an explanation of the grand mystery of godliness, or, a true and faithfull representation of the everlasting gospel of our lord and saviour jesus christ, the onely begotten son of god and sovereign over men and angels by h. more ... more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) an explanation of the grand mystery of godliness, or, a true and faithfull representation of the everlasting gospel of our lord and saviour jesus christ, the onely begotten son of god and sovereign over men and angels by h. more ... more, henry, - . [ ], v-xxx, , [ ] p. printed by j. flesher for w. morden ..., london : . errata on p. [ ] at end. reproduction of original in yale university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng christianity -- early works to . christianity -- essence, genius, nature. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images - emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread - emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an explanation of the grand mystery of godliness ; or , a true and faithfull representation of the everlasting gospel of our lord and saviour jesus christ , the onely begotten son of god and sovereign over men and angels . by h. more , d. d. tim. . . and without controversie great is the mystery of godliness : god was manifested in the flesh , justified in the spirit , seen of angels , preached unto the gentiles , believed on in the world , received up into glory . acts . , . and while they looked stedfastly toward heaven , as he went up , behold , two when stood by them in white apparell ; which also said , ye men of galilee , why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? this same iesus which is taken up from you into heaven , shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven . gal. . . though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel then this , let him be accursed . london , printed by i. flesher , for w. morden bookseller in cambridge , . to the reader . reader , . if thine own curiosity has given thee the trouble of perusing what i have wrote hitherto , that thou maiest not suspect thy task will prove endless , give me leave to informe thee that there is no small hopes that this discourse may prove the last from my hand that shall exercise thy patience . in which if thou wilt not believe me on my bare word , the better to ease thee of thy fears i shall back it with some reason . i must indeed confess , that free speculation and that easie springing up of coherent thoughts and conceptions within is a pleasure to me far above any thing i ever received from external sense ; and that lazy activity of mind in compounding and dissevering of notions and ideas in the silent observation of their natural connexions and disagreements , as a holy-day and sabbath of rest to the soul. but the labour of deriving of these senses of the mind with their due advantages and circumstances to the understanding of another , and to find out words which will prove f●●thful witnesses of the peculiarities of my thoughts ; this verily is to me a toil and a burden unsupportable : besides the very writing of them a trouble so tedious , that if any one knew with what impatience and vexatiousness i pen down my conceptions , they might be very well assured that i am not onely free from , but incapable of the common disease of this scripturient age. . no smal engines therefore could ever move so heavy and sluggish a soul as mine to so ungratefull a piece of drudgery ; as thou thy self maiest collect from my very writings themselves , the subjects of them being matters of the highest consequence that the mind of man can entertain her self withall . the writing whereof was in a manner a necessary result of my natural constitution , which freeing me from all the servitude of those petty designs of ambition , covetousness , and the pleasing entanglements of the body , i might either lie fixt for ever in an unactive idleness , or else be moved by none but very great objects . amongst which the least was the contemplation of this outward world , whose several powers and properties touching variously upon my tender senses , made to me such enravishing musick , and snatcht away my soul into so great admiration , love , and desire of a nearer acquaintance with that principle from which all these things did flow ; that the pleasure and joy that frequently accrued to me from hence is plainly unutterable , though i have attempted to leave some marks and traces thereof in my philosophical poems . . but being well advised both by the dictates of my own conscience , and clear information of those holy oracles which we all deservedly reverence , that god reserves his choicest secrets for the purest minds , and that it is uncleanness of spirit , not distance of place , that dissevers us from the deity ; i was fully convinced that true holiness was the onely safe entrance into divine knowledge : and having an unshaken belief of the existence of god and of his will , that we should be holy , even as he is holy , there was nothing that is truly sinful that could appear to me , assisted by such a power , to be unconquerable . which therefore urged me seriously to set my self to the task . of the experiences and events of which enterprize my second and third canto of the life of the soul is a real and faithful record . . my enjoyments then increasing with my victories , and innocency and simplicity filling my mind with ineffable delight in god and his creation , i found my self as loath to die , that is , to think my soul mortal , as i was when i was a child to be called in to go to bed in summer evenings , there being still light enough as i thought to enjoy my play . which solicitude put me upon my first search into the nature of the soul , which i pursued chiefly by the guidance of the school of plato , whose philosophy to this very day i look upon to be more then humane in the chief strokes thereof . but launching out so very early into so deep a theory , i think it not amiss to advertise the reader that he would do well , where he finds a difference in my discoveries , to interpret , and also rectifie if need be , my first thoughts by my second , my philosophick poems and whatever is writ in that volume , by my later and better concocted prose . these were the first essaies of my youth ; and how great and serious the objects of my mind were therein thou canst easily judge . . and after this , where i seem most light and trivial and play the sportful satyrist against enthusiastick philosophy , my design even then was as seasonable , serious and of as grand importance as i could possibly undertake ; which i have more then sufficiently demonstrated in those writings themselves . and though some over-subject to the fanatick disease have looked upon that unexpected sally of mine as a very extravagant exploit ; yet i did easily bear with their ignorance , deeming it in my silent thoughts in some sort parallel to that of the peevish hebrew who reproached moses for slaying of the egyptian , not knowing that it was a preludious act to his delivering of his whole nation from the bondage of aegypt . . and i hope i may speak it without vanity , that what is discovered concerning enthusiasme in my enthusiasmus triumphatus , together with that which is comprehended in this present volume , will contribute no small share to a rightful and justifiable subduing of so dangerous a distemper , and to the slaying or at least fettering that wild beast that the devil himself rides upon , when he warres against the lamb , whose throne i have seen shaken with the pushings of this monsters horns for these many years together , though never clearer then now of late . and i dare pronounce with a loud voice aforehand , that if ever christianity be exterminated , it will be by enthusiasme . of so great consequence is it rightly to oppose so deadly an evil . which cannot better be done then by shewing the reasonableness and important usefulness of christian religion in the historical sense thereof , and in reference to the very person of christ our saviour ; which i have , i hope , abundantly performed in this present treatise : and by discovering the natural causes and imposturous consequences of enthusiasme , which i had done before in enthusiasmus triumphatus . which two treatises i hope will prove two invincible fortresses against all the force and fury of the fanatical spirit . . after this the bold impiety of this present age engaged my thoughts in a subject of no less moment then the former : for i saw that other abhorred monster , atheisme , proudly strutting with a lofty gate and impudent forehead , boasting himself the onely genuine offspring of true wisdome and philosophy , namely of that which makes matter alone the substance of all things in the world . this misshapen creature was first nourished up in the stie of epicurus , and fancied it self afterward grown more tall and stout by further strength it seemed to have received from some new principles of the french philosophy misinterpreted and perverted by certain impure and unskilful pens . which unexpected confidence of those blind boasters made me with all anxiety and care imaginable search into the power of matter and mere mechanical motion , and consider how far they might go of themselves in the production of the phaenomena of the world. but as for the philosophy of epicurus , it seemed to me at the very first sight such a foolery , that i was much amazed that a person of so commendable parts as p. gassendus could ever have the patience to rake out such old course rags out of that rotten dunghill to stuffe his large volumes withall . but i must confess i did as much admire des-cartes philosophy as i did despise the epicurean , who has carried on the power of matter for the production of the phaenomena of nature with that neatness and coherence , that if he had been as ignorant in other things as skilful in mechanicks , he could not but have fancied himself to have wone that crown that many wits have striven for , that is , the honour of being accounted the most subtil and able atheist of both the present and past ages . this made me peruse his writings with still more and more diligence : and the more i read , the more i admired his wit ; but at last grew the more confirmed that it was utterly impossible that matter should be the onely essential principle of things , as i have in several places of my writings demonstrated . and therefore having clearly vanquished this difficulty , i betook my self with greater alacrity to the writing of my antidote against atheisme . to which presently after i added my threefold cabbala as an appendix to the same design , being well advised what a homely conceit our high wits have of the three first chapters of genesis , though they do betray their own ignorance by their mean opinion of them . . and possibly then i had left off , had not a dangerous sickness , that made me suspect that the time did near approach of quitting this my earthly tabernacle , urged me more carefully to bethink my self what reception i might have in the other world . and , praised be god , such was the condition of my soul , though then much overrun with melancholy , that my presages concerning my future state were very favourable and comfortable , and my desire was to be gathered to that body of which iesus christ is head , even he who was crucified at ierusalem , and felt the pangs of death for a propitiation of the sins of the world , who was then represented to me as visible a prince and as distinct a person and head politick as any king or potentate upon earth . and therefore being thus fully convinced with my self that he whose life was ever to me the most sweet and lovely of any thing i could see or taste , was indeed even in his humane nature made a king and priest for ever , and constituted soveraign over men and angels , my heart was full of ioy ; but withall accompanied with a just measure of shame , that i had spoken hitherto so sparingly of his royal office and of the homage due to so divine a potentate , whose subject to my great satisfaction i found my self to be , and whose presence i did not at all despair of approaching in due time to my eternal comfort and honour . which sense of things made me conceive a solemn vow with my self , if god gave me life , to write this present treatise . which occasion i thought fit not to conceal , though i be much averse from speaking any thing over-particularly of my self , that the high-flown fanaticks of this age may consider more carefully what i have writ , and take heed how they either slight or revolt from their celestial soveraign . but i thought it very convenient before i put in execution this great design , to take again into consideration that other weighty subject , the immortality of the soul , being better appointed and provided for the clearing of that truth then i was when i first adventured upon the theory . and thus having fully convinced my self ( and i hope as many else as are capable of judging of the more choice and subtile conclusions of reason and philosophy ) that there is a god , and that the soul of man is immortal , which are the two main pillars upon which all religion stands ; i advanced forward with courage , having left no enemy behind , and betook my self with great confidence to the finishing and publishing of this present treatise of the mystery of christianity . which i look upon as the most precious and the most concerning piece of wisdome that is communicable to the soul of man , the very chief and top ▪ bough of that tree of knowledge whose fruit has neither poison nor bitterness . and therefore being come to my journeys end , i will here sit down with thanks , and enjoy my self under this comfortable shade , and do assure thee , reader , that i am not likely to weary thy eyes with the descriptions of any further discoveries by my pen. . onely that thou mayest view this with the better ease and satisfaction , i shall , according to my usual manner , endeavour to remove all rubs of offence out of thy way , by giving thee an account aforehand of whatever may seem to thee a considerable either superfluity , defect , or aberration in my performance , not omitting to impart to thee the right and proper meaning of the very title of my discourse . thou must therefore expect from my terming of it , an explanation of the mystery of godliness , not a mere verbal exposition or declaration what is signified therein , but such an orderly exhibition of the truths thereof , that the scope of the whole being understood , the reasonableness of the particulars thereunto tending may clearly appear . and the end to which all parts of the christian mystery point at is the advancement and triumph of the divine life . in the exaltation whereof god is the most highly and most truly magnified and glorified , and not in the dark and unintelligible exercise of an irresistible power . by which no other acts of devotion can be stirred up in us then fear and stupour , such as seizes upon poor astonished cattel in stormes and lightnings , or mighty land-flouds , that carry them they know not whether . i have styled it also a true and faithful representation of the everlasting gospel , &c. true , as intermingling no humane inventions no● deductions therewith , but contenting my self with what is expresly declared in the scripture . the truth of which things i think i have demonstrated beyond all exception in the third part of my discourse . i add also , faithful , i having wrote impartially , setting down nothing out of any passion , interest or side-taking , nor out of the spirit of opposition or vain-glory , but speaking the truth freely without any respect to persons or factions ; not minding either to sooth the one or displease the other , but delivering my message so as one that is sensible he must give account thereof within a small space of time before them in the other world. and as i profess my self that i have done all things herein with a faithful heart , so i doubt not but the effect will witness for me , that what i profess is true . for whereas some in an hypocritical flattery of the external person of christ shuffle out all obligation to the divine life , that mystical christ within us , and pervert the grace of god in the gospel to loosness and libertinisme ; and others on the contrary ( whether out of the power of melancholy that calls the thoughts inward , or the scandal they take from abuse of the personal offices of our blessed saviour , ( they seeing the generality of christians make the external frame of religion but a palliation for sin ) or whether from the obscurity of some articles of the christian faith ) have become plainly infidels and misbelievers of the whole history of christ , and will have nothing to do with his person , but look upon the mystery of christianity as a thing wholy within us , and that has no other object then what is either acting or acted in our selves : i have with all earnestness of endeavour and with undeniable clearness of testimony from reason and scripture demonstrated the truth and necessity of both christ within and christ without , and have plainly set out the wonderful wisdome and goodness of god in contriving so powerful a means as the very exteriour oeconomy of christianity is for the renewing of our natures into the glorious image of his son , who is the life of god and the soul 's sure pledge of an happy immortality . besides that there is no article of the christian faith , nor any particular miracle hapning to or done by our saviour or to be done by him , mentioned in the gospels or any where else in the new testament , but i have given so solid and rational an account thereof , that i am confident that no man that has the use of his understanding shall be able ever to pretend any reason against christian religion , such as it is exhibited in the holy writings themselves . and what is , if this be not , to set out a faithful representation of the gospel ? which i have not rashly termed the everlasting gospel of our lord and saviour , &c. being warranted thereto by that of daniel , who styles christian religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the everlasting righteousness , or the everlasting religion , as grotius has well interpreted it . which religion is denoted by the suffering of the messias , and began from thence , and is to remain till he return again visibly in the clouds of heaven and put a period to this stage of things . i was also thereunto provoked in way of express opposition to that bold enthusiast of whom i have spoken so much in the ensuing treatise , who seems to endeavour to superannuate christianity as it is founded upon the person of our ever-blessed saviour the crucified jesus , and to introduce another evangelie , as he calls it , which he pretends to be the everlasting gospel , and fancies himself that flying angel in the midst of heaven that is the preacher of it to every nation and kindred and tongue and people . . as for my discourse it self , i having adventured there to determine none of the more nice and intricate opinions of theology , but kept my self within the bounds of the confessed truth of our religion , i hope very few things will occurre that shall not be found inoffensive and perspicuously consonant to scripture . that which i imagine most lyable to censure is , that in some matters i may seem over-copious , in others too scant . as for example , my description of the animal life , my display of paganisme , and my parallelisme betwixt our saviour and apollonius , may haply seem to some set down over-largely and luxuriantly . but truly i thought i could not be too punctuall in describing the animal life , it being so serviceable for our better understanding the divine , whose nature and properties by how much more clearly and distinctly any one conceives , and withall has a savoury and experimental rellish thereof , with the greater satisfaction shall he peruse what i have writ , and understand the reasonableness , and be assured of the truth and solidity of the christian religion . for the divine life is in a manner the deepest bottome of this whole mystery of godliness we treat of . moreover , the more perfect understanding of the nature of the animal life makes us the abler to judge of the sundry superstitions of paganisme , wherein though by their subtil apologies they could clear themselves from atheisme and the worser sort of idolatry , and could make it good that it was one eternal deity , be he never so philosophically defined , that was the chief and ultimate object of their worship ; yet it is hereby apparent that the best of them exceeds not the animal bounds , forasmuch as they worshipped god in these rude religions onely out of the sense of the gratifications of the animal life : and if i have more copiously set down how foully and sordidly they have done it , my pains therein i hope may be interpreted to very good purpose , it being manifest thereby how just a victory christianity had over paganisme . . and for that continued parallel i have made betwixt the life of christ and apollonius , besides the pleasure the peruser may take , in receiving an account of the character and actions of so noble a person as that pagan was , ( whom his fellow-heathens did either equalize to or else prefer before our ever-blessed saviour , and who was not a mere enthusiastick whifler with a raised style and a canting eloquence , but was exemplarily just , chaste and generous , and did such miracles as nothing but magick and the assistance of some of the invisible powers he was in league with could bring to pass ) i say , beside the pleasure , there will accrue to him also the advantage of a more clear and distinct knowledge of the right idea of a person truly divine , by discovering of a counterfeit that in outward appearance came so nigh the true . for those things though they dazled the eyes of the better sort of the heathen , as hierocles and others , in such sort that they took him to be at least as sacred a person as our saviour himself ; yet i doubt not but that by this parallelisme of mine i have proved the comparison to be very vain and presumptuous , and have made it appear to as many as are competent judges of what is truly divine , that our saviour christ does exceed the character of apollonius ( though it is very probable philostratus has taken the liberty to adde more miracles and perfections then he ever was guilty of ) as far as apollonius did the brute beasts . and therefore i hold the making of this parallelisme of very great use and consequence for the enabling us to distinguish the divine life from the animal even then when it is dressed up in its most commendable ornaments . of which this in apollonius is a very illustrious example . . and though there be no great exercise intended of curiosity of judgement in my bringing up mahomet and that grand enthusiast of amsterdam upon the stage as being bold corrivals with christ himself ; yet it is no supervacaneous action to draw them into sight , though it be but that their own looks might condemn them . for that also tends to the confirmation of our religion , that she has no actual competitors but such as bear upon them their self-condemnation at the very first view . which is easilier obtained of mahometisme , their success and victories having made them bold and careless to lay out themselves to the world. but familisme is a more various , a more obscure and sculking monster , though she mutter in her dark hole that she has right to the dominion of the whole earth , and that christianity and mahometisme are to give place to her . and therefore truely it might have been judged a defect , if i had not thus haled her out of her den into open day , that the world once having seen her may say they have enough of her , unless god out of his wrath has given them up to a reprobate sense , for their abuse of the solid truth of the gospel . i confess my so large excursions and frequent expostulations with the familists and quakers are not very ornamental to my discourse , and may go off but heavily with such persons as peruse mens writings more for pleasure then service , and rather for private satisfaction then for publick usefulness , which they neither intend themselves , nor do easily spy out or rellish in the intentions of others . but the publick interest of the church of christ being the scope and measure of my writing this treatise , it was sufficient that i kept faithful to my own design , not heeding the gratification of more trim and elegant fancies , who are so nice and finical that they would not come near a sore , though they could heal it by touching it , nor approach a sick person , though the cast of their shadow were a cure . wherefore to give an account of my so sedulous and copious reprehensions and convictions of these two sects , who have an over-near affinity one with another , and were growing apace into one body of familisme , ( which made me represent that sect so formidable as i have ) the first reason of my so industriously accosting them is the either certain knowledge or strong presumption i have that there may very well be extraordinarily sincere and wel-meaning men adhering to their way . for though the depth of the mystery of familisme , and i doubt of quakerisme too , be that which every good christian ought from his very heart to detest and abhorre , namely the slighting , nay , i may say , the utter rejecting of the person of christ as to his humane nature , with all his offices assigned to him by his father ; yet this is an arcanum that is kept hid from their novices , ( and if a man continue conscienciously good , he may be a novice with them as long as he lives ) to whom they propound nothing but the most weighty precepts of the gospel , and charm their attention with finely-contrived allegories of the history of christ , interpreting all to a spiritual or mystical sense of things to be done in us : with which these yonglings are not a little tickled , as thinking themselves adorned with a special piece of divine knowledge ; and then they being marvellously sincere , and having from an enthusiastick complexion or some better principle a very eager thirst after reall goodness and righteousness , the rellish of these morall allusions must needs become still the more savoury to them . whence it does appear that the best and most serious tempered men may be the easiliest drawn to the liking and adhering to so fair and cunning a faction , and that consequently a man cannot be over-careful and solicitous in trying all means possible to undeceive them and set them in the right way . but then again further , our design was not onely in the behalf of these who really deserve to be pittied , but was aimed also against their obdurate deceivers , who being deeply baptised into this accursed apostasy from the person of christ , led multitudes along with them , the kingdome swarming with those that for no good purpose so peremptorily distinguished themselves from other men , by a resolved coursness and crosness of deportment . what therefore could i do more seasonably , when not onely my self but even almost all men were afraid that this sort of people would overrun all , then to expose to the eye of the world the bottome of so damnable a conspiracy , which was no less then rebellion against their celestial soveraign christ iesus , and the undermining or tearing in pieces of his kingdome upon earth under pretence of beginning the reign of his saints and holy ones ? this made me so careful and explicite in discovering the whole mystery of familisme , and so free and vehement in my expostulations both with them and the quakers in this treatise of mine , being very impatient whatever variegations an ill-managed liberty should run the nation into , that they should ever become pagans . . but to the eternal laud and praise of our infinitely-merciful god , whose eye of providence ever watches over his church , when things were most desperate , he was pleased to answer the prayers and well-meant endeavours of his faithful servants with not onely hopes but enjoyments more sudden and more ample then could then be imagined , in restoring our gracious soveraign charles the second , to whom god give a long and prosperous reign , so unexpectedly to his rightful government , to the unexpressible joy and comfort of all his three kingdomes . the excellent endowments of whose royal person are such , that whatever grand matters the fervid parturiency and amuzed expectation of the very fanatick part of this nation was big withall , may come to a more safe and mature birth by the restoring this long-afflicted prince to his ancient right , then by any other way conceivable . for those words of so great sound , and of no less import , namely the millennium , the reign of the saints , the new jerusalem , and the like , to them that are not very wild or ignorant can signifie nothing else but the recovery of the church to her ancient apostolick purity , wherein nothing shall be imperiously obtruded upon men but what is plainly discoverable to be the mind of christ and his blessed apostles . there shall be nothing held essential and fundamental but the indispensable law of the christian life , and that doctrine that depends not upon the fallible deductions of men , but is plainly set down in the scripture ; other things being left to the free recommendation of the church , ensnaring no mans conscience nor lording it over the flock of christ. . which certainly they do that call those things antichristian that are not , and thereby make more fundamentals then christ or his apostles ; which errour is the very essence and substance of antichristianisme , and of the grand apostasy of the church . as methinks should appear plainly to any man that considers it from the description of the new jerusalem , whose foundation and whole fabrick runs so upon twelve . for truly it seems to me very unsafe and over-near the brinks of reproach to the spirit of god , to conceit that wisdome which dictated this prophecy so shallow and trifling , as to mean nothing by that so industriously inculcating the number twelve but the churches proceeding first from the preaching of the apostles ; a truth that no man never so destitute of the spirit of divination could misse of , or possibly think otherwise . wherefore the meaning of the prophecy questionless is , that after the church has added false fundamentals to the christian faith , and as bad superstructures , the time will come when it shall be again restored to its former purity : and that as the root twelve is the embleme of the pure church ; so there is also a root of a number that will discover that church which is the mother of this great apostasy , as really in my judgement mr. potter in the number . has ingeniously demonstrated . but it is manifest that all the zealous corrivals for the government of this nation , by either decrying things for antichristian that in themselves are innocent and of an indifferent nature , or by obtruding opinions that are worse then indifferent , have but shewed themselves branches of that great stock of apostasy , and are too far removed from the reputed merit of either being or beginning of a church that is purely apostolical . . this honour therefore seems to have been reserved by providence for the eternizing the happy reign of our gracious soveraign ; and all the parturient agonies and zealous presages of the people of this nation , as if there was an approach of some extraordinary good to be revealed suddenly to the world , to have been nothing else ( if they knew their own meaning ) but a less explicite presensation of the return of charles the second to the rightfull government of his kingdomes . and truely it will be the greatest miracle to me in the world if he can frustrate our expectation . for whether we consider the excellent qualifications of our gracious prince , whom providence has so long time disciplined in the most effectual method of prudence and vertue , besides the express declaration of his own royal inclinations this way ; or whether we look upon the reasonableness of the thing it self , it being not onely recommended to us both by precept and prophecies , but also offering so irrefragable evidence from its own nature of the indispensableness of the duty ; there being no other possible means to reduce the world to a right christian tenour of spirit , and to recover it to a due strength and soundness of complexion , but by shearing off those large excrescencies of either useless or scandalous ceremonies and opinions , the foments of strife and palliations of hypocrisy , men seeking by these to be excused from the most weighty precepts of the gospel ; or lastly we take notice of the great interest the wise and reverend clergy of this nation cannot but discover herein even in reference to themselves : it is almost impossible to doubt of either endeavour or success in this so important affair . for certainly nothing can so well secure their peace and make them impregnable , as the using of their power and exercising their discipline in the behalf of such truths and rites as are plainly and confessedly apostolical , and the being more facil and easie in additional circumstances , and cutting quite off all useless and entangling opinions . for hereby will their opposers be manifestly found to fight against god and his christ , while they contest with his ministers who urge nothing upon the people but what was plainly taught and practised by himself and his apostles , whose waies and doctrines are so sacred , that they ought to be kept up with all lawful severity . which one plain and generous rule of government , if faithfully kept to , is the most effectual means imaginable of making the world good , and for both the unity and enlargement of the church , infinitely above all those many fine artifices and small devices of the most professed politicians in the church of rome ; provided we be not course and sordid , but reverent and comely in our publick worship . . but to return . in the third and last place , although the exigency of the times which then urged me to write thus carefully touching the quakers and familists is now ( god be thanked ) changed into a more safe scene of things , and the resettlement of our gracious soveraign in his throne doth again secure the scepter of christ to his church ; yet i thought it fit not to ex●unge what i had wrote concerning these sects . for for the present , it cannot but contribute considerably to an unfained composure of their spirits and peaceful acquiescence in the known christian truth , their minds being more at leisure now & better fitted to consider what is true then they were before , when the heat of enthusiastick hopes of i know not what great success inflamed them and blew them up so high , that the voice of sober reason could not well be heard in that fanatick storm and bluster , nor an errour easily let go , which seemed a pledge of the sudden approach of so great advantages to the entertainers of it . and then for the future , so fundamental a discovery of the unsoundness and madness of these sects cannot , i think , but be very effectual for the preventing their spreading hereafter ; that it will not be any longer in the power of their false teachers to befool well-meaning men with fine words , and make them unawares countenance a faction , the deepest arcanum whereof is absolute rebellion against the person of christ and an utter abrogation of christian religion . which task though others heretofore have undertaken , and i question not but with like faithful and zealous regard to the good of the church ; yet their discovery could not be so perfect , they not living in an age of such liberty , which has tempted all sorts of men to shew themselves in their own colours . besides that what they wrote being onely concerning this sect of familisme in pamphlets apart by themselves , the matter was not of such general concernment as to invite or engage men to read . but the subject of this present treatise being of so universal and so weighty importance , it cannot fail to prove a more effectual monitour to the world of the deadly danger that lies under that fair enticing title of the family of love. . nor ought my earnest diligence against familisme embolden you to think me partial or defectuous , in that you observe me so eagerly opposing no other sect ; for the design of my discourse leads me not to such particularities as are controverted amongst christians that still hold the fundamentals of our religion : against whom i profess my self eager in nothing so much as in hearty exhortation that they would not make their difference of opinion any breach of friendship , but an exercise of their christian charity and tender forbearance one of another : not insulting over one anothers supposed ignorance , nor forcing one another to external compliance and profession of what they do not believe , by harsh antichristian compulsions ; but by calme reasoning and kind treating one another with mutuall love and patience , which is an exercise more pleasing in the sight of god then the exactest uniformity of opinions and worship that the greatest formalist can propound or desire . this is all that i find my self bound in conscience to be earnest in against such like sects as these . but familisme is no such sect , nay , to speak properly , and to yield them their own boast , they are no sect at all , i mean of christians , but a totall apostasy from christianity , as you may easily understand out of what i have writ in the following discourse . and therefore my present purpose being the demonstration of the solidity of the fundamentals of christianisme as it is apparently comprehended in the holy writ , it was proper and unavoidable for me to deal with all such as did oppose or undermine those undispensable truths of our religion ; and therefore i had been wanting to the cause , if i had not thus industriously set my self against this dangerous and mischievous mystery of unbelief which is ordinarily called familisme . and as i have not spared them , so there is no sect that has stoln away any one essential of christianity , whether appertaining to life or speculation , but i have bid them battel , and i hope rescued the prey out of their hands and led them captive into the truth ; at least they have not escaped their share of chastisement for their committing of so hainous a crime . and this is all that i could in reason attempt , unless i would break all the lawes of method , and make useless excursions beyond the set limits of my discourse . . my forbearing therefore to squable with every petty sect i hope will be accounted no part of defectuousness . but there are other omissions i must confess that may seem more justly liable to that imputation . as for example , in that i have not endeavoured to clear the prophecy of daniel's weeks to that accuracy , as to bring the passion of our saviour to the middle of the last week , as the prophecy seems most naturally to imply ; but have contented my self with that chronological account of funccius that suffers it to fall in the last day of the week . but as i have already intimated in the place , there may be that latitude of the meaning of the middle of the week , that it may signifie any time of the week begun and not yet expired . in which sense funccius his account is within a year or thereabout of the exact completion of the prophecy . which is so near the matter , that one may easily suspect that it is some mistake in their computations that it does not happen just according to the prophecy , so little time being easily misreckoned in so large an account . besides , it was sufficient for my purpose onely to take notice and to make evident , that this prophecy of daniel is understood of the messias , and that the weeks are long ago expired . for by this alone we may demonstratively conclude that he is already come ; which was the onely thing pertinent to my present subject . and lastly , for thy further satisfaction , as the task thou expectedst had been too laborious for me to performe , so thou thy self wilt hold it needless when thou shalt understand with what accuracy and solidity it is already perfected by the learned master of our colledge dr. cudworth in his publick lectures in the schools : wherein he has undeceived the world , misled too long by the over-great opinion they had of joseph scaliger , and taking funccius his epocha has demonstrated the manifestation of the messiah to have fallen out at the end of the sixty ninth week , and his passion in the midst of the last , in the most natural and proper sense thereof . which demonstration of his is in my apprehension of as much price and worth in theologie , as either the circulation of the bloud in physick , or the motion of the earth in natural philosophy , as i have already noted in its proper place . . again , i may haply seem unto thee defectuous in that i have so expressely professed my hope and expectation of better times in the church , and yet not gone about to produce that copiousness of arguments that might have befitted the management of so desirable a truth . but i have to answer for my self , that that subject was too big for my hands , especially being as full already as they could grasp ; and that the theory also was not essential to the scope of my present discourse ; and lastly , that certain friends of mine ( whose more then ordinary skill and happy rellish of the best and choicest things has made them fit undertakers of so usefull a design ) will , i hope , ere long gratifie the world with their excellent performances in that subject . the promotion of which opinion cannot but be profitable to the church of christ , provided the case be rightly stated , namely , that these good times , which we expect and hope for , will not be the exaltation of this or that sect. for the childish conceit of some is , that the future prosperity of the church will be nothing but the setting up this forme or that opinion , and so every faction will be content to be millennists upon condition that christ may reign after their way or mode , that is in calvinisme , in arminianisme , in papisme , in anabaptisme , in quakerisme , in presbytery , in episcopacy , in independency , and the like . but the true happiness of those days is not to be measured by formalities or opinions , but by a more corroborated faith in christ and his promises , by devotion unfeigned , by purity of heart and innocency of life , by faithfulness , by common charity , by comfortable provisions for the poor , by chearful obedience to our superiours , and abundance of kindness and discreet condescensions one to another , by unspotted righteousness and an unshaken peace , by the removal of every unjust yoke , by mutual forbearance , and bearing up one another as living stones of that temple where there is not to be heard the noise of either axe or hammer , no squable or clamour about formes or opinions , but a peaceable study and endeavour of provoking one another to love and good works . provided this be the idea of those happy ages to come , the inculcating of this belief in my judgement cannot but be very useful , it bearing along with it both a detection and reprehension of the degeneracy of the present age , and a warmth and encouragement to hasten those good times by endeavouring to correct our lives according to this pattern we have of them . . that also will be accounted a defect by some , that i have said no more of publick worship , and nothing at all of church-government . but i must again answer , that it was beside my scope to meddle with such things . to which i may adde , that the world is full of such controversies , and as much said already as either wit or zeal can excogitate . my design was onely to represent christianity in the fundamentals thereof , with that purity and clearness as might most of all conciliate belief and strengthen our faith in the most necessary points , such as concerned every private christian to believe and to live accordingly ; to the end that though the iniquity of the times should have proved such that he knew not whither to turn him or whom to joine withall in any publick worship or profession , yet he might rest satisfied in this , that he was immutably grounded in the saving truths of the gospel , and was able to give an account of his faith to himself and to as many as were fit to receive it ; and living uprightly might not be affraid to find himself alone , knowing that every single man is a church , if his body once become the temple of the holy ghost . my onely solicitude therefore was to corroborate that faith that is plainly propounded to us out of the scripture , which is sufficient to salvation , and to exalt that life that has lyen dead and buried for these many ages under a vast heap of humane inventions , useless and cumbersome ceremonies and unpeaceable opinions : not at all doubting but that if the life of christ were once awakened in the world , he that clothes the lilies of the field and adornes the birds of the aire with their severall comely and orderly-disposed colours , will not be wanting to such a church as has the principle of life in it self ; but that it will grow up into such an external forme and comeliness in all points as most befits and are the most proper results of those vitall operations in it . whenas the best externals without these are but as the skin of an animal stuffed with wooll or straw . . but besides that it was beyond my scope , it was also above my abilities to give judgement concerning the curiosities of church-government , it depending upon studies too tedious and voluminous for the strength of my body , as also very little gratefull to the rellishes of my mind , whose genius has irresistibly carried me captive into another country and a quite different scene of speculations and objects . all therefore that i could with confidence and safety have pronounced is , that in general church-government and discipline is as assuredly jure divino as the civil magistrate ; and , it may be , should have adventured to adde , that in a christian polity the power of appointing and ordering things in the church is lodged in the supremacy of every such body politick , and that all degrees ecclesiastick are but under-ministers to this supreme power , who is head of all next to christ. that this supreme power is to regulate the affairs of the church as near to the prescripts and practices of the apostolick times as they can guesse , unless those practices and prescripts may be conceived to have been founded upon such a constitution of the church as is not in the present affairs of this or that part of christendome which is concerned . that if the external forme of church-government were of such mighty consequence , as that this ought to be called antichristian , that reputed jure divino , and that it were essential to a true church to have such or such a kind of government rather then another , christ would have left more express command and direction concerning it ; that the church might not be liable to erre in so fundamental a matter . that the main end of church-government and discipline is the countenancing and promoting the christian life and an holy observation of such precepts of christ as do not make men obnoxious to the secular law by the transgressing of them , to keep out also idolatry and every errour or superstitious practice that tends to the supplanting or defeating the power of the gospel ; and that therefore we ought rather to be solicitous about managing this government to the right end , then disturb the peace of the church by over-scrupulous examination of the exteriour frame thereof . that if christ had left an exact platforme of government , and the church kept to it ; if the above-said end were not aimed at in the management thereof , but in stead of being a countenance and encouragement to reall godliness it should be directed to the upholding of useless or mischievous opinions , scandalous ceremonies and ensnaring inventions of men ; the more exactly they kept to this outward platforme of christ , the more plainly they would discover themselves to be antichristian , ( that is , a pretended christian power against the reall interest of christ ) and that conjunction of the horns of the lamb with the voice of the dragon would more evidently appear . that church-discipline and government is as a fort or castle , of excellent use if it be in the hands of the faithfull souldiery of christ , or as a safe vessell for precious liquour , or as restringent and corroborative physick where there is an unexpected evacuation of the serviceable supports of life . but if traitours to the kingdome of christ get possession of this castle , poison be mingled with this precious liquour , and foul and malignant humours be lodged in the body ; it were more desirable the castle were ruined , the vessell broken , the physick cast down the sink , and the body left free to the course of nature , then that things so hatefull and pernicious should be continued and conserved by them : that is to say , it were better that christian religion were left to support it self by the innate evidence of its own truth , then being sophisticated with vain lies and wicked inventions be forcibly maintained for other ends then it was intended for , nay be made to serve contrary ends , and prove a mystery of tyranny and ungodliness : and that therefore the first and chief point is to make a right choice of the object of this church-discipline , which is to comprehend nothing but what is sound and purely apostolicall , that is , the indisputable truths of our religion , such as we are sure to be the mind of christ and his apostles ; namely the generally-acknowledged articles of the christian faith , and plain and indispensable duties of life . for these are such as deserve to be held up with all possible care and strictness , other things so gently recommended that no consciencious man may be pinched thereby . that nothing can conciliate more authority to the church nor more assured peace and tranquillity , then to deal bonâ fide with the people ; and not to make them more foolish and superstitious then they would naturally be , and then to pride and please our selves in the sweet rellish of that false satisfaction we find in feeling our power over them , and in fansying our selves such marvellous church-polititians , that we can by crafty delusions lead about those whom we should make it our business to undeceive and free from all vain mistakes , and set before them the naked truth and pure light of the gospel , whereby they may become really good , and therewith bear a more unfeigned respect to the ministery and shew more sincere obedience to the church , then they can by being kept to that blind way of admiring outward formalities and useless opinions and ceremonies , out of which cannot arise so natural a tie of love and honour to the priest as by his discovering his faithfulness to his charge in shewing them the very truth and substance of the religion he ministers to them , and by being instrumental in deriving of the same christian spirit upon them which he ought to have in an higher measure himself . that they may well hazard goodly structures of truth by building them upon doubtful and controvertible foundations ; such is the setting such a kind of episcopacy or presbytery upon the basis of a divine right ; besides their making themselves thereby obnoxious to the suspicion of a design of unmerciful riding and galling the people when they have once by this device so safely lockt themselves into the saddle : as if that were not true which i noted before , that the exactest platforme of church-government , by directing or using of it to other ends then it was instituted by christ , did become thereby the more perfectly antichristian . that episcopacy simply in it self is not antichristian , as appears even out of that book which fanatick hot-spurres so much abuse to the disturbance of the church , i mean the apocalypse , compared with the acknowledged church-history concerning this ancient government , which was in use when the church was most exactly symmetrall . and therefore if this or that forme of government were essential to the purity of a church , episcopacy would not have obtained in that state when she was most pure , if it had been antichristian . from whence it also necessarily followes that presbytery is not jure divino . that if any mode or platforme of church-government be jure divino , i should sooner venture upon mr. thorndike's way then any , which in my apprehension he has made out with much solidity and freedome of judgement , and is not onely truely serviceable to the design of church-government in generall , but also very accommodate to the present constitution of things , it being such a mixture of episcopacy and presbytery together , as may justly , if they would be modest and ingenuous , satisfie the expectation of both parties . that upon an account of reason and of the nature of the thing it self , episcopacy joined with presbytery is better then presbytery alone ; forasmuch as it is easier to find one man fitted for so sacred an office then many . and there is more ingenuous shame and sense of honour in a single person then in a multitude , whose number makes them more bold and daring to pass any thing , such as if it were in the power of one single person to stop , he could not in point of reputation and self-security fail to use his negative voice . but where the power is in a multitude without any restraint , there cannot but be the hazard of very gross transactions , they bolstering up one another by reflexion upon their numerosity ; and every man , in shuffling off the odiousness of the miscarriage to the rest of the lump , conceits himself to bear a very inconsiderable share of either the shame or danger of whatever is voted . wherefore there must be a great deal of either ignorance or malice to style that function antichristian , that is thus recommended to us both from the practice of the primitive church and the light of reason . . nor can i understand why an ample and honourable revenue should be accounted antichristian ; especially by those whose ordinary ambition and endeavours are to grow rich . and for honour it self ; it seems to me a symptome of secret atheisme and prophaneness in the minds of men , while they are so prone to think a man less honourable by being in a more special and nearer manner the servant of god and of his son iesus christ who is lord over all . wherefore whosoever has not a very venerable esteem of these peculiar servants of christ , ought to suspect himself that he is also guilty of some latitant averseness or enmity to religion it self ; unless that he can clearly deprehend that his disrespect or disgust arises from the over-long continued fraud and histrionical imposture of such functions in the apostatized church ; the gayest idol being more odious and contemptible then the rudest and most unpolished piece of timber that pretends to be nothing but what it is . which yet will not excuse him from doing his outward respect to such personages , much less encourage him to personall revilements , a disorder that s. paul to an high priest in a religion superannuated could not allow himself in . otherwise where they are not idols , but fill out their titles , i think no man , unless it be out of envy or want of judgement , will conceive their dignities and revenues ill placed . for supernatural miracles having ceased , there is but this one moral miracle left that i know , to awaken the world into a serious belief of the truth of christian religion , namely a bishop refulgent with honour and overflowing with wealth , and yet exemplarily humble , meek and temperate , not thinking himself over-great for the personal discharge of his office he is intrusted with , nor so lull'd asleep in ease and affluency as to let fall the scepter of christ out of his hands to be taken up by such as cannot wield it with that paternall affection and judgement that a true bishop and carefull watcher over the souls of men would be sure to do . wherefore to speak out plainly and at once , if i had said any thing of ecclesiastick policy , i should not have forborn to pronounce , that such a bishop as i have hitherto described , and that rules his own family well , not allowing any scandalous servants to attend him , but being a pattern in himself and in all his house of unblamable godliness and christianity ; that makes his visitations in his diocese in his own person , and vibrates that sacred thunder and lightning , the truely-dreadfull sentence of excommunication , by no other arme but his own , nor to any other aime then the dissipating of vice and wickedness and all rebellion and disobedience to the known and acknowledged lawes of christ ; that inflicts no mulcts but what are bestowed in relief of the poor of the respective parish and the needfull repairs or comely adornings of the church ; that is watchfull , prudent and compassionate , and has the art and patience of conversing with the meanest capacities , and the skill and sagacity of finding out the reason where he findes the end of the gospel notoriously defeated in any place ; that has counsell in readiness and fit applications whether the pastour or his charge be discovered to be in fault ; that exhorts every where to sobriety and brotherly-kindess , and is diligent to pluck up or prevent the growth of such opinions as serve the end of sin , and encourage men to leudness ; that gravely and severely rebukes the bold offender , and affectionately bewails the failings of the weak , and chearfully expresses his sincere joy whereever he finds a people live orderly and unblamably , and gives the best countenance and encouragement he can devise for the furthering the same ; i say , i could not have forborn to pronounce , that to decry such a bishop as this for antichristian , were an unpardonable piece of antichristianisme ; and to murmure against his visitations , to repine at the annuall return of the sun , by whose warmth all things live and flourish . for there is not any effectualler means imaginable to make the people believe in good earnest that religion is worth the looking after , then to find themselves lookt after so carefully and affectionately in reference to religion by persons of so honourable rank and quality . . lastly , that will also be added to the number of defects by some , that i have not as well endeavoured to shew the reasonableness of the precepts of christ as of his actions and miracles . to have done this i confess had been pertinent enough , had it been needfull . for i could not imagine that the precepts of christ could seem unreasonable to any that did not pervert the meaning of them . they may seem indeed severe and difficult at first sight ; but the severity is no greater then the cure of the disease requires . ut valeant homines , ferrum patiuntur & ignes . and to deny thy self and to mortifie thy self is neither the killing nor denying of any thing in thee but thy vices ; upon which there accrews unto thee unspeakable joy and ease . nor are thy difficulties in these undergoings so great but that thy helps are farre greater , provided thou be an unfeigned believer . for what lust canst thou stick to part withall for his sake who parted with his life for thee ? or what present enjoyment canst not thou easily quit , if thou believe that future happiness that attends thee in the other world ? and how canst thou fail to fly fornication , whilest thou considerest that by practising this unclean vice thou makest a vile strampet corrivall with the holy ghost , whose temple thy body is if thou beest a christian , and whose temple it cannot be if thou indulge to thy self so dangerous a liberty ; there being nothing that does more extinguish the operations of the spirit , then the letting thy self loose to lawless lusts ? but the reasons of christ's precepts are so obvious in theory and so faithfull in experience , that i think it needless to insist upon this theam , assuring every one that he shall best understand their solidity by life and practice . . but there are others whose reprehensions i shall hardly escape , for that i have gone about to render the reason of any thing in christian religion : religion seeming to them in the best dress when it appears most unreasonable . which humour is the most treacherous to true christianity that any thing can be , and a sure barre to her progress amongst free and ingenuous persons . but truly whenas the efficacy of the gospel is not deemed hopeless , no not upon the coursely covetous , enormously ambitious , and sottishly sensual ; i could see no cause why freedome , ingenuity , reason and philosophy should be such crimes as to make men less capable of the benefit thereof : and therefore , i must profess that for their sakes chiefly that are over-prone to these more noble infirmities of the mind , i have represented christianity no less reasonable then it is ; and that is , i hope , as reasonable as any judicious spirit could desire or expect . . and if in my discovery of the reasonableness of things a more then ordinary heat has accompanied that light , and may seem to have armed my style in some places with over-much sharpness and vehemence ; i would desire so soft and prudent a soul to consider with himself whether there be not men in the world as bad as i describe , and whether he ought in charity to conceit i mean any other then those ; and being such as they are , whether they can deserve less ; and if he be none of them himself , why he should partake of their sinnes by disallowing of their deserved chastisement and rebuke . against which there can be no colourable reason , unless that these which deserve this punishment may have grown past feeling . which insensibleness is more to be deplored and pitied then their being exposed to the search of a faithfull chirurgion , the method of whose art forces him , if he could possibly , to launce them to the quick . but those that have digested wickedness into principles , and framed religion it self into a compliance and furtherance to the foulest conversation ; it is no wonder , while they can upon such fantastick grounds conceit themselves the darlings of heaven and children of the most high , that they look for proportionable honour and respect from men ; and would march on , though in these ill wayes , as solemnly and securely as the children of israel out of aegypt , of whom it is said , that not a dogge should move his tongue against any of them . . concerning that sense of the apocalyptick visions which mr. mede has hit upon , and which for the main i have professed my self to conceive to be true , there is nothing seems to me so harsh therein as that objection of some , who contend that it implies that all the adherers to the romane church after this her apostacy will be certainly damned . the concocting or ruminating on which sad sentence cannot but be to a benigne nature like the eating of the little book which contains the visions of this apostacy , bitter in the stomack , though the first pleasures of unriddling these prophetick aenigmes may be as honey to the mouth . and to speak freely , for a man to be easily contented that another should be damned , is no good sign that himself is in the way of salvation . that was a witty decision of solomon in defining her to be the true mother that could not endure that the child should be divided and killed . and whatever church is cruell and remorsless in either temporall persecution or the eternall damnation of such men as believe in christ according to the plain and easie meaning of the scripture , and live accordingly ; she may approve her self to be an imperious harlot , but no discerning spirit will ever take her for the true mother , that new ierusalem , which is the spouse of christ or wife of the lamb. wherefore those are very weak christians that are so low-belled by this terror as to be taken up and captivated by the church of rome , and acknowledge her the mother-church by force of that argument that demonstrates the contrary : to say nothing of their disingenuous abuse of the charity of the reformed churches . but for my own part i confess that for sureness i had rather exercise my charity in wishing them converts from popery , then express any great confidence of their being safe in that religion . not that it is possible for me ( who cannot infallibly demonstrate to my self that all that lived under paganisme are certainly damned ) to imagine that all that have gone under the name of papists have tumbled down into hell. but the case is much like that in shipwrack on the sea , or pestilence in a city where we will suppose not a house free ; no man can pronounce that it is impossible that such or such a person should escape , nor that any of them are in any tolerable safety . the danger is alike to them that adhere to the apostate church : for though there be a possibility of some mens being saved by an extraordinary or miraculous providence , they breaking through all those impediments and snares that are laid in their way , and attaining to a dispensation above the church they live in , ( as haply some under paganisme did ; ) yet it cannot be denied but that the oeconomie of that church naturally tends to the betraying of souls to eternall destruction ; that falling out which our saviour said of old of the pharisees , they compass sea and land to make one profelyte , and when he is made , he becomes twofold more the child of the devil then themselves . for he will not stint his hypocrisie in religion by the measure of their gain that invented the forme , and submit to it for their end , but for his own , namely that he may excuse himself from all reall holiness by keeping to the observation and profession of their vain inventions . and thus are the commandements of god made of none effect by their traditions . in brief , the whole frame of that church is fashioned out so near to the ancient guise of idolatrous paganisme , or else to the liveless and ineffectual forme of judaisme , ( both which christ appeared on purpose to destroy , as either contrary or ineffectuall to salvation , and does explicitly recommend to the world a pure and spirituall worship , that we should worship the father in spirit and in truth ; ) or lastly is so full of contradictions and impossibilities in their feigned stories and imperiously-obtruded opinions ; that the natural result of being born under such a religion or of turning to it , is either to become a besotted superstitionist to believe or do any thing that others will have him to do , ( which is a sign the spirit of regeneration has not yet passed upon him , and that there is no life nor light in him , ) or else ( which is too frequent ) to turn down-right atheist ; it being so grosly discernable that the tenents of their church are impossible , and their practices fraudulent , fitted chiefly for filthy lucre , and their ceremonies useless , thankless and ridiculous . and therefore if any be saved in the church of rome , they are such as are not truely of it , but above it , and fend for themselves as well as they may by some pardonable sleights of prudence accompanied with an impregnable innocency of spirit , and readiness of doing all possible good they can ; they sparing their own lives and liberties upon no other account then that , and out of a perswasion that he that commanded them to be wise as serpents as well as innocent as doves , has given them no commission inconsiderately and to no purpose to betray themselves into the power of his usurping enemy . but for others that are perfect papists , and swallow down all that church proposes to them , without chewing or distasting any thing ; it is a demonstration there is no principle of life in them , but that they are like dead earthen pitchers , which receive poison and wholesome liquors with a like admittance . and if there be no principle of life , there is no seed of salvation in a man. for it is most certainly true , and the scripture it self doth witness to it , that unless a man be born from above , he cannot see the kingdome of god. that which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit . this is the new creature that is created in wisdome , righteousness and true holiness . the first of which the church of rome expunges , in that it gives no leave to a man never so regenerate to judge for himself , but he must say as the church sayes , right or wrong : and for the other two all their superstitious ceremonies put together adde nothing to them , but rather stifle and sufflaminate them . again , s. john tell us , that he that hates his brother , is in the dark , and walketh in the dark , and knows no whither he goes . but others may know it , as appears by another saying of the same apostle , every one that hates his brother , is a murderer ; and no murderer hath eternall life abiding in him . but on the contrary he affirms , that love is of god , and that he that loveth , is born of god , and knowes god. now to apply the case to these rules , if love be an essential character of a regenerate soul , and hatred of errour , darkness and eternal death ; or , to come yet closer , if hatred it self be murder ; what will murder it self be , added thereunto ? and if any thing be murder , i demand whether this be not , namely to take away the life of a member of iesus christ who does fully and freely profess the ancient and apostolick faith according to the letter or history of the new testament , and does seriously compose his life according to the precepts therein contained ; and does onely declare against and reject the contradictious opinions and idolatrous practices that have no ground at all in scripture nor reason , but are quite contrary to both . i say , if this be no murder , there is no murder in the world : and how guilty the church of rome is of this crime , all the world knowes . wherefore this being one of the principles of that bloudy church , and he that is a perfect papist being of one mind and suffrage with his church in all things , ( for she will be held no less then infallible ) 't is apparent that no through-paced papist can ever go to heaven while he is such ; this murderous disposition being a demonstration that he is not born of god , but of him that was a murderer from the beginning . for love being the very heart and center of regeneration , if there be no antipathie in us against that which is so contrary to the deepest principle of the divine life , it is a sign there is none of that life in us . wherefore this hypothesis of mr. mede cannot be made harsh or odious by the opposer's surmise , there being a capacity of being saved in such as i have above described , though of the papall denomination , which are as it were the woman in the wilderness . and for that incapacity of being saved in the other , there wants no apocalypse to reveal the certainty thereof . nor do i know a more uncharitable opinion in the world , then that which promises them salvation that are so far from charity themselves , that they are professedly persecuters and murderers of the innocent , nay of the sincere and faithful members of christ. . but the subtilty of our adversaries is such that they will reply , that there are as many snares and impediments in the reformed churches to true holiness , if not to all holiness , in the opinions of solifidianisme and eternall decrees ; and as great a demonstration of their utter insensibility of that principle of the divine love into which every true christian is regenerated , in their doctrine of absolute reprobation and inevitable damnation of innumerable myriads of men , providence determining them upon all the wayes and means thereto ; as in the romanists either censuring all out of their church to be in a state of perdition , or in their inflicting a temporal death upon them that gainsay the articles of their church . for what is this in comparison of being content that all the world in a manner should be adjudged to everlasting torments for doing such things as they were from all eternity decreed to do , nor could any way possibly avoid it ? this objection i must confess is very shrewdly levelled at the mark ; nor can i well undertake within the narrow limits of my now almost-ended preface , to make a full and direct answer to the things themselves : onely i shall return thus much . first , that all of the reformed churches are not solifidians , nor hold any thing concerning the divine decrees inconsistent with either the goodness of god or the advancement of godliness ; and that for my own part i am one of that number . and then secondly , they that do , do not profess themselves infallible in their opinion , nor judge others to be in a damnable condition that are not of it ; and therefore do not low-bell men into their own errour by either uncharitable censurings or bloudy persecutions , nor become incorrigible themselves upon pretence of infallibility , but are in a fair way of acknowledging the truth when it shall be rightly and advantageously proposed . thirdly , their errours are not so many nor managed with that meditated craft and design as in the old apostate church ; they being not invented to serve some avaritious or ambitious end , but fallen into ( if i may so speak ) by chance , upon reading some passages of scripture , ( that looked upon alone may seem to favour their conclusions ) and by reason of the obscurity of the things themselves such as have puzled contemplative men in all ages and places . and fourthly and lastly , if they have made their own inventions and argumentative conclusions articles of faith , it is because they are not yet sufficiently cleansed from the corruption they contracted under the mother of apostasy : which mainly consists in this , in adding the fallible deductions of humane reason to the infallible articles of the ancient and apostolick faith. so that whatever hazard of salvation there is in the reformed churches , it is by reason that they do still romanize , and do not clear up into a certain and uncontroverted apostolick purity , exhibiting nothing for fundamentals but what is expresly so in the text it self , without the slipperyness of humane ratiocination . which certainly as it is their duty , so is it also their greatest interest , and the most effectuall way for peace and righteousness upon earth . . as for that abusable opinion of imputative righteousness , that i have shewn my dissatisfaction touching that point , ( which ordinarily the worst of men most of all build upon ; though i do not deny but well-meaning and piously-disposed persons may also heedlesly take up the forme ) i hope the judicious will not misconstrue it , nor take it ill that i have been so free and faithful as to discover the danger and groundlesness of this overmuch idolized doctrine . for indeed it is a very idol , that is nothing , as the apostle describes an idol to be ; i mean nothing of it self but a mere phrase , if you prescind it from what is comprized in remission of sins through the bloud of christ shed upon the cross. for this remission of sins contains in it such a reconciliation with god , that we are safe from all the effects of his wrath both concerning this state and that which is to come ; that is to say , we shall not be punished by his withholding his grace from us here , or that glory which is expected in the other life . for these deprivements being the results of sin , if we were not secured from them , our sins were not remitted ; which is against the hypothesis . now i appeal to the judgement and conscience of the most zealous assertour of imputative righteousness , if he can find any thing more comprized therein then such a remission of sins as we have defined ; and whether when he talks of being cloathed with christs righteousness in this imputative sense , he can understand any thing but being as it were armed and defended from the wrath of god and all the ill consequences thereof . for if this righteousness we are thus cloathed with were a righteousness that really kept us ( suppose ) from envy , from drunkenness , from adultery , and made us charitable , sober and chast ; it were not then imputative , but inherent . from whence it plainly appears that if you prescind it from remission of sins through the sacrifice of christ on the cross , this phrase of imputative righteousness has no signification at all ; and that therefore there is no loss or damage done to our religion , if it be not accounted a distinct article from the remission of sins in the bloud of christ. for it cannot afford any true and useful sense distinct there-from , nay i may say any that is not very mischievous and dangerous , and such as tends to that loathsome and pestilential errour of antinomianisme . but if you will understand by it remission of sins ; i do again appeal to the sagacious , if there may not yet be a great deal of fraud and hypocrisie in making choice of such an expression as does easily insinuate to over-many a needlesness of seriously endeavouring to be really righteous , ( we being so warmely secure by the imputation of anothers ▪ ) and does omit such circumstances of the meritorious cause of the remission of our sins ( namely the bloud of christ hanging upon the cross ) as are not onely the plainest pledge of that inestimable favour of god , but the strongest engagement imaginable and greatest endearement of our affections to christ ; that we may be the more willing to mortifie our corruptions for his sake , and to eschew sin , which was so hateful to god , that he would not remit it without the atonement of the most precious bloud of his onely-begotten son. which admirable artifice of the divine wisdome and unspeakable power of the gospel in the passion of christ for the remission of sins is very cunningly and fraudulently declined in this new phraseology of imputative righteousness , which is but a dry scene , and works not at all upon our affections , unless to a carelesness and dissoluteness of life . and therefore i cannot but set the easie entertainment of such a pretended doctrine upon the same score with the rejectment or neglect of the anniversary celebration of the crucifixion of christ , though it was a solemnity of more importance then any festival of the year . as if the tendency of reformation were to slur and defeat the chiefest arts of the gospel , and cut away the strongest ties to the most indispensable duties of a christian. . but the last and greatest exception i presage will be against what i have wrote for liberty of conscience , especially considering what a foul face of things the late pretence to this right had superinduced upon this miserably-distracted kingdome . but this aggravation will really be found to have no weight , if indifferently examined . for if every right should be forfeited , or rather be accounted no right at all , because it has been contended for in an undue manner , or brought much calamity and confusion upon a nation ; not onely liberty of conscience , but all civil rights also , nay the gospel of iesus christ it self , would be forfeited ; warre , bloudshed and confusion being as frequently introduced upon these pretences as upon any . besides , there was not a simple permission of liberty of conscience , but an encouragement and fomenting of sects and factions , and an unworthy prostitution of this sacred right to the base political designes of ambitious persons ; they that were in power conniving at the most uncouth and unseemly miscarriages out of a sense and consciousness that they had no right to rule , and a desire of making their usurpation as sweet to the people as they could , by forbidding them nothing but disobedience to themselves . so that the gross disorders that had grown and were still growing more and more upon us , are not to be imputed so much to liberty of conscience , as to the unhinging of all civill government , and removing of the ancient and undoubted soveraignty over the people . and lastly , what i have defined concerning liberty of conscience , to those that would abuse that right , will seem rather the taking of it away then a patronizing of it . but i must confess i have endeavoured as well to establish it upon its justest and clearest grounds , as to circumscribe it within its due limits . which performance of mine cannot but be distastful to two sorts of men . the one are such as being very cold at home , letting their hearts freeze to the indispensable duties of a true christian , which is to be conformable to the life of christ in humility , holy love and unspotted purity of conversation , do in stead thereof with zeal scalding hot seek to hale and force other men by externall compulsion to a conformity to their foolish and useless opinions and ceremonies , loving to order other folks with great rigour and lordliness , to make amends , as they think , thereby for their own disorder and conspicuous impotency in not being masters of themselves . when as yet they exercise the worst of vices even in the actions whereby they would make an atonement for their other gross miscarriages . for what is it but a notorious specimen of pride thus to force others to acknowledge their wisdome by making them profess to be of their opinion ? and what but injustice and barbarous cruelty to afflict men for what they cannot help , and in what they do not sinne ? and what but plain rebellion against god to wrest his scepter out of his hand by which he rules in the consciences of men , and to usurp this empire unto themselves ? to say nothing how often they sacrifice here also to mammon and the belly . but to have such enemies as these to our conclusion i hope will be thought one argument added to the rest of the truth thereof ; nor ought i to be over-solicitous if what i have writ scandalize those that in their principles and practices are so scandalous . to the other sort i ought to bear a more tender respect , to those , i mean , that out of no corrupt principle , but out of a sincere affection to christian religion , dislike our plea for liberty of conscience , as being afraid that christianity it self will be prejudiced thereby . but to these i answer , that as i highly commend their care and solicitude for the best of religions , so i must humbly crave leave to dissent from their judgements in managing the interest thereof . for i dare pronounce , that there is nothing would make so much for the interest of christianity , as if this right of liberty of conscience were known and acknowledged all over the world . for then assuredly by how much more manifest the truth and authority of every religion is , by so much more certainly would it prevail ; as we may observe that every religion by how much more false it is , by so much the more severely and tyrannically it is supported by external violence . wherefore if it could be agreed upon to take away this external support , false religion and vain superstition would sinke , those bladders and bulrushes being taken from under them , and that onely would be found to swimme whose innate truth was able to bear it up of it self . and such certainly is the naked simplicity of christian religion , devested of those many encumberments of humane inventions both false and useless , wherewith it is so laden , that it could not chuse but sink notwithstanding any externall support , did not the force of the undeniable truths therein bear up all that luggage which ignorance , hypocrisie and covetousness has cast upon it . how free and quick passage then would it have if this burden had once sunk from it , and it were restored to the primaevall purity thereof ? surely , that religion that got ground so fast , though cruelly persecuted and opposed , could not but make admirable progresses , might it but once upon equall termes grapple with other religions . i am prone to believe that it would not be long till all the kingdomes of the earth would become the kingdomes of the lord and his christ. so great an interest has the true and primaevall christianity in this common right of liberty of conscience ; which though christians might imagine extendible no further then to themselves , yet to be so streight to one another as not to acknowledge that mutual right , seems enormously harsh and unchristian . for we all agreeing in the truth of the scriptures , which certainly are sufficient to salvation , ( since the belief and practice of what is plain in them will not fail to carry a man to heaven , ) what an unreasonable thing is it that there should be that hatred and persecution against those that god so well approves that he will save them , and christ so dearly loved that he gave his life a ransome for them ? again , there being also a necessity , as i have said , in the persecuted of thinking as he does , and an uncertainty in the opinions that the persecutour would promote , as being demonstrable by neither reason nor scripture ; how unwarrantable an action is it to do a certain injury for an uncertain conceit ? to all which you may adde , that the love of knowledge is but the work of the devil : how much more then is bitter zeal and brawling about it ? but the depretiating of humane devices tends much to the exaltation of true sanctity , that mask of hyprocrisie patcht up of empty opinions and formalities being by this means torn off and leaving the face bare , that their complexion may be more discernable how pure and sincere it is , or how unsound , cadaverous and deformed . and lastly , a mutuall agreement of bearing with one anothers dissents in the non-fundamentals of religion is really a greater ornament of christianity then the most exact uniformity imaginable , it being an eminent act or exercise of charity , the flower of all christian graces , and the best way , i think , at the long run to make the church as uniforme as can justly be desired . for if true christian love could once get the rule in the hearts of men , the apostle will undertake for her that she shall do nothing unseemly . for charity is indeed the mother of unity and bond of perfection ; and he that is really spirited thereby , i dare promise for him that he will never oftentate his sanctimony by a pretended queziness of conscience , as if he had a more delicate sense and a more peculiar discernment in things appertaining to godliness then others have . but whatever a good round force would urge him to , out of love to himself and his own safety , he would not fail of his own accord to comply therewith , out of the love of order and the reverence he bears to the authority of the church he lives under . nor on the other side would the church ever offer to obtrude upon her children what is either false or useless . for they both of them being once imbued with that divine sense we speak of , cannot but be well assured that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth any thing ; but faith working by love. and whosoever walketh by this rule , peace be upon him and upon the true israel of god. h. m. from my study at christs coll. in cambridge iune . . an explanation of the grand mystery of godliness . chap. i. . the four main properties of a mystery . . the first propertie , obscurity . . the second , intelligibleness . . the third , truth . . the fourth , usefulness . . a more full description of the nature of a mystery . . the distribution of the whole treatise . . every legitimate mystery comprehends in it at least these four properties . it is a piece of knowledge , first , competently obscure , recondite and abstruse : that is , it is not so utterly hid and intricate , but that , in the second place , it is in a due measure intelligible . thirdly , it is not only intelligible , what is meant by it ; but it is evidently and certainly true. fourthly and lastly , it is no impertinent or idle speculation , but a truth very usefull and profitable : we may well add also , for some religious end. . this obscuritie and abstruseness makes not only the mystery more solemn and venerable to those to whom it is communicated , but hides it also from their eyes that are not worthy to partake thereof . from whence some criticks have derived mysterium from the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to hide : which is well aimed at as to the sense . but others , with more judgment in grammar , acknowledge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be a proper greek word , and fetch the derivation of it from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because they to whom it is communicated are to keep silence , and not to impart it to unmeet persons . and in this sense chrysostome expounds mysterium , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a matter wonderfull , unknown , and not to be easily or rashly communicated to others . . nor indeed could it be at all ▪ if it were utterly unintelligible . wherefore intelligibleness adds this further requisite also to a mystery , that it thereby becomes communicable to such as are fitly prepared to be instructed therein . for which reason the etymologists give also this notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that it is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is to teach and instruct a man in divine matters so far forth as the party is fit to receive . hence is also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , mysta , a scholar or commencer in divine mysteries , one that is more slightly imbued in the knowledge of such holy things . . but there is afterward a clearer manifestation and a fuller satisfaction , and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then becomes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , being now more firmly ascertained of the truth which he did but obscurely apprehend before . from which clearness and certainty of the thing represented there necessarily arises a full and free assent of his understanding without any further doubt or hesitancy ; the proverb being made good in this case , that seeing is believing . . but that there may not be a mere dry belief without any love or liking of the object thereof , we added also that this mystery is not only certainly true , but very concerningly usefull and profitable ; which though the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it self does not implie , yet another in the same language and of the like sense does , which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. initiations into sacred mysteries . the usefulness whereof a platonist admirably well describes , not without a verbal allusion , in this manner , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which , if we would render it in our more familiar language , sounds thus ; the scope or aim of all religious mysteries is the bringing back faln man into his pristine condition of happiness , and to lead him again to that high station which he then first forsook when he preferr'd his own will and the pleasure of the animal life before the will of god and that life and sense which is truly divine . . wherefore not to dwell too long on the threshold , we conclude briefly and in general , that a mystery is a piece of divine knowledge measurably abstruse , whereby it becomes more venerable , but yet intelligible that it may be communicable , and true and certain that it may win firm assent , and lastly very usefull and effectual for the perfecting of the souls of men , and restoring them to that happiness which they anciently had faln from ; that so near a concernment may as well gain upon their affections as the evidence of truth engage their understandings ; and so the whole man may be carried on to a devout embracement of what is exhibited unto him by the knowledge of his religion . . what we have thus generally proposed we shall now applie more particularly , and more fully prosecute those four primary properties in that grand mystery of godliness which we call christianity : distributing our discourse into these four main parts ; the first whereof shall insist somewhat upon the abstruseness and obscurity of our religion , the second upon the intelligibleness of it , the third upon the certainty of it ; and the fourth on the great concerning usefulness thereof . to which we shall add what considerations we think fittest concerning the secondary properties which emerge out of these primary ones . chap. ii. . that it is fit that the mystery of christianity should be in some measure obscure , to exclude the sensuall and worldly . . as also to defeat disobedient learning and industry : . and for the pleasure and improvement of the godly and obedient . . the high gratifications of the speculative soul from the obscurity of the scriptures . . that there is a considerable obscurity and abstrusenesse in christian religion is easily made evident as well from the cause as the effects of this obscurity . for besides that from the common nature of a mystery christianity ought to be competently obscure and abstruse , that it may thereby become more venerable and more safely removed out of all danger of contempt ; we cannot but see what a speciall congruity there is in the matter it self , to have so holy and so highly-concerning a mystery as our religion is , abstruse and obscure . for that divine wisdome that orders all things justly ought not to communicate those precious truths in so plain a manner that the unworthy may as easily apprehend them as the worthy ; but does most righteously neglect the sensuall and careless , permitting every man to carry home wares proportionable to the price he would pay in the open market for them : and when they can bestow so great industry upon things of little moment , will not spare to punish their undervaluing this inestimable pearle by the perpetual losse of it . for what a palpable piece of hypocrisie is it for a man to excuse himself from the study of piety , by complaining against the intricacies and difficulties of the mystery thereof ; whenas he never yet laid out upon it the tenth part of that pains and affection that he does upon the ordinary trivial things of this world ? . thus are the careless voluptuous epicure and over-careful worldling justly met with . but not they alone . for the obscurity of this mystery we speak of is such , that all the knowledge of nature and geometry can never reach the depth of it , or rellish the excellency of it ; nor all the skill of tongues rightly interpret it , unless that true interpreter and great mystagogus , the spirit of god himself , vouchsafe the opening of it unto us , and set it on so home in our understandings , that it begets faith in our hearts , so that our hearts misgive us not in the profession of what we would acknowledge as true. for as for the outward letter it self of the holy scriptures , god has not so plainly delivered himself therein , that he has given the staff out of his own hands , but does still direct the humble and single-hearted , while he suffers the proud searcher to lose himself in this obscure field of truth . wherefore disobedient both learning and industry are turned off from obtaining any certain and satisfactory knowledge of this divine mystery , as well as worldliness and voluptuousness . according as our blessed saviour has pronounced in that devout doxology , i thank thee , o father , lord of heaven and earth , because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent , and hast revealed them unto babes : even so , father , for so it seemed good in thy sight . . nor are the wicked onely disappointed , but the godly very much gratified by the intricacy of this sacred mystery . for the spirit of man being so naturally given to search after knowledge , and his understanding being one of the chiefest and choicest faculties in him , it cannot be but a very high delight to him to employ his noblest endowments upon the divinest objects , and very congruous and decorous they should be so employ'd . besides , the present doubtfulness of truth makes the holy soul more devout and dependant on god the onely true and safe guide thereunto . from whence we should be so far from murmuring against divine providence for the obscurity and ambiguity of the holy scriptures , that we should rather magnifie his wisdome therein ; we having discovered so many and so weighty reasons why those divine oracles should be obscure : the wicked thereby being excluded ; the due reverence of the mystery maintained ; and the worthy partakers thereof much advantaged and highly gratified . . for what can indeed more highly gratifie a man , whose very nature is reason , and special prerogative speech ; then by his skill in arts and languages , by the sagacity of his understanding , and industrious comparing of one place of those sacred pages with another , to work out , or at least to clear up , some divine truth out of the scripture to the unexpected satisfaction of himself and general service of the church ; the dearest faculty of his soul and greatest glory of his nature acting then with the fullest commission , and to so good an end , that it need know no bounds , but joy and triumph may be unlimited , the heart exulting in that in which we cannot exceed , viz. the honor of god and the good of his people ? all which gratulations of the soul in her successful pursuits of divine truth would be utterly lost or prevented , if the holy scriptures set down all things so fully , plainly and methodically , that our reading and understanding would every where keep equal pace together . wherefore that the mind of man may be worthily employ'd and taken up with a kind of spiritual husbandry , god has not made the scriptures like an artificial garden , wherein the walks are plain and regular , the plants sorted and set in order , the fruits ripe , and the flowers blown , and all things fully exposed to our view ; but rather like an uncultivated field , where indeed we have the ground and hidden seeds of all precious things , but nothing can be brought to any great beauty , order , fulness or maturity , without our own industry ; nor indeed with it , unless the dew of his grace descend upon it , without whose blessing this spiritual culture will thrive as little as the labour of the husbandman without showres of rain . chap. iii. . the obscurity of the christian mystery argued from the effect , as from the iews rejecting their messias ; . from the many sects amongst christians ; . their difference in opinion concerning the trinity , . the creation , . the soul of man , . the person of christ , . and the nature of angels . . hitherto we have argued the obscurity of the christian mystery from the reasons and causes thereof , whereby we have evinced that it ought to be obscure , and that therefore in all likelyhood it is so . but the effects are so manifest , that if we do but briefly point at them , it will be put beyond all doubt that it is so indeed . let us now instance in some few . why are the iews yet unconverted , or rather why did they at first cast off their messias ; but because the prophesies in scripture were so obscure , that they had taken up a false notion of him and of the condition he was to appear in ? for they expected him as a mighty prince that should restore the kingdome to israel , and that victory , peace , prosperity and dominion should be accumulated upon the iewish nation by his means . which opinion i conceive the lowness of the mosaical dispensation under which they lived , that perpetually propounded to them worldly advantage as a reward of their obedience , and the obscurity of the predictions of the messias , engaged them in . for they being either figurative and allegorical , or mingling sometimes the state of his second coming with his first ; their eager eye being so fully fixt upon what sounded like worldly happiness , they could mind no other sense but that in these enigmatical writings : which yet proved clear enough to as many as god had prepared , and belonged to the election of grace . but he might , if it had pleased his wisdome so to do , have made all things so plain , that we should not need at this day to expect the calling of the iews , but they might have been one body with us long since . but their rejection is a greater assurance to us of the truth of our religion , we being able to make it good even out of those records that are kept by our professed enemies . besides a man can no more rationally require , that all israel should have flowed in at the first appearance of christ , then that his second coming should be joyned with his first , or his first drawn back to the next age after adams fall , nor that more rationally , then that autumne should be cast upon summer , and both upon spring . the counsels of god are at once , but the fulfillings of them ripen in due order and time . . but though we let go the iews , and contain our selves within the compass of those that either are or would be accounted christians , their opinions and sects both have been and are so numerous , that the very mention of so confessed a truth may sufficiently evince the obscurity of those divine oracles to which they all appeal . i will instance only in things of greater moment , which will be a sure pledge of the certainty of their innumerable dissensions in smaller matters . . wherefore to say nothing of that more intricate mystery of the triunity in the godhead , where the curious speculators of that difficult theory are first divided into trinitarians and anti-trinitarians , and then the trinitarians into heterusians , homousians and homoeusians : we shall see them disagreeing not onely in the distinction of the persons , but concerning the essence it self : some affirming god to be infinite , others finite ; some a spirit , others a body ; othersome not onely a body , but a body of the very same shape with mans . of which opinion the aegyptian anthropomorphites were so zealously confident , that they forced the bishop of alexandria out of fear of his life to subscribe to their gross conceit . . again concerning the creation of the world , some affirme that god made it of matter coaeternal with , and independent of , himself : others that he created it of nothing : others that he made it not at all ; but that it was made , as some would have it , by good angels , others , by the devil . . concerning the soul of man , some say it subsists and acts before it comes into the body ; others onely in the body , and after the solution of the body : others in the body alone ; others not there neither , as holding indeed no such thing as a soul at all , but that the body it self does all : which some hold shall rise again , others not ; but that the whole mystery of christianity is finished in this life . . concerning christ , some were of opinion that he was onely god appearing in humane shape ; others onely man : others both ; others neither . . concerning angels , some affirm them to be fiery or aery bodies ; some pure spirits ; some spirits in aery or fiery bodies ; others none of these , but that they are momentaneous emanations from god ; others that they are onely divine imaginations in men : which can be by no means allowed , unless we should admit the holy patriarch abraham to have arrived at such a measure of dotage , as to provide cakes and a fatted calf to entertain three divine imaginations which visited him in his tent . but certainly such slight and exorbitant glosses as these can argue nothing else but a misbelief of the text , and indeed of all religion , and that the interpreter is no christian , but either atheist or infidel . wherefore to leave such spirits as these to the confident dictates of their own foul complexion , we shall rather take into consideration some few , but main , points wherein certain men , otherwise rational enough in their sphere , and hearty assertors of the authority of scripture , disagree from the generality of other christians . the first of them is concerning the trinity of persons in the unity of the godhead . the second concerning the divinity of christ. the third and last concerning the state of the soul after death . which points though i must confess they are of subtle speculation , yet they seem so necessary and essential , the two former especially , to christian religion , that i think it fit not to pass them over with a bare mention of them , nor yet to speak much in so profound and mysterious a matter . chap. iv. . that the trinity was not brought out of plato's school into the church by the fathers . . a description of the platonick trinity and of the difference of the hypostases . . a description of their union : . and why they hold all a due object of adoration . . the irrefutable reasonableness of the platonick trinity , and yet declined by the fathers , a demonstration that the trinity was not brought out of plato's school into the church . . which is further evidenced from the compliableness of the notion of the platonick trinity with the phrase and expressions of scripture . . that if the christian trinity were from plato , it follows not that the mystery is pagan . , , . the trinity proved from testimony of the holy writ . . now concerning the first , the trinity , say they , objecting against it in general , is nothing else but a pagan or heathenish figment brought out of the philosophy of pythagoras and plato , and inserted into the doctrine of the church by the ancient fathers who most of them were platonists . but to this i answer , that it is very highly improbable that the fathers borrowed the mystery of the trinity from the school of plato ; which you shall easily understand when we have so far as serves to our purpose explained the doctrine of the platonical triad , which is briefly thus . . there are three hypostases , say they , in the deity , namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is , the good , or first self-originated goodness ; intellect , or the eternal mind ; and lastly soul or spirit . their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is also their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and they distinguish all three after this manner : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the good. intellect . soul. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the first one. one all. one and all. if we would ease our apprehension here by the help of our phansy , we might compare the first to simple and pure light ; the second to light variegated into colours , as in the rainbow ; the third to those rayes of light ( for all is light ) that receive and carry down these colours to the ground , and impress them and reflect them from some standing pool or plash of water . again the first hypostasis is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , essentially the good , causally the intellect . the second is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , essentially intellect , causally soul , participatively the good. the third is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , essentially soul , that is love and operation , causally matter and the world , participatively the good and intellect . . now for the union of the three hypostases , we shall understand the accuracy thereof by degrees . as first , that the proper life and energie , as i may so say , of each hypostasis is not contein'd within it self , but , like a vocal and audible sound in a still silent night , perpetually re-ecchoes through the whole deity : or as when a song of three parts is sung , each musician enjoys the harmony of the whole . but this i must confess looks more properly like communion then perfect union : we step therefore a degree further , and affirme , that as body and soul is conceived to make up one man , and this individual body and this individual soul to make up this individual man : so these three hypostases to make up one individual deity , their union and actuation one of another being infinitely and unspeakably more perfect then in any other being imaginable . and as the motions of the body are perceptible to the soul of man , and the impressions of the soul upon the body would be perceptible to it , if it had of it self a faculty of perception : so likewise by this ineffable close union and mutual actuation of the three hypostases , all their proper energies become fully perceptible to one another . and the life of the first so infinitely and unexpressibly gratifying the second , and both the third by an immutable necessity and congruity of nature , it is evident they can have but one will , which is as it were the heart , the centre or root of the deity , the eternal self-originated good. but thirdly and lastly , these three hypostases are not one onely by this actuating union which may seem to admit of a real separability ; but there is also a real unity or identity in them : the distinction among them being , as tatianus speaks , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , like the rayes of the sun in respect of the sun ; or , if you will , as the centre , rayes and surface of a globe , which implyes a contradiction to be conceived without them ; or , as the faculties of the soul are to the soul , which are as inseparable from her as she is from her self . the union therefore of them all , and the emanation of the second and third from the first being so necessary , natural , and inevitable , ( for the first can be no more without the second , or the second without the third , then the sun can be without his rayes , or the soul without her faculties ; ) there is no scruple , say they , but we may call all this the godhead or deity , the second and third coming so unavoidably out of the first root , and being so inseparable from it . and therefore there is nothing here properly creature ; creation being a free act : and if not creature , what can it be but god ? . and since from these three are all things that are made , and in their hands is the guidance of all things ; nothing less then divine adoration can of right belong unto them . for though there may be some allay of excellency in their descent from the first , yet they being all our creators and governors , none ought to fall short of divine worship . . this is a brief summe of the platonists doctrine concerning the triunity of the godhead : which , as it seems in it self rational enough , so it is not obnoxious to several bold cavils that over-daring wits make against the sacred mystery of the trinity ; alledging against distinction of persons without difference of essence , that there are only three logical notions attributed to one single and individual nature : and against three essences of the same nature , that it looks like an unnecessary and groundless repetition , and that that great chasma betwixt god and matter will be as wide as before ; that it is unconceivable but , the last being of the same nature with the first , that it should be also prolifical , and so in infinitum : that these three must of necessity be three gods , if any of them be god ; because they are all exquisitly of the same kind ; whenas in the platonick triad the first is only the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as some have also ventured to affirm in the christian trinity . now i say all being so easy and unexceptionable in the platonical speculation of this mystery , it seems almost impossible but that if the fathers had borrowed this notion of the trinity from the platonists , they would have explain'd it in this more facile and plausible way . . but you 'l object , that though it may seem more rational in it self , yet it might not be so happily applied to places of scripture ; and that 's the reason why the fathers , though they took the mystery from plato in the gross , yet did not particularly explain it after the way of the platonists . but without doubt there is not only no place of scripture that plainly clashes with the above-described mystery , but sundry places that may be very speciously alledged for it . it is plain that as the second hypostasis in platonisme is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so it is in christianity called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if wisdome and intellect were acknowledged his proper character in both . they might also plausibly enough draw to their sense what christ speaks , john . . my father is greater then i ; and what he utters concerning the spirit , chap. . . he shall glorifie me ; for he shall receive of mine , and shew it unto you . wherefore , i say , the fathers being every way so fairly invited to bring the platonick notion of the trinity into the church , assuredly if themselves had been platonists , and had fetched the mystery from that school , they would not have failed to have done it . . secondly , admit that the ancient fathers were platonists , and brought the mystery of the trinity into the church of the christians , it does not straight follow that it is therefore a pagan or heathenish mystery : pythagoras and plato having not received it from pagans or heathens , but from the learned of the iews , as sundry authors assert ; the iews themselves in long succession having received it as a divine tradition ; and such is platonisme acknowledged to be by iamblichus , who sayes it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and assuredly if there had not been some very great reason for it , men so wise and profoundly knowing as pythagoras , plato , plotinus and others , would never have made so much adoe about it . . thirdly and lastly , i say it is not only impious , but vain and foolish , to asperse that mystery with the reproch of paganisme , that is so plainly , to them that be not prejudiced , set down and held forth in the holy scripture . for the very forme of baptisme prescribed by our saviour evidently enough denotes three divine hypostases . of the father there is no question . concerning the divinity of the sonne we shall speak more fully in the second point we proposed . that the holy ghost is not a mere power , property or attribute of god , but an hypostasis , one free enough from being swai'd by tradition or authority of any church , and ( as himself conceits ) a very close and safe adherer to scripture , does grosly enough acknowledge , while he makes it some created angel that bears the sacred title of the holy ghost , and undergoes those divine functions that are attributed to him . but we need not maintain truth by any mans error , it being sufficiently able to support it self ; and therefore we will make use of no advantage , but what scripture it self offers us . and this forme of baptisme affords us something to the evincing that the holy ghost is not an attribute , but an hypostasis . for sith that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is to give up a mans self to the discipline , government and authority of this or that person ; it is the most natural sense to conceive that all three mentioned in the forme are persons , we being so well assured that two of them are . but there are other passages of scripture that will make the point more clear . rom. . . the god of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing , that ye may abound in hope , through the power of the holy ghost . now if the holy ghost were but a power , not a person , what a ridiculous tautology would it be ? for the sense would be , through the power of the holy power . again , john . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are very ill syntax , were it not that there is a personality in the holy spirit , which by what follows is most undeniably evident ; for he shall not speak of himself : but whatsoever he shall hear , that shall he speak . to receive of one and communicate to others by way of hearing and speaking , what can that belong to but a person or hypostasis ? to this you may adde also mark . . whatsoever shall be given you in that hour , that speak ye : for it is not you that speak , but the holy ghost . now that this hypostasis is not a created angel , amongst other reasons the conception of christ may well argue , it being more congruous that that spirit that moved upon the waters and created the world , should form that holy foetus in the womb of the virgin , then that any created angel should apply himself to that work ; for he had not then been the son of god , but of an angel , as in reference to his birth in time . . besides , this one individual spirit in scripture in represented as every where ready to sanctify , to regenerate , to distribute various gifts and graces to the church , to have spoke by the mouth of the prophets , to be a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a discerner of the thoughts of the heart . baptisme also and benedictions are imparted in his name ; he is also called to witness , which is a piece of divine worship : all which seems more naturally to be understood of him whom we properly call the spirit of god , then of any particular created angel whatsoever . . we shall onely adde one place more , which will put all out of doubt to them that do not doubt of the text it self ; john . . there are three witnesses in heaven , the father , the word , and the spirit : and these three are one. what can be writ more plain for the proof of the triunity of the godhead ? but for those that suspect the clause to be supposititious , i shall not trouble my self to confute them ; that task being performed so solidly and judiciously by a late interpreter , that nothing but prejudice and wilfulness can make a man depart unsatisfied with so clear a demonstration . wherefore secure of this point concerning the trinity , we go on to the next concerning the divinity of christ. chap. v. . that the natural sense of the first of s. iohn does evidently witness the divinity of christ. . a more particular urging of the circumstances of that chapter . . that s. iohn used the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the iewish or cabbalistical notion . . the trinity and the divinity of christ argued from divine worship due to him , and from his being a sacrifice for sin . . that to deny the trinity and divinity of christ , or to make the union of our selves with the godhead of the same nature with that of christ's , subverts christianity . . the uselesness and sauciness of the pretended deification of enthusiasts , and how destructive it is of christian religion . . the providence of god in preparing of the nations by platonisme for the easier reception of christianity . . that christ is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a mere creature , but a divine hypostasis , or truly , really and physically ( not allegorically and morally ) joyn'd with that divine hypostasis which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if men would not bring their own sturdy preconceptions , but listen to the easy and natural aire of the text , the beginning of s. iohns gospel would put out of all controversy . for i 'le appeal to any , supposing the union of christ's humanity with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be true , in what fitter , more significant or better-becoming way could it be expressed then already it is in the beginning of that gospel ? wherefore to interpret it in any other sense , is to delude themselves , and to abuse the scripture through the prepossessions of their own prejudice . of which violence they do thereto they cannot well be sensible , they thinking they have full commission to distort it into any posture , rather then to let it alone in that which so plainly points to a mystery which they hold impossible and self-contradictious . for so has their bold and blind reasoning concluded aforehand concerning the trinity , and divinity of christ. but to those that are indifferent this text bears such evidence with it , that it cannot but settle their belief . . for why should the euangelist omit the manner of christ's birth as he was man , but that he was intent upon his eternal generation as he was god ? or why should he not call him by that name that was given him at his circumcision , or by the name of crist or the messias who was a person expected in time , but that his thoughts were carried back to that of him which was from all eternity ? nor is it imaginable that he should be here called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 instead of iesus or christ , unless there were some valuable mystery in it , which the learned easily unriddle from iewish interpreters , they speaking often of the word of the lord as an hypostasis distinguishable from god , and yet that by which he created adam and the rest of the creatures . and for my own part i make no question but that the greek philosophers , as pythagoras and plato , had not onely their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but the whole mystery of their trinity from the divine traditions amongst the jews . philo the jew speaks often of this principle in the godhead , calling it a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or sometimes c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , other sometimes d 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and attributes unto it the creation of the world , as also the healing of the diseases of our mindes , and the purging of our souls from sins ; insomuch that this author might be a good commentator upon this first chapter of s. iohn . . wherefore there being this notion of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amongst the jews , to which the creation and government of the world is attributed , the same also being done here , what can be more likely then that s. iohn means the very same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is creator and governor of all ? which the very phrase and posture of things will yet further confirme . for assuredly this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the gospel is the same with that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the first epistle of s. iohn : and what 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the same epistle will explicate , chap. . . i write unto you , fathers , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because you have known the eternal : and christ by the prophet esay is call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the eternal father . for that is the most proper meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as appears esay . . thus saith the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , inhabiting eternity . nor is it incongruous for the same being to be the son of god and the father and governour of all the creatures . and the prophet micah chap. . prophesying of christ , describes him thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , his emanations are from the beginning , from the dayes of eternity . which agrees well with what christ professes of himself , iohn . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for if he was before abraham , there is little question but he was before all things ; and that of the psalmist is but his due attribute , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , before the mountains were brought forth , or the earth was formed , even from everlasting to everlasting thou art god. and now for the posture of things , after the evangelist has twice asserted that he was from the beginning ; that you may not mistake and think he means the beginning of his ministry , as the messiah , he tells you , according to the doctrine of the jews , that all things were created by him : and at the tenth verse , that you may have no subterfuge , he sayes , that even that world that was made by him knew him not : which excludes all moral and mystical interpretations , and shews plainly that wicked men , though not their wickedness , are his creation , and consequently all the world besides . and the author to the hebrews is a farther witness of this truth , citing that of the psalmist concerning the son of god , thou , lord , in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth , and the heavens are the work of thy hands . there is yet another argument of the divinity of christ , which i need not prove , it being acknowledged even by our adversaries , and it is religious worship due to him , which i conceive is due to none but god. . the holy trinity and divinity of christ we have hitherto proved out of the scriptures , and might adde many places more ; but the reason and nature of the thing it self shall be the last confirmation . that christ is to be worshipped is acknowledged of all hands . but to worship one that is not god , is to relapse into the ancient rites of the pagans , who were men-worshippers and eaters of the sacrifices of the dead . for iupiter , belus , bacchus , vulcan , mercurius , osiris and isis , and the rest of the gods of the heathen , what were they but mere men , whose benefactions extorted divine honours from superstitious posterity after their death ? wherefore christ ought not to be a mere man , but god , that is , he ought to be really and physically united to the deity ; it being present not by assistance onely but by information ; that as body and soul are one man , so god and man may be one christ. but if there were no trinity , but one hypostasis in the deity and the humanity of christ thus joyn'd with it , how could he be a sacrifice for sin , there being none beside himself to whom he should be offer'd ? or how could he be sent by another , when there is none other to send him ? and the son of god out of the bosome of his father could not be said to suffer , but he that is offended to be sacrificed to pacifie himself : which things are very absurd and incongruous . but you 'l say , the absurdity still remains in the second hypostasis . for was not sin as contrary to him as to the first and third , and consequently he as much offended ? and therefore he dying in our nature , was sacrificed to pacify himself . in answer to this i admit that all three hypostases were alike offended at sin , and withall alike compassionate to sinners . which compassion was in the deity towards mankind before the incarnation and death of christ. but the formal declaration and visible consignation of this reconcilement was by christ according as he is revealed in the gospel , whose transactions in our behalf are nothing else but a sweet and kind condescension of the wisdome of god in this mystery accommodating himself to our humane capacities and properties , to win us off in a kindly was to love and obedience . and therefore all the three hypostases being alike offended at sin , and alike prone to pardon the sinner and recover him to obedience , contrived such a way of declaring their pardon , as might shew their highest dislike of sin , and win most upon the sinner by moving his affections to a serious sorrow and remorse . wherefore the divine complotment was this ; that the eternal son of god should be made flesh , and to testifie the hatred of god to sin and his love to mankind , should be sacrificed for an atonement for the sins of the world : then which a greater engine cannot be imagined to move us to an abhorrence of sin , and to the love of his law that thus redeemed us and wrought our reconciliation with the father . to whom being , as i may so say , the head in the divinity and of all things , and having in his paternal right the first power of punishing and pardoning , this pacification is naturally directed . for it is as if a father of a family or the prince of a nation having a minde to pardon some malefactor , that he might not seem too prone to mercy , and so encourage men to rebellion , should plot with his eldest son to be an earnest intercessor in the behalf of the party , when yet the son disrelisheth the crime of him he intercedes for as much as his father did . there is the same reason in the intercession of christ with the eternal father , saving that it was with more earnestnesse and greater agony , even unto death , and of farre higher consequence . but that such an intercession and pacification as this should be made up in the solitary scene of one person , is impossible . . wherefore the denying of either the divinity of christ or the trinity seems a subversion of the christian religion . and not onely so , but that fanatical piece of magnificency of some enthusiasts , who would make their union with god the same with that of christ's . for then were they truly god , and divine adoration would belong unto them ; or if not , it is a sign they are not god , and that therefore christ is not : either of which confounds or destroys our religion . but if you demand what the difference is betwixt the union of christ and ours with the divinity , i have intimated it before . in one the divinity is forma informans , in the other but forma assistens : in the one it is as lux in corpore lucido , in the other as lumen in corpore diaphano . the divinity in christ is as the light in the sun ; the divinity in his members as the sun-shine in the aire . . and this distinction and due distance being kept , which some saucy and high-flown enthusiasts do not observe , there is yet scope and encouragement enough for them to strive to be full as good as they pretend ; i am sure farre better then they are : there ordinarily being no difference betwixt them and the meanest christians , but that their tongues are swelled with greater tumor and turgency of speech , and their minds filled with more vain phantasyes and exorbitant lunacyes ; whenas the other speak conformably to the apostolick faith , and with less noise live more honestly . but that no less union with god then real and physical deification must make them good , is a sign they are stark naught , and that pride has laid wast their intellectuals . for is not that spirit that created and framed all things able to reforme us unto the most unblamable pitch of humility , self-denial , dependency upon god , love of our neighbour , obedience to magistrates , faith , temperance and holiness , without being any more hypostatically united with us then with the earth , sea , sun , moon and starres , and the natural parts of the creation ? wherefore we conclude that to assert , that the union of any true christian with god is the same with that of christ's , is a bold , useless and groundless opinion , and inconsistent with and destructive of the christian religion . . we have seen how necessary and essential to christianity the doctrine of the divinity of christ is , and consequently of the trinity , without which the other cannot be rightly conceived : and therefore we do not onely disapprove of those frivolous slanders and cavils that would brand that sacred mystery with the infamous note of paganisme ; but highly magnifie and humbly adore the providence of god that that truth should be kept so long warme and be so carefully polished by those heathens that knew not the main use thereof , or to what end the tradition was delivered to the ancient patriarchs , prophets or holy sages of old in either aegypt or iudaea , from whence pythagoras and plato had it , and prepared those parts of the world where their philosophy had taken foot-hold , to an easy reception of christianity : but this we have glanced at elsewhere . chap. vi. . the danger and disconsolateness of the opinion of the psychopannychites . . what they alledge out of cor. . set down . . a preparation to an answer advertising first , of the nature of prophetick schemes of speech . . secondly , of the various vibration of an inspired phansie . . thirdly , of the ambiguity of words in scripture , and particularly of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . and lastly , of the corinthians being sunk into an unbelief of any reward after this life . . the answer out of the last and foregoing premisse . . a further answer out of the first . . as also out of the second and third , where their objection from verse . is fully satisfied . . their argument answered which they urge from our saviours citation to the sadducees , i am the god of abraham , &c. . we proceed now to the third and last point propounded , which is concerning the state of souls departed , which we assert not to sleep , that is , not to be void of all operation and sense of joy or punishment , but that they have a knowledge and apprehension of their own condition , be it good or bad. which article i hold as undoubtedly true , though not so indispensable , as the two former , and though not so necessary , yet exceeding convenient to be entertain'd : it being a great abater to our zeal and fervency in religion to think that in the end of our life we shall be dodged and put off by a long senseless and comfortless sleep of the soul under the sods of the grave for many hundreds , if not for some thousands , of years . besides , an indulgence to such a dulness and heartlesness of spirit , as to be content to intermit the functions of life for so long a time , may at last work the soul into a sottish mistrust of ever being awaked , and make her conclude the mystery of christianity within the narrow verges of this mortal life ; as david george and other enthusiasts did , who were more in love with many wives then with any article of faith that promised such pleasures as might not be reaped in this flesh. . but we are here to deal ( not with such vain fanaticks , but ) with severely-devoted sons of reason , who pretend not to dictate but demonstrate out of scripture the sleep of the soul ; confidently suggesting to the better gaining proselytes to their own , that the contrary opinion is not christian but heathenish , derived from the philosophy of plato ( which the greek fathers had imbibed ) and thence introduced into the church of christ. to the first of which i answer , that our adversaries demonstrations for the sleep of the soul are but their own imaginations and dreams upon the mistaken text. it is beside my scope to insist long on this matter : i shall onely give you a tast of the weakness of the rest of their arguments by proposing and refuting of those that seem the strongest . their main proof is from the whole tenor of the of the cor. and more particularly from the verse ; if after the manner of men i have fought with beasts at ephesus , what advantageth it me , if the dead rise not ? hence they think may certainly be concluded , that the soul before the resurrection of the body has not the perception or enjoyment of any thing ; otherwise the very remembrance of those sufferings for christ might be a solace for paul when he was out of the body . . but to answer this difficulty with the fuller satisfaction , let us premise some few things to prepare the way to it : as first , that the schemes of speech in prophets and men inspired are usually such as most powerfully strike the phansie and most strongly beat upon the imagination , they describing things in the most sensible , palpable and particular representations that can be . according to which figure the general resurrection is set off by mens awaking out of the dust of the earth and coming out of the graves , when as yet many thousands have wanted burial , their bones rotting on the surface of the earth , and as many thousands have had their intombement in the waters . . secondly , that the holy writers do not pen down their conceptions in so strict a scholastick method , that they keep precisely and punctually to one title ; but by a free vibration of phansie give a touch here and a touch there , according as they were moved and actuated by that spirit that exhibits more to their minds at once then their tongue has leasure orderly and distinctly to utter ; and are more earnestly taken up in making good the main and most usefull scope of their discourse , then to satisfie mens curiosities in particular niceties . . thirdly , that many words in scripture have a lax and ambiguous sense , and that therefore they are to be understood according as circumstances and likelyhood of truth determine : and that these termes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are of that nature ; they sometimes signifying the raising up again of a body out of the grave , sometimes merely vivificating of the body , or recovering a person to life , other sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the very same with the jewes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as grotius observes , which signifies nothing else but eternal life , or a blessed immortality . others enlarge the signification further , and make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , conservation in being : and death seeming to us so dangerous a passage , as if we were in hazard of either falling asleep or sliding into a non-subsistence , divine conservation , because we begin then a new state of life , is not unfitly termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as giving us as it were a new subsistence , setting us upon our feet again ; and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as keeping us awake when we seemed in danger of letting go all functions of life . which meaning of the words a late interpreter handsomely makes good , comparing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , rom. . . with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , exod. . . which the seventy render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the manner of which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or conservation is excellently set out by this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which may imply a kinde of jogging or stirring up which is used to recover or prevent ones falling into a swoon ; and god is the grand author of life and motion , as the apostle speaks . . fourthly and lastly , that the corinthians being a people given notoriously to the pleasures of the flesh , there is no question to be made but the temptations of the place had also drawn away some members of the church there at corinth , and made them also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . now there being nothing that does so much extinguish all hopes and apprehensions of a life to come as carnal and sensual pleasures ; it is very likely that those corrupted members fell away in their own judgments from the belief of any reward after this life , and so with himeneus and philetus , or with the david-georgians and our modern nicolaitans , allegorized away the real meaning of the resurrection or the blessed immortality into a mere moral sense , under pretence whereof they might ostentate themselves more spiritual and knowing christians then the rest ; and yet with less fear and remorse of conscience indulge to themselves all loosness and liberty of enjoying every tempting pleasure of this mortall life . . wherefore to the present argument i answer in general out of this last and the foregoing premiss , that the purpose of the apostle in this to the corinthians is to shew that there is a life after the death of this body , and a blessed immortality to be expected . a palpable pledge whereof was god's raising of christs body out of the grave , and exhibiting him alive to his disciples . which was a sign very significant and expressive of the thing ; this blessed immortality mainly consisting in being clothed with those heavenly , ethereal and paradisiacal bodies which christ will bestow upon those that belong to him at the last day . . out of the first i answer , that though s. paul speak in such a phrase as fixes our imagination on the earth only , as is plain from that comparison of seed sown and rotting in the ground ( for men sow not seed upon the water ) yet in whatsoever element the souls or bodies of the saints be found , earth , water or air , nay though we should grant with some that sundry souls of holy men act in aery vehicles in this interval betwixt their death and the day of judgment ; yet it is no more prejudice to them , then to those that are found alive in the flesh ; for none are excluded from the enjoyment of their glorified bodies . . out of the second and third i answer , that s. paul might very well have three conceptions vibrating in his minde , while he wrote concerning this mystery : the one more simple and general , of the life and subsistency of the soul out of this earthly body ; the other more special , of a blessed immortality ; and the third most determinate of all , which represented the manner of this blessedness , in being invested with glorified bodies . and out of this general i shall direct a more particular answer to that of the of this chapter , where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be either interpreted , if the souls of just men deceased obtain not their glorified or heavenly bodies : ( for though it were granted that they did in the mean time live and act in aery vehicles , yet that state and region , as the earth , being common to good and bad , they had yet obtained no peculiar reward for their hardship and toil here ) or else , which is the more safe sense by far , it may be interpreted at large of the life and subsistency of the soul after its departure , according to the last signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the third premiss . and thus is the strength of the main proof of the psychopannychites utterly enervated . . but there are other places of scripture which they misapply to the same purpose , as the answer of our saviour to the sadducees question concerning the resurrection , i am the god of abraham , the god of isaac , and the god of iacob ; god is not the god of the dead , but of the living . hence our adversaries would conclude that the souls of the departed do not live ; because if they did , our saviour's argument would be invalid for the resurrection . for if abraham's spirit were now alive , god might be his god , though his body never rise . but this is easily satisfied out of the second premiss : by resurrection there being understood a life hereafter , and the opinion of the sadducees being that there is neither angel , nor spirit , nor life to come , he does not exactly tie himself to that particular circumstance of a blessed immortality that consists in the enjoyment of glorified bodies ; but answers more at large concerning the subsistence of souls of men departed , that they are and live , and that therefore there are spirits ; and so handsomly confutes the whole doctrine of the sadducees by that citation out of their own pentateuch , and a skilful application thereof . chap. vii . . a general answer to the last sort of places they alledge that imply no enjoyment before the resurrection . . a particular answer to that of cor. . out of hugo grotius . . a preparation to an answer of the author 's own , by explaining what the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie . . his paraphrase of the six first verses of the forecited chapter . . a further confirmation of his paraphrase . . the weakness of the reasons of the psychopannychites noted . . the third and last way of proving the sleep of the soul , is from such passages in scripture as seem to joyn the hour of our death immediately with the day of our resurrection , as in cor. . where the apostle seems to intimate that there does nothing intercede betwixt the solution of our earthly tabernacle , and being clothed with the heavenly ; which not being till the day of judgment , it is a sign that the soul is in no condition unless that of sleep till then . so likewise in tim. chap. . and chap. . in the former he speaks of his depositum , which he intrusts god with till that day , and prays that onesiphorus may finde mercy at that day : and in the latter he speaks of a crown of righteousness that the lord the righteous judge will give him at that day , as if all were defer'd till then . but in my conceit it is a weak kinde of argument , because the souls of the saints receive not their great reward till the day of iudgment , that therefore they receive nothing at all ; nay that they are in a worse state then in this life , as having lost all sense of existence or being . their opinion to me seems more tolerable then this , who , though they do not presently mount them up in their ethereal chariots to heaven , yet permit them to move and to act in their aereal vehicles at a less distance from the earth . but that last day being a day of that high solemnity , dreadful glory and majesty , it is no wonder that for the better moving of the minds of men , he so often mentions that time without taking any notice of the interceding space : for thereby it also seems more nigh , as a distant object does to the sight , no visible thing coming between . . now for the second to the cor. . chap. there be two waies of clearing that difficulty there : the one of hugo grotius , in which a late learned interpreter of our own does also insist , expounding ( as they may well ) the third verse ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) thus , if so be we shall be found in the number of those that are still clothed with these earthly bodies , not stript naked of them by death . this interpretation the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 going afore makes still the more warrantable ; as also that following phrase , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is used by the apostle in a parallel case . this exposition utterly destroys all the force of the psychopannychites argument taken from this place : for whereas the apostle seems to speak as if immediately upon the solution of this earthly , they were to be invested with a heavenly tabernacle , ( which is mainly to be gathered out of the second and fourth verses ) it is only upon the supposition that the day of the lord might come while they were yet clothed with flesh . . but because this interpretation may seem to be something derogatory to the apostle's knowledge , as if he were pendulous and uncertain whether the day of iudgment might not be in his time ; which some men will not bear : i shall propound another , that they may take their choice . the former seems to have a special advantage in the proper sense of those two words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and if we can but come off well here , we shall carry on the rest handsmooth . we premise therefore thus much concerning the meaning of those two words , that as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies simply to put on a garment , so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may well signifie to put on an inward garment . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signifie within , in composition , as the latine word in does in inducula , inducium , and interula ; all which signifie an inward garment , and the two former they ordinarily derive from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this proper signification of the word . and as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie to put on an inward garment , so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie an addition of an inward garment to an outward , for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signifie in composition ; as if the sense were , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not to be content to wear an upper garment only , but to put on also an inward ; as we do in winter add an half-shirt or a wastcoat . or if this look like too curious a criticism , let 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would be : which would signifie then at large only the adding of further clothing , whether within or without , but is to be expounded as circumstances require . . being thus fitted for the purpose , we shall now briefly paraphrase the six first verses of the . chap. which they alledge against us , thus ; . for we know , that if this earthly and mortal body of ours were destroyed , that yet we have an heavenly one whose author and maker is god. . and for this cause is it that we groan so earnestly to be clothed also with our heavenly body within this earthly : . because we being thus clothed , when we put off our earthly body , we shall not be found naked , nor our souls left to float in the crude air. . for we that are in these earthly bodies groan earnestly being burdened , not as if we had a desire to be stript naked of all corporeity , or that we should be presently rid of these earthly bodies before god see fit ; but that we may have a more heavenly and spiritual clothing within , that mortality may be swallowed up of life . . nor do we arrive to this pitch by our own power , but it is god who works upon us ( as i said ) both body and soul , and frames us into this condition by the operation of his holy spirit , which he has given as a pledge of our eternal happiness . . and therefore we are alwaies of a good courage , not discontented at any thing . for whether we be in this earthly body , it is tolerable , as being our usual and natural home ; or whether we go out of it , which is most desirable , we shall then go to the lord , our inward man being so fitly clad for the journey . . that this is the genuine sense of these verses , the verse of the chapter immediately going before will further confirm , where the apostle saith , that though his outward man perish , yet his inward man is renewed day by day , which is , though his earthly body be in a perishing and decaying condition , yet his spiritual and heavenly gets strength and flourisheth every day more and more . now the resurrection and attainment of the heavenly body being all one , it were worth the while to enquire into the meaning of the apostle , philipp . . v. . where he professes his unwearied endeavours to attain to the resurrection of the dead : where presently it follows , not as if i had already attained it , or as if i were already perfected . for if he meant not this inward spiritual body inveloped in the earthly , he need not tell the philippians that he had not yet attain'd it . but the point in hand is sufficiently plain already . . we have seen what weak demonstrators the psychopannychites are against the life and operation of souls out of the body , in their appeals to scripture : we shall now see how improbable their aspersion is of the opinion being a pagan or heathenish invention derived , as they say , merely from the school of pythagoras and plato , and from thence introduced into the church . chap. viii . . that the opinion of the soul 's living and acting immediately after death , was not fetched out of plato by the fathers , because they left out preexistence , an opinion very rational in it self , . and such as seems plausible from sundry places of scripture , as those alledged by menasseh ben israel out of deuteronomy , jeremy , and job . . as also god's resting on the seventh day . . that their proclivity to think that the angel that appeared to the patriarchs so often was christ , might have been a further inducement . . other places of the new testament which seem to imply the preexistence of christ's soul. . more of the same kinde out of s. john. . force added to the last proofs from the opinion of the socinians . . that our saviour did admit , or at least not disapprove the opinion of preexistence . . the main scope intended from the preceding allegations , namely , that the soul 's living and acting after death is no pagan opinion out of plato , but a christian truth evidenced out of the scriptures . . and i think it is not hard for a man to prove that this sinister conceit of theirs is almost impossible to be true . for if the ancient fathers by vertue of their conversing so much with plato's writings had brought this opinion , of the souls living and subsisting after death , into the christian religion , they could by no means have omitted the preexistence of it afore , which is so explicite and frequent a doctrine of the platonists ; especially that tenet being a key for some main mysteries of providence which no other can so handsomly unlock , and having so plausible reasons for it , and nothing considerable to be alledged against it . for is it not plain that the soul , being an indivisible and immaterial substance , can not be generated ? now if it be created by god at every effectual act of venery , ( besides that in general it is harsh that god should precipitate immaculate souls into defiled bodies ) it seems abominable that by so special an act of his as creation , he should be thought to assist adultery , incest and buggery . of this see more at large in my trestise of the immortality of the soul , book . chap. , & . but they 'l still urge , that it was not the unreasonableness of the opinion , but the uncompliableness of it with scripture , that made them forgoe the preexistency of the soul , though they retained her subsistency , life and activity after death . . but it had assuredly been no hard matter for them to have made their cause plausible even out of scripture it self . the jewes would have contributed something out of the old testament . menasseh ben israel cites several places to this purpose , as deuteronomy . , . insinuating there , that god making his covenant with the absent and the present , that the souls of the posterity of the jewes were then in being , though not there present at the publication of the law : for the division of the covenanters into absent and present naturally implies that they both are , though some here , some in other places . this text is seriously alledged by the generality of the jewes for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of souls , as grotius has noted upon the place : also jeremy . verse . the forenamed rabbi renders it , antequam formassem te in ventre , indidi tibi sapientiam , reading 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in piel , not in cal. before i formed thee in the belly , i had made thee of a wise ingenie , fitted thee to all holy knowledge , &c. we will add a third place , job . he renders it , nosti te jam tum natum fuisse , knowest thou that thou wast then born , and that the number of thy daies are many ? then , viz. from the beginning of the creation , or when the light was made ( a symbol of intellectual or immaterial beings ) . the seventy also plainly render it to that sense , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i know that thou wast formed then , and that the number of thy years are many . the author of the book of wisdome ( who though he be not canonical , yet is acknowledged a very venerable writer ) speaks out plainly concerning the soul of solomon , chap. . v. , . for i was a witty childe , and had a good spirit : yea , rather being good , i came into a body undefiled . . besides , they might have alledged how inconsistent the daily creation of souls is with god's resting on the seventh day , as having then finished the whole work of his creation . . moreover , their inclination to think that in sundry of those apparitions of angels to the ancient patriarchs , it was christ himself that appeared , would further have enticed them to retain this doctrine of preexistence of souls , that that opinion of christ's appearing then might be more entire and determinate ; as it would be also in those that hold melchisedec that blessed abraham to have been christ : which opinion cunaeus looks upon as true ; nor can calvin look upon it as strange , if he do but hold to his own words in his readings upon daniel , in eo nihil est absurdi , quòd christus aliquam speciem humanae naturae exhiberet antequam manifestatus esset in carne . and that the angel that led the israelites into the land of canaan was christ , seems plainly asserted cor. chap. . v. . neither let us tempt christ , as some of them tempted him , and perished by serpents . but christ is a complexion of the humane nature with the divine . consider also hebr. . . which seems to implie that the soul of the messias was a patron and protector of the holy seed betimes , and had a special relation to the iews above any other nation . and therefore when he came into the world , ( i. e. was born , brought up and conversed among the jews , ) he might the more properly be said to come to his own , though his own knew him not , john . . and verily that the soul of the messiah was in being before he took upon him our flesh , the most easie and natural meaning of joh. . . seems also to import , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . here s. iohn seems to cabbalize , as in several places of the apocalypse , that is , to speak in the language of the learned of the jews : for the genuine sense is , he that confesses that iesus is the messiah come into the flesh , or into a terrestrial body , is of god : which implies that he was , before he came into it . which is the doctrine of the jews , and expressed so exactly according to their sense , that themselves could not have uttered it more naturally and significantly , and therefore , might they say , it is unnatural and violent to put any other meaning upon it . . again , he being happily ( before the generation of men and the peopling of the earth ) the messiah elect , ( as i may so speak ) united also with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and resplendent with celestial glory and beauty amongst the angels in heaven ; this hypothesis will give a very easie and natural sense to sundry places of the new testament that otherwise seem very obscure . as that of philipp . . , , . for it has racked many mens minds to conceive how an exinanition of himself can belong to the eternal and immutable god by becoming man ; which the text seems to point at . but it may very properly belong to the soul of the messiah , who was yet truly god by a physical union with the godhead . so likewise john . , . i have glorified thee upon earth , for which purpose i was sent down thither . and now , father , bring me up back again to thy self , that i may again enjoy that glory which i had with thee in the heavens , before the world and generations of men were . this is the easie meaning of those two verses : for that this is to be understood of the humanity of christ , grotius is so confident , that he is fain to turn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which i was to have , or which i was designed to have , before the world was . but this present gloss needs no such distortion or force done to words , but is very natural and genuine . . again , john . . i came down from heaven , not to doe mine own will , but the will of him that sent me : and chap. . . he that comes from heaven is above all : and yet clearer , chap. . . i came forth from the father , and am come into the world ; again i leave the world , and go to the father . but clearest of all , chap. . . where speaking of his ascension ( and that was local ) he mentions also his descension , which it is most natural to understand in the same sense . no man hath ascended up to heaven , but he that came down from heaven , even the son of man who is in heaven ; i. e. whose mind and conversation is there , though his personal and visible presence be here on earth , as grotius also interpreteth these last words . to all which you may adde john . . what if you shall see the son of man ascend where he was before ? . these scriptures which we have cited bear so strong towards a local descending from , as well as ascending up to , heaven , that some have thought that christ was , besides his ascension after his resurrection , bodily taken up into heaven , and that he there received instructions from god , and was then sent down to publish the gospel . but certainly so notable a transaction of christ then in the flesh would never have been omitted by the other three evangelists , nor so slightly and obscurely intimated by this . . but this evangelist flying higher then to be kept within the compass of the time since his incarnation , it had been very easie for the fathers to have pleaded for the preexistence and descent of the soul of the messiah from heaven into an earthly body from those passages of scripture which we have quoted . and to make all sure , they might have further alledged for this opinion of the soul's preexistence , that it was at least unreproved , if not approved of , by our saviour himself ; as appears out of john . where he being asked by his disciples , whether it was the blind mans own fault , or his parents , that he was born blind ( which question plainly implies a preexistence before this life ) he seems to admit , it is certain he does not reprehend , the hypothesis : no more then he does , mark . , . or matthew . . where his disciples telling him , that some took him for elias , others for ieremias , or for some one of the old prophets or other ; he there again admits or not gainsaies the opinion of the jews concerning the preexistence or transmigration of souls , ( as grotius himself acknowledges that of ieremie to be referred ad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ) but passes to a questioning of them , whom they thought him to be . . i conclude therefore , there being such plausible pretensions to prove the preexistence of souls , not only out of reason but scripture it self , if the fathers had been imbued with that heathenish and pagan opinion ( as our adversaries term it ) of the soul 's being able to act after the death of the body , from the philosophy of plato , it had been even impossible for them to forgoe the latter part concerning the pre-existent life of the soul before she comes into these bodies ; which is the thing i have all this while driven at . chap. ix . . proofs out of scripture that the soul does not sleep after death : as peter . with the explication thereof . . the authors paraphrase compared with calvin's interpretation . . that calvin needed not to suppose the apostle to have writ false greek . . two waies of interpreting the apostle so as both grammatical soloecisme and purgatory may be declined . . the second way of interpretation . . a second proof out of scripture . . a third of like nature with the former . . a further enforcement and explication thereof . . a fourth place . . a fifth from hebr. . where god is called the father of spirits , &c. . a sixth testimony from our saviours words , matth. . . . but that this so usefull and comfortable a doctrine of the soul 's living and subsisting after the shipwrack of this body may be firmly established , i shall further adde what plain evidences there are in scripture for the proof thereof ( for as for those of reason , i shall refer you again to my above-named treatise , book . ch . , , and . ) and i conceive that of pet. . v. , , . is none of the meanest , if prejudice and violence wrest it not out of its genuine sense , which any man may easily apprehend to be this ; for christ also has once suffered for sins , the just for the unjust , ( that he might bring us to god , ) being put to death as to his body or flesh , but yet safe and alive as to his soul and spirit . by which also he went and preached unto the separated souls and spirits in prison , which sometimes were disobedient , viz. in the days of noe. . that solid interpreter of scripture iohn calvin expounds it in the main according to this paraphrase ; only for being alive as to his soul or spirit , he reads it , vivificatus spiritu , meaning by spirit the spirit of god. but it is plain that the antithesis is more patt and punctual as we have rendred it , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is as warrantably interpreted to be alive as to be made alive : as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be grave , not to be made grave . beside , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the greek septuagint signifies not only to revive one dead , but to save alive , according to which sense we have translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . there is also another slight difference betwixt us , in that he had rather have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 translated a watch-tower then a prison : which we should easily admit , who alledge this place against the sleep of the soul ; but he acknowledging also that the other sense is good , we have not varied from the common translation . the greatest discrepancy is , that he conceives that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a dative for a genitive absolute : but i leave him there to compound that controversie with the grammarians . the truth is , the learned and pious interpreter thought it more tolerable to admit that the apostle writ false syntax then unsound doctrine ; the fond opinion of the papistical purgatory being a worse soloecisme in religion , then to latinize in greek , or put a false case , is in grammar . . but this being too loose a principle , & wholy unsatisfactory to our adversaries , to phansie the holy writers to soloecize in their language , when we do not like the sense ; he had better have taken some other course more allowable to save us from the peril of purgatory : and in my judgment there are two , either of which will suffice to fence us from the assaults of the romanists . . the first is , by observing a latitude of sense in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for , as aristotle notes in his metaphys . lib. . cap. . the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in composition does not only signifie perfect privation , but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from whence we may well translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , who in times past were not so obedient or so believing as they should be ; and who were so bad , that they might be punished in their bodies and perish in the deluge , but yet so good , that at length they must attain to an higher degree of eternal life by christ's preaching to the dead , as is also intimated in the following chapter of this epistle ver . . wherefore acknowledging but two states , viz. of either hell or paradise , we say , that these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were in the very lowest degree of paradise , in which they were kept as in an inferior mansion , which was as a kind of prison or close custody unto them , ( their desires aspiring higher , ) till there was made a great accession unto their happiness upon christ's appearing and preaching unto them . and this is the very sense that calvin aims at in his commentarie upon this place . . but there is yet another interpretation , which we will propound in the second place , as free from the fear of any purgatory as the former , and requires no immutation at all in our foregoing paraphrase . we 'll admit therefore that these disobedient souls were in hell , not in the lowest region , but in the more tolerable parts thereof : it does not at all from hence follow , because christ in his spirit exhibited himself to these , preached to them , and prepared them by the glad tidings of the gospel , & after carryed them to heaven with him in triumph as a glorious spoil taken out of the jaws of the devil , that there is any redemption out of hell now , much less any purgatorie . for there were two notable occasions for this , such as will never happen again : for it respects the souls of them that were suddenly swept away in the deluge , and the solemnity of our saviours crucifixion and ascension ; he even in the midst of death undermining the prince of death , and at his ascension victoriously carrying away these first-fruits of his suffering , and presenting them to his father in the highest heaven . but to expect from this , that there should be still continued a daily or yearly releasment out of hell or purgatory , is as groundlesly concluded as if , because at the solemn coronation of some great prince all the prison-doors in some city were flung open , malefactors should infer , that they will ever stand open all his whole reign . thus we see how safe also the easy and obvious sense of this place is ; which i thought fit to rescue from the torture of other more learned and curious expositors , that it might be able to give its free suffrage for the confirmation of a point so usefull as this we have in hand . for it is plain that if christ preached to the dead , they were not asleep at so concerning a sermon . . again , cor. . v. . we are confident , i say , and willing rather to be absent from the body , and to be present with the lord. here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 plainly intimates a going out of this mortal body , not a change of it into an immortal one : therefore we may safely conclude that this courage and willingness of the apostle to die implies an enjoyment of the presence of christ after death before the general resurrection : else why should he rather desire to die then to live , but that he expects that faith should be presently perfected by sight , as he insinuates in the foregoing verse ? but assuredly better is that enjoyment which is onely by faith , then to have no enjoyment at all ; as it must be if the soul cannot operate out of this body . . a like proof to this and further confirmation of the truth is that of philipp . . , , , . where the apostle again professing his courage and forwardness to magnifie christ in his body , whether by life or by death , uses the like argument as before ; for to me to live is christ , and to die is gain . but if i live in the flesh , it will be worth my labour ; yet what i should chuse i wote not . for i am in a strife betwixt two , having a desire to depart and to be with christ ; which is far better : nevertheless , to abide in the flesh is more needfull for you . . the genuine sense of which place is questionless this ; that while he lived , his life was like christ's upon earth , innocent , but encumbred with much hardship and affliction , bearing about in his body the marks of the lord jesus ; but if he died , he should then once for all seal to the truth of his martyrdome , and not onely scape all future troubles ( which yet the love of christ , his assistance , and hope of reward did ever sustain him in ) but , which was his great gain and advantage , arrive to an higher fruition of him after whom he had so longing a desire . but if to be with christ , were to sleep in his bosome , and not so much as to be sensible he is there ; it were impossible the apostles affections should be carried so strongly to that state , or his judgement should determine it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so exceedingly much better ; especially his stay in the flesh being so necessary to the philippians and the rest of the church , and what he suffered and might further suffer in his life , no less a testimony to the truth , then death it self . . fourthly , those phrases of s. peter , pet. . . yea i think it meet , so long as i am in this tabernacle , to stir you up and put you in remembrance : knowing that i must shortly put off this tabernacle , &c. and so vers . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in all likelyhood alludes to the same ; as if his soul went out of the body as out of a tabernacle . all these phrases i say seem to me manifestly to indicate that there is no such necessary union betwixt the soul and the body , but she may act as freely out of it as in it ; as men are nothing the more dull , sleepy or senseless by putting off their cloaths , and going out of the house , but rather more awakened , active and sensible . . fifthly , hebr. . there god is called the father of spirits , the corrector and chastiser of our souls , in contradistinction to our flesh or bodies : and then vers . . lifting us up quite above the consideration of our corporeal condition , he brings us to the mystical mount sion , the city of the living god , the heavenly jerusalem , and to an innumerable company of angels , to the universal assembly , and church of the first-born which are inrolled in heaven , and to god the iudge of all , and to the spirits of just men made perfect . now i demand what perfection can be in the spirits of these just men to be overwhelmed in a senseless sleep : or what a disproportionable and unsutable representation is it of this throng theatre in heaven , made up of saints and angels , that so great a part of them as the souls of the holy men deceased should be found drooping or quite drown'd in an unactive lethargie ? certainly as it is incongruous in it self , so it is altogether inconsistent with the magnificency of the representation which this author intends in this place . . sixthly , matth. . . the life of the soul separate from the body is there plainly asserted by our saviour . fear not them that kill the body , but are not able to kill the soul ; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell ; i. e. able , if he will , to destroy the life both of body and soul in hell-fire , according to the conceit of those whose opinions i have recited in my treatise of the immortality of the soul , book . chap. . or else miserably to punish or afflict both body and soul in hell , the torments whereof are worse then death it self . for as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perire signifie to be excessively miserable , so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perdere may very well signifie to make excessively miserable . but now for the former part of the verse [ but are not able to kill the soul ] it is evident that they were able , if the soul could not live separate from the body . for killing of the body , what is it but depriving it of life ? wherefore if the soul by the death of the body be also deprived of life , it is manifest that she can be killed ; which is contrary to our saviour's assertion . chap. x. . a pregnant argument from the state of the soul of christ and of the thief after death . . grotius his explication of christ's promise to the thief . . the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . how christ with the thief could be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in paradise at once . . that the parables of dives and lazarus and of the unjust steward implie that the soul hath life and sense immediately after death . . we have yet one more notable testimony against our adversaries . our saviour christ's soul and the thief 's upon the cross did subsist and live immediately upon the death of the body , as appears from luke . , . and he said unto iesus , lord , remember me when thou comest into thy kingdome . and iesus said unto him , verily i say unto thee , this day shalt thou be with me in paradise : as if he should thus answer , thou indeed beggest of me that i would be mindfull of thee when i come into my kingdome , but i will not deferre thee so long ; onely distrust not the unexpected riches of my goodness to thee : for verily i say unto thee , that this very day shalt thou be with me in paradise . and there is no evasion from this interpretation , the syriack , as grotius noteth , interpointing betwixt [ i say unto thee ] and [ today , ] and all the greek copies , as beza affirmes , joyning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , one of them also having 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 betwixt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so that all subterfuge is quite taken away . . grotius his commentary upon this place is very ingenious , wherein he supposes christ to speak to the thief being a jew according to the doctrine of the hebrews , who called the state of the piously-deceased 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the garden of pleasure or paradise : where though they enjoyed not that consummate happiness which they were in expectation of at the resurrection , yet they were at the present in a great deal of joy and pleasure ; so much indeed that they held none to arrive to it after their death but such as had their souls well purified before they departed their bodies : whom he parallells to * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above mentioned out of the author to the hebrews chap. . and therefore there was great cause , saith he , that our saviour said , this day , thereby signifying that he should not be any longer deferred , according to the doctrine of their rabbins , notwithstanding the vainness of his life , but upon this his repentance should immediately be with christ in paradise , even that very day he spoke unto him . . nor need we with s. austin sweat much in labouring to make that article of the apostles creed , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , agree with his being in paradise in the intervall betwixt his death and resurrection . for * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in general , as this expositour makes good , signifies nothing else but the invisible state of souls separate from the body : nor does * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 restrain it to a descent into hell. for as for this phrase , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because it is spoken of the whole person of christ , as it is also of others that enter into the state of the dead ; by the defixion of our phansy upon what is most gross and sensible , viz. the going down of the body into the grave , we are easily drawn to make use of it to express the whole business both of the bodie 's and the soul 's receding from amongst the number of the living : as iacob does , genes . . . * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when notwithstanding his son was not buried , but torn in pieces with wild beasts , as he thought . wherefore the sense is , my body descending into the grave , with my soul shall i go unto my son into the region of the dead . . again , though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 usually signifies to descend or go downwards , yet it signifies sometimes merely to vanish or go out of sight ; and very often , as in other words , so in this , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has no signification at all , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is all one with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to go : of which it were easie to give plenty of examples out of the septuagint , but that i account it needless . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may very well be rendred , not that he descended into hell , but that he went into the region of souls separate , or of the spirits of men departed this life . and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bears this general sense , grotius makes good not only from the forecited place of genesis , but from the use of the word in sundry greek authors , as diphilus , sophocles , diodorus siculus , iosephus , plato and others . that of plutarch is very remarkable , where he expounds that verse of homer , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , saith he , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and the same author elsewhere , * to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimating that the air is that invisible region of the dead , into which the spirits of dying men depart . and it is confessed of all sides that whereas those other elements , fire , water , earth are visible , that the air and aether are utterly invisible ; and therefore * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may very well contain in it both hell and paradise . whence it is plain that christ might be at the same time both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in paradise , as a man may be both in england and in london at once . and his promise to the thief of the immediate enjoyment of that bliss , was as it were a proclamation from the cross to all the world , that the souls of men live and subsist out of their bodies . which he further demonstrated by reassuming his own , and ascending with it up to heaven in the sight of his disciples . . which truth he seems to me also plainly to suppose in the parable of dives and lazarus , as also of the unjust steward . for dives his desiring abraham to send lazarus to his brethren , to inform them of his sad condition , in what trouble and torment he was , does manifestly imply that the souls of the wicked are in torment and in trouble before the day of judgment , yea immediately upon their death ; and that the souls of the godly are forthwith in joy after their departure out of this life : as is intimated by the transportation of lazarus his soul into abraham's bosome , and our saviour's application of the parable of the steward , exhorting us to be liberal of these worldly goods , that when this life and the pleasures thereof fail , we may be received into joy everlasting . but we need not insist upon what is more obnoxious to the cavils and evasions of our slippery adversaries , we having produced already so many and unexceptionable testimonies of scripture for the confirmation of the present truth , viz. that it is no paganism , but sound and warrantable christianity , to assert that the souls of the deceased do not sleep , but do live , understand and perceive what condition they are in after death , be it good or evil . book ii. chap. i. . he passes to the more intelligible parts of christianity , for the understanding whereof certain preparative propositions are to be laid down . . as , that there is a god. . a brief account of the assertion from his idea . . a further confirmation from its ordinary concatenation with the rational account of all other beings , as first of the existence of the disjoynt and independent particles of matter . . we have at length passed through the most dark and doubtful part of our journey , and have given what account we were able of the most obscure and abstruse points in christianity : we begin now to enter into a more lightsome region and easier prospect of truth , the day breaking upon us and the morning-light tinging the tops of the mountains , from whence we are ascertain'd of a further and a more full discovery of that grand mystery we seek after ; which the spirit of god in the plain records of scripture will afterward so ratifie and confirm , that to those that have a judgment to discern , it will be secured from all future controversie . but in the mean time we are to contemplate the reasonableness and intelligibleness thereof from some chief heads or eminent and known aphorisms in philosophy and free reason , which will no less gratifie our understanding in this present pursuit after truth , then the pleasant reflections of the sun's beams from the tops of the hils do the eye of the early traveller . but we shall only rehearse , not insist much upon the proof of these conclusions , they being either so fully and irrefutably demonstrated in other writings ( see my treatise of the immortality of the soul , and my antidote against atheism ) or else of that evidency in themselves , that they want nothing but simple perception for their demonstration . . the first and chiefest is the existence of god , that is , of a being both infinitely wise , good and powerful . which , it is manifest , cannot be matter or body , grinde it as thin as you will in your imagination ; and therefore he must be a spirit , omnipresent , pervading and penetrating all things . which conclusion is so agreeable to the natural faculties of our mind , if we were once acquainted with them . ( for some men are become even strangers to the better part of themselves ) that any thing contrary or on this side of this po●ition will certainly lie very unevenly and untowardly in our conception . . for whereas it is impossible but something must be of itself ; is it not far more congruous to our reason that that be of itself whose very nature and idea importeth so much , then that not only this should not be at all , but also some other thing should be of itself , whose nature imports no such matter . wherefore it is most easie and most suitable to the dictates of our own faculties to admit the existence of god. from whence we are enabled to give a rational account of the most considerable objects that fall under our contemplation . for if any man will dare to assert that matter exists of it self , his assertion is at randome , nor can he render any reason for it , there being no such thing conteined in the idea thereof . but if he asserts god to exist , and any should further demand how it comes to pass , the very idea of god represents his nature to be such , that he cannot fail to be . for the idea of the most absolute and perfect essence cannot but represent it to our minds to be such as has the most absolute and perfect relation to existence . from whence it follows , if we believe our own faculties , that he does exist . otherwise , when our faculties tell us that necessary existence belongs to him , we shall notwithstanding affirm that it does not belong unto him , ( as certainly it does not , if he exist not at all ; ) which is a palpable contradiction . . but what a madness were it in a man to deny the free dictates of his own reason in a point not only so plain in itself but so serviceable and delightfull in the contemplation of the works of nature and that corporeal matter of which they are made ? for as for the existence of the very substance of matter , we cannot be at a loss in the search of the cause thereof , though it contein no reason of its existence in its idea . for though every part thereof be independent of the rest and separable , and therefore there might have been a want of matter in the world , or it may be an overplus ; yet neither of these have fallen out : but how matter came to be produced such , and so much , as it is , we have already found out a true and sufficient cause , an omnipotent deity , that can perform any thing that implies no contradiction ; and such is the production or emission of matter into being . chap. ii. . that the wise contrivances in the works of nature prove the being of a god ; . and have extorted an acknowledgment of a general providence , even from irreligious naturallists . . that there is a particular providence or inspection of god upon every individual person : which is his second assertion . but we proceed to that which is most curious and admirable , namely , the contrivance of this matter into such various forms of living creatures , wherein there is such excellent and accurate wisdome and skill discovered , that it is utterly impossible that the mere motion of the matter should ever reduce it , without an intellectual guide , into such perfect form and order . but to call the first cause of all this , nature rather then god , is to talk either very ignorantly or very humorsomely . for if they make nature a blind and unknowing principle , how can she keep so constant a tenor of such cunning artifice in all kinds of living creatures ? but if they will admit in her knowledge and skill , it is then a frivolous and an humorsome controversie , whether the first principle of all things should be deemed a god or a goddess , and be called deus or natura . but they that are not wilfully ignorant , may understand that there is that order and contrivance in the works of nature , that the first original cannot but be intellectual or rational ; and that all things are ordered for the best purpose and greatest happiness of the creation . so that what we find in the idea of god , that is , infinite wisdome and goodness , we find also reflected from the objects of nature , and can thence with a great deal of the highest devotion and pleasure , both further confirm that innate notion we have of god , and ease our minds in resting in so full and sufficient a cause of those exquisitely-framed phaenomena that daily appear unto us in the world. . and verily the species of things are so excellently-well provided for , that it has extorted an acknowledgment of a general providence even from such men , as if their intellectuals would have permitted them , their morals would scarcely have upheld them from sinking into the dullest degree of atheisme . but seeing things so framed in nature as they are , they could not but affirm that they came from an intellectual principle , which is god ; allowing him an ineffable happiness in contemplating of himself and his own wisdome in forming of the world and the various kinds of creatures therein ; but phansying him withall so fatally affixed to his own seat , that he cannot bow himself to look so low as to take notice of any particular or personal carriages of men , nor stretch forth his arm either to reward or punish them . an opinion that seems either to arise out of a desperate inability of giving a reason of sundry accidents that happen to particular creatures in the world , or else out of a tender regard to their own interest ; they being afraid of any other god then such as they have promised themselves will act nothing above or contrary to the ordinary and known course of nature , which , as they think , is a very certain assurance of future impunity . . but to me it seems impossible that so excellent a being as the deity is , should be ignorant of any thing that implies no contradiction to be known . and therefore our second assertion shall be , that there is a very exquisite particular providence reaching to every individual thing or person in the world : it being as easie for god to see all things , as to see any one thing ; his perception being infinite , and therefore undistractable and indefatigable . now his goodness and power being no less immense , it will necessarily follow that there is not any thing that befalls the meanest creature in the whole creation , but that it was suitable to the goodness of god either to cause it or permit it . for though it may seem at the present harsh to that particular being , yet at the length it may prove for its greater advantage ; at least it may be deemed good for the universe , as marcus aurelius solidly and judiciously ever and anon does suggest : and i think he is but a shallow philosopher that cannot maintain this cause against all atheistical surmises and cavills whatsoever . chap. iii. . his third assertion , that there are particular spirits or immaterial substances , and of their kinds . . the proof of their existence , and especially of theirs which in a more large sense be called souls . . the difference betwixt the souls or spirits of men and angels , and how that pagan idolatry and the ceremonies of witches prove the existence of devils . . and that the existence of devils proves the existence of good angels . . my third assertion is , that there are particular spirits or immaterial substances . which will easily flow from what is so firmly proved already , that there is one omnipotent , omniscient and infinitely-benign spirit , which we call god : who therefore acting according to his nature , we cannot doubt but that he has created innumerable companies of spirits to enjoy themselves and their creatour . which are either purely immaterial , having no communion at all with matter , with the greeks again divide into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , into pure intellects or minds and simple unities : or else such as ( although according to their very substance or essence they be immaterial , yet ) have a propertie of being vitally united with , and also affected by , the matter . to these spirits , for want of a better term , i must take the boldness to abuse a known word to a greater latitude of sense , and give the name of souls to them all , because they do vitally actuate the matter , be it aethereal , aereal , or terrestrial . whether there be not also a middle sort betwixt these souls and pure intellects , a man may well doubt , which differ from intellect in having an immediate power of moving the matter , and from souls in not being vitally joined therewith , but acting merely as assistent formes , such as the aristoteleans phansie their intelligencies to be . . for the existence of the three first orders we have intimated already a considerable argument which reaches all the orders of spirits indifferently . the last order falls not only under the knowledge of more abstracted reason , but also under experience it self . for that there is a spirit in the body of man is evident to us , because we find such * operations in us as are incompetible to matter , if we more closely and considerately examine them . this spirit that thus acts in us is called a soul. but that there is some such analogical principle in the aereal or aethereal genii , the actions and conditions of some of them do confirm . for if their nature were not such as we have described , that is , if they did not inhabit and vitally actuate corporeal vehicles , how could they ever sin or fall ? for it is out of the conjunction of these two principles , spirit and vehicle , that there ever could be brought in any inward temptation , distraction or confusion in any of the orders of the genii or angels . but pure and simple abstract beings seem utterly impassible , and therefore impeccable . wherefore it is very highly probable that all fallen angels , which we ordinarily call devils , are of the fourth order of spirits which we have described . . which spirits of the genii , fallen or not fallen , notoriously differ from these spirits of men , in that they are not capable of informing an humane or terrestrial body , and therefore bear themselves above them as a superior being , and out of their pride and scorn have ever since their fall , either by fraud or force , universally entangled poor contemptible mankinde in sundry performances of idolatrous worship unto them ; which they could not have done , if men were not lapsed as well as they . wherefore the pagans superstitions and the history of witches will make good that there are devils , and that they are of that nature we speak of . . and i think this being evinced , no man will question but that there are also good angels to conflict with and moderate the bad. for god will not let the great automaton of the universe be so imperfect , as to be forced to step out perpetually himself to do that which some noble part of his creation might perform ; nor set those things one against another that are quite of another kinde . besides , those philosophers that have wrote of these things with most judgment , do not easily conclude , that there are any other created intellectual beings but such as are capable of being vitally united with some vehicle or other . which , if it were true , is nothing prejudicial to us , the admission of the three first orders being little or nothing serviceable to our design . and lastly , it is improbable but that , the fall of the angels being from a free principle , as some fell , so others stood , and that there has ever been since their fall both good and bad angels in the world , in that sense as i have explained the nature of the angels or genii , whether good or bad. chap. iv. . his fourth assertion , that the fall of the angels was their giving up themselves to the animal life , and forsaking the divine . . the fifth , that this fall of theirs changed their purest vehicles into more gross and feculent . . the sixth , that the change of their vehicles was no extinction of life . . the seventh , that the souls of men are immortal , and act and live after death . the inducements to which belief are the activity of fallen angels . . the homogeneity of the inmost organ of perception . . the scope and meaning of external organs of sense in this earthly body . . the soul's power of organizing her vehicle . . and lastly , the accuracy of divine providence . . we add fourthly , that these angels before their fall had a twofold principle of life in them , divine and animal ; and that their fall consisted in this , in leaving their obedience to the divine life , and wholy betaking themselves to the animal life without rule or measure . . fifthly , that this rebellion had an effect upon their vehicles , and changed their pure aethereal bodies into more feculent and terrestrial , ( understanding terrestrial in as large a sense as cartesius does , which will take in the whole atmosphere . ) they have forfeited therefore these more resplendent mansions for this obscure and caliginous air they wander in , and have now in their polluted vehicles less of heaven then the meanest regenerate soul that dwels in these tabernacles of earth : and that of the prophet is most true of them , that their sun is gone down at mid-day . . sixthly , that the destruction of these aethereal vehicles was not an utter extinction of life to them , but onely an exclusion from the life and pleasures of that supernal paradise which they enjoyed in those heavenly vehicles . for that they now live and move and act is manifest , in that the whole world rings of their exploits and villanies . . seventhly , that the souls of men , which are as much immortall ( they being spirits ) as those of the faln angels are , are not devoid of life after the death of this body . for as the souls of the fallen angels descended from thinner to thicker , without the loss of sense and life ; so do our souls ascend from thicker to thinner habitations , with the like ( if not greater ) security of acting and living after the death of the body . . which we shall the easilier believe , if we consider how contemptible and homely a thing that organ is which is the ultimate and immediate conveigher of whatever we perceive in the outward world ( and which is most remarkable ) in which alone the soul has any sense at all of any thing that arrives to her cognoscence . * which ( if it be not the animal spirits within the brain , which makes most of all for us ) i confess with cartesius i think it most probable to be the conarion , then which nor water , nor air , nor aether , nor any other element else seems more simple and homogeneal . so that the advantage seems not to be in the nature of that organ , but it is because the soul by those lawes that brought her into the body , has placed her centre of perception there . . which little pavilion of the soul's centre of perception , being of so gross consistence as it is , and becoming thereby less passive and alterable ; it was very requisite that there should be that curious frame of the external organs of the eye , the ear , the nose and other parts , to strengthen those motions and impressions that they transmit ; so that they may be able forcibly enough to strike upon the conarion , or at least strike through the organs , and penetrate to the animal spirits in the brain , supposing them the most inward and immediate organ of perception . and that the conformation of the external organs of sense is such , that they are to admiration fitted to this end , is a thing so well known amongst the anatomists , that i need not insist on the proof of it : as it is also among physitians , that none of the external organs have any sense at all in them , no more then an acousticon or a dioptrick glass . from whence is discovered the unreasonableness of their despair , that conceit that when the soul is devested of her organical body , she can have no sense nor perception of any thing . for this curious organization tends to nothing else but the proportionating the vigour of motion to the difficulty of its passage through the nerves , or to the grossness of the consistency of the conarion . which organical contrivance therefore may not be at all needfull in the soul separate from the body , the centre of perception being placed bare in a more tender and passive element , such as air , aether , and the like . so that it will be the greatest wonder in the world , that the soul should sleep after death , so small a thing being able to waken her . . besides , it is not unreasonable but that she and other spirits , though they have no set organs , yet for more distinct and full perception of objects may frame the element they are in into temporary organization , and that with as much ease and swiftness as we can dilate and contract the pupil of our eye , and bring back or put forward the crystalline humor . . and not only to respect the natures of humane souls but also the will and purpose of god , there was never any yet that pretended to knowledge in philosophy , that denied the immortality of the soul in this sense which we contend for , but they deni'd first a particular divine providence ; which for my own part i think it is impossible for any one to deny that will diligently and indifferently search into the matter . and therefore this seventh assertion may very well stand , that the souls of men are immortal , and act and live after death . of this subject i have wrote more lately and more fully in my treatise of the immortality of the soul , to which the reader may have recourse . chap. v. . the eighth assertion , that there is a polity amongst the angels and souls separate , both good and bad ; and therefore two distinct kingdomes , one of light and the other of darkness : . and a perpetual fewd and conflict betwixt them . . the ninth , that there are infinite swarms of atheistical spirits , as well aereal as terrestrial , in an utter ignorance or hatred of all true religion . the eighth assertion is , that every angel , good or bad , is as truly a person as a man , being endued also with life , sense and understanding ; whence they are likewise capable of ioy and pain , and therefore coercible by laws . and mutual helps being able to procure what solitude cannot , they must of necessity be sociable and hold together in bodies politick , and obey , for either hope of advantage or fear of mischief . out of the whole masse therefore of the angelical nature ( taking in also according to philo the souls of men , be they in what vehicles they will ) there arise since their fall two distinct kingdoms , the one of darkness , ( whose laws reach no further then to the interest of the animal life , ) the other of light , which is the true kingdom of god , and here the animal life is in subjection , and the divine life bears rule ; as the divine life is trodden down in the other kingdom , and the animal life has the sole jurisdiction . . now the inward life and spring of motion in each kingdom being so different , it follows that these two kingdoms must alwaies be at odds , and that there must be a perpetual conflict till victory . which we shall still more easily conceive , if we admit what is very reasonable , that the kingdom of light reaches from heaven to earth , that is , that as there are found on the same surface of the earth animals both wilde and gentle , harmless and poisonous , and men good and bad , pious and impious ; so likewise even in the same regions of the air , that there are scatter'd spirits of both kindes , good and evil , subjects of the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. in the order of those aereal angels the ancient philosophers ranked the souls of men deceased whether vertuous or wicked , unless they had reached to an extraordinary and heroical degree of purity and perfection ; for then they conceited that they were carried up to those more high and aethereal regions . . ninthly , that there are infinite swarms of atheistical spirits , as well aereal as terrestrial , belonging to the kingdom of darkness , that either absolutely deny god , or at least particular providence ; and look upon the divine life as a tedious and troublesome phansie and destitute of all future reward : and if there be any present contentment in it , they reckon it amongst such as accrews to men mad and distracted , whose imagination makes them many a fools paradise to please themselves in ; and so , say they , does this religious lunacy to them that are tainted with it ; it having neither any real object nor solid fruits but what a beguiled phansy mocks their superstitious minds withall . and though these rebels may be well enough seen in the knowledge of nature and mathematical subtilties , as also in all manner of craft and state-policy , yet their desires being so fully lulled asleep to all divine things , they can neither excogitate ought themselves , nor allow of any reasons from others , whereby they might be brought off from that state of darkness and rebellion they are in , to the true worship of the living god. nay it is probable they are obdurated to that height of boldness , that they think themselves able to grapple with the powers of the kingdom of light ; and that superiority was theirs of old , and is yet their due , and may come into their hands again ; and that their chieftain is the elder brother , though cast thus low by the envy of the yonger : which was the wilde conceit of the euchites , ophites , or satanians . chap. vi . his tenth assertion , that there will be a finall overthrow of the dark kingdome , and that in a supernatural manner , and upon their external persons . . the eleventh , that the generations of men had a beginning , and will also have an end . . to which also the conflagration of the world gives witness . . now , in the tenth place , it is very uncouth and unusual that so resolved and unreconcileable opposition as there is betwixt the two kingdomes we speak of , should not end at last in some signal overthrow , with victory on the one part or other . but besides , the undeniable right and justness of the cause which the powers of the kingdome of light contend for , will not onely procure of him that fits judge an end to their toyle and conflict , but they will certainly carry it on their side , and that not onely in a still , mystical , allegorical sense , ( which these atheistical spirits will have no sense at all of nor any perception ; for they will resolve all into nature , policy and good fortune , it may be into some more then ordinary influence of the starres that begin to set a golden age on foot again ; so little would a reign of righteous men upon earth convince the obdurately wicked ) but by a powerful miraculous appearance , whereby they shall be confounded in their outward senses ; there being nothing else left for divine providence to work upon ; the divine life and touch of conscience being utterly lost in them , and their reason being perfectly lulled asleep to whatsoever concerns the true knowledge of god and duties of religion . . eleventhly , the generations of men had a beginning , and will also have an end . that they had a beginning , is the general consent of all philosophers , poets and historians . the aristoteleans indeed dissent , but upon such weak grounds that it is not worth the while to confute them . but cartesius his philosophy is so favourable to this opinion , that necessarily it inferrs it . besides , the history of nature seems to confess it , in that the earth cannot bring forth such perfect animals as she did at first , as lucretius has noted lib. . de rerum natura . iamque adeo fracta est aetas , effoetaque tellus , vix animalia parva creat , quae cuncta creavit secla , deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu . the earth who of her self at first brought forth huge lusty men of stature big and bold , and large-limb'd beasts , she grown effete and old hardly bears small ones now , and little worth . which as it must needs be an infallible sign of her age , so it is also of her once being young and having a beginning . . now , besides that axiom in philosophy , that what has a beginning , will also have an end ; that generation shall at last cease upon the face of the earth , that ancient fame of the conflagration of the world gives further witness to . of which direfull fate the sibylls have sung long since , and * pythagoras and heraclitus given testimony , whom ovid also has followed : and the stoicks , men slow enough to believe great things upon slight grounds , have taken it into their philosophy ; adding also that the souls of men subsist till then , but that at the last they are extinguished in this final conflagration . others phansy a more benigne use of this fire , that it shall purge and fertilize the earth , and prepare it for a more happy habitation : as if the divine nemesis had a kinde design for the whole , when she seems so cruelly severe to some part of the creatures ; and that she did in this not onely an act of iustice , but of skilfull husbandry , burning up the barren ground with all the vermine therein , to make the field the more fruitfull ; according to that of virgil in his georgicks , saepe etiam steriles incendere profuit agros , atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere flammis : sive inde occultas vires ac pabula terrae pinguia concipiunt ; sive illis omne per ignem excoquitur vitium , atque exudat inutilis humor . the fruitless field with its dry standing straw 't is fit sometimes to burn with crackling fire : for whether hence the earth hid virtue draw and oyly moisture , or she doth perspire and sweat out all corruption ; by this law the bettered soil answers the swain's desire . but god forbid that any mortall man should be so bold and unwise as to profess he understands so profound a mystery of providence . all that i aime at is this , that it is not onely the opinion of christians but of ancient heathens and jews , that the earth at length will be all set on fire , and that there will be a period put to this present stage of things ; which i shall make a solid use of in the behalf of our religion against them both . chap. vii . . his twelfth assertion , that there will be a visible and supernatural deliverance of the children of the kingdome of light , at the conflagration of the world. . the reason of the assertion . . his thirteenth assertion , that the last vengeance and deliverance shall be so contrived , as may be best fit for the triumph of the divine life over the animal life . . whence it is most reasonable the chieftain of the kingdome of light should be rather an humane soul then an angel . . his last assertion an inference from the former , and a brief description of the general nature of christianity . . my twelfth assertion is , that there shall not onely be a sensible and palpable overthrow of the kingdome of darkness , ( such as themselves shall feel with a vengeance , a whirlwind of destruction ratling about their ears , as i may so speak ; the visible wrath of god seizing upon their external persons , ) but there shall be also a visible deliverance of the other kingdome from this storme of fire and brimstone , from this fierce anger of god and the rorings and boilings of incensed nature against the wicked . for who can imagine the horror , the stench , the confusion , the crackling of flames of fire , those loud murmurs and bellowings of the troubled seas working and smoking like seething water in a caldron , the fearfull howlings and direfull grones of those rebellious ghosts , who besides the general defacement of whatsoever they heretofore took pleasure in , are in an unexpressible torture of body , with an unimaginable vexation of minde ; self-love then ( the centre of the animal life ) proving the depth and bottom of hell , as being inflamed and boiling up with the highest indignation and vengeance against it self , that when it had so many opportunities , it provided no better for its own happiness ; being now convinced that there is a special providence over the good , and that righteousness has its eternal reward ? for in that day shall all the faithful renew their strength , and shall mount up with wings as eagles , and be carried far above the reach of this dismal fate ; that is , they shall ascend up in those heavenly chariots or ethereal vehicles ( the ancient philosophers speak of ) and so enter into immortality and eternal rest . . but if there were not this visible deliverance of the powers of the kingdome of light , the powers of the contrary kingdome , let them suffer what they would , they would imagine it a piece of blind and inevitable fortune , as well as partial earthquakes and inundations and particular conflagrations , which have destroyed towns and countries heretofore ; and therefore deem their ill condition a fad calamity indeed , but no punishment . which will seem the more probable if we consider that epicures and atheists themselves admit of a final destruction of the world , as you may see in lucretius , who speaking of the earth , the sea and the heavens , presages thus of them , tres species tam dissimiles , tria talia texta , una dies dabit exitio ; multosque per annos sustentata ruet moles & machina mundi . three species of things so different , three such contextures , shall one fatall day ruine at once ; and the world's machina upheld so long rush into atomes rent . . my thirteenth assertion is , that this palpable and visible difference which divine providence is to make betwixt the evill and the good , will be , and is , so wisely contrived , that it shall not onely be a manifest conviction and confutation of atheists and epicures , and an undoubted revelation of god's existence and soveraignty in the world , but in a speciall manner for the high honour and triumph of the divine life over the animal life . which through so many sorrows , afflictions , temptations , scornfull reproaches of the wicked , their cruel and barbarous usages , shall at last with all the embraces of her be enthroned in everlasting peace and glory . . and that this may be done more exquisitely , that wisdome that contrives all for the best , was to lay aside all those things that seem so goodly and precious to the animal life , such as are , the outward power and pompe of the world , highness of rank , transcendency in natural knowledge , beauty , birth , bodily strength , or whatsoever the animal life , divided from the divine , takes pleasure in , and can perform by it self : all this , i say , was to be laid aside in the choice of that person by whom this great conquest over the kingdome of darkness was to be atchieved ; as it is written , he has no pleasure in the strength of an horse , neither delighteth he in any mans legs : but the delight of the lord is in them that fear him and put their trust in his mercy . which i onely cite for illustration sake , it being undeniably true in it self , that god preferres his own glory , that is the divine life , or the image of himself shining in his creatures , before any natural accomplishment whatsoever . thus therefore it was to fare in the choice of the chieftain of the powers of the kingdome of light : as if some great prince being highly displeased at the general luxury , rebellion , and persidiousness of his nobles , to shew how little he esteemed the highness of their ranks in respect of true vertue , should take some one of the lowest of the commons , yet indued with eminent prudence , loyalty and valour , and set him next to himself in honour , trust and power in the administrating the affairs of his kingdome : so the almighty passing by those more superior orders of angels , that his high esteem of the divine life might be more apparent and conspicuous , was to make his choice in the rank of humane souls , and to lay the government upon some one , who being designed to that office from the beginning of the world , should win notorious victories against the kingdome of darkness , and rescue at last all such as the devil has held captive , into the glorious liberty of the sons of god. . lastly therefore ( to make an end at length of my preparatory assertions ) the main mystery of christianity consists in this , that it is a wise contrivance of providence upon the lapse of men and angels , to slur and defeat all the pride and practices of the devil and his accomplices , and to reduce all penitent and regenerate souls to that glory and happiness they heretofore forfeited and fell from : or , if you will briefly , but more significantly , thus ; christianity is that period of the vvisdome of god and his providence , wherein the animal life is remarkably insulted or triumphed over by the divine . chap. viii . . that not to be at least a speculative christian is a sign of the want of common wit and reason . . the nature of the divine and animal life , and the state of the world before and at our saviour's coming , to be enquired into before we proceed . . why god does not forthwith advance the divine life and that glory that seems due to her . . the first answer . . a second answer . . a third answer . . the fourth and last answer . . we have now laid down such conclusions , either so evident from themselves , or demonstrable from reason , or so allowable by the authority of the wisest men that have been in the world and yet uninterested in christianity ; that , the hardest difficulties thereof being resolvable into these , it will appear that it is not only an indisposition to all religion whatever , but the want of common wit and the laudable parts of a man , that keeps any one off , at least from being a speculative christian. . there are only two things more for a further preparation to be proposed to our view , before we come to a particular application of the several branches of christianity to the foregoing theorems . the one is concerning the animal life and the divine ; the other is concerning the condition of the world upon these times , and before the prince of the kingdome of light began that great enterprise of redeeming of lapsed mankind out of the bondage of satan . . concerning the first it is likely some will be forward to enquire , what is this animal life , and what the divine , that this must so pompously triumph over the other ? and why , if the one be so much more pretious in the eyes of god then the other is , does he not without so long ambages and tiresome circumstances enthrone her at once , giving her her due honour without delay , and mistaken and lapsed souls that happiness they are capable of , without so tedious and irksome trouble ? the rudeness and unmannerliness of this latter question , or rather bold and unskillful expostulation , provokes me beyond the laws of method to dispatch it before the former ; especially we wanting nothing further to answer it then what is supposed in the very expostulation , viz. that the divine life is more transcendently excellent and precious then the animal life is . . but as transcendent as it is , if we understand it aright , that of it which is kept from us , is not any thing of it self , but an high and precious modification of our own minds , whereby we become unspeakably good and happy , and are made thereby capable of enjoying god , the highest good that is conceivable . but the divine life in god is impassible , and cannot by any means be disturb'd , diminished , or incommodated any way : and that life in us , viz. that divine modification of our souls , when it is not in us , is not at all , and therefore by not being bears no calamity , nor indeed being in us does it feel any either pain or pleasure , gratification or discontent . for it is the soul it self that has the sense of all , and 't is she that feels this divine sense or life ; but there is no sense feels it self , else there would be as many persons as senses . wherefore the divine life it self is not injured , troubled , nor pain'd by any impatiency or expectance of that honour and triumph that is intended . . secondly , that estate that the souls of the blessed at last arrive to , which is the crowning of the divine life in them with glory and immortality , is so excellent and transcendent a condition , that it is very just and congruous that no free agent should ever arrive to it but through a competent measure of tribulation and distress , as a tryal of that loyal affection he owes to so fair and lovely an object . and if the waies of providence be something tedious and tiresome in bringing the souls of men to this haven of rest and quietness ; yet because we are so certainly and highly rewarded at the last , if self-love do not blind our eyes , we cannot but confess that the whole progress was very becoming and decorous , and that things were carried on as they ought to be : as aristotle notes of poetical history , where laborious and calamitous vertue ever at last attains to victory and glory . and therefore in that regard the philosopher prefers the reading of epick poets before historians , because they write of affairs as they ought to be , but historians only as they are , which do often seem not to be so well as they should be . but fools and children , as the proverb is , are unfit spectators of things in motion and transaction , they knowing not at all whither they tend . and it is no wonder if the stupid world be much amuzed at providence , till that great dramatist , god almighty , draw on the period towards the last catastrophe of things . for then certainly heaven and earth will ring with this plaudite or acclamation , verily there is a reward for the righteous ; doubtless there is a god that judges the earth . but it is a wayward and impatient temper in us , that we will neither expect nor approve that method in the full course of providence , which the most curious and judicious phansies have set out to the great gratification of our faculties , though but in feigned history : as if humane contrivance could be more just and exact then divine wisdome it self . wherefore i say again , that assuredly at the last , passive and perseverant vertue shall ascend her triumphant chariot , and be drawn through the wide theatre of the world in all imaginable pomp and glory . . thirdly , there is not only a due price set upon the reward by this long trial and probation ; but there are peculiar vertues very noble and laudable that are exercised therein , which might for ever have lien asleep without this occasion : such are heroical fortitude , unconquerable patience , sedulous and watchfull prudence , dexterous and subtile invention , and clear and solid management of reason against the perverse suggestions or more impudent declarations of the sophisters of the dark kingdome . besides , we are in a more sensible school of profound humilitie and submission to the will of god in all things , and have the opportunity cast upon us of so strong trials of our loyaltie in the times of desertion , that the remembrance of that fidelitie cannot but make us find our selves far more dear to god , and raise an ineffable joy and content to our minds , that we have had such occasions to shew our faithfulness and constancy to him whom our soul loveth . wherefore from the going on thus by degrees there seems to arise a natural accrewment of greater happiness . but to require of god , that he should at once command the soul into that state that it is thus kindly to ripen into in succession of time , is to expect that the seasons of the year should be thrown headlong one upon another on an heap , and that there neither should be buds nor blossoms ( though they have their peculiar use , beauty and fragrancy ) but that it should be autumne all the year long ; as i have answered already in the like case . but the divine wisdome is the best dispenser of his goodness , who to set all the powers of nature aworking , brings in monsters as well as hercules into the world , that valour may have a proportionate object . and were not the kingdome of darkness it self some way usefull , and did not some homage or other to the high soveraignty of divine vvisdome and goodness , i dare pronounce , it would not subsist one moment , but be quite exterminated out of being . . fourthly and lastly , there being nothing detrimented but our selves ( if we be detrimented ) by this delay of our happiness , as i have already demonstrated , and our selves being lapsed and revolted from god ; it is very just that we do a very competent penance in that regard ; that that divine excellency that we are to return to , may not be dishonoured by so vile and cheap a prostitution , and too easie and sudden reconcilement . for though god be at once reconciled to us in his son , yet it does not excuse us from undergoing a due order of penalties before we enjoy the full fruit of reconciliation . and this is no new doctrine , but what the apostles themselves have taught , that through much tribulation and affliction we are to enter into the kingdom of heaven ; and , that whom the lord loveth , he chasteneth , and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth . therefore there is no returning to our lost happiness or being received again into the favour of god but in a durable way of nurture and trial. so that we see sufficient reason why providence should not bring on all that happiness of the faithful at once , which at last will fall to their shares ; but use some delay and circumstances ( as the expostulator presumptuously cals them ) before all things be finished and compleated . chap. ix . . what the animal life is in general , and that it is good in it self . . self-love the root of the animal passions , and in it self both requisite and harmless in creatures . . as also the branches . . the more refined animal properties in brutes , as the sense of praise , natural affection , craft : . political government in bees . and cranes and stags , . as also in elephants . . the inference , that political wisdom , with all the branches thereof , is part of the animal life . . now to return to what we should have spoke of first , the animal life and the divine , and to declare what they are , not in a scrupulous philosophical way , but so far forth as will serve for use and the guidance of our lives ; we say first in general , that the animal life is that which is to be discerned in brutes as well as in men , which at large consists in the exercise of the senses , and all those passions that nature has implanted in them , either for the good of them in particular , or for the conservation of their species . which will be better understood , if we instance in some , wherein , as in the rest , the wisdom of god in nature is easily to be traced . whence it will likewise appear that there is simply no evil but good in the animal life it self ; but that our undue use of , or immoderate complacency in , such motions is the only sin : which is plain in the outward senses . but we shall chiefly , though very briefly , consider the passions of the brute creatures . . the general root of these questionless is self-love , which though it sound odiously ( as it ought to do taken in the worst sense ) amongst men , yet it is a right and requisite property of life in every brute animal . for they not being indued with the larger and more free faculties of reason and understanding , if that intense love which each bears to it self should have been equally carried forth to the rest of the creatures , what a puzzle and distraction would it have made in every single animal ? care and solicitude being so redoubled upon external considerations in the behalf of others , that it would force them every one to be regardless of its own safety and welfare ; or at least make them less able to provide for it , they having their animadversion fixed elsewhere , and upon such as they cannot by reason of distance of place or like disadvantage conveniently succour . and thus their affection would prove as well fruitless to others as unprofitable to themselves , it not being directed thither nor concentred there where it may do most good , viz. to themselves ; whom yet they are alwaies most able and most in readiness to help and assist , they being nighest at hand and most present to themselves . wherefore it is upon very just grounds that every animal should bear the strongest love towards it self , because it is better able to attend its own welfare then another's , or can be attended by another . nec tam praesentes alibi cognoscere divos . there is therefore no vitiosity in self-love , as it is a mere animal affection , but it is a warrantable principle of life implanted by god in nature for the good and welfare of the creature . . and the root having no poison in it , the branches in themselves are pure and innocuous . which branches are all the animal passions , such as anger , fear , sorrow , ioy , all the necessary desires of the body , to keep it in being , such as are hunger , and thirst , and sleepiness . nor does the effect or influence of self-love rest here in providing for the individual ; but that wisdom that works in nature has so contrived it , that these brute creatures when they seek their greatest content and pleasure , they do then the most serviceable act that can be done to the universe , which is the conservation of those species of animals which are so perfect , that they cannot be continued in the world without this manner of propagation , which is by union of male and female . it is not my purpose to make an exact enumeration of all the animal affections , much less to declare the use of them ; in which divine providence does as plainly appear , as in the anatomy of the parts of the body , and therefore gives testimony that they are all good in their kinde , as being inserted into the animal nature by so wise and so benign an artificer . . i will only mention some few of the more refined passions that are observable in some brutes : such as are , the sense of praise and glory , the strength of natural affection , the exercise of craft and subtilty for self-preservation , their real and effectual policy for common safety , and an obscure imitation of some acts of religion . we shall not make any tedious excursions upon these particulars ; we will only name some animals , as a pledge of the truth we intimate . as for example , that there is the sense of praise , glory and victory in brutes , is evident in the peacock , elephant , horse , and in cocks of the game . that there is natural affection in them to their young ones , almost all creatures witness ; but of reciprocal affection of their young to them that brought them forth the most eminent example is in the stork , whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to do the duty of an affectionate childe to his aged parent . gratitude also of another kind is very conspicuous in other animals , in dogs especially , who have often interposed their lives for the defence of their masters , and have had so deep a sense of sorrow at their death , that they have thereupon voluntarily pined away themselves and died . so that these very brutes seem to have arrived to that pharisaical perfection that reached no further then loving their friends , or doing good to those that did good to them . as for the craft and skill in shifting for one , as they say , and saving a mans own carkass , though we might instance in many others , yet i shall content my self in only naming that one animal so well known for his wiles and subtilties , the fox . . and for political order and government , the exactness thereof in the commonwealth of bees is not only noted by great naturalists , such as aristotle and pliny , but vulgarly known to every countreyman that has hives in his garden ; where he may observe , how some one bee by his humming , as by the sound of a trumpet , awakes the rest to their work ; how fitly the whole company distribute the several tasks of mellification amongst themselves ; how severe punishers they are of drones , ejecting them out of their hives ; how loyal they are to their king or captain , moving as he moves , and sustaining him with their own bodies when he is weary with flying ; how wise they are to keep themselves from being dispersed in a storm of winde , by taking little pieces of stones in their feet to ballast their light bodies : which is also reported of the cranes , though they be not agreed to what end ; some affirming that the stones they carry in their claws are to discover , when they fly , whether they fly over water or dry ground ; for by letting them fall , by the distinction of the sound they will discern which it is . but i believe they may as easily discover it by their sight , and therefore i should rather think that the use of these stones is the same with those of the bees . . but that which seems more political in the cranes is this , that they have one captain amongst them , who , when they rest upon the earth , watches over the whole company , holding a stone in one foot , that if he should by chance be overcome by drowsiness , the falling thereof might waken him : the rest in the mean time sleep with their heads under their wings ; but if any danger approach , the captain gives notice by crying out , and so away they fly . this office of precedency they have by turns , and that as well in the air as on the earth ; and he that is placed in the van and cuts the air first , in due time retires . as is also eminently observable in the sicilian staggs in their passing through the streight betwixt sicilia and calabria , which they were wont to doe in summer-time to seek new pastures : he that follows lays his head on the hinder part of him that goes before ; he therefore that goes first comes back into the rear when he is weary and easeth his head upon the hindmost : which they do by turns , and so the weight of their horns proves no great impediment to their swimming . . that also is very exquisite policy , which apollonius in his travels into india observed in the elephants while they passed the river ; the least went first , and so proportionably the rest followed , the greatest passing over the last of all . which order damis his disciple and fellow-traveller disallowing as rude and inept , his master apollonius informs him of the right reason thereof , shewing him how they were now in chace and hunted after , and being in retreat , according to military discipline the strongest were to march last . besides , if the greatest had marched foremost , the weight of their bodies would have made the passage more deep , and more difficult and inconvenient to the lesser that should follow . . wherefore it is evident that political wisdom is a branch of the animal life and such vertues as are comprehended under it , such as political iustice , temperance , fortitude or courage , a sense of friendship , fame , or glory ; with several other affections that are contain'd in the political spirit , and which are discoverable in several other brute animals , as well as in the elephant : but i must not expatiate . chap. x. . that there is according to pliny a kind of religion also in brutes , as in the cercopithecus ; . in the elephant . . a confutation of pliny's conceit . . that there may be a certain passion in apes and elephants upon their sight of the sun and moon , something a-kin to that of veneration in man , and how idolatry may be the proper fruit of the animal life . . a discovery thereof from the practise of the indians , . whose idolatry to the sun and moon sprung from that animal passion . . that there is no hurt in the passion it self , if it sink us not into an insensibleness of the first invisible cause . . the last affection we named was religion , or rather the shadow of it . the aegyptians figure out the rising of the moon by a cynocephalus , who sympathizeth so with that planet , that while she is in conjunction that creature loseth its sight , being blind till the moon hath recovered her light : the menstruous flux of the female is also exactly in the interlunium . whence the aegyptian priests kept these animals in their temples for the more exact observation of the course of the moon , and made them hieroglyphicks to represent the rising thereof ; drawing a cercopithecus in this posture , viz. standing upon his hinder feet , and lifting up his fore-feet toward heaven , with his face directed up to the moon . and pliny does plainly affirm that they do novam lunam exultatione adorare . which yet i must confess i look upon to be no more an act of adoration , then the fawning and leaping of a dog at the return of his master , or the manifold incurvations or prostrations of his body at his feet . whence the criticks endeavor to give a reason of the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies adoration . . the same author , amongst other properties of the elephant , saies there is this in him also , religio siderum , solisque ac lunae veneratio , a religious observance of the stars , and veneration of the sun and moon ; and that in mauritania , every new moon when it begins to shine , the elephants repair to the river amilus , where , after a solemn purification and washing of themselves , having first done their salutations to the moon , they return into the woods . . that the two great luminaries of the world have a very strong influence upon all sublunary bodies is very plain , and upon some more peculiarly then others ; and yet without any suspicion of religion in them . for what religion can there be in the heliotropium that winds about so with the sun ? or what so early devotion is that in the cock , whom yet proclus will needs phansie to sing his morning-hymn to apollo or the sun at the first sense of his rayes at break of day ? or what evening-devotion is that in crows or rooks , that a man may observe roosting on the tops of trees with their bills turned toward the sun setting ? the general life and motion in the world has ( as i said ) its particular effect according to this or that animal . and so the presence of the moon that is received with so much exultation by the cercopithecus , with so solemn a shew of devotion by the elephant , is notwithstanding barked at by the dog , as the sun is cursed by a certain people of libya for his troublesome heat . but i think no man that is not very rash will admit , that that kinde of ape and the elephant do any more by their actions and gestures adore the moon , then the dog by his barking does blaspheme her . . i will not deny but in apes and elephants , and such like brute creatures that bid nearer towards humane perfection , that the sight of the sun and the moon may sometime cause a strange kind of sense or impress in them , some uncouth confounded phantasm consisting of love , fear , and wonderment , near to that passion which in us is called veneration . so great power have the more notable objects of nature upon the weak animal senses . and therefore though religion be not , yet idolatry may be the proper fruit of the animal life , as is handsomly discoverable in the worship of the sun and moon . . for what the apes and those elephants in mauritania do , the same is done by the idolaters of the east-indies in the two islands of tidor and ternate , where they sing hymns to the rising sun , and pray to the moon by night for the increase of children , cattel and the fruits of the earth : conceiving these two to be the great deities of the world , the sun the male and the moon the female , and that these two begat the stars , which they look upon also as petty deities . . that they sought out a first cause on whom the order , oeconomy and government of the world should depend , proceeded from the sagacity of the superior faculties of their souls : but that they so vainly pitched upon the sun and moon , proceeded from the brutish admiration and dull astonishment of the animal senses in them . which animal propensity and enticing power of these objects are lively set down in iob. if i beheld the sun when it shined , or the moon walking in brightness ; and my heart hath been secretly enticed , or my mouth has kissed my hands : this also were an iniquity to be punished by the iudge ; for i should have denied the god above . wherefore , as i said before , though religion be not , yet idolatry may rightly be deemed the fruit of this animal passion , which is a natural veneration of glorious astonishing objects . . not that it is any hurt to be sensibly struck with the most illustrious phaenomena of nature , but that we should not sink so far in or stick so fast there , as not to proceed further to the knowledge of him who is invisible and cannot be seen with the outward eyes of the body . otherwise transportation of minde and wonderment at the more noble objects in the world is so far from having any harm in it , that it is an usual property of the philosophical and religious complexion , and has its great pleasure and use . as there is indeed some use and advantage in all the animal affections ; and therefore if we relinquish any of them , unless it be for an higher good , we are made thereby more maimed and imperfect . chap. xi . . of a middle life whose root is reason , and what reason it self is . . the main branches of this middle life . . that the middle life acts according to the life she is immersed into , whether animal or divine . . her activity , when immersed in the animal life , in things against and on this side religion . . how far she may goe in religious performances . . we have now competently set out the nature of the animal life : but before we pass to the divine , it will be needfull to us to take notice of a middle life or facultie of the soul of man betwixt the divine and animal ; which if we might name by the general principle or common root thereof , we may call it reason : which is a power or facultie of the soul , whereby either from her innate ideas or common notions , or else from the assurance of her own senses , or upon the relation or tradition of another , she unravels a further clew of knowledge , enlarging her sphere of intellectual light , by laying open to her self the close connexion and cohesion of the conceptions she has of things , whereby inferring one thing from another she is able to deduce multifarious conclusions as well for the pleasure of speculation as the necessity of practice . . from this single facultie or common root of emproved knowledge shoot out many branches : but i shall name only some main ones ; such as are the skill of natural philosophy , of arithmetick and geometry ; the power of speech , whether merely grammatical , or also rhetorical ; a capacity of civil education , and an ability of discoursing and acting also after an exteriour way in matters of religion . . this is a short description of the middle life which is neither animal nor divine , but is really ( what the astrologians phansy mercurie to be ) such as that with which it is conjoined , whether good or bad , divine or animal . . for if reason be swallowed down into the animal life , it ceases not to operate there , but all her operations then are tinctured with that life into which she is immers'd : so that she will be active there , either in crafty contrivances for the getting of wealth , or in merry wiles for the enjoyment of pleasure ; or else be plotting designs to satisfie ambition ; or at least be perpetually taken up for the getting of a necessary livelihood . nor doth she contain her self within the bounds of mere dry action , but , according to the genius of the party , discovers her self in the power of speech and eloquence : she enabling some to write very sage political discourses , employing others in framing out very curious conclusions in matters of religion ; others she busies as much to excogitate all the cavils they can against the religion they are born under , and indeed against the whole profession of pietie in general , endeavouring to make the belief of a god and his providence ridiculous to the world . sometimes she further associates to her self the help of poetry , the more winningly to recommend her own conceptions to those to whom she communicates them . hence are so many melting elegies upon the unexpected death of some famous beauty , triumphant songs upon cruell and barbarous victories in bloody warre , impure sonnets to that polluted goddess the terrestrial venus , wild catches that applaud and encourage exorbitant abuses of the blood of the grape . . nor is this all that reason and phansy can do , while they are inspired merely from the animal life with a competent advantage from education and complexion : but they will also adventure to compose devout hymns in honour of the saints , to the blessed virgin especially , nay to christ himself , and to the holy and eternal trinity ; describe to us the pleasures and riches of paradise , though they never came there , nor it may be never will do . and if these things may seem more slight , because poetical , those more seeming substantial performances in solid prose , i mean ardent and prolix praiers , long and fervent preaching , backed with much affection and winning eloquence , i must pronounce of these also , that they may , and do too often , arise from no higher a principle then what we have described , and are the results of such powers as may reside in the mere natural man. chap. xii . . the wide conjecture and dead relish of the mere animal man in things pertaining to the divine life , and that the root of this life is obediential faith in god. . the three branches from this root , humility , charity and purity ; and why they are called divine . . a description of humility . . a description of charity , and how civil justice or moral honesty is eminently contained therein . . a description of purity , and how it eminently contains in it what ever moral temperance or fortitude pretend to . . a description of the truest fortitude : . and how transcendent an example thereof our saviour was . . a further representation of the stupendious fortitude of our saviour . . that moral prudence also is necessarily comprized in the divine life . . that the divine life is the truest key to the mystery of christianity ; but the excellency thereof unconceivable to those that do not partake of it . . and now i have advanced the animal life so high , by adding this middle nature to it , that you may perhaps marvail upon what i shall pitch that may seem more precious and desirable , unless it be some wonder-working faith , whereby a man might cast out devils and command mountains to remove and be carried into the midst of the sea. but it is so far from proving any such like priviledge that the tumour of the natural spirit of man would please it self in , that i am afraid when i shall describe it , he will have no relish at all of it , scarce understand what i mean ; and if he do , yet he will look upon it as a dry insipid notion without any fruit or pleasure therein . but however i will declare it to him as well as i can ; and that nothing may be wanting , i shall first give a short glance at the root of this divine life also , which is an obediential faith and affiance in the true god , the maker and original of all things . from this faith apostate angels and lapsed mankind are fallen ; but the soul of the messias ever stood upright , wading through the deepest temptations that humane nature could be encumbred with . . but this holy and divine life to such as have an eye to see , will be most perceptible in the branches thereof , though to the natural man they will look very witheredly and contemptibly . these branches are three , whose names though trivial and vulgar , yet if rightly understood , they bear such a sense with them , that nothing more weighty can be pronounced by the tongue of men or seraphims : and in brief they are these , charity , humility , and purity ; which , where-ever they are found , are the sure and infallible marks or signes of either an unfallen angel or a regenerate soul. these we call divine vertues , not so much because they imitate in some things the holy attributes of the eternal deity , but because they are such as are proper to a creature to whom god communicates his own nature so far forth as it is capable of receiving it , whether that creature be man or angel , and so becomes * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for such a creature as this ( and christ was such a creature in the highest manner conceivable ) has conspicuously in it these three divine vertues , namely , humility , charity and purity . . by humility i understand such a spirit or gracious property in the soul of man or any intellectual creature , as that hereby he does sensibly and affectionately attribute all that he has or is or can do to god the author and giver of every good and perfect gift . this is the highest piece of holiness , and the truest and most acceptable sacrifice we can offer to god , thus lively and freely to acknowledge that all we have is from him : from whence we do not arrogate any thing to our selves , nor contemptuously lord it over others . in this grace is comprehended an ingenuous gratitude , which is the freest and most noble kind of iustice , that is , a full renouncing of all self-dependency , a firm and profound submission to the will of god in all things , and a disgust or at least a deadness to the glory of the world and the applause of men . . by charity i understand an intellectual love , by which we are enamoured of the divine perfections , such as his goodness , equity , benignity , his wisdome also , his iustice and his power , as they are graciously actuated and modified by the forenamed attributes . and i say that to be truly transformed into these divine perfections , so far forth as they are communicable to humane nature , and out of the real sense of them in our selves , to love and admire god in whom they infinitely and unmeasurably reside , is the truest and highest kind of adoration , and the most grateful praising and glorifying god that the soul of man can exhibit to her maker . but in being thus transformed into this divine image of intellectual love our mindes are not onely raised in holy devotions towards god , but descend also in very full and free streams of dearest affection to our fellow-creatures , rejoycing in their good as if it were our own , and compassionating their misery as if it were our selves did suffer ; and according to our best judgement and power ever endeavoring to promote the one and to remove the other . and this most eminently conteins in it whatever good is driven at by civil iustice or moral honesty . for how should we injure those for whose real welfare we could be content to die ? . by purity i understand a due moderation and rule over all the joyes and pleasures of the flesh , bearing so strict an hand and having so watchful an eye over their subtil enticements & allurements , and so firme and loyal affection to that idea of celestial beauty set up in our mindes , that neither the pains of the body nor the pleasures of the animal life shall ever work us below our spiritual happiness and all the competible enjoyments of that life that is truly divine . and in this conspicuously is contain'd whatever either moral temperance or fortitude can pretend to . for ordinarily he is held temperate enough , that can but save his brains from gross sottishness and his body from diseases ; but this purity respects the divine life it self , and requires such a moderation in all the affairs of the flesh , that our bodies may still remain unpolluted temples and meet habitations for the spirit of god to dwell in and act in , whether by way of illumination , or sanctification and animation to interiour duties of holiness . and as for fortitude , it is plain that this purity of the soul having mortified and tamed the exorbitant lusts and pleasures of the body , death will seem less formidable by far , and this mortal life of lesser value . . but the greatest fortitude of all is when love proves stronger then death it self even in the deepest and most bitter sense of it : and not so much the weakness and insensibleness of the body , nor yet the full carreer or furious heat and hurry of the naturall spirits makes pain and death more tolerable ; but the pure courage of the soul her self animated onely by an unrelinquishable love of the divine life , and whatever design is imposed upon her by that principle . . the example of this fortitude is admirable in our blessed saviour , and transcends as much the general valour recorded by the pens of poets and historians , as the valour of those heroes does exceed the salvage fierceness and boldness of bears , wolves and lions . for a man to encounter death in an exalted heat and fire of his agitated spirits , is not much unlike a mere drunken fray , where their blood being heated with the excesse of wine , the combatants become unsensible of those mortal gashes they make in one anothers bodies . but to fight in cold blood , is true valour indeed , and the greater , by how much more the occasion of the enterprise approves it self noble , and the parties are not at first engaged by any rage or passion . for then they sacrifice their lives but to a rash fit of choler , or at least to , that tyrant in them , pride , which they for the better credit of the business ordinarily call the sense of honour ; else they could willingly upon better thoughts save themselves the pains and danger of the combate . . but to speak of valour more lawfull and laudable , which is to meet the enemy in the field , where their minds are enraged and heightned by the sound of the drum and the trumpet , ( which are able to put but an ordinarily-metall'd man out of his wits ) it is yet counted a very valiant and honourable act , if a man in this hurry and tumult of his spirits makes his sword fat with the blood of the slain , and mows down his enemies on every side as a sacrifice to his country and friends , i mean to his wife and children , and all that are near unto him . which yet may be parallel'd with the courage and rage of wolves and tigres , who will fiercely enough defend their young by that innate valour and animosity in them , without help of any external artifice to heighten their boldness . but the valour and fortitude of the ever-blessed captain of our salvation has no parallel , but is transcendently above whatever can be named . for what comparison is there betwixt that courage which is inspired from the pomp of warre or single combat , from the heat and height of the natural spirits , from the rage and hatred against an enemy , or from the love to a friend ; and such a fortitude as being destitute of all the advantages of the animal life , nay clogg'd with the disadvantages thereof , as with a deep sense of death , fear , agony and horror , yet notwithstanding all this , in an humble submission to the will of god and a dear respect to that lovely image of the divine life , wades through with an unyielding constancy , and this ( which is not to be thought on without astonishment and amazement ) not to rescue or right a friend , but to save and deliver a malevolent enemy ? . we have seen how iustice , temperance and fortitude are in a supereminent manner comprehended in the divine life , which taking possession of the middle life or rational powers , must needs beget also in the soul the truest ground of prudence that may be . for this divine life is both the light and the purification of the eye of the mind , whereby reason becomes truly illuminated in all divine and moral concernments . * which mystery though it cannot be declared according to the worthiness of the matter , yet some more external intimations may serve for a pledge of the truth thereof . as for example , in that it does remove pride , self-interest and intemperance that clog the body and cloud the soul , it is plain from hence , of what great advantage the divine life is for the rectifying and ruling our judgements and understandings in all things . . i have endevoured according to the best of my abilities briefly to set before you the excellency of that life which we call divine . but it is impossible by words to conveigh it to that soul that has not in her in some measure the sense of it aforehand . which if she have , it is to her the truest key to the mystery of christianity that can be found ; and in this light a man shall clearly discern how decorous and just a thing it is that this life which is transcendently better then all , should at last after long trials and conflicts triumph over all ; and that for this purpose jesus christ should come into the world , who is the author and finisher of this more then noble and heroical enterprise . book iii. chap. i. . that the lapse of the soul from the divine life immersing her into matter , brings on the birth of cain in the mystical eve driven out of paradise . . that the most fundamental mistake of the soul lapsed is that birth of cain , and that from hence also sprung abel in the mystery , the vanity of pagan idolatry . . solomon's universal charge against the pagans , of polytheisme and atheisme , and how fit it is their apology should be heard for the better understanding the state of the world out of christ. . their plea of worshipping but one god , namely the sun , handsomely managed by macrobius . . the indian brachmans worshippers of the sun : apollonius his entertainment with them , and of his false and vain affectation of pythagorisme . . the ignorance of the indian magicians , and of the daemons that instructed them . . a concession that they and the rest of the pagans terminated their worship upon one supreme numen , which they conceived to be the sun. . having with a competent clearness , as i hope , set forth the nature of the divine life ( to such as have a principle to judge thereof ) as also of the animal , we shall the more fully understand wherein consists the lapse or revolt as well of the rebellious angels as of fallen man. which was in that they forsook the law of the divine life , and wholy gave themselves up to the animal life , ranting it and revelling it there without any measure or bounds . of which this seems to be the sad effect , that the soul of man had quite forgot his creatour , being fully plunged and immersed into the very feculency of the material world . for that faculty in him whereby he is capable of corporeal joy , which is the * mystical eve , had grown so rampant and lawless , that it had quite devoured and laid waste those more noble and delicate senses of the mind ; and had so intimately joyned him in love and dependance on the matter , that his soul having forsaken god her true lord and husband , by a lively adhesion stuck so close to this gross corporeal fabrick , this outward sensible universe , that in this near and affectionate conjunction with it , she made good in the mystery that which is said in the letter concerning eve , after she was driven out of paradise , she brought forth her first-born cain , whose birth in the mystical sense is nothing else but that false conceit that the reason of his name imports , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i have got a man , or an husband , who is the very iehovah , according to the most easie and natural meaning of the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . this therefore is the first and most fundamental mistake of lapsed mankind , that they make body or matter the only true iehovah , the only true essence and first substance of whom all things are , and acknowledge no god but this visible or sensible world . and therefore stop not here , but naturally proceed to the birth of abel , which iosephus interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sorrow . which certainly the soul of man in this condition is abundantly obnoxious to . but the word may as well , and does more ordinarily , signifie vanity , according to that of the apostle concerning the heathens and their religion , that they were grown vain in their imaginations . and so that came to pass which the author of that pious book entituled the wisdom of solomon so sadly complains of . . surely vain are all men by nature , who are ignorant of god , and could not out of the good things that are seen , know him that is ; nor by considering the works , acknowledge the work-master : but deemed either fire or wind , or the swift air , or the circle of the stars , or the violent water , or the lights of heaven , to be the gods that govern the world. the charge is laid home by this writer upon universal paganism . but it is but a just thing to give them a little scope to plead for themselves , that thereby truth may be the better discovered and the more firmly established , and the natural state of mankind , before christ came into the world , be more fully understood ; which is the present business in hand , and the last point we propounded by way of preparation to our main work . the crime they are accused of here is polytheism , which necessarily includes in it atheism . for to say there are more gods then one , is to assert there is none at all ; the notion of god , in the strictest sense thereof , being incompetible to any more then one. wherefore the heathen being polytheists in profession , by undeniable consequence are found atheists . . but here some of them apologize for themselves after this manner ; affirming that they acknowledged one only supreme deity , viz. the sun : and that the several worships which were exhibited were to this one , though under several names , by reason of the several powers or virtues observed in him . this is the plea of macrobius , and he manages it under the person of vettius praetextatus very handsomly and wittily , reducing from either properties of nature , allusion of names , the likeness of statues or images , the conformity of ceremonies , or testimony of oracles , no less then sixteen deities of the heathen ( that to the vulgar seem distinct ) to this one of the sun , namely apollo , bacchus , mars , mercury , aesculapius and salus , hercules , isis , serapis , adonis , attin , osiris , horus , nemesis , pan , iupiter , saturnus . and i doubt not but with the like windings and turnings of wit and imagination he may reduce the worship of the rest to the same deity ; he having let fall an ominous word taken out of the mouths of the ancients at the very entrance of the discourse , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which if it be well followed , will not fail to make good that the heathens worship was terminated upon one supreme object , which macrobius will have to be the sun. and he concludes all , for a fuller confirmation thereof , with a double citation . the one is of a short invocation of the heathen theologers , the form whereof runs thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. o sun ommnipotent , the spirit of the world , the power of the world , the light of the world . the other is out of the hymns of orpheus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . thou that dost guide the ever-winding gyre and wide rotations of th' aethereal fire , o sol , great sire of sea and land , give ear . omniparent sol with golden visage clear , all-various godhead , bacchus , glorious jove , or whate're else thou 'rt styl'd , my vows approve . in which verses the government and generation of all things are attributed to the sun , who ( that it may be less incongruous ) is allowed to have sense and understanding in him , as you may see in the same author , saturnal . lib. . cap. . which is also asserted cap. . where he proves bacchus and the sun to be all one . for he gives the reason of the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. mens iovis , understanding by iupiter * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is the air or liquid part of the world , as theon explains it upon aratus . and here macrobius saies that iupiter signifies heaven . * physici solem mundi mentem dixerunt : mundus autem vocatur coelum , quod appellant iovem . . that the sun is the supreme numen of the heathens , may be further evinced from the ceremonies and worship the indian brachmans did to him , who were also called the priests of the sun , whom apollonius tyaneus , that industrious restorer of paganism , so loudly extols , and so far preferrs before the babylonian magi , gymnosophists and all the wise men of the world besides . but the circumstances of his entertainment there according to philostratus is an argument only of their being more able magicians or conjurers then the rest of the world , not more truly wise , as we that worship the true god must of necessity conclude . for what else can we gather from that black swarthy page with a golden anchor in his hand and a crescent like the moon shining upon his forehead , that met damis and apollonius in the way , told them their purpose aforehand , and conducted them to the magi ? what from that ever-smoaky mount , guarded or enveloped with a perpetual thick cloud or mist , so that these sages could not be found without some such black guide of their own sending , nor their habitation entred , though there be neither man nor ditches to defend them ? what from their manner of entertainment of this zealous greek that traversed so great a part of the world to find them out ? whom they received at a banquet where wine and viands were conveighed to the table without the help of the hand of any mortal . what from their hymns and frantick dances in a round by way of divine worship done unto the sun , when striking the ground with a rod , the earth would rise in waves under them , while they danced thus and sung their morning songs to their supposed deity as he appeared above the horizon ? what , i say , can be gathered from all this , but that they were a conventicle of witches or conjurers ? though i will not deny but they might be the most accomplished priests that paganism at that time could vaunt of , and the fittest instructers of apollonius , whose purpose was with all care and diligence to restore the heathenish rites , and thereby stop the growth of christianity . and surely the devil made paganism as desirable and lovely as he could in those notable ornaments of wit and manners and other more miraculous accomplishments that were found in that person . but his constant devotions he did to the sun , though they shew him to be a very skilful and orthodox hierophanta in the pagan superstition ; yet his ignorance in philosophy demonstrates him no genuine pythagorean , but that he did craftily abuse that name and profession , the better to promote his heathenish design . . it seems those spirits that the indian magicians and apollonius were acquainted withall , were either very envious or very ignorant , or at least philostratus that wrote their story . for in the opening of their mysteries such things fall from them as are inconsistent with the most essential parts of pythagoras his philosophy and truth it self . but as for this of making the sun the supreme numen , these lapsed spirits being haply as much concerned in the benefit of it as we mortals ( as homer intimates , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he rose to shine to gods as well as men ; ) it is not improbable but being fallen so low from the true god , that themselves make this the object of their worship from whom they finde the most sensible good , and are kept from that utter darkness that a sad fate at the long run may bring upon them . . all which things considered , we may well grant what macrobius so industriously drives at , that the worship of the heathen was terminated in one supreme deity , which the profounder mystagogi conceiv'd to be the sun ; and they were taught by the clarian oracle to call him iao , as if he were the true iehovah . chap. ii. . that the above-said concession advantages the pagans nothing , for as much as there are more suns then one . . that not only unity , but the rest of the divine attributes are incompetible to the sun. . of cardan's attributing understanding to the sun 's light , with a confutation of his fond opinion . . another sort of apologizers for paganism , who pretend the heathens worshipped one god , to which they gave no name . . a discovery out of their own religion that this innominated deity was not the true god but the material world . . but it is easily demonstrated that they get nothing by this grant : for whereas they please themselves most of all in the unity of this numen , there being as they fancy but one sun in the world , as the latine word sol implies , and * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in greek ( nay macrobius dotes so much on this notion , that he will not have him called apollo delphicus from the place of his worship , but from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an old greek word which signifies unus , from whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must be derived quasi jam non unus : ) yet the noble and free spirit of philosophy will not be carried captive with these cobweb-fetters of superstition and verbal criticism ; and therefore those that are more knowing in nature boldly point us to as many suns as there are discovered fixed stars in the firmament ; as is to admiration made clear in that never-sufficiently-extolled philosophy of des-cartes . then which , if rightly understood , there cannot be found a stronger bar against either the folly of paganism , or the profaneness of atheism . . but not only this obvious attribute of unity is wanting to this pagan deity , but several others also that are as necessarily included in the notion of a god : such as are sprituality , immensity , omnipotency , omnisciency and the like . for the reflexion of his beams is a demonstration that light is a body ; and therefore unless all bodies were light or at least diaphanous , he cannot be immense , but he must be excluded by other bodies . and hence he is not omnipotent , no not so much as in his most eminent property . for he cannot illuminate both sides of the earth at once , nor free his own face of those importunate spots that ever and anon lie upon it like filth or scum maugre all the power of his divinity , as scheiner and des-cartes have diligently observed . he is also so far from being omniscient , that he has no knowledge at all , a body being uncapable , of cogitation , as the cartesian school judiciously maintains , and i have fully demonstrated in my book of the immortality of the soul. . but cardan attributing understanding to this luminary , writes more like a priest of the sun ( as indeed both himself and his father have been suspected for magicians ) then a man of reason or a sound philosopher . but that the charge may not seem incredible , i will produce his own words . cumque sol luceat intellectu , saies he , qui ei est tanquam anima ; si ab eo secedere posset intellectas , non aliter luceret sol quàm terra : that is , and whereas the sun shines by understanding , which is to him as a soul ; if so be that understanding should recede from him , the sun would shine no otherwise then the earth . in which he plainly makes visible light and intellect all one . from whence yet it would follow that the sun discerns nothing done in the dark , and that therefore he is not omniscient , and that a glow-worm or rush-candle are better witnesses what is transacted in the night then he can be . for if visible light and intellect be all one , every new-lighted lamp or taper will prove an intelligence : so vain is this supposition , that the sun is the supreme numen of the world. . but there is another sort of apologizers for heathenism , that frame their defence more cautiously , averring only in general that the various rites done to particular deities were meant to one supreme cause of all things , though they have the discretion not to venture to name him . for the proof whereof they alledge , first , that when they invoked any particular deity that was proper for them then to invoke , the priests afterwards added an invocation of all the deities in general , as servius notes upon that of virgil , diique deaeque omnes , studium quibus arva tueri . secondly , that all the deities were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , there were altars that were consecrated to them all in general , with such inscriptions as these , dis deabusqe omnibus , and dibus deabusqe omnibus , and the like . thirdly , that they had one common feast for them all , which was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as mr. selden notes . lastly , the aegyptians , a people more infamous for polytheism and variety of religions then any nation under the cope of heaven , yet their priests are observed more compendiously to do their ceremonies to certain spheres or round globes , whereof there was one in every temple , but kept very close from the sight of the vulgar ; the priests reserving the knowledge of the unity of the object of their worship as an arcanum only belonging to themselves . . but that this one object of worship was not the true god , but the material world , the very figure they make use of does most naturally intimate ; and i have noted above that mundus and iupiter in the pagan philosophy is one and the same . and plutarch speaks expresly concerning the aegyptians , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that they account the world or universe to be the same with the prime god or first cause of all things . him the aegyptians worshipped under the name of serapis ; who being asked by nicocreon king of cyprus , what god he was , the oracle gave this answer , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . such is my godhead as to thee i tell : the heaven 's my head , the seas my belly swell ; the earth's my feet , my ears lye in the aire , my piercing eye 's the lamp of phaebus fair . from which hypothesis is most easily understood what is meant by that enigmatical inscription in the temple of sais in aegypt ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i am all that was , and is , and is to come , and my veil no mortall ever did yet uncover . a venerable riddle under which there lyes not one grane of truth , unless there be nothing but modified matter in being . but thus to make the world god , is to make no god at all ; and therefore this kinde of monotheisme of the heathen is as rank atheisme as their polytheisme was proved to be before . chap. iii. . the last apologizers for paganisme , who acknowledge god to be an eternal mind distinct from matter , and that all things are manifestations of his attributes . . his manifestations in the external world. . his manifestations within us by way of passion . . his more noble emanations and communications to the inward mind , and how the ancient heathen affixed personal names to these several powers or manifestations . . the reason of their making these several powers so many gods or goddesses . . their reason for worshipping the genii and heroes . . the last and best sort of apologizers for paganisme are those who profess one eternal spiritual and intellectual being , the governour and moderatour of all things . such as plutarch a pagan priest defines god to be , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , wherefore god is a mind or intellect , an abstract forme or being , pure from all matter , and disintangled from whatever is passible . which he sets down according to the mind of socrates , plato , and his own . the most subtil therefore and ingenious among the heathen defend themselves thus ; we acknowledge ( say they ) one eternal deity , infinitely holy and benigne , omniscient , omnipotent , which is the first cause and original of all things in the world , as well spiritual as corporeal ; and that there is nothing in the world but what is a manifestation of the presence and precious attributes of this one deity . and therefore we look upon the vast capacity of the wide universe as a most august and most sacred temple of his divine majesty , who fills and possesses every part thereof : every appearance to our outward senses , every motion and excitation within our own bodies , every impression upon our mindes , being nothing else but so many manifestations of either the wisdome , the goodness , the power , the justice , or the wrath of that one god ; whose appearances we are every where ready to adore . . whether therefore our eyes be struck with that more radiant lustre of the sun , or whether we behold that more placid and calme beauty of the moon , or be refreshed with the sweet breathings of the open aire , or be taken up with the contemplation of those pure sparkling lights of the starres , or stand astonished at the gushing down-falls of some mighty river , as that of nile , or admire the height of some insuperable and inaccessible rock or mountain , or with a pleasant horrour and chilness look upon some silent wood , or solemn shady grove ; whether the face of heaven smile upon us with a chearfull bright azure , or look upon us with a more sad and minacious countenance , dark pitchy clouds being charged with thunder and lightning to let fly against the earth ; whether the aire be cool , fresh and healthful , or whether it be soultry , contagious and pestilential , so that while we gasp for life we are forc'd to draw in a sudden and inevitable death ; whether the earth stand firm and prove favourable to the industry of the artificer , or whether she threaten the very foundations of our buildings with trembling and tottering earth-quakes accompanied with remugient echoes and ghastly murmurs from below ; whatever notable emergencies happen for either good or bad to us , these are the ioves and vejoves that we worship , which to us are not many but one god , who has the onely power to save or destroy : and therefore from whatever part of this magnificent temple of his , the world , he shall send forth his voice , our hearts and eyes are presently directed thitherward with fear , love and veneration . . nor does our devotion stop here , or rather stray only without , but those more notable alterations and commotions we find within our selves , we attribute also to him whose spirit , life and power filleth all things . and therefore those very passions of love and wrath , on the former whereof dependeth all that kindly sweetness of affection that is found in either the friendship of men or love of women , as on the latter all the pompe and splendour of warre ; these , with the rest of the passions of the soul , we look upon as the manifestations of his presence , who worketh every where for our solace , punishment , or trial. . nor can we omit those more noble communications of his and heavenly emanations into our minds , such as are wisdome , iustice , political order , and the like ; all which , with the former and an innumerable companie more which we have passed by , the religion of our ancestours fram'd into personal gods and goddesses ; calling wisdome , minerva ; justice , dice or themis ; political order , eunomia : to love is to be referred cupid and venus ; to wrath , mars and the furies . that power which shaketh the earth is termed enosichthon . the sea they call neptune ; the aire iuno ; the sun apollo ; the moon diana ; the earth vesta ; the corne ceres ; wine bacchus ; and so of the rest . . of which certainly there can be no other reason , then that the ancient instituters of paganisme were so enthusiastically transported in the single contemplation of every divine power or manifestation in the world , that being rapt with admiration of the great consequence thereof , they were resolved in their devotional thoughts and meditations to dwell on every one singly alone , and not to huddle up all those excellencies in one general worship ; they having so reverent esteem of every attribute of god , that they thought it sufficient of it self to constitute a deity . and therefore they understood by these personal appellations , whether male of female , ( for god , say they , is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) one and the same deity under this or that manifestation of himself in the world , according to which they gave him a proper name , as if he were a different person ; when as it is but with him as with the ocean , who changes his name according to the coasts he beats upon . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as dionysius notes in his geographicall poem . . and if they took into their religious consideration the worship of the genii or spirits , whether such as whole appearance was so horrid and terrible that it caused affrightment , or such as whose benign aspect was accompanied with a more pleasing wonderment and joy ; these they look'd upon also as eminent manifestations of that one eternal deity which runs through all things , giving life and being to all , whom therefore they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whom though they make three , viz. iupiter coelestis , iupiter marinus , and iupiter infernalis , the latter two whereof they also call neptune and pluto ; yet it is one eternal spirit ( say they ) which we worship in these three , whose kingdome and dominion is over all , though the administration thereof differ according to the nature and merit of them that are governed . the same apology we may make for that honour we do to the deceased heroes , whose noble persons and refined spirits the divine excellencies more illustriously shone through then ordinary . for in truth we do not so much worship them as god shining through them ; as he that bows to the sun or moon through a glass-window , intends not his obeisance to the glass , but to those celestial luminaries ; nor do we bow our body to those luminaries , but to god who to us appears through all things . chap. iv. . the heathens festivals , temples and images . . their apology for images . . the significancy of the images of jupiter and aeolus . . of ceres . . of apollo . . their plea from the significancy of their images , that their use in divine worship is no more idolatrous then that of books in all religions ; as also from the use of images in the nation of the iews . . their answer to those that object the impossibleness of representing god by any outward image . . that we are not to envy the heathen , if they hit upon any thing more weighty in their apologies for their religion ; and why . . now according to the various appearances of this one divinity , that puts forth it self every where , our ancestors instituted various religious rites and ceremonies , appointed sundry sorts of festivals and sacrifices , built temples , set up altars with several inscriptions , and erected images proper and significative of that or this divine power , which at set times and places they were to worship . to which religious customes under which we were born we submitted our selves without being obnoxious , as we conceive , to any just imputation of idolatry . . for we worshipped not those images which were thus erected , no more then any other nation does the holy volumes of their law or religion , when either they pray out of them , have them read , or use them in the administring of an oath . for that reverence that is done , is not done to the book , but to him whose word it is said to be , to him whom they pray to or swear by : and those images to us are not unlike the religious books of others , they being very expressive of the circumstances of the exertion of that divine power which we at any time adore . as you may see in the images of iupiter , aeolus , ceres , apollo and the rest . . for iupiter , who was their god of thunder , as he bore in his left hand a royal scepter , his right hand was charg'd with thunder , according to that of the poet , — cui dextra trisulcis ignibus armata est — aeolus , the god of the winds , he was made standing at the mouth of a cave , having a linnen garment girt about him , and a smiths bellows under his feet : at his right hand stood iuno covered with a cloud , putting a crown upon his head , as having given her kingdome to him ; and on his left hand stood a nymph up to the middle in water , which iuno gave him to wife . which image is very significative of the nature and causes of the windes , and so intelligible , if we do but take notice that iuno is the aire , that it wants no further explication . . ceres was made in the figure of a country-woman sitting upon an oxe , having in her right hand a plough-share , and a basket of seeds hanging from her arme , in her left hand a sickle and a flayle : iuno the goddess of the aire and of the clouds was on one side , and apollo or the sun on the other ; intimating how the warmth of the sun and kindly showrs are to second the labour of the husbandman , or else nothing will prosper . . the figure of apollo or the sun was thus ; his image had a youthful countenance : in his right hand he held a quiver of arrows and a bow , in his left an harp ; under his feet was a terrible monster , in the form of a serpent having three heads , viz. of a wolf , of a lion , and of a fawning dog : on the top of his head was a golden trivet , and about his temples a crown of twelve precious stones . the meaning whereof , though it may seem abstruse at first sight , yet if you consider it a while , it very fitly sets out the nature of the sun , and of time whose knowledge depends on him , and of knowledge which depends on time. his bow and arrows signify nothing but the darting of his beams from so far a distance , whence he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the poets : and his youthful countenance nothing but his unfading vigour , which age seems not at all to diminish . his harp signifies the dance of the planets about him , as if he sate and played to them , or at least , according to the other hypothesis , as if he led the dance himself , playing on his harp , and the rest of the planets followed him . the twelve precious stones signifie the twelve signes of the zodiack , with which he is incircled ; and the three-headed serpent deciphers time in the threefold notion of it , past , present , and to come . the time past , as macrobius notes , like a ravenous wolfe devouring the memory of things : the time present being urgent and raging like a lion through its instant actuosity ; and the time to come flattering us with hopes like a fawning dog. and lastly the golden trivet or tripod denotes the threefold object of knowledge which time affords them that are wise , such as homer makes calchas the priest of apollo to be , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , who knew what was , what is , and what 's to come . so that it is apparent how strange soever the use of these images may seem , that it was no other then that of books ; they raising our minds ( and it may be with a greater advantage of devotion and admiration ) into the sense and consideration of that divine power which we were to adore . . wherefore that imputation is very unjust that would charge us with idolatry properly so called , as if we did worship the idols themselves . but to use images in divine worship , ( there being that convenience of them which we have alledged , ) we question not but that it is lawfull in it self , where there is no command from god to the contrary . and where his command is most express , as it is to the nation of the jews , yet it is very well known that there was also there a religious use of images ; as is plain in the cherubims that covered the mercy-seat , and the brasen serpent which they were to look up to in the wilderness . for through that did the almighty exert his healing power upon those that were stung with fiery serpents . * for such effects as these are not from nature or art , but from the efficacie of religion , as the very word telesme does plainly bewray . now it seems to us a thing incredible that god should command any thing absolutely evil in it self , and therefore undeniable but that the use of images in divine worship is not in it self evil . . nor does that which is mainly and most ordinarily alledged against images in religious worship ( viz. that it is impossible to represent god by any outward figure ) seem of any weight at all to us . for neither do we admit that these images are intended for figures and representations of god , but only for the sensible setting out to our sight the effects and objects of those powers and attributes which we adore in him : and if we did admit it , yet we have wherewith to defend our selves . for it we are not to use images in divine worship , because they cannot set out the nature of god as he is in himself , we are not at all to think of him when we worship him ; the thoughts concerning his very nature or person which we frame of him ( though haply they be not without some truth ) having yet as little similitude with him whom we worship , as the imagination of a man born blind hath with the glorious image of the sun : he feels indeed the comfortable effects of his presence upon his body , but his eyes did never see , nor can his mind conceive how illustrious he is to look upon . . to this purpose the most witty , cautious and subtile sort of the pagans apologize for themselves : nor are we to envy them , if they hit upon any thing more weighty and substantial in their apologie . for christianity is so excellent in it self , that we need not phansy any religions worse then they are , the better to set off its eminency . besides , the more tolerable sense we can make of the affairs of the ancient pagans , the easier province we shall have to maintain against prophane and atheistical men , to whom if you would grant , that providence had utterly neglected for so many ages together all the nations of the world , except that little handfull of the iews , they would whether you would or no from thence infer , that there was no providence over them neither , & consequently no god ; it being a thing incredible , that there should be any providence at all in things of the highest concernment , unless it dispread it self further then into such an inconsiderable part of the world as some imagine . but that the heathen were not so utterly destitute of means as some would make them , s. paul seems largely enough to declare in his epistle to the romans . and that their condition was not so horridly desperate , he may perhaps seem to intimate from that favourable expression in his speech to the athenians , where he saith , god connived at the times of their ignorance . but i had almost forgot my self , my design being not to apologize for the heathen , but to answer what they apologize for themselves : which i shall doe very briefly . chap. v. . an answer to the last apology of the pagans ; as first , that it concerns but few of them , . and that those few were rather of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , then pure pagans . . that the worship of images is expresly forbid by god in the law of moses . . that they rather obscure then help our conceptions of the divine powers . . that there is great danger of these images intercepting the worship directed to god. . he referrs the curious and unsatisfied to the fuller discussions in polemical divinity . . first therefore we are to consider that what has been here alledged in defence of the pagans , concerns but very few of them , the generality of them being idolaters in the grossest sense , as is manifest out of the complaints of david , psalm . as also out of the epistle of ieremy , and other places . . secondly , it is questionable whether those few , such as pythagoras , socrates , plato , plotinus , plutarch , and the like , are to be reputed mere pagans , or whether they came nearer to the nature of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , having been imbued with the knowledge of that one eternal spirit which is the creator and governor of all things , by conversing with the iews , or by conversing with them that had conversed with them . and that they had the knowledge of him by the communication of some such hidden tradition or cabbala , seems manifest in that these more holy and more expert men in divine mysteries amongst the heathen taught also the triunity , as well as the immateriality , of the godhead ; i mean the first and chiefest of them , such as pythagoras and plato : which being a reach above humane wit , and a thing so usefull to be taken into christianity , is to me a strong argument that it was none of their own invention , but that they had it either from those that were inspired themselves , or had received it from those that were inspired . . thirdly , the making of graven images and falling down before them is a thing expressly forbidden to the people of god in that religion where himself thought fit to appear in the framing of it ; which is an evident sign of the faultiness of the use of idols in divine worship . . fourthly , the pretended serviceableness of images for the instructing the people and the setting out to them the nature of that divine power which they are to adore , seems very questionable . for the presence of so strange an object before their eyes striking the outward sense so strongly , may rather hinder the inward operation of their mind from more pure and genuine conceptions of god , then at all further them in the framing of them ; and as memory is too often lost by the use of writing , so the power of imagination as to divine things may be spoiled and enfeebled by these false props of external representations . . fifthly and lastly , there is a great danger , of which the jealousie of god seems very sensible , that these vice-royes and representatives of the divine majesty , as they would have them to be , may prove treacherous to the highest soveraignty , intercepting and keeping to themselves all those praiers and praises , all those immolations and sacrifices that are offered by the people . for the unskilfull multitude seeing the priest sacrifice and all the people pour forth their devotions with their eyes fixed on the idol , set upon some high place , carved into all the members and organs of life and sense so artificially that he seems to sight to be a living person , are easily driven through the weakness of their wit to imagine him to be such indeed , and to adore him as a living and powerfull deity , such as is able to doe them good or hurt according to his own pleasure , as grotius well observeth out of s. augustine . . but if this our answer shall seem liable to a further replie , i shall remit the disputacious , to the mercy of school-divines , and the rack of polemical theology , my self being better employ'd in laying on a charge upon universal paganisme so evidently true , that the craftiest and most refined wits of them all shall not be able to elude it . chap. vi. . a new and unanswerable charge against paganisme , namely , that they adored the divine powers no further then they reached the animal life , as appears from their dijoves and vejoves , . jupiter altitonans , averruncus , robigus and tempestas . . from the pleasant spectacle of their god pan : what is meant by his pipe , and nymphs dancing about him . . what by his being deemed the son of hermes and mercury , and what by his beloved . nymph syrinx , his wife echo , and daughter iambe . . the interpretation of his horns , hairiness , red face , long beard , goats feet , and laughing countenance . . that heavy accusation of polytheisme , atheisme and idolatry which was laid upon the heathen you have already heard , and with what sleights of wit they have endeavoured to defend themselves , pretending that in the varietie of their worships , it is but one eternal deity that they adore according to the manifestations of his presence who worketh all in all . the charge we shall lay upon them now is not , i confess , so grievous , but more devoid of all shew of any solid answer whereby they may quit themselves thereof . and in brief it is this , viz. that though we should admit that they did worship one eternal and incorporeal deity , infinitely wise , good and powerfull ; yet it is evident that they worshipped him only in such manifestations of him that nearest concerned the animal life ; that is , in such as were most dreadfull and terrible , or alse most pleasing and agreeable thereunto . hence it is , as i said before , that they had their vejoves as well as dijoves , both which was but apollo , or the sun who is the visible diespiter or lucetius : but because he also sometimes by the soultry heat he causes in the aire raises also plagues and pestilences , he was worshipped also under the name of vejovis , whose temple was of old to be seen in rome , and his image holding arrows in his hand as being ready to hurt ; as you may see in gellius . . the horrour of thunder also made them worship iupiter under the notion or title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of iupiter altitonans , as the latines call him ; and the scripture it self forbears not to call thunder the voice of god. the fore-named critick adds to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( as the greeks would style him ) averruncus and robigus ; the latter whereof , he saies , is to be pacified for the security of our corn , the other for the safety of our selves . but the former seems rather a general name belonging to every divine power that is to be attoned to keep off mischief , then to any one particular manifestation of the wrath of god in the world. such as is a storm or tempest at sea , whom the romans made a particular deity after their consul cornelius scipio had escaped the danger . te quoque , tempestas , meritam delubra fatemur , cum penè est corsis obruta classis aquis . . such instances as concern the pleasure and gratification of the animal life are innumerable ; but some we must produce , that thereby you may the better judge of the rest . and it seems their god pan , by whom , as his name denotes , they understood the universe , was a very pleasant spectacle to them , both by his picture , and other conceits they had of him . for why was he pictured with a pipe in his hand and a laughing countenance ? why were the nymphs imagined to dance about him at the sound of his musick ? but that they did acknowledge that all things in the world are ordered with an excellent congruity and harmony ; so that the inhabitants thereof , that is , the souls of living creatures , which are the nymphs here mentioned , being touched every one with the sense of what is most gratefull and agreeable to it self , are conceived to skip and dance for joy . that they meant the material or visible world by pan , is apparent as well from what they write of his birth and amours , as from other observables in his image . . for he is said to be the son of mercury or hermes , which is the divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of god , as the world is the * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . now the universe being but one , pan is rightly exempted from that rabble of sweet-hearts that the other deities are feigned to have had ; for there is no body for him to love , only the reflection of himself from the minds of men that contemplate him . this , when his nature is returned most truly , and the order of things and ends of providence are rightly understood , is his beloved nymph syrinx ; if more rudely and brokenly reflected , his wife echo , of whom was born iamble a tattling gossip full of ridiculous stories and old-wives tales , full of scoffs and cavils and misrepresentations of those things that are observed in the world. by which reputed daughter of pan may be well understood the false sects of philosophy & vain superstitions that ever abounded in all ages , which though they may please the ignorant , yet seem either idle or impious to them that know better . . but it is most manifest by his image , that they understood the universe by him . for what could be meant by his acute horns and the hispidity or hairiness of his skin , but the effluvium of particles or the rayes of things , burring out from all bodies that act at a distance ? which is most conspicuous in the lights of heaven , which are so far removed , and which yet we see , as also all other objects of sight , by virtue of a pyramid , whose basis is in the object , and cuspis is in our eye . these in general are the horns of pan : and the bright redness of his face denotes that colour in the sky ; as his prolix beard the streaming light of the sun and moon ; and his being clothed with the spotted skin of a leopard the stars ; it may be also the spottedness of the sea and the earth , the one with islands and the other with flowers . that he is partly man and partly beast , denotes the comprehension of all living creatures as well irrational as rational ; and that he stands on the feet of a goat , that the species of things could not subsist without proclivitie to lust , of which the goat is a notorious emblem . and that he is made laughing , signifies that the whole world is res ludicra , as that merry prophet mahomet speaks ; to whom we may adjoin the suffrage of the poet who makes man's life a stage-play . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this life 's a scene of fools , a sportfull stage , where grief attends him that is over-sage . but this i have touch'd upon already . we pass therefore to their particular deities . chap. vii . . that as the world or universe was deified in pan , so were the parts thereof in coelius , juno , neptune , vulcan , pluto , ops , bacchus , ceres , &c. . that the night was also a deity , and why they sacrificed a cock to her , with the like reason of other sacrifices . . interiour manifestations that concern the animal life , namely that of wrath and love , which are the pagans mars and venus . . minerva , mercurius , eunomia , &c. manifestations referred to the middle life . . the agreement of the greeks religion with the romans , as also with the aegyptians . . their worship of the river nilus , &c. . that the religion of the rest of the nations of the world was of the same nature with that of rome , greece and aegypt , and reached no further then the animal life . . and that their worshipping of men deceased stood upon the same ground . . this universal specimen of the divine power , the world , as they have deified the whole , so they have also made deities of the parts thereof . for their uranus or coelius , what is it but the heavens ; their iupiter and iuno , the air and clouds ; neptune the sea ; vulcan ( that limping deity ) the fire ? who is said to halt , quod sine ligneo tanquam baculo progredi nequeat , as phornutus notes , meaning by his going with a stick the fewel he is sustained by . by pluto they mean the interior parts of the earth , out of which gold and silver and other precious commodities are digged . by ops or bona dea the exteriour parts of the soil in general , that afford the necessaries of life to both man and beast . hither also is to be referred bacchus , ceres , pomona , flora , and such like deities ; as to coelius the hoast of heaven , and in special the sun and moon , the most famous deities among the pagans : the latter goes under the name of diana , the former of apollo , and it may be of vesta . for her temple was round , and a fire kept there constantly by the vestal virgins in the midst of the temple ; which denotes that the sun is in the midst of the world : and her name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that he stands still , according to that more accurate hypothesis . . neither were they sensible only to the pleasure of the lights of heaven , but also of the convenience of night , that dark shadow of the earth , within whose sable curtains all living creatures so sweetly repose themselves : wherefore they made night also a goddess , under the name of latona or nox ; and they sacrificed a cock to her , as ovid tels us in his fastorum , because he was a disturber of that rest and silence the night is the bestower of to wearied mortals . so they sacrificed a dog to diana for his bold barkings at the moon , a goat to bacchus for brouzing on the vine , a sow to ceres for rooting up her corn. such obvious reasons as these brought in an infinite number of ceremonies , which will not be worth the while to run over . the nature of the deities themselves which the pagans worshipped being a sufficient argument of the sense and meaning of their religion , and that it reached no further then the animal life . . we have named the most eminent exteriour manifestations of the divine power in the world : we shall now give a few instances of the interiour . and the most notable , i conceive , are those two natural passions of wrath and love ; which powers they adored under the names of mars and venus . the schoolmen would call them the irascible and concupiscible , to which two they reduce the rest of the passions of the minde : but we cannot insist upon these things . . there are also other interiour deities , as i may so call them , such as pallas or minerva , mercurius , eunomia , and the like : all which reach no further then the middle life i speak of , and are the improvements of mans reason in the knowledge of nature , the discipline of war , political iustice , skil in trades and traffick , the invention of letters , of musick , of architectonicks , and ( if you will ) of all kinds of mathematicks ( an instance whereof you have in that precept of the oracle , that bad them double the cube ; ) which because they may be in us without any sense of the divine life at all , i think we may also venture to call animal or natural . for as for him that is the best accomplish'd in these , yet that of the apostle may be still true of him , animalis homo non capit quae sunt spiritûs dei , the natural man is uncapable of spiritual and divine matters . . that the religion of the romans , in which we have chiefly instanced hitherto , reached no further then the animal life , is plain . the greeks differ'd little or nothing from them , their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being intended to twelve of those deities which were acknowledged by the romans , and such as we have named already . and for the aegyptians it is evident also that their religion was no better , if not worse ; their serapis being the same with pan or the universe , according to the concession of his own oracle ; and their osiris and isis but the sun and the moon , deities scarcely left out of the worship of any heathens . it is true there is a people in africk that curse the sun by reason of his immoderate heat ; but it is the stronger argument where the comfort of his rayes is felt , ( and in what nation are they not ? ) that the rude people did as much bless him and adore him . . the river nilus was a great god with the aegyptians too , as ganges with the indians , they both of them fattening the soil by their overflowings . the divinity of nilus apollonius also that rambling greek did supersti●iously acknowledge , by doing his devotions to the river within the sight and noise of his roaring catarracts , after he had visited the gymnosophists . but for themselves it is no wonder they should deify so grand a benefactour , they worshipping such things as liv'd on his benevolence . for such were the living creatures , birds , beasts , and creeping things , to which they did divine honour ; nay you may add trees and plants , onyons and garlick not excepted , as every one casts into their dish . . what we have said of rome , greece and aegypt , may be made as manifest concerning the religion of all the parts of the world beside , as of arabia , persia , india , china , tartary , germany , scythia , guinea , aethiopia , and in the new-found world , as in virginia , mexico , peru and brasilia . but it would be as tedious as needless to harp so long on one string by so voluminous an induction ; and it is more warrantable to be sparing then over-lavish in so copious and confessed a matter . whoever reads those writers , which are numerous enough , that can inform them in this inquiry , he will assuredly find , that the religion of the heathen reached no further then the objects of the animal life ; and that though they may go under several names , yet that they are the same things every where , viz. wrath , lust and sensuality ; or such things as are in subserviency to these , as corn , wine , and other requisites for the necessities or delights of man ; as also those powers that have an influence upon these , as the sun , moon and stars , fire , water , air , and the like . . we may adde to these inanimate things , eminent persons whom they could not but acknowledge as their great benefactors . such were their law-givers , kings and commanders that fought their battels successfully ; the first inventours of arts or any useful contrivance for the convenience of life . wherefore the most subtil defenders of the worship of the pagans , let them elude the charge of idolatry as well as they can , or polytheism , yet they can never avoid the imputation , that their serving of god in the heathens ceremonies , is not any thing more then the acknowledging that power that is able to gratifie or grieve the spirit of the mere natural man. chap. viii . . that judaism also respected nothing else but the gratifications of the animal life , as appears in all their festivals . . that though the people were held in that low dispensation , yet moses knew the meaning of his own types , and that immortality that was to be revealed by christ. . that their sabbaths reached no further then things of this life ; . nor their sabbatical years and iubilees ; . nor their feasts of trumpets ; . nor their feast of tabernacles ; . nor their pentecost ; . nor lastly their feast of expiation . . and truly that the absolute transcendency of the christian religion may be the better understood , i cannot here omit that iudaism does very much symbolize with paganism in this point we are upon . for though the iewes were very right and orthodox in this , in that they did direct their worship to that one and only true god that made heaven and earth , and is the author and giver of every good gift ; and that without the offence and scandal of idolatrous worship : yet under this dispensation of moses , he seems openly to promise nothing more to the people of the iewes then the present enjoyments of this natural life , nor threatens any thing but the plagues thereof , as seems manifest , deuteronomy . where the blessings of obedience to moses his law , and the cursings of disobedience are largely set down . . not but that i can easily believe , that moses himself understood the mystery of immortality , and the promise of those eternal joyes to be revealed by the messias in the fulness of time , as also the meaning of all the types that refer unto him ; and that his successors also in that nation , their holy men or prophets , had some measurable knowledge thereof : but my meaning is , that the generality of the iews were locked up in this lower kind of dispensation , and that moses his law in the externals thereof drives at no higher then thus ; as is apparent from all the festivals thereof , they none of them concerning any thing more then the enjoyments and conveniences of this present life . . for as for their sabbaths , they were but a memorial of the creation of this visible world , the belief whereof the sadducees embraced as well as others , though they denied that there was either angel or spirit ; for there is not any mention of the creation of any such thing in the external letter of moses , and therefore the appearances of angels they look'd upon as only present emanations from god , which ceased as he disappeared . . and for their sabbatical year , as also the year of iubilee , which was celebrated at the end of seven times seven years , besides that they are not without a reflection upon the creation of the world , which was compleated at the seventh day , wherein therefore god rested ; the other reasons , according to the text of moses , reach no further then the things of this present life . for as concerning the sabbatical year , the precept runs thus : six years thou shalt sow thy land , and gather the fruits thereof ; but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest , and lye still , that the poor of thy people may eat : in like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard and with thy olive-yard . and for the iubilee , it is evident that it had a secular use , for the releasment of servants , and restoring of lands to their first owners who were necessitated to sell them . those feasts therefore were instituted in order to a political good . . their feasts of trumpets and their new-moons seem indeed to have an higher use , to call the people together to hear the law : but i told you before that the blessings and cursings of the law were merely temporal . and for their sacrifices of thanksgiving and of atonement , they were in reference to what is good or evil to this life of the flesh. . their feast of tabernacles was instituted in remembrance that the children of israel dwelt in tabernacles and boothes , when god brought them out of the land of aegypt . as also their passeover was a more particular representation of the manner of their delivery out of the hands of the aegyptians ; as you may see exodus the . . their pentecost , that is , the fiftieth day after the passeover , in this they offered two wave-loaves ; as upon the second day of the passeover they offered a sheaf of the first fruits of their harvest : so that those solemnities respected merely the fruits of the earth . . and lastly , as for the feast of expiation , wherein the scape-goat carried away the sins of the people and the evils deserved thereby into the wilderness ; being , as i have already intimated , that those plagues or evils denounced in moses his law be but of a secular consideration , it is plain that this particular ceremony in the religion of moses , in the letter thereof , reaches no further then the pleasures or aggrievances of this mortal life : it being reserved for christ alone to bring the most certain and most comfortable news of that eternal joy which we shall be made partakers of with him for ever in the heavens , who was to abolish death , and to bring life and immortality to light through the gospel , as s. paul speaks . chap. ix . . the preeminency of judaism above paganism . . the authors of the religions of the heathen , who they were . . how naturally lapsed mankind fals under the superstitious tyranny of devils . . the palpable effects of this tyranny in the nations of america . . that that false and wilde resignation in the quakers does naturally expose them to the tyranny of satan . . that their affectation of blinde impulses is but a preparation to demonical possession , and a way to the restoring of the vilest superstitions of paganism . . what shall we say then ? is there no real difference at all betwixt iudaism and paganism ? yes a great deal . for though they both seem to agree in this , that they neither reach further in their end then the gratifications of the animal life ( it being indeed incredible , that their souls , that are so low sunk that they cannot see beyond this present state , should emerge to so high a pitch of sanctification as is understood by that life we call divine : ) yet iudaism has the preeminence far above paganism . first , in that those rich discoveries of the gospel are so exactly adumbrated and shadowed out in the mosaical types , that a man may be assured that they were prefigured by them . secondly , that the worship of god according to the rites of moses is more pure and devoid of all suspicion of idolatry , which the religion of the heathen was not , as has been already declared . . lastly , in that god himself was the institutour of the religion of the jews , whenas the rites of the heathen were found out and appointed either by angels , as some would have it , such as were the overseers and guardians of severall nations and countreys , ( who if they were good , the inhabitants of the earth it seems revolted from them , and corrupted their primitive institutions so long ago , that the knowledge of them never arrived to or hands ; ) or else at the best they were but the better sort of lapsed spirits , or crafty political men , or impure and malicious devils . and so far as history will give us light , all the religions of the world , saving those of moses and christ , have no better authors then those of the three last kinds , as you may gather out of what has been already spoken ; and too many of them , i suspect , have been ordained by the foulest and wickedest of all the lapsed crew . . for mankinde being so much sunk and fallen from god by the temptation of the devil , like a bird or prey he follows his prize , and hunts there where his game is most , hovering over the sons of men , whom he having struck down to the earth , le ts not his hold go , but having once seized upon them , keeps them as long as he can within his own power ; it falling to his share to domineer over men as naturally as wicked men to circumvent and domineer one over another , i mean the more powerful and subtle over the more weak and unwise . . of which the whole new-found world seems to be an ample testimony ; there being very few places in america , but such as were discovered to be palpably and visibly under the power of the old serpent , their religious rites and ceremonies being as uncouth and antick and more bloody and cruell then those that witches are known to be tied to here . for the mind of these apostate spirits is , that the remnant of the law of nature and light of reason in man should be quite obliterated , and that mankind should be wholy their vassals , and that they should forget the nobleness of their own condition , and stoop to whatsoever they require of them , which are commonly such things as become none but mad-men and beasts . . and therefore it is a very dangerous and false kind of resignation in those that would pretend to a more then ordinary pitch of religion , to bid adieu to the rules of humanity and reason under the pretence of the exercise of self-denial . for thus giving away their own will in those things that are laudable and good , they give room for the devil to enter and to possess them soul and body , and to drive them to the most vile , sordid , the most uncivil and ridiculous , nay the most wicked and impious , actions that humane nature is liable to ; as is too much already found in some of that fanatick sect of the quakers , who under pretence of crucifying the dictates of reason and humanity and every thing they find their spirit carried to , smother that lamp of god in them : and being thus got in the dark , are the scorn and laughing-stock of satan , that sworn enemy of mankind the devil ; and delusive spirits , like so many ignes fatui , lead them about in this bewildring night that they have voluntarily brought upon themselves , by not making use of that talent that god already had given them , but flinging of it away as an unholy thing . . this is true of several of them by their own confessions ; and things of a like nature to these are evident in most of them , whether themselves will confess it or no : but let them pretend what they will , most certain it is , that that spirit that leads them from the scriptures , from the use of reason , from common humanity , from their loyalty to christ that died for them , and whom god has exalted above all powers and principalities whatever , either amongst men or angels ; that spirit , i say , that seduces them from such indispensable points as these , is none other then he that seduced man at first , and would again bring him into a slavish subjection to himself by despoiling of him utterly of all those tender touches of spirit , and warrantable suggestions of reason and natural conscience , or the laudable customes of his education , to act merely upon blind impulses , of which no account is to be given , that thereby he may be the easier possessed by him , and be hurried to any vileness of wickedness , to any cruelty or uncleanness without stop or resistance ; and that the law of christ being extinguished , the most foul and barbarous forme of religion amongst the gentiles may be restored . for the virulent enmity of this sect against the ministers of the gospel is no obscure argument that they are acted by the envy of the devil , whose kingdome already has in part , and shall still fall more and more by the hand of our saviour : whose triumphs that we may see how just they are , we must not passe over paganisme so favourably as we have , but discover the beastly and bloody tyranny of satan upon the nations of the earth in his more execrable rites and ceremonies , the abominableness whereof demonstrates that they had no other institutour but himself . chap. x. . the devil 's usurped dominion of this world , and how christ came to dispossess him . . the largeness of the devil's dominion before the coming of christ. . the nation of the iews , the light of the world ; and what influence they might have on other nations in the midst of the reign of paganisme . . that if our hemisphere was any thing more tolerable then the american , it is to be imputed to the doctrine of the patriarchs , moses and the prophets . . that this influence was so little , that all the nations besides were idolaters , most of them exercising of obscene and cruel superstitions . . that the kingdomes of the earth are , or rather were , at the disposal of the devil , was his own boast to our saviour when he would have tempted him to fall down and worship him : and it is observable that our saviour disputes not his title , though he denyes him that homage ; nay he seems to acknowledge his present possession and dominion over this world , by calling him the prince thereof , though an usurper , and such as himself came to deliver the nations from . now is the redemptiom of this world , ( for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies , as grotius has noted ) now is the prince of this world cast out ; and i when i am lifted up from the earth , will draw all men unto me . . now how absolute and universal his dominion was before christ came into the world , we shall easily understand if we consider that he had one hemisphere entire , viz. america with the adjacent islands ; and this other wherein we live , and that contains those three great continents , europe , asia and africk , ( saving the little that that handful of the people of god did possess , ) what of it was not his ? . this family therefore of the faithful has in all ages been , as our saviour speaks , the light of the world ; though never so visible and so spreading as after his coming : and it is not to be doubted but wise men of several nations communicating with the iews , whether in palestine or aegypt , carried something away with them whereby they might better the laws and rites of those countries wherein after they did for any time reside . so that if the examples of the tyranny of satan , or the impurity of his institutions and ceremonies be not so many , nor so heinous and abominable in these parts of the world as in the other hemisphere , it is not to be referred to any tolerableness of his malice or wickedness , but to the efficacy of that light whose appearance very oft is so gratefull and congruous to the soul of man , that though it have been nursed up in vain and unclean superstitions , and bloody and beastly rites of a false religion ; yet so soon as a purer forme is propounded , with confidence it closeth with what is better , and resisteth the power both of a bad custome and an ill master at once . . i speak not this as if the knowledge of god in the ancient patriarchs , moses and the prophets had any such considerable influence upon the inhabitants on this side of the earth , as that we were at a loss for examples of what was sufficiently abominable amongst the nations ; but that if we may seem to have been in any more tolerable condition then the americans , that it may not be imputed to any remisness in that hater and contemner of mankind , but to the providence of god and the power of truth , the light whereof at so great distances , and so many reflections and refractions , is not without some effect . . but scarce any where at all of that efficacy , as to keep off the grosness of idolatry : but in many places it was so perfectly absent , that beastliness , obscenity and execrable cruelty was added to the other unpardonable parts of their superstitions . it would be an endless business to bring in all the instances we may , but some we must , as a pledge of the rest , and in what order it happens ; and that with all briefness possible , onely naming their abominations , not insisting upon them . chap. xi . . the villanous rites of cybele the mother of the gods. . their feasts of bacchus : . of priapus , and the reason of sacrificing an ass to him . . their lupercalia , and why they were celebrated by naked men . . the feasts of flora. . of venus , and that it was the obscene venus they worshipped . . that their venus urania , or queen of heaven , is also but earthly lust , as appears from her ceremonies . . that this venus is thought to be the moon . her lascivious and obscene ceremonies . . the first that comes to my thoughts is the mother of the deifyed rabble , cybele , mater deorum , the celebration of whose rites had so much villany and debauchedness in it , that the more ingenuous of the roman were ashamed of the office. the priests clad in party-coloured coats danced antick dances , writhing about their heads ilfavouredly , and keeping time with their hands upon their breasts to the tune of the tabret , pipe and cymbals , footed it thus from house to house through the streets , begging mony of the people to the use of cybele the mother of the gods. from whence they were called metragyrtae as well as menagyrtae ; but they were such noted beasts and drunkards , that their gross misdemeanours gave an occasion to that by-word , circulator cybeleius , whereby they understood a lewd dissolute villain , given wholly up to drunkenness and debauchedness . . i cannot name the bacchanalia , but your phansies will prevent me , where it seems ( and it is the complaint of that sober writer livy ) that though the title of the feast be bacchus , yet the conlusion is promiscuous lust and venery , nay violent force and fightings and frequent murders . for the opportunities of night , and the mixture of men and women together of several ages and orders , and the incitation of lust through the intemperance of wine made them transgress all the bounds of shame and modesty ; so that with unresistible violence they would force whom they could , and falling out about their prey , wound and kill one another ; the noise and grones of the dying parties and the shreeks of the ravished women not being heard by reason of the rattling and tinckling of their tabrets and cymbals which sounded all the while : so that it seems the romans as well as the sicyonii worshipped 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but to let that goe uninterpreted ; . priapus , what a filthy deity was he ? his image so obscene , as you may see in the poets , that no chast pen would describe it after them , though their description be but a testimony of the truth of the abomination . to this impure god they sacrificed an asse : the reason ovid in his fastorum tells at large ; but it is so lascivious , that it will be sufficient only to have hinted it . it seems the god was in love with the nymph lotis , who lying with the rest of the rural deities in the grass in a moon-shine night , and being fallen asleep , priapus by stealth intended to have deflowred her : but when he was over-near the perpetrating of his villany , old silenus his asse chanced to bray so rudely and loud that he wakened the nymph and defeated the god of his lewd purpose , debarring him of his desired pleasure , and exposing him to the derision of all the rural deities by the mishap . omnibus ad lunae lumina risus erat . and therefore the heathens sacrifice an asse to priapus , as a reiterated revenge upon that beast for doing him so great a displeasure . . some such reason as this the same prophet of the heathens , as i may so call him , gives of mens running up and down stark naked in the lupercalia , which were celebrated to the honour , or rather dishonour , of pan , lycaeus , faunus or sylvanus ; for it is nothing but a memorial also of his defeated lechery . for hercules having retired into a wood with his wife omphale , a fair and goodly person and richly attired , this rural god by chance espying her , fell in love with her , watched where they took up their lodging , and silently stole into the cave by night : where hercules and omphale having changed garments , he lying in his wives clothes , and she in his lions skin , made the lustfull god mistake so unluckily , that it cost him , besides the shame , the bruising of his body against the sides of the cave , where the enraged heros cast him , discharging himself of so uncouth and unsutable a bed-fellow . and this is the reason why sylvanus will have his ceremonies performed by naked men in detestation of that deceit and mistake that may ly under clothes . veste deus lusus fallentes lumina vestes non amat , & nudos ad sua sacra vocat . the god abus'd by cloths that hinder sight , unto his feasts the naked doth invite . so lascivious are the rites , and so frivolous the theology of the ancient pagans . . flora is a name that sounds more innocently , but yet her solemnities are not performed without shameless wantonness and uncivil mirth ; lewd harlots being appointed to run up and down naked , pleasing the spectators with their obscene gestures and meretricious disportments . . their goddess venus can be no sooner mentioned then suspected , and that deservedly . for though plato and plotinus acknowledge a twofold venus , the one heavenly , the other popular and carnal ; yet that distinction in the true meaning thereof seems only to be lodged amongst the better sort of philosophers , the people doing their devotions to that lower deity , as it appears by the epithets they give her , and the ceremonies they perform to her . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the argivi , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the athenians , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the syracusans worshipped , can be no other but that power which is the president of lust , as the meaning of those unchast epithets does plainly demonstrate . and that venus which was worshipped at cyprus , the phallus which was shewn amongst other of her ceremonies evidently declares her nature to be of the same kind . . there was indeed an urania , a celestial venus , she is called the queen of heaven in scripture , venus mylitta in prophane writers , ( mylitta signifying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) which was worshipped as well in some parts of africk as in babylonia ; but the reason of her name , which we have already told , as also the manner of her ceremonies , do manifestly shew that she was but that popular venus we spoke of before . for young women sate in her temple , their places being distinguished by certain lines or threads , which any stranger that would make use of their bodies , broke , and so carried her apart that he had a mind to deal with from the rest , and gave her a piece of mony for a requital ; and after this superstitious kind of fornication she was permitted to marry whom she pleased . the better sort of women made their abode near the temple in certain waggons covered like tents : from whence the abomination was called succoth benoth , and the goddess her self benoth for shortness , whence the criticks with great probability derive the latine word venus . . this venus which was worshipped so in several places , is conceived by some to be the moon , as by philochorus , who affirms her to be sacrificed to , if by men , in womens apparel , if by women , in mens apparel : which planet is rightly called the queen of heaven , and under the name of hecate is also maleficarum venus , as selden notes . astarte also is the same numen , served by her impure priests , men of filthy and effeminate manners . the abominableness of the worship of this goddess of lust is lively set out by eusebius in the life of constantine , nemus erat & delubrum extra publicam viam spurco veneris daemoni in parte verticis montis libani in fruticeto positum . erat hîc malitiae schola omnibus lascivis , ubi viri non viri muliebri morbo daemonem placabant . and besides this , it was , as he sayes , the rendezvous of all lewd persons , men and women given to wantonness , where they committed adultery , fornication and sodomy with impunity , because no man of any repute would come amongst them . chap. xii . . of their famous eleusinia , how foule and obscene they were . . the magnificency of those rites , and how hugely frequented . . that the bottome thereof was but a piece of baudery , held up by the obscene and ridiculous story of ceres and baubo . . of their foul superstitions in tartary , malabar , narsinga , and the whole continent of america . . that so villainous doings are found under so bad a title as this goddess bears , may seem less marvel ; but such solemnities as have had the greatest fame for mysteriousness and sanctity are not found clear of this course kind of filthiness . we will instance in one example for all , in the sacra eleusinia instituted to the honour of ceres , whom one would expect that she should approve her self an honest country matron ; whenas some of the sights to be seen in her temple ( as holy as they made those mysteries ) were but the ensignes of a bawdy-house , which was the cause i suppose that made socrates and demonax not care to be initiated . . but what by the power of delusive spirits or the fraud of the priests , that caused unexpected flashings of light and astonishing thunderings , besides other strange sights which they exhibited to them that were come to an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , these mysteries were in so great request , that they were honoured sometimes with the presence of no less then thirty thousand persons . claudian in his de raptu proserpinae sets out the solemness of these rites very livelily . iam mihi cernuntur trepidis delubra moveri sedibus , & clarum dispergere culmina lumen , adventum testata dei : jam magnus ab imis auditur fremitus terris , templumque remugit cecropidum — now do i see the trembling temple move from the foundation , and the roof all bright to send down sudden day shot from above , sign of the gods approach ; now strange affrights of bellowing murmurs echoing under ground fill the cecropian structures with their sound . . but this magnificent description of the poet will be quite dash'd out of countenance , if we do but produce that smart taunt to their foul superstition set down by the pen of one of the ancient fathers , tota in adytis divinitas , tota suspiria epoptarum , totum signaculum linguae , simulacrum membri virilis revelatur . to this of * tertullian we might add out of theodoret , or rather ( as some would have it ) correct tertullian's mistake . for they did ( say they ) exhibit to the eyes of the epoptae 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being part as it were of this solemnity , tertullian's mistake is not quite so wide as they would make it , but the peoples eyes were befool'd with the sight of them both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saies * theodoret ; and clemens gives a reason of it , because ceres after her long travail in seeking proserpina , being weary and very sad , sate in that heaviness on a certain stone , the greeks call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ovid translates it , saxum triste , the sad stone ; hic primùm gelido sedit maestissima saxo , illud cecropidae nunc quoque triste vocant . the goddess being in this disconsolate condition , one baubo , saith * clemens , an old countrey-woman , offered her to drink : but the goddess being overcome with sadness and refusing it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and afterward it should seem more chearfully took off her cup. . thus filthy and impure is the religion of the pagans all over , whose nasty ceremonies had not been recorded by the pens , nor uttered by the mouths of the holy fathers , had not necessity done violence to their modesty . nor will i detain you any longer in so unsavoury a subject , though we might travail further in this mire , relating to you the unclean customes of candu in tartary , where they prostitute their sisters , their daughters , nay their own wives to strangers by way of honour to their idols : of calecut in malabar , where the king strains courtesie with the high priest , and will needs have him reap the primitiae of the pleasures of his new-married bride ; in that city also is there a temple dedicated to the ape , an animal of noted lechery : of narsinga , where women prostitute themselves to get mony for their idols : of the whole continent of america , where besides that their common lust and venery has no bounds , they also offer their daughters to be deflowred by their priests , and dedicate young boyes to sodomy ; particularly at old port and puna in peru , where the devil so far prevailed in their beastly devotions , ( as purchas relates out of cieza ) that there were boyes consecrated to serve in the temple , and at the times of their sacrifices and solemn feasts the lords and principal men abused them to that detestable filthiness ; and generally in the hill-countreys the devil under shew of holiness had brought in that vice . for every temple or principal house of adoration kept one man or two or more , which were attired like women even from the time of their childhood , and spake like them , imitating them in every thing ; with whom under pretext of holiness and religion their principal men on principal daies had that hellish commerce . but enough and too much of the foulness of the pagan superstition . chap. xiii . . the bloudy tyranny of the devil in his cruel superstitions . the whipping of the prime youth of lacedaemon at the altar of diana . . the sacrificing to bellona and dea syria with the priests own bloud . the bloud of the sick vow'd to be offered in cathaia and mangi , with other vile and contemptuous abuses of satan . . other scornful and harsh misusages in siam and pegu. men squeezed to death under the wheels of an idols chariot in the kingdom of narsinga and bisnagar . . foul tedious pilgrimages in zeilan , together with the cuttings and slashings of the flesh of the pilgrim . . whipping , eating the earth , plucking out eyes before the idol in new-spain , with their antick and slovenly ceremonies in hispaniola . . the intolerable harshness of their superstitious castigations in mexico and peru. . that these base usages are an infallible demonstration of the devil's hatred and scorn of mankind . . having given you a competent view of the misgovernment of the prince of this world in the lawless extravagancies of unclean lust ; we shall now consider his cruel insolencies and despightful usages of contemned mankind , which we may call the bloudy tyranny of the devil over men . and there are not a few examples thereof : we shall not omit to produce such as are on this side murther , and yet are manifest arguments of that envy and scorn he bears to man. as the whipping of the prime youth of lacedaemon before the face of their friends at the altar of diana : a custome so barbarous , that thespesion the chief of the gymnosophists thought fit to object it to apollonius that great reformer of paganism . but he is fain to excuse the lacedaemonians , as doing that which was the more tolerable ; the scythian goddess rigidly exacting of them the effusion of mans bloud at her altar . . the sacrificing to bellona was with the priests own bloud , which was also done to dea syria by hers at the fire-feast , where also young men in a superstitious rage , ( who after ran through the city with that in their hand which they had cut off from their body , and cast into some house or other , thereby to oblige them to give them their womanish habit and attire ) dismembred themselves in honour to the goddess . the sick in cathaia and mangi ( as is recorded by paulus venetus ) were taught to vow the offering of their bloud to their idol , if they recovered . and what had less pain ( but more contempt and scorn with it ) the priest used to besprinkle his congregation before he dismissed them , with bloud , milk , earth and cowes-dung . . in siam the religious orders are held under very hard lawes , it being death to speak to a woman , and to drink wine no less then stoning . that also is a base abuse of the people in pegu , as purchas relates out of gasp. balby , who drink the water wherein the priest has wash'd himself . in the kingdome of narsinga and bisnagar there is an idol to which they make long pilgrimages , and when they appear before him , come with their hands bound , or with ropes about their necks , or with knives sticking in their arms or legs , or else cut their flesh , and cast the pieces into the idol's face . the idol being drawn in solemn procession , the more zealous of the people lye in the way to be squeezed to death by the wheels , as both balby , odoricus and linschoten write . i might add other examples of this kinde , but i will not overmuch transgress my proposed method , not intending for the present to speak of any cruelties of satan but such as are on this side murther . . in zeilan they make pilgrimages of incredible tediousness ; for having travailed many hundred miles , they are fain to wade near twenty miles together in stinking mire , besides their clambering up an hill of many miles ascent by the help of ropes and hooks and bushes that they are to take hold of : and when they are got up to the top , and have fed their eyes with the print of his foot that was their ancient law-giver , they compleat their penance with pricking and cutting their own flesh . . in new-spain they sought pardon of their idols by whipping themselves on the naked shoulders , and taking up earth and eating it . in peru they lay prostrate on the ground before their idols , the more zealous not sparing to pluck out their own eyes in a blinde devotion . in hispaniola , when they sacrific'd , they were wont to thrust a consecrated hook down their throats to fetch all out of their stomachs ; which done they sate round their idol in an antick posture , wry-necked and cross-legged , praying for the acceptance of their sacrifice . . the priests and religious at mexico were wont to rise at midnight , having cast incense before their idol , to retire into a large place where many lights were burning , and there with lancets and bodkins to pierce the calves of their legs near to the bones , anointing their temples with the bloud . they would also slit their members in the midst in a frantick pursuance of a thankless chastity . they whipp'd themselves also with cords full of knots , besides their tedious and destructive fastings . these sad ceremonies they also used in peru , where they swinged themselves with stinging nettles , and struck themselves over the shoulders with hard stones . these and the like abuses ( that you may meet withall in writers ) which satan has put upon mankind , are a demonstration of his great contempt and hatred of us . but we shall come nearer now to make good that charge , which our blessed saviour , who came to destroy his dominion , most justly has laid upon this usurper , that he was a murderer from the beginning : which is most evident from that execrable custome of sacrificing of men to him under what account or title soever : which was an abomination practised of old in most parts of the world , as the testimony of historians will make good . chap. xiv . . men sacrificed to the devil in virginia , peru , brasilia . they of guiana and paria also eat them being sacrificed . the ceremony of these sacrifices in nicaragua . . the hungry and bloud-thirsty devils of florida and mexico . . their sacrificing of children in peru , with the ceremony of drowning a boy and a girle in mexico . . the manner of the mexicans sacrificing their captives . . the huge numbers of those sacrifices in mexico , and of their dancing about the city in the skin of a man new flay'd . . and in new-spain in the skin of a woman . . the knowledge of this is fresh concerning the americans , as that they in virginia sacrificed children to the devil , as also in peru for the health and prosperity of the ingua , and for success in war. the same they doe in brasilia . the people of guiana , of paria and other adjacent parts do not only sacrifice men , but some of them after feed upon the sacrifice . the priests of nicaragua , as purchas relates out of gomara , after the ceremony of a mournful sound and going thrice about their captives , of a sudden rip up their breasts with certain knives of flint , and then after the distribution of the body to the king , their high priest and him that took the captive in war , they set their heads upon trees , under which they sacrifice also other men and children . . in florida the devil appears to them and complains that he is thirsty : but nothing quenches his thirst but the bloud of men . acosta relates of the mexicans , that their priests would tell their kings that their gods died for hunger : the meaning whereof was , that they must forthwith go out to war to get captives for sacrifices to their gods. . in peru , at the inauguration of their new ingua , they sacrificed two hundred children ; they either cut off their necks , anointing themselves on the face with their bloud , or drowned them and so buried them with certain ceremonies . and the mexicans also are reported at a feast which they keep in their canaoes on the lake , to drown a boy and a girl , to keep the gods of the lake company . they of peru would also sacrifice virgins out of their monasteries , as the same author writes : and ordinarily any indian of quality , and those too of mean sort , would sacrifice their first-born to redeem their own life , when the priest pronounced that they were mortally sick . . the mexicans indeed , if acosta does not them overmuch right , sacrificed only captives to their idols . but they were unmercifully lavish of the bloud of their conquered enemy , their sacrifices being often repeated , and they sacrificing at least forty or fifty at a time , making them to ascend to the top of an high terras in the court of the temple , where the chief priest ( as also his assistants ) being clad in most ugly and diabolical dresses to astonish the people , opened the breast of the captive with a wonderous dexterity , pull'd out the heart with his hands , and shew'd it smoaking to the sun , to whom he did offer this heat and fume of the heart , and then cast it at the idols face , and with a spurn of his foot tumbled the body of the sacrifice down the stairs of the temple . . so prodigal was their abominable religion of humane bloud , that some daies they have sacrificed five thousand or more , and in divers places above twenty thousand , as acosta relates from the reports of the indians . there is one nasty piece of cruelty that he saies was used in mexico , which was the flaying of a slave , and apparelling another man with his skin , who was to go dancing and leaping through all the houses and market-places of the city to beg money for the idols ; and they that refused to give , he was to give them a ●lap on the face with the bloudy corner of the skin . . this is ill enough ; but that something worse in new-spain , where they flay'd a woman , and covered a man with her skin , who was to dance about the streets two daies together . so despightfully cruel and tyrannical has the rule of the devil been in the new-found pagan world ; and yet we shall not finde him much better in the old. for there we shall also finde him a bloud-thirsty murderer in most of the parts thereof . chap. xv. . the sacrificing of children to moloch in the valley of hinnom , . that it was not a februation , but real burning of them . that this custome spread from syria to carthage . . further arguments thereof , with the mistake of saturn being called israel rectified by grotius . and that abraham's offering up isaac was no occasion at all to these execrable sacrifices . . sacrificing of men in britain , lusitania , france , germany , thrace and in the isle of man. . in sundry places also of greece , as messene , arcadia , chios , aulis , locri , lacedaemon . . that the romans were not free neither from these salvage sacrifices . . to which you may add the cimbrians , lituanians , aegyptians , the inhabitants of rhodes , salamis , tenedos , indians , persians , &c. . syria is famous , or rather fouly infamous , for that cruel god of the ammonites , moloch , to whom they sacrificed their children burning them in the fire . this was , as in other places , so also done in the valley of hinnom , so called , à rugitu seu lamentis puerorum dum exurebantur , from the roarings and cryings of the children whilest they were a burning , or else from the possessours of that field , the sons of hinnom . it is also named tophet , from the beating of the drums they then used to drown the cryes of the poor infants that were sacrificed . some are of opinion that it was onely a februation , purification , or consecration of their children , not a sacrificing of them : but mr. selden has sufficiently confuted that conceit , to whom i remit the curious , de diis syris , syntagm . . cap. . . gaffarel indeed , though he will admit that certain persian colonies seated in samaria sacrificed their children to adramelech and anamelech the gods of sepharvaim , yet he will not allow by any means that children were sacrificed to moloch , but onely februated : and this he does in favour to the jews whom he would not have to stand guilty of such a detestable piece of idolatry . but it is beyond all exception plain , that they did sacrifice their sonnes and daughters to devils , psal. . and iosephus himself acknowledges of achaz , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . see grotius upon the . of deuteronomy , where he does plainly enough prove that children were really sacrificed to moloch , though he does not deny but in process of time the rigour of this cruel custome might be changed into what was more tolerable , viz. the traduction of their children between two fires ; later ages finding out such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for the mitigating of the barbarousness of their ancient rites . and it is not unlikely but that before this cruelty was quite laid aside , there was first a seldomer use of it , and that at last it vanished into simple februation ; which is the best way i know to save solomon's credit , and vindicate him from the suspicion of so barbarous a piece of idolatry , though he reigned long before achaz . . that this custome of sacrificing children spread it self out of syria into europe i cannot say : but it is likely that the carthaginians had it from thence , they being a colony of that nation ; and lactantius charges them with this cruel superstition , that they used to sacrifice men to saturn ; and that , being overcome by agathocles king of sicilie , and suspecting their god was angry with them , they sacrific'd ducentos nobilium filios , two hundred noble-mens sons at once . this abomination of sacrificing their children ennius also had noted of old , poeni sunt soliti sos sacrificare puellos . . the cretians also as well as the syrians sacrificed to saturn , however they took up the custome . but a further evidence that the carthaginians had theirs from the syrians is that the name of the god they sacrificed to was called amilcas , as selden notes out of athenagoras , which comes very near to moloch or milcham , and that they used also drums and pipes to drown the noise and cries of the sacrificed . porphyrius out of the phoenician chronicles tells us that this saturn the phoenicians call israel , who was their ancient king , and sacrificed his onely-begotten son to deliver his kingdome from a present danger of warre . his sons name also , he saith , was ieoud , which has near affinity with the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , unigenitus ; and the whole narration seems to some a deprav'd story of abraham's sacrificing isaac , though grotius be of another minde , and haply out of a true conjecture : the mistake being in some scribe , who finding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which was the name of the king that sacrific'd his son , ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as philo byblius has it out of sanchuniatho ) thought it the usual contraction of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whenas that phoenician king was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which the syrians use for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) as enoch bore the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as grotius will more fully inform us upon deuteron . . but though that way that selden recites out of porphyrius were true , i do not see that this occasion should need to have any influence on remoter parts in europe , they of peru without any such invitation being lavish of the blood of their children in sacrificing them to the devil . but if it had , it were no excuse , but a greater reproach to them and their ill master , that god's refusall of so high and rigorous an homage ( though he had an indisputable right to it ) could not binde their hands from either offering or receiving such bloody sacrifices . . wherefore , without any such animation or emulation , i believe , the apostate spirits every where full of scorn and cruelty , did of themselves set up such abominable rites in most parts of the old world . as here in britain , where they were wont to sacrifice captives to foretel things to come , as tacitus writes . strabo affirms the same of the lusitani , who for the same purpose sacrificed their captives to mars . diodorus writes the same concerning the gaules , and suetonius of the germans ; eusebius of the thracians , who sacrificed men , to be better ascertained of their success in warre : and tacitus concerning the isle of man near us , saith , that it was the seat of the druids who were great men-sacrificers , which they performed in woods . lucos saevis superstitionibus sacros , that author calls them . . neither were the greeks free from this bloody superstition . for aristomenes messenius sacrificed three hundred men to iupiter ithemius . the arcades also sacrificed boyes to iupiter lycaeus , and the inhabitants of chios a man to diomedes . the locri were commanded by their oracle , for the asswaging of a pestilence , so send every year two virgins to troy , which had their throats first cut , and then were burnt in sacrifice to pallas trojana : and iphigenia , the butchering of her ( under the pretence of marriage ) by the hand of the priest at the altar of diana in aulis , is notoriously known , and lively set out by lucretius , with this epiphonema at the end of the narration , tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum . the lacedaemonians also sacrificed men to mars . phylarchus affirms all the greeks to have done the like . . pliny boasts that the romans were free from those cruel and impious superstitions : but if he mean they were alwayes so , it will be found but a boast . for of old they sacrificed men to saturnus and iupiter latialis , as tertullian and lactantius have noted ; and it was usuall with them to give men to be devoured by beasts in their great festivals , which they celebrated to this or the other deity . besides , they are said to have sacrificed at rome two greeks and two gaules , a male and female of each , every year . and throughout sicily and italy those barbarous sacrifices were very frequent according to pliny's own testimony , and were not abrogated at rome till about six or seven hundred years ab urbe condita . . we might reckon up more nations polluted with this execrable impiety , as the cimbrians , lituanians , aegyptians , the inhabitants of rhodes , salamis , tenedos and cyprus , also those of laodicaea , besides the indians , persians , arabians , albanians , and others ▪ but these may suffice which we have already named for remarkable examples of satan's villainous miscarriages in his usurped rule over the sons of men. chap. xvi . . four things still behind to be briefly touch'd upon for the fuller preparation to the understanding the christian mystery ; as first the pagan catharmata . the use of them prov'd out of caesar ; . as also out of statius and the scholiast upon aristophanes . . that all their expiatory men-sacrifices whatsoever were truly catharmata . . the second , their apotheoses or deifications of men . the names of several recited out of diodorus . . of baal-peor , and how in a manner all the temples of the pagans were sepulchres . their pedigree noted by lactantius out of ennius . . certain examples of the deification of their law-givers . . we have clearly and fully enough set out unto your view the uncleanness and cruelty of the pagan superstitions : there are only four things behind which we will lightly touch upon , and then i think we shall sufficiently have prepared the way to give you an easy and intelligible representation of the whole frame of christian religion , as it is set out in the holy scripture . the first of the four things i were a mentioning is their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , purgamenta , piacula : but the greek word is more proper , which signifies the death of some man which the pagans sacrificed for the expiating of their faults , and saving themselves from the rigour and vengeance of their gods. this reason was acknowledged plainly by the gaules , amongst whom this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this mactation of men was so frequent , as caesar has observed . pro vita hominum nisi vita hominis reddatur , non posse deorum immortalium numen placari arbitrantur : i. e. they think that unless the life of a man be given in lieu of the life of men , the majesty of the immortall gods cannot be pacified . and therefore , in gravioribus morbis , praeliis , periculis , homines pro victimis immolant aut immolaturos vovent , as ortelius cites it out of caesar , and therefore in more grievous diseases , warrs , dangers , they either sacrifice men , or at least make a vow they will sacrifice them . . this kind of sacrifice because it was made ordinarily of the vilest sort of people , slaves or captives or other contemptible persons , the apostle , to shew how vilely himself was esteemed of by men , set off his condition by a phrase borrowed from thence , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , cor. . . to this custome papinius statius alludes , where he brings in meneceus his mother speaking to him thus , lustralemne feris ego te , puer improbe , thebis devotumque caput , vilis ceu mater , alebam ? have i , ô wicked child , thee nourished like mother poor , for cruell thebes to be a lustral wretch , a vile devoted head ? this is noted also by servius upon virgil. but there can be nothing more pertinent either for the explaining of that phrase of the apostle , or for a clearer witnessing of this heathenish custome , then what grotius addes upon the place out of the scholiast upon aristophanes his plutus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. men that were sacrificed to the gods for the clearing of a city or people from the pestilence or any other disease , were called catharmata , which custome also obtain'd amongst the romans . and on another comedy the scholiast asserts it to have been also the custome of the athenians , and that they made choice of some poor useless wretches for that purpose . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. for the athenians also g●t certain base and useless persons , and in the time of any calamity coming upon the city , as of pestilence and the like , they sacrificed these , thereby to be cleared of their piacular crime , for which cause these men were called catharmata : which in latine is piacula or purgamenta . . we might alleadge other testimonies , as that out of suidas upon the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and others ; but these may suffice for so easy a matter . for all the expiatory sacrifices wherewith they would appease the wrath of the gods , as often as they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or mactations of men ( which were too-too frequent all over the world , ) these men that were thus sacrificed were indeed catharmata properly so called . . the second thing we would have noted is , their apotheoses , then which nothing was more frequent amongst the gentiles , there scarce being any of the immortal gods so deem'd amongst them , but some mortall man there was also that bore the same name , and had the same worship also done unto him . diodorus instances in sol , saturn , rhea , iupiter , pan , ceres , and others , whose genealogies , inventions , or famous exploits that historian pursues in his first book of his bibliotheca historica . he names also belus the sun of neptune and libya , as the captain of an aegyptian colony into babylon , with whom it fared as with innumerable others , who were considerable benefactours to the countrey they liv'd in , or people with whom they did converse : they had altars and temples erected to their memorial , and sacrifices and religious ceremonies appointed to be done to them as to the immortal deities . . and baal-peor to whom israel joyned , where they are said to eat the sacrifice of the dead ; bede upon the text expounds it to this sense , initiati sunt & sacrificaverunt baal qui colebatur in phegor , belus enim fuit pater nini , &c. and that is the reason that they were called * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because they were sacrifices offered to the soul of the deceased belus . clemens alexandrinus upbraids to the heathen , that in a manner all their temples were nothing else but the sepulchres of some famous men , whose memory was the first occasion of those religious solemnities and ceremonies that were performed there . lactantius also out of ennius and cicero plainly demonstrates that the generality of the pagan deities , such as we have already named out of diodorus , were once men living here on earth , and produces out of ennius their pedigrees , counsels and transactions in this life . cicero makes a kind of distinction in his de legibus , where he makes this decree concerning religion : divos & eos qui coelestes semper habiti sunt , colunto , & eos quos in coelo merita locaverunt , herculem , liberum , aesculapium , pollucem , castorem , quirinum , i. e. let them worship the gods , both those who were ever accounted celestial , and those whom their merits have placed in heaven , as hercules , bacchus , aesculapius , pollux , castor , quirinus . . for the romans worshipped romulus , as the babylonians belus , like as other nations also have deified those that have first given them laws and religious rites ; as the scythians zamolxis , and the chineses their kings , and in particular their law-giver confusius . minos also , aeacus and rhadamanthus , for their singular iustice while they lived , were by the greeks assigned to the honour of being judges amongst the dead in the other world. but of this enough . chap. xvii . . the third observable , the mediation of daemons . . this superstition glanced at by the apostle in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and that daemons are the souls of men departed , according to hesiod . . as also according to plutarch and maximus tyrius . . the author's inference from this position . . the third thing observable is their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or daemons i mean their dii medioxumi , or rather those spirits that were mediatours ( as i may so call them ) betwixt the supreme deities and men. according to this sense is that of plato in his symposion , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. god intermingles not himself with man , but all the converse and conference betwixt the gods and men is performed by daemons . and the same philosopher saies plainly and expresly , that these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 receive the praiers and oblations that men make , and present them to the gods , and bring back from them rewards and injunctions which they communicate some way or other to men . but this is not plato's opinion alone , but of most of the ancient philosophers that would venture to say any thing at all in religion ; as of zoroaster , thales , pythagoras , celsus , plutarch , apuleius , and who not ? nay this conceit is so natural , that it is found among the rude americans , who profess that their zemes are no other then mediatours and messengers from the great god that is eternal and invisible , as peter martyr relates in his first decad , lib. . concerning the inhabitants of hispaniola . . this opinion of the heathen was glanced at by the apostle , coloss. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as grotius observeth upon the place . nor does the difference of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make any difference in the thing , the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as philo has noted ; and either of them is competible to the soul out of the body , as the same author also acknowledgeth . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies also the soul in the body according to xenocrates in aristotle , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. in like manner that he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( i. e. happy ) who has a good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or genius , as xenocrates says , that be is happy or has a good genius that has a good soul. for the soul is every man's daemon or genius . but the more proper sense , and that which we mean in this place , is that of philo : to whom we may add the suffrage of hesiod , out of plutarch ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. but soules that have quit themselves from generation , and are for the future free from the incumbrances of the body , become daemons , carefull inspectours over mankind , according to hesiod . from whence haply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divido , it signifying the very same that anima separata . . and plutarch himself subscribes to hesiod's opinion , that souls freed from their bodies become daemons or genii , and that they goe up and down the earth as being observers and rewarders of the actions of men ; and that though they be not actors themselves , yet they are abbettors and encouragers of them that act ; as old men that have left off the more youthfull sports , love to set the younger sort to their games and exercises , themselves in the mean time looking on . so plutarch in his de genio socratis and maximus tyrius endeavour at large to prove that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or genii are nought but the souls of men departed , who are occupied much-what in such emploiments as they were in the flesh . . from whence it will follow that good men that were full of humanity & love to mankind , will prove good genii : & by how much their love is greater and their spirits more free and universal , that they will have a more generall inspection , or at least they will be more fit for it ; were they but armed with sufficient power and authority from above answerable to that noble dear affection they bear to man : and in that themselves have been in the flesh , and tasted what belongs to our condition , they will be the more kindly mediatours and negotiatours in our affairs . so reasonable is this opinion of the pagans concerning the intercession of their genii , but their worshipping of them as rash , they having no sufficient warrant thereunto . chap. xviii . . the fourth and last thing to be noted , namely their heroes , who were thought to be either begot of some god , or born of some goddess : the latter whereof is ridiculous , if not impossible ; . the former not at all incredible . . franciscus picus his opinion of the heroes ( feigned so by the poets ) as begot of the gods : that they were really begotten of some impure daemons , with josephus his suffrage to the same purpose . . the possibility of the thing further illustrated from the impregnation of mares merely by the wind , asserted by several authors . . the application of the history , and a further confirmation from the manner of conception out of dr. harvey . . examples of men famed for this kind of miraculous birth of the heroes , on this side the tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . the fourth and last thing i would propound to your view is their heroes , which are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also , that is , the souls of men departed this life : but there was something special in their birth , in that they were conceived to be born of some goddess impregnated by a man , or of some woman impregnated by some god. from whence plato would give the reason of the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , love , because the heroes were begot by some god or goddess falling in love with mortals . such was the birth of aeneas , as antiquity has conceited , who was begot on venus by anchises , and of achilles the son of thetis by peleus . but that goddesses , that is , spirits susteining the person of women , should bring forth children ; though there be pretended true stories of such things , and that it may be it is not impossible , yet it seems to me very incredible . . but that the genii or spirits which antiquity called gods , might impregnate women so , that they might bring forth children without the help of a man , seems not to me to be at all incredible ; and most of your heroes have been reported to be such , the greater number of the most famous of them being certain by-blows of iupiter upon several women he fell in love with . for he is said to beget hercules upon alcmena , pelasgus of niobe , sarpedon of laodamia , dardanus of electra , amphion of antiope , minos and rhadamanthus of europa , of leda castor and pollux , and perseus of danae . his four last adulteries are handsomely comprized in a distich by the epigrammatist , with the fashion or fraud he used in his assaults upon those women . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . which i could not forbear to reherse , the first transformation there named , viz. of iupiter's becoming a swan ( when he had to doe with leda ) putting me in mind of ludovicus the familiar of that witch whose story franciscus picus so fully prosecutes , whom he confessed to have to doe with her , though in the rest of his parts in the shape of a man , yet with feet fashioned like a goose. but the main thing observable in that dialogue is picus his ingenious conjecture concerning these supposed fables of the poets , as some would have them . but he conceives there may be a considerable truth in them as concerning the generation of the heroes , and that in rude antiquity , when the dominion of the devil was more free , and mankind more idle and ignorant , there were really and frequently such congresses or venereous conjunctions of unclean spirits with women , according to that practice which to this day is confessed by witches , especially in their meetings and joviall revellings in the night at that solemnity which they call our lady's play , the ancients called it ludum dianae or ludum herodiadis ; where the witches , as themselves confess , do eat and drink and dance , and doe that with these impure spirits which modesty would forbid to name . which dalliance had sometime such real effect with them of ancient times , that the women , as picus would have it , were impregnated by the daemones or genii , the deemed gods of the heathen . from whence came famous men , that were not only reputed but really sprung ex stirpe deorum , according to their opinions they had of the gods. iosephus a sober writer acknowledges the birth of the giants of old to be after this manner , to whom he ascribes all the impiety and injustice that had crept into the world before noah's flood . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as he writes in his first book of iewish antiquities . . and though this may seem incredible to others , yet stranger matters have been asserted concerning the conception of females without the help of a male in the perfectest kind of living creatures : as that which virgil affirms in his georgicks concerning some metal'd mares that have conceived of the wind. ore omnes versae in zephyrum stant rupibus altis , exceptántque leves auras ; & saepe sine ullis conjugiis , vento gravidae ( mirabile dict● ! ) saxa per & scopulos fugiunt — they all standing on high crags with turned face to gentle zephyr , the light air they draw ; and oft , ( o wonder ! ) without venus law , quick with the wind o're hills and rocks they trace . which silius italicus expresses also very livelily of the spanish gennets of his country ; et venerem occultam genitali concipit aurâ . which that you may not suspect to be only the levity and credulity of poets to report such things , i can inform you that s. austin and solinus the historian write the same of a race of horses in cappadocia . nay , which is more to the purpose , columella and varro , men expert in rural affairs , assert this matter for a most certain and known truth . . wherefore if the free air by the advancing of the pleasure of the spirits of these animals , or actuating them by a volatil salt , will fill them so full of life and joy , that it will make their wombes blossome , as i may so say , and after bring forth fruit ; why may not an aiery spirit transforming himself into the shape of a man , supply his place effectually , he being able , as witches have confessed , to raise as high pleasure and indeed higher then any man can doe ; and so to loosen the body into a transmission of such principles and particles as will prove in their conflux in the wombe vital and prolifical ? which may be the easilier admitted , if we consider that the seed of the male gives neither matter nor form to the foetus it self ; but like the flint and steel only sets the tinder on fire , as dr. harvey expresses it . so that the pagan gods , when they would have to doe with women , needed no such ambages as ordinarily men imagine , viz. first to play the succubi , & then the incubi , that is , first to receive the seed of man , having transformed themselves into the shape of a woman , & then to transfuse the seed into the womb of a woman , after they had changed themselves into the form of a man. for it is not the matter of the seed , but a gratefull contact or motion fermenting or spiriting the place of conception , that makes the female fruitfull . so great a probability is there that there is some truth in that fame concerning the birth of the ancient heroes , though their time by reason of the uncertainty of the story is called * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by historians . . but there is so strong a suspicion in the minds of men that there are such events in the world , that they venture upon some examples within the compass of more approved history , as alexander and scipio , whom many conceited to be the sons of iupiter . and diogenes laertius tells a formal story of perictione plato's mother being impregnated by apollo , which he confirms by the authority of three several writers , speusippus , clearchus and anaxilides . chap. xix . . that out of the principles we have laid down , and the history of the religions of the nations we have produced , it is easie to give a reasonable account of all matters concerning our saviour from his birth to his visible return to iudgment . . that christianity is the summe and perfection of whatever things were laudable or passable in any religion that has been in the world . . the assertion made good by the enumeration of certain particulars . . that our religion seems to be more chiefly directed to the nations then the iews themselves . . an enumeration of the main heads in the history of christ , that he intends to give account of . . i have now omitted nothing of considerable moment to our present purpose , having laid down by way of preparation such grounds as will inable us to give a solid account of whatsoever occurrs in the history of christ , whatsoever happen'd to him , was done or is to be done by him , from his birth to his visible return to iudgment . for besides that there are no effects so miraculous there recorded , as to exceed the efficacy of those invisible powers which we have demonstrated to be in the world ; so the reasonableness of every thing will be easily illustrated by what we have discovered concerning the nature and end of christianity , which is to advance the divine life upon earth , and to bring the partakers thereof to eternal happiness , and in the mean time to redeem the world out of the dominion and tyranny of the devil , and to bring in the worship of christ as the lawfull owner of all soveraignty in heaven and in earth : and that not by external force and violence , but by the wonderfull wisdom of god discoverable in the gospel ; there being such winning compliances and condescensions to the faculties of man , and so powerfull endearments upon his affections , that at the first hearing it is able to carry away the ingenuous captive into obedience to it , with joy in their hearts and tears in their eyes , their whole man melting into an easie pliableness to this new gracious law in the sense of so great joy , love and sorrow : besides their being surprized with a just slighting or indignation against the religions they were formerly ingaged in , for either their beggerly elements or abominable sacrifices and ceremonies . . for whatsoever is defective in any , christ makes a full supply ; and where their rites are execrable and detestable , he treads quite contrary there to both the foul obscenities and bloody cruelties of satan . but what propensions in mankind were more warrantably natural , he gratifies them in a truer and higher manner then ever they were yet in the world. so that of a very truth christianity is not only the compleatment and perfection of iudaisme , but also of universal paganisme ; the summe or substance of whatever was considerable in any religion being comprehended in the gospel of christ , which was reserved to the last periods of time as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or summing up of all that went before , as the apostle speaks in his epistle to the ephesians , that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might summe up all together in christ , whether things in heaven or things in earth . . for as for things in heaven , whether it be the objects of the worships of the heathen , namely their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , men canonized for gods and their heroes , or the trust they had in their dii medioxumi , in the mediation and intercession of their daemons , or whatsoever obscure hopes they had of enjoying the life of the gods themselves in heaven after the dissolution of the body ; all these things are more compendiously , and yet more truly , plainly and warrantably , comprehended in christ. as also the things in earth , as the jewish sacrifices and the pagans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so many and so curious ceremonies of expiation and purification , they are all more fitly and more effectually contained in the sacrament of baptisme and in the celebration of the death of our saviour then in any of the rites of the nations . . and truly all things are so shrewdly levelled at the religion of the heathens in the transactions of christ and matters belonging to him , that he may rather seem to be meant for them then the jews themselves , though they had the first refusal of him ; so that the counsel of god is made evident as well in the contrivance as the effect thereof . and this may serve for a general hint concerning the nature and composure of christianity . . but we shall not content our selves therewith , but descend to a more particular account , applying the grounds which we have laid down to all the considerable matters contained in the history of christ ; which we shall refer to these heads : his birth ; his life ; his crucifixion ; his resurrection ; his ascension ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intercession ; principality over men and angels ; his mission of the holy ghost upon the apostles ; the success of all this in changing of the affairs of the world , and ruining of the kingdome of the devil ; his visible returning again to iudgment to take vengeance of the wicked , and to compleat redemption to the faithfull , crowning all their labours and sufferings with glory and immortality , and reestablishing of them in those paradisiacal ioys which they had forfeited and fallen from by the envy and subtilty of the devil . of all these we shall speak with what brevity we can . book iv. chap. i. . that christ's being born of a virgin is no impossible thing . . and not only so , but also reasonable in reference to the heroes of the pagans . . and that this outward birth might be an emblem of his eternal sonship . . thirdly in relation to the sanctity of his own person , and for the recommendation of continence and chastity to the world . . and lastly for the completion of certain prophesies in the scriptures that pointed at the messias . . concerning the birth of christ , or whatsoever else happened miraculously to him , or was done by him , i conceive i shall give a sufficient account , if i shew not only their possibility , but their reasonableness . and it is not at all impossible that a virgin should bring forth a son , if we understand the meaning of that term aright , which signifies a woman that never had any thing to doe with a man. for it implies no contradiction for her to conceive from some other hidden cause , and therefore at least the omnipotent power of god can bring it to pass . for whether is it easier to create all things of nothing , to make plants and animals to spring out of the earth without the help of either male or female , or to prepare the wombe of a woman so , as to make her conceive without the help of a man ? wherefore to deny the possibility thereof is to deny the existence of god in the world . . but it is not only possible , but reasonable . for besides that in general it is fit that so extraordinary a person as our saviour in his coming into the world should be accompanied with miraculous indications of his eminencie , there is a peculiar accommodation in this of his being conceived and born by a supernatural power to those either true stories or strong suspicions of the pagans , who did so easily believe that their famous heroes , whose memory continued so long with them , and was so sacred , that they did divine honours to them , were not sprung of mortal race , but were ex stirpe deorum , as you have already heard ; which is in a most true and eminent manner accomplished in the birth of our saviour . . again , christ considered out of the body , he being not a mere humane soul , but being truly , livingly and really united with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is by union the eternal son of god. now that being to come to pass which s. iohn speaks of in the beginning of his gospel , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the word was made flesh ; he that was to be born of mary ( the spouse of ioseph ) he being , i say , the true and genuine son of god , begotten of the father from all eternity , when he was to be born here into the world in time ; who was so fit to be entitled to his procreation as he that was the author of his eternal generation ? and therefore he was to be born of a virgin , and to be conceived by a supernatural way , that his visible humanity as well as his inward divinity might have a just occasion of being called the son of god , and that the one might be the emblem as it were of the other . . thirdly , you have seen how full of abominable obscenity and uncleanness the superstition of the heathen was ; to say nothing of the carnality and uxoriousness of the jews , and of that impuritie which by almost all nations ( unless where superstition has emboldened them to beastliness ) is confessed to be in the acts of venerie ; they commonly concealing those parts which nature ordained for such uses from the eyes of men , as being ashamed to acknowledge themselves subject to so low a kind of sense . it was therefore unfit that christ should be born according to that common way of generation , that he might give no encouragement to that which men are so madly set upon , notwithstanding that bridle of shame that nature would curb them in by ; especially himself coming into the world to be the highest pattern of purity that can be exhibited to mankind : for which reason he also abstained from marriage , and commended the virgin-life ; which he might doe with better reason then any , he being a more certain pledge of those holy , heavenly and eternal joyes , then ever was yet manifested to the world . wherefore partly in opposition to the uncleanness of paganisme , and partly for an invitation to his followers to set a due price upon continence and chastity as great helps to the purifying of the soul , and the making of her relish those delights which are truly divine , himself did not vouchsafe to take our flesh upon him in that way which is accompanied with the height of gross carnal pleasures ; nor when he had taken our flesh , to reap the joyes thereof , no not so much as upon those allowable terms of marriage ; he coming into the world on purpose to slight and slur that which is to the greatest esteem and sweetest relish with the natural man. . fourthly and lastly , the being born of a virgin being one of the notes of the messias , as the very first prophesie of him in the more proper and emphatical sense thereof seems to imply , that the seed of the woman ( in opposition or exclusion of the mans seed ) should break the serpents head , as also that more plain allusion and lively type in the prophet isaiah of a virgin conceiving of a son whose name was immanuel , does exquisitely prefigure ; this , i say , adds also to the congruity of this miracle of christ's conception in the wombe of a virgin. all which things put together are more then enough to sufflaminate those blasphemous suspicions of witless and ungodly men , and to convince them that it was not the colouring of some casuall miscarriage in the mother of christ , that he was said to be begotten of the holy ghost ; but that it was so indeed , and so determined by the wisdom and counsel of god. the greatest reason whereof was ( as i conceive ) the sanctity of our saviour's soul , and his purpose of discountenancing of the pleasures and pollutions of the flesh , and the drawing of mens minds to the study of purity , a very considerable branch of the divine life which he came to raise in the world. chap. ii. . that as the virginity of christ's mother recommended purity , so her meanness recommends humility to the world ; as also other circumstances of christ's birth . . of the salutation of the angel gabriel , and of the magi. . that the history of their visit helps on also belief , and that it is not reason but sottishness that excepts against the ministery of angels . . his design of continuing a parallel betwixt the life of christ and of apollonius tyaneus . . the pedigree and birth of apollonius , how ranck they smell of the animal life . . the song of the angels and the dance of the musical swans at apollonius's birth compared . . now as his being born of a virgin is a recommendation of purity , so his being born of so mean a virgin as the spouse of a carpenter is a recommendation of humility . for it is observable that christ on set purpose vilified and slighted that which is most esteemed and most dear to the animal life , and such are all those things that make for our honour and reputation amongst men ; and nobleness of parentage is not one of the meanest of them . other circumstances of his birth tend also to the same scope ; for no sooner came he into the world , but he practised that which he after taught others , he took the meanest place in the inne : and though he were heir of all things , and the designed soveraign of angels and men ; yet he was shouldered out from amongst them , and was fain to take his lodgings in the stable amongst the brute beasts . but in this low condition while he is taken no notice of by supercilious mortals , yet the angels celebrates his nativity with an heavenly carol , imparting the good news of his birth not to the wise or noble of this world , not to the learned rabbies or rulers of the people , but to men of a lowly and innocent profession , to shepheards attending their flocks by night . all which circumstances of his birth you see how reasonable , how significant and decorous they are . . nor is that salutation of the angel gabriel concerning it , and his prediction to mary , an useless and idle complement : but it was requisite that what was to happen to her should be foretold her , that the modest virgin might not be abash'd to see her womb swell , she not knowing the cause of it . the same may be said also of the journey of the magi , that it is not a thing vainly inserted into the history to make a show , but that the fame of the jews expectation of their messias about that time being spread all over the east , these genethliaci that lov'd to busie themselves about nativities and strange events in the world , amidst their viewing the constellations , discovering a new star as it seem'd to them , and observing its motion , were led to the very place where the young king of the jews lay , where they worshipped him , not as the son of god , but as one that they expected would be a mighty secular prince ; and therefore to engage him to favour themselves and their country , they did unto him this timely homage . . but though they intended no more then thus , yet it being so famous an accident could not but further the faith of those that were to be called in to the belief of the gospel . besides that , it was a prelusion to & prefiguration of the forwardness of the gentiles above the jews to receive christ as their soveraign and redeemer , as also a prelibation of that glory that should at last accrew to christ for the great debasement of himself and unparallel'd humiliation . so that nothing can make the circumstances of the history of his birth incredible , unless it be the mention of the ministery of angels in it , which none can cavil at but such as believe no angels at all , neither good nor bad : nor can any be of this unbelief but such as prefer the sottish suggestions of their own dull temper before the perpetual testimonies of all ages and all nations of the world ; who have ever and anon had new instances of apparitions and communications with evil spirits , and fresh occasions of executing the laws they had made against witches and wicked magicians . . i should now pass to the second head i propounded , could i abstain from touching a little upon the circumstances of the birth of that famous corrival of our saviour , apollonius tyaneus ; whose story writ by philostratus , though i look upon it as a mixt business partly true and partly false , yet , be it what it will be , seeing it is intended for the highest example of perfection , and that the heathen did equalize him with christ , you shall see how ranck his whole history smells of the animal life , and how hard a thing it is either in actions or writings to counterfeit that which is truly holy and divine . for which end i shall make a brief parallelisme of the histories of them both in the chief matters of either , that the gravitie and divinitie of the one and the ridiculousness and carnality of the other may the better be discerned . . as in this very first point is plain and manifest , which is dispatched in a word . for in that philostratus writes how apollonius was of an ancient and illustrious pedigree , of rich parents , and descended from the founders of the city tyana , where he was born , is not this that which is as sweet as honey to the natural man , and such as an holy and divine soul would set no esteem upon ? like to this is his mother's being waited upon by her maidens into a meadow , being directed thereto by a vision , where while her servants were straying up and down making of posies and chaplets of flowers , ( o what fine soft pompous doing is here ! ) and her self disporting her self in the grass , she at last falls into a slumber , the swans in the mean time rangeing themselves in a row round about her , dancing and clapping their wings , and singing with such shrill and sweet accents that they filled the neighbouring places with their pleasant melody , they being as it were inspired and transported with joy by the gentle breathings of the fresh and cool zephyrus ; whereupon the lady awaking is instantly delivered of a fair child , who , after his fathers name , was called apollonius . . the amenity of the story how gratefull and agreeable it is to flesh and bloud ! but how ridiculous is that dance and rountlelay of the musical swans compared with that heavenly melody of the holy angels at the nativity of christ ! for that , if it could be true , is but a ludicrous prodigie and presignification that apollonius would prove a very odde fellow and of an extraordinary strein , and serves only for the magnifying of his person . but this is a grave and weighty indication of the goodness of god and the love of his holy angels to men , and a prediction of that peace and grace which should be administred unto them through jesus christ that was then born . behold , said the chief angel whose glorious presence surrounded the shepheards with light , behold , said he , i bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be unto all people ; for unto you is born this day a saviour , which is christ the lord : whereupon there was suddenly with this angel a multitude of the heavenly hoast praising god and saying , glory to god in the highest , and on earth peace , good will towards men . chap. iii. . that whatever miraculously either happened to or was done by our saviour till his passion cannot seem impossible to him that holds there is a god and ministration of angels . . of the descending of the holy ghost , and the voice from heaven at his baptisme . . why christ exposed himself to all manner of hardship and temptations . . and particularly why he was tempted of the devil , with an answer to an objection touching the devil's boldness in daring to tempt the son of god. . how he could be said to shew him all the kingdoms of the earth . . the reason of his fourty daies fast , . and of his transfiguration upon the mount. the three first reasons . . the meaning of moses and elias his receding , and christ's being left alone . . the last reason of his transfiguration , that it was for the confirmation of his resurrection and the immortality of the soul. . testimonies from heaven of the eminency of christs person . . we have done with the birth of christ , we proceed now to his life : wherein we shall consider only those things that extraordinarily happened to him , or were miraculously done by him , till the time of his passion ; wherein nothing will be found impossible to them that acknowledge the existence of god ▪ the active malice of devils , and the ministery of angels . but that which i intend mainly to insinuate is , the comeliness and sutableness of all things to so holy and divine a person ; which that it may the better appear , i shall after shew the difference of this true example of solid perfection , christ , and that false pattern of feigned holiness in that impostour apollonius , whom the later heathen did so highly adore . . the chief things that happened in an extraordinary way to christ before his passion are these three . . the descending of the holy ghost upon him in the shape of a dove at his being baptized , and the emission of a voice from heaven , saying , this is my beloved son in whom i am well pleased . . the temptation of the devil upon his fasting : and . his transfiguration upon the mount. concerning the first , there is great reason for that miracle . for god having a design to set on foot the divine life in the world by his son iesus christ , why should he not countenance the beginning of his ministery by some notable sign , by which men might take notice that he was the messias , sent of god ? and iohn the baptist confesses himself assur'd thereof by this indication . and being there was to be some extraordinary appearance , what could be more fit then this of a dove , a known embleme of meekness and innocency , inseparable branches of the divine life and spirit ? and at what better time then when iesus gave so great a specimen of his meekness and humility , as to condescend to be wash'd , as if he had been polluted , when he was more pure then light or snow ; and to be in the form of a disciple to iohn , when he was able to teach him and all the world the mysteries of god ? which may be noted to the eternal shame of our conceited enthusiasts , who phansying they have got something extraordinary within , contemn and scorn the laudable institutions of the church ; which is an infallible argument of their pride , as this of our saviour's humility . but while he humbled himself thus , god did as highly advance him , adding to this silent show an articulate voice from heaven , the better to assure the by-standers that he was the messias , the son of god. . as for his being tempted of the devil , it has the same meaning that the hardship of his whole life . for being that the kingdome of god on earth , which is the church , was to overcome the kingdome of satan by suffering ; our saviour christ gives himself an example of all manner of trials and troubles , of the most tedious difficulties that could occurre : like a wise and couragious commander animating his souldiers by his own willingness to suffer as deeply as they that he commands . which polyaenus relates to be the stratagem of iphicrates , who when he saw it convenient to draw out his souldiers in a cold frosty night to assault the enemy , and observed their aversness by reason of the bitterness of the season , and the thinness of their clothing , he straitway clad himself more thin then the thinnest of them , and on his bare feet trudged from tent to tent to shew himself to his camp : which did so encourage the souldiers , that they set upon the enterprize without delay under the conduct of so wise and valiant a commander . . and therefore christ in like manner for the incouragement of his followers went before in all manner of difficulties , not onely in poverty , in reproach , and in a constant refusal of all the pleasures , riches and honours of this present world , as being to establish the faith of a better ; but he was given up also to be tempted of the devil , that we may not be dismai'd by such encounters , and know how to behave our selves when we are ingaged in them . for his being transported thus securely in the aire by the hand of satan , like some innocent bird in the talons of a rapacious hawk , and yet not fainting under it , what can it be but an eminent effect of his faith in the living god , which is the very root and inmost original of the divine life ? the same may be said of his miraculous fast ; for himself in answer to the tempter did profess , man lived not onely by bread , but by faith in that word that sustaineth all things . that also is worth the noting that grotius observes upon the place , that this threefold temptation wherewith the devil tempted christ is the most usual and most prevalent that he assalts mankind withall , viz. egestas , confidentia praedestinationis , & spes splendoris humani , ( especially those that have disentangled themselves from the more soft and sensual desires of the flesh : ) and the advantage of christs temptation is , that we are punctually instructed aforehand how we are to oppose . wherefore this history of his temptation is very decorous and agreeable to reason . nor does the relation of the devil 's assalting of the son of god make it the less credible : for it is most likely that he was not sure yet he was such in that sense that we understand the son of god ; and a question whether all the devils be yet convinced that he is what we rightly believe him to be . but for his own curiosity to try what he was , as well as out of a malicious design to pervert him , if he could , he assalted him after this manner in the wilderness . . that of shewing him all the kingdomes of the earth from an exceeding high mountain , seems to have some difficulty in it . for if it was onely a prestigious representation of the glory of the kingdomes of the earth , what needed a transportation of him to the top of a mountain , or at least of a mountain so exceeding high ? but if it was a real view of them , the highest mountain in the world will not enlarge our prospect so as to take in one ordinary kingdome under our sight . but to this i answer , that this cunning prestigiator took the advantage of so high a place to set off his representations the more lively , and to make them the more probable to be true . for the prospect seeming so great to the eye , and ruder phansies imagining the earth a round flat , this old jugler might easily hope that he might delude the carpenters son with so large a show , and perswade him that what was so great , was all ; especially perstringing his sight so , as that the whole horizon should seem full of the pompous varieties of the powers and principalities of the world . . as for the long and solemn fast of christ and his retirement into solitude for fourty dayes , after notice was given from heaven that he was the messias the son of god , this was very seemly and convenient to sharpen the desire of the people to receive him when he did return , and to gain more authority to his doctrine which he was to teach them , and to inculcate to his successors by his example how fit it is to starve the animal life , and quite vanquish all the pleasures of the body , before they take upon them to be instructers in divine matters , which are of eternal concernment to the soul. when as now-a-daies by how much more a mans skin is full treg'd with flesh , blood and natural spirits , and by how much the more eager appetite he has to the things of the world , by so much impatienter he is to get into the pulpit to exercise his voice and lungs , and thereby to approve himself for a preferment : whenas christ would not exercise this office of preaching the kingdome of heaven , before he had at once despised all the riches , pomp and pleasures of the earth . and as his wisdome is discovered in undertaking this solemn abstinence and retirement ; so is also his humility in affecting no innovation therein , but he took up the example of moses and elias , who after conferr'd with him in the mount at his transfiguration : which is the third and last eminent accident which happen'd to our saviour before his passion , and which is not recited to fill up the story , but is of very deep and weighty consequence . . our saviour takes unto him peter , iames and iohn , three of the prime of his apostles , to be spectatours and witnesses of what they should see on the mount , whither he carried them , where he was transfigured before them , his face shining like the sun , and his raiment becoming as white as the light ; where moses also and elias talked with him concerning his death and glorious resurrection . which conference was first a great cordial to animate our saviour the better to go through his heavy sufferings ; and secondly a great satisfaction to as many of the jews as should be converted to christianity , that moses and elias , that is , their law-giver and ther chiefest of their prophets , were abettours to christ in this new dispensation he was to set up in the world ; and thirdly , there was a particular injunction ( even while moses and elias were present with him face to face ) to hearken and yield obedience now to christ as to the beloved son of god , and to let moses and elias go , all things being compleated in him . for a cloud overshadowed them , and a voice came out of the cloud , saying , this is my wel-beloved son , in whom i am well pleased : hear ye him . . and the very vision was a representation of what was to come to pass : for after this , moses and elias vanished , and his disciples , when he had raised them up from the ground , ( for they had fallen flat on their faces out of fear ) lifting up their eyes , saw no man save iesus onely . . fourthly and lastly , it was a very fit and powerful instance to assure men of the immortality of the soul , and to beget a more unshaken belief of the resurrection of christ out of the grave : and therefore christ bad his disciples tell no man of the vision , but reserve it till its due use and time , that is , till christ had risen from the dead , to be added as a further confirmation of that mystery of enjoying of life and immortality in a glorified body , against that dull infidelity of atheisticall men that think the soul of man cannot act unless in the flesh . . in the first and last of these memorable accidents we rehearsed , there is an eminent witness from heaven of the excellency of christs person , to which that nothing remarkable may be omitted , we shall adde also that recorded in john . where christ praying , father , glorify thy name , there came a voice from heaven saying , i have both glorified it , and will glorifie it again . chap. iv. . what miraculous accidents in apollonius his life may seem parallel to these of christs . his superstitious fasting from flesh and abstinence from wine out of a thirst after the glory of foretelling things to come . . apollonius a master of iudiciary astrology , and of his seven rings with the names of the seven planets . . miraculous testimonies given to the eminency of apollonius his person by aesculapius and trophonius how weak and obscure . . the brachmans high encomium of him , with an acknowledgment done to him by a fawning lion. the ridiculous folly of all these testimonies . . we have now gone through the chiefest things that happened to christ in an extraordinary manner before his passion . before we proceed any further , being mindful of our promise , we shall give a glance at what may seem parallel in the life of apollonius . and to the miraculous fast of christ undergone for so sober purposes , which he was carried to by the power of the spirit , i finde nothing to be compared in that famous philosopher , if he deserved so solid a title , but his continual voluntary abstinence from flesh and wine . which needless superstition is coloured with as contemptible an end , that is , a vain affectation of glory by foretelling of things to come ; a faculty that mightily pleases and tickles the natural man : and the affectation thereof shews the levity and pride of apollonius his spirit , as also of his grand instructers in that science the brachmans of india , who having asked damis if he had any skill in divination , and he professing that his study and knowledge reached no further then to things usefull and necessary , laughed him to scorn . . but philostratus writes of apollonius as wholy giving himself up to the study of divination and iudiciary astrology , and how iarchas the chief of the brachmans gave him seven rings with the names of the seven planets inscribed upon them , as also that apollonius wrote four books of this art. which things are a demonstration of his gross ignorance in nature and philosophy , and of the petty temper of his spirit ; and that there was nothing truly divine in him , though the deceived pagans adored him for a god. for those that descend to such arts , it is a sign there is no solid knowledge in them , much less any supernatural principle either in them or assisting to them ; but that their predictions are diabolical , or else that they are mere whiflers and juglers , and have no extraordinary assistance at all . . i shall adde but another parallel and so proceed ; and that is the testimonies concerning the eminencie of their persons , in which there is as great a difference as of their persons themselves . the person of christ being witnessed to by an audible voice from heaven , god affirming thereby to the world that he was his beloved son , and requiring their obedience to him ; but the eminency of apollonius being recommended by none but the ghost of aesculapius and trophonius , whose den he entred , and ( as it became a necromancer ) confabulated there a long time with him , as he did also with achilles at his tombe , who imploy'd him to renew his annual rites and honours in thessalie . but this recommendation of his was not immediate from either , but by their priests , who being informed , the one by a dream , the other by some obscure voice in the temple ( of which there was no witness but the priest himself ) gave out great matters of apollonius . . we may adde also the testimony of the brachmans those famous magicians , whom apollonius so much applauding , they claw'd him again , and concluded among themselves that he was worthy to be honored as a god , both alive and after death . nay we will give him in all to make up the weight . a certain tame lion in aegypt seem'd also to acknowledge his divinity , coming to him as he was sitting in the temple and crouching under him ; who when apollonius told the people that he was that ancient aegyptian king amasis come into a lions body , the beast began to roar , and lament and weep bitterly , as begging his succour in so bad a condition : which apollonius being sensible of , got the lion to be sent to leontopolis a city of aegypt , and there to be kept in such sort as was more sutable to his royal soul. how obscure , confounded and ridiculous are all these testimonies of the eminency of the person of that subtil impostor ! so base and evanid is all humane contrivance against the glory and soveraignty of christ the true son of god. chap. v. . three general observables in christs miracles . . why he several times charged silence upon those he wrought his miracles upon . . why christ was never frustrated in attempting any miracle . . the vanity of the atheists that impute his miracles to the power of imagination . . of the delusive and evanid viands of witches and magicians . . vve come now to what jesus miraculously did in his life-time . we may referre the most of his miracles to these four heads ; his feeding the hungry multitudes : his healing the sick : his raising of the dead , and his dispossessing of devils . in all which you may observe first , that his wonder-working power was exercised upon known and familiar objects , such as often occurre amongst men . for such are hunger , sickness , death , and possession of devils or witchery ; not that i think them both one , but that sundry persons are possessed that way , and it may be most frequently . secondly , that christ puts forth his power no where out of any levity or vain ostentation , but as the necessities of men required it : all his miracles being a perpetual exercise of love and compassion to mankind . to which we might adde also in the third place , what is likewise general to them all , his purpose of glorifying god by them , and laying foundations of faith for the people to believe in him , as the true messias . . which belief yet he would not accelerate too fast , that it might not prevent his suffering ; nor yet accelerate his suffering too fast , before he had done the due preparatory works which he had to do . which made him sometime to seem unwilling to do over-publick miracles , as that at the wedding of turning water into wine ; and after he had fed the multitude , he hid himself that they might not make him king ; and several times when he miraculously healed men with more privacy , he strictly charged them that were thus healed to tell no man ; as well that he might not over-hastily precipitate belief in men , as i have already intimated , as also to keep himself from the rage of the pharisees till the due time of his suffering was at hand . in the mean while his miracles and doctrine was to distill into the mindes of men by degrees , to prepare them for a fuller belief upon his resurrection from the dead . . it would be too voluminous a business to rehearse the story of every particular miracle , and to descant upon it . what we have thus advertised in general , is most considerable and most profitable to be noted . nor need we adde any thing to facilitate the belief of them to those that are not such infidels as not to believe the existence of either god or spirit . for others will very easily conceive that christ being joyn'd with that eternal word that healeth all things , might heal those that are absent either by his word , or by the ministery of angels who were alwaies to attend him . and it is no wonder that christ should never be mistaken in any attempt or presage , he being so livingly united with the eternal wisdome of god , and being of one will and spirit with him , not disturb'd or distracted with any excursions or impetuosities of his own will. . the whifling atheists impute all to the natural power of imagination , and please themselves mightily in the abuse of those passages in the gospel that seem to assert that christ was hindred from working of miracles because of the unbelief of the people , as it is said in the gospel of s. mark , that he could do no mighty works , because of their unbelief . but it was not a natural but moral impossibility ; he could not induce his minde thereto , he being provoked to so just indignation against his own country that despised him . but say in good sadness , poor blind and baffled souls , how can the natural strength of imagination heal the absent ? to say nothing of the present sick of ordinary diseases , such as the leprosy , palsy and dropsie ; who ever cur'd those by mere imagination ? how then shall imagination recover sight even to them that were born blind ? how shall it raise the dead in whom there is no imagination at all ? as in iairus his daughter , and lazarus who had lien four days in the grave . can phansy feed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes ? or four thousand besides women and children with seven loaves and a few little fishes , being almost hunger-starv'd by three dayes recess into the wilderness ? . which things though not so substantially performed , are notwithstanding in some measure imitated by witches and magicians , i mean in their junketings ; whose viands are observed to afford so little satisfaction to nature , that they leave oftentimes the partakers of them as weak and faint almost as if they had eaten nothing ( as bodinus relates of the magical entertainments of that nobleman of aspremont , whose guests by that time they had rid a little space from his house were ready to faint and fall down both horse and man for hunger ; ) and also to be of such a fugitive consistence , that they ordinarily vanished at the taking away of the cloth : whenas in both these miracles many baskets full of the fragments were reserved . chap. vi. . of christs dispossessing of devils . . an account of there being more daemoniacks then ordinary in our saviours time . as first from a possible want of care or skill how to order their mad-men or lunaticks . . the second from the power of the devil being greater before the coming of christ then after . . that not onely excommunication but apostasy from christ may subject a man to the tyranny of satan , as may seem to have fallen out in several of the more desperate sects of this age. . an enumeration of sundry daemoniacal symptoms amongst them . . more of the same nature . . their profane and antick imitations of the most solemn passages in the history of christ. . a further solution of the present difficulties from the premised considerations . . a third and fourth answer from the same of their cure and the conflux of these daemoniacks into one country . . a fifth from the ambiguity of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . the sixth and last answer , that it is not at all absurd to admit there was a greater number of real daemoniacks in christs time then at other times , from the useful end of their then abounding . . as for our saviours dispossessing or ejecting of devils out of men ; as his raising of the dead was a pledge and prefiguration of that power he professed was given him of crowning them that believed on him with life and immortality at the last day , so was this a very proper prelude to that utter overthrow he was to give the kingdome of satan , he being to dispossess him of all places at last . there 's nothing can seem harsh to them that believe there are spirits ( and none but sensuall , profane and foolish men will misbelieve such things ) there is nothing , i say , can seem harsh in this kind of miracle , unless it be the multitude of persons then possessed , or the multitude of devils in one possessed person whose name was legion . . but as for the first , there may be many answers , none whereof want their use and weight . wee 'l begin with what seems of meaner consideration first : where we will not omit to mention that the redundancy of daemoniacks in christs time above what we observe in later ages , may proceed from the differences of the skill and care that was then had of mad-men and lunaticks in iudea and the adjacent countries of the gentiles from whence no small part of them came , and what is used now a-daies . it is , i say , questionable whether they had so good provision for distracted people at those times and in those places for keeping them within and ordering their distemper to the greatest mitigation they were capable of . for the stronger it is , the more effectual allurement is there to bring some evil spirit or other into the body of a man. for he ceasing to be his own , another does the more naturally become the master of him . as he that is not his own man through the soveraignty of drink , will find also many other masters buisy about him ; all the boyes in the town stocking after him , and heightening his intoxication by their apish injuries . but i will not insist upon this . . secondly , it is not so strange that there should be a greater number of possessed in christs time then now , because since christianity the power of the devil is much more curbed . for it is plain that where paganisme rules , the persons of men are more subject to the cruelty of the devil . as appears by what is recorded in history concerning the inhabitants of several countries ; as of madagascar , where the devil afflicts them bodily : in florida he astonishes them with dreadfull apparitions , and cuts their very flesh off in his approaches : they of guiana are beat black and blew by him , and the brasilians so grievously tormented , that they are ready to dy for fear upon the very thought of him . the apostate jews that they fell under his power is the opinion of their own rabbins : and the primitive christians delivered to satan felt to their smart the rigour of his lash . all which may go for a sufficient proof , that the profession of christianity and the worship of the true god in that way that he will be worshipped , is a personal protection from the gross assaults of the devil . . a man might adde further , that not onely they that are duly excommunicated by the church are made obnoxious to his tyranny , but also those that revolt of themselves , and deny the lord that bought them , by their misbelief of the sacred history of the gospel , and the personal office of christ , even of him that died betwixt two thieves at ierusalem . as is notoriously apparent in some of the forlorn and giddy-headed sects of these times , amongst whom , i dare say , a man may find out a greater number of true daemoniacks then christ and his apostles are said to cure . . for to what more rationally then to the possession of these deceiving spirits can be attributed those wild extasies they are in , their falling down dead , the swelling of their bodies and foaming at the mouth , their neglectedness , sordidness , and abhorring from all order and humanity , their antick postures & gestures ? one going in the open marketplace with his head lift on high and his arms spread out , roaring and mouthing out fanatical denunciations ; and another following him at the heels with a soft sneaking pace , his head hanging down as if his nose bled , and his hands pressing his navel , as if he were troubled with the belly-ach ; others creeping on all four like brute beasts , and wallowing and tumbling on the ground like dogs or swine . others taken with the expected power they lay vacant for , were hurried on in a very swift pace on tip-toes , with their hats inverted on their heads , and yet not falling off , and their arms stretched directly upwards with their fore-fingers pointing to the zenith ; and this for so long a space as no ordinary man could doe the like . . adde to this their being troubled with apparitions , their fearfull and hideous howlings and cryings , their wild and extatical singings and frantick dancings , their running naked through towns into churches and private houses , their violent and irresistible shakings to the utter weakening of nature and making their very bodies sore : and all this transacted by a power or spirit which themselves confess distinct from themselves , which also speaks distinctly and audibly in them , and uses their arms and hands to the beating their head and body , which imposes upon them very absurd commands , macerating most , killing some with fasting , tyrannizing over them all in every thing , almost as much as the devil does over the poor indians . . creeping , crouching , licking the dust , eating of butterflies , feeding of nought but crums and bones , such as we fling to dogs , cabbage stalks and leaves of coleworts scattered and cast away by the market-women ; these are smaller services of that imperious fiend within them . but this new guest countermanding the allowable voice of nature so as scarce to suffer a man to take four and twenty hours rest in five and twenty daies , to condemn him to the guidance of every foolish fly that comes in his sight , and so to adjudge him to hold his leg so long and so close to the fire ( the fly guiding him the time ) that it was scorched from the knee to the foot , in such grievous manner that it was not to be cured in less then a quarter of a year ; these are more severe and rigid services of that infernal task-master . besides that , ever and anon this inward voice , and sometimes outward , utters very audibly to them some place or other of scripture to a ridiculous abuse and prophanation of it ; and not that only , but enforces the poor captivated vassal in scorn and contempt of the person of christ to act some remarkable passages in his story , such as his death , and triumph at ierusalem ; the former by iames milner and iohn toldervy , the latter by iames naylor , who had his horse led in triumph by two women trudging in dirt at his entring bristol , with holy , holy , and hosanna's sung to him by the fanatical company that attended him ; garments also in some places being strowed in the way . such wild tricks as these are these deluded souls made to play , to make sport for those aerial goblins that drive them and actuate them . . i might enlarge further upon this matter : but this short glance at things might be enough to induce any indifferent man ( that can at all believe that there is any such thing as witches and possession of evil spirits ) not easily to mistrust but that the distemper of this present age has been such ( and it may be still is ) that if there were any such venerable person as could command them from under this power by which many of them are so madly actuated , there would plainly prove a more plentifull harvest of daemoniacks in these times then in our saviour's ; and a number more besides iohn gilpin and iohn toldervy would acknowledge themselves to have been possessed by the devil . but at least we will gain this reasonable observation from our digression we have made , which will be succedaneous to what we mainly aim'd at , viz. that if one age be so exceeding fanatical above another , why may not one age be as much more daemoniacal then another ? . thirdly , such distracted and epileptical persons , as also daemoniacal , would not be talked of unless they were miraculously cur'd ; which not happening in other ages , they are not so much taken notice of . fourthly , our saviour going from place to place , and his fame flying further then the motion of his person , he was likely to meet with and to have brought to him more of such persons by far from the pagan nations about him , then otherwise at any time could in any likelihood have been taken notice of , though there were in other parts of the world and in other ages as many . . fifthly , those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so called in the scripture , there is no need to take them all in the strictest sense : mad-men , lunaticks or epileptical men , or any men extraordinarily distempered with melancholy , being by the iews deemed and called daemoniacks , the people being as much over-prone to ascribe natural diseases to the devil , as many physicians are to ascribe diabolical distempers and vexations to nature . but christ cured the diseases by his word , ( * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) suffering the people to call them by what title they pleased : as he that has a catholick medicine , is not very curious of either the name or the nature of maladie . but there is no question but that there was a competent number of daemoniacks properly so called . . sixthly and lastly , supposing all so called were properly daemoniacks , and that there were a greater number of them in christ's time and in those parts then there elsewhere has been at any time , what inconvenience is there in this , if providence would so dispense , for so good a purpose ? as christ intimates in the case of the man that was born blinde , where he professeth , that it was not his parents fault nor his own that he was born blind , but it was the will of god it should be so , that he might have the occasion of doing the more glorious miracle . and there wanted nothing then but the divine permission to make so many daemoniacks , no more then there was any thing more requisite but the permission of christ for the gadaren devils to take possession of the swine , and so to hurry them into the midst of the sea. and certainly they are very captious that will not permit so free a soveraignty to the almighty to lay some hardship on some few of his creatures for the general good of the rest , especially when those creatures themselves may have deserved infinitely worse at his hand then he inflicts upon them , and are compensated with a peculiar advantage for their sufferings . some one of these answers or several of them put together are sufficient , if not more then sufficient , to satisfie this first difficulty . chap. vii . . that the history of the daemoniack whose name was legion has no incongruity in it . . that they were a regiment of the dark kingdome that haunted most the country of the gadarens : and that whether we conceive their chieftain alone , or many of his army to possess the man , there is no absurdity therein . . how it came to pass so many devils should clutter about one sorry person . . the reason of christs demanding of the daemoniacks name , and the great use of recording this history . . the numerositie of the devils discovered by their possession of the swine . . several other reasons why christ permitted them to enter into the gadarens heards . . that christ offended against the laws of neither compassion nor iustice in this permission . . the second difficultie , concerning that fierce daemoniack that had so many devils in him , that he thought fit to call himself by the name of legion , as being possest by such a multitude of unclean spirits , though it bears at the first view the face of an extravagancie , yet if it be throughly examined it will prove a very weighty history ; all being found congruous to the nature of things , and decorous and beseeming so divine a person as our saviour , who was to conquer the devil and ruine his kingdome , as we see he has in some measure done at this very day . that there should be such an army of spirits in one place ought not to seem strange to him that will believe the sight and report of the young man whose eyes were opened at the praier of elisha , whereupon he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about the prophet . nor is it any real incongruity , that there should be a multitude of daemons or spirits within the compass of one mans body , though it may be so many of that legion were not entred into him , but that he was actuated principally by the captain thereof , he being rebuked by christ in the singular number , and he answering as one in the name of many . which we may as well understand of those that were near him and followed him , and had some maligne influence its likely on the daemoniack by way of obsession , as of such only as were entred into him and properly did possess him . . for it seems by their petition to christ , they were a regiment of the dark kingdome , that use to rove and ramble about in the countrey of the gadarens , out of which they had no mind to depart ; those parts being more obnoxious to the infernal powers , they abounding so with apostate iews , who being fallen from the holy covenant became more subject to the tyranny of the devil . wherefore there is no necessity of granting● a whole legion of fiends in this daemoniack , but a competent multitude or some chief one of the legion . though without any violence to their natures , there may many lodge in the body of a man ; these spirits being able to draw themselves out of their usual extent into a far narrower compass , and perhaps wholly to quit their own vehicle to make use of anothers ; and so many may unite with the blood and spirits of a man. . nor need it seem so harsh that so great a number should be busied about one sorry wight . for that military word legion suggests unto us a very fit and easie solution of this difficultie , viz. that this did not happen primarily , but by consequence ; the chief commander of this dark regiment having his usual haunt and recourse to him , & therefore the obsession of this numerous rabble is only by sequel : as if some captain should make his stay for his own pleasure in some blind solitary cottage in the field ; it would be no wonder to see the house beset with the multitude of his souldiers , they being there in attendance on him , rather then in any satisfaction or advantage to themselves , there being not a proportionable booty for so great a company ; but the place notwithstanding would not fail to be foully pestred by them . after this sort it far'd with this miserable daemoniack , who could not but be even stifled with the throng of this hellish legion . . nor is it any question but that christ knew how strong they were and numerous : and therefore that the greater glory may accrew to himself and to him that sent him , he makes them confess their numerosity by asking the possessed his name . and it was more fit that the power of christ should be demonstrated and the divinity of his person , in chasing a whole hoast of devils relating to one possessed , then that there should be as many possessed as there were devils , for him to shew his power on : for the victory is never the less , ( the devils being nothing the weaker for not appearing harnessed with humane flesh ) and a great deal of inconvenience to mankind was declined ; besides the great noise and turbulency in the world which would have risen thereupon , which christ ever avoided . but it was fit that this history should be recorded as well as transacted , that the church might have the more strong faith in the son of god , who even while he was in the flesh had such noble victories over the powers of the dark kingdome , putting to flight many thousands of devils at once . . the truth whereof was very handsomely assured by christs permitting what these unclean spirits desired , which was to goe into a heard of swine , which , the text saies , was about two thousand ; which was a very fair pledge of their numerosity to them that will not cavil ; these impure spirits , as both trismegist and psellus have observed , pleasing themselves to dabble in the bloud of brutes as well as of men , and therefore to lodge themselves in their veins and arteries . and malice being as sweet to them as the refreshing of their other foul appetite , every souldier of this dark regiment would be very nimble at seizing of his prey ; and so they dividing their booty amongst them , every one reaped the satisfaction of his own foul and malicious mind , by entring the swine and hurrying them into the midst of the sea : which they indeed had not been able to doe , had not christ permitted them . but christ was not at all overshot in this concession or permission to effect their project : for though they desired it for mischief sake , that they might incense the gadarens against him , yet he plainly outwitted them in their project , it being more serviceable to him then to them . . for hereby was the foulness and mischievous virulency of the devils more plainly demostrated . whence his mercy to the possessed was the more fully illustrated : and by the loss of the swine the temper of the gadarens was also discovered , the mosaical abstinence seasonably coutenanced against the apostate jews of that country , the swinish nature of men aenigmatically perstringed , and the divine power of christ , as i said , who alone could deal with such numerous troops of infernal spirits , manifested to the world ; and the mouth of such frivolous allegorists stopped , as would make the devils that christ is said to cast out of the possessed , to be no essential spirits , but only deprav'd affections , as calvin observes upon the place . wherefore there is nothing of levity , injury or any extravagancy in the whole story , but all circumstances therein are sober , just and usefull . . for christ was not bound to hinder the loss of the swine , their perishing being for so publick a good and of so great importance , as to assure us of the vast power he has who shall one day be judge , and do final vengeance upon all the infernal powers at once ; and that , though he be so full of compassion towards mankind as to lay down his life for the world , that through belief in him he may save them from eternal destruction , yet no softness or effeminacy of spirit , or unseasonable pity to the brute creatures , shall hold his hands from doing execution upon unbelieving and obdurate persons ; but that as here the devils and the swine were plunged together into the bottom of the sea , so a deludge of fire shall be poured out upon the earth at the last judgement , wherein all terrestriall animals together with the devils and the damned shall burn in flames unquenchable . chap. viii . . of christ's turning water into wine . . the miraculous draught of fish. . his whipping the money-changers out of the temple . . his walking on the sea , and rebuking the winde . . his cursing the fig-tree . . the meaning of that miracle . . the reason why he expressed his meaning so aenigmatically . . that both the prophets and christ himself ( as in the ceremonies he used in curing the man that was born blind ) spoke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in typicall actions . . the things that were typified in those ceremonies christ used in healing the blinde ; as in his tempering clay and spittle . . a further and more full interpretation of the whole transaction . . some brief touches upon the prophesies of christ. . besides those miracles which are referrable to the four general heads we noted , there be also other single examples of different natures : such are his turning water into wine ; the miraculous draught of fish ; his driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple ; his walking on the sea , and his rebuking of the winds . to all which it is common with the rest , that they were not done out of any vanity or ostentation , but out of a principle of love and kind affection , being alwaies invited by some present exigency to shew his wonder-working power . as in that of turning water into wine at a wedding in cana of galilee , which he did at the solicitation of his mother , though with some reluctancy , because of the envy of the pharisees that sought to kill him ; as also out of a principle of humanity , they being at a loss for wine ( more company its likely for iesus his sake coming to the marriage-feast then was expected ; ) nay i may say out of a frame of spirit becoming the divinity of his person . for what is more divine or god-like , then himself being utterly exempted from the pleasures of this life and the knowledge of the nuptial bed , yet wholly laying aside all superciliousness and exprobrations to others , to countenance necessary marriage , gratifying their lawfull desires ( who could not well be disentangled from these things ) in the ordinary and natural enjoyments of the body ? . the miraculous draught of fish simon pulled up after he had cast his net at our saviour's appointment , it was partly a compensation of their long toil all night , when they caught nothing , and partly a prefiguration of peter's excellent success when he was become a fisher of men . . that miracle of whipping the money-changers out of the temple , ( for so grotius will have it to be esteemed , christ performing it , as he writes , nullâ vi externâ , solâ divinâ virtute venerabilis ) though it seem full of unwarrantable passion or fury , yet the provocation was very just , and the principle from whence this fit of zeal did flow , the best that could be , viz. a dear regard to the despised gentiles , ( whose atrium or place of worship the jews did thus contemptuously prophane ) and a just indignation against the iews , who out of a fond pride and conceit of their being the seed of abraham , though they prov'd themselves the sons of the devil , scorn'd and despised the poor gentiles for whom christ was to die ; and it was an act full of love and heroical affection to right them thus while he lived . . his walking on the sea it was to come to his disciples that were toiling and rowing against the winde and the stream , he having in all likelihood not the convenience of taking boat any where to come unto them . and lastly , his rebuking the wind and the sea in a mighty storm , necessity plainly extorted that miracle , the ship being covered with waves , and his disciples , as they conceived , ready to be cast away , which made them awaken him , crying out , lord save us , we perish . so natural , decorous and becoming are all the actions and miracles of christ. . there is only one behinde , instantia monodica , as a man may call it , an example not parallel'd in the whole history of the gospel , which is the cursing of the fig-tree : the meaning whereof has puzzled many , as the narration it self has scandalized some ; as if this act was guilty not only of levity but of a ridiculous kinde of ferocity , with a semblance of injustice , if injustice can be committed against a tree . for was there any reason that a tree should be cursed for not bearing fruit , when the time of year was not yet for the bearing thereof ? this seems very odd and preposterous . but if it be rightly understood , there is nothing more grave , more sober , nor more weightily mysterious . . for my own part , i make no question but that the genuine meaning of it is this , and what it signifies it sets out to the very life , viz. that the most acceptable and desireable fruit of the everlasting righteousness was not then found in the iudaical dispensation : nay , i add further , that it was never intended that that tree should bring forth any such fruit , but only the fair fig-leaves of an external and ceremonial righteousness , and a more overly and legal kind of morality ; but the more perfect fruits of the regenerating spirit were not to be found there , though christ came into the world to exprobrate to them the want thereof , and so to put a period to the iudaical dispensation , so as that it should quite wither away and fall to nothing , as we find it come to pass at this very day . which consideration , amongst others that occur in scripture , more evidently confirms what we finde true in effect , that according to the eternal counsell of god , christ was mainly intended for the gentiles , and that breaking this shell of iudaisme in which he was brooded , under so many types and shadows , he should take his flight thence , and after spread his wings from one end of the earth to the other . . but this mystery having something of seeming harshness in it to men of less profound minds , such was the sweetness and inoffensiveness of our saviour's temper , that he would neither scandalize them , nor grate too hard against the iudaical oeconomy , which that nation so highly reverenced , and therefore recorded this truth only in this enigmatical miracle . . and thus to speak * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was not only usual with the prophets , but practised also by our saviour himself in other cases as well as in this : as in the manner of his healing him that was born blinde , john . where the ceremonies he useth seem very uncouth and strange before one knows the meaning of them , but rightly understood they must be acknowledged admirably fit for the purpose : i mean , not for curing of the blinde , ( for what can clay and spittle and the water of a pool avail for the restoring of sight to one that was born blind ? ) but for mysteriously setting out some grand truths concerning iesus . . as that he was the son of god , or that eternal word , whereby god created the world and framed man of the earth , in token whereof he tempers clay and spittle , he being about to rectifie and amend the workmanship of his own hands . to which erasmus seems plainly to allude in his paraphrase upon the place ; * ejusdem autem autoris est restituere quod perierat , qui condider at quod non erat . besides another truth of very great importance which is set out to the very life in this typical cure , viz. that we are to expect the renovation of our minds and our regeneration from that power that created us ; that no man can come to christ , as he is a visible person , unless the father , that is , the eternal divinity , draw him , or , as the apostle speaks to the corinthians , that no man can say that iesus is the lord , but by the holy ghost . . now i say , that christ's tempering clay and spittle does emblematize the eternal deity that created all things ; and his acting first upon the blinde man & so sending of him to the pool of siloam ( by which undoubtedly is meant shilo or the messias ) this does plainly figure out the forementioned truths ; that those that do come to christ , and faithfully adhere to him , are prepared and given to him of god ; and that by faith in him , they are purg'd and purified from all blindness and filthiness by the assistance of that spirit which is promised to all that believe in him : according to what christ himself has pronounced , he that believeth on me , out of his heart shall flow streams of living waters : which he understands of the spirit , of which these waters of siloam are therefore a very fit figure or emblem , they fitly denoting even from the very name , as i have already intimated , the clearing and healing spirit of christ , who is the shilo or siloam wherewith we are to be washed and cleansed from that foulness and earthly-mindedness which we had contracted in the state of nature or first creation , before the act of regeneration has passed upon us . . we have considered the miracles of christ ; let us give a short glance on his prophesies . in which , that which is mainly considerable is , that they are very few . which i look upon as a reprehension and reproach of that natural itch in mankind to divinations and predictions ; of which impostors usually much boast , and a nation of america , though more atheistical then all the rest , are so vehemently set upon , that they often even grow mad again with that study . but very little fell from our saviour's mouth by way of prophesie , but what was in a manner of indispensable concernment to be foretold . such as his own sufferings and resurrection , the destruction of the city , & the general iudgment . he exercised also his power of divination in his conference with the woman of samaria : but his applications there were so serious that he forgot the sense of hunger , being more pleased with the attempts of her conversion and her country-men , then with the most delicate junkets that could be set before him . he foretold also who should betray him : but it was to demonstrate that both his betraying and all his sufferings else , they being foreseen , might have been avoided ; and therefore that he underwent them willingly . to which also those predictions tend , when i am lifted up , i shall draw all men unto me ; as also of the good shepheard laying down his life for his sheep , and then presently adding , and other sheep i have which are not of this fold , meaning the gentiles who were to be brought in by his death . which is a plain demonstration that christ suffered death * voluntarily out of his entire love to the world , and that he knew aforehand what an effectual instrument his passion would prove for the conversion of the gentiles to the true knowledge of god. chap. ix . . the miracles of apollonius compared with those of christ. . his entertainment at a magical banquet by iarchas and the rest of the brachmans . . his cure of a dropsy and of one bitten by a mad dog . . his freeing of the city of ephesus from the plague . . his casting a devil out of a laughing daemoniack , and chasing away a whining spectre on mount caucasus in a moon-shine night . . his freeing menippus from his espoused lamia . . we have now done with the actions of christ , such as were more extraordinary and miraculuos : we will proceed to his passion after we have made a short comparison of the most famous exploits of apollonius with these of our saviour , according to those heads we have already insisted upon ; his miraculous feeding of the people ; his curing diseases ; his casting out devils ; his raising of the dead , and his predictions of things to come . . as for the first , i do not remember any example of it in apollonius his life ; only philostratus writes that apollonius himself was entertained by the brachmans at such a banquet as was provided in a miraculous manner , together with the king of media , where three-sooted tables were brought in and plac'd in the midst without the help of any mans hand ; as also the floor spread with odoriferous herbs and flowers ; and bread , wine , fruits and sweet-meats on plates conveighed through the air and set upon those tables without any servitours to carry them . which story being so very like the junketings of witches , and the behaviour of iarchas and his brother brachmans being so full of scorn and insolency towards the king and the very chief of his retinue , his brother i mean and his sons , may fully confirm any man that they were no better then magicians ; nor their great favourite and disciple apollonius any other then a wizzard and a necromancer , as his conjuring up of the ghost of achilles does further prove . . as for his cures , i do remember but three , the first of which seems to have more of the power of nature and morality then of a miracle ; he curing a young man of a dropsie by precepts of temperance in the temple of aesculapius . the other was of one bitten by a mad dog , who was so distempered therewith , that he would bark , goe on all four and couch on the ground like a dog : but it looks so like a piece of witchery , and apollonius was so punctual in discovering what the inhabitants of the place ( which was tarsus ) could not inform him of , as of the colour , shaggedness and other qualities of the dog , as also where he was , that it is a suspicion that he that cured the disease did inflict it himself , or rather his familiars for him ; and so it is likely that the dog as well as the man was bewitched . for he came along from the river-side ( where he was shivering as if he had an ague ) so soon as damis had whispered in his ear that apollonius would speak with him : who told the people also while he was cherishing him and stroaking him , that the soul of telephus the mysian was entred into him ; which is a further confirmation of our conjecture . but indeed all the circumstances of the story are either ludicrous and ridiculous , or else impious ; as his making the dog cure the man by licking of him , and then himself curing the dog by praying to the river cydnus and slinging the dog into the stream . . but the most famous cure of all is that , when he freed the city of ephesus from the plague . but it being discovered already what a kind of man this apollonius was , viz. a mere magician , i cannot but suspect that the case is the same with that former , and that the whole city suffered so direfull a disease as the devouring pestilence by the hand of the devil , to get the greater renown to apollonius that stout hyperaspistes of paganisme , who for the advancing of his own credit was to free them from this raging evil . of which opinion of ours there are two grand arguments : the one his assembling the people in the theatre , and there incouraging them to stone an old ragged begger , which he perswaded them was the plague , but it seems it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a destroying daemon ; as it appeared by his eyes as he was a stoning , and by that delusion of a shagged dog as big as a lion found under the heap of stones , when the people had thought to have seen him there in his former shape of a patch'd begger . the other argument is the ephesians erecting the image of hercules apotropaeus in the place where this old mendicant was stoned , which is a sign that pagan idolatry was the upshot of the plot . wherefore i look upon these two last cures as done out of suspicable principles and upon extravagant objects . . as for his casting out devils , i do not remember any example thereof saving one , and that was of a young man of corcyra who was a laughing daemoniack , out of whom at athens , by a many repeated menaces and imperious railings , he at last ejected the evil spirit , who for a sign of his departure made a great image tumble down from the royal porch in the city with a great noise and clatter . to this head we may refer also , though by an improper reduction , his conjuring of a phantasme that appeared to him and his fellow-travellers as they were journying on mount caucasus in a bright moon-shine night : which phantasme went before them sometime in one shape and sometime in another ; but by many vehement chidings , by many railings , reproaches and execrations , was made to disappear at last , and to depart , crying and whining at the discourteous usage . . we may add to these the story of menippus and the lamia : who in the form of a beautifull young woman made love to menippus , and at last perswaded him to marry her . but apollonius being at the nuptials , discovered the illusion , and by reproaching the bride , made , i think , the whole edifice , ( which was supposed to be plac'd near corinth ) i am sure the furniture and riches thereof , all the moveables , the tapestry , the gold and silver vessels , nay the pages , servants and officers of this fair lady to vanish at once , and her self only left was compelled to confess her self a foul carnivorous fiend . so either frivolous or exorbitant are all the miraculous exploits of this deified impostor . but all the objects of our saviour's miracles were , as i at first noted , more obvious and familiar : which is the greater assurance as well of the innocency and sincerity of his person , as of the truth of his history . chap. x. . apollonius his raising from death a young married bride at rome . . his divinations , and particularly by dreams . . his divinations from some external accidents in nature . . his prediction of stephanus killing domitian from an halo that encircled the sun . astrology and meteorology covers to pagan superstition and converse with devils . . a discovery thereof from this prediction of his from the halo compared with his phrantick ecstasies at ephesus . . a general conclusion from the whole parallel of the acts of christ and apollonius . . that exploit at rome , which was the raising of a young woman to life that was carrying to be buried , had been indeed a more solid miracle , if it had been any at all . but the time not being set down how long she had been dead , it was most likely that it was no more then is competible to a trance . but the knowledge of the devil extending further then his power , he might easily inform apollonius what a seasonable opportunity he had to doe a seeming miracle . but our saviour's raising of lazarus after he had been four daies buried , gives sufficient credit to his other two miracles of that kind , that they were reall and true . this re-enlivening therefore of the new-married bride at rome is rather to be referred to the predictions or divinations of apollonius then to his miracles , which were very few in comparison of the other : of which yet we will give you some examples , for it would not be worth the while to reckon up all , nor to reherse these at large , but only briefly to name them . . such therefore was the discovery of the unclean lust of timasion his mother-in-law in aegypt , and the prediction of a foul act in an eunuch upon one of the king of babylon's concubines ; as also of saving pharion at alexandria from being executed amongst other robbers that were led along to die , by keeping the executioner in discourse till a messenger on horseback galloping with all speed seconded apollonius his divination with a clear demonstration of pharion's innocency . you may add to these his divinations by dreams , as that of the suppliant fishes that besought the dolphin's favour , which he interpreted to the advantage of the eretrians , for whom he interceded with the the king of babylon : and another by which he was diverted from going to rome till he had seen candy ; a woman with a rich crown upon her head , who told him she was the nurse of iupiter , embracing him in his sleep , and desiring him that he would first come to converse a while with her before he went to rome : which woman he interpreted to be crete , where iupiter was born and brought up . . there were also several of his divinations which he seemed to gather from some external accident in nature . such was that from the chirping of the sparrows in the midst of his speech to the ephesians , whereupon he broke off , to tell them that not far off a young man had spilt a sack of corn in the street . and that from the lioness the hunters had slain in babylonia , as apollonius was in his journey to india , which having eight young lions in her belly , he presaged from thence that it would be a year and eight months till their return . a third from a terrible thunder at an eclipse at rome ; whereupon he lifting up his eyes toward heaven , said that it were a great marvail indeed if this should end in nought . but his meaning was known by the after-clap , for nero's cup was struck out of his hand , as he was drinking , by a flash of lightning , while he sate at table . a fourth from a monstrous birth in syracuse , a woman of quality being brought to bed of a child with three heads , which he interpreted of the three roman emperors , galba , otho and vitellius . . the fifth and last we shall mention is an halo which was observed about the sun in greece ; which meteor being round like a crown , but much obscuring the light of the sun , apollonius his prediction was , that one stephanus ( which signifies a crown ) should kill the emperour domitian . but for my own part , i conceive that the observation of prodigies can as little help a man in such punctual predictions , as of the figurations of the starres : but that these things are pretenses and covers of a baser art , or rather of some wicked superstition and unlawfull familiarity with the apostate spirits . which a notorious circumstance of the event of this last prediction will demonstrate to the indifferent . for while domitian was a murdering at rome , apollonius being at ephesus , sees the transaction of the business so plainly as if he had been there , and at the very hour it was done encouraged stephen to the act ; and starting backwards and forwards , and staring terribly with his eyes , bad him stab the tyrant , as if he had been present by to assist . which phrantick and gastly ecstacy is an argument that he was then possessed of the devil that raised this theatre of things in his mind , and therefore in all likelihood foretold him them also before they came to pass . . wherefore briefly to conclude concerning the extraordinary acts of christ and apollonius ; in the one there is nothing but what is sound and necessary , of weighty and usefull importance and from a divine and irreprehensible principle ; in the other nothing but what is either vainly affected , slight and frivolous , or else infernal and diabolical ; that of pharion not expected , which looks the most plausible of them all . for that divination is no more then is performed by ordinary witches ; and that act of justice which was the reskuing of the innocent from death , though good in it self , was prostituted by him to base purposes , to the gaining of credit to a grand restorer of paganisme , and industrious upholder of the kingdome of the devil . chap. xi . . a comparison of the temper or spirit in apollonius with that in christ. . that apollonius his spirit was at the height of the animal life , but no higher . . that pride was the strongest chain of darkness that apollonius was held in , with a rehersal of certain specimens thereof . . that his whole life was nothing else but an exercise of pride and vain-glory , boldly swaggering himself into respect with the greatest whereever he went. . his reception with phraotes king of india , and iarchas head of the brachmans . . his intermedling with the affairs of the roman empire , his converse with the babylonian magi and aegyptian gymnosophists , and of his plausible language and eloquence . . that by the sense of honour and respect he was hook'd in to be so active an instrument for the kingdome of darkness . . that though the brachmans pronounced apollonius a god , yet he was no higher then the better sort of beasts . . we have made a parallel of the miracles and prophesies of christ and apollonius , and have spent our judgments upon them ; the truth of which censure that it may the better appear to all , we shall briefly compare their temper or frame of spirit . . which i confess is as brave in apollonius as the animal life will reach unto . but that animal life at the best falls short of the saving knowledg of god , and is but that which in a manner is common to beasts , devils and men. this therefore we will acknowledge to be in apollonius a generous sense of political iustice , a severe profession of temperance , and a great affectation of knowledge , especially of things to come . but as for political iustice and civil agreement and concord , which he seems often to be very sensible of , and earnestly to exhort the cities to , where he went , no less then this can be entertained in the very kingdome of satan ; which , if it were divided against it self , could not stand . and for his vehement affectation of knowledge , it is evident that it is a mere branch of the natural life , and such as is as competible to the apostate spirits , nay more by far then to an ordinary good man : and apollonius his temperance aiming but at this which is so low and vile , how far short does it fall of what is truely heavenly and divine ? this therefore is observable in him , that if he quitted one entanglement of the animal life , it was the more fully and willingly to be fettered by another . . but the strongest chain of darkness that he was caught in , is that of pride , which though it be made of more subtil and small links , yet holds us longer captive then any . this is that which blemishes the history of his life more then any immorality else whatsoever . for to what but this can be reduced that scornfull and ridiculous prayer he made to apollo at antioch , that he would turn the countrey-people into cypress-trees , that the winde taking their branches , they might at least by that means make some sound , they being as yet quite mute and not able to discourse with so sage a philosopher ? to what but this can we impute that magnificent answer he gave the keeper of the bridge as he passed into mesopotamia , when he was demanded what merchandizes he brought ? to whom he reply'd , that he brought along with him iustice , temperance , fortitude , continence , tolerance , magnanimity and constancy . he addes modesty to the rest ; but it was ill plac'd in so flaunting a display of his own praises . to what but this can you referre his cavilling with the sober questions ask'd him by the captain of the guards on the confines of babylon , where he takes upon him as if himself was king of every country he came into ? . but what need we recite particulars ? his whole life being nothing else but a lofty strutting on the stage of the earth , or an industrious trotting from one nation of the world to another , to gather honour and applause to himself , by correcting the customes of the heathen , or renewing their fallen rites , and playing the uncontrollable reformer whereever he pleas'd : which is a very pleasant thing to flesh and bloud . besides the bold visits he gave to princes and potentates , with the greatest confidence and ostentation of his own vertues that could be imagined , making himself the measure of others worth , insomuch that he would not do the ordinary homage to bardanes king of babylon , til he was certified whether his vertues deserved it or no. with whom , as also with other princes , he treated of political affairs , not detrecting to intermeddle with the present administration of justice . but this unexpected audacity of his proved ever succesful , he alwaies , by i know not what luck or power , swaggering himself into respect , by despising the both pomp and persons of the greatest . so that he was ever haile fellow well met with the highest kings and emperours , they being ever taken with great admiration of his wisdome . and therefore bardanes is brought in in the story courting of him at last , and earnestly intreating the beggerly philosopher to take his lodging in his palace , shewing him all the glory and pomp of his kingdome , offering him great summes of gold and precious stones . the former whereof though he refused , yet he could not well abstain from fingering the latter , under pretence forsooth that there was some strange philosophick virtue in them , as also that they should be an offering to the gods at their return into their own country . . so also phraotes king of india is said to receive him with very great respect , he carrying him to bathe himself in his royal bath , and after receiving him at a feast , and placing him next himself , above his nobles . beside the great honour he had from iarchas and the rest of the brachmans , to whom the king of india wrote in his behalf . where in conference with those sages he was plac'd in phraotes his chair of state , forbad also to rise up at the coming in of the king of media ; with whom ( at that banquet which i have already mentioned ) he having some contestation , the king became at last so much his friend , that he was almost uncivilly importunate to see him at his own court in media at his return . . adde unto these his busy intermedling in the affairs of the roman empire ; his large political conferences with vespasian ; his abetting conspiracies against nero and domitian ; his learned discourses with the babylonian magi , concerning whom he told damis , that they were not so perfect but that they wanted the benefit of some of his instructions , as he confessed that something he learned from them ; his campling and cavilling with the gymnosophists , who though they seemed not so great wizzards , yet were not less vertuous then either the brachmans or himself ; and lastly , his plausible language and great eloquence , he making in several places very winning orations and exhortations to morality and the observance of the most behooffull laws and institutes , such as would tend most to civility and the peace and security of the people . . from all which it is most evident , that a naturall sense of honour and gallantry was the wing and spirit that made apollonius such a great stickler in his time ; and that , he being of a lofty and generous nature apt to reach out at high things , the kingdome of darkness hook'd him in , to make an instrument of him for their own turn , and so to dress up paganism in the best attire they could , to make it , if it were possible , to vie with christianity : and that there should be nothing wanting to this corrival of christ , the indian brachmans pronounced him of that eminency , that he deserved to be reputed and honoured as a deity , both living and dead , as i have already related to you . . but if the excellency of his person be better examined , he will be found so far from being in the rank of a god , that there can be no more acknowledged of him then that he was of the better sort of beasts , that is , that he was a mere natural man , onely dressed up and disguised by his pythagorick diet and habit , and a magical power of doing of miracles ; as is demonstrable from the whole tenour of his story , there being nothing in it that relishes or savours what is above the animal life . from whence we may safely conclude there is nothing in him divine . chap. xii . . the contrariety of the spirit of christ to that of apollonius . . that the history of apollonius , be it true or false , argues the exquisite perfection of the life of christ , and the transcendency of that divine spirit in him that no pagan could reach by either imagination or action . . the spirit of christ how contemptible to the mere natural man , and how deare and precious in the eyes of god. . how the several humiliations of christ were compensated by god with both sutable and miraculous priviledges and exaltations . . his deepest humiliation , namely , his suffering the death of the cross , compensated with the highest exaltation . . wherefore we shall find the life of our saviour quite contrary to his , there being nothing recorded in him that is plausible to flesh and bloud , no splendour of parentage , no streams of eloquence , no favour of potentates , no affectation of any peculiarity to himself in any thing ; but being every where reproached and despised , he ceased not to do good without any mans applause . and whereas the very spirit and life of all apollonius his actions is a gallant sense of glory , which the devil befool'd him by ; so that which perpetually breath'd in the actions of our saviour was a passive , loving , profound spirit of humility , which is the most certain character of the divine life , of any thing that is . . so that let the history of apollonius be wholy true , or partly false , or wholy false , it is all one to me . for if it be true , this grand example of divine vertue , as he is pretended , falls infinitely short of the truth of the divine life manifested in christ , there being indeed nothing found in apollonius that is truely divine . but if it be a figment , in whole or in part , how transcendent then is that divine worth in christ , and how lovely and illustrious is the beauty of his image , that the pens and pencils of the most learned and accomplish'd pagans cannot draw one line thereof , nor give one touch or stroke near his resemblance ? . and indeed how should it ever come into the minde of a mere natural man to think of an humble , passive , soul-melting , self-afflicting and self-resigning divinity lodging in any person ; or if it did , that there was any such great price upon that spirit more then on that which seems to the world more gallant and generous ? but certainly this is more precious in the eyes of god then all things in the world beside ; and whatsoever injury is done to this , it is like the touching of the apple of his own eye . and so tender was he over our saviour , in whom this was so transcendently found , that he ever compensated his sufferings with a proportionable triumph , and his willing submissions and debasements of himself with an answerable exaltation . . and therefore his humble birth he honoured with the musick of a quire of angels from heaven , and the homage of the wise men from the east who brought presents to him , as to a new-born king. so his long fasting in the desart was compensated by the power not onely of curing diseases , but of turning water into wine , and of miraculously feeding of multitudes in the wilderness . as also his refusing of all the pomp and glory of the world , ( which was shewn him from the top of a mountain ) by the transfiguration of his person on the top of mount tabor into so great a glory as all the speciosities of the world could not equalize , his face shining as the sun , and his garments being bright as the light. and lastly , his being carried from place to place by the hand of satan , as an innocent lamb in the talons of an eagle , this temptation also was amply recompensed by having a palpable power over the kingdome of satan , and dispossessing daemoniacks , and putting to flight many thousands of devils at once , as you heard concerning him whose name was legion . . but the emergency of the greatest honour that accrew'd to him was from the deepest sufferings , even from his bitter passion on the cross : which was fully remunerated by so glorious a resurrection and ascension , by his session at the right hand of god , and his exaltation above all principalities and powers , whether in heaven or earth ; he being made head and soveraign over men and angels , and indued with a power of crowning all believers with a glorious immortality at the last day . of all which we shall speak in order , shewing the fitness and reasonableness of every thing in its place . chap. xiii . . the ineffable power of the passion of christ , and other endearing applications of him , for winning the world off from the prince of darkness . . of his preceding sufferings and of his crucifixion . . how necessary it was that christ should be so passive and sensible of pain in his suffering on the cross ; against the blasphemy of certain bold enthusiasts . . their ignorance in the divine life , and how it alone was to triumph in the person of christ unassisted by the advantages of the animal or natural . . that if christ had died boldly and with little sense of pain , both the solemnity and usefulness of his passion had been lost . . that the strange accidents that attended his crucifixion were prefigurations of the future effects of his passion upon the spirits of men in the world. . which yet hinders not but that they may have other significations . . the third and last reason of the tragical unsupportableness of the passion of christ , in that he bore the sins of the whole world. . the leguleious cavils of some conceited sophists that pretend that it is unjust with god to punish the innocent in stead of the guilty . . the false ground of all their frivolous subtilties . . first therefore as concerning his passion , i say , it is an enravishing consideration to take notice how this humble candidate for so great an empire as i have described , applies himself to his design , giving an infallible proof not onely of his power , that he is able to protect , but of his dear affection and entire love to his people , in that he can undergo so horrid agonies in their behalf ; and being to win the kingdomes of the earth out of the possession of the devil , how he uses no other engine then the displaying of his own nature , and the endearing loveliness and benignity of his own spirit , to shame and confound the ugliness and detestableness of his usurping competitor . wherefore he did not onely tread counter to the wayes of satan in humility and purity and continual beneficency in his life-time : but further to shew the vast disparity or discrepancy betwixt that old tyrant and this gracious prince that is so succeed ; whenas the devil , as you have already heard , inflicted unsupportable penances upon his abused vassals , ingaging them to cut and slash their own flesh , and frantickly to dismember themselves , to whip themselves with knotted cords or stinging nettles , to wound themselves with sharp flints , & to fast & macerate themselves so as to pine away in desarts , or break their necks down some steep rock or precipice , as acosta reports of them ; christ , quite conttary to this , is so far from such like tyranny and cruel and handling of others , that to satisfie us concerning the justly-suspected wrath of his father , he undergoes all this load himself , to win us off to a more perfect and chearful obedience to his holy precepts , by so great and sensible an engagement . the weight and power of his scepter being mainly to be felt in the sense of love , which is the strongest ●ie imaginable even to natural ingenuity . but the power of the old serpent was exercised in fear and terrour and despightfull scorn upon poor distressed mankind . there being this great advantage therefore of winning of the hearts of men from the kingdome of darkness to the power of god by christ's afflictions and sufferings ; it is no wonder that he submitted himself to them , though they were so unspeakably grievous . . and indeed what can be imagined more grievous then that lively representation of his bitter passion ( unless the passion it self , ) when in the mount of olives , at his devotions , he was in such an agony , that he sweat as it were great drops of bloud that fel from his face to the ground ? besides the despightfull mockings and spittings in his face , with cruel and bloody scourgings : the consideration whereof would drive a man to any hardship to approve himself faithfull and thankfull to so loving a saviour . what then will the contemplation of his direfull and tragical crucifixion ? where so divine a person , nay , where the son of god in the flesh , being disgracefully placed betwixt two thieves , his holy and spotless humanity was so deeply pierced with the present sense and real agony of death , that the weight and burthen thereof enforced him to cry out , eloi , eloi , my god , my god , why hast thou forsaken me ? and here he may appeal from the cross to all the world in the words of ieremiah , behold and see , if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow . . which sorrow and passion had it not been as real and as great as it is recounted , how slight and ludicrous a matter would the mystery of christianity be ? how prophane therefore and execrable are those wretches , that would turn that to the disgrace of christ , which is the glory of the gospel ? as if our saviour was less perfect by being thus passive and so sensible of pain . but it is plain that these bold and insolent enthusiasts , which boast so much of perfection as to equalize themselves or their blind guides with christ , nay , prefer them before him , i say , it is plain they are so ignorant , that they doe not know in what the true perfection consists . . for i have already declared , that in the person of christ , that only which was truly divine was to have the triumph and victory , unassisted with any thing that is precious and praise-worthy in the eyes of the world . and the true perfection approveable before god is found only in that which is divine , not natural or animal , such as would be applauded by a mere carnal man. and such is stoicism and spartanism , a power as well relished by wicked men and apostate angels , nay , i may say , better , then by the holy and regenerate . and it is an exercise of far greater faith and obedience to the divine will , to undergoe pain and affliction , when it searches us so deep , and stings us so vehemently ; then when by any forced generosity and stoutness of spirit , or any natural or artificial helps whatsoever , we bear against the sense thereof , and quit our selves in this heat and stomachfulness , as if we were invincible and invulnerable champions . . if it had fared thus with christ at his death , the solemnity of his passion had been lost . indeed it had been no passion , nor would have caused any in them that read the story . but his sufferings being so great and so real as they were , it is the greatest attractive of the eyes and hearts of men towards him that could possibly be offered to the world : which himself was very well aware of , and did foretell it in his life-time ; when i am lifted up , i shall draw all men unto me . . which effects of his passion , those miraculous accidents that attended it seem also to presage . for what was that rending of the vail of the temple from the top to the bottome at ierusalem ? what were those earthquakes in more remote places out of iudea , and the torn or cloven rocks , but a presage how the earthly minds and stony hearts of all men in time , as well iews as gentiles , would be shaken and broke in pieces with sorrow and grief at his sufferings who is the saviour of the world ? nay , what did the sun , the very life and soul of the natural world , what did that deliquium or swounding fitt of his betoken , but that this sad spectacle of the crucifixion of christ would so empassion the minds of all ingenuous men , and so melt their hearts with love & affection to this universal saviour , that they would willingly die with him , that they might also live with him and rejoice with him for ever in heaven ? . i speak not this to exclude other significations of these prodigies . for they may also have their truth and use as well as these , especially some of them : as that of the eclipse of the sun , which may also signifie that the true light of the world ( he that was termed by the prophet the sun of righteousness ) was then a suffering ; and that of rending the vail of the temple , which no question denoted the rescinding of the mosaical rites and ceremonies , and the abrogation of the high-priests office , christ now having taken away the partition-wall , and given every believer free access to the presence of his father by his own death whereby he has reconciled us to god. . which offers us a third reason why this passion of christ should be so tragical as it was , and the weight thereof so unsupportable . for he bore then the wrath of god for the sins of the world , being smitten , as the prophet speaks , for our transgressions , and the iniquities of us all were laid upon him ; that is , he was an universal sacrifice for all mankind . which the proud and self-conceited enthusiast , that phansies himself so well within , that he contemns all external religion ( unless it be of his own invention ) being not at leisure to consider , boldly and blasphemously traduces him for weak and delicate , that willingly underwent the greatest pain that ever was inflicted upon any mortal , that bore a weight more heavy then mount aetna , and too big for the shoulders of any atlas to bear . . as little to the purpose are the leguleious cavils of some pragmatical pettifoggers , as i may so call them , in matters of divinity , who though they be favourable enough to the person of christ , and seem to condole his ill hap that he fell thus into the hands of thieves and murtherers ; yet set no price at all upon his death , no more then upon theirs that died with him , accounting his bloud as common and unholy as that of the malefactors that were crucified with him ; the wrath of god being not all atoned , as they say , by his suffering , because it is unjust that an innocent man should be punished for those that are guilty . but what unjustice is done to him that takes upon him the debt or fault of another man willingly , if he pay the debt or bear the punishment ; provided that he that may exact or remit either , will be thus satisfied ? . but such trivial and captious intermedlers in matters of religion , that take a great deal of pains to obscure that which is plain and easie , deserve more to be flighted and neglected then vouchsafed any answer . for all their frivolous subtilties and fruitless intricacies arise from this one false ground , that the soveraign goodness of god and his kind condescensions and applications to the affections of man are to be measured by iuridical niceties , and narrow and petty laws , such as concern ordinary transactions between man and man. but let these brangling wits enjoy the fruits of their own elaborate ignorance , while we considering the easie air and sense of sacrifices in all religions , shall by this means be the better assured of the natural meaning of it in our own . chap. xiv . . that sacrifices in all religions were held appeasments of the wrath of their gods. . and that therefore the sacrifice of christ is rather to be interpreted to such a religious sense then by that of secular laws . . the great disservice some corrosive wits doe to christian religion , and what defacements their subtilties bring upon the winning comeliness thereof . . the great advantage the passion of christ has , compared with the bloudy tyranny of satan . . how general the custome of sacrificing was in all nations of the world is a thing so well known , that i need not insist upon it ; and that their sacrifices were accounted an appeasment of the wrath of the gods and expiation for their faults , is also a truth so conspicuous that it cannot be denied . hence these sacrifices we speak of were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in latine placamina , februa , piamina . much of this nature you may read in grotius , de satisfactione christi , cap. . where he does not only make good by many expressions and examples that the sacrifices of the ancient heathen pacified the anger of the gods , but also ( which is nearer to our purpose ) that the punishment of those that were thus reconciled and purged was transferred upon the beast that was sacrificed : for the clearing whereof he alledges many citations ; and these two amongst the rest . one out of cato ; cum sis ipse nocens , moritur cur victima pro te ? since thou thy self art guilty , why does then thy sacrifice for thee die ? the other out of plautus , men ' piaculum oportet fieri propter stultitiam tuam , ut meum tergum stultitia tuae subdas succedaneum ? that is to say , is it fit that i should be made a piacular sacrifice for your foolishness , that my back should bear the stripes that your folly has demerited ? . wherefore this being the sense of the sacrifices we speak of in all the religions in the world , it is more fit to interpret the death of christ , who gave himself an expiation for the sins of the world , according to that sense which is usual in the mysteries of religion , then according to the entangling niceties and intricacies of secular laws . . but as for those busie and pragmatical spirits , that by the acrimonie of their wit eat off the comely and lovely gloss of christianity , as aqua fortis or rather aqua stygia laid on polish'd metal , what thanks shall they receive of him whom yet they pretend to be so zealous for ? the most winning and endearing circumstances of his exhibiting himself to the world being so soiled and blasted by their rude and foul breath , that as many as they can infect with the contagion of their own errour , christianity will be made to them but a dry withered branch ; whenas in it self it is an aromatick paradise , where the senses and affections of men are so transported with the agreeableness of objects , that they are even enravished into love and obedience to him that entertains them there . and nothing can entertain the soul of man with so sweet a sorrow and joy , as this consideration , that the son of god should bear so dear a regard to the world as to lay down his life for them , and to bear so reproachfull and painfull a death to expiate their sins and reconcile them to his father . . but this is not all the advantage he had to win the government of the world unto himself . for not only his exceeding love to mankind was hereby demonstrated , but the cruel and execrable nature of that old tyrant the more clearly detected . for whereas the devil , who by unjust usurpation had got the government of the world into his own hands , tyrannizing with the greatest cruelty and scorn that can be imagined over mankind , thirsted after humane bloud , and in most parts of the world , as i have already shewn , required the sacrificing of men ; which could not arise from any thing else but a salvage pride and despight against us : this new gracious prince of god's own appointing , christ iesus , was so far from requiring any such villainous homage , that himself became a sacrifice for us , making himself at once one grand and all-sufficient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or piamen to expiate the sins of all mankind , and so to reconcile the world to god. chap. xv. . an objection concerning the miraculous eclipse of the sun at our saviour's passion , from it s not being recorded in other historians . . answer , that this wonderfull accident might as well be omitted be several historians as those of like wonderfulness ; as for example the darkness of the sun about julius caesar's death . . further , that there are far greater reasons that historians should omit the darkness of the sun at christ's passion then that at the death of julius caesar. . that grotius ventures to affirm this eclipse recorded in pagan writers ; and that tertullian appeal'd to their records . . that the text does not implie that it was an universal eclipse , whereby the history becomes free from all their cavils . . apollonius his arraignment before domitian , with the ridiculousness of his grave exhortations to damis and demetrius to suffer for philosophy . . we have seen how reasonable the history of christ's passion is ; neither do i know any thing that may lessen the credibility of it , unless it be the miraculous eclipse of the sun. not that the eclipse it self is so incredible , but that it may seem incredible that so wonderfull & so generally-conspicuous an accident of nature should be recorded by none but by the evangelists themselves , learning and civility in those times so universally flourishing , and there being no want of historians to recount such things . this objection makes a great shew at first ; but you will see at length it will come to nothing . . first therefore let us set down the like accidents to this that have fallen out , and been as conspicuous to all the world : as that sensible obscurity and languor of the sun in iulius caesar's time , as also in iustinian's time , and lastly that bloudy dulness in the face of that luminary for four daies together in the times of carolus quintus ; things as remarkable in themselves as this eclipse at the passion of christ , and all it 's likely proceeding from like causes . but the moderating of these causes so , as that the effect should take place just at the time of our saviour's suffering , this was miraculous and by special providence . now i demand for that first observation of the sun , that indured a whole year together , & was a concomitant of iulius caesar's death ; when there were so many historians in the after-age till suetonius his time , viz. livy , strabo , valerius , maximus , velleius paterculus , philo , mela , plinius , iosephus , plutarchus , tacitus , how many of these recorded so great a prodigie . i doe not find any historian alledged but pliny , who likely had it from ovid and virgil , who after the manner of poets pleasing themselves to record strange things and to magnifie great men , recite this accident in nature in honour to iulius caesar. ille etiam extincto miseratus caesare romam , cum caput obscurâ nitidum ferrugine texit , impiáque aeternam timuerunt secula noctem . at caesar's death he rome compassioned , in rusty hue hiding his shining head , and put the guilty world into a fright they were surpriz'd with an eternal night . as virgil has it in his georgicks . and ovid in his metamorphoses to the same purpose , — solis quoque tristis imago lurida sollicitis praebebat lumina terris . the sun 's sad image caesar's fate to moan with lurid light to anxious mortals shone . which condition of the sun , pliny writes , lasted for a whole year . the like cedrenus reports to have happened in iustinian's time . but there were nigh twenty considerable writers from iustinian's time till georgius cedrenus . i would therefore remit the caviller to peruse these historians , and observe in how few of them this prodigie in iustinian's daies is recorded . the same may be said of what happened under carolus quintus . and then if he deprehend that so remarkable accidents be taken no notice of by many writers that had a capacity of recording them , i would have him also to consider that such like reasons that might cause them to omit the writing of those prodigies , might also fit those that omitted the setting that down that happened at our saviour's passion ; and to rest contented that he finds it recorded by them that are most concerned in it , that is , three of his faithfull followers , matthew , mark & luke , who bearing a truer respect to christ's person then those flatterers of princes , virgil and ovid , to the deceased iulius , recorded this miraculous eclipse to his honour , as they did that long obscuration of the sun to the honour of their adored caesar. . neither is this all ; for i may further add , that there are greater reasons why all , saving christ's own followers , should omit the recording that eclipse at his passion , then that those writers we speak of should the continual obscurity of the sun , that was to be observed for a whole year together about the exitus of iulius caesar's reign . for the noveltie of that in caesar's time might make the greater impression upon mens spirits ; whenas that obscuritie of the sun at our saviour's suffering ( though i doubt not but that it was so great as that the stars appeared through the defect of the sun 's light , so as they may doe in a summers night ) might well be neglected by the nations of the world , they having noted already that the light of the sun is obnoxious to such obfuscations and dulnesses , and that for so long a time together . so that although this lurid deadness of the sun at the passion was far greater then that at caesar's death ; yet it being shorter by far , as lasting not above three hours , it might seem to them less considerable ; especially they not knowing what was the meaning of it . and when they did , they had the less encouragement to record it , it making for a new religion contrary to their own . so that even that consideration may seem a sufficient reason why this notable accident may be pretermitted by both jewish and heathenish historians . . but grotius out of phlegon a pagan writer ventures to answer more point-blank , namely , that the said author does affirm that in the fourth year of the two hundred and second olympiad , ( which is the year wherein christ suffered according to the usual opinion ) there was the greatest eclipse that ever was known ; night surprizing men at the sixth hour of the day ( which is at noon , ) and being so dark that the stars were seen at that time of the day . he mentions also therewith a mighty earthquake in bithynia , and how the greatest part of nicaea was ruined thereby . to this purpose is there also recited out of another pagan writer by eusebius ; whom grotius discovers to be one thallus . which testimonies will stand good till the opposer of the truth of the narrations of the evangelists shall either prove infallibly by chronology , that christ did not suffer that year , or else by astronomical calculation , that there was a natural eclipse of the sun in that year he suffered , so horrid and dismal as phlegon describes . but phlegon confining it to no place , intimates it was universal , and therefore not natural . tertullian also speaking to the pagans concerning this matter , appeals to their own records concerning the truth thereof . and for my own part , i make no question but that it is true in the very sense we speak of , viz. that it was an universal eclipse , whatever becomes of the testimonies of thallus and phlegon . . but being the text does not necessarily implie thus much , we may with calvin restrain it to iudaea , god miraculously intercepting the light of the sun from those parts only , by the interposition of some conspissated body , or by raising a black caliginous mist , such as he caused in the land of aegypt . for the scripture will sute well enough with any of these senses ; so little of any just occasion is there left to the caviller and infidel . so that the credibilitie and reasonableness of the chief circumstances of our saviour's passion is sufficiently cleared . . to which we have nothing to parallel in apollonius his life , except it be his arraignment before domitian : where domitian quitting him from the charge that was laid against him , yet he for ostentation sake , to shew what an expert magician he was , vanishes in the midst of the court , to the great amazement of the emperour and the rest of his judges . but in the mean time he having such a trick of legerdemain as this , to keep himself from peril ; it makes all his magnanimous precepts concerning the contempt of death that he so gravely imparts to damis and demetrius ( encouraging them to suffer any thing for the cause of philosophy ) hypocritical and ridiculous . so whifling and ludicrous is every thing of apollonius , if compared with that solid truth and real excellency that is discoverable in christ. book v. chap. i. . of the resurrection of christ , and how much his eye was fixed upon that event . . the chief importance of christ's resurrection . . the world excited by the miracles of christ the more narrowly to consider the divine quality of his person , whom the more they looked upon , the more they disliked . . whence they misinterpreted and eluded all the force and conviction of all his miracles . . gods upbraiding of the world with their gross ignorance by the raising him from the dead whom they thus vilified and contemned . . christ's resurrection an assurance of man's immortality . . we have done with the passion of christ : we come now to his resurrection and ascension ; and first his resurrection . concerning which it is observable , that our saviour's eye was fix'd upon nothing more then it ; he prophesying of it in his life-time under that parable of destroying the temple , and then raising of it up within three daies , meaning the temple of his body ; as also in the application of that strange accident that befell ionas : for as jonas was three daies and three nights in the whales belly , so the son of man should be three daies and three nights in the belly of he earth . he deferred also the divulging of his transfiguration in the mount till his resurrection , as not being of any such efficacy to beget faith in the people , till this also had happened unto him . . now the grand importance of this so wonderfull an accident consists chiefly in these three things . first , in that it is a very eminent triumph of the divine life in the person of christ. secondly , in that it is so plain an assurance of a blessed immortality . and thirdly , in that it is so sure a seal and so clear a conviction of the truth and warrantableness of all the miracles christ did in his life-time . . that our saviour christ was the most illustrious example of the divine life that ever appeared in the world , cannot be denied by any but such as are blinde , and have no eyes to behold that kind of splendour . but that the judgement of the world might be the more notoriously baffled , god assisted this divine worth with many strange miracles , that they might more fixedly and considerately contemplate this so holy and lovely a person . but the more it seems they looked upon him , the more they disliked him , the whole world being so deeply lapsed into the animal life , ( the jews themselves not exc●pted , ) that they had no knowledge nor relish of the divine . nay , they had an antipathy against him , as the wise man expresses it , he is grievous unto us even to behold , his life is not like unto other mens , his waies are of another fashion : he was made to reprove our thoughts . . wherefore they having so settled an hatred against him , all the miracles that he did , or whatsoever happened miraculously unto him , did but set a more venemous edge of their spleen against him . from whence it was easie for them to misinterpret and elude every thing , imputing his casting out devils to a contract with beelzebub the prince of the devils ; the testimony from heaven , that he was the son of god , to the delusion of evil spirits that would lapse them into idolatry ; his feeding the multitudes in the wilderness , to witchcraft and sorcecery ; and his raising of men from the dead , to the nature of some lethargical or obstupifying disease , that may seem to make a man devoid of life for four daies together . the eclipse of the sun indeed was a very strange thing , if the darkness was in the sun it self : but they might remember , at least from the relations of others , that it was strangely obscured for a whole year together about the death of iulius caesar , and so interpret this at the passion as a mere casual coincidence of things ; or that some delusive spirits intercepted the light of the sun in favour of the great magician whom they thought just to crucifie betwixt those other two malefactors . . but he whom they numbred amongst the transgressours , and took to be the vilest of men , because he was not recommended by any thing that the animal life likes and applauds , ( as nobleness of birth , the power of popular eloquence , honour , wealth , authority , high education , beauty , courtship , pleasantness of conversation , and the like ; ) he is , i say , notwithstanding this general contempt from men , very highly prized by him who is the infallible judge , whose waies are not as our waies , nor his thoughts as our thoughts ; but that he might conform our apprehensions to his own , raised iesus christ from the dead , bringing that passive , contemptible divinity that lodged in him into a deserved victory and triumph ; exprobrating to the blind world the ignorance of that life that is most dear and precious to himself ; making him alive whom they maliciously killed , and preparing a way to an universal homage for him , who was universally scorned and became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the off-scouring of all , though his spirit , life and nature was of more worth then all the things of the world beside . . nor is this resurrection of christ only a particular honour and high testimony given to the person of christ , who was so splendid an habitation of the divine life ; but it is also an assurance of a blessed immortality to all those that will adventure to follow his example , that their labour shall not be in vain in the lord. and therefore he is not said here to rise alone ; but in token of what a general concernment his resurrection was , the monuments of some lately-deceased souls flew open , and themselves appeared to several in the holy city . which things were a palpable prohetical prefiguration of that blessed immortality that christ has purchased for all men that believe in him and obey him . chap. ii. . the last end of christ's resurrection , the confirmation of his whole ministry . . how it could be that those chief priests and rulers that hired the souldiers to give out , that the disciples of christ stole his body away , were not rather converted to believe he was the messias . . how it can be evinced that christ did really rise from the dead ; and that it was not the delusion of the some deceitfull daemons . . the first and second answer . . the third answer . . the fourth answer . . the fifth answer . . the sixth and last answer . . that his appearing and disappearing at pleasure after his resurrection is no argument but that he was risen with the same body that was laid in the grave . . the last end of christ's resurrection is the confirmation of his whole ministry . for assuredly the jews dealt with him as with some magician and impostour , who though he did very strange things whilst he lived , yet if he were once judicially tried , condemned and put to death , they did not make any question but that it would be with him as with other malefactours , the trouble of him would end with his life ; as is usually observed in matters of this kind : otherwise it would be a great flaw in providence , and the generations of men would not be able to subsist for the insolencies of witches and sorcerers . but god thus extraordinarily and miraculously interposing his power , in raising iesus from the dead , gave the most certain and most confounding testimony against the malicious cruelty of the jewes ( if we may call that malice which the love and candour of christ in the midst of his bitter sufferings named only ignorance ) that possibly could be given . for their judicial proceedings are hereby not only in an extraordinary way made suspicable and taxed of injustice , but by such a miraculous means , that it is manifest that none other but god himself is their accuser , as well as the acquitter of the innocent whom they put to death , and did so throughly martyr , that none but the hand of god could recover him to life . the same therefore of so notable an accident the chief of the jews very well knowing , and that it would , if believed , demonstrate that all he did or said before in his life-time was right , and from an undeniable principle ; that the people might not receive him for their messias now , whom three daies agoe they had crucified ; hired the souldiers that watched his monument , to tell abroad that his disciples stole him away by night while they were asleep . . but here haply some may demand , how it came to pass that these chief priests and rulers , being so punctually informed by the souldiers ( which watched the sepulchre of christ ) that he was risen from the dead , were not converted to the faith themselves , and convinced that iesus was indeed the expected messias . but we may very well conceive , that what might prove very effectual to move others to believe in christ , might yet take no hold upon them ; partly because they were further engaged in this bloudy and direfull tragedy then others were ; and having a deeper sense of honour and repute with the people , then of the favour of god and love to the truth , they might in a desperate and obdurate condition venture , as the saying is , over shoes over boots ; being more willing to expose themselves to any thing , then to that shame and reproach that would attend the acknowledgment of so hainous an errour . and then partly because though this accident may seem very strange , yet they might conceit that it was not above the power of evil spirits to perform , who might change themselves into the lustre of angels of light , and therefore that it was but a greater temptation upon them to try their faithfulness and obedience to the law of moses . for what would not they think rather then find themselves guilty of so grand ignorance , as not to know the promised messias when he came into the world , and of so gross a crime as to be murderers of him that from heaven was declared the son of god ? . but out of this solution you 'l say arises as great a difficultie as the former , viz. how we can be ascertained that christ is really raised from the dead : because some delusive spirits might open his sepulchre , and carry him away , and afterward appear in his shape , making use of his body to shew to thomas , or changing their own vehicles into the likeness of flesh and bones , so that no man's sense may discover any difference . but to this many things may be answered : and . first , that that which may be an exception or evasion in any case , is of consequence in no case . for what does there at any time really happen , but evil spirits have a power to imitate so near , that our senses may well be deceived ? secondly , though they have this power in themselves , yet i deny that they can exert it when , and so far as they please ; and therefore god would not permit them to add so irresistible credit to the whole ministry of christ by this last miracle , if christ had not really been the messias : but he being the messias , it was no delusion of theirs , but a real transaction by that hand that is omnipotent . . thirdly , every thing was exactly as if he had risen from the dead : the watch saw the earth-quake , and the stone rolled from the door of the sepulchre by an angel from heaven : peter look'd in and beheld the linen cloaths lying by themselves , the body of christ was missing there . he appeared to his disciples elsewhere , he discoursed with them , eat & drunk with them , they felt his flesh , and put their very fingers into his wounds . what greater demonstration then this could there be that he was really risen from the dead ? and therefore by men indifferent it must needs be acknowledged to be so , though there be a possibility of being otherwise . . fourthly , those miraculous things , either happening to him or done by him while he was alive , they being so real as they were , must needs beget faith in the unprejudic'd , that this accident was real also . for is it so strange a thing that that divine power should raise christ from the dead , that enabled him to raise lazarus out of the grave when he had been four daies buried ? to say nothing of his other miracles , and those evident testimonies from heaven that he was the son of god. for though there was some room left for the shuffles and subterfuges of the blinded jews ; yet to those that are free and piously disposed , the resurrection of christ compared with what either supernaturally was done by him , or happened to him in his life and at his passion , they do so binde and strengthen one another , that there is no place left for misbelief . . fifthly , besides the testimony of the angels that told mary magdalen , ioanna and others , that christ was risen , and that they did fondly to seek the living amongst the dead , our saviour's owne prophesie concerning his rising the third day could not but make the thing undoubtedly sure to his disciples , and all such as were concerned in it , and had believed on him before , whereby they became zealous assertors and witnessers of it to the world. . sixthly and lastly , all these things happening thus extraordinarily and supernaturally to a person that professed himself the messias , * at that very time that the jewish prophesies foretold the messias would come ; it is an unanswerable demonstration that this was he , and that therefore all things that he did , spoke , or happened unto him , were no vain illusion , but reality and truth . . neither does his appearing and disappearing at pleasure , and coming in to his disciples when the doors were shut , at all weaken the truth of his resurrection and vital actuating that very body that lay in the grave . for he gave a specimen of a wonderfull power residing in him in his transfiguration on the mount ; and that he carried that about him then that was able to swallow up mortality into life , though it was usually restreined as a light in a dark lanthorn . his divinity therefore with his inward exalted humanity , i mean his soul , took hold again of his body , and did vitally irradiate it , so that he was as naturally united with it as any angel is with his own vehicle , or any soul of man or any other animal with their bodies . nor was it any greater wonder that christ should rarifie his body into a disappearing tenuity , then that angels and spirits condensate their vehicles into the visibility and palpability of a terrestrial body , the same numerical matter still remaining in both . chap. iii. . the ascension of christ , and what a sure pledge it is of the soul's activity in a thinner vehicle . . that the soul's activity in this earthly body is no just measure of what she can doe out of it . . that the life of the soul here is as a dream in comparison of that life she is awakened unto in her celestial vehicle . . the activity of the separate soul upon the vehicle argued from her moving of the spirits in the body , and that no advantage accrews therefrom to the wicked after death . . there is no reasonable allegation therefore against the resurrection of christ : and as usefull and intelligible a mystery is his ascension . for we are not less assured by his ascending into heaven of the life and activity of the soul out of an organical terrestrial body , then by his resurrection of her immortality . for the body of christ in his ascension , though it left the earth in all likelihood organiz'd and terrestrially modified , yet passing through the subtil air and purer aether , it cannot be conceived but that it assimilated it self to the regions through which it passed , and became at last perfectly celestial and aethereal , whatsoever was earthly or feculent being absorp't or swallowed up into pure light and glory . . nor can it seem harsh to any that has well considered these things , that the soul freed from this terrestrial dungeon should have so great power and activity over a thinner vehicle ; the subtiltie thereof in all likelihood contributing much to this activity and vigour : of which though she have but a small spark at first , yet the power of the minde being kindled therewith may , as she pleases , convert her whole vehicle into an aethereal flame . for we are no more to measure what she can doe being rid of the fatall entanglements of this earthly prison , by what she does in it , then we can of the prowess and activity of some captive champion when he is set free , by what he does in fetters and hard bondage ; or of her own agility , reason and perspicacitie when she is awake , by her stupidity and inconsistency of thoughts while she is asleep . . for the whole life of man upon earth day and night is but a slumber and a dream in comparison of that awaking of the soul that happens in the recovery of her aethereal or celestial body : which though it be ( unless it please her occasionally to mould it into any organiz'd shape ) one simple and uniform light , which we may call an aethereal star , as ficinus calls those of less purity stellas aereas ; yet all the more noble functions of life are better performed in this heavenly body then in the earthly , such as intellection , volition , imagination , seeing , hearing , and the like . the same may be said of the passions of the mind , they being more pure , more pleasing and more delicate then can possibly happen , or at least for any time continue with us , in this life . . what i have affirmed of this aethereal body , this uniform and homogeneal orbe of light , cannot seem rashly spoken to them that understand the immediate organ of sense in those bodies we are now united with : which i have already intimated to be either the animal spirits or the conarion , as unlikely a seat of sense as the air or aether , and either of these as unlikely to be disobedient to the power of the soul as the animal spirits now are in the state of conjunction . * and therefore it being undeniable but that the soul does move them some way in the body , i see no difficulty but in her releasement from the body , she may be able to act upon her vehicle of like tenuity with them , so as to mould and transfigure it even as she pleases : that natural charm that lull'd her active powers asleep while she was in the body , loosing its force now she is out of it . which notwithstanding will prove no advantage to the wicked , they being thereby awakened into a more eagre and sharp torment and more restless hell. chap. iv. . christ's session at the right hand of god interpreted either figuratively or properly . . that the proper sense implies no humane shape in the deity . . that though god be infinite and every where , yet there may be a special presence of him in heaven . . and that christ may be conceived to sit at the right hand of that presence , or divine shechina . . to the ascension of christ we are to add his session at the right hand of god , his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and his intercession with god for his church . and for the first there is no difficultie therein , whether we understand the phrase figuratively , as calvin seems to doe , ( for then by his sitting at the right hand of god nothing else is signified , but that he is next to god in the administration of his kingdome , that he is as his right hand to sway his scepter over men and angels , to bruise the wicked as with a rod of iron , and to receive the righteous into favour ; ) or whether we understand it properly , as some others would have it to be understood . for there is no inconvenience to acknowledge the glorified body of christ to be in humane shape , and that this organized light will sit as steadily on an aethereal throne , as a body of flesh and bones on a throne of wood or ivory . . nor does that expression of the right hand of god implie any absurdity in it , as if god himself were an essence also in humane shape , and that he had a left hand as well as a right , and the rest of the parts of the body of a man. for from the words of the text , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a man may as well prove that he has many right hands as any at all : which shews plainly that the anthropomorphites have no ground for their fond conceit from such passages of scripture as these . . but yet though god be infinite , and consequently every where at once , nothing hinders but that there may be some special presence of him in one place more then another , whither if a man had access , he may be truly said to converse with god face to face . we will grant therefore a divine shechina and a peculiar visible glory of god which no creature can imitate residing in the heavens , which presence he may manifest in many places at once if he please : but whereever it discovers it self , it is a most certain and infallible sign that god himself is in a special manner there . which ineffable and unimitable glory is of this great consequence , that the holy saints and angels receive commands from thence as from the very mouth of god , are recreated more by that wonderfull lustre then we mortals are by the light of the sun , and that it is an oracle with whom they may consult , and receive answers of clear and indubitable certitude , and doe divine worship and honour to the external substance and visible presence of the deity . . at the right side of this glory might christ in his humane shape be placed , as at the right hand of his father that sent him into the world , to whom also he praied with his eyes lift up to heaven , and to whom he said that he was to return when he left the earth , with whom also steven saw him standing , and comforting him at his martyrdome : whether his visive facultie was in a wonderfull and stupendious measure fortified to discern so distant an object , or whether that object was not so distant as the false conceits of some vain philosophers would determine ; for for my own part , i think that if the true philosophy were known and rightly understood , there would nothing more facilitate the belief of christianity then it . chap. v. . the apotheosis of christ , or his receiving of divine honour , freed from all suspicion of idolatry , forasmuch as christ is god properly so called , by his real and physical union with god. . the real and physical union of the soul of christ with god being possible ; sundry reasons alledged to prove that god did actually bring it to pass . . the vain evasions of superficial allegorists noted . . their ignorance evinced , and the apotheosis of christ confirmed from the immortality of the soul and the political government of the other world. . that he that equalizes himself to christ is ipso facto discovered an impostour and lier . . there is nothing therefore harsh or incongruous in the session of christ at the right hand of god the father , the mystery being fitly explained : his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will be found as reasonable , if rightly understood . by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i mean his residence in heaven , and his receiving of divine honour and adoration from the church . in which there can be nothing suspicable , unless there be any danger of idolatry there where he that is truly god is worshipped . the * apology of the gentiles you have heard already , and how far guilty they were of that miscarriage in the worshipping of creatures under the pretense of their being only more eminent manifestations of that one eternal deity which they did adore . but the immediate object of our worship is not simply a creature , but god properly so called ; forasmuch as he is as really and physically united with god as our soul is with our body . now as a man is truly said to be a body or a corporeal substance because of the real or physical union of his soul with the body ; so christ is truly and properly said to be god , because his whole humanity is joined with god. this is a very easie and intelligible way of conceiving this mystery ; neither does it implie any contradiction or inconsistency in it , no more then is found in the natural union of soul and body ; god being as able to find fitting means of really and vitally uniting the soul of the messias to himself , as of uniting an humane soul to a terrestrial body . . now this which was in the power of god to doe , we may be the better ascertained that he did doe it , or is to doe it some time , ( for i will not anticipate and fall upon the third part of my discourse , before i come at it , ) if we consider the congruities thereof . i have recited to you examples of the pagan apotheoses , how they did divine honour to men that liv'd amongst them , and were considerable to their generations for several benefactions and gratifications of the animal life , whether they were the improvers of their pleasures or their profit , law-givers , successfull commanders in war , or happie inventours of some usefull things to supplie humane necessities . hence it came to pass that venus , mercurius , zamolxis , mars , bacchus , ceres and others were deified by them . now there being so transcendent an advantage to accrew to mankind by the coming of the messias into the world , and he being to suffer for the sins of the people , and so by his death to vanquish the power of death , and to set open the gates of heaven to all believers ; that that strong , natural , and at least pardonable propension in mankind of exhibiting the highest honours they can to their most heroical benefactors might not be frustrated and seem ever to be in vain ; as also that the great humiliation and reproachfull passion that the messias was to undergoe might be largely compensated ; and that that which is most lovely of all things , and yet in the eyes of men most despicable , i mean the divine life , might be exalted , even in an outward homage and worship , as high as ever the animal life was , in the world , and that warrantably and without any guilt of idolatry : god , when he sends the messias into the world , is so to communicate his own nature to him , or so really and physically to unite himself with him , that he may be a lawfull object of divine worship . which he is , if not only by a moral adhesion , or political institution , but by a natural and real union with the divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he truly become the son of god. . we see then upon what warrantable and rational grounds the messias is exalted to so high a pitch of honour , god having made him supreme head over men and angels : i speak of the very person of christ as well as his nature . for the shuffling and superficial allegorist will acknowledg that the divine nature or upright being , as some of them call it , is above all . but that they are so shie of taking any notice of the person of christ , is either out of ignorance in their understanding , or out of a total misbelief of the history of christ , wherein is asserted the existence of angels and the immortality of the souls of men . . now if there be angels , and if the souls of men subsist and act out of their bodies , they must also ( as i have already demonstrated in my preparative assertions ) needs fall into political order and government , and therefore must have some head over them : which here the scripture does plainly assert to be christ , who is the captain of our salvation for to assist , direct and encourage all the powers of the kingdome of light to defend themselves and rescue others out of the captivity of the kingdome of darkness and tyranny of devil . . wherefore if any man start up and pretend an equality with christ , he is ipso facto convinced of ignorance in the mystery of godliness , and deprehended to be an impostour and a lyar ; or he is haply a beast and an epicure , denying the immortality of the soul , and thereupon building all his slights and contempts of the personal knowledge of our saviour ; he deeming him as all men else wholly mortal , and therefore utterly to have perished above sixteen hundred years agoe . chap. vi. . an objection against christ's soveraignty over men and angels , from the meanness of the rank of humane spirits in comparison of the angelical orders . . an answer to the objection so far as it concerns the fallen angels . . a further inforcement of the objection concerning the unfallen angels , with an answer thereto . . a further answer from the incapacitie of an angels being a sacrifice for the sins of the world. . and of being a fit example of life to men in the flesh . . that the capacities of christ were so universal , that he was the fittest to be made the head or soveraign over all the intellectual orders . . christ's intercession : his fitness for that office. . what things in the pagan religion are rectified and compleated in the birth , passion , ascension and intercession of christ. . but it may be further objected , that although it be very reasonable that the angels and the spirits of men , whether in the body or out of the body , be reduced under some political form of government ; yet it seems very incongruous and disproportionable that some one of the lowest rank of all the orders of rational creatures should be made the soveraign over all , over angels and archangels , and all principalities and powers whatsoever , whether in heaven or in earth . . but to this i answer , that though the superiour orders of intellectual beings may have far more strength and natural understanding in them then man ; yet the humanity of christ may not be inferiour to them in humility and an holy adhesion to god , in self-resignation , and faith in him who is the root of all things , in love also and dear compassion over the whole creation , and , in a word , in whatever appertains to the divine life . but as for the lapsed angels , let them be otherwise as cunning and knowing in all arts and subtilties of nature , let them be as powerfull & as gigantick as they will , even to the overturning mountains and striking down steeples at a blow ; yet christ has infinitely the preeminence of them in those divine accomplishments i have recited ; nay , he has a principle beyond them , removed above their sphere , as man has a principle beyond beasts . and therefore it is no more wonder that god has constituted him lord over these rebellious titans , then that man is made superiour to lions , elephants , whales , and other mighty and monstrous creatures . . but you 'l say , though it seem just that the usurped empire of the devil be taken from him , and given to christ , yet there is no reason that the unfallen angels should be brought under his sceptre , they being naturally of an higher order then himself , and having forfeited nothing by rebellion or disobedience to god : and therefore it had been more reasonable for god to have united himself hypostatically ( as they call it ) with some angel then with humane nature . but what art thou , o man , that pretendest to be so wise as to give laws to god ? may not he dispose of his own and of himself as he pleases ? besides , there being so great a revolt in the angelical orders , who tempted also mankind into their lapse , the pretermission of them all in the conferring of so great an honour as was conferred upon christ , was but a just check and slight cast upon all their orders at once ; the angelical bloud , as i may so say , being tainted with treason . again , the revolt and rebellion of the apostate angels being nothing else but a wilde and boundless giving themselves up to the pleasures and suggestions of the animal life , and christianity ( as i have already defined it ) nothing else but a triumph of the divine life over the animal ; this triumph , scorn and insultation over the animal life is more exactly pursued , by how much in every place those things that seem of most value to it are left out , as slighted and disregarded ; and the whole mystery of the recovery of the lapsed creation to god performed by him who undertook it without the false pomp of those needless circumtances of highness of order , nobleness of birth , worldly authority , strength and beauty of body , subtilty of wit , knowledge of nature , plausibility of eloquence , or whatsoever else seems precious to the mere natural or animal spirit . so that upon this very account the angels were to be excluded from this function . . but fourthly and lastly , if any angel would have been competitour with our saviour in this honour , that question put to zebedee's children might well have dash'd him out of countenance in his competition : you know not what you ask : can you drink of the cup that i am to drink of , and be baptized with the baptisme that i am to be baptized with ? that is , can you undergoe that shamefull and scornfull death of the cross ? certainly an angel cannot . for if he could be born into the world in humane flesh , and suffer those agonies the soul of the messias did , this angel were no angel , but an humane soul. but perhaps you 'l replie , that though an angel cannot suffer death in an humane body , yet he is so capable of torment and punishment , that he may be made an expiation for the sinnes of the world. but i demand how we that are so much concerned in it shall know of that suffering . for the transactions of men are a spectacle to the angels , but the transactions of angels are not discerned by men by reason of the tenuity of their vehicles . but this suffering angel would have appeared on purpose : yet how unsatisfactory and phantastical would this have been conceived in comparison of the real and assured passion of our saviour christ. . besides , if an angel had undertaken this office , he could not have been so fit an example of life to us as christ , who was a man subject to the same infirmities with our selves , and who really felt what belong'd to the imbecillity of our natures . for the passions of his minde were no more abated nor destroyed by his union with the deity , then the passibility of matter is by being united with a soul. wherefore christ wading thus faithfully without sin or blame throughout all the incumbrances of the flesh , which are greater then those that the angelical orders are liable unto , is a very concerning spectacle of both men and angels : but what an angel could do , would but very little concern us men . . wherefore he who was of so universal a capacity , as to be an example of good and a reprover of evil to all the orders of intellectual beings that are pe●cable and mutable , and of so generall a kindness and compassion to all rational souls , that he could dy a most shameful and bitter death , to reduce them from their rebellion and confederacy with the kingdome of darkness , to return to the kingdome of god ; this person , i say , whose influence is so great upon all , is fit to be made head over all , according as himself has declared , to me is given all power in heaven and in earth . whence it is plain that there is none save god himself above him , at whose right hand he fits , and intercedes for his church . . which is the last thing i propounded , his intercession ; upon which i need make no stay , there being no difficulty at all in it , but a very great congruity , and such as is incompetible to any angel , as i have already intimated . the author to the hebrews takes notice of it , chap. . for we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are , yet without sin . who therefore must needs prove a very compassionate and potent intercessour for us with his father , not onely for forgiveness of sins , but for all needfull supplies of grace and assistance to his church militant here on earth . . thus we have seen how in the birth , passion , ascension and intercession of christ is comprehended a full and warrantable completion of those four notable parts of the pagan religion which relates to their heroes , to their catharmata , their apotheoses , and intercessions of their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or dii medioxumi . for what they were naturally groping after and mistaken in , in these points , all that is rectified here and made lawfull and allowable , nay meritorious and effectual for both present and future happiness , i mean in christ iesus ; all businesses betwixt god and us being to pass through his hands , if we look for grace and success . which accommodation contriv'd by the wisdome of god was of very great virtue for the bringing of the nations of the world to close with the truth of the gospel , they being invited to that upon good grounds , which their blind propensions carried them out to in a way of errour and mistake chap. vii . . that there is nothing in the history of apollonius that can properly answer : to christ's resurrection from the dead . . and that his passage out of this life must go for his ascension ; concerning which reports are various , but in general that it was likely he died not in his bed . . his reception at the temple of diana dictynna in crete , and of his being called up into heaven by a quire of virgins singing in the aire . . the uncertainty of the manner of apollonius his leaving the world , argued out of philostratus his own confession . . that if that at the temple of diana dictynna was true , yet it is no demonstration of any great worth in his person . . that the secrecy of his departure out of this world might beget a suspicion in his admirers that he went body and soul into heaven . . of a statue of apollonius that spake , and of his dictating verses to a young philosopher at tyana , concerning the immortality of the soul : . of his ghost appearing to aurelian the emperour . . of christ's appearing to stephen at his martyrdome , and to saul when he was going to damascus . . we have spoken of the birth , life , death , resurrection and ascension of christ ; we will come to the three last things we propounded , when we have briefly considered what in apollonius is parallel to christ's resurrection and ascension : for there is alwaies some glance or other in his life at the most notable passages in our saviour's . but i can finde nothing that must go for apollonius his resurrection from the dead , but his escaping out of the hands of domitian : which danger was so great , that all men took him for a dead man. * but what a whifling business it was and a mere piece of magical ostentation , i have already noted . . his real passage therefore out of this world must go for his ascension , as his escape out of that desperate danger for his resurrection . but the reports concerning his departure are various ; some affirming that at a full age , being fourscore or an hundred year old , he died at ephesus . but it seems not likely , philostratus professing that he had travailed the greatest part of the habitable world to enquire of his sepulchre , and that he could hear no news of it any where . but so grave and divine a person as apollonius was reputed , could not fail to be honoured with a very pompous funeral and sumptuous monument whereever he happened to dy , he being so famously known over all the world : wherefore it is likely that he did not dy , as they say , in his bed , but in some solitude , either by a sudden surprizal of death , or on set purpose , as empedocles , who cast himself into the flames of aetna , that he might be thought what apollonius professed himself before domitian , an immortal god. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . others report that having entred into the temple of minerva at lindus in rhodes , he suddenly disappeared before the people , and went no man knows whither . others affirm that he left this mortal life in crete , where approaching the temple of diana dictynna , the doors flew open of themselves , to the admiration of the keepers of the temple : who suspected him for a sacrilegious enchanter , in that the fierce mastives that kept the treasury fawned on him with more kindness and familiarity then on them that fed them . wherefore the sextons bound apollonius with fetters to secure the treasury ; but about midnight he set himself free , and calling the guards by their names , that they might not think he would steal away privately , he went to the door of the temple , which , as i said , opened of it self , and when he had entred in , shut of it self again : whereupon were heard voices from heaven as it were of young girles singing melodiously and chanting forth a stanza to this sense , come from the earth , come , leap hither up to heaven , mount from the earth on high . . but concerning this history of his leaving of the world two things are observable . first , that philostratus does invalidate his narration by varying the story so much as he does : for he professing that he made it his business to enquire of this matter , travailing most part of the habitable world for his better satisfaction , and not determining which of these three reports is the truest ; it is a sign that he was not ascertained of the truth of any of them , but that his end may be such as i at first intimated . . but suppose the last and most glorious of these three stories was the truest ; yet apollonius his credit is much obscured by parting thus in the night , though we allow him a moon-shine night for his voiage : for then the highest mystery ( if it be not a mere forgery ) that may be in it , is but thus much ; that these young girles , the nymphs of diana , called and carried away the old wizzard to the enjoyment of those disportments and pleasures that such ludicrous spirits , together with old hags and others of the fraternity , use to make with one another in farre remote solitudes under some broad-spred oake , or on the top of some steep mountain environ'd with woods and shady trees , ( which solemnity is called ludus dianae by the ancients , as i have noted already out of mirandula : ) where out of a special favour to him for the great service he did the powers of darkness , they might break his neck in a frolick from some precipice , cracking the shell to enjoy the kernell , or some more handsome way or other uncase him of his wrinkled and loathed vestments of mortality ; that so being stript more naked then when he appeared before the tribunal of domitian , he might be entertain'd with the more loving embraces of the officers of the dark kingdome , and receive the wages thought due to so faithfull and industrious a servant ; which were but such , though it may be in an higher degree , as other magicians and enchanters do receive . so vain , so frivolous and vulgar are all things in the life of apollonius , if compared with what is recorded in the life of christ. . but be his departure out of this world what way it will , it is likely that the secrecie thereof conciliated much credit to his person ; and by adding to his pagan zeal the spurious pretences of abstinence , chastity , contempt of the world and other plausible showes of morality , besides those miracles ( as a man may call them ) which he did by the assistance of the powers of the dark kingdome , he did not fail to be thought by some to have been carried body and soul into heaven , as enoch and elias were , and to have obtain'd an happy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the gods. in confidence whereof they erected statues to him here on earth , as philostratus relates , and particularly in tyana the town where he was born . . grotius relates out of an ecclesiastical writer , that there was a statue of his that spoke , being actuated by some assistent daemon ; but that his mouth was soon stopped by the power of christ and the preaching of the gospel . he dictated also certain verses to a young student of philosophy in tyana , concerning the immortality of the soul , who had for some ten months together earnestly prayed to him to resolve him of that point : which verses he recited to his fellow-students in a frantick posture , starting out of his sleep , and averring apollonius was there present , though none see him but himself : which would make a man think it was nothing else but the continuation of a confused dream , which he compleated betwixt sleep and waking ; it being no rare thing for men asleep to answer to more questions then his fellow-students put to this young philosopher . . but his real appearance to aurelian the emperour seems more probable . for his forces , as vopiscus writes , marching against tyana , and the citizens shutting the gates of the town against him , incensed the emperour so , that he made a rash vow that he would not leave one dog alive in the city . but apollonius his ghost appearing to him in his tent , and dehorting him from so great a cruelty , and threatning him into a better minde , prevented the mischief ; so that the town being taken , he merrily interpreted his resolution to the destruction of the doggs onely , but strictly charged his souldiers to spare the citizens . this story if it was not true , it was handsomly contrived , both for the keeping up of the honour of the deified apollonius , by making him so seasonably deliver his native town in so great an exigency , and also for the saving of the emperour's credit with the souldiers , that he might seem by the divine powers to be absolved from that rigid vow of giving the whole town up to the slaughter and plunder of the souldiery . . these are the main things i have met with concerning apollonius his manner of leaving of the world , and the effects of his supposed divinity after he had left it . but ( besides the uncertainty and suspicability of the story ) it is evident that they are very sorry and obscure indications thereof , if they be compared to the evidences that are produced for the real 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of christ. for stephen while he was a stoning , to the great corroboration of his spirit in his cruel martyrdome , saw the heavens opened , and christ standing at the right hand of god in glory and great majesty . and paul , as he was going to damascus to persecute the disciples of christ , was struck off from his furious purpose by the glorious appearance of christ from heaven : for there shone a very great light about him , and a voice was heard from heaven , saying , saul , saul , why persecutest thou me ? &c. his fellow-travailers saw also the coruscation of the light and were astonished , and heard the sound from heaven , though they understood not the meaning of it ; they hearing it not so articulately as he that was most concern'd in it . which are two notable demonstrations of the truth and legitimateness of christ's apotheosis , to which there is nothing comparable in the story of apollonius . chap. viii . . the use of this parallel hitherto of christ and apollonius . . mahomet , david george , h. nicolas , high-pretending prophets , brought upon the stage , and the author's apology for so doing . . that a misbelief of the history of christ , and a dexterity in a moral mythology thereof , are the greatest excellencies in david george and h. nicolas . . that if they believed there were any miracles ever in the world , they ought to have given their reasons why they believe not those that are recorded of christ , and to have undeceiv'd the world by doing miracles themselves to ratifie their doctrine . . if they believed there never were , nor ever will be any miracles , they do plainly betray themselves to be mere atheists or epicures . . the wicked plot of satan in this sect in clothing their style with scripture-language , though they were worse infidels then the very heathen . . that the gross infidelity of these two impostours would make a man suspect them rather to have been crafty prophane cheats then honest through-crackt enthusiasts . . that where faith is extinct , all the rapturous exhortations to vertue are justly suspected to proceed rather from complexion then any divine principle . . we have now stretch'd the parallel as far as it will go , the line failing on apollonius his side : but so long as the matter would afford , we thought it worth our pains to continue the comparison , that the excellency of our saviour's person might more clearly appear , so illustrious a counterfeit becoming his competitour ; and that all the world may be satisfied , that it was not chance or luck , but the incomparable dignity of the person of christ , and the weighty circumstances of providence , that gave such ample testimony to him , which made the world turn christians rather then apollonians , that is , made them rather embrace the gospel then continue in paganisme , though reformed after the neatest and most refined manner by the noblest and gallantest personage that ever was purely pagan , the famous apollonius . . but that he may have the field clear to himself , it will not be amiss to digress a little further , and take notice of some few others that put in for an equality with him or a superiority above him : and the chief of them are these three , mahomet , david george , and the begodded man of amsterdam ; whom i dare not venture to bring into the list without a preface for pardon and excuse for that which looks so like a piece of dishonour and disrespect to our blessed saviour . but duessa till unstripped will compare with una ; you know the story in spencer : and the bold ignorance of some does ordinarily make others take a great deal of pains to explain and evince that which to any indifferent man is usually true at first sight . which kind of undertakings though they be no great arguments of a mans wit , yet they are of his faithfulness and sincere love to the truth , which is far better . . first therefore to speak a little of the two latter , david george and him of amsterdam , those two meal-mouth'd prophets that court the world to follow them by so many mystical good-morrows , making the whole gospel but as one long-winded fable , and themselves the onely inspired and infallible lights of the world , because they phansie they have found the right * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of it . so that their excellency seems to consist mainly in these two things ; in a resolved infidelity or stout misbelief of the history of christ so far as it is miraculous , and a dexterity in a moral mythology thereof : whereby the gospel is utterly abrogated , and more fundamentally destroy'd then the law of moses is by the gospel . for there was never any christian so immodest as to deny the miracles of moses , and so consequently the truth of the history of the old testament , which these do in the new ; by which you may judge what they do concerning the old also . for it is most likely they believe there were never any such things as miracles done any where . . but if they believe there were miracles , let them shew their reasons why they distrust that what is recorded of our saviour is but a fable , and let them produce miracles themselves to demonstrate to us that we believe a falsehood , and that god has sent them upon such a special errand as they pretend . if they can do no miracles , god is no witness unto them , but they witness only of themselves , and therefore are mere fanaticks and distemper'd enthusiasts , having nothing to drive them forwards to so bold and prodigious an enterprise as the superannuating of christianity and the abrogating of the office of the person of christ , but the pride and fury of their own inflam'd spirits , and a phantastical conceit of themselves , as if god had inlightened them more then all the world besides . . if , according to the impulse of that spirit of infidelity in them , they conceive there never was nor ever will be any miracles done in the world , but that all things are carried according to the course of nature ; they betray themselves in this , that they are so far from being extraordinarily illuminated , that they are more blinde and blockish then every ordinary man that has the fear of god before his eyes ; and that they are , what some suspect them to be , a skulking kinde of epicureans and atheists . but this i dare boldly say , that strip their style of all scripture-phrases , and all allusions to the history of christ and of the old testament , you shall finde nothing affirmed in these authors that will rise higher then the faith of epicurus , democritus or lucretius ; they positively affirming nothing but what any ordinary moral pagan would affirm , nay not so much as the better sort that held the immortality of the soul. . but this is the wicked plot of the devil in this sect , that he clothes their style with scripture-language , that they may as it were wear the colours of the kingdome of light , and so covertly destroy or win the christian souldiers from their allegiance to christ , and lapse them into the bondage of the dark kingdome . so that that mighty prop of faith in those precious promises of the gospel being taken away , their heart may fail them in the hour of temptation , and they may be wrought by degrees into a full compliance with every transitory pleasure which the natural man relishes , whether in riches , honour or satisfaction of the flesh ; and that upon whatever terms the world shall propound it to them . so far therefore are those two forward fellows of delph and of amsterdam from approving themselves so great lights of the world as they pretend , that they are more dark in their understanding then many of the heathen , who had some kind of glimpse of a world to come , believed the existence of spirits and the power of miracles . . which consideration would make a man think that they were not so much as honest through-crackt enthusiasts , but rather knowing cheats and impostours , who being down-right epicureans , but of something a finer contexture , could abuse their rapturous and enthusiastick complexion to deceive the whole christian world , calling them off from christ to an admiration of themselves : which might be a considerable profit , as well as no small pleasure to them ; and under pretense of teaching them the great mystery of the gospel , might endeavour to undermine the gospel by taking away the substantial history of it , wrapping up ordinary precepts of life , such as any moral pagan can give concerning vertue , in the mysterious dress of the birth , death , resurrection and ascension of christ ; making the whole mystery of christianity nothing but a finely-contrived fable to set out some trivial moral truths , such as are acknowledged by almost every atheist and epicurean , and the practice whereof reaches no further then the more advantageous managements of the pleasures and enjoiments of this present life . . i do not deny but that the frequent use of scriptural allusions and phrases in their writings may raise in well-meaning men a sense beyond the feeling of them that wrote them . but where faith in christ is extinct and of those promises that he made so clearly known to the world by his resurrection and ascension , i conceive that this is an infallible argument that the divine life is extinct also ; and that it is from some impurity of body , soul or spirits , that a man sinks below that belief ; and that his vertues then are but complexional or merely moral , such as are found in a cicurated beast or some better-natur'd brute . this in all likelihood was the utmost of that light which was in those two grand boasters ; which compar'd with that in christ , bears not so much proportion as the flame of a stinking lamp to the glorious lustre of the sun : insomuch that if they had not been both by themselves and others either equalized to , or preferred before our saviour , i should not so much as have vouchsafed to have made any comparison betwixt them , or ever to have mentioned them in my writings . chap. ix . . mahomet far more orthodox in the main points of religion then the above-named impostours . . the high pitch this pretended prophet sets himself at . his journey to heaven , being waited upon by the angel gabriel . his beast alborach , and of his being called to by two women by the way , with the angels interpretation thereof . . his arrival at the temple at jerusalem , and the reverence done to him there by all the prophets and holy messengers of god that ever had been in the world . . the crafty political meaning of the vision hitherto . . mahomet bearing himself upon the angel gabriel's hand , climbes up to heaven on a ladder of divine light . his passing through seven heavens , and his commending of himself to christ in the seventh . . his salutation of his creatour , with the stupendious circumstances thereof . . five special favours he received from god at that congress . . of the natural wilyness in enthusiasts , and of their subtile pride where they would seem most humble . the strange advantage of enthusiasme with the rude multitude ; . and the wonderfull success thereof in mahomet . other enthusiasts as proud as mahomet , but not so successfull , and why . . the third pretended prophet and head of the nations is mahomet : who though he haply be not so moralized a man , or at least not so cautious , as these two we last spoke of , but more openly entangled in the pleasures of the flesh , if he be not belied , then these two sadducees , were , and more able to enjoy himself in those pleasures ; yet ( be it luck or choice or mere policy , ) he seems more orthodox in the grand points of religion then they ; he holding not only the existence of a god and of angels and spirits , but also the immortality of the soul , and a solemn judgment to come , wherein every man shall receive according to what he has done in the flesh , whether it be good or evil . . the success of this pretender has been so wonderfully great in the world , that i think it not amiss to make somewhat a longer stay upon him then upon the two former . we shall therefore take notice what pitch he sets himself at , and after endeavour to level him and reduce him to his due place . if we will then believe his own testimony , we shall find him so much favoured by god and the heavenly powers , as to be carried up into the highest heavens , at least by vision . but he tells the story of himself as if it was a real transaction , viz. that once about midnight the angel gabriel knocked at his door , and told him that he should travail up to heaven , for god almighty would speak with him . that the angel brought along with him a milkùwhite beast called alborach , something bigger then an ass , but less then a mule , which the angel bad mahomet get upon : but the beast kicking and refusing his rider , the angel asked him why he did so , for he never did nor ever could receive upon his back a better man then mahomet . but alborach answered , he would not admit him , unless he would promise to procure him an entrance into paradise : which mahomet promising , he got up , and the angel led the beast by the rains of the bridle , till they were come to ierusalem . now as they were in their way upon their journey , mahomet heard the voice of a certain woman crying to him aloud , mahomet , mahomet ; but the angel forbad him to answer : and when they had gone further , another woman called him after the same manner ; but the angel commanded him to hold his peace . and that afterward he asked the angel what these women were : to which the angel replied , that the first was the promulgatress of the iewish , the second of the christian law ; and that if he had answered to the first woman , all the mauri had become iews , if to the second , christians . . when they had come to the gate of the temple at ierusalem , that mahomet lighted off from his beast alborach , and that he and the angel went into the temple , where all the prophets and messengers of god that ever came into the world met him and saluted him , saying , ioy to the messenger and honourable prophet of god. afterwards waiting on him in great pomp to the chappell mihrab , with much reverence they desired him that he would pray for them all : which when he had done , they besought him also that he would be mindfull of them when he came into the presence of god. this done , they all went away , and mahomet and the angel were left alone in the temple . . by which crafty figment mahomet assuredly meant nothing else but a justification of himself for beginning a third sect , distinct from the religions of iews and christians , and the recommendation of himself to the world as the greatest prophet that ever yet appeared on earth . but we are not come to the height of the vision yet . . the angel and mahomet afterwards coming out of the temple , found a ladder made of divine light which reached from earth to heaven , whereby they both , mahomet bearing himself upon the angels hand , ascended up thither , passing through seven heavens ; the first of pure silver where adam was , the second of gold where noah , the third of a certain precious gemme wherein was abraham , the fourth of smaragdus wherein ioseph , the fifth of adamant wherein moses , the sixth of carbuncle wherein iohn the baptist was found , and the seventh of celestial light wherein was iesus christ. all these venerable personages welcomed mahomet with loving salutations and kind embraces , and commended themselves to him ; but in the seventh heaven mahomet seems to commend himself to christ. the infinite numbers , monstrous figures and immense bignesse of angels that he sets off his vision by , for the greater astonishment of his followers , i thought good to omit , as being too vile and tedious , and he is not got to his journies end yet . . the angel gabriel takes leave of him in this seventh heaven , telling him he may goe no further with him , but that god alone now must be his guide . mahomet therefore holding on his journie , was carried on the tops of incredible heights and sublimities , wading through much water and deep snow , insomuch that he had been quite spent , had not a voice refreshed him , saying , mahomet , come hither and salute thy creatour . he following therefore the sound of this voice , saw so great a light , that he was almost blinded therewith : for the face of god was cover'd with veiles of celestial light seventy miles thick ; to which he approached within the space of two flight shot , but could not see the face of god by reason of the hot gleames and glorious raies that streamed from those veils of light . but god laid his hand upon him to refresh him , which felt exceeding cold . . in this congress he received the law from god and many wonderfull secrets : but he glories most of all that in this night he had conferr'd upon him five things which no man before or after ever had . first , that god then made him the first and most chief creature in heaven and in earth . secondly , that he should be the most excellent and most honourable amongst the sons of adam at the day of iudgment . thirdly , that he should be the general redeemer of the world. fourthly , that he should have the knowledge of all tongues . fifthly and lastly , that he should be victorious , and carry away the spoils of war. . we see how high mahomet has mounted himself , & how much political craft is intermix'd with this fanatical figment . for enthusiastick madness , as it is never disjoined from the highest kinde of pride , even there where it seems to be most humble , ( for the attributing nothing to it self , but that all its knowledge and power is immediately from god , is nothing else but an ostentation of an higher kind of power and more infallible way of knowledge then other mortals have , of which this vision of mahomet's is a lively representation ) so it has very often strange and unexpected fetches of fraud and guile in it , such as would not easily come into the mind of an ordinary sober man. whereby an enthusiast amongst rude people , if he be not quite crackt , but be of an active spirit , and have opportunity offered him , may doe wonderfull things in the world , such as no sober man could ever atchieve or dare to attempt . such is the case of this mahomet , who in the midst of his fanatical madness , wilde mirth , insatiable lust and ambition , poetical raptures and martial fury , lai'd the foundation of that mighty empire that all the world stands amazed at at this day . the first step to which was that enthusiastick phrensie that emboldened him either to think or at least to profess himself the last and greatest prophet that ever god would send into the world. for the bold inculcation of this , seconded with many occasional fetches of wit to save himself when his impostures were discovered , carried the business successfully with that rude nation he had to deal with . . as for that pride that accompanies fanatical madness , i must confess there were others had their minds set as high on that rack as he , i mean david george , he of amsterdam , the peruvian doctour , and others who affected the same title and office with him , and it may be being more throughly mad ( at least some of them ) did more firmly believe themselves to be that great prophet god would send into the world then mahomet did . but mahomet having a more governable enthusiasm in him , and a more martial and political spirit , and , what is chiefest of all , better opportunity of playing his game , as having to deal with rude and illiterate people ; his success did not only exceed theirs , but prov'd so admirable , as it might have become a true prophet indeed . chap. x. . that mahomet was no true prophet , discovered from his cruel and bloudy precepts . . from his insatiable lust. . from his wildeness of phansy , and ignorance in things . what may possibly be the meaning of the black speck taken out of his heart by the angel gabriel . . his pretence to miracles ; as his being overshadowed with a cloud , when he drove his masters mules . . a stock of a tree cleaving it self to give way to the stumbling prophet . the cluttering of trees together to keep off the sun from him , as also his dividing of the moon . . the matters hitherto recited concerning mahomet taken out of johannes andreas the son of abdalla a mahometane priest , a grave person and serious christian. . but . that he was not a true prophet , but a mere political enthusiast of a vafrous and versatil wit , with a little smack of cracktness and lunacy , is very deprehensible as well from his immorality as his ignorance of things , and the wildness of his phansy . i shall give some few instances of each . and to the first i refer his cruelty , in giving laws to butcher all men that would not presently turn to his religion . which precept is set down in the alcoran , as also in zuna , occidite homines , quousque omnes mauri fiant . and that they may act this tragedy more zealously , and not be affraid of being kill'd themselves , he promised them so great a joy in that death ( besides their speedy entrance into paradise , and feasting it there with their creatour ) that they would even willingly leave paradise , and come again into the flesh to be capable again of so great joy as that kinde of death affords them . . besides that he was thus cruel , he was also insatiably venereous , as may be gathered by several acts of his ; as his taking away his servant zeydin's wife from him , whenas himself had no less then nine at home already of his own , and zeydin but this one . in the book azear and assameil he is said to have fifteen wives , and extolled for his virility in that he had to doe with them all in one hour . he committed adultery also with one marina , a jewish girle , which was given him of fifteen years of age ; and being caught in the act by axa and hafeza the two chiefest of his wives , and chid for it , he swore to them he would never meddle with her again : but his lust being stronger then the obligation of an oath , his two wives found him at that unlawfull game once more : whereupon mahomet enlarged the laws of matrimony , to save his own credit , and made it lawfull for all his followers to have to do with their maid-servants . he is said also when he had already seven wives , to have married that axa at six years of age , and to have lyen with her when she was but eight years old . finally at last he set no bounds to his lust , but taught the people he might lie with whom he would , though he kept them within a certain stint : whereby he was not so kind as * david george , that permitted this freedom to all his followers as well as to himself . . his wildness of phansy and ignorance in things is evident in several passages ; as his making mary the mother of iesus , the sister of moses and aaron ; in asserting the stars to be hung in golden chains , and that the biggest of them are no bigger then a great mountain ; in affirming that god has established the earth on a * bulls horn , and that the shaking of his head is the cause of earthquakes . this mahomet delivers in the book zuna : where also he teaches how when a man is buried , two black angels come unto him , and force him to raise himself on his knees , and to put on his soul upon the out-side of his body as a shirt or surplice ; which done , they examine him whether he believe in the law of mahomet , with a deal of other stuff to that purpose . that also is a wonderfull fine fiction of his , that when he was four year old , the angel gabriel took him by the hand , and led him behinde a hill , and there with a sharp rasor cut up his breast , and took out his heart , which having cleansed of a black speck , he after put it in again . but it is evident from the effect , that the angel did not use his incision-knife for the best advantage for preventing of those so many and so enormous acts of adultery which mahomet was famous for : or it may be the meaning is , that that black speck being taken out , he was then impeccable , i mean , in that fanatick sense , that doe what he would , he could not sin , no not though he lay with his own mother or murthered his father ; a wilde conceit of some enthusiasts of these daies . . it would be an endless labour to record all the follies of this prophet , the most judicious whereof is his pretense to miracles . for he that has neither miracles nor can feign any , what face has he to profess himself a prophet ? the first miracle he pretends to we have mentioned already , which was the cleansing of his heart of the black spot , which makes men obnoxious to be assaulted by the devil , as the mahometans conceive . the second happened when he was seventeen years old , when a cloud like a canopy kept over his head in an hot day , as he travailed with his masters camels . to these you may adde his being saluted by an angel in the cave , and spoken to by stones and trees and brute creatures , with this compellation , haile mahomet , the messenger of god , as also the weeping of a dry trunk of a palm-tree at his departure and exile from mecha . . but the three most notable miracles are still behind . the first whereof is the cleaving of the stock of a tree by mahomet's stumbling at it , as he was walking with his eyes devoutly looking up unto heaven . for the tree clove of it self , to give the holy prophet passage ; but when he was gone by , presently grew together again . the second is the cluttering of trees together to keep the sun off from him , and the retiring of them every one to his own place at his command . in zuna , mahomet more particularly affirms , that on a day he doing the necessities of nature in an open place , he commanded two trees to come to him to keep off the heat of the sun from him ; which they did immediately , their roots being torn out of the earth : and that he commanding them to return , the trees obeyed , and were fastened into the earth in their own place as before . but the last and most notable miracle , which equally argues his ignorance of nature as well as the wildness of his phansie , is his dividing of the moon into two parts , and making one part goe into one of his sleeves and the other into the other , and both of them to come out at his neck , and then soadering of both parts together , and so restoring her to the same place in heaven from whence by his prayer he made her to descend . of which miracles this is briefly to be noted , that as some of them are not possible , so none of them that are , are pretended to be done before witnesses ; and that most of them are very foolish and ridiculous . . these things are recorded by a very grave and pious person and a true and sincere christian , so far as i can discern , iohannes andreas , the son and successour of abdalla a mahometan priest , a man throughly-well skill'd in the religion and law of mahomet , who after his conversion to christianity wrote a book , and in my apprehension with a great deal of honesty and judgment , concerning the imposture of mahometism ; out of which i have recited what you have heard , and might adde much more both out of him and other writers . but this will suffice to demonstrate mahomet to be such as i have characterized him , and make us by such comparison as these the better understand , and the more sensibly relish , the sobriety , decency , and unexceptionable solidity of our own religion . chap. xi . . three main consequences of christ's apotheosis . . of the mission of the holy ghost , and the apostles power of doing miracles . . the manner of the descent of the holy ghost upon them at the day of pentecost . . the substantial reasonableness of the circumstances of this miracle . . the symbolical meaning of them . . what was meant by the rushing winde that filled the whole house . . what by the fiery cloven tongues . . a recital of several other miracles done by or happening to the apostles . . the congruity and coherence of the whole history of the miracles of christ and his apostles argued from the success . . after our something-long but needfull digression to view the false and unsound waies that mahomet , david george and his fanatical fellow of amsterdam would lead men in , we return now to that faithfull way and true guide iesus christ , whose resurrection , ascension and apotheosis we having passed through , we shall now proceed to the three last things we propounded , all which are very natural and suitable consequences of his apotheosis , his sitting and ruling of the world at the right hand of the father : and they are these ; his sending of the holy ghost at the day of pentecost , and enabling his apostles and disciples to doe miracles : the great success of their endeavours in the world , they being thus assisted by so miraculous a power ; and christ's visible return into the world , to judge the quick and the dead . . the first of these , which is the mission of the holy ghost , and the enabling of his apostles to work miracles , it was not only fitting to be performed , as being first promised by christ , while he was with them here on earth ; but also needfull to have been done , though it had not been promised , that when they went out to preach the gospel to the nations , they might not seem wholly ridiculous and contemptible in propounding such vain and incredible things , ( as they would seem to the world , ) and such as had some kind of blemish or reproach with them , recommending to them one for the son of god whom the jews had crucified for a malefactor betwixt two thieves . certainly if an extraordinary power had not assisted them , and they could not have done something beyond nature , they would have been laughed at and hissed out of every place they came to . but having this supernatural assistance , both their own faith was the more firmly rooted thereby , they finding that iesus approved himself to the utmost to be all that with his father which he professed himself to be ; and they were so exceedingly encouraged and emboldened through this sensible presence of the deity going along with them , that no dangers nor affronts , no not the fear of death or torment , could hinder them from being open witnesses to the world of all those things which they had seen and most certainly knew concerning the crucified iesus , the son of god and saviour of mankind . . we have seen in general how requisite this supernatural assistance was to the apostles ; we shall now take notice in particular how congruous at least & decorous the first appearance thereof was at the day of pentecost . the apostles together with other disciples being met in an upper room at ierusalem , and being all of one mind and of one faith and expectation of the promise of the spirit , at the above-named day of pentecost , of a suddain there came upon them a sound from heaven , as of a mighty rushing winde , which filled the house where they were sitting ; and there appeared unto them cloven tongues , like as of fire , which sate upon each of them : and they all filled with the holy ghost began to speak with other tongues , as the spirit gave them utterance . . supposing a god , a providence and the ministry of angels and spirits , there is not a jot of this impossible or incredible . but we shall also take notice of the congruity of circumstances , which are either for an handsome symbolical sense , or else for a more indispensable convenience ; as i conceive the day to be , and their assembling thus together on this day of pentecost in one place . for their seeing what happened thus miraculously to every one of them is a stronger confirmation of all their faiths , and they are the more sufficient witnesses to all the world of what thus miraculously befell them . and the day of pentecost was the most convenient time for this to happen , because of the greater concurse of people on that day . . but it does not exclude that more mystical and symbolical sense of s. austine's ; that as the written law was given to the iews on the fiftieth day after the passeover , so the law of the spirit which was to be written in mens hearts was thus wonderfully begun here on the same day , by the preaching of the apostles , on whom the spirit descended in such an extraordinary manner . nor does that other sense concerning the unity of place exclude that moral intimation of grotius , deus dona sua promisit unitati . that also of their being seated in an upper room must signifie morally , or nothing considerable ; for else the more removed from the earth , the never nearer to god , especially within the smell of the atmosphere . which philosophick contemplation apollonius pursues with a great deal of pomp and gravity , indoctrinating damis , while they were travailing on mount caucasus , ( which the neighbour inhabitants look'd upon as the holy mansion of the gods , as other hills also are call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from that opinion , ) that a man is never the nearer the knowledge of religion and vertue , if he were mounted upon the highest athos , olympus or all the caucasus's in the world , unless he contemplate religious and divine matters , not so much in a pure and subtile air , as from an undeprav'd and sincere spirit . . but that which is of the greatest significancy is the mighty rushing wind and the fiery cloven tongues . the former whereof is an emblem of the external violence which god would doe to the world in the introducing of the acknowledgment of his son into it . for without doubt those wonderfull miracles that were done by the apostles , beat so strongly upon the outward senses of men , that they were after a manner forcibly driven to acknowledge that the hand of god was with them , and that the doctrine which they taught was true . the knowledge whereof at last , with the fame of their miracles , filled the whole world , as that sound from heaven and mighty rushing wind filled the whole house where they sate . i am sure the chief priests complained betimes that the apostles had filled all ierusalem with their doctrines . . the latter , viz. the fiery cloven tongues ; the fieriness of them intimates the searching , penetrating , melting and purifying power of the spirit ; as their being cloven or divided the effect of the living word which accompanied their preaching , which we may better call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , then the stoicks their meager reason . for this is that which is sharper then any two-edged sword , dividing the very joints and marrow , and piercing to the inmost penetrals of the heart , as may be observed at the preaching of peter's sermon . or , not to be altogether so mystical or spiritual , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these divided or cloven tongues may be only an external symbol of that inward power given them to speak and understand several tongues , though they were never taught them . which was a gift of very sober and necessary use ( as all the miracles are that were done either by christ or his apostles ) they being to preach to men of several nations then sojourning at ierusalem , and afterwards to travail into several countries to convert men to the faith. . this is a solid account of all the circumstances of that great miracle done partly upon , and partly by the apostles , after christ's ascension into heaven : which divine power ever after assisted them in all their travails and labours in the gospel , as you may see in the acts. where you shall find them not only endued with this miraculous power themselves , but by * prayer and imposition of hands conferring it upon others for the benefit of the church : where you shall see them * healing the sick , making the * lame to walk , * raising the dead , * casting out devils , and doing over again all the most considerable miracles of our saviour ; and some which he never did , as the speaking with tongues , and healing * by the mere shadow of their bodies , which seems more wonderfull then by the touching of the hem of christ's garment . to which you may adde what strangely happened to them ; as upon their praiers and devotions how the house * shaked under them , as in an earthquake , through the sensible presence of the divine power attending them : their being * transported through the air by the hand of an angel from one place to another : their being visited by * angels in prison , who opened the prison doors , and made the fetters fall off from their bodies of their own accord : the * transfiguration of their countenances into an angelical glory ; and the * appearance of christ from heaven to them in a splendour more bright and radiant then the sun at mid-day , as it happened to paul as he was travailing to damascus . the credibility of which things , as also of the resurrection and miracles of christ , the success it self does plainly argue . . for it seems utterly impossible that christ , a man cut short of all accomplishments that are plausible to flesh and bloud , being neither arm'd by the power of eloquence , the knowledge of philosophy , the authority and honour of the world , nor the advantages of birth or fortune ; but on the contrary being disadvantaged by leading a life and offering himself an example of manners that are either scorn'd or hated by every natural man , who was still made more odious and contemptible by his suffering a shamefull death betwixt two gro●s malefactors ; i say , if an high hand from heaven had not carried on the affairs of christianity , that is , if christ had not done some such miracles himself as are recorded , if he had not risen from the dead , ascended into heaven , and thence powred forth his spirit upon the apostles , and enabled them to doe such wonderfull works as they did , * it had been utterly impossible that christianity could have had any such success in the world as we see it has at this day . so that the whole history of christ is very congruous and coherent , and such as according to the nature of the thing ought to be whenever the messias was to come into the world. chap. xii . . three main effects of christ his sending the paraclete , foretold by himself , iohn . when the paraclete shall come , &c. . grotius his exposition upon the text. . the ground of his exposition . . a brief indication of the natural sense of the text by the author . . the prophesie of christ fulfilled , and acknowledged not only by christians but also mahometans . . that the substance of mahometism is moses and christ. their zealous profession of one god. . their acknowledgment of miracles done by christ and his apostles , and of the high priviledge conferred upon christ. . what advantage that portion of christian truth which they have embraced has on them , and what hopes there are of their full conversion . . it would be too tedious a business particularly to prosecute that ample success that the passion , resurrection , ascension of christ and his sending the holy ghost had in the world : but the most universal and farthest-spreading effects thereof we cannot pass by in silence ; especially those three which himself foretells of , john . that when the paraclete should come , he would convince the world concerning sin , righteousness and iudgment . concerning sin , because they believe not on me . concerning righteousness , because i goe to the father , and you see me no more . concerning iudgment , because the prince of this world is judged . . all which , as grotius interprets the place in a forensal sense , is of a very large extension , and acknowledged as well by turk as christian. for that learned expositour makes christ to send the spirit as an advocate to plead his cause against the world , ( and indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies so , and nothing else ) and thereby to convince the world , first , of that great crime of infidelity , and of killing of their true prophet , nay their expected messias . this properly respects the jews who crucified him : and they felt the divine vengeance for so heinous a fact , their city being sacked , their temple demolished , and themselves scattered and made underlings in all places of the world. secondly , of the equity and righteous dealing of the just god with christ , who , because he had suffered so wrongfully , made him a compensation , by making him a partaker of his heavenly glory for the reproach and injury he bore upon the earth . thirdly & lastly , of iustice betwixt party and party ; and that therefore as the devil excited the jews to put christ to death , so by way of retaliation christ should put the devil out of his present dominion and rule in the world , by the destruction of idolatry and the worship of those apostate spirits : though the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems something lame here , the members being so heterogeneall one to another . . but the exposition will appear sufficiently ingenious for all that , if we do but consider what he sets down for the ground of his interpretation ; that sin , righteousness and iudgment , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , answer to the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying publica judicia de criminibus ; but the other two , privata judicia , unum ex aequo & bono , which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , alterum certam ex lege formulam habens , which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which assuredly comprehends such laws as concern the right of possession as well as that of retaliation , which grotius so specially aims at in his citing levit. . . the devil therefore being a mere usurper and having no right to the rule and dominion of the world , the action will lie against his usurpation , and thus the interpretation will be unexceptionable . and that the action is of this kind is plain , in that christ , the son of god , is heir of all things , as himself somewhere intimates , and the apostle also in plain terms * declares . . the sense therefore of the forecited text in short is this , that the spirit , which is called the paraclete or advocate , when he comes should convince the world of the veracity of christ , and the infidelity and cruelty of the iews that crucified him who was a true prophet , neither deceiver nor deceived ; and of the equity of god that compensated his sufferings amongst the jews , by taking him to himself , and crowning him with immortal glory ; and of the iudgment of god against the devil , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that god has given sentence against him already that he shall be ejected out of his usurped dominions , and that all the pagan forms of worship shall be abrogated and destroy'd . . this the paraclete or spirit of god coming upon the apostles and assisting them and the church so miraculously for many ages , has with such undeniable conviction made good , that not only all christendome is assured thereof , but that vast empire of the turks and all the mahometans whereever dispersed in the world. so that after a manner the whole earth is filled with the belief thereof : which i thought worth the taking notice of , that this success may not seem less ample then it is . . for though the mahometans are not christians but pagans in too true a sense , yet it is plain that much of the letter of their law is moses and christ. and to the confusion of gross idolatry and polytheism they profess one only god , creatour of heaven and earth ; and their great stress of their religion lies upon this main article , with which they are so transported , that they spend a great deal of their time in their mosco's in chanting out this one truth , * la illa ilella , la illa ilella , that is , there is but one god , as historians relate . but this is no more then the jews believe , nor upon so good grounds : but they proceed further , as if they were ambitious to make out that broken title that one gives them , who calls them semichristianos , half-christians . . for partly in their alcoran , and partly in zuna , it is recorded how iesus christ was conceived by the holy ghost , and so born of the virgin mary . that the gospel is the way , the light and salvation of men , and that they that obey it not shall be damned . that christ knew the very thoughts of mens hearts , that he raised the dead , that he healed men of incurable diseases , that he gave sight to the blind , and made the dumb to speak . that the apostles of christ , matthew , peter and paul , healed one habib anaiar of the leprosie at antioch , and raised the king's daughter from the dead ; as also gave sight to a childe that was born blinde . and lastly three preeminences the alcoran gives to christ , which it gives not to any other prophet , to abraham , moses , no nor mahomet himself . the first is , that he was carried up to heaven bodie and soul ; where it is expresly added in zuna , that he shall return from thence to judge the world with righteous judgment . the second , that he shall be called the word of god. the third , that he should be called the holy spirit of god. these things you may read more at large in iohannes andreas his confusio sectae mahometanae , as also in others ; out of whom you may also add , that the turks have so venerable an esteem of s. iohn's gospel , that they wear it next their bodies as an amulet when they goe to war to keep them from gun-shot . . this i thought worth the noting , partly that that honour which is due to christ may not be given to mahomet , of whom the best that can be said is only this , that he did not so utterly pervert and deprave the mystery of the gospel by either his ignorance , political tricks or fanatical humours and whimsies , but that there was so much of the substance and virtue thereof left , as being seconded with the dint of the sword , was able enough to hew down the more * gross heathenish idolatry , chastise the disobedient & hypocritical christians , and ruine the external dominion of the devil in the world : and partly that we may discern what great hopes there are that in due time , when the chief scandals of christendome are taken away , ( they being so far prepared already in their reverend opinion concerning our blessed saviour ) the whole turkish empire may of a sudden become true christians ; that which is vain and false among them having no better prop then the foolish and idle visions , false pretended miracles and groundless fables of a mere wily , phansifull and unclean impostour ; whenas the pure christian religion comprehended in the gospel is so solid , sincere & rational , that no man that is master of his wits but may be throughly satisfied concerning the truth thereof . chap. xiii . . the triumph of the divine life not so large hitherto as the overthrow of the external empire of the devil . . her conspicuous eminency in the primitive times . . the real and cruel martyrdoms of christians under the ten persecutions , a demonstration that their resurrection is not an allegorie . . that to allegorize away that blessed immortality promised in the gospel is the greatest blasphemy against christ that can be imagined . . you see then how large the success or event of our saviour's coming into the world is in reference to the external overthrow of the kingdome of the prince of this world , that old usurper over the sons of men . if you demand of me how great the triumph of the divine life has been in all this victory ; i must answer , i could wish that it was greater then it is , that it had been larger and continued longer : but something has been done all this time that way too . . for faith in god through our lord jesus christ , and a firm belief of a life to come , and the effect of this faith which is the very nature and spirit of christ dwelling in us , consisting of purity , humility and charity , this sound constitution was very much in the church in the primitive times , even then when they had no succour nor support from the hands of men ; nay when they were cruelly handled by them : they chusing rather to be banish'd , imprisoned , tortured and put to any manner of death , then to deny him who had redeemed them with his most precious bloud , and had prepared a place of eternal happiness for them with himself in heaven . . here faith and the divine life was very conspicuously victorious and triumphant , in that in the eyes of all the world it set at nought all the cruel malice of the devil and the terrour of death it self in the most ghastly vizard he could put on ; as you may see innumerable examples in the ten bloudy persecutions under the heathen emperours . which history must needs make a man abominate such light-headed and false-hearted allegorists that would intercept the hopes of a future life by spirituallizing those passages in scripture that bear that sense into a present , moral and mystical interpretation ; as if the gospel and the precious promises therein conteined reached no further then this life we now live upon earth . . which is the highest reproach and blasphemie that can be invented against christ iesus , as if he were rather a betraier then a saviour of mankind ; and that he was more thirsty after humane bloud then those indian gods we have spoken of , who were so lavish thereof in their sacrifices ; and as if it were not love and dear compassion towards us that made him lay down his life , but hatred and a spightfull plot of making myriads of men to be massacred and sacrificed out of affection to him that thus should betray them . wherefore whosoever interprets the new testament so as to shuffle off the assurance of reward and punishment after the death of the body , is either an arrant infidel or horrid blasphemer . chap. xiv : . the corruption of the church upon the christian religion becoming the religion of the empire . . that there did not cease then to be a true and living church , though hid in the wilderness . . that though the divine life was much under , yet the person of our saviour christ , of the virgin mary , &c. were very richly honoured ; . and the apostles and martyrs highly complemented according to the ancient guize of the pagan ceremonies . . the condition of christianity since the general apostasie compared to that of una in the desart amongst the satyrs . . that though this has been the state of the church very long , it will not be so alwaies ; and while it is so , yet the real enemies of christ do lick the dust of his feet . . the mad work those apes and satyrs make with the christian truth . . the great degeneracy of christendome from the precepts and example of christ in their warrs and bloudshed . . that though providence has connived at this pagan christianism for a while , he will not fail to restore his church to its pristine purity at the last . . the full proof of which conclusion is too voluminous for this place . . we have given a light glance upon the condition of the primitive church before christianity became the religion of the empire : what change would be wrought then , a man might discern out of the very causes . for whenas not only the fear of persecution was taken away , but great honours and outward advantages added to the church , the very worst and most atheistical of the pagans would be most forward to close with the christian religion ; and if any of the heathen stood out , it is not unlikely but they were such as had most conscience , though in an erroneous worship . so that the net then drew up more mud and dirt then good fishes . the garden of god which had before nothing else but wholesome herbs and flowers , was all overrun with weeds . or , if you will , the true church which was before as conspicuous as a city on an hill , was now hid and dispersed in the wide wilderness of the roman empire , which though it bore the name of christian , yet for life and manners was worse then pagan . . but yet not to make things less considerable then they were ; first , the true christian church was , i say , but hid , not lost , as it fares at this very day . for she is still hid in the wilderness , and like that voice in the wilderness complains and witnesses against the beastly , sensual and abominable lives and salvage dealings in that part of the world which is called christendome . for there alwaies were and still are in this great rude mass of christianity some that are truly regenerate and rightly form'd by the hand of god into the lovely image of christ , who give witness of the loathsome and detestable deviations of those that so impudently and imperiously boast themselves to be the only christians , when in truth they are not christians at all , that is , no true members of christ , as having nothing at all of his spirit , as their works do evidently declare . . and secondly , though i must confess that the divine life it self , as communicable to the church , is very much under the hatches since christianity and political interest went hand in hand ; yet after the church became so rich and pompous , they have laid out their riches very much in honour not only to our saviour , in whom the divine life dwelt in a transcendent manner , but to his blessed mother , to the holy apostles and martyrs , who were also great examples of it . and being that these generations were such that god could expect no better of them , his providence , i think , did wisely permit that they might be so deeply engaged in their external homage to christ and his most faithfull followers : that that might be fulfilled in some measure in the martyrs also which was prophesied concerning christ , therefore i will divide him a portion with the great , and he shall divide the spoile with the strong , because he hath powred out his soul unto death . and therefore the martyrs sharing so deeply in the sufferings of christ , were permitted also in a measure to partake of that glory and honour that is done to great princes and emperours after their decease ; to have images and temples erected to their name . this makes me not so much wonder at that passage of providence which allowed so much virtue to the bones of the martyr babylas once bishop of antioch , as to stop the mouth of apollo daphneus , when iulian would have enticed him to open it by many a fat sacrifice : to say nothing of several other memorable miracles that were done by the reliques of saints and martyrs in those times . . hitherto therefore the pagan world since they became christians have been very religiously complemental according to the ancient guize of paganism , devoutly cringing and courting with many sacred rites and ceremonies not only christ , but the blessed virgin and all the holy martyrs & confessours , very freely and forwardly bestowing upon them all external reverence , consecrating chappels & daies to their honour and memories : so that the personal worship of the divine life as it is seated in christ , in the blessed virgin , in this or in that saint or martyr , is as punctually performed , as the worship of those excellent dowries of the animal life in ancient paganism , which they honoured in belus , bacchus , ceres , apollo , venus and other eminent persons amongst the heathens , who were great gratifiers of the natural life of man. . methinks * spencer's description of una's entertainment by satyrs in the desart , does lively set out the condition of christianity since the time that the church of a garden became a wilderness . they danc'd and frisk'd and play'd about her , abounding with external homages and observances ; but she could not inculcate any thing of that divine law of life that she was to impart to them . the representation is so lively , and the verses so musical , that it will not be tedious to recite some of the chief of them ; as stanza . where he makes the satyrs to lay aside their rudeness and roughness as much as they could , to revive the dismaied virgin after her great distress . their frowning foreheads with rough horns yclad , and rustick horrour all aside they lay , and gently grenning , shew a semblance glad to comfort her , and fear to put away , their backward bent knees teach her humbly to obay . and then again in the following stanza , they , in compassion to her tender youth , and wonder to her beauty soverain , are won with pitty and unwonted ruth , and all prostrate upon the lowly plain do kis her feet , and fawn on her with count'nance fain . . their hearts she guesseth by their humble guise , and yields her to extremity of time ; so from the ground she fearless doth arise , and walketh forth without suspect of crime . they all , as glad as birds of joyous prime , thence lead her forth , about her dancing round , shouting , and singing all a shepheards rime , and with green branches strowing all the ground , do worship her , as queen with olive girlond crown'd . . and all the way their merry pipes they sound , that all the woods with double echo ring , and with their horned feet do wear the ground , leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring , &c. but in all this alacritie and activity in their ceremonies and complemental observances , una could beat nothing of the inward law of life into them , but all was spent in an outward idolatrous flattery , as the poet complains stanza . glad of such luck , the luckless lucky maid did her content to please their feeble eyes , and long time with that salvage people stai'd , to gather breath in many miseries : during which time , her gentle wit she plies to teach them truth which worship her in vain , and made her th' image of idolatries . but when their bootless zeal she did restrain from her own worship , they her ass would worship fain . . but though it has been thus so long , yet it seems incredible it should be always so ; and while it is as it is , yet the divine life is in its personal triumph . and now the enemies of christ even while they are such , ( and such are all unregenerate men , let them be called christians never so loudly ) do lick the very dust of his feet , and they lout and ly prostrate to the names of those men whose lives , if they were on the earth again ( they are so contrary to theirs ) they would unreconcilably hate , and scorn their persons for their meanness , and tread them under feet ; nay it may be with more shame and cruelty then ever , make them suffer once again those bloudy martyrdomes . . so that it is an uncouth spectacle to consider what strange ridiculous work these satyrs , monkyes and baboons , ( i mean the unregenerated mass of mankind , who are enlivened with nothing but the mere animal life ) have made these many hundred years in the wilderness , with the most precious truth of the gospel ; what sophistical knots and nooses , fruitless subtilties and niceties , what gross contradictions and inconsistencies the schoolmen and polemical divines have filled the world with ; what needless and burdensome ceremonies , what ensnaring new coined articles , what setting up of self-flattering sects and interests , what variously-carved formes and new-fangled curiosities have been contriv'd and shap'd out by either superstitious church-men or carnal politicians . . but if there were nothing worse then this , though this be ill enough , the scene would seem only comical in comparison : but at last the ape cuts his own throat with the shoomakers knife , and christendome lyes tumbling and wallowing , i know not for how many ages together , in its own bloud . the reason of which is , that in this long bustle for and great ostentation of an external religion , the inward life and spirit of christianity which consists in humility , charity and purity , is left out , and pride , lust and covetousness are the first movers in all our actions : so that though we be called by the name of christ , yet our hearts and reall services are grosly pagan ; we consecrating our very souls with all the powers , affections and faculties of them to the worst-titled deities of the heathen ; and being strictly commanded by our saviour to love one another , as it were in despight , to shew what real apostates we are to paganisme , rather pour forth one anothers bloud as a drink-offering to mars , then keep that inviolable and indispensable precept of his whom we profess to be our liege lord and soveraign . . thus has it pleas'd that ever-watchfull eye of providence to connive as it were a while at this pagan christianisme , as well as he did in former ages at the ancient paganisme . but assuredly it will be better , and all the glorious predictions of the prophets concerning christ , even in this world will not end in so tedious a scene , where there is so little good , and such a floud of filth and evil . but the spirit of the lord will blow upon these dry bones , and actuate this external forme of religion with life and power , and the scales will fall from her eyes , and that load of scurf and ascititious foulness will fall from her skin , and her flesh shall be as of a tender child , and she shall grow strong , healthful and irreprehensibly lovely to look upon . when these things come to pass , the divine life will be in her highest triumph or exaltation upon earth ; and this excellent state of the church will continue for a very considerable time . * but the wicked shall again assault the just , and christ visibly returning to judgement shall decide the controversy . . this is the truest and most faithful representation in general ( so far as my skill in church-history or prophecies will reach ) that i can make of that interval of time , betwixt christ's powring forth of the holy ghost on his apostles and his coming again to judgement . but because it would be a voluminous business more particularly to make good what i have asserted , and that it is not so essential to the present purpose i have in hand , i hold it not at all necessary to engage in any operose endeavours of demonstrating the truth of the conclusion . i shall rather send him that doubts , to satisfie himself in the perusing of the learned writings of that incomparable interpreter of prophecies mr. ioseph mede : whose proceedings are with that care and caution , with that clearness and strictness of reason , with that accuracy of judgement and unparallel'd modesty and calmness , that the study and enquiry into these matters , which had even grown odious and infamous by the wild and ridiculous miscarriages of hot fanatick spirits , has in my apprehension gained much credit and repute by the orderly and coherent methods and unexceptionable ratiocinations of this grave and venerable person . upon whose account i am not ashamed to profess , that i think it clear both out of daniel and the apocalypse that the scene of things christendome will be in due time very much changed , and that for the better . and because there does nothing so much counterbalance the weight of mr. mede's reasons as the autority and lustre of that worthily-admired name of the learned hugo grotius , who has interpreted the revelations to quite another sense ; ( the ingenuities and prettinesses of whose expositions had almost imposed upon my self to a belief that there might be some such sense also of the revelation as he drives at ) to make all clear i shall take the pains of exhibiting both to the view of the reader . who i hope will not take it ill that so pious , so learned and judicious a person as mr. mede , and that in a matter to which he may seem to be peculiarly selected and set apart to by god and nature , to which he mainly applied himself with all possible care , seriousness and devotion , should see further then hugo grotius , who has an ample harvest of praise from other performances , and who by reason of his political emploiments could not be so entirely vacant to the searching into so abstruse a mystery . chap. xv. . grotius his reasons against days signifying years in the prophets , propounded and answered . . demonstrations that days do sometimes signifie so many years . . mr. mede's opinion , that a new systeme of prophecies from the first epocha begins chap. . v. . cleared and confirmed . . what is meant by the three days and an half that the witnesses lye slain . . of the beast out of the bottomless pit . . of the first resurrection . . the conclusion of the matter in hand from the evident truth of mr. mede's synchronisms . . the strongest presumption that grotius has against mr. mede's way is his confidence that days never signifie years . which if he could make good , it would utterly invalidate and make useless the whole frame of mr. mede's apocalyptical interpretations . but he affirms it with all boldness imaginable ; * dies etiam apud prophetas dies sunt , non anni ut quidam somniant : and endeavours to prove it , and pretends he has done it very plainly , from daniel . . and he said unto me , unto two thousand and three hundred days ; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed , compared with vers . . and the vision of the evening and the morning which was told thee , is true , that is , saith he , has nothing in it obscure , but is clear and plain . from whence he further inferres , that it is plain every where that days have never any hidden meaning in them , but signifie merely days , not years . which in my apprehension is not at all well argued by so learned an expositour . for though we should admit that true in this place signifies plain and clear without any figure or aenigme ; it does not at all follow that whereever day is used , it must be in this usual and proper sense . which answer were solid , though the very word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were used here . but they are not , but the text runs thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , unto two thousand evenings-mornings , &c or two thousand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but elsewhere , as chap. . v. , . there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is put . and therefore it were a very groundless inference to conclude , because where day is so described by its natural parts of evening and morning , there it signifies naturally and not figuratively , that therefore it should do so where it is not thus described . to which you may adde , that the angels telling daniel , that this vision of evenings and mornings , that is , of days , is clear , doth plainly imply that the visions of the number of days are sometimes not clear but obscure , and may signifie years ; otherwise this intimation had been in vain : as truly the very numbring thus by days also ; whenas it had been more natural to have expressed the prophecy by so many years , if it had not been of set purpose to make the prophecies of daniel more obscure , and to hide them from such eyes as the wisdome of god thought fit , that they should not perceive their meaning . this is the utmost that grotius has to say against the expounding of days by years . . let us see now what may be said for it . first , it is plain that the prophetical descriptions of time do sometimes affect certain ambages and obscurities to hide themselves in , which our adversaries themselves cannot deny : otherwise daniel might have said more plainly , three years and an half , then * a time and times and half a time. wherefore why may not years be signified by days as well as time and times signifie years , especially there being some handsome analogy in the matter , they being both measured by a complete circuit of the sun , the one annual , the other diurnal ? again , we see plainly that god himself has de facto in several places of the scripture made days the compendious representatives of years . as numb . . . forty days , each day for a year ; and ezechiel . . i have appointed thee each day for a year . to which you may adde , that the jewish doctors of old took it up for a principle to interpret prophecies by ; which reaches the case very home , in reference to the apocalypse , whose authour our adversaries will acknowledge not to abhorre from cabbalisme . thirdly , i shall urge that very text which grotius has so strangely perverted to his own sense , daniel . v. . where the angel tells daniel that the vision of the evening and the morning is perspicuous and clear . which most certainly is an intimation to daniel , that some prophecies imparted to him , where the time is numbred by days , are not clear , but are to be looked upon as enigmatical and figurative . but here the mention also of evening and morning shews plainly that natural days or ordinary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are to be understood , and yet the angel puts in this caution . whereby it is still more evident that days do ordinarily in prophecy signifie years . fourthly , the little horn , daniel . that rules for a time and times and half a time , it is evident that it is not antiochus epiphanes , because this little horn is part of the fourth beast , namely the romane ; but antiochus part of the greek empire . for it is clear from chap. . vers . . that , the great horn being the first king , the four following horns are of the same kingdome ; in the latter time whereof antiochus epiphanes rises up , as appears v. . these things are so plain that nothing can be plainer . wherefore the little horn in the seventh chapter is a part of the romane empire , a power there whose reign cannot be circumscribed within the compass of three years and a half , but these years must be resolved into days , and these days into so many years , or no sense can be made of the prophesie . but this is done to our hand in the apocalypse , where the woman in the wilderness is said to abide there for * a time and times and half a time as well as * days . which plainly shews the warrantableness of this solution . fifthly , those numbers of daniel , chap. . v. , . namely , one thousand two hundred and ninety days , and a thousand three hundred and five and thirty days , they being so unapplicable to any thing in the sense of days , but so exactly pointing out the latter times in the sense of years , is a further demonstration that days sometimes signifie years in the prophetical writings . sixthly , it seems exceedingly improbable , a single day being so inconsiderable a space of time to transact those things in that are prophesied of in scripture , that the spirit of god should number out the time by days , when it might more compendiously be set down by years ; especially these pettinesses being below the divine majesty to catch at , and there being no examples of events that have been observed thus punctually to answer to a day where prophecies have been numbred by days , that would have filled up any number of years . how unlikely then is it that * half a day should come into compute , as it does in the slain witnesses , if days be meant , and not some greater measures of time ? seventhly , it is manifest , and confessed of all hands , that the days of daniel's weeks are years . here grotius would fain evade if he could , by feigning a peculiar priviledge of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to signifie a week of years , unless there be the mention of days added to determine the sense the other way : which makes me wonder that a person otherwise so ingenuous should vent so groundless and false a supposition . i dare say you can scarce believe me unless i produce his own words , which are these ; * ubi de dierum hebdomade agitur , solet adjici dierum nomen : whenas yet there are but two instances of this addition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the one daniel . v. , . which is not done as usual , but to adde light in all likelihood to the precedent prophecy of the weeks of years , for distinction sake , and does imply that they would also naturally signifie weeks of days . the other , ezechiel . . where it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if they had read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seven days , not , weeks of days . but quite contrary to what he has pronounced , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a week , without any thing added to it , does alwaies signifie a week of days , unless in a prophetical scheme the days of the week signifie years , as it does here in daniel . see genes . . v. , . exod. . v. . levit. . v. . numb . . v. . deut. . v. , , . chron. . . ierem. . . in all these places 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a week of days wihtout 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 added to it . nor is there any example where it has such an addition but these two produced by himself , of which we have given an account . eighthly and lastly , mr. mede's synchronisms are apodictically true to any one that has but a competency of wit and patience to peruse them . but according to these synchronisms the continuance of the conculcation of the outward court , the mournful prophecies of the witnesses , the woman in the desart , the ten-horned and two-horned beasts , the sealed servants of the lamb , the whore of babylon , the succession of the first six trumpets , the continuance , i say , of all these is circumscribed within the space of three years and an half , if the days be but days and not years , as grotius would have it . which is a thing impossible , especially if we consider that beasts are , in the prophetical scheme of speech , polities or kingdomes , not persons , and therefore unconceivable to be so short-lived as to last but three years and an half . to which you may adde , that the chief matters of the apocalypse are comprehended within this synchronisme ; and that it is a wonder that there is no mention of years in all this book , saving of the millennium , but onely of months or days and half a day : which is a shrewd presumption that the computation of years is hidden under these terms where they signifie any definite time at all . wherefore i think it is as clear as the light , that days in prophecy do sometimes signifie years . nor see i any reason why time may not as well as things and actions be figuratively expressed by the prophets . . the greatest cavils that can be made against mr. mede's way , i conceive , are either against his dividing the apocalypse from the fourth chapter to the end of the book into two systems of prophetical visions , the one containing the fate of the empire , the other of the church , and both beginning from one epocha ; or else against his interpretation of the time of the killing of the two witnesses ; or lastly against his making the beast out of the bottomless pit ( chap. . ) the same with the beast out of the sea ( chap. . ) the greatest thing objected against the first is , that one of his chiefest marks of the beginning a new series of prophecies fails him . for whereas he argues from chap. . vers . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that there is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a running over the same space of time again and that à carceribus ad metam ; and from v. . the voice which i heard from heaven spake unto me again ; which he would parallel with chap. . v. . and with chap. . v. . the former whereof is the beginning of the prophecy of the seven churches , the latter of the seven seals : it is objected against the second mark , that it is defective , in that this voice is not joyned with the mentioning of a trumpet as those two to which he would parallel it are . i confess if the mention of a trumpet had been here joyned , the beginning of the prophecy a-new had been notoriously plain and palpable . indeed too plain for a book of prophecies that the wisdome of god has used so much artifice to obscure . but this half-indication was enough to such as god had made fit ( and thought the time seasonable ) to unriddle the mystery . but methinks there are other indications of the beginning of a new systeme of prophecies that may in a good measure compensate the imperfectness of this . i shall but briefly intimate them . as first the extraordinary majesty of that angel that has this opened book of prophecies in his hand ; his description being not unlike that of his that had the sealed book , revel . chap. and . and then secondly , this new book of prophecies seems naturally to imply a new systeme of prophecies distinct in kind as well as in volume ; the one , suppose , containing the affairs of the empire , the other of the church . which things though different in nature , yet running parallel in time , it is reasonable to conceive that the second book of prophecies reaches up to the same epocha with the first . which in the third place is further intimated by the oath of the angel who swears there shall be no more time , but that the mysterie of god shall be finished at the sounding of the seventh trump . which pronouncing that there will be no more time , certainly is meant of the time and times and half a time which shall then be expired , and which was pointed at by daniel the servant and prophet of god. which is the reason of the adding of those words , as he has declared to his servants the prophets . and lastly , that you may be still more sure that the prophecy begins again from the first epocha , there is not onely this more light and general mention of the * seventh trumpet , which is the last period of the sealed book , but also a distribution of it into * seven thunders , as there was of the * seventh seal into seven trumpets . and this mighty and illustrious angel , who , though he be not one of the seven properly so called ( and here is onely said to be * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) yet he immediately succeeding the sixth , is in some sort the seventh , and may well sustain the person of the seventh for this bout , he seeming also to continue his roaring all the time the seven thunders utter their voices . the last of which it 's likely may be thunder properly so called , namely that final conflagration of the world and the setting the earth on fire by thunder and lightning . and surely when the prophecies of the seals have reached to this last catastrophe , he must be very scrupulous that will make any doubt but that the prophecies of the opened book begin again from the first epocha of the revelation . to all which you may adde , that mr. mede's synchronisms do not depend upon this hypothesis , but on the contrary , prove by undeniable evidence that it is more then an hypothesis , even a necessary truth resulting from the demonstration of the said synchronisms . . as for the three days and an half that the witnesses are said to lye slain , there are scarce any now so ignorant as not to be ashamed to conceit these days to be natural days , and these witnesses to be any two particular men . but the objection is against them that will acknowledge them to be three years and an half , as mr. mede does , how it can be likely that at the very last gasp of the power of the beast , the truest and most apostolick christians should be in worse plight then ever before . but to this i answer , that the truth of mr. mede's synchronisms does not at all depend upon this , nor is his conjecture so impossible to be true . but i must confess i think there is still a better way of answering , namely , that these three days and an half are the same that a time and times and half a time , that is , three times and an half . for it is unquestionable but that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 often signifies no more then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . now that it should signifie so here , ( besides the improbability of an effect answerable to the other interpretation , or that the witnesses should be otherwise slain then they have been often or for a long time together ) that mention of half a day answering to half a time fairly invites us to believe ; it being also unlikely that providence would affect the curiosity of counting by half a year , a thing not to be sampled in all divine prophecies . these three days and an half therefore are first to be changed into three times and an half , and then these three times and a half into three years and an half , and these three years and an half into prophetick days . which ambages and circuits are not at all improbable , if we consider what studied concealments and obscurities there are in this book of the apocalypse , as particularly in the number of the beast , and of the new ierusalem , upon which we shall touch a little anon . to say nothing of a main usefulness of these three days and an half to determine the true number of a time and times . for how can we be assured how many times are designed thereby , especially it being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in daniel , which is the plural number , not the dual , and therefore bids fair to be more then two times , at least three ? whence it would be four times and an half . but these three days and an half correct or prevent the mistake , by fixing these time and times and half a time to three times and an half . which i confess i do little doubt but that it is the true meaning of the mystery . nor does their being slain * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , at all prejudice our interpretation . for it is not well rendred , when they shall have finished , nor yet need be rendred , while they are making an end of their witnessings , as if this should happen at the latter end of it ; but may very warrantably be expounded dum peragunt , while they are performing this office of witnessing from the beginning of the days to the end thereof . nor yet is that a real but seeming absurdity that this interpretation brings along with it , as if the witnesses could prophesy while their carcasses lie dead in the streets . for it is plain that in that sense they are said to be dead , they may prophesy in sackcloth , nay they will necessarily do so , i mean perform their witnessing with sadness and mourning . for their death is nothing else but a political death , their want of power and rule in the world. for such is their resurrection , namely political , they being raised to honour and government , as mr. mede himself acknowledgeth . wherefore there is no absurdity neither in the inward meaning nor outward cortex of this prophecy . for the inward meaning is such as i have told you : and the outward cortex framed with very graceful artifice , like that in the image of nebuchadnezar , where merely for the decorum of the type , the whole image is represented as standing and struck upon the legs , whenas yet that which was signified by the head , by the breast and armes , and by the belly and thighs , to wit , the babylonian , persian and greek monarchies , were passed away . so for the like decorum in this type of the witnesses , if not for necessity , to avoid a seeming gross incongruity , that the witnesses might not be said to prophesy while their bodies lay dead in the streets ; the time of their death , which really pervades the whole days , is concealed under and contracted into these three days and an half , and made not to appear , where in the things signified it is ; as those parts of the image were represented as standing , when the things that they signified ceased to be . which scheme is not at all more hard in the one then in the other , and in this type of the witnesses more useful and necessary . . concerning the sameness of the * beast out of the sea with the * beast out of the bottomless pit , there could have been no scruple , if translators had interpreted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of the sea , as it is very well capable , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying the same very often in scripture ; as iob . . and chap. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and psalm . v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as also isay . . ion. . . and other places . wherefore the wisdome of god thought good to vary the phrase here , onely for concealment ; as this whole book of prophecies is beset with many purposed , though not invincible , obscurities and difficulties , to keep this treasure hid till the time appointed . or it may be the using of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here in stead of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might be not to determine the sense to the ten-horned beast , but to give at least a liberty of interpreting it also of the two-horned contemporary with him . . but in no aspect does this book of the apocalypse look so hopeless and discouraging as in that of the first resurrection , chap. . but withall it is to be noted , there is no difficulty here but such as will at least equally urge those that begin the millennium at constantine's time : so that this can be no prejudice to mr. mede's interpretations and synchronisms . for whether we will go the allegorical way with some , and understand this first resurrection in a political sense like that of the witnesses , this way is better accommodated to mr. mede's synchronisms then to the other hypothesis . nor were it any great inconvenience to admit it as true , those phrases which at last will have a literal fulfilling , being often used in a figurative ; as we may observe in the lake of fire , some descriptions of god's coming to particular judgments , the six thunders , and the like : all which expressions will have at last a literal and physical completion . but though the figurative sense of resurrection may be passable and tolerable in this place , yet i must confess i dare not avouch it to be wholy true . my reasons shall be suggested in the exposition of the text , which runs thus , and i saw thrones , and they sate upon them , and judgment was given unto them : and i saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of iesus , and for the word of god , and which had not worshipped the beast , neither his image , neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands ; and they lived and reigned with christ a thousand years . but the rest of the dead lived not again untill the thousand years were finished . this is the first resurrection . blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection ; on such the second death hath no power , but they shall be priests of god and of christ , and shall reign with him a thousand years . there was never any book penned with that artifice as this of the apocalypse , as if every word were weighed in a balance before it was set down ; which is manifest out of other places as well as this . in which i conceive a double design is aimed at , a prediction of a proper resurrection of the witnesses to the truth by their deaths , and of a political resurrection to the true and apostolical church that does survive upon earth . the former are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the latter those that worshipped not the beast , &c. which if they were not distinct from the other , it had been better to have omitted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and to have read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. wherefore this is the first intimation that there are two orders of men there set down , the one that suffered death for the cause of the gospel ; the other that are still alive , but resolute opposers of the beast . but there is also a second hint in the following words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they lived and reigned . the spirit of god seems on set purpose to make choice of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that he might not bear too hard toward the sense of a literal resurrection , and so urge the reader too forcibly to understand both these orders above distinguished to be candidates of a real and literal resurrection at this time . and therefore he uses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which in reference to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will naturally implie a literal resurrection ; and in reference to the other , no literal resurrection , ( they being not supposed naturally dead , ) but merely a living upon earth and reigning there with christ , which is their moral and political life and resurrection . the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall reign with christ in heaven , and those other with christ on earth , he being universal prince over both churches : and therefore neither heaven nor earth is here mentioned , that the sense may be accommodated to either the reigning with christ in heaven or in earth , according to the distinct capacities of the persons . and the like caution is used in the prefiguration of the time ; of which there is no necessity to conceit that it signifies just a thousand years literally , but that it signifies at least a thousand years , and certainly not more then there are daies in that thousand , nor in likelihood near so many . but the signification is rather symbolical , as the ten daies are , chap. . v. . and ye shall have the tribulation of ten daies , that is , the utmost extent of tribulation , beyond which there is nothing further , as there is no number beyond ten : by which therefore must be meant death . and that is the reason why presently is added , be thou faithfull unto death , and i will give thee the crown of life . so this thousand years upon earth is a symbol of the churches stable duration to the end of the world , that there shall no politie flourish beyond it : it being a cube whose root is ten. and the application of it to the reigning of the children of the resurrection with christ in heaven , discovers the unshaken stability and endless duration of that celestial kingdome also , beyond which absolutely there is nothing at all . but the rest of the dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , lived not again . the using of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has plainly respect to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and intimates that their resurrection was real and literal , to which others should not attain till after the thousand years upon earth . after which it is plainly said , that there is a general resurrection , and that all the dead do rise ( ver . , , . ) wherefore this general resurrection being literal and real , it is too too harsh and violent to understand this first resurrection mentioned in this fifth verse to be only figurative and mystical . but understanding it literally , that which follows has a wonderfull natural and easie sense . blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection ( which he speaks thus in the singular number , one would think , on purpose to keep men off from conceiting he means it of the successive body of the church during the thousand years ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , upon these the second death has no power , namely , the lake of fire ( ver . . ) into which hades or the whole region of mortality is cast , the earth being all on fire . but blessed are those that have part in the first resurrection , for they are sped already & safe , having obtained those celestial bodies that do certainly exempt them from this fate . for these and all such as god shall afterward make partakers of this blessed kind of resurrection , are naturally free from the reach of the second death : but they shall be priests of god and of christ , and reign with him , not * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but for sureness and for distinction sake , simply , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is , they shall be holy , sacred and divine persons , and live with christ in his immutable and everlasting kingdome in heaven for ever and ever . this i conceive to be the most easie and natural sense of this place , and that the personal reign of christ upon earth and of his holy martyrs is a very rash and groundless and unsafe conceit , fit for nothing but heat and tumult both of phansie and action . nor do i think it necessary that the sons of this first resurrection should at all appear to us , their celestial bodies , into which they are vivificated , being naturally invisible , and therefore a kind of miracle for us to see them , and no more necessary then the exhibiting those souls to view which christ carried to heaven in triumph after his resurrection ; which yet he did not exhibit to the sight of the world . and if he doe here , i can imagine no better end then that of mr. mede's , that it may be for a sign or beckening to the jews , to help on their conversion : but i can affirm nothing of these things . only i am well assured that if christendome were once well purged of all her idolatries , foolish and contradictious opinions and wicked practices , it would be a very great miracle if the jews could be kept off from being converted . . wherefore in brief to conclude , seeing the truth of mr. mede's synchronisms , as far as respects this present subject , is so apodictical , and that there is nothing material to be alledged against them , and that the numbers of daies and moneths there mentioned are of necessity to be interpreted years , and that according to this hypothesis there can be no other sense of the woman in the wilderness , of babylon the great city , of the two-horned beast and the ten-horned beast , &c. then what mr. mede hath given ; it is manifest that the church of christ would be lapsed into a degenerate condition for years : and as evident that there will be a recovery out of this lapse , by reason that there has been yet no room for the promised millennium , persecution dogging the church till constantine's time , after which the daies were to succeed , and therefore the millennium is yet to come . as appears further in that it is synchronall to the seventh trumpet , and that the * resurrection of the witnesses is after their lying dead either all the daies , or at least the last three daies and an half ; in that the * marriage of the lamb commences from the burning of babylon , and the * company of palm-bearers from their victory over the persecuting beast . these things are so plain that they are not worth insisting upon . and it is a great priviledge of this synchronical architecture of mr. mede , that it is not built upon any hypothesis but the innate characters of the apocalyptical visions themselves ; whenas grotius his way depends so on the chronologie of the writing of the apocalypse , that unless iohn received these revelations in claudius his time , ( which yet is against the common current of all both ancient and modern writers ) the fabrick of his expositions falls to the ground . to which you may add , that he has no guide nor clue at all in this prophetick labyrinth , no not so much as that obvious , but fallible one , the order of the prophecies as they lie ; but is forced sometimes to goe back , as he fancieth himself able to apply his historical materials . so that he has indeed no guide at all from the apocalypse it self ; whenas mr. mede is directed and limited by the demonstrative law of those innate synchronisms he has gathered . of whose truth this may be one general after-ratification , that the things that are found to be synchronal , have also a natural connexion and complication one with another , as he that but casts his eye upon his scheme of synchronisms , and considers the natures of things , will easily deprehend . chap. xvi . . of the four beasts about the throne of majesty described before the prophecie of the seals . . of the six first seals according to grotius . . of the six first seals according to mr. mede . . of the inward court , and the fight of michael with the dragon , according to grotius and mr. mede . . of the visions of the seven trumpets . . the near cognation and colligation of those seven synchronals that are contemporary to the six first trumpets . . the mistakes and defects in grotius his interpretations of those synchronals . . of the number of the beast . . of the synchronals contemporary to the last trumpet . . the necessity of the guidance of such synchronisms as are taken from the visions themselves , inferred from grotius his errours and mistakes who had the want of them . the author's apologie for preferring mr. mede's way before grotius's , with an intimation of his own design in intermedling with these matters . . but for further conviction of the excellency of mr. mede's way above that of grotius's , i shall compare some of their main interpretations . for to meddle with all would be too tedious and voluminous ; but to give a specimen in some , very commodious , if not necessary . first therefore , in the first six seals , i may add also in the first six trumpets , grotius fixes the scene of all these visions in iudaea , and ends them with the sacking of the city . of which in general it is to be noted , that his applications are too small and petty usually for these prophecies ; and that the prophecies themselves , if they had no other meaning , might very well have been spared ; whatever is needfull in them to the church having before more plainly been predicted by the mouth of our blessed saviour , and therefore not likely to fill so great a part of the apocalypse by their more obscure prefigurations . but we will descend also to their particular weaknesses and inconcinnities ; and first of the seals , with the session of majesty prefixed before them . where grotius makes the four beasts , the lion , calfs , man and eagle , to be peter , iames , matthew and paul. which besides that in general it is a figment at pleasure without ground , the applications i think are not so congruous . for why should peter , who out of fear denied his master , be a lion more then paul , whose heat assuredly was rather greater then the others ? and why paul an eagle rather then a calf , who certainly laboured like an oxe in the ministery , and compares himself to one that treadeth out the corn , cor. . ? and though he took long journies , yet he did not flie in the air , nor goe faster by land or water then other travellers did . and why should matthew be a man more then all the rest , and rather then iames , the brother of iesus who was peculiarly styled the son of man ? wherefore mr. mede's account seems far more solid , as having an acknowledged ground , the order of the camp of israel , which was distributed into four parts , each part being under a standard or ensigne : those that lay on the east , of a lion ; on the west , of an oxe ; on the south , of a man ; and on the north , of an eagle . so that this glorious session of the divine majesty is set out by the order of the israelitish camp , where in the midst was the tabernacle as the throne of god , and about it the tribes of israel so disposed as i have intimated . which is infinitely a more solid account then that of grotius , as you shall more distinctly understand in the opening the four first seals , whose applications are admirably fit to each beast in mr. mede's way , but very frigid and faint in grotius's . for he thinks it reason enough of the lion , that is , peter , his * calling to see the rider of the white horse , because peter was the first that preached the gospel , and therefore he speaks first here . whenas it does not appear he spake first of those that spake the unknown tongues so fast , acts . who questionless preached the gospel in them . . that this rider of the white horse is christ , they both agree in ; but why the first beast should be the praeco before this sight , mr. mede's reasons are far more satisfactory , as you shall hear anon . the praeco of the * rider of the red horse he makes matthew , because it is written matth. . . nation shall rise against nation and kingdome against kingdome . but this is not matthew's prophecie but our saviour's . the vision he fansieth fulfilled in the war betwixt the beroeans and philadelphians , but names no distinct time , nor prince that should be the rider of this red horse . the praeco of the * rider of the black horse he makes paul , because agabus foretold him this famine which he fansieth signified here . but then agabus should have rather been the beast then paul. beside that , agabus told other christians as well as him of it . the fulfilling of this vision according to him was in the reign of claudius . the praeco of the * rider of the pale horse he makes iames , because he threatens rich men with death , chap. . but himself acknowledges that by death here is meant plague and pestilence , whenas that menace in iames is war and slaughter , the taking and burning ierusalem by fire ; as himself also interprets the third verse of that chapter . you see by what small strings the applications of these four beasts are tied to these four visions hitherto ; to omit what is very inconcinne , the breaking the order they were first named in , ( chap. . ver . . ) the first a lion , the second an oxe , the third a man , and the fourth an eagle . which should have answered to the first , second , third , and fourth seals without any misplacing ; whenas the second beast is here applied to the fourth seal , the third to the second , and the fourth to the third . the * fifth seal he interprets of the revenge of the bloud of the martyrs , as mr. mede does , but restrains the vision to steven and iames and some few else he knows not who : and by this means leaves no vision for the ten bloudy persecutions which were more then ten thousand times more considerable then what he aims at . the * sixth seal , which mentions a great earthquake , the eclipse of sun and moon , the falling of the stars , &c. he interprets literally of such prodigies , quite against the way of prophetick interpretation , and without the application of history to countenance it . such is the inconcinnity and insignificancy of grotius his interpreting of the six seals : which is quite otherwise in mr. mede . . for first the application of the four beasts to the four first seals is both orderly and very proper and articulate . for the lion on the east side of the israelitish camp is applied to christ the prince from the east in more senses then i will insist upon , they being ordinary and obvious . besides that , the nature of a lion is sutable to the thing signified in the vision , to wit victory to him on the white horse . and the like in the rest . for so the oxe on the west side of the camp is applied to trajan from west ; the man on the south side , to septimius from the south ; & the eagle on the north side , to maximinus from the north. the natures also of the visions are sutable to the things that came to pass under those emperours . the mighty slaughters under trajan and his successor adrian are indigitated by the oxe . the exactness of administring iustice and carefull provision of septimius and alexander severus , by a man , to whom numbring and measuring and the administration of justice is so proper . the extraordinary raging of the famine , sword and pestilence under maximinus , by the carnivorous eagle that feeds upon dead carkasses . in brief , the meaning of the first six seals is this : that prince of unspotted righteousness , the rider of the white horse , with his arrow and his bow in his hand , aims at something of high importance , ( and it is no less then what he promised his followers at their lowest ebb , fear not , little flock , for it is your fathers good pleasure to give you the kingdome : ) and he hits the mark in the sixth seal , where the pagan empire of the devil is shattered to the purpose by constantine's turning christian . but to adorn the course of time till then by some prophetick remarks , the riders of the red , black and pale horses are brought in : as also most concerningly the cry of the souls of the martyrs under the altar , whereby is denoted especially the reign of diocletian and that ten years unparallel'd persecution then commencing . which fifth seal , the rescuing of the empire into the hands of christ by the subversion of the pagan powers doth immediately succeed , and is the matter of the sixth seal figured out by proper prophetical expressions . so that all things in mr. mede's way as they are easie , natural and distinct , so are they very weighty and worthy the spirit of god and his holy prophets to predict . nor has grotius so much as any seeming advantage of him in any thing , unless in the interpreting of the rider of the black horse . which , if history would have complied , mr. mede could have been content to have interpreted of famine also . but in my apprehension nothing can be more significant of that which mr. mede applies it to then this vision is . for what colour is more significant of the severity of iustice then black , whether we look upon the temper of spirit wherein it resides , which is a grave , sad , rigid melancholy ; or the execution thereof in criminal matters , which is death , whose mournfull emblem is black ? the black horse therefore , with the pair of balances , argues the rider severely just , frugal and provident , and one that will have a special care , . that if one choenix of wheat be sold for a penny , that three of barley shall be sold for a penny . . that men shal live by their honest labours , and not by theft and rapine . for choenix signifies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the food for a day , and denarius the wages for a days labour . . that there shall be no stealing nor robbing ( but buying by measure , ) though it should be so hard a time that their day-labour will but find them food . . he will provide that they shall have at least a choenix for a penny , that the price of bread-corn and necessary victuals may not exceed a daies wages . and so of wine and oile he will take heed there be no fraud in buying and selling there neither , nor any spoil or wast by the unruly souldiery . . i should now pass to the trumpets , but i will rather deal with those visions first that are synchronal to the time of these six seals . and that is * the fight of michael with the seven-headed dragon ; and * the temple and altar of god that are symmetral or commensurable to the angels measure . mr. mede interprets this fight of the seven-headed dragon and michael , the conflict of the church of christ with the pagan cruelty till constantine's and theodosiu's times ; which therefore as it is synchronal , so has it also a great cognation with the visions of the six seals . for the archer on the white horse aims at that effect all the time of this bloudy battel , which he hits or reaches in the completion of the sixth seal . but grotius referres the vision to simon magus and peter , who brought him down headlong out of the air by his praiers , at which he supposes * that acclamation of the angels , who were the spectators of this cacomagical funambulo , and beheld him out of the windows of heaven while he tumbled down to the ground . but what a petty and ludicrous business is this in respect of that effect comprized in the sixth seal , which is both the issue of this battel and the mark the archer on the white horse aimed at by all the labours and patience of his saints ? that of the * temple of god or the inward court of the temple grotius expounds only to this sense , that it is thus measured , to signifie that adrian should not build upon it , though he did upon the ground about it , and called the city aelia , after his own name . but he brings no express proof that the inward court was not built upon ; nor , if it were not , was it a thing worth divine prophecie taking notice of : nor is there any likelihood that providence regarded the place so which god had utterly rejected , and * hindred the rebuilding of it by fire breaking from the foundation . certainly so divine a prophecie as this of the apocalypse looks not at such petty matters as these . besides , the angel's bidding iohn measure not only the temple and altar , but also the men that worshipped therein , plainly intimates that there was another kind of meaning in the thing then grotius sought after , but is certainly that which mr. mede has found , namely , that this inward court that is measured signifies the pure christian church before it was adulterated by a kind of christian-paganisme . which condition also of the church has a plain cognation with other things synchronal , as their * resolute opposing the dragon , and being so serious in their religion that they preferred it before their own lives . . we proceed now to the trumpets . that vision of the * first trumpet , hail and fire mingled with bloud , grotius ( quite out of the road of prophetick exposition ) interprets to a moral sense of hardness of heart and bloudy anger , which he applies to the iews . whenas hail-stones and fire are symbols of hostile vengeance executed upon others , not of anger burning and consuming in ones self ; and therefore these hail-stones and fire are said to doe execution upon the trees and grass . wherefore mr. mede does more fitly applie it to the infestation of the roman empire from the year . to . partly by alaricus and the goths , and partly by the barbarous nations under radagaisus , and partly by the vandals and alani . these are the northern storms of hailstones with bloud and fire that fell upon the empire . the vision of the * second trumpet , namely , the burning mountain cast into the sea , grotius expounds of the tower antonia , whose fall notwithstanding was not accompanied with burning , and therefore he rather understands it of the sallying of the wrathfull souldiers out of the tower upon the people of ierusalem . which is but a petty matter in comparison of alaricus his taking and firing of rome , upon which followed a continual spoil of the empire till it was dilacerated into ten kingdomes ; which is mr. mede's exposition of this vision . but the other is unsutable to that expression especially , * and the third part of the ships perished . which intimates that the sea signifies here far larger then the inhabitants of one city , or a croud of people in one street thereof . to say nothing how this book of prophecies that characterizes things so often by numbers , understands here as elsewhere by * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the romane empire . the * third - trumpet vision is the great star falling into the third part of the rivers , burning like a lamp , the comet lampadias , suppose , properly so called . this grotius applies to that aegyptian impostour mentioned in the acts and in * iosephus . but beside that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the third part here again characterizes the roman empire , this star is too big in my judgment for that aegyptian vagabond and easily-defeated deceiver . mr. mede's interpretation is much more accommodate , who applies it to the extinction of the western caesareate , which was grown very low and obscure in those inconsiderable emperours , avitus , majoranus , severus , anthemius , olybrius , glycerius , nepos , the immediate predecessors of augustulus ; but fell quite and was extinct in this prince of sorrow , bitterness and sad misfortunes , whom odoacer king of the heruli pulled out of his throne , anno . the * fourth - trumpet vision , an eclipse of the third part of the sun and moon and stars , proceeds further concerning rome , and signifies that that light she shone with under the ostrogoth kings should be extinct , that she should be despoiled of regal majesty , yea of consulship and authority of the senate . which ill fate is very properly prefigured by the obscuration of sun , moon and stars , as mr. mede has undeniably made good , and accordingly applied the history . grotius interprets it only of the taking of certain towns in galilee and other places by vespasian , and the slaughter of the iews . which is a very laxe and dilute interpretation in comparison of mr. mede's . the * fifth - trumpet vision is the key-bearer of the bottomless pit , and the locusts . which grotius referrs to eleazar the son of ananias ( though he confesses the time does not agree ) and to the faction of the zelots . whom he cannot fancy to be those scorpion-tail'd locusts but in their general account of being robbers and devourers , and the leisurely doing their mischief , the poison of the scorpion being three daies a killing . but it does not appear that that evil of the zelots may be accounted leisurely in any such special manner , the plague of them not lasting longer then such like barbarous tyrannizing of masterless souldiers uses to doe ; and it is but * five moneths according to grotius his account , but he does not so much as go about to prove his account by history . besides , how can * golden crowns belong to these zelots ? for grotius his expounding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implied that they were the boasting of crowns and victory , not real crowns , is very groundless , and confutable out of his own exposition of * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by which he acknowledges real mulierosity and voracity in these zelots . that concerning the * sting in their scorpion-tails , introibant ut defensores , exibant raptores , is indeed witty , but not solid . for if you will have their form to figure their behaviour , they went in robbers as well as went out . for the fore-parts of these scorpiolocustae represent robbery more perfectly then the hinder-parts . mr. mede's application of this vision to mahomet and the saracens is in every respect admirably natural and punctual . the mischief therefore of the fifth trumpet is that false light or pseudo-prophet mahomet , sent down upon earth by the vengeance of god ; whose doctrine is the fume of the bottomless pit , and his followers the saracens the locusts here spoke of . as . coming out of arabia , as the aegyptian locusts did that plagued the literal aegypt . . and then hugely numerous , as the companies of locusts use to be . . and also making their stay 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which you may turn menses quinos , by fives of moneths . which is an allusion to the usual continuance of locusts ( plin. . . ) and answers in the prophetical sense to the five months of years , that is , a hundred and fifty years that these locusts infested italy ; and to the twice one hundred and fifty years that the saracenical kingdome continued . so properly are fives of months applicable to them . . as also the golden crowns to the multitude of their conquests , they having subdued palestine , syria , both the armenias , the lesser asia , persia , india , aegypt , numidia , portugal and spain , within the space of fourscore years . . the arabians , whence the saracens were , tied up their hair with an head-tire like women . . the sound of the wings of these locusts , which was * as the sound of chariots and of many horses running to battel , is too big an expression for the faction of the zelots , but fitly signifies the mighty and swift victories of the saracens . . as also their poisonous scorpion-tails doe the venome of the old serpent under the false religion of mahometisme . for all those powers that are not under the kingdome of light are part of the powers of the prince of the dark kingdome , the devil . . as is here intimated very clearly , the * king over them being the angel of the bottomeless pit , though they pretend to be such zealous worshippers of that * one true god that made heaven and earth . their pretence to which seems to be perstringed in the very name of their prince * abaddon , alluding to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as mr. mede would have it . that allusion of grotius in apollyon to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is more express , but not better to our purpose then his ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to chrysippus being from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , & therefore signifying unus , as * adad also does , the god of the assyrians . which name is not so concealed in abaddon , but that by cutting it into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and taking away the insignificant termination , and letting loose the two 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 held so hard together by the dagesh , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immediately shews himself to make good the paronomasia . which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 therefore must be the assyrians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as philo byblius calls him ; and he might with homer as well have stiled him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he being the same with apollo & iupiter , whose titles in orpheus his hymns are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in hebrew signifies as well soveraignty as paternity , as appears in that regal title abimelek . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the supreme adad , the father and soveraign over all ; and the paronomasia so palpable in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and abaddon , that they have in a manner the very same sound . whence it is manifest that it is not for nothing the prophet has pitched upon this name abaddon rather then * others which were more ordinary and signifie a destroyer as well as this , and why he would interpret it rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 namely , to point at the saracens hypocritical ostentation of * monotheisme or worshipping one god , which they doe mainly in envy and opposition to the christians profession of the trinity , while themselves in the mean time are under the destroyer , and are still as truly pagans as the assyrians and greeks that worshipped adad and apollo . the * sixth - trumpet vision is the euphratean horsmen , which grotius applieth to the roman army that besieged ierusalem , which he is content to be nominated euphratean , because some of the romane forces , namely those of syria , were quartered near euphrates . but why should the whole roman army be denominated from hence ? and then the four angels how can they fitly be referred to vespasian , titus , mucianus , and tiberius alexander , being these four were not of an equal rank and power coordinate , and but one was the chief commander of the army ? and that several others might have as well been put in as some of these four , may appear from what himself writes on verse . besides , he gives no account of the time , namely , * a day , a month and a year ; nor of their numerosity , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that of horse . he interprets also their * breast-plates of fire , and of iacinth and brimstone , of the colours of their horsemens coats , as if they were made of thread of either colour de feu , violet-colour , or a pale sulphurate colour : which is too mean a business to be taken notice of in so sacred a prophecy . the applying of the falaricae to the fire , smoak and sulphur coming out of the horses mouths , is ingenious if considered alone . we shall compare it with mr. mede's anon . but the foot-man that the romans sometimes placed behind a horse-man for readiness , especially considering he rid not with his face backward , nor slipt off over the horse tail , but lighted on one side , very hardly makes out the similitude of an amphisbaena ; not to add that the amphisbaena it self in his sense is but a fiction . his interpretation also of * worshipping the daemonia and idols of silver and gold to a mystical sense is more faint and dilute then the literal meaning . but in every one of these particulars mr. mede's interpretation has a fitness unexceptionable : he referring the * four angels at the river euphrates to the four sultanies of the turkish dominion , bagdad , caesarea , aleppo , damascus , planted on this side and that side euphrates : he calculating the time of a * day , month and year ( i. e. years ) from the inauguration of togrulbec the prince of the turks to the taking constantinople , which is just years : he applying those * myriads of myriads of horse to the known numerositie of the turkish armies , who being persians by their long abode in that country , are called persae in the greek history ; so that the foot are in this allusion horsemen too , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying eques as well as persia. which allusion to names is used also by daniel in making the he-goat stand for the kings of the aegeades , that is , of the macedonians . their * breast-plates of fire , iacinth and sulphur , he interprets of that aspect they seem to have by discharging their carbines or pistols in fight , which makes all their breasts for a time seem fiery , then of a blew iacinth colour by the smoak , and the most lasting object of sense is the stinking of the sulphur . which representation is to be understood of them nearer at hand . this invention of gun-powder ( foreseen by that providence that inspired iohn , and not vainly pointed at in these visions , but for the better assurance of what time they belong to ) is again intimated in that it is said , that * the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions ; which grotius gives this short account of , rictus equorum sanguinolenti , qualis leoni post devoratas pecudes : as if these did eat flesh to bloudy their jaws withall ; else where is the lion-like representation in them more then in others ? i rather therefore conceive that their heads are compared to the heads of lions , because of the terrour of the noise , dreadful like the roaring of a lion , when the horsemen discharged toge●her against the enemy . for presently follows , * and out of their mouths came fire and smoke and brimstone ; all were breathed out together from their jawes at once . to which grotius his application of the falaricae is not to be compared , as any one that considers their nature and the manner of flinging them will deprehend at first sight . mr. mede's exposition also of the serpentine tails of the horses is both more handsome and more important . * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , the tails of the horses were as if they had been half a serpent clap ' to and hanging out with his head . which is an embleme of that sad after-clap of their victory over men . the devil then , that old serpent , being ready to parlie with them and to seduce them to mahometisme . and lastly his interpreting of the * worship of daemons and idols in the proper sense , and applying it to the residue of the romane empire infected with what we call papal superstition and idolatry , i could wish it were not so fit and appropriate as it is . the application of these two last trumpet-visions is so particular and exquisite , that though they were not necessarily enforced by virtue of his synchronisms , it would be very hard to doubt of them . which would make a man eager to consider the meaning of the seventh and last trumpet-vision ; which consists of loud praises to god in heaven for that * the kingdomes of the world are become the kingdomes of our lord , and of his christ. this grotius interprets of the liberty the christians had to profess their religion at ierusalem , when the jews were all banished thence . but the vision certainly is farre too bigge for so small a matter . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is very hard to interpret * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the plural number , of iudaea onely . and besides , how doth christ reign for ever there , whenas his subjects are now such miserable thrals to the turk ? if he had taken * the great power to himself in that place , he has lost it again , if this sense of grotius be true . but it is plain this seventh trumpet appertains to the recovery of the church out of apostasy , by * the appearing of the temple of god and the ark of the covenant in heaven , which is a figure of the political power that pure and apostolick men will be advanced to . for the temple signifies the church in its pure condition , while it was symmetral to the angelical or divine measure , vers . . but the appearing of the ark of the covenant thus in heaven is accompanied with lightnings and voices and thunders and earthquakes and great hail . as is intimated also by the very title of the seventh trumpet , it being a trumpet of * woe to the wicked and unbelieving : answerably to the * seven thunders that filled the space of the seventh trumpet while that mighty and illustrious angel roars like a lion , and is justly conceived to represent our saviour christ , the lion of the tribe of iuda , who being once stirred up will never cease pursuing the prey , till he has brought all under his feet , death it self not excepted . . but we return to those things that are synchronal to the six first trumpets . which visions though they be more then any synchronals besides , yet they have all a very near cognation or manifest colligation one to another . the general summary of the condition of the times they point out , is the apostasie or degeneracy of the church ; which yet is never conceived so ill , but that there were some pure and apostolick christians in it ; and therefore to represent the two sorts of professors of christianity there are two sorts also of visions : those of the whore of babylon , the ten-horned beast and the two-horned beast , relating to the degeneracy of christendome ; the two witnesses mourning in sackcloth , the virgin company , the sealed of the lamb , to those that kept their purity in the church . all these synchronize with the six first trumpets , out of which is blown the wrath of god upon the romane empire , as is but just , by reason of their apostasie ; as it is also equal with god to protect his own then . and therefore the company of the lamb are * sealed and marked to be kept from the common calamities . this general apostasy also could not have crept in , if the ecclesiastick and secular power had not conspired , and therefore there is the two-horned beast as well as the ten-horned . against which are opposed the two mourning witnesses , the one sustaining the person of the unpolluted priest , the other of the faithful magistrate . and this apostasy consisting much in gross idolatry and vain superstition , which according to scripture-language is termed whoredome ; this state is set out also by the vision of the * whore of babylon , to which is opposed the * virgin company . there are yet two visions behind which are not properly to be referred to this sort or that , but each of them to both , namely , * the woman in the wilderness , and * the outward court and holy city trodden down by the gentiles . which visions have the insinuation of both piety and profaneness in them at once : the truly pious part of the church being signified by the woman ; but by the wilderness the salvageness and brutishness of the rest of christendome , they being wholy given up to the animal life . by the outward court and holy city is noted the sanctity of the christian church set apart from the rest of the world ; but by the being trodden down by the gentiles , the imitation of pagan worship introduced by the general apostasy of christendome . so that you see by what a strong tie from the very nature of the things themselves these eight synchronal visions are held together with , in one time . . let us now consider grotius his chief mistakes or defects in interpreting of them . as in those of the two witnesses , and of the outward court and holy city being trodden down by the gentiles for forty two months , which is , saith he , for about three years and an half . this city he interprets of aelia built by adrian : which therefore in that regard is not to be looked upon as holy ; as indeed the city of ierusalem ceased so to be , when the jews had ceased to be god's people . the trampling the holy city he interprets of the building of a temple there to iupiter capitolinus . as if that temple stood but three years and an half . but he would terminate these years from the beginning of the building of this temple to the sedition of barchochab ; but brings no history to make good his device : and if he could make this time of barchochab good , it were yet good for nothing , unless he could also pull down the temple at the three years and an half 's end . the two witnesses he would have the two churches in aelia , the one speaking hebrew , the other greek ; as if the spirit of god divided these into two that professed one faith and were of one mind , not distinguished in any thing save in outward language . * the bodies of these slain witnesses lying in the streets of the great city three days and an half , this he interprets of the oppression and persecution by barchochab ; which certainly was very short , if but three days and an half long : neither does he here bring any proof of history , nor is it probable that divine prophecy would affect the preciseness of half a day or three days and an half in such a general prefiguration of things as the apocalypse is . besides , how unlikely is it that ierusalem , that had now lost all its glory and power , should be styled by the name of the great city ? the chiefest ground that they have to think so , is that expression , as if * our lord was crucified there . but i answer , that our lord in a literal sense was not crucified either in sodome or aegypt , which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immediately referres to ; nor in a spiritual sense more in ierusalem then in the rest of the roman empire . wherefore this city is nothing else but the degenerate polity of the apostate church where christ is persecuted ( as he complained to * saul ) in his true and living members . where also christ according to the spirit , that is , the divine life , is rightly said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to be crucified , not in the time past only , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , indefinitely , was , is , and will be crucified so long as this power of apostasy holds up . for the praeter tense in prophecy is very usual for the future . but if any one disrelish this more mystical sense , i shall substitute that of mr. mede's , which the coursest literalist cannot evade , namely that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is understood the extent of the whole romane empire within which christ was literally crucified . see mr. mede upon the text. the vision of the woman crowned with twelve starres ( which number signifies the pure and apostolical church ) * her being in the wilderness days , he interprets of the extinguishing the church , to outward sight at least , at rome , by the miracles and sorceries of simon magus , ( which yet is a suspected history ) and her appearing onely in the country and villages , which are but as a desart in respect of the populosity of that renowned city . but the time of days he makes out by no history . to say nothing how this interpretation depends on another very harsh one , namely the expounding , * and her child was caught up unto god , and to his throne , of the disappearing of the church by the seductions of simon . whenas to be carried up to the throne of god surely signifies magistracy , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 magistrates . as is intimated also in the foregoing part of the verse , that he should rule the nations with a rod of iron . the vision of the * whore sitting upon the scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns , and , if you will , of the beast coming out of the sea , chap. . ( for we may put them together , they being the same according to grotius his own confession ) this beast he makes the sin of idolatry . which is quite out of the way of interpreting prophetick schemes , where beasts signifie kingdomes or dominions , as is plain out of daniel . but the ten horns he will allow to be ten kings : in which he were right , if he had acknowledged a body fit to bear them . the seven heads he makes the seven caesars , claudius , nero , galba , otho , vitellius , vespasian , titus . but if the caesars be heads , there must be more heads then seven : for there were four caesars before claudius , and i think thirty after titus that were not christians . but claudius , saith he , is the first that banished the christian teachers . which act was yet so inconsiderable , that the first persecution was fixt on nero , and the other nine noted persecutions were after titus , the last of them raging a little before constantine the great . so that there is a juster reason that this beast should have above thirty heads then but seven . again , in this beast which the prophet iohn resembles to a * leopard in his body , and to have the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion , he will have claudius , who before was one of the heads of the beast , now to be the body thereof ; and domitian , who is later then the last of these seven caesars , and so in order more like the tail , to be the mouth of the beast , and in chap. . to be the beast it self . so much of forcedness and incoherency is there in the making out this false hypothesis . that also is harsh in my judgement , the making presently one of these heads , which were before caesars , to be the capitol at rome ; though it be said to be * wounded to death , & that by the stroke of a * sword , and to be healed also : which methinks are very unnaturally applicable to a hill or a tower. he pretends he has hit the time of * the forty two months this beast should make warre : but he referrs to no history ; and helvicus affixes the beginning of the second persecution to the tenth of domitian's reign : whence it will not be three years and an half , but rather six years , that he wars against the saints . but the chiefest artifice of his misinterpretation is upon chap. . of the revelation . where the beast * that was , and is not , and is to ascend out of the bottomless pit , and to go into perdition , he again applies to domitian , making nothing of transfiguring a single head into a whole beast . but the description is more accurate , vers . , &c. the seven heads are seven kings ; five are fallen , and one is , and the other is not yet come : and when he cometh , he must continue a short space . and the beast that was , and is not , even he is the eighth , and is of the seven , and goeth into perdition . and the ten horns which thou sawest , are ten kings , which have received no kingdome as yet ; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast . the five kings here that are fallen , saith grotius , are claudius , nero , galba , otho , and vitellius : which how fond a conceit it is , i have already demonstrated . and one is , that is , saith he , vespasian , in whose reign it is supposed , not proved , that iohn wrote these visions . the other is not yet come , namely titus . and when he comes , must continue but a short time . but galba , otho , and vitellius much shorter . the beast that was and is not , to wit domitian , who was emperour while his father vespasian was absent from rome . which if he were really , and not styled so out of complement and flattery , the application is handsome . for then it was sometimes true of him , that he was , and is not , and shall be emperour again . he is the eighth . domitian is indeed the eighth and so distinct an head and so considerable , as reigning longer then any of his predecessors , that he quite spoils the interpretation . for thus the beast will be eight-headed , not seven-headed , contrary to the vision : which those words , and is of the seven , do therefore correct , and shew that the eighth is not so the eighth but that there are still but seven heads : which * this exposition can never unriddle . to say nothing how if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie he is the son of some of the seven , it would have been less ambiguous to have said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for he was not the son of all seven , but of vespasian onely . * the ten horns are ten kings , which have received no kingdome as yet , &c. this grotius himself expounds of the ostrogothi , wisigothi , vandali , gepidae , longobardi , heruli , burgundiones , hunni , franci , saxones . these are the ten horns of the beast domitian , ( for grotius will have domitian this beast , ) growing up and acting some ages after the beast ceased to be . which is an interpretation so extravagant , that nothing can be more . the last synchronal of the six trumpets that we shall touch upon , is the * two-horned beast : which grotius against all analogy of prophetick interpretation expounds of art magick , not of any polity either ecclesiastical or civil . the horns like those of a lamb , are two christian vertues imitated by magicians , temperance in diet and abstinence from venery . but abstinence from venery is common to other religions with christianity : and to abstain from flesh and wine no christian precept at all . his haling also of the ghost of achilles and statue of apollonius to the making up an exposition of * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , understanding by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the umbra of achilles , which is unusual , or the statue of apollonius made by his followers ; and then presently in the same breath to interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( when it had so often signified either the statue of apollonius or umbra of achilles ) concerning images in general , is to make the scripture an image of wax , and to mold it into what shape we please . . but there is yet a further and more substantial eviction of grotius his mistake upon the account of the number of the beast . for certainly that must be the * two-horned beast to whom the number can rationally be applied : which grotius would fit to ulpius the known name of trajan the emperour , which he reads ΟΥΛΠΙΟc , making c stand for six . but considering 't is called the number of the name of the beast , by this conceit trajan would be the beast . which is contrary to the law of prophetick schemes , where beast signifies not any particular man , but a state politick , and also against his former exposition of the beast , which according to him must be either idolatry or magick . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is farre more passable in that regard then this of ΟΥΛΠΙΟc . to say nothing how it is called the number of the beast , without mentioning any name ; as also the number of a man , without intimating any thing to doe with his name . which plainly imports that there is a further reach then an allusion to any man's name or the name of any state. but the meaning of * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is , that it is numerus humanus , such a number as men usually deal with , and may be numbred by humane art. but it seems there is some skill to be used therein , because he saith , here is wisdome , and , let him that hath understanding calculate the number of the beast . which if it were but the putting of the numeral letters of some name together , would be but a very petty piece of skill . all the skill or rather luck would be to find out the name , but there would be no skill at all in calculating of the number . but the text saith , let him that hath skill calculate the number of the beast ; and it sets down the very number that is to be numbred . which number yet cannot be numbred after the manner of men ( which way notwithstanding is intimated ) but by extraction of the root : and therefore undoubtedly mr. potter has found out the true and solid solution of this mysterie . concerning which no man can fail to be satisfied , unless either ignorance or prejudice make him uncapable , if he consider , first , in general , what rich mysteries the spirit of god has been pleased to wrap up in numbers . of which there are many pregnant examples in the creation of the world distributed into six daies . the meaning whereof is not otherwise to be understood but by the nature and powers of numbers , as i have clearly enough shewn in the defence of my philosophick cabbala . and then in the next place ( which is closer to the purpose ) if he take notice of what the abovesaid author urges most pertinently , that other numbers in scripture are of necessity to be numbred thus by the extraction of the root either square or cubick , to know the particular dimensions of things numbred by them . as those stones mentioned kings . . which are said to be some of eight , others of ten cubits : which must needs be the cubick summe of each stone , as he hath undeniably demonstrated . that square numbers are also taken notice of , is evident from ezekiel . . five and twenty thousand by five and twenty thousand . but to come nearer to the business in hand , the cubical summe of the new ierusalem , namely , twelve thousand furlongs , is set down in the * apocalypse ; of which there can be no sense in way of numbring but to find the perimeter thereof . which is not to be done but by the extraction of the cubick root . the measure also of the wall , * an hundred fourty four cubits , is utterly unapplicable thereto if we look upon it as the number of one line . for it would be too little for the perimeter by far , and too great for the altitude thereof : wherefore the measure of the thickness and height of the wall is the root of an hundred fourty four , namely twelve . thirdly therefore , the applicability of the number to the holy city appearing in the root thereof , to wit , which is a number peculiarly consecrated to signifie the chief matters of the new ierusalem ; the chiliarchies also or regiments , as i may so call them , of the lamb being summed up in this number in the very beginning of that * chapter that immediatly follows the mention of the number of the beast , and being made up of twelve times twelve chiliades , as appears chap. . how unexceptionable a warrant and assurance is it , that the numbring of the number of the beast must be the finding out of the root of his number also , and that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lies not betwixt and so much as betwixt and , and that as is the number of the pure and apostolick church , so of the lapsed and antichristian ? this is the clear and unbyassed reason of the thing in abstracto , let it light where it will. but it lights so pat upon the romish hierarchy , that a man cannot but be amazed at so exact a providence . for this lucky and learned writer has out of history made it even over-clear , that twenty five is a character as essentially interwoven into the hierarchy of rome as twelve is into the state of the new ierusalem . and those six main things that this holy city is set out by in the apocalypse , namely . twelve gates , . twelve angels at the gates , . twelve tribes written on the gates , . twelve foundations with names written on them , . twelve thousand furlongs , the solid measure of the city , . twelve manner of fruits of the tree of life , have their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exactly in the roman hierarchy and city , viz. . five and twenty gates , whether taken literally , or mystically for churches to baptize in , . five and twenty angels , that is , pastors , . five and twenty titles or parishes , . five and twenty cardinals , . five and twenty thousand furlongs , the perimeter of which cube is the circuit of rome , as the perimeter of the cube twelve thousand furlongs the circuit of ierusalem , . five and twenty articles of the creed which should be the food of the tree of life to all believers . in these essential matters and in many other things beside has he evidently shown how exactly the root of is applicable to the roman hierarchy ; to whose treatise i must refer thee for further satisfaction . which thou canst not fail of , if thou be free from prejudice , and furnished but with a tolerable insight in geometry and arithmetick . the greatest and most obvious objection against his interpretation is , that is not a perfect square number as is . for they will demand , if be the number aimed at , why was not the express number of the beast rather , the exact square of ? or why not any other number betwixt and as well as ? to which i briefly answer , that as it was not expressed by the root but by the square , for concealment sake ; so for the same reason not by the perfect square , there being so smart a clang of the root it self at the end of it , which might have hindred the completion of the prophecy , and awakened them into an over-great caution how they affected the number of , it being so considerable a part of the number of the beast , and might have betrayed or discovered the mystery of numbring it also too soon to the world . and for the numbers betwixt and , i demand , why not as well as any of the rest ? for having once passed by the true square , for which there was so good reason , any modest man might judge the choice of the rest free and indifferent . but besides , that there may want no exactness in this mystery , the number bears along with it very important significations and very apposite to the matter it is applied to : as that noted by mr. mede , that the idolatrous poison of the sixth head is signified thereby , pervading all the body of this antichristian beast . that also of grotius is ingenious , senarius numerus res hujus mundi significat , ut septenarius res seculi melioris . so that by this account both the outside and inside of this number of the beast is worldly , carnal and sensual . for the root also , viz. , intimates the same nature ; the root of that root being five , an hieroglyphick of sensuality and stupid adhesion to the objects of the outward senses ; which are the chief faculties of the soul that are caressed and emploied in the romane religion . there their religion begins , and there it ends , as it is in this number , which is made by into it self , and ends in again . this is the circuit of their superstitious performances that reach not the rectifying of the inward , but are mere fruitless , though bewitching , entertainments of the outward man. and lastly , the above-cited author 's own account is not only very witty , but equally solid , in my judgment , concerning the nearer approximation of the root of ( taking in the fraction ) to then to , that both these numbers may have a pretence to be the root . for thereby the number does more exquisitely and unavoidably figure out the papal hierarchie . by its root , the twenty five cardinals in distinction to the pope , an head above them . by , the twenty five cardinals with the pope , who pretends also when he pleases to be one of the cardinals . but he adds also another reason of this number , which is not rashly to be rejected : that as , being a perfect square , sets out the figure of the area of ierusalem , so the most perfect figure of has the same proportion of length and breadth that the figure of the area of rome . these argumentations will seem very strange and odd to such as are not so much as acquainted with the first rudiments of arithmetick and geometry , or at least have not taken notice that the ancientest and best wisdome has been hid in the symbols of numbers ; which is notorius in pythagoras his school . but he that seriously considers what small sense can be made by a philosopher of the six daies creation and god's resting on the seventh , without this key of the natures of numbers and figures , will be enforced to confess , that there is one supreme wisdome that has ever attended the church and the holy scriptures , from end to end , which in the abstrusest mysteries thereof has been pleased to make use of a method of concealment which is numeral , or , if i may so speak , cabbalistical . . the last synchronals are those that are contemporary to the seventh trumpet , and commence at the ending of the sixth , and end at the day of iudgment properly so called , that immediately leads to hell or paradise . these synchronals are the ligation of satan , the blessed millennium , or reign of christ with his saints upon earth , the bride of the lambe , the new ierusalem , and the company of palm-bearers . the connaturality of the things comprized under this synchronism i have hinted already ; i shall only here bring grotius his expositions of the chief of them into view . the * bride of the lamb , he interprets of constantine's family and retinue ; wherein he commits a gross parachronism . for it is plain this spouse is to be married to christ after the destruction of the city by fire , as it appears both by the order of these visions , and by chap. . v. , . but the burning of rome by totilas was after constantine's time . the beginning of the * millennium grotius affixes to an edict of constantine's , which eusebius speaks of , and wherein there is mention made of the ligation of satan . this makes a pretty shew , as also his interpreting the reign of the martyrs with christ , of that honour they had done them at their monuments . but it is to be considered in how short a time that honour was turned into idolatrous reproach , as also how the thousand years according to his account are expired above three hundred years agoe ; from whence commences the devil's being let loose : which we cannot term * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a little time in respect of the millennium , it being no less then a third part ; and it is no good sense , if it be not understood in respect of it . but which is still worse , while he interprets the devil's being let loose of the invasion of the ottoman family upon christendome , he reminds us of the great victories the saracens had , who were as very devils as the turks , and yet had vexed the christian world much , before the year . so that according to this account the devil was let loose in the midst of the millennium , and has been loose almost a millennium already , which therefore in respect of the millennium cannot be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . upon this false hypothesis hangs the conceit of the turks besieging constantinople , to be the begirting of the holy city by the numerous armies of gog and magog . for the greeks themselves styled constantinople new sion , as grotius has noted . but it is plain the exposition is a mere hallucination , because the holy and beloved city in the prophecie is not taken , god interposing by fire from heaven , and sweeping all away by that finall judgement . but the turks have taken this sion , and have peaceably possessed it these two hundred years . i shall conclude with the * new ierusalem , the lambs bride , adorned for her husband ; which grotius interprets of the catholick church made now more splendid with outward ornaments by the care and cost of princes . which in my apprehension is no good sense ; marriage rather signifying the bringing in some people to christ that were not united to him before , or at least the appearing of a people that was before hid , then the external adorning of them that were already the known and professed people of christ. besides that the times that grotius points at are the most unlike that new ierusalem , which is the church recovered to her apostolical symmetry again , and to be * measured by the golden reed of the angel , and which runs all upon twelves , to shew that it is purely apostolick , and has no other foundation nor structure then christ and his apostles . for the whole solid content thereof , length , breadth and height , is * twelve thousand furlongs : the breadth of * the wall also and the height thereof is measured by twelve . so that there is nothing in this new ierusalem but what is pure and apostolical ; which is not so in the garishly-adorned church that grotius looks at . besides that it is said there was * no temple there ; whenas every church is a temple under the roman hierarchie . . i might have examined his expositions of the * vials also with other passages , wherein i could have discovered the like errours and mistakes . but what i have instanced in already , is sufficient to shew upon what unnatural , distorted , nay i may say impossible , applications they are cast that would attempt the interpreting of the apocalypse without the guide of synchronisms taken from the innate characters of the visions themselves : but by the benefit of that guide how easie and natural sense is made of every vision , and how perfectly answerable to history and events , as is manifest in the expositions of mr. mede . whom i have not preferred thus before grotius out of any ill will or disrespect to that miracle of his age for learning and ingenuity , but merely out of love to the truth , as i am verily perswaded grotius has framed his interpretations ; but withall ( which is a further commendation of him ) out of a very deep sense of the advantages of peace , and out of a spirit of sweetness , candor and humanity , for which i do believe him singular and eminent . and verily if i were not conscious to my self that the very same spirit did in some measure act me in this discovery of his mistakes , that did him in committing of them , i mean the sense of peace and common good of the church , i had rather be in his errors accompanied with humanity and kindness of spirit , then be in a truth that must needs be attended with salvageness , ferocity and fury . but as the truth i stand for is above grotius's mistakes , so i hope the good of my design will not appear inferiour to his , after you have considered the benefit of mr. mede's interpretations of the apocalypse , as well as the truth thereof . chap. xvii . . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does not implie , that most of the matters in the apocalypse appertain to the destruction of jerusalem and to rome heathen . . the important usefulness of this book for the evincing of a particular providence , the existence of angels , and the ratification of the highest points in christianity . . how excellent an engine it is against the extravagancy and fury of fanatick enthusiasts . . how the mouths of the iews and atheists are stopped thereby . . that it is a mirrour to behold the nature of the apostasie of the roman church in . . and also for the reformed churches to examine themselves by , whether they be quite emerged out of this apostasie ; with the author's scruple that makes him suspect they are not . . what of will-worship and idolatry seems still to cleave to us . . further information offered to us from the vision of the slain witnesses . . the dangerous mistakes and purposes of some heated meditatours upon the fifth monarchy . . the most usefull consideration of the approach of the millennium , and how the time may be retarded , if not forfeited , by their faithlesness and hypocrisie who are most concerned to hasten on those good daies . . and truly the benefit of the apocalypse so interpreted as mr. mede has expounded it , is invaluable . for the visions are so perfectly & patly applicable to acknowledged history this way that he goes ; that he that will not believe the prophecies fulfilled in those things he produces , cannot believe the fulfilling of any prophecies at all : whenas on the other side , if the applications were no more weighty , nor clearer and fitter then they are grotius's way , this book of prophecies would be utterly useless , it being in the power of no man that is not extremely credulous to be satisfied with such lame , imperfect , nay , as i said , impossible interpretations . wherefore the vindication of the method of mr. mede in interpreting this book , is really the rescuing of the book it self into that power and use it ought to have in the church : for it is a standing light to all ages thereof , and the greatest to the last . nor do those expressions of * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , at all infringe the truth we have declared , or import that all the matters in the apocalypse appertain to either the destruction of ierusalem or to rome heathen . for as for the former , it seems very needless to spend many visions upon it ; our saviour having prophesied of it so clearly before , and with all usefull circumstances that could be desired . how vain therefore is it to imagine so many visions spent thereupon in this book , that are not only obscurer then our saviour's prophecie , but so obscure that they are now not tolerably applicable to the known events ; and therefore must be utterly useless to the church , because they could neither forewarn them of any thing before the event , nor be a record of god's foresight and providence after it ? and for the latter , i say there are visions plain and express enough concerning heathen rome , and her bloudy persecuting the church , in the battel of michael and the dragon . the first six seals also appertain to that time while rome was heathen ; the sixth whereof signifies the mighty change of things to the advantage of the church , the empire becoming christian. wherefore there is no want of visions for heathen rome , nor any but what were very significant and usefull ; as all the six seals and the vision of michael and the dragon are : which encourage the church to be patient under those ten bloudy persecutions , in assurance that at last they should have the victorie over their persecuting enemie . and what could they desire more to be signified then this in such general prophecies as these ? nay i say further , they might have counted the nearness of their deliverance by the posture of the beasts that were the praeco's of the four first seals , observing from what quarter such emperours came as bore the greatest similitude with the riders of the red , black and pale horses : and when the persecution was the highest , their hopes were the clearest , and the event nearest ; as appears from the easie meaning of the fifth and sixth seal . so that there are visions enough concerning the romane empire while it was pagan , so far forth as it concerned the church . and why should there not be visions that concern the empire when it was turned christian , and paganized again under christianity , and in this apostasie cruelly oppressed and persecuted the true members of christ ? why should not this state of things be prophesied of as well as the former ? to this there are but these two answers to be given ; either that the church is not apostatized , or that those phrases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do plainly signifie that the scope of the apocalypse reaches not so far . the former answer i could wish were solid , but have no leisure here to dispute it . the latter i conceive is very weak and unsatisfactory , and from an inference as ridiculous as his would be , that upon the report that such a comedy or tragedy was to be acted half a quarter of an houre hence , which , i think , is very quickly , should conclude that all the acts and scenes thereof would not be a quarter of an hour long . and to make use of the suffrage of our very adversaries , grotius himself interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not of the whole series of visions , but of some of them only , and particularly of the destruction of ierusalem ; and othersome they are fain to expound of such events as have hapned but two hundred years ago , and of such as are not to come to pass before the end of the world. which is a demonstration of the insolidity of this exception against mr. mede's method of interpreting this book : whose meaning for the general we having cleared from all possible prejudices , let us now consider the important usefulness thereof . . in the first place therefore , in my apprehension it is the clearest and plainest conviction that can be offered to the understanding of a man , that there is a special providence over the church of god , and that there are angels , the ministers of this providence , to consider how there has been the communication of prophecies concerning the affairs of the church and family of god by the ministry of angels appearing to his servants the prophets from abraham's time , the father of the faithfull , to this very age and onwards ; the truth of the events plainly lying before our eyes , either in things that still continue , or are to be read in undoubted history . which is a sign that those prophets who said they did commune with angels , did not commune with their own fancies , but had real conference with those celestial inhabitants . as abraham certainly had gen. . where the angel tells him , that in him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed , namely , by christ who was of his seed . nor did daniel , when he was by the river * ulai , talk with his own shadow , as the truth of the event proves , but with an angel ; as also gabriel was , who imparted to him the prophecie of the seventy weeks , then which nothing can be more accurately answering to the event . to which you may add those angels that appeared to him on the banks of the river * hiddekel , the event of whose predictions are partly come to pass and partly now fulfilling under * the time and times and half a time , which also are almost expired , and are the period of the latter times pointed at by those * numbers , daies and daies mentioned by the angel on the banks of the river hiddekel , as mr. mede has i think very solidly interpreted . which general intimations in daniel's prophecies are more particularly and more fully set out in the apocalypse of s. iohn : who also plainly professeth himself to have had conference with angels ; and his visions suting the events so punctually , it is a demonstration of both the continued providence of god over his church , and of the existence of those angelical beings . which is the first great fruit and use of this book of the apocalypse , that he that reads and rightly observes the exact applicableness of the visions to the event , cannot doubt of the existence of god and of his holy angels , nor of his special providence over the church . i might add also , nor of the souls immortality ; christ appearing so plainly to iohn , and speaking to him in these words , * i am he that liveth , and was dead , and behold i am alive for evermore , amen : and have the keys of hell and death , that is , of raising men at the last day , &c. to which you may add the description of the general resurrection , chap. . which things being uttered by a prophet whose visions hitherto so punctually answer the known events of things , cannot but be an unexceptionable demonstration of the resurrection of christ and of our own immortality : and indeed of the whole truth of christianity , and especially of those two highest points thereof , the divinity of christ and the triunity of the godhead . for it being so generally acknowledged by the church of god , that the gospel and the epistles of s. iohn , and this book of the apocalypse , have all one author , as indeed the very matter and style of them do further argue , ( the phrases and matter coming nearest the notions of the ancient cabbala of the jews , as in particular , his using of the term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in them all concerning christ ; ) it cannot but be a great satisfaction that a person so highly honoured with the gift of divine revelation is so express an assertor of that holy mysterie , as he is surely in the beginning of his gospel . which therefore even they are also to believe with reverence that are not able to fit themselves with any easie conception thereof ; it being not at all unreasonable that one so highly inspired as s. iohn , should have something communicated to him that passes the understanding of ordinary capacities : so that pride here must be the mother of unbelief . and this is the first and main general use that may be made of this eminently-divine book of the apocalypse , and has reached i must confess further then the order of things requireth at this time : but i cannot but prefer the usefulness of my discourse before the elegancy and accuracy of my proposed method . . but then secondly , there is also another excellent use thereof even against those whom either the pretence to or affectation of such kind of knowledge has made either to appear or really to be very mad and extravagant . for i think it not improbable that some men may be content to appear this way minded upon design and for advantage . which political abuse of the holy oracles of god is in my apprehension one of the worst and the most execrable kinds of sacrilege that is . but by being well skilled in the meaning of the visions of this book , we shall be the more able to defeat the evil purposes of such enthusiasts and impostours , who being wholy ignorant of the affairs of the kingdom of christ , will yet pretend to be the great instaurators of his empire , and the beginners of the blessed millennium , and of the reign of the spirit . whose fraud and villanie is easily discoverable from the solidly-framed synchronisms of mr. mede . i speak chiefly in reference to that great prophet of the familists , whom i have so often named , whose imposture is easily confutable out of the apocalypse . for the church having continued for some ages symmetral , that is , * commensurable to the reed of the angel ( which ages were before the apostasie of the church ; ) it is evident that the faith and practice of the church catholick then is allowable and approvable by the rule of god , and therefore not to be reproved by men , nor to be reformed any further then into that primitive state , when they held the creed in the plain literal sense thereof without any shuffling allegories , as also the distinction of laity and clergy , and met together in places set apart for publick worship . which is an undeniable testimonie out of this so divinely-inspired prophet s. iohn against all those that would lay aside the person of christ , and deny his divinity , with the triunity of the godhead , antiquate his mediatorship , make no distinction betwixt laity and clergy , would pull down churches , with the like wild fanatical professions and intentions . which certainly would have been accounted abominable in those ages that the church was symmetral , which lasted till about four hundred years from the birth of christ ; as appears out of that ingenious inference of mr. mede from the proportion of the outward court of the temple to the inward , which according to villalpandus is as to , and therefore daies of apostasie implies daies of the purity of the church foregoing this apostasie , which added to the years from the birth of christ to his suffering make up years or thereabouts . or else , if you reckon from these very times ( wherein this period of apostasie should be near its expiration ) backward , and take from , there will remain years again : till which time the faith and practice of the catholick church is out of the visions of the apocalypse assured to us as approvable before god. which i look upon as a fit engine to beat back the fury of such reformers as those enthusiasts are i mentioned , and a demonstration that for all their heat and canting they are but demoniacks , and no divinely-inspired men . but as in the times that the messias was personally to come into the world many impostours instigated by the devil stood up to deceive the people of the iews , and brought them into much misery and mischief ; so now the times being at hand that christ is to appear in the spirit , and the dead witnesses are to rise up and rule , many false dispensations will crowd in with fury , boldness and tumult , and pretend to be the true dispensation . which will not be prevented by slurring the main scope of the apocalypse , and pretending that all the matters there are meant either of the destruction of ierusalem or else of rome heathen , ( this is but like the sprinkling a little water upon too violent a fire , which will but make it rage the more ; ) but by applying our minds more throughly to understand the meaning of these divine visions , that we may be the more able thereby to steer the zeal of men off from doing so much hurt as they may be instigated to doe ; that the wheat be not burnt up with the cockle , but that what is pure and apostolical may be preserved . and so also in secular affairs : whereas the very power of the civil magistrate and his security is hazarded by wild and hot-spirited men , that would raise a fifth monarchie by bloud and rapine , and tumble down all government , according as either their own enthusiastick heat shall instigate , or opportunity invite or give leave ; pretending that all authority , all orders and degrees in this fourth monarchie are unholy and prophane , and that they are the pioners to level all plain , and break all government in pieces , that christ , the fifth monarch , may personally come and begin his millennial empire upon earth ; it behoves the christian rulers , whether ecclesiastical or civil , to be so well acquainted with the meaning of these prophecies , that they may be able to stop the mouths of these loud fanaticks by those holy oracles they pervert thus and abuse , and to shew them that there is no proof at all of such things as they thus vainly imagine : as assuredly there is not , as i have already shewn in my interpretation of the fourth and fifth verses of the twentieth chapter ; and that it was both the doctrine of the apostles , and practice of the church , while it was symmetral , to obey the magistrate and live peaceably under him , though he were an heathen : how much more then are they to obey them that are christians ? that superiour and inferiour are as natural in a people as head and feet in an humane body ; and that therefore no man can decry government but out of madness or some villainous design to enthrall others at last under the yoke of their own lawless fury . that there are kings and governours under the renewed state of things in the millennium , as appears revel . . v. . and that no frame of government can be evil , where governours rule by a good law . and lastly , that to make any thing essentially evil or good that is in it self indifferent and left so by christ and his apostles , is a fundamental transgression against the law of the new ierusalem , whose foundation and structure is all upon twelve . but instead of convincing them by what is true , to endeavour to stop their fury by imposing upon them by false glosses , is the next way to imbolden them the more , and make them contemn the authority of them that should guide them and instruct them . for the prefiguration of the apostasie of the church , and her recovery out of it ( which may be done , at least without changing any temporal powers and superiorities ) is a thing so plain , that it cannot be hid . . a third use of the apocalypse is the answering a very crooked objection both from the iew and atheist . for seeing things have been so ill for so many ages of the church together , that the world has grown pagan again after a manner , and that the turk has also swallowed so great a part of the church ; surely there is no true religion at all , nor providence , will the atheist say ; and the iew , at least that their messiah is not yet come , idolatry having in a manner filled all the nations that profess him . but to both we may answer , that nothing has hapned in all this but what was foreseen by god , and predicted plainly in these visions of the apocalypse ; to say nothing of what daniel had more generally adumbrated before . which therefore is rather an argument for providence then against it , and a demonstration of the messiah's faithfull vigilancie over his church , rather then of his not yet having gathered one in the world . for it is plain that christ is the author of those holy visions , and that the great plagues that have fallen upon the church , either by the turk or others , have been by reason of their apostasie from the purity of the apostolick faith and practice . . a fourth use , and that an eminent one , of the apocalypse is , to be as a clear mirrour of both the apostasie of the church and of the way of her recovery . the apostasie of the church is intimated more generally in the number of the name of the beast , whose root being , as the root of the number of the apostolick church , intimates that their apostasie consists , in the general , of adding to the root and foundation of christian religion supernumerary articles of their own invention and coining , being not contented with the essentials or fundamentals of faith , which were clearly and plainly delivered by the twelve apostles , and are easily without any dispute and contest understood to be in the holy scriptures . i intimated also before from the root of , being , resolvable also into again , that their apostatical religion was framed chiefly to gratifie and entertain the external senses , that it began there and ended there , and let the diviner and more heavenly motions of the mind lie asleep . but yet more particularly this apostasie is indigitated by the square ; as if the poison of the sixth head of the beast , that red bloudy dragon , that is , cruel persecution and idolatry , were spred through the body of the apostatized church : whose chief part the two-horned beast must needs be , who made the whole romane empire very lively resemble the beast , whose deadly wound he healed , that is , the ancient pagan power . but enough of this , it being a theam that will be over-eagerly listned to by some , and obstinately , without any consideration and reason , rejected by others . . but this apocalyptick glass is not only for the romanist but all the churches of christendome to look their faces in , and to consider how much they are still engaged , or how far emerged out of this lapse and apostasie , or whether they be quite emerged out of it or no. for i must confess i do much scruple the matter , and that upon account of the daies , wherein the woman is in the wilderness , and the witnesses mourn in sackcloth . concerning the epocha of which daies the very highest mr. mede pitches upon is , namely , from the death of iulian , which will end the daies , anno . but many years before this were there the same different churches that there are now . wherefore it is a sign that the woman was not then , nor yet is , out of the wilderness ; but that the true church is still hid in these divisions of churches , and that all hitherto for the outward face of things is but a wilde desart . moreover those divisions of churches which were made about an hundred years ago , and which immediately became the churches of this or that polity ; if those alterations then had been into a way purely apostolical , it had been plainly the enlivening of the witnesses , and the calling of them into heaven , many years before the expiration of the days . which is a strong presumption all is not yet right , and that the witnesses are not yet alive , nor the woman yet out of the wilderness . . wherefore out of a due humility and modesty suspecting our selves not to have emerged quite out of this general apostasy of the church , into which the spirit of god has foretold she would be lapsed for years ; let us see if we can find out what remainders of this lapse are still upon us . which i suppose we shall be the more ready to acknowledge , by how much more they shall be found to symbolize with that church whom we justly judge to be so manifest an apostate . now i demand , is not one fundamental miscarriage in that church , that they make things fundamental that are not , and mingle their own humane inventions with the infallible oracles of god , and imperiously obtrude them upon the people ? we are very sensible our selves of this in ceremonies . and are not uncertain and useless opinions as arrant a ceremony as ceremonies themselves , which we so kick against and fly away from , like wild horses ? nay i may adde also , that it will be hard to wash our hands clean from that other badge of the beast , unchristian persecution in points of religion , and that for differences where christ himself has made none , but our selves onely imagine them . again , as for idolatry , another known character of the beast , cannot we find that also amongst our selves ? i do not mean covetousness onely , which the apostle cals idolatry , but the adventuring to erect imaginations , if not images , of god , some more horrid and affrightful then those that stand in the most polluted temples of the pagans , ( the statue of saturn tearing his own children a pieces with his teeth and eating of them , is but an hieroglyphick of mercy in comparison thereof ; ) while in the mean time the mournful witnesses testifie both out of moses and out of s. iohn , that the nature of god is quite another thing . god is love , and he that abideth in love abideth in god , and god in him . the lord , the lord god , gracious and merciful , long-suffering , and abundant in goodness and truth . and yet what forcible assaults are there to set up this idol or false image in the temple of every mans minde , which otherwise should be consecrated to the love of god and the warm and comfortable residence of his holy spirit ? that also is a blind image of god , worse then the pagan cupid , which some conceited fondlings set up in favour of themselves , that god sees no sin in his elect , let them sin never so grosly ; whenas the scripture expresly affirms , that his eyes behold , his eye-lids try the children of men , and that he is of purer eyes then to endure iniquity any where . to say nothing that opinions themselves that are framed by humane curiosity in points of religion , though otherwise harmless , become idols , and have the very same effect that idols have , that is , they lay asleep the minde , and besot it so , that it becomes senseless of the indispensable motions of the divine life . and further , that the tricking up our selves with such curiosities is but a self-chosen holiness , and a worshipping and serving god after our own humour , which assuredly is little better then idolatry . . and lastly more compendiously and at once , let us consider the nature of the witnesses slain by the beast of the bottomless pit . which is a childish thing to conceit to be two persons , forasmuch as they prophesy for years together , as mr. mede has well defined ; and i also adde , that they are dead in another sense even that time they are said to prophesy , as i have * above noted , and i think there is very little doubt to be made of the interpretation . let us therefore now consider what these two witnesses are . and truely according to the richness of prophetick expression i do not think they are restrained to one single signification , but type out at least these two things , the old and new testament , which by a prosopopoeia are here called the two witnesses ; or else the magistracy and ministery , forasmuch as those things they are described by are allusions to moses and aaron , and to zerobabel and ieshua . the concinnity of the former interpretation does not depend onely on that obvious allusion to that latine word testament , but is further ratified from the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 frequently signifiing the laws or institutes of god , rendred also for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . not to adde , that the old and new testament are , whether they were called so or no , two eximious witnesses of the mind of god unto the world. wherefore now , more prophetico , making these two books two persons , they may be said to be alive , or slain , either in a political , or moral sense . they would be alive in a political sense , if they had the only rule in the transactions of the affairs of church and commonwealth : that there should be no injunctions as indispensable in matters of religion , but such as they plainly determine , much less any thing against them . and so likewise in state-affairs all oppression and tyranny would be prohibited . wherefore while the inventions of men rule in the church instead of the dictates of those holy oracles , and while course oppression and tyranny over the members of christ is prevalent , that is , while men think they have power and wealth and wit and policy , merely to tread down the people , and not to succour them and guide them for their real good , and to ennoble their spirits as much as they are capable , rather then to make them besotted vassals and slaves , to put out their eyes , to make mill-horses of them , that they may the better droile and drudge for the satisfaction of their lusts ; whereever things are carried on this way , the beast of the bottomless pit has slain the two witnesses in the political sense , the law of god in the mean time protesting against their proceedings , both in the old and new testament , as is plain to every one that peruses those writings . the witnesses also would be alive in a moral sense , if those indispensable precepts of life witnessed by them were really turned into life and practice in us . for the external word is but a dead letter , but then is properly alive , when that life is begotten in us whereof it testifies . which if it be neglected ; as also their rule , so farre forth as it respects ecclesiastick policy , be declined , and men act , both in political affairs and in their private capacities , according to the rules of men and their unprofitable institutes , and thereby neglect the indispensable commands of god ; who cannot but see that the two witnesses we speak of are plainly slain , and that the old and new testament are but as two liveless carkasses , lying unburied indeed , ( for they will not burn them , and put their ashes into an urne , and hide them under ground , for fear of the people ) but useless and unactive , having no power to curb the wicked enormities of the world , who have taken up another self-chosen law to themselves , minted and forged by the false antichristian church , consistent enough with , nay very favourable to , all those pomps and vanities that we are sworn against in our very baptisme ? whence it is said that the inhabitants of the world are so glad and triumphant and send gifts to one another upon the slaying of the witnesses , their death conducing so much to the uncurbed fruition of all worldly and carnal enjoyments ; but the church in the mean time becoming no better then * sodome and aegypt , a land of tyranny and beastliness , a city of carnality and oppression . wherein ( to proceed to the other sense ) moses and aaron , zerobabel and ieshua , the holy and legitimate magistracy and ministery are slain , that is , kept out of all political power by this beast out of the bottomless pit , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which as it may signifie the sea , may be understood of the ten-horned beast ; but as it may signifie a deep pit in the earth , such as that from whence smoke came and the locusts , may signifie the two-horned beast , who is said to come out of the * earth , and is the master of that wisdom that is earthly , sensual and devilish , and which is accompanied with bloudy zeal and strife about their vain and useless opinions and ceremonies . this , i believe , we will be prone enough to acknowledge against others , namely in those dominions wherein popery has so great a stroke : but it is more to our advantage to examine also what is amiss at home . for it does not follow , because the number of the beast is not upon us , that we do not bestianize ; nor is it the purple spots , but the disease , that is mortiferous . but the case is as if a man not yet knowing sheep from goats , should be told that those in such a pasture that had such a mark or figure upon them , were goats : it were a fond thing for him to think that this mark or figure were so of the essence of a goat , but that , when in another place he met with a creature so shaped , of the like bigness , and with such a cry as a goat has , he might take the boldness to pronounce that that was a goat too , though the abovesaid marks were wanting . wherefore let us impartially consider whether we be yet pure sheep or no. if the witnesses be dead in both a moral and political sense amongst us , that is , if we follow the name or authority of any man , and be ruled more by that then the plain scriptures ; if we are not content with such a faith as is plain out of them , and was the faith of the church when it was symmetral ; if by fulsome and course antinomianisme , by the doctrine of the needlesness or impossibility of being good and of living according to the precepts of christ , we hinder the scripture from being alive in us , and by mingling conceits of our own and imperiously imposing of them upon others hazard with some the belief of the whole , and keep others out of such place and authority as naturally falls to their share , though never so cordial and exemplary christians according to the old symmetral pattern ; we , having thus transgressed that holy , ancient and apostolick number ( ) by our new-fangled additions , and adding also persecution thereto , do as certainly become or continue part of the beast , as the goat is a goat without the above-said mark and figure upon him . nor shall we ever be quit from the crime of slaying the witnesses , till we lay aside all heat and pride in preferring our own opinions , whereby we do but make void the weighty precepts of life , and make the commandments of god of none effect by our traditions ; engaging the affections of the people in things that are unprofitable , and inuring them to lie cool to the indispensable law of christ. which is truely to slay the witnesses , and to let them lie stark dead in the streets . and while those that govern , govern for themselves , and love to feel their own power , and forget that the very rule of their government is the comfort and ennoblement of the spirits of the people , ( that they may be free and knowing , faithful christians and subjects ) and that whatever any one has , it is given him for the good of another , and not for the satisfaction of his own vain lusts : while such miscarriages as these are in either ministery or magistracy , supreme or subordinate , in what measure these are , in that measure is moses and aaron , zerobabel and ieshua , the old testament and the new testament slain and cast out dead into the streets ; and all power , ( let it change into what frame it will ) but the playing of the leviathan in the waters of the sea , making the deep boil before him , and leaving an hoary tract of froth after him , boasting himself in his power and title , that he is the prince of the children of pride . . wherefore that millennial happiness that some men talk so loud of , is not in demolishing of all ranks and orders of superiority in church or state , which things are natural and necessary ; but in the right administration of affairs in both , by those orders of men . who if they would reform all things according to the apostolick rule , and institute such a discipline as would countenance the indispensable life of god , not the unprofitable humors of rash and fallible men ; and every one in their rank would pay their duties of support and succour to the people , that every man that is honest and vertuous might live according to his quality in a christian comfortable way ; the tributes of honours and titles to such orders of men are but their just due , and become as well usefull as ornamentall to the world . it is therefore but a fanatick or satanick fury in such that under pretence of ushering in the fifth monarchy , as they call it , would destroy all orders and ranks in church and state , as if the wrath of man could work the righteousness of god : when neither these orders themselves have any unholiness in them , nor the persons haply in possession are less saints then they that would pull them down . for if the enriching a man's self by the destruction of others entitle a man to saintship , the greatest robbers are in the readiest way to enter into the holy of holies . but such zelots as these , what miserable redeemers they are like to prove , is too sadly prefigured by that iewish faction at ierusalem , more intolerable by far to the inhabitants then the enemy that besieged them . wherefore the gaping after a fifth monarchy in this sense , can be nothing else but the thirsting after spoil and bloud , many men being stimulated thereto by the secret sting of the old serpent in envy to the church of christ , hoping to root out the gospel by destroying of setled authority and by starving the ministery , and so to bring in a rabble of fanatical superstitions or atheistical prophanenesses . the most certain prevention whereof , in my judgment , is the reduction of the church , by those that are in authority , to such a frame as is purely apostolical . for then the constitution of things will be so sacred and unexceptionable , that it will awe and keep off the villainy and boldness of such men that are otherwise encouraged by the conspicuous intermixture of things false , idolatrous and impious , to flie against all at once , and to rend all into pieces . besides that they row with the stream , and the tide of divine vengeance will carry them along ; which will ever and anon flow in upon the church , till a true and sincere reformation . for there is no stability to be expected till that city be raised , whose not only foundation is laid in twelve , but whose gates , tribes ▪ angels , the breadth and height of the wall , and the solid content of the whole city , are nothing else but the replication still of twelve throughout , that is to say , till that church appear that is purely apostolical in life and doctrine . . which times being so very near at hand , as appears by compute of prophecie , it should be a great encouragement for every one to look thither-ward , and to shake off that dulness and lethargicalness that has possess'd the world so long , as if it would never be better . for this article of infidelity among the rest keeps the witnesses still dead in all the senses above-named . wherefore let every man reform himself , and exhort and encourage his neighbour , and witness the good witness of the power of god to the conquering and subduing of all manner of sin. for these times come not on by rapine and violence , but by the increase of righteousness upon earth . for the real and speedy advancement whereof there is nothing more effectual then the belief that god will now , in these last times of all , give more then ordinary assistance to them that will be faithfull in his covenant , and that the work of righteousness will goe on with much more ease then heretofore and with infinitely better success . wherefore it is good striking while the iron is hot , and making use of this day of salvation , lest such prophecies of grace being conditionall , it may fare with us as it did with the israelites whose carkasses fell in the wilderness , in a tedious delay and a long leading them about , who otherwise had in their own persons entred the promised land. so i do not see that it is impossible or improbable but this prophecie of the churches change into so excellent a state may be foreslacked by the ill management and faithlesness of them from whom god more peculiarly expects that they should be industrious labourers in this white harvest of apostolick purity and sanctity ; they having now for some time separated from the great babylon to build those that are lesser and more tolerable , but yet not to be tolerated for ever ; it being more then high time they should clear up into an holy city of god. otherwise i do not see but the success is likely to answer the endeavours of them that are chiefly concerned . and the variety of numbring the period of time by daies , months and semi-times , seems to threaten some such matter . and therefore according to that laxer computation by months and semi-times there may lie hid a reserve of delay for thirty , nay an hundred or two hundred years longer then god otherwise intended to commence this glorious dispensation . but the certainty of the events of other prophecies that precede in order , if this promise be not conditional to both jew and christian , is a demonstration that it will not fail to take effect . this is the faithfullest account that i can give of the affairs of christendome from the pouring out of the holy ghost upon the apostles , till christ's coming again in the spirit to renew his lapsed church into true holiness and righteousness in the rising of the witnesses and the reigning of the saints upon earth a thousand years . the close of which will be the day of iudgment properly so called , which , after this long but not impertinent digression , if it be a digression , we shall now take into consideration . book vi. chap. i. . three chief things considerable in christ's return to iudgment , viz. the visibility of his person , the resurrection of the dead , and the conflagration of the world. . places of scripture to prove the visibility of his person . . that there will be then a resurrection of the dead not in a moral but a natural sense , demonstrated from undeniable places of scripture . . proofs out of scripture for the conflagration of the world , as out of peter , the chap. of his second epistle . . an interpretation of the and verses . . a demonstration that the apostle there describes the conflagration of the world. . a confutation of their opinion that would interpret the apostle's description of the burning of jerusalem . . that the coming of christ so often mentioned in these two epistles of peter is to be understood of his last coming to iudgment . , . further confirmation of the said assertion . . other places pointed at for the proving of the conflagration . . in the return of christ to judgment these three things are to be considered as very nearly annected and comprehended in it ; the visibility of his person and pomp of his coming , the resurrection of the dead , and conflagration of the world. but because all these things are doubted by some that do not profess themselves anti-scripturists , i shall first produce such places of scripture as do plainly assert these points , and then in the next place shew how reasonable the assertion is . . the visible or personal return of christ to iudgment , though it may be proved from many places , yet i shall content my self with a few . and i must confess i look upon the of matth. from the to the verse , ( where the son of man is said to come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory , and to send out his angels with a mighty sound of a trumpet ) to be a pregnant testimony thereof . but the verse to be a description of the state of the world , especially of the roman empire , till the appearance of the sign of the son of man. but whether this sign of the son of man be the same with the son of man coming in the clouds , or some sign in the heavens to be given long before his coming , for the conversion of the jews , i take not upon me to decide . but from the to the verse , i think there our saviour may reassume his first subject , the destruction of ierusalem ; and therefore being within the view of the temple and of the city , he uses the pronoun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these things , in his prophecie of them . but in the verse , pursuing his prediction of the end of the world , he saies , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but concerning that day : and so he gives wholesome precepts of watchfulness to his church , to the end of this chapter . which sense is very agreeable to the following chapter , which most easily and naturally is wholy to be understood of the last judgment . but from the verse of that chapter to the end , even they that would wind the former part of the chapter to another sense , acknowledg it to be understood of the last day . and there the visible pomp of christ coming to judge the world is plainly set down , viz. his sitting upon a throne with his holy angels about him . to these you may add the * testimonie of the two men clothed in white shining raiments , that told the disciples as they were gazing up into heaven after christ , as he ascended , that he should come down again in the same manner as they had seen him goe into heaven : as also that of s. paul to the thessalonians , for the lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout , with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of god ; and the dead in christ shall rise first . then we which are alive and remain , shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the lord in the air , and so shall we be ever with the lord. these places are so plain concerning the visible appearance of christ's person in his coming to judgment , that no tolerable allegorie can elude them . . that there will be a resurrection of the dead ( in a natural not a moral sense ) at the same time , is as evident from the very last words i cited . for who but a mad-man will interpret the meeting of christ in the air in a moral sense ? if it had been written [ in the heavens , ] they would have shuffled it off , and said , in the heavenly being or heavenly nature mystically understood . but will they have the impudence not to acknowledg the aieriness and phantastry of their mysteries of incredulity , when they must according to the same analogy be driven to say that we shall at the resurrection meet christ in the aiery being mystically understood ? but it is as false a gloss to interpret the doctrine of the resurrection cor. . so as to exclude the natural and physical sense of it , it being plain that such a death and such a resurrection is spoken of concerning us , as is argued from the death and the resurrection of christ , who is said to die 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for our sins ; which is impossible to be interpreted mystically . read from the first to the eleventh verse , it is a plain history . from whence the apostle inferres that there is a blessed resurrection or glorious immortality in body and soul which christ will bestow on all true believers at the last day : as himself has promised over and over again in the sixth of s. iohn's gospel , [ and i will raise him up at the last day . ] many other places there are to this purpose in scripture which i willingly omit . . the third and last is the conflagration of the world , of which i hold that of s. peter an undeniable testimonie ; but the day of the lord shall come as a thief in the night ; in which the heavens shall pass away with a noise , and the elements shall melt with fervent heat , the earth also and the works therein shall be burnt up . the explication of which prophecie mr. ios. mede has set down with a great deal of caution and judgment . to which i should wholy subscribe , did i not believe that this execution of fire were the very last visible judgment god would doe upon the rebellious generations of adam , leaving them then to tumble with the devils in unsupportable torment and confusion . . and therefore i would expound 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 verse . but yet notwithstanding , or nevertheless , before this conflagration of the earth we expect a new heaven and a new earth , in a political sense , in which righteousness shall dwell . nor does that phrase verse . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 looking for & hastning the coming of the day of god warrant any one to restrain this prophecie to a moral meaning , as if it were only high expressions signifying something in our own power and to be done by us . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be either an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and denote no more then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , with great earnestness and diligence to expect ; or if so be you take them for two several things , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must signifie hastning , that sense is also consistent enough with our interpretation . for being the day of the lord is a day of great joy and ample remunerations to the godly , as well as of destruction to the wicked , ( and suppose it also comes not till righteousness has had its reign upon earth ) we may well be exhorted by our prayers and conversations to hasten and accelerate as much as in us lies the coming of either . . but that by no such mystical interpretation as this the earth can be excused from being burnt by a visible and palpable fire , is clear beyond all exception from the , and verses of this chapter . where the apostle alledges against that usual refuge and security of atheists , to wit , the sameness and immutableness of the law of nature and the order or course of things , that all things are as they were from the beginning , and ever will be so , and that therefore god will never step out in such an extraordinary way to iudgment ; to this the apostle opposes that eminent example of god's vengance in bringing the floud upon the old world and drowning the earth in an immense deluge of water : but the heavens and the earth which are now , saith he , are reserved unto fire against the day of iudgment and perdition of ungodly men . were the waters in noah's time natural , when god had a controversie with all flesh , and shall the fire that the world shall be destroyed with be spiritual ? but light-minded men whose hearts are made dark with infidelity care not what antick distorsions they make in interpreting scripture , so they bring it but to any shew of compliance with their own phansie and incredulity . . i know there be that would understand by this burning of heaven and earth , the destruction of the city of ierusalem . but the description is too big by far for so small a work , and not likely to be understood of them it was intended as a comfort to , it being so exceedingly well fitted to the conflagration of the world , and so disproportionated to the other event . moreover it is manifest from the scoffer's arguing against the promise of christ's coming ver . . ( that nature keeps still the same course it did since the beginning ) that this coming of christ was not understood by them ( and consequently not by s. peter ) of the burning of a city by war , ( for such things have hapned often , and so they might not think it improbable ierusalem might be burnt in due time ; ) but of that final glorious coming of christ to judge the world , which judgment the conflagration of the earth is to attend . . and truly if a man will but weigh things without prejudice , he shall find the main matter of these two epistles to be nothing else but an exhortation to grow perfect and established in all christian vertues from the hope of that excellent reward that shall be bestowed at the appearing and coming of the lord jesus : as you may see in this second epistle , the first chapter , for so an entrance shall be administred unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdome of our lord and saviour iesus christ. which is parallel to that in his first , where the promise is an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that fadeth not away , reserved in the heavens ; and so on to the thirteenth verse . which verses doubtless no unbiassed judgment will ever understand of a delivery from any temporal calamity , much less the destruction of ierusalem , from which place those dispersed jews were far enough removed , as far as pontus , cappadocia , asia , galatia , bithynia . to say nothing that the so-carefull an inculcation of that sad theam of the fatal destruction of the holy city would not so much become the pen of this venerable apostle , nor the gust of them he wrote to , being jews by nation as well as christians : to neither of which capacities could that fearfull destruction of their city be so comfortable a contemplation , whenas it drew tears from our saviour's eyes though at a greater distance of time . and his great solicitude that they should have these things alwaies in * remembrance after his death , is a sign that what he insists upon is a matter of more consequence and longer continuance then what respects the burning of the city . . furthermore , the argument whereby he would set on these things upon the spirits and belief of them he wrote to , that he was an eye-witness of the glorious transfiguration of christ , when his person appeared in that splendour which might become a glorified body , such as himself will appear in at his return to judgment , makes it still more reasonable that that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that powerful coming of christ there mentioned , is his final coming in glory , when he shall change our vile bodies into the similitude of his glorious bodie according to the working of his mighty power . this chief article therefore of the christian faith , in which all christians are the most highly concerned , was that which the apostle did press so earnestly and carefully upon them before his departure , which was the chief prop of their faith and patience , and which he affirmed from a special experiment of his own in that glorious transfiguration on the mount , ( where moses and elias talked with christ , which was a most certain argument of the soul's immortality ) to be no cunningly-contrived fiction , but a certain truth , both from what he saw there before his eyes , and what he heard discoursed at that holy meeting . where the passion of christ was treated of , and the exceeding glorious consequences of it ; of which the greatest of all is his last return to judgment , when he shall consummate the happiness of all believers with everlasting glory , and so restore the creation to a perfect recovery into what they had fallen from , and punish the obstinate with eternal fire . which things being declared without the circumstance of the series of time , it was easie for those three auditors on the mount to conceive them to be very shortly to come to pass , and therefore to make that enquiry of elias his coming first , according as their scribes taught them out of malachi ; if simply the appearance of elias and his going away again , contrary to their expectation and desire , did not put them upon that question . . but that the glorious coming or powerfull presence of christ , which he so solicitously would ascertain them of , is not his coming to destroy ierusalem , appears further from the nineteenth verse of this chapter ; where , after he has endeavoured to establish them in the belief of that main article , from the resplendent transfiguration of the person of christ ( of which he was an eye-witness on mount tabor , as also as ear-witness of that voice from heaven , this is my beloved son , and of that precious promise that he was to be the performer of at the last day ; which transfiguration was a visible pledge of his being invested into that supereminent office of the glorious judge of the quick and the dead ) and had recommended to them also the prophecies of the old testament as a light that shines in the dark to give some direction ; yet he insinuates further that they shall have a more clear and firm assurance of this so concerning a truth , the day dawning and the day-star arising at length in their hearts . which is very harsh to applie to any thing but to the more clear conviction , by the spirit of god in their souls , of the truth of this promise of an eternal reward , of that crown of a blessed immortality to be given at christ's return to judgment at the last day . these and such like considerations make it seem to me utterly incredible that by this fiery destruction should be understood the burning of ierusalem , and not the conflagration of the earth ; and by the appearing and coming of christ so often mentioned in these epistles , his vengeance on the iewes , and not his final return to judge the whole world : a supposition in my apprehension far more agreeable to the weight and gravity of this apostles style . thus much by the way for the rescuing of these two excellent epistles to that more natural and more solemn and useful sense they were ever understood in , till of late ; though i must confess they have not depraved the meaning of the seventh verse of the last chapter of the second epistle , it being indeed impossible to interpret it otherwise then of the burning of the world , which alone is sufficient for our present purpose . . we might adde several other passages as well in the prophets as in the apocalypse and other places , that tend to the same purpose with this of s. peter , for the proving of this final judgment of god by fire ; as also such places of scripture elsewhere as implie that there is some notorious punishment reserved for the devils , which shall be inflicted upon them at last . for when and upon what occasion can it begin so fitly as at the conflagration of the world ? that there is a certain horrible torment in store for them is plain from matth. . . art thou come to torment us afore the time ? and pet. . . ( as also ep. of jude ver . . ) where the devils are said to be reserved in chains of darkness unto the iudgment of the great day , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that god has confined them to this lower region of caliginous air as to a dark prison till the great assizes , as some very judiciously expound it . with which places if you compare that last malediction or severe sentence of our saviour against the wicked , goe ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels , it will be very easie to infer what this final punishment is , and when , and how it will begin . but we need not insist upon these things , we having sufficiently proved the point already . chap. ii. . the fitness and necessity of christ's visible return to iudgment . . further arguments of his return to iudgment , for the convincing of them that believe the miraculousness of his birth , his transfiguration , his ascension , &c. . arguments directed to those that are more prone to infidelitie , taken out of historie , where such things are found to have hapned already in some measure as are expected at christ's visible appearance . . that before extraordinary iudgments there have usually strange prodigies appeared by the ministry of angels , as before great plagues or pestilences . . as also before the ruine of countries by war. . before the swallowing down antioch by an earthquake . . at the firing of sodome and gomorrha . . and lastly , before the destruction of jerusalem . . it remains now that we shew , that these three main circumstances of christ's coming to judgment ( which we have proved to be contained in the mystery of our religion ) are in themselves congruous and reasonable . which we shall first make good concerning the visible pomp and glorious appearance of the person of christ in the air , attended by his holy angels , he descending as it were with the noise of battel and alarm of war , an archangel sounding a trumpet before him as the heavenly camp marches on and moves . for he will certainly appear in an equipage most terrible and glorious , and in this solemn and dreadful order he will face the bold , prophane and atheistical world , * who by no other means would be convinced of either a providence or a deity , but with supercilious looks and scornfull speeches have contemned all the hopes of future reward , and laught at the religious for weak-brain'd fools or mad-men . but then shall the hearts of the faithfull be filled with joy , they seeing so comfortable an appearance of him whom their soul longed for ; who will reward all their injuries , sorrows and reproaches with condign honour and happiness . nay i may say that christ will then vindicate himself from all those scorns and revilements that bold and prophane wretches out of their sensuality and high-mindedness have cast upon him from age to age , pleasing themselves and gratifying other epicurean brutes of like impiety with themselves with their ungodly jears and scoffs against him who was the highest example of divine perfection that ever appeared in the world. nay i adde further , that there is in a manner a necessity of this personal return of christ thus in glory to judge the world according to his promise , that these blasphemers may not be encouraged to reckon him with such impostours as david george and mahomet , who though they prefixed a shorter time to their followers , shall not again be heard of till they appear before his tribunal of whom we speak . . and as for those that do believe that the person of christ does still subsist , that he was so miraculously born , so gloriously transfigured on the mount , so wonderfully raised up from the dead , and did so conspicuously ascend into heaven , * two angels in bright garments affirming to them that beheld him , that he would thus return again , viz. in a personal visibility ; what stranger thing is it that he should return , then that which they acknowledge to be true of him already ? and how fit is it that he should still retain this supremacy over the world , none else having bought it so dearly as himself did by his most bitter death and passion ? and he that is so compassionate a mediatour by reason of his humane nature , will prove the more fit and equal judge . and that there will be a period and full pause of the generations of men upon earth , i have already little less then demonstrated , though it be enough to shew there is no incongruity nor inconvenience in it . for that is sufficient to stop modest men from either inventing or embracing such evasive allegories as do elude the testimony of the scripture in an article of so weighty a concernment as this . . and as for those that are greater infidels , and look upon the above-framed description of christ's coming to judgement to be exceeding improbable , if not impossible , i say , nothing but the very dulness of atheisme it self can make them conceit thus . for it being once admitted , that there are angels as well as men , this glorious appearance of christ with the holy angels is as easie and natural to admit , as the martial pomp of a mighty army , or the solemnity of a great assize . but that there are spirits or angels , and that they can appear to men in what region of the aire they please , history affords innumerable instances . and how much for the miraculousness of it does this pompous approach of christ in the clouds differ from those fightings and skirmishings of whole armies in the aire , of which all ages almost and all historians ring , as well sacred as prophane ? the clattering also of armour and the sound of the trumpet have been very frequently heard from the heavens , as plinie and other historians do report . virgil and ovid record these things with verses sutable to the solemnity of the prodigies . armorum sonitum toto germania coelo audiit . — georgic . lib. . all o're the heavens the noise of armes was heard in germanie . and ovid concerning the same matter ; arma ferunt inter nigras crepitantia nubes terribilesque tubas auditaque cornua coelo . clashing of armes amidst black pitchy clouds was heard , with trumpets hoarse and cornets loud . so that the apostles prediction of christ's coming thus visibly to judge the world , attended with the heavenly hosts , and the archangel sounding a trumpet before him , is so far from being impossible , that it has in some manner and measure been already in the world , though those astonishing prodigies fall infinitly short of the glory and terrour of the day of judgement . . besides , if we may compare small things with great , as certainly we may , the analogy being so conspicuous , what particular judgement and vengeance of note has god done in the world , wherein there has not been a sensible administration of angels forerunning it ? i might make a very copious induction , but i will keep my self within measure . before sweeping plagues and warrs how frequent are these apparitions ! cardan makes mention of several of the first kind . before the plague at galaratum there appeared to a young man , as he was riding thither in a rainy night , a cart all covered with fire , which , gallop he as fast as he would , was ever over against him : he heard the voice also of rusticks saying , cave , cave , take heed , take heed . this spectre attended him till he got to the temple of st. laurence , which was without the town gate , and there sunk into the ground both cart , oxen , rusticks , and fire and all . the same author relates also of a stranger prodigie of a pestilence in peru upon the banks of the river consote near carthage , where there appeared to certain women washing there , as their custome was , a man of a huge stature with his belly cut up and exenterated , and two children in his armes : he spoke to them , and told them that all the christian women should die , and the greatest part of them also . this spectre was also seen on horse-back on the side of the hills , running swifter then the wind . a mighty plague followed , that destroied almost all the inhabitants of the place . that also out of fincelius is very remarkable , the appearing of twelve or fifteen men in marchia of huge and horrid statures in the corn field with sithes in their hands , mowing down oates with might and main , so that the very hitting of the sithes was plainly heard afarre off , but in the mean time no oates were cut down . people endeavoured to apprehend them , but they ran too swift for them , and yet they nevertheless mowed as laboriously in their flight as before . a great plague ensued thereupon . i could adde to these what i have been credibly informed has hapned in england . . but i shall rather pass to the other prodigies of warre ; concerning which machiavel does plainly confess as well as cardan , that before great commotions , warrs , and sacking of cities , there have often appeared strange prodigies , and particularly the skirmishing of armies in the aire , such as was seen over aretium before the coming of the french king into italy , as machiavel himself testifies . and cardan also doth furnish us with farther examples , as that of mexico before it was destroyed , where the like prodigies hapned . a cross also was seen by the mexicans in the east , and a man of so high stature , that his head seemed to touch the heavens , which much terrified them . he writes also of the picts in england , that before their destruction there were seen fiery armies in heaven fighting with one another ; and that in the confines betwixt the picts and scots at mid-day there was so great a noise of armed horsemen that encountred one another , that it almost frighted the poor countrymen out of their wits . . that was also a terrible prodigie that preceded that hideous ruine of antioch by an earthquake . there was seen over that great city a spectrum in the aire of a vast stature in the habit of a woman , but with an horrid countenance , so that she frighted all that looked on her , but especially when she slash'd a whip which she had in her hand , the cracks thereof were so loud and dreadful . this continued for fifteen nights together , from two a clock till four , in the month of may , anno . . but there is nothing more accommodate to our purpose then the destruction of sodome and gomorrha with fire from heaven , a compendious representation of the final burning of the world. for before that vengeance was done upon those two wicked cities , three angels appeared to abraham , and revealed that design to him : two also visited lot , and by a main hand drew him out of the fearful destruction . . i might adde many more examples , but i shall content my self with the superaddition onely of that one and most eminent instance of the destruction of ierusalem , wherein the invisible powers , i mean the angels , were discerned to act in a sensible and palpable manner . which is deprehended not onely by that flaming sword that hung over the city for a whole year together , and a sudden light in the night-time that shone about the altar and the temple , so that it made it as light as day ; as also the spontaneous opening of the east gate of the temple , which was so heavy and massy , as being made of brass , that it was as much as twenty men could do to shut it , ( to which you may adde the voice that was heard by the priests , as they went into the temple by night at the time of pentecost , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let us go hence : ) but mainly , and what is most of all to my purpose , by those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , those chariots and armed companies of souldiers which were seen round about in the aire before sun-set to sally out of the clouds , and to fill all with the numerosity of their troups . wherefore if such particular judgements were executed with a visible attendance of the angels of god ; when he shall execute vengeance on the whole world , can we think it strange if he then shall appear more then ordinarily glorious in his heavenly retinue , thousand thousands ministring unto him , and ten thousand times ten thousand standing before him , as the prophet speaks ? which prophecy if it could respect shorter periods of time , yet certainly the fullest and most proper completion of it will be at the last judgement . chap. iii. . the resurrection of the dead by how much more rigidly defined , according to every circumstance and punctilio delivered by theologers , by so much the more pleasant to the ears of the atheists . . that the resurrection in the scholastick notion thereof was in all likelihood the great stone of offence to those two enthusiasts of delph and amsterdam , and emboldened them to turn the whole gospel into an allegorie . . the incurable condition of enthusiasts . . the atheists first objection against the scholastick resurrection proposed . . his second objection . . his third and last objection . . that his objections do not demonstrate an absolute impossibility of the scholastick resurrection , with the author's purpose of answering them upon other grounds . . we come now to the second particular propounded , the resurrection of the dead , which i dare say the atheist will listen to with more then ordinary attention , and greedily suck in the doctrine , provided it be stated with the most curious circumstances that the rigidest of theologers will describe it by , and mainly by these two ; that we shall have the same numerical bodies in which we lived here on earth , and that those very bodies , the molds being turned aside , shall start out of the grave . this doctrine the atheist very dearly hugs as a pledge , in his bold conceit , of the falseness and vanity of all the other articles of religion . wherefore he phansying the upshot of christianity to be so groundless and incredible , he fairly quits himself of the trouble of all , and yields himself up wholly to the pleasures of this present world. . and i question not but that this is the great stone of offence upon which those two blind enthusiasts of delph and amsterdam ( of whom i have so often spoken ) fell and split themselves ; the rock which made them suffer the shipwrack of their faith , in allegorizing the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment into a mere moral sense , and in conceiting the last trump to be only their doctrine , and that christ was come in them to judge the quick and the dead ; and that the happy resurrection so much talked of and so long expected , was nothing else but to be raised up into the like life and belief with these fanaticks , as i must call them : and i would ask them , what is meant by the resurrection of the unjust , if this be the resurrection of the just ? or if this be the resurrection to life , what is meant by the resurrection to condemnation ? . but in truth it is scarce fit to ask enthusiasts any questions at all , they , under pretence of inspiration , wholy disclaiming the use of reason , and imperiously dictating their own wilfull imaginations to the world for certain and undisputable revelations : and therefore in this regard there is more hope of the atheists then of them , who by propounding their objections put men in a capacity of finding out an answer ; but when men will haughtily and superciliously deny a truth under the pretence of the spirit , without rendring a reason , this ignorance or rather madness is utterly incurable . . leaving therefore these men to the full enjoyment of their own phansies , let us hear the objections of the atheists against this article so stated as has been above defined ; which are chiefly three . first , against the numerical identity of our bodies in the resurrection : because , say they , the anthropophagi or cannibals are continually fed with mans flesh , as also they feed one upon another . to give therefore the highest instance against this assertion ; how can that man , say they , that has been fed with mans flesh in a manner perpetually , and at last himself fed upon by men , have the same body at the resurrection ? for he will be left as bare of flesh , as the crow was of feathers when every bird had pecked away what belonged unto themselves . besides the hazard of losing that flesh that was his own , ( if any was his own ) by being himself devoured and digested into the flesh and body of others . . their second objection is against mens bodies rising out of their graves , and runs thus ; it implies , say they , that all men were buried : whenas myriads have been drowned in the seas and eaten by fishes . besides infinite numbers that have had the usual burial of their nations , have had a very inconsiderable part of their bodies committed to the ground ; only a few ashes in an urn ; the rest of their body , in the burning , vanishing into air. which in some sort comes to pass in them that are wholy buried in the earth . for the body rots and melts away there into fume and vapours , which the heat of the sun exhales and draws into the air. some it may be shoot up into the blades of grass , which either rots upon the ground , or is food for horses , to whose shares it doth not fall to have honest burial , but lie to rot also in the open fields , or else are eaten by those creatures that at length doe so . so that the soul , if she were to seek for her body , would hear more likely news of it in the air then in the earth . so incredible is it , that it is kept circumscribed in so particular a part of the earth as the grave . . and lastly , to make all sure , they endeavour to enervate the very grounds and dig down the deepest foundation of this assertion of identity of bodies at the resurrection , by alledging that the very end thereof implies a contradiction . for whereas the reason is given , that the body that was partner either in unlawfull pleasures or the laudable pains and labours of the soul , might partake also of her punishment or reward : here they pretend that the bodie is not the same numerical body throughout the whole life of a man , no more then a river is the same river , but that the bodie wasts and is restored , that the present spirits , bloud and flesh are passing , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as heraclitus speaks , and new supplies are perpetually made by food ; and that therefore we have no more the same numerical body always then the same numerical cloaths , but that in both we wear out the old and get new , but in our cloaths at once , in our bodies by degrees . wherefore to contend that the same numerical body shall rise that was buried , and that upon point of justice , is to contend for the greatest piece of injustice that may be : for so shall the body of an old man be punished for the sins of that body he had when he was young . . these and such like are the arguments of those that would overthrow religion upon this advange , as they deem it ; and something they drive at that seems to tend to a perswasion of some kind of incongruity and incredibility in the matter , but it will not all amount to an utter impossibility . but to me it seems so inconsiderable , that i shall not vouchsafe it an answer upon those terms and that hypothesis they goe upon . i shall soar a little higher , that my way being aloft , as the wise man speaks , i may be free from the snares beneath . but what i answer i would be understood to direct to the atheist and the infidel , permitting them that already believe the substance , to vary their phansies with what circumstances they please . but for these others i must hold them to hard meat , and cut my skirts as short as i can , that they sit not upon them . chap. iv. . an answer to their first and last cavil , from those principles of plato's school , that the soul is the man , and that the bodie perceives nothing . . an answer to their second , by rightly interpreting what is meant by rising out of the grave in the general notion thereof . . that there is no warrant out of scripture for the same numerical bodie , but rather the contrary . . the atheists objection from the word resurrectio answered , whose sense is explained out of the hebrew and greek . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , what the meaning of them is in that general sense which is applicable as well to the resurrection of the unjust as of the just . . i answer therefore first out of the best sort of philosophers , that animus cujusque is est quisque , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that the soul of every man is his individual person , and that she alone it is that hears , that sees , that enjoies pleasure and undergoes pain ; and that the body is not sensible of any thing , no more then a mans doublet when he is well bastinado'd . and this answer takes away all occasion of the first and last cavil . for why are men solicitous of the same numerical body , but that they may be sure to find themselves the same numerical persons ? but it being most certain there is no stable personality of a man but what is in his soul , ( for if the body be essential to this numerical identity , a grown man has not the same individuation he had when he was christned ; ) it is manifest , that if there be the same soul , there is exactly the same person ; and that the change of the body causes no more real difference of personality then the change of cloaths . and why do men plead for the consociation of the soul 's numerical body in reward or punishment , but that they phansie the body capable of pleasure and pain ? but they erre , not knowing the nature of things , the body being utterly uncapable of all sense and cogitation , as not only the best of the platonists , but also that excellent philosopher des-cartes has determined , and is abundantly demonstrated in my * treatise of the immortality of the soul. . this therefore being cleared , i answer also to their second cavil , concerning mens rising out of the very graves they wery buried in , that the expression is only prophetical and symbolical , ( though i do not deny but that in some it may happen literally to be true ) and that it signifies no more then thus , that the same men that die and are buried , shall as truly appear in their own persons at the day of iudgment , as if those bodies that were interred should be presently actuated by their souls again , and should start out of their graves ; and to give an instance , they shall be as truly the same persons as lazarus , when he rose body and soul out of the grave , after he had lien there four daies together . but that universal expression of mens rising out of the grave is but a prophetical scheme of speech the more strongly to strike our senses , as i have already intimated in my * exposition of the of cor. against the psychopannychites . and therefore the greater accumulation of absurdities that can be made against that circumstance , it will the more confirm that usefull interpretation of mine . . this succour we have against the atheists out of philosophy ; but i answer further as concerning the scripture it self , ( which is the only certain measure of the truth of our religion , and to which alone i dare finally stand , not thinking my self bound to make good every conceit that either the pride , precipitancie , inadvertencie or ignorance of fallible teachers have obtruded upon the world , ) that i dare challenge him to produce any place of scripture out of which he can make it appear , that the mysterie of the resurrection implies the resuscitation of the same numerical body . the most pregnant of all is job , which later interpreters are now so wise as not to understand at all of the resurrection . the cor. . that chapter is so far from asserting this curiosity , that it plainly saies it is not the same body ; but that as god gives to the blades of corn grains quite distinct from that which was sown , so at the resurrection he will give the soul a body quite different from that which was buried . now if it be not the same body that was buried , what need it run into the earth to come out again ? wherefore it is plain that the apostle there writes , as i said before , in a prophetical and symbolical style . . but the atheist will still hang on and object further , that the very term resurrectio implies that the same body shall rise again , for that only that falls can be said properly to rise again . but the answer will be easie , the objection being grounded merely upon a mistake of the sense of the word , which is to be interpreted out of those higher originals the greek and hebrew , and not out of the latine , though the word in latin does not alwaies implie an individual restitution of what is gone or fallen : as in that verse in ovid , victa tamen vinces subversaque troja resurges . but this is not so near to our purpose ; let us rather consider the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which resurrectio supplies in latin , and therefore must be made to be of as large a sense as it . now 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is so far from signifying ( in some places ) the reproduction or recuperation of the same thing that was before , that it bears no sense at all of reiteration in it . as matth. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and genes . . there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie merely a living subsistence : and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in an active signification according to this sense will be nothing else but a giving or continuing life and subsistence to a thing . the word in the hebrew that answers to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which translators interpret a living substance : whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to this analogie may very well bear the same latitude of sense that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they being both words that are rendred resurrectio , but simply of themselves signifie only vivification or erection unto life , or the being made a living creature . but seeing that men are creatures that have been once alive , and are to be made alive again , and to become sensible and visible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at the day of judgment ; therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are ordinarily translated revivificatio , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are to be understood in the same sense that implies a recuperation of life . . now the iewish rabbins , as buxtorf has noted , are very critical in these words , appropriating 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the resurrection of the just , but the other to the revivification of the wicked ; though they sometimes again confound them . but that which is nearest to our purpose is to consider in what signification of the words the thing signified is competible to the unjust as well as to the just . and i conceive it is that which the apostle paul speaks , cor. . . for we must all appear before the tribunal of christ , that every man may receive according to what he has done in his body , whether good or evil . but as well the wicked as the just , before they thus appear , are really in life and being ; though to us they be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , dead , vanisht and invisible . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , luke . but all are alive and visible to god , even the bad as well as the good . therefore the resurrection or revivification ( for the word signifies no more then so ) that is common to both , is this ; that they become palpable and visible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and appear at that general assizes at the last day . for then all the world good and bad shall not only be alive to god , but also alive and visible to one another . and this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or revivificatio that is common to all . and that this notion is solid appears from hence , in that luke by saying , for they all live to god , implies that they are dead in reference to men . wherefore so far forth as they are said to be dead , so far forth may they be said to be revived or to be raised from the dead ; as the ghosts of men are said to be by art magick , because they are made to appear . but the devil is not said to be raised from the dead , because he was never properly said to be alive amongst us , or to live amongst us . chap. v. . an objection against the resurrection , from the activity of the soul out of her body , with the first answer thereto . . the second answer . . the special significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the first belonging to the unjust , the latter to the just . . that the life that is led on the earth or in this lower region of the air is more truly a death then a life . . the manner of our recovering our celestial body at the last day . . and of the accomplishment of the promise of christ therein . . i should proceed , but that i must be contented to be interrupted by one objection more , which is this ; if the souls of men live and act out of their bodies before the resurrection , what need is there of any resurrection of the body ? for what want have they of any bodies at all , if their soul can live and act without them ? but i answer , first , that we are not infallibly assured but that the souls as well of the good as the bad after death have an aereal body , in which , if stories be true , they have sometimes appeared after their decease . and that they may act , think and understand in these aiery vehicles , as well as other spirits doe , is not at all incredible nor improbable ; the faculties of an humane soul being not inferiour to the faculties of some orders of spirits , whose understandings are not so clear but that they are divided in their judgments , some being of one sect of philosophers , some of another , as those that appeared to cardan's father professed themselves avenroists . . but secondly , if it were granted that the souls of the deceased were stript of all corporeity , and yet could act , we may nothwithstanding very well conceive that that which once had so intimate union with the grossest of bodies , has certainly a very strong propension , natural complacency or essential aptitude alwaies to join with some body or other . which power if we may not infallibly affirm to be so catching , that the soul is never disappointed of some kinde of vehicle , yet we may safely pronounce , that when that natural capacity is satisfied , there accrues a greater accomplishment and more vigorous enjoiment to the soul , her operations thereby being made more sensible and vivid . and therefore that great reward of an heavenly , aethereal or immortal body , which shall be given at the last day , is of very high concernment for the compleating of the happiness of the souls of the faithfull , whether we suppose them in the mean time to live without bodies , or to be alive only in aiery vehicles ; the * latter whereof if examined to the bottome , will appear the most unexceptionable opinion , and least liable to the cavils of gainsaiers . but whether of them be most true i leave to the grave and wise to determine . . this rub being thus removed out of the way , we now proceed to the special significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the former of which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the resurrection to condemnation ; the latter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and simply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the resurrection to life , the resurrection of the just , and simply the resurrection , as it is cor. . and elsewhere . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they belong to the wicked , have no further sense of revivification then in that general way we have explained , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implying that they were raised and made to appear at this day of general summons , merely to receive the sentence of eternal death , goe ye accursed into everlasting fire , &c. but now 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is appropriated to the resurrection of the just , and is termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , implies in it a further and more peculiar revivification or re-enlivening , viz. into that life which was lost by the first fall , that paradisiacal life , that aethereal and heavenly life , which is unrecoverable unless we recover those heavenly glorified bodies which are promised to us by christ at his coming . . for this muddy earth , and vaporous polluted air which is the very region of death , wherein all the pleasures , joyes and triumphs of this present life are but like the grinning laughter of ghosts or the dance of dead men , these foul elements , i say , can afford no such commodious habitation for the soul , as to arrive any thing near to the height of that happiness which she shall be possessed of when christ shall be pleased to change these our vile bodies into the similitude of his glorious bodie , and so to recover us into the enjoiment of that heavenly life which we unhappily forfeited by our first fall. for which purpose he came into the world , as himself professes john . v. . this is the will of him that sent me , that whosoever sees me and believes in me , should have everlasting life , and that i should raise him up at the last day . . and so certainly it will be at his coming to judgment , that they that then see him and firmly believe on him , ardently loved him and vehemently desired his appearing , shall find such a warming change in themselves , partly by the glorious approach of his person and lustre of his numerous retinue , partly by the wonderfull secret workings of the divine presence in their very bodies and souls , that at last there will be kindled such an irresistible faith , so rapturous a joy and transportant love , that breaking out upon the body , be it what it will , it will turn all into a pure aethereal flame ; and so elias-like in those celestial chariots shall they ascend up to christ , and meet him in the air , and join with his armie whereever it moves , as becoming then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , their vehicles being transformed by the power and presence of christ , and the working of his divinity , into a pure paradisiacal and angelical nature . . and thus shall he make his word good of raising us up at the last day , in that he does re-enliven us , and restore us to that life and joy which we had fallen from , re-enthrone us into that glory we had defaced in our selves and was lost in these dark bodies of ours , and raise us up to that pristine state of happiness and that superiour paradise , which we could not re-enter into , or be re-estated in , but by becoming wholly aethereal or celestial . chap. vi. . that he has freed the mysterie of the resurrection from all exceptions of either atheists or enthusiasts . . that the soul is not uncapable of the happiness of an heavenly body . . and that it is the highest and most sutable reward that can be conferr'd upon her . . that this reward is not above the power of christ to confer , proved by what he did upon earth . . that all iudgment is given to him by the father . . further arguings to the same purpose . . and now i think we have so disentangled the mystery of the resurrection from all the prejudices and conceived difficulties that it was involved in , that i may challenge all the world , the atheist , infidel and new-fangled enthusiast , if they can frame any solid exception against it , which they can manage by reason , and is not a mere sullen dictate of their own dark and dull minds . . for this precious crown of immortality which christ shall then crown us withall , is neither beyond his power to give , nor our capacity to receive . for the offers and fluskerings , as i may so say , of the faculties of the soul of man , even in this state of death and imprisonment , are so high , so noble and divine , as well in speculation as devotion , especially when our spirits are more then ordinarily pure , and come nearer to an aethereal kind of defecacy ; that they that have the experience thereof cannot distrust but that , if she had the advantage of an angelical bodie , her operations would prove little inferiour to theirs . which is a demonstration that she is as well capable of such bodies as they ; as also of the worth and value , and of the fitness and accommodateness of so ample a reward . . for philosophy herself can witness , that according to the greater purity of our spirits , the motions and passions of our minds are changed and become more holy and divine , & our thoughts and apprehensions more clear , our love to god more ardent and sincere , our benignity to men more free and general , and all the faculties of our soul in a ready posture to comply with the best commands or suggestions of reason or religion . of what infinite importance therefore must it be to have such a body as is not only perpetually thus compliable with the best motions of the soul , but by virtue of its heavenly purity does naturally encline the mind to such thoughts , motions and affections , as are most acceptable to god and most enravishing to her self ? which consideration does evidently demonstrate that high reason that is in our religion , in the promise of a glorified body , as the greatest reward of our earnest colluctations and obedient endeavours in this life . for nothing but divine inspiration or some infallible method of philosophy could discover to the mind of man so concerning a point . . but to doubt whether christ can cloath us with such bodies as those , or enliven our whole man , in whatsoever bodies we be found , into that immortality and life which accrues to us by transforming our vile bodies into the similitude of his glorious bodie , is either to forget or not to believe what mighty power he had when he was here upon earth ; how merely by his word he calmed the raging of the seas , silenced the tempestuousness of the windes , multiplied a few loaves and a few fishes so , in the very eating of them , that he fed many thousands therewith in the wilderness ; which was an eminent specimen of his power of transforming matter into what modification he pleased : besides his healing of the sick , not only those that were present and believed on him , but also the absent ; to which you may add the raising of the dead , which comes nearer to our purpose , as also the resurrection of those that rose with him , to signifie his enlivening power , who himself so miraculously rose from the grave . . by which wonderfull works he did plainly demonstrate , that what he professed of himself was true , that as the father has life in himself , so he has also given the son to have life in himself , that is , the power of vivification or enlivening of others , as you may see by the context , john . v. . and not only so , but he has given him also the power of punishing as well as rewarding , as it follows in the next verse , and he hath given him authority to execute judgement , because he is the son of man , viz. that son of man that upon his sufferings and after his being risen from the dead should have all power given to him in heaven and in earth . which we may easily believe , whenas he had so vast a power in the lowest ebbe of his humiliation , when he went up and down afflicted , despised and neglected , being attended only by a few contemptible fisher-men and others of like inferiour condition ; and yet then he opened the eyes of them that were born blind , and at a distance healed the sick , and being unaccompanied with any visible pomp or power , with one word of his mouth drove away a legion of devils at once . what shall he not then be able to doe , when he shall return in the highest glory and majesty that the visible divinity can appear in ? when the heavens shall be filled with the brightness of his camp , and all the nations of the world shall be astonished at the dreadfull splendour of his coming ? . shall not he then , who in his dejectment could raise to life not only a faithless but senseless corps , enliven those that at his glorious appearance are so filled with faith , love , joy , desire and admiration , that their empassioned souls are ready to leave their bodies , if it were possible , to come and doe their homage to their long-expected saviour and redeemer ? shall not that divine and omnipotent power then that worketh round about him , so cooperate with those kindled affections , as to change their very bodies into an ability of naturally ascending up to him , and joining with him ? or is it hard for him to convert flesh or air into a pure aethereal fire , & to awake such a facultie in the soul as shall kindly and vitally inactuate it , who turned air into flesh , and prepared the dead carcase of lazarus so fittingly for reunion with the soul , that he raised him out of the grave on the fourth day ? wherefore this resurrection , life and immortality we speak of , being neither impossible for christ to give , nor our nature uncapable to receive , it remains that we shall enjoy it , because christ both himself and by his apostles has so plainly and expresly promised it . chap. vii . . caecilius his scoffs against the resurrection , and conflagration of the world : that against the resurrection answered already . . in what sense the soberer christians understood the conflagration of the world. . that the conflagration in their sense is possible , argued from the combustibleness of the parts of the earth . . as also from actual fire found in several mountains , as aetna , helga and hecla . . several instances of that sort out of plinie . . instances of vulcanoes , out of acosta . . the vulcanoes of guatimalla . . vulcanoes without smoak having a quick fire at the bottome . . vulcanoes that have cast fire and smoak some thousand of years together . . hot fountains , springs running with pitch and rosin , certain thermae catching fire at a distance . . the third thing we propounded comprized in christ's return to judgment is the conflagration of the world , a point as incredible to most of the heathen as the resurrection of the dead ; and the comparing of them both together made it the more ridiculously-incredible to them , as you may see by that jear that caecilius gives the christians in minucius felix . quid ? quod toti orbi & ipsi mundo cum sideribus suis minantur incendium , ruinam moliuntur ? quasi aut naturae divinis legibus constitutus aeternus ordo turbetur , aut , rupto omnium elementorum foedere & coelesti compage divisâ , moles ista quâ continemur & cingimur subruatur . nec hâc furiosâ opinione contenti , aniles fabulas astruunt & annectunt . renasci se ferunt post mortem & cineres & favillas . nescio quâ fiduciâ mendaciis suis invicem credunt . putes eos jam revixisse . anceps malum & gemina dementia , coelo & astris quae sic relinquimus ut invenimus interitum denunciare , sibi mortuis & extinctis ( qui sicut nascimur & interimus ) aeternitatem repromittere . to which you may add how they menace burning and meditate ruine to the whole earth and to the heaven it self with the stars thereof ; as if the eternal order constituted by the divine laws of nature could be disturbed , or that this huge fabrick wherein we are contained and surrounded , by the breaking of that league amongst the elements and division of the celestial compages could tumble down . and not content with this furious opinion alone , they join and stitch to it old wives fables . they affirm that they shall rise again after death , and live after the being turned into embers and ashes . i know not upon what confidence they can thus believe one anothers lies . you would think they were men started out of their graves already . a twofold mischief and double madness , to denounce destruction to the heavens and starres which we leave in the same condition that we find them , and to promise eternity to our selves once dead and extinct , who as we are born into the world , so we die . but the double sting of this twofold jear is easily pulled out ; and that indeed concerning the resurrection already ; we having plainly shewed , that that mysterie implies nothing more then this , that the same individual persons shall be revivificated body and soul , and made happy with eternal life . but the same individual person does not involve any necessity of the same numerical body , as has been shewn at large . . the very point and sting of this scoff against the conflagration , is also a presumptuous mistake as well as that against the resurrection , ( though i deny the possibility of neither ) and it lyes in these words , ipsi mundo cum sideribus suis minantur incendium , ruinam moliuntur . such a clatter as this indeed ( though some of the pagan philosophers , as lucretius and seneca , are not affraid to admit , yet ) might well scare the more sagacious from giving assent to it . but the conflagration of the world , according to the truth thereof in the christian mystery , is limited with more modest and credible bounds , it not concerning the starry heavens ; unless you will call these heavens starry that are the receptacle of sublunary comets and falling starres . so that all the destruction that is threatned by the better-knowing christians is onely to the globe of the earth , and the circumjacent aire , with all the garnishings of them , which shall be burnt up and destroyed : but the aire and earth shall continue aire and earth still ; but with such alteration as this terrible burning shall work upon them . . that this is possible many things may induce us to believe , which are to be found as well in the earth as in the aire . for what of the earth is not combustible ? the exteriour turfy part is ordinary fewel , and stones themselves are calcined into lime and chalk by fire . and the pyrenean mountains betwixt france and spain took fire so ( whether from thunder or by certain shepheards ) that the gold and silver mines ran streaming down for many days together . from which accident some will have these hills to have their name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying fire . besides , there are many mines of minerals in the earth that do not onely yield to the power of fire , but covet it in a manner and catch at it , as naphtha , sulphur and bitumen ; to say nothing of sundry sorts of coals , vast woods and wildernesses , which are so combustible , that the mere excesse of the heat of the aire has sometimes set them on fire , as it hapned in several places anno . . we may adde to all this in how many places of the earth there are found actual fires by natures own kindling , as if she kept house under ground , and made several hills her chimneys : such as vesuvius in italy , aetna in sicily , helga and hecla in islandia , mountains so terrible for thunder , flamings out of fire , casting abroad stones , ashes , stink and smoak , that the more phansifull conceit that hell is begun there aforehand . which were more plausible if the apparitions that are seen there were as true as they are said to be frequent . . plinie will furnish us with more instances of this nature , as of chimaera a hill of phaselis in pamphylia , the hephaestian mountains in lycia , cophantus in bactriana . near hesperius a mountain in aethiopia the fields in the night all glitter with light , as also a certain piece of ground in babylonia . nymphaeus a mountain of apollonia flings out fire and bituminous matter , the fury whereof is increased by rain : as also the fire of those ignivomous mountains in lycia and pamphylia . that aeolian iland hiera near italy was all on fire , and the sea round about it , for some days together ; which he reports as a known truth , and an instance near at hand . but he concludes with the burning of that high and vast mountain in aethiopia called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , the chariot of the gods , as the most famous example of this kind ; adding to all this short epiphonema , tot locis tot incendiis rerum natura terras cremat . . and yet these vulcanoes are not less frequent in america , as acosta writes , and gives this description of them in general , that they be rocks or pikes of very high mountains , having upon their tops a plain , and in the midst thereof a pit or great mouth which descends to the very foot of the hill , a thing very terrible to behold , as he saies . out of those mouths is vomited smoak , and sometimes fire , and sometimes neither , as it fares ordinarily with that of arequipa , as also with that of mexico near the village of angels , which sends out smoak and ashes onely by fits , but never fire ; and yet the inhabitants are affraid it will sometime break out and burn all the country . . the vulcanoes of guatimalla are more terrible . in the year . almost all the city of guatimalla fell with an earthquake . this vulcanoe had then for six months together day and night cast from the top and vomited , as it were , great flouds of fire ; a notable instance of what treasures of combustibles nature is stored with . as is also observable in the vulcanoe of quitto , which cast such abundance of ashes , that in many leagues compass thereabouts it darkned the light of the day . . there are also other kind of vulcanoes which never cast either smoak , flame or ashes , but in the bottome they are seen to burn with a quick fire never dying . this imposed upon a greedy priest , and made him think it was nothing else but heaps of gold melted in the fire , which he thought to have fetched up by letting down an iron kettle with chains . but his device was not fire-proof , his kettle and chain melting so soon as they approached near the bottome . . but the greatest wonder of all is that which acosta noteth of some vulcanoes , that for some hundred , nay some thousands of years have cast out continually smoak , fire and ashes . these visible instances of particular burnings of the earth are notable presumptions that there are laid in in the hidden mines of providence such a provision of combustible matter as will serve for that universal conflagration we speak of , when the day of vengeance shall make use of those treasuries of wrath. . we might adde further arguments of subterraneous fires and the fewel thereof from earthquakes and hot fountains ; of which there are some in peru , as the same writer reports , that are so hot , that a man cannot endure his hand so long as the repeating of an ave-marie . there be infinite numbers of these in the province of charcas . he makes mention also in the same place of several springs and fountains that run with pitch and rosin . which yet seems nothing so strange as those thermae fallopius speaks of , in the territories of parma , whose water catches fire at a distance : and as for hot fountains they are more ordinary in these known parts of the world then that we need at all insist thereupon . see plin. lib. . cap. . chap. viii . . a fiery comet as big as the sun that appeared after the death of demetrius . comets presages of droughts . woods set on fire after their appearing . . of falling starres . of the tail of a comet that dried up a river . . hogsheads of wine drunk up and men dissipated into atoms by thunder . . that the fire of thunder is sometimes unquenchable , as that in macrinus the emperours time ; and that procured by the praiers of the thundring legion . . of conglaciating thunders , and the transmutation of lot's wife into a pillar of salt. . the destruction of sodom with fire from heaven . that universal deluges and earthquakes doe argue the probability of a deluge of fire . . that plinie counts it the greatest wonder , that this deluge of fire has not hapned already . . we have seen how well stored the earth is toward this general conflagration ; let us now consider what the heaven or aire may afford . where letting go other fiery meteors , we shall only consider some few instances of comets , falling starres and of thunder . by comets i understand onely such new starres as are sublunary and of combustible matter actually set on fire . of which sort there was one of so huge a magnitude which appeared after the death of demetrius , that it was found no less then the sun to see to , and with the brightness of its fiery shining turned night into day . but to speak more at large of this meteor , cardan and other philosophers would have them either signes or causes of great droughts ; and they may well be both , these sublunary especially : such great fiery bodies not being easily fed without wasting much of the kindly moisture of the aire , which makes the season also unwholesome and pestilential . but for droughts , it has been observed that after the appearing of these comets , the year has been so excessive hot , that it has parched the corn upon the ground , set whole woods on fire , and dried fountains and rivers ; as it hapned in the years and . . the stellae cadentes are either such as virgil describes in his georgicks , saepe etiam stellas vento impendente videbis praecipites coelo labi , noctisque per umbram flammarum longos à tergo albescere tractus . oft mayst thou see upon approaching wind starres slide from heaven , and through the night 's great shade long tracts of flaming white to draw behind . ( which meteors though they make a great show in the night , yet doe not ordinarily much hurt , unless they should light upon the fields of aricia , whose earth was so combustible that it would take fire upon the falling of any coal ) or else they are such kind of comets , as themselves become sometimes falling starres : which scaliger affirms to have been found true in his time : and fromondus out of sennertus writes , that the tail of a comet in the year flew off , and falling into a river drunk up all the water of it . . but the effects of no fiery meteor are so frequent or so terrible as that of thunder . to which sulfureous exhalations out of the earth contribute something , as well as moist vapors for the generating of rain : as is discovered by the great frequency of thunders about the vulcanoes we spoke of . one notable effect which plinie takes notice of is like that of the tail of the comet . for he saith there is one kind of thunder , quo dolia exhauriuntur intactis operimentis . like to this is that which the above-named writer recites out of wolfangus meurerus , that a certain minister as he was going from lipsia to torga was so consumed by thunder , that not a bit of him was to be seen , his whole body being dissolved into vapour and exhalations , and blown away with the wind . the closest texture of bodies will not hold , when this quick searching fire assaults them . for this meteor is made of such subtile , glib and furiously-agitated elements , that they will irresistibly pass whereever they attempt , and disjoyn every congeries of atoms , as lucretius has well described them . quae facile insinuantur , & insinuata repentè dissolvunt nodos omnes , & vincla relaxant . which easily pierce , and piercing straightway loose all knots , and suddenly break every noose . . but that is as remarkable as any thing concerning thunder , that the fire thereof is sometimes unextinguishable ; as it hapned in macrinus the emperours time , when the theatre was thunder-struck in the very day they celebrated their vulcanalia . and such was that fire that fell from heaven in aurelius his time by the prayers of a legion of the christians , which from this effect was called legio fulminatrix , the thundring legion . a competent shower of such fire as this , that is thus peremptory and importunate , what part of the earth is so incombustible that it would not subdue ? . i would not mention that strange and unexpected effect of thunder whereby it conglaciates or makes rigid , fluid or soft bodies , ( which both seneca and cardan takes notice of : the one gives an instance of hogsheads of wine turned into ice by thunder ; the other of certain mowers in the iland lemnos , who being thunder-struck as they were supping under an oake , their bodies became so hard , rigid and stiff , as if they had been so many statues , which imitated the same actions they were doing when they were alive , one seeming to eate , the other seeming to lift a pot to his mouth , a third to drink , &c. ) i say i would not mention this , did it not give some light and credibility to that wonderfull transmutation of lot's wife into a pillar of salt ; the thundring and lightning that then fell , some of it it seems being attempered to such an effect , and directed to strike that refractory woman , that she might be not onely a monument of god's wrath upon disobedient curiosities , but also of the manner of his executing that signal vengeance upon sodom and gomorrha with the neighbouring cities , viz. that it was with thunder and lightning from above , as the text witnesseth , and solinus and tacitus also agree to , and not onely by subterraneous fire breaking forth , and the absorption of earthquakes that swallowed down the cities , as strabo seems to insinuate . . this destruction of sodom with fire from heaven , assented to by heathens as well as christians , is so ample a pledge of the possibility of the conflagration of the earth , that though i could out of plinie and others adde other such like instances of cities being burnt down with thunder , yet i shall content my self with this so notable an example . and having shewn that there are such copious and rich treasures of the fiery principle in nature , i shall make this brief demand , why may not this principle sometime so break out and overflow , that there may be an universal rage of fire upon earth , as well as there was once of water ? for the hidden causes and principles of nature sometimes work scantly , sometimes moderately , sometimes as if they had broke all laws and bounds : as is observable in torrents and earthquakes ; they sometimes being kept within the compass of a very few miles , othersometimes being in a manner universal , as those earthquakes were that hapned in the years , and . so flouds sometimes are so small , that they scarce cover a whole meadow ; othersometimes so great , that they drown whole towns ; and othersometimes they are either so large as to be universal , or at least to cover vast kingdomes and continents at once . such were the deluges of deucalion , of ogyges , and that of noah . so likewise we see also in history what particular executions the element of fire , either by fulgurations from heaven or eruptions out of the earth , has done on this house , on that town , nay upon whole countries : why may not the rage of it then at last so break out , that it may be called even a general deluge of fire ? . this seems so farre from an impossibility to plinie , that considering how full fraught the world is with this element , and how propagative it is of it self , he saith it is the greatest miracle of all , that this universal conflagration has not already hapned . excedit profectò omnia miracula , ullum diem fuisse quo non cuncta conflagrarent . chap. ix . the conflagration argued from the proneness of nature and the transcendent power of christ. . his driving down the powers of satan from their upper magazine . . the surpassing power and skil of his angelical hosts . . the efficacy of his fiat upon the spirit of nature . . the unspeakable corroboration of his soul by its union with the godhead ; and the manner of operation upon the elements of the world. . that the eye of god is ever upon the earth , and that he may be an actour as well as a speculatour , if duly called upon . , . a short description of the firing of the earth by christ , with the dreadful effects thereof . . that therefore which nature seems thus perpetually to threaten of her self , can it be hard for us to believe that christ and his glorious host of angels , who have a power above nature , will be able to effect when it shall seem good to him whom god has made visible judge of the world ? remember what command he had over the elements when he was in the flesh in the lowest state of humiliation , and what power he had over them that for so long time have been permitted to lord it in this grosser elementary world , whose chieftain is called the prince of the aire . remember how by a word of his mouth he sent packing a whole legion of his kingdome at once . what is it then that he cannot do in his exalted estate , when he returns to judgement in so exceeding great majesty and glory , when he shall descend with the sound of the trump , and face the earth with his bright squadrons , and fill the whole arch of heaven with innumerable legions of his angels of light , the warm gleames of whose presence is able to make the mountains to reek and smoak , and to awake that fiery principle that lies dormient in the earth into a devouring flame ? . but besides this , by descending thus low they drive the old usurper and his dark legions from that upper magazine , and now can turn his artillery against himself , and make use of all the provision fit for fire-works . for this is the time that diphilus the tragedian prophesies of , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to this sense , the time will come when as the golden sky his hidden fiery treasures shall let fly , and raging flames burn up all and consume , filling both earth and aire with noisome fume . and if there were not here already matter enough to contrive into the most mischievous kind of fiery meteors , such as will be sure to do execution , yet that word that created all things can easily change so much of any matter into such a modification as will most effectually serve for this heavy vengeance . . but i make no question but that there are second causes on this side that omnipotent creative power of the godhead , that are sufficient for such ministries of providence as this . as truly those innumerable bright legions of angels may seem to be , whose skill and power of imagination upon the elements of nature is certainly transcendently above what we can conceive ; their faculties , at least some of them , as farr surpassing ours , as ours do those of brute beasts who have not the least conceit of our power and artifice in doing things . . what power think you then is in the head of these heavenly hosts christ iesus , who in the flesh , as i have often noted , shewed such mighty specimens thereof over the elements of the world ? the mere fiat therefore of his imagination and will acting upon the spirit of nature , whether nearer hand or farther of , cannot but prove sufficient , if he so please , to undoe that universal coalition of particles out of which arises the compages and consistence of every earthly substance , and to turn them into such a flame as some would have the whole earth anciently to have been , or so to moderate the action , and fire it so deep , and with such a qualification of parts , as shall be most sutable to his present and after-design . . this effect will not seem beyond that inherent power in the divine soul of iesus , if we consider its unspeakable corroboration by his mysterious union with the godhead , and the obedience of the spirit of nature to the exalted powers of the soul , and the power of this * spirit upon the subtil matter of the world , and the force of that subtile matter to disjoyn all coalescencies ; and then the promptness of these dissolved particles to close again unto such a forme as the regulated activity of the spirit of nature shall command them into . for all this is but an higher and diviner kind of magick , working by the excitation of the spirit of nature upon the changeable elements of the world , no creation nor annihilation of any thing . . so that keeping our selves on this side the naked deity , to the consideration of second causes , partly natural & partly free agents , amongst whom the highly-exalted and supereminently-divine soul of iesus is the chief , we discover a power able to effect more then we have declared concerning the conflagration of the earth . and when this will suffice , how over-evidently are we assured of the feisableness of this atchievement from what s. peter has suggested concerning the absolute power of the word of god , by whom all things are , and who is a perpetual spectatour of his works ? for the spirit of the lord filleth the world , as the wise man speaks , and that which containeth all things has knowledge of the voice . and it is as true that all things lye open to his sight , and that the earth is alwayes under the present eye of god. wherefore he that perpetually looks on , is it hard to conceive that at last , at some solemn period of time , he may in a special manner step out into action , if need so require , and he be invoked thereunto ? . wherefore the faithful being gathered from all the corners of the earth , and carried up to * christ their saviour , and joyning with his legions of light ; there being then left in the earth and in the inferiour parts of the aire none but obdurate adherents to the dark kingdome , which shall now be made more externally dark then ever , black pitchy clouds covering the whole face of the sky , and making night fall upon the inhabitants of the world even at mid-day : in the midst of this sad , silent and louring aspect of the heavens , he that in the flesh was heard and answered by thunder , when he prayed , saying , father , glorifie thy name , shall by the same interest in the eternall god cause such an universal thunder and lightning , that it shall rattle over all the quarters of the earth , rain down burning comets and falling starres , and discharge such claps of unextinguishable fire , that it will do sure execution whereever it falls ; so that the ground being excessively heated , those subterraneous mines of combustible matter will also take fire : which inflaming the inward exhalations of the earth , will cause a terrible murmur under ground , so that the earth will seem to thunder against the tearing and ratling of the heavens , and all will be filled with sad remugient echoes ; earthquakes and eruptions of fire there will be every where , and whole cities and countries swallowed down by the vast gapings and wide divulsions of the ground . nor shall the sea be able to save the earth from this universal conflagration , no more then the fire could preserve her from that overspreading deluge ; for this fiery vengeance shall be so thirsty , that it shall drink deep of the very sea ; nor shall the water quench her devouring appetite , but excite it . for such is the nature of some fires , as history every where testifieth . . wherefore the great channel of the sea shall be left dry , and all rivers shall be turned into smoak and vapour ; so that the whole earth shall be inveloped in one entire cloud of an unspeakable thickness , which shall cause more then an aegyptian darkness , clammy and palpable to be felt ; which added to this choaking heat and stench will compleat this external hell , a place of torment appointed not onely for the prophane atheist and hypocrite , but also for the devil and his angels , where their pain will be proportionated according to the untamedness of their spirits and unevenness of their perverse consciences . chap. x. . the main fallacies that cause in men the misbelief of the possibility of the conflagration of the earth . . that the conflagration is not only possible but reasonable , the first reason leading to the belief thereof . . the second reason , the natural decay of all particular structures , and that the earth is such , and that it grows dry and looses of its solidity whence its approach to the sun grows nearer . . that the earth therefore will be burnt , either according to the course of nature , or by a special appointment of providence . . that it is most reasonable that second way should take place , because of the obdurateness of the atheistical crew . . that the vengeance will be still more significant , if it be inflicted after the miraculous deliverance of the faithful . . i hope by this time we have prevailed so far as to perswade the possibility of the conflagration of the world , in that sense we have explained it . and truly i know nothing that should keep a man from assenting to it as possible , but that dull fallacie , whereby we conclude that nothing can be done but what we have seen done , or phansie we could doe our selves . and this is the reason that makes the atheist misbelieve creation , because he himself can make nothing but out of prejacent matter ; and a settled course of things causes so deep an impression in our senses , that we can hardly phansie they will ever alter . which makes some men never think of death , especially if they have never been sick ; a flattering impossibility , by reason of so long continuance of life , stealing into their hopes , as if they should never die . and therefore that great monarch was fain to have one to rub up his memory every day with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , remember that thou art mortal . well may we phansie then such unalterable laws of nature as shall secure the earth from such a destruction as we speak of , when we are led unawares into so favourable a conceit of our own life or fortune , after we have for a competent time been well settled in either , as not at all to think of the mutability of our condition . wherefore i hope any one that is aware of this ordinary fallacie , will easily recover himself into so much use of his reason , as not to conclude the conflagration of the earth impossible , because he knows not how to burn it himself ; or that it will alwaies continue unburnt , because it has been unburnt thus long . . but that which i drive at is , to shew that the belief of a christian is not only of things possible , but reasonable ; which i have in some sort made good already by discovering the manifold treasures of the fiery and combustible principles in heaven and earth : to which i add further , first , that providence ordering all particular corporeal things by number , weight and measure , it is reasonable that the continuance of this present stage of things be numbred , that is , have its number of years set , so that there be a full pause or period , a last exiit and plaudite , to this tragick comedie . . secondly , whatever particular corporeal structure has a beginning ( unless it be a body inacted with a glorified spirit ) will also have an end naturally of it self , and that which will have an end , is subject to decaying . and for my own part i question not but that the earth is of such a nature , and * that it waxes old by degrees , & will grow more & more dry & steril in succession of ages ; whereby it will become more kexy , and loose of its solidity . for a body that is porous and can imbibe moisture , the more moist , the more solid it is , & the more solid the earth is , the better it will keep its distance from the sun , as it is swung about him in this common vortex of the planets . wherefore the distance of the earth lessening so , as astronomers observe , might it not come from other causes , would be a parlous symptome and sign that the earth grows old apace , and much exhausted : and the more it is exhausted , the nearer still it will be wrought toward the sun , according to the cartesian philosophy . so that at last , what by its over-drieness and what by its approaching so near to the fountain of heat , not only forrests and woods , which has happned already , but the subterraneous mines of sulphur and other combustible matter will catch fire , and set the whole earth in a manner on burning . . i say therefore , that the earth will thus at the long run be burnt , either according to the course of nature , ( of which manner of destruction these be the main concomitants ; that by reason of a long distemper and languishment , she will be utterly unable or very wretchedly able to sustain either man or beast for abundance of ages together before she be ruined and burnt up by this mortiferous fever , and after this death and destruction of hers , far less able , she becoming then but as a caput mortuum by reason of the long exhaustion of the life and heart of the soil before this lingring conflagration ) or else by a more special or solemn appointment of providence , the period of her conflagration shall be shortned . from which if any universal good doth accrue to the creation , it is not unworthy of the son of god and his mighty and most glorious host to be emploied in so weighty a performance . for is not the whole earth the vineyard of the lord , a particular platt of his skillfull culture and husbandry ? . thirdly and lastly , there being so many obdurate rebellious spirits , as well among the apostate angels as men , that are so far revolted from god , that they scarce retain any sense of him in their minds , that peremptorily deny a particular providence , and stoutly phansie that if there be a deity , he takes no notice of the affairs of any particular creatures , that jear and flout at religion , and look upon the life of the son of god when he lived in the world as a poor and contemptible example of pusillanimity and dejectedness of spirit , that contemn all his true followers for moaped fools ; but make their own lusts their law in all things , and therefore are insensible of whatever injustice or cruelty they commit , or whatever beastliness or vileness they give themselves up to ; these being past all sense within , but all of them sensible enough in their bodies or vehicles , the devils themselves not excepted , how fitting , nay how necessary is it , that a fiery whirlwind and tempest of vengeance should rattle upon their external persons , and that corporeal pain should pierce them to the very quick , and that all whatever they took delight in should be demolisht , and that they should be smothered in tormenting heat and darkness , of which they know no end ? . these considerations which i have alledged make the conflagration of the world not only possible , but also very reasonable , especially with that circumstance of not coming * naturally , ( for they would then look on it only as a common calamity ) but of being inflicted visibly by one whose person and laws are so much vilified and scorned by all the powers of the dark kingdome : and then again , for further conviction and aggravation , after such a time as they have seen the supernatural * deliverance of the righteous before their eyes . for this makes good that promise and threatning of our saviour , what difference he would make betwixt the sheep and the goats , saying to one , * come ye blessed of my father , inherit the kingdom ; and to the other , goe ye accursed into everlasting fire , prepared for the devil and his angels . chap. xi . . a recapitulation or synopsis of the more intelligible part of the christian mysterie , with an indication of the usefulness thereof . . the undeniable grounds of this mystery , the existence of god , a particular providence , the lapsableness of angels and men , the natural subjection of men to devils in this fallen condition . . god's wisdome and iustice in the permission thereof for a time . , . further reasons of that permission . . the lapse of men and angels proved . . the good emerging out of this lapse . . the exceeding great preciousness of the divine life . . the conflagration of the earth . . the good arising from the opposition betwixt the light and dark kingdome . . that god in due time is in a special manner to assist the kingdome of light , and in a way most accommodate to the humane faculties . . that therefore he was to send into the world some venerable example of the divine life , with miraculous attestations of his mission of so sacred a person . . that this person , by reason of the great agonies that befall them that return to the divine life , ought to bring with him a palpable pledge of a proportionable reward , suppose , of a blessed immortality , manifested to the meanest capacity by his rising from the dead and visibly ascending into heaven . . that in the revolt of mankind from the tyranny of the devil , there ought to be some head , and that the qualifications of that head ought to be opposite to those of the old tyrant , as also to have a power of restoring us to all that we have lost by being under the usurper . . that also in this head all the notable objects of the religious propensions of the nations should be comprized in a more lawfull and warrantable manner . . that this idea of christianity is so worthy the goodness of god , and so sutable to the state of the world , that no wise and vertuous person can doubt but that it is or will be set on foot at some time by divine providence ; and that if the messias be come , and the writings of the new testament be true , in the literal sense it is on foot-already . . we have , i think , fully enough set forth the reasonableness of christian religion in the idea thereof , it may be more fully then was needfull , before we come to prove that it is more then an idea . we shall by way of recapitulation contract the more intelligible frame thereof into a lesser model , that its due symmetrie and proportion may be better seen at once . which will be both a relief to our memory , and also a help to our judgment , when we shall have a more easie opportunity of considering the solid strength and handsome congruity of the whole fabrick . . and i dare challenge the most maliciously-wise and skilfull , if he can find any rational exception against the structure of this so intelligible a truth , whose foundation is no less firm then what is built upon these undeniable grounds ; that there is a god , and a perfect and particular providence , that there are angels , and spirits of men really distinct from their bodies , and that the one as well as the other are lapsable . which things i have demonstrated * partly in this present treatise , * partly in other writings ; and i appeal to all the world if they have any thing solid to oppose against what i have writ . moreover , that this lapse of men and angels is their forsaking of the divine life , and wholy cleaving to the animal without any curb or bounds ; whereby as well the fallen angels or devils as man himself are become , as much as respects the inward life , mere brutes , being devoid of that touch and sense of the divine goodness . and therefore their empire is generally merely like that of the beasts , according to lust and power , where the stronger rules with pride and insolency over the weaker ; and so the devils being a degree above men , of more wit and power then they , it naturally falls to their shares to tyrannize over mankind , who were in the same condemnation with themselves , having become rebels to god as well as they . . and it is but a piece of wisdome and justice in that great judge and dramatist god almighty , to permit this to be for a season : and therefore the generality of the world were to be for a time under the religion and worship of devils , who were wild and enormous recommenders of the mere animal life to the sons of men without any bounds or limits ; themselves in the mean time receiving that tribute of abused mortals which was most agreeable to their pride and tyrannical natures , that is , religious worship and absolute obedience , as i have proved by many examples in history . . and that god should stand silent all this time is no wonder , partly from what i have intimated already , and partly because he is out of the reach of any real injury in all this ; as also because the object of this irregular fury of both men and devils , in which they please themselves so much , is but the effect of that one power from whence are all things , or some shred or shadow of the divine attributes . for i have shewn fully enough that all the branches of the animal life are good and laudable in themselves , and that only the unmeasurable love and use of them is the thing that is damnable . the great rebellion therefore of both men and angels is but a phrantick dotage upon the more obscure , evanid and inconsiderable operations or manifestations of that power which hoots into all . . in this low condition is held the kingdome of darkness , who , maugre all their lawlesness and rebellion , do ever lick the very dust of his feet from whom they have revolted . for there is no might nor counsell against the eternal god , but his will shall stand in all . that all-comprehending wisdome therefore was not outwitted by these rebels , but she suffered them to introduce a darkness , out of which herself would elicite a more marvellous and glorious light , and let them prime the tablet with more duskish colours , on which she was resolved to pourtray the most illustrious beauty that the eyes of man could desire to look upon . . and that there is a lapse of men and angels , is very manifest . that of man is so plain , that not only the better sort of philosophers , such as the pythagoreans and platonists , but the making of laws and appointing of punishments and mens general confession of their proneness to vice and wickedness , doth abundantly testifie . and that there are wicked spirits or evil genii , as well as good , the religion of the pagans , and the confession of witches , and the effects of them in the possessed are a sufficient argument . . now that wisdome , as i have said , that orders all things sweetly , is not in the least measure baffled by this misadventure of the fall of angels and men ; but looks upon it as fit fuel for a more glorious triumph of the divine life : and that noted aphorisme amongst the pythagoreans , who laid no principles for mean ends , comes in fitly here , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the worser is made for the service and advantage of the better . and the kingdome of darkness , no question , by him that rules over all is very dextrously subordinated to the greater advantage of the kingdome of light , it yielding them a due exercise of all their faculties in the behalf of the divine life , which god most justly does magnifie above all things ; as also a most successfull victorie and triumph . so that the period of ages ought to end ( so exact a providence attending things ) as a very joyfull and pleasant tragick comedie . this the reason of man will expect upon supposition that there is a god and providence , as most certainly there is both ; especially if one quality of souls and spirits be better and more precious then another , and the divine life the most lovely perfection of all . . which is as true as touch to all that have once tasted the excellency of it ; and the ignorance of the blinde is no argument against the certain knowledge of them that see . for one soul , angel or spirit ( though they may be the same in substance , as all corporeal things are the same in matter ) may differs as much from another , as gold , diamonds and pearls do from common dirt or clay , or the most exquisite beauty from the horriblest monster . that therefore that is base shall be rejected , and that which is precious and noble shall be gathered up , in that day that the lord shall make up his jewels . . and that there will be such a visible day of vengeance wherein the whole earth shall burn with the wrath of god , not only the common fame throughout all ages and places , of the final conflagration of the world , and natural reasons in philosophy , but also a necessity of some universal , palpable and sensible punishment on impudently-prophane and atheistical people , is a warrantable inducement to believe . . the great good therefore that does arise out of this revolt of men and angels , is a setting the activity of the creation at an higher pitch , and making the emanations of all manner of life felt more to the very quick , exciting and employing all the faculties and passions of souls and spirits in a greater degree of life and motion , with more vigilancy and a more favoury sense of acquired enjoiments , then if there had been no such opposition betwixt the light and dark kingdomes . . now therefore though god may seem at first to give the dark kingdome and animal life the start of the divine , yet he is in due time , by some very effectual means , so to raise up , so to back and assist the divine life against the powers of darkness , that she may be found to have very visible victories against the usurpation of satan over the sons of men . wherefore the divine wisdome that does not act according to absolute power , but according to the congruity of the nature of things , is to wind off mankind from the slavery of the devil , and reclaim them from the irregularities of the animal life to the embracement of the divine , by such a way as is most accommodate to the humane faculties and capacities . . and what do we think could work more kindly upon the nature of man to disenslave him from the bondage of satan , and to make him close with the divine life which he had forsaken , then to exhibit a very visible example thereof in some venerable person , who should earnestly exhort mankind to follow his steps and practices , and whose doctrine should be confirmed with sensible testimonies from heaven , in approbation and exaltation of his person , shewing that he is the only beloved , the darling and delight of the eternal god , with some such expression as this from the very clouds , this is my beloved son , hear him ? in brief , that his birth , life and death should be adorned with such miraculous and supernatural circumstances , that it may be visible to all men that are not willingly blinde , that this man was a true and infallible messenger sent from god ? which would be a very forcible battery laid against their outward senses . . but being that this had been the sadder message by how much more they had been ascertain'd it had been true , that they must forsake the exorbitant pleasures of the animal life , and keep close up to the divine ; it was also requisite that they might be assured of a proportionable reward for so great an agony as they were to undergoe in mortifying & castigating their natural or habitual desires , and betaking themselves to the streighter way . and therefore it is fit that that truth that is so obscure and incredible to the generality of men , should be made grosly manifest to the meanest capacities ; i mean the reward of a blessed immortality after this life , and the regaining of heaven or paradise which lapsed mankind had lost . the certainty whereof i cannot tell how it may be better assured to them , then by the witness of one whom we are sure is infallible , and who saies expressly that he came from * thence , and after death is to go thither again , and does not only tell the world so , but proves it to outward sight , he being raise out of his grave after he was perfectly dead , and ascending into the heavens where flesh and bloud cannot inhabit . which is a visible demonstration of the soul's immortality , and as feelingly accommodate to the slowest apprehension , as if some man , of whose honesty the people were indubitably assured , should descend from some high hill , where none of the country had had the hap to have been as yet , and should tell them what pleasant woods and groves there were there , full of all manner of delicious fruit , a true terrestrial paradise , and that it was not so steep or inaccessible as they imagined ; and therewith should return thither in the very sight of those that questioned the matter . this consideration would reach their very inward reason and indispensable interest . for they that are the lowest lapsed , are not fallen from the sense of their own good , and from a desire of everlasting happiness if they find it possible . . this were enough to make mankinde weary of the devil 's tyrannical yoke . but in all revolts there ought to be some head ; and no person is so fit for such a purpose as he who is able to reward his followers , whose vertues are eminently opposite to the vices of the tyrant , and whose rule , when he is installed , will as little thwart the usual or natural and innocent propensions of the people as may be . wherefore whereas the devil's government is notorious for unspeakable pride , insolency and cruelty to mankind ; ( as has been at large discovered in those bloudy sacrificings and despightfully misusings of men in a way of superstition , which no man can doubt to have any better author then satan himself ) the head of this warrantable revolt must be singularly kind and tenderly and affectionately loving and compassionate to the generations of men , as also very humble and lowly , and be so far from requiring such abominable and bloudy homages as the sacrificing of men to him , that he would willingly lay down his life for their sake . which must needs prove an unspeakable endearment of the affections of his followers to him , and raise in them a more vehement detestation of the devil's tyranny . but because love is ineffectual that has no power of doing good , this head becomes the more perfectly compleat , if he be found not only so kind as to be willing to lay down his life for his subjects , but also to be able to save them from all the inconveniences that opposite power intangled them in , whose wages were no better then eternal death ; and therefore it was fitting that he should have a power from god of giving everlasting life and crowning them with a blessed immortality at the last day , and of saving them from that general destruction that will in time seize as well on the rebellious angels as the unreclaimed souls of men . . lastly , those natural & innocent propensions of mankind are gratified in this head we speak of , if there be such properties in him as are sutable to their opinions , practices and desires , in matters of religion . and we know by history that the heathen were very prone to suspect those that were their eminent benefactors to have been born of more then humane race ; and that they had so high sense of gratitude toward them , that they deified them after their deaths , and did them divine honour . adde to this , their conceit of the necessity of their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the appeasing the wrath of the gods , and of the convenience of their dii medioxumi . wherefore if divine providence add these gratifications also , in the choice of the head she shall appoint for the opposing and beating down the kingdome of satan , the matter is still more completely fitted and accommodated to the humane faculties ; which having been long abused by idle mistakes , cannot but be highly transported with joy upon the discovering their true and warrantable object : and so the nations will finde such a prince and leader , as the more they behold him and eye him , the more they must become enravished by him ; divine wisdome condescending by this contrivance to the utmost curiosity of courtship , to win off poor lapsed mankind from the tyranny of satan to the kingdome of god. . this is a short review of the more intelligible part of christianity ; the reasonableness whereof i take to be such , that i dare appeal to the judgment of any , if it be not so worthy of the divine wisdome and goodness , and so fitly suited unto the nature and condition of things and the state of men upon earth , that it is indispensable but that providence some time or other should send into the world such a prince and redeemer of his people out of the captivity of the devil , as we have described : who having declared the promises of eternal life to his faithful followers , and so raised himself a party against the powers of the dark kingdome , should exercise the creation with this noble and high-concerning conflict , and after a due time of trial of the faith , resolution , constancy , love , and obedience of his adherents , return visibly again at last , according to promise , giving victory , peace and a blessed immortality to his own , and pouring down wrath and vengeance and utter destruction upon his implacable and contemptuous enemies . this providential contrivance , i say , looking upon it in the idea , is so congruous and rational , that there is no wise and vertuous man but will easily assent , that it will some time or other be set afoot in the world. but i shall now endeavour to make good that it is already on foot , and that this period of providence is begun in the appearance of iesus christ the son of god and of the blessed virgin : that is , that our christian religion , as it relates to the person of christ , according as i have propounded it and displaied it in the main branches thereof , is not a mere idea , but a real and actual truth . which i think will be sufficiently demonstrated , if i prove that the expected messias is come , and that the writings of the new testament are true . for nothing then can defeat our design , unlesse a man will be so wild as to pervert the literal sense of those writings , and turn every thing miraculous there into an allegory . chap. xii . . that the chief authour of this mystical madness that nulls the true and literal sense of scripture is h. nicolas , whose doctrine therefore and person is more exactly to be enquired into . . his bitter reviling and high scorn and contempt of all ministers of the gospel of christ that teach according to the letter , with the ill consequences thereof . . the reason of his vilification of them , and his injunction to his followers not to consult with any teachers but the elders of his family , no not with the dictates of their own consciences , but wholy to give themselves up to the leading of those elders . the irrecoverable apostasie of simple souls from their saviour by this wicked stratagem . . his high magnifications of himself , and his service of the love , before the dispensation of moses , john the baptist , or christ himself . . that his service of the love is a third dispensation , namely of the spirit , and that which surpasses that of christ ; with other encomiums of his doctrine , as that in it is the sounding of the last trump , the descent of the new jerusalem from heaven , the resurrection of the dead , the glorious coming of christ to iudgment , and the everlasting condemnation of the wicked in hell-fire . . that h. nicolas for his time , and after him the eldest of the family of the love in succession , are christ himself descended from heaven to judge the world , as also the true high priest for ever in the most holy. . there being therefore this only obstacle to our prosperous procedure in this affair , and the spreading of this mystical madness being most of all from the esteem and authority of that highly-adored enthusiast , h. nicolas of amsterdam ; i find my self necessitated to make here some stop , to discover his enormous doctrines , and the groundlesness of them ; as well to undeceive his seduced admirers , as to justifie my own * publick dislike of him , that i may not seem to have been in the least measure either rash or injurious . and that we may the better proceed therein , i shall first present him to you in all his ruffe and glory , adorned with the testimonies of his own style , such as he would appear to the world to be ; and then examine if there be any ground of believing him to be such ; and lastly offer reasons whereby i shall clearly demonstrate that he is not what he pretends to be . . and that his lustre may seem as big as he desires , you shall first hear what pittifull things all are that are not found of his sect , if you will believe his censure of them ; namely , * that there is no knowledge of christ nor of the scripture but in his family ; that without his god-service of the love all the god-services , wisdome , and doctrine out of the scripture , let them be taught by those that are never so well learned therein , is but witchery and blindness . * and that as many as misbelieve and oppose his service of the love , are earthly and devilishly minded . * and that there is no remission of sins out of his communialty . * that it is assuredly all false and lies , seducing and deceitfull , what the ungodded or unilluminated men out of the imagination or riches of their knowledge and out of the learnedness of the scriptures bring forth , institute , preach and teach . that all teachers and learners out of his communialty are a false christianity and the devil's synagogue or school , yea a nest of devils and all wicked spirits . and of their knowledge compendiously and at once he pronounces , it is a false being , the devil , the antichrist , the wicked spirit , the kingdome of hell , and the majesty of the devil . no better then this is the most sober and carefull reasoning out of the holy scriptures , or the simple apprehension of the history of christ and all his promises , be they by never so sincere and devout souls , if they be not of his blessed family of the love , who have the luck to be the only-illuminated in the world. of this you may read more fully in his first exhortation , chap. . and . which ugly and uncharitable character he gives of all christians besides his own family ( who yet are indeed ( as you shall hear anon ) no christians at all ) must needs imbitter the spirits of his professed followers , and envenome them beyond all measure against the ministry of the gospel according to the letter thereof . which yet clearly enough sets out to us the history of christ , his promises and precepts ; neither is there any mystical meaning that is true , that is not literally set down in the text. so that all their boast is but of allusions and phrases , nor can they produce any thing that is not already plainly before our eyes in the letter it self . and therefore if they have any choice secret to themselves , it is the mystery of infidelity and unbelief , a bold and groundless presumption that the history is not true . . which presumption makes them so peremptorily conclude all the scripture-learned under ignorance , none of them hither to having been so nasute as to smell out the least falsity in the oldness of the letter . and therefore that their novices may not be entangled nor distracted through the simple belief or plain doctrine of ordinary christians , he exhorts them not to hearken to , nor believe any other service or information but what is administered by the elders in the house of the love , * enjoins them to give up their understandings wholy to the eldest of the family , and to give ear to none else but the teachers of his own sect. * nay he will not so much as suffer them to appeal to the light that is within them , nor to judge themselves nor be judged by their own consciences , but only by the elders of the house of the love , concerning whom they must not have the least suspicion of errour or unfaithfulness . which is the greatest tyranny and slavery upon the soul of man that can be devised , and a shrewd indication that those elders will approve and advise things against express scripture , reason and conscience . and thus is many a poor simple lamb catched out of the fold of christ , and carried quite away without recovery into the thickest and remotest woods and darkest caverns or dens to be devoured by this white wolf , who by his gracious speeches , heart-melting insinuations , soft-soothing language , that is oiled and perfumed with nothing but love , first intices the little ones , after whom his mouth most of all waters , to a great esteem of himself , and then utterly extinguishes in them , to their eternal destruction , all that faith they had in the person and promises of our ever-blessed saviour . which he does by intercepting all aid that the use of reason and the knowledge of the scripture could administer , giving them such hard language as we have above recited ; the civilest aspersion he bestows being , the imagination of the knowledge : but magnifying himself and his service of the love , that is , his own doctrine , above whatever yet appear'd to the sons of men , as you shall now hear . . for he sets himself above abraham , moses , david , and all the prophets , above iohn the baptist , yea above the person of christ himself . for indeed he will allow that the service of the fathers in the covenant of circumcision until moses was the forefront of the true tabernacle ; and that moses in figures and shadows set out the true being of the true sanctuary of god in the spirit ; and that to david and the prophets was shewn the true being in the spirit of their sight : that iohn the baptist was a preparation by repentance to an entrance into the holy of the true tabernacle ; and that this holy of the true tabernacle is the service of christ in the belief : but the holy of holies , or the most holy , this he reserves to himself and his service of the love. * wherein , as he boasts , is the perfection of life , the completion of all prophecies from the beginning of the world , the righteous judgment of god , the throne of christ before which all things must needs be manifested , the perfect being of the godhead , and the true rest of the chosen of god. he calls also this his service of the love the last day , and the perfection and conclusion of all the works of god. whereby he would intimate it to be an everlasting seventh day or sabbath . and yet he will have it also the eighth day , as if he affected an holy-day beyond that of god himself , and a time beyond eternity . . again , in his prophecie of the spirit of love , he sets himself highest in the enumeration of the three principal services , namely the service of the law under god the father , the service of the belief under christ the saviour , and the service of the love under the holy ghost . the affectation of which office he learnt of his master david george , as is noted by them that have wrote of these enthusiasts . i omit to speak of lesser encomiums of his doctrine ; as that it is the last trump , that sure word of prophecie ; that his day of the love is that new day that the lord has made , abundant in clearness and full of eternal joy , the new ierusalem descending from heaven , and the inheritance of the right-perfection . we will conclude all with what he writes in his revelation of god. behold presently in this day is the kingdome of the god of heaven and his righteousness , the godly majesty and his glory , as also the salvation of christ and the eternal life appeared in perfect clearness , with great triumph and ioy ; the resurrection also of the dead , the cleansing of the earth , the blessing of all generations , the righteous iudgment of god , the glorious coming of christ with all the thousands of saints , and the everlasting condemnation of all ungodly in the hellish fire . what therefore can you expect more then is accomplished in his service of the love ? and what greater person can there be then he who sets so glorious a dispensation on foot on the earth ? let us therefore take notice what he makes himself in the midst of this glory and pomp which he sets out . . as if it were a small thing for him to be raised from the dead , and to be anointed with the holy ghost , * he boasteth further that god has sealed in him the dwelling of his glory and of his holy name ; and elsewhere that he is godded with god , and consubstantiated with the deity : and expresly in his evangely , chap. . he declares how god has manned himself with him , and godded him with his godhead , to a living tabernacle , a house for his dwelling , and to a seat of his christ the seed of david ; and how the judgment-seat of christ is revealed out of heaven from the right hand of god , and that on the same judgment-seat of christ there sitteth one ( meaning himself ) in the habitation of david which judgeth uprightly , thinketh upon equity , and requireth righteousness , and that through him god will judge the compass of the earth . * this , in his introduction to the glass of righteousness , is the right messias , the high priest for ever in the most holy , the noble king of israel and iuda , that possesses the seat of his father , an everlasting peaceable prince over the house of iacob according to the promises . but you 'l say this cannot be understood of h. nicolas , but of christ , according as he has wrote * elsewhere , that there is in his communialty of the love a true iudge , iesus christ our lord and king , which executes the right iudgment of his father according to the truth . but we are also to understand that this christ , that sits on the throne of his father david , is the eldest father of the family of love , as appears out of his evangelium cap. . sect . . and . which places compared with what has been recited , it is clear that h. nicolas is this christ on the seat of david for his life-time ; and , which is still worse , and the seed of endless madness and blasphemie , that this wild presumption of the eldest in the family being the very christ from heaven returned to judge the world with equity , will be entailed upon their successors for ever . and that the appearance of this christ may be the more glorious and more answerable to the very phrase of scripture , he is accompanied with angels as well as saints , some of his elders being adorned with the glittering title of seraphims , as is to be seen in the legend of his life , entituled mirabilia dei , as also in his glass of righteousness . chap. xiii . . an examination of all possible grounds of this fanatick boaster's magnifying himself thus highly . . that there are no grounds thereof from either the matter he delivers , or from his scriptural eloquence , raptures and allegories . . the unspeakable power and profit of the letter above that of the allegorie , instanced in the crucifixion , resurrection , ascension of our saviour , and his coming again to iudgement . . that allegorizing the scripture is no special divine gift , but the fruit of either our natural phansie or education . . that he had no grounds of magnifying himself from any miracles he did ; . nor from being any special preacher of perfection or practiser thereof . . of that imperfection that is seated in the impurity of the astral spirit and ungovernable tumult of phansy in fanatick persons . . but enough has been related to shew that transcendent esteem this enthusiast had both of himself , and also would insinuate into others , of his own person and doctrine . let us now consider what right or ground he had to assume so much to himself , or others may have to attribute so much unto him . and to bring all the inducements imaginable into view ; this high conceit of his of being so supereminent a person , must arise either from the matter he does deliver , or his eloquence , or the raptures he was in when he penn'd down his revelations , ( as he would have them thought ) or from the mysteriousness of his allegories , or from his evangelizing the perfection , or lastly for that he was prophesied of in the scriptures , as he in whom all things should be fulfilled . . now for the main matter he delivers plainly and above-bord , it is the excellency of love. which is so essential a truth to christianity , * and plainly inculcated in the gospel , and so effectually recommended , that there is no true christian can miss of it . so that we need no new instructer in that divine grace , much less any inspired prophet to teach us what is so plain to us already . and therefore if there be any thing new in this doctrine of love , it must be such a kind of love that is new to christians , i mean to true christians ; but not to the gnosticks , nor the school of simon magus , who spoke as magnificently of himself as this impostor can do possibly . and for his scriptural eloquence , his raptures and transportations in the penning down his writings , how that such things arise frequently from nature and complexion , is abundantly declared in my enthusiasmus triumphatus : ( to say nothing of worser assistences then mere complexion ) as also the dexterity of allegorizing ; which yet how distortedly he performs , i shall note anon . . in the mean time i hold it well worth our observation , how giddy and injudicious those persons are that are so mightily taken with the mystical sense of such parts of the history of christ as are most profitable in the belief of the mere letter : such as his passion , resurrection , ascension , his session at the right hand of god , and his coming again to iudgement , when he will change these vile bodies of ours into the similitude of his heavenly body . for making this a mere representation of something to be performed within us , namely his crucifixion , of our mortifying of the old man , his resurrection , of our rising to newness of life , his ascension into heaven and sitting at the right hand of god , of our entrance into and rule and reign in the heavenly being with christ in the spirit , and his returning to iudgement , the judging and governing our natural and earthly man with righteousness and equity ( which allegories , or rather not so good , is the deepest wisdome and divinest revelation that is to be found in this admired prophet ) such allusions , i say , and similitudes as these have no more force nor efficacy to urge us , or help us on to those accomplishments they represent , then if the history of christ were a mere fable . but if , in stead of making them resemblances , we should use them as arguments from a true history , they have a power unspeakable for the making us good . * for thus any ingenuous spirit would melt into remorse , when he considers how the son of god , out of mere love and compassion to him , was crucified for him ; and thereby will willingly submit to all the pain of mortification in a kindly gratitude to his saviour : * and from the belief of the resurrection of christ from the dead , will be the further animated in his pursuance of the resurrection to an holy life , being assured of eternal enjoyment of his labours by a blessed immortality ; of which also his ascension into heaven is a further pledge , and his sitting at the right hand of god the greater motive to take off his mind from earthly desires , and to think of those things that are above . * and lastly , his certain hope of obtaining that crown of glory which christ the righteous judge shall give unto him at the last day ( i mean that glorified and heavenly body ) will be the greatest ingagement imaginable to spend the strength of his natural body in his service , to expose it to all hardships , yea to death it self , if need so require , for the honour of his saviour ; and in the mean time to possess it in all sanctity possible , in a gratefull observance of his commands from whom we expect the redemption of our bodies . . wherefore the literal meaning of the history of christ being so powerful and effectual to the making of us good , it is a sign of a great deal of folly and levity to dote upon mere allegories and allusions , that have no force at all in them to move us to godliness and vertue ; or to surmise that there is any thing spiritual or divine in the mere allegorizing of the scripture . for there is nothing divine , saving our full assurance of the holy truths themselves that are delivered in the gospel , whether they be life or history , for this is a spiritual gift indeed . but that we conceive that one may represent the other , that is only the natural nimbleness of our phansy , or a dexterity accruing to us from use and education ; such as i question not but was in saint paul , who was brought up a pharisee , & the●efore was well versed in their midrash or mystical meaning of the history of the old testament , which made him so prone to such applications in the new. but this was no such special inspiration or peculiar spiritual attainment in him above the rest of the apostles , but merely a cast of his office , a specimen of his former education , which accustomed him to allusions and allegories in the interpreting of the law. so that i much pity those poor * souls that are so transported and overcome with those allusions and allegorical reflexions , as such high attainments , that they think themselves illuminated above the capacities of all other mortals , being more pleased with the gaudy colours of the rainbow then with the pure light which is reflected thence : which yet all true christians plainly see and feel in the simplicity of its own nature , without any such cloudy refractions ; and know that the rest is not the dictate of the spirit , but the mere service of phansy lending its aid to the setting forth of divine perceptions . and yet this slight sallad is the chief food this pretended prophet feeds his followers withall , and the greatest demonstration of his being extraordinarily called and inspired . . for as for miracles , he never did any , as you may see in that book of his life entituled mirabilia dei , where nothing miraculous is recorded , unless a certain prophetical dream , wherein he seemed to be frighted , together with some devotional expressions after he awakened out of it ; as also a lucky escape out of the hands of his persecutors , who haply being not so vigilant as they might be , the phrase of the story makes them struck with blindness ; and lastly his witty questions and answers to the priest or confessor when he was a child : wherein he does so fully utter the chief of his doctrine , that he seems as wise at eight years old as ever he was since , though he lived to a very considerable age. but any one that has any insight in things may easily discern that the discourse was never intended for a true history , but a spiritual romance . so that as petty businesses as these are , they have no assurance of their truth . . now for his pretensions of being the most eminent preacher of perfection , it is a mere boast . for whether he means by perfection , love , which is the perfection of the law , it cannot be more clearly and advantageously preached then it is in the new testament by christ and his apostles . * and what comparison is there betwixt such a teacher of love , who being the declared son of god by signes and miracles , gave his life out of dear compassion to mankind , and a soft fellow that onely talks fine phrases to the world ? or whether he pretend to a more general perfection in the divine graces or holy life , whose root is true faith in god and his promises through christ , and the branches charity , humility and purity ; it shall appear anon , that as for true faith he is perfectly fallen from it , and that he is as a dead tree pulled up from the root . and for the present it is evident also out of his own writings ( not to charge him with accusations out of others ) that he is far from being perfect either in charity , humility , or purity . for what greater sign of uncharitableness , then to charge all men that are not of his communialty to be of the synagogue of satan and children of the devil ? and what greater pride , then to prefer himself before abraham , moses and christ , and make as if he were god himself come to judge the world with his thousands of saints and seraphims ? and lastly , what greater symptoms of lust & impurity , then to be sunk down from all sense and presage of a life to come ? to say nothing of his complaints , in his glasse of righteousness , of such as came in to spy out their liberty , * and his lusty animations against shamefacedness and modesty in men and women , and their shiness to such acts as ordinary bashfulness is loath to name . which in my apprehension are very foul spots in that glasse of his , as if it had been breathed upon by the mouth of a menstruous woman . . but there is also a more subtil uncleanness , from which who is not free , if he knew his own weakness , he would be ashamed to profess himself perfect ; and that is the impurity of the astral spirit , in which is the seat and dominion of unruly imagination . hence are our sidereal or planet-strucken preachers and prophets , who being first blasted themselves , blast all others that labour with the like impurity , by their fanatick contagion . those in whom mortification has not had its full work , nor refined the inmost of their natural complexions , are subject to be smitten and overcome by such enthusiastick storms , till a more perfect purification commit them to the safe custody of the intellectual powers . wherefore let this pretended prophet boast as much as he will of his glorious resurrection from the dead , it is manifest to the more perfect , that he has not yet so much as passed through that death that should have led him to the unshaken kingdome of truth , and letten him in to the immovable calmness and serene stilness of the intellectual world , where the blasts and blusters of the astral spirit cease , and the violence of phansy perverts not the faithful representations of eternal reason . for god is not in these fanatick herricanoes , no more then he was in the tempestuous wind , earthquake , or fire that passed before the prophet elias . but the divine truth is to be found in that still small voice , which is the echo of the eternal word ; not urg'd upon us by that furious impulse of complexionall imagination , but descending from the father of lights , with whom there is no shadow of change . this was an attainment out of this boasters reach , of which he had not the least sense or presage , and therefore was wholy given up to the hot scalding impressions of misguided phansy in his astral spirit . which being strangely raised and exalted in this false light , has a power by words or writings to fire others , and to intoxicate them with the same heat and noise in their enravished imagination , whereby that still and small voice of incomplexionate reason cannot be heard . chap. xiv . . that neither h. nicolas nor his doctrine was prophesied of in holy scripture . that of the angel preaching the everlasting gospel groundlesly applied to him . . as also that place iohn . . of being that prophet . . his own mad application of acts . v. . to himself . . their misapplication of cor. . v. , . and hebr. . v. , . to the doctrine of this new prophet . . their arguing for the authority of the service of the love from the series of times and dispensations , with the answer thereunto . . that the oeconomie of the family of love is quite contrary to the reign of the spirit . . that the author is not against the regnum spiritûs the cabbalists also speak of , but onely affirms that this dispensation takes not away the personal offices of christ nor the external comeliness of divine worship . . that if this regnum spiritûs is to be promoted by the ministry of some one person more especially , it follows not that it is h. nicolas , he being a mere mistaken enthusiast , or worse . . and therefore being blinded with the wind and dust of this fanatick tempest , they are carried on to so great a piece of folly , as to fansy this mistaken wight so sacred and divine a person as to be prophesied of in the holy scriptures . but the places that are alledged are so weakly and ineptly applied , that it is a further confirmation of their being strangely hood-winked and held down with an over-bearing effascination and witchcraft . for how vain a thing is it to make this man that angel that preached the everlasting gospel , whenas that angelical preachment was at least seven or eight hundred years before he lived , according to all those interpreters that have endeavoured to give a solid and coherent account of s. iohn's prophecy ? but this is more then i need attempt , ( or it may be can be done ) to confute this assertion by chronological demonstration . it is sufficient to note that it is groundless , a mere phansy unbacked by reason and argument ; whenas on the contrary there is evident reason against it ; this person whom they so much adore being rather a decryer of the everlasting gospel then a preacher of it , as shall appear in due time . . the second conceit of his being prophesied of in scripture is fixt upon that of s. john . verse . where they would have him to be that prophet , viz. an eminent prophet distinct from elias and christ. but it is very discernable how weak an alledgement this is . for first , if there were such an eminent prophet expected distinct from elias and christ , it does not follow it is he . and then again , this expectation of the jewes is no divine testimony . and thirdly , as some interpreters have noted , they expected him before the coming of elias , as elias before the coming of christ. others understood by that prophet the prophet ieremie , who is styled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that prophet of god. and lastly , amongst the rest that excellent critick and pious interpreter castellio renders it simply , a prophet , the sense being , at least art thou a prophet ? see castellio upon the place . so many weaknings are there of this groundless fiction of his being prophesied of in this place of scripture . . but i shall produce a third place , and that of his own chusing , acts . where god is said to have appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained ; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men , in that he hath raised him from the dead . this shameless enthusiast does not stick to apply to himself this place , as if he were the man prophesied of therein . whenas it is manifest it is meant of the person of christ , whom god had corporeally raised from the grave , as a palpable pledge and assurance that the world should be judged by him according to the scriptures , math. . . but supposing the meaning to be that which this fanatick boaster would have it , see what sense it will make with the preceding verse , which would be this , that god now commands all men every where to repent , namely , because years hence he will raise up h. nicolas from the dead , in a moral sense , who shall judge the world by his doctrine . what bedlam madness is this to vent such expositions of the holy writ upon pretence of higher inspiration then ever was yet in the world ? the apostle's exhortation would be as wild sense as if one should earnestly cry unto the people walking in paul's to run out of the church as fast as they can , because it is ready one thousand five hundred years hence to fall down upon their heads . . that i may not omit any places that they alledge , i will adde also cor. . v. , . for we know in part , and we prophesy in part : but when that which is perfect is come then that which is imperfect shall be done away . and hebr. . v. , . therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of christ , let us go on unto perfection ; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works , and of faith toward god , of the doctrine of baptisme , laying on of hands , and of the resurrection of the dead , and of the eternal judgement . from these two places they are wont to gather that the doctrine of christ is imperfect , and a more perfect doctrine was to come , which is , say they , the doctrine of hen. nicolas . which argument is as weak and frivolous as blasphemous . for it is plain that in the former place he compares not any doctrine to be set on foot on earth with the present doctrine of christ and knowledge of the apostles , but the condition of the knowledge of the christian church in this life with that which she shall have in heaven : and therefore he saith , now i know in part , but then i shall know even as i am known . what , does s. paul mean that he shall know nothing clear till h. nicolas his time ? o the madness and impudence of these giddy interpreters ! and to the latter text ; what , would they have us to let go our christian creed under pretence of a new doctrine which is more perfect ? yea certainly they would so , as will appear more plainly anon . but how shamefully they abuse this scripture to that execrable end , is evident from the following verse , and this will we do , if god permit . that is , the apostle himself will deliver that doctrine of perfection he mentions in the first verse ; and therefore it is no prophecy of the doctrine of h. nicolas , but a more exquisite declaration of the excellency of christs priesthood ; which is too long and too accurate to fill a short creed . but what pittiful shifts are these deluded fanaticks put to , when they have no better alledgements then these for their rebellious errours against christ ? . i shall conclude my examination of their grounds of believing this fanatick so great and eminent a prophet , with something a more trim conceit of his followers , whereby they would countenance their high opinion they have of him , which is hinted also from himself ; namely , that the series of times and providence seem to give witness to the mighty professions he makes of his own ministry . for as there was for a time a service of the law under god the father , and then a service of the belief under christ the son ; so likewise the holy ghost must have his turn and have his service : and what service can that be , but the service of the love ? to which i answer , that if they speak this in good earnest in reference to the three hypostases of the ever-blessed trinity , it is plain that that mystery was not communicated to the world under the law of moses , but concealed in the hidden cabbala among the wise men and prophets , not to be published till christ ; for the better clearing and fitter recommending the theory of his union with the eternal word . with the appearance therefore of christ , with whom all the fulness of divine wisdome was to be imparted to men , a distincter knowledge of the deity and clearer assurance of the immortality of the soul ( the main branches of the ancient cabbala ) was also communicated . but it is no where said , nor can be conceived , that god the father distinctly from the son and holy ghost gave the law to moses ; but it was an act , as all acts ad extra are , of the entire godhead . nor is the father nor the holy spirit excluded in the oeconomie of the gospel , but their glory is acknowledged coequal and their majesty coeternal . nor again can the church ever cease to be under the belief of iesus christ , so as that any other god-service should justle that out by its succession . for the belief of the promises of christs coming again visibly to judgement and crowning his true members with eternal life and glory , must of necessity continue till the promises themselves be fulfilled : which are but phantastically conceived to be fulfilled in the service of the love. . moreover how can that dispensation pretend to be the ministry of the spirit , where men are kept off from believing the inward manifestations of their own mind ( where alone they can be properly said to be taught of god ) and urged to give up all their light and consciences to be rul'd at the pleasure of the elders of his family ? this is not to be inspired by god , but to be taught merely by men , and to be carved and shaped out like a piece of dead marble by the hand of the statuary . so wholy unlike the dispensation of the spirit is this oeconomie of the service of the love. beside that it is a piece of rapine and robbery to appropriate that to their family which is the peculiar of every true believer in christ , who assuredly have the assistance of the holy spirit , * as i have proved at large in the following parts of my discourse . . but if any one will adventure to affirme , that after this dead forme of religion and external flattery of the person of christ , which has continued too-many ages , there will succeed a more general reign of the spirit of life and experimental knowledge of his sceptre and power in us , subduing all his enemies there under his feet , and renewing the world in true righteousness and holiness ; it is that which i in no wise oppose ; nay i must confess i have a fatal and unalterable propension to think it to be true , and that this may be that regnum spiritús which the cabbalists of old did presage , and does begin with the reviving of the witnesses in the apocalypse of s. iohn . of which things i have * already spoke . but in the mean time this is not the special work of any one man , but like the vision of * ezekiel , where breath comes from the four winds of heaven upon the bones already covered with sinews , flesh and skin ; and behold they lived , and stood upon their feet , an exceeding great army : an orderly company , such as the church of christ ought to be . for this internal power of the spirit will not annul or destroy the external frame of christian religion , as it referrs to the offices of the person of christ , the head of his church , ( as these satanical impostors would pretend ) but rectifie and corroborate it , and make it more irreprehensibly and enravishingly beautifull ; as there was more lustre in those raised bodies after the spirit of life had entred into them , then when they were mere dead carkasses . . besides , if we did conceive that this dispensation of christ in the spirit was to be in a more special manner promoted by the ministry of some one person , it does not at all follow that h. nicolas is the man ; and not onely so , but i am confident i shall make it manifest that it is impossible that it should be he . which i shall have sufficiently performed , when i have demonstrated that he is nothing at all of that which he pretends to be , but only a mere mistaken enthusiast , if not worse ; which was the last part of my purpose . and this i conceive is fully evinced by proving him to have laid aside all the offices of the person of christ , as he is man , and intercepted all the hopes of his visible return to judgement in the clouds of heaven , and of rewarding all true believers with that glorious crown of life in an heavenly body at the last day . which things are so clear in scripture , that the scripture it self must loose its authority if these things once loose their belief , as is manifest by what we have said * already in this present treatise . and therefore he that denies these things , it is plain he is not inspired of god , but is a minister and factor for the devil . chap. xv. . that the personal offices of christ are not to be laid aside : that he is a priest for ever , demonstrated out of sundry places of holy writ . . that the office of being a iudge is also affixed to his humane person , proved from several testimonies of scripture . . places alledged for the excluding christ's humanity , with answers thereto . . the last and most plausible place they do alledge , with an answer to the same . . now that the humane person of christ , as i may so call it , is not to be laide aside , is evident ( not to repeat what i have elsewhere alledged ) from the whole epistle of the author to the hebrews . for he that there is said to be an high priest for ever , is that very man who was crucified on the cross at ierusalem , who was said to be like unto his brethren in all things ; that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest , in things appertaining to god , to make reconciliation for the sins of the people : for in that he himself hath suffered , being tempted , he is able to succour them that tempted . and it is further clear that it is this very man we speak of , in that he is said to be born not of the tribe of levi , but of the tribe of iuda , chap. . . and yet he is there declared a priest for ever after the order of melchisedec . read the whole chapter ; nothing can be more clearly asserted then the everlasting high-priesthood of this man , who sanctifying the people with his bloud , suffered without the gate . which are such particularities as must needs affix the eternal high-priesthood to the humane person of christ. again in that he is said to suffer but once , it is apparent that it is to be literally understood of his humane person ; and every priest standeth dayly ministring and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins : but this man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins , for ever sate down at the right hand of god , &c. and yet more fully in the foregoing chapter : for christ is not entred into the holy places made with hands , which are the figures of the true ; but into heaven it self , now to appear in the presence of god for us . nor yet that he should offer himself often , as the high priest entreth into the holy place every year with bloud of others . for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world. but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself . and as it is appointed unto men once to die , but after this the judgement : so christ was once offered to bear the sins of many ; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time , without sin unto salvation . to which you may adde that of peter , for christ also hath once suffered for sins , the just for the unjust , that he might bring us to god. and john . . if any man sin , we have an advocate with the father , iesus christ the righteous , and he is a propitiation for our sins . and if he was so in s. iohn's time , why not alwaies ? furthermore , romans . . for when we were yet without strength , in due time christ died for the ungodly . he saies not , by the ungodly , but , for the ungodly : which therefore cannot be allegorized but into nonsense . like that , verse . for if when we were enemies , we were reconciled to god by the death of his son. is any one reconciled by killing the holy life , the mystical christ in him ? wherefore it is plain that in s. paul's time the humane person of christ was the high priest who was an atonement with god by the sacrifice of himself . and god has not declared any where that he has or ever will put him out of his office , till his coming again to iudgement , when he shall appear the second time , without sin unto salvation , as you heard out of the author to the hebrews ; that is , when he shall not bring his sin-offering with him , viz. an earthly , mortal body , capable of crucifixion , but shall appear as a glorious judge to complete salvation to all them that truely believe in him , and expect his joyful coming ; at what time he shall finish the redemption of our bodies , and translate us to his everlasting kingdome in heaven . . and that this office of a iudge is assured to his humane person , is plain from what we recited out of the acts : namely , that god has given assurance to all men , that he will judge the world by the man jesus , in that he has raised him so miraculously from the dead . which is that very son of man that shall appear on his throne accompanied with his angels , matth. . and assuredly none will deny but that he who sitteth at the right hand of god , will come thence to judge the quick and the dead : but it is this crucified iesus , that for the joy that was set before him endured the cross , despising the shame , and is set down at the right hand of the throne of god , hebr. . . to which truth s. peter also witnesseth in the acts. where that very iesus whom the jews delivered up and denied in the presence of pilate , is said to be received into heaven , until the time of restitution of all things , which god hath spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets since the world began . this implies that at the utmost fulfilling of the periods of time he will again appear and finish the mysterie of righteousness , and perfect salvation to his people at the last , according as he has promised , john . no man can come to me , except the father , which has sent me , draw him ; and i will raise him up at the last day . which certainly is to be understood of his humane person , forasmuch as for that very cause he has made him judge of life and death , as appears chap. . ver . . for as the father hath life in himself , so likewise he hath given to the son to have life in himself ; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also , because he is the son of man. now when he saith , no man can come to me , except the father draw him , it is manifest , that by the father is meant the eternal hidden deity , whose workings and preparations within every mans soul fit him to join with christ's humane person , the visible head of the church of god : otherwise if by christ were here understood the eternal word , it would not be good sense . for that is that which draws , not the thing drawn to , in this place . again , whereas he saies , he will raise him up at the last day , it is evident that it is not morally or mystically to be understood , but literally ; otherwise it could not be defer'd till the last day , but should be done in this life . nor can it be understood of the day of the service of the love : for then the sense would be , that they that believed on christ some sixteen hundred years agoe , should become familists now , or rather some others for them ; which promises are insipid and ridiculous . wherefore it is this son of man , to whom god hath also given power to execute judgment . and the very same certainly is he that is represented on the great white throne , from whose face the earth and heaven fled away . rev. . and i saw the dead , small and great , stand before god : and the bookes were opened , and another book was opened which is the book of life : and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in those books , according to their works . and the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them : and they were judged every man according to their works . and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire . hell , i. e. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is here the region of the dead : and the whole frame and phrase of the matter here contain'd doth so plainly import that the judgment is concerning those that are dead , whether drowned in the sea , or buried in their graves , or in whatever other circumstances quitted this mortal life ; that this truth of christ's visible coming to judgment cannot be concealed or eluded by any allegorical fetches whatsoever . . nor have our inconsiderate adversaries any thing to alledge for their rebellious despising of the humane person of christ , unless two or three grosly-mistaken places of scripture . such as hebr. . v. . where moses is said to esteem the reproach of christ greater riches then the treasures in aegypt ; and chap. . v. . iesus christ the same yesterday , and to day , and for ever . out of which passages they phansie to themselves such a christ only as was as well in moses's time as now , and was ever the same from the beginning of the world and ever will be . but they plainly in these texts raise mountains of molehills . for the simple and genuine sense of the former is nothing but this , that moses bare such reproaches as christ and the firm professors of christ bear , which he uses as an argument of patience to the hebrews from the example of moses : unless you will interpret the place upon the supposition of christ being the prefect of israel before his incarnation . but the former sense is more plain and passable . and for the other place , it is nothing but an exhortation to perseverance from the constancy of the christian rulers and governours who persisted in their faith to the end : and the apostle tells them hereupon that the faith is the same still , and christ's assistance the same now that it was then to them , and will be ever the same to all true believers . which surely is all that is meant by jesus christ the same yesterday , and to day , and for ever . for to make yesterday to signifie from everlasting , is very rash and cross to the phrase of scripture , psal. . for a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday ; and job . for we are but of yesterday , and know nothing . which is very true of these new upstart interpreters . . but their last and most plausible allegation is that out of the corinthians , wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh ; yea , though we have known christ after the flesh , yet know we him so no more . here they think they have full commission to lay aside the humane person of christ from the example of s. paul. but their mistake is in not knowing the hebrew idiom of this place of scripture . for as that excellent interpreter hugo grotius has noted , the words are to be rendred , yea though we might have known christ after the flesh , that is to say , though i with others might have known christ after the flesh , and conversed with him here upon earth , nay have been something a-kin to him , as certain boasted themselves it seems at corinth , yet henceforth , saith he , we should know him after this manner no more , but as an heavenly prince : in whom he has the most interest , that is the most nearly renewed into the image of his life . or without this hebraisme , it may be an oblique monition to the aforesaid persons , and have rather the nature of an exhortation to them , then of a declaration concerning himself ; which they would be more certainly enforced to take to themselves , by how much more plain it was that paul never knew christ according to the flesh. that it has some such meaning as this , and not that of our adversaries , is plain from the precedent verse , where he expresly retains the humane person of christ in his priestly office : for that he saith , that he is that one man that died for all , ( not killed by all , as i noted above ) that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves , but unto him that died for them and rose again . which is not sense , if it be not understood of the humane person of christ. and verse he does plainly profess himself the ambassadour of the crucified iesus , or legate of the great angel of the covenant ; now then we are ambassadours for christ , as if god did beseech you by us , we pray you in christ's stead , be ye reconciled to god. for he hath made him to be sin for us , who knew no sin ; that we might be made the righteousness of god in him . of which there can be no possible meaning that excludes the humane person of christ from his priestly office . we have therefore abundantly demonstrated that the person of our saviour is not to be laide aside , but that he is a priest for ever according to the scriptures . chap. xvi . . that hen. nicolas does plainly in his writings lay aside the person of christ , as where he affirms that whatever is taught by the scripture-learned is false , and that all the matters of the bible are but prefigurations of what concerns the dispensation of his blessed family . . other citations to the same purpose , and his accursed allegory of christ's celebrating his passeover with his disciples , whereby he would antiquate and abolish the true historical knowledge of him . . several places where he evidently takes away the priestly office of christ. . others that plainly take away his glorious return to iudgement and the resurrection of the dead in the true and apostolical sense . . we shall now make it as evident that this pretended prophet we speak of does lay him aside , whereby we shall clearly convince the world of his falshood and imposture . and this shall be chiefly out of his own writings . out of which we shall first produce such passages as in a more general manner infer what we aim at . as certainly such places doe , as expresly declare that whatsoever is taught of christ out of his communialty of the love , is all false . whence it does plainly appear , that the articles of the apostles creed understood according to the letter , are held false by this inspired communialty : for these articles are taught by them that are not of hen. nicolas his family . in his first exhortation chap. . he plainly declares , that the true belief in jesus christ is not to be found in any people upon earth that walk without the communialty of the love. and chap. . sect. , . he tels us , that it is a presumption against god and his saints , that any one out of the learnedness of the letter , or out of the imagination of the knowledge , taketh upon him to be a teacher or preacher , or to institute or intermeddle in any god-service or worship , unless he be an illuminated elder of the house of the love. and sect. . he does affirm that it is all assuredly false and lies , seducing and deceitfull , whatever is taught by others out of the learnedness of the scripture . again , in his evangely , chap. . there also he asserts , that to those that are without the family of love , all the matters of christianity to them are in images , figures and shadows , in similitudes , parables and closed books . where his meaning is easily understood out of chap. . sect . . for these figures he makes shadows of the true and spiritual things which were heretofore , through iesus christ , come to pass , seen , heard and preached , and have stood for a memorial of the true spiritual things which should , in the time to come , come to pass , namely by this inspired minister . whereby the history of christ is made a mere allegory and prophetick prefiguration of what is fulfilled in his dispensation of the communialty of the love : wherein all becomes fulfilled in christ , whatsoever was written of him , as he plainly asserts chap. . sect . . and he more abundantly declares himself in his prophecie of the spirit of love , chap. . that a man out of his natural and scripture-learned understanding has not any light or knowledge at all of the christian mystery ; yea he is so utterly void of the same , that he cannot understand the smallest tittle thereof : he may indeed speak out of the written word , but understandeth nothing thereof according to the truth ; but it is all covered and sealed before him in similitudes , images , figures and parables . where again it is easie to infer , that this great prophet holds nothing of the articles of the christian faith to be true in that sense the scripture-learned teach them : which is plainly to deny the history of christ , and to profess our selves mere infidels . out of which spirit of infidelity he has so distortedly allegorized all the clauses of the creed , that to such as are not bewitched and besotted by his fanatick blasts to a better opinion of him then he deserves , he must needs appear an infidel . lastly , in his introduction , chap. . sect . . there again he does boldly affirm , that it is certainly mere lies what the letter-learned institute or set forth , how clear soever in understanding , if they be yet unreformed by the love and her service . and in the following section he plainly declares , that the scriptures are not to be taught nor held forth historically , but as prefigurations of the promises that are fulfilled in his service of the love. whence it is evident he had no belief in the letter of the scripture , nor of the miraculous history of christ , and of the predictions concerning him , whereby our faith should be affixed to his humane person . against which he useth all diligence imaginable , as if not simple care but an inspired envy or satanical spite against the honour of his person did actuate him in all his writings . . to which purpose , i conceive , is that caution in his introduction , that no man bind his heart to any outward thing , which he is served with to the righteousness of life . for of all outward things nothing can be more serviceable then the humane person of christ , who suffered for us and redeemed us from the wrath to come , if we stand faithfull in the covenant . those places also where he saith , that the godly life is the very saviour himself ; and that no man knows christ nor can confess him , unless his shape be in him , that is , his life and image be in him , seem intended as justling against the external person of christ ; as also what he saith chap. . namely , that no other foundation may be laid then that iesus christ who from everlasting was , and is , and abideth for ever : whereby i doubt not but he intends the exclusion of his humane person , whose compute began but about hundred years agoe . but the most wonderfull sleight he puts him off by , is his mystical meaning of christ's celebration of the passeover with his disciples . which we shall easily understand , if we take notice what he means by flesh in his writings , namely , by flesh is meant the letter or history . in his prophecy of the spirit of love , chap. . ver . . verily therefore they do all erre very much that judge according to their understanding ( out of the earthly being , or out of the flesh or letter ) god's truth , which is heavenly and spiritual . see also introduct . ch . . sect . . now if you will but read his evangely , chap. . sect . , , , . also chap. . sect . , . and chap. . sect . , . you shall find in brief ( for it were too tedious to write these allegorical ambages ) that the right celebration of the pascha or passeover with christ is , that he ( namely , christ after the flesh , they are his own words ) should be slain , that is , that christ according to the letter or history should be abolished , that he may be entertained only according to the spirit . which is the great arcanum of this sect of the family . behold , saith he , this is the right passeover with christ , and the right supper which the upright believers and disciples of christ keep with christ , to wit , that they depart even so with christ out of the flesh , ( that is , that christ according to the history or letter be crucified or slain in them , that is , nullified and rejected as a mere legend or fable ) and pass into the spirit , ( that is , the spiritual mystery of christ , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or moral of the fable ) and out of the death or mortality , ( that is , out of the dead letter ) into the eternal life of everlasting immortality . in which sonorous language that you may not promise to your self any such lasting purchase , there is nothing meant but the state of perfection which these familists phansie to themselves here upon earth , and is everlasting in no other sense then in succession , they promising themselves that their sect will continue for ever ; and therefore he adds , wherethrough sin and all destruction becomes vanquished , namely by this state of perfection , wherein sin and every imperfect and destroyable state is swallowed up . for they having come to the highest , there is no change of things , though their persons be mortal , according to their own doctrine . this allegorie of the passeover is so odd a conceit , that did i not suppose the author deeply fanatical , i should suspect it accompanied with a sly jearing and scorn against the history of christ , and to be the product of a scoffing atheistical spirit . for no atheist could exercise his wit here with more villainous sliness against the truth of the scriptures then thus . which makes me sometimes think that he was not simply fanatical , but either atheistical , or possessed by the devil , himself in the mean time not knowing whose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was . . and thus we have had a taste in general , how sedulously this author endeavours to out the person of christ. we shall now pursue the matter in two main heads , the office of his priesthood , and his coming visibly to judgment in his humane person . to which is annexed the promise of a glorious resurrection , and eternal life , in a plain and true sense , without any shuffling or equivocating . that he makes nothing of the atonement of christ's personal sufferings , he does in my judgment too plainly discover , chap. . sect . . of his documental sentences , where rather then he will acknowledg the usefulness of that advocate with the father , iesus christ the righteous , who is a propitiation for our sins , he does pronounce him that sins by violence or temptation to be guiltless , as the ravished virgin deuteronomie ; that so there may be no need of christ's sacrifice , whose personal death and priestly office he never takes notice of to this purpose : as you may observe further , exhortat . chap. . from sect . to the end of the chapter . where although he supposes a mans stumblings and fallings daily very great and terrible before him , and that for that cause he is very wofull of heart , feels the pricking of sin , the darts of death , and condemnation of hell , and so is in much anguish and affliction of mind ; yet is there no application at all of the sacrifice of christ upon the * cross , nor any help nor comfort at all held out by his sufferings , though it was the most proper place that could be to mention them . and chap. . in the praiers he puts up there , in stead of making use of the mediation of that christ that felt the pains of death on the cross for us , he makes use only of gods supposed promise or covenant he has made with the house of the love , sect . . and . see him also upon the beatitudes sect . . and it is no wonder we hear nothing of that reconciliation made by the cross of christ , for he does plainly aver , sect . . that the true being in the love is that peace with god and man ( mentioned ephes. . . ) and the true testament that standeth fast for ever . and exhortation chap. . . remission of sins is gained only by submitting to the house of the love : the same that david george boasted of his doctrine . therefore my beloved children change ye not nor turn away your selves from the house of love. for there is in the same the stool of grace , to an everlasting remission of sins over all such as cleave thereon , and to a peace and rest of the life to all such as humble them there-under . by such slips and omissions as these , those that are not very dull of perception may easily spel out his meaning . which yet is more clear by other places of his evangely , chap. . where he setleth the everlasting priesthood not upon christ's person , but makes this kingly priest no person at all , but a thing , a state or condition of him and his followers here upon earth . and therefore he calls there this mystical christ , the lords sabbath , the seventh day in the paradise of god , the perfection , &c. and chap. . he makes the entrance of christ into heaven and his visible ascending up thither , and sitting at the right hand of god , and sending down the holy ghost at the day of pentecost , ( which was a real effect of his eternal priesthood and intercession with god for his church ) nothing but the appearing of him according to the spirit , out of the heavenly being in their minds or souls , upon which he sent down his spiritual or heavenly powers . wherefore this mystical christ is the only high priest that he acknowledgeth , and will allow him no otherwise then in this mystical and spiritual sense to be an everlasting and true christ of god. see the place ; of which you will assure your self i have given the right sense , if you compare it with chap. . sect . , , . where he more plainly affirms , that it is the upright being of the love , christ after the spirit , ( which he calls the true light ) which is that high priest that abideth for ever at the right hand of god in the heavenly being . which phrase heavenly being alwaies signifies morally or mystically with him , and means something within us . and yet he has the impudence to alledge acts . v. . where christ is said to ascend into heaven literally and naturally so called , his disciples gazing upon him as he went up . thus you see how industriously , nay how madly and rashly , he shuffles out the humane person of christ from his priestly office every where . and as he will have the heaven or most holy within us , so will he have his sacrifice and passion within us too . introduct . chap. . . where doe any now , saith he , keep the supper of christ , where they break , distribute and eat the bread ( which is the true body of christ ) to a remembrance of christ , that he hath suffered in us for the sins cause the death of the cross , and so his death is published till he come in his glory ? where it is plain that the crucifixion of christ is a mystery in us , and it is insinuated a duty too . for the body and the flesh of christ is christ according to the history . which christ according to the flesh is to be slain in us , if we celebrate the passeover aright : and thus we must publish his death till he come in glory , that is , in the spirit . . and truely no other is his glorious coming to judgment , with this sect , then this mystical and spiritual coming ; which was the second part i intended to pursue ; which i question not but i shall make as clear as noon-day . of this there are so many testimonies and so pregnant , that the only fear is of being too copious in the proof of this matter . revel . dei cap. . there his illuminate elders together with his family of love are the heavens in which christ the son of god comes gloriously and triumphantly to judgment , to reign with god and his righteousness everlasting upon earth . which plainly excludes the ending of the world and that coming of christ that all christians expect . and chap. . sect . . he affirms that in this eighth day , which is the day of the spirit of love , all the dead that are deceased in the lord iesus christ do rise from the death , and all generations of heaven and earth do become judged in the judgement of god with equity . again in his introduct . chap. . he saith , that now the true glorious god , who is the resurrection and the life , revealeth his saints out of his bosome , where ( since the time they fel asleep ) they have rested untill this day of the love ; because they should now in these last times , in the resurrection of the righteous , be manifested with christ in glory , to a righteous judgement of god on the earth . and chap. . he there also affirms , that in this day of the love there appear and come to us livingly and gloriously all god's saints which in times past died and fell asleep in god. and chap. . there he also tells us , how that in sure and firm hope of everlasting life the upright believers have rested in the lord iesus christ , till the appearing of his coming , which is now in this day of the love revealed out of the heavenly being ; with which iesus christ the former believers of christ , who were fallen asleep , rested or died in him , are now also manifested in glory , being raised from the dead to the intent that they should reign alive with him over all his enemies . to which you may add what he has wrote chap. . in his prophecy of the spirit of love : make you to flight , make you to flight , yea , get you now all out of the way , ye enemies of the lord , and of his service of the love , and give the lord with his holy ones the roome ; yet shall ye not escape the vengeance of god. for , he saith , the lord cometh to judge betwixt the family of the love and the rest of the world : where-through the earth is now moved , the heavens troubled , the elements melt with heat , and the token of the coming of the son of man appears in heaven : with which rumour or rushing noise of the power of god and his holy ones , the last trumpet doth also presently give forth her sound ; through whose blast of her vehement sound , and through the appearing of the coming of christ , the dead shall stand up and arise unto the judgement of god ; who having revenged the bloud of his holy ones , that the sinners have spilt and shed upon the earth , he puts this pure family in peaceable possession thereof ; that they may reign there-over , or judge the same with righteousness , from henceforth world without end . so that the completion of all the prophets ends in the triumph of familism ; the same which david george boasted of himself . see also chap. . sect . . lastly in his evangely , chap. . . behold in this same day , namely of the love , is the resurrection of the lords dead come to pass , through the appearing of the coming of christ in his majesty according to the scriptures . and a little after , sect . . in which resurrection of the dead , god sheweth unto us that the time is now fulfilled , that his dead ( or the dead that are fallen asleep in the lord ) rise up in this day of his judgement , and appear unto us in godly glory , which shall also henceforth live in us everlastingly with christ , and reign upon the earth . of which the plain sense is , that the souls deceased so many hundred years agoe , are alive again in these of the family of love , and shall reign everlastingly in them with the mystical christ on the earth . which plainly excludes that other iudgement or resurrection in the literal sense , as i said before . again chap. . sect . . for this cause our hope standeth now in this day very little on many of the inhabitants of the world ; but we hope with joy much more on the appearing of the dead that die in the lord or are dead in him , to wit , that they in their resurrection from the death shall livingly come unto and meet with us . for all the dead of the lord and members of christ shall now live and rise with their bodies , and we shall assemble us with them , and they with us to one body in iesus christ , into one lovely being of the love , and be altogether concordable in the love and peace of iesus christ. chap. xvii . . his perverse interpretation of that article of the creed concerning life everlasting . . his misbelief of the immortality of the soul , proved from his forcible wresting of the most pregnant testimonies thereof to his dispensation and ministry here on earth . . their interpreting of the heavenly body mentioned cor. . and the unmarried state of angels , to the signification of a state of this present life . . that h. nicolas as well as david george held there were no angels , neither good nor bad . . further demonstrative arguments that he held the soul of man mortall . . how sutable his laying aside of the person of christ is to these other tenets . . that h. nicolas , as highly as he magnifies himself , is much below the better sort of pagans . his irreverent apprehension of the divine majesty , if he held that there was any thing more divine then himself . . finally as for that article of the creed concerning life everlasting , his exposition is this : we confess that the same everlasting life is the true light of men , and that god hath made and chosen him the man thereto , that he should live in the same light everlastingly . where , by him the man , he means the succession of mankind , as any one may know that is but a little acquainted with his manner of writing : and by everlasting life and the true light of men , he means the light of the love and the service thereof ; which he presages shall abide for ever . which therefore he cals the house of god's dwelling , the eternal rest of his holy ones , the everlasting fast-standing ierusalem , the true and indisturbable kingdome , full of all godly power , ioy , and of all heavenly beautifulness , wherein the land of the lord , with fulness of eternal life , and lively sweetness is sung from everlasting to everlasting . with such sweet charms and pleasing enchantments does this grand deceiver lull asleep his little ones into an utter oblivion and perfect misbelief of those precious promises of everlasting happiness made to us by christ , who hath brought life and immortality to light . . for that there is with no other life but this , nor any immortality of the soul or blessed resurrection which consists in the soul 's being invested with an heavenly and spiritual body according to the plain and literal sense of scripture ; his gross abuse of those two main proofs thereof [ cor. . ] [ thes. . ] do plainly demonstrate ; which he does wildly distort , as he doth the rest of the scripture , to a mere prediction of his service of the love , in which he will have every thing of the last day and of the resurrection fulfilled , that we may be sure that there is nothing else to be expected but this . for in this the last trump sounds ; christ appears in the heavens , being come to judgement ; those very saints that in time past died and fell asleep in the lord , are now raised up in glory , and that with their bodies , and livingly come unto and meet with us , according to that in thes. . and lastly , these raised saints , that is , the family of love , shall thus reign with their mystical christ upon earth for ever world without end . what interpretation of scripture can more accurately and radically take away all expectation of christs personal coming to judgement , and the hope of a blessed immortality included therein by the resurrection of the dead , then this of this bold author ? which we may be the better assured he intends , in that his applications are so miserably forced , and yet he has no better proofs then these for the ratifying of his service of the love. for if he thought they did signifie that which all christians think they do , he could fancy no force at all in them for the establishing of his doctrine : but the orthodox meaning seeming to him utterly incredible , makes him confident that he has found out the right sense ; if he deal bonâ fide , and takes not the scripture for a mere fable , which he may abuse as he pleases . . for we may observe him using the same industry in eluding the force of such places as are plain for an immortal state after this life , even there where he may seem unconcerned , if he held the soul of man immortal . as that cor. . where the promise of the heavenly or spiritual body is evidently set down , as appears further out of the last verses of the precedent chapter : and yet these familists are not ashamed to expound it of the most holy of the true tabernacle , in their canting language ; whereby they mean the perfection of the love , a state in this life , as you may see in their mirabilia dei. and in the spiritual land of peace , that which is writ luk. . . concerning the children of the resurrection , that they are neither married nor given in marriage , but are as the angels of god , he applies to the state of the service of the love , and makes it fulfilled in his life . which is an allegory so cross and crooked , that nothing but an unbelief of the literal sense could ever have put a man upon the framing of it : besides that scurvy intimation it bears along with it of community of wives , the very same doctrine that * david george is said to have vented . . who also held , that angels and devils are onely good men and bad men , or their vertues and vices : in whose footsteps this scholar of his hen. nicolas treads very carefully , as appears from his revel . dei cap. . where he makes the righteousness , the true spirits or holy angels . as also * elsewhere he saith , that he that has the seven deadly sins in him , is possest of the seven horriblest and destructionablest devils : intimating that the rest of the vices are devils also , but not so destructionable . and he insinuates further in the same place , that the seven devils cast out of mary magdalen were those seven deadly sins . and i am certain that the most knowing of the family have freely professed that there are no devils nor witches nor angels but those in us . which things being supposed , it is necessary either to cast away the scriptures , or else to allegorize them away into a mere moral or mystical sense , as these enthusiasts have done . . they believing therefore the existence of neither angel nor spirit , of necessity they must believe no immortality of the soul. and that they believe no such thing there is still a further evidence , in that he never exhorts any man to holiness upon that account ( which yet is he most powerful argument to make men good that can be propounded ) nor ever makes use of such places of scripture as imply a blessed immortality to come after this life , in the literal meaning of them . his encouraging his followers to comply with any superstition , be it never so uglily idolatrous , rather then to expose themselves to danger , agrees also well with this supposition . and some have noted that they have alledged this reason for it , that the temple of god may not be destroied . whereby they mean their humane persons , which they suppose lost irrecoverably in the death of the body . and that there may be no doubt at all that this is their opinion , i will conclude with a reference to * one of his epistles , where he speaks to this very question : which he does with so many hacks and hesitations , with so much shuffling and doubling and insinuations to the contrary , that no rational man can be unsatisfied but that he held it mortal . for if he had held it immortal , it had been impossible he should have concealed his opinion , or intimated any thing to the contrary ; it being so useful a doctrine for others , and so commendable for himself to profess . which obdurate conceit of his made him allegorize away all the articles of the creed , and so deny the resurrection of christ as well as of all others that believe on him ; and being secure , as he thought , that he does not now subsist , he could not dream of any christ that could be head of the church but that mystical one he insists so much upon , the upright being of the love , the perfection of all . and verily if there be nothing to come after this life , i dare allow him to be as great a prophet as either himself or his followers desire he should be esteemed . . he is therefore upon his own hypothesis very consonant to himself , in removing the humane person of christ as a thing that has perished one thousand six hundred years ago , and in riveting the godhead into his own person so thwackingly and substantially , as that he may give the world to understand that he was as much god as that christ that died at ierusalem , and that all those that attained to the perfection of the love were so too : that he might abundantly compensate thereby the loss of that one that died upon the cross , having fallen into the hands of merciless sinners . this , i say , is a consistent dream of his : and that it is no more but a dream , i partly have already , and shall still more clearly demonstrate in this present discourse . . in the mean time it is very plain , that though he sets out himself in such seraphical language , and adorns his own person with such gorgeous titles as if nothing ever yet appeared in the world so holy and divine ; yet he is indeed much inferiour to the better sort of pagans , as being nothing more then an enthusiastick sadducee , or a fanatick deist , if so much . for i wonder what a kind of god he imagins to himself , to whom he makes the senate of heaven so unmannerly as to use such formes of speech to him as he does revel . dei cap. . go to then , let it even be so , o god , it is vouchsafed thee that thou shouldest first bring forth a declaration of thy right . but i have no mind to dive any further into this depth of satan , from which i pray god deliver every good christian . chap. xviii . . the great mischief and danger that accrues to the world from this false prophet . . the probable ferocity of this sect when time shall serve , and eagerness of executing his bloudy vision . . that familisme is a plot laid by satan to overthrow christianity . . what the face of things in likelyhood would be supposing it had overrun all . . the motives that inforced the authour to make so accurate a discovery of this imposture . . out of the description we have given hitherto , we may easily compute the great mischief that accrues to the world from this false pretender to revelations , whereever his witchcraft has power to seize the spirit of a man. for first , that admirable wisdome of god in the outward frame of christian religion , as it respects the person of christ , his endearing passion , his glorious resurrection and ascension , his comfortable intercession , and his joyful return to judgement , when our immortality shall be completed in heavenly glory ; all this is swept away , and therewith our assurance of eternal life . and besides this , that there may be nothing wanting to the perfecting of that monstrous evil that is hatched in this family , it may prove a pandora's box to mankind even in this life , if a more benigne providence do not prevent it . for they having , as i have told you , a full licence from their infallible prophet to dissemble and aequivocate , to comply with any religion whatever ; they may multiply hiddenly in great numbers to the hazard of a state or commonwealth . for being taught by their illuminate elders , that there is nothing to be expected after this life , it must needs make them hang their lips very longingly after the greatest enjoyments they can of this present world. the possession and rule whereof their prophet has promised them with such magnificent words and enthusiastick grandiloquence , that they cannot but be inflamed into violent attempts upon the first occasion that they shall phansy safe to make use of . and what full right do you think will they imagine themselves to have to fly upon all , whenas they phansy the head of their faction to be no less then christ himself come to judge the world in righteousness ? . wherefore if some sullen fellow amongst them of a peremptory and imperious spirit , overcharged with pride and melancholy , and deeply baptized into the doctrine of this sect , shall by his fanatick heat , parts and language emerge to that height of honour as to be approved the eldest of that family : the same is presently become in his own conceit , and in theirs also , god himself returned to judgement , and all his host , saints and seraphims , if ever opportunity arme them to execute their design . and then will they think that that is to be fulfilled which is figured out in that vision of a man clothed with an habergion , and harness , and girded with an iron chain , whose hands and leggs to the very girdle were wet with bloud , with a sword in his left hand also red and bloudy , and another in his right which was altogether a glowing fire , glisning & crackling very terribly with many fire-flames . which direful spectre gives out his voice in the following sections . vengeance , vengeance , vengeance ; now swiftly , now swiftly , yea now very swiftly , wo , wo , wo , unto all the enemies of the lord and his holy ones , and to all the enemies of the family of love. so great darlings do they give out themselves to be of god and his providence , and so miserable an end , do they prefigure to themselves , shall befall those that are not of their blessed family . god of his mercy open the eyes of all men , that they may see the fearful purposes of this diabolical impostor , and quit themselves of these subtil delusions of satan . . for if i have any sense or foresight at all in me , it is a plot to overrun and subjugate , if it be possible , all christendome , and perfectly to extirpate the worship of christ , and to extinguish the belief of all his promises , under pretence of a greater holiness and perfection then there is in christian religion ; though this familisme be such as i have abundantly set out to you . see his prophesie of the spirit of love , chap. . also chap. . sect. , . and chap. . sect. , , , . and chap. . sect. . . , &c. in which places he promises to his followers that they shall have the day at last , that is , that familisme shall thrust christianity out of the world. . which because they have so great minde should be fulfilled , let us suppose a while that they have got the mastery over christendome , and compute with our selves the consequences thereof . without all question , although every page of this divine authour ( as they would have him ) be so thick painted with the sweet repetitions of love and lovely , the issue of such a victory would be the most beastly tyranny that ever appeared yet upon the stage of the earth , worse by farre then mahometisme it self . for first , all hope of a future life being taken away , every man according to his power will be more free and eager to satisfie his lust in the superfluous pleasures of this . from whence those that are weak will be oppressed without pitty , to satiate the desires of the proud and injurious oppressour . and then again , for peace in matters of religion , upon which score especially this flattering deceiver would recommend himself to the world , the interpretations of scripture , whereby he would establish his authority with men , are so wilde and fanatick , and so dissonant to all sense and reason , that he has sown therein the seeds of perpetual contention ; unless it be prevented by a remedy worse then the disease , that is , a perfect slavery of the conscience , and an implicit faith that their prophet is infallible , without any examination and doubt . which is the most base and villainous degeneracy that the spirit of man can be forced into , and is ever there attempted most where the religion of a nation is the most rotten and false . but that this latter would be the way seems too-too probable , both from the necessity of the case , and from such intimations out of his writings as i have already produced . to which you may adde that in his revelatio dei , where he plainly forbids to try the spirits by reason or knowledge or scripture-learning , but by the true being of the living godhead . which are high words , but signifie nothing but that we never attain to the living godhead till we think as he thinks : and therefore intercepting all information of reason , expects an immediate assent , that is , such an assent as we know not why we do assent ; then which nothing can be more mad and furious , or at least relish more of knavery and deceit , and of a ready reproach to all dissenters , as if they were utter strangers to the living godhead . but that religion certainly is false at the bottome that will not suffer it self to be enquired into by reason ; as * he saith very excellently of mahometisme , meritò suspecta merx est quae hâc lege obtruditur , ne inspici possit . . you see what a wild and exorbitant thing this blind enthusiasm is , the very vehicle of hell that carries to antheisme and prophaneness , and the triumphal chariot of the devil ; in which questionless this begodded mock-prophet was hurried away , though haply he might not know it , but gloried in his shame , and prided himself in his own captivity . the condition of whose spirit , what it is , and whitherto it tends , if i know mine own heart , i have thus carefully discovered , out of no other principle at all but that love and loialty i owe to my crucified saviour and sovereign , and out of that dear compassion i bear to my fellow-members of his body the church . for verily i cannot but melt into sorrow and pitty , to consider how deceivable many well-meaning souls are , and how captivable by the witchery of a fanatick eloquence into a strange belief , that there is a more then ordinary share of divinity residing upon this person , whom i am so well assured is but epicurus turned enthusiast , and one sunk as low beneath the light of the gospel as any wretched pagan that never heard thereof . and therefore i hope all his admirers that are not so far baptised into his way as to have celebrated his pascha and slain christ according to the flesh , that is , according to the letter and history , and so become perfect infidels , will take it well at my hands that i have so faithfully discovered the deceit , that they may no longer give countenance to so horrid an imposture . and for as many as have thus slain the lord of life , which yet i hope are not very many , how they should take ill this my freeness of speech , i can in no wise imagine . for i dare say for them , in that they have thus slain him , ( as s. peter said in another case ) they have done it out of ignorance , through the prestigious enchantments of this grand deceiver ; and therefore they can no sooner acknowledge their errour , but find their pardon , through him who was truely slain and sacrificed for the sins of the world , and rose again for an assurance to us of a blessed immortality after the death of the body . which must needs be a message of great joy to all people that are of an upright and sincere heart . chap. xix . . that familism is a monster bred out of the corruptions of christianity , and ill management of affairs by the guides of the church . . the first particular of ill management intimated . . the second particular . . the third particular . . the fourth . . the fifth particular . . that this false prophet h. nicolas was raised by god to exprobrate to christendome their universal degeneracy , prophaneness and infidelity . . that though the evil be discovered , it is not to be remedied but by returning to the ancient apostolick life and doctrine . . and now after my freedome with your competitours for the rule of christendome , the illuminated elders of the lovely communialty of the love ; have the patience to hear me in a word or two , o ye conspicuous lights and guides of the communialty of christ. what think you of this hideous monster that i have so lively set before your eyes ? from whence came it ? whose brat is this foul errour of familism ? methinks i hear you straight reply , h. nicolas his . but i demand further , how came h. nicolas to be such a monster ? you will immediately return answer out of micronius , that he received his metamorphosis from david george . but i take leave to ask again , who transformed david george into such an angel of light ? to which you 'l quickly reply , the devil . his back i confess is broad enough to bear all , indeed too broad to satisfie the curiosity of my querie , who would gladly know the more particular causes of so monstrous a production in the bowels of christendome . which if you be ignorant of , give me leave a little to informe you : and be not displeased if you find much of the fault laid at your own dores . for my own part , i humbly conceive that you your selves have congested that putrid matter together , which neither sun nor moon , nor any natural influence of heaven , but the fiery wrath of god and his enraged eye of jealousie has given heat and life to . this dangerous monster therefore have you your selves , by provocation of the divine vengeance , raised up to your selves , and given increase to , and strength to subsist . which may appear to you from the due consideration of these particulars following . . for first , you have so corrupted the simplicity of christian religion by your humane inventions and opinions , ( which are so incredible , so unintelligible , so against all sense and reason , and obtruded on the people with so much force and violence , and with an authority and necessity equally indispensable to the very oracles of god ) that you are constrained thereby to pronounce of that religion then which nothing is more reasonable , that there is no reasonable account to be given of it , but that we are to believe it without examination or inquisition into it , and thereby debase it and set it as low as turcism or the most pittifull piece of paganism that can be produced . you inuring therefore the people to believe things upon no account , and obtruding such things upon them as no account can be given of , prepare them for the entertaining of every bold impostor that pretends to an infallible spirit , and commends his adulterous ware upon the same title that you doe yours , namely , that they are so high and transcendent that they are above the reach of carnal reason , condemning every sober inquisition into the truth as carnal . wherefore if there be but impudency enough , assisted with a fiery enthusiastick style , flowered over with scriptural phrases and allusions , with deep and vehement protestations of the irresistible power of the spirit that transports them and carries them on to that prophetical ministry , they may securely say what they please , and never be tried nor distrusted , let them speak never so irrationally and inconsistently . for the people are already sufficiently inured to things irrational , contradictions and unintelligible , whereby the perfectest non-sense must appear to them the most pure dialect of the spirit . and therefore there will be no stop but they must needs be carried on with such torrents of ecstatick eloquence , and be washed away from the body of the church into this or that fanatick sect , according as the sutableness of their natural humour and opportunity exposes them to their assaults . . again , when i consider the ineptness of your allegations out of scripture for such opinions as you are so zealous for , and the solemn adorning of the margins of your theological treatises with such insignificant citations out of the undeniable oracles of god , as that when one examines them he shall find his understanding as much abused as a mans eye-sight is by that mockery of drawing ones hands one from the other , and twisting with his thumbs and forefingers as if there were some subtil string betwixt ; ( for assuredly the connexion betwixt your quotations and your conclusions is utterly as invisible as that imaginary line to the eyes of the sleepy ) i cannot but look on the writings of this enthusiast as an imitation of yours ; wherein providence does reproach to you your unfaithfulness to the credulous people , in that you would bear them in hand that all is true you obtrude upon them by your multitude of impertinent references to the holy writ . which artifice this mock-prophet has taken up and out-done you in , who stuffes his margins so thick with citations , as if every sentence in the bible strove to put in their suffrage for him ; according as he boasts of himself , that all the scriptures from the beginning to the end do point at him and his ministry if rightly understood : whenas , if truly examined , though his margins perpetually point towards the scriptures , they do not at all point at him again in any place , nor give him the least nod of approbation , nor take any notice at all of him . . thirdly , whereas the mystery of christianity , even as it refers to the external person of christ , is the chiefest obligation of mutuall love that the wisdome of god could set forth to the world ; you that are not only christians , but the guides of christendom , have so entangled this mystery with your rash and perverse superadditions , with your forgeries , subtilties and vain comments , that it is become nothing else but a shop of controversies , a school of contention , out of which is heard nothing but brawlings and scoldings about useless opinions , nothing has sprung from thence but hatred , pride , faction , yea barbarous persecutions and bloudshed , your selves blowing the trumpet out of those holy places which were erected for the preaching of the gospel of peace , and in an antichristian phrensy sounding an alarm of warre against such as are in reconciliation with god through the bloud of jesus christ , which should be the common cement of christendome , and hold all their hearts together in firm unity and concord . wherefore you having thus left empty the tabernacle of david , is it any wonder that a stranger hath thus stept in , and taken possession ? and you having flung away that precious legacy of your dying lord , namely , the love of one another , what injustice is it that an alien take it up , and flourish it in your sight to your utter shame and reproach ? and truly he writes as one that knows his advantage passing well in this regard , as you may see if you read his introduction , chap. . sect . . to the end of the chapter , as also sect . of the eleventh chapter to the end thereof . . fourthly , whereas you place all your piety in an hypocritical flattery of christ's person , and have overwhelmed and smothered the life of religion with an unsupportable load and luggage of needless and thankless ceremonies , or else have wounded it to death with the acuteness and spinosity of harsh and dry opinions , not heeding at all the renovation of your own minds , nor of theirs that are committed to your charge into the lively image of christ , which assuredly does mainly consist in christian love ; how just is it with god to permit such an enthusiast to arise , who shall make it the great arcanum of his religion to slay christ according to the flesh , that is , according to the history , you having slain him so cruelly and remorslessly according to the spirit , ( that is , extinguished his life that ought to be in us ) by substituting your own foolish opinions and loathsome ceremonies in the place thereof ? nay indeed you have handled the matter so , that you have made christ according to the flesh be the executioner of himself according to the spirit , making every article concerning christ an engine for either sensuality or strife . in brief , the exteriour oeconomie of christian religion being intended for the inward perfecting of our minds in true righteousness and holiness , ( which is christ in us according to the spirit , ) you by your devices defeating this end , doe naturally take away the means thereto ; and thus yourselves are the principal murderers of christ , even according to the flesh too , and h. nicolas is only your appointed executioner . and therefore it is , as i said , but just with god , you having so long and so constantly abused all the articles of the creed to a contrary purpose then was intended by his gracious counsel , that he permit such a mock-prophet to arise that should hazard the peoples misbelief of all , and allegorize away all that solid and useful truth of the history of christ , into a mere moral or mystical sense , as if the letter were but a parable or fable . . fifthly , in that this sect we speak of do rattle so about your ears with the loud noise of perfection , though for my own part i am well assured the best of them are far enough from it ; yet in the mean time i cannot but interpret it an exprobration and reproach to the great abhorrency you have to so searching a doctrine , that will touch and wound your hypocritical hearts with the sense and conscience of wilful sinfulness , which you would cloak under that colour of impossibility of being as you should be ; as also to your false dealing with those under your charge , whom you do bedwarfe and becripple by your poisonous medicines , would make them alwaies sorry boies with bibs and aprons , or else conceal their age and keep them alwaies in minority for advantage sake , like those infortunate orphans that are betraied into the hands of treacherous guardians . what wonder is it therefore that those that truly hunger and thirst after righteousness , being starved at home with those dilute and corrupt doctrines of the needlesness of sanctity , of invincible infirmity , slight attrition , frivolous penances , venal indulgences , crawl out abroad to seek better food , and so get into the lap and suck the nipples of this sweet enchantress , the lovely family of the love ; whose breasts do promise such strong nourishment , that they that drink thereof do not only pass from children to men , but from being men doe become gods ? . and sixthly and lastly , while i contemplate the universal face of christendome , what a den of thieves and murderers it is become , what a region of robbers and oppressors , what a sty of epicures , what a wilderness of atheism and prophaneness , in a manner wholly inhabited by satyrs and salvage beasts ; when i consider within my self how generally men live as if there were nothing to come after this life , and how many already have drunk down that doctrine , that there is indeed nothing to come hereafter ; of which notwithstanding the history of christ , his death , resurrection and ascension , and his appearing out of heaven to paul as he was a going to damascus , are as palpable pledges as divine providence could produce , as also of his visible return to judgement according to the scriptures : i say , when i consider how little effect all this has had for the raising of mens minds to an heavenly conversation , but that they live as if they were utterly sunk from this belief , i cannot imagine any thing more reasonable then to conclude , that out of very wrath and indignation god has raised this false prophet to them , that it might be with them according to the proverb , like lips , like lettice ; like prophet , like people . as if god should thus expostulate with christendome ; behold , i have given to you my only-begotten son out of my own bosome , whose authority i ratified unto you by audible voices from heaven , by mighty signs and miracles done by him while he was alive : i gave him a sacrifice for sin to reconcile you to my self , and to endear your affections unto him and me , that ye might cordially follow his example and keep his precepts : i raised him from the dead and exhibited him visibly to his disciples , as an undoubted pledge of a blessed immortality to them that believe on him ; which i further confirmed by his ascension into heaven , and his appearing to that chosen vessel of mine , who has so fully prefigured unto you his glorious return to judgment , and the resuscitation of all his saints into that eternal happiness which they had fallen from . and now i demand of you , what could i have done more for the gaining you back to my self , and for the resettling you again in my heavenly paradise ? but because you are so besotted with earthliness and sensuality as to make no use of the inestimable advantages of the gospel , but have set your happiness upon things here below ; behold , i have raised up unto you a prophet according to your own hearts desire , who will help on the completion of your infidelity , and in the midst of a many fine words and sweet friendly phrases , close up your eyes in unbelief ; and so having sealed unto you by his witchery and enchantments this assurance , that the mystery of christ reaches no further then the things of this life , you may use the present market , and enjoy your worldly lusts to the full . . this surely , if i understand any thing , is the sense and meaning of god's permission that such a prodigie as familisme should appear with so much success in the christian world : and though i have faithfully and industriously discovered the matter unto you , yet i must profess that i conceive it not in my power , nor any ones else , to prevent the sad effects thereof . that can only be by a true and sincere reformation of heart and minde into the ancient and apostolick life and doctrine . for there is nothing so recommendable to mankinde as the christian faith in the native plainness and simplicity thereof ; nor any thing so horrible and detestable as that vizard that the depravedness of christendome has put upon it . which face of things if it continue , atheism having seized on so great a proportion , it is prone to conjecture , that what remains may be easily swallowed up of familism , or of some such parallel plague of the church ; and so the right faith in christ may quite be laid asleep , never to awaken till there is no use thereof , i mean , till men be affrighted into a belief by an universal thunder and lightning from heaven , and the glorious appearance of the son of man in the clouds , to recompence the good , and to adjudge the wicked to everlasting fire . for the counsels of god , as his prophecies , are two-handed , and both of them in some cases have a meaning conditional . but , as i desire , so i hope the best : and it is a great ease to my minde , that i have so freely declared what i conceive tends so much thereto . book vii chap. i. . that the subject of the third part of his discourse is the reality of the christian mystery . . that the reasonableness of christian religion and the constant belief thereof by knowing and good men , from the time it is said to have begun til now , is a plain argument of the truth thereof to them that are not over-sceptical . . the averseness of slight and inconsiderate witts from all arguments out of prophecies , with their chiefest objections against the same . . that the prophecies of the messias in the old testament were neither forged nor corrupted by the jews . . an answer to their objections concerning the obscurity of prophecies . . as also to that from free will. . that all prophecies are not from the fortuitous heat of mens phansies but by divine revelation , proved by undeniable instances . . a particular reason of true prophets amongst the iews , with some examples of true prophecies in other places . . a notable prophecie acknowledged by vaninus concerning julius caesar's being kill'd in the senate . . we are come now to the third part of our discourse , wherein the doubtfull dawnings of this great mystery we are clearing up will break out into a fuller light , and the progress of truth will be like that of righteousness , that shineth more and more till perfect day . the possible , as also reasonable idea of christianity , which i have hitherto represented , is but as the seminal forme of a plant hid in the seed under ground ; but we shall now exhibit it as it were to sense , shot up into open view , and demonstrate that this possible idea has already arrived to a real and actual existence in the world. which being a matter of so great consequence , we will not huddle it up at once , nor yet make any steps more for pomp then for use and the fuller conviction of the truth we are to prove . . and truly the very first step i shall make , or rather have partly made already , i hope , to any indifferent man will seem not a little considerable . we have very amply and intelligibly declared how highly - reasonable the frame of our religion is , how becoming and consistent all those things are that christ is recorded to have done or suffered . add therefore to the reasonableness of the thing it self , the constant and perpetual tradition thereof for true , and that it has been so seriously believed in all ages , that as well the learned as unlearned , as well the noble as ignoble , have been ready , nay have actually laid down their lives for a witness thereof . and methinks no man that is not over-sceptical , but this consideration should fetch off his assent . for the fame of those things that are seriously reported and constantly believed by knowing and judicious men , cannot rationally be called into question , unless the things themselves affirmed seem unreasonable , or else over-artificial and in too trim and cunning a dress of reason . that the things recorded are very reasonable , i have already demonstrated : and how little of the cunning artifice of either logick or rhetorick they partake of , i dare appeal to any that peruse them . wherefore if any man persist in his unbelief , the impediment is not in the mystery offered to him , but in himself , that has no desire it should be true , either out of pride , as not being willing to find himself to have been ignorant hitherto of the true religion , or out of the love of either the pleasures or profits of this present world , which the belief of christianity does naturally curb . but we proceed to what is still more close and cogent . that the iews have for this many hundred years expected and do still expect him whom they call their messias , every one knows , as also that this name messias is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from whence our religion is denominated . wherefore if i can prove that this messias is already come , and that iesus whom we worship is that christ , i have then performed the promise of the third part of my discourse ; which is to prove that christianity ( the idea whereof i have hitherto described , ) is not a mere idea , but a real truth . which first i shall attempt from prophecies , after from history : the comparing of both which together will be so strong an argument , that to the unprejudiced it cannot appear less then a perfect demonstration . . i know some are of so impatient and superficial a spirit that they vilifie the very name or mention of prophecies , as arguments of no validity , because they cannot find themselves at leisure to weigh the force of them . but if they will rationally speak against them , they must alledge some of these four objections , viz. that either they are often forged , or at least corrupted by some wily politicians to serve some state-design : or are so obscure that there is no certain sense or meaning of them : or if there be , that it does not infallibly import that things thus predicted will surely come to pass , there being so great dependance of the affairs of the world upon the actings of men : or lastly , to strike home , that there never was nor ever will be any prophecies from any extraordinary inspiration , but that some men have very hot phansies , and their minds running on future things vent what they think ; and their predictions , like dreams , sometimes prove true , sometimes false ; and that the report of those that have hapned true has begot that false perswasion of there being prophets in the world. . such slight considerations as these doe marvellously gratifie the light-minded and atheistical , but more severely looked into will prove of no force . for as for the first objection , it is plain it can have no place here , if we consider with what holiness and veneration the iews look upon the very outward letter of those divine oracles committed to their custody . besides that it is ridiculous to suspect them either to have foisted in or any way altered such prophecies as we are here to make use of , they being such as will manifestly make against themselves : which is a mighty priviledge that christianity has , that in maintaining of her cause she can so boldly appeal to those records that have been ever kept in the hands of her enemies . nor can the christian , if he would , corrupt these prophecies , but he would be forthwith discovered by the iews . whence neither atheist nor pagan can rationally suspect any foul play of this kind . . as for the pretended obscurity or ambiguity of prophecies , i deny that they may all justly be termed obscure . besides that , the words of them that are so in some measure , ever fit one sense better then another ; and where there is any such ambiguity , that sense is to be accounted true that has been judged so by men unprejudiced , and , all things considered , appears most proper and easie . the satisfaction of which answer will be better understood when we descend to examples , then by general precept . . the third objection cannot be urged by any but such as are over-doting idolizers of the faculty of free will , and forget that some prophecies are not conditional but absolute , as certainly all those are that are of so vast and moliminous concernment to the world as the appearing of the messias is . whose coming , if it had been conditional , nothing could be thought to hinder but sin. which in this case is as absurdly inferred , as if one should argue that the sickness of the patient keeps away the physitian , when it rather occasions his coming . and one end of christ's coming , as i have abundantly shewn already , is to be a sacrifice for sin , and to renew the world in righteousness . . the last objection is the most perverse and lubricous , but yet such as is easily mastered , if we consider how punctually and particularly many things have been prefigured in prophecie , and , that usually those that have prophesied , have also done miracles , or something miraculous and extraordinary has hapned unto them ; that they have seen * visions of angels and have been assisted by supernatural powers . an eminent example whereof is that prophecie of the man of god out of iuda against the altar at bethel , which was accompanied with the drying up and restoring of the hand of ieroboam , and the rending of the altar and pouring of the ashes for a sign that his prophecie was true . which yet was so punctual and particular , that he names the very name of him that was to doe this vengeance against the altar at bethel , viz. iosias ; though it was a prediction of a thing that was not to come to pass within three hundred years . so isaiah prophesied of cyrus by name , and what god intended to doe by him in reference to his people , some hundreds of years before cyrus was born . and daniel so punctually foretold the translation of the empire from the assyrians to the medes and persians , and then to alexander of macedon , whose successors in part the posterity of lagus and seleucus should be , and what great evils the jews should suffer from them , that porphyrius comparing the greek history with daniel's prophecie , had no other way to evade , but by pretending they were wrote after the event . which is so frivolous a subterfuge , that it is not worth answering . . for being there is a deity , and that the iews in a more then ordinary manner lived under a kinde of theocracy , and were a people with whom it was usual to have prophets and inspired messengers from god ; why should it seem strange to porphyrius or any else , that god should by his holy angels instruct the prophet daniel so particularly and perfectly concerning things to come , wherein his own nation was so nearly concerned ? for even there where providence seems to take less care , the greater mutations of states and kingdomes have been foretold by the priests and magicians of the country . as it hapned to moteczuma king of mexico , before the invasion of the spaniard , as you may see in acosta and other writers . and valens the augur , in varro , is said to have prophesied at the first building of the city of rome , that it should continue twelve hundred years ; which fell out accordingly . . and * vaninus himself , that prophane wit , was not so far besotted with epicurean incredulity , but that he does acknowledge , nay rather assert with a serious appeal to all history as well ancient as of late daies , if great changes in the affairs of the world have not been predicted miraculously one way or other ; and himself instances in one notable prophecie engraven in a table of brass found in capys his sepulchre concerning the murdering of iulius caesar in the senate . which capys notwithstanding , king of italy , lived near a thousand years before iulius caesar. so that if a man be not very grosly stupid , he musts needs confess that all prophecies are not from the mere ravings & roamings of a buisie phansie , but from some higher and more infallible principle ; and that it is far more rational , when events answer to prophecies of great concernment , to impute it to providence rather then to chance . i know vaninus referrs all to the celestial bodies or influence of the stars : but how groundless and childish his conceit is , i shall evince in its * due place . chap. ii. . the genuine sense of jacob's prophecie . . the inference therefrom , that the messias is come . . that there had been a considerable force in this prophecie , though the words had been capable of other tolerable meanings : but they admitting no other interpretations tolerable , it is a demonstration the messias is come . . the chief interpretations of the jews propounded . . that neither moses nor saul can be meant by shiloh , . nor david , . nor jeroboam , nor nebuchadonosor . . that in the babylonian captivity the sceptre was rather sequestred then quite taken away ; with a further urging of the ineptness of the sense of the prophecie , if applied to nebuchadonosor . . their subterfuge in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 noted and refuted . . the various significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and their expositions therefrom . . an answer to them in general . , . an answer to their evasion by interpreting of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a tribe . . an answer to their interpreting of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a staffe of maintenance . . an answer to their interpreting it a rod of correction . . an answer jointly to both these last interpretations . . that their variety of expositions is a demonstration of their own dissatisfaction in them all . . being now well assured of the force of such arguments as are drawn from prophecies , let us proceed and make use of them for the proving the matter in hand , that iesus , whom we worship , is the very christ. which we will doe by producing first such as prefine and circumscribe the time of his coming , and then those that more perfectly characterize the properties of his person . of the first sort is that most ancient and eminent prophecie of iacob on his death-bed , the sceptre shall not depart from judah nor a law-giver from between his feet , til shiloh come , and unto him shall the gathering of the people be . that our inference may be the more unexceptionable , let us briefly run over the words . the sceptre . the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which the seventy interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , aquila 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , symmachus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , onkelos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all which denote the same thing , the soveraignty or power political . from iudah . by iudah according to warrant of scripture is to be understood , not only the tribe of iudah precisely , but what-ere accession or cooptation there was into that tribe , as appears from malachy . . nor a lawgiver , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the seventy render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the word naturally signifies a commander or decreer . i believe those that have translated it dux , have not missed of the mind of the seventy's interpretation . let 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 therefore signifie , one that gives laws or commands to the people . which is an unexceptionable meaning of the word , as all acknowledg , and is of nearest affinity with the former , according to that usual way in scripture of repeating the same thing twice , in words little different in signification . of which instances are innumerable . from between his feet , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the seventy turn it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , ex semine iudae , in that sense that iuda has been interpreted . that is to say , that iuda shall have a prince , governour , or political power of their own , or shall be governed or rul'd by those of their own bloud . till shiloh come : that is , till the messias come ; as all the ancient interpreters of the iews ever expounded it , their judgements being then unprejudiced . only they , as well as others , have varied about the notation of the name shiloh , as you may see in martinius . some will have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying filius , from whence is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 secundina . others will have shiloh to be a noun of the same forme with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and expound it , salvator , pacificus , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the seventy seem to have read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which they render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , till he come for whom so great and illustrious things are reserved . others , as the vulgar translation , read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 missus . * which reading alwaies pleased me above any of them , and i have the suffrage also of the incomparable hugo grotius upon that place . and unto him shall the gathering of the people be . the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may either signifie congregatio , expectatio , obedientia or confractio . none of the senses but agree with the prophecie ; but the second and third are capable of a more easy critical account . . it is plain from this brief and warrantable exposition of the words , that the natural and genuine sense of iacob's prophecie is this , that , whatsoever become of the tribes of israel , juda , and what ever part of the tribes have any coalition with it , and goe under one name and title , shall not fail to have a political power and government of their own , till the messias come . this , i say , is the most easie and natural sense of this prophecie , and such as has been ever given by their own expositors , till that sad mistake of killing their messias perverted their judgments . wherefore , before themselves became guilty , and while they were fit to be judges , we appeal to them , if iacob's prophecie does not plainly foretel , that the political power and government of the jews shall not cease till the messias come . but it is evident it has ceased : therefore of a certain the messias is come . . which this prophecie would sufficiently assure us of , though there were other tolerable interpretations to be made besides this ; it being reasonable to conclude , that where there may be various senses made of words , that is the truest that flowes the most naturally , and seems to doe so to such as are unprejudiced . but to be still more certain of the truth of the sense of this prophecie which has been already given ; though both jews and others have set their wits on tenter-hooks to find other meanings thereof , they have light upon none but what are intolerably vain and foolish . . it will not be amiss to give you a tast of the chiefest of them . first therefore , those that would not have the messias understood by shiloh , they understand either moses , saul , david , ieroboam or nebuchadonosor . first , moses , because when he was sent to deliver the children of israel out of aegypt , iuda surrendred the sceptre to him , though he was of the tribe of levi. secondly , saul , because he was crowned in shiloh . thirdly , david , viz. implying that the sceptre was in iuda , and should there continue til david's time , in whose ●eign there was an accession of some people brought under his rule . fourthly , ieroboam , as being he who was crowned in shiloh , and took the sceptre from iuda . fifthly , nebuchadonosor , because he took the sceptre from iuda , and carried the people captive , and rased ierusalem and the temple to the ground . but to these may be answered briefly : . to that concerning moses , that he could not take the sceptre from iuda , iuda having none . for all the tribes together were not a polity then , much less any one of them , but were miserable underlings and bondslaves to that cruel tyrant pharaoh . to that of saul , that he was not created king in shiloh , but in mizpeh ; nor that saul the benjamite could take the sceptre from iuda , he having none yet , as was said before ; besides that ridiculous syntax of shiloh's coming , which is a place , not a person , according to this interpretation : as also it is very frigid to applie the last clause of the prophecie to saul . . to that of david may be answered much-what the same with that to the former , that iuda before david's time , though it had a precedency and seniority , yet wielded no sceptre over the other tribes , nor had any distinct jurisdiction more then the other had : and that it is very inept , if we read the whole prophecie , which immediately before speaks so magnificently of iuda's courage and prowess , to think it presently falls so flat , as only to predict that iuda shall not lose his seniority or precedencie til david come . and still , which makes it more harsh , the words naturally seem to import , that iuda shall lose his sceptre when shiloh or david is come , though it be the first time then that he takes it up . i say the words do naturally implie so , though not necessarily : but admit they do not , but the royal sceptre continue with iuda for many hundreds of years afterwards , as it did , and that even then when almost all the tribes were lost ; how frivolous do they make this prophecie of iacob , in setting off so petty things in such magnificent terms , and leaving out the most notable matters that belong to that tribe ? and lastly , that that addition to the jurisdiction of david does not so well fit nor fill up the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as that of the messias the jews expect . . to that of ieroboam , that ieroboam was not anointed king in shiloh , but in sichem a city of ephraim : and that this conspiracy did not take away the sceptre from iuda , but rather gave occasion to iuda of being a kingdome of it self , and such as was not dissolved for many hundred years after , whereas before it was but a part of the kingdome of israel . and lastly to that of nebuchadonosor , that this interpretation puts a very foolish and frivolous sense upon the prophecie , as if it ran thus ; that the sceptre shall not be taken from iuda , till some one come and take it by force . as if iacob would venture to foretel that iuda would not be such a fool as to give away his sceptre , though he might be so either cowardly or unfortunate to have it wrested out of his hands . wherefore he that is prophesied of here must be to the jews more then a mere robber or despoiler , and must have some special relation to them of either being their king or prophet in some more then ordinary manner ; or else the sense will be very flat and inept , as if he should say , the sceptre will not be taken away before it be taken away . . besides , the sceptre was not so much taken away by the babylonish captivity , as sequestred for a time , during which space they were ascertained from god by the mouths of his prophets , that they should return again within the space of seventy years . so that it was rather an interregnum then an abolition of the iudaical politie . which some would have to continue in some small degree amongst themselves even in that interval of their captivity , as having their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , who had a power over all the people of iuda . but that is more then is worth the contending for . god's obligation by the mouth of his prophets to bring them back within seventy years , and the smallness of the continuance of their captivity in respect of the enjoiment of their liberty afterwards , are sufficient of themselves to make that captivity onely a suspension , not a taking away , of the sceptre from iuda . to all this you may add the unsutable connexion of this prophecie with the foregoing verses , where iuda is so magnificently spoke of for his stoutness and courage ; to which presently it is subjoined ( according to this interpretation ) that the sceptre shall never be taken away , till some vanquish him and take it away , as it seems nebuchadonosor did : which is as incoherent and insipid sense as can be imagined , as i partly intimated before . but to interpret it , as the ancient jews have interpreted it , of the messias , the coherence is very perfect , viz. that this stout warriour iuda shall not finally lose his sceptre , till that special messenger of god and expectation of the nations come , viz. the messias , who shall be of a more universal concernment then to that little handfull of the world , the iews . . the next starting-hole they seek , they think they have found in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , phansying that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may there signifie ( as it does sometimes ) in aeternum ; but the accent athnack in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is as much as a colon in latine , hinders them from that evasion . . the last pretended ambiguity is in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which , say they , may signifie either a tribe or a staffe , viz. of support and aid , or a rod of castigation and affliction . taking it for a tribe , the prophecie may run thus , that the tribe of iuda shall never be taken away , til the messias come ; or thus , that the tribe of benjamin , whatever become of the rest of the tribes , shall not be taken from juda , &c. taking it for a staffe , the sense is this , that juda , be he in what captivity or oppression soever , yet he will be supported and succoured by some or other , til the messias come . taking it for a rod ; that the rod of castigation and affliction will never be taken away from juda , til shiloh come . . to which i answer , and first in common to them all , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being thus put in the prophecie , and so naturally answering one to another , if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 did as ordinarily signifie a scribe as one that had political power and rule , yet it were somewhat a forced thing to expound it so in this place , the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 directing so naturally to the other sense ; & still more forced if you take notice of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ex semine ejus , a thing not stood upon in those inferiour offices of a scribe or expounder of the law. to which you may add that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is never so expounded in scripture by the seventy , but alwaies either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that though they might shuffle off the right sense of the prophecie in the beginning thereof , yet the following part defends both it self and the other from that violence and injury . for there must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , political power , in iuda , till shiloh come , let 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie what it will. . but to touch upon them also in several ; where we must take notice that the tribe of iuda , not his person , is the subject of this prophesie . the sense therefore of the first interpretation will be this , that judah will not be taken from judah , till shiloh come . which is very ridiculous . but so far as it is possible iudah is taken from iudah , and therefore shiloh is come . for iudah is taken all apieces and scattered amongst the nations in all the quarters of the world. or if they will against reason phansy the person of iudah the subject of this prophecie , ( of which the sense will then be , iudah his tribe shall not be taken from him , till shiloh come , ) the patriarch would have expressed himself more determinately and said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 naturally signifies , no tribe at all should be taken from him , whereas ten have been carried away at a clap and never yet returned . besides if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie his own tribe , that is properly taken from him too , and lost , they not being under his rule , that is , under the government of iuda ; but he is like a commander whose armie is quite routed , and all carried away from him captive , and under the command of strangers : and though they bear his name still , what is that if they be not under his power ? surely the patriarch's mind was taken up with mean matters on his death-bed , if there be no more in the prophecie then so . . the second interpretation , understanding still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for a tribe , is lyable to the like exceptions with the first , and the foolery of it still more palpably deprehendible . for here it is exceeding evident that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , will necessarily signifie , not a tribe shall be taken from iuda , &c. for it is as if one should say , that a sheep shall not be taken out of the fold , till dametas come . but if dametas coming , there should be found onely one left , the other shepheard would think himself deluded ; if he that promised him should pretend he has kept his word in keeping but one sheep in the fold . for it were a foolish fallacy to plead , that he promised that a sheep should not be taken away , and that there is a sheep that is not . so that it is plain that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , one particular tribe , benjamin , cannot be understood , and therefore none at all . for all the rest were carried away by salmanassar into perpetual captivity . . to the third interpretation we answer , that iacob is distributing peculiar benedictions to every one of his sons ; but this is common to them all , and therefore not to be affixed to iuda : and then , that it is a petty business amongst such illustrious predictions and encomiums of iuda , that he shall not be put to such utter streights but that he shall be able to live , though an underling , and dependent on other people ; so that this is a very wretched and dilute sense of the prophecie . . and the fourth is as ill , if not worse . for first , as before , what is common to all the tribes , and yet belongs more to the other tribes then to iuda ( the ten i mean that were carried away by salmanassar ) is here appropriated to iuda , and that in the midst of encomiums and blessings . read the whole prophecie concerning iuda , and at the first sight you will discover the unreasonableness of this patch , if this be the meaning of this part of the prophecie . besides , the prophecie according to this sense could not be true . for iuda was a flourishing kingdome or commonwealth for many hundreds of years together , as appears out of their own history . . and lastly , in answer to both these last interpretations at once ; the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 simply set down as it is here without any other circumstances to determine the sense of it , never signifies either the staffe of maintenance or the rod of chastisement . so that they might as well expound it a crutch , as either . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will certainly signifie a crutch : and therefore taking that liberty that they take , the sense of this prophecie may run thus , a crutch shall not depart from iuda , nor a scribe from betwixt his feet , till shiloh come : that is , that iuda never will want a scribe with a crutch , that is , an halting scribe , a scribe that will make lame and crooked expositions of the law in defence of that capital errour of theirs , till the second coming of the messias . . i have given you a brief tast of the fond evasions the jews make use of , to hide the plain sense of this prophecie of iacob : concerning which it is worth the taking notice , that as their expositions are very vain and seem so to us , so it is manifest that they are unsatisfactory even to themselves , in that they have produced so many . for what could put them upon excogitating a new one but a dissatisfaction in the old ? and though they have pumped out as many as they can , they do not know which to adhere to . chap. iii. . the prophecy of haggai . . the natural sense of the prophecy . . that the second temple could not be more glorious then the first but by receiving the messias into it . . that herod's temple could not be understood hereby . . an answer to their subterfuge concerning ezekiel's temple . . that the prophecy of malachi addes further force to that of haggai . . that the prophet could understand no other temple then that which was then standing . . but if they could have found out any tolerable evasion in this prophecy , yet their work is not done , there being other plain predictions to the same purpose : as in haggai , for thus saith the lord of hosts , yet once , it is a little while , and i will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land : and i will shake all nations , and the desire of all nations shall come , and i will fill this house with glory , saith the lord of hosts . the silver is mine , and the gold is mine , saith the lord of hosts . the glory of this latter house shall be greater then that of the former , saith the lord of hosts , and in this place will i give peace . . the natural sense of which prophecy is plainly this : the prophet encourages the people to work and build the temple , because that though it should not be so costly as the former in ornaments of gold and silver , which yet it were an easie thing for god to bestow if he would , ( the silver is mine and the gold is mine ; ) yet the glory of this latter house shall be greater then the former , in that it shall be honoured with the presence of the messiah in it , who is called here the desire of all nations : and as he is elsewhere styled the prince of peace , so is his coming set out here by the gift of peace ; and in this place will i give peace , saith the lord of hosts . . now we demand of the iewes , in what respect this second house was more glorious then the former , if the messiah came not into it while it was standing . that it was a pitiful structure in comparison of solomon's temple , the weeping of the old men at the rearing of the edifice was a plain demonstration . besides that the rabbins themselves say it was destitute of five prerogatives the other had : viz. the urim and thummim , the shechina , fire from heaven , the ark of the covenant , and the spirit of prophecy . the evasions of the jews here are very poor and inconsiderable : viz. . that though the temple at first was not so glorious , yet when herod had reformed it , it was more splendid and stately then solomon's . which is not only false , but if it were admitted to be true , would not salve the meaning of the prophecy . for all those external ornaments could not compensate the losse of the five preeminences above-named . besides that it is ridiculous to make so petty a design of building a fine temple to be expressed with such exceeding high language as if the greatest miracle in the world were to be exhibited , ( which yet was done by herod , the vilest of men ) i will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land , &c. and the second alledgement , that this latter temple stood ten years longer then the former , is still more frivolous . and therefore at last they are forced to quit this temple , and affix the prophecie on a third , viz. ezekiel's temple . which is yet unbuilt , though it be above two thousand years since that prophecie ; whenas the prophet said , yet a little while , and i will shake the heavens and the earth , &c. . but the jews will be still obstinate , and still urge that it is plain how magnificent a temple ezekiel's is , and that it is clearly prophesied of , and must be at last , and that therefore they will not expect their messias till then . but to this i briefly answer , first , that it may be , that vision of the temple was nothing else but an exhibition of the temple of solomon , such as it was when nebuchodonosar destroyed it . to which opinion grotius is very inclinable . secondly , if it be a more magnificent structure , that the prophecie is not absolute , as that of the messiah , but conditional ; as seems to be expresly intimated in the very prophecie , ezekiel . upon which , i conceive , it may be a representation of such a magnificent structure as the iews would have raised even in their messiah's time , if they had not refused him , that they would have pulled down herod's temple as built by the hands of so execrable a wretch , and raised this structure of ezekiel . this had been the natural issue of their embracing the messiah ; but the counsel of god must stand . or lastly , that the whole vision is of a mere mystical or spiritual meaning , which the vision of the holy waters and the strange virtue of them , as also the trees there mentioned ( * chap. . ) seem shrewdly to insinuate . so that no argument drawn from the temple of ezekiel can enervate the force of this prophecie of haggai , it being so very clear in it self , and the other so many waies interpretable to a compliance therewith . . the truth whereof will be still more evident if we adde that of malachi ; behold , i will send my messenger , and he shall prepare the way before me : and the lord whom ye seek , shall suddenly come to his temple ; even the messenger of the covenant , whom ye delight in : behold , he shall come , saith the lord of hosts . which prophecie is parallel to the foregoing prophecie , and does more fully describe the person of the messias , whereby we may be the better assured that they are both meant of him : and the time here again seems plainly enough to be predefined , viz. that he would come into that temple that the iews had then standing , though it had not been long rebuilt , and grace it with his presence before it should be utterly ruined and laid wast . . this certainly is the natural sense of this prophecie , and it is a very harsh thing to think that malachi had any other temple in his mind but this . but this temple has been laid level to the ground above one thousand six hundred years agoe , and therefore the messias either came into his temple then , or the prophecie is false . for there never was any since for him to come into , nor is now , nor will be again for ever , at least before his coming . for how shall the jews build them a temple before they have found the messias ? so that the messias will be first , and the temple after , if at all . but certainly this prophecie of malachi supposes the temple first and ready built , and that the messias in due time will be born into the world , and come into it . which therefore was the second temple . chap. iv. . the prophecie of daniel . . the exposition of the prophecie . . that the said exposition is as easie and natural as the meaning of any writing whatsoever ; and what an excellent performance it would be to demonstrate out of chronologie , that the passion of christ fell two or three daies after the beginning or before the end of the last week . . the summe of the sense of the whole prophecie . . that the circumscription of the prophetical weeks is not made by the vastation of the city , but by the accomplishment of those grand prophecies concerning the messiah . and that no epocha can be true that does not terminate upon them . . the last prophecie which we shall alledge is out of daniel , chap. . where he meditating upon that prediction of ieremie , that seventy years should be accomplished in the desolations of ierusalem , and praying earnestly to god in behalf of the people , the angel gabriel by express command was sent to him to impart this prophecie to him . i. seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city , to finish the transgression , and to make an end of sinnes , and to make reconciliation for iniquity , and to bring in everlasting righteousness , and to seal up the vision and prophecie , and to anoint the most holy. ii. know therefore and understand , that from the going forth of the cōmandement to restore and to build ierusalem , unto the messiah the prince , shall be seven weeks , and threescore and two weeks , the street shall be built again and the wall , even in troublesome times . iii. and after threescore and two weeks shall messiah be cut off , but not for himself ; and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary , and the end thereof shall be with a floud , and to the end of the warre desolations are determined . iv. and he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week , and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease , and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate , even until the consummation , and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate . . this is so eminent a prophecie , and so mainly to the purpose , that we are concerned to annex some short notes upon every verse , that the sense may appear more plain ; and if there be any diversity of interpretations , that we may the better shew that none does prejudice the main scope we drive at . i. seventy weeks , that is , weeks of years . of which sense there is no doubt with either jew or christian. and seventy of such weeks , not so precisely as that what is foretold may not come to pass before the seventieth week be quite run out , or may not run out into some part of a following week ; the reckoning being by weeks and not by years , as mr. mede also has well observed , and is a supposition that no body can justly cavil at . are determined . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , cut out , as some would have it , implying that immediately after the expiration of these , the jews would into captivity again . but that curiosity is more then needs , and not so conformable to the sense of the prophecie : so that in my apprehension our english translation has the odds of it . upon thy people and upon holy city . i. e. near upon the expiration of the seventieth week the people of the jews shall be no longer the people of god , nor their city holy , their religion naturally ceasing upon some act of theirs , whereby a better , according to the purpose of god , shall be brought in . to finish transgression , or , to fill up , perfect , or compleat transgression . for so will the * word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here signifie , and seems to be the most natural sense in this place : as if the angel should say , seventy weeks shall the scourge be taken from thy people , wherein they will again follow their own evil waies and increase their sins to the very height : which they did the most notoriously by killing their messiah . and to make an end of sin . or , to put an end to the judaical sin-offerings . for so will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie ; and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is as much as to seal , denotes a putting an end to a thing by fulfilling and completing it , as towards the latter end of this verse , to seal up the vision and prophecie , the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used . and to make reconciliation for iniquity : or , to expiate iniquity . for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies : but the sense is much-what the same in both . and to bring in everlasting righteousness . i. e. such a law or religion which shall endure for ever , and according to which if we live , that will be our justification , not the works of moses's law nor those offerings nor sacrifices . and to seal up the vision and prophecie . i. e. to fulfill and accomplish the prophecies , viz. those great important prophecies concerning the messiah . and to anoint the most holy , viz. the most holy person that ever lived . for though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be the feminine gender , and may seem to signifie rather sanctity in the abstract , or res sancta , yet the jews themselves understood it of a person ; moses gerundensis of the very messiah : and it is used of any thing consecrate to god , whether field , man , or cattel , levit. . . besides that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 need not be a noun of the feminine gender , but be the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sanctus , as appears from levit. . . and numb . . . or the words there are to be read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and therefore again confirme that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 belongs to persons consecrated as well as things . if it had been meant of the most holy place of the temple , it had in all likelihood been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might go for the most holy place , christ was also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the most eminent manner imaginable : for in him dwelt the * godhead bodily . ii. from the going forth of the commandement to restore and to build ierusalem . viz. from the decree or command of artaxerxes in the seventh year of his reign mentioned ezra . whereby ezra was inabled to constitute magistrates and judges over the people , to have power of life and death amongst themselves and to live after their own political laws . in which concession cannot possibly but be included a licence or decree to build up the houses of ierusalem . besides that , as funccius also pleads , their liberty of living under their own magistrates is the truest and most substantial sense of building their city : and vers . . there is express leave given to make what use they please of the remainder of those liberal contributions which were given for sacrifices and religious services . whence it is plain the power of building the city was included in this commission ; onely ezra cared not to begge that expresly that would be involved in a greater grant and such as might incline the king's spirit more powerfully , viz. matters of religion , as you may see vers . . wherefore this is the proper decree for rebuilding the city , or else none . for the titles of the other decrees are either for building the temple , or else restrained to the rearing of the walls of the city , the houses having been built before , as you may see by reading the history of ezra and nehemiah . unto messiah the prince : that is , unto the manifestation of that person that is so well known and so much expected by the iews under the name of their messiah , the word being never used absolutely but concerning him . shall be seven weeks , and sixty two weeks : that is , sixty nine weeks , there being no mystery in the parting of these numbers , saving an hebrew idiom to be understood from ezekiel . . and genes . . often in that chapter , as also . vers . . as grotius comments upon the place . funccius offers at something more considerable , that the state of the iewish commonwealth should be more unsettled for the first seven weeks or thereabouts , as is to be understood out of ezra and nehemiah . the street shall be built again and the walls , even in troublesome times . that is , not only the area of ierusalem shall again be replenished with houses , but the wall shall also be built again , though in troublesome and unsettled times ; as appears in the above-mentioned history : for the builders were fain to have their swords in readiness as well as their trowels . iii. and after the sixty two weeks , which succeed immediately the seven weeks , that is to say , after sixty nine weeks shall messiah be cut off , viz. the above-named messiah the prince . for that must needs be the most natural meaning thereof ; and , as i said before , messiah is never put thus absolutely but here : whence doubtlesly the jews gave him whom they expected for their redeemer the name of messiah . cut off . if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it might signifie transfixus or affixus , as funccius , would have it : but it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies to cut off , not only from life , but , as mr. mede observes , from reigning as a king. and in respect of the iews he was cut off in both these senses . for he was the messiah their prince whom his own people cut off from life , and thereby from themselves , that they should be no more his people nor he their king : and therefore it follows 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is not , and not for himself ; but the sense is , the messiah shall be cut off by the hands of the people of the jews , and that people shall be none of his . this exposition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 manasseh ben israel likes so well , that he applies it where it is not so natural and easie , or else is tautological . for he interprets it of agrippa the last king of the jews , whom , he saies , vespasian slew some three years before the destruction of the temple , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so the kingdome was no longer agrippa's nor any of his race . but in this sense concerning the messiah , it being presupposed that he is cut off by the jewish people , it is very easie to conceive that they are the nominative case to the verb understood in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that the people that cut him off should be no longer his people , by reason of this hainous act of theirs . so that upon this act the iews ceased to be the people of god ; and thus being given over , at last comes that vengeance prophesied of in the following words , that their city and sanctuary should be destroyed by those that were designed to be the people of the prince the messiah . for so mr. mede interprets the place excellently well in my judgement , rendring 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , populus principis futurus ; understanding thereby the romans , in which empire christ was to have chiefly his church and kingdome . and it is most natural that as messiah before was the same with messiah the prince , so the prince here should be the same with the messiah , the sense fitting so exceeding well . whenas if the messiah be not understood here by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but only some prince and people at large [ the people of the prince which shall come , ] the sense thereof will be more lax and dilute , which would be more knit together and made of a more even contexture upon mr. mede's hypothesis . and the end thereof shall be with a floud . that is , after the destruction of the city , the roman armie will overflow iudaea . and to the end of the war desolations are determined . grotius interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for , and renders it , pro fine belli erit definita a desolatio . deus hunc exitum bello isti praefinivit , terrae vastitatem , god has determined that issue of the war , the devastation of the land. iv. and he shall . mr mede renders it , nevertheless he shall . for indeed the conjunction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has the force in a manner of any conjunction , and may be rendred according as the sense directeth . and the most genuine sense seems that which mr. mede has given , that though israel was cast off , yet a remnant according to the election of grace should be wone off to christ by the preaching of the gospel of his kingdome : which should be done before and after his passion , by himself and his apostles . this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or new covenant , * which adorns the very title-page of the greek testament . and the seventy turn it in this place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . confirm the covenant . that is , as i said , the covenant of the gospel : see funccius upon the place . with many , i. e. with several ; for so the word signifies frequently : though it be true also that many of the jews were converted and entred the covenant within the space of this one week , which is the seventieth or last week . and in the midst of the week , or , of that week . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may either signifie in one half-part of the week , as grotius interprets it , or else simply , in the midst of the week . in which interpretation the midst need not signifie mathematically the middle part of the week equidistant from the extremes , but any part within the extremes : so that the second or sixth year of the week may be said in this sense , and that truly , in the midst of the week . so that the angel may mean no more by this expression then that what he foretells shall be done after the last week begins and before it ends . he shall make the sacrifice and oblation to cease . viz. the messiah then suffering shall antiquate and put an end to the jewish sacrifices and oblations . for he that was prefigured by them being come , and having been sacrificed and made an oblation , it is plain that those other ceased as to right and efficacy , that is , were abrogated or abolished by the excellencie of his person , who offered up himself once a sacrifice and atonement for the sinnes of the whole world. if chronologie will but admit of it , the wit of man cannot find out a more becoming interpretation then this concerning his making the daily sacrifice to cease . which is as it were the scope of the whole prophecie . for to intimate within what week the messiah should suffer , upon whose death the antiquation of moses's law and the introduction of the everlasting righteousness depended , is a thing more decorous , & more befitting so precise an accuracy , then the destruction of the temple , which other interpreters say is meant by making the sacrifice to cease . besides , it had been more proper and compendious to have named the temple then the oblations and sacrifices , if there had not been something of an higher nature meant by this expression . the main drift therefore of the prophecie is , more curiously to define the time , as of his manifestation , so likewise of the death of the messiah , which i question not but may very well be hinted at here in this expression ; and what was spoke more at large and indeterminately in the foregoing verse touching his being cut off , may here , for time , be more punctually defined : and as at the mention of his death before , there was annexed that vengeance upon them that murdered him ; so here , where it is repeated again , the same vengeance is repeated . and for the overspreading of abomination he shall make it desolate . the hebrew is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which with mr. mede i would render thus , and commanding over a wing of abominations he will be a destroyer , i. e. over an armie of idolatrous gentiles , namely the roman armie . see also grotius upon matth. . v. . whose interpretation , though it differ something from mr. mede's , yet in my opinion does confirm it very much : he proving by several citations out of authors , that the romans bore upon their standards the images of their gods , which in hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . we shall only instance in that one of many out of tacitus ; fulgentibus aquilis , signisque & simulacris deûm in modum templi . so fitly is this wing of abominations interpreted of an armie of idolaters . even until the consummation and that determined . read , and even until the consummation , i. e. the finishing of this destruction . shall be poured upon the desolate . read , it shall continue upon the distressed , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the roman armie shall continue upon ierusalem til they have brought it to utter devastation : or , it shall be spread like water poured out upon the desolate , in that sense that inundation was interpreted in the foregoing verse . for , as i intimated before , this is but a repeated prediction of the same vengeance upon the same occasion , namely , the consideration of their murdering their messiah , which is implied in that expression , he shall make the sacrifice and oblation to cease , himself then becoming a sacrifice according to the eternal counsel of god. . the sense which we have given of this prophecie is so coherent and of one piece , though taken out of several interpreters , that no sense can be applied to any writings more naturally . so that , as i said , if chronologie will but favour the interpretation , it is most certain that what we have given is the meaning thereof . and funccius , who has made the seventy weeks expire exactly with the breath of our saviour upon the cross , if he could have found the ending but a year sooner , had given a tolerable and commendable account of this prophecie according to the latitude of the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above mentioned . and it is not a thing hopeless , but that he and other chronologers may be mistaken a year in their computations . but whoever out of his industry and skill in history and chronologie shall demonstrate to the world , that the passion of our saviour fell out some two or three years before the ending or else after the beginning of the last week , his invention will be more to christian religion then either the venae lacteae or the circulation of bloud to physick and philosophy . for the fulfilling of this prophecie will appear so clear and complete , that if porphyrius were alive again , he would again be driven to say it was writ post eventum , that is to say , that the jews have contrived a prophecie to confute themselves withall . . the good news therefore that the angel gabriel imparts to daniel in this prophecie is this , that they should return out of captivity ; and that from the going out of certain decree to rebuild ierusalem and give it the form of a city , that is , a power of being governed by their own laws and magistrates , that from that time forward god had determined seventy weeks for them , that he would give them his special protection so long , and they should be his people , and their city should be holy , their oblations and sacrifices should not be antiquated , nor their law and religion abrogated : but within that time a new law or religion should begin , which should never have an end , which therefore is called the everlasting righteousness ; and that the iudaical sin-offerings should then cease , that is , should be no longer warrantable or effectual . for the messiah should by that time be come , whom they will slay , and he shall by his death put an end to all other sacrifices , his bloud being sufficient to reconcile the whole world to god. but though the design of divine providence herein was holy and good , yet the jews crucifying him out of malice and envie , ( enormous wickedness having blinded their eyes ) the people of the jews shall be cast out of god's favour , nor shall they be the people of the messiah , but a people that shall be the messiah's , viz. the romans , shall come and destroy their city and sanctuary with an utter destruction . . this is a short and easie account of the whole prophecie , in which it plainly appears , that the foretelling of the destruction of the city is but an appendix to the main prophecie , and comes but in by the by , as an effect of that foul act of the jews in slaying their prince : but that the circumscription of the prophetical weeks is made by those main designs they were allotted to the jews for , that is , they should not expire till the everlasting righteousness was brought in , till the prophecies were fulfilled , and the most holy was anointed , that is , till the messiah was come , till he suffered , rose again , ascended into heaven , sent down the holy ghost upon the apostles , and set the christian religion on foot in the world. all which was done in the last week . after which the city was to be destroyed by the romans ; but there was no need of precisely setting down the time when . but the noise and clatter of the devastation of it has so disturbed the judgments and phancies of many learned writers , that they have very crookedly and unnaturally haled on the extent of the weeks to reach the destruction of the city , and so have caused a needless obscurity in so pregnant a testimonie of the truth of our religion . for indeed there can be no genuine or satisfactory interpretation of daniel's weeks , unless they all of them , the seven , the sixty two , with the single week , follow one another continuedly in one line , and such an epocha be pitched upon , as that at the expiring of the sixty nine weeks the messiah may be manifested to the world , and in the seventieth week be cut off , and be made a sacrifice for sinne , and so abrogate the jewish law , and bring in the everlasting righteousness , &c. to which the epocha from the seventh year of artaxerxes longimanus does fairly lead , nor is there any other tolerable besides it ; which is a further confirmation of the truth thereof . to say nothing , how there is none of the three decrees , but that which went out in the seventh year of artaxerxes , that can so fitly be called a decree for rebuilding the city , as i have intimated already . chap. v. . the application of the first verse of the prophecie to prove that the messiah is come . . the iews evasions propounded and answered . . an application of the second verse of the prophecie , with a confutation of those rabbins opinions that make cyrus , jehoshua and zerobabel , or nehemiah their messiah . . an application of the third verse , with a confutation of the jews fiction of agrippa's being the messiah to be cut off . . i have compleated the sense of the prophecie of daniel , and that with more accuracy then this present occasion required , i speak in regard of pitching upon that epocha with funccius , which is set down ezra . for without being so particular there is strength enough in the prophecie to evince , that the messiah is already come . for from the first verse thereof it is very clear , that within seventy weeks the most holy was to be anointed , and an everlasting righteousness to be brought in . now i demand of the iews or any else , take their epocha where they will , if they can finde any everlasting righteousness , law or religion , that was brought in before the expiration of daniel's weeks , if it be not this of christianity : but by the prophecie there must be some law or everlasting righteousness brought in by that time . and what or who was that most holy that was anointed within these weeks , if it was not the very christ whom we christians worship ? the iews themselves acknowledge the second temple was not anointed : therefore it must belong to some person ; which must be the messiah mentioned in the following verse . i may add also , how is vision and prophecie fulfilled , ( the most eminent whereof was concerning their messiah ) i say , how are they compleated within the space of these seventy weeks , if the messiah be not yet come ? . the iews have no way in the world to evade here but by forcing the most absurd interpretation upon this verse of the prophecie that can be imagined ; as if the sense were , that those things there foretold should come to pass after the seventy weeks . whenas it is plain that the casting the weeks so into parts , and expresly foretelling that in this part this shall come to pass , and in that , that ; it is plain , i say , from hence , that the main scope of the prophecie is to tell what things will come to pass before their expiration . which we shall be the better assured of if we examine the fondness of the other supposition , and apply it to the words of the text , which are these , seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city , or , cut out for thy people and for thy holy city , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to finish transgression , &c. if these things that follow in this verse be to be understood as foretold to come to pass after the seventy weeks , what is the sense of the preposition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ? questionless there can be but these two senses of it ; either so as the septuagint have translated it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , viz. that transgression may be finished , as also our english translatours have rendered it , which doubtless is the true sense ; or else it must signifie the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and there is no sense imaginable besides these two that can be pretended . if the first , the gross absurdity is this , that whereas there has been about three hundred weeks for the compleating those things mentioned there in that verse , and they not yet done , according to the jews opinion ; yet the prophecie mentions only seventy , and those wherein they themselves confess nothing at all was to be done of them ; then which nothing can be imagined more wilde and ridiculous . if the second , i answer that the seventy and other unprejudiced interpreters alway turn it according to the former sense . nay , that abarbanel and manasseh , who otherwise pervert the sense of this prophecie , yet they translate it so too , and yield that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never signifies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 until . and lastly , if it did so , yet the sense of the prophecie would be pittifully lame and imperfect , if we compare it with the event . for the sense would be , seventy weeks are determined upon thy people , until or before that the everlasting righteousness be brought in , the most holy anointed , vision and prophecie perfected , &c. which certainly supposes that within a little time after , at least after less then seventy weeks , these things should be fulfilled ; and yet there has thrice seventy weeks gone over since the expiration of the first seventy , and no tidings of any such things . wherefore it is more clear then the meridian sun , that the things there understood were to come to pass within the seventy weeks expressly spoke of by the prophet daniel . . again , from the second verse of this prophecie we demonstrate , that the messiah is come : because from the going out of the commandment or decree to rebuild the city to the messiah is but sixty nine weeks . wherefore imagine what decree you will , the time is run out , and many hundred years besides . and that this prophecie is to be understood of that great messiah their prince and redeemer , appears plainly enough because he is called here by daniel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 absolutely , as being his proper name , whenas in all other places of scripture it is an appellative . whence it is more then conjectural that the iews had the name of their messiah out of this place , and understood it of that messiah we speak of . but after that unhappy mistake of theirs in refusing their messiah when he came , they have forced other interpretations , though utterly unapplicable to the text ; some understanding by messiah king cyrus , others nehemias , others iehoshua the priest , others zerobabel : none of which conceits are so much as possible . for the epocha from which they must reckon , must be from some command or decree to rebuild the city . for so the words run , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the promulgation of the decree to restore , &c. that that is the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is plain from esther , chap. . ver . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , let there goe forth a royal command or decree . whence it is plain that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is as much as a decree , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the promulgation of it ; as may be understood also from luke . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth put the business out of all controversie that this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is , as the seventy often translate it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a command , not a foretelling or talking of things ; because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does not signifie concerning the restoring , but to restore . so that none that have any either common sense or but moderate skill in the hebrew , but will confess that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies , from the decree to cause to return , &c. from whence it is very manifest that none of those persons which the jews here offer can be accepted for the messiah mentioned in this prophecie . not cyrus ; because if you will apply him to the first decree , which was his own , the account is absurd at first sight . for thus you must reckon from the edict of cyrus to the same cyrus . the other decrees are after cyrus , and therefore the sense will be more absurd , if any thing can be more . the reason is much-what the same concerning iehoshua and zerobabel , for they were the very persons that immediately executed cyrus his decree . and for nehemias , he is a great many years too late from cyrus his decree , and as much too near to that decree that went out the seventh year of artaxerxes . this i speak in reference to that evasion they seek in the parting of the number of this prophecie into seven weeks , and sixty two weeks , as if it should be but seven weeks from the decree to the messiah , that is , fourty nine years . but besides that it is plain , chronologie will not fit their turn for this subterfuge , it is further evident that if it would , it will yet appear ut a subterfuge . for unless you will joine the seven weeks and the fifty two weeks together , it will not make good sense , as any one that examines it will easily understand ; and that the messiah is not to come within the first seven weeks , appears in that he is to be cut off after the sixty two weeks . . which shall be a third argument ( from the third verse of the prophecie ) that the messiah is come . after sixty two weeks the messiah shall be cut off , that is , not until the last week begin and before it expire . for there is no question but the seventy weeks being thus divided into parts for the setting out the time of the coming and appearing of the messiah even to his death , that what he did visibly or suffered in the world is circumscribed within those weeks ; and therefore we may safely conclude that before the seventy weeks expired the messiah was cut off , that is , that he was cut off above sixteen hundred years agoe , to wit , before the destruction of the city , as plainly appears in the text , that makes the sacking of ierusalem a consequent of his death : and the number of the weeks , pitch upon what decree you please , must needs expire many years before the taking of the city , and therefore the messiah was cut off , and consequently came into the world so many years agoe . here the iews , to evade so manifest a demonstration , tell us a story of one agrippa their last king , and of mumbas his sonne , whom they say vespasian slew at rome three years and an half before the destruction of the temple . this was he that was cut off from the kingdome of iudaea , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and it was no longer his nor his posterities . this is the most specious answer they have made yet , but yet upon examination will be found excessively weak . for first it is plain from records of history and antiquity , that agrippa the last king of the iews lived nigh upon thirty years after the destruction of ierusalem . and then in the second place , if we should suppose their fiction to be true , the last week of the seventy will either expire many years before , or run out beyond the cutting off this agrippa , if you make , as you ought , the decree for building of the city the epocha of the account , and affix it to the seventh year of either funccius his artaxerxes or scaliger's . to all which you may adde that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being put here so absolutely , it cannot but be understood of the great messiah the jews did and do still expect , their own rabbins expounding it so while they were unprejudiced ; and that it is most natural to understand the same person spoken of in the whole prophecie ; who is first prefigured in the expression of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which their own doctors also interpret of their messiah ) by which if the temple had been meant , it had been rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and therefore again an anointed person being understood in the first verse , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentioned in the second and third must be the same person ; and there being in the first joyned with the mention of him not only so sacred a title as the most holy , but also the bringing in of everlasting righteousness , the expiating of sin , and fulfilling of prophecies , it is plain that so mean a person as agrippa ( or any else they have or can name ) is unapplicable to this prophecie of daniel ; such things being there foretold as are utterly incompetible to him : but such as will anon appear from other prophecies to be singularly competible to the great messiah the jews expected , and are the characteristicals of his person , as we shall fully make good in its due place . chap. vi. . how convincing evidences those three prophecies of jacob , haggai and daniel are , that the messiah is come . . that it was the general opinion of the jews , that the messiah was to come about that time we say he did . . josephus his misapplication of the prophecie of daniel to vespasian . . a further confirmation out of tacitus , that the jews about those times expected their messiah . . another testimony out of suetonius . . in the mean time it is so plain and apparent from these prophecies of iacob and haggai , that the messiah is already come ; that any one , though secluded from all commerce with these parts of europe , and knowing nothing of the face of things here , if he had but onely certain information that the iewish politie and temple were destroyed , and could but read the above-named prophecies , he would be sure that the messiah was come into the world : as also out of this prophecie of daniel he might without any intelligence at all ( provided only he took notice of the epocha of decrees , and how that the weeks from any one of them would be expired many hundred years ago ) infallibly inferr that the messiah was certainly come . these things are so perfectly clear , that it is needless to add any thing else to confirm the belief of them . . which yet some do by appealing to the judgement of their own rabbins , if they themselves did not conclude that their messiah was to come about that time we say he did . nehemias , a jewish rabbin , that lived some fifty years before christ , did openly declare out of the prophecie of daniel , that the coming of their expected messiah could not be prolonged above fifty years ; as appears out of grotius , if he was not misinformed by stoctoxus . but by what he answers to sarravius , one would think that he saw the place with his own eyes ; ostendit istum mihi locum olim hagae stoctoxus . and that this was not one rabbin's opinion , but the apprehension of many of their wise men , is manifest from what iosephus has written , de bello judaico lib. . cap. . to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that which excited them most of all to the warre , was a doubtful prophecie found in the holy writings , as if about that time some one from their country should be emperour of the world. this the iews took as properly belonging to them , and many of the wise men were deceived in their judgements about the matter . out of which words it plainly appears that the learned of the iews , and in a manner the whole nation , was perswaded that their messiah , whom they thought would be the prince of the known world , was hard at hand . in which perswasion they were so serious that they ventured their lives , liberty , temple and city thereupon , that being the greatest thing that animated them to that infortunate warre . of their firmness in which opinion a further argument is , that they were so ready to phansy this or the other their messiah about those times . for there were many looked upon for a while as such , as herod , iudas gaulonites , ionathas , barchochab and others . . neither does iosephus his note upon the prophecie that gave the iews this confidence , he calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an ambiguous prediction , derogate any thing from the clearness thereof concerning the time. but the character of his person , it seems , was not so perfectly set out , but that they missed the knowing of him when he was come : and therefore it was necessary for iosephus to say that the oracle was ambiguous . but it were ambiguous indeed , if it were , as he would make it , more applicable to vespasian then to the true messiah . for that messiah there prophecied of was to be cut off , which vespasian was not ; and that before the last week , whenas vespasian besieged ierusalem about fourty years after . besides that it is ridiculous to resolve the solemnity of the holy oracles of the prophets into so petty a business , as in stead of their foretelling that one of the iewish lineage should become a great prince , and sway the sceptre over the nations ( which prediction was alwaies looked upon as some peculiar honour and priviledge to the iews ) that only a forraigner coming to iudaea , and for no better end then to sack their city , destroy their temple , and make vassals of them and slaves , that this man after should be chosen emperour of rome , as others had been before him . whether awe and fear might baffle the understanding of iosephus so as to think this a true glosse , though it be but servile flattery , i will not dispute : but whether he thought it false or no , that it is so , i think i have put out of controversie . . but what iosephus records concerning the opinion of his nation , that they thought the coming of their messiah to be about that time , is got into the history of the pagan writers also . cornelius tacitus writes so like to what iosephus has set down , that it seems something like a translation of him , as in his speaking of the prodigies that did fore-run the destruction of the city ; visae per coelum concurrere acies , rutilantia arma , & subito nubium igne collucere templum . expassae repentè delubri fores , & audita major humanâ vox , excedere deos , simul ingens motus excedentium . that is , armies were seen skirmishing in the heavens , weapons glittering , and the temple filled with light from the sudden flashing of the clouds . the door also of the temple instantly flung open , and a voice was heard bigger then the voice of any man , that the gods go out , and withall a mighty bustle of them as going out together . after this presently he addes , quae pauci in m●tum trahebant : pluribus persuasio inerat , antiquis sacerdotum literis contineri , co ipso tempore ut valesceret oriens , profectique judaeà rerum potirentur : quae ambages vespasianum & ti●um praedixerunt . i. e. which some few interpreted as a dangerous presage : most were perswaded that it was contained in the ancient books of their priests , that at that very time the east should grow potent , and that those come from judaea should obtain the empire : which ambages presignified vespasian and titus . in which he plainly intimates that the opinion of the near approach of their messiah was so strong , that it bore against all the ill prodigies , nay made them interpret them to a good sense , as if this excedere deos was but their hastning out to take possession of the nations ; which was true in no other sense then in that christ , who was the peculiar guardian angel , as i may so speak , of the jews before , became afterward the worship of the whole empire . or if you will , god , who was in a manner topical before , restrained to iudaea , became the known and acknowledged god of the whole earth . . suetonius in the life of vespasian ( cap. . ) in express terms calls this expectation of the iews , veterem & constantem opinionem . percrebuerat , saith he , oriente toto vetus & constans opinio , esse in fatis ut eo tempore judaeâ profecti rerum potirentur . id de imperatore romano , quantum eventu postea praedictum patuit , judaei ad se trahentes , rebellarunt , &c. an ancient & constant opinion had grown very common over all the east , that the fates had so destined , that at that time those that came from judaea should become masters of all . which fate , as appeared by the event , foretold of the roman emperour , the jews interpreting in favour of themselves , rebelled , &c. by which expressions of suetonius we may understand how assured the iews were , that that was the time of the coming of their messiah , and that the fame of it was not contained within their own precincts , but had spred over all the east , and that the whole world was at a gaze in expectation of the great prince of the iews . chap. vii . . that it being evident the messiah is come , it will also follow that jesus is he . . that the prophets when they prophesied of any eminent king , priest or prophet , were sometimes carried in their prophetick raptures to such expressions as did more properly concern the messiah then the person they began to describe . . that these references are of two sorts , either purely allegorical , or mixt ; and of the use of pure allegories by the evangelists and apostles . . of mixt allegories of this kind , and of their validity for argument . . that eminent prophecie of isaiah , that so fully characterizes the person of christ. . that the ancient jews understood this of their messiah , and that the modern are forced hence to fancy two messiahs . the soul of the messiah appointed to this office from the beginning of the world , as appears out of their pesikta . . the nine characters of the messiah's person included in the above-named prophecie . . a brief intimation in what verses of the prophecie they are couched . . that this prophecie cannot be applied to the people of the iews , nor adequately to jeremie's person . . special passages in the prophecie utterly unapplicable to jeremie . . we have , i think , sufficiently demonstrated that the time of the coming of the messiah is expired , and therefore ( the predictions of him and promises being not conditional , as i have above intimated , but absolute , ) it undeniably follows that he is come . upon which we might immediately infer , especially considering the time of his coming , that iesus christ is he . for whom else can they possibly pitch upon ? but we shall proceed more punctually , and suspend that inference , until we have laid before you those prophecies that characterize his person , what a one he should be , what he should doe , and what should betide him . . of which there is none so full as that of isaiah , chap. . but before i enter upon it or any other , it will be very convenient , for the preventing of all cavils and tergiversations , to set down a supposition which is both rational in it self , and allowed of , nay highly magnified , in things where their interest does not lie at stake , by the most learned of the iews . and it is this , that that eminent person whom they call their messiah , being at last to give them a visit in this world , and as the very sense of his name imports , which signifies anointed , being to be the top and flower of those three functions in which this anointing was used , viz. prophet , priest and king ; it is very rational to conceive , how in their actuations by the spirit of god , when he fell upon the prophets , that while they prophesied or spake of some more considerable priest , prophet or king ( that wisdome guiding them which is omniscient and more moving then any motion , which reacheth from one end to another mightily , and sweetly orders all things ) they were so actuated and transported , that in that fatidical rapture they were caught up into , the sense of their mind and words was carried further then the particular person they began to describe . so that according to this supposition we will of our own accord acknowledge that several , and those of the most eminent prophecies that characterize the person of christ , did first touch upon some other person , which was but a fainter resemblance of him . but that after this glance they are carried to their main scope they drive at , where they pierce and are fixt , as an arrow stuck in the mark . . now this reference is of two sorts , either a perfect allegorie , or mixt. that i call a perfect allegorie , when all the expressions concerning the person first spoke of do very well and naturally fit him , but may be interpreted ( and that more exquisitely it may be ) of some more illustrious person that comes after . such allusions as these are used by the apostles and evangelists to the great confirmation of our faith , however the iews are scandalized at it . for there can be no other sense of it then this , viz. that either these interpretations which they put upon the prophets were the known interpretations of the iews , and therefore very accommodate to perswade the iews by ; and it was a sign they were right interpretations , they being made before prejudice had blinded them . or else , that these expositions were their own , that is , that they arose in their own minds first ; which was impossible they should , they being but allusions , unless the certain knowledge of what hapned to our saviour christ had put them upon it . so that those allusive proofs are to us strong confirmations that the history of the gospel in those things that seem most incredible is certainly true . i will content my self with that one instance ( though i might alledge many others ) of christ's being born of a virgin. certainly unless they had known that de facto he was so , or that their wise men had interpreted that of isaiah chap. . to that sense , it is incredible that they should ever alledge that place for it ; and they making no use of any other but this , which is only allusory , it is plain the certainty of the event was that which cast them upon the interpretation . . i call a mixt allegorie that which is partly allusoric , as being applicable first to some more inferiour person , whether king , prophet or priest , and then to the messiah , and partly simple and express , not applicable to any but the messiah himself ; the prophet being so actuated by the spirit of god , that in the sublimity of that divine heat he is in , his sense and expressions reach out further then the person that is the type , and strike into such circumstances that are not at all true but in the antitype . and these predictions of this nature concerning the messiah are as demonstrative to those that are not intolerable cavillers , as if the prophecie had been wholly carried to the messiah , without glancing or touching upon any other person . . these things being premised , let us return to isaiah , and peruse his whole prophecie , that we may the more accurately judge thereof . chap. . . who hath believed our report ? and to whom is the arme of the lord revealed ? . for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant , and as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no form nor comeliness : and when we shall see him , there is no beauty that we should desire him . . he is despised and rejected of men , a man of sorrows , and acquainted with grief ; and we hid as it were our faces from him : he was despised , and we esteemed him not . . surely he hath born our griefs , and carried our sorrows ; yet we did esteem him stricken , smitten of god , and afflicted . . but he was wounded for our transgressions , he was bruised for our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon him , and with his stripes we are healed . . all we like sheep have gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; and the lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all . . he was oppressed , and he was afflicted , yet he opened not his mouth : he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter , and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb , so he opened not his mouth . . he was taken from prison and from judgement : and who shall declare his generation ? for he was cut off out of the land of the living ; for the transgressions of my people was he stricken . . and he made his grave with the wicked , and with the rich in his death , because he had done no violence , neither was deceit in his mouth . . yet it pleased the lord to bruise him , he hath put him to grief : when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sinne , he shall see his seed , he shall prolong his daies , and the pleasure of the lord shall prosper in his hand . . he shall see of the travel of his soul , and shall be satisfied : by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justifie many , for he shall bear their iniquities . . therefore will i divide him a portion with the great , and he shall divide the spoile with the strong ; because he hath poured out his soul unto death ; and he was numbred with the transgressours , and he bare the sinne of many , and made intercession for the transgressours . . the ancient and wisest of the iews ever interpreted this chapter of their messiah . and the later rabbins being convinced of the clearness of the prophecie , and respecting the authority of those wise interpreters before them , have been some of them forced to acknowledge two messiahs , the one the son of ioseph , the other of david . the former a suffering messiah , the other victorious and triumphant , rather then to deny the evidence of this prophecie . out of which there is also a special tradition set down in an ancient book amongst the iews , which is called pesikta , which further confirms our assertion of their interpreting of it concerning the sufferings of the messiah ; how that the soul of the messiah was ordained ( and did gladly accept the condition ) to suffer , from the beginning of the world. the tradition runs thus , * that when god created the world , he put forth his hand under his throne of glory , and brought forth the soul of the messiah and all his attendants , and said unto him , wilt thou heal and redeem my sons after six thousand years ? he answered he would . god said again unto him , wilt thou undergoe the chastisements to purge away their iniquities , ( according as it written ( it is the rabbins own application ) certè morbos nostros tulit ? ) the soul of the messiah answered , i will undergoe them and that right gladly . . this is enough to confirm that it was the opinion of the ancient and unprejudiced iews , that this prophecie was meant of their messiah : and , as i said , there is not any one prophecie so full of characteristicals of his person as this , though not all of the like clearness . but i dare say no less then these nine are in some sort or other included in it . . his being rejected by the jews ; . and being made a sacrifice for sin . . his resurrection . . his ascension . . his apotheosis . . the excellency of his doctrine . . his reception by the gentiles . . the destruction of their superstition and of that divine honour done to unwarrantable persons . . and the eternity of his kingdome . . i shall briefly intimate in what verses of the prophecie every of these are hinted . his rejection by his own is plainly intimated vers . , , . his suffering and being a sacrifice for sinne , ver . , , , , . his ascension and resurrection , vers . , . his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ver . . he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death , that is , with the wicked rich men , that is , great potentates of the earth who were rich , powerfull and injurious , those many nimrods in the world , whose sepulchres and monuments were after magnificent temples , and themselves deified as gods. because he had done no violence . the reason is incomparably solid : for if the princes and emperours of the world had divine honours done to them after their death who were but magnifici latrones , as one calleth them , much rather should the messiah , who did no violence , but was so faithfull and good in all things , be exalted unto this honour , have temples built to him , and be worshipped as a god. the verse does further confirm this sense , wherefore i will divide him a portion with the great , and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; because he hath poured out his soul unto death . which spoil cannot be so aptly understood of any thing as this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it being mentioned so upon these terms , after his pouring out his soul unto death . one verse illustrates another so , that i think there can be no doubt of the sense . the excellency of his doctrine is understood vers . . which sets out the success of the gospel . his reception by the gentiles vers . , . for if the gentiles had not come in , there had been small satisfaction ; the jews being excluded , or rather they excluding him . the destruction of their superstition and unwarrantable worship they did to unworthy persons , this is included in their reception of christ. the long duration of his kingdome , v. . and who shall declare his generation ? that is , the permanency of his own royal person , and the succession of his church that will adhere to him for ever . . this is a punctual and very reasonable account of this prophecie : but be it how it will , yet this is out of question , that the suffering and glorification of the messiah is here prefigured , and that if that in the general be not understood , there is no good sense to be made of this prophecie . for to distort it to the affliction of the jewish people , is very harsh , nay impossible , as appears from vers . . for the transgression of my people was he stricken . wherefore it was not the people of god that are here stricken , but some person struck by reason of them . the most tolerable application of the prophecie is to the afflictions of ieremie , of whom grotius has expounded it , ( though not excluding christ ) and has made sense of it in so many places , that i do not deny but that it may be understood of ieremie in the first and less-considerable meaning ; but that withall the application to christ is not merely allusory , but that such things are spoke in this prophecie as cannot but with an exceeding deal of lameness and ineptness be applied to ieremie . . and truly the very beginning of the prophecie is too magnificent by far for the affairs of ieremie ; who has believed our report , &c. for there is nothing so incredible in all those transactions concerning him . again vers . . with his stripes we are healed . it is ridiculous to attempt an application of these words to ieremie . for he was no sin-offering to appease the wrath of god , but what he suffered was rather for their mischief . and that is as foolishly applied to him , vers . . and who shall declare his generation ? as if it were understood of ieremie's longevity , then whom far less considerable men have lived much longer . so frigid and frivolous is this interpretation . neither without violence can that phrase , for he was cut off out of the land of the living , ( especially considering the mention of the grave in the next verse ) be understood otherwise then of the inflicting of death : which was not ieremie's case . so verse . when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sinne : to interpret that of ieremie is plainly to dote . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a sin-offering or sin it self ; but god made ieremy neither sin nor sin-offering for his people . and lastly , to say nothing of the unfitness of that expression , i will divide him a portion with the great , and he shall divide the spoil with the strong , to be applied to that petty business of ieremie , chap. . v. . where the captain of the guard is said to give him victuals and a reward , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , he accommodated him for his journey ( the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shewing what the whole gift was , only a viaticum ; and it had been the greatest reproach imaginable for the prophet to have received any thing more , to have made himself rich with the spoils of his own country-men ) i say , to say nothing of the unfitness of that expression to be applied to so small a matter ; the words following are so full and home , because he hath poured out his soul unto death , that they cannot signifie less then an actual dying ; nor is there any example that they signifie otherwise . and therefore the division of the spoil with the strong must be after death , and denote his apotheosis . it is plain therefore as well out of the confession of the rabbins themselves , as out of the words of the prophecie , that it is not merely an allusorie prefiguration of the messiah , but a down-right description of him in such circumstances as are incompetible to any besides him , and therefore , as i said , is as valid as if it had all been meant of him alone . but because all the characters of him here included are not so full and clear as in other places , and those that are the clearest are of so much importance , that it will not be any loss of labour to adde other confirmations to them , i shall evidence every one of them more fully from other prophecies . chap. viii . . further proofs out of the prophets , that the messiah was to be a sacrifice for sinne . . that he was to rise from the dead . . that he was to ascend into heaven . . that he was to be worshipped as god. . that he was to be an eminent light to the nations ; . and welcomely received by them . what is meant by his rest shall be glorious . . that he was to abolish the superstition of the gentiles . . and that his kingdome shall have no end . . that all these characters are competible to jesus whom we worship , and to him only . . the first mark of the messiah was his rejection , that he should be rejected of the jews ; but those places that foretel his killing , more strongly implying his rejection , we need add nothing particular thereof . that the messiah was to be slain , and be a sacrifice for sinne , besides that full and copious prediction of isaiah , is clear out of daniel , who saith that after sixty nine weeks the messiah was to be cut off ; and then adding afterwards that in the half of the seventieth week he should make the sacrifice to cease , it is plain that his death and ceasing of the jewish sacrifices and oblations were in one week , and that thereupon his death was a sacrifice , whereby those iudaical oblations were antiquated . for it is well known that the temple and their oblations continued about forty years after the passion of christ : so that it cannot be understood of the outward destruction of the temple , and prohibition of sacrifices ; and therefore it must be understood of the nulling of the validity and authority of them , their law of sacrificing being abrogated by that transcendent sacrifice of the body of our blessed saviour upon the cross. for there is nothing else that can be imagined to cease or take away the iudaical sacrifices in the midst of the last week but that . to these we might adde psalm . and zachar. . . but what has been alledged already is more then enough . . let us now rather see what has been foretold of his resurrection from the dead . and in my mind that is a very clear prediction thereof psalm . v. . where david being transported in his spirit by a divine power writes higher matters then are competible to any but the true david , the messiah himself . i have set the lord alwaies before me ; because he is at my right hand , i shall not be moved . therefore my heart is glad , and my glory rejoyceth ; my flesh also shall rest in hope : for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell , neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption . thou wilt shew me the path of life : in thy presence is fulness of ioy , and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore . this is so natural a description of one raised out of the grave before he corrupt there , and ascending into the presence of god in the heavens to enjoy eternal life , that nothing can be more express . but david was never raised out of the grave himself , but his flesh saw corruption . wherefore it appears that it was a prophecie of some other , viz. the messiah , of whom david was a type . . the ascension of the messiah is lively prefigured psalm . the chariots of god are twenty thousand , even thousands of angels : the lord is amongst them as in sinai , in the holy place . thou hast ascended on high , thou hast led * captivity captive : thou hast received gifts or men , for the rebellious also , that the lord god may dwell among them . if this be applied unto christ , the sense is easie , especially if you take notice how the lord was amongst them in sinai , that is , there was one chief angel , whom some would have to be christ , which sustained the person of god , who might have the name of adonai , as christ also has , and is styled the angel of the covenant , malachi . . in lieu of him is here the messiah himself attended with many squadrons of angels , and receiving gifts of his father to communicate to the world , that god might dwell amongst them , that they might be brought in to be of his church . . this prophecie also plainly points at his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but there are also other places that make it still more clear , as psalm . the lord said unto my lord , sit thou at my right hand , till i make thine enemies thy footstool : and then vers . . the lord has sworn , and will not repent , thou art a priest for ever , after the order of melchisedeck . the jews themselves of old acknowledged this psalm to be a prophecie of the messiah ; and the first and fourth verses are such that they can bear no other sense , but that the messiah was to be greater then david , and to be a king , priest and intercessour at the right hand of god for ever . also psalm . . thy throne , o god , is for ever and ever ; the sceptre of thy kingdome is a right sceptre : thou lovest righteousness and hatest iniquity ; therefore god , thy god , hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows . him that the psalmist speaks of here he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and it cannot signifie an ordinary king or magistrate , because he saies , his throne is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , for ever , absolutely , as r. moses aegyptius expounds that phrase . wherefore most justly does the chaldee paraphrast make this psalm a prophecie of the messiah , whose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or divinity is plainly expressed in these verses i have recited . i will add one place more out of the prophet isaiah , chap. . v. . for unto us a child is born , unto us a son is given , and the government shall be upon his shoulder ; and his name shall be called wonderfull , counseller , the mighty god , the everlasting father , the prince of peace : of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end , upon the throne of david and upon his kingdome , to order and to establish it with judgment and with justice , from henceforth and for ever : the zeal of the lord of hosts will doe this . i do not doubt but that this prophecie is in some sort referrable also to hezekiah , and hits upon him first , but the main scope of it is the messiah ; and that therein his divinity and the eternity of his kingdome is set out , both the testimony of the chaldee paraphrast , the translation of the septuagint , and the expressions in the prophecie according to the hebrew text is evidence enough . for they translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and his name shall be called wonderfull counseller , the mighty god , the everlasting father , the prince of peace , after this manner , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which exposition cannot possibly be sense , if referred to hezekiah , but agrees very well with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the messiah . besides the english translation , of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end , is so exactly according to the hebrew , that it is plain all the expressions are not competible to hezekiah ; and grotius himself , who loves to stretch the sense of every particular expression of these kind of prophecies to the person they first aim at , yet he acknowledges ingenuously that they are more fitly and more plainly applicable to the messiah . which to any indifferent man is satisfaction enough that they were meant of him ; especially if he consider that the ancient iews , who may well be thought to understand the genius of their own prophets the best , have long since , before this inveterate contest betwixt the iew and christian , interpreted them so . . the sixth character of his person is the excellencie of his doctrine . this is intimated , as i said , isaiah . by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justifie many ; but is more fully express'd malachi . the lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come into his temple , ( which might have been produced as another prophecie of the divinity of the messiah ) even the messenger of the covenant , whom you delight in ; behold , he shall come , saith the lord of hosts . but who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth ? for he is like a refiners fire , and like fullers sope : and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver ; and he shall purifie the sons of levi , and purge them as gold and silver , that they may offer unto the lord an offering in righteousness . whereby is plainly denoted the purity and sanctity of that law and spirit that the messiah was to communicate to his serious followers , that he would throughly purifie them and purge them from their hypocrisie and sinfulness . and again , isaiah . behold my servant whom i uphold , mine elect in whom my soul delighteth : i have put my spirit upon him , he shall bring forth judgment to the gentiles . he shall not cry , nor lift up , nor cause his voice to be heard in the street . a bruised reed shall he not break , and the smoaking flax shall he not quench ; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth . he shall not fail , nor be discouraged , till he have set judgment in the earth : and the isles shall wait for his law . thus saith god the lord , he that created the heavens and stretched them out , he that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it , he that giveth breath unto the people upon it , and spirit to them that walk therein ; i the lord have called thee in righteousness , and will hold thy hand , and will keep thee , and give thee for a covenant unto the people , for a light of the gentiles : to open the blind eyes , to bring out the prisoners from the prison , and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house . and isaiah . listen , o isles , unto me , and hearken ye people from far . the lord hath called me from the womb , from the bowells of my mother hath he made mention of my name . and he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword , in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me , and made me a polished shaft , in his quiver hath he hid me . and verse . and now saith the lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant , to bring iacob again unto him : though israel be not gathered , yet shall i be glorious in the eyes of the lord , and my god shall be my strength . and he said , it is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of iacob , and to restore the desolations of israel ; i will also give thee for a light to the gentiles , that thou maiest be my salvation to the end of the earth . my salvation , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with an allusion to the very name of isaiah 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies , the salvation of the lord : which seems to be alluded to in the first verse also , from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name . which is so near a kin to the name of iesus , that the messiah may seem to be prefigured in the very name of the prophet isaiah as well as in his person : as it must be confessed that both these two prophecies do in some measure belong to isaiah himself first . but considering how the more excellent kings and prophets were to be types of the messiah , and that the language is so very high , it cannot be doubted but that in these divine raptures and exaltations of spirit , the minde and tongue of isaiah was carried above what was competible to his own person , and therefore must naturally be transferred to the messiah ; it being plain from other places , that there was at last to come some one transcendent prince and prophet anointed in an higher manner and measure then any other . which the iews expected , and called their messiah . and therefore it is therewithal manifest , that their messiah was to be an eximious teacher , prophet or law-giver . . the seventh character is that he should be very welcomely received of the nations ; that which these last prophecies also intimate . but i shall add others also . to this sense the jews themselves interpreted that ancient prophecie of iacob 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to him shall be the gathering together of the nations ; the seventy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and he is the hope or expectation of the nations . and there is yet one , more ancient then that , which implies it ; viz. the promise to abraham that he should be a father of many nations , and that in his seed all * nations of the earth should be blessed . of which other prophecies also witness . isay . . and it shall come to pass in the last daies , that the mountain of the lords house shall be established in the top of the mountains , and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it . the jewish doctours themselves acknowledge this to be understood of the times of the messiah . and chap. . and in that day there shall be a root of jesse which shall stand for an ensign of the people : to it shall the gentiles seek , and his rest shall be glorious ; or , him shall the gentiles seek , viz. in a devotional way , shall pray unto him , and sing praises unto him . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is often used in that sense , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and his rest shall be glorious , & sepulcrum ejus erit gloriosum ; so some turn it , and truely not rashly nor without cause . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in several places signifies the rest of the dead . job . v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; which the seventy render , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : it is in iob's description of the state of the dead . also proverbs . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he shall rest in the congregation of the dead , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is better ; for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are all one , as appears psalm . v. . lastly , psalm . v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aquae requietum , implies such a rest as sleep , the brother of death . for there is nothing more prone then to lye and sleep on the shadie banks of a river . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may very well signifie dormitorium ejus , or sepulcrum ejus , erit gloriosum ; that is , that it shall at last be exalted to the nature of a temple , he shall have divine honour done unto him , and the gentiles shall pray unto him and adore him : as is intimated in the words immediately going before . but this was more then we needed to charge this prophecie with , though it be probable enough it is contained in it . there are sundry other places that serve for the proof of this seventh character : but because it is sufficiently enough demonstrated already , and little or no controversie made of it , i pass to the eighth . . which is the messiah his abolishing the superstition of the gentiles , that is , such worship as they had no divine warrant for , they being so grosly mistaken in the object . this is so plainly included in the two last characters , that i need add no other proof . but if there were need , that in the , and psalms might further confirme it . where he is constituted a new king and priest ; and therefore implies new religion and laws , and such as the heathen were ignorant of before ; but such as they must obey upon pain of high displeasure . . the last character is the long duration of the messiah's kingdome . psalm . v. . once have i sworn by my holiness , that i will not lye unto david . his seed shall endure for ever , and his throne as the sun before me . it shall be established for ever as the moon , and as a faithful witness in heaven . also psalm . v. . thy throne , ô god , is for ever and ever , the sceptre of thy kingdome is a right sceptre , &c. which prophecie makes good the former , and shews how it is to be fulfilled in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the messiah . see also psalm . which the hebrew rabbins do acknowledge to be understood of the messiah . also daniel . . and . . this character is so clear , that i need not insist any longer upon it . . these are the main marks and characters of the person of the messiah , by which we may infallibly find out who he is . and who indeed can he be according to these characters , but iesus whom we christians worship ? for what competitor for the messiahship but he , was , being a iew , rejected by the iews and crucified ? who is it that arose from the dead and ascended into heaven but he ? who ever delivered so pure doctrine to purge the world from wickedness and to enlighten the nations as he ? it is he therefore whom the nations waited for , and have received : it is he for whose sake they parted with their old vain and impure superstitions , by whose doctrine they are brought to the knowledge of the eternal god : and lastly it is he whom for his bitter sufferings god has exalted above angels and archangels and all the host of heaven , and has set him at his own right hand to be a priest and king over his church for ever . chap. ix . . the peculiar use of arguments drawn from the prophecies of the old testament for the convincing the atheist and melancholist . . an application of the prophecies to the known events for the conviction of the truth of our religion . . that there is no likelihood at all but that the priesthood of christ will last as long as the generations of men upon earth . . the conclusion of what has been urged hitherto . . that christ was no fictitious person , proved out of the history of heathen writers , as out of plinie , . and tacitus : . as also lucian , . and suetonius . . that the testimony out of josephus is supposititious , and the reasons why he was silent concerning christ. . julian's purpose of rebuilding the temple at jerusalem , with the strange success thereof , out of ammianus marcellinus . . we have now made a very considerable progress in the proof of the reality of christian religion , that it is more then a mere idea . let us here make a stand and breath a while , and contemplate with our selves the peculiar use and advantage of this present argument , for the stopping the mouths as well of the bold atheist as the suspicious melancholist . for indeed it is too true , and every good man could wish it were not so , that the latter ages of the church have not dealt faithfully with the world , but beyond the bounds of all modesty and conscience obtruded upon the people fond legends and forged miracles , as if they were given up into their hands onely to be imposed upon and abused . which consideration does cast some men into an unchangeable misbelief of the whole business of christianity , and makes them look upon it all as a mere fiction and fable . for they measure the genius of the primitive church by what they see practised before their eyes now-adayes , and look upon the whole tribe of the priests as impostors . which censure though it be most unjust , yet it will be very hard to convince these censurers but that it is very true , unless by some such argument as now lies before us , viz. that the ancient prophecies in the old testament could not be forged by the christian priests , and that the jews would not forge them against themselves . nay they that know any thing of the jews , will acknowledge them so religiously addicted to the letter of these holy writings , that knowingly and wittingly they durst not alter a tittle . wherefore all those prophecies we have alledged are real , and we have made good they clearly foretel that the messiah should come many hundred years ago ; therefore it is plain he is come . . i therefore demand of either the prophane or melancholick , who is this messiah , if iesus be not he . nay i appeal to them if the very characters of his person be not certainly to be known by their own senses agreeably to the prediction of those infallible oracles . the prophecies have said , he should be rejected of his own . ask the iews , they will acknowledge they have rejected him . the prophecies foretold he should be cut off , be killed by them . ask the iews , they will not deny but that they did condemn him to death , but deservedly , as they contend for their own excuse . the prophecies foretold his doctrine should enlighten the gentiles . ask thine own eyes if the gentiles be not turned from their vain & unwarrantable superstitions to the knowledge of that one god that made heaven and earth , and of iesus christ whom he hath sent . the prophecies prefigured his rising from the dead and his ascending up into heaven : and ask thine own conscience if thou dost not believe that this was alwaies the belief of the christians ; and consult with thine own reason , if it had been possible that the death of christ could have drawn all the world after him , if it had not been seconded with his resurrection . certainly those that believed on him before , had deserted him after his death , if he had not risen from the dead : but of that more fully hereafter . lastly , the prophecies foretold that the messiah should be worshipped as a divine person , and receive divine honour , and that god would make him a king and priest for ever . ask thine own senses , if thou dost not find it so . how many thousand temples are there consecrated to his name ? in how many nations and kingdomes of the earth is he honoured as the son of god ; prayers offered unto him , and in his name , and praises sung unto him with all solemnity and devotion imaginable ? . and for the duration of this his royal priesthood , it has continued already a faire time , about one thousand six hundred years , as may be infallibly gathered out of history . and as appears from these ancient prophecies of the jews , he is a person so holy and sacred , and upon whom the eyes of providence have been in such a wonderfull manner fixed , infinitely above any person that ever was yet in the world , that it is impossible that the testimonies given of him should ever be obliterated by succession of time ; nothing but an universal conflagration being able to make an end of all the copies of the jewish oracles or of the christian gospel . and therefore it is a thing beyond all likelihood , nay i may say all possibility , that this honour and kingdome of christ upon earth should ever cease till the earth cease to have inhabitants . i do not deny but the insupportable wickedness of the christians , their faithlesness , ferocity and uncleanness , their accursed hypocrisie and open prophaneness , may make this kingdome of christ very itinerant and to pass from one nation to another people ; but it will ever be the religion of some people and nation or other : or if not , there will at least be sincere professors of his name in several nations and kingdomes , as in the persecuted estate of the primitive church ; which will certainly leaven the world again with the christian religion , with more glory and purity then ever , unless a fiery vengeance from heaven step betwixt , and christ come again visibly so judgement in the clouds . . the thing therefore that i say is this , that though a man should be so cautious forsooth and so crafty , as that because these latter ages have been guilty of so much falseness and forgery , he will believe no records of the church at all , no not so much as the holy gospels and the epistles of the apostles ; yet he may have sufficient assurance from the prophecies of the old testament ( which , unless he will be egregiously foolish and unreasonable , he cannot have any pretense to suspect as supposititious ) that christianity is no fiction , but a real truth ; if he will but compare the prophecies with the events of things as they lye before his eyes , and with the free confession of those that are open enemies to the christian religion , i mean the nation of the iews . . for the firmer belief whereof , he may also help himself something from those strinklings that are found in prophane writers . for if thou wilt be so prodigiously melancholick and suspicious as to doubt whether there ever were such a man as christ , the very history of the heathens may assure thee thereof ; they mentioning these things so timely , as that there could be no errour about the existence of the person they speak of whether he ever were in the world or no. for plinie , tacitus , lucian and suetonius , all of them flourished so near the time of the taking of the city of ierusalem , ( viz. plinie about twenty , tacitus thirty , lucian and suetonius about forty or fifty years ) that they could not but have certain information whether he was a fictitious person or real , from the captive iews , who would not have failed to stifle a religion they hated so , if it had been but a figment at the bottome . plinie in his epistle to trajan finds the christian professours in good earnest , even to death : whose dangerous and mischievous errour he might easily have confuted , if the history of christ had been but a romance ; but he found them immovable , nor could he help it . which constancy of theirs he calls pervicaciam & inflexibilem obstinationem , a pervicacity and inflexible obstinacy . which is ridiculous to think can befall men in a mere fiction within the time that search may easily discover to be false , and that they should stand out to the exposing of themselves to death and torture . he writes in the same epistle that he put two maid-servants on the rack , sed nihil aliud inveni quàm superstitionem pravam & immodicam , but i found nothing else ( saith he ) but a perverse and immoderate superstition . and of those that fear made desist from the profession of their religion , affirmabant hanc fuisse summam vel culpae suae vel erroris , quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire , carmenque christo quasi deo dicere , &c. they affirmed that this was the sum of their either fault or errour , that they were wont on a set day to meet together early in the morning before day-break , and sing an hymne to christ as to a god. which is a sign that betimes the christians followed christ , not as a mere eminent moralist , that gave excellent precepts of life , better then ever any did , but that they held his person truely divine , and adorable for some wonderful considerations or other . . but this inquisition and bloudy persecution of the christians began higher then trajan's time , to wit in nero's , who , to smother that abominable act of his in firing the city of rome , did most salvagely punish the christians , as if they had been the authors of it . tacit. annal . lib. . ergo abolendo rumori nero subdidit reos , & quaesitissimis poenis affecit , quos per flagitia invisos vulgus christianos appellabat . auctor nominis ejus christus , qui tiberio imperitante , per procuratorem pontium pilatum supplicio affectus erat . repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat , non modò per judaeam originem ejus mali , sed per urbem etiam , quò cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque . igitur primò correpti qui fatebantur ; deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens , haud perinde in crimine incendii quàm odio humani generis , convicti sunt . et pereuntibus addita ludibria , ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent , aut crucibus affixi , aut flammandi ; atque , ubi defecisset dies , in usum nocturni luminis urerentur . wherefore nero to suppress the rumour of his own vile act , by suborning false witnesses got those to be accused who being hatefull for their wickedness were commonly called christians , and punished them with exquisite tortures . the author of that sect was one christus , who in the reign of tiberius was put to death by pontius pilate the deputy . which damnable superstition , suppressed for a time , broke out afresh , not only in judaea the first source of that mischief , but also in the city of rome , whither all villainous and shamefull things flow from all parts , and are held in great esteem . wherefore they were first laid hold of that confessed themselves christians ; afterward by their discovery a huge multitude were condemned , not so much for being guilty of firing the city , as that they were hated of all mankind . they added also reproaches to their death , clothing some of them with the skins of beasts , to be worried by dogs ; others were crucified , and others were burnt after day-light , to serve in stead of lynks or torches . this persecution was not thirty years after the passion of christ. i appeal now to any one , if he can think it possible that these that lived so near to that time when christ was said to be crucified , that they might make exact inquiry into the matter ; i appeal to him , if he can think it possible they could expose their lives and fortunes to the hatred and cruelty of the heathen , if they were not most certain that there was such a man that was crucified at ierusalem : and demand further , he dying so ignominious a death , whether it be again possible that there should not be some extraordinary thing in the person of christ , to make them adhere to him so after his death , with the common hatred of all men and hazard of their lives . . and therefore lucian , in his peregrinus , does rightly term christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that great man crucified in palaestine . for at least he spoke the opinion of christ's followers , if not his own . and the doctrine of the christians he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the marvellous wisdome of the christians , whom he affirms to renounce the heathen deities , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and to worship their crucified sophist , or their crucified master and teacher . and in his philopatris , if it be his ( and if it be not , it is not much material , being it must be of some writer coetaneous to him ) there are some inklings of very high matters in christianity , as of the trinity , of life eternal , of the galilean's ascension into the third heaven , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , walking up the air into the third heaven , where having learned most excellent matters he renewed us by water . which is likely to be some intimation of the ascension of christ into heaven , or else of paul's being rapt up into the third heaven , though the narration thereof be depraved . and critias in that dialogue swears 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by the son that is from the father . and he and triephon jearing divine providence betwixt them , as being set out by the religious , as if things were written in heaven , critias asketh triephon if all things , even the affairs of the scythians , were written there also . to which triephon answereth , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all things , if so be chrestus be also amongst the nations . all which passages intimate what a venerable opinion there was spred in the world concerning christ , and that therefore there was some extraordinary worth and excellency in his person . which conclusion i shall make use of in its due place . . in the mean time i shall onely add that mention made of him in suetonius , in vita claudii , cap. . where he is called chrestus , as before in lucian's philopatris he was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . iudaeos , impulsore chresto , assiduè tumultuantes româ expulit , he expelled the iews out of rome , they making perpetual tumults by the instigation of chrestus . which is the highest record of our religion that is to be found in prophane writers ; and no marvel , it reaching so near the passion of christ from whence our religion commenced . for the reign of claudius began about seven years after christ's passion , and ended within thirteen years . and that christ suffered under pontius pilate , tacitus himself gives witness in what we have above recited . but a more accurate chronologie of these things cannot be expected but from them who are more nearly concerned , viz. the christians themselves . . iosephus his testimonie had reached higher in time , if we could be assured that what he seemed to write of christ was not foisted in , by some thankless fraud of unconscionable superstitionists , or short-sighted politicians , that could not see that the solidity of christian religion wanted not their lies and forgeries to sustain it . but , for my own part , i think it very unlikely that iosephus , being no christian , should write at that rate concerning christ as he does , besides other reasons which might be alledged . and therefore for the greater compendium , i shall be content to acknowledge that what is found in his antiquities concerning the crucified iesus is supposititious , and none of his own . which omission i impute partly to his prudence and partly to his integrity . for certainly he knowing the affairs of iesus so well as he did , could not in his own judgment and conscience say any thing ill of him , more then that he was crucified ; which was no fault in him , but in his unjust and cruel murderers : and simply to have nominated him in his history , without saying any thing of him , had been a frigid , lame business ; and to have spoke well of him , had been ungratefull both to his own country-men the iews and also to the pagans . wherefore it being against his conscience to vilifie him and revile him and his followers , so as the heathen historians have done ; and against his prudence , being not convinced that he was the very messiah , to declare how excellent a person he was ; it remains that in all likelihood he would play the politician so far as not to speak of him at all . . we shall produce but one testimony more out of pagan historians , and that is out of ammianus marcellinus , concerning iulian's purpose to re-edifie the temple of ierusalem , that the iews might sacrifice there according to their ancient manner . which was looked upon to be done more out of envy to the christians , then in love to the jews ; and in an affront to that universal and inestimable sacrifice of the body of christ once offered upon the cross , which was to cease the jewish sacrifices , and to put an end to the exercise of the mosaical ceremonies . ruffinus and sozomen declare the matter more at large ; but we shall contain our selves within the recitall of what ammianus has written , ( lib. . near the beginning ) who being an heathen , puts as fair a gloss upon the emperour's action as he could ; but the event is plainly enough set down , and such as does much confirm the truth of christian religion . julianus imperii sui memoriam magnitudine operum gestiens propagare , ambitiosum quondam apud jerosolymam templum ( quod post multae & internecina certamina obsidente vespasiano , postea & tito , agrè est expugnatum , ) instaurare sumptibus cogitabat immodicis ; negotiumque maturandum alipio dederat antiochiensi , qui olim britannias curaverat pro praefectis . cum itaque rei idem fortiter instaret alipius , juvaretque provinciae rector ; metuendi globi flammarum prope fundamenta crebris assultibus erumpentes fecere locum , exustis aliquoties operantibus , inaccessum ; hocque modo elemento destinatiùs repellente , cessavit inceptum . julian having a mind to propagate the memorie of his reign by the greatness of his acts , purposed to rebuild with immense charges that once-stately temple at jerusalem ( which with much adoe after many a bloudy battel was taken , after siege laid to it by vespasian first , and then by titus . ) this business was committed to the care of one alipius of antioch , who had once been deputy of britain for the governours . wherefore when this same alipius did stoutly urge on the work , and the governor of the province gave him his assistance ; dreadfull balls of fire breaking out near the foundation with frequent sallies , burning up sundry times the workmen , made the place inaccessible . and thus the enterprise ceased , the element directed by a peremptory destiny beating them off from their work . chap. x. . further proofs that both iews and pagans acknowledge the reality of the person of christ and his doing of miracles . . the force of these allegations added to the prophecie of the time of christ's coming and the characters of his person . . that the characters of his person are still more exact , but not to be insisted upon till the proof of the truth of the history of the gospel . , . that the transcendent eminency of christ's person is demonstrable from what has already been alledged and from his resurrection , without recourse to the gospels . from whence it necessarily follows that his life was writ . . that the life of christ was writ timely , while eye-witnesses were alive , proved by a very forcible demonstration . . that eternal happiness through christ was the hope of the first christians , proved out of lucian and s. paul ; and of a peculiar self-evidence of truth in his epistles . . that the first and most early meaning of christianity is comprised in those writings . . that eternal salvation depending upon the knowledge of christ , it was impossible but that the apostles should take care betimes that the miracles of christ should be recorded . . that the apostles could not fail to have the life of christ written , to prevent the erroneous attempts of the pragmatical , to satisfie the importunity of believers , or in obedience to divine instigation . . that it is as incredible that the apostles neglected the writing of the life of christ , as that a wise man in the affairs of the world should neglect the writing of his will when he had opportunity of doing it . . that , it being so incredible but that the life of christ should be writ , and there being found writings that comprize the same , it naturally follows , that they are they . . these testimonies out of heathen writers may suffice to take off that fond and groundless suspicion of the whole history of christ being a mere allegory or fiction . a thing that the greatest enemies thereof had never the face to object to the christians , neither iews nor pagans , nor our modern atheists , especially the more nasute sort of them , such as pomponatius and vaninus , who do not only acknowledge christ's person , but his miracles ; only forsooth they referre them to the influence of the stars and celestial intelligences , of which i shall speak in its proper place . the iews also acknowledge his miracles , but add that he was a magician : and iulian himself and celsus , who wrote against the christians , never had the face to deny but that iesus of nazareth did once live in iudaea , and did strange things ; though the one revolted from him , and the other never believed in him . and hierocles , that highly-moral pagan , does not deny the miracles of christ , nor the excellencie of his person , but contends that apollonius tyaneus may at least come into competition with him . and to say nothing of tiberius his purpose of having him entred into the catalogue of the roman deities by a decree of the senate , because the report thereof is from parties , viz. from eusebius out of tertullian ; we may more appositely adjoin that adrianus severus and heliogabalus , though in vain , attempted afterward the same thing . and particularly of severus , lampridius an heathen historian writes , that this emperour intending to erect a temple to christ , and to worship him amongst the rest of the gods , was hindred by the priests , qui consulentes sacra , repererant omnes christianos futuros , si id optatò evenisset , & templa reliqua deserenda : who by some way of divination or other had found out , that if the emperour's mind was fulfilled all would turn christians , and the other temples would be left desolate . so that there was a very high and venerable opinion of christ , even with those that were not christians . . which evidences out of prophane writers surely even alone , can have no small force to beget the belief of that which i now contend for , viz. that christ did once live here on earth , and that he was a person very famous and remarkable for some things in him , done by him or hapning to him . to which testimonies if you add those clear prophecies that foretold that the jews messiah was to come about that time that christ is said to have lived ( in which both the heathen and christian stories do agree ) and those characters that we know for a * certain do belong to him , such as i have already largely enough insisted upon ; it is impossible , unless scepticism be heightned unto a disease as perfect as either madness or down-right mopedness , but that any one should believe more of christ then i contend for at this present . . and yet the characters of his person set out in the prophecies are still more exact then what i have produced hitherto , to prove that he was indeed the expected messiah . as that he should be of the family of david , of the tribe of iuda ▪ born of a virgin , and in bethlehem ; that he should open the eyes of the blind , and make the lame walk , and other such like miracles ; that he should be put to such a death as that his hands and feet should be pierced , that they should cast lots for his garment , and give him vinegar to drink , &c. but these particularities having no force till we have proved that the history of the gospel is true , we must defer making any use of them till we have cleared that point . in the pursuit whereof we must endeavour to prove these three things . . that the life and death of christ was writ in a serious manner by some or other ; not romantically but historically , as plutarch , tacitus and suetonius are conceived to have writ the lives of illustrious persons and emperours . . that it was maturely writ , while there were living eye-witnesses of the things related . . and that those gospels we receive now-adays , are the true copies of those that were so maturely written . . the first part seems to me fully demonstrable from what we have proved already , without any recourse to the history of the gospel , viz. that there was a very transcendent eminency in the person of christ , as to whom both the time and main characters of the expected messiah did so exactly agree : whence he could not but attract the eyes of the world after him , and gain very zealous and faithfull followers , that would at least by word of mouth divulge the things they saw and observed so strange and miraculous in him . whence he could not escape having his life and death written by some pen or other , especially it being so certain he * rose from the dead , as it is . . for the jews having crucified him , nothing could be more odious to them then that report of his followers , that god miraculously raised him from the dead ; whereby christ was acquitted by a special hand of providence of all their wicked aspersions and false accusations , and themselves condemned of the highest crime they could imagine themselves capable of , even the murdering of their messiah . wherefore the attestation of that which would make them so odious and execrable even in their own eyes , if it were true , must needs make the attestors thereof very hatefull to them and unsupportable ; and therefore raise against them all the mischief they possibly could . whence it is impossible that the disciples of christ should maintain so hainous a falshood , no not if they had made no conscience of lying ; and yet still more impossible , if we consider their simplicity and innocency , a property in them of which i think it never came into the mind of any one to doubt . i conclude therefore , that a person so plainly prefigured by ancient and sacred prophecies , so refulgent in miraculous vertues and unheard-of providences , one who for the wonders he did , by the unbelieving iews was accounted a magician , by the heathen philosophers and atheists acknowledged a worker of miracles , and by his own followers proclaimed the expected messiah , and the onely-begotten son of god , whom he had miraculously raised from the dead after the iews had crucified him ; i say , that a person thus wonderfully qualified above any that ever yet came into the world , should fail of having his life historically recorded , is a thing farre more incredible then the greatest miracle that ever was yet upon record . . and now in the second place , that this history or record of his life and death was timely enough written , viz. while the eye-witnesses of those things which he did or hapned to him were yet living , is also very clear , if we consider the great importance of compleating such an history in due time . for certainly it could not but seem a matter of very weighty moment , christ being believed by his disciples to be so holy and divine a person as he was , and that their faithful adherence to him was their onely assurance of everlasting life . which great truth of a blessed immortality they were evidently taught by that success their messiah had upon earth , which was as ill as could be , he being so spightfully abused and crucified in so ignominious a manner ; whenas yet they might with the rest of the iews have expected that he should have broke the romane yoke , and been a glorious and victorious prince to their great advantage in this world. but they saw that providence waved this , and by an high hand exalted him into another kingdome , raising him from the dead and taking him visibly into heaven . which was so palpable a demonstration of the soul's immortality , and of a peculiar advantage to the followers of this great favourite of the almighty , when they were to enter into that other state ; that the power of conscience and the sense of their own good in the other life would make them very careful and officious to preserve the memory of their divine teacher , who both shewed them the way to and the certainty of immortal happiness . which piece of gratitude they were still more strictly bound to perform , it being so obvious for them to look upon christ as a publick gift of god to the world , not to be restrained to that age then present , but to be transmitted to all posterity ; nor confined within that little handful of followers he left behind him , but to be made known to all israel : nor could they long be ignorant but that the gentiles also should have share in him , especially upon his rejection by the jews , and so he was to become the light and salvation of all nations from age to age according to the prophets . . that this was the early sense of the church concerning the knowledge of christ for eternal salvation , the nature of the thing it self , as i have already intimated , doth plainly demonstrate . for what meaning could they possibly make of god's raising him from the dead , and visibly assuming him into heaven , but that he should be a palpable pledge of that future happinesse which was to accrue to them that would be his faithfull adherents and followers ? this questionlesse was the belief of the apostles and all succeeding christians , as the * heathens themselves witnesse of them , though in a jearing manner . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but being catechized and instructed , be perswaded by me , if you desire to live for ever . this theam is much insisted upon by the apostle paul every where in his epistles . which though i may seem too hasty in naming so soon , while i am but driving on a method to demonstrate that there are very timely records of christianity within the ages of eye-witnesses of the things that are recorded ; yet i think i have not done preposterously , if we consider that there is a peculiar kind of self-evidence in that apostle's writings that they are not supposititious or fictitious : it being , in my judgement , out of the power of man to imitate that unaffected fervour , those natural and yet unexpected schemes of high and serious zeal , those parenthetical exundances of weighty sense and matter , swelling out , i had almost said , beyond the bounds of logical coherence , that vigorous passion and elevation of spirit , and yet all so unsuspectable of any humane artifice , that we cannot but be assured that he that wrote these epistles was throughly possessed and transported with the belief of the things he wrote . i am sure i cannot but be assured , and find my self in an utter incapacity of doubting thereof , who yet am naturally as melancholy and suspiciou● as other mortals , as i could prove by early specimens of this kind , if modesty would permit me to parallel the follies and errours of my childhood with the mature conclusions of such as have affected the repute of being the great wits of the world. . wherefore being so fully perswaded in my self , and never meeting with any one that could have the face to deny but the epistles of s. paul were the writings of one that was in very good earnest , my appeal to them in this place for the sense and meaning of the first and apostolick faith i could not hold unseasonable . but it is evident in these epistles that the writer of them lived within the age of the eye-witnesses of the wonderful things that were either done by , or hapned to christ. whence it plainly appears also , that that sense of the gospel which paul declares in these epistles was the first and most early meaning that the apostles conceived concerning the mystery of christianity , viz. that christ's passion was an expiation for sin , and that we are purified by faith in him , and that our eternal salvation depends on the knowledge of him . . now i appeal to the most sceptical man living , if a matter of so vast moment as this , that concerns the common salvation of mankind in that future and eternal state , can be sluggishly and carelesly prosecuted by those that knew both the truth and importance of that affair , and had a more then ordinary engagement to look after it , and whose consciences could not but threaten them with the loss of everlasting life , if they did not use all honest endeavours to set on foot the most effectual way they could the certain knowledge of so concerning a mysterie . and whether it be possible to conceive the first christians so sottish and devoid of sense , as not to see how necessary it was to record the circumstances of the birth , life , and death of our saviour , and all the miracles that he did , while the mouths of unbelievers and gainsaiers might be stopt by recourse to eye-witnesses of the things that were to be related of him . . and if we could imagine any such supine carelesness or backwardness in the apostles themselves , who were the fittest to write these records , or at least those that were throughly informed by them ; yet the forwardness and pragmaticalness of others , who could not hold their hands from writing of such strange matters as hapned in iudaea , though not sufficiently instructed in the truth of them , would even force them to write down the truth of the history of christ so timely , for the prevention of errour , and to set their own name to the record . to say nothing of the importunity of the newly-converted christians , who could not but be extremely desirous very punctually to know all things concerning that divine person whose name they now religiously professed , and whom they acknowledged to be the onely-begotten son of god. wherefore the apostles themselves , or else some throughly instructed by them , could not chuse but draw up a narration of the birth , life , and death of christ , and the many considerables therein , for the comfort and satisfaction of their proselytes , and that there might be a true relation of these things to posterity for ever . to all which you may adde , that if it were possible that all these should fail , ( which i think is incredible , ) yet providence would not fail , and supernatural inspiration , to drive them on to the seasonable accomplishment of so important a work. . in my judgement these are an undeniable demonstration , that the history of christ has been so timely recorded as we contend for , by either the apostles or those that were intimately acquainted with them . and that it is infinitely more improbable that this has not been done , then that one of a great estate and many children , and wise in the affairs of the world , should , when it was in his power to write , neglect the writing of his will. a thing that none would believe , unless this will of his after his decease could not be found ; nor then haply neither , but rather suspect some body has burnt it . but if it be found , and appear such as becomes a man of his wisdome and discretion to have made , it will not be in the power of any man to doubt of it that is not interessed in the matter : and if any do , he will be looked upon as a very fool or fraudulent fellow , that sought some advantage by questioning the will. . the case is very highly the same here , in these records of christianity we speak of . for according to plain deduction of reason we see it impossible but that they should be writ so timely , and the outward event answers punctually to these demonstrations of our own mind . for there are two records of the life and death of christ written by two of his apostles , viz. matthew and iohn , a third by mark who was much conversant with the apostle peter , and a fourth by luke who was a great companion of s. paul , whose acts together with others of the apostles he also recorded , and ends the narration before paul's departure from rome into spain . whence we may conclude that luke wrote his gospel while paul was yet alive , of whose transactions himself was an eye-witness , as matthew and iohn of all the things they wrote , or at least most of them ; and the rest they had from other apostles , who were by when they were not , or from the mouth of our saviour himself . this conclusion is so plain , that it is as ridiculous to deny it , as for one to deny the above-mentioned will , which none can do without being hooted at for a fool. for when we see external events such as plain and undeniable reason cannot but compute even necessary to come to pass , it must be either folly or fraud that makes any doubt or deny they are really come to pass , when they are exhibited thus manifestly to their outward senses . chap. xi . . other proofs , that the life of christ was writ by his apostles or his followers , out of grotius . . an answer to a foolish surmise that those records writ by the apostles might be all burnt . . that the copies have not been corrupted by either carelesness or fraud . . this it self was a sufficient demonstration to prove that the history of the life of christ was writ so timely as i affirm , and namely by some of his own apostles , and those that were coetaneous to them , particularly by matthew , mark , luke and iohn , according as the title of each gospel does import . but we will not neglect to mention what grotius also makes use of in this place , viz. that these gospels are cited under these names by iustin , irenaeus and clemens , the first fathers of the church : that tertullian affirms that in his time the original of some of them were extant , though betwixt an hundred and two hundred years after they were written : that all the churches acknowledged them as authentick , before there was any calling of councils about that matter : that neither jew nor pagan ever made any controversie thereof : that iulian , though an enemy to christianity , did expresly confess that these writings that are under the name of peter , paul , matthew , mark , luke , were indeed their writings : and lastly , that it is as fond a thing to doubt thereof , as to question whether those poems that go under homer and virgil's names be in very deed their poems or no. which arguments certainly cannot but have their due weight with them that are not over-pervicacious : but , as i think , i had sufficiently evinced the conclusion before . . against which i do not see what the most perverse wit can invent or object , unless he will say that the first records the evangelists wrote , and the faithful copies taken from them , were burnt , and that these that we have now-adays are an after-forgery of the church . which is as bold and foolish an allegation , as if a son , who did not like his share appointed him in his father's will , though the will appear as authentick as any can do , should pretend that they had burnt the true will , and forged this to his damage : whenas yet he cannot prove the least tittle of this imputation . nay i may say it is far more foolish then this . for this may be feasable , to burn a single writing , and then make a new one in the stead . but it is altogether impossible for the enemies of the church ever to have suppressed or made away with those first true copies of the gospel ; which doubtlesse were in the custody of many thousand persons in severall parts of the world . for the writings being so very little in bulk , and of so great concernment , what christian would not have a copy of them that was but able to reade ? besides that there is not the least hint in history of any such thing . nor indeed can any historian witnesse of matters of this kinde . for who could assure him , if there had been any attempt of burning them , that they were all burnt ? and if any were but left , they would multiply again in a moment : and that but few would be delivered up , we may be very well assured , when they bore such love to that truth they conteined , that they preferred it before their own lives . . it is therefore undoubtedly true , that the copies that we have this day of the evangelists are transcripts from their first originals , without any interruption . the only scruple that remains now is concerning our third and last conclusion , whether they may not be altered and depraved in some measure in so long succession of time , either by chance , or the pious frauds of the church . to which i answer in the first place , that it is incredible but that the gospels should escape as well as the writings of plato , aristotle , or tully , if we look at only such alterations as may proceed from the heedlesnesse of the transcribers ; and yet no man doubteth but that their writings do now fully communicate their mindes to the world concerning those things they do declare , as fully and perfectly as they themselves writ them . and as for any pious frauds of the church , i answer , that the church was more simple and honest in the apostolical times and some ages after , within which compasse so many copies of the gospel were extant , and so dispersed throughout the world , that they could not adulterate those writings if they would . for as i have said already , those writings being of so little a bulk , and consequently the transcription of them so easie , the copies would be multiplied almost equally to the number of christians , i mean of those that could reade ; and being so holy a writ , the transcription be made with all possible care and circumspection . for certainly christians were very serious in their religion in those dayes . besides it is very reasonable to believe , that a special providence would keep off both chance and fraud from wronging so sacred writings in any thing materiall ; and if not materiall , what are they the worse ? not to mention how awe and reverence to such holy writings would naturally hold them off from mingling any thing by way of fraud or intermedling with them : and the effect makes good this presage . for in perusing of them we plainly discover that harmony and agreement of one thing with another , that we may be well assured that there is nothing spurious or adulterate foisted into the text. the multitude of various lections also further confirms our conclusion ; which is an argument of the multitudes of copies i spoke of : and the collection of these various readings a testimony even of the faithfulnesse of these later ages oft he church , and of the high reverence they had to these records , in that they would not so much as embesell the various readings of them , but keep them still on foot for the prudent to judge of . and lastly , upon perusall of those various readings , the clear discovery that nothing at all is lost of the truth of christian religion by any of them ( and consequently no detriment or prejudice done to any but such as are more for factions and opinions then the real power of godliness ) this also ratifies the truth we drive at , namely , that those copies of the gospel which we daily peruse are incorrupted , and that therefore those things contained in them are certainly true , as being writ by the pens of those who had sufficient knowledge of what they declare , being either eye-witnesses of the same , or conferring with them that were , and both of that unsuspected integrity , that the like is not to be found in any witnesses else in the world. chap. xii . . more particular characters of the person of the messiah in the prophecyes . . his being born at bethlehem ; . and that of a virgin. . his curing the lame and the blinde . . the piercing of his hands and feet . . thus have we undeniably demonstrated the truth of the gospel and the things therein contained , and consequently the certainty and reality of the christian religion : which being done , we can now more seasonably adde some few characters more of the person of the messiah so particular and expresse , that it may justly ravish us with the admiration of so punctuall a providence as is discoverable therefrom in predictions and prophecies . i will not instance in many , because we have already finished our designe ; and those that love to abound more in matters of this nature , may consult others that have handled them more fully and copiously . we shall only resume what we above mentioned , of his being born at bethlehem , of the family of david , and that of a virgin ; his making the blinde to see and the lame to walk ; the piercing of his hands and feet ; and their casting lots for his vesture . that these things were true of him , the gospel plainly testifies : and that they were prophesied of him , is as plain out of the prophecies of the old testament , which we shall here recite . . and first that of micah , but thou bethlehem ephratah , though thou be little among the thousands of judah , yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in israel , whose goings forth are from old , from the dayes of eternity . this is a very particular description of the person of the messiah from the place of his birth . and it was the confessed glosse of the chief priests and scribes upon this text , as appears matt. . , . to which episcopius addes the suffrage of the chaldee paraphrast and r. solomon iarchi . but that which makes this prediction and the divine providence more admirable are the circumstances of its completion . for bethlehem was not the town of abode of either ioseph or mary , nor went they thither at that time of their own accord , nor upon an ordinary occasion : but augustus , ( surely not without some special incitation from above , ) made a decree that all the world , that is , all under the romane empire , should have their names enrolled in publick records . wherefore all went to be enrolled , every one into his own city . whence it was that ioseph also went up from galilee out of the city of nazareth into iudaea , unto the city of david which is called bethlehem , because he was of the house and lineage of david , to be enrolled with mary his espoused wife , being great with child . whence , as grotius would infer , it is evident that mary was of the house of david as well as ioseph , else she would have resorted to the city of her own stock or kindred , and not to bethlehem . but the admirable hand of providence that all take notice of in this matter is this , that from this act it was so manifest to all the world that christ was of the lineage of david , and was , according to the prophecie , born at bethlehem . a thing which if it had not been true , the iews could have easily confuted . but the christians were able to make good what they asserted , by appealing to these records kept in the roman archiva , and were to be seen , as iustin , tertullian and chrysostome do affirm , in their ages . which blows away all the foolish and fabulous parachronisms of the iews concerning the time of iesus at one blast . . the next character of his person is that he was to be born of a virgin. which the evangelists affirm he was , and two prophecies predict he should be . the first genesis . from god's own mouth , that the seed of the woman should break the serpents head . which seed certainly was christ , who could not be properly called the seed of the woman more then the seed of the man , but that it was a prefiguration that christ should be born of a virgin without the help of a man. the other prophecie is that of isaiah ch . . v. . therefore the lord himself shall give you a sign : behold , a virgin shall conceive , and bear a sonne , and shall call his name immanuel . this prophecie i confess is applicable , and that with much ease and perspicuity , to some certain maid or virgin , suppose one that the prophet esay was to take to wife , at the time he spoke this prophecie to king ahaz . the first sense whereof is only this , that within such a compass of time that this maid should be married , bring forth , and educate her infant , that is to say , within the time of his infancy , the syrian and israelitical forces should unsuccessfully leave iudaea , and in the interim there should be no such scarcity as was feared by ahaz , which is intimated in that phrase , butter and honey shall he eat , &c. the name also of the child was therefore called immanuel , god with us , because he was used as a sign of god's special assistance and providence over ahaz and his kingdome . moreover i cannot affirm that any of the ancient or modern jews ever interpreted this prophecie of the messiah . of which notwithstanding there can be no worse consequence then this , that the first meaning thereof being so easie & obvious , and made good by event , and none of the jews ever venturing to applie it to the messiah , that nothing but the certain knowledge of the evangelist that christ was indeed thus born , could move him to make this application of it to the manner of his birth . but that being certainly known , as also that principle of the jewish 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of giving an higher and fuller sense to the historical or prophetical passages in the old testament ( all things hapning to them in types ) it were impossible but that this interpretation should be made of this prophecie ; it belonging more perfectly and properly to christ then to isaiah's son : whose mother was only a virgin before she was his mother , but mary the mother of christ was a virgin both before and after ; and the prophets son merely a nominal immanuel , but christ was truly god with us , in whom the fulness of the godhead dwelt bodily : and lastly , the prophet bidding ahaz ask a sign of god , either in the depth or in the height above , it is plain that by a sign is meant some wonderfull prodigious sign out of the course of nature . and therefore when the prophet saies , god himself will give a sign , behold , a virgin shall conceive , and bear a son , &c. it is manifest that this sign is to be prodigious or preternatural ; which was never fully nor properly accomplished before the true emmanuel was born of his ever-blessed mother the virgin mary . for the deliverance of iudaea from the two kings within the space of the childs infancy was not a sign , but the thing signified , and a type of the great deliverance to be wrought by christ. what the iews cavil concerning the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is very weak and frivolous . they that know any thing in the hebrew tongue , are well assured that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies properly a virgin , such as never knew a man. which appears both from the derivation and the constant use of its signification . to which you may add , that it is thus translated in this very place by onkelos , ionathan and the seventy . insomuch that this prophecie seems to me more certainly to be applicable to christ in the most proper sense thereof then any prophecie else ( which has any other reference then to him alone ) that was ever applied to the messiah by the jews themselves . . that of the lame , the deaf and blind , is in isaiah ch . . v. . then shall the eyes of the blind be opened , and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped . then shall the lame man leap as an hart , and the tongue of the dumb sing . which words though they may have a metaphorical completion in the daies of hezekiah , yet there is no question but the proper and reall fulfilling of them was intended for the messiah , as is very sutable to what goes immediately before , vers . . behold your god will come , he will come and save you . and certainly god could never be said to come so properly at any time , as in the person of our blessed saviour , who is rightly styled god blessed for ever . . my last instance shall be psalm . which the ancient rabbins do freely and apertly confess to be a prophecie concerning the messiah . in which some particular passages , however express and precise , did never happen to any other that they can entitle to the psalm , but did punctually and literally happen to him . as that vers . . they parted my garments among them , and cast lots upon my vesture : which is verified exactly matth. . v. . and then again verf. . the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me , they pierced my hands and my feet . i know not whether i should add also vers . . i am poured out like water ; and parallel it with iohn . v. . but the particular prediction of that former circumstance seems admirable , that the manner of his death should be so punctually set down by the prophet . for this was very really and literally fulfilled in his crucifixion ; wherein the hands and feet of malefactors were pierced with nails whereby they were fastned to the cross. nor ought the various readings of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 weaken the perfectness of this prediction . for when they have made the best they can of it , yet are they , whether they will or no , forced to acknowledge that there is some special execution or mangling done on the hands and feet , by the sense of the text. but that it is just so as we ordinarily interpret it , the suffrage of the most learned of the jews themselves , as iacob ben chaiim , moses hadarsan , and the seventy do sufficiently confirm . to which also the exposition of the chaldee paraphrast , aquila , and the masora contribute something . to which we may add , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without another word is not sense , and that there might by some neglect first be a change of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which sound both alike , and then of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which are writ almost like , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 having no difference but of bigness , and that not much , and therefore are very often confounded . this is more likely then the leaving out a whole word , which they that read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do . that allegation also of grotius against this reading does not want its weight , namely , that the similitude of the lion is used but three verses before , and therefore not likely to be used again so soon , especially it being mentioned also some four verses after . lastly , the event ought to make an end of this critical controversie with those that are not prejudiced . and though it will not stop the mouths of the contumacious , yet it will chear the hearts of those that are pious and rational with the pleasure of the contemplation of so punctual a providence over the affairs of men . chap. xiii . . that if the gospel of christ had been false and fabulous , it would not have had that success at jerusalem by the preaching of the apostles . . the severity also of the precepts and other hardships to be undergone would have kept them off from being christians . . as also the incredibleness of the resurrection of christ , and of our being rewarded at the conflagration of the world. , . the meanness also and contemptibleness of the first authours would have turned men off , nor would they have been listned to by any one , if the resurrection of christ had not been fully ascertain'd by them . . which the apostles might be sure of , being only matter of fact ; nor is it imaginable they would declare it without being certain of it , by reason of the great hazards they underwent thereby . . i might note other remarkable particulars out of this psalme and other places that do contribute to the more punctual characterizing the person of christ ; but i have already exceeded the limits of my own design , which was to engage in these things only so far as might suffice to demonstrate the reality of the mystery we treat of . which when we have confirmed by one argument more , and answered an objection or two , we shall then put an end to this third part of our discourse . the last argument therefore is briefly this , a religion so unassisted by men , nay , so opposite to them , both their natural belief and interest , could never have spred it self so in the world , if it had been false and fabulous , and not really true at the bottome . how mightily it spred it self , appears out of the history of the gospel and the acts of the apostles , as also out of the epistles of s. paul , even then when the greatest opposers of it , the jews , were upon the spot , to whom it was necessary for them first to preach it , and who had opportunity to enquire diligently touching the matter of fact , of every thing that was alledged by the apostles after the passion of christ , as done by him or hapning to him , or done by themselves , after they had received the gift of the holy ghost according to promise , and wrought such miracles as he did . there were many thousands of the jews converted , whom it is impossible to imagine , at least all of them , ( and the more inquisitive and nasute might have undeceived the rest ) to have been so supine and careless , as not to enquire diligently into things in a matter of so great importance as their eternal salvation , and of so present dammage and loss to them that they forfeited the favour of all their countriemen , and unavoidably charged them and their rulers with the most impious crime that ever mortals could commit . . but the success rested not here , but reached out of iudaea into all parts of the romane empire , there being gained innumerable companies of believers every where , till at last nations and kingdomes and sceptres , and , in a word , the whole roman empire became christian. this is the truth of the story , which no man can deny ; and that this story could not be true , unless the christian religion be true also , i mean those miraculous things which are recorded of christ and his apostles , is further demonstrable , as well from the harshness as the incredibility of the doctrine of this religion , as also the weakness and contemptibleness of the first founders and disseminators of it . for whether we consider the precepts of christianity , they are very strict and severe , very unkind and unwelcome to flesh and bloud , such as the animal life cannot at all relish nor entertain , unless some extraordinary thing be adjoined , that forces admittance . self-denial , mortification , the putting a man in a way of necessary or very probable persecutions and afflictions from without , besides the renouncing of those pleasures that no external power hinders him of , can be no acceptable news to the natural man. besides the scoffs and reproaches of the world that would undoubtedly follow their change of religion . which change could not but seem still more grievous and intolerable , in that it was to be whole and entire from the present superstition they were educated in , which they were utterly to renounce . whence their hazard and infamie could not but be greater . . in the undergoing of which hardships they had nothing to sustain themselves but the belief of such things which a man would think might startle them most of all , that is , their reward after this life , no other waies ascertained to them , but by the rising of one from the dead after he had been three daies buried ; which was exhibited to them as a pledge of that blessed resurrection which those that embraced the christian doctrine should enjoy at the burning of the world , and turning the earth into ashes and cinders . a thing so incredible to humane wit , that no man unless he was really convinced by some infallible way that it was so indeed , could ever admit of , or abstain from denying with an addition of scoffs and derision , as it fell out with the epicureans and stoicks , acts . . wherefore without all controversie the first embracers of christianity entertained it upon no other terms but manifest proof of eye-witnesses , and the evidence of such persons as they saw very faithful and serious , and as had the effect of this great power of god , that raised iesus christ from the dead , manifestly residing upon themselves , whereby they were able to doe miracles ; as is also recorded in the acts of the apostles . . now for the first authours and founders of this religion , how weak and contemptible they were as to worldly concernments , appears plainly from hence , that they were not recommended to the world either for their nobility of birth , or skill in humane arts and sciences , nor had they any secular power to assist them , nor any force of arms to either overcome others , or defend themselves , for all they were exposed to so great and imminent dangers perpetually . our saviour himself was but of mean parentage , a carpenters son , crucified betwixt two thieves as a hainous malefactor . what therefore can there be imaginable that should move his apostles and disciples to adhere to him so faithfully after his death , and to expose themselves to all manner of jeopardies , all manner of sufferings , whippings , imprisonments , long journies , tortures , and death it self ? what should cause them to disturb their own peace so , and the peace of all men , if there were not some very miraculous thing at the bottom , and such as was worthy to alarme all the world ? what message could they have brought to those several nations they travailed to , that themselves would not be ashamed of carrying , if it had been only so , that the jews had crucified one iesus , the son of ioseph a carpenter , betwixt two thieves at ierusalem , who yet was a very good and just man ? it may be so , would the gentiles say ; more shame for them ; what is that to us ? but this man was the promised messiah , and did very strange miracles , cast out devils , healed all manner of diseases , and was declared the son of god by an audible voice from the heavens . as for the miracles you mention , would the gentile reply , we have heard strange things done by those that are called magicians ; and we had no acquaintance with the party you speak of , to discern whether he was so good as you pretend . for mens judgments are ordinarily partial out of affection and friendship : and it is strange that if he were so good as you make him , and declared from the clouds to be the son of god , that god would suffer him so ignominiously to die betwixt two thieves on the cross. which is a sign that if he did any miracles , they were but from such powers as are subject to the magistrate , and through that faithfull providence that attends the affairs of men , can doe nothing when the magician is apprehended , imprisoned and condemned . truly if there had been no more then this in the story , it seems impossible that the cause should have had such success as it has had . . wherefore certainly the first preachers of the gospel added to all this , to the admiration and astonishment of the hearers , that this iesus , whom the jews had thus crucified , was by the miraculous hand of god raised out of the grave the third day ; that after his resurrection he conversed with his disciples both apart and together ; that he was seen of above five hundred at once ; that he staid upon earth for * fourty daies , and was seen visibly afterward to ascend into heaven . which things as they were above all expectation marvailous , and did , if they were true , fully argue not only the innocency but transcendent divinity of the person of iesus ; so were they so incredible , that none could believe them , especially to their present peril , unless from such as were eye-witnesses of the same , and could send them to many more that were eye-witnesses , and of unsuspected integrity of life ; or for the better compendium , shewed that they were true messengers sent from god , by some signs or miracles they did upon the spot . . this therefore was the main of their message , which was nothing but matter of fact , which themselves knew certainly to be true , and seriously and earnestly declared it to the world , not by any art or eloquence . for the apostles were but poor illiterate persons , fishermen , publicans , and the like , had no other weapons to win men to the faith , but by a simple , though earnest and serious , narration of those things they knew for certain , and did avouch with that confidence , that they gave up their ease , livelihood and lives , for a pledge of the truth thereof . which testimonie could not possibly be false , it being ( as i said before ) concerning matter of fact , namely , the resurrection of christ , wherein so many could not be deceived : nor is it imaginable how they should goe about to deceive others against their own consciences , or without sufficient knowledge in a thing that gained them nothing but perpetual hatred and ill will , imprisonments , tortures and death . in the mean time , by these poore contemptible instruments , that had neither political power on their side ( but were oppressed by it ) nor had any art nor eloquence ( excepting only paul , who yet made use of neither ) and by succession of such as they had converted , within a few ages all the world in a manner swarmed with christians of all qualities and degrees , noble and ignoble , learned and unlearned , though invited thereto by no secular advantage , but rather being perpetually exposed to misery and persecution . all which things seriously considered together with the exactness and perspicuity of prophecies concerning the messiah , cannot but seem to any indifferent judge a demonstration for the truth of christian religion no less certain then mathematical . chap. xiv . . objections of the jews against their messiah's being come , answered . . a pompous evasion of the aristotelean atheists supposing all miracles and apparitions to be the effects of the intelligences and heavenly bodies . . vaninus his restraint of the hypothesis to one anima coeli . . his intolerable pride and conceitedness . . a confutation of him and the aristotelean atheisme from the motion of the earth . . that vaninus his subterfuge is but a sel-contradiction . . that christianitie's succeeding judaisme is by the special counsel of god , not by the influence of the starres . . cardanus his high folly in calculating the nativity of our saviour , with a demonstration of the groundlesness of vaninus his exaltation in his impious boldness of making mahomet , moses and christ sidereal law-givers of like authority . . that the impudence and impiety of these two vain glorious pretenders constrains the authour more fully to lay open the frivolousness of the principles of astrology . . the * objections we were a mentioning are from two hands ; from the iew , or from the atheist . that from iew is chiefly this , that the condition of the times under christ is not conformable to what is prophesied concerning the times of the messiah . there is not that peace and concord , no not in christendome it self , neither in the church nor state ; nor is idolatry extirpated , nor the israelites replanted and setled in their own land : all which things notwithstanding are foretold to come to pass in the dayes of the messiah . whence , say they , it is plain he is not yet come . but i briefly answer , . that the prophetical promises of the coming of the messiah were absolute , as i have * already noted , the extent of the effect of his coming conditional ; men being free agents , and not fatal actors , in all things , as the iews themselves cannot deny . . that the nature of the gospel tends altogether to the accomplishing of those promises of universal peace and righteousness , and did begin fair in the first times of the church as much as respects the church it self . . that whatever relapse or stop there has been , things are not so hopeless but in time they may be amended ; and that they , in those days when they are true converts to christ , may , if they will then desire it , return to their own land. but after this serious conversion and real renovation of their spirits into a true christian state , i cannot believe they will continue so childish as to value such things ; but will find themselves in the spiritual canaan already , and on their march to that ierusalem which is above , the mother of us all , and that it will not be in the power of any but themselves to turn them out of the way . . the other objection , or rather evasion of that wholesome use that may be made of the truth of the history of christ , is from that sort of atheists that love to be thought aristoteleans : for there are two chief kinds of atheisme , epicurean and aristotelean . the former denies all incorporeal substance whatsoever , and all apparitions , miracles and prophecies that imply the same . who are sufficiently confuted already by this undeniable declaration we have made . the other are not against all substances incorporeal , nor against prophecies , apparitions and miracles , though of the highest nature ; insomuch that they will allow the history of christ , his resurrection , and appearance after death , the prophecies concerning him , and what not ? but they have forsooth this witty subterfuge to save themselves from receiving any good therefrom , in imagining that there is no such particular providence as we would inferre from hence , because all this may be done by the influence of the celestial bodies , actuated by the intelligences appertaining to each sphere , and deriving in a natural way from him that sits on the highest of the orbs such influences as according to certain periodical courses of nature will produce new law-givers , induing them with a power of working miracles , assisting them by apparitions and visions of angels , making them seem to be where they are not , and appear after they cease to be , namely after their death : when in the mean-time there be neither angels , nor souls separate , but all these things are the transient effects of the power of the heavens and configuration of the celestial bodies , which slacks by degrees , and so the influence of the starres failing , one religion decaies and another gets up . thus iudaisme has given place to christianity , and christianity in a great part of the world to mahometisme , being establishments resulting from the mutable course of nature , not by the immediate finger of god , who keeps his throne in the eighth sphere , and intermeddles not with humane affairs in any particular way , but onely aloof off hands down , by the help and mediation of the celestial intelligences and power of the starres , some general casts of providence upon the generations of the earth . . a goodly speculation indeed , and well befitting such two witty fools in philosophy as pomponatius and vaninus : the latter of which seems not to give himself up to this fine figment altogether fully and conformably to the ancient doctrine of aristotle , but having a great pique against incorporeal beings , is desirous to lessen their number as much as he can , and seems pleased that he has found out , that one only soul of the heavens will serve as effectually to do all these things as the aristotelean intelligences ; and therefore ever & anon doubts of those , and establisheth this as the onely intellectual or immaterial principle and highest deity ; but such as acts no otherwise then in a natural way by periodical influences of the heavenly bodies . where you may observe the craft and subtility of the man , what a care he has of his own safety , and how he has imprisoned the divinity in those upper rooms for fear of the worst , that he may be as far out of his reach as the earth is from the moon . so cautious a counseller in these matters is an evil and degenerate conscience . . this is the chiefest arcanum that the amphitheatrum and famed dialogues of this stupendious wit will afford ; who was so tickled and transported with a conceit of his own parts , that in that latter book he cannot refrain from writing down himself a very good for wisdome and knowledge . whenas , assuredly , there was never any mans pride and conceitedness exceeded the proportion of his wit and parts so much as his . for there is nothing considerable in him but what that odd and crooked writer hieronymus cardanus had , though more modestly , vented to the world before : onely vaninus added thereto a more express tail of bold impiety and prophaneness . . i have elsewhere intimated how the attributing such noble events to the power of the starres is nothing but a rotten relick of the ancient pagan superstition ; and have in my book of the * immortality of the soul plainly enough demonstrated that there is no such inherent divinity in the celestial bodies as that ancient superstition has avouched or modern philosophasters would imagine . and i shall here evidently prove against this great pretender , that his removal of the deity at that distance from the earth is impossible . for there are scarce any now that have the face to profess themselves philosophers , but do as readily acknowledge the motion of the earth , as they do the reality of the antipodes , or the circulation of the bloud . i would aske then vaninus but this one question , whether he will not admit that the sun is in that heaven where he imagins his anima coeli● and whether this heaven be not spred far beyond the sun , and be not also the residence of this celestial goddess of his . there is none will stick to answer for him , that it is doubtlesly so . wherefore i shall forthwith inferre , that let his unskilful phansy conceit us at this moment in as low a part of the universe as he will , within the space of six months we shall be as far above or beyond the sun as we are beneath him now , and yet then phansy our selves as much beneath him as before . which plainly implies that our earth and moon swim in the liquid heavens , which being every where , this deity of vaninus must be every where , though his degenerate spirit was afraid of so holy a neighbourhood , nor could abide the belief of so present a numen . thus has the annual course of the earth dashed off all that superstitious power and sanctity that ancient paganisme has given and the aristotelean atheist would now give to the sun , planets and starres ; and we are forced even by the light of nature and humane reason to acknowledge the true principle from whence all miraculous things come , that is , a god , every where present , in whom we live and move and have our being . . besides this , suppose that all prodigies , apparitions and prophecies were from the intermediate influence of the celestial bodies , these intelligences or that anima coeli working thereby upon the persons of men , to inspire them , and turning the aire into representations and visions to converse with them ; this covering is too scant to hide the folly of this sorry sophist , his supposition plainly ruining it self . for he does acknowledge that those inspirations and prophecies are true that are thus derived from those ●idereal powers . but it is evident that those that have been the most illustrious prophets , have had converse with angels , and talked with them , and have so recorded the matter to the world. as for example , the prophet daniel who discoursed with the angel gabriel ; christ also discoursed with moses and elias on mount tabor , and moses with the angel of god on mount sinai . besides christ , who was so highly inspired and assisted from heaven , has over and over again pronounced a future happiness after this life . all which , allowing them for a while to be the dictates or representations of the astral influences , i demand of vaninus , how he comes to be wiser then those that were so miraculously assisted , that these visions of angels should not be so as they that saw them have related , that moses and elias should not be the spirits of moses and elias , but onely transient figurations of the aire raised by the influence of the heavens . moreover i would ask of him if he think that that heavenly assistance that can according to his own acknowledgement inform men of things to come at a thousand years distance , ( for such was the prediction of the death of iulius caesar in the senate , though a matter very contingent , ) cannot certainly inform them whom it pleases so wonderfully to assist , whether the souls of men be mortal or immortal , which is far more cognoscible to those aethereal powers then the other . wherefore this wretched figment of his to excuse himself from the acknowledgement of the existence of angels or daemons , and the subsistence of the soul after death , from which he so much abhors , will stand him in no stead , but argues him more intoxicated , whifling and giddy , in admitting the truth of such narrations , and yet denying the genuine consequences of them , then they that give no credence to the narrations themselves . . that which was objected of christianity justling out iudaisme , and of mahometisme in a great part of the world justling out christianity , is partly false and partly nothing to the purpose . that christianity has properly justled out iudaisme , is very false . for iudaisme has rather been ripened into the perfection of christianity , then been stifled and sufflaminated by any counter-blast of those sidereal influences he dreams of . for we see how things have gone on in one continued design from * abraham to christ , as the prophecies and the predictions in scripture plainly testifie . god promised to abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed . iacob foretells on his death-bed , that the jewish polity and religion should not fail till the messiah , a iew and son of abraham , was come , to whom the gathering of the gentiles should be : and so in other * prophecies which we have already recited and applied . from whence it is manifest , that it is the hand and counsel of god who is constant to himself , and whose wisdome and providence reaches from end to end , that has begun and carried on this matter according to his own will and purpose , and not any bustles or counter-blasts of various aspects of the heavenly bodies , that do and undo according to the diversities and contrarieties of their schematisms and configurations . . nor could any thing but levity of minde and vain-glory induce cardan to pretend the calculating of our saviours nativity , whenas the year of his birth is so uncertain amongst the most accurate chronologers , and astrology it self a thing wholly groundlesse and frivolous , as i shall demonstrate anon . nor is it any specimen of his wit , but of his grosse impiety , so boldly to equalize the rise of mahometisme to that of iudaisme and christianity , as if moses , christ and mahomet were all astrall law-givers , alike assisted and inspired from the influence of the stars . a conceit that vaninus is so transported with , that he cannot tell what ground to stand upon when he cites the passage out of cardan , he is so tickled with joy. but that this exultation of his is very childish and groundlesse , appears , both in that he falsly attributes prophecies , divine laws and miracles , to the influence of the stars ( a superstitious errour that arises only out of the ignorance of the right systeme of the world ; ) and then again ( if it were true ) that he imagines mahomet ( who was a mere crafty politician , and did neither miracles , nor could prophesie ) to be a law-giver set up by the miraculous power of the heavens , such as enables divine law-givers and prophets to do reall miracles . to which you may adde the ridiculous obstinacy of this perverse sophist , who the more we give him of what he contends for , ( viz. that mahomet also is a star-inspired prophet , that is to say , illuminated from the anima coeli , which according to his opinion is the highest and most infallible principle of miracles and divine wisedom , ) the more ample testimony we have against his own folly , that so peremptorily denies the existence of daemons , and subsistence of the soul after death . which are openly avouched by this third witnesse of his own introducing : and therefore he abhorring so from such truths as are certainly dictated from the celestiall bodies , did not excesse of pride and conceitednesse blinde his judgement and make him senseless , he could not but have found himself stung with that lash of the satyrist , o curvae in terris animae , & coelestium inanes ! but i have even tired my self with running the wilde-goose chase after these fickle and fugitive wits , whose carelesse flirts and subsultorious fancies are as numerous , as slight and weak , against the firm and immovable foundations of solid reason and religion . . i should now pass to the fourth part of my discourse , did not the reflexion upon the insufferable impudence of cardan , in pretending to cast our saviours nativity , and that villainous insulting of vaninus thereupon , ( as if all religion was but an influence of nature and transent blast of the starres ) invite me , nay indeed provoke me , to lay open the vanity of their accursed art , wherein they have combined together to blaspheme god , and to make religion contemptible and useless to the world . chap. xv. . the generall plausibilities for the art of astrology propounded . . the first rudiments of the said art. the qualities of the planets , and their penetrancy through the earth . . that the earth is as pervious to them as the aire , and of their division of the zodiack into trigons , &c. . the essentiall dignities of the planets . . their accidentall dignities . . of the twelve celestiall houses , and the five wayes of erecting a scheme . . the requisitenesse of the exact knowledge of the moment of time , and of the true longitude and latitude of the place . . direction what it is , and which the chiefest directours or significatours . . of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or apheta and anaereta , and the time when the anaereta gives the fatall stroke . . i shall therefore make this short digression to expose to your view the extreme folly and frivolousness of the pretended art of astrology , whose main general reasons and particular principles are in brief as follows . first , they alledge , that it is a thing beyond all belief , that such an innumerable company of starres , whose light is not considerable , nor their position so exact for ornament , should be made for nothing else but to look upon . therefore , say they , there is some other mystery in it , and that they are endued with certain hidden influences , and have their severall peculiar virtues , as distinct as the herbs and flowers of the field , and it is their art of astrology that professeth the knowledge thereof . again , the earth and water being such simple bodies as they are , the various productions in nature could not be , were it not for that infinite variety of those celestiall bodies , the starres , and their severall influences upon the earth . this their great champion sir christopher heydon urges as a principall argument for them . thirdly , that it is plain that the moon hath a moist influence , and that at her full the brains of beasts generally , the eyes of cats , and the meat of shell-fishes are swell'd to a greater bigness ; and that they are lessened in the change . fourthly , that the moon also , to our wonderment , guides the ebbing and flowing of the sea , whose influence is equally seen when she is under the horizon as when above , when near our nadir as when near our zenith . whence , say they , it is plain that the heavenly bodies have not only a power or influence , besides light , but more searching and penetrating then light it self , as being able to make its way through the thickness of the earth , and to reach its effect on the further side thereof . both which wonders they further confirm from the magneticall needle , hat looks toward the pole-starre , though on the other side of the tropick of capricorn ; where the northpole will be hidden twenty or thirty degrees below the horizon . whence it is manifest , say they , that the influence of the pole-starre pierces through the bowels of the earth , and is a notorious argument of that secret and irresistible virtue of the rest of the heavenly bodies . fifthly , the station , direction and repedation of the planets is a thing so strange and mysterious , that it is not likely they should make those odde motions , unless those waglings this way and that way , those goings backward and forward were a certain reeling or spinning the fates and fortunes of things or persons here below . sixthly and lastly , yearly experience teaches us that the approach of the sun renewes the world , and makes an annuall resurrection of plants and insects , and such living creatures as are born of putrefaction , and have no other father then the fiery-bearded sun. if then this one planet does such rare feats , certainly the rest of the planets and fixed starres do not stand for cyphers , but have their virtues and operations as well as he , whose efficacy and influence , say these starre-gazers , our art does punctually and particularly define . you may adde if you will out of origanus , the heat of the dog-starre , and the moist influence of arcturus and the hyades . these are the generall plausibilities that these deceivers endeavour to countenance their profession by . but we shall now set down the main particular principle and fundamentall rudiments of their so-much-admired science , as they would have it esteemed , and then shall orderly answer to them both . . according therefore to origanus , whom i shall chiefly follow in setting down these astrologicall principles , i do not say all , but what is sufficient ; nor will i set down any but what they acknowledge for principles , nor omit any that are so considerable as these i set down ; first , it is taught by them , that the planets have the most influence upon terrestriall bodies , but that the fixt stars also as well as they have virtues so potent as to pierce the very penetrals of the earth : that of the planets the sun is hot and moist rather then drying : that mars is hot and parchingly drying : that saturn hinders the warm influence of the other starres , and is in an high degree frigefactive , as also exsiccative . from these two qualities contrary to the principles of life , saturn is termed infortuna major , mars , infortuna minor ; because heat is not contrary to life , though driness be . iupiter is also deemed fortuna major , because he has sufficient moisture well tempered with heat . but venus , fortuna minor , because her moisture exceeds her warmth . from this distinction of hot , cold , dry and moist , the planets are also divided into masculine and feminine , diurnall and nocturnall , &c. so that if these conceits of drinesse , moistnesse , coldnesse , and heat fail , all the rest fail . . but i think that principle more observable which is touched upon already , that the influence of the starres and planets do pass freely through the earth : which is implied in that aphorisme of ptolemy cited by origanus , masculescere & efficaciores dici planetas , qui ab horizonte ortivo vel occiduo deducuntur ad meridianum supra vel infra terram . effoeminari verò qui contrá . which plainly implies , that their influences pass as easily through the earth as through the air : otherwise surely those planets that tended from the western horizon toward the meridian under the earth , would have the disadvantage of it . that also goes upon the same hypothesis that the earth is no impediment , namely , that iupiter being consignificatour in the second house , denotes riches ; and that by how many more planets there be in the sixth house , by so much more subject to diseases the childe will be . that the sixt starres and planets do most potently act in the cardines of the celestiall theme , of which imum coeli is one . which supposes the earth as pervious as the very air to the celestial influences . to omit other divisions of the signes into mobilia , fixa , and bicorporea , into masculine and feminine , &c. i shall only set down that more noised division of them into trigons , viz. the fiery trigon , aries , leo , sagittarius ; the earthly , taurus , virgo , capricorn ; aereall , gemini , libra , aquarius ; watery , cancer , scorpius , pisces . . they teach us also fine things of the dignities of the planets : which are either essential or accidentall . an essentiall dignity is nothing else but the encrease of the innate virtue of the planet by being in such or such a signe of the zodiack , as origanus has defined . the first essential dignity is the house of the planet . as for example , leo is the house of the sun , cancer of the moon . and because there are more signes then planets , it fals to the share of the rest to have two houses apiece , so aspected to the houses of the luminaries as becomes the goodnesse or malignity of their natures . as for example , capricorn and aquarius must be the houses of unfortunate saturn , because their aspect is opposite to the houses of the luminaries . sagittarius and pisces the houses of iupiter , because the aspect to the foresaid houses of the sun and moon is a benigne aspect , namely , trine . but now mars has aries and scorpius for his houses , because he forsooth himself being a malignant planet may have his houses in a malignant posture to the houses of the sun and moon , namely , in a quartile aspect , &c. and as to be in their own houses is a dignity , so to be in the signe opposite they call exilium , and account it a great detriment to the planet . to second essential dignity is exaltation : as aries is the exaltation of the sun , because his efficacy is so apparent in spring , and therefore his casus must be in libra : which must on the contrary be the exaltation of saturn , that planet being of a cold temper contrary to the sun. the dragon's head also is exalted in gemini , as albumasar out of hermes has given us to understand , and depressed in sagittarius . the third essential dignity is triangularity or triplicity , whereby certain planets are constituted the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of their respective trigons . sol and iupiter of the fiery trigon ; the moon and venus of the earthly trigon ; saturn and mercury of the aereal : and because there are not eight planets , but seven only . mars is the sole trigonocrator of the watery triplicity . i omit to say any thing of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or dignity of terms , in which the two luminaries are not concern'd . carpentum , which is the fifth dignity , is but a coacervation of the four precedent . persona or almugea is when there is the same configuration betwixt the sun and moon and another planet as there is betwixt their houses . decanat is the prefecture of the planets over every ten degrees of the signs in the zodiack . mars over the first ten degrees of aries , sol over the second , venus over the third ; mercury over the first ten of taurus , the moon over the second , saturn over the third ; and so on , according to the order of the planets , till all the ten degrees of the zodiack be gone through . the last essential dignity is gaudium , which is competible only to those planets that have two houses , and is when a planet is plac'd in that house which is most agreeable to his nature . the chief of these dignities are house , exaltation , and triplicity . for the first has five powers , the second four , and the third three . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has but two , and almugea and gaudium but one apiece . . the accidental dignities arise either from their posture to the sun , or from their motion in their orbs , or from their mutual configuration . in regard of their position to the sun they are either in cazimi , or combust or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or free from combustion , or oriental or occidental . to be in cazimi is to be corporeally join'd with the sun , and gives the planet five fortitudes . to be combust or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be distant some ten or fifteen degrees from the sun , &c. this position puts four or five detriments on the planet . to be free from combustion adds five fortitudes . saturn , iupiter and mars from their conjunction to their opposition with the sun are oriental , and gain two fortitudes ; but from their opposition to their conjunction are occidental , and incur two detriments . in regard of their motion the planets are either direct , retrograde , swift , slow or stationary . direction has four fortitudes , retrogradation five debilities , station two debilities . configuration or aspect is either sextile , quartile , trine , opposition or conjunction . the conjunction of benign planets adds five fortitudes , of malign five debilities . sextile and trine are benign aspects , quartile and opposition malign , &c. . but to climbe nearer to the top of their artifice , let us now set down their witty contrivance of the heavens into twelve houses in their erection of their astrological scheme . the first house begins at the east horizon , and is to be numbred according to the series of the signs eastward , and is called horoscopus and domus vitae . the second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus lucri . the third 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus fortunae . the fourth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , imum coeli and domus patrimonii . the fifth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus liberorum . the sixth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus aegritudinum . the seventh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus nuptiarum . the eighth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus mortis . the ninth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus religionis . the tenth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , cor coeli and domus honorum . the eleventh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or domus amicorum . the twelfth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or domus carceris . every one of these houses has its consignificatour . the first house saturn , the second iupiter , the third mars , the fourth sol , and so on , according to the ptolemaical order of the planets . according to which also they constitute their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or afridarii , giving the planets a septennial dominion in succession from the nativity . the first septennium to the moon , the second to mercury , the third to venus , &c. now this erection of a scheme and distribution of the heavens into twelve houses is no less then five manner of waies , as * origanus has set down . the first of iulius firmicus , who draws his circles through the poles of the zodiack . the second of aben ezra , who divides the aequator into twelve equal parts , as the other did the zodiack , by the drawing of six great circles through the mutual sections of the horizon and meridian & through each thirtieth degree of the aequator . the third is that of campanus , who divides the principal vertical into twelve equal parts by archs drawn through the common intersections of the meridian and horizon . fourthly alcabitius draws the circles through the poles of the world and certain equidistant points in the semidiurnal and seminocturnal archs of the ascension of the ecliptick . and lastly , porphyrius divides the two oriental parts of the zodiack intercepted betwixt the horizon and meridian above and below into three equal parts apiece . so many waies are there of building houses or castles in the air. . that the erection of a scheme may foretell right the fate of the infant , the time of the birth is to be known exactly . for if you miss a degree in the time of the birth , it will breed a years errour in the prognostication ; if but five minutes , a month , &c. for which purpose also it is a necessary to know the longitude and latitude of the place . . after the erection of so accurate a scheme , they pretend to be able to foretell the time of the main accidents of mans life , and that either by profection annual and transition , or by direction . the last is the chief : and therefore not to fill your eares over-much with the wretched gibberish of gypsies , when i have intimated that the first of the two former run all upon aspects , and that transition is nothing else but the passing of a planet through the places of the nativity , whether its own or of other planets or of the horoscope , &c. i shall force my self a little more fully to define to you , out of * origanus , the nature of direction . which is the invention of the arch the aequator which is intercepted betwixt two circles of position , drawn through two places of the zodiack , the one whereof the significator possesses , the other the promissor , and ascends or descends with the arch of the ecliptick in the posture of the sphere given . the term from whence the computation is made is the significator ; the term to which , the promissor . as if sol be directed to mars , sol signifies dignities , and mars the nature of those dignities ; and the distance of the time is computed by direction . i shall omit to tell you that all the planets and all the houses are capable of direction , if we would accurately examine a scheme . but the chiefest directors or significators are , . the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which the arabians call hylech from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the latines emissor or prorogator vitae . . the moon for the affections of the mind . . the sun , even then also when he is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for the condition of life and dignities . . the horoscope for health and peregrinations . . the medium coeli for marriage and procreation of children . . the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the part of fortune for increase or decrease of riches . . but the chiefest of all is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as respecting life it self , which is directed to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or interfectour , or slayer . which is , suppose , either some planet which is present in the eighth house , as saturn or mars , or the almuten of the eighth house , or the planet join'd to the almuten , or the almuten of the planet , or the almuten of the lord of the eighth house . but the huge mystery is , and that a sad one , that when the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comes to the place of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , the emissor unto the place of the interfector , then wo be to the brat that ever he was born under so unlucky starrs ; for there is no remedie but he must die the death . nor will his * alcochodon , or almuten hylegii avail him any thing , when his hyleck or emissor is once come into the hands of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or that celestial butcher . these are the most fundamental and most solemn fooleries ( for so i must call them ) of their whole art : and i shall now set my self to demonstrate them to be so , after i have answered those more general plausibilities they would countenance themselves by . chap. xvi . . that the starrs and planets are not useless though there be no truth in astrology . . that the starrs are not the causes of the variety of productions here below . . that the sensible moistening power of the moon is no argument for the influence of other planets and starrs . . nor yet the flux and reflux of the sea , and direction of the needle to the north pole. . that the station and repedation of the planets is an argument against the astrologers . . that the influence attributed to the dog-star , the hyades and orion , is not theirs but the sun 's , and that the sun's influence is only heat . . the slight occasions of their inventing of those dignities of the planets they call exaltations and houses , as also that of aspects . . their folly in preferring the planets before the fixt starrs of the same appearing magnitude , and of their fiction of the first qualities of the planets , with those that rise therefrom . . their rashness in allowing to the influence of the heavenly bodies so free passage through the earth . . their groundless division of the signs into moveable and fixt , and the ridiculous effects they attribute to the trigons , together with a demonstration of the falseness of the figment . . a confutation of their essential dignities . . as also of their accidental . . a subversion of their erection of themes and distributing of the heavens into twelve celestial houses . . their fond pretenses to the knowledge of the exact moment of the infants birth . . a confutation of their animodar and trutina hermetis . . as also of their method of rectifying a nativity per accidentia nati . . his appeal to the skilfull , if he has not fundamentally confuted the whole pretended art of astrology . . wherefore to their first general pretence , that the very being of the starrs and planets would be useless , if there be nothing in the art of astrology , i answer , that though there were certain virtues and influences in every one of them , yet it does not follow that they are discovered in their art : and then again , that though there were none saving that of light and heat in the fixt starrs , it will not follow that they are useless . because the later and wiser philosophers have made them as so many * suns : which hypothesis our astrologers must confute before they can make good the force of their first argument . and for the planets , they have also suggested that they may have some such like use as our earth has , i. e. to be the mother of living creatures , though they have defined nothing concerning the natures of them ; whereby their opinion becomes more harmless and unexceptionable , as it is in it self highly probable : forasmuch as the earth , as well as saturn , iupiter and the rest , moves about the sun , and is as much a planet as any of them ; as the best astronomers doe not at all stick now-adaies to affirm . which does utterly enervate the force of this first general pretence of the astrologians . . to the second i answer , that the starrs are but lights of much the same nature as our sun is , only they are further removed , so that their contribution is much-what the same . and again , nothing turns off their more subtil influence , according to their own concession ; and therefore though there were this variety in them , yet because all this variety reaches every point of the earth , the product would be the same , unless the particles of the earth were diversified by some other cause , which assuredly they are . and thirdly , that neither their own variety , nor the influences of the heavens , if they be merely material , are sufficient causes of productions here below . fourthly , that the celestial matter is every where , and that the earth swims in it , as wood does in water , so that we need not have recourse to so remote unknown activities . and lastly , that that general 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or spirit of nature , is also every where ready to contrive the matter into such shapes and virtues as its disposition makes toward . and this is enough and more then enough to take off the edge of the knights argument . . i do acknowledge that the moon in her full swells certain things with moisture ; which effect is both sensible and palpable , and also reasonable , by reason of her proximity and of the reflexion of the sun's beams from her body , which being but of a moderate power , melt the air and vapours into an insinuating liquidness , but do not dissipate them , as his direct beams doe by day . which feat i do not doubt but that any other of the planets would perform , if they were so plac'd that their discus would seem of equal bigness with the moon 's , and she were removed into their place . but it is an insufferable folly to argue from such both reasonable and palpable effects of the moon , that the other planets also and fixt starrs have as powerfull effects upon us ; which yet we can deprehend by neither reason nor experience . . the like may be answered concerning the flux and reflux of the sea ; the ground whereof is rationall from what des-cartes has set down in his princip . philos. part . . namely , that the ellipsis of the celestiall matter is streightned by the moons body , which makes the aether flow more swift : which is a plain and mechanicall solution of the phaenomenon . and then we finde by certain experience that this flux and reflux depends on the course of the moon , so that there can be no deceit in the business . but when there is no reason nor sufficient experience that this is the cause of that , to attribute the one to the other is no good logick . and to that of the loadstone and polar-starre i say again , as i have said already , that it does not follow , because there are some sensible effects from the heavens , certain and constant , that therefore we may imagine what effects we please to proceed from this or that particular starre without due experience or reason for the same . and then in the next place , that it is not so much the influence of the heaven , as the magnetisme of the earth , in which this direction of the needle toward the north consists . for the needle varies in certain meridians , and some three miles from rosseburg , a town near upon the very corner where the finnick seas and sinus finnicus are joyn'd , the needle amidst a many sea-rocks turns about , nor ceases so to do for the space of a whole mile . which is a further demonstration that the direction of the needle depends upon the magnetisme of the earth . but truly if the events that astrologers take upon them to predict did as steadily point to the causes they alledge , this planet or that configuration of planets , signes or starres , as the needle and axis of the earth to the north ; though they could give no reasons thereof , i could easily allow their art. but there being such demonstrative reasons against their grounds , and no certain experience for them , these particular allegations concerning the moon and pole-starre will stand them in no stead . . the station and retrogradation of the planets is a very considerable argument against them , and shews how foolish and imaginary their art is that is upheld by such gross mistakes . for they that understand the right systeme of the world , know very well that those phaenomena are not reall but seeming : which is a scurvy slur to these astrologers . but this i shall meet with again hereafter . . to the last i answer , that neither the dog-starre , arcturus , the hyades nor orion are conceived to have any such effects as are attributed to them , but then when the sun is in such places of the zodiack as himself without them would bring forth . and therefore they do fallaciously attribute to those starres what is really the virtue of the heat of the sun approaching nearer us , or abiding longer upon us . and as for the wrath of the dogge , which is abated already in some considerable measure , how tame a creature think you will he be , when the anticipation of the aequinoxes shall appoint him his kennell as low as capricorn , if the world should so long continue ? these may serve for poeticall expressions ( such as that of virgil , who attributes that to the signes which belongs to the sunne ; candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum taurus — when the white bull opens with golden horns the early year : ) but they will not endure the severity of the laws of an art , which is , to speak properly , not to entitle things circumstantiall and concomitant to reall causality . but as for the sun's efficacy it self , i will not deny it , nor yet acknowledge it any more then in the generall influence of heat , which cherishes and excites the seminal principles of things into act and perfection . which is no more mysterious then the aegyptians and livia's maids of honour hatching of egges without the help of the hen ; the same which the sun does to the ostriches left upon the sand . and i will also acknowledge that the rest of the stars do not stand for cyphers , but that at a competent distance they will have their effect : which the sun it self has not when removed from us but to the other side of the aequator , whereby his rayes become more oblique . how inconsiderable then think you would he be , if he were removed as farre as the fixt starres , all whose influence put together cannot supply his absence in the depth of winter ? whence it is plain , that it is a very fond inference to argue that those remote bodies of the fixt starres and planets have an influence upon us , because the sun and moon that are so near us have ; whenas if they were as far removed , their influence would assuredly be as insensible as that of the five planets and fixt stars . . and yet notwithstanding such is the intolerable impudence of the inventours of astrology , that they have at randome attributed such things to the other planets and starrs as they have only ground for , if any at all , in the two luminaries . as for example , because they might observe some more sensible mutation in the air and earth at the sun 's entring aries , it would be the more tolerable to phansie that sign his exaltation . but now to appoint places of exaltation to other planets , as taurus to the moon , libra to saturn , is a mere running the wild-goose chase from one single hint to matters where there is nothing of like reason or experience . so likewise because they had some intimation to make leo the house of the sun , his heat being then most sensible , and cancer the house of the moon , because then she would be most vertical to us ; they have without either fear or wit bestowed houses two apiece upon the rest of the planets , though there be neither reason nor effect answerable . and lastly , for aspects , in all likelihood the sensible varieties of the phases of the moon in opposition , trine and quartil , gave them first occasion to take notice of aspects : and then another thing happening , though independent on the course of the moon , namely , that every seventh day , in an acute disease , is critical , and that there are usually at those returns the greatest stirrs and alterations in the patient , and the quartil aspect of the moon happening also about seven daies from the conjunction , and then about seven daies more she being in opposition ; this natural circuit of fermentations in acute diseases , has given them occasion to slander the moon in those cases , and for her sake to reproach the aspects of opposition and quadrature in all the rest of the planets . such small hints as these are the solidest foundations of the phantastick structure of astrology . which we shall now something more nearly lay battery to , and so shatter it , that it shall not so much as find room in the imaginations of men . . to begin therefore with the first of their principles i have set down , that they prefer the planets before the fixt starrs ( i mean those so remote ones , that they seem but about the bigness of the greater starrs ) is without all reason ; the planets being but heaps of dead matter much like that of the earth , and having no light but what they reflect from the sun. for that which seems to be the innate light of the moon , is but the reflexion of the sun's beams from the earth . wherefore their activity and influence may justly seem less then that of the fixt starrs which shine not with borrowed but innate light . and for their powerfull penetrating into the bowels of the earth , that is a mistake arising from the supposed influence of the moon on the flux and reflux of the sea , even when she is on the other side of the earth ; to which with the like fallacious inference i have * answered already . but then , for the qualities of the planets , where they define the sun to be hot and moist rather then drying , but mars hot and parching dry , and saturn dry and cold ; what will not these impudent impostours dare to obtrude upon us , when they will vent such stuff as is liable to confutation by our very senses ? for does not our very sense tell us that the sun is the most hot and drying planet that is ? his heat it is , and not that of mars , that withers the grass and flowers , and parches the tops of mountains , and even rosts the inhabitants of the earth when they expose their bodies to his more direct raies . but what faculty could ever inform us that mars was such a parching and heating planet , and saturn so cold ? assuredly he that will expose his head to their acronychal raies , which are most potent , and shall profess he feels more cold from one and heat from the other , then he does from the other parts of heaven , will approve himself as mad as that old dotard that pretended that he could as often as he listned plainly hear the harmony of the celestial sphears . all the planets are opake bodies , and whatever their colour is , are as cold as earth . for neither yellow nor red clay cast any more heat then white , nor has any soil any sensible influence but what is drawn in by the nose , which sometimes proves wholesome and savory and sometimes of●ensive . but how our star-gazers proboscides should be drawn out to that length as to smell out the different virtues of the planets , i can no way understand . wherefore the pronouncing of mars hot and dry , and saturn cold and dry , &c. is a shameless foolery , and a demonstration of the vanity of the rest of their allotments of the first qualities to the planets . and since from these they are reputed benign or malign , masculine or feminine , and the like , all this part of their pretended science is but a rhapsody of fooleries also . . to the second , of the earth's being so pervious to the influence of the starrs and planets , i say , first , that it is a principle without proof , as i have already evinced : and then secondly , if i give them it , they will be fain to vomit it up again , it being destructive to their whole art. for if the raies and influence of the stars and planets have free passage through the body of the earth , the whole ceremonie of erecting a scheme for such a longitude and latitude is needless ; nay , as to the heavens , the fates of all men would be alike . for that hidden influence which governs all would reach to all points from all parts of heaven at once . . thirdly , concerning the division of their signs into mobilia and fixa and hicorporea . the mobilia are the equinoctial and solstitial signs . the latter whereof might deserve better the name of fixa then mobilia . and in my apprehension the tempers of the year might as well be said to be begun , suppose the cold in sagittarius and fixed in capricorn , and the heat in gemini and fixed in cancer , as begun in capricorn and fixed in aquarius , &c. but we will wink at small matters . that of the fiery , earthy , watry and aiery trigons is more notorious , and i cannot but smile when i read the effects of them . as for example , in physick , as dariot has set down , the moon and ascendent in the fiery signs comfort the virtue attractive , in the earthy signs the retentive , the aiery the digestive , and the watery the expulsive . would any man dare to administer physick then without consulting the precepts of astrology ? also in husbandry that 's a notable one of sir christopher's , who tells us how we may cause a plant to shoot deep into the earth or higher into the air , by setting of it at such an aspect of the moon . namely , if the moon be in the earthy triplicity , the root will shoot more downward into the earth ; if in the aiery , more upward into the air. which is a rare secret. now to omit the groundless and arbitrarious division of the zodiack into these four trigons , of which there is only this one hint , that i can imagine , namely , the fitness of leo for one part of the fiery trigon , the sun being most hot in that sign ; ( from which little inlet all the four elements flew up into heaven , and took their places in their respective triplicities in the zodiack with great nimbleness and agility , playing at leap-frog & skipping over one anothers backs in such sort , that dividing themselves into three equal parts , every triental of an element found it self a fellow-member of a trine aspect : ) the best jest of all is , that there is no such zodiack in heaven , or , if you will , no heaven for such a zodiack as these artists attribute these triplicities to . for this heaven and this zodiack we speak of is only an old errour of ptolemie's and his followers , who not understanding the true system of the world , and the motion of the earth , in which is salv'd the anticipation of the aequinoxes , have phansied a heaven above the coelum stellatum , and a zodiack that did not recede from west to east as the starry zodiack does . and this figment , which later ages have laughed off of the stage , is the only subject of these renounced trigons and triplicities , which therefore are justly laughed off of the stage with it . which discovery is a demonstration that the whole art of astrology is but upon frivolous and mere imaginary principles , as we shall further make manifest . and therefore those physicians proclaim themselves either cheats or fools , that would recommend their skill from such vain observations . . fourthly , now for the essential dignities of the planets , sith it is nothing but the increase of their innate virtue by being in such or such a sign , and these being the signs of that zodiack which has no heaven , nor is any thing ; it is manifest that the whole doctrine of essential dignities falls to the ground . but we will also cast our eye upon the distinct parts of this vain figment . and therefore as to the first essential dignity , the house of the planet ; there is no sagacious person but can easily smell out the meaning of making leo the house of the sun ; namely , not that that sign has any virtue to increase heat , but that the sun then has been long near the tropick of cancer , and so has more then ordinarily heated the earth by so long a stay in so advantageous a posture . and this is it , not the being in his house then , that makes the heat so great ; for those beyond the other tropick sure are cold enough . the same may be said of cancer , the moons house , that it is posture , not the nature of the place , that makes her virtue more then to us , but less to our antoeci . from this small hint from sense and mistakes of reason , have they without all reason and sense bestowed houses on the rest of the planets , guiding themselves by the conceit of the malignity and benignity of aspects . which to be a mere figment i have * noted already , it having no ground but that rash joining together of critical daies with the aspects of the moon . what a small preferment astrological exaltation is , you may understand from albumazar's liberality , who amongst the planets has advanced the head and tail of the dragon to the same dignity , which yet are nothing but intersections of the imaginary circles of the course of the moon and the ecliptick . but of this dignity i have * spoke enough already , and therefore i pass to the next . as for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or lords of the trigons , what great pitty it was there were not just eight planets , that each trigon might have had its two consuls , and mars not rule solitarily in his watry one ? but the foolery of the trigons being already confuted , i need add nothing further concerning this dignity . the prerogative of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is destroyed by that first general argument , the parts of the signs being as fictitious as the whole . and as for the carpentum or royal seat or throne , it being a compound dignity compacted of the former , the parts being but imaginary , it is evident that the whole is a mere nothing . and that persona planetae or almugea is as little , appears from hence , in that aspect is an empty conceit , raised upon no solid ground , as i have more then once already intimated . and that the lords of the decanats have but imaginary provinces , is again plain , for that their whole zodiack wherein all those fripperies are lodged is but imaginary , and their order also of assignation upon a false hypothesis , viz. according to that ranging of the planets that is in ptolemie's system . and lastly , gaudium , the last of the essential dignities , supposes two falsities ; that there are houses in this fictitious zodiack , and that planets are masculine and feminine : which supposition has been confuted already . so that all these essential dignities are devoid of all substance and reality , and the numbring of their particular fortitudes is the telling out so many nullities to no purpose . . nor can you hope for a better account of their accidental dignities . cazimi , combustion , and freeness from combustion , how fond and inconsistent conceits are they ? for first it is unreasonable , if they know the nature of the planets , of the sun , and of the celestial vortex , to make a planet in cazimi to gain five fortitudes . for beyond the sun the planet is at the furthest distance it can be from us : and saturn , iupiter and mars a whole diameter of the suns orbit more distant then when they are in opposition to the sun : and venus and mercury half of their own . besides , how can their virtue pass the body of the sun , or the bearing of the vortex against the planet and against us , and all the attemps of influence from the planet not be eluded ? again , if cazimi on this side the sun be good , why should not beyond the sun be bad ? and if venus or mercury in the body of the sun be so considerable , how much more are the spots of the sun that are far greater ? which their ignorance could never reckon in the compute of their dignities . besides , what wilde and disproportionable jumps are these , that cazimi should be five fortitudes , and yet combustion , which is to be but a little distance from the sun , should be five debilities ; and yet to be free from combustion , that is further removed from the body of the sun , should be again five fortitudes ? things so arbitrarious groundless , that none but sick-brain'd persons can ever believe them . that also is notoriously foolish , that saturn , iupiter and mars from their * conjunction with the sun to their opposition should have two fortitudes , and from their opposition to their conjunction should have two debilities . for in a great part of that semicircle that carries from opposition to conjunction , they are far nearer , and therefore much stronger then in the beginning of that semicircle that leads from their conjunction to opposition . moreover those dignities and debilities that are cast upon planets from direction , station and retrogradation , the thing is mainly grounded upon a mistake of the systeme of the world , and ignorance of the earths annuall motion , and from an idiotick application of accidents or phrases amongst men . and therefore because when things succeed ill they are said to go backwards , and when we are weary we goe more slow or stand still to breath us , or when we are most vigorous we run swiftest ; therefore must station be two debilities , retrogradation no less then five , but direction must be five fortitudes . whereas in reason station should rather seal on the effect of the planet more sure . but the truth is , a planet is neither stationary nor retrograde truly , but in appearance , and therefore these debilities no true ones but imaginary . the last accidental dignity is configuration or aspect , the vain grounds whereof have been * already taxed . to which i add , that it is utterly unreasonable to conceive that sextil and trine should be good , and yet quartil that is betwixt both be stark naught . nay it were far more reasonable to conceive that if conjunction and sextil were good , that quartil should be better then trine , as being further from opposition , and because the planets thus aspected are in better capacity both of them to strike with more direct raies on the earth , then if they were in a trine aspect . and therefore i know no reason imaginable that could move them to have so ill a conceit of quartil aspect , but because of the great unquietness of acute diseases that happens about every seventh day , which is the time also of the quartil aspect of the moon : and therefore the whole mystery of aspects is to be resolved into this rash misapplication . you have seen now how little worth all the astrological dignities are ; and yet out of these huge nothings of their fictitious art is the whole fabrick built of whatever predictions they pretend to : so that we may be assured that all is vain and ridiculous . . concerning their twelve houses of the nativity , the division is arbitrarious , and their erecting of a scheme so many waies and that with like success , an evidence that the success is not upon art but fortuitous . the configuration also of the houses and those * septennial 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or alfridarii do intimate that the whole business is but a figment , going upon that false hypothesis of ptolemie , that the planets and the earth have not the sun to their centre . but this is not all we have to say against these celestial tenements . for either the earth is pervious to all the raies of the planets and starrs , as well beneath as above the horizon , or only they above the horizon shed their virtue on the child . if the former be true , all nativities are alike . if the latter , why have they any more then six houses , and why any at all under the horizon ? and in good sadness what is the meaning that their horoscope and the sixth house , being houses of so great concernment , should be under the horizon ; especially when they are pleased at other times to pronounce that a star or planet that is vertical is most efficacious ? and can it be thought any thing but a mere phancie that led them to make the horoscope the house of life , namely , because the starrs arise from thence , and are as it were born into the world ? whence ( as i have shewed their custome to be in other things ) they have feigned the rest of the houses at random . and that you may still be more sure that there is nothing in these houses , ( or rather that the houses themselves are nothing ) they are but the distribution of that imaginary zodiack and heaven , which ( i told you * before ) the errour of ptolemy brought into the world , into twelve imaginary sections , beginning at the east point of this zodiack : so that their art is perpetually built upon nothing . . now for the exact time of the nativity , that one should know the very moment when the child is born , i say it is a curiosity nothing to the purpose . for first , if the hard and thick earth be pervious to the raies of heaven , how easily may those thin coverings of the womb be penetrated continually by the power of the starrs ? and therefore even then is the childe as much exposed to them , as when it is newly born . or if it be not ; why may not it some moments after its being born , be still as liable to their influence as in the moment when it was born ? for cannot these influences that penetrate the very metalline bowels of the earth pierce a child's tender skin without any resistance ? but supposing this curiosity to be to the purpose ; how hard and lubricous a matter is it to come to that exactness that they pretend to be requisite ? for first they must know the exact longitude of the place , ( a thing of extreme uncertainty ) or else the exactness of time will doe them no good . and yet again , their affectation of exactness seems ridiculous , when we cannot well determine the proper time of his birth . for he is born by degrees , and few or none come out , after first they appear , in a shorter space then half a quarter of an hour . wherefore their head being exposed to the starry influence , why should not that celestial infection pervade their whole body ? but suppose that to be the moment of their birth , wherein the whole body is first out , how shall this moment be known ? by an exact minute watch , such as tycho had , and sir christopher heydon professes himself to have had , which would exactly give him the minute and second scruple of time. but how few nativity-casters can boast of the same priviledge ? or if they could , to what purpose is it , when it seldome happens that they are in the same house , much less in the same room where the party is delivered ? wherefore the report of the midwife is the best certainty they have : and how many nativities have been cast without so much as that ? and yet they will confidently predict fates and destinies upon an uncertain time given them . for they can , say they , correct it , and reduce it to the right moment of the nativity , and that by no less then three several waies ; by trutina hermetis , animodar , and accidentia nati : which how bold and groundless a boast it is , let us now see . . trutina hermetis goes upon this ground , that that degree of the zodiack the moon is in at the time of conception , the same is the horoscope of the nativity . but what a foolish subterfuge is this , whenas the exact time of conception is as hard to be known as that of the nativity ? and if it were known , there is yet no certainty , some coming sooner , some later , as every mother , nurse or midwife knows full well ; nor will any of them presume to tell to a day when a woman shall be brought to bed . in animodar the nativity is either conjunctional or preventional , that is , either after or before the conjunction of the sun and moon . if the interlunium precede the time of the birth , the degree is to be noted in which it happens ; if the plenilunium , that degree in which that luminary is that is above the horizon in the time of opposition , the sun by day , the moon by night . the degrees thus given , the almuten almusteli is to be found out , which is the planet that has most dignities in that place of opposition or conjunction ; which are trigon , house , altitude , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and aspect . then the degree of the sign is to be noted in which the almuten was at the time of the estimated birth , &c. for i need not hold on ; enough has already been said to demonstrate the whole process a ceremonious foolery . for the computation being to be made from the place of the almuten almusteli , and his election by dignities , and dignities being nothing but empty phansies and vanities , as i have already proved , the correction of the nativity by animodar must needs be idle and vain . besides that , the almuten being one and the same , as belonging to one and the same conjunction or opposition of the luminaries , how can it be a rule to children born at the same times in divers climates ? for it is evident the horoscope alters with the clime and lastly , not only picus , a foe to astrology , professes how false both this method of animodar as also that rule of hermes is , and clashing one with another ; but origanus himself , a friend to the art , advises us rather to listen to the relations of mother midnight then to give any credit to either of these waies . the most certain way of correcting a scheme of nativity in origanus his judgment , is per accidentia nati , whether good or bad , as honours , preferments , gifts , sickness , imprisonment , falles , conflicts , &c. which way notwithstanding at the first sight is very lubricous . for it is at least disputable and uncertain , whether there be liberty of will in man or no. but i will venture further , that for my own part , i think it demonstrable from inward sense , reason and holy writ , that there is free-will in men ; whence it will necessarily follow , quòd multa accidunt hominibus praeter naturam praeterque fatum . diseases therefore , imprisonments , disgraces and preferments may be brought upon us by the free agency of our selves or others , and that sooner or later according as mens vertues or vices act . which takes away all certainty of computation per accidentia nati . . besides that the manner of it is very frivolous and ridiculous . for it being threefold , as origanus has set down , profection annual , transition , and direction ; there is none of them that are any thing more then mere phansies and figments . for what can be more vain and imaginary then their annual profection , which makes the horoscope and the rest of the houses move thirty degrees a year till the whole period be finished in twelve ? is this circuit of the nativity-scheme any where but in their own brain ? and then their predictions or corrections are by aspects of the cuspe of the root with the cuspes of the present scheme calculated for this or that year . and how aspects themselves are nothing , i have again and again taken notice . and for transition , what is more monstrous then to think that a planet by passing the same place in which it self or other planets were at the nativity , should cause some notable change in the party born ? as if the planets walked their rounds with perfumed socks , or that they smelt stronger at the nativity then other times , and that another planet come into the trace thereof should exult in the scent , or the same increase the smell : or what is it that can adhere in these points of heaven that the planets were found in at the nativity ? or why is not the whole tract of the same scent ? or why not expunged by the passage of other planets ? but what will not madness and effascination make a man phansie to uphold his own prejudices ? and truly these two origanus himself is willing to quit his hands of , as less sound and allowable : but direction is a principal business with him . which yet in good truth will be found as frivolous as the rest . for as in transition , so also in direction , the great change must happen when a planet , or cuspe , or aspect come to the place where such a planet or cuspe were at the nativity . when the significator comes to the place of the promissor , then the feat does not fail to be done . for the promissor is conceived as immovable , and such as stands still and expects the arrivall of the significator : which is a demonstration that this promissor is either imaginary space or nothing : and which of these two think you will keep promise best ? nay the significator also , if it be the horoscope or any other house , is imaginary too , as i have demonstrated . and if it be a planet , seeing yet the planets move not as a bird in the aire , or fishes in the waters , but as cork carried down the stream ; it is plain how this planet never gets to that part of the celestiall matter in which the promissor was at the nativity , the promissor ever sliding away with his own matter in which he swims : and therefore if he hath left any virtue behinde him , it must again be deposited in an imaginary space . which is an undeniable argument that the whole mystery of direction is imaginary . wherefore if profection annuall , transition and direction are so vain that they signifie nothing forward , how can we from events ( though they should be judged and reasoned from exactly according to these phantastick laws ) argue backward an exact indication of the time of the nativity ? if they could have pretended to some rules of nature or astronomy to have rectified a geniture by , they had said something ; but this recourse to their own phantastick and fictitious principles proves nothing at all . . and thus have i run through the eighth and ninth sections of the foregoing chapter before i was aware . and he that has but moderate skill in the solid principles of naturall philosophy and astronomy , and but a competent patience to listen to my close reasonings therefrom , cannot but acknowledge that i have fundamentally confuted the whole art of astrology , and that he has heard all their fine terms of horoscope , and celestiall houses , exaltation , triplicity , trigons , aspects benigne and maligne , station , retrogradation , combustion , cazimi , significator , promissor , apheta , anaereta , trigonocrator , horecrator , almugea , almuten , alcochodon , together with the rest of their sonorous nothings , to have fallen down with a clatter like a pyle of dry bones by the battery i have laid against them . and truly here i would not stick to pronounce that i have perfectly vanquished the enemy , did i not espy a little blinde fort to which these fugitives usually make their escape . and surely by the title it should be a very strong one ; they call it experience or observation of events , which they boast to be accurately agreeable to their predictions . chap. xvii . . their fallacious allegation of events answering to predictions . . an answer to that evasion of theirs , that the errour is in the artist , not in the art. . further confutations of their bold presumption , that their art alwaies predicts true . . that the punctuall correspondence of the event to the prediction of the astrologer does not prove the certainty of the art of astrology . . the great affinity of astrology with daemonolatry , and of the secret agency of daemons in bringing about predictions . . that by reason of the secret agency or familiar converse of daemons with pretended astrologers , no argument can be raised from events for the truth of this art. . a recapitulation of the whole matter argued . . the just occasions of this astrologicall excursion , and of his shewing the ridiculous condition of those three high-flown sticklers against christianity , apollonius , cardan and vaninus . . but here their hold is not so strong as their impudence great , that they will so boldly bear us in hand , that by virtue of the principles of their art they have foretold any thing to come . there are many ludicrous wayes of divination wherein no man is in good earnest , and yet the predictions and present personall descriptions of men sometimes fall right : but no sober man will impute this to art but to chance . it was but a fallacy of neptune's priest , when he would have carried the spectator into admiration of that deity from the many donaries hung up in his temple by votaries . but he whom he would have thus impos'd upon was too cunning for him . for he demanded straightway a catalogue of those votaries that had suffered shipwrack . and so do i of those predictions that have proved false . cardan , a reputed prince in this faculty , complains that scarce ten in fourty prove true : and picus , a narrow searcher into the art , professes that he has found of his own experience nineteen in twenty false ; and that in the prognostication of weather , where no free agents intermeddle to interrupt or turn off the naturall influence of the stars . . but all the aberrations that either themselves or others may have observed will not bring off the more devoted admirers of astrology to acknowledge the vanity thereof . for their excuse is , first , that by history , private information , and by their own experience they are assured that the predictions do sometimes fall punctually true to a year , nay , to a day , and sometimes to an hour , and that the circumstances of things are so particularly set out , that it cannot be chance but art that arrives at that accuracy . and then secondly , that the profession of others , and also their own observation , does witness to them , that when there is any mistake , the errour is in the artist , not in the art. for when they have examined their astrologicall scheme , they finde the event was there signified , and that it was their own oversight to miss it . but to answer to the latter first , i say , they cannot pretend their observation universall ; and they that understand astrology best , will acknowledge there is that intanglement usually and complication of things , that it requires a very long time to give due judgement according to art concerning a nativity . and therefore , i say , the representation of the event being so doubtfull , if they chance to predict right at first , they easily perswade themselves that was the meaning of the celestial theme . if they miss , they will force on their way further , till they finde out what is answerable to the events ; which then must needs be the meaning of the art , though the artist oversaw it : nor will they urge themselves to any further accuracy of inquisition , for fear they should finde it disagree again ; or rather out of a strong credulity that if it hit right , it is surely from the true meaning and principles of their beloved science : whenas in truth their themes have no certainty in their representation , but are as a piece of changeable stuffe or creased pictures , look this way it is this colour , that way that , this way a virgin , that way an ape ; or like the oracles of apollo , who was deservedly called loxias , whose crooked answers winded so this way and that way , that nothing but the event could tell whither they pointed . . i might adde further , that the pretence of the schemes themselves ( be they never so exact ) i say the pretence of their alwayes representing the events aright , is a most impudent and rash presumption ; because ( as i have intimated already ) the objects of their predictions are so alterable by the interposall of free agents , which interrupt ever and anon the series of causality in naturall inclinations . whence in reason a man can expect no certain predictions at all from the significations of the stars , nor that any triall can be made whether there be any thing in the art or no. and it cannot but seem to every one a very bold surmise , to imagine that all that fall in one fight by the edge of the sword , or suffer shipwrack in one storm , or are swept away in one pestilence , had their emissors and interfectors in their nativity answerable to the times of their death . the artists themselves dare not avouch it , and therefore bring in an unobserved caution of having recourse to eclipses , comets , and blazing-stars , to calculate the generall fortune of the place , nay , of their parents and ancestors , and of their familiar friends , of which there is no news in the most famous predictions of astrologers : and therefore these and the like considerations being left out , it is a signe their divinations fell true by chance . wherefore it is a shameless piece of imposture to impute the truth of predictions to art , where the rules of art are not observed ; i may adde where they are so palpably by experience confuted . for so it is in twins , whose natures should be utterly the same according to their art ; and if they could be born at one moment , the moment of their death should be the same also . and yet those undissevered twins born in scotland , who lived till twenty eight years of their age , prov'd very often dissenting brethren , would wrangle and jangle ; and one also died before the other . in answering to which instance , in my judgement , that ingenious knight sir christopher is very shrewdly baffled . . and now to the * former , i say , the reasoning is not right , to conclude the certainty of the art from the punctuall correspondence of the event to the prediction . for it is also true that the event has been punctually contrary thereto . and therefore this is as good a demonstration that it is no art , as the other that it is : but it is easie to conceive that both may happen by chance . again , as for that exact punctuality of time , it is most likely to be by chance , because ( as i have proved above ) there is no way of rectifying a nativity to that accuracy they pretend . and for particular circumstances in horary questions , why may they not be by under-hand information , or some tricks and juglings that are usuall amongst cheats ? but if the predictions of astrologers be free from this , and yet be punctuall in time and other circumstances , and so many that it may seem improbable to be imputed to chance , ( though chance has such a latitude , that it is difficult to say any thing is not by chance that happens , suppose but four times seldomer then the contrary ) it will not yet follow that they are free from other things which are assuredly worse , more horrid , and more execrable ; such as the consulting of ghosts and familiar spirits : a wickedness that that zealous patron of astrology , sir christopher heydon , acknowledges to be too frequently palliated under the pretence of this art. . and truly for my own part i do not much doubt but that astrology it self is an appendix of the old pagans superstition , who were worshippers of the host of heaven , and whose priests were confederates of the devil ; and therefore it is no wonder if daemonolatry creep in upon astrology , and renew their old acquaintance with one another . and assuredly it is a pleasant spectacle to those aiery goblins , those haters and scorners of mankinde , to see the noble faculties of men debased and intangled in so vile and wretched a mystery , which will avail nothing to divination unless these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these malicious deceivers act their parts in the scene . for it is not unconceivable how these invisible insidiators may so apply themselves to a mans curiosity that will be tampering and practising in this superstition , that ( suppose ) in horary questions , they may excite such persons and at such a time to make their demands , that according to the foreknown rules of astrology the theme of heaven will decypher very circumstantially the person , his relations , or his condition , and give a true solution of the demand , whether about decumbitures , stollen goods , or any such questions as are set down in dariot's introduction . which needs must enravish the young astrologer , and inflame him with the love and admiration of so strange an art. and as for nativities and punctuall predictions of the time of ones death , and it may be of the manner of it , ( which either only , or most ordinarily happens in such as are addicted to , or devoted admirers of this art ) it is very suspicable that the same invisible powers put to their helping hand to bring about the effect ; and so those whose misfortunes and deaths are predicted , must to the pot , to credit the art , and be made sacrifices to the lust and ambition of those rebellious fiends , to whose secret lash and dominion men expose themselves when they intermeddle with such superstitious curiosities as are appendages to ancient paganism , and were in all likelihood invented or suggested by those proud and ludicrous spirits , to entangle man in by way of sport and scorn , and to subjugate him to the befoolments of their tricks and delusions . for it is not unreasonable to think that by certain laws of the great polity of the invisible world they gain a right against a man without explicit contract , if he be but once so rash as to tamper with the mysteries of the dark kingdome , or to practise in them , or any way to make use of them . for why not here as well as in the ceremonies of witchcraft ? ( but i must not make too large excursions . ) and therefore i think it the safest way for every one that has given his name to god and christ , not to meddle nor make with these superstitious curiosities of astrology , either by practising them himself , or consulting them that do , that no ill trick be put upon him by being made obnoxious to the invisible scourge , or by making others so in whose behalf he consults . . i say then , these vagrant daemons of the air either secretly insinuating themselves into the actions of astrologers , or after more apparently offering themselves to familiarity and converse , for to grace their profession by oral revelation of things past , present , or to come in such a way as is above humane power ; i demand how it shall appear that cardan's , for example , and * ascletarion's deaths , and others more punctually , that i could name , predicted by themselves or others , was not by the familiarity of daemons , but the pure principles of astrology . and so of whatsoever honour or other events that have been found to fall out just according to astrological predictions , i demand how it can be proved that astrology was not here only for a vizard , and that a magician or wizzard was not underneath . by how much accurater their predictions are , by so much the more cause of suspicion . . now therefore to conclude , seeing that the principles of astrology are so groundless , frivolous , nay contradictious one with another , and built upon false hypotheses and gross mistakes concerning the nature and system of the world ; seeing it has no due object by reason of the interposing of the free agency of both men and angels to interrupt perpetually the imagined natural series of both causality and events ; seeing there is not sufficient experience to make good the truth of the art , they that have practised therein having not observed the pretended laws thereof with due accuracy , and therefore if any thing has hitherto hit true , it must be chance , which quite takes away their plea from events ; so that their art is utterly to seek , not only for principles , which i have demonstrated to be false , but for experience and effects , which hitherto have been none ; ( and assuredly they make nothing of pronouncing loudly that such or such a configuration will have such an event , though they never experienc'd it at all , or very seldom : as it must needs be in the conjunction of saturn , iupiter , and mars , which returns not in seven hundred years ; ) seeing also that those predictions that are pretended to have fallen right are so few , that they may justly be deemed to have fallen right by chance , and that if any thing has been foretold very punctually and circumstantially , it may as well , nay better , be supposed to proceed from the secret insinuations or visible converse with the aiery wanderers , then from the indication of the stars ; and lastly , seeing there is that affinity and frequent association of astrology with daemonolatry and ancient pagan superstition ; that person certainly must have a strangely-impure and effascinable passivity of phancie , that can be bound over to a belief or liking of a foolery so utterly groundless as astrology is , and so nearly verging toward the brinks of apostasie and impiety . . i have now finished my astrological excursion , to which i was strongly tempted , in a just zeal and resentment of that unparallel'd presumption and wicked sauciness of the vain-glorious cardan , who either in a rampant fit of pride and thirst after admiration , or out of a malicious design to all true piety , would make the world believe that the divinity and sacrosanctity of christian religion was subjected to his imaginary laws of the stars , and that the fate of christ the son of god , miraculously born of the holy ghost , was writ in his nativity , which forsooth he pretended to have calculated : as if all that iustice , meekness and power of working of miracles were deriv'd upon our saviour from the natural influence of the configuration of the heavens at his birth ; and as if he did not willingly lay down his life for the world , * as he himself professes , but were surprized by fate , and lay subject to the stroke of an astrological 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or sidereal interfector . as also to meet with that enormous boaster and self-conceited wit , the prophane and giddy-headed vaninus , a transported applauder and admirer of that wild and vain supposition of cardan , upon which he so much dotes , that it is the very prop and master-piece of his impious writings , the both basis and finishing of all his villainous distorted doctrines against the truth and sacredness of christian religion . to which two you may add also apollonius , though long before them , a high pretender to divine revelations , and hot instaurator of decaying paganism ; but withall a very silly affected of * astrological predictions , by which it is easily discoverable at what a pitch he did either divine or philosophize . and methinks it is a trim sight to see these three busie sticklers against christianity , like three fine fools so goodly gay in their astromantick disguises , exposed to the just scorn and derision of the world for their so high pretensions against what is so holy and solid as the christian faith is , and that upon so fond and frivolous grounds as this of astrology . book viii . chap. i. . the end and usefulness of christian religion in general . . that christ came into the world to destroy sin out of it . . his earnest recommendation of humility . . the same urged by the apostle paul. . we have no finished the third part of our discourse , and have sufficiently proved , that christianity is not only a reasonable and intelligible idea of something that may be worth providence's setting on foot some time or other , or as a seminal form lurking unactive in the seed under ground ; but that it has shot it self into real existence , and is as a grown tree that spreads its arms far and wide . it remains now that we consider the branches and fruit thereof . and i dare boldly pronounce that this is the tree whose leaves were intended for the healing of the nations , not for a pretence and palliation for sin ; and that the fruit thereof to the true believer is life and immortality . this is a brief comprehension of the glorious end and great usefulness of the gospel . but we shall be something more explicate in a matter of so mighty importance . you may understand out of what has been said in the first part concerning the nature of the mystery of godliness , that the gospel is a kind of engine to raise the divine life into those triumphs that are due to it , and are designed for it from everlasting by the all-seeing providence of god. let us now consider how fit the dispensation of the gospel is for this purpose , that is to say , those things that are testified in it , or prophesied of it , or intimated by it , how all these things aim and conspire to this end ; partly by affording the most effectual means imaginable for the re-installing the soul into an higher state of righteousness here , then any other dispensation that has yet appeared in the world , and thereby more certainly transplanting her hereafter into a blessed state of immortal life ; and partly by exhibiting such warrantable grounds of doing divine homage to the lord jesus christ , in whom this life we speak of resideth so plentifully , he being anointed therewith far above the measure of his fellows . so that in this respect , though the other design has taken so little effect in the world , yet we cannot but acknowledge that the divine life has not been disappointed of all her exteriour pomps and triumphs . we shall begin with the former kinds of the powers of this engine . . the first wherof consists in this , in that it is so plainly and clearly declared in the new testament , that the great end of christs coming into the world was to remove sin out of it , and to purifie mens souls from all uncleanness and wickedness ; as is apparent from sundry places . as john chap. . he that committeth sin is of the devil ; for the devil sinneth from the beginning . for this purpose the son of god was manifested , that he might destroy the works of the devil . whosoever is born of god , doth not commit sin ; for his seed remaineth in him : and he cannot sin , because he is born of god. again , tit. chap. . for the grace of god that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men ; teaching us , that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts , we should live soberly , righteously and godly in this present world ; looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great god and our saviour iesus christ ; who gave himself for us , that he might redeem us from all iniquity , and purifie to himself a peculiar people , zealous of good works . also ephes. ch . . v. . husbands , love your wives , even as christ also loved the church , and gave himself for it ; that he might sanctifie and cleanse it with the washing of water , by the word : that he might present it to himself a glorious church , not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing ; but that it should be holy and without blemish . i might add several other places , but i shall content my self with but one ratification more of this truth from the mouth of our blessed saviour , who professes he came not to destroy the law , but to fulfill it , that is , to set it at an higher pitch , as appears by the whole scope of his sermon upon the mount. the observance of which precepts he does seriously require of his disciples and followers ; as appears from that similitude he closes his discourse withall , where he pronounces that they that kept and practised his sayings , should be safe as one that builds his house upon a rock ; but those that heard and practised not should be as he that built on the sand , that is , upon a false and deceitfull foundation . and a little above he does plainly protest even against such that may have prophesied , cast out devils and done miracles in his name , ( which yet are greater matters then either the making or hearing of long praiers or long sermons , ) because they kept not this law of righteousness he there propounds , he does protest that in the day of judgment he will not know them , but bid them depart from him , as workers of iniquity . this is sufficient to demonstrate that the end of the gospel is to renovate the spirits of men into true and real inherent righteousness and holiness , which in counter-distinction to the animal life ( which had domineered in the world so long , not only in the prophane actions but also in the very * religious rites of the heathens , as i have already shewn at large ) i have denominated the life divine , and numbred out those three parts it most consists of , namely , humility , charity and purity ; and therefore it will not be unseasonable to shew how expresly and particularly urgent the gospel is for the promoting these three graces . . our saviour christ matth. . makes a solemn invitation to the first of these vertues , propounding himself an example ; come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden , and i will give you rest . take my yoke upon you , and learn of me , for i am meek and lowly in heart , and you shall find rest unto your souls . and matth. . v. . blessed are the meek , for they shall inherit the earth . it is a promise from the same mouth . the meaning of both which places is , that humility and meekness beget a great deal of peace and tranquillity and enjoyment of a mans self even in this life , whenas pride exposes a man to perpetual discontent and impatiency . besides that the proud man is as it were the butt that the almighty shoots his arrows against to gall , wound and vex ; the very hackstock of divine vengeance , and the sport and pastime of misfortune . god resisteth the proud , but giveth grace to the humble . but my purpose is not to interpret such easie places as i alledge , but merely to bring them into the readers view . and there are many more yet that testifie of the excellency of this grace of humility . for our saviour again ( matth. . ) entitles those vertues especially to the knowledge of the mystery of the kingdome of god. i thank thee , o father , lord of heaven and earth , because , thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent , and hast revealed them unto babes . even so , father , for so it seemeth good in thy sight . and matth. . christ being asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven , called a little childe unto him , and set him in the midst of them , and said , verily i say unto you , except ye be converted and become as little children , ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven . whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little childe , the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven . and chap. . . ye know that the princes of the gentiles exercise dominion over them , and they that are great exercise authority upon them . but it shall not be so among you ; but whosoever will be great among you , let him be your minister ; and whosoever will be chief among you , let him be your servant . even as the son of man came not to be ministred unto , but to minister , and to give his life a ransome for many . in which passage is insinuated , that useless and pompous honour is to have no place in the church of christ ; but that if any mans office be more honourable then another , it must be also more serviceable , especially in matters appertaining to religion . for to the like purpose is that matth. . where the pride and hypocrisie of the scribes and pharisees is taxed . for they binde heavy burthens , saith our saviour , and grievous to be born , and lay them upon mens shoulders ; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers . but all their works they do to be seen of men : they make broad their phylacteries , and enlarge the borders of their garments , and love the uppermost rooms at feasts , and the chief seats in the synagogues , and greetings in the market-places , and to be called of men , rabbi , rabbi . but ●● not you called , *** rabbi , saith our saviour : for one is your master , even christ , and all you are brethren . and call no man your *** father upon earth ; for one is your father which is in heaven . neither be you called *** masters ; for one is your master , even christ. but he that is greatest among you , shall be your * servant . and whosoever shall exalt himself , shall be abased ; and he that humbleth himself , shall be exalted . . hitherto our saviour , and that very fully . in whose foot-steps the apostles also insist , rom. . . be of the same minde one towards another . minde not high things , but condescend to men of low degree . be not wise in your own conceits . and eph. . i therefore the prisoner of the lord beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called , in all lowlinesse and meeknesse , with long-suffering , forbearing one another in love . and titus . put them in minde to be subject to principalities and powers , to obey magistrates , to be ready to every good work , to speak evil of no man , to be no brawlers , shewing all meekness to all men . so that we see the christian religion meets as well with the saucinesse of the inferiours , as with the affected domination of superiours . thus expresly does the gospel recommend humility to the world. chap. ii. . christs enforcement of love and charity upon his church by precept and his own example . . the wretched imposture and false pretensions of the family of love to this divine grace . . the unreasonableness of the familists in laying aside the person of christ , to adhere to such a carnall and inconsiderable guide as hen. nicolas . . that this whifler never gave any true specimens of reall love to mankinde , as christ did and his apostles . . his unjust usurpation of the title of love. . the unparallel'd endearments of christs sufferings in the behalf of mankinde . . the next branch of the divine life is christian love or charity , then which nothing is more inculcated in the new testament . christ has left it as his motto , and the motto of his church , the symbolum or word whereby it may be known to whom they belong . iohn . . a new commandement i give unto you , that ye love one another ; as i have loved you , that ye love one another . by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples , if ye love one another . as if he should have said , you may have heard something indeed out of moses of loving ones neighbour as himself ; which precept as it did not reach so far as i intend this of mine , and that which it reached at is utterly laid aside and neglected , i now afresh set it on foot , and upon such terms and in such a degree and manner as never was yet . for i would have you love one another even as i have loved you , that is , so heartily and sincerely , that you will be ready to lay your lives down one for another , if need require . which is more express , chap. . . this is my commandment , that ye love one another , as i have loved you . greater love hath no man then this , that a man lay down his life for his friends . which christ doing for his church , especially in those circumstances he did , is an unparallel'd specimen of true love indeed , and the highest obligation that can be of our loving both him and one another . . which things while i consider , i cannot with patience think upon the gross imposture of that bold enthusiast of amsterdam , who giving no sound evidence of any such love as may be deemed rightly either morall or divine , only tumbling out a rhapsody of swelling words , distorted allegories , and slight allusions to the history of scripture , intermingling them or strinkling them ever and anon with the specious name of love , ( though there be no motive nor reason that urges the thing it self all the while , ) would give out himself such a master of this mystery , as that christianity must be super-annuated , and all the devotionall homage due to our saviour laid aside , all his offices silenced , his passion slighted , nay derided , his visible return to judgement anticipated and eluded , his resurrection and ascension misbelieved , and the promise of eternal life swallowed up in the present glorious enjoyments and enrichments of them that will give up their soundness of judgement and reason to be led about with the may-games and morrice-dances of that sweet sect that have usurped to themselves the title of the family of love. whenas the authour of this faction , as i am well enough informed , was more likely to prove a pimp or second sardanapalus , then a true instructor of the world in so holy a mystery ; being infamous for having suspected females in his house , and living splendidly and deliciously above his rank ; noted for his crimson-satten doublet and other correspondent habiliments , as also for his large looking-glass , wherein he often contemplated his whole begodded humanity ; and composing his long beard , and stroaking down his satten sides , might strut in admiration of himself , that he found the world so favourable to his false impostures ; and lastly , ridiculous for his women-scribes , and other such like soft doings , not to say impure and obscene . all which to any man that has but a moderate nasuteness cannot but import , that in the title of this sect that call themselves the family of love , there must be signified no other love then that which is merely natural or animal ; though the preacher of this love-mystery bears himself so aloft , and is so high upon the wing , that he cannot phansie himself any thing lesse then that apocalypticall angel flying in the midst of heaven , and preaching the everlasting gospel to the inhabitants of the world. and truly this gospel of henry of amsterdam is likely to be as lasting as the generations of men , and , i may adde , as universall as both men and brutes . . hear , o heavens , and hearken , o earth , while i pleade the cause of the just one and despised against the rebellious hypocrites . thus saith the lord god , behold , i lay in sion for a foundation a stone , a tried stone , a precious corner-stone , a sure foundation ; and he that believes thereon , shall not be ashamed . iudgement also will i lay to the line , and righteousness to the plummet , and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lyes , and the waters shall overflow their hiding-places . that this corner-stone and sure foundation is * christ that suffered at ierusalem , we are infallibly informed by those that were truly inspired , the blessed apostles . that the refuge of lyes and hiding-place is most naturally applicable to this skulking family , is apparent , in that the summe of their religion is nothing but a bundle of lying allegories and canting terms , whereby they deal falsly with men ; and under the pretence of fine mystical speeches , would thrust out of the world the choicest and most beneficiall truth that ever was imparted to the sons of men ; i mean the truth of the gospel in the plain simplicity thereof , whereby we are so clearly taught what we are to be , to do , and to expect . and the storm that shall overtake them , and the deluge that shall fall in upon them in their hidden dwellings , shall be those torrents of reason and that irresistible conviction from the sincere and true-hearted followers of christ. tell me therefore , o ye conceitedly-inspired , whose phancies have blown you above gospel-dispensations , why do you run into the errour of the jews , and refuse this precious corner-stone , this sure foundation , and build upon disunited sand and rotten quagmires , that will bear no weight ? why do you lay aside christ in the truth of his history , the most palpable pledge of divine providence , of god's reconciliation to men and of future happiness , that ever was exhibited to the world , and chuse for your guide a mere allegorical whisler , an idol-puppet dressed up in words and phrases filched out of the scripture , but perverting and eluding the main scope and most usefull meaning thereof ? why have ye forsaken the only-begotten sonne of god , and given your selves up to the deceivable conduct of a mere carnall man , and wholy destitute not only of true faith in god and christ , but of all substantial knowledge and reason ? why are you so rash and giddy as to believe one that only testifies of himself , and is so impudent a plagiary as to offer you no wares but such as he has stolne from you , if you pretend to be of the christian church ; and those so poisoned and adulterated , that you cannot receive them without the danger of being struck into a misbelief of the truth of christs gospel , and of revolting from him to whom so many illustrious prophecies of old , so many miracles done by himself , to whom his wonderfull resurrection from the dead , and audible voices from heaven while he was living , gave ample testimony that he was indeed the true son of god ? . what indearing evidence or argument has this mercer of amsterdam given you of true compassion and love to mankinde , that you should vaunt him so transcendent a mystagogus in so divine a mystery , that you equalize him to , nay , exalt him above christ and his apostles ? did he not live a lazy , easie , soft life , as other rich shop-keepers do ; whenas not only our saviour himself but also his apostles lived an hard asketick life , full of dangers and afflictions also from without ? let s. paul speak for the rest , for they were in a manner all of them in the same case , and might justly expostulate with these high fanatick pretenders in the same words : are they ministers of christ ? ( i speak like a fool ) i am more ; in labours more abundant , in stripes above measure , in prisons more frequent , in deaths often . of the iews received i fourty stripes save one , thrice was i beaten with rods , once was i stoned , thrice i suffered shipwrack , a night and a day have i been in the deep ; in iourneyings often , in perils of water , in perils of robbers , in perils by mine own countreymen , in perils by the heathen , in perils in the city , in perils in the wildernesse , in perils at the sea , in perils among false brethren ; in wearinesse and painfulnesse , in watchings often , in hunger and thirst , in fastings often , in cold and nakednesse , &c. to all which you may adde very despightfull and torturous deaths which most of them underwent at last : and all this out of a faithfull love to their lord and master jesus christ , and a dear regard to the good and salvation of mankinde . but what was it wherewith this h. n. obliged the world so that all due homage and divine reverence to the person of christ must be laid aside , and this bold impostor silence the constant faith of christians , by his high pretensions of being the head and father of such a family whose inscription must be love , who with this family of his , is god and christ , and cherubims and seraphims , angels and arch-angels already busie in their office of judging the quick and the dead , and gathering the elect from all the corners of the earth ? . but in my apprehension at the very first sight he shews himself very injudicious , if not malicious , in making a difference betwixt the true houshold of faith and family of love ; besides his gross and impudent injustice in usurping that badge of honour to himself that was won by another in a field of bloud . for , as i was going to say , what has this h. n. done to merit this title more then in scribling many fanatical rhapsodies of unsound language , abusively borrowed from the sacred scriptures , and in perverting the sense and supplanting the end by his wicked elusions and vain allegorical evasions , and so under pretense of beginning an higher dispensation of righteousnes and religion in the world then ever was yet , treacherously introducing in stead of true religion nothing but sadducisme , epicurisme and atheisme ? this voluminous enthusiasme of his , together with the gracing of the family with the splendour of his crimson habiliments , is all i find that can pretend to any contestation or competition with the true master of divine love , or to any obligation of his followers . . i must confess our saviour compiled no books , it being a piece of pedantry below so noble and divine a person . but that short sentence which he writ with his own most precious bloud , as i have loved you , so love you one another , is worth millions of volumes , though written with the truest and sincerest eloquence that ever fell from the pen of an oratour . nor did he wear any gay clothes , but when by force the abusive souldiers put a scarlet robe upon him indespight and mockery . nor was he resplendent in any colours but what was the die of his own bloud in his solemn and dreadful passion , when he was so cruelly scourged , when out of agonie of mind he sweat drops of bloud , when he was nailed to the cross , and the lance let bloud and water out of his side . all which ineffable and unsupportable torments this innocent lamb of god suffered for no demerit of his , ( for what thank is it to suffer for a factious impostor or open evil doer ? ) but out of mere compassion and hearty love to mankind , that he might by this bitter passion of his , and the glorious consequences of it , his resurrection and ascension , gain us to god. and now let all men judge if there can be possibly any authour or pretended instructer of the world , in that holy and divine love indeed , comparable to the lord iesus , who has given this unparallel'd demonstration of his love unto us . chap. iii. . the occasion of the familists usurpation of the title of love. . earnest precepts out of the apostles to follow love , and what kind of love that is . . that we cannot love god , unless we love our neighbour also . . an exposition of the and verses of the chapter of the epist. of s. peter . . saint paul's rapturous commendation of charity . . his accurate description thereof . . that love is the highest participation of the divinity , and that whereby we become the sons of god. and how injurious these fanaticks are that rob the church of christ of this title to appropriate it to themselves . . hearken therefore to me , yet that would follow after righteousness , ye that seek the lord : look unto the rock whence you were hewen , and to the hole of the pit from whence you were digged . look upon him whom ye have pierced , and whose bloud is the seed of the church , whose spouse was taken out of his side as eve out of the side of adam . acknowledge your original , and recount with your selves the price of your redemption , even the inestimable bloud of that immaculate lamb christ jesus . the sense whereof is the strongest cement imaginable to unite us to our saviour and one unto another . but the church having been given up so long a time to bitter factions and persecutions , to warre and bloudshed , and all manner of enmity and hostility one against another , it is no wonder if a stranger has invaded that title , which she may justly be thought to have either refused or forfeited . for my own part , i know not how to apologize for either the fond opinions or foul miscarriages of the wilderness of christendome . but sure i am that the banner over the true spouse of christ is love : that love is the badge and cognoscence of all his faithful members , by which they are known to be his living members indeed : that love and peace is the last legacy which was left to the disciples by their dying lord and master ; an inheritance entailed upon all the true sons of god for ever : that love is the fulfilling of the law , and has filled almost every page of the gospel and all the writings of the apostles ; and when they speak of faith , it is none other faith then that which worketh by love. . out of the many repetitions and inculcations of this holy and heavenly vertue i was a gleaning out some to present you withall , for an evidence how serious the gospel of christ is and how sufficient in the urging of his indispensable duty . we go on therefore , and adde to what we have already cited these following places . galat. . . for in iesus christ neither circumcision availeth any thing , nor uncircumcision , but faith which worketh by love. and if circumcision be nothing without faith working by love , what can baptizing or rebaptizing or any external ceremony be without this true faith whose life and spirit is love , which the apostle directs us to ? and after v. , . for , brethren , ye have been called unto liberty ; only use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh , but by love serve one another . for all the law is fulfilled in one word , even in this , thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self . where this law of love is so carefully described , that the abuse of this title to lust and libertinisme is plainly excluded , against such as talk so much of love , and are but libertines at the bottom . which caution also is very soberly and prudently put in by s. iohn , ep. . chap. . v. . by this we know that we love the children of god , when we love god and keep his commandements . which is a plain demonstration that that love which saint iohn exhorts to so copiously in his epistle , is a love purely divine , and such as no man can be assured he doth practise , unlesse he keep all the commandements of god. for even a carnall man may love the children of god , because he findes them harmless , peaceable and beneficiall , or because himself is of a good sanguine benigne complexion : but this love , in a man that makes not conscience of the commandements of god , is merely animal and natural ; not proceeding from that community of the divine spirit which all the regenerate participate of , but out of complexion and self-love , which will adhere to any thing that it feels a naturall comfort from . but if this childe of god prove something spinose and harsh in opposing , rebuking , or it may be not complying with some dearly-beloved humours of this good-natured sanguine ; his corrupt bloud will then begin to boyl against the son of god , and return him hatred for his good will. . and as this blessed apostle and peculiarly-beloved of our saviour has made so carefull a caution , that the love he recommends to the world should not slack so low as to draggle in the dirt ; so has he wisely provided against the hypocrisie of high-flown religionists , who pretend to be so transported with love to god and his service , that they quite forget their neighbour : and therefore at the end of the foregoing chapter he does plainly pronounce , that if a man say , i love god , and hateth his brother , he is a lyar : for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen , how can he love god whom he hath not seen ? and this commandement have we from him , that he that loveth god , love his brother also . which duty of the second table being most hard , and the most l●able to be cast off through the hypocrisie of mens hearts , the inculcation thereof is most frequent with the apostles . paul to the ephesians , chap. . ver . . let all bitternesse , and anger , and wrath , and clamour , and evil speaking be put away from you , with all malice : and be ye kinde one to another , tender-hearted , forgiving one another , even as god for christs sake has forgiven you . be ye therefore followers of god , as dear children ; and walk in love , as christ also hath loved us , and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to god for a sweet-smelling savour . and colos. . . put on therefore ( as the elect of god , holy and beloved ) bowels of mercies , kindenesse , humblenesse of minde , meeknesse , long-suffering ; forbearing one another , and forgiving one another , even as christ forgave you . and above all things put on charity , which is the bond of perfectnesse : and let the peace of god rule in your hearts , &c. peter also , in his first generall epistle , seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit , unto unfeigned love of the brethren , see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently . and in his second epistle , ch . . and besides this , giving all diligence , adde to your faith vertue ; and to vertue , knowledge ; and to knowledge , temperance ; and to temperance , patience ; and to patience , godlinesse ; and to godlinesse , brotherly kindnesse ; and to brotherly kindnesse , charity . . the coherence of this golden chain of divine graces is so admirable that i cannot passe it by , though it be beside my present purpose to speak any thing of the places i cite . but we shall not so well understand the fit connexion of these vertues with themselves , nor of the whole link of them with the precedent text , without rectifying the translation in a word or two . the apostle in the foregoing verses intimates to them how god has provided for them according to his divine power all things appertaining to life and godlinesse , through the knowledge of his son iesus christ , who hath called us in glory and * virtue , and given us exceeding great and precious promises , that having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust , we should be partakers of the divine nature : and then comes in what has been recited , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which they have rendred , and besides this . which translation makes no connexion of sense with the former words , but is very abrupt , nor will the phrase i think bear that meaning . it is better sense and more laudable criticisme to render it thus , and therefore forthwith , or without any more adoe , adde to your faith vertue , &c. which latter words are not well rendred neither . the greek is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . grotius would have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be redundant there ; so that his suffrage is for the english translation . but for my own part i think that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is so far from being redundant , that it is essentiall to the sentence , and interposed that we might understand a greater mystery then the mere adding of so many vertues one to another , which would be all that could be expresly signified if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were left out . but the preposition here signifying causality , there is more then a mere enumeration of those divine graces . for there is also implied how naturally they rise one out of another , and that they have a causall dependence one of another . therefore the sense is , that god having on his part fitted all things for their salvation , and they having obtained like precious faith with the apostle himself , that through the efficacy of their faith they should also acquire virtue , that is , strength and fortitude . for high and noble promises excite courage and resolution to set upon the difficulties through which they must passe that would obtain the promises . and this encountring with the difficulties that are in a christian mans way , while he is not a talker of christianity but a reall actour and cordiall endeavourer to follow the precepts and example of christ , will beget not verbal but true knowledge in him , that is , holy experience in the wayes of god. and in this experience he is taught how those fleshly and worldly lusts and desires have often deceived him , and led him out of the way , blinding his judgement by their importunate suggestions , and extinguishing , or at least dulling , those more religious and divine senses of the soul , when their importunities are listened to and their cravings satisfied . and therefore this knowledge and experience begets temperance , that is , a more rigid resolution of curbing and keeping under of all worldly and carnal desires , and a peremptory refraining from giving any answer to their impudent beggings and cravings . which things if a man seriously attempt in its due extent and latitude , questionless he will put himself upon a very intolerable task , and there will be no remedy but patience ; which he will find so mightily out of his power , that he will be forced upon his knees to the god of heaven to comfort , assist and strengthen him in his agony and conflict against his domestick enemies , and to support his spirit in so great anguish and pain . whence it is plain that we cannot keep close to the laws of temperance , but that patience will necessarily emerge therefrom ; nor be kept in this spirit of patience without the invocation and acknowledgment of divine assistance , which is an unquestionable fruit of godliness properly so called . nor can we applie our hearts seriously and sincerely to this kind of godliness long , but we shall find answers to our praiers and breathings after god , beyond both our own expectation and the belief of others : and therefore enjoying the victory through the divine grace that is sufficient for us , and getting so glorious a triumph over our lusts , we finding our souls transported with an high sense of thankfulness to our redeemer and benefactour , who wants nothing of our retributions himself , the stream of our affections is naturally driven downwards to his church , to the saints that dwell upon earth , and those that excell in vertue , or at least pretend unfeigned endeavours after it . and this is properly brotherly kindness , which carries our affections to those that profess the same religion with our selves . which brotherly kindness arises not only out of this consideration of thankfulness toward god , but out of the very temper and condition of the soul thus purified : according to what s. peter intimates , that having purified our souls in obeying the truth through the spirit , the end and result thereof is the loving our brethren . or else what serves this purification for ? shall envy , shall hatred , shall lust , shall ambition , shall luxury , shall those enormous desires and affections be cast out of the soul by sanctity and purity , that she may be but a transparent piece of ice or a spotless fleece of snow ? shall she become so pure , so pellucid , so crystalline , so devoid of all stains and tinctures , of all soil and duller colours , that nothing but still shadows and night may possess that inward diaphanous purity ? then would she be no better then the nocturnall air , no happier then a statue of alabaster . all would be but a more cleanly sepulchre of a dead starved soul. but there is no fear of so poor an event upon so great preparations . for love and desire are so essentiall to the soul , that she cannot put them off but change them . she is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as psellus calls her , an immaterial and incorporeal fire , an unextinguishable activity , and will catch at some object or other . and therefore if she has ceased to love the world and the lusts of her own body , she will certainly love the body of christ , the church , and study how to help them and advantage them . nor can she stop here , but this pure and quick flame mounts upwards and is reflected again downwards , and vibrates every way , reaching at all objects in heaven and in earth , as natural fire enters all combustible matter . and therefore in her pure and ardent speculations of the godhead and his unlimited goodness , and also her observations of the capacity of the whole creation of receiving good both from him and one another , she overflowes those narrow bounds of brotherly love , and spreads out into that ineffably-ample and transcendently-divine grace and vertue , universal charity , which is the highest accomplishment the soul of man is capable of either in this life or that which is to come : and thus at last she becomes perfect , as her father which is in heaven is perfect . . this is that most excellent way which s. paul speaks so transportedly and triumphantly of , cor. ch . . where having first numbred out the manifold gifts that god bestowed upon his church , as preaching , prophesying , working of miracles , gifts of healing , and diversity of tongues , he immediately breaks out in the rapturous commendations of charity above all . though i speak with the tongues of men and of angels , and have not charity , i am become as a sounding brass and a tinckling cymball . and though i have the gift of prophecie , and understand all mysteries , and all knowledge ; and though i have all faith , so that i could remove mountains , and have no charity , i am nothing . and though i bestow all my goods to feed the poor , and though i give my body to be burned , and have not charity , it profiteth me nothing . and after he has raised our expectation and estimation of this heavenly grace with these high words of his , he does not , as the vain enthusiast does , heat our phancies and leave our judgment in the dark ; but he does very distinctly and copiously describe to us the nature of this divine vertue ; so that we may plainly know where to be , and what to seek after , and how to be satisfied whether we have attained to it or no. . charity suffereth long , and is kinde ; charity envies not ; charity vaunteth not it self , is not puffed up , doth not behave her self unseemly , seeketh not her own , is not easily provoked , thinketh no evill , complies not with iniquity , but rejoiceth with the truth ; beareth all things , believeth all things , hopeth all things , endureth all things . this is a very full and lively description of love and charity , and the character of the sweetest and heavenliest perfection that is communicable to the nature of man ; and so warmly poured out from the sincere heart of this rich possessour of it , the holy apostle , that it is to me more moving then all the canting language of the highest fanatical pretenders to the profession of this mystery . . this is the highest participation of divinity that humane nature is capable of on this side that mysterious conjunction of the humanity of christ with the godhead ; and therefore this is that whereby we become the sons of god , as s. iohn has evidently declared in his . epistle general , ch . . beloved , let us love one another : for love is of god ; and every one that loveth , is born of god , and knoweth god. he that loveth not , knoweth not god ; for god is love. and vers . . herein is love , not that we loved god , but that he loved us , and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins . beloved , if god so loved us , we ought also to love one another . no man hath seen god at any time : if we love one another , god dwelleth in us , and his love is perfected in us . and again vers . . god is love ; and he that dwelleth in love , dwelleth in god , and god in him . several other testimonies there are of the high estimate the true church of christ has of this holy vertue of love : but what i have already cited is sufficient to shew how urgent the precepts of the gospel are for this excellent branch of the divine life , which we call charity ; as also how inexcusably injurious , impious and blasphemous to christ those fanatical impostors are that revolt from the church , superannuate christ's offices , and antiquate the christian religion , under a pretence of an higher dispensation and revelation upon which they have set the title or superscription of love , adorning themselves with the churches colours , that by this evil stratagem they may the more safely fall upon her and destroy her , at least seduce the most simple and , many times , the best-meaning members of the church from their true head , christ jesus , who ransom'd them with his own most precious bloud . whose soveraignty over his church cannot cease , himself not ceasing to be ; but he is a priest and king for ever according to the prophecies . chap. iv. . our saviour's strict injunction of purity ; from whence it is also plain that the love he commends is not in any sort fleshly , but divine . . several places out of the apostles urging the same duty . . two more places to the same purpose . . the groundless presumption of those that abuse christianity to a liberty of sinning . . that this errour attempted the church betimes , and is too taking at this very day . . whence appears the necessity of opposing it , which he promises to doe , taking the rise of his discourse from iohn . . . the third branch of the divine life is purity . in the urging whereof both christ and his apostles being so earnest , it is plain , that that love which they recommend to the world can be no suspected affection , like that which the canting language of the enthusiasts may justly be thought to favour ; but that it is that pure and holy love indeed , which deservedly we have styled divine . and how severely this purity we speak of is required , i shall give you some few but very sufficient instances . matth. . . ye have heard that it was said by them of old time , thou shalt not commit adultery : but i say unto you , that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her , hath committed adultery already with her in his heart . and if thy right eye offend thee , pluck it out , and cast it from thee : for it is better for thee that one of thy members should perish , then that thy whole body should be cast into hell. and if thy right hand offend thee , cut it off , and cast it from thee , &c. what more serious and earnest monition can there be made to continence and abstinence from sensual pleasures then this of our saviour , who upon no less penaltie then the torments of hell interdicts us all looseness and uncleanness ; forbidding us all preludious preparations to the foul acts of lust , and not permitting so much as an imaginary scene of illicit transactions , to which our will could really assent if opportunity were offered ? . and we shall find the apostles insisting in the footsteps of their master in this matter . . corinth . . wherefore come out from among them , and be ye separated , saith the lord , and touch not the unclean thing ; and i will receive you : and i will be a father unto you , and ye shall be my sons and daughters , saith the lord almighty . having therefore these promises ( dearly beloved ) let us cleanse our selves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit , perfecting holiness in the fear of god. and thessalon . . the god of peace sanctifie you wholy ; and i pray god your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our lord iesus christ. and in the former chapter , ver . . for this is the will of god , even your sanctification , that ye should abstain from fornication : that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour ; not in the lust of concupiscence , as the gentiles that know not god. and corinth . . ver . . now the bodie is not for fornication , but the lord ; and the lord for the bodie : and god hath both raised up the lord , and will also quicken us by his own power . know ye not that your bodies are the members of christ ? shall i then take the members of christ , and make them the members of an harlot ? god forbid . and a little after , flee fornication . every sin that a man doth , is without the body ; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body . what ? know ye not that your body is the temple of the holy ghost in you , which ye have of god , and ye are not your own ? for ye are bought with a price : therefore glorifie god in your bodie and in your spirit , which are god's . also coloss. . . mortifie therefore your members which are upon the earth , fornication , uncleanness , immoderate affection , evil concupiscence , and covetousness , which is idolatry . for which things sake the wrath of god cometh upon the children of disobedience . parallel to which is that ephes. . . walk in love , as christ also hath loved us : but fornication and all uncleanness and covetousness , let it not be so much as once named amongst you , as becomes saints . neither filthiness , nor foolish talking , which are not convenient ; but rather giving of thanks . for this ye know , that no whoremonger , nor unclean person , nor covetous man , who is an idolater , hath any inheritance in the kingdome of christ and of god. let no man deceive you with vain words ; for because of these things cometh the wrath of god upon the children of disobedience . be not you therefore partakers with them . and corinth . . . know ye not the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdome of god ? be not deceived , neither fornicatours , nor idolaters , nor adulterers , nor effeminate , nor abusers of themselves with mankind , nor thieves , nor covetous , nor drunkards , nor revilers , nor extortioners , shall inherit the kingdome of god. . i have made a more ample collection of the enforcements of this duty of purity and sanctity then i intended ; and yet i cannot abstain from adding of two more : the one out of s. peter , epist. ch . . dearly beloved , i beseech you as strangers and pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. the other out of him which i have already so often cited , rom. . . the night is far spent , and the day is at hand ; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness , and put on the armour of light . let us walk honestly as in the day , not in rioting and drunkenness , not in chambring and wantonness , not in strife and envying : but put ye on the lord iesus christ , and make no provision for the flesh , to fulfill the lusts thereof . . i have now abundantly shewn how plainly and explicitly christ and his apostles urge all men that are hearers of the gospel to be carefull and conscionable doers of the same , that they should be holy even as christ was holy in all manner of conversation ; that they are bound to endeavour and aspire after the participation of the divine life and all the branches thereof , humility , love and purity , hating even the garment spotted by the flesh , as the apostle iude speaks . and how this holiness and righteousness is required of them with no less seriousness and earnestness then upon the forfeiture of their eternal salvation if they do not act according to those precepts . insomuch that i stand amazed while i consider with my self that hellish and abominable gloss that some have put upon the gospel , as if it were a mere school of loosness , and that the end of christs coming into the world was but to bring down a commission to the sons of men whereby they might be enabled to sin with authority , i am sure with all desirable security and impunity ; nothing being required on their part but to believe that christ died for them , and upon no other condition then that bare belief : as if christ did not give himself to redeem us from sin , but to assert our liberty of sinning ; which is the most perverse and mischievous misconstruction of the grace of god revealed in christ that possibly could be invented , and point-blank against the end and design of his coming into the world . for he gave himself for us , that he might redeem us from all iniquity , and purifie unto himself a peculiar people , zealous of good works . . yet as repugnant and irrational as this errour is , it had attempted the church betimes ; as appears by sundry monitions of the apostles , when exhorting their charge to holiness of life and real righteousness , they often intimate their proneness of being deceived in thinking they had leave to be remiss in these matters . some instances you may have observed already : to which you may add that of s. iames , be ye doers of the word , and not hearers onely , deceiving your own souls . but that of s. iohn is most express and emphaticall , little children , let no man deceive you ; he that doth righteousness , is righteous even as he is righteous , that is , even as christ was righteous , who was not putatitiously and imaginarily righteous , but really so indeed : though it seems by this caution there were that went about in those times to perswade it might be otherwise . and i could wish that this errour were not so taking in the church as it is at this day : then which notwithstanding no greater i think can be committed nor more dangerous , it rendring this admirable engine ( as i have termed it ) which god has set up in the world for the advancement of life and godliness , altogether invalid and useless . . wherefore all the following powers of this instrument depending on this first , unless we can make good this , the rest will have no force nor motion . therefore that i may make all throughly glib and expedite , i find an obligation upon me not to rest in these , though never-so-evident testimonies , that we are strictly bound to inherent sanctity and holiness ; but to clear also to the judicious the unwarrantableness and weakness of the grounds of this errour , which they would obtrude upon the world as the chief mystery of the gospel , namely , that if one do but believe , though devoid of all sanctification , yet he is approved as holy and righteous by the imputation of christs righteousness , and so consequently shall inherit everlasting life , let him live here as he will. i shall take the rise of my discourse from that grave and affectionate counsel the holy apostle has given to young and weak christians , and which i even now mentioned , little children , let no man deceive you , &c. chap. v. . the apostle's care for young christians against that errour of thinking they may be righteous without doing righteously . . their obnoxiousness to this contagion , with the causes thereof to be searched into . . the first sort of scriptures perverted to his ill end . . the second sort . . that the very state of christian childhood makes them prone to this errour . . what is the nature of that faith abraham is so much commended for , and what the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . a search after the meaning of the term justification . . justification by faith without the deeds of the law what may be the meaning of it . . scriptures answered that seem to disjoin reall righteousness from faith ; . and to make us only righteous by imputation . . undeniable testimonies of scripture that prove the necessity of real righteousness in us . . that which plato commends in law-givers and institutors or governors of commonwealths , that they have a special and prime care of childhood and youth ; as the diligent in husbandry make peculiar fences for their young plants to save them from the dangers their tenderness exposes them to ; that also is observable in the blessed apostle , who amongst many other provisions he has made in the behalf of all younglings in christianity , has also armed them and fenced them with this caution against being mistaken so dangerously in christianity as to conceit they may by a bare professing themselves christians be righteous , though there were neither any real righteousness in their hearts nor any fruits of it in their hands . a wicked errour which several seducers tempted men to , such as were nicolaus , marcio and carpocrates , as historians have taken notice of . . and because there can be no better antidote then the being convinced that there is an obnoxiousness in younger christians to this contagion , i shall diligently search out and set forth the causes whereby they become obnoxious ; that finding themselves so , they may have the greater care to keep themselves from being smitten with this pestilentiall infection . where we shall finde that come to pass in spirituall things that often happens in natural . for as weak bodies contract diseases from meats and drinks , nay , from that which is so perpetual and palpable a principle of life that we can scarce live one moment without it , i mean , the refreshing aire , which casts many tender bodies into agues and feavers and other distempers : so tender and weak souls often by ill concoction turn the very bread of eternal life , the word of god , into morbifick matter ; and in stead of getting growth and strength by feeding thereon , weaken the divine life in them , and sink themselves into most dangerous and desperate maladies . . the first cause then of the proneness of young christians to this present errour , is certain places of scripture , the meaning whereof they not rightly understanding , make bold to interpret them in favour to their own carnality and fleshly desires . it would be too voluminous a business to cull out all the places that are perverted to this ill purpose . we shall content our selves in producing the chiefest , in answering to which we shall naturally satisfie all the rest . and these i may cast into two sorts . for they are such as either seem to import , that a bare faith will justifie us , and so we may become righteous by an empty belief ; or else such as seem to say , that the righteousness of christ becomes ours , or , that we are righteous by that righteousness that is in him . and of the first kind is that rom. . abraham believed god , and it was accounted to him for righteousness . now to him that worketh , is the reward not reckoned of grace , but of debt ; but to him that worketh not , but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly , his faith is counted for righteousness . and rom. . therefore being justified by faith , we have peace with god , through iesus christ our lord. and rom. . for christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth . and at the ninth verse of the same chapter , if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the lord iesus , and shalt believe in thy heart that god has raised him from the dead , thou shalt be saved . which places seem to imply , that a mere belief that christ has done or suffered this or that is our justification and salvation . i might adde galat. . ver . . but i shall defer it till its proper place . . we come now to the second sort of testimonies of scripture which seem to impute the righteousness of christ to us , and to teach us that it is that by which we become righteous . cor. . . but of him are ye in christ iesus , who of god is made unto us wisedom and righteousnesse and sanctification and redemption . and rom. . therefore as by the offence of one judgement came upon all men to condemnation ; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to justification of life . for as by one mans disobedience many were made sinners , so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous . from these and such like places young and unskilful christians are prone to infer , that they may be righteous by the obedience or righteousness of christ applied or imputed to them , though they have no real righteousness in their own souls , nor care to act righteously . and this is the first cause of their proclivity to this unwholsome errour . but there is another behinde , without the concurrence of which this former would be ineffectuall . for all the passages in holy scripture are certainly both sound and true ; but it is the unsoundness and corruptness of our own mindes that draws poison out of these herbs and flowers of paradise . . i say therefore in the second place , that the main cause of the propension of christian childehood to this gross errour is in the very condition it self of those that are but children in christianity . for this childish state i conceive to be this ; when a man makes indeed a free open profession of christianity , and with all possible expressions of thanks to god for his rich mercy in the bloud of christ for the remission of sins , laies fast hold ( as he thinks ) on this grace by faith ; having also some more weak inchoations of the life of righteousness : but the old man is still very strong , the body of sin very little subdued or impaired , so that whensoever they are encountred , the toyl is very heavy , and a world of work still behinde , and such ungrateful work and painful , that it is no metaphor nor hyperbole to say , it is a perpetual death , a continued crucifixion . this being then the condition of one that is but a little young childe in christianity , i appeal to any one if there can chuse but be a very considerable proneness in such persons to be delivered from this toil and torture of mortification , whereby they are to enter into higher degrees of righteousness and life . and now we being very easily drawn to believe those things which make for our own interest and the accomplishment of our desires , it must needs be that if any thing sound towards that sense , we shall easily make it up with a lusty belief that it is so indeed , and ( it may be ) thank god to boot for this amabilis insania , for these dear mistakes and dreams of ours . wherefore at length to assume , the scripture therefore seeming at first sight something to favour this opinion of being righteous without any reall righteousness in our selves , but by that which is at a wide distance removed from us and placed in another ; to save the pains of the great anguish and agony that the aspiring to inward real righteousness will cost in this weak estate of christian childehood , it cannot be but that he that has arrived to no higher condition , should very easily close with this so welcome a notion , and having once embraced it , be angry at the very heart at any one that would rouze him from this so pleasing repose , or dissettle him from this false ease and joy : the weak and fainting heart of this tender age chusing rather ( for present avoiding of smart ) an hasty palliation then a sound cure . but that i may not rather confirm then bring off these younglings from this dangerous errour , by noting their most pregnant places and saying nothing to them ; i shall endeavour to make it plain that , if they please , they may understand those places otherwise then they do : and then , because that their gloss is not so consonant to reason , nor the rest of the scripture , that they ought to relinquish this unwarrantable sense which they have harboured in favour to their own vices and wickednesses . . and for our better preparation for this designe , we will first settle the notion of the terms that so frequently occurre in the epistles of s. paul , and which so nearly concern our present matter . such as are faith , righteousness , iustification , imputation , and the like . and first of faith , which is so highly commended by the apostle , i say , it signifies nothing else but this in general , viz. an high sense of and confidence in the power , iustice and goodness of god , and a firm belief that he will assuredly bring to pass whatsoever he has promised , seem it never so unlikely and difficult to flesh and bloud . and this is that which was so commended in abraham , as it is plain in the fourth to the romans , who against hope believed in hope , that he might become the father of many nations : and being not weak in faith , he considered not his own body now dead , when he was about an hundred years old , nor yet the deadness of sara's womb ; being fully perswaded that what god had promised he was able to perform . and therefore ( saies the apostle ) it was imputed to him for righteousness . that is to say , god approved of him for a good and pious man , who not consulting with the natural improbability of the thing , but giving firm credence to the promise of god , did that which was due to the goodness and power of god , and becoming a good and righteous man. so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is nothing else but to be approved as a good man , or a doer of what is righteous and good , and that because he does that which is good and righteous . as this act of the soul exerting her self above the low and sluggish tenour of nature , and winging her self by lively sense of divine power and goodness , to the assenting to and resting in such things as the present state of nature can never bring about , certainly is , and is esteemed and approved of god as a very righteous and good act , and to proceed from a good and holy temper , which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies any vertue or goodness in a man whatsoever : so that act of phinehas , when he so zealously did vengeance on zimri and cosbi , it is said in the psalm , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it was looked upon by all succeeding generations as a very noble and eminent act of righteousness , i. e. it was reputed according to its own nature . but the meaning is not , that this was in stead of all other righteousness to him , and that he was reputed as righteous all over now , although he were not so at all in any other things . . now for iustification , we shall best understand the meaning of the word from the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . first therefore , besides the forensal acception , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to be just , gen. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thamar is more righteous then i. so eccles. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he that loves gold , will not be just * . secondly , it signifies to appear just , psa. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , that thou maist plainly appear or approve thy self to be just . and psal. . ● . for in thy sight no man living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall appear just . thirdly and lastly , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to make just and pure , to free from vice and sinfulness . psalm . v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , therefore have i cleansed my heart in vain . and eccles. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . nec tuam probitatem usque ad mortem differas , saies the translation . and rom. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he that is dead , is freed from sin . also act. . . and by him all they that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of moses : i. e. ye are more throughly cleansed and purged from sin and wickedness then you could be ever under the law of moses . which is consonant to other passages in scripture , as , that the law makes nothing perfect ; and again , if there had been a law that could have given life , then verily righteousness might have been of the law. and now we have found out a warrantable sense of these words , we shall be able more expeditely to discover the sense of the foregoing places of scripture alledged for this pernicious conceit of a christians being righteous without any real righteousness in him . . wherefore , to that in the . to the romans : whose force will be the greater if we adde that also which is written a little before in the chap. v. . therefore we conclude , that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law ; and what he inferrs also vers . . that iews and gentiles and all are under sin . wherein the meaning of the apostle is to magnifie , as was most fit , the ministration of the gospel ; and so he signifies to the world that whatsoever is discovered hitherto , is imperfect , lapsed and ruinous , all but weak and sinful before the coming in of christ , even the works of the law themselves , and that smooth external righteousness of mere morality and ceremony . so that all the world are found guilty before god , and by the deeds of the law there shall be no flesh justified in his sight . for by the law is but the knowledge of sin , vers . . it gives no strength to perform . wherefore now reckoning nothing upon all these things , we are as it were to begin the world again , and to endeavour after such a righteousness as is by faith in christ jesus ; and not to rest in any thing that may be done by the ordinary power of the flesh , but to aspire after that righteousness which is communicable to us by that spirit which raised jesus christ from the dead . but neither abraham nor any one else can be justified by any carnal righteousness of their own ; but that highly-spiritual act of abraham reaching beyond the common rode of nature , who against hope believed in hope , that was that which commended abraham so much to god. and thus from the example of abraham would the apostle commend the christian faith to the world , and in particular to the jews the offspring of abraham . for at the end of the fourth chapter he makes this use of abraham's faith being imputed to him for righteousness ( that is , reputed by god as a very excellent good act , as it indeed was ) that we might also be brought off to believe on him that raised up ●esus our lord from the dead , who was delivered for our offences , and raised again for our justification . in which verse are contained the two grand priviledges of the gospel , that is , the forgiveness of sins upon the satisfaction of christs death , and the justifying of us , that is the making of us just and holy through a sound faith in him that raised jesus from the dead . which interpretation the verse of the chapter doth sufficiently countenance , but if the spirit of him that raised up iesus from the dead dwell in you , he that raised up christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortall bodies , by his spirit that dwelleth in you , viz. to righteousness : as is plain out of the foregoing verse , and if christ be in you , the body is dead because of sin , but the spirit is life because of righteousnesse ; that is , the body of death which we desire to be delivered from , as the apostle speaks , appears by the presence of christ in us to be thus deadly a body by reason of sin , we feeling for the present nothing but an heavy indisposition to all holinesse and goodnesse in the body and its affections , and all sinfulnesse and unclean atheisticall suggestions from the flesh , which is death to the soul. for to be carnally-minded is death . so that by reason of the sinfulnesse of our body and the sad heavinesse thereof , it appears as deadly and ghastly a thing to us as mezentius his tying the living and the dead together , when once christ is in us : but our life is then that righteousnesse which is of the spirit , we finding a comfortable warmth and pleasure in the gratefull arrivals of that holy and divine sensation . but he that raised christ from the dead , will in due time even quicken these our mortall bodies , or these dead bodies of ours , and make them conspire and come along with ease and chearfulnesse , and be ready and active complying instruments in all things with the spirit of righteousness . which belief is a chief point in the christian faith , and most of all parallel to that of abraham's , who believing in the goodness and power and faithfulness of god , had , when both himself and his wife sara were dry and dead as to natural generation , and so hopeless of ever seeing any fruit of her womb , who had , i say , ** isaac born to him , who bears ioy and laughter in the very name of him , and was undoubtedly a type of ** christ according to the spirit . for isaac is the wisedom , power and righteousness of god flowing out and effectually branching it self so through all the faculties both of mans soul and body , that the whole man is carried away with joy and triumph to the acting all whatsoever is really and substantially good , even with as much satisfaction and pleasure as he eats when he is hungry , and drinks when he is dry . and thus by our entrance and progress in so holy a dispensation , are we well approved of by god , and being justified thus by faith , we have peace with him through our lord iesus christ , rom. . . so that this iustification is not a mere belief that christ died for us in particular , or that he was raised from the dead , whereby anothers righteousness is imputed to us : but a believing in god , that he has accepted the bloud of christ as a sacrifice for sin , and that he is able through the power of the spirit to raise us up to newness of life , whereby we are encouraged to breath and aspire after this more inward and perfect righteousnesse . which advantages god propounds to all the hearers of the gospel , without any respect of works or former demurenesse of life , if so be they will but now come in and close with this high and rich dispensation , and be carried on with couragious resolutions to fight against and pull down the man of sin within themselves , that this living and new way of real divine righteousnesse may be set up and rule in their hearts . i say , if they be encouraged to this holy enterprise by faith in christ for the remission of sins , and for the power of his spirit to utterly eradicate and extirpate all inward corruption and wickednesse , this faith is presently imputed to them for righteousnesse ; that is , they are , and are approved by god as dear children of his , and as good men , and are of the seed of the promise . for they are born now not of the will of man , nor of the will of the flesh , but of the will of god ; and their will is wholly set upon righteousnesse and true holinesse , which they hunger and thirst after as sincerely and eagerly as ever they did after their natural meat and drink : and god who feeds the young ravens is not so cruell as to deny them this celestial food ; which food they reach at and as it were wrest out of his hands by faith in the power of his spirit , whereby they account themselves able to doe * all things . . and this is the only warrantable notion that i can finde , of being justified by faith . nor do those places above recited prove any other then this . for that which seems to make most of all for another [ viz. rom. . . but to him that worketh not , but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly , his faith is counted for righteousness , ] may very well be interpreted according to that tenour of sense i have already declared . for that is the great and comfortable priviledge of the gospel , that without any respect of former works , if so be we do but now believe remission of sins in christ , and believe in his power that justifies the ungodly , ( i. e. that makes just the ungodly , and purifies and purges them from all sin and iniquity , from which by their own naturall power they could not purged , and restores them to inward reall righteousnesse by the working of his spirit ) this faith is imputed for righteousnesse . for they that do thus believe , are good and righteous men for matter of sincerity , so that they have peace with god through the bloud of christ , and by the power of that spirit that is now working in them , are renewed daily more and more into that glorious image and desirable liberty which arises in the further conquest of the divine life in them , and makes them righteous even as christ was righteous . and now the hardest is satisfied , the other places alledged will easily fall of themselves by the application of what has been said concerning this nature of faith and iustification . . as for those places of scripture that seem to attribute the righteousness of christ to us , as where he is said to be made unto us wisedom , righteousness , sanctification and redemption , the sense is only this , that he works in us wisedom , righteousness , &c. otherwise it might be inferred that we shall have only an imputative redemption , and that we shall not be really saved and redeemed . as for that other , as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners , so by the obedience of one man many shall be made righteous , i say it is a place against themselves : for by adam we became really sinners and sinful , contracting original corruption from his loins ; therefore by christ we are to be made really righteous . and this was the end of his obedience that was obedient even to the death of the crosse , that we being buried with him by baptisme into death , like as christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father , even so we also should walk in newness of life , rom. . wherefore there really being no ground in scripture for this childish mistake , and it being as unreasonable that one soul should be righteous for another , as that one body should be in health for another ; if i shew that the scripture it self does expresly require of us that we be righteous and holy in our own persons , there is then nothing wanting to the full discovery of this childish and ungrounded conceit of being righteous without any righteousness residing in us . . and in my apprehension this very text of s. iohn is a clear eviction of this truth , it plainly declaring that they are mistaken who ever conceit themselves righteous without doing righteousnesse , or without being righteous in such a sense as christ himself was righteous . there are also several other testimonies of the apostles to the same purpose , some whereof i have noted already ; as where he saith , that christ was manifested to take away our sins , and that he came to destroy the works of the devil ; and that he that is born of god , sinneth not , because the seed of god abideth in him , that is , a permanent principle of divine life and sense , whereby he seeth and abhorreth whatsoever is wicked and unholy . and again , ioh. ● . hereby we know that we know him , if we keep his commandements . he that saith , i know him , and keepeth not his commandements , is a lyar , and the truth is not in him : but whose keepeth his word , in him verily is the love of god perfected . hereby know we that we are in him : he that saith he abideth in him , ought himself also to walk even as he walked . like that tim. . . let every one that nameth the name of christ depart from iniquity . chap. vi. . their alledgement of gal. . . as also of the whole drift of that epistle . . what the righteousnesse of faith is according to the apostle . . in what sense those that are in christ are said not to be under the law. . that the righteousness of faith is no figment but a reality in us . . that this righteousnesse is the new creature , and what this new creature is according to scripture . . that the new creature consists in wisedom , righteousness and true holiness . . the righteousnesse of the new creature . . his wisedom and holinesse . . that the righteousness of faith excludes not good works . the wicked treachery of those that teach the contrary . . as for that text which we deferred to speak to , we shall now take it into consideration . it was gal. . . knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law , but by the faith of iesus christ , even we have believed in iesus christ , that we might be justified by the faith of christ , and not by the works of the law : for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified . from this place of scripture also there are some that would inferre a superannuating and annulling of all moral honesty and reall righteousness whatever , pretending that nothing but mere faith is required to make us approvable before god. and indeed they fansy that this whole epistle administers invincible arguments to maintain this mischievous conclusion , though there be not to any indifferent judge any solid reason of so full a confidence . which we shall easily understand , if we take notice that the designe of this epistle is only to reduce those galatians again to the truth of christianity , that were almost apostatizing to iudaisme and the ceremonial law of moses . ye observe dayes and moneths and times and years ; i am afraid of you , lest i have bestowed labour on you in vain , chap. . , . but the main scope of the apostle is against circumcision , as is plain upon the very first perusall of the epistle ; which he beating down together with the law of moses , and extolling the faith in christ , seems sometimes to excuse a man from walking according to the moral law under the pretence of faith in christ. but as s. peter hath well observed , there be many things in s. pauls epistles hard to be understood , which foolish men pervert to their own destruction . but that we be not led into the same errour and mischief , it will be of no small concernment to trace the footsteps of s. paul , that so we may wind our selves out of this dangerous maze or labyrinth . . whereas then he seems to nullifie or vilifie at least the law in the advancing of that righteousnesse that is by faith ; let us see what this righteousnesse that is by faith , and what that of the law , is . chap. . . for i through the law am dead to the law , that i might live unto god : i am crucified with christ. nevertheless i live , yet not i , but christ liveth in me . i through the law am dead unto the law , what a riddle is this ! that the law should deprive it self of its disciples . and yet it doth so : for it is a schoolmaster to christ , or rather an usher , which when it hath well tutour'd us and castigated us , removes us up higher , to be made in christ perfect , who is the perfection of the law. but the law it self makes nothing perfect ; and this is the reason that righteousness is not of the law. and to this purpose speaks the apostle in this very epistle at the verse of the . chapter , is the law then against the promises of god ? god forbid . for if there had been a law given which could have given life , verily righteousnesse should have been by the law ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a law that could enliven and enquicken us . but that is beyond the power of the law : that 's the title and prerogative of christ , who is the way , the truth and the life . i am the resurrection and the life : he that believeth in me , though he were dead , yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me , shall never die , joh. . this therefore is the righteousness of faith or belief , far above the righteousness of the law or killing letter . . wherefore when this faith is come that worketh us up to a living frame of righteousness within us , we are no longer under the servility of the law of moses , but are all the children of god by faith in christ jesus . now none are the children of god but those that are led by the spirit of god , as the apostle elsewhere witnesseth in his epistle to the romans . and those that have the spirit of god , what fruits they bring forth is amply set out by the apostle in this to the galatians , chap. . v. . the fruit of the spirit is love , joy , peace , long-suffering , gentlenesse , goodnesse , faith , meeknesse , temperance : against such there is no law . for indeed there is no need of it , they being a law unto themselves . so we see how those that are in christ are not under the law , because that inward fountain of obedience or living law in their hearts is above it : they do really and truly fulfill it through the spirit that is by faith . for that spirit is the begetter of love , and love is the fulfilling of the law. for all the law is fulfilled in one word , even in this , thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self , gal. . . this i say then , walk in the spirit , and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh . for the flesh lusteth against the spirit , and the spirit against the flesh ; and these are contrary one to another , that ye may not do the things ye would . which certainly is the true and genuine sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as grotius also has noted . and these are contrary , that is to say , oppose one the other , namely , the spirit the flesh , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to the end you may not do those things that your own corrupt will or carnall minde inclines you to : which naturally coheres with what follows , but if you be led by the spirit , you are not under the law. for against such there is no law , as was said before . which implyes , if they be not led by the spirit , they are liable to the curse of the law , to death , hell and damnation . for so also speaks the apostle , when he hath reckoned up the works of the flesh , that they that do such things , shall not inherit the kingdom of god , ver . . and v. . he openly declares , that they that are christ's , have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts . . so we see plainly that the righteousnesse that is of faith is not a mere chimaera or phansie , but a more excellent righteousness then that of the law. for the law is no quickening spirit , but a dead letter : but christ is the resurrection and the life . and he is god our righteousness , mighty to save , and can with ease destroy the powers of death , darkness and the devil out of the soul of man ; but we must have the patience to endure the work wrought in us by him . i live , yet not i , but christ liveth in me . and if we will still cloak and cover our foul corrupt hearts with forged conceits of hypocrisie's own making , and excuse our selves from being good to one another or to our selves , because god in christ is so good to us ; hear what the apostle speaks in the sixth and last chapter of this epistle at the seventh verse . be not deceived , god is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth , that shall he also reap . for he that soweth to his flesh , shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the spirit , shall of the spirit reap life everlasting . . the aim therefore of the apostle is not to extenuate or discountenance real vertue and righteousnesse , but to point us to it , and shew us where it may be had : not in dayes or years , not in new moons or festivals , not in circumcision nor in the dead letter of the law ; but in christ and the spirit of god , in the renewed image of god , in the new birth , in the new life , in the second adam from heaven , in the new creature . but god forbid that i should glory save in the cross of our lord iesus christ , by whom the world is crucified unto me and i unto the world . for in christ iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision , but a new creature . which the apostle elsewhere cals the new man ; that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man , that is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ; and be renewed in the spirit of your minde : and that you put on the new man which after god is created in righteousnesse and true holinesse , that is , not in external ceremonial holiness or outward sanctimonious shew , but in the regeneration of the inward spirit to a new life from the very heart . and again , colos. . vers . . lie not one to another , seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds , and have put on the new man , which is renewed in knowledge , after the image of him that created him ; where there is neither greek nor iew , circumcision nor uncircumcision , barbarian , scythian , bond nor free , but christ is all and in all . . this new creature then is nothing else but the image of god in the soul of man. so witness both these texts : the new man which after god is created in knowledge , righteousness and true holiness . the very same that plato speaks at once in his theaetetus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to be like god is to become holy , iust and wise. but because most men , even the old adam in us , take themselves to be holy , just , and wise ; it will be seasonable here to see what iustice , holinesse and wisedom this is that is in the new creature . . and who can tell it so well as he that is it ? matth. . ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old , thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill , shall be in danger of the judgement : but i say unto you , that whosoever ● angry with his brother without a cause , shall be in danger of the judgement ; and whosoever shall say unto his brother , racha , shall be in danger of the councell ; but whosoever shall say , thou fool , shall be in danger of hell-fire . ye have heard that it was said by them of old , thou shalt not commit adultery : but i say unto you , that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her , hath committed adultery with her already in his heart . again it was said of old , forswear not thy self : but i say unto you , swear not at all , but let your communication be yea , yea , and nay , nay ; for whatsoever is more then these , cometh of evil . ye have heard it also said , an eye for an eye , and a tooth for a tooth : but i say unto you , resist not evil . ye have heard also , thou shalt love thy neighbour , but hate thine enemy : but i say unto you , love your enemies , bless them that curse you , do good to them that hate you , and pray for them that despightfully use you and persecute you . behold the exact and unblameable righteousnesse that is in the regenerate soul far above the doctrine or thoughts of either the legal pharisee or mere moralist . external righteousness in the outward man , or to be internally just as far as corrupt reason suggests , is but filthy rags in respect of this righteousnesse christ requires of us , and the new creature doth bring into us , once grown up to its due stature in us . let every man examine himself by this rule . . and as this iustice is far above , yea , sometimes contrary to , the justice of the natural man ( for with him to hate his enemies , to recompense evil with evil , is just ; ) so the holiness is far transcending the holinesse of either the ancient or modern scribes and pharisees and zelotical ceremonialists . for all outward ceremonies of time or place , of gesture or vestments , rites or orders , they are all but signes and shews ; but the body is christ. lastly , that the natural man phansie not himself wise , ( as who is not of all precious things the most forward to appropriate that to himself ? ) that he phansie not himself wise before he be holy and iust , let him examine his wisedom by that square in the third chapter of s. iames's epistle . who is a wise man and endowed with knowledge amongst you ? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisedom . but if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts , glory not and lye not against the truth . this wisedom descendeth not from above , but is earthly , sensual and devilish . for where envying and strife is , there is confusion and every evil work . but the wisedom that is from above is first pure , then peaceable , gentle , and easie to be entreated , full of mercy and good fruits , without partiality , without hypocrisie . the righteousnesse then of the new creature is a righteousness far above the letter of moses's law , though exactly performed ; it 's holiness more resplendent then the robe of aaron and all his priestly attire , or whatsoever ceremonies else god hath instituted or man invented ; it 's wisdome far above all the thin-beaten subtilties of either the wrangling sects or disputacious schools , without contention or bitter contradiction . . so that it is plain from the constant scope of the apostle both in this epistle and every where else , that he does not vilifie true vertue and morality , but drives at an higher pitch and perfection thereof ; and that the righteousness of faith , which he prefers before the righteousness of works , is not by way of exclusion of good works out of the righteousness of faith , but of urging us to exacter and more perfect works of righteousnesse then could be performed under the dispensation of the law. how wicked a treachery therefore is it against the church of christ , and how impudent a piece of boldness in those false teachers that would bear men in hand , that this doctrine of the being approved in the eyes of god by a dry and dead faith , devoid and destitute of all real sanctity and holiness , is not only a christian truth , but the most choice and principal doctrine in all christianity ; when there is not any footstep of any such thing in all the instructions and informations of either christ or his apostles ? chap. vii . . that no small measure of sanctity serves the turn in christianity : . as appears out of scriptures already alledged . . further proofs thereof out of the prophets ; . as also out of the gospel , . and other places of the new testament . . the strong armature of a christian souldier . . his earnest endeavour after perfection . . wherefore having sufficiently cleansed and oyled the first wheel of this mighty engine we are shewing the usefulnesse of ; we proceed now to the second , where if we do not use our diligence also , this machina will not prove effectual for the purpose it was designed , viz. for the destroying of the works of the devil . of whose stratagems and devices we being not ignorant , we will declare unto you what is most seasonable in this place ; namely , that where he cannot corrupt our minds with this dangerous errour of the sufficiency of an unsanctified and an unsanctifying faith , he will in the second place endeavour to perswade us that a small measure of holinesse will serve our turn ; considering the passion of christ is of so great price in the eyes of his father , who accepts of his death for an atonement for our sins , and that by his bloud we are reconciled to god , and therefore any remisse desire , any lazy inclination to obedience will be enough ; the passion of christ and the imputation of his righteousnesse will make out the rest . . but that this is really the suggestion of the devil , not the meaning of the gospel , i shall make evident from many testimonies of scripture . i might say , that many of those we have already alledged do clearly demonstrate the same . for what means that of iohn , where he declares that he that is born of god cannot sin , because the seed of god remains in him ? what that of paul , where he saith that christ came to redeem us from all iniquity , and purchase to himself a church without spot and wrinkle , a church holy and without blemish ? what means our saviour christ's setting the rule of righteousnesse at that exquisite pitch of perfection , accounting tacit assents to lust no lesse then adultery , rash and causlesse anger a degree of murder , who has not only condemned retaliation , but has commanded us to do good for evil ? i say , what is the sense of all this , but that we christians are called to a higher degree of perfection in life and sanctity then ever any masters of morality and religion in the world hitherto put men upon ? and therefore the dispensation of christianity is so far from allowing men in any immoral vices or defects , that it does not only cleanse from these , but lifts us up a degree higher , and never leaves till it has restored our souls into a condition plainly divine . . that this is the state that every christian is called to , and ought to be unsatisfied unlesse his conscience tell him he is aiming at , and growing in some measure towards it , both the propheticall descriptions of the kingdom of the messiah upon earth , and several other testimonies in the gospel and writings of the apostles do still more fully witnesse . for besides those places that describe the reign of the messiah from the abundance of peace and righteousnesse which should overspread the nations , as the waters cover the sea ; there are other particular passages that do prefigure a very great measure of holinesse that the church of christ should be conspicuous by , with clearer knowledge and greater activity to walk in the wayes of god. and i do not doubt but that which was fulfilled in a corporeal sense in christs time , had also a more spirituall and more permanent meaning ; namely , that of esay , chap. . , . where the eyes of the blinde are said to be opened , and the ears of the deaf unstopped , the lame to leap as an hart , and the tongue of the dumb to sing . which lively does set out the condition of the true christian believer while he makes his faithfull progress in christianity , going on from strength to strength till he appear before god in sion . add to this zech. . for that it is mystically applicable to our present purpose , appears from v. . they shall look upon me whom they have pierced : but what we were going to recite was v. . in that day shall the lord defend the inhabitants of ierusalem ; and he that is feeble among them shall be as david , and the house of david shall be as god , as the angel of the lord before them . as our saviour saith of john the baptist , that the least in the kingdome of heaven is greater then he . i shall close the prophetick predictions with that of malachi , chap. . speaking of the angel of the covenant , viz. christ , and that dispensation he was to set afoot in the world , behold he shall come , saith the lord of hoasts : but who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth ? for he is like a refiners fire , and like fullers sope . and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver ; and he shall purifie the sons of levi , and purge them as gold and silver , that they may offer unto the lord an offering in righteousness . . the very same thing which john the baptist witnesses of christ , matth. . v. . i indeed baptize you with water unto repentance ; but he that cometh after me is mightier then i , whose shoes i am not worthy to bear : he shall baptize you with the holy ghost and with fire . whose fan is in his hand , and he will throughly purge his floor , and gather his wheat into the garner ; but he will burn up the chaffe with unquenchable fire . to which you may add v. . and now is the axe laid to the root of the trees : therefore every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire . like that matth. . v. . every plant which my heavenly father hath not planted , shall be rooted up . which scriptures do plainly declare to us , that the design of christ's coming was to consume utterly and to tear up by the very roots all errour and wickedness out of the hearts of them that would receive him . . and this were sufficient to discover what a high degree of holiness is expected of him that will be in good earnest a christian. but i will not omit other places that sound to the same purpose . peter . . wherefore gird up the loins of your mind , be sober and of a perfect hope in the grace that is brought to you through the revelation of iesus christ ; as obedient children , not fashioning your selves according to former lusts in your ignorance : but as he that has called you is holy , so be ye holy in all manner of conversation ; ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in your whole conversation , in every thing you doe ) because it is written , be ye holy , for i am holy . the same which our saviour exhorts to in his sermon on the mount , be ye perfect , as your father which is in heaven is perfect . paul also to the ephesians , ch . . v. . finally , my brethren , be strong in the lord , and in the power of his might . put you on the whole armour of god , that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil . for we wrestle not against flesh and bloud , but against principalities , against powers , against the rulers of the darkness of this world , even against the wicked spirits of the air . wherefore take unto you the whole armour of god , that ye may be able to stand in the evil day , and having vanquished all , to stand . stand therefore , having your loins girt about with truth , and having on the breast-plate of righteousness , and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace . above all , taking the shield of faith , whereby you shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked : and take the helmet of salvation , and the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god. we shall add only a short speech to the christian souldier thus harnessed from the captain of our salvation , jesus christ , revel . . to him that overcometh will i give to sit with me in my throne ; even as i also overcame , and am set down with my father in his throne . which things thus put together and carefully considered , cannot but awaken us out of that drouzy and lazy dream of unoperative faith and sluggish sordid slavery to sin under pretence of invincible infirmity , into a full belief of the mighty power of christ and of his armature and ammunition , whereby we are able to overcome all our domestick lusts , though abetted and incensed by the fiery stratagems of the devil . . to him that overcomes . when , i beseech you , is this overcoming ? is not victory wone in the same field the battel is fought ? and is not our warfare here upon this earth ? wherefore it is plain our victory must be here also . it is in this life we are commanded to kill and slay the old man in us with all his deceiveable lusts , who , while he is alive , will be alwaies plotting and inventing some evil device or other to undermine and root the kingdome of christ out of our hearts . and therefore we must be wholy the one or wholy the other . we cannot serve christ and belial , light and darkness cannot abide together . and verily the apostle has furnished us with so compleat an armature , that we cannot but confess our selves stronger then the strong man that has hitherto kept the house ; so that if he be not dispossessed , it is long of us . for the faithfull christian souldier is so well appointed ( being girt with truth , & his heart fortified with uprightness and sincerity , his mind with representations of eternal life , his feet with readiness & unwearied resolution of walking as becomes the gospel of christ , his memory with the choicest and most useful & encouraging precepts of the scripture , & his whole soul bearing it self strong in the faith of the power of god against all assaults and temptations of the enemies of our salvation ) that he cannot but get the day and stand conquerour in the field , though his own domestick lusts be assisted by the powers of the prince of the air that rules in the children of disobedience . for this shield of faith is able to quench all the fiery darts of the devil . this is that faith whereby the ancients have subdued kingdomes and wrought righteousness . and this is that whereby every christian shall advance his conquests against the kingdome of darkness and unrighteousness as much as he pleases . for according to a mans faith , so shall it be unto him . . wherefore those that plead for a lazy slackness and remisness in these attempts , are not faithfull christians but false brethren got amongst us . he that puts his hand to the plough , and looks back , is not fit for the kingdome of god. again , he that loveth father or mother more then me , is not worthy of me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more then me , is not worthy of me . nay , he that loveth his own life more then christ , is not worthy of him , nor can he be his disciple , as our saviour himself has declared . how can then any be christ's disciple that loves any lust whatsoever , though never so pleasant , though never so profitable , more then the son of god that redeemed him with his own bloud ? wherefore all true christians have been in this point in good earnest in both practice , profession and praiers , in breathing and contending after all exquisiteness of purity and integrity both of flesh and spirit , perfecting holiness in the fear of god , as the apostle exhorts the corinthians . according to which also s. iames in his epistle general , chap. . v. . let patience have her perfect work , that ye may be perfect and entire , being defective in nothing . like that praier of epaphras for the colossians , chap. . . who is said there to labour fervently for them in praier , that they may stand perfect and complete in the whole will of god. which is the same with s. peter's , epist. the last chapter , the god of all grace , who hath called us to his eternal glory by christ iesus , after that you have suffered a while , make you perfect , stablish , strengthen , settle you . to which we will add that of the author to the hebrews , and so conclude . now the god of peace that brought again from the dead our lord iesus , the great shepheard of the sheep , through the bloud of the everlasting covenant , make you perfect in every good work , to doe his will , working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight , through iesus christ , to whom be glory for ever and ever , amen . chap. viii . . that the christians assistance is at least equal to his task . . the two gospel-powers that comprehend his duty . . the first gospel-aid , the promise of the spirit , with prophecies thereof out of ezekiel and esay . . some hints of the mystical meaning of the last . . another excellent prediction thereof . . we have made it very evident that that degree of righteousness that the christian is called unto is no lazy , sluggish inclination to holiness , no maimed , halting , hypocritical following after christ ; but a sound and chearfull endeavour , and at last a joifull acquisition of such a degree of sanctity and righteousness as far surmounts the pretensions of all other religions whatsoever ; and is indeed so exquisite and perfect , that nothing better can be desired or imagined . so holy and heavenly a calling is the calling of a christian. and indeed the expectation is so great , that if our aids and assistances were not proportionable , we could never arrive to the end of our calling . but our helps are in my apprehension far greater then our task , if we were not wanting to our selves . . we have hitherto seen how necessary inward sanctification is to a christian , as also to how ample a measure he is called . both these he is indispensably obliged to endeavour and breath after perpetually ; as is manifestly declared by christ , his apostles , and the prophets before them . wherefore these two , i mean the evidence that we are to be inwardly and really righteous , and not only so , but in an extraordinary manner , are the two powers of the gospel that comprehend our great and ultimate duty of being holy as he that has called us is holy , of becoming perfect as our father which is in heaven is perfect . the following gospel-powers all of them are aids and helps to this design . the first whereof is the promise of the spirit , through christ's intercession ; the second , the example of christ ; the third , the meditation on his passion ; the fourth , on his resurrection and ascension ; and the last , on the last iudgement . these powers are of such admirable efficacy , if rightly applied , that they are able to pul down every strong hold , and to cast out all evil imaginations , and every high thing that exalts it self against the knowledge of god , and to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of christ , as the apostle speaks . no strength of habituated sin , no violence of any lust shall be able to stand before them . . the first of these powers is the promise of the spirit ; i do not mean for the doing miracles , ( for that was but a transient business , and accommodate only to the first ages of the church , ) but for through-sanctification and cleansing us from all our sins , and for our perfect growth in righteousness and holiness . that this power is a concomitant to the dispensation of the gospel in all true believers , is apparent both from the predictions of the prophets , and from the mouth of our saviour and his blessed apostles . esay . hear now , o iacob my servant , and israel whom i have chosen . thus saith the lord that made thee , and framed thee from the womb , and will help thee . fear not , o iacob my servant , and thou iesurun whom i have chosen : for i will pour water upon him that is thirsty , and floods upon the dry ground ; i will pour my spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thy offspring . and they shall spring up as among the grass , and the willows by the water-courses . which prophecie is most properly applicable to the church of christ who is the true seed of iacob : those wrastlers with god , and strivers to get in at the * narrow gate that leads to life , they are the true iesurun , the * upright of heart and sincere seekers after god , those that truly hunger and thirst after righteousness ; and therefore god will satisfie them by the supernatural assistance of his blessed spirit . again , ezekiel . ver . . prefiguring the blessed dispensations of the kingdome of christ ; then will i sprinkle clean water upon you , and ye shall be clean : from all your filthiness and from all your idols will i cleanse you . a new heart also will i give you , and a new spirit will i put within you ; and i will take the stony heart out of your flesh , and i will give you an heart of flesh . and i will put my spirit within you , and cause you to walk in my statutes , and ye shall keep my judgments and doe them . also esay . v. . where certainly according to analogie of interpretations of prophecie , ( the seed of abraham being a type of the spiritual church of christ , and their warfare not carnal but spiritual , nor the waters promised by christ such liquors as run in brooks and rivers , but emanations of the purifying and refreshing powers of the spirit of god ) we may see with what close and faithfull assistance god is pleased to adhere to his true israel in whom there is no guile , but they are sincerely waging war and to the utmost resisting all the temptations of the world , the flesh and the devil . but thou , israel , my servant , iacob , whom i have chosen , the seed of abraham my friend ; fear thou not , for i am with thee ; be not dismaied for i am thy god : i will strengthen thee , yea i will help thee , yea i will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness . behold , all they that were incensed against thee , shall be ashamed and confounded , they shall be as nothing ; and they that strive with thee shall perish . thou shalt seek them , and shalt not find them , even them that contended with thee ; they that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of nought . for i the lord thy god will hold thy right hand , saying unto thee , fear not , i will help thee . fear not thou worm iacob , and ye men of israel ; behold i will make thee a new sharp threshing-instrument , having teeth ; thou shalt thresh the mountains , and beat them small , and shalt make the hills as chaffe . thou shalt fan them , and the wind shall carry them away , and the whirlwind shall scatter them ; and thou shalt rejoice in the lord , and shalt glory in the holy one of israel . when the poor and needy seek water , and there is none , and their tongue faileth for thirst ; i the lord will hear them , i the god of israel will not forsake them : i will open rivers in high places , and fountains in the midst of the vallies . i will make the wilderness a pool of water , and the dry land springs of water . this prophecie is an exquisite description of those full and complete victories the church gets against sin and satan by the supernatural assistance of the spirit of god. which promise is again repeated in the following chapter , which though it be larger then the former , and part cited already to another purpose , yet i cannot refrain from transcribing the whole , it being so plain a prophecie of christ ( as appears from the fore-part thereof ) and of the power of his kingdome through the spirit for the vanquishing of all sin and wickedness in them that do truly believe . behold my servant whom i uphold , mine elect in whom my soul delighteth . i have put my spirit upon him , he shall bring forth judgement to the gentiles . he shall not cry , nor lift up , nor cause his voice to be heard in the street . a bruised reed shall he not break , and smoaking flax shall he not quench ; he shall bring forth judgement unto truth . he shall not fail nor be discouraged , till he hath set judgement in the earth : and the isles shall wait for his law. thus saith god the lord , he that created the heavens and stretched them out , he that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it , he that giveth breath to the people upon it , and spirit to those that dwell therein : i the lord have called thee in righteousness , and will hold thine hand , and will keep thee , and give thee for a covenant of the people , for a light of the gentiles ; to open the blind eyes , to bring out the prisoners from the prison , and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house . i am the lord , that is my name ; and my glory will i not give to another , neither my praise to graven images . behold , the former things are come to pass , and new things do i declare : before they spring forth , i tell you of them . sing unto the lord a new song , and his praise from the end of the earth ; ye that go down to the sea , and all that is therein ; the isles and the inhabitants thereof . let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice , the villages that kedar doth inhabit . let the inhabitants of the rock sing : let them shout from the top of the mountains : let them give glory unto the lord , and declare his praise in the islands . the lord shall goe forth as a mighty man , he shall stir up jealousie like a man of war ; he shall cry , yea , roar ; he shall prevail against his enemies . i have long time holden my peace , i have been still and refrained my self ; now will i cry like a travailing woman , i will destroy and devour at once . i will make wast mountains and hills , and dry up all their hearbs ; i will make the rivers islands , and i will dry up the pools . and i will bring the blind by a way that they know not , i will lead them in paths that they have not known : i will make darkness light before them , and crooked things straight . these things will i doe unto them , and not forsake them . . it is a very high representation of that mighty power of god from above that assists his church , and how christ by the dispensation of the gospel does set us free from the bondage of sin ; how he opens the understandings of the ignorant , and procures liberty for those that were shut up in the dungeon of a dark conscience , and held in captivity under sin ; how those that are dry and barren like the wilderness and the tops of rocks shall be watered with springs of living water , and how the villages that * kedar possesses , that is , those that are overshadowed with sorrow and darkness , a light shall spring up unto them , and how they shall give glory unto the lord : for that he himself will be their champion , he shall fight their battels , and by the power of his spirit and by that fire wherewith he will plead with all flesh , wither the top and flower of their pride , and dry up their restagnant lusts , and lighten their paths before them , and lead them forth into the land of righteousness . these are the true warfares and victories of the church of christ , as those that have the veil taken off from their eyes and hearts can easily discover . and surely with any other usefull sense then this cannot we ordinarily read the like descriptions of the churches triumphs by christ over her enemies , or by those that have been types of him , as david was an eminent one . and therefore if i would read the psalm ( i will love thee , o lord my strength , &c. ) i should hope for very small edifying thereby but in such a mystical sense as this is , that is , by supposing that in me which partakes of christ , that is , my inward mind or spirit , raising war against * saul , which is the power of the flesh , the craving pit of hell , that sin that lodges in this mortal body whose vain desires have no bottom nor end . . i might abound with these allegations out of the prophets and psalms ; but i have given a key into the hand of the judicious , and he may unlock those treasures himself , if he desires to have his faith enriched and strengthened by those plentiful promises of this assistance we speak of , made to them that are serious professors of the gospel . i shall only adde one testimony more , which in my apprehension is very express , and that is isa. . strengthen the weak hands , and confirm the feeble knees . say to them that are of a fearfull heart , be strong , fear not ; behold , your god will come with vengeance , even god with a recompence , he will come and save you . then shall the eyes of the blinde be opened , and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped ; then shall the lame man leap as an hart , and the tongue of the dumb shall sing : for in the wilderness shall waters break out , and streams in the desart . and the parched ground shall become a pool , and the thirsty land springs of water : in the habitations of dragons , in the places where they lay shall be grass , with reeds and rushes . and an high-way shall be there , and a way , and it shall be called a way of holiness : the unclean shall not passe over it , but he shall walk in the way with them , and the simple shall not erre . no lion shall be there , nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon , it shall not be found there ; but the redeemed shall walk there . and the ransomed of the lord shall return and come to sion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads : they shall obtain joy and gladnesse , and sorrow and sighing shall flee away . chap. ix . . the great use of the belief of the promise of the spirit . . the eating the flesh of christ and drinking his bloud , what it is . . further proof of the promise of the spirit . . that we cannot oblige god by way of merit . . other testimonies of scripture tending to the former purpose . . these places which we have recited out of the old testament cannot but warm and encourage him that reads them , by reason of the loftinesse of their prophetical style , provided that he have in himself a facility of mystically applying of things to the great purpose they drive at . but what we shall adde out of the new , though they will not strike the phansy with so high language , yet they will , it may be , reach ones reason more surely , and extort assent more powerfully even from them that are loth to finde it true , that there is such a mighty supernatural assistance afforded from god , viz. the cooperation of his holy spirit in our conflicts against sin . which perswasion is of great consequence to make us resolute in resisting all temptations , and to gain the victory in every assault ; and therefore we will produce sufficient evidences of the truth thereof . . and the first that occurs to my minde , is that of our blessed saviour , luke . . if ye , being evil , know how to give good gifts to your children , how much more shall your heavenly father give the holy spirit to them that ask him ? and that this dispensation of the spirit of sanctification is a common gift to all christians , appears out of what we have already recited out of s. matthew , where iohn professes himself only able to baptize with water unto repentance , but that the baptisme of christ should be with the holy ghost and with fire , that is , with the power of the spirit that will melt and purifie us as silver is purified in the fire . also from ioh. . where christ styleth himself the manna that came down from heaven , and declareth , that he that eateth his flesh and drinketh his bloud , hath eternal life ; with other expressions of the like nature . wherefore his disciples began to be scandalized at it : but jesus answered and said , does this offend you ? what if you shall see the son of man ascend up where he was before ? that will be a very strange and stupendious spectacle to you , and such as will assure you of my divinity ; but withall remove my body so far from you , that you cannot then , if you would , mistake so grosly as to think i speak of this body and bloud i carry now about with me . it is the spirit that quickneth , the flesh profiteth nothing . the words that i speak unto you , they are spirit , and they are life ; that is to say , they are touching the spiritual body , which is the inmost temple of the holy ghost , and which you are in some measure to partake of here , and which shall have its compleat refinement when i shall crown you with the perfection of life eternal at the last day . or , they are simply concerning the spirit , and that life which i my self am according to my divinity , viz. the eternal word in whom is the life , and that life is the light of men . this is that which you are to feed on , and to drink into your souls , when you have not my particular bodily presence with you . for this word and spirit is every where to be taken in by them that breath and thirst after this heavenly sustenance of their souls ; and so is that fulfilled which he declares v. . he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud , dwelleth in me and i in him . for the eating of the flesh is in some measure partaking of the spiritual body , and the drinking of the bloud the imbibing that life therewith that rayes out from the eternal word into all purged and purified hearts , whereby christ dwelleth in them and they in him , and god in all . . again , iohn . . in the last day , that great day of the feast , iesus stood and cryed , saying , if any man thirst , let him come unto me and drink . he that believes on me , as the * scripture hath said , out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters . which he spake of the spirit , which they that believe on him should receive ; as the text it self expounds it . and therefore is a good ratification of the mystical sense of those prophecies we rehersed out of esay . but these things are spoken more plainly and without a metaphor , ioh. . . if ye love me , keep my commandements . and i will pray the father , and he shall give you another comforter , that he may abide with you for ever ; even the spirit of truth , whom the world cannot receive , because it seeth him not , neither knoweth him : but ye know him , for he dwelleth with you , and shall be in you . which precept and promise is like that of esay , chap. . which is , that ( if we seriously compose our mindes to do due acts of obedience to god ) he will pour out his spirit upon us . then shall thy light break forth like the morning , and thy health shall spring forth speedily ; and thy righteousness shall go before thee , the glory of the lord shall be thy rereward . he shall guide thee continually , and satisfie thy soul in drought , and make fat thy bones : and thou shalt be like a watered garden , and like a spring of water , whose waters fail not . that is , ( as any spiritual christian would be apt to interpret the place ) if thou thirst after righteousnesse , and in the mean time to thy utmost power do the outward functions thereof in thy duties to god and man , at length this spirit of truth will break forth like the morning light within thee , and the emanations of the holy ghost will so throughly refresh thee and strengthen thee , that with ease and pleasure thou shalt walk in all the wayes of god , which shall be like the flowry alleys of a paradise to thee , both to thine inward and outward man. . not that our endeavours or desires are any obligation to god by way of merit on our part , but it is his mercy to the soul that does in good earnest pant after him . for till he has compleated his work in us , all our works are worth nothing ; and whenever they are worth any thing , they are not ours but his . and to this sense speaks paul to titus , chap. . but after that the kindnesse and love of god our saviour toward man appeared , not by works of righteousnesse which we have done , but according to his mercy he saved us , by the washing of regeneration , and renewing of the holy ghost , which he shed on us ( or poured out upon us , as the original has it ) abundantly through iesus christ our saviour . like that of the prophet , thou shalt be like a watered garden . . adde to these ioh. . . iesus answered , verily verily i say unto thee , except a man be born of water and of the spirit , he can in no wise enter into the kingdom of god. that which is born of the flesh , is flesh ; and that which is born of the spirit , is spirit . and rom. . . but ye are not in the flesh , but in the spirit , if so be that the spirit of god dwell in you . now if any man have not the spirit of god , he is none of his . and vers . . likewise the spirit also helpeth our infirmities : for we know not what we should pray for as we ought ; but the spirit it self maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered . and also cor. . . know ye not that ye are the temple of god , and that the spirit of god dwelleth in you ? and lastly , ephes. . . ( for it were infinite to reckon up all places of scripture that tend to this purpose ) for this cause i bow my knees to the father of our lord iesus christ , of whom the whole family of heaven and earth is named , that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory , to be strengthned with might by his spirit in the inward man ; that christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye being rooted and grounded in love , may be able to comprehend with all saints , what is the breadth , and length , and depth , and height ; and to know the love of christ which passeth knowledge , that ye may be filled with all the fulness of god , who is able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think , according to the power that worketh in us . to him therefore be glory in the church by christ iesus throughout all ages , world without end . amen . chap. x. . a recapitulation of what has been set down hitherto concerning the usefulnesse of the gospel , and the necessity of undeceiving the world in those points that so nearly concern christian life . . the ill condition of those that content themselves with imaginary righteousnesse , figured out in the fighters against ariel and mount sion . . a further demonstration of their fond conceit . . that a true christian cannot sin without pain and torture to himself . . vve have now abundantly proved out of places of scripture , the necessity of inward sanctification and reall in-dwelling righteousness , and the high pitch thereof , together with the mighty assi●●ance hereunto , the promise of the spirit of god moving and cooperating in the inward man to the finishing and completing all his works in us , that we may be holy and blameless without spot or wrinkle or any such thing . we have also prevented all perverse glosses of false teachers , whereby they would slacken and enervate the strength and efficacy of these three powers of the gospel we have hitherto spoken of , by introducing a bare , fruitless and steril faith , or the imputation of an external righteousness , that , according to their compute , is further removed from us then the highest star. which errour , were it as harmless as groundless , any peaceable good christian could be content to connive at it : but it being an old mischievous stratagem against the church , and so noted by the wisedom of the apostles , an evil machination found out by the prince of darkness to undermine the kingdom of christ , no faithful adherent to the interest of the lord jesus , and the advancement of his rule and power in the world , can with a good conscience slightly pass it over , but will use his best endeavour to undeceive the world in so dangerous a mistake . . and though i be now hasting apace to the next joynt of the evangelical engine i am describing , yet i cannot passe on with satisfaction to my self , before i have also added to the suffrages of the apostles ( who unanimously have voted this opinion , of being righteous without doing righteousnesse , a very dangerous imposture and deceit ) some rational considerations that may make us still more sensible of the ill consequences thereof . for my own part , i must confesse that it is to me a thing utterly inconceivable how a man can be righteous here without righteousnesse , or happy hereafter without righteousnesse here ; or how any true christian can please himself in a palliation more then a cure , or can be satisfied with any thing but that manna that came down from heaven , the very flesh and bloud of christ in that sense i have interpreted it , or without feeding his soul with that real spirit of righteousness , or the divine nature , which is meat indeed and drink indeed . for i do not understand how the condition of these opposers of so essential and fundamental a truth can be any other then what the prophet * esay has prefigured in those that fight against ariel , the altar of holocausts , ( where the whole beastly nature is to be burned by the consuming * fire of god ) and that lay siege against mount * sion , the hill of that drinesse and thirst which god has promised to irrigate with living springs of water . it shall be as when an hungry man dreameth , and behold he eateth ; but he awaketh , and his soul is empty : or as when a thirsty man dreameth , and behold he drinketh ; but he awaketh , and behold he is faint . so shall the multitude of the nations be that fight against mount sion . this is the condition of all sects whatsoever that are contrary to them that thirst and hunger after righteousness : for these shall be really satisfied , the dew of divine grace shall plentifully showr down upon this sion , and they shall be filled with spiritual manna from heaven ; whereas the other , their hunger and thirst ( that is , their wants and defects ) being real , but not after real righteousness , are fed only by imaginations and dreams , and whenever they awake out of them , will finde themselves destitute . . nay , what is yet worse , a man may almost conclude that they are not so much as in a capacity of dreaming of celestial food . for that is a function of life , to dream of such things as are agreeable to such a species of living creatures ; and those that dream of such things as are congruous to their nature , it is because they have had an enjoyment of them , and do sometimes enjoy them according to the order of nature . and certainly he that is a true christian , is not a mere natural man , but is that new creature that is framed in righteousness and true holinesse : and therefore he must be fed out of such principles as he was generated from , not of the will of man but the spirit of god ; and therefore he does not only dream of , but really feed of that manna that is from heaven , that inward essential righteousnesse that is from god. and as it is impossible for one man to eat , to drink and to breath for another in a natural way ; so also is it alike impossible for any one person to eat and drink and breath in a spiritual way for another . and if we were wholly alive to that life that is most certainly in every christian rightly so called , we should think it as inconvenient that any one should be righteous for us , as that he should be in health for us . for what comfort would it be , while we are in a tedious fever , a sharp fit of the stone or gout , that some other person should be sound and at ease for us ? . and therefore it is too shrewd an indication that men in this imaginary perswasion are in a manner past feeling , as the apostle speaks , as being devoid of all divine life and sense ; otherwise sin and immorality would be as harsh to their souls as these diseases are painful to their bodies . and hence it is that s. iohn saith , that he that is born of god sinneth not , because the seed of god remaineth in him ; as i have noted above . for what principle of life sins against it self ? what beast wilfully wounds it self ? what tree blasts it self ? what life will so much as hurt it self any way ? will the eagle swim in the sea , or the dolphin fly in the aire ? will not all creatures keep them to their own element and original , and fly their contrary element as that which brings destruction , or at least a great deal of diseasement to them ? what regenerate man then can endure to come near the region of sin ? it can be no more pleasant to him then the smoke to his eyes , or the saw to his hearing . how can i do this wickedness , and sin against god ? nay how can i cut and launce and scorch my self , my better self , even christ which lives in me , with whom i suffer as often as his image suffers ? and this may serve for a more generall taste of the unreasonablenesse of this wicked and mischievous imposture that has ever more or lesse attempted the church of christ. but i shall bring you in a more punctual bill of the losses and damages done thereby . chap. xi . . that the want of real righteousness deprives us of the divine wisedom , proved out of scripture : . as also from the nature of the thing it self . . that it disadvantages the soul also in natural speculations . . that it stifles all noble and laudable actions ; . and exposes the imaginary religionist to open reproach . . that mere imaginary righteousness robs the soul of her peace of conscience , . and of all divine ioy ; . of health and safety , . and of eternal salvation . . that god also hereby is deprived of his glory , and the church frustrated of publick peace and happiness . . this sad reckoning may be comprized under these two general heads , the good of man and the glory of god. those particulars in which the good of man chiefly doth consist , be these : . true wisedom and a sound iudgement in things . . noble and profitable actions . . honourable repute . . peace and tranquillity of minde . . divine ioy and triumph of spirit . . health and safety here in this life . . eternal happiness hereafter . and now first that we are deceived and cheated of true wisedom and a sound mind by this fond supposal , that we may be righteous , though we be not righteous as christ was righteous , that is , in doing of righteousness , will sufficiently appear from this , that righteousness and holiness is the only true way to divine wisdome and a sound judgement in things . which may be made good both by manifold testimonies of scripture , and from the nature of the thing it self . if any one will doe the will of god , he shall know of my doctrine , saith christ whether it be from god , or whether i speak of my self , john . and in the psalms , the fear of the lord ( by which is understood righteousness , the eschewing evil and doing good , as the psalmist himself explains it ) is the beginning of wisdome ; a sound iudgement have they that doe thereafter , &c. and elsewhere , the secret of the lord is with them that fear him , and he is mindfull of his covenant to make them know it , as the hebrew will be well rendred . and job . i said daies should speak , and multitude of years should teach wisdome : but there is a spirit in a man , and the inspiration of the almighty gives them understanding . but how this inspiration and spirit of wisdome has for its abode an heart really righteous , the wisdome of solomon will tell us ; insomuch that he that is contented to forgoe righteousness , must also of necessity fall short of wisdome . wisdome cannot enter into a wicked heart , saith he , nor dwell in a body that is subject unto sin . for the holy spirit of discipline fleeth from deceit , and withdraweth her self from thoughts that are without understanding , and is rebuked when wickedness cometh in . wisdome therefore and unrighteousness cannot abide under the same roof . our bodies cannot be both the temples of the living god and of a deceitfull idol . and if it were needfull to add any thing allegorical and mysterious to these plain testimonies of scripture , we might also urge that this precious truth , that wisdome rises out of righteousness , was also shadowed out in the fourth days creation , wherein the lights of heaven were made . for that mysterious jew on the place records this observable priviledge of the number four , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the quaternarie number is the first quadrate , pariter par , or equally equal , the measure of iustice and equity . wherefore the number here of the day being a symbol of righteousness , that which was created in that day , viz. the lights of heaven , may very well be the symbols of divine knowledge or wisdome , viz. the sun of righteousness , as christ is called ; intimating that the divine wisdome is conceived and brought forth , or , if you will , created in righteousness . so that this intellectual sun does not arise and shine upon our minds til this fourth day , the day of righteousness . but then that in the proverbs is made good , that the path of the just is as the shining light 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that goes on and shines 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 til the firmitude or stability of the day ; and that 's at noon , which is the solstice of the day , where his altitude does not so sensibly vary . so that the sense is , that the path of the righteous is like the course of the sun , who still climbs up , til he fully reach his meridian : but the way of the wicked is as darkness , ( as it is in the following verse , ) they know not at what they stumble . . and thus it is plain from testimonies of scripture , that divine wisdome and a sound mind is not to be attained unto but through righteousness : and that consequently he that forgoes real righteousness , must of necessity lose true wisdome . but beside this there are also innate arguments taken from the things themselves , whereby the same truth may be proved . for it is apparent that corruption of the will , like rust , eats away the strength , defaces the beautie , and obscures the brightness of the understanding , and dulls the edge of the natural wit. but to point out more at large some reasons why the unrighteous must be also unwise . the first is , from the falseness of the wicked heart ; the second , from the asymmetry or incongruity the vitious mind has with divine truth . and for the former , it is a manifest reason why god does not commit the treasures of wisdome to the unrighteous . for he will not put it into the custody of false men . how carefull the divine wisdome is in this point , siracides has very fitly described , chap. . for first she will walk with a man by crooked waies , and bring him unto fear and dread , and torment him with her discipline , until she have tried his soul , and proved him with her judgements : then will she return the straight way unto him , and comfort him , and shew him her secrets , and heap upon him the treasures of knowledge . but why she will not commit this great and pretious treasure to polluted and unholy minds , is , as i have said , because of their faithlesness , they being so likely to abuse it : that is , they will either contemn it , as a swine does a pearl , preferring either the sensual pleasures or the riches or the honours of the world before it , and so quenching the good grace of god by their base lusts and evil desires , are cast off by god in a deserved scorn ; ( for the divine wisdome is not so vile and cheap a thing as to intrude her self like an impudent woman into the familiarities of men , but is rebuked and checked and goes her way at the entrance and appearance of her bold corrivals , if they be entertained , viz. the lust of the flesh , the lust of the eyes , and the pride of life : and many such affronts will quite chase her away , so that whereas she sought after us before , she now sought after by us will be hard to be found : ) or else if we do not seem to contemn her and slight her , yet we may shew our selves faithless and treacherous in betraying her to other uses then god intended her . as if so be we should thence endeavour to exalt our own name , and please our selves in our own arrogancy , setting our selves above others ; or use the quickness and sagacity of our understandings to deceit , or the patronizing of evil in our selves or others ; i say , because the unrighteous man would be subject to abuse thus treacherously the great gift of god , therefore the divine wisdome may not lodge in his false heart : but in stead of that any fortuitous opinions which his own natural inclinations , practices , education , or confusion of his own mind and conscience shall heap together in him hand over head ; which he taking for truth shall notwithstanding abuse , and shew the divine wisdome how he would also use her if he could come at her , 't is likely worse , or rather he would abuse himself worse with her then with those ; that meat being worst for the sick which is best for them that are well . but beside that the counsell of god is such that he will not give the gift of wisdome to the wicked heart , there is also an incongruity , if not an incompossibility , in the thing it self . the wicked man is uncapable of it . the natural man perceiveth not the things of the spirit of god ; for they are foolishness to him : neither can he know them , because they are spiritually discerned . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the sun cannot be seen by the eye , unless the eye receive the likeness of the sun , as plotinus speaks . wherefore we doe very foolishly in that we bestow so much time in the exercise of our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and so little in the preparing and fitting of it , that afterward the use of it may be with good effect . if the eyes be weak , muddy and dim , even almost to blindness , we are not so foolish as to think to perfect our sight by looking long , or often , or on many objects ; it makes our sight rather worse : but the disease of the eye is first to be taken away , and then with ease and in a moment we may see more then before we could in many years by wearisome poaring with our short sight ; or rather ( which is more to the purpose ) we should be able to discern such things as in our former condition we should never have been able at all to discern . so the soul of man , in its unrighteous and polluted condition , does very unadvisedly with so much curiosity and anxious labour to endeavour the discoveries of divine truths ; for there is as yet laesum organum , and she ought to commit her self first to the skill of a faithfull physitian , to christ , who is the healer of the souls of men as well as he was of their bodies , and so to be re-estated again into that state of health and soundness , ( and righteousness is this soundness of the soul , ) and then to use her faculty when it is able to receive that whereby the object is discovered . in lumine tuo videbimus lucem , in thy light we shall see light . but if the eye receive no light , it discovers no object : so if the soul receive no impresse from god , it discovers nothing of god. for it is most certainly true , that like is known by like ; and therefore unless the image of god be in us , which is righteousness and true holiness , we know nothing of the nature of god , and so consequently can conclude nothing concerning him to any purpose . for we have no measure to applie to him , because we are not possessed of any thing homogeneal or of a like nature with him , and this only can be a measure ; for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the philosopher speaks . but when we are arrived to that righteousness or rectitude of spirit or uprightness of mind , by this , as by the geometrical quadrate , we also comprehend with all saints what is that spiritual breadth and length and depth and height , as the apostle speaks . what the rectitude of an angle does in mathematical measurings , the same will this uprightness of spirit doe in theological conclusions . . and not to make this loss of wisdome a jot less then it is , i further add , that unrighteousness is encumbred with many distempers and impediments whereby even natural knowledge , as well as divine wisdome , is much hindred in a man. such are anger , impatience , self-admiration or self-conceitedness , admiration of persons , or a pusillanimous over-estimation of them ; desire of victory more then of truth ; too close attention to the things of the world , as riches , power and dignities ; immersion of the mind into the body , and the slaking of that noble and divine fire of the soul by intemperance and luxury , with such like . all which certainly are very great enemies to all manner of knowledge , as well natural as divine . and as for anger , which appears in disputes , that it blinds the judgement , is an acknowledged truth , as those proverbial sayings witness , impedit ira animum , &c. and ira furor brevis ; and madness and wisdome do not consist together . this passion placed upon religious objects is called zeal , and the apostle , that there may be no mistake , calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , bitter zeal . but this inordinate anger , be it in things humane or religious , it is really a whirlwinde in our soul , and carries up with it dirt and straws and dust and all in to the understanding , and does alwaies more or less blind the judgment . and how great an enemy impatience is to that choice piece of natural knowledge which lies in mathematicks , is evident from hence , that those sciences either find or make the studiers of them of calm and quiet spirits , as petiscus truly observes . but whether the admiration of our selves , or of other persons , be more mischievous to the truth , is not easie to define . for though we be more prone to admire our selves , yet we may with less checking admire another ; it looking something like friendship or modesty : though commonly , if not alwaies , we have some lurking interest involved in the same , and so admire our selves in another with less envy and suspectedness . wherefore the next way not basely to admire another is not conceitedly to admire ones self , or more favourably to look on a mans own conceits then on a strangers . for it will be very hard for one whom self-love does not impose upon , to be imposed upon by any other person , whom he cannot love better then himself . and as for desire of victory , the sense of that folly is , that a man had rather seem wise , then be so , or have the glory and fame then the possession of wisdome . and he that is thus affected , must of necessity follow such things as are most obvious , plausible and popular ; and so become a fool amongst wise men as well as seem a wise man amongst fools . and as for close attention to the world , that man ought to hold there be more souls then one in a mans body , that will hold that ambitious and covetous men have any leisure to be much seen either in divine or natural things . for their plottings after wealth and honour , and the putting of their plots in execution , will take up the animadversion of the soul so much , that one animadversive will not suffice for both these provinces . so that it is possible that men that have not addicted themselves to any such projects , but have been ever imploied in the single search after wisdome , may understand more in divinity and nature then they who by long diligence and industry have at last scrambled up to the top of honour and riches ; a position never allowed of either by the iewish prelates of old or the present cardinals . which has made the one bold persecutors of christ , the other of the chief christian philosophers . as is manifest in the story of galileo . lastly , immersion of the mind into the body , sensuality and intemperance , that these be main impediments to knowledge , is most plain . for seeing that the soul in this state does depend on the brain for phansy and memory ( without which there can be no understanding ) as well as on the eye and ear for seeing and hearing ; it will follow that the brain being altered and distempered by frequent excess , the faculty of understanding will also goe to wrack . for if the very clime or temper of the air wherein men are bred and born does avail so much for wit or dulness , as has been alwaies acknowledged that it does , whence is that by-word of a boeotian wit ; certainly distemper in diet will as much , if not much more . and it is known by too frequent and wofull experience , how many men of good natural parts have either buried them in gluttony , or drowned them in drunkenness , or consumed them by lust. this truth indeed is more easie to be understood then worthily to be deplored . . i have now sufficiently proved , that we are assuredly cheated of true wisdome and a sound mind by that mischievous conceit , that a man may be righteous , though he be not righteous as christ was righteous , that is , really righteous . and that we are also cheated of all noble and profitable actions is as plain . for from whence should they arise but from these two fountains , righteousness and wisdome ? and the former is here supposed to be wanting , from whence has been clearly proved the want also of the other . wherefore the good and happiness of mankind does here most miserably goe to wrack . . and therefore thirdly , there is no ground of deserved reputation amongst men . but their mouths will be closed in silence , if not opened in reproach . for the unrighteous nature will work in those that be really unrighteous ; and the actions of unrighteousness , in those that will however be reckoned in the number of the righteous for some other cause then for being so indeed , will be more lavishly spoken against for their numbring of themselves amongst those that are godly . for the miscarriages of those that make no shew of religion nor pretend to holiness , are noted only by them that are holy , and they only take offence at it ; but when they that are reckoned amongst the religious do transgress , even the wicked themselves , that are willing to wink at one another , will take great offence at these , and talk very loud against them . for their wicked acts breaking through that external covering and outside of religion , they are deservedly laught at ; as the ass by the beasts of the forrest , when his unsutable ears appeared through the lions skin , and his rude braying betraied his nature . . this imaginary righteousness does rob us also of tranquillity and peace of mind . for he that acts unrighteously , is in actual rebellion against right reason and the spirit of god ; and he that is only imaginarily righteous , will not fail to act unrighteously ; for real unrighteousness will have its real effects , as well as poisonous plants their fruit , and serpents their spawn . wherefore he that has no more then imaginary righteousness , carries a kingdome of rebellion in himself ; and unless he be given up to a reprobate sense , the peace and tranquillity of his mind cannot but be shaken . for verily the rational soul of man is not so utterly estranged from all vertue and goodness , nay indeed there is that congruity and connaturality betwixt them , that it will be a hard task utterly to break off that ancient league . for vertue is natural to the soul , vice and immorality extraneous and adventitious ; else why do they call the cleansing of the soul from vice , the purging of her ? for purgation is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the platonists well define it , the taking away of what is unnatural and improper . wherefore seeing that vertue is natural to the soul , it is reasonable to conceive it is better rooted then to be expunged quite or a sudden by any one phansy or opinion , and that the sense thereof will not so easily be washed out . and therefore it remaining there , and yet a man acting according to some unnatural or irrational conceit that he has taken up he knows not how unawares , he acting , i say , against this noble and innate sense of the soul , he must needs be wounded and disquieted . . divine ioy and triumph of the soul is taken away . for what is ioy and triumph but the more fully and easie of any nature according to its own principle ? as the flame when it has broke through the smoke and raw smotherings of the fewel into more free activity and more uncurb'd vibrations of its own splendour and light . and verily the soul has found its own freedom and force and easie activity and natural complacency in the spirit of righteousness , when once it has from many incumbrances of the flesh and of the world broke out into that divine flame , and so felt what is most perfective of her self and of her own happiness , and what suits her better then any thing that ever she had a sense of before . which is a sign again that this is most natural to the soul , her sense being most satisfied therewith . and in the high enjoiment of so enravishing a good , what can she doe less then breath out her pleasure in such like ejaculations as these , rejoice in the lord alwaies , and again i say , rejoice ; and with the psalmist , rejoice in the lord , o ye righteous , for it becometh the just to be thankfull ? . that health and safety is taken away by this substituting of imagination for real righteousness , is plain . for if the keeping of the law is health to the navel and marrow to the bones , as the wise man speaks , what must unrighteousness be , but a canker in the flesh and rottenness to the bones ? and if that of the apostle be true , who is he that will harm you , if you be followers of that which is good ? then what harm may you not fall into if you adhere to what is evil ? . as we are deprived of health and safety here , so also shall we be defrauded of our eternal happiness hereafter by this imposture wherewith we are imposed upon by our own selves . for to say nothing by way of argument from the reason of the thing , how incompetible and incongruous heaven is to an unrighteous soul , the testimony of scripture is plain in this matter ; for no unclean thing may enter into the holy city . and cor. . . know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdome of god ? be not deceived ; neither fornicatours , nor idolaters , nor adulterers , nor effeminate , nor abusers of themselves with mankind , nor thieves , nor covetous , nor drunkards , nor revilers , nor extortioners , shall inherit the kingdome of god. and hebr. . . follow peace with all men , and holiness , without which no man shall see the lord. and thus we see that all the happiness of man and his real good is utterly subverted and destroyed by this mischievous imagination of being righteous otherwise then by true and living righteousness . . and it is as plain that this imposture will rob god of his glory , as well as defeat man of his happiness . for whether we understand by the glory of god the image of god communicable to men ; as the image , that is , the light of the sun , is the glory of the sun : or whether we understand the acknowledgment of that excellency and perfection that is in god , first deeply conceived in our hearts , and then fully and freely professed by our mouths : both these are assuredly taken away by this false conceit . and of the former there is no doubt , being that the spirit of righteousness is that very glory of god or image of christ. wherefore whatever does intercept this , does really eclipse the glory of god. and it is as true also of the other . for seeing that the most rich and precious excellencies of the divine nature cannot be discovered by the soul as they ought to be , but by becoming divine , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if thou beest it , thou seest it , as plotinus speaks ; it must needs be that they cannot be worthily admired and extolled by any soul but such as is divine , that is , such a soul as god has poured the spirit of righteousness and true holiness on , without which it is impossible to see god. to all which particulars that concern every private man you may add that great summe of an incomputable damage that respects the publick ▪ for what peace or faithfulness can there be amongst men where the professed mysterie of their religion is the explosion of real righteousness ? or what can possibly take place in stead thereof but fraud and falshood , foul lusts , phrantick factions , rude tumults and bloudy rebellions ? to which you may cast in the loss of our very hopes that the world should ever grow better , or that the holy promises of god should take effect . for there is not a more cruel or butcherly weapon for the slaying of the witnesses , nor a more impregnable fort against the approaching kingdome of christ , and that millennial happiness which many good and faithfull christians expect , then this hell-hatch'd doctrine of antinomianisme . chap. xii . . of the attending to the light within us , of which some spiritualists so much boast . . that they must mean the light of reason and conscience thereby , if they be not fanaticks , mad-men or cheats . and that this conscience necessarily takes information from without ; . and particularly from the holy scriptures . . that these spiritualists acknowledge the fondness of their opinion by their contrary practice . . an appeal to the light within them , if the christian religion according to the literal sense be not true . . that the operation of the divine spirit is not absolute , but restrained to certain laws and conditions , as it is in the spirit of nature . . the fourth gospel-power , the example of christ. . his purpose of vindicating the example of christ from aspersions , with the reasons thereof . . we have now gone through the three first powers of the gospel ; of which three the last , namely , the promise of the spirit , may seem so sufficient of it self to some , without any thing further , and i am sure does so to others , that professedly they take up here , and exclude , or at least neglect , all that advantage that accrues from the history of christ , and hereby do antiquate the christian religion . these are those great spiritualists that talk so much of the light within them , and the power within them ; and boast that they want nothing without to be their guide and support , but that they can goe of themselves without any external help . for keeping to the light within them , the power of god and the spirit of god will assist them , and will lead them into all truth . and truly i cannot but say amen to what they declare . for i know assuredly that it is most true , if they would leave off their canting language , and say in down-right terms , that keeping sincerely to the dictates of reason and conscience , and the perpetually denying themselves in such things as they know or suspect to be evil , with devout addresses to the throne of grace for the assistance and illumination of the holy spirit , to discover and overcome all errour , falseness , pride and hypocrisie that may lurk in their hearts ; i say , i am well assured that this dispensation , faithfully kept to , will in due time lead unto all saving truth ; and that such a one at the last cannot fail to become a christian in the soundest and the fullest sense , such as firmly adhered to christ in the first and most unspotted ages of the church . but if they will call any hot , wild imagination or forcible and unaccountable suggestion , the light within them , and follow that ; this is not to keep to reason and conscience , but to be delivered up to a reprobate sense , and to expose a mans self to all the temptations that either the devil or a mans own lust or a sordid melancholy can entangle him in . . wherefore by the light within them they must understand an accountable and rational conscience within them , unless they be perfect fanaticks or mad-men , or , what is worse , mere impostors and cheats , who would pretend to a conscience , but yet irrational and unaccountable to any one , and hereby have the liberty of doing what they please , being given up at length to nothing but fury and lust. and then lastly , this conscience within them is not a thing so absolutely within them , that it can take no information from what is without . for it is manifest that this lamp of god that burneth in us , is fed and nourished from external objects . for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen , being understood by things that are made ; for by these from without are we advertised of his eternal power and godhead . and as we are thus taught by the outward book of nature concerning the existence of god and his general providence in the world as to the necessities of life both of men and beasts ; so may we also by external vvritings or records be more fully informed of a more special providence of his to the sons of men , concerning the state in the other world , and of that eternal life manifested by christ. but i grant that it is still this light within us , that judges and concludes after the perusal of either the volumes of nature or of divine revelation . . but as he that gives his mind to mathematicks , architecture , husbandry , gardening , and the like , if he out of a foolish conceit of light and reason being only ●●●hin one , and not without , ( as certainly neither ink nor paper , nor both put together , are any more partakers of the light of reason then of sense and life ) would make no use of the writings of euclid , suppose for mathematicks , nor any other authour that has writ of such matters , and so of the rest of the faculties i named , nor converse with any man by word of mouth , nor cast his eyes upon what they have done , but only think with himself and sit still by the light of his own lamp within dores ; will be a very sorry mathematician , architect , husbandman or gardener : so certainly for moral and divine truth , he that will be so taught by himself , that he will not use outward advantages , such as the holy scriptures especially afford , will be found at last to have been the scholar of a very foolish and imperfect master . . besides that , these men contradict themselves in their own practices . for they vilifie that by which they have been taught , and retain the very phrases of what they have learned out of scripture , and know not how to speak without scripture-terms , nor can make any show without scriptural allusions ; and that grand document of keeping to the light within us they borrow out of s. iohn's gospel : and yet they are so phrantick and peevish that they would fling away the staffe without which they are not able to make one step in religion . moreover if this light within us is so precisely within us , that it wants no information from without us , why do they themselves scribble such abundance of pamphlets , make catechisms , set out prophecies ? why do they exhort , rebuke , nay reproach and raile against men to convert them , if what is without cannot reach that which is within ? or why do they meet together to hear some one of their assembly ( after he has fallen down as in a trance , and got up again ) dictate oracles out of his disturbed breast ? for his words which they hear are without , and beat upon the ear ; they are not the light within . wherefore it is plain , that the light within may be informed by something which is without , whether by voice or writings : and if so , there is an obligation upon this light within to be so considerate , as to seek the most punctual information it can from what is most likely to inform it from without . . and therefore they are with all diligence to examine the most venerable records of religion , and especially of that religion under which they were not only born , but which is absolutely of it self the most renowned religion that ever was in the world. which therefore none but such as are utterly averse from all religion , as being wholy given up to lust and prophaneness , can without examination dare to relinquish ; and if they will examine it , i mean the christian religion , ( as it referrs to the person of christ , that died betwixt two thieves at jerusalem , but rose again the third day , that ascended visibly into heaven , and shall again return in a visible manner to judge the quick and the dead , ) i appeal to this light within them , to their reason and conscience , and that of the most cunning impostors amongst them all , or of whoever will join with them , if the evidence for this religion from prophecie , history , and from the nature of the religion it self , is not such , as that nothing but ignorance of the true meaning thereof and of its right design can hinder it from being acknowledged as a most certain truth by any , but those that are afraid that any religion that leads to holiness , or promises any thing after this life , should be found true . . as for that objection taken from the mighty power of the spirit of god , as if that were so sufficient of it self , that belief therein and assistance therefrom would anticipate the mention and use of any other power whatsoever that may seem to confer to the end of the gospel , the sanctification of our souls ; i answer to this , that they that do after this manner argue , do erre not knowing the scriptures . for this power of the spirit communicable to believers is not an absolute and omnipotent power , not to be resisted , not to be frustrated , if there be not due means and wise accommodations concurring with its workings or attempts to work . but i may in some manner illustrate the condition thereof from what is observable in the spirit of nature , the principle of all natural generations , growths and perfections ; in which there is a kind of hypothetical omnipotency as to the work of nature ; that is , that this spirit will not fail to assist and complete , provided that such and such circumstances in corporeal agents be not wanting . so is it also in this divine spirit , or the holy ghost , as it is communicable to us ; it will certainly assist and finish its work , if there be no impediment on our side , which it behoves us to remove out of the way , nor any thing wanting which we can applie our selves to for the advance of our faith & perfecting of the holy life ; such as meditating on the scriptures , conferring with holy men , experienced christians , & using with devotion and reverence all the ordinances of christ. for though this assistance of the holy spirit be unspeakably powerfull to the sincere and diligent ; yet in the negligent and perverse , as i said , his attempts are frustrated . and therefore steven expostulates with the jews in this sense , ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts and ears , ye do alwaies resist the holy ghost : and elsewhere we are exhorted not to * grieve the spirit , nor * quench the spirit . which expressions do plainly demonstrate that the communication of the spirit is not absolute and omnipotent , but received according to certain laws and waies of god's own appointing ; who of his infinite wisdome has traced out such a method in christian religion as is most accommodate to gain souls to himself : of which we have heard part already , and shall now proceed to the four last powers of the gospel , which are mainly instrumental to the work of the spirit upon the hearts of all true believers . . and the first of these is the example of our ever-blessed saviour , who has given us no other precepts then what himself was the exactest pattern of ; and himself such a pattern of life , that is , of faith in god , of humility , love and purity ; that we cannot doubt in following his footsteps that we are in a wrong way , he being by voices from heaven and by his miracles upon earth proved and declared to be the only-begotten son of god. wherefore the nearer we keep to his path , the surer we are that we walk upon sound ground . besides that he is our lord and soveraign , and therefore natural ingenuity will urge us forward to compose our lives so as is most agreeable to his fashion . and he does expresly require this as a testimonie of our love and loyalty to him ; if you love me , keep my commandements : of which a principal one is , that as i have loved you , ye love also one another . so he gives his disciples an example of being humble one to another , in that he washed their feet . if i then , your lord and master , have washed your feet , ye ought also to wash one anothers feet . for i have given you an example , that you should doe as i have done to you , john . and matth. . take my yoke upon you , and learn of me , for i am meek and lowly in heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls . . but i need not insist much upon this subject ; i having amply enough shewn in the second part of my discourse , how the whole history of christ , all his actions and deportments of himself , tend to the most effectual recommending of the divine life unto us . we shall only take the opportunity here to wipe off such stains as the foul and unsound breath of some blasphemous mouths have of old or of late endeavoured to stain this bright mirrour of divine perfection withall . which will be not only a piece of indispensable duty and loyalty to the person of our saviour , but also the better encouragement to his sincere followers ; especially when i have added the parallel of such accusations and imputations as bear very close analogie with those of our saviours himself . for he has foretold of old what would come of it , that the disciple should not be above his master , nor the servant above his lord. and if they have called the master of the house beelzebub , how much more shall they call them of the houshold ? but how just the calumnies are against the one and the other , we shall now see . chap. xiii . . that christ was no blasphemer in declaring himself to be the son of god ; . nor conjurer in casting out devils . . that he was unjustly accused of prophaneness . . that there was nothing detestable in his neutrality toward political factions : . nor any injustice nor partiality found in him . . nor could his sharp rebukes of the pharisees be rightly termed railing ; . nor his whipping the buyers and sellers out of the temple tumultuary zeal ; . nor his crying out so dreadfully in his passion be imputed to impatience or despair . . the suspicion of distractedness and madness cleared . . his vindication from their aspersions of looseness and prodigality . . the crooked and perverse nature of the pharisees noted ; with our saviours own apology for his frequenting all companies . . that christ was no self-seeker in undergoing the death of the cross for that joy that was set before him . . the former part of which task though it may seem needless , if not ridiculous , amongst christians , who cannot entertain any evil thoughts of that person whom they deservedly worship ; yet because all that live in christian commonwealths are not cordially such in no manner at all ; for the convincing of them , if it were possible , of the excellency of christ , or at least for the better stopping of vain mouths from rash and unskilfull censures , i hold it not improper to recite to you a charge or bill of inditement exhibited against that innocent and immaculate lamb christ iesus by malicious and ignorant men ; to the intent that he , whom they have so unworthily charged , may be as honourably dismissed and acquitted , that his righteousness may be brought forth as the morning , and his judgement as the noon day . and here that they may fly high enough at first , and strike deep enough even to a deserved taking away of life , blasphemy must stand in the front , to give countenance and strength to the rest of their following accusations . . then conjuring and dealing with the devil . . prophanation of the sabbath . . neutrality , or cold indifferency in publick controversies . . injustice . . railings . . tumultuary and injurious zeal . . impatience and despair . . phrensy or madness . . debauchery and looseness of life . . lavishment and prodigality . . and lastly , ambition and self-interest . these are the several dunghills from whence wicked and perverse men would industriously dig out dirt to cast in the face of him who was the perfect pattern of divine purity and righteousness . but let them ply themselves as fast as they can in these several foul pits , it will not be hard to find wherewith to wipe it off as fast as their impious diligence shall be able to cast it on . and first let us consider what work they make in the first place as concerning blasphemy . john . for declaring god his father , and that he and his father was one , he is there furiously accused of blasphemy , and ready to be stoned . and john . they are also there ready to stone him for saying he was before abraham . and matth. . . he is there also accused of blasphemy for saying , son , be of good cheer , thy sins are forgiven thee . and here in this first accusation de facto constat ; christ confesses , that he is one with god , that he is the son of god , and that he has power to forgive sins , that he was before abraham : but it is utterly denied , that in any of all this christ did blaspheme . for first , consider the very words of christ , i and my father are one . how unreasonably and inconsequently did these dull and peevish perverters of the words of him whom they so entirely hated for his good life and doctrine , deduce from that saying , i and my father are one , that he , being a man , made himself god ? for it is as childishly and ineptly inferred from thence by them , that he made himself god ; as if they should conclude , that the body is the very soul , because the body and the soul are one , that is , one man. and it is no more falshood , much lesse blasphemy , for the humanity of christ ( who was so really and lively actuated , informed , and united with god , as the body is with the soul ) to pronounce of himself as if he were very god , then it is for the tongue to say , i understand , i believe , i perceive , when neither the body nor it believes , perceives , or understands any thing , but only the soul with which it is so intimately united , and of which that which the tongue speaks in such cases is to be understood . and if this be duely considered and taken in , christs saying also , that he was before abraham , will not prove any blasphemy . for christ by reason of his so near union and essential conjunction with god , which athanasius well resembles to that of the body and soul , may as properly and naturally professe himself to be before abraham , yea , to have been before the world was made , as the tongue of man may utter , i shall survive after the death of this my body ; in which there is no ill sense nor incongruity in the judgement of most sober men . but besides this , that which the blinde jews understood not , being hoodwinked with the thicknesse of their own particular religion and unregenerate nature , sometimes christ speaks of himself under the notion of a divine life and unction communicable to the sons of men in all ages and places . wherefore the sense is this , that whereas the iews religion and topical and temporary holiness began but as high as from abraham ; that of christs , which he exhibited in that fulnesse to the world , was truly universall both for time as well as place ; a light that enlightneth every man that cometh into the world ; the eternal wisedom of god , that in all ages makes those that receive it friends of god and prophets , as the wise man speaks . and it is no wonder that divine men according to their higher or more intimate union with the divinity lose their sense and remembrance of their particularities , and pronounce of themselves rather according to the things they are so livingly united with , then according to their own vanishing circumscribed corporeal persons . and now it being no blasphemy , as is plain , to admit that one may be thus lively actuated by and united to god , in whom , if any where , the minde of god must dwell ; who can more reasonably remit sins then such an one and so manifest a prophet as our saviour declared himself by his signs and miracles done among the people ? but our saviour has so excellently answered for himself , and so appositely , as to the condition of his opposers , that when i have rehearsed it , this first accusation will be more then satisfied . is it not written in your law , i said , ye are gods ? if he called them gods unto whom the word of god came , and the scripture cannot be broken ; say you of him whom the father has sanctified , and sent into the world , thou blasphemest ; because i said , i am the son of god ? if i do not the works of my father , believe me not . but if i do , though ye believe not me , believe the works ; that ye may know and believe that the father is in me and i in him . and surely at the very first sight this is a right sober plea to any unprejudiced judge , that our saviour was so far from a blasphemer , that for his life he was a saint , or rather the pattern and original of all saintship , for his miracles the power of god , and for his nature and relation filius dei , the son of god , in a very safe scriptural and judaical sense ; to trouble their low apprehensions with no higher nor harder conceptions . which conceptions are notwithstanding not so hard as true : and the writings of the apostles and the evangelists being judge ( to whom every christian is bound to appeal ) i conceive it will easily appear to indifferent men , that the godhead belongs to christ really and essentially , not titularly , being as necessarily included in the formalis ratio of his nature , as three angles in the notion of a triangle . and in my own judgement , i cannot acquit those men who are so busie against the divinity of christ ( whenas yet they would be called and esteemed christians ) from being guilty not only of high indiscretion , but of a very grand errour in christianity . but the jews , to whom this great mystery of the coalition of god and man into one person was not then revealed , did very perversly to interpret christs words into such a sense as they might with confidence call blasphemy ; whenas they might have interpreted them according to what was more compliable with the tenour of their own faith. in this , i say , was their malice very remarkable , that they would not afford his saying an ordinary benigne interpretation , whose works and actions were so miraculous and divine , and his life so full of goodnesse and innocency . . but such was the perversenesse of this stupid nation , that even those things that should have wrought an acknowledgement of their messias , made them more obstinate ; and they must be less his friend , because he was a foe to the devil , and deem him a conspiratour against god , when it was his businesse to dislodge satan whereever he found him . christ in the second accusation must by all means be represented to the world as a conjurer , and a dealer with the devil , matt. . . where the people being much amazed at that great miracle that jesus did in healing the possessed that was blinde and dumb , insomuch that they began to bethink themselves that this man might very well be the messias ; the wicked and envious pharisees most impudently calumniate him , saying , this man doth not cast out devils , but by beelzebub the prince of the devils . but christs reply to this so hainous calumny is as solid as milde . every kingdom divided against it self is brought to desolation ; and every city or house divided against it self cannot stand . and if satan cast out satan , he is divided against himself ; how shall then his kingdom stand ? and if i by beelzebub cast out devils , by whom do your children cast them out ? therefore they shall be your judges . but if i cast our devils by the spirit of god , &c. and here he clears himself by two excellent arguments . the first supposes the devils to be so wise and to love themselves so well , that they knew how to conserve , and would endeavour to conserve their own commonwealth and power ; but if they should enable christ to cast out their fellow-devils , it were a plain beginning of sedition and dissension , and a portending of ruine to their state. nor could it be reasonably suspected that christ was so deep a complotter with the rulers of darknesse , and that he was of so much intimacy or interest with them , that this was done by way of collusion betwixt the devils and him , that in something else he might subvert the kingdom of god with greater ease and effect . for there can be nothing conceived more contrary to the devils nature and interest , then that life which christ both taught and practised ; besides his recommending of * spiritual worship , which destroys paganisme and the worship of daemons . wherefore it was the more perversly done of the pharisees to impute this miracle to the power of the devil rather then the spirit of god ; whenas also their own sons and disciples were conceived by them to cast out devils by no evil art , but merely by the power of god ; as divers writers testifie , that both iews and egyptians were known to cast out unclean spirits by conjuring them in the name of the god of abraham , isaac and iacob , and sometimes in the nomen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , in the name of iehova , as * theophilus writes . . the third charge is prophanenesse and sabbath-breaking , luk. . where iesus with his disciples going through the corn-fields , they pluck the ears of corn , rubbing them with their hands , and eating them , and that on the sabbath-day . but here christ apologizes for them by the example of david who ate the shew-bread . and at the . verse , the scribes and pharisees are filled with madnesse , because he healed a man on the sabbath-day ; insomuch that they consult to do the utmost of despight unto him : for all one might have thought that apologetical reason for the business might have prevented their choler , or asswaged it , is it lawfull to do good on the sabbath-day or to do evil , to save life or to destroy it ? but methinks there cannot be imagined any answer so smart , and hit more home then that in the second of mark , v. . the sabbath was made for man , not man for the sabbath ; therefore the son of man is lord also of the sabbath . where the well-prepared christian is taught in a short sentence worthy to be writ in letters of gold , or rather in the heart of every holy and understanding man , not only what concerns the sabbath , but even the whole businesse of religion , that it is rather hominis gratiâ quàm dei ; and that though god's honour be mainly pretended in it , yet it is mans happinesse that is really intended by it , even of god himself . which wretched men of ignorant and dark mindes , and deeply levened with the sowr pharisaical leven , understanding not , create much trouble to themselves and all the world besides in their peevish and inept prosecution of matters of religion ; they being no meet judges of their either apprehensions or actions , whom the divine freedome and benignity has transformed into a contrary nature to themselves . . now for neutrality , that seems so intolerable and detestable to those whose uncurbed desire of worldly advantage or humorous projects makes them even hate all that may be and yet are not instrumental to their precipitate designs ; it is so far from being a fault in our saviour , that in my opinion it was a very graceful ornament in the demeanour of so divine and pious a personage as he was , who was set apart for better purposes then to attend political squabbles and dissensions , which seldom fail of being begun and continued from any better principles then envy , ambition and covetousnesse . our saviour being very craftily tempted to declare himself to be of judgement either for or against caesar ( matth. . ) by this question , is it lawful to pay tribute to caesar , or no ? he as warily avoids giving his sentence , for the justnesse of this or that cause , as may be ; returning only this well-attemper'd answer , give unto caesar the things that are caesar's , and unto god the things that are god's . ita christus sapientissimo responso & seditionis motae & violatae religionis calumniam in quaestione insidiosissima effugit , as that excellent interpreter observes : and so he quits himself from appearing either herodian , gaulonite or caesarean . . what semblances they can feign of injustice or partiality , will be picked out of such passages as these ; his unseasonable cursing the fig-tree for not bearing fruit , whenas the time of year was not for fruit ; his blaming the pharisees for long prayers , when himself is recorded to have prayed a night together ; and lastly , his quitting the woman that was taken in the very act of adultery . but as for the first ; as the fig-tree felt no hurt , so no hurt was done in withering it : but this was merely a symbolical passage , whereby the judgement of god was prefigured against the unfruitfull religion of the jews , as i have above noted . for long prayers ; whereas our saviour is said ( luke . ) to have gone out into a mountain to pray , and continued all night in prayer to god ; the greek has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is more likely to signifie in proseucha dei , or divine oratory , or place of prayer to god ; as is plain from that of the satyrist , ede ubi consistas , in qua te quaero proseucha . however it is to be conceived our saviour condemned rather the hypocrisie and effectedness of long prayers then the mere length of them ; it being impossible for any of so accomplished a spirit as our saviour to blame either the shortness or length of mens devotions arising out of a soberly-guided affection , not a vain affectation . for the acquitting the adulteresse , it cannot be interpreted as a countenancing of any such foul miscarriage , but as an exprobration to the jews of their own wickednesses , which whenas they ought to have been conscious to themselves of , they should not have been over-forward to do execution upon those that were but sinners as themselves , especially that power of condemning and punishing being then in a manner taken out of their hands by the romans . and here christ did also worthily of that divine and benigne nature which dwelt in him , of which this fruit was but as an handful to that full harvest the sons of adam afterward reaped from his doings and sufferings . . as for the imputation of railing ; one of the worst speeches that ever fell from his lips was when he called the scribes and pharisees hypocrites ; which , according to the propriety of the word , is as much as histriones or stage-plaiers : and indeed the scribes and pharisees of old and their posterity ever since have so dressed up themselves and their religion too , that that title might deservedly have been entailed on them and their seed for ever . but christ elsewhere seems more bitter , where he speaks out in plain english , ye are of your father the devil . but it was a title that fell out so fittingly for them upon their vain boast of their father abraham , whose sonship they had forfeited by being quite of a contrary nature to him , that it had been a piece of inexcusable forgetfulnesse not to have reminded them of their true descent and pedigree , he having so full authority thereto . . that seeming injurious and tumultuary zeal , where he whips the tradesmen out of the temple , and overthrows the tables of the money-changers , the very manner of the doing of it does justifie the act ; it being plainly miraculous , that a private man , destitute both of arms and authority from men , should drive so many both from their station and gain . nor would this zeal , seem it never so tumultuous , look misbecomingly , if we did consider from whence it sprung . our saviour certainly conceived high indignation and sorrow in his heart , while he observed that scorn and contempt those blinde superstitionists , the iews , bore against the poor despised gentiles , in thus profaning their place of worship . but i may not stay here , especially having touched upon this * objection already . i will only cursorily note this , that there was nothing could more effectually attempt to move that milde spirit of our saviour to ire and impatiency , then the scornful pride and smooth hypocrisie of great pretenders to religion . . what is alledged against him of despair and distrust in god , is from those last dreadful and tragical words , eli , eli , lama sabacthani : which being uttered in the very pangs of death and insufferable torture , if they had been more harsh and unreasonable then they seem , there had been little reason to accuse christ for them ; christ then , according to his humane nature , being at the same disadvantage that those that lye in the highest paroxysms of sickness , the actions of whom are rather to be deemed actiones hominis then humanae , and so they to be acquitted of them . but those words are so sober , that they want no such apologie : especially if it be free to interpret them according to the latitude of the hebrew text , from whence they are taken . for lama will signifie how as well as why ; and then it is nothing but a speech of one bemoaning himself in the present sense of his insupportable desertion . . what others gather of distractedness in our saviour and broken forgetfulness , that he should pronounce himself forsaken of him who himself was , ( for he was god , ) and so complain of an impossibility ; that allegation argues more shortness of understanding in themselves . for the humanity of christ was not god ; for so he had not been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god and man , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , twice god : but he being only god by union , even that union holding , there may be this desertion of the humanity . as the sun , at christ's passion , not disjoined from the world , yet for the time deserted the world by withdrawing its light from it . but if this will not doe , there is another way to make good this imputation of madness against him who was deservedly styled the wisdome of god. and this they will confirm even by the verdict of his own friends , mark . . and when his friends heard of it , they went out to lay hands on him ; for they said , he is beside himself . but indeed this is the fate of all almost that are more then ordinarily wise , to be accounted little better then mad . for they having either higher or contrary apprehensions to the vulgar , and consequently acting many times contrary to them , they can hardly escape the suspicion of madness ; the multitude of their judges , even the meanest of them , having not so mean a conceit of himself , but that he is even infallible in those things which he has for so long a time together held as true , without any controll in himself or of others . and i remember a passage somewhere in trismegist , where the instructer in high mysteries , when he had enlightned his son tatius , forewarns him of the reproach he would undergoe from the vulgar , that he would certainly seem to them as a man distracted . and this also was the condition of democritus , whom the people out of over-much pitty and officiousness desired hippocrates to use his best skill to cure , as troubled with the phrensy : which he intending to set to the next day , was over night advertized by a divine vision or dream , that it was not democritus that was mad , but the people . and to return again to the text alledged , if we follow the not-unprobable conjectures of some , the people will also be here found to be the mad-men , and not christ , for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will agree as well with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as with christ , and the actions of the multitude are more suitable with madness then any thing recorded there of him . for the people did tumultuously flock together , and was so troublesome , it seems , that men could not eat their meat quietly for them : wherefore there being that fervour and heat in the multitude , christ's friends went out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to take christ by the hand , and lead him out of the croud or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the multitude ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for it was said , the multitude or people are mad or beside themselves . which is a thing too often credible , whether this text prove it or no. . as for the tenth and eleventh accusations of debaucherie and looseness of life , prodigality and needless lavishments , which are a near strain to the height of the worst kind of madness ; they are expresly set down in scripture . and our saviour himself knew what a fame went of him . luke . , . iohn the baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine ; and ye say , he hath a devil . the son of man is come eating and drinking ; and ye say , behold , a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber , a friend of publicans and sinners . for in the following verses that woman in the city , which is said to be a sinner , which bestowed so much cost and affection upon our saviour , was such an one , prostitutae pudicitiae mulier , as beza interprets it : but what her demeanour was toward our saviour christ is there set down , she stood behind him weeping , and began to wash his feet with tears , and wiped them with the hairs of her head , and kissed his feet , and anointed them with the ointment . which ointment in the other gospel is said to be a box of spikenard very pretious . which familiar and affectionate officiousness and sumptuous cost , together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with , could not but give much scandal to the pharisees there present . for that dispensation of the law under which they lived making nothing perfect , but only curbing the outward actions of men ; it might very well be , that they being conscious to themselves of no better motions within then of either bitterness or lust , how fair soever they carried without , could not deem christ's acceptance of so familiar and affectionate service from a woman of that fame to proceed from any thing better then some loose and vain principle ; and that therefore the prophet was grown idly-minded , or that he was no prophet at all . but he was both a prophet , and constantly sober-minded , and unblamable even in this matter . for he knew that she had been sometime a convert , as well as heretofore a sinner , whose conversion our saviour , he having several times conversed with her , either begun or confirmed by that his conversation . for he balk'd no company , as a good physitian declines no patient nor disease . and certainly that great miracle which iesus wrought upon her brother ( for this was mary the sister of martha and lazarus whom christ raised from the dead ) could not but fully settle her in a firm faith and love of god and jesus christ whom he had sent . whereby her heart at that time being full of the joiful remembrances of the mercy and goodness of god every way exhibited to her by this man christ , ( as remission of sins , true instructions in righteousness , newness of life , and the regaining of her dear brother lazarus from the grave ; ) out of a deep sense of the love of god , and thankfull regard to him through whom all that was manifested and made good to her , she did overflow with kindness and thankfulness : the expressions whereof moving no sense of evil to our saviour , ( his sanctified body being as pure and immovable as consecrated marble , the golden wings of the cherubims in the temple , or that very alabaster that bore in it the pretious ointment , ) it had been not only incivility but even impiety to have given any check or discountenance to this devout convert in this her full carier of sincere love and thankfull affection . which certainly , whatever it seemed to those pittifull spectators , those strait-laced pharisees , was an odour of sweet savour unto god , and as holy incense filled the court of heaven , as well as the opening of the box of ointment filled the house with an acceptable sent to all but iudas ( whose covetousness made him with a handsome pretence to the poor , exclaim of the act as profuse and prodigal ; ) and to the abovesaid pharisees , who doubtless thought all the perfume lost , saving that fee thereof they felt in their own nostrils . . but it is observable that such was the perverse and wicked ingenie of those crooked superstitionists , that true goodness in no kind of dress would please them . in iohn the baptist there was that eminent severity and austerity of life , accompanying and unreprovable integrity and purity of heart , that he might , one would think , have commanded them to that which was good ; but he must have a melancholy devil in him . our saviour came in a more pleasant and careless garb , laying aside that awfull and rough severity that was in the other , intermingling himself with all companies , taking not at all upon him , being as other men are in every thing , sin only excepted ; ( which manner of life as it is of more perfection then the other , as supposing more benignity of nature , and more firm radication in goodness , so fewer men are capable of it , much less unsteddy and unresolved youth , who are to fly from suspected company as from the devouring plague ; ) yet , i say , these wretched pharisees , as true detesters of real holiness and godliness , whatever they pretend in the shadow thereof , cannot give our saviour a good word , but interpret his good nature good-fellowship , or debauched company-keeping , and his serviceable intermingling himself with all sorts of men ( publicans and sinners not excepted ) for their good , friendship and countenance to what is evil . but our saviour christ has sufficiently apologized for himself in this matter in these few words ; the whole have no need of the physitian , but those that are sick . and in another similitude he fitly represents their cross nature by what is said of those in the song the little children sung in the market-place ; we have piped to you , and ye have not danced ; we have mourned to you , and ye have not lamented : that is , these inept and unwieldy-spirited fellows , the pharisees , could not be moved to what was truly good , neither by the sad and austere deportment of iohn , nor by the more free and unaffected carriage of our saviour . . and therefore let us leave them at last as remediless , & examin the last allegation , which is taken out of one of his own followers and friends , hebr. . v. . looking unto iesus the authour and finisher of our faith ; who for the joy set before him , endured the cross , despising the shame , and is set down at the right hand of the throne of god. here cavillers will insinuate to the derogation of that perfect righteousness in christ , that he was a self-seeker in all that toil and sorrow he underwent for the sons of men , nay an ambitious kingdome-seeker , ( for that ioy which sustained him was this throne mentioned in this text ; as i confess cannot be denied by any : ) and that therefore all these acts and sufferings of our saviour , that seemed so heroical , do proceed but from a mercenary principle . but this allegation is very easily answered . for whether we understand by this throne or kingdome a more undisturbed enjoiment of the divinity and fuller possession of god , which speaks a more powerfull and high exaltation of the humane nature of christ , and his more free fruition of the divine ; and this respects our saviour christs own good ; or whether we understand that power he should be endued with , whereby he led captivity captive and procured gifts for men , trampling down the powers of hell and darkness for the rescue of the sons of adam from their long bondage ; this throne , this kingdome , this power aimed at , implied in our saviour neither ambition nor mercenariness . for the desire of a fuller fruition of god was not ambition , but divine love ; which he not affecting in that luciferian way , similis ero altissimo , but through an humble enravishment of spirit in the remembrance of that divine beauty , was so far from committing any sin , that he did that which is weakness or sin not to commit . and as iacob could not properly be said to be either a self-seeker or mercenary in respect of rachel for whom he served so many years , and whom he so entirely loved , but in respect of laban and his sheep-keeping he might be said to be mercenary , and a self-seeker ; ( for he served him only for rachel's sake : ) so christ being enamoured of the divine nature , for love whereof he went through so much drudgery and misery upon earth , could not in respect of that glorious and soul-ravishing beauty which he sought to enjoy , be said to be either self-seeking or mercenary ; when it was the very presence of god that he was so taken with , as a friend is with the lovely person of his friend . but now for that power he foresaw he should be invested withall , of leading captivity captive and procuring gifts for men ; being that it was for the universal good of others , why might he not please and solace himself in it in the midst of his many tedious encumbrances , without the least suspicion of ambition or blame ? wherefore maugre all that has been hitherto objected or can be devised against that accomplished pattern of all righteousness , that immaculate lamb christ jesus , we will conclude with that song of praise sung in the apocalypse by the elders before the throne of the lamb. worthy is the lamb , that was slain , to receive power , and riches , and wisdome , and strength , and honour , and glory , and blessing . and let every creature which is in heaven , and on the earth , and under the earth , and such as are in the sea , and all that are in them , help to fill up the heavenly quire and say , blessing , and honour , and glory , and power be unto him that sitteth on the throne , and unto the lamb , for ever and ever . chap. xiv . . the reason of his having insisted so long on the vindicating of the life of christ from the aspersions of the malevolent . . the true character of a real christian. . the true character of a false or pharisaical christian. . how easily the true members of christ are accused of blasphemy by the pharisaical christians . . and the working of their graces imputed to some vicious principle . . their censuring them prophane that are not superstitious . . the pharisees great dislike of coldness in fruitless controversies of religion . . their ignorance of the law of equity and love. . how prone it is for the sincere christian to be accounted a railer , for speaking the truth . . that the least opposition against pharisaical rottenness will easily be interpreted bitter and tumultuous zeal . . how the solid knowledge of the perfectest christians may be accounted madness by the formal pharisee . . his proneness to judge the true christian according to the motions of his own untamed corruptions . . his prudent choice of the vice of covetousness . . the unreasonableness of his censure of those that endeavour after perfection . . his ignorant surmise that no man liveth vertuously for the love of vertue it self . . the usefulness of this parallelisme betwixt the reproach of christ and his true members . . and thus you have seen christ vindicated from all those several suspicions and aspersions laid upon him by malicious and ignorant men , whereby they would represent him as not possessed of , nor acting from so noble and divine a principle of righteousness as he himself profest , and his followers have ever witnessed of him . in which i confess i have been something more large then might have been expected in pleading the cause of a person so perfectly pure and innocent . but i considering our saviour christ not so much in himself , as in his members , i mean , his true members , who have one common spirit with him ; and how they are liable to the same accusations and misconstructions of spightfull and inconsiderate men that himself was in the flesh : i thought it fit more fully to insist upon the clearing and well and rightly interpreting of all the carriages of christ ; that thereby those that call themselves his members , may know better how to interpret one another ; or if they be not so themselves , that they may however learn not to judge rashly and inconsiderately of them that are , and walk indeed as he walked . and that my foregoing pains may be the more effectual to this purpose , i shall not stick to second them , so far as to shew how men ordinarily cast the same or the like soil and dirt upon the truest members of christ , that they did upon christ himself . . and that you may take in this with the more evidence , give me leave to prefix in your mind the right image of a true christian , or living member of christ. and such an one is he , who is a branch of the same vine , has derived into him the same sap and life , partakes of one and the same divine spirit with christ ; the fruit whereof is to love god with all a mans heart and with all his soul , and his neighbour as himself ; and to doe so to others as he himself would be done to . and that i may not name that only which seems nothing in too many mens eyes , i add also , to know and acknowledge the only true god , and iesus christ whom he hath sent . and surely whosoever has this in its due measure and vigour of life , is conscious to himself and finds the sweet of so great and glorious an accomplishment of mind , that whatever the wit or humour of man can add to it , will seem of little more value then dust and straws we tread under our feet . . and now i have told you what a true and living member of christ is , let me also tell you what a false or titular or pharisaical christian is . and he is this , one that has not the divine sap or spirit derived to him , as being and growing in , and becoming one with the true vine christ jesus ; and is not possess'd nor is sensible of that sufficiency , joy and satisfaction that is in the inward life of christ , and the spirit of righteousness and eternal and undispensable truth of god : but being dead to what is most necessary , pretious and saving in christianity , and only alive , or mainly , to the spirit of the world , loves himself with all his heart and all his soul , and god and his neighbour only for his own sake : or rather uses and rides his neighbour , having haltered him or obliged him with some prudentially and judiciously-bestowed courtesies ; and worships god rather then loves him , nè noceat , beseeching him that upon a special dispensation , though he be no better then others , nor ever intends nor hopes to be better , yet that it may be better with him in the end then with other folk . let me die the death of the righteous , and let my latter end be like his . or it may be , what is little better then that , in stead of the living righteousness of christ , he will magnifie himself in some humorous pieces of holiness of his own . for he imagines there is a god , and that it is safe to make a friend of him one way or other ; and therefore , that his conscience may be the better excused from those things that are more weighty and substantial , he will take up things according to his own humour and phansie , as fasting twice in the week , making long prayers , hearing long sermons , sticking curiously to some unnecessary , uncertain and fruitless opinions concerning god and religion , such as are warrantable neither out of scripture nor reason , and growing very hot and zealous in the agitation of these things ( though to the disturbance of the church of god and injury of his neighbour ) yet these trinkets and trumperies of his own humour and complexion , this heat , this noise , this zeal , these are the altar , fire and holocaust wherewith he sacrifices to god , and presents himself an oblationer before the almighty . and all this to be excused from that which is the very end of all religion and worship , that is , the sacrificing of our own corrupt life , and acquiring that prize that is set before us , the holy spirit of righteousness , equity and purity ▪ whose moderation and guidance is the light of the world and the life of man. . and having thus , though but loosely and rudely , scattered the delineaments of these two opposite professours of christianity ( the true christian and pharisaical humorist , ) i shall from hence , as from the cause and original , derive evidence and light to what i shall now propose to you by way of parallelisme betwixt what our saviour in his own person suffered of false accusations and aspersions , and what his true and living members are obnoxious to from that spirit of pharisaisme that has ever and does to this very day rule still in the world . and first of the first accusation that was laid to our saviours charge , viz. blasphemy , he hath spoken blasphemy , matth. . it is apparent , the pharisaical nature being desirous to be excused from destroying and bringing to nothing in ones self all haughty and ambitious designes , self-seeking , covetousness and intemperance , doth easily endeavour to make amends for this , and to pacifie the conscience and approve ones self to god , by laying out all our parts in spinning excellent high subtilties and amazing mysteries from any hints taken in scripture , and in adorning the nature of god and religion according to the garishness of a mans own natural phansie and nicety of wit. whence it may come to pass that these traditionary pharisees having made it their business to rack their natural unregenerate minds to find some magnificent conceptions ( as they imagine them ) to bestow upon the deity ; that one freed by christ ( who is the truth that makes one ▪ free indeed ) by not admitting or gainsaying these high and divine inventions of theirs concerning god and christ , wherewith they have wrapped him and clothed him ( though they doe but what dionysius did to the golden vestments of iupiter , take them off and put on a linsy-wolsy one , ) may well be suspected and accused of blasphemy and injury to god , when it is nothing but a refusal of the groundless conclusions of rash and inconsiderate men , or else worse , that of purpose cloth god and christ and represent him to the people in such a dress as will make most for the countenancing their own hypocrisie , profit and interest . i will only name one instance of many . how has the roman clergy forced and rack'd their wits to make good the grand mystery of transubstantiation , whose ordinary priests must have greater power of working miracles then the devil could invent to puzzle our saviour withall ? for what is the turning a stone into bread in comparison of turning bread into god incarnate ? and yet a mass-priest after the uttering of a few formal words of consecration , has brought about the prodigie . and he that will be so bold as to call bread but bread , and not christ or god , how can he chuse but be thought to blaspheme ? but yet this blasphemy is not against the nature of god or christ , but against the forgery and fictions of men , and so indeed is no more blasphemy then bread is christ or mans phansy the deity . the rule therefore that christians are to take notice of here is this ; there being so much humour and interest and stupour of education that may begin or continue false conceptions of god ; if any one professe himself that he cannot conceive such things as some so peremptorily and imperiously obtrude upon his belief , that he is not straightway to be accounted a blasphemer of god , it haply being but a dissent only from the conceits of men . . the second aspersion cast on our saviour was , that that miraculous good that he did , was from the power of satan , not of god. and methinks it is not hard to find something parallel to this in some aspersions cast upon his true members by rash pharisaical censure . which is this ; the eximious and exemplary life of good and holy men is many times ( by those that are more addicted to such a dress or outward platform of religion consisting of certain ceremonies and opinions , then to the truth and essence of religion it self ) imputed to corrupt natural principles , such as vain-glory and the esteem of the world , political advantage , and the like ; which answers to the pharisees giving out that christ cast out devils by beelzebub the prince of the devils . so say our modern pharisees of such as are not of their sect ; if those men live never so holily and unblamably in this present evil world , exercising vertue and avoiding vice , that it is not from any divine principle in them , but from the instigation of pride the prince of vices . . so in the third place , they that affect even more then a iudaical strictness in the observation of the sabbath , ( though god knows it is too many times that their consciences may be the more free to work unrighteousness all the week after , ) yet they will take upon them to censure them of no less crime then prophaneness that observe neither the same measure of superstition nor hypocrisie with themselves . . fourthly , neutrality and cold indifferency in publick controversies , how can it possibly chuse but seem very abominable to the pharisee or formal professour ? for they knowing no other religion then what consists in certain dispensable and unnecessary opinions and performances ; when they are shaken and hazarded , he that will not engage to the utmost then , as if god and true religion it self were at stake , cannot but be deemed very unworthy and detestable . whenas to be but coldly and indifferently affected in things indifferent , is in all reason to be esteemed just and good . . nor is it a whit strange to hear the pharisaical tribe complain of the true regenerate christian as unjust ; whenas the one acts according to an outward rule or tradition which was made for the meeting with their own wicked and untamed corruptions , ( malo nodo malus cuneus ) and which notwithstanding they craftily and perversly make use of by leguleious cavills to the injuring of one another or them that are better then themselves ; but the true christian acts and judges according to the living law of equity and the eternal love of god springing up in his heart . . sixthly , as for the accusation of railings and revilings , even a sober and wel-carriaged christian may well be subject to that calumnie . for the pharisee bearing himself very high in the opinion of his own either formal or phantastical righteousness , making a shift rather any way to perswade himself he is righteous and religious then by partaking of true religion and righteousness indeed ; he acting therefore according to the nature he really has , not according to what he phansies himself to be ; it cannot but happen that the true christian , endued with the divine nature and spirit of righteousness , not intending at all to raile or revile , but using the most easie and unaffected propriety of words , calling a spade a spade , as the proverb is , doing but so as adam did in innocency , giving the creatures names according to their natures , it cannot but happen , i say , that the actions and persons being foully bad of such as notwithstanding be in their own conceit as good as any , when they be called by what names express the truth of their natures and no more , that yet they will presently judge the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a railer and reviler . . now for tumultuary zeal , i must confess that pharisaical hypocrisie is such an abominable provoking thing in the sight of all the sons of god , that it can scarce fail scorching and heating their tender and lively spirits , no more then a natural flame can fail to swinge and pain our natural flesh ; which none of us can suffer with such patience , but we are ready to testifie our sensibleness both by gestures , actions and words . besides that in a moderate and well-guided zeal against the pharisaical interest , all being so rotten there , so sore and patched over with pitiful plaisters ; the least action or opposition will make them cry out , even afore they be hurt , being conscious to themselves how unsound and unable they are to abide the least measure of rough handling . so that the least vigour of opposition in good earnest against their hypocritical and unwarrantable waies will by them be deemed but bitter and tumultuous zeal . eighthly , the just and seasonable bemoanings of the dear servants of god and fellow-members of christ , when nature is very much oppressed with adversity or torment , are not to be judged rashly the symptomes of impatience or despair . for the expressing of the sense of ones misery is no vice , since the suppressing thereof may be no vertue , but rather a symptome of pride , or affectation of spartanisme . . and now in the ninth place , as for that aspersion of madnesse and phrensy the true christian has often cast upon him by the pharisaical religionist , the cause of it is plain from either of their natures , or from the nature of madness it self . for as sottishnesse and dotage is the extinguishing of reason in phlegme or cold ; so madness is the disordering , discomposing and dissipating the phansy and reason in the distemper of heat . wherefore , whereever the heat exceeds the sense and reason of him that speaks or acts , there comes in so much of madnesse as there is of that excess . but as concerning sense and reason , sith it is all one to be absent as not to appear , therefore it must needs follow , that those that speak with much zeal & vigour things very true in themselves , yet to others very incredible or unintelligible , must be by them reputed no better then mad-men . and hence it was that the governour told paul , that too much learning had made him mad . and hence probably may be the ground of that ordinary saying , nullum magnum ingenium sine admixtura insaniae . partly because no great wit can well be but with some good measure of natural heat and activity of spirit ; and partly , or rather mainly , because the improvement of these parts and wit by subtil search into things have produced such conclusions , so paradoxical and opposite to the vulgar conceits of men , and yet of such evidence of reason to the inventors of them , that they asserting with heat and confidence the conclusions to be true , to such men as were not capable of the subtilty of the reasons which infer them , could not chuse but get to themselves for their pains the reputation of men whose brains were seasoned with some strinklings at least of madnesse and phrensy . and according to this analogy may it very well be said , nullus insignis christianus , &c. that there is no notable christian that will not seem to have some spice of madness in him , especially if he be judged by the formal stiff pharisee , whose postures and actions are alwaies kept as it were in an outward wooden frame , as a childe in a standing stool ; his traditions and accustomary opinions being as deeply scored and carved in his memory , as the outward and obvious shows of things at the first sight in the world are scralled out in the rude furrows of an idiots brain . and as the unskilfull rustick would suspect him scarce sound in his senses , that should confidently speak any thing that should palpably cross or cancell those gross scrallings the sensible shew of this world has writ in his imagination : so certainly the formal pharisee would not stick to judge him mad , that with zeal and boldness pronounced such things that were not parallel nor agreeable to the preconceptions and prefigurations of his prejudiced mind ; but most of all if such things as he could get no conception at all of , they being not upon the same levell opposite , but so high removed , that they would be out of his reach of apprehension . surely the more earnest a true member of christ should be in such points , the more mad he would appear in the eyes of the cool prudential pharisee . . as for the three last aspersions that were cast on our saviour , and his true members are accordingly liable unto , the mere formal christian being judge , viz. debauchery and looseness of life , lavishments and prodigality , ambition and self-interest ; i shall briefly dispatch them all . and to the first this general consideration appertains , by how much every one is weak himself and obnoxious to temptations , by so much more suspicious he is that others transgress , when there is any thing that may tempt out the corruptions of a man ; or where there are any signs or effects of that which in some persons is naught , though those signs or effects in themselves are neither good nor bad . here the formal christian consulting with what is alive and operative in himself , viz. his inward corruption , judges the best of men after his measure ; and concludes that how he should be affected , what he should doe or suffer in such or such cases , that any one placed in the same cases and conditions doth suffer or act the like . and the more scandalous and offensive must the conversation of the most perfect and purified be , for as much as their invulnerableness and insensibleness in the midst of such vanities as others are moved with that are alive unto sin , cannot but make them more innocently free and careless in things that of themselves are not really evil . . as for the matter of prodigality , it is obvious to conceive that covetousness sitting judge , even frugality it self shall be branded with that name ; and that covetousness being so clean and dry and creditable a sin , ( as being so perfectly opposite to the mad roaring garb of the spend-thrift ) there will scarce be found a pharisee that will be so imprudent as not to retain so profitable a vice. wherefore the pharisee being covetous , the true christian , whom that noble and divine nature according to which he is regenerate has made more liberal , must needs by him be sentenced as improvident and prodigal . . lastly , for the imputation of ambition and self-interest . it is no ambition or pride earnestly to endeavour as much as in us lies to be renewed into that glorious and divine image of christ , and to contend to the utmost for the accomplishment of the same . for in this image is very eminently contained that most healthfull and comely disposition of the mind , unaffected humility . for whereas the image of christ grows not up but from the destruction and ( if it were possible ) perfect annihilation of our own stubborn and stout will , that eagerly and peremptorily ever seeks its own satisfaction , and whenever it finds it glories and arrogates to it self the success ; it must needs be , by how much more perfectly the true image of christ is recovered in us , that by so much the more fully we are freed from all pride and arrogancy . so that as it cannot be the puff of pride that should drive us on to endeavour after so high a pitch of perfection , but the divine breath of god in the soul ; no more can that pitch of perfection once attained to be any cause of pride , sith that humility is of the very essence thereof . for it is as contradictious and unreasonable , as if we should say that we become proud by becoming humble . . as for self-interest , the accusation is of that nature of the devil 's against job , doth iob serve god for nought ? men devoid of the spirit of righteousness and unacquainted with the power and pleasure of divine worth and grace , can phansy nothing there desirable but the external fruits thereof , such as honour and esteem among men , or a future reward from god. wherefore it must needs be that the pharisee or outward formalist , perceiving nothing of pleasure and sweetness in holiness and vertue in himself , if he observe others much devoted thereunto , that he must judge them to make use of those things for some other more pleasant enjoiment , as praise and applause , or a future reward ; and that they are not delighted with the things themselves . whenas certainly a true member of christ and one really regenerate into his image , could no more cease from pleasing himself and enjoying himself in the sense and conscience of this divine life , and the results thereof , all holy and becoming actions , then the natural man can cease from the enjoiments of the body , though he knows ere long his body shall afford him no more enjoiments . and yet i must also add , that it is the next door to an impossibility , that one that is become thus divine , should not have his heart fully fraught with the most precious hopes of future immortality and glory : he asked life of thee , and thou gavest him even a long life for ever and ever . . i have now finished my parallelisme betwixt the revilements cast upon our saviour and those that his truest members may be obnoxious to . which pains i think i have not at all misplaced , they tending only to the stopping of the mouths of carnal censurers , and the animating sincere christians , that they may not be discouraged from following so excellent an example by the affronts and reproaches of the world , but that they may know their own innocency , safety and freedome , while they keep in the true way , that is , in christ the son of god , who making us free , we become free indeed ; that is , free from the deceits of our own lusts , and free from the awe and terrour of imperious and superstitious men , that would obtrude their own errours upon us with as much earnestness and make them as indispensable as the infallible oracles of god. we having therefore spoken what things we thought most requisite concerning the example of christ , we proceed now to his passion , which is the fifth power of the gospel . chap. xv. . the passion of christ the fifth gospel-power , the virtue whereof is in a special manner noted by our saviour himself . . that the brazen serpent in the wilderness was a prophetick type of christ , and cured not by art but by divine power . . that telesmatical preparations are superstitious , manifest out of their collections that write of them ; . particularly out of gaffarel and gregory . . that the effects of telesmes are beyond the laws of nature . . that if there be any natural power in telesmes , it is from similitude ; with a confutation of this ground also . . a further confutation of that ground . . in what sense the brazen serpent was a telesme , and that it must needs be a typical prophecie of christ. . the accurate and punctual prefiguration therein . . the wicked pride and conceitedness of those that are not touched with this admirable contrivance of divine providence . . the insufferable blasphemy of them that reproach the son of god for crying out in his dreadfull agony on the cross ; wherein is discovered the unloveliness of the family of love. . and truly this fifth gospel-power , the passion of christ , is of so great efficacy and concernment , that our saviour seems with more then ordinary delight to have ruminated on the wonderfull effects that it would have in the world . john . . and i , if i be lifted up from the earth , will draw all men unto me ; signifying thereby what death he should die , as the text witnesses . this shews what a powerful engine our saviour himself thought his death would prove to draw all the world after him . which is a demonstration that the mind of a christian ought to dwell very much in the meditation of the death and passion of christ. the use whereof appears in another intimation of our saviour's , though more typical , yet the analogie is so plain , that no man can miss it . john . and as moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness , so shall the son of man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth on him should not perish , but have eternal life . this is so perfect a representation of our saviours passion , that i cannot but blame my self for not entring it amongst other prophecies that i alledged for the messiah's suffering . . and it will still appear more plainly that it was intended a prefiguration or typical prophecie of christ , if we consider that moses was not put upon it by any natural skill , as if the effigies of this brazen serpent did by any power of art or nature heal the israelites of their bitings of the fiery flying serpent . but it was an immediate direction of god , by whose supernatural power the cure was wrought : as the authour of the book of * wisdome expresly has noted , namely , that he that turned towards that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as he styles it , the sign of salvation , was not saved by the thing that he saw , but by him that is the saviour of all . for beside that the whole mystery of telesmes is but a superstitious foolery , much-a-kin to and dependent of that groundless pretence of such wonderfull influences as the ancient pagan ignorance attributed to the stars ; the very matter of this serpent was inconvenient and improper for this effect , as interpreters on the place have observed . to which i might add that there is not any example of any telesmes that were ever known to cure the diseasement after this sort , that is , by only looking thereunto . and that those that have been made against scorpions or other hurtfull creatures , they have chaced them out of the place or killed them upon the spot ; but if any one were stung by these venomous serpents , there was a tactual application of the remedy to him that was hurt . . and yet i will not so much stand upon this , as that the whole business of telesmatical preparations is superstitious , and that they have no effect by any natural virtue or influence . this methinks i plainly discover out of their collections that seem most pleased in the representing of these curiosities to the eye of the world in their writings ; gaffarel especially , who does with plenty of words , but no reason at all , endeavour to make us believe that the power of telesmes is natural : but i never knew any cause managed with more slight , more loose and more frivolous arguments in my daies . but out of his own mouth i shall be able to condemn him , and upon these two accounts . first , in that according to his own conjectures and relations , the erecting and preparing of these telesmes is , as we contend , superstitious or paganically religious : and then secondly , that the effects of them , where they have any , are plainly beyond the power of any natural cause . . as for the first , himself does profess that he is of opinion that the first gods of the latines , which they called averrunci or dii tutelares , were no other then these telesmatical images . and his reason is , that they made some of these tutelar gods under certain constellations : which is no wonder say i , the host of heaven being the deities of the pagans , & telesmes and astrology both rags of that ancient superstition . and apollonius tyaneus , who trotted and trudged about the world so much to restore the heathen religion , had an excellent gift ( if historians do not belie him ) of consecrating telesmes against storks , gnats , inundations of rivers , winds and storms and other noxious things : which notwithstanding that nasute sophist philostratus was willing to omit in his legend of him , as being very solicitous to save him harmless from the imputation of being a magician , as a man may observe by several passages in him . so that either way the natural efficacy of telesmes is discovered to be but a figment . but that their formation is but a paganical superstition , those more exact collections and transcriptions of gregory will further clear , if a man do but peruse them . for there he may see how in the building of cities they did not only consult the rules of astrologie for a fit configuration of the heavens , but also sacrificed , and that sometime with mans bloud , to the genius of the place , erecting a figure of brass whereinto , as they thought , they telesmatically conveyed the tutelar deity of the city . which statue was therefore placed in some safe recess , or else in some eminent place : but whereever it was , there they conceived was contained the fate or fortune of all . of this sort doubtless was the trojane palladium , and the lame and the blinde that the soul of david so hated , . sam. . as gregory has with very good reason , i think , concluded . . this is enough to intimate from what principle these telesmatical fooleries sprung , let them be of what kind they will. and the effects of them , such as are recorded , are plainly such as cannot be imputed to the power of the heavens , if we carefully consider the circumstances of things . as for example , what influence from heaven can be derived upon a city for having the first stone of it , or any one stone of it , laid under such an aspect ? what is this to the whole city that shall be so many months , it may be years , in building afterwards ? besides that i have already demonstrated the whole artifice of * astrology to be but a foppery . so that certainly it is nothing but the consecration of the city and the recommendation of it to the tutelage of a daemon . and though we should admit that the telesmatical figure of a stork ( suppose ) or a scorpion may drive away storks or scorpions , how should the telesmatical statue of a man drive away men , and keep a fort or country impregnable from the incursions of the enemy ? as the silver statues did buried in the confines of thracia and illyria , that valerius commanded to be digged up and taken away : upon which those countries within a few daies after were overrun with the goths and hunns . besides , it is much that the humane statues should make such a difference as to take part with some men and be against others , when the telesmatical figures of other creatures drive away creatures only of the same species . which are things utterly inexplicable from the laws of nature . . if there by any natural power in these things , it must be from similitude : but it is most ridiculous to think that this similitude has any thing to doe with the stars . for though there be the name there suppose of a scorpion , yet there is no scorpion there nor the image of one . but if there were any antiscorpionical power in that constellation ; that matter or metall that will receive it at all , will receive it in any other figure as well as in the figure of a scorpion , and in some , it 's likely , better . but this influence , being nothing but some thin particles that must pervade the pores of this brazen serpent , can as easily goe out as come in , and will give place to the next influence , and so never be the same . it is simply therefore the similitude of a brazen scorpion that must drive away the scorpions : which no man can imagine any reason for , if the experience be true , but the communitie of the spirit of nature , and that instance of one chord trembling while that which is unisone to it is struck , and of sympathie in persons by reason of similitude and cognation ; as in those two young children , brothers , and extremely like one another , born at riez in france , who if one were sick , sad , sleepy , the other would be so also . which are the most plausible reasons that gaffarel alledges for his so-dearly-beloved conclusion . if therefore scorpions and gnats fled from the place upon the making of such a figure of a gnat or scorpion ( suppose ) in brass or in any other metall , i should think the reason was , because the spirit of nature being harshly affected in the body of that which has so complete a similitude with such a creature , may in some measure raise an harsh sense in those creatures , and therefore finding themselves in such a place in an unpleasing temper , they will be sure to keep far enough from it . but if this be a right cause , such a telesme may be made without any regard to the configuration of the heavens . whence again all these astrological ceremonies will be demonstrated to be but fooleries . but i shall demonstrate further that this also is a foolery , and that there is no natural efficacy at all in telesmes , and that from their own history . for either gregory or gaffarel tells us , that if part of a telesme be broken off , the effect ceases . ( which we might have alledged as an argument that the virtue is in the figure merely . ) and they instance in a telesmatical crocodile whose chap was broken off ; for then the crocodiles returned . which to me is an indication that the effect is not from the spirit of nature , but from some ludicrous and deceitfull daemons that love to befool mankind . for if telesmatical emerods and the phallus work upon those parts , why should not the above-named crocodile that wanted but a chap work upon all the parts of the crocodiles but their chaps ; which would be diseasement enough to keep them away ? and the phallus gregory mentions , ( which he rightly , i think , reckons amongst these telesmes ) cured or diseased the privy parts of the athenians , according as they received the deity to which they were consecrated . from whence a man may conjecture concerning the rest of these trumperies . . again , these telesmes are made against such things as have no life nor sense in them , as against fire and water . of which the engravements can have no such similitudes , one would think , as to engage the spirit of nature to act any way ; and yet gaffarel tells us a very reverend story of a telesme against fire found under a bridge at paris . vvhich certainly if it had any natural power to preserve the city from great fires , such as would destroy the houses , it would also have h●ndred them from lighting their candles at a tinder-box , and warming their fingers in a frosty morning . and yet this curious philosopher seems to lament the losse of that telesme , they having thereby , as he saies , exposed the city to frequent scale-fires ever since . but let the telesmatical sculpture of fire and vvater be never so like , insomuch that we may hope that it may affect the spirit of nature something ; there being no sagacity nor sense in the river lycus ( suppose ) which apollonius curb'd with such a device , nor in fire now existent , ( much lesse that which is to come ) how can they withdraw themselves from such places where telesmes are laid up , they having not , as animals have , the power of spontaneous motion ? lastly , there are telesmes that have no similitude at all with the things they are to keep off ; as that man on horseback in brasse set up at constantinople against pestilential infection , which ( say they ) being once demolished , the city has been extraordinarily subject to plagues and fearful mortalities . that ship also of brasse there telesmatically consecrated against the dangers of that tempestuous sea , it had no similitude at all of either the water or vvinde : but yet of such force it was , that a piece of it being broke off and lost , the sea returned to its former unrulinesse ; but being found and put together , the sea became quiet again . they took it therefore apieces again , for experience sake , and the windes and sea were suddenly rough and boistrous , so that a ship could not come up into harbour ; but the brazen ship being again handsomely compacted , the windes and sea were again peacefull and calme . wherefore if a man do but cast an indifferent eye upon the whole matter , it will be very difficult for him not to pronounce , that he that can believe that the power of telesmes is natural , is more irrationally credulous then the most simple superstitionist in the world . . out of what has been said it is evident that the brazen serpent erected by moses in the wildernesse was not a telesme in that sense gaffarel would understand the word , that is , a sculpture , statue or similitude of something made so by astrological art , that what effects it has for the keeping off evil or remedying what has already befallen , is merely from the concurrence of natural causes , though the application of them was artificial ; the chief whereof is the influence of the heavens and the figure of the telesme . for it is apparent there can be no such . but if they mean by a telesme , such a figure of some creature consecrated in a way of religion for the services above-named , nothing hinders but that the brazen serpent may be a telesme , whether from the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies an image , or from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which denotes consecration . and this of moses was both a warrantable and effectual telesme . for it was by the prescription of god himself , and throughly did the effect it was set up for . but the cures that it did being supernatural , and neither the figure nor the matter of the serpent contributing any thing to the healing of them that were bitten by those fiery flying serpents , it is plain that moses had been left free from making any such telesme of the figure of a serpent , ( there being nothing in the thing it self to invite him to it ) had not god moved him thereto . nor can we imagine any other cause why divine revelation should suggest such a thing unto him , unlesse there were some mystery in it . something therefore that did notably concern the church of god was denoted thereby ; and what i was a going to say at first , having removed all obstacles i now again resume and dare pronounce , that it was a plain , though typical , prophecy of the messias his passion , and of the use of it , and so clear , that no words could have more punctually prefigured it to us . for the analogy and resemblance is most exquisite , if we cast our eye upon the whole scene of things . . for how naturally doe the israelites in the wildernesse represent the church of christ in the world ; and their being bitten with fiery flying serpents , our being poisoned and pained with vexatious lusts , and remorse of conscience when sin has entred into our souls ? what could more lively represent our saviour upon the crosse , who knowing no sin , yet was made * sin for us , then this brazen serpent set upon a pole in the camp of israel ? which indeed had the outward shape of a fiery flying serpent , but was so far from being a serpent , that it had nothing of a serpent but external form thereof , and healed all them that were bit with those poisonous and deadly serpents . so our blessed saviour devoid of sin himself , yet being in the most ugly outward appearance of sinfulnesse that could be put upon him ( he suffering betwixt two criminal malefactors , as it was prophesied of him , that he should be numbred amongst the transgressors ) he is in this posture ( where he looks so like sinfulnesse it self ) unto the whole church of god , when they are smitten with the fiery excitements of sin , or the deadly pangs or remorse of conscience , those rancorous wounds that sin leaves in the soul when she has been once bitten therewith , he is , i say , thus hanging upon the crosse , if they look upon him with the eye of faith , the most soveraign remedy and the most presentaneous asswagement of their pain and malady that can be offered to the thoughts of men , i am sure , of any humble and well-meaning man. . but for those that are self-conceited , of a perverse reason , and of an high-flown luciferian temper , that prefer the subtilty of their own opinionated wit and curious search into all secrets , and magnifie their own natural worth before the friendship of him that loved us even to the death ; these men are not fit relishers of the sweetnesse of that abundant goodnesse and kinde condescension of divine providence in his manifestation of jesus christ to the world : as neither the fiery enthusiast , filled with the sense of his own foolish revelations and divine visitations ( as he phansies them , ) so stout , so stiffe , and so perfect ( as the flatteries of his own imagination would bear him in hand ) that he findes nothing but god and himself worth thinking of , and will be an immediate reteiner to the almighty , without any interposal whatsoever . to that height and hardnesse is he swollen in his own conceit . but the true character of him is that which the apostle iude has given him , that he is but a mouth filled with great swelling words , puffed up , sensual , knowing not the spirit . such as these are those in too great a measure that wholly neglect the meditation on christs passion , though it be of so great efficacy for the quenching and suppressing of all the restlesse and fiery motions of sin in them . but execrable blasphemers are they , whose pride and conceitednesse has made them reproach the person of christ in his highest agonies on the crosse , and impute that to a sinful weaknesse and imperfection , that was but the due effect of the weight of his sufferings , who bore the sins of the whole world , and made an atonement with god for them . yet because he cryed out in the words of that psalme , which is a lively prophecie of his sufferings , my god , my god , why hast thou forsaken me ? therefore must that fanatick fool of amsterdam , and his illuminate elders , that boast so much of perfection , be more perfect then the son of god himself , whose certain appearance in the world is so clearly demonstrated out of the ancient prophecies of the old testament , and so manifestly ratified by the miracles recorded in the new. . i appeal to all men if satan himself could vent any thing more despightful and scornful against the endearing sufferings of our ever-blessed saviour , who out of tender love to mankind underwent those dreadful agonies of death , and waded through the heavy wrath of god for sinners , then these wretches have , that would recommend themselves to the vvorld under the false flourish and hypocritical title of the family of love ; whereas by antiquating the use of the passion of christ , and thus villainously reproaching christ upon the crosse , they demonstrate to all the world , that they have not the least sense or skill in so divine a mystery , but are wicked apostates from god , who is that pure and divine love , and underminers of the kingdome of his son jesus christ : in which neither such high-flown enthusiasts nor any dry churlish reasoners and disputers shall have either part or portion , till they lay down those gigantick humours , and become ( as our saviour christ , who is the unerring truth , has prescribed ) like little children ; for of such as these onely is the kingdome of heaven , as the prince of that kingdome has declared . these therefore he embraced and blessed when he was alive ; these he dying on the crosse stretched out his armes to receive ; to these he wept drops of bloud , that they might shed tears ; for these he was scourged , that they might chastise the exorbitancy of their own lusts and evil concupiscences ; for these he shed his most precious bloud , that they might die to sin , and live to righteousnesse , by that power which raised jesus christ from the dead . this is the foolishness of the crosse , a scandal not onely for such as are unbelievers , but even to many of them also that would be accounted zealous and knowing christians . chap. xvi . . the end of christs sufferings not onely to pacifie conscience , but to root out sin ; witnessed out of the scripture . . further testimonies to the same purpose . . the faintnesse and uselesnesse of the allegory of christs passion in comparison of the application of the history thereof . . the application of christs sufferings against pride and covetousnesse . . as also against envy , hatred , revenge , vain mirth , the pangs of death , and unwarrantable love. . a general application of the death of christ to the mortifying of all sin whatsoever . . the celebrating the lords supper , the use and meaning thereof . . but that this is the meaning of christs sufferings , that is , that we should also suffer in the flesh , and mortifie our sinfull members , besides what our saviour himself has intimated in comparing himself to the brazen serpent in the vvildernesse , the sight whereof did not onely asswage the pain of them that were bitten , but take away the poison , ( whence we may reasonably conclude , that the looking on christ on the crosse is not onely to heal the stings of conscience upon sin committed , but to destroy the poison and corruption of sin out of us , that we may not sin any more ) is plain , in that the apostles themselves also do urge the use of christ crucified to both those ends and purposes . saint iohn epist. chap. . my little children , these things write i unto you that you sin not . but if any man sin , we have an advocate with the father , iesus christ the righteous , and he is the propitiation for our sins . but this use of the crosse , namely , propitiation and the peace of conscience , all men catch at . there is more need of producing such places as shew the other use thereof , for the mortification of our sins . that of saint peter , epist. chap. . is very expresse . for asmuch therefore as christ has suffered for us in the flesh , arm your selves likewise with the same minde : for he that hath suffered in the flesh , hath ceased from sin ; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh , to the lusts of men , but to the will of god. for the time past of our lives may suffice to have wrought the will of the gentiles , when we walked in lasciviousness , lust , excesse of wine , revelling , banquettings and abominable idolatries . to which sense he speaks at least as fully , chap. . ver . . for this is thank-worthy , if a man for conscience towards god endure grief , suffering wrongfully . for even hereunto were ye called : because christ also suffered for us , leaving us an example , that we should follow his steps ; who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth ; who when he was reviled , reviled not again , when he suffered , threatned not , but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously ; who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree , that we being dead to sin , should live unto righteousnesse ; by whose stripes we are healed . for ye were as sheep going astray , but are now returned to the shepherd and bishop of your souls . what can warrant the use of the crosse for the cure of sins more plainly then this ? . but we will hear also what saint paul saith , tim. chap. . ver . . this is a faithful saying , if we be dead with christ , then shall we also live with him ; if we suffer , we shall also reign with him ; if we deny him , he will also deny us . this is most certainly true as well of inward mortification as of outward trouble ; and the mention of the death of christ is to support our spirits in the enduring of both . and philip. . ver . . that i may know christ , and the power of his resurrection , and the fellowship of his sufferings , being made conformable to his death ; viz. that as christ died upon the crosse , so he might be crucified to the world and all the vain lusts thereof : and those that walk otherwise , he cannot but proclaim them enemies to the crosse of christ , whose god is their belly , and whose glory is their shame , who minde earthly things , ver . . and galat. . . but god forbid that i should glory save in the crosse of our lord iesus christ , by which the world is crucified to me , and i unto the world ; that is , the world is but a dead spectacle to me , my affections being dead to it . i will close all with that excellent place , rom. . . know ye not that as many of us as were baptized into the lord iesus christ , were baptized into his death ? therefore we are buried with him by baptisme into death , that like as christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father , even so we also should walk in newnesse of life . for if we have been planted together in the likenesse of his death , we shall be also in the likenesse of his resurrection . knowing this , that our old man is crucified with him , that the body of sin might be destroied , that henceforth we might not serve sin . for he that is dead , is freed from sin . . you see how the most urgent exhortations of the apostles to kill and overcome our lusts are back'd and edged , if you will , with a reflexion upon the crucifixion of our saviour . which allusion , if it were no more then that odde perverse sect ( which i have so often named ) would make it , ( who desire to allegorize away the whole history of christ to a mere fable , as if it were nothing but a mere fictitious representation of things to be morally transacted in us ) truly the argument were nothing . for the death of a ram or a goat would serve to represent the sacrificing of our sensual lusts , rather better then the death of christ , who was so innocent a person . but the stress of the argument lyes in this , that a person not onely so immaculate and innocent , but so holy and sacred , so honourable and divine ; that the son of the living god , declared so from heaven , foretold evidently by the mouths of the most infallible prophets , and that at the distance of so many ages , and undeniably demonstrated to be such by his own miracles , and by that miracle of miracles , his resurrection from the dead , and his visible ascension into heaven in the eyes of his disciples ; that this so noble and divine a person , that this son of god should in dear compassion and love to mankinde give himself up , not onely to a poor despicable beggarly life , but be contented to be whipped and scourged , and put to a death both painful and shameful with thieves and malefactors , and this merely to atone the wrath of god , and open the gates of heaven to bewildred mankind that were wandring further and further from their primeval happiness ; this is such an argument as would melt the hardest heart ; and awake the dullest understanding into a quick and chearful apprehension of that duty that so nearly concerns him , viz. to be , if it were possible , more resolvedly willing to die to all his sins and worldly vanities , then christ was to lay down his life to redeem him from them . . this mighty power of the death of christ is of such invincible efficacy to them that will but seriously dwell upon the meditation thereof , that no strong hold of sin will be able to resist it ; no evil and inordinate affection , but the consideration of this passion will calm , keep under , and utterly subdue . the very counting the circumstances of his sufferings will put us out of conceit even with those vices that we have most familiarly entertained , and still all those perturbations and disquietnesses of minde that the crossest accidents of the world and our own weakness can expose us to . art thou a lover of money ? how canst thou abstain from blushing , whilst thou remembrest that covetousnesse betraied and sold thy saviour for thirty pieces of silver ? or refrain from communicating thy goods to the poor , when christ has been so prodigal of his bloud for thee ? art thou proud ? how canst thou but be ashamed to exalt thy self , when the onely-begotten son of god took upon him the form of a man , yea of the lowest sort of men , and humbled himself , and became obedient to death , even the reproachful death of the crosse , that he might teach us humility , that the same minde might be in us that was in him , as the apostle speaks ? art thou neglected , scorned , or reviled ? thy saviour was buffetted , mocked and spit upon . are thy inferiours preferred before thee ? barabbas was held a more worthy person then iesus . are thy friends false to thee ? christ was betraied by iudas with a kisse . dost thou fall from , or fall short of thy expected honours ? iesus wore no earthly crown but that of thorns , nor scepter but a reed , nor any robe but such as the abusive souldiers put on him to make legs to him and mock him . art thou traduced for one as not sound in thy religion ? thy saviour was accused as a blasphemer . what motion therefore or disturbance of pride shall be able to disquiet thy minde , if thou do but reflect on thy saviours sufferings ? . and for envy , hatred and revenge , how canst thou harbour the least touch or sense of them , while thou lookest upon him who out of love laid down his life for us , even then when we were enemies to him , yea , for those very persons that crucified him , praying unto god for them , father , forgive them , for they know not what they do ? and if thou be transportable into vain mirth , what can better calm that giddy temper then the remembrance of his sadnesse , whose soul was sorrowful even unto death ? and if the highest and most searching afflictions attempt thee , what can more strongly arm thy patience , then if thou ruminate on that bitter cup , the consideration whereof put thy saviour into such an agony , that he sweat drops of bloud that fell down to the ground ? and lastly , if lust and wantonness do assault thy soul , the most present remedy is the contemplation of thy dying lord and master , who with his out-stretched arms on the crosse to embrace thee , presents himself a corrival in thy strongest affections . look upon his inclined head , not crowned with roses but wounded with thorns ; view his half-closed eyes , heretofore filled and beautified with lucid spirits , whose milde motions were the perpetual interpreters of his kindness and compassion to the sons of men , but now overcast with the heavy cloud of death . kisse his cold and pale lips , and receive his last breath , and tell me if thou didst not hear this whisper in it , canst thou love any thing better then me , who out of love do undergo this painfull and reproachfull death for thee ? . but what i have appropriated to this foolish passion of wantonnesse , may equally take place in any inordinate affection ; and our saviour may justly expostulate how unkindly , how ungrateful he is dealt with , when his pretended disciples refuse to mortifie any lust whatsoever for him , who gave up himself to death for them . this consideration is so urgent and convictive , that none that have the least spark of ingenuity can be able to resist it . and therefore whatever conceited high-flown fools may imagine of the cross of christ and the meditation of his crucifixion , as a thing that may rather fit children in christianity then grown men ; i say , it is the great power of god to salvation : and so long as a man findes any sin in him , he is to have recourse to it for his cure , as the israelites in the wildernesse , as often as they were bit with the fiery flying serpents , were to look up unto the brazen serpent which moses had erected in their camp. and those that make no use of the benefit thereof , i should suspect them to be no israelites , but a gen●ration of vipers or serpents themselves , to whom the poison of sin is so congenerous , that it is their nature and pleasure , no pain at all to them ; so that they desire no cure , but flee from the crosse , as scorpions do quit the place where a telesme is erected against them . . but our saviour christ knew the power and efficacy of his passion so well , that he made a speciall provision for the commemoration of that often which it was fit he should suffer but once . this we usually call the eucharist or the holy communion . a solemnity never to be antiquated , till our saviour return again to judgement visibly in the clouds of heaven , as s. paul intimateth , cor. . . for as often as you eat this bread or drink this cup , you do shew the lords death till he come . for the solid use of it cannot cease till then when all is accomplished . for so long as men are to have any growth in godlinesse , or are to animate themselves to any holy designes , or sin is to be encountred with , or thanks to be given for the victories of the cross , the holy eucharist cannot possibly cease . for the most proper preparation for the receiving of the sacrament is a serious meditation on the passion of christ , which is commemorated therein . the consideration whereof , what mighty power and efficacy it has for the vanquishing and subduing of all manner of sins and corruptions , i have given sufficient intimation . so that every celebration of the communion should be as it were a repeated resolution and corroborated conspiracy in the bloud of the new covenant , to do our utmost against all the powers of sin , of darkness , and of the devil ; and this upon the sense of that great love and loialty we owe to our dear saviour and soveraign iesus christ , who died for us , and poured out his own bloud to glue and cement us to himself and to one another . so that the mystery of christian religion is a mystery of the deepest and dearest friendship , and of the most indissoluble union of affection that can possibly be excogitated . wherein neither distance of place nor time can make any division , but it holds together heaven and earth , and bindes what is past to what is present , and actuates and invigorates what is present , to a prosperous and successful bringing on that which is to come . thus it is with all those that are true christians , and do really communicate in the bloud of christ ; they have one minde and one heart , they have one vote and one interest , which is the advancement of the kingdom of the lord jesus christ in the world in truth and holiness , and that christian peace , faith and love may flourish even to the ends of the earth . chap. xvii . . the sixth gospel-power is the resurrection and ascension of christ. the priviledge of this demonstration of the soul's immortality above that from the subtilty of reason and philosophy . . the great power this consideration of the soul's immortality has to urge men to a godly life : . to wean themselves from worldly pleasures , and learn to delight in those that are everlasting : . to have our conversation in heaven . . the conditions of the everlasting inheritance , . further enforcements of duty from the soul's immortality . . the sixth gospel-power is the contemplation of the resurrection and ascension of christ ; in respect of which stupendious event the apostle has declared how it is christ jesus that has abolished death , and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel . for truly whatsoever traditions there were amongst the iewish rabbins , whatever disquisitions or conclusions amongst the philosophers , whether platonists or aristoteleans , concerning the soul's immortality , they were either so uncertain and fallacious in themselves , or so subtil and unintelligible to the people , that they could not satisfie the world concerning this so important a matter . and if a man should write never so accurately and apodictically of this point , the use thereof would reach but to a few , namely such as are of a very patient and comprehensive spirit , that have leisure and take delight in perusing of subtil and close-wrought contextures of reason ; which to most men is a toilsome and tedious thing . and when a man has writ and read all he can of this subject , and has met with the very best and most demonstrative arguments for the conclusion ; yet for use and service , the recollection of them is voluminous and cumbersome , as well as the collections from them doubtful and fallible , at least to them that are not fully masters of their reason . but as the resurrection and ascension of our saviour is certain , as known to be de facto by abundance of witnesses ; so is the remembrance and representation of it to our mindes at once , and strikes strong upon our phansie , and reaches our reason with that powerful conviction , that believing this , we cannot any longer doubt of either the existence of god , or our own immortality . and if we once be but well assured of the existence of god and of our own immortall state after this life , methinks this alone should be able to lift us above all the snares that satan has laid in this world to entangle us . . mortality , one would think , if well considered , might give us some check from too eager pursuit of honours and riches , from worldly plots and designes , as also ( for fear of diseases that accelerate death ) from over-lavish indulgence to sensuality and intemperance . but the certainty of a life to come , the condition whereof shall be such as our demeanour here layes the seeds of , whether for happinesse or misery , and that in a measure unspeakably above what happens , or can happen in this life ; this consideration must have such virtue in it , if we duly meditate upon it , that it should win us with all willingnesse to forsake all the unlawful pleasures and projects of this transient world , to get some sure interest in that which is to come , and not to trust all in one bottom , if any thing at all , i mean in the leaking vessel of this mortal body , which is ever and anon ready to sink or topple over , and so to drown all the hopes we placed in it . wherefore , as ye heard out of saint peter , we are , like strangers and pilgrims in this life , to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul ; that our minds going out impolluted of the foulness and contagion of this defiled earth they sojourn in , may be received into the happy society of just men made perfect , as the author to the hebrews speaks . whenas if they go out foul and impure , their reception must be accordingly , they being given up into the power of those deformed fiends of hell , the very thoughts of whose sight and company might be enough to affright any man that is not atheistically sortish from assimilating himself to those nasty gaol-birds by repeated acts of vice and wickedness . besides what smart of punishment shall reach both their outward senses and guilty consciences by the inevitable rod of god's justice upon them . . vvherefore it is most indispensably rational , to use this vvorld as if we used it not , and to addict our selves to such pleasures as are most proper to the other state ; such as are those most delicious touches & senses of the divine love , or that pure and intellectual affection which s. paul calls charity : vvhereby we delight in the good of another , as if it were our own ; whereby we rejoice in the wisdome & goodness of god displaied his creatures ; whereby we ardently desire the advancement of the kingdom of christ infinitely before any private advantage whatsoever , and do faithfully assist and earnestly expect the joyful accomplishment and finishing of the great mystery of godliness in the fullest period thereof , to a final triumph over sin and satan , and a perfect redemption of the church of christ into the glorious liberty of the sons of god. . these are the warrantable pleasures of the soul that has a designe upon the life to come , of a soul that is risen with christ , and therefore seeks those things that are above , where christ sitteth on the right hand of god. and upon this very consideration the apostle enforceth his exhortation , colos. . mortifie therefore your members which are upon earth , fornication , uncleannesse , inordinate affection , evil concupiscence , and covetousness which is idolatry . and our saviour in his sermon on the mount , lay not up for your selves treasures upon earth , where moth and rust doth corrupt , and where thieves break through and steal : but lay up for your selves treasures in heaven , where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt , nor thieves break through and steal . for where your treasure is , there will your heart be also . and therefore saint paul professes of himself ( and exhorts others to imitate him ) that his minde is wholly taken up with those things which are above , philip. . . brethren , be followers of me , and mark them that walk so as ye have us for an example . for our conversation , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , our municipal affairs , our negotiations of greatest concernment are in heaven , of which city we are , and from whence we look for our saviour the lord iesus christ , who shall change our vile bodies , that they may be fashioned like to his glorious body , according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself . . and verily he that through faith is once possest of these things , it is a wonder to me how he can think of any thing else : as the prisoner could not abstain from the pleasure of thinking of the known day of his liberty , or a poor man of an inheritance that would certainly fall to him within the term of few years . and if it were conditional , as this of the kingdome of heaven is , we may easily conceive how much he were concerned to have a care punctually to observe the conditions propounded , or earnestly to endeavour to get such qualifications as that he may not forfeit the enjoiment of that fortune which otherwise would naturally fall to his share . and how they are to be qualified that are to be heires of that everlasting inheritance , the scripture doth plainly set out ; there must no unclean thing enter into the holy city . none can be heirs of this kingdome but the sons of god , nor any be the sons of god but those that are led by the spirit of god , rom. . and what are the fruits and effects of that domestick guide , the apostle has plainly told us already , galat. . that the fruits of the spirit are love , ioy , peace , long-suffering , gentlenesse , goodnesse , faith , meekness , temperance . and they that are christs ( in whose title alone it is that we can lay claim to heaven ) have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts . and again rom. . if ye live after the flesh , ye shall die ; but if ye through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body , ye shall live : that is to say , ye shall live the life of peace and joy and righteousness here , and of eternal glory hereafter . . wherefore we see what an urgent power the meditation of future happiness is to the believer , to make him endeavour to the utmost to be partaker of the divine nature , and to aspire to a due measure of holiness , without which we shall necessarily be frustrate of our expected happiness . the consideration whereof cannot but wean him from all the exorbitant desires of the pleasures , profits or honours of this world. which though they had not intermingled with them many vexations and distasts , much care and solicitude , but were certain for this life and entire ; yet life being uncertain , and the longest terme thereof but like a dream , or a post that goes by , in comparison of our future abode elsewhere , i dare leave it to the worldly mans own computation , what a pittiful bargain he has made in forgoing what is to come for these temporary enjoyments : worse far then he that sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage . but i shall not dilate any further on so plain a matter . all the wit and rhetorick of man cannot move him whom those known , but weighty , words of our saviour will not ; vvhat will it profit a man to gain the whole vvorld , and to lose his own soul ? chap. xviii . . the day of judgement , the seventh and last gospel-power , fit as well for the regenerate as the unregenerate to think upon . . the uncertainty of that day , and that it will surprize the wicked unawares . . that those that wilfully reject the offers of grace h●re , shall be in better condition after death then the devils themselves are . . a description of the sad evening-close of that terrible day of the lord. . the affrightment of the morning-appearance thereof to the wicked . . a further description thereof . . the translation of the church of christ to their aethereal mansions , with a brief description of their heavenly happinesse . . we come now to the seventh and last power of the gospel , which is the consideration of the dreadful solemnity of the day of iudgement ; the very mention whereof from the mouth of paul made felix the governour to tremble . and i must confess it is so hard an engine , that it is more fit to beat upon the obdurate hearts of the unbeliever and unregenerate , that are crusted over with iron and flint , then for battery against the truly regenerate and sincere believers ; for those other powers of the gospel are more proper and abundantly sufficient for carrying them on with courage and constancy in the waies of god. but there is in the day of iudgement an object not misbeseeming their most serious thoughts ; which is the perfecting and finishing of the redemption of the godly . vve shall not all sleep , but we shall all be changed , and that for the better . for whatever is mortal , then shall put on immortality ; and none of the saints shall be worse clothed then in a body of an heavenly and aethereal consistence . this is that incorruptible crown of glory , of life and of righteousness , which the apostles mention , and s. paul expresly declares to be laid up for him against that day , namely , the day of iudgement ; which the lord the righteous iudge shall give him at that day , and not to him alone , but to all those that love his appearing : that is to say , whose affections and consciences are so sincere , that they longingly expect when he will consummate and finish the happinesse of his church ; and should be so far from fear , that their hearts would exult for joy , to hear the sound of the trump , and see the sky grow bright by the overspreading of his heavenly camp in the air. . this meditation therefore reaching as well the unconverted as the converted , it had been ill omitted of us . and that it may take the better effect , we are to suggest what will be able to break down or prevent such false and foolish fortifications as the minde of man may rear up against it , to bear off the powerful assaults it makes upon his soul and conscience . these are chiefly two . the one , the long intervall of time from hence to that day , which makes the terrour thereof little , as things seem lesse the farther they are removed from our eyes . the second is , the hope that within so long a space they may have time to repent and be converted , though they live as they lift in this life : for they may prepare themselves for that day in the other life which is to come . but to the first i answer , that the approach of this day is very uncertain , ( by reason of the obscurity of prophecies and of the very completions of them ) and is left so , for the present exercise of the good , and the perpetual vexation of the wicked both in this state of things and that which is to come . his appearance therefore will be sudden like a comet or blazing-star , which no man could tell when it would first appear ; but more terrible and minacious by farre , not threatning the death of this or that prince , or the change of this or that state , but the overturning of all states and kingdoms , and the burning up the earth with all the works and inhabitants thereof with unquenchable fire . and that evil which a man does not know but may begin to morrow , if duely thought upon , cannot seem at a great distance , but near at hand , and ready to surprise him . . to the other i answer , that he that wilfully rejects the offers of grace and opportunities of becoming holy and good in this life , he shall have no more priviledge in the other then the devils themselves have , who , as s iude expresly tels us , are reserved in everlasting chains of darknesse unto the iudgement of the great day ; who shall then inevitably undergo the fate of sodom and gomorrha , who are set forth for an example , suffering the vengeance of eternal fire . and what manner of persons these are , iude and peter have both very graphically described : such as had totally evaded all obligation to true holinesse and righteousnesse , and were of an impure and foul conversation , filthy dreamers , defiling the flesh , despising dominion , and speaking evil of dignities ; followers of balaam , perverting the truth for a reward ; spots in the christian societies , feeding themselves without fear ; clouds without water , blown about with every winde of false doctrine ; fruitless trees ; raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame ; wandring starres to whom is reserved the blacknesse of darkness for ever . no more hope of them therefore then of lucifer and his accursed accomplices . and s. peter pronounces the same sentence of them , for they are plainly the same persons , namely , bold and daring spirits , arrogant and self-conceited , despising government and reproaching authority ; such as speaking great swelling words of vanity , allure through the lusts of the flesh , in much wantonnesse , those that were clean escaped from them that live in errour ; day-rioters , having their eyes full of adultery , that cannot cease from sin , or forbear the recommending of the liberty thereof to others , but beguile unstable souls ; having their hearts exercised with crafty and covetous practises ; wells without water ; clouds carried about with tempests , adjudged to utter darkness for ever . for with the devils they are cast down into hell , and delivered up even as they to chains of darknesse , to be reserved to the day of iudgement , pet. . so that there is no more hope of such impenitent sinners that have laid waste their consciences , and wilfully neglected or resisted the manifold convictions , clear illuminations , and frequent offers of grace and assistance from the dispensations of the gospel , after this life , then there is of those old apostates , the wicked spirits that are kept as prisoners in hell , till that fearful and terrible day of the lord. . that day of the lord wherein all unbelieving flesh shall tremble , and every face gather blackness . for this will prove a day of wrath indeed , a day of anguish and distresse , a day of devastation and desolatenesse , a day of darknesse and of gloominesse , a day of clouds and of thick darknesse ; a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities and the high towers , not of iudah only , but against all the nations of the earth . for the lord himself will descend from heaven to revenge him of his enemies . he shall take to him his iealousie for compleat armour , and turn the whole creation into weapons of his displeasure . his severe wrath shall be sharpened for a sword , and the world shall fight with him against the unwise . then shall the right-aiming thunderbolts go abroad , and from the clouds as from a well-drawn bow shall they fly to the mark . and hail-stones of wrath shall be cast as out of a stone-bow , and the waters of the sea shall boil and rage against them , and hot scalding flouds shall overflow them and drown them : and they shall be blown about with fiery windes , and wearied out with the whirlwinde , and they shall have no peace nor solace for ever . the moon and stars shall withdraw their shining , and the sun shall be turned into bloud . for nothing but mists and fogs and stench , nothing but sulphureous vapours , smoring heat , dark clouds charged with horrid thunder and lightning , immense earthquakes and innumerable eruptions of subterraneous flames , crackling volcanoes , smoaking mountains , high flakes and tortuous streams of fire from burning forrests and woods , lowd shreeks and howlings of affrighted men and beasts , grim and grisly apparitions , deep and dreadful groans of tormented ghosts ; nothing but such uncomfortable objects as these shall fill up the scene of the earth and air , when once that final vengeance has seised upon the wicked . . this is the sad evening-close of that terrible day of the lord ; and the morning-appearance thereof will not be much more chearful to either the hypocrite or prophane person . for the hopes of the hypocrite cannot but fail , and his heart sink like a stone , while he sees the righteous judge that tries the heart and reins coming in the clouds of heaven to execute vengeance on the wicked , and to deliver the godly from that imminent fate that attends the earth . and the proud scoffing epicurean that laugh'd at religion as a piece of weakness and foolery , and impudently denied there was either god or providence in the world , he will then to his utter shame and confusion acknowledge his own philosophy , which he thought such an high piece of wit before , the most unhappy folly and madnesse he could have light upon . for he shall be confuted to his very outward senses , when he shall see christ himself appear with all his heavenly host attending him ; when he shall hear the sound of the trump , and see forthwith the whole air filled with his glittering legions consisting of saints and angels . for the trump shall sound , saith the apostle , and then those that have already departed this life shall immediatly appear in their celestial harness , in their glorified bodies . for those that are alive shall not prevent those that are dead , but rather the contrary . for those that sleep in jesus will god bring with him , and harness them with the bright armour of life and immortality , whereby they become part of that glorious angelical host wherewith our dread soveraign and blessed saviour jesus christ will face the earth a while , to the exceeding great astonishment and terrour os the wicked world. . out of which by the ministry of his angelical troops will he gather his saints that are found alive in the flesh from all the corners of the earth , as the angels plucked lot out of sodom , when the city was to be destroyed with fire and brimstone from heaven ; a type questionless of this final judgement . and whether it be by the quick descent of fiery chariots , like that of elias , who was safely thereby conveighed to heaven , and about a thousand years after conversed with our saviour on the mount ; or bright shining clouds , glistering with the glory and lustre of their celestial guides , be made foot-stools for them to get up on ( for there is no fear that the weight of their bodies should break through , their earth and flesh being of a sudden changed into pure aether ; ) or whatever other pomp and solemnity there may be in their transportation from the rest of the world unto that glorious company that strikes all mens eyes with amazement , while they look up into the sky ; this visible selection of the good from the bad must needs fill the hearts of the wicked with unspeakable dread and horrour . and that partly by reason of the present wonders of this unexpected supernatural visitation , which thus suddenly has surprised them through unbelief ; and partly from the sad presage of what will follow , even that horrid and dismal tempest which we have already described , that endless night of thunders and lightnings and earthquakes , of roarings and howlings and utter confusion and destruction for ever . . which direful vengeance having once entred upon that execrable crue , forsaken of god and given up to the merciless rage of the incensed elements , the victorious church of christ retreats with the rest of the angelical hosts , marching up the ethereal regions in goodly order and lovely equipage , filling as they go along the re-echoing sky with songs of joy and triumph . for this is the greatest day of solemnity , the highest festival that can be celebrated in the heavens ; whose inhabitants if they rejoice at the conversion of one sinner , what joy and rejoicing must they express at the complete redemption of the whole church ? when jesus christ the prince of our salvation , who is able to save to the * utmost , has perfectly redeemed us body and soul , and leading captivity captive , rescuing us from the power of hell , death and the devil , does resettle us again in our own land , and reestablish us into the ancient liberties of the sons of god , making us fellow-citizens with the pure and unpolluted angels , and free partakers of all the rights and immunities of the celestial kingdom ; even of that kingdom where there is order and government without envy and oppression , devotion without superstition , beauty without blemish , love without lust , sweetness without satiety ; where there is outward splendidness without pride , musick without harshness , friendship without designe , wisedom without wrinkles , and wit without vain-glory ; where there is kindnesse without craft , activity without weariness , health without sickness , and pleasure without pain ; and lastly , where there is the vision of god , the society of christ , the familiarity of angels , and communion of saints ; where there is love and joy and peace and life for evermore . upon the consideration of which ineffable happiness , what inference can be more genuine then what s. paul has made already on the same subject ? wherefore , my beloved brethren , be stedfast , unmoveable , alwayes abounding in the work of the lord ; forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the lord. chap. xix . . that there can be no religion more powerful for the promoting of the divine life then christianity is . . the external triumph of the divine life in the person of christ how throughly warranted and how fully performed . . the religious splendour of christendom . . the spirit of religion stifled with the load of formalities . . the satisfaction that the faithfully-devoted servants of christ have from that divine homage done to his person , though by the wicked . . i have now sufficiently exposed to your view the nature and use of this seven-fold engine , these seven powers of the gospel , how potent they are to beat down every strong hold of sin , and to raise up the divine life and spirit of righteousness in us . that they have done so little execution in christendom hitherto , that disquisition i shall deferre till its due place . in the mean time i appeal to all the world if there can be invented a religion more powerful for this purpose then the christian religion is . . but for the external triumphs of the divine life in reference to the person of christ , the usefulness of our religion in that point is demonstrable not only from the frame thereof in it self , but from the long and constant effects it has had in the christian world. for as for the frame of our religion , we have therein a full warrant to do the highest divine homage to christ that we can express ; he being so clearly therein declared the true son of god , not only by several testimonies from heaven , but also by that supernatural manner of his generation in the womb of the virgin by the overshadowing of the holy ghost , by his mysterious union with the eternal word , by his miraculous resurrection from the dead , and by his visible ascension into heaven , and session now at the right hand of his father . this is warrant enough to do all divine homage to our blessed saviour , as to the only-begotten son of god. and truly the church , to give them their due , has not been sparing ; the very constitution of our religion being so effectual for this purpose . for so divine a person as christ was , namely , the very son of god , and yet condescending to undergoe so horrid a death for the world ; how could engaged mankind stint themselves from shewing of all manner of expressions of love and devotion toward him ? . wherefore they erected innumerable magnificent structures of temples , chappels , and other religious edifices , and consecrated them to his name : they endowed the christian priesthood with ample riches and dignities ; set up church-musick , sung divine anthems in honour of our saviour , adorned their churches , celebrated his passion with unexpressible reverence , instituted festivals , and filled both time and place with such variety of ornaments , that a man might observe that the greatest part of the splendour and pomp of christendom was in reference to their religion . which certainly would have been a very goodly and lovely spectacle , if superstition , hypocrisie , and ecclesiastick tyranny could have been kept out . . but this external worship and the ceremonies thereof , things equally performable by the evil and the good , by the regenerate and mere natural man , these took growth enormously , and like ranck weeds choaked the corn : or , what happens in full and over-fed bodies , in which natural heat and activity is very much lost , the huge load and bulk of visible formalities extinguished the life and spirit of religion . . but however this outward homage to our saviour continued and does continue in a great measure over the face of christendom to this very day , though their expressions are not alike courtly every where . which continuation of divine honour done unto him cannot but gratifie his faithfully-devoted servants , they having a deep resentment of the shameful sufferings their lord and master underwent out of his dear love to them ; and therefore do naturally rejoyce at this tribute of divine adoration the world gives to so holy and sacred a person , it being so sutable a part of compensation of his humiliation and reproach . besides that they receive some satisfaction , that divine providence has so brought it about touching the true members of christ , whose principles are so opposite to the guise of the world , and their persons so contemptible , that yet the world are fain with the lowest prostrations to adore that in christ , which they kick about and trample upon so in his despised members . but i will insist no longer on this theme , having spoke enough of it elsewhere . we have now shewn the usefulness of the mystery of godlinesse in all holy and religious respects : i shall adde only a word or two in reference to things of this life , and so conclude the fourth part of my discourse . chap. xx. . the usefulnesse of christianity for the good of this life , witnessed by our saviour and s. paul. . the proof thereof from the nature of the thing it self . . objections against christianity , as if it were an unfit religion for states politick . . a concession that the primary intention of the gospel was not government political , with the advantage of that concession . . that there is nothing in christianity but what is highly advantageous to a state-politick . . that those very things they object against it are such as do most effectually reach the chief end of political government , as doth charity for example , . humility , patience , and mortification of inordinate desires . . the invincible valour that the love of christ and their fellow-members inspires the christian souldiery withall . . that christianity contributes also to the happinesse of this present world , is evident both from the testimony of christ and his apostles , and also from the nature of the thing it self . matth. . where our saviour having exhorted us not to be over-sollicitous for the things of this life , food and raiment ; setting before our eyes the care of divine providence in creatures of far lesse price then our selves ; how the fowls of the air are provided for , that neither sow nor reap , nor gather into barns ; how gloriously the lilies of the field are arraied , that neither weave nor spin : he concludes , that we should not so eagerly and carefully seek after those things as worldly-minded men do ; but seek ye first the kingdom of god ( saith he ) and his righteousnesse , and all these things shall be added unto you . for your heavenly father knows that ye have need of all these things . and paul to timothy , godlinesse is profitable for all things , having the promise of this life and that which is to come . . and if we consider the nature of the thing it self , there is an accruement of present happinesse from true christianity , not only by virtue of promise , but even by natural dependence of causes and events ; especially when that christian frame of spirit has arrived to any considerable degree of perfection and maturity . for there is no such obliging person in the world as a mature and ripe christian , nor any truer policy then to be obliging . which temper the more sincere it is , the more taking it is , and the more sure fortress against adverse fortune . wherefore what advantage humanity has , he has it in the greatest measure . besides that his calm and castigate spirit makes him sensible & discreet above all expression , and of a sagacity beyond all conceit of the unregenerate man. his faithfulnesse also and honest and chearful industry have their proper blessing attending them . and his moderate desires of riches and honours and his laudable use of them , unblemished with any blot of either sordid covetousnesse or vain ostentation , prevents or beats back the ill-aimed darts of secret malice and envy . and if but a meaner share of the things of this world be allotted to him , yet his contentments are not the lesse , he finding that true which both david and solomon have pronounced , that better is a little that the righteous has then great possessions of the ungodly . and when more unsupportable pressures and afflictions fall upon him , such as great fits of sicknesse , imprisonment , and the approaches of death , his advantages in this condition are unspeakably above what any other mortal is capable of . for the more these urge his outward man , the more his inward is inflamed and excited to the exercise of those powers that are most holy and precious ; and needing no admonition , ( though so fit and apposite as that of epictetus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) the circumstances of things themselves will assuredly awaken this christian champion to the exertion of all the strength of his soul , and to the successful use of his spiritual weapons wherewith he is armed against the day of battel . for faith and devotion and invigorated meditations of the other state will so fortifie his spirits and strengthen his minde , that in all this affliction he will become more then conquerour through the power of christ that enables him to all things . and by how much the enjoyments of this present life are diminished , the more his thoughts are cast upon those that are to come . . this brief intimation shall suffice to shew how serviceable christianity is for comfort and solace in this present life to every true christian in his private capacities . but i must not omit to discover also that advantage which a communialty has by becoming truly christian. which i am forced to the rather , because some have not stuck to pronounce of christianity as of a religion never intended for bodies politick , and very disadvantageous for publick concerns : as if christian humility , mortification of the flesh , and patience of injuries , would so cow and soften a nation , that it would make them as helplesse as innocent , and thus betray them to the victorious fierceness of their invading neighbours ; and the precepts of charity so indispensably urged but slacken the hands of those that are able to work , and fill the whole land with lazy beggars . such like cavils as these have some ill-willers not only to christian religion , but ( as i suspect ) to any religion that would curb their inordinate affections , invented and cast abroad ; but more to the detection of their own ignorance and shame , then of any imperfection or unfitness in christianity , whereby it may not be the religion of the most flourishing states and kingdoms that can be constituted . . in answer therefore to the proposed objections , i will in the first place acknowledge with them , that the gospel was not intended primarily for the advantages of this life , nor bore in it any politick design for the administration of publick affairs of state ; but for making men in their private capacities good and happy , and for working their spirits into such a frame of life and holiness as would most certainly assure them of that joy and glory that is laid up for believers in the other world. but withall i cannot but take notice , by how much it is plain that there is no political or worldly design in the gospel , by so much the more evident it is that there is no deceit nor falshood therein ; and that it is not the cunning contrivance of some crafty law-giver , but an holy , sincere and infallible testimony of the will of god concerning the true way of salvation , and of the everlasting happiness of the souls of men . . but though i have been so liberal as to allow them thus much , yet i deny that there is any thing in christian religion but what is not onely not inconsistent with , but highly advantageous to a state or kingdome that becomes truly christian. for empty noises and names of things do nothing . wherefore i shall affirme , that whatever advantages other religions may be thought to have for conscientious obedience to the supreme powers and faithfull dealing betwixt man and man , ( which is the universal scope of all religions as they are made serviceable to bodies politick ) christianity has these , and upon more evident and unquestionable grounds then any religion else whatsoever . for what religion is there in the world that can give that demonstration of a life to come , that christianity doth in the resurrection of our blessed saviour , that infallible pledge of immortal happiness to all his followers ? the truth therefore of christian religion rightly represented being so irrefutably convincing to both the learned & the unlearned , the heart and conscience not onely of the people but also of the magistrate will be the more irresistably bound to the performance of their mutual duties one to another . the result whereof is an unviolable peace , and with that , all such comforts of life as the best laws and governments pretend to aime at for making a nation happy . . nay i adde further , that those things that they object against christianity are such as , if a nation become truly christian , do most effectually reach the chiefest ends of political government . of which one main one is mutual succour in time of need . and what is more proper for this then charity ? nor is there any fear that this proneness to help one another shall relaxate the endeavours of the generality of the body politick , but it only sweetens their care and industry , and takes off that torturous solicitude that must naturally attend those that know too well , that if they cannot hold up themselves , they must certainly perish . which desperate consideration forces them to all possible tricks & frauds for self-preservation . which uncomfortableness of life and the evil temptations thereof are prevented in a common-wealth that is truly christian , and consequently sincerely charitable . neither will laziness thereby be nourished ; this same christian frame of spirit making them all more ambitious of doing then receiving good ; according to that noble saying of our saviour , it is a more blessed thing to give then to receive . . and as it is without controversie that humility , the patient suffering of injuries , and the mortifying the exorbitant desires of the flesh , do tend most certainly , in a polity that is become thus christian , to a constant peaceableness and a faithful and impartial administration of iustice in all things , ( for from whence is warre and dissension , violence and injustice , but from the inordinate lusts of the flesh , from pride and desire of disproportionable revenge ? ) so is it as true also that they make us not a whit more liable to the invasion of our enemies , as becoming thereby more cow'd or soft in spirit . for a due castigation of the lusts of the flesh rendreth the body more healthful and hardy ; whenas luxury will certainly make it rotten and effeminate , and expose it to all manner of diseases . and it is a very unskilful conceit to think that humility will make them such tame things , that the enemy may take them up and carry them away at his pleasure : for christian humility does not consist in being content to be brought under bondage by men , but in not despising others , and not arrogating any thing to our selves , nor seeking unjust dominion over others for our own pleasure and satisfaction . . nor does patience toward particular injuries inure the christian at all to be remiss in making resistance against an unjust invader of his country and liberties . for the very same principle , namely the divine love , that prompted him to bear private wrong , the damages whereof he could better reckon up , will as forcibly urge him to resist such publick violence done against the body of christ , who are more dear unto him then the apple of his eye , and their concerns as much beyond his private interest as their number exceeds his single person . his love therefore to christ who died for him , and whose cause then shall really lie at the stake ; his sincere affection to his fellow-members , to whom their dying lord left that sacred legacy of mutual love , sealing it on their mindes with his own stupendious example , who being so high above them , yet stooped to the shameful and bitter death of the cross , that they might love one another so ardently and entirely , that if need required they would not stick to lay down their lives one for another ; his firm belief in the providence of god and his special assistance to them that fight his battels ; his moderate love of this present world , and certain expectation of the immediate enjoyments of the happiness of the other life upon the quitting of this ; the consideration , i say , of all these things will arme our christian souldiery ( let them be in their private demeanour as milde and humble , as tame and lamb-like as you please ) with such miraculous valour and courage , that i cannot but presage that that benediction of moses will not fail to attend their enterprizes , five of them shall chase an hundred , and an hundred of them shall put ten thousand to flight : for the lord will go before them , and the god of israel will be their rereward . what nation therefore can grapple with such a people as this ? for there is neither strength nor counsel against the almighty . book ix . chap. i. . the four derivative properties of the mystery of godlinesse . . that a measure of obscurity begets veneration , suggested from our very senses . . confirmed also by the common suffrage of all religions , and the nature of reservednesse amongst men . . the rudenesse and ignorance of those that expect that every divine truth of scripture should be a comprehensible object of their understanding , even in the very modes and circumstances thereof . . that contradictions notwithstanding are to be excluded out of religion . . and that the divinity of christ and the triunity of the godhead have nothing contradictious in them . . we have now finished the four primary properties of the mysterie of godlinesse , having treated of the obscurity , intelligiblenesse , of the truth , and usefulnesse thereof : and have already intimated that there arise from these four other properties ( which if you please you may call derivative ; ) as from the obscurity of this mystery arises venerability ; from the intelligiblenesse , communicability ; from truth , a power of gaining assent ; and lastly , from usefulnesse , an affectionate prizing of it , and a zeal or desire of promoting the knowledge and virtue of it in the world as much as we can . it remains therefore that we speak something of these , but with all brevity possible . . that a due measure of obscurity makes a mystery the more venerable , is a truth suggested to us by several observations . how shades and silence affect our very senses , every one can witness who is not of so course a contexture of body that onely gross and fierce objects can move him . but he whose senses are more passive and delicate , can with pleasure relate how he is affected when he enters into some shady and invious vvood or grove , the thickness of whose trees and redoubled shadows stops his sight and hopes of ever passing through all that growes on that sacred ground ; but what he sees , he approves of as delightful , and conceives a peculiar pleasure in that confused divination or obscure representation of things there , where his eyes cannot reach , nor his feet approach . the silence also of the place encreases the solemness thereof , in which ( as plutarch saies well ) there is something profound and mysterious . and for this very reason the shadiness and stilness of the night ordinarily seems a very venerable object to those whose senses are so quick and fine , that they can feel and rellish all manner of mutations in nature : which impress enriched the poets phansie with that expression , noxque tenebrarum specie reverenda tuarum . . the common suffrage also of all religions gives with us , who have alwaies affected something not easily intelligible at first sight : and their temples were so built as to have their adyta , some more sacred and inaccessible places in them . and we may further observe , that sparingness of speech and reservedness in men does naturally conciliate reverence to them . for there is still something behind in them impervious and inaccessible , which if they would impart , they might lessen their respect and become more contemptible . for it is very obvious to humane nature to brood some strange over-weening conceit of those things they know not , and to neglect and slight that which they know . these are thieves that willingly leave the house when they have carried away all the treasure . but perpetual expectation continues respect . and what makes matter if the bottom of the well be fathomless , if the water we reach be but pure and useful ? wherefore those that contend for such an absolute plainness and clearness in all points of religion , shew more of clownishness and indiscretion then of wit and judgement ; and their zeal is not so much for truth , as out of pride & vain-glory ; they taking it very ill that any thing in the mysterie of godliness should be so mysterious , as that their conceited reason should not be able to comprehend it . . but i demand of those great pretenders to reason , who would usurp or monopolize that title to themselves in matters of religion , by what faculty can they demonstrate , that the divine oracles should mention nothing to us but what is the adequate object of our understandings , and that we shall not be puzzled in our endeavouring to comprehend the modes and circumstances of that general truth which they propose to us ? for the general proposal may be useful to us , whenas the curiosity of circumstances may serve for nothing but the feeding of our foolish desire of devouring all truth we can meet with and priding our selves in the booty . i speak this in reference to the most obscure articles of our religion , touching the triunity of the godhead and the divinity of christ. for that the holy scripture does affirm both , i have already sufficiently shown . and being that they come to us with the same authority that the whole new testament does , we cannot with any face deny the assertions and yet profess our selves christians . for the adverse party have no plea but the incomprehensibleness of the manner of the thing : which allegation is most unjust and ridiculous . for that which comes to us by divine revelation is as certain as our senses . but our senses do assure us of such things as no faculty can conceive how they are such as our senses warrant them to be . as for example , the immediate union of matter with matter , and the power we have by will and thought to move any member of our body ; these things we know to be , but are as incomprehensible as any thing that the scripture has declared of the triunity of the godhead or christ's divinity . and therefore all their arguments against those two articles are weak and vain . for it is sufficient that for those useful purposes i have often mentioned they be proposed in the scripture ; but in a more shady , obscure and general way ; that being enough to serve the end they are proposed for . and if any one be at a loss how to conceive the mystery , let him make it up with devout admiration and humble veneration : affections better becoming every holy man , then a fierce and peremptory pursuit of his own conceited reason , and bold attempt to pry into those things that god has thought fit to hide from him . which is a saucy and clownish as forcibly to unveil or unmask some noble matron or modest virgin whether they will or no. . but that no fraud be done to truth , nor mankind left liable to all the incredible forgeries and fables of covetous priests and impostors , we shall more carefully limit this our exaction of reverence only to such articles of religion as are recommended to us not only upon account of divine revelation and serviceableness to some laudable end , but are also clear from contradiction and incompossibility . for for my own part i am well assured that god , who made our faculties , will never offer any thing to us to believe , that upon close debate does plainly contradict them . else all religions were alike credible , and the moons coming out of mahomet's sleeve as passable as the history of ionas his being three dayes and three nights in the whales belly , and afterwards coming out alive . which , though it be miraculous , is not at all impossible . . and therefore i do with all confidence imaginable assert , that the divinity of christ , and the triunity , so far forth as the scripture has de-declared it self in these points , have nothing of contradiction nor impossibility in them . nay , i will go one step further . athanasius his creed , which one would think is expresse enough concerning this mystery , if certain words in it be but varied in that latitude of sense which they are capable of , and not only so , but must of necessity have in the creed , there may be such an interpretation made of it as the most captious reason can finde no cavil against . chap. ii. . that there is a latitude of sense in the words of athanasius his creed , and that one and unity has not the same signification every where . . the like in the terms god and omnipotent . . of the word equal , and to what purpose so distinct a knowledge of the deity was communicated to the church . . in what sense the son and holy ghost are god. that divine adoration is their unquestionable right . and that there is an intelligible sense of athanasius his creed , and such as supposes neither polytheisme , idolatry nor impossibility . . that there is no intricacy in the divinity of christ but what the schools have brought in by their false notions of suppositum and union hypostatical . . that the union of christ with the eternal word implies no contradiction , and how warrantable an object he is of divine worship . . the application thereof to the iews . . the union of christ with god compared with that of the angels that bore the name jehovah in the old testament . . the reasonableness of our saviours being united with the eternal word , and how with that hypostasis distinct from the others . . now that there is necessarily understood this latitude of variety in the sense of several of the words of the creed , is apparent from the consent of those that do subtilize this mystery to the utmost curiosity . for it is impossible for them or any else to think that the godhead of the whole trinity is one in the same sense that the father considered alone is one , or the son or holy ghost so considered . for then there being no more unity in the single hypostases then in the whole trinity , every hypostasis will be triune ; which no man will assert . wherefore there is a latitude of sense in the word one or unity allowable in the creed . . so when the father is said to be omnipotent , the son omnipotent , and the holy ghost omnipotent , it is evident that omnipotent has not the same sense in all . for the father has the power of eternal generation of the son , and both son and father of an eternal emission of the spirit ; but the son does not proceed from the spirit , neither is the father generated of the son. yet the spirit and the son which are both from the father , how infinitely do they exceed the creation of the world ? and the like may be said of the term god ; by which if you understand that which is first of all in such a sense as that all else is from him , and he from none , the son and the spirit cannot be said to be god in this signification , because the father is not from them , but they from the father . . and therefore it is further manifest that the word equal is not to be understood mathematically and absolutely , but in an useful reference to us . which is a key that will easily open the whole mystery of the creed , which god did not communicate to the world to spin and weave unprofitable cobwebs out of ; but did thus explicitly impart the knowledg of his divine glory , that understanding the distinctness of his godhead in the triunity thereof , the divinity of christ might the better be conceived , and how warrantable an object he is of our worship & divine adoration . for it passing through the titles of the humanity to the eternal son of god , there cannot be the least scruple or show of idolatry in such divine worship . . for the son is god , and the holy ghost is god , as well as the father , that is to say , they are all eternal , omnipresent , omniscient , omnicreant ; and therefore divine adoration is due without question to the whole trinity from the creatures . and not upon this account onely , but because they are so perfectly one , and have the same indivisible omnipresency , and therefore are one entire godhead , one coequal glory and majesty coeternal . i say then that this latitude of sense being once admitted , which is necessarily implied , the meaning of athanasius his creed may prove such as no imputation of either polytheisme , idolatry , or unconceivable impossibility can be alledged against it ; and the end of this mystery fully served in such an intelligible interpretation . but i shall not undertake any such paraphrase in this place . and what i have already ventured at is rather by way of essay or invitation to others to make trial , then peremptory assertion in so profound a point , that deserves rather our humble admiration then curious disquisition . it is sufficient that so far as scripture has determined of this article , it is without exception or contradiction . . the divinity of christ in my apprehension is a more easie object of belief , being as intelligible as the union of our soul and body . for as they two make up one man , so god and man make one christ , as athanasius himself has expressed it . this the schools call hypostatical union , which has no intricacy in it but what they themselves have bestowed upon it . for every substance is of it self an individual substance , and universals but a logical notion arising from our comparing of substances of like nature together . neither is there any substance but by due preparatory modifications may be capable of being united with some other individual substance , and these two individual substances become one whole substance . which yet are not so one as that they cease to be two numerical substances ; because they ar●●o otherwise said to be one , i am sure are no otherwise one , then by the apt union of one with another . which yet hinders not but that they are still ; and if they are , they are two : namely , my soul and body are still this individual soul and this individual body , though they be , as they term it , hypostatically united . for it onely implies conjunction , not confusion of substances , nor any losse of the individuality of the substances thus conjoined . for there is no substance conjoinable with another , but remains this individual substance , even for that very reason because it is a substance , every substance being of it self individual , as i have already said , and yet conjoinable with another substance : whence it is plain that the scholastick notion of suppositum is a mere foolery . . out of which we may easily understand how that the humanity of christ and the eternal word may be hypostatically united without any contradiction to humane reason unsophisticated with the fopperies of the schools , and both their hypostases remain still entire . of which i will exhibite this as a more sensible representation . suppose a vast globe made all of solid gold , saving one very small section which we will suppose of silver . this individual gold and this individual silver , remaining still this individual gold and silver , make up one entire globe , which is not an entire globe without either . so in christ , made up ( as i may so speak ) of the second hypostasis of the trinity and of that humane person that conversed at jerusalem ; he is that individual silver , and the other that individual gold , and both these together one christ , the sphere of whose divinity filling all things , and being every where at hand , cannot but be a warrantable object of our praiers and invocations , as the passive humanity of christ the prop of our faith and confidence by his bitter passion and intercession . . what superstition therefore can there be , or least suspicion of idolatry , when we pray unto christ , if we do but think of him to whom we pray ? for the eternal godhead does so outshine every thing in this object of devotion , that our minde is in a manner wholly transported into god , though with a due reflexion of honour upon the person of our saviour , in virtue of whose death and intercession we make our addresses . which truth might also passe with the jew , without any scruple at all , if he do but call to minde with what devout humility their fore-fathers have * adored the presence of angels . to whom in their law * iehovah , the most holy name of god , is also attributed . and if an angel , that sustains the person of god onely by way of embassy , has this divine honour ; how much more then is due to christ , who is iehovah not onely by title and external function , but by real union with the eternal son of god ? which the platonists in their triad also call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the same in greek that iehovah is in hebrew . . or if they could imagine that there was so extraordinary a kind of union of these angels with god , where so high a name is attributed to them , as being in such an universalizing rapture that they had lost the sense of their own personalities , and were wholly actuated by god , who used them as fully and commandingly as our soul does our bodies ; yet this may fall short in a two-fold respect of that union which is betwixt the humanity of christ & the eternal word . for first , it may not be of the same kinde , but differs as much , it may be , as the union of a spirit with a dead corps does from the union of the soul of man in an healthful body . or if it could be admitted that there was some principle excited and awaked , or some way inserted into the essence of an angel , whereby he might have real and vital union with god , yet it being but temporary , it is not to be compared with this lasting and durable union in the messias . nor does the visible presence of the angel warrant divine worship more to him then to christ. for christ according to his higher and more adorable nature is every where present . . i conclude therefore that the divinity of christ is not at all repugnant to reason , i mean his real and physical union , as i may so call it , with the eternal word . for being that it was this vvord or eternal vvisdome whereby god made all things , it is very decorous and congruous that that great instrument of the restoring so choice a piece of his creation as man is , should be united particularly to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or eternal vvord . nor is it unconceivable how he may be united particularly and immediately to this hypostasis , and not the other two , from what we observe in nature . for even the faculties of the soul residing in the same part of the soul , according as the part of the body is tempered or modified , one faculty may exert it self in the part , and another be silent and take no hold thereon . and further it is evident , that though the holy spirit of god and the spirit of nature be every where present in the world , and lie in the very same points of space ; yet their actions , applications or engagings with things are very distinct . for the spirit of nature takes hold only of matter , remanding grosse bodies towards the centre of the earth , shaping vegetables into all that various beauty we finde in them ; but does not act at all on our souls or spirits with divine illumination , no more then the holy spirit meddles with remanding of stones downwards , or tumbling broken tiles off from an house . which things rightly considered and improved make this mystery intelligible enough for those that are fit for such speculations . so that i need adde nothing more , having already proceeded further then i intended , in zeal against the fraud of some , and indiscretion of others , who so confidently maintain , that some main points in christian religion are not onely obscure ( which i willingly acknowledge , and that thereby our religion is the more venerable ; ) but also repugnant to reason , which i utterly deny , and shall in its due place shew the sad inconvenience of so rash an assertion . chap. iii. . that the communicableness of christian religion implies its reasonableness . . the right method of communicating the christian mystery . , . a brief example of that method . . a further continuation thereof . . how the mystagogus is to behave himself towards the more dull or illiterate . . the danger of debasing the gospel to the dulness or shallowness of every weak apprehension . . the second derivative property of the mystery of godliness is communicability . for in that it is intelligible , it becomes hereby communicable . whence it appears what communication i mean : not such as is competible also to magpies and parots , that is , a sound of words or phrases , which those birds are able to repeat after us ; but a rational impartment of the matter , whereby a mans understanding is satisfied of the real grounds of our belief . this duty the ancient christians were charg'd with , as appears pet. chap. . v. . be ready alwaies to give an answer to every man that asketh a reason of that hope that is in you , with meekness and reverence , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and if we be ask'd a reason of our belief , and the apostle requires us to answer , assuredly he was not conscious of any unreasonableness of the christian faith in his time . that of that witty father of the church , credo quia impossibile , however it might please the answerer , it could never satisfie the opposer . this would not prove 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as s. paul speaks , a defence and confirmation of the gospel , but rather an exposing it to derision and contempt . for he that will acknowledge impossibilities in his religion , gives up the cause without blowes , and yields at once all that his adversary desired , namely that his religion is nothing but a forgery or foolery . . intelligibleness therefore must precede communication in him that communicates the mystery to another , so far as he does venture to communicate it . otherwise if he once give his tongue leave to out-run his understanding , what hopes has he of seeming intelligible to another when himself understands not what he saith ? whence unless he meet with a fool , he himself will be sure to be found one , or accounted an impostor or mad-man . so little edification can there be in such discourses . but if a man would be a prudent imparter of christian religion indeed , he is not onely to take care that what he pronounces of the mystery is intelligible to himself ; but also to be very circumspect how he speaks any thing to any one before they be capable of receiving it . and therefore if he would use a right method , he must begin with such things as are the most easy to conceive and the most capable of demonstration , and also are the most certain pledges of the happiness which they may expect who desire to be real and cordial embracers of christianity . . as for example , they are to declare how christ is the messias expected of old of the jews , though rejected by them when he came : that he is the son of god , miraculously born of a virgin : that he was a sacrifice for sin , and underwent the shameful death of the cross out of love to us : that he was raised from the dead the third day , and ascended visibly into heaven , and thence is to be expected as judge of the quick and of the dead ; and that then those that believe on him shall be crowned with the highest glory and immortality , their vile bodies being changed into the similitude of his heavenly body : and that the resurrection of christ is a palpable earnest of the purpose of god to reward us thus with everlasting life . such like things as these are to be communicated first by way of proposal , they neither vexing nor wearying the apprehension or imagination of man by any difficulty of conception , but are so strange that they may well call out the closest attention , and put a man upon the most eager inquisition to be satisfied whether they be true . . the terms of the question therefore being thus easily intelligible , in the next place it will be expected that they evidence the truth of the narration : which is to be done from those clear prophecies of the coming of the messias , in the old testament , and of what he was to do and to suffer ; any by a rational eviction of the incorruptedness and authentickness of the history of christ in the gospels and the rest of the writings in the new. and after this , orderly and by degrees , they are to be led on to those things that are more obscure and mysterious , and yet to the patient and well-prepared mind both true and intelligible . for though some few points in christianity may be obscure ; yet so far forth as the scripture defines any thing of them , they are both intelligible and true . so that truth and intelligibility is in every warrantable part of christianity , at least to those that have their understandings exercised in rational speculations . but for others whose parts and imploiments have rendred them less fit for any meditation that is subtile and obscure , they may content themselves with the safe adhesion to the forme of sound words delivered in the scriptures . . out of which they are very intelligibly instructed of the divinity of christs person , in that they read there how he was declared the son of god by voices from heaven : that he was begotten not by man , but by the overshadowing of the holy ghost : that he did such miracles also as became the son of god to do , being utterly above the power of nature : that in him dwells the fulness of the godhead bodily , whenas it dwelt in the temple of the jews onely typically . and therefore there is far greater reason that the devotions of christians should be directed * towards christ , then those of the jews towards the holy temple ; towards which they alwaies worshipped , when they put up their supplications to god , though they were far distant from it . that the word also is said to be made flesh , to wit the word that was in the beginning with god , when all things were made ; and that this word also was god ; and that god was manifested in the flesh by the appearing of christ in the world. . that these things are thus really and in truth , the authentickness of the scriptures makes good . but for such as are unexercised in metaphysical speculations , that have not so much as considered the union of their own soul with their body , nor once heard of distinction real and formal , and other setled notions requisite for the more express apprehension of such high points as the conjunction of the divinity and humanity in christ and the triunity of the godhead ; the best instruction can be given to them by the mystagogus is , that they would make that up in humble adoration that they want in knowledge : and that god of his mercy imparted these mysteries to the world for use , and not for curious and vexatious speculation : and that they should be so modest as not to think that utterly unintelligible that themselves for the present cannot apprehend . . that the truth of the gospel is a standing and immutable thing , not to be altered and changed according to the capacities of men ; and that if nothing should be exhibited to their belief but what they will all affirm they have a satisfactory conception of , they will at last tread down religion to nothing . for they will not stint themselves there , i mean in the rejection of the divinity of christ , and of a triune deity ; but the notion of angels and spirits , and of an immateriall soul , and lastly of any being whatsoever that is truly spiritual , will appear so inconceivable to some , that at last religion will be tumbled down as low as mere body and matter , and will find no object but the visible world , and the sun and starrs must be the greatest deities . and so either the ancient pagan superstition or else down-right atheisme must take place . chap. iv. . the due demeanour of a christian mystagogus in communicating the truth of the gospel . . that the chiefest care of all is that he speak nothing but what is profitable for life and godliness . . a just reprehension of the scopeless zeal of certain vain boanerges of these times . . that the abuse of the ministery to the undermining the main ends of the gospel may hazard the continuance thereof . . that any heat and zeal does not constitute a living ministery . . some such account as this will the prudent communicatour of the mystery of christianity give to him that asks a reason of his faith , declaring his sense of things with meekness and fear , as s. peter speaks , that is to say , with patience and mildness towards him whom he informs , and with holy respect and reverence towards god whose messenger in some sort he is ; and therefore ought to be careful that he mistake not his errand in any thing , nor mingle of his own what he has no commission to speak , nor distort the truth out of fear or favour , nor make himself suspected by any levity or affected vanity in style or words , that are misbecoming a matter of so great importance . for quaintness of wit and studied eloquence may tickle the ear for a time , like a musical aire the while it is playing : but a faithful and serious declaration of the most weighty parts of our religion will wound the very heart , and captivate the soul to the obedience of christ. . and above all things , he that either of himself adventures , or has any better call to this office , let him ever have in his eye the usefulness of the mystery he indeavours to communicate , remembring that that is an universal property thereof ; and that , if either his inadvertency or curiosity has carried him into any useless speculations or theories , he is most certainly led out of his way , and that he is now imparting humane inventions which are nothing at all appertaining to the gospel of christ ; that he is now feeding his charge not with the sincere milk of the word , but the brackish sweat of some over-heated brain . this is the most common and the most dangerous mistake that is to be observed in this function ; as if their very art and faculty were to let fly words for whole hours together , whereof not one is directed or intended towards the mark and scope of the gospel , which is the rooting out of sin and destroying the kingdome of the devil . . and yet it is a wonder to see the zeal and heat , and hear the noise of these boanerges , these sons of thunder , as if every sentence were fire and lightning from heaven against the strong holds of sin and satan , and that they would humble every thought to the obedience of christ , who came into the world to redeem us from all iniquity , and to purchase to himselfe a church pure , holy and undefiled , without either spot or blemish . which end notwithstanding is for the most part not onely not aimed at , but too often crossed and supplanted by hypocritical insinuations of either the needlesness or impossibility of these things . to be short , for the most part the discourse is so off and on , that a man knows not what they would have : but it is as if one should bring grey-hounds into the field , and let them slip and cry allooe , when yet there is no game before them . which noise though it may make them skip up and look about a while , yet they will presently finde themselves unconcern'd , there being nothing in sight for them to pursue . . but if they would exhort to follow peace and holiness , without which no man shall see the lord , this were worth our pursuance indeed , as being the known and certain end of the preaching of the gospel . but if we see no such design therein , and therefore act opposite to it , and vilify the dawnings of that day of righteousness that is to arise upon the world and to make that habitations of christendome a land of joy and peace , and discourage the people of god by telling them dreadful stories of the sons of anak , those invincible giants , whenas there is nothing too hard nor invincible to the true iosua , our lord jesus , the wisdome & power of god ; verily it is to be feared that this function , which was intended by god a fortress against sin , if it prove by unskilful zeal such a bulwark of unrighteousness , that he may dig it down and remove it as a ruinous wall of a garden , whose dead rubbish and stones ever falling on the innocent herbs and flowers do smother and stifle them , or as an old decaied hedge which is to be pull'd up and carried away , the quick-set being grown . . but if we will work the works of the lord in faithfulness and according to the design of the gospel , we our selves shall become part of that quick-set , and be made living stones to hold up one another in the temple of god. and that those that are not thus enlivened may not take themselves to be so , by reason of their extraordinary promptitude and vivacity ; i must not forbear to declare that this life we speak of is no natural heat , nor the external effects of it . nor is that a living ministry according to this sense , that makes shew of the greatest zeal . for verily it is well known that cooling physick may be administred in very hot broth . and it is too-too possible that such things may be delivered with the greatest heat and fervency imaginable , which once received into the minds of the hearers are so far from warming them afterwards and spiriting them to true holiness and righteousness , that they even slake and extinguish the desire thereof : which yet is no less a crime then stifling the life of god in the world as much as in us lies , and undermining the kingdome of christ upon earth . these things i could not but take notice of concerning the communication of the gospel , as being of very great use as well to the hearer as the teacher , that neither the one might mistake himself , nor the other be deceived by him . chap. v. . the nature of historical faith. . that true saving faith is properly covenant , and of the various significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . in what law and covenant agree . . in what law and testament . . i● what covenant and testament agree . . that the church might have called the doctrine of christ either the new law or the new covenant . . why they have styled it rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the first reason . . other reasons thereof . . the occasion of translating 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the new testament . . the third derivative property of this mystery is a power of winning assent , which arises from the convincing clearness of the truth of the gospel . this assent , which is general to all convincing truths of what nature soever , appropriated thus to this divine mystery , is called faith : and this faith in persons unconcerned , suppose angels or devils ( whom the gospel may not be meant for , and yet believe the truth of it , at least the good angels ) or else in such persons as may be concern'd in the gospel , and yet will not close therewith , though they believe it , ( if there be any such that can doe so ) is vulgarly called an historical faith. as if a man should throughly understand how such a one has purchased a lordship upon such and such terms , this is an historical knowledge in him ; and he can tell the whole transaction of the business , and does believe it ; but in the mean time has no share there , he professing himself either unable or unwilling to meddle upon these terms . such is historical faith , which alone stands us in no stead to salvation , and gives no share or portion in the kingdome of heaven . . but if out of this belief and knowledge we seriously close with the terms of the gospel , this will prove a saving faith , and is not mere historical knowledge and belief , but covenant . the conditions and promises whereof are clearly comprehended in the new testament , as we ord●narily call it from the latine translation . but the greek inscription is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which might be better rendred the new covenant ; but is capable also of being interpreted the new law. for of so large an extent is the signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it denoting both law , covenant and testament , as hugo grotius has observed out of plato , aristophanes and isocrates . . and well may these * three kinds of rights pass under one common notion and name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if we consider what agreement and affinity they have one with another . for first , law and covenant agree in sanction ; especially publick leagues and covenants , which of old were made by the mactation of some beast , from whence sanction is à sanguine , from the bloud of the sacrifice . for which cause also the hebrew doctours willingly deduce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 succidere , as the latins foedus à feriendo . whence the phrase of striking a covenant is so obvious both in hebrew , greek and latine authors . and that there is sanction in laws as well as in publick contracts and covenants is plain , for that the bloud of him that transgresses is to satisfie the law. in legibus sanctio dicitur ea pars ( saies grotius ) quae sanguinem delinquentis legi consecrat ; in laws that part is called sanction which consecrates the bloud of the delinquent to the law . . again , law and testament have this common to them both , that neither are without covenanting or contracting . nam & haeres , eo ipso quòd haeres est , praestare debet factum defuncti ; & subjectus alterius impeperio , eo ipso quòd subjectus est , ejusdem legibus parere debet : for an heir or executor , as such , is hereby bound to perform the deed of the deceased ; and he that is a subject , is , as such , bound thereby to obey the laws of him whose subject he is , as the same author tells us . . lastly , covenant and testament agree in this , that at first it is free to a man whether he will contract or no , and so whether he will take administration or no , or be such a mans heir . but it is not alwaies free whether a man will be such an ones subject or no , whenas subjection may unavoidably descend on one as born of such parents and in such an ones jurisdiction . . out of this distinct apprehension of these several significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , we may the more easily judge which is the most competible to the nature of the gospel ; and observe the wisdome of the ancients in making this inscription rather then any other . for they might have intitled it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , having a double invitation thereto . for first , the jews called their pentateuch , as also the rest of their books of holy writ , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the christian doctrine is so termed also both by paul and iames , galat. . bear ye one anothers burdens , and so fulfill the law of christ : and iam. . if you fulfill the royal law , according as it is written , thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self , ye doe well . they might also have inscribed it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whose determinate sense had been then , the new covenant . but then it would have hid that special sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the author to the hebrews alludes to , chap. . . . but they have made choice of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , first because they seem to have an intimation from christ himself thus to style the gospel , matth. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this is my bloud of the new covenant . the same also you may read in mark and luke . so that here being mention of bloud , sanction properly so called , and which is most conspicuous in the nature of a covenant , is herein manifested . the author to the hebrews does more accurately and fully prosecute this matter , chap. , , and . where ver . . he plainly parallels the bloud of christ to the bloud of the covenant made by god with the jews . for when moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law , he took the bloud of calves and goates , and scarlet wool and hyssop , and sprinkled both the book and all the people , saying , this is the bloud of the covenant which god hath enjoined unto you . to which bloud of the jewish covenant all along to the end of the chapter he compares the sacrifice of christ and the shedding his most precious bloud , when he did foedus ferire , make a covenant of peace with god for remission of sins to all mankind . . the other reason why they have styled it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , covenant , rather then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is because this inscription more plainly insinuates unto us the sweet condescension of god almighty and his singular goodness in the gospel , who in sending of christ hath not dealt with us summo jure , nor imperiously and minaciously , as severe law-givers use to doe ; but mildely and kindly , as those that contract and covenant in a familiar and kind way one with another . and the holy writers are so far from giving any considerable occasion to title the gospel by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that they frequently set it in opposition thereunto . and if at any time they attribute that term to it , it is ordinarily not without some softning or mitigating qualification ; as the law of faith , not of works , and the law of liberty jam. . . so that we see that there is a very sufficient ground why , notwithstanding the jews call'd their pentateuch and other holy writings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the law , that the primitive christians should call the evangelical writings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , covenant ; it usually also signifying testament , to which the author to the hebrews alludes , chap. . . which comes exceeding near to the nature of a covenant , where one is constituted heir upon condition . . the very title therefore of that authentical volume of our religion gives some general knowledge of the nature of it , if it had been fitly translated out of the greek . but the latine christians as well in the old as in the new testament ever translating 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , testamentum , ( etiam ubi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nominatur , as grotius takes notice , whenas god yet cannot die , and therefore will never have occasion to make his last will and testament ) have given occasion to our english translatours to follow them in the title of this book , and to render it testament , rather then covenant : by which notwithstanding is to be understood covenant . otherwise if you understand a last will and testament , what sense will the old testament bear ? chap. vi. . that there were more old covenants then one . . what old covenant that was to which this new one is especially counterdistinguished : with a brief intimation of the difference of them . , . an objection against the difference delivered ; with the answer thereto . . the reason why the second covenant is not easily broken . . that the importance of the mystery of the second covenant engages him to make a larger deduction of the whole matter out of s. paul. . in general therefore our christian religion is a covenant , the terms and conditions whereof are comprehended in those books which we ordinarily call the new testament , which were better and more significantly rendred the new covenant . the nature whereof we cannot so well understand , unless we reflect back upon the old covenants mentioned in the scripture , which preceded this ; and there being more then one , take notice which of them especially this new one is set opposite to . that there is mention of more covenants then one , is manifest from ephes. . . and particularly circumcision in the book of moses and the prophets is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the new testament , acts . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and god gave unto abraham the covenant of circumcision . . but questionless that one most eminent , most solemn and most formal covenant which god made with the children of israel , beginning it at their going out of aegypt , but perfecting it on mount sinai in arabia , this is that old covenant chiefly glanced at by them that styled our religion the new covenant : and they had a very good warrant for it out of the prophet jeremy , ch . . v. , . behold the daies come , saith the lord , that i will make a new covenant with the house of israel and with the house of iudah : not according to the covenant that i made with their fathers in the day that i took them by the hand , to bring them out of the land of aegypt ( which my covenant they brake , although i was an husband unto them , saith the lord. ) but this shall be the covenant that i will make with the house of israel : after those daies , saith the lord , i will put my law in their inward parts , and write it in their hearts , and will be their god , and they shall be my people . which promise also is recorded in the . of esay , and all thy children shall be taught of the lord , and great shall be the peace of thy children . so that there is found an old and a new covenant set opposite the one against the other by the prophets own ordering . the difference of whose natures consists mainly in this , that the old covenant is an external covenant , something without a man , the other an inwardly-ingrafted principle of life . this is that word which is in our heart as well as in our mouth , of which paul professes himself a preacher , and therefore must be the gospel of iesus christ. . but you 'l say , the evangelists and the apostles writings are without too as well as the letter of moses . i , but yet for all that it is very manifest and plain that they have not reached the dispensation of the gospel , that have not attained to an inward principle of life . which being the great distinguishing design of the gospel , we are to look upon it in this design and end , and that it has not done its work , and is in a manner nothing to us till this be done . he that believes in me , out of his belly shall flow rivers of water . and john . he that eateth my flesh , and drinketh my bloud , dwelleth in me , and i in him . as the living father has sent me , and i live by the father ; so he that eateth me , even he shall live by me . which passages plainly enough import the most intimate principles of life that may be ; the divine nature being turned as it were in succum & sanguinem within us , being converted into the juice and nourishment of our souls . . but our conversation under the mosaical covenant , and our frame of spirit there is but an ordinary accustomary temper or habit of doing or not doing such and such things ; and consequently all that righteousness but a fleshly rational fabrick of minde , which fear and custome have carved out in the surface as it were of our souls ; which characters by the same instruments are so preserved legible . but under the covenant of christ , nor fear nor custome , but an inward spirit of life works us into everlasting holiness and a permanent renovation of nature and regeneration of the hidden man. . from whence the reason is to be understood of that difference the prophet ieremie intimates betwixt the old covenant and the new. that the old covenant was broken by his people , but the new one should not be broken . for the one being an external yoke , and the other the inward pleasure of life and radicate desire of the soul ; it is no wonder that what is forced lasts not long , but that upon the first opportunity and provoking occasion , like unmanaged horses , we cast off the burden that so pinches us and galls us , in lying so heavy upon us , and being no part of us . but the perfect law of liberty becoming as it were our own life and nature , our greatest burden would be not to act according to it , and to act contrary thereto intolerable . for it were the wounding and tormenting a principle of life in us , or the spirit of christ in us , whereby we are not only aided and assisted to every good work , but take a natural delight therein : whereas under the mosaical law we have no conformity of spirit to either the purer moral precepts , or any complacency in the luggage of a company of insipid and burdensome ceremonies ; and yet the mosaical dispensation , though it give no strength to perform what it requires , yet like pharaoh's hard task-masters requires the same tale of brick , though they withhold the straw . . and this gives us some light into the nature of the two covenants in reference to the prophecie of ieremie . but it being an argument of very great consideration , i will not content my self with so scant an account thereof , but make a more copious deduction of the whole matter out of paul , gal. . that we may the more fully understand so important a mystery : and when i have from thence discovered the excellency of the state of the second covenant , i shall adde such things as tend to the more useful knowledge of the entrance into it and advance in it . chap. vii . . the different states of the two covenants set out galat. . by a double similitude . . the nature of the old covenant adumbrated in agar : . as also further in her son ismael . . the nature of the new covenant adumbrated in sarah : . as also in isaac her son and in israel his offspring . . the necessity of imitating abraham's faith , that the spiritual isaac or christ may be born in us . . the grand difference betwixt the first and second covenant , wherein it doth consist . with a direction , by the by , to the most eminent object of our faith. . the second main point wherein this difference consists , namely liberty , and that , first from ceremonies and opinions ; . secondly from all kind of sins and disallowable passions ; . lastly , to all manner of righteousness and holiness . . tell me , ye that desire to be under the law , do ye not hear the law ? for it is written that abraham had two sons ; the one by a bond-maid , and the other by a free-woman . but he who was of the bond-woman was born after the flesh ; but he of the free-woman was by promise . which things are an allegorie ; for these are the two covenants , the one from the mount sinai , which gendereth to bondage , which is agar . for this agar is mount sinai in arabia , and answereth to ierusalem which now is , and is in bondage with her children . but ierusalem which is above is free , which is the mother of us all . here the story of agar and sarah , ismael and isaac is made to set out , and that very appositely and lively , the two different conditions of those that are under the law and those that are under the gospel : that thereby the advantage and excellency of one above the other being laid open before the eyes of the galatians , they might not hereafter be any more in a tottering and fluctuating condition , or sophisticate and adulterate the precious purity of the gospel with iudaical superfluities and useless , if not now hurtfull , ceremonies ; but stick fast to christ alone , not going back from him to moses , nor yet mingling mosaical rites and ceremonies with the plainness and sincerity of christ. in the words we have recited there is a double similitude . we will in each first lay out the particulars of the protases , and then pass on to the apodoses . the particulars of the first are agar abraham's bond-woman , ismael the son of the bond-woman , and the manner of the birth of this son of the bond-woman , he was born after the flesh , that is , according to the ordinary course of nature . now in the apodosis , ierusalem that now is , that is , the church of the jews , answers to agar abraham's bond-woman , and those of that church to ismael the son of the bond-woman , and to the being born after the flesh , the being born out of the outward letter of the law. the particulars in the second protasis are sarah the free-woman , and isaac the son of abraham which he had of this free-woman , and lastly , the manner of his birth , it was not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it was not after the ordinary course of nature , but the extraordinary power of god signified in his promise . and now in the apodosis , ierusalem that is from above , that is , the church of true christians , answers to sarah the free-woman , and those of that church to isaac the son of the free-woman , and their being born of the spirit , not of the letter , to the being born by promise , not according to the flesh . and now if we compare the particulars of these two protases one with another in their due order , we shall find a main difference or rather contrariety . for agar and sarah differ as bondage and freedome , and ismael and isaac as bond and free , and the condition of their births as nature and god. and consequently there must arise a real difference or contrariety in the particulars of the apodoses , viz. betwixt the old terrestrial ierusalem and the new one from above , betwixt the jew , pharisee or outward legalist and the true and real christian , and lastly , betwixt the flesh and the spirit . and so to speak compendiously , this text of the apostle is nothing else but a description of the different conditions of the two covenants , set out in an historical allegorie , taken from agar and sarah and their two sons , &c. i shall therefore now fall upon them in that order as i have laid them out . . and first therefore of agar , the bond-woman , which signifies the covenant of the law given upon mount sinai . for this agar is mount sinai in arabia . which is spoken synecdochically from a town there called agra by plinie , and by dion , agara , and the people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in greek geographers , as grotius has pertinently observed . this allusion therefore to agar on mount sinai where the law was given , does commend to us more handsomely and facilitate the allegory taken from the story of agar and sarah . but if there were not this geographical advantage , the application will be found very sutable and apposite even without it . and much of the nature of the old and new covenant is hinted at even in the names themselves : as in this of agar , which they ordinarily interpret peregrina . what the relation of habitude is betwixt the soul of man and the things of the old covenant , is very fitly set down in the meaning of this name agar . for verily as for those things that were positive and ceremonial in the law of moses , they are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , things strange and of no affinity with the soul ; and as for those things that are most precious and most indispensably good in the law of moses , the soul in no better a dispensation then under the law is plainly a stranger to them . for the law conveies no life ; but all congruity , sympathy and vital affinity must arise out of a principle of life . and hence it is that the law makes nothing perfect , and that righteousness cannot be of the law , as i have above intimated out of the apostle . the law therefore giving no life , a mere legalist is even a stranger to those things he practices and imitates under the law , and acts so as the parot speaks , by external imitation , not from a due inward faculty . secondly , this agar her condition was a bond-woman : and what i pray you is it to be in bondage or not sui juris but to be constrained to act ad nutum alterius ? and in this condition are all those that are under the law. for they do not act according to a free inward and living principle in them , but are fain to be curb'd and fettered by an outward imposition , which is perfect and proper bondage . and there is no bondage but to doe or suffer otherwise then a man would himself . . thirdly , of this agar is begot ismael . what 's that ? ismael may signifie these two things : viz. either one that has only a knowledge of god by * hearsay , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 audire and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deus , or so far as some external letter conveies it to him , resolving all his faith in things concerning god into an outward scripture only ; and haply is so earthly and carnal that he would scarce believe there were a god , unless it were for the scripture . or else from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 obedire , from obeying god in a servile and external forc'd way . for obedience implies some kind of reluctancy , or that that which we obey in goes something against the hair with us ; but yet in obedience to the commander we doe it nevertheless , as being bound to obey . and this is most of all proper to them under the first covenant . for that law not giving life , there is no principle of life and natural and genuine compliance of the soul of man with the spirituality of the law under the first covenant ; and therefore that of the law which he endeavours to perform must needs go cross to him , and it will be merely the obedience to the precept , not the love of the thing , that will make him endeavour the performance . and this is the true condition of agar's son ismael . and it would not be unseasonable to add also that he is a great and fierce ** disputer upon the letter , a notable polemical divine , and his ignorance and untamedness of his carnal heart makes him very bold and troublesome : ** his hand is against every man , and every mans hand against him , as the scripture witnesses of him . but i will not insist upon these things . fourthly and lastly , this ismael the son of agar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he was begotten and born after the flesh , or according to the ordinary and accustomary power of nature . and such an one is he that is merely under the first covenant : he is not born of the spirit , or regenerated 〈…〉 nary power and assistance of god , which he that is un 〈…〉 covenant takes hold of by faith in the promise ; but toiles and tugs with that understanding and ordinary naturall power is in him of externally conforming himself to the proposed rule : and under this poor dispensation , when he is come to the best of this his either birth or growth , he is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he is but flesh , and not spirit . for that which is born of the flesh , that is , of our own natural abilities , is but flesh ; but that which is born of the spirit , that is , of god and his divine seed in us , that is spirit , the true spiritual man , the lord from heaven , heavenly , in a mystical sense . but this under the law is but the son of the flesh or the earth ; is not a son of that ierusalem that is from above , the heavenly ierusalem , which is the mother of as many as are real and true christians . for this is sarah the free-woman ; but the old ierusalem is in bondage with her children , as the apostle plainly tells us . . and thus far have i described the condition or nature of the old mosaical covenant , so far forth as is intimated in the text. i proceed now to the second or new covenant under christ. and the first particular in the protasis here is sarah , domina , a free-woman , libera à vitiis ac ritibus , as the interpreter speaks very well , one that is not commanded into obedience by others , but is sui juris , does what she pleases ; and so she may very well , for nothing pleases her but what is good , and therefore fit to be done . for sarah , or the new ierusalem from above , is of one spirit and one mind with christ. and this is the true church of christians , in whom the body of sin being dead , they are free from it , as the apostle speaks to the romans ; & being quit thereof , they walk freely and safely , etiam custode remoto , that surly paedagogue , the law , no longer dogging them at the heels . for whatever it can suggest from without , the spirit of god whispers to them from within , or indeed that living form of all holinesse and righteousnesse , the image of christ recovered in them , guides them as easily and as naturally to , as our external senses guide our natural man in this outward and visible world . this therefore is the condition of the church of christ and every true member of it , at least arrived to its due maturity and perfection , that every soul there is as sarah , domina , as a queen regent in her little world , her self acting nothing forcedly but freely , as from a living principle , and keeping those under her in due order and subjection . which condition undoubtedly the scripture does point at in such phrases as these , he hath made us kings and priests ; and elsewhere , you are a kingly priesthood ; and the like . . secondly , of this sarah was born isaac , which signifies * laughter , and is a signe of chearfulness and ioy. because he that is a true christian acts and walks with joy and chearfulnesse in the waies of holinesse and righteousnesse . and herein is he mainly distinguished from ismael , who acts merely out of obedience to an external form , and so forces himself against the hair to do or omit that which , were it not that he was bound in obedience to do or omit , he would take the boldnesse to neglect ; his inward principle being contrary to it . as for example , he would revenge , did not the law forbid him ; he would immerse himself into all manner of sensual pleasures , were he not aw'd as an hungry dog by the lash and penalty of the law ; and so in other things . but the soul of a true christian , in whom isaac is born , does not act what is good or omit what is evil out of any force or fear of any external inconvenience , but naturally , as i may so speak , that is , from a divine nature and power in him , and therefore with as much chearfulnesse and willingnesse as the natural man does eat and drink . and of this isaac was born iacob , who was called israel , which philo the jew interprets , one that * sees god , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but you may be remembred that ismael in the first signification of his name noted one that did onely know god by hear-say , which is quite contrary to the seeing of god. for that priviledge is proper to the true christian to whom isaac is born , and from him israel : but he is quite out of the line of ismael ; having now nothing to do with hear-saies and conjectures , and fruitlesse disputacity upon the mistaken letter , and polemical divinity , and vain and ridiculous altercations and janglings ; for he is now a citizen of that new ierusalem from above , and the onely true ierusalem , according to the notation of the name , which they will have to signifie the vision of peace . he is a living stone of the temple of him that is greater then solomon , where there is not heard the noise of any axe or hammer . thirdly and lastly , this isaac was not born according to the flesh , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. per eam vim extraordinariam quam deus promiserat : for it is a metonymy , as the interpreter rightly has noted isaac was not born according to the power of nature ( for that natural power of begetting and bearing children was then extinct in abraham and sarah , by reason of old age , as the text tells us ; ) but he was born by the power of god working extraordinarily in nature : which power abraham having a faith in , and believing the promise , he at the appointed time saw and enjoied the effect of it . and this is the precious christian faith so mainly necessary , and yet so little spoken of by them that spake much in matters of divinity . for without this faith in the power of god , isaac will not be born in us ; and if he be not born in us , i know no warrant we have to conclude our selves christians or men under the second covenant . wherefore it is a point mainly necessary to be insisted upon , that we may at length be really that which we pretend to be , that is , sons of the free-woman , and not of the bond-woman ; that the true isaac may be in us , which is christ according to the spirit , the wisdome and power of god , a divine vigor and life whereby we are inabled with joy and chearfulnesse to walk in the waies of god. . and verily it was this so necessary and useful faith that was so commended in abraham , that it was imputed to him for righteousnesse , as i have above noted , viz. his believing the promise of god in things above the ordinary power of nature . for it is the nature of men that make large professions of god and divine providence , yet never to believe him further then in natural causes and humane probabilities . but this is not so much to believe god as nature , nor to depend on him , but on our own cold and ineffectual reason concluding from accustomary probabilities . which if abraham had done , it might well have forfeited the birth of his son isaac . and it will be very reasonable to examine our selves , if we do not now hinder the birth of the spiritual isaac , by reason of our unbelief . for we finding the generality of men so evil as they are , and being conscious to our selves of abundance of corruption and all manner of weaknesse and proclivity to what is bad , and finding it so common a thing for men to continue in their evil wayes , and not to put off their wonted habits , and that in our own attempts and resolutions we have been often baffled and cast back again ; we are likely , through a spirit of infidelity , to conclude that that which is so hard to flesh and bloud , and is so seldome seen in the course of the world , will not be at all effected in us , and therefore either live as it happens , or at least make very small progresse in matters of true religion and piety , i am sure fall short of that high calling whereunto we are called , viz. that glorious liberty of the sons of god , from the slavish inveiglements of all uselesse ceremonies and real sins . and this is for want of abraham's faith , who believed contrary to all probability of nature , that for all his decaied body , and sarah's barren womb , yet god would raise up seed to him , and that they should have a son in their old age . we are therefore to imitate abraham the father of the faithful ; and what we finde our selves weak in , not to distrust but that god in his good time can make it out to us ; and therefore with patience and perseverance to presse forward , and by faith in the power of god , who raised christ from the dead , to expect that after we have been made conformable to his death , we shall also partake of the resurrection from the dead . for christ in our souls wading through the death with us , that is , supporting and strengthening us in our greatest agonies , brings up himself and us into a glorious resurrection from the dead : which you may call a birth , if you please , as well as a resurrection , using but the same liberty that is already in the scripture ; where speaking of his resurrection , the apostle cites that in the second psalm , thou art my son , this day have i begotten thee . and this is the son who , as he professes of himself , if he make us free , we are then free indeed . for he is the son of sarah the free-woman , and we being of one spirit with him do ipso facto become free . . and if we would compendiously declare the grand difference betwixt the first and second covenant , it does consist mainly in these two points we are upon . first , that a true christian , or one attained to the end and scope of the second covenant , is what he is by faith in a supernatural power working him to it . secondly , that that condition he has attained to is a condition of true and perfect freedome properly so called . but he that is under the first covenant , is what he is by the power of nature onely , and by applying himself as well as he can to the external rule he has set before him . and verily he that does no more then thus in christianity it self , that is , outwardly apply himself to the letter of the gospel , has not arrived to the end of the gospel , nor is isaac yet born in him , but is under an outward legal form , in stead of the law of the spirit of life . and he cannot be born of the free-woman , forasmuch as the law of the spirit of life is wanting in him , which does really free us from the law of sin and death . but now by reason that a true christian arrives to that happy condition he is in by a supernatural power , ( which condition is to be freely and naturally righteous and good , that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a divine nature ; which when we have attained to , we may be properly said naturally and without straining to do that which is good and righteous ) we discover here a very eminent object of our faith , viz. this divine power , by the help whereof we are to be wrought up into this happy condition of a living inward righteousnesse , that is as near to us as our own souls , and is the life and spirit of our soul , as our soul is of our body . and thus are we made just by faith , as i have elsewhere intimated , viz. by faith in the power of god , whereby he is able to raise jesus christ from the dead in us , or what is all one , whereby he is able to make the spiritual isaac grow in our withered and barren wombs , and to bring to passe in us that by his assisting grace which would never have come to passe by the mere strength of nature . this i say is a very eminent and highly-considerable object of our christian faith. and the want of this faith the prophet may seem to complain of in a mystical sense , when he saies , who has believed our report ? or to whom is the arm of the lord revealed ? that is , men are very slow to believe that the power of god in christ is so efficacious as it is to cast down every strong hold of satan , and to kill and slay the body of sin in us , that the spirit of righteousnesse may be revived and restored in us . and thus much briefly of the first point wherein the second covenant differs from the first . the second point is this , that the state of the second covenant is a state of liberty , as that under the first of bondage . . and this liberty consists in these three things especially . first in that we are freed from the tedious and voluminous luggage of ceremonies , nor are any longer superstitiously hoppled in the toiles and nets of superfluous opinions , which tend not at all of their own nature to the advancement of the divine life and the kingdome of christ in the world . and verily it cannot sink into my minde how zeal about unnecessary knowledge can be any better then the boiling of the natural heat in the behalf of that which is alike dear , nay more dear to devils and natural men then to the true children of god , in whom the curious desire of speculative knowledge is very much extinguished through their ardent thirst after divine life and sense : which will most vividly possesse them upon a due measure of regeneration , or the resurrection from the dead , when we have risen with christ as well as died with him . in the mean time while we are passing through the painful agony of mortification , all fine opinions and curiosities of religion will lie scattered and neglected about us , as toies and gew-gawes by a child that is deadly sick . . secondly , the second part of our liberty consists in this , that we are free from sin. they are the very words of the apostle , for if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death , we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection : knowing this , that our old man is crucified with him , that the body of sin might be destroied , that henceforth we should not serve sin . for he that is dead , is freed from sin . and hence i think it is very plain that a man that has had his due progress under the second covenant , i mean the gospel of christ , is freed from the rebellion and tumult of the body of sin . and that we may not shuffle off so general a notion and elude the force thereof , i will particularize ; he is freed from pride , from envy , from hatred , from wrath , from grief , from covetousness and from sensual lust. and some of these are so incompetible with the nature of a christian , as pride and envy , that they are like the rankest poison , not in the least degree consistent with the condition we speak of . and though something in reason may be said for hatred , yet i believe it will lie very crosly and unevenly in the heart of a good christian ; and i see no need of it , whenas anger and sorrow , that is pity , will supply the place of it . and we may observe our saviour christ surprized with anger , and melted in grief and pity ; but there is not the least intimation of hatred in any passage of our saviours life . so that it is the safest and most warrantable to be angry at , or pity wicked men , not to hate them ; lest we become in some measure hateful our selves by putting on that so deformed vizard . as for sensual lust and all voluptuousness , it is so conspicuous an object of mortification , that he that does not hit the mark there , and strike dead , kills nothing at all . for it is the most crass and gross enormity of them all , and the most scandalous , and the most importunate disturber of men that make towards god , and the greatest extinguisher of true faith and sense in divine things ; and so besmears the wings of the soul , as it were with bird-lime , that she cannot move upward , nor at all release her self from the impediments of the body , nor have any phansy nor conceit of what is heavenly and divine . but now pride and voluptuousness being exterminated , it is plain that covetousness will be set packing ; for it is ordinarily onely a purveior for those two vices . and those that are the most sordidly covetous , are well aware that mony being able to do all things , ( let men talk what they will ) they really are not , nor can be despicable . . the third and last is his freedome to righteousness . and that this is true , is very plain from what has been said before . for he being free from that load of unnecessary ceremonies , and from the intanglements of fruitless and superstitious opinions , and from the body of sin ; what can now hinder that divine principle of regeneration from acting chearfully , freely and comfortably ? for every mountain is cast down , and every valley is exalted , and all is made plain and even before him , that with pleasure , ease and joy he may walk in the wayes of that everlasting righteousness that christ brings into the world . for the eternal seed of the word that is engrafted in him , or that living law of righteousnesse planted in his heart , does as naturally guide and actuate him as the soul does move an unshackled body ; and it is no more constraint or bondage in him to do what is truly good and holy , then it is to the unregenerate to do that which is natural or vitious . and thus have i plainly and truly set before you the idea of a well-grown christian , that has made his due proficiency under the mighty advantages of the new covenant , the gospel of christ ; that we may know what to aspire to and breath after , and that we may never be quiet till we be possessed of this blessed & happy condition . which designe is of so high consequence , that i shall hold my self very defective in my treating thereof , unless i adde also what would be serviceable for direction touching the entrance into this new covenant we have described , and for our advance and progress in the same . which we shall doe by shewing the adequate object thereof , the true principle that moves us to covenant , and the most effectual means to make us faithfull pursuers of what we first purposed and agreed to . chap. viii . . the adequate object of saving faith or christian covenant . . that there is an obligation on our parts , plain from the very inscription of the new testament . . what the meaning of bloud in covenants is . . and answerably what of the bloud of christ in the christian covenant . . the dangerous errour and damnable hypocrisie of those that would perswade themselves and others that no performance is required on their side in this covenant . . that the heavenly inheritance is promised to us only upon condition , evinced out of several places of scripture . . the adequate object of saving faith or christian covenant ( for i mean by covenant our faithfull and sincere closing with the terms of the gospel ) is that which we ordinarily call the new testament ; that is to say , those concerning truths that are there upon record , as well precepts as promises : all these are to be believed and assented to . or , to speak yet more comprehensively , all that christ is said there to have done or suffered , to have acted or procured for us , whatever good he has done for us already or promised for the future on his part , this is to be believed without any evil suspicion or wavering : and what on our part is required to be done , is also with a free and plenary purpose of minde to be accepted and promised , and with all stedfastness and sincerity to the utmost of our power to be endeavoured after , without any fraud or tergiversation , without any elusive tricks or perverse misconstructions of the holy precepts of the gospel . . for the very inscription of this record we call the new testament , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , bears before it the notion of a covenant , that is , of mutual obligation : though it may also signifie a new law ; which title would more roughly confute those hypocritical flatterers both of themselves and their followers , who by their deceitfull interpretations would make them believe that nothing is expected on our hand in this gospel-dispensation . and besides , a law is not for nothing defined in aristotle by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , covenant , it being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as lycophron has defined it , the law being our common sponsour or undertaker that there shall be just dealing betwixt party and party . nor can they decline the truth we aim by pretending that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is only the new testament in such a sense as relates to dying men , and therefore may signifie a right conveied to another without any mutual obligation . for in this sense it cannot be called a new testament , because there was no old one answering to it . for the law of god , or covenant by moses , could not be called a testament in this sense : for god the father did not die , nor is moses his law any legacy or last will and testament in reference to moses his death . . it remains therefore that christianity is an obligatory covenant , whereby party is tied to party , that is , god to man , and man to god ; & that the mediatour of this covenant is iesus christ , whose bloud shed upon the cross is the bloud of this covenant ; as your most sacred and solemn covenants amongst the nations , and with the jews too , were ( as i have above intimated ) with the sprinkling of bloud . which ceremonie of sacrificing and effusion of bloud was nothing but an insinuation of a mutual imprecation or commination of the highest evil to one another , if they dealt treacherously in the covenant . grotius produces an ancient form of the pagan religion , which is express to this purpose ; qui prior defexit , tu illum , iupiter , sic ferito , ut ego hunc porcum hodie feriam , tantóque magis quanto magis potes pollésque . and so the trojans and graecians making a solemn covenant , and religiously obliging one another to stand to the terms thereof , upon the sacrificing of lambs and pouring out a drink-offering to the gods , one uttered this imprecation or commination indifferently to either party that should prove false . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . thrice great and glorious iove , and ye the gods his heavenly senators , which of these twain first break this solemn league and fall at odds ; as doth this wine , so may their scattered brain pash'd from their cursed sculls the pavement stain . . from this general notion and meaning of the bloud in the sanction of covenants , we may the better understand what is the meaning thereof in that covenant which god has made with us through the bloud of christ. for at his last passion he called the wine his bloud of the new covenant to be shed for many for the remission of sins , that is , for peace and reconciliation betwixt god and man. but in these solemn leagues , pacifications and covenants , which were made with bloud , though it were a ceremonie of agreement , yet the effusion of bloud did not cease to be of a comminatory signification for those that were faithless in their covenant . so it is also much more with the bloud of the son of god. as the peace is of higher concernment , so is the breach of covenant of the greater danger . this the authour to the hebrews does expresly take notice of , and shews that upon wilfull misdemeanours and perverse revoltings from god , the expiatory and pacificatory virtue of the bloud of christ then ceases , and the comminatory part takes place ; hebr. . . for if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth , there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins : but a certain fearfull looking for of judgement , and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries . he that despised moses law died without mercy , under two or three witnesses . of how much severer punishment , think ye , shall he be thought worthy who hath troden under foot the son of god , and hath counted the bloud of the covenant , wherewith he was sanctified , an unholy thing , and hath done despight unto the spirit of grace ? and therefore , as s. peter speaks epist. . it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness , then after they have known it , to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them . which persons he decyphers in he foregoing verse , that they were such as had escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the lord and saviour jesus christ , but were again entangled therein and overcome , being brought into the bondage of sin by giving place to the deceitfull doctrines of libertinism ; as you may see more at large in that chapter . . wherefore it appears out of what already has been said , that there are terms to be performed on out part in this new covenant as well as there are promises on god's part , and that christianity is no such loose , remiss and inert religion as some deceivers would make it : which we shall make still more plain from several other testimonies of scripture . matth. . the kingdome of heaven suffereth violence , and the violent take it by force . whence is plainly intimated that no lazy or careless endeavours will carry us on to the enjoiment of the promises of the covenant . as elsewhere , he that laies his hand to the plough and looks back , is not fit for the kingdome of god. and luke . . strive to enter in at the streight gate : for i say unto you , many shall seek to enter in , and shall not be able . because streight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life ; but wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction , and many there be that goe in thereat . as it is in the parallel place of s. matthew . which plain places of scripture one would think should awake those filthy dreamers out of their mischievous conceits & opinions , whereby they would make us believe the evangelical dispensation is so soft and delicate a thing , that there is no laying of the hand to the plough , no crouding or striving , but that we shall be carried to heaven on that easie featherbed of unactive faith or fanatick libertinism . whenas the evangelical oracles tell us that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling ; that we are to run and to wrastle , to fight and to resist even unto bloud . cor. . . know ye not that they that run in a race , run all , but one receiveth the prize ? so run that ye may obtain . and every one that strives for the victory , is temperate in all things . now they doe it to obtain a corruptible crown , but we an incorruptible . i therefore so run , not as uncertainly : so fight i , not as one that beateth the air . but i keep under my body , and bring it into subjection : lest by any means when i have preached to others , i my self should become a cast-away . and yet s. paul was as chosen a vessel as the choicest of these pieces that befool themselves so with self-flattery , that they think they have found an easier way to salvation then paul himself knew , that think they shall get the victory and the crown by not fighting against their own corruptions , but by beating the air with knackish forms of gracious speeches and vain grandiloquence that tends to nothing but the masking of their own hypocrisie and unfaithfulness in the covenant , and to the seduction and ruine of others . . but s. paul , however they would abuse some passages in him to the favouring of their ill cause , is an utter disclaimer of such false doctrine , and does yet more expresly tell us that the promises of the gospel are conditional . this is a faithfull saying ( saith he to timothy , epist. chap. . ) if we be dead with him , we shall also live with him : if we suffer , we shall also reign with him : if we deny him , he will also deny us . if we deal unfaithfully in the covenant , yet he is faithful and cannot deny himself : he will stand to his covenant in all the intents and purposes thereof , whether to punishment or reward . and rom. . there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in christ iesus ; but their qualification presently follows , that walk not after the flesh , but after the spirit : and ver . . they that are in the flesh , cannot please god. but ye are not in the flesh , but in the spirit , if so be the spirit of god dwell in you : and if this spirit be in you , the body is dead unto sin . and again , if ye live after the flesh , ye shall die ; but if through the spirit ye mortifie the deeds of the body , ye shall live . and ver . . the spirit it self bears witness with our spirits , that we are the children of god. and if children , then heirs , heirs of god and joint heirs with christ ; if so be we suffer with him , that we may also glorified with him . which plainly implies that the inheritance of heaven , or kingdome of glory , is a conditional kingdome or inheritance . and not to speak of kingdoms , we shall not so much as have remission of sins but upon condition . matth. . , . for if ye forgive men their trespasses , your heavenly father will also forgive you . but if you forgive not men their trespasses , neither will your father forgive you your trespasses . what can be more evident then this ? chap. ix . . what it is really to enter into this new covenant . . that the entring into this covenant supposes actual repentance . . that this new covenanter is born of water and the spirit . . the necessity of the skilfull usage of these new-born babes in christ. . that some teachers are mere witches and childe-suckers . . we have therefore undeniably demonstrated that this new gospel-covenant is a conditional covenant : and but that hypocrisie and impietie has made mens souls so degenerate , that sense and non-sense is alike to them , they would from the very sound and signification of the word perceive that there are mutual terms and conditions implied , or else it could be no covenant . this therefore being premised , we shall the better understand what is that due affection and qualification of mind that is required of him that would enter into this covenant , or what it is whereby he has really entred into it . for it is not a mere historical faith or belief of those things that are in the new testament , and an acknowledgment that they all tend to the peace and salvation of man , and that he is obliged to live up to the utmost of his power to those holy precepts that are there conteined ; but further , there is a love and liking of the said precepts as well as a desire of the enjoiment of the promise of eternal life , and a sincere resolution of endeavoring to live as near as he can according to those evangelical rules , and a chearfull expectation of divine assistance , that god will enable him by the cooperation of his holy spirit to make such due progresses in life and godliness as shall become an unfeigned professour of faith in christ jesus . . he that upon the perusal of the records of the gospel , as they are found in the new testament , or by what other way soever the substance thereof is communicated to him , and so upon information of his errours and mistakes , whether in opinion or practice , is thus affected as we have declared ; it is manifest that he has already repented him of his sins and errours , and is in a real mislike of his former conversation , so far forth as it was unconformable to the mind of christ. so that the state above described does plainly implie repentance , which comprehends in it a rejection of such apprehensions as we now have discovered to be false , and an abhorrence from and sorrow for all our misdeeds , with a willingness to make satisfaction where we have done wrong , if it lie in our power , and a proneness to take revenge of our selves in curbing our selves and cutting our selves short of the ordinary enjoiment of such things as are in themselves lawfull , they being for the present not so expedient for us , but rather hurtfull and dangerous . . he that is thus affected as we have described , and can thus willingly and sincerely close with christ , and receive him as king as well as priest and prophet , and holds himself bound in duty to live in the world as he lived , following his example in all things , and has ( as i have already said ) a love and liking of those graces he has recommended to the world , is a fit new-covenanter . for flesh and bloud has not revealed these things unto him , but the spirit of god that remains in him ; he being born again not of corruptible seed , but incorruptible , the word of god that lives and abides for ever . of this state may be understood that of s. john , whosoever confesses that iesus is the son of god , god dwelleth in him and he in god : and chap. . whosoever believeth that iesus is the christ , is born of god. and this is that new birth without which there is no entrance into the kingdome of heaven , namely , unless a man be born of water and of the spirit ; that is to say , born of the spirit which is figured out in baptismal water ; which is the outward sign of this inward regeneration , whereby a man is a capacity of thus covenanting with god , obteins remission of sins in christ , and becomes a real and visible member of his church . . and when he is thus born into the church , he is not then taken into the armes of absolute omnipotency to support him , defend him , and nourish him : but there is much-what the same reason that there is of a young plant newly sprung out of the earth , or a young child newly born into the world ; unless they meet , the one with a carefull and skilfull gardener , the other with good nurses , they are both in hazard of being spoiled with one sad accident or other ; their growth may be hindered , if not life extinguished , by neglect or untoward handling . for the influence of grace is not always irresistible , nor the purpose of it undefeatable , but is much-what as the power of nature and her offerings and attempts towards the perfection of those species of things she produces , as i have also above noted . she works alwaies towards the best , but may be checked or stopped ; and the spirit ( the apostle saies ) may be quenched as well as natural fire . and though nature freely offers that comfortable principle of life , the fresh aire , yet the lungs of the child may be so stuffed by the unwholsome milk of a wretched and unfaithful nurse , that he cannot receive it , to continue life and health , but the poor infant must be forc'd to yield to the importunity of the disease , and to dy by their hands who professed to administer life and nourishment to him . . there is the same reason in those that are as yet infants in christianity , that have really a life and sense and desire to what is truly good , but are not yet come to that growth but that they are to suck from others . if they that pretend to nurse them up impart poison in stead of the sincere milk of the word , there is no question but they are in very great danger of losing that life they are newly begotten into , and of falling from this new covenant . that there were of old such nurses or rather witches that , in stead of feeding these infants , suck'd the very bloud and life of religion out of them , several passages in the epistles of the apostles do intimate , as i have already taken notice , namely , that they were little children whom those impostours would make believe that they might be righteous , though they were not righteous as christ was righteous . which is to squeeze cold poison into their mouths , not to suckle them with the saving milk of the word . st. paul was a more faithfull nurse , and taught titus to be so too , chap. . where after the mention of the entrance into this new covenant by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the holy ghost , he presently addes , this is a faithfull saying , and these things i will that thou affirm constantly , that they which have believed in god should be careful to maintain good works . chap. x. . the first principle the new-covenanter is closely to keep to . . the second principle to be kept to . . the third and last principle . . wherefore that there be no recidivation nor standing still , but that there may be a due advance and growth in the christian life , the first principle that the new-covenanter is to adhere to stedfast and unshaken , is this , that there is an indispensable obligation in this new covenant of living up so near as we possibly can to those precepts of the gospel that are delivered either by the mouth of our saviour himself or the holy apostles ; and that we are not to allow our selves in any thing that our own consciences tell us is a sin ; nor be discouraged as men out of hope , if we finde our selves , against our own meaning and purpose , at any time mistaken ; but with chearfulness and confidence in the mediation of our saviour to adde more resolute endeavours and the greater circumspection for the future , making even an advantage of our lapses , that sudden surprisal or any errour or frailty brought us into , for an higher and more speedy advance in the divine life . these two considerations of our indispensable obligation to duty , and christs intercession and propitiation for us , s. iohn has prudently bound up together , . epist. . my little children , these things i write unto you , that you sin not . but if any man sin , we have an advocate with the father , iesus christ the righteous ; and he is a propitiation for our sinnes , and not for ours onely , but for the sinnes of the whole world . hereby we know that we know him , if we keep his commandements . he that saith i know him , and keepeth not his commandements , is a liar and the truth is not in him . but whoso keepeth his word , in him verily is the love of god perfected . as this point is exceeding clear , as i have more largely proved elswhere : so is is most necessary to be believed and to be remembred perpetually , that we may keep our selves safe from tasting , touching , or coming any thing near the sight or sent of that lushious poison of libertinisme ( let it be coloured , sugared over or perfumed with the most gracious termes or glorious expressions that the deceivable eloquence of man can put upon it ; ) and that we may shun the breath of such a seducer , as of one that is infected with the pestilence , and whose converse is death and the eternal ruin of our very souls . . the second principle that he is closely to keep to is , that ( i had almost said ) omnipotent faith in god through christ : i mean the belief of the assistance of his holy spirit to overcome all manner of sin in us . for if we keep up duely to this , nothing will be able to withstand us , but by patience and perseverance we shall be able to beat out satan out of his strongest holds . according to thy faith so be it unto thee , is true as well in christs healing our souls as in his curing the bodies of the sick when he was upon earth . this is a prime branch of that saving faith , and the greatest strength and sustentation we have to keep us from sinking back into sin , and from being drown'd and carried away with the flouds of ungodliness . if we let this hold go , all is gone : for they that doe not believe that they have power to resist sin , must of necessity give up themselves captives to it . and this is that which makes s. paul so affectionately devout in the behalf of the ephesians , that god would be pleased to give them this special gift of faith for their strength and corroboration of the inward man ; chap. . for this cause i bow my knees unto the father of our lord iesus christ , that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory , to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man ; that christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye being rooted and grounded in love , &c. according as i have elswhere rehearsed . and in the doxologie immediately following this prayer , of what unconceivable efficacy the operations of the spirit are in us , the apostle again does intimate in a very high strain , now unto him that is able to doe exceeding abundantly above what we ask or think , according to the power that worketh in us , unto him be glory in the church by christ iesus throughout all ages world without end . which words plainly imply that such is the inexhaustible richness of grace and assistance from the spirit of god , that the effect of its inward workings in us is for the present not imaginable , much less expressible . wherefore our faith cannot be too great in this supernatural principle ; and the greater it is , the greater courage and the more speedy and more absolute victory . . and yet there is still another principle that will further actuate our faith , and make us still more lively , resolute and invincible ; and that is the love of christ which every young christian is to warme himself with , and inflame his courage more and more : which he will best do by frequent meditations upon christs passion , what shame , what sorrow and pain he underwent to gain the love of souls , and so to try them to himself in those sweet and inviolable bands of sincere love and friendship , that by this golden chain he may pull them up after him from earth to heaven . let therefore our new-covenanter as often as he reflects upon the exceeding great love of his saviour , and finds his heart begin to grow hot , being touch'd with a ray from that celestial flame , that bright sun of righteousness that now shines at the right hand of god , let him be sure to remember what compensation he requires for all that dear affection he has shewn to us . the lesson is but short , and therefore must not be forgotten , if you love me , keep my commandements . chap. xi . . the diligent search this new-covenanter ought to make to finde out whatsoever is corrupt and sinful . . that the truly regenerate cannot be quiet till all corruption be wrought out . . the most importunate devotions of a living christian. . the difference betwixt a son of the second covenant and a slave under the first . . the mystical completion of a prophecy of esay touching this state . . the young christian being thus armed with faith and love and an unwavering sense of his duty in becoming holy even as he that called him is holy , he will be then both willing and ready to look his enemies in the face , and to seek them out if he cannot at first sight finde them , and to pull them out of every hiding-place of hypocrisy , and bring them into the open light and slay them . and if after diligent search he can finde none , yet he will be so modest as to distrust the measure of his skill , and will be earnest in prayer to god to discover what inward hidden wickedness there may lurk yet in him , to the end that the old leven may be utterly cast out , and that there may be nothing left that is contrary to the scepter of christ and the kingdome of god in his heart . . for indeed it is impossible that one is truely regenerate and has the seed of god and the life of his spirit actually in him , should be quiet till all that which is unholy and corrupt be wrought out . but the case is much-what as in the natural body that is sick , either death or health will in a competent time possess the body . if the morbifick matter be not carried away by sweating , purging or some evacuation or other , life it self will be carried away : but if that which is contrary to life be remov'd , health must certainly take place . . and so it is in the divine life it self , when it has taken root and growth , whatever is contrary to it , is burdensome to it , like that * tyrannick project of tying the living and the dead together . wherefore the true christian can never be at ease and rest till he has cast off that heavy load , the body of sin , the old man that stinks earthily and unsavourly , if he be perceived at all , and indeed so unsufferably , that the divine life and sense in a man cannot endure it . nor can endure to be in a condition so sensless that there should be any of that ●our leven left , and yet there be no perception of it . and therefore the most importunate address to the throne of grace in a living christian is , that god would be pleased to discover whatever ugliness or deformity there is in him in either practise or principle . which god of his mercy does by degrees , not all at once , that there may not arise overmuch distraction and confusion . but if we be not wanting to our selves , the work will be accomplish'd in due time , and the kingdom of heaven , as well within as without , will be as a grain of mustard-seed . the crisis of the disease will be in a competent time , as i said before , and our whole man re-enlivened with the spirit of god , and restored to the state of righteousness , peace and joy in the holy ghost . . for verily to be quiet upon any other terms but these , is not to be a son of the second covenant , but a careless slave under the first , that acts not out of a principle of love and inward life and liking , but out of some external respect , and cares not how little he does or what is the frame of his mind , so he may but scape being well cudgelled for the present , and receive at last the promised wages of his master . but under the second covenant the case is quite otherwise . for the true christian there is impatient of sin , merely because it is sin , and bears the same analogie to the sense of his soul that a wearisome or torturous disease does to the sense of his body ; and therefore it is intolerable till he be freed from it ; and that the more , by how much the more assured he is that it is contrary to the will and minde of christ , who came into the world to heal us of our iniquities and to free us from all sin . . and therefore lastly , we are never to rest contended till we find our selves through the power of god arrived to this state and frame of spirit , ( and that in such an height as is competible to humane nature , ) that there may be nothing undestroied that is contrary and opposite to the life of god in us . that that may be fulfilled which is prophesied in isaiah , that they that fight against israel shall be as nothing ; and they that strive with him shall perish . thou shalt seek them , and shalt not finde them , even them that contended with thee ; they that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of nought . chap. xii . . that the destroying of sin is not without some time of conflict . the most infallible method for that dispatch . . the constant ordering of our external actions . . the hypocritical complaint of those for want of power that will not doe those good things that are already in their power . . the danger of making this new covenant a covenant of works , and our love to christ a mercenarie friendship . . earnest praiers to god for the perfecting of the image of christ in us . . continual circumspection and watchfulness . . that the vilifying of outward ordinances is no sign of a new-covenanter , but of a proud and carnal mind . . caution to the new-covenanter concerning his converse with men . . that the branches of the divine life without faith in god and christ , degenerate into mere morality . the examining all the motions and excursions of our spirit how agreeable they are with humility , charity and purity . . cautions concerning the exercise of our humility ; . as also of our purity , . and of our love or charity . the safe conduct of the faithfull by their inward guide . . and this may serve for a more general direction and encouragement ; but we shall annex also what is of more particular consideration . for we have express'd our selves hitherto , as if so soon as a man were under the second covenant , there needed nothing but the finding out of his sins : for then armed with faith and love , he could suddenly destroy them . but that i may be rightly understood , it cannot be without some time of conflict . but the stronger he is in these divine vertues , the victory will be the easier and the speedier . but in the mean time the flesh will be working against the spirit , and the spirit against the flesh ; and patience and faithfulness is required on our side that we doe what god already has put into our power . and assuredly it is in the power of the new-covenanter to mortifie all manner of corruptions and immoderate desires in due time by this short and infallible method , viz. by a constant denial of their cravings . give a begger nothing at thy door , and he will never visit thee . desire is starved by being unfulfilled . a man you know often loses his appetite by staying over-long for his dinner . . inordinate desire will haunt a man like an ague , if we pamper and satisfie it . the devil and the sop will both down into our bellies at once . but thou maiest pine out both desire and the devil that lurks in it by a pertinacious temperance or stopping thy self in thy outward actions . affect not vain-glory and applause in thy outward actions or speeches , but modestly decline it , and pride will fall in thy soul. in good time thou shall finde humility rise in thy heart , and sweetly shine in thee with her milde light . give not thine anger vent , and it will be extinct like smothered fire . answer not thy lust or lasciviousness , and it will cease to call unto thee , but die as a weed trod down into the ground . dare to doe good , though thy base heart gainsay it ; and pleasure thy very enemies , those that hate thee or envy thee . for covetousness and hatred being thus oft crossed , will out of discontent at last quite leave thee . . but if thou be false to god and thine own soul in those things which he hath put in thy power , ( and he hath put the outward man plainly in thy power , ) and neglectest the performance of them , and yet dost complain of want of strength ; thou art in plain english an hypocrite , and dealest treacherously with christ in the covenant , and the devil and thine own false heart have deceived thee . thou colloguest and flatterest with thy lips , and tellest fair stories of the loving-kindness and free grace of god in christ ; but thy heart is far from him : for whosoever names the name of christ , is to depart from iniquity , as has been already noted out of the apostle . . but now in the second place , as we are faithfully to persist in a constant abstinence from outward evil actions , and in a perpetual exercise of such as are good ; so we must by all means have a special care that we take not up our rest in these , and so make this new covenant a mere covenant of works , as if by these external performances we did so oblige christ as that he were bound to give us heaven by way of gratitude or of bargain and purchase : we dealing craftily herein , as poor men doe sometimes with great persons , presenting them with something of small value , to get from them a reward of far greater worth ; they having in the mean time no cordial affection to those they present with their gifts , but only baiting the hook to catch a fish . nay , i adde further , that personal love and affection merely upon this account of being externally beneficial to us in dying for us and delivering us from eternal destruction , even this does not fill up the end and purpose of the second covenant . for this were little better then a kind of mercenary friendship , and such as is competible to the mere natural man : for he can love him that does him such a good as his very animal frame or temper is sensible of . but our love and friendship with christ must be still more inward and more intimate , we being tied to him not only by the sense of external benefits , but by unity of spirit ; there being the same life and spirit in us that was in him here on earth . and therefore there will be in our very souls an high sympathy and ineffable pleasure and liking of that nature and spirit that breaths in all the actions and speeches recorded of our saviour , and a transporting delight in all the precepts of the gospel , whether delivered by himself or his holy apostles ; they will be sweeter then the honey and the honey-combe , and more desirable then thousands of gold and silver , as the prophet david speaks . . wherefore we are never to be quiet till we find our selves fully enamoured on the very character and genius , as i may so speak , of our blessed saviour , and find our selves so affected as he was affected in the world . and therefore we are to adde to our external profession fervent prayer to god , not only to resist temptations , or to doe outward good works ; but that he would also wholly renew our nature in us , that our regeneration may be perfected , and that we may be entirely transformed into the lively image of our lord and saviour jesus christ. and this not only at set times , but continually as we have opportunity and vacancy from the throng and urgency of worldly affairs . for then should we commune with our hearts , and meditate on that divine image and character , the life of christ , and observe wherein we are most wanting , and to what part thereof our affections are the most cool ; and so with serious and earnest ejaculations to god implore the help and assistance of his spirit to compleat the good work that he has begun in us : and so we shall fulfill that precept of the apostle , pray continually , that is , whether upon the emergency of some temptation , or upon self-examinations and devout meditations . . and as we are to pray continually , so we are to watch continually , that is , to pass from one transaction to another with circumspection ; making our very converse with men and affairs in the world an advantage to our main design of improvement in the divine life . for coming thus out into company and emploiment , we have thereby a present exercise of that grace that is in us , and can find thereby the better our own inabilities and defects , as also what strength we are of , and what proficiency we have made in the way we have chosen . and so what we have , will be thereby corroborated ; and what we want , being discovered to our selves , we know the better to ask it at the hands of god. . thus will the work assuredly go on by perpetual meditations , prayer and watchfulness . and while thou art thus taken up with thy self , take heed how thou meddlest with other men . and particularly beware of despising the publick ordinances of thy church . for thou mayst hear the same advice given thee in the open congregations that thou hast assented to as true in thine own conscience , from a faithful and knowing ministry . which , if thou beest what thou pretendest to , will delight thy heart , both in that it is a testimony of the truth , and that it may take effect in others by god's blessing as well as in thee . wherefore it is no sign of a new-covenanter , but of a proud and carnal mind and of a wicked designer , to vilifie these things . . moreover thou art to take this advertisement along with thee concerning thy converse with men , that first thou censure not any man for external matters of an indifferent interpretation , in diet , apparel , or civil behaviour , whether he be more courtly or plain in carriage , whether more chearfull or more sad , whether he drink wine or refrain from drinking , whether he wear good clothes or goe in a meaner dress ; and so of other things of like nature . thou oughtest i say to passe no censure , no not so much as in thy tacit thoughts , about these things , but esteem every man from what is truly christian or unchristian in him . and then secondly , thou art carefully to take heed that the just liberty of another lead thee not into any inconvenience , by tempting thee to imitate him . but thou art strictly to keep to what thou knowest in thine own conscience to be most for thine own safety ; that the good work may goe on in thee , and that righteousness may have its firm rooting and full growth . but in the mean time thou art to look after thy self as a tender child or sick person , who are rightly forbidden such things as grown men and in health take their liberty to make use of . these two cautions will prevent all scandal whereby thou maiest either harm thy self or be injurious to others . . lastly , i shall more particularly and expresly recommend to thee the frequent meditation of these three branches of the divine life , humility , charity and purity , together with their deepest root faith in god through iesus christ. for if this be not taken in , thy progress in the second covenant may degenerate into a mere accustomary or complexional frame of morality , and have nothing in it that is really divine . i am sure it will not be of that nature as to fit thee for that eternal salvation that is promised to those that are true believers . and as concerning those three branches of the divine root , i would have thee to place them ever in thine eye , and examine all the motions and excursions of thy spirit into outward actions , how sutable they are to these , and closely observe when thou thinkest thy self so zealously carried out by the moving of one of these principles , if thou dost not run counter to another . nay , it may be thy enthusiastick heat may carry thee so far as to sin against that very principle that thou thinkest thy self to be moved by . . thus whilst thou affectest too extravagant expressions of thy humility , the discreet and knowing in religion will thereby find out thy pride . as if thou shouldest not be content to entertain the poor at thy table , but thou wilt also wait upon them with a trencher in thy hand , bare-headed , and doe all the offices of a servitour to them ; as if thou wert celebrating the old saturnalia . look to thy self that there be no touch of vain-glory in it , and that thou dost not desire to be talked of . consider also if it be not an offence against charity , and a scandalizing those that are without ; who , if they can fansie thee sincere , will be forcibly invited to deem thee very fanatical and melancholick , and that all religion is nothing else . but true charity doth nothing unseemly . . when the desire of purity also puts thee upon the chastisement of thy body , doe it so hiddenly that thou maiest not offend against humility by thy pharisaical ostentation . wherefore if thou dost give thy mind to the mortification of the flesh , shew it not to men in thy sordid clothes , nor in thy sour face and hard looks ; but keep it to thy self as secret as thou canst , that he that seeth in secret may reward thee openly . . art thou warmed with the sense of charity , which thou hadst rather call love ? take heed that thou transgress not against purity by declining into unclean fanatick lust , that foul ditch that many of our high-talking enthusiasts have tumbled into , and have been so blinded with the mire thereof , that they have made it a principal fruit of their illumination , to doe those acts without shame or measure that both the light of nature and the gospel of christ has taught us to blush at . such circumspections as these thou art to use , if thou wouldest stear thy course safely ; and if thou wilt be faithfull to thine inward guide , and deal uprightly in the holy covenant , thou wilt want no monitor ; thy way shall be made so plain before thee , that thou shalt not err nor stumble , but arrive at last to the desired scope of all thy travails and endeavours , to a firm peace and unfailing righteousness , and shalt be filled with all the fulness of god. book x. chap. i. . that the affection and esteem we ought to have for our religion does not consist in damning all to the pit of hell that are not of it . . the unseasonable inculcation of this principle to christians . . that it is better becoming the spirit of a christian to allow what is good and commendable in other religions , then so foully to reproach them . . what are the due demonstrations of our affection to the gospel of christ. . how small a part of the world is styled christians , and how few real christians in that part that is so styled . . that there has been some unskilfull or treacherous tampering with the powerfull engine of the gospel , that it has done so little execution hitherto against the kingdome of the devil . . the author's purpose of bringing into view the main impediments of the due effects thereof . . the fourth and last derivative property of the mystery of godliness , which arises from the usefullness thereof , and that great concernment it is of in relation not only to this present and transitory , but that future and everlasting happiness of mankind , is that appretiation and high value it deservedly wins or should win 〈◊〉 us . which is not to be expressed , as usually is done , by vilifying and reproaching all other religions , in damning the very best and most consciencious turks , iews and pagans to the pit of hell , and then to double lock the door upon them , or to stand there to watch with long poles to beat them down again , if any of them should offer to emerge and endeavour to crawl out . this fervour is but a false zeal and of no service to the gospel , to make it impossible to all men to scape hell , that are not born under or visibly converted to christianity , when they never had the opportunity to hear the true sound thereof . for if providence be represented so severe and arbitrarious , it will rather beget a misbelief of all religions then advance our own , especially with all free and intelligent spirits . . and what need they tell such sad stories to them that hear the gospel concerning them that hear it not , nor ever were in a capacity of hearing it ? it touches not them , but disturbs these that hear it , and makes divine providence more unintelligible then before . were it not sufficient for their auditors to understand , that they that doe hear the gospel and yet refuse it , that they are indeed in a damnable condition , the belief thereof being the very touchstone of salvation to them that it is offered to ? but if they will be curious , ( which is no commendable quality , ) they can onely adde , that none shall be saved but by virtue of that truth which is comprehended in the gospel , that is , before they come under that one head of the church , which is christ jesus ; there being no other name under the heavens whereby we can be saved , as the apostle has declared . but how the consciencious iews , pagans and turks , that seemed not to die christians , may be gathered to this head , it will be a becoming piece of modesty in us to profess our ignorance . . certainly it were far better and more becoming the spirit of the gospel , to admit and commend what is laudable and praise-worthy in either iudaisme , turcisme or paganisme , and with kindness and compassion to tell them wherein they are mistaken , and wherein they fall short ; then to fly in their faces and to exprobrate to them the most consummate wickedness that humane nature is lapsable into in matters of religion , and thus from an immoderate depression of all other religions to magnifie a mans own . which is as ridiculous a scheme of rhetorick , in my apprehension , as if one should compare solomon with all the natural fools in the world , and then vaunt how exceeding much he out-stripped them all in wisdom ; or helena with all the ugly deformed females that ever were , and so argue the excellency of her beauty , because she so far surpassed these mishapen wretches : which in my judgment is a very small commendation . . but such demonstrations of our affections as these are very sorry and injudicious . he that professes he believes the truth of the gospel , and has entred into this new covenant , if he will give a solid testimony of his sincere affection to it indeed , he must doe it by his life and conversation . for if he like it and believe it , he must needs follow the counsel conteined in it ; which if he do closely and faithfully , he will finde it of that unspeakable excellency and important concernment , that he cannot rest quiet in reaping the fruit thereof himself , but will be truly desirous that the same good may be communicated , if it were possible , to all the world . . and truly for my own part , when i seriously consider with my self and undeniable clearness and evidence of truth in the gospel of christ above all the religions in the world , and the mighty and almost irresistible power and efficacy that lies in it for the making of men holy and vertuous ; i cannot but with much fervencie of desire wish it were further spred in the world , and am much amazed that it has made no further progress then it has . for as brerewood has probably collected in his enquiries , pagan idolatry still possesses two thirds of the known world , mahometisme one fifth part , and christianisme but a sixth . and ( what is a thing more deplorable ) a very great part of the christian church has been overrun with the turk , and does lie at this very day in miserable bondage under him . and that there may be nothing wanting to encrease wonderment , even those parts of the world that are purely christian , as to title , so great share of them , whether they go under the name of reform'd or catholicks , are tainted with so gross hypocrisy , such open prophaneness and professed atheisme amongst their own crews and loose conventicles , that it is something hard to finde a cordial christian in the most pretending churches of christendome , that does not deny his profession either in heart or practice or in both . . which sad scene of things cannot but move any thoughtful christian , that does in good earnest wish well to his religion , to sift out , if it be possible , the true causes of his lamentable condition of christendome , and what are the impediments that hinder the gospel ( which of it self is so powerful an instrument as it is of salvation ) from taking effect with out selves , or from having freer passage into other countries that are yet pagan . that it is our sinnes , every well-meaning man will be ready to reply . but the question still remains , there being amongst us the most effectual engine that the wisdome of god could contrive for the destroying of sin out of the world , why there is no more execution done thereby against the power of sin and the kingdome of darkness then there is . the enquiry therefore must be what tampering there has been with this engine , what adding or taking from it , to spoil its efficacy , what mistakes of the use thereof ; and the like . for that there is something most wretchedly amiss in the use of the gospel throughout all christendome , is very plain , in that the purpose of it is almost totally frustrated every where ; and prophaneness , infidelity and atheisme have in a manner seized the hearts of all . which most men are ready to confess , some with a true christian sorrow or hearty indignation , others with a tacit joy or exteriour flearing , as being glad their corrupt thoughts and practices have the countenance of so many suffrages . . to omit therefore such principles as are unintelligible and are for ever seal'd up out of our sight ; let us look upon what is intelligible and visible . let us produce such causes into view , which no man can deny but that they are as general as these horrid diseases , and are extremely inclining , if not absolutely effectual and necessitating the christian world into this abominable condition it is found in at this day , and many ages before . chap. ii. . the most fundamental mistake and root of all the corruptions in the church of christ. . that there maybe a superstition also in opposing of ceremonies , and in long prayers and preachments . . that self-chosen religion extinguishes true godliness every where . . the unwholsome and windy food of affected orthodoxality ; with the mischievous consequences thereof . . that hypocrisy of professours fills the world with atheists . . that the authoritative obtrusion of gross falsities upon men begets a misbelief of the whole mystery of piety . . that all the churches of christendome stand guilty of this mischievous miscarriage . the infinite inconvenience of the superlapsarian doctrine . . wherefore freely to profess what i think in my own conscience to be true ; the most universal and most fundamental mistake in christendome , and that from whence all the corruption of the church began and is still continued and increased , is that conceited estimation of orthodox opinions and external ceremony , before the indispensable practice of the precepts of christ , and a faithful endeavour to attain to the due degrees of the real renovation of our inward man into true and living holiness and righteousness : in stead whereof there is generally substituted curiosity of opinion in points imperscrutable and unprofitable , obtrusion of ceremonies , numerous , cumbersome , and not onely needless , but much unbeseeming the unsuspected modesty of the spouse of christ , who should take heed of symbolizing any way with idolatry , which is spiritual adultery or fornication . for while the heart goes a whoring after those outward shows , and an over-value be put upon them , the inward life of godliness will easily be extinguished , and love to the indispensable law of christ grow cold and dead . nay they that have the greatest zeal and fierceness , as i may so speak , towards religion , there is invented such an heap and cumbersome load of external performances , that such a zelot as this may spend all his strength upon the mere outworks of piety , before he can come near to take the fort royal , or enter the law of perfect liberty , the divine life , which consists in true humility , perfect purity and sincere charity . for all such ceremonies make but a show in the flesh , nor can reach to the regeneration of our mindes into the unfeigned love of our brethren . whence the most seemingly religious this way may be the most accursedly cruel and unjust , the most implacable and uncharitable that can be . and yet according to that false model of religion that humane invention has set out to the world , he may both take himself , and others also may take him to be seraphically pious ; though in the judgment of christ and of his true church he lie in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity . . and in other parts of christendome where the pomp of ceremonies and exteriour superstition is not so much urged , though a man at first sight might hope that things would be much better , yet experience will teach him that there is little amendment , and that the causes of degeneracy , of gross hypocrisy and wickedness , are even as operative and as well appointed to work their effect there as in other places . for this also is superstition , to place our religion in opposing external ceremonies , and to think every man the more pious by how much the more zealous he is against them . wherefore our affections being drawn out in this hot antipathy , our hearts grow cold to the indispensable duties of the gospel ; which are love , patience , meekness and brotherly-kindness , with the rest of those fruits that demonstrate that the tree of life , that the life of christ is planted in us , and that the spirit of god abideth in us . besides that we are to remember that we may idolize long prayers and frequent preachments , and that they may make up an external religion to us in stead of that godliness that is indispensable and internal , and an ever-flowing fountain of all comely and profitable actions and deportments towards god and towards men . . i say therefore that this self-chosen religion in all the parts of christendome ( though it be but such as a wicked man may perform as dexterously and plausibly as the most truly righteous and regenerate ) being so highly extolled and recommended to the people , is almost an irresistible temptation to make them really and morally wicked . for that natural inclination and appetite in mankinde to religion being satisfied or eluded by this unwholsome food , they can have no desire to that which is true religion indeed ; and will be very glad to be excus'd from it , it being more hard at first to embrace or practice , whence it is in a manner necessary for them to let it alone . . and they will the more easily abstain from it , there being another poisonous v●and that swells them so that they are ready to burst again , which is that highly-esteemed knowledge called orthodoxness or rightness of opinion . of which the apostle , knowledge puffeth up , but charity edifieth . this seems so glorious in their eyes , that they phansy themselves angels of light , and fit to enter into the presence of god , if they be but neatly & elegantly trimm'd up in these fine ornaments of orthodoxality . ●esotted fools ! blinde and carnal ! that think to recommend themselves to the majesty of heaven by being array'd in these motly coats , this strip'd stuff of their own spinning . while they thus affect the favour o● god by opinionative knowledge , how do they betray their gross ignorance ! for how can that which is more pleasing to the natural man , nay , i may say , to the devil himself , then to a regenerate soul , how can that render any one acceptable to god ? and yet in all the divisions of the churches they lay the greatest stress upon this , bear the greatest zeal toward it , recommend it the most vehemently to the people , who following the example of their pastours , if they be but busie & hot in these rending points , they think themselves fully possest of the life of christ , and that they are very choicely religious , though in the mean time charity to their neighbour be cold , & they have attain'd to no measure of true righteousness and holiness . herein chiefly lies the mystery of hypocrisy in all the churches of christendome , counting all pious that are but zealous for the waies and opinions of their sect ; and those that are not for it , be they never so unblameable and cordial christians , they are either hated as hereticks , or at best pitied for poor moralists , mere natural men. . these are the most general and very potent impediments for the hindring the gospel of taking that effect which it would otherwise have in the christian world , and for making most of the professours of christianity hypocrites , that is , such as make a great show of godliness , but deny the power thereof , which should mainly appear in our duty to our neighbour and in a sober and just conversation , doing all things as in the sight of god. now this hypocrisy in professours begets prophaneness , atheisme , and unbelief in such persons as naturally have not so strong propension to matters of religion , that is to say , that have not so superstitious a complexion as to be tied to religion upon any termes in any dress and from any kinde of recommenders of it . for their natural nasuteness suggests , that if there be any religion at all , most certainly it is not to be divided from sound morality , to which truly both the prophets , apostles , and precepts of christ do plentifully witness . but they observing that they that make the greatest noise about religion , and are the most zealous therein , do neglect the laws of honesty and common humanity , that they can easily invade other mens rights , that they can juggle , dissemble and lie for advantage , that they are proud and conceited and love the applause of the people , that they are envious , fierce and implacable , that they are unclean and sensual , that they are merciless and cruel , and care not to have kingdomes to flow in bloud for the maintaining of their tyranny over the consciences of poor deluded souls ; ( when yet the contest is nothing but about hay and stubble , the combustible superstructures of humane invention : of which every vainglorious superstitionist , that would make a show in the flesh , has cast on his handfull , if not his arm-full , for the hiding and smothering of the indispensable truths of the gospel , and to put men into perplexities and labours for that which is not bread , to rack their heads with nonsense , contradictions and impossibilities , to weary out their bodies with the thankless toyle of endless and needless ceremonies , and to carry out their heart to toyes and trifles , and so make them neglect the holy and weighty commands of our saviour , which are intelligible to all men , and in some measure approved by all ; such as are , to deal as we would be dealt with , to love our neighbours as our selves , and the like ) i say , those that are not of so religious a complexion naturally , but have wit and sagacity enough to smell out the corruptions and discern the incoherences of the actions of professors , making observation of these things , are by this scandal exceedingly tempted ( and very hardly escape the being quite overcome by so perverse a scene of pretended piety ) to think that the whole business of religion is nothing but humour and madness , or , at the best , but a plot to enrich the priest and keep the people in awe . . this is one great scandal and effectual counterplot against the power of the gospel , the vilifying and despising of moral honesty by those that are great zelots and high pretenders to religion . this does advance atheisme and prophaneness very much . but there is another miscarriage which i have hinted at already as epidemical and universal , and at least as effectual to this evil purpose as the former . there is scarce any church in christendome at this day that does not obtrude not only falshoods , but such falshoods that will appear to any free spirit pure contradictions and impossibilities , and that with the same gravity , authority and importunity that they doe the holy oracles of god. now the consequence of this must needs be fad . for what knowing and consciencious man but will be driven off , if he cannot profess the truth without open asserting of a gross lie ? if he sees good wine poured out of one bottle , but rank poison out of another into the same cup , who can perswade him to drink thereof ? this is a heavy sight to the truly-religious , but the joy and triumph of the prophane , who willingly take this advantage against the whole mystery of piety , as if there were no truth at all in it , because that so gross falshoods are urg'd upon them with the same indispensableness , with the same solemness & devoutness , as those things that ( were it not for the serious impudence of the priest in other open falsities ) might pass with them for true . but they being not at leisure to perpend things to the bottom , but it may be not altogether indisposed to believe a faithfull report from an honest man , they finding the relater foully tripping in some things that he so earnestly urges , discredit the whole narration , and so become perfect atheists and unbelievers ; though , for their own security , they juggle with the juglers , that is , comply and doe outward reverence and devotion , though they cannot but laugh in their sleeves at either the ignorance or cunning deceitfulness of their ghostly leaders . . and that i may not seem to slander the state of christendome , i mean of the whole visible church in what nation soever under heaven ; if we may believe historians , there is none , neither greek nor roman , neither lutheran nor calvinist , but will be found guilty of this fault . i shall particularize in some one thing in all . the greek as well as the roman hold transsubstantiation , the lutheran consubstantiation ; things that have no ground in scripture , and are a palpable contradiction to reason . and yet not more contradictious then absolute reprobation according as our rigid reprobationers have defined it : namely , that god has irresistibly decreed from all eternity to bring into being innumerable myriads of souls of men exceeding far the number of them that shall be saved ; who as without their own consent they were thus thrust into the world , so let them doe what they will , are certainly determined to unspeakable torment so soon as they go out of it , and at the last day shall be adjudged to an higher degree of misery , so great and so exceeding , that all the racks and tortures that the wit or cruelty of the most enraged tyrants could ever invent or execute , would be ease and pleasure in comparison of it , and that these pangs and torments shall remain fresh upon them for ever and ever . . this is the representation of that sour dogma . which to reason is as contradictious as if one should name a square circle or black light ; and as harsh and horrid to the eares of the truly-regenerate into the nature of god , who is love it self , as the highest blasphemie that can be uttered . nor is the nature of those that are irreligious enough so much estranged from the knowledge of god , but that they think , if there be any at all , he cannot be such a one that laid such dark plots from all eternity for the everlasting misery of his poor impotent and unresisting creature , that never did any thing but what the divine decrees determined he should doe , and therefore was alwaies the almighties obedient servant : for which at last he must be condemned to eternall punishment by him whom he did ever obey . the serious and imperious obtrusion of such a dismal conceit as this for one of the greatest arcanums of religion , will make the free spirit and over-inclinable to prophaneness confidently to conclude , that the whole frame of religion is nothing but a mere scar-crow to affright fools , and that there is no hell at all , since such innocent persons and constant obeyers of the divine decrees must be the inhabiters ot it . chap. iii. . the true measure of opinions to be taken from the designe of the gospel , which in general is , the setting out the exceeding great mercy and goodness of god towards mankinde . . and then secondly , the triumph of the divine life in the person of christ , in the warrantableness of doing divine honour to him . . thirdly , the advancement of the divine life in his members upon earth . . the fourth and last rule to try opinions by , the recommendableness of our religion to strangers or those those that are without . . i might adde several other opinions in several parts of christendome , that tend very much to the defeating and eluding the serious end and purpose of religion : but before i go any further , i shall set down the main designes of the gospel of christ , that we may have a more plain and sure rule and measure to try all opinions by . the designe therefore of the gospel in general is the magnifying of the goodness and loving-kindness of god , that he has afforded mankinde so glorious a light to walk by , so effectual means to redeem them from the love of the perishing vanities of this present world , and to recall them back again to himself and to the participation of the ineffable joyes & pleasures of his celestial kingdom . for god so loved the world , that he gave his only-begotten son , that whosoever believeth in him should not perish , but have everlasting life . for god sent not his son into the world to condemn the world , but that the world through him should be saved . and titus . for we our selves also were sometimes foolish , disobedient , deceived , serving divers lusts and pleasures , living in malice and envy , hateful , and hating one another . but after that the kindness and love of god our saviour toward man appeared , not by works of righteousness which we have done , but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy ghost , which he shed on us abundantly through iesus christ our saviour . to which sense also the apostle speaks , ephes. chap. . and you who were dead in trespasses and sins , wherein in times past ye walked according to the course of this world , according to the prince of the power of the aire , the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience ; among whom also we all had our conversation in times past , in the lusts of our flesh , fulfilling the desires of our fleshly minde , and were by nature the children of wrath even as others . but god who is rich in mercy , for his great love wherewith he loved us , even when we were dead in sins , hath quickened us together with christ , ( by grace ye are saved ) and hath raised us up together , and made us sit together in heavenly places in christ iesus ; that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace , in his kindness towards us , through iesus christ. to which lastly you may adde tit. . . for the grace of god that bringeth salvation , hath appeared to all men ; teaching us , that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts , we should live soberly , righteously and godly in this present world , &c. these scriptures give plain testimony of this more general designe of the gospel . . the next designe is an external exaltation of the divine life that did so mightily and conspicuously appear in the person of our saviour christ ; as i have already abundantly declared , how the mystery of christianity comprehends in it chiefly this designe of exalting into triumph the divine life above the animal and natural : and that either externally , in the religious worship we do our saviour , and is done even by hypocrites and wicked persons ; or else internally , in the advancing of true faith and holiness in his living members and sincere followers of his doctrine . philip. . let the same minde be in you which was in christ iesus , who being in the forme of god , thought it no robbery to be equal with god ; but emptied himself and took upon him the forme of a servant , and was made in likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a man , he humbled himself and became obedient to the death , even the death of the cross. wherefore hath god also exalted him , and given him a name above every name ; that at the name of iesus every knee should bow , of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth , and that every tongue should confess that iesus christ is lord , to the glory of god the father . and hebr. . thy throne , o god , is for ever and ever ; the scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom . thou hast loved righteousness , and hated iniquity ; therefore god even thy god hath anointed thee with the oile of gladness above thy fellows , that is to say , hath exalted thee to this due honour and rule , having put all things under his feet , angels themselves not excepted , as s. peter tells us , epist. . . who is g●ne into heaven , and is on the right hand of god , angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him . there is a further enumeration of the angelical classes , colos. . where the apostle speaking of this high exaltation of the person of christ , he intimates not only the subjection of the orders of angels to him , but their reconciliation to god by him , and , as some would have it , a fuller confirmation of them in his favour , vers . . who is the image of the invisible god , the first-born of every creature . for by him were all things created that are in heaven , and that are in earth , visible and invisible ; whether they be thrones , or dominions , or principalities , or powers : all things were created by him and for him ; and he is before all things , and by him all things consist . and he is the head of the body the church . he is the beginning , the first-born from the dead ; that in all things he might have the preeminence . for it pleased the father that in him should all fulness dwell : and making peace through the bloud of his crosse , to reconcile all things by him unto himself , whether they be things in earth or things in heaven . so mighty and wonderfull was the result of the humiliation of our saviour ; and so clear and warrantable an object is he of divine adoration . . thus is the divine life triumphant in the person of christ the head of his church . but another main design of the gospel is , that the divine life may be advanced in us , that is , that faith in god through christ , that humility , love and purity may have their due growth in us here ; that thereby we may be fitted to receive that immortal crown of glory which he will bestow upon all true believers at the last day , when he shall carry his whole church with songs of joy and triumph into his celestial kingdome . that this is the main purpose of the gospell i have already sufficiently proved , and therefore need adde nothing in this place . . the fourth and last rule or measure of opinions is , the recommendableness of our religion to those which are without ; that is to say , we must have a special care of affixing thereto any of our own inventions or interpretations of scripture for christian truths , which may seem uncouth and irrational to strangers and such as are as yet disengaged . for though those that by reason of their education have had full acquaintance with christianity will adhere to their religion , though it may be corrupted with many false glosses and fond opinions of men as indispensably obtruded as the undoubted scripture it self : yet strangers that are free and unaccustomed to them , will not fail to boggle at them ; and being offered to them also with equal authority with the very word of god , they will be necessitated to fly back , and to relinquish the holy truth by reason of the indissoluble intertexture of the gross falshoods they find interwoven with it . a thing that is seriously to be considered by all those that bear any love to the gospel , and desire that it may be propagated and promoted in the world. for certainly it was intended for a more general good and larger diffusion then has been hitherto by reason of its having fallen into faithless and treacherous hands , who make it only an instrument of gaining wealth and power to themselves and of riding the people , and not of gaining souls to god. chap. iv. . the general use of the foregoing rules . . a special use of them in favour of one anothers persons in matters of opinion . . the examination of election and reprobation according to these rules . and how well they agree with that branch of the divine life which we call humility . . the disagreement of absolute reprobation with the first rule ; . as also with the third , and with the second and fourth . . these are the four main rules which i conceive very usefull to examine either other mens opinions or our own . and if the heat of our spirits or the confidence of others would urge upon us pretended truths ( for to admit of open falsities or forgeries for what advantage soever is intolerable , ) that are not subservient to these designs above named , we may well look upon them as idle curiosities ; and if they pretend also to revelation or inspiration , that it is nothing but madness and fanatick delusion . but if they do not only not promote but countermine those designs above mentioned , they are to be looked upon then not as frivolous , but dangerous and impious , and so to be declined by all means possible . and lastly , though they appear such as may contribute something to those designs if followed and embraced , yet i must adde also this caution , that they are not to be forc'd so as that unless a man will profess them , he must be accounted no good christian. for they coming from a fallible and doubtfull hand , they ought not in reason to infringe that undoubted right of christian liberty ; the scripture alone being full enough to perfect a christian both in life and doctrine . . there is also a further use to be made of these rules in favour of one anothers persons though of different opinions , that is , by taking notice what good they drive at , as well as what evil they tend to : which makes much for peace and brotherly kindness , and may blunt the edge of eager and bitter zeal , that makes the over-fervid zelot think that he that is of a contrary opinion to him intends nothing but mischief by his opposite doctrine . in examining therefore every opinion , we are to observe what design of the gospel it agrees with , as well as what it crosses . and that the use of our rules may the better appear , i shall now shew the practice of them by trying some few opinions of no small note by this touchstone : for it were an endless business to examine all , and needless , because by these examples he that lists may examine the rest , indeed any that either has been or ever will offer it self to the world in matters of religion . . the first that occurrs is such an election and reprobation that wholly excludes free will. the controversie is so well known that i need not state it . applying this doctrine to the four rules i have set down , i find in the third that it has some compliance with that choice branch of the divine life , namely humility , and a submission of a mans self and all the world to the will of god. it is the lord , let him doe what he pleases . and that therefore a serious and humble soul being much taken up and transported with this consideration , may think of nothing else , but take this doctrine to be very truth , nay live and die in it , and go to heaven when he has done . whence it were a piece of satanical fury to persecute any such opinionist ; and want of charity , these living as well as other christians , not to bear as good affection to them as to others ; nay to advance our affection with the superaddition of pity , they living in something a more dark mansion then others ; which will plainly appear if we applie their opinion to the rest of the rules and the particulars of them , which we have set down . . for if we make application to the first , that tells us that the design of the gospel is the manifestation of the exceeding superabundant loving-kindness of god to the world , who would not any should perish , but that all should come to repentance , as s. peter speaks . this sad opinion of the predestinatours does confront this design at the very first sight , making the goodness of god such an half-faced thing , nay i may say of a more thin and sparing aspect then the sharpest new moon , nay an infinitely less proportion , if their dolefull stories be true . for to speak summarily of the business ; some very exceeding small number shall necessarily , by the free grace of god , be eternally saved , but the rest necessarily damned to ineffable , eternal and unsupportable torture . this is that glorious redundant grace of the gospel according to them . which free spirits will think the worst news and most mischievous that ever was communicated to the world. the worst , because so extreme few shall be saved . the most mischievous , because it will hazzard all men to be damned according to the ordinary course of reason . for , whenas things are determined already , who need stir a foot unless to please himself and reap the present joies of this life ? . for it is very irrational for us to be sollicitous and trouble our selves to bring that to pass which will every jot as soon come to pass without our trouble . so that unless a man be , beyond all conceit , foolish and sottish , and cannot reason concerning things , he will be necessitated almost , i am sure , very strongly invited , to be as loose and wicked as his own heart or the temptations of the world can suggest to him . whence it is plain that this doctrin in it self , though it may impose upon some by the shew of humility , is a supplanter and destroier of the whole divine life root and branch , that is , it weakens mens faith also in the gospel , if this be peremptorily obtruded upon them to be all the design of it ; it slakes all endeavour of good practice , takes them off from the aspiring to that blessed regeneration and renovation of their minds into purity , love , and humility it self , which they most pretend to . and therefore most generally , though they seem to crouch to god , yet are they very prone to be too-too rigid , sour , and even cruel to men , full of pride , dissension and confusion . so that the unworthiness of this opinion is discernible also by the third rule . . and does entrench something also upon the second . for whereas , according to their own concession , the value of the bloud of the son of god was such that it might have been a ransome for ten thousand worlds ; what a check would this be to a mans more affectionate veneration of him upon the cross , when he thinks he has restrained the purpose of his suffering to so exceeding few ? nothing but self-love and self-flattery can well bear up a mans devotion . what an adorable thing have they made the tender compassion of god in jesus christ , whenas he is represented to us , according to their explication of the mystery , at the same time to have found out a full satisfaction to his justice for the sins of the whole world , and yet at that very moment to have decreed in a manner all the world to eternal damnation ; and this forsooth to make manifest his justice , which is sufficiently manifested by the death of his son ? is not that freer grace that is intended for all , and they put in a capacity of receiving it , if they be not wanting to themselves , then that which is only necessitated on some very few , and for want of which the rest must necessarily perish ? wherefore upon these terms a man cannot conciliate that venerable affection which is due to our saviour , nor indeed beget a belief of the narration in more nasute and sagacious men . which is an entrenchment against the fourth rule also , which should awe us from peremptorily affixing any thing to our religion that will make it less recommendable to them that are without , as certainly this opinion does to all indifferent men . which makes me amaz'd at the sedulous obtrusion of it by some men , whom i can charitably conclude to be , as well as hey are accounted , in their way religious and godly . for it is a piece of unsufferable pride and conceitedness to think themselves infallible in a point where free men , at least as pious and religious , if not more , have seriously and industriously concluded the contrary ; especially when such gross inconveniences are discernible therein . chap. v. . that election and reprobation conferrs something to humility . . that some men are saved irresistibly by virtue of discriminative grace . . that the rest of mankind have grace sufficient , and that several of them are saved . . the excellent use of this middle way betwixt calvinisme and arminianisme . , . the exceeding great danger and mischief of the former extremes . . there is nothing makes this opinion pardonable , but that shew , as i said , that it bears of humility ; and haply it is in some regard really serviceable thereto . and i should take it to be very instrumental to take away all pride and arrogance , or attributing any thing to our selves , or contemning our neighbours , if the professours of it were generally of so meek , so humble and so lowly a spirit ; whenas they are too often over-harsh , fierce , and contemptuous of others . but this may not be the fault of the opinion , but of the opinionist , though that sad severity of god tied up in this same pretended mystery is no enforcing example of kindness and humanity . . but to the end that choice and lovely vertue of christian humility may want no motives nor encouragement , and that that pleasure that some souls may justly take in the free acknowledgment of god's irresistible grace and over-powering operations upon their spirits may not be suffocated nor extinguished ; we shall make such an accomodation betwixt both parties , that unless envy and repining at the goodness of god toward mankinde make them still dissatisfied , i question not but that they will rest contented . i profess therefore and do verily think , that there is such a thing as discriminative grace , as they call it , in the world , and that to such a difference for good , that some few of mankinde by virtue thereof will be irresistibly saved , but that the rest of the world are probationers , that is , have free will and are in a capacity of being saved , some greater , some less ; and that whosoever is damn'd , it is long of himself . for ( as siracides saith ) god has no need of the wicked man. . and that this may not seem to be a mere subterfuge , like that of some others , i further add , touching all this rest of mankind which i speak of , that there is grace sufficient offered to them some way or other , some time or other , and that several of them , according to their faithfulness to that light and power which god has given them , shall be actually saved . at which sentence neither the arminian ought to repine nor the calvinist . for whatever good arminianism pretends concerning all mankind , is exhibited to this part not absolutely elected , and to the other part the goodness of god is greater then is allotted by arminius . and whatever good there is pretended in calvinism to that part that is absolutely elected , the same goodness is here exhibited , and besides that direfull vizard pull'd off that ignorance and melancholy had put upon divine providence and on the lovely face of the gospel . . i may adde to this , that he that finds himself in an extraordinary powerfull manner carried to that which is good , may as fully ascribe it to god's free grace , as in the calvinistical hypothesis ; and he that has no mind to goodness cannot lay the fault on god but himself . nor can satan tempt by that forcible stratagem to either despair or dissoluteness , suggesting that if a man shall be saved , he shall be saved , or if damned , he shall be damned , and that he can neither help on the one nor hinder the other . for unless a man be very deeply radicated in faith and sincere obedience , i should hold it a piece of fond self-flattery to take himself for one of the elect , whenas he may hold of a more seasonable tenure , and act accordingly as a probationer : and when he has got to that irrelapsable condition of those whose souls are after a manner perfected in faith and holiness , it will better become him then to entitle god alone to all those transactions wrought in him , and to take up that saying of jacob , verily god was in this place , and i knew it not , and name the place he slept in bethel , the temple of god : for such is the body of every regenerate christian , and especially of the elect. . this concession of ours thus far , as it is most true , and certainly not unserviceable for the promoting that thankfull and humble frame of spirit that would attribute all to the irresistibleness of free grace and to the force of their particular and irrevocable predestination and election ; so is it also a mighty safeguard from those dangerous miscarriages that too often happen the other way . wherein there being no mean , but one must be either elect or reprobate , how prone is it out of self-love to take up a stout and peremptory conceit that a man is the childe of god destinated thereto before the foundation of the world , and that he can no more miss to be saved then he did to be born ? but as for others , poor offalls and out-casts of the creation , that they can never find out the way to heaven and salvation , do what they can , let them importune god and vex and weary nature never so much ; but are like sampson , with his eyes put out , brought upon the stage of this world only to make the philistims merry , or at best to be mere foils and blacks to set off the beauty and lustre of the secure saints : who being unavoidably caught as it were in a nooze or fast snare of salvation laid for them from all eternity , so soon as they once phansy themselves taken by the leg , do so bounce and dance in the string with that enormity and violence , as if they tried by their wild tugs and jerks , whether the force of their corruption or the decretall thread be the stronger . . nay do grow up to such a pitch of fool-hardiness , as to think themselves not possibly able to run themselves out of breath by the most wild and dissolute courses imaginable , nor remove themselves one hairs breadth out of god's favour for all this . in fine , do proceed so far as to acknowledge no law but their own lust and the fulfilling their own masterless will , and consequently do conclude that they cannot sin . thus imitating a false pattern , and making themselves compendious puppets or pocket-medals of that great idol of theirs ( for it is no god ) that wills , as they say , merely because he wills . and so they dance and sport about the imagination of their own heart , as the children of israel , in the law-givers absence did about the molten calf . thus has this dark conceit , which some rash spirits have endeavoured to make essential to christianity , led many one into secure libertinism first , and after into most desperate atheism . chap. vi. . the scholastick opinions concerning the divinity of christ applied to the foregoing rules . . as also concerning the trinity . . the application of the antitrinitarian doctrine to the said rules . it s disagreement with the third , . as also with the second . . the antitrinitarians plea. . an answer to their plea. . how grosly the denying the divinity of christ disagrees with the third rule . . the next opinions that occur are those concerning the divinity of christ and the holy trinity . and first , those of the schools , of which i shall only say in general , that though their industry and sincerity of their design may be commendable , which was to unite the humanity of christ of hypostatically to the divinity , that there should be no suspicion of idolatry in doing the highest divine honour to him we call the son of god , and that therefore what they drive at is very agreeable to the second rule we have set down ; yet for my own part i think they have made so little proficiency to the main end , that that one plain expression in athanasius , as the body and soul is one man , so god and man is one christ , is better then all their curious definitions of things , which reach to no greater hypostatical union then that of the body and soul ; whenas i dare say , if it were searched to the bottom , the union betwixt the divinity and humanity in christ is more one and more exact then that of soul and body , which they call hypostatical . but they have defined things so unskilfully and perplexedly , that though their design be agreeable to our second rule , yet their performance does clash much with the third and fourth : such contradictions or unintelligible spinofities weakening faith , and hindring the passage of the gospel to them that are without . . which may be rightly said also concerning their subtil and inconsistent disquisitions and conclusions touching the trinity . wherein though their design be in the same respect commendable as before , yet they have made the mystery so intricate and contradictious , that they weaken the christian faith to those that are within , and make it less passable and recommendable to strangers ; and have given occasion thereby to some bold spirits , it being so disadvantageously represented to them , to deny the whole mystery , whereby they have purchas'd to themselves the title of antitrinitarians . . whose opinion i look upon as fundamentally repugnant to christianity it self , if the new testament be the foundation of christianity . for i know nothing more express then that in those writings . and therefore the denying of the trinity is the denying of the authority of the new testament . or if they will pretend they can interpret things there so as to evade this doctrine , by the same reason i think they may evade any , and so still the sacred writ shall stand for a cypher , and signifie nothing ; which tends mainly to the enervating of our faith , and is a gross entrenchment upon the third rule . . and truly i think it may be made to appear that it is also particularly against the second . for the divinity of christ does not fall in so handsomly and kindly without the supposition of a trinity , as i have elswhere intimated ; and therefore i look upon it as a special piece of providence , that so explicite a knowledge of the godhead in the triunity thereof was so generally made known to the world together with christianity , that the eternal son of god might be worshipped through christ , and the whole deity , as i may so say , distinctly honour'd and adored . . but they will reply , that though they deny the trinity and divinity of christ , namely that the eternal word was made flesh , yet they assert that divine honour is due unto him , and therefore do not transgress against the second rule . for they acknowledge that though christ be but man , yet god has given him all power in heaven and in earth , and that he shall return visibly to judge the quick and the dead , and that as the father has life in himself , so has he given him to have life in himself , that is , the power of enlivening us and quickening us at the last , and of changing these vile bodies of ours into the similitude of his glorious body . and therefore that their opinion serves the end of christianity as well as the other in reference to divine worship due to christ , and is more sutable to the fourth rule ; these perplexities of christs divinity and the triunity of the godhead making our religion less passable and recommendable to those that are without . . but to this i answer , first , as before , that to take away the trinity and divinity of christ is to take away the authority of the new testament , or to take such a liberty of forcing and distorting the sense of things , as will make it contemptible and useless ; then which what can be of more dangerous consequence ? it will be a trespass not only against one , but against all the rules i have set down , and make the gospel pass very ill not only with strangers , but our selves too , and turn christendome back to infidelity and paganisme . but secondly , i deny that the scripture declares any thing concerning the divinity of christ , or the holy trinity , that is impossible , contradictious , or more unintelligible then things that men do ordinarily assent to , that are free philosophers , and admit nothing upon force or superstition , but upon reason ; and that the union of the eternal word with the humane nature of christ is as conceivable for the modus as the union of the soul and body : that the intricacies of the schools are fooleries , and not to be taken into our religion : that the scripture only sets forth a triunity in the godhead in general , not obscured by any terme that can entangle any one of a tolerable wit and understanding , unless he will be so blockish as to think , because the second hypostasis in this trinity is called son , that the father was married and had a wife , as the turks fondly object ; whenas nothing else is signified but that the son is from the father , and the holy ghost from both . thirdly , that the first author & beginner , or at least the most eminent renewer of this sect that so boldly and stoutly denies the trinity , was one , though of a leguleious wit , yet so inept and averse from divine matters , that he flatly denies that the existence of god is discoverable by the light of nature and reason . and after he has found him by help of scripture , as he thinks , yet he has missed him . for that which is not infinite in essence , cannot be god. and therefore it is no wonder if he hangs off so heavily from the admission of that more distinct and full knowledge of him manifested in the holy oracles , & that those that symbolize so much with his genius in other things follow him also in this . fourthly , the noblest spirits & best philosophers that ever appear'd in the world for the knowledge of nature and of god , and that some ages before christ , of their own choice without force or obtrusion held the triunity of the godhead ; which though i will not avouch to be perfectly right in all things , ( they being even over-accurate in the describing of it , & therefore well may trip ) yet for the main is such that there is reason for it , but none at all against it , & it is very sutable in the general to those general intimations in the scripture . nor do i believe any christian bound to hold the theory in the set formes of humane invention , though he may peruse them & believe as much as he thinks good , and do think it a decent thing , that his reason cannot perfectly reach nor exhaust so profound a mystery , & that therefore he is to make up the rest in humble adoration . fifthly and lastly , by denying the triunity of the godhead and divinity of christ , other articles of our faith are made incredible , and that divine adoration we give to christ suspected of idolatry . for it will not seem credible to strangers , especially that abhor such superstitions , that god ever exalted any mere man to such a pitch as the socinians themselves acknowledge christ is exalted ; but that it is some cunning plot to lapse the world or retain it in idolatrous worship . it will also seem to them incredible , if christ be mere man , that he should * by a power in himself , as he professes , be able to perform his promise at the last day , that is , to raise us all to a glorious and immortall life , changing these bodies of flesh into a pure celestial substance ; which is an act for none but the deity to doe . and therefore if it be done by any thing in himself , it is by the deity residing in him , by the eternal word by whom all things were created : who was said to be the son of god before the incarnation ; and after the incarnation both he that was born in time and this eternal word is look'd upon as one son of god by real and physical union . from whence that is easily understood which we alluded to before , as the father has life in himself , so has he given to the son to have life in himself . but our adversaries way is very unconceivable and unintelligible , and therefore doth plainly transgress against the rule he pretends it most agrees with , the making christian religion recommendable to them that are without . . as also he does herein against the third rule in no small measure . for by spoiling christ of his divinity and of being acknowledged in very truth the son of god , all those condescensions of his which he stooped to for our good , the esteem of them is much slackned and relaxed , and will not stick the mark so strongly as upon this ancient and universal hypothesis of the church of christ , who did acknowledge that he was really the son of god ; which must needs enhance the esteem of his sufferings exceedingly , and therefore more effectually melt our affections into the greater remorse for sin , and stouter resolutions to mortifie and kill all inordinate motions and desires , all perverse and corrupt suggestions of our natures , be it never so harsh to us , and bring them under the scepter of the crucified jesus . which this sect so little considers , that they very hardly are drawn to acknowledge christs death a sacrifice for sin ; and so by their dry , harsh and rash reasonings expunge one of the chiefest powers and choicest artifices of the gospel for the making men good . chap. vii . . imputative righteousness , invincible infirmity and solifidianism , in what sense they seem to complie with the second and last rule , and how disagreeing with the third . . the groundlesness of mens zeal for imputative righteousness , . and for solifidianisme . . the conspiracy of imputative righteousness , solifidianism and invincible infirmity to exclude all holiness out of the conversation of christians . . that large confessions of sins and infirmities without any purpose of amending our lives is a mere mocking of god to his very face . with the great danger of that affront . . the last examples of applying and examining of opinions according to the rules we have set down shall be in imputative righteousness , in perfection and infirmity , in iustification by faith alone , and in the reign of christ upon earth . and as for imputative righteousness , infirmity and the opinion of the solifidians , i must confess , they seem to pretend much to the exaltation of the person of christ , and to make men sensible of their great need of him ; and seeming to promise ease and security to careless sinners , may also make the gospel more passable to those that are without , that have a minde to enjoy this world as well as that which is to come , and is as plausible to such kinde of people as roman indulgences and pardons , absolution upon slight penances , and the like . to which kinde of errours and miscarriages i cannot but impute a great part of the degeneracy of christendome at this day . nor can i imagine how the more perfectly reform'd churches could have failed of proving generally excellent christians indeed , if these opinions of imaginary righteousnesse , empty faith , and the invinciblenesse of sin , had not stept into the room of those follies and errours they had fled from . whence it is apparent how highly they transgress against the third rule , and consequently how cautious men should be of either receiving them or communicating them to others . . for as for imputative righteousness it is very suspicious , seeing the scripture is silent therein , that it is the suggestion of hypocrisie and deceit to undermine that due measure of sanctification whereunto we are called . for otherwise this invention is utterly needless , the sacrifice of christs passion being sufficient to expiate whatever sins we fall into from any pardonable principle . which sacrifice were utterly needless , if the perfect righteousness of christ were so imputed to us as that we might reckon it our own . for then were we as righteous as christ , for he has no greater righteousnesse then his own whereby he is righteous . and this righteousness consisting as well of abstaining from sins as doing acts of righteousnesse , it is plain that all this is imputed to us , and that therefore hereby we are to be accounted of god as never to have sinned , and therefore there wanted no expiation for sin ; and so christ died in vain . for the imputation of his righteousness will serve for all . wherefore an opinion so absurd one cannot imagine why any should be so well pleased with , unless they intended it a shelter for sin , and to excuse themselves from real holinesse and righteousnesse . . neither do i know to what end but this men should so zealously press the opinion of being saved by faith alone , in such a perverse sense as some do , not meaning thereby a living faith working by love , but we must be justified by faith prescinding from charity , obedience , and whatever is accounted holy and just. but it is plain , that unless a man will say he is justified by a dead faith , which is no more true faith then a dead corps is a man , that real sanctity will as surely accompany faith as light does the sun ; and that the controversie is as ridiculously raised of faith , whether it alone justifie , as if one should move a question whether the sun alone makes it day . for if they mean the sun without the raies , it is evidently false ; but if they mean the sun alone without the moon or stars , it is as evidently true . but by prescinding life from faith , and contending that it justifies , is as incongruous as to assert that the sun without light makes day , and as mischievous as to insinuate that inward sanctity is not necessary to salvation . and therefore when they talk of faith alone , they ought to explain themselves so as that they may not be understood to exclude christian holiness , but iudaicall , and what other needless , imperfect and superstitious principles of justification men have stood upon in the world , and withall to urge an operative christian love , which is the fulfilling of the law. . to this imputative righteousnesse and iustifying faith , from which they would fain disjoyn real sanctity , they adde christian infirmity , whereby they would insinuate the invinciblenesse of sin. so that two of these opinions suggesting that that due degree of righteousness we have spoken of ( nay indeed any degree thereof ) is needlesse , and this other , that it is impossible , what can this tend to but an utter neglect of all holiness in christian conversation ? the profession of which frame of religion , though some take it to be a great piece of service of god , yet that apostle whose expressions they too often abuse , declares that it is a mere mocking of him , as if they did naso suspendere adunco ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , be not deceived , god is not mocked ; as a man sows , so shall he also reap . for this abuse and perverse application of the mystery of christianity to lewdness and secure wickedness is a mere deluding and mocking of the benigne counsel of god in christ. it is to flear in the face of heaven , and under pretence of extolling christ , really to subvert his kingdom upon earth . . is not this a mere mocking and confronting of the divine majesty , whenas he has sent christ into the world on purpose to redeem the world from their vain conversation , and to abolish or destroy the works of the flesh and the devil , to tell god in our devotions a long story of our own fleshliness and devilishness , and to intimate to him to his face , that however his free-graciousness is content it should be so , and that in the application of christs righteousness god cannot nor will not see any unrighteousness of ours ; and therefore , which is worst of all , after many long and tedious narrations , of which the greatest part is a very foul and black catalogue of our faults , to depart out of his presence without either hope , resolution or endeavour of being any thing better then we are : is not this , i say , to pervert and make ridiculous the good counsel of god even in his own hearing , and to jeer him to his face ? but however he may connive for a while at these follies or affronts , yet he will not alwaies keep silence and hold his hands : non semper stolidam praebebit vellere barbam iupiter . he will not alwaies be put off with solemn whimperings , hypocritical confessions , ruful faces , sore arms and legs tied up and set on wooden stumps , with dolefull acknowledgements of but wilful misery and poverty , of feigned and counterfeited maimedness and inability . if his indignation be kindled , yea but a little , it will burn off our wood , and force us to finde our legs , yea , and use our arms too , to fly or fend off , if it were possible , the strokes of divine vengeance that will justly finde us out . chap. viii . . the flaunting hypocrisie of the perfectionists , and from whence it comes . . the easie laws whereby they measure their perfection . and the sad result of their apostasie from the person of christ. . that there is far more perfection in many thousands of those that abhorre the name of perfection then in these great boasters of it . . in what consists that sound and comely frame of a true christian spirit . . and thus much of that creeping hypocrisie that walks with a still and demure pace in these opinions of imputative righteousnesse , empty faith and invincible infirmity : contrary to which is that flaunting hypocrisie of the high-flown perfectionists , whose constitutions yet are ordinarily as unsound as the former , and far more opposite and repugnant to the very frame and spirit of the gospel ; nay , i dare adde that it is an opinion cunningly urg'd by the envy of the devil himself upon hot , fierce , eager and melancholy spirits , that fly high and are exceeding subject to self-pride and arrogance , to obliterate in them the remembrance of the passion of christ , and to elude the use of that precious sacrifice , to slake the affections of men to him , and to draw them off from dependence any way on his person . which we may be the better assured of , if we consider what easie laws they measure their perfection by and their freedom from sin. . for any ill motions , though never so strong , if not assented to , they have no shame nor conscience of ; and if they be carried by the strength of temptation to commit the act , then they lay the blame on the impetuosity of the assault , conceit themselves to be only as ravished virgins ( according to the softness of their phansie and favourable opinion of their own sincerity ) deflowred against their own will , and still stand upon self-justification . and what is yet more execrable , when they are come to the height of their begodded condition , and arrived to the state of full perfection , then like the indian abduti or spanish illuminati , they cannot sin , do what they will ; let them commit what foulness they will , what injustice or cruelty soever is suggested to them , these unclean and proud fanaticks take it all to be inspiration ; or else are emboldened at last ( by the upshot of their luciferian apostasie from the simplicity of the truth of the gospel ) to hold that there is no difference of good and evil , and that sin is but a conceit , no real miscarriage , but to those that know not their own liberty . which final result of things does plainly indigitate , who moved at the bottom of the business in their first alienation from the person of our saviour . and the justice of god is very observable in such apostates , how they are strucken with blindeness , how silly and weak they are in their reason and imagination , and their lives and actions odious and abominable . . but that the religion of these perfectionists is not merely a surprisal by the sleights of satan , but a studied and premeditated revolt from their allegiance to our blessed saviour , though first suggested by the envy of lucifer against the son of god , is too-too plain in this ; that when they seem most tolerable and to have some conscience of their waies , yet what christians are troubled at and asham'd of , they will not acknowledge to be sin , lest they should seem to want the sacrifice of christ or be beholden to him for his sufferings . which is a sign , as i have already said , that familisme was invented by the malice of the devil to lay aside the office and person of christ : let them talk as highly and gloriously of their begodded estate as they will ; which their infernal teacher has taught them to boast of so much , that christ may seem lesse god then he is . but i dare pronounce , that thousands of poor modest christians that abhorre the name of perfection , and speak much of iustification by faith alone , of the imputation of christs righteousness , and complain of their own infirmity very sadly and seriously , have yet arriv'd to a far greater degree of perfection then these self-magnifiers and rude insulters over these humble and contrite spirits : who having no ill meaning by those frames of speech that are taught them , are affectionate adherers to their saviour , and out of their due reverence to god , and hearty abhorrence from all shew of or least approach toward sin and wickedness , take sanctuary in christ , and ease their souls by their reliance on his atonement and intercession for such infirmities as these bold and fanatical boasters would bear men in hand and perswade themselves not to be at all sinful . and now whether these rampant enthusiasts or the humble and orthodox christian be of the sounder complexion , let any man that is not wilfully blinde give sentence , and how allowable the doctrine of these perfectionists is , whenas it traiterously strikes at the person of our saviour and at the antiquating the office of his royal priesthood , and is cross to that lovely and decorous frame of spirit which is required of all men , and most of all of christians , that they be humble and lowly of minde , which the death of christ , and our reliance upon his intercession and sufferings for favour at the hands of god , does naturally nourish , and keep off that swollen unwholsome distemper of arrogance and self-weening . . in which , that no man may mistake me to his own prejudice , i say that the sound and comely frame of a christian spirit is this ; unfeignedly to endeavour the perfecting of all holiness both in heart and actions , and not to allow a mans self in any thing that he thinks is a sin ; and when he is arriv'd at that height of sanctity , that he is not conscious to himself that he does any thing that is unlawful , to give the whole praise to god , and to his merits and intercession that has procured him the assistance of his holy spirit , and by virtue of his death has so powerfully engaged him to warre against his lusts and to mortifie all his immoderate passions ; and withall to remember , that though he know nothing by himself , yet he is not thereby justified , and that a man cannot be sure but that he may mistake himself in some thing or other , though he never sin against his own light ; and to impute it rather to the mercy of god , that he has not led him into such violent temptations as some have been , that he finds himself not to have submitted to evil motions , then to ostentate his own strength , and contemn the protection of so kind a saviour , who being acquainted with humane infirmity , may justly be thought to have kept off those tempestuous assaults that otherwise might have invaded us . besides that , let us be never so perfect now , yet it cannot pay the old score , because we ought to have been alwaies without sin ; and therefore our recourse to so compassionate a saviour is never out of date . which is a truth indispensable both for the maintaining of the honour of christ , and keeping our selves in a submiss and humble frame of spirit towards god and towards men . so that the opinion of these enthusiastick perfectionists does plainly transgress against both the second and third rule we have set down . chap. ix . sincerity the middle way betwixt pretended infirmity and the boast of perfection : with the description thereof . . a more full character of the sincere christian. . that they that endeavour not after that state are hypocrites , and they that pretend to be above it , conspiratours against the everlasting priesthood of christ. . the personal reign of christ upon earth , and the millenium in the more sober meaning thereof applied to the above-nam'd rules . . to stear our course right therefore betwixt those hypocritical pretenders of invincible infirmity and these high-flown boasters of absolute perfection , we must keep in that safe middle path of unfeigned sincerity . which therefore wil neither charge the condition of nature , as being utterly uncorrigible , that cannot be reduc'd to obedience , no not by the power of the spirit of god ; nor cast it upon god himself , as being unwilling or not caring that nature should be thus reduc'd and brought under to the obedience of christ : but a man will charge himself in all his miscarriages , and hold it his duty ( and such as by gods assistance he may perform , if he be not wanting on his part ) to yield his members as instruments of righteousness to god , as well as he did before yield them as instruments of unrighteousness to sin. for sincerity implying a faithful purpose and will of doing what is right , christ has hereby wone the castle or fort of his enemy ; and all the ammunition and engines therein will certainly then be used for right designes . the eyes that before suck'd in rotten corruptive thoughts from false alluring objects , and so set the heart on fire with filthy lusts , are now made inlets of the light and brightness of the unspotted wisdome of god , fairly pourtraied out in the visible creature . those ears that could before drink in with delight the smooth tales of detraction and calumny , stand now open onely to the sighs of the poor or honest reports of our neighbour . those feet that before were swift to shed bloud , are now much more ready to rescue the innocent . those hands that before were onely exercised in griping and pulling from others , are now ever open for alms-deeds and bountiful distribution to the needy . that tongue that in secret would not spare to strike his friend , will now in a just cause defend his enemy . in brief , there is no external action of true sanctity and righteousness but the sincere christian both believes and findes he has a power to perform it , and therefore does constantly the good and refuses the evil , that his conscience tells him is so indeed , and is in his power to do and refrain : that is to say , he will be sure to refrain from whatsoever is unjust , he will never deal with another otherwise then himself would be dealt with , he will most certainly abstein from extortion , adultery , fornication , he will never doe any envious or revengeful actions . and not onely so , but he does believe that through the grace of god he may be quite devoid of all envy and malice , and not so much as bear any ill will against any man , no not against his enemies ; and the same of all other inordinate affections , which though they move strongly and rebelliously , yet he never assents so far to them as to be willing to doe them , though he had a secure opportunity thereof . . and yet he does not think himself perfect , though he thus assents to no sin while he thinks it so ; nor at all doubts of his salvation , though he be imperfect . and if by the boisterousness and importunity of a temptation or some unavoidable inadvertency he falls into any evil action , the pleasure he finds from it will be like that which a child gets by falling with his forehead against sharp stones or with his hands into the fire . wherefore his sincere love to righteousness and hearty abhorrence from sin will make him alwaies circumspect . for he holds himself bound not onely not to commit sin when it appears to be so , which he thinks then impossible for him to do ; but charges himself with a perpetual watchfulness , that he may not commit it when it would insinuate it self under some more specious shape . and though by divine assistance and faithful adhesion thereto , he finde himself arriv'd to that pitch that he has conquered all corruptions , so that he cannot charge himself with either pride , or lust , or envy , or covetousness , or any such like vice , or that he does misbelieve the promises of god , or does not depend upon his providence , or is not willing to submit to his will in all things to whatever condition he shall call him : yet he knowing himself withall not infallible , nor unconquerable , especially without the assistance of christ , as also actually beset with many inconveniences of humane nature ( such as are straying of thoughts , unevenness in devotion , indisposedness of minde by reason of this tabernacle of earth we live in ) and reflecting on the old reckoning of the follies of our life past , which nothing but ignorance can conceit to have been without sin , and how all these things ( though ordinary philosophy pronounces them to be no faults , but mere infirmities of nature ) they having been contracted by our lapse , may justly by religion be set on our score ; this sincere christian , whose character i have given , will be so far from setting the person of christ at defiance , and vilifying his passion , intercession and holy priesthood , that he will with the greatest reverence of devotion that can be imagined love him and adore him , and will not quit that sweet repose of minde he findes in the recounting with himself what an inestimable friend he has with god , for all the pleasures and greatest interests of this present life ; nor presume to be justified by his own life or works , but by faith in christ , whom he rejoices to think that he shall see his judge at the last day . . this is the true and sound complexion of a sincere christian ; and he that does not faithfully endeavour to arrive at this state , discovers himself to be an halting hypocrite , and one that is no lover of the divine life , nor has tasted the sweetness of sanctity , and of the holy spirit of god , nor known the power of his operations . he that pretends to be above it , he is self-condemned , and betraies himself of what kingdome he is , that he is inacted by the envy of satan against the kingdome of christ , to antiquate his offices and to lay aside his person : which he perswades sundry fanatical souls to do , puffing them up with the conceit of self-perfection , on purpose to exclude our saviour . the danger of which errour is no less then the utter forfeiture of their eternal salvation . for no man shall inherit eternal life but by the donation of the crucified iesus , whom god has appointed judge at the last day . besides that the very life and moral temper in these revolters from the son of god , if we compare it with that of the sincere christian , there is as much difference , to them that can tast , as betwixt the wilde grape and the sweet . so hard a thing is it for either nature or the devil to imitate the true tincture of the spirit of christ. their vine is the vine of sodom , and their fruit as the clusters of gomorrah , and their churches as a field whom the lord hath blasted , there is the smell of the sulphurous lake and of the pit of hell amongst them . . the last thing i propounded was the personal reign of christ upon earth . of which opinion as the reasons are slender or none at all , so the usefulness thereof to me invisible , not knowing that it promotes any end of the gospel which i can take notice of . but that there may be a millennium , as they usually call it , or a long period of time wherein a more excellent reign of christ then has manifested it self yet to the world may take place , truly it seems so reasonable in it self , and there are such shrewd places of scripture seem to speak that way , that it is hard for an indifferent man to gainsay it . but i conceive then that the renovation of the state of things will be , as s. peter speaks , into new heavens and new earth wherein righteousness shall dwell ; wherein real sanctity and universal peacefulness shall bear sway ; wherein the crucified iesus shall not be onely complemented aloof off , and saluted in statues and pictures , both himself and his mother and all his apostles and most eminent adherents ( whenas in the mean time mars , venus and pluto and other idols of the heathen are cordially lov'd and serv'd , all christendome giving themselves enormously to war and bloudshed , to lust and luxury , to wealth and covetousness , worshipping these deities in spirit and in truth : ) but as the divine honour done to our saviours person shall not then cease , so the power of his spirit shall be more potently felt for the unpaganizing of the world , and for the destroying of this spiritual idolatry , which is the inordinate affections and fierce endeavours of the animal life ; and shall implant such a love and liking of the life of christ , that peace and righteousness shall overflow all . contentions about opinions shall then cease , they being priz'd onely by the pride and curiosity of the natural man , and all the goodly inventions of nice theologers shall then cease , and all the foolish and perplexing arguments of the disputacious schools shall be laid aside , and the gospel alone shall be exalted in that day . and truly the millennium being in such a sense as this stated , it is both probable and very desirable , and an opinion that agrees with , nay such as may very well further , all the designes of the gospel ; as any one may discern by making application to the rules i have set down . of which rules these few examples may serve to shew the use , and to teach a man how to extricate himself from that mighty cumbersomeness of the numerosity of opinions , whether they be suggested from his own thoughts or offer'd by other men . for if he applies them to these rules , he will finde most of them either so little to the designes of the gospel , or so much against them , that he will account some not worth the sifting , others not worthy the naming , much less the entertaining by a sober christian. which practises and considerations cannot but tend much to the advancement of the gospel of christ , if diligently observ'd though but by private christians . i shall onely give some brief touch what is proper for the magistrate to contribute for the advancement of christianity , and then we shall conclude . chap. x. that in those that believe there is a god , and a life to come , there is an antecedent right of liberty of conscience not to be invaded by the civil magistrate . . object . that no false religion is the command of god ; with the answer thereto . . that there is no incongruity to admit that god may command contrary religions in the world . , . the utmost difficulty in that position , with the answer thereto . . that god may introduce a false perswasion into the mind of man as well for probation as punishment . . that simple falsities in religion are no forfeiture of liberty of conscience . . that though no falsities in religion were the command of god , yet upon other considerations it is demonstrated that the religionist ought to be free . . a further demonstration of this truth from the gross absurdities that follow the contrary position . . before we can well understand the power of the magistrate in matters of religion , we must first consider the common right of mankind in this point , provided they be not degenerated into atheisme and prophaneness . for he that believes there is no god , nor reward , nor punishment after this life , what plea can he have to liberty of conscience ? or how unproper is it to talk of his right in matters of religion , who professedly has no religion at all , nor any tie of conscience upon him to make that wicked profession ? for atheisme as it is very coursely false in it self to any man that has the clear exercise of his reason , so is it intolerably mischievous and destructive even to the present happiness of states and kingdomes , and therefore to be shunned and repressed as the very plague and pest of humane polities . but for those that seriously make profession of the existence of god creator of all things , and of his providence , and acknowledge that there is a life to come wherein the wicked shall be punished and the vertuous rewarded ; it seems to me that there does naturally accrew such a right to these men of freedome in their religion as is inviolable , and such as the power of the magistrate ought not to invade , unless there be some perverse mixture in it that forfeits their right . in the mean time supposing there be nothing but simple mistake , which they of the contrary religion will call superstition , yet the conscience of the other party being bound up to this , it is his natural right to have his freedome therein ; because his conscience is necessarily subjected thereby to a greater power then any is on earth : and therefore not to give him the liberty of his religion is both a piece of inhumanity and injustice towards him , and a kind of rebellion against god whose liege subject he is . . nor can any thing that i know weaken the solidity of this truth , unless you will say that no false religion is the command of god , or at least that it is countermanded by the promulgation of the true. to which i answer , that there is so much truth in those religions i speak of , that they contain a belief of the existence of god & that there is a life to come ; which is a demonstration that the rest of their religion , in the belief and exercise whereof they seriously and sincerely seek the favour of god and eternal happiness , does bind their conscience most severely and indispensably to obedience . which immediate dictate of conscience in a soul that is * sincere , what is it but the command of god ? and before his voice be heard here , his will is not promulgated to that person . for nothing but conviction of conscience that this or that is the will of god is properly the promulgation of his will to every particular soul : otherwise it is but as a recital of the law in a * language the people understand not , and therefore can take no hold upon them . again , how can an erroneous conscience oblige to obedience , if its dictate be but as from it self , and not the command of god ? for it is improper to say a man is obliged to obey himself , especially in matters of religion . wherefore it is plain that the obligation is to god , and from god , who has proclaimed in the heart of every man that is conscienciously and sincerely religious how he will be served and worshipped , and by inevitable trains of providence has for a time fixt him to this or that perswasion . which being the most express , the most complete and articulate way that god can promulgate his law by , namely , the conviction of mens reason and conscience ( for i speak of such as are in their wits , not mad-men and fanaticks , nor yet such as embrace for religion precepts contrary to the light and law of nature , which is the highest and most uncontrovertible law of god , as being not topical but universal , and therefore there can be no perswasion against that , but it is to be imputed to the villany of man , not to the command of god , who in all nations by the inward light of nature commands to the contrary , be their topical religion what it will ; ) in these things , i say , whose falseness is not easily discoverable by the light of nature ( such as are sundry matters of fact done many ages ago , and religious precepts and ceremonies thereupon depending ) if there be this conviction of conscience concerning them , there is necessarily implied the command of god to that people so convicted . for when can god be said to command a person , if not then when he conveys a practical perswasion so unto him ( be it by the intervention of what providence it will ) that there is no place left to doubt but that it is his command ? for if he spoke to him face to face ( which he does not doe to one of infinite thousands , nor it may be properly to any ) there could be no greater assurance of receiving a command from him . wherefore a man being as fully assured that he has received a command from god as he can be assured , and this assurance being contrived into him by the providence of god himself ; it is evident that the command is truly from god. to which a man is still obliged till he does in as express a manner receive a countermand from the same soveraign power . . which countermand , according to what i have already laid down , is not received nor promulgated till the conscience be convinced , but is still as a law repeated in a strange language ; and therefore being not understood , is not obligatory . nor does the great law-giver of the universe contradict himself in this variety , nay contrariety , if you will , of religions . for he does not command them all to the same people at the same time ; but every one according as his conscience is convicted receives a new command , and where they are inconsistent , relinquishes the old . and truly there seems no harshnesse nor incongruity at all in admitting variety and contrariety of religions in the world , and all commanded by god , if this diversity and opposition were discoverable only in several degrees of perfection , or in the manner of worship and ceremony : but they being contradictory one to another in the very articles of their creeds , this seems an insuperable difficulty , how god should command them to believe contradictions , of which one part must of necessity be false . as for example , it is impossible , that christ died on the crosse , and , that he died not on the crosse , or , that he rose again from the dead , and , that he did not rise again from the dead , should both parts be true . in the former of which examples the turks , in the latter the iews belief is opposite to ours . . this truly at first sight seems a very hard knot . but the difficulty will not prove so formidable , after we have considered wherein it lies and how it may be answered . and surely it lies mainly in this , whether it be consistent with the nature of god to conveigh a false perswasion into the minde of man or no. this is the utmost of the intricacy . to which methinks the answer is not difficult . i freely therefore do affirm , that it is not inconsistent with gods nature so to do . for he is thereby neither the authour of any sin committed by us , nor doth he commit any thing himself herein unworthy of his divinity . he is not the authour of sin in us , in that invincible ignorance is no sin , nor any act that proceeds therefrom . there is indeed lesse perfection in these actions , but every imperfection is not sin ; for they may be such imperfections as are utterly involuntary and unavoidable , as we suppose this false persuasion is and all the effects of it . . nor does god do any thing unworthy of himself in introducing such an invincible or unavoidable perswasion , though it be false . for to cause another to think that which is not true , is not simply evil in it self . otherwise it were unlawful to fence , and to use ordinary stratagems of warre , wherein the enemy endeavours to deceive each other ; which is not done but by bringing them into a false belief . and we are the worst kinde of enemies against god , being rebels and apostates from him : and therefore though he needs insinuate no mistakes into us by way of stratagem , yet he may fix upon us the belief of such things as are false by way of punishment ; and though he command homage from us as his subjects , yet he may do it with several badges of disgrace , as some offended prince might command a rebel for a time to wear some sordid token of his rebellion upon his outward garments whenever he went abroad , or an incensed high priest for penance adjudge some offender to do his devotions alwaies in some dark pit or dungeon , in stead of a convenient closet or well-adorned church . which things though they be but ugly in themselves , yet they being part of that duty they are tied up to by them that ought to command , they are free from the molestations of others that are inferiour to that power that commanded them ; nor are these offenders the one to be drag'd into the church to do his devotions there , nor is any one to pull off by violence from the other the badge of dishonour that he is commanded to wear . now the dishonourable badges of the soul are those grosse errours and ignorances with which god may justly be deemed , by way of reproach and punishment , to command those to worship him that are convinced so to do , nor know yet any thing better . and the dark pit may be any blinde dispensation which divine providence has adjudged men to , till their conviction to the contrary . for conviction is the immediate command of god in the conscience ; as i have often repeated . . and as god by way of punishment may introduce a false perswasion into the minde of man , so also by way of probation . for if to introduce a false perswasion in it self be not simply evil , how can it be evil when used for a good end , and by an unerring wisedom , and from an infinite goodness ? which powers if we were invested with , none could make any controversie of it , but that we might also take the liberty to do so too . and people hold it ordinarily very pardonable , if not allowable , to impose upon children and sick persons by false stories for their health , and to save the spilling of innocent bloud by concealing the pursued from the knowledge of him that would murther him . nay , in smaller exigencies , as in the trial of a servants trust , no man would be much offended if one made his servant believe he trusted him further then he did , either to encourage his faithfulness or to detect his fraud : as if he should in his presence put up into a box some false jewels that made a great show , but of small value , and should commit them unto his servants custody carefully sealed up as a most precious treasure , thereby to try if he will run away with them ; adding thereunto a sealed bag of counters with an old inscription of so much in gold. such a trial as this , which implies an introducing of a false opinion into the minde of the servant , few or none would hold culpable in his cautious master . what injustice therefore can it be in god , if he try the souls of men first in a false religion , perswading them that it is true , and thereby commanding the practice thereof ; since by this means their faithfulness is discovered , whether they will be sincere when that is committed to them which is wholly true indeed ? . it is plain therefore that some falsehoods in a religion which has so much truth in it as to engage a man in the exercise thereof in hope of eternal life , doe not hinder but that this whole religion that obliges the conscience is the command of god to them whose conscience it does oblige ; and therefore that they are free from the commands of any external power , if some other things of another nature do not make them forfeit their liberty . for the simple falsities in religion are not enough , that is , are not sufficient to detect that such a religion is not commanded to such and such persons by god himself ; who thought good to try abraham's faith by that false perswasion , that he was actually to sacrifice his son to him , whenas god intended no such matter . which example does prove that god has not only a power , but has put also into act this right that he has of causing men to think otherwise then what is really true . but what is that to thee ? they must stand or fall to their own master , nor hast thou any power to countermand them till they have a countermand from god by clear conviction that the way they are in is false : for then onely ceases it to be the command of god to them . . but if thou wilt be so humour some for all this as to deny that such a conviction of conscience , so stated as i have stated it , is the real command of god in every particular , namely , in the apprehensions which are false ; yet , though this were admitted , it will notwithstanding be evident that it is a piece of rudeness and barbarity to incommodate a person thus perswaded for the profession of his religion . for first , his speaking and acting according to the unavoidable perswasions of his minde is not a sin , it arising according to our hypothesis out of invincible ignorance ; nor is he supposed to act any thing against the known laws of nature ; and therefore no just right of any one is endamaged : but in the mean time the soveraignty of the godhead is fully acknowledged , and the loyalty and sincerity of the religionist exercised therein . wherefore what reason can there be that any one for so good an action , that is not exceptionable for any thing that is properly sinful , should be rudely treated , punished , or any way disturbed or hindred ? for whosoever endeavours his forcible hindrance , does not only suppress an innocent and laudable action , but he does necessarily perpetrate a foul and sinful one . for such is the solicitation of others to the omission of that duty of loyalty our own conscience tels us we owe to god. wherefore he that hinders the sincere religionist from the profession of his religion , tempts him to a sin against god : which no powers in the world have a right to do , but are ipso facto guilty of rebellion against their maker , by corrupting his liege subjects , and urging them to faithlesness and neglect of their duty . how culpable are they then in forcing them and haling them to such actions as they are perswaded god has severely forbid them ? verily if this be not unjustly to command him who is under the power of another , i cannot imagine what is ; nor what can be deemed a sin against god , if urging others to sin against him be not . so that again , even upon our adversaries own terms , it is plain that the soveraign power of god sets the sincere religionist free in matters of religion from any external force or power whatsoever . . now as this position recommends it self sufficiently from its own native concinnity and solidity ; so will it also appear still more solid and more consonous to reason , if we consider the absurdity of the contrary position , namely , that liberty of conscience is by no means to be granted in religion . for from hence it follows that every religion may , nay ought to keep out all other religions with all care possible . for every mans conscience tels him his is the best , or else he would not be of it ; nay , that there is none true and saving but his own . for if they will say they may be saved in others , then is our former argument a perfect demonstration against them , that they are not only injurious to men but absolute rebels against god indeed , in treating those ill that are his liege people , and whom he loves so well that he intends to save them , and in persecuting them even for those very actions wherein they do most seriously express their obedience to him . but if there be but one true and saving religion at once in the world , this is the greatest disinterest to it that can be imagined . for upon this position it will be as carefully kept out and as forcibly as any of the rest ; which in my apprehension is very foul play , and therefore this is another evidence of the truth of our thesis , viz. that the contrary is the greatest injury and disinterest to the true religion that can be supposed , which nothing but external force hinders from spreading over all . for magna est veritas , & praevalebit , i mean in the mindes and consciences of those men where she may have free audience , not in the noise and terrour of tyrannical impositions and obtrusions . besides the frequent misery and calamity this position brings upon nations and kingdoms , viz. wars , bloud-shed , subversion of families , deposing , stabbing or poisoning of princes , perpetual enmity and hatred , and all the works and actions of the kingdom of darkness . of so mischievous consequence is this opinion we do oppose . whenas if it were acknowledged universally , that liberty of religion is the natural right of mankinde , all these mischiefs would be prevented ; the prince could not pretend any quarrel against the people , nor the people against the prince or against one another , but in civil rights that are more plain and intelligible . chap. xi . . that there is a right in every nation and person to examine their religion , to hear the religion of strangers , and to change their own , if they be convinced . . that those nations that acknowledge this right and act accordingly , have naturally a right to send out agents into other nations . their demeanour there , and the right of revenging their injuries . and how this method had justified the spaniards invasion of the indians . . the unpracticablenesse of the present theory by reason of the general perverseness of the world. the advantageousnesse of it to christendome , and suitablenesse of it to the spirit of a christian. . that religion corruptive of manners is coercible by the magistrate . . and that which would plainly destroy the defence of the countrey . . as also whatever religion is inseparably interwoven with principles of persecution . . an answer to that objection , that all sects are persecutive , and that therefore there can be no liberty of conscience given . . it is manifest therefore that liberty of religion is the common and natural right of all nations and persons , that is to say , that they have a power , as they are rational men , and believe that there is a god , and a life to come , to examine what is the best way to serve him for their future advantage ; and not to be tied up so to that religion is first proposed to them , but that they have a right to suspect , especially if they do not like it , that there is some better , and therefore that they may confer with those of other religions , send for them out of one nation into another , and entertain them when they are arrived , hear them diligently , and , if they be convinced , openly profess it . or if they come of their own accord , they are to be entertained with the same security that an agent of state is , and may freely converse with them of the nation that have a minde to hear them . for this is a piece of their right of liberty , to speak as well as the others to hear . which transactions would breed no disturbance at all , if this right of liberty of religion was universally understood and acknowledged by all the nations of the world : as certainly it is their right . . and it being so , it seems plainly to follow , that any nation or people that do heartily ackowledge the reasonableness of this right , and their practice is accordingly , that there accrues to them this part of the right also , that they may send of those of the religion themselves are into their neighbouring nations to communicate their religion to them , and to try if they can convince them of that which they are perswaded is true , and to shew them the errours of their own ; but at seasonable times , and without reproach or tumult , or any way confronting them in the exercise of their religion ; a thing very barbarous and insufferable at home , much more abroad in countreys where they are strangers . for the avoiding of which wilde enormities it seems reasonable in it self , and a thing to be agreed upon , that there shall be no security to any stranger that takes upon him to gather the people together under pretence of instructing them in a more perfect religion , unless he be an agent from his own nation for that purpose . nor is he to begin with the rude people , but to act above-board , and to make his applications to the governours of the places where he arrives ; and not to pretend to the juglings of inspirations , and the irresistible blusters and impetuosities of an unaccountable conscience : but first with a discreet candour to allow and commend what is good and praise-worthy in the religion of the place ; and then , after an unaffected profession of the love and kindeness of them that sent him , towards the nation , with all prudent insinuations possible to lay before them the groundlesness or gross falsities which are in their religion ; and after that to shew the most demonstrative reasons he has for the recommending of his own , namely , such as are agreed upon by the mature deliberation and counsel of them that sent him upon this errand , to which it should be criminall to adde , upon their authority , any foolish inventions of his own . and if these agents for religion neither injuring nor defrauding any one of their civil rights , shall be evilly entreated by those they offer to instruct , if they abuse them by imprisonment or any other hard dealing , or finally put them to death ; that state or kingdom to which they belong may require their bloud at their hands , as having grosly and barbarously transgressed against the law of nations , and the common right of all mankinde that have not forfeited it some way or other : as these have not , they allowing this liberty among themselves , and to all others that have a sense and conscience of the same right , and being firmly resolved , if it should come to a war , and they be conquerours of their ill neighbours , to use no other means to turn their new subjects from their old religion , but by peaceably and patiently shewing them the vanity thereof , and the excellency and solidity of their own . which cannot by any means be called the propagation of religion by the sword , when there shall not be so much force put upon them to change their former religion , if they be found conscientious , as to compell them to be present at the solemnities of the new. only they shall swear fealty to their conquerours , and be well indoctrinated in that common right of mankinde , that no man is to be persecuted for religion , if he have not forfeited that right by taking upon him the liberty of persecuting others . and therefore they may enjoy their religion if they can still like it , upon equal termes with the conquerours , as to their private capacities . if the spaniard had made himself master of the indies upon these conditions , and had abstained from his execrable cruelties , he might have justified himself to all the world. for this had not been to propagate religion by the sword , but to maintain a mans natural right . . this theory i think is very sound at the bottome , and that it is very clear what ought to be ; but hugely unpracticable by reason of that general perverseness and corruption of men . yet i thought it worth the while to expose it to view , the acknowledgement thereof being the greatest advantage to chritian religion that can possibly be conceived , there being nothing so effectual for the easie fall of turcisme and paganisme into the profession of christ as this prin●iple we have explained ; our religion being not onely solid in it self , but incomparably more demonstrable to all rational spirits then any religion ever extant in the world. besides , though its use will not extend so farre at the first , yet it may be something serviceable to these parts of the world whose eyes are more open to truth then others are . and verily in my judgement , this principle i do thus recommend , as it seems to me to deserve the reception of all men as true , so of all christians especially , not onely upon point of policy , but as more sutable to that spirit they are of , abhorring from force and cruelty ; who are therefore to permit full liberty of conscience to all those that do not forfeit it by mixing with their religion such principles as are contrary to good manners and civil right , or repugnant to this very principle of liberty we speak of . . wherefore those that under pretence of religion would corrupt the people with such doctrines as plainly countenance vice and tend to the rooting out of the sense of true honour and vertue out of a nation , have lost this common right we contend for , as being infecters and poisoners of the people amongst whom they live ; and therefore the therefore the publick magistrate of what nation or religion soever has a power to restrain them , their doctrine being so dangerous to the welfare of a state , and contrary to the light of nature and suffrage of the wisest men in all places of the world and in all ages . no religion fraught with such rotten ware as this , is to be received in any coast where they would put in , but to be kept out by strangers and suppressed at home . . again , those also would forfeit this right of liberty , whose religion should contain any thing in it that would weaken the state which received it . as if there were some such absurd superstition , as upon pretence of an high esteem fo virginity and extreme abhorrence from warre should urge the emasculation of every third male-child , or the luxation or cutting off their fore-finger or thumb , whereby the country would be depopulated , and the inhabitants made unserviceable for the defence thereof : there is no question but the magistrate might inhibit such a religion as this . . as he might in the last place all such as have intermixed with them that wolvish and ferine humour of persecuting others for their religion , that would live quietly by them , and would not force any one to their own faith , nor disturb the publick exercise of religion in others . for these have no right to be suffered further then at the discretion of the magistrate ; nor can more reasonably plead for liberty then the wolfe and fox crave leave to have their kennels or holes in the midst of a sheepfold , or the owle or night-raven to put in their note amidst a quire of nightingales . . but you 'l say , all religions and sects are such foxes and wolves , and therefore there is no liberty of religion at all to be given . those that are so , i confess , are at the mercy of the magistrate , as having forfeited their right . which forfeiture he may exact more or less severely accordingly as he has more or less security that these crafty and wild creatures may do no mischief . but i do not believe that all men that do profess religion are of this partial nature ; nay on the contrary , i do verily believe that they that are the most truly religious , are the most abhorrent from persecution of conscience sake . wherefore as many as are ready to profess , and that upon oath , if it be required , that it is their judgement ( and their practice does not contradict it ) that no man is to be incommodated in his civil rights , in his libety , estate or life , for the cause of such a religion as whose principles teach not to incommodate others , and do avow that theirs is such , and that they will be as faithful to the prince or state in which they live as those of his own religion ; these having in no wise forfeited their right of liberty , neither this way nor any other , by intermingling practices or principles against the light of nature and laudable morality ; it were the highest piece of injustice that can be committed to abridge them of the safe profession thereof . chap. xii . . to what persons and with what circumstances the christian magistrate is to give liberty of conscience . and the great advantage thereof to the truth of christianity . . that those that are not christians , are not to be admitted into places of trust by the christian magistrate , if he can supply himself with those that are . . that the christian magistrate is to lay aside the fallible opinions of men , and promote every one in church and state , according to his merit in the christian life , and his ability promoting the interest of the church of christ and the nation he serves . . that he is to continue or provide an honourable and competent allowance for them that labour in the word and doctrine . . that the vigilancy of the christian magistrate is to keep under such sects as pretend to immediate inspiration unaccountable and unintelligible to sober reason , and why ? ▪ that the endeavour of impoverishing the clergy smels rank of prophaneness , atheisme and infidelity . . that the christian magistrate is either to erect or keep up schools of humane learning , with the weighty grounds thereof . . a further enforcement of those grounds upon the fanatick perfectionists . . the hideous danger of casting away the history of the gospel upon pretence of keeping to the light within us . . to come to a conclusion therefore , and to touch the point we have aimed at all this time , what a christian prince or the supreme magistracy may contribute to the advancement of the gospel of christ : from these general principles we may inferre , first , that he is to give liberty of conscience to all such as have not forfeited it , namely such as i have last of all described , especially if they be natives of the place , were it possible for them to be of any religion then christian. but withall to require a publick and solemn account of their change of religion ; wherein it may appear whether it be conscience or design or humour that makes them apostatize . which either fraud or giddiness shall make the party obnoxious to such rebuke and penalty as may probably deterre the people from the like causeless revolts . but if the person be of a serious life , and shall be found to have changed his opinion upon such grounds of reason as , though false , yet may possibly mislead a wel-meaning man ; yet for sureness he shall be put upon his oath : which test though it be abused to over-petty matters , yet certainly must not loose its due use in causes of so solemn importance . in which kind of cases if any refuse upon a pretended scrupulosity of swearing at all , and in an affectation of seeming more precisely holy then others , without question it is not religion but some fathomless depth of knavery that lies at the bottom ; and they may justly be suspected of some treasonable and treacherous design against the religion and government under which they live . wherefore before they should have liberty to profess themselves of another religion , they should be required to take a solemn oath , with a deep imprecation of divine vengeance upon soul and body , that nothing moves them thereto but mere conviction of conscience , and that they have no secular design at all in their change , nor desire any more liberty then what they think themselves bound in conscience to allow to others . which publick examination and oath is very useful also and justifiable upon mens relinquishing of the publick worship of god in the churches , though they do not professedly declare themselves to be no christians . for not to joyn with them in publick worship , is the next door to that apostasy . this practice would be of infinite advantage for the truth of christianity . for hereby the priesthood will be more cautious how they clogge the gospel with unwarrantable trumperies ; and those that would revolt , by this calling them to an account first , shall be forced to feel the strength and solidity of that religion they would bid adieu to , and their secret designes prevented by the solemnity of an oath . and lastly the christian magistrate by giving this liberty after these due circumstances ( which assuredly he will have very seldome occasion for by reason of the evidence of our religion ) will avoid the justifying the iniquity of other religions who not by power of reason and conscience , but by outward force , hinder their natives from turning christians . . but secondly , though these serious people shall not be deprived of their liberty , lives or estates , nor any way impaired in their private fortunes ; yet they shall be disabled from bearing any office of trust in the commonwealth , especially if there be of the christian religion that will manage them with equal skil and fidelity . for it is plainly unnaturall , if not impossible , that a man that is serious in his religion should not prefer one of his own faith before a stranger , if in other things they be equal . besides that the lawes of caution and prudence cannot fail to suggest so reasonable a choice ; which are very much to be listned to in things of this nature . for present possession of power is better assurance then the oath of well-meaning but withall of temptable and lapsable mortals . . thirdly , the christian magistrate is to give no assistance of his power nor countenance any further then christianity it self is concerned : that is to say , he is to give that assistance which is due from a magistrate for the defending and promoting of our religion , so far forth as it is plainly discoverable in the written word of god in the literal and historical meaning thereof : for to cant onely in allegories , is to deny the faith of christ. and as for opinions , though some may be better then othersome , yet none should exclude from the fullest enjoyment of either private or publick rights , suppose there be no venome of the persecutive spirit mingled with them . but every one that professes the faith of christ and believeth the scripture in the historical sense thereof , let his opinions be otherwise what they will , he is according to his life , worth and ability every where to be preferred in either church or state. which is absolutely the most advantageous way for the advancing of the gospel and making the world good that the wit of man can find out . and external force being so unfitting in it self , and most of all unbecoming the christian magistrate , in matters of religion , what one might fancy lost in laying aside persecution , would in as great a measure be regained by countenancing this free and naked representation of the beauty and perfection of the gospel quite rid of all pretended traditions and whatever obfuscations and entanglements of humane invention . for then the truth of god would be like an unsheathed sword , bright and glittering , sharp and cutting , and irresistibly convincing the rational spirit of a man. whenas now our religion is wrapt up in so many wreathes of hay and straw , that mo man can see nor feel the edge of it . . fourthly , being compulsion is not to be used nor prudence excluded , ( for it is the same fanatical madness to exile prudence out of affairs of church and state as to exclude reason and mathematicks out of philosophy ) it is very plain that the christian magistrate is engaged to adde to liberty of conscience the advantage of an honourable and comfortable subsistence for those that labour in the word and doctrine ; that is to say , he is obliged in all reason and conscience to continue it where it is , and to raise it whereever it is wanting . and i am very confident it is either gross fanatical ignorance , or the hidden malice of satan against the kingdome of christ , acting either in profane and atheistical persons or such as are not cordially christians , that suggests any thing to the contrary . for the less any religion is underpropped by external force , the more able ought their heads and tongues to be that are only by their learning , eloquence and innocency of life to support it : and the present ages having so much wit and so little sense of piety , he that will undertake to give a good account of his religion and to answer all opposers , though the scruples and controversies be but concerning that which is plainly in the scripture , he ought to have leisure and vacancy from the affairs of the world to prepare himself , and continue his dexterity in this kinde . for that tedious buzz and noise of the spirit has now , i think , made it self so ridiculous , that no prudent man will listen to such lazy impostures . every one is to give a reason of his faith ; but priests or ministers more punctually then any ; their province being to make good every sentence of the bible to a rational enquirer into the truth of those oracles . who therefore can sufficiently attend these things , and be to seek for bread for himself and his family ? how unjust and sordid a temper therefore are those persons of , that could be content to leave the clergy to work for their living ? any inferiour fellow may talk and prate phrases and make faces , but when a sober man would be satisfied of the grounds from whence they speak , we shall hear no news of any thing but the spirit , and railing against carnal reason , though it be no soft flesh but hard and penetrant steel , and such as pierces them to the very heart , for all their contempt and slighting of it . . and verily while i consider the unreasonableness and ill consequence of this kinde of enthusiasme , i cannot but think the vigilancy of the christian magistrate should extend to this also amongst other things , to suppress and keep under all sects and religions that hold of so fanatick a tenour , that is to say , that profess they believe against the christian faith from the illumination of such a spirit as they can give no account of , viz. such as does not illuminate their reason , whereby their doctrine may be accountable and intelligible to others , but only heat them and make them furious against the christian church . for besides the hazarding of making a whole nation mad ( for seriously it is an infectious disease , if not the very possession of the devil ) there may some damnable plot lie under it against christianity and the state. for it is a more easie thing to heat the phansies of the vulgar , then to inform their iudgements ; though this tends to sober edification , that to confusion and destruction . in brief , there are these two very bad things in this resolving of matters into the immediate suggestion of the spirit not acting upon our understandings . first , it defaces and makes useless that part of the image of god in us which we call reason ; and secondly , it takes away that special advantage that christianity has above all other religions , that she dare appeal to so solid a faculty . and therefore he that takes away the use of reason in religion , undermines christianity , and laies it as low as the basest superstition that ever appeared in the world. . now therefore to return , i say , to talk at the rate of these blinde illuminati , that do not so much as pretend to any solid satisfaction in what they say , requires no study , nothing but heat and impudency , and a careless insensibility of what they said last , or whether one thing will hold with another : but he that so speaks as ready to give a reason of what he delivers , and indeed of all things that are already delivered in the scriptures so plainly as that it appears what the meaning is , ( for it is no prejudice that there be some depths beyond the present reach of men ) this man certainly ought not to be tied up to the cares of the world by being put to labour for his bread ; but ought to have a liberal , certain and honourable allowance . but to contemn the christian clergy , or to endeavour to make them contemptible by impoverishing them and forcing them to base terms of living , smels exceeding rank of prophanenesse , atheisme , and infidelity : and the railing at them and calling them mercenary because they have a just maintenance allowed them , is assuredly the voice of that envious accuser of the brethren , who by those villainous reproaches and calumnies would undermine and pull down the kingdom of christ in the world , by striking at the necessary props and supporters of it , the ministry of the gospel ; whose subsistence ought to be independent of the people , that may reprove the more freely , and that there may be no temptation to either unworthy connivances , or to the sophisticating the doctrine of christ by sweet poison , to inveigle the rich , and to untie their purse-strings ; what they thus pay , being the price of their own souls , betraied into the hands of such canting mountebanks . . fifthly , the christian magistrate ought also to continue , and erect where there wants , publick schools of learning . for the more knowing his subjects are , the more certainly will they keep to christianity , and the more easily will others come off to the same faith. nothing comparable to this for the preventing all delusions and impostures in religion . mahometisme could never have been set on foot but in a rude and illiterate nation . but christianity got its first foot-hold in the most civilized parts of the world , though persecuted and opposed . besides that it is a piece of unspeakable madness to think that any man can be a fit interpreter of scripture without that which some in contempt call humane learning , as logick or the known principles of reasoning ; i will adde mathematicks and philosophy , and skill in tongues and history : no man without the knowledge of these can make good the truth of those holy oracles to knowing and understanding men . and therefore they that decry these helps , are either very ignorant , or out of their wits , or have a treacherous plot against the flourishing of christianity , and would bring in some fanatick religion , or else are enemies to all religion whatsoever . . for tell me , o ye high-flown perfectionists , and ye great boasters of the light within you , could the highest perfection of your inward light ever shew to you the histories of past ages , the universal state of the world at present , the knowledge of arts and tongues , without some external helps of either books or teachers ? how then can you understand the providence of god , the purpose of prophecies and the authority of that religion which god has peculiarly appointed us to walk in , without external assistances ? how can you make a due judgement of the truth of christianity , without a rational explication of the prophecies that foretold the coming of christ , without weighing what may be said concerning the authentickness and uncorruptedness of his history in the gospels , and without considering the reasonableness of all those miraculous matters there recorded concerning him , and of what is behinde for him to perform at his visible return to judge the quick and the dead ? no light within you , unassisted of helps without , and of the knowledge of history , tongues and sciences , and carefull exercise of reason , that excellent gift of god to mankinde , can ever make you competent judges of this matter . . and as you do thus forfeit the knowledge of the truth by this sullen self-sufficiency of yours within , so do you also endanger your eternal salvation . for you cannot justly excuse your selves by the close following the light within you , if you do it in such a contemptuous manner that you will listen to nothing offered you from without , though never so accommodate and agreeable to those rational faculties god has given you . wherefore it being no necessitated ignorance , but your own wilfulness , that has made you apostates from the law of christ , your unbelief is no abrogation of that law to you ; but , stop your ears as hard against it as you can , yet you shall be judged by it at the last day ; when , you having not served god as he would be served , he will assuredly reward you as you would not be rewarded . for there is no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved but that of iesus christ of nazareth , whom the iews crucified and god raised from the dead . wherefore you who make it the chiefest point of your religion to crucifie him again by celebrating that execrable pascha or phase , which is your detestable killing of christ according to the flesh , that it to say , according to the letter or history , which is to put christ out of all his offices assigned to him by his father , and to turn mere pagans and infidels , think as smoothly and favourably of your selves as you will , that doom must pass upon you at last ( not according to your self-flattering mysteries , but according to the truth of the letter ) which shall adjudge all the wicked to that everlasting fire which is prepared for the devil and his angles . chap. xiii . . the authours application to the better-minded quakers . . he desires them of that sect to search the grounds and compute the gains of their revolt from christ. . that there are no peculiar effects of the spirit of god in the sect of the quakers , but rather of pythonisme . . that their inspirations are not divine , but diabolicall . . the vanity of their boasting of the knowledge of their mysterious allegories . . the grounds of their insufferable bitterness against the ministers of christ. . that he was urged by the light within him to give witnesse to the truth of the history of the gospel , and to admonish the quakers . his caution to the simple-minded among them how they turn in to familisme . . his ease and satisfaction of minde from disburdening himself of this duty . . the compassionablenesse of their condition , . and hope of their return to christ. . knowing therefore the terrour of the lord , we were earnestly moved in minde to forewarn you and exhort you , i mean , as many of you are curable and reducible to the truth . for some have celebrated that accursed pascha so fully and obdurately , that they are become past feeling , having not any sense nor hope left of the concerns of another life , god having justly given them up to a reprobate sense for the denying of the lord that bought them . but for you whose defection is not compleated , nor your eyes sealed up to perfect infidelity , let me desire you to make a stand awhile , to lay your hands upon your own hearts , and impartially examine your selves , what you would have , where you would be , and what good thing you would seek , that is not plainly exposed to your view in the gospel of christ. you had begun well : who has hindred you ? what has tempted you out of the way ? do you now sincerely seek the kingdom of heaven , or gape after a booty upon earth ? examine your own consciences , and answer to your selves . i desire not to broach your shame . but i hope you will not account me injurious , if i take notice of such things as you conceal from none . . search therefore your own hearts , and try your selves , what manner of spirit has taken hold upon you , since you have been so imbittered against the school of christ. there is no vertue you can pretend to that is not comprehended in his life and doctrine in the highest perfection and clearnesse . how can you then take a new guide , unless it be to be led into some pleasing errour ? and truly it is no small pleasure to the proud to have something separate and peculiar of their own , to seem wiser and holier then other men . and i desire you to appeal to your own conscience , how great a stroke this vice has had in furthering on your apostasy ; and beseech you to compute , if you be still serious in religion , what you have gained by your revolt . is your reason any thing more improved ? nay certainly , that ye have cut off and cast from you as carnal and unholy . are you more humble and more charitable ? if you be , you do ill to conceal your vertues , who would have the world believe so highly of you . you affect indeed to be very homely and sordid in your habits ; but you do not perceive how sowr your affected sordidness smels of the leven of the pharisees , who loved to be seen of men ; and how you have but licked up what diogenes that pagan sophist left in his tub , and have chosen rather to be proud cynicks then civil christians . and if your humility have so strong a sent of pride , how noisomely does your pride it self stink in the nostrils of all men , your disrespect to your betters , your sawciness , your censoriousness , quite contrary to the precepts and practice of all holy men in all ages ? your humility therefore being so little , your charity certainly cannot be great . for indeed you count all besides your selves a rude unsanctified mass , the weeds of the world , fit for nothing but the fire of your fanatick wrath to burn up . i but you will say , though you have forgone your reason and good manners , yet you have the spirit of god amongst you , which is worth all . if you have , shew me the fruit thereof . for pharisaical sowrnesse , contest with the magistrate , affronting the minister in his publick function , these are no fruits of the spirit of god ; but these alone with certain clownish forms of calling thou for you , and keeping on the hat when others in civil respect put it off , are the main effects of that spirit that distinguisheth you from others of the nation . . is this therefore the great purchase you have obtained by turning your back on christ and contemning of his person , to grow rude and clownish to all the world beside ? but methinks i hear you answer again , as for this man , we know not what is become of him ; but behold the spirit is sensibly present amongst us even at this day . but i demand by what signs . o , we shiver and quake every joynt of us . but that is no certain signe of the spirit of god. was not the winde suddenly turned into the north , or had you not an ephemera , or was not your over-excited choler entangled or turned out of the way by phlegme or melancholy ? what miraculous power is there in all this ? o , but there are also amongst us that have fallen down into a trance , that have foamed and swelled till their buttons break off . wherefore of a truth these men could not but be full of the spirit , and this be a miracle indeed . if your religion oweth not its growth to the tricks of juglers and tumblers , or to artificial epilepsies i do confesse , it is a miracle from these symptomes , if satan himself drives not on the designe . for these are plainly the passions of pythonicks , such a kinde of possession as seized the pagan-prophets and priests of old , who were no better then the worshippers of devils , whose oracles christ has silenced long since . wherefore examine your selves if you glory not in your shame : see how you tread : look behinde you , or rather search within you , who is the prompter or first mover in this new scene of things . . for tell me ( i beseech you ) what did your foaming prophets , when they vented themselves , discharge into your ears , whereby they may be deemed more divine then those fanatick pagans ? was not their continual song , so soon as they got upon their feet , the burning up of all ordinances ? from whence therefore could this voice come but out of the flames of hell ? or what could swell the bodies of your inspired , but the venome and poison of the devil , which at last working up to their mouths he spit out enviously against the worship of christs person and all his holy offices ? which is another evidence against you that your pretended inspirations are not divine but diabolical , and that the mystery of satan worketh amongst you , who would fain pull down him whom of a truth god hath set up to be a king and priest to the nations for ever . . but the sweetest satisfaction of all is , that you are so extraordinarily illuminated , that you understand all the mysteries of christs kingdom better then any one else , and can in a supercilious pity bemoan the ignorance of the world , or with an imperious bitterness fly in their faces and reproach them for it , especially the teachers of the people , that they have not taken up your allegorical knacks , nor know how to give a mystical meaning of the gospel from the preaching of iohn the baptist to the coming of christ to judgement . but you are indeed so unilluminated as not to understand that such devices as these are merely allusions of humane wit , and help very little to the enforcing of that they are made to signifie , namely , repentance and mortification of every evil lust and concupiscence , and a renovation of our mindes into the perfect image of christ , that his spirit may rule in us , and that the works of death and darknesse may be utterly destroied . for this truth is plainly and literally contained in the scripture ; so that if your mindes were not more set upon fancies then savoury instruction , you need not run a gadding after any new guide for the attainment of this light . and , god be thanked , many honest plain-hearted christians , that do not swagger and make such a noise with mystical phrases as you , both hear and live according to these gospel-precepts , using a secret and silent severity upon themselves , not acting the rough and hairy baptist upon others as you do , who love to o●tentate your self-chosen austerities to the eyes of the world , like the pharisees , who made sowr faces for fear the people should not take notice that they afflicted their bodies with fasting . what purchase therefore have you got by your allegorical mysteries ? unlesse you have been emboldned thereby to let go the historical truth of the gospel , and have found your selves much at ease , that your belief is not charged with such miraculous things as are written of christ , partly done already and partly to be done at the end of the world. for hereby you do proclaim your selves infidels , and that for all your boasting , your spirits are so foul and impure , that they are no fit receptacles of the holy christian faith , but that you have levelled your selves as low as epicures and atheists , who are no more capable of the belief of these things then the beasts of the field . . if it be thus with you , i dare appeal unto you whether you keep so precisely to the light within you , but that you have consulted with that blinde guide h. nicolas , and tasted of the treacherous sops of his abhorred passover , whose fanatick boldness has led the dance to this mad apostasy . have you not celebrated his detestable phase , who has gone about to perswade the world that the greatest and truest arcanum of the lords supper is iudas-like to betray their master , to kill christ according to the flesh , that is , to lay aside and misbelieve the truth of his history ? ask your own hearts , if the warmth of this sop has not so encouraged you , nay inflamed you with insufferable bitternesse against the ministers of christ as teaching nothing but lies , because they have not ceased to believe the truth . has not this with him that entred in with it so intoxicated you with rage , that you have trampled the holy bible under your feet ? is it not this that hath made you so often roar against and revile the preacher in the pulpit , and disturb the publick assemblies by your rude and frantick interpellations ? which extravagancies demonstrate by what spirit you are led , and that you are plainly rebels against christ , and are revolted to the powers of the dark kingdom . . these things i could not forbear to write , as being very much pressed in spirit thereunto . for the light within me , that is , my reason and conscience , does assure me that the ancient and apostolick faith according to the historical meaning thereof is very solid and true ; and that the offices of christ are never to be antiquated till his visible return to judgement according to the literal sense of the creed ; and that familisme is a mere flam of the devil , a smooth tale to seduce the simple from their allegeance to christ. and therefore i beseech every man in these daies of liberty to take heed how they turn in thither , especially those that are of an enthusiastick temper , such as are most of the honester and better-meaning quakers . for if in their bewildred wandrings they take up their inne here , let them look to it that they be not robbed of all the articles of the christian faith , and be stripped into naked infidelity and paganisme , and ( which is worst of all ) be so intoxicated with the cup of this inchantress , as to think this injury their gain , and to prefer false liberty before their christian simplicity , and those gaudy and phantastick titles of being deified and begodded before the real possession of christian truth and godliness . . these things both here and elsewhere i have been forced to utter to the world ; for it was as fire within me , and the discharging of my burden as it is mine own ease and satisfaction , so i do not despair but if there be that sincere zeal to truth and holiness that is pretended , that it will redound to the safety of these melancholy wanderers that look up and down for truth with that candle of the lord , the spirit that he has lighted in them . but however where it shall not take effect , i shall neverthelesse be excused , and their bloud will be upon themselves and their accursed seducers . . i know the haughty and covetous , that rellish nothing but the tearing to themselves undeserved respect from men , and clawing of money to them any way with their crooked talons , will hardly abstain even from open derision of my zeal and solicitude for so contemned a people , and look upon me as a man of very mean designs , that would any way intermeddle with these poor despised pilgrims . but these worldly sophists consider not that the gaining of the meanest soul to eternal salvation is really a greater prize then purchasing whole kingdoms upon earth , and infinitely above all the pains of any mans applications thereto . and besides , for mine own part , i have ever had so right a sense and touch upon my spirit of their condition , that i think none more worthy of a mans best direction then they ; the most imperious sects having put such unhandsome vizards upon christianity , that they have frighted away these babes that seem to me very desirous of the sincere milk of the word . which having been every where so sophisticated by the humours and inventions of men , it has driven these anxious melancholists to seek for a teacher within , and to cast themselves upon him who they know will not deceive them , the voice of the eternall word within them ; to which if they be faithfull , they assure themselves he will be faithfull to them again . which is no groundless presumption of theirs , it supposing nothing but what is very closely consistent with the nature of god and his providence . and truly as many of them as do persist in that serious and impartial desire of such knowledge as tends to life and godliness , i do not question but that god will in his due time lead them into the truth , and that they will be more confirmed christians then ever . . which success of theirs will be more speedy and sure , if ( as they set themselves against other vices , so ) they mainly bend their force against spiritual pride and affectation of peculiarity in religion , and of finding themselves wiser in the mysteries thereof then the best of christians have pretended to . and above all things if they beware of enthusiasme either in themselves or others , or of thinking that the gift of the spirit can be any revelation that is contrary to reason or the acknowledged history of christ , the truth thereof being so rationally evincible to all such as apply themselves without prejudice to examine it to the bottom . if in pursuance of their sincere intentions they keep off from these rocks , i doubt not but they will return safe again to iesus christ the great pastor and bishop of their souls . chap. xiv . . that publick worship is essential to religion , and inseparable when free from persecution . the right measure of the circumstances thereof . . of the fabrick and beauty of churches according to that measure . . the main things he intends to touch upon concerning publick worship . . that the churches of christians are not temples , the excellency of our religion being incompliable with that notion . . the vanity of the sectarians exception against the word church applied to the appointed places of publick worship . . that though the church be no temple , yet it is in some sense holy , and what respect there is to be had of it , and what reverence to be used there . . of catechizing , expounding and preaching . . of prayer , and what is the true praying by the spirit . . the excellency of publick liturgies . . what is the right end of the ministry . . certain special uses of sermons , and of the excellency of our saviour christs sermon on the mount. . the best way for one to magnifie his ministry . . of the holy communion , who are to be excluded , and of the posture of receiving it . . of the time of baptism , and the signe of the crosse. . of songs and hymns to be composed by the church , and of holy-daies . . of the celebrating the passion-day and the holy communion . . of images and pictures in places of publick worship . . a summary advertisement concerning ceremonies and opinions . . after this charitable digression to meet with the quakers , let us resume our business in hand , and make an end . * the sixth and last thing that concerns the care of the christian magistrate is publick worship . which seems to me so natural and essential to religion , that it cannot fail to appear , unless some force hinder it ; in which case they will venture to meet in private conventicles ; that is , they will exercise their acts of religion as publickly as they dare , and will not be content to be confined to their closets at home . ioint-exercise therefore of religion is confessed of all sides , which therefore must necessarily be external and visible . now no visible actions can be done without visible circumstances , and amongst these circumstances some are more fit and decorous , some less ; as is manifest at the first sight . nor will it be hard to judge of the fitness or decorum of these circumstances , if we can finde out a measure of them ; which certainly is the end and meaning of them : which is , the expression of our honour and reverence to god and to his son iesus christ , and the edification of our neighbour . . by which rule we shall discover concerning the meeting-house , as some had rather call it then the church , that it ought to be of a comely structure , proportionably magnificent to the number of the people that are to have recourse to it in the common exercise of their devotions . for though men of equal condition may make bold with themselves and meet in what place they please , yet it would be thought a piece of grosse unmannerliness to expect a prince to give an inferiour peasant the meeting in a barn or cow-stable . would it not look then like a piece of irreligious rudeness , which is truly a kinde of prophaneness , to expect that almighty god and his son jesus christ should give us the meeting in squalid and sordid places , even then when we pretend most to shew our reverence and devotion to him ? for though we may make bold one with another to meet where we please , yet we making our approaches to god in those places , and he thereby making his special approaches to us ( for in a philosophical sense he is every where alike ) questionless it cannot but be an expression of our reverence unto him to have the structure of the place proportionably capacious , well and fairly built , and handsomely adorned , and as properly and significantly of our religion and devotional homages we owe to our crucified saviour , as can be without suspicion of idolatry or any scandalous superstition . for it is true from the very light of nature , which the knowledge of christ does not extinguish , but direct and perfect , that houses of publick worship ought to have some stateliness and splendour in them expressive of the reverence we bear to the godhead we do adore . and therefore the christian magistrate , for the honour of his saviour who suffered so much shame for him , as also for making christian religion more recommendable to them that are without , ( for religion will not seem religion to any without publick worship , nor a desirable religion unless this publick worship be performed with inoffensive splendour and decency ) ought to assist and abett such good practices as these . . it is beyond the limits of my present discourse to make any curious inquisition or determination concerning the particularities of this publick worship ; though i cannot abstain from giving some general hints concerning the due managements of the chief matters thereof , such as are most obvious to think of and most useful to consider . and such are the enquiries into the nature of the place of this publick worship , and the holiness thereof , and our demeanour therein , and especially of those chief performances of preaching , praying , receiving the sacrament , of baptisme also and of holy-days : to which we may adde those accessory helps of devotion , as some account them , musick and pictures . concerning which i shall rather simply declare my sense of things , then solicitously endeavour to demonstrate my conclusions by over-operose reasonings ; which will but raise a dust and provoke the polemical rabble . . concerning therefore this house of publick worship the christians meet in , i conceive there is no need to phansie it a temple ; nay rather it seems fit to look upon it as no temple , the use of that ceremony being antiquated by the excellency and supereminency of our religion . for the famed iehovah is not now a topical deity , nor christ confined to this or that city or people , but is the declared worship of the whole earth , and is not contained within the wals of any temple , but has his personal residence in heaven , whither our devotions are to be directed , and our mindes suspended and lifted up thitherward , not debased nor defixed to the corners of any earthly edifice , into which when a man looks he findes nothing worthy of adoration . to which truth both stephen and paul give their suffrage , the one declaring to the iews , the other to the areopagites , that the most high , who is lord of heaven and earth , dwelleth not in temples made with hands . and our saviour himself to the samaritan woman who was solicitous which of those temples , that of samaria or that of ierusalem , was the right place of worship , he tels her plainly that such topical or figurative worshipping of god was shortly to cease ; that the hour was coming , and then was , when the true worshippers shall worship the father in spirit and in truth . for the father seeketh such to worship him . god is a spirit , and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth , that is , by the inward sanctity of their souls , and with the true service of prayers and praises and alms-deeds , of which incense and sacrifices were but the figures and shadows . let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense , and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice . to do good and to communicate , forget not ; for with such sacrifices god is well pleased . and lastly , s. iohn in his apocalyps describing the condition of the new ierusalem , which is the church of christ in her best state , i saw , saith he , no temple there , for the lord god almighty and the lamb are the temple of it : that is , their worship is directed immediatly towards god and christ , not to any place , as the jews ever worshipped toward the temple of ierusalem . . but though the nature and name of a temple does not belong to this house of publick worship according to the sense of scripture ( which made also the primitive christians carefully abstain from that nomination ) yet i do not see any ground at all why some of our phanciful sects should take offence at the name of church applied thereto . for the church being an house wherein we meet to serve the lord , whether god the father or christ his son , both which are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this house is naturally there from denominated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in greek , whence is our english word church , as every trivial grammarian can tell them . . but now it being thus plain , that it is an house for divine worship , and therefore has a special relation to god , though it be not dedicated in such a solemn manner as solomon's temple , yet it does necessarily contract a kinde of holiness hereby , and by this holiness some measure of respect , namely , that it should be kept in handsome repair , and be carefully defended from all foulness and nastiness both within and without . and because custome has appropriated it to the service of god , unless very great necessity urge , it is not to be made use of to any other purposes . those that are otherwise affected in this matter , may justly seem guilty of a kinde of incivility against god , as i may so call it , and hazard the being accounted clowns in the sight of the court of heaven and all the holy angels : as that also might be reputed a piece of unskilfulness and obsolete courtship , to complement any one part of this house , as if there were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there , and the ark of the covenant . for this would be to turn the church of christ into a temple . wherefore those that at their entrance into the congregation either kneel down , or standing do their private devotion , and continue bare-headed before divine service begin , they mean not this devotion to the edifice , but testifie only with what fear and reverence they make their approaches to god ; and their hearts being in preparation to a nearer approach , shew their sense of his coming nearer to them by this reverential observance . for veneration is done at the coming of great persons at great distances off ; nor doth cease till a due distance after the congress . . concerning preaching , that which is most remarkable is this , that whereas there are three chief kindes thereof , namely , catechizing , expounding a chapter , and preaching usually so called , whereof the first is the best , and the last the least considerable of them all ; this worst and last is the very idol of some men , and the other rejected as things of little worth , but assuredly they are of most virtue for the effectual implanting the gospel of christ in the mindes of men , and of the two ▪ as i said , catechizing the better ; because it enforces the catechized to take notice of what is taught him , and what is thus taught him is not so voluminous but that he can carry it away and remember it for ever : and withall the most useful , as being the very fundamentals comprized in the christian creed , or the first and most natural results from them tending to indispensable duties of life ; and therefore will alone , if sincerely believed and faithfully practised , carry a man to heaven . but the next profitable way of preaching is expounding of a chapter , provided that he that does so , makes it his only business ( without any vain excursions to shew his reading ) to render those places of the chapter that are obscure , easie and intelligible to the capacity of the auditors , with some brief , but earnest , urging of their duties from such passages as most necessarily tend thereto . this will make the private reading of scripture pleasant to his charge : and it will prove the more effectual for their good , if he contain himself within the new testament , and fetch only so much out of the old as will be subservient for the full understanding of the new. there is nothing so likely to convince the conscience as this , when men are able to reade and understand the text of scripture it self , and are sensibly beat upon by the power of that spirit that is found in those writings , far beyond all the fine speeches and phrases of humane eloquence . which yet is the greatest matter in this third way of preaching , and the truest use that can be made of it , namely , not to fill the peoples head with unprofitable or hurtful opinions , but by the artifice of a more florid and flowing style , to raise the affections of the auditors to the love and pursuit of such things as are commanded us by the precepts of the gospel . i confess therefore , this exercise may be of laudable use in such a congregation where all the people are throughly grounded in the fundamentals of christianity , and are well skilled in the knowledge of the bible : otherwise if the other two necessary wayes of preaching be silenced by this more overly and plausible way , it is to the unspeakable detriment of the flock of christ. which will happen even then when it is performed after the very best manner . how great then is the evil , think you , when the exercise of their popular eloquence is nothing but a stage of ostentation and vain-glory to the speaker , and begets nothing but an unsound blotedness and ventosity of spirit in his hearers and admirers , they being intoxicated with lushious and poisonous opinions , which tend to nothing but the extinguishing of the love and endeavour after true righteousness and holiness , and the begetting in them a false security of minde and abhorred libertinisme ? had it not been far better that they had rested in the fundamentals of their faith comprised in the apostles creed , with an obligation on their conscience to live according to the laws of christ and his holy precepts , then to be led about and infatuated by the heat and noise of such false guides ? . concerning praying , it is an epidemical mistake , that men think extemporary prayers are by the spirit , and that the spirit is not in a set form : whenas in truth the spirit may be absent in the highest extemporary heats , and present in the use of set forms , where there may appear greater calmness and coolness . for the spirit of praier does not consist in the invention of words and phrases ( which is rather a gift of nature , as the faculty of extemporary speaking in other cases is , proceeding from heat and phansy and copiousness of the * animal spirits ) but in a firm belief in god through christ , and in an hearty liking and sincere desire of having those holy things communicated to us that we pray for . and therefore he that reads , or hears a publick liturgy read , in such a frame of minde as i have described , does as truly pray by the spirit as he that invents words and phrases of his own . for there is nothing divine but this holy faith and desire , the rest is mere nature . and it is a demonstration how ignorant these men are that talk so loud of the spirit , whenas they cannot so much as discern what is truly spiritual from what is but animal and natural . to which you may adde , that if none pray by the spirit but those that invent their own words , the whole congregation are very spiritless prayers , they all hanging upon the lips of the minister , who alone will be acknowledged to pray by the spirit : whose pretended assistance is not yet always so powerful as to protect him from the incurring of the danger of non-sense , and of making the publick worship of god insipid or else distasteful and loathsome , or , which is even as ill , contemptible and ridiculous . . wherefore it is far more safe , as it is undoubtedly more solemn , to use a publick liturgy that bears the authority of the whole church , then to venture so holy and devotional a performance upon the uncertainty of any mans private spirit , who will be but tempted to ostentate his own conceited eloquence , or forced to discover his own weakness and folly . whenas a set form will prevent all pride and knackishness , and preserve the publick worship in its due reverence and honour , especially where it is contrived with that cautiousness , that nothing is expressed therein that engages the minde in controverted opinions , but speaks according to the known tenour of scripture undepraved by humane glosses . . but you will say , if a minister be cut so short in these performances of extemporary praier and expatiating preachments , how shall he be able to give any eximious testimony of his abilities in his calling ? how shall he have the opportunity of shewing his gifts ? to which i answer , that the end of the ministry is not the ostentation of any mans particular gifts , but the edification of the people ; which are better edified by diligent catechizing and faithful and judicious expounding of the scripture , then by loose and ranging discourses out of the pulpit , where he that speaks having taken leave of his short text , may fill the ears of his auditors with nothing but the noise of his own conceits and inventions : whenas in the exposition of a whole chapter ( suppose ) at a time , the peoples mindes will be kept closer to those infallible oracles , and will more easily discern the prevarications of their teacher . but for the greater assurance against any foul play of this kinde , his misinterpretations of these holy writings to loosnesse and libertinism should be the forfeiture of the exercise of his function . . besides , i do not speak so much to exclude preaching , as to bring catechizing and expounding into more request , which are abundantly more useful and edifying . nay , i think that some well-tuned strains of unaffected eloquence at the chief festivals of the year , and in occasional exhortations to the people upon observation of what is most amiss amongst them , done with a great deal of seriousness and gravity , as also at publick fasts and thanksgivings , were a thing of excellent use , and of the more efficacy , it being the more seldom . but for other days , if our saviour christs sermon on the mount were read with much reverence and emphatick distinctness ; it being the advice of so sacred and infallible a person , in whose mouth there was neither errour nor guile , who was the son of god clothed with the formalities of our flesh , on purpose to take the chair awhile amongst us , and to read us sound and warrantable lectures of divinity ; in whose behalf god the father condescended to do the office of a praeco , and commanded silence out of the clouds , saying , this is my beloved son , hear him ; who was so faithful and compassionate a pastour to his flock , that he laid down his life for his sheep , and so beloved of his father , that he was miraculously raised from the dead , and taken up into heaven ; and lastly , who shall visibly descend thence , and judge every man according to his works ; if this sermon , i say , of wholsome advice and holy precepts , were read distinctly and reverently to the people , how can it but be more edifying and work more upon their spirits for their good , then the sophisticated and affected rhetorick of a fallible mortal ? besides the keeping out the danger of being either choaked with the crooked and spinose controversies of polemical divinity , or of being poisoned or intoxicated with the unwholsome sugar-sops of antinomianism and libertinism . . and lastly , to answer still more home to the point , if thou hast a desire to magnifie thy ministry in an eximious manner , in stead of ostentating thy gifts , exercise and improve thy graces to the highest thou canst . endeavour to the utmost to be an unblemished example to thy flock of humility , of brotherly kindeness , of obedience to the magistrate , of temperance , of exact iustness in thy dealing , of compassion to the poor and needy . use thy best prudence to keep peace and love amongst thy charge , as it becomes christians , and to invite the more able to a charitable relief and help of those that are in want and necessity , that no unsupportable distresse may make the lives of our fellow-members comfortless : as also privately to reprove those that are guilty of any scandalous miscarriages , but with the wisest and discreetest applications that may be ; that thy reprehensions , as they ought , so they may appear to proceed from nothing but from love , and from care and conscience of thy duty . in which if thou wouldest not lose thine authority and confidence , thou must live exactly in the indispensable laws of christ thy self , nor make these solemn reproofs but for the breach of such . but if thou be really vitious thy self in these , or , to make thy self seem more holy , rebuke for the neglect of some petty mock-vertues of thine own chusing , thou shalt not fail to be either odious or ridiculous . but here the great hypocrisie is this , that to compensate their neglect in these indispensable and highly-concerning duties of the ministry , they abound in empty lip-labour , and endeavour to conciliate authority to themselves by their pretended spiritual gifts of extemporary praying and preaching , in stead of that unblemished sanctity of life , of useful prudence in behalf of their charge , and of christian goodnesse and charity . and that they may keep up their credit more certainly with the people , they lay their foundation wisely , namely , by giving them to understand that there is no hope of living as we should do , or any need thereof ; and so making their whole flock as rotten as themselves both in principles and practice , there being none left to reprove the false prophet by either example of life or contrariety of doctrine , he thus secures to himself his authority entire by his admired clack of the tongue , which some call the knack of preaching and praying . which yet , where better intended , is of as little efficacy as a tar-bottle hung out on a thorn-bush , if compared with personal application and private information and reproof . for that is like the adfriction of the pastoral medicine to a diseased sheep , without which the formality of the bottle on the bush will do no cure , let the flock be gathered about it never so solemnly . . touching the communion ; none are to be excluded therefrom that professe their belief of the holy scriptures & of the apostles creed in the plain literal and historical sense thereof ; unless they stand guilty of some gross and scandalous sins ( which are to be nominated in some known law concerning this matter , and not to be left to the uncertainty of any private ministers judgement ) and do persist therein impenitent and unreclaimed . for it were the greatest treachery to the party that could be , by admitting him to this holy communion , to make him more secure in such sins as will be sure , while they are unrepented of , to exclude him from that heavenly communion of saints for ever . besides the scandal and offence to the rest of the serious and sincere-hearted communicants , to whom the sight will appear as ugly as if one having fallen over head and ears into the dirt , should in that black miry hue , droppingly dirty , place himself at table amongst persons of quality , whom the master of the feast had invited upon some special entertainment . and as for the posture of the communicant , as there are none that are so curious as to reduce it to that in which christ and his disciples celebrated his last supper , so none ought to be so captious as to take offence if one receive the communion kneeling , in devotion to god and humble thankfulnesse for that great benefit that is signified thereby , namely , the death of christ with the results thereof , and the participation of his body and bloud in that sense i have spoken of * elsewhere ; nor if another take it sitting , as it is a celebration of a supper , or that he may clear himself of the suspicion of idolizing the outward elements of bread and wine . for it is as well unjust as uncharitable to be at all scandalized at actions that have such innocent and allowable grounds , and the most unsufferable at the celebrating of such a mystery as is wholly made up of love and affection to christ and to one another . i confess an uniformity would look better in outward shew , but is not worth the least stir or violence in diversities of actions or rather circumstances interpretable to so good a meaning . and the reall exercise of our charity in leaving every one free , is every whit as suitable to this solemn performance as the most exquisite uniformity , if devoid of the spirit of meekness and mutual forbearance . . concerning baptisme ; the more seriously a man looks into it , the more certain he will find it , that the scripture has defined nothing concerning the time of baptising those that are born of believing parents . some adventure further , and affirm there is no precept for baptizing them at all , and that they are members already of the church by being born of them that are . to the latter of which i answer , that if they be capable of membership , how can they be uncapable of the sign thereof ? but to those that acknowledge that they must be baptized , it being plain that no time is set down in scripture , i say , it is naturally left to the power of the church to appoint that time which she thinks to be most convenient . for though it may seem more excusable to call the churches authority into question , of appointing new ceremonies or such circumstances of the old as are not necessary ; yet it cannot but be judged an unsufferable piece of temerity to question it here concerning such a circumstance as the substance cannot be performed without it . for if any one be baptized , he must be baptized some time or other . and in my judgement , though the arguments of our adversaries make a bold shew , she has pitched upon the safest . for i am very inclinable to believe , though i think i am as little superstitious as another , that there does some reall good accrew to an infant from thus early being dedicated to christ by the sincere devotion of his parents . which dedication he himself is more fully to ratifie and complete publickly in the church , when he comes to years of discretion , when he will be able to make distinct answers to such questions as it is over-obvious to imagine were unseasonably asked him when he could not speak . but for the cross in baptisme , it was so seasonable at the first institution thereof , while professed pagans were mingled among the christians , and so significant alwaies , that if the church cannot make such an additional as this , she cannot make any at all . but unity of hearts being better then uniformity in actions indifferent , there ought to be no breach nor quarrel about these things . but if the parents conscientiously deferre the childs baptisme till years of discretion , or desire it should be baptized in its infancy , if they like the signing of it with the sign of the cross or the omission of it , the minister will conciliate more authority to himself by professing his indifferency in these things , and his high value of the indispensables of christianity and of his tender regard to the consciences of men , ( which is a thing more sacred then any ceremony that is not of gods own institution , ) then if he drew too hard to an uniforme compliance in things where christ has left us free . for the visible exercise of professed charity and kind forbearance is a more comely ornament of the church then constrained uniformity . nay i will adde , that a constant profession of an indifferency may sooner make the church uniforme , then the placing religion in these things . for contestation ceaseth when the object is judged of little value . . touching musick , it is evident that hymns and songs were the timeliest piece of publick worship that was offered to christ. and truly i think the church having authority to frame a publick liturgy in prose , they should do well not to confine their singing to david's psalms , but also to compose songs of their own , in an easie and unaffected style , but in warrantable both language and meeter ; and get tunes set to them , not over-operose and artificial , nor over-plain and languid ; which need not be many in number , and might be taught children betimes , so that there might be no need of the unsanctified throats of mere mercenaries to fill up the quire , but that all musical devotions might be performed by the whole congregation , every christian making it a piece of the education of his children to learn the tunes of the church , who therefore would be near-upon as soon fit to sing as to pray with the rest of the assembly . these hymns composed by the church should be chiefly for the main holy-days thereof , appointed for the celebrating ( suppose ) of the nativity , of the passion , of the resurrection and ascension of our saviour , and of the mission of the holy ghost . for it seems to me a thing almost beyond belief , that a nation should believe the history of christ , that he was god incarnate at such a time , and that the same incarnate deity suffered , &c. and yet not be so much transported with the consideration , as to celebrate such stupendious passages by anniversary solemnities ; since that to adorn the year with festivals and holy-days is according to the very dictate of nature and practice of all nations . wherefore those that pretend to so much spirituality as to cast out all observation of dayes , i wish it be not a symptome of infidelity in them , and of a secret quarrell they have to the truth of christianity it self . for those that are most perfect in divine accomplishments , cannot enjoy the actual enravishments that may arise from this perfection without vacancy from secular emploiments , for which these holy-dayes therefore are most fit : and those that are less perfect , by their vacation from worldly drudgery have the opportunity of searching more closely into the state and condition of their souls , and of more serious meditations and resolutions of composing their life to the most perfect patterns of truth and sanctity . and for this very purpose the observation of every seventh day should be inviolable , not to be profaned by either secular imploiments or foolish pastimes ; but spent in religious exercises either publick or private ; not as placing any sanctity in dayes , but in laying hold of so good an opportunity for the completing of the work of godliness in us , and meditating upon the infinite goodness of god in the mystery of the creation and redemption of mankind . . the knowledge of the latter of which being so appropriate to us christians , that we are acquainted with the main strokes of the process thereof , it is more worthy and becoming us not to huddle up all in one day , but distinctly to celebrate the main particularities of so concerning a mystery , such as are , the nativity of christ , his passion , resurrection , and the rest ; amongst which the celebration of his passion being most useful and edifying , the solemnity thereof ought to be at least as sacred and as frequented and as religiously celebrated with preaching , praying and singing , as any other day , and that in a way appropriate to that solemnity with hymnes and songs also proper for the passion of christ , and mournful and melting tunes proper to these songs composed by the church . which passion-songs would be also usefull upon communion-dayes , they containing in them devotional desires and resolutions of crucifying our affections and lusts , and of faithful love to christ and to one another ; which are the great things that the passion of christ points us to and would enforce upon us . wherefore the morning-singings on a communion-day may very well be supplied by these passion-songs . but at the receiving of the communion , while the bread and the cup pass about , some psalmes of david that appear most proper , and that declare the great goodness and mercies of god , or some songs of the churche's composing appropriate to the purpose , full of thankfull acknowledgments and holy resolutions , may be sung all the time in more chearful tunes , such as the ascension-songs and resurrection-songs are sung in . all which songs of the church are to urge duty upon men and press on holiness , upon considerations naturally flowing from the belief of the things we do solemnize . if to the singing of these skilfully-composed songs and choice psalmes , there were added also the help of an organ , for the more certain regulating of this singing part of devotion and the more affectionate performance thereof ; it will not be easie to imagine what is wanting to a due and unexceptionable filling up of all comely circumstances of that publick worship that is fit to be practised by professed christians , unless you would bring in also images and pictures . . but to speak my sense and judgment of things freely ; the mere placing of images or statues in a church is a very bold and daring spectacle : but the bowing towards them , or praying with bended knees and eyes devoutly lift up to them , is intolerable , if pagan idolatry be so ; nay in some regard worse , that is , more irrationall and ridiculous , forasmuch as these statues are not supposed to be the receptacle of the spirit of him they pray to : so that their way of devotion is utterly groundless , senseless and sottish , as well as impious and idolatrous . pictures i must con●ess are a more modest representation ; and the consideration of the vile reproaches some foul mouths have heretofore , and do sometimes still cast upon the crucified iesus , may tempt the devotional lovers of his person to a conceit that if there were a representation of his crucifixion in picture , and that they bowed to it at their coming into the church , it were but an innocent satisfaction to themselves so publickly to do their homage to their saviour in that representation that he is most scorned and reproached in , and but a just compensation to him for the reproaches that vile and wicked persons cast out against him . but to this i answer , first , that the determining our worship to any part of the church would look like the turning of our christian meeting-houses into temples , contrary to what is written , i saw no temple there . and then in the second place , though the fetches of mans wit are very fine and subtile in these cases , yet it is expresly said that god is a jealous god , and there are many scrupulous and jealous men , as well in christendome as out of christendome ; and therefore a practice that is not right in it self , and so exceeding scandalous to others , ought by no means to obtain in the publick worship of christians . if there be any permission of pictures therefore in the church , it must not be for worship but for ornament , which they will scarce be without considerable cost ; nor that cost again well placed , unless there be some edification by them . and therefore i doe not conceive how they will be tolerable at all without some proper inscriptions also adjoyned : as upon the picture of the resurrection and ascension of christ some such inscription as that of saint paul , if you be risen with christ , seek those things that are above . upon the picture of the passion of christ some such as these , when i am lifted up , i shall draw all men unto me . those that are of christ , have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts . greater love hath no man then this , that he lay down his life for his friends , this is my commandement , that as i have loved you , so you would likewise love one another . and thus every piece , which are not to be many , should have their proper inscriptions , without which they should not be permitted in the church , as being fit for nothing but to amuze the sight . but now they are no sooner seen , but they set a mans mind awork , and cause him to think of the most important meaning of the chief passages of the history of christ. of which none are more effectuall then that of his passion ; which together with the passion-songs and tunes and organs may wound the heart of a man , and let out more corrupt bloud at one touch , then the faint hackings of a dry discourse of an hour or two long . which helps and ornaments of publick worship will fill up all the numbers of all warrantable splendour and comeliness , and keep out , if precisely kept to , all shadow and suspicion of either superstition or idolatry . but if any should be so weak or scrupulous as to take offence at so unexceptionable use of pictures in the church , and particularly , if our religion should be the less recommendable thereby to either iews or turks , whose conversion we are not onely to desire , but with seriousness and faithfulness to apply our selves to , at least to remove all scandals and stumbling-blocks out of their way ; rather then any such dispensable punctilios should hinder the enlargement of christs kingdome in the essential soveraignty thereof comprehended in the express precepts of the written word , a full pencil of white directed by charities own hand should wipe out all these well-meant delineations and inscriptions , and to compensate the loss , that one of s. paul should succeed , if any man seem to be contentious , we have no such custome , neither the churches of god. . to conclude , such is the truth and simplicity of christian religion , that if the authority of the church think good to recommend any additional circumstances of divine worship , they must not be for ineffectual pomp and show , but for real use and edification ; affecting such a beauty and comeliness as nature does in living creatures , whose pulchritude is the result of such a symmetry of parts and tenour of spirits as implies vigour and ability to all the functions of life . and truly there should be no more ceremony in the church , then the use thereof may be obvious to understand , and the life and power of holiness may throughly actuate ; that our minds may not be amused , lost , sunk in , or fixed upon any outward things here , but be carried from all visible pomps to the love and admiration of our blessed saviour in heaven , and of that heavenly and divine life that he came into the world to beget in the hearts of all true believers . and what we have said of additional ceremonies , there is the same reason of deductional opinions , they are to have their recommendation from their use and efficacy in promoting life and godliness in the souls of men . but their obtrusion is as unwarrantable as of the other , if not more . forasmuch as ceremonies are most-what indifferent , opinions never , but determinately true or false , or to be held so by them that either doubt or think the contrary : which therefore is a greater violence to ingenuous natures . as also the usurpation greater to intrude into either the prophetick or legislative office of christ , then to affect to be onely the master of the ceremonies ; and the superstition alike , since superstition is nothing else but a fear and scrupulosity about such things as bear no estimate in the eyes of god : as certainly neither of these do one way nor other , neither opinions that concern not life and godliness , nor ceremonies that are of an indifferent nature , and may of themselves be either practised or omitted . and therefore for men to be affected timorously and meticulously in these things , it is a sign they understand not the royal law of christian liberty , and commit that which is the main vice included in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or superstition , in that they phansy to themselves a pettish and captious deity . whence it is manifest that the over-careful using or scrupulously omitting of indifferent ceremonies , as also over-much solicitude in the rejecting or embracing of useless and uncertain opinions , is no commendable worship or service , but rather an implicite reproach of the holy godhead they profess to adore . the end . the contents . preface . . the authors natural averseness from writing of books . fol. v . that there was a kind of necessity urged him to write what he has wrote hitherto . ibid. . the occasion of writing his psychozoia . ibid. . as also of his poem of the immortality of the soul. vi . his satyricall essays against enthusiastick philosophie . ibid. . the great usefulness of his enthusiasmus triumphatus and of this present treatise for suppressing enthusiasme . ibid. . the occasion and preparations to his writing his antidote against atheisme and his threefold cabbala . vii . the urgent occasion of writing this present treatise , as also of his discourse of the immortality of the soul. ibid. . his account of the inscription of this present treatise . viii . his apology for his so copiously describing the animal life . x . and for his large parallel betwixt christ and apollonius . ibid. . the reason of his bringing also mahomet upon the stage and h. n. and of his so large excursions and frequent expostulations with the quakers and familists . xi . that the wonderful hopes and expectations of the religious of the nation , yea of the better-meaning fanaticks themselves , are more likely to be fulfilled by this happy restoring of the king then by any other way imaginable . xii . wherein consists the very essence and substance of antichristianisme . xiii . that the honour of beginning that pure and apostolick church that is so much expected seems to have been reserved by providence for charles the second our gracious soveraign , with pregnant arguments of so glorious an hope . ibid. . the reasons why he did not cast out of his discourse what he had written concerning quakerisme and familisme , notwithstand●ng the fear of these sects may seem well blown over through the happy settlement of things by the seasonable return of our gracious soveraign to his throne . xiv . the reason of his opposing the familists and quakers above any other sects . xv . his excuse for being less accurate in the computation of daniels weeks . ibid. . as also for being less copious in the proving the expected restorement of the church to her pristine purity ; together with a description of the condition of those happy ages to come . xvi . that this discourse was mainly intended for the information of a christian in his private capacities . xvii . what points he had most probably touched upon if his design had urged him to speak any thing of church-government . ibid. . a description of such a bishop as is impossible should be antichristian . xx . why he omitted to treat of the reasonableness of the precepts of christ. xxi . that the pains he took in writing this treatise were especially intented for the rationall and ingenuous . xxii . his apology for the sharpness of his style in some places . ibid. . an objection against mr. mede's apocalyptick interpretations from the supposed sad condition of all adherers to the apostate church ; with the answer thereto . ibid. . the adversaries reply to the foregoing answer , with a brief attempt of satisfying the same . xxv . an apology for his free dislike of that abused notion of imputative righteousness . xxvi . his defence for so expressly declaring himself for a duly-bounded liberty of conscience . xxvii book i. chap. i. the four main properties of a mystery . . the first property , obscurity . . the second , intelligibleness . . the third , truth . . the fourth , usefulness . . a more full description of the nature of a mystery . . the distribution of the whole treatise . fol. . chap. ii. . that it is fit that the mystery of christianity should be in some measure obscure , to exclude the sensuall and worldly . . as also to defeat disobedient learning and industry . . and for the pleasure and improvement of the godly and obedient . . the high gratifications of the speculative soul from the obscurity of the scriptures . chap. iii. . the obscurity of the christian mystery argued from the effect , as from the iews rejecting their messias ; . from the many sects amongst christians : . their difference in opinion concerning the trinity , . the creation , . the soul of man , . the person of christ , . and the nature of angels . chap. iv. . that the trini●y was not brought out of plato's school into the church by the fathers . . a description of the platonick trinity , and of the difference of the hypostases . . a description of their union : . and why they hold all a due object of adoration . . the irrefutable reasonableness of the platonick trinity , and yet declined by the fathers , a demonstration that the trinity was not brought out of plato's school into the church . . which is further evidenced from the compliableness of the notion of the platonick trinity with the phrase and expressions of scripture . . that if the christian trinity were from plato , it follows not that the mystery is pagan . , , . the trinity proved from testimony of holy writ . chap. v. . that the natural sense of the first of s. iohn does evidently witness the divinity of christ. . a more particular urging of the circumstances of that chapter . . that s. iohn used the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the iewish or cabbalistical notion . . the trinity and the divinity of christ argued from divine worship due to him , and from his being a sacrifice for sin . . that to deny the trinity and divinity of christ , or to make the union of our selves with the godhead of the same nature with that of christ's , subverts christianity . . the uselesness and sauciness of the pretended deification of enthusiasts , and how destructive it is of christian religion . . the providence of god in preparing of the nations by platonisme for the easier reception of christianity . caap. vi. . the danger and disconsolateness of the opinion of the psychopannychites . . what they alledge out of cor. . set down . . a preparation to an answer advertising first , of the nature of prophetick schemes of speech . . secondly , of the various vibration of an inspired phansie . . thirdly , of the ambiguity of words in scripture , and particularly of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . and lastly , of the corinthians being sunk into an unbelief of any reward after this life . . the answer out of the last and foregoing premisse . . a further answer out of the first . . as also out of the second and third , where their objection from verse . is fully satisfied . . their argument answered which they urge from our saviours citation to the sadducees , i am the god of abraham , &c. chap. vii . . a general answer to the last sort of places they alledge that imply no enjoyment before the resurrection . . a particular answer to that of cor . out of hugo grotius . . a preparation to an answer of the author 's own , by explaining what the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie . . his paraphrase of the six first verses of the forecited chapter . . a further confirmation of his paraphrase . . the weakness of the reasons of the psychopannychites noted . chap. viii . . that the opinion of the soul 's living and acting immediately after death , was not fetched out of plato by the fathers , because they left out preexistence , an opinion very rational in it self , . and such as seems plausible from sundry places of scripture , as those alledged by menasseh ben israel out of deuteronomy , jeremy , and job . . as also god's resting on the seventh day . . that their proclivity to think that the angel that appeared to the patriarchs so often was christ , might have been a further inducement . . other places of the new testament which seem to imply the preexistence of christ's soul. . more of the same kinde out of s. john. . force added to the last proofs from the opinion of the socinians . . that our saviour did admit , or at least not disapprove , the opinion of preexistence . . the main scope intended from the preceding allegations , namely , that the soul 's living and acting after death is no pagan opinion out of plato , but a christian truth evidenced out of the scriptures . chap. ix . . proofs out of scripture that the soul does not sleep after death : as peter . with the explication thereof . . the authors paraphrase compared with calvin's interpretation . . that calvin needed not to suppose the apostle to have writ false greek . . two waies of interpreting the apostle so as both grammatical soloecisme and purgatory may be declined . . the second way of interpretation . . a second proof out of scripture . . a third of like nature with the former . . a further enforcement and explication thereof . . a fourth place . . a fifth from hebr. . where god is called the father of spirits , &c. . a sixth testimony from our saviours words , matth. . . chap. x. . a pregnant argument from the state of the soul of christ and of the thief after death . . grotius his explication of christ's promise to the thief . . the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . how christ with the thief could be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in paradise at once . . that the parables of dives and lazarus and of the unjust steward imply that the soul hath life and sense immediately after death . book ii. chap. i. he passes to the more intelligible parts of christianity , for the understanding whereof certain preparative propositions are to be laid down . . as , that there is a god. . a brief account of the assertion from his idea . . a further confirmation from its ordinary concatenation with the rational account of all other beings , as first of the existence of the disjoynt and independent particles of matter . chap. ii. . that the wise contrivances in the works of nature prove the being of a god ; . and have extorted an acknowledgement of a general providence , even from irreligious naturalists . . that there is a particular providence or inspection of god upon every individual person : which is his second assertion . chap. iii. . his third assertion , that there are particular spirits or immaterial substances , and of their kinds . . the proof of their existence , and especially of theirs which in a more large sense be called souls . . the difference betwixt the souls or spirits of men and angels , and how that pagan idolatry and the ceremonies of witches prove the existence of devils . . and that the existence of devils proves the existence of good angels . chap. iv. . his fourth assertion , that the fall of the angels was their giving up themselves to the animal life , and forsaking the divine . . the fifth , that this fall of theirs changed their purest vehicles into more gross and feculent . . the sixth , that the change of their vehicles was no extinction of life . . the seventh , that the souls of men are immortal , and act and live after death . the inducements to which belief are the activity of fallen angels . . the homogeneity of the inmost organ of perception . . the scope and meaning of external organs of sense in this earthly body . . the soul's power of organizing her vehicle . . and lastly , the accuracy of divine providence . chap. v. . the eighth assertion , that there is a polity amongst the angels and souls separate , both good and bad ; and therefore two distinct kingdomes , one of light and the other of darkness : . and a perpetual fewd and conflict betwixt them . . the ninth , that there are infinite swarms of atheistical spirits , as well aereal as terrestrial , in an utter ignorance or hatred of all true religion . chap. vi. . his tenth assertion , that there will be a final overthrow of the dark kingdome , and that in a supernatural manner , and upon their external persons . . the eleventh , that the generations of men had a beginning , and will also have an end . . to which also the conflagration of the world gives witness . chap. vii . . his twelfth assertion , that there will be a visible and supernatural deliverance of the children of the kingdome of light at the conflagration of the world. . the reason of the assertion . . his thirteenth assertion , that the last vengeance and deliverance shall be so contrived , as may be best fit for the triumph of the divine life over the animal life . . whence it is most reasonable the chieftain of the kingdome of light should be rather an humane soul then an angel. . his last assertion an inference from the former , and a brief description of the general nature of christianity . chap. viii . . that not to be at least a speculative christian is a sign of the want of common wit and reason . . the nature of the divine and animal life , and the state of the world before and at our saviour's coming , to be enquired into before we proceed . . why god does not forthwith advance the divine life and that glory that seems due to her . . the first answer . . a second answer . . a third answer . . the fourth and last answer . chap. ix . . what the animal life is in general , and that it is good in it self . . self-love the root of the animal passions , and in it self both requisite and harmeless in creatures . . as also the branches . . the more refined animal properties in brutes , as the sense of praise , natural affection , craft : . political government in bees , . and cranes and stags , . as also in elephants . . the inference , that political wisdome , with all the branches thereof , is part of the animal life . chap. x. . that there is according to pliny a kind of religion also in brutes , as in the cercopithecus ; . in the elephant . . a confutation of pliny's conceit . that there may be a certain passion in apes and elephants upon their sight of the sun and moon , something a kin to that of veneration in man , and how idolatry may be the proper fruit of the animal life . . a discovery thereof from the practice of the indians , . whose idolatry to the sun and moon sprung from that animal passion . . that there is no hurt in the passion it self , if it sink us not into an insensibleness of the first invisible cause . chap. xi . . of a middle life whose root is reason , and what reason it self is . . the main branches of this middle life . . that the middle life acts according to the life she is immersed into , whether animal or divine . . her activity , when immersed in the animal life , in things against and on this side religion . . how far she may go in religious performances . chap. xii . . the wide conjecture and dead relish of the mere animal man in things pertaining to the divine life , and that the root of this life is obediential faith in god. . the three branches from this root , humility , charity and purity ; and why they are are called divine . . a description of humility . a description of charity , and how civil justice or moral honesty is eminently contained therein . . a description of purity , and how it eminently contains in it whatever moral temperance or fortitude pretend to . . a description of the truest fortitude : . and how transcendent an example thereof our saviour was . . a further representation of the stupendious fortitude of our saviour . . that moral prudence also is necessarily comprized in the divine life . . that the divine life is the truest key to the mystery of christianity ; but the excellency thereof unconceivable to those that do not partake of it . book iii. chap. i. that the lapse of the soul from the divine life immersing her into matter , brings on the birth of cain in the mystical eve driven out of paradise . . that the most fundamental mistake of the soul lapsed is that birth of cain , and that from hence also sprung abel in the mystery , the vanity of pagan idolatry . . solomon's universal charge against the pagans , of polytheisme and atheisme , and how fit it is their apology should be heard for the better understanding the state of the world out of christ. . their plea of worshipping but one god , namely the sun , handsomely managed by macrobius . . the indian brachmans worshippers of the sun : apollonius his entertainment with them , and of his false and vain affectation of pythagorisme . . the ignorance of the indian magicians , and of the demons that instructed them . . a concession that they and the rest of the pagans terminated their worship upon one supreme numen , which they conceived to be the sun. chap. ii. . that the above-said concession advantages the pagans nothing , forasmuch as there are more suns then one . . that not only unity , but the rest of the divine attributes are incompetible to the sun. . of cardan's attributing understanding to the sun 's light , with a confutation of his fond opinion . . another sort of apologizers for paganism , who pretend the heathens worshipped one god , to which they gave no name . . a discovery out of their own religion that this innominated deity was not the true god , but the material world . chap. iii. . the last apologizers for paganisme , who acknowledge god to be an eternal mind distinct from matter , and that all things are manifestations of his attributes . . his manifestations in the external world. . his manifestations within us by way of passion . . his more noble emanations and communications to the inward mind , and how the ancient heathen affixed personal names to these several powers or manifestations . . the reason of their making these several powers so many gods or goddesses . . their reason for worshipping the genii and heroes . chap. iv. . the heathens festivals , temples and images . . their apology for images . . the significancy of the images of jupiter and aeolus . . of ceres . . of apollo . . their plea from the significancy of their images , that their use in divine worship is no more idolatrous then that of books in all religions ; as also from the use of images in the nation of the iews . . their answer to those that object the impossibleness of representing god by any outward image . . that we are not to envy the heathen , if they hit upon any thing more weighty in their apologies for their religion ; and why . chap. v. . an answer to the last apology of the pagans ; as first , that it concerns but few of them , . and that those few were rather of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , then pure pagans . . that the worship of images is expresly forbid by god in the law of moses . . that they rather obscure then help our conceptions of the divine powers . . that there is great danger of these images intercepting the worship directed to god. . he referrs the curious and unsatisfied to the fuller discussions in polemical divinity . chap. vi. . a new and unanswerable charge against paganisme , namely , that they adored the divine powers no further then they reached the animal life , as appears from their dijoves and vejoves , . jupiter altitonans , averruncus , robigus and tempestas . . from the pleasant spectacle of their god pan : what is meant by his pipe , and nymphs dancing about him . what by his being deemed the son of hermes and mercury , and what by his beloved nymph syrinx , his wife echo and daughter iambe . . the interpretation of his horns , hairiness , red face , long beard , goats feet , and laughing countenance . chap. vii . . that as the world or universe was deified in pan , so were the parts thereof in coelius , juno , neptune , vulcan , pluto , ops , bacchus , ceres , &c. . that the night was also a deity , and why they sacrificed a cock to her , with the like reason of other sacrifices . . interiour manifestations that concern the animal life , namely that of wrath and love , which are the pagans mars and venus . . minerva , mercurius , eunomia , &c. manifestations referred to the middle life . . the agreement of the greeks religion with the romans , as also with the aegyptians . . their worship of the river nilus , &c. . that the religion of the rest of the nations of the world was of the same nature with that of rome , greece , and aegypt , and reached no further then the animal life . . and that their worshipping of men deceased stood upon the same ground . chap. viii . . that judaisme also respected nothing else but the gratifications of the animal life , as appears in all their festivals . . that though the people were held in that low dispensation , yet moses knew the meaning of his own types , and that immortality that was to be revealed by christ. . that their sabbaths reached no further then things of this life ; . nor their sabbatical years and iubilees ; . nor their feasts of trumpets ; . nor their feast of tabernacles ; . nor their pentecost ; . nor lastly their feast of expiation . chap. ix . . the preeminency of judaism above paganism . . the authors of the religions of the heathen , who they were . . how naturally lapsed mankind fals under the superstitious tyranny of devils . . the palpable effects of this tyranny in the nations of america . . that that false and wilde resignation in the quakers does naturally expose them to the tyranny of satan . . that their affectation of blinde impulses is but a preparation to demonical possession , and a way to the restoring of the vilest superstitions of paganism . chap. x. . the devil 's usurped dominion of this world , and how christ came to dispossess him . . the largeness of the devil's dominion before the coming of ch●ist . . the nation of the iews , the light of the world ; and what influence they might have on other nations in the m●dst of the reign of paganisme . . that if our hemisphere was any thing more tolerable then the american , it is to be imputed to the doctrine of the patriarchs , moses and the prophets . . that this influence was so little , that all the nations besides were idolaters , most of them exercising of obscene and cruel superstitions . chap. xi . . the villanous rites of cybele the mother of the gods. . their feasts of bacchus : . of priapus , and the reason of sacrificing an ass to him . . their lupercalia , and why they were celebrated by naked men . . the feasts of flora. . of venus , and that it was the obscene venu● they worshipped . . that their venus urania , or queen of heaven , is also but earthly lust , as appears from her ceremonies . . that this venus is thought to be the moon . her lascivious and obscene ceremonies . chap. xii . . of their famous eleusinia , how foul and obscene they were . . the magnificency of those rites , and how hugely frequented . . that the bottome thereof was but a piece of baudery , held up by the obscene and ridiculous story of ceres and baubo . . of their foul superstitions in tartary , malabar , narsinga , and the whole continent of america . chap. xiii . . the bloudy tyranny of the devil in his cruel superstitions . the whipping of the prime youth of lacedaemon at the altar of diana . . the sacrificing to bellona and dea syria with the priests own bloud . the bloud of the sick vow'd to be offered in cathaia and mangi , with other vile and contemptuous abuses of satan . . other scornful and harsh misusages in siam and pegu. men squeezed to death under the wheels of an idols chariot in the kingdome of naisinga and bisnagar . . foul tedious pilgrimages in zeilan , together with the cuttings and slashings of the flesh of the pilgrim . . whipping , eating the earth , plucking out eyes before the idol in new-spain , with their antick and slovenly ceremonies in hispaniola . . the intolerable harshness of their superstitious castigations in mexico and peru. . that these base usages are an infallible demonstration of the devil's hatred and scorn of mankind . chap. xiv . . men sacrificed to the devil in virginia , peru , brasilia . they of guiana and pa●ia also eat them being sacrificed . the ceremony of these-sacrifices in nicaragua . . the hungry and bloud-thirsty devils of florida and mexico . . their sacrificing of children in peru , with the ceremony of drowning a boy and a girle in mexico . . the manner of the mexicans sacrificing their captives . . the huge numbers of those sacrifices in mexico , and of their dancing about the city in the skin of a man new flay'd . . and in new-spain in the skin of a woman . chap. xv. . the sacrificing of children to moloch in the valley of hinnom . . that it was not a februation , but real burning of them . . that this custome spred from syria to carthage . . further arguments thereof , with the mistake of saturn being called israel rectified by grotius . and that abraham's offering up isaac was no occasion at all to these execrable sacrifices . . sacrificing of men in britain , lusitania , france , germany , thrace and in the isle of man. . in sundry places also of greece , as messene , arcadia , chios , aulis , locri , lacedaemon . . that the romans were not free neither from these salvage sacrifices . . to which you may add the cimbrians , lituanians , aegyptians , the inhabitants of rhodes , salamis , tenedos , indians , persians , &c. chap. xvi . . four things still behind to be briefly touch'd upon for the fuller preparation to the understanding the christian mystery ; as first the pagan catharmata . the use of them prov'd out of caesar ; . as also out of statius and the scholiast upon aristophanes . . that all their expiatory men-sacrifices whatsoever were truly catharmata . . the second , their apotheoses or deifications of men . the names of several recited out of diodorus . . of baal-peor , and how in a manner all the temples of the pagans were sepulchres . their pedigree noted by lactantius out of ennius . . certain examples of the deification of their law-givers . chap. xvii . . the third observable , the mediation of demons . . this superstition glanced at by the apostle in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and that daemons are the souls of men departed , according to hesiod . . as also according to plutarch and maximus tyrius . . the author's inference from this position . chap. xviii . . the fourth and last thing to be noted , namely their heroes , who were thought to be either begot of some god , or born of some goddess : the latter whereof is ridiculous , if not impossible ; . the former not at all incredible . . franciscus picus his opinion of the heroes ( feigned so by the poets ) as begot of the gods : that they were really begotten of some impure daemons , with josephus his suffrage to the same purpose . . the possibility of the thing further illustrated from the impregnation of mares merely by the wind , asserted by several authors . . the application of the history , and a further confirmation from the manner of conception out of dr. harvey . . examples of men famed for this kind of miraculous birth of the heroes , on this side the tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . chap. xix . . that out of the principles we have laid down , and the history of the religions of the nations we have produced , it is easie to give a reasonable account of all matters concerning our saviour from his birth to his visible return to iudgement . . that christianity is the summe and perfection of whatever things were laudable or passable in any religion that has been in the world . . the assertion made good by the enumeration of certain particulars . . that our religion seems to be more chiefly directed to the nations then the iews themselves . . an enumeration of the main heads in the history of christ , that he intends to give account of . book iv. chap. i. that christ's being born of a virgin is no impossible thing . . and not only so , but also reasonable in reference to the heroes of the pagans . . and that this outward birth might be an emblem of his eternal sonship . . thirdly in relation to the sanctity of his own person , and for the recommendation of continence and chastity to the world . . and lastly for the completion of certain prophecies in the scriptures that pointed at the messias . chap. ii. . that as the virginity of christ's mother recommended purity , so her meanness recommends humility to the world ; as also other circumstances of christ's birth . . of the salutation of the angel gabriel , and of the magi. . that the history of their visit helps on also belief , and that it is not reason but sottishness that excepts against the ministery of angels . . his design of continuing a parallel betwixt the life of christ and of apollonius tyaneus . . the pedigree and birth of apollonius , how ranck they smell of the animal life . . the song of the angels and the dance of the musical swans at apollonius's birth compared . chap. iii. . that whatever miraculously either happened to or was done by our saviour till his passion cannot seem impossible to him that holds there is a god and ministration of angels . . of the descending of the holy ghost , and the voice from heaven at his baptisme . . why christ exposed himself to all manner of hardship and temptations . . and particularly why he was tempted of the devil , with an answer to an objection touching the devil's boldness in daring to tempt the son of god. . how he could be said to shew him all the kingdoms of the earth . . the reason of his fourty daies fast , . and of his transfiguration upon the mount. the three first reasons . . the meaning of moses and elias his receding , and christ's being left alone . . the last reason of his transfiguration , that it was for the confirmation of his resurrection and the immortality of the soul. . testimonies from heaven of the eminency of christs person . chap. iv. . what miraculous accidents in apollonius his life may seem parallel to these of christs . his superstitious fasting from flesh and abstinence from wine out of a thirst after the glory of foretelling things to come . . apollonius a master of iudiciary astrology , and of his seven rings with the names of the seven planets . . miraculous testimonies given to the eminency of apollonius his person by aesculapius and trophonius how weak and obscure . . the brachmans high encomium of him , with an acknowledgment done to him by a fawning lion. the ridiculous folly of all these testimonies . chap. v. . three general observables in christs miracles . . why he several times charged silence upon those he wrought his miracles upon . . why christ was never frustrated in attempting any miracle . . the vanity of the atheists that impute his miracles to the power of imagination . . of the delusive and evanid viands of witches and magicians . chap. vi. . of christs dispossessing of devils . . an account of there being more daemoniacks then ordinary in our saviours time . as first from a possible want of care or skill how to order their mad-men or lunaticks . . the second from the power of the devil being greater before the coming of christ then after . . that not only excommunication but apostasy from christ may subject a man to the tyranny of satan , as may seem to have fallen out in several of the more desperate sects of this age. . an enumeration of sundry daemoniacal symptoms amongst them . . more of the same nature . . their profane and antick imitations of the most solemn passages in the history of christ. . a further solution of the present difficulties from the premised considerations . . a third and fourth answer from the fame of their cure and the conflex of these daemoniacks into one country . . a fifth from the ambiguity of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . the sixth and last answer , that it is not at all absurd to admit there was a greater number of real daemoniacks in christs time then at other times , from the useful end of their then abounding . chap. vii . . that the history of the daemoniack whose name was legion has no incongruity in it . . that they were a regiment of the dark kingdome that haunted most the country of the gadarens ; and that whether we conceive their chieftain alone , or many of his army to possess the man , there is no absurdity therein . . how it came to pass so many devils should clatter about one forty person . . the reason of christs demanding of the daemoniacks name , and the great use of recording this history . . the numerosity of the devils discovered by their possession of the swine . . several other reasons why christ permitted them to enter into the gadarens heards . . that christ offended against the laws of neither compassion nor iustice in this permission . chap. viii . . of christ's turning water into wine . . the miraculous draught of fish. . his whipping the money-changers out of the temple . . his walking on the sea , and rebuking the winde . . his cursing the fig-tree . . the meaning of that miracle . . the reason why he expressed his meaning so aenigmatically . . that both the prophets and christ himself ( as in the ceremonies he used in curing the man that was born blind ) spoke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in typical actions . . the things that were typified in those ceremonies christ used in healing the blinde ; as in his tempering clay and spittle . . a further and more full interpretation of the whole transaction . . some brief touches upon the prophesies of christ. chap. ix . . the miracles of apollonius compared with those of christ. . his entertainment at a magical banquet by iarchas and the rest of the brachmans . . his cure of a dropsy and of one bitten by a mad dog . . his freeing of the city of ephesus from the plague . . his casting a devil out of a laughing daemoniack , and chasing away a whining spectre on mount caucasus in a moon-shine night . . his freeing menippus from his espoused lamia . chap. x. . apollonius his raising from death a young married bride at rome . . his divinations , and particularly by dreams . . his divinations from some external accidents in nature . . his prediction of stephanus killing domitian from an halo that encircled the sun. astrology and meteorology covers to pagan superstition and converse with devils . . a discovery thereof from this prediction of his from the halo compared with his phrantick ecstasies at ephesus . . a general conclusion from the whole parallel of the acts of christ and apollonius . chap. xi . . a comparison of the temper or spirit in apollonius with that in christ. . that apollonius his spirit was at the height of the animal life , but no higher . . that pride was the strongest chain of darkness that apollonius was held in , with a rehersal of certain specimens thereof . . that his whole life was nothing else but an exercise of pride and vain-glory , boldly swaggering himself into respect with the greatest whereever he went. . his reception with phraotes king of india , and iarchas head of the brachmans . . his intermedling with the affairs of the roman empire , his converse with the babylonian magi and aegyptian gymnosophists , and of his plausible language and eloquence . . that by the sense of honour and respect he was hook'd in to be so active an instrument for the kingdome of darkness . . that though the brachmans pronounced apollonius a god , yet he was no higher then the better sort of beasts . chap. xii . . the contrariety of the spirit of christ to that of apollonius . . that the history of apollonius , be it true or false , argues the exquisite perfection of the life of christ , and the transcendency of that divine spirit in him that no pagan could reach by either imagination or action . . the spirit of christ how contemptible to the mere natural man , and how deare and precious in the eyes of god. . how the several humiliations of christ were compensated by god with both sutable and miraculous priviledges and exaltations . . his deepest humiliation , namely , his suffering the death of the cross , compensated with the highest exaltation . chap. xiii . . the ineffable power of the passion of christ , and other indearing applications of him , for winning the world off from the prince of darkness . . of his preceding sufferings and of his crucifixion . . how necessary it was that christ should be so passive and sensible of pain in his suffering on the cross ; against the blasphemy ●f certain bold enthasiasts . . their ignorance in the divine life , and how it alone was to triumph in the person of christ unassisted by the advantages of the animal or natural . . that if christ had died boldly and with little sense of p●in , both the solemnity and usefulness of his passion had been lost . . that the strange accidents that attended his crucifixion were prefigurations of the future effects of his passion upon the spirits of men in the world. . which yet hinders not but that they may have other significations . . the third and last reason of the tragical unsupportableness of the passion of christ , in that he bore the sins of the whole world. . the leg●●leious cavils of some conceited sophists that pretend that it is unjust with god to punish the innocent in stead of the guilty . . the false ground of all their frivolous subtilties . chap. xiv . . that sacrifices in all religions were held appeasements of the wrath of their gods. . and that therefore the sacrifice of christ is rather to be interpreted to such a religious sense then by that of secular laws . . the disservice some corrosive wits do to christian religion , and what defacements their subtilties bring upon the winning comeliness thereof . . the great advantage the passion of christ has , compared with the bloudy tyranny of satan . chap. xv. . an objection concerning the miraculous eclipse of the sun at our saviour's passion , from it s not being recorded in other h●storians . . answer , that this wonderfull accident might as well be omitted by several historians as those of like wonderfulness ; as for example the darkness of the sun about julius caesar's death . . farther , that there are far greater reasons that historians should omit the darkness of the sun at christ's passion then that at the death of julius caesar. . that grotius ventures to affirme this eclipse recorded in pagan writers ; and that tertullian appeal'd to their records . . that the text does not imply that it was an universal eclipse , whereby the history becomes free from all their cavils . . apollonius his arraignment before domitian , with the ridiculousness of his grave exhortations to damis and demetrius to suffer for philosophy . book v. chap. i. of the resurrection of christ , and how much his eye was fixed upon that event . . the chief importance of christ's resurrection . . the world excited by the miracles of christ the more narrowly to consider the divine quality of his person , whom the more they looked upon , the more they disliked . . whence they misinterpreted and eluded all the force and conviction of all his miracles . . god's upbraiding of the world with their gross ignorance by the raising him from the dead whom they thus vilified and contemned . . christ's resurrection an assurance of man's immortality . chap. ii. . the last end of christ's resurrection , the confirmation of his whole ministry . . how it could be that those chief priests and rulers that hired the souldiers to give out , that the disciples of christ stole his body away , were not rather converted to believe he was the messias . . how it can be evinced that christ did really rise from the dead ; and that it was not the delusion of some deceitfull daemons . . the first and second answer . . the third answer . . the fourth answer . . the fifth answer . . the sixth and last answer . . that his appearing and disappearing at pleasure after his resurrection is no argument but that he was risen with the same body that was laid in the grave . chap. iii. . the ascension of christ , and what a sure pledge it is of the soul's activity in a thinner vehicle . . that the soul's activity in this earthly body is no just measure of what she can do out of it . . that the life of the soul here is as a dream in comparison of that life she is awakened unto in her celestial vehicle . . the activity of the separate soul upon the vehicle argued from her moving of the spirits in the body , and that no advantage accrews therefrom to the wicked after death . chap. iv. . christ's session at the right hand of god interpreted either figuratively or properly . . that the proper sense implies no humane shape in the deity . . that though god be infinite and every where , yet there may be a special presence of him in heaven . . and that christ may be conceived to sit at the right hand of that presence , or divine shechina . chap. v. . the apotheosis of christ , or his receiving of divine honour , freed from all suspicion of idolatry , forasmuch as christ is god properly so called , by his real and physicall union with god. . the real and physical union of the soul of christ with god being possible ; sundry reasons alledged to prove that god did actually bring it to pass . . the vain evasions of superficial allegorists noted . . their ignorance evinced , and the apotheosis of christ confirmed from the immortality of the soul and the political government of the other world. . that he that equalizes himself to christ is ipso facto discovered an impostour and lier . chap. vi. . an objection against christ's soveraignty over men and angels , from the meanness of the rank of humane spirits in comparison of the angelical orders . . an answer to the objection so far as it concerns the fallen angels . . a further inforcement of the objection concerning the unfallen angels , with an answer thereto . . a further answer from the incapacitie of an angels being a sacrifice for the sins of the world. . and of being a fit example of life to men in the flesh . . that the capacities of christ were so universal , that he was the fittest to be made the head or soveraign over all the intellectuall orders . . christ's intercession : his fitness for that office. . what things in the pagan religion are rectified and compleated in the birth , passion , ascension and inercession of christ. chap. vii . . that there is nothing in the history of apollonius that can properly answer to christs resurrection from the dead . . and that his passage out of this life must go for his ascension ; concerning which reports are various , but in general that it was likely he died not in his bed . . his reception at the temple of diana dictynna in crete , and of his being called up into heaven by a quire of virgins singing in the aire . . the uncertainty of the manner of apollonius his leaving the world , argued out of philostratus his own confession . . that if that at the temple of diana dictynna was true , yet it is no demonstration of any great worth in his person . . that the secrecy of his departure out of this world might beget a suspicion in his admirers that he went body and soul into heaven . . of a statue of apollonius that spake , and of his dictating verses to a young philosopher at tyana , concerning the immortality of the soul. . of his ghost appearing to aurelian the emperour . . of christ's appearing to stephen at his martyrdome , and to saul when he was going to damascus . chap. viii . . the use of this parallel hitherto of christ and apollonius . . mahomet , david george , h. nicolas , high-pretending prophets , brought upon the stage , and the author's apology for so doing . . that a misbelief of the history of christ , and a dexterity in a moral mythology thereof , are the greatest excellencies in david george and h. nicolas . . that if they believed there were any miracles ever in the world , they ought to have given their reasons why they believe not those that are recorded of christ , and to have undeceiv'd the world by doing miracles themselves to ratifie their doctrine . . if they believed there never were , nor ever will be any miracles , they do plainly betray themselves to be mere atheists or epicures . . the wicked plot of satan in this sect in clothing their style with scripture-language , though they were worse infidels then the very heathen . . that the gross infidelity of these two impostours would make a man suspect them rather to have been crafty prophane cheats then honest through-crackt enthusiasts . . that where faith is extinct , all the rapturous exhortations to vertue are justly suspected to proceed rather from complexion then any divine principle . chap. ix . . mahomet far more orthodox in the main points of religion then the above named impostours . . the high pitch this pretended prophet sets himself at . his journey to heaven , being waited upon by the angel gabriel . his beast alborach , and of his being called to by two women by the way , with the angels interpretation thereof . . his arrival at the temple at jerusalem , and the reverence done to him there by all the prophets and holy messengers of god that ever had been in the world . . the crafty political meaning of the vision hitherto . . mahomet bearing himself upon the angel gabriel's hand , climbes up to heaven on a ladder of divine light . his passing through seven heavens , and his comm●nding of himself to christ in the seventh . . his salutation of his creatour , with the stupendious circumstances thereof . . five special favours he received from god at that congress . . of the natural wilyness in enthusiasts , and of their subtile pride where they would seem most humble . the strange advantage of enthusiasme with the rude multitude ; . and the wonderfull success thereof in mahomet . other enthusiasts as proud as mohamet , but not so successful , and why . chap. x. . that mahomet was no true prophet , discovered from his cruel and bloudy precepts . . from his insatiable lust. . from his wildeness of phansy , and ignorance in things . what may possibly be the meaning of the black speck taken out of his heart by the angel gabriel . . his pretence to miracles ; as his being overshadowed with a cloud , when he drove his masters mules . . a stock of a tree cleaving it self to give way to the stumbling prophet . the cluttering of trees together to keep off the sun from him ; as also his dividing of the moon . . the matters hitherto recited concerning mahomet taken out of johannes andreas the son of abdalla a mahometane priest , a grave person and serious christian. chap. xi . . three main consequences of christ's apotheosis . . of the mission of the holy ghost , and the apostles power of doing miracles . . the manner of the descent of the holy ghost upon them at the day of pentecost . . the substantial reasonableness of the circumstances of this miracle . . the symbolical meaning of them . . what was meant by the rushing winde that filled the whole house . . what by the fiery cloven tongues . . a recital of several other miracles done by or happening to the apostles . . the congruity and coherence of the whole history of the miracles of christ and his apostles argued from the success . chap. xii . . three main effects of christ his sending the paraclete , foretold by himself , iohn . when the paraclete shall come , &c. . grotius his exposition upon the text. . the ground of his exposition . . a brief indication of the natural sense of the text by the author . . the prophesie of christ fulfilled , and acknowledged not only by christians but also mahometans . . that the substance of mahometism is moses and christ. their zealous profession of one god. . their acknowledgment of miracles done by christ and his apostles , and of the high priviledge conferred upon christ. . what advantage that portion of christian truth which they have embraced has on them , and what hopes there are of their full conversion . chap. xiii . . the triumph of the divine life not so large hitherto as the overthrow of the external empire of the devil . . her conspicuous eminency in the primitive times . . the real and cruel martyrdomes of christians under the ten persecutions , a demonstration that their resurrection is not an allegorie . . that to allegorize away that blessed immortality promised in the gospel is the greatest blasphemy against christ that can be imagined . chap. xiv . . the corruption of the church upon the christian religion becoming the religion of the empire . . that there did not cease then to be a true and living church , though hid in the wilderness . . that though the divine life was much under , yet the person of our saviour christ , of the virgin mary , &c. were very richly honoured ; . and the apostles and martyrs highly complemented according to the ancient guize of the pagan ceremonies . . the condition of christianity since the general apostasie compared to that of una in the desart amongst the satyrs . . that though this has been the state of the church very long , it will not be so alwaies , and while it is so , yet the real enemies of christ do lick the dust of his feet . . the mad work those apes and satyrs make with the christian truth . . the great degeneracy of christendome from the precepts and example of christ in their warrs and bloudshed . . that though providence has connived at this pagan christianism for a while , he will not fail to restore his church to its pristine purity at the last . . the full proof of which conclusion is too voluminous for this place . chap. xv. . grotius his reasons against days signifying years in the prophets , propounded and answered . . demonstrations that days do sometimes signifie so many years . . mr. mede's opinion , that a new systeme of prophecies from the first epocha begins chap. . v. . cleared and confirmed . . what is meant by the three days and an half that the witnesses lye slain . . of the beast out of the bottomless pit . . of the first resurrection . . the conclusion of the matter in hand from the evident truth of mr. mede's synchronisms . chap. xvi . . of the four beasts about the throne of majesty described before the prophecie of the seals . . of the six first seals according to grotius . . of the six first seals according to mr. mede . . of the inward court , and the fight of michael with the dragon , according to grotius and mr. mede . . of the visions of the seven trumpets . . the near cognation and colligation of those seven synchronals that are contemporary to the six first trumpets . . the mistakes and defects in grotius his interpretations of those synchronals . . of the number of the beast . . of the synchronals contemporary to the last trumpet . . the necessity of the guidance of such synchronisms as are taken from the visions themselves , inferred from grotius his errours and mistakes who had the want of them . the author's apology for preferring mr. mede's way before grotius's , with an intimation of his own design in intermedling with these matters . chap. xvii . . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does not implie , that most of the matters in the apocalypse appertain to the destruction of jerusalem and to rome heathen . . the important usefulness of this book for the evincing of a particular providence , the existence of angels , and the ratification of the highest points in christianity . . how excellent an engine it is against the extravagancy and fury of fanatick enthusiasts . . how the mouths of the jews and atheists are stopped thereby . . that it is a mirrour to behold the nature of the apostasie of the roman church in . . and also for the reformed churches to examine themselves by , whether they be quite emerged out of this apostasie ; with the author's scruple that makes him suspect they are not . . what of will-worship and idolatry seems still to cleave to us . . further information offered to us from the vision of the slain witnesses . . the dangerous mistakes and purposes of some heated meditatours upon the fifth monarchy . . the most usefull consideration of the approach of the millennium , and how the time may be retarded , if not forfeited , by their faithlesness and hypocrisie who are most concerned to hasten on those good daies . book vi. chap. i. three chief things considerable in christ's return to iudgment , viz. the visibility of his person , the resurrection of the dead , and the conflagration of the world. . places of scripture to prove the visibility of his person . . that there will be then a resurrection of the dead not in a moral but a natural sense , demonstrated from undeniable places of scripture . . proofs out of scripture for the conflagration of the world , as out of peter , the chap. of his second epistle . . an interpretation of the and verses . . a demonstration that the apostle there describes the conflagration of the world. . a confutation of their opinion that would interpret the apostle's description of the burning of jerusalem . . that the coming of christ so often mentioned in these two epistles of peter is to be understeod of his last coming to iudgment . , . further confirmation of the said assertion . . other places pointed at for the proving of the conflagration . chap. ii. . the fitness and necessity of christ's visible return to iudgment . . further arguments of his return to iudgment , for the convincing of them that believe the miraculousness of his birth , his transfiguration , his ascension , &c. . arguments directed to those that are more proue to infidelity , taken out of history , where such things are found to have hapned already in some measure as are expected at christ's visible appearance . . that before extraordinary iudgments there have usually strange prodigies appeared by the ministry of angels , as before great plagues or pestilences . . as also before the ruine of countries by war. . before the swallowing down antioch by an earthquake . . at the firing of sodome and gomorrha . . and lastly , before the destruction of jerusalem . chap. iii. . the resurrection of the dead by how much more rigidly defined , according to every circumstance and punctilio delivered by theologers , by so much● the more pleasant to the ears of the atheists . . that the resurrection in the scholastick notion thereof was in all likelihood the great stone of offence to those two enthusiasts of delph and amsterdam , and emboldened them to turn the whole gospel into an allegorie . . the incurable condition of enthusiasts . . the atheists first objection against the scholastick resurrection proposed . . his second objection . . his third and last objection . . that his objections do not demonstrate an absolute impossibility of the scholastick resurrection , with the author's purpose of answering them upon other grounds . chap. iv. . an answer to their first and last cavil , from those principles of plato's school , that the soul is the man , and that the body perceives nothing . . an answer to their second , by rightly interpreting what is meant by rising out of the grave in the general notion thereof . . that there is no warrant out of scripture for the same numerical body , but rather the contrary . . the atheists objection from the word resurrectio answered , whose sense is explained out of the hebrew and greek . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , what the meaning of them is in that general sense which is applicable as well to the resurrection of the unjust as of the just . chap. v. . an objection against the resurrection , from the activity of the soul out of her body , with the first answer thereto . . the second answer . . the special significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the first belonging to the unjust , the latter to the just . . that the life that is led on the earth or in this lower region of the air is more truly a death then a life . . the manner of our recovering our celestial body at the last day . . and of the accomplishment of the promise of christ therein . chap. vi. . that he has freed the mystery of the resurrection from all exceptions of either atheists or enthusiasts . . that the soul is not uncapable of the happiness of an heavenly body . . and that it is the highest and most sutable reward that can be conferr'd upon her . . that this reward is not above the power of christ to confer , proved by what he did upon earth . . that all iudgment is given to him by the father . . further arguings to 〈◊〉 same purpose . chap. vii . . caecilius his scoffs against the resurrection , and conflagration of the world : that against the resurrection answered already . . in what sense the soberer christians understood the conflagration of the world. . that the conflagration in their sense is possible , argued from the combustibleness of the parts of the earth . . as also from actual fire found in several mountains , as aetna , helga , and hecla . . several instances of that sort out of plinie . . instances of vulcanoes , out of acosta . . the vulcanoes of guatimalla . . vulcanoes without smoak having a quick fire as the bottome . . vulcanoes that have cast fire and smoak some thousand of years together . . hot fountains , springs running with pitch and rosin , certain thermae catching fire at a distance . chap. viii . . a fiery comet as big as the sun that appeared after the death of demetrius . comets presages of droughts . woods set on fire after their appearing . . of falling starres . of the tail of a comet that dried up a river . . hogsheads of wine drunk up and men dissipated into atoms by thunder . . that the fire of thunder is sometimes unquenchable , as that in macrinus the emperours time ; and that procured by the praiers of the thundering legion . . of conglaciating thunders , and the transmutation of lot's wife into a pillar of salt. . the destruction of sodom with fire from heaven . that universal deluges and earthquakes do argue the probability of a deluge of fire . . that plinie counts it the greatest wonder , that this deluge of fire has not ha●●ed already . chap. ix . . the conflagration argued from the proneness of nature and the transcendent power of christ. . his driving down the powers of satan from their upper magazine . . the surpassing power and skill of his angelical hosts . . the efficacy of his fiat upon the spirit of nature . . the unspeakable corroboration of his soul by its union with the godhead ; and the manner of operation upon the elements of the world. . that the eye of god is ever upon the earth , and that he may be an actour as well as a speculatour , if duly called upon . , . a short description of the firing of the earth by christ , with the dreadful effects thereof . chap. x. . the main fallacies that cause in men the misbelief of the possibility of the conflagration of the earth . . that the conflagration is not only possible but reasonable . the first reason leading to the belief thereof . . the second reason , the natural decay of all particular structures , and that the earth is such , and that it grows dry and looses of its solidity , whence its approach to the sun grows nearer . . that the earth therefore will be burnt , either according to the course of nature , or by a special appointment of providence . . that it is most reasonable that second way should take place , because of the obdurateness of the atheistical crew . . that the vengeance will be still more significant , if it be inflicted after the miraculous deliverance of the faithfull . chap. xi . . a recapitulation or synopsis of the more intelligible part of the christian mystery , with an indication of the usefulness thereof . . the undeniable grounds of this mystery , the existence of god , a particular providence , the lapsableness of angels and men , the natural subjection of men to devils in this fallen condition . . god's wisdome and iustice in the permission thereof for a time . , . further reasons of that permission . . the lapse of men and angels proved . . the good emerging out of this lapse . . the exceeding great preciousness of the divine life . . the conflagration of the earth . . the good arising from the opposition betwixt the light and dark kingdome . . that god in due time is in a special manner to assist the kingdome of light , and in a way most accommodate to the humane faculties . . that therefore he was to send into the world some venerable example of the d●vine life , with miraculous attestations of his m●ssion of so sacred a person . . that this person , by reason of the great agonies that befall them that return to the divine life , ought to bring with him a palpable pledge of a proportionable reward , suppose , of a blessed immortality , manifested to the meanest capacity by his rising from the dead and visibly ascending into heaven . . that in the revolt of mankind from the tyranny of the devil , there ought to be some head , and that the qualifications of that head ought to be opposi●e to those of the old tyrant , as also to have a power of restoring us to all that we have lost by being under the usurper . . that also in this head all the notable objects of the religious propensions of the nations should be comprized in a more lawfull and warrantable manner . . that this idea of christianity is so worthy the goodness of god , and so sutable to the state of the world , that no wise and vertuous person can doubt but that it is or will be set on foot at some time by divine providence ; and that if the m●ssias be come , and the writings of the new testament be true in the literal sense , it is on foot already . chap. xii . . that the chief authour of this mystical madness that nulls the true and literal sense of scripture is h. nicolas , whose doctrine therefore and person is more exactly to be enquired into . . his bitter reviling and high scorn and contempt of all ministers of the gospel of christ that teach according to the letter , with the ill consequences thereof . . the reason of his vilification of them , and his injunction to his followers not to consult with any teachers but the elders of his family , no not with the dictates of their own consciences , but wholy to give themselves up to the leading of those elders . the irrecoverable apostasie of simple souls from their saviour by this wicked stratagem . . his high magnifications of himself , and his service of the love , before the dispensation of moses , john the baptist , or christ himself . . that his service of the love is a third dispensation , namely of the spirit , and that which surpasses that of christ ; with other encomiums of his doctrine , as that in it is the sounding of the last trump , the descent of the new jerusalem from heaven , the resurrection of the dead , the glorious coming of christ to judgment , and the everlasting condemnation of the wicked in hell-fire . . that h. nicolas for his time , and after him the eldest of the family of the love in succession , are christ himself descended from heaven to judge the world , as also the true high priest for ever in the most holy. chap. xiii . . an examination of all possible grounds of this fan●tick boaster's magnifying himself thus highly . . that there are no grounds thereof from either the matter he delivers , or from his scriptural eloquence , raptures and allegories . . the unspeakable power and profit of the letter above that of the allegorie , instanced in the crucifixion , resurrection , ascension of our saviour , and his coming again to iudgment . that allegorizing the scripture is no special divine gift , but the fruit of either our naturall phansie or education . . that he had no grounds of magnifying himself from any miracles he did ; . nor from being any special preacher of perfection or practiser thereof . . of that imperfection that is seated in the impurity of the astral spirit and ungovernable tumult of phansie in fanatick persons . chap. xiv . . that neither h. nicolas nor his doctrine was prophesied of in holy scripture . that of the angel preaching the everlasting gospel groundlesly applied to him . . as also that place iohn . . of being that prophet . . his own mad application of acts . v. . to himself . . their misapplication of cor. . v. , . and hebr. . v. , . to the doctrine of this new prophet . . their arguing for the authority of the service of the love from the series of times and dispensations , with the answer thereunto . . that the oeconomie of the family of love is quite contrary to the reign of the spirit . . that the author is not against the regnum spiritûs the cabbalists also speak of , but only affirms that this dispensation takes not away the personal offices of christ nor the external comeliness of divine worship . . that if this regnum spiritûs is to be promoted by the ministry of some one person more especially , it follows not that it is h. nicolas , he being a mere mistaken enthusiast , or worse . chap. xv. . that the personal offices of christ are not to be laid aside : that he is a priest for euer , demonstrated out of sundry places of holy writ . . that the office of b●ing a iudge is also affixed to his humane person , proved from several testimonies of scripture . . places alledged for the excluding christ's humanity , with answers therein . . the last and most plausible place they do alledge , with an answer to the same . chap. xvi . . that hen. nicolas does plainly in his writings lay aside the person of christ , as where he affirms that whatever is taught by the scripture learned is false , and that all the matters of the bible are but presigurations of what concerns the dispensation of his blessed family . . other citations to the same purpose , and his accursed allegory of christ's celebrating his passeover with his disciples , whereby he would antiqu●te and abolish the true historical knowledge of him . . several places where he evidently t●kes away the priestly office of christ. . others that plainly take away his glorious return to iudgment and the resurrection of the dead in the true and apostolical sense . chap. xvii . . his perverse interpretation of that article of the creed concerning life everlasting . . his misbelief of the immortality of the soul , proved from his forcible wresting of the most pregnant testimonies thereof to his dispensation and ministry here on earth . . their interpreting of the heavenly body mentioned cor. . and the unmarried state of angels , to the signification of a state of this present life . . that h. nicolas as well as david george held there were no angels , neither good nor bad . . further demonstrative arguments that he held the soul of man mor●al . . how sutable his laying aside of the person of christ is to these other tenets . . that h. nicolas , as highly as he magnifies himself , is much below the better sort of pagans . his irreverent apprehension of the divine majesty , if he held that there was any thing more divine then himself . chap. xviii . . the great mischief and danger that accrues to the world from this false prophet . . the probable ferocity of this sect when time shall serve , and eagerness of executing his bloudy vision . . that familisme is a plot laid by satan to overthrow christianity . . what the face of things in likelihood would be supposing it had overrun all . . the motives that inforced the authour to make so accurate a discovery of this imposture . chap. xix . . that familism is a monster bred out of the corruptions of christianity , and ill management of affairs by the guides of the church . . the first particular of ill management intimated . . the second particular . . the third particular . . the fourth . . the fifth particular . . that this false prophet h. nicolas was raised by god to exprobrate to christendome their universal degeneracy , prophaneness and infidelity . . that though the evil be discovered , it is not to be remedied but by returning to the ancient apostolick life and doctrine . book vii . chap. i. that the subject of the third part of his discourse is the reality of the christian mystery . . that the reasonableness of christian religion and the constant belief thereof by knowing and good men , from the time it is said to have begun till now , is a plain argument of the truth thereof to them that are not over-sceptical . . the averseness of slight and inconsiderate witts from all arguments out of prophecies , with their chiefest objections against the same . . that the prophecies of the messias in the old testament were neither forged nor corrupted by the jews . . an answer to their objections concerning the obscurity of prophecies . . as also to that from free will. . that all prophecies are not from the fortuitous heat of mens phansies but by divine revelation , proved by undeniable instances . . a particular reason of true prophets amongst the iews , with some examples of true prophecies in other places . . a notable prophecie acknowledged by vaninus concerning julius caesar's being kill'd in the senate . chap. ii. . the genuine sense of jacob's prophecie . . the inference therefrom , that the messias is come . . that there had been a considerable force in this prophecie , though the words had been capable of other tolerable meanings : but they admitting no other interpretations tolerable , it is a demonstration the messias is come . . the chief interpretations of the jews propounded . . that neither moses nor saul can be meant by shiloh , . nor david , . nor jeroboam , nor nebuchadonosor . . that in the babylonian captivity the sceptre was rather sequestred then quite taken away ; with a further urging of the ineptness of the sense of the prophecie , if applied to nebuchadonosor . . their subterfuge in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 noted and refuted . . the various significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and their expositions therefrom . . an answer to them in general . , . an answer to their evasion by interpreting of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a tribe . . an answer to their interpreting of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a staffe of maintenance . . an answer to their interpreting it a rod of correction . . an answer jointly to both these last interpretations . . that their variety of expositions is a demonstration of their own dissatisfaction in them all . chap. iii. . the prophecie of haggai . . the natural sense of the prophecie . . that the second temple could not be more glorious then the first but by receiving the messias into it . . that herod's temple could not be understood hereby . . an answer to their sub●erfuge concerning ezekiel's temple . . that the prophecie of malachi adds further force to that of haggai . . that the prophet could understand no other temple then that which was then standing . chap. iv. . the prophecie of daniel . . the exposition of the prophecie . . that the said exposition is as easie and natural as the meaning of any writing whatsoever ; and what an excellent performance it would be to demonstrate out of chronologie , that the passion of christ fell two or three daies after th● beginning or before the end of the last week . . the summe of the sense of the whole prophecie . . that the circumscription of the prophetical weeks is not made by the vastation of the city , but by the accomplishment of those grand prophecies concerning the messiah . and that no epocha can be true that does not terminate upon them . chap. v. . the application of the first verse of the prophecie to prove that the messiah is come . . the iews evasions propounded and answered . . an application of the second verse of the prophecie , with a confutation of those rabbins opinions that make cyrus , jehoshua and zerobabel , or nehemiah their messiah . . an application of the third verse , with a confutation of the jews fiction of agrippa's being the messiah to be cut off . chap. vi. . how convincing evidences those three prophecies of jacob , haggai and daniel are , that the messiah is come . . that it was the general opinion of the jews , that the messiah was to come about that time we say he did . . josephus his misapplication of the prophecie of daniel to vespasian . . a further confirmation out of tacitus , that the jews about those times expected their messiah . . another testimony out of suetonius . chap. vii . . that it being evident the messiah is come , it will also follow that jesus is he . . that the prophets when they prophesied of any eminent king , priest or prophet , were sometimes carried in their prophetick raptures to such expressions as did more properly concern the messiah then the person they began to describe . . that these references are of two sorts , either purely allegorical , or mixt ; and of the use of pure allegories by the evangelists and apostles . . of mixt allegories of this kind , and of their validity for argument . . that eminent prophecie of isaiah , that so fully characterizes the person of christ. . that the ancient jews understood this of their messiah , and that the modern are forced hence to fancy two messiahs . the soul of the messiah appointed to this office from the beginning of the world , as appears out of their pelikta . . the nine characters of the messiah's person included in the above-n●med prophecie . a brief intimation in what verses of the prophecie they are couched . . that this prophecie cannot be applied to the people of the iews , nor adequately to jeremie's person . . special passages in the prophecie utterly unapplicalbe to jeremie . chap. viii . . further proofs out of the prophets , that the messiah was to be a sacrifice for sinne . . that he was to rise from the dead . . that he was to ascend into heaven . . that he was to be worshipped as god. . that he was to be an eminent light to the nations ; . and welcomely received by them . what is meant by his rest shall be glorious . . that he was to abolish the superstition of the gentiles . . and that his kingdome shall have no end . . that all these characters are comp●tible to jesus whom we worship , and to him only . chap. ix . . the peculiar use of arguments drawn from the prophecies of the old testament for the convincing the atheist and melancholist . . an application of the prophecies to the known events for the conviction of the truth of our religion . . that there is no likelihood at all but that the priesthood of christ will last as long as the generations of men upon earth . . the conclusion of what has been urged hitherto . . that christ was no fictitious person , proved out of the history of heathen writers , as out of plinie , . and tacitus : . as also lucian , . and suetonius . . that the testimony out of josephus is supposititious , and the reasons why he was silent concerning christ. . julian's purpose of rebuilding the temple at jerusalem , with the strange success thereof , out of ammianus marcellinus . chap. x. . further proofs that both iews and pagans acknowledge the reality of the person of christ and his doing of miracles . . the force of these allegations added to the prophecie of the time of christ's coming and the characters of his person . . that the characters of his person are still more exact , but not to be insisted upon till the proof of the truth of the history of the gospel . , . that the transcendent eminency of christ's person is demonstrable from what has already been alledged and from his resurrection , without recourse to the gospels . from whence it necessarily follows that his life was writ . . that the life of christ was writ timely , while eye-witnesses were alive , proved by a very forcible demonstration . . that eternal happiness through christ was the hope of the first christians , proved out of lucian and s. paul ; and of a peculiar self-evidence of truth in his epistles . . that the first and most early meaning of christianity is comprised in those writings . . that eternal salvation depending upon the knowledge of christ , it was impossible but that the apostles should take care betimes that the miracles of christ should be recorded . . that the apostles could not fail to have the life of christ written , to prevent the erroneous attempts of the pragmatical , to satisfie the importunity of believers , or in obedience to divine instigation . . that it is as incredible that the apostles neglected the writing of the life of christ , as that a wise man in the ●ffairs of the world should neglect the writing of his will when he had opportunity of doing it . . that , it being so incredible but that the life of christ should be writ , and there being found writings that comprize the same , it naturally follows , that they are they . chap. xi . . other proofs , that the life of christ was writ by his apostles or his followers , out of grotius . . an answer to a foolish surmise that those records writ by the apostles might be all burnt . . that the copies have not been corrupted by either carelesness or fraud . chap. xii . . more particular characters of the person of the messiah in the prophecies . . his being born at bethlehem ; . and that of a virgin. his curing the lame and the blinde , . the piercing of his hands and feet . caap. xiii . . that if the gospel of christ had been false and fabulous , it would not have had that success at jerusalem by the preaching of the apostles . . the severity also of the precepts and other hardships to be undergone would have kept them off from being christians . . as also the incredibleness of the resurection of christ , and of our being rewarded at the conflagration of the world. , . the meanness also and contemptibleness of the first authors would have turned men off , nor would they have been listned to by any one , if the resurrection of christ had not been fully ascertain'd by them . . which the apostles might be sure of , being only matter of fact ; nor is it imaginable they would declare it without being certain of it , by reason of the great hazards they underwent thereby . chap. xiv . . objections of the jews against their messiah's being come , answered . . a pompous evasion of the aristotelean atheists supposing all miracles and apparitions to be the effects of the intelligences and heavenly bodies . . vaninus his restraint of the hypothesis to one anima coeli . . his intolerable pride and conceitedness . . a confutation of him and the aristotelean atheisme from the motion of the earth . . that vaninus his subterfuge is but a self-contradiction . . that christianitie's succeeding judaisme is by the special counsel of god , not by the influence of the starres . . cardanus his high folly in calculating the nativity of our saviour , with a demonstration of the groundlesness of vaninus his exaltation in his impious boldness of making mahomet , moses and christ sidereal law-givers of like authority . . that the impudence and impiety of these two vainglorious pretenders constrains the authour more fully to lay open the frivolousness of the principles of astrology . chap. xv. . the general plausibilities for the art of astrology propounded . . the first rudiments of the said art. the qualities of the planets , and their penetrancy through the earth . . that the earth is as pervious to them as the aire , and of their division of the zodiack into trigons , &c. . the essentiall dignities of the planets . . their accidentall dignities . . of the twelve celestial houses , and the five wayes of erecting a scheme . . the requisiteness of the exact knowledge of the moment of time , and of the true longitude and latitude of the place . . direction what it is , and which the chiefest directours or significatours . . of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or apheta and anaereta , and the time when the anaereta gives the fatall stroke . chap. xvi . . that the starrs and planets are not useless though there be no truth in astrology . . that the starrs are not the causes of the variety of productions here below . . that the sensible moistening power of the moon is no argument for the influence of other planets and starrs . . nor yet the flux and reflux of the sea , and direction of the needle to the north pole. . that the station and repedation of the planets is an argument against the astrologers . . that the influence attributed to the dog-star , the hyades and orion , is not theirs but the sun 's , and that the sun's influence is only heat . . the slight occasions of their inventing of those dignities of the planets they call exaltations and houses , as also that of aspects . . their folly in preferring the planets before the fixt starrs of the same appearing magnitude , and of their fiction of the first qualities of the planets , with those that rise therefrom . . their rashness in allowing to the influence of the heavenly bodies so free passage through the earth . . their groundless division of the signs into moveable and fixt , and the ridiculous effects they attribute to the trigons , together with a demonstration of the falseness of the figment . . a confutation of their essential dignities . . as also of their accidental . . a subversion of their erection of themes and distributing of the heavens into twelve celestial houses . . their fond pretenses to the knowledge of the exact moment of the infants birth . . a confutation of their animodar and tru●ina hermetis . . as also of their method of rectifying a nativity per accidentia nati . . his appeal to the skilful , if he has not fundamentally confuted the whole pretended art of astrology . chap. xvii . . their fallacious allegation of events answering to predictions . . an answer to that evasion of theirs , that the errour is in the artist , not in the art. . further confutations of their bold presumption , that their art alwaies predicts true . . that the punctual correspondence of the event to the prediction of the astrologer does not prove the certainty of the art of astrology . . the great affinity of astrology with daemonolatry , and of the secret agency of daemons in bringing about predictions . . that by reason of the secret or familiar converse of daemons with pretended astrologers , no argument can be raised from events for the truth of this art. . a recapitulation of the whole matter argued . . the just occasions of this astrological excursion , and of his shewing the ridiculous condition of those three high-flown sticklers against christianity , apollonius , cardan and vaninus . book viii . chap. i. the end and usefulness of christian religion in general . . that christ came into the world to destroy sin out of it . . his earnest recommendation of humility . . the same urged by the apostle paul. chap. ii. . christs enforcement of love and charity upon his church by precept and his own example . . the wretched imposture and false pretensions of the family of love to this divine grace . . the unreasonableness of the familists in laying aside the person of christ , to adhere to such a carnal and inconsiderable guide as hen. nicolas . . that this whifler never gave any true specimens of real love to mankinde , as christ did and his apostles . . his unjust usurpation of the title of love. . the unparallel'd endearment● of christs sufferings in the behalf of manki●d . chap. iii. . the occasion of the familists us●rpation of the title of love. . earnest precepts o●t of the apostles to follow love , and what kind of love that is . . that we c●nnot love god , unlesse we love our neighbour also . . an exposition of the and verses of the chapter of the epist. of s. peter . . saint paul's rapturous commendation of charity . his accurate description thereof . . that love is the highest participation of the divinity , and that whereby we become the sons of god. a●d how injurious these fanaticks are that rob the church of christ of this title to appropriate it to themselves . chap. iv. . our saviour's strict injuction of purity ; from whence it is also plain that the love he commends is not in any sort fleshly , but divine . . several places out of the apostles urging the same duty . . two more places to the same purpose . . the groundless presumption of those that abuse christianity to a liberty of sinning . . that this errour attempted the church betimes , and is too taking at this very day . . whence appears the nec●ssi●y of opposing it , which he promises to do , taking the rise of his discourse from iohn . . chap. v. . the apostle's care for young christians against that errour of thinking they may be righteous without doing righteously . . their obnoxiousness to this contagion , with the causes thereof to be searched into . . the first sort of scriptures perverted to this ill end . . the second sort . . that the very state of christian childhood makes them prone to this errour . . what is the nature of that faith abraham is so much commended for , and what the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . a search after the meaning of the term justification . . justification by faith without the deeds of the law what may be the meaning of it . . scriptures answered that seem to disjoin reall righteousness from faith ; . and to make us only righteous by imputation . . undeniable testimonies of scripture that prove the necessity of real righteousness in us . chap. vi. . their alledgement of gal. . . as also of the whole drift of that epistle . . what the righteousness of faith is according to the apostle . . in what s●●se those that are in christ are said not to be under the law. . that the righteousness of faith is no figment but a reality in us . . that this righteousness is the new creature , and what this new creature is according to scripture . that the new creature consists in wisdome , righteousness and true holiness . . the righteousness of the new creature . . his w●sdome and holiness . . that the righteousness of faith excludes not good works . the wicked treachery of those that teach the contrary . chap. vii . . that no small measure of sanctity serves the turn in christianity : . as appears out of scriptures already alledged . . further proofs thereof out of the prophets ; . as also out of the gospel , . and other places of the new testament . . the strong armature of a christian souldier . . his earnest endeavour after perfection . chap. viii . . that the christians assistance is at least equal to this task . . the two gospel-powers that comprehend his duty . . the first gospel-aid , the promise of the spirit , with prophecies thereof out of ezekiel and esay . . some hints of the mystical meaning of the last . . another excellent prediction thereof . chap. ix . . the great use of the belief of the promise of the spirit . . the eating the flesh of christ and drinking his bloud , what it is . . further proof of the promise of the spirit . . that we cannot oblige god by way of merit . . other testimonies of scripture tending to the former purpose . chap. x. . a recapitulation of what has been set down hitherto concerning the usefulness of the gospel , and the necessity of undeceiving the world in those points that so nearly concern christian life . . the ill condition of those that content themselves with imaginary righteousness , figured out in the fighters against ariel and mount sion . . a further demonstration of their fond conceit . . that a true christian cannot sin without pain and torture to himself . chap. xi . . that the want of real righteousness deprives us of the divine wisdome , proved out of scripture : . as also from the nature of the thing it self . . that is disadvantages the soul also in natural speculations . . that it stifles all noble and laudable actions ; . and exposes the imaginary religionist to open reproach . . that mere imaginary righteousness robs the soul of her peace of conscience , . and of all divine ioy ; . of health and safety , . and of eternal salvation . . that god also hereby is deprived of his glory , and the church frustrated of publick peace and happiness . chap. xii . . of the attending to the light within us , of which some spiritualists so much boast . . that they must mean the light of reason and conscience thereby , if they be not fanaticks , mad-men or cheats . and that this conscience necessarily takes information from without ; . and particularly from the holy scriptures . . that these spiritualists acknowledge the fondness of their opinion by their contrary practice . . an appeal to the light within them , if the christian religion according to the literal sense be not true . . that the operation of the divine spirit is not absolute , but restrained to certain laws and conditions , as it is in the spirit of nature . . the fourth gospel-power , the example of christ. . his purpose of vindicating the example of christ from aspersions , with the reasons thereof . chap. xiii . . that christ was no blasphemer in declaring himself to be the son of god ; . nor conjurer in casting out devils . . that he was unjustly accused of prophaneness . . that there was nothing detestable in his neutrality toward political factions : . nor any injustice nor partiality found in him . . nor could his sharp rebukes of the pharis●es be rightly termed railing ; . nor his whipping the buyers and sellers out of the temple tumult●ary zeal ; . nor his crying out so dreadfully in his passion be imputed to impatience or despair . . the suspicion of distractedness and madness cleared . . his vindication from their aspersions of looseness and prodigality . . the c●o●ked and perverse nature of the pharisees noted ; with our saviours own apology for his frequenting all companies . . that christ was no self-seeker in undergoing the death of the cross for that joy that was set before him . chap. xiv . . the reason of his having insisted so long on the vindicating of the life of christ from the aspersions of the malevolent . . the true character of a real christian. . the true character of a false or pharisaical christian. . how easily the true members of christ are accused of blasphemy by the pharisaical christians . . and the working of their graces imputed to some vicious principle . . their censuring them prophane that are not superstitious . . the parisees great dislike of coldness in fruitless controversies of religion . . their ignorance of the law of equity and love. . how prone it is for the sincere christian to be accounted a railer , for speaking the truth . . that the least opposition against pharisaical rottenness will easily be interpreted bitter and tumultuous zeal . . how the solid knowledge of the perfectest christians may be accounted madness by the formal pharisee . . his proneness to judge the true christian according to the motions of his own untamed corruptions . . his prudent choice of the vice of covetousness . . the unreasonableness of his censure of those that endeavour after perfection . . his ignorant surmise that no man liveth vertuously for the love of vertue it self . . the usefulness of this parallelisme betwixt the reproach of christ and his true members . chap. xv. . the passion of christ the fifth gospel-power , the virtue whereof is in a special manner noted by our saviour himself . . that the brazen serpent in the wilderness was a prophetick type of christ , and cured not by art but by divine power . . that telesmatical preparations are superstitious , manifest out of their collections that write of them ; . particularly out of gaffarel and gregory . . that the effects of telesmes are beyond the laws of nature . . that if there be any natural power in telesmes , it is from similitude ; with a confutation of this ground also . . a further confutation of that ground . . in what sense the braz●n serpent was a telesme , and that it must needs be a typical prophecie of christ. . the accurate and punctual prefiguration therein . . the wicked pride and conceitedness of those that are not touched with this admirable contrivance of divine providence . . the insufferable balsphemy of them that reproach the son of god for crying out in his dreadful agony on the cross ; wherein is discovered the unloveliness of the family of love. chap. xvi . . the end of christs sufferings not onely to pacifie conscience , but to root out sin ; witnessed out of the scripture . . further testimonies to the same purpose . . the faintness and uselesness of the allegory of chr●sts passion in comparison of the application of the history thereof . the application of christs sufferings against pride and covetousness . . as also against envy , h●●red , revenge , vain mirth , the pangs of dea●h , and unwarrantable love. . a general application of the death of christ to the mortifying of all sin whatsoever . . the celebrating the lords supper , the use and meaning thereof . chap. xvii . . the sixth gospel-power is the resurrection and ascension of christ. the priviledge of this demonstration of the soul's immortality above that from the subtilty of reason and philosophy . . the great power this consideration of the soul's immortality has to urge men to a godly life : . to ●ean themselves from worldly pleasures , and learn to delight in those that are everlasting : . to have our conversation in heaven . . the conditions of the everlasting inheritance . . further enforcements of duty from the soul's immortality . chap. xviii . . the day of judgement , the seventh and last gospel-power , fit as well for the regenerate as the unregenerate to think upon . . the uncertainty of that day , and that it will surprize the wicked unawares . . that those that wilfully reject the offers of grace here , shall be in no better condition after death then the devils themselves are . . a description of the sad evening-close of that terrible day of the lord. . the affrightment of the morning-appearance thereof to the wicked . . a further description thereof . . the translation of the church of christ to their aethereal mansions , with a brief description of their heavenly happiness . chap. xix . . that there can be no religion more powerful for the promoting of the divine life then christianity is . . the external triumph of the divine life in the person of christ how throughly warranted and how fully performed . . the religious splendour of christendome . . the spirit of religion stifled with the load of formalities . . the satisfaction that the faithfully-devoted servants of christ have from that divine homage done to his person , though by the wicked . chap. xx. . the usefulness of christianity for the good of this life , witnessed by our saviour and s. paul. . the proof thereof from the nature of the thing it self . . objections against christianity , as if it were an unfit religion for states politick . . a concession that the primary intention of the gospel was not government political , with the advantage of that concession . . that there is nothing in christianity but what is highly advantageous to a state-politick . . that those very things they object against it are such as do most effectually reach the chief end of political government , as doth charity for example , . humility , patience , and mortification of inordinate desires . . the invincible valour that the love of christ and their fellow-members inspires the christian souldiery withall . book ix . chap. i. the four derivative properties of the mystery of godliness . . that a measure of obscurity begets veneration , suggested from our very senses . . confirmed also by the common suffrage of all religions , and the nature of reservedness amongst men . . the rudeness and ignorance of those that expect that every divine truth of scripture should be a comprehensible object of their understanding , even in the very modes and circumstances thereof . . that contradictions notwithstanding are to be excluded out of religion . . and that the divinity of christ and the triunity of the godhead have nothing contradictious in them . chap. ii. . that there is a latitude of sense in the words of athanasiu● his creed , and that one and unity has not the same signification every where . . the like in the terms god and omnipotent . . of the word equal , and to what purpose so distinct a knowledge of the deity was co●municated to the church . . in what sense the son and holy ghost are god. that divine adoration is their unquestionable right . and that there is an intelligible sense of athanasius his creed , and such as supposes neither polythe●sme , idolatry nor impossibility . . that there is no intricacy in the divinity of christ but what the schools have brought in by their false notions of suppositum and union hypostatical . . that the union of christ with the eternal word implies no contradiction , and how warrantable an object he is of divine worship . . the application thereof to the iewes . . the union of christ with god compared with that of the angels that bore the name jehovah in the old testament . . the reasonableness of our saviours being united with the eternal word , and how with that hypostasis distinct from the others . chap. iii. . that the communicableness of christian religion implies its reasonableness . . the right method of communicating the christian mystery . , . a brief example of that method . . a further continuation thereof . . how the mystagogus is to behave himself towards the more dull or illiterate . . the danger of debasing the gospel to the dulness of shall●●ness of every weak apprehension . chap. iv. . the due demeanour of a christian mystagogus in communicating the truth of the gospel . . that the chiefest care of all is that he speak nothing but what is profitable for life and godliness . . a just reprehension of the scopeless zeal of certain vain boanerges of these times . . that the abuse of the ministery to the undermining the main ends of the gospel may hazard the continuance thereof . . that any heat and zeal does not constitute a living ministry . chap. v. . the nature of historical faith. . that true saving faith is properly covenant , and of the various significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . in what law and covenant agree . . in what law and testament . . in what covenant and testament agree . . that the church might have called the doctrine of christ either the new law or the new covenant . . why they have styled it rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the first reason . . other reasons thereof . . the occasion of translating 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the new testament . chap. vi. . that there were more old covenants then one . . what old covenant that was to which this new one is especially counterdistinguished : with a brief intimation of the difference of them . , . an objection against the difference delivered ; with the answer thereto . . the reason why the second covenant is not easily broken . . that the importance of the mystery of the second covenant engages him to make a larger deduction of the whole matter out of s. paul. chap. vii . . the different states of the two covenants set out galat. . by a double similitude . . the nature of the old covenant adumbrated in agar : . as also further in her son ismael . . the nature of the new covenaent adumbrated in sarah : . as also in isaac her son and in israel his offspring . . the necessity of imitating abraham's faith , that the spiritual isaac or christ may be born in us . . the grand difference hetwixt the first and second covenant , where in it doth consist . with a direction , by the by , to the most eminent object of our faith. . the second main point wherein this difference consists , namely liberty , and that , first , from ceremonies and opinions ; . secondly , from all kind of sins and disallowable passions ; . lastly , to all manner of righteousness and holiness . . chap. viii . . the adequate object of saving faith or christian covenant . . that there is an obligation on our parts , plain from the very inscription of the new testament . . what the meaning of bloud in covenants is . . and answerably what of the bloud of christ in the christian covenant . . the dangerous errour and damnable hypocrisie of those that would perswade themselves and others that no performance is required on their side in this covenant . . that the heavenly inheritance is promised to us only upon condition , evinced out of several places of scripture . chap. ix . . what it is really to enter into this new covenant . . that the entring into this covenant supposes actual repentance . . that this new-covenanter is born of water and the spirit . . the necessity of the skilfull usage of these new-born babes in christ. . that some teache●s are mere witches and childe suckers . chap. x. . the first principle the new-covenanter is closely to keep to . . the second principle to be k●pt to . . the third and last principle . chap. xi . . the diligent search this new-covenanter ought to make to find out whatsoever is corrupt and sinful . . that the truly regenerate cannot be quiet till all corruption be wrought out . . the most importunate devotions of a living christian. . the difference betwixt a son of the second covenant and a slave under the first . . the mystical completion of a prophecy of esay touching this state . chap. xii . . that the destroying of sin is not without some time of conflict . the most infallible method for that dispatch . . the constant ordering of our external actions . . the hypocritical complaint of those for want of power that will not do those good things that are already in their power . . the danger of making this new covenant a covenant of works , and our love to christ a mercenary friendship . . earnest praiers to god for the perfecting of the image of christ in us . . continual circumspection and watchfulness . . that the vilifying of outward ordinances is no sign of a new-covenanter , but of a proud and carnal mind . . caution to the new-covenanter concerning his converse with men . . that the branches of the divine life without faith in god and christ , degenerate into mere morality . the examining all the motions and excursions of our spirit how agreeable they are with humility , charity and purity . . cautions concerning the exercise of our humility ; . as also of our purity , . and of our love or charity . the safe conduct of the faithfull by their inward guide . book x. chap. i. that the affection and esteem we ought to have for our religion does not consist in damning all to the pit of hell that are not of it . . the unseasonable inculcation of this principle to christians . . that it is better becoming the spirit of a christian to allow what is good and commendable in other religions , then so foully to reproach them . . what are the due demonstrations of our affection to the gospel of christ. . how small a part of the world is styled christians , and how few real christians in that part that is so styled . . that there has been some unskilfull or treacherous tampering with the powerfull engine of the gospel , that it has done so little execution hitherto against the kingdome of the devil . . the author's purpose of bringing into view the main impediments of the due effects thereof . chap. ii. . the most fundamental mistake and root of all the corruptions in the church of christ. . that there may be a superstition also in opposing of ceremonies , and in long prayers and preachments . . that self-chosen religion extinguishes true godliness every where . . the unwholsome and windy food of affected orthodoxality ; with the mischievous consequences thereof . . that hypocrisy of professours fills the world with atheists . . that the authoritative obtrusion of gross falsities upon men begets a misbelief of the whole mystery of piety . . that all the churches of christendome stand guilty of this mischievous miscarriage . . the infinitie inconvenience of the superlapsarian doctrine . chap. iii. . the true measure of opinions to be taken from the design of the gospel , which in general is , the setting out the exceeding great mercy and goodness of god towards mankind . . and then secondly , the triumph of the divine life in the person of christ , in the warrantableness of doing divine honour to him . . thirdly , the advancement of the divine life in his members upon earth . . the fourth and last rule to try opinions by , the recommendableness of our religion to strangers or those that are without . chap. iv. . the general use of the foregoing rules . . a special use of them in favour of one anothers persons in matters of opinion . . the examination of election and reprobation according to these rules . and how well they agree with that branch of the divine life which we call humility . . the disagreement of absolute reprobation with the first rule ; . as also with the third , . and with the second and fourth . chap. v. . that election and reprobation conferrs something to humility . . that some men are saved irresistibly by virtue of discriminative grace . . that the rest of mankind have grace sufficient , and that several of them are saved . . the excellent use of this middle way betwixt calvinisme and arminianisme . , . the exceeding great danger and mischief of the former extremes . chap. vi. . the scholastick opinions concerning the d●vinity of christ applied to the foregoing rules . . as also concerning the trinity . . the application of the antitrinitarian doctrine to the said rules . it s disagreement with the third , . as also with the second . . the antitrinitarians plea. . an answer to their plea. . how grosly the denying the divinity of christ disagrees with the third rule . chap. vii . . imputative righteousness , invincible infirmity and solifidianism , in what sense they seem to comply with the second and last rule , and how disagreeing with the third . . the groundlesness of mens zeal for imputative righteousness , . and for solifidianism . . the conspiracy of imputative righteousness , solifidianism and invincible infirmity to exclude all holiness out of the conversation of christians . . that large confessions of sins and infirmities without any purpose of amending our lives is a mere mocking of god to his very face . with the great danger of that affront . chap. viii . . the flaunting hypocrisie of the perfectionists , and from whence it comes . . the easie laws whereby they measure their perfection . and the sad result of their apostasie from the person of christ. . that there is far more perfection in many thousands of those that abhor the name of perfection then in these great boasters of it . . in what consists that sound and comely frame of a true christian spirit . chap. ix . . sincerity the middle way betwixt pretended infirmity and the boast of perfection : with the description thereof . . a more full character of the sincere christian. . that they that endeavour not after that state are hypocrites , and they that pretend to be above it , conspiratours against the everlasting priesthood of christ. . the personal reign of christ upon earth , and the millennium in the more sober meaning thereof applied to the above-nam'd rules . chap. x. . that in those that believe there is a god , and a life to come , there is an antecedent right of liberty of conscience not to be invaded by the civil magistrate . . object . that no false religion is the command of god ; with the answer thereto . . that there is no incongruity to admit that god may command contrary religions in the world. , . the utmost difficulty in that position , with the answer thereto . . that god may introduce a false perswasion into the mind of man as well for probation as punishment . . that simple falsities in religion are no forfeiture of liberty of conscience . . that though no falsities in religion were the command of god , yet upon other considerations it is demonstrated that the religionist ought to be free . . a further demonstration of this truth from the gross absurdities that follow the contrary position . chap. xi . . that there is a right in every nation and person to examine their religion , to hear the religion of strangers , and to change their own , if they be convinced . . that those nations that acknowledge this right and act accordingly , have naturally a right to send out agents into other nations . their demeanour there , and the right of revenging their injuries . and how this method had justified the spaniards invasion of the indians . . the unpracticableness of the present theory by reason of the general perversness of the world. the advantageousness of it to christendome , and suitableness of it to the spirit of a christian . . that religion corruptive of manners is co●rcible by the magistrate . . and that which would plainly destroy the defence of the countrey . . as also whatsoever religion is inseparably interwoven with principles of persecution . . an answer to that objection , that all sects are persecutive , and that therefore there can be no liberty of conscience given . chap. xii . . to what persons and with what circumstances the christian magistrate is to give liberty of conscience . and the great advantage thereof to the truth of christianity . . that those that are not christians , are not to be admitted into places of trust by the christian magistrate , if he can supply himself with those that are . . that the christian magistrate is to lay aside the fallible opinions of men , and promote every one in church and state , according to his merit in the christian life , and his ability of promoting of the interest of the church of christ and the nation he serves . . that he is to continue or provide an honourable and competent allowance for them that labour in the word and doctrine . . that the vigilancy of the christian magistrate is to keep under such sects as pretend to immediate inspiration unaccountable and unintelligible to sober reason , and why ? . that the endeavour of impoverishing the clergy smels ranck of prophaneness , atheisme and infidelity . . that the christian magistrate is either to erect or keep up schools of humane learning , with the weighty grounds thereof . . a further enforcement of those grounds upon the fanatick perfectionists . . the hideous danger of casting away the history of the gospel upon pretence of keeping to the light within us . chap. xiii . . the authors application to the better-minded quakers . . he desires them of that sect to search the grounds and compute the gains of their revolt from christ. . that there are no peculiar effects of the spirit of god in the sect of the quakers , but rather of pythonism . . that their inspirations are not divine , but diabolical . . the vanity of their boasting of the knowledge of their mysterious allegories . . the grounds of their insufferable bitterness against the ministers of christ. . that he was urged by the light within him to give witness to the truth of the history of the gospel , and to admonish the quakers . his caution to the simple-minded among them how they turn in to familism . . his ease and satisfaction of mind from disburdening himself of this duty . . the compassionableness of their condition , . and hope of ●heir return to christ. chap. xiv . . that publick worsh●p is essential to religion , and inseparable when free from persecution . the right measure of the circumstances thereof . . of the fabrick and beauty of churches according to that measure . . the main things he intends to touch upon concerning publick worship . . that the churches of christians are not temples , the excellency of our religion being incompliable with that notion . . the vanity of the sectarians exception against the word church applied to the appointed places of publick worship . . that though the church be no temple , yet it is in some sense holy , and what respect there is to be had of it , and what reverence to be used there . . of catechizing , expounding and preaching . . of prayer , and what is the true praying by the spirit . . the excellency of publick liturgies . . what is the right end of the ministry . . certain special uses of sermons , and of the excellency of our saviour christs sermon on the mount. . the best way for one to magnifie his ministry . . of the holy communion , who are to be excluded , and of the posture of receiving it . . of the time of baptism , and the sign of the cross. . of songs and hymns to be composed by the church , and of holy-daies . . of the celebrating the passion-day and the holy communion . . of images and pictures in places of publick worship . . a summary advertisement concerning ceremonies and op●nions . an index of places of scripture that are interpreted in this treatise . chap. verse . page . genesis .     . . . . , . , . . . , to . exodus .     . , , . . . . . deuteronomy .     . , . . iob.     . . . . , . . psalmes .     . , , . , . . . . . , . . . , . . proverbs .     . . . isaiah .     . . , , . . . . ● . . . . . . . . . . , to . . . , , . . . . . . , . .   . , . ieremiah .     . . . . , to . , to . ezekiel .     . , &c. . daniel .     . , to . , to . micah .     . . , . haggai .     . , to . . malachi .     . . . title of the new testament .   . matthew .     . , . , . . . .   . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . .   . . . , ad finem . . . , &c. . . , , &c. mark.     . . . . , . . . . . . . . luke .     . . . . . . . , . , . iohn .     . , to . , .   . . . . , .   . . . , . . . . , , . . .   . .   . . . . . . , . , . . . . . . . . . . . , to . , .   , . , .   . . . , . . acts.     . . . . . . romans .     . . . . . .   . .   . .   , . . . . .   . . . , . . . . . i corinthians .     . . . . . . . . , , , . ii corinthi .     . , to . , , .   . . galatians .     . , . . . . , . . , . .   , , . , to . ephesians .     . . . philippians .     . , to . . . , , . . . . . colossians .     . . . i thessalon .     . . . ii timothy .     . . . . . . hebrews .     . . . . . .   . .   . ibid. i peter .     . . .   , , . , . ii peter .     . . , .   , . . . , to . , .   . . i iohn .     . . . . . , , &c. . . . . . . revelation .     . , . . . . . . , , &c. . . , to . , , . . , to . . . , to . , to . . , , . . . , . , .   , . , .   , , , . , , .   , to . . . . , , .   , , . , . . , . , .   , . .   , . to . . . . . . .   . . . . . . . .   , , . , . . . .   , to . , .   . . . , . , . mistakes in the copy . praef . pag. ix . lin . . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . book , pag. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . pag. . l. . r. soul or spirit . pag. . l. . r. damoniacal . pag. . l. . r. mankind ; and the devil and. pag. . l. . r. mettled . l. . r. th' all . pag. . l. . r. eternity ; when . l. . r. in time , who . pag. . l. . r. true in . l. . r. needfull . before . l. . r. idea , we . pag. . l. . r. is built but. pag. . l. . r. dangerously as in christianity . pag. . l. . r. righteous ; as. pag. . l. . r. sindge . pag. . l. . r. near two thirds . pag. . l. . r. any other religion . in printing . pag. . l. . for souls and spirits , read souls or spirits . p. . l. . embraces , r. embracers . p. . l. . pan , lycaeus , r. pan lycaeus . p. . l. . that , r. . that . p. . l. . but not better , dele not . p. . l. . clap ' r. clap'd . p. . l. . wery . r. were . p. . l. . glisning , r. glinsening . p. . l. . or men , r. for men . p. . l. . hat , r. tha● , p. . l. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . whatsoever : so , r. whatsoever . so. p. . l. . . r. . p. . l. . conveies , read conveighs . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e the authors naturall averseness from writing of books . that there was a kinde of necessity urged him to write what he has wrote hitherto . the occasion of writing his psychozoia . as also of his poem of the immortality of the soul. his satyrical essays against enthusiastick philosophie . the great usefulness of his enthusiasmus triumphatus and of this present treatise for suppressing enthusiasme . the occasion and preparations to his writing his antidore against atheisme and his threefold cabbala . the urgent occasion of writing this present treatise , as also of his discourse of the immortality of the soul. his account of the inscription of this present treatise . revelat. . his apology for his so copiously describing the animal life . and for his large parallel betwixt christ and apollonius . the reason of his bringing also mah●●et upon the stage and h. n. and of his so large ●xcursions and frequent expostulations with the q●akers and familists . that the wonderful hopes and expectations of the religious of the nation , yea of the better-meaning fanaticks themselves , are more likely to be fulfi●led by this happy restoring of the king then by any other way imaginable . wherein consists the very essence and substance of antichristianisme . that the honour of beginning that pure and apostolick church that is so much expected seems to have been reserved by providence for charles the second our gracious soveraign , with pregnant arguments of so gl●rious ●n hope . the reasons why he did not cast out of his discourse what he had written concerning quakerisme and familisme , notwithstanding the fear of these sects may seem well blown over through the happy settlement of things by the seasonable return of our gracious soveraign to his throne . the reason of his opposing the familists and quakers above any other sects . his excuse for being less accurate in the computation of daniels weeks . as also for being less copious in the proving the expected restorement of the church to her pristine purity ; together with a description of the condition of those happy ages to come . that this discourse was mainly intended for the information of a christian in his private capacities . what points he had most probably touched upon if his design had urged him to speak any thing of church-government . revelat. . . a description of such a bishop as is impossible should be antichristian . why he omitted to treat of the reasonableness of the precepts of christ. that the pains he took in writing this treatise were especially intended for the rationall and ingenuous . his apology for the sharpness of his style in some places . an objection against mr. mede 's apocalyptick interpretations from the supposed sad condition of all adherers to the apostate church ; with the answer thereto . the adversaries reply to the foregoing answer , with a brief attempt of satisfying the same . an apology for his free dislike of that abused notion of imputative righteousness . his defence for so expresly declaring himself for a duly-bounded liberty of conscience . notes for div a -e a the word of god. b the divine word . c god. d the first-born son of god. john . . see further of this subject book . c. . sect . . and chap. . throughout . chap. . v. . chap. . v. . cor. . job . , . heb. . . * the spirits of just men made perfect . * he descended into hell. * hades , ordinarily translated hell. * he descended . * to descend into hell. * for i will go down into the grave to my son , mourning . * to h●ll , or ha●●● . * into an obscure and invisible , whether the air , or some subterraneous place . * the invisibility and uncolouredness of the air is called hades or hell. * hades . notes for div a -e * see my treatise of the immortality of the soul , book . chap. , , , . * see my treatise of the immortality of the soul , book . chap. . sect . , , . and chap. . throughout . book . chap. , . * see the immortality of the soul , book . chap. . lib. . lib. . psalm . , . job . , , . * a divine man. * a divine daemon . * a divine angel . * see further of this , book . chap. . notes for div a -e * see cabbala philosophica on gen. chap. , and . * the natural iupiter . * i. e. the natural philosophers called the sun the minde or soul of the world . but the world is called heaven , which they name iupiter . * see book . chap. . sect . . * see further of this , book . chap. . rom. . , . acts . . * the inward word . * the outward word or speech . cor. . . tim. . . john . . lib. . * adversus valent . cap. . * therap . l. . * in protrepi : see purcha● his ●ilgrim . part . book . chap. . * i. e. that he burnt his own son , offering him as an holocaust , according to the customes or supersti●ious rites of the canaanites . * the sacrifices of the dead . many angels of god having to doe with women , begot insolent and injurious children , & despisers of all goodness , by reason of their confidence in their own strength . lib. . * the fabulos time . * heroical . ephes. . . notes for div a -e john . v. . need , security or confidence in predestination or the decrees of god , and hope of worldly honour and preferment . luk. . . mark . , , * luk. . . * in types . * in words . * it is for the same author to restore what had perished , who had made what before had no being . cor. . . john . ● . * see book . chap. . sect . . lib. . lib. . notes for div a -e john . . matth. . , . wisdom , chap. . , . cor. . . * see book . chap. . * see my discourse of the immortality of the soul , book . chap. . * mark . . * see book . chap. . matth. . matth. . . see book . ch . . sect . . heb. . . * see book . chap. . sect. . act. . . act. . . * the moral meaning of a fable . * see enthusiasmus triumphatus , sect . . art . . * see iohan. andr. confus . secta mahometanae , cap. . acts . , , . acts . . hebr. . . * acts . . * acts . . * acts . , . * acts . . * acts . . * acts . . * acts . . * acts . . * acts . . and ch . . v. , , , . * acts . . * acts . , . and ch . . ver . , . * see book . chap. . * hebr. . . * john . ▪ * see chap. . sect. . in the fifth-trumpet vision , where the hypocrisie of their zeal in this point is discovered . see iohan. andr. confus . sectae mahometanae , cap. . * see chap. . sect . . in the vision of the fifth trumpet . isaiah . . * in his fairy queen , book . cant. . * revel . . v. , , , , , , &c. * grot. in apocal. cap. . . * dan. . . & chap. . . * chap. . . * vers. . see mr. mede de numeris danielis . * revel . . . * grotius in dan. . . revel . . , . * verse . * verse . * chap. . , . * another angel . rev. . , . * revel . . . * revel . . . * revel . . . * the thousand years upon earth . * thousands of years never to be ended . * rev. . , . * chap. . * chap. . . revel . . * rev. . , . * verse , . * verse . * verse . * rev. . . * verse . luke . . revel . . . * revel . . . * revel . . . * revel . . . * rev. . , . * see book . ch . . sect . . * revel . . . * revel . . . * verse . * verse . * the third part . * verse . * antiq. lib. . cap. . bell. jud. lib. . c. . acts . . * verse . * rev. . , , . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * rev. . . * verse . * see chap. . sect . . * verse . see book . ch . . sect . . * macrob. saturnal . lib. . cap. . * as , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and others . * see chap. . sect . . * ver. , . ver. , . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * vers. . * vers. . * vers. . * revel . . . * the world . * kingdomes . * vers. . * vers. . * vers. , . * revel . . . * revel . . . * revel . . * revel . . . * revel . . . * revel . . . * vers. , . * vers. . * acts . . * rev. . . * vers. . * rev. . . * rev. . . * vers. . * vers. . * vers. . * rev. . . * see mr. mede's comment . apocalypt . upon this . chapter . * verse . * revel . . . * vers. . * rev. . . where it is the beast , namely the two-horned beast , not the image of the beast , to which the number belongs . * vers. . for it is the number of a man. * chap. . . * verse . * rev. . . * rev. . . * revel . . * verse . * revel . . . * verse . * verse . * verse . * verse . * rev. . * rev. . . & ch . . . * vers. . * ch. . . * dan. . . * chap. . * chap. . . * verse , . * rev. . . * revel . . . revel . . * chap. . sect. . revel . . . * vers. . * revel . . . notes for div a -e matth. . . * acts . v. . thess. . , . pet. . . pet. . . pet. . . * pet. . , , , . & chap. . . pet. . , , . pet. . . * see book . chap. . sect . . and ch . . sect . . * act. . v. . see book . ch . . sect . . cardan de rerum varietate lib. . cap. . idem lib. . cap. . see henningus grosius his magica de spectris , lib. . sect. . see machiavel de republica , lib. . cap. . cardan de rerum varietate , lib. . cap. . see ioan. garibus , de phaenomenis system . . joseph . de bello judaico , lib : . cap. . dan. . * after the manner of a river . * see book . ch . . of that treatise , as also chap. , , . * see book . ch . . sect . . see my treatise of the immorality of the soul , book . ch . . * ibid. book . chap. . see my treatise of the immortality of the soul , book . ch . . sect . . plin. natural . histor. lib. . cap. . joseph . acost . histor. of the indies , book . chap. . jos. acosta lib. . cap. . cardan . de rerum varietate , lib. . c. . plin. histor. natur. lib. . cap. . * see my treatise of the immortality of the soul , book . chap. . sect. . also chap. . and . . pet. . wisdome chap. . v. . * see my treatise of the immortality of the soul , book . chap. . sect. . john . . * see book . ch . . sect . . * see book . chap. . sect . ● * see the immortality of the soul , book . ch . sect . . * mat. . , . * see book . ch . , , . * in my antidote against atheism , and my treatise of the immortality of the soul. see book . ch . . * see book . chap. . sect . , . * enthusiasm . triumphat . sect . . * see his introduct . ch . . . and chap. . . * see his prophecie of the spirit of love ch . . . * his exhort . ch . . . * ch . . . ch. . . * ch . . . also . . * ch . . , . see his evangelie , ch . . * chap. ● . . see revel . d●i cap. . v. . * evangel . ch . . * chap. . * exhortat . chap. . . * see book . ch . . ad . see enthusias . triumphat . sect . , , , , , . * see book . chap. . * see book . chap. . * see book . chap. . * see book . chap. . sect . . * see book . ch . . sect . . * see his glasse of righteousness , book . chap. . king. . . revel . chap. . v. . see grotius upon the place . acts . v. . * see book . ch . . and . * see book . chap. . sect . . * chap. ● . v. , . * chap. . hebr. . v. , . hebr. chap. . v. . hebr. ● . v. ● , , , ● pet. . . acts . v. . acts . , . see book . chap. . sect . , , . cor. . . chap. . sect . . introduct . ch . . . * see book . ch . , & . evang. regni , cap. . evang. regni , cap. . & . * see enthusiasm . triumphat . sect . . artic. . * see h. n upon the seven deadly sinnes . * epist . chap. ● . see revelat. dei , cap. . sect . , , , . revel . dei , cap. . sect . , , . * grotius de religione christiana , lib. . notes for div a -e * see book . ch . . sect . . kings ch . . v. , , , , , . * in his de admirandis naturae arcanis , lib. . dialog . . * see chap. . sect . , , , . &c. and chap. , , . genes . ch . . ver . . * see book . chap. . sect . , , . haggai . v. , , , . vers. , . * see ezekiel . v. , , , , . malach. ch . . v. . * the septuagint render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ad consummandam praevaricationem . see revel . . v. . * ● coloss. . . * see book . chap. . sect . , , . see sarrav . epist. pag. . 〈◊〉 histor. ab exc●●●● n●ronis lib. . cap. . see book . chap. . sect . . * see hulsius de messia pag. . and hornbeck l. . c. . * see book . ch . . sect . , , , , . * as if they meant it of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * genes . chap. . v. . and chap. . v. . also chap. . . see chap. . sect . . antiquitat . judaic . l. . c. . * see c. . sect . . * see further ch . . sec. , . and ch . . sect . . * see lucian his philopatr . micah . . see grotius on psal. . v. . * acts . v. . * chap. . sect . . * see book . 〈…〉 . * 〈…〉 book . chap. . * see book . chap. . sect . . * book . ch . , , . * de motibus part . . cap. . * de motibus part . . cap. . * alcochodon est stella virtutis , ex qua de annis quibus natus secundum naturae cursum victurus est judicium sumitur , nisi ratione directionis vel alterius violenti & subiti casûs vita nati citiùs abrumpatur . see origan . de effect . part . . * see book . ch . . sect . . also immortal . book . ch . . sect . , , . * see sect . . see sir christopher heydon his defence of judicial astrology , c. . p. . * see sect . . * see sect . . * see chap. . sect . . * see sect. ● . * see chap. . sect . . * see sect . . see origin . par . . cap. . see his defence of judiciall astrology , cap. . * sect. . * sueton , in vita domitiani sect . . * john . . * see book . ch . . sect . . notes for div a -e matth. . . matth. . . * see book . chap. , & . james . . *** infallible doctour , impetious father or master , obtruding upon his own authority other doctrines then christ hath taught us . *** infallible doctour , impetious father or master , obtruding upon his own authority other doctrines then christ hath taught us . *** infallible doctour , impetious father or master , obtruding upon his own authority other doctrines then christ hath taught us . * quò quis inter vos majorem in ecclesia dignitatem obtinebit , còsciat sibi non plus imperit concessum , sed plus oneris injunction . grot. isa. . . * pet. . . rom. . , . cor. . , , &c. isa. . . joh. . . . pet. . . ver . . * or , power . psalm . , . tit. . . jam. . . john . . rom. . . * see also apocal . . . hebr. . . gal. . . sect. . rom. . , . ** 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . philo in his allegories . and in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . see also in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the same purpose . and in his de nominum mutatione , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ** 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . philo in his allegories . and in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . see also in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the same purpose . and in his de nominum mutatione , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . * phil. . . sect. ● . joh. . . . pet. . gal. . . eph. . . joh. . . tit. . ephes. . matth. . . ● cor. . . hebrews . luk. . . matth. . . hebr. . . * luke . . * from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , rectus ▪ isai. . * from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 obtenebratus , atratus fuit . * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 infernus , à 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 petiit . ver. , , . ver. . ver. . * see chap. . sect . , , . ver. . ver. . * esay . * from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ignis and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deus . * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 siccitas . psalm . . proverb . . . prov. . . pet. . . rom. . , . acts . . * ephes. . . * thes. . . john . . john . . matt. . . psal. . . wisd. . . joh. . , . * joh. . , . * ad autolycum , lib. . see book . c. . sect . , , . joh. . * book . c. . sect . . revel . . , . mark . . matth. . ● . john . . num. . . * chap. . . * book . chap. , , . * cor. . . isa. . . psal. . matth. . . philip. . . pet. . . luk. . . ● tim. . . pet. . ● . heb. . . colos. . . revel . . . mark . . cor. . . tim. . . pet. . , , . zeph. . . wisd. . . * heb. . . cor. . . tim. . ▪ ●sa . . . ●●ov . . . act. . . levit. . . isai. . . notes for div a -e book . c. . sect . , , . and c. . sect . , , , &c. * exod. . . * gen. c. , & . exod. c. , , , & . philip. . ● * revel . . . john . . tim. . . pet. ● . ● . * see grotius upon the inscription of the new testament . see exod. . . john . . gal. . , , , &c. book . . c. . sect . . * philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ** philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ** philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * see book . chap. . sect . . * philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as if israel were also to be deduced from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying videre , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deus . psa. . . rom. . , , . hom. iliad . phil. . . ephes. . . hebr. . . john . . john . . book . ch . . sect . . book . ch . . book . ch . , , , , , , , , . book . c. . * book . ch . . sect . . matt. . . book . c. , . isai. . , . thess. . . notes for div a -e cor. . . john . , ▪ sam. . . pet. . . eccles. . . gen. . . book . c. , . john . . * john . . gal. . . pet. . . cor. . rom. . . * which qualification is all along supposed in this question , otherwise the falsities of a religion cannot so rightly be conceived any commands of god , but a blindness and darkness the religionist has brought upon or continues to himself through his own hypocrisie and wickedness . * so it is to them that are sincere , but in those that are not it is like the stopping of the ears against the reading of the law in a known language . act. . . * see chap. . sect . . act. . . act. . . joh. . , . psa. . . heb. . . rev. . . * see book . chap. . sect . . * book . c. . sect . . also c. . sect . , . rev. . coloss. . . john . . gal. . . john . . john . . cor. . . remarks upon two late ingenious discourses the one, an essay touching the gravitation and non-gravitation of fluid bodies, the other, observations touching the torricellian experiment, so far forth as they may concern any passages in his enchiridium metaphysicum / d. henry more. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) remarks upon two late ingenious discourses the one, an essay touching the gravitation and non-gravitation of fluid bodies, the other, observations touching the torricellian experiment, so far forth as they may concern any passages in his enchiridium metaphysicum / d. henry more. more, henry, - . [ ], p. : ill., diagr. printed for walter kettilby ..., london : . reproduction of original in huntington library. table of contents: p. [ ]-[ ] errata: p. 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texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng more, henry, - . -- enchiridion metaphysicum. gravitation -- early works to . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images - judith siefring sampled and proofread - judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion remarks upon two late ingenious discourses : the one , an essay touching the gravitation and non-gravitation of fluid bodies : the other , observations touching the torricellian experiment ; so far forth as they may concern any passages in his enchiridium metaphysicum . by d r henry more . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . aristot. london , printed for walter kettilby at the bishops head in s t paul's church-yard , . imprimatur antonius saunders . ex edibus lamberhanis , novemb. . . the preface . reader , i had not given thee the trouble of a preface , were it not for apologizing for a phrase which i observe something frequently to occur in my remarks , which may seem to thee hugely paradoxical , if not very absurd . it is gravitation upwards : i made use of it in imitation of the learned authour , upon whose discourses i make my remarks . wherefore that thou maist the better discern how allowable or disallowable this form of speech is , and that i may withall offer to thee that which may perhaps tend to the better opening thine understanding in hydrostatical theories , i will lay down a simple hypothesis for the illustrating that natural poize , libration or gravitation that philosophers suppose they discover in the fluid matter of this our terrestrial world . first , therefore , let us imagine our earth environed only with the materia subtilis , that des cartes has so curiously described ; or more plainly and intelligibly , with the pure subtil aether which is a liquid body of that subtilty , that it will with ease penetrate all bodies in some measure , but abundantly the pores of glass . secondly , let us consider , that a hail-shot , gravel , quick-silver , and the like may be poized in water , and corn , chaff , currans , powders , and such like in the air , and that they will subside or weigh one against another in the said elements ; so the particles of these elements themselves , water and air , and the vapours therein , are as it were weighed or poized in this more universal liquidum of the aether . thirdly , that the particles of quick-silver , water , vapours , air , and , in brief , what ever is conteined in that which they call the atmosphere , if there be no lett nor new emergent mutation , are in this poizing placed according to their solidity , chiefly of the very particles they do consist , suppose air , water , quick-silver , according as i have declared in my first hydrostatical axiom , enchirid. metaphys . cap. . sect . . fourthly , that in some sense all the parts and particles of the atmosphere , even the thinnest air at the convexity thereof , are heavy , namely thus ; that if they were upon some occasion raised higher than the convexity , those thin parts of air would descend again to the said convexity as sure as the vapours do in dew on the grass , or raised dust does upon any pavement or floor . fifthly , that this we call heaviness is nothing else but a capacity in the parts or particles of the atmosphere to be placed according to their solidity , by that , what ever it is , that moves them , or disposes them . sixthly , that when these particles of fluids in the atmosphere are so disposed , with regard to their different solidity , as is according to the laws of this moving principle , they press not then on one another , but , as to any actual gravitation on one another , they are at rest . seventhly , this diversity of solidity in the particles is the cause why we see elements and liquids in such different places , and of such different consistencies . as quick-silver below water , water below , air , the thicker air below the thinner , and their consistencies accordingly . eighthly , that the more solid the particles are in fluids , the more strong their consistency is , as well as they are thereby more heavy . ninthly , that as the moving or disposing principle brought the several liquids to such various differences of consistency by a positive action , so it keeps them in the same consistency by a like positive action or force , though upon occasion mutable or vincible . tenthly , that there may be a very strong consistency in liquids without any elasticity or springiness at all , as in quick-silver and water which are not compressible . elevently , that there may be a compressible consistency considerably strong where there is little or no elasticity of parts . a thing easily discernible in the wringing or pressing in a mans hand a wet handkerchief ; and of such a compressible consistency may be our lower air , stuffed with thick vapours , as also consisting of the grosser aëreal particles . twelfthly , that all poizings , suspensions or librations of heavy liquid bodies , are not by a mere counterpoize of perpendicular pressure of another body , but may be by the firmness or force of its consistency . i speak this in reference to the torricellian experiment , and the standing of the water in pumps and syringes , which is thus solved with the greatest ease and intelligibleness that may be , by supposing so strong a consistency in this lower air , that the firmness thereof will resist the weight of suppose inches of mercury in a tube , or of foot of water in a pump , but will be broke by the weight of or inches of mercury , and or foot of water , and suffer compression , to the letting in the subtil liquidum or aether ( in which the whole atmosphere is poized into the glass or pump , whereby the mercury or water is made capable to descend . and inches of mercury being of one weight with foot of water in a tube of the same diameter , it is plain , that this is the poize that equals either the firmness of consistency , or else the weight of the air. thirteenthly , but here now i say lies the curiosity of the theory , whether this suspension , suppose of the mercury in the tube , be to be conceived to be by perpendicular pressure or actual gravitation of the air upon the restagnant mercury ; or else , as i intimated before , by the firmness of its consistency , it being not compressible , by no greater weight than that of inches of mercury , and so there being no vacuum , nor penetration of dimensions , the circle of motion is necessarily stopt , and the mercury stands at that pitch . to which i conceive is most safely answered , that when the mercury is fallen to inches , that there is a kind of libration betwixt the air jointly with the restagnant mercury , and the mercury in the tube . for upon the infusing of water upon the restagnant mercury , that in the tube will proportionably ascend . and this the learned authour upon whom i make the remarks , will call gravitation upwards , because its tendency is towards that more subtil matter in the derelicted space in the glass . and this libration is not much unlike that in a siphon with one leg much higher than another , into which putting some quick-silver ( which will presently poize it self into an equality in each shank ) if you pour water into the longer shank , the quick-silver in the other will ascend accordingly : which is again a kind of gravitation upwards against the thin air , and answers to the ascending or gravitating of the torricellian mercury in the tube against the subtil aether there . but that the parts thus librated in this liquidum subtilissimum , ( in which the whole atmosphere is poized by the moving or disposing principle ) when they are settled in their poize , press or gravitate one upon another , i do utterly deny . but then secondly , i say , the firmitude of the consistence of the air is as it were the string of this balance , which if it break , or so far forth as it breaks or relaxates , the mercury in the tube will fall down . and thirdly , that the mercury is kept up by this string of firmness of the consistency of the air , and not by the actual gravitation of an atmospherical cylinder of an equal diameter on the restagnant mercury , appears from that experiment of the mercury in the tube not falling , though the vessel of mercury be close covered in a glass , and so the supposed pressure of the atmospherical cylinder intercepted , and a commodious valve made , that upon the falling of the mercury would let the air out , though there be none let in by it ; which valve the weight , suppose , of ten pounds of mercury would be sure to fling open , if it were the weight of the atmospherical cylinder that held up that ten pound of mercury in the tube before . nor fourthly , can it be the spring of that air included in the glass that upholds the mercury in the tube , since it must be so great , that it must hold up no less than the weight of ten pound of mercury ; and if the elasticity of the air be so great or strong , considering the subtilty of the parts of the air that make this spring , which are hugely more subtil and thin , and consequently more cutting than the edge of a razor , it is impossible but that they should cut with all imaginable ease into the quick-silver , and so piercing into it prove unserviceable for the pretty feat they are intended . to say nothing here of the excellent arguments of this learned authour upon whom i remark , by which he seems to me quite to have defeated that modern paradox of the monstrous elasticity of the air , which yet some eximious wits have so favourably entertained . wherefore lastly , to detain my reader no longer in a less needful preface , from what has been said he may easily discern , that this phrase of gravitation upward is not destitute of all good ground , since such libration upward terminates on a thinner element , as true and proper gravitation always does ; and he may in the mean time observe there is no proper gravitation but in such cases , when a heavier fluid sways upon a lighter , but that the parts of the heavy fluid do not press or gravitate one upon another at all , nor a lighter upon an heavier , but are moved jointly by that principle which disposes them according as we have above described ; and finally consider with himself , whether it be not more likely there should be such a subtil element penetrating all bodies , in which they , or ( to speak more compendiously ) the whole atmosphere is librated , and that there is likewise that vincible consistency of the lower air , than that there should be that tension this learned authour stands up for ( which cannot be without penetration of dimensions , nor is it conceivable how such an extended funiculus should hold together ) or ( which this authour is as much against as for the other ) that there should be such a monstrous elastick pressure of the air , and actual gravitation of the parts of the same elements one upon another , when the particles are of the against more solid and searching reason , that enquires after the final cause of things , and duely relishes that excellent aphorism of aristotle , natura nihil agit frustra : so is it manifestly against common sense and experience . methinks the hypothesis i have here briefly described , is far less obnoxious than any of the other . but if any one be otherwise minded , i know right well , that liberty of philosophizing is the common right of all that in good earnest profess themselves free philosophers . on the essay touching the gravitation and non-gravitation of fluid bodies . remark the first . of gravity and gravitation , that it is nothing but mobility and actual motion , and upon what terms it is fit to conclude actual motion to be in a body . remark the second . whether motion downwards belong to solid bodies as such , and whether some fluids have not a stronger tending of that kind than some solid bodies . remark the third . the true reason why the parts of solid bodies do not gravitate one upon another . upon chapter the fourth . the attempt of supplanting my demonstration in enchirid . metaphys . cap. . sect. . by introducing a cap or cone of water only gravitating on the lamina lignea , succinctly explained . remark the fourth . the disparity betwixt the cap or cone , and cylinder of water and the pyramid of bricks . remark the fifth . that the former instance of masonry in the pyramid of bricks , will not so much as hold in wheat , sand , and hail-shot . remark the sixth . the suspended sand in the top of the body of a cylinder no argument for any such supposed masonry in the element of water . remark the seventh . the mechanical incumbency of the particles of sand on the eggshel in the manner of an arch , whence to be enervated . remark the eighth . of the lateral direction of the parts of sand and such like bodies . remark the ninth . four arguments to show the invalidity of this pretended masonry in water against my demonstration from the round lamina lignea in my enchiridium metaphysicum . remark the tenth . the intrinsecal gravity of water how to be understood . remark the eleventh . that water in its fluid consistency gravitates , and in what sence it so does , infused on quicksilver , into which a tube is immit'ted , &c. remark the twelfth . that a bucket of water is not as much one continued body as a bucket of pitch , and wherein the nature of fluidity does consist , and how eminent in water . remark the thirteenth . the learned authour's mistake touching the principium hylarchicum , with a brief description thereof . remark the fourteenth . the distinction of considering water as a solid body and a fluid body examined . remark the fifteenth . a twofold mechanical account of the non-gravitation of the particles of water on subjected bodies , viz. from the continuity of the particles , and from their architecture or masonry , with a confutation of both . remark the sixteenth . that the learned authour himself at last admits , that the parts of water are not continuous but contiguous . his refuge to the masonry of the particles also confuted . remark the seventeenth . whether the cartesian aqueous particles be more fit for this supposed masonry , than those of wheat , hail-shot , and sand. remark the eighteenth . whether water be quid continuum or contiguum . remark the nineteenth . a column of water gravitating on a rundle upon a perforated bottom of a bucket , how reconcilable with this supposed masonry of the arch. remark the twentieth . an experiment of two rundles urged against this supposed architecture , together with an experiment that clearly takes away both his mechanical accounts at once , that of continuity and this of masonry . upon chapter the eighth . that the authour lays his main stress on his natural account of the non-gravitaion of water , &c. remark the twenty first . intrinsecal heaviness of a body , how ex pacto to be understood from my first remark . remark the twenty second . the authour's description of his natural account of the non-gravitation of fluids , &c. remark the twenty third . the authour's distinction of the terminal motions of water as a heavy body and as of a fluid body examined by our agreement in the first remark , and conluded , that all the directions of motion in water as to primitiveness and intrinsecalness are of one kind . remark the twenty fourth . that the learned authour has abundantly well proved the various tendencies and pressures of water every way , but not every way at once or the same time . remark the twenty fifth . the usefulness of the conjunction of primitive gravitation with the motion of water downwards , as to the authour's scope ; this primitive gravitation of the aqueous particles remaining , as if it were alone , the motion of water upwards defeating that downwards ; and primitive gravitation taken away making a bucket of air and bucket of water aequiponderant . so that either way this natural account is subverted . remark the twenty sixth . that the various lines of direcion of motion , beside the perpendicular , can contribute nothing to the abating of the intrinsick gravitation . remark the twenty seventh . that the imagined continuity in water more than in callis-sand , nor the motion per declive , can abate the intrinsick gravitation of water if there were any in it . remark the twenty eighth . that the tumbling of the callis-sand per declive , does not prove , that when the granules rest , they press per declive but downwards . remark the twenty ninth . how from the supposition of just l. stock of intrinsick weight in a cubick foot of water to be dispensed to all the various lines of motion in water , and yet there being felt just l. weight still , it is demonstrable , that all the other motions are merely imaginary not real . remark the thirtieth . the ineffectual answer of the authour to this difficulty ; with a further confutation of this natural account of his from a bucket of ice . upon difficiles nugae , or observations touching the torricellian experiment . the transition from his remarks upon the essay touching the gravitation of fluids to this other touching the torricellian experiment . remark the first . of rarefaction and tension , and of condensation and restitution in the authour's sense . the groundlessness of them proved , by proving there are subtiler particles in the air than those that are properly aëreael . as also their repugnancy to reason & experience . remark the second the distinction of gravitatio ad motum , and gravitatio ad pondus . and that it is unconceivable , how the latter should be without the former ; if there be any intrinsick gravity in heavy bodies so called , together with the true reason why the parts of lead do not gravitate one upon another . remark the third . that the increase of renitence or pressure of the water against its being raised higher in b , more than in a , and in c , more than in b , is not the reason that the oil in the tube does not go out at b , and ascends at c. also why a peuter porringer full of hail-shot weighs alike in water from the bottom to the top . remark the fourth . smaller particles in the air acknowledged by the authour himself , together with a disprovement of his supposed continuity of the greater . remark the fifth . compressed air appearing heavier no proof that it had innate gravity in it before , but rather that there is no such thing as intrinsick gravity in the world . remark the sixth . the cohaesion of the parts of water weaker than that of air , according to the authour , a manifest argument against his pretended masonry in the parts of water . remark the seventh . his experiment of the glasssiphon with quick-silver and water , and his mistaken conclusions therefrom : and what excellent use there may be made of it against his imaginary architecture in the element of water . remark the eighth . his invention of the cap or cone enervated from stevinus his experiment of a rundle on the bottom of a vessel with an hole in it . remark the ninth . the gravitation of the water in that case on the rundle whence it is , whether simply because of the air underneath , or because the air is in the state of abituriency . where something by the by of the spirit of nature . remark the tenth . why an empty glass-bottle carefully stopt and sunk into the sea is broken , and why in some cases oil drives water , and water quick-silver upwards , and what shroud insinuations such phaenomena are , that there is no such thing as inward gravitation in bodies , but that mater is ranged according to the laws of the spirit of nature . remark the eleventh . that the reason why a small glass-tube filled up with water , and immitted into a vessel of water , the water in the tube will sink till it be even with the superficies of the water in the vessel , is not from the force of the water in the tube to press downwards , but from some higher principle . remark the twelfth . the pretended obscure solution in enchirid. metaphys . cap. . or reason of the falling off , and sticking to of the obturaculum in a tube with a valve , according as the tube is more or less immersed in the water , more fully explicated . remark the thirteenth . that the sticking of the obturaculum to the valve , is not simply from the tubes pressing up a portion of water of a greater weight than it , because if the abituriency of the air in the tube be in a due measure sufflaminated , the obturaculum at the same depth will fall . together with a farther confutation of this reason from glass-bottles well stopt and immitted into the sea. whence the operation of the principium hylarchicum is farther discovered ▪ remark the fourteenth . a notable experiment of the authour 's in a tube of quick-silver , which if he had rightly improved , might easily have led him to an acquaintance with the hylostatick spirit of the world . remark the fifteenth . two more experiments out of honoratus faber , a farther confirming of our solution of the former . remark the sixteenth . the authours's mistake in making all bodily motion to be wrought by the contact of some active body , whenas most bodily motions in the world are not mechanical but vital . remark the seventeenth . the authour's mistake conceiving that there are no pores in glass , and that if the aether pass those pores it must pass freely . remark the eighteenth . his mistake further discovered from his own experiments and observations made in a glass-tube of mercury inverted in the air , and the mercury in the torricellian experiment . remark the nineteenth . and further still detected by demonstrating the incredibility of the ascending of any vapours or steams from the mercury into the derelicted space in the tube . remark the twentieth . a notable objection of the authour 's against the opinion of mercurial effluvia occupying the derelicted space of the tube , and such as himself does not answer . remark the twenty first . a sound and ingenious demonstration of the authour 's against the hypothesis of an atmospherical cylinder suspending the cylinder of mercury in the tube , from the tube of mercury hung upon a balance , with its mouth some half an inch immersed in restagnant mercury . remark the twenty second . his ingenious obviating that evasion of a cylinder of air pressing on the top of the tube of mercury so hung , as if that supplied the place of the mercury in the tube , whose weight was discovered in the opposite scale of the balance . remark the twenty third . his dextrous defeating as weak a subterfuge , whereby they would elude the force of his former answer . remark the twenty fourth . two neat experiments of the authour 's , whereby he meets with all such elusions , and unexceptionably demonstrates , that the pressure of an atmospherical pillar in such like hydrostatical experiments is a mere mistake . remark the twenty fifth . another ingenious demonstration against the pressure of atmospherical cylinders from the standing of the mercury in the tube , when the surface of the restagnant mercury is not passing one fourth part of the basis of the cylinder of mercury in the tube . remark the twenty sixth . his argument from the torricellian experiment succeeding as well in a closed receiver as in the open air not imputable to the elasticity of the air which supposes pressure ; it being already confuted here , and more particularly in his sixth chapter by the two brazen cylinders in the water . remark the twenty seventh . his experiment of the bottle and heated bolts-head , how well it is levelled against the elasticity of the air , but his solution of the phaenomenon unsatisfactory . remark the twenty eighth . the authour's opinion that all those experiments which the virtuosi would give an account of from the pressure and elasticity of the air , are performed by suction and attraction , more strictly to be examined , in reference to that experiment of the weight hung at the embolus of the air-pump . remark the twenty ninth . the various standing of the mercury in the tube , according to the change of weather , or placing it in higher or lower air ; how that observation is manageable against the opinion of tension and mercurial effluvia . remark the thirtieth . the unexpected motions and agitations of things ( put into the receiver ) upon a strong exhaustion of the air-pump , that it is not from tension of the rarefied air , but from some such principle as the furious and rapid motion of winds is , raised from the dissolution of the aqueous particles of the clouds . remark the thirty first . that experiment of regius , of drawing tobacco smoak through water in a covered cup , by two pieces of a tobacco-pipe , can be no instance of such an attraction and rarefaction as this author stands for , but will serve to illustrate some of the phaenomena in the foregoing remark . remark the thirty second . a description of the torricellian experiment in the chiefest example . the groundlesness of the authour's reasons of this phaenomenon from the tension of the mercurial effluvia in the derelicted space , discovered . remark the thirty third . a discovery of the repugnancies of his solution of this phaenomenon . his ingenuous confession touching the phaenomenon of gravity , that mechanical reasons are in vain attempted thereof . that aristotle's philosophy implies a spirit of nature . remark the thirty fourth . that the suspension of the mercury is not to save the vniverse from discontinuity , but to preserve the air in its due consistency . and that it is not air but one common spirit that is the cement of the universe . remark the thirty fifth . that attraction is not to be proved from cupping-glasses , or the expansion of squeezed bladders at the top of the torricellian tube . remark the thirty sixt . what account is to be given of the jointly weighing of a tube and mercury , of a tube and water , and of a glass and water inverted on mercury and water . remark the thirty seventh . the authour 's plain declaration , that the laws of nature are not mechanical , together with the consequences of that concession , and the necessity of introducing a spirit of nature . the fond humour of the philosophizers of this age , who whenas their nature consists of spirit as well as body , take all their measures of philosophizing from body , none from spirit . remark the thirty eighth . of the sticking together of two marbles ; and that fuga vacui is but the final cause thereof : and what may be the efficient . remark the thirty ninth . stevinus his experiment of a rundle of wood lighter than water laid upon the hole of a bottom of a vessel to be filled with water , &c. what an argument it is against the gravitation of water on water , and against that monstrous elasticity ( by some supposed ) of the air. remark the fortieth . of the close sticking together of the magdeburg hemispheres . that neither tension of the inward rarefied matter , nor the elasticity of the outward air is the cause of it , as also what in all likelyhood is . remark the forty first . the authour 's ingeniously contrived pump , and his mistake in attributing a phaenomenon in it to inward tension , which is rather to be referred to the strength of the consistency of the outward air. remark the forty second . other phaenomena observable in the authour's pump , and how there is no need of tension for the solving of them , but that they are notable intimations of the necessity of an hylostatick spirit in the world . remark the forty third . an argument from the author 's own pump , that water is not suspended in pumps by tension , but by gravitation upwards , more expresly here explained , and at last resolved into the hylarchick principle , together with a particular reason why in the proposed case of the authour's pump , upon the elevation of the embolus , not one drop of water comes out . remark the forty fourth . the uncertainty of success , if the pump were longer , or heat applied to the glass ; but certain , tension would find no place therein . remark the forty fifth . the raising water and suspension of it in a pump how it is effected . remark the forty sixth . the insinuation of the air into the cavity of a well , whether it be the effect or the cause of the recession of the water , or whether not rather both . remark the forty seventh . whether the protrusive force in a pillar of free air add any thing to the elastick pressure thereof , and whether the least proportion of air has the same strength of spring that a greater . as also a notable argument from the elasticity of air not raising the water in the authour's pump one inch , whenas it is pretended , that it will sustain l. of mercury inches high ; that there is no such elasticity at all . the conclusion . errata sic corrige . page . line . read bodies . p. . l. ▪ r. intrinsecalness . p. . l. . r. tube . p. . l. . r. ordered . p. . l. . l. r. considerate , remarks upon two late ingenious discourses , the one an essay touching the gravitation and non-gravitation of fluid bodies , the other observations touching the torricellian experiment . on the essay touching the gravitation or non-gravitation of fluid bodies , &c. upon chapter the second . the first remark . in this chapter there are things said that are repugnant one to another . for in the very entrance of the chapter the learned author asserts that gravity is an intrinsecal quality of bodies whereby they tend downwards to or towards the center of the earth ; and yet afterwards toward the end of the chapter , he affirms that fire may rightly be said to gravitate upwards , &c. now if that definition be true , that gravity is an intrinsecal quality of bodies whereby they tend towards the center of the earth ; whether by gravity be understood a faculty or capacity of so tending , or the actual exercise thereof , we cannot avoid a repugnancy . for if an actual exercise thereof be understood , that is gravitation : which here being affirmed to be the tending downwards of bodies towards the center of the earth , it is a contradiction that the tendency of them upwards should be gravitation , but rather levitation . but if by gravity be understood only their capacity of tending downwards to the center , yet the actuality thereof will be gravitation , as that of levity , levitation ; and therefore according to this notion of gravity , can be only downwards , when as the learned author after asserts that gravitation is also upwards , which , i say , seems a contradiction . but i rather interpret it an emendation of his former assertion , and by after affirming that gravitation is upwards as well as downwards , that he would insinuate , that it is really and in truth , ( against that sense that gravity and gravitation is understood in the schools ) as well upwards , transverse , oblique as downwards , there being no way such gravity or gravitation as the schools dream of , that is , from any inherent quality of the body it self , that may be called gravity , but that it is a mere idolum fori , as my lord verulam would call it , a false notion sticking to the vulgar use and sense of that word , which me thinks this learned author does apertly acknowledge , and consequently explode that usual notion , in these words where he says ; that gravitation is nothing else but motus , or nisus ad motum secundùm lineam directionis ejusdem ; and a little before , that gravitation is nothing else but motion , or at least conatus or nisus ad motum : which in my judgment plainly takes away that false notion of gravity and gravitation , entertained by the vulgar and the schools . for it as plainly follows , by denying all intrinsecal nature to gravitation saving motus or nisus ad motum , that that scholastick gravitation , or the specifick nature thereof is taken away , as by denying that homo is any thing but animal vitâ sensúque praeditum , would take away the specifick nature of man out of the universe . the first part therefore of this my first remark shall be , that , even according to the judgment of this learned author , there is nothing in bodies but mobility and actual motus or nisus ad motum , however they may be disguized under the vulgar phrases of gravity and levity , of gravitation or levitation , &c. secondly , that the author , though in processe of his discourse he use these vulgar phrases of gravity and gravitation , he is to remember that the true and philosophical sense of them is nothing else but mobility , and actual motion , or actual nisus ad motum ; which if it be considered in its direction towards the center of the earth , is more specially noted with the name of gravity or gravitation . thirdly , that if we will cautiously and severely philosophise , we are not to imagine this actual motion or actual nisus ad motum to be in any body , unless it be discovered there to be , by clear sense or reason ; but rather not to be when we have diligently used these two faculties for to discover them , and yet they appear not . fourthly , it is deprehensible neither by sense nor reason , that because water , for example , will nimbly run up a tube let down into water , stopt with ones finger at the neather orifice , and then opened , that there was before any actual motion upwards in the water , or any actual nisus ad istiusmodi motum , but that as to any such motion , it was at rest . fifthly , that if the quick running up of the water into such a tube be a solid argument of an actual nisus of the water upwards , even then when it has no such occasion to discover it self , the quickness of the ascent of the water is so great , and so equal to the descent of water in a crooked tube of water opened at one end in the air , after it is immersed into the water , i mean the other orifice stopt also with ones finger and them opened again when it is let down at a sufficient depth , that the actual nisus of the water , ( suspended , suppose in a bucket ) downwards and upwards will be in a manner equal . so that the water will have no weight at all ; in so much that another bucket of the same weight and size , without any water in it , would be equiponderant to it . from whence sixthly and lastly it would follow , that we finding so great a weight from the water in the full bucket , with an actual nisus downwards , there must be a being distinct from the water , that directs its motion thitherward . but this is an observation beyond my present scope . the rest , at least , will be useful for the better understanding our selves in our following remarks . upon chapter the third . the second remark . in the beginning of this chapter the author seems to affirm that it belongs to solid bodies as such to have an actual pressure , or conatus ad motum towards the center of the earth , but to fluids onely as they are reducible to solids by being put into some vessel ; when as yet it is evident that some fluid bodies have a stronger pressure towards the center of the earth than many solid bodies . thus bulk for bulk water presses more strongly towards the center than most kinds of wood , and quicksilver than most kind of metals . whence it is plain that gravity is not to be esteemed from the fixedness of parts , but from the solidity of the particles , which that principle that orders matter ranges accordingly . remark the third . that also i conceive is a mistake , in that he says , p. . l. . that though solid bodies do actually gravitate , yet the parts thereof do not gravitate one upon another because mutually and mechanically sustained one by another , and in a state of continuity . for first , the continuity and fixedness of solid dodies in nature is not mechanical but per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and then that the parts do not gravitate one upon another is not from their continuity , but homogeneity or equal solidity of particles rather . whence it is , that in fluids of an homogeneal nature , the parts do not gravitate one on another ; but in solid bodies and continued , if one side be pumiceous suppose and the other metalline , the metalline will gravitate on the pumiceous or spungie side . upon chapter the fourth . in this chapter and in the eight are laid down the two main principles , which seem to be intended against the force of my demonstration in my enchiridium metaphysicum , in which i so much exult , cap. . sect. . both which therefore i shall more carefully examine . the principle in this chapter aimed at is : that in liquid bodies , suppose in water , that a whole column of water from the subjected body to the surface of the water does not gravitate , but only a cap or cone of it , at a little distance from the subjected body . whence it might seem hopeful , that my lamina lignea in a bucket , being pressed upon but by such a low cone , and that the rest of the weight of the water discharging it self betwixt the sides of the bucket and the lamina , might well raise it up , &c. but that this is only a witty phancy , i hope i shall make appear from these following remarks . remark the fourth . that the residue of the pyramis ( p. . l. . ) would stand without any gravitation upon the cavity left by the subsiding of those sixteen stones and those that are meerly supported on them can be no argument , that only a cone or cap of water gravitates on the round lamina lignea , both because the lamina lignea does not subside from the rest of the column of water above it , but bears against it , and also because if it should be imagined a little to subside , the particles of water being flexible would still lean toward the subsiding cone , and being so infinitely small would certainly tumble after it if the cone subsided to any distance . so unfit is this comparison , though in other respects sufficiently ingenious . remark the fifth . and whereas this learned authour saies , ( p. . l. . ) that this instance of masonry which he has given in square stones , will hold in smaller and more irregular bodies , experience will prove they will not in those he instances in , wheat , sand , and hail-shot . for if there were an hole made at the bottom , that that cap , he imagines , might really subside and be taken away , the expected arches in each experiment would prove ill built by their sudden tumbling to the ground . nor would the egg-shell and its little cap or cone of wheat stand as under an arch supported by the rest of the grains in the whole heap , as he affirms p. . l. . and therefore that the egg-shell scapes so well is to be referred to some other cause . as for that lateral pressure per declive which may refract the perpendicular gravitation of the grains of wheat , i shall examine that conceit in its * due place . remark the sixth . that the sand remained suspended in the body of the cylinder , is to be attributed to the weight of lead that had crammed the sand together , that especially toward the top , next to which it was , that it stuck by renitence of its irregular parts , one against another , p. . l. penult . but what is this to the nature of water , where all is so infinitely glib and passable , one particle by another , not the least show of stuffing and cramming ? a man might make a pair of pinsers that set into a bed of sand , ( though the pinsers be open above and beneath and tube-like ) which would pull up more sand than stuck in this tube . and it is all one whether the sand be pinched by such pinsers or be pinched by cramming into such a tube . that 's all the mystery of masonry that i can discern in this experiment . remark the seventh . but that there was not any such mechanical incumbency of the particles of the sand as left the egg-shell as it were under an arch , so that from thence it was that only a small cap or cone of sand gravitated upon it , seems to me to be manifest , in that if there were an hole made of the same diameter with the egg-shell , and the egg-shell taken away , not only the cap of sand but the arch would come tumbling down to the ground , and therefore that the egg-shell is not damnified must proceed from some other cause . the sand about the sides apparently protects it from the weight of the lead . remark the eighth . that the lateral direction in the parts of sand or such like bodies , p. . l. . should refract the perpendicular gravitation , when as it self is but a lateral gravitation or an hindred perpendicular direction , in a tube suppose or vessel , may justly be questioned . for the particles once checked by the sides of the tube or vessel , in all likelihood spend then all their direction downward , or may be reflected more dangerously from the sides to the hazard of the egg-shell : if the reason of things lay this way . remark the ninth . that the non-gravitation of the small bodies , p. . l. . of sand , gravel and shot , do not sufficiently prepare our minds to apprehend one of the reasons of non-gravitation of fluids , is manifest from that so often inculcated instance of the tumbling down of the arch at the real removal of the cone or cap with the body subjected , and an hole made of equal bigness on an upper flore or table . besides , though in such gross particles as sand , and wheat , and shot , one part may help a little to sustain another : yet as in a tube of physical monads , if they were imagined heavy , this would not at all be ; so in water whose parts are so infinitely little in comparison of shot , wheat , or sand , this masonry of parts leaning upon parts would have no effect at all . thirdly , if there were any such masonry in the lying of the parts of water as might answer some way to the figure , p. . all that artifice would be spoiled in boyling water or in water jumbled , in which notwithstanding there is as little gravitation of the parts as in that which is quiet . fourthly and lastly , supposing there were this masonry in water , this will not destroy the firmness of my demonstration from the round board at the bottom of the bucket , since the diameter of the bottom of the bucket may bear such a proportion to the altitude of the bucket , and so little distance left betwixt the round board and the sides of the bucket , that there will be a great horizontal section of the cone in the air above the bucket or surface of water in it , whence the residue of this supposed hollow arch impendent on the residue of the cone must needs fall to it , and consequently the whole cylinder of water over the board gravitate on it , which shall be , suppose , times more than that hollow cylinder which is contained betwixt the convex of this cylinder of water and the concave of the bucket . and yet shall the round board ascend . this is plain enough already , but if there could be any scruple , i could so encrease the proportion of the diameter of the bottom of the diameter of the bottom of the bucket to its height , that the very remainder of the cone shall be , suppose , times bigger than the remainder of the vault that environs the cone , besides * other ways by which this invention of the cone or cap in the subjected body in the water will be plainly deprehended to be only a witty invention . upon chapter the fifth . remark the tenth . those words p. . l. . [ that it is certain , water hath an intrinsecal gravity of its own as it is an heavy body ] these words are the most clearly understood . whether they be true or false , from what i thought we were agreed on in the first and second part of my first remark , that gravity is nothing else but mobility , and gravitation nothing else but motion or nisus ad motum . gravity therefore being nothing else but mobility or a capacity of being moved downwards ; this capacity is most certainly in it intrinsecally , and indeed in all other bodies besides . but if by gravity should be understood such a principle in water or any heavy body else , as by virtue whereof they would upon occasion move themselves downwards , that i make account not at all certain but ra●●er false . remark the eleventh . water so long as water , p. . l. . is ever in its fluid consistency , and therefore sometimes does gravitate in its fluid consistency , that is , has an actual motion or an actual nisus ad motum ad centrum terrae . but that pressure it seems to have , p. . l. . upon quick-silver in a vessel , is but ex accidenti towards the center of the earth it aims at the thin matter in the torricellian tube , or rather to reduce the matter to a due aequilibrium . nor does it press upon the quick-silver but with it , and vis unita fortior , as appears by the rising of the mercury in the glass . upon chapter the sixth . remark the twelfth . that a bucket of water should be as much one continued body as a bucket of pitch or wax , is a me a paradox , p. . l. . this cannot be unless the water were frozen . and pitch , and wax , and butter , and ice , applyed to the fire , and so having their parts put upon motion , and thereby being made fluid , show plainly the nature of fluidity that it consists in smalness of parts and the slippery motion of them one by another , which in water is very eminent ; and their discontinuity is notably discernible also in that they are so exhalable by the sun , and do so easily convey themselves into piles of wooll , a vessel of water placed in the room , if that experiment be true , as i never heard it contradicted . remark the thirteenth . i only take notice here , p. . l. . that this learned authour is mistaken in his notion of the principium hylarchicum , which so oft occurrs in my enchiridium metaphysicum * . for i do not understand thereby any intelligent nature , but vital only , or at least mainly : i mean a spirit indued with the plastick power of ordering the matter according to certain general laws which the divine wisdom hath vitally and essentially , though not intellectually implanted in this spirit of nature as i else-where call it . for that there is no life but what is cogitative , is a conceit taken up but yesterday , and i believe will as soon expire . that it is plastical , and that it is not intelligent , these two things i think i can and have demonstrated ; but whether it may have some more sleepy drowsie sense in it also , i have not yet determined , and for the present think it hard to prove either one way or other , and i am loth to assert any more than i can prove . upon chapter the seventh . remark the fourteenth . the distinction of considering water as a solid body and as a fluid body ( p. & . ) does not go well down with me . for water so long as it is water and not ice , is always fluid , even then when it is envesselled ; and if its entire tendency then towards the earth argue its solidity , it is a solid body also out of the vessel , for it also then tends entirely and directly towards the earth , as is seen in the drops of rain . wherefore we see no reason of reducing of envesselled water to the nature of a solid body , that upon that pretence the problem of its parts not gravitating one upon another may be thence solved . remark the fifteenth . the non-gravitation of the particles of water ( p. . l. . ) upon subjected bodies , is resolved into two accounts . the first mechanical , the second natural . the mechanical is proposed and applied in this seventh chapter , the natural in the next . the mechanical account is two-fold ; the first from the continuity of the particles of water , the second from their architecture or masonry , supposing they were not continued . now that that account from the continuity of parts , whereby the learned authour would have it to be a kind of solid body , that this is invalid appears from the . and . remarks . and indeed discontinuity of the parts of water is palpable from their extreme softness to our very fingering : as when any thing is ground , the samller the powder is the softer it feels to our fingers , and continuity is nothing else but the fixtness of part to part , whence hardness would necessarily arise , as appears in water turned into ice , which is nothing else but the fixing the aqueous parts one to another . remark the sixteenth . and therefore this learned authour does well ( p. . l. . ) to admit at length , that water has the nature of separate bodies , and that its parts are only contiguous . but then when he flies for a solution of the present problem ( why a whole column of water does not gravitate on the subjected body ) to his instances ( p. . l. . ) of a pyramid of square stones , a heap of wheat and of callice-sand , wherein an arch is made over the subjected bodies , &c. the invalidity of this reason i have abundantly discovered in my . . . . . and . remarks . there is no comparison betwixt those gross parts in rest , and these infinitely small particles of water , which are in motion . remark the seventeenth . the authour seems to affirm that the cartesian aqueous particles are infinitely more improveable ( p. . l. . ) for making an arch for the ease and security of subjacent bodies , than those of wheat , hail-shot or sand , whenas doubtless they are infinitely less improveable , as being in promiscuous motion according to des-cartes , the materia subtilissima and the globuli intermingled , nor are they in any order but what they perpetually slip from ; and how perfectly they are dis-intangled one from another , and slippery , is manifest to our very senses , as i noted * before . remark the eighteenth . he supposes ( p. . l. . ) that the union of the parts of water are much more close than that of the monads of callice-sand , because the water is quid continuum , though fluidum . but i have * offered reasons that i hope are sufficient to evince , that it is not quid continuum but contiguum ; and i farther add , that the parts of sand being crammed so hard together and at rest , come nearer to the nature of continuity , than where the parts are in motion and come closer together , as it is in water . remark the nineteenth . the learned authour ( p. . l. . ) does acknowledge that in a bucket of water with a rundle at the bottom , if the bottom have an hole in it , the whole column of water will gravitate on the rundle , and not only a cap or cone . here i demand how this hole at the bottom of the vessel under the rundle , the water not running out , can concern the supposed arch , and cause a whole cylinder of gravitation on the rundle , if there was this masonry in this phaenomenon and it were not to be salved by another principle ? remark the twentieth . again , upon what occurrs , l. . that the water will undermine a lighter body than the like quantity of water commensurable to its bulk , i would propound this experiment : supposing the bucket with an hole at the bottom , as before , and that heavier-wood-rundle almost equal to the bottom of the bucket placed on it , and then a lighter-wood-rundle of equal diameter with the heavier placed on it , whether the whole cylinder of water does not press on these rundles , and not a cap only , and whether notwithstanding the upper rundle will not ascend ? which is a sign that its ascending at other times is not to be imputed to the architecture of the arch so ingeniously excogitated by this learned authour . but i will appeal to one experiment more which will take away both these two mechanical accounts at once , that of continuity , and this of architecture ; and the experiment is this : let there be a bucket , whose concavity is perfectly cylindraceous , and the diameter of the bottom parts : let there be another cylindraceous vessel , whose internal diameter shall be parts , external : let there be at the bottom of this vessel little equidistant holes in the sides slooping inwards so as to come just to the bottom , that the water may no otherwise go out than just from the bottom upwards , nor ascend at all but by pressing to the bottom first . put this vessel into a bucket to the bottom thereof , and hold it there so as that the top of the vessel shall be equal to the top of the bucket . then pour in water till they be full to their brims , then take away your hand that held the vessel to the bottom of the bucket . the vessel in the bucket will rise up higher and higher till there be no more thereof immersed in water than is equal to such a moles of water as is equal to the whole vessel in weight . the weight of the water on the bottom of this vessel is near upon thirty times more than the water betwixt this vessel and the sides of the bucket , which should undermine it , and yet the vessel rises , of which no account can be given , neither from the continuity of the water ; for the water in the vessel is not continued with the exteriour water in the bucket , but is only contiguous to the sides of the vessel : nor from that masonry of an arch upon the rundle or bottom of the vessel ; for the whole moles of the water in the vessel does as much entirely press on the bottom of the vessel , as the whole moles of water in any bucket does upon the bottom thereof . so wholly ineffectual are these mechanical inventions of continuity , and the arch or cone on the subjected bodies in water , for solving the non-gravitation thereof . we shall now examine the natural account . upon chapter the eighth . i observe that the authour ( p. . l. . ) lays the main stress of all upon this natural account of the non-gravitation of water , either upon its inferiour parts , or any subjected body heavier or equal in weight to the like bulk of water . for this , says he , i take to be the true natural specifical reason of the non-gravitation of fluids , though the mechanical reason before given is not wholly useless , but contributes its part to it . we will therefore be more diligent in examining this natural account . remark the twenty first . and for the better procedure in this business , upon his mentioning the intrinsecal heaviness of a body , p. . l. . we are here to remember what we were , i thought , agreed upon in my first remark , part the first and the second ; that heaviness or gravity in a body , is nothing but its mobility , nor gravitation but its motion or actual nisus ad motum , and that that notion of gravity in the schools is but idolum fori . that mobility and motion upwards is as intrinsecal to a body as mobility and motion downwards . that there is no motion nor nisus ad motum discernible in water to any term , but when it is misplaced , so that all such motion is only upon occasion in it . and therefore when water ascends in a tube in such sort as is described , remark . part . that mobility and motion upward is as intrinsecal to the water as its nisus downward ; for that nisus downward is not but pro re nata , when it is misplaced . these things i hope will not be stuck at , if we have but recourse to my first remark and the parts thereof . remark the twenty second . this natural account of the non-gravitation of fluids , which the authour lays so much stress upon ; is this , p. . l. . that they have several lines of their direction of gravitation ( that is of their motion , by remark the first ) and therefore necessarily one must be refracted , impeded , and abated by the other ; and consequently the direction of its perpendicular or lateral gravitation ( or motion downward ) is corrected or very near wholly suspended by the other tendencies or directions of its motion . this is the learned authours natural account of the non-gravitation of the parts of water upon water , &c. remark the twenty third . the learned authour brings in again ( p. . l. . ) the notion and distinction of the terminal motions or tendencies of water as it is an heavy body , which are perpendicular towards the earth , which he calls the primitive conatus of all heavy bodies and the effect of their intrinsick gravity ; and the other motions and directions as it is a fluid body . this distinction he repeats again , p. . l. penult . which language if we will uncipher according to our agreement in my first remark , the sense is this , that water as it is a body moveable downwards , or has an intrinsick mobility downwards , has its direction towards the earth . but here i demand , if the mobility of water upwards be not as intrinsick to it as downwards , and the one conatus as primitive as the other , since they are both only ex data occasione , by the waters being misplaced ? for where the water is rightly placed , it has no terminate motion at all , and therefore all the directions of motion in water as to primitiveness or intresecalness are of the same kind . and it has , as all other bodies have , a mobility every way , but their actual nisus or motus is pro re nata . remark the twenty fourth . and the learned authour , from p. . to p. . has abundantly well proved this mobility of water or its parts , that datâ occasione it will be moved upward , downwards , horizontally , obliquely , and indeed every way , and that to opposite terms in the very same lines . that is , that this may be caused at several times , and upon several occasions . but that water has all these tendencies or pressures at once , that his experiments will no way reach to . this i think will plainly appear to any one that considers well my first remark , part . . and . remark the twenty fifth . in his description of this his natural account ( remark . ) he declares that by the many other directions and tendencies in a fluid body , the perpendicular is very near wholly suspended , but here ( p. . l. . ) that ●t possibly may be , that the line of direction in a perpendicular descent may be considerably stronger and more efficacious , and consequently the gravitation stronger , because there contributes to that motion , not only the nature of water as a fluid body , but also as a heavy body . but besides what i have * above noted , that the distinction betwixt a heavy body and a fluid , where one and the same body is both heavy and fluid at once , is not so congruous , and that there is * no such primitive gravity or gravitation distinguishable from the mobility and actual motion or tendency of any body downwards : admit this intrinsick gravity or gravitation over and above to the mobility and motion of the water downwards , yet seeing the mobility and motion of the water upwards is as urgent and nimble as that downwards , they do one utterly defeat another , and for all these the water retains its intrinsick gravitation still , so that this invention seems utterly useless , and the parts of water would press upon one another notwithstanding this hypothesis . but if this intrinsick gravity be a mistake of the schools , as i doubt not but that it is , then that inconvenience will return which i mention in my first remark , part . that a bucket of water will have no more heaviness in it than if it had no water in it , which is contrary to experience , which are plain indications of the invalidity of this natural account . remark the twenty sixth . he says notwithstanding , ( p. . l. . ) that if the line of the perpendicular descent of the fluid be compared with all those various and many lines of its direction , &c. that the perpendicular motion of its gravitation as an heavy body will be near altogether abated . but it is to be observed , that take all those various motions in , whereby it may seem hopeful that the intrinsick gravitation will be abated , they will yet contribute nothing thereto , because there is no tendency in any one line of them , but there is an equal contertendency in the same , so that their force is every way utterly defeated , as i noted of the perpendiculars before . remark the twenty seventh . what he is observed to say in the former remark , he farther illustrates and confirms ( p. . l. . ) by a like instance of callice - sand , where he supposes their perpendicular gravitation so hugely abated by their motion per declive , and repeats the advantage water has above the callice-sand , because the parts of water are conjoined in one continuum . but that it is quite contrary i have * above proved concerning the continuity , as * also in that kind of perpendicular gravitation , which is not pro re nata , but intrinsick . but we will here farther add , that if there were any such thing as intrinsick gravity , every upper part would press on the lower , and the greatest pressure would be at the lowest , the least at top . so little service does this conceit of continuity . and every grain of sand where ever sited , would ad summum virium thrust downwards . remark the twenty eighth . but that they do not thrust so peremptorily downwards , he says ( p. . l. . ) the cause is apparently beyond all contradiction , that the accidental tendency of the sands per declive doth break the perpendicular gravitation , so that it does not gravitate upon the most fragil subjected body in its full weight . that this is no such apparent cause , besides what we have noted * above , that in the foregoing remark does further confirm , if there were any such thing as intrinsick gravity ; and though the sands tumble per declive , it does not at all follow when they are stopt and rest , that they press per declive , but downwards . that an animal therefore is not damnified under an high heap of sand , may have some such reason as the suspension of fluids . remark the twenty ninth . touching the further explication and enforcement of this natural account of the non-gravitation of the parts of fluids in a cubick foot of water , which he supposes just twelve pound weight perpendicular , ( p. . l. . ) and that it is the common stock of all its pressures ( p. . l. . ) to be distributed as from one common cistern through so many pipes ( l. . ) to serve all those gravitations or conatus ad motum , for it hath not above twelve pound intrinsick weight to serve all these conatus or gravitations . here methinks it is most apparently . deprehensible , that where there is acknowledged to be no other stock of intrinsick weight but this twelve pound to be derived to those multifarious actual gravitations , horizontal , oblique , and directly upward , and yet the virtue of this twelve pound perpendicular ponderancy is felt entire still , that all the other actual gravitations are mere imaginations of a curious mind and no real effects in nature . remark the thirtieth . indeed the learned authour seems aware of this difficulty and propounds it as such ( p. . l. . ) but i must confess i understand not the force of his answer , though he says it is plain . for he says the water in the bucket is as fluid a body as so much water in the ocean , but the bucket of water is as one solid body . the bucket of water is the water in the bucket , which cannot be fluid and solid at once . it is a perfect repugnancy in nature . it is therefore most certainly a fluid body even in the bucket , and will have all that belongs to a fluid body as such , all those several gravitations , oblique , horizontal , and upward , if there were any such , and that upward especially , there being nothing to bound it or check it , which yet is of the greatest force to lessen the perpendicular gravitation . but that there are none such , is manifest from the entireness of the gravitation downwards in the water of the bucket : suppose pound weight still , and were the bottom of the bucket taken out at once as it hangs , the water would not as it comes out immediately spread horizontally , but descend directly down . so that the horizontal sallies are only pro re nata made , when the water cannot get down perpendicularly , nor attempted ever but ex data occasione , when the moving principle is invited to act , which is true also of its gravitation downwards , which is never actual , but upon the waters being misplaced . but to phansie there is such a perpetual conatus every way and strong pressure to no purpose , is too much a-kin to those elastick thrusts and croudings imagined by others in the air , or that furious every way agitation of the matter in the cartesian philosophy . the laws of nature assuredly are more orderly and still . to all which we will add , that if this were the main reason why the parts of water do not gravitate one upon another in the bucket , because the perpendicular gravitation is so refracted , mitigated , and as it were brought to an aequilibrium , by the other gravitations ; it would necessarily follow , that the water in the bucket being wholly turned into ice , and so really becoming a solid body , whereby all those other gravitations saving the perpendicular would be extinct , that the perpendicular gravitation which was pound weight before , will be well nigh doubled , when as on the contrary it is rather lighter , proportionable to that moderate rarefaction it received in the congeling : which plainly demonstrates that those other imagined gravitations were not actual before , but that they are only made pro re nata , as i have intimated in my first remark , part . upon difficiles nvgae ; or , observations touching the torricellian experiment . having by the former remarks cleared my demonstration of the existence of the principium hylarchicum , or spirit of nature , by that experiment of the wooden rundle rising from the bottom of a bucket of water , from what obscurity or uncertainty the invention of the cap or cone and the every-way-gravitation , or tendencies of motion imagined in fluid bodies as such , might involve it in : i shall now chiefly raise such remarks on this second treatise , namely the authours observations touching the torricellian experiment , which will make good a like * demonstration of mine from the ascending weight hung at the embolus of the air-pump , against this learned authours solution thereof , and of all such like experiments . the cause whereof he lays chiefly on rarefaction and tension of matter , &c. which he supposes to be real affections of nature : and therefore i shall take these notions at the first rebound , as they occur in the second chapter of this present treatise . upon chapter the second . the first remark . the learned authour here takes up principles unproved , p. . and such as cannot be proved by any experiment or reason in nature , nay such as are repugnant to reason , and absurd if we more closely canvase them , and more considerately search into them . that he has not proved them but merely applied them , is plain to any one that will give himself the divertisement of perusing his treatise . and that they cannot be proved is manifest from the very notion of rarefaction and condensation , and of tension and restitution , p. . l. . for rarefaction and tension is when one and the same corporeal substance occupies a greater space than before , but condensation and restitution when it occupies less . these are the general natures ( which is enough for my present purpose ) in which they agree , i mean rarefaction and tension , and condensation and restitution , which were rashly admitted by some ancient philosophers as well as by modern , because they conceited there were no bodies in the universe , at least near our earth , whose parts were more subtil than those of the air , or else phancied the air an absolute homogeneous body , nor looked upon it as consisting of any particles . so confused were their notions of this natural phaenomenon . but that it consists of actual particles seems to me manifest , in that it is so easily divisible . the tender thred of a spinner that hangs on a mans hat , being able to divide it in any assigned part , which were a thing incredible , did not the air consist of parts merely contiguous , and that small ones too , and yet not of an infinite smalness ; for as much as air will not pass the pores of some bodies , though of other some it will. and therefore seeing there is no vacuum , as is agreed on all sides , and that the parts of the air are exceeding yielding to the least touch , which could not be if the main parts of the air were of such figures as would adequately fill all the space it is conceived to occupy ; for then it would be so crammed that nothing could move easily or without forcible penetration of dimensions : wherefore there must be particles to fill the little intervals betwixt the parts of the air , and those exceeding small , that motion may be easie , and that the fluitant parts of the air in this more subtile fluid may nimbly yield to motion every way , as we see it does . this is one way of proving there are exceeding small particles in the air , distinct from the main and more proper particles thereof . but there is yet a more visible detection thereof in the phaenomenon of light , in that it passes the pores of glass , which the air cannot pass . and that light is a subtil body , besides the authority of the ancients , the reflexion and refraction of it makes it abundantly manifest . how can the figure of a body , as in a burning-glass , direct the rays so to one point , if they were a mere quality and not thinner particles of matter in the air ? and as for the conceit of species intentionales , which they make lumen solis to be in respect of his lux : that it is an impossible notion , i have demonstrated in my enchiridium metaphysicum . these hints are sufficient in an argument so easily allowed by all unprejudiced philosophers to demonstrate , that there are * smaller parts of matter than those that are properly aëreal , and such as can penetrate the pores of bodies when the aëreal parts shall be forced to stand without . from whence therefore it will plainly follow , that these principles of rarefaction and condensation , of tension and restitution of the air cannot be proved to be in nature , in such cases as this learned authour and others phansie they are . because the coming in and re-ceding of the subtiler particles we have proved to be in nature , will salve these phaenomena , and show that it needs not be the same substance entire when it is rarefied , but subtiler parts may come in as water into a spunge ; nor when it is condensated , but the subtil parts may go out as water out of a spunge . and there is the same reason of the tension of the air and its restitution ; it may be salved by egress and regress of subtiler particles , and the tension and restitution like a lute-string may be a mere conceit . nor are we content with this , but we also further affirm that it is de facto a mere conceit , as appears from that we have already proved , that the air is so well replenished with matter far subtiler than it self , even such as will penetrate glass , and from what is acknowledged on all sides , that the air is also compressible . for from hence it will necessarily follow , that upon the compression thereof , that there may be no vacuum , or by a necessary circle of motion , those smaller particles will pierce any glass , as suppose the glass-tube in the torricellian experiment , of which we shall speak more particularly in its due place . besides , the very notion of such a rarefaction and condensation , tension and restitution , as this authour would have , is contrary to the nature of a body , which the ancient philosophers defined 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a substance of trinal dimension and impenetrable . and impenetrability of body or matter is so generally acknowledged as a real and inseparable property thereof , that even those philosophers that are for such a rarefaction and condensation , as aristotle has broached , and this authour maintains , have laboured tooth and nail , though in vain , to defend it from that absurdity of penetration of dimensions . to say nothing how it is a mere confounding of the properties of body and spirit . for such a rarefaction and condensation as is here supposed , is too like the dilatation and contraction that belongs to particular spirits . and lastly , if we consider more punctually and precisely , that if there be this rarefaction , it must be either by encreasing the bulk of every particle , suppose of air , thus rarefied , or by encreasing the number of the particles ( every particle ( a wonderful imagination ! ) sending particles out of it self to occupy a greater room ) both the emissitious and original particles in the mean time being without pores , at least so far forth as they are thus encreased ( this new acquired extension being not by opening and filling of pores ( as in the cartesian way ) but by new continued quantity , or at least newly emitted ) it is , i say , here manifest , that if the encrease of the particles be in bulk ( since there is no other imaginable or at least rational notion of solidity , but imporosity of matter , and close continuity of parts undivided into particles ( for natural experience teacheth us that looseness of particles is the original of fluidity and softness ) those particles becoming bigger , in some cases it may be an hundred or a thousand times , and being likewise solid ; the effect of the rarefaction would be , that the body rarefied would feel more gross than before , which is against experience . but however in the other case where the number is only encreased , those emissitious particles by reason of their imporosity and close continuity of parts , are as really solid as those bigger . and therefore it is as hard to conceive that they can ever enter again into the particles out of which they were emitted . to say nothing ( since there is no vacuum ) how hard a thing it is to conceit upon every such rarefaction there is necessarily this crouding of hard or solid bodies into the like hard or solid bodies , so that they really penetrate , not pores but the very dimensions of one another , though thus hard and solid . and this in bodies unraresied , and that upon slight occasions and small force , which i must confess to me seems hugely harsh & absurd , and plainly against experience , even in soft bodies as in water ; those forcible experiments that disprove its elasticity , proving therewithal the impenetrability of its parts . to all which i shall add , that this supposed principle of tension takes away all starting holes that might be sought in bringing in any interspersed vacuities or empty pores in bodies , which would be a discontinuity or discontiguity of matter in the world , which this tension is pretended a fence against . and besides , if there were any such interspersed vacuities , so that matter might be driven up closer into them , that would still make my demonstration from the air-pump more firm , and the ascending of the weight would be still the more marvellous , and require the more necessarily a principium hylarchicum , the defence of which is the great scope of my present remarks . but to admit so incredible and unconceivable affection in nature as the mutual penetration of dimensions , even in hard or solid bodies , ( for the littleness of them hinders not but that they are really hard or solid ) is an hypothesis so like the rude crouding and intolerable pressing , in that prodigious elasticity of the air , that i hope this ingenious authour will be as cautious how he over-firmly adheres to the one , as he has been judicious in exploding the other . upon chapter the third . the second remark . the learned authour says , that the upper parts , p. . of a cube of lead do not actually gravitate upon the inferiour parts , because the upper are mechanically impeded by the lower from their actual gravitation upon them ; yet every atom thereof contributes to the gravitation of the whole upon the scale . the former he calls , p. . gravitation ad motum , the latter gravitation ad pondus . but it is very hard to conceive if there were any such thing as intrinsick gravity , that is , a nature in the lead it self whereby it was carried downward , that it should not have every part of it gravitationem ad motum , or conatum ad motum , since no inferiour part can mechanically hinder the superiour part from this conatus , and every natural agent is supposed to act ad extremum suarum virium : and that no parts are idle , appears from the gravitation ad pondus , if there were any such intrinsick gravity . wherefore in that they do not gravitate one upon another , as they do when lead and clay are continued together , and the clay undermost , p. . l. . is not from any mechanical continuity , but from the same reason that is in fluids of the same kind , the parts press not one upon another because they are not misplaced , but are ranged in that order that is agreeable to the laws of that immaterial principle . but if the parts were not thus ordered by a principle distinct from them , but their gravitation were from their own innate gravity , it were incredible , nay impossible that there should be a gravitation ad pondus of the parts , and none ad motum . for if the innate gravitation of each part of the leaden cube did not bear against its fellow downwards , there would be no bearing against the scale at all ; as is manifest to any one that thinks close on the matter . the third remark . he says , p. . l. . that the reason why a glass tube of oyl immersed to such a depth into a vessel of water , will some of it go out , but immersed lower it will stay in , and if lower , will ascend in the tube , &c. is this ; because there is a greater pressure or renitence in the last place than in the second , and in the second than in the first , and therefore less force is required to raise the superficies in this first case than in the second , and in the second than in the third . this is ingenious , but there is this obstacle to the truth thereof : for let the first place be a. the second b. the third c. and let us consider that the oyl going out at a. the whole body of the water from a. to the superficies is raised up at once , and there appears no hillock of water above the oyl at a. on the superficies or on a vessel of oyl above the water at a. supposing water let into a vessel of oyl after the same manner by a glass tube . now besides that it is incredible that so little portion of water or oyl effused at a. should at all be able to-raise the whole bulk of water or oyl in the vessels , from the whole superficies where a. is ( though never so little ) towards the tōp of the vessels ; it is also further demonstrable that the increase of renitence or pressure of the water against its being raised higher in b. more than in a. and in c. more than in b. is not the reason that the oyl in the tube put in water , or water in a tube put into oyl , does not go out at b. and ascends at c. for it would follow , that a tube of oyl put into a vessel of water of a far greater diameter than before , suppose twice as great , and the tube again immersed to a. that is , to an equal depth as before , the oyl would not go out , since the bulk of the water from a. to the superficies is four times as big as it was before , and therefore the renitence against being raised higher , should nigh hand increase in proportion . and yet the oyl goes out at a. as before , notwithstanding this imagined renitency . whence it is plain it is not the force of effused water in the oyl , or oyl in the water , that can raise the water or oyl one atoms breadth higher , but the preventing activity of that immaterial principle that disposes all the parts of the liquors in the vessel , orderly and at once , there being no crowding nor pressing any way , one part on another . and that the pewter porringer full of hail-shot weighed in water , p. . l. . is found from the bottom to the top in a manner of equal weight , is not because it forces the superficies of the water no higher in one position than another , but because the water is no heavier at one depth than another , that is , is not heavy at all . upon chapter the fourth . remark the fourth . p. . l. . in this page the learned authour does in a manner acknowledge what i so diligently endeavoured to prove in my first remark , part . for he compares the air to a vast net with small mashes or interstitia , fitted gradually with parts more and more subtil , wherein he judges right , saving that by the comparison of the net he would insinuate a continuity of the air , which i have sufficiently disproved , remark . part . remark the fifth . the compression of divers particles of the air , saith our authour , p. . l. . may render that compressed body of air sensibly heavy : whence he inferrs , that we may not wholly exclude those particles from all kind of gravity before compression . for no weighty body can arise from the coalition of such parts as had no manner of gravity before . the conclusion bears some show of concinnity with it ; but methinks the inference would be more safe , if one should argue from hence that there is no such thing as innate gravity , since that which appeared a light body before , without adding any real quality , but by only thrusting the parts nearer together , it got a motion downwards . which therefore implies that that motion is from some other substance , not from the compressed air it self , and that fire , if it could be compressed , would also tend downwards . as the matter thereof does tend downwards plainly in wood , but the parts of wood attenuated and agitated tend upwards in the form of fire ; which is no obscure intimation that it is not any inward particular form or quality , that is that which moveth things upward or downward , but a distinct immaterial principle that is the orderer and disposer of the matter of the universe , according to the more or less solidity in its consistency . remark the sixth . he asserts in this page . as also p. . l. . that there is not that strict cohaesion of one part of water with another , as with one part of air with another , and yet as i have above noted , the air is dividable by the thred of a spinner hanging on ones hat ; how dividable then and separable is one part of water from another , that is more easily disjungible than air it self , and how unfit for such architecture of the imagined cone or cap in the former treatise ? remark the seventh . after an experiment made with a glass-siphon with quick-silver and water , the longer leg of the siphon being inches , the shorter . and the shorter leg having something a larger diameter than the longer ( which experiment is thus : . he filled the shorter leg with mercury till it ran up as high in the longer , that is inches according to the law of fluids , and stopping the shorter with his finger filled the residue of the longer with water , whereupon the mercury in the longer leg subsided to two inches and a quarter , inches of water driving it so far down , though inches of water is the usual counterpoise to two inches of mercury . : having filled again the siphon with quick-silver as at first , and immersing it into a tube of water inches high , so that the column of water over the shorter leg was full inches , yet those inches drive the mercury in the shorter leg but one inch down , and raised it one inch in the longer . . having poured water into the longer leg of the siphon , so that the mercury subsided two inches , and as much flowed out at the shorter , and then immersing again the siphon into the glass-vessel inches deep filled with water , the mercury subsided near an inch in the shorter leg , and accordingly impelled the mercury into the longer . ) upon this experiment , i say , he makes this observation , p. . l. . that notwithstanding the advantage of the larger diameter of the shorter leg , the gravitation of the external water or any imaginary column thereof , was not half so much as the gravitation of the cylinder of water included in the tube , he means , the longer leg of the siphon , which i conceive to be a plain mistake ; for neither is that larger diameter in the shorter leg any advantage , but a disadvantage ; the motion of fluids being swifter out of a narrow passage into wide than vice versâ : nor is there any indication in all these experiments , that the gravitation of the inches of water in the longer leg does gravitate as much more as the column of water of inches impendent over the orifice of the shorter leg . for in the first instance , where inches of water drives the quick-silvver inches and ¼ downward in the longer leg , it is because of the largeness of the diameter of the shorter leg , or by reason of its wideness . so when the inches of water and the quick-silver was to balance against it , it required more quick-silver to be at a counterpoise with it , than if it had had the same diameter with the longer shank ; and hence it is , that the quicksilver subsides so far in the longer shank , and not the discontinuity of the water in it from other water . and now we come to the second instance , it is to be noted that the impendent column of water driving the mercury one inch downward in the short leg , and so consequently raising it one in the longer , that there will be inches in the longer leg , and but in the shorter ; so that upon the matter the column of inches in the water poizes as much against the quick-silver in this experiment , as that water in the longer shank did in the former . for here it ponderates against inches of quick-silver , there but against and ¼ , nay i may safely say against above two in this ; for if it was driven down one inch in the shorter but wider shank , it must needs rise above one inch in the other ; and i doubt not but a quarter of an inch or thereabout , if the authour had taken so punctual notice of it . and as in these two instances in several , the column of the water in the water is found to be aequiponderant to a column of so many inches in the longer shank of the siphon , so we shall find them in this last and joint experiment . for upon the pouring water into the long leg of the siphon there remained but inches of mercury in that leg , and in the other , wherefore upon the immitting of the siphon into the glass-tube , and there being found about an inch subsiding in the shorter leg , and a rising as much in the longer ; it is manifest that in each leg there was about inches height of quicksilver a piece , and that the column of water in the water gravitates as much as the column of water in the longer shank of the siphon , and not only half as much , as our authour would have it ; which is an excellent experiment against his supposed masonry in the element of water , and that each part of water by each part doth most glibly slip : and that therefore this imaginary architecture can contribute nothing to the rising of the round wooden rundle from the bottom of the bucket , on which i build that notable demonstration of mine in my enchiridium metaphysicum . upon chapter the fifth . remark the eighth . that experiment of stevinus , that a rundle placed on the bottom of a vessel with a hole in it , so that the rundle somewhat overlaps the hole , p. . l. . that the rundle will gravitate upon that hole and the incumbent cylinder of water commensurate in base to that rundle so hard and close , that it requires a weight in a pair of scales near commensurate to the weight of the impending cylinder of water to raise it from the bottom ; i say this experiment is an argument against that invention of the cap or cone , and the rest of that architecture in the foregoing book . for the hole under the rundle cannot be conceived any mechanical cause at all , why the same architecture may not be that was imagined before , and yet the rundle ariseth not in the vessel , nor does the water sile thorough . remark the ninth . that the rundle ariseth not in the vessel the learned authour offers this reason , because the water gravitates now upon the rundle , as having mediately a lighter element , namely the air upon which it gravitates , l. . but being as firmly sustained as before from passing to the air , why should it gravitate any more than before ? and besides if the bottom of the bucket be somewhat higher than the basis of the ribs of the bucket on which it may stand , and there be a second bottom made to keep the air betwixt this second bottom and the former perforated bottom from communicating with the rest of the air ; it is worth the enquiring whether the rundle then will not rise , because the abituriency of the air which was in the other case , is thus sufflaminated ? whence it would be plain , it was not simply because there was air beneath , that the water gravitated on the rundle , but because that air was in the state of abituriency , or at least in sufficient quantity to colluctate with the water , the principium hylarchicum upon such hints , by reason of the quick motion of those laws of life in it , putting this under-air into that abiturient state , and therewithal carrying the water raptu consensûs into an actual tendency downward , and so thrusting the rundle closer to the hole , intangles it self in its own attempt , as not acting by free reason and counsel , but by some general laws of instinct of life , which in some such by-cases do not further but hinder the effect generally produced by nature . whence it is evident that this spirit of nature is not the first cause , which is the aeternal wisdom , but a mere inferiour creature . but this is but by the by . remark the tenth . our authour mentions an experiment of an empty glass-bottle carefully stopt , and sunk a great depth into the sea , that the pressure of the water will break it a-pieces , p. . l. . and he resolves it into this reason , because the water presses against a lighter element , the air , though mediately through the glass . but i say , that is not the adequate cause thereof , that it has a lighter element near to it , but because that the element is misplaced , for the upper part of the water in a vessel does not press against the air in the vessel that is incumbent on it ; but if a bottle of air were let down into the sea with its mouth downward , and well stopt to keep out water , yet the water will thrust the cork upward and drive it in . but that is because the air is misplaced , and put in the element of water , which methinks are very apert insinuations , that there is no such thing as intrinsick gravity , but that matter moved is moved by a principle distinct from it self . for the parts of the water of the sea do not press one against another , neither before nor after the bottle is let down , and yet there is such a pressure on the bottle once let down , that either the cork is driven in or the bottle broke in pieces . the other two instances also the authour mentions in this page tend to the same purpose , i mean those of oyl driving water upwards , and water quick-silver , of which he declares p. . . thus . for in these instances though the immediate contiguity be of the heavier body to the lighter , as oyl to water , and water to mercury , yet the air being behind the mercury in the longer leg of the siphon , and behind the water in the tube , the water in the one case and the oyl in the other , doth in truth gravitate upon the air mediately and effectively , rather than upon the immediate heavier fluid . which would plainly be a gravitation upwards , and therefore the more harsh phrase and sense , but may justly insinuate to this authour the reasonableness of their opinion that hold , there is no inward gravitation at all , but that the matter is moved pro re nata , and ranged by the spirit of nature , according to certain laws generally good for the universe , and essentially implanted in the said spirit . and these last phaenomena are easily resolved into the first hydrostatical axiom in my enchirid. metaphys . c. . sect . . upon chapter the sixth . remark the eleventh . the reason assigned , p. . l. . why a small glass-tube of so many inches long , and filled up with water , and stopt with ones finger at the lower end , and let into a vessel of water of a competent diameter and depth , upon the unstopping of the lower end , all the water in the tube above the superficies of the water in the vessel will run down till ' it be no higher than the said superficies , namely , because if it obtain never so little more height in the pipe than in the vessel , it has a greater force to press downwards than the water in the vessel has strength to resist it ; this reason i conceive does not quite exhaust the difficulty : for suppose this pipe of but a quarter of an inch diameter , and a bucket of a foot and a half , and deep a foot , and the pipe inches and half a quarter long , and inches thereof in the water , so that there is but half a quarter of an inch of the water to press up by its force to some , though very little , height , a moles of water of inches deep , and a foot and an half diameter , how is it possible that the force of intrinsick gravity of a cylinder of water but a quarter of an inch diameter , and half a quarter of an inch altitude , should raise at all a cylinder of inches diameter and inches in altitude , if some principle distinct from both , did not assist ? for the one cylinder exceeds the other above some hundred thousand times , and yet the pressure of this little cylinder must raise the great one by its own force , if there be no other principle to help , nor penetration of dimensions , which is even as absurd as the other . or if you take the inches of water more in the tube into your compute , yet this added to the abovesaid cylinder of but half a quarter of an inch high , will be above times less than the exteriour cylinder . so big is the absurdity still . remark the twelfth . the falling off and sticking to of the obturaculum in a tube with a valve according as the tube is less or more immersed in the water ; my reason of this phaenomenon given in my enchiridium metaphysicum , cap. . sect . . this learned authour says , p. . he is as much dissatisfied with , as with the reason of the excellent authour of the hydrostatical paradoxes , but he alledges nothing against it but that it is an obscure solution . when as yet this i think therein is very plain and intelligible , that if there be what i declare , quaedam quasi sursum suctio aëris in tubo contenti , & conformis ac contemporanea aquae compulsio in obturaculum gih &c. that that is a very solid reason why the obturaculum when this suction is strong enough ( which is when the tube is let down deep enough ) by a circle of motion , or at least a joint compression of the water at the same time against it , should be kept up from falling . for upon this abiturient state of the air , it being more vigorous than that impulse that should carry down the obturaculum , ( or rather that principle that moves the matter being rapt into one consent of circular motion from the bottom of the air in the tube to the top , and then down into the water till it reach the obturaculum under the tube , urging the water as if it would ascend up , ( which it would do but for the obturaculum ) in pursuit of the air so drawn upwards , till it was even with the superficies of the water ) it is manifest that the obturaculum upon that abituriency is driven upwards , and that the motion in order of nature is first there in the air of the tube ; for as much as if the abituriency of the air in the tube be stopt with a mans finger at a due nearness , or by a moveable embolus , the obturaculum that at such a depth clave close before to the valve , will presently fall down , which is a plain demonstration that the rise of the motion of pressure against the obturaculum is from the air in the tube first moved , according to that law of the principium hylarchicum conteined in my first hydrostatical axiom , enchirid. metaphys . cap. . sect . . which causes this joint motion or pressure against the obturaculum . this cannot be obscure to any that acknowledge that a spirit endued with plastick life , though devoid of understanding , and it may be of any acute sense , is able to move matter . remark the thirteenth . and from what we have said in the foregoing remark , it is evident i conceive that this learned authour is out in the account of this phenomenon . for p. , and iii. he resolves the sticking of the obturaculum to the valve , into the tubes pressing up a portion of water of a greater weight than it . if the sucker , says he , ( which answers to that which i call the obturaculum ) be drawn up ( p. . l. . ) and then immersed so low that the portion of water impelled up by the tube does exceed the weight of the sucker , the sucker will be sustained by the pressure of the water upon it : but if the weight of a moles of water , saith he , commensurate to so much of the tube as is immersed in the water , be less than the weight of the sucker , the sucker by its own weight will subside . that this reason is maim , is apparent from hence ; that if the tube be let in so low that it raised a moles of water whose weight is much greater than the weight of the obturaculum , or sucker , and that for the present the obturaculum will stick to the valve , yet if the tube be stopt with ones finger , or rather by a moveable embolus at a due nearness to the valve , the obturaculum will suddenly fall ; whence it is manifest , that the solution is not finally to be made into the raising of the water to several heights , upon which its pressure should encrease against the obturaculum , but into the abituriency of the air in the tube or just quantity thereof , and of the several forces of that abituriency into the laws of motion , innate or essential to the spirit of nature or universal transposer of the parts of the matter of the world . for where there is no raising of the water higher at a deeper descent to make its pressure greater in the immitting air into water , as in a glass filled with air and well stopt let down into the bottom of the sea , upon a deep descent it will break , though upon a moderate it will not ( though it raises the water alike in both cases . ) which is resolvible into nothing but the greater excitement of the force of the principium hylarchicum , upon the greater transgression of those hylostatick laws vitally and essentially included in it . for the parts of water in water do not gravitate one against another , and they have as much room to play in when a bottle of air is sent down into the water , as when a bottle of water of the same size is sent thereinto . but the air in the former is misplaced , contrary to the hylostatick laws of the universe . upon chapter the seventh . remark the fourteenth . it is a very notable and pleasant experiment the learned authour mentions , p. . l. . it is most evident to any mans sense , quoth he , that will but try , that if a tube be open at both ends and filled up with mercury , and then one end stopped with the finger , and the other end inverted and immersed in the restagnant mercury , whereby it descends from the top of the tube , a strong and sensible attraction is wrought upon the pulp of the upper finger that closeth it , which continues and grows more and more forcible , sensible , and evident , the further the mercury is removed from the upper end , and approaches to its usual station of inches . this is his experiment , which to me is a seasonable confirmation of what in the foregoing remark i observed . that the force of activity in the principium hylarchicum or hylostaticum is excited proportionably to the measure of misplacement of the parts of the matter of the universe . but as for the learned authours solution of this phaenomenon , i mean of this attraction of the pulp of his finger at the top of the tube , i must confess i am not at all satisfied with , and look upon it as a kind of philosophical incivility , whenas so eminent a fellow creature as this hylostatick spirit , took the opportunity of pulling him by the finger , when he could not shake him by the hand , that he would not embrace this offer of acquaintance , nor take notice of the existence of such a being in the world , which i must confess , i think , this phaenomenon is a notable evidence of , so circumstantiated as this authour hath described ; for it is not impulsion ab extrà as he describes it . for , says he , most evidently the force the finger feels is from within and not from without : and when he says , it is upon the pulp of the finger and not the quitching of the skin , it is apparent that that force is in his very finger , not on the outside , whether in the tube or without . and therefore it cannot be the contiguity of any body in the tube , as our learned authour would have it , by which this attraction is made , but it is the hylostatick spirit of nature , that upon unexpected occasions , after an unexpected manner moves the matter , and it was a kind of an attempt of this hylarchick principle to expand and rarifie the pulp of the finger to supply the absence of the mercury . it s tugging therefore of the pulp of the finger toward the cavity of the tube , made the sense of the attraction into it . but that this attraction could be by no contiguity of any body in the tube , appears from hence , that then it would have been felt more particularly and distinctly in the very exteriour skin . remark the fifteenth . the other two instances out of honoratus faber which this learned authour brings , p. . seem to favour my sense of the first . for the papyr extendible by force , but otherwise contracting it self , made fast at the upper end of the tube , and upon the descent of the mercury being extended , as also a bladder so fastned and close tyed in the neck , and being blown out at the descent of the quick-silver , both these seem effects of an ineffectual effort in the hylarchical spirit of the world to supply that nakedness or emptiness of the tube of that matter it ought to be replenished with , as far as it can , and that makes it extend the papyr to supply as far as it will go , and to blow up the bladder by putting the grosser particles in it upon motion , that is , rarefying what moisture there is in the bladder , which , it is no wonder , when there is a hole in the bladder , is not done , for then those particles get out and are dispersed throughout the whole vacuity . but that the whole bladder should be blown up by attraction , i shall take occasion * hereafter to show to be a mistake . remark the sixteenth . that aphorism of our learned authour , p. . that regularly all natural bodily effects are wrought by a contact of some active body upon the patient . this to me seems to contradict the phaenomena of nature , and in motion confessedly so called , most numerously and universally , which is not , unless ex accidenti , mechanical but vital . the descent of a stone is vital , as i have proved in my enchiridium metaphysicum , but its hitting or occursion against any thing whereby it moves , that is only mechanical motion in the thing so moved , otherwise motion is not by knocking or crowding , but by vital transposing of parts , as is most manifest in fluids , the parts not gravitating one against another , but being jointly and freely moved by that vital principle , which we call the hylarchick spirit of the world . upon chapter the eighth . remark the seventeenth . our authour reasons passing-well against a free permeation of the aether into the glass-tube derelicted of the quick-silver , because the quicksilver then would subside to the bottom , as when there is but a hole at the top of the tube no bigger than a pins point , because then the air he thinks may come in freely , so if the aether could come in freely through the pores of the glass , the mercury would subside in that case too . but that the subtiler parts of the air or aether cannot upon occasion ( though not so freely ) penetrate the pores of the glass , his arguments for this assertion seem to me altogether unsatisfactory . for if i understand him aright , the first thing he offers to prove it by , is , that if they could penetrate at all they would penetrate freely , and then the former inconvenience would return . the second is a denial , or supposal that there are no such pores in glass as any such smaller particles can go thorough . but to the first i answer . that though the pores of the glass be pervious enough to the aether or subtiler parts of the air , yet the r●nitency of the natural consistence of the air will not for-go them but by some force , and a less pressure or force than of a column of quick-silver of about inches high will not prevail , any above it will. to the second , that in my first remark i have hinted that ( part . ) which will sufficiently prove that there are pores in the glass as well as particles subtiler than the air to pass through them , as is apparent in the direction of the rays to one point through a burning-glass , against what our authour here declares that there is only a vis , virtue or vigour corporeal , no substance that penetrates the glass . for as bodies are only tangible , so they are only reflexible and refractable ; to which you may add , that the lightness and frangibleness of glass are farther indications of its porosity . these things are so plain to the unprejudiced that it is needless to insist on them . remark the eighteenth . and yet we may use a further confirmation of the subtiler parts of the air passing the pores of the glass , from the authours own concession , p. . l. . that they pass not through the mercury , as he conceives they do in the inverting a glass-tube of mercury on the free air , in which case he observes bubles ascending in the mercury as it descends ; but there being no such tumultuary motion of the mercury in the torricellian experiment , he concludes , no parts of air pass through the mercury into the tube . and therefore say i , it is the plainer case they pass through the pores of the glass only in this experiment . upon chapter the ninth . remark the nineteenth . of which we shall be the better assured , after we understand that the authours reasons in this ninth chapter for the ascent of steams or vapours from the mercury it self , p. . l. . are not sufficient . for the two ways that he offers for the separating these steams or vapours from the body of the mercury are , the first , expression or driving them out by the strong descent of the mercury and compression of the inferiour parts by the superiour . the other , is extraction or straining out those parts that are more subtil and fluid , and capable of expansion , &c. to which i answer , that these two ways are in a manner one and the same , or at least the stress lies upon that one first , which if it fail the other will signifie nothing . and methinks it is apparent at least in such a case as this , that it will signifie nothing , namely , if the tube filled with mercury be immitted into the restagnant mercury , very much inclining , and be raised to a perpendicular by degrees and leasurely , for then there being no such jolting of one part against another , but a gently bringing one part over another perpendicularly , and being so posited , they according to the law of fluids not gravitating one part upon another in the tube above the surface of the restagnant mercury , and having but little under to gravitate upon , nor the restagnant mercury ( according to the same law of fluids , even then when it was made something to ascend by the mercury descending from the tube ) gravitating one part upon another , it is manifest there was no compression able to separate any particles from the mercury and send them into the tube . remark the twentieth . the authour himself raises a notable objection , p. . l. . against this opinion of mercurial effluvia supplying the derelicted place of the mercury in the tube : suppose , says he , the tube were ten foot long , or the upper end were a bolts-head that should contain pounds of mercury , this mercury subsiding to inches , where should there be effluvia to fill so great a space ? his answer is , the more mercury descends to inches , the more effluvia there will be to fill the space ; but i say if the tube of mercury be let down obliquely , as before , and be gently and leasurely raised to a perpendicular , according to the law of fluids the compression will be even just nothing . from whence then can that vast empty space be supplyed but by the subtiler parts of the air coming in through the pores of the glass-tube ? which is that we aimed at . upon chapter the eleventh . remark the twenty first . his confutation of the use of the atmospherical cylinder in the solving of the torricellian experiment is very ingenious , p. . l. . namely from the supposal of a glass-tube half an inch diameter in cavity , and as much in thickness of foot long , and sealed at one end , filled with mercury and immersed to the bottom of a vessel of restagnant mercury inches deep , so that inches and / will be above the restagnant mercury , the tube remaining full to the top . but the glass being lighter than the mercury , it will be driven up thereby near to the superficies thereof . so that about inches of the upper end of the tube will be empty , but the tube continues till inches of mercury and / , the bottom of it immersed but / an inch ; and the supposition is , that the inches of mercury and an half , weighs one pound , and the tube just as much . this tube of mercury now in these circumstances fixed by a string to a beam of a pair of scales , two pound in the adverse scale will counterpoise , and any little advantage of weight added will make it preponderate . whence he clearly deduces from the mercury's contributing the weight of a pound to the counterpoizing the scale , that it is not sustained by a cylinder of air of equal diameter and weight with it self , for then there would be but that one pound weight of the tube alone to counterpoize the two pound in the scale ; which is a firm and ingenious demonstration against the hypothesis of the atmospheres pressing the restagnant mercury . remark the twenty second . nor can it be eluded by saying , p. . l. . that though the column of quick-silver in the tube be indeed sustained by a column or cylinder of air of equal diameter with the column of mercury in the tube , and so weighs not at all against the scale ; yet a column of air whose basis is the top of the tube does ponderate upon it , and so supplies the place of the cylinder of quick-silver to which it is equal in weight . for since the diameter of the quick-silver is but half an inch , and the diameter of the whole tube / of an inch , it is manifest , that the weight of the column of air on the head of the tubes , if it weighed at all in their sense , would be nine times as much in weight as that of the mercury in the tube , which is a very gross absurdity . remark the twenty third . and as weak a subterfuge is that whereby they would elude this answer , namely by pretending , that the glass-tube being a body specifically lighter than mercury , is it self sustained by the restagnant mercury , as if that broke the force of the column of air that presses times as strong on the head of the tube as the other column of air on the restagnant quick-silver ; when-as it is a thing plainly prodigious that a single force should keep mercury inches and / above the surface of the restagnant mercury up in the air , though it be i know not how many thousand times lighter than mercury , and yet that the glass should not be kept down inches under the surface of the restagnant mercury , though not fourteen times heavier than glass , by a force nine times as great as the former . remark the twenty fourth . but the authour does very handsomely meet with all such elusions by two neat experiments . the one is of a glass-tube , the diameter of whose cavity was , the diameter of the whole of an inch , the length inches , the weight thereof in the air ounces , the water it would contain , near ounce . this tube tyed at the closed end to the scale of a balance , and being filled with water and stopt with ones finger , and so let down into water , and so settled there as that the lower end was near about a quarter of an inch from the surface , there was required in the opposite scale four ounces and , which is equal to the weight of the water and tube together to hold the tube in an aequilibrium , and here the glass-tube is not held up by the restagnant water , the glass being so heavy that it would sink to the bottom , as being a body specifically heavier than water . wherefore this aequilibrium being from hence , according to the principles of those that hold the pressure of the atmosphere , either because the tube and the water jointly do weigh against the weights in the other scale , or because the column of air on the head of the tube with the tube weigh against them , this second being impossible , for as much as the diameter of that column is five such parts as the diameter of the column of water in the tube , and that of air on the restagnant water is four , and therefore would press at least half as much again as the water in the tube , namely in the proportion of to , which the scale discovers to be false , for there is only one ounce ● / added to the two ounces / ● , not / ● / of an ounce more ; it remains that it is the water with the tube jointly that weighs against the weights in the other scale , for as much as the restagnant water does not hinder the tube : from whence it follows , that the water in the tube is not sustained by any column of air on the restagnant water , which will be more apparent in the other experiment , which is this : he took , suppose , the same tube , heated it very hot , and hung the closed end upon one scale of a balance , and let the open end sink a little into a vessel of water , and counterpoized it in the other scale with ounces / ● , the weight the empty tube weighed in the air , which , because the end of it did little more than touch the water , it still retained , but within the space of half a quarter of an hour the tube was filled inches of its with water , which inches of water was found to weigh one ounce and ¼ , and one ounce and ¼ more put in the opposite scale , and the scales held so that the tube might only touch the surface of the water , the tube with the inches of water in it was found to weigh just ounces . now therefore since the tube could weigh no more , if so much , on the top of the water , than it did when it was hung only in the air , for the pillar of air incumbent on the top of the tube is the same in both cases , it is manifest , against the principles of those that hold the pressure of the atmosphere , that the water in the tube weighs its part , namely one ounce and ¼ to make the weight ounces , and consequently that the water in the tube is not sustained by any pressure of a pillar of air incumbent on the restagnant water . remark the twenty fifth . that also is an ingenious demonstration against the opinion of the pressure of atmospherical cylinders , p. . l. . namely the inverting a glass-tube of quicksilver , suppose of a diameter of . such parts as the vessels diameter of restagnant quick-silver is . so that it may be apparent that the rim or round superficies of the restagnant mercury in the vessel , is not a full fourth part of the area of the mercurial cylinder in the tube , and yet the mercury in the tube will be sustained as in other cases . which therefore cannot be from the pressure of the air on the restagnant mercury , the superficies thereof being less than one fourth part to the area of the cylinder of mercury . remark the twenty sixth . and this last instance surely is no wise to be contemned , that the torricellian experiment will succeed as well in a great receiver as in the open air , when-as notwithstanding there can be no atmospherical column on the restagnant mercury in the receiver , nor is there any refuge here to the elasticity of the air , p. . because that supposes the gravitation thereof , which has been so plainly disproved by the authour , not only by these last experiments , but in his . chapter , and particularly by the two brass cylinders weighed in water of diameters of a double proportion one to another , and the one side of a quadruple to the other . for things being so contrived that a column of air of two inches diameter press on the one , and not a quarter of an inch diameter on the other , the cylinders yet shall be equiponderant in the water . the experiment there has a threefold improvement , and the very first strong enough , considering there is no elasticity or rebounding in the water , see p. . l. . though the authour phansie there is , and that equal weights pressed by unequal force , the stronger must prevail . and moreover if this elasticity of the air were admitted , he does not unskilfully urge , that every part of the included air does act so equally in a manner against every part every way , that there is a suspension of the pressure any way to any effect , &c. p. . l. . upon chapter the thirteenth remark the twenty seventh . that experiment also of the bottle and the bolts-head is notably levelled against the elasticity of the air , p. . l. . that a bolts-head soundly heated , and placed upon a glass-bottle , with some fix ounces of water in it , which may fill it about half full , but not so closely luted but that some air , though but at a pins hole , may come in , the water in the bottle will be wholly drawn up into the bolts-head . but if the bolts-head were hastily so closed that no air could enter into it , some water would indeed rise as far as into the shank of the bolts-head , but the whole water would not ascend into the bolts-head as before it did , which , says this learned authour , is a plain argument against that huge elasticity of the air that some imagine . for no fresh air being let in by this strict closure , the force of the rarefied air in the bolts-head is more entire , and as he conceives the attraction more powerful to raise the water as before , if there were any thing near that elasticity in the common air that is imagined there , that it can expand it self into times a larger space if need be ; nor would the weight , says he , of the interposed water be too great for the elatery of the air in this case to drive it up so high as before , since in a close receiver it is able , according to their opinion , to thrust and keep up a column of mercury to inches high , possibly of a pound weight or more . why therefore , if there were any such forcible elatery of the air , cannot it thrust up or ounces of water about or inches high into the bolts-head , which is rationally argued against that huge elasticity of the air. but as for the authours own solution of this problem from tension and attraction , i am as little satisfied with , as he with their elastacity , and am reminded of that saying in pliny , quid mirabilius esse potest aquis in coelo stantibus ? but the same miracle is in the bolts-head , neither of which i can resolve into any meaner principle than that which i call the hylarchical or hylostatical spirit of the world . as for that of tension we shall consider in chap. and . upon chapter the fourteenth . remark the twenty eighth . here the learned authour does declare himself , that all those experiments which the virtuosi would give an account of from the pressure and elasticity of the air , p. . are plainly performed by suction and attraction of the air , when put under a greater tension or rarefaction ; which i must confess i am much concerned to examine how true it is , in reference to what i have writ of the experiment of the weight hung at the embolus of the air-pump in my enchiridium metaphysicum . on which therefore i may touch something in this chapter , but more fully discover the mistake of this opinion in the next , where the learned authour pretends to deliver the true cause of the suspension of the mercury in the torricellian experiment . remark the twenty ninth . that the mercury in the torricellian experiment , p. . l. . will fall or inches , as it shall be placed at the bottom of an hill or at the top of the hill , or upon the change of weather , is reasonable to me , because of the different consistency of the air , which abounds more or less with the materia subtilissima , and so can more easily transmit it through the pores of the glass with less violence done to its consistence : which very experiment methinks to me is an argument against the opinion of tension , and subtil parts coming from the mercury it self , for then it were all one in what weather , or where the glass were placed . but the mercury subsiding in clearer and colder weather , in higher places on the top of the hills , where the air is not so much stuft with vapours , it is plain this change depends on the more easie entrance of the materia subtilissima through the pores of the glass , and that the consistency of air is not so strong there , but a lesser weight will break it than in a thicker . remark the thirtieth . that upon a strong exhaustion in the air-pump , a dry bladder well tyed and blown moderately full , is broken , as likewise glass-bubbles , &c. that a bladder , the greatest part of its air squeezed out , and the neck tied very close , and a weight fastned to it and put into a large glass filled with water to be placed on the air-pump , and then covered with a large receiver well luted to the pump , the air pumped out of the large receiver , this bladder below the water would swell till by continuing the pumping it will be full blown . and lastly , that water , spirit of wine , &c. will be raised to run out of a glass , and that bubbles will be formed at the bottom of an included glass of water in such a great receiver , so that all is put into a various agitation ; all this the learned authour resolves into the tension of the rarefied air in the receiver : which i must again confess i am as little satisfied with as he is with their elasticity of the air , nor do i think either of them true ; but this i think , that in the bladders and glass-bubbles , that break , there is a stronger agitation of the parts of the air , and that it is that which materially acts against the inward-sides of the glass-bubbles and bladders , not the exteriour matter by attraction , but there is a furious agitation of the interiour , which is not from any former elasticity , but which it acquires pro re nata , as furious winds are raised in the north in the great world upon dissolution of aqueous particles of the clouds , which furious and rapid motion it is impossible for them to acquire from mere heat , but from some higher principle , and the same principle i suppose to act here , being raised into a fierce or quick activity , to reduce the matter in the exhausted receiver as near as it could to a consistency more sutable to the rest of the air at this pitch from the earth , but there is no heat in the bladder or glass-bubles , or in the receiver , that can so furiously agitate the matter in them ; and that here is such a boiling agitation and bubling in water , spirit of wine , &c. it is a plain indication , that these things happen not by way of tension , but of excitation and a furious dispersion of the parts to thicken , as much as may be , the whole matter in the receiver , that is so highly thin above the measure of matter so near the earth , and amidst our crass air. not to speak of other things that may be alledged , which i shall reserve for the ensuing chapter . remark the thirty first . as for that experiment in regius , it is very improperly brought in , p. . l. . for such an attraction as our authour stands for , namely such as is made upon this kind of rarefaction and tension . for there is not the least pretence to any rarefaction or tension of this kind in that experiment , but only a circle of motion in the air , the mouth draws in the air into the thorax by one part of a tobacco-pipe , and the thorax being distended presses the external air , which find its way into the other tobacco-pipe lighted with tobacco in it , the smaller end immersed into the water ; and through the water the air and smoke passes , and continues its course till it come into the other piece of a tobacco-pipe , which , though it passes the close cover of the vial , yet does not pass into the water it self , but falls short of it , and so getting into that piece of a tobacco-pipe after it has passed through the water and got into the air betwixt the cover of the glass and water , it goes into the tobacconists mouth , and so completes the whole circle ; but here is not one jot of tension or rarefaction of the air all this time , but only of the tobacco which is turned into a fume . but that all the parts of the water to the very bottom of it , and the granules of sand lying at the bottom of the water are put into a tumultuary motion , that is no wonder , ( when-as the air and smoke are forced to find their way through the water ) and may a little illustrate and facilitate the conception of the true reason of those tumults and agitations of water and the spirit of wine above mentioned , observed in the exhausted receiver , namely because a more subtil and active element came in through the pores of the glass , as the hurry of the tobacco-fume and air through the water in this last experiment , and that they had a more than ordinary excitation in them from the moving principle , for the reasons above specified : but that tension has nothing to do in these things , i shall further confirm upon what occurrs in the following chapters . upon chapter the fifteenth . remark the twenty second . in this chapter the learned authour lays down the true cause , as he conceives , of the suspension of the mercury in the glass-tube in the torricellian experiment , and he takes occasion to speak of three kinds thereof , but i shall take notice only of one , and that the chief of them , in which if i plainly discover his mistake , i suppose there will be no controversie touching the other two . this experiment then is , when a tube , suppose of four foot long , is filled full of quick-silver , and so inverted and immitted into a vessel of restagnant quick-silver , upon which the mercury in the glass-tube will descend to inches and an half , and leave about inches in the tube destitute of mercury . the reason of this phaenomenon the authour gives to be this ; the expression and ascension of some mercurial vapours or particles at large , forced up by the agitation and pression of the parts of the mercury , and withal their tension , that they may be able to fill so great a space as the inches of the tube devoid of the body of mercury . this is his solution of this problem . but the reasons upon which this solution is built , are not sufficiently firm . for first , he supposes no aëreal particles passing through the mercury to get into the derelicted space of the tube , that it must necessarily be the effluvia of the mercury it self that ascends ; when-as by the . and . part of my first remark there are such subtil parts in the air that they penetrate the pores of the glass . and then secondly , for the pression and agitation of the parts of the mercury , the pression of fluids on fluids of the same kind , is nothing in a manner , and the agitation observed might be much diminished , if not wholly prevented by a leasurely oblique immission of the tube , and so by degrees bringing it to a perpendicular ; whence there would be either no mercurial effluvia raised , or else the copiousness of them so varied accordingly as they shall take heed to prevent the tumultuary agitation , that the suspension of the mercury will not be the same at all times , but sometimes lower , sometimes higher . nor is that lucta in the mercury from the endeavouring of nature to give tension to the effluvia , but betwixt the weight of the column of mercury , and the resistency of the consistence of the compressible air. nor lastly will that experiment of the quick-silver , so forcibly rising against the top of the tube , if it be suddenly lifted up , prove any such lute-string-like tension in the supposed effluvia . for in this case there is that , which this learned authour admits of , both phrase and thing , that is , gravitatio sursum , and upon the more sudden plucking up the tube , the consistence of the air not letting in the subtil element , and there being no vacuum any where , nor penetration of dimensions , the air is driven upon the restagnant quick-silver , and the restagnant quick-silver into the mouth of the tube , and so is as it were a flux of water into a far straiter channel , and therefore it must there proportionably run the swifter . and this swift motion in so heavy a body as mercury must needs be the stronger and more peremptory , coming against so thin a body as that subtil matter in the tube , even to the danger of breaking it . so that the whole is as it were a quick gravitation sursum , by a circle of motion against that thin element at the upper end of the tube . which plainly shows , that there is no ground for tension , there being such reason for circumpulsion . and thus i have shown the groundlesness of his reasons , but in the next chapter i shall discover the repugnancy of his assertion . upon chapter the sixteenth . remark the thirty third . in this chapter he sets down the two suppositions he holds necessary for the maintaining of his former solution of the torricellian phaenomenon . the first is , that there is no vacuum in nature . the second , that thin or subtil bodies are capable of tension , and of attraction and strong adhaesion to other bodies , and cohaesion of one part to another , as in a lute-string , as is his familiar illustration , saving that in a lute-string the tension one way straitens it another way , and makes the lute-string narrower , but here the tension and cohaesion is every way at once . as for the first , that there is no vacuum , it is granted , which makes his denial of the passing of any aërial parts or particles in the air , through the glass or mercury , repugnant to his own supposed principle . for it being plain that the immersion of the tube may be made so obliquely and leasurely as neither to press out nor fridge out any mercurial effluvia ; it follows there would be a vacuum ; or if some few should arise , what would they do when the top of the tube is like a bolts-head , containing the capacity of many pounds of mercury , there must be a vacuum , or such a tension of those few effluvia , that i should think it would exceed all belief in the very authour himself . but let this go ; there is enough in what remains utterly to destroy this hypothesis of the authour , i mean these two things comprized in the second member ; mere tension it self , such as is ordinarily supposed in an usual tube , in the descent of the mercury to inches , and that tough adhaesion and cohaesion of the particles thus extended . for first as for the tension , in a tube so obliquely immitted and leasurely raised to a perpendicular , no man can rationally imagine one inch of effluvia either pressed or fridged out of the mercury by its descent ; and if there were , and these taken or let out by some artifice at every trial , some trials would lessen the mercury such inches of the tube , which would prove very sensible . but though this were not , there would in the mean time by this tension of one inch of matter into , be seventeen inches penetration of solid matter and hard , or else it would not be penetration , and this by so small a force as the weight of a cylinder of mercury of no greater diameter than would make it weigh one pound , when-as the authour himself acknowledges that an pound weight will not press water so as to make it yield at all , and yet here upon the least gentle motion of the tube from a perpendicular to an inclined posture , and from an inclined posture to a perpendicular , there shall be more or less penetration of dimension , as if that which wise and considerate philosophers have held impossible , were as easie as the running an hot bodkin into a pound of butter , which methinks to any one that indifferently perpends the matter , must seem a clear demonstration against this solution of the problem , as i have already noted in the sixth and seventh part of my first remark ; and what i have there already writ , will save me the labour of any further enlarging my self in this point . but now for that tough and peremptory adhaesion of this thin body in the tube , to the top and sides thereof , and cohaesion of one part thereof to another , and the lowest part to the highest part of the quick-silver in the tube , as if the top of the tube were instead of so many peggs , and the upper part of the quicksilver the bridge of the lute , and the subtil matter betwixt , under this actual tension , so many lute-strings , in virtue whereof the column of mercury hangs suspended as a weight . this to me i must confess is unimaginable . for first i cannot but conceive , that if i could come to this thin matter , which is thinner than air it self , i could cut through it with a spinners thred , or by any other line subtiler and weaker than it ; nor can i imagine that that which can be so easily cut asunder , holds so fast together , as that it will sustain in this experiment one pound weight , in some others it may be some hundreds . besides , if every part held together so toughly , no flie could move in it , nor flie nor feather fall down from the top of the tube to the upper bafis of the mercurial cylinder , which is against experience , but they would hang like dust or flies on the webs of spiders , or indeed the whole consistence of that subtil matter would be viscous or glutinous and so impassable to them . to all which you may add , if it had this strong retraction as a lute-string , it taking hold only on the upper part or surface as it were of the mercurial cylinder , it would pluck up the bridg. wherefore the mercurial cylinder is not held up by suspension but by circumpulsion and gravitation upwards , if i may use the language of this authour , the air and quicksilver both gravitating against the thin subtil matter in the upper end of the tube , through the mercury in the lower end , as the water does against the stopple of the valve in the * above-mentioned experiment , that is , there is a sistency of them in this order and libration by the hylostatick spirit of the universe , which also directs the motion of heavy bodies downward , of which this learned authour does ingeniously confess men have tired themselves in vain to find out any mechanical cause , and i have in my enchiridium metaphysicum proved that it is contrary to the laws of mechanicks . and he seems to resolve these things into nature , which is the principium matûs & quietis , as aristotle defines , and also declares of her , that natura nihil agit srustra . whereby , but that his words have stuck in his teeth and he hath not spoke out , aristotle acknowledges what i contend for , a spirit of nature or hylostatick principle , which he must of necessity acknowledge , unless he contradict himself , for as much as he makes matter merely passive , which it cannot be , if what moves it and orders it be but a modification of matter , and not a spirit distinct there-from : for that modification would be from its own essence , and consequently it would be self-moved , and move it self so , ( unless we play tricks with it ) that it does nihil agere srustra , which is far from being a mere passive principle . but this is more than i intended to say upon this occasion . vve have plainly enervated the main of this chapter ; what little maters remain , we will dispose into the following remarks . remark the thirty fourth . the learned authour endeavours to prove the attraction of tensed bodies , p. . l. . from natures affectation of a strict contiguity , it being a kind of continuity of the universe and all its parts . but i observe , if there were any such attraction , the final cause only is there indigitated , but we seek after a natural efficient cause . and i deny moreover that there is any scope in the suspension of the mercury to save the universe from discontinuity , but only to preserve the air in its due consistency . nor is the air the common cement of the parts of this inferiour world , but it is one common spirit that holds the parts of the whole universe together , no atomi hamatae , or any such corporeal contrivances . and where the matter is never so subtil , the contiguity of the world is as much as where it is more crass . and therefore where we see strange things done upon any place , being filled with only extreme subtil matter , it is not because there is any more fear then of discontiguity or a vacuum , but because that matter is misplaced , and the hylostatick spirit of the universe would dispose of it better . remark the thirty fifth . the learned authour , p. . and . would prove this attraction in his supposed tensed and rarefied bodies in this sense , from the experiment of cupping-glasses and the bladder in the top of the tube in the torricellian experiment . but that these are no proofs for attraction i have shewed * in former remarks . remark the thirty sixth . he here mentions again , p. . l. . the heated tube we have spoke of , remark . of its attraction and suspension of the water in it , the water in the tube and the tube weighing as one body ; and the like experiment he makes here again of a heated beer-glass with a more flew mouth , drawing up water , and weighing as one body with the water , he attributing the suspension of the water in both to the attraction of the rarefied air. but that hypothesis being so fully confuted by me , i am more sollicitous in these instances to give an handsom account of the jointly weighing of the tube and mercury , of the tube and water , and of the glass and 〈◊〉 , each of them as one joint 〈◊〉 , than of confuting what is already confuted . and the case i conceive stands thus : by the hylostatick laws of the vniverse it is , that heavy bodies will even press upwards , as light upon heavy , and jointly both against a far lighter , though there be an heavy body betwixt , which i a little above noted in the resiliency of the quick-silver against the top of the tube . now as there the air and restagnant quick-silver gravitated against the subtil matter in the top of the tube through the column of quick-silver in the tube , so the air and water gravitate both in the tube and drinking-glass , against the rarefied air therein , it being thinner than the common air , and ascended in each so far according to hylostatick laws ; as i doubt not but that if a whole tube of such subtil matter as is at the top in the torricellian experiment could be had and were inverted into restagnant mercury , the mercury would be seen to ascend to inches in the tube as the water is seen to ascend in the beer-glass and tube . in all which cases both the mercury and water ascend by a libration which this authour calls a gravitation upwards , and are held there by the same law at such a gage , and not by attraction or suspension . but how then , will you say , does the tube and mercury , the tube and water , the beer-glass and water , weigh each of them together as one joint body ? 't is a considerable problem , but i answer , the same hylostatick principle that thus librates them , which is the spirit of nature , does also , but with a vincible and mutable union , unite them . for both motion and union is from spirit , as i have showed in my enchiridium metaphysicum . and from hence it will be easily understood , how when with the hand , p. . l. . you lift up the beer-glass towards the superficies of the restagnant water , the water included will arise with it much above the superficies of the external water . which though it be not by that monstrous elastick pressure of the air that some are for , yet it is by a gravitation of the air upon the water , and of the water upwards , and both of them jointly against the rarefyed air in the concave of the glasse . so little need is there of any tension , but merely of this hylostatick libration . remark the thirty seventh . the learned authour , p. . l. . speaks of the power and efficacy of the laws of nature , in colligating strictly parts of the most distantial textures and consistencies without the help of vellicles , hooks , or grappers , or atomi hamatae , and p. . he says , and that very truly and eloquently , that all the men in the world can never give any satisfactory reason , why the motion of a stone is downwards to the earth more than to the moon , but only nature that is the principium motûs & quietis , or rather the god of nature , whose standing and statuminated law nature is , has so odered it , and ordered it so in the best way for the use , beauty and accommodation of the vniverse : wherein he does plainly declare that the laws of nature are not mechanical , which if they be not , they must be vital , and if they be vital laws , what is the immediate fountain next to god , and subject in which this life is , or this principium motûs & quietis ? is it a substance distinct from matter , or is it an essential power or modification of matter it self ? for every thing is either substance or modification of substance . if these laws of nature be an essential power , or modification of matter , matter is self-moving , and is also herself-orderer , even to the expression of all those curious footsteps of the divine wisdom in the creation , which is most apertly against aristotle , whom our learned authour has no mean respect for , and who expresly gives only passivity to matter , but derives activity from another principle . this is his frequent doctrine . and then which is still worse , it confounds the nature of body and spirit , the motive and unitive power being immediately and originally in spirit , but the moveable and unitable in matter . but if these vital laws in nature that conduce to the good of the universe , be not essential to the matter and act from it , it remains there is a spirit of nature to which they are essential , which is the mover and moderatour of the matter , which wants no vellicles , hooks , or grappers , to hold those parts of matter together that are to be held , or while they are to be held together , nor chissels to loose them , as the laws of nature shall require . this this learned authour seems to be assured a spirit is capable of , by the union of his soul and body ; and it is a wonder to me , being we consist of those two principles , that the genius of the age is so generally such , that they take all their measures of philosophizing from their corporeal part , none from their spiritual , as if they had forgot they had any such , or were utterly unacquainted with its faculties , or as if their entire personal compages were nothing else but a certain modified mass of philosophizing matter : but that mere matter should so peremptorily hold together without those atomi hamatae the epicureans talk of , would be to me a greater wonder than that they should with them ; but that there remains the same wonder still how the parts of the atomi hamatae hold together , for physical parts they must have , or else they could have no figure . upon chapter the seventeenth . remark the thirty eighth . our learned author , p. . l. . resolves the close sticking together of two smoothed marbles , with a weight hung at the lowermost , into fuga vacui , for as much as if there should be a parallel divulsion of them , there would be some time , ( motion not being in an instant , ) before the interiour distance could be supplyed with matter . which therefore would cause a vacuum in nature . which no question nature does abhor from , and which might be without any logical repugnancy , ( there being so plainly an extensum every where distinct from matter , as i have abundantly demonstrated in my enchiridium metaphysicum ) did not the laws of nature oppose it . but we must note also that fuga vacui is but the final cause , but those that slight this solution , seek after an efficient cause ; and here again we must either make matter self-moving and self-uniting , or self-fixing , or else we must have recourse to the spirit of nature and its hylostatick laws , whereby it governs the matter ; and whereby indeed it holds the whole compages of the world together . for the world being finite , as i have proved in my enchiridium metaphysicum , and consisting of an indefinite number of vortices and what ever other liquid matter , if the motion of the matter were mechanical , and not from a vital principle actuating it , which i call the spirit of nature , there would be a dehiscency of the parts of it , and nothing would be so plentiful as vacuities , whenas now there is either none at all , or as little as may be imagined . for the divuision of the marbles incliningly or angularly , will very hardly be conceived without some infinitely small vacuity , unless motion can be conceived to be in an instant . remark the thirty ninth . upon stevinus his experiment occurring here again , p. . l. . how that a rundle of wood , lighter than water , laid upon the hole of the bottom of a vessel to be filled with water , that the pillar of water on that wood will keep down the rundle , and indeed will gravitate to the full weight of such a dimension of water , when-as , if that hole be not under the rundle , it of it self will come up . i say , this were a great paradox in nature , if the parts of water gravitated on water , and that there were such a monstrous elasticity of the air. for the recoiling column of air bearing against the rundle through the hole , of such a diameter , as that such a column would overcome in some other cases some hundred pounds weight , this should make the rundle arise with far greater ease , than when the bottom of the vessel is whole and is not perforated ; therefore it is a plain indication that there is no such constant pressure of the parts of water on water , nor any such prodigious elasticity of the air , but that the motion and rest of matter is pro re nata , according as the hylostatick spirit of the world guides it . for certainly that upper elater of the air that presses the water on the rundle , is less resisted by far , by the bottom unperforated , which does not heave at the rundle to lift it up , than it is by the column of air below , that heaves so strongly as might match some hundred pound weights . which consideration will be most unexceptionable if for a rundle we place a lesser vessel with thin sides , with four small holes made sloopingly through the sides at the bottom , as i have above described upon another occasion . it will be hard then to find any evasion if the inward vessel ascend not as it does when the bottom is unperforated . upon chapter the eighteenth . remark the fortieth . that the divulsion of the magdeburg hemispheres , p. . is so far much easier side-way , than from their center , i easily accord to ; for in such a divulsion there is as it were the power added of a double wedge , but in pulling directly from their centers , it comes nearer to the case of one attempting to pull a billet into two , by taking hold of this side and that side of the middle of it , and so to part it into two , in a parallel separation of each part . but that they are held together by any such tension of filaments , or the contraction of them , while they adhere to the concave of the hemispheres , seems not to me at all credible . for though the learned authour argues indeed shroudly against the elasticity of the air being the cause of their adhesion , because , if the hemispheres after they have grown cold adhere so close together , that the weight of pound will not sever them , ( by reason of the elasticity of the air or weight of the atmosphere pressing them together , ) yet though they were put again into a considerable heat , they would adhere as strongly still , the elatery of the air being not at all diminished , but rather encreased by warmth , it exciting the spring thereof to a more forcible expansion , which therefore must press the harder against the hemispheres ; but that it is observed that if they be but made blood-warm they will easily fall asunder , which i confess is no contemptible argument against the elasticity of the air 's being the cause of this so strong cohesion : yet it is in my opinion one argument amongst others , that it is not the contraction or restitution of the tensed matter in the hemispheres , that is the cause thereof . for if it were upon so strong a stretch and contraction , as he ordinarily expresses by the stretch of a lute-string , it is incredible that so small a moment of heat should so suddenly and hugely relaxate it , that the hemispheres should as it were fall asunder of themselves , that before stuck so strongly together that they bore pound weight , which relaxation neither can be without penetration of dimensions , which immensly heightens the incredibility of it , that so small a force should cause penetration of dimensions , as i have also observed before in the torricellian experiment , besides all other repugnancies that recurr here again . and therefore as the learned authour would conclude from the remotion of the elasticity of the air , there none other appearing , that his tension and restitution must take place ; so i by like reason , by the remotion of the elasticity of the air and his tension & restitution , may infer that my hylostatick spirit of the world ought to take place , which acts pro re nata upon the matter , constringes and relaxes as occasion is . and here i say , upon cooling of the hemispheres , here is a gravitation of the air inwards , toward the common center of the hemispheres , by reason of the subtilty of the matter there contained in an undue place , and the sides of the hemispheres are kned together , as a man may sometimes feel his ribs to be in some subtil cold air , and we feel this contraction not from within , but rather from without or in our very ribs . i say therefore there is an occasional gravitation of the ambient air and hemispheres themselves against the rarefied air or subtil matter within them , to squeeze it out , as there is of water against a bottle of air let into the sea , which sometime this very pressure breaks : which cannot be expected in these brass hemispheres ; but this compression being not mechanical but vital , a little hint changes the operation , as in the board that ascends in a bucket , if there be a hole in the bottom of the bucket it will not ascend , but if there be a false bottom below that , at a due nearness , it will , and the obturaculum of the valve in the tube that will adhere to the valve , if the tube be open into the air , yet do but stop it with your embolus at a right distance , the obturaculum will descend . so a little warmth here makes the hylostatick spirit of the world quit her compressive operation , and relaxate her hold , without penetration of dimensions or any other absurd supposition ; only suppose vital motion instead of mechanical , and all will go off glibly . upon chapter the nineteenth . remark the forty first . the author 's ingeniously contrived pump , p. , . will require some few more remarks , and then we shall have done . the orifice b being luted up , the embolus was raised , but not with equal facility as it was when it was open , the reason whereof the learned authour resolves into the violent tension every elevation of the embolus gives to the air in the upper cavity of the glass , that it may thereby be able to supply the place of the water drawn up by the pump . but i conceive it is to be resolved into the strength of the consistency of the air without , which without some violence will not suffer the materia subtilis to be squeezed out of it into the cavity of the glass . so that there wants no tension for the making up this phaenomenon . remark the forty second . the glass-bottle a b c holding quarts of water , and first freely by pumping being evacuated of ½ , the orifice at b after being luted close , a quart more with much ado was pumped out , so that there was but one and / left , into which notwithstanding the pipe of the pump did reach . but after this , be the embolus never so often listed up , not a drop of water comes . but the air only , says our authour , included in the pump is rarefied by lifting up the embolus , and condensated by depressing it . which very experiment methinks should be a sufficient confutation of this kind of rarefaction and condensation , as if one mans strength were able to cause so monstrous a thing as penetration of dimensions , see remark . part , & . nor is the reason of no more water coming , because the air is now tended to the utmost that such a strength of the pulling up the embolus can extend it , but it is from the greater firmness or obsistency of the external air , whose strength is invigorated by the hylostatick spirit of the world , against that unfit constitution of having already so much subtil matter misplaced ; as in the magdeburg hemispheres : besides that it were against the hylostatick laws , that so heavy a body as water should shoot up so high into so extreme thin a body as that subtil matter in the glass * , and that without any fresh air succeeding thereinto , or extreme heat preceeding . and i do not question but that if the torricellian experiment were made under water , the quick-silver in the tube would stand hugely much higher than it does now in the air. and therefore that consideration may have also its weight in this phaenomenon . but it is apparent there is no need of any tension in these problems , there being subtil matter to supply its room . and yet for this subtil matter , if the motions of the parts of the air were wholly mechanical and not vital , we can find no reason but that the force of the embolus , that at first pumping overcame the consistence of the air , should not overcome it still , that glassful of subtil matter being nothing to that ocean of it in the air. so evident every way is our hypothesis of an hylarchick principle . remark the forty third . moreover the embolus reaching near h , and being elevable near to the top of the laton syringe or pump , the air , if we can gather any thing from the figure of the instrument and its proportions , is upon the elevation of the embolus to its full height , stretched in the pump so ( when-as the tension of the air in the cavity of the glass occupies a space to what it did before , but in the proportion of to . ) as to occupy a space that is to its former at least as to . which is a greater sign that there is no such tension , ( for if there were , the air in the cavity of the glass that is but tended as to . would receive more tension , and so make the water ascend ) than that in the pump should be so overproportionately tended . and consequently that the water is not suspended in a pump by tension , nor made to ascend to such an height by that means , but by gravitation-upwards , either upon an actual misplacement of the subtiler element , or upon the imminent danger thereof , which would be if the water receded , therefore it goes up till such an height or measure , the air and water above the bottom of the pump gravitating upwards , not being so much crowded by reason of impenetrability of matter , as conducted and vitally moved by the hylarchick principle in this gravitation-upwards . the force whereof is according to the solidity of the elements that thus gravitate . and hence also may emerge a reason why in this case not one drop of water comes , upon the elevation of the embolus , namely because the gravitation of the rarefied air in the cavity of the glass , added to the restagnant water above the orifice of the pipe , by reason of the tenuity of the one , and small quantity of the other , is too weak to raise or sustain a pillar of water in the pipe , that would reach up into the pump , and so no water comes . remark the forty fourth . but now upon supposition that the pump were longer , p. . i. penult . or that there were a strong external heat applied to the superiour air in the glass , if the water in that case would be as easily raised as at the first , as our authour affirms ; in the first way , it must be when the pump is so long , that the space the subtil matter occupies there upon the pulling up the embolus , is larger than that it occupies in the glass , or the matter rather more subtile . and in the second the reason might be , that the application of this heat changes the vital energy , that is , that peremptory firmness and obsistency i spoke of before , into a more relaxate operation , as i noted in the magdeburg-hemispheres . but i am not certain that either way will find success . but certain i am , upon no account of tension and restitution it will be , if success answer expectation . remark the forty fifth . the learned authour collects out of the experiments of his pump , p. . i. . that the gravitation or pressure of the external air is not the cause of raising the water in a pump ; and as touching that springie atmospherical way , his collection i conceive is true , but i said above and here again repeat , that the raising of water , and the suspension of it in a pump , is by a circular pressure and gravitation of the air and water incumbent on the superficies of water that the bottom of the pump is on , which jointly gravitates upward with the water ascending in the pump , as i above declared the air and quick-silver gravitates upward in regard of that subtil element in the top of the tube , and here the air and water gravitate upwards , that there may be no bare subtil matter in the pump , to the disorder of the universe : which gravitation of air and quick-silver , and of air and water upwards , is not , as i said , by any crouding or gravitating part upon part , but they are all carried by the hylostatick spirit of the world in this orderly way and to so good an end , that there may be no inconvenience by misplacing the elements of the universe , of which i hold the materia subtilis to be one . remark the forty sixth . his collections also against the very elasticity of the air from the said experiments are ingenious , but i cannot insist on them , i shall rather take notice of what occurrs , p. . l. . where he supposes that the immission or insinuation of the air into the cavity of a well ( for there is the same reason as in the glass-bottle , that is , as it were , the well of his pump ) is the effect not the cause of the recession of the water . the scruple here is , whether it may not rightly be said , to be both . for in that circle of air and water that is made in the going of the pump , the moving of the air , that by the coming out of the water is carried either toward the well or into it , as it is the effect of the waters coming out of the well and pump ; so , it making part of the circle of air and water that gravitates even to the bottom of the bucket in the pump , where the hazard of an hiatus , and the baring of the subtil element is , is also a cause , i mean instrumental cause , ( for the principal efficient is the hylostatick spirit of the world ) of the getting the water out of the pump , it being part of that material circle in motion , caused by that principle that guides the matter . remark the forty seventh . the two arguments against the elasticity of the air , which the learned authour concludes with , are , if they be well weighed , very considerable . the first is , that if the elasticity of the air in a low roof'd room , or a glass receiver , is able to sustain the mercury in the tube at the same height in the torricellian experiment , that it is sustained in the free air where there is the weight of the atmospherical cylinder superadded to the said elasticity of the air , it is a sign that they are both but a mere conceit , and that the mercury is suspended by the pressure of neither . i must confess i cannot imagine how those elastick philosophers can evade the evidence of this argument , unless they hope to escape by saying , that the elasticity of the air being brought to its highest vigour or force the atmospherical pressure can give it , so it be but kept at the same springiness and tightness by the glass or the roof of the room , the elasticity being the same still , the effect will be the same . this a man might phansie at first sight , but if he more distinctly consider the matter , it will not satisfie : for let the force elastick of the air in the glass or room caused by the pressure first of the atmosphere be as , and this conserved entire in the glass or room which does not press against this elastick air , but stands immoved , nor would the atmosphere , if it were incumbent on this air , add any thing more to the elasticity thereof , but it will still remain as , yet though it add nothing to the elasticity of the air , seeing it has a pressure and protrusive force in it , which the roof and glass have not , it will notwithstanding have its distinct force superadded to that of the interjacent elastick air , through which it will effectually act for the easier raising or suspending of the quick-silver , and consequently will suspend at an higher pitch than the air in a room or glass can do , there being a small convenient valve that would let out the air , but hinder any from coming in . there is a nicety in this business , but i doubt not but the truth will be found on our learned authour's side , and the urgency forward or progressive conatus of the elastick air , will add something to the account . and besides , as an appendage to this argument , if we compare portions of this elastick air without regard to the atmosphere , the least proportion of it will have equal effect with the greatest , and a cylinder of elastick air reaching from the roof of the room to the restagnant quick-silver , shall have no more force for the sustaining of the mercury in the tube , than one of but the tenth part of an inch high , which is again a sign there is no such elasticity at all . for no man will say that the smallest charge of gunpowder will , when it is fired , explode the bullet with equal force , that a due quantity of powder will ; for all its elasticity or expansiveness is more quick and smart than this of the air. or that , if but a quarter of an inch of air , or less , were condensated to that proportion that a due measure of air in a wind-gun uses to be , that it will discharge with that force that the other does , and yet both their motions here are by elasticity properly so called . wherefore there being these differences where elasticity is really , but none in the pretended elasticity of the air , it is a sign it is a mere pretense and no true phaenomenon in nature . and now for the authour 's other argument which he raised out of his pump , which is this ; if there were any such elasticity of the air , suppose in a close room or glass that could keep up a cylinder of mercury , ( i add , and raise it too , if a tube of materia subtilis only , could be let down into it ) to inches high , which yet according to the amplitude of its diameter may weigh two , four , or ten pound , it were impossible but that the elatery of the air in his pump ( it being open at k and b , so that the air may come in at b , and either air or water go out at k ) should drive a portion of water into the pipe of but half an inch diameter , so that it may rise above the surface of the restagnant water in the glass-bottle , suppose an inch or half an inch high , which is nothing in a manner to the raising of pound weight . which we shall understand still more clearly and convincingly , if we will suppose the pipe of this pump of such a diameter that or inches of mercury in it would weigh pound , and a glass-bottle of a diameter times larger than that of the pipe , which is the proportion that this glass-bottle does really bear to this pipe in the pump : then imagine this glass-bottle so well replenish'd with quick-silver , that the restagnant quick-silver will reach somewhat above the middle of the glass , the pipe in the mean time filled or inches full of it , it will stand at thereabout , though it be pound weight ; nay i dare appeal to any considered philosopher if there were a glass-tube of foot , or longer , of mere materia subtilis immitted into this glass-bottle of mercury , sufficiently replenisht therewith , if he can otherwise think but that the mercury will rise up to about or inches high . but for the sustaining of it , it is acknowledged of every side , that pound weight of mercury inches high , is susustained , whatever it be that sustain it . the elastick philosophers say , it is the elatery of the air in the glass-bottle , which bears so strongly against the restagnant mercury , that the inches of mercury , that weigh pound weight , cannot descend into the restagnant mercury . but our learned authour here most rationally denies it , averring , that if there were so strong an elatery of the air as to drive up or bear up pound weight of mercury , which is here inches in the pipe or tube ; certainly the same elasticity would drive or bear up one inch of water into the pipe or tube , it being many hundred times lighter than those inches of mercury . but here the elastick philosophers seek a witty refuge , viz. that it is the non-resistence of the materia subtilis that is destitute of all elasticity , which is the reason of the prevalency of the elatery of the air to mount up or sustain so great weight of quick-silver , but there being air in the pipe of like elasticity with that in the glass-bottle in this other case , that it is that that stops all such motion of the water upward . but this is to indulge to pretty phancies against palpable sense and all true reason . it is already acknowledged by these elastick philosophers , that there is an elatery of the air in the glass , that will at least sustain , if not raise up a ten pound weight . now if there be not an elatery in the air of the pipe so strong as might resist such a force , but exceedingly far weaker , if any at all , the water must rise or stand an inch high at least , neither which is done . but now you may feel with your fingers end how exceeding weak the elatery of just such a cylinder of air is , as is in the pipe , if you make a tube of the same diameter with that pipe , and make an embolus of some wood equiponderant , or at least not lighter than water , and so fit it to the pipe that it may slip up and down with all ease imaginable , which it may do and be close enough if it be oiled . and this easie slipping up and down of it , might be an argument how weak the elatery of the air is in it , but that they will straight answer that you move the emboblus so easily upward , because the recoiling elatery helps you ; but does not the direct as much hinder me ? but put your embolus in the water , whose surface i suppose the upper end of the embolus will lie even with , then put the tube on the embolus , and putting your hand into the water , with your finger move up the embolus , which you shall find to move against the elatery of the air in the tube , if there be any , with extreme ease ; you will discern that the force of / of a pound weight at most , will repel the air with its elatery . how then can it resist the force that will draw up or sustain forty times as much ? wherefore it is plain upon supposition that the elasticity of the air is so strong that it will raise or sustain ten pound weight , that it will so forcibly press the water in the glass-bottle into the pipe , that by reason of the straitness thereof in comparison of that part of the glass , that contains the water , it will send it packing through that pipe as air sent out through the nozel of a pair of bellows , by him that presseth the bellows with his hands . all the air of the bellows is pressed at once , and the motion of that in the bellows being much slower , that in the nozel comes out quick and smart , and so would the water through the pipe be driven with a swifter force by reason of its straitness , and new air coming in at the orifice b , it would never leave running out at k , till the water were exhausted as low as e , which we seeing not done , we see hereby , that there is no such elasticity in the air at all , as our elastick philosophers suppose . we will obviate the vanity of but one evasion more and then conclude . the pretense of the recoiling elatery of the air we took away by placing the little tube and embolus of wood in the water . here perhaps they will say , that the elatery of the air on the surface of the water , causes the embolus so easily to be pressed against the elatery of the air that is incumbent on it . but how can that be , whenas the water has no elatery to lift up my hand , or bear against the bottom of the embolus , and the water only succeeds the pressure of my finger against the embolus , does not press with it , if we can believe our senses ? so that there is merely a circule of such strength as the pressure of my finger makes and no more . and besides this , if this be any such advantage , the same is found in this learned authours pump , the air coming in at b to make a circle of pressure by its elasticity to e and so to a and out at k , till it come to b again , and yet there is not one inch of water raised by this elasticity above the surface i , though this elasticity is pretended to sustain inches of quick-silver of pound weight . and that this mistake may still be laid more open , and no creep-holes lest for further evasion , from the valves or littleness of the passages at k and b , let us turn this round glass into a large open vessel , that the pressure of the air may come as free as heart can wish , and let into it a tube , inches whereof would contain pound of mercury , and which being immersed in mercury , so many inches of mercury would be suspended in : put upon such an embolus as was above described , ( whose upper basis lies equal with the water ) this empty tube , and then put in your hand into the water , and believe your senses , with what ease that embolus is to be pressed up against the elatery of the air in the tube , it requiring as i said before , scarce the force of a ¼ of a pound weight . can therefore the elatery of the air sustain times that weight , and keep the mercury about inches high in the same tube , and not raise water into the tube one inch high , which is above times lighter than the inches of mercury it is pretended to sustain , whenas the elatery of air in the tube is deprehended not to make the fortieth part of resistence against the elatery of air incumbent on the restagnant water , which is pretended to press forty times stronger ? wherefore the elatery of the air being so certainly deprehended not to do that which is forty times easier for it to do , it is impossible that it should do that which is forty times harder , and is a manifest demonstration there is no such elatery at all . conclusion . but now to bring all home at length to the intended scope , and to recount the chief fruits of our labour in making these remarks on the learned authours two treatises . if i be not out in my account , i conceive in my remarks on the first treatise ( to say nothing of several in the second ) i have clearly demonstrated the invalidity of all this authour's inventions , though otherwise ingenious , whether mechanical or natural , ( and yet such as would exclude the spirit of nature ) whereby he might seem to undermine the strength of my demonstration from the rising of the wooden rundle in a bucket of water , enchirid. metaphys . c. . sect . . which demonstration therefore remains unshaken in the behalf of the principium hylarchicum or hylostatick spirit of the universe . and as for that other like notable demonstration , from the ascending of so great a weight hung at the embolus of the air-pump , the chief undermining of the force thereof being by either the elatery of the elastick philosophers , or this authour's tension , the former this learned authour himself has so abundantly confuted with such plain and solid arguments , that any discerning person may easily discover the desperateness of that cause . and now for that other , i think i have offered abundant reasons for the incredibility ' , or rather impossibility thereof * wherefore the conceit of the elasticity of the air , and of funiculus lini , or tension in general being thus utterly defeated , it is manifest , the force of my demonstration , enchirid. metaphys . cap. . sect . , , , &c. from the weight at the embolus of the air-pump , for the hylarchick spirit of the world holds strong and entire still . and therefore i account , in a more distinct compute , that the fruits of my labour in making these remarks are these . first , this learned authour i hope is freed from that anxiety & solicitude touching me , and is by this time satisfied that i have not incurred the guilt of that rashness and heedlesness as to make choice of small and feeble arguments to sustain great and concerning truths . for it is very judiciously said of him , and i am wholly of his mind , that the most important and surest truths in the world never receive so much detriment by arguments and sophistry of opponents , as they do by those arguments in their favour which have improper mediums to support their conclusions , or such as are capable of other solutions : which i am very confident mine will never be found capable of . and i think from these remarks this learned authour by this time may be sensible , is no rashly grounded confidence . secondly , there is the redounding of no small commendation to this authour for his industry and dexterity , and special sagacity in making and improving hydrostatical experiments , that are so considerable succours to such useful truth . for he has very stoutly and pertinently assisted me in a more full defeating of that which always appeared to me an incredible paradox , i mean that prodigious elastick pressure of the air , and therefore i impute it to the modesty of this writer , that he has entitled his second book difficiles nugae . for though there may be some difficulty and curiosity in making and examining such like hydrostatical experiments , yet believe me there is no nugality at all , unless to those that make experiments for experiments sake , or to pass away the time , or to be thought great natural or rather mechanical philosophers , and that in hope to shew , that all the phaenomena of nature may be performed without the present assistance or guidance of any immaterial principle . but to try and consider these experiments and phaenomena with that carefulness and distinctness , and penetrancy of discernment , as to discover there must of necessity be some immaterial mover underneath , there is no nugacity at all in this , but sound and serious philosophy . thirdly therefore , this is no small fruit of this authour 's two treatises , and of my labour in making my remarks on them , that it does more plainly and evidently appear , that there is nothing of real strength can be said against my demonstrations for the spirit of nature , but that of necessity there is such a being in the world . fourthly , and that therefore it being so plain that there is this inferiour immaterial being endued only with life , or some more obscure sensation , and that has the general strokes of the laws of the universe , but cannot act by reason and counsel pro re nata , it is manifest that there is a more noble and divine being in the world that gave this inferiour immaterial being its existence , and allotted to it in measure , or limited out to it those general laws of vital activity , which we discover in it in the phaenomena of nature . beside , that this certainty of the existence of the spirit of nature demolisheth the strongest bulwark that ordinarily the atheist has , namely his confidence that there is no such thing as a spirit or immaterial being in the world . whence he securely hugs himself in that fond and foul conclusion , that there is no god. fifthly , whenas many men are driven quite out of all conceit of ever understanding the nature of their own spirit or soul , by that sophistry put upon them , that if it is a spirit or immaterial being , it would pass through the body , but could not take hold of it or unite with it to move it ; the discovery of the spirit of nature , moving as well as penetrating all the matter of the world , will as solidly and palpably confute the sophism , as he did that against motion , by walking before the face of the sophister that would prove there was none in the world . sixthly , whenas this spirit of nature moves all the tenuious matter , and fluid as well as solid in the universe , we easilier discern how rational it is , that particular spirits , angels suppose , or daemons , may have a faculty of moving their tenuious vehicles , and the souls of men the animal spirits in the body . seventhly & lastly , whenas others according to the thickness of their conceptions cannot believe they have any soul at all , but take it for granted they have none , what a rousing argument ought this to be to them , to awake them out of this dull dream , to consider that a stone does not descend to the earth , but by the virtue of a spirit that moves it downwards , nor a wooden rundle ascend up in a bucket of water , but by the same means ? how then can it be possible , but that we being conscious to our selves of more free and spontaneous motions , of motions contrary to the tuggings of the spirit of nature , of motions heavenly and divine , that these can be performed by mere matter and body , and not by a particular spirit really distinct therefrom ? wherefore there being that unexceptionable evidence for the existence of the spirit of nature , and that egregious usefulness of the knowledge thereof , i shall conclude for this ancient platonick or rather pythagorick . opinion in this lucretian strain of confidence . ergo etiam atque etiam est in mundo spiritus ille naturae , qui materiam regit atque gubernat . the end . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e * remark . . * see remark . * see difficiles nugae . remark . see difficiles nugae . remark , . * remark . . * remark . . * remark , . * remark , . * remark , . * remark , , , . see also difficiles nugae . remark , , . * remark . notes for div a -e enchirid. met aphys. cap. . sect . . * enchirid. metaphys . cap. . cap. . sect. . * see remark . * remark . cap. . sect. . * remark . * remark . remark . cap. : cap. . sect. . remark . part , and . remark . * see remark ● * see remark . . , . democritus platonissans, or, an essay upon the infinity of worlds out of platonick principles hereunto is annexed cupids conflict, together with the philosophers devotion, and a particular interpretation appertaining to the three last books of the song of the soul / by h. more ... more, henry, - . this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a of text r in the english short title catalog (wing m ). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) democritus platonissans, or, an essay upon the infinity of worlds out of platonick principles hereunto is annexed cupids conflict, together with the philosophers devotion, and a particular interpretation appertaining to the three last books of the song of the soul / by h. more ... more, henry, - . [ ], , , [ ] p. printed by roger daniel ..., cambridge : . in verse. reproduction of original in huntington library. eng a r (wing m ). civilwar no democritus platonissans, or, an essay upon the infinity of worlds out of platonick principles. hereunto is annexed cupids conflict together more, henry f the rate of defects per , words puts this text in the f category of texts with or more defects per , words. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - judith siefring sampled and proofread - judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion democritus platonissans , or , an essay upon the infinity of worlds out of platonick principles . hereunto is annexed cupids conflict together with the philosophers devotion : and a particular interpretation appertaining to the three last books of the song of the soul . by h. more master of arts , and fellow of christs colledge in cambridge . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} plat. pythagoras terram planetam quendam esse censuit qui circa solem in centro mundi defixum converteretur . pythagoram secuti sunt philolaus , seleucus , cleanthes , &c. imò plato jam senex , ut narrat theophrastus . libert. fromond . de orbe terrae immobili . cambridge printed by roger daniel , printer to the universite . . to the reader . reader , if thou standest not to the judgement of thine eye more then of thy reason , this fragment may passe favourably , though in the neglectfull disguise of of a fragment ; if the strangenesse of the argument prove no hinderance . infinitie of worlds ! a thing monstrous if assented to , and to be startled at , especially by them , whose thoughts this one have alwayes so engaged , that they can find no leisure to think of any thing else . but i onely make a bare proposall to more acute judgements , of what my sportfull fancie , with pleasure hath suggested : following my old designe of furnishing mens minds with varietie of apprehensions concerning the most weightie points of philosophie , that they may not seem rashly to have settled in the truth , though it be the truth : a thing as ill beseeming philosophers , as hastie prejudicative sentence politicall iudges . but if i had relinquishd here my wonted self , in proving dogmaticall , i should have found very noble patronage for the cause among the ancients , epicurus , democritus , lucretius , &c. or if justice may reach the dead , do them the right , as to shew , that though they be hooted at , by the rout of the learned , as men of monstrous conceits , they were either very wise or exceeding fortunate to light on so probable and specious an opinion , in which notwithstanding there is so much difficultie and seeming inconsistencie . nay and that sublime and subtil mechanick too , des-chartes , though he seem to mince it must hold infinitude of worlds , or which is as harsh one infinite one for what is his mundus indefinitè extensus , but extensus infinitè ? else it sounds onely infinitus quoad nos but simpliciter finitus . but if any space be left out unstuffd with atoms , it will hazard the dissipation of the whole frame of nature into disjoynted dust . as may be proved by the principles of his own philosophie . and that there is space whereever god is , or any actuall and self-subsistent being , seems to me no plainer then one of the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . for mine own part i must confesse these apprehensions do plainly oppose what heretofore i have conceived ; but i have sworn more faithfull friendship with truth then with my self . and therefore without all remorse lay batterie against mine own edifice : not sparing to shew how weak that is , that my self now deems not impregnably strong . i have at the latter end of the last canto of psychathanasia , not without triumph concluded , that the world hath not continued ab aeterno , from this ground : — extension that 's infinite implies a contradiction . and this is in answer to an objection against my last argument of the souls immortalitie , viz. divine goodnesse . which i there make the measure of his providence . that ground limits the essence of the world as well as its duration , and satisfies the curiositie of the opposer , by shewing the incompossibilitie in the creature , not want of goodnesse in the creatour to have staid the framing of the universe . but now roused up by a new pbilosophick furie , i answer that difficultie by taking away the hypothesis of either the world or time being finite : defending the infinitude of both . which though i had done with a great deal of vigour and life , and semblance of assent , it would have agreed well enough with the free heat of poefie , and might have passed for a pleasant flourish : but the severitie of my own judgement , and sad genius hath cast in many correctives and coolers into the canto it self ; so that it cannot amount to more then a discussion . and discussion is no prejudice but an honour to the truth : for then and never but then is she victorious . and what a glorious trophee shall the finite world erect when it hath vanquished the infinite ; a pygmee a giant . for the better understanding of the connexion of this appendix , with the poem of the souls immortalitie ; i have taken off the last stanza's thereof , and added some few new ones to them for a more easie and naturall leading to the present canto . psychathan . lib. . cant. . stanz. . but thou who ere thou art that thus dost strive with fierce assault my groundwork to subvert , and boldly dost into gods secrets dive , base fear my manly face note make m'avert . in that odde question which thou first didst stert , i 'll plainly prove thine incapacitie , and force thy feeble feet back to revert , that cannot climb so high a mysterie , i 'le shew thee strange perplexed inconsistencie . why was this world from all infinitie not made ? say'st thou : why ? could it be so made say i . for well observe the sequencie : if this out-world continually hath wade through a long long-spun-time that never had beginning , then there as few circulings have been in the quick moon as saturn sad ; and still more plainly this clear truth to sing , as many years as dayes or flitting houres have been . for things that we conceive are infinite , one th' other no'te surpasse in quantitie . so i have prov'd with clear convincing light , this world could never from infinitie been made . certain deficiencie doth alwayes follow evolution : nought 's infinite but tight eternitie close thrust into it self : extension that 's infinite implies a contradiction . so then for ought we know this world was made so soon as such a nature could exist ; and though that it continue , never fade , yet never will it be that that long twist of time prove infinite , though ner'e desist from running still . but we may safely say time past compar'd with this long future list doth show as if the world but yesterday were made , and in due time gods glory out may ray . then this short night and ignorant dull ages will quite be swallowed in oblivion ; and though this hope by many surly sages be now derided , yet they 'll all be gone in a short time , like bats and owls yflone at dayes approch . this will hap certainly at this worlds shining conflagration . fayes , satyrs , goblins the night merrily may spend , but ruddy sol shall make them all to flie . the roaring lions and drad beasts of prey rule in the dark with pitious crueltie ; but harmlesse man is master of the day , which doth his work in pure simplicitie . god blesse his honest usefull industrie . but pride and covetize , ambition , riot , revenge , self-love , hypocrisie , contempt of goodnesse , forc'd opinion ; these and such like do breed the worlds confusion . but sooth to say though my triumphant muse seemeth to vant as in got victorie , and with puissant stroke the head to bruize of her stiff fo , and daze his phantasie , captive his reason , dead each facultie : yet in her self so strong a force withstands that of her self afraid , she 'll not aby , nor keep the field . she 'll fall by her own hand as ajax once laid ajax dead upon the strand . for thus her-self by her own self 's oppos'd ; the heavens the earth the universall frame of living nature god so soon disclos'd as he could do , or she receive the same . all times delay since that must turn to blame , and what cannot he do that can be done ? and what might let but by th' all-powerfull name or word of god , the worlds creation more suddenly were made then mans swift thought can run ? wherefore that heavenly power or is as young as this worlds date ; or else some needlesse space of time was spent , before the earth did clung so close unto her-self and seas embrace her hollow breast , and if that time surpasse a finite number then infinitie of years before this worlds creation passe . so that the durance of the deitie we must contract or strait his full benignitie . but for the cradle of the cretian iove , and guardians of his vagient infancie what sober man but sagely will reprove ▪ or drown the noise of the fond dactyli by laughter loud ? dated divinitie certes is but the dream of a drie brain ▪ god maim'd in goodnesse , inconsistencie ; wherefore my troubled mind is now in pain of a new birth , which this one canto'll not contain . now reader , thou art arrived to the canto it self , from which i have kept thee off by too tedious preface and apologie , which is seldome made without consciousnesse of some fault , which i professe i find not in my self , unlesse this be it , that i am more tender of thy satisfaction then mine own credit . as for that high sullen poem , cupids conflict , i must leave it to thy candour and favourable censure . the philosophers devotion i cast in onely , that the latter pages should not be unfurnished . h. m. nihil tamen frequentius inter autores occurrit , quám ut omnia adeò ex modulo ferè sensuum suorum aestiment , ut ea quae insuper infinitis rerum spatiis extare possunt , sive superbè sive imprudenter rejiciant ; ● in usum suum fabricata fuisse glorientur , perinde facientes ac si pediculi humanum caput , aut pulices sinum muliebrem propter se solos condita existimarent , eáque demum ex gradibus saltibūsve suis metirentur . the lord herbert in his de causis errorum . de generali totius hujus mundi aspectabilis constructione ut rectè philosophemur duo sunt imprimis observanda : unum ut attendentes ad infinitam dei potentiam & bonitatem , nè vereamur nimis ampla & pulchra & absoluta ejus opera imaginari : sed è contra caveamus , nè si quos fortè limites nobis non certò cognitos , in ipsis supponamus , non satis magnificè de creatoris potentia sentire videamur . alterum , ut etiam caveamus , nè nimis superbè de nobis ipsis sentiamus . quod fieret non modò , si quos limites nobis nullâ cognitos ratione , nec divina revelatione , mundo vellemus affingere , tanquam si vis nostra cogitationis , ultra id quod à deo revera factum est ferri posset ; sed etiam maximè , si res omnes propter nos solos , ab illo creatas esse fingeremus . renatus des-cartes in his princip. philosoph. the third part . democritus platonissans . the argument . 'gainst boundlesse time th' objections made , and wast infinity of worlds , are with new reasons weigh'd , mens judgements are left free . hence , hence unhallowed ears and hearts more hard then winter clods fast froze with northern wind . but most of all , foul tongue i thee discard that blamest all that thy dark strait'ned mind , can not conceive : but that no blame thou find ; what e're my pregnant muse brings forth to light , she 'l not acknowledge to be of her kind , till eagle-like she turn them to the sight of the eternall word all deckt with glory bright . strange sights do straggle in my restlesse thoughts , and lively forms with orient colours clad walk in my boundlesse mind , as men ybrought into some spacious room , who when they 've had a turn or two , go out , although unbad . all these i see and know , but entertain none to my friend but who 's most sober sad ; although the time my roof doth them contain their presence doth possesse me till they out again and thus possest in silver trump i sound their guise , their shape , their gesture and array but as in silver trumpet nought is found when once the piercing sound is past away , ( though while the mighty blast therein did stay , its tearing noise so terribly did shrill , that it the heavens did shake , and earth dismay ) as empty i of what my flowing quill in heedlesse hast elswhere , or here , may hap to spill . for 't is of force and not of a set will . ne dare my wary mind afford assent to what is plac'd above all mortall skill . but yet our various thoughts to represent each genle wight will deem of good intent . wherefore with leave th' infinitie i 'll sing of time , of space : or without leave ; i 'm brent with eagre rage , my heart for joy doth spring , and all my spirits move with pleasant trembeling . an inward triumph doth my soul up-heave and spread abroad through endlesse ' spersed aire . my nimble mind this clammie clod doth leave , and lightly stepping on from starre to starre swifter then lightning , passeth wide and farre , measuring th' unbounded heavens and wastfull skie ; ne ought she finds her passage to debarre , for still the azure orb as she draws nigh gives back , new starres appear , the worlds walls 'fore her flie . for what can stand that is so badly staid ? well may that fall whose ground-work is unsure . and what hath wall'd the world but thoughts unweigh'd in freer reason ? that antiquate , secure , and easie dull conceit of corporature , of matter , quantitie , and such like gear hath made this needlesse , thanklesse inclosure , which i in full disdain quite up will tear and lay all ope , that as things are they may appear . for other they appear from what they are by reason that their circulation cannot well represent entire from farre each portion of the cuspis of the cone ( whose nature is elsewhere more clearly shown ) i mean each globe , whether of glaring light or else opake , of which the earth is one . if circulation could them well transmit numb●●s infinite of each would strike our ' stonishd sight ; all in just bignesse and right colours dight but totall presence without all defect 'longs onely to that trinitie by right , ahad , aeon , psyche with all graces deckt , whose nature well this riddle will detect ; a circle whose circumference no where is circumscrib'd , whose centre 's each where set , but the low cusp 's a figure circular , whose compasse is ybound , but centre 's every where . wherefore who 'll judge the limits of the world by what appears unto our failing sight appeals to sense , reason down headlong hurld out of her throne by giddie vulgar might . but here base senses dictates they will dight with specious title of philosophie , and stiffly will contend their cause is right from rotten rolls of school antiquitie , who constantly denie corporall infinitie . but who can prove their corporalitie since matter which thereto 's essentiall if rightly sifted 's but a phantasie . and quantitie who 's deem'd originall is matter , must with matter likewise fall . what ever is , is life and energie from god , who is th' originall of all ; who being everywhere doth multiplie his own broad shade that endlesse throughout all doth lie . he from the last projection of light ycleep'd shamajim , which is liquid fire ( it aether eke and centrall tasis hight ) hath made each shining globe and clumperd mire of dimmer orbs. for nature doth inspire spermatick life , but of a different kind . hence those congenit splendour doth attire and lively heat , these darknesse dead doth bind , and without borrowed rayes they be both cold and blind . all these be knots of th' universall stole of sacred psyche ; which at first was fine , pure , thin , and pervious till hid powers did pull together in severall points and did encline the nearer parts in one clod to combine . those centrall spirits that the parts did draw the measure of each globe did then define , made things impenetrable here below , gave colour , figure , motion , and each usuall law . and what is done in this terrestriall starre the same is done in every orb beside . each flaming circle that we see from farre is but a knot in psyches garment tide . from that lax shadow cast throughout the wide and endlesse world , that low'st projection of universall life each thing 's deriv'd what e're appeareth in corporeall fashion ; for body 's but this spirit , fixt , grosse by conspissation . and that which doth conspissate active is ; wherefore not matter but some living sprite of nimble nature which this lower mist and immense field of atoms doth excite , and wake into such life as best doth fit with his own self . as we change phantasies the essence of our soul not chang'd a whit , so do these atoms change their energies themselves unchanged into new centreities . and as our soul 's not superficially colourd by phantasms , nor doth them reflect as doth a looking-glasse such imag'rie as it to the beholder doth detect : no more are these lightly or smear'd or deckt with form or motion which in them we see , but from their inmost centre they project their vitall rayes , not merely passive be , but by occasion wak'd rouze up themselves on high . so that they 're life , form , sprite , not matter pure , for matter pure is a pure nullitie , what nought can act is nothing , i am sure ; and if all act , that is they 'll not denie but all that is is form : so easily by what is true , and by what they embrace for truth , their feigned corporalitie will vanish into smoke , but on i 'll passe , more fully we have sung this in another place . wherefore more boldly now to represent the nature of the world , how first things were how now they are : this endlesse large extent of lowest life ( which i styled whileere the cuspis of the cone that 's every where ) was first all dark , till in this spacious hall hideous through silent horrour torches clear and lamping lights bright shining over all were set up in due distances proportionall . innumerable numbers of fair lamps were rightly ranged in this hollow hole , to warm the world and chace the shady damps of immense darknesse , rend her pitchie stole into short rags more dustie dimme then coal . which pieces then in severall were cast ( abhorred reliques of that vesture foul ) upon the globes that round those torches trac'd , which still fast on them stick for all they run so fast . such an one is that which mortall men call night , a little shred of that unbounded shade . and such a globe is that which earth is hight ; by witlesse wizzards the sole centre made of all the world , and on strong pillars staid . and such a lamp or light is this our sun , whose firie beams the scortched earth invade . but infinite such as he , in heaven won , and more then infinite earths about those suns do run ; and to speak out : though i detest the sect of epicurus for their manners vile , yet what is true i may not well reject . truth 's incorruptible , ne can the style of vitious pen her sacred worth defile . if we no more of truth should deign t' embrace then what unworthy mouths did never soyl , no truths at all mongst men would finden place but make them speedie wings and back to heaven apace . i will not say our world is infinite , but that infinitie of worlds ther be . the centre of our world 's the lively light of the warm sunne , the visible deitie of this externall temple . mercurie next plac'd and warm'd more throughly by his rayes , right nimbly 'bout his golden head doth flie : then venus nothing slow about him strayes , and next our earth though seeming sad full spritely playes . and after her mars rangeth in a round with firie locks and angry flaming eye , and next to him mild iupiter is found , but saturn cold wons in our utmost skie . the skirts of his large kingdome surely lie near to the confines of some other worlds whose centres are the fixed starres on high , 'bout which as their own proper suns are hurld ioves , earths and saturns ; round on their own axes twurld . little or nothing are those starres to us which in the azure evening gay appear ( i mean for influence ) but judicious nature and carefull providence her dear and matchlesse work did so contrive whileere , that th' hearts or centres in the wide world pight should such a distance each to other bear , that the dull planets with collated light by neighbour suns might cheared be in dampish night . and as the planets in our world ( of which the sun 's the heart and kernell ) do receive their nightly light from suns that do enrich their sable mantle with bright gemmes , and give a goodly splendour , and sad men relieve with their fair twinkling rayes , so our worlds sunne becomes a starre elsewhere , and doth derive joynt light with others , cheareth all that won in those dim duskish orbs round other suns that run . this is is the parergon of each noble fire of neighbour worlds to be the nightly starre , but their main work is vitall heat t' inspire into the frigid spheres that 'bout them fare , which of themselves quite dead and barren are . but by the wakening warmth of kindly dayes , and the sweet dewie nights they well declare their seminall virtue in due courses raise long hidden shapes and life , to their great makers praise . these with their suns i severall worlds do call , whereof the number i deem infinite : else infinite darknesse were in this great hall of th' endlesse universe ; for nothing finite could put that immense shadow unto flight . but if that infinite suns we shall admit , then infinite worlds follow in reason right . for every sun with planets must be fit , and have some mark for his farre-shining shafts to hit . but if he shine all solitarie , alone , what mark is left , ? what aimed scope or end of his existence ? wherefore every one hath a due number of dim orbs that wend around their centrall fire . but wrath will rend this strange composure back'd with reason stout . and rasher tongues right speedily will spend their forward censure , that my wits run out on wool-gathering , through infinite spaces all about . what sober man will dare once to avouch an infinite number of dispersed starres ? this one absurdity will make him crouch and eat his words ; division nought impairs the former whole , nor he augments that spares . strike every tenth out , that which doth remain , an equall number with the former shares , and let the tenth alone , th' whole nought doth gain , for infinite to infinite is ever the same . the tenth is infinite as the other nine , or else nor they , nor all the ten entire are infinite . thus one infinite doth adjoyn others unto it and still riseth higher . and if those single lights hither aspire , this strange prodigious inconsistencie groweth still stranger , if each fixed fire ( i mean each starre ) prove sunnes , and planets flie about their flaming heads amid the thronged skie . for whatsoever that their number be whether by seavens , or eighths , or fives , or nines , they round each fixed lamp ; infinity will be redoubled thus by many times . besides each greater planet th' attendance finds of lesser . our earths handmaid is the moon , which to her darkned side right duly shines , and iove hath foure , as hath been said aboven , and saturn more then foure if the plain truth were known . and if these globes be regions of life and severall kinds of plants therein do grow , grasse , flowers , hearbs , trees , which the impartiall knife of all consuming time still down doth mow , and new again doth in succession show : which also 's done in flies , birds , men and beasts ; adde sand , pearls , pebbles , that the ground do strow leaves , quills , hairs , thorns , blooms , you may think the rest their kinds by mortall penne can not well be exprest : and if their kinds no man may reckon well , the summe of successive particulars no mind conceive nor tongue can ever tell . and yet this mist of numbers ( as appears ) belongs to one of these opacous sphears . suppose this earth ; what then will all those rounds produce ? no atlas such a load upbears . in this huge endlesse heap o'rewhelmed , drownd , choak'd , stifled , lo ! i lie , breathlesse , even quite confound . yet give me space a while but to respire , and i my self shal fairly well out-wind ; keep this position true , unhurt , entire , that you no greater difficulty find in this new old opinion here defin'd of infinite worlds , then one world doth imply . for if we do with steddy patience mind all is resolv'd int' one absurdity , the grant of something greater then infinitie . that god is infinite all men confesse , and that the creature is some realty besides gods self , though infinitely lesse . joyn now the world unto the deity . what ? is there added no more entitie by this conjunction , then there was before ? is the broad breasted earth ? the spacious skie spangled with silver light , and burning ore ? and the wide bellowing seas , whose boyling billows roar , are all these nothing ? but you will reply ; as is the question so we ought restrain our answer unto corporeity . but that the phantasie of the body 's vain i did before unto you maken plain . but that no man depart unsatisfi'd a while this universe here will we feigne corporeall , till we have gainly tride , if ought that 's bodily may infinite abide . what makes a body saving quantity ? what quantitie unlesse extension ? extension if 't admit infinity bodies admit boundlesse dimension . that some extension forward on doth run withouten limits , endlesse , infinite is plane from space , that ever paceth on unstop'd , unstaid , till it have filled quite that immense infinite orb where god himself doth sit . but yet more sensibly this truth to show if space be ended set upon that end some strong arm'd archer with his parthian bow , that from that place with speedy force may send his fleeter shafts , and so still forward wend . where ? when shall he want room his strength to trie ? but here perversly subtill you ' l contend nothing can move in mere vacuity , and space is nought , so not extended properly . to solve these knots i must call down from high some heavenly help , feather with angels wing the sluggish arrow . if it will not flie , sent out from bow stiff-bent with even string , let angels on their backs it thither bring where you free mind appointed had before , and then hold on , till in your travelling you be well wearied , finding ever more free passage for their flight , and what they flying bore . now to that shift that sayes vacuity is nought , and therefore not at all extent we answer thus : there is a distancy in empty space , though we be well content to balk that question ( for we never meant such needlesse niceties ) whether that it be a reall being ; yet that there 's parts distent one from another , no mans phantasie can e're reject if well he weigh't and warily . for now conceive the aire and azure skie all swept away from saturn to the sunne , which eath is to be wrought by him on high . then in this place let all the planets runne ( as erst they did before this feat vvas done ) if not by nature , yet by divine power , ne one hairs breadth their former circuits shun and still for fuller proof , th' astronomer observe their hights as in the empty heavens they scoure . will then their parallaxes prove all one or none , or different still as before ? if so , their distances by mortall men must be acknowledg'd such as were of yore , measur'd by leagues , miles , stades , nor lesse nor more from circuit unto circuit shall be fouud then was before the sweeping of the floor . that distance therefore hath most certain ground in emptinesse we may conclude with reason sound . if distance now so certainly attend all emptinesse ( as also mensuration attendeth distance ) distance without end is wide disperst above imagination ( for emptinesse is void of limitation ) and this unbounded voidnesse doth admit the least and greatest measures application ; the number thus of the greatest that doth fit this infinite void space is likewise infinite . but what so e're that infinite number be , a lesser number will a number give so farre exceeding in infinity that number as this measure we conceive to fall short of the other . but i 'll leave this present way and a new course will trie which at the same mark doth as fully drive and with a great deal more facility . look on this endlesse space as one whole quantity . which in your mind int' equall parts divide , tens , hundreds , thousands or what pleaseth best . each part denominate doth still abide an infinite portion , else nor all the rest makes one infinitude . for if one thousandth part may be defin'd by finite measures eas'ly well exprest , a myriad suppose of miles assign'd then to a thousand myriads is the whole confin'd . wherefore this wide and wast vacuity , which endlesse is outstretched thorough all , and lies even equall with the deity , nor is a thing meerly imaginall , ( for it doth farre mens phantasies forestall nothing beholden to our devicefull thought ) this inf'nite voidnesse as much our mind doth gall , and has as great perplexities ybrought as if this empty space with bodies were yfraught . nor have we yet the face once to denie but that it is , although we mind it not ; for all once minded such perplexity it doth create to puzzled reason , that she sayes and unsayes , do's she knows not what . why then should we the worlds infinity misdoubt , because when as we contemplate its nature , such strange inconsistency and unexpected sequels , we therein descry ? who dare gainsay but god is every where unbounded , measurelesse , all infinite ; yet the same difficulties meet us here which erst us met and did so sore affright with their strange vizards . this will follow right where ever we admit infinity every denominated part proves streight a portion infinite , which if it be , one infinite will into myriads multiply . but with new argument to draw more near our purpos'd end . if god's omnipotent and this omnipotent god be every where , where e're he is then can he eas'ly vent his mighty virtue thorough all extent . what then shall hinder but a roscid aire with gentle heat each where be ' sperst and sprent . unlesse omnipotent power we will empair , and say that empty space his working can debarre . where now this one supposed world is pight was not that space at first all vain and void ? nor ought said ; no , when he said , let 't be light . was this one space better then all beside , and more obedient to what god decreed ? or would not all that endlesse emptinesse gladly embrac'd ( if he had ever tride ) his just command ? and what might come to passe implies no contradictious inconsistentnesse . wherefore this precious sweet ethereall dew for ought we know god each where did distill , and thorough all that hollow voidnesse threw and the wide gaping drought therewith did fill , his endlesse overflowing goodnesse spill in every place ; which streight he did contrive int' infinite severall worlds , as his best skill did him direct and creatures could receive for matter infinite needs infinite worlds must give . the centre of each severall world 's a sunne with shining beams and kindly warming heat , about whose radiant crown the planets runne , like reeling moths around a candle light . these all together , one world i conceit . and that even infinite such worlds there be , that inexhausted good that god is hight a full sufficient reason is to me , who simple goodnesse make the highest deity , al 's make himself the key of all his works and eke the measure of his providence ; the piercing eye of truth to whom nought lurks but lies wide ope unbar'd of all pretense . but frozen hearts ! away ! flie farre from hence , unlesse you 'l thaw at this celestiall fire and melt into one minde and holy sense with him that doth all heavenly hearts inspire , so may you with my soul in one assent conspire . but what 's within , uneath is to convey to narrow vessels that are full afore . and yet this truth as wisely as i may i will insinuate , from senses store borrowing a little aid . tell me therefore when you behold with your admiring eyes heavens canopie all to bespangled o're with sprinkled starres , what can you well devize which causen may such carelesse order in the skies ? a peck of peasen rudely poured out on plaister flore , from hasty heedlesse hond which lie all carelesse scattered about , to sight do in as seemly order stond , as those fair glistering lights in heaven are found . if onely for this world they were intended , nature would have adorn'd this azure round with better art , and easily have mended this harsh disord'red order , and more beauty lended . but though these lights do seem so rudely thrown and scattered throughout the spacious skie , yet each most seemly sits in his own throne in distance due and comely majesty ; and round their lordly seats their servants hie keeping a well-proportionated space one from another , doing chearfully their dayly task . no blemmish may deface the worlds in severall deckt with all art and grace . but the appearance of the nightly starres is but the by-work of each neighbour sun ; wherefore lesse marvell if it lightly shares of neater art ; and what proportion were fittest for to distance one from one ( each world i mean from other ) is not clear . wherefore it must remain as yet unknown why such perplexed distances appear mongst the dispersed lights in heaven thrown here & there . again , that eminent similitude betwixt the starres and phoebus fixed light , they being both with steddinesse indu'd , no whit removing whence they first were pight , no serious man will count a reason slight to prove them both , both fixed suns and starres and centres all of severall worlds by right , for right it is that none a sun debarre of planets which his just and due retinue are . if starres be merely starres not centrall lights why swell they into so huge bignesses ? for many ( as astronomers do write ) our sun in bignesse many times surpasse . if both their number and their bulks were lesse yet lower placed , light and influence would flow as powerfully , and the bosome presse of the impregned earth , that fruit from hence as fully would arise , and lordly affluence . wherefore these fixed fires mainly attend their proper charge in their own universe , and onely by the by of court'sie lend light to our world , as our world doth reverse his thankfull rayes so farre as he can pierce back unto other worlds . but farre aboven further then furthest thought of man can traverse , still are new worlds aboven and still aboven , in the endlesse hollow heaven , and each world hath his sun . an hint of this we have in winter-nights , when reason may see clearer then our eye , small subtil starres appear unto our sights as thick as pin-dust scattered in the skie . here we accuse our seeing facultie of weaknesse , and our sense of foul deceit , we do accuse and yet we know not why . but the plain truth is , from a vaster hight the numerous upper worlds amaze our dazzled sight . now sith so farre as sense can ever trie we find new worlds , that still new worlds there be , and round about in infinite numbers lie , further then reach of mans weak phantasie ( without suspition of temeritie ) we may conclude ; as well as men conclude that there is aire farre bove the mountains high , or that th'earth a sad substance doth include even to the centre with like qualities indu'd . for who did ever the earths centre pierce , and felt or sand or gravell with his spade at such a depth ? what histories rehearse that ever wight did dare for to invade her bowels but one mile in dampish shade ? yet i 'll be bold to say that few or none but deem this globe even to the bottome made of solid earth , and that her nature's one throughout , though plain experience hath it never shown . but sith sad earth so farre as they have gone they still descrie , eas'ly they do inferre without all check of reason , were they down never so deep , like substance would appear , ne dream of any hollow horrour there . my mind with like uncurb'd facilitie concludes from what by sight is seen so clear that ther 's no barren wast vacuitie above the worlds we see , but still new worlds there lie , and still and still even to infinitie . which point since i so fitly have propos'd , abating well the inconsistencie of harsh infinitude therein supposd and prov'd by reasons never to be loos'd that infinite space and infinite worlds there be ; this load laid down , i 'm freely now dispos'd a while to sing of times infinitie , may infinite time afford me but his smallest fee . for smallest fee of time will serve my turn this part for to dispatch , sith endlesse space ( whose perplext nature well mans brains might turn , and weary wits disorder and misplace ) i have already passed : for like case is in them both . he that can well untie the knots that in those infinite worlds found place , may easily answer each perplexitie of these worlds infinite matters endlesse durancie . the cuspis and the basis of the cone were both at once dispersed every where ; but the pure basis that is god alone : else would remotest sights as bigge appear unto our eyes as if we stood them near . and if an harper harped in the moon , his silver sound would touch our tickled eare : or if one hollowed from highest heaven aboven , in sweet still evening-tide , his voice would hither roam . this all would be if the cuspe of the cone were very god . wherefore i rightly 't deem onely a creaturall projection , which flowing yet from god hath ever been , fill'd the vast empty space with its large streem . but yet it is not totall every where as was even now by reason rightly seen : wherefore not god , whose nature doth appear intirely omnipresent , weigh'd with judgement clear . a reall infinite matter , distinct and yet proceeding from the deitie although with different form as then untinct has ever been from all eternitie . now what delay can we suppose to be , since matter alway was at hand prepar'd before the filling of the boundlesse skie with framed worlds ; for nought at all debar'd , ( pair'd . nor was his strength ungrown , nor was his strength em - how long would god be forming of a flie ? or the small wandring moats that play i' th' sun ? least moment well will serve none can denie , his fiat spoke and streight the thing is done . and cannot he make all the world as soon ? for in each atom of the matter wide the totall deitie doth entirely won , his infinite presence doth therein reside , and in this presence infinite powers do ever abide . wherefore at once from all eternitie the infinite number of these worlds he made , and will conserve to all infinitie , and still drive on their ever-moving trade , and steddy hold what ever must be staid ; ne must one mite be minish'd of the summe , ne must the smallest atom ever fade , but still remain though it may change its room ; this truth abideth strong from everlasting doom . ne fear i what hard sequel after-wit will draw upon me ; that the number 's one of years , moneths , dayes , houres , and of minutes fleet which from eternitie have still run on . i plainly did confesse awhile agone that be it what it will that 's infinite more infinites will follow thereupon , but that all infinites do justly fit and equall be , my reason did not yet admit . but as my emboldened mind , i know not how , in empty space and pregnant deitie endlesse infinitude dares to allow , though it begets the like perplexitie : so now my soul drunk with divinitie , and born away above her usuall bounds with confidence concludes infinitie of time of worlds , of firie flaming rounds ; which sight in sober mood my spirits quite confounds . and now i do awhile but interspire a torrent of objections 'gainst me beat , my boldnesse to represse and strength to tire . but i will wipe them off like summer sweat , and make their streams streight back again retreat . if that these worlds , say they , were ever made from infinite time , how comes 't to passe that yet art is not perfected , nor metalls fade , nor mines of grimie coal low-hid in griefly shade . but the remembrance of the ancient floud with ease will wash such arguments away . wherefore with greater might i am withstood . the strongest stroke wherewith they can assay to vanquish me is this ; the date or day of the created world , which all admit ; nor may my modest muse this truth gainsay in holy oracles so plainly writ . wherefore the worlds continuance is not infinite . now lend me , origen ! a little wit this sturdy stroke right fairly to avoid , lest that my rasher rymes , while they ill fit with moses pen , men justly may deride and well accuse of ignorance or pride . but thou , o holy sage ! with piercing sight who readst those sacred rolls , and hast well tride with searching eye thereto what fitteth right thy self of former worlds right learnedly dost write : to weet that long ago there earths have been peopled with men and beasts before this earth , and after this shall others be again and other beasts and other humane birth . which once admit , no strength that reason bear'th of this worlds date and adams efformation , another adam once received breath and still another in endlesse repedation , and this must perish once by finall conflagration . witnesse ye heavens if what i say's not true , ye flaming comets wandering on high , and new fixt starres found in that circle blue , the one espide in glittering cassiopie , the other near to opbiuchus thigh . both bigger then the biggest starres that are , and yet as farre remov'd from mortall eye as are the furthest , so those arts declare unto whose reaching sight heavens mysteries lie bare . wherefore these new-seen lights were greater once by many thousand times then this our sphear wherein we live , 'twixt good and evil chance . which to my musing mind doth strange appear if those large bodies then first shaped were . for should so goodly things so soon decay ? neither did last the full space of two year . wherefore i cannot deem that their first day of being , when to us they sent out shining ray . but that they were created both of old , and each in his due time did fair display themselves in radiant locks more bright then gold , or silver sheen purg'd from all drossie clay . but how they could themselves in this array expose to humane sight , who did before lie hid , is that which well amazen may the wisest man and puzzle evermore : yet my unwearied thoughts this search could not give o're . which when i 'd exercis'd in long pursuit to finden out what might the best agree with warie reason , at last i did conclude that there 's no better probabilitie can be produc'd of that strange prodigie , but that some mighty planet that doth run about some fixed starre in cassiopie as saturn paceth round about our sun , unusuall light and bignesse by strange fate had wonne . which i conceive no gainer way is done then by the siezing of devouring fire on that dark orb , which 'fore but dimly shone with borrowed light , not lightened entire , but halfed like the moon . and while the busie flame did fieze throughout , and search the bovvels of the lowest mire of that saturnian earth ; a mist broke out , and immense mounting smoke arose all round about . which being gilded with the piercing rayes of its own sun and every neighbour starre , it soon appear'd with shining silver blaze , and then gan first be seen of men from farre . besides that firie flame that was so narre the planets self , which greedily did eat the wastning mold , did contribute a share unto this brightnesse ; and what i conceit of this starre doth with that of ophiuchus fit . and like i would adventure to pronounce of all the comets that above the moon , amidst the higher planets rudely dance in course perplex , but that from this rash doom i 'm bett off by their beards and tails farre strown along the skie , pointing still opposite unto the sun , however they may roam ; wherefore a cluster of small starres unite these meteors some do deem , perhaps with judgement right . and that these tayls are streams of the suns light breaking through their near bodies as through clouds . besides the optick glasse has shown to sight the dissolution of these starrie crouds . which thing if 't once be granted and allow'd , i think without all contradiction they may conclude these meteors are routs of wandring starres , which though they one by one cannot be seen , yet joyn'd , cause this strange vision . and yet methinks , in my devicefull mind some reasons that may happily represse these arguments it 's not uneath to find . for how can the suns rayes that be transmisse through these loose knots in comets , well expresse their beards or curld tayls utmost incurvation ? beside , the conflux and congeries of lesser lights a double augmentation implies , and 'twixt them both a lessening coarctation . for when as once these starres are come so nigh as to seem one , the comet must appear in biggest show , because more loose they lie somewhat spread out , but as they draw more near the compasse of his head away must wear , till he be brought to his least magnitude ; and then they passing crosse , he doth repair himself , and still from his last losse renew'd grows till he reach the measure which we first had view'd . and then farre distanc'd they bid quite adiew , each holding on in solitude his way . ne any footsteps in the empty blew is to be found of that farre-shining ray . which processe sith no man did yet bewray , it seems unlikely that the comets be synods of starres that in wide heaven stray . their smallnesse eke and numerositie encreaseth doubt and lessens probabilitie . a cluster of them makes not half a moon , what should such tennis-balls do in the skie ? and few 'll not figure out the fashion of those round firie meteors on high . ne ought their beards much move us , that do lie ever cast forward from the morning sunne , nor back cast tayls turn'd to our evening-eye , that fair appear when as the day is done . this matter may lie hid in the starres shadowed cone . for in these planets conflagration , although the smoke mount up exactly round , yet by the suns irradiation made thin and subtil no where else it s found by sight , save in the dim and duskish bound of the projected pyramid opake , opake with darknesse , smoke and mists unsound . yet gilded like a foggie cloud doth make reflection of fair light that doth our senses take . this is the reason of that constant site of comets tayls and beards : and that their show's not pure pyramidall , nor their ends seem streight but bow'd like brooms , is from the winds that blow , i mean ethereall winds , such as below men finden under th' equinoctiall line . their widend beards this aire so broad doth strow incurvate , and or more or lesse decline : if not , let sharper wits more subtly here divine . but that experiment of the optick glasse the greatest argument of all i deem , ne can i well encounter nor let passe so strong a reason if i may esteem the feat withouten fallacie to been , nor judge these little sparks and subtile lights some auncient fixed starres though now first seen , that near the ruin'd comets place were pight , on which that optic instrument by chance did light . nor finally an uncouth after-sport of th' immense vapours that the searching fire had boyled out , which now themselves consort in severall parts and closely do conspire , clumper'd in balls of clouds and globes entire of crudled smoke and heavy clunging mists ; which when they 've staid a while at last expire ; but while they stay any may see that lists so be that optick art his naturall sight assists . if none of these wayes i may well decline the urging weight of this hard argument , worst is but parting stakes and thus define : some comets be but single planets brent , others a synod joyn'd in due consent : and that no new found meteors they are . ne further may my wary mind assent from one single experience solitaire , till all-discovering time shall further truth declare . but for the new fixt starres there 's no pretence , nor beard nor tail to take occasion by , to bring in that unluckie inference which weaken might this new built mysterie . certes in raging fire they both did frie . a signe whereof you rightly may aread their colours changeable varietie first clear and white , then yellow , after red , then blewly pale , then duller still , till perfect dead . and as the order of these colours went , so still decreas'd that cassiopean starre , till at the length to sight it was quite spent : which observations strong reasons are , consuming fire its body did empare and turn to ashes . and the like will be in all the darksome planets wide and farre . ne can our earth from this state standen free a planet as the rest , and planets fate must trie . ne let the tender heart too harshly deem of this rude sentence : for what rigour more is in consuming fire then drowning stream of noahs floud which all creaturs choak'd of yore , saving those few that were kept safe in store in that well builded ship ? all else beside men , birds , and beasts , the lion , buck , and bore dogs , kine , sheep , horses all that did abide upon the spacious earth , perish'd in waters wide . nor let the slow and misbelieving wight doubt how the fire on the hard earth may seize ; no more then how those waters erst did light upon the sinfull world . for as the seas boyling with swelling waves aloft did rise , and met with mighty showers and pouring rain from heavens spouts ; so the broad flashing skies thickned with brimstone and clouds of fiery bain shall meet with raging etna's and vesuvius flame . the burning bowels of this wasting ball shall gullup up great flakes of rolling fire , and belch out pitchie flames , till over all having long rag'd , vulcan himself shall tire and ( th' earth an ashheap made ) shall then expire . here nature laid asleep in her own urn with gentle rest right easly will respire , till to her pristine task she do return as fresh as phenix young under th' arabian morn . o happy they that then the first are born , while yet the world is in her vernall pride : for old corruption quite away is worn as metall pure so is her mold well tride . sweet dews , cool-breathing airs , and spaces wide of precious spicery wafted with soft wind : fair comely bodies goodly beautifi'd snow-limb'd , rose-cheek'd , ruby-lip'd , pearl-ted , star eyn'd their parts each fair in fit proportion all conbin'd . for all the while her purged ashes rest these rellicks dry suck in the heavenly dew , and roscid manna rains upon her breast , and fills with sacred milk sweet fresh and new , where all take life and doth the world renew ; and then renew'd with pleasure be yfed . a green soft mantle doth her bosome strew with fragrant herbs and flowers embellished , where without fault or shame all living creatures bed . ne ought we doubt how nature may recover in her own ashes long time buried . for nought can ever consume that centrall power of hid spermatick life , which lies not dead in that rude heap , but safely covered ; and doth by secret force suck from above sweet heavenly juice , and therewith nourished till her just bulk , she doth her life emprove , made mother of much children that about her move . witnesse that uncouth bird of arabie which out of her own ruines doth revive with all th' exploits of skillfull chymistrie , such as no vnlgar wit can well believe . let universall nature witnesse give that what i sing's no feigned forgerie . a needlesse task new fables to contrive , but what i sing is seemly verity well suting with right reason and philosophie . but the fit time of this mutation no man can finden out with all his pains . for the small sphears of humane reason run too swift within his narrow compast brains . but that vast orb of providence contains a wider period ; turneth still and slow . yet at the last his aimed end he gains . and sure at last a fire will overflow the aged earth , and all must into ashes go . then all the stately works and monuments built on this bottome shall to ruine fall . and all those goodly statues shall be brent which were erect to the memoriall of kings kaesars , ne may better ' fall the boastfull works of brave poetick pride that promise life and fame perpetuall ; ne better fate may these poor lines abide . betide what will to what may live no lenger tide ! this is the course that never-dying nature might ever hold from all eternitie , renuing still the faint decayed creature which would grow stark and drie as aged tree , unlesse by wise preventing destinie she were at certain periods of years reduced back unto her infancie , which well fram'd argument ( as plain appears ) my ship from those hard rocks and shelves right safely stears . lo ! now my faithfull muse hath represented both frames of providence to open view , and hath each point in orient colours painted not to deceive the sight with seeming shew but earnest to give either part their due ; now urging th' uncouth strange perplexitie of infinite worlds and time , then of a new softening that harsher inconsistencie to fit the immense goodnesse of the deity . and here by curious men 't may be expected that i this knot with judgement grave decide , and then proceed to what else was objected . but , ah ! what mortall wit may dare t' areed heavens counsels in eternall horrour hid ? and cynthius pulls me by my tender ear such signes i must observe with wary heed : wherefore my restlesse muse at length forbear . thy silver sounded lute hang up in silence here . finis cupids conflict . mela. cleanthes . cl. mela my dear ! why been thy looks so sad as if thy gentle heart were sunk with care ? impart thy case ; for be it good or bad friendship in either will bear equall share . mel. not so ; cleanthes , for if bad it be my self must bleed afresh by wounding thee . but what it is , my slow , uncertain wit cannot well judge . but thou shalt sentence give how manfully of late my self i quit , when with that lordly lad by chance i strive . cl. of friendship mela ! let 's that story hear . mel. sit down cleanthes then , and lend thine ear . upon a day as best did please my mind walking abroad amidst the verdant field scattering my carefull thoughts i' th' wanton wind the pleasure of my path so farre had till'd my feeble feet that without timely rest uneath it were to reach my wonted nest . in secret shade farre moved from mortals sight in lowly dale my wandring limbs i laid on the cool grasse where natures pregnant wit a goodly bower of thickest trees had made . amongst the leaves the chearfull birds did fare and sweetly carrol'd to the echoing air . hard at my feet ran down a crystall spring which did the cumbrous pebbles hoarsly chide for standing in the way . though murmuring the broken stream his course did rightly guide and strongly pressing forward with disdain the grassie flore divided into twain . the place a while did feed my foolish eye as being new , and eke mine idle ear did listen oft to that wild harmonie and oft my curious phansie would compare how well agreed the brooks low muttering base , with the birds trebbles pearch'd on higher place . but senses objects soon do glut the soul , or rather weary with their emptinesse ; so i , all heedlesse how the waters roll and mindlesse of the mirth the birds expresse , into my self 'gin softly to retire after hid heavenly pleasures to enquire . while i this enterprize do entertain ; lo ! on the other side in thickest bushes a mighty noise ! with that a naked swain with blew and purple wings streight rudely rushes . he leaps down light upon the flowry green , like sight before mine eyes had never seen . at 's snowy back the boy a quiver wore right fairly wrought and gilded all with gold . a silver bow in his left hand he bore , and in his right a ready shaft did hold . thus armed stood he and betwixt us tway the labouring brook did break his toilsome way . the wanton lad whose sport is others pain did charge his bended bow with deadly dart , and drawing to the head with might and main , with fell intent he aim'd to hit my heart . but ever as he shot his arrows still in their mid course dropt down into the rill . of wondrous virtues that in waters been is needlesse to rehearse , all books do ring of those strange rarities . but ne're was seen such virtue as resided in this spring . the novelty did make me much admire but stirr'd the hasty youth to ragefull ire . as heedlesse fowls that take their per'lous flight over that bane of birds , averno lake , do drop down dead : so dead his shafts did light amid this stream , which presently did slake their fiery points , and all their feathers wet which made the youngster godling inly fret . thus lustfull love ( this was that love i ween ) was wholly changed to consuming ire . and eath it was , fith they 're so near a kin they be both born of one rebellious fire . but he supprest his wrath and by and by for feathered darts , he winged words let flie . vain man ! said he , and would thou wer'st not vain that hid'st thy self in solitary shade and spil'st thy precious youth in sad disdain hating this lifes delight ! hath god thee made part of this world , and wilt not thou partake of this worlds pleasure for its makers sake ? unthankfull wretch ! gods gifts thus to reject and maken nought of natures goodly dower that milders still away through thy neglect and dying fades like unregarded flower . this life is good , what 's good thou must improve , the highest improvement of this life is love . had i ( but o that envious destinie , or stygian vow , or thrice accursed charm should in this place free passage thus denie unto my shafts as messengers of harm ! had i but once transfixt thy froward breast , how would'st thou then — i staid not for the rest ; but thus half angry to the boy replide : how would'st thou then my soul of sense bereave ! i blinded , thee more blind should choose my guide ! how would'st thou then my muddied mind deceive with fading shows , that in my errour vile , base lust , i love should tearm , vice , virtue stile . how should my wicked rymes then idolize thy wretched power , and with impious wit impute thy base born passions to the skies and my souls sicknesse count an heavenly fit , my weaknesse strength , my wisdome to be caught my bane my blisse , mine ease to be o'rewraught . how often through my fondly feigning mind and frantick phansie , in my mistris eye should i a thousand fluttering cupids find bathing their busie wings ? how oft espie under the shadow of her eye-brows fair ten thousand graces sit all naked bare ? thus haunted should i be with such feat fiends : a pretty madnesse were my portion due . foolish my self i would not hear my friends . should deem the true for false , the false for true . my way all dark more slippery then ice my attendents , anger , pride , and jealousies . unthankfull then to god i should neglect all the whole world for one poor sorry wight , whose pestilent eye into my heart project would burn like poysonous comet in my spright . aye me ! how dismall then would prove that day whose onely light sprang from so fatall ray . who seeks for pleasure in this mortall life by diving deep into the body base shall loose true pleasure : but who gainly strive their sinking soul above this bulk to place enlarg'd delight they certainly shall find unbounded joyes to fill their boundlesse mind . when i my self from mine own self do quit and each thing else ; then an all-spreaden love to the vast universe my soul doth fit makes me half equall to all-seeing jove . my mighty wings high stretch'd then clapping light i brush the starres and make them shine more bright . then all the works of god with close embrace i dearly hug in my enlarged arms all the hid paths of heavenly love i trace and boldly listen to his secret charms . then clearly view i where true light doth rise , and where eternall night low-pressed lies . thus lose i not by leaving small delight but gain more joy , while i my self suspend from this and that ; for then with all unite i all enjoy , and love that love commends . that all is more then loves the partiall soul whose petty loves th' impartiall fates controll . ah son ! said he , ( and laughed very loud ) that trickst thy tongue with uncouth strange disguize , extolling highly that with speeches proud to mortall men that humane state denies , and rashly blaming what thou never knew let men experienc'd speak , if they 'll speak true . had i once lanc'd thy froward flinty heart and cruddled bloud had thawn with living fire and prickt thy drousie sprite with gentle smart how wouldst thou wake to kindly sweet desire , thy soul fill'd up with overflowing pleasures would dew thy lips with hony-dropping measures . then wouldst thou caroll loud and sweetly sing in honour of my sacred deity that all the woods and hollow hills would ring reechoing thy heavenly harmonie . and eke the hardy rocks with full rebounds would faithfully return thy silver sounds . next unto me would be thy mistresse fair , whom thou might setten out with goodly skill her peerlesse beauty and her virtues rare , that all would wonder at thy gracefull quill . and lastly in us both thy self shouldst raise and crown thy temples with immortall bayes . but now thy riddles all men do neglect , thy rugged lines of all do lie forlorn . unwelcome rymes that rudely do detect the readers ignorance . men holden scorn to be so often non-plusd or to spell , and on one stanza a whole age to dwell . besides this harsh and hard obscuritie of the hid sense , thy words are barbarous and strangely new , and yet too frequently return , as usuall plain and obvious , so that the show of the new thick-set patch marres all the old with which it ill doth match . but if thy haughty mind , forsooth , would deign to stoop so low to hearken to my lore , then wouldst thou with trim lovers not disdeign to adorn the outside , set the best before . nor rub nor wrinkle would thy verses spoil thy rymes should run as glib and smooth as oyl . if that be all , said i , thy reasons slight can never move my well establishd mind . full well i wote alwayes the present sprite , or life that doth possesse the soul , doth blind , shutting the windows 'gainst broad open day lest fairer sights its uglinesse bewray . the soul then loves that disposition best because no better comes unto her view . the drunkard drunkennesse , the sluggard rest , th' ambitious honour and obeisance due . so all the rest do love their vices base 'cause virtues beauty comes not into place . and looser love 'gainst chastitie divine would shut the door that he might sit alone . then wholly should my mind to him incline : and woxen strait , ( since larger love was gone ) that paultrie sprite of low contracting lust would fit my soul as if 't were made for 't just . then should i with my fellow bird or brute so strangely metamorphis'd , either ney or bellow loud : or if 't may better sute chirp out my joy pearch'd upon higher spray . my passions fond with impudence rehearse , immortalize my madnesse in a verse . this is the summe of thy deceiving boast that i vain ludenesse highly should admire , when i the sense of better things have lost and chang'd my heavenly heat for hellish fire , passion is blind , but virtues piercing eye approching danger can from farre espie . and what thou dost pedantickly object concerning my rude rugged uncouth style , as childish toy i manfully neglect , and at thy hidden snares do inly smile . how ill alas ! with wisdome it accords to sell my living sense for livelesse words . my thought 's the fittest measure of my tongue , wherefore i 'll use what 's most significant , and rather then my inward meaning wrong or my full-shining notion trimly scant , i 'll conjure up old words out of their grave , or call fresh forrein force in if need crave . and these attending on my moving mind shall duly usher in the fitting sense . as oft as meet occasion i find . unusuall words oft used give lesse offence ; nor will the old contexture dim or marre , for often us'd they 're next to old , thred bare . and if the old seem in too rustie hew , then frequent rubbing makes them shine like gold , and glister all with colour gayly new . wherefore to use them both we will be bold . thus lists me fondly with fond folk to toy , and answer fools with equall foolerie . the meaner mind works with more nicetie , as spiders wont to weave their idle web , but braver spirits do all things gallantly of lesser failings nought at all affred : so natures carelesse pencill dipt in light with sprinkled starres hath spattered the night . and if my notions clear though rudely thrown and loosely scattered in my poesie , may lend men light till the dead night be gone , and morning fresh with roses strew the skie : it is enough , i meant no trimmer frame or by nice needle-work to seek a name . vain man ! that seekest name mongst earthly men devoid of god and all good virtuous lere ; who groping in the dark do nothing ken but mad ; with griping care their souls do tear , or burst with hatred or with envie pine or burn with rage or melt out at their eyne . thrice happy he whose name is writ above , and doeth good though gaining infamie ; requiteth evil turns with hearty love , and recks not what befalls him outwardly . whose worth is in himself , and onely blisse in his pure conscience that doth nought amisse . who placeth pleasure in his purged soul and virtuous life his treasure doth esteem ; who can his passions master and controll , and that true lordly manlinesse doth deem , who from this world himself hath clearly quit counts nought his own but what lives in his sprite . so when his sprite from this vain world shall flit it bears all with it whatsoever was dear unto it self , passing in easie fit , as kindly ripen'd corn comes out of th' eare . thus mindlesse of what idle men will say he takes his own and stilly goes his way . but the retinue of proud lucifer , those blustering poets that flie after fame and deck themselves like the bright morning-starre . alas ! it is but all a crackling flame . for death will strip them of that glorious plume that airie blisse will vanish into fume . for can their carefull ghosts from limbo ●ake return , or listen from the bowed skie to heare how well their learned lines do take ? or if they could ; is heavens felicitie so small as by mans praise to be encreas'd , hells pain no greater then hence to be eas'd ? therefore once dead in vain shall i transmit my shadow to gazing posteritie ; cast farre behind me i shall never see 't , on heavens fair sunne having fast fixt mine eye . nor while i live , heed i what man doth praise or underprize mine unaffected layes . what moves thee then , said he , to take the pains and spenden time if thou contemn'st the fruit ? sweet fruit of fame , that fills the poets brains with high conceit and feeds his fainting wit . how pleasant 't is in honour here to live and dead , thy name for ever to survive ! or is thy abject mind so basely bent as of thy muse to maken merchandize ? ( and well i wote this is no strange intent . ) the hopefull glimps of gold from chattering pies , from daws and crows , and parots oft hath wrung an unexpected pegascian song . foul shame on him , quoth i , that shamefull thought doth entertain within his dunghill breast , both god and nature hath my spirits wrought to better temper and of old hath blest my loftie soul with more divine aspires then to be touchd with such vile low desires . i hate and highly scorn that kestrell kind of bastard scholars that subordinate the precious choice induements of the mind to wealth or worldly good . adulterate and cursed brood ! your wit and will are born of th' earth and circling thither do return . profit and honour be those measures scant of your slight studies and endeavours vain , and when you once have got what you did want you leave your learning to enjoy your gain . your brains grow low , your bellies swell up high , foul sluggish fat ditts up your dulled eye . thus what the earth did breed , to th' earth is gone , like fading hearb or feebly drooping flower , by feet of men and beast quite trodden down , the muck-sprung learning cannot long endure . back she returns lost in her filthy source , drown'd , chok'd or slocken by her cruell nurse . true virtue to her self's the best reward , rich with her own and full of lively spirit , nothing cast down for want of due regard , or 'cause rude men acknowledge not her merit . she knows her worth and stock from whence she sprung , spreads fair without the warmth of earthly dung , dew'd with the drops of heaven shall flourish long ; as long as day and night do share the skie , and though that day and night should fail yet strong and steddie , fixed on eternitie shall bloom for ever . so the soul shall speed that loveth virtue for no worldly meed . though sooth to sayn , the worldly meed is due to her more then to all the world beside . men ought do homage with affections true and offer gifts for god doth there reside . the wise and virtuous soul is his own seat to such what 's given god himself doth get . but earthly minds whose sight 's seal'd up with mud discern not this flesh-clouded deity , ne do acknowledge any other good then what their mole-warp hands can feel and trie by groping touch ; thus ( worth of them unseen ) of nothing worthy that true worth they ween . wherefore the prudent law-givers of old even in all nations , with right sage foresight discovering from farre how clums and cold the vulgar wight would be to yield what 's right to virtuous learning , did by law designe great wealth and honour to that worth divine . but nought 's by law to poesie due said he , ne doth the solemn statesmans head take care of those that such impertinent pieces be of common-weals . thou'd better then to spare thy uselesse vein . or tell else , what may move thy busie muse such fruitlesse pains to prove . no pains but pleasure to do the dictates dear of inward living nature . what doth move the nightingall to sing so sweet and clear the thrush , or lark that mounting high above chants her shrill notes to heedlesse ears of corn heavily hanging in the dewy morn . when life can speak , it can not well withhold t' expresse its own impressions and hid life . or joy or grief that smoothered lie untold do vex the heart and wring with restlesse strife . then are my labours no true pains but ease my souls unrest they gently do appease . besides , that is not fruitlesse that no gains brings to my self . i others profit deem mine own : and if at these my heavenly flames others receiven light , right well i ween my time 's not lost . art thou now satisfide said i : to which the scoffing boy replide . great hope indeed thy rymes should men enlight , that be with clouds and darknesse all o'recast , harsh style and harder sense void of delight the readers wearied eye in vain do wast . and when men win thy meaning with much pain , thy uncouth sense they coldly entertain . for wotst thou not that all the world is dead unto that genius that moves in thy vein of poetrie ! but like by like is fed . sing of my trophees in triumphant strein , then correspondent life , thy powerfull verse shall strongly strike and with quick passion pierce . the tender frie of lads and lasses young with thirstie eare thee compassing about , thy nectar-dropping muse , thy sugar'd song will swallow down with eagre hearty draught ; relishing truly what thy rymes convey , and highly praising thy soul-smiting lay . the mincing maid her mind will then bewray , her heart-bloud flaming up into her face , grave matrons will wex wanton and betray their unresolv'dnesse in their wonted grace ; young boyes and girls would feel a forward spring , and former youth to eld thou back wouldst bring . all sexes , ages , orders , occupations would listen to thee with attentive ear , and eas'ly moved with thy sweet perswasions , thy pipe would follow with full merry chear . while thou thy lively voice didst loud advance their tickled bloud for joy would inly dance . but now , alas ! poore solitarie man ! in lonesome desert thou dost wander wide to seek and serve thy disappearing pan , whom no man living in the world hath eyde : for pan is dead but i am still alive , and live in men who honour to me give : they honour also those that honour me with sacred songs . but thou now singst to trees to rocks to hills , to caves that senselesse be and mindlesse quite of thy hid mysteries , in the void aire thy idle voice is spread , thy muse is musick to the deaf or dead . now out alas ! said i , and wele-away the tale thou tellest i confesse too true . fond man so doteth on this living clay his carcase dear , and doth its joyes pursue , that of his precious soul he takes no keep heavens love and reasons light lie fast asleep . this bodies life vain shadow of the soul with full desire they closely do embrace , in fleshly mud like swine they wallow and roll , the loftiest mind is proud but of the face or outward person ; if men but adore that walking sepulchre , cares for no more . this is the measure of mans industry to wexen some body and getten grace to 's outward presence ; though true majestie crown'd with that heavenly light and lively rayes of holy wesdome and seraphick love , from his deformed soul he farre remove . slight knowledge and lesse virtue serves his turn for this designe . if he hath trod the ring of pedling arts ; in usuall pack-horse form keeping the rode ; o! then 't's a learned thing . if any chanc'd to write or speak what he conceives not't were a foul discourtesie ? to cleanse the soul from sinne , and still diffide whether our reasons eye be clear enough to intromit true light , that fain would glide into purg'd hearts , this way 's too harsh and rough : therefore the clearest truths may well seem dark when sloathfull men have eyes so dimme and stark . these be our times . but if my minds presage bear any moment , they can ne're last long , a three branch'd flame will soon sweep clean the stage of this old dirty drosse and all wex young . my words into this frozen air i throw will then grow vocall at that generall thaw . nay , now thou 'rt perfect mad , said he , with scorn , and full of foul derision quit the place . the skie did rattle with his wings ytorn like to rent silk . but i in the mean space sent after him this message by the wind be 't so i 'm mad , yet sure i am thou 'rt blind . by this the out-stretch'd shadows of the trees pointed me home-ward , and with one consent foretold the dayes descent . so straight i rise gathering my limbs from off the green pavement behind me leaving then the slooping light . cl. and now let 's up , vesper brings on the night . finis . a particular interpretation appertaining to the three last books of the platonick song of the soul . a atom-lives . the same that centrall lives . both the terms denotate the indivisibility of the inmost essence it self ; the pure essentiall form i mean , of plant , beast or man , yea of angels themselves , good or bad . apogee , see interpret . gen. autokineticall , ananke , acronycall , alethea-land , animadversall . that lively inward animadversall . it is the soul it self , for i cannot conceive the body doth animadvert ; when as objects plainly exposed to the sight are not discovered till the soul takes notice of them . b body . the ancient philosphers have defined it , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . sext. emperic . pyrrhon . hypotyp . lib. . cap. . near to this is that description , psychathan , cant. . stanz. . lib. , matter extent in three dimensions . but for that {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , simple trinall distension doth not imply it , wherefore i declin'd it . but took in matter according to their conceit , that phansie à materia prima , i acknowledge none , and consequently no such corpus naturale as our physiologist make the subject of that science . that {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} is nothing but a fixt spirit , the conspissation or coagulation of the cuspidall particles of the cone , which are indeed the centrall tasis , or inward essence of the sensible world . these be an infinite number of vitall atoms that may be wakened into diverse tinctures , or energies , into fiery , watery , earthy , &c. and one divine fiat can unloose them all into an universall mist , or turn them out of that sweat into a drie and pure etheriall temper . these be the last projections of life from the soul of the world ; and are act or form though debil and indifferent , like that which they call the first matter . but they are not meerly passive but meet their information half way , as i may so speak : are radiant ab intimo and awake into this or the other operation , by the powerfull appulse of some superadvenient form . that which change of phantasmes is to the soul , that is alteration of rayes to them . for their rayes are ab intrinseco , as the phantasmes of the soul . these be the reall matter of which all supposed bodies are compounded , and this matter ( as i said ) is form and life , so that all is life and form what ever is in the world , as i have somewhere intimated in antipsychopan : but however i use the terme body ordinarily in the usuall and vulgar acception . and for that sense of the ancients , nearest to which i have defined it in the place first above mentioned , that i seem not to choose that same as most easie to proceed against in disproving the corporeity of the soul , the arguments do as necessarily conclude against such a naturall body as is ordinarily described in physiologie ( as you may plainly discern if you list to observe ) as also against this body composed of the cuspidall particles of the cone . for though they be centrall lives , yet are they neither plasticall , sensitive , or rationall , so farre are they from proving to be the humane soul whose nature is there discust . c cone : is a solid figure made by the turning of a rectangular triangle , about ; one of the sides that include the right angle resting , which will be then the axis of the compleated cone . but i take it sometimes for the comprehension of all things , god himself not left out , whom i tearm the basis of the cone or universe . and because all from him descends , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , with abatement or contraction , i give the name of cone to the universe . and of cone rather then pyramid because of the roundnesse of the figure , which the effluxes of all things imitate . chaos , see interpret gen. chronicall , clare , circulation , the terme is taken from a toyish observation , viz. the circling of water when a stone is cast into a standing pool . the motion drives on circularly , the first rings are thickest , but the further they go they grow the thinner , till they vanish into nothing . such is the diffusion of the species audible in the strucken aire , as also of the visible species . in brief any thing is said to circulate that diffuseth its image or species in a round . it might have been more significantly called orbiculation ; seeing this circumfusion makes not onely a circle , but fills a sphere , which may be called the sphere of activity . yet circulation more fitly sets out the diminution of activity , from those ringes in the water which as they grow in compasse , abate in force and thicknesse . but sometimes i use circulate in an ordinary sense to turn round , or return in a circle . centre , centrall , centrality . when they are used out of their ordinary sense , they signifie the depth or inmost being of any thing , from whence its acts and energies flow forth . see atom-lives . cuspis of the cone . the multiplide cuspis of the cone is nothing but the last projection of life from psyche , which is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} a liquid fire or fire and water , which are the corporeall or materiall principles of all things , changed or disgregated ( if they be centrally distinguishable ) and again mingled by the virtue of physis or spermaticall life of the world ; of these are the sunne and all the planets , they being kned together , and fixt by the centrall power of each planet and sunne . the volatile ether is also of the same , and all the bodies of plants , beasts and men . these are they which we handle and touch , a sufficient number compact together . for neither is the noise of those little flies in a summer-evening audible severally : but a full quire of them strike the ear with a pretty kind of buzzing . strong and tumultuous pleasure and scorching pain reside in these , they being essentiall and centrall , but sight and hearing are onely of the images of these , see body . eternitie . is the steddie comprehension of all things at once . see aeon discribed in my expos upon psychozoia . energie , it is a peculiar platonicall terme . in my interpret . gen. i expounded it operation , efflux , activity . none of those words bear the full sense of it . the examples there are fit , viz. the light of the sunne , the phantasms of the soul . we may collect the genuine sense of the word by comparing severall places in the philosopher . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . for every being hath its energie , which is the image of it self , so that it existing that energie doth also exist , and standing still is projected forward more or lesse . and some of those energies are weak and obscure , others hid or undiscernable , othersome greater and of a larger projection . plotin. ennead . . lib. . cap. . and again , ennead . . lib. . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . and we remain above by the intellectuall man , but by the extreme part of him we are held below , as it were yielding an efflux from him to that which is below , or rather an energie he being not at all lessened . this curiositie antoninus also observes , ( lib. . meditat. ) in the nature of the sun-beams , where although he admits of {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , yet he doth not of {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} which is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . the sunne , saith he , is diffused , and his fusion is every where but without effusion , &c. i will onely adde one place more out of plotinus . ennead . . lib. . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . the naturall energie of each power of the soul is life not parted from the soul though gone out of the soul , viz. into act . comparing of all these places together , i cannot better explain this platonick term , energie , then by calling it the rayes of an essence , or the beams of a vitall centre . for essence is the centre as it were of that which is truly called energie , and energie the beams and rayes of an essence . and as the radii of a circle leave not the centre by touching the circumference , no more doth that which is the pure energie of an essence , leave the essence by being called out into act , but is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} a working in the essence though it flow out into act . so that energie depends alwayes on esence , as lumen on lux , or the creature on god ; whom therefore synesius in his hymnes calls the centre of all things . entelecheia . see interpret . gen. f faith . platonick faith in the first good . this faith is excellently described in proclus . where it is set above all ratiocination , nay , intellect it self . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . but to them that endeavour to be joyned with the first good , there is no need of knowledge or multifarious cooperation , but of settlednesse , steddinesse , and rest . lib. . cap. . theolog. platon . and in the next chapter ; {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . for we must not seek after that absolute or first good cognoscitively or imperfectly , but giving our selves up to the divine light , and winking ( that is shutting our eyes of reason and understanding ) so to place our selves steddily in that hidden unitie of all things . after he preferres this faith before the clear and present assent to the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , yea and the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , so that he will not that any intellectuall operation should come in comparison with it . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . for the operation of the intellect is multiform and by diversitie separate from her objects , and is in a word , intellectuall motion about the object intelligible . but the divine faith must be simple and uniform , quiet and steddily resting in the haven of goodnesse . and at last he summarily concludes , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . see procl. theolog. platonick . lib. . cap. . h hyle . see interpret . gen. i intellect .. sometimes it is to be interpreted soul . sometime the intellectuall facultie of the soul . sometimes intellect is an absolute essence shining into the soul : whose nature is this . a substance purely immateriall , impeccable , actually omniform , or comprehending all things at once ▪ which the soul doth also being perfectly joyned with the intellect . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . plot . ennead . . lib. . cap. . ideas , or idees , sometimes they are forms in the intellectuall world . viz. in aeon , or on , other sometimes , phantasmes or representations in the soul . innate idees are the souls nature it self , her uniform essence , able by her fiat to produce this or that phantasme into act . idiopathy . see interpret . gen. ia● l logos . see interpr . gen. life . the vitall operation of any soul . sometime it is the soul it self , be it sensitive , vegetative , or rationall . lower man . the lower man is our enquickned body , into which our soul comes , it being fitly prepared for the receiving of such a guest . the manner of the production of souls , or rather their non-production is admirably well set down in plotinus , see , ennead . . lib. . cap. , . m monad . see interpr . gen. mundane . mundane spirit , is that which is the spirit of the world or universe . i mean by it not an intellectuall spirit , but a fine , unfixt , attenuate , subtill , ethereall substance , the immediate vehicle of plasticall or sensitive life . memory . mundane memory . is that memory that is seated in the mundane spirit of man , by a strong impression , or inustion of any phantasme , or outward sensible object , upon that spirit . but there is a memory more subtill and abstract in the soul it self , without the help of this spirit , which she also carries away with her hauing left the body . magicall . that is , attractive , or commanding by force of sympathy with the life of this naturall world . moment . sometimes signifies an instant , as indivisible , as {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , which in motion answers to an instant in time , or a point in a line , aristot. phys. in this sense i use it , psychathan . lib. . cant. . stanz. . . but in a moment sol doth ray . but cant. the . stanz. . v. . i understand , as also doth lansbergius , by a moment one second of a minute . in antipsych . cant. . stanz. the . v. . by a moment i understand a minute , or indefinitely any small time . o orb. orb intellectuall , is nothing else but aeon or the intellectuall world . the orbs generall mentioned psycathan . lib. . cant. . stanz. . . v. . i understand by them but so many universall orders of beings , if i may so terme them all ; for hyle hath little or nothing of being . omniformity , the omniformity of the soul is the having in her nature all forms , latent at least , and power of awaking them into act , upon occasion . out-world ▪ and out-heaven . the sensible world , the visible heaven . p perigee , see interpret . gen. psychicall , parelies , parallax , protopathy . parturient . see , vaticinant . phantasie . lower phantasie , is that which resides in the mundane spirit of a man , see memory . q. quantitative . forms quantitative , are such sensible energies as arise from the complexion of many natures together , at whose discretion they vanish . that 's the seventh orb of things , though broken and not filling all as the other do . but if you take it for the whole sensible world , it is entire , and is the same that tasis in psycozoia . but the centre of tasis , viz. the multiplication of the reall cuspis of the cone ( for hyle that is set for the most contract point of the cuspis is scarce to be reckoned among realities ) that immense diffusion of atoms , is to be referred to psyche , as an internall vegetative act , and so belongs to physis the lowest order of life . for as that warmth that the sense doth afford the body , is not rationall , sensitive , or imaginative , but vegetative ; so this , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} i. e. liquid fire , which psyche sends out , and is the outmost , last , and lowest operation from her self , is also vegetative . r rhomboides . see interpr . general . reason . i understand by reason , the deduction of one thing from another , which i conceive proceeds from a kind of continuitie of phantasmes : and is something like the moving of a cord at one end ; the parts next it rise with it . and by this concatenation of phantasmes i conceive , that both brutes and men are moved in reasonable wayes and methods in their ordinary externall actions . rayes . the rayes of an essence is its energie . see energie . reduplicative . that is reduplicative , which is not onely in this point , but also in another , having a kind of circumscribed ubiquitie , viz. in its own sphear . and this is either by being in that sphear omnipresent it self , as the soul is said to be in the body tota in toto & tota in qualibet parte , or else at least by propagation of rayes , which is the image of it self ; and so are divers sensible objects reduplicative , as light , colours , sounds . and i make account either of these wayes justly denominate any thing spirituall . though the former is most properly , at least more eminently spirituall . and whether any thing be after that way spirituall saving the divinitie , there is reason to doubt . for what is entirely omnipresent in a sphear , whose diametre is but three feet , i see not , why ( that in the circumference being as fresh and entire as that in the centre ) it should stop there and not proceed even in infinitum , if the circumference be still as fresh and entire as the centre . but i define nothing . s spermaticall . it belongs properly to plants , but is transferred also to the plasticall power in animalls , i enlarge it to all magnetick power whatsoever that doth immediately rule and actuate any body . for all magnetick power is founded in physis , and in reference to her , this world is but one great plant , ( one {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} giving it shape and corporeall life ) as in reference to psyche , one happy and holy animall . spirit . sometimes it signifieth the soul , othersometime , the naturall spirits in a mans body , which are vinculum animae & corporis , and the souls vehicle : sometimes life . see reduplicative . soul . when i speak of mans soul , i understand that which moses saith was inspired into the body , ( fitted out and made of earth ) by god , genes . . which is not that impeccable spirit that cannot sinne ; but the very same that the platonists call {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , a middle essence betwixt that which they call {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ( and we would in the christian language call {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ) and the life of the body which is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , a kind of an umbratil vitalitie , that the soul imparts to the bodie in the enlivening of it : that and the body together , we christians would call {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} and the suggestions of it , especially in its corrupt estate , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . and that that which god inspired into adam was no more then {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , the soul , not the spirit , though it be called {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} spiraculum vitae ; is plain out of the text ; because it made man but become a living soul , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . but you will say , he was a dead soul before , and this was the spirit of life , yea the spirit of god , the life of the soul that was breathed into him . but if {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} implie such a life and spirit , you must acknowledge the same to be also in the most stupid of all living creatures , even the fishes ( whose soul is but as salt to keep them from stinking , as philo speaks ) for they are said to be {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} chap. . v. . . see cor. chap. . v. , . in brief therefore , that which in platonisme is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , is in scripture {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ; what {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} in one , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , the brute or beast in the other , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} the same in both . self-reduplicative . see reduplicative . t tricentreitie . centre is put for essence , so tricentreitie must implie a trinitie of essence . see centre , and energie . v vaticinant . the soul is said to be in a vaticinant or parturient condition , when she hath some kind of sense and hovering knowledge of a thing , but yet cannot distinctly and fully , and commandingly represent it to her self , cannot plainly apprehend , much lesse comprehend the matter . the phrase is borrowed of proclus , who describing the incomprehensiblenesse of god , and the desire of all things towards him , speaks thus ; {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . theolog platon lib. . cap. . see psychathan . lib. . cant. . stanz. . . & . the philosophers devotion . sing aloud his praise rehearse who hath made the universe . he the boundlesse heavens has spread all the vitall orbs has kned ; he that on olympus high tends his flocks with watchfull eye , and this eye has multiplide midst each flock for to reside . thus as round about they stray toucheth each with out-stretch'd ray , nimbly they hold on their way , shaping out their night and day . never slack they ; none respires , dancing round their centrall fires . in due order as they move echo's sweet be gently drove thorough heavens vast hollownesse , which unto all corners presse : musick that the heart of iove moves to joy and sportfull love ; fills the listning saylers eares riding on the wandering sphears . neither speech nor language is where their voice is not transmisse . god is good , is wise , is strong , witnesse all the creature-throng , is confess'd by every tongue . all things back from whence they sprong , as the thankfull rivers pay what they borrowed of the sea . now my self i do resigne , take me whole i all am thine . save me , god! from self-desire , deaths pit , dark hells raging fire , envy , hatred , vengeance , ire . let not lust my soul bemire . quit from these thy praise i 'll sing , loudly sweep the trembling string . bear a part , o wisdomes sonnes ! free'd from vain relligions . lo ! from farre i you salute , sweetly warbling on my lute . indie , egypt , arabie , asia , greece , and tartarie , carmel-tracts , and lebanon with the mountains of the moon , from whence muddie nile doth runne , or whereever else you won ; breathing in one vitall aire , one we are though distant farre . rise at once lett 's sacrifice odours sweet perfume the skies . see how heavenly lightning fires hearts inflam'd with high aspires ! all the substance of our souls up in clouds of incense rolls . leave we nothing to our selves save a voice , what need we els ! or an hand to wear and tire on the thankfull lute or lyre . sing aloud his praise rehearse who hath made the universe . finis . an answer to several remarks upon dr. henry more, his expositions of the apocalypse and daniel, as also upon his apology written by s.e. mennonite, and published in english by the answerer ; whereunto are annexed two small pieces, arithmetica apocalyptica, and appendicula apocalyptica ... s. e., mennonite. approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing a estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) an answer to several remarks upon dr. henry more, his expositions of the apocalypse and daniel, as also upon his apology written by s.e. mennonite, and published in english by the answerer ; whereunto are annexed two small pieces, arithmetica apocalyptica, and appendicula apocalyptica ... s. e., mennonite. more, henry, - . [ ], p. printed by miles flesher, for walter kettilby ..., london : . each part has special t.p. reproduction of original in bodleian library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng - tcp assigned for keying and markup - spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images - olivia bottum sampled and proofread - olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an answer to several remarks upon dr henry more his expositions of the apocalypse and daniel , as also upon his apology . written by s. e. mennonite , and published in english by the answerer . whereunto are annexed two small pieces , arithmetica apocalyptica , and appendicvla apocalyptica . of all which an account is given in the preface . london , printed by miles flesher , for walter kettilby , at the bishop's head in st. paul's church-yard . . the preface . reader , thov maist justly expect from me some account of my publishing these remarks of s. e. and of my answers thereto , which i will give , as clearly and briefly as i may . the remarks seem writ by one , not onely very serious , but highly confident in his way , and as magisterial as if he were no vulgar interpreter of prophecies of scripture , nor ordinary remarker upon the interpretations of others , but some infallible iudge or decisive oracle in the case . and therefore that which is so highly prized of himself , it seemed hopefull that it was of such a nature , if rightly answered , that it might give some diversion at least , if not satisfaction to others . who the remarker is , i cannot satisfie thy curiosity to tell thee . but i have adventured to call him mennonite for that odd wild conceit of his , that all magistracy and monarchy consequentially , will go down in the millennial reign of christ. which is the opinion of daniel brenius a mennonite , but otherwise not an unlearned person , and the point is disputed betwixt him and his master episcopius . what dutch or german , or other foreign name those initial letters s. e. will answer to , i cannot easily conjecture . but if it were left to me fit a name to them , from what language i please , i would doe it from the greek , and it should be streblosinous ereunetes , those two words comprizing both the good and bad of his genius and performance , viz. his pains in enquiring into the sense of the scripture-prophecies , which is a laudable enterprize , and his studied perversion and distortion of the sense of them to make them comply with the unaccountable dreams , as i deem it , of his own fancyfull melancholy , which is a thing no-wise approvable . however , he seeming to me one more than ordinary addicted to , and exercised in this study of interpreting prophecies , and particularly those of daniel and the apocalypse , i thought it not amiss to publish all his remarks upon dr. h. more his expositions of them , together with my answers thereto , for these reasons following . first , for that the remarker having used all the diligence he could , and as i perceive , being eagerly set to find flaws in the expositor's interpretations of the visions of those two prophets , and attempting to substitute others in their room ; i have plainly discovered , that in effect he has found none , nor could substitute any thing that would so properly agree with the text as that which the expositor has made choice of before . which therefore is a demonstration of the firmness and certainty of intelligibleness in the divine visions , and that they are in no-wise compliable with every fancy of either a rash or designing interpreter , nor may be made a nose of wax , as some fondly imagine . secondly , in answering these remarks , there are so many occasions of taking notice of the true and genuine rules of interpreting prophecies , the visions especially of daniel and the apocalypse , and of the remarker's transgression of them , that the reading of these remarks , with the answers thereto , cannot but add to the skill and judgment of any one that has a genius this way . thirdly , in the answers to these remarks , there is not onely a farther illustration and confirmation of the expositor's interpretations of these prophecies , but light also given to several other prophecies or passages of them . vpon which account they must needs seem considerable to such as have a mind to these kind of studies , than which there are none more noble or more becoming either a philosopher or a christian , provided they pursue them out of their love to god and humble adoration of his providence over the sons of men , and out of no sinister design of serving a party . fourthly , i thought it very requisite to publish these remarks , together with my answers , because i could not be assured but that sometime or other they might come out without any answer to them , which might be a prejudice to the truth . for they seeming to be written with great confidence , and pretending much to scripture-autority , and being varnished over with scripture-phrases , and no body by to shew their errours and defects , they may strike great reverence into the heedless populacy , and make the remarker go for some notable hypopheta or interpreter of the prophets ( whenas there is not one true stroke in all his pretended interpretations that clash with the expositor's ; though it is not so much to be imputed to want of diligence and ability in the remarker as to the invincibleness of truth ) and so the ordinary people would be drawn into wretched mistakes ; and the profane wits not thinking it worth the while to give themselves the trouble of discovering the errours of this new interpreter , would be the more strongly confirmed in their own , and have new cause to insult over all pretences of understanding prophecies . fifthly , and i thought it the more requisite to publish these remarks , and to answer them , because some extravagant notions are applied to the prophetical visions by the remarker ( whether they be to be deemed romanistical or anabaptistical , i know not , but ) such as i thought did not so well comport with either a christian spirit or the peace of christendom , and therefore i thought it my bounden duty to beat them out of this harbour , and not to suffer these holy oracles that were communicated to the church for her more safe and peacefull guidance to be made instruments of her disquiet and confusion . and lastly , i had a more special eye to those two great and usefull truths exhibited to us in the visions of the apocalypse . the first , that the late reformation begun by luther , and propagated and perfected in other kingdoms and countries , and more especially here in england was the rising of the witnesses . the second , that the primitive times till about four hundred years after christ were symmetral . the evidence of which two truths , the remarker endeavours tooth and nail to smother and suppress by most wretchedly distorting and slubbering over the sense of the tenth chapter of the apocalypse and of the two succeeding synchronal visions , the one comprized in the eleventh chapter , the other in the twelfth , thirteenth and fourteenth ; and also by peremptorily denying but groundlesly , that the vision of the seven churches reaches any farther than to the beginning of the millennium . all which is done in favour of his beloved mennonism , that christ may not be held to begin his reign where there is any visible monarch or civil magistrate that rules . which opinion , though it may seem the more tolerable and harmless , by how much the distance is the greater from the present age to the millennium , yet it being apt to beget a prejudice against monarchy and civil magistracy , and to impress a false idea of the reign of christ in the minds of the vulgar , as if his reign was inconsistent with monarchy and civil magistracy ; and for as much as it is joined with the denying , that the late reformation is the rising of the witnesses ( which truth utterly routs that fond opinion against civil magistracy ) and also with a belief that their days prophesying in sackcloth is but about expiring , or but just expired , upon which the witnesses are to lye three days and an half slain , &c. which naturally tends to the impregnating mens minds with a fond expectation of a sudden completion of the prophecy of their rising ( which yet god be thanked is accomplished already ) and so to cause endeavours of innovations and tumults of seditions and rebellions ( as amongst the jews by pretence of false christs after the true one was come so ) amongst christians upon a false expectation of the sudden rising of the witnesses , when in truth they are risen already : these things are of so great import , as also the acknowledgment of the symmetricalness of the primitive ages , for the present peace of the reformed churches , and the reconciling the sectaries to the publick worship , that i thought them alone a sufficient motive to publish these remarks and answers for the stearing men off from such wild and disorderly conceits which so easily find harbour in melancholick and enthusiastick spirits , and which other crafty and disaffected politicians are over prone , cunningly and designingly to serve their turns of . see the expositor's pref. to his apocalypsis apocalypseos , § . this usefulness made me with great alacrity publish these remarks , they giving me so fit an occasion to instruct , and i hope to convince men of the errour of this false spirit that has gone out into the world , and has , i fear , deluded too many . and therefore the remarker , whether he has writhen and forced his wit and invention to personate an eager impugner of the expositor's interpretations of the prophecies of john and daniel , or has indeed seriously attacked them , he has however done good service to the church of god by drawing out answers more fully to explain and confirm those important truths so certainly exhibited in the prophecies . and if the answerer seem at any time to be something quick and smart upon the remarker , or rather upon that spirit he is actuated withall ( for he has no enmity against any man's person whatsoever ) i hope it will not seem more to an indifferent judge than the perversness of the matter or manner of uttering it by the remarker naturally called for . and not to shew a man's dislike of such things with some commotion of mind would but feed the humour of a conceited enthusiast , and make him fansie he has got the ascendent of his tame adversary , and not impute his being gently handled to his christian meekness and kindness of temper but to the power and dominion of his own tumid and delusive spirit , that commissions him to ride triumphantly over the necks of all such as are not ready to submit to the mistaken dictates of his false light . and if this quickness and freeness of the answerer should draw from the remarker a bitter reviling reply , which is neither a desirable nor probable event if the remarker have that ingenuity as to rejoice and acquiesce in the truth with whomsoever it is found , yet it will not want its proper use . for then it will be still more manifest , that whereas the remarker ( though not taken up into an exceeding high mountain , as christ was by satan , and shewn all the kingdoms of this world and glory of them yet ) fansying himself highly caught up in the spirit has uttered such sublime matter in this exaltation touching the glorious state and oeconomy of the new jerusalem , and things in tendency thereto as transcend the conceit and allowance of any sober and considerate man ; it will be hence i say still more manifest , that it is not from the height of any divine rapture that he has discovered such marvellous mysteries , but that all this elevation of spirit is nothing but the heaving of the hypochondria , and the vain delusion of the touring fumes of an over-heated melancholy ; and that the sound understanding of daniel and the apocalypse does not belong to fanatical enthusiasts , but to men of a more rational genius , serene mind and sober judgment . thus , reader , thou hast as full an account as i can give of the publishing these remarks and answers , together with the manner thereof . how sufficient it is , thou wilt best perceive upon the perusal of them . which thou wilt doe , i hope , with no small satisfaction , if orderly , as they are placed , chapter and verse , thou readest the places in the expositor's expositions of daniel and the apocalypse before thou readest the remark and answer . and if thou hast not those expositions by thee , provided thou reade but the verse in the bible which the remark and answer relate to , thou wilt seldom be at a loss for the understanding either of them . but as for the remarks upon the apology , if thou beest at a loss , thou must have recourse to the pages thereof , which are constantly set down at the beginning of the remark . as for those two little additional pieces , arithmetica apocalyptica , and appendicula apocalyptica , i need say little of them . the occasion of writing them is set down in each , and the scope and end of them is much what the same , with that of my answer to the remarks , viz. to undeceive the world and free men from such false notions of some passages in the apocalypse as tend to unquietness of mind , and unsetling the church and state. for my answer to the remarks upon the apology ( which i would have the reader thoroughly to consider ) so plainly demonstrating that the partial fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses is the issue of the months war of the beast with the saints ( apoc. . v. , . ) and with the witnesses ( chap. . v. , . ) which issue is coincident with the close of the sixth trumpet , chap. . v. . and that all the vials follow the sixth trumpet , and the three doxologies or triumphs , and that the reformation is the fulfilling of this partial fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses ; the issue , i say , of the months war being thus accomplished , it naturally follows that the compute of the months , ( whatever that number signifies ) expires therewith , or is no farther to be reckoned upon . for the time of a vision can reach no farther than the vision it self . but because he that gave me the occasion of writing arithmetica apocalyptica , seems not aware of this reason , but doth notwithstanding his acknowledgment of the reformation being the rising of the witnesses , produce the time of their witnessing in sackcloth beyond the abovesaid issue of the months war , more than an hundred years , in which expiration of the months or days prophetical he surmises that antichristianity will be utterly rooted out of the church , as if that would be the full completion of the rising of the witnesses ; this gave me occasion in the above-mentioned arithmetica apocalyptica , to shew that daniel's seven semi-times not the days nor months is the true authentick eventual measure to compute the fulfilling of the medial-visions by . and i may here add , that if the fulfilling of the vision of the rising of the witnesses and the fall of babylon be enlarged to an utter ruine of the antichristian kingdom , and advancing the reformation throughout christendom , and to the extending the last blast of the second wo-trumpet or sixth trumpet , or the beginning of the seventh , and consequently the three triumphant expressions of ioy till then , ( for they must be contracted or enlarged together ) i having proved so plainly that all the vials , which are so many plagues upon antichrist follow the sixth trumpet , and those triumphs or doxologies , chap. . v. , , . chap. . v. . and chap. . v. . there will be no time for the pouring out these vials till antichrist be gone , upon whom they are to be poured . which shews plainly that the success of the months war with the saints or witnesses is not to be , as it were , continued from the reformation till an universal rising of the witnesses or full and final ruine of babylon at the expiration of the prophetical months , or years , but that the reformation past is the adequate success of that months war or daniel's time , and times , and half a time , which is equivalent thereto , and the onely authentick measure of the truth of the events of the medial-visions . and forasmuch as many authentick copies , ( apoc. . . ) instead of [ to continue ] have [ to make war ] forty two months , and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if you leave out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , signifies here to act at pleasure , prosperously , freely and unmasterly , or untrollably as judicious interpreters have noted ; and since however the beast cannot make war before he continue , and that therefore his continuance at least commences as high as his making war , and both are said to be months ; it is plain hence , that the beast's continuance and his war do perfectly synchronize , and as one ends , so must the other , at the same time . but the rising of the witnesses is the issue and end of the months war , therefore the continuance of that state of the beast who is said to continue months ends at the rising of the witnesses or fall of the tenth part of the city . which is a plain intimation that those interpreters are in the right that interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , v. . ( if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be left out ) to act at pleasure with uncontrollableness and success . which state of the beast ceased at the rising of the witnesses and fall of the tenth part of the city . for then was he over-mastered in a large part of his dominions , and he could not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , act so freely and domineeringly as he did before . so that all the pretence of prolonging the months continuance of the beast , apoc. . . beyond the time of the issue of the months war , v. . and then at the months end precisely taken , of quite extinguishing his power , plainly vanishes ; the months onely pointing at the entireness of his reigning before he came into that broken condition , and not at the time of his reign at large . of so great use is that little piece for the preventing mistakes touching this matter . and for appendicula apocalyptica , by maintaining mr. mede's interpretation of the seals against mr. durham's , as also his symmetral times of the church antecedent to the asymmetral , it does plainly strengthen the right of monarchy and episcopacy from the holy writ against such as are otherwise affected . and this is all that i have to say by way of preface touching the whole book , nor shall add any thing more to detain thee from the perusal thereof , but my prayers , that thou maist reade to thy own edification , and that what thou readest may either beget or encrease in thee a sober mind , and sensible of thy duty to god and to thy prince , and to all that are in autority under him , whether in church or state. farewell . the errata correct thus .   for reade pag. . lin . . seraphimus , seraphinus ibid. l. . peresius pererius p. . l. . now not p. . l. . his this p. . l. . from being for being p. . l. . seat seal p. . l. . regenerating degenerating p. . l. . trumpet , might trumpet might p. . l. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. . l. . toils evils p. . l. . world word p. . l. . most of those most of all those p. . l. . primity primitiae p. . l. . vails vials p. . l. . vial-angel first vial-angel ▪ p. . l. . game gain p. . l. . partly party p. . l. . in the is the p. . l. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. . l. . motiminous moliminous p. . l. . many main p. . l. . arme army p. . l. . aetymological etymological p. . l. . rom from p. . l. . synopsis of synopsis p. . l. . to the as the p. . l. . seven seventh p. . l. . why has why has not an answer to several remarks upon dr. henry more his apocalypsis apocalypseos , written by s. e. mennonite , and published in english by the answerer : together with his answers thereunto . jam . iii. , . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . london , printed by m. f. for walter kettilby . . remarks upon apocalypsis apocalypseos . chap. i. vers. . both here and vers . . the direction to the seven churches is rendred , [ to the catholick church distinguished into seven successions , ] and so no literal sense , but onely a prophetical sense regarded in the epistles . ans. it was no part of the expositor's scope to meddle with the literal sense , but to give a continued , coherent , prophetical sense onely , of this whole book of prophecies , the apocalypse . ver. . kings and priests are doubtlesly to be taken here , as in ch . . v. . and hast made us to our god kings and priests , and we shall reign on the earth . so that the sense here given is a straining of the text from a proper literal , to a forced metaphorical sense . ans. the sense is very easie , unforced and exceeding usefull , and a fit caution against such hot and heady saints , who would be presently up , and reigning on the earth before they have attained to the kingdom of heaven within them , and have become masters of their own earthly minds . reigning upon earth seems here in the text , on purpose omitted , to give way to such an usefull and edifying interpretation as is here given by the expositor . ver. . our saviour's being cloathed with a garment down to his foot , and girt about the paps with a golden girdle , seems to respect not onely his priestly , but also his kingly office , the garment signifying the first , and the girdle that righteousness which was the girdle of his loins , and that faithfulness which was the girdle of his reins , esa. ch . . v. . where he is described as a glorious , spiritual prince . and as in the epistle to the philadelphian church , his calling himself holy and true , respects both his offices of priest and king ; so his garment seems to refer to the one , and his girdle to the truth wherewith he was girded , whereby he is our prince . ans. that his priestly office is here aimed at , is without question , and the expositor is for such expositions as are most unquestionable . if what is added had been as certain , he would have taken it in . but it seems not onely uncertain , but unlikely . for kings wear not their girdles about their paps , but about their loins ; but the priests did . and aaron's girdle was interwoven with gold . see cornelius à lapide on the place . and lastly , as for [ holy and true ] truth as well as holiness , respects his priestly office according as the seventy render vrim and thummim , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ver. . to say that the voice of christ being as the sound of many waters does plainly discover , that christ is here represented as in union with his church , is scarce sense . for the union of him with his church being spiritual , can badly be represented by the sound of a voice . nor does what is said here of his voice , signifie more than what is described , psal. . viz. that the voice of the lord is upon many waters , and is powerfull and full of majesty , &c. and though waters in the prophetick style are used to signifie a multitude , yet it follows not that they must always do so , but may also be used in a literal sense , as they are , ch . . v. . the sea gave up the dead , &c. ans. whenas it is said expresly , that his voice is as the sound of many waters , and waters in the prophetick style signifie multitudes of people ; what can be more easie and obvious than to interpret it , that his voice was as the voice of a multitude ; and how fitly does that then signifie , that christ is here represented in union with his church , through whose mouths , by the breathing of his holy spirit in them , he speaks to the world , &c. and it is not the expositor's conceit alone . st. gregory , tychonius , haymo , seraphimus and peresius interpret it of the sound of the gospel , which was preached by zealously inspired emissaries , and the truth thereof testified by innumerable witnesses in union with christ by his spirit . and indeed what can better signifie the spiritual union of the church of christ with his living members , than that all their voices should be , as it were , one voice , breathed out from the mouth of the son of god ? for that shews that they also have one heart , and one spirit , which is the spirit of the son of god , with which they are all united . ver. . iohn's falling at the feet of christ as dead , proceeded not from his fear , that the vision might portend great evil to the people of god , but from such an astonishment as made daniel , chap. . on the like vision of christ , there fall on his face in a dead sleep , having no strength remaining in him , and his comeliness turn into corruption , and made a great quaking fall upon them that were with him , though they saw not the vision . and as also made ioshua fall on his face on his appearance to him , as a captain of the host of the lord. ans. that it was not onely from the glory , but the terrour of the vision , his legs standing in fire , and a sword coming out of his mouth , that caused iohn to fall down as dead , appears farther from his comforting of him , in telling him , that himself was dead , but is now alive , and has the keys of hell and death , &c. to fortifie him against the dread of persecutions , that even then were exercising the church ; and iohn might well suspect that this vision did portend greater . ver. . [ the things which thou hast seen ] respects the precedent vision of the seven churches : the following words [ the things that are and shall be hereafter ] should be [ both the things which are and shall be hereafter ] and so make the vision contain both a literal and prophetical sense ; whereas the taking of the words in the sense supposed , viz. to signifie the past ephesine state of the church , and the present smyrnean state of it , and the future state of the other churches , destroys the literal sense , and also spoils the coherence , not onely with the precedent vision , but also with the following verse . ans. this remark upon the expositor is very impertinent , he professedly having nothing to doe with the literal sense . but that account which he gives in reference to the prophetical , is so easie , unstrained and natural [ hast seen ] so plainly denoting the time past , that d. pareus on the place writes thus : ità rest apocalypseos christus ipse in tres ordines distinguit . quasdam jam viderat iohannes inde ab exordio evangelii sub nerone & sequentibus imperatoribus ad domitianum usque gestas ; quasdem in praesenti videbat , majorem partem de futuris porrò visurus erat . how naturally then , the whole time of the church being cast into seven intervals , ephesine past , smyrnean current , pergamenian and the rest to come , are those words [ write the things which thou hast seen , and the things that are , and the things that shall be hereafter ] interpreted as the expositor has interpreted them ? and how fitly do they cohere with what follows ? 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — which being the accusative case , shews plainly that the seven candlesticks take in all the seven intervals of the church , past , present and to come . vpon the notes of chap. . rem . . the seven churches in asia , refers not to its signifying fundamentum , thereby to signifie all the churches that keep the apostolical foundation in doctrine and practice , for that is implied in calling them churches , and christ owns none to be churches farther than they do so , without which doing they cannot be united to him , and so cannot be of his church which is his body . but asia here alludes both to its signifying the earth , and also action . ( of both which see exposition of the seven churches ) . so that [ to the seven churches in asia ] does signifie , to the seven churches in their state of action and conflict , or militant state on earth ; and this in distinction from that blessed state of rest and joy in that great jubilee of the world the millennium , which the labours of this militant state will end with . and so the prophetick sense of the epistles reacheth but to the commencement of the millennium . ans. it is sufficient that others would call those churches that did not keep to the foundation , but added doctrines and practices contrary thereto ; and therefore asia's signifying fundamentum , is not needlesly superadded to design the truly catholick church . that asia signifies action , is granted on both sides ; but it is illogical to deduce conflict from action , and the arguing à genere ad speciem , as if one should say , it is a living creature , therefore it is a man. though all conflict is action , yet all action is not conflict . this is foisted in to serve a false hypothesis , and to exclude the millennium out of the intervals , and to make them reach but to the beginning thereof . rem . . there 's no need of the ephesine state of the church its ending at the beginning of the persecution in nero's time , but it may continue after , as the pergamenian state does continue through the succeeding epistles . for as the advancement of the church to that state was from christianity's being received by autority , so the continuing of autority to profess that religion is a continuing that state , though from a new emerging condition the church may receive a new denomination . and so the ephesine state being agreeable to the whole primitive time , though the emerging persecution does give the denomination of a new state to the church , yet it destroys not the former that is consistent therewith . that the ephesine church was not tainted with nicolaitism , is no argument that it expired before the beginning of that sect , but rather of the contrary . for if that sect was not then in being , it was no commendation of the church not to be tainted therewith , nor could it be said to have it . ans. it is sufficient that from a new emerging condition the church may receive a new denomination , and so begin a distinct interval ; and thus will the whole succession of time , from the beginning of the church to the end of the world , be distinguished into so many intervals . so limited , as history complying with the characters of the prophecy , will ratifie , which is all that is intended . and thus the ephesine state or interval will be naturally terminated upon the commencement of persecution in nero's time , the smyrnean then beginning ; and the smyrnean end upon the emerging of the church out of persecution by the emperours turning christian , and the pergamenian then begin . but , the church quickly degenerating into idolatry , and persecuting the apostolick christians , and so long a time continuing so , from some remarkable change of the modes of their idolatry and persecution , and other degeneracies of the church , this pergamenian denomination may cease , and the degenerate church be called thyatirian , and the true church be said to be , the church in pergamus , and the church in thyatira , because it was within the jurisdiction of the degenerate church so denominated , &c. as for that touching nicolaitism , it is a mere cavil or quibble . for it plainly was a commendation of the ephesine interval , that there was not yet that uncleanness found in it that was after set on foot by the nicolaitans . and the nicolaitans being christians , they could no sooner appear , but the church ipso facto would be defiled by them . wherefore the ephesine interval of the church being now defiled by them , it 's a sign that interval comes short of the times of the nicolaitans . chap. . vers. . the promise here to the overcomer being onely that he shall not be hurt of the second death , gives no assurance thereby of being partaker of the first resurrection . the crown of life which is promised to them that are faithfull to death must certainly be meant of the reward in the other life . and what reward would it be to the sufferers unto death to have their successours obtain the imperial crown ? besides , take it to signifie the reward in the other life , and it will so agree with what follows the epiphonema , the one promise explaining the other , whereas the senses here given of both are so different as to make them badly sute for promises of the same epistle . ans. the promise here to the overcomer , according to the elliptical intimations in the apocalypse is the promise of partaking of the first resurrection , and so has the ancient church expounded it . and to ask what reward it would be to the sufferers unto death to have their successours to obtain the imperial crown , is to tell us without asking , that selfishness , or want of that unselfinteressed love , which makes us prefer the publick good of the kingdom of christ before our own , causes the remarker to make such a weak objection as this . and if the crown of life , and not being hurt by the second death explained each other , and were but the same thing , it would be a needless tautology : whenas taken in these different senses it is a double promise to encourage the smyrnean church to suffer martyrdom , the one that their sufferings shall turn the roman empire christian , the other that they for their martyrdom shall partake of the first resurrection , a privilege peculiar to martyrs , &c. to which may be added that it is observable where there is any promise or threatning before the epiphonema it indicates things political touching this state on earth , but if placed after the epiphonema , the invisible state and concerns of the other world . and why may not one epistle use both these arguments , they having both force to persuade to the same thing . vers. . the pergamenian state commencing at the emperours professing christianity , the testimony and suffering of antipas is not to be applied to the pope onely , but does primarily respect that haughty imperious spirit which was generally observed in patriarchs and bishops after they grew so great through the protection and favour and bounty of princes , which begat such fierce contentions amongst themselves and furious ragings against their adversaries or opposers . ans. the sufferings and testimony of antipas does chiefly respect those that were martyred by the church of rome under the pope in this interval , which is bounded by the ending of the war against the waldenses and albigenses which were slain with the sword . these things are certain and conspicuous , as is made out in the exposition of the seven churches . as for smaller matters if any have the like evidence let them add them that will. vers. . [ i will come unto thee quickly ] is taken in a distinct sense from the following words . and i will fight against them , &c. whenas plainly the coming quickly is to fight , &c. and this threatning to fight with the sword of his mouth is against the true church , which by transgression had deserved such sharp rebuke , and therefore cannot be intended against the enemies of it . ans. what strange confidence is this upon no ground at all ? i will come unto thee , i will fight against them . is not [ thee ] and [ them ] sufficient notes of diversification , that they are spoke touching distinct , nay opposite , parties , the one his church , the other their adversaries , whence he says he will fight against them ? to all which you may add , that this is the political prediction preceding the epiphenema . vers. . thyatira does , as in all other epistles , signifie the state of the true church that 's written to , and not of the antichristian church at that time ; and therefore it cannot refer to the making the virgin mary the daughter of god , but alluding to that signification of the word may signifie that state of the church wherein the autority of christ began to gain the ascendent of worldly powers , and which therefore may be reckoned the infancy of his kingdom ; and in that respect the church as to that time may be called a daughter , though otherwise styled a woman . which time we suppose to commence from the expulsion of the goths out of italy ( whose reign there was the seventh head that was to continue but a little time ) immediately after which the popes grew so great as to cause the exarches first to remove to ravenna and after to be expell'd italy , and so prospered with their usurped autority as by degrees to make all the foreign nations that had overrun the empire and setled in it to be subject to them . he therefore gaining such rule by his false pretensions to be christ's vicar , does evidence the reality of that autority , by usurpation whereof he grew so potent , as also did the roman hierarchy , who oft proved able to sway the states of kingdoms , to depose their kings , &c. since therefore the usurpers of christ's autority , grew so potent and prevalent thereby , such as were redeemed from the world to become members of his kingdom , and so were really accompanied with the power of his spirit proportionably to the state they had attained to , must surely be likewise of great prevalency in their several stations though but of private condition . hence so great power is ascribed to the two witnesses , ch . . and hence the great persecution and war at length was raised against the saints by the antichristian powers to suppress the emerging power of christ's kingdom in them , which fulfilled the other sense of thyatira , by the multitude of martyrs sacrificed , &c. ans. in the epistle to the church in pergamus christ says , i know thy works and where thou dwellest even where satan's seat is . which undoubtedly is the see of rome , and therefore the church in pergamus is the apostolick church within the jurisdiction of the roman there termed in the prophetick style pergamenian , and so undoubtedly thyatirian in this interval . and therefore barely to contradict this without any reason added , is mere wantonness and humour . but now the pergamenian interval ending in the year , when the pope's legate amelin made an end of the albigensian war with trancavel , bastard-son of the earl of beziers , what an extravagance is it to say that the thyatirian interval began near seven hundred years before the pergamenian ended ? the faithfull martyr antipas by his account should be slain in the thyatirian interval , whenas the prophecy places him in the pergamenian . and that the slaying of antipas respects and typifies those vast slaughters of the waldenses and albigenses with me there is not ( nor can there be with any one else that well considers it ) the least doubt imaginable ; and therefore i make no question but the pergamenian interval reaches so far as to include them , whence the thyatirian denomination must of necessity begin after their time , nor can the distinct denominations which constitute the intervals interfere one with another . again , a daughter in the prophetick style is a delicate damosel in her flourishing age , not an infant ; and christ's true church upon the expulsion of the goths was so far from getting the ascendent over the worldly powers that she grew more and more enslaved under the power of antichrist , under the bondage of that roman pharaoh , than which there is not a more worldly power under the sun , and was held under this power till the sardian interval , viz. till the rising of the witnesses , that is to say , till the late happy reformation begun by luther , &c. this therefore is a very rude rush against manifest truth , as if the remarker did not mark what he did or said . else he would not say that the popes caused the exarches to remove their seat to ravenna , whenas no history that i meet with makes any mention of any other seat of them but that . but such slips as these i could willingly wink at , if the main of the remark had any solidity in it . but how lax and lank it all is , the intelligent will easily discern by these few hints i have given . vers. . i will kill her children with death , seems here to signifie a spiritual death and curse ensuing the same , and so will better cohere with the following words , all the churches shall know that i am he that searcheth the reins and heart , &c. and is of the like signification with what is threatned zach. . against such as fought against ierusalem and would not keep the feast of tabernacles . ans. those two expositions given by the expositor are plain , and events answerable . but no events have answered or are likely to answer to the other as to the strange miraculous diseases . and for her children to be killed by a spiritual death it would be no loss to her , they would be the more alive to her and snug in her bosome , and be the closer thyatirians . and for the coherence of what follows it is sufficiently perspicuous in the other plain and unstrained way . vers. . giving power over the nations respects not the governours and people that were reformed . for they gained no power thereby , but freedom onely from the thraldom they were formerly under . but if this respects any thing of the reformation , ( which i conceive it does not , and that the thyatirian interval reaches not so far ) it must signifie the chief leaders in the reformation , who through the cause of god they were engaged in attained to bear so great sway and make so great changes , &c. ans. those that were under the rule and power of the nations ( even whole provinces and kingdoms of them ) that is to say , under the power of the paganochristians , shall vanquish and overcome the paganochristians so as to turn them to their own religion , or those that remain of them unconverted to have them under their girdle , &c. this therefore is a mere cavil . the easie sense is , whereas suppose the antichristian powers bore sway over the kingdoms or nations of england , scotland , ireland , denmark , swedeland , &c. under the thyatirian interval : in the sardian interval the apostolick christians , such as christ speaks to in the church of thyatira shall bear the rule over these nations . and the ruling them with a rod of iron , and breaking them a-pieces like a potter's vessel , is shattering a-pieces the antichristian compages they were held together in before , and subjecting them to the gospel of christ : this shall be effected upon several nations , that were before paganochristian , in the sardian interval . what can be more easie and clear ? vers. . there 's but one morning star and that is bright , so that the morning-star and the bright morning-star must signifie the same . and they are so far from signifying several states of the church , that the one is spoken onely of christ himself , viz. he calls himself the bright morning-star . but what the morning-star is which is promised to the overcomers in the thyatirian church , is hardly to be understood farther than we are partakers thereof , but seems to be of like signification with pet. . . both seeming to respect an addition of light of life to the light of truth before received . ans. there 's but one morning star indeed , which is christ , who is here signified , but in a political consideration as prince of his empire on earth , which may have degrees of largeness and lustre . and that christ is here understood in a political sense the foregoing verse intimates , that speaks of the enlargement of his kingdom . of which also the subsequence of the epiphonema farther assures us according to the rule noted in the exposition of the seven churches . and where christ is called the bright morning star , apoc. . . it is not spoke there simply of his person , abstracting from his kingdom on earth , because he says immediately before it , i am the off-spring of david , which is a challenging his right to all the kingdoms of the earth upon that score of his descent from david the king to whom god had made the promise , ps. . and this following the description of his glorious reign in the new ierusalem , and relating to those times , he saith not , as in the sardian interval , i am the morning-star ; but , the bright morning-star , by reason of his exceeding great lustre and glory in his millennial reign . why should any one wink against so clear a light and inviolable coherence and congruity of things ? but why he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 instead of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the sardian interval , the expositor has noted in his exposition of the seven churches . chap. . vers. . walking with me in white , is in this verse made signifie that conversing with christ by his spirit , whereby they shall be inabled to walk with him in all innocency and integrity . but in the following verse , the being cloathed in white rayment , which is the same with walking in white is taken in a different sense , viz. to be prosperous in the propagating the affairs of christ's kingdom . also in the said following verse , those words , i will not blot his name out of the book of life , which interpret the foregoing words , ( viz. that the walking in white , and the being cloathed with white rayment , is the walking in the light of life , whereby we become heirs of the crown of life , and so written in the book of life ) are yet taken to signifie a continued succession of such men to the end of the world , whereas the continuance of such a succession is no reward to the sardian church , though it may be joy to them as they are concerned for the propagation of religion . ans. if there be any errour in this interpretation , it is , in that the expositor has not expounded [ to walk with me in white ] in the same sense he expounded [ to be cloathed in white rayment ] which has a political sense , and signifies the good success of affairs with them . for the remarker was to remember that the expositor was giving the prophetical sense of these epistles , not the literal , moral , or spiritual . and that therefore according to that solid rule set down , that the declarations touching the success of the church that is writ to , before the epiphonema , signifies politically , so this being cloathed in white is to be expounded accordingly . but being whiteness , signifies as well innocency as prosperity , and innocency is a fitting these few names in sardis for their prosperous success , that i made use of these different significations so well subordinated one to another , deserves not to be cavilled at , but rather to be approved . and correspondently to this prophetical sense which must be political [ i will not blot his name out of the book of life ] is to be understood , that these few names are the durable seed of such a church as shall last to the end of the world. but to say , this is no reward to them that they have such a durable succession , is a reproach to the remarker , as if he were a stranger to the true christian state , and knew not the gratifications of a soul regenerate into the living image of christ , who with his church is one mystical body in succession through all ages ; and therefore what any part of them suffer for the present , if it make for the greater good of the church for the future , they take themselves to be amply rewarded by so happy an event . and such a success as causes joy to them , as the remarker acknowledges , must be a proportionable good to them , and if consequent upon their labours and sufferings , a reward thereof . so that such allegations as these are mere affected cavils . vers. . the opened door that cannot be shut , and the little strength signifie not any outward force or army , but that spiritual strength that is attained to by faith , working by love , which makes us become freed by the truth from the thraldom of the worldly powers , and gain that enterance into the kingdom of our lord as never to fall . both this and the four following verses do shew the philadelphian church to be in a militant state in progress to the victorious state of rest and glory in the millennium . and what is said in these verses , is spoken of the entire state of the philadelphian church , and therefore cannot be referred to the seventh vial as the commencement thereof . but to instance in their signifying a militant state , &c. the promise , v. . to make them of the synagogue of satan , who say they are iews , to come and worship , &c. does plainly shew the church to be in conflict with such enemies as pretend to be true christians , and yet refuse subjection to the true church , which cannot agree with the millennial state , when satan shall be bound and all enemies put under the feet of christ , &c. the promise , v. . to keep from the hour of temptation that shall come upon all the world , &c. does evidence and a state far different from that of the millennium , and does seem to signifie that time of great trouble precedent thereto , dan. . the promise also , v. . to come quickly and warning to hold fast , &c. does also plainly shew that the time of the millennium , when god will reward all his servants , ch . . . is not then come , though it be near approaching . and the several promises , v. . made to him that overcometh , do also evidence the church to be then , as we have said , in a militant state. the first of those promises , viz. to make the overcomer a pillar in the temple of god , seems to signifie , that he shall be of great rule and autority . for the worshippers in the temple do chiefly respect the mosaical or ruling judicial office , as we shew , ch . . . the next promise , viz. he shall go no more out , &c. does plainly signifie a militant state , which he that overcometh is promised a cessation and rest from . the three following promises are all much to the same purpose , signifying the great manifestation of the glory of god in such as overcome , whereby it shall be visible to all to whom they belong , &c. ans. here again the remarker forgetting that we are upon the prophetical sense of these epistles , writhes his fancy into a moral or spiritual interpretation , though i will not take notice from what kind of spirit this may be . most undoubtedly the prophetical sense of this eighth verse is political , and denotes the uncontrollable success of the church of philadelphia . but to wrest it to a moral or spiritual sense , as it is a prophecy , is to doe violence to the scope of the holy ghost therein . this little force or army , as it is indeed little compared with the other great appearance at the battel of the great day of god almighty , are no other than those that follow the noble heros on the white horse , apoc. ch . . and the boanerges's thundring over the great city , divided into three parts . so that the commencement of this philadelphian interval is in the seventh vial , but reaches to the fourth thunder . which consideration silences all the pretended reasonings of the remarker , against the philadelphian intervals comprehending the millennial reign of christ. for the entire state of the philadelphian church is comprised in that interval according to our hypothesis , and according to truth , as shall appear . i say therefore briefly , that i acknowledge the philadelphian church in part of her interval to be militant , that is to the expiration of the seventh vial or first thunder . but under the second thunder according to promise she obtains the title of the city of god , which is the new ierusalem , which cometh down out of heaven from god , just as it is described , apoc. . . what can be more plain and express ? philadelphia therefore must be this new ierusalem , as sure as christ will keep faith in his promises . so that the philadelphian interval reaches so far as the second thunder inclusively . but that it reacheth through the millennium also , may appear to the unprejudiced from what follows . [ and i will write upon him my new name ] where grotius expresly upon this very passage says . hoc novum nomen christi est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this new name of christ is , king of kings and lord of lords . which therefore must undoubtedly respect his millennial empire , which yet is given to this philadelphian church in whom he shall thus reign . and grotius again , apoc. . . hoc est nomen illud novum , says he , quod innui , cap. . . verè novum si non jus spectes , sed juris eventum . for though he had always a right , yet then at last he was in full possession when his millennial empire was erected , which was a new thing , and not before , and he but newly actual king of kings and lord of lords . but besides this ( keeping still to the prophetical sense , which is undoubtedly political , ) that first promise , him that overcometh will i make a pillar in the temple of my god , and he shall go no more out , implies plainly the perpetuity of the philadelphian church to the worlds end , though otherwise modify'd and differently denominated in the laodicean interval . here , him that overcomes , respects the whole body of the philadelphian church , and therefore the philadelphian church shall reach to the worlds end , though it afterward vary in modification and denomination , namely , after the expiration of the millennium . he must wilfully wink , and perversely shut his eyes that sees not this truth clearly already . and the remarker seems to doe so in so violently wresting the signification of a pillar in the temple of god , which so naturally signifies stability and permanency , to the signifying great rule and autority , upon a dark private notion of his own , ch . . . ( which we will examine when we come to it ) as if he were wiser than christ , and knew his meaning better than himself . for he plainly expounds this pillar , of stability and permanency in saying , and he shall go no more out . so stable and permanent shall this philadelphian state be , as a pillar in a temple , whose removal would hazard the whole edifice . and this terrestrial scene shall fail so soon as this philadelphian church shall cease to be . this passage he thus mis-interprets , and those other that are so close and home to the business he shuffles off with this general account , that they manifest the glory of god in them that overcome . but they manifest such a glory as belongs to the new ierusalem and the millennial empire of christ , if we can assure our selves of the sense of any passage from the easie , plain and natural signification of words and expressions . and now as i was going to say , let us add to all this , that as the ephesine interval represents the truly catholick and apostolick church as something declining in her zeal and fervour , and threatned therefore with persecution : and as the smyrnean interval represents her in her persecution under the pagan jurisdiction , but quitting her self couragiously and victoriously upon promised success , that their sufferings would win the imperial crown at last , and the roman empire turn christian ; as the pergamenian interval represents the same church exalted out of her pagan persecutions , but , upon the degeneracy of the church into superstition , idolatry and cruelty , suffering again under a paganochristian jurisdiction . and as the next interval , viz. thyatirian , represents the said catholick and apostolick church suffering under the same paganochristian jurisdiction , but quitting themselves nobly , supported by the promise , that these sufferers under pergamus and thyatira shall have the rule and possession of whole nations at the next turn of things , and respit from their persecutions and martyrdoms , viz. in the sardian interval : in which there is no complaint of eating things sacrificed unto idols , as in the pergamenian and thyatirian intervals , nor any intimations of martyrdom for not complying therewith , but onely a complaint of that imperfection of state and signal remisness from what they were at first when newly come out of their sufferings . which sardian interval therefore does plainly represent the state of the catholick church emerged out of the gross corruptions and barbarous persecutions of the roman church , though themselves yet are not so good as they should be ; although there be in it some few names , some few excellent persons that are as it were the seed of a better state of the true church to come , &c. now therefore , say i , as these five intervals represent the state of the truly catholick and apostolick church , so plainly , amply and lively , so does the philadelphian interval the succeeding state thereof , where is not onely no idolatry to be tempted to , nor any martyrdom for refusing to comply therewith , but also no spot nor wrinkle , nor any such thing but it is entirely holy and without blemish . this is the description of the sixth interval or succession of states in the church catholick and apostolick . and therefore i demand here of any man that has any spark of judgment and sagacity left in him , what time this can be but such that includes in it the ierusalem state and blessed millennial empire of christ , which cannot be more pure ▪ perfect and glorious than this state of the philadelphian church . which is a prophetical description of some state of the church as is acknowledged on both hands , and which is to succeed the sardian , and also that there will be a blessed millennium on earth . wherefore this consideration alone might assure us of this truth . but when there is farther added ; that on him that overcomes , ( that is on the philadelphian church ) i will write the name of the city of my god , which is new ierusalem , which cometh down out of heaven from my god , &c. can it be any thing but affected stupour or some strange invincible prejudice , ( a prophetical sense being allow'd ) that any one should doubt but that the times of the new ierusalem and millennial empire of christ are included in the philadelphian interval , which was the thing to be demonstrated . vers. , . christ's coming in to sup with them that open to his knocking , does signifie his receiving them to his marriage-supper . and his granting to them that overcome to sit down on his throne , signifies their reigning with him in the millennium . and these being two promises to the same purpose to be fulfilled in the millennial state , and being made to the victorious in the laodicean church , does manifest the same to be in a militant state precedent to the millennium . nor is the degeneracy of the laodicean church competent to the millennial state , of which there 's no account that there should be any such change in it , nor is it imaginable how it should , it being established in that glorious state of righteousness as is described , and having all occasion of evil removed by the devil 's being bound and all things being made new . and though he be to be loosed again , yet it is not to deceive or work any change in those that belong to the new ierusalem , but to seduce the nations about it , who through his deceit are to be stirred up in enmity against it , though before they brought their glory into it and walkt in the light of it . ans. to pervert the genuine sense of this prophecy , here the remarker interprets that politically that he should interpret mystically or spiritually as he has in other places interpreted that spiritually which should have been expounded politically . so sinuous and serpentine a thing is beloved falshood . from v. . to v. . the declension of the philadelphian state after the millennium in their remisness in pursuing spiritual gifts and graces , and breathing after the living image of christ in themselves and in their propagating of his kingdom , is prefigured or predescribed ( the church being depressed then into a new denomination of laodicean ) and they sharply rebuked and terribly threatned if they do not repent of these immoralities or dispiritualities , if i may so speak . and thus continuedly in the same moral sense he still farther upbraids them , that though he , by the searching rebukes of his spirit , knocks at the door of their consciences to awaken them out of their remisness and litherly formalness , yet they are insensible of his call , being satisfied to celebrate the lord's supper without idolatry still indeed , ( as it was in the popish mass ) but also without any breathing after the fruits thereof , our living union with christ and spiritual communion with him ; and yet he tells them for their comfort as well as reproves them , that if they will open to him through constant obedience to his dictates that they shall fully enjoy his communion and be in a truly living union of spirit with him , which is the true meaning and scope of the lord's supper , and which will recover them again into that wholsome state the philadelphians stuck to universally in the former interval . that this is thus spiritually or morally to be understood and not politically , as the marriage supper of the lamb is , apoc. . , , . is farther manifest in that it is said , if any one hear my voice and open the door , i will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me , viz. at his home ; they will sup together there , which therefore is no invitation of the party abroad to sup . wherefore what a fond thing is this to apply christ's coming into our hearts and souls , and entertaining there spiritual communion with us , such as is signified by the communion of the lord's supper , unto that political sense of things , the jews adjoining themselves to the church of christ , and acknowledging him their messias , their head and husband in the above cited place ? this is enormously to strain and pervert the sense of scripture . as is also that conceit of interpreting [ to sit down on his throne ] of their reigning with him in the millennium . for being there is no mention here of such conflicts and persecutions and martyrdoms in this laodicean state , to which an earthly deliverance and victory , and an earthly crown and dominion was promised in the smyrnean , pergamenian and thyatirian intervals , nor any mention of the word of patience , &c. the throne that is here promised must be of another nature , that is , a place or seat in heaven as universally it is interpreted by expositors . and being the conflict the laodiceans are here exhorted to is the subduing their carnal minds and affections , and through mortification to be renewed unto the heavenly image of christ by the spirit of life in the new birth , which is the true and onely method of attaining to this heavenly throne or crown of glory , it is very unnatural to understand it of any other throne than that . but they being roused thus up by the exhortation of christ to shake off that dulness and torpor of spirit and dead formality and carnality , and to be enlivened again into a quick sense of their duty by virtue of their regeneration into his living image , that of st. paul to the ephesians , ch . . will be fulfilled in them . when we were dead in our sins he hath quickened us together with christ , and hath raised us up together and made us sit ( there is the promised throne ) together in heavenly places in christ iesus . and that it is an heavenly seat or throne , that passage in the promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , does naturally insinuate according to that in the [ te deum ] when thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers . his ascending into heaven and sitting at the right hand of god was the consequence of his sufferings . in which heaven there are many seats or mansions , as he elsewhere tells us , which undoubtedly he has prepared for every one that overcomes . as christ after he overcame , sate down in his father's throne which he gave him ; so all judgment being given to the son , he that overcomes shall sit down in a throne or seat in heaven of christ's giving , as grotius seems to interpret the words . for it is most natural to conceive the throne of christ and of other victors , though not of equal majesty and glory , yet to be of the same nature , that is to say , heavenly , as the current of expositors runs . and it was an heavenly throne christ ascended after he had overcome , not an earthly millennial throne , which according to the remarker , he had not obtained in the laodicean interval , whenas he says expresly he was sate down already in the throne his father gave him upon his overcoming . and therefore the like thrones he promiseth other overcomers . and lastly , it being so plainly demonstrated before , that the millennium is comprised in the philadelphian interval , it is impossible that this throne promised to the laodicean victor should be understood of reigning with christ in the millennium . so that i conceive it is plain enough , that as this epistolar prophecy is acknowledged by the remarker to reach from the beginning of the church to the commencement of the millennium , so upon better reason that it reacheth to the end of the world . for when the slate of the church is divided into so many successions , and prefigured in a prophetical manner , why should two such notable intervals as that of the millennium and the after game of gog and magog , &c. be omitted ? it were a rude and immodest thing in me to suppose the spirit of prophecy defectuous in this point rather than suspect mine own judgment and slowness that may hinder my discerning the completeness and perfection of this prophecy . but the remarker produces reasons why we should think the prophecy of the seven churches reaches no farther than the commencement of the millennium . the first is , because christ invites the laodiceans to the marriage supper of the lamb , and promises the overcomer a throne in the millennium . the second , that there is no account given that the millennial state should ever degenerate into the laodicean . thirdly and lastly , that it is unimaginable that the millennium , being established in that glorious state of righteousness that is described , and all occasions of evil removed , the devil being bound , nor to be let loose again upon those that belong to the new ierusalem , but onely upon the nations ; that the millennial state should degenerate into the laodicean . but i have already answered the first by shewing that christ's promising to sup with him that opens to him the door is no invitation to the marriage supper of the lamb , nor the promised throne an earthly throne in the millennium , but a promise of the heavenly kingdom which this throne signifies . according as our saviour promises his apostles , luk. . i appoint unto you a kingdom as my father has appointed unto me ( which hugely fits this place , to him that overcometh will i grant to sit with me in my throne , even as i also overcame and am sate down with my father in his throne ) that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom , and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of israel . which place is parallel to that of matth. . . verily i say unto you , ye that have followed me , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( which grotius expounds by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and munster by resurrectio mortuorum ; and calvin says , non dubium est quin hîc de extremo die loquatur christus ) at the resurrection when the son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory , ye also shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of israel . so that this is also a throne of iudicature , a laodicean throne , from which this interval in one respect has its denomination , because at the close thereof christ with his saints will judge the people , which makes this promise the more suitable . and that the saints should have their thrones of judicature then to judge the people with christ no man can much marvel at , that considers that of saint paul , cor. . . know ye not that we shall judge the angels ? that we shall be co-approvers of the sentence of christ against the devils and wicked souls at the last day ? which shews how fitly , unforcedly and naturally this throne here promised is understood of the heavenly throne , as i have demonstrated it cannot be understood of an earthly throne in the millennium . to the second i answer , that there is a very good account out of the apocalypse to be given why we should think that the millennial or philadelphian estate will at last degenerate into the laodicean . it is true there is no express imputation of any fault upon the beloved city in the prophecy of the opened book , but that after the millennium there is a change of affairs is thence plain , it telling us of the loosing of the devil , and the endeavours of gog and magog to subdue the holy city , but the reason in that prophecy is omitted , and it is the artifice of concealment in the apocalypse to omit things in one vision and supply them in another , and the supplement is manifest in this vision of the seven churches . for the laodicean interval succeeding the philadelphian which i have demonstrated to include in it the millennial reign of christ , must needs synchronize with that state of the church which is after the millennial empire . wherefore the reproofs of the church of laodicea for their lukewarmness and remisness in the affairs of the kingdom of christ , and neglecting to retain and propagate that inward state of the spirit of life in the new birth , but resting in a dead , formal , though otherwise unexceptionable , external worship of god , &c. this shews the reason of the devil 's being let loose again , that he might raise stirs against the church , and so they might reflect upon their condition , and repent them of their lukewarmness and remisness . which hypothesis is more agreeable to the iustice of god and his care over his church , than that he should loose the devil again and raise storms against his church no man knows why nor wherefore . to the last i answer , that it is very easily conceivable , though the church does at last become so pure and spotless , so holy and righteous , yet that in process of time it may decline . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in this state of mortality nothing can be absolutely firm and durable . did not the blessed angels who were created in unspeakable purity and glory fall from their station ? who yet had no tempter from without , for there were no devils that needed to be tied up before the angels fell . wherefore as to that point they had as much advantage as the philadelphian church , but exceeding much more in being spirit and not flesh. but the philadelphian church will be mortal flesh as other sons of adam . wherefore in long process of time they may well degenerate something even before the loosing of the devil out of prison . and when he is loose again , it is but a precarious surmise to think he can act onely upon the nations that are not in communion with the church . for when he is loose he is as he was before he was imprisoned . nor is there any ground to restrain the word [ nations ] to those onely that are not in visible communion with the church , but it may very naturally signifie that multitude of nations and people in the world whether of the church or not . and it is a rash presumption to suppose that the nations that walk in the light of the new ierusalem are not converts to the christian faith , forasmuch as they are said to be saved ; or the kings of the earth that bring their glory into it that they are not whole kingdoms converted to the christian belief as that auspicious acclamation foretells , that the kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of the lord , and of his christ , &c. wherefore we see that there is not the least shadow of reason , but that the prophecy of the seven churches is a prophecy of the state of the church distinguished into seven intervals from the beginning of the church to the end of the world. which may the better assure us that the two prophecies , the one of the sealed book , the other of the opened book , are so likewise . chap. . vers. . the pure transparent iaspar stone is an emblem of holiness , and the red sardin stone of iustice ; and therefore he that sate on the throne being like unto them , does signifie the holiness and righteousness of god in executing of judgment , and so does better sute with the occasion of the vision , ( it being a representation of god on his throne of judicature as judge of the world ) than to make the firmness of the one to signifie the strength or omnipotency of god ; and the red fiery colour of the other his piercing activity , &c. but indeed it is not of a fiery red , but of a dead red colour . ans. god is not represented here on his throne of judicature , but simply in his chair of state , as i may so speak . it is the throne of the divine majesty as creator and governor of the world , and more peculiarly of his church , according to that doxology , v. . thou art worthy , o lord , to receive glory , and honour , and power ; for thou hast created all things , and for thy pleasure they are and were created . wherefore grotius judiciously notes that the iasper does signifie invictam dei potentiam ( which we may briefly call his radical omnipotency , or rather the necessity of existence of his indiscernible essence . ) and the sardius ( which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answers to in hebrew , so called from its redness ) vim dei activam qualis in igne est . they are his very words on the text. and zegerus tells us , that tychonius , primasius and beda , all three make the sardius to have the colour , of fire . to which you may add victorinus , rupertus , richardus and lyranus , who all give the signification of fire to the sardius . and aretas expresly says in cornelius à lapide , sardius quia sanguinei & ignei coloris est , igneam , i. e. sublimissimam & efficacissimam dei naturam significat . but what the remarker objects , that the sardius is but of a dead red colour , is not true of the best sort , and least true in the appearance of the vision . where though the colour was not so brisk as that of a flame ( for there are three differences noted here both in greek and latin , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and pruna , flamma , splendor , ) yet it might very well be like that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or pruna . which sutes best with the vision in ezekiel , which answers to this , and is noted in the exposition it self . vers. . these elders are onely spiritual rulers in the same sense , as they and the four beasts , ch . . are said to be rulers . for they come together in thanksgiving , from being redeemed from the earth , and made kings and priests , &c. so that the reigning here signified is such as is common to all saints ; and therefore it 's a gross perverting of scripture to appropriate it to worldly princes . ans. the song of thanksgiving is this , ch . . v. . for thou wast slain , and hast redeemed us to god by thy bloud out of every kindred and tongue , and people , and nation . what wonderfull weak arguing is this ? because the kings out of every nation are redeemed by the bloud of christ , and publickly confess the same , therefore they are no more kings of any nation than the common people that are so redeemed . as if true christianity took away all subordination of ranks and degrees in the world . why then have they not all crowns , if they be all kings alike ? or why has any so ? who grosly perverts scripture now ? and what does the remarker mean by worldly princes ? if he means worldly-minded princes , this contradicts the scene of things here , which is a representation of the millennial happiness and holiness upon earth , and therefore these four and twenty crowned elders or monarchs are not supposed worldly-minded . if he makes them worldly princes , because they are still in the world , that is , on the earth ; that 's a contradiction to christ's millennial reign on earth , the millennium must be in heaven then , not on earth . if subordination of ranks and degrees , from the prince to the pezant , make them worldly princes , the polity in heaven is worldly . for there is a subordinate hierarchy of angels there , and archangels , of powers , principalities , dominions and thrones , colos. . . and so the millennial reign will be no where . o but it is said in the following verse , and hast made us to our god kings and priests , and we shall reign upon the earth . ans. this questionless alludes to that which god commanded moses to tell the children of israel touching him , exod. . . and ye shall be to me a kingdom of priests , which is called a royal priesthood , pet. . . and the apocalypse more distinctly styles the true church in those happy days kings and priests . but as under moses the nation being called a kingdom of priests , it did not confound the distinction betwixt priest and people , but aaron was the high priest , and had other priests under him , and moses was king in iesurun , and had the heads of the tribes under him ; so the four and twenty elders , and the four beasts , the whole body of the church joining together in this doxology , thou hast made us kings and priests , and we shall reign upon earth , does not confound ( with him that has a distinct understanding ) the subordinate degrees and ranks of men , but there may be kings , and bishops , and priests that are in another sense so , than the common people are . therefore this ground is exceedingly too weak to support such a monstrous paradox in theology and politicks . that the reign of the messias alters not the course of nature , but sanctifies it and makes it holy , is an opinion of some of the best of the rabbins . and to give unnatural expositions of prophecies , is to cast a mist before the eyes of men , that they will not be able to discern when they are fulfilled . as if the millennium will never be till princes be no more kings than the people ; as the iews fansie the times of the messias , not yet come , because the lyon does not yet eat hay with the oxe . vers. . the sea of glass being the laver of regeneration , does not signifie the condition of those that are regenerated thereby , but that which does regenerate them , viz. that manifestation of god in our lord jesus , the glory of which we beholding as in a glass , are changed into the same image from glory to glory . ans. why may not the laver of regeneration signifie the condition of those that are regenerate ? for , qualis causa talis effectus . why may not then the quality of the one signifie the quality of the other ? the pure transparent laver of regeneration , the purity of the regenerate , and their perviousness to be shined into and illuminated by the spirit of god. this is spoke more within compass than the remarker's turning the font into a looking-glass , especially if we consider that sea signifies a body of people . besides , according to the remarker's own self , the manifestation of the glory of christ regenerating us into his own image , and so we becoming like christ ; that which represents him that regenerates , represents us also regenerated into his image ; whence it is plain , that the sea of glass represents the regenerate people , and that the remarker contradicts himself . chap. . vers. . written within and without , cannot signifie the outward sense or symbols of the prophecy , and the inward sense or things represented thereby ( for that inward sense cannot be written , but onely the words or symbols containing it , so that one writing must serve for both ) but does plainly mean that the outward writing contains the prophecy of the seals and trumpets , and the writing within that of the opened book . ans. it is a childish thing to think that the book seen by iohn was written with all those words contained in the apocalypse , but it was a symbol of the compages of those prophetical representations , and of the inward meaning of them contained in the mind of christ and the holy angel sent to iohn . now as the book in general was a symbol of the figurative representations , and the inward meaning of them in the mind of the angel , that is to say , of the inward prophetical sense of them ; so the being writ within and without distinctly signifies , the latter the external representations and symbols of the prophecies , and the being writ within the real prophetical sense of the figures and symbols . and of the being writ within and without , that this is the natural sense of it , is moreover manifest , because all the ancient interpreters have been harping much upon that string or something like it . s. ierom amongst the rest will have this book to signifie the scripture : and the being writ within and without to signifie the literal and mystical sense . but certainly this sense which i have given is much more natural , which restrains it to this present book of prophecies , and to the symbolical sense and real prophetical sense thereof . to take away this sense , and tell us onely that the matter not being able to be contained in the inside of the rolled book , the rest was fain to be writ on the outside , so that it was liber opisthographus , is either to trifle or doe worse , to reproach the pen-man as either over-sparing of his parchment , or overseen in the proportioning it to his matter . but this intimation of these two senses i have noted is usefull and weighty , whereby the vanity and madness of those interpreters is discovered that confound the symbolical sense with the real or prophetical , as r. h. has done . see the expositor's epilogue , sect . . and this of our remarker's is of little more weight than the rest , viz. that written within and without must mean the disposal of the prophecy of the opened book within , and that of the seals and trumpets without . to what purpose is this intimation ? and besides , it is an hysteron-proteron , to write that which is last in the inside , and that which is first on the outside , quite contrary to the mode of opisthographal writings . vers. . in the midst of the throne and the four beasts , is not between the throne and the beasts . for if the beasts stood so round about the throne , the lamb could stand but between the throne and one beast . but the beasts are here indeed upon the throne , as the seraphims in esay , and so the lamb rose up in the midst , &c. which appears farther from one of them , giving the seven vials to the seven angels . ans. if twenty beasts stood round about the throne , the lamb could stand betwixt the throne , and but one beast . and the lamb may be said to stand betwixt the throne and the beasts , though he stood but betwixt the throne and one beast , as is manifest both out of phrase of scripture and common speech , so that that is but a slight exception . but if the beasts are indeed upon the throne , as the remarker would have them , they are in good truth , very unmannerly beasts . nor could they excuse their presumption from the example of the seraphims in esay . . . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there both kimchi and aben-ezra render iuxta , not super , near or by , not upon ; and munster and grotius , with other interpreters of the best note , agree thereto . and why one of the beasts may not give the vials to the seven angels , standing by the throne , as well as being upon it , i understand not . these beasts in heaven are angelical bodies or companies , and therefore peganius his note on ch . . . is ingenious , who understands it of the angelical general , who had the lyon for his ensign , &c. chap. . vers. . the warfare of this conqueror is not spiritual , but his conquering signifies his victories over the iews by the roman armies , whereby he fulfilled what he had foretold of sending forth his armies to destroy those murtherers , &c. and his , to conquer , signifies his like success against the roman empire by the seven trumpets and vials , &c. ans. the prophecy of the seven churches commences from the very beginning of the church upon christ's ascension , and sending upon the apostles the holy ghost . wherefore there is more humour than judgment to thwart mr. mede's interpretation of the rider of the white horse with a bow in his hand , to whom a crown was given , the imperial crown no doubt . for the aim of his war was to turn the roman empire christian , which was effected under the sixth seal . which rider of the white horse mr. mede understands of christ. wherefore when christ upon his powring down the holy ghost had fitted his chief commanders in this evangelical warfare , to carry on the design of converting the empire to christianity , why should not he be this noble heros on the white horse , not f. vespasianus , nor titus , his son , who sack'd ierusalem , thus making the prophecy to commence forty years later than it should ? the warfare therefore of this conqueror is both spiritual , or evangelical , and political ; that is to say , the external guidance of affairs , as his moving vespasian to his wars against the iews , and giving him that success is in order to the propagation of the gospel through the empire . and it is well known that iulian , to hinder the growth of the gospel , encouraged the iews to rebuild their temple . but this noble heros on the white horse , by his invisible powers miraculously defeated the design , as you may see in ammianus marcellinus . the stretching his going forth conquering and to conquer , to the seven trumpets and vials seems to me a forcing of the text ( beyond its proper intention ) needless and impertinent . christ was so far from a conquering condition under the trumpets , that his two great enemies , mahomet and antichrist , had in a manner over-run his kingdom in those times . vers. . fourth part , is not here used , because the destruction did not reach over all the empire , for some of the trumpets which reached but part of the empire , are said to fall upon the third part of the earth , &c. because a third part is used as a symbol of the empire . ans. but where is [ a fourth part ] used for a symbol of the empire ? wherefore it is plain there is not the like reason in both . and a fourth part of the earth being less than a third part of the earth , it is plain that a portion less than the whole empire is intimated thereby . vers. . the civil autority , and not the draconick majesty , is the sun , and the priesthood is the moon ; and the draconick majesty exercising its autority in both , is included in both . ans. this is dictated , not proved . if the draconick majesty influence by his autority both the priesthood and the secular magistracy , there is then one sun and two moons . for derived autority is mutuatitious , as the light of the moon , and that which derives it , is as the light of the sun , innate and original . but the secular moon is not considered in this vision . it lay upon the remarker to prove it . vers. . the heavens departing as a scroll , signifies a dissolution of the pagan magistracy , as well as of the hierarchy ; and therefore it is said in the following verse , the kings of the earth , and great men , and chief captains , &c. called to the rocks and mountains , &c. ans. the kings of the earth , and great men , and chief captains calling to the rocks and mountains , &c. does not signifie a dissolution of the secular magistracies , but it sets out the fear of those great men that would support by their arms the pagan religion ; who though they perished some of them in the quarrel , yet the constitution of the empire as to seculars , continued still the same , the same orders and offices , emperours , consuls , &c. chap. . introduction . the first six trumpets cannot ( as the introduction to this chapter makes them ) be a vengeance on the roman empire for persecuting the primitive christians , because it was destroy'd ( viz. the western empire which is here intended ) by the three first of them . the fourth is upon rome , under the seventh head , viz. the ostrogothian kings ; the fifth and sixth do concern both the greek empire and the ten-horned beast under the eighth head. also it is unagreeable with the making the christian emperours the seventh head , by reason of the church being then symmetral . for it is unreasonable that the empire being then in so regular a condition as is supposed , should be punished for its former irregularities . but the ostrogoths were indeed the seventh head , as will be afterward shewed . ans. if the expositor had said all the six trumpets were a vengeance on the roman empire for persecuting the primitive christians , the objection had been the more valid . but he says onely , in the time of the six trumpets vengeance is taken , &c. and i think if the western empire was destroy'd by the three first of them , vengeance is pretty well taken of the empire . and if the greek empire and ten-horned beast , of which the greek empire is part , be concerned in the fifth and sixth trumpets , vengeance is farther taken of that empire that was the murtherer of the primitive martyrs : in which many of the pagans remaining at first , and the empire degenerating so generally into new paganick superstitions and idolatries , it is no wonder these plagues of the six trumpets should thus fall upon them . but there are two farther mistakes in the remarker ; the first is , that the church about the commencement of the trumpets was symmetral , which is contrary to the expositor's hypothesis ; and when the church became asymmetral , the christian emperours who followed the guidance of the church in the same measure , became asymmetral also , and were the head of the beast , that was , is not , and yet is , in that measure it had degenerated into that form . the second is , that it is unreasonable that god should punish the empire while it was in so regular a condition . for ( to omit how the marked or sealed company were safe , and that there are several passages in history testifying thereto ) that which mr. mede has here noted is considerable . neque sera , saith he , christianorum imperatorum ibi rerum potiuntium pietas justitiae dei intercedere debuit non magìs quàm pietas iosiae ut regnum iudae sanguinis à manasse effusi reum , excidium à deo decretum effugeret . see king. . . and the making the ostrogoth kings one head of the beast ; how vain a conceit that is , i shall note in its proper place . vers. . christ is not called the east , but the day-spring , &c. and the naming him from a quarter of the heavens , is an improper appellation , though to name him from the light arising there , is proper . and the angel's ascending from the east was , because he came to seal those that were the children of light , faithfully keeping the doctrine of the sun of righteousness , and therefore did sutably to his office come from the region of light . ans. there wants no farther answer to this exception , than what may be read in the notes on this second verse . when christ is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is here rendred the east , a quarter of the world is not understood , but the light arising in that quarter . vers. . the palm-bearing multitude are not the victors over the beast , but the primitive martyrs , who slain under the altar , cryed for vengeance in the fifth seat , and being there comforted with white robes given them , and told that they should rest a little , whilst their brethrens sufferings were accomplished ; that time being expired , they in their white robes come in triumphant acclamations , entering into the happy state here described , which is the reward of their sufferings , as the first resurrection is the reward for the sufferers under the beast . but for the victors over the beast to be here signified , is improbable ; both from the unseasonableness of it before the sounding of the trumpets , and the needlesness of it . because what is said here , if meant of those victors , is more fully set forth after the sounding of the trumpets ; nor is there mention here of their advancement to rule , or of judgment being executed upon their adversaries , which are the chief burthen of those songs and acclamations after the seventh trumpet . also here they are said to be without fault before the throne of god , and to serve him day and night in his temple ; whereas of the victors over the beast in the new ierusalem state it 's said , the throne of god and the lamb is in it , and i saw no temple there . the cry here also of salvation to our god , v. . does answer to that loud voice in heaven , ch . . . now is come salvation and strength , &c. which seems to be uttered by an angelical quire , but is a rejoicing at the same salvation wrought by the devil 's being cast out , as is intended by this cry , &c. there 's also no coherence or connexion betwixt the sealed company and the palm-bearers , to make the sense here given allowable . for the sealing is before the beginning of the trumpets , and the other not till the end of them . and though the signification of the sealing may reach to the end of the trumpets , yet the coherence of all prophecies being primarily in the cortex or schemes and symbols , and secondarily in the sense contained in them ; there being no such coherence here in the former , neither can there be in the latter . ans. the making the palm-bearing multitude the souls of the primitive martyrs , is a mere conceit , and quiet out of the rode of prophetical interpretation of the apocalypse , which insisteth not upon the description of the state of souls in heaven , but of the state of the church on earth . that short hint , touching the souls of the primitive martyrs under the altar , that they should rest , that is , expect a little while and their bloud would be revenged , and that in the mean time they were put in an happy condition , signified by their white robes , is sufficient ; what more can be expected to be said of them ? but the description of the palm-bearing company does not sute with separate souls in heaven , but with the inhabitants of the new ierusalem on earth , as may appear to any unprejudiced reader of the , and verses of this chapter . the conceit is so extravagant , that according to the remarker , instead of having but two resurrections , we shall have three . so that instead of blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection , it should be said , blessed and holy is he that has part in the second resurrection , if there was a resurrection before it , answering to the first resurrection of them that suffered under the beast , as this passage in the remark implies . and that the victors over the beast should be here intimated , is neither unseasonable , it being upon the excursion of the time of the sealed , and forearmed against the plagues of the six trumpets ; nor needless , it being the artifice of the apocalypse to represent the same time , and state of things , more and less perfectly or fully , and to supply in one vision what was omitted in another . so that it is no wonder that this vision notes onely their peace , holiness and security from persecution . consider the expositor's explication of those verses . and for their serving god day and night in his temple , that is no other temple than that in the new ierusalem , of which it is said , the lord god almighty , and the lamb is the temple thereof . and certainly the cry of salvation may well be as loud among the victors over the beast upon the rising of the witnesses and the seventh vial , as on the defeat of paganism in constantine's time . and as for the sealing , though it be declared before the sounding of the trumpets , yet the nature of the thing does necessarily imply , that it is performed all along the succession of the church through the first six trumpets . and lastly , the coherence of all prophecy is primarily and radically in the things predicted . but the coherence of the cortex is a slippery hold , it being framed and fitted very often merely for external ornament and embellishing . this is so obvious and frequent in the apocalypse , that it is needless to name any example . wherefore this sealing and sealed ones reaching to the end of the sixth trumpet , a mention of the victors over the beast , the witnesses rising at the exit of the sixth trumpet , is seasonably and orderly placed , and with all imaginable dueness of coherence , which was the thing to be demonstrated . chap. . vers. . sea is not used here as signifying three or third , and so being a character of the roman empire , but signifies the universal dominion of the earth , as it does in daniel's vision of the four beasts , where the four winds are said to strive upon the great sea , &c. and the roman empire being reputed a third part of the then known dominions of the earth , it 's therefore called a third part of the sea. ans. the expositor does not here say that sea signifies three or third , but that it signifies the terretories and jurisdiction of rome , the number three or third being the character of the roman empire . but the ill pointing of the place , made the remarker mistake the sense , and make so wise a remark . vers. . the sun signifies not the king onely , but the legislative autority , wherever it resides , that being the light whereby the affairs of all dominions are guided and governed ; the moon signifies those who have the rule and administration of matters in religion , and the stars the grandees or chief ministers in the government . ans. the remarker is of one mind , but achmetes and the indian , persian and aegyptian onirocriticks of another , who say the sun does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , constantly and immutably signifie the king , the moon the next in power to him . but that it signifies the legislative power in abstracto , is the private fancy of the remarker , for which he has neither reason nor example . and the same is to be said of the moon 's signifying the priesthood . that it signifies next in autority , is warranted by the interpretation of ioseph's dream of the sun and moon and eleven stars worshipping him , where the moon is interpreted his mother , though no priest , as the sun his father . chap. . vers. . the sun darkned here is not the gospel , but the autority or legislative power of those dominions over-run by the saracens , and religion but secondarily concerned , as it suffers by the suffering of the autority which upheld it . and as the sea denotes the many dominions of the earth , so does the sun here signifie the various powers or autorities that governed them . ans. that the sun does not signifie legislative power in abstracto , but the highest person in autority , i have noted already . and though one great sea may signifie a comprehension of several distinct kingdoms subject to tumultuate , or rather war one against another , as having no union under one head ▪ yet the several heads of these kingdoms cannot so properly be represented by one sun , which naturally implies one head over them all . wherefore being that the saracens over-run so many kingdoms and principalities , if this must be the darkning of them , it would then have been said that the smoak of the abyss darkned the stars . for when multitudes of kings and princes are concerned together , that have no dependence one of another , they are then signified by stars . whence the red dragon is said to have pulled down so many stars with his tail , that is , to have subjected so many kings and princes to the roman empire . wherefore it is rashly pronounced , that the sun-shine of the gospel of the sun of righteousness is not meant by the sun that is here said to be darkned , whenas the smoak of the pit must be mahometism . and therefore in this passage religion most certainly is related to , and is the main concern of the whole book of the apocalypse , and other things predicted merely in order to it , viz. to the right worship of god through jesus christ. and therefore that sense which is easie and natural , and tends that way , is most assuredly the true sense of any passage of these prophecies . see the spiritual signification of sun in the expositor's alphabet of iconisms . chap. . vers. . the ten-horned beast did rise out of the sea , and two-horned beast out of the earth ; and our saviour setting his right foot on the sea , and his left foot on the earth , does signifie here his coming down from heaven , to put down all autority and power under his feet , the earthly powers within his kingdom being within the seventh trumpet to be abolished , and all things to become new , by forming a new heaven and a new earth , or establishing the kingdom of heaven upon earth ; and so making the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of our lord , and of his christ. ans. this remark is not much amiss , saving that it lears toward that foul conceit , that there will be no monarchy nor princes over their respective principalities and kingdoms , where the kingdom of christ is set up , whenas the twenty four crowned elders do most certainly denote the pure apostolick christianity of those many kings and princes that will be contained within the kingdom of christ in the millennium : and setting one foot on the sea , and another on the earth , refers particularly to the vanquishing the ten-horned beast that came out of the sea , ch . . and the false prophet or two-horned beast that came out of the earth , v. . ( out of a clay-pit , for the clay in daniel signifies the ecclesiastick regenerating party ) which two , ch . . . are taken alive and cast into the lake of fire and brimstone . vers. . the sounding of the seventh trumpet is plainly not at the time of the roaring of the mighty angel , and therefore cannot be branched into the seven thunders . for after his roaring and the seven thunders uttering their voices thereon , and the other matters after declared , there is a regress to begin a new prophecy of the contents of the opened book , and to bring the same down to the seventh trumpet also , that the affairs of the six trumpets and the opened book ( viz. during the time of the antichristian and worldly powers ) being connected as synchronizing the seventh trumpet , might close both together . the seven thunders therefore seem symbolically to signifie a preparation of the christian party against the great day of god at the seventh trumpet , as the three unclean spirits , like frogs , are of the antichristian party . that as the latter bestir themselves with miraculous deceits to excite the princes of the earth to battel , so the former signifies a miraculous power of spirit , that shall exert it self in many christian heroes , whereby they shall become exciters and conductors of the christian party to the same ; and hereunto shall also become boanerges's thundring out such powerfull convictive testimonies against the abominations of their enemies , and such denunciations of god's judgments against them for the same , as were not meet before that time to be uttered , and therefore were to be sealed up , &c. some such meaning seems to be signified in micah , ch . . v. , . ans. the more clearly to decide this point , let us consider that the apocalypse consists of three prophecies , the prophecy of the seven churches , the prophecy of the sealed book , and the prophecy of the opened book ; and that as it less derogates from their perfection , to be conceived each of them to reach from the beginning of the church to the end of the world , viz. of the affairs of this earth , so of the first of them i have proved the same , as also shown that the second commenceth from the beginning of the church , and that it reaches to the end of the world , is plain from hence . the whole time of the book consists but of seven seals , and some things of the book reach to the end of the world , therefore the seventh seal must reach to the end of the world . and the seventh seal being divided into seven trumpets , the seventh trumpet must reach to the end of the world . wherefore it is plain that the prophecy of the sealed book reaches to the end of the world ; and if this reasoning will not serve , i will anon confirm it by the oath of the angel. but in the mean time let us farther note , that the sounding of each of these seven trumpets , and the visum of each trumpet do synchronize or are of equal extent , begin and end together . as for example , the visum of the sixth trumpet , which contains the over-running of the turks , and the general impenitency of the western christian world for their idolatry , &c. c. . . the sixth trumpet , i say , is conceived to sound all the while this visum continues . now the seventh trumpet belonging to the prophecy of the sealed book , it was ( before we come to the prophecy of the opened book ) immediately to succeed the sixth , and to sound all the time its visum is exhibited . but it is manifest the roaring of the angel immediately succeeds the sounding of the sixth trumpet ; wherefore it is plain , that the roaring of the angel is substituted in the place of the sounding of the seventh trumpet ; and that the roaring of the angel , as well as the sounding of the seventh trumpet , reacheth to the end of the world . but the text says , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , when he cryed or roared , ( not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , when he had cryed ) seven thunders uttered their voices . wherefore this roaring of the lyon of the tribe of iuda , which reaches from the sixth trumpet to the end of the world , is divided into seven thunders . but the seventh trumpet reaches from the sixth to the end of the world , therefore the space of the seventh trumpet is divided into seven thunders . and how easie , natural , and indeed inevitable is this to one that is not blinded with prejudice . that in this prophecy of the sealed book , as the seventh seal is divided into seven trumpets , so the seventh trumpet ( which as the rest belongs to the prophecy of the sealed book ) should be divided into seven thunders , those seven thunders immediately following the sixth trumpet , as the seven trumpets immediately follow the sixth seal . out of all which it is manifest , that the prophecy of the sealed book reacheth to the end of the world , as well as the prophecy of the seven churches . now therefore to consider the remark on this verse , it is manifest out of what has been said , that the seventh trumpet does synchronize with the roaring of the mighty angel , because his roaring is substituted into the place of the sounding of the seventh trumpet , which reacheth to the end of the world , and that roaring being branched into seven thunders , that the seventh trumpet is branched into seven thunders . nor does the regress to begin a new prophecy of the contents of the opened book clash at all with this synchronizing of the seventh trumpet , with the roaring of the angel and the seven thunders , but most naturally agree with it ; this roaring and seven thunders reaching to the end of the world ( to the utmost term of the laodicean succession , of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as ptolemy calls it , laodicea combusta , laodicea burnt down by thunder and lightning from heaven at the conflagration , which congruity in all likelihood gave occasion of denominating these seven divisions of the last trumpet from thunders ; and farther confirms , that these thunders reach to the end of the world ) , and therefore the most fittingly intimates a regress to a new prophecy , namely , to that of the opened book . which , if we will not derogate from its perfection , must , as the two former , reach from the beginning of the church to the end of the world . and as for the synchronizing of the affairs of the first six trumpets , with those of the opened book , till the seventh , that it is a precarious surmise , will appear in its due place . but now it being so plain , that the seven thunders synchronize with the seventh trumpet , it is manifest that all that the remarker delivers about the frogs , and hero's , and boanerges's ( the seven thunders being a symbol of no such things , but of a distinction , as other sevens in the apocalypse , of that last space of time into so many intervals ; and those things being before the seventh trumpet , according to his supposition , ) it is manifest , i say , that all those conceits of the remarker are onely an idle evanid dream . vers. . as , [ write not ] viz. the things which the seven thunders uttered , is the general translation , so is it far more agreeable with the command to seal them up , than that singular translation , thou shalt write them hereafter . for if they were to be written at all , where should they be written but here where they are uttered ? and to write them hereafter , is to make them belong to the opened book , whereas they belong to the sealed book , if the seventh trumpet be branched into seven thunders . ans. his remark upon this verse is more material . but i answer , that it is not one single copy we rely on . the biblia regia , says david pareus , has it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thou shalt write them hereafter . and andreas , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , write them hereafter . and the copy that grotius comments on , whatever it is , has it . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thou shalt write them hereafter . and i must confess i do little question but that is the true reading , whenas our ordinary copy has it , which our english translation follows , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which corrupt reading , i conceive , proceeded from the heedlesness or unskilfulness of some scribe , and some ill writ copy , which made him turn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , written contractedly thus , [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and so made it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and afterwards , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the future tense , and therefore not so fitly applied to a present action , others turned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but from this and for that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is superflous , for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had been enough ; or if a pronoun had been to be added , it would rather have been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the whole command would have run thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but whatever writers or mss have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i conceive that after the true reading 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was corrupted into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was turned into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by some busie critick or scribe , which others afterward might follow : from these considerations , i say , i do strongly suspect , or rather not at all doubt but that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the true reading . and it agrees very well with the command to seal them up , as being needless to relate the affairs of the seven thunders here , because they shall be related in the prophecy of the opened book , that prophecy containing the fate of the church as the other of the empire ; and therefore this is but a more majestick transition from the finished course of the prophecy of the sealed book , to make a regress to the prophecy of the opened book . nor is there the least inconvenience that the distinct visions writ down in the prophecy of the opened book , and in that regard belonging to it , should as to the intervals of the thunders spoke of in the prophecy of the sealed book be referred synchronistically to that prophecy also . vers. . if [ there shall be no more time ] did denote the end of the world , it would be very improperly placed here above a thousand years before . but it 's meant of the political order and government of the world , which [ time ] does symbolically signifie ; because all political government is managed and upheld by certain laws , and rules , and forms , and methodical ordering of affairs , as time is measured by days , and months , and years , &c. whenas in the millennial state all government will be regulated wholly by the guidance of the spirit of god dwelling among them , and so thoroughly enlightening them with the judgments of his truth , that they shall not need the light of the sun or moon , viz. of those humane laws and policies , &c. so that time shall be no more , and the mystery of god shall be finished , does here answer to that great voice from the throne , at the pouring forth of the seventh vial , viz. it is done . and to the same voice from him that sate on the throne , ch . . who also there says , behold i make all things new , viz. the mystery of god being finished by the former things passing away , a new state of things is to be introduced , as is there after described . ans. at the expiration of the sixth trumpet , it is not improper to give notice that there will be no more time than what is contained in the seventh , because the seventh is both contiguous to the sixth , and reacheth to the end of the world , as was noted above . but that time signifies political order and government , is a private precarious notion of the remarker , without any ground or example in scripture , or the onirocriticks . and for his reason for which he imagines it signifies so , it is over-lax . time indeed is divisible into ages , ages into years , years into months , months into days , &c. but what greater matter of order in this , than in the dividing and subdividing of any other quantity ? or if there be , how does this typifie political orders and laws more than in husbandry , mechanicks , &c. so that it signifying all things under the sun done in any order or method as well as political laws and government , when this time here spoken of shall be no more , we may all put up our pipes , tradesmen , husbandmen , students , in whatever arts and faculties , and fall asleep with our fingers in our mouths , unless a spirit waken us that will drive us to act without order or government , which yet can be no apostolick spirit , because the apostle's precept is , cor. . . let all things be done decently and in order . how much better were it , sapere ad sobrietatem , than to entertain such high-slown conceits as these ? in these best times undoubtedly there will be humane laws and polities , that is , laws and polities constituted by men , but perfectly conformable and complyable with the laws of god , and dictates of his holy spirit , and his guidance will assist in making them . to fansie an aziluthick state on earth , whenas a briathick constitution is consistent with the state of heaven , is a too too extravagant surmise . as for , it is done , and all things are made new. here would be rather undoing than doing , and nothing would be made new . no new heaven , nor new earth ( which certainly has a political sense ) if there were no polity in this renewed state . and the polity will be constituted by men , though by the guidance of the holy spirit , which will invigorate also both governours and people to support the said laws , and to live according thereunto . vers. . the [ saving ] here is a great straining of the text , to uphold a crazy notion . for whereas it is said in the notes on the verse , that the sense is exceeding imperfect , unless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saving , or except , the common sense given of it is very clear , and this new imposed sense so exceeding imperfect as to be really false . and the several places cited to prove that it may be taken in this sense , is no proof that it is taken so here . nor do those citations prove that it is so taken in them . for the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or but , will signifie the same with saving or except , &c. ans. the remarker here is very magisterial , and somewhat scoptical . but the expositor is crazy neither in his notion nor the proof of it . for no man that understands greek , but must acknowledge that our english translation is out in rendring those words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thus , when he shall begin to sound , the mystery of god should be finished . for it leaves out the particle [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] and yet makes but imperfect sense , rendring 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ should be finished ] whenas to make the sense perfect , it should be rendred , shall be finished , but that would ill agree with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel , when he shall begin to sound , the mystery of god shall be finished : that is the sense our english translation aims at , but then it should not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as it is , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; and yet so [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] being left out , which yet is intollerable , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , will be rendred unsutably to the words following , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ut evangelizavit , as he told the joyfull news to his servants the prophets . wherefore this mystery of god containing that joyfull news , it is very hard to conceive it not to contain the new ierusalem and the millennial reign of christ. which mystery is not finished at the beginning of the sounding of the seventh trumpet , but rather at the end thereof . but now render but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ saving ] as it certainly does signifie sometimes , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ shall sound ] as it naturally signifies , and all will run as glib as can be , ( according to the most approved copies of the new testament set out by isaac casaubon and dr. winterton , which is the cambridge greek new testament ; ) thus ; that there shall be time no more saving in the days of the voice of the seventh angel , when he shall sound and the mystery of god be finished . which shews that the sounding of the seventh trumpet will reach to the end of the world. but now , according to these authentick greek copies , if you render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , [ but , ] not [ saving ] or [ except ] . the sentence will not be sense : thus ; that there shall be time no more : but in the days of the seventh angel , when he shall sound [ or begin to sound ] and the mystery of god be perfected . what then ? what of all that ? one may well say . this plainly is not perfect sense to any one that understands sense , unless you take away the colon , and take [ but ] in the same sense that [ except ] has : which is all that i contend for . wherefore it being so plain , that the sentence is imperfect sense , unless you understand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and but to signifie the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and [ except ] if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does sometimes signifie so , it plainly follows it signifies so here . this is more than enough to this remark . i will onely here note which i intimated above on v. . that this oath of the mighty angel , that there shall be time no more saving in the days of the voice of the seventh angel , plainly imports that the sounding of the seventh trumpet reaches to the end of the world , or of the scene of affairs on this earth , ( whence i inferred that the sealed-book-prophecy did so . ) which is an article so contrary to the belief of atheistical and sensual men , that it is no wonder that so strong an asseveration is used to impress it on them . but this answers to his calling himself , the amen , &c. in his epistle to the laodicean church , where the same article is asserted . see the exposition it self on this present chapter . this angel therefore swearing at the expiration of the sixth trumpet , that there shall be no more time , saving in the days of the sound of the seventh trumpet , and this before there is any entrance into the prophecy of the opened book , plainly joins the seventh trumpet to the sixth , and so makes a decursion from the beginning of the sealed-book-prophecy , to the very end of it , conterminating to the end of the world , and by mentioning the seven thunders also before the said sealed-book-prophecy is finished , points us plainly to a division of the sounding of the seventh trumpet into seven such intervals , as the seventh seal was divided into , viz. seven trumpets , as we noted above . and thus by the oath of the angel , as i observed before , by the bye , it is assuredly true that the prophecy of the sealed book reacheth to the end of the world. chap. . vers. . it 's very incongruous that the temple or thysiasterion , and the outward court being one entire fabrick , should signifie prophetically things succeeding one another . but they here signifie indeed things that synchronize . for the worshippers in the temple , and at the altar , are measured , to be preserved from those evils which they in the outward court do suffer by its being trodden down , and are the same with the two witnesses in the next verse , the moses and aaron , or those that officiate in the ruling or judicial , and in the priestly offices . the worshippers in the temple signifie the first , because there was the law in the ark , on which the divine presence was seated in the mercy-seat , as on a throne of judgment , to be consulted with , and the worshippers at the altar do plainly enough signifie the latter . ans. that things coexistent together , may signifie things succeeding in time one after another , may appear from that analogy space has to time ; and they partake so much in the common similitude of one nature , that spatium signifies as well spatium temporis , as spatium loci , as is abundantly manifest in reading latin authours . and as in the extension of space or place , one part is out of another , not confounded one with another , and upon some respect one part counted in site before another , another after : so it is also in the succeeding parts of time. and as the parts of space are measurable or numerable , so are the parts of time : and there may be the same proportion betwixt a part of space , to a part of space ; that there is betwixt a part of time , to a part of time , and alternatim . so that even from hence we may be satisfied , that the area of the inner and the outer court , without any incongruity , may be made prophetically to signifie things succeeding one another . if the inner court have an aptitude to denote the church in her purer condition , and the outer in her less pure , as questionless they have , and she be first in that first condition , and after in the second ; it 's plain that the inner and outer court , though they be coexistent , yet have an aptness to signifie things succeeding one another . and if the area of the inner court bear the same proportion to the area of the outer , that the time of the purity of the church to the time of her lesser purity , by easie analogy the proportion of the outer area to the inner , will give us the proportion of the time of the less purity of the church to the time of her purity . these things will be whether we will or no. and these significancies are so congruous and natural , that they are ordinarily hit upon . thus cornelius à lapide on ezekiel says , atrium gentium non mensuratum significat innumerabilem gentium multitudinem ecclesiae adjungendam . and h. n. makes the sanctum and the sanctum sanctorum two dispensations , the one following the other , and favourably interprets the latter of the dispensation of his own followers . also the three immured intervals of space in cebes his table , signifie three states or moral conditions of men succeeding one another in time . and the seven churches in the apocalypse , though coexistent together , yet the spirit of prophecy makes use of them to signifie seven succeeding states of the church catholick and apostolick . and the parts of nebuchadnezzar's image he saw in his dream , though view'd altogether , represented notwithstanding four successive kingdoms , according to the number of the metals it consisted of . and lastly , aretas , even upon this place , by the inner court understands the iudaical church , by the outer the christian . wherefore it is very congruous to understand , though they be states in succession , the inner court of the pure state of the christian church , and the outer of her state apostatical . but to make the inner and outer court to signifie things that do synchronize , spoils those elegant analogies of time and place , which i noted above . for as the outer court's dimensions lye out from the inner , so the time that is signified by the one , should be distant from the time that is signified by the other , and should by no means synchronize ; which is as gross and harsh as to fansie the stones that paved the inner and outer court laid confusedly and intermixtly one by another . besides , making the things signified here by the inner and outer court to synchronize , makes the prophecy of the opened book to commence no higher than the beginning of the seventh or last seal . which is a strange mutilation , or if you will , decollation of the prophecy of the opened book , whenas the prophecy of the seven churches , and of the sealed book , and it was a point of their perfection to doe so , commenced from the beginning of the church . wherefore this is a surmise very absurd . and the absurdity still appears greater , in that the proper undertaking of the opened-book-prophecy is to set out the affairs of the church , as the other of the sealed book the affairs of the empire . and yet thus it would omit the chiefest and most notable times thereof , viz. the primitive times , and the victory of christianity over paganism . for if this present vision begin so low as the seventh seal , the next of the woman cloathed with the sun , must do so too , or else it would be a gross neglect of order and method , not to begin the prophecy of the opened book with a vision that had as high an epocha of time as any . which considerations may assure any intelligent reader , that the remarker is enormously out in making the things signified by the inner and outer court to synchronize . such a monstrous mistake as this must needs beget a many frigid and dilute notions and interpretations : such as these are that follow . the measuring of the inner court signifies its preserving from the toils the outer is oppressed with , which he offers as an argument that they synchronize . but the natural and obvious sense , and onely sense of measuring a thing , is to try if it have its just dimensions , discoverable by the measure . thou son of man , shew the house to the house of israel , that they may be ashamed of their iniquities , and let them measure the pattern . and suppose measuring signified preserving , yet it follows not that they of the inner court , and they of the outer synchronize , but that such an interval of the church which answers to the inner court , shall be preserved from such apostasies as that succession of the church which answers to the outer court shall fall into . and a like groundless conceit it is , that the worshippers in the temple , and in the thysiasterion , should be the two witnesses , as if the two witnesses were not sufficiently described under that very title in the residue of the vision , and moreover by an allusion to zorobabel and ieshuah , but must be typified also , the secular magistratical witness by those in the temple , the sacerdotal by those in the thysiasterion . which is the most evanid and uncouth conceit that any man of wit and parts could pitch upon . but the former must signifie so , because there was the law in the ark , on which the divine presence was seated in the mercy-seat , as on a throne of judgment to be consulted with . but i answer ; therefore the worshippers there were in the quality of subjects , rather than magistrates . besides , he that sits here in the throne , sits there not to judge causes , but to utter oracles , which is the office rather of a priest or prophet , than of a judge , as aaron's breast-plate was called the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : and this sanctum sanctorum , where the divine presence is seated , in hebrew is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which the seventy usually render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but aquila and symmachus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as buxtorf also oraculum . what 's this to civil magistracy ? and though the law was in the ark , yet this law concerns sacerdotal matters as much , if not more than civil ; and aaron's rod that budded was there also . to all which you may add , that the temple altogether relates to sacerdotal matters and religion . to the high priest alone it was permitted to go into the sanctum sanctorum . in the sanctum was the incense-altar , which was once a year sprinkled with the bloud of the sacrifice by the high priest. and the golden candlesticks were also there , which denote the light of the world , as the altar of incense the requisiteness of prayers ; which two duties of preaching and praying , ( the priest's lips shall preserve knowledge ) are the notorious duties of the priesthood . thus it was with the temple , but for the thysiasterion , not the priests alone were there but upon the occasion of offering their oblations and sacrifices , which the sons of aaron assisted in , the people had frequent recourse thither . let us consider what oecumenius and elias cretensis tells us in cornelius à lapide , upon exod. . . there were three tabernacles , say they , the first the outmost closed on the sides with curtains , and open above , which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sanctum seculare , or mundanum , because it was common to all . in this stood the brazen altar for holocausts sub dio : this therefore is the thysiasterion . the second tabernacle was the sanctum , quod erat quasi templum sacerdotum , hoc undique clausum erat & nexum sancto sanctorum . in hoc erat candelabrum , &c. and the last tabernacle was the sanctum sanctorum soli pontifici patens , &c. add unto these the autority of s. chrysostome and theophylact , to which also erasmus subscribes . out of this i think it is abundantly manifest , what a groundless conceit this is to make those in the temple the secular and magistratical witness , and those in the thysiasterion the sacerdotal , when both the temple and thysiasterion belong to the priests , ( though the people had also access to the thysiasterion , ) but are unfit to represent those that are in the ruling or judicial office . and therefore it is plain that those in the temple and thysiasterion signifie but one sort of men , or one succession of the church , that are symmetral indeed , as answering to the measure they were measured with , but one part less holy than another , as the holiness of the sanctum sanctorum , sanctum and thysiasterion differs in degrees . for the church in her holiness lessened by degrees , till at last she fell into her gross apostasie . vers. . the court without the temple being left out , and not measured , is explained by the holy city , being troden under foot , &c. which shews that the coming down of the new ierusalem from heaven is the restauration of the outward court , that god may be worshipped there as in the inward court , which , during the time of the other being left out , continued in such a state as to need no restauration , and consequently they synchronize . ans. that city , viz. the church , which was holy before the apostasie , and therefore compared to the inner court , being troden down by the gentiles after the apostasie came in , is compared to the outer : but the outer court is here explained by the holy city , because in moses's time there was no other outer court than the camp of israel , or the holy people of the iews , who were gathered in the outer court when the temple was built to serve god , as mr. mede has rightly noted . and therefore the coming down of the new ierusalem from heaven is the restauration of the outer court , that is of the apostated church to the primitive purity of the inner , before the apostasie . but what argument of the state of the inner and outer court sychronizing can there be gathered from hence ? vers. . the ordinary translation , viz. and when the witnesses shall have finished their testimony , is true : and the beast overcoming them is not onely politically meant in keeping them out of power , but also in silencing them from prophesying ; and for this it is that the dwellers on earth do so rejoice over them , because the witnesses had tormented them , viz. by their prophesying . now they prophesied days , so that the victory over them for which there 's such joy , being after their prophesying , viz. for their being silenced , it must be after the days . nor can they be supposed to prophesie the three days and an half they are said to lye dead , though they may when they are onely politically slain , viz. kept out of power . ans. the ordinary translation is true , so far as it respects the sense of the letter or cortex ; but [ when they shall be a finishing their testimony ] is also a true and natural sense , and indeed the onely sense consistent with the truth of the prophecy , as i have clearly proved in the second part of my threefold appendage . and for the silencing the witnesses after they had prophesied days , that this must be their three days and an half lying dead is a marvellous mistake . for how can they be silenced , but upon the penalty of their prophesying or witnessing ? there is no other way of silencing them imaginable . and for god knows how many hundred years they were so severely silenced before , that banishment , imprisonment , all manner of torturous deaths were their penalty , for offering to speak against the corruptions of the apostatized church . and lastly , they may prophesie as well when they are said to lye dead , as when politically slain . for to be politically slain , is either at least to have no power or influence on affairs for the right guiding of them , or actually to be outed from any office in church or state , which is to lye dead as to those points , but yet they may prophesie at their own peril . political death is opposed here onely to natural death . and when they are silenced , i. e. put out of autority , or licence to preach or prophesie , that is one kind of that political death that is opposed to natural ; but they thus lying not naturally dead , they may preach or prophesie as i said , at their own peril . this therefore is a gross errour . vers. . this call from heaven is not any political call by princes , but the exaltation by the spirit of life , that entred into them , and set them on their feet , whereon judgment began to be given unto them to take away the dominion of the beast ; but their rising hereby in power and interest in the world , was by such secret operations of god , as is undiscernible to the world , and so they ascend as in a cloud . this spiritual exaltation of them may occasion their worldly exaltation also by princes to such employments as they are free to accept of . ans. heaven , in the prophetick style , is the region of political powers , and to interpret a prophecy out of the road of the prophetick style , is merely to trifle with a man 's own private fancy . and the spirit of life entering into them , signifies politically , as in that vision of ezekiel , ch . . . and to interpret the cloud they ascend up to heaven in , of secret operations of god , and undiscernible to the world , being again quite out of the road of the prophetick style , is a mere private imagination . achmetes interprets , ascending in a cloud , of glory and power , and the scripture frequently describes that state so . and interpreters ordinarily intimate that this ascending of the witnesses in a cloud after their three days lying dead , is an allusion to christ's ascension , after he had lain three days in the grave , who ascended in a cloud conspicuously and gloriously to take possession of that throne and dominion his father had promised him . vers. . the tenth part of the city fell , cannot signifie the taking away the tithes of it , for the words denote a ruine to the body of the city , and not a loss of some appurtenances as revenues , &c. which is plainly confirmed by the following words , viz. the great earthquake , and the seven thousand slain , and the affrightment of the rest . which seems to aim at some great revolution , to the subverting of the antichristian state of affairs in one of the ten kingdoms the empire was divided into , and so introducing such a settlement as to be a prelude and pattern to what is to succeed in other dominions . ans. the meaning is not , that the tithes , i. e. the holy revenue of the city , were taken away , without the fall of any part of the city ; but being the tithes did fall , but whether a just tenth part of the city or no , was uncertain , the expositor contented himself with what was certain . but that there was a partial fall of the polity or city , he does not question . brightman and pareus understanding by the city , the polity of antichrist or his kingdom ( for to understand it of a city of wood and stone , is a little too gross , i think ) adventure to pronounce , that at least a tenth part of the papal city fell in the late reformation . which if true , i willingly admit to be understood by the fall of the tenth part of the city , as well as the tithes , if not rather . but that this earthquake should be meant of one of the ten kingdoms , is a dwindling business , the prophecy is fulfilled in a more illustrious way already . vers. . the third wo-trumpet cannot be the pouring forth of the vials , because the trumpets belong to the visions of the sealed book , and the vials to the opened book ; and also because the state of affairs before the vials are far from agreeing with what is described at the seventh trumpet . ans. the description indeed of the visions of the vials , and other visions that fill up the interval of the seventh trumpet , which is the third wo-trumpet , belong to the prophecy of the opened book , as being set down there . but this hinders not but that they may be referred for order sake unto the third wo-trumpet . is it not expresly said here in the text , that the seventh angel sounded , though it be in the prophecy of the opened book ? what therefore is this for , but to give us notice of the due order and intervals of things in this opened-book-prophecy , from what we may observe in the sealed-book-prophecy , where there was mention of the seven thunders ? and this also may give great countenance to that reading , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for this sounding of the seventh angel mentioned here , implies , that what was suppressed , and not written , concerning the affairs of the sounding of the seventh angel in the sealed-book-prophecy , shall be declared in that interval of the visions of the opened-book-prophecy , that synchronizes with the seventh trumpet of the sealed book . this is an observation very remarkable . and as for the state of affairs before the vials , how well or ill they agree with what is described at the seventh trumpet , i can say nothing , unless the remarker had particularized ; but i presume the imagined disagreement is from his own misplacing them before the rising of the witnesses . but place them after , and the agreement is good , and according to that auspicious acclamation , v. . vers. . no kingdoms of the world became the kingdoms of the lord by the reformation . for though they rejected the pope's supremacy , and reformed some gross corruptions , yet they continued so many as made them not cease to belong to the ten-horned beast . and indeed christ's kingdom being to be governed wholly according to the laws of truth , by the guidance of the spirit of god , all government , so far as it falls short thereof , and is politically managed according to the course of the worldly powers , and upheld to the obstructing the advancement of christ's kingdom upon earth , it 's so far antichristian . ans. there is a very gross and false principle laid down in this remark , if i mistake not the remarker's meaning . which is this : that christ's kingdom cannot be there where things are ordered by any external or political rules or laws in either church or state , but merely by the immediate guidance and motion of god's spirit . that the spirit of god will assist in making these laws , and will actuate and invigorate both rulers and people with a sensible and living relish of them to observe them , and see them observed in those excellent times that are to come , i willingly grant . but that other principle i look upon as proceeding either from a deep or high melancholly , i know not which to call it ; or if the remarker can bear it , a religious delirancy . and it is a most enormous piece of ingratitude against the holy and benign providence of god to speak so vilifying of the reformation as he does . if the reformed people , as they are called , had taken half the pains to spy out every one his own faults ( and sincerely , with imploring the divine assistence , had endeavoured to mend them ) that they have taken to spy faults in governours and governments , we should have had a glorious church of it by this time . but spiritual pride has laid waste their understandings . the kingdom of christ can very well subsist without such enthusiastick whimsies . consider apoc. . v. . now is come salvation and strength , and the kingdom of our god , and the power of his christ. which is the triumph of christianity over paganism . and yet the primitive christians lived under external laws and rules both spiritual and civil . vers. . this verse ought to begin the next chapter , it being the beginning of the prophecy of the opened book . the temple of god was opened in heaven , when christian worship was received and autorized by the emperours , and the ark of the testament was seen in the temple , when christian laws became received by autority , to become the laws of the empire , and the lightnings , and thunderings , and voices , signifie the great changes in the world ( by shaking the powers thereof ) that should be made thereby . ans. what a marvellous remark is this , that this verse is the beginning of the prophecy of the opened book ! whenas it is said ch . , . upon iohn's eating the opened book ; thou must prophesie again before many peoples , and nations , and tongues , and kings . the vision of the inner and the outer court , the two witnesses , their slaughter and resurrection , is it no prophecy ? what an affected blindness is this , not to see so plain a truth ? wherefore that vision most certainly begins the prophecy of the opened book , which iohn is said to swallow , and thereupon that he was to prophesie before many peoples , &c. which words this vision immediately follows . and again , what a violence is this to make the opening of the temple of god in heaven no part of this first vision , but to tear it off from the rest of the vision , and make it part of the following , contrary to the autority of the best copies , and most approved expositors of the apocalypse ? there must be a strange prejudice that should hurry any one upon such an outrage , it being also repugnant to what is said in the same verse , which he thus unnaturally breaks off ▪ and there were lightnings , and voices , and thunderings , and an earthquake and great hail , which is plainly a description of matters concerning the seventh vial , where , ch . . it is said upon the seventh vial being poured out into the air , that there were voices , and thunders , and lightnings , and an earth-quake , and a great hail indeed , the hailstones being of a talent weight . the concurrence of these five phenomena , voices , thunderings , lightnings , earthquake and a great hail being found here , and no where else in all the apocalypse , saving under the seventh vial , what can it be but an indication of their synchronizing or signifying the same things ? so that this cannot be the beginning of the ensuing vision or prophecy , but the conclusion of this comprized in this eleventh chapter . and still it is more impossible , for as much as it is certain , that the vision beginning in the next chapter containeth the persecutions of the primitive church , as we shall see anon , whence all in the foregoing chapter must necessarily belong to that first vision . and therefore this interpretation of the temple of god being opened in heaven , is exceeding extravagant . for this comes to pass after the seventh angel begins to sound , which is a thousand and odd hundred years after the christian worship was received by the emperours . we may note also , that the pretty interpretation he makes of this passage depends upon a political sense of [ heaven ] which he rejected before , and may better doe it now , it being not likely to signifie any thing more than merely the place where the temple was seen ; as [ heaven ] is taken in the following vision . ( where certainly it signifies not symbolically , but topically or locally ) viz. the air from which region the thunders and lightenings were seen , as well as the temple of god appeared there ; as it is also said chap. . that upon the angels pouring his vial into the air , there were thunderings and lightenings , which confirms to us , that [ heaven ] here , which the remarker would interpret symbolically , signifies onely topically , and denotes the air. chap. . vers. . the woman cloathed with the sun signifies the church her being established in a heavenly station by the emperours receiving the faith , ( the supreme power being signified by the sun ) and so autorizing and defending the same by their autority ; and is not applicable to the sun of righteousness farther than he is owned by the emperours or worldly powers to be prince of the world , for she is beautified with this cloathing by her being in heaven . but she was before her exaltation to that station as much cloathed with the light of the gospel , or the sun of righteousness , and her crown of twelve stars does signifie as much as her being cloathed with the sun in that sense . ans. that the expositor's interpretation of the woman travailing in birth and pained to be delivered is true , this alone may assure us , viz. because it is very natural and such as is hit upon by all interpreters in a manner , i may add also necessary , it being incredible that the opened-book-prophecy prefiguring the fate of the church should omit the state of persecution the primitive christians were under . which if not here is no where figured out in the opened-book-prophecy . whence it is plain that as the vision of the measured inner court prefigures the purity and unapostatized state of the primitive church , so this of the woman in the throes of childbirth , her sharp persecutions under the pagan emperours . but now for the remarker's exposition , besides that it is tautological , it presently repeating what was understood , according to him , by the temple opened in heaven , that it is false appears , . because it deprives the opened-book-prophecy of any vision that sets out the persecutions of the primitive church , which is as notable and considerable as any thing that is prefigured in the whole apocalypse , and so makes the opened-book-prophecy defectuous . . it supposes , ( which is false ) that [ heaven ] in this vision signifies symbolically when it signifies onely topically . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had signified symbolically it would have run thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. and there appeared a great wonder , a woman in heaven cloathed with the sun , &c. if being seen in heaven had signified her political state or condition . which it does no more than it does concerning the red dragon , v. . who is not said to be seen in heaven , to set out his political condition , for that his seven crowns sufficiently shew , namely that he was in the highest political state , but onely signifies topically , and declares in what place iohn saw this wonderfull sight ; and so it is of the woman being seen there . . the remarker's interpretation here and his exposition of [ the temple appearing in heaven ] contradicts the text. for he supposes in both the christian religion to have become the religion of the emperours , and the christian laws the laws of the empire . whence it is plain that the woman cloathed with the sun in his sense is past her throes . this is point-blank against what is declared in the vision , that the woman cloathed with the sun being with child , cried travelling in birth and pained to be delivered , whenas the being in heaven in the remarker's sense , implies she was delivered already . wherefore it being so plain from hence , that the th verse of the precedent chapter is not the beginning of this vision , it is manifest that it ends the former , and that the earthquake and great hail is the same with that of the seventh vial ; and consequently from what has been already noted here on this chapter , and what deliver'd in my answers to the remarks on the former , that the vision comprised in that chapter commenceth with the beginning of the church , and ends with the seventh vial. it is also plain already , that the vision begun in this th . ch. commenceth from the beginning of the church , and endeth not till the vision of the wine-press , which closeth the . chapter , and which the remarker himself cannot deny but synchronizes with the seventh vial. so that the . . and . chapters contain one entire vision ( consisting of several parts ) synchronal to the vision contained in the . ch. and the affairs represented in this . ch. reach unto the woman's flight into the wilderness , where she is to be for a time and times and half a time , and to the emerging of the healed beast out of the sea , who makes war against her seed for months , the same with a time and times and half a time , and with the days of the mournfull prophesying of the witnesses . which time and things answer to one another , those of the . chapter to those of the . as the time of the affairs of this . chapter to the measured inner court there in chap. . and now forasmuch as there is a war betwixt the beast and the soldiers of the lamb in the . chapter , the mustering of these soldiers takes up part of the . chapter , and the description of their condition , which soldiers therefore synchronize with the war mentioned in the . chapter . and the voice of the first angel is a menacing admonition to the bestians for their idolatry , threatning to them the ill success of their war against the saints at last . which comminatory voice of this first angel commenceth for ought i can see with the fifth trumpet , and extends it self to the western as well as eastern empire , but is restrained to the time of the months war. but the second angel tells the actual success thereof , babylon is fallen , is fallen . which answers to the fall of the city in the . chapter , which is the success of the war there betwixt the beast and the witnesses . but what follows the fall of the city , in the . chapter , and the fall of babylon in the . reacheth into the times which commence with the seventh trumper and end with the seventh vial. so that there being such a perpetual correspondence of time and things betwixt the vision comprised in the . chapter and this integral vision contained in these three next , it is manifest they are two synchronal visions . and this i thought was a seasonable place to represent them to be such . vers. . this travailing in pain is not the suffering of the primitive persecutions , but her labouring to bring forth the man-child that was to rule all nations ; that as she was exalted to that heavenly station by the emperours receiving the faith , so the devil might be cast down from the same , and so outed of his dominion , which he held thereby , whereby the autority of christ might be established in heaven as prince of the world. ans. this travailing in pain must be understood of the primitive persecutions . for after the christian religion had become the religion of the empire ( which was upon the victories of constantine , in whom the man-child which the woman brought forth who was to rule all nations ( viz. those numerous nations contained in the roman empire ) was caught up unto god and his throne , that is , was invested in the imperial throne ) the woman , that is , the apostolick church was freed from her throes . the remarker seems to interpret without any regard to history . and here he harps again upon the same mistaken string , making heaven signifie symbolically when it here onely signifies topically . vers. . the war here does not signifie the conflict between the primitive christians and their persecutors : for the christians were not then in such a station as to war in heaven , but the war here on their side bears the same sense with the war of their adversaries , viz. the devil being sentenced to be cast out on the man-child's being caught up unto god and his throne , the war here was to put that sentence in execution , and it was betwixt the christian emperours and the heathen emperours , and also the tyrants who in favour of paganism rose up against the christian emperours , by which war at length the power of the devil or pagan empire was wholly abolished . ans. the war does signifie the conflict betwixt the primitive christians and their persecutors . and the reason alledged against it is very vain , as if [ heaven ] signified symbolically and not topically , which most certainly it does , as grotius has also noted , and renders [ in coelo ] in aere . and when the man-child was caught up unto god and his throne , the devil was not onely sentenced to be cast out but was actually cast out . nor was the man-child taken unto the throne of god , till the christian emperour had overcome the pagan . vers. . though the primitive christians did overcome their accuser by the bloud of the lamb , so as to be exalted to the heavenly station of ruling by the man-child being caught up unto god and his throne , &c. and obtained sentence against their adversary to be cast out , &c. yet was that sentence executed as before by the war , v. . ans. see what head-strong prejudice will doe ! as if the remarker shou'd say , though this eleventh verse does imply that the war was betwixt the primitive christians and their persecutors , yet it was not . but it does most certainly demonstrate that the war was betwixt the primitive christians and their persecutors . for the words are these , for they overcame , ( viz. the red dragon ) by the bloud of the lamb , and by the word of their testimony , and they loved not their lives unto death . what can be a more express description of martyrdom than this ? this is not a description of a war of emperours against emperours with their armies in the field where they fight upon equal terms , but of martyrs ( with the word of their testimony ) passively undergoing for their witnessing to the truth , what their cruel persecutors would inflict upon them . vers. . the dwellers in heaven are bid to rejoice by reason of the salvation and strength and kingdom of god and power of his christ , which was to come , and therefore surely must signifie them to whom the same came , whose particular concern this matter of joy was ; whereas angels and martyrs are no farther concerned in it than in general , as they are concerned for the welfare of the church ; nor can those that were exalted by preferments to the political heaven of the empire be concerned in it farther than they were in such a state as to have the coming of salvation and strength and the kingdom of god fulfilled in them . for it onely respects those that are in such a state , who are called dwellers in heaven in respect of the heavenly station that they were exalted to thereby after the devil and his angels were cast out , and the autority of christ established as prince of the world. for then they became the joyfull company with the lamb on mount sion singing the song of the victory , &c. who as they are there markt on their foreheads for preservation , so they are the worshippers in the temple and altar ( or the two witnesses ) meted for the same purpose , and are the same that are called dwellers in heaven , ch. . . and are thus distinguished from those dwellers on earth , against whom the woe is pronounced by reason of the power the devil will have over them still after he is cast out . ans. the expositor has taken in both senses of [ heaven ] political and natural , they being both sure and consistent one with another , and the joy of angels and martyrs at the welfare of the church is too great to be slighted or omitted . but to ramble into mystical senses , and reach out to the company of the lamb on mount sion , is not to interpret by rule , but to trifle . all apostolick christians were concerned in this victory of the church , and most of those in high place in the empire turned christian. but the foregoing verse so plainly determining this joy to the victory of the church in the times of constantine ( which shews that the kingdom of god and power of his christ was come already , and is said to be so , v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. not yet to come ) it is a strange vagary to ramble from the antemedial synchronals to the middle synchronals , which undoubtedly the company on mount sion belong to . and for the remarker's groundless conceit touching the worshippers in the temple and thysiasterion , the vanity thereof has been above sufficiently shewn . and for the dwellers in heaven , ch. . v. . we shall consider it when we come at it . but for this present place , if the dwellers in heaven be those in high degree , the dwellers on earth must naturally signifie those in low degree , or common people , as the expositor has interpreted it . vers. . arianism cannot be here intended more than the catholick doctrine , they both running into extremes , and each maintaining their cause with like fumous animosity . but by the serpent's casting out water like a floud seems to be signified the frequent tumultuating of the common people and magistrates that continued pagans against the christians , whereby great outrages were oft committed . but such arians and catholicks may be also included who under a cloak of religion did violently prosecute each other out of enmity or self-interest to the great reproach and ruine of religion . ans. the contention betwixt the arians and catholicks is most certainly included , and is that which history most of all rings of , and most highly concerned the church , and therefore could not be omitted in this opened-book-prophecy which concerns the state of the church : as for any other contests less notable betwixt christians and pagans they were such as could not hazard the woman's being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , her being carried away with the sloud . none but a contention betwixt the christians themselves and such as shaked the very foundation of their religion could put her in that hazard . so that this is a very lank sense which the remarker gives of this passage . vers. . the earth that helped the woman , by swallowing the sloud , may signifie the sober , stayd sort of people , who being either seasoned with principles of religion , or being of peaceable spirits , and obedient to authority , did endeavour to asswage all such tumults , and discountenance and oppose all such furious animosities , and were for composing all differences in a legal , orderly , and peaceable manner . ans. undoubtedly that sloud of contention was the hot contest betwixt the arians and catholicks . could therefore the soberer sort of common people , christians or pagans , compose this difference ? what an absurd conceit is this ? the earth that swallows up this sloud , does not signifie the common people here , though sometimes it is a symbol of them . but the sense is onely this , that this floud of contention was swallowed down and dried up by the help of oecumenical councils , as some rapid torrent is suck't down by the gaping of the earth . this is enough . but farther curiosity might invite a man to fanfie that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is included in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whence [ oecumenical ] comes , is alluded to ; or earth in general put for clayish earth , which in daniel is a symbol of the ecclesiastical power , of which councils did consist . and then it fits obviously and exquisitely . chap. . vers. . the name of blasphemy , if it does intend idolatry , yet it hath a farther signification , as , all sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven men , but the blasphemy against the holy ghost , &c. where the malignant reproach of god's spirit evidencing it self in the works of our saviour , is said to be unpardonable blasphemy ; and the like reproaching of the holy spirit manifesting it self in the saints is likewise blasphemy , though not of so heinous a degree . which kind of blasphemy seems here to be chiefly intended . also our saviour says to the philadelphian church , i know the blasphemy of those that say they are iews , &c. viz. spiritual jews or christians , the belying the truth and righteousness of god in believers , in making that to be it which is not , is there called blasphemy . and so this beast is v. . said to speak great things and blasphemies ; and v. . to blaspheme the name of god and his tabernacle , and them that dwell in heaven , whereby seems to be signified his enmity against the saints with whom , v. . he makes war , but doth , v. . discharge his wrath against them with blasphemous scoffs and reproaches to overwhelm them with contempt , &c. of which see v. . ans. that the name of blasphemy does chiefly , if not onely intend idolatry , is the current sense of expositors , papists and reformed . and blasphemy being an iconisme of idolatry , that sense is more probable for its being iconistical , the genius of the apocalyptick style being such as to signifie things iconistically , rather than plainly . see , blasphemy , in the expositor's alphabet of iconisms . moreover , this vision sets out the state of the visible church ( which visible state of things in the church is the main object of those visions of the apocalypse that concern the church , as this prophecy of the opened book does ) wherefore the vision in this th chapter comprizing those times of the church , wherein she was so visibly apostatized into idolatry , some iconistical passages or other must particularly indicate that , nor the vision be content with that more slight and unobservable intimation , by calling the two beasts that appear here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which does more palpably denote their cruelty than idolatry ; and therefore there is this farther intimation , and plainer , in saying there was the name of blasphemy on his seven heads , and that his mouth spoke great things and blasphemies , v. . where , great things being joined with blasphemies , it is a plain indication , that blasphemy here has no such dwindling sense as the remarker would put upon it . and lastly , that it does not signifie blasphemy in the remarker's sense , viz. reproaching and speaking evil of the saints , may appear from hence , because this title of blasphemy is set in common upon all the seven heads , whenas several of them as the kings and decemviri had nothing to doe with the saints or any of the church of god. nay , six of these heads were gone before the saints , which the remarker means , were on the stage , and so had no occasion to blaspheme them . but that they are all seven idolatrous heads , is unquestionable with those that understand sense . wherefore blasphemy , and to blaspheme , in several other places of scripture , signifying idolatry , as well as here , as is abundantly made out by mr. mede and peganius upon the place , ( see also the alphabet of iconisms , ) it seems to me an homoursome business in the remarker , that he should balk the exposition of that excellent interpreter mr. mede , and take up with one so little approvable with any , unless with some conceited touchy souls , that fansie themselves saints before they be so , and love separation , and cry out , stand off , i am more holy than thou ; that when they are sharply , though justly , reproved for their real hypocrisie , factiousness and other vices and miscarriages , they may imagine themselves to be blasphemed by the beast or his worshippers , and so be the more confirmed in their presumed saintship , and in all the enormities that attend such a delusion . so little edifying is such a precarious exposition as this . there wanted no prophetical monitions or prefigurations that wicked men will speak ill of good men from that antipathy which is betwixt them . but that the pretended church of christ still professing christianity , and declaring against idols , should really become idolatrous , and establish idolatries by a law , to be able to predict this , was becoming the prescience of god , and to predict it , his goodness , it being so usefull for the reformation of the church . there is nothing more that is material in this remark , unless i should take notice of that assertion which seems to insinuate , that mens speaking evil of the fruits of god's spirit appearing in good men , though of a private and ordinary quality , not special missionaries from god , as christ and his apostles were , nor publick persons or grandees in government , that reproaching such is termed blasphemy in scripture . which i dare say is false ; let him search all the english bible , and find a place if he can . and if so ; then this interpretation of the remarker is quite out of doors . vers. . the dragon's power here given to the beast , is the same with the beast's power , v. . over all that dwell on the earth , whose names are not written in the book of life of the lamb , &c. viz. all who by entrance into life by faith do not attain to become members of christ's kingdom , are shut out under the powers of darkness , and so become subject not onely to idolatrous delusions , but to cruel bondage also , &c. the dragon's seat and great autority is not the imperial crown , for that he lost being cast out of heaven , but it 's his dominion over those dwellers on earth , whose names are not written in the book of life , &c. which is like the dominion which a rebel may gain over a great part of the prince's subjects , that revolt from him , though the prince keep his crown . ans. the dragon's power here in this verse does not signifie the same that the beast's power in the th and th verses . for here the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here signifies military forces , and what they are the expositor has explained . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 used here also , and rendred autority , shews that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies military forces , or else it were a needless tautology . indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here may well be parallel to that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in v. . and explained thereby . for this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this great autority is said , v. . to be an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a power or autority over kindreds , tongues and nations , and that is a great autority indeed , saving that there is made that diminution from it ; it does not reach those , to make them submit to the unlawfull edicts of it , whose names are writ in the book of life of the lamb. that the dragon could not give the imperial throne to the beast , because he was cast out of it himself , is wittily observed . but you must understand he surrendred it not willingly , but because he could not keep it . it signifies onely , that the beast succeeded the dragon , and that is imputed to the dragon as done by him , which was done onely upon occasion of the condition he was in , by a zoopoeia of the second kind . but the furthering of the debauchery of the empire by pagan-like superstition and idolatry , there he may have a positive influence and help on the mischief by his invisible forces . vers. . the deadly wound of one of the heads of the beast is not the ruine of the pagan empire by its conversion to christianity , but it 's that wound by the sword , vers . . viz. the ruine of the empire by the incursion of the barbarous nations , and the extinguishing of the western emperours in augustulus . ans. the deadly wound of one of the heads of the beast is the conversion of the emperour , the sixth head , to christianity , which was the issue of the war betwixt michael and the dragon , the war betwixt the primitive christians and their persecutours , ch . . as has been there proved against the remarker . and the wound by the sword , v. . relates to that battel . it was by their faith in the word , which is the sword of the spirit , that the primitive christians overcame their persecutours . this meaning is very easie and natural . but that the remarker would distort this passage to the incursion of the barbarous nations , and the extinguishing of the western emperours in augustulus , shews him less mindfull of that indispensable rule in the interpreting the visions of the opened-book-prophecies especially ( which set out the affairs of the church ) that that interpretation is to be preferred that points at the state of the church and matters of religion . this is a most certain truth . and to shew how unsuccessfull he is by balking it , it is said v. . that the head that was wounded was healed . so that this vision represents the ten-horned beast ( whose ten horns were crowned , and wounded head healed at the same time ) under his healed condition , though the perfection of his cure extended farther . but in the political sense this western head was not healed till corolus magnus his time . so that by this account the epocha of this vision must be years after christ , and the continuance of this beast , which is prophetical months , commence from thence . which i think is sufficiently absurd . vers. . his name , his tabernacle , and them that dwell in heaven , may signifie three states or degrees of saints , in whom god was blasphemed by the contempt and reproaches cast on them by the beast , to represent them as evil doers , and falsly accuse their good conversation in christ. the first such as are but in a legal state under a christian profession , and therefore are peculiarly characterized by bearing the name of god , because the loving and professing the same is the height of such a state . therefore esay . . . makes it the distinguishing character of the jews from other nations , that they were called by god's name , and on their revolt from their obedience , ier. . . they are threatned , that god's name shall be no more named by any of them . and our saviour's first petition in his prayer seems to respect this state as preparatory to that which he teacheth next to pray for . the second , such as by faith have attained to an entrance into life or communion with god by his spirit , but not thereby to such a full subjection to him , or victory over the world , whereby to live in a constant communion with him , but his abode in them is as the sojourning in a tabernacle ; and this state of christians does answer to the outward court , which was left out and not meted to be preserved from profanation , &c. rev. . , . whence at the descent of the new ierusalem ( which is at the restauration of the outward court ) it 's said , the tabernacle of god is with men . the third , such as answer to the worshippers in the temple , and at the altar , and are measured for preservation , when the outward court is left out to be profaned and troden down during the antichristian apostasie . these overcome the beast , and are those inhabitants of mount sion , that were redeemed from the earth , and follow the lamb whereever he goes , being without fault before the throne of god , &c. in whom god is not a sojourner as in a tabernacle , but makes his constant abode in them ( by that communion with him in life which they enjoy ) as in a temple , and who though , as being the two witnesses , they are described in a mournfull condition by reason of their being sorrowfully affected with the evils of the world they testifie against , yet they are joyfull harpers on mount sion , ch . . to whom that voice is directed , ch . . . rejoyce ye heavens , and ye that dwell in them . but to make the idolatrous worship of god , or of saints and angels ( supposed here for the dwellers in heaven ) to be signified by the blaspheming of him and them , is a forced construction , being what is done is out of a real design of paying due worship and honour to them . though it be erroneous and corrupt , yet can it badly be called a blaspheming of them ( which imports rather a malignant purpose to reproach them than to honour them ) especially in reference to saints and angels , who have by such worship more ascribed to them than is due , though it may be in reference to god , who hath thereby less ascribed to him than his due , and so is dishonoured . ans. that there are two states of men in reference to religion , i allow , a legal or exteriour state , ( when out of fear of hell and hope of heaven they live as near as they can according to an external rule ) and a spiritual state , which is the state of regeneration and of the spirit of life in the new birth , which may be less or more perfect , whereby they have a sense of the sweetness and loveliness of the divine life , and are held thereby in communion with god. and i allow also that this state may be either vincible or invincible . so that the remarker may imagine three estates if he will , but by the like subdivision of the legal state there may be four . for there may be such a strong fear of hell in an unregenerate man , that it may make him also invincibly resist all such injunctions as are put upon him , which seem repugnant to the word of god , for fear of being damned and tormented in hell. so precarious is this conceit of just three states . but grant just three states , i deny that the men under these three states are signified by the name of god , by the tabernacle of god , and by the dwellers in heaven . first , because men merely under such dispensations , who yet are neither extraordinarily inspired missionaries as christ and his apostles , nor publick magistrates , which the scripture calls gods , and the like , are not capable of being blasphemed , that is , the phrase is not proper for them , and therefore it is a sign they are not here understood . again , the remarker cannot produce any places of scripture where the name of god signifies men in a legal state , or the tabernacle of god signifies men in a less perfect spiritual state , or that the dwellers in heaven denote men precisely in an invincible spiritual state . as for the scriptures cited for the first . god's name was not the people of israel themselves ; and when we pray , hallowed be god's name , do we understand the people of god there by god's name ? what trifling is this ? and lastly , besides all this , if by god's name is meant those that bear his name ; this , according to the style of the apocalypse , signifies the highest attainment in christianity , as being the character of the philadelphian state , ch . . . i will write upon him the name of my god. and so the tabernacle of god , it cannot be the note of the less perfect degree of the spiritual state , because it is the ierusalem-state , the highest degree of the spiritual state , that is , apoc. . . and the condition there described is a permanent condition ; so that this conceit of sojourning is a perfect mistake : according to which , the restauration of the outward court would be a restoring of it to a sojourning condition . how repugnant are these things ? nor is there any thing brought to prove , that the dwellers in heaven signifie men of the third state , but that of ch . . . rejoyce ye heavens , and they that dwell in them . which we have proved to belong to the times of constantine . and as for the conceit touching the worshippers in the temple , and thysiasterion , the groundlesness thereof was shew'd in my answer to the remarks on chap. . so that this whole remark hitherto is a strange incoherent dream of forced and far-fetched fancies . and for his impugning the expositor's interpretation , it is as weak as the other was wild . for supposing the idolatrous worship of god , saints and angels to be well meant by them , that so worship them , ( though the gain of the church more than the glory of them that they so worship , is in all likelihood aimed at by them that give the example to the people ) yet it does not follow but that this worship is really a reproach to them . which reproach , they being all made objects of religious worship , is properly called blasphemy , as act. . . the town-clark clears the apostles from being blasphemers of the goddess diana . that they are all reproached , both god , saints and angels is made good in the exposition ; and it is farther fitting that this reproach should be called blasphemy , that by this sharp reproof they may be the more effectually staved off from committing idolatry in such worship of god , saints , and the holy angels . to all which you may add , that it is usual in scripture to charge the sinner with that directly which he commits but interpretativè , as ier. ch . . . the prophet there makes the jews to say to a stock , thou art my father ; and to a stone , thou hast begotten me , for their praying to stocks and stones . see synops. prophetic . book . chap. . vers. . this scripture is of like sense with , reward her as she has rewarded you , &c. chap. . but the sense here given is to make a mercy and blessing to be threatned instead of a judgment , and the scripture to speak so ambiguously as to be unintelligible . ans. this is a comfortable promise to them that suffer for the present , that their cause shall obtain at last , and a threatening to the unconverted part of their enemies , that they shall lose so much of their dominion by those that are converted ; and this certainly was to come to pass , and did come to pass against the papal power in the rising of the witnesses , the late blessed reformation , which was more considerable than the killing by the sword in a literal sense , which was no farther to come to pass than themselves necessitated it . this verse therefore sets out the expectant state of the soldiers of the lamb , the firm hope of victory at last for their sufferings , as is expresly said in those last words . here is the patience and faith of the saints . but the news of their actual victory is by the second angel , ch . . . vers. . the exercising all the power of the first beast , &c. does signifie the temporal dominion of the two-horned beast , by plucking up three horns by the roots ; and for the better countenancing the power he did exercise , he as a prophet , or christ's vicar , did confirm the exercise of the same power by the beast , and so caused all to worship him . but his exercising all the power of the first beast cannot signifie his making laws in matters of religion ; for if the first beast had such power ( which is not to be granted ) yet that cannot be called all his power , nor the greatest part of it . ans. one would think the remarker a man of a mighty secular and worldly genius , when notwithstanding this opened-book-prophecy related to the state of religion in the church , he ever distorts things to a politick or civil sense , which yet are most naturally understood of religion . for the words here run thus ; and he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him , and he causeth the earth , and them that dwell therein , to worship the first beast , whose deadly wound was healed . before which immediately precedes , and he spake as the dragon , viz. decreed idolatries ▪ and the reason then follows , because he had got the autority of the first beast into his own hands , whereby he reduced the world again to a draconick religion , bloudy and idolatrous . he had got all this kind of power into his hands , the two-horned beast , i say , had so , but he had not got all the secular power of the empire into his hands , no not by plucking the three horns up by the roots . for the ten-horned beast signifies the whole secular dominion of the empire . besides , that the two-horned beast began to renew the image of the dragon before he had plucked up the three horns by the roots . so that that passage [ all the power of the first beast ] must be understood of that kind of power , it being false of the other . and this power of approving and allowing matters of religion in the supreme secular magistrate , as it is declared in our church , is most certainly their right ; but this is not a place to dispute the point . thus safe is it to stear the sense of the opened-book-prophecy , by having an eye to the affairs of religion in the empire . vers. . the change of religion by the victory of the martyrs cannot be called a deadly wounding of the beast by a sword , nor was there any ruine to it thereby ; for the same politick body of the beast continued till it was wounded to death by a sword , viz. ruined by the incursion of the barbarous nations . and as he was not ruined by the ruine of the pagan religion , so the restoring of the like religion was not the reviving of him . but he lived again when the like politick body or civil state of affairs in the empire was re-established by the ten-horned beast , by the barbarous nations settling into a subjection to , or a compliance with the roman laws . and as the beast was revived when the former politick state of the empire was restored in the ten-horned beast , so when the pope created a new succession of emperours , it then became a complete image of the former beast . so that the beast and his image are not so denominated from the affairs of religion , but from the civil state of the empire , yet so as to include religion as it is complicated with the civil affairs . ans. here the remarker again misseth the mark quite , by not taking heed to that inviolable rule in expounding the opened-book-prophecy , viz. that it sets out the state of the empire in reference to matters of religion , and the pure worship of god and christ , and that these expositions are the surest that respect that . for what cares the spirit of prophecy for taking notice of the changes of secular states and kingdoms , but so far as god's true church and the purity of his worship are concerned , and consequently those that worship him according to the laws he has appointed ? the pagan emperours of rome were pontifices maximi , as well as emperours , and the pagan religion part of the laws of the empire , it being enacted and ratified by the supreme powers thereof , as the civil laws were . wherefore the pagan religion equally , if not more , being the very life and soul of the seven-headed red dragon ( that is , of the pagan empire , which would cease to be the red dragon , if the pagan religion ceased ) than the civil laws themselves , when the pagan religion was in a sort abolished by the sixth head of the red dragon his turning christian , namely the emperour constantine , &c. certainly that was the head ( and then ) that was wounded to death , and wounded to death in the fullest sense that the opened-book-prophecy can be truly thought to take notice of , as chiefly to aim at . for what is the church concerned in the affairs of kingdoms , but so far as they either hinder or further the pure worship of god and christ ? and in the same sense that the head was wounded to death , is the beast said to be wounded ( in this verse ) by the sword , namely in the red dragon's fight with michael and the martyrs , the battel being described in the immediately foregoing chapter ; and therefore where should he get his wound but there ? for the martyrs sticking close to the truth of the word , which is the sword of the spirit , got the victory over the beast , they loving not their lives unto the death . add unto all this , that the beast could not revive before his head wounded to death was cured . neque enim sanatio istaec factum aliquod posterius fuit , sed ipsa nativitas bestiae novissimae , as mr. mede judiciously concludes from the genuine sense of the text of the prophecy . but in this civil or secular sense that the remarker drives at , his head was not cured till carolus magnus was made the western emperour . but he is represented in this vision in the beginning of it as with ten crowned horns , so with his head cured . such he was when he emerged out of the sea , he was revived again from his deadly wound . therefore the epocha of this vision , as i noted before , commenceth as low as the reign of carolus magnus , according to the remarker , and the months of the beast must end after two thousand years after christ. and besides this , according to the remarker's sense of the reviving of the beast , and beast's head will continue dead near three hundred years after the body of the beast was revived . this it is to attempt to unlock the apocalypse without that excellent key , the rule i have so often mentioned . chap. . vers. . if the zeal of those greek emperours named were not a sufficient fulfilling of the monition of the first angel , the overrunning of the empire by the saracens would be far more proper to make it up , both in regard of time and other respects , than the subduing by the turks . but neither of them are signified , being visions belonging to the sealed book . nor needs there any farther fulfilling than what was by those greek emperours . ans. the expositor's words on this verse are these ; that this angelical monition was the most loudly and earnestly urged upon the christian world , at the dreadfull siege and storming of constantinople , and subduing the whole eastern church and empire to the turk . which makes neither the plague of the saracens nor turks to belong to the opened-book-prophecy , but lets them keep their place in the prophecy of the sealed book . but implies onely , that the voice of that angel is not confined to the greek emperours onely , but may be stretched to as many , either secular potentates or prelates , or other eminently zealous men , and observant of the severe judgment of god against the idolatrous greek church . for ought i know , those early evangelici may come in for a share here , who were preachers of the everlasting gospel , that which was purely contained in scripture , and declared against the idolatries and superstitions of the church of rome , and sealed their testimony with their bloud , i mean the waldenses and albigenses . who if they made any use of the judgments of god by the saracens on the empire , as well as others might do of his judgments by the turks , and it can be made out , i am not against it . and from the end of the albigensian war , which was finished anno , to the taking of constantinople , which was in the year , in that interval there were many famous men declaring for the everlasting gospel against the antichristian doctrines and practices , and they making the pope of rome the antichrist , could not but denounce this approaching judgment . you may see their names in alstedius and david pareus . and upon the taking of constantinople by the turk , the voice of this first angel would be louder in preaching the everlasting gospel , and denouncing the fall of antichrist or babylon till the second angel could tell the news that it was done . see alstedius his chronologia testium veritatis , where you may easily make collections to this purpose . vers. . the fall of babylon , viz. the commencement of it , is most aptly applied to the separation of the albigenses and waldenses from the communion of it ; to which may be added the separation of the greek church from it , before the subduing of the empire by the turks . but to apply this to the reformation , will clash with the admonition of the third angel. ans. the waldenses and albigenses could not be the angel that declared that babylon was fallen , but were a people that were aggrieved that it stood , but were an holy good people , and truly evangelical , and preachers of the everlasting gospel , and denouncers of the judgments of god against babylon , predicting that it would fall , and therefore belong to the first angel. and though mr. mede would draw the affairs of the waldenses and albigenses to the voice of the second angel , yet he has not the confidence to say that their appearing was the fall of babylon , but onely , that , as he phrases it , iam nunc ruinae babylonis jaciuntur fundamenta . and he would countenance his application from the very place that , [ babylon is fallen is fallen ] alludes to , isa. ch . . because at the time that isaias uttered that prophecy , the medes cast off the yoke of the assyrians , and building their imperial city ecbatana under their new king dejoces , laid the foundation of an empire fatal to babylon , as well as to nineve . but supposing that so , yet it is plain in the vision that the prophet esay's imagination was not carried to the time of dejoces and the building of ecbatana , but to that very festival night that belsazer celebrated , in which the medes and persians took babylon . and it might very well then be said , babylon is fallen , is fallen . but the other time being about years before , if it had been said that then babylon was fallen , it had been a falshood , and so it is in the news of the second angel , if the angel respect the times of the albigenses and waldenses , and say that then babylon was fallen , it is plainly an untruth , it standing tight about years after their appearing . nor can his so pronouncing be excused by this passage in esay , as has been plainly proved . see munster , vatablus and cornelius à lapide upon that vision of esaias . but now , how the separation of the greek church has any place here , i understand not . but if the breaking of that short union , such as it was , of the greek church with the roman be reckoned to this partial fall of babylon , how much more is the reformation begun by luther ( which is nearer to that affair of the greek church , than that to the albigensian ) to be reckoned thereto , when so many countries , principalities and kingdoms fell off from the papacy ? wherefore this voice of the second angel is most fitly applied to the reformation , as the rising also of the witnesses , the rising of the witnesses being the fall of babylon . and it is said expresly , at the rising of the witnesses , that a tenth part of the city fell , viz. of the city babylon . which being not a final or total ruine of babylon , but , as it were , the primity thereof , and at least a tenth part thereof falling at the reformation , it is a most evident argument that the reformation is the rising of the witnesses , and this very fall of babylon , which is with that joy and triumph declared by this second angel. what can be more clear ? and therefore this joyfull annunciation of the fall of babylon corresponds with the doxology of the elders upon the sounding of the seventh trumpet , ch . . nor does this at all clash with the admonition of the third angel , as we shall presently see . vers. . the misapplying the monitions of the two former angels hath run the third out of distance , to signifie the condemnation to hell-torments , which is peculiar to the day of judgment , whenas plainly here is signified a judgment in this life . for their torments are said to be in the presence of the holy angels , and by reason of the suffering them the worshippers of the beast have no rest day nor night ; and it 's also said , here is the patience of the saints , viz. in bearing what they shall suffer from the worshippers of the beast enraged with these torments . so that doubtless this monition of the angel does signifie the plagues of the vials . ans. the monition of the third angel is not run out of due distance , nor reaches to the last judgment , when the wicked shall be cast into hell , but is onely a peremptory declaration , that those that worship the beast and his image shall be so served at the last day , at the general day of judgment . but this does not excuse them from unquietness and unpeaceableness of mind in this life . and that that final judgment is to be inflicted in the presence of the holy angels , and in the presence of the lamb is no argument that it is a judgment in this life , because the holy angels , as also the saints ( martyrs especially ) will be assistents to the lamb on his tribunal at the last day , when he shall pronounce that dreadfull sentence , go ye accursed into everlasting fire , &c. all expositors agree that infernal torments are here understood , by being tormented with fire and brimstone , and the smoak thereof ascending up for ever and ever . but that which follows concerns the unpeaceableness of mind , and unquietness of conscience in them that have any conscience left in them , if they worship the beast and his image , by reason that the voice of this angel will be so loud and clear touching the idolatrousness of the church of rome , and the unsalvableness of those in her communion . which will the more enrage the pontifician party to persecute and necessitate others that have any conscience left in them to suffer any persecution rather than hazard their own salvation , and turn idolaters . this will be the most eminently fulfilled , i mean the preaching of the third angel , under the effusion of the fourth vial in the mystical sense thereof , though it has in some measure been fulfilled all along the reformation , and may reach through all the vials by a geniconaea , but by an idiconaea more peculiarly respect the fourth . but from hence is that which follows : here is the patience of the saints , &c. so that the remarker and expositor here agree , that the monition of the third angel respects the plagues of the vials in some sort . vers. . the angel coming out of the temple , does here and elsewhere signifie their coming from the throne of god , where they received his commands , and justice and judgment being the habitation of his throne , the righteousness of those commands may be farther signified . also they being ministring spirits attending at the throne ( signified by the seven lamps burning before it ) the temple is their proper abode till they be sent out . but what ground there is to make the temple here to represent the church , i do not apprehend . ans. this conceit of the remarker would be the more plausible , if the angel had been said to come from the throne . but every one that went into the temple went not into the sanctum sanctorum . that was a privilege of the high priest onely . and that all angels have the honour to attend the throne , is a point the remarker will never be able to prove ; nor that the temple here signifies the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thereof in that strict sense . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes signifies as large as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is rendred templum , which contains the outward and inward court also . and peganius , an excellent critick in the jewish learning , touching this angel coming out of the temple , says , it was anciently a custome among the iews , out of the temple to appoint labourers for the first harvest , and to signifie to them when they should begin . certainly those labourers which were appointed out of the temple , nor the appointers of them were such as entred the sanctum sanctorum , and approached the throne , &c. and mr. mede expresly interprets this angel's coming out of the temple of the prayers of the church in general , as that from the thysiasterion of the prayers more especially of martyrs and confessors . how largely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies , may appear from what is said , psalm . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and in his temple does every man speak of his glory . but it is not for every man to enter into the sanctum , much less into the sanctum sanctorum . the whole fabrick is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as being the habitation of god , as the notation of the word implies . and iohn . . where our saviour says , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , destroy this temple , the jews presently understood it of the whole fabrick that included the courts , which makes them answer , forty six years , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , was this temple a building , &c. wherefore it is plain there is ground enough for the temple , representing the church of god , the congregation of god or his people using solemnly to be gathered thither . and our saviour calls it the house of prayer . this angel therefore coming out thence , and speaking to the other angel sitting on the cloud representing christ , to put in his sickle signifies whitherto the prayers of the church tended . vers. . the reaping of him that fate on a cloud , may signifie the ascending of the witnesses in a cloud , or rather the consequences thereof . for their ascent will be the pitching of the thrones for the ancient of days to sit , or a commencement of that judgment that is to be given to the saints of the most high to take away the dominion of the beast . so that the reaping here will be the separating of the people of god from communion with the beast , to associate themselves with the risen-witnesses , and to fulfill the monition , come out of her my people , &c. ans. is he then that sits on the cloud the risen-witnesses ? it 's pity but there had appeared another with him to make them two . the description imports that it is christ himself , according to the usual sense of interpreters , even that son of man that comes in the clouds of heaven , and the ancient of days gives him the kingdom , which he augmenteth here by this harvest of the converted iews , this immediately preceding the vintage , which synchronizeth , and is in a manner the same with the seventh vial , ( see mr. mede ) and with the battel of the rider on the white horse , ch . . which there immediately ensues the marriage of the lamb , which in all reason is understood of the calling of the jews . the rising of the witnesses is certainly before the first vial , but this affair synchronizeth with the sixth . so much out is the remarker here . vers. . here the angel that hath power over the fire , his crying to him that had the sharp sickle is said to be for vengeance on the cruel murtherers and idolaters , but the vengeance taken by thrusting in the sharp sickle is said more especially to respect the converting them , which is a strange vengeance . and the making the mention of fire here to be , because of the martyrdoms inflicted by it , is not sense . but the angel is said to have power over fire in respect of his executing god's wrath by causing fierce and bloudy wars consuming like a fire , &c. in which sense fire is used in the first trumpet , and the censer of fire cast upon the earth before the trumpets ; and so likewise here the angel with a sharp sickle being to reap the vine of the earth , viz. to gather the antichristian party to battel , is odered thereto by the angel that had power over fire , viz. who ( as our saviour came not to bring peace , but division , and to send a fire on earth , and as the rider on the red horse in the second seal had power to take peace from the earth , &c. ) had power to cause such divisions and commotions as should incense and stir men up to the said battel , &c. ans. upon those words [ which had power over the fire ] peganius writes thus : who in the priesthood , says he , of the heavenly tabernacle was to have care of the fire upon the altar , whence now should be kindled the fire of vengeance . which is a sense no way inconsistent with mine , viz. that this altar is named in relation to the martyrdoms under the papal tyranny , and the fire the rather , because their martyrdom was much by fire , they were burnt as holocausts to the pride and covetousness of the papacy . and peganius himself upon those words precedent [ and another angel came out from the altar ] where the souls of the martyrs , says he , were kept , and whose bloud the lord would avenge at this time . but the fire of the altar does not signifie wrath and vengeance simply of it self , as appears from esay . ch . . where a live-coal taken from the altar by a seraphin , and put to the mouth of the prophet , is a sign of his iniquity being taken away , and of his sin being purged , which is not vengeance , but mercy . and the use of this fire on the altar was to burn their sacrifices , which were to propitiate god's wrath , not to kindle it . wherefore these things being considered , what a severe sentence is this of the remarker to say [ that the making of mention of fire here is , because of the martyrdom inflicted by it ] is not sense ? for it is more perfect and adequate sense than the other . the altar and the fire that burnt their holocausts , compared with the burning of the martyrs , which the pontifician power burnt as so many holocausts , to their pride , avarice and cruelty , being a more proper and efficacious incentive to pray for vengeance against them than merely the heat of fire signifying that way , which may as well signifie the warmth of mercy , the ardour , of love , and zeal for the conversion of men as vengeance . nor does the fire of incense , apoc. . of it self signifie wrath and vengeance , else prayer , which the fume of incense signifies could onely be for vengeance , which is extremely absurd . but the coals of incense there are determined to that sense , because the prayers of god's people had been uttered that way . and the angel that had the care of the fire on the altar , ( fire signifying the flames of holy zeal and love , as well as the heat of wrath and revenge ) may call to him that has the sharp sickle , according to both these senses , out of wrath to destroy one party , and out of love and mercy to convert the other . for that seems to be an affected mistake in the remarker , that he makes the expositor to allot both vengeance and conversion to the same party . so that the objection is a mere cavil . vers. . here is likewise a strange wine-press of the wrath of god , viz. mens being pressed in conscience upon sharp convictions of sin by powerfull preaching , whereby the wrath of god against them is kindled in them . such perverting of the easie , plain sense of the text seems to proceed from an affectation of speaking smooth things . ans. this meaning of the wine-press is not so strange as true , as i shall make appear in my answer to his next remark . and as for the remarker's insinuating an affectation in the expositor of speaking smooth things , and that he should mis-interpret the vision out of this principle , if he again should say that the remarker mis-interprets prophecies out of a deep fierce melancholy , would that be an argument ? or onely a sign of want of better arguments ? vers. . as the juice of grapes troden by horsemen in a wine-press would spue out to the horse-bridles , so a great slaughter is here aptly signified by bloud coming out to the horse-bridles in the wine-press of the wrath of god. but that a perfect victory over the contumacious by a full conviction of them should be here signified , is the continuance of the strange conceits in the two foregoing verses , turning the great wrath of god , which at the great day of god the seventh trumpet is to be executed upon the obdurate enemies of christ by that decisive battel betwixt him and them into the great blessing of making them converts , &c. and that furlongs should here signifie symbolically , and not numerically , is also a groundless conceit . for the numerical signification is the plain easie sense , and there is no intimation of any other sense ; whenas the number ( which is instanced in to countenance a symbolical sense here ) hath the same plainly signified in the text , that it is to be taken symbolically or mystically . and also the same is evident in the wonderfull apt application of it , which in this case altogether fails . therefore it had been better still to have taken up with mr. mede's conceit , than to relinquish it for this undoubted mystery , which is doubtless a great mistake . ans. this is the first news i have heard of horses being wine-pressers . nor is the bloud of the grape in the vision said to spurt up to the horse-bridles in the wine-press , but to come out of the wine-press , even to the horse-bridles , and that for the space of one thousand six hundred furlongs . what , could the bloud spurt so far out of the wine-press ? then certainly it spurted above the horse-bridles in the wine-press . ribera most certainly has hit on the most genuine literal sense of this passage , who first mentioning that of ioel , ch . . . get ye down , for the wine-press is full , the wine-fats overflow ; he says , iohn outdoes this expression of the prophet , whenas he says so much mustum came out from this pressing , that not onely the wine-press was full to the top , but overflowed the neighbouring ground to a thousand six hundred furlongs , and so deep that all the space was unpassable by any footman ; and if an horse-man rid in it , it would take his horse up to the bridle . this is assuredly the easie and natural sense of the letter . and therefore if the letter be to be expounded of a carnal warfare , there will be such a battel as will overflow the ground with bloud for sixteen hundred furlongs , that is for two hundred miles together . which if you suppose in length , as all interpreters in a manner look that way , and take it for granted that the longitude of the bloudy tract is intimated , unless there were a chanel made on purpose , it would proportionably spread in breadth . but to make a more favourable construction of it , let these two hundred miles in length spread but a mile in breadth , so that the tract of bloud may be but square miles , which is but a modest supposition , this slaughter being to be executed by the victorious saints , nothing but either heedlesness or an efferate religious melancholy can make any one conceit so salvage a scene of things introduced by them . besides that , it is infinitely incredible that so vast a multitude of men should be gathered into one field-battel , as that if all their throats were cut , or however else they were slain should fill two hundred square miles with bloud up to the horse-bridle . wherefore the nature of this symbol here ( which is uncapable of the gross literal sense ) as that also of the rider of the white horse , with a sharp sword going out of his mouth , and the camp suddenly turn'd into a tripartite city , and the synchronism and congruity of these three visions that aim all at one thing , may assure any one , that either prejudice , heedlesness or complexion does not hood-wink , that the victory over one part indicated in these visions is spiritual , viz. their conversion ; but as for the other part , which is here understood , by the city without which the wine-press is troden ( and is the same city , a tenth part whereof fell at the rising of the witnesses , ) and in the seventh vial , by babylon , and by the beast and false prophet in the vision of the rider of the white horse , the victory over them is political , and indicates their confusion . not that they are to be murthered neither , but that the city babylon , which is the bloudy idolatrous hierarchy , their revenues will be gone , and their autority abolished , and the same is to be understood of the false prophet , which is the city babylon . nor is there any need to understand any other destruction to the beast distinct from the false prophet , than the dissolution of that of his power that constituted him a beast in the prophetick style , cruelty against the saints , and his upholding idolatry . which power being extinct , the beast is destroy'd , but the legal sovereignty is preserved for the support of truth and purity of god's worship , and kingdom of his son , who surely reigns there where his pure gospel obtains and is maintained by the magistrate . these things will certainly be . but to interpret these prophecies of such salvage and prodigious , nay impossible slaughters , and that by the saints , as it is a reproach to them that are truly so , and may animate pretended saints to tumults and rebellions , so it does great injury to this book of prophecies , and seasons the peoples minds with such false notions , that when they are fulfilled , they will not know they are fulfilled , as it has happened already in the rising of the witnesses . the symbols of those three visions are such , that any one that has any nasuteness of interpreting of prophecies , if he give due heed , he must needs conclude that the slaughtering passages in the battel of the great day of god almighty is a parable . nor do they belong to his obdurate enemies , but to those that have been strangers to the faith , nor had before the like opportunity of knowing the truth , and being converted . his obdurate enemies rather are to be found in babylon , who though hail-stones of a talent weight fall on them , are not made contrite thereby , but blaspheme ; they are obstinate , like the fool in solomon , whom if you bray in a mortar with a pestil , yet will not his foolishness depart from him , the conceit of infallibility has so far infatuated them . what remains in the remark is spoke with a great deal of confidence , though what is alledged against the furlongs , signifying symbolically , not numerically , is exceeding weak . for the numerical signification applied to the extent of the slaughter , is so far from being plain and easie sense , that it is a sense incredible , yea impossible : and therefore a certain indication , that this slaughter is to be taken in a parabolical sense , such as the expositor has given . suppose an army in the field of a square figure , and that the men were so closely set together , that each of them had but half a pace , or five half-feet squared to turn them in , and that this square army took up near upon miles , let the latus be but miles and square it . the whole army will consist of seven hundred eighty four thousand thousand men , ( whenas one thousand thousand is ten hundred thousand men ) which therefore is near three hundred times a greater army than that prodigious army of xerxes , which herodotus says consisted of fighting men . can the remarker believe that there will ever be such an army so numerous meeting thus in one place ? but suppose it , and the bloud of this army , even of every single souldier of it to be wholly let out of his body , which is scarce done in any one slain . in a vessel of two foot and half square , how deep would the bloud be ? certainly scarce an inch. but scarce thirty inches deep will reach to the horse-bridle . so that the bloud of an army above thirty times greater than what i have described , and nine thousand times greater than xerxes his army will scarce suffice to make such a deluge of bloud , though wholly effused , as to reach furlongs , i mean square miles , to the horses bridles . and the saints the executioners of god's wrath must be the butchers to let out all this bloud : what a monstrous conceit is this ? what more incredible ? what more impossible ? and if we should make our hypothesis yet more modest , and instead of the square miles , be content with square furlongs , the root of which would be put furlongs or five miles , yet according to this hypothesis , bloud to the horse-bridles for such a space , will require the slaughter of above a thousand times more men than those in xerxes his army , though his army consisted of fighting men . wherefore this is a certain sign that the sense is parabolical , and that the number is not numerically , but symbolically to be taken . nor needed there any intimation of extracting the square root here , as there is in the number , because that number is not a perfect square number ; and the less need , because this way of extracting the square root was freshly intimated before , in the number , and lay obvious to the eye in the regiments or chiliarchies in the beginning of this chapter , and in these hecatontads it does lye as obvious here to an observant eye , and unprejudiced judgment , if he be acquainted with the symbolical meaning of the quaternary or number four. the aptness of the application whereof to the present occasion the expositor has fully made out in his exposition and notes . and it is notorious ignorance or prejudice in the remarker ( no mistake in the expositor ) if he be not thence satisfied . chap. . introduction . the introduction to this chapter does make these three places , ch . . v. , , . ch . . v. . ch . . v. , , . to signifie the same triumphal song , which is a triple errour : the first being the doxology at the seventh trumpet , the second no song , but the denouncing the commencement of babylon's fall by the waldenses , the third no triumphal song of victory ( though sung by the victors over the beast and his image , ) but of admiring and glorifying god for his judgments by the pouring forth of the seven vials , then in view in the angel's hands , so as to make all to fear and glorifie him . ans. these three places do most certainly refer to the same thing , to the fall of the tenth part of the city of babylon , or the rising of the witnesses , which is in a manner the same ; they are also three testifications of ioy and triumph upon that notable passage of god's providence , call them songs , or doxologies , or joyfull annunciations , it is all one to the expositor . the first is a doxology at the seventh trumpet , but for the rising of the witnesses immediately mentioned before . the second is the joyfull annunciation of the good news of babylon's fall in part , namely the tenth part of the city , which the waldenses could not tell was fallen , nor any for them in their time , for it stood then entire , and so continued for about years after . the third is a song of victory , it being a song of the lamb , in imitation of that of moses , when they triumphed over pharaoh and his host after they were overthrown in the red sea. what can be plainer ? and these are said to be victors over the beast ; and in the song it self it is said , all nations shall worship before thee , because thy judgments are manifested , namely upon babylon in the fall of the tenth part of their city , and in the rising of the witnesses . how clearly and naturally do these things hang together ? which if it were not , there would be no occasion nor object of this triumphal song . for who but fools or mad men triumph before victory ? nor could it be for the future pouring forth the vails then in view . for it is not said these victors saw them , but that st. iohn saw them . nor did st. iohn see them before this song of the victors was ended . for the first verse is onely a general title of the chapter about the vials . the particular order of his seeing them is afterwards . for he says expresly , v. . that after this song of the victors he looked , and behold the temple of the tabernacle of heaven was opened . which implies it was shut , or his eyes shut to it before . and the seven angels came out of the temple , &c. and it is farther manifest from v. . for one of the four beasts there mentioned had not given the vials to the angels till then . how could the victors then see them have them , before they were given them ? so that this song will have no object of praise and thanksgiving . which is a plain demonstration that the remarker is in a mistake . vers. . the beast is not the roman hierarchy , but the ten-horned beast headed by the false prophet or roman hierarchy . it 's sufficient to call the vials the seven last plagues , if they begin after the sixth trumpet , and end with the seventh , especially the trumpets belonging to the sealed book , and the vials to the opened book , and so may rather respect the preceding plagues of the opened book , viz. those said to be inflicted by the witnesses , and also by the two precedent angels to the third , who is monitor of the vials . ans. the beast here is most certainly the roman hierarchy or two-horned beast , because v. . the victors are said to have got the victory over the beast , and over his image ; and it is plain , chap. . that the two-horned beast was the maker of this image : but it farther follows , and over the number of his name , which also plainly belongs to the two-horned beast . and as for the seven last plagues ( in which is filled up the wrath of god against the said beast , which suffered considerably in the rising of the witnesses ) none of them seven can be called the last , which end before the sixth . those plagues must certainly expire before any of the seven begin , in respect of which all seven are to be called the last plagues . this is pitifull tearing and forcing of things to serve a fond hypothesis , that will not hold water . lastly , the second wo-trumpet being mentioned in the opened-book-prophecy , is a plain indication that as to order of time and succession of things , the seven last wofull plagues in the last wo-trumpet must succeed the second wo-trumpet , and consequently the fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses , though all the first six trumpets belong to the sealed-book-prophecy , as does also the interval of the seventh . and as for the plagues inflicted by the witnesses , they were during their days prophesying , ch . . . and therefore the same with the six first plagues , there being no other actually inflicted plagues prefigured but they . and for the two angels , they are no inflicters of plagues , but advertisers touching god's judgments to come , or already fallen on the idolaters . vers. . the sea of glass here is the same with that ch . . . and therefore hath respect to nothing farther than what it there signifies ; and to make standing on the sea of glass to signifie standing on the shore of that sea , is a great straining of the text ; nor was there any such deliverance of the protestants , or overthrow of the pope by the reformation , as to make any parallel between that and the jews deliverance and pharaoh's overthrow . nor was the overthrow that was then given to the pope by the doctrine of iustification , that being but one particular of the reformation , but the main of his overthrow then was the casting off his supremacy . ans. that the sea of glass is not the same with that in ch . . . though it may be also alluded to , is plain in that it there is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the lamps are also said to be , and therefore within the n 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ( for indeed the whole scene of things , some whereof , according to the mosaick position , are without the n 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are there represented as within , and that not without a mystery , it signifying that the representation is of the state of the church reduced to the most early primitive apostolick purity . ) but the sea of glass here is seen by iohn before the opening of the n 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , before the temple was opened , v. . which does put it more out of doubt that the red sea congealed as it were into two walls of glass , ( as zeno veronensis glosses on exod. . . ) that the israelites might pass over the yellow or fulvid sand , betwixt , is chiesly alluded to ; and it being called also the song of moses , the servant of god , doth farther ratifie it . and indeed i meet with no expositor papist nor protestant , old nor modern but agree that moses his song at the overthrow of the aegyptians at the red sea is alluded to . wherefore the remarker's refractariness to so evident a truth is very remarkable . nor is it any straining of the text to translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , standing upon the shore of the sea. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as much as prope or juxta , and therefore if it be near or hard by the sea , where is it but on the shore ? and that it is understood of the red sea , all interpreters agree , as i noted before . but the remarker it seems is wiser than them all . but i hope he will not be wiser than the writer of the apocalypse , who compares the state of the true church under the tyranny of the papacy to the israelites servitude in aegypt . ch . . wherefore our being freed from this bondage , may very well be parallel'd to the iews deliverance and pharaoh's overthrow . and lastly , the doctrine of iustification , though it was not the onely instrument , yet it was a main one . the comfort whereof being so zealously and frequently instilled into the minds of both people and potentates , and that great drudgery and bondage under the pope being held up by the contrary doctrine in that church ; this proved a notable engine to out the pope , not onely of his supremacy , but to free the people of all those superstitious burthens they groaned under before . vers. . the a harpers victory over the beast does not signifie the protestants victory , but the victory of those sealed and measured , for preservation against whom the antichristian powers could not prevail . b the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven is not the same with the temple opened in heaven , wherein was seen the ark of the testament , ch . . . c for that , as formerly was said , signified the receiving of the christian worship and laws by the emperours . d but this verse apparently relates to another time . ans. that the a harpers victory over the beast signifies the protestants victory , has been proved over and over again ; it is a song of thanksgiving for their deliverance from the roman pharaoh , and declares god's judgments to have been manifested upon him . and as for the thousand sealed ones , ( for that that measuring for preservation is a mere conceit i have shewn in its proper place ) whose invincible constancy and faithfulness to the lamb , and their privileges of the new birth is intimated in the foregoing chapter , their new song is also there mentioned , which none could learn but the thousand that were redeemed from the earth . that sets out their internal state , but this is a song of external deliverance , and alludes to the deliverance of the israelites from pharaoh king of aegypt . and these thousand sealed ones are the sealed of the twelve tribes of israel , ch . . as here is the song of moses the servant of god for their victory over pharaoh . wisedom is easie to him that understands , but to him that will not understand all things are hard . b the temple opened here , and the temple open ch . . . is most assuredly the same temple . for the ark of the testament is said to be in the one , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by which word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the seventy render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and they render it also by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ deut. . . ] testimony . and this other is called the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony . and exod. . . it is said , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but also before v. . the same thing is said , and vatablus from the hebrew renders it , ponésque in arca testimonium quod dabo tibi ; upon which cornelius excellently well , hinc , says he , dicta fuit arca testimonii , id est , legis , & arca testamenti , id est , foederis . continebat enim legem quae erat conditio foederis inter deum & hebraeos initi . consequenter tabernaculum ab arca quam continebat vocatum est tabernaculum foederis & tabernaculum testimonii . so cornelius à lapide . whence we see plainly that the temple in these two places named is one and the same temple , which temple stood open ( out of which the vial-angels came ) as well after the doxology of the elders , ch . . as after the song of the harpers in this chapter ; but ch . . . the ark of the testament is said to be seen in it , because this points at the sixth vial , which synchronizeth with the harvest , by both which is understood the calling of the jews . and therefore by the ark of the testament being seen in heaven , is signified that that was the time in which god would have an eye to his everlasting covenant made with the jews , and resume them again to be his people ; which sense is worthy the taking notice of , though it was omitted before . c that sense which the remarker would put upon the ark of the testament being seen in heaven , ch . . . i have shewn the vanity thereof sufficiently above , nor need i here repeat it . his conceit therefore sailing , and there being no mention of opening the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony or testament in heaven but in these two places , ch . . and ch . . and they both being after a song of thanksgiving , it is a shrewd indication ; d that the times of the opening the temple here , and those in ch . . . are one , though the mention of the temple being opened ch . . be deferred till v. . that it may set off the appearing of the ark of the covenant with a greater grace , but the time of seeing the ark of the covenant differs from the time of the opening of the temple , for the former is at the sixth vial , the latter just before the first . wherefore in brief , the opened temple in heaven , ch . . and this opened here being one and the same , and this in order to the effusion of the vials , this is no small confirmation of the expositor's interpreting the two last verses of ch . . touching the affairs of the vials , which was worth noting by the bye . vers. . the seven angels coming out of the temple may signifie that it 's by the worshippers in the temple , and at the altar , viz. the two witnesses , that they pour forth their vials , and that they minister to them in that service . their being cloathed in white linen , and girt with golden girdles , signifies the righteousness and holiness of their administration for the advancement of christ's kingdom , which though spiritual , extends to the executing justice , and upholding true worship , and they are the ministers of god's wrath for transgressions against both . ans. that the worshippers in the temple , and at the altar , are not the two witnesses , i have shewn above , and therefore the angels coming out of the temple here , cannot denote them ; and if the two witnesses be the ministers of god's wrath , it is the more unlikely that that effusion of bloud from the wine-press , so that it would reach to the horses bridle for sixteen hundred furlongs together , should be understood literally , and not parabolically , else these ministers of god's wrath must shed the bloud of an army nine thousand times bigger than that of xerxes , as was noted above . a butchery incredible to be perpetrated by the saints and holy witnesses of god. chap. . vers. . a to understand the pouring forth of the first vial on the earth in such a general sense as the command is to pour all the vials on the earth ( so that it is onely to correspond with the other vials in the cortex ) is to make it signifie nothing ; and therefore the effect of the first vial , viz. the grievous sore on the worshippers of the beast is imputed to another cause , viz. to their exulcerate rage at the rising of the witnesses . b these are but sorry conceits for which one should reject mr. mede's far more current account of this vial , viz. that it signifies the bohemian war that ensued the sufferings of huss and ier. of prague ; whereby great ruine fell on the popish clergy and the religious houses in that and the adjoining countries , and miraculous defeats on the great popish armies sent against the bohemians , &c. which plague is aptly signified by the vial poured on the earth , the two-horned beast rising out of the earth . and that there was then the like spirit in agitation in other countries , though it did not break forth , may appear by our commons petitioning in parliament , about the same time , henry the fourth and the lords , that he may have the temporalties of the bishops and clergy which were consumed in unnecessary courses , &c. and also by the parliaments importuning henry the fifth to suppress the religious houses , as being nurseries of idleness , and cages of unclean birds . to divert which storm , the clergy set on foot the claim of the crown of france , and the war thereon , &c. c also there could be no such exulcerated rage at the rising of the witnesses , because the reformation was not the rising of them . for though thereby the pope's supremacy was rejected , and some gross corruptions reformed , yet did the reformed churches retain generally the same political state of government , and so much of the popish leaven in matters of religion , that they did not cease to continue members of the beast . d nor did there appear any such spirit of life in them to set them on their feet , and cause them to ascend , &c. they continuing in the same worldly state and station , though freed from some popish grievances . ans. a though the first vial were poured out on the earth in that general sense , doth its pouring forth signifie nothing ? it will necessarily hit some particular thing or person or other , and it particularly hits the marked slaves of the beast , and inflicts a sore on them , and so every vial the pouring it forth will mediately or immediately concern the terraqueous globe , namely the inhabitants thereof . but for that special meaning of earth , which the remarker takes notice of , and i have noted to answer to the clay in daniel , and to signifie the ecclesiastick rank of men , if this in general were understood by the earth , v. . it were an hypothesis very allowable , yea laudable , being these vials concern the pontifician hierarchy , which mr. mede calls bestiam antichristianam , and all reach him either immediately or mediately , even those that are poured on the sun , into the air , or on the river euphrates , they all touch the concern of the beast that rose out of the earth , as you may see by the exposition of the vision . and the first vial poured on the earth in this sense , reacheth them immediately , it inflicting so noysome and grievous a sore on those that are the marked slaves of the two-horned beast especially , their interest being so much concerned in the fall of babylon and the rising of the witnesses . wherefore that cup of intoxication and dementation through envy , malice , rage and fury ( as it is said ch . . v. . upon the rising of the witnesses and doxology of the elders , and the nations were angry , which answers to the effect of the effusion of this first vial , the noysome sore on the marked slaves of the beast ) that cup , i say , is really the pouring forth of this first vial , which is a grievous plague indeed . impedit ira animum — and quos iupiter vult perdere eosdem dementat prius . so that by the remarker's leave these are no sorry conceits , nor the expositor's private opinion , but the opinion of worthy interpreters before him . b but the remarker's is a groundless conceit to apply that which belongs to the times preceding the rising of the witnesses to the vials , which come after their rising , as is most plain to them that do not wilfully wink against the truth . wherefore the war of the hussites , &c. is such a business as the albigensian war ; and if justifiable , to be referred to the war betwixt the beast and the saints , ch . . v. . c nor has the remarker any evasion out of this evidence of truth , but by an unworthy vilifying of the protestant reformation , which undoubtedly was the rising of the witnesses , and most certainly was a very illustrious atchievement of providence , and quite wiped away that foul face of things , which custome and law had established before , and is described in the idea of antichristianism , and therefore it is most wretched ingratitude to undervalue so great a bounty of the divine majesty towards his servants ; like the murmuring of the israelites against moses and aaron , by whose conduct they were delivered from the bondage and tyranny of pharaoh . nor was the pope's supremacy onely rejected , and some gross corruptions , here in the church of england suppose , reformed , but all gross corruptions , nor were there any left that can be a just cause of separation from our church . but the cavil now forsooth must be , because they retain still political government ( for popish leaven in matters of religion , which is reformed to the pattern of the times that were symmetral , is plainly outed from our church ) and continue in the same worldly state and station ( the terms for political government ) as if all political laws and orders , though they were made and managed for the support of the kingdom of god and the purity of his worship were worldly . how freakish is this ? but how outragious to make the reformed churches , merely for this cause to continue members of the beast ? this is such a wild imagination , that it is more becoming those dreamers st. iude describes , that despise dominion and speak evil of dignities than any sober christian . d and lastly , as i remember i noted before , the spirit of life entring into the witnesses has not a spiritual sense , but political . and the genius of prophetick iconisms , and of the apocalyptick prophecies , is rather to adumbrate the external and visible state of the church than the internal . there is onely one thing remaining in this remark , at the beginning , that i may seem to have slipt over , viz. that the effect of the first vial , namely that rankorous sore does not seem to be imputed to the effusion of the vial , but to the rising of the witnesses . but i answer , that it is sufficient that this sore rages in the time of the vial-angel . for here are seven distinct times allotted to the seven vial-angels , as there are seven distinct times allotted to the seven trumpet-angels , and what happens in the said allotted times is attributed to the angel to whom the time is alloted , whether the angel contribute any thing to it or no. nor does any one imagine that the locusts and euphratean horse-men were blown out of the fifth and sixth angels trumpets , but that those things happened under the times allotted to them . and the rider of the red horse under the second seal , he is said to take peace from the earth , merely because in his time there were such killing and slaying one another . and it is something idiotical to think otherwise of these things . but supposing there must be some real activity in this first vial-angel for the inflicting this angry aegyptian boil , there is not the least absurdity in allowing it , viz. that as an evil spirit from the lord haunted saul when his melancholy fits came upon him , so this first vial-angel may commissionate some spirits , upon the envy and the anger the bestians had conceived against the risen witnesses , to actuate them with more than ordinary rage and madness against them , and so infatuate their counsel by this distemper . this , i hope , will take away all scruple touching this first vial. vers. . the second vial is made to synchronize , and in substance to be the same with the first , the first being supposed to be the envious raging at the reformation by the enemies of it , and the second the reformation it self in rejecting the pope's autority , &c. ans. this second remark is a mere calumny . for the first vial does not synchronize with the second , because the first , viz. that exulcerated rage of the marked slaves of the beast began presently upon the rising of the witnesses , while the reformation was but fresh , young and tender , and not so thoroughly established , but was capable of quick reciprocations of affairs , as it happened , here for example in england , queen mary so suddenly succeeding king edward . but after this there was a more full settlement and firm establishment of the state of the risen witnesses , so that through many provinces , principalities and kingdoms , which are so many seas , the pontifician party was hopeless and helpless , those seas becoming by the effusion of the second vial as the bloud of a dead man. for they were all dead to the emissary fisher-men of the pretended successour of st. peter , nor a live fish to be taken for their game . the perfect revulsion of these great parts of the pontifician iurisdiction from those that his power still did actuate and enliven ; and the hindering them from reuniting for a due time , till they were turned into the congealed bloud , as it were of a dead man ; this was the effusion of the second vial , and plainly distinct from the first , and such as to which the first might well contribute . for the marked slaves of the beast being dementated with wrath , would necessarily doe such things as would excite the other party to use all possible care and diligence , courage and resolution to make all sure against them for the future . the second vial therefore is not the rising of the witnesses or the first appearance of the reformation , but it bears that analogy to the rising of the witnesses , that the descending of the new ierusalem under the second thunder ( which comprizes the settlement of the millennial empire of christ ) does to the victory of the rider of the white horse under the first . vers. . the word of god is no subject capable of pouring a vial thereon : and as for the clear convictive explications thereof , this as to those that are convinced thereby is not a punishment ( viz. a vial of wrath ) but a blessing : and so if it be taken to signifie the conversion of any emperour or potentate , &c. ans. i noted at first that all the vials are commanded to be poured on the earth ; which if we consider seriously , must needs be understood in the inward sense , of the two-horned beast that came out of the earth or clay . and therefore on whatever they are said to be poured , they must reach this earth either mediately or immediately , directly or indirectly , that is , reflexively , or else the angels do not obey the divine command . but if the effusion of the vial reach the two-horned beast to detriment him , whether mediately or immediately , it is poured on the earth , and the divine command is fulfilled . and in this sense a vial may be poured on the word of god , which may illuminate emperours , kings or princes to the great damage of the two-horned beast , and so rightly be said to be poured on the earth , though it be first discharged on the sun in those senses the expositor intimates . vers. . a it was to the ten-horned beast that satan gave his seat , and so the vial poured here on the seat of the beast does signifie that beast . hereby the root of the beast's autority seems to be struck at , viz. that whenas the precedent vial poured on the sun , and scorching men with great heat , seems to signifie mens being zealously incensed , and so sharply inveying against , and reproving the corruptions and oppressions of the antichristian powers then ruling ; this vial seems to proceed farther , and to strike at the root of their autority , c asserting the right of christ to rule , and his laws of truth to be obey'd , and so all powers that obstruct the advancement of his kingdom to be enemies , &c. therefore it 's likely to be the result of the rising of the witnesses . ans. this is an assertion quite contrary to that necessary hypothesis in explaining the effusion of the vials , whose object is the two-horned beast . besides , if this seat signifie rome , as mr. mede would have it , this indeed the dragon gave to the ten-horned beast , but it is plain the two-horned beast possesses it , nay he has usurped the secular power also in ordine ad spiritualia , so that it is a vain thing to understand here any beast but the two-horned , at whom the whole vision of the vials does aim . the residue of the remark is marvellous ( unless i misunderstand the remarker's meaning ) which supposes bitter invectives against the sun , that is the secular powers antichristian , like the barking of dogs against the moon , to be the pouring forth of the vial upon the sun. certainly that angel that does thus , mistakes his instructions . for he was to pour his vial upon the earth from that general command , and here he pours it upon the sun without any reference to the earth . besides that , this account of this fourth vial , by the remarker , is very dilute and indistinct , he making the sun to signifie any secular antichristian power , and the effusion of this vial upon it nothing but the grumbling of some male-contents against their governours , and inveying against their administration of affairs , because they sute not with their humour or interest . which is a thing done by some or other so repeatedly or continually in all governments ( which are never free from such spirits ) that it is impossible this should be a particular character of any of the vials . and moreover it is a plain contradiction to the text it self , which runs thus : the fourth angel poured out his vial on the sun , and power was given him to scorch men with fire . whom then can he be thought to scorch but those that have so incensed him ? so that the plague will be on them that invey against the antichristian powers or the beast , which is contrary to the drift of the vision , and to the mention of the blasphemy of them that are scorched . this is fond enough i think . but something follows still worse , and more foul and fond ( if , as i said before , i rightly understand him . ) b what achmetes , what artemidorus ever taught the remarker , that the seat of a secular potentate signifies the root of his autority ? this must be in some countrey , pardon the pleasantness of the conceit , where mens chairs grow to their breech , even as the root and the trunk or stalk of a plant grow together . but as the fancy is forced , so the doctrine therein implied is unsound in his exposition of these two vials , fourth and fifth . and besides , that gloss on the fifth is nothing but that stale calvinistical or rather iesuitical principle , a weak and wicked falshood , not a stinging truth that should make them gnaw their tongues for pain , viz. dominium sundatur in gratia . which vial has been pouring out so long that methinks it should be empty by this , or never be empty till the millennium , and so this application will have the same diluteness and indistinctness that the former . to rail against the autority one lives under is against the duty of a christian . the apostle paul says , thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people , act. . . the apostle peter describes the worst of men thus : pet. . . they despise government , presumptuous are they , self-willed , they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities . to which add that of iude ; yet michael the archangel , when contending with the devil , he disputed about the body of moses , durst not bring against him a railing accusation ( though you may be sure he was in the right ) but said the lord rebuke thee . certainly none of the antichristian powers can be worse than the devil the prince of darkness , nor any of the reprehensive saints greater or more holy than michael , which i note that they that take themselves to be saints may learn good manners of him . c and then for the striking at the root of autority in pretence of christ's right to rule , and his laws of truth to be obey'd : if this be the result of the rising of the witnesses to come , god be thanked that they are risen already , and that this is but a dream , and are ready to instruct all the world , and have done it upon occasion . that every soul is to be subject to the higher powers : for the powers that be are ordained of god ; whosoever therefore resisteth the power , resisteth the ordinance of god ; and they that resist , shall receive to themselves damnation . and yet the powers then , touching which st. paul speaks , were not onely antichristian in some sense , but mere pagan . but from this we may understand , that the root of all autority is god himself . and therefore they are witnesses with a witness , that in pretence of christ's right to rule , will strike at the root of all autority , god himself , and be guilty of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the ancient giants were , viz. of fighting against god. wherefore this doctrine implied in the interpretation of these two vials , made by the remarker , is extremely unsound and unchristian , and consequently upon this account also his interpretation is false . vers. . though the drying up the river euphrates may signifie such mutation in the turkish empire as to make way for the iews and eastern nations , &c. yet it 's like to have some farther signification , viz. that whereas euphrates was a great defence to babylon , by diverting the stream of which cyrus took the city , something analogous thereto ( whence may be the great strength and confidence of mystical babylon ) may be here signified to be removed to the like purpose . but what this is , time must disclose . ans. this remark is ingenious enough . but why may not the entireness of the turkish empire be the great defence of the mystical babylon ? so that as the entireness of the roman empire hindred the appearing of the man of sin or antichrist , so the entireness of the turkish empire may retardate antichrist's ruine ; the kings of the east not appearing for the truly apostolick church , till there be some change or brokenness in the turkish empire . vers. . a there 's no such commutation of iconisms here as is imagined , b but the division of the city into three parts is the consequence of that decisive battel , viz. the antichristian party being over-thrown and dissolved , two parts thereof , viz. the beast and false prophet are cast into the lake , &c. and the third slain with the sword proceeding out of the mouth , &c. ch . . v. , . ans. a it is impossible but that there should be a commutation of iconisms in this vision . for the fore part of the vision , from v. . to v. . represents the forces of all the kings of the earth , those of the dragon's party , viz. pagans and infidels , and those of the beast's and false prophet's party , viz. the antichristian forces , drawn out to fight against the army of god almighty or the lord of hosts , viz. the evangelical party , into the fields of armageddon , but neither fight nor success is mentioned hitherto , no nor so much as the seventh vial poured out upon them yet for the discomfiture of the infidel and antichristian party by the evangelical . wherefore unless there were a commutation of iconisms , and these tripartite forces in armageddon , ( which comprize , as it were , the forces of all the world ) were turned into as great and large a city , which might contain the same parties , there is nothing of either conflict or success of that vast multitude congregated in armageddon , set out in the vision , which is extremely absurd ; as if the spirit of prophecy had forgot in the mid-way what he was about . wherefore the same thing to be predicted , is continued , but by a commutation of iconisms , and the tripartite forces in the field are represented by a mighty city divided into three parts , and the battel is represented by those boanergeses the preaching part of the evangelical host thundering over this great city , and the success by declaring that the cities of the nations , that is , the infidels , they fell , were thunder-struck , converted to the pure apostolick faith by the powerfull preaching of these evangelists . but it is said of babylon , which is part of this great city , that hailstones of a talent weight fell upon her ; but instead of being converted , she blasphemed ; but that she was vanquished in a political sense , is plain from the description . a man must wink hard that can keep his eyes from intromitting so clear a truth . but now to what the remarker alledges , i say ; b how can the dividing of the city into three parts be the consequence of the battel in armageddon , when there 's no fighting there , nor the vial poured out till v. ? and the great city answering to the tripartite forces drawn out into the fields of armageddon , viz. infidel , antichristian and evangelical , the said city must contain the same , but this tripartition the remarker would take up withall , leaves out the evangelical party , and makes the antichristian party two , whenas , quatenus antichristian , they are but one party , and ought to be so accounted . and lastly , for the third party slain with the sword ; here 's no mention of slaying with the sword in this vision , but of the cities of the nations being thunder-struck . to all which you may add , that the beast and the false prophet were as much two before the fight as after , and those slain with the sword , viz. the draconick party were one part of this tripartition as much before as after the fight . so that the fight could be no cause of this tripartition . nor is there any true tripartition but what was before the conflict , and which was of the whole number of the forces , evangelical , antichristian and infidel , into those three parts . for logick tells us , as there is reciprocatio definitionis cum definito , so there must be distributionis partium cum toto . there must be an adequateness in both . vers. . a it 's done , does here ( as formerly noted ) answer to the same words , ch . . . and signifie the same with , the mystery of god shall be finished , and time shall be no more , ch . . viz. the course of this world is at an end , and all things are become new , the politick frame of governments is to be dissolved , and a new heaven and a new earth to be established , &c. b but to imagine here to be signified the overthrow of antichrist by powerfull preaching is a strange conceit . they had long since by obdurate impenitence been past such cure ( of which they had long before this sufficient trial ) and become ripe for this finishing plague , which in the supposed sense would not be such , but a mercy . c the vial into the air signifies the immediate pouring it upon the power of the devil ( the prince of the powers of the air ) or the extinguishing his power by which the beast and false prophet were acted . ans. a this fond fancy of the remarker i have refuted above ; and it is a mere precarious dream of his , that all political government shall cease . the mystery of god is finished if the antichristian governments cease , and a true christian polity , that faithfully and effectually supports the kingdom of christ and the purity of god's worship , be established in the room of the order . this extravagant fancy tends to nothing but enthusiastical anarchy . the new heaven and new earth , in the prophetick style , signifies a new polity ; and this , such a polity , where reigneth righteousness . b it is a mistake in the remarker , and that a gross one , that he thinks the expositor supposes the antichristian party to be converted by these boanergeses , it is the infidel partly that are . babylon remains obdurate , but in virtue of the conversion of the infidel party to the purity of the gospel , the evangelical party grows so strong , that the power of babylon is quite abolished , which is the victory over them . c that the pouring of the vial into the air should signifie the immediate pouring it on the power of the devil , the prince of the air , is a conceit both uncertain and needless , and therefore the expositor omitted it . it rather respects the consequent thundering and lightening in the air , &c. the miraculous restraint of the power of satan begins with the millennium , which commenceth with the third thunder . vers. . the voices , thunderings and lightenings signifie no such promulgation of the gospel by the boanergeses , as is imagined , but the great judgments that then befell the beast and false prophet , as they signifie , ch . . . and as the great hail does plainly shew they do so here , which therefore is advisedly not taken notice of . ans. these voices , thunderings and lightenings do very fitly set out the promulgation of the law of the son of god , alluding to the thunderings and lightenings and dreadfull voice of god , like a trumpet at the giving of the law on mount sinai , exod. . . deut. . . and . . but i do not deny but in some places it may signifie wars in the ordinary sense . but the circumstances of things determine otherwise here . nor does the mention of hail hinder that determination , which advisedly is defrred in the vision , and placed after the fall of the cities of the nations , to intimate that the subduing of babylon or victory over her was of another sort , from that over the cities of the nations . wherefore the mention of hail is deferred till the very last verse of the vision , and disjoined from the thunderings and lightenings , that it may peculiarly respect the distinct execution done upon babylon , and such as followed the conversion of the cities of the nations . vers. . it 's a great reproach to the evangelical party to reckon it part of the city of babylon , out of which they were come before in obedience to the voice , come out of her my people , &c. but the three parts of the city ( viz. that the antichristian party was composed of ) are the beast's , the false prophet's , and the dragon's party , answerable to the three unclean spirits , &c. and the three parts it was divided into are as is mentioned on v. . ans. the evangelical party is not reckoned as part of the city of babylon , and therefore no reproach to them . nor can this great armies gathered together in armageddon , which comprized the evangelical forces also , be conceived not to contain the evangelical party in it . for this great city is not babylon it self , no not according to the remarker's account that makes the dragon part of it , and therefore it must be the most absolute great city , that contained all the three parties met in armageddon , the infidel , antichristian and evangelical party . the remarker's tripartition was sufficiently confuted before on v. . chap. . vers. . blasphemy is to be taken here in the sense spoken of , ch . . as well as to signifie idolatry ; and so far as it intends idolatry , it respects that which is committed by worshipping or idolizing the beast , as well as what is by the beast's worshipping of idols ; the former , though not so heinous , being of larger extent than the latter , &c. ans. what a fond strained conceit that is of the remarker to stretch the meaning of blasphemy here to the sharp reproofs given to immorigerous saints , as some fansie themselves that deserve not the title , i have noted ch . . but here is an addition , that by the names of blasphemy written on the beast , must be understood also the idolizing of the beast , or worshipping him . by this rate all the saints and angels in heaven will be full of names of blasphemy , the virgin mary especially . but what pen would ever set out the idolatrous worship given to them from multitudes of people , by describing them full of names of blasphemy ? this it is to affect freaks and conceits of ones own , contrary to the current of all expositors . vers. . the ten-horned beast signifies the civil politick state of the empire , and so hath its denomination from the corruptions thereof , viz. the violences , oppressions , and crafty fraudulent management of affairs which attend worldly governments . therefore though their being idolatrous may influence them to make them more corrupt , yet it makes no alteration in the civil state of affairs to give a new denomination thereto . so that the sixth-headed beast continues the same after the empire being christian , till it receive the deadly wound by a sword , viz. till its ruine by the barbarous nations ; and the seventh-headed beast that is to continue but a little while is ( according to forbes ) the ostrogothian kings ( adding thereto the preceding reign of odoacer ) about the expiring of the reign of which kings happened divers prodigies significant of the false prophet or two-horned beast ( viz. the eighth head ) beginning to reign . and if the said kings be not the seventh head , they will be taken no notice of in the prophecy , though their reign be almost as long as the christian emperours , who are here made the seventh head , and how much shorter it is than the reign of the other , it sutes so much the better with that head its being to continue but a little time . and the dominion of those kings was so absolute , that the eighth head could not begin to reign untill their expulsion , &c. and if they were the seventh head , then the heathen and christian emperours make but one head , and so the same beast continues , as i said , under the reign of both , and therefore is not so denominated on a religious , but on the civil account aforesaid . which is farther evident from the signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , viz. a wild beast , and the beast is so named for the same reason , that ierusalem is called a lioness , and her kings lions , ezek. . and nimrod a mighty hunter , &c. and how early all worldly rulers were noted for violence and oppression , appears by that saying of iob , ch . . . the earth is given into the hands of the wicked , he covereth the faces of the iudges thereof ; if not , where , and who is he ? and solomon says , he beheld the place of judgment that iniquity was there , the place of righteousness that wickedness was there : and the oppressions done under the sun made him praise the dead more than the living . and psalm . god reproving the rulers of the earth for judging unjustly , and accepting the person of the wicked , and neglecting to defend the poor and fatherless , and to doe justice to the afflicted and needy ; it 's added , they know not , neither will they understand : they walk on in darkness , all the foundations of the earth are out of course . so that though the earth be in such a disorder and dissolved condition , by reason of their evil government ( as on the same occasion it is said , psal . . the earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved , ) yet they are like to proceed in the same course . hence the psalmist concludes , arise , o god , judge the earth , for thou shalt inherit all nations ; signifying , that no better is to be expected till he arise to judge the earth , who is to inherit all nations . doubtless therefore the beast his being called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , does chiefly , if not onely , respect the evil administration of iustice . what is here said to be the plain and natural sense of that description : [ the beast that was , and is not , and yet is ] is forced , and even frivolous . but the true sense is plain and weighty , viz. the beast that was in the empire , under the emperours , whether pagan or christian , which ceased to be when it had its deadly wound by a sword , viz. was destroy'd by the incursion of the barbarous nations , and the emperours extinguished in augustulus , viz. the empire then ceased to be the roman beast , or a politick body governed by the roman laws , and headed by a roman prince ; odoacer then succeeding , and the ostrogothian kings to him , who being foreign princes , getting to rule , and continuing to govern by the sword , and not according to the laws and government of the romans , are therefore rightly reckoned a new or seventh head. but after their expulsion , the foreign nations settled in the empire began to be formed into a politick body according to the roman laws , which to that end were collected and published in the pandects , code , novels , &c. by iustinian , who expelled the ostrogoths ; and those nations thus formed in subjection to the roman laws became the image of the former beast ; to complete which image , the new german emperours were set up . and the false prophet or antichristian eighth head of rome did so promote and countenance this new model of the empire , and caused such obedience to be given thereunto by the autority he usurped , as was really a giving life to this image ; and in respect of the whole sway he obtained in matters of religion , and that he had also in civil affairs in ordine ad spiritualia , he became truly the head of the ten-horned beast . but the government which that beast exercised according to the new politick model of roman laws ( which became the common law of the nations setled in the empire , though statute or customary laws were added thereunto ) it 's in respect thereof called the image of the beast , viz. of the former beast , which was wounded to death , &c. ans. this is a large remark , and therefore hath room for many errours . the first is , that a kingdom or empire is called a beast in the prophetick style , from the violences , oppressions , and crafty fraudulent management of affairs within themselves ; as if it were such a wild beast that it tore and devoured its own flesh , which it must do if in this regard it is called a beast or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a wild beast . but a whole kingdom or empire being but one entire beast , its wildness and cruelty is to be understood of its ravening upon other beasts , that is , kingdoms or empires , or those that belong unto them , and are part of them . this is the constant sense of a beast in the prophetick style . and is repeatedly so in daniel and the apocalypse , but with a more precise regard to a certain kingdom , which is the kingdom of the son of man , which was inchoated in the iews , enlarged under christianity , but will come to its full extent and glory in the millennial empire of christ , upon the overthrow of the kingdom of antichrist . this kingdom of the son of man is set in opposition to the kingdoms of those several beasts in daniel and the apocalypse . and whenas mildness and humanity , and pure , spiritual , rational religion belongs to man , fierceness and cruelty , and a proneness to worship outward garish objects ( as is observable in the cercopithecus and elephant , see mystery of godliness , book . ch . . ) belongs to beasts . whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is rightly conceived to include idolatry in it as well as cruelty . and because the saracens and turks are not guilty of this external gross idolatry , though they had cruelty enough to be represented under the type of ravenous wild beasts , yet that is declined , and they are represented , the one under the form of locusts , but with the faces of men , and the other under the type of strange centaurs or horsemen , where the humane form comes in again . this were enough one would think to confirm us in the opinion of grotius and iacchiades , that such empires are as much , or rather more to be esteemed wild beasts for their idolatry than their cruelty . but they are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , wild beasts more properly , and especially for their being man-keen , that they will fall upon and devour men , that is , the subjects of the kingdom of the son of man , which is a rational creature , and who are for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not for the brutish worship of idolatrous empires or kingdoms . nor does either daniel or the apocalypse take notice of any kingdoms under the notion of beasts , but such as be idolatrous and raven upon the subjects of the kingdom of the son of man , so that their political order amongst themselves is not regarded , but their idolatry and cruelty upon the subjects of the son of man for not submitting to their idolatry . secondly , his application of this his false notion to the ten-horned beast in this place , is wonderfull bold and daring , as if by the beast here described onely the political or secular state were understood , whenas the text expresly says , that this ten-horned beast was full of names of blasphemy , that is , of idolatry , according to all expositors . nothing can be more fully expressed than this concerning the idolatries of the beast , and the scarlet colour onely , if that , intimates his cruelty . therefore it is not so much the civil , politick state of the empire , as the religion of the empire established by law that iohn's description of the beast aims at . and the religion of the empire established by law is as much the law of the empire , and as essential to such a beast as the civil institutes are ; and therefore it must necessarily give a new denomination to the empire when the established religion is changed . but the civil state alone is not the beast or empire iohn describes . nay the civil laws are not at all involved in his description , but onely the several forms of sovereignty , as if he meant onely to characterize the beast from the state of religion , not from civil laws . thirdly , it is a false principle in general the remarker supposes , that the spirit of prophecy is employ'd chiefly in prefiguring the changes of the civil state in kingdoms , especially in the visions of the opened-book-prophecy , which concerns the affairs of the church and purity of god's worship , as i noted above . so that he does toto coelo errare in these wild rambles of his . fourthly therefore , it is impossible that the sixth-headed beast should continue the same after it was turned christian. it were more tolerable to conceive that , if all the civil laws had been abrogated , and the same pagan religion retained with the same ranks of magistrates , that the beast would have continued the same . for in the sense of the prophetick style it is idolatry alone with cruelty , especially against the subjects of the kingdom of the son of man , that makes an empire a beast . and therefore , fifthly , the incursion of the barbarous nations , unless they were the first extinguishers of the pagan religion , could not be the givers of that deadly wound to the beast by a sword . but that wound was given before by the hand of michael in the combat of the primitive christians , with their persecutours under the red dragon . sixthly , the ostrogothian kings cannot be the seventh sovereignty of the empire , ( for the seventh head they are not to be called , because there are but seven heads in all of the beasts , and the eighth sovereignty is one of them ) the ten-horned beast signifying the whole empire . but the ostrogothian kings were masters of but a small pittance thereof . this is a palpable demonstration of the falsity of forbes his conceit . and therefore there is no inferring the christian and pagan caesars to be but one sovereignty from this topick , and that therefore the civil polity is onely considered , not the religion of the empire . seventhly , that is also a great piece of ignorance to call the eighth king the eighth head , which i glanced at before . for the vision says expresly , that the beast had but seven heads , upon which seven heads were the names of blasphemy , chap. . which shews plainly that the slaying of the beast was under that king or head of the empire ( though not of the beast ) who was not idolatrous , and that was the christian emperours , constantine ▪ &c. which again is a plain evidence that the empire is called beast quatenus idolatrous . who can resist so clear light ? eighthly , the ostrogothian kings reign in rome , if it be taken no notice of in this opened-book-prophecy , there is not one half-penny worth of harm done , this prophecy respecting religion and the church , not civil changes in the empire . this onely farther confirms that principle so usefull in it self , but so neglected by the remarker ; and that the remarker also has no ground to make the pagan emperours and christian emperours but one head or king , that he might infer the conclusion he so dotes on . that the ten-horned beast signifies onely the civil state of the empire , &c. ninthly , i have abundantly proved , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stylo prophetico signifies an idolatrous polity or empire , so that it is needless here to repeat it , nor does the accumulation of so many places of scripture at all enervate what i have said ; but onely intimate the male-administration of affairs in each empire amongst themselves , which is not the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the prophetick visions , but it means idolatrous empires persecuting the true church . and lastly , whereas the remarker says , that what the expositor calls the plain and natural sense of that description of the beast , [ the beast that was , is not , and yet is ] is forced and even frivolous , there wants no farther confutation of this uncivil reproach , than what is already said on this remark , and may be read in the exposition of this present verse in apocalypsis apocalypseos ; but that the remarker's sense is such , nay corsly false and impertinent , i shall now fully make evident , if it may convince him of his errour . i shall answer to every material particular thereof . first therefore , whereas he saith ; the beast that was is the empire , under the emperours , whether pagan or christian : this assertion is grosly false ( besides the defect in omitting all the heads preceding the pagan emperours . ) for the empire under christian emperours , before they became paganochristian , was not a beast , that was the interval in which it was true of the beast to say , it is not , as may clearly appear out of what has been said already to the remarker's first , second , and seventh errours , and briefly out of the description of the beast by iohn . it is a beast full of blasphemies , that is , hugely idolatrous . this beast therefore ceased to be under the christian emperours . and if idolatry be not of the essence of this beast , the beast will have eight heads , which is grosly repugnant to the vision . secondly , whereas he saith , that this beast ceased to be upon the incursion of the barbarous nations , and the emperours extinguished in augustulus , and the rule then under odoacer and the ostrogothian kings , being not by the roman laws , but by the sword : here again the remarker is quite out of the story . for though the incursion of the barbarians did vex the empire , yet it did not destroy it , but they were as morbifick matter , and preternatural or febricitant heat in the body natural , which implies not actual death , but a disease onely . nor were the civil laws of the empire abrogated , but were still in use , though their course might be here and there something interrupted or obstructed as the course of the bloud is in a diseased body . and for odoacer and the ostrogothian kings in italy , it is plain out of carolus sigonius , de imperio occidentali , lib. . and . that theodoricus , and so of his successours , they supported the roman laws and magistracies . senatum , consules , patritios caeterósque qui fuerant in imperio magistratus retinuit ; and a little after , atque omninò instituit regnum veteris imperii ex omni parte simillimum . wherefore the empire could not cease to be the roman beast upon the ostrogothian king's rule , they retaining still the roman magistracies and laws , though they were not of the roman bloud ; for several emperours before were not . to which you may add , that theodoricus was sent as a viceroy by zeno the eastern emperour ; and that zeno was then the head of the empire the ten-horned beast , that is , of the whole empire the western caesars failing . and therefore . thirdly , whereas he affirms the ostrogothian kings to be the seventh head of the empire , it is apparent he is grosly out , both upon the former account , as also because it is plainly ridiculous and impossible that the ostrogothian kings , whose jurisdiction reached to such a small scantling , should be the head of the ten-horned beast , which signifies the whole empire . fourthly , whereas he tells us , that the subjection of the barbarous nations to the political roman laws , collected by iustinian , was the making of the image of the beast , that is again a conceit impossible . for as much as the image of the beast is the image of the red dragon , whose character is idolatry and persecution ; and therefore the remarker here stands in his own light , that would restrain his sense to political or civil laws , not laws about religion . but as for civil laws , i proved before they did obtain , so that iustinian did not play the painter to draw an image of the beast , but rather the physician , that cured the beast of a fever , and gave the course of law more free passage , which is as the bloud and life in a body politick and besides this , it is suggested in history , that iustinian was not so good a painter as to draw a true image of the beast his under work-men failing him . for tribonianus , who was the greatest lawyer , and most in his favour , it is said of him , that he was a covetous fellow , and did pretio leges figere & refigere , make and null laws merely for money . in the code , says sleidan , quam plurimae sunt justiniani leges quae superioribus derogant . and the novels the remarker mentions bear no good omen in their name . they were new laws , made upon new emergent occasions . see antonius contius his preface to the novels . so sorry an image is this of the former roman polity . fifthly , whereas he says , that this image is completed in the pope's creating the german emperours to be the emperours of the western empire ; i say , whether these emperours or the popes be conceived to be the eighth head of the beast , the seventh being supposed , as the remarker would have it , the ostrogothian kings , and the raising the living image of the beast the subjection of the barbarians to the roman political laws collected by iustinian , it will follow , as i think i have elsewhere noted , that the beast will be some hundred of years revived before his head , than which , what can be more absurd in reason and philosophy ? and lastly , for the pope's giving life to this image of his making , it being onely a civil image , as the remarker would have it , and not reaching religion and ecclesiastick affairs , the pope has not so little to doe as to inspire any life into it ; but if this image reach religion and ecclesiastick affairs , then the remarker contradicts himself . thus i think i have sufficiently proved that the remarker's sense of that description [ the beast that was , is not , and yet is ] is so far from being the plain sense , that it is grosly false , it being understood of the civil roman constitution onely ; which all the time he speaks of , never ceased to be ▪ whence it could never be said properly of it [ it was ] because that is of things past ; nor [ is not ] because that is not true of things present ; nor [ is not , and yet is ] because that is non-sense applied to the same thing still in being . so infinitely false is this conceit of the remarker . but that it is also impertinent , i shall dispatch in one word . this gives us no instruction touching the state of the church as to the purity of religion and worship , and therefore is useless , and impertinent , and uncompliable with the main and general scope of the opened-book-prophecy . vers. . receive power as kings one hour with the beast , viz. not the two-horned , but ten-horned beast headed with the eighth head or two-horned beast . for when the empire , invaded by the barbarous nations , setled again into a subjection or conformity to the roman laws , then did the princes or christians of those several nations become setled as kings in the several countries of the empire where they were seated . ans. the ten-horned beast contains the roman empire with its ten kings . wherefore if the beast does not include idolatry here in it , the sense will be , the ten horns will receive power as kings , when all the ten kings of the empire receive power as kings ; that is , they shall receive power when they shall receive power . what a trifling is this ? but if we take beast in its proper sense , according to the prophetick style , it will naturally signifie as the expositor has noted , that about that time that the roman empire , which was christian before , begins to revive into the image of the dragon for superstition , persecution and idolatry , then shall the ten horns also be receiving their power as kings , &c. this sense , as it is plain , so it is instructive , and compliable with the general scope of the opened-book-prophecy , that informs us of the state of religion , and of the worship of god and christ in the christian world. but what iustinian's code has here to doe , i know not . theodorick was appointed king of italy by zeno the emperour before iustinian's time . chap. . vers. . the description of this angel does much agree with that , chap. . the crying here mightily with a strong voice answering to the crying there with a loud voice , as when a lion roareth , and the enlightening the earth with his glory here , to the face of the angel like the sun there , yet they seem not to be the same . but this here seems to be the great prince michael , who , dan. . is said to stand up in the time of great trouble , such as never was since there was a nation , and then the people of god should be delivered , &c. ans. that the angel here described may reach into the times of michael , dan. . i will not deny . but then that is no bar to the sense the expositor hath given . for by michael , not michael himself , but some illustrious persons on earth are understood . and when so many illustrious persons , kings and princes appeared for the truth at the partial fall of babylon or rising of the witnesses , viz. at the late reformation , that partial fall may well be taken in to this account . but the times of michael are afterwards , and may respect the kings of the east and the conquests of the rider of the white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth . which are the affairs of the sixth and seventh vials . vers. . babylon is not said to become the habitation of devils after its power is utterly destroy'd ; but when the people of god are warned to come out of her , lest they partake of her plagues , so that her final destruction was to come . which when it is come , her whole politick body will then be dissolved , that then she will cease to be babylon , nor will the people of god then need any admonition to come out of her when they can have no motives to stay in her . but she is said to be fallen here , because she had lost the authority with which she formerly ruled in the world , and her game she had now to play was with all her force and arts of policy to defend her self against the great judgment coming upon her . ans. babylon is undoubtedly said to be the habitation of devils after she is utterly overthrown and brought to ruine , the haunting of devils and unclean birds being the very character of such ruined places , and alluded to here . nor are the people of god warned to come out of her ruines , but that voice out of heaven to god's people , to come out of her , was uttered before the rising of the witnesses , and this angel's strenuous proclaiming the fall of babylon . this warning , i say , precedes both the partial and final overthrow of that great city . but the description of her desolation and ruines from their being haunted with devils and unclean birds , respects especially her final overthrow . nor are the people of god bid to come out of her ruines , as i noted before , but to come out of babylon both before her partial and consummate fall . here therefore is an hysterology in the cortex . but the description of so complete an overthrow of babylon does plainly shew us and assure us that the bidding to go out of her is before her fall . and therefore this voice from heaven commanding god's people to come out of her , answers to the voice of the first of the three angels , ch . . flying in the midst of heaven , and exhorting men to fear god and to worship him , that is , the creator of all things , that is to say , to cease from idolatry . the voice from heaven here is coincident with the latter part of the time of the voice of the first angel from the midst of heaven . examples of such hysterologies in the cortex are so frequent , that i need not name any . vers. . there 's no need of taking merchants of the earth in any other than the literal sense . but then it 's not to be applied solely to the city of rome , but to all other cities under her jurisdiction , which being of the same political body , are comprehended under the name of babylon , and by imitation of her delicacies and splendour became in like manner enrichers of her merchants . ans. it is not likely the spirit of prophecy would spin out so long a threnodia , if it was onely the howling of some secular merchants , that their worldly traffick failed them . what 's this to the church and religion which the opened-book-prophecy has always an eye to ? and what a sapless thing is the literal sense of this lamentation in comparison of the parabolical ? and what jurisdiction has rome as a secular trading city over other trading cities of the empire ? the new ierusalem , to which babylon is directly opposed , does not signifie a material city , but a state or polity , therefore undoubtedly babylon signifies so too . and lastly , this city of babylon is said to deceive all nations by her sorcery , and to be guilty of the bloud of prophets and saints , &c. are secular merchants such profound magicians , or so concerned to suck the bloud of saints and prophets ? this therefore is an overmuch homespun and secular conceit in the remarker to fansie the parabolical sense needless of this lamentation . vers. . as we said , v. . merchants needed not be taken in any other than the literal sense , so consequently sea will not need here to be taken in any other sense , though in the prophetick style it hath another sense . ans. that both merchants and sea should be taken in a parabolical sense in this prolix threnodia , i have declared sufficient reason , i hope , upon , v. . chap. . vers. . the doxology supposed to end here is continued in the three following verses , and the four first verses seem to respect onely those who are called to the marriage-supper , or appertain to the new ierusalem , and the following three verses the joining all others with them in the doxology , who are concerned in that great revolution and blessed renovation of the world , when the earnest expectation of the creature which waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of god shall be answered , and thereby the creature it self that had been so long subject to vanity , shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption , into the glorious liberty of the children of god , rom. . , , . and there 's no going back till verse the eleventh . ans. the four first verses do plainly contain a doxology , or the praising of god for his just judgments upon babylon , as is plain from v. . where he is said to have judged the great whore. this is the occasion and object that this doxology is conversant about . and the occasion and object of the following doxology in the three next verses is the marriage of the lamb , as is plain v. . let us be glad and give honour to him , for the marriage of the lamb is come , &c. wherefore they having distinct occasions and objects , it is sufficient reason they should be look't upon as distinct doxologies , and that the former should not be conceived to be continued three verses farther than it is . whence it follows , the marriage of the lamb , or conversion of the jews synchronizing with the sixth vial , as the battel of the rider of the white horse with the seventh , that the going back must be before , vers . . viz. at vers . . vers. . the crowns here signifie not the kings of the east submitting themselves to the rider of the white horse . for those are believers who are to reign with christ , but wear no such crowns as are here signified . for the crowns here are of those kings that war with the lamb , but he shall overcome , and so he wears the crowns which he had won . ans. if there were an accession of many kings to the kingdom of christ , whether they yielded voluntarily , or by force , there was an accession of so many crowns ipso facto , and their conviction by the power of the gospel is the best kind of vanquishing in the kingdom of christ and his militia . vers. . the armies being cloathed in white linen , does well accord with understanding the war literally . for this cloathing does onely signifie that it 's an holy war , being under the conduct of him who in righteousness doth make war. ans. white linen may signifie holiness , but by no means a carnal war. if that had been meant , it would have been said , they were cloathed in white armour , bright and shining . which would aptly have signified both holiness and war too . vers. . nor does the sword issuing out of his mouth , wherewith he smites the nations , shew it to be no carnal or literal warfare , but signifies the sharp , but righteous sentence of judgment , which he does first pronounce against his enemies , and then does the war execute the same . and also signifies farther , that spiritual slaughter or powerfull conviction of the remnant , v. . thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron , and break them , &c. does plainly signifie the absolute subjection he shall bring his obstinate enemies into , as the admonition in the following verses thereto , in psal. . does shew . to which does answer in psal. . . god shall send the rod of thy strength out of sion , rule thou in the midst of thine enemies . but contrition of heart by conviction , can with no aptness be signified by the said expressions of the psalmist , it being a spiritual subjecting of men into a voluntary obedience , contrary to the other . ans. the sharp sword issuing out of the mouth of the rider of the white horse , cannot signifie the sharp sentence of judgment which he does first pronounce against his enemies , for that is supposed to have been done in his royal tent at a council of war , but he is here upon his march with his squadrons of horse following him . nor does it also , but onely signifie that spiritual slaughter or powerfull conviction of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the rest of his enemies , namely those distinct from the beast and false prophet , which therefore are the infidel party . and as for christ's obstinate enemies ; turks and infidels have been such , and will be such , till they be , as esay speaks , ch . . . smitten with the rod of his mouth ( not the rod of his strength in the remarker's sense ) which forerius interprets of the preaching of the gospel . and as for that passage in the second psalm , we are to take notice , that the prophecy there belongs first to david , and is literally to be understood of him . but in the spiritual and mystical sense referring to christ , his kingdom being mainly spiritual , his warfare and conquests are rightly understood to be chiefly spiritual also . the text runs plainly upon this sense , viz. and out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword ( and this is in his march to the battel , as i noted before ) that with it he should smite the nations . this therefore is his weapon of war , whereby he subdues the nations . and he shall rule them with a rod of iron , alluding to psal. . . where for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ reges eos ] the hebrew has 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ conteres eos ] which aptly intimates that contrition the expositor mentions , and farther confirms the sense of the sharp sword : as also does that which follows ; and he treadeth the wine-press , &c. which we have demonstrated above , what a salvage mistake it is not to understand it in a spiritual or parabolical sense . wherefore the vision of the wine-press , the seventh vial and this present vision synchronizing and indeed setting out the same thing , and that of the wine-press necessarily inferring a spiritual meaning , and the camp of armageddon being turned into a city the boanergeses thundred over , ( which plainly puts off the conceit of a carnal battel in armageddon ) and here the commander on the white horse being called the word of god , and the weapon whereby he subdues his enemies being a sword that comes out of his mouth , and the habits that both he and his followers are clad in , being fine linen , white and clean , not white armour , bright and shining ; all these things considered , unless one be blinded with invincible prejudice , how can he miss of interpreting all these of the spiritual warfare of christ and the victories of the gospel ? vers. . the writing on the thigh does not properly signifie his descent , but his posterity or spiritual off-spring , viz. that he is king of kings in respect of those who through faith in him are begotten to be kings and priests to god , ch . . v. . ans. the thigh is a symbol of generation , and consequently of pedegree and genealogy . which therefore may look both backwards and forwards in respect of the person whose pedegree is considered . wherefore if any one will interpret this place both ways , he has my free leave . vers. . as the legislative power , being the light of the world by which the affairs thereof are governed , is in the prophetick style called the sun ; so the kingdom of christ having become now far the most prevailing autority of the world ( babylon being fallen , and in almost an expiring condition ) he in the glory of his kingdom on earth is here called the sun , in whose power the angel makes the following invitation . but to refer this so glorious a description of the great battel and victory of our saviour to preaching of the gospel , ( and that in the time of so great knowledge , when there will be so little need of it , and the enemy will be so obdurate against it ) is an extravagant conceit . so is it , that the beast and false prophet gathered to the battel , should not be included in the slain ; and that for this wonderfull reason , that they were cast into a lake of fire , and therefore the fowls could not feed on them . whereas their feeding on them is at the victory , and the casting into the lake follows , which what it signifies , see v. . ans. this is a pretty conceit of the remarker , touching the angel standing in the sun , but it is raised upon weak grounds . for sun does not signifie the legislative power in abstracto , nor yet in concreto , unless it be monarchical , which is not according to the hypothesis of the remarker . nor is babylon fallen before this battel , in that consummate sense , that to a carnal eye the victory could appear so sure on the evangelical parties side . and therefore though christ were supposed here the sun , ( which renders the other hypothesis needless of making sun to signifie the legislative power , he in respect of his kingdom being a monarch ) the assurance of the victory is not to be foretold by a politician from the visible power of christ's kingdom . for this is the philadelphian army , which christ himself calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. small forces , ch . . . and therefore no politician could compute the success thereof from its military power . but these were some inspired prophets of the evangelical party , that from the sure word of prophecy and their experience of the marvellous effects of the zealous preaching of the pure gospel in the power of the spirit , foretell the success of the battel in this invitation , standing in the glorious light or sun-shine of the gospel . but to make the angel that stands in the sun to stand in the person of christ , the monarch or head of his kingdom , seems rude and incongruous . this confident invitation answers to that voice from the throne , from the dabir or oracle , ch . . . it is done . nor need the remarker judge the referring this so glorious a description of this great battel and victory to the preaching of the gospel an extravagant conceit , as there being then little need of it , and the enemy so obdurate against it . for there will be great need of such preaching of the gospel , as we have described , and the power of it predicted , is not upon the antichristian party , which the remarker fansies so obdurate , but upon the infidel party especially , which are said to be slain with the sword of him that sate on the white horse . but the beast and the false prophet are not so slain ; and it is a wonderfull good and solid reason which the expositor intimates for it . because the fowls of the air could not feed on them , they being cast into the lake of fire . nor could they feed on them before they were cast thither , as the remarker imagines , because they were taken alive and cast into the lake of fire ; and fowls that follow armies do not seize on men before they be slain . wherefore it is a demonstration that the beast and false prophet were none of the slain by the sword that goes out of that hero's mouth on the white horse . vers. . the fowls invited to this feast are all noble-spirited and vertuously disposed persons , who though not in a state of faith , will , in this flourishing state of christ's kingdom , be ready to side therewith , as all filthy degenerate people will ( or rather must by reason of the low state they are sunk into ) side with the babylonish party , though in a fallen expiring condition . for then is babylon the hold of every foul spirit , and cage of every unclean bird , chap. . . ans. the meaning of the fowls of the air , which the expositor has given , is clear and without all exception ; and if that of the remarker were to be admitted , it were to be admitted but as a secondary sense , though also true . but it seems improbable to be true , both because there is no example of fowls signifying precisely so as he supposes , and also for as much as it is incredible , that such nobly-spirited and vertuously disposed persons , not in the state of faith , and therefore indeed infidels , such as mere deists are ( and with numerous multitudes of such christendom swarms ) and therefore are not so properly of the antichristian party , as under the dragon , or amongst the infidels ; i say it is incredible when those boanergeses shall thunder over the tripartite city , or the army of this heros on the white horse appear , that is , the pure gospel be preached in the power of the spirit ; but these noble and vertuous spirits will be found among the slain by the sword , that goes out of that hero's mouth ; that is to say , will be converted . which if they be not , it will be an indication , that they are not such noble and vertuously disposed spirits as the remarker imagines , and therefore no fowls flying in the midst of heaven , and so the parable will be meant onely of the angels . touching the last clause of this remark , see what we have said upon chap. . . vers. . this lake burning with fire and brimstone , wherein the beast and false prophet are consumed , may signifie what befalls them in the other life , into which state the devil after is to be cast , ch . . . and also the inflamed zeal with which men will then be moved against the former politick state of the beast and false prophet , whereby the same will be wholly dissolved , and so the former things will pass away , and all things become new . and the lake of fire , in this sense , may signifie the same with the great hail-stones of a talent weight which fell on men , ch . . . ans. the nature of prophecy is to tell us of the visible events of things in this life . and the event of the battel , as to them that are said to be slain with the sword , concerns their visible state here on earth ; why should not then the event of the same battel , as it is figuratively or symbolically set out , concern the beasts and false prophets state in this world too ? the being put therefore into the lake of fire and brimstone , signifies not their being punished in hell in the other world , but the consumption and abolition of their power in this . for by fire are things consumed . and it is said of the whore , that some of the kings should eat her flesh and burn her with fire . and it is the loftiness of the prophetick style to parallel this consuming fire here , which denotes the full consumption and abolition of the power of the beast and false prophet , to the fire and sulphur of hell. this is so plain and necessary a sense , that both grotius and dr. hammond embrace it , and make use of it on the place , though not to the same purpose . that the inflamed zeal of the conquerors against the corrupt and idolatrous state of the beast and false prophet may contribute much to a speedier and perfecter dissolution thereof , is not unreasonable to imagine . but that a lake of fire and brimstone should signifie such zeal in men , i know no example in any interpreter of prophetick symbols . the other sense sufficeth . but that the great hail-stones of a talent weight denote the same thing that this fiery lake does here , therein i easily agree with the remarker . which does farther confirm that the lake of fire signifies not the state of the beast and false prophet in the other world , but in this . vers. . the remnant is not one of the two parts , but the third of the three parts that the antichristian party were divided into , the beast and false prophet being the other two . and they are said to be slain with the sword that proceedeth out of the mouth , &c. in distinction from the slaughter of the beast and false prophet , which shews that the slaughter of them was real in battel . ans. in this battel of the great day of god almighty there are but these three parties in all ; those under the dragon , which are atheists , deists and infidels ; those under the beast and false prophet , which are the antichristian party ; and those under the rider on the white horse , which are the pure evangelical party . there is therefore no pretence of dividing the antichristian party into more than two parts , one under the beast , the other under the false prophet . how can then the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which our english bible renders remnant ) be the third of the three parts that the antichristian party were divided into , that may be said to be slain with the sword that proceedeth out of the mouth of the rider on the white horse , in distinction from the slaughter of the beast and false prophet ? the beast and false prophet undergoing both one and the same fate , it shews they were looked upon as but one of the two parties that the heros on the white horse warred against ; and therefore , when it is said , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the rest were slain by the sword that came out of the mouth of him that sate on the white horse , it 's necessarily understood that that was the fate of those that were under the dragon , the third part not of the antichristian party , but of all the forces gathered in the field of armageddon . were not this true , there is nothing said of the event of the battel upon those that were under the dragon , which surely was the most numerous multitude . and that this victory over them is parabolical , not carnal and literal , has been abundantly proved upon v. . chap. . vers. . if the great chain to bind satan be a making laws to bridle the wicked , then the loosing of him must be a taking away or relaxation at least of those laws to give the wicked liberty , which is not to be imagined . nor needs there be any other laws than the known laws of god already to restrain wickedness , when there 's that spirit in rulers as to see them duly executed . by this binding therefore of satan , may be signified an infernal confinement of him from that going to and fro , and walking up and down on the earth , iob . which peter calls going about like a roaring lion , seeking whom he may devour . so that he is to be deprived of his power of working mischief , by deceiving people , and to be bound in chains under darkness , jud. . ans. the neglect of executing the laws may well be a loosening of satan . for the neglect of execution is the next door to the abrogation of laws , which will make them to be look't upon as obsolete , and not binding . and this is a thing easily to be imagined , when the philadelphian state was a degenerating into the laodicean . that there needs no laws but the bible , is a mere presumption . how mis-interpretable the bible is , to say nothing of the largeness of it , is too notoriously known . wherefore a clear abridgement out of it , with a sense agreed by a truly holy and truly infallible oecumenical council , as i may so call it , upon the abolition of the babylonian polity , will be of great use for the settlement and expedition of all affairs . but to leave things in a scattered way to the spirit of rulers , is , instead of erecting an holy city or polity , to leave all things to the disorder and confusion of an enthusiastick anarchy . this therefore is the political sense of the binding of satan . but for that physical sense , as i may so call it , of infernal confinement in the dungeon of the rephaim ; if it were admitted , it does not at all clash with this other . nor will i stick to admit it upon condition , that the remarker will also admit that which is very consentaneous thereto , viz. that about that time the devil is sentenced to hell , the martyrs be also sentenced to heaven in glorified bodies , by virtue of their privilege in the first resurrection . vers. . if the seventh trumpet be branched into seven thunders , to reach to the end of the world , the space of one thunder must be a large time to be spent in making laws to establish a new polity , whenas the millennial state will be no politick , but a spiritual government , and the multitude of laws is the chief grievance of most governments . and that will be a time of so great light , both by reason of humane knowledge , and much more of divine , through the illumination of god's spirit dwelling among them , that surely it 's not imaginable what need there will be of farther laws for bridling wickedness than what god hath already given . nor can more extensive laws to that purpose be conceived , were there but a due spirit ruling , to see them executed , which will not then be wanting . all other laws will be the light of the sun and the moon , which they will have no need of , having the glory of god and the lamb to be their light . and as the millennial state will need no such preparation for its settlement , as this second thunder is supposed to be , so it will not have any such declension by degenerating , as is imagined , in the fourth thunder , ( the devil 's loosing being not to make any change in it , but onely to stir up the foreign nations against it ) but will be one simple glorious state arising upon the destruction of the beast and false prophet , and the removing of the deceiver out of the way ; whereby the law of god will have its free course , and his servants will be in full power to prosecute the execution thereof . by their righteous administration whereof , they will shine forth like the sun in their father's kingdom . ans. what is said in the beginning of this remark , supposes the intervals of the seven thunders to be equal ; whenas they are very unequal , as the intervals of the successions of the seven churches , and of the seven heads of the beast are . and whereas he says , that the millennial state will be no politick government , it is a plain contradiction to the language of the apocalypse , which by city understands polity ; so that as the city babylon is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to which the city ierusalem is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or opposite city ; so there must be a ierusalem-polity opposite to the polity of babylon . nor can there be any polity understood without order and laws . nor is multitude of laws any grievance of government , if they be no more than do really serve for the security of the government , the purity of god's worship , and the real good of the people : and in the millennial empire of christ there will be no other laws than such , nor any more than will serve those ends ; and to bring things to that accuracy , will require longer time for discussing and sifting things , than a greater number of laws would . but to say that the millennial state will not be political , but spiritual , is to make an opposition betwixt those things which may very friendly agree . for a political state may be also spiritual , as this millennial state will be , the laws being dictated in that great oecumenical inspired council , by the spirit of god himself , and the rulers in their respective places by virtue of their regenerate state , and the spirit of god , richly abiding in them , heartily relishing these laws , and vigorously pursuing the execution of them . if this be not a spiritual state , though political , what can be a spiritual state or government ? what may seem to be wanting is , i fear , nothing but an unaccountable huff , a blast or humour , nothing of the spirit of god. and as for the abundance of humane knowledge and divine illumination in those times , as if that took away the use of laws ; i say , laws are not for the just , but unjust , it is a chain to bind the devil and all that truckle under him . for to think that in the millennium there will be none , where the saints live , but mere saints is a rash conceit ; there will be several odd fellows lurking in the ruines both of the dragon's kingdom and of babylon . what follows is magnificent enough , but empty , and i have answered it already upon the foregoing remark . and the latter part of this remark does onely declare , not prove , there will be no declension in the philadelphian state , whenas i have proved there will , by making good my interpretation of the epistle to the church of laodicea , as also of the former epistle , against the exceptions of the remarker . and it is a wonderfull groundless conceit to think that god would let loose satan again out of his prison to disturb the affairs of his church , and change the condition thereof , if they had not first changed their own condition , and merited this judgment . and lastly , touching the deceiver removed out of the way ; i ask what deceiver caused the angels to fall , before whose fall there were no deceivers nor devils ? and the devil when he is restrained to his infernal confinement , yet all that then can be said is but this , let no man , when he is tempted , say , i am tempted of the devil ; for he , during his infernal confinement , tempteth no man : but every man is tempted , when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed , &c. iam. . . and certainly in the millennium men are not born without original sin , nor is their body of flesh less subject to various lusts than the aethereal bodies of angels were . so that what is here produced is mere rhetorical colour , no solid or substantial argument . vers. . this conceit of iron , adamantine , rigid laws , &c. ( and these to be in a time when there will be so little need of them ) does shew an imagination much upon the rack . if the wicked in the millennium are to be kept under such laws , they will have little heart to join in that song , blessing , honour , glory and power , &c. be unto him that sitteth on the throne , and unto the lamb for ever . which is said every creature in heaven and earth shall doe , ch . . but these will be times for which paul says , the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth , and wherein it shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of god , it being not made subject unto vanity willingly , but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope , rom. . viz. that wickendess which iohn says the whole world lyes in , being the result of its thraldom and delusion under the power of the devil , which lapsed man became subject unto ; yet in hopes to be delivered therefrom , they becoming in this millennial state partakers of their hopes , having all stumbling-blocks of iniquity taken away , and receiving all advantages to further them in the ways of righteousness , they will joyfully walk therein , and through the blessings they find do attend their so doing , will be moved to join in the said song of , blessing , honour , glory and power , &c. ans. here 's but the repetition of the same things in the beginning of this remark , which were in the former , and therefore they need no new answer . but afterwards he offers at two new arguments against this conceit , as he calls it , of iron , adamantine , rigid laws . for if there be such in the millennium , the wicked will have little heart , says he , to join in that song , chap. . . blessing , honour , glory and power , &c. whenas it is said , every creature in heaven , earth and under the earth , &c. shall join in it . in answer to which , i onely demand , whether the old serpent in his infernal confinement , which is under the earth , will either join in , or say amen to that doxology ? in what sense he will , the wicked will also . the other reason is , that this is the time ( viz. the millennium ) wherein the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption , into the glorious liberty of the sons of god. but i here demand , first , whether all the creatures , or all men will be thus delivered from the bondage of corruption , nay whether all men that live in the same countries that they that belong to the new ierusalem , do ? i suppose the remarker will not adventure to assert it . wherefore there being those among the saints that are not saints themselves , these rigid laws are fit to bridle them . but then secondly , i deny that this place of rom. . refers to the millennium , but to the state of the resurrection . for then onely will this deliverance from the bondage of corruption be , and the attainment of the freedom of the sons of god , which is the title of the angels . for then in our glorified bodies we shall become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , equal to the angels . and this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is mentioned , v. . which we groan after and wait for , viz. the redemption of our bodies , that they may be glorified and made angelical , such as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , have , the angels or sons of god. vers. . the first resurrection is not a revivification into their glorified bodies to reign in heaven . for there saints cannot be said to reign , there being none there to be subjects to them . and that state is not attainable till the resurrection at the last day , when christ hath promised to raise up those that believe in him , iohn . , . also the following words ; blessed is he that hath part in the first resurrection , on such the second death hath no power ; do shew , that the first resurrection is not an emerging above the regions of mortality , by being revivified into glorified bodies , for then the pronouncing the second death to have no power over them would be needless . which is also farther evidenced by the reign in the first resurrection , being a thousand years , whenas the heavenly state is everlasting . and it 's a great violation of scripture to make a thousand years , when spoke of the resurrection , to signifie symbolically , when it 's so oft in the chapter used numerically , and by coherence of the discourse must every-where needs have the same signification . therefore the first resurrection is a privilege of the martyrs that suffered under antichrist to reign in the millennial state , as the powers of the air , viz. the devil and his angels did among the worldly powers , till he was bound in the bottomless pit . ans. i answer ; saints may be said to reign in heaven , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at least , if not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . besides , what will the remarker say to that text , tim. . if we suffer , we shall also reign with him . and to rom. . heirs of god and joint-heirs with christ , if so be we suffer with him , that we may be also glorified with him , that is , partake of his glorious kingdom , according to that , mat. . come ye blessed of my father , inherit the kingdom prepared for you , &c. whence it is plain , that the saints may be said to reign in heaven according to phrase of scripture . and if there be a polity in heaven , as most certainly there is , the martyrs may have several provinces to rule over in a briathick state , as the cabbalists seem to call it . and that the heavenly state is not attainable before the general resurrection , is against the opinion of the ancient fathers , as you may see in mr. mede . and the last day reaches from the beginning of the millennium , to the end of the world , or general resurrection , as i have discoursed this point more copiously in a letter to a friend , and therefore am loth to repeat it here . the adding to the mention of the first resurrection , that the second death has no power over them , is not needless , both because it more manifestly imports that this resurrection is not meant of a political resurrection , but a physical , and also that it assures us of the sense of that passage in the epistle to the church of smyrna ; he that overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death ; from the comparing of which two places together , the ancients rightly inferred the rising of the martyrs at the first resurrection , that it was their privilege . so that as some of the passages in daniel and the apocalypse are , as it were , tallies kept by parties one with another , to give a just account of the sense , so the same are some passages of the apocalypse one to another , of which i might give many more examples , but i hold it needless . nor does the martyrs reigning in heaven that thousand years of the millennium clash with their reigning there for ever afterwards . but from the beginning of the millennium , to everlasting , is their reign , and omne majus continet in se minus , so that it is true that they reigned in heaven , while the saints which worshipped not the beast , with their successours , reigned in the millennium on earth , viz. they reigned a thousand years while the martyrs reigned in heaven the same time . but in this place it was impertinent , and too motiminous , nor sutable to the accustomed brevity and succinctness of the apocalyptick style , to tell they yet farther reigned to all eternity , that being to be signified afterwards . nor is it any violation of scripture to make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the sixth verse , signifie symbolically , when in the fourth and fifth it does not , the article [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] being in the fourth and fifth verses . which therefore points at the determinate thousand years of the millennium . but it is lest out in the sixth verse , and , as it seems , on purpose to lead us to that symbolical meaning , touching those that partake of the first resurrection , and which was proper to them , in conterdistinction to those confessors who worshipped not the image of the beast , and who , with their successors , onely reigned that thousand years of the millennium . which farther argues , that the first resurrection is physical , and into an heavenly glorified body . so coherent is the discourse , and agreeable with the symbolical sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in v. . but to make the privilege of the martyrs in the first resurrection to be , that they reign during the millennium , as the powers of the air , the devil and his angels did among the worldly powers , till he was bound ; this , though it may seem a witty conceit , yet it is not true . for then they have but the office of ministring angels , which is not to reign , but to minister . for i hope they will not doe as the devils did , receive religious worship from us mortals . and if these martyrs have no bodies , how is it a resurrection ? and if onely aerial bodies , so have other souls as well as they . and if you say they onely minister for the good of the saints in this airy region , what hinders but other souls that are not martyrs may have the same office ? so that this is no privilege of the martyrs , nor the right state of the first resurrection . wherefore the safest and most natural sense of the first resurrection is not to crop or mutilate it , but to let it be full and of the same kind with the general resurrection of the just . vers. . there was no increase of wickedness by relaxation of discipline . for these nations that gather themselves against the saints are foreign nations , that were never subject to their discipline ; but during the devil's being bound , did live peaceably by them , and haply did so rejoice in the light of the new ierusalem as to fulfill those sayings ; the nations that are saved shall walk in the light thereof ; and , the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations ; but were now so deceived by satan's being loosed , as to combine against the beloved city , as the neighbouring-nations used to confederate against ierusalem . ans. that there was no increase of wickedness by relaxation of discipline , is a thing said , not proved , though i have proved above to the contrary . nor is there any sufficient intimation in the vision , that they were foreign nations that environ'd the holy city ( that is , the holy polity , ) but people of a foreign spirit and aliens from the faith and genius of those that are of the true houshold of god , though they lived amongst the nations that were converted to the true apostolick christianity . and the kingdom of christ having become so large at that time , when , apoc. ch . . . ch . . . all the kingdoms of the world , as it is written , were become the kingdoms of the lord and his christ , it is hard to conceive it should be otherwise ; and also , by relaxation of discipline , that even those that were subject to their discipline should not so corrupt as to make part of the army of gog and magog . and what nations can be thought to walk in the light of the new ierusalem , but those that are converted to the christian faith ? for by faith we are saved , as the apostle tells us . and those nations that are healed , are the same that are saved also ; no other at all need be implied . and whether you count gog and magog neighbouring or foreign nations , it is but childish and idiotical to take it so far in the literal sense , ( and against the genius of the apocalyptick style ) that they must signifie either neighbouring or foreign nations in a geographical meaning , but in a mystical dissimilitude of spirit and profession answering to distance of place ; and those that have the same profession but not the same spirit really and the same saith are borderers rather than natives . and such are those that bear the name of the christianity then established , i mean in the millennium , but covertly favour the dragon and the beast . and these are gog , which signifies tectum . but those that are open draconists or bestians , these are magog , which signifies absque tecto , as the lexicon sanctum will have it . but this is a greater curiosity than needs . it is sufficient in the mean time to observe , that as the very people gog and magog , that were the ancient enemies of the jews , are not here understood ; so no people of a foreign nation , out of the bounds and precincts of the new-ierusalem jurisdiction or kingdom of christ , are necessarily signified thereby , though i do not deny but by magog may be also understood , whatever foreign forces are accumulated to those that are within the dominions of the new ierusalem . vers. . those in the ierusalem state being called the camp of the saints and the beloved city , does shew they are in no such a degenerate state as the epistle to the laodiceans describes , and so is one reason more to those many given , ch . . that the two last of the seven epistles do not concern the millennial state. and it 's a great straining of the text to serve the contrary conceit , to make those titles be given the new ierusalem , because there were many saints there , and the rest so as to purity of external worship . for if those many were the greater number , then the laodicean state would not be applicable thereto ; if the less , then the titles of the camp of the saints and beloved city would not agree therewith , and the purity of their external worship in all , will not mend the matter , unless hypocrisie may entitle one to saintship . ans. that the church of philadelphia , though degenerated into a laodicean state , may be called in these straits the camp of the saints and the beloved city , appears out of ch . . the city is there called holy , though trampled down and polluted by the gentiles . nor is it any straining of the text to make them called the camp of the saints , because there were many saints there , though not all such , whenas the greater part , according to several degrees of saintship , might be saints , and these less degrees of saintship an effect of the degeneracy , and that the external worship in all was still pure and incorrupt , and they that used it did it out of judgment and conscience , being sincerely pleased , in that they thought god was pleased with it ; this adds a farther weight to make the city both holy and beloved , especially in comparison of the rabble of their enemies . and therefore it was not hypocrisie , but a solid ground that entitled this camp to saintship . and if we should suppose the most degenerate part to have listed themselves in the army of gog and magog , as it is exceeding probable , the holy city seeming in such imminent danger ; this is manifestly consistent with the camp being called the camp of saints , and the city the beloved city , and likewise with the degeneracy of those times , i mean the laodicean degeneracy , at once ; those degenerate persons being now drained out of the holy city into the army of gog and magog , and so the city lest fit to retain the title of holy and beloved still without any scruple or exception . vers. . death and hell are here made one to be the species of the other , viz. the first to signifie those dead by diseases , and the other the whole region of mortality . but surely it will be a better account of the text to suppose this to be a like distribution of the damned into two parts , as the twenty four elders and the four beasts is of the saints , viz. into the governours and governed ; and that hell signifies those children of wrath who have been rulers in the world under the powers of darkness , and death those that died in their sins in their private condition , but were not publick instruments of evil as to others . and that this distinction of them is made by reason of the different state or degrees of punishment that befalls them after this life , according to that saying ; the lord soon pardoneth the mean , but the mighty shall be mightily tormented . this sense will well agree with v. . viz. death and hell were cast into the lake of fire , but so will not the other sense . for not all that dye of diseases , much less shall the whole region of mortality be cast into the lake of fire , &c. ans. death and hell are not here made the one the species of the other , but rather the one a part of the other . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is translated hell , signifies the dark invisible receptacle of the deceased ; and hell has its name from an anglosaxon word , that signifies to cover . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 therefore , which is here rendred hell is the common or universal receptacle of all the deceased . the sea gave up the dead that were in it , and death and hell delivered up the dead that were in them . there was begun an enumeration of the receptacles of the deceased , or by a prosopopoeia , of the keepers of these deposita , viz. the deceased . the sea is one ; those places that take in the bodies of those that dye of diseases , another ; but to be short , he abruptly names that common receptacle or keeper of all the deceased , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is translated hell. this is the plain meaning of the text. but the remarker's two parts are out of doors , because if death and hell make two parts , sea will come in for the third , and so spoil the conceit , which otherwise had no harm in it . for whereas he most of all applauds his exposition as so well agreeing with v. . [ death and hell were cast into the lake of fire ] if he take in sea too , to cast into the lake of fire , it will make strange work . but the interpretation of v. . by the expositor , does not suppose death there to signifie either all that dye of diseases , or none but those that dye of diseases , but to signifie , death it self , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ hell ] to signifie this region of mortality wherein he reigns , as you may see in his exposition , where the sense is sufficiently clear and smooth . chap. . vers. . sea does not signifie here the unquiet multitude of the wicked , but as it does in the second trumpet and the second vial , viz. the over-spreading of worldly dominion that does overflow and overwhelm men with power , as the sea overflows the earth . ans. the nature of the sea is to be tossing , unquiet and moving , which therefore very well sets off the disposition of the mobile vulgus , especially the wicked part of them , that are easily ruffled into seditions and rebellions . but when this new heaven and new earth , that is , this new-ierusalem-polity is settled , there will be no such thing as the appearance of a fluctuating sea , or of a sea by invasion breaking in upon the land ; but all will be in settled peace and quietness , as the expositor has explained this passage . but to interpret sea and waters not of multitudes of people , but of worldly dominions ( the ruling part ) is quite out of the road of the prophetick style . but the worldly powers and worldly dominions hugely fill the remarker's fancy . vers. . the new ierusalem coming down from heaven is not a polity to be settled on earth by councils , but it is god's taking up his abode among men , to rule and govern them by his truth and life dwelling in them , whereby they shall walk in the light of life , and so not need the constitutions of councils . ans. the new ierusalem come down from heaven , is the new heaven and the new earth , and a new heaven and a new earth in the prophetick style is a new polity . see the alphabet of iconisms in [ heaven and earth . ] and besides , in that it is the city ierusalem , in opposition to the city babylon , it must be a polity antistoechal to a polity , city signifying a polity in the prophetick style . and a council and laws will be requisite , yea necessary in the millennium ; for there will be draconists and bestians , though under the hatches , mingled within the dominions of the kingdom of christ. and it is a childish conceit to think , that through so vast a dominion as the millennial will be , there will be none but such as are pure saints , and have the truth of life dwelling in them . and however that be , men will not then be born saints , but emerge into true saintship by degrees , and therefore will need an external direction . but the remarker seems to imagine they will be grown men as soon as they drop out of the womb , and will want no childrens catechisms to instruct them . vers. . i will give to him that is a-thirst of the fountain of the water of life freely , does primarily respect the millennial state , which is the present subject ; and so likewise do the words in the next verse , viz. shall inherit all things , yet eternal rewards may be included in those promises . ans. i say these places here mentioned do plainly point at the heavenly reward , as the expositor has explained them , when christ saves us to the utmost . his saying he is omega as well as alpha , intimates as much . for the last letter in the alphabet of salvation is our enjoyment of the heavenly inheritance , in which we inherit all things that heart can wish . and v. . as if he alluded to the conclusion of his epistle to the church of laodicea ( which farther confirms the expositor's sense of that epistle ) he useth the phrase , he that overcometh , he shall inherit all things , and i will be his god ( he speaks there in reference to his divinity ) and he shall be my son , and consequently an heir of the celestial inheritance with christ , enjoying such happiness as his glorified humanity does there in the kingdom of his father . vers. . the inscription of the names of the twelve tribes on the gates is but a continuance of that israelism , which runs through the whole prophecy . but if the imagined sense here were true , that there is no entrance into the dispensation of the spirit without endeavours to live up to the external rules of the word as well as one can , how come publicans and sinners to enter into the kingdom of heaven before the legal scribes and pharisees ? ans. to make the distinct parts of the continued israelism in this description of the new ierusalem to signifie nothing , is to make the spirit of prophecy to trifle in the description thereof . nor does this usefull and edifying sense the expositor has given at all clash with that saying of our saviour ; that publicans and sinners enter into the kingdom of heaven before the scribes and pharisees . for they did not live up to the external law of god as near as they could , for then they had been sincere . but our saviour christ expresly calls them hypocrites . wo unto you scribes and pharisees hypocrites , ye tithe , mint and cumin , but omit the weightier matters of the law , judgment , mercy and faith . so that there was more sincerity in the publicans and sinners our saviour pleads for than in them . vers. . the golden reed here is to answer to all the rest of the splendid description of the new ierusalem , but neither it nor the angel measuring with it , signifies the ierusalem state , to surpass those measured , ch . . for it being ( as is shewed there ) the restauration of the outward court to the inward , is not a superiour state to that of the worshippers in the inward court. but the measuring there by a man , is by iohn himself , to signifie his being to prophesie of them , and what he does prophesie of them respects chiefly their preservation from being troden down , and the duties they should perform . so that a golden reed were not agreeable for that occasion . ans. this shuffling off this solid interpretation of the angel's measuring the city with a golden reed , depends upon the remarker's making the witnesses and the worshippers in the temple and thysiasterion , ch . . to be the same , and the inner and outer court to synchronize . but the vanity of this imagination i have sufficiently confuted on that chapter . and therefore measuring the inner court , signifying the symmetricalness of the church visible for about years after christ , as not yet degenerated into that gross apostasie , and there being different degrees of holiness in the sanctum sanctorum , sanctum and thysiasterion , which also insinuates that that interval of the church did lessen in its holiness by degrees , till at last it degenerated into that state of the apostasie , and according to history those times having several things in them of a superfluous and combustible nature , that will not abide the fire as gold will , and lose nothing of its weight , it is apparent that that state of the church was inferiour to this of the millennium , and that being measured by an ordinary combustible reed , and but by a man , for iohn was such , this by an angel and with a golden reed , it does not onely admit but enforce upon the intelligent such an interpretation as the expositor has given , which is an edifying instructive interpretation , when that account the remarker gives signifies nothing , viz. onely , that the golden reed here is to answer to the described splendour of the new ierusalem . i demand then , what does that ordinary reed answer to ? certainly to a more combustible and inferiour condition of the inner court , or the worshippers therein , viz. the church for about years after christ. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle somewhere tells us . the city therefore being measured by a golden reed , and by an angel , is not said so for pomp sake , or merely to follow suit , as at a game at cards , but by an antistoechal reflexion on the reed and the man measuring the inner court , ch . . to denote the excellent state of the millennial church above that of the church till about years after christ , though that was an excellent state of the church too in comparison of the times of apostasie . this is more than enough on this remark ; that which i have wrote on ch . . does alone abundantly demonstrate the weakness thereof . vers. . the city being of pure gold does signifie the sound judgment and righteousness that will dwell therein by the throne of god and the lamb being in it . which to be sure will not be without charity ; but the description does respect a spiritual state of government . ans. sound judgment and righteousness necessarily arise from the spirit of divine love or charity . vnself-interessed love must needs clear the sight in judgment . but the remarker is shy of admitting charity primarily to be understood , because it sutes so well with making the millennium the same with the philadelphian interval after the settlement of things , which he has taken a toy against , though it be most certainly true . vers. , . the twelve stones , which are the foundation of the wall , need not each of them a particular signification here , but as all pretious stones , are chiefly valued according to their degrees of splendour and solidity ; so these two qualities seem mainly here to be aimed at , to signifie the soundness and beautifulness of that apostolical righteousness whereon the safety and defence of the new ierusalem shall be founded ; yet not excluding an allusion to such qualities in any of the stones as will bear an apt application . but straining here to give a particular account of them all , hath caused a strange luxuriancy of fancy . ans. to slubber over the mystery of the twelve stones , with those two significations onely in general of splendour and solidity , is again to make the spirit of prophecy to trifle . and being thus niggardly as to admit of but two properties , it is still worse , in that one is less proper for a wall , which is a structure for defence , rather than for beauty and ornament . but take them both in ; if this were the business , one kind of stone would have served better than all twelve , and that is the diamond , which out-does them all for solidity and splendour . what stone so hard and invincible as it ? what stone so beautifull and splendid ? but yet in a better mood he seems inclined to admit of an allusion to such qualities in any of the stones as will bear an apt application . but if in any , why not in all ? he saith straining here to give a particular account of all hath caused a strange luxuriancy of fancy . but how can that fancy be luxuriant that is not exorbitant , but keeps within a prescribed compass , and takes notice of no virtues in any of these stones , but what tend to the safety and security of the city , to preserve the philadelphian state therein , and hinder it from lapsing into the laodicean . but that is the very thing that the remarker has a pique at the presumption of the expositor , for , that he would give an account of every stone in the wall , they several of them supposing , and so aptly complying with his hypothesis of making the philadelphian state and new ierusalem state all one , and the laodicean to succeed ; so that he cannot endure it , and upon that account calls that strained fancy in the expositor , which is strickt and unexceptionable reason , as any one that examines it without prejudice will find it . vers. . christ's kingdom being spiritual , the kings or rulers there will rule by a spiritual power , by which they will be also priests ; such as the twenty four elders are to the four beasts , and such as they and the four beasts , to those they shall reign over . and therefore to suppose , as here is done , that monarchs or crowned heads ( who rule by worldly power ) shall be kings or rulers in christ's kingdom , shews little understanding of the state of it , or something worse . of that lordship which the kings of the gentiles exercise , and of their being called benefactors , our saviour says , it shall not be so among you , but he that is chief as he that serveth , luk. . . and their profession of christianity , while they rule by the same worldly and political government , cannot make them christian , but rather the more complete antichristian rulers . but the autority that those spiritual kings and priests will have in the millennial state over those they govern , may be likened to that rule and sway which the nobility , gentry and clergy have over the commonalty , saving the great difference that , whereas the one is gained by worldly means , and managed for worldly interest , to the much grievance and oppression of the people , the autority of the other will be exercised with a true christian spirit , to the full satisfaction and joy of those who are governed , and so will cause the fulfilling of what was told at our saviour's birth , of great joy and gladness that should be to all people , and of that doxology ( ch . . . ) of every creature in heaven and on earth , blessing , honour , glory and power , &c. ans. this is one of the oddest remarks of the whole pack . we will therefore consider each passage therein more strictly . christ's kingdom being spiritual , says the remarker , the kings or rulers there will rule by a spiritual power , by which they will be also priests . here we are first to consider in what regard the kingdom of christ upon earth may be called spiritual , in such sort as to be inconsistent with its being a kingdom political , which is settled by councils , and ordered by laws and decrees . for certainly the kingdom of christ was a spiritual kingdom from the apostles times , and onward , at least till the christian religion became the religion of the empire , and yet the affairs of the church were regulated by laws , and established by councils . there was at least twenty councils before constantine's time ; so that the church was both a spiritual and political kingdom of christ at once . in what regard therefore was it spiritual ? it was spiritual , first , in regard of its erection , which was not by an arme of flesh or worldly forces , as other kingdoms ordinarily are raised , but by the spirit of god in powerfull preaching of the gospel , and in doing of miracles . secondly , it is an holy spiritual kingdom , antistoechal to the kingdom of evil spirits , against which this kingdom of christ was erected , to rescue us from their temptations , and the thraldom of sin and wickedness under them : and st. paul declares , ephes. . . that we wrestle not against flesh and bloud ( as if we had any carnal or worldly design of wrestling the dominion of the world into our own hands , that we might enjoy the world ) but against principalities , against powers , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , against the present princes of the dark world , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( syrus legit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , says grotius ) against the evil spirits , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the airy regions , which is an hellenism , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answering to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which often signifies no more than the air . and drusius on the place , cites one of the commentators on liber aboth , who tells us , a terra usque ad firmamentum omnia plena esse turmis & praefectis , & infra plurimas esse creaturas laedentes & accusantes omnésque stare ac volare in aere , &c. which shews plainly that drusius is of the same mind with grotius . in this sense therefore is the kingdom of christ a spiritual kingdom , in that by the working of the spirit in his servants it wrestles with , opposes and finally overcomes the kingdom of evil spirits , tempters to all manner of wickedness and debauchery , under which the souls of men were enslaved . thirdly and lastly , the kingdom of christ is a spiritual kingdom , because the proper aim and scope thereof is merely spiritual , viz. the end and aim of it is not worldly and temporal things , but things spiritual and eternal . the polity , laws , and administration thereof by those that have the spirit of god tend to this scope , that all the subjects thereof may advance in the state of regeneration by the power and working of the spirit of god in them here , that they may be heirs of that heavenly , invisible , spiritual and eternal kingdom in the world to come . whatever more than this , is imagined of the spirituality of christ's kingdom will end , i fear , in blind enthusiastick huffs and sudden blasts , that will tear all into anarchy . but we proceed : christ's kingdom being spiritual , says he , the kings and rulers there will rule by a spiritual power . why ? so they will , though it be such a polity as i have described , the governours being endued with the spirit of god , and acting for the abovesaid spiritual ends , and being autorized so to act by the laws of christ's kingdom , which their inward frame of spirit heartily closeth with , and assures them of the truth and equity of them , as also all the people of the new ierusalem , who will be found willing to subject themselves thereto in this day of christ's power . is not this plainly and fully to act and rule by a spiritual power ? nor does this ruling thus by a spiritual power presently make them priests properly so called . christ is our king as well as our priest. and so there may be as well spiritual kings in his millennial empire , as priests according to the sense above declared , they ruling and reigning in the same christian spirit , and for the same spiritual ends that the priests officiate for . but to illustrate his meaning how they will be priests , he farther adds , that they will be such as the twenty four elders are to the four beasts , and such as they and the four beasts will be to those they shall reign over . but there is so much light in the illustration , that it discovers the darkness of his own errour . for the description of the twenty four elders is this , chap. . that there were twenty four [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] thrones , and on these thrones twenty four elders in white raiment , and there were golden crowns on their heads . what can be more expressive of kings , than thrones and golden crowns , and of holy and righteous kings , than the white raiment they are cloathed with ? which in all likelihood is white silk , which is called soft raiment in matthew , and said to be fit for kings houses . but that it is left indifferent , it is the more capable of having some allusion to the priesthood likewise , but then with a complication of holiness in these millennial kings , that they had the power of kings , and the holiness of priests , and were supreme heads of the church in ecclesiastick causes also , in their own dominions . for the kings in these times will not be so blind as to be led by the nose by the priests , but see what is fitting themselves , and accordingly approve of it , and the priests will easily appeal to them , they themselves being faithfull also to the true end of christ's kingdom . if these kings were priests properly so called , or kings properly so called were not here meant instead of golden crowns on their heads , they would have had golden girdles girding their white raiment . wherefore it is plain that the twenty four elders are properly kings in respect of the four beasts . but they are kings onely over the four beasts , the four beasts comprizing the whole israel of god , that is , the whole kingdom of christ in the millennium . and therefore the four beasts are subjects , nor are they kings or rulers over other people or nations out of the kingdom of christ , which is rashly and without ground asserted by the remarker . wherefore the remarker vainly insults over the expositor in the following words : and therefore to suppose , as here is done , that monarchs or crowned heads ( who rule by worldly power ) shall be kings and rulers , &c. this is to fly in the face of the very text , and pull the golden crowns off the heads of the four and twenty elders . for they are crowned heads , and reign and rule in christ's kingdom . but that he may seem to have some wit in his wrath , he would by crowned heads understand such monarchs as rule by worldly power . but i have already demonstrated , that the monarchs in the millennial polity rule by a spiritual power , and that a political and spiritual government are not terms inconsistent one with another , nor need i again repeat it . whence it is manifest , that the remarker out of the ignorance of the state of christ's kingdom or something worse , an affected singularity in high-flown notions , has erred in so material a point . but he holds on to maintain it from that saying of our saviour , luk. . . which is the same with mat. . . but neither are any reprehension of just political government , which is managed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle speaks , politic. lib. . cap. . but of that which aristotle there calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of any kind of government , as he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , tyranny , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a digression from the regal power , and defines it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a monarchy constituted for the good of the monarch ; which , with aristotle's leave , it should be , but i suppose he means exclusively to the good of the publick . 't is this our saviour blames , if any thing here in monarchy , not monarchy it self merely as political . but mainly he spoke this to upbraid the ignorance of those of his disciples that were ambitious of high places in his kingdom here on earth , they foolishly conceiting they should have the pleasure and riches ( whereby they may be inabled to be gracious benefactors ) and splendour of worldly potentates . this concerns the apostles themselves and the succeeding bishops , which were to be rulers of the church ( and therefore is rather a prediction for them than any prescription to secular christian monarchs that should be afterwards ) the apostles , i say , this seems onely to concern , and the succeeding primitive bishops , who were to live in mean rank as to the condition of the world , and to care and toil for the good of the church , and bear the brunt of all persecutions , as our saviour himself dyed for his church . this is the genuine sense of those two places . but for such a monarch as really rules for the good of the kingdom of christ , that those places any thing concern such a political government , is a wonderfull groundless conceit , and quite out of the road of truth . as that which follows , is either grosly false or impertinent . for if he mean that political government simply in it self , will make a christian ruler , or a ruler that professes christianity rather the more completely antichristian , it is wretchedly false , as may appear out of what has been said already . but if he mean by political government , worldly government , which serves the ends of the world , rather than of the kingdom of christ ; this is absolutely impertinent to the present point , and contrary to the hypothesis , which is that these millennial monarchs rule by such a political constitution as best serves the promotion and conservation of christ's spiritual kingdom , and best sutes with the regenerate spirits both of the governours and governed . which he keeping to , though himself were unregenerate , yet is he far from being antichristian ; but as it 's said in lower matters , malus homo , yet bonus civis , so such an unregenerate man would be a good christian monarch , not at all antichristian . a man would think that the remarker were a republican or antimonarchical man by such wild passages as these . but what follows may clear him from that suspicion . for he likens the autority that those spiritual kings and priests will have in the millennial state over those they govern to that rule and sway which the nobility , gentry and clergy have over the commonalty , &c. which if it relates to the english constitution , he must needs understand of the time out of parliament , because convocations , councils and parliaments are of a political nature , which he will not allow of in the millennium . from whence it is manifest , that the rule of those spiritual kings and priests in the millennium over them they govern , is merely precarious , and they may chuse whether they will obey them or no. and so this deep mystery of the remarker , touching the millennial state , is resolved at last into mere anarchy . though i will be so charitable as to hope he will allow monarchy to be the best government till that time , ( which is far enough off ) that the millennial anarchy comes in . this is an extravagant dream , arising out of a dry and over-thoughtfull melancholy , thus to fansie the millennial state here on earth to be aziluthical , or like ovid's golden age , when there was neither law nor magistrate , whenas i have above noted , that even the unfallen angels , and that before the lapse of any , were in a state briathical or political in the heavenly regions . and lastly , as for the joy and doxology he concludes with , no intelligent good man but would be more thankfull to divine providence , for such a tight and well-knit polity in the millennial kingdom of christ , as i have described , than such a lax and lazy anarchy as is described by the remarker . vers. . the kings of the earth bringing their glory to it , does not signifie their becoming converts , but their doing honour to it by acts of bounty , &c. as foreign princes did sometimes honour to the temple of ierusalem by sacrifices and presents , though they became not converts . ans. that the kings of the earth bringing their glory to it , does signifie their becoming converts , plainly appears from the precedent part of the verse ( for there is but the repeating , according to an usual scheme in scripture , the same thing again in different words , the conversion of nations implying the conversion of their kings , and the conversion of kings the conversion of the nations they rule over . ) and the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it ▪ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which answers exquisitely to that passage , act. . . the lord added every day to the church , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , new converts , such as should be saved . and esay also , to which this place of the apocalypse alludes , chap. . . plainly confirms this sense . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the nations shall come to thy light , and kings to the brightness of thy rising . lift up thine eyes round about and see , all they gather themselves together , they come to thee : thy sons shall come from far , and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side . then thou shalt see and flow together , and thy heart shall fear and be enlarged , because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee , the forces of the nations shall come unto thee . what can signifie the conversion of kings and nations more fully than this ? chap. . vers. . this pure river of water of life , is the waters of life which every one that is a-thirst is called to drink of freely ; and its issuing out of the throne does signifie , that the executing of righteousness by the throne of god dwelling among them , is accompanied with the full communion of his spirit . so that the throne of god is not here to be applied to those that are in autority , more than the whole city in which the throne of god is ; and that communion with him by his spirit , is a blessing attending the throne of god being therein , viz. it 's that river , the streams whereof make glad the city of god , psal. . ans. the expositor has given so easie , apposite and natural a sense of this and the following verse , that were it not for the pertinacious continuance of the remarker in his aziluthick dream , he would never go about to substitute any other in lieu of it , and say , the throne of god is not here to be applied to those that are in autority more than the whole city . as if the throne of god ( which doubtless signifies the sovereign throne , as apoc. . . ) were equally erected in every private citizen . what can be more gross than this ? this is like that arrogance in core , dathan and abiram , numb . . who said to moses and aaron , ye take too much upon you , seeing all the congregation are holy , every one of them , and the lord is among them ; as the remarker says , the throne of god is in the whole city . if every citizen then be a sovereign magistrate , where are the people to obey ? wherefore it is a mere aziluthick dream , and a substituting anarchy , for an holy and righteous polity , and perfectly repugnant to the very text. and therefore that v. . of him that is athirst , his drinking the waters of life freely is rather to be interpreted politically , by this river issuing from the throne of god , that they that sincerely desire it , may admit themselves into a church and polity where pure doctrine and impartial iustice is to be had , and where there are none that do , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , nor sell justice for money and bribes . which yet does not exclude that more general sense of the communion of god's spirit in all the citizens of the new ierusalem . vers. . tree of life may be another symbol to signifie the same thing with the waters of life . and thus did the tree of life signifie in paradise , viz. that dispensation of life to be revealed by the prince of life , who brought life and immortality to light . and therefore adam was not disposed to eat of the tree of life , being not forbidden , though he was so forward to eat of the tree that was forbid ; which after he had done , he was expelled paradise , lest he should then take of the tree of life ; whereby is signified , that enterance into life is not to be gained by following our own inventions , in searching after the knowledge of good and evil . but if this tree of life be taken ( as it is here ) to signifie men , it must not be to signifie grandees onely , but all citizens , viz. all plants of righteousness nourished by the waters of life . the leaves healing the nations does not mean those that were become subjects to christ's kingdom and discipline , but neighbouring nations , whose kings brought their honour and glory to the new ierusalem . and that light of instruction they borrowed from the glorious lustre of it ( in the light whereof the nations which are saved shall walk ) is signified by the leaves of the tree of life healing the nations . in like manner did other nations borrow light from the iudaical worship , and the heathen priests and philosophers did rectifie their theology by the christian doctrine . and though this healing of the nations by the leaves will be much more verified in the people subject to the dominion of the new ierusalem , than in those neighbouring nations , yet that verifying of it , is signified by the description given of his righteous dominion , who is to judge the world in righteousness , and minister judgment to the people with equity . ans. the tree of life the remarker here will have to signifie the same thing that the pure river of water of life . what a tautological bungle is this , and slurring this distinct political description of the state of the new ierusalem , as if in all that is said nothing is understood , but onely in general , that the citizens of this city are in the dispensation of life . but this is the effect , as i said , of his aziluthick dream . these trees therefore that signifie grandees in the ierusalem polity , whether ecclesiastick or civil , are such as answer to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the magnates of the polity of babylon , who were merchants , and did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and sold justice for money , being earthly-minded , and as to the life of god , trees quite dead and withered . as for the tree of life in paradise , it was the sincere union of our wills with the will of god , and the tree of knowledge of good and evil , is the following our own will , and the not keeping in that former union . but what this is to the explication of the present text , i see not . trees here , according to the prophetick style , signifie men , and that grandees : if they had been the commonalty of the city , or all the citizens , grass and flags growing by the river sides had better represented them than trees . that , not neighbouring nations , but converted nations become parts of the kingdom of christ , are understood by nations , i have above sufficiently proved . and it is a strange paradox , that those nations that are capable of healing , were not capable of being converted to such a frame of polity and religion , which so palpably tended to both the present and future happiness as well of prince as people , and was intended by providence for the common religion of mankind , whenas the iewish was onely topical . and therefore the ancient philosophers borrowing of the jews , without turning to their religion , signifies nothing here . vers. . there shall be no more curse , signifies not papal curse , but the curse of god for sin ; and therefore it follows , but the throne of god and the lamb shall be therein , and his servants shall serve him , viz. by the throne of god and the lamb being therein , they shall be established in righteousness and holiness whereby his servants shall serve him , &c. ans. if the curse of god for sin is taken away in the mellennium , then there will be no more , neither diseases nor death ; no briars nor thorns , nor labour of tillage , &c. this is another aziluthical whimsie or dream of a golden age , in which ovid makes the earth to bring forth all manner of fruit , yea corn it self without plow or tillage . mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat , nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis . but it is a childish conceit to think that in the millennium external nature will be changed , though men will then have more healthfull bodies , by reason of their regeneration into true holiness and righteousness . the judgment of r. moses aegyptius is far more sober and sound touching the state of things in the reign of the messias , than the remarker's ; who writes thus , non ascendat , saith he , in cor tuum , &c. let not such a fond conceit arise in thy mind , as if in the days of the messias any thing would vary from the usual custome of this natural world , or any thing be innovated in the work of the six days creation . but the course of nature will then be no otherwise than now it is . see munster , on esay , ch . . whose expressions touching the times of the messiah , v. , , . that wolves , lions , bears and leopards will then lose their salvageness , gave some jews occasion to deny , that the times of the messiah are yet , because these beasts still retain their old nature . which shews the danger of extravagant interpretations of prophecy ; to set the sense of things upon such a strange rack , and incredible , that they that shall believe it will be hindred from acknowledging prophecies to be fulfilled , when yet really they are . and therefore , as ch . . . where it is said , and there shall be no more death ; the meaning is not , that the citizens of the new ierusalem shall never dye ; but there shall be no such death as in the polity of babylon , no more bloudy massacrings of the faithfull witnesses of christ ; so likewise here , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and there shall be no more curse , is to be understood , not that the curse of sin shall be taken from external nature , but such curses as were most notorious in the polity of babylon , those papal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or excommunicatory denunciations that often did set all christendom on fire , and embroiled it in bloudy and destructive wars . the true key of rightly explaining the state of the new ierusalem , is the interpreting things in way of opposition to the state of babylon , and the condition of the faithfull servants of christ under it . which is worthy of any intelligent person's observation . and what follows in this verse , exquisitely well agrees with this exposition . but the throne of god and the lamb shall be in it . the pope before had usurped the throne of god , from whence be thundered and lightened so with his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , his excommunicatory curses to the disturbance of all christendom ; but now this throne of god is taken from the vsurper , and become the throne of the lamb , to the peace and refreshment of the vniversal church of christ. such is the state of his millennial empire . an answer to several remarks upon dr. henry more his exposition of the visions of daniel , written by. s. e. mennonite , and published in english by the answerer : together with his answers thereunto . london , printed by m. f. for walter kettilby . . remarks upon the exposition of the visions of daniel . vision . vers. . this image being to represent the four great kingdoms that were to arise successively on the earth , and which is said to be terrible in the same sense , as the four beasts in the next vision are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or wild beasts , it 's very incongruous to understand any part of it , of any other than secular power ; so that the feet being part of clay , and part of iron , cannot signifie the roman empire , its becoming partly ecclesiastical , and partly secular , the first being no such empire or power as is intended to be represented by this image . i understand therefore by the iron and clay the mixt monarchies that did arise in the ten kingdoms the empire was divided into , whereby the legislative power became in the king and states jointly ( whereas the emperours and precedent monarchs represented by this image , and also all heathen monarchs had it absolutely in themselves ) which states are signified by the clay , answering to the beast that wore the ten horns , and the ecclesiastick power is no farther concerned therein , than as it is a part of the states . ans. though we should suppose this image to be said in the same sense terrible , that the four beasts in the next vision are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or wild beasts , yet it is not incongruous to understand part of it to concern other than secular power . nay , it being to represent the same four great kingdoms that the following vision does , and to the same extent of time , it had been an hideous defect , if there had not been something in this to answer to the little horn with eyes in the other , that being a principal object of divine providence and of the prophecy : but the little horn with eyes is the ecclesiastick power in the fourth kingdom , when it was divided into ten horns . and the very title of this power is reverend , which is something a-kin to terrible . for what we do revere , does , in some sense , cause fear in us . but besides this , this ecclesiastick power is , in the apocalypse , called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a wild beast , with two horns , which every wild beast has not . and if it be the less frightfull , because they are said to be the horns of a lamb , yet the beast is still sufficiently terrible , in that it hath the voice of a dragon . but this lamb-like condition of it is chiefly represented in this present vision , its seeming harmlesness and unarmedness , its suppleness and compliableness to cleave to that which is stronger ; as in moist potters-clay — argillâ quidvis imitaberis udâ . whence it is plain , there is no need of this new conceit of the remarker , that would confine this mixture of iron and clay to a mere secular mixt monarchy . but the clay is the same power here ( but under such a notion as i have intimated ) that the little horn with eyes is in the ensuing vision ; and yet haply with this difference , that this white clay or potters-earth signifies the ecclesiastick body in general , as they are opposed to the laicks ; the other the same , more perfectly moulded into an hierarchy : and so it may be the more fitly conceived , why the two-horned beast is said to rise out of the earth , namely out of this clayey-earth or potters-earth . but if a mere mixt secular monarchy were understood thereby , that being so congenerous a body , they all being sword-men , steel and iron had been more fit to represent their difference , than iron and clay , which , as the little horn is said to be different from all the rest ; so this clay palpably at the first sight , without giving notice , is presently discerned to be vastly different from the iron . and the remarker himself acknowledging the ecclesiastick power to be part of the states in this mixt monarchy , as he imagines , and the vision making these two differences onely , he must have a wonderfull dim and undiscerning fancy that does not forthwith descry , that the secular part of the power is all , and onely understood by the iron , and the ecclesiastick onely , by the clay ; as in the following vision the secular part onely is understood by the ten horns , the ecclesiastick onely by the little horn with eyes . nothing is more clear to an unprejudiced judgment than this . vers. . the papal hierarchy , which by the autority it usurped , attained to head the ten-horned beast , must very unproperly be signified by the clay , when the power that became subject to it is meant by the iron . but the iron does signifie a stronger power that what is meant by the clay , and therefore by reason of it the kingdom is said to be partly strong ( as retaining some of the strength of the former iron kingdom ) and by reason of the clay , partly broken , that is , part of its power is divided from it , and transferred unto that part of the government signified by the clay . and thus have the kings of the ten kingdoms retained some of the strength of the iron , viz. a supreme prerogative power over the states , though they shared with them in the legislative power . ans. no question but the iron doth signifie a stronger power , as to the arme of flesh , as it is called , than the clay does , it chiefly alluding to the military power and ordinary worldly forces which kings and princes raise to defend themselves and their kingdoms with , of which their nobles , gentry , &c. are part . but the clay is not apt to signifie any such power , and therefore is used on purpose that you may understand the ecclesiastick part of the empire thereby : who having no such power themselves , but yet versed in all the arts of insinuation , and enveagling of those in whom this iron-power was placed , got at last such an hank upon the iron part of the empire , ( by pretending a power in ordine ad spiritualia ) as to compass such things as weakned both the power and security of the monarchs of the empire ; so that the papal hierarchy at last in reality became the head of the empire . but this was not an iron-power or worldly-power , but a pretended spiritual power ; which therefore the spirit of prophecy , in the apocalypse , ever and anon compares to magick and witchcraft . whenas the visible power of arms is a plain solid thing , and bears the face of its own strength , and of what it is apparently before it . the ten horns without eyes , giving up themselves to be led by the little horn with the eyes of a man , ( who thereupon framed all matters of religion to the interest of his hierarchy , and they having a clayey conscience , that would comply and fit it self to any occasion that would advance their grandure ) this was most certainly the weakening of the power of the monarchs . nor can any monarch be absolute , that in the mutable matters , which concern christian religion , is not supreme head himself , but yields his neck to the yoke of a foreigner . the competition is betwixt the ten sightless horns , and the little seeing horn. there 's no other states taken notice of in that vision , and no more there is in this . the mixture of monarchy in a mere secular sense , is not an object worth the taking notice of by these divine prophecies , whose main scope is to foretell the state of the church , not the condition of secular states as such . vers. . whereas the act of mingling here is ascribed to the iron , viz. it mixeth with the clay , signifying the descending of those kings from that height of majesty and power with which heathen kings and emperours reigned , to the admitting of those signified by the clay to some participation in the government : the conceit here of seminaries , &c. does ascribe the act of mingling chiefly to the clay . and no better is the account of the words [ they shall not cleave one to another ] which are made here to signifie the bickering and clashing betwixt the secular and ecclesiastical power , whenas the true sense of them is , that notwithstanding those kings shall yield to the states sharing with them in government , as aforesaid , yet they shall keep them at their distance , and retain the majesty of kings , &c. this change of the power of kings , from absolute to mixt monarchy , was the result of christianity's being established the religion of the empire . whereby the man-child was caught up unto god and his throne , and the devil cast out unto the earth , revel . . and so could not lord it with the absolute dominion , as he did formerly in his heavenly station . for the autority of christ's laws being now acknowledged , would not admit of such tyrannical rule , though the subtile impostures of the false prophet did , under pretence of religion , after introduce such barbarous cruelties as did equal or exceed what was acted by the heathen powers . but so powerfull a check had the states ( whereof the clergy was a part ) on princes by virtue of christian laws , as oft to depose them for male-administration . which autority some of the princes did allow them to have , by virtue of the episcopal power , joined with them , as appears by that speech of carolus calvus at the council of tullum , viz. from which my consecration or sublimity of kingdom , i ought not to be cast down or supplanted by any without the judgment of the bishops , by whose autority i was consecrated king , and who are called the throne of god , in which he sitteth , and by whom he decreeth his judgments . to whose fatherly correptions and castigatory judgments i am ready to submit my self . mr. baxter's abridgment of councils , pag. . ans. the act of mingling is not here ascribed to the iron , but the expressions are wonderfull accurately agreeable to the sense which the expositor has given . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a participle of the passive voice , and is rendred by the septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and by our english translation [ mixt ] not mingling it self , which is quite against the conceit and surmise of the remarker , that makes the monarchs of their own accord without being trepan'd or play'd upon by the ecclesiastick party , to communicate part of their legislative power to what is signified by the clay . but the text plainly imports the contrary , viz. that mutual compliance which was betwixt the iron and the clay , which is expressed by the participle in hithpael , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( the septuagint render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) that it is effected 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the seminaries of poor , despicable , mortified men , in appearance or profession , but notably trained up to make the iron stick to the clay , the secular power to the ecclesiastick , as is set forth in the exposition . these were shrewd efficacious instruments for the promoting and continuing the adhesion of the iron to the clay , the secular power to the sacerdotal hierarchy of the empire . and though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in your ordinary dictionaries has no such metaphorical sense , yet the metaphor being so easie , unstrained and natural , and so exquisitely agreeable to the sense of the prophecy , it is an idiotick or pedantick humour to suspect or refuse it . and that prescience that foretold these things , did foreknow also that such places of education would be called seminaries ; in like manner as , that the saints which are superstitiously and idolatrously worshipped , would be accounted and called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to which mahuzzim exquisitely answers . and lastly , the horse-men on each side of an army , which were to protect the foot , that the romans would call them alae ; beside that the analogy is very obvious and natural . and therefore though no hebrew dictionary tells us , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies idolized saints , or that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the wing of an army , yet the most genuine meaning of those passages in those two prophecies calling for such a sense , and the easie naturalness of the similitude or analogy of things warranting it , mr. mede did very well and laudably to use the freedom of so interpreting those places , though none were so wise or lucky as to hit on it before him . and there is the very same reason for the expositor his making 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to allude to the seminaries of ecclesiasticks trained up for the interest of the papal hierarchy . that against making the iron and clay their not cleaving to one another to import their falling out or clashing is a very sorry cavil . for what is disunion of friends , but falling out and clashing ? and it is very usual for a negative to signifie a positive , contrary to the positive denied , as in that of virgil , — quis aut eurysthea durum ? aut illaudati nescit busiridis aras ? where illaudatus , does not signifie one that simply is not praised , but one that is detested and execrated of all for his barbarous cruelty . and there are infinite examples to the same purpose . but the iron ever keeping the clay at a distance , imports they never mingled or cleaved together , which is plainly against the text. so that the remarker had better have let things alone when they were so well adjusted before , than have tampered so unskilfully with them ; and upon grounds so conspicuously false , as if the iron and clay signified any other than two orders of men , secular and ecclesiastick ; he might as well say , black and white would doe so . what follows in this remark , is big with a double mistake . first , that the defeat of the red dragon by michael was an abatement of the secular power of the empire or emperours , as if constantine had less secular power by becoming christian : whenas the overthrow of the red dragon concerned onely the pagan religion ; and what pitifull work the remarker has made on that th chapter of the apocalypse , i have above shewn on his former remarks . the emperour constantine therefore remained as absolute a prince as his predecessors . nor did he ever give away , ( which is the other false surmise of the remarker , ) his legislative power more than his predecessors . but being miraculously converted to the christian religion , he did but that which the most absolute princes that are , being in their wits , would doe , for the good of the empire , which was committed to him by god , without the due worship of whom , through christ , he could not think the empire could flourish . he therefore consulted , especially with the bishops , not to communicate his legislative power to them , but for them to communicate their skill in the mysteries of christian religion to him , that he might order affairs accordingly . and if constantine in virtue of the christian doctrine , wherewith he was embued , ruled more righteously than his predecessors , this was no abridgment of his absolute power , but merely a right use thereof . and the same may be said of the ten kings or monarchs , the ten horns of the beast . they were trepan'd out of their right , when they acknowledged any sovereign in causes ecclesiastick as well as civil , besides themselves . and i wonder , whenas the remarker produces such a notable example in the case of carolus calvus of the ecclesiastick encroachments upon the secular power , that he should at all doubt , but that the clay is the ecclesiastick power , as well as the iron the secular , and such a power as alone is fitly set out by the clay , in full distinction to the iron or secular power in kings , nobles and gentry , &c. vision . vers. . a sea , in the prophetick style , signifies not simply vast multitudes of people , for then , there was no more sea , rev. . . must signifie there was no more multitudes . but by sea is meant such multitudes united in a political state under the powers that rule them . b and that power which does overflow , and so subject them to its dominion , is rather the sea ( as appears by the second trumpet and the second vial ) and they as the fish moving in it . by reason whereof , and the fluctuating condition they are in thereby , they are represented by waters , rev. . c this power is the spirit of the world ruling in them . their thraldom , under which is that bondage of corruption , which subjects them to the prince of this world. of which spirit solomon saith , he hath set the world in their hearts , &c. and paul , we have not received the spirit of the world , but the spirit of god , &c. and by reason of the rule of which in us , we are said to be of the world , and so under the power of darkness , in opposition to that spiritual state which believers are begotten into , whereby they cease to be of the world , and are translated from darkness to light , and from the power of satan to god , delivered from the power of darkness , and translated into the kingdom of our lord. this spirit of the world therefore is the like principle of the natural life in man's heart , as the spirit of god is of the spiritual life therein ; and by the one do the devils bear the like sway in natural or unregenerate men , as christ does by the other in the regenerate . hence is ascribed to the devil that power over those who are delivered to him for the destruction of the flesh ; and also the power of death , through fear of which , he makes men all their life subject to bondage . and hence did he make that claim to all the kingdoms of the world : which our saviour did not gainsay . for he by the power mentioned being the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience , ephes. . . ( which all mankind are till they are recovered out of their lapsed state ) he can , as paul says , take them captive at his will , and so rules as he pleaseth in the world , save wherein god as supreme governour of the world , does interpose in the behalf of his servants , and for bringing to pass what changes and revolutions he hath determined . the four winds striving on the great sea , and four beasts coming out of it signifie the four great kingdoms that were to arise successively on the earth , and the great commotion and combustion they would cause in the world by their vanquishing one another . d but the aerial genii , or angels , are not concerned therein as ministers of god's providence farther than they are a part of the powers of those kingdoms that are so to arise . such are the presidentiary angels of the kingdoms of persia and graecia in vision th . ans. the expositor does not say that a sea signifies multitudes of people simply , but that the great sea , in this place , signifies so ( according to the prophetick style ) which does not denote the determinate dominion of any one potentate , but the people of adverse potentates , who are so far from being held under one government , that they are the people of opposite governments or empires , and therefore cannot be called one great sea , as under one government , but as one great multitude , which is called a great sea , by reason of the greatness of the multitude , and is well represented by the great sea , with winds ruffling the waves thereof , by reason of the commotion and war one against another . b but that a multitude under one government is not called sea , unless it be overflowing some other government , i deny to appear either out of the second trumpet or second vial. the remarker should have spoke out more clearly . but i say the sea , though it be not actually overflowing another , being so subject to fluctuations from several cross winds and unexpected occasions , is properly a symbol of worldly governments , that are obnoxious to these commotions and mutations . whence that passage , revel . . . is fitly understood . [ and i saw a new heaven and a new earth ] where heaven signifies the governing part , and earth the multitude governed ; which being expressed by earth , there was no want of sea to signifie the same ; but to denote the stability of this new constitution of things , it is added , [ and there was no more sea ] which does not signifie there was no more multitudes , but no more tumultuating multitudes , and that firm peace and tranquillity possest the millennial empire of christ and his holy and righteous people . from whence come wars and fightings amongst you ? come they not hence ? even of your lusts that war in your members ? jam. . . c what follows in this remark is something prolix and mysterious , but may be well meant for ought i know ; but so far as i see , enervates nothing that the expositor has writ on this verse . for the spirit of the world , which he discourses of , certainly ambition , which the expositor names , is the chief effect of it , and most chiefly considered in this place . d nor does the remarker deny but that the aerial genii are concerned in these mutations and revolutions in kingdoms , which is all i care to have granted . this looks like a desire of saying something contrary to the expositor , when there is nothing to be said . but i cannot let pass one passage of scripture amongst the many he has cited , viz. that , eccles. . . where he insinuates , that in [ he hath set the world in their hearts ] by [ he ] is understood the spirit of the world ; whenas it is plain from the foregoing words [ he hath made every thing beautifull in its time ] that it 's god that has set the world in mens hearts , viz. in their understandings ( for the heart is the seat of the understanding in the scripture-phrase ) in virtue of which they take more notice thereof than brutes , but yet are far from being masters of the mysteries of his providence , as is intimated in the following words of that verse , that no man can find out the work that god maketh from the beginning to the end . there is also another scripture that he seems to intimate a false sense of , luke . . where the devil says the disposing of all the kingdoms of the earth is given to him , and he bestows them on whom he will. which the remarker says , christ does not gainsay ; insinuating thereby , as if his silence admitted it for truth . and indeed christ himself , in st. iohn , more than once calls the devil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the prince of this world. but that is onely to be understood in a moral sense , not in a political . for this spirit of the world , of which the remarker makes so many words , and which is the image of the devil in as many as it is , as the divine life is the image of god and christ in us , nothing can more clearly , nor yet more succinctly describe it than what we find , ioh. . . all that is in the world , the lust of the flesh , the lust of the eyes , and the pride of life is not of the father , but of the world ; that is , of the spirit of the world. and therefore he that is quit of these , and is transformed into the divine life , which is the image of god , is really translated out of the darkness of this world , into the kingdom of his dear son , as the apostle speaks , and is a true christian ; he in the mean time adhering to the profession of the ancient apostolick faith , and holding communion with the truly catholick church . which others , while they pretend to doe , though they be plainly under an antichristian oeconomy , the spirit of the world , according to st. iohn's description , reigning in them , they are morally reigned over by the devil , who obtains a wicked tyranny over them , driving them to tyrannize , or to be tyrannized over , even in a political sense . and thus , i confess , the devil by his instruments has a great sway over those that are of the world , in the sense above explained , and holds them in great slavery and bondage , while the softness of the flesh , and abhorrence from death and hardship , and the covetousness of the eye , and the pride of life , ambitious aspires makes them subject to be led captive at his will. in this sense our saviour's calling the devil the prince of this world , is true . but the devil's boast of being the prince of this world , in his own sense , is as false as the other is true . and as for that power he has over the bodies of men , as to torturous diseases or death ( in which respect he is called samael by the cabbalists ) he looks there more like an hang-man or executioner than like a prince . so that it is hard to conceive what the remarker would have by his spirit of the world , as to this place of daniel , that may refer to the winds blustering on the great sea , more than the expositor has offered already , in suggesting that they are either angelical powers , that bear a great stroke in all humane affairs , or the busie and unquiet activity of ambitious minds especially , which st. iohn calls the pride of life , which does not exclude the other two concomitants . but here has been too much said to such a needless digression . vers. . the eagle's wings being pluck't , is spoken of the whole kingdom represented by this beast , and therefore is not to be applied onely to the first king thereof , much less to that humbling providence of driving him from his kingdom , &c. whenas he was restored therefrom to his former majesty , splendour and glory , viz. the wings wherewith that kingdom was exalted ; by reason whereof , it 's the golden head of the image , and babylon is called by esay the golden city , and this continuing the same to the end of the kingdom ; the wings taken in this sense cannot be pluck't till then . that haughtiness also wherewith the heart of nebuchadnezzar was liftted up , was inherited by his posterity , as appears by daniel's reproof of belshazzar , ch . . . and therefore the plucking of the wings , by reason of it , ought to respect the one as well as the other . the being made to stand upon the feet like a man , and having a man's heart given it , are two expressions to the same purpose , and being ( as i said of the plucking of the eagle's wings ) spoken of the beast representing the whole kingdom , are not to be applied onely to the first king , much less to that single providence which befell him of his being restored from his delirancy . but they signifie , that though this kingdom is represented by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or wild beast , as well as the three succeeding , yet is it not of so degenerate a salvage nature as they will prove , but that the spirit of a man will bear some sway in it to the furnishing it with some manly endowments , viz. the morality wherein calvin makes one kingdom to exceed the other as much as the metals do one another ; and the noted chaldean wisedom ( which though perhaps not greater than in the succeeding kingdoms , yet did more influence the government in those less corrupt times . ) and also the noted majestick splendour of that kingdom ; of which speaks nebuchadnezzar , dan. . . and for the glory of my kingdom , my honour and brightness returned unto me , and excellent majesty was added unto me , &c. and hence it 's not onely likened to the most noble generous spirited beast , but also the same hath eagles wings given unto it ; which though they signifie the haughty aspiring aforesaid ( which is described , esay . , . ) yet it 's such as transcends the brutish nature , and must proceed from the spirit of a man. but to make the man's heart given to the beast signifie darius his humanity to daniel , is a strange conceit . for if darius was one of the babylonian kings , yet what is spoken in general of the beast , which signifies the whole kingdom , cannot be appropriated to the last king , and he of so short a reign . but that the babylonian kingdom was finished in belshazzar , appears by daniel's interpreting the hand-writing on the wall , with which ieremy's prophecy does agree , of nebuchadnezzar's kingdom continuing to his son , and his son's son . and those who reckon the next kingdom to begin in cyrus , it 's because darius his reign was so short , as to be hardly taken notice of ; and also , during his time , the government was mainly in cyrus , though he bore the name of king. ans. most of this remark would have been spared , if the remarker had fully understood , or sufficiently considered the nature of a prophetick henopoeia . for in such an henopoetick type , the head or horn of a beast , together with the body thereof , make but one beast to the end of the succession thereof . and therefore what the beast in any part of its succession does , or suffers in any part thereof , it is said simply of the beast to be done or suffered . and what by times or intervals is done by , or happens to such a typical creature , be it man or brute , is in the prophetick representation set out at once ; and history onely can discover how often , or in what part the type is verified . i will give but one example for many . the woman , apoc. . sitting upon the scarlet-coloured beast , iohn says , he saw her drunk with the bloud of the saints , and with the bloud of the martyrs of iesus . vidit eam ore rabido , saith grotius , despumante & evomente sanguinem , ut ebrii solent . but this was not the constant pickle she was in , and unintermitted , though it was seen and represented all at once to iohn ; but whether you understand it of rome-pagan with grotius , there was not one-continued persecution under the pagan emperours , but ten distinct ones , as they are reckoned . nor under paganochristian rome has this glut of bloud been one continued persecution , but massacres at intervals repeated , as also other murtherings : but this being thus at several times drunk with the bloud of the innocent , is set out at once , as if it were but one fit of drunkenness ; or as if she were always drunk , neither of which is true . but the henopoetick type implies neither of those , but is onely a notable mark at large , and prefiguration , that at some times she would most barbarously persecute the saints of god , and martyrs of jesus . this is all that this henopoetick type signifies . and therefore it is great unskilfulness in the remarker , that he will have the plucking of the eagle-wings of the lion to be done onely once , that is , when he is destroy'd , as they pluck capon 's wings not before their heads be writhen off . but by what has been said , these wings of the lion may well be said to be pluck't , when any thing happened which might humble him , weaken him and discourage him , which certainly that sad providence upon nebuchadnezzar did , and could not but be a great obstacle to the affairs of his kingdom . the retardation of which affairs also happened again , and was notorious under evelmerodac , when by the rebellion of cyrus , media was rent from the babylonian empire . and then again in belshazzar , whose knees knocked together for fear , at the hand-writing on the wall , &c. all these by virtue of a prophetick henopoeia , are referrible to that one passage of the prophecy [ i beheld till the wings thereof were pluck't ] like as to the following words [ and was made stand on the feet as a man , and a man's heart was given unto it ] both the restoring of nebuchadnezzar and the humanity of darius medus , which the expositor has noted , are referrible also . and being the text of the prophecy places this reducing of the eagle-wing'd lion , upon the plucking of his wings , to a more humane temper ; it is evident , that the erect stature , and the man's heart , these symbols of humanity , is not the continued character of the babylonian kingdom , as the remarker would have it , but intermittent and occasional . and lastly , that darius medus succeeded belshazzar in the empire , the remarker may be satisfied out of thomas lydiat . emendat . temp. anno m. . he that considers what has already been said , will easily discern all the other strained conceits in this remark to break apieces of themselves , and therefore i will not mis-spend time in needlesly answering such slight matters . vers. . grotius his conceit of [ iudaeae nihil nocuit ] was not worth borrowing of him , though it 's fansied here to be so abundantly reasonable ; and as to those decrees alledged to make it good , there may be also contrary decrees ( by which the building of the temple was so many years obstructed ) instanced in to disprove it . but the plain easie sense of the beast raising it self on one side , is , that whereas the beast signifies the same kingdom that , chap. . is described by a two-horned ram , having one horn higher than the other , the highest whereof came up last ; the rise of the beast here on one side signifies , that it had its rise from the first horn , viz. the kingdom of the medes , though the other horn ( the persian kingdom ) did over-top the first to obtain the dignity of the empire . ans. upon mis-information from envious neighbours , the building of the temple was some years retarded : but this is to be attributed to the ill will of those neighbours of the iews , not of the persian monarchs . and it was through their favour alone , that both temple , city and walls of ierusalem were built at last . so friendly were those monarchs to the iews . so that what was borrowed from grotius , was worth the borrowing ; but it is but what others have said before , and the iews particularly , as you may see in cornelius à lapide . but this pretty unexpected conceit of the remarker seems utterly impossible , as being plainly unnatural . for in what posture could the bear stand to shew one side to be higher than the other , as the horns of the ram are said to be ? what , did he stand on his two legs on the right side , with his left legs lift up into the air , that that side might be higher than the other ? wherefore if he raised himself at all , it was on his hinder feet , in a rampant posture ; and his thus raising of himself was on one side 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , in unam partem ; and as vatablus would have it , in babylonios ; but as grotius and the expositor , in gentes , at large in counterdistinction to the iews . but the original also seems to refuse the remarker's sense , who says , it had its rise from the first horn ; or he raised himself from the first horn to obtain the second also , and become medo-persian emperour , and so possess both sides at once . this sense naturally requires it should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the reaching out from the expressed terminus à quo , taking hold on the terminus ad quem , which is not so tight the other way . vers. . that the four wings of this beast do assuredly note the celerity of alexander's conquest , is an assured mistake . and the distinguishing the signification of the four wings , as they are wings , from , as they are four , is to separate what the vision has united , and what is inseparable . for four wings cannot be considered but as four wings , &c. but they , as well as the four heads , denote the division of alexander's kingdom , and do signifie ( as the wings of the first beast did ) the haughty aspiring of the kings of those succeeding kingdoms , and the exalted state of their kingdoms . ans. how confident either ignorance or heedlesness makes the remarker ? this leopard with four wings of a fowl upon his back , is one and the same beast , from the beginning to the end , according to the nature of these henopoetick types ; and so what events or actions sute with the symbolical parts of the creature , are to be referred to those symbols . wings therefore being the symbol of swiftness , the swiftness of alexander's victories is notified by them , as the eagle-wings of the lion denoted the same . the swiftness of whose expeditions , viz. of the king of babylon , ieremy compares to the slight of eagles , chap. . and chap. . wherefore these four wings of this leopard answer exquisitely to the description of the he-goat in the next chapter , which is the same empire , viz. the greek . behold an he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth , and touched not the ground . what did he then but in a manner fly ? and what can better set out such a flying , than wings ? so fitly do these two visions explain one another as to this passage . but in the mean time the remarker professeth himself of a wonderfull indistinct conception , that cannot distinguish the nature of the four wings , in general , from the number of them : wherein yet he contradicts himself . for he will not say that the four wings as four signifie haughty aspiring , but as wings . wherefore as he from the general nature of them would have signified ambitious aspiring ( which if they did both here and in the lion , it clashes not with the expositor's interpretation , one symbol being capable of several senses by an henopoeia of the second kind ) so the expositor from the said general nature of them will have them signifie swiftness , which is at least the more principal sense , as has been proved , and will reach also the swift division of the greek empire into four parts , alexander living so little a while after his conquest . vers. . though it be difficult to give an account of ezekiels vision , chap. . yet i think it may be safely concluded , that the living creatures and wheels are not angelical , as is here supposed . for those four living creatures agreeing in number and name with the four beasts , revel . . ( for they are both called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) and the four faces of each of these living creatures being the faces of the four beasts ; it shews , that as the last signifies a successive body or society of men , so the other must have the like signification . which is farther confirmed by their all four having the likeness of a man , and a man's hand under every wing , and their having calves feet ( signifying the labour and travel which is given to men under the sun ) and also by the spirit that is said to be in them and in the wheels . whereas angels are called spirits , and not described by any spirit abiding in them . . the four faces and the four wings of the living creatures i take to signifie the same thing , viz. the complication in humane nature , of the nature of those four animals , signified by the faces , that is , of reason , religion , courage and industry . of these four does humane nature consist and subsist by them , they being the life and support of humane affairs . the four wings may signifie the several spirits from which these operations are produced , and the man's hand under each wing the management of all these operations by reason and prudence . the four beasts , all of them representing the same body or society of christians , have the same signification with the four faces and wings of each living creature , but it would not have agreed with them , that each of them should have had four faces , as it doth with the erect stature of the living creatures ; and also it would have been needless , being the same thing is signified by the four several beasts . besides , those beasts having six wings , there would have been faces wanting to two of them . . which two wings added to the other four , i take to be the same with the two wings with which the seraphims fly , esay . ( these six-winged beasts being the same with those seraphims ) and to signifie that grace and truth which came by jesus christ , or that life and truth which he says he is , and thereby the way to the father . and we being by this grace or life , and truth , quickened and raised unto newness of life in christ jesus , whereby we cease to be of the world , and are delivered from the power of darkness , and translated into the kingdom of our lord , and so raised up , and made to sit together in heavenly places in christ jesus , ephes. . . they thereby become truly wings to us , in exalting us from a worldly or earthly , unto such an heavenly state . ezekiel's vision therefore of the living creatures and wheels , i take to be a representation of the ruling of the god of israel over his people in a natural state , under a legal or iudaical dispensation , as the twenty four elders and the four beasts represent the same rule in a christian state , under the dispensation of the divine life . the latter of which is to be fulfilled in the millennium , but the former was never fulfilled completely , because the iews failed of living up to the height of that dispensation . . but this vision of ezekiel , and his other also of the temple , seem to be designed for the like purpose , as the tree of life was planted in paradise , viz. to signifie that dispensation of life which men in due time were to be admitted unto , but not then , the natural earthly state of man not admitting thereof . . so likewise the two mentioned visions , the first of them seems to signifie the spiritual power wherewith god would have ruled over his people , and the last the spiritual communion he would have had with them , with the blessing attending the same , if they had walked perfectly with him , according to all his righteous judgments in that legal dispensation . . hence the close of the vision of the temple is . [ the name of the city from that day shall be , the lord is there ] that is , from the time they shall keep and observe all the laws and ordinances then delivered . . and hence the god of israel on sending ezekiel to prophesie the ruine of the city , and temple , and captivity of the people does ( to render their iniquity more heinous ) shew himself to the prophet in the glory of that government which their transgressions made them fail of , or fall from , to be cast off . . two instances of their falling from that government are , first , their making the calf , whereon god , who , exod. . , . had promised to dwell among them , does , chap. . , . say , he will send his angel before them , but refuseth to go up in the midst of them , lest he destroy them . secondly , their desiring a king , which is said to be not the rejecting of samuel , but of god to rule over them . . the wheels i take to be the same to the four living creatures , as the four beasts are to the twenty four elders , viz. as the governed to the governours . . and both the wheels and living creatures being under the throne , and not rising , but as lifted up ; nor moving , but as acted by the spirit , which was in both , seems to signifie the natural earthly state of those they represent , whereby they were as mere passive subjects to the actings of the spirit of god upon them , like as the prophets were to the spirit of prophecy that came upon them : . whereas the four beasts are upon the throne ; and the twenty four elders surround it , sitting on their seats in their kingly and princely habits , signifying the heavenly station they are exalted to by the spirit of god , being a principle of life dwelling in them ; from which new nature they become as active spirits , to doe what the others have no power unto , but by the adventitious acting of the spirit of god upon them . . the living creatures appearing like burning coals , and lamps may signifie the burning zeal or spirit of elias they are acted by , in distinction from the pure serene christian spirit of faith working by love , which answers to the still small voice , which afected the prophet more than the precedent strong wind , and earthquake , and fire . hence though our saviour calls iohn the baptist a burning and shining light , yet he says , he that is least in the kingdom of heaven , is greater than he . . that the temple-vision designs to set forth such a perfect legal state of righteousness and the spiritual communion attending the same , as aforesaid , seems concludible . first , from chap. . , . where the prophet is commanded to shew the house of israel the pattern of the house , that they may be ashamed ; which if they be , he is to shew them all the form , and laws and ordinances of it , that they may keep and doe them . so that all the laws and ordinances given by the prophet , after the manner of levitical law , are of the same import , and to be taken in the same sense with those delivered by it , which they had before broken . . secondly , from the oblation of the holy portion , being reeds square , and the city being , and the sanctuary square , which all are symbolical numbers of a natural or fleshly state . so that as the number of the beast ( the root of which is ) sets forth a complete , carnal , politick state , according to humane natural wisedom ; so here seems to be signified the perfection of a people in a natural state , by being solely under the conduct and government of divine laws , and the righteous judgments of god agreeable to that state . . thirdly from the measures , which is the compass of the city , being the perimeter of the cube of furlongs , which is the cubical measure of the new ierusalem , as appears by mr. potter , whereby seems to be signified , that the one represents the state of a people under the rule of divine laws , and the righteous judgments of god , according to an external legal state , so long as they can perfectly conform thereunto : and the other such a solid state of righteousness , or inward dispensation of life , as does inable men to a perfect walking with god , by fulfilling all his righteous judgments . but as our saviour hath taught us first to cleanse the inside of the cup , that the outside may be clean also ; so it 's onely by the inward dispensation of the latter , whereby we become able to fulfill the righteousness designed by the former . so that the waters out of the sanctuary becoming a river , and the trees growing on the banks thereof , with what else in this vision agrees with that of the new ierusalem , signifies what would have been fulfilled in the israelites in that state , if they could have been ashamed of all their iniquities , and kept all the laws , forms and ordinances then given , and what will be fulfilled in that righteous state , wherein all the statutes and judgments of god shall be duly performed . . as to the difference of the mosaical laws , and the laws of ezekiel's temple , the reason thereof is , that the one delivers to them what was required of them that they should doe , the other what they ought to doe , to live up to the height of that dispensation , whereby to become partakers of the blessings thence signified . but enough of conjectures about things so obscure and mysterious . ans. the remarker , according to that competent share of confidence nature has endued him with , thinks it may be safely concluded that the living creatures and wheels are not angelical . but does he think it so safe a thing to conclude of his own private opinion against the sense ( to say nothing of the consent of christian interpreters ) of the whole school of the iewish rabbins , who as they call their natural philosophy bereshith , so their more abstruse theology touching god and angels , they call mercavah , which is this very vision of ezekiel , and signifies , currus , a chariot ? and that the chariot of god is angelical , is plain from that in psal. . . the chariots of god are twenty thousand , even thousands of angels , and the lord is among them , as in sinai in the holy place . in which sinai moses also saw this glory of the lord , exod. . and chap. . . he is commanded to make two golden cherubims ( in imitation of this cherubick chariot which ezekiel afterwards saw ) which were to be placed upon the ark , where was to be the throne of god in the temple . and psal. . he rode upon a cherub , and did fly , &c. where grotius thinks that of old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rechub , currus , was writ , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cherub . but it tends all to one , the cherubims being his chariot . and what follows , [ he came flying on the wings of the wind ] the word there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies a spirit as well as a wind , and so the whole sense may be , he rid on his chariot , viz. his angelical chariot , and was carried swiftly on the wings of his ministring spirits , that readily execute his word . and psal. . he sitteth between the cherubims , &c. and these living creatures in this vision of ezekiel , ch . . are at least ten times called cherubims . and are not cherubims angels ? and the same may be said of the seraphins , esay . which is a like representation of the divine majesty , are they not angels ? but the remarker alledges reasons why the living creatures in ezekiel's vision are not angels . first , because these four living creatures agree in number and name with the four beasts , revel . . and therefore they signifying a successive body of men , ezekiel's four living creatures must signifie a body of men also . secondly , they all four have the likeness of a man , and a man's hand under every wing , and therefore they must be men that are signified thereby . thirdly , they have calves-feet , which signifies the laboriousness of men under the sun. fourthly and lastly , a spirit is said to be in them , and in the wheels . wherefore angels cannot be signified by either , angels being called spirits , and not described by any spirit abiding in them . but in answer to this , i say , first , that this vision is an ideal symbolum , or symbolical idea of the glorious majesty and empire of the god of israel over the whole angelical world , divided into four parts ( the cabbalists give names to them , azeluthick , briathick , ietzirathick and asiathick ) he ruling them by the divine influence of his spirit , whereby he has the perfect and absolute command over them . this symbolical idea of the glory of the god of israel moses saw in the mount , and ordered things according to this pattern in the mount , as he was directed , of which the cherubims on the ark of the covenant is part , as also the pitching of the tents of the israelites about the tabernacle , in four parts , with the standards bearing the names of these four living creatures , in their camp. these were an external imitation of the symbolical idea of the angelical kingdom of the god of israel , but their dispensation reached not to the life and reality thereof , but they bore it onely in the outward image . but this standing symbolical idea is that seal which the divine providence intends so thoroughly to impress on his church at last in way of life and perfection , that the god of israel , by the influence of his spirit , will so actuate his church , that his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven , or in the angelical world by his holy angels . to which purpose this vision is again exhibited to iohn in the apocalypse as a representation of the blessed state of the millennium , when the state of the church will answer this symbolical idea in the truth of life , or plenteous dispensation of the spirit . here therefore is the remarker's mistake , that he fansies that the standing symbolical idea of the angelical world , where there is no death nor succession cannot set out the state of the church on earth , where there is death and succession . which , methinks , is as awkardly argued , as if one should imagine , that st. michael the archangel being the seal of some corporation , and intended for the signing of successive leases of that corporation ; the seal should be argued successive , and not to be the same standing individual seal , because the wax and leases it seals are not so , and consequently that the seal cannot be the image of st. michael the archangel , because he is one standing person , and not in succession . wherefore it is plain , that the standing symbolical idea of the angelical kingdom , which is unsuccessive , may notifie the millennial kingdom of christ on earth , which is successive , and the said kingdom be examined by it how near it is to the pattern , as the seals of leases how near they are to the standing original seal of the abovesaid corporation . to the second i say , those four living creatures having the likeness of a man , and the hand of a man under each wing , does not prove these angels to be men , but rather proves that the remarker is mistaken in the nature of angels , as if they had either no form ( which is impossible , they being finite creatures , or a round form , as if they were so many aereal or aethereal foot-balls or contracted hedg-hogs . but if they have distinct animal forms , what can it be but humane , all conceived imperfections being removed therefrom , and nothing taken in but what will well consist with heavenly beauty and glory ? wherefore let their figure for the main be humane , and other variations in them onely symbolical appendages ; it does not follow from thence , that they are not the standing symbolical idea of the angelical kingdom , but rather that the angels are naturally in humane shape . for that this vision signifies angels , is plain , in that they are called cherubims . but if one will be here resty and perverse , there will be no room left for any cavils ; if we answer , that the faces of a man , and the hands of a man signifie no otherwise than the faces of a lion , oxe and eagle , or the feet of a calf , they all signifying onely symbolically . which answer will weaken also the third reason . for the feet of a calf need signifie nothing but what is competible to the angelical nature , as the face of an oxe or calf does no other , it may signifie robustious indefatigable strength . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies god or an angel , has its notation from strength , and is ordinarily translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the seventy . and to give a reason why all the four beasts have calves feet , is obvious enough , because that which supports ought to be strong . but there are farther cabbalistical mysteries touching that point , which is needless here to enter upon . it is sufficient that we have hitherto proved , that the three first reasons have no force to evince , that these living creatures and wheels are not angelical . and for the last reason , it is the slightest of all , as if angels , which are spirits , were not to be actuated by the spirit of god as well as the souls of men are . whenas by virtue of the divine spirit they escape the being turned into devils . and indeed the many reins whereby the god of israel rules and governs the four provinces of his angelical kingdom is the influence of his divine spirit , which unites with their spirits , and they with it , whereby he drives them whither he pleases . for his spirit is as sure to be effectually in their pure essence , as the rays of the sun in the clear air. wherefore there being such solid proofs , that the living creatures in ezekiel's vision are angelical , and none but invalid arguments against it , it is an argument that the remarker has much mistaken himself in thinking it was so safe to conclude the contrary . the rest of the remark is a digression into an ethical or ethico-political explication of the vision of ezekiel , which though it were true and unexceptionable , the expositor is not concerned to meddle with , as not at all enervating the philosophical account of that vision , he admitting both a philosophical and moral cabbala , touching both the bereshith and mercavah too . but that the remarker's pains may not seem to be over much slighted , i will consider some passages in it . first then , he makes the four faces the four wings , and the four beasts to signifie but one and the same thing , which is a marvellous slubbering and hudling things together , which surely have more distinct meanings . certainly it must be some great and abstruse mystery that is thus repeatedly both by the faces , wings , and whole bodies of the four beasts and living creatures , and thus pompously set out . and yet it is onely this ; that there are these four properties in humane nature , reason , religion , courage and industry . which lying so bare and obvious to every understanding , what is this but the making the spirit of prophecy to trifle , in setting out so pompously such a trivial theory that no man is ignorant of ; nay i may say , and that so maimedly and unfitly ? for the elephant certainly had been a more fit animal to represent religion than the eagle , so that there is a fitting animal wanting to denote the property of religion in humane nature . and for as much as brutes have reason , and man alone properly religion , man had been a better symbol of religion than an eagle . but then there had wanted an animal to typifie reason , unless you made man the type of both , and put the eagle quite out of office . thus crude and broken is the remarker's conceit in this matter . again , there are good scriptural-phrases produced about the two flying wings of the seraphins , which he will have the same with the third pair of wings of the beasts , but the application is , methinks , much of the hooks . for the two flying wings of the seraphins , esay . signifie the readiness and expediteness of their ministry enjoyn'd by god to the service of his church , whenas he referrs it to the exalting of ones self from a worldly and earthly , to a heavenly state . thirdly , that seems a precarious groundless conceit , or rather false . that the tree of life was not set in paradise for adam to eat of , but to play at chop-cherry with him , and to mock him ; whenas the text says , the lord commanded the man , saying , of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat ; and i hope the tree of life was one of them . the original is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thou hast plenary commission , if not command , to eat of all , saving the tree of knowledge of good and evil . which had been a mere mocking of adam , if he had no power of eating of the tree of life . and now , fourthly , this being a fundamental mistake of the remarker in the case of adam , the like discovers it self in his conceit touching the iews , and the two visions of ezekiel , that of the four living creatures , and that other of the temple . god gave no impossible commands to the iews . but those exquisite descriptions of things touching the temple by a long and operose hylasmus and israelismus , set not out what the iews should have been , if they had kept these ordinances exquisitely , but what the church of christ would be ( of which the iews were a type , ) in process of time . that this is the sense of that vision , the apocalypse that borrows so many things from it , and uses such frequent allusions to the temple , does sufficiently indicate . nor is there any other sense of the vision of the four living creatures , as touching the iews , who were not upon condition of legal performances , to arrive to that angelical state , that the christian church with them will arrive to at last . but the divino-political sense of that vision ( which yet is most properly applied to it as repeated in the apocalypse , which relates to the camp of the iews a figure of the state of the christian church to come ) is that the church of god at last will answer the pattern of the angelical kingdom , and god's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven . fifthly , the name of the city , the lord is there , is the very indication of the state of the new ierusalem , which is a demonstration it was never intended for the iews under their legal dispensation upon any terms . sixthly , ezekiel is not here sent to prophesie the ruine of the city and temple , they both having been destroyed fourteen years before . but they being destroyed , he in this hylastick and israelistick way prophesies of the state of the new ierusalem , which the apocalypse also describes . seventhly therefore , the iews their making a golden calf , and craving a king , whatever other inconveniences it may cause to them , it could not make them forfeit that which was never intended them in that state . eighthly , if the beasts be the governed , and the four and twenty elders the governours , how come the beasts to be upon the throne , and the twenty four elders onely about it ? ninthly , the wheels and living creatures being not moved , but as acted by the spirit , does not signifie an earthly state in them , but the most divine and heavenly , viz. an vnselfwilledness in them . that they have no self excursions of mind or will , but that the spirit of life from the eternal mind is the perpetual principle of their motion and rest . tenthly , that the four beasts are not upon the throne , i have shew'd upon that place of the apocalypse ; and that he contradicts himself in saying so , i observed even now in the eighth note . eleventhly , the burning coals , which are prunae , do not signifie the spirit of elias in men , but the seraphick spirit in angels , as seraphin from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has its denomination , viz. from burning . and the seraphin are counted of the higher sort of angels . and as for lamps , they are in the description of the scene of the new ierusalem , apoc. . now for the temple , i say , twelfthly , that the whole vision of the temple concerns the christian church , and therefore that command to the prophet , chap. . , . respects especially the thyatirian and sardian interval thereof , that they may repent of all their sins and corruptions , and so make what haste they can toward that excellent state of the church , which is prefigured by the vision of the temple . thirteenthly , as for the numbers , , and ezek. chap. . and in the apocalypse , nothing more can be signified by the former , viz. those in ezekiel , than that the new ierusalem will gratifie even the external man also , and his outward senses ; which the quinary number does denote , namely , that even the outward state of the church then will be rich and glorious , according to what is likewise prophesied of in the apocalypse , that the kings of the earth shall bring their honour and glory into it . and it is the encouraging prediction of christ himself , seek the kingdom of god and his righteousness , and all worldly good things shall be added thereto . which will most amply be fulfilled in the millennial empire of christ , which is that eminent kingdom of god upon earth . and for that other number , it is not set down to signifie the most complete , carnal , politick state , but to be a certain character of the pontifician hierarchy the two-horned beast , who are discovered to have affected the number , which is the root of . that is the main drift of that number , though deluding their followers with pleasing objects of sense may haply be aimed at thereby also . fourteenthly , the measures , which is the compass of ezekiel's city agreeing with the perimeter of the new ierusalem , whose solid or cubick measure is furlongs in the apocalypse ; the true and usefull meaning of that is , to assure us that ezekiel's vision of the temple is a prophecy of the state of the church , which is set out by s. iohn in his description of the new ierusalem , that men may make no vagaries into any other fancies , as the remarker has done here . and the wisedom and providence of god is admirable herein . besides , if that externality or superficiality were aimed at , which the remarker would have signified , the measure of the superficies of the cube , not the perimeter , would have been set down and made use of . fifteenthly , the difference of the mosaical laws , and those of ezekiel's temple , the greater exactness of these above the other , is not that the iews may obtain the blessedness of the new-ierusalem state by a legal performance of them , which , as i noted above , had been but a mockery ; but farther to intimate , that the temple-vision is a prophecy of the christian state , of greater perfection than that of the iews , though prefigured here , as in the apocalypse , by matters and ordinances belonging to the temple . and lastly , though the remarker , as to his main scope , is most certainly in a mistake , yet his misconceit is such , as it was not for every ordinary genius to hit upon , and he has ever and anon decked it with sundry piously sounding sentences and scripture phrases , though they had not the luck to be rightly applied . and this may be an accession to his former commendableness , that he abates something of his wonted stifness , and is content to let what he has said to go for a conjecture onely . vers. . to make all people and nations to signifie some of all people and nations , is a making too bold with the text. but the words will be absolutely true of all nations within the extent of christ's kingdom , and in some degrees true of all the other nations , who will doe a kind of homage to him by the walking in the light of the new ierusalem , and bringing their glory and honour into it . that manner in which this is supposed to be fulfilled between the time of constantine and the apostacy , is such as does in no manner agree with the state of christ's kingdom , as is shewed in remarks on the exposition of the revelation . of the four sentences supposed here to be represented , the first and last might have been spared . for here is onely signified the judgment of the beast ( which includes the little horn ) and the settling of christ in his kingdom on earth . and the assigning the kingdom to him , besides the settling of him in it , is an insignificant distinction . ans. the fore part of this remark is so slight , that the best answering of it is to slight it . and as for that which follows , and were more material if it were true , viz. that the state of the church betwixt constantine and the apostacy is in no manner agreeing with the state of christ's kingdom , it is contradictious to the very visions of the apocalypse , chap. . . now is come salvation and strength , and the kingdom of our god , and the power of his christ. which is upon michael's overcoming the dragon . which all men in their wits , that consider these things understand of the christians deliverance from their pagan persecutours by constantine . and i have shown all the affected paradoxes of the remarker , how vain , how groundless and false they are in my answer to his former remarks on the exposition of the apocalypse . and lastly , as for the four sentences . the first is very pertinent and significant , it being so agreeable to the crown given to him on the white horse , apoc. . . the second and third are acknowledged by the remarker , and the fourth is made good from the tenth verse of this present chapter , where it is said , the iudgment was set , and the books were opened . which answers to apoc. . , . and expositors make the judgment to reach to the last day here in daniel , as well as it does there in the apocalypse . vision . vers. , . though seleucus was not one of the four notable horns , yet he with his predecessors in the same kingdom were one of them . and as there was many changes of the line in the macedonian kingdom , yet all made but one horn , so the seleucidae , with their predecessors , make but one horn in the babylonian kingdom . and the seleucidae and lagidae being the two chief kingdoms which succeeded alexander ( of which there is so large a prophecy under the titles of the king of the north and the king of the south ) it 's strange that one of them should prove none of the four horns his kingdom was branched into . and it 's yet more strange , that the little horn which was to arise in the latter time of those kingdoms , should be applied to seleucus , who arose soon after the beginning of them . ans. the remarker seems not to mind what he says in this remark . for how could seleucus , with his predecessors , make one horn in the babylonian kingdom , when no horn can be here meant but what succeeded the great horn , alexander the great ? and never any one made the babylonian kingdom one of the four horns . but by help of ptolemy , seleucus did not onely recover his satrapy of babylon , which antigonus would have deprived him of ; but in a short time vanquishing both antigonus and his son made himself master of asia , as well as of syria and babylonia , and therefore himself began the race of the kings of the north , which is so famous in the prophecy of daniel , though he was by no means one of the four notable horns that immediately succeeded alexander , nor so reputed by historians . the thing is so , nor can it be helpt . but he may be a remoter successour of alexander , in that he succeeded antigonus in the main of his dominions , and so may be fansied as of the line of one of the immediate notable horns , successours of alexander , though this be more than needs . and as for the other difficulty that is raised , how the little horn that was to arise in the latter time of those kingdoms should be applied to seleucus , who arose soon after the beginning of them , we are to observe how the angel , v. . by an idiconoea falls upon antiochus epiphanes , who is but one part of the little horn , but hugely to be noted , by reason of the affairs of the church of god. but expounding the vision by way of a geniconoea , the little horn will take in seleucus , and reach to the end of that line of the syrian kings , or kings of the north. see the expositor's notes on this vision , and there you will find several examples of geniconoea's and idiconoea's , and thence understand the reasonableness and solidity of the answer to this difficulty . vers. . i am inclined to think , that as the description of antiochus epiphanes is agreed to be typical of antichrist , so the days have a prophetical as well as a literal sense . else it had been a more ready way , and more agreeable to the general course of the prophecies to have computed the time by prophetical days . also the saying that the vision is for many days , that is , a long time , does seem to import the same . for whenas haggai says , yet a little while and the lord shall shake heaven and earth , &c. and malachy , that the lord whom ye seek will suddenly come to his temple , &c. where the prophets express a longer time by a little while and suddenly , it 's strange that a shorter time here should be called a long time . so that these days may prophetically signifie some time of the millennium , that may properly signifie the cleansing of the sanctuary . for after the overthrow of the antichristian party at the seventh trumpet , and the seventh vial , there may be a long time spent before all the corruptions introduced by the beast and false prophet in each of their governments be eradicated to the accomplishing of that saying of our saviour , every plant which my heavenly father has not planted shall be rooted up . for as the main rise of those corruptions was greediness of gain , so mens interests will be so interwoven with them as to make an absolute extirpation of them , a work of time and difficulty . and this work may be signified by what ezekiel speaks of burning the weapons of gog , and burying all his multitudes in the valley of hamon gog , and cleansing the land. and also by the hailstones of a talent weight , and the casting of the beast and false prophet into the lake of fire ( viz. as to one sense of the lake of fire ) according to what is said of them in my remarks . ans. that the days have a plain literal sense , is manifest from the text it self , which saith , the vision of the evening and morning is true . in the original it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , it is a plain truth , not aenigmatically or symbolically expressed . for in the other sense all the visions of daniel are true , which passage here would imply they were false , unless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had this signification in this place , and the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has in the foregoing vision , v. . and . which munster in his chaldee dictionary saith is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and our english translation in both those verses says , i asked him the truth of all this ; and i would knew the truth of the fourth beast ; not that daniel doubted but the vision was true , but he would know the plain truth or meaning of those symbolical representations . whence it is plain that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 truth in these cases is not opposed to falshood , but to symbols , parables or aenigmes . and therefore the expositor being assured that the literal sense of the days was true , and being more solicitous of writing nothing but what was true than adventurous upon things uncertain , though he took in the typical sense of the little horn , as it denoted antiochus epiphanes ; yet he would not at that time declare , that the days were typical also , and signified so many years , which is nothing so certain as the other . but if they be typical ( as the expositor has thought of it before he see these remarks , nor was averse therefrom ) the epocha in all likelihood is to be taken from the profanation of the temple by antiochus epiphanes , as the epocha of those numbers is , chap. . from whence it will follow , that it will be from the present year about years , till the church of christ be cleansed from its corruptions and his millennial reign begin upon earth . which years partly belong to the residue of the first thunder , which contains the seven vials , and partly to the second thunder , in which is the descent and settlement of the new ierusalem , the city or polity antistoechal to the then ruined babylon . but how much of these years is to be allotted to the residue of the vials , and how much to the second thunder , the event must shew ; if the days have also a symbolical sense . but that after the overthrow of babylon there will be such a huge while till every evil plant be rooted out of the church , is a mere conceit of the remarker . if things were lest to his sancifull anarchical way , worldly interests might the more easily slacken the dispatch ; but a truly holy , and a truly oecumenical council , whose laws shall bind all christendom , will expedite the business in a competent time . so that the interval of the second thunder need not be so long , nor the burning of the weapons of gog , and the burying all his multitudes in the valley of hamon gog , and cleansing the land , take up so tedious a time . by which , if the overthrow of babylon is signified , that passage in the apocalypse , chap. . but the rest of the dead lived not again , till the thousand years were finished , though it most naturally and certainly intimates a physical resurrection preceding of the martyrs , may also haply insinuate a political resurrection of those multitudes buried in hamon gog , that they shall not rise again till the thousand years be past ; but after that , they will so multiply , that they will besiege the holy and beloved city , and seem to hazard the true apostolick church , her being brought once again under the yoke of the wicked . the hailstones of a talent weight , and the lake of fire belong to the first thunder rather than to the second . vision . vers. . though there be no mystery in breaking the number here , yet sure it 's not an insignificant hebrew idiom , but that there 's a reason for the doing of it , as there is in the mentioned gen. . where it's so oft used , viz. to distinguish the time of those patriarchs lives before they began to have children from the time of their lives after . but as to the instance of gen. . . there 's no such breaking of the number there . and as to ezekiel . . there 's also a reason for it , viz. the maneh being sixty shekels , is said to consist of , and ▪ shekels , because those three were several sorts of coin , which together made up the maneh . and so the text here does plainly import a reason of breaking the number , viz. that it would be seven prophetick weeks before the building of the temple and city be completed , and that it would after continue to built for sixty two such weeks till the time of the messiah , &c. ans. this is the onely place where the remarker may seem to have got the expositor upon the hip . but he will fling two men at once then , grotius and the expositor that adheres to him . the words of grotius upon the place are these , duo hîc notanda hebraeos numerum perfectum in particulas scindere , ut ezek. . . deinde verò numerum minorem praeponere majori , ut , gen. . saepissimè gen. . . & alibi saepe . the expositor has followed this copy exquisitely , and in grotius his order ; and the remarker should have done so , if he would have done fair . grotius from ezek. . . observes that the hebrew sometimes divides a full number into parts : twenty shekels , five and twenty shekels , fifteen shekels shall be your maneh . this dividing of sixty into , and , grotius took onely to be an hebrew idiom , he finding so little reason otherwise for it ; and though some with the like confidence the remarker does , give the same reason with him , yet vatablus and clarius the one says [ sortè ] . and the other [ opinor ] to the business , which are indications of their uncertainty therein ; and shews the cautiousness of grotius , that he would rather resolve the business into an hebrew idiom , than content himself with such conjectures . for mine own part , i suspect it to be a mere propheticism , as i may so speak , that is , a prophetick scheme or propriety of speech usefull for concealment ( which is one scope of the prophetick style ) or the making the prophecy look more obscure and mysterious , something like to that , apoc. . . which i cannot insist on here . this for the dividing a full number into several parts . of putting the lesser number before the greater , those gen. . are repeated examples ; the remarker's reason whereof seems less probable , it implying that some of the patriarchs should live near two hundred years before they begot any children , and that adam had no child till he begot seth ; and being it 's plain he had , others might have so also . which makes the remarker's reason quite fail . and as for gen. . . according to the hebrew it is , and after the end of , [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] the fifty and the hundred days the waters were abated . which is a plain instance of what grotius would have . and therefore it was more adviseable for the expositor to decline an historical account of dividing the weeks into and , upon grotius his critical account thereof , than to adventure to say with the remarker , that it would be prophetical weeks from the going out of the decree before the building of the temple and city be completed , which is not applicable to any history . and if there be any thing in it , it being a thing onely by the bye , and uncertain , the main thing aimed at being the manifestation of the messias , at the end of the and weeks joined together , and the expositor being solicitous to make no application of history but what was certain and true , he deserves rather thanks and commendation for his care to impose upon none , than to be cavilled at by the remarker for not being as rash as himself , in making vain conjectures . but if there be any thing in naming these weeks a-part before the other , the most credible account is that of thomas lydiat in his canones chronici , that it respects the time of the presidency of nehemias over iudaea . but i think it not worth the while to concern my self in it . vision . vers. . it 's much distortion of the words [ and the thing is true ] to make them signifie , it 's plainly delivered , and not enigmatically in symbols . for the things so delivered are as true as those which are plainly delivered . but those words do refer to the following words , viz. but the time appointed was long ; that is , though it may seem incredible to prophesie of affairs so particularly for so long a time to come , yet the things foretold are true or certain . ans. it 's so far from being much distortion of the words to translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the thing was a plain truth , no aenigme or parable , that it is the onely easie , true and natural sense of them , as may appear from what we have said upon the third vision , v. . for here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is again used in that sense , that it and the chaldee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is noted to have , viz. plain truth without aenigmatical figures . and therefore daniel says of it , that he understood the thing , and had understanding of the vision or prophecy , without asking any interpreter , as he does in those symbolical visions . what a natural coherence this is with the foregoing words ? but to say that the thing is said to be true for fear , because the time is long , the vision or prophecy should be suspected of falshood , is a very frigid account . for that was needless , it being a divine prediction , and the prescience of god reaching in infinitum . but that of the longness of the time is mentioned upon the affirming the thing to be true , not to obviate any diffidence of the truth thereof , though long , but it is given as a mark for the right application of the prophecy to historical events . of which , if grotius had taken notice , he would have been ashamed to confine his historical applications to the times of antiochus , and the affairs of the maccabees , and no farther . vers . what befell daniel here , was out of an astonishment at the vision , as also iohn fell at the feet of our saviour as dead on his appearance to him , the frailty of humane nature being not able to bear the view of so terrible and glorious a representation . hence god tells moses , that none could see his face and live ; and the israelites intreated that god should speak no more unto them from mount sinai , lest they dye , and manoah and his wife , on the angel's ascending in the flame , fell on their faces ; and he said , we shall dye because we have seen god. but such an exinanition as is here supposed for receiving divine communications , cannot be signified , for he was disabled to receive them till he was revived and strengthened from that liveless condition the vision cast him into . ans. what a fond and even prophane cavil is this of the remarker , against these mystical or moral passages of the expositor , upon what befell daniel before he received this noble and ample vision of truth ? and how pedantickly does he instruct him , touching the natural horrour and astonishment of mere mortals upon the sight of the angelical powers , as if the expositor were yet to learn that either out of the scripture or other history , whenas he does plainly acknowledge the literal sense , v. . besides the moral allegory , which are very well consistent together , nor exclude one the other ? and it is a marvellous wise arguing in the remarker , when he would prove that such an exinanition as is here supposed for receiving divine communications , cannot be signified , because daniel was dis-inabled from receiving them , till he was revived and strengthened from that liveless condition the vision of these angelical powers had cast him into . but he seems so blind as wilfully not to see or take notice that this reviving was from a supernatural power , which had not been but upon a precedent exinanition , which made him capable of it . which is a symbol of the new life which revives not in us , till the selfish life be evacuated and abolished , till we be dead to it . then the soul is fitted for divine communications . but it seems the expositor had the luck here to cast pearls before swine . vers. . i will shew thee what is noted in the scripture of truth ; signifies , i suppose , no more than that i will more fully and plainly unfold to thee what hath formerly ( though briefly and obscurely ) been notified by the prophets . for the words do plainly refer to other writings , which are called scriptures of truth . but to make them signifie the declaring of the divine counsel , in plain words , without symbols , is an unaccountable distortion of them . ans. the remarker is marvellously singular in this conceit , in understanding by the scripture of truth [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] the prophetical scriptures , written before daniel received this prophecy . whenas there is not one interpreter that i could ever lay my hands on , or find mentioned by any , but they understand thereby onely what is decreed and recorded in the divine mind . the standing intellect of god , in which are described all the laws and decrees of his providence , is that writing or book of god which is so often mentioned in the bible . as exod. . blot me out of thy book : and psal. . are not these things noted in thy book ? and psal. . and in thy book were all my members written . and that book represented to iohn , sealed and unsealed , is but a symbol of this book or writing , as i may so speak . and this scripture of truth in daniel , in all likelihood is the first ground of that apocalyptick sealed and unsealed book . if by the scripture of truth had been understood the various prophecies of the precedent prophets , it would have been said the scriptures , not the scripture of truth . besides , it will be hard to find all the things of this prophecy any how written in the foregoing prophets . but it is not worth the while to confute so groundless a paradox , which is indeed an unaccountable essay of a distorted fancy . but to make the scripture of truth to signifie a declaration of the divine counsel and purpose in a plain way , without enigmes , is no distortion at all of the sense of the words . but is most easie and natural as to one part , there being not one interpreter but who has hit of it or approved it , that scripture here signifies the decree or counsel of god. and that truth in the style of daniel signifies plainness , in opposition to aenigmaticalness , has been proved over and over again , and that it does particularly signifie so here , appears from chap. . vers . . and now will i shew thee the truth . as if none of daniel's visions were true till now . but the apparent sense is , now will i communicate a plain prophecy to thee , without any aenigmatical figures or involutions . which therefore shews that the scripture of truth is particularly restrained to this prophecy here , and not understood of the writings of the precedent prophets at large , who abound with enigmes or parables . if the angel in saying ▪ now will i shew thee what is written in the scripture of truth , meant onely , i will shew thee what already is shewn in the writings of the prophets , it were a very sorry way of exciting attention in daniel , who might have said to the angel , it were a needless thing to give himself that trouble , if what he would predict was already predicted in the prophetick writings . so extravagant is the remarker in this remark . vision . vers. . i take this verse to be a general account of what is more particularly related in the following verses , and the covenant the same with what is after called the holy covenant , and the prince of it the same with the prince of the host , against whom antiochus epiphanes is said to magnifie himself , vis. . whenas demetrius can very badly , by reason of his right onely , be said to be prince of antiochus and his confederate forces , whenas at the same time he is described to be really king acting in his own behalf . ans. the indistinctness of the remarker's fancy would crumple up things together , which grotius by virtue of his skill in history has explicated more articulately . and nothing is alledged against him of any value . for demetrius being really by right , though absent , the sovereign of his uncle antiochus , and of attalus and eumenes waging war against heliodorus , though in behalf of their sovereign king demetrius onely in shew , demetrius may very well , justly and properly be called the prince of these confederates against his open enemy heliodorus . their being perfidious to him did not extinguish his real right and relation of being their king. nor was antiochus yet declared or acknowledged king. the remarker should have proved that . vers. . these two kings meditating mischief in their hearts , seems to be against the iews , and not against one another , for that would not be so agreeable with their meeting then in a friendly way , and the words do import some mischief which they concurred in , and not mischiefs projected against one another . and the lyes they speak may then signifie what they say of the iews by way of instigating one another against them . this sense will better than the other agree with the scope of the vision ( viz. to foretell what will befall the people of god ) and also with the following words . but it shall not prosper , for yet the end shall be at the time appointed , that is , notwithstanding such meditating the iews ruine , yet the end of their state shall not be till the time appointed . the same words to the same sense are , v. . ans. these two kings meditating mischief one against another , when they pretend mutual friendship , though it be not agreeable to the laws of friendship , yet it is to the nature and custome of politick potentates , and the prophecy predicts not what ought to be , but what would be . and the one being so ambitious and covetous , the other so deeply injured , there was no likelihood that there was any real friendship betwixt them , but that all their caressing and complementing one another were imposture and lyes , as they are called in the prophecy . and the scope of the prophecy is sufficiently pursued without distorting this place from this natural sense grotius and others have given it . for the feats of antiochus against the iews are fully declared afterwards . and for the following words , but it shall not prosper , &c. the sense the expositor has given agrees very well with this hypothesis of grotius . and besides , what mischief the king of the north meditated against the king of the south , did not prosper , as appears from v. , . but there is no mention of any essay from the king of the south , against the people of god , which farther shews the ineptness of the remarker's conceit , which he would substitute in the room of grotius his judicious interpretation . see also what the expositor has writ , v. . on those words , because it is yet for a time appointed , comparing them with what he has wrote on the same words , v. . vers. . the conceit of making churches and monasteries to be called strong holds , seems very remote from the intended sense of the text. a for they were no such holds at all , farther than the crafty impostures of priests did for their gain delude the people with a belief of their being so . and it was in a spiritual sense they were pretended to be such , which does not agree with the words in this and the precedent verse , they bearing a martial sense . b i take them therefore to be spoken in way of c antithesis on mentioning this strange god whom this king should acknowledge , viz. that though the laws of this strange god teach righteousness and peace ( which are to flourish in his kingdom ) yet this king so acknowledging him ▪ and honouring him with splendid superstitious devotions , shall notwithstanding continue the same iron kingdom as formerly ( though mixt with clay in the sense mentioned , vis. . ) viz. the same kingdom of violence and war. ans. nothing was ever writ with more judgment , elegancy and solidity , in explication of prophecies , than what that excellent interpreter mr. mede has writ on this and the foregoing verse . which yet this conceited remarker very superciliously calls a conceit , and says is very remote from the intended sense of the text , when nothing is more congenerous thereto , the prophecy intending to describe the state of the church as to religion and divine worship in that space of the time and times , and half a time , when the little horn , which is this king of pride , should rule the rost . and therefore we may be sure it will not omit to perstringe the idolatry then sprung up , i mean the pagano-christian idolatry , or an idolatry of a new mode . for it is said of this king of pride , v. . that he shall not regard the god of his fathers , i. e. either none of the pagan gods , he shall regard none of them ; or if you will , more particularly , he shall not regard that proper god of his fathers , viz. mars ; whom grotius would have understood by the red dragon . of which mars , romulus and remus were born , and he is the special presidentiary god of the roman city and empire , as grotius himself also will have it . this god of his ancestors this king of pride does not regard , but is one who with his hierarchy professes celibate , forbidding to marry , a single life for him and his adherents being most sutable , and for their ambitious designs ; and preferring his own politick ends before any god or religion , it follows , v. . according to a true , skilfull and faithfull account of the sense out of the hebrew . together with god he will in his place ( or temple where he is worshipped ) honour the mahuzzim ( not mars the proper god of his ancestors , but these new 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as mahuzzim may signifie from the seventy's translation , psal. . . these new numina defensoria of his empire ) even with a god his fathers knew not ( which is christ ) shall he honour them with gold , and silver , and pretious stones , &c. this is the onely easie and genuine sense that can be made of the th verse . and it being thus plain to any unprejudiced eye , that these mahuzzim are the daemons that s. paul speaks of , tim. . where he tells us that the spirit has foretold 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 expresly that those that forbid to marry , &c. will bring in the worship of daemons , ( which express prediction is no-where but here ) and the degenerating church looking upon the relicks of saints and their consecrated images ( whose form of consecration does sometimes specifie their intended virtue against the invasion of enemies ) to be the defence of the city where they are , and the saints themselves to be their mahuzzim , their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or martial and warlike defenders of the city , where temples or other places are consecrated to them . what a groundless cavil is this of the remarker to except against mr. mede's rendring the sense of this present verse thus , which is exquisitely according to the hebrew , viz. and he shall make the holds of the mahuzzim jointly to the foreign god , understanding it of churches and monasteries ? for the mahuzzim being once such warlike defenders , expressed so under that notion , and their help being supposed to come from the places consecrated to them , what an easie and obvious analogy is it to call those consecrated places strong holds or forts ? a and the prediction is not of what they would be in reality , but what they would be thought and reputed . which therefore is a foretelling of those delusions in the church , under the reign of the king of pride . that the people should put their trust and confidence in such vanities . b what the remarker would substitute in lieu of this excellent account of mr. mede , is very frigid and jejune ; it giving notice of nothing , but that the king of pride will be for war as well as other potentates , and so making him to honour the god of forces , he makes him still a worshipper of mars , the god of his ancestours , contrary to the text. besides , there is this other incongruity in this conceit , in that this prince of pride is not a sword-man , but rex sacrorum , and his power lyes merely in a manner ( not in martial forces and feats of arms , but rather ) in magical incantations and lying miracles , and prestigious charming of people into such superstitions as make most for his own advantage , and such whereby he has an hank upon the empire , and deludes them with all deceiveableness of unrighteousness . c and as for the antithesis in professing christ , who is the prince of peace , and yet to be given to war : is not the antithesis at least as full when christ came to introduce a pure divine worship , to worship the father in spirit and in truth , that this king of pride has filled all with superstitious rites and idolatries towards the mahuzzim , the daemons or deceased saints ? and lastly , there is another a more near , proper and immediate antistoechy or opposition betwixt the genius of this king of pride and his ancestours , in mr. mede's way , they worshipping the god mars in a gross pagan secular sense , he the mahuzzim , which are as it were so many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or paganochristian mavortes , in a sense more spiritual and ecclesiastical . to all which you may add , that grammar and criticism will not so easily comply with the remarker's way . but i have been too long on this remark already . vers. . thy tydings out of the north is surely more likely to be meant of the germans , poles , muscovites , &c. than of the tartars , both because they are directly north of the turks , whenas the tartars are as much east as north of them , and also because the end here foretold against the turks is more likely to be executed by the christians than by those of the same religion with the turks , especially whenas it is sent upon them in reference to the advancement of christianity , which is the occasion of its here being foretold . ans. that the tydings out of the north is surely more likely to be meant of the germans , poles , muscovites , &c. than of the tartars , is spoke with more confidence than sound assurance of reason . for the tartars being north-east of the turks , but much more properly north than the persians ; it is easie and natural to conceive , that the tydings out of the east being out of persia , that the news of the stirs in tartary would be called the tydings out of the north , the tartars being a people so hugely more north than the persians . any one that but casts his eye on a map , will at first sight discern this . so that the tartars having a capacity of an eastern consideration , as well as of a northern , they will fit both the sixth vial and the present passage of this prophecy too , and therefore have a privilege above the germans , poles and muscovites to make part of the kings of the east , which the sixth vial mentions . and by that time this comes to pass , the mahometan and pagan tartars may be turned christians ; and being fresh converts , may have more zeal and activity in the behalf of true christianity than either germans , poles or muscovites . besides , it is a mistake in the remarker , that he surmises that it is the turk that comes to his end , v. . when it is the king of pride that comes to his end . for the vision drives at him plainly from v. . to the very end of the chapter . and this last verse luther ( in his letter to count schlikius ) and he shall come to his end , and none shall help him , interpreteth it of the ruine of the pope . the letter is in martinius horzovinus his collation of huss and luther , p. . and how absurd it would be to suppose the contrary , the expositor has signified in his exposition of the last verse of this eleventh chapter , which is needless here to repeat . i will onely here add to what is said there , that this vision of the scripture of truth being for a long time , ch . . it is the more unlikely not to reach to the utter overthrow of the king of pride , and that being so notable a providence not to skip over it . vers. . it 's strange to run so far as old rome for interpreting this verse , whenas it may be much better applied to new rome . . for constantinople being seated in the point of a promontory , between two great seas , is much more properly said to be seated between two seas than rome , which is at a large distance from those seas it is seated between , especially from one of them ; and is no more seated between them than any other part of italy . . also the title of glorious holy mountain is much more applicable to constantinople than to rome , because constantine there setled , when by reason of the hatred he contracted for professing christianity , he could abide no longer at rome ; and also , because many emperours reigned there , who were zealous against the idolatrous corruptions of the roman church , and many noted councils also held there , in one of which under constantinus copronymus the worship of images was condemned as idolatrous ; and also , because before the ruine of the eastern empire they separated from rome for its corruptions . . and new rome may farther be called so from what flourishing state christianity shall be in there , after the ruine of the turkish empire , whenas old rome shall have the same fate befall it with old babylon , according to what is pronounced against it , rev. . . also it 's plain that in new rome the king of the north has placed the tabernacles of his palace , and the word tabernacle may be perhaps used , because of the following words , yet shall he come to his end , viz. the turks will not have a settled empire there , but it will be destroy'd . . but whereas the planting the tabernacles of his palace being related after the tydings out of the east and the north , seems to signifie what he shall doe at the end of his empire , it may notwithstanding be understood in the sense i have given . for after the describing of his conquests , this planting of his tabernacles comes as an additional character of him . also the tydings out of the east and the north may respect not onely what shall befall him at the end of his empire , but also his almost continual conflicts , during his empire , with the aforesaid northern countries , and with the persians . . that the planting of his tabernacle , &c. should signifie the taking of rome by the turk , and so fulfilling what is said of casting the beast and false prophet into a lake of fire , is not onely for the reasons aforesaid a groundless conceit , but also disagrees with what the same pen writes on rev. . for there onely the remnant of the beast and false prophet unconverted are made to be cast into the lake of fire , &c. and of the lake of fire , no account is there given , and better none than what is here given . for it 's plain there , that the casting of the beast and false prophet into the lake of fire , and so extinguishing the western empire , as it is there called , must be by the army of the rider of the white horse , and consequently not by the turks . . ezekiel's prophecy of tyre is no type of antichrist ( as is imagined ) and so gives no countenance to the applying the words , [ glorious holy mountain ] as here is done . both his and esay's prophecy of tyre , as they are intermixt with their prophecies of other neighbouring nations , so there 's no appearance of their having any other meaning than what those other prophecies have , viz. what concerns onely those nations . and the reasons given to the contrary in synopsis prophetica , book . ch . . are of no moment . . for tyre is properly called an harlot , and said to commit fornication with all the kings of the earth , by reason of the subtile deceits and allurements with which merchants and trafickers enveagle their customers . . and tyre being forgotten seventy years , according to the days of one king ( viz. of one kingdom , as king is usually taken ) is plainly enough understood of the babylonian kingdom , which was to continue seventy years according to ieremy's prophecy . and tyre being taken and ruined by nebuchadnezzar , did continue so till the end of that kingdom . . but the fansied cabbalistical sense of those seventy years will soon vanish , by considering , first , that the christian caesars belong to the sixth , and not to the seventh head , as is shewed in the remarks . . and next that antichristian rome , which is supposed to be typified by tyre , was not in being before the christian emperours , and therefore cannot be said to be forgotten , during their time. . as to the description of the prince of tyre , for which he is supposed to represent some great priest in the church ; first being threatned with the death of the uncircumcised , is no more than what is threatned to pharaoh in ezek. chap. . and is said to befall all the princes there spoken of . . next he is not said to be adorned , as is supposed , with the high priest's vestments , but onely with pretious stones , to signifie the perfection of beauty and splendour , which by great wisedom he had attained unto . . by reason whereof he is said to have been in eden , the garden of god , in like sense as great kings are called trees of eden in ezekiel , chap. . . then as to his being called anointed cherub , and his being upon the mountain of god , and walking in the midst of the stones of fire ; they all signifie the perfection mentioned in the next verse , which he had by wisedom arrived to , even to an angelical state , comparable to the anointed cherub and stones of fire , &c. . and being such , it 's no wonder that the word sanctuary should be applied to him , whenas it is so to moab , esay . . so that in this vision of tyre is set forth the height of perfection and glory that humane wisedom and industry could advance a state unto . . which though it was to so high a degree as is described , yet all ( proceeding not from the spirit of holiness to make their works to be wrought in god ) proved corruptible like unto all fleshly glory . . but to make all this typical of antichristian rome , is a like romantick conceit with the applying of a moral cabbala to the three first chapters of genesis . . for besides what is already said against the same , the vision setting forth the perfection and glory of a secular kingdom or civil state , can but very incongruously thereby typifie an ecclesiastical state . but then all this description being of what was real , and what tyre by pride and iniquity of her trafick fell from , will by no means be applicable to what was onely counterfeit in antichristian rome , and what by her corruptions and impostures she fell into . and as to the state of the roman church before her apostacy , it being not then antichristian , cannot be aimed at by what is typical of the antichristian church ; nor was its condition then such , as can so answer to the description of tyre , as to be typified by it . the words therefore [ glorious holy mountain ] having no countenance from the vision of tyre , or any other reasons given for it to be applied to rome , the doing of it is altogether unaccountable , unless it proceed from a disposition to give the old gentleman at rome a plaster for having broken his head , &c. ans. i is a pretty shew the remarker makes to induce us to believe , that constantinople is here meant by the city , betwixt two seas , where the glorious holy mountain is . but there is nothing solid in his arguing . for , first , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does not so properly signifie simply betwixt , as betwixt the middle parts of the things any thing is said to be betwixt . and therefore here the septuagint accordingly render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is , betwixt the two middle parts of the adriatick suppose and tuscan sea. and so is rome situated , thorough which , if you draw a line to these two seas , that line will touch each sea as to sight , in the map of ortelius and ptolemy , in the middle . whenas constantinople is not situated thus betwixt the middle parts of the pontus euxinus and propontis , but rather at the west-end of the euxine sea , in which regard old rome's situation has much the advantage of new rome or constantinople . and considering the huge length of the two seas , extended along each side of italy , and the narrowness of the land in comparison , he must have a wonderfull capricious fancy that does not presently acknowledge it very properly placed betwixt two seas . and that other towns in italy are placed so as well as it , is but a fond allegation . whenas there are other notes to restrain it to rome alone . and there are other towns besides constantinople placed betwixt the pontus euxinus and the propontis . and then secondly , for the title of [ glorious holy mountain ] which is the main restraining note of the place ; the hills of rome are exceeding much more celebrated in history than the hills of constantinople . they are but rarely and faintly taken notice of in comparison . and for the holiness of the place , if it be to be gathered from the holiness of persons once there residing , what comparison is there betwixt that one emperour constantine , who , hated for his zeal for the christian religion , went to byzantium ( if zosimus must be believed , who was no friend to the christians ) and s. peter and s. paul , who dyed martyrs at rome for the profession of christ , as also did a dozen bishops of rome in succession after them , eleutherius being the first that dyed in his bed ? and yet after him also cornelius , lucius , sixtus , marcellinus , marcellus and miltiades dyed martyrs also for the christian religion . and such was the eminent holiness of the primitive bishops of rome , that the roman bishop has born the title thereof ever afterwards till this very day ; as also their church and hierarchy , how appropriated the title of holiness is to them , all men know , and it will continue as long as they are ; whenas the holiness of constantinople is extinct by the overflowing of the turk , and therefore the glorious holy mountain can be no where but where this title of holiness does reside . and prophecy being anticipatory history , uses the same phrase that history would do , or common speech does in the age it points at : which is a consideration worth the noting . and as for those many constantinopolitan emperours that were zealous against the idolatrous corruptions of the roman church ; and councils held there against the worship of images , there were more that complied with the roman corruptions than that resisted them , and there were councils there held as well for the worship of images as against it , and these prevailed against the former . which therefore argues the place more polluted than holy . and even before the taking of constantinople by the turk , the christians within at their devotions for success against him , are said to carry their holy images in procession , as leonardus chiensis declares , then present in the city at the siege , in his narrative of the taking of constantinople by the turk ; and richerius also writes the same , lib. . de rebus turcarum ; and it being ever since possest by those infidels , surely it has not encreased the holiness thereof . and the manner of the greeks devotions then is a plain demonstration how little they had separated from the roman corruptions . and thirdly , it is a sign the remarker is hugely put to his shifts , when he is fain to eek out the holiness of that city with what he presumes it will be after the destruction of the turkish empire , as if rome and other cities then may not be as holy as it . for that the material city of rome shall be so utterly ruined , is a rash conjecture of his own , the mystical babylon not signifying a material city , but a polity . and fourthly , that is the fondest argument of all for having new rome understood in this passage of the prophecy , because the turk already has placed the tabernacles of his palace there , which is rather an argument against it . for the words import some new acquist of his . nor does tabernacle ( a conceit of the remarker's ) alway imply a flitting condition , otherwise the condition of the new ierusalem would be such , because god then is said to place his tabernacle amongst men . and the particle [ yet ] is [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] in the hebrew , and may be as well translated [ and ] as [ yet ] or rather better . fifthly , and if we cannot be assured from the order and nature of things in this part of the vision , that the acquiring of the possession of the glorious holy mountain betwixt the two seas , is after the news out of the east and out of the north , and the turks trouble therefrom , and after his going forth upon this trouble of mind with great fury to destroy by war-like invasion , amongst which invasions is the invading of the city betwixt two seas , &c. it is impossible for any one to have the assured sense of any thing written . but take this unstrained , natural and necessary order of things ; and suppose , with the remarker , that the city betwixt the two seas is constantinople , which is the metropolis of the turkish empire ; where , for the more distinctness , we will suppose him residing , and to hear the disturbing news from the east and north , and to go out of constantinople with great fury to destroy many ; and amongst other acquists by war to take constantinople , of which he is supposed all the while possest , and which cannot by any means now be supposed to bear the title of holy : can there any thing be more ridiculous and incongruous than this ? and that is a very lame , slim put-off to say , this taking of the city betwixt two seas is added onely as a character of the turk . for he was sufficiently characterized over and over again by his other atchievements . and being it is said , that after the news out of the east , and out of the north , he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace , &c. it is evident that that atchievement was to come after ; that is to say , after he had taken aegypt , v. . whenas he had taken constantinople before included in that general overflowing of the king of the north , v. . according , as the expositor there has hinted , and he is now possessed of it . for in that th verse the general overslowing of the king of the north is comprized . but v. . there is particularized his being made master of the glorious land palestine or iudaea , and v. , . of aegypt and other countries which he took after constantinople : thus exquisitely methodical is the frame of the prophecy . nor can such confusion as the remarker would have , be admitted under pretence of more fully characterizing the turk when he was sufficiently characterized already . and now i hope the remarker will not think it so strange , that the expositor ran so far as old rome for a right interpretation of this verse , when pitching the sense upon new rome would make it intolerable nonsense . and therefore to proceed . sixthly , new rome being so utterly uncompliable with the scope of the prophecy , the taking old rome here by the turk is no groundless conceit , but apparently rational , though but conjectural . nor does it at all disagree with what the expositor has delivered upon rev. . where the overthrow of the beast and false prophet is attributed to the courage and conduct of that illustrious heros on the white horse , with a sword coming out of his mouth . for the influence of that evangelical arme ( by virtue of whose preaching the kings of the east , tartars and persians suppose , by that time may be converted , viz. within the seventh vial ) may bring to pass such things as may thus disturb the mind of the turk , and make him make such incursions into christendom , that at last he may attack italy and rome it self , and plant the tabernacles of his palace there according to the scope of the prophecy . so that we see how the overthrow of the beast and false prophet may be ascribed both to the army of the rider of the white horse , and to the turk also , that providence of god that comprizeth all , attempering the affairs of the world to such ends as he has foreseen and foretold by the mouth of his holy prophets . but it is a childish and idiotick conceit to fansie that army of the rider of the white horse to be a company of men at one time gathered into one place , or that the kings of the earth will be in such sort gathered ; but what is more scatteredly and interruptedly done as to time , and place , and parties , is according to the uniting and constringing nature of a prophetick henopoeia , represented as done at one time , and in one place , and by one set-battel betwixt the parties there congregated . and he that is not aware of the genius of the prophetick style in such cases , will make strange work in the interpretation of prophecies . seventhly , the remarker's affirming that esay's and ezekiel's prophecy of tyre is no type of antichrist , is more sullen than sound ; the reason he brings for it being so small and evanid , viz. because the kings or princes of other places in the adjoining prophecies are not made types of antichrist . but why should this be expected more than that all the good kings of israel should be made types of christ ? besides , how does the remarker prove but that king ▪ pharaoh is made a type of antichrist , ezek. ch . . of which we shall say more anon . but there is a special reason to believe the king of tyre to be a type of antichrist , the apocalypse borrowing so many entire phrases out of the visions of tyre in the lamentation over babylon , which most certainly signifies the pontifician polity . which is a fair indication to any ordinary unprejudiced sagacity that tyre is intimated a type of the same polity that babylon is . and the expressions are so high , sublime and grandisonant ( which is ridiculous to conceive to be levelled onely at a mere rich cunning merchant ) that several ancient fathers , as s. ierome , s. austin , origen , beda , ambrose and tertullian have thought it a prophetick parable touching the devil ; but others more moderate , as apollinarius and theodoret understood some things therein , of the prince of tyre , others of the devil . and so that which is said esay . . how art thou fallen from heaven , lucifer , thou son of the morning , origen , eusebius , ambrose , athanasius , and most of the ancients understood it of the devil ; but s. cyprian , to give him his due , understood antichrist by it . and it is plain from the apocalypse , that by the king of babylon is understood antichrist . wherefore where there is the like exorbitant sublimity of style as there is here toward the prince of tyre , a meaner person than the king of babylon , ( being but as it were an huge wealthy cunning merchant , and a prince over such ) surely some greater thing or person than the prince of tyre must be understood ; and it being not to be understood of the devil , who can claim a juster right to be signified by the prophecy in the full sense thereof , than antichrist himself ? but particular reasons are farther given in book . chap. . synopsis prophetica , which the remarker pretends to confute , to which confutations i will answer in order as they occur . first then , methinks he begins very inauspiciously to make cunning traficking , properly whoredom . let him produce any lexicographer that will tell us that traficking signifies whoring in any approved authour , sacred or profane , and a farther answer shall be framed . in the mean time to one that will say any thing , it is fit to answer nothing . cunning traficking may be akin to thieving ; but how it is to simple whoring , i see not . secondly , the seventy years tyre is forgotten , and lyes in ruines , cannot be understood of the seventy years of the babylonish kingdom . for then tyre should be taken in the beginning of nebuchadnezzar's reign , whenas it was not taken by him till the year of the iulian period , which is about years from the beginning of the babylonian kingdom , as you may see in petavius his de doctrina temporum . thirdly , what a vain conceit it is to make the christian caesars part of the sixth head of the beast , i have shewn upon his foregoing remarks . to make them part of the sixth head , is to make them idolatrous , which is a perfect contradiction to the vision , which makes eight kings but onely seven heads of the beast , and all of them idolatrous . wherefore one of these eight kings must not be idolatrous , which were the primitive christian caesars , who were the seventh king of the eight . fourthly , rome was idolatrous before it was christian , and turned idolatrous again when it became paganochristian , and whoredom is the true symbol of idolatry known to all ; wherefore the harlot , though she was silent awhile in the time of the pure christian caesars , which were the seventh king , yet when that time expired , she might sing again like a harlot . nor does this at all hinder but that this vision is typical of rome-antichristian , this stroke setting out more exquisitely the paganochristianism of their idolatry , that they paganize again , and again play the harlot by a new mode of idolatry , which yet is the lively image of the idolatry of old paganism . fifthly , as for pharaoh his being threatened with the death of the uncircumcised , we being taught out of the apocalypse , that by aegypt is understood the pontifician hierarchy , he must be of a slow sense that does not discern that prophecy of ezekiel , chap. . v. . to concern the papal hierarchy , which pretending to be holy church in a special manner , and that this papal polity is that kingdom of christ that shall abide for ever , which is the privilege onely of the millennial empire of christ , the prophet upbraids that confidence to this roman pharaoh , as if he were more holy and pure than other worldly potentates , and therefore says expresly , whom dost thou pass in beauty ? go down and be thou laid with the uncircumcised . thou shalt perish as well as other heathen or pagan polities . if there were not some such weighty sense as this under it , it is incredible that pharaoh's lying down in death with the uncircumcised , should be so often repeated in this prophecy . he is reckoned amongst that long list of uncircumcised potentates , whose empires failed , and so must his , though he thinks himself in such a special manner a circumcised one , and to be that christian kingdom which shall never fail . sixthly , that the prince of tyre is described as adorned with the high priest's vestments , is evident from hence ; in that of all the nine pretious stones which are named , there is not one of them but what is in the high priest's breast-plate ; but to have named all twelve had been too bare for the nature of a prophecy of this kind , and too sorry a conceit it would be to fansie the breast-plate without the other cloathing . and his naming a little after the anointed cherub , shews that the prophet's fancy was carried into the temple ( into the sanctum sanctorum ) and to the high priest , who alone had power to enter thereinto . seventhly , and as to his being said to be in eden , the garden of god , that ill sutes with the city of tyre , built on a hard steril rock ; whenas italy , the seat of the sacerdotal prince chiefly aimed at , is by geographers and historians acknowledged to be the very paradise of europe . nor does the remarker mend himself by making the prince of tyre the tallest cedar in the garden of god , by referring to ezek. . for that example of the king of assyria is brought in onely to set out the high sovereignty and magnificency of pharaoh , who is a type of antichrist , that exalteth himself above all that is called god or is worshipped . it is a parable taken up against him . and therefore v. . it is said , thou shalt lye in the midst of the uncircumcised ( for all thy pretended holiness ) with them that be slain with the sword . this is pharaoh and all his multitude , saith the lord god. the whole parable of the king of assyria is understood of pharaoh , and consequently of the papal hierarchy , and it does lively set out the business , but it would take up too much room to give an account of it here . eighthly , there must be a strange thick callosity on the perceptive faculty of that man that can discern no more by those expressions , the anointed cherub , the holy mountain of god , the walking up and down in the midst of the stones of fire , viz. cloathed with the vestments of aaron , as was above noted , than the signification of , forsooth , an angelical state ( as if the angels in heaven were anointed cherubs , whenas it plainly refers to the cherubim in the sanctum sanctorum , which were anointed and consecrated ) of an high and mighty merchant with a company of his cunning traders and trafickers , if not blew-apron men , grown rich and wealthy by their worldly craft and subtilty , nothing less than the most holy things in the temple of god must set out the greasie glory of these fat burgomasters , and their worldly splendour and prosperity , arising from their over-reaching arts in trafick , and the thence issuing sordid gain . what a homely course conceit is this ? ninthly , as for the name sanctuary , being applied to moab , the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is in both places , is of a general signification , and signifies any consecrated place , whether it be to the god of israel , the true god , or otherwise . but that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here respects the true god , and alludes to the sanctuary of the god of israel , and therefore denotes some high and mighty priest principally , not a worldly , though princely merchant , the anointed cherub , the holy mountain of god , and the vestments of aaron , a little before mentioned , do naturally indicate , and that the fancy of the prophet had not withdrawn it self from the temple at ierusalem . the allusion to whose most holy things to conceive to be merely to set out the worldly prosperity of a city of subtile cheating merchants ; as also to conceive , that the comparing of the wisedom of the prince of tyre with that of daniel , and making the tyrian prince prefer his own before it , doth denote onely his cunning in trading , and not some person that has more resemblance to the prophet daniel , as pretending himself also to be a prophet , though characterized in the apocalypse to be a false one , is most absurd and ridiculous . but it is too long to insist on these things . and therefore tenthly , what the remarker says , that this perfect tyrian state proceeding not from the spirit of holiness proved corruptible ; this , i suppose , he collects from v. . thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created , till iniquity was found in thee . but if this be all that is meant by this vision , that humane polities , be they never so well ordered at first , if there be no more than what is humane , will in process of time corrupt ; besides , that it is so obvious and trivial a notion , it is not the object of prophecy . wherefore for the prophet to make such a stir about so small a business , is a supposition incredible . and therefore this perfect state , that is to say , this upright and honest state , as well as beautifull and glorious of the prince of tyre , is a real prediction of the state of the primitive bishops of rome especially , even till the apostasie came in . and the words of this th verse sound so high , that s. austin , gregory and other theologers conceive they relate to lucifer , who was created perfect , but fell through his own pride . these rich and glorious descriptions therefore taken from the most holy things of the temple , respect the bishops of rome especially , and their hierarchy before the time of the apostasie , till iniquity was found in them . nothing but wilfull blindness , or a skew conceit against episcopacy , as if the remarker were a presbyterian , which yet i do not believe , can hinder a man from seeing so clear a truth . eleventhly , as for the moral cabbala on the three first chapters of genesis , it is a natural and coherent application of the most sapid and weighty parts of a divine morality . and let him take heed that he is not guilty ( in an high degree ) of an insensibility of such things that will adventure to call that cabbala a romance . but this was pluck't in by the head and shoulders by the remarker , and haply might as well have been omitted as answered by the answerer . twelfthly , it is extreme precariously affirmed by the remarker , that the perfections and imperfections of a civil state may not typifie the perfections and imperfections of a state ecclesiastical , and especially as to some particular point . as this vision of the prince of tyre is taken notice of in synopsis prophetica , for a prediction of ecclesiastical nundinations . wherefore this tyrian polity , they being a polity of merchants , and being for a time honest and upright , and not adulterating their wares , nor using any fraud or couzenage may be a type of the primitive unapostatized state of the church , while her merchandize was pure and uncorrupt . for there is a spiritual as well as a secular merchandize , as appears by that of solomon , prov. . . for the merchandize of wisedom is better than the merchandize of silver , &c. and the salutiferous wisedom of the gospel better than all other wisedoms . and our saviour christ says , the kingdom of god is like a merchant-man , seeking goodly pearls , mat. . and the goodly pearl indeed that exceeds all other pearls , is pure evangelical truth , unsophisticate with any noxious errour . this was the merchandize of the primitive church and of the bishop of rome , while he continued perfect in his ways from the day god created him , that is , constituted him bishop of rome , till iniquity was found in him . till he defiled his sanctuaries by the multitude of his iniquities , by the iniquity of his trafick , bringing in many institutes and doctrines antichristian and repugnant to the pure evangelical truth of christ ; and all this for filthy lucre and worldly interest . what an easie type is tyre here , though a civil state of a state ecclesiastick ? but i am even weary of making out such plain things . what follows is refuted already by this and by my fourth answer . and i have been too long already . it is sufficiently clear out of what has been said , that ezekiel's prophecy of tyre is a type of antichrist , and consequently does give countenance to the applying the words [ glorious holy mountain ] to antichrist himself or his seat , as well as the most holy things in the temple , or relating to aaron , are applied in ezekiel to the prince of tyre , antichrist his type . as for that passage of the remarker's rare wit in the close of all , i onely answer this thereto , that the expositor takes no pleasure in breaking any ones head of what quality soever , nor has any such intention any where , or of administring any palliating plasters . but if he had any sovereign cephalick , or medicated cap that would corroborate and cleanse the brain , and clear the judgment , i do not doubt but he wishes so well to the remarker , that he would bestow it on him , whereby he might be the better inabled to discern the solidity and congruity of other mens conceptions , and the absurdities and incongruities of his own . if he had in his understanding the last verse [ yet he shall come to his end , &c. ] of the destruction of the turk conjoined it with his pitching the tabernacles of his palace on mount sion and mount moriah in expectation of the kings of the east , the return of the israelites to their own land , as mr. mede seems to intimate , there had been better sense in it ; but to join the destruction of the turk with his pitching the tabernacles of his palace in new rome or constantinople , is very absonous and ridiculous . but whether mr. mede's way , or the expositor's way , be the better , time onely will certainly discover . vision . continued in chap. . vers. . and there shall be a time of trouble , such as never was since there was a nation , &c. answers not to the great earthquake under the seventh vial , but proceeds from the great commotion that will be , by reason of the gathering of the great armies of the christian and antichristian party to the great decisive battel of that great day of god almighty . and that earthquake signifies the great astonishment the victory then will cause , and the great revolution which will ensue thereon . which sense is confirmed by the following words , and at that time shall thy people be delivered , viz. that deliverance will be the fruit and product of those troubles , and it will be by the utter vanquishing of the antichristian party , in the abovesaid battel . ans. the time of trouble , and the time of the great earthquake are assuredly the same , viz. the time of war , and destruction which earthquakes signifie in the prophetick style , and according to artemidorus and achmetes . wherefore the earthquake cannot be after the victory , or signifie any revolution then , but signifies the battel it self and the destruction thereby . but afterwards comes settlement contrary to an earthquake , namely the descent of the new ierusalem , wherein the iews will be so notably concerned , the names of the twelve tribes of the children of israel being to be writ on the gates thereof . which sense indeed is confirmed by the following words . and at that time thy people shall be delivered , becoming citizens of the new ierusalem , they shall be delivered both from all secular bondage , and also from the beggarly elements of the mosaick dispensation , and by their christianity be made heirs of eternal salvation , as the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the septuagint . the earthquake , apoc. . is put in lieu of the battel by a mutation of iconisms , as the great city in lieu of all the forces gathered together in armageddon , by the same figure . but after this earthquake , which concludes the first thunder , comes the settlement , as i said , under the second . vers. . if the words [ some to everlasting life , and some to shame and everlasting contempt ] respect the first resurrection ( as they seem to doe ) then surely the awaking to shame and contempt must intend a state in the other life , as well as the awaking to everlasting life does so . and the words [ shame and contempt ] seem apt to signifie what is likely then to befall them , when the faithfulness of god's promises and threatenings to reward the righteous and punish evil doers , will be made so manifest . ans. if we had nothing but the english translation to go by , or other translations like it , what the remarker says may seem rational enough ; but if we have recourse to the hebrew , and withall consider the phrases of [ shame and contempt ] the expositor's account seems more rational , though , as i have above noted , on the remarks , he is not averse from admitting this sense of the remarker's also . vers. . the words a [ scatter the power of the holy people ] are surely meant of the christians or adopted , as well as of the natural iews , and do more respect them than the other . b but it's strange that the words [ all these things shall be finished ] viz. an accomplishing to scatter the power , &c. should be made to signifie , all these marvellous things to the first and second resurrection , whenas they plainly mean the wonders that are to last for a time , and times , and half a time , viz. the preceding wonders of scattering the power of the holy people , which will then be accomplished or finished . ans. the words a [ scatter the power of the holy people ] are certainly understood of the iews . but that they are meant of others also , if the remarker had any reasons so to think , he should have produced them . b and that [ all these things shall be finished ] are not to be restrained to the wonders that are to last for a time , and times , and half a time , is plain from hence , in that it is repugnant to the text , which runs thus : and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people , all these things shall be finished ; that is according to the remarker , all the wonders during the time , and times , and half a time . which then will imply , that the accomplishing to scatter the power of the holy people precedes those wonders , which is grosly false . wherefore , all these things shall be finished , includes both those wonders , and the accomplishing to scatter the holy people , and whatever else has been hinted of the new ierusalem , and the first and second resurrection . after which immediately occurs , v. . the question of the angel. how long shall it be to the end of these wonders ? and therefore [ all these things ] take in all before . and daniel tells us , ch . . v. . that the time appointed was long . and the oath of the apocalyptick angel , and the oath of this angel here in daniel surely swear touching the same end of the periods of time , viz. that besides the time , and times , and half a time , there shall be no more time than the interval of the seventh trumpet , which reaches to the conflagration . see the expositor upon this verse . vers. , . though the meaning here given of and days may be intended , yet i suppose there is also another meaning which seems to be chiefly aimed at , viz. . that as antiochus epiphanes did typifie antichrist , so by the taking away the daily sacrifice is signified the beginning of the antichristian reign , and so those numbers will have the same epocha with the time , and times , and half a time , or days . . this sense will much better agree with the reckoning by indictions ( which began but about constantine's time ) than the other . . and also does give a much more agreeable answer to the question , v. . what shall be the end of these things ? which does second the question , v. . how long shall it be to the end of these wonders ? and so is meant of those wonders that are to last for a time , and times , and half a time , and does enquire what shall be the end of them . which the first sense of the numbers gives no apt answer to , telling onely what shall fall out towards the end of those wonders . but this other sense gives an apt , though not a satisfactory answer thereto , telling daniel , that as he understood not the words time and times , &c. which answered his first question , the meaning of them being closed till the time of the end , so what he farther enquires is also concealed till then . but at the end of the and days ( beginning them , as aforesaid , with the days ) there will those things fall out as will give a satisfactory account of what he enquires after , and make them peculiarly blessed who reach those times . . so that whereas the end of days does signifie a time wherein the scattering of the power of the holy people will be ended , and they wholly delivered from the bondage and evils they suffered ; . the end of the other numbers signifies times , wherein a great advancement will be towards the glorious state of the millennium . . for though it be one simple uniform state , yet it may be a considerable time growing to the height of it . . with which seems to agree , zech. . , . in that day the light shall not be clear , nor dark , not day nor night , but in the evening it shall be light . which signifies that those times will still be more refined towards the end of them , which is most agreeable with their being to end with a translation into an heavenly state . so far will they be from degenerating into a laodicean state . ans. that mr. mede's interpretation of these two numbers is the onely true interpretation , and that the remarker's interpretation , though it has some shew of ingeniousness in it , is groundless , i shall shew by shewing the weakness of his reasons for it . for , first , it does not follow because antiochus epiphanes is a type of antichrist , that therefore by the taking away the daily sacrifice , is signified the beginning of the antichristian reign , so that it must have the same epocha the days have . for chap. . the days which are said to be the time of the ceasing of the daily sacrifice and pollution of the sanctuary caused by antiochus epiphanes , making both these days and antiochus typical of antichrist , and to point at the continuance of his once begun pollutions , yet the epocha of those prophetical days or years is not the epocha of the years of the reign of antichrist , but from the beginning of the literal pollution of the sanctuary . which yet might better have been there than here in these numbers of and . because it is expresly said here , that from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away , and the abomination that maketh desolate set up , there shall be days , &c. so that the epocha is set to us here , when it was free in the other place ; and yet not there neither is the epocha the same with the epocha of the reign of antichrist . it is sufficient there that the days be typical of years , though the epocha of them be not the epocha of the reign of antichrist , of whom antiochus epiphanes is a type . for were it so , the reign of antichrist would continue above a thousand years longer . and lastly , it may be considered whether the express fixing the epocha of the numbers and on the taking away the daily sacrifice , may not be set down on purpose to be a guide to us , where to fix the epocha of the number days , supposing it also typical of years , and to indigitate to what time the antichristian pollution will reach , having once begun , and so point at the end of it , as the other does at the height of it . secondly , though the two numbers consist of indictions , yet there is no betterness in the remarker's way than in mr. mede's way , both because the beginning of constantine's indictions was about an hundred years before the epocha of the prophetical days , as is plain out of petavius and sigonius , so that they could give no aim at that epocha , and also that it is sufficient that they point to the times in which these indictions were in use , that no man might fansie them to be literal days , not prophetical ; and also , that may give a latitude of compute by quindenaries of fifteens , and not bind the event of the prophecy to a strict prophetical day . thirdly , nor does this way give a much more agreeable answer to the question , v. . [ what shall be the end of these things ? ] which does fecond the question v. . for the question , v. . is manifestly of all the wonders from v. . of the precedent chapter , to v. . of this . upon all this matter the question is put , v. . how long shall it be to the end of these wonders ? amongst which is the new ierusalem intimated , and the first and second resurrection . and therefore the answer of him that sweareth by him that liveth for ever , reacheth to that extent , and endeth with — all these things shall be finished ; that is , even to the second resurrection . and this i think is a very pertinent and satisfactory answer to that question , which was , how far to the end of those wonders ? and his answer is , to the end of the world. as i noted above , that daniel said , the time appointed was long . but here now , v. . daniel , to whom it was said , v . but thou , o daniel , shut up the words , and seal the book even to the time of the end ( which phrase denotes the fourth monarchy ) is made to ask this question ( understanding nothing by the question of one of the two angels , and the answer of palmoni thereto ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . what the latter part of those times which was called the time of the end ? for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies . which place , because our english renders , what shall be the end of these things ? the remarker understands what shall be the end or success of them : which is a mistake . but the genuine sense is , what is the latter part of those times , which are called the time of the end ? by which is understood the roman monarchy . and then , though daniel was no wiser than he was before , who is bid to go his way , for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end ( whether you take it in a more restrict sense , or in the same it is taken , v. . ) yet those two numbers from the epocha given , v. , . do most plainly and satisfactorily answer to the question , and evidently point at those latter times of the time of the end , or last monarchy , which is the roman , viz. at the time , and times , and half a time , which by s. paul are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the latter times of the last . which is of very weighty use for the discovery of the times of antichrist . but the remarker's way leads the heedless into groundless hopes of such an acceleration of the millennium , as to any prudent and knowing man must seem incredible . and flesh and bloud had rather be blessed by reaching into the prosperous times of the church on earth , than be peculiarly happy in the other state , by suffering martyrdom here . fourthly , i deny that the end of the days does signifie a time wherein the scattering of the power of the holy people will be ended , forasmuch as the vials follow the days , and do not precede them , nor are they poured out till the rising of the witnesses . and therefore , fifthly , it is impossible that these two numbers in this chapter , from the epocha of the reign of antichrist should reach into those times wherein the glory of the millennium is more advanced . and , sixthly , i say it is a mere surmise of the remarker to make the proper millennial state so dim and imperfect , and contrary to the description in the apocalypse , which makes the state of the new ierusalem so soon as it is settled exceeding glorious . when once the new ierusalem is descended , and the millennium begun , the glory will be so excellent , that it is not probable that the intention of it will increase but onely the extension , more people being proselyted to it . and , seventhly and lastly , as for that place of zechary , chap. . , . if it respect the state of the christian church , as grotius declines it , yet how does it appear that it is understood of the millennial times , and not rather of the times before ; the millennium being the latter part of the day of the gospel , and therefore more fitly answering to the evening , and also a time of much more light , glory and prosperity than the times before , which may answer to those words of the prophecy , but in the evening it shall be light . but if it must respect the millennium , as the remarker would have it , the most natural sense of the original makes plainly against him . for , v. . the hebrew runs thus : and it shall come to pass in that day , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , non erit lux pretiosa ; that is , there will be no rarity or scarcity of light , as in winter time , when days are short , and the sun seldom appears by reason of clouds , and makes but a short stay when he does , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , nec erit gelu . nor will there be any frost . wherefore in this sixth verse of chap. . of zechary , the state of the church is compared to a perpetual summer . but in the next verse the description advanceth higher , and taketh away the vicissitudes of days and nights , according to the description of the millennial state , apoc. . . and . . where it is expresly said , there shall be no night there . so here , v. . verbatim out of the hebrew . and there shall be one day known to the lord , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , no day and no night , ( that is no natural day nor night which are parts of the nychthemeron , which therefore castellio thus paraphraseth , perpetua lux erit , says he , nulla diei noctisque vicissitudine ) and it shall come to pass that at evening time there shall be light ; that is to say , whenas other days close in darkness , and are parts of a nychthemeron ( which is the proper notion of a natural day to be part of the nychthemeron ) it shall not be so here , but even the evening-tyde , all of it shall be light . so castellio that excellent hebrew critick on the place : which is a lively portraiture of the laodicean state , whose light will not fail them , but zeal and heat will be wanting , which is the condition of the evening-light . it is not so hot and vigorous as that of the day . and the laodicean church is blamed for her lukewarmness . the sixth verse therefore in this place of zechary is a description of the times immediately precedent to the millennium properly so called , the latter end of verse the seventh , of the times subsequent thereto , viz. to the millennium , which is the laodicean state . and thus the more cloudy and misty conceits of the remarker vanish , and mr. mede's interpretation of these numbers is found the onely sound and solid account . an answer to several remarks upon dr. henry more his apology . ( wherein with the right placing of the vials , the late reformation begun by luther , &c. is demonstrated to be the rising of the witnesses . ) written by s. e. mennonite , and published in english by the answerer : together with his answers thereunto . london , printed by m. f. for walter kettilby . . remarks upon the apology , &c. remark upon pag. , . the comparison here betwixt daniel's visions , and the visions of the opened book , and the inference therefrom is an elaborate , insignificant argument . a for the two first visions of daniel running through the four monarchies , and the transition from each monarchy to the other , being here called ioints , if a succeeding vision prophesie but of the three first of those monarchies it must of necessity end in the third joint , and does not doe it out of relation to , or contexture with , the precedent prophecies , and so can be no example whereon to infer the like is to be done in the visions of the opened book farther than there is the same necessity of it . for the said three visions were received at such divers times , and in such divers manners ( and the first is but an interpretation of nebuchadnezzar's dream ) that they have no more relation to each other , than the prophecies of other prophets on the same subjects have to daniel's visions . b but as to the conceived ioints in the opened book , which are imagined to answer to those instanced in daniel's visions , the first is a mere imagination . for the measuring the inward court , and not measuring the outward court ( from which the distinction of symmetral and asymmetral ages is taken ) do synchronize , as is shewed in remarks on the revelation , chap. . c the second ioint i agree to be so , viz. as it is a transition from the antichristian reign to the millennial state ; but then say , that the vials do not begin but end in that ioint . which does therefore the better agree with the instance in daniel , viz. of the partial vision ending in the third joint . d yet is there no need of such partial visions beginning or ending in such a ioint . for the three admonishing angels , rev. . is a like vision which does neither . e the great pains taken to prove that the vials do not begin with the trumpets might have been spared . for that without scruple will be agreed . but no use can be made of it for the purpose designed , viz. that they must then begin at the end of the trumpets ( which is the next joint ) for the trumpets belonging to the sealed , and the vials to the opened book , and they being distinct series of prophecies , which have no contexture or relation betwixt them ( as is aforesaid of daniel's visions ) though they synchronize , the vials in the one are not to be guided by any ioints in the other series for their beginning or ending . f nor as i have shewed is their beginning or ending in such a ioint needfull , though i have agreed they end in such a ioint . ans. it would amaze any man of an ingenuous spirit to observe how strangely the remarker in the very entrance shuffles and flunders to evade the force of the plain and orderly reasoning of the expositor , which in brief is this . in the book of daniel it is to be noted , that after the two first visions which synchronize , and contain the representation of the four monarchies ( the conterminations of which monarchies , that is , the times wherein the precedent ends , and the subsequent begins , are as so many eminent ioints in the two visions ) there is a vision that begins short of the time of the two former , and is added for a more full representation of some things to fall out in some of the monarchies of the former . and that it also commences with the first of the three eminent ioints of the former . it is noted also in the two first visions of the opened book in the apocalypse , that begin from the same epocha , and end in the same times , and have two eminent ioints , as daniel's had three , viz. the first the contermination of the antemedial synchronals with the medial , which is the same with the contermination of the sixth seal with the seventh seal or first trumpet . the other the contermination of the medial synchronals with the post-medial , which is the same with the contermination of the sixth trumpet with the seventh , the time of the risen witnesses and partial fall of the city . it is noted , i say , that after these two synchronizing visions , there is a vision of the vials that comes short of the epocha of the two former visions , as that other does in daniel . and therefore the apocalypse being such an imitation of daniel as it is , and they such a mutual key to one another , it is reasonable to conclude , that this third vision in the opened book , whose epocha falls short of the two former ; that its epocha , i say , must be placed in one of the two eminent ioints of the two foregoing visions , and so , as it may serve the like end as that third vision in daniel does , viz. more fully to represent the matters belonging to some space of time in the foregoing visions . the remarker himself is agreed that it is not to be placed in the first ioint . wherefore its natural place is at the second joint after the risen witnesses and partial fall of babylon . for upon this it is presently said , the second wo is past , viz. the second wo-trumpet , or sixth trumpet . this is the first argument of the expositor , the following arguments are to be considered afterwards . now what says the remarker to this ? a if a succeeding vision , says he , prophesie but of the three first of these monarchies , it must of necessity end in the third joint , and does not doe it out of any relation to , or contexture with , the precedent prophecies , &c. but i answer , that the succeeding vision does not prophesie of the three first of these monarchies , but of the second and third , and for that very purpose begins at the first joint , viz. with the persian monarchy : nor does end at the third ioint , but with the affairs of antiochus epiphanes , they respecting the church of the iews , for whose cause this succeeding vision is subjoined ; but the line of this part , viz. of the third kingdom continued near an hundred years longer , though i will not gainsay but in some considerable sense the times of antiochus epiphanes may be said to be in the close of the third kingdom . but it was the beginning at the first ioint for the passing to the second , and to the third kingdom , which was the design . so that we see that this succeeding vision is in mere subserviency to the fuller illustrating some affairs touching the church that were to be in the times of the third monarchy , and therefore has relation to the foregoing visions as a supplement to some parts thereof , and thence is a fit example whereon to infer the like was to be done in the visions of the opened book . and that which he farther adds of these three visions being received at such divers times , and in such divers manners , one being but an interpretation of nebuchadnezzar's dream , how weak and impertinent is this ? as if that wisedom which inspired daniel , could not so attemperate his visions that they might be thus subservient one to another . and besides , they are actually placed thus in daniel's book of prophecies as the other three are in the apocalypse . so altogether nothing is it , that the remarker has hitherto alledged . b but now , secondly , as to what he says of the first ioint in the two first visions in the opened book , that it is a mere imagination the inward and the outward court synchronizing , i have so fully confuted that fond conceit of his in my answer to his remarks on that place , that i need onely here remind him of it . nothing can be more rude and absurd than that . c thirdly , as for the second ioint , it is most certainly an authentick joint , whether the remarker will agree to it or no , and plainly demonstrated by mr. mede in his synchronisms , and solidly maintained by the expositor , nor to be denied by any one in his wits , it being the contermination of the medial synchronals with the post-medial , and of the sixth trumpet with the seventh ; but where the vials are o be placed is the thing in dispute , and consequently the beginning of the millennium properly so called . d fourthly , his arguing that there is no need that a partial vision should commence with some eminent ioint of the more general vision preceding , because the three admonishing angels is a like vision , and does not , is very infirm : forasmuch as that of the three admonishing angels is no partial vision in such a sense as the third vision in daniel is , and the vision of the vials , but merely part of a vision , viz. of the second vision of the opened book . and the first angel belongs to the medial times , the second to the enterance of the post-medial times , the joyfull annunciation of the fall of babylon respecting the fall of the city at the time of the rising of the witnesses , which was just at the close of the sixth trumpet , as i noted before . so that all that follows ( chap. . ) from vers . . to the end of the chapter , respects things or events after the rising of the witnesses . e fifthly , the expositor's pains in proving that the vials do not commence with the trumpets , is not mis-spent , because some learned men have been inclined to that opinion , and there are some shews and plausibilities for it . and sixthly , the pains taken to remove the vials from the beginning of the trumpets is not to place them at the end of the trumpets , ( for the end of the trumpets is no ioint at all , the seventh trumpet reaching to the end of the world ) but it is to place them in the second ioint of the two foregoing visions , viz. at the contermination of the medial and post-medial synchronals , which is the same with the contermination of the sixth and seventh trumpet . at the close of the former of which the witnesses rise , and the city of babylon falls in part . so that if they be placed at the second ioint of the two first visions of the opened book , it is all one as the placing them in the second ioint of the vision of the sealed book . and besides , to say , the trumpets belonging to the sealed book , and the vials belonging to the opened book , and they being distinct prophecies , have no relation one to another , is a wonderfull groundless assertion , and point blank against the express indication of the spirit of prophecy in the apocalypse , who referreth the rising of the witnesses and the partial fall of babylon to the exitus of the second wo-trumpet or sixth trumpet : and yet the rising of the witnesses is part of a vision of the opened book ; and what correspondency things have prophesied of in the sealed book , to those prophesied of in the opened book , it were easie to shew , but it would take up too much time . f and seventhly and lastly , what the remarker will call needfull , i know not , but that the placing of a partial vision should be at some eminent knot of the more general vision preceding , is wonderfully natural and congruous , which is the first argument of the expositor for placing the vials at the second ioint of the preceding visions , when the first would not do . but besides this , there are four arguments more added , which we will now see how well the remarker can evade , in his next remark , which is as follows . pag. , . the imagined slight intimations , saith he , of the seven vials , rev. , , &c. is a very slight fancy . a the nations anger is that for which the wrath of god is there said to come upon them ( and not their anger or exulcerate rage at the reformation , which anger is made to be the first vial , but cannot be so , as is shewed in remarks ) viz. whereas the devil having great wrath on his being cast down from heaven , went thereon to make war with the saints , the beasts warring against them , by his instigation ( persecuting not onely with death , but with all other subtile and mischievous antichristian practices ) is that anger of the nations ; for which it is said , thy wrath is come , viz. to reward them as they had rewarded the saints , chap. . . and to destroy them that destroy'd the earth . so that this wrath cannot be applied to the third or any other vial , but to the whole judgment of god , which ruined the antichristian party , and inflicted due punishment on them . b the temple of god does signifie ( as is shewed in remarks ) the emperours embracing the christian profession , so far is it from being applicable to any of the vials ; nor does appear any reason why it should be applied to the sixth vial , unless because it is supposed the iews will then be converted . which if they be , they will be then no more concerned in the temple of god and ark of the covenant than the christians . the earthquake and great hail supposed to belong to the seventh vial , signifies ( as is shew'd in remarks ) the great revolutions in the world , by shaking the powers thereof , which would be caused by christianity being autorized by the emperours for the religion of the empire . c the acclamations in heaven at the seventh trumpet are no ways applicable to the rising of the witnesses , and nor they nor the doxology of the elders do answer to the triumphal song , chap. . which indeed is no such song , as is shewed in remarks . and lastly , all those thanksgivings signifie a much more flourishing state of christ's kingdom by the absolute vanquishing of his enemies , and subduing them than can be at the rising of the witnesses . d the fansied glances , chap. . at the things of the fourth , fifth , sixth and seventh vials are as slight conceits as the said slight intimations . but it was advisedly done to omit instancing in the words that do so glance , because it is so hard to doe it . e nor does it appear of what use the so glancing at the affairs of the vials here , and the slight intimations of them aforesaid at the seventh trumpet can be , save onely what they are invented for , viz. to give colour to that crazy conceit of placing the vials within the seventh trumpet . but there is so little or nothing said for them , that they are not worth saying so much against them ; especially i having given such account of the same scriptures in my remarks as will sufficiently shew the vanity of those conceits , if it be not apparent enough already . f which account does make the th verse ( which is supposed to glance at the second ioint of the prophecy , ) to respect a much higher time , viz. the revolting of the waldenses . and the following to the th ( which is supposed to glance at the fourth vial ) to respect all the vials as a monition . to which also belongs the next verse , viz. v. . which is supposed ( though no appearance why ) to glance at the fifth vial. and the said account does make from v. . to v. . ( which is supposed to glance at the sixth vial ) to respect the rising of the witnesses , and the consequences thereof . and from v. . to the end of the chapter , ( which is supposed to glance at the seventh vial ) to respect the preparation of the antichristian party to the great battel at the seventh vial , and the seventh trumpet and the issue thereof . g and as to the adding the visions of the vials in chap. . and . as a supplement to chap. . though it be said here thereof , we may be sure it is sound and right ; yet it is as groundless as any thing i have spoken to , as appears by my remarks ; and what i have said , or shall say , against the placing the vials within the seventh trumpet . ans. the next argument of the expositor for the placing the vials within the seventh trumpet , is , that placing them at the second ioint , their position will be such , that they will more fully illustrate those times of the foregoing visions , in which things are more scantly and obscurely represented , namely the times after the rising of the witnesses , chap. . . but are such as relate to some of the vials . as the wrath of the nations to the first , the wrath of god to the third , the ark of the covenant to the sixth , and the earthquake and great hail to the seventh . and there is no question but the plagues of the vials are vials of wo to the beast , and any one unprejudiced will say that they are the plagues the third wo-trumpet or the seventh trumpet is charged with . for presently after the rising of the witnesses and fall of the city it is said , the second wo is past , and behold the third wo cometh quickly , and there is nothing but the acclamations in heaven and the doxology of the elders interposed , as an interlude , and the vision goes on . what then can it go on to , but to some manner of description of the third wo , which was to come quickly , which are the plagues contained in the third wo-trumpet ? for upon the saying the second wo is past , and the third wo cometh quickly , it is likewise said immediately , and the seventh angel sounded , &c. wherefore what can be expected after that short interlude , but some kind of description of the plagues of the third wo-trumpet , which is the seventh trumpet , which i say are the vials , which are more obscurely and defectuously here intimated . the first the intoxicating cup of wrath , which dementates men , and infatuates their counsels . this is hinted at by that short passage , and the nations were angry . which anger , according to the sense of all expositors , is their anger and envy conceived at the rising of the witnesses and fall of the city , and exquisitely antithetal to the acclamations in heaven , and doxology of the elders . these things strike so powerfully and strongly to raise this sense , that a man must be very dull and stupid , or wilfully blind , that does not perceive it , and readily agree to it . a and yet the remarker does not stick to say , that the nations anger is that for which the wrath of god is there said to come upon them , and not their anger or exulcerate rage at the reformation , which anger is made to be the first vial , but cannot be so , as is shew'd in remarks , &c. but , i say , this hellish envy and immoderate rage , they being given up to evil spirits to actuate them , that this is the very first vial poured upon them , i have sufficiently proved against his remarks in its proper place , and therefore need not here repeat it . and [ thy wrath is come ] refers to the revenge on these bloud-suckers , who by this intoxication will make themselves obnoxious thereto . which therefore is rightly referred to the third vial. but for one to bring in by head and shoulders here the wrath of the dragon in another vision , and in that part thereof which respects things a-many hundred years before , yea above a thousand , when there is so plainly before his face a fresh and notorious occasion of new conceived wrath , is to resolve to say any thing rather than profess himself to have nothing to say . b secondly , as to what relates to the sixth vial ; here he runs into the like extravagance , interpreting the temple of god in heaven of the emperours embracing the christian profession , applying to this part of the vision , which respects things after the rising of the witnesses , ( as is manifestly proved against his remarks ) that which happened above a thousand years before their rising . and for that significant symbol of the conversion of the iews , which judicious interpreters of the apocalypse conceive will be about the sixth vial ; what a puerile peice of sophistry is that to put it off by saying , they will then be no more concerned in the ark of the covenant , than the christians ; as if it could not belong to them then , because they would be christians ? but it may signifie notwithstanding that god will then within the compass of the sixth vial have an eye to his everlasting covenant he made with the iews , and so convert them to christianity . and it will be always true , that this was a prophetick type and prefiguration thereof , even when they are turned christians . and lastly , as to the earthquake and hail that does so palpably answer to the seventh vial ; that it really does so , and does not respect any revolutions upon the pagan emperours turning christians , i have in my answer to his remarks upon chap. . vers . . abundantly demonstrated . and therefore it must necessarily glance at the seventh vial. so that it being so plain , that the residue of this vision is a more imperfect signification of the things that the vision of the vials does more fully signifie , the argument holds good that the vials must be placed at the beginning of the seventh trumpet or second ioint of the two first visions of the opened book , that they may do the same service to those two visions that the third vision in daniel does to the two precedent visions there . c and it is worth the observing , that as the vision of the pouring forth the vials themselves , is much more full than the slighter account of those affairs in this present vision , chap. . so the preamble to the vision of the pouring out of the vials is much more large than the preamble to their more obscure compendium here . and farthermore , that as those acclamations in heaven , and doxology of the elders is upon some real overthrow of the babylonish party , and victory of the apostolick party , which are called the witnesses ; so the triumphal song of moses and the lamb must be upon the like victory , and i doubt not but the very same . the doxology of the elders is a song of thanksgiving plainly : we give thee thanks , o lord god almighty , because thou hast taken to thee thy great power , and hast reigned . to which answers the annunciation of the second angel , chap. . babylon is fallen , is fallen ( not will fall ) the great city ; of which a tenth part fell at the rising of the witnesses . and in the song of moses and the lamb it is said ; all nations shall come and worship before thee for thy judgments are made manifest , and this before the pouring out of the vials , viz. in that partial fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses . thus strongly do these three bind one with another , and one would think invincibly . but what says the remarker to this ? the acclamations in heaven at the seventh trumpet , are in no-wise applicable to the rising of the witnesses , and nor they nor the doxology of the elders do answer to the triumphal song , chap. . which indeed is no such song as is shew'd in remarks , &c. this is a mere sullen denying of a thing without giving any reason for it . that there should be acclamations in heaven upon the fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses , and ushered in with the sound of a trumpet , and yet should not be applicable thereto , is very humourously and shamelesly spoken . and i have produced reasons to prove that the doxology of the elders does answer to the song of moses and the lamb already , and the remarker none in his remarks , that this song of moses and the lamb is not a triumphal song . so that things are hitherto firm in themselves , and the remarker onely obstinate . but he comes in at last with this pretence , that the acclamations and doxology at the seventh trumpet are too great to be applied to the rising of the witnesses . to which may be added , that they being after the sounding of the seventh trumpet , are rather for the effects of it , than for the fruits of the close of the sixth , which is the rising of the witnesses . but as to the first ; he must be of a very niggardly gratitude that can think that either those acclamations in heaven or doxology of the elders exceed so illustrious a providence as the rising of the witnesses , wherein so many kingdoms , principalities and provinces became the kingdoms of our lord and of his christ ; nor is it said that all kingdoms then became his . so that the form of speech is strictly within compass : and yet these may be lookt upon but as the primitiae of what was after to accrew thereto , and so that indefinite assertion may be enlarged to what is comprized in future hope and expectation . and in answer to the second i say , the acclamations and doxology are not after the sounding of the seventh trumpet , but commence with it ; but the sounding is mentioned first for the better embellishing the cortex , it ushering in , as it were , those heavenly acclamations and doxology of the elders . and though they may glance at more enlarged hopes of future accessions , yet the principal object and occasion of this thanksgiving is the actual rising of the witnesses : and were it not so , this signal providence and illustrious victory would be without any doxology or thanksgiving , which is grosly absurd ; that there should be no shout nor sign of joy at such a surprizing providence as this , namely , at the reviving of the two witnesses when they had lain slain three days and an half in the streets of the city , nor at their ascending in a cloud into heaven in the view of all the people , the tenth part of their city , that slew them , falling in the mean time by an earthquake , and many thousands of their enemies buried in the ruins . how incredible , how indecorous is it that so happy a catastrophe of the witnesses sufferings as this , should pass without a plaudite ? therefore it is a sensless thing not to make the rising of the witnesses and the fall of the city the object of those acclamations , and of the doxology of the elders , and contrary to the usual mode of the apocalypse , that ever closeth the good success of the church with some indications of joy and thankfulness , as chap. . vers . , . chap. . vers . . and again vers . . which concludes with a feast of joy and thanksgiving for the victory of the rider of the white horse . d and now to go on , mindless , in what follows , of the remarker's haughty verbosity the fruits of an heated melancholy and a crazied fancy , which makes him reproach the most sound and usefull truths . i will onely take notice of what is most material he says on this present argument . he says it was advisedly done of the expositor to omit instancing in the words that do so glance at the fourth , fifth , sixth and seventh vials , because it is so hard to doe it . but i answer , the expositor omitted it , because it is so easie for any one to doe , that reades his expositions of this part of this vision , chap. . and that of the vials , chap. . how these comport one with another , is manifest . for the mystical interpretation of the fourth vial shews in what a wretched and damnable condition they are in , that adhere to the papacy , their sad case being so manifest out of the word of god , which is the sun , a lamp unto our feet , and a light unto our paths . and this answers to vers . , , . of chap. . where eternal torment and damnation is denounced to them that worship the beast and his image , &c. and it is told in what unquietness of conscience they are in , that in the light of those times adventure to doe so . and for vers . . [ here is the patience of the saints ] ( that will not go against their consciences , but rather suffer ; ) that answers to that part of the fourth vial [ and men were scorched with great heat , and blasphemed the name of god ] which rage the mother of persecution does hugely well comport with the affliction of the saints , and the patience they are put to for that time . but under the fifth vial there is better news , especially from the political sense thereof , as if there would be some such change of affairs in the behalf of the evangelici , that the seat of the beast would grow unfrequented , and his kingdom considerably clouded and darkened , upon which sense therefore of the fifth vial the verse of chap. . may very well be thought to glance , [ blessed are the dead that dye in the lord , for their works do follow them ] i. e. the effect or success of their works and labours for the advancement of the kingdom of christ and the fall of antichrist . [ from henceforth ] from such a time of the sardian interval , viz. under the fifth vial will the scales turn , and the evangelical power begin to be preponderant to the antichristian . now the sixth vial concerns the conversion of the iews haply with some other eastern people . how fitly therefore and plainly does the harvest , mentioned chap. . . glance at the sixth vial ? for conversion to the gospel is reaping the harvest , as our saviour himself has used the similitude , ioh. . . and lastly , what an assured complication of time and affairs there is betwixt the vision of the wine-press , the seventh vial and the battel of the rider on the white horse , is so fully made out by the expositor , that no man that has read what he has writ , can doubt of it . e farthermore , whereas the remarker says it does not appear , of what use the so glancing at the affairs of the vials here , and the slight intimations of them aforesaid at the seventh trumpet can be , save onely to give colour to the placing of the vials in the seventh trumpet ; i say that that use alone were abundantly sufficient for the spirit of prophecy to frame these two first visions of the opened book so , as that by those intimations and glances not onely colour , but sound evidence may be given that all the vials are placed within the seventh trumpet . for from hence it will infallibly follow , that they are to be placed after the rising of the witnesses , and that the rising of the witnesses was the late reformation begun by luther , &c. which is of vast consequence to be understood and acknowledged , that god may have condign praise and thanks for so great a mercy to his church ; that broils and stirs of phantastical and fanatical people may be prevented , who are apt to be encouraged to attempt innovations upon that false conceit that the rising of the witnesses is near , and that then forsooth , that very reformation will be indeed , that is the true rising of the witnesses . whenas most certainly the vision is accomplished already . it will also beget a just esteem of the present reformation , and make men with quiet of conscience and chearfulness of mind hold communion with the established national churches , which is good for all the reformed nations and kingdoms . and lastly , it will , whenas things shall appear so well constituted without , make men that have any sense of , or propension to religion , and a desire to excell therein , to look within themselves , and to use all their zeal and heat against those faults that are to be reformed within ; as pride , self-conceitedness , envy , wrathfulness , implacableness , censoriousness , covetousness , persidiousness , contemptuousness , malepertness against their betters , indulging the use of the creature , unconversableness , cavils against publick administration of affairs , and despising and speaking ill of them that be in autority , with whatever other vices they discover in themselves ; i say , they having no proper object without to exercise their zeal on , in reference to matters of religion , it will be more hopefull they will turn it inward against their own corruptions ; but now falsly fansying so much defect or corruption in the established religion and ecclesiastick constitutions , they are prone foolishly to imagine themselves saints , for their bitter inveying against the publickly constituted religion , and the administration of things there ; when as they lye cold enough to that necessary inward reformation , and are little sensible of it . wherefore , as i said , this use alone of the intimations and glances of the two first visions , on the vials , namely that we may thereby be assured that the vials are all to be placed within the seventh trumpet , is sufficient that the frame of those two visions should be so contrived . but questionless there are other uses also , which would be too long to note . these intimations and glances give the better assurance of the sense of the vials . as in the sixth vial for example , which interpreters expound of the conversion of the iews , understanding them by the kings of the east . but there is nothing to signifie conversion there . but in this glance here , by the mentioning of harvest , conversion is implied . and if any one will say , there 's nothing signifying the iews yet , i say the intimation in the first vision respecting the sixth vial , is the ark of the covenant which must needs point at the iews . but i cannot insist on these things . f now let us see what account the remarker gives of those verses of this second vision , which the expositor says , do glance at the four last vials . but he begins a verse higher , viz. with the th verse , which , saith he , is supposed to glance at the second ioint of the prophecy , viz. that voice of the angel , babylon is fallen , is fallen , &c. this , saith he , relates to the revolt of the waldenses , &c. which is plainly to make the angel pronounce a gross untruth . for babylon was not then fallen , but stood till about four hundred years after they appeared . but in the first vision , at the close of the sixth trumpet , where the witnesses are said to rise , there the city is said to fall in part , and by the tenour of the second vision , babylon there can be fallen but in part , the affairs of the last vials being so plainly glanced at after the mention of babylon's fall . so that the fall of that city in part , chap. . . and the fall of babylon , chap. . . do more fully expound one another , the latter plainly declaring that city to be babylon , and the former telling us the fall is but partial : which the glances on the last vials in the latter vision do fitly agree with . so that the fall of the city in the first vision must of necessity be the fall of babylon in the second . and indeed what can it refer to but that ? and who but an exorbitant humourist , that being mentioned in the first vision , can imagine any other meant but it in the second ? especially if he consider that these two first visions of the opened book comprized , the former in chap. . the latter in the , and chapters , begin from the same epocha , and end in the same time , concluding with the seventh vial ; and that they have parts all along correspondent one with another , and thereby give to one another mutual light . wherefore as there is war , viz. betwixt the beast and the witnesses in the first vision , so there is betwixt the beast and the saints or souldiers of the lamb in the second ; and as there is an actual victory of the witnesses , and a fall of the great city in the first vision , so there must be some thing actual in the second vision , that must answer to so notable an occurrence in the first . and what is this but the second angel's annunciation of the fall of babylon , which both answers to the fall of the great city in the first vision , and also gives light thereto by plainly shewing it is babylon that is there meant , and that babylon's fall is but in part ? babylon , chap. . shews that the fall of the great city , chap. . is the fall of babylon , and the fall of the great city , chap. . being but in part , shews that the fall of babylon , chap. . is but in part also , viz. the tenth part of the city . thus do these two correspondent passages of these visions give mutual light one to another . and there being nothing in the whole second vision that answers to that notable occurrence in the first , but this ; babylon in the second vision and the fall thereof must answer to the fall of the great city in the first , and the rising of the witnesses ; that is to say , the city is in part , actually fallen in the first vision , therefore ( prophecy being an anticipatory history , and these two prophetical visions corresponding one with another ) it ought to be , and is so in the second . what can be more clear ? and therefore the city fallen in the first vision being at the close of the sixth trumpet , babylon fallen in the second vision , must be also at the close of the sixth trumpet , and at the rising of the witnesses ; which was the thing to be demonstrated . now let us proceed to the remarker's account of those verses of the second vision , which the expositor says glance at the four last vials . the , , , and th verses , which glance at the fourth vial , he will have to respect all the vials as a monition . but if merely they did so , being the effusion of the vials is for the confusion of the beast , and for the victory of the saints , it would not then be said , here is the patience of the saints , &c. but , here is their ioy and exultation . so that this is a confounded account , and absonous , the expositor's distinct , that makes it respect chiefly the fourth vial , not all of them alike , and is agreeable to the nature of the thing . and the same may be said of the th verse , that the expositor's account is more distinct that makes it relate to the fifth vial for the reason above alledged , that the sardian church will emerge then out of some more than ordinary affliction which it was under , during the fourth vial , which affliction is predicted or menaced in the epistle to that church . but all this is lost in the confused account of the remarker . the , and th verses , which respect the sixth vial , he will have to respect the rising of the witnesses , which is a thing plainly impossible , it having been demonstrated , and will be still farther , that all the vials are within the seventh trumpet after the rising of the witnesses ; and it was more particularly even now proved , that the fall of babylon in this vision mentioned , synchronizeth with the fall of the city mentioned in the former vision , and with the rising of the witnesses ; and therefore what things are prefigured in these , and verses , must be after the rising of the witnesses . and by the bye i will here note , the fall of babylon synchronizing , as hath been proved , with the fall of the great city , chap. . and the remarker making the third angel a premonitor to all the vials , it necessarily follows , from what i have proved , and from what he himself asserts , that all the vials follow the fall of the great city and rising of the witnesses . the , , and last verses , which glance at the seventh vial , he will have to respect the preparation of the antichristian party to the great battel at the seventh vial , and the issue thereof . and why not , i pray you , the battel it self also ? so that here the remarker , ( if he would speak out ) and the expositor do agree , and he , as well as the expositor , makes the second vision end with the seventh vial , as it is plain the first vision does , which ends with an earthquake and great hail , which in the seventh vial are said to be hailstones of a talent weight , which are great indeed . the first of the four arguments mentioned at the beginning , viz. that the placing of the vials at the second ioint of the two first visions does illustrate the remainders of those two visions , several passages of the said remainders respecting several of the vials , and receiving light therefrom , and also giving light thereto , being thus unexceptionably and irrefutably maintained , we will proceed to the three remaining . the expositor's second reason for placing the seven last plagues , which are those of the vials , after the sixth trumpet , or in the second ioint of the abovesaid visions is this . the six trumpets are a set or number of plagues , and mentioned before these of the vials , which is another set of plagues , which whole set are called the last plagues ; wherefore this whole set must be placed after the other , unless some necessary reason withstand . the answering this second argument , the remarker either heedlesly forgets , or discreetly declines , it being undeniable but the natural position is that which the expositor contends for . the expositor's third argument is this , that though in reference to all the six plagues of the trumpets , the seven last plagues are rightly so called , yet the two later of the six trumpets being called wo-trumpets , that is to say , plague-trumpets in a special manner , and that inflicted for the pagano-christian idolatry in the empire , of which the western empire did not repent upon the destruction of the eastern for that wickedness , that the seven plagues may be called in a more special manner the seven last plagues , in reference to the two preceding plague-trumpets , which immediately follow the fourth trumpet ; and that upon these two later plague-trumpets being past , the seven last plagues or vial-plagues with the last plague-trumpet should succeed , and be inflicted upon these impenitent idolaters of the west part of the empire . and the text says expresly , the second wo is past , that is , the second plague is , viz. the plague of the euphratean horse-men , and the third wo or plague cometh quickly , and then the third or last plague-trumpet sounds ; and what can it breathe out but the seven last plagues , which is the title of the vials ? this is the expositor's third argument , and a plain and sound one too , and such as the remarker had the discretion to say nothing to . and lastly , for making the vision of the vials a supplement to chapter the eleventh , it is a sound and unexceptionable conclusion from premisses the remarker can never enervate , nor is there any thing in his remarks which i have not fully answered , nor hath he said any thing , nor will be ever able to say any thing which will disprove the placing of the vials in the seventh trumpet , whereby that vision may be understood to be a less fit supplement to the vision in the eleventh chapter . pag. . a whenas it is argued that all the seven vials must be placed within the seventh trumpet , because they follow a great victory and triumph over the beast , which must needs be the rising of the witnesses , &c. there is no such victory and triumphal song precedent to the vials as is supposed ( as is shew'd in remarks ) but onely a song of admiring and glorifying god for his judgments to be executed by the vials , and this sung by the victors over the beast during the antichristian reign , viz. by the sealed company of the lamb , &c. b and whereas the fall of babylon , chap. . . and of the city , chap. . . are made to synchronize with the rising of the witnesses , and to signifie the victory gained by them , how groundless this conceit is , see remarks on the said chap , . . and chap. . . yet this is p. . called invincible evidence ; and it 's said there , that nothing can be more demonstrable , whenas nothing is there demonstrated , but onely , how the weakness of arguments to place the vials within the seventh trumpet , is supplied with strength of confidence and imagination . c but whereas the doxology , chap. . , . and the joyfull annunciation of babylon's fall , chap. . . and the triumphal song , chap. . are made to fall in together , and signifie the same song of triumph ; this is inconsistent with the making the said chap. . . to signifie the same with chap. . . which precedes the seventh trumpet , whenas the doxology follows it . d and whereas sardis is said to signifie a song of ioy , and to fall in with the said three songs , it signifies also a remnant , to which sense of the word the epistle seems chiefly to allude . so that the harmonious coincidency that is imagined of all these supposed triumphal songs , is no better than the clinking of the bells , as one thinketh . ans. the second and third argument of the expositor ; s. e. thought fit to take no notice of , as was observed in our answer to the foregoing remark . a but here in the beginning of this he vouchsafes to consider his fourth argument , viz. that all the seven vials must be placed within the seventh trumpet , because they follow a great victory and triumph over the beast , which must needs be the rising of the witnesses , &c. to which s. e. boldly answers ; there is no such victory and triumphal song precedent to the vials , as is supposed ( as is shewed in remarks ) but onely a song of admiring and glorifying god for his judgments to be executed , by the vials , and this sung by the victors over the beast , during the antichristian reign , viz. by the sealed company , with the lamb , &c. this is stoutly to deny a thing , but here is no reason produced for the denial ; and what is pretended in the remarks , i have there shewn the invalidity thereof . and since , in the maintaining the first of the four arguments , pag. . l. . i have abundantly proved that as well the song of moses and the lamb , as the doxology of the elders , and the annunciation of the fall of babylon is upon an actual victory and judgments of god on the antichristian party . and again have demonstrated pag. . that the fall of babylon , chap. . and the fall of the tenth part of the city is the same , and consequently that babylon's fall there is in the close of the sixth trumpet ; and therefore the residue of that vision glancing at several of the vials , as has been proved , it 's plain that not onely the vials follow the sixth trumpet , but that the song of moses and the lamb , that immediately precedes the vials , is a joyfull acknowledgment of a real victory over the antichristian party in a political sense , as well as that annunciation of the angel , that babylon is fallen , and the doxology of the elders upon the rising of the witnesses . which annunciation of the angel , and doxology of the elders a more brief and compendious adumbration of the vials doth follow . and therefore as these parts are the same with the vials , though in a contracted way , so the annunciation of the angel and doxology of the elders are conceived to be the same with the song of moses and the lamb , though in a more contracted way . in brief , the fall of babylon , chap. . being in the close of the sixth trumpet , as well as the rising of the witnesses , chap. . and a more compendious description of the vials immediately following each of them ; it is plain that the song of moses and the lamb prefixed before the vials , has a very fit and fresh object , the fall of babylon and the rising of the witnesses , and worth the praising and glorifying god for his judgments therein ; and it is said in the song , all nations shall come and worship before thee , for thy judgments are made manifest . again , the fall of babylon and the rising of the witnesses , cannot but imply a victory over the beast ; and there is in this song mention of those that had got the victory over the beast , and over his image , &c. thirdly , the fall of babylon is really the fall of aegypt , the pontifician power being denoted by both , and therefore the rising of the witnesses implies a deliverance from the yoke and bondage of that aegyptian pharaoh , and his overthrow in the red sea. and those that sing this song , are said to stand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is on the shoar of that sea that was converted into glass or ice , exod. . . while the israelites passed over , and to sing the song of moses the servant of god , &c. fourthly and lastly , the song is exquisitely framed to signifie a thanksgiving for a victory and deliverance actually obtained ; and therefore if we cannot be certain that it is for such an actual deliverance and victory , we can be certain of the sense of nothing . this , i hope , is invincible evidence , nor can any thing be more demonstrable , and may deserve better language than what the rude remarker gives , viz. that nothing is here demonstrated , but onely , how the weakness of arguments is supplied with strength of confidence and imagination . b and now for the fall of babylon synchronizing with the rising of the witnesses , there wants no new proof thereof here . what has been said already on this remark , proves it over and over again . and if any one will consult my answer on s. e. his remarks upon chap. . and chap. . it will be evident unto him , that what he says there signifies nothing to the invalidating this present position . so that it is a groundless boast of s. e. to make any such reference . c and for the next clause of this remark , i say , the expositor does not make chap. . . to signifie the same with chap. . . for this latter contains onely the fall of the great city , but the former the bringing the joyfull news of the fall of the great city or of babylon , which joyfull annunciation supposes what happens chap. . . and the annunciation of it , it self follows in order of time after that accident , as well as the acclamations in heaven , or doxology of the elders . d and now lastly , for that boyish clause of s. e. so grave a divine as he may seem to be from his skill in the holy tongue , whereby he is able to note , that sar in sardis may as well signifie a remnant as a song ; though it be but a childish chiming piece of wit of his thus to allude to that old proverb , as the fool thinketh , so the bell clinketh ; yet to give him his due , he shews himself a man of no small judgment in the manner of his application , he omitting the mention of fool , and so closely reserving that title to himself . in which that he has done himself all imaginable right , i shall prove in that he has so fondly substituted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies reliquiae , for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies canticum in the aetymological account of the word sardis . for his reasoning here is wonderfull weak and sorry . for first , though sar in sardis signifies as well a remnant as a song , yet it signifying both , and the latter sense complying so well with the joyfull annunciation of the angel , with the acclamations in heaven and doxology of the elders , and with the song of moses the servant of god , and of the lamb , which all respect the commencement of the sardian church , the expositor had most solid and unexceptionable reason to make choice of that sense of sar in sardis that comported so manifestly with the song of moses and those other significations of ioy upon the fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses , and the commencing of the sardian interval of the church the late happy reformation , so many strings drawing and tyeing us to that determinate sense rather than any other . secondly , suppose sar to signifie remnant , how will he rid himself of the latter part of the word , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , dis , which signifies ioy. so that this remnant will be a remnant of ioy however , or a joyfull remnant . who therefore cannot but break forth into doxologies , praises and thanksgivings for so great a deliverance ? it would be a very sensless and mute remnant , if it were not so . but being so , there is a real agreement and harmony betwixt even this etymon of sardis , and those songs and doxologies above mentioned . but thirdly and lastly , to make sar in sardis to signifie reliquiae or a remnant , in reference to the emerging of the sardian church upon the rising of the witnesses and the fall of babylon is an apert repugnancy or gross nonsense , those kingdoms and principalities then gained by christ out of the hands of antichrist being the primitiae of his acquists by his wars and victories , not the reliquiae , and a pledge of greater accessions to his dominion to be made hereafter . so that this sense of sar , which s. e. would have , is utterly unapplicable to the church of sardis . and therefore must , as the expositor would have it , signifie canticum , not reliquiae , and sardis [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] a song of ioy , or ioy breaking out into singing . so that this exception of s. e. is so very slight and sorry , that the grave divine seems to have been ( in some more freakish fit ) allured thereto , merely that he might vent his boyish wit of thinking and clinking , with which he seems as much tickled as a squirrel with the musick she makes in her wire-cage , with bells hanging over it . pag. . a whereas it 's said here , that as mr. mede has placed the vials , onely the seventh followeth the sixth trumpet ; he hath placed all of them within the sixth trumpet . b for the bohemian war on the suffering of iohn huss was many years after the taking of constantinople by the turks , at which the sixth trumpet must commence , if not sooner . c so that though onely the seventh vial follows the expiring of the sixth trumpet , yet all of them follow the commencement of it . d and whereas it s argued that all the seven vials must be after the seventh trumpet , because they are called the seven last plagues ; e it 's a strange crippling the sense of the words , to make them serve the end designed . but ( as it 's said in remarks ) they are most properly called the last plagues in respect of the precedent plagues of the opened book , viz. those signified by the monitions of the two precedent angels , chap. . and the plagues the witnesses smote the earth with , chap. . yet also with respect to the trumpets . but it 's enough to denominate them the last plagues , if they be the last series of plagues , though there be a former series of plagues unexpired when they began . ans. this remark abounds with mistakes . for , first , a mr. mede has not placed all the vials within the sixth trumpet , as appears by all the printed schemes of his synchronisms that i have met with , in which the seventh vial is placed within the seventh trumpet . and besides , he says expresly in his little treatise of synchronisms , part . synchron . . phiala septima quae consummationis phiala est concurret cum initio tubae septimae . b secondly , he makes the bohemian war on the suffering of iohn huss to be many years after the taking of constantinople . whenas the taking of constantinople by sultan muhamed was in the year . but the bellum hussiticum in the year , above thirty years before . but supposing it was as many years after , how does this prove that mr. mede places all the vials within the sixth trumpet ? he indeed makes the hussites concerned in the first vial , but then the sooner the bellum hussiticum began , it were the more hopefull the vials would end within the sixth trumpet ; but the arguing from the later beginning of that war , i must confess passeth my reach to discern what the force of the reasoning is , and the other way would be very little to the purpose . c thirdly , he seems plainly to contradict himself in placing all the seven vials within the sixth trumpet before , and now letting the seventh vial commence after the expiring of the sixth trumpet . d fourthly , another gross mistake of the remarker is , in that he makes the expositor to argue for the placing of all the seven vials after the seventh trumpet , whenas he argues onely for the placing them after the sixth . for after the seventh is after the end of the world. but his arguing for the placing them after the sixth trumpet is very firm and strong . because all seven of them are called the seven last plagues , therefore not one of them is to begin and expire before any of the six trumpet-plagues , or the second wo-trumpet or plague-trumpet expire , else that vial that did so would not be one of the last plagues , this second plague-trumpet , suppose , being later than it , or expiring later than it . e and this is no crippling the sense of [ last ] but maintaining the proper sense thereof , and indeed the onely sense . for how can that be said in succession to be the last , that has a later , that outlasts it ? and that the seven last plagues respect the six first plagues , and consequently the first and second wo-trumpet or plague-trumpets properly so called , the remarker himself cannot deny . and the plagues of the six trumpets are the very plagues that the witnesses are said to smite the earth withall . and it is wonderfully weak and freakish to run to the vision in chap. . for a plague or two , in respect of which , the vials may be called the seven last plagues , viz. to those of the two precedent angels there . whenas the former of them is no plague-angel , that is , no inflicter of plagues , but a preacher of pure worship , and an advertizer of the approaching judgments of god against idolaters , and yet of no other than such as are comprized within the six first trumpets , the fifth and sixth particularly ; and the second a declarer of that actual judgment befallen babylon at the close of the sixth trumpet ; and then comes the third angel , whose voice , according to the remarker's own confession , is onely a premonition in general , touching all the seven vial-plagues . wherefore it is not a plague it self , and no more were the advertisements of the other two angels . but i have really proved it to be a glance at the plague of the fourth vial , and that after the fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses , which things are nothing to the tooth of s. e. the remarker , but exceeding true . and yet here i would have the remarker to observe how unawares he has stumbled upon truth , in making the third angel a premonitor of the seven last plagues , viz. the vial-plagues and them to be last in respect of the plagues the first and second angel give notice of , which undoubtedly are the plagues comprized within the intervals of the first and second wo-trumpets , or plague-trumpets , properly so called . the vial-plagues , i say , are according to him the last plagues , in respect of the plagues of those two trumpets , which is the very thing i contend for . pag. . there 's a stronger objection in remarks against the conceit of making the three days and an half of the witnesses lying dead , signifie the same with three times and an half , than the second here mentioned , viz. that the dwellers on earth are said to rejoice over them when they are slain , because they tormented them ( viz. by their prophesying and smiting the earth , &c. ) but they prophesied days , and during that time smote the earth with the plagues ; therefore this slaying of them , are rejoycing thereat for putting an end thereby to those torments , must be after the days . ans. the expositor's second objection is , which he answers in that page , that if the three days and an half be the same with the three times and an half , which is the same with the days or months , ( which are but various expressions of the three times and an half ) then the witnesses will be conceived to speak and prophesie while they lye dead . but now this stronger objection of the remarker , as he imagines it , which yet is not a jot stronger than the other , is this : that the dwellers on the earth are said to rejoice over the witnesses when they are slain , because they tormented them by their prophesying and smiting the earth , but they prophesied days , and during that time smote the earth with the plagues ; therefore this slaying of them and rejoicing thereat for putting an end thereby to those torments , must be after the days . this is a mighty argument with the remarker . but his confidence therein ariseth out of his ignorance of the nature of a prophetick henopoeia , which exhibits things done or suffered at several times and repeatedly , under one shew , or at once , as if it were one continued action or suffering . the repeated therefore killing of the witnesses , whether naturally or politically , as occasion was given , at several times is expressed by one killing of them ; the tormenting of the dwellers on earth by the witnesses prophesying at several times , is represented as one continued prophesying ; and the rejoicing of the dwellers upon earth for their being rid of the torments the vexatious prophesying of these witnesses put them to , being repeated as oft as the killing of the witnesses was , at which they found themselves at ease , toties quoties , is yet exhibited under the shew of one rejoicing . this is most certainly the nature of a prophetick henopoeia , to represent things thus , which the remarker not considering , imagines a great strength in an objection , which in reality has no strength at all . pag. . a as for the first reason for the said conceit of the witnesses , &c. apocalyptick nasuteness and sagacity will not lead one to hold an opinion against which there is such an unanswerable objection as i take that now mentioned to be . b as to the second reason , half a year in so short a time as three years and an half may be considerable to take notice of . and perhaps it may be also taken notice of in reference to the profanation of the temple by antiochus epiphanes , and shutting up the heavens from rain by eliah ( both which were for the same time ) and so may have partly a symbolical signification , viz. that this shall be a like short time of trial , and have the like happy issue . and in rev. . . there is a prediction that reacheth to an hour , which what sense is to be given thereof , this may admit of the same . and the time here signified seems to be like a short discord before a sweet close , and such a turn of affairs as was iulian's apostacy before the establishment of christianity in the empire , and as also was the relapse in queen mary's days before the settlement of the reformation ; so is this such a turn before the advancement of christianity to that ascendent-state it will gain over its enemies by the rising of the witnesses . as to the third reason , c this condition of the witnesses will not be so sad as is imagined , but they are likely to be very heart-whole , and to possess their souls in patience and comfortable hopes of what they have a prospect to be near at hand . and though it seems so incredible that they should recover in so short a time , yet it 's not so , that the commencement of their recovery should be within so short a time , but their rising and absolute recovery may continue long , though it will be to a much better condition than they were in before . d as to the fourth reason , the apologer himself , saith he , makes their political death to be represented by their mournfull prophesying days ; and it is also sufficiently exprest by the suffering none to buy or sell that hath not the mark of the beast , and also sufficiently implied by the cruel war against them . for to be sure they would not be admitted to any autority by those who were so enraged against them . c as to the fifth reason , this persecution will chiefly respect ( as i have said ) the strickt restraining of them from tormenting their adversaries as formerly . for having so prevailed as to be about to finish their mournfull testimony , and to begin to get the ascedent of their adversaries before this turn of affairs , their adversaries jealousie of them by reason thereof , will make them use all watchfull diligence to keep them under . f and this answer includes an answer to the sixth reason , if it need any . for this is a different war from the former , being not to destroy , but silence and subdue . ans. he comes now to the expositor's six arguments , whereby he would prove that the three days and an half that the witnesses are said to lye dead , are the same with the three times and an half , or days or months . and to the first , which is taken from the obvious answering of three integrals and an half , to three integrals and an half , viz. three days and an half to three times and an half , the same with the days and the months , he saith , that apocalyptick nasuteness and sagacity will not lead one to hold an opinion , against which there is such an unanswerable objection as the objection even now mentioned . but i have shew'd it to be so far from being an unanswerable objection , that i have fully answered it , with all ease and clearness imaginable . i will onely add , that peganius , a very learned and pious writer , is of that apocalyptick sagacity and nasuteness , that though he do not hold the witnesses already risen , but that they are to rise in the year , which is years hence , yet he makes the three days and an half to be the same with the three times and an half or days . b as for his answer to the expositor's second reason , ( which is , that the affectation of predicting to the curiosity of half a year is improbable ) it is manifold . first , that half a year in so short a time as three years and an half , may be considerable . secondly , that it may be taken notice of in reference to the profanation of the temple by antiochus epiphanes , and shutting up the heavens from rain by eliah , and may be a symbol of the short continuance of the trial , and the like happy issue . thirdly , that there is a prediction , rev. . . that reacheth to an hour , which what sense may be given thereof , this may admit of the same . fourthly and lastly , that it will be such a sudden turn of affairs as was iulian's apostacy before the establishment of christianity in the empire , and the relapse in queen mary's days before the settlement of the reformation . but to the first i answer , that the whole three years and an half is so inconsiderable , that no such small periods of time are typified in all the apocalypse by any number set down therein , the very nature of this book of prophecies being such as onely to prefigure the more large or general strokes of providence and periods of time . so that to say half a year in respect of three years and an half is considerable , is a mere sophistical quibble . so half an hour would be in respect of three hours and an half , for the proportion is alike in both . the strength of the argument is this , that the apocalyptick prophecies intending to prefigure the state of no such small periods of time by any number , as four years suppose , nay if you will of four times four years , that it is incredible that they should be so curious as to predescribe the condition of just three years and an half , whenas if they had said roundly , four years , it would have served all intents and purposes that three years and an half could do . to the second i answer , that the three years and an half of the profanation of the temple does rather confirm the expositor's opinion that makes the three days and an half the three times and an half or days , the outward court of the temple being profaned or troden down by the gentiles for that time , according to the vision . so that as antiochus epiphanes his profanation was a type of the profanation and conculcation of the outer court or holy city by the gentiles , so the three years and an half is likewise a type of that time , they containing days to be expounded prophetically , as the three years and an half are to be expounded . and the like is to be said of the shutting up the heavens from rain for three years and an half , that is , as is aforesaid for days , the time of the mournfull witnesses , during which time the distilling of the salutiferous doctrine of the gospel , which should descend upon the people as a refreshing rain was hindred . which farther confirms that the three days and an half is three times and an half , and refers to the state of things in the days of the mournfull witnesses . and that therefore the three years and an half of antiochus his profanation of the temple , and the shutting up the heavens from rain by elias , are no symbols of a short continuance of the trial , though they may be of the happy issue of things in the conclusion . to the third i answer , that [ hour ] apoc. . . signifies there the same that time ; and if half a day here will be admitted to signifie half a time , the remarker and expositor are agreed . for i hope he will not stick when he has once admitted that the half day signifies half a time , to acknowledge that the three days will signifie three times ; so that then it will be , three times and an half , or a time and times and half a time , as daniel has it , which is the thing the expositor contends for . to the fourth and last i say , that the turn of affairs were very sudden indeed upon iulian's shorter reign than half of three years and an half ; and his successors , as he before them , being emperours of the whole roman empire might quickly re-establish the christian religion therein ; but if once the reformed kingdoms and states , or people were over-run again with popery , there being no one emperour or head over them all , the remarker's conceit is not credible . and as for queen mary's reign , it was almost twice three years and an half , and that recession respected onely the dominions she was queen of . so that if in her time there had been as many nations overflown again with popery , as have now been converted from it to the gospel , the rest of the witnesses would have been left in the lurch , and lain still in the dead slate they were in before . but the rising ought to be general , unless there be some thing intimated to the contrary . but lastly , it is not enough for the fulfilling of the remarker's sense of these three days and an half , that there be a sudden turn of things , but that the ill plight of the witnesses should be confined to just three years and an half , which is a thing not onely incredible , but even ridiculous for one to conceive . but yet , all that is brought , which does not evince this , is nothing to the purpose . and i am confident nothing will ever be brought to evince it . c the remarker's answer to the expositor's third reason , which is , that if the state of the apostolick church be ever brought to so sad a condition as is represented by the karcases of the two witnesses lying dead in the streets of the great city , it is incredible they should recover again within the space of three years and an half . to elude the force of this argument , the remarker point blank against the description of the condition of the slain witnesses , first makes their state more joyous and comfortable than can possibly comply with that sad representation of them in the type thereof . they are slain by the beast out of the bottomless pit , and their dead bodies lye exposed in the street of the great city . what a comfortable and heart-whole condition is this ? the best that can be said of it is , they are in the state of death for the present , but may in time be raised out of it . but for the present time , what can be more dismal and sad ? and the other trick of evading is , that though it seems so incredible that the witnesses should recover in so short a time , yet it is not so that the commencement of their recovery should be within so short a time . to which i say it is altogether incredible , that it will ever appear that popery has overflown the reformed nations , states and kingdoms for that short space of three years and an half just , and then at the expiring of that half year the recovery of the witnesses should presently commence , the apocalypse , as i noted above , having no aim to design such small moments of time , nor it being at all probable that the pope and his hierarchy , having once again got the reins into their own hands , of western christendom should not by their notable policy and vigilancy be able to retain their power entire , for above three years and an half together . and then in the second place i add , there is no such distinction discernible in the vision as to make a difference betwixt their recovery , and the commencement of their recovery : unless one would conceive that the spirit of life from god entering into them and their standing on their feet to be the commencement of their recovery , and their ascending into heaven in a cloud the recovery it self . but being their death from which they are revived , is a political death ; so soon as they were alive , they were politically alive , and their ascending into heaven upon a call thither is but a more full expression of the same state , or may regard more properly those of the witnesses that were called to the higher ranks of political offices and honours . d the expositor's fourth reason is , that if we restrain the lying dead of the witnesses to the three years and an half at the end of their prophesying , there is nothing in the vision to represent their political death ( to which their resurrection relates ) before that time , though they have been dead in that sense at least years already . to which the remarker answers , that the apologer himself makes the witnesses political death to be represented by their mournfull prophesying days , and it is also sufficiently expressed by suffering none to buy and sell , and by the cruel war against them . but to this i reply , that the apologer of expositor does not make their political death to be represented by their mournfull prophesying days , but makes it onely synchronize therewith . and for the rest of the remarker's answer , it is impertinent to the expositor's reason , who says there is nothing in this vision of the witnesses that sets out their political death for years together , though it mention their resurrection . so that this vision must be wretchedly maimed according to this false gloss the remarker puts upon it . and though there be war and overcoming , and forbidding to buy or sell mentioned in the next vision , yet that vision is not this , nor is their death there mentioned , which is antithetal to resurrection from the dead . and besides , chap. . vers . . it is onely said that it was given to the beast to make war with the saints , and to overcome them , which does not at all imply their political death for years , for they may overcome them onely at the last at the end , as in the letter of the vision , chap. . vers . . nor does the prohibiting to buy and sell imply that death of the witnesses for years together , there being no intimation of the extent of time in the business . whence there is a necessity that the three days and an half , which is the three times and an half , equivalent to days , must denote the time of the political death of the witnesses , that the months war , and the beast's overcoming the saints , chap. . vers . . both the victory and war may be expounded accordingly , as equal to , and coincident with the three days and an half , or three times and an half , and to the days . whence we may understand that this answer of the remarker is most miserably forced , weak , and far-fetched . e the expositor's fifth reason is , that being the witnesses have lain slain in a political sense so long , and have been so often slain , even many hundred thousands of them in a natural sense , before the end of their mournfull witnessing , it is unconceivable what persecution or oppression in these last three years and an half different from what they had endured before , should befall them , or more worthy taking notice of ▪ that the former should be omitted , and these by the karcases lying three days and an half in the street , be represented . the answer of the remarker here is very slim and lank to this fifth reason , he acknowledging the persecution and oppression for these three days and an half , nothing comparable to the severities of that in the days of the mournfull prophesying of the witnesses ; but discreetly letteth slip the main question , why so gentle a persecution in comparison , and of so small continuance , should be noted in the vision , and one more than three hundred times longer for duration , and more bloudy , rude and barbarous for all manner of cruelty , should be omitted . this he wisely declines to say any thing to , it being such as to which nothing can be said . f the expositor's sixth and last reason is this , that whereas it is said , vers . . and when they shall have finished their testimony , the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them , and shall overcome them and kill them : that unless his sense be admitted , there is till the end of their prophesying neither any war , nor any overcoming , nor any killing of the witnesses , which is point blank against the truth of history . what says the remarker to this ? his former answer , says he , is an answer to this , if it need any . for this is a different war , saith he , from the former , being not to destroy , but to silence and subdue . and yet this is notified , and the other omitted . what will not one say that is wedded to a fond opinion ? but the vision does not onely omit the forty two months war against the witnesses , and that continued slaughter either political or natural above three hundred times of longer continuance than this slighter distress of three days and an half , but does naturally import that there was no war against the witnesses till they had finished their days witnessing , if we adhere to the cortical sense as the remarker does ; which is point blank against the truth of history . for the text saith , and when they shall have finished their testimony , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , bestia illa ascendens ( so beza ) which s. iohn had his eye upon , that beast ascending out of the bottomless-pit , shall make war against them , &c. which implies he came out of the pit just upon the finishing their testimony , ( when they had said their say ) to assault them , &c. as it is said , chap. . upon the wrath of the dragon against the seed of the woman , and his resolution of making war against them , that s. iohn saw 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a beast ascending out of the sea , which implies the first appearance of him . and the very words , when they shall have finished their testimony , the beast shall make war against them , does plainly and naturally imply he shall not war against them before , but that then coming out of the pit , or out of the sea , he will presently set upon them . he that can shut his eyes against such plain truth , i pray god he may not become blind for ever . pag. . whereas it is supposed there hath been such evident proof that the vials follow the rising of the witnesses , the contrary , i suppose , hath been made sufficiently evident ; whereby the fansied mathematical evidence , that the reformation must be the rising of the witnesses , comes to nothing . and the change by the reformation was not so vast and stupendious ( as it 's here said to be ) but that it 's sufficiently prophesied of by the second vial , which does very aptly signifie it , it consisting chiefly in rejecting the pope's autority with some corruptions , which were incident to the owning of it . ans. this last remark is nothing but a triumph before victory , he supposing he hath produced such objections as do enervate the expositor's arguments for the placing the vials after the rising of the witnesses , whenas in truth all his objections are as weak as water , and as tender as any cobweb , as i have manifestly shewn ; nor is there any unprejudiced eye but will easily discern it , and consequently that , the reformation begun by luther is the rising of the witnesses , is no fancy , as the remarker reproachfully calls it , but a solid truth , and even of mathematical evidence and clearness . and whereas he would lessen that illustrious passage of providence the reformation , ( which of a truth was very glorious and stupendious ) by saying it consisted chiefly in rejecting the pope's autority with some corruptions incident to the owning of it ; i say here in england for example , not onely the pope's autority was rejected , but all the corruptions of that church that can be properly called antichristian , and such as are described in the expositor's idea of antichristianism : from the imputation of all which he has solidly and impartially vindicated the church of england at the end of his synopsis prophetica , as any one may fully understand that reades that vindication without prejudice . so that the constitution of things as to the worship of god is reduced to the state of those times that are symmetral , before the apostacy came in . this has the ineffable goodness of god by his providence brought to pass , but that we have made no better use of it , of whatever party we are , lyes at our own doors . and a sad reckoning i fear will fall to their share that grumble and murmur against so laudable a constitution of things , under which they may live an holy , innocent and apostolick life here , and hereafter arrive thereby to eternal glory . the works of the flesh , saith the apostle , are manifest , which are these , adultery , fornication , vncleanness , lasciviousness , idolatry , witchcraft , hatred , variance , emulation , wrath , strife , sedition , heresies , envyings , murthers , drunkenness , revellings , and the like ; of which the apostle tells us , that they that doe such things shall not inherit the kingdom of god. but the fruit of the spirit is love , ioy , peace , long-suffering , gentleness , goodness , faith , meekness , temperance . and as to the former he saith , that they that are christ's , have crucified the flesh , with the affections and lusts . and as to the latter he admonisheth ; if we live in the spirit , let us also walk in the spirit . but now if we crucifie the one , and live and walk in the other , shall we not then be in reality , no conceited and presumptuous saints , so fansied by our selves onely , or by our own party , but truly become such in the sight of god and all discerning people ? and this assuredly those may attain unto , who under the dispensation of god's providence are called unto the communion of the church of england , if they be not wanting to themselves in the use of the advantages thereof . and if so , what can the cavilling at , and calumniating the constitution of things , what the vilifying and speaking contemptibly of them , and what the insensibleness of the wickedness of schisms and divisions ; what can these proceed from , but from the spirit of pride and hypocrisie , which would seem some extraordinary thing in religion , when indeed it 's nothing but its mere self , that is , a proud , hypocritical , and many times hypochondriacal spirit fermenting and swelling it self into a conceit of its affecting a more perfect state of holiness and saintship than is consistent with communion with the publick religion established by divine providence , here in england suppose ; but in the mean time it self neither crucifying the flesh , nor the lusts , nor ill humours thereof , as hatred , variance , emulations , strife , wrathfulness , schismaticalness , fierceness of spirit , &c. nor walking in the spirit of love , peace , long-suffering , gentleness , goodness and meekness , whenas the wisedom that is from above , is first pure , then peaceable , gentle , &c. and therefore this is a false satisfaction of a tumid mind , that has no real thirst after true holiness and righteousness indeed , such as the spirit of god has exhibited the light of to us in the scriptures , but this false spirit would cloathe it self in a counterfeit shew of saintship of its own devising and rellishing , which being extravagant and out of the road of the established rule , it fondly hopes will approve it self to be extraordinary . and truly this is the ordinary cheat whereby spiritually proud men impose upon themselves and others that are no wiser than themselves . they think themselves extraordinarily holy , and singularly religious for their extraordinary zeal against , or contempt of the publick religion appointed by the special providence of god and the sovereign autority of the nation , and deem it in a manner profane , because common or publick . whenas if they would but cast their eyes upon those texts above cited , that set out so fully and expresly the works of the flesh , and the fruit of the spirit , and examine themselves by that rule that is so intelligible , and wherein there is no freakishness nor canting , and resolve to indulge themselves in no sin ( as there is no sin required as a condition of communion with the church of england ) and out of a firm faith make their earnest addresses to god for strength and assistence to overcome all our inward corruptions , and perfectly to mortifie the old man , that we may attain to that newness of life , through the spirit of regeneration , and so be wholly quit of the works of the flesh above enumerated by the apostle , and walk in the spirit and the fruits thereof . i say , if they would examine themselves whether they doe thus or no , whether they have mortified , or at least do sincerely endeavour to mortifie all those works of the flesh there mentioned , or any other any way a-kin to them ; and whether they be revived into those fruits of the spirit there specified , and have a real savour and rellish of them , and are ashamed in themselves , and perceive it a burthen to them , to find themselves in any other temper , this is the onely way for them to discover their own hypocrisie , and to bring them into a true method of becoming real saints indeed . and this they may be , holding communion with the church of england , as i shew'd above . but to bear themselves high in their own conceit , for their pragmatically fansying ( rather than espying ) faults in the constitutions of a church so well established , and to have a huge zeal for a purer external reformation of the publick , while that private internal reformation ( upon a false satisfaction of mind from that zeal for an outward ) is so blindly neglected ; this is the most effectual method i know to make them become , and ever remain haughty and headstrong hypocrites , and as to all true and real , spiritual religion very cold and dough-baked christians . this high , haughty , but really empty schismatical spirit is the very pest of the reformed churches , and i pray god it may never prove the utter ruine and destruction of the reformation . and let this serve for a return to the remarker's rude and irreverent scorn and contempt he has cast upon the reformation ; wherein divine providence it self suffers , and his spirit of prophecy , who has plainly declared it to be the rising of the witnesses , as has been above demonstrated , mauger all the pretended objections of the conceited remarker . but now lastly , whereas the remarker will have the reformation sufficiently prophesied of by the second vial onely , it is a thing utterly incredible that so glorious a passage of providence should be passed over with so short and slight an intimation ; which is onely this : the second angel poured out his vial on the sea , and it became as the bloud of a dead man , and every living soul dyed in the sea. this is all according to him that prefigures this stupendious passage of providence ; whenas the victory of the primitive christianity over paganism is set out most magnificently and copiously at the opening of the sixth seal , chap. . . as also again by the victory of michael over the red dragon , chap. . . and there are great acclamations and rejoicings thereupon ; but according to the mind of the remarker the victory of the evangelical christians over antichrist and horrid enemy of the church of christ , and over pagano-christianism consisting of many gross superstitions , and multifarious idolatries , and execrable cruelties and butcherings , nothing inferiour to those of the red dragon ; all this is hudled up into two or three lines without any acclamations of ioy , doxologies or songs of thanksgiving for such an inestimable mercy , which yet to such a vast atchievement of providence , according to the usual mode of the apocalypse , ought expresly to have been annexed . wherefore though the second vial may be a type of the settled state of the reformation after some short reciprocations of affairs after the rising of the witnesses , yet it cannot be in any reason or congruity of sense reputed the type of the reformation it self in its first and fresh appearance , which is most properly the rising of the witnesses , and upon which are those joyfull acclamations and doxologies , or songs of thanksgiving , chap. . , , . as the expositor by unexceptionable and invincible arguments has proved . and then in the second place , as it is incongruous to conceive the second vial to be the onely prophetick type of the reformation , so it is also impossible it should be so . for it being so firmly demonstrated , that the vials , all of them follow the rising of the witnesses , if the second vial be the onely type of the reformation , it will yet follow , that the rising of the witnesses ( which is also repugnant to the remarker's hypothesis ) is already past , the reformation , together with the second vial , according to the remarker , being already come ; and therefore i demand of him , what event of providence , which is past , is prefigured by the rising of the witnesses . none certainly can be found but the fresh appearance of the reformation before its perfect settlement . it is that which was prefigured by the rising of the witnesses ; and the settlement thereof by the second vial. the interval betwixt is the first vial , viz. the intoxicating cup of wrath , envy and dementation on those that had the mark of the beast , with their unsuccessfull endeavours therefrom , to extinguish the reformation in its first appearance , and in its first freshness and tenderness to have strangled it , as the serpents sent from iuno would have done hercules in his cradle . thus easie is wisedom to him that understands ; but a confused and prejudiced mind will intricate all things . but he that has a mind clear and unprejudiced , cannot fail of assurance in this present point , if in reading the two first visions of the opened book , he closely observe these few things following ; first , that the two visions begin from the same epocha ( i mean the visions comprized , the first of them , in the eleventh chapter , and the other in the twelfth , thirteenth and fourteenth chapters ) which that they do has been demonstrated in my answer to the remarks on the place , and granted in some sense by the remarker himself ; and that they end in the same times , viz. with the last vial , which contains a full and final overthrow of babylon , or the beast and false prophet , which is manifestly proved by me against the remarker . so that these two first visions are synchronal . secondly , that both the first and second vision contain a war with the beast , and that the event of that war is an actual , but partial overthrow of the beast or babylon , called the great city , as is manifest from chap. . vers . , , . unto which answers the actual fall of babylon in the second vision . which must needs be actual , else the angel would speak an untruth , chap. . vers . . and but partial , because it both answers to that in the first vision , and precedes the seventh vial in the second , before which the full and final overthrow of babylon is not . and whereas , prophecy is anticipatory history , and yet no actual success of the forty two months war , but this fall of babylon is prefigured in this second vision , it is plain that this is the success thereof , and therefore the very same with the partial fall of the great city and rising of the witnesses in the first vision . which was in the last half day of the three days and an half , or in the last half time of the three times and an half . whence the fall of babylon the angel brings news of must be so too , and not before , because the upshot of that war also was not till then . thirdly , that forasmuch as the fall of babylon in the second vision is the same with the fall of the great city and rising of the witnesses in the first , and this latter is just at the close of the sixth trumpet , the former must be so , viz. the fall of babylon must be at the close of the sixth trumpet also . fourthly , forasmuch as this fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses is an ample object of ioy and thanksgiving to the evangelici , the witnesses and sealed souldiers of the lamb , against whom the beast warred , and was too hard for them all along , though they held out through patience , and faith , and hope of promised success at last , chap. . vers . , . therefore as there is a joyfull message by an angel of the actual fall of babylon in the second vision , chap. . vers . . so it is impossible but those acclamations in heaven and doxology of the elders , chap. . vers . , , . should respect the partial , but actual fall of the city and rising of the witnesses , it being so ample an object of those joyfull acclamations , and of that thankfull doxology , and there being nothing betwixt but the gracefull ushering them in with the sound of the seventh trumpet . whence it is plain they respect that event , as it is also from that passage in the doxology it self , vers . . where thanks is given to god almighty , because he has taken to him his great power , and hath reigned , viz. in that fall of the great city and rising of the witnesses ; in this he re-assumed a considerable part of his kingdom which antichrist had usurped . fifthly therefore , we being so well assured that the partial fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses is the object of the joyfull annunciation of the second angel , chap. . and of the doxology of the elders , chap. . and meeting in the very next vision , viz. that of the vials , with a song ( prefixt thereto ) of praise and thanksgiving by the victors over the beast for an actual , but partial victory ( actual , because it is said therein , chap. . vers . . for thy judgments are made manifest , viz. in this late fall of babylon , which yet is but partial , because this song is prefixt before the vials , which are to bring to pass the fall and final ruine thereof ) and there being no precedent actual and partial victory but this in the fall of the city and rising of the witnesses , which may be the object of this song of thanksgiving , like that of moses upon the overthrow of pharaoh at the red sea , it is impossible but this song must be to the same effect with the doxology of the elders , and synchronize with it . sixthly therefore , it is as clear as noon-day , that , that doxology of the elders immediately following the sixth trumpet , this song of moses and the lamb must immediately follow the sixth trumpet . and lastly , all the vials following the song of moses and the lamb , that they all follow the sixth trumpet and the rising of the witnesses , and consequently , there being no part of the two first visions of the opened book ( which begin from one epocha , and end with the seventh vial ) that prefigures that notable , and indeed stupendious atchievement of providence in causing so many provinces , principalities , nations and kingdoms to cast off the pope in the late reformation , unless this of the partial fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses ( for all the vials are after their rising ) it necessarily follows that the aforesaid reformation is the partial fall of babylon and the rising of the witnesses , which was the thing to be demonstrated . and this succinct master-reason of the expositor , as i may so call it , may go for a more general confirmation of all his particular reasonings on this subject , ( though they are sufficiently firm also of themselves ) and shews how skilfully he has allotted the several passages of the two visions that follow the fall of babylon and rising of the witnesses , to several of the vials , which are certainly in that time after the said fall and rising . it shews also the assuredness of his judgment in making the three days and an half , that the witnesses lye slain to be the same with the three times and an half or days , and that the expositor's six arguments for it , as they are rational in themselves , so they conclude a certain truth , and that the remarker's answers to them are mere whifling . for the late reformation being demonstrated to be the rising of the witnesses , all the remarker's conceits about this matter are quite out of doors . these are the genuine corollaries of this solid demonstration , as to speculation , but as to use this one is inestimable , that it naturally gives a stop , with all that are not out of their wits , to their conceiving any hopes of innovations in state or church from the near approach of the rising of the witnesses , the completion of that prophecy being so plainly past : and farthermore , for the quieting of their spirits does plainly inform them of the excellency of the reformation made by our reverend and royal reformers here in england , and that therefore to separate from such a constitution so well approved of by divine testimony , is a piece of gross disobedience to the magistrate , and hatefull ingratitude to the goodness of god , and his benign providence over his church . arithmetica apocalyptica , or a resolution to three main queries touching the numbers of the medial-visions of the apocalypse , added by way of appendage to the answer to the foregoing remarks upon dr. henry more his apology . london , printed by m. f. for walter kettilby . . arithmetica apocalyptica , or a resolution to three main queries , &c. while my answers to the foregoing remarks were in the press , by a lucky providence there came into my hands certain apocalyptick papers sent me in a letter from a friend , who desired my judgment touching them . the papers were the more welcome , because the authour of them seemed to be convinced of that grand truth contended for by dr. h. m. in his apology , viz. that the protestant reformation was the rising of the witnesses . to which that authour addeth also , that they rose in the year of our lord , but that their mournfull prophesying did not conterminate , as naturally it doth , with their resurrection and ascension , but was to continue years longer , and to expire in the year . in which year he declares with a strange scheme of enthusiastick confidence , that babylon will be utterly ruined , and all antichristianity quite rooted out of the church . which look't so like an intended defeat to the important usefulness of the assurance of the doctrine , that the witnesses are risen already , which is the quieting mens minds , and preventing stirs and commotions , and the conciliating a good opinion of the present constitution of things in matters of government and religion here in england , that i thought i was obliged the more narrowly to consider the grounds of so triumphant a conclusion ; and especially ( my friend in his letter pressing me the most earnestly thereto ) to settle according to my best judgment the epocha of the medial visions , which the authour of those papers makes to be the year of our lord . which depends upon his making the epocha of the sealed-book-prophecy and the opened-book-prophecy to be the year , in which he supposes that s. iohn received those prophecies in the reign of nero. wherefore to demonstrate the folly of that enthusiastick confidence in the authour of those papers , according to my friend's desire , i have here settled the true epocha of the medial visions , or of the apostasie or reign of antichrist , the usefulness of which we shall consider in its due place . nor content with this , i have prefixed two other queries that tend to the satisfaction of them that urge against the truth of the doctrine , that the witnesses are risen , that they are made to rise while the last semitime is but current , and not expired , as if this destroy'd the usefulness of the prophecy , by giving so large a latitude of time as the space of years for the fulfilling its prediction , and were also inconsistent with its synchronizing with the months and days , those days not admitting of any latitude , but necessarily signifying strictly so many years . the use therefore of these two first queries for the solving this difficulty , i shall also take notice of in its due place . in the mean time we shall produce into view the queries themselves , of which this is the first , whether daniel's three times and an half , however disguized or varied into months and days , be not the standing authentick measure of the medial-visions of the apocalypse ? the second , it being granted that daniel's three times and an half is the standing authentick measure of the medial-visions , what may be the genuine use and purpose of varying them into months and days ? the third , what is the precise epocha of the medial-visions , or of the apostasie or kingdom of antichrist ? these be the three queries . and as to the first i say , that daniel's three times and an half , or seven semitimes , is the standing authentick measure of the medial-visions of the apocalypse . of which that of the woman in the wilderness is one , of whom it is said , apoc. . . that she was there to be nourished for a time , and times , and half a time , with which abiding of the woman in the wilderness , the entireness of the rule of the seven-headed beast restored , the outer court troden under foot by the gentiles , the two witnesses prophesying in sackcloth , the entire dominion of the two-horned beast or false prophet , or of the great whore or mystical babylon , according to mr. mede , and according to the truth , do synchronize . of all these visions therefore are daniel's seven semitimes the standing authentick measure for the computing the event of any medial-vision , however varied into days and months ; nor is there any more precise restriction as to eventual prediction , than there would have been , though the expression of three times and an half or seven semitimes had never been varied into months and days . and my reasons for this my assertion are these . first , it looks something absurdly and derogatorily to the omniscience of the spirit of prophecy , as if he were farther advanced in knowledge in st. iohn's time than in daniel's , and as if about years nearer approach to the event predicted , enabled him to count the duration of the little horn with eyes in st. iohn's time to the punctuality of a year , whenas in daniel's time he could count it onely according to those large measures of semitimes , each of which contains years . this methinks looks very uncouthly and absurdly . indeed if he had not counted the reign of the little ruffling horn with eyes by any parts of time , but onely predicted that such a polity would appear during the fourth kingdom , and then after in the apocalypse told accurately the time of its duration , whether months or days prophetical it would look unsuspectedly , but things being as they are , they plainly look derogatorily to that perfection of prescience in the spirit of prophecy , to fansie he foretold the time of the event an hundred and eighty times more punctually at years nearer approach thereto , viz. in st. iohn's time , than he did at that distance in daniel's time , as if he wanted that advantage then which he had afterwards . secondly , it is plainly suggested by the spirit of prophecy , chap. . from those two places compared together , vers . . and the woman fled into the wilderness , that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days : and vers . . and to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle , that she might fly into the wilderness into her place , where she is nourished for a time , and times , and half a time : it is plainly , i say , hence suggested , that the expressing of the duration of the medial-visions by days is not for any more accurate account ( from some known epocha ) of the time of the predicted event ; for then the time of the woman's abode in the wilderness should have been expressed in the first place by those more general and lax measures of , a time , and times , and half a time , or seven semitimes , but then afterwards by that more strickt and minute measure of a day , as intimating the event to be predicted even to a set prophetical day . but it being quite contrary , it is a plain insinuation that daniel's seven semitimes is the prophetical measure to estimate the true time of the events by , and not those lesser parts of time a prophetical day or month , this measure of daniel being placed not onely after the days in this and the foregoing chapter , but also after the months there mentioned to be a key to the right understanding of these variations . thirdly , it is apparent that the variation of the seven semitimes is not intended for any more punctually and restrictively predicting the event , for that the variation would then have been onely into days prophetical . but it being also into months , it will entangle the account , and make the prophecy seem to contradict it self , and imply things impossible to be possible , that is , that the prophecy shall predict true as to time , and not true at once . for if the event predicted fall within the last part of time , suppose , the last prophetick month , though but a little after the beginning thereof the prophecy is true , but the same or what is necessarily and intimately synchronal to it , not falling out in the last of the days , according to which expression it should do , it makes the prediction false . and indeed there is the same reason of the last semitime . in the fifth month whereof , if the woman go out of the wilderness , the prediction is true ; but sith it is not in the last month , nor in the last day , it is doubly false . whence it is manifest that those variations of the seven semitimes into months and days are onely cortical in the external celature of the vision , are mere numeral diorisms , not prophetical numbers restraining the event to any closer pinch of time than if the duration of the medial-visions had been in every place expressed by seven semitimes . fourthly , in the vision of the two witnesses , who while the outer court is troden down by the gentiles for months , do mournfully prophesie days , which is the same time in other terms , the spirit of prophecy reducing all at last in this vision , apoc. . vers . . . to three days and an half , does himself set his seal to this truth , that as to the restrictive prediction of the event there was never greater preciseness intended , than what that latitude of numbering by semitimes did require , which is very lax . and that by three days and an half , three times and an half , or daniel's seven semitimes are signified , that assertion by invincible demonstration in the apology ( i mean by those six solid arguments , which the remarker as eager and keen as he is upon the business to invalidate them , has but shewn his own weakness in attempting it ) is made good to any intelligent and unprejudiced reader . wherefore by the reduction , in the close of the vision , of the months and days to daniel's three times and an half ( expounding [ day ] by time first , as it does most certainly sometimes so signifie , and therefore from the abovesaid arguments , as certainly so signifies here ) we may be assured from the testimony of the spirit of prophecy himself , that the onely standing authentick measure of the duration of the medial-visions , is daniel's seven semitimes . but there is a necessity of reducing the signification of day to that of time first , because a prophetick day signifies but one natural year , but a time a prophetick year , which is natural years . fifthly , the nature of the things predicted to come to pass at the expiration of the time of the medial-visions is such , that their accomplishment cannot be effected in the space of a single prophetical day . such is a considerable breaking the entireness of the dominion of the little horn with eyes , or of the two-horned beast , the false prophet or whore of babylon , the fall of the tenth part of the city and rising of the witnesses , at which such acclamations as these are heard in heaven . the kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our lord and his christ , chap. . vers . . and chap. . that song of moses and the lamb is sung by the triumphant harpers on the sea of glass , great and marvellous are thy works , lord god almighty : iust and true are thy ways , o king of saints : who shall not fear thee , o lord , and glorifie thy name ? for thou onely art holy , for all nations shall come and worship before thee , for thy judgments are manifest . surely all this must not signifie such small atchievements as can be brought about in one single year . and as rome was not built in one natural day , no more could so great a ruine of the roman polity or hierarchy , though but partial , be effected in one prophetical day . which unless we reckon by semitimes , must of necessity be the measure we reckon by . wherefore it is plain from the nature of the things predicted , though they were not come to pass , that they are not to be atchieved in one single year or prophetick day , and that therefore the variation of the seven semitimes into days was never intended , for so precise an indication of the predicted event , as to limit it to a single year . and the days and months being but the variations of the same seven semitimes of daniel , there is the same reason of the months also , that neither of them imply a greater strictness than that ancient authentick standing measure in daniel , a time , and times , and half a time . but as i said , if we stick not to this , the onely measure is by prophetical days . sixthly and lastly , to all this for our farther assurance , that daniel's measure is the onely measure to measure the true time of the events of the medial-visions by , we may add , that one real specimen , which indeed involves in it all the middle synchronals , namely , the rising of the witnesses . which , forasmuch as i have so firmly demonstrated the effusion of all the vials to follow , it is as firmly from thence sure and manifest , that the reformation begun by luther , and spreading and propagating it self thorough so many countries , principalities and kingdoms , is the completion of that vision of the rising of the witnesses . which noble event predicted in this vision , it is manifest according to history , was not restrained to a prophetick day nor month neither , but fell out simply , as was predicted in the last half day , or last semitime of the seven . but that the vials follow the sixth trumpet or rising of the witnesses , and that consequently the abovesaid reformation is the completion of that vision of the witnesses rising , i thought it was even with mathematical evidence made good in the apology ; but i hope now , whoever carefully peruses the foregoing answer to the remarks , made by so keen a remarker , will find that the answerer has had occasion given him of so fully and clearly confirming , and invincibly evidencing the forementioned assertion , that it will not be in the power of any one that closely attends to what is written any longer to hesitate about the truth thereof , nor consequently to doubt of this present truth , that daniel's seven semitimes is the onely real and authentick standing measure , according to which the events of the medial-visions are to be computed , and their truth examined from a certain epocha . which first point being cleared , we are in the next place to enquire what may be the genuine use and purpose of varying daniel 's seven semitimes into months and days in these visions of the apocalypse . for certainly there is no trifling in so sacred a writing . for , to begin with what may seem slightest , first , daniel's time and times , and half a time , being so often to recur in the medial-visions , if there had been no varying of them into the months and days ; i may add also into the three days and an half , the outside of the visions would have looked more homely and bald , whenas this variety gives grace and ornament unto them . nor can this reason seem trisling , if we consider that god and nature in plants and animals does not affect onely what is wholsome and usefull , but adds also thereunto what is handsome and beautifull . but secondly , it seems very requisite , yea even necessary for the apocalyptick styles , which describes bodies politick , which are to continue for many ages together by the symbol of some particular beast , or single humane person , man or woman , which it would be indecorous to declare , they were to continue a time , and times , and half a time , which either conveys nothing to the mind of the reader , or else , if plainly expressed , the space of twelve or thirteen hundred years , when no particular beast , nor any single man or woman can be conceived to live so long ; it was , i say , necessary for the apocalyptick style to turn daniel's time , and times , and half a time into days or months , that the cortex of the visions might keep decorum in those symbols of living creatures , and they not be said to continue so extremely much longer than is agreeable to the laws of nature . upon which account of decorum , or adorning the cortex with the smooth shew of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the karcases of the slain witnesses are said to lye but three days and an half unburied , though those three days and an half are the same with daniel's three times and an half . but to have said either here or elsewhere for , a time , and times , and half a time , three years and an half , had been quite out of the road of the prophetick style , which never names a year for a year of years , though a time signifies such a prophetical year , as i may so call it , but it is no where in use , and it would imply that no less than years were the space of the millennium , or ligation of satan . thirdly , the denoting daniel's seven semitimes , one while by days , and another while by months , and the applying the numbering by days , of which the sun is governour to the children of the day , the truly evangelical church , and the numbering by months , which respects the moon , who is the governess of the night to the apostatized persecutive church , is a farther piece of instructive elegancy , even in the exteriour cortex of the medial-visions , characterizing thereby the gentiles that tread under foot the holy city for forty two months , and the healed beast with seven blasphemous heads , to whom it was given to make war with the saints also months , by the infamous note of the children of darkness , but characterizing the true church and unapostatized evangelical christians , who were to be nourished in the wilderness [ chap. . . ] days , and the mournfull witnesses , chap. . that were to prophesie in sackcloth days , and to be raised from the dead , after three days and an half , by the glorious title of the children of light . fourthly , this variation of daniel's semitimes into months and days has not this office onely of duly characterizing the two parties , the apostolical and evangelical church in commendation of the one , and detestation of the other ; but is farther serviceable to us for the more distinct knowledge of the visions , that we do not confound into one such parties as are two , and notified to be so by this character . and hence it is that mr. mede is sound solidly and judiciously to have distinguished betwixt that woman iohn saw in the wilderness upon a scarlet-coloured beast , chap. . and that mentioned chap. . vers . . who is said to be fed in the wilderness days , where the numbering by days does plainly indicate that woman in the wilderness to be the pure evangelical church , the mournfull witnesses , &c. whenas the other woman in the wilderness , chap. . is the apostatized church , even the whore of babylon , as she is there called . wherefore this distinguishing the mulier eremicola from the whore of babylon by mr. mede , is a thing not to be overlookt or slighted , nor this use of numbering the same time , one while by days , another while by months , to be contemned , it stearing us off from such mistakes . fifthly , it is well known to them that concern themselves in these speculations , that the artifice of concealment is a thing driven at in the frame and contrivance of the apocalyptick visions , as well as certainty of revealment , as is noted in book . chap. . synopsis prophetica , and the usefulness thereof there intimated . and it is obvious to conceive that disguising of the duration of the medial-visions under so many variations , of a time , and times , and half a time , of months , of days , of three days and an half must needs contribute something to the obscuring of the visions , and make them not lye so open and obvious to every eye , but gives a pleasant exercise to the sagacious and intelligent to find cut the mystery , and to reduce all to the ancient authentick measure . sixthly , but there is yet a farther usefulness of the varying of daniel's time , and times , and half a time into months or days , and that a notable one . for , forasmuch as neither the greek nor hebrew , though they have the dual number expresses the word [ times ] by it , what assurance have we but that times , in [ a time , and times , and half a time ] may signifie more times than two , and so it will not be seven semitimes but nine , whenas seven is the sacred number the apocalypse seems to affect . but that they are seven , and not nine , or more , the varying of them into days , or months does fully assure us , and that by a time , and times , and half a time is understood , three prophetical years and an half , or seven half years . of which , seventhly , there is this farther notable use . for though i have made it plain in my satisfying the former query , that these variations of daniel's time and times , and half a time into months and days was never intended for a more accurate computation of the predicted event from some certain epocha to a month , much less to a day ; yet it being known by those variations that daniel's number is seven semitimes , and that those seven semitimes are seven prophetical half years , or seven spatia semestria , by virtue of these notices , and by iohn's measuring the temple of god , &c. chap. . that is , the inner court , and leaving the outer court to be trod under foot by the gentiles for months ; from these indications of st. iohn , and from the proportion the outer court bears to the inner , the precise epocha of the duration of the medial-visions is certainly to be collected . for as the outer and inner courts are two steady and unalterable proportional terms understood in their full settled extent or magnitude , so there can be no scruple but that the third proportional term , viz. months offered by the spirit of prophecy is to be understood as to this use in its full apparent extent for a steady and determinate inference of the fourth proportional term for a timely discovery of the enterance of the apostasie . for no number given for such or such an use , if that use do not require it , nor there be any thing intimated that way ( for the three days and an half respect the vision of the witnesses , not the measuring of the temple and months conculcation ) can abate of its full significancy by any prophetick synecdoche or numeral diorism ; much less can it doe so , when the use it serves to , requires the contrary ; as here it does , or else the measuring the inner court , and the offering this third proportional term to infer a fourth , is to little purpose . but taking this third proportional , months , in its proper full extent , as the outer and inner court is taken in theirs , which are as to , it will necessarily infer months in the full extent ; which therefore is precisely prophetick days , that is , years , for the commensurate time of the church before the apostasie came in . and this i think is no contemptible use of the variation of daniel's time and times , and half a time into months or days . and , eighthly and lastly , though the variation of daniel's ancient and authentick measure into months and days be not to predict the entire event of the medial-visions to a precise prophetick month , much less to a prophetick day , yet these variations of daniel's seven semitimes into months and days , have no contemptible use , in that they are fitted for the punctual setting down the particular progresses and spreadings of the predicted event , which one day , nor one single prophetick month could contain . we need instance but in that one example , the vision of the rising of the witnesses , which began with luther . the right epocha of the medial-visions being found , from whence the seven semitimes are to commence , the event is not to be expected till the seventh semitime be entered into . but then if we would count in a natural and accurate order , we might say , for example , that luther appeared first upon the stage the fourteenth day of the second month of the seventh or last semitime . that queen elizabeth came to the crown on the twenty sixth day of the third month of the last semitime , and so of the rest , as we find in history . for still as any fresh provinces , states , principalities or kingdoms , or any rulers and grandees in them which were pontifician before received the gospel , or any evangelici before oppressed were advanced into autority , the witnesses slain before do in these revive and ascend into heaven , and obtain rule and government . for the suffering evangelici and the reigning evangelici are conceived but as one body , though the succession be for many ages . and this i think is one considerable use of varying the phrase of a time , and times , and half a time into months and days , and takes them in both together . but now , which i also noted in my letter to a friend ; in whatever month or day there is an example of the resurrection and ascension of the witnesses , there their mournfull prophesying ceaseth from that time in that place . as for example here in england , a. d. , which is the th day of the third month of the last semitime , the time when queen elizabeth was advanced to the crown , and several evangelical grandees in church and state to high dignities and employments ; upon this resurrection and ascension of the witnesses , their mournfull prophesying ceased here ; and so it was at other times , and in other places . the close affinity and connaturality of the things predicted do plainly evidence this to any one that does not wilfully wink against the truth . in the mean time i think i have made it abundantly plain , that though the varying of daniel's time , and times , and half a time into months and days was not to predict the entire event of the medial-visions to the accuracy of one prophetick day , nor yet month , yet the spirit of prophecy has not herein trifled at all , but that there are several considerable uses of this variation , that no man for the want thereof may obstinately pretend that the other must needs be the use thereof , whenas yet there is no necessity at all of that , viz. that the months or days should signifie the full extent of that time , whenas that full sense is so easily abatable by a prophetick synecdoche or numeral diorism , there being given also intimations thereto . having thus therefore dispatched the two first queries , we proceed to the third and last , the solution of which i shall transcribe out of the abovesaid letter to a friend . which solution is as follows . first , having fixt the epocha of the beginning of the church , which , i conceive , is to be reckoned from the year in which our saviour suffered , ascended into heaven , and sent down the holy ghost to assist his apostles , which is the most indubitable and unexceptionable epocha that can be pitched upon , and must needs seem the least strained to serve any design ; in the next place we are to consider , whether the epocha of the threefold prophecy of the apocalypse , that is to say , the prophecy of the seven churches , the prophecy of the sealed book and the prophecy of the opened book is not to be fixt in the self same year that the beginning of the church is . and that it is so to be fixt , these few reasons seem to infer . first , they are prophecies all three of them of a large universal extent , reaching from the time , at least of their reception ( which was but a few years after the beginning of the church , especially in comparison of the time succeeding ) even till the day of doom . wherefore in all likelihood they are a transcript of the divine decree or provision of the state of the church , such as god foresaw it would be in its general successions , from the very beginning thereof , to the end of the world , that so the three prophecies or visionary representations of the state of the church may be complete and unmaimed . secondly , it is acknowledged by such interpreters that otherwise dissent from us , that the prophecy of the seven churches begins from the very beginning of the church , why should not then the other two prophecies do so too ? thirdly , the beginning of the visions of the sealed-book-prophecy and the opened-book-prophecy are naturally applicable to that epocha of the church we have pitched upon , viz. the year when our saviour suffered , ascended , and sent down the holy ghost to assist his apostles . for what more natural and fit application can there be of the rider of the white horse with a bow in his hand , to whom a crown is given , than to christ ascended and sending down the holy ghost to assist his followers , to conquer the roman empire , and subject it to the sceptre of the son of god , that that might be fulfilled which was predicted by our saviour , fear not little flock , for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom ? and this rider came from the east , & oriens nomen ejus . see the interpretation of the first seal in the exposition of the apocalypse . wherefore this vision does that right to our saviour as to represent his glorious and miraculous assistence at the very beginning of his church , in the beginning of the prophecy of the sealed book . now for the two initial visions of the opened book , that comprized in the eleventh chapter , which begins with the measuring of the inner court , it is manifest at the first sight how applicable that is to the church , from the year that christ suffered , till the apostasie came in , and the more primitive the more applicable ; and therefore here is but justice done to that part of the succession of the church , which reaches from the first year of the church of christ , to the reception of these visions , that it be as well as the rest of the time before the apostasie , noted as symmetral in this visionary representation . and now for the initial vision comprized in the twelfth , thirteenth and fourteenth chapters , the throes of the church begun in the head thereof , christ on the cross , of whom it is truly said , there was never sorrow like his sorrow . these were the pangs so early begun for the bringing forth in his church a man-child , that should wear the imperial crown at last , the emperours becoming christian. and so the fight of michael with the red dragon , the paganick roman power , the battel was begun in christ on the cross , crucified under the roman power by pilate their governour . but this strategem of the captain of our salvation in suffering thus himself to be crucified , was the spring and source of all his conquests and victories afterwards , as is obvious to observe , and therefore it were very unfit and unjust to have this left out of the visionary representation ; which yet it would be , did not the prophecy of the opened book reach to the very first beginning of the church , and take in the year of christ's crucifixion . and fourthly and lastly , whenas it is observable in daniel , chap. . in that set of visions that represents the four monarchies by four beasts , viz. the babylonian , persian , greek and roman , that notwithstanding those visions are received in the first year of belshazzar , which is according to thomas lydiat , about years from the beginning of the babylonian monarchy , yet merely that the set of visions might be complete , the babylonian monarchy is represented from its very first rise and original , though above two thirds of its duration was then past when daniel received those visions . wherefore the spirit of prophecy affecting , as i may so speak , this completeness in sets of visions , though the representation be of profane kingdoms , and we finding no cause of the vision reaching into some part of time before its reception , saving that intent that the visionary representation of such periods of time should be complete ; we may hence much more be assured , that these sets of visions are so , they so much concerning his church , and for whose completeness there were such weighty reasons as were even now alledged , namely , why they should reach into the very first year of the church when christ suffered , ascended into heaven , and sent down the holy ghost ; and being the space of that time to the reception of the visions ( though they were received under domitian ) bears nothing that proportion to the space of the antemedial visions , or of the first six seals , that years bear to , which is above the proportion of two to three , but of the other the proportion is less than of one to six ; i say , he must be a sceptick even to stupidity , that is not hence convinced , that all these three prophecies i have spoken of , the prophecy of the seven churches , the sealed-book-prophecy and the opened-book-prophecy , have the same epocha that the beginning of the church has . wherefore to proceed , we being so well assured of this point , we are next to consider what year of his age christ was crucified in , and according to the above mentioned thomas lydiat , whom i conceive to be in the truth , christ was crucified about the thirty third year of his age , he being betwixt twenty nine and thirty when he was baptized and entered upon his ministry , and he continuing the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom for about three years and an half ( as the ancient fathers have delivered ) before he was crucified . we take it therefore for granted , that christ was crucified in the thirty third year of his age. and now lastly , from the vision of the measuring the inner court , and the profanation of the outer for months , chap. . we gather the time of the beginning of the apostasie thus . villalpandus divides the large square - area , upon which the temple and all the buildings belonging to the inner and outer court are placed , into nine particular equal square - area's . two of these area's are those on which not onely the temple , but all the porticus's that belong to the inner court are built . with area of the inner court , distributed into two squares , has in its western square the temple , on its eastern the altar for holocausts . but thus the inner court taking up just two squares of the nine equal squares , and the rest being allotted to the outer court with its buildings or porticus's , it is plain that the area of the outer court to the inner is as to . and the two first of the proportional terms being thus invariably fixt , the third proportional is to be taken in such a fixt invariable sense , without any figure or diorism , as has been proved above . whence the fourth proportional will infallibly be inferred thus ; as to , so months in the full and fixt extent , to months ; which are equal to days prophetical , which is so many years . therefore the symmetral time of the church before the apostasie came in is years . which years include the year of christ's crucifixion . but there were years antecedent thereto , which added to , makes years . to this very year inclusively , according to this compute , the church continued symmetral . wherefore the first year from which the apostasie is to be computed , is the year , seven years distant from the year of our lord ; which for roundness sake is usually made the epocha of the apostasie . and chemnitius expresly says that the invocation of saints began to be brought into the church , non multo ante annum quadringentesimum . and i think is not much before the year of our lord . this therefore is the precise epocha for computation , though the apostasie came in by degrees as an evening twilight . where it had been hard for us to pitch an epocha to a precise year , if the divine providence had not fixed it for us in that vision , chap. . which yet is pleased in another place , chap. . to make the epocha more lax . see the ioint-exposition on the th verse of that chapter , in synopsis prophetica , book . chap. . wherefore as the rising of the witnesses in the last semitime may be distinctly noted according to the number of the month , and day of the month , in which such particular risings and ascendings of the witnesses happened ; so in the first semitime of the seven from the abovesaid epocha of , may the more notable advances of the apostasie be noted according to the month and day . but it would be over long to insist on these things . this shall suffice for a solution of the three proposed queries . and now out of what has been said to the two first of them , it is apparent that this measuring of the time of the witnesses political death and mournfull prophesying by semitimes , does not onely not destroy the usefulness of the prophecy by giving so large a time for the fulfilling the prediction , but is indeed the most usefull way of measuring , as being the most accommodate to set out the fulfilling of the prophecy in the rising of the witnesses , the nature of their rising being not restrainable to the strictness of a single year . nor is it at all inconsistent with the synchronizing with the months and days upon the pretence that those days cannot admit of any latitude , but must signifie strictly so many years . for these months and days are simply such , ( as to the computing of the event of the prophecy ) onely in the cortex of the vision , it being in that case a numeral diorism , but by the indication of the three days and an half or seven half days in the conclusion , ( which is the golden key of the vision ) they are months and days divided ( as a seven foot rule by six notable equidistant notches or marks the whole making inches ) into seven equal parts ; though thus to have expressed it in the cortex , had been too bald and bare , and not agreeable to the external smoothness and politure of these parabolical visions ; nor adapted to the mysterious concealment of these prophecies , which is one main scope aimed at in their frame and contrivance . but any wary and understanding reader will easily conceive touching the medial-visions ( all which synchronize one with another ) since that their duration answers to that ancient authentick measure in daniel , of a time , and times , and half a time , apoc. . . or of seven semitimes ( as in the seven foot rule above mentioned ) and that this is glanced at again in the conclusion of the vision by the three days and an half or seven half days ; that this is their real standing measure indeed . which semitimes for farther use and curiosity , being divided each of them into hexamenons or six-months-spaces , and after , each month into thirty days , which makes each semitime an hecatonogdoconthemeron or the space of days ; a considerate and observant reader , i say , will easily gather from hence , that the single measure of the full space of time allotted to the medial-visions is a semitime , an hexamenon , or an hecatonogdoconthemeron , and that nothing else is to be understood by this days and months , but these seven hecatonogdoconthemerons , and these seven hexamenons . so that the event of the prophecy is not tyed up to the last month of the or last day of the , but onely to the last hexamenon or last hecatonogdoconthemeron ; and therefore these single measures being the measures of this full extent of time , that as to the completion of the prophecy , or the falling out of the predicted event , if it be but within the seventh semitime begun , but not expired ( forasmuch as a semitime hexamenon or hecatonogdoconthemeron is the unite in this compute ) the fulfilling the prophecy is sufficiently exact ; nor is there any defect therein , no more than when a prophecy foretells such a thing to fall out the hundredth year hence , ( which year is divided into twelve months or days ) the completion therefore is deemed defectuous for the event not falling out at the very expiration of the year in the last day , or at least in the last month thereof . but this being allow'd , which is so obvious and ordinarily known , we farther add , that as the seven hexamenons , the seven hecatonogdoconthemerons and seven semitimes exactly synchronize in their full extent , so do they also in an event that falls short of that full extent , and is before the expiration of the seventh semitime . for such an event is conceived to fall out in such a month of the hexamenon of the seventh semitime , and in such a day of that month , which is the very same day in reality also in the hecatonogdoconthemeron of the seventh semitime . so exactly is synchronism observed in computing the event by semitimes , even to that of the day of the month of the hexamenon , with the day of the hecatonogdoconthemeron , and with the eventual point in the last semitime . and yet the event , suppose , of the rising of the witnesses is not restrained to one day or month in the last semitime , but spreads into several months and days , the rising of the witnesses , and the ceasing of their mournfull prophesying still all along synchronizing one with the other , according to the partial fulfilling of the prophecy within a certain compass of the hexamenon or hecatonogdoconthemeron of the last semitime . the thing i hope by this time is clear to any one that will not wilfully wink against the truth , or by heedlesly confounding the cortex of the vision with the pith or rind with the pulp create to himself needless difficulties . and thus the use of the solution of the two first queries is sufficiently illustrated . and the usefulness of the solution of the third may appear from hence , that common epocha of all the three prophecies , that of the seven churches , as also of the sealed book and of the opened book being so rationally fixed and unexceptionably , and consequently the epocha of the medial-visions , or of the apostasie or kingdom of antichrist ; according to this solid compute the days of the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth , expired in the year , which is years before the expiration set down in those apocalyptick papers i mentioned in the beginning . so that all his enthusiastical hopes and conceits of the year vanish . as the event also i question not but will farther prove , viz. that his computation is vain and groundless . and the falsness of his prediction is the more plainly and precisely discoverable in that he is forced to compute by days not semitimes . and therefore to be out but one prophetick day , argues the prediction to be false . and yet he is out above such days already . but what better can be expected of what is built upon such weak grounds as the making the epocha of the sealed-book-prophecy and opened-book-prophecy to be the year of our lord . as if in that year s. iohn received his visions under the reign of nero , in the island of patmos : whenas both the epocha is not to be taken from the time of s. iohn his receiving the visions , nor in truth did he then receive them , viz. in the year , but towards the end of domitian's reign , and about the year of our lord . this the current of antiquity , and interpreters agree in . and even those that could wish the visions had been received sooner , before the destruction of ierusalem , that they might with better plausibility interpret some visions of the destruction of that city ; yet the force of this truth is so great , that they do not onely admit it , but with all earnestness and confidence aver it , as alcazar does for example , namely , that the apocalyptick visions were received by iohn toward the latter end of domitian's reign . reade but ribera , alcazar and cornelius à lapide upon this point , and thou canst not but be satisfied of the truth thereof . and yet the above named enthusiast having deduced from this false epocha , that babylon will be ruined , the beast and false prophet taken , and all antichristianity rooted out of christendom in the year , does not stick to dance and skip for joy upon this rotten ground or shaking quagmire with doxologies and hallelujah's in his mouth , as i noted at first . who can sufficiently admire ( whether the fraud or fury of ) such enthusiasm ? or be so wanting to the publick good as , lest this malady should hiddenly spread , not to antidote men against it , that they be not shaken in mind nor troubled , as if any pretender to the spirit can make it out from prophecy , that either the witnesses are not risen , or at least , if they be , their mournfull prophesying does not end upon their rising till the year . but that then a new scene of things will come on , and the son of perdition , that man of sin the antichrist be blasted at the brightness of christ's appearing ? for assuredly , as has been noted at the close of the solution to the second query , whereever the witnesses are risen their mournfull prophesying immediately ceases there ; and therefore whoever upon that account fansies himself or others the mournfull witnesses , if the matter be sifted to the bottom , they will be found mere murmuring male-contents , and wretchedly blind and unthankfull to divine providence , in that they so slight such an unexpressible favour to the reformation , here in england suppose , established by the risen witnesses . and though they pretend to a greater holiness and righteousness than is consistent therewith , or than ordinary reformed christians have or ( if they neglect not the advantages offered to them ) may have if they will , they do thereby but shew themselves to have exceeding much less , and to be far greater sinners , every sin against the publick as much transcending a private sin , as the concern of the publick does a private concern . which weighty argument i will leave with the reader as worthy his more full and leisurely meditations . onely let me beg this one thing of him before i take leave , that he would not mis-interpret this my care and diligence in supporting so certain a truth as that of the rising of the witnesses and the ending of their mournfull prophesying where they are risen , that the prophecy thereof is already fulfilled in the blessed protestant reformation , and that all computing now by the days for any fresh accessions to the reformed churches or farther ruine of antichrist is quite out of doors . but that the onely true computation of the approach of his farther fall , and of the farther advancement of the kingdom of christ is to be taken from the christian behaviour of the reformed churches . by how much more truly holy and humble they become , and instead of their zeal , every one for the self-chosen mode of piety in their own way , which is very smally or nothing to the purpose of true piety indeed ( the heat concerning which ways is the very fire of hell kindled by the devil himself , the very mystery of iniquity and depth of satan , whereby he subtilly endeavours to extinguish all sincere zeal for the indispensables of christianity by inflaming mens spirits in the behalf of what makes so slenderly to the purpose of that true and undefiled religion before god ) by how much more , i say , that instead of this false and hypocritical zeal ( a zeal that onely serves to excuse their consciences from the plain and undoubted duties of a christian ) they shall grow seriously warm in the behalf of the known , intelligible and indispensable precepts of life given by the prophets of old , and ratified by christ and his apostles , that is to say , by how much more just , temperate and prudent , by how much more meek , self-denying and charitable , by how much more faithfull and friendly they are one to another , by how much more sincerely pious towards god , and heartily loyal , and tenderly respectfull towards his vicegerents here on earth , and obedient to those that are put in autority under them , whether in church or state , so that it become the genuine character of a protestant or reformed christian to be inviolably loyal to his prince , and cheerfully morigerous to all his lawfull commands , by whatever ministers of his power they be enjoined ; i say , by how much more this face of things shall appear , by those degrees , and not by the numbering of the days of the mournfull prophesying of the witnesses will it best be discerned how near , or how far off the ruine of antichrist , or the farther amplification of the kingdom of christ is . but for people without preparing themselves for so signal a blessing to sit counting upon their fingers ends , how many years it is to the expiration of those prophetick days , in expectation of some strange change of things , which days yet are expired above years ago , what a freak is this ? what a fanatick dotage , to imagine that yet to come which is already past , and conceit in the mean time that god will , however they behave themselves , bring what they would have , to pass , before the expiration of their miscounted years , not improving what is really already past to those laudable advantages providence intended it ? for assuredly divine providence never freed us from the slavery of rome to serve our own lusts , or to serve him according to our own self-chosen ways or humours , but to be zealous and faithfull in the indispensable points of his service and worship , and as to indifferent circumstances thereof to be concluded by the appointment of our lawfull superiours set over us by him. wherefore in very faithfulness to the publick , and to the reformed churches , i have used this care and diligence to undeceive them , and to set before them more true measures to calculate the approach of the fall of antichrist by , and the most speedy method of accelerating it , that is , by laying aside all humours and animosities , and all heats and scrupulosities about smaller things , and by endeavouring earnestly and sincerely , in mortifying our own carnal minds to find and feel the true rellish of the plain and indispensable duties of christianity , whether towards god , towards his vicegerents here on earth , or towards one another , and so by the renovation of our souls into the living image of our lord jesus christ , to become real members of his body , and faithfull subjects of his kingdom . this is the onely true method of the farther ruining the kingdom of antichrist , and the advancing the kingdom of christ. and it must be a people of this philadelphian character , ( indigitated by those few names in sardis ) by whom the affairs of reformed christendom or the true kingdom of christ is likely to prosper . wherefore as many as have any good will towards sion , let them leave counting of time on their fingers ends , and doting on an expected expiration of the days , as if it were yet to come , whenas it is already past , and lay their hand on that work above described , in virtue whereof the desire of all nations will come indeed in a more illustrious manner than ever , and christ really will consume with the spirit of his mouth that man of sin , and son of perdition , and destroy him with the brightness of his appearing , and upon his ruines raise his glorious millennial empire on earth : whenas the methods of hot enthusiasts , instead of this expected happiness are more likely to bring an hell upon earth , and unspeakable disorder and confusion . which that it may never be , i have used this faithfulness and open freeness of speech which i have , being assured no good christian will ever tax me for it . for i seek nothing of my own in this but to serve the true interest of the kingdom of christ , as every good christian is bound to doe . appendicvla apocalyptica , or a brief confutation of mr. samvel clark his pretences for the following of mr. iames dvrham , rather than mr. ioseph mede , in his explication of the seals and trumpets , and of the inner and outer court of the temple , in his annotations upon the apocalypse . levit. xix . . thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed , neither shall a garment of linen and woollen come upon thee . london , printed by m. f. for walter kettilby . . appendicvla apocalyptica . it was not many days after i had sent the foregoing appendage to the printer , when i was advertized by a friend touching mr. clark's annotations on the whole new testament , and how particularly in his preface to those on the revelation , dr. more was concerned , and his exposition in some passages perstringed . i had therefore the curiosity to send to london for the book , and having got it , perused the said preface , and not so onely , but in a cursory manner read over his annotations . in which , where he follows his two safest guides mr. mede and the doctour , to give him his due , he has done well and usefully , but in adjoining that third party so heterogeneous to the other two , i leave it to his own consideration whether he has not transgressed the mystical meaning of those mosaical precepts , levit. . . and deut. . . thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed , neither shalt thou plow with an oxe and an ass together . but this onely in general touching his annotations on the apocalypse . it is his preface wherein i am concerned in the behalf of the doctour , whom as i have defended so stoutly against the pretences of the remarker , that those main usefulnesses of his exposition might not be defeated or eluded ; so the like occasion again being given , i shall endeavour to acquit my self with like success here ; in the mean time not at all grudging the annotatour the praise of what is really commendable in him , though otherwise i am like enough to be free in discovering wherein he is faulty . and truly i think he is highly to be commended , that he had that due value for the apocalypse ( the most admirable monument of divine providence , and of a divine or angelical wit and artifice that is extant in the world ) as to spend several years in the study of that book . in which study he seems to excell , that his excellent assistent , as he calls him , dr. seaman . whom i meeting with , by chance , in a book-sellers shop in london , a little after dr. more 's exposition of the apocalypse was published , he occasionally told me of at least half a dozen authours ( for he was a noted pryer into interpreters of prophecies ) that held the epistles to the seven churches to be a prophecy as well as the doctour . but when i asked him if he had met with any that had undertook to make it out in particulars , he confessed he had met with none . but the annotatour , better versed in this study than his excellent assistent , produces one mr. bernard of batcomb ( whose works , he says , praise him in the gates , alluding , i suppose , to a key in the door , he having entitled his exposition of the apocalypse , a key for the opening st. john 's mystical revelation ) by whom he says , after he was possessed of the opinion of the epistles to the seven churches being prophetical ( by no less than twenty good arguments , and an exposition from top to toe unexceptionably coherent , and accurately fitted to history ) by dr. more , he was much confirmed therein by his finding him , the abovesaid mr. bernard of batcomb , of the same opinion long before , who , he says , takes much the same way that dr. more has since insisted on . but when so accurate a prophetical exposition , and twenty firm arguments for so expounding those epistles , wanted farther confirmation from mr. bernard of batcomb's suffrage , i hope it will farther gratifie the annotatour to hear that ludovicus crocius and balthasar willius , two famous divines , do more accurately than mr. bernard agree with the doctour's exposition ; who both writ long before the doctour , and with whose writings nor with mr. bernard's the doctour was ever acquainted before the publishing of his own exposition ; in which he had no pattern to imitate , nor any help but the scripture it self , and the knowledge of the prophetick style and history . which is no contemptible argument for the assuredness of the prophetical sense of those epistles . see the doctour's preface to his exposition of the visions of daniel , sect. . wherefore i commend the annotatour's caution , that he thinks he cannot be too sure of the truth of an exposition of so sacred a writing , and of so high and vast a concern . and do farthermore well approve of his judicious method of gathering together all the dispersed notions of such as he conceived had most seriously and carefully , and with most skill bestow'd their pains on any part of this divine volume , amongst which he was pleased to reckon mr. mede , dr. more and mr. durham . for it is a very rash business , and the fruit of a strange overweening confidence and self-conceitedness to think that by the bare strength of ones own solitary wit , parts , learning and an overdaring fancy to master so mystical a piece as the holy apocalypse . but now having freely commended what is commendable in the ingenious and industrious annotatour , i hope he will the more easily bear with it , if i also tell him wherein he fails ; and it is chiesly in these two points . first , in that he does not keep himself strictly enough to the proper meaning of the prophetick style , such as may be justified either by examples of scripture , or by the ancient indian , persian and aegyptian onirocriticks , such as achmetes has gathered together ( and assuredly not without a special providence ) and such as to which all sorts of commentatours do appeal , grotius himself not excepted , and many of which are collected into dr. more 's alphabet of iconisms in his synopsis prophetica . secondly , he does not bring a mind freed from prejudice , or a purpose of serving a party , or is at least abused into errour by following such as have warpt the genuine meaning of some parts of the revelation to a compliance with that faction , of which the writer was , or intended to serve , as grotius did the roman faction , and so has perverted the true meaning of the prophecies of daniel and the apocalypse so wretchedly , as no example can parallell ; and it is the misfortune of some , otherwise , pious and learned persons , to have been trepan'd into his errours by over-much estimation of his parts and learning . but these things which i have thus hinted will be the best discerned in answering those passages of the annotatour's preface which concern the doctour ; which i will take in order as they lye . first then , sect. . in the exposition , says he , of the seals and trumpets i have followed mr. durham , wherein he differs from mr. mede and dr. more . i know indeed , saith he , what dr. more saith , that mr. mede 's interpretation of the first six seals is so solid , that it 's impossible , i think , for any unprejudiced reader not to be assured of the truth of them , myst. of iniq. p. . here i am concerned for mr. mede and the doctour at once , who , i can assure you , does stedfastly persist in the same judgment still , both touching the truth of mr. mede's exposition of the first six seals , and that it is in all likelihood prejudice in all those that are not satisfied therewith . let us now hear what the annotatour alledgeth against this judgment of the doctour . but notwithstanding this confident elogy , both the dutch annotatours , saith he , ( who published their annotations five years after mr. mede 's comment came forth , viz. , and who take notice of his interpretation in their notes ) and also judicious mr. durham ( whose solid exposition of the revelation was composed near twenty years after that , yet ) both these , together with others formerly , make 'em relate chiefly to church affairs . the annotatour here would justifie his deserting mr. mede by the example and autority of the dutch annotatours and judicious mr. durham , and others before mr. mede . but for those before him , if they all went the other way , which cannot be proved , yet their autority is not of much value , interpreters before him roving so very much , and writing their sudden fancies rather , ( they having no cynosura to guide themselves by ) than what they had concluded upon more sure grounds , and due and deliberate reasons , though by a good providence , rather than any great care or skill , they have sometimes stumbled upon what is usefull and true . and now for the time since mr. mede , for my own part i have been much amazed to observe how so truly judicious a writer came to be so little taken notice of , especially for his apocalyptick lucubrations , and the best solution i could find of this strange phaenomenon was , that solid things soonest sink out of sight when chaff and straws float above on the water . those things which are writ with close strick't attention of mind , and accuracy of judgment , require such a close strick't attention and accuracy of judgment in the reader to understand them , and perceive the truth and strength of them , which is a pain to the generality of men , even to many of them that pretend to be learned , the minds of most being lax and desultorious , slight and impenetrative ; and therefore what is most overly easie and superficial , is the most generally rellished and applauded , when things most true and solid are neglected , because they require better parts and more pains by close attentiveness and comprehensiveness of mind to receive them . but for the dutch annotatours , that they should balk mr. mede's interpretation of the seals , he that considers the texture thereof and how it is complicated with the account he gives of the vision of the four beasts and four and twenty elders with golden crowns on their heads ( which he makes to represent the bishops of those happy times there prefigured , as dr. more the monarchs ) need no longer wonder that the dutch divines , that live under a state that is neither monarchical nor episcopal , should not be willing to admit , that the best and most glorious times of the church that are predicted in the apocalypse should be episcopal or monarchical . which two orders are naturally linked together . but now how necessarily mr. mede's interpretation of the seals is interwoven with that of the vision of the four beasts and four and twenty elders , is evident in that the horsemen that appear upon the opening of the four first seals come out of those four quarters that respect the four living creatures , the east the lion , the west the oxe , the south the man , and the north the eagle , and in that order the four beasts or living creatures are reckoned . from those quarters , i say , and in that order do the riders of the four horses come . which answer to the quarters and ensigns of the camp of israel . and the fit application of things here to history by mr. mede is admirable and enravishing , and the providence of god marvellously illustrated therein , and a reason obvious occurs why there are onely four horsemen in the opening of the seals , viz. for that there are no more beasts to point at the quarters they come from than four in the precedent vision , which whole vision , as i said , alludes to the camp of israel . but let the reader peruse the interpretation of the fourth and sixth chapters of the revelation in mr. mede , or at least in dr. more , and so judge . but now for the autority of judicious mr. durham , whom the annotatour chuseth to follow rather than mr. mede , who yet undoubtedly much better deserves that encomium than the other party . let mr. durham be as judicious as the annotatour pleases when he is free , yet who can well assure us that favour to a faction , and his affection for the scotch presbytery ( for even his speech and style bewray him ) has not blinded his judgment in this matter ? indeed before mr. mede had blest the world with his excellent interpretation of that vision ( apoc. . ) of the divine majesty sitting on his throne , and of the four beasts and four and twenty elders sitting on thrones round about him ; and of the opening the first six seals , chap. . for interpreters to have fumbled in these things might be a less sign of want of judgment . but for one now , when he had so fair a copy before him , to interpret ( chap. . . ) the four and twenty elders not so much as of any officers or guides but of private professours , though they are said to sit on thrones to be cloathed in white soft raiment , such as either belongs to the priesthood or to kings houses , and to have golden crowns on their heads , ( which in the apocalypse often occurs and always signifies political sovereignty and dominion , not spiritual or moral . ) what is this a sign of but of a clouded judgment , much blinded by a disgust against either monarchy or episcopacy ? the proof that he would bring from the song of the four beasts and elders , chap. . , . makes against him . for whereas they are there said to reign upon the earth ; the four beasts indeed as well as the four and twenty elders are equally there concerned in that spiritual reign ; but if that was the onely reason , either all must have crowns , or none must have crowns ; otherwise crowns here must of necessity denote either christian monarchs or christian bishops . it cannot be avoided . but in that it is said , chap. . , . and when those beasts give glory — the four and twenty elders fall down before him — ; and hence there is gathered , that the four beasts are the ministers of the gospel : what a preposterous business is this , to make those that wear crowns to be private persons , and those that have no crowns to be rulers and governours in the church ? besides , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a good sense , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a bad , both according to the prophetick style signifie a body politick ; and these four beasts undoubtedly allude to the four quarters of the camp of israel , as also may the four and twenty elders to the twenty four chief priests , or heads of the families , or courses of the priests and levites , if bishops be understood thereby . but if as the annotatour and his guide , mr. durham , would have it from the text ▪ that the divine worship is begun by the beasts , that is , by some amongst them , it implies that the four and twenty crowned elders are the monarchs and sovereigns of christendom , who are not the leading ministers or priests in the divine worship ▪ though devoutly present at the same ; the bishops themselves , in counterdistinction to the christian sovereigns , making part of the body of the people , and therefore understood to take their place in that multitude of subjects that make up the four beasts : and in the mean time , though these monarchs be no bishops , yet they being next under christ in all causes , and over all persons , as well ecclesiastical as civil , supreme heads and governours , they may be look't upon as so many patriarchs as well as kings , or patres patriae , that is to say , fathers of their country . this sense of mr. mede or the doctour is easie and clear , but that of mr. durham , unless we will make symbols and words signifie any thing or nothing , incredible , nay impossible . wherefore mr. durham , though called judicious by the annotatour , has in this matter forfeited his title and his autority therewithall . nor can it be a sufficient excuse , nor indeed any for the annotatour to have deserted mr. mede's way of expounding the seals from the example of mr. iames durham . but to give the annotatour his due , he does not support himself onely by these autorities , but adds what he thinks is reason , for his interpreting not onely the first six seals , but first six trumpets also included in the seventh seal , of the affairs of the church rather than of the empire . because , says he , according to mr. mede's own interpretation , not onely the first seal , but also the fifth and sixth too , relate to the affairs of the church , and the seventh , saith he , contains both the trumpets and vials , and the vials relate to the affairs of the church , and therefore three or four of the seals being clearly and confessedly descriptive of church affairs , why should the others be of a different nature from them ? it being the very argument mr. mede himself uses against those that would interpret some of the trumpets of heresies , and othersome of warlike invasions , and so bring things of a different nature under one name . this is the main of the annotatour's justification of himself for his deserting mr. mede in the interpretation of the seals . and to this i answer , that the true church of christ being so mingled with the body of the roman empire , it will be hard to find any thing to fall out on the one , but it will some way or other concern the other ; but the distinction of sorting the affairs to the one and to the other , is to be taken from the opposition of the true church of christ to the body of the empire and the religion thereof , as counter-distinct to that of the true apostolick church . and therefore those visions that relate to the state of the empire so described , as to a fit object of them , must be the visions appertaining to the state of the empire ; but those that in such a sort relate to the state of the church , must appertain to the church , that is to say , the pure religion of the church or its body must be the object in the one , and the false religion of the empire or its body must be the object in the other . and this therefore it is i declare in the behalf of mr. mede , that the visions of the first six seals and the first six trumpets , which are part of the seventh seal , that is to say , that all the visions of the sealed book , so far as it has pleased the spirit of prophecy to unseal them , before he descends to the visions of the opened book , are rightly said to respect the state of the empire , remembring also that axiome , that denominatio est à parte potiori . wherefore i answer , as to the first and sixth seal , that they do most palpably and eminently set out the intended conquest and final overthrow of the impure pagan religion of the empire , and the imperial crown is given to the rider of the white horse , and the success of this heros is against the religion of the empire , and the sixth seal the overthrow thereof , to omit the affairs of the iews , and the siege and sacking of ierusalem , which concerns the body of the empire , and is referrible to the rider of the white horse ; nor was the overthrow of the pagan religion under the sixth seal without large effusion of the bloud of the body of the empire . so that five of the six seals plainly respect the state of the empire as their object . and if the fifth did not , yet denominatio est à parte potiori , as i said . but under that seal , the christians being part of the civil body of the empire , and the vast effusion of their bloud there intimated ( though it was semen ecclesiae yet ) a weakening of the empire , and the empire threatened therefore , that seal plainly respects the empire also . in brief , the fifth seal is a most terrible commination of a dreadfull vengeance on the bloudy and idolatrous empire . so plainly is the empire the object of that seal . and for the seventh seal , the vials are no part of it , but belong to the opened-book-prophecy ( the object of the vials is the true churches gaining ground upon antichrist till the utter subversion of his kingdom ) but the seven trumpets belong to it , viz. to the seventh seal , and as they are martial instruments , so they , every one of the first six of them , betoken invasions , and war , and spoil , and destruction on the empire , and mr. mede's application of history thereto is very apposite and fit . so that it is plain that the sealed-book-prophecy , so far as it has pleased the spirit to unseal it , respects the fate or state of the empire in the six seals and six trumpets . but the seven thunders that succeed in the place of the seventh trumpet , as the seven trumpets did into the place of the seventh seal ; what they uttered , iohn is commanded for the present to conceal . so that the annotatour's reason for his interpreting the seals all of them of the affairs of the church quite vanisheth , and in so doing he must needs find himself in a wrong box , or others will easily so find him , he not interpreting the visions according to the genuine meaning of the prophetick style , as mr. mede does , but according to his own private fancy . but that i swell not my appendicula to an undue bulk , i must not enter , much less insist on these things . we haste therefore to what follows . in sect. . the first thing that occurs , is his allowing the doctour's dividing of the third period or seventh trumpet into seven thunders to be an ingenious invention , but withall perstringing it as a notion that has no ground in the text. but what we have answered to the remarker in his remarks on the tenth chapter of the apocalypse will sufficiently demonstrate that this invention of the doctour is plainly grounded upon the text , and confirmed therefrom , and so is not onely ingenious , but also true . to which answer therefore i refer the reader , and proceed to what occurs next , which is his assertion that the things prefigured by the inner and outer court of the temple do synchronize . the absurdity of which conceit i have abundantly demonstrated against the remarker upon chap. . whither i might again refer the reader . but because the annotatour here in his preface pretends to prove his erroneous assertion , which he follows mr. durham in , by no less than six arguments i will briefly hint the weakness of every one of them . arg. . his first argument insinuates , that the coherence betwixt the first and second verse of chap. . is no other ways to be understood than by allowing what things are signified by the inner and outer court , to synchronize , v. . rise and measure the temple — v. . but the court that is without ( or rather according to the greek ) but the outer court of the temple 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , cast out , or pronounce to be rejectaneous . for it is given to the gentiles , and the holy city shall they tread under foot — of which two verses the most easie and natural coherent sense is this , that iohn is bid by the angel to arise and measure , that is , forthwith to set himself to the measuring of the inner court as denoting the present state of the church , which he should find symmetral to the rule . but as for the outer court denoting a state of the church to come , that should bear the same proportion of time or duration to the present state of her , that the outer court does to the inner , of space , you may save your labour of measuring of that , but onely pronounce it rejectaneous , asymmetral or unanswering to the rule . for providence has decreed to permit it to be possessed of the gentiles , and they shall tread it under foot — they do not yet tread it under foot , but shall do after such a proportion of time . does not this easie sense make the first and second verse admirably coherent , and withall plainly imply , that the different states of the church prefigured by the inner and outer court do not synchronize , but succeed one another ? let any indifferent reader compare the annotatour's pretended coherence , and this of mine , and then give judgment . arg. . if when he measures , all within the church are included , then none are left out . and on the contrary , if all are left out , then none are measured , viz. at that time . ans. this measuring and casting out concerns the visible state of the church , no part whereof is left out , during the time of symmetricalness , but it is all supposed to be measured and allowed to be in its degree symmetral . but of the asymmetral times of the church , no part is measured , that is to say , is approved as symmetral , but the visible state of the church declared to be all along faulty and asymmetral , though in different degrees . arg. . outer relates to inner , and inner to outer . but according to mr. mede's way , when the inner is measured , there is no outer at all ; and when the outer is left out , there is no inner spoken of . ans. prius tempore relates to posterius tempore and vice versâ ; but when prius tempore is , posterius tempore is not ; and when posterius tempore is , prius tempore is not . what a piece of lank sophistry is this ? things succeeding in time may be represented to our understanding together , and that by things that are coexistent , and so may be compared one with another . see my answer to the remarker upon this text. arg. . the subject here of measuring and leaving out is different as well as the actions relating thereto ; but according to mr. mede there is but one common subject for both , viz. the visible church . ans. but this common subject the visible church is distinguished into two different states , the one unapostatized , the other apostatized , and therefore not onely admit , but call for a different action , the one of measuring and approving as symmetral , the other of casting out as adulterate and rejectaneous . for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signifie . arg. . how could it be more clearly expressed to relate to the same time than it is ? for the coexistent parts of a prophetick representation signifie the coexistency of the things they represent , if nothing be expresly intimated in the prophecy to the contrary , as it is in the vision of daniel's statue of several metals , and of the seven heads of the beast exhibited at once , where they are in both places , interpreted by an angel to succeed one another . this is the sense of his fifth argument . ans. it might have been more clearly expressed to relate to the same time if it had run thus : measure the inner court , because true iews worship there , but measure not the outer court , because it is troden under foot by the gentiles . this , though it does not necessarily exclude two successive conditions of the visible church , yet it had been more favourable to the annotatour's way than as things are set down in the vision , where iohn is bid to rise streight and measure the temple , and those that do worship therein , ( which implies they were then worshipping when iohn was to measure them ) but is bid to cast out the outer court of the temple , because the gentiles shall tread it under foot . which plainly insinuates that this will be done after the time of the true worshippers in the temple — . but then for the other part of the argument , i answer , . that parts of a representation at once are sometimes to be understood of succession , though there is no express intimation thereof in the prophecy it self by an angel-interpreter , so as in the case of daniel's image and the seven heads of the beast , v. g. as in the seven coexistent churches of asia , which are yet by reason concluded to signifie seven successive intervals of the church , and the annotatour cannot deny it . . that which i intimated before is a fair assurance that the right worshippers in the temple and the polluting gentiles in the outer court succeed one another ; not to add here , that this vision in the eleventh chapter is the first of the opened-book-prophecy , and therefore must commence with the highest epocha of the prophecies , unless we will make the opened-book-prophecy to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which is so exceeding absurd , that no one whose intellectuals do not labour under some strange callosity , or who is not hugely benumb'd or blinded with prejudice can endure as tolerable , but must feel or discern the extreme harshness or ugliness thereof . but this point i think will occur again in his preface . arg. . mr. mede himself doth grant , that when the representation consists in motion and action , things done together in vision are to be expounded of things to be performed together in signification ; but , says the annotatour , the essence of the type here consists not in the frame of the temple and courts , but in motion and action , viz. measuring the temple and casting out the court , and therefore they are to be expounded of things to be performed together , and so to synchronize . ans. no ingenuous reader can understand mr. mede's grant to reach any farther in representations by action and motion than such actions and motions as either require or admit of a simultaneous performance , as well as of a simultaneous representation . but here in this case the actions or motions are not simultaneous , nor so represented . for iohn's measuring the inner court is a representation preceding his casting out , or rejecting the outer ; and his declaring the outer court rejectaneous , reaches the whole court , and that whole time of the state of the church represented thereby ; and iohn must needs have a representation in his mind of both the courts , while he measures the one , and declares the other rejectaneous . and these two courts , the one unpolluted , the other polluted with gentilism , representing the twofold state of the visible church , the one succeeding the other is rightly enough termed by mr. mede the essence of the type , and the object of iohn's examining them . so little is there in this sixth or last , and in all the five foregoing arguments ; and so plain is it , that there is not the least incongruity or distortedness , ( which these arguments would fain charge it with ) in mr. mede's way ; nor any comparison for clearness and strength betwixt those arguments which dr. more produces for the fetching the rise of this vision , chap. . from the first epocha of the church , and these of the annotatour which i have confuted . let the reader peruse dr. more 's arguments , synops. proph. lib. . cap. . sect . , , , , , , , . and then freely judge . it is not a probable business , but to the intelligent and unprejudiced plain demonstration . the annotatour's last attack is upon mr. mede's notion of a twofold series or systeme of prophecies , ( which he says is his chief argument whence he would infer , that the time of the inner court precedes that of the outer ) viz. the systeme of the sealed book , and that other of the opened book , which latter , says he , he fansies must needs begin ab ovo again , and commence from the epocha of the seals , &c. to which the annotatour answers , ( ) that there is no necessity of such a division of the prophecies into those of the sealed book , and those of the opened book , as he could shew by several arguments . or , ( ) if there were , yet what necessity is there that this latter must needs commence from the same starting place with the former ? or yet ( ) if there be , then i say this is done , chap. . where the woman cloathed with the sun is the primitive apostolical church . but to the first i reply , that there was indeed no necessity at first that constrained the divine wisedom to frame the apocalypse thus as it is , ( this part i mean we speak of ) into this twofold series of prophecies , is true . but now it is thus framed as it is , it is surely want of wisedom in us not to discern it to be so . that it is so , i need produce no new arguments here , but refer you to dr. more 's synopsis prophetica , lib. . cap. . in the above named sections , , , &c. to which you may add what i have answered to the remarker on the th and th chapters . but for the several arguments the annotatour could produce to shew , that there is no necessity of conceiving those two series of prophecies , if they be no better than the six arguments in the other cause , he does well to conceal them ; but if they be better , why did he not produce them ? i am sure mr. durham's arguments are very weak and sophistical , p. . and built all upon that passage , chap. . vers . , . the second wo is past , and behold the third wo cometh quickly ; and the seventh angel sounded — the former part of which does not continue the vision hitherto in this th chapter , to the sixth trumpet ; so that all that is hitherto herein said , must belong to the sealed-book-prophecy , because the exitus of the second wo-trumpet , or sixth trumpet , is here mentioned , no more than all that follows the sounding of the seventh trumpet , to the end of the apocalypse , belongs to the seventh trumpet , and so is to appertain to the sealed-book-prophecy ; but in these two verses there is a marvellous artfull intimation of the coincidence of time , viz. that this vision ( chap. . ) of the rising of the witnesses and falling of the great city ends , as to time , with the second wo-trumpet . in virtue of which intimation the visions of the opened book and sealed book are reduced into clear and usefull synchronisms ; and we are assured , that what follows in chap. . after the seven trumpets beginning to sound , follows the sixth trumpet , and belongs to the time of the seventh , &c. but to infer from the time of the exitus of the sixth trumpet falling in with the time of the rising of the witnesses , that this vision must belong to the sixth trumpet , which appertains to the sealed-book-prophecy , when it is so plainly and expresly , from the text , a prophecy of the opened book is so weak a reasoning , and so absonous , as nothing can be more . and this weakness and mistake makes both mr. durham and the annotatour give such an odd and incongruous sense of that passage , chap. . . thou must prophesie again — as if it concerned the preaching of the gospel , taking prophesying in so large a sense that it may signifie preaching , whenas the word ( again ) plainly intimates that the prophesying must be of the same kind as before , that is , predicting of things to come . but how strangely does prejudice blind the understandings of men ? to the second i answer , that there being two series of prophecies acknowledged , the one chiefly respecting the affairs of the empire , the other of the church ; there is a necessity , unless we will be very absurd , and conceive that the spirit of prophecy will not be as punctual at least , in prefiguring from the beginning the affairs of the church , as those of the empire ( as if he were more curious in things extraneous than in things more nearly concerning himself , and as it were domestick ) to acknowledge that some visions commence as high as the vision of the seals . which is a plain demonstration that the woman in the throes of child-birth and the fight of michael with the dragon begins as high as the first epocha of the church . see what we have answered the remarker upon chap. . and to the third and last i answer , if this be true that the second vision of the opened-book-prophecy , viz. the woman in the pangs of childbed began so high as the epocha of the seals or commencement of the church , any one whose perceptive faculty is not grown insensible by callosity or gross prejudice must needs feel , perceive and abhor such an ugly and harsh piece of preposterousness in placing thus this headless vision first that falls short of the epocha of the church by the space of the first six seals , or of betwixt three and four hundred years : whenas it is so fitly placed to shew , in mr. mede's way , the purity and unapostatizedness of the primitive church , and the continuance of that state , as the woman in the pangs of childbearing and the fight of michael with the dragon to set out the churches sharp sufferings and conflicts in endeavouring to propagate the gospel , and subdue the roman empire to the sceptre of christ. wherefore all things being so easie , natural , smooth and coherent in mr. mede's way , as to these things we here speak of , it would amaze a man , that after things are made so plain and convictive , that either mr. durham the guide , or mr. clark his follower should have their eyes so held , that they should not see so clear and manifest a truth . i must confess i was very much astonished at it till i considered the power of prejudice from education or faction , and espousing the cause of a party . and the annotatour does here in the conclusion ingenuously confess the malady he labours under . his dear regard to presbytery and disgust against episcopacy , this has made him not content with the faithfull conduct of mr. mede and dr. more , but he must have another light to guide him out of the paths and tracts of solid ground , in which they would have safely led him , to be carried into fenny and marish places . and prejudice has so hoodwinked his judgment , that notwithstanding all his arguments against mr. mede's way in these points are thus unconclusive , as i have demonstrated , yet he most triumphantly concludes ; this then being evinced , that the temple and altar measured and the court unmeasured do synchronize , all those inferences which dr. more so frequently deduces from his opinion will of themselves fall to the ground , as , episcopacy simply in it self is not antichristian , presbytery is not jure divino , pref. to myst. of godl . p. . and elsewhere concerning the office and dignity it self ( of a bishop ) it cannot sink into my mind , that that order of the church which was instituted and in practice in those ages thereof which were symmetral , can with any face or conscience be judged antichristian , myst. of iniquity , p. . but why has the annotatour noted that inference of the doctour also , that the doctrine of the divinity of christ , and triunity of the godhead is in this way confirmed by divine autority against the socinians , who admit of no other autority but such , and by tricks and quillets think they can shuffle off other places of scripture that are produced for those doctrines ? had he rather that this inference also should fall to the ground , than that presbytery should not perk up and prevail in the world against episcopacy ? but i will rather charitably surmise he did not think of that ; and declare , that it is great pity but that a person so active and industrious to communicate truth to the world , as the annotatour is , should light upon any other guides but such as are both skilfull and faithfull . and lastly , i will not despair , but that he seeing so plainly all his pretences of evincing , that the temple and altar measured , and the court unmeasured , do synchronize , to be utterly routed and vanish , and the doctour's notion of the symmetral times of the church antecedent to the asymmetral , to stand firm and unshaken , that he will admit or rather embrace the inferences the doctour deduces therefrom , that neither episcopacy is antichristian , nor presbytery jure divino . finis . an antidote against atheisme, or, an appeal to the natural faculties of the minde of man, whether there be not a god by henry more ... more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) an antidote against atheisme, or, an appeal to the natural faculties of the minde of man, whether there be not a god by henry more ... more, henry, - . [ ], [i.e. ], [ ] p. printed by roger daniel ..., london : . reproduction of original in union theological seminary library, new york. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng atheism -- early works to . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images - olivia bottum sampled and proofread - aptara rekeyed and resubmitted - andrew kuster sampled and proofread - andrew kuster text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion an antidote against atheisme , or an appeal to the natural faculties of the minde of man , whether there be not a god. by henry more fellow of christ colledge in cambridge . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . trismegist . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . aristot. london ▪ printed by roger daniel , at lovell's inne in pater-noster-row . anno . to the honourable , the lady anne conway . madame , the high opinion or rather certain knowledge i have of your singular wit and vertues , has emboldened , or to speak more properly , commanded me to make choice of none other then yourself for a patronesse of this present treatise . for besides that i do your ladiship that right as also this present age and succeeding posterity , as to be a witnesse to the world of such eminent accomplishments & transcendent worth ; so i do not a little please my self , while i find my self assured in my own conceit that cebes his mysterious & judicious piece of morality hung up in the temple of saturne , which was done in way of divine honour to the wisdome of the deity , was not more safely and suteably placed then this carefull draught of natural theology or metaphysicks , which i have dedicated to so noble , so wise , and so pious a personage . and for my own part it seems to me as reall a point of religious worship to honour the vertuous as to relieve the necessitous , which christianity terms no lesse then a sacrifice . nor is there any thing here of hyperbolisme or high-flow'n language , it being agreed upon by all sides , by prophets , apostles , and ancient philosophers , that holy and good men are the temples of the living god. and verily the residence of divinity is so conspicuous in that heroical pulchritude of your noble person , that plato if he were alive again might finde his timorous supposition brought into absolute act , & to the enravishment of his amazed soul might behold vertue become visible to his outward sight . and truly madame , i must confesse that so divine a constitution as this , wants no preservative , being both devoid & uncapable of infection ; and that if the rest of the world had attain'd but to the least degree of this sound complexion & generous frame of minde , nay if they were but brought to an aequilibrious indifferency , and , as they say , stood but neutralls , that is , if as many as are supposed to have no love of god , nor any knowledge or experience of the divine life , did not out of a base ignorant fear irreconcilably hate him , assuredly this antidote of mine would either prove needless and superfluous , or , if occasion ever called for it , a most certain cure. for this truth of the existence of god being as clearly demonstrable as any theorem in mathematicks , it would not fail of winning as firm and as universall assent , did not the fear of a sad after-clap pervert mens vnderstandings , and prejudice and interest pretend uncertainty & obscurity in so plain a matter . but considering the state of things as they are , i cannot but pronounce , that there is more necessity of this my antidote then i could wish there were . but if there were lesse or none at all , yet the pleasure that may be reaped in perusal of this treatise , ( even by such as by an holy faith & divine sense are ever held fast in a full assent to the conclusion i drive at ) will sufficiently compensate the pains in the penning therof . for as the best eyes & most able to behold the pure light do not unwillingly turn their backs of the sun to view his refracted beauty in the delightfull colours of the rainbow ; so the perfectest minds & the most lively possest of the divine image , cannot but take contentment & pleasure in observing the glorious wisdome & goodness of god so fairly drawn out and skilfully variegated in the sundry objects of externall nature . which delight though it redound to all , yet not so much to any as to those that are of a more philosophicall & contemplative constitution ; & therefore madame , most of all to yourself , whose genius i know to be so speculative , & wit so penetrant , that in the knowledge of things as well natural as divine you have not onely out gone all of your own sexe , but even of that other also , whose ages have not given them overmuch the start of you . and assuredly your ladiship 's wisedome and judgement can never be highly enough commended , that makes the best use that may be of those ample fortunes that divine providence has bestow'd upon you . for the best result of riches , i mean in reference to ourselves , is , that we finding ourselves already well provided for , we may be fully masters of our own time : & the best improvement of this time is the contemplation of god and nature , wherein if these present labours of mine may prove so gratefull unto you and serviceable , as i have been bold to presage , next to the winning of soules from atheisme , it is the sweetest fruit they can ever yield to your ladiships humbly devoted servant henry more . the preface . atheisme and enthusiasme though they seeme so extreamely opposite one to another , yet in many things they do very nearly agree . for to say nothing of their joynt conspiracy against the true knowledge of god and religion , they are commonly entertain'd , though successively , in the same complexion . for that temper that disposes a man to listen to the magisteriall dictates of an over-bearing fancy , more then to the calm and cautious insinuations of free reason , is a subject that by turns does very easily lodge and give harbour to these mischievous guests . for as dreams are the fancies of those that sleep , so fancies are but the dreams of men awake . and these fancies by day , as those dreams by night , will vary and change with the weather & present temper of the body . so that those that have onely a fiery enthusiastick acknowledgement of god ; change of diet , feculent old age , or some present dampes of melancholy will as confidently represent to their fancy that there is no god , as ever it was represented that there is one ; and then having lost the use of their more noble faculties of reason and understanding , they must according to the course of nature , bee as bold atheists now , as they were before confident enthusiasts . nor do these two unruly guests only serve themselves by turns on the same party , but also send mutuall supplies one to another ; being lodg'd in severall persons . for the atheist's pretence to wit and natural reason ( though the foulenesse of his mind makes him fumble very dotingly in the use thereof ) makes the enthusiast●●cure ●●cure that reason is no guide to god. and the enthusiast's boldy dictating the carelesse ravings of his own tumultuous fancy for undeniable principles of divine knowledge , confirms the atheists that the whole buisinesse of religion & notion of a god , is nothing but a troublesome fit of over-curious melancholy . therefore , i thought i should not be wanting to religion and to the publique , if i attempted , some way , to make this fansifull theosophy or theomagy , as it is very ridiculous in it self , so also to appeare to the world , and if it were possible , to the very favourers of it ; it being the most effectuall means in my judgment , to remove this dangerous evill out of the minds of men , and to keep it off from theirs that are as yet untainted . and this i indeavoured in those two late pamphlets i wrote , namely my observations and my reply . in both which i putting my self upon the merry pin ( as you see it was necessary so to do ) and being finely warm'd with anger and indignation against the mischief i had in designe to remove , if i may seem after the manner of men to have transgressed in any niceties , yet the ingenuous cannot but be very favourable in their censure , it being very hard to come off so clearly well , in the acting of so humorous a part ; there scarce being any certaine judge of humours , but the humour of every man that judges . and i am very well aware that some passages cannot but seem harsh to sad and weakly spirits , as sick men love no noise nor din , and take offence at but the smell of such meats , as are the most pleasant and strengthening nourishment of those that are well . but as for my selfe i can truly pronounce that what i did , i did in reason & judgment , not at all offending that life that dwelleth in mee . for there was that tonicall exertion , and steady tension of my spirits , that every chord went off with a cleare and smart sound , as in a well-tuned instrument set at a high pitch , and was good musick to my self that throughly understood the meaning of it . and my agile and swift motion from one thing to another , even of those that were of very different natures , was no harsh harmony at all to mee , i having the art to stop the humming of the last stroke , as a skilfull harper on his irish harpe , and so to render the following chord cleane , without the mixing or interfaring of any tremulous murmurs , from the strings that were touch'd immediately before . and i did the more willingly indulge to my self this freedome and mirth , in respect of the libertines whom i was severely and sharply to reprove , and so made my self as freely merry as i might , and not desert the realities of sobernesse , that thereby they might know , that no superstitious sneaksby , or moped legallist ( as they would be ready to fancy every body that bore no resemblance at all with themselves ) did rebuke them or speak to them , but one that had in some measure attain'd to the truth of that liberty , that they were in a false sent after . thus was i content to become a spectacle to the world , in any way or disguise whatsoever , that i might thereby possibly by any means gain some souls out of this dirty and dizzy whirle-poole of the flesh , into the rest and peace of god ; and to seem a fool my self to provoke others to become truly and seriously wise . and as i thought to winne upon the libertine by my mirth and freenesse , so i thought to gain ground upon the enthusiast , by suffering my self to be carried into such high triumphs and exaltations of spirit as i did . in all which ( though the unskilfull cannot distinguish betwixt vain-glory and divine joy or christian gloriation ) i do really nothing but highly magni●y the simplicity of the life of christ above all magick , miracles , power of nature , opinions , prophecies , and what ever else humane nature is so giddily and furiously carried after , even to the neglecting of that which is the sublimest pitch of happinesse that the soul of man can arrive to . wherefore many of those expressions in my reply that seem so turgent are to be interpreted with allusion to what this divine life does deservedly triumph over , and particularly what magicians boast they can do : as in that passage which seems most enormous pag. th . i still the raging of the sea &c. which is the very same that medea vaunts of in ovid , — concussaque sisto , stantia concutio cantu freta , nubila pello . and for the rest that has falne from me in those free heats , i 'me sure there is neither expression nor meaning that i cannot not only make good by reason , but warrant and countenance also by some thing plainly parallell thereto , in scripture , philosophers and fathers , especially origen , whom i account more profoundly learned and no lesse pious then any of them . but as i said the drift and scope of all was , vigourously to witnesse to this buisy and inquisitive age , that the simplicity of the life of christ , though it bee run over by most and taken no notice of , that is , that perfect humility and divine love , whence is a free command over a mans passions and a warrantable guidance of them , with all serenity , becoming prudence , and equity ; that these are above all the glory of the world , curiosity of opinions , and all power of nature whatsoever . and if the sense of this so plaine a truth with all it's power and lovelinesse did so vehemently possesse my soul , that it caused for the present some sensible mutations and tumults in my very animall spirits and my body , the matter being of so great importance , it was but an obvious piece of prudence to record those circumstances , that professing my self so very much moved , others might be the more effectually moved thereby ; according to that of the poet — si vis me flere , dolendum est primùm ipsi tibi . and i am no more to be esteemed an enthusiast for such passages as these , then those wise and circumspect philosophers , plato and plotinus , who upon the more then ordinary sensible visits of the divine love and beauty descending into their enravish'd soules , professe themselves no lesse moved , then what the sense of such expressions as these will bear , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and to such enthusiasme as is but the triumph of the soul of man , inebriated as it were , with the delicious sense of the divine life , that blessed root , and original of all holy wisdome & virtue , i am as much a friend , as i am to the vulgar fanaticall enthusiasme a professed enemie . and eternal shame stop his mouth , that will dare to deny , but that the fervent love of god and of the pulchritude of vertue will afford the spirit of man more joy and triumph , then ever was tasted in any lustfull pleasure , which the pen of unclean wits do so highly magnify both in verse and prose . thus much i thought fit to premise concerning my two late pamphlets , which i have done in way of civility to the world , to whom i hold my selfe accountable , especially for any publique actions , who now i hope will not deem those unexpected motions of mine so strange and uncouth , they so plainly perceiving what musick they were measured to . but as for this present discourse against atheisme , as there is no humour at all in it , so i hope there is lesse hazzard of censure . for here is nothing to give offence , unlesse we be so weak-sighted , that the pure light of reason & nature will offend us . here 's no lavish mirth , no satyricall sharpenesse , no writhing or distorting the genuine frame & composure of mine own mind , to set out the deformity of anothers , no rapture , no poetry , no enthusiasme , no more then there is in euclid's elements , or hippocrates his aphorismes . but though i have been so bold as to recite what there is not in this present discourse , yet i had rather leave it to the quick-sightednesse of the reader to spie out what there is , then be put upon so much immodesty my self , as to speak any thing that may seem to give it any precellency above what is already extant in the world about the same matter . onely i may say thus much , that i did on purpose abstaine from reading any treatises concerning this subject , that i might the more undisturbedly write the easy emanations of mine own mind , and not be carried off from what should naturally fall from my self , by prepossessing my thoughts by the inventions of others . i have writ therefore after no copy but the eternall characters of the mind of man , and the known phaenomena of nature . and all men consulting with these that indeavour to write sense , though it be not done alike by all men , it could not happen but i should touch upon the same heads that others have , that have wrote before mee ▪ who though they merit very high commendation for their learned atcheivements , yet i hope my indeavours have been such , that though they may not deserve to be corrivalls or partners in their praise and credit , yet i doe not distrust but they may do their share towards that publique good , that such performances usually pretend to aime at . for that which did embolden me to publish this present treatise , was not , as i said before , because i flatte●'d my self in a conceit that it was better or more plausible , then what is already in the hands of men : but that it was of a different sort , and has it 's peculiar serviceablenesse and advantages apart and distinct from others ; whose proper preeminences it may aloofe off admire , but dare not in any wise compare with . so that there is no tau●ology committed in recommending what i have written to the publique view , nor any lessening the labours of others by thus offering the fruit of mine own . for considering there are such severall complexions and tempers of men in the world , i do not distrust but that as what others have done , has been very acceptable and profitable to many , so this of mine may be well rellish'd of some or other , and so seem not to have been writ in vain . for though i cannot promise my reader that i shall entertaine him with so much winning rhetorick and pleasant philology , as hee may find else where , yet i hope hee will acknowledge , if his mind be unpreiudic'd , that he meets with sound and plain reason , and an easy and cleare method . and though i cannot furnish him with that copious variety of arguments that others have done , yet the frugall carefulnesse and safenesse of choise that i have made in them , may compensate their paucity . for i appeale to any man , whether the proposall of such as will easily admit of evasions ( though they have this peculiar advantage that they make for greater pompe and at first sight seem more formidable for their multitude ) does not embolden the atheist and make him fancy , that because he can so easily turn the edge of these , that the rest have no more solidity then the former ; but that if hee thought good , and had leisure , hee could with like facility enervate them all . wherefore i have endeavoured to insist upon such alone , as are not onely true in themselves , but are unavoidable to my adversary , unlesse he will cast down his shield , forsake the free use of the naturall facultyes of his mind , and professe himself a mere puzzled sceptick . but if he will with us but admit of this one postulate or hypothesis , that our faculties are true , though i have spoke modestly in the discourse it self , yet i think i may here without vanity or boasting , freely professe that i have no lesse then demonstrated that ●here is a god. and by how much more any man shall seriously indeavour to resist the strength of my arguments , by so much the more strong he shall find them ; as he that presses his weak finger against a wall of marble ; and that they can appear slight to none but those that carelessly and slightly consider them . for i borrowed them not from books , but fetch 't them from the very nature of the thing it self and indelible ideas of the soul of man. and i found that keeping my self within so narrow compasse as not to affect any reasonings but such as had very clear affinity and close connexion with the subject in hand , that i naturally hit upon what ever was materiall to my purpose , and so contenting my self with my own , received nothing from the great store and riches of others . and what i might easily remember of others , i could not let passe if in my own judgement it was obnoxious to evasion . for i intended not to impose upon the atheist , but really to convince him . and therefore des-cartes , whose mechanicall wit i can never highly enough admire , might bee no master of metaphysicks to mee . whence it is that i make use but of his first argument only , if i may not rather call it the schooles or mine own . for i thinke i have mannag'd it in such sort and every way so propp'd it and strengthened it , that i may challenge in it as much interest as any . but as for his following reasons , that suppose the objective reality of the idea of god does exceed the efficiency of the mind of man , and that the mind of man , were it not from another , would have conferr'd all that perfection upon it self , that it has the idea of , & lastly , that it having no power to conserve it self , and the present and future time having no dependance one of another , that it is continually reproduc'd , that is conserv'd by some higher cause , which must be god ; these grounds , i say , being so easily evaded by the atheist , i durst not trust to them , unlesse i had the authours wit to defend them , who was handsomely able to make good any thing . but they seem to me to be liable to such evasions as i can give no stop to . for the mind of man , as the atheist will readily reply , may be able of her self to frame such an actuall idea of god , as is there disp●●ed of , which idea will be but the present modification of her , as other notions are , and an effect of her essence , and power , and that power a radicall property of her essence . so that there is no excesse of an effect above the efficiency of the cause , though wee look no further then the mind it self , for she frames this notion of god as naturally and as much without the help of an higher cause , as she does any thing else whatsoever . and as for the mind 's contributing those perfections on her self , shee has an idea of ; if shee had been of her self , the atheist will say , it implyes a contradiction , and supposes that a thing before it exists , may consult about the advantages of its own existence . but if the mind be of it self , it is what it finds it self to be , and can be no otherwise . and therefore lastly if the mind find it self to exist , it can no more destroy it self , then produce it self , nor needs any thing to continue its being , provided that there be nothing in nature that can act against it and destroy it ; for what ever is , continues so to be , unlesse there be some cause to change it . so likewise from those arguments i fetch'd from externall nature , as well as in these from the innate propertyes of the mind of man , my careful choise made very large defalcations , insisting rather upon such things as might be otherwise , and yet are farre better as they are , then upon such as were necessary and could not be otherwise . as for example ; when i consider'd the distance of the sun , i did not conceive that his not being plac'd so low as the moone , or so high as the fixed starres , was any great argument of providence , because it might be reply'd that it was necessary it should be betwixt those two distances , else the earth had not been habitable , & so mankind might have waited for a being , till the agitation of the matter had wrought things into a more tolerable fitness or posture for their production . nor simply is the motion of the sun or rather of the earth , any argument of divine providence , but as necessary as a piece of wood's being carried down the stream , or straws about a whirle-poole . but the laws of her motion are such , that they very manifestly convince us of a providence , and therefore i was fain to let goe the former , and insist more largely upon the latter . nor thought i it fit , to rhetoricate in proposing the great variety of things , and praecellency one above another , but to presse close upon the designe and subordination of one thing to another , shewing that whereas the rude motions of the matter a thousand to one might have cast it otherwise , yet the productions of things are such as our own reason cannot but approve to bee best , or as wee our selves would have design'd them . and so in the consideration of animalls , i do not so much urge my reasons from their diversity and subsistence , ( though the framing of matter into the bare subsistence of an animall is an effect of no lesse cause then what has some skill and counsell ) but what i drive at , is the exquisite contrivance of their parts , and that their structure is farre more perfect , then will meerly serve for their bare existence and continuance in the world ; which is an undenyable demonstration that they are the effects of wisdome , not the results of fortune or fermented matter . lastly when i descend to the history of things miraculous and above the ordinary course of nature , for the proving that there are spirits , that the atheist thereby may the easier bee induced to believe there is a god , i am so cautious and circumspect , that i make use of no narrations that either the avarice of the priest , or the credulity and fansifullnesse of the melancholist may render suspected . nor could i abstaine from that subject , it being so pat and pertinent unto my purpose , though i am well aware how ridiculous a thing it seems to those i have to deale with . but their confident ignorance shall never dash mee out of countenance with my well-grounded knowledge : for i have been no carelesse inquirer into these things , and from my childhood to this very day , have had more reasons to believe the existence of god and a divine providence , then is reasonable for mee to make particular profession of . in this history of things miraculous or super-naturall , i might have recited those notable prodigies that happened , after the birth , in the life , and at the death of christ ; as the star that led the wise men to the yong infant ; voices from heaven testifying christ to bee the sonne of god ; and lastly that miraculous eclipse of the sun , made , not by interposition of the moon , for shee was then opposite to him , but by the interpos●●ion or totall involution , if you will , of those scummy spots that ever more or lesse are spread upon his face , but now over-flowed him with such thicknesse and so universally , that day-light was suddainly intercepted from the astonished eyes of the inhabitants of the earth . to which direfull symptomes though the sunne hath been in some measure at severall times obnoxious , yet that those latent causes should so suddainly step out and surprise him , and so enormously at the passion of the messias , hee whose mind is not more prodigiously darkened then the sun was then eclips●d , cannot but at first sight acknowledge it a speciall designement of providence . but i did not insist upon any sacred history , partly because it is so well and so ordinarily known , that it seemed lesse need●ull ; but mainly because i know the atheist will boggle more at whatever is fetch'd from establish'd religion , and fly away from it , like a wild colt in a pasture at the sight of a bridle or an halter , snuffing up the aire and smelling a plot afarre off , as hee foolishly fancies . but that hee might not be shy of mee , i have conform'd my self as neer his own garbe as i might , without partaking of his folly or wickednesse , that is , i appeare now in the plaine shape of a meere naturalist , that i might vanquish atheisme ; as i did heretofore affectedly symbolize in carelesse mirth and freedome with the libertines , to circumvent libertinisme . for hee that will lend his hand to help another fallen into a ditch , must himself though not fall , yet stoop and incline his body : and hee that converses with a barbarian , must discourse to him in his own language : so hee that would gaine upon the more weake and sunk minds of sensuall mortalls , is to accommodate himself to their capacity , who like the bat and owle can see no where so well as in the shady glimmerings of their own twilight . an antidote against atheisme . chap. i. the seasonable usefulnesse of the present discourse , or the motives that put the authour upon these indeavours of demonstrating that there is a god. the grand truth which wee are now to bee imployed about , is the proving that there is a god ; and i made choice of this subject as very seasonable for the times wee are in , and are coming on , wherein divine providence granting a more large release from superstition , and permitting a freer perusall of matters of religion , then in former ages , the temp●er would take advantage where hee may , to carry men captive out of one darke prison into another , out of superstition into atheisme it self . which is a thing feasible enough for him to bring about in such men as have adhered to religion in a meere externall way , either for fashion sake , or in a blind obedience to the authority of a church . for when this externall frame of godlinesse shall breake about their eares , they being really at the bottome devoyd of the true feare and love of god , and destitute of a more free and unprejudic'd use of their facultyes , by reason of the sinfullnesse and corruption of their natures ; it will bee an easy thing to allure them to an assent to that , which seemes so much for their present interest ; and so being imboldned by the tottering and falling of what they took for religion before , they will gladly in their conceipt cast down also the very object of that religious worship after it , and conclude that there is as well no god as no religion ; that is , they have a mind there should be none , that they may be free from all wringings of conscience , trouble of correcting their lives , and feare of being accountable before that great tribunall . wherefore for the reclayming of these if it were possible , at least for the succouring and extricating of those in whom a greater measure of the love of god doth dwell , ( who may probably by some darkening cloud of melancholy or some more then ordinary importunity of the tempter be dissettled and intangled in their thoughts concerning this weighty matter ) i held it sit to bestow mine indeavours upon this so usefull and seasonable an enterprise , a● to demonstrate that there is a god. chap. ii. what is meant by demonstrating there is a god , and that the mind of man , unlesse he do violence to his facul●ies , will fully ●ssent or dissent from that which notwithstanding may have a bare possibility of being otherwise . but when i speak of demonstrating there is a god , i would not be suspected of so much vanity and ostentation as to be thought i mean to bring no arguments , but such as are so convictive , that a mans understanding shall be forced to confesse that is is impossible to be otherwise then i have concluded . for for mine own part i am pro●e to believe , that there is nothing at all to be so demonstrated . for it is possible that mathematicall evidence it self , may be but a constant undiscoverable delusion , which our nature is necessarily and perpetually obnoxious unto , and that either fatally or fortuitously there has been in the world time out of mind such a being as we call man , whose essential property it is to be then most of all mistaken , when he conceives a thing most evidently true . and why may not this be as well as any thing else , if you will have all things fatall or casuall without a god ? for there can be no cu●be to this wild conceipt , but by the supposing that we our selves exist from some higher principle that is absolutely good and wise , which is all one as to acknowledge that there is a god. wherefore when i say that i will demonstrate that there is a god , ● do not promi●e that i will alwayes produce such arguments , that the reader shall acknowledge so strong as he shall be forced to confesse that it is utterly unpossible that it should be otherwise . but they shall be such as shall deserve full assent and win full assent from any unprejudic'd mind . for i conceive that we may give full assent to that which notwithstanding may possibly be otherwise : which i shall illustrate by severall examples . suppose two men got to the top of mount athos , and there viewing a stone in the form of an altar with ashes on it , and the footsteps of men on those ashes , or some words if you will , as optimo maximo , or , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the like , written or scralled out upon the ashes ; and one of them should cry out , assuredly here have been some men here that have done this : but the other more nice then wise should reply , nay it may possibly by otherwise . for this stone may have naturally grown into this very shape , and the seeming ashes may be no ashes , that is no remainders of any fewell burnt there , but some unexplicable and imperceptible motions of the aire , or other particles of this fluid matter that is active every where , have wrought some parts of the matter into the form and nature of ashes , and have fridg'd and plaid about so , that they have also figured those intelligible characters in the same . but would not any body deem it a piece of weaknesse no lesse then dotage for the other man one whit to recede from his former apprehension , but as fully as ever to agree with what he pronounced first , notwithstanding this bare possibility of being otherwise ? so of anchors that have been digged up , either in plaine fields or mountainous places , as also the roman vrnes with ashes and inscriptions , as severianus , ful : linus and the like , or roman coynes , with the effigies and names of the caesars on them ; or that which is more ordinary , the sculls of men in every church-yard , with the right figure , and all those necessary perforations for the passing of the vessells , besides those conspicuous hollowes for the eyes and rowes of teeth , the os styloeides , ethoeides , and what not ? if a man will say of them , that the motion of the particles of the matter , or some hidden spermatick power has gendred these both anchors , vrnes , coynes , and sculls in the ground , hee doth but pronounce that which humane reason must admitt as possible : nor can any man ever so demonstrate that those coynes , anchors , and vrnes , were once the artifice of men , or that this or that scull was once a part of a living man , that hee shall force an acknowledgment that it is impossible that it should be otherwise . but yet i doe not think that any man , without doing manifest violence to his facultyes , can at all suspend his assent , but freely and fully agree that this or that scull was once part of a living man , and that these anchors , vrnes and coynes , were certainly once made by humane artifice , notwithstanding the possibility of being otherwise . and what i have said of assent is also true in dissent . for the mind of man not craz'd nor prejudic'd will fully and unreconcileably disagree , by it's own natural fagacity , where notwithstanding the thing that it doth thus resolvedly and undoubtingly reject , no wit of man can prove impossible to bee true . as if wee should make such a fiction as this , that archimedes with the same individuall body that hee had when the souldiers slew him , is now safely intent upon his geometricall figures under ground , at the center of the earth , farre from the noise and din of this world that might disturb his meditations , or distract him in his curious delineations he makes with his rod upon the dust ; which no man living can prove impossible : yet if any man does not as unreconcileably dissent from such a fable as this , as from any falshood imagineable , assuredly that man is next doore to madness or dotage , or does enormous violence to the free use of his facultyes . wherefore it is manifest that there may bee a very firme and unwavering assent or dissent , when as yet the thing wee thus assent to may be possibly otherwise ; or that which wee thus dissent ●rom , cannot bee proved impossible to be true . which point i have thus long and thus variously sported my self in , for making the better impression upon my reader , it being of no small use and consequence , as well for the advertising of him , that the arguments which i shall produce , though i doe not bestowe that ostentative term of demonstration upon them , yet they may bee as effectuall for winning a firme and unshaken assent , as if they were in the strictest notion such ; as also to reminde him that if they bee so strong and so pa●ly fitted and suteable with the facultyes of mans mind , that hee has nothing to reply , but only that for all this , it may possibly bee otherwise , that hee should give a free and full assent to the conclusion . and if hee do not , that hee is to suspect himself rather of some distemper , prejudice , or weaknesse , then the arguments of want of strength . but if the atheist shall contrariwise pervert my candour and fair dealing , and phan●y that he has got some advantage from my free confession , that the arguments that i shall use are not so convictive , but that they leave a possibility of the thing being otherwise , let him but compute his supposed gains by adding the limitation of this possibility ( viz. that it is no more possible , then that the clearest mathematicall evidence may be false ( which is impossible if our facultyes be true ) or in the second place , then that the roman vrnes and coins above mentioned may prove to be the works of nature , not the artifice of man , which our facultyes admit to be so little probable , that it is impossible for them not fully to assent to the contrary ) and when he has cast up his account , it will be evident that it can be nothing but his grosse ignorance in this kind of arithmetick that shall embolden him to write himself down gainer and not me . chap. iii. an attempt towards the finding out the true notion or definition of god , and a cleare conviction that there is an indelible idea of a being absolutely perfect in the mind of man. and now having premised thus much , i shall come on nearer to my present designe . in prosecution whereof it will bee requisite for mee , first to define what god is , before i proceed to demonstration that he is . for it is obvious for mans reason to find arguments for the imp●ssibility , possibility , probability , or necessity of the existence of a thing , from the explication of the essence thereof . and now i am come hither , i demand of any atheist that denies there is a god , or of any that doubts whether there be one or no , what idea or notion they frame of that they deny or doubt of . if they will prove nice & squeamish , and professe they can frame no notion of any such thing , i would gladly aske them , why they will then deny or doubt of they know not what . for it is necessary that he that would rationally doubt or deny a thing , should have some settled notion of the thing hee doubts of or denies . but if they professe that this is the very ground of their denying or doubting whether there be a god , because they can frame no notion of him , i shall forthwith take away that allegation by offering them such a notion as is as proper to god as any notion is proper to any thing else in the world . i define god therefore thus , an essence or being fully and absolutely perfect . i say fully and absolutely perfect , in counterdistinction to such perfection as is not full and absolute , but the perfection of this or that species or kind of finite beings , suppose of a lyon , horse or tree . but to be fully and absolutely perfect is to bee at least as perfect as the apprehension of a man can conceive , without a contradiction . but what is inconceivable or contradictious is nothing at all to us , for wee are not now to wagg one atome beyond our facultyes . but what i have propounded is so farre from being beyond our facultyes , that i dare appeale to any atheist that hath yet any command of sense and reason left in him , if it bee not very easie and intelligible at the first sight , and that if there bee a god , he is to be deemed of us , such as this idea or notion sets forth . but if hee will sullingly deny that this is the proper notion of god , let him enjoy his own humour ; this yet remains undenyable that there is in man , an idea of a being absolutely and fully perfect , which wee frame out by attributing all conceivable perfection to it whatsoever , that implyes no contradiction . and this notion is naturall and essentiall to the soul of man , and can not bee wash'd out , nor conveigh'd away by any force or trick of wit what●oever , so long as the mind of man is not craz'd , but hath the ordinary use of her own facultyes . nor will that prove any thing to the purpose , when as it shall be alledg'd that this notion is not so connaturall and essentiall to the soul , because she framed it from some occasions from without . for all those undenyable conclusions in geometry which might be help'd and occasion'd from some thing without , are so naturall notwithstanding and essentiall to the soul , that you may as soon un-soul the soul , as divide her from perpetuall assent to those mathematicall truths , supposing no distemper nor violence offered to her facultyes . as for example , shee cannot but acknowledge in her self the several distinct ideas of the five regular bodies , as also , that it is impossible that there should bee any more then five . and this idea of a being absolutely perfect is as distinct and indelible an idea in the soul , as the idea of the five regular bodyes , or any other idea whatsoever . it remaines therefore undenyable , that there is an inseparable idea of a being absolutely perfect ever residing , though not alwayes acting , in the soul of man. chap. iv. what notions are more particularly comprised in the idea of a being absolutely perfect . that the difficulty of framing the conception of a thing ought to bee no argument against the existence thereof : the nature of corporeall matter being so perplex'd and intricate , which yet all men acknowledge to exist . that the idea of a spirit is as easy a notion as of any other substance what ever . what powers and propertyes are containd in the notion of a spirit . that eternity and infinity , if god were not , would bee cast upon something else ; so that atheisme cannot free the mind from such intricacyes . goodnesse , knowledge and power , notions of highest perfection , and therefore necessarily included in the idea of a being absolutely perfect . but now to lay out more particularly the perfections comprehended in this notion of a being absolutely and fully perfect , i think i may securely nominate these ; self-subsistency , immateriality , infinity as well of duration as essence , immensity of goodnesse , omnisciency , omnipotency , and necessity of existence . let this therefore bee the description of a being absolutely perfect , that it is a spirit , eternall , infinite in essence and goodnesse , omniscient , omnipotent , and of it self necessarily existent . all which attributes being attributes of the highest perfection , that falls under the apprehension of man , and having no discoverable imperfection interwoven with them , must of necessity be attributed to that which we conceive absolutely and fully perfect . and if any one will say that this is but to dresse up a notion out of my own fancy , which i would afterwards ssily insinuate to be the notion of a god ; i answer , that no man can discourse and reason of any thing without recourse to settled notions decyphered in his own mind . and that such an exception as this implies the most contradictious absurdities imaginable , to wit , as if a man should reason from something that never entred into his mind , or that is utterly out of the ken of his own facultyes . but such groundlesse allegations as these discover nothing but an unwillingnesse to find themselves able to entertain any conception of god , and a heavy propension to sink down into an utter oblivion of him , and to become as stupid and senselesse in divine things as the very beasts . but others it may be will not look on this notion as contemptible for the easie composure thereof out of familiar conceptions which the mind of man ordinarily figures it self into , but reject it rather for some unintelligible hard termes in it , such as spirit , eternall , and infinite , for they do professe they can frame no notion of spirit , and that anything should be eternal or infinite , they do not know how to set their mind in a posture to apprehend , and therefore some would have no such thing as a spirit in the world . but if the difficulty of framing a conception of a thing must take away the existence of the thing it self , there will be no such thing as a body left in the world , and then will all be spirit or nothing . for who can frame so safe a notion of a body , as to free himself from the intanglements ▪ that the extension thereof will bring along with it . for this extended matter consists of either indivisible points , or of particles divisible in infinitum . take which of these two you will , and you can find no third ) you will be wound into the most notorious absurdityes that may be . for if you say it consists of points , from this position i can necessarily demonstrate , that every speare or spire-steeple or what long body you will is as thick as it is long ; that the tallest cedar is not so high as the lowest mushrome ; and that the moon and the earth are so neere one another , that the thicknesse of your hand will not go betwixt ; that rounds and squares are all one figure ; that even and odde numbers are equall one with another ; and that the clearest day is as dark as the blackest night . and if you make choice of the other member of the disjunction , your fancy will bee little better at ease . for nothing can be divisible into parts it has not : therefore if a body be divisible into infinite parts , it has infinite extended parts : and if it has an infinite number of extended parts , it cannot be but a hard mystery to the imagination of man , that infinite extended parts should not amount to one whole infinite extension . and thus a grain of mustard-seed would be as well infinitely extended , as the whole matter of the universe ; and a thousandth part of that grain as well as the grain it self . which things are more unconceivable then any thing in the notion of a spirit . therefore we are not scornfully and contemptuously to reject any notion , for seeming at first to be clouded and obscur'd with some difficulties and intricacies of conception ; sith that , of whose being we seem most assured , is the most intangled and perplex'd in the conceiving , of any thing that can be propounded to the apprehension of a man. but here you will reply that our senses are struck by so manifest impressions from the matter , that though the nature of it bee difficult to conceive , yet the existence is palpable to us , by what it acts upon us . why , then all that i desire is this , that when you shall be reminded of some actions and operations that arrive to the notice of your sense or understanding , which unlesse we do violence to our faculties we can never attribute to matter or body , that then you would not be so nice and averse from the admitting of such a substance as is called a spirit , though you fancy some difficulty in the conceiving thereof . but for mine own part i think the nature of a spirit is as conceivable , and easy to be defin'd as the nature of anything else . for as for the very essence or bare substance of any thing whatsoever , hee is a very novice in speculation that does not acknowledge that utterly unknowable . but for the essentiall and inseparable properties , they are as intelligible and explicable in a spirit as in any other subject whatever . as for example , i conceive the intire idea of a spirit in generall , or at least of all finite created and subordinate spirits ▪ to consist of these severall powers or properties , viz. self-penetration . self-motion , self-contraction and dilatation , and indivisibility ; and these are those that i reckon more absolute ; i will adde also what has relation to another , and that is the power of penetrating , moving and altering the matter . these properties and powers put together make up the notion and idea of a spirit , whereby it is plainly distinguished from a body , whose parts cannot penetrate one another , is not self-moveable , nor can contract nor dilate it self , is divisible and separable one part from another ; but the parts of a spirit can be no more separated , though they be dilated , then you can cut off the rayes of the sunne by a paire of scissors made of pellucide crystall . and this will serve for the settling of the notion of a spirit ; the proofe of it's existence belongs not unto this place . and out of this description it is plain that a spirit is a notion of more perfection then a body , and therefore the more fit to be an attribute of what is absolutely perfect , then a body is . but now for the other two hard terms of eternall and infinite , if any one would excuse himself from asse●●g to the notion of a god , by reason of the incomprehensiblenesse of those attributes , let him consider , that he shall whether he will or no be forced to acknowledge something eternal , either god or the world , and the intricacy is alike in either . and though he would shuffle off the trouble of apprehending an infinite de●ty , yet he will never extricate himself out of the intanglements of an infinite space ; which notion will stick as closely to his soul , as her power of imagination . now that goodnesse , knowledge and power , which are the three following attributes , are attributes of perfection , if a man consult his own facultyes , it will be undoubtedly concluded , and i know nothing else he can consult with . at least this will be returned as infallibly true , that a being absolutely perfect has these , or what supereminently containes these . and that knowledge or something like it is in god , is manifest , because without animadversion in some sense or other , it is impossible to be happy . but that a being should bee absolutely perfect , & yet not happy , is as impossible . but knowledge without goodnesse is but dry subtilty , or mischievous craft ; and goodnesse with knowledge devoyd of power is but lame and ineffectuall : wherefore what ever is absolutely perfect , is infinitely both good , wise and powerfull . and lastly it is more perfection that all this be stable , immutable and necessary , then contingent or but possible . therefore the idea of a being absolutely perfect represents to our minds , that that of which it is the idea is necessarily to exist . and that which of its own nature doth necessarily exist , must never fail to be . and whether the atheist will call this absolute perfect being , god or not , it is all one ; i list not to contend about words . but i think any man else at the first sight will say that wee have found out the true idea of god. chap. v. that the soul of man is not abrasa tabula , and in what sense shee might be said ever to have had the actuall knowledge of eternal truths in her . and now wee have found out this idea of a being absolutely perfect , that the use which wee shall hereafter make of it , may take the better effect , it will not be amisse by way of further preparation , briefly to touch upon that notable point in philosophy , whether the soul of man be abrasa tabula , a table book in which nothing is writ ; or whether shee have some innate notions and ideas in her self . for so it is that shee having taken first occasion of thinking from externall objects , it hath so imposed upon some mens judgements , that they have conceited that the soul has no knowledge nor notion , but what is in a passive way impressed , or delineated upon her from the objects of sense ; they not warily enough distinguishing betwixt extrinsecall occasions and the adaequate or principal causes of things . but the mind of man more free and better excercised in the close observations of its own operations and nature , cannot but discover , that there is an active and actuall knowledge in a man , of which these outward objects are rather the reminders then the first begetters or implanters . and when i say actuall knowledge , i doe not mean that there is a certaine number of ideas flaring and shining to the animadversive faculty like so many torches or starres in the firmament to our outward sight ▪ or that there are any figures that take their distinct places , & are legibly writ there like the red letters or astronomical characters in an almanack ; but i understand thereby an active sagacity in the soul , or quick recollection as it were , whereby some small businesse being hinted unto her , she runs out presently into a more clear and larger conception . and i cannot better describe her condition then thus ; suppose a skilful musician fallen asleep in the field upon the grasse , during which time he shall not so much as dream any thing concerning his musical faculty , so that in one sense there is no actuall skill or notion nor representation of any thing musicall in him , but his friend sitting by him that cannot sing at all himself , jogs him and awakes him , and desires him to sing this or the other song , telling him two or three words of the beginning of the long , he presently takes it out of his mouth , and sings the whole song upon so slight and slender intimation : so the mind of man being jogg'd and awakened by the impulses of outward objects is stirred up into a more full and cleare conception of what was but imperfectly hinted to her from externall occasions ; and this faculty i venture to call actuall knowledge in such a sense as the sleeping musicians skill might be called actuall skill when he thought nothing of it . chap. . that the soul of man has of her self actuall knowledge in her , made good by sundry instances and arguments . and that this is the condition of the soul is discoverable by sundry observations . as for example , exhibite to the soul through the outward senses the figure of a circle , she acknowledgeth presently this to be one kind of figure , and can adde forthwith that if it be perfect , all the lines from some one point of it drawn to the perimeter , must be exactly equal . in like manner shew her a triangle , she will straightway pronounce that if that be the right figure it makes toward , the angles must be closed in indivisible points . but this accuracy either in the circle or the triangle cannot be set out in any materiall subject , therefore it remains that she hath a more full & exquisite knowledge of things in her self , then the matter can lay open before her , let us cast in a third instance , let some body now demonstrate this triangle described in the matter to have it's three angles equall to two right ones : why yes saith the soul this is true , and not only in this particular triangle but in all plain triangles that can possibly be describ'd in the matter . and thus you see the soul sings out the whole song upon the first hint , as knowing it very well before . besides this , there are a multitude of relative notions or ideas in the mind of man , as well mathematicall as logicall , which if we prove cannot be the impresses of any materiall object from without , it will necessarily follow , that they are from the soul her self within , and are the naturall furniture of humane understanding . such as are ●hese , cause , effect , whole and part , like and vnlike , and the rest . so equality and inequality , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 proportion & analogy ▪ symmetry and asymmetry , and such like : all which relative ideas i shall easily prove to be no materiall impresses from without upon the soul , but her own active conception proceeding from her self whilst shee takes notice of externall objects . for that these ideas can make no impresses upon the outward senses is plain from hence ; because they are no sensible nor physicall affections of the matter . and how can that , that is no physicall affection of the matter affect our corporeall organs of sense ? but now that these relative ideas , whether logical or mathematicall be no physicall , affections of the matter is manifest from these two arguments . first they may be produced when there has been no physicall motion nor alteration in the subject to which they belong , nay indeed when there hath been nothing at all done to the subject to which they doe accrue . as for example , suppose one side of a room whitened the other not touch'd or medled with , this other has thus become unlike , and hath the notion of dissimile necessarily belonging to it , although there has nothing at all been done thereunto . so suppose two pounds of lead , which therefore are two equal pieces of that metall ; cut away half from one of them , the other pound , nothing at all being done unto it , has lost it's notion of equall , and hath acquired a new one of double unto the other . nor is it to any purpose to answere , that though there was nothing done to this pound of lead , yet there was to the other ; for that does not at all enervate the reason , but shewes that the notion of sub ●double which accrued to that lead which had half cut away , is but our mode of conceiving , as well as the other , and not any physicall affection that strikes the corporeall organs of the body , as hot and cold , hard and soft , white and black , and the like do . wherefore the ideas of equall and vnequall , double and sub-double , like and vnlike , with the rest , are no externall impresses upon the senses , but the souls own active manner of conceiving those things which are discovered by the outward senses . the second argument is , that one and the same part of the matter is capable at one and the same time , wholly and entirely of two contrary ideas of this kind . as for example , any piece of matter that is a middle proportionall betwixt two other pieces , is double , suppose , and sub-double , or tripple and sub-tripple , at once . which is a manifest signe that these ideas are no affections of the matter , and therefore do not affect our senses , else they would affect the senses of beasts , and they might also grow good geometricians and arithmeticians . and they not affecting our senses , it is plain that wee have some ideas that we are not beholding to our senses for , but are the meer exertions of the mind occasionally awakened , by the appulses of the outward objects ; which the out-ward senses doe no more teach us , then he that awakened the musician to sing taught him his skill . and now in the third and last place it is manifest , besides these single ideas i have proved to be in the mind , that there are also severall complex notions in the same , such as are these ; the whole is bigger then the part : if you take equall from equall , the remainders are equall : every number is either even or odde ; which are true to the soul at the very first proposal ; as any one that is in his wits does plainly perceive . chap. vii . the mind of man being not unfurnish'd of innate truth , that wee are with confidence to attend to her naturall and unprejudic'd dictates and suggestions . that some notions and truths are at least naturally & unavoydably assented unto by the soul , whether shee have of her self actuall knowledge in her or not . and that the definition of a being absolutely perfect is such . and that this absolutely perfect being is god , the creatour and contriver of all things . and now we see so evidently the soul is not unfurnished for the dictating of truth unto us , i demand of any man , why under a pretence that shee having nothing of her own but may be moulded into an assent to any thing , or that shee does arbitrariously and fortuirously compose the severall impresses shee receives from without , hee will be still so squeamish or timorous , as to be affraid to close with his own facultyes , and receive the naturall emanations of his owne mind , as faithfull guides . but if this seem , though it be not , too subtile which i contend for , viz ; that the soul hath actuall knowledge in her self , in that sense which i have explained , yet surely this at least will be confess'd to be true , that the nature of the soul is such , that shee will certainly and fully assent to some conclusions , how ever shee came to the knowledge of them , unlesse shee doe manifest violence to her own faculties . which truths must therefore be concluded not fortuitous or arbitrarious ▪ but natural so the soul : such as i have already named , as that every finite number is either even or odde . if you adde equal to equal , the wholes are equal ; and such as are not so simple as these , but yet stick as close to the soul once apprehended , as that the three angles in a triangle are equal to two right ones : that there are just five regular bodies neither more nor lesse , and the like , which we will pronounce necessarily true according to the light of nature . wherefore now to reassume what we have for a while laid aside , the idea of a being absolutely perfect above proposed , it being in such sort let forth that a man cannot rid his minde of it , but he must needs acknowledge it to be indeed the idea of such a being ; it will follow that it is no arbitrarious nor fortuitous conceipt , but necessary and therefore natural to the soul at least if no● ever actually there . wherefore it is manifest , that we consulting with our own natural light concerning the notion of a being absolutely perfect , that this oracle tells us , that it is a spiritual substance , eternal , infinite in essence and goodness , omnipotent , omniscient , and of it self necessarily existent . for this answer is such , that if we understand the sense thereo● , we cannot tell how to deny it , and therefore it is true according to the light of nature . but it is manifest that that which is self-subsistent , infinitely good , omniscient and omnipotent , is the root and original of all things . for omnipotency signifies a power that can effect any thing that implies no contradiction to be effected ; and creation implyes no contradiction : therefore this perfect being can create all things . but if it found the matter or other substances existing aforehand of themselves , this omnipotency and power of creation will be in vain , which the free and unprejudic'd faculties of the minde of man do not admit of . therefore the natural notion of a being absolutely perfect , implies that the same being is lord and maker of all things . and according to natural light that which is thus , is to be adored and worshipped of all that has the knowledge of it , with all humility and thankfullnesse ; and what is this but to be acknowledged to be god ? wherefore i conceive i have sufficiently demonstrated , that the notion or idea of god is as naturall , necessary and essentiall to the soul of man , as any other notion or idea whatsoever , & is no more arbitrarious or fictitious then the notion of a cube or terraedrum , or any other of the regular bodyes in geometry : which are not devised at our own pleasure ( for such figments and chimaras are infinite , ) but for these it is demonstrable that there can be no more then five of them . which shews that their notion is necessary , not an arbit●arious compilement of what we please . and thus having fully made good the notion of god , what he is , i proceed now to the next point , which is to prove , that hee is . chap. viii . the first argument for the existence of god taken from the idea of god as it is representative of his nature and perfection : from whence also it is undeniably demonstrated that there can be no more gods then one. and now verily casting my eyes upon the true idea of god which we have found out i seem to my self to have struck further into this businesse then i was aware of . for if this idea or notion of god be true , as i have undenyably proved , it is also undeniably true that he doth exist ; for this idea of god being no a●bitrarious figment taken up at pleasure , but the necessary and naturall emanation of the mind of man , if it signifies to us that the notion and nature of god implyes in it necessary existence as we have shown it does , unlesse we will wink against our own naturall light , wee are without any further scruple to acknowledge that god does exist . nor is it sufficient grounds to diffide to the strength of this argument , because our fancy can shuffle in this abater , viz. that indeed this idea of god , supposing god did exist , shews us that his existence is necessary , but it does not shew us that he doth necessarily exist . for he that answers thus , does not observe out of what prejudice he is inabled to make this answer , which is this : he being accustomed to fancy the nature or notion of every thing else without existence , and so ever easily separating essence and existence in them , here unawares hee takes the same liberty , and divides existence from that essence to which existence it self is essentiall . and that 's the witty fallacy his unwarinesse has intangled him in . again when as we contend that the true idea of god represents him as a being necessarily existent , and therefore that he does exist ; and you to avoid the edge of the argument reply , if he did at all exist ; by this answer you involve your self in a manifest contradiction . for first you say with us , that the nature of god is such , that in its very notion it implyes its necessary existence , and then again you unsay it by intimating that notwithstanding this true idea and notion ▪ god may not exist , and so acknowledge that what is absolutely necessary according to the free emanation of our facultyes , yet may be otherwise : which is a palpable contradiction as much as respects us and our facultyes , and we have nothing more inward and immediate then these to steer our selves by . and to make this yet plainer at least if not stronger when wee say that the existence of god is necessary , wee are to take notice that necessity is a logicall terme , and signifies so firme a connexion betwixt the subject and praedicate ( as they call them ) that it is impossible that they should bee dissevered , or should not hold together , and therefore if they bee affirm'd one of the other , that they make axioma necessarium , an axiome that is necessary , or eternally true . wherefore there being a necessary connexion betwixt god and existence ; this axiome , god does exist , is an axiome necessarily and eternally true . which we shall yet more clearly understand , if we compare necessity and contingency together ; for as contingency signifies not onely the manner of existence in that which is contingent according to its idea , but does intimate also a possibility of actual existence , ( so to make up the true and easy analogy ) necessity does not only signify the manner of existence in that which is necessary , but also that it does actually exist , and could never possibly do otherwise . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 necessity of being and impossibility of not-being , are all one with aristotle , & the rest of the logicians . but the atheist and the enthusiast , are usually such profess'd enemyes against logick ; the one meerly out of dotage upon outward grosse sense , the other in a dear regard to his stiffe and untamed fancy , that shop of mysteryes and fine things . thirdly , wee may further add , that whereas wee must needs attribute to the idea of god either contingency , impossibility , or necessity of actuall existence , ( some one of these belonging to every idea imaginable ) and that contingency is incompetible to an idea of a b●ing absolutely perfect , much more impossibility , the idea of god being compiled of no notions but such as are possible according to the light of nature , to which wee now appeal : it remains therefore that necessity of actuall existence bee unavoidably cast upon the idea of god , and that therefore god does actually exist . but fourthly and lastly , if this seem more subtile , though it bee no lesse true for it , i shall now propound that which is so palpable , that it is impossible for any one that has the use of his wits for to deny it . i say therefore , that either god or this corporeall and sensible world must of it self necessarily exist . or thus , either god or matter or both doe of themselves necessarily exist . if both , wee have what we would drive at , the existency of god. but yet to acknowledge the necessary existence of the matter of it self , is not so congruous and suteable to the light of nature . for if any thing can exist independently of god , all things may ; so that not onely the omnipotency of god might be in vain , but beside there would be a letting in from hence of all confusion and disorder imaginable ; nay of some grand devill of equall power and of as large command as god himself : or if you will of six thousand millions of such monstrous gigantick spirits , fraught with various and mischievous passions , as well as armed with immense power , who in anger or humour appearing in huge shapes ▪ might take the planets up in their prodigious clutches , and pelt one another with them as boyes are wont to do with snowbals ; and that this has not yet happened will bee resolved onely into this , that the humour has not yet taken them . but the frame of nature and the generation of things would be still lyable to this ruine and disorder . so dangerous a thing it is to slight the naturall dependencyes and correspondencyes of our innate ideas and conceptions . nor is there any refuge in such a reply as this , that the full and perfect infinitude of the power of god , is able easily to overmaster these six thousand millions of monsters , and to stay their hands . for i say that six or fewer , may equallize the infinite power of god. for if any thing may be self-essentiated besides god , why may not a spirit of just six times lesse power then god exist of it self ? and then six such wil equallize him , a seventh will overpower him . but such a rabble of self-essentiated and divided deities , does not only hazzard the pulling the world in pieces , but plainly takes away the existence of the true god. for if there be any power or perfection whatsoever , which has its original from any other then god , it manifestly demonstrates that god is not god , that is , is not a being absolutely and fully perfect , because we see some power in the world that is not his , that is , that is not from him . but what is fully and wholly from him , is very truly and properly his , as the thought of my minde is rather my mindes , then my thoughts . and this is the only way that i know to demonstrate that it is impossible that there should be any more then one true god in the world ; for if we did admit another beside him , this other must be also self-originated ; and so neither of them would be god. for the idea of god swallows up into it self all power and perfection conceivable , and therefore necessarily implies that whatever hath any being , derives it from him . but if you say the matter does only exist and not god , then this matter does necessarily exist of it self , and so we give that attribute unto the matter which our natural light taught us to be contain'd in the essentiall conception of no other thing besides god. wherefore to deny that of god , which is so necessarily comprehended in the true idea of him , and to acknowledge it in that in whose idea it is not at all contain'd ( for necessary existence is not contain'd in the idea of any thing but of a being absolutely perfect ) is to pronounce contrary to our natural light , and to do manifest violence to our faculties . nor can this be excused by saying that the corporeall matter is palpable and sensible unto us , but god is not , and therefore we pronounce confidently that it is , though god be not , and also that it is necessary of it self , sith that which is without the help of another must necessarily bee and eternally . for i demand of you then sith you professe your selves to believe nothing but sense , how could sense ever help you to that truth you acknowledged last , viz that that which exists without the help of another , is necessary and eternall ? for necessity and eternity are no sensible qualities , and therefore are not the objects of any sense ; and i have ready very plentifully proved , that there is other knowledge and perception in the soul besides that of sense . wherefore it is very unreasonable , when as we have other faculties of knowledge besides the senses , that we should consult with the senses alone about matters of knowledge , and exclude those facultyes that penetrate beyond sense . a thing that the profess'd atheists themselves will not doe when they are in the humour of philosophising , for their principle of ato●es is a businesse that does not fall under sense , as lucretius at large confesses . but now seeing it is so manifest that the soul of man has other cognoscitive faculties besides that of sense ( which i have clearly above demonstrated ) it is as incongruous to deny there is a god , because god is not an object fitted to the senses , as it were to deny there is matter or a body , because that body or matter , in the imaginative notion thereof , lies so unevenly and troublesomly in our fancy and reason . in the contemplation whereof our understanding discovereth such contradictious incoherencies , that were it not that the notion is sustain'd by the confident dictates of sense , reason appealing to those more crasse representations of fansy , would by her shrewd dilemma's be able to argue it quite out of the world . but our reason being well aware that corporeal matter is the proper object of the sensitive faculty , she gives full belief to the information of sense in her own sphear , slighting the puzzling objections of perplexed fancy , and freely admits the existence of matter , notwithstanding the intanglements of imagination , as she does also the existence of god , from the contemplation of his idea in our soul , notwithstanding the silence of the senses therein . for indeed it were an unexcusable piece of folly and madnesse in a man , when as he has cognoscitive faculties reaching to the knowledge of god , and has a certain and unalterable idea of god in his soule , which he can by no device wipe out , as well as he has the knowledge of sense that reaches to the discovery of the matter ; to give necessary self-existence to the matter , no faculty at all informing him so ; and to take necessary existence from god , though the natural notion of god in the soul informe him to the contrary ; and only upon this pretence , because god does not immediately fall under the knowledge of the senses ; thus partially siding with one kind of faculty only of the soul , and proscribing all the rest . which is as humoursomely and foolishly done , as if a man should make a faction amongst the senses themselves , and resolve to believe nothing to be but what he could see with his eyes , and so confidently pronounce that there is no such thing as the element of aire nor winds nor musick nor thunder . and the reason forsooth must be because he can see none of these things with his eyes , and that 's the sole sense that he intends to believe . chap. ix . the second argument from the idea of god as it is subjected in our souls , and is the fittest naturall meanes imaginable to bring us to the knowledge of our maker . that bare possibility ought to have no power upon the mind , to either hasten or hinder it's assent in any thing . we being delt with in all points as if there were a god , that naturally wee are to conclude there is one . and hitherto i have argued from the naturall notion or idea of god as it respects that of which it is the idea or notion . i shall now try what advantage may be made of it , from the respect it bears unto our souls , the subject thereof , wherein , it does reside . i demand therefore who put this indelible character of god upon our souls ? why and to what purpose is it there ? nor do not think to shuffle me off by saying , we must take things as we find them , and not inquire of the finall cause of any thing ; for things are necessarily as they are of themselves , whose guidance and contrivance is from no principle of wisdome or counsell , but every substance is now and ever was of what nature and capacity it is found ; having it's originall from none other then it self ; and all those changes and varieties we see in the world , are but the result of an eternall scuffle of coordinate causes , bearing up as well as they can , to continue themselves in the present state they ever are , and acting and being acted upon by others , these varieties of things appeare in the world , but every particular substance with the essential properties thereof is self-originated , and independent of any other . for to this i answere , that the very best that can be made of all this is but thus much ; that it is meerly and barely possible ▪ nay if we consult our own faculties , and the idea of god , utterly impossible : but admit it possible ; this bare possibility is so laxe , so weak , and so undeterminate a consideration , that it ought to have no power to move the mind this way or that way that has any tolerable use of her own reason , more then the faint breathings of the loose aire have to shake a mountaine of brasse . for if bare possibility may at all intangle our assent or dissent in things , we cannot fully mis-believe the absurdest fable in aesop or ovid , or the most ridiculous figments that can be imagin'd ; as suppose that eares of corn in the field heare the whistling of the wind and chirping of the birds ; that the stones in the street are grinded with pain when the carts go over them : that the heliotrope eyes the sun and really sees him as well as turns round about with him : that the pulp of the wall-nut , as bearing the signature of the brain , is indued with imagination and reason . i say no man can fully mis-believe any of these fooleries , if bare possibility may have the least power of turning the scales this way or that way . for none of these nor a thousand more such like as these imply a perfect and palpable contradiction , and therefore will put in for their right of being deemed possible . but we are not to attend to what is simply possible , but to what our naturall faculties do direct and determine us to . as for example , suppose the question were , whether the stones in the street have sense or no , we are not to leave the point as indifferent , or that may be held either way , because it is possible and implyes no palpable contradiction , that they may have sense and that a painfull sense too . but we are to consult with our naturall faculties , and see whither they propend : and they do plainly determinate the controversy by telling us , that what has sense and is capable of pain , ought to have also progressive motion , to bee able to avoyd what is hurtfull and painfull , and we see it is so in all beings that have any considerable share of sense . and aristotle who was no doater on a deity , yet frequently does assume this principle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that nature does nothing in vain . which is either an acknowledgment of a god , or an appeale to our own rationall faculties . and i am indifferent which , for i have what i would out of either , for if we appeale to the naturall suggestions of our own faculties , they will assuredly tell us there is a god. i therefore again demand and i desire to be answered without prejudice , or any restraint laid upon our naturall faculties , to what purpose is this indelible image or idea of god in us , if there be no such thing as god existent in the world ? or who seal'd so deep an impression of that character upon our minds ? if we were travailing in a desolate wildernesse , where we could discover neither man nor house , and should meet with herds of cattell or flocks of sheep upon whose bodies there were branded certain markes or letters , we should without any hesitancy conclude that these have all been under the hand of some man or other that has set his name upon them . and verily when we see writ in our souls in such legible characters the name or rather the nature and idea of god , why should we be so slow and backward from making the like reasonable inference ? assuredly he whose character is signed upon our souls , has been here , and has thus marked us that we and all may know to whom we belong . that it is he that has made us , and not we our selves ; that we are his people and the sheep of his pasture . and it is evidently plain from the idea of god , which includes omnipotency in it , that we can be made from none other then he ; as i have before demonstrated . and therefore there was no better way then by sealing us with this image to make us acknowledge our selves to be his , and to do that worship and adoration to him that is due to our mighty maker and creatour , that is to our god. wherefore things complying thus naturally , and easily together , according to the free suggestions of our naturall faculties , it is as perverse and forced a buisinesse to suspend assent , as to doubt whether those romane vrnes and coynes i spoke of digg'd out of the earth be the works of nature or the artifice of men. but if wee cannot yet for all this give free assent to this position ▪ that god does exist , let us at least have the patience a while to suppose it . i demand therefore supposing god did exist , what can the mind of man imagine that this god should do better or more effectuall for the making himself known to such a creature as man , indued with such and such faculties , then we find really already done ? for god being a spirit and infinite , cannot ever make himself known necessarily , and adaequa●ely by any appearance to our outward senses . for if he should manifest himself in any outward figures or shapes , portending either love or wrath , terrour or protection , our faculties could not assure us that this were god , but some particular genius good or bad : and besides such dazeling and affrightfull externall forces are neither becoming the divine nature , nor suteable with the condition of the soul of man , whose better faculties and more free god meddles with , does not force nor amaze us by a more course and oppressing power upon our weake and brutish senses . what remaines therefore but that he should manifest himself to our inward man ? and what way imaginable is more fit then the indelible impression of the idea of himself , which is ( not divine life and sense ▪ for that 's an higher prise laid up for them that can win it , but ) a naturall representation of the god-head and a notion of his essence , whereby the soul of man could no otherwise conceive of him , then an eternall spirit , infinite in goodnesse , omnipotent , omniscient and necessarily of himself existent . but this , as i have fully proved , we find de facto done in us , wherefore we being every way dealt with as if there were a god existing , and no faculty discovering any thing to the contrary , what should hinder us from the concluding that he does really exist ? chap ▪ x. naturall conscience , and religious veneration , arguments of the existence of god. hitherto we have argued for the existency of the god-head from the naturall idea of god , inseparably and immutably risiding in the soul of man. there are also other arguments may be drawn from what we may observe to stick very close to mans nature , and such is naturall remorse of conscience , and a feare and disturbance from the committing of such things as notwithstanding are not punishable by men : as also a naturall hope of being prosperous and successefull in doing those things which are conceived by us to be good & righteous ; and lastly religious veneration or divine worship ; all which are fruits unforcedly and easily growing out of the nature of man ; and if we rightly know the meaning of them , they all intimate that there is a god. and first of naturall conscience it is plain that it is a fear and confusion of mind arising from the presage of some mischief that may be●all a man beside the ordinary course of nature , or the usuall occurrences of affaires , because he has done thus or thus . not that what is supernatural or absolutely extraordinary must needs fall upon him , but that at least the ordinary calamityes and misfortunes , which are in the world , will be directed and levelled at him sometime or other , because he hath done this or that evill against his conscience . and men doe naturally in some heavy adversity , mighty tempest on the sea or dreadfull thunder on the land ( though these be but from naturall causes ) reflect upon themselves and their actions , and so are invaded with fear , or are unterrifide , accordingly as they condemne or acquit themselves in their own consciences . and from this supposall is that magnificent expression of the poet concer-cerning the just man nec fulminant is magna jovis manus , that he is not affrayd of the darting down of thunder and lightening from heaven . but this fear , that one should bee struck rather then the rest , or at this time rather then another time , because a man has done thus or thus , is a naturall acknowledgment that these things are guided and directed from some discerning principle , which is all one as to confesse that there is a god. nor is it materiall that some alledge that marmers curse and swear the lowdest when the storm is the greatest , for it is because the usualnesse of such dangers have made them loose the sense of the danger , not the sense of a god. it is also very naturall for a man that follows honestly the dictates of his own conscience , to be full of good hopes , and much at ease , and secure that all things at home and abroad will goe successfully with him , though his actions or sincere motions of his mind act nothing upon nature or the course of the world to change them any way : wherefore it implyes that there is a superintendent principle over nature , and the materiall frame of the world , that looks to it so that nothing shall come to passe , but what is consistent with the good and welfare of honest and conscientious men. and if it does not happen to them according to their expectations in this world , it does naturally bring in a belief of a world to come . nor does it at all enervate the strength of this argument that some men have lost the sense and difference betwixt good and evill , if there be any so fully degenerate ; but let us suppose it , this is a monster , and i suspect of his own making . but this is no more prejudice to what i ayme at , who argue from the naturall constitution of a man the existency of a god ; then if because democritus put out his eyes , some are born blind , others drink out their eyes and cannot see , that therefore you should conclude that there is neither light nor colours : for if there were , then every one would see them , but democritus and some others doe not see them . but the reason is plain , there hath been force done to their naturall facultyes and they have put out their sight . wherefore i conclude from naturall conscience in a man that puts him upon hope and fear of good and evill from what he does or omits , though those actions and omissions doe nothing to the change of the course of nature or the affaires of the world , that there is an intelligent principle over universall nature that takes notice of the actions of men ▪ that is that there is a god ; for else this naturall faculty would be false and vaine . now for adoration or religious worship it is as universall as mankind , there being no nation under the cope of heaven that does not do divine worship to something or other , and in it to god as they conceive ; wherefore according to the ordinary naturall light that is in all men , there is a god. nor can the force of this argument be avoyded , by saying it is but an universall tradition that has been time out of mind spread among the nations of the world . for if it were so ( which yet cannot at all be proved ) in that it is universally received , it is manifest that it is according to the light of nature to acknowledge there is a god. for that which all men admit as true , though upon the proposall of another , is undoubtedly to be termed true according to the light of nature . as many hundreds of geometricall demonstrations that were first the inventions of some one man , have passed undenyable through all ages and places for true , according to the light of nature , with them that were but learners not inventours of them . and it is sufficient to make a thing true according to the light of nature , that no man upon a perception of what is propounded and the reasons of it ( if it be not cleare at the first sight and need ●easons to back it ) will ever stick to acknowledge for a truth . and therefore if there were any nations that were destitute of the knowledge of a god , as they may be it is likely of the rudiments of geometry , so long as they will admit of the knowledge of one as well as of the other , upon due and ●it proposall ; the acknowledgment of a god is as well to be said to be according to the light of nature , as the knowledge of geometry which they thus receive . but if it be here objected that a thing may be universally receiv'd of all nations and yet be so farre from being true according to the light of nature , that it is not true at all ▪ as for example that the sun moves about the earth , and that the earth stands still as the fix'd center of the world , which the best of astronomers and the profoundest of philosophers pronounce to be false : i answere that in some sense it does stand still , if you understand by motion the translation of a body out of the vicinity of other bodyes . but suppose it did not stand still , this comes not home to our case ; for this is but the just victory of reason over the general prejudice of sense ; and every one will acknowledge that reason may correct the impresses of sense , otherwise we should admit the sun and moon to be no wider then a sive , and the bodyes of the starrs to be no bigger then the ordinary flame of a candle . therefore you see here is a clashing of the faculties one against another , and the stronger carryes it . but there is no faculty that can be pretended to clash with the judgement of reason and natural sagacity that so easily either concludes or presages that there is a god : wherefore that may well go for a truth according to the light of nature that is universally received of men , be it by what faculty it will they receive it , no other faculty appearing that can evidence to the contrary . and such is the universall acknowledgment that there is a god. nor is it much more materiall to reply , that though there be indeed a religious worship excercised in all nations upon the face of the earth , yet they worship many of them but stocks and stones , or some particular piece of nature , as the sunne , moon , or starrs ; for i answer , that first it is very hard to prove that they worship any image or statue , without reference to some spirit at least , if not to the omnipotent god. so that we shall hence at least win thus much , that there are in the universe some more subtile and immateriall substances that take notice of the affairs of men , and this is as ill to a slow atheist , as to believe that there is a god. and for that adoration some of them do to the sunne and moon , i cannot believe they do it to them under the notion of mere inanimate bodies , but they take them to be the habitation of some intellectuall beings , as that verse does plainly intimate to us , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the sun that hears and sees all things ; and this is very neer the true notion of a god. but be this universall religious worship what it will , as absurd as you please to fancy it , yet it will not faile to reach very farre for the proving of a deity . for there is no naturall faculties in things that have not their object in the world ; as there is meat as well as mouths , sounds as well as hearing , colours as well as sight , dangers as well as feare , and the like . so there ought in like manner to be a god as well as a naturall propension in men to religious worship , god alone being the proper object thereof . nor does it abate the strength of the argument that this so deeply radicated property of religion in man , that cannot be lost , does so ineptly and ridiculously display it self in manking . for as the plying of a dogges●eet ●eet in this sleep , as if there were some game before him , and the butting of a yong lambe before he has yet either hornes or enemies to encounter , would not be in nature , were there not such a thing as a hare to be coursed , and an horned enemy to be incountred with horns : so there would not be so universall an excercise of religious worship in the world , though it be done never so ineptly and foolishly , were there not really a due object of this worship , and a capacity in man for the right performance thereof ; which could not be unlesse there were a god. but the truth is , mans soul in this drunken drowsy condition she is in has fallen asleep in the body , and like one in a dreame talks to the bed-posts , embraces her pillow instead of her friend , falls down before statues in stead of adoring the eternall and invisible god , prayes to stocks and stones instead of speaking to him that by his word created all things . i but you will reply that a yong lambe has at length both his weapon and an enemy to encounter , and the dreaming dogge did once and may again pursue some reall game ; and so he that talks in his sleep did once conferre with men awake , and may do so again ; but whole nations for many successions of ages have been very stupid idolaters , and do so continue to this day . but i answere that this rather informes us of another great mystery , then at all enervates the present argument or obscures the grand truth we strive for . for this does plainly insinuate thus much , that mankind is in a laps'd condition , like one fallen down in the fit of an epilepsy , whose limbes by force of the convulsion are moved very incomposedly and illfavourdly ; but we know that he that does for the present move the members of his body so rudely and fortuitously , did before command the use of his muscles in a decent exercise of his progressive faculty , and that when the fit is over he will doe so again . this therefore rather implyes that these poore barbarous souls had once the true knowledge of god , and of his worship , and by some hidden providence may be recover'd into it again ; then that this propension to religious worship , that so conspicuously appeares in them , should be utterly in vain : as it would be both in them and in all men else if there were no god. chap. xi . of the nature of the soul of man , whether she be a meere modification of the body , or a substance really distinct , and then whether corporeall or incorporeall . vve have done with all those more obvious faculties in the soul of man , that naturally tend to the discovery of the existence of a god. let us briefly , before wee loose from our selves and lanch out into the vast ocean of the externall phaenomena of nature , consider the essence of the soul her self , what it is , whether a meer modification of the body or substance distinct therefrom ; and then whether corporeall or incorporeall . for upon the clearing of this point wee may happily be convinced that there is a spiritual substance ▪ really distinct from the matter . which who so does acknowledge will be easilier induced to beleeve there is a god. first therefore if we say that the soul is a meer modification of the body , the soul then is but one universall faculty of the body , or a many facultyes put together , and those operations which are usually attributed unto the soul , must of necessity be attributed unto the body . i demand therefore to what in the body will you attribute spontaneous motion ? i understand thereby a power in our selves of wagging or holding still most of the parts of our body , as our hand suppose or little finger . if you will lay that it is nothing but the immission of the spirits into such and such muscles , i would gladly know what does immit these spirits and direct them so curiously . is it themselves , or the braine , or that particular piece of the braine they call the co●arion or pine-ker●ell ? whatever it be , that which does thus immit them and direct them must have animadversion and the same that has animadversion has memory also and reason . now i would know whether the spirits themselves be capable of animadversion , memory and reason : for it indeed seemes altogether impossible . for these animall spirits are nothing else , but matter very thin and liquid , whose nature consists in this , that all the particles of it be in motion , and being loose from one another fridge and play up and down according to the measure and manner of agitation in them . i therefore now demand which of the particles in these so many loosely moving one from another , has animadversion in it ? if you say that they all put together have , i appeal to him that thus answers how unlikely it is that that should have animadversion that is so utterly uncapable of memory , and consequently of reason . for it is as impossible to conceive memory competible to such a subject , as it is , how to write characters in the water or in the wind . if you say the brain immits and directs these spirits , how can that so freely and spontaneously move it self or another that has no muscles ? besides anatomists tell us that though the brain be the instrument of sense , yet it has no sense at all of it self ; how then can that that has no sense , direct thus spontaneously and arbitrariously the animall spirits into any part of the body ? an act that plainely requires determinate sense and perception . but let the anatomists conclude what they will , i think i shall little lesse then demonstrate that the brains have no sense . for the same thing in us that has sense has likewise animadversion , and that which has animadversion in us has also a faculty of free and arbitrarious fansy and of reason . let us now consider the nature of the brain , and see how competible those operations are to such a subject . verily if wee take a right view of this laxe pith or marrow in mans head , neither our sense nor understanding can discover any thing more in this substance that can pretend to such noble operations as free imagination and sagacious collections of reason , then we can discern in a cake of sewer or a bowle of curds . for this loose pulp , that is thus wrapp'd up within our cranium is but a spongy and porous body , and pervious not onely to the animall spirits but also to more grosse juice and liquor , else it could not well be nourished , at least it could not be so soft and moistned by drunkennesse and excesse as to make the understanding inept and sottish in its operations . wherefore i now demand in this soft substance which we call the brain , whose softnesse implyes that it is in some measure liquid , and liquidity implyes a severall motion of loosned parts ; in what part or parcell thereof does fancy , reason and animadversion lye ? in this laxe consistence that lyes like a net all on heaps in the water , i demand in what knot , loop , or intervall thereof does this faculty of free fancy and active reason reside ? i believe you will be asham'd to assigne me any : and if you will say in all together , you must say that the whole brain is figured into this or that representation , which would cancell memory and take away all capacity of there being any distinct notes and places for the severall species of things there represented . but if you will say there is in every part of the brain this power of animadversion and fansy , you are to remember that the brain is in some measure a liquid body , and we must inquire how these loose parts vnderstand one anothers severall animadversions and notions : and if they could ( which is yet very inconceivable ) yet if they could from hence doe any thing toward the immission and direction of the animall spirits into this or or that part of the body , they must doe it by knowing one anothers minds , and by a joynt contention of strength , as when many men at once , the word being given , lift or tugge together for the moving of some so masty a body that the single strength of one could not deal with . but this is to make the severall particles of the brain so many individuall persons ; a fitter object for laughter then the least measure of beliefe . besides how come these many animadversions to seem but one to us , our mind being these , as is supposed ? or why if the figuration of one part of the brain be communicated to all the rest , does not the same object seem situated both behind us and before us , above and beneath , on the right hand and on the left , and every way as the impresse of the object is reflected against all the parts of the braines ? but there appearing to us but one animadversion and one site of things , it is a sufficient argument that there is but one , or if there be many , that they are not mutually communicated from the parts one to another , and therefore there can be no such joynt endeavour toward one designe , whence it is manifest that the braines cannot immit nor direct these animall spirits into what part of the body they please . moreover that the braine has no sense , and therefore cannot impresse spontaneously any motion on the animall spirits , it is no slight argument in that some being dissected have been found without braines , and fontanus tells us of a boy at amsterdam that had nothing but limpid water in his head in stead of braines ; and the braines generally are easily dissolvable into a watry consistence , which agrees with what i intimated before . now i appeale to any free judge how likely these liquid particles are to approve themselves of that nature and power as to bee able by erecting and knitting themselves together for a moment of time , to beare themselves so as with one joynt contention of strength to cause an arbitrarious ablegation of the spirits into this or that determinate part of the body . but the absurdity of this i have sufficiently insinuated already . lastly the nerves , i mean the marrow of them which is of the self same substance with the braine , have no sense as is demonstrable from a catalepsis or catochus : but i will not accumulate arguments in a matter so palpable . as for that little sprunt piece of the braine which they call the conarion , that this should be the very substance whose naturall faculty it is to move it self , and by it's motions and nods to determinate the course of the spirits into this or that part of the body , seems to me no lesse foolish and fabulous then the story of hi● that could change the wind as he pleased by setting his cap on this or that side of his head . if you heard but the magnificent stories that are told of this little lurking mushrome , how it does not onely heare and see , but imagines , reasons , commands the whole fabrick of the body more dextrously then an indian boy does an elephant , what an acute logician , subtle geometrician , prudent statesman , skillfull physician and profound philosopher he is , and then afterward by dissection you discover this worker of miracles to be nothing but a poor silly contemptible knobb or protuberancy consisting of a thin membrane containing a little pulpous matter much of the same nature with the rest of the braine , spectatum admissirisum teneatis amici ? would not you sooner laugh at it then goe about to confute it ? and truly i may the better laugh at it now , having already confuted it in what i have afore argued concerning the rest of the braine . i shall therefore make bold to conclude that the impresse of spontaneous motion is neither from the animall spirits nor from the braine , and therefore that those operations that are usually attributed unto the soul are really incompetible to any part of the body ; and therefore that the soul is not a meer modification of the body , but a substance distinct therefrom . now we are to enquire whether this substance distinct from what ordinarily we call the body , be also it self a corporeall substance , or whether it be incorporeall . if you say that it is a corporeall substance , you can understand no other then matter more subtile and tenuious then the animall spirits themselves , mingled with them and dispersed through the vessells and porosities of the body , for there can be no penetration of dimensions . but i need no new arguments to confute this fond conceipt , for what i said of the animall spirits before , is applicable with all ease and fitnesse to this present case . and let it be sufficient that i advertise you so much , and so be excus'd from the repeating of the same things over again . it remains therefore that we conclude that that which impresses spontaneous motion upon the body , or more immediatly upon the animall spirits , that which imagines , remembers , and reasons , is an immateriall substance distinct from the body , which uses the animall spirits and the braines for instruments in such and such operations : and thus we have found a spirit in a proper notion and signification that has apparently these faculties in it ; it can both understand and move corporeall matter . and now this prize that we have wonne will prove for our designe of very great consequence . for it is obvious here to observe that the soul of man is as it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a compendious statue of the deity . her substance is a solid effigies of god. and therefore as with ease we consider the substance and motion of the vast heavens on a little sphere or globe , so we may with like facility contemplate the nature of the all-mighty in this little meddall of god , the soul of man , enlarging to infinity what we observe in our selves when wee transferre it unto god ; as we do imagine those circles which we view on the globea to be vastly bigger while we fancy them as described in the heavens . wherefore we being assur'd of this that there is a spirituall substance in our selves in which both these properties do resid , eviz . of understanding and of moving corporeall matter , let us but enlarge our minds so , as to conceive as well as we can of a spirituall substance that is able to move and actuate all matter whatsoever never ●o farre extended , and after what way and manner soever it please , and that it has not the knowledge onely of this or that particular thing , but a distinct and plenary cognoscence of all things ; and we have indeed a very competent apprehension of the nature of the eternall and invisible god , who like the soul of man , does not indeed fall under sense , but does every where operate so , that his presence is easily to be gathered from what is discovered by our outward senses . chap. i. the universall matter of the world be it homogeneall or heterogeneall , self mov'd or resting of it self , that it can never be contriv'd into that order it is without the super-intendency of a god. the last thing i insisted upon was the specifick nature of the soul of man , how it is an immateriall substance indued with these two eminent properties , of understanding and power of moving corporeall matter . which truth i cleared , to the intent that when we shall discover such motions and contrivances in the largely extended matter of the world as imply wisdome and providence we may the easilier come off to the acknowledgment of that eternall spirituall essence that has fram'd heaven and earth , and is the author and maker of all visible and invisible beings . wherefore we being now so well furnish'd for the voiage , i would have my atheist to take shipping with me , and loosing from this particular speculation of our own inward nature to lanch out into that vast ocean , as i said , of the externall phaenomena of universall nature , or walke with me a while on the wide theatre of this outward world , and diligently to attend to those many and most manifest marks and signes that i shall point him to in this outward frame of things that naturally signify unto us that there is a god. and now first to begin with what is most generall , i say that the phaenomena of day and night , winter and summer , spring-time and harvest , that the manner of rising and setting of the sun , moon and starrs , that all these are signes and tokens unto us that there is a god , that is , that things are so framed that they naturally imply a principle of wisdome and counsell in the authour of them . and if the●e be such an authour of externall nature , there is a god. but here it will be reply'd ▪ that meere motion of the universall matter will at last necessarily grinde it self into those more rude and generall delineations of nature that are observed in the circuits of the sunne , moone and s●arres , and the generall consequences of them . but if the mind of man g●ow so bold as to conceipt any such thing , let him examine his faculties what they naturally conceive of the notion of matter . and verily the great master of this mechanicall hypothesis does not suppose not admitt of any specificall difference in this universall matter , out of which this outward frame of the world should arise . neither do i think that any man else will easily imagine but that all the matter of the world is of one kind for its very substance or essence . now therefore i demand concerning this universall uniform matter , whether naturally motion or rest belongs unto it . if motion it being acknowledg'd uniforme , it must be alike moved in every part or particle imaginable of it . for this motion bring naturall and essentiall to the matter is alike every where in it , and therefore has loosened every atome of it to the utmost capacity , so that every particle is alike , and moved alike , and therefore there being no prevalency at all in any one atome above another in biggnesse or motion , it is manifest that this universall matter , to whom motion is so essentiall and intrinsecall , will be ineffectu●ll ●or the producing of any varity of appearances in nature , and so●o sunnes , nor starres no● earths , nor vortic●s 〈◊〉 ever arise out of this infinitely thin and still matter , which most thus eternally remain unperceptible to any of 〈◊〉 , were our senses ten thousand millions of times 〈…〉 then they are ▪ indeed there could not be any such thing as either man or sense in the world . but we see this matter shewes it self to us , in abundance of varieti●●●●● appearance ; therefore there must be another principle besides the matter to order the motion of it so , as may make these varieties to appear : and what will that prove but a god ? but if you 'l say that motion is not of the nature of matter ( as indeed it is very hard to conceive it , the matter supposed homogeneall ) but that it is inert and stupid of it self ; then it must be moved from some other , and thus of necessity we shall be cast upon a god , or at least a spirituall substance actuating the matter ▪ which the atheists are as much affraid of , as children are of spirits , or themselves of a god. but men that are much degenerate know not the naturall emanations of their own minds , but think of all things confusedly , and therefore it may be will not stick to affirm , that either the parts of the matter are specifically different , or though they be not , yet some are moveable of themselves , others inclinable to rest , and was ever so ; for it happened so to be , though there be no reason for it in the thing it self ; which is to wound our faculties with so wide a gap , that after this they will let in any thing , and take away all pretence to any principles of knowledge . but to scuffle and combat with them in their own dark c●verns , let the universall matter be a heterogeneall chaos of confusion , variously moved and as it happens : i say there is no likelyhood that this mad motion would ever amount to so wise a contrivance as is discernable even in the generall delineations of nature . nay it will not amount to a naturall appearance of what we see and is conceived most easy thus to come to passe , to wit , a round 〈◊〉 , moon , and earth . for it is shrewdly to be suspected that if there were no superintendent over the motions of those aetheriall whirle-pooles , which the french philosophy supposes , that the form of the sun and the rest of the starres would be oblong not round , because the matter recedes all along the axis of a vortex , as well as from the center , and therefore naturally the space that is left for the finest and subtilest element of all , of which the sunne and starres are to consist , will be long not round . wherefore this round figure we see them in , must proceed from some higher principle then the meere agitation of the matter : but whether simply spermaticall , or sensitive also and intellectuall , i 'le leave to the disquisition of others who are more at leasure to meddle with such curiosities . the businesse that lies me in hand to make good is this , that taking that for granted which these great naturallists would have allowed , to wit , that the earth moves about the sunne , i say the laws of its motion are such , that if they had been imposed on her by humane reason and counsell , they would have been no other then they are . so that appealing to our own faculties , we are to confesse that the motion of the sunne and starres , or of the earth , as our naturallists would have it , is from a knowing principle , or at least has pass'd the approbation and allowance of such a principle . for as art takes what nature wi●l afford for her purpose , and makes up the rest her self ; so the eternall mind ( that put the universall matter upon motion , as i conceive most reasonable , or if the matter be confusedly mov'd of its self , as the atheist wilfully contends ) this eternall mind , i say , takes the easy and naturall results of this generall impresse of motion , where they are for his purpose , where they are not he rectifies and compleats them . and verily it is farre more suteable to reason that god making the matter of that nature that it can by meere motion produce something , that it should go on so farre as that single advantage could naturally carry it , that so the wit of man , whom god has made to contemplate the phaenomena of nature , may have a more fit object to exercise it self upon . for thus is the understanding of man very highly gratifi'd , when the works of god and there manner of production are made intelligible unto him by a naturall deduction of one thing from another : which would not have been if god had on purpose avoided what the matter upon motion naturally afforded , and cancelled the laws thereof in every thing . besides to have altered or added any thing further where there was no need , had been to multiply entities to no purpose . thus it is therefore with divine providence ; what that one single impresse of motion upon the vniversall matter will afford that is usefull and good , it does allow and take in ; what it might have miscarried in , or could not amount to , it directs or supplies . as in little pieces of wood naturally bow'd like a mans elbow , the carver does not unbow it , but carves an hand at the one end of it , and shapes it into the compleat figure of a mans arme. that therefore that i contend for is this , that be the matter moved how it will , the appearances of things are such as do manifestly intimate that they are either appointed all of them , or at least approved by an universall principle of wisdome and counsell . chap. ii. the perpetuall parallelisme of the axis of the earth and its due proportion of inclination , as also the course of the moon crossing the ecliptick , evident arguments that the fluid matter is guided by a divine providence . the atheists sophisme of arguing from some petty inconsiderable effects of the motion of the matter , that the said motion is cause of all things , seasonably detected and deservedly derided . now therefore to admit the motion of the earth , & to talk w th the naturallists in their own dialect , i demand whether it be better to have the axis of the earth steddy , and perpetually parrallell with its self , or to have it carelesly tumble this way and that way as it happens , or at least very variously and intricately . and you cannot but answer me that it is better to have it steady and parallel : for in this lyes the necessary foundation of the art of navigation and dialling . for that steddy stream of particles which is supposed to keep the axis of the earth parallel to it self , affords the mariner both his cynosura and his compasse . the load-stone and the load-star depend both on this . and dialling could not be at all without it . but both of these arts are pleasant , and the one especially of mighty importance to mankind . for thus there is an orderly measuring of time for our affaires at home , and an opportunity of traffick abroad , with the most remote nations of the world , and so there is a mutual supply of the severall commodities of all countreys , besides the inlarging of our understanding by so ample experience we get of both men and things . wherefore if we were rationally to consult , whether the axis of the earth is to be held steady and parallel to it self , or to be left at randome , wee would conclude that it ought to be steady . and so we find it de facto , though the earth move floating in the liquid heavens . so that appealing to our own facultyes , we are to affirm that the constant direction of the axis o● the earth was established by a principle of wisedom● and counsell ▪ or at least approved of it . again , there being severall post●●es of this steady direction of the axis of the earth , v●z , either perpendicular to a plane going through the center of the sun , or coincident or incl●ning , i demand which of all these reason and knowledge would make choise of . not of a perpendicular posture , for both the pleasant variety and great conveniency of summer and winter , spring● time and harvest would be lost ; and for want of accession of the sun , these parts of the earth that bring forth fruit now and are habitable , would be i● an incapacity of ever bringing forth any , and consequently could entertain no inhabitants ; and those parts that the full h●at of the sun could reach , he plying them allwayes alike without any annual recession or intermission , would at last grow tired and exhausted . and besides consulting with our own facultyes we observe , that an orderly vicissitude of things , is most pleasant unto us , and does much more gratifie the contemplative property in man. and now in the second place ▪ nor would reason make choice of a coincident position of the axis of the earth . for if the axis thus lay in a plane that goes through the center of the sun , the ecliptick would like a colure or one of the meridians passe through the poles of the earth , which would put the inhabitants of the world into a pittifull condition . for they that scape best in the temperate zone , would be accloy'd with very tedious long nights , no lesse then fourty dayes long , and they that now have their night never aboue fovr and twenty houres , as friseland , iseland , the further parts of russia and norway , would be deprived of the sun above a hundred and thirty dayes together , our selves in england and the rest of the same clime would be closed up in darknesse no lesse then an hundred or eighty continuall dayes , and so proportionably of the rest both in and out of the temperate zones . and as for summer and winter , though those vicissitudes would be , yet it could not but cause very raging diseases , to have the sun stay so long describing his little circles neer the poles and lying so hot upon the inhabitants that had been in so long extremity of darknesse and cold before . it remaines therefore that the posture of the axis of the earth be inclining , not coincident nor perpendicular to the forenamed plane . and verily it is not onely inclining , but in so fit proportion , that there can be no fitter excogi●ated , to make it to the utmost capacity as well pleasant as habitable . for though the course of the sun be curbed within the compasse of the tropicks and so makes those parts very hot , yet the constantgales of wind from the east ( to say nothing of the nature and fit length of their nights ) make the torrid zone not only habitable but pleasant . now this best posture which our reason would make choise of , we see really establish'd in nature , and therefore , if we be not perverse and willful , we are to inferre that it was established by a principle that has in it knowledge and counsell , not from a blind fortuitous jumbling of the parts of the matter one against another , especially having found before in ourselves a knowing spiritual substance that is also able to move and alter the matter . wherefore i say we should more naturally conclude , that there is some such universall knowing principle , that has power to move and direct the matter ; then to fancy that a confused justling of the parts of the matter should contrive themselves into such a condition , as if they had in them reason and counsell , and could direct themselves . but this directing principle what could it be but god ? but to speake the same thing more briefly and yet more intelligibly , to those that are only acquainted with the ptolemaicall hypothesis : i say that being it might have happened that the annuall course of the sun should have been through the poles of the world , and that the axis of the heavens might have been very troublesomely and disorderly moveable , from whence all those inconveniencies would arise which i have above mentioned ; and yet they are not but are so ordered as our own reason must approve of as best ; it is naturall for a man to conceive , that they are really ordered by a principle of reason and counsell , that is , that they are made by an all wise and all-powerful god. i will only adde one or two observables more , concerning the axis of the earth and the course of the moon , and so i will passe to other things . it cannot but be acknowledged that if the axis of the earth were perpendicular to the plane of the sun 's ecliptick , that her motion would be more easy and naturall , and yet for the conveniencies afore mentioned we see it is made to stand in an inclining posture . so in all likelyhood it would be more easy and naturall for that hand-maid of the earth the moon , to finish her monethly courses in the aequinoctiall line , but we see like the sun she crosses it and expatiates some degrees further then the sun him self , that her exalted light might be more comfortable to those that live very much north , in their long nights . wherefore i conclude that though it were possible , that the confused agitation of the parts of the matter might make a round hard heap like the earth , and more thin and liquid bodies like the aether , and sun , and that the earth may swimme in this liquid aether like a rosted apple in a great bowle of wine , and be carried about like straws or grasse cast upon a whirle-poole , yet that it's motion and posture should be so directed and attemper'd as we our selves that have reason upon due consideration would have it to be ; and yet not to be from that which is knowing and in some sense reasonable ; is to our faculties , if they discerne any thing at all , as absonous and absurd as any thing can be . for when it had been easier to have been otherwise , why should it be thus , if some superintendent cause did not oversee and direct the motions of the matter , allowing nothing therein but what our reason will confesse to be to very good purpose ? but because so many bullets joggled together in a mans hat will settle to such a determinate figure , or because the frost and the wind will draw upon dores and glasse-windows pretty uncouth streaks like feathers , and other fooleries which are to no use or purpose , to inferre thence that all the contrivances that are in nature , even the frame of the bodyes both of men and beasts , are from no other principle but the jumbling together of the matter , and so because that this does naturally effect something that it is the cause of all things , seems to me , to be a reasoning in the same mood and figure with that wise market-mans , who going down a hill , and carrying his cheeses under his armes , one of them falling and trundling down the hill very fast , let the other go after it , appointing them all to meet him at his house at gotham , not doubting but they beginning so hopefully would be able to make good the whole journey . or like another of the same town , who perceiving that his iron trevet he had bought had three feet , and could stand , expected also that it should walk too and save him the labour of the carriage . so our profound atheists and epicureans according to the same pitch of wisdome do not stick to infe●●e , because this confused motion of the parts of the master may amount to a rude delineation of hard and soft , rigid and fluid , and the like ; that therefore it will go on further and reach to the disposing of the matter in such order as does naturally imply a principle ▪ that someway or other contains in it exact wisdome and counsell . a position more beseeming the wise-men above mentioned , then any one that has the least command of his naturall wit and faculties . wherefore we having sufficiently detected the ridiculous folly of this present sophisme , let us attending heedfully to the naturall emanations of unprejudic'd reason conclude , that the rising and setting of the lights of heaven , the vicissitude of day and night , winter and summer , being so ordered and guided , as if they had been settled by exquisite consultation , and by clearest knowledge ; that therefore that which did thus ordaine them is a knowing principle , able to move , alter and guide the matter according to his own will and providence , that is to say , that there is a god. and verily i do not at all doubt but that i shall evidently trace the visible foot-steps of this divine counsell and providence , even in all things discoverable in the world . but i will passe through them as lightly and briefly as i can . chap. iii. that rivers , quarries of stone , timber-wood , metalls , mineralls , and the magnet , considering the nature of man , what use he can make of them , are manifest signes that the rude motion of the matter is not left to it self , but is under the guidance and super-intendency of an all-wise god. let us therefore swiftly course over the vallies and mountains , sound the depth of the sea , range the woods and forests , dig into the entrailes of the earth , and let the atheist tell me which of all these places are silent and say nothing of a god. those that are most dumbe will at least compromize with the rest , that all things are by the guidance and determination ( let the matter move as it will ) or at least by the allowance , and approbation of a knowing principle : as a mason that makes a wall , sometimes meets with a stone that wants no cutting , and so only approving of it he places it in his work . and a piece of timber may happen to be crack'd in the very place where the carpenter would cleave it , and he need not close it first that he may cleave it asunder afterwards ; wherefore it the mee● motion of the matter can do any rude generall thing of good consequence , let it stand as allowable ; but we shall find out also those things which do so manifestly ●avour of designe and counsell , that we cannot naturally withhold our assent , but must say there is a god. and now let us betake out selves to the search , and see if all things be not so as our reason would desire them . and to begin at the top first , even those rudely scattered mountains , that seeme but so many wens and unnaturall protu●erancies upon the face of the earth , if you consider but of what consequence they are , thus reconciled you may deeme them ornaments as well as usefull . for these are natures stillatories in whose hollow cavernes the ascending vapours are congealed to that universal aqua vitae , that good fresh-water , the liquor of life , that sustaines all the living creatures in the world , being carried along in all parts of the earth in the winding chanels of brookes and rivers . geography would make it good by a large induction . i will onely instance in three or foure : ana and tagus run from sierra molina in spain , rhenus , padus and rhodanus from the alpes , tenats from the riphean , garumna from the pyrene●n mountains , achelous from pindus , hebrus from rhodope , tigris from niphates , or●ntes from libanus , and euphraetes from the mountains of armenia , and so in the rest . but i will not insist upon this , i will now betake my self to what does more forcibly declare an eye of providence , directing and determining as well as approving of the results of the supposed agitation of the parts of the matter . and that you may the better feel the strength of my argument , let us first briefly consider the nature of man , what faculties he has , and in what order he is in respect of the rest of the creatures . and indeed though his body he but weak and disarmed , yet his inward abilities of reason and artificiall contrivance is admirable . he is much given to contemplation , and the viewing of this theatre of the world , to trafick and commerce with forrain nations , to the building of houses and ships , to the making curious instruments of silver , brasse or steele , and the like . in a word he is the flower and chief of all the products of nature upon this globe of the earth . now if i can shew that there are designes laid even in the lowest and vilest products of nature that respect man the highest of all , you cannot deny but that there is an eye of providence that respecteth all things , and passeth very swiftly from the top to the bottome , disposing all things wisely . i therefore now demand , man being of this nature that he is , whether these noble faculties of his would not be lost and frustrate were there not materialls to excercise them on . and in the second place i desire to know , whether the rude confused agitation of the particles of the matter do certainly produce any such materialls fit for man to exercise his skill on or no ; that is to say , whether there were any necessity that could infallibly produce quarries of stone in the earth which are the chief materialls of all the magnificent structures of building in the world ; and the same of iron and steel , without which there had been no use of these stones ; and then of sea-coal and other necessary fewel , fit for the working or melting of these metalls ; and also of timber trees , for all might have been as well brush-wood and shrubs ; and then assuredly there had been no such convenient shipping , what ever had become of other buildings ; and so of the load-stone that great help to navigation , whether it might not have laine so low in the earth as never to have been reached by the industry of man ; and the same may be said also of other stones and metalls , that they being heaviest might have laine lowest . assuredly the agitated matter , unlesse there were some speciall over-powering guidance over it , might as well have over-slipt these necessary usefull things , as hit upon them : but if there had not been such a creature as man , these very things themselves had been uselesse , for none of the bruit beasts make use of such commodities , wherefore unlesse a man will doe enormous violence to his faculties , he must conclude that there is a contrivance of providence and counsell in all those things , which reacheth from the beginning to the end , and orders all things sweetly . and that providence foreseeing what a kind of creature she would make man , provided him with materialls from whence he might be able to adorne his present age , and furnish history with the records of egregious exploits both of art and valour . but without the provision of the forenamed materialls , the glory and pompe both of warre and peace had been lost . for men instead of those magnificent buildings which are seen in the world , could have had no better kind of dwellings , then a bigger sort of bee-hives or birds-nests made of contemptible sticks and straws & durty mo●ter . and instead of the usuall pompe and bravery of warre , wherein is heard the solemne sound of the hoarse trumpett , the couragious beating of the drumm , the neighing and pransing of the horses , clattering of armour , and the terrible thunder of cannons , to say nothing of the glittering of the sword and spear ▪ the waving and fluttering of displayed colours , the gallantry of charges upon their well managed steeds and the like : i say had it not been for the forenamed provision of iron , steel and brasse , and such like necessary materialls , instead of all this glory and solemnity , there had been nothing but howlings and showtings of poor naked men belabouring one another with snag'd sticks , or dully falling together by the eares at fi●ti-cuffs . besides this , beasts being naturally armed , and men naturally unarmed with any thing save their reason , and reason being ineffectuall having no materialls to work upon , it is plaine that that which made men , beasts and metalls , knew what it did , and did not forget it self in leaving man destitute of naturall armature , having provided materialls , and giving him wit and abilityes to arme himself , and so to be able to make his party good against the most fierce and stoutest of all living creatures whatsoever , nay indeed left him unarmed on purpose that he might arme himself and excercise his naturall wit and industry . chap. iv. a further proof of divine providence taken from the sea , and the large train of causes laid together in reference to navigation . having thus passed over the hills and through the woods and hollow entrailes of the earth , let us now view the wide sea also , and see whether that do not informe us that there is a god , that is , whether things be not there in such sort as a rationall principle would either order or approve , when as yet notwithstanding they might have been otherwise . and now we are come to view those campos natantes as lucretius calls them , that vast champian of water the ocean , i demand first whether it might not have been wider then it is , even so large as to overspread the face of the whole earth , and so to have taken away the habitation of men and beasts . for the wet particles might have easily ever mingled with the dry , and so all had either been sea or quag-mire . secondly though this distinction of land and sea be made , whether this watry element might not have fallen out to be of so thin a consistency as that it would not beare shipping ; for it is so farre from impossibility , as there be de facto in nature such waters , as the river silas for example in india . and the waters of b●risthenes are so thin and light , that they are said to swim upon the top of the stream of the river hypanis . and we know there is some kind of wood so heavy , that it will sink in any ordinary kind of water . thirdly and lastly , i appeale to any mans reason , whether it be not better that there should be a distinction of land and sea , then that all should be mire or water ; and whether it be not better that the timber-trees afford wood so light that it swim on the water , or the water be so heavy that it will beare up the wood , then the contrary . that therefore which might have been otherwise , and yet is settled according to our own hearts wish who are knowing and rationall creatures , ought to be deemed by us as established by counsell and reason . and the closer we looke into the buisinesse we shall discerne more evident foot-steps of providence in it . for the two maine properties of man being contemplation and sociablenesse or love of converse , there could nothing so highly gratify his nature as power of navigation , whereby he riding on the back of the waves of the sea , views the wonders of the deep , and by reason of the gl●bnesse of that element , is able in a competent time to prove the truth of those sagacious suggestions of his own mind , that is , whether the earth be every way round , and whether there be any antipodes , and the like ; and by cutting the aequinoctiall line decides that controversy of the habitablenesse of the torrid zone , or rather wipes out that blot that lay upon divine providence , as if so great a share of the world had been lost by reason of unfitnesse for habitation . besides the falling upon strange coasts and discovering men of so great a diversity of manners from our selves , cannot but be a thing of infinite pleasure and advantage to the enlargement of our thoughts from what we observe in their conversation , parts , and poli●y . adde unto this the sundry rarities of nature , and commodities proper to severall countries , which they that stay at home enjoy by the travailes of those that go abroad , and they that travaile grow rich for their adventure . now therefore navigation being of so great consequence , to the delight and convenience ▪ of humane life , and there being both wit and courage in man to attempt the seas , were he but ●itted with right materialls and other advantages requisite ; when we see there is so pat a provision made for him to this pu●pose , in large timber for the building of his ship , in a thick sea-water sufficient to beare the ships burden , in the magnet or load-stone for his compasse , in the steady and parallell direction of the axis of the earth for his cynosura ; and then observing his naturall wit and courage to make use of them , and how that ingenit desire of knowledge an● converse , and of the improving of his own parts and happinesse stirre him up to so notable a designe ; we cannot but conclude from such a traine of causes so ●ittly and congruously complying together , that it was really the counsell of a● universall and eternall mind that has the overseeing and guidance of the whole frame of nature , that laid these causes so carefully and wisely together , that is , we cannot but conclude that there is a god. and if we have got so fast foot-hold already in this truth by the consideration of such phaenomena in the world that seeme more rude and generall , what will the contemplation of the more particular and more polished pieces of nature afford in vegetables , animalls and the body of man ? chap. v. though the meere motion of the matter may do something , yet it will not amount to the production of plants and animalls . that it is no botch in nature that some phaenomena be the results of motion , others of substantiall formes . that beauty is not a meere phancy ; and that the beauty of plants is an argument that they are from an intellectuall principle . hitherto we have only considered the more rude and carelesse strokes and delineaments of divine providence in the world , set out in those more large phaenomena of day and night , winter and summer , land and sea , rivers , mountains ▪ metalls and the like ; we now come to a closer view of god and nature in vegetables , animalls , and man. and first of vegetables , where i shall touch only these foure heads , their forme and beauty , their seed , their signatures & their great vse as well for medicine as sustenance . and that we may the better understand the advantage we have in this closer contemplation of the works of nature , we are in the first place to take notice of the condition of that substance which we call matter , how fluid and slippery and undeterminate it is of it self : or if it be hard , how unfit it is to be chang'd into any thing else . and therefore all things rot into a moisture before any thing can be generated of them , as we soften the wax before we set on the seal . now therefore , unlesse we will be so foolish , as because the uniforme motion of the aire , or some more subtile corporeall element , may so equally compresse or beare against the parts of a little vapourous moisture as to forme it into round drops ( as we see in the dew and other experiments ) and therefore because this more rude and generall motion can do something , to conclude that it does all things ; we must in all reason confesse that there is an eternall mind , in vertue whereof the matter is thus usefully formed and changed . but meere rude and undirected motion , because naturally it will have some kind of results , that therefore it will reach to such as plainly imply a wise contrivance of counsell , is so ridiculous a sophisme , as i have already intimated , that it is more fit to impose upon the inconsiderate souls of fooles and children then upon men of mature reason and well exercis'd in philosophy . admit that raine and snow and wind and haile and ice and such like meteors may be the products of heat and cold , or of the motion and rest of certaine small particles of the matter ; yet that the usefull and beautifull contrivance of the branches , flowers and fruits of plants should be so too ( to say nothing yet of the bodyes of birds , fishes , beasts and men ) is as ridiculous and supine a collection , as to inferre that because mere heat and cold does soften and harden waxe and puts it into some shape or other , that therefore this mere heat and cold or motion and rest , without any art or direction made the silver seal too , and graved upon it so curiously some coat of armes , or the shape of some birds or beasts , as an eagle , a lyon and the like . nay indeed this inference is more tolerable farre then the other , these effects of art being more easy and lesse noble then those others of nature . nor is it any botch or gap at all in the works of nature that some particular phaenomena be but the easy results of that generall motion communicated unto the matter from god , others the effects of more curious contrivance or of the divine art or reason ( for such are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the rationes seminales ) incorporated in the matter , especially the matter it self being in some sort vitall , else it would not continue the motion that it is put upon when it is occasionally this or the other way moved ; & besides , the nature of god being the most perfect fullnesse of life that is possibly conceivable , it is very congruous that this outmost and remotest shadow of himself be some way though but ob●curely vitall . wherefore things falling off by degrees from the highest perfection , it will be no uneven or unproportionable step , if descending from the top of this outward creation , man , in whom there is a principle of more fine and reflexive reason , which hangs on , though not in that manner in the more perfect kind of brutes , as sense also , loth to be curb'd within too narrow a compasse , layes hold upon some kinds of plants , as in those sundry sorts of zoophyta , but in the rest there are no further foot-steps discovered of an animadversive forme abiding in them , yet there be the effects of an inadvertent form ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) of materiated or incorporated art or seminall reason : i say it is no uneven jot , to passe from the more faint and obscure examples of spermaticall life , to the more considerable effects of generall motion , in mineralls , metalls & sundry meteors , whose easy & rude shapes have no need of any particular principle of life or spermaticall forme distinct from the rest or motion of the particles of the matter . but there is that curiosity of forme and beauty in the more noble kind of plants bearing such a sutablenesse and harmony with the more refined ●ense and sagacity of the soul of man , that he cannot chose ( his intellectuall touch being so sweetly gratifide by what it deprehends in such like objects but acknowledge that some hidden cause much a kin to his own nature , that is intellectuall , is the contriver & perfecter of these so pleasant spectacles in the world . nor is it all to the purpose to object , that this buisinesse of beauty and comelinesse of proportion is but a conceit , because some men acknowledge no such thing , & all things are alike handsome to them , who yet notwithstanding have the use of their eyes as well as other folkes . for i say this rather makes for what we a yme at , that pulchritude is convey'd indeed by the outward senses unto the soul , but a more intellectuall faculty is that which relishes it ; as a geometricall scheme is let in by the eyes , but the demonstration is discern'd by reason . and therefore it is more rationall to affirm that some intellectuall principle was the authour of this pulchritude of things , then that they should be thus fashion'd without the help of that principle . and to say that there is no such thing as pulchritude , because some mens souls are so dull & stupid that they relish all objects alike in that respect , is as absurd and groundlesse as to conclude there is no such thing as reason and demonstration , because a naturall fool cannot reach unto it . but that there is such a thing as beauty , & that it is acknowledged by the whole generations of men to be in trees , flowers and fruits ; the adorning and beautifying of buildings in all ages is an ample & undenyable testimony . for what is more ordinary with them then the taking in flowers and fruitage for the garnishing of their work ? besides i appeal to any man that is not sunk into so forlorne a pitch of degeneracy , that he is as stupid of these things as the ba●est of beasts ▪ whether for example a rightly cut tetraedrum , cube or icosaedrum have no more pulchritude in them , then any rude broken stone lying in the field or high wayes ; or to name other solid figures which though they be not regular properly so called , yet have a settled idea and nature , as a cone , sphear or cylinder , whether the ●ight of these doe not gratifie the minds of men more , and pretend to more elegancy of shape , then those rude cuttings or ch●ppings of free stone that fall from the masons hands and serve for nothing but to fill up the middle of the wall , and so to be hid from the eyes of man for their ●glinesse . and it is observable that if nature shape any thing near this geometricall accuracy , that we take notice of it with much content and pleasure ; as if it be but exactly round ( as there are abundance of such stones found betwixt●two hills in cuba an iland or america ) or ordinatly quinquangular , or have the sides but parallell , though the angles be unequall , as is seen in some little stones , and in a kind of alabaster found here in england ; these stones i say gratifie our sight , as having a neerer cognation with the soul of man , that is rationall and intellectuall ; and therefore is well pleased when it meets with any outward object that fits and agrees with those conge●it ideas her own nature is furnished with . for symmetry , equality , and correspondency of parts is the discernment of reason , not the object of sense , as i have heretofore proved . now therefore it being evident that there is such a thing as beauty , symmetry and comelinesse of proportion ( to say nothing of the delightfull mixture of colours ) and that this is the proper object of the understanding and reason ( for these things be not taken notice of by the beasts ) i think i may safely inferre that whatever is the first and principall cause of changing the fluid and undeterminated matter into shapes so comely and symmetricall , as wee see in flowers and trees , is an understanding principle , and knows both the nature of man and of those objects he offers to his sight in this outward and visible world . for these things cannot come by chance or by a multi●arious attempt of the parts of the matter upon themselves , for then it were likely that the species of things ( though some might hit right , yet most ) would be maym'd and ridiculous ; but now there is not any ineptitude in any thing which is a signe that the fluidnesse of the matter is guided and determined by the overpowering counsell of an eternall mind , that is , of a god. if it were not needlesse i might now instance in sundry kinds of flowers , herbes and trees ● but these objects being so obvious and every mans phansie being branched with the remembrance of roses , marigolds , gillyflowers , pionyes , tulips , pa●sies , primroses , the leaves and clusters of the vine , and a thousand such like , of all which they cannot but confesse , that there is in them beauty and symmetry and gratefull proportion , i hold it superfluous to weary you with any longer induction , but shall passe on to the three considerations behind , of their seed , signatures and vsefulnesse , and shall passe through them very briefly , the observables being very ordinary and easily intelligible . chap. vi. the seeds and signatures of plants , arguments of a divine providence . i say therefore in that every plant ▪ has its seed , it is an evident signe of divine providence . for it being no necessary result of the motion of the matter , as the whole contrivance of the plant indeed is not , and it being of so great consequence that they have seed for the continuance and propagation of their own species , and for the gartifying of mans art also , industry and necessityes , ( for much of husbandry and gradening lyes in this ) it cannot but be an act of counsell to furnish the severall kinds of plants with their seeds , especially the earth being of such a nature , that though at first for a while it might bring forth all manner of plants , ( as some will have it also to have brought forth all kinds of animalls ) yet at last it would grow so sluggish , that without the advantage of those small compendious principles of generation , the graines of seed , it would yield no such births ; no more then a pump grown dry will yield any water , unless you pour a little water into it first , & then for one bason-full you may fetch up so many soe-fulls . nor is it materiall to object that stinking weeds , and poysonous plants bear seed too as well as the most pleasant and most usefull , for even those stinking weeds and poysonous plants have their use . for first the industry of man is excercised by them to weed them out where they are hurtfull . which reason if it seem slight , let us but consider that if humane industry had nothing to conflict and struggle with , the fire of mans spirit would be half extinguish'd in the flesh , and then wee shall acknowledge that that which i have alledged is not so contemptible nor invalid . but secondly who knows but it is so with poysonous plants , as vulgarly is phansied concerning toads and other poysonous serpents , that they lick the venome from off the earth ? so poysonous plants may well draw to them all the maligne juice and nourishment that the other may be more pure and defaecate , as there are receptacles in the body of man and emunctories to draine them of superfluous choler , melancholy and the like . but lastly it is very well known by them that know any thing in nature and physick , that those herbs that the rude and ignorant would call weeds are the materialls of very soveraigne medicines , that aconitum hyemale or winter wolfes bane , that otherwise is ranck poyson , is reported to prevaile mightily against the bitings of vipers and scorpions , which crollius assenteth unto . and that that plant that bears death in the very name of it , solanum laethiferum , prevents death by procuring sleep , if it be rightly apply'd in a feaver . nor are those things to be deemed unprofitable whose use we know not yet , for all is not to be known at once , that succeeding ages may ever have something left to gratifie themselves in their own discoveries . we come now to the signatures of plants , which seems no lesse argument that the highest originall of the works of nature is some understanding principle , then that so carefull provision of their seed . nay indeed this respects us more properly and adaequare●y then the other , and is a certaine key to enter man into the knowledge and use of the treasures of nature . i demand therefore whether it be not a very easie and genuine inference from the observing that severall herbs are marked with some marke or signe that intimates their vertue , what they are good for ; and there being such a creature as man in the world that can read and understand these signes and characters , hence to collect that the authour both of man and them knew the nature of them both ; for it is like the inscriptions upon apothecaries boxes that the master of the shop 〈◊〉 on ▪ that the apprentise may read them ; nay it is better , for here is in herbs inscribed the ve●y nature and use of them ▪ not the meere name . nor is there any necessity that all should be thus signed , though some be ; for the rarity of it is the delight ; for otherwise it had been dull and cloying , too much harping upon the same string . and besides divine providence would onely initiate and enter mankind into the usefull knowledge of her treasures , leaving the rest to imploy our industry that we might not live like idle loyterers and truants . for the theatre of the world is an excercise of mans wit , not a lazy polyanthea or book of common places . and therefore all things are in some measure obscure and intricate , that the sedulity of that divine spark the soul of man , may have matter of conquest and triumph when he has done bravely by a superadvenient assistance of his god. but that there be some plants that bear a very evident signature of their nature and use , i shall fully make good by these following instances . capillus vener● , polytrichon or m●ydenhaire , the lye in which it is sodden or in●us'd , is good to wash the head and make the haire grow in those places that are more thin and bare . and the decoction of quinces , which are a downy and hairy fruit , is accounted good for the fetching again hair that has fallen by the french poxe . the leaf of balme and of alleluia or wood-sorrell , as also the roots of anthora represent the heart in figure and are cardiacall . wall nuts beare the whole signature of the head . the outward green cortex answers to the pericranium , and a salt made of it is singularly good for wounds in that part , as the kernell is good for the brains which it resembles . vmbilicus veneris is powerfull to provoke lust as di●scorides affirmes . as also your severall sorts of satyrions which have the evident resemblance of the genitall parts upon them : aron especially , and all your orchisses , that they have given names unto from some beasts or other , as cynosorchis , orchis myodes , tragorchis and the like . the last whereof , notorious also for its goatish smell and tufts not unlike the beard of that lecherous animall , is of all the rest the most powerful incentive to lust. the leaves of hypericon , are very thick prick'd , or pinck'd with little holes , and it is a singular good wound-herb , as usefull also for deobstructing the pores of the body . scorpioides , echium , or scorpion-grasse is like the crooked tayle of a scorpion , and ophioglossum or adders-tongue has a very plain and perfect resemblance of the tongue of a serpent , as also ophioscorodon of the intire head and upper parts of the body , and these are all held very good against poyson and the biting of serpents . and generally all such plants as are speckled with spots like the skins of vipers or other venemous creatures , are known to be good against the stings or bitings of them , and are powerfull antidotes against poyson . thus did divine providence by naturall hieroglyphicks read short physick lectures to the rude wit of man , that being a little entered and engaged he might by his own industry and endeavours search out the rest himself , it being very reasonable that other herbs that had not such signatures ▪ might be very good for medicinall uses , as well as they that had . but if any here object that some herbs have the resemblance of such things as cannot in any likelyhood referre to physick , as geranium , cruciata , bursa pastoris , & the like ; i say they answer themselves in the very proposall of their objection : for this is a signe that they were intended onely for ludicrous ornaments of nature , like the flourishes about a great letter that signify nothing but are made onely to delight the eye . and 't is so farre from being any inconvenience to our first progenitours if this intimation of signatures did faile , that it cast them with more courage upon attempting the vertue of those that had no such signatures at all ; it being obvious for them to reason thus , why may not those herbs have medicinall vertue in them that have no signatures , as well as they that have signatures have no vertue answerable to the signes they beare ? which was a further confirmation to them of the former conclusion . and it was sufficient that those that were of so present and great consequence as to be antidotes against poyson that so quickly would have dispatch'd poore rude and naked antiquity , or to helpe on the small beginnings of the world by quickning and actuating their phlegmatick natures to more frequent and effectuall venery ( for their long lives shew they were not very fiery ) i say it was sufficient that herbs of this kind were so legibly sign'd with characters that so plainly bewrai'd their usefull vertues , as is manifest in your satyrions , ophioglossum , and the like . but i have dwelt too long upon this theory , wee 'l betake our selves to what followes . chap. vii . arguments of divine providence drawn from the usefulness of plants . vve are at length come to the fourth and last consideration of plants , viz. their vse & profitablenesse . and to say nothing now of those greater trees that are fit for timber , and are the requisite materials for the building of ships and magnificent houses , to adorne the earth , and make the life of man more splendid and delectable ; as also for the erecting of those holy structures consecrated to divine worship amongst which we are not to forget that famous aedifice , that glorious temple at jerusalem consecrated to the great god of heaven and earth : as indeed it was most fit that he whose guidance & providence permitted not the strength of the earth to spend it self in base gravel and pebbles insteed of quarries of stones , nor in briars and brush-wood instead of pines , cedars and okes , that he should at some time or other have the most stately magnificent temples erected to him , that the wit and industry of man and the best of those materials could afford . it being the most suteable acknowledgment of thanks for that piece of providence that can be invented . and it is the very consideration that moved that pious king david to designe the building of a temple to the god of israel ; see now , sayes he , i dwell in a house of cedar , but the arke of god dwelleth within curtains . but as i sayd i will add nothing concerning these things being contented with what i have glanced upon heretofore . we will now briefly take notice of the profitablenesse of plants for physick and food , and then paste on to the consideration of animalls . and as for their medicinall uses , the large herballs that are every where to be had are so ample testimonies thereof , that i have said enough in but reminding you of them . that which is most observable here is this , that brute beasts have some share in their vertue as well as men. for the toad being overcharged with the poison of the spider , as is ordinary believed , has recourse to the plantane leafe . the weasel when she is to encounter the serpent , armes her self with eating of rue . the dog when he is sick at the stomach , knows his cure , falls to his grasse , vomits , and is well . the swallowes make use of celandine ; the linnet of euphragia for the repairing of their sight . and the asse when hee 's oppress'd with melancholy , eats of the herbe asplenium or miltwaste , and so eases himself of the swelling of the spleene . and virgill reports of the dictamnum cretense or cretian dittany , that the wild goats eate it when they are shot with darts or arrowes , for that herb has the vertue to work them out of their body and to heale up the wound . — non illa feris incognita capris gramina , cum tergo volucres h●esere sagitt●e . which things i conceive no obscure indigitation of providence ; for they doing that by instinct and nature , which men who have free reason cannot but acknowledge to be very pertinent and fitting , nay such that the skillfullest physitian will approve and allow ; and these creatures having no such reason and skill themselves , as to turne physitians ; it must needs be concluded that they are inabled to do these things by vertue of that principle that contrived them , and made them of that nature they are , and that that principle therefore must have skill and knowledge , that is , that it must be god. we come now to the consideration of plants as they afford food both to man and beasts . and here we may observe that as there was a generall provision of water by setting the mountains and hills a broche , from whence through the spring-heads and continued rivulets drawn together ( that caused afterwards greater rivers with the long winding distributions of them ) all the creatures of the earth quench their thirst : so divine providence has spread her table every where , not with a juicelesse green carpet , but with succulent herbage and nourishing grasse , upon which most of the beasts of the field doe feed . and they that feed not on it , feed on those that eate it , and so the generations of them all are continued . but this seeming rather necessary then of choise , i will not insist upon it . for i grant that counsell most properly is there implyde where we discerne a variety and possibility of being otherwise , and yet the best is made choise of . therefore i will onely intimate thus much , that though it were necessary that some such thing as grasse should be , if there were such and such creatures in the world , yet it was not at all necessary that grasse and herbs should have that colour which they have , for they might have been red or white , o● some such colour which would have been very offensive and hurtfull to our sight . but i will not insist upon these things ; let us now consider the fruits of trees , where i think it will appear very manifestly , that there was one and the same authour both of man and them , and that assuredly he knew what he did when he made them . for could apples , and oranges , and grapes , and apricocks , and such like fruit , be intended for beasts that hold their heads downward and can scarce look up at them , much lesse know how to reach them ? when we feed our dogs , we set the dish or trencher on the ground , nor on the table . but you 'le say that at last these fruits will fall down , and then the beasts may come at them : but one thing is , there are not many that desire them , and so they would rot upon the ground before they be spent , or be squander'd away in a moment of time , as it might easily fare with the most precious of plants the vine . but man who knowes the worth of the grape knowes to preserve it a long season ( for it is both eaten and drunk some yeares after the vintage ) as he does also gather the rest of the fruits of the earth , and layes up both for himself and his cattel : wherefore it is plainly discoverable that mans coming into the world , is not a thing of chance or necessity , but a designe , as the bringing of worthy guests to a well furnish'd table . and what i have intimated concerning the vine is as eminently , if not more eminently , observable in the ordinary kinds of graine , as wheat and barly , and the like , which also like the vine are made either edible or potable by mans art and industry ; but that 's not the thing that i care so much to observe . that which i drive at now is this : that bread-corne that brings so considerable increase by tillage and husbandry would scarce be at all without it : for that which grows wildly of it self is worth nothing : but it being so wholesome and strengthning a food , that it should yield so plentifull increase , and that this should not be without humane art and industry , does plainly insinuate , that there is a divine providence that intended to excercise the wit of man in husbandry and tillage : which we may the more firmly assure our selves of , if we add unto this the carefull provision of instruments so exactly fitted out for this imployment , viz. the laborious oxe , and the stout but easily manageable horse ; iron for the plough-share , and ropes for the horse-geares to pull by . and it is very seasonable to take notice of this last , it belonging to this consideration of the profitablenesse of plants . and i appeale to any body that will but take the pains a while to consider of what great use and consequence cordage is in the affaires of men , whether it was not a palpable act of providence to send out such plants out of the earth which would affoord it . for we can discover no necessity in nature that there must needs be such plants as hempe and flaxe . wherefore if we will but follow the easy suggestions of free reason , we muust cast it upon providence , which has provided man-kind of such a commodity , that no lesse affaires depend upon , then all the tackling of ships , their sayles and cable-ropes , and what not ? and so consequently all forraigne traffick , and then the transportation of wood and stone , and other necessary materialls for building ; or the carriage of them by land in waines and carts , besides the ordinary use of pulleyes or other engines for the lifting up of heavy weights which the strength of man without these helps would not easily master ; besides what i hinted before concerning the use of cordage in husbandry , in plowing and carrying home the fruits of the earth . the uses indeed of the forenamed plants are so universall , and take place so in every affaire of man , that if it were lawfull to be a little merry in so serious a matter , a man might not unfittingly apply that verse of the poet to this so generall a commodity ; omnia sunt homini tenui pendentia filo . that all the businesses of men do very much depend upon these little long fleaks or threds of hempe and flaxe ▪ or if you will say , that there may some scambling shift be made without them in long chaines of iron , or sayles of woollen and the like ; yet we seeing our seives provided for infinitely better , are in all reason to judge it to proceed from no worse a principle then divine providence . i might now reach out to exotick plants , such as the cinnamon-tree , the balsame-tree , the tree that beares the nutmegge invelloped with the mace , as also the famous nut-tree , which at once almost affords all the necessaries of life . for if they cut but the twiggs at evening , there is a plentifull and pleasant juice comes out , which they receive into bottles and drink instead of wine , and out of which they extract such an aqu●vitae as is very soveraign against all manner of sicknesses . the branches and boughs they make their houses of ; and the body of the tree being very spongy within , though hard without , they easily contrive into the frame and use of their canoes or boates . the kernell of the nut serves them for bread and meat , and the shells for cups to drink in , and indeed they are not mere empty cups , for there is found a delicious cooling milk in them : besides there is a kind of hemp that incloses the nut , of which they make ropes and cables , and of the finest of it sailes for their ships ; and the leaves are so hard and sharpe-pointed , that they easily make needles or bodkins of them , for stitching their sailes and for other necessary purposes . and that providence may shew her self benigne as well as wise , this so notable a plant is not restrain'd to one coast of the world , as suppose the east-indies , but is found also in some parts of africa , and in all the islands of the west-indies , as hispaniola cuba , as also upon the continent of carthagena , in panama , norembega , and severall others parts of the new-found world . but i thought fit not to insist upon these things , but to containe my self within the compasse of such objects as are familiarly and ordinarily before out eyes , that we may the better take occasion from thence to return thanks to him who is the bountiful authour of all the supports of life . chap. viii . the usefullnesse of animalls an argument of divine providence . we are now come to take a view of the nature of animalls : in the contemplation whereof we shall use much what the same method we did in that of plants , for we shall consider in them also , their beauty , their birth , their make and fabrick of body , and vsefullnesse to man-kind . and to dispatch this last first . it is wonderfull easy and naturall to conceive , that as almost all are made in some sort or other for humane uses , so some so notoriously and evidently , that without maine violence done to our faculties we can in no wise deny it . as to instance in those things that are most obvious and familiar ; when we see in the solitary fields a shepheard , his flock , and his dog , how well they are fitted together ; when we knock at a farmers door , and the first that answers shall be his vigilant mastiffe , whom from his use and office he ordinarily names keeper , and i remember theophrastus in his character 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tells us , that his master when he has let the stranger in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taking his dog by the snout will relate long stories of his usefullnesse and his services he does to the house and them in it . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this is he that keepes the yard , the house and them within . lastly when we view in the open champian a brace of swift grey-hounds coursing a good stout and well-breathed hare , or a pack of well tuned hounds , and huntsmen on their horse-backs with pleasure and alacrity pursuing their game , or heare them winding their hornes neere a wood side , so that the whole wood rings with the echo of that musick and chearefull yelping of the eager doggs : to say nothing of duck-hunting , of foxe-hunting , of otter-hunting , and a hundred more such like sports and pastimes , that are all performed by this one kind of animall ; i say when we consider this so multifarious congruity and fitnesse of things in reference to our selves , how can we withhold from inferring , that that which made both dogs and ducks and hares and sheep , made them with a reference to us , and knew what it did when it made them ? and though it be possible to be otherwise , yet it is highly improbable that the flesh of sheep should not be designed for food for men ; and that dogs that are such a familiar and domestick creature , to man , amongst other pretty feats that they doe for him , should not be intended to supply the place of a servitour too , and to take away the bones and scraps that nothing might be lost . and unlesse we should expect that nature should make jerkins & stockings grow out of the ground , what could she doe better then afford us so fit materialls for clothing as the wooll of the sheep , there being in man wit and art to make use of it ? to say nothing of the silk-worme that seems to come into the world for no other purpose ▪ then to furnish man with more costly clothing , and to spin away her very entrailes to make him fine without . agains when we view those large bodies of oxen , what can ●e better conceit them to be then so many living and walking powdring tubbs and that they have animam pro sale , as philo speaks of fishes , that their life is but for salt to keepe them sweet till we shall have need to eate them ? besides their hides afford us leather for shooes and boots . as the skins of other beasts also serve for other uses . and indeed man seems to be brought into the world on purpose that the rest of the creation might be improved to the utmost usefulnesse & advantage ; for were it not better that the hides of beasts and their flesh should be made so considerable use of as to feed and cloath men , then that they should rot and stink upon the ground , and fall short of so noble an improvement as to be matter for the exercise of the wit of man , & to afford him the necessary conveniences of life ? for if man did not make use of them , they would either dye of age , or be torne apieces by more cruel masters . wherfore we plainly see that it is an act of reason & counsel to have made man that he might be a lord over the rest of the creation ▪ & keep good quarter among them . and being furnish'd with fit materialls to make himself weapons , as well as with naturall wit and valour , he did bid battaile to the very fiercest of them , and either chased them away into solitudes and deserts , or else brought them under his subjection and gave lawes unto them ; under which they live more peaceably , and are better provided for ( or at least might be , if men were good ) then they could be when they were left to the mercy of the lyon bear or tiger . and what it he doe occasionally and orderly kill some of them for food ? their dispatch is quick and so lesse dolorous then the paw of the bear or the teeth of the lyon , or tedious melancholy and sadnesse of old age , which would first torture them , and then kill them and let them srot upon the ground stinking and uselesse . besides , all the wit and philosophy in the world can never demonstrate , that the killing and slaughtering of a beast is any more then the striking of a bush where a birds nest is , where you fray away the bird and then seize upon the empty nest. so that if we could pierce to the utmost catastrophe of things , all might prove but a tragick-comedy . but as for those rebells that have fled into the mountains and deserts , they are to us a very pleasant subject of naturall history besides we serve our selves of them as much as is to our purpose . and they are not onely for ornaments of the universe , but a continuall exercise of mans wit and valour when he pleases to encounter . but to expect and wish that there were nothing but such dull tame things in the world , that will neither bite nor scratch , is as groundlesse and childish as to wish there were no choler in the body nor fire in the universall compasse of nature . i cannot insist upon the whole result of this warre , nor must forget how that generous animall the horse , had at last the wit to yield himself up , to his own great advantage and ours . and verily he is so fitly made for us , that we wight justly claim a peculiar right in him above all other creatures . when we observe his patient service he does us at the plough , cart , or under the pack-saddle , his speed upon the high way in matters of importance , his dociblenesse and desire of glory and praise , and consequently his notable atchievements in war , where he will knap the speares a pieces with his teeth , and pull his riders enemy out of the saddle ; and then that he might be able to performe all this labour with more ease , that his hoofs are made so fit for the art of the smith , and that round armature of iron he puts upon them ; it is a very hard thing not to acknowledge , that this so congruous contrivance of things was really from a principle of wisdome and counsell . there is also another consideration of ani●alls and their usefulnesse , in removing those evills we are pester'd with by reason of the abundance of some other hurtfull animalls , such as are mice and rats and the like ; and to this end the cat is very serviceable . and there is in the west-indies a beast in the form of a beare which cardan calls vrsus formicarius , whose very businesse it is to eate up all the ants which some parts of that quarter of the world are sometimes excessively plagued withall . we might add also sundry examples of living creatures that not onely bear a singular good affection to mankind , but are also fierce enemies to those that are very hurtfull and cruell to man ; and such are the lizard , an enemy to the serpent ; the dolphin to the crocodile ; the horse to the bear ; the elephant to the dragon , &c. but i list not to insist upon these things . chap. ix . arguments of divine providence fetched from the pulchritude of animalls , as also from the manner of their propagation . i return now to what i proposed first , the beauty of living creatures ; which though the coarse-spirited atheist will not take notice of , as relishing nothing but what is subservient to his tyranny or lust : yet i think it undeniable , but that there is comely symmetry & beautifulnesse in sundry living creatures , a tolerable usefull proportion of parts in all . for neither are all men and women exquisitly handsome , indeed very few , that they that are may raise the greater admiration in the minds of men , and quicken their natural abilities to brave adventures either of valour or poetry . but as for the brute creatures though some of them be of an hatefull aspect , as the toad , the swine & the ra● ; yet these are but like discords in musick to make the succeeding chord goe off more pleasantly , as indeed most of those momentany inconveniences that the life of man ever and anon meets withall they but put a greater edge and vigour upon his enioyments . but it is not hard to find very many creatures , that are either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the philosopher distinguishes , that are either very goodly things and beautifull , or at least elegant and pretty ; as most of your birds are . but for statelinesse and majesty what is comparable to a horse ? whether you looke upon him single , with his mane and his taile waving in the wind , and hear him coursing and neighing in the pastures ; or whether you see him with some gallant heros on his back , performing gracefully his usefull postures , and practising his exploits of warre ; who can withhold from concluding that a providence brought these two together , that are fitted so well to each other that they seem but one compleat spectacle of nature ? which imposed upon the rude people neere thessaly , and gave the occasion of the fabulous centaurs , as if they had been one living creature made up of horse and man. that which i drive at is this , there being that goodlinesse in the bodies of animalls , as in the oxe , grey-hound and stagge ; or that majesty and statelinesse , as in the lyon , the horse , the eagle and cock ; or that grave awfullnesse , as in your best breed of mastives ; or elegancy and prettinesse , as in your lesser dogs , and most sorts of birds , all which are severall modes or beauty , and beauty being an intellectuall object , as symmetry and proportion is ( which i proved sufficiently in what i spake concerning the beauty of plants ) that which naturally followes from all this is , that the authour or originall of these creatures , which are deemed beautifull , must himself be intellectuall , he having contrived so gratefull objects to the mind or intellect of man. after their beauty let us touch upon their birth or manner of propagation . and here i appeale to any man whether the contrivance of male and female in living creatures be not a genuine effect of wisdome and counsell ; for it is notoriously obvious that these are made one for the other , and both for the continuation of the species . for though we should admit with cardan and other naturallists , that the earth at first brought forth all manner of animalls as well as plants , and that they might be fastned by the navell to their common mother the earth , as they are now to the female in the wombe ; yet we see she is growne steril and barren , and her births of animalis are now very inconsiderable . wherefore what can it be but a providence , that whiles she did beare she sent out male and female , that when her own prolifick vertue was wasted ▪ yet she might be a dry-nurse or an officious grand-mother to thousands of generations ? and i say it is providence , not chance nor necessity , for what is there imaginable in the parts of the matter that they should necessarily fall into the structure of so much as an animall , much lesse into so carefull a provision of difference of sexes for their continuall propagation ? nor was it the frequent attempts of the moved matter that first light on animalls , which perpetually were suddainly extinct for want of the difference of sexes , but afterward by chance differenced their sexes also , from whence their kinds have continued . for what is perpetuall , is not by chance ; and the births that now are by putrefaction shew that it is perpetuall . for the earth still constantly brings forth male and female . nor is it any thing to the purpose to reply ( if you will make so large a skip as to cast your self from the land into the water to dive for objections ) that the eele , though it be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an animall so perfect as to have bloud in it , yet that it has no distinction of sexe : for if it have not , there is good reason for it , that creature arising out of such kind of matter as will never faile generation . for there will be such like mud as will serve this end so long as there be rivers and longer too , and rivers will not faile so long as there is a sea. wherefore this rather makes for discriminative providence that knew afore the nature and course of all things , and made therefore her contrivances accordingly , doing nothing superfluously or in vain . but in other generations that are more hazardous , though they be sometimes by putrefaction , yet she makes them male and female , as 't is plain in frogs and mice . nor are we to be scandalized at it , that there such carefull provision made for such contemptible vermine as we conceive them : for this onely comes out of pride and ignorance , or a haughty presumption that because we are incouraged to believe that in some sense all things are made for man , that therefore they are not made at all for themselves . but he that pronounces thus , is ignorant of the nature of god and the knowledge of things . for if a good man be mercifull to his beast , then surely a good god is bountifull and benigne , and takes pleasure that all his creatures enjoy themselves that have life and sense and are capable of any enjoyment . so that the swarmes of little vermine , and of flyes , and innumerable such like diminutive creatures , we should rather congratulate their coming into being , then murmure sullenly and scornfully against their existence ; for they find nourishment in the world , which would be lost if they were nor , and are againe convenient nourishment themselves to others that prey upon them . but besides , life being individuated into such infinite numbers that have their distinct sense and pleasure and are sufficiently ●itted with contentments , those little soules are in a manner as much considerable for the taking off or carrying away to themselves the over-flowing benignity of the first original of all things , as the oxe the elephant or whale . for it is sense , nor bulk that makes things capable of enjoyments . wherefore it was fit that there should be a safe provision made for the propagation and continuance of all the kinds of living creatures , not onely of those that are good , but of those also that we rashly and inconsiderately call evill . for they are at least good to enjoy themselves and to partake of the bounty of their creatour . but if they grow noysome and troublesome to us , we have both power and right to curbe them : for there is no question but we are more worth then they or any of the brute creatures . but to returne to the present point in hand ; there are also other manifest footsteps of providence which the generation of living creatures will discover to us , as for example , the maner of procreation of fishes and birds . for there being that notable difference in animalls that some of them are oviparous , others viviparous , that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( as philo comprehends them by that generall terme ) that fishes and birds should be oviparous is a plain signe of counsell and providence . for though it will be granted that their species might continue and subsist , though they had been viviparous , yet it would have brought their individualls to very small numbers . for as for fishes , since grasse and herbs are no fruit of the sea , it was necessary that they should feed one upon another , and therefore that they should multiply in very great plenty , which they could not have done any thing neer to that fullnesse they now do , if they had been viviparous as four-footed beasts are : but being now oviparous , and the lesser kinds of them so many at first , and sending forth such infinite numbers of spawn , their generations are neither extinct nor scanted , but are as plentifull as any creatures on the land. and the reason why birds are oviparous & lay egges but do not bring forth their yong alive , is because there might be moreplenty of them also , and that neither the birds of prey , the serpent nor the fowler should straiten their generations too much . for if they had been viviparous , the burden of their wombe , if they had brought forth any competent number at a time , had been so big and heavy , that their wings would have failed them , and so every body would have had the wit to catch the old one . or if they brought but one or two at a time , they would have been troubled all the yeare long with feeding their yong , or bearing them in their wombe ; besides there had been a necessity of too frequent . venery , which had been very prejudiciall to their dry carcases . it was very reasonable therefore that birds should propagate by laying of egges . but this is not all the advantage we shall make of this consideration . i demand further what is it that makes the bird to prepare her nest with that artifice , to sit upon her egges when she has laid them , and to distinguish betwixt these and her uselesse excrement ? did she learne it of her mother before her ? or rather does she not do she knows not what , but yet what ought to be done by the appointment of the most exquisite knowledge that is ? wherefore something else has knowledge for her , which is the maker and contriver of all things , the omniscient and omipotent god. and though you may reply that the hatching of their egges be necessary else their generations would cease ; yet i answere that all the circumstances and curiosities of brooding them are not necessary . for they might have ma●e shift on the ground in the grasse , and not made themselves such curious and safe nests in bushes and trees . besides if all things were left to chance , it is far easier to conceive that there should have been no such things as birds , then that the blind matter should ever have slumbled on such lucky instincts as they that seem but barely necessary . but you 'le object that the ostrich layes egges and hatches them not , ●o that these things are rather by chance then providence . but this rather argues a more exquisite discerning providence then is any argument against it . for the heat of the ground ( like those ovens in egypt , diodorus speaks of ) whereon she layes them , proves effectuall for the production of her yong . so nature tyes not the female to this tedious service where it is needlesse and uselesse ; as in fishes also , who when they have spawn'd are discharg'd of any further trouble : which is a most manifest discovery of a very curious and watchfull eye of providence which suffers nothing to be done ineptly and in vaine . i will only make one advantage more of this speculation of the birth of animalls , and then passe on to what remains . it is observed by those that are more attentive watchers of the works of nature , that the foetus is framed out of some homogeneall liquour or moysture , in which there is no variety of parts of matter to be contrived into bones and flesh ; but , as in an egge for example , about the third day the hen has sate on it , in that part where nature beginnes to set upon her worke of efformation , all is turned into a crystalline liquid substance about her , as also severall insects are bred of little drops of dew : so in all generations besides it is supposed by them , the nature does as it were wipe clean the table-booke first , and then pourtray upon it what she pleaseth . and if thus be her course to corrupt the subject matter into as perfect privation of form as she may , that is , to make it as homogeneall as she can , but liquid and plyable to her art and skill ; it is to me very highly probable , if not necessary , that there should be something besides this fluid matter , that must change it , alter and guide it into that wise contrivance of parts that afterwards we find it . for how should the parts of this liquid matter ever come into this exquisite fabrick of themselves ? and this may convince any atheist that there is a substance besides corporeall matter , which he is as loth to admit of as that there is a god. for there being nothing else in nature but substantia or modus , this power of contriving the liquid matter into such order and shape as it is , being incompetible to the liquid matter it self , it must be the modus of some other substance latitant in the fluid matter , and really distinguishable from it , which it either the soul or some seminall from or archeus , as the chymists call it , and they are all alike indifferent to me at this time . i ayming here only at a substance besides the matter , that thence the atheist may be the more easily brought off to the acknowledgment of the existence of a god. nor can the force of this argument be eluded by saying the matter is touched and infected by the life of the female whiles she bore the egge , or that her phansy gets down into her wombe . for what life or phansy has the earth , which as they say gendred at first all animalls , some still ? and what similitude is there betwixt a bee and an oxe , or a waspe and an horse , the those insects should arise out of the putrifide bodies of these creatures ? it is but some rude and generall congruity of vitall preparation that sets this archeus on work rather then another . as mere choler engages the phansy to dream of fiering of gunns , and fighting of armies : sanguine figures the imagintion into the representation of faire women , and beautifull children : phlegme transforms her into water and fishes ; and the shadowy melancholy intangles her in colluctation with old hagges and hobgoblins , and frights her with dead mens faces in the dark . but i have dwelt on this subject longer then i intended . chap. x. the frame or fabrick of the bodies of animalls plainly argue that there is a god. i come now to the last consideration of animalls , the outward shape and fabrick of their bodies , which when i have shew'd you that they might have been otherwise , and yet are made according to the most exquisite pitch of rea●on that the wit of man can conceive of , it will naturally ●ollow that they were really made by wisdome and providence , and consequently that there is a god. and i dem●nd first in generall concerning all those creatures that have eyes and eares , whether they might not have had onely one eye and one eare a piece ; and to make the supposition more tolerable , had the eye on one side the head , and the eare on the other , or the eare on the crown of the head , the eye in the forehead for they might have lived and subsisted though they had been no better provided for then thus . but it is evident that their having two eyes and two eares , so placed as they are , is more safe , more sightly , and more usefull . therefore that being made so constantly choice of , which our own reason deemeth best , we are to inferr that that choice proceeded from reason and counsell . again i desire to know why there be no three-footed beasts , ( when i speak thus , i doe not meane monsters , but a constant species of kind of animalls ) for such a creature as that would make a limping shift to live as well as they that have foure . or why have not some beasts more then foure-feet , suppose sixe & the two middlemost shorter then the rest , hanging like the two legges of a man a horse-back by the horse sides ? for it is no harder a thing for nature to make such frames of bodies then others that are more elegant and usefull . but the works of nature being neither uselesse nor inept , she must either be wise her self , or be guided by some higher principle of knowledge : as that man that does nothing foolishly all the dayes of his life , is either wise himself , or consults with them that are so . and then again for the armature of beasts , who taught them the use of their weapons ? the lyon will not kick with his feet , but he will strike such a stroke with his tayle , that he will breake the back of his encounterer with it . the horse will not use his tayle unlesse against the busy flyes , but kicks with his feet with that force that he layes his enemy on the ground . the bull and ram know the use of their hornes as well as the horse of his hoofes . so the bee and serpent know their stings , and the beare the use of his paw . which things they know merely by naturall instinct , as the male knowes the use of the female . for they gather not this skill by observation and experience , but the frame of their nature carries them to it , as it is manifest in young lambes that will butt before they have horns . therefore it is some higher providence that has made them of this nature they are . and this is evident also in birds that will flutter with their wings , when there is but a little down upon them , and they are as yet utterly unusefull for flying . and now i have fallen upon the mention of this kind of creature , let me make my advantage of that generall structure observable in them . the forme of their heads being narrow and sharpe , that they may the better cut the aire in their swift flight , and the spreading of their tayles parallell to the horizon for the better bearing up their body ; for they might have been perpendicular as the tayles of fishes in the water . nor is it any thing that the owle has so broad a face , for her flight was not to be so swift nor so frequent . and as for fishes and the bladder of wind found in their bodies , who can say it is conveigh'd thither by chance , but is contriv'd for their more easy swimming , as also the manner of their finnes , which consist of a number of gristly bones long and slender like pinnes and needles , and a kind of a skin betwixt , which is for the more exactnesse and makes them thin and flat like oares . which perfect artifice and accuracy might have been omitted and yet they have made a shift to move up and down in the water . but i have fallen upon a subject that is infinite and inexhaustible , therefore that i be not too tedious i will confine my self to some few observations in ordinary beasts and birds ( that which is most known and obvious being most of all to our purpose , ) and then i shall come to the contemplation of man. and indeed what is more obvious and ordinary then a mole , and yet what more palpable argument of providence then she ? the members of her body are so exactly fitted to her nature and manner of life : for her dwelling being under ground where nothing is to be seene , nature has so obscurely fitted her with eyes , that naturalists can scarce agree whither she have any sight at all or no. bu● for amends , what she is capable of for her defence and warning of danger , she has very eminently conferr'd upon her : for she is exceeding quick of hearing . and then her short tayle and short leggs , but broad fore-feet armed with sharpe clawes , we see by the event to what purpose they are , she so swiftly working her self under ground and making her way so fast in the earth , as they that behold it cannot but admire it . her leggs therefore are short that she need dig no more then will serve the merethicknesse of her body . and her fore-feet are broad , that she may scoup away much earth at a time . and little or no tayle she has , because she courses it not on the ground like the rat or mouse of whose kinred she is , but lives under the earth and is fain to dig her self a dwelling there : and she making her way through so thick an element , which will not yield easily as the aire or the water , it had been dangerous to have drawn so long a train behind her : for her enemy might fall upon her reare and fetch her out before she had compleated or had got full possession of her works . cardan is so much taken with this contemplation , that though i find him often staggering , yet here he does very fully and finnely professe that the contrivance of all things is from wisedome and counsell : his words are so generous and significant that i hold them worth the transcribing . palam est igitur , naturam in cunctis sollicitam mirum in modum fuisse , nec ●biter sed ex sententia omnia praevidisse , hominesque quibus hoc beneficium deus largitus est , ut causam rerum primam inveniant , participes esse illius prim● naturae , neque alterius esse generis naturam quae haec constituit , ab illorum mente , qui causam eorum cur ita facta sint plene assequi potuerunt . thus forcibly has the due contemplation of nature carried him beyond nature and himself , and made him write like a man rap'd into a divine exstasy . but there are as manifest foot-steps of divine providence in other creatures as in the mole . as for example ; the hare , whose temper and frame of body are plainly fitted on purpose for her condition . for why is she made so full of feare and vigilancy ever re●ring up and listning whiles she is feeding ? and why is she so exceeding swift of foot , and has her eyes so prominent , and placed so that she can see better behind her then before her ? but that her flight is her onely safety , and it was needful for her perpetually to eye her pursuing enemy , against whom she durst never stand at the bay , having nothing but her long soft limber eares to defend her . wherefore he that made the hare made the dog also , and guarded her with these properties from her eager foe , that she might not be too easy a booty for him , and so never be able to save her self , or afford the spectatour any considerable pastime . and that the hare might not alwayes get away from the grey hound , see how exquisitely his shape is fitted for the course : for the narrownesse and slendernesse of his parts are made for speed ; and that seeming impertinent long appendix of his body , his taile , is made for more nimble turning . there are other animalls also whose particular fabrick of body does manifestly appeare the effect of providence and counsell , though naturallists cannot agree whether it be in the behalf of the beast thus framed or of man. and such is that creature which though it be exotick yet is ordinarily known by the name of a camell : for why are those bunches on his backe , but that they may be instead of a ●ack-saddle to receive the burden ? and why has he four knees and all his legges bending inwards , like the fore-feet of other beasts , and a protuber●anoy under his breast to lean on , but that being a tall creature he might with ease kneel down and so might the more gainly be loaden ? but cardan will by no meanes have this the designe of nature , but that this frame of the camell's body is thus made for his own convenience : for he being a creature that lives and seeks his food in waste and dry deserts , those bunches he would have receptacles of redundant moysture , from whence the rest of his body is to be supply'd in a hard and tedious time of drought , and that his legges being very long , he ought to have knees behind and a knob beneath , to rest his weary limbes in the wildernesse , by sitting or kneeling in that posture he does , for he could not so conveniently lie along as the horse or asse or other creatures . but i should not determine this to either alone , but take in both causes , and acknowledge therein a richer designe of providence , that by this frame and artifice has gratifide both the camell and his master . chap. xi . the particular frames of the bodies of fowls or birds palpable signes of divine providence . we passe on now to the consideration of fowls or birds : where omitting the more generall properties of having two ventricles , and picking up stones to conveigh them into their second ventricle , the gizzerne , ( which provision and instinct is a supply for the want of teeth ) as also their having no paps as beasts have , their yong ones being nourished so long in the shell , that they are presently fit to be fed by the mouths of the old ones ( which observations plainly signify that nature does nothing ineptly and foolishly , and that therfore there is a providence ) i s●all content my self in taking notice only of some few kinds of this creature that familiarly come into our sight , such as the cock , the duck , the swan and the like . i demand therefore concerning the cock , why he has spurres at all , or having them how they come to be so fittingly placed . for he might have had none ▪ or so misplaced that they had been utterly uselesse , and so his courage and pleasure in fighting had been to no purpose . nor are his combe and his wattles in vaine , for they are an ornament becoming his martiall spirit , yea an armature too , for the t●gging of those often excuses the more useful parts of his head from harm . thus fittingly does nature gratify all creatures with accommodations sutable to their temper , and nothing is in vaine . nor are we to cavill at the red pugger'd attire of the turkey , and the long excrescency that hangs down over his bill , when he swells with pride and anger ; for it may be a receptacle for his heated bloud , that has such free recourse to his head , or he may please himself in it as the rude indians , whose jewells hang dangling at their noses . and if the bird be pleasur'd we are not to be displeased , being alwaies mindfull that creatures are made to enjoy themselves , as well as to serve us , and it is a grosse piece of ignorance and rusticity to think otherwise . now for swannes and ducks and such like birds of the water , it is obvious to take notice how well they are fitted for that manner of life . for those that swim their feet are framed for it like a paire of oares , their clawes being connected with a pretty broad membrane , and their necks are long that they may dive deep enough into the water . as also the neck of the herne and such like fowl who live of fishes and are fain to frequent their element , who walk on long stilts also like the people that dwell in the marshes ; but their clawes have no such membranes , for they had been but a hindrance to those kind of birds that onely wade in the water and do not swim . it is also observable how nature has fitted other birds of prey , who spy their booty from aloft in the aire , and see best at that distance , scarce see at all neere at hand . so they are both the archer and shaft , taking aime afar off , and then shooting themselves directly upon the desired mark , they seize upon the prey having hit it . the works of providence are infinite , i will close all with the description of that strange bird of paradise , for the strangenesse has made it notorious . there is a bird that falls down out of the aire dead , and is found sometimes in the molucco ilands ▪ that has no feet at all no more then an ordinary fish. the bignesse of her body and bill , as likewise the form of them , is much what as a swallows ; but the spreading out of her wings and tayle has no lesse compasse then an eagles . she lives and breeds in the aire , comes not near the earth but for her buriall , for the largenesse and lightnesse of her wings and tayle sustain her without lassitude . and the laying of her egges and brooding of her young is upon the back of the male which is made hollow , as also the breast of the female for the more easy incubation . whether she live merely of the dew of heaven or of flyes and such like insects , i leave to others to dispute ; but cardan professes he saw the bird no lesse then thrice , and describes it accordingly . nor does scaliger cavill with any thing but the bignesse of the wings and littlenesse of the body , which he undertakes to correct from one of his own which was sent him by orvesanus from java . now that such contrivances as these should be without divine providence , is as improbable to me as that the copper ring with the greek inscription upon it found about the neck of an overgrown pike , should be the effect of unknowing nature , not the artifice and skill of man. chap. xii . vnavoydable arguments for divine providence taken from the accurate structure of mans body , from the passions of his mind , and fitnesse of the whole man to be an inhabiter of the universe . but we needed not to have rambled so farre out into the works of nature , to seek out arguments to prove a god , we being so plentifully furnish'd with that , at home which we took the pains to seek for abroad . for there can be no more ample testimony of a god & a providence then the frame and structure of our own bodyes . the admirable artifice whereof galen , though a mere naturallist , was so taken with , that he could not but adjudge the honour of a hymne to the wise creatour of it . the contrivance of the whole and every particular is so evident an argument of exquisite skill in the maker , that if i should pursue all that suites to my purpose , it would amount to an entire volume . i shall therefore only hint at some few things , leaving the rest to be supply'd by anatomists . and i think there is no man that has any skill in that art , but will confesse the more diligently and accurately the frame of our body is examined , it is found the more exquisitely conformable to our own reason , judgement , and desire . so that supposing the same matter that our bodyes are made of , if it had been in our own power to have made our selves , we should have fram'd our selves no otherwise then we are . to instance in some particular . as in our eyes , the number , the situation , the fabrick of them is such that we can excogitate nothing to be added thereto , or to be altered either for their beauty , safety or usefulnesse . but as for their beauty i will leave it rather to the delicate wit and pen of poets and amorous persons , then venture upon so tender and nice a subject with my severer style . i will onely note how sa●●ly they are guarded , and fitly framed out for that use they are intended . the brow and the nose saves them from harder strokes : but such a curious part as the eye being necessarily lyable to mischief from smaller matters , the sweat of the forehead is fenced off by those two wreaths of haire which we call the eye-brows ; and the eye-lids are fortify'd with little stiffe bristles as with palisadoes , against the assault of flyes and gnats , and such like bold animalcula . besides the upper-lid presently claps down and is as good a fence , as a portcullis against the importunity of the enemy : which is done also every night , whether there be any present assault or no , as if nature kept garrison in this acropolis of mans body the head & look'd that such lawes should be duly observ'd , as were most for his safety . and now for the vse of the eye which is sight , it is evident that this organ is so exquisitely framed for that purpose , that not the least curiosity can be added . for first the humour and tunicles are purely transparent , to let in light and colours unfoul'd and unsophisticated by any inward tincture . and then again the parts of the eye are made convex , that there might be a direction of many raies coming from one point of the object unto one point answerable in the bottome of the eye ; to which purpose the crystalline humour is of great moment , and without which the sight would be very obscure and weake . thirdly the tunica vvea has a musculous power , and can dilate & contract that round hole in it which is called the pupill of the eye , for the better moderating the transmission of light . fourthly the inside of the vvea is black'd like the wals of a tennis-court , that the rayes falling upon the retina ▪ may not , by being rebounded thence upon the vvea , be returned from the vvea upon the retina again , for such a repercussion would make the sight more confused . fifthly the tunica arachnoides , which invellops the crystalline humour by vertue of its processus ciliares can thrust forward or draw back that precious usefull part of the eye , as the neernesse or distance of the object shall require . sixthly and lastly the tunica retina is white , for the better and more true reception of the species of things ( as they ordinarily call them ) as a white paper is fittest to receive those images into a dark roome . if the wit of man had been to contrive this organ for himself , what could he have possibly excogitated more accurate ? therefore to think that meer motion of the matter , or any other blind cause could have hit so punctually ( for creatures might have subsisted without this accurate provision ) is to be either mad or sottish . and the eye is already so perfect , that i believe the reason of man would have easily rested here , & admir'd at it's own contrivance : for he being able to move his whole head upward and downward and on every side , might have unawares thought himself sufficiently well provided for . but nature has added muscles also to the eyes , that no perfection might be wanting ; for we have oft occasion to move our eyes , our head being unmoved , as in reading and viewing more particularly any object set before us : and that this may be done with more ease and accuracy , she has furnish'd that organ with no lesse then six severall muscles . and indeed this framing of muscles not only in the eye but in the whole body is admirable ; for is it not a wonder that even all our flesh should be so handsomly contriv'd into distinct pieces , whose rise and insertions should be with such advantage that they do serve to move some part of the body or other ; and that the parts of our body are not moved only so conveniently as wil serve us to walke and subsist by , but that they are able to move every way imaginable that will advantage us ? for we can fling our leggs and armes upwards and downwards , backwards , forwards and round , as they that spin , or would spread a mol●hill with their feet . to say nothing of respiration , the constriction of the diaphragme for the keeping down the guts and so enlarging the thorax that the lungs may have play , and the assistance of the inward intercostall muscles in deep suspirations , when we take more large gulps of aire to coole our heart overcharged with love or sorrow . nor of the curious fabrick of the larynx so well fitted with muscles for the modulation of the voice , tunable speech , and delicious singing . you may adde to these the notable contrivance of the heart , it 's two ventricles and it's many valvulae , so fram'd and situated as is most fit for the reception and transmission of the bloud , which comes about through the heart , and is sent thence away warm to comfort & cherish the rest of the body : for which purpose also the valvulae in the veines are made . but i will rather insist upon such things as are easy and intelligible even to idiots , who if they can but tell the joynts of their hands or know the use of their teeth , they may easily discover it was counsel , not chance , that created them . for why have we three joynts in our leggs and armes as also in our fingers , but that it was much better then having but two or four ? and why are our fore-teeth sharp like cheesells to cut , but our inward-teeth broad to grind , but that this is more exquisite then having them all sharp or all broad , or the fore-teeth broad and the other sharp ? but we might have made a hard shift to have lived though in that worser cōdition . again why are the teeth so luckily placed , or rather why are there not teeth in other bones as well as in the jaw-bones ? for they might have been as capable as these . but the reason is , nothing is done foolishly nor in vaine , that is , there is a divine providence that orders all things . again to say nothing of the inward curiosity of the eare , why is that outward frame of it , but that it is certainly known , that it is for the bettering of our hearing ? i might adde to these that nature has made the hind-most parts of our body which wee sit upon most fleshy , is providing for our ease and making us a natural cushion , as well as for instruments of motion for our thighes and legges . she has made the hinder-part of the head more strong , as being otherwise unfenced against falls and other casualties . she has made the back-bone of severall vertebrae , as being more fit to bend , more tough & lesse in danger of breaking then if they were all one intire bone without those gristly junctures . she has strengthned our fingers and toes with nailes , wheras she might have sent out that substance at the end of the first or second joynt , which had not been so handsome ●or usefull , nay rather somewhat troublesome and hurtfull . and lastly she has made all the bones devoid of sense , because they were to bear the weight of themselves and of the whole body . and therefore if they had had sense , our life had been painfull continually and dolorous . and what she has done for us , she has done proportionably in the contrivance of all other creatures ; so that it is manifest that a divine providence strikes through all things . and therefore things being contrived with such exquisite curiosity as if the most watchfull wisdome imaginable did attend them , to say they are thus framed without the assistance of some principle that has wisdome in it , & that they come to passe from chance or some other blind unknowing originall , is sullenly and humorously to assert a thing , because we will assert it , and under pretense of avoyding superstition , to fall into that which is the onely thing that makes superstition it self hatefull or ridiculous , that is , a wilfull and groundlesse adhering to conceits without any support of reason . and now i have considered the fitnesse of the parts of mans body for the good of the whole , let me but consider briefly the fitnesse of the passions of his minde , whether proper , or common to him with the rest of animalis , as also the fitness of the whole man as he is part of the vniverse , and then i shall conclude . and it is manifest that anger does so actuate the spirits and heightens the courage of men and beasts that it makes them with more ease break through the difficulties they incounter . feare also is for the avoyding of danger , and hope is a pleasant praemeditation of enjoyment , as when a dog expects till his master has done picking of the bone . but there is neither hope , nor feare , nor hate , nor any peculiar passion or instinct in brutes that is in vaine ; why should we then think that nature should miscarry more in us then in any other creature , or should be so carefull in the fabrick of our body , and yet so forgetfull or unlucky in the framing of the faculties of our soules ; that that feare that is so peculiarly naturall to us , viz. the feare of a deity , should be in vaine , and that pleasant hope and heavenly joyes of the mind which man is naturally capable of , with the earnest direction of his spirit towards god , should have no reall object in the world ? and so religious affection which nature has so plainly implanted in the soul of man should be to no use ▪ but either to make him ridiculous or miserable : whenas we find no passion or affection in brutes either common or peculiar but what is for their good and welfare . for it is not for nothing that the hare is so fearfull of the dog , & the sheep of the wolfe ; & it there be either fear or enmity in some creatures for which we cannot easily discerne any reason in respect of themselves , yet we may well allow of it as reasonable in regard of us , and to be to good purpose . but i thinke it is manifest that sympathy and antipathy , love and enmity , aversation , feare , and the like , that they are notable whetters and quickners of the spirit of life in all animalls , and that their being obnoxious to dangers and encounters does more closely knit together the vitall powers , and makes them more sensibly relish their present safety , and they are more pleased with an escape then if they had never met with any danger . their greedy assaults also one upon another while there is hope of victory highly gratifies them both . and if one be conquer'd and slaine , the conquerour enjoyes a fresh improvement of the pleasure of life , the triumph over his enemy . which things seeme to me to be contriv'd even in the behalf of these creatures themselves , that their vitall heat and moysture may not alwayes onely simber in one sluggish tenour , but some times boyle up higher and seeth over , the fire of life being more then ordinarily kindled upon some emergent occasion . but it is without controversy that these peculiar passions of animalls many of them are usefull to men ▪ ( as that of the lizards enmity against the serpent ) all of them highly gratify his contemplative faculty , some seem on purpose contriv'd to make his worship merry ; for what could nature intend else in that antipathy betwixt the ape and snayle , that that beast that seems so boldly to claime kinred of man from the resemblance of his outward shape , should have so little wit or courage as to runne away from a snayl , and very ●ufully and frightfully to look back , as being affraid she would follow him as erasmus more largely and pleasantly tells the whole story ? but that nature should implant in man such a strong propension to religion , which is the reverence of a deity , there being neither god nor angell nor spirit in the world , is such a slurre committed by her as there can be in no wise excogitated any excuse . for if there were a higher species of things to laugh at us as wee doe a● the ape , it might seem more tolerable . but there can be no end neither ludicrous nor serious of this religious property in man , unlesse there be something of an hig●er nature then himself in the world . wherefore religion being convenient to no other species of things besides man , it ought to be convenient at least for himself : but supposing there were no god , there can be nothing worse for man then religion . for whether we look at the externall effects thereof , such as are bloudy massacres , the disturbance and subversion of common-weales , kingdomes and empires , most salvage tortures of particular persons , the extirpating and dispossessing of whole nations , as it hath hapned in america , where the remorselesse spaniards in pretense of being educated in a better religion then the americans , vilifyed the poor natives so much , that they made nothing of knocking them o th' head merely to feed their doggs with them , with many such unheard of crueltyes . or whether we consider the great affliction that that severe governess of the life of man brings upon those souls she seizes on ▪ by affrighting horrours of conscience , by puzzeling and befooling them in the free use of their reason , and putting a barre to more large searches into the pleasing knowledge of nature , by anxious cares and disquieting feares concerning their state in the life to come , by curbing them in their naturall and kindly injoyments of the life present , and making bitter all the pleasures and contentments of it , by some checks of conscience and suspicions that they do something now that they may rue eternally hereafter ; besides thosse ineffable agonies of mind that they undergo that are more generously religious , and contend after the participation of the divine nature , they being willing , though with unspeakeable paine , to be torn from themselves to become one with that universall spirit that ought to have the guidance of all things , and by an unsatiable desire after that just and decorous temper of mind ( whereby all arrogancy should utterly cease in us , and that which is due to god , that is , all that we have or can do , should be lively and sensibly attributed to him , and we fully and heartily acknowledge ourselves to be nothing , that is , be as little elated , or no more rellish the glory and praise of men , then if we had done nothing or were not at all in being ) doe plunge themselves into such damps and deadnesse of spirit , that to be buried quick were lesse torture by farre , then such darke privations of all the joyes of life , then such sad and heart-sinking mortifications : i say , whether we consider these inward pangs of the soul , or the externall outrages caused by religion ( and religious pretense will animate men to the committing such violences , as bare reason and the single passions of the mind unback'd with the fury of superstition will never venture upon ) it is manifest that if there were no god , no spirit , no life to come , it were farre better that there were no such religious propensions in man-kind , as we see universally there is . for the feare of the civill magistrate , the convenience of mutuall ayde and support , and the naturall scourge and plague of diseases would contain men in such bounds of justice , humanity and temperance , as would make them more clearly and undisturbedly happy , then they are now capable of being , from any advantage religion does to either publique state or private person , supposing there were no god. wherefore this religious affection which nature has implanted , and as strongly rooted in man as the feare of death or the love of women , would be the most enormous slip or bungle she could commit , so that she would so shamefully faile in the last act , in this contrivance of the nature of man that instead of a plaudite she would deserve to be hissed off the stage . but she having done all things else so wisely , let us rather suspect our own ignorance then reproach her , and expect that which is allowed in well approved comedies , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for nothing can unlose this knot but a deity . and then we acknowledging man to dwell as it were in the borders of the spirituall and materiall world ( for he is utriusque mundi nexus , as scaliger truly calls him ) we shall not wonder that there is such tugging and pulling this way and that way , upward and downward , and such broken disorder of things ; those that dwell in the confines of two kingdomes , being most subject to disquiet and confusion . and hitherto of the passions of the mind of man , as well those that tye him down to the body , as those that lift him up towards god. now briefly of the whole man as he is part of the vniverse . it is true if we had not been here in the world , we could not then have missed our selves ; but now we find our selves in being and able to examine the reasonableness of things , we cannot but conclude that our creation was an act of very exquisite reason & counsel . for there being so many notable objects in the world , to entertaine such faculties as reason and inquisitive admiration ▪ there ought to be such a member of this visible creation as man , that those things might not be in vaine : and if man were out of the world , who were then left to view the face of heaven , to wonder at the transcursion of comets , to calculate tables for the motions of the planets and fix'd starres , and to take their heights and distances with mathematicall instruments , to invent convenient cycles for the computation of time , and consider the severall formes of yeares , to take notice of the directions , stations and repedations of those erratick lights ▪ and from thence most convincingly to informe himself of that pleasant and true paradox of the annuall motion of the earth , to view the asperityes of the moon through a di●ptrick-glasse , and venture at the proportion of her hills by their shadowes , to behold the beauty of the rain-bow , the halo ▪ parelii and other meteors , to search out the causes of the flux and reflux of the sea , and the hidden vertue of the magnet , to inquire into the usefullnesse of plants , and to observe the variety of the wisdome of the first cause in framing their bodies , and giving sundry observable instincts to fishes ▪ birds and beasts ? and lastly as there are particular priests amongst men , so the whole species of man-kind being indued with reason and a power of finding out god , there is yet one singular end more discoverable of his creation , viz. that he may be a priest in this magnificent temple of the vniverse , and send up prayers and praises to the great creatour of all things in behalf of the rest of the creatures . thus we see all filled up and fitted without any defect or uselesse superfluity . wherefore the whole creation in generall and every part thereof being so ordered as if the most exquisite reason and knowledge had contrived them , it is as naturall to conclude that all this is the work of a wise god , as at the first sight to acknowledge that those inscribed vrnes and coynes digg'd out of the earth were not the products of unknowing nature , but the artifice of man. chap. i. that , good men not alwayes faring best in this world , the great examples of divine vengeance upon wicked and blasphemous persons are not so convincing to the obstinate atheist . the irreligious jeares and sacrileges of dionysius of syracuse . that there have been true miracles in the world as well as false , and what are the best and safest wayes to distinguish them that we may not be impos'd upon by history . hitherto i have insisted upon such arguments for the proving of the existence of god , as were taken from the ordinary and known phaenomena of nature ; for such is the history of plants , animalls and man. i shall come now to such effects discovered in the world as are not deemed naturall , but extraordinary and miraculous . i do not mean unexpected discoveries of murders , a conspicuous vengeance upon proud and blasphemous persons , such as nicanor , antiochus , herod and the like , of which all histories , as well sacred as profane are very full , and all which tend to the impressing of this divine precept , in the poet , upon the minds of men , discite justitiam moniti & non temnere divos . for though these examples cannot but move indifferent men to an acknowledgment of divine providence , and a superiour power above and different from the matter ; yet i having now to do with the obstinate and refractory atheist , who , because himself a known contemner of the deity he finds to be safe and well at ease , will shuffle all these things off , by asking such a question as he did , to whom the priest of neptune shewed the many d●naria hung up in his temple by his votaries saved from ship-wrack , & therefore vaunted much of the power of that god of the sea ; but what is become of all those , saith he , that notwithstanding their vowes have been lost ? so i say , the atheist to evade the force of this argument will whisper within himself ; but how many proud blasphemous atheisticall men like my self have escaped , and those that have been accounted good have dyed untimely deaths ? such as aesop and socrates , the prophets , apostles and martyrs , with sundry other wise and good men in all ages and places , who yet being not so well aware of the ill condition and restinesse of this wicked world , of which they have truely profess'd themselves no citizens , but strangers , have suffered the greatest mischiefs that can happen to humane nature , by their innocent meaning and intermedling in aliena republica ; it having usually been more safe , craftily and cautiously to undermine the honour of god , then plainly and honestly to seek the good and wellfare of men. nay outragious affronts done on purpose to religion , will the atheist further reply , have not onely past applauded by the world , but unpunish'd by divine justice : as is notorious in that sacrilegious wit , dionysius of syracuse , who spoiling jupiter olympius of his costly robe very stiff and ponderous with gold , added this apologetical jear to his sacrilege , that this golden vestment was too heavy for the summer , and too cold for the winter , but one of wooll would fit both seasons . so at epidaurus he commanded the golden beard of aesculapius to be cut off and carried away , alledging that it was very unfit that the son should wear a beard when as his father apollo wore none . that also was not inferiour to any of his sacrilegious jests , when taking away the golden cups and crowns held forth by the hands of the images of the gods , he excused himself , saying , that he received but what they of their own accord gave him ; adding that it were a gross piece of foolishness , when as we pray to the gods for all good things , not to take them when they so freely offer them with their own hands . these and other such like irreligious pranks did this dionysius play , who notwithstanding fared no worse then the most demure and innocent , dying no other death then what usually other mortalls do : as if in those ages there had been as great a lack of wit , as there was here in england once of latin , and that he escaped a more severe sentence by the benefit of his clergy . but others think that he was pay'd home and punish'd in his son that succeeded him . but that , will the atheist reply , is but to whip the absent , as aristotle wittily said to him that told him that such an one did unmercifully traduce him behind his back . wherefore i hold it more convenient to omit such arguments as may intangle us in such endless altercations , & to bring only those that cannot be resolved into any naturall causes , or be phansyed to come by chance , but are so miraculous , that they do imply the presence of some free subtile understanding essence distinct from the brute matter , and ordinary power of nature . and these miraculous effects , as there is nothing more cogent if they could be believed ; so there is nothing more hard to the atheist to believe then they are . for religionists having for pious purposes , as they pretend , forged so many false miracles to gull and spoile the credulous people , they have thereby with the atheist taken away all belief of those which are true . and the childish & superstitious fear of spirits in melancholick persons who cre●te strange monsters to themselves & terrible apparitions in the darke , hath also helped them with a further evasion , to impute all spectres and strange apparitions to mere melancholy and disturbed phansy . but that there should be so universall a fame , and feare of that , which never was , nor is , nor can be ever in the world , is to me the greatest miracle of all . for if there had not been at some time or other true miracles ( as indeed there ought to be , if the faculties of man , who so easily listens to and allowes of such things , be not in vain ) it is very improbable that priests and cunning deluders of the people would have ever been able so easily to impose upon them by their false . as the alchymist would never go about to sophisticate metalls , & then put them off for true gold and silver , but that it is acknowledged that there is such a thing as true gold and silver in the world . in like manner therefore as there is an indeavour of deluding the people with false miracles , so it is a signe there have been and may be those that are true . but you 'l say there is a touch-stone whereby we may d●scerne the truth of metalls , but that there is nothing whereby we may discover the truth of miracles recorded every where in history . but i answer there is ; and it is this . first if what is recorded was avouched by such persons who had no end nor interest in avouching such things . secondly if there were many eye-witnesses of the same matter . thirdly and lastly if these things which are so strange and miraculous leave any sensible effect behind them . though i will not acknowledge that all those stories are ●alse that want these conditions , yet i dare affirme that it is mere humour and sullennesse in a man to reject the 〈◊〉 of those that have them ; for it is to believe nothing but what he seeth himself : from whence it will follow that he is to read nothing of history , for there is neither pleasu●e nor any usefullnesse of it , if it deserve no belief . chap. ii. the moving of a sieve by a charme . coskinomancy . a magicall cure of an horse . the charming of serpents . a strange example of one death-strucken as he walked the streets . a story of a suddain winde that had like to have thrown down the gallows at the hanging of two witches . and now that i have premised thus much i will b●iefly recite some of few those many miraculous passages we meet with in writers , beginning first with the bare and simple effects of spirits , as i will aforehand adventure to pronounce them , and then afterwards we shall come to the apparitions of spirits themselves . and of those bare effects we will not care to name what may seem slightest first . bodinus relates how himself and severall others at paris saw a young man with a charme in french , move a sieve up and down . and that ordinary way of divination which they call coskinomancy or finding who stole or spoiled this or that thing , by the sieve and sheares , pictorius vigillanus professeth he made use of thrice , and it was with successe . a friend of mine told me this story concerning charms , that himself had an horse , which if he had stood sound had been of a good value . his servants carried him to severall farriers but none of them had the skill to cure him . at last unknown to their master , they led him to a farrier , that had , it should seem , some tricks more then ordinarie , and dealt in charms , or spells , and such like ceremoni●s : in vertue of these he made the horse sound . the owner of him after he had observ'd how well his horse was , asked his servants , how they got him cured , whence understanding the whole matter , and observing also that there was an s. branded on his buttock , which he conceited stood for satan , chid his servants very roughly , as having done that which was unwarrantable and impious . upon this profession of his dislike of the fact , the horse forthwith ●ell as ill as ever he was , in so much that for his unserviceablenes he was faine to be turned up loose in the pasture . but a kinsman of the owners coming to his house & after chanceing to see the horse in the grounds took the advātage of a low price for so fair a gelding & bought him . the horse had no sooner changed his master but presently changed his plight of body also & became as sound as ever . charming also of serpents is above the power of nature . and wierus tells us this story of a charmer at saltzburg , that when in the sight of the people he had charmed all the serpents into a ditch and killed them , at last there came one huge one far bigger then the rest , that leapt upon him , and winded about his wast like a girdle , and pulled him into the ditch , and so killed the charmer himself in the conclusion . that also i will adventure to refer to the effects of spirits which i heard lately from one mrs . dark of westminster concerning her own husband ; who being in the flower of his age , well in health and very chearfull , going out of his house in the morning with an intent to return to dinner , was , as he walked the streets , sensibly struck upon the thigh by an invisible hand , for he could see no man near him to strike him . he returned home indeed about dinner-time , but could eat nothing , onely he complain'd of the sad accident that befell him , and grew forthwith so mortally sick , that he dyed within three dayes . after he was dead there was found upon the place where he was struck , the perfect figure of a man's hand , the four fingers palme and thumb black and sunk into the flesh , as if one should clap his hand upon a lump of dow . and hitherto there is nothing related which will not abide the exactest triall and be cleared from all suspicion of either fraud or melancholy . but i shall propound things more strange , and yet as free from that suspicion as the former . and to say nothing of vvinds sold to merchants by laplanders , and the danger of losing the third knot ( which was very frequent as olaus affirmes before those parts of the world were converted to christianity ) ● shall content my self for the present with a true story which i heard from an eye-witnesse concerning these preternatural winds . at cambridge in the raigne of queen elizabeth there was two vvitches to be executed , the mother and daughter . the mother when she was called upon to repent and forsake the divel , she said , there was no reason for that , for he had been faithfull to her these threescore yeares , and she would be so to him so long as she lived ; and thus she died in this obstinacy . but she hanging thus upon the gallowes , her daughter being of a contrary mind renounced the divel , was very earnest in prayer and penitence ; which by the effect , the people conceived the divel to take very heinously . for there came such a sudden blast of wind ( when as all was calme before ) that it drave the mothers body against the ladder so violently , that it had like to have overturned it , and shook the gallows with such force , that they were faine to hold the posts for fear of all being fung down to the ground . chap. iii. that winds and tempests are raised upon mere ceremonies or forms of words prov'd by sundry examples . margaret warine discharg'd upon an oake at a thunder-clap . amantius and rotarius cast headlong out of a cloud upon a house top . the vvitch of constance seen by the shepheards to ride through the aire . vvierus that industrious advocate of witches recites severall ceremonies that they use for the raising of tempests , and doth acknowledge that tempests do follow the performance of those ceremonies , but that they had come to passe neverthelesse without them : which the divell foreseeing , excites the deluded women to use those magick rites , that they may be the better perswaded of his power . but whether there be any causall connexion betwixt those ceremonies and the ensuing tempests i will not curiously decide . but that the connexion of them is supernaturall is plain at first sight . for what is casting of flint-stones behind their backs towards the west , or flinging a little sand in the aire , or striking a river with a broom , and so sprinkling the wet of it toward heaven , the stirring of vrine or water with their finger in a hole in the ground , or boyling of hogs bristles in a pot ? what are these fooleries available of themselves to gather clouds and cover the aire with darknesse , and then to make the g●ound smoke with peales of haile and raine , and to make the aire terrible with frequent lightnings and thunder ? certainly nothing at all . therefore the ensuing of these tempests after such like ceremonies must be either from the prevision of the divell ( as wierus would have it ) who set the witches on work , or else from the power of the divell which he hath in his kingdome of the aire . and it seems strange to me that wierus should doubt this power , when he gives him a greater ; for what is the transporting of vapours or driving them together , to the carrying of men and cattel in the aire , ( of which he is a confident asserter ) unlesse it require larger divells or greater numbers ? and that there are sufficient numbers of such spirits will seem to any body as credible , as that there are any at all . but now for the truth of this , that certain words or ceremonies do seem at least to cause an alteration in the aire and to raise tempests ; remigius writes that he had it witnessed to him by the free confession of neer two hundred men that he examined : where he adds a story or two in which there being neither fraud , nor melancholy to be suspected , i think them worth the mentioning . the one is of a witch , who to satisfy the curiosity of them that had power to punish her , was set free that she might give a proof of that power she professed she had to rai●e tempests . she there●ore being let go ▪ presently betakes her self to a place thick set with trees , scrapes a hole with her hands fills it with vrine , and stirres it about so long , that she caused at last a thick dark cloud charged with thunder and lightning to the terrour and affrightment of the beholders . but she bade them be of good courage ▪ for she would command the● cloud to discharge upon what place they would appoint her , which she made good in the sight of the spectatours . the other story is of a young girle , who to pleasure her father complaining of a drought , by the guidance and help of that ill master her mother had devoted and consecrated her unto , rais'd a cloud , and water'd her father's ground only , all the rest continuing dry as before . let us add to these the story of cuinus and margaret warine . while this cuinus was busy at his hay-making , there arose suddenly great thunder and lightning , which made him runne homeward , and forsake his work , for he saw sixe oakes hard by him overturned from the very roots , and a seventh also shatter'd and torn a pieces : he was fain to lose his hat and leave his fork or rake for hast ; which was not so fast but another crack overtakes him and rattles about his eares ; upon which thunder-clap , he presently espied this margaret warme a reputed witch upon the top of an oake , whom he began to chide . she desired his secrecy , and she would promise that never any injury or harm should come to him from her at any time . this cuinus deposed upon oath before the magistrate , and margaret warine acknowledged the truth of it , without any force done unto her , severall times before her death , and at her death . [ see remigius daemonolatr . lib. . cap. . ] remigius conceives she was discharged upon the top of the oake at that last thunder clap and there hung amongst the boughs ; which he is induced to believe from two stories he tells afterwards . the one is of a tempest of thunder and lightning that the herdsmen tending their cattell on the brow of the hill alman in the field of guicuria were f●ighted with , who running into the woods for shelter suddenly saw two countrey men on the top of the trees , which were next them , so durty , and in such a pickle , and so out of breath , as if they had been dragg'd up and down through thornes and miry places ; but when they had well eyed them , they were gone in a moment out of their sight they knew not how nor whither . these herdsmen talked of the businesse , but the certainty of it came out not long after . for the free confessions of those two men they then saw , being so exactly agreeing with what the herdsmen had related , made the whole matter cleare and undoubted . the other story is of the same persons , known afterward by their names , viz. amantius and his partner rotarius , who having coursed it aloft again in the aire , and being cast headlong out of a cloud upon an house , the later of them being but a novice and unexperienced in those supernaturall exploites , was much astonish'd and affraid at the strangenesse of the matter , but amantius being used to those feats from his youth , his parents having devoted him from his childhood to the divell , made but a sport of it , and laughing at his friend called him foole for his feare , and bad him be of good courage ; for their master , in whose power they were , would safely carry them through greater dangers than those . and no sooner had he sayd these words , but a whirlwinde took them , and set them both safe upon the ground : but the house they were carryed from , so shook , as if it would have been overturn'd from the very foundations . this , both those men examin'd apart , confessed in the same words , not varying their story at all ; whose confessions exactly agreed in all circumstances with what was observed by the country people concerning the time and the manner of the tempest and shaking of the house . i will onely add one story more of this nature , and that is of a witch of constance , who being vext that all her neighbours in the village where she lived were invited to the wedding , and so were drinking and dancing and making merry , & she solitary and neglected , got the divell to transport her through the aire , in the middest of day , to a hill hard by the village : where she digging a hole and putting vrine into it , rais'd a great tempest of haile , and directed it so , that it fell onely upon the village , and pelted them that were dancing with that violence , that they were forc'd to leave off their sport . when she had done her exploite she returned to the village , and being spied was suspected to have raised the tempest , which the shepheards in the field that saw her riding in the aire knew well before , who bringing in their witnesse against her , she confess'd the fact . i might be infinite in such narrations , but i will moderate my self . chap. iv. supernaturall effects observ'd in them that are bewitch'd and possess'd . the famous story of magdalena crucia . we will now passe to those supernaturall effects which are observed in them that are bewitch'd or possess'd . and such are ; foretelling things to come , telling what such and such persons speak or do as exactly as if they were by them , when the party possess'd is at one end of the town and sitting in a house within doores , and those partyes that act and conferre together are without at the other end of the town ; to be able to see some and not others ; to play at cards with one certain person and not to discern any body else at the table besides him ▪ to act and talk and goe up and down and tell what will become of things , and what happens in those fitts of possession , and then so soon as the possessed or bewitched party is out of them , to remember nothing at all , but to enquire concerning the welfare of those whose faces they seemed to look upon but just befo●e , when they were in their fitts . all which can be no symptomes nor signes of any thing else but of the devil got into the body of a man , and holding all the operations of his soul , and then acting and speaking and sporting as he pleases , in the miserable tenement he hath crouded himself into , making use of the organs of the body at his own pleasure for the performing of ●uch pranks and fears as are farre above the capacity ▪ st●ength or agility of the party thus bewitched or possessed . all these things are fully made good by long and tedious observations recorded in the discovery of the witches of warbois in huntingtonshire anno . the memory whereof is still kept fresh by an anniversary sermon preacht at huntington by some of the fellows of queens colledge in cambridge . there is al●o lately come forth a narration how one mrs . muschamp's children were handled in cumberland ▪ which is very like this of mr. throckmorton's children of warbois . that which is generally observed in them both is this , that in their fitts they are as if they had no soule at all in their bodyes , and that whatsoever operations of sense , reason or motion there seemes to be in them , it is not any thing at all to them , but is wholly that stranger's , that hath got into them . for so soone as their fitts are over , they are as if they had been in so profound a sleep , that they did not so much as dreame , and so remember nothing at all of what they either said , or did , or where they had been ; as is manifest by an infinite number of examples in the forenamed relations . of the truth of which passages here at home we being very well ascertain'd , we may with the more confidence venture upon what is recorded concerning others abroad . as for example ▪ the possession of the religious virgins in the monastery of werts , others in hessimont , others also not farre from xantes , and in other places , where there were eye-witnesses enough to take notice how strangely they were handled , being flung up from the ground higher then a mans head , and falling down again without harme , swarming upon trees as nimbly as cats , and hanging upon the boughes , having their flesh ●orne off from their bodyes without any visible hand or instrument , and many other mad prankes which is not so fit to name , but they that have a mind may read at large in wierus . i would passe now to other effects of witchcraft , as the conveying of knives , balls of haire , and nailes into the bodyes of them that are bewitched ; but that the mention of these nunnes puts me in mind of that famous story in wierus of magdalena crucia , first a nunne , and then an abbatesse of a nunnery in corduba in spain . those things which were miraculous in her were these ; that she could tell allmost at any distance how the affairs of the world went , what consultations or transactions there were in all the nations of christendome , from whence she got to her self the reputation of a very holy woman and a great prophetesse . but other things came to passe by her or for her sake , no lesse strange and miraculous ; as that at the celebrating of the holy encharist , the priest should allwayes want one of his round wafers , which was secretly conveyed to magdalen , by the administration of angells , as was supposed , and shee receiving of it into her mouth a●e it , in the view of the people , to their great astonishment and high reverence of the saint . at the elevation of the host magdalen being near at hand , but yet a wall betwixt , that the wall was conceived to open and to exhibite magdalen to the view of them in the chappell , and that thus she partaked of the consecrated bread . when this abbatesse came into the chappel her self upon some speciall day , that she would set off the solemnity of the day by some notable and conspicuous miracle : for she would sometimes be lifted up above the ground three or foure cubits high ; other sometimes bearing the image of christ in her armes , weeping sa●ou●ly , she would make her haire to increase to that length and largenesse that it would come to her heels , and cover her all over and the image of christ in her armes , which anon notwithstanding would shrink up again to its usuall size ; with a many such specious though ●nprofitable miracles . but you 'll say that the narration of these things is not true , but they are feigned for the advantage of the roman religion , and so it was profitable for the church to forge them and record them to posterity . a man that is unwilling to admit of any thing supernaturall would please himself with this generall shuffle and put-off . but when we come to the catastrophe of the story he will find it quite otherwise ; for this saint at last began to be suspected for a sorceresse as it is thought , and she being conscious , did of her own accord , to save her self , make confession of her wickednesse to the visiters of the order , as they are called , viz. that for thirty yeares shee had been marryed to the divel in the shape of an aethiopian ; that another divel●ervant ●ervant to this , when his master was at dalliance with her in her cell , supplyed her place amongst the nunnes at their publick devotions ; that by vertue of this contract she made with this spirit , she had done all those miracles she did . upon this confession she was committed , and while she was in durance , yet she appear'd in her devout postures praying in the chappell as before at their set houres of prayer ; which being told to the visiters by the nunnes , there was a strict watch over her that she should not stirre out . neverthelesse shee appeared in the chappell as before , though she were really in the prison . now what credit or advantage there can be to the roman religion by this story , let any man judge . wherefore it is no figment of the priests or religious persons , nor melancholy , nor any such matter ( for how could so many spectatours at once be deluded by melancholy ? ) but it ought to be deemed a reall truth : and this magdalena crucia appearing in two severall places at once , it is manifest that there is such a thing as apparitions of spirits . but i must abstaine as yet from touching that argument , i having not dispatch'd what i propounded concerning the vomiting up of nailes , the conveying of knives and pieces of vvood into the bodies of men , and the like . which things are so palpable and uncapable of delusion , that i think it worth the while to insist a little upon them . chap. v. examples of bewitch'd persons that have had balls of haire , nayles , knives , wood stuck with pinns , pieces of cloth , and such like trash conveigh'd into their bodies , with examples also of other supernaturall effects . i will begin with that memorable true story that langius tels of one vlricus neusesser who being grievously tormented with a pain in his side , suddenly felt under his skin , which yet was whole , an iron naile as he thought . and so it prov'd when the chirurgion had cut it out : but neverthelesse his great torments continued , which enraged him so , that he cut his own throat . the third day when he was carried out to be buried , eucharius rosenbader , and joannes ab ettenstet , a great company of people standing about them , dissected the corps , and ripping up the vent●icle , found a round piece of wood of a good length , four knives , some even and sharp , others indeated like a saw , with other two rough pieces of iron a span long . there was also a ball of haire . this happened at fugenstall ▪ . vvierus tells also a story of one that was possessed , of which himself was an eye-witnesse , that vomited up pieces of cloth with pins stuck in them , nailes , needles and such like stuffe : which he contends doth not come from the stomack , but by a prestigious slight of the devil is only ingested into the mouth . antonius benivenius also witnesses of his own knowledge , that a woman his patient , after a great deal of torture , and disquiet , and staring distraction , and extraordinary swelling of her belly , at last fell a vomiting of long crooked nailes , pinns , and a clue of haire and vvaxe , and so great a crust of bread as no man's swallow could ever get down . then she fell a prophecying and raging in such sort as those that are bewitched or possessed , so that the physician was forced to leave her to the cure of the church . meinerus clatsius his servant , when he was bewitch'd , his throat was so swelled that his face became blew again with it , and therefore his mistresse , judith a devout mat●on , fearing he would be choked , betook her self to her prayers with the rest of her family . vvilliam in the mean time ( for so was his name ) begins to discharge at the mouth , and sends out of his throat the forepart of the shepheards breeches , whole flints and their fragments , clues of yarne , besides long locks of womens haire , needles , a piece of the lining of a boies coat , a peacocks feather which he had pulled out of the taile of it eight dayes before , with other more slight stuffe . cardan tells a story also of a good simple countrey fellow and a friend of his , that had been a long time troubled with vomiting up glasse , iron , n●iles and haire , and that at that time he told cardan of it he was not so perfectly restored but that something yet crash'd in his belly as if there we●e a bag of glasse in it . i might add seasonably hereunto what is so credibly reported of mrs. muschamp's child , that it was seen to vomit up pieces of vvood with pinns stuck in it . but i will conclude all with that story of about thirty children that were so strangely handled at amsterdam . of the truth whereof vvierus professeth himself very well assured . they were tortured very much , and cast violently upon the ground , but when they arose out of their fitt knew nothing but thought they had been onely asleep . for the remedying of this mischief they got the help of physicians , vvizards and exorcists , but without successe ▪ onely while the exorcists were reading , the children vomited up needles , thimbles , shreds of cloth , pieces of pots , glasse ▪ haire , and other things of the like nature . now the advantage i would make of these stories is this , that these effects extraordinary and supernaturall being so palpable and permanent , they are not at all lyable to such subterfuges as atheists usually betake themselves to , as of melancholy , & disturbance of phansy in those that professe they see such strange things , or any fraud or impost●re in those that act . all that can with any shew of reason be alledged is this , that such partyes in their ●itts of distraction may devoure such things as they vomit up , or at least put them into their mouthes . but they that are by might easily see that , distracted people doing things carelessly and openly . and these things happen to those that are thus handled against their wills ; and as they are not discovered to doe any such things , of themselves , so neither do they confess afterwards that they did it , when they are come to their right senses ; and ordinarily it is found out that some woman or other by sorcery or vvitchcraft was the authour of it . besides it is evident that there can be no mistake at all in some of these passages ; for how can an iron naile get betwixt the skin and the flesh , the skin not at all ripped or touch'd ? or how is it possible for any body to swallow down knives and pieces of iron a span long ? which besides that story of vlricus neusesser , is made good in another of a young wench , who when she had made cleane a paire of shoes with a knife , which she put in her bosome , she after seeking for it , it could not be found any where , till at length it began to discover it self in a swelling on her left side , and at last was pulled out thence by the chirurgion . you may read the whole story in vvierus , lib. . it was done at levensteet in the dukedome of brunswick . an old women had come to the house in the morning , and a strange black dog was found under the table . there are also other miraculous and supernaturall effects , as in that maid of saxonies speaking of greek ; and in another in italy telling what was the best verse in all virgill . in another whom caelius rhodiginus profess'd he saw that spoke from betwixt her legs . another at paris whom dr. picard and other divines would have dispossest , whom one hollerius a physician deriding , as if it had been nothing but melancholy in the woman and ignorance in those divines , was after convinc'd of the contrary , when he saw her standing betwixt two other women and crying out of a sudden , discerning her hands to be so fast bound that there was no loosing of them without cutting the string . there was not the appearance of any thing to any body but to the possessed onely , who said she saw then a white cloud come neer her when she was bound . chap. vi. the apparition eckerken . the story of the pyed piper . a triton or sea-god seen on the banks of rubicon . of the imps of witches , and whether those old women be guilty of so much dotage as the atheist fancies them . that such things passe betwixt them and their imps as are impossible to be imputed to melancholy . the examination of john winnick of molesworth . the reason of sealing covenants with the divell . but it is now high time to cleare up this more dim and cloudy discovery of spirits into more distinct and articulate apparitions , according as i did at first propound . and these i shall cast into two ranks : such as appeare near to us on the ground , or such as are seen afarr off , above in the aire . and here again to begin with small things first . near elton a village half a mile distant from embrica in the dukedome of cleve , there was a thing had its haunt , they called it eckerken ; there appeared never more then the shape of an hand , but ●t would beat travellers , pull them off from their horses , and overturn carriages . this could be no phansy , there following so reall effects . the story of the pyed piper , that first by his pipe gathered together all the rats and mice , and drown'd them in the river , and afterward , being defrauded of his reward , which the town promis'd him if he could deliver them from the plague of those vermine , took his opportunity , and by the same pipe made the children of the town follow him , and leading them into a hill that opened , buried them there all alive ; hath so evident proof of it in the town of hammel where it was done , that it ought not at all to be discredited . for the fact is very religiously kept amongst their ancient records , painted out also in their church-windowes , and is an epoche joyn'd with the yeare of our lord in their bills and indentures and other law●nstruments . that also seems to me beyond all exception and evasion which suetonius relates of a spectrum appearing on the b●nks of the river rubicon : which was thus , julius caesar having marched with his armie to this river , which divides gall●a citerior from italy , and being very doubtfull with himself whither he should passe over into italy or not , there was seen on the river side a man of a prodigious stature and form playing on a reed . the strangeness of his person as well as the pleasantnesse of his musick had drawn severall of the shepherds unto him , as also many of the souldiers , amongst whom were some trumpeters ; which this 〈◊〉 ( as melanchthon ventures to call him ) or sea god well ob●erving nimbly snatches away one of the trumpets ou● of their hands , leaps forthwith into the river , and 〈◊〉 a march with that strength and violence , that he seem'd to ●end the heavens , and made the aire ring again with the m●ghty fo●cibleness of the blast , in this manner he p●ssed over to the other side of the river . whereupon caesar taking the omen , leaves off all further dispute with himself carries over his army enters italy , secure of success from so manifest tokens of the favour of the gods. to confirme this truth of apparitions , if we would but admit the free confessions of vvitches concerning their impes , whom they so frequently see and converse withall , know them by their names , and do obeisance to them ; the point would be put quite out of all doubt , and their proofs would be so many , that no volume would be large enough to containe them . but forsooth these must be all melancholy old●women that dote and bring themselves into danger by their own phansyes and conceits . but that they doe net dote , i am better assured of , then of their not doting , that say they do . for to satisfy my own curiosity i have examined severall of them , and they have discours'd as cunningly as any of their quality and education . but by what i have read and observ'd i discerne they serve a very perfidious master , who playes wreaks many times on purpose to betray them . but that 's only by the by . i demand concerning these witches who confesse their contract and frequent converse with the divel ; s●me with him in one shape , others in another ; whether mere melancholy and imagination can put powders , rods , oyntments , and such like things into their hands , and tell them the use of them , can impresse markes upon their bodies ▪ so deep as to take away all sense in that place , can put silver and gold into their hands , which afterwards commonly proves but either counters , leaves ▪ or shells , or some such like uselesse matter ? these reall effects cannot be by mere melancholy . for if a man receive any thing into his hand , be it what it will be , there was some body that gave it him . and therefore the vvitch receiving some reall thing from this or that other shape that appeared unto her , it is an evident signe , that it was an externall thing that she saw , not a mere figuration of her melancholy phansy . there are innumerable examples of this kind , but the thing is so triviall and ordinary that it wants no instances . i will only for down one , wherein there is the apparition of three spirits . john vv●nnick of molsew●rth in huntington-shire being examin'd . aprill . confessed as followes . having lost his purse with seven shillings in it , for which he suspected one in the family where he lived , he saith , that on a friday while he was making hay bottles in the barn , and swore and curs'd and rag'd , and wisht to himself that some wise body would help him to his purse a●d money again , there appear'd unto him a spirit in the shape of a beare but not so big as a coney , who promis'd upon condition that he would fall down and worship him , he would help him to his purse . he assented to it , and the spirit told him to morrow about this time he should find his purse upon the floor where he made bottles , and that he would then come himself also ; which was done accordingly : and thus at the time appointed recovering his purse he fell down upon his knees to the spirit , and said , my lord and god i thank you . this spirit brought then with him two other , in the shape the one of a white cat , the other of a coney , which at the command of the beare-spirit he worshipped also . the beare-spirit told him he must have his soul when he dyed , that he must suck of his body , that he must have some of his bloud to seale the covenant . to all which he agreed , and so the beare-spirit leaping up to his shoulder , prick'd him on the head , and thence took bloud . after that , they all three vanished , but ever since came to him once every twenty four houres , and suck'd on his body , where the markes are found . and that they had continually done thus for this twenty nine yeares together . that all these things should be a mere dreame is a conceit more slight and foolish than any dreame possibly can be . for that receiving of his purse was a palpable and sensible pledge of the truth of all the rest . and it is incredible that such a series of circumstances back'd with twenty nine yeares experience of being suck'd and visited dayly , sometimes in the day time , most commonly by night , by the same three familiars , should be nothing but the hanging together of so many melancholy conceits and phansies . nor doth the sealing of covenants and writing with bloud make such stories as these more to be suspected : for it is not at all unreasonable that such ceremonies should passe betwixt a spirit and a man , when the like palpable rites are used for the more firmly tying of man to god. for whatsoever is crasse and externall leaves a stronger impresse upon the phansy , and the remembrance of it strikes the mind with more efficacy . so that assuredly the divel hath the greater hanck upon the soul of a witch or wizard , that hath been perswaded to complete their contract with him in such a grosse sensible way , and keepes them more fast from revolting from him , than if they had only contracted in bare words . chap. vii . the nocturnall conventicles of witches ; that they have often dissolved & disappeared at the naming of the name of god or jesus christ ; and that the party thus speaking has found himself alone in the fields many miles from home . the dancing of men , women and cloven-footed satyres at mid-day ; john michaell piping from the bough of an oake , &c. but i shall now adde further stories that ought to gain credit for the conspicuous effects recited in them . as that which paulus grillandus reports of one not far from rome , who at the perswasion of his wife anointing himself , as she had done before him , was carried away in the aire to a great assembly of wizards and vvitches , where they were feasting under a nut-tree . but this stranger not relishing his cheare without salt , at last the salt coming , and he blessing of god for it , at that name the whole assembly disappeared , and he poore man was left alone naked an hundred miles off from home ; whither when he had got he accused his wife , she confess'd the fact , discovering also her companions , who were therefore burnt with her . the same authour writes a like story of a young girle thirteen years old in the dukedome of spalatto , who being brought into the like company and admiring the strangenesse of the thing , and crying out blessed god , what 's here to do ! made the whole assembly vanish , was left herself in the field alone , and wandring up and down was found by a countrey man to whom shee told the whole matter . so the husband of the witch of lochiae , whom she brought into the like assembly , by saying o my god where are we ? made all to vanish , and found himself naked alone in the field fifteen dayes journey from home . severall other stories to this purpose bodinus sets down , which these sensible effects of being so far distant from home and being found naked in the fields , shew to be no freakes of melancholy but certain truth . but that the divel in these junquetings appeares to the guests in the form of a satyr , black goat , or else sometimes in the shape of an ill-favoured black man , is the ordinary confession of vvitches , by this way discovered and convicted . of his appearance in the shape of a man in black at least , if not a black man , a young woman committed for the suspicion of vvitchcraft , at the castle in cambridge told my learned friend dr. cudworth and my self this story . how one lendall-wife , who afterwards at cambridge suffered for a witch , made a motion to her of procuring her a husband ; she accepted of it . the day and hour appointted , her sweet-heart met her at lendall's house . he brake the businesse to her ; but in the middle of the conference she did but turne her head aside and he was vanished , and instead of a good proper yeomanlike man there was found in the chaire , where he did sit , nothing but a young whelp lying on the cushion . shee told us also how upon a time when she dwelt with a dame in a little town near cambridge , and was sent into the fields to gather sticks , that lendall-wife did meet her there and urged the old businesse again , and b●cause she would not consent to it , that shee beat her unmercifully , pulled off all her cloathes , and left her naked and in a manner dead upon the ground , and that she thought , if her dame had not come to seek her , and had not found her , she had died no other death . she told us also how at another time the door being shut and she going to bed , that her sweet-heart came to her himself , earnestly desiring that the match might goe on : which she as resolutely refusing , he grew very angry , and asked her if she would make a fool of him , and gave her such a parting blow upon her thigh that it was black and blew a good while after . but that which i aime at happened sometime betwixt these passages i have already related . while this marriage was driving on , the wench was again invited to lendall-wife's house , where she might meet with her sweet-heart at a supper . shee told us , when she was come , that shee waited ● great while below , and marvelled that there was neither fire nor rost-meat nor any thing else that could promise any such entertainment as was expected , nor did she see any thing brought into the house all the while she was there , and yet notwithstanding , that at supper time the table was well furnish't as well with guests as meat . he that did sit at the upper end of the table was all in black , to whom the rest gave very much respect , bowing themselves with a great deal of reverence whenever they spake to him . but what the wench seemed most of all affected with , was that the company spake such a language as she understood not ; and lendall-wife whom at other times , she said , she could understand very well , when she spake then at table she could not understand at all . old stranguidge ( of whom there hath been reported ever since i came to the universitie that he was carried over shelford steeple upon a black hogge and tore his breeches upon the weather-cock ) was one of the company . i doe not remember any other she told us of that wee knew ; but there were severall that she her self knew not . it was darke when they went to supper , and yet there was neither candle nor candlestick on the board , but a moveable light hovered over them , that waf●ed it self this way and that way in the aire betwixt the seeling and the table . under this glimmering lamp they ate their victuals and entertain'd discourse in that unknown dialect . she amazed at the strangenesse of the businesse and weary of attending of so uncouth a company , as she said , slunck away from them and left them . as for my own part , i should have looked upon this whole narration as a mere idle fancy or sick mans dream , had it not been that my beliefe was so much enlarged by that palpable satisfaction i received from what wee heard from foure or five vvitches which we lately examined before : and yet what i heard was but such matters as are ordinarily acknowledged by such vvitches as will confesse . and therefore i shall rather leave my reader to wait the like opportunity , then trouble my self with setting down any further examinations of my own . i will only adde a story or two out of remigius concerning these conventicles of witches , and then i will proceed to some other proofs . john of hembach was carried by his mother being a witch to one of these conventicles , and because he had learnt to play on the pipe , was commanded by her to exercise his faculty & to get up into a tree , that they might the better hear his musick . which he doing , & looking upon the dancers , how uncouth and ridiculous they were in their motions and gestures , being struck with admiration at the novelty of the matter , suddenly burst out into these words , good god , what a mad company have we here ! which was no sooner said , but down came john , pipe and all , and hurt his shoulder with the tumbling cast , who when he called to the company to help him , found himself alone , for they had all vanish'd , john of hembach told the story , but people knew not what to make of it , till some of that mad crue that danc'd to his pipe , were apprehended upon other suspicions , as catharina praevotia , kelvers orilla , and others , who made good every whit what john had before told ( though they knew nothing of what he told before ) adding also more particularly that the place where he pip'd to them was maybuch . the other memorable story that i shall relate out of remigius is this . one nicolea langbernhard , while she was going towards assenunturia along a hedge side , spied in the next field ( it was about noon-time of day ) a company of men and women dancing in a ring ; and the posture of their bodies being uncouth and unusuall made her view them more attentively , whereby she discerned some of them to have cloven feet , like oxen or goats ( it should seem they were spirits in the shape of lusty satyrs ) she being astonish'd with fear cryes out , jesus help me and send me well home . she had no sooner said so , but they all vanished saving onely one peter grospetter , whom a little afterwards she saw snatch'd up into the aire and to let fall his maulkin ( a stick that they make cleane ovens withall ) and her self was also driven so forcibly with the winde , that it made her almost loose her breath . she was faine to keep her bed three dayes after . this peter ( though at first he would have followed the law on nicolea for slandring him , yet ) afterward freely confess'd and discovered others of his companions , as barbelia the wife of joannes latomus , mayetta the wife of laurentius , who confessed she danced with those cloven-footed creatures at what time peter was amongst them . and for further evidence of the businesse john michaell , herds-man , did confesse , that while they thus danced , he plaid upon his crooked staffe , and struck upon it with his fingers , as if it had been a pipe , sitting upon an high bough of an oake ; and that so soon as nicolea called upon the name of jesus , he tumbled down headlong to the ground , but was presently catch'd up again with a whirldwind , and carryed to weiller meadowes , where he had left his herds a little before . adde unto all this , that there was found in the place where they danced a round circle wherein there was the manifest ma●kes of the treading of cloven feet , which were seen from the day after nicolea had discover'd the businesse , till the next winter that the plough cut them out . these things happened in the yeare . chap. viii . of fairy circles . a larger discussion of those controversies betwixt bodinus and remigius , viz. whether the bodyes of witches be really transformed into the shape of wolves and other creatures ; whether the souls of witches be not sometimes at those nocturnall conventicles , their bodies being left at home ; as also whether they leav● not their bodies in those extasies they put themselves in when they promise to fetch certain newes from remote places in a very short time . it might be here very seasonable , upon the foregoing story , to enquire into the nature of those large darke rings in the grasse , which they call fairy circles , whether they be the rendezv●●z of witches , or the da●cing places of those little puppet-spirits which they call elves or fairies . but these curios●ties i leave to more busy wits . i am onely intent now upon my serious purpose of proving there are spirits ; which i think i have made a pretty good progresse in already , and have produced such narrations that cannot but gain credit with such as are not perversly and wi●lfully incredulous . there is another more profitable question started , if it could be decided , concerning these night-revellings of vvitches , whether they be not sometimes there , their bodies lying at home , as sundry stories seem to favour that opinion : bodinus is for it , remigius is against it . it is the same question , whether when vvitches or vvizards professe they will tell what is done within so many miles compasse , and afterwards to give a proof of their skill first anoint their bodies and then fall down dead in a manner , and so lye a competent time senselesse , whether , i say , their souls go out of their bodies , or all be but represented to their imagination . we may add a third , which may happily better fetch off the other two ; and that is concerning your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which the germans call were-vvolff ; the french loups garous ) men transformed into vvolves : and there is much what the same reason of other transformations . i shall not trouble you with any histories of them , though i might produce many . but as well those that hold it is but a delusion of the divell and mere tragedies in dreames , as they that say they are reall transactions , do acknowledge , that those parties that have confessed themselves thus transformed have been weary and sore with running , have been wounded and the like . bodinus here also is deserted of remigius , who is of the same mind with vvierus , that sly , smooth physician , and faithfull patron of vvitches , who will be sure to load the divell as much as he can , his shoulders being more able to bear it , and so to ease the haggs . but for mine own part , though i will not undertake to decide the controversy , yet i thinke it not a●●isse to declare , that bodinus may very well make good his own , notwithstanding any thing those do alledge to the contrary . for that which wierus and remigius seem so much to stand upon , that it is too great a power for the divell and too great indignity to man , that he should be able thus to transform him ; are in my mind but slight rhe●orications , no sound arguments . for what is that outward mis●apement of body to the inward deformity of their souls , which he helps on so notoriously ? and they having given themselves over to him so wholy , why may he not use them thus here , when they shall be worse used by him hereafter ? and for the changeing of the species of things , if that were a power too big to be granted the divell , yet it is no more done here , when he thus transforms a man into a vvolf , then when he transforms himself into the shape of a man. for this vvolf is still a man , and that man is still a divell . for it is so as the poet sayes it was in vlysses his companions which circe turned into hoggs , they had the head , the voice , the body and bristles of hoggs ; — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but their understanding was unchanged , they had the mind and memory of a man as before . as petrus bourgotus professeth that when his companion michael verdung had a●ointed his body and transform'd him into a wolf , when he look'd upon his hairy feet he was at first affraid of himself . now therefore it being plain that nothing materiall is alledged to the contrary , and that men confesse they are turn'd into wolves , and acknowledge the salvage cruelties they then committed upon children , women and sheep , that they find themselves exceeding weary , and sometimes wounded ; it is more naturall to conclude they were really thus transformed , then that it was a mere delusion of phansy . for i conceive the divell gets into their body , and by his subtile substance , more operative and searching than any fire or putrifying liquour , melts the yielding compages of the body to such a consistency , and so much of it as is fitt for his purpose , and makes it plyable to his imagination : and then it is as easy for him to work it into what shape he pleaseth , as it is to work the aire into such forms and figures as he ordinarily doth . nor is it any more difficulty for him to mollify what is hard , then it is to harden what is so soft and fluid as the aire . and he that hath this power , we can never stick to give him that which is lesse , viz. to instruct men how they shall for a time forsake their bodies , and come in again . for can it be a hard thing for him , that can thus melt and take a pieces the particles of the body , to have the skill and power to loosen the soul , a substance really distinct from the body and separable from it ; which at last is done by the easy course of nature , at that finall dissolution of soul and body which we call death ? but no course of nature ever transforms the body of man into the shape of a wolf ; so that this is more hard and exo●bitant from the order of nature then the other . i but you 'l say the greatnesse and incrediblenesse of the miracle is this ; that there should be an actuall separation of soul and body and yet no death . but this is not at all strange if we consider that death is properly a disjunction of the soul from the body by reason of the bodie 's unfitnesse any longer to entertain the soul , which may be caused by extremity of diseases , outward violence or age ; and if the divell could restore such bodies as these to life , it were a miracle indeed . but this is not such a miracle , nor is the body properly dead , though the soul be out of it . for the life of the body is nothing else but that fitnesse to be actuated by the soul. the conservation whereof is help'd , as i conceive , by the anointing of the body before the extasy ; which ointment filling the pores keeps out the cold and keeps in the heat and spirits , that the frame and temper of the body may continue in fit case to entertain th● soul again at her return . so the vital streames of the carcasse being not yet spent , the prist●ne operations of life are presently again kindled , as a candle new blown out and as yet reeking , suddenly catches fire from the flame of another , though at some distance , the light gliding down along the smoke . wherefore there being nothing in the nature of the thing that should make us incredulous , these sorceresses so confidently pronouncing that they are out of their bodies at such times , and see and do such & such things , meet one another , bring messages , discover secrets and the like , it is more naturall and easy to conclude they be really out of their bodies , then in them . which we should the more easily be induced to believe , if we could give credit to that story wierus tells of a souldier out of whose mouth whilest he was asleep a thing in in the shape of a wesell came , which nudd●●ng along in the grasse and at last coming to a brook side , very busily attempting to get over ▪ but not being able , some one of the standers by that saw it , made a bridge for it of his sword ▪ which it passed over by , and coming back made use of the same passage , and then entred into the souldier's mouth again , many looking on : when he waked he told how he dream'd he had gone over an iron bridge , and other particulars answerable to what the spectatours had seen afore-hand . wierus acknowledgeth the truth of the story , but will by all meanes have it to be the divell , not the soul of the man ; which he doth in a tender regard to the witches , that from such a truth as this they might not be made so obnoxious to suspicion that their extasies are not mere dreames and delusions of the divell , but are accompanied with reall effects . i will not take upon me to decide so nice a controversy , only i will make bold to in●ermeddle thus farre as to pronounce bodinus his opinion , not at all unworthy of a rationall and sagacious man. and that though by his being much addicted to such like speculations he might attribute some naturall effects to the ministry of spirits , when there was no need so to doe , yet his judgement in other things of th●s kind is no more to be slighted for that , then cartesius , that stupendious mechanicall witt , is to be disallowed in those excellent inventions of the causes of those more generall phaenomena of nature , because by his successe in those he was imboldned to enlarge his principles too farre , and to assert that a●imalls themselves were mere machina's : like aristoxenus the musician that made the soul nothing else but an harmony ; of whom tully pleasantly observes , quod non recessit ab arte sua . every genius and temper , as the sundry sorts of beasts and living creatures , have their proper excrement : and it is the part of a wise man to take notice of it , and to chuse what is profitable , as well as to abandon what is uselesse and excrementitious . chap. ix . the coldnesse of those bodyes that spirits appear in witnessed by the experience of cardan and bourgotus . the naturall reason of this coldnesse . that the divell does really lye with vvitches . that the very substance of spirits is not fire . spirits skirmishing on the ground . field - fights and sea - fights seen in the aire . but to return into the way , i might adde other stories of your daemones metallici , your guardian genii , such as that of socrates , and that other of which bodinus tells an ample story , which hee received from him who had the society and assistance of such an angell or genius , which for my own part i give as much credit to as to any story in livy or plutarch : your lares familiares , as also those that haunt and vexe families appearing to many and leaving very sensible effects of their appearings . but i will not so farre tire either my self or my reader . i will only name one or two storyes more , rather then recite them . as that of cardan , who writes as you may see in otho melander , that a spirit that familiarly was seen in the house of a friend of his , one night layd his hand upon his brow which felt intolerably cold . and so petrus bourgotus confessed that when the divell gave him his hand to kisse , it felt cold . and many more examples there be to this purpose . and indeed it stands to very good reason that the bodies of divels being nothing but coagulated aire should be cold , as well as coagulated water , which is snow or ice and that it should have a more keen and piercing cold , it consisting of more subtile particles , than those of water , and therefore more fit to insinuate , and more accurately and stingingly ▪ to affect and touch the nerves . wherefore witches confessing so frequently as they do , that the divel lyes with them , and withall complaining of his tedious and offensive coldnesse , it is a shrewd presumption that he doth lie with them indeed , and that it is not a mere dreame , as their friend wierus would have it . hence we may also discover the folly of that opinion that makes the very essence of spirits to be fire : for how unfit that would be to coagulate the aire is plain at first sight . it would rather melt and dissolve these consistencies then constringe them and freeze them in a manner . but it is rather manifest that the essence of spirits is a substance specifically distinct from all corporeall matter whatsoever . but my intent is not to philosophize concerning the nature of spirits , but only to prove their existence . which the story of the spectre at ephesus may be a further argument of . for that old man which apollonius told the ephesians was the walking plague of the city , when they stoned him and uncovered the heap , appear'd in the shape of an huge black dog as big as the biggest lion. this could be no imposture of melanchly nor ●raud of any priest. and the learned grotius , a man far from all levity and vain credulity , is so secure of the truth of ty●neus his miracles , that he does not stick to term him impudent , that has the face to deny them . our english chronicles also tell us of apparitions ; armed men , foot and horse , fighting upon the ground in the north part of england and in ireland for many evenings together , seen by many hundreds of men at once , and that the grasse was troden down in the places where they were seen to fight their battailes : which agreeth with nicolea langbernhard her story of the cloven-footed dancers , that left the print of their hoofs in the ring they trod down , for a long time after . but this skirmishing upon the earth puts me in mind of the last part of this argument , and bids me look up into the aire . where omitting all other prodigies i shall only take notice of what is most notorious , and of which there can by no meanes be given any other account , then that it is the effect of spirits . and this is the appearance of armed men fighting and encountring one another in the sky . there are so many examples of these prodigies in historians , that it were superfluous to instance in any . that before the great slaughter of no lesse than fourescore thousand made by antiochus in jerusalem recorded in the second of maccabees chap. . is famous . the historian there writes that through all the city for the space almost of fourty dayes there were seen horsemen running in the aire , in cloth of gold , and arm'd with lances , like a band of souldiers , and troops of horsemen in array encountring and running one against another , with shaking of shields , and multitudes of pi●●es , and drawing of swords , and casting of darts , and glittering of golden ornaments , and harnesse of all sorts . and josephus writes also concerning the like prodigies , that happened before the destruction of the city by titus ▪ prefacing first , that they were incredible , were it not that they were recorded by those that were eye-witnesses of them . the like apparitions were seen before the civill warres of marius and sylla . and melanchthon affirmes that a world of such prodigies were seen all over germany from to . s●ellius amongst other places doth particularize in a●●rtsfort , where these fightings were seen not much higher then the house tops ; as also in amsterdam where there was a sea-fight appearing in the aire for an houre or two together , many thousands of men looking on . and to say nothing of what hath been seen in england not long ago , there is lately a punctuall narration of such a sea-fight seen by certain hollanders , and sent over hither into england , but a lion appearing alone at the end of that apparition , though it may be true for ought i know , yet it makes it obnoxious to suspicion and evasion and so unprofitable for my purpose . but the phaenomena of this kind , whose reports cannot be suspected to be in subserviency to any politick designe , ought in reason to be held true , when there have been many profess'd eye-witnesses of them . and they being resolvable into no naturall causes , it is evident that we must acknowledge supernaturall ones , such as spirits , intelligences or angels , term them what you please . chap. x. a very memorable story of a certain pious man , who had the continuall society of a guardian genius . i had here ended all my stories , were i not tempted by that remarkable one in bodinus , to our-run my method . i but named it heretofore , i shall tell it now more at large . i am the more willingly drawn to relate it , such examples of the consociation of good spirits being very scarce in history . the main reason whereof , as i conceive , is because so very few men are heartily and sincerely good . the narration is more considerable in that he that writes it , had it from the man 's own mouth whom it concerns ; and is as follows . this party , a holy and pious man , as it should seem , and an acquaintance of bodinus's , freely told him , how that he had a certain spirit that did perpetually accompany him , which he was then first aware of , when he had attain'd to about thirty seven years of age , but conceiv'd that the said spirit had been present with him all his life time , as he gathered from certain monitory dreams and visions , whereby he was forewarn'd as well of severall dangers as vices . that this spirit discovered himself to him after he had for a whole year together earnestly pray'd to god to ●end a good angell to him , to be the guide and governer of his life and actions ; adding also , that before and after prayer he used to spend two or three houres in meditation and reading the scriptures , diligently enquiring with himself , what religion , amongst those many that are controverted in the world , might be best , beseeching god that he would be pleased to direct him to it . and that he did not allow of their way , that at all adventures pray to god to confirm them in that opinion they have already preconceived , be it right or wrong . that while he was thus busy with himself in matters of religion , that he light on a passage in philo judaeus in his book de sacrificiis , where he writes , that a good and holy man can offer no greater nor more acceptable sacrifice to god , then the oblation of himself , and therefore following philo's counsell , that he offered his soul to god. and that after that , amongst many other divine dreames and visions , he once in his sleep seemed to hear the voice of god saying to him , i will save thy soul , i am he that before appeared unto thee . afterwards that the spirit every day would knock at the doore about three or four a clock in the morning , though he rising and opening the doore could see no body , but that the spirit persisted in this course , and unlesse he did rise , would thus rouze him up . this trouble and boisterousnesse made him begin to conceit that it was some evill spirit that thus haunted him , and therefore he daily pray'd earnestly unto god , that he would be pleased to send a good angell to him , and often also sung psalmes , having most of them by heart . wherefore the spirit afterward knocked more gently at the doore , and one day discovered himself to him waking , which was the first time that he was assured by his senses that it was he ; for he often touched and stirred a drinking-glasse that stood in his chamber , which did not a little amaze him . two dayes after when he entertain'd at supper a certain f●●end of his , secretary to the king , that this friend of his was much abash'd while he heard the spirit thumping on the bench hard by him , and was strucken with fear , but he ●ad him be of good courage , there was no hurt towards ; and the better to assure him of it , told him the truth of the whole matter . wherefore from that time , ●aith bodinus , he did affirm that this spirit was alwayes with him , and by some sensible signe did ever advertize him of things : as by striking his right eare if he did any thing amisse ; if otherwise , his left . if any body came to circumvent him ▪ that his right eare was st●uck , but his left eare , if a good man and to good ends accosted him . if he was about to eat or drink any thing that would hurt him , or intended or purposed with himself to do any thing that would prove ill , that he was inhibited by a signe , and if he delaid to follow his businesse , that he was quickened by a ●●gne given him . when he began to praise god in psalmes and to declare his marveilous acts , that he was presently raised and strengthened with a spirituall and supernaturall power . that he daily begg'd of god that he would teach him his will , his law and his truth ; and that he set one day of the week apart for reading the scripture and meditation , with singing of psalmes , and that he did not 〈◊〉 out of his house all that day ; but that in his ordinary conversation he was sufficiently merry and of a chearfull minde , and he cited that saying for it , vidi facies sanctorum laetas . but in his conversing with others ▪ if he had talked vainly and indiscreetly , or had some daies together neglected his devotions , that he was forthwith admonished thereof by a dreame . that he was also admonished to rise betimes in the morning , and that about four of the clock a voice would come to him while he was asleep , saying , who gets up first to pray ? he told bodinus also how he was often admonish'd to give almes , and that 〈◊〉 more charity he bestow'd , the more prosperous he was . and that on a time when his enemies sought after his life , and knew that he was to go by water , that his father in a dreame brought two horses to him , the one white , the other bay ; and that therefore he bid his servant hire him two horses , and though he told him nothing of the colours , that yet he brought him a white one and a bay one . that in all difficulties , journeyings and what other enterprizes soever , he used to ask counsell of god , and that one night , when he had begged his blessing , while he slept he saw a vision wherein his father seemed to blesse him . at another time , when he was in very great danger , and was newly gone to bed , he said that the spirit would not let him alone till he had raised him again , wherefore he watched and pray'd all that night . the day after he escaped the hands of his persecuters in a wonderfull manner ; which being done , in his next sleep he heard a voice saying , now sing , quisedet in latibulo altissi●● . a great many other passages this party told bodinus , so many indeed , that he thought it an endlesse labour to recite them all . but what remains of those he has recited , i will not stick to take the pains of transcribing them . bodinus asked him why he would not speak to the spirit for the gaining of the more plain and familiar converse with it . he answered that he once attempted it , but the spirit instantly struck the doore with that vehemency , as if he had knock'd upon it with an hammer , whereby he gathered his dislike of the matter . but though the spirit would not talk with him , yet he could make use of his judgement in the reading of books and moderating his studies . for if he took an ill book into his hands and fell a reading , the spirit would strike it , that he might lay it down , and would also sundry times , be the books what they would , hinder him from reading and writing overmuch , that his minde might rest , and silently meditate with it self . he added also , that very often while he was awake , a small , subtile , inarticulate sound would come unto his eares . bodinus further enquiring whether he ever see the shape and form of the spirit , he told him that while he was awake he never see any thing but a certain light very bright and clear and of a round compasse and figure ; but that once , being in great jeopardy of his life , and having heartily pray'd to god that he would be pleased to provide for his safety , about break of day , amidst his slumberings and wakings , he espyde on his bed where he lay a young boy clad in a white garment tinctured somewhat with a touch of purple , and of a visage admirably lovely and beautifull to behold . this he confidently affirmed to bodinus for a certain truth . chap. xi . certain enquiries upon the preceding story ; as , what these guardian genii may be . whether one or more of them be allotted to every man , or to some none . what may be the reason of spirits so seldome appearing ; and whether they have any settled shape or no. what their manner is of assisting men in either devotion or prophecy . whether every mans complexion is capable of the society of a good genius . and lastly whether it be lawfull to pray to god to send such a genius or angel to one or no. it is beside my present scope , as i have already professed , to enter into any more particular and more curious disquisitions concerning the nature of spirits , my ayme being now onely to demonstrate their existence by those strange effects recorded every where in history . but this last narration is so extraordinarily remarkable , that it were a piece of disrespect done to it , to dismisse it without some enquiries at least into such problems as it naturally affords to our consideration , though it may well seem plainly beyond the power of humane witt , or lawes of modesty to determine any thing therein . in the first place therefore , it cannot but amuse a man's minde to think what these officious spirits should be , that so willingly sometimes offer themselves to consociate with a man ; whether they may be angels uncapable of incorporation into humane bodies , which vulgarly is conceived : or whether the souls of the deceased , they having more affinity with mortality and humane frailty then the other , and so more sensible of our necessities and infirmities , having once felt them themselves ; a reason alledged for the incarnation of christ by the authour to the hebrews : which opinion has no worse favourers then plutarch , maximus tyrius , and other platonists : or lastly , whether there may not be of both sorts . for separate souls being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in a condition not unlike the angels themselves , it is easy to conceive that they may very well undergo the like offices . secondly we are invited to enquire , whether every man have his guardian genius or no. that witches have many , such as they are , their own confessions testify . the pythagorea●s were of opinion that every man has two genii , a good one and a bad one . which mahomet has taken into his religion , adding also , that they sit on mens shoulders with table-books in their hands , and that the one writes down all the good , the other all the evill a man does . but such expressions as those i look upon as symbolicall rather then naturall . and i think it more reasonable that a man changing the frame of his minde changes his genius withall : or rather , unless a man be very sincere and single-hearted that he is left to common providence , as well as if he be not desperately wicked or deplorably miserable , scarce any particular evill spirit interposes or offers himself a perpetuall assistent in his affaires and fortunes . but extreme poverty , irksome old age , want of friends , the contempt , injury and hardheartednesse of evill neighbours , working upon a soul low sunk into the body and wholy devoid of the divine life , does sometimes kindle so sharp , so eager , and so piercing a desire of satisfaction and revenge , that the shreeks of men while they are a murdering , the howling of a wolf in the fields in the night , or the squeaking and roring of tortured beasts do not ●o certainly call to them those of their own kinde , as this powerfull magick of a pensive and complaining soul in the bitternesse of it's affliction attracts the ayd of these over-officious spirits . so that it is most probable that they that are the forwardest to ●ang witches are the first that made them , and have no more goodnesse nor true piety then these they so willingly prosecute , but are as wicked as they , though with better luck or more discretion , offending no further then the law will permit them , and therefore they securely starve the poor helpless man , though with a great deal of clamour of justice ▪ they will revenge the death of their hogg , or cow. thirdly it were worth our disquisition , why spirits so seldome now adayes appear , especially those that are good ; whether it be not the wickednesse of the present age , as i have already hinted ; or the generall prejudice men have against all spirits that appear , that they must be straightwayes divells ; or the frailty of humane nature that is not usually able to bear the appearance of a spirit , no more then other animalls are , for into what agonies horses and doggs are cast upon their approach , is in every ones mouth , and is a good circumstance to distinguish a reall apparition from our own imaginations ; or lastly whether it be the condition of spirits themselves , who , it may be , without some violence done to their own nature cannot become visible , it being happily as troublesome a thing to them , to keep themselves in one steady visible consistency in the aire , as it is for men that dive , to hold their breath in the water . fourthly it may deserve our search , whether spirits have any settled forme or shape . angells are commonly pictured like good plump cher●y-cheek'd lads . which is no wond●r , the boldnesse of the same artists not sticking to picture god almighty in the shape of an old man. in both it is as it pleases the painter . but this story seems rather to favour their opinion , that say that angells and seperate s●uls have no settled forme but what they please to give themselves upon occasion , by the power of their own phansy . ficinu● , as i remember , somewhere calls them aereall starres . and the good genii seem to me to be as the benigne eyes of god running to and fro in the world with love and pitty beholding the innocent endeavours of harmlesse and single-hearted men , ever ready to doe them good and to help them . what i conceive of separate soules and spirits , i cannot better expresse then i have already in my poem of the pr●existency of the soul. and i hope it will be no sin to be better then my word , who in my preface have promissed no poetry at all , but i shall not think much to offer to your view these two stanzas out of the forenamed poem . like to a light fast lock'd in lanthorn dark , whereby by night our wary steps we guide in slabby streets , and dirty chanels mark ; some w●aker rayes from the black top do glide , and flusher streams perhaps through th' horny side . but when we 've past the perill of the way , arriv'd at home , and laid that case aside , the naked light how clearly doth it ray , and spread its joyful beames as bright as summer's day ? even so the soul in this contracted state , confin'd to these straight instruments of sense , more dull and narrowly doth operate ; at this hole heares , the sight must ray from thence , here tasts , there smells ; but when she 's gone from hence , like naked lamp she is one shining spheare , and round about has perfect cognoscence what ere in her horizon doth appear ; she is one orb of sense , all eye , all airy eear . and what i speak there of the condition of the soul out of the body , i think is easily applicable to other gen●i , or spirits . the fift enquiry may be , how these good gen●i become serviceable to men , for either heightening their devotions or inabling them to prophecy ; whether it can be by any other way then by descending into their bodies and possessing the heart and braine . for the euchites , who affected the gift of prophecy by familiarity with evill spirits , did utterly obliterate in their souls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the principles of goodnesse and honesty ( as you may see in psellus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) that the evill spirits might come into their bodies , whom those sparks of virtue , as they said , would drive away , but those being extinguish'd they could come in and possess them and inable them to pr●phecy . and that the imps of witches do sometimes enter their own bodies as well as their's to whom they send them , is plain in the story of the witches of warbois . it is also the opinion of trismegist , that these spirits get into the veines and arteries both of men and beasts . wherefore concerning the dreames and visions of this holy man that so freely imparted himself to bodinus , it may be conceived reasonable that the good genius insinuated himself into his very body , as well as the bad into the bodies of the wicked , and that residing in his braine and figuring of it , by thinking of this or that object , as we ourselves figure it when we think , the external senses being laid asleep , those figurations would easily be represented to the common sense ; and that memory recovering them when he awaked , they could not but seem to him as other dreames did saving that they were better , they ever signifying some thing of importance unto him . but those raptures of devotion by day , might be by the spirits kindling a purer kinde of love-flame in his heart , as well as by fortifying and raising his imagination . and how far a man shall be carried beyond himself by this redoubled soul in him , none , i think , can well conceive unlesse they had the experience of it . and if this be their manner of communion , it may well be enquired into , in the sixt place , whether all men be capable of consociation with these good genii . cardan somewhere intimates that their approaches are deprehensible by certain sweet smells they cast . from whence it may seem not improbable , that those bodies that smell sweet themselves , where the mind does not stink with pride and hypocrisy , have some naturall advantage for the gaining their society . but if there be any peculiar c●●plexion or naturall condition required , it will prove lesse hopefull for every one to obtaine their acquaintance . yet regeneration come to it 's due pitch , though it can not be without much paine and anguish , may well rectify all uncleannesse of nature ; so that no singularly good and sincere man can reasonably despaire of their familiarity . for he that is so highly in favour with the prince , it is no wonder he is taken notice of by his courtiers . but the last and most considerable question is , whether it be lawfull to pray to god for such a good genius or angell . for the example in the foregoing story seems a sufficient warrant . but i conceive faith and desire ought to be full-sayle to make such voiages prosperous , and our end and purpose pure and sincere , but if pride , conceitedness● ▪ or affectation of some peculiar priviledge above other mortalls , spurre a man up to so bold an enterprise , his devotions will no more move either god or the good geni● , then the whining voice of a counterfeit will stirr the affection of the discreetly charitable . nay this high presumption may invite some reall fiends to put a worse jest upon him then was put upon that tattered rogue guzman , by those mock-spirits , for his so impudently pretending kindred , and so boldly intruding himself into the knowledge and acquaintance , of the gentry and nobility of genoa . but the safest magick is the sincere consecrating a mans soul to god , and the aspiring to nothing but so profound a pitch of humility as not to be conscious to ourselves of being at all touched with the praise and applause of men ; and to such a free and universall sense of charity as to be delighted with the welfare of another as much as our own . they that solely have their eye upon these will find coming in what ever their heart can desire . but they that put forth their hand to catch at high things , as they phansy , and neglect these , prove at last but a lague to themselves , and a laughing-stock to the world . these are the severall speculations that the foregoing narration would naturally beget in the mindes of the curious . but methinks i hear the atheist replying to all this , that i have run a long division upo● very uncertain grounds , and asking me not without some scorn and anger , whether i believe that multifarious fable i have rehearsed out of bodinus and so much descanted upon . to which i answer , that i will not take my oath that the most likely passage in all plutarch's lives , or livies history is assuredly true . but however that i am not ashamed to professe , that i am as well assured in my own judgement of the existence of spirits , as that i have met with men in westminster-hall , or seen beasts in smithfield . chap. xii . that whether the species of things have been from all eternity , or whether they rose out of the earth by degrees in time , the frame of them is such , that against all the evasions of the atheist they naturally imply that there is a god. thus have we gone through the many and manifold effects represented to our senses on this wide theater of the world. the faintest and obscurest whereof are arguments full enough to prove the existence of a deity . but some being more palpable then other some , and more accommodate to awaken the dull and slow belief of the atheist into the acknowledgement of a god , it will not be amisse to take notice of what evasions he attempts to make for the extricating himself out of those that he pharisies the most sensibly to entangle him , and the most strongly to hinder his escape . and such are especially these two last i insisted upon , the curious frame of mans body , and apparitions . and the force of the former some indeavour to evade thus ; that there hath ever been man and woman and other species in the world , and so it is no wonder that like should propagate its like , and therefore that there is no want of any other invisible or materiall cause but the species of things themselves : and so these admirable contrivances in nature must imply no divine vvisdome nor counsell or any such thing . but here i demand whether there were ever any man that was not mortall , and whether there be any mortall that had not a beginning , and if he had , it must be either by generation or creation . if by creation , there is a god. if by aequivocall generation , as rising out of the earth , our argument will hold good still notwithstanding this evasion , but if you 'll say there was never any man in the world but was born of a woman , this must amount but to thus much ▪ that there hath been an infinite number of successions of births . if there be meant by it any thing more then thus , it will not prove sense . for though our phansy cannot run through an infinite series of effects , yet our reason is assured there is no effect without a cause , and be the progresse of causes and effects as infinite as it will , at last we resolve it naturally into some first ; and he that denies this , seems to me w●llfully to winke against the light of nature , and do violence to the faculties of his minde . and therefore of necessity there must be at least one first man and vvoman which are first ordine naturae , though infinity of time reckoning from the present causeth a confusion & obscurity in our apprehensions . and these which are thus first in order of nature or causality must also exist first before there can be any other men or women in the world. and therefore concerning these first it being manifest that they were born of no parents , it follows they were created or rose out of the earth , and so the evasion will be frustrated . besides if you affirm that there was never any man in the world but who was born of a vvoman , and so grew to mans estate by degrees , it will fall to some mans share to be a babe and a man at once , or to be both father and child , for so soon as mankind was ( let it be from aeternity , and beyond aeternity is nothing ) those that then existed were begot of some body , and there was nothing before them to beget them , therefore they begot themselves . but that they should at once then have been perfect men , their substances being of alterable and passive matter , that is wrought diversly and by degrees into that frame it hath , is as rash , as if they should say that bootes , and shooes , and stockins , and pyes , and peels , and ovens have been together with all aeternity : when as it is manifest there ought to be an orderly intervall of time before these things can be , wherein must precede the killing of oxen , and flaying of them , as also of sheep , tanning , spinning , cutting , and many more such like circumstances . so that it is enormously ridiculous to say that mankind might have been at once from all aeternity , unlesse the omnipotency of a god , who can do what ever we can imagine and more , should by his unresistable fiat cause such a thing in a moment so soon as himself was , which was ever , and he was never to seek for either power or skill . but that the fluid matter of it self should have been thus raised up from all aeternity into such compleat species of things , is very groundlesse and irrationall . i say , that there ever should be such a thing as this in the world , a man at once existing of himself in this corporeall frame that we see , who notwithstanding did afterwards dye like other mortalls ; is a fable above all poeticall figments whatsoever , and more incredible then the hardest article that any religion ever offered to the atheist's beliefe . others therefore deserting this way of evasion betake themselves to another , which , though it seem more plausible at first view , is fully as frivolous . they say that all the species of things , man himself not excepted , came first ●ut of the earth by the omnifarious attempt of the particles of the matter upon one another , which at last light on so lucky a construction and fabrick of the bodies of creatures as we see , and that having an infinite series of time to try all tricks in , they would of necessity at last come to this they are . but i answer , that these particles might commit infini●e tautologies in their strokes and motions , and that therefo●e there was no such n●cessi●y at all of falling into those formes and shapes that appea●e in the world . again , there is that excellent contrivance in the body , suppose , of a man , as ● have heretofore instanced , that it cannot but be the effect of very accurate knowledge and counsell . and lastly this concourse of atoms they being left without a guide , it is a miracle above all apprehension , that they should produce no in●pt species of things , such as should of their own nature have but three leggs , and one eye , or but one eare , rowes of teeth along the vertebrae of their backs , and the like , as i have above intimated , these in●ptitudes being more easy to hit upon , than such accurate and irreprehensible frames of creatures . but to ●lude the force of this argument against the fortuitous concourse of atoms ▪ they 'll excog●ta●e th●s mad evasion ; that nature did indeed at first bring forth such ill-favoured and ill-appointed monsters , as well as those that are of a more exquisite frame ; but those that were more pe●fect fell upon those other and kill'd them , and devoured then , they being not so well provided of either limbs or senses as the other , and so were never able to hop fast enough from them , or maturely to discover the approaching d●ngers that ever and anon were coming upon them . but this unjust and audacious calumny cast upon god and nature will be easily discover'd and convicted of fa●shood if we do but consider , first that trees , harbs , and flowers , that do not stine from their places , or exercise such fierce cruelty one upon another , that they all in their severall kinds are handsome , and elegant , and have no ineptitude or defect in them . secondly that all creatures born of putrefaction , as mice ▪ and froggs and the like , as those many hundreds of insects , as grashoppers , flyes , spiders and such other , that these also have a most accurate contrivance of parts , & that there is nothing fram'd rashly or ineptly in any of them . lastly in more perfect creatures , as in the scotch barnacles , which historians write of , of which if there be any doubt , yet gerard relates that of his own knowledge , which is as admirable , and as much to our purpose , that there is a kind of fowle which in lancashire are called tree geese , they are bred out of rotten pieces of broken ships and ●●unks of trees cast upon a little iland in lancashire they call the pile of foulders ; the same authour saith he hath found the like also in other parts of this kingdome : those fowles in all respects , though bred thus of putrefaction , ( and that they are thus bred is undeniably true as any man if he please may satisfy himself by consulting gerard the very last page of his history of plants ) are of as an exact fabrick of body , and as fitly contriv'd for the functions of such a kind of living creature , as any of those that are produced by propagation . nay the●e kind of fowles themselves do also propagate , which has imposed so upon the foolishness of some , that they 〈◊〉 denied that other way of their generation , wh●● as 〈◊〉 being generated one way does not exclude the 〈…〉 seen in froggs and mice . where●ore those productions out of the 〈…〉 putrefaction being thus perfect and accurate in 〈…〉 well as others , it is a manifest discovery that 〈…〉 never frame any species of things ineptly and 〈…〉 that therefore she was ever guided by counsell and 〈◊〉 that is , that nature her self is the effect of an all-knowing god. nor doth this consideration onely take away this present evasion , but doth more palpably and intelligibly enervate the former . for what boots it them to fly unto an infinite propagation of individualls in the same aeternall species , as they imagine , that they might be able alwaies to assigne a cause answerable to the effect ; when as there are such effects as these , and products of putrefaction , where wisdome and counsell are as truely conspicuous as in others ? for thus are they neverthelesse necessarily illaqueated in that inconvenience which they thought to have escaped by so quaint a subtilty . chap. xiii . that the evasions of atheists against apparitions are so weak and silly , that it is an evident argument that they are convinced in their own judgements of the truth of these kinds of phaenomena , which forces them to answer as well as they can , though they be so ill provided . now for their evasions whereby they would elude the force of that argument for spirits , which is drawn from apparitions , they are so weak and silly , that a man may be almost sure they were convinced in their judgement of the truth of such like stories , else it had been better flatly to have denied them , then to feigne such idle and vain reasons of them . for first they say they are nothing but imaginations , and that there is nothing reall without us in such apparitions . but being beaten off from this slight account , for that many see the same thing at once , then they fly to so miraculous a power of phansy , as if it were able to change the aire into a reall shape and form , so that others may behold it , as well as he that fram'd it by the power of his phansy . now i demand of any man , whether this be not a harder mysterie and more unconceivable then all the magicall metamorphoses of divells or witches . for it is farre easyer to conceive that some knowing thing in the aire should thus transform the aire into this or that shape , being in that part of the aire it doth thus transform , then that the imagination of man , which is but a modification of his own mind , should be able at a distance to change it into such like appearances , but suppose it could , can it animate the aire that it doth thus metamorphize , and make it speak , and answer to questions , and put things into mens hands , and the like ? o the credulity of besotted atheisme ! how intoxicated and infatuated are they in their conceits , being given up to sensuality , and having lost the free use of the naturall faculties of their minde ! but shall this force of imagination reach as high as the clouds also , and make men fight pitched battails in the aire , running and charging one against the other ? here the same bold pretender to wit and philosophy caesar vaninus ( who cunningly and jugglingly endeavours to infuse the poyson of atheisme into the mind of his reader on every occasion ) hath recourse to those old cast rags of epicurus his . school , the exuvious effluxes of things ; and attempts to salve these phaenomena thus ; that the vapours of mens bodies and it seems of horses too , are carried up into the aire and fall into a certain proportionable posture of parts , and so imitate the figures of them aloft among the clouds . but i demand how the vapours of the horses finde the vapours of their riders : and when and how long are they coming together : and whether they appeare not before there be any armies in the field to send up such vapours : and whether harnesse and weapons send up vapours too , as swords , pikes , and shields : and how they come to light so happily into the hands of those aeriall men of warre , especially the vapours of metalls ( if they have any ) being heavier in all likelyhood then the recke of a●●malls and men : and lastly how they come to discharge at one ano●her and to fight , there being neither life nor soul in them : and whether sounds also have their exuviae that are reserved till these solemnities ; for at alborough in suffolke were heard in the aire very loud beatings of drums ▪ shooting of muskets , and ordinance ▪ as also in other such like p●odigies there hath been heard the sounding of trumpets , as snellius w●ites . a●d pliny also makes mention of the sounding of ●rumpets and clashing of armour heard out of the heavens about the cymbr●ck wars , and often before . but here at alborough all was concluded with a melodious noise of musicall ●nstruments . the ex●viae 〈◊〉 fiddles it seems ●ly up into the aire too , or were those musical accen●s frozen there for a time , and at the heat and firing of the canons the aire ●elenting and thawing became so harmoniously vocall ? with what vain concei●s are men intoxicated , that willfully wink ●g●inst the light of nature , and are ●stranged from the true knowledge and acknowledgment of a god! but there is another evasion which the same se●ulous insinuatour of a●heisme would make use of in case this should not hold , which seems more sober but no lesse false . and that is this : that these sigh●i●gs and skirmishings in the aire are only the 〈◊〉 of some reall battail on the earth . but this in nature is plainly impossible . for of necessity these armies thus fighting , being at such a distance from the spectatours that the same of the battail never arrives to their eares , their eyes can never behold it by any re●lexion from the clouds . for besides that reflexion makes the images more dim then direct sight , such a distance from the army to the clouds , and then from the clouds to our eye , will lessen the species so exceedingly that they will not at all be visible . or if we could imag●ne th●t there might be some times such an advantage in the figure of these clouds as might in some sort remedie this lessening of the species , yet their surfaces are so exceeding rudely polish'd , and reflection which , as i said , is ever dim enough of it self ▪ is here so extraordinarily imperfect ▪ that they can never be able , according to the course of nature , to returne the species of terrestriall objects back again to our sight , it being so evident that they are unfit for what is of farr less difficulty . for we never finde them able to reflect the image of a starr when as not onely glass , but every troubled pool or durty plash of water in the high-way does usually do it . but that it is far easier for a star , then for any of these objects here upon earth to be reflected to our eyes by those rude naturall looking-glasses placed among the clouds , sundry reasons will sufficiently inform us . for first , the starrs do not abate at all of their usuall magnitude in which they ordinarily appeare to us , by this refl●ction ; the difference of many hundreds of leagues making no difference of magnitude in them , for indeed the distance of the diameter of the orbite of the earth makes none , as must be acknowledged by all those that admit of the annuall motion thereof . but a very few miles do exceedingly diminish the usuall biggnesse of the species of an horse or man , even to that littlenesse , that they grow invisible . what then will become of his sword , shield , or speare ? and in these cases we now speak of , how great a journey the species have from the earth to the cloud that reflects them , i have intimated before . secondly it is manifest , that a starre hath the preheminence above these terrestiall objects , in that it is as pure a light as the sunne , though not so bigg , but they but opake coloured bodies , and that therefore there is no comparison betwixt the vigour and strength of the species of a starre and of them . thirdly in the night-time , the eye being placed in the shadow of the earth , those reflections of a starr will be yet more easily visible ; whenas the great light of the sun by day , must needes much debilitate these reflected images of the objects upon the earth , his beams striking our eyes with so strong vibrations . fourthly and lastly , there being starres all over the firmament , so as there is , it should seem a hundred times more ●asie for naturall causes to hit upon a paraster or parastron ( for let analogie ●mbolden me so to call these seldome or never seen phaenomena , the image of a single starre or whole constellation reflected from the clouds ) then upon a parclios or paraselenc . but now the story of these is more then an hundred times more frequent then that of the paraster . for it is so seldome discovered that it is doubted whither it be or no , or rather acknowledged not to be , of which there can be no reason , but that the clouds are so ill-polished that they are not able to reflect so considerable a light as a starre . from whence i th●nk , we may safely gather ▪ that it is therefore impossible that they should reflect so debile species as the colours , and shapes of beasts and men , and that so accurately , as that we may see their swords , helmets , shields , speares , and the like . wherefore it is plaine that these apparitions on high in the aire , are no reflections of any objects upon earth ; or if it were imaginable that they were , that some supernaturall cause must assist to conglaciate & polish the surfaces of the clouds to such an extraordinary accuracy of figure & smoothnesse , as will suffice for such prodigious reflections . and that these spirits that rule in the aire may not act upon the materials there , as well as men here upon the earth work upon the parts thereof , as also upon the neighbouring elements so farre as they can reach , shaping , perfecting , and directing things , according to their own purpose and pleasure , i know no reason at all in nature or philosophy , for any man to deny . for that the help of some o●ficious gen● is implyed in such like prodigies as these , the seasonablenesse of their appearance seems no contemptible argument , they being according to the observation of historians , the forerunners of commotions and troubles in all kingdomes and common-wealths . yet neverthelesse as good artificers as i here suppose ▪ they working upon nature must be bounded by the laws of nature . and reflection will have its limits as well as refractiō , whither for conveiance of species or kindling of hea● ; the lawes and bounds whereof that discerning wit cartesius being well aware of , doth generously and judiciously pronounce ; that a burning-glasse , the distance of whose focus from the glasse doth not beare a lesse proportion to the diameter thereof , then the distance of the earth from the sun to the diameter of the sun , will burn no more vehemently then the direct raies of the sun will do without it , though in other respects this glasse were as exactly shaped & curiously polished , as could be exspected from the hand of an angel. i have now compleated this present treatise against atheisme in all the three parts therof : upon which while i cast mine eye and view that clear and irrefutable evidence of the cause i have undertaken , the external appearances of things in the world so faithfully seconding the undeniable dictates of the innate principles of our own mindes , i cannot but w th cōfidence aver , that there is not any one notion in all philosophy more certain & demonstrable then that there is a god. and verily i think i have ransacked all the corners of every kind of philosophy that can pretend to bear any stroke in this controversie , with that diligence , that i may safely pronounce , that it is mere brutish ignorance or impudence , no skill in nature or the knowledge of things , that can encourage any man to pro●esse atheisme , or to embrace it at the proposall of those that make profession of it . but so i conceive it is , that at first some famously learned men being not so indiscreetly zealous and superstitious as others , have been mistaken by idiots and traduced for atheists , and then ever after some one vain-glorious fool or other , hath affected with what safety he could to seem atheisticall , that he might thereby forsooth be reputed the more learned , or the profounder naturallist . but i dare assure any man , that if he doe but search into the bottome of this enormous disease of the soul , as trismegist truely calles it , he will find nothing to be the cause thereof , but either vanity of mind , or brutish sensuali●y , & an untamed desire of satisfying a mans own will in every thing , an obnoxious conscience , and a base fear of divine vengeance , ignorance of the scantness & insufficiency of second causes , a jumbled feculencie and incomposednesse of the spirits by reason of perpetuall intemperance & luxurie , or else a dark bedeading melancholy that so starves and kils the apprehension of the soul in divine matters especially , that it makes a man as inept for such contemplations , as if his head was filled with cold earth , or dry grave-moulds . and to such slow constitutions as these , i shall not wonder , 〈◊〉 as the first part of my discourse must seem marvelous subtile , so the last appear ridiculously incredible . but they are to remember that i do not here appeal to the complexional humours or peculiar relishes of men , that arise out of the temper of the body , but to the known & unalterable idea's of the mind , to the phaenomena of na●ure and records of history . upon the last whereof if i have something more fully insisted , it is not to be imputed to any vain credulity of mine , or that i take a pleasure in telling strange stories , b●t that i thought sit to fortify and strengthen the faith of others as much as i could ; being well assured that a contemptuous misbelief of such like narrations concerning spirits , and an endeavour of making them all ridiculous and incredible , is a dangerous prelude to atheisme it self , or else a more close and cra●ty profession or insinuation of it . for assuredly that saying was nothing so true in politicks , no bishop , no king ; as this is in m●taphysicks , no spirit , no god. a table of the chapters of each book . book i. i. the seasonable usefulness of the present discourse , or the motives that put the authour upon these indeavours of demonstrating that there is a god. 〈…〉 pag. ii. vvhat is meant by demonstrating there is a god , and that the mind of men , unless he do vi●lence to his faculties , will fully assent or dissent from that which notwithstanding may have a bare possibility of being otherwise . iii. an attempt towards the finding out the true notion or definition of god , and a clear conviction that there is an indelible idea of a being absolutely perfect in the mind of man. iv. vvhat notions are more particularly comprised in the idea of a being absolutely perfect . that the difficulty of framing the conception of a thing ought to be no argument against the existence thereof : the nature of corporeall matter being so perplex'd and intricate , which yet all men acknowledge to exist . that the idea of a spirit is as easy a notion as of any other substance what ever . what powers and properties are contain'd in the notion of a spirit . that eternity and infinity , if god were not ▪ would be cast upon something else ; so that atheisme cannot free the mind from such intricacies . goodness , knowledge and power , notions of highest perfection , and therefore necessarily included in the idea of a being absolutely perfect . v. that the soul of man is not abrasa tabula , and in what sense she might be said ever to have had the actuall knowledge of eternall truths in her . vi. that the soul of man has of herself actual knowledge in her , made good by sundry instances and arguments . vii . the mind of man being not unfurnish'd of innate truth , that we are with confidence to attend to her naturall and unprejudic'd dictates and suggestions . that some notions and truths are at least naturally and unavoidably assented unto by the soul , whether she have of her self actuall knowledge in her or not . and that the definition of a being absolutely perfect is such . and that this absolutely perfect being is god , the creatour and contriver of all things . viii . the first argument for the existence of god taken from the idea of god as it is representative of his nature and perfection . from whence also it is undeniably demonstrated that there can be no more gods then one. ix . the second argument from the idea of god as it is subjected in our souls , and is the fittest natural means imaginable to bring us to the knowledge of our maker . that bare possibility ought to have no power upon the mind , to either hasten or hinder it's assent in any thing . we being dealt with in all points as if there were a god , that naturally we are to conclude there is one . x. naturall conscience , and religious veneration , arguments of the existence of god. xi . of the nature of the soul of man , whether she be a mere modification of the body , or a substance really distinct , and then whether corporeal or incorporeal . the second book . i. the universall matter of the world be it homogeneall or heterogeneall , self-mov'd or resting of it self , that it can never be contriv'd into that order it is ●ithout the super-in●endency of a god. ii. the perpetuall parallelisme of the axis of the earth and its due proportion of inclination , as also the course of the moon crossing the ecliptick , evident arguments that the fluid matter is guided by a divine providence . the atheists sophisme of arguing from some petty inconsiderable effects of the motion of the matter , that the said motion is the cause of all things , seasonably detected and deservedly derided . iii. that rivers , quarries of stone , timber-wood , metalls , mineralls , and the magnet , considering the nature of man , what use he can make of them , are manifest signes that the rude motion of the matter is not left to it self , but is under the guidance and super-intendency of an all-wise god. iv. a further proof of divine providence taken from the sea , and the large train of causes laid together in reference to navigation . v. though the mere motion of the matter may do something , yet it will not amount to the production of plants and animalls . that it is no botch in nature that some phaenomena be the results of motion , others of substantiall formes . that beauty is not a mere phansy : and that the beauty of plants is an argument that they are from an intellectuall principle . vi. the seeds and signatures of plants , arguments of a divine providence . vii . arguments of divine providence drawn from the usefulnesse of plants . viii . the usefulnesse of animalls an argument of divine providence . ix . arguments of divine providence fetched from the pulchritude of animalls , as also from the manner of their propagation . x. the frame or fabrick of the bodies of animalls plainly argue that there is a god. xi . the particular frames of the bodies of fowls or birds palpable signes of divine providence . xii . vnavoydable arguments for divine providence taken from the accurate structure of mans body , from the passions of his mind , and fitnesse of the whole man to be an inhabiter of the universe . the third book . i. that , good m●n not alwayes faring best in this world , the great examples of divine vengeance upon wicked and blasphemous persons are not so convincing to the obstinate atheist . the irreligious jeares and sacrileges of dionys●us of syracuse . that there have been true miracles in the world as well as false , and what are the best and safest wayes to distinguish them that we may not be impos'd upon by history . ii. the moving of a sieve by a charme . coskinom●ncy . a magicall cure of an horse . the charming of serpents . a strange example of one death-strucken as he walked the streets . a story of a suddain winde that had like to have thrown down the gallows at the hanging of two witches . iii. that winds and tempests are raised upon mere ceremonies or forms of words prov'd by sundry examples . margaret war●e discharg'd upon an oake at a thunder-clap . amantius and rotarius cast headlong out of a cloud upon a house top . ●he witch of constance seen by the shepheards to ride through the aire . iii iv. super●atural effects observ'd in them that are bewitch'd and possess'd . the famous story of magdalena crucia . v. examples of bewitch'd persons that have had balls of haire , nayles , knives , wood stuck with pinns , pieces of cloth , and such like trash conveigh'd into their bodies , with examples also of other supernaturall effects . vi. the apparition eckerken . the story of the pyed piper . a triton or sea-god seen on the banks of rub●con . of the imps of witches , and whether those old women be guilty of so much do●age as the atheist fancies them . that such things passe betwixt them and their imps as are impossible to be imputed to melancholy . the examination of john winnick of molesworth . the reason of scaling covenants with the diveil . vii . the nocturnal conven●●les of witches ; that they have often d●ssolved and disappeared at the naming of the name of god or jesus christ ; and that the party thus speaking has found himself alone in the fields many miles from home . the dancing of men , women and cloven-footed satyres at mid-day ; john michaell piping from the bough of an oake , &c. viii . of fairy circles . a larger discussion of those controversies betwixt bodinus and remigius , viz. whether the bodyes of witches be really transformed into the shape of wolves and other creatures ; whether the souls of witches be not sometimes at those nocturnall conventicles , their bodies being left at home ; as also whether they leav● not their bodies in those extasies they put themselves in , when they promise to fetch certain newes from remote places in a very short time . ix . the coldnesse of those bodyes that spirits appear i● witnessed by the experience of cardan and bourgotus . the naturall reason of this coldnesse . that the divell does really lye with vvitches . that the very substance of spirits is not fire . spirits skirmishing on the ground . field sights and sea-fights seen in the aire . x. a very memorable story of a certain pious man , who had the continuall society of a guardian genius . xi . certain enquiries upon the preceding story ; as , what these guardian genii may be . whether one or more of them be allotted to every man , or to some none . what may be the reason of spirits so seldome appearing ; and whether they have any settled shape or no. what their manner is of assisting men in either devotion or prophecy . whether every mans complexion is capable of the society of a good genius . and lastly whether it be lawfull to pray to god to send such a genius or angel to one or no. xii . that whether the species of things have been from all eternity , or whether they rose out of the earth by degrees in time , the frame of them is such , that against all the evasions of the atheist they naturally imply that there is a god. xiii . that the evasions of the atheists against apparitions are so weak and silly , that it is an evident argument that they are convinced in their own judgements of the truth of these kinds of phaenomena , which forces them to answer as well as they can , though they be so ill provided . finis . the immortality of the soul, so farre forth as it is demonstrable from the knowledge of nature and the light of reason by henry more ... more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) the immortality of the soul, so farre forth as it is demonstrable from the knowledge of nature and the light of reason by henry more ... more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed by j. flesher, for william morden, london : . errata: p. 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instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng immortality. soul. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - john latta sampled and proofread - john latta text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the immortality of the soul , so farre forth as it is demonstrable from the knowledge of nature and the light of reason . by henry more fellow of christ's colledge in cambridge . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . pythag. quid jucundius quàm scire quid simus , quid fuerimus , quid erimus ; atque cum his etiam divina atque suprema illa post obitum mundíque vicissitudines ? cardanus . london , printed by i. flesher , for william morden bookseller in cambridge . . to the right honourable edward lord viscount conway and kilulta . my lord , though i be not ignorant of your lordships aversness from all addresses of this kinde , ( whether it be that your lordship has taken notice of that usual vanity of those that dedicate books , in endeavouring to oblige their patrons by over-lavish praises , such as much exceed the worth of the party they thus unmeasurably commend ; or whether it be from a natural modesty that cannot bear , no not so much as a just representation of your own vertues and abilities ; or lastly , from a most true observation , that there are very few treatises writ which are any thing more then meer transcriptions or collections out of other authors , whose writings have already been consecrated to the name and memory of some other worthy persons long since deceased ; so that they doe but after a manner rob the dead , to furnish themselves with presents to offer to the living ) yet notwithstanding this averseness of your lordship , or whatever grounds there may be surmised thereof , i could not abstain from making this present dedication . not so much i confess to gratify your lordship ( though it be none of the best complements ) as for mine own satisfaction and content . for i doe not take so great pleasure in any thing as in the sense and conscience of the fitness & sutableness of mine own actions ; amongst which i can finde none more exactly just & befitting then this ; there being many considerations that give you a peculiar right and title to the patronage of this present discourse . for besides your lordships skill in philosophy & real sense of piety , two such endowments as are rarely to be found together ( especially in persons of high quality ) and yet without which matters of this nature can neither be read with any relish nor easily understood ; there are also other things still more peculiar , & which naturally doe direct and determine me to the choice i have made . for whether i consider the many civilities from your self & nearest relations , especially from your noble & vertuous lady , whom i can never think on but with admiration , nor mention without the highest respect : or whether i recollect with my self the first occasion of busying my thoughts upon this subject , which was then when i had the honour and pleasure of reading des-cartes his passions with your lordship in the garden of luxenburg to pass away the time , ( in which treatise though there be nothing but what is handsome and witty , yet all did not seem so perfectly solid and satisfactory to me but that i was forced in some principal things to seek satisfaction from my self : ) or lastly , call to minde that pleasant retirement i enjoyed at ragley during my abode with your lordship ; my civil treatment there , from that perfect and unexceptionable pattern of a truly noble & christian matron , the right honourable your mother ; the solemness of the place , those shady walks , those hills & woods , wherein often having lost the sight of the rest of the world , and the world of me , i found out in that hidden solitude the choicest theories in the following discourse : i say , whether i considered all these circumstances , or any of them , i could not but judge them more then enough to determine my choice to so worthy a patron . nor could the above-mentioned surmises beat me from my design , as not at all reaching the present case . for as for my part , i am so great a lover of the truth , and so small an admirer of vulgar eloquence , that neither the presage of any gross advantage could ever make me stoop so low as to expose my self to the vile infamy or suspicion of turning flatterer , nor yet the tickling sense of applause & vain-glory , to affect the puffy name & title of an orator . so that your lord p might be secure as touching the first surmise . and verily for the second , though i confess i might not be at all averse frō making a just & true representation of your lordships vertues and accomplishments , yet considering the greatness of them , & the meanness of mine own rhetorick , i found it not so much as within my power , if i would , to entrench upon your lordships modesty ; and therefore i must leave it to some more able pen to do you & the world that right whether you will or no. and lastly , for that scruple concerning the theft or petty sacriledge of several plagiaries , who , as it were , rob the monuments of the dead to adorn the living ; it is the onely thing that i can without vanity profess , that what i offer to your lop. is properly my own , that is to say , that the invention , application and management of the reasons and arguments comprised in this book , whether for confutation or confirmation , is the genuine result of my own anxióus and thoughtful mind , no old stuff purloined or borrowed from other writers . what truth & solidity there is in my principles and reasonings were too great a piece of arrogance for me to predetermine . this must be left to the judgements of such free & discerning spirits as your lordship : with whom if what i have writ may find acceptance or a favourable censure , it will be the greater obligation & encouragement to , my lord , your honours humbly devoted servant henry more . the contents of the preface . . the title of the discourse how it is to be understood . . the authors submission of his whole treatise to the infallible rule of sacred writ . . a plain and compendious demonstration that matter consists of parts indiscerpible . . an answer to an objection touching his demonstration against the suns superintendency over the affairs of the earth . . a confirmation of mr. hobbs his opinion , that perception is really one with corporeal motion and reaction , if there be nothing but matter in the world. . an apologie for the vehicles of daemons and souls separate . . as also for his so punctually describing the state of the other life , and so curiously defining the nature of a particular spirit . . that his elysiums he describes are not at all sensual , but divine . . that he has not made the state of the wicked too easy for them in the other world . . that it is not one universal soule that hears , sees and reasons in every man , demonstrated from the acts of memory . . of the spirit of nature ; that it is no obscure principle , nor unseasonably introduced . . that he has absolutely demonstrated the existence thereof . . that the admission of that principle need be no hinderance to the progress of mechanick philosophy . . the great pleasure of that study to pious and rational persons . . of what concernment it would be if des-cartes were generally read in all the universities of christendome . . an excuse of the prolixity of his preface from his earnest desire of gratifying the publick , without the least offence to any rational or ingenuous spirit . that the present treatise may pass more freely and smoothly through the hands of men , without any offence or scruple to the good and pious , or any real exception or probable cavil from those whose pretensions are greater to reason then religion , i shall endeavour in this preface to prevent them , by bringing here into view , and more fully explaining and clearing whatever i conceive obnoxious to their mistakes and obloquies . . and indeed i cannot be well assured but that the very title of my discourse may seem liable to both their dislikes . to the dislike of the one , as being confident of the contrary conclusion , and therefore secure that that cannot be demonstrated to be true , which they have long since judged not worthy to be reckoned in the rank of things probable ; it may be not so much as of things possible . to the dislike of the other , as being already perswaded of the truth of our conclusion upon other and better grounds : which would not be better , if the natural light of reason could afford demonstration in this matter . and therefore they may haply pretend , that so ambitious a title seems to justle with the high prerogative of christianity , which has brought life and immortality to light . but of the former i demand , by what faculty they are made so secure of their being wholly mortal . for unless they will ridiculously conceit themselves inspired , when as they almost as little believe there is either god or spirit , as that they have in them an immortal soule , they must either pretend to the experience of sense , or the clearness of reason . the former whereof is impossible ; because these bold denyers of the immortality of the soule have not yet experienced whether we subsist after death or no. but if they would have us believe they have thus concluded upon rational grounds ; i dare appeale unto them , if they can produce any stronger reasons for their cause then what i have set down ( lib. . cap. . ) and if i have not fully and fundamentally answered them . if they will say their confidence proceeds from the weak arguings of the adverse party ; i answer , it is weakly done of them , ( their own arguments being as unconcluding as they can fancy their adversaries ) to be so secure , that truth is on their own part rather then on theirs . but this can touch onely such managements of this cause as they have seen already and censured . but that is nothing to me , who could never think i stood safe but upon my own leggs . wherefore i shall require them onely to peruse what i have written , before they venture to judge thereof ; and after they have read , if they will declare that i have not demonstrated the cause i have undertook , i think it reasonable & just , that they punctually shew in what part or joynt of my demonstration they discern so weak a coherence as should embolden them still to dissent from the conclusion . but to the other i answer with more modesty and submission , that the title of my book doth not necessarily imply any promise of so full and perfect a demonstration , that nothing can be added for the firmer assurance of the truth ; but onely that there may be expected as clear a proof as natural reason will afford us . from which they should rather inferre , that i doe acknowledge a further and a more palpable evidence comprehended in christian religion , and more intelligible and convictive to the generality of the world , who have neither leisure nor inclination to deal with the spinosities and anxieties of humane reason and philosophy . but i declined the making use of that argument at this time ; partly because i have a design to speak more fully thereof in my treatise of the mystery of christian religion , if god so permit ; and partly because it was unsutable to the present title , which pretends to handle the matter onely within the bounds of natural light , unassisted and unguided by any miraculous revelation . . which will be a pleasant spectacle to such as have a genius to these kinde of contemplations , and wholly without danger ; they still remembring that it is the voice of reason & nature ( which being too subject to corruption may very well be defectuous or erroneous in some things ) and therefore never trusting their dictates and suggestions , where they clash with the divine oracles , they must needs be safe from all seduction : though , i profess , i doe not know any thing which i assert in this treatise that doth disagree with them . but if any quicker-sighted then my self do discover any thing not according to that rule , it may be an occasion of humble thankfulness to god for that great priviledge of our being born under an higher and exacter light : whereby those that are the most perfectly exercis'd therein , are inabled as well to rectify what is perverse , as to supply what is defectuous in the light of nature ; and they have my free leave afore-hand to doe both throughly all along the ensuing discourse . and this may serve by way of a more general defence . but that nothing may be wanting , i shall descend to the making good also of certain particulars , as many as it is of any consequence further to clear and confirme . . in the first book there occurre onely these two that i am aware of . the one concerning the centre of a particular spirit , whose idea i have described , and demonstrated possible . the other concerns my demonstration of the impossibility of the suns seeing any thing upon earth , supposing him meerly corporeal . in the making good the former , i have taken the boldness to assert , that matter consists of parts indiscerpible , understanding by indiscerpible parts , particles that have indeed real extension , but so little , that they cannot have less and be any thing at all , and therefore cannot be actually divided . which minute extension , if you will , you may call essential ( as being such that without that measure of it , the very being of matter cannot be conserved ) as the extension of any matter compounded of these you may , if you please , term integral ; these parts of this compounded matter being actually and really separable one from another . the assertion , i confess , cannot but seem paradoxical at first sight , even to the ingenious and judicious . but that there are such indiscerpible particles into which matter is divisible , viz. such as have essential extension , and yet have parts utterly inseparable , i shall plainly and compendiously here demonstrate ( besides what i have said in the treatise it self ) by this short syllogism . that which is actually divisible so farre as actual division any way can be made , is divisible into parts indiscerpible . but matter ( i mean that integral or compound matter ) is actually divisible as farre as actual division any way can be made . it were a folly to goe to prove either my proposition or assumption , they being both so clear , that no common notion in euclide is more clear , into which all mathematical demonstrations are resolved . it cannot but be confessed therefore , that matter consists of indiscerpible particles , and that physically and really it is not divisible in infinitum , though the parts that constitute an indiscerpible particle are real , but divisible onely intellectually ; it being of the very essence of whatsoever is , to have parts or extension in some measure or other . for , to take away all extension , is to reduce a thing onely to a mathematical point , which is nothing else but pure negation or non-entity ; and there being no medium betwixt extended and not-extended , no more then there is betwixt entity and non-entity , it is plain that if a thing be at all , it must be extended . and therefore there is an essential extension belonging to these indiscerpible particles of matter ; which was the other property which was to be demonstrated . i know unruly fancy will make mad work here , and clamour against the conclusion as impossible . for finite extension ( will she say ) must needs have figure , and figure extuberancy of parts at such a distance , that we cannot but conceive them still actually divisible . but we answer , that when matter is once actually divided as farre as possibly it can , it is a perfect contradiction it should be divided any further ; as it is also that it cannot be divided actually as farre as it can actually be divided . and no stronger demonstration then this against them can be brought against us by either fancy or reason : and therefore supposing we were but equal in our reasoning , this is enough to give me the day , who onely contend for the possibility of the thing . for if i bring but fully as good demonstration that it is , as the other that it is not , none can deny me but that the thing is possible on my side . but to answer the above-recited argument , though they can never answer ours , i say , those indiscerpible particles of matter have no figure at all : as infinite greatness has no figure , so infinite littleness has none also . and a cube infinitely little in the exactest sense , is as perfect a contradiction as a cube infinitely great in the same sense of infinity : for the angles would be equal in magnitude to the hedrae thereof . besides , wise men are assured of many things that their fancy cannot but play tricks with them in ; as in the infinity of duration and of matter , or at least of space . of the truth whereof though they are never so certain , yet if they consider this infinite matter , space , or duration , as divided , suppose , into three equal parts ( all which must needs be infinite , or else the whole will not be so ) the middle part of each will seem both finite and infinite ; for it is bounded at both ends . but every thing has two handles , as epictetus notes ; and he is a fool that will burn his fingers with the hot handle , when he may hold safe by the other that is more tractable and cool . . concerning my demonstration of the impossibility of the suns being a spectator of our particular affairs upon earth , there is onely this one objection , viz. that though the sun indeed , by reason of his great distance , cannot see any particular thing upon earth , if he kept always in that ordinary shape in which we should suppose that , if he were devoid of sense , he would doe ; yet he having life and perception , he may change some part of his body ( as we doe our eye in contracting or dilating the pupil thereof ) into so advantageous a figure , that the earth may be made to appear to him as bigge as he pleases . though some would be more ready to laugh at , then answer to , so odde a surmise , which supposes the sun blinking and peering so curiously into our affairs , as through a telescope ; yet because it comes in the way of reasoning , i shall have the patience seriously to return this reply . first , that this objection can pretend to no strength at all , unless the body of the sun were organical , as ours is ; when as he is nothing but fluid light : so that unless he hath a spiritual being in him , to which this light should be but the vehicle , this arbitrarious figuring of his fluid matter cannot be effected . but to grant that there is any such incorporeal substance in the sun , is to yield me what i contend for , viz. that there are immaterial substances in the world. but that there is no such divine principle in him , whereby he can either see us , or aim at the producing any apparition on the earth in reference to any one of us , by the activity of that spirit in him , it is apparent from the scum and spots that lie on him . which is as great an argument that there is no such divinity in him as some would attribute to him , ( such as pomponatius , cardan , vaninus and others ) as the dung of owls and sparrows , that is found on the faces and shoulders of idols in temples , are clear evidences that they are but dead images , no true deities . lastly , though we should suppose he had a particular sentient and intelligent spirit in him , yet the consideration of the vast distance of the earth from him , and the thickness of her atmosphere , with other disadvantages i have already mentioned in my treatise , makes it incredible that he should be able to frame his body into any figure so exquisite as will compensate these insuperable difficulties . . in my second book the first exception is concerning the . axiome , which , say they , i have not proved , but onely brought in the testimony of mr. hobbs for the support thereof ; which therefore onely enables me to argue with him upon his own principles , wherein others will hold themselves unconcerned . but i answer , first , that it will concern all his followers as well as himself , so that it is no contemptible victory to demonstrate against all those so confident exploders of immaterial substances , that their own acknowledged principles will necessarily inferre the existence of them in the world. but in the next place , it will not be hard to produce undeniable reasons to evince the truth of the above-named axiome , viz. that sense and perception in matter , supposing nothing but matter in the world , is really the same with corporeal motion and reaction . for it is plain in sensation , there being alwayes external motion from objects when our senses are affected . and that inward cogitation is thus performed , appears from the heat that thinking casts a man into : wherefore generally all cogitation is accompanied with motion corporeal . and if there be nothing but body or matter in the world , cogitation it self is really the same thing with corporeal motion . moreover as in sensation the corporeal motion is first , and perception followes , so it is necessary that universally in all internal cogitations also certain corporeal motions immediately precede those perceptions , though we did admit that matter moved it self : for no sense would thence arise without resistence of something it his against . insomuch that the subtilest matter unresisted or not imprest upon , would be no more capable of cogitation then a wedge of gold , or pig of lead . and therefore if we will but confess ( what none but mad men will venture to deny ) that a pig of lead or wedge of gold has not any thought or perception at all without some knock or allision proportionable to their bigness and solidity , the subtilest matter must likewise have none without some proportionable impression or resistance . whence it is plain that alwaies corporeal reaction or collision precedes perception , and that every perception is a kind of feeling , which lasts so long as this resistence or impress of motion lasts , but that ceasing is extinguish'd , the matter being then as stupid as in a pig of lead . and that therefore as in general there is alwaies corporeal motion where there is cogitation , so the diversification of this motion and collision causes the diversification of cogitations , and so they run hand in hand perpetually , the one never being introduced without the fore-leading of the other , nor lasting longer then the other lasteth . but as heat is lost ( which implies a considerable motion or agitation of some very subtile matter , ) so our understanding and imagination decayes , and our senses themselves fail , as not being able to be moved by the impression of outward objects , or as not being in a due degree of liquidity and agility , and therefore in death our bodies become as senseless as a lump of clay . all sensation therefore and perception is really the same with motion and reaction of matter , if there be nothing but matter in the world . and that every piece of matter must perceive according as it self is moved , whether by it self ( if it were possible ) or by corporeal impress from other parts , is plain , in that matter has no subtile rayes , or any power or efflux streaming beyond it self , like that which the schools call species intentionales , nor yet any union more mysterious then the meer juxta-position of parts . for hence it is manifest that there can be no communication of any impress that one part of the matter receives or is affected with from another at a distance , but it must be by jogging or crouding the parts interjacent . so that in every regard corporeal motion or reaction , with sufficient tenuity of parts and due duration , will be the adaequate cause of all perception , if there be nothing but matter in the world . this i think may suffice to assure any indifferent man of the truth of this part of mr. hobbs his assertion , if himself could make the other part true , that there is nothing existent in nature but what is purely corporeal . but out of the former part , which is his own acknowledged principle , i have undeniably demonstrated that there is . . the other exception is against that opinion i seem to embrace touching the vehicles of daemons and souls separate , as having herein offended against the authority of the schooles . and i profess this is all the reason i can imagine that they can have against my assertion . but they may , if they please , remember that the schooles trespass against a more antient authority then themselves , that is to say , the pythagoreans , platonists , jewish doctours , and the fathers of the church , who all hold that even the purest angels have corporeal vehïcles . but it will be hard for the schools to alledge any antient authority for their opinion . for aristotle their great oracle is utterly silent in this matter , as not so much as believing the existence of daemons in the world ( as pomponatius and vaninus his sworn disciples have to their great contentment taken notice of . ) and therefore being left to their own dry subtilties , they have made all intellectual beings that are not grossly terrestrial , as man is , purely immaterial . whereby they make a very hideous chasme or gaping breach in the order of things , such as no moderate judgment will ever allow of , and have become very obnoxious to be foyled by atheistical wits , who are forward and skilful enough to draw forth the absurd consequences that lye hid in false suppositions , as vaninus does in this . for he does not foolishly collect from the supposed pure immateriality of daemons , that they have no knowledge of particular things upon earth ; such purely incorporeal essences being uncapable of impression from corporeal objects , and therefore have not the species of any particular thing that is corporeal in their minde . whence he infers that all apparitions , prophecies , prodigies , and whatsoever miraculous is recorded in antient history , is not to be attributed to these , but to the influence of the stars , and so concludes that there are indeed no such things as daemons in the universe . by which kinde of reasoning also it is easy for the psychopannychites to support their opinion of the sleep of the soule . for the soule being utterly rescinded from all that is corporeal , and having no vital union therewith at all , they will be very prone to infer , that it is impossible she should know any thing ad extrà , if she can so much as dream . for even that power also may seem incompetible to her in such a state , she having such an essential aptitude for vital union with matter . of so great consequence is it sometimes to desert the opinion of the schooles , when something more rational and more safe and useful offers it self unto us . . these are the main objections my first and second book seem liable unto . my last i cannot but suspect to be more obnoxious . but the most common exception i foresee that will be against it , is , that i have taken upon me to describe the state of the other world so punctually and particularly , as if i had been lately in it . for over-exquisiteness may seem to smel of art and fraud . and as there is a diffidency many times in us ▪ when we hear something that is extremely sutable to our desire , being then most ready to think it too good to be true ; so also in notions that seem over-accurately fitted to our intellectual faculties , and agree the most naturally therewith , we are prone many times to suspect them to be too easy to be true ; especially in things that seemed at first to us very obscure and intricate . for which cause also it is very likely that the notion of a particular spirit , which i have so accurately described in my first book , cap. , , . may seem the less credible to some , because it is now made so clearly intelligible , they thinking it utterly improbable that these things , that have been held alwaies such inextricable perplexities , should be thus of a suddain made manifest and familiar to any that has but a competency of patience and reason to peruse the theory . but for my own part , i shall not assume so much to my self , as peremptorily to affirm that the indiscerpibility of a spirit arises that way that i have set down , that is to say , that god has made a particular spirit just in that manner that i have delineated . for his wisdome is infinite , and therefore it were an impious piece of boldness to confine him to one certain way of framing the nature of a being , that is , of endowing it with such attributes as are essential to it , as indiscerpibility is to the soule of man. but onely to have said in general , it is possible there may be a particular essence of its immediate nature penetrable & indiscerpible , and not particularly to have described the manner how it may be so , might have seemed to many more slight and unsatisfactory , deceit lurking in universals , as the proverb has it . and therefore for the more fully convincing of the adverse party , i thought fit to pitch upon a punctual description of some one way , how the soule of man or of a daemon may be conceived necessarily indiscerpible , though dilatable ; not being very sollicitous whether it be just that way or no , but yet well assured that it is either that way or some better . but this one way shewes the thing possible at large : ( as that mean contrivance of an indian canoa might prove the possibility of navigation . ) and that is all that i was to aime at in that place . so in my description of the state of the other world , i am not very sollicitous whether things be just so as i have set them down , but because some men utterly misbelieve the thing , because they can frame no particular conceit what the receptions and entertains of those aerial inhabitants may be , or how they pass away their time , with many other intricacies which use to entangle this theory ; i thought it of main concernment to take away this objection against the life to come ( viz. that no man can conceive what it is , and therefore it is not at all , which is the ordinary exception also against the existence of all incorporeal substances ) by a punctual and rational description of this future state . which i exhibite to the world as an intelligible hypothesis , and such as may very wel be , even according to the dictates of our own faculties , being in the mean time fully assured , that things are either thus , or after a better or more exact order . but , as i said , to propound some particular probable way , i thought it of no small service to those who totally distrust all these things for that reason mainly , as being such as we can make no rational representation of to the understandings of men . . but there are also particular objections . the first whereof is against our aerial and aethereal elysiums , which forsooth , to make their reproach more witty , they will parallel with the mahometan paradise . but besides that i doe in the very place where i treat of these things suspend my assent after the description of them , there is nothing there offered in their description , but , if it were assented to , might become the most refined spirit in the world. for there is nothing more certain then that the love of god and our neighbour is the greatest happiness that we can arrive unto either in this life or that which is to come . and whatever things are there described , are either the causes , effects , or concomitants of that noble and divine passion . neither are the external incitements thereto , which i there mention , rightly to be deemed sensual , but intellectual : for even such is also sensible beauty , whether it shew it self in feature , musick , or whatever graceful deportments and comely actions , as plotinus has well defined . and those things that are not properly intellectual , suppose odours and sapours , yet such a spirit may be transfused into the vehicles of these aerial inhabitants thereby , that may more then ordinarily raise into act their intellectual faculties . which he that observes how our thoughts and inclinations depend immediately on a certain subtile matter in our bodies , will not at all stick to acknowledge to be true . and therefore whatever our elysiums seem to the rash and injudicious , they are really no other thing then pure paradises of intellectual pleasure , divine love and blameless friendship being the onely delight of those places . . the next objection is concerning the state of the wicked , as if i had made their condition too easy for them . but this methinks any man might be kept off from , if he would but consider , that i make the rack of conscience worse then a perpetually-repeated death . which is too too credible to come to pass there , when as we finde what execution passions will doe upon us even in this life ; the sicilian tyrants having not found out a more exquisite torture then they . and as for those souls that have lost the sense of conscience , if any can doe so , i have allotted other punishments that are more corporeal , and little inferiour to the fire of that great hell that is prophesied of , as the portion of the devils and the damned at the last day . by which neither then nor before could they be tortured ( if we appeal to humane reason , whom alone we appeal to , as judge , in this treatise ) if they were not vitally united with corporeal vehicles . . the two last exceptions are , the one touching the soul of the world , the other the spirit of nature . the first is against our over-favourable representation of their opinion , that make but one soul in the whole universe , induing her with sense , reason , and understanding : which soul they will have to act in all animals , daemons themselves not excepted . in all which , say they , it is one and the same universal soul that hears , sees , reasons , understands , &c. this opinion i think i have confuted lib. . cap. . as sufficiently as any one error can be confuted in all natural philosophy . and that favourable representation i have made there of it , sect. . has that in it , whereby , unless a man be very remiss and mindless , he may easily demonstrate the falsness of the supposition . for though we may well enough imagine how , the body being unchanged , and this soul of the universe exquisitely the same every where , that though the party change place , and shift into another part of the soul of the world , he may retain the same opinions , imaginations and reasonings , so farre forth as they depend not on memory ( this universal soul raising her self into the same thoughts upon the same occasions ; ) yet memory is incompetible unto that part which has not had the perception before of what is remembred . for there is necessarily comprehended in memory a sense or perception that we have had a perception or sense afore of the thing which we conceive our selves to remember . to be short therefore , and to strike this opinion dead at one stroke ; they that say there is but one soule of the world , whose perceptive power is every where , they must assert , that what one part thereof perceives , all the rest perceives ; or else that perceptions in daemons , men and brutes are confined to that part of this soul that is in them , while they perceive this or that . if the former , they are confutable by sense and experience . for though all animals lie steeped , as it were , in that subtile matter which runs through all things , and is the immediate instrument of sense and perception ; yet we are not conscious of one anothers thoughts , nor feel one anothers pains , nor the pains and pleasures of brutes , when they are in them at the highest . nor yet doe the daemons feel one anothers affections , or necessarily assent to one anothers opinions , though their vehicles be exceeding pervious ; else they would be all avenroists , as well as those that appeared to facius cardanus , supposing any were . wherefore we may generally conclude , that if there were such an universal soul , yet the particular perceptions thereof are restrained to this or that part in which they are made : which is contrary to the unity of a soul , as i have already said in its due place . but let us grant the thing ( for indeed we have demonstrated it to be so , if there be such an universal soule and none but it ) then the grand absurdity comes in , which i was intimating before , to wit , that that part of the soule of the world that never perceived a thing , shall notwithstanding remember it , that is to say , that it shall perceive it has perceived that which it never perceived : and yet one at japan may remember a countrieman arrived thither that he had not seen nor thought of for twenty years before . nay , which is more to the purpose , supposing the earth move , what i write now , the earth being in the beginning of aries , i shall remember that i have written when she is in the beginning of libra , though that part of the soule of the world that possesses my body then will be twice as distant from what does guide my hand to write now , as the earth is from the sun. wherefore it is plain that such an universal soule will not salve all phaenomena , but there must be a particular soule in every man. and yet i dare say , this wilde opinion is more tenable then theirs that make nothing but meer matter in the world . but i thought it worth the while with all diligence to confute them both , the better of them being but a more refined kinde of atheisme , tending to the subversion of all the fundamentals of religion and piety amongst men . . as for the spirit of nature , the greatest exceptions are , that i have introduced an obscure principle for ignorance and sloth to take sanctuary in , and so to enervate or foreslack the usefull endeavours of curious wits , and hinder that expected progress that may be made in the mechanick philosophy ; and this , to aggravate the crime , before a competent search be made what the mechanical powers of matter can doe . for what mechanical solutions the present or foregoing ages could not light upon , the succeeding may ; and therefore it is as yet unseasonable to bring in any such principle into natural philosophy . to which i answer , that the principle we speak of is neither obscure nor unseasonable ; nor so much introduced by me , as forced upon me by in vitable evidence of reason . that it is no obscure principle , the clear description i have given of it , lib. . cap. . will make good . those that pretend that the introduction thereof is unseasonable , i demand of them when they will think it to be seasonable . for this simple surmise , that although all the mechanical solutions of some phaenomena which have been hitherto offer'd to the world be demonstrably false , yet future ages may light upon what is true , can be held nothing else by the judicious , but a pittiful subterfuge of fearful souls , that are very loath to let in any such affrightful notion as an immaterial or spiritual substance into the world , for fear the next step must be the acknowledgment also of a god ; from whom they would fain hide themselves by this poore and precarious pretence . but i say , if the introduction of this principle be not seasonable now , it will never be seasonable . for that admirable master of mechanicks des-cartes has improved this way to the highest , i dare say , that the wit of man can reach to in such phaenomena as he has attempted to render the causes of . but how in sundry passages he falls short in his account , i have both in the forenamed and following chapter , as also elsewhere , taken notice . i will instance here onely in the phaenomenon of gravity , wherein i think i have perfectly demonstrated that both he and mr. hobbs are quite out of the story , and that the causes they assign are plainly false . and that i have not mentioned the opinions of others in this way , it was onely because i lookt upon them as less considerable . . but you 'l say that though these be all mistaken , yet it does not follow but that there may arise some happy wit that will give a true mechanical solution of this probleme . but i answer , that i have not onely confuted their reasons , but also from mechanical principles granted on all sides and confirmed by experience , demonstrated that the descent suppose of a stone or bullet or any such like heavy body is enormously contrary to the lawes of mechanicks , and that according to them they would necessarily , if they lye loose , recede from the earth , and be carried away out of our sight into the farthest parts of the aire , if some power more then mechanical did not curbe that motion , and force them downwards towards the earth . so that it is plain that we have not arbitrariously introduced a principle , but that it is forced upon us by the undeniable evidence of demonstration . from which to suspend our assent till future ages have improved this mechanical philosophy to greater height , is as ridiculous , as to doubt of the truth of any one plain and easy demonstration in the first book of euclide , till we have travelled through the whole field of that immense study of mathematicks . . nor lastly needs the acknowledgment of this principle to damp our endeavours in the search of the mechanical causes of the phaenomena of nature , but rather make us more circumspect to distinguish what is the result of the meer mechanical powers of matter and motion , and what of an higher principle . for questionless this secure presumption in some , that there is nothing but matter in the world , has emboldned them too rashly to venture on mechanical solutions where they would not hold , because they were confident there were no other solutions to be had but those of this kinde . . besides that to the rational and religious there is a double pleasure to carry them on in this way of philosophy : the one from the observation how far in every thing the concatenation of mechanical causes will reach , which will wonderfuly gratify their reason ; the other from a distinct deprehension where they must needs break off , as not being able alone to reach the effect , which necessarily leads them to a more confirmed discovery of the principle we contend for , namely the spirit of nature , which is the vicarious power of god upon the matter , and the first step to the abstrusest mysteries in natural theologie ; which must needs highly gratify them in point of religion . . and truly for this very cause , i think it is the most sober and faithful advice that can be offered to the christian world , that they would encourage the reading of des-cartes ' in all publick schools or universities . that the students of philosophy may be throughly exercised in the just extent of the mechanical powers of matter , how farre they will reach , and where they fall short . which will be the best assistance to religion that reason and the knowledge of nature can afford . for by this means such as are intended to serve the church will be armed betimes with sufficient strength to grapple with their proudest deriders or opposers . whenas for want of this , we see how liable they are to be contemned and born down by every bold though weak pretender to the mechanick philosophy . . these are the main passages i could any way conceive might be excepted against in the ensuing discourse : which yet are so innocent and firm in themselves , and so advantageously circumstantiated in the places where they are found , that i fear the reader may suspect my judgement and discretion in putting my self to the trouble of writing , and him of reading , so long and needless a preface . which oversight though it be an argument of no great wit , yet it may be of much humanity , and of an earnest desire of doing a publick good without the least offence or dis-satisfaction to any that are but tolerable retainers to reason and ingenuity . but for those that have bid adieu to both , and measure all truths by their own humoursome fancy , making every thing ridiculous that is not sutable to their own ignorant conceptions ; i think no serious man will hold himself bound to take notice of their perverse constructions and mis-representations of things , more then a religious eremite or devout pilgrim to heed the ugly mows and grimaces of apes and monkies he may haply meet with in his passage through the wilderness . the immortality of the soule . chap. i. . the usefulness of the present speculation for the understanding of providence , and the management of our lives for our greatest happiness ; . for the moderate bearing the death and disasters of our friends ; . for the begetting true magnanimitie in us , . and peace and tranquillitie of minde . . that so weighty a theory is not to be handled perfunctorily . . of all the speculations the soul of man can entertain her self withall , there is none of greater moment , or of closer concernment to her , then this of her own immortality , and independence on this terrestriall body . for hereby not onely the intricacies and perplexities of providence are made more easy and smooth to her , and she becomes able , by unravelling this clue from end to end , to pass and repass safe through this labyrinth , wherein many both anxious and careless spirits have lost themselves ; but also ( which touches her own interest more particularly ) being once raised into the knowledge and belief of so weighty a conclusion , she may view from this prospect the most certain and most compendious way to her own happiness ; which is , the bearing a very moderate affection to what ever tempts her , during the time of this her pilgrimage , and a carefull preparing of her self for her future condition , by such noble actions and heroicall qualifications of mind , as shall render her most welcome to her own countrey . . which belief and purpose of hers will put her in an utter incapacity of either envying the life or successes of her most imbittered enemies , or of over-lamenting the death or misfortunes of her dearest friends ; she having no friends but such as are friends to god and vertue , and whose afflictions will prove advantages for their future felicitie , and their departure hence a passage to present possession thereof . . wherefore , being fully grounded and rooted in this so concerning a perswasion , she is freed from all poore & abject thoughts and designes ; and as little admires him that gets the most of this world , be it by industry , fortune or policie , as a discreet and serious man does the spoiles of school-boyes , it being very inconsiderable to him , who got the victory at cocks or cob-nut , or whose bag returned home the fullest stuffed with counters or cherry-stones . . she has therefore no aemulation , unless it be of doing good , and of out-stripping , if it were possible , the noblest examples of either the present or past ages ; nor any contest , unless it be with her self , that she has made no greater proficiency towards the scope she aimes at : and aiming at nothing but what is not in the power of men to confer upon her , with courage she sets upon the main work ; and being still more faithfull to her self , and to that light that assists her , at last tasts the first fruits of her future harvest , and does more then presage that great happiness that is accrewing to her . and so quit from the troubles and anxieties of this present world , staies in it with tranquillitie and content , and at last leaves it with joy. . the knowledge therefore and belief of the immortalitie of the soule being of so grand importance , we are engaged more carefully and punctually to handle this so weighty a theory : which will not be performed by multiplying of words , but by a more frugall use of them , letting nothing fall from our pen , but what makes closely to the matter , nor omitting any thing materiall for the evincing the truth thereof . chap. ii. . that the soules immortality is demonstrable , by the authors method , to all but mee● scepticks . . an illustration of his firs● axiome . . a confirmation and example o● the second . . an explication of the third . . an explication and proof of the fourth . . a proof of the fifth . . of the sixth . . an example of the seventh . . a confirmation of the truth of the eighth . . a demonstration and example of the ninth . . penetrability the immediate proper●● of incorporeall substance . . as also indiscerpibility . . a proof and illustration of the tenth axiome . . and to stop all creep-holes , and leave no place for the subterfuges and evasions of confused and cavilling spirits , i shall prefix some few axiomes , of tha● plainness and evidence , that no man in his wits but will be ashamed to deny them , if he will admit any thing at all to be true . but as for perfect scepticisme , it is a disease incurable , and a thing rather to be pittied or laught at , then seriously opposed . for when a man is so fugitive and unsetled , that he will not stand to the verdict of his own faculties , one can no more fasten any thing upon him , then he can write in the water , or tye knots of the wind . but for those that are not in such a strange despondency , but that they think they know something already and may learn more , i doe not doubt , but by a seasonable recourse to these few . rules , with others i shall set down in their due place , that they will be perswaded , if not forced , to reckon this truth , of the immortality of the soul , amongst such as must needs appear undeniable to those that have parts and leisure enough accurately to examine , and throughly to understand what i have here written for the demonstration thereof . axiome i. what ever things are in themselves , they are nothing to us , but so far forth as they become known to our faculties or cognitive powers . . this axiome is plain of it self , at the very first proposal . for as nothing , for example , can concern the visive faculty , but so far forth as it is visible ; so there is nothing that can challenge any stroak to so much as a touching , much less determining our cognitive powers in generall , but so far forth as it is cognoscible . axiome ii. whatsoever is unknown to us , or is known but as meerly possible , is not to move us , or determine us any way , or make us undetermined ; but we are to rest in the present light and plain determination of our owne faculties . . this is an evident consectary from the foregoing axiome . for the existence of that that is meerly possible is utterly unknown to us to be , and therefore is to have no weight against any conclusion , unless we will condemn our selves to eternall scepticisme . as for example , if after a man has argued for a god and providence , from the wise contrivance in the frame of all the bodyes of animals upon earth , one should reply , that there may be , for all this , animals in saturn , jupiter , or some other of the planets , of very inept fabricks ; horses , suppose , and other creatures , with onely one eye , and one eare , and that both on a side , the eye placed also where the ear should be , and with onely three leggs ; bulls and rams with horns on their backs , and the like : such allegations as these , according to this axiome , are to be held of no force at all for the enervating the conclusion . see my antidote against atheisme , lib. . cap. . and . axiome iii. all our faculties have not a right of suffrage for determining of truth , but onely common notions , externall sense , and evident and undeniable deductions of reason . . by common notions i understand what ever is noematically true , that is to say , true at first sight to all men in their wits , upon a clear perception of the terms , without any further discourse or reasoning . from externall sense i exclude not memory , as it is a faithfull register thereof . and by undeniable deduction of reason , i mean such a collection of one truth from another , that no man can discover any looseness or disjoyntedness in the cohaesion of the argument . axiome iv. what is not consonant to all or some of these , is meer fancy , and is of no moment for the evincing of truth or falsehood , by either it's vigour or perplexiveness . . i say meer fancy , in counter-distinction to such representations as , although they be not the pure impresses of some reall object , yet are made by rationall deduction from them , or from common notions , or from both . those representations that are not framed upon such grounds , i call meer fancies ; which are of no value at all in determining of truth . for if vigour of fancy will argue a thing true , then all the dreams of mad-men must goe for oracles : and if the perplexiveness of imagination may hinder assent , we must not believe mathematicall demonstration , and the . proposition of the d book of euclide will be confidently concluded to contain a contradiction . see my antidote lib. cap. . axiome v. whatever is clear to any one of these three faculties , is to be held undoubtedly true , the other having nothing to evidence to the contrary . . or else a man shall not be assured of any sensible object that he meets with , nor can give firm assent to such truths as these , it is impossble the same thing should be , and not be , at once ; whatever is , is either finite , or infinite ; and the like . axiome vi. what is rejected by one , none of the other faculties giving evidence for it , ought to goe for a falsehood . . or else a man may let pass such impossibilities as these for truth , or doubt whether they be not true or no , viz. the part is greater then the whole ; there is something that is neither finite nor infinite . socrates is invisible ; and the like . axiome vii . what is plainly and manifestly concluded , ought to be held undeniable , when no difficulties are alledged against it , but such as are acknowledged to be found in other conclusions held by all men undeniably true . . as for example , suppose one should conclude , that there may be infinite matter , or , that there is infinite space , by very rationall arguments ; and that it were objected onely , that then the tenth part of that matter would be infinite ; it being most certain that there is infinite duration of something or other in the world , and that the tenth part of this duration is infinite ; it is no enervating at all of the former conclusion , it being incumbred with no greater incongruitie then is acknowledged to consist with an undeniable truth . axiome viii . the subject , or naked essence or substance of a thing , is utterly unconceivable to any of our faculties . . for the evidencing of this truth , there needs nothing more then a silent appeal to a mans owne mind , if he doe not find it so ; and that if he take away all aptitudes , operations , properties and modifications from a subject , that his conception thereof vanishes into nothing , but into the idea of a meer undiversificated substance ; so that one substance is not then distinguishable from another , but onely from accidents or modes , to which properly belongs no subsistence . axiome ix there are some properties , powers and operations , immediately appertaining to a thing , of which no reasons can be given , nor ought to be demanded , nor the way or manner of the cohaesion of the attribute with the subject can by any meanes be fancyed or imagined . . the evidence of this axiome appeares from the former . for if the naked substance of a thing be so utterly unconceiveable , there can be nothing deprehended there to be a connexion betwixt it and it's first properties . such is actuall divisibility and impenetrability in matter . by actuall divisibility i understand discerpibility , gross tearing or cutting one part from another . these are immediate properties of matter , but why they should be there , rather then in any other subject , no man can pretend to give , or with any credit aske the reason . for immediate attributes are indemonstrable , otherwise they would not be immediate . . so the immediate properties of a spirit or immateriall substance are penetrability and indiscerpibility . the necessary cohaesion of which attributes with the subject is as little demonstrable as the former . for supposing that , which i cannot but assert , to be evidently true , that there is no substance but it has in some sort or other the three dimensions ; this substance , which we call matter , might as well have been penetrable as impenetrable , and yet have been substance : but now that it does so certainly and irresistibly keep one part of it self from penetrating another , it is so , we know not why . for there is no necessary connexion discernible betwixt substance with three dimensions , and impenetrability . for what some alledge , that it implyes a contradiction , that extended substance should run one part into another ; for so part of the extension , and consequently of the substance , would be lost ; this , i say , ( if nearly looked into ) is of no force . for the substance is no more lost in this case , then when a string is doubled and redoubled , or a piece of wax reduced from a long figure to a round : the dimension of longitude is in some part lost , but without detriment to the substance of the wax . in like manner when one part of an extended substance runs into another , something both of longitude , latitude and profundity may be lost , and yet all the substance there still ; as well as longitude lost in the other case without any loss ▪ of the substance . and as what was lost in longitude was gotten in latitude or profundity before , so what is lost here in all or any two of the dimensions , is kept safe in essential spissitude . for so i will call this mode or property of a substance , that is able to receive one part of it self into another . which fourth mode is as easy and familiar to my understanding , as that of the three dimensions to my sense or fancy ▪ for i mean nothing else by spissitude , but the redoubling or contracting of substance into less space then it does sometimes occupy . and analogous to this is the lying of two substances of several kindes in the same place at once . to both these may be applied the termes of reduplication and saturation : the former when essence or substance is but once redoubled into it self or into another ; the latter when so oft , that it will not easily admit any thing more . and that more extensions then one may be commensurate , at the same time , to the same place , is plain , in that motion is coextended with the subject wherein it is , and both with space . and motion is not nothing ; wherefore two things may be commensurate to one space at once . . now then extended substance ( and all substances are extended ) being of it self indifferent to penetrability or impenetrability , and we finding one kind of substance so impenetrable , that one part will not enter at all into another ( which with as much reason we might expect to find so irresistibly united one part with another that nothing in the world could dissever them . for this indiscerpibility has as good a connexion with substance as impenetrability has , they neither falling under the cognoscence of reason or demonstration , but being immediate attributes of such a subject . for a man can no more argue from the extension of substance , that it is discerpible , then that it is penetrable ; there being as good a capacity in extension for penetration as discerption ) i conceive , i say , from hence we may as easily admit that some substance may be of it self indiscerpible , as well as others impenetrable ; and that as there is one kind of substance , which of it's own nature is impenetrable and discerpible , so there may be another indiscerpible and penetrable . neither of which a man can give any other account of , then that they have the immediate properties of such a subject . axiome x. the discovery of some power , property , or operation , incompetible to one subject , is an infallible argument of the existence of some other , to which it must be competible . . as when pythagoras was spoken unto by the river nessus , when he passed over it , and a tree by the command of thespesion the chief of the gymnosophists saluted apollonius in a distinct and articulate voice , but small as a womans ; it is evident , i say , that there was something there that was neither river nor tree , to which these salutations must be attributed , no tree nor river having any faculty of reason nor speech . chap. iii. . the general notions of body and spirit . . that the notion of spirit is altogether as intelligible as that of body . . whether there be any substance of a mixt nature , betwixt body and spirit . . the greatest and grossest obstacle to the belief of the immortality of the soul , is that confident opinion in some , as if the very notion of a spirit were a piece of non-sense and perfect incongruity in the conception thereof . wherefore to proceed by degrees to our maine designe , and to lay our foundation low and sure , we will in the first place expose to view the genuine notion of a spirit , in the generall acception thereof ; and afterwards of several kindes of spirits : that it may appear to all , how unjust that cavill is against incorporeall substances , as if they were meer impossibilities and contradictious inconsistencies . i will define therefore a spirit in generall thus , a substance penetrable and indiscerpible . the fitness of which definition will be the better understood , if we divide substance in generall into these first kindes , viz. body and spirit , and then define body to be a substance impenetrable and discerpible . whence the contrary kind to this is fitly defined , a substance penetrable and indiscerpible . . now i appeale to any man that can set aside prejudice , and has the free use of his faculties , whether every term in the definition of a spirit be not as intelligible and congruous to reason , as in that of a body . for the precise notion of substance is the same in both , in which , i conceive , is comprised extension and activity either connate or communicated . for matter it self once moved can move other matter . and it is as easy to understand what penetrable is , as impenetrable , and what indiscerpible as discerpible ; and penetrability and indiscerpibility being as immediate to spirit , as impenetrability and discerpibility to body , there is as much reason to be given for the attributes of the one as of the other , by axiome . and substance in its precise notion including no more of impenetrability then indiscerpibility , we may as well wonder how one kind of substance can so firmly and irresistibly keep out another substance ( as matter for example does the parts of matter ) as that the parts of another substance hold so fast together , that they are by no means discerpible , as we have already intimated : and therefore this holding out in one being as difficult a business to conceive as the holding together in the other , this can be no prejudice to the notion of a spirit . for there may be very fast union where we cannot at all imagine the cause thereof , as in such bodies which are exceeding hard , where no man can fancy what holds the parts together so strongly ; and there being no greater difficulty here , then that a man cannot imagine what holds the parts of a spirit together , it will follow by axiome . that the notion of a spirit is not to be excepted against as an incongruous notion , but is to be admitted for the notion of a thing that may really exist . . it may be doubted , whether there may not be essences of a middle condition betwixt these corporeal and incorporeal substances we have described , and that of two sorts , the one impenetrable and indiscerpible , the other penetrable and discerpible . but concerning the first , if impenetrability be understood in reference to matter , it is plaine there can be no such essence in the world ; and if in reference to its own parts , though it may then look like a possible idea in it self , yet there is no footsteps of the existence thereof in nature , the souls of men and daemons implying contraction and dilatation in them . as for the latter , it has no priviledge for any thing more then matter it self has , or some mode of matter . for it being discerpible , it is plain it's union is by juxtaposition of parts , and the more penetrable , the less likely to conveigh sense and motion to any distance . besides the ridiculous sequel of this supposition , that will fill the universe with an infinite number of shreds and rags of souls and spirits , never to be reduced again to any use or order . and lastly , the proper notion of a substance incorporeal fully counter-distinct to a corporeal substance , necessarily including in it so strong and indissoluble union of parts , that it is utterly indiscerpible , whenas yet for all that in this general notion thereof neither sense nor cogitation is implyed , it is most rational to conceive , that that substance wherein they are must assuredly be incorporeal in the strictest signification ; the nature of cogitation and communion of sense arguing a more perfect degree of union then is in meer indiscerpibility of parts . but all this scrupulositie might have been saved ; for i confidently promise my self , that there are none so perversly given to tergiversations and subterfuges , but that they will acknowledge , whereever i can prove that there is a substance distinct from body or matter , that it is in the most full and proper sense incorporeal . chap. iv. . that the notions of the several kindes of immateriall beings have no inconsistencie nor incongruitie in them . . that the nature of god is as intelligible as the nature of any being whatsoever . . the true notion of his ubiquity , and how intelligible it is . . of the union of the divine essence . . of his power of creation . . we have shewn , that the notion of a spirit in general is not at all incongruous nor impossible : and it is as congruous , consistent and intelligible in the sundry kindes thereof ; as for example that of god , of angels , of the souls of men and brutes , and of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or seminal forms of things . . the notion of god , though the knowledge thereof be much prejudiced by the confoundedness and stupidity of either superstitious or profane men , that please themselves in their large rhetorications , concerning the unconceiveableness and utter incomprehensibleness of the deity ; the one by way of a devotional exaltation of the transcendency of his nature , the other to make the belief of his exsistence ridiculous , and craftily and perversly to intimate that there is no god at all , the very conception of him being made to appear nothing else but a bundle of inconsistencies and impossibilities ; nevertheless i shall not at all stick to affirm , that his idea or notion is as easy as any notion else whatsoever , and that we may know as much of him as of any thing else in the world . for the very essence or naked substance of nothing can possibly be known by axiome . but for his attributes , they are as conspicuous as the attributes of any subject or substance whatever ; from which a man may easily define him thus ; god is a spirit eternal , infinite in essence and goodness , omniscient , omnipotent , and of himself necessarily existent . i appeal to any man , if every term in this definition be not sufficiently intelligible . for as for spirit , that has been already defined and explained . by eternal i understand nothing here but duration without end or beginning : by infiniteness of essence , that his essence or substance has no bounds , no more then his duration : by infinite in goodness , such a benign will in god as is carried out to boundless and innumerable benefactions : by omnisciency and omnipotency , the ability of knowing or doing any thing that can be conceived without a plain contradiction : by self-existency , that he has his being from none other : and by necessary existence , that he cannot fail to be . what terms of any definition are more plain then these of this ? or what subject can be more accurately defined then this is ? for the naked subject or substance of any thing is no otherwise to be known then thus . and they that gape after any other speculative knowledg of god then what is from his attributes and operations , they may have their heads and mouths filled with many hot scalding fancies and words , and run mad with the boysterousness of their own imagination , but they will never hit upon any sober truth . . thus have i delivered a very explicite and intelligible notion of the nature of god ; which i might also more compendiously define , an essence absolutely perfect , in which all the terms of the former definition are comprehended , and more then i have named , or thought needful to name , much less to insist upon ; as his power of creation , and his omnipresence or ubiquity , which are necessarily included in the idea of absolute perfection . the latter whereof some ancient philosophers endeavoring to set out , have defined god to be a circle whose center is every where and circumference no where . by which description certainly nothing else can be meant , but that the divine essence is every where present with all those adorable attributes of infinite and absolutely perfect goodness , knowledg and power , according to that sense in which i have explained them . which ubiquity or omnipresence of god is every whit as intelligible as the overspreading of matter into all places . . but if here any one demand , how the parts , as i may so call them , of the divine amplitude hold together , that of matter being so discerpible ; it might be sufficient to remind him of what we have already spoken of the general notion of a spirit . but besides that , here may be also a peculiar rational account given thereof , it implying a contradiction , that an essence absolutely perfect should be either limited in presence , or change place in part or whole , they being both notorious effects or symptoms of imperfection , which is inconsistent with the nature of god. and no better nor more cogent reason can be given of any thing , then that it implyes a contradiction to be otherwise . . that power also of creating things of nothing , there is a very close connexion betwixt it and the idea of god , or of a being absolutely perfect . for this being would not be what it is conceived to be , if it were destitute of the power of creation , and therefore this attribute has no less cohaerence with the subject , then that it is a contradiction it should not be in it , as was observed of the foregoing attribute of indiscerpibilitie in god. but to alledge that a man cannot imagine how god should create something of nothing , or how the divine essence holds so closely and invincibly together , is to transgress against the . . and . axiomes , and to appeal to a faculty that has no right to determine the case . chap. v. . the definition belonging to all finite and created spirits . . of indiscerpibility , a symbolical representation thereof . . an objection answered against that representation . . we have done with the notion of that infinite and uncreated spirit we usually call god ; we come now to those that are created and finite , as the spirits of angels , men and brutes , we will cast in the seminal forms also , or archei , as the chymists call them , though haply the world stands in no need of them . the properties of a spirit , as it is a notion common to all these , i have already enumerated in my antidote , lib. . cap. . self-motion , self-penetration , self-contraction and dilatation , and indivisibility , by which i mean indiscerpibility : to which i added penetrating , moving , and altering the matter . we may therefore define this kind of spirit we speak of , to be a substance indiscerpible , that can move it self , that can penetrate , contract , and dilate it self , and can also penetrate , move , and alter the matter . we will now examine every term of this definition , from whence it shall appear , that it is as congruous and intelligible , as those definitions that are made of such things as all men without any scruple acknowledg to exist . . of the indiscerpibility of a spirit we have already given rational grounds to evince it not impossible , it being an immediate attribute thereof , as impenetrability is of a body , and as conceivable or imaginable , that one substance of it's own nature may invincibly hold its parts together , so that they cannot be disunited nor dissevered , as that another may keep out so stoutly and irresistibly another substance from entring into the same space or place with it self . for this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or impenetrability is not at all contained in the precise conception of a substance as substance , as i have already signified . but besides that reason may thus easily apprehend that it may be so , i shall a little gratifie imagination , and it may be reason too , in offering the manner how it is so , in this kind of spirit we now speak of . that ancient notion of light and intentional species is so far from a plain impossibility , that it has been heretofore generally , and is still by very many persons , looked upon as a truth , that is , that light and colour doe ray in such sort as they are described in the peripatetical philosophie . now it is observable in light , that it is most vigorous towards its fountain , and fainter by degrees . but we will reduce the matter to one lucid point , which , according to the acknowledged principles of opticks , will fill a distance of space with its rays of light : which rayes may indeed be reverberated back towards their center by interposing some opake body , and so this orbe of light contracted ; but , according to the aristotelean hypothesis , it was alwayes accounted impossible that they should be clipt off , or cut from this lucid point , and be kept apart by themselves . those whom dry reason will not satisfy , may , if they please , entertain their fancy with such a representation as this , which may a little ease the anxious importunity of their mind , when it too eagerly would comprehend the manner how this spirit we speak of may be said to be indiscerpible . for think of any ray of this orbe of light , it does sufficiently set out to the imagination how extension and indiscerpibility may consist together . see further in my antidote , lib. . cap. . as also the appendix cap. . and . . but if any object , that the lucid center of this orbe , or the primary substance , as i call it , in the forecited places , is either divisible or absolutely indivisible , and if it be divisible , that as concerning that inmost of a spirit , this representation is not at all serviceable to set off the nature thereof , by shewing how the parts there may hold together so indiscerpibly , but if absolutely indivisible , that it seems to be nothing ; to this i answer , what scaliger somewhere has noted , that what is infinitely great or infinitely small , the imagination of man is at a loss to conceive it . which certainly is the ground of the perplexedness of that probleme concerning matter , whether it consists of points , or onely of particles divisible in infinitum . but to come more closely to the business ; i say that though we should acknowledg the inmost center of life , or the very first point , as i may so call it , of the primary substance ( for this primary substance is in some sort gradual ) to be purely indivisible , it does not at all follow , no not according to imagination it self , that it must be nothing . for let us imagine a perfect plain , and on this plain a perfect globe , we cannot conceive but this globe touches the plain , and that in what we ordinarily call a point , else the one would not be a globe , or the other not a plain . now it is impossible that one body should touch another , and yet touch one another in nothing . wherefore this inmost center of life is something , and something so full of essential vigour and virtue , that though gradually it diminish , yet can fill a certain sphere of space with its own presence and activity , as a spark of light illuminates the duskish aire . wherefore there being no greater perplexity nor subtilty in the consideration of this center of life or inmost of a spirit , then there is in the atomes of matter , we may by axiome . rightly conclude , that indiscerpibility has nothing in the notion thereof , but what may well consist with the possibility of the existence of the subject whereunto it belongs . chap. vi. . axiomes that tend to the demonstrating how the center or first point of the primary substance of a spirit may be indiscerpible . . several others that demonstrate how the secondary substance of a spirit may be indiscerpible . . an application of these principles . . of the union of the secondary substance considered transversly . . that the notion of a spirit has less difficulty then that of matter . . an answer to an objection from the rational faculty . . answers to objections suggested from fancy . . a more compendious satisfaction concerning the notion of a spirit . . and thus we have fairly well gratified the fancy of the curious concerning the extension and indiscerpibility of a spirit ; but we shall advance yet higher , and demonstrate the possibility of this notion to the severest reason , out of these following principles . axiome xi . a globe touches a plain in something , though in the least that is conceivable to be reall .   axiome xii . the least that is conceivable is so little , that it cannot be conceived to be discerpible into less .   axiome xiii . as little as this is , the repetition of it will amount to considerable magnitudes . as for example , if this globe be drawn upon a plain , it constitutes a line , and a cylinder drawn upon a plain , or this same line described by the globe multiplyed into it self , constitutes a superficies , &c. this a man cannot deny , but the more he thinks of it , the more certainly true he will find it . axiome xiv . magnitude cannot arise out of meer non-magnitudes . for multiply nothing ten thousand millions of times into nothing ▪ the product will be still nothing . besides , if that wherein the globe touches a plain were more then indiscerpible , that is , purely indivisible , it is manifest that a line will consist of points mathematically so called , that is , purely indivisible , which is the grandest absurdity that can be admitted in philosophy , and the most contradictions thing imaginable . axiome xv. the same thing by reason of its extreme littleness may be utterly indiscerpible , though intellectually divisible . this plainly arises out of the foregoing principles : for every quantity is intellectually divisible ; but something indiscerpible was afore demonstrated to be quantity , and consequently divisible , otherwise magnitude would consist of mathematicall points . thus have i found a possibility for the notion of the center of a spirit , which is not a mathematicall point , but substance , in magnitude so little , that it is indiscerpible ; but in virtue so great , that it can send forth out of it self so large a sphere of secondary substance , as i may so call it , that it is able to actuate grand proportions of matter , this whole sphere of life and activity being in the mean time utterly indiscerpible . . this i have said , and shall now prove it by adding a few more principles of that evidence , as the most rigorous reason shall not be able to deny them . axiome xvi an emanative cause is the notion of a thing possible . by an emanative cause is understood such a cause as meerly by being , no other activity or causality interposed , produces an effect . that this is possible is manifest , it being demonstrable that there is de facto some such cause in the world ; because something must move it self . now if there be no spirit , matter must of necessity move it self , where you cannot imagine any activity or causality , but the bare essence of the matter from whence this motion comes . for if you would suppose some former motion that might be the cause of this , then we might with as good reason suppose some former to be the cause of that , and so in infinitum . axiome xvii . an emanative effect is coexistent with the very substance of that which is said to be the cause thereof . this must needs be true , because that very substance which is said to be the cause , is the adaequate & immediate cause , and wants nothing to be adjoyned to its bare essence for the production of the effect ; and therefore by the same reason the effect is at any time , it must be at all times , or so long as that substance does exist . axiome xviii . no emanative effect , that exceeds not the virtues and powers of a cause , can be said to be impossible to be produced by it . this is so plain , that nothing need be added for either explanation or proof . axiome xix . there may be a substance of that high vertue and excellency , that it may produce another substance by emanative causality , provided that substance produced be in due graduall proportions inferiour to that which causes it . this is plain out of the foregoing principle . for there is no contradiction nor impossibility of a cause producing an effect less noble then it self , for thereby we are the better assured that it does not exceed the capacity of its own powers : nor is there any incongruity , that one substance should cause something else which we may in some sense call substance , though but secondary or emanatory ; acknowledging the primary substance to be the more adequate object of divine creation , but the secondary to be referrible also to the primary or centrall substance by way of causall relation . for suppose god created the matter with an immediate power of moving it self , god indeed is the prime cause as well of the motion as of the matter , and yet nevertheless the matter is rightly said to move it self . finally , this secondary or emanatory substance may be rightly called substance , because it is a subject indued with certain powers and activities , and that it does not inhaere as an accident in any other substance or matter , but could maintaine its place , though all matter or what other substance soever were removed out of that space it is extended through , provided its primary substance be but safe . . from these four principles i have here added , we may have not an imaginative but rationall apprehension of that part of a spirit which we call the secondary substance thereof . whos 's extension arising by graduall emanation from the first and primest essence , which we call the center of the spirit ( which is no impossible supposition by the . . and . axiomes ) we are led from hence to a necessary acknowledgment of perfect indiscerpibility of parts , though not intellectuall indivisibility , by axiome . for it implyes a contradiction that an emanative effect should be disjoyned from its originall . . thus have i demonstrated how a spirit , considering the lineaments of it ( as i may so call them ) from the center to the circumference , is utterly indiscerpible . but now if any be so curious as to ask how the parts thereof hold together in a line drawn cross to these from the center ( for imagination , it may be , will suggest they lye all loose ) i answer that the conjecture of imagination is here partly true and partly false , or is true or false as she shall be interpreted . for if she mean by loose , actually disunited , it is false and ridiculous : but if only so discerpible , that one part may be disunited from another , that is not only true , but necessary ; otherwise a spirit could not contract one part and extend another , which is yet an hypothesis necessary to be admitted . wherefore this objection is so far from weakning the possibility of this notion , that it gives occasion more fully to declare the exact concinnity thereof . to be brief therefore , a spirit from the center to the circumference is utterly indiscerpible , but in lines cross to this it is closely cohaerent , but not indiscerpibly ; which cohaesion may consist in an immediate union of these parts , and transverse penetration and transcursion of secondary substance thorough this whole sphere of life which we call a spirit . nor need we wonder that so full an orbe should swell out from so subtil and small a point as the center of this spirit is supposed . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle somewhere sayes of the mind of man. and besides it is but what is seen in some sort to the very eye in light , how large a spheare of aire a little spark will illuminate . . this is the pure idea of a created spirit in general , concerning which if there be yet any cavill to be made , it can be none other then what is perfectly common to it and to matter , that is , the unimaginableness of points and smallest particles , and how what is discerpible cannot at all hang together ; but this not hindering matter from actuall existence , there is no reason that it should any way pretend to the inferring of the impossibility of the existence of a spirit by axiome . but the most lubricous supposition that we goe upon here , is not altogether so intricate as those difficulties in matter . for if that be but granted , in which i find no absurdity , that a particle of matter may be so little that it is utterly uncapable of being made less , it is plain that one and the same thing , though intellectually divisible , may yet be really indiscerpible . and indeed it is not only possible , but it seems necessary that this should be true : for though we should acknowledg that matter were discerpible in infinitum , yet supposing a cause of infinite distinct perception and as infinite power , ( and god is such ) this cause can reduce this capacity of infinite discerpibleness of matter into act , that is to say , actually and at once discerp it or disjoyn it into so many particles as it is discerpible into . from whence it will follow , that one of these particles reduced to this perfect parvitude , is then utterly indiscerpible , and yet intellectually divisible , otherwise magnitude would consist of meer points , which would imply a contradiction . we have therefore plainly demonstrated by reason , that matter consists of parts indiscerpible ; and therefore there being no other faculty to give suffrage against it , for neither sense nor any common notion can contradict it , it remains by axiome . that the conclusion is true . . what some would object from reason , that these perfect parvitudes being acknowledged still intellectually divisible , must still have parts into which they are divisible , and therefore be still discerpible ▪ to this it is answered , that division into parts does not imply any discerpibility , because the parts conceived in one of these minima corporalia ( as i may so call them ) are rather essentiall or formall parts then integrall , and can no more actually be dissevered , then sense and reason from the soul of a man. for it is of the very essence of matter to be divisible , but it is not at all included in the essence thereof to be discerpible ; and therefore where discerpibility fails there is no necessity that divisibility should faile also . see the preface , sect. . . as for the trouble of spurious suggestions or representations from the fancy , as if these perfect parvitudes were round bodyes , and that therefore there would be triangular intervals betwixt , void of matter , they are of no moment in this case , she alwayes representing a discerpible magnitude instead of an indiscerpible one . wherefore she bringing in a false evidence , her testimony is to be rejected ; nay if she could perplex the cause far worse , she was not to be heard , by axiome the . wherefore fancy being unable to exhibite the object we consider , in its due advantages , for ought we know these perfect parvitudes may lye so close together , that they have no intervals betwixt : nay it seems necessary to be so ; for if there were any such intervalls , they were capable of particles less then these least of all , which is a contradiction in reason , and a thing utterly impossible . but if we should gratify fancy so far as to admit of these intervals , the greatest absurdity would be , that we must admit an insensible vacuum , which no faculty will be able ever to confute . but it is most rationall to admit none , and more consonant to our determination concerning these minima corporalia , as i call them , whose largeness is to be limited to the least reall touch of either a globe on a plain , or a cone on a plain , or a globe on a globe ; if you conceive any reall touch less then another , let that be the measure of these minute realities in matter . from whence it will follow , they must touch a whole side at once , and therefore can never leave any empty intervals . nor can we imagine any angulosities or round protuberancies in a quantity infinitely little , more then we can in one infinitely great , as i have already declared in my preface . i must confess , a mans reason in this speculation is mounted far beyond his imagination ; but there being worse intricacies in theories acknowledged constantly to be true , it can be no prejudice to the present conclusion , by the . and . axiomes . . thus have we cleared up a full and distinct notion of a spirit , with so unexceptionable accuracy , that no reason can pretend to assert it impossible , nor unintelligible . but if the theory thereof may seem more operose and tedious to impatient wits , and the punctuality of the description the more hazardous and incredible , as if it were beyond our faculties to make so precise a conclusion in a subject so obscure , they may ease their understanding , by contenting themselves with what we have set down cap. . sect. , . and remember that that wisdome and power that created all things , can make them of what nature he pleases , and that if god will that there shall be a creature that is penetrable and indiscerpible , that it is as easy a thing for him to make one so of its own nature , as one impenetrable and discerpible , and indue it with what other properties he pleases , according to his own will and purpose : which induments being immediately united with the subject they are in , reason can make no further demand how they are there , by the . axiome . chap. vii . . of the self-motion of a spirit . . of self-penetration . . of self-contraction and dilatation . . the power of penetrating of matter . . the power of moving , . and of altering the matter . . we have proved the indiscerpibility of a spirit as well in center as circumference , as well in the primary as secondary substance thereof , to be a very consistent and congruous notion . the next property is self-motion , which must of necessity be an attribute of something or other ; for by self-motion i understand nothing else but self-activity , which must appertain to a subject active of it self . now what is simply active of it self , can no more cease to be active then to be ; which is a sign that matter is not active of it self , because it is reducible to rest : which is an argument not only that self-activity belongs to a spirit , but that there is such a thing as a spirit in the world , from which activity is communicated to matter . and indeed if matter as matter had motion , nothing would hold together but flints , adamant , brass , iron ; yea this whole earth would suddenly melt into a thinner substance then the subtil aire , or rather it never had been condensated together to this consistency we finde it . but this is to anticipate my future purpose of proving that there are spirits existing in the world : it had been sufficient here to have asserted , that self-motion or self-activity is as conceivable to appertain to spirit as body , which is plain at first sight to any man that appeales to his own faculties . nor is it at all to be scrupled at , that any thing should be allowed to move it self , because our adversaries that say there is nothing but matter in the world , must of necessity ( as i have intimated already ) confess that this matter moves it self , though it be very incongruous so to affirm . . the congruity and possibility of self-penetration in a created spirit is to be conceived , partly from the limitableness of the subject , and partly from the foregoing attributes of indiscerpibility and self-motion . for self-penetration cannot belong to god , because it is impossible any thing should belong to him that implyes imperfection , and self-penetration cannot be without the lessening of the presence of that which does penetrate it self , or the implication that some parts of that essence are not so well as they may be , which is a contradiction in a being which is absolutely perfect . from the attributes of indiscerpibility and self-motion ( to which you may adde penetrability from the generall notion of a spirit ) it is plain that such a spirit as we define , having the power of motion upon the whole extent of its essence , may also determine this motion according to the property of its own nature : and therefore if it determine the motion of the exteriour parts inward , they will return inward towards the center of essentiall power ; which they may easily doe without resistance , the whole subject being penetrable , and without damage , it being also indiscerpible . . from this self-penetration we doe not only easily , but necessarily , understand self-contraction and dilatation to arise . for this self-moving substance , which we call a spirit , cannot penetrate it self , but it must needs therewith contract it self ; nor restore it self again to it's former state , but it does thereby dilate it self ; so that we need not at all insist upon these termes . . that power which a spirit has to penetrate matter we may easily understand if we consider a spirit only as a substance , whose immediate property is activity . for then it is not harder to imagine this active substance to pervade this or the other part of matter , then it is to conceive the pervading or disspreading of motion it self therein . . the last terme i put in the definition of a spirit , is the power of altering the matter ; which will necessarily follow from it's power of moving it or directing its motion . for alteration is nothing else but the varying of either the figures , or postures , or the degrees of motion in the particles ; all which are nothing else but the results of locall motion . thus have we cleared the intelligibility and possibility of all the termes that belong to the notion of a created spirit in generall , at least of such as may be rationally conceived to be the causes of any visible phaenomena in the world : we will now descend to the defining of the chief species thereof . chap. viii . . four main species of spirits . . how they are to be defined . . the definition of a seminall forme ; . of the soule of a brute ; . of the soule of a man. . the difference betwixt the soule of an angel and an humane soule . . the definition of an angelical soule . . of the platonicall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . that des cartes his demonstration of the existence of the humane soule does at least conclude the possibility of a spirit . . we have enumerated four kindes of spirits , viz. the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or seminall formes , the soules of brutes , the humane soule , and that soule or spirit which actuates or informes the vehicles of angels : for i look upon angels to be as truly a compound being , consisting of soule and body , as that of men and brutes . their existence we shall not now goe about to prove , for that belongs to another place . my present design is onely to expound or define the notion of these things , so far forth as is needful for the evincing that they are the ideas or notions of things which imply no contradiction or impossibility in their conception ; which will be very easy for us to perform : the chief difficulty lying in that more general notion of a spirit , which we have so fully explained in the foregoing chapters . . now this general notion can be contracted into kindes , by no other differences then such as may be called peculiar powers or properties belonging to one spirit and excluded from another , by the . axiome . from whence it will follow , that if we describe these several kindes of spirits by immediate and intrinsecall properties , we have given as good definitions of them as any one can give of any thing in the world . . we will begin with what is most simple , the seminal formes of things which , for the present , deciding nothing of their existence , according to their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 possibilis , we define thus ; a seminal forme is a created spirit organizing duely prepared matter into life and vegetation proper to this or the other kind of plant . it is beyond my imagination what can be excepted against this description , it containing nothing but what is very cohaerent and intelligible . for in that it is a spirit , it can move matter intrinsecally , or at least direct the motion thereof , but in that it is not an omnipotent spirit , but finite and created , it 's power may well be restrained to duely prepared matter both for vital union and motion . he that has made these particular spirits , varying their faculties of vital union according to the diversity of the preparation of matter , and so limiting the whole comprehension of them all , that none of them may be able to be vitally joyned with any matter whatever , and the same first cause of all things , that gives them a power of uniting with and moving of matter duely prepared ; may also set such lawes to this motion , that when it lights on matter fit for it , it will produce such and such a plant , that is to say , it will shape the matter into such figure , colour and other properties , as we discover in them by our senses . . this is the first degree of particular life in the world , if there be any purely of this degree particular . but now , as aristotle has somewhere noted , the essences of things are like numbers , whose species are changed by adding or taking away an unite ; adde therefore another intrinsecall power to this of vegetation , viz. sensation , and it becomes the soule of a beast . for in truth the bare substance it self is not to be computed in explicite knowledg , it being utterly in it self unconceivable , and therefore we will onely reckon upon the powers . a subject therefore from whence is both vegetation and sensation is the general notion of the soule of a brute . which is distributed into a number of kindes , the effect of every intrinsecal power being discernible in the constant shape and properties of every distinct kind of brute creatures . . if we adde to vegetation and sensation reason properly so called , we have then a setled notion of the soule of man ; which we may more compleatly describe thus : a created spirit indued with sense and reason , and a power of organizing terrestrial matter into humane shape by vital union therewith . . and herein alone , i conceive , does the spirit or soule of an angel ( for i take the boldness to call that soule , what ever it is , that has a power of vitally actuating the matter ) differ from the soule of a man , in that the soule of an angel may vitally actuate an aëreal or aethereal body , but cannot be born into this world in a terrestrial one . . to make an end therefore of our definitions : an angelical soule is very intelligibly described thus ; a created spirit indued with reason , sensation , and a power of being vitally united with and actuating of a body of aire or aether onely . which power over an aëreal or aethereal body is very easily to be understood out of that general notion of a spirit in the foregoing chapters . for it being there made good , that union with matter is not incompetible to a spirit , and consequently nor moving of it , nor that kind of motion in a spirit which we call contraction and dilatation ; these powers , if carefully considered , will necessarily infer the possibility of the actuation and union of an angelical soule with an aethereal or aiery body . . the platonists write of other orders of spirits or immaterial substances , as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but there being more subtilty then either usefulness or assurance in such like speculations , i shall pass them over at this time ; having already , i think , irrefutably made good , that there is no incongruity nor incompossibility comprised in the notion of spirit or incorporeal substance . . but there is yet another way of inferring the same , and it is the argument of des-cartes , whereby he would conclude that there is de facto a substance in us distinct from matter , viz. our own minde . for every real affection or property being the mode of some substance or other , and reall modes being unconceivable without their subject , he inferres that , seeing we can doubt whether there be any such thing as body in the world ( by which doubting we seclude cogitation from body ) there must be some other substance distinct from the body , to which cogitation belongs . but i must confess this argument will not reach home to des-cartes his purpose , who would prove in man a substance distinct from his body . for being there may be modes common to more subjects then one , and this of cogitation may be pretended to be such as is competible as well to substance corporeal as incorporeal , it may be conceived apart from either , though not from both . and therefore his argument does not prove that that in us which does think or perceive is a substance distinct from our body , but onely that there may be such a substance , which has the power of thinking or perceiving , which yet is not a body . for it being impossible that there should be any real mode which is in no subject , and we clearly conceiving cogitation independent for existence on corporeal substance ; it is necessary , that there may be some other substance on which it may depend ; which must needs be a substance incorporeal . chap. ix . . that it is of no small consequence to have proved the possibility of the existence of a spirit . . the necessity of examining of mr. hobbs his reasons to the contrary . . the first excerption out of mr. hobbs . . the second excerption . . the third . . the fourth . . the fifth . . the sixth . . the seventh . . the eighth and last excerption . . i have been , i believe , to admiration curious and sollicitous to make good , that the existence of a spirit or incorporeal substance is possible . but there is no reason any one should wonder that i have spent so much pains to make so small and inconsiderable a progresse , as to bring the thing only to a bare possibility . for though i may seem to have gained little to my self , yet i have thereby given a very signal overthrow to the adverse party , whose strongest hold seems to be an unshaken confidence , that the very notion of a spirit or substance immaterial is a perfect incompossibility and pure non-sense . from whence are insinuated no better consequences then these : that it is impossible that there should be any god , or soule , or angel , good or bad ; or any immortality or life to come . that there is no religion , no piety nor impiety , no vertue nor vice , justice nor injustice , but what it pleases him that has the longest sword to call so . that there is no freedome of will , nor consequently any rational remorse of conscience in any being whatsoever , but that all that is , is nothing but matter and corporeal motion ; and that therefore every trace of mans life is as necessary as the tracts of lightning , and the fallings of thunder ; the blind impetus of the matter breaking through or being stopt every where , with as certain and determinate necessity , as the course of a torrent after mighty stormes and showers of rain . . and verily considering of what exceeding great consequence it is to root out this sullen conceit that some have taken up concerning incorporeal substance , as if it bore a contradiction in the very termes , i think i shall be wanting to so weighty a cause , if i shall content my self with a bare recitation of the reasons whereby i prove it possible , and not produce their arguments that seem most able to maintain the contrary . and truly i doe not remember that i ever met with any one yet that may justly be suspected to be more able to make good this province then our countreyman mr. hobbs , whose inexuperable confidence of the truth of the conclusion , may well assure any man that duely considers the excellency of his natural wit and parts , that he has made choice of the most demonstrative arguments that humane invention can search out for the eviction thereof . . and that i may not incurre the suspicion of mistaking his assertion , or of misrepresenting the force of his reasons , i shall here punctually set them down in the same words i find them in his own writings , that any man may judge if i doe him any wrong . the first place i shall take notice of is in his leviathan , chap. . the word body in the most general acceptation signifies that which filleth or occupieth some certain room , or imagined place ; and dependeth not on the imagination , but is a real part of that we call the universe . for the universe being the aggregate of all bodyes , there is no reall part thereof that is not also body ; nor any thing properly a body , that is not also part of ( that aggregate of all bodyes ) the universe . the same also , because bodyes are subject to change , that is to say , to variety of appearance to the sense of living creatures , is called substance , that is to say , subject to various accidents ; as sometimes to be moved , sometimes to stand still , and to seem to our senses sometimes hot , sometimes cold , sometimes of one colour , smell , tast , or sound , sometimes of another . and this diversity of seeming , ( produced by the diversity of the operation of bodyes on the organs of our sense ) we attribute to alterations of the bodyes that operate , and call them accidents of those bodyes . and according to this acception of the word , substance and body signifie the same thing ; and therefore substance incorporeal are words which when they are joyned together destroy one another , as if a man should say an incorporeal body . . the second place is in his physicks , part . chap. . article . but it is here to be observed that certain dreames , especially such as some men have when they are betwixt sleeping and waking , and such as happen to those that have no knowledg of the nature of dreames , and are withall superstitious , were not heretofore nor are now accounted dreames . for the apparitions men thought they saw , and the voices they thought they heard in sleep , were not believed to be phantasmes , but things subsisting of themselves , and objects without those that dreamed . for to some men , as well sleeping as waking , but especially to guilty men , and in the night , and in hallowed places , fear alone , helped a little with the storyes of such apparitions , hath raised in their mindes terrible phantasmes which have been and are still deceitfully received for things really true , under the names of ghosts and incorporeal substances . . we will adde a third out of the same book , part . chap. . art. . for seeing ghosts , sensible species , a shadow , light , colour , sound , space , &c. appear to us no less sleeping then waking , they cannot be things without us , but onely phantasmes of the mind that imagines them . . and a fourth out of his humane nature , chap. . art. . but spirits supernaturall commonly signifie some substance without dimension , which two words doe flatly contradict one another . and article . nor i think is that word incorporeal at all in the bible , but is said of the spirit , that it abideth in men , sometimes that it dwelleth in them , sometimes that it cometh on them , that it descendeth , and goeth , and cometh , and that spirits are angels , that is to say , messengers ; all which words doe imply locality , and locality is dimension , and whatsoever hath dimension is body , be it never so subtile . . the fifth excerption shall be out of his leviathan , chap. . and for the matter or substance of the invisible agents so fancyed , they could not by naturall cogitation fall upon any other conceit , but that it was the same with that of the soule of man , and that the soule of man was of the same substance with that which appeareth in a dream to one that sleepeth , or in a looking-glass to one that is awake : which , men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the fancy , think to be reall and external substances , and therefore call them ghosts , as the latines called them imagines , and umbrae ; and thought them spirits , that is , thin aereal bodies ; and those invisible agents , which they feared , to be like them , save that they appeare and vanish when they please . but the opinion that such spirits were incorporeal or immateriall , could never enter into the minde of any man by nature ; because , though men may put together words of contradictory signification , as spirit and incorporeal , yet they can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them . we will help out this further from what he writes in his humane nature , cap. . art. . to know that a spirit is , that is to say , to have natural evidence of the same , it is impossible . for all evidence is conception , and all conception is imagination , and proceedeth from sense ; and spirits we suppose to be those substances which work not upon the sense , and therefore are not conceptible . . the sixth , out of chap. . where he writes thus : this nature of sight having never been discovered by the ancient pretenders to naturall knowledg , much less by those that consider not things so remote ( as that knowledg is ) from their present use , it was hard for men to conceive of those images in the fancy and in the sense , otherwise then of things really without us . which some ( because they vanish away they know not whether nor how ) will have to be absolutely incorporeal , that is to say , immaterial , or forms without matter , colour and figure , without any coloured or figured body , and that they can put on aiery bodyes , ( as a garment ) to make them visible when they will to our bodily eyes ; and others say , are bodyes and living creatures , but made of aire , or other more subtile and aethereal matter , which is then , when they will be seen , condensed . but both of them agree on one general appellation of them , daemons . as if the dead of whom they dreamed were not the inhabitants of their own brain , but of the aire or of heaven or hell , not phantasmes but ghosts ; with just as much reason as if one should say he saw his own ghost in a looking-glass , or the ghosts of the stars in a river , or call the ordinary apparition of the sun of the quantity of about a foot , the daemon or ghost of that great sun that enlightneth the whole visible world . . the seventh is out of the next chapter of the same book . where he again taking to task that jargon , as he calls it , of abstract essences and substantial formes , he writes thus : the world ( i mean not the earth onely , but the universe , that is , the whole mass of all things that are ) is corporeal , that is to say , body , and hath the dimensions of magnitude , namely length , breadth and depth ; also every part of body is likewise body , and hath the like dimensions ; and consequently every part of the universe is body , and that which is not body is no part of the universe : and because the universe is all , that which is no part of it is nothing , and consequently no where . . the eighth and last we have a little after in the same chapter , which runs thus ; being once fallen into this errour of separated essences , they are thereby necessarily involved in many other absurdities that follow it . for seeing they will have these formes to be real , they are obliged to assign them some place . but because they hold them incorporeal without all dimension of quantity , and all men know that place is dimension , and not to be filled but by that which is corporeall , they are driven to uphold their credit with a distinction , that they are not indeed any where circumscriptivè , but definitivé . which termes , being meer words , and in this occasion insignificant , pass onely in latine , that the vanity of them might be concealed . for the circumscription of a thing is nothing else but the determination or defining of it's place , and so both the termes of distinction are the same . and in particular of the essence of man , which they say is his soule , they affirm it to be all of it in his little finger , and all of it in every other part ( how small soever ) of his body , and yet no more soule in the whole body then in any one of these parts . can any man think that god is served with such absurdities ? and yet all this is necessary to believe to those that will believe the existence of an incorporeal soule separated from the body . chap. x. . an answer to the first excerption . . to the second . . an answer to the third . . to the fourth excerption . . an answer to the fifth . . to the sixth . . to the seventh . . an answer to the eighth and last . . a brief recapitulation of what has been said hitherto . . we have set down the chiefest passages in the writings of mr. hobbs , that confident exploder of immaterial substances out of the world . it remains now that we examine them , and see whether the force of his arguments beares any proportion to the firmness of his belief , or rather mis-belief , concerning these things . to strip therefore the first excerption of that long ambages of words , and to reduce it to a more plain and compendious forme of reasoning , the force of his argument lies thus : that seeing every thing in the universe is body ( the universe being nothing else but an aggregate of bodies ) body and substance are but names of one and the same thing ; it being called body as it fills a place , and substance as it is the subject of severall alterations and accidents . wherefore body and substance being all one , incorporeal substance is no better sense then an incorporeal body , which is a contradiction in the very termes . but it is plain to all the world that this is not to prove , but to suppose what is to be proved , that the universe is nothing else but an aggregate of bodyes : when he has proved that , we will acknowledge the sequel ; till then he has proved nothing , and therefore this first argumentation must pass for nought . . let us examine the strength of the second , which certainly must be this , if any at all ; that which has its originall meerly from dreames , feares and superstitious faneyes , has no reall existence in the world . but incorporeall substances have no other originall . the proposition is a truth indubitable , but the assumption is as weak as the other is strong ; whether you understand it of the reall originall of these substances , or of the principles of our knowledge that they are . and be their originall what it will , it is nothing to us , but so far forth as it is cognoscible to us by axiome first . and therefore when he sayes , they have no other originall then that of our own fancy , he must be understood to affirme that there is no other principle of the knowledge of their existence then that we vainly imagine them to be ; which is grossly false . for it is not the dreams and feares of melancholick and superstitious persons , from which philosophers and christians have argued the existence of spirits and immaterial substances , but from the evidence of externall objects of sense , that is , the ordinary phaenomena of nature , in which there is discoverable so profound wisdome and counsell , that they could not but conclude that the order of things in the world was from a higher principle then the blind motions and jumblings of matter and meer corporeall beings . to which you may adde what usually they call apparitions , which are so far from being meerly the dreams and fancyes of the superstitious , that they are acknowledged by such as cannot but be deemed by most men over atheisticall , i mean pomponatius and cardan , nay by vaninus himself , though so devoted to atheisme , that out of a perfect mad zeale to that despicable cause he died for it . i omit to name the operations of the soule , which ever appeared to the wisest of all ages of such a transcendent condition , that they could not judge them to spring from so contemptible a principle as bare body or matter . wherefore to decline all these , and to make representation onely of dreames and fancyes to be the occasions of the world's concluding that there are incorporeall substances , is to fancy his reader a meer foole , and publickly to profess that he has a minde to impose upon him . . the third argumentation is this : that which appears to us as well sleeping as wakeing , is nothing without us : but ghosts , that is immateriall substances , appeare to us as well sleeping as waking . this is the weakest argument that has been yet produced : for both the proposition and assumption are false . for if the proposition were true , the sun , moon , stars , clouds , rivers , meadows , men , women , and other living creatures were nothing without us : for all these appeare to us as well when we are sleeping as waking . but incorporeall substances doe not appeare to us as well sleeping as waking . for the notion of an incorporeall substance is so subtile and refined , that it leaving little or no impression on the fancy , it 's representation is meerly supported by the free power of reason , which seldome exercises it self in sleep , unless upon easy imaginable phantasmes . . the force of the fourth argument is briefly this : every substance has dimensions ; but a spirit has no dimensions . here i confidently deny the assumption . for it is not the characteristicall of a body to have dimensions , but to be impenetrable . all substance has dimensions , that is , length , breadth , and depth : but all has not impenetrability . see my letters to monsieur des-cartes , besides what i have here writ , cap. , and . . in the excerptions belonging to the fifth place these arguments are comprised . . that we have no principle of knowledge of any immateriall being , but such as a dream or a looking-glasse furnisheth us withall . . that the word spirit or incorporeall implyes a contradiction , and cannot be conceived to be sense by a naturall understanding . . that nothing is conceived by the understanding but what comes in at the senses , and therefore spirits not acting upon the senses must remain unknown and unconceivable . we have already answered to the first in what we have returned to his second argument in the second excerption . to the second i answer , that spirit or incorporeall implyes no contradiction , there being nothing understood thereby but extended substance with activity and indiscerpibility , leaving out impenetrability : which i have above demonstrated to be the notion of a thing possible , and need not repeat what i have already written . to the third i answer , that spirits do act really upon the senses , by acting upon matter that affects the senses ; and some of these operations being such , that they cannot be rationally attributed to the matter alone , reason by the information of the senses concludes , that there is some other more noble principle distinct from the matter . and as for that part of the argument that asserts that there is nothing in the understanding but what comes in at the senses , i shall in it's due place demonstrate it to be a very gross errour . but in the mean time i conclude , that the substance of every thing being utterly unconceivable by axiome . and it being onely the immediate properties by which a man conceives every thing , and the properties of penetrability and indiscerpibility being as easy to conceive , as of discerpibility and impenetrability , and the power of communicating of motion to matter as easy as the matters reception of it , and the union of matter with spirit , as of matter with matter ; it plainly followes , that the notion of a spirit is as naturally conceivable as the notion of a body . . in this sixth excerption he is very copious in jearing and making ridiculous the opinion of ghosts and daemons ; but the strength of his argument , if it have any , is this , viz. if there be any such things as ghosts or daemons , then they are ( according to them that hold this opinion ) either those images reflected from water or looking-glasses , cloathing themselves in aiery garments , and so wandring up and down , or else they are living creatures made of nothing but aire or some more subtile and aethereall matter . one might well be amazed to observe such slight and vain arguing come from so grave a philosopher , were not a man well aware that his peculiar eminency , as himself somewhere professes , lies in politicks , to which the humours and bravadoes of eloquence , especially amongst the simple , is a very effectuall and serviceable instrument . and certainly such rhetorications as this cannot be intended for any but such as are of the very weakest capacity . those two groundless conceits that he would obtrude upon the sober assertors of spirits and daemons belong not to them , but are the genuine issue of his own brain . for , for the former of them , it is most justly adjudged to him , as the first author thereof ; it being a rarity , which neither my self nor ( i dare say ) any else ever met with out of mr. hobbs his writings . and the latter he does not onely not goe about to confute here , but makes a shew of allowing it , for fear he should seem to deny scripture , in chap. . of his leviathan . but those that assert the existence of spirits , will not stand to mr. hobbs his choice for defining of them , but will make use of their own reason and judgment for the setling of so concerning a notion . . in this seventh excerption is contained the same argument that was found in the first ; but to deal fairly and candidly , i must confess it is better backt then before . for there he supposes , but does not prove , the chief ground of his argument ; but here he offers at a proof of it , couched , as i conceive , in these words [ and hath the dimensions of magnitude , namely length , breadth and depth ] for hence he would infer that the whole universe is corporeall , that is to say , every thing in the universe , because there is nothing but has length , breadth and depth . this therefore is the very last ground his argument is to be resolved into . but how weak it is i have already intimated , it being not trinall dimension , but impenetrability , that constitutes a body . . this last excerption seems more considerable then any of the former , or all of them put together : but when the force of the arguments therein contained is duely weighed , they will be found of as little efficacy to make good the conclusion as the rest . the first argument runs thus ; whatsoever is reall , must have some place : but spirits can have no place . but this is very easily answered . for if nothing else be understood by place , but imaginary space , spirits and bodyes may be in the same imaginary space , and so the assumption is false . but if by place be meant the concave superficies of one body immediately environing another body , so that it be conceived to be of the very formality of a place , immediately to environ the corporeall superficies of that substance which is said to be placed ; then it is impossible that a spirit should be properly said to be in a place , and so the proposition will be false . wherefore there being these two acceptions of place , that distinction of being there circumscriptivè and definitivè is an allowable distinction , and the terms may not signify one and the same thing . but if we will with mr. hobbs ( and i know no great hurt if we should doe so ) confine the notion of place to imaginary space , this distinction of the schools will be needless here , and we may , without any more adoe , assert , that spirits are as truly in place as bodyes . his second argument is drawn from that scholastick riddle , which i must confess seems to verge too near to profound nonsense , that the soule of man is tota in toto and tota in qualibet parte corporis . this mad jingle it seems has so frighted mr. hobbs sometime or other , that he never since could endure to come near the notion of a spirit again , not so much as to consider whether it were a meer bug-beare , or some reall being . but if passion had not surprised his better faculties , he might have found a true setled meaning thereof , and yet secluded these wilde intricacies that the heedless schools seem to have charged it with : for the immediate properties of a spirit are very well intelligible without these aenigmaticall flourishes , viz. that it is a substance penetrable and indiscerpible , as i have already shewn at large . nor is that scholastick aenigme necessary to be believed by all those that would believe the existence of an incorporeal soul ; nor do i believe mr. hobbs his interpretation of this riddle to be so necessary . and it had been but fair play to have been assured , that the schools held such a perfect contradiction , before he pronounced the belief thereof necessary to all those that would hold the soule of man an immateriall substance , separable from the body . i suppose they may mean nothing by it , but what plato did by his making the soule to consist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor plato any thing more by that divisible and indivisible substance , then an essence that is intellectually divisible , but really indiscerpible . . we have now firmly made good , that the notion of a spirit implyes no contradiction nor incompossibility in it ; but is the notion or idea of a thing that may possibly be . which i have done so punctually and particularly , that i have cleared every species of substances incorporeall from the imputation of either obscurity or inconsistency . and that i might not seem to take advantage in pleading their cause in the absence of the adverse party , i have brought in the most able advocate and the most assured that i have hitherto ever met withall ; and dare now appeal to any indifferent judge , whether i have not demonstrated all his allegations to be weak and inconclusive . wherefore having so clearly evinced the possibility of the existence of a spirit , we shall now make a step further , and prove that it is not onely a thing possible , but that it is really and actually in nature . chap. xi . . three grounds to prove the existence of an immateriall substance , whereof the first is fetcht from the nature of god. . the second from the phaenomenon of motion in the world . . that the matter is not self-moveable . . an objection that the matter may be part self-moved , part not . . the first answer to the objection . . the second answer . . other evasions answered . . the conclusion , that no matter is self-moved , but that a certain quantity of motion was impressed upon it at its first creation by god. . there be three main grounds from whence a man may be assured of the existence of spirituall or immateriall substance . the one is the consideration of the transcendent excellency of the nature of god ; who being , according to the true idea of him , an essence absolutely perfect , cannot possibly be body , and consequently must be something incorporeall : and seeing that there is no contradiction in the notion of a spirit in generall , nor in any of those kinds of spirits which we have defined , ( where the notion of god was set down amongst the rest ) and that in the very notion of him there is contained the reason of his existence , as you may see at large in my antidote , lib. . cap. . ; certainly if we find any thing at all to be , we may safely conclude that he is much more . for there is nothing besides him of which one can give a reason why it is , unless we suppose him to be the author of it . wherefore though god be neither visible nor tangible , yet his very idea representing to our intellectuall faculties the necessary reason of his existence , we are by axiome . ( though we had no other argument drawn from our senses ) confidently to conclude that he is . . the second ground is the ordinary phaenomena of nature , the most generall whereof is motion . now it seems to me demonstrable from hence , that there is some being in the world distinct from matter . for matter being of one simple homogeneal nature , & not distinguishable by specificall differences , as the schools speak , it must have every where the very same essentiall properties ; and therefore of it self it must all of it be either without motion , or else be self-moving , and that in such or such a tenor , or measure of motion ; there being no reason imaginable , why one part of the matter should move of it self lesse then another ; and therefore if there be any such thing , it can onely arise from externall impediment . . now i say , if matter be utterly devoid of motion in it self , it is plain it has it's motion from some other substance , which is necessarily a substance that is not matter , that is to say , a substance incorporeall . but if it be moved of it self , in such or such a measure , the effect here being an emanative effect , cannot possibly fail to be where-ever matter is , by axiome . especially if there be no externall impediment : and there is no impediment at all , but that the terrestriall parts might regain an activity very nigh equall to the aethereall , or rather never have lost it . for if the planets had but a common dividend of all the motion which themselves and the sun and stars , and all the aethereall matter possess , ( the matter of the planets being so little in comparison of that of the sun , stars and aether ) the proportion of motion that will fall due to them would be exceeding much above what they have . for it would be as if four or five poor men in a very rich and populous city should , by giving up that estate they have , in a levelling way , get equall share with all the rest . wherefore every planet could not faile of melting it self into little less finer substance then the purest aether . but they not doing so , it is a signe they have not that motion nor agitation of themselves , and therefore rest content with what has extrinsecally accrued to them , be it less or more . . but the pugnacious , to evade the stroke of our dilemma , will make any bold shift , and though they affront their own faculties in saying so , yet they will say , and must say , that part of the matter is self-moving , part without motion of it self . . but to this i answer , that first this evasion of theirs is not so agreeable to experience ; but , so far as either our sense or reason can reach , there is the same matter every where . for consider the subtilest parts of matter discoverable here below , those which for their subtilty are invisible , and for their activity wonderfull , i mean those particles that cause that vehement agitation we fell in windes : they in time loose their motion , become of a visible vaporous consistency , and turn to clouds , then to snow or rain , after haply to ice it self ; but then in process of time , first melted into water , then exhaled into vapours , after more fiercely agitated , do become wind again . and that we may not think that this reciprocation into motion and rest belongs onely to terrestriall particles ; that the heavens themselves be of the same matter , is apparent from the ejections of comets into our vortex , and the perpetuall rising of those spots and scum upon the face of the sun. . but secondly , to return what is still more pungent . this matter that is self-moved , in the impressing of motion upon other matter , either looses of its own motion , or retains it still entire . if the first , it may be despoiled of all its motion : and so that whose immediate nature is to move , shall rest , the entire cause of its motion still remaining , viz. it self : which is a plain contradiction by axiome . if the second , no meaner an inconvenience then this will follow , that the whole world had been turned into pure aether by this time , if not into a perfect flame , or at least will be in the conclusion , to the utter destruction of all corporeall consistencies . for , that these self-moving parts of matter are of a considerable copiousness , the event does testify , they having melted almost all the world already into suns , stars and aether , nothing remaining but planets and comets to be dissolved : which all put together scarce beare so great a proportion to the rest of the matter of the universe , as an ordinary apple to the ball of the earth . wherefore so potent a principle of motion still adding new motion to matter , and no motion once communicated being lost , ( for according to the laws of motion , no body looses any more motion then it communicates to another ) it plainly follows , that either the world had been utterly burnt up ere now , or will be at least in an infinite less time then it has existed , nay , i may say absolutely in a very little time , and will never return to any frame of things again , which though it possibly may be , yet none but a mad-man will assert , by axiome . and that it has not yet been since the first epoches of history , is a demonstration this second hypothesis is false . . there is yet another evasion or two , which when they are answered there will be no scruple remaining touching this point . the first is , that the matter is all of it homogeneall , of the like nature every where , and that it is the common property of it all to be of it self indifferent to motion or rest ; and therefore , that it is no wonder that some of it moves and other some of it rests , or moves less then other some . to which i answer , that this indifferency of the matter to motion or rest may be understood two wayes : either privatively , that is to say , that it has not any reall or active propension to rest , more then to motion , or vice versâ , but is meerly passive and susceptive of what motion or fixation some other agent confers upon it , and keeps that modification exactly and perpetually till again some other agent change it ; ( in which sense i allow the assertion to be true , but it makes nothing against us , but for us , it plainly implying that there is an incorporeal substance distinct from the matter , from whence the matter both is and must be moved . ) or else , this indifferency is to be understood positively , that is to say , that the matter has a reall and active propension as well to motion as to rest , so that it moveth it self and fixeth it self from its own immediate nature : from whence there are but these two absurdities that follow : the first , that two absolutely contrary properties are immediately seated in one simple subject ; then which nothing can seem more harsh and unhandsome to our logicall faculties ; unless the second , which is , that motion and rest being thus the emanative effects of this one simple subject , the matter will both move and rest at once ; or , if they doe not understand by rest , fixation , but a meer absence of motion , that it will both move and not move at once . for what is immediate to any subject , will not cease to be , the subject not being destroyed , by axiome . nor will they much help themselves by fancying that matter necessarily exerting both these immediate powers or properties at once of motion and rest , moves her self to such a measure and no swifter . for this position is but coincident with the second member of the dilemma , sect. . of this chapter ; and therefore the same argument will serve for both places . the other evasion is , by supposing part of the matter to be self-moving , and part of it self-resting , in a positive sense , or self-fixing : which is particularly directed against what we have argued sect. . but that this supposition is false is manifest from experience . for if there be any such self-fixing parts of matter , they are certainly in gold and lead and such like metalls ; but it is plain that they are not there . for what is self-fixing , will immediately be reduced to rest , so soon as externall violence is taken off , by axiome . whence it will follow that though these self-fixing parts of matter may be carried by other matter while they are made fast to it , yet left free they will suddainly rest , they having the immediate cause of fixation in themselves . nor can any one distrust that the change will be so suddain , if he consider how suddainly an externall force puts matter upon motion . but a bullet of gold or lead put thus upon motion , swift or slow , does not suddainly reduce it self to rest . whence it plainly appears that this last evasion contradicts experience , and therefore has no force against our former arguments . . wherefore it is most rationall to conclude , that matter of its own nature has no active principle of motion , though it be receptive thereof , but that when god created it , he superadded an impress of motion upon it , such a measure and proportion to all of it , which remains still much-what the same for quantity in the whole , though the parts of matter in their various occursion of one to another have not alwayes the same proportion of it . nor is there any more necessity that god should reiterate this impress of motion on the matter created , then that he should perpetually create the matter . neither does his conservation of this quantity of motion any thing more imply either a repetition or an augmentation of it , then the conservation of the matter does the superaddition of new matter thereunto . indeed he need but conserve the matter , and the matter thus conserved will faithfully retain , one part with another , the whole summe of motion first communicated to it , some small moments excepted , which are not worth the mentioning in this place . chap. xii . . that the order and nature of things in the universe argue an essence spirituall or incorporeall . . the evasion of this argument . . a preparation out of mr. hobbs to answer the evasion . . the first answer . . the second answer . . mr. hobbs his mistake , of making the ignorance of second causes the onely seed of religion . . we have discovered out of the simple phaenomenon of motion , the necessity of the existence of some incorporeall essence distinct from the matter : but there is a further assurance of this truth , from the consideration of the order and admirable effect of this motion in the world . suppose matter could move it self , would meere matter , with self-motion , amount to that admirable wise contrivance of things which we see in the world ? can a blind impetus produce such effects , with that accuracy and constancy , that , the more wise a man is , the more he will be assured that no wisdome can adde , take away , or alter any thing in the workes of nature , whereby they may be bettered ? how can that therefore that has not so much as sense , arise to the effects of the highest pitch of reason or intellect ? but of this i have spoke so fully and convincingly in the second book of my antidote , that it will be but a needless repetition to proceed any further on this subject . . all the evasion that i can imagine our adversaries may use here , will be this : that matter is capable of sense , and the finest and most subtil of the most refined sense , and consequently of imagination too , yea haply of reason and understanding . for sense being nothing else , as some conceit , but motion , or rather reaction of a body pressed upon by another body , it will follow that all the matter in the world has in some manner or other the power of sensation . . let us see now what this position will amount to : those that make motion and sensation thus really the same , they must of necessity acknowledg that no longer motion no longer sensation , as mr. hobbs has ingenuously confessed physic. chap. . and that every motion or reaction must be a new sensation , as well as every ceasing of reaction a ceasing of sensation . . now let us give these busie active particles of the matter that play up and down every where the advantage of sense , and let us see if all their heads laid together can contrive the anatomicall fabrick of any creature that lives . assuredly when all is summ'd up that can be imagined , they will fall short of their account . for i demand , has every one of these particles that must have an hand in the framing of the body of an animal , the whole design of the work by the impress of some phantasme upon it , or , as they have severall offices , so have they severall parts of the design ? if the first , it being most certain , even according to their opinion whom we oppose , that there can be no knowledg nor perception in the matter , but what arises out of the reaction of one part against another , how is it conceivable that any one particle of matter or many together ( there not existing yet in nature any animal ) can have the idea impressed of that creature they are to frame ? or if one or some few particles have the sense of one part of the animal ( they seeming more capable of this , the parts being far more simple then the whole compages and contrivement ) and other some few of other parts ; how can they confer notes ? by what language or speech can they communicate their counsell one to another ? wherefore that they should mutually serve one another in such a design , is more impossible , then that so many men blind and dumb from their nativity should joyn their forces and wits together to build a castle , or carve a statue of such a creature as none of them knew any more of in several , then some one of the smallest parts thereof , but not the relation it bore to the whole . . besides this , sense being really the same with corporeal motion , it must change upon new impresses of motion , so that if a particle by sense were carried in this line , it meeting with a counterbuffe in the way , must have quite another impress and sense , and so forget what it was going about , and divert its course another way . nay though it scaped free , sense being reaction , when that which it beares against is removed , sense must needs cease , and perfect oblivion succeed . for it is not with these particles as with the spring of a watch , or a bent crosbow , that they should for a considerable time retain the same reaction , and so consequently the same sense . and lastly , if they could , it is still nothing to the purpose ; for let their sense be what it will , their motion is necessary , it being meerly corporeall , and therefore the result of their motion cannot be from any kind of knowledg . for the corporeall motion is first , and is onely felt , not directed by feeling . and therefore whether the matter have any sense or no , what is made out of it is nothing but what results from the wild jumblings and knocking 's of one part thereof against another , without any purpose , counsell or direction . wherefore the ordinary phaenomena of nature being guided according to the most ▪ exquisite wisdome imaginable , it is plain that they are not the effects of the meer motion of matter , but of some immateriall principle , by axiome . . and therefore the ignorance of second causes is not so rightly said to be the seed of religion , ( as mr. hobbs would have it ) as of irreligion and atheisme . for if we did more punctually and particularly search into their natures , we should clearly discern their insufficiency for such effects as we discover to be in the world . but when we have looked so closely and carefully into the nature of corporeall beings , and can finde no causality in them proportionable to these effects we speak of , still to implead our selves rather of ignorance , then the matter and corporeall motion of insufficiency , is to hold an opinion upon humour , and to transgress against our first and second axiomes . chap. xiii . . the last proof of incorporeall substances from apparitions . . the first evasion of the force of such arguings . . an answer to that evasion . . the second evasion . . the first kind of the second evasion . . a description out of virgil of that genius that suggests the dictates of the epicurean philosophy . . the more full and refined sense of that philosophy now a dayes . . the great efficacy of the stars ( which they suppose to consist of nothing but motion and matter ) for production of all manner of creatures in the world . . the third and last ground which i would make use of , for evincing the existence of incorporeall substances , is such extraordinary effects as we cannot well imagine any naturall , but must needs conceive some free or spontaneous agent to be the cause thereof , when as yet it is clear that they are from neither man nor beast . such are speakings , knocking 's , opening of doores when they were fast shut , sudden lights in the midst of a room floating in the aire , and then passing and vanishing ; nay , shapes of men and severall sorts of brutes , that after speech and converse have suddainly disappeared . these and many such like extraordinary effects ( which , if you please , you may call by one generall terme of apparitions ) seem to me to be an undeniable argument , that there be such things as spirits or incorporeall substances in the world ; and i have demonstrated the sequel to be necessary in the last chapter of the appendix to my treatise against atheisme ; and in the third book of that treatise have produced so many and so unexceptionable storyes concerning apparitions , that i hold it superfluous to adde any thing here of that kind , taking far more pleasure in exercising of my reason then in registring of history . besides that i have made so carefull choice there already , that i cannot hope to cull out any that may prove more pertinent or convictive ; i having pen'd down none but such as i had compared with those severe lawes i set my self in the first chapter of that third book , to prevent all tergiversations and evasions of gain-sayers . . but , partly out of my own observation , and partly by information from others , i am well assured there are but two wayes whereby they escape the force of such evident narrations . the first is a firm perswasion that the very notion of a spirit or immateriall substance is an impossibility or contradiction in the very termes . and therefore such stories implying that which they are confident is impossible , the narration at the very first hearing must needs be judged to be false , and therefore they think it more reasonable to conclude all those that profess they have seen such or such things to be mad-men or cheats , then to give credit to what implyes a contradiction . . but this evasion i have quite taken away , by so clearly demonstrating that the notion of a spirit implies no more contradiction then the notion of matter ; and that its attributes are as conceivable as the attributes of matter : so that i hope this creep-hole is stopt for ever . . the second evasion is not properly an evasion of the truth of these stories concerning apparitions , but of our deduction therefrom . for they willingly admit of these apparitions and prodigies recorded in history , but they deny that they are any arguments of a truly spirituall and incorporeall substance distinct from the matter thus changed into this or that shape , that can walk and speak , &c. but that they are speciall effects of the influence of the heavenly bodyes upon this region of generation and corruption . . and these that answer thus are of two sorts . the one have great affinity with aristotle and avenroes , who look not upon the heavenly bodies as meer corporeall substances , but as actuated with intelligencies , which are essences separate and immateriall . but this supposition hurts not us at all in our present design ; they granting that which i am arguing for , viz. a substance incorporeall . the use of this perverse hypothesis is only to shuffle off all arguments that are drawn from apparitions , to prove that the souls of men subsist after death , or that there are any such things as daemons or genii of a nature permanent and immortall . but i look upon this supposition as confutable enough , were it worth the while to encounter it . that of the sadduces is far more firm , they supposing their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be nothing else but the efficacy of the presence of god altering matter into this or the other apparition , or manifestation ; as if there were but one soule in all things , and god were that soule variously working in the matter . but this i have already confuted in my philosophicall poems . . the other influenciaries hold the same power of the heavens as these ; though they do not suppose so high a principle in them , yet they think it sufficient for the salving of all sublunary phaenomena , as well ordinary as extraordinary . truly it is a very venerable secret , and not to be uttered or communicated but by some old silenus lying in his obscure grot or cave , nor that neither but upon due circumstances , and in a right humour , when one may find him with his veins swell'd out with wine , and his garland faln off from his head through his heedless drousiness : then if some young chromis and mnasylus , especially assisted by a fair and forward aegle , that by way of a love-srollick will leave the tracts of her fingers in the blood of mulberies on the temples and forehead of this aged satyre , while he sleeps dog-sleep , and will not seem to see for fear he forfeit the pleasure of his feeling ; then , i say , if these young lads importune him enough , he will again sing that old song of the epicurean philosophy , in an higher strain then ever , which i profess i should abhor to recite , were it not to confute ; it is so monstrous and impious . but because no sore can be cured that is concealed , i must bring this hypothesis into view also , which the poet has briefly comprised in this summary . namque canebat , uti magnum per inane coacta semina terrarumque animaeque marisque fuissent , et liquidi simul ignis ; ut his exordia primis omnia , & ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis . . the fuller and more refined sense whereof now a daies is this ; that matter and motion are the principles of all things whatsoever ; and that by motion some atomes or particles are more subtil then others , and of more nimbleness and activity . that motion of one body against another does every where necessarily produce sense , sense being nothing else but the reaction of parts of the matter . that the subtiler the matter is , the sense is more subtil . that the subtilest matter of all is that which constitutes the sun and stars , from whence they must needs have the purest and subtilest sense . that what has the most perfect sense , has the most perfect imagination and memory , because memory and imagination are but the same with sense in reality , the latter being but certain modes of the former . that what has the perfectest imagination , has the highest reason and providence ; providence and reason being nothing else but an exacter train of phantasmes , sensations or imaginations . wherefore the sun and the stars are the most intellectuall beings in the world , and in them is that knowledg counsell , and wisdome by which all sublunary things are framed and governed . . these by their severall impresses and impregnations have filled the whole earth with vital motion , raising innumerable sorts of flowers , herbs and trees out of the ground . these have also generated the severall kindes of living creatures . these have filled the seas with fishes , the fields with beasts , and the aire with fowles ; the terrestriall matter being as easily formed into the living shapes of these severall animals by the powerfull impress of the imagination of the sun and stars , as the embryo in the womb is marked by the strong fancy of his mother that bears him . and therefore these celestiall powers being able to frame living shapes of earthly matter by the impress of their imagination , it will be more easy for them to change the vaporous aire into like transfigurations . so that admitting all these stories of apparitions to be true that are recorded in writers , it is no argument of the existence of any incorporeall principle in the world . for the piercing fore-sight of these glorious bodies , the sun and stars , is able to raise what apparitions or prodigies they please , to usher in the births or fore-signify the deaths of the most considerable persons that appear in the world ; of which pomponatius himself does acknowledg that there are many true examples both in greek and latine history . this is the deepest secret that old silenus could ever sing to ensnare the ears of deceivable youth . and it is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the very worst sense , horrendum mysterium , a very dreadfull and dangerous mystery , saving that there is no small hope that it may not prove true . let us therefore now examine it . chap. xiv . . that the splendor of the celestiall bodies proves no fore-sight nor soveraignty that they have over us . . that the stars can have no knowledg of us , mathematically demonstrated . . the same conclusion again demonstrated more familiarly . . that the stars cannot communicate thoughts , neither with the sun nor with one another . . that the sun has no knowledg of our affairs . . principles laid down for the inferring that conclusion . . a demonstration that he cannot see us . . that he can have no other kind of knowledg of us , nor of the frame of any animall on earth . . that though the sun had the knowledg of the right frame of an animal , he could not transmit it into terrestriall matter . . an answer to that instance of the signature of the foetus . . . further answers thereto . . a short increpation of the confident exploders of incorporeall substance out of the world . . that the light is a very glorious thing , and the lustre of the stars very lovely to look upon , and that the body of the sun is so full of splendour and majesty , that without flattery we may profess our selves constrained to look aside , as not being able to bear the brightness of his aspect ; all this must be acknowledged for truth : but that these are as so many eyes of heaven to watch over the earth , so many kinde and carefull spectators and intermedlers also in humane affairs , as that phansifull chymist paracelsus conceits , who writeth that not onely princes and nobles , or men of great and singular worth , but even almost every one , near his death has some prognostick sign or other ( as knocking 's in the house , the dances of dead men , and the like ) from these compassionate fore-seers of his approaching fate ; this i must confess i am not so paganly superstitious as to believe one syllable of , but think it may be demonstrated to be a meer fancy , especially upon this present hypothesis , that the sun and stars have no immateriall being residing in them , but are meer matter consisting of the subtilest particles and most vehemently agitated . for then we cannot but be assured that there is nothing in them more divine then what is seen in other things that shine in the dark , suppose rotten wood , glo-worms , or the flame of a rush-candle . . this at least we will demonstrate , that let the sun and stars have what knowledg they will of other things , they have just none at all of us , nor of our affairs ; which will quite take away this last evasion . that the stars can have no knowledg of us is exceeding evident . for whenas the magnus orbis of the earth is but as a point compared with the distance thereof to a fixed star , that is to say , when as that angle which we may imagine to be drawn from a star , and to be subtended by the diameter of the magnus orbis , is to sense no angle at all , but as a meer line ; how little then is the earth it self ? and how utterly invisible to any star , when as her diameter is above . times less then that of her magnus orbis ? from whence it is clear that it is perfectly impossible that the stars , though they were endued with sight , could so much as see the earth it self , ( much less the inhabitants thereof ) to be spectators and intermedlers in their affaires for good or evil ; and there being no higher principle to inspire them with the knowledg of these things , it is evident that they remain utterly ignorant of them . . or if this demonstration ( though undeniably true in it self ) be not so intelligible to every one , we may adde what is more easy and familiar , viz. that the stars being lucid bodies , and those of the first magnitude near an hundred times bigger then the earth , and yet appearing so small things to us , hence any one may collect , that the opake earth will either be quite invisible to the stars , or else at least appear so little , that it will be impossible that they should see any distinct countries , much less cities , houses , or inhabitants . . wherefore we have plainly swept away this numerous company of the celestiall senators from having any thing to doe to consult about , or any way to oversee the affairs of mankind ; and therefore let them seem to wink and twinkle as cogitabundly as they will , we may rest in assurance that they have no plot concerning us , either for good or evill , as having no knowledg of us . nor if they had , could they communicate their thoughts to that great deemed soveraign of the world , the sun ; they being ever as invisible to him , as they are to us in the day time . for it is nothing but his light that hinders us from seeing so feeble objects , and this hindrance consisteth in nothing else but this , that that motion which by his rayes is caused in the organ is so fierce and violent , that the gentle vibration of the light of the stars cannot master it , nor indeed bear any considerable proportion to it : what then can it do in reference to the very body of the sun himself , the matter whereof has the most furious motion of any thing in the world ? . there is nothing now therefore left , but the sun alone , that can possibly be conceived to have any knowledg of , or any superintendency over our terrestriall affairs . and how uncapable he is also of this office , i hold it no difficult thing to demonstrate . whence it will plainly appear , that those apparitions that are seen , whether in the aire or on earth ( which are rightly looked upon as an argument of providence and existence of some incorporeall essence in the world ) cannot be attributed to the power and prevision of the sun , supposing him purely corporeall . . for it is a thing agreed upon by all sides , that meer matter has no connate ideas in it of such things as we see in the world ; but that upon reaction of one part moved by another arises a kind of sense , or perception . which opinion as it is most rationall in it self to conceive ( supposing matter has any sense in it at all ) so it is most consonant to experience , we seeing plainly that sense is ever caused by some outward corporeall motion upon our organs , which are also corporeall . for that light is from a corporeal motion , is plain from the reflexion of the rayes there of , and no sound is heard but from the motion of the aire or some other intermediate body ; no voice but there is first a moving of the tongue ; no musick but there must either be the blowing of wind , or the striking upon strings , or something analogicall to these , and so in the other senses . wherefore if there be nothing but body in the world , it is evident that sense arises meerly from the motion of one part of matter against another , and that motion is ever first , and perception followes , and that therefore perception must necessarily follow the laws of motion , and that no percipient can have any thing more to conceive then what is conveighed by corporeall motion . now from these principles it will be easy to prove that , though we should acknowledg a power of perception in the sun , yet it will not amount to any ability of his being either a spectator , or governor of our affairs here on earth . . according to the computation o● astronomers , even of those that speak more modestly , the sun is bigger then the earth above an hundred and fifty times . but how little he appears to us every eye is able to judge . how little then must the earth appear to him ? if he see her at all , he will be so far from being able to take notice of any persons or families , that he cannot have any distinct discerning of streets , nor cities , no not of fields , nor countries ; but whole regions , though of very great extent , will vanish here , as alcibiades his patrimony , in that map of the world socrates shewed him , to repress the pride of the young heire . the earth must appear considerably less to him then the moon does to us , because the sun appears to us less then the moon . it were easy to demonstrate that her discus would appear to the sun near thirty , nay sixty times less then the moon does to us , according to lansbergius his computation . now consider how little we can discern in that broader object of sight , the moon , when she is the nighest , notwithstanding we be placed in the dark , under the shadow of the earth , whereby our sight is more passive and impressible . how little then must the fiery eye of that cyclops the sun , which is all flame and light , discern in this lesser object the earth , his vigour and motion being so vehemently strong and unyielding ? what effect it will have upon him , we may in some sort judge by our selves ; for though our organ be but moved or agitated with the reflection of his rayes , we hardly see the moon when she is above the horizon by day : what impress then can our earth , a less object to him then the moon is to us , make upon the sun , whose body is so furiously hot , that he is as boyling fire , if a man may so speak , and the spots about him are , as it were , the scum of this fuming cauldron ? besides that our atmosphere is so thick a covering over us at that distance , that there can be the appearance of nothing but a white mist enveloping all and shining like a bright cloud ; in which the rayes of the sun will be so lost , that they can never return any distinct representation of things unto him . wherefore it is as evident to reason that he cannot see us , as it is to sense that we see him ; and therefore he can be no overseer nor intermedler in our actions . . but perhaps you will reply that though the sun cannot see the earth , yet he may have a sense and perception in himself ( for he is a fine glittering thing , and some strange matter must be presumed of him ) that may amount to a wonderfull large sphere of understanding , fore-knowledg , and power . but this is a meer fancyfull surmise , and such as cannot be made good by any of our faculties : nay the quite contrary is demonstrable by such principles as are already agreed upon . for there are no connate ideas in the matter , and therefore out of the collision and agitation of these solar particles , we cannot rationally expect any other effect in the sun , then such as we experiment in the percussion of our own eyes , out of which ordinarily followes the sense of a confused light or flame . if the sun therefore has any sense of himself , it must be only the perception of a very vigorous light or fire , which being still one and the same representation , it is a question whether he has a sense of it or no , any more then we have of our bones , which we perceive not , by reason of our accustomary and uninterrupted sense of them , as mr. hobbs ingeniously conjectures in a like supposition . but if you will say that there is a perception of the jogging or justling , or of what ever touch or rubbing of one solar particle against another , the body of the sun being so exceeding liquid , and consequently the particles thereof never resting , but playing and moving this way and that way ; they hitting and fridging so fortuitously one against another , the perceptions that arise from hence must be so various and fortuitous , so quick and short , so inconsistent , flitting and unpermanent , that if any man were in such a condition as the sun necessarily is , according to this hypothesis , he would both be , and appear to all the world to be , stark mad ; he would be so off and on , and so unsetled , and doe , and think , and speak all things with such ungovernable rashness and temerity . in brief , that the sun by this tumultuous agitation of his fiery atoms , should hit upon any rationall contrivance or right idea of any of these living creatures we see here on earth , is utterly as hard to conceive , as that the terrestriall particles themselves should justle together into such contrivances and formes , which is that which i have already sufficiently confuted . . and if the sun could light on any such true frame or forme of any animall , or the due rudiments or contrivance thereof , it is yet unconceivable how he should conveigh it into this region of generation here on earth , partly by reason of the earths distance and invisibleness , and partly because the deepest principle of all being but meer motion , without any superior power to govern it , this imagination of the sun working on the earth can be but a simple rectilinear impress , which can never arise to such an inward solid organization of parts in living creatures , nor hold together these spectres or apparitions in the aire , in any more certain form then the smoak of chymnies , or the fume of tobacco . . nor is that instance of the power of the mothers fancy on the foetus in the womb , any more then a meer flourish ; for the disparity is so great , that the argument proves just nothing : for whereas the mother has an explicite idea of the foetus and every part thereof , the sun and stars have no distinct idea at all of the parts of the earth ; nay i dare say that what we have already intimated will amount to a demonstration , that though they had sense , yet they do not so much as know whether this earth we live on be in rerum naturá or no. . again , the mark that is impressed on the foetus , the mother has a clear and vivid conception of ; but the curious contrivance in the idea of animals , i have shewn how incompetible it is to the fortuitous justling of the fiery particles of either sun or stars . . thirdly , the impress on the foetus is very simple and slight , and seldome so curious as the ordinary impresses of seals upon wax , which are but the modifications of the surface thereof ; but this supposed impress of the imagination of the sun and stars is more then a solid statue , or the most curious automaton that ever was invented by the wit of man ; and therefore impossible to proceed from a meer rectilinear impress upon the aether down to the earth from the imagination of the sun , no not if he were supposed to be actuated with an intelligent soule , if the earth and all the space betwixt her and him were devoid thereof . nor do i conceive , though it be an infinitely more slight business , that the direction of the signature of the foetus upon such a part were to be performed by the fancy of the mother , notwithstanding the advantage of the organization of her body , were not both her self and the foetus animated creatures . . wherefore we have demonstrated beyond all evasion , from the phaenomena of the universe , that of necessity there must be such a thing in the world as incorporeall substance ; let inconsiderable philosophasters hoot at it , and deride it as much as their follies please . book ii. chap. i. . an addition of more axiomes for the demonstrating that there is a spirit or immateriall substance in man. . the truth of the first of these axiomes confirmed from the testimony of mr. hobbs . . the proof of the second axiome . . the proof of the third . . the confirmation of the fourth from the testimony of mr. hobbs , as also from reason . . an explication and proof of the fifth . . a further proof thereof . . a third argument of the truth thereof . . an answer to an evasion . . another evasion answered . . a further answer thereto . . a third answer . . a fourth answer , wherein is mainly contained a confirmation of the first answer to the second evasion . . the plainness of the sixth axiome . . the proof of the seventh . . having cleared the way thus far as to prove that there is no contradiction nor inconsistency in the notion of a spirit , but that it may exist in nature , nay that de facto there are incorporeall substances really existent in the world , we shall now drive more home to our main design , and demonstrate that there is such an immateriall substance in man , which , from the power it is conceived to have in actuating and guiding the body , is usually called the soule . this truth we shall make good first in a more generall way , but not a whit the lesse stringent , by evincing that such faculties or operations as we are conscious of in our selves , are utterly incompetible to matter considered at large without any particular organization . and then afterwards we shall more punctually consider the body of man , and every possible fitness in the structure thereof , that is worth taking notice of for the performance of these operations we ordinarily find in our selves . and that this may be done more plainly and convincingly ▪ we will here adde to the number of our axiomes these that follow . axiome xx. motion or reaction of one part of the matter against another , or at least a due continuance thereof , is really one and the same with sense and perception , if there be any ▪ sense or perception in matter . . this axiome , as it is plain enough of it self ( supposing there were nothing but body in the world ) so has it the suffrage of our most confident and potent adversary mr. hobbs in his elements of philos. cap. . art. . whose judgment i make much of in such cases as these , being perswaded as well out of reason as charity , that he seeing so little into the nature of spirits , that defect is compensated with an extraordinary quick sightedness in discerning of the best and most warrantable wayes of salving all phaenomena from the ordinary allowed properties of matter . wherefore i shall not hold it impertinent to bring in his testimony in things of this nature , my demonstrations becoming thereby more recommendable to men of his own conclusions . but my design being not a particular victory over such a sort of men , but an absolute establishing of the truth , i shall lay down no grounds that are meerly argumenta ad hominem ; but such as i am perswaded ( upon this hypothesis , that there is nothing but body in the world ) are evident to any one that can indifferently judge thereof . and the demonstration of this present axiome i have prefixed in my preface sect. . axiome xxi . so far as this continued reaction reaches , so far reaches sense or perception , and no farther . . this axiome is to be understood as well of duration of time , as extension of the subject , viz. that sense and perception spread no further in matter then reaction does , nor remain any longer then this reaction remains . which truth is fully evident out of the foregoing axiome . axiome xxii . that diversity there is of sense or perception does necessarily arise from the diversity of the magnitude , figure , position , vigour and direction of motion in parts of the matter . . the truth of this is also clear from the . axiome , for perception being really one and the same thing with reaction of matter one part against another , and there being a diversity of perception , it must imply also a diversity of modification of reaction ; and reaction being nothing but motion in matter , it cannot be varied but by such variations as are competible to matter , viz. such as are magnitude , figure , posture , locall motion , wherein is contained any endeavour towards it , as also the direction of that either full motion or curb'd endeavour , and a vigour thereof ; which if you run to the lowest degrees , you will at last come to rest , which therefore is someway referrible to that head , as to magnitude you are to refer littleness . these are the first conceivables in matter , and therefore diversity of perception must of necessity arise from these . axiome xxiii . matter in all the variety of those perceptions it is sensible of , has none but such as are impressed by corporeall motions , that is to say , that are perceptions of some actions or modificated impressions of parts of matter bearing one against another . . to this truth mr. hobbs sets his seale with all willingness imaginable , or rather eagerness , as also his followers , they stoutly contending that we have not the perception of any thing but the phantasmes of materiall objects , and of sensible words or markes , which we make to stand for such and such objects . which certainly would be most true if there were nothing but matter in the world ; so that they speak very consonantly to their own principles : i say , this is not only true in that school , but also rationall in it self , supposing nothing but matter in the world , and that perception and reaction is really one . for that reaction being in brutes as well as in men , there must not be any difference by a perception of quite another kind , but by an externall way of communication of their perceptions . and therefore the distinction betwixt men and beasts must consist onely in this , that the one can agree in some common mark , whether voices or characters , or whatever else , to express their perceptions , but the other cannot ; but the perceptions themselves must be of one kind in both , they neither of them perceiving any thing but corporeall impressions , such as they feel by the parts of the matter bearing one against another . axiome xxiv . the distinct impression of any considerable extent of variegated matter cannot be received by a meer point of matter . . by a meer point of matter i doe not mean a meer mathematicall point , but a perfect parvitude , or the least reality of which matter can consist , concerning which i have already spoke lib. . cap. . this being the least quantity that discerpible matter can consist of , no particle of matter can touch it less then it self . this parvitude therefore that is so little that it has properly no integrall parts , really distinguishable , how can it possibly be a subject distinctly receptive of the view , haply , of half an horizon at once ? which sight is caused by reall and distinct motion from reall distinct parts of the object that is seen . . i acknowledg indeed that the pupill of the eye is but small in comparison of those vast objects that are seen through it , as also that through a hole exceedingly much less , made suppose in brass or lead , large objects are transmitted very clearly ; but i have observed with all that you may lessen the hole so far , that an unclouded day at noon will look more obscure then an ordinary moon-shine night . wherefore nature has bounds , and reducing her to the least measure imaginable , the effect must prove insensible . . again , this object we speak of may be so variegated , i mean with such colours , that it may imply a contradiction , that one and the same particle of matter ( suppose some very small round one , that shall be the cuspe of the visuall pyramide or cone ) should receive them all at once ; the opposite kindes of those colours being uncommunicable to this round particle , otherwise then by contrarietie of motions , or by rest and motion , which are as contrary ; as is manifest out of that excellent theorem concerning colours in des-cartes his meteors , which if it were possible to be false , yet it is most certainly true , that seeing motion is the cause of sight , the contrariety of objects for colour must arise out of contrary modifications of motion in this particle we speak of , that immediatly communicates the object to the sentient : which contrariety of motions at the same time and within the same surface of the adaequate place of a body is utterly incompetible thereto . . this subterfuge therefore being thus clearly taken away , they substitute another , viz. that the distinct parts of the object doe not act upon this round particle , which is the cuspe of the visuall pyramide , at once , but successively , and so swiftly , that the object is represented at once ; as when one swings about a fire-stick very fast , it seems one continued circle of fire . but we shall find this instance very little to the purpose , if we consider , that when one swings a fire-stick in a circle , it describes such a circle in the bottome of the eye , not upon one point there , but in a considerable distance ; and that the optick nerve , or the spirits therein , are touched successively , but left free to a kind of tremor or vibration as it were , ( so as it is in the playing of a lute ) till the motion has gone round , and then touches in the same place again , so quick , that it findes it still vigorously moved : but there being but one particle to touch upon here , some such like inconveniences will recurre as we noted in the former case . . for , as i demonstrated before , that some colours cannot be communicated at once to one and the same round particle of matter ; so from thence it will follow here , that , such colours succeeding one another , the impress of the one will take off immediatly the impress of the other ; from whence we shall not be able to see such various colours as are discernible in a very large object at once . for unless the impression make some considerable stay upon that which receives it , there is no sensation ; insomuch that a man may wag his finger so fast that he can scarce see it : and if it doe make a due stay , suppose a large object checkered with the most opposite colours , it were impossible that we should see that checker-work at once in so large a compass as we doe , but we shall onely see it by parts , the parts vanishing and coming again in a competent swiftness , but very discernible . . lastly , this quick vicissitude of impulse or impression would contaminate all the colours , and make the whole object as it were of one confounded colour , as a man may easily perceive in a painted wheel ; for what is it but a quick coming on of one colour upon the same part of the optick nerve , upon which another was , immediately that makes the whole wheel seem of one blended colour ? but not to impose upon any one , this instance of the wheel has a peculiar advantage above this present supposition for making all seem one confounded colour , because the colours of the wheel come not onely upon one and the same part of the nerve , but in one and the same line from the object ; so that in this regard the instance is less accommodate . but it is shreudly probable , that fluid perceptive matter will not fail to find the colours tinctured from one another in some measure in the whole object here also , by reason of the instability of that particle that is plaied upon from all parts thereof . at least it is an unexceptionable confirmation of our first demonstration of the weakness of the second evasion , from the necessity of a considerable stay upon the percipient matter , and that sensation cannot be but with some leisurely continuance of this or that motion before it be wiped out . we might adde also that there ought to be a due permanency of the object that presses against the organ , though no new impression suddenly succeeded to wipe out the former , as one may experiment in swiftly swinging about a painted bullet in a string , which will still more fully confirme what we aime at . but this is more then enough for the making good of this . axiome ; whose evidence is so clear of it self , that i believe there are very few but will be convinced of it at the first sight . axiome xxv . whatever impression or parts of any impression are not received by this perfect parvitude or reall point of matter , are not at all perceived by it . . this is so exceeding plain of it self , that it wants neither explication nor proof . axiome xxvi . what ever sense or motion there is now in matter , it is a necessary impression from some other part of matter , and does necessarily continue till some part or other of matter has justled it out . . that what motion there is in any part of matter is necessarily there , and there continues , till some other part of matter change or diminish its motion , is plain from the lawes of motion set down by des-cartes in his principia philosophiae . and that there is the same reason of sense or perception ( supposing there is nothing but matter in the world ) is plain from axiome . that makes motion and sense or perception really the same . chap. ii. . that if matter be capable of sense , inanimate things are so too : and of mr. hobbs his wavering in that point . . an enumeration of severall faculties in us that matter is utterly uncapable of . . that matter in no kind of temperature is capable of sense . . that no one point of matter can be the common sensorium . . nor a multitude of such points receiving singly the entire image of the object . . nor yet receiving part part , and the whole the whole . . that memory is incompetible to matter . . that the matter is uncapable of the notes of some circumstances of the object which we remembred . . that matter cannot be the seat of second notions . . mr. hobbs his evasion of the foregoing demonstration clearly confuted . . that the freedome of our will evinces that there is a substance in us distinct from matter . . that mr. hobbs therefore acknowledges all our actions necessary . . we have now made our addition of such axiomes as are most usefull for our present purpose . let us therefore , according to the order we propounded , before we consider the fabrick and organization of the body , see if such operations as we find in our selves be competible to matter looked upon in a more generall manner . that matter from its own nature is uncapable of sense , plainly appears from axiome . & . for motion and sense being really one and the same thing , it will necessarily follow , that where ever there is motion , especially any considerable duration thereof , there must be sense and perception : which is contrary to what we find in a catochus , and experience daily in dead carkasses ; in both which , though there be reaction , yet there is no sense . in brief , if any matter have sense , it will follow that upon reaction all shall have the like , and that a bell while it is ringing , and a bow while it is bent , and every jack-in-a-box that school-boyes play with , while it is held in by the cover pressing against it , shall be living animals , or sensitive creatures . a thing so foolish and frivolous , that the meer recitall of the opinion may well be thought confutation enough with the sober . and indeed mr. hobbs himself , though he resolve sense meerly into reaction of matter , yet is ashamed of these odd consequences thereof , and is very loth to be reckoned in the company of those philosophers , ( though , as he sayes , learned men ) who have maintained that all bodies are endued with sense , and yet he can hardly abstain from saying that they are ; onely he is more shie of allowing them memory , which yet they will have whether he will or no , if he give them sense . as for example , in the ringing of a bell , from every stroak there continues a tremor in the bell , which decaying , must according to his philosophie be imagination , and referring to the stroak past must be memory ; and if a stroak overtake it within the compass of this memory , what hinders but discrimination or judgment may follow ? but the conclusion is consonant enough to this absurd principle , that there is nothing but matter in the universe , and that it is capable of perception . see mr. hobbs his elements of philos. chap. . . but we will not content our selves onely with the discovery of this one ugly inconvenience of this bold assertion , but shall further endeavour to shew that the hypothesis is false , and that matter is utterly uncapable of such operations as we find in our selves , and that therefore there is something in us immateriall or incorporeall . for we finde in our selves , that one and the same thing both heares , and sees , and tasts , and , to be short , perceives all the variety of objects that nature manifests unto us . wherefore sense being nothing but the impress of corporeall motion from objects without , that part of matter which must be the common sensorium , must of necessity receive all that diversity of impulsions from objects ; it must likewise imagine , remember , reason , and be the fountain of spontaneous motion , as also the seat of what the greeks call the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or liberty of will : which supposition we shall finde involved in unextricable difficulties . . for first , we cannot conceive of any portion of matter but it is either hard or soft . as for that which is hard , all men leave it out as utterly unlike to be endued with such cognitive faculties as we are conscious to our selves of . that which is soft will prove either opake , pellucid , or lucid . if opake , it cannot see , the exterior superficies being a bar to the inward parts . if pellucid , as aire and water , then indeed it will admit inwardly these particles and that motion which are the conveighers of the sense , and distinction of colours ; and sound also will penetrate . but this matter being heterogeneall , that is to say consisting of parts of a different nature and office , the aire , suppose , being proper for sound , and those round particles which cartesius describes for colour and light ; the perception of these objects will be differently lodged ; but there is some one thing in us that perceives both . lastly , if lucid , there would be much-what the same inconvenience that there is in the opake , for its own fieriness would fend off the gentle touch of externall impresses ; or if it be so milde and thin that it is in some measure diaphanous , the inconveniences will again recurre that were found in the pellucid . and in brief , any liquid matter has such variety of particles in it , that if the whole , as it must , ( being the common sensorium ) be affected with any impress from without , the parts thereof must be variously affected , so that no object will seem homogeneall , as appeares from axiome . which truth i shall further illustrate by a homely but very significant representation . suppose we should put feathers , bullets and spur-rowels in a box , where they shall lye intermixedly , but close , one with another : upon any jog this box receives , supposing all the stuffage thereof has sense , it is evident that the severall things therein must be differently affected , and therefore if the common sensorium were such , there would seem no homogeneall object in the world . or at least these severall particles shall be the severall receptives of the severall motions of the same kinde from without , as the aire of sounds , the cartesian globuli of light and colours . but what receives all these , and so can judge of them all , we are again at a loss for , as before : unless we imagine it some very fine and subtill matter , so light and thinne , that it feels not it self , but so yielding and passive , that it easily feels the several assaults and impresses of other bodies upon it , or in it ; which yet would imply , that this matter alone were sensitive , and the others not ; and so it would be granted , that not all matter ( no not so much as in fluid bodies ) has sense . such a tempered matter as this is analogous to the animal spirits in man , which , if matter could be the soule , were the very soule of the body , and common percipient of all motions from within or without , by reason of the tenuity , passivity and neare homogeneity and imperceptibility of any change or alteration from the playing together of its own tenuious and light particles ; and therefore very fit to receive all manner of impresses from others . whence we may rationally conclude , that some such subtile matter as this , is either the soule , or her immediate instrument for all manner of perceptions . the latter whereof i shall prove to be true in its due place . that the former part is false i shall now demonstrate , by proving more stringently , that no matter whatsoever is capable of such sense and perception as we are conscious to our selves of . . for concerning that part of matter which is the common sensorium , i demand whether some one point of it receive the whole image of the object , or whether it is wholly received into every point of it , or finally whether the whole sensorium receive the whole image by expanded parts , this part of the sensorium this part of the image , and that part that . if the first , seeing that in us which perceives the externall object moves also the body , it will follow , that one little point of matter will give locall motion to what is innumerable millions of times bigger then it self , of which there cannot be found nor imagined any example in nature . . if the second , this difficulty presents it self , which also reflects upon the former position , how so small a point as we speak of should receive the images of so vast , or so various objects at once , without obliteration or confusion ; a thing impossible , as is manifest from axiome . and therefore not receiving them , cannot perceive them by axiome . but if every point or particle of this matter could receive the whole image , which of these innumerable particles , that receive the image entirely , may be deemed i my self that perceive this image ? for if i be all those points , it will come to pass , especially in a small object , and very neare at hand , that the line of impulse coming to divers and distant points , it will seem to come as from severall places , and so one object will necessarily seem a cluster of objects . but if i be one of these points , what becomes of the rest ? or who are they ? . there remains therefore onely the third way , which is that the parts of the image of the object be received by the parts of this portion of matter , which is supposed the common sensorium . but this does perfectly contradict experience ; for we finde our selves to perceive the whole object , when in this case nothing could perceive the whole , every part onely perceiving its part ; and therefore there would be nothing that can judge of the whole . no more then three men , if they were imagined to sing a song of three parts , and none of them should heare any part but his own , could judge of the harmony of the whole . . those that are commonly called by the name of secundae notiones , and are not any sensible objects themselves , nor the phantasmes of any sensible objects , but onely our manner of conceiving them , o● reasoning about them , in which number are comprehended all logicall and mathematicall termes ; these , i say , never came in at the senses , they being no impresses of corporeall motion , which excite in us , as in doggs and other brutes , the sense onely of sounds , of colours , of hot , of cold , and the like . now matter being affected by no perception but of corporeall impression , by the bearing of one body against another ; it is plain from axiome . that these second notions , or mathematicall and logicall conceptions , cannot be seated in matter , and therefore must be in some other substance distinct from it , by axiome . . here mr. hobbs , to avoid the force of this demonstration , has found out a marvelous witty invention to befool his followers withall , making them believe that there is no such thing as these secundae notiones , distinct from the names or words whereby they are said to be signified ; and that there is no perception in us , but of such phantasmes as are impressed from externall objects , such as are common to us and beasts : and as for the names which we give to these , or the phantasmes of them , that there is the same reason of them , as of other markes , letters , or characters , all which coming in at the senses , he would beare them in hand that it is a plain case , that we have the perception of nothing but what is impressed from corporeall objects . but how ridiculous an evasion this is , may be easily discovered , if we consider , that if these mathematicall and logicall notions we speak of be nothing but names , logicall and mathematicall truths will not be the same in all nations , because they have not the same names . for example , similitudo and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and proportio , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and ratio , these names are utterly different , the greek from the latine ; yet the greeks , latines , nor any nation else , doe vary in their conceptions couched under these different names : wherefore it is plain , that there is a setled notion distinct from these words and names , as well as from those corporeall phantasmes impressed from the object ; which was the thing to be demonstrated . . lastly , we are conscious to our selves of that faculty which the greekes call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or a power in our selves , notwithstanding any outward assaults or importunate temptations , to cleave to that which is vertuous and honest , or to yield to pleasures , or other vile advantages . that we have this liberty and freedome in our selves , and that we refuse the good , and chuse the evill , when we might have done otherwise ; that naturall sense of remorse of conscience is an evident and undeniable witness of . for when a man has done amiss , the paine , grief , or indignation that he raises in himself , or at least feels raised in him , is of another kind from what we finde from misfortunes or affronts we could not avoid . and that which pinches us and vexes us so severely , is the sense that we have brought such an evill upon our selves , when it was in our power to have avoided it . now if there be no sense nor perception in us , but what arises from the reaction of matter one part against another ; whatever representation of things , whatever deliberation or determination we fall upon , it will by axiome . be purely necessary , there being upon this hypothesis no more freedome while we deliberate or conclude , then there is in a paire of scales , which rests as necessarily at last as it moved before . wherefore it is manifest that this faculty we call free-will is not found in matter , but in some other substance , by axiome . . mr hobbs therefore , to give him his due , consonantly enough to his own principles , does very peremptorily affirm that all our actions are necessary . but i having proved the contrary by that faculty which we may call internall sense or common notion , found in all men that have not done violence to their own nature ; unless by some other approved faculty he can discover the contrary , my conclusion must stand for an undoubted truth by axiome . he pretends therefore some demonstration of reason , which he would oppose against the dictate of this inward sense ; which it will not be amiss to examine , that we may discover his sophistry . chap. iii. . mr. hobbs his arguments whereby he would prove all our actions necessitated . his first argument . . his second argument . . his third argument . . his fourth argument . . what must be the meaning of these words , nothing taketh beginning from it self , in the first argument of mr. hobbs . . a fuller and more determinate explication of the foregoing words , whose sense is evidently convinced to be , that no essence of it self can vary its modification . . that this is onely said by mr. hobbs , not proved , and a full confutation of his assertion . . mr. hobbs imposed upon by his own sophistry . . that one part of this first argument of his is groundless , the other sophisticall . . the plain proposall of his argument , whence appeares more fully the weakness and sophistry thereof . . an answer to his second argument . . an answer to the third . . an answer to a difficulty concerning the truth and falsehood of future propositions . . an answer to mr. hobbs his fourth argument , which , though slighted by himself , is the strongest of them all . . the difficulty of reconciling free-will with divine prescience and prophecies . . that the faculty of free-will is seldome put in use . . that the use of it is properly in morall conflict . . that the soule is not invincible there neither . . that divine decrees either finde fit instruments or make them . . that the more exact we make divine prescience , even to the comprehension of any thing that implies no contradiction in it self to be comprehended , the more cleare it is that mans will may be sometimes free . . which is sufficient to make good my last argument against mr. hobbs . . his first argument runs thus ( i will repeat it in his own words , as also the rest of them as they are to be found in his treatise of liberty and necessity ) i conceive , ( saith he ) that nothing taketh beginning from it self , but from the action of some other immediate agent without it self ; and that therefore , when first a man hath an appetite or will to something , to which immediatly before he had no appetite nor will , the cause of his will is not the will it self , but something else not in his own disposing : so that whereas it is out of controversy , that of voluntary actions the will is the necessary cause , and by this which is said the will is also caused by other things , whereof it disposeth not , it followeth , that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes , and therefore are necessitated . . his second thus , i hold ( saith he ) that to be a sufficient cause , to which nothing is wanting that is needfull to the producing of the effect : the same also is a necessary cause . for if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring forth the effect , then there wanteth somewhat which was needfull for the producing of it , and so the cause was not sufficient ; but if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the effect , then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause , for that is said to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it . hence it is manifest , that whatsoever is produced , is produced necessarily . for whatsoever is produced , hath had a sufficient cause to produce it , or else it had not been . what followes is either the same , or so closely depending on this , that i need not adde it . . his third argument therefore shall be that which he urges from future disjunctions . for example , let the case be put of the weather , 't is necessary that to morrow it shall rain , or not rain ; if therefore , saith he , it be not necessary it shall rain , it is necessary it shall not rain , otherwise there is no necessity that the proposition , it shall rain or not rain , should be true . . his fourth is this , that the denying of necessity destroyeth both the decrees and the prescience of god almighty . for whatsoever god hath purposed to bring to pass by man , as an instrument , or foreseeth shall come to pass , a man , if he have liberty from necessitation , might frustrate , and make not to come to pass ; and god should either not foreknow it , and not decree it , or he should foreknow such things shall be as shall never be , and decree that which shall never come to pass . . the entrance into his first argument is something obscure and ambiguous , nothing taketh beginning from it self : but i shall be as candid and faithfull an interpreter as i may . if he mean by beginning , beginning of existence , it is undoubtedly true , that no substance , nor modification of substance taketh beginning from it self ; but this will not infer the conclusion he drives at . but if he mean , that nothing taketh beginning from it self , of being otherwise affected or modified then before ; he must either understand by nothing , no essence , neither spirit nor body , or no modification of essence . he cannot mean spirit , as admitting no such thing in the whole comprehension of nature . if body , it will not infer what he aims at , unless there be nothing but body in the universe , which is a meer precarious principle of his , which he beseeches his credulous followers to admit , but he proves it no where , as i have already noted . if by modification he mean the modification of matter or body , that runs still upon the former principle , that there is nothing but body in the world , and therefore he proves nothing but upon a begg'd hypothesis , and that a false one ; as i have elsewhere demonstrated . wherefore the most favourable interpretation i can make is , that he means by no thing , no essence , nor modification of essence , being willing to hide that dearly-hug'd hypothesis of his ( that there is nothing but body in the world ) under so generall and uncertain termes . . the words therefore in the other senses having no pretence to conclude any thing , let us see how far they will prevail in this , taking no thing , for no essence , or no modification of essence , or what will come nearer to the matter in hand , no faculty of an essence . and from this two-fold meaning , let us examine two propositions , that will result from thence , viz. that no faculty of any essence can vary its operation from what it is , but from the action of some other immediate agent without it self ; or , that no essence can vary its modification or operation by it self , but by the action of some other immediate agent without it . of which two propositions the latter seemes the better sense by far , and most naturall . for it is very harsh , and , if truly looked into , as false , to say , that the mode or faculty of any essence changes it self , for it is the essence it self that exerts it self into these variations of modes , if no externall agent is the cause of these changes . and mr. hobbs opposing an externall agent to this thing that he saies does not change it self , does naturally imply , that they are both not faculties but substances he speakes of . . wherefore there remains onely the latter proposition to be examined , that no essence of it self can vary its modification . that some essence must have had a power of moving is plain , in that there is motion in the world , which must be the effect of some substance or other . but that motion in a large sense , taking it for mutation or change , may proceed from that very essence in which it is found , seemes to me plain by experience : for there is an essence in us , whatever we will call it , which we find endued with this property ; as appears from hence , that it has variety of perceptions , mathematicall , logicall , and i may adde also morall , that are not any impresses nor footsteps of corporeall motion , as i have already demonstrated ; and any man may observe in himself , and discover in the writings of others , how the minde has passed from one of these perceptions to another , in very long deductions of demonstration ; as also what stilness from bodily motion is required in the excogitation of such series of reasons , where the spirits are to run into no other posture nor motion then what they are guided into by the mind it self , where these immateriall and intellectuall notions have the leading and rule . besides in grosser phantasmes , which are supposed to be somewhere impressed in the brain , the composition of them , and disclusion and various disposall of them , is plainly an arbitrarious act , and implies an essence that can , as it lists , excite in it self the variety of such phantasmes as have been first exhibited to her from externall objects , and change them and transpose them at her own will. but what need i reason against this ground of mr. hobbs so sollicitously ? it being sufficient to discover , that he onely saies , that no essence can change the modifications of it self , but does not prove it ; and therefore whatever he would infer hereupon is meerly upon a begg'd principle . . but however , from this precarious ground he will infer , that whenever we have a will to a thing , the cause of this will is not the will it self , but something else not in our own disposing ; the meaning whereof must be , that whenever we will , some corporeall impress , which we cannot avoid , forces us thereto . but the illation is as weak as bold ; it being built upon no foundation , as i have already shewn . i shall onely take notice how mr. hobbs , though he has rescued himself from the authority of the schools , and would fain set up for himself , yet he has not freed himself from their fooleries in talking of faculties and operations ( and the absurditie is alike in both ) as separate and distinct from the essence they belong to , wich causes a great deal of distraction and obscurity in the speculation of things . i speak this in reference to those expressions of his of the will being the cause of willing , and of its being the necessary cause of voluntary actions , and of things not being in its disposing . whenas , if a man would speak properly , and desired to be understood , he would say , that the subject in which is this power or act of willing , ( call it man or the soul of man ) is the cause of this or that voluntary action . but this would discover his sophistry , wherewith haply he has entrapt himself , which is this , something out of the power of the will necessarily causes the will ; the will once caused is the necessary cause of voluntary actions ; and therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated . . besides that the first part of this argumentation is groundless ( as i have already intimated ) the second is sophisticall , that sayes that the will is the necessary cause of voluntary actions : for by necessary may be understood either necessitated , forced and made to act , whether it will or no ; or else it may signify that the will is a requisite cause of voluntary actions , so that there can be no voluntary actions without it . the latter whereof may be in some sense true , but the former is utterly false . so the conclusion being inferred from assertions whereof the one is groundless , the other sophisticall , the illation cannot but be ridiculously weak and despicable . but if he had spoke in the concrete in stead of the abstract , the sophistry had been more grossly discoverable , or rather the train of his reasoning languid and contemptible . omitting therefore to speak of the will separately , which of it self is but a blind power or operation , let us speak of that essence which is endued with will , sense , reason , and other faculties , and see what face this argumentation of his will bear , which will then run thus ; . some externall , irresistible agent does ever necessarily cause that essence ( call it soule or what you please ) which is endued with the faculties of will and understanding , ●o will. this essence , endued with the power of exerting it self into the act of willing , is the necessary cause of voluntary actions . therefore all voluntary actions are necessitated . the first assertion now at first sight appears a gross falshood , the soule being endued with understanding as well as will , and therefore she is not necessarily determined to will by externall impresses , but by the displaying of certain notions and perceptions she raises in her self , that be purely intellectuall . and the second seems a very slim and lank piece of sophistrie . both which my reasons already alledged doe so easily and so plainly reach , that i need add nothing more , but pass to his second argument , the form whereof in brief is this ; . every cause is a sufficient cause , otherwise it could not produce its effect : every sufficient cause is a necessary cause , that is to say , will be sure to produce the effect , otherwise something was wanting thereto , and it was no sufficient cause : and therefore every cause is a necessary cause , and consequently every effect or action , even those that are termed voluntary , are necessitated . this reasoning looks smartly at first view , but if we come closer to it , we shall find it a pittifull piece of sophistry , which is easily detected by observing the ambiguity of that proposition , every sufficient cause is a necessary cause : for the force lyes not so much in that it is said to be sufficient , as in that it is said to be a cause ; which if it be , it must of necessity have an effect , whether it be sufficient or insufficient ; which discovers the sophisme . for these relative terms of cause and effect necessarily imply one another . but every being that is sufficient to act this or that if it will , and so to become the cause thereof , doth neither act , nor abstain from acting necessarily . and therefore if it doe act , it addes will to the sufficiency of its power ; and if it did not act , it is not because it had not sufficient power , but because it would not make use of it . so that we see that every sufficient cause rightly understood without captiositie is not a necessary cause , nor will be sure to produce the effect ; and that though there be a sufficiency of power , yet there may be something wanting , to wit , the exertion of the will ; whereby it may come to pass , that what might have acted , if it would , did not : but if it did , will being added to sufficient power , that it cannot be said to be necessary in any other sense , then of that axiome in metaphysicks , quicquid est , quamdiu est , necesse est esse : the reason whereof is , because it is impossible that a thing should be and not be at once . but before it acted , it might have chosen whether it would have acted or no ; but it did determine it self . and in this sense is it to be said to be a free agent , & not a necessary one . so that it is manifest , that though there be some prettie perversness of wit in the contriving of this argument , yet there is no solidity at all at the bottome . . and as little is there in his third . but in this , i must confess , i cannot so much accuse him of art and sophistrie , as of ignorance of the rules of logick ; for he does plainly assert that the necessity of the truth of that proposition there named depends on the necessity of the truth of the parts thereof ; then which no grosser errour can be committed in the art of reasoning . for he might as well say that the necessity of the truth of a connex axiome depends on the necessity of the truth of the parts , as of a disjunct . but in a connex , when both the parts are not onely false , but impossible , yet the axiome is necessarily true . as for example , if bucephalus be a man , he is endued with humane reason ; this axiome is necessarily true , and yet the parts are impossible . for alexanders horse can neither be a man , nor have the reason of a man , either radically or actually . the necessity therefore is only laid upon the connexion of the parts , not upon the parts themselves . so when i say , to morrow it will rain , or it will not rain , this disjunct proposition also is necessary , but the necessity lyes upon the disjunction of the parts , not upon the parts themselves : for they being immediately disjoyned , there is a necessity that one of them must be , though there be no necessity that this must be determined rather then that . as when a man is kept under custodie where he has the use of two rooms only , though there be a necessity that he be found in one of the two , yet he is not confined to either one of them . and to be brief , and prevent those frivolous both answers and replyes that follow in the pursuit of this argument in mr. hobbs ; as the necessity of this disjunct axiome lyes upon the disjunction it self , so the truth , of which this necessity is a mode , must lye there too ; for it is the disjunction of the parts that is affirmed , and not the parts themselves , as any one that is but moderately in his wits must needs acknowledg . . there is a more dangerous way that mr. hobbs might have made use of , and with more credit , but yet scarce with better success , which is the consideration of an axiome that pronounces of a future contingent , such as this , cras socrates disputabit . for every axiome pronouncing either true or false , as all doe agree upon ; if this axiome be now true , it is impossible but socrates should dispute to morrow ; or if it be now false , it is impossible he should : and so his action of disputing or the omission thereof will be necessary , for the proposition cannot be both true and false at once . some are much troubled to extricate themselves out of this nooze ; but if we more precisely enquire into the sense of the proposition , the difficultie will vanish . he therefore that affirms that socrates will dispute to morrow , affirms it ( to use the distinction of futurities that aristotle somewhere suggests ) either as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , either as a thing that is likely to be , but has a possibility of being otherwise , or else as a thing certainly to come to pass . if this latter , the axiome is false ; if the former , it is true : and so the liberty of socrates his action , as also of all like contingent effects , are thus easily rescued from this sophistical entanglement . for every future axiome is as incapable of our judgment , unless we determine the sense of it by one of the forenamed modes , as an indefinite axiome is , before we in our minds adde the notes of universality or particularity : neither can we say of either of them , that they are true or false , till we have compleated and determined their sense . . his fourth argument he proposes with some diffidence and dislike , as if he thought it not good logick ( they are his own words ) to make use of it , and adde it to the rest . and for my own part , i cannot but approve of the consistency of his judgment , and coherency with other parts of his philosophie : for if there be nothing but body or matter in the whole comprehension of things , it will be very hard to find out any such deity as has the knowledg or foreknowledg of any thing : and therefore i suspect that this last is onely cast in as argumentum ad hominem , to puzzle such as have not dived to so profound a depth of naturall knowledg , as to fancy they have discovered there is no god in the world . . but let him vilifie it as he will , it is the only argument he has brought , that has any tolerable sense or solidity in it ; and it is a subject that has exercised the wits of all ages , to reconcile the liberty of mans will with the decrees and praescience of god. but my freeness , i hope , and moderation shall make this matter more easy to me , then it ordinarily proves to them that venture upon it . my answer therefore in brief shall be this ; . that though there be such a faculty in the soule of man as liberty of will , yet she is not alwaies in a state of acting according to it . for she may either degenerate so far , that it may be as certainly known what she will doe upon this or that occasion , as what an hungry dog will doe when a crust is offered him ; which is the generall condition of almost all men in most occurrencies of their lives : or else she may be so heroically good , though that happen in very few , that it may be as certainly known as before what she will doe or suffer upon such or such emergencies : and in these cases the use of liberty of will ceases . . that the use of the facultie of free-will is properly there , where we finde our selves so near to an aequiponderancy , being toucht with the sense of vertue on the one side , and the ease or pleasure of some vitious action on the other , that we are conscious to our selves that we ought , and that we may , if we will , abandon the one and cleave to the other . . that in this conflict the soule has no such absolute power to determine her self to the one or the other action , but temptation or supernaturall assistance may certainly carry her this way or that way ; so that she may not be able to use that liberty of going indifferently either way . . that divine decrees either find men sit , or make them so , for the executing of whatever is absolutely purposed or prophesied concerning them . . that the praescience of god is so vast and exceeding the comprehension of our thoughts , that all that can be safely said of it is this , that this knowledg is most perfect and exquisite , accurately representing the natures , powers and properties of the thing it does foreknow . whence it must follow , that if there be any creature free and undeterminate , and that in such circumstances and at such a time he may either act thus or not act thus , this perfect foreknowledge must discern from all eternity , that the said creature in such circumstances may either act thus , or so , or not . and further to declare the perfection of this foreknowledg and omniscience of god ; as his omnipotence ought to exten so far , as to be able to doe whatsoever implyes no contradiction to be done ; so his praescience and omniscience ought to extend so far , as to know precisely and fully whatever implies no contradiction to be known . to conclude therefore briefly ; free or contingent effects doe either imply a contradiction to be foreknown , or they doe not imply it . if they imply a contradiction to be foreknown , they are no object of the omniscience of god , and therefore there can be no pretence that his foreknowledg does determinate them , nor can they be argued to be determined thereby . if they imply no contradiction to be foreknown , that is to acknowledg that divine praescience and they may very well consist together . and so either way , notwithstanding the divine omniscience , the actions of men may be free . . the sum therefore of all is this , that mens actions are sometimes free and sometimes not free ; but in that they are at any time free , is a demonstration that there is a faculty in us that is incompetible to meer matter : which is sufficient for my purpose . chap. iv. . an enumeration of sundry opinions concerning the seat of common sense . . upon supposition that we are nothing but meer matter , that the whole body cannot be the common sensorium ; . nor the orifice of the stomack ; . nor the heart ; . nor the brain ; . nor the membranes ; . nor the septum lucidum ; . nor regius his small and perfectly solid particle . . the probability of the conarion being the common seat of sense . . i have plainly proved , that neither those more pure and intellectual faculties of will and reason , nor yet those less pure of memory and imagination , are competible to meer bodies . of which we may be the more secure , i having so convincingly demonstrated , that not so much as that which we call externall sense is competible to the same : all which truths i have concluded concerning matter generally considered . but because there may be a suspicion in some , which are over credulous concerning the powers of body , that organization may doe strange feats ( which surmise notwithstanding is as fond as if they should imagine , that though neither silver , nor steel , nor iron , nor lute-strings , have any sense apart , yet being put together in such a manner and forme , as will ( suppose ) make a compleat watch , they may have sense ; that is to say , that a watch may be a living creature , though the severall parts have neither life nor sense ) i shall for their sakes goe more particularly to work , and recite every opinion that i could ever meet with by converse with either men or books concerning the seat of the common sense , and after trie whether any of these hypotheses can possibly be admitted for truth , upon supposition that we consist of nothing but meer modified and organized matter . i shall first recite the opinions , and then examine the possibility of each in particular , which in brief are these . . that the whole body is theseat of common sense . . that the orifice of the stomack . . the heart . . the brain . . the membranes . . the septum lucidum . . some very small and perfectly solid particle in the body . . the conarion . . the concurse of the nerves about the fourth ventricle of the brain . . the spirits in that fourth ventricle . . that the first opinion is false is manifest from hence , that upon supposition we are nothing but meer matter , if we grant the whole body to be one common sensorium , perceptive of all objects , motion which is impressed upon the eye or eare , must be transmitted into all the parts of the body . for sense is really the same with communication of motion , by axiome . and the variety of sense arising from the modification of motion , which must needs be variously modified by the different temper of the parts of the body , by axiome . it plainly followes that the eye must be otherwise affected by the motion of light , then the other parts to which this motion is transmitted . wherefore if it be the whole body that perceives , it will perceive the object in every part thereof severall wayes modified at once ; which is against all experience . it will also appear in all likelihood in severall places at once , by reason of the many windings and turnings that must happen to the transmission of this motion , which are likely to be as so many refractions or reflections . . that the orifice of the stomack cannot be the seat of common sense , is apparent from hence , that that which is the common sentient does not only perceive all objects , but has the power of moving the body . now besides that there is no organization in the mouth of the stomack , that can elude the strength of our arguments laid down in the foregoing chapters , which took away all capacity from matter of having any perception at all in it , there is no mechanicall reason imaginable to be found in the body , whereby it will appear possible , that supposing the mouth of the stomack were the common percipient of all objects , it could be able to move the rest of the members of the body , as we finde something in us does . this is so palpably plain , that it is needless to spend any more words upon it . . the same may be said concerning the heart . for who can imagine , that if the heart were that common percipient , that there is any such mechanical connexion betwixt it and all the parts of the body , that it may , by such or such a perception , command the motion of the foot or little finger ? besides that it seems wholly imployed in the performance of its systole and diastole , which causes such a great difference of the situation of the heart by turns , that if it were that seat in which the sense of all objects center , we should not be able to see things steddily resting in the same place . . how uncapable the brain is of being so active a principle of motion as we find in our selves , the viscidity thereof does plainly indicate . besides that physitians have discovered by experience , that the brain is so far from being the common seat of all senses , that it has in it none at all . and the arabians , that say it has , have distinguished it into such severall offices of imagination , memory , common sense , &c. that we are still at a loss for some one part of matter , that is to be the common percipient of all these . but i have so clearly demonstrated the impossibility of the brains being able to perform those functions that appertain truly to what ordinarily men call the soule , in my antidote against atheisme , that it is enough to refer the reader thither . . as for the membranes , whether we would fancy them all the seat of common sense , or some one membrane , or part there of ; the like difficulties will accur as have been mentioned already . for if all the membranes , the difference and situation of them will vary the aspect and sight of the object , so that the same things will appear to us in several hues and severall places at once , as is easily demonstrated from axiome . if some one membrane , or part thereof , it will be impossible to excogitate any mechanicall reason , how this one particular membrane , or any part thereof , can be able so strongly and determinately to move upon occasion every part of the body . . and therefore for this very cause cannot the septum lucidum be the common percipient in us , because it is utterly unimaginable , how it should have the power of so stoutly and distinctly moving our exteriour parts and limbs . . as for that new and marvelous invention of henricus regius , that it may be a certain perfectly solid , but very small particle of matter in the body , that is the seat of common perception ; besides that it is as boldly asserted , that such an hard particle should have sense in it , as that the filings of iron and steel should ; it cannot be the spring of motion : for how should so small at atome move the whole body , but by moving it self ? but it being more subtile then the point of any needle , when it puts it self upon motion , especially such strong thrustings as we sometimes use , it must needs passe through the body and leave it . . the most pure mechanical invention is that of the use of the conarion , proposed by des-cartes ; which , considered with some other organizations of the body , bids the fairest of any thing i have met withall , or ever hope to meet withall , for the resolution of the passions and properties of living creatures into meer corporeall motion . and therefore it is requisite to insist a little upon the explication thereof , that we may the more punctually confute them that would abuse his mechanicall contrivances to the exclusion of all principles but corporeall , in either man or beast . chap. v. . how perception of externall objects , spontaneous motion , memory and imagination , are pretended to be performed by the conarion , spirits and muscles , without a soule . . that the conarion , devoid of a soule , cannot be the common percipient , demonstrated out of des-cartes himself . . that the conarion , with the spirits and organization of the parts of the body , is not a sufficient principle of spontancous motion , without a soule . . a aescription of the use of the valvulae in the nerves of the muscles for spontaneous motion . . the insufficiency of this contrivance for that purpose . . a further demonstration of the insufficiency thereof , from whence is clearly evinced that brutes have soules . . that memory cannot be salved the way above described ; . nor imagination . . a distribution out of des-cartes of the functions in us , some appertaining to the body , and others to the soule . . the authors observations there upon . the sum of this abuse must in brief be this , that the glandula pinealis is the common sentient or percipient of all objects ; and without a soule , by vertue of the spirits and organization of the body , may doe all those feats that we ordinarily conceive to be performed by soule and body joyned together . for it being one , whenas the rest of the organs of sense are double , and so handsomely seated as to communicate with the spirits as well of the posteriour as anteriour cavities of the brain ; by their help all the motions of the nerves ( both those that transmit the sense of outward objects , and of inward affections of the body , such as hunger , thirst and the like ) are easily conveighed unto it : and so being variously moved , it does variously determine the course of the spirits into such and such muscles , whereby it moves the body . moreover that the transmission of motion from the object , through the nerves , into the inward concavities of the brain , and so to the conarion , opens such and such pores of the brain , in such and such order or manner , which remain as tracts or footsteps of the presence of these objects after they are removed . which tracts , or signatures , consist mainly in this , that the spirits will have an easier passage through these pores then other parts of the brain . and hence arises memory , when the spirits be determined , by the inclining of the conarion , to that part of the brain where these tracts are found , they moving then the conarion as when the object was present , though not so strongly . from the hitting of the spirits into such like tracts , is also the nature of imagination to be explained ; in which there is little difference from memory , saving that the reflection upon time as past , when we saw or perceived such or such a thing , is quite left out . but these are not all the operations we are conscious to our selves of , and yet more then can be made out by this hypothesis , that perception of objects , spontaneous motion , memory and imagination , may be all performed by vertue of this glandula , the animal spirits , and meer organization of the body ; as we shall plainly find , though but upon an easy examination . . for that the conarion , devoid of a soule , has no perception of any one object , is demonstrable from the very description cartesius makes of the transmission of the image , suppose through the eye to the brain , and so to the conarion . for it is apparent from what he sets down in the . article of his treatise of the passions of the soule , that the image that is propagated from the object to the conarion , is impressed thereupon in some latitude of space . whence it is manifest that the conarion does not , nor can perceive the whole object , though severall parts may be acknowledged to have the perception of the severall parts thereof . but something in us perceives the whole , which therefore cannot be the conarion . and that we doe not perceive the external object double , is not so much because the image is united in the organ of common sense , as that the lines come so from the object to both the eyes , that it is felt in one place ; otherwise if the object be very near , and the direction of our eyes be not fitted to that nearness , it will seem double however . which is a demonstration that a man may see with both eyes at once ; and for my own part , i 'me sure that i see better at distance , when i use both , then when one . . as for spontaneous motion , that the conarion cannot be a sufficient principle thereof , with the spirits and organization of other parts of the body , though we should admit it a fit seat of common sense , will easily appear , if we consider , that so weak and so small a thing as that glandula is , seems utterly unable to determine the spirits with that force and violence we find they are determined in running , striking , thrusting and the like ; and that it is evident , that sometimes scarce the thousandth part of the conarion shall be directer of this force ; viz. when the object of sight , suppose , is as little as a pin's point , or when a man is prick'd with a needle , these receptions must be as little in the glandula as in the exteriour sense . but suppose the whole conarion alwaies did act in the determining the motion of the spirits into this or that muscle ; it is impossible that such fluid matter as these spirits are , that upon the noddings of the conarion forward may easily recede back , should ever determine their course with that force and strength they are determined . but haply it will be answered , that such subtile and fluid bodies as the animall spirits , that are in a readiness to be upon motion any way , the least thing will determine their course , and that the muscles themselves , being well replenisht with spirits , and framed with such valvulae as will easily intromit them from the brain , and also conveigh them out of one opposite muscle into another upon the least redundance of spirits in the one above the other , and so shut them in ; that that force we find in spontaneous motion may very well be salved by this mechanicall artifice . . we will not here alledge that this may be onely a meer fancy , these valvulae in the nerves not being yet discovered by any anatomist to be part of the organization of the body of any animal ; but rather shew , that they would not effect what is aimed at , though they were admitted . for first it does not appear that the spirits will make more hast out of c. into b , then the pressure caused in b. by the determination of the spirits from the conarion forces them to . for all places being alike to them to play in , they will goe no further then they are driven or pressed , as wind in a bladder . and how the conarion should drive or press the spirits into b , so as to make it press those in c , and force them out so quick and smart as we find in some actions , is a thing utterly unconceivable . . besides , admit that the conarion could determine them with some considerable force so into b , that they would make those in c. come to them through the valve g , there being the valve e. to transmit them into c. again , it is impossible but that the tenth part of that force which we ordinarily use to open a mans hand against his will , should whether he would or no easily open it . for a very ordinary strength moveing k. from b. towards c. must needs so press the spirits in b , that they will certainly pass by e. into c , if our body be nothing but matter mechanically organized . and therefore it is the meer imperium of our soule that does determine the spirits to this muscle rather then the other , and holds them there in despite of externall force . from whence it is manifest that brute beasts must have soules also . . concerning memory and imagination , that the meer mechanical reasons of des-cartes will not reach them , we shall clearly understand , if we consider that the easy aperture of the same pores of the brain , that were opened at the presence of such an object , is not sufficient to represent the object , after the conarion has by inclining it self thitherward determined the course of the spirits into the same pores . for this could onely represent the figure of a thing , not the colours thereof . besides a man may bring an hundred objects , and expose them to our view at the same distance , the eye keeping exactly in the same posture , insomuch that it shall be necessary for these images to take up the very same place of the brain , and yet there shall be a distinct remembrance of all these ; which is impossible if there be no soule in us , but all be meer matter . the same may be said of so many names or words levell'd if you will out of a trunk into the eare kept accurately in the same posture , so that the sound shall beat perpetually upon the same parts of the organ , yet if there be five hundred of them , there may be a distinct memory for every one of them ; which is a power perfectly beyond the bounds of meer matter , for there would be a necessary confusion of all . . lastly , for those imaginations or representations that are of no one object that we ever see , but made up of severall that have taken their distinct places in the brain , how can the conarion joyn these together ? or rather in one and the same object , suppose this man or that house , which we see in a right posture , and has left such a signature or figure in the brain as is fit to represent it so , how can the conarion invert the posture of the image , and make it represent the house and man with the heels upwards ? besides the difficulty of representing the distance of an object , or the breadth thereof , concerning which we have spoken already . it is impossible the conarion , if it be meer matter , should perform any such operations as these . for it must raise motions in it self , such as are not necessarily conveighed by any corporeall impress of another body , which is plainly against axiome . . and therefore that sober and judicious wit des-cartes dares not stretch the power of mechanicall organization thus far , but doth plainly confess , that as there are some functions that belong to the body alone , so there are others that belong to the soule , which he calls cogitations ; and are according to him of two sorts , the one actions , the other passions . the actions are all the operations of our will , as in some sense all perceptions may be termed actions . and these actions of the will are either such as are meer intellectuall operations , and end in the soule her self , such as her stirring up her self to love god , or contemplate any immateriall object ; or they are such as have an influence on the body , as when by vertue of our will we put ourselves upon going to this or that place . he distinguishes again our perceptions into two sorts , whereof the one has the soule for their cause , the other the body . those that are caused by the body are most-what such as depend on the nerves . but besides these there is one kind of imagination that is to be referred hither , and that properly has the body for its cause , to wit , that imagination that arises meerly from the hitting of the animall spirits against the tracts of those images that externall objects have left in the brain , and so representing them to the conarion ; which may happen in the day-time when our fancy roves , and we doe not set our selves on purpose to think on things , as well as it does in sleep by night . those perceptions that arrive to the soule by the interposition of the nerves , differ one from another in this , that some of them refer to outward objects that strike our sense , others to our body , such as hunger , thirst , pain , &c. and others to the soule it self , as sorrow , joy , fear , &c. those perceptions that have the soule for their cause , are either the perceptions of her own acts of will , or else of her speculation of things purely intelligible , or else of imaginations made at pleasure , or finally of reminiscency , when she searches out something that she has let slip out of her memory . . that which is observable in this distribution is this , that all those cogitations that he calls actions , as also those kind of perceptions , whose cause he assignes to the soule , are in themselves ( and are acknowledged by him ) of that nature , that they cannot be imitated by any creature by the meer organization of i'ts body . but for the other , he holds they may , and would make us believe they are in bodies of brutes , which he would have meer machina's , that is , that from the meer mechanical frame of their body , outward objects of sense may open pores in their brains so , as that they may determine the animall spirits into such and such muscles for spontaneous motion . that the course of the spirits also falling into the nerves in the intestines and stomack , spleen , heart , liver , and other parts , may cause the very same effects of passion , suppose of love , hatred , joy , sorrow , in these brute machina's , as we feel in our bodies , though they , as being senseless , feel them not ; and so the vellication of certain tunicles and fibres in the stomack and throat , may affect their body as ours is in the sense of hunger or thirst ; and finally that the hitting of the spirits into the tracts of the brain , that have been signed by externall objects , may act so upon their body as it does upon ours in imagination and memory . now adde to this machina of des-cartes , the capacity in matter of sensation and perception , ( which yet i have demonstrated it to be uncapable of ) and it will be exquisitely as much as mr. hobbs himself can expect to arise from meer body , that is , all the motions thereof being purely mechanicall , the perceptions and propensions will be fatall , necessary , and unavoidable , as he loves to have them . but being all cogitations that des-cartes terms actions , as also all those kind of perceptions that he acknowledges the soule to be the cause of , are not to be resolved into any mechanicall contrivance ; we may take notice of them as a peculiar rank of arguments , and such , as that if it could be granted , that the soules of brutes were nothing but sentient matter , yet it would follow that a substance of an higher nature , and truly immateriall , must be the principle of those more noble operations we find in our selves , as appears from axiome . and . chap. vi. . that no part of the spinall marrow can be the common sensorium without a soule in the body . . that the animal spirits are more likely to be that common percipient . . but yet it is demonstrable they are not : . as not being so much as capable of sensation ; . nor of directing motion into the muscles ; . much less of imagination and rationall invention ; . nor of memory . . an answer to an evasion . . the authors reason , why he has confuted so particularly all the suppositions of the seat of common sense , when few of them have been asserted with the exclusion of a soule . . there remain now onely two opinions to be examined : the one , that place of the spinall marrow where anatomists conceive there is the nearest concurse of all the nerves of the body ; the other , the animall spirits in the fourth ventricle of the brain . as for the former , viz. that part of the spinall marrow , where the concurse of the nerves are conceived to be , as i have answered in like case , so i say again , that besides that i have already demonstrated , that matter is uncapable of sense , and that there is no modification thereof in the spinall marrow , that will make it more likely to be indued with that faculty then the pith of elder or a mess of curds ; we are also to take notice , that it is utterly inept for motion , nor is it conceivable how that part of it , or any other that is assigned to this office of being the common percipient in us of all thoughts and objects , ( which must also have the power of moving our members ) can , having so little agitation in it self , ( as appearing nothing but a kind of soft pap or pulp ) so nimbly and strongly move the parts of our body . . in this regard the animal spirits seem much more likely to perform that office ; and those , the importunity of whose gross fancyes constrains them to make the soule corporeall , doe nevertheless usually pitch upon some subtile thin matter to constitute her nature or essence : and therefore they imagine her to be either aire , fire , light , or some such like body ; with which the animall spirits have no small affinity . . but this opinion , though it may seem plausible at first sight , yet the difficulties it is involved in are insuperable . for it is manifest , that all the arguments that are brought chap. . sect. . will recur with full force in this place . for there is no matter that is so perfectly liquid as the animal spirits , but consists of particles onely contiguous one to another , and actually upon motion playing and turning one by another , as busy as atomes in the sun. now therefore , let us consider whether that treasury of pure animall spirits contained in the fourth ventricle be able to sustain so noble an office as to be the common percipient in our body , which , as i have often repeated , is so complex a function , that it does not onely contain the perception of externall objects , but motion , imagination , reason and memory . . now at the very first dash , the transmission of the image of the object into this crowd of particles cannot but hit variously upon them , and therefore they will have severall perceptions amongst them , some haply perceiving part of the object , others all , others more then all , others also perceiving of it in one place , and others in another . but the percipient in us representing no such confusion or disorder in our beholding of objects , it is plain that it is not the animall spirits that is it . . again , that which is so confounded a percipient , how can it be a right principle of directing motion into the muscles ? for besides what disorder may happen in this function upon the distracted representation of present objects , the power of thinking , excogitating and deliberating , being in these animal spirits also , ( and they having no means of communicating one with another , but justling one against another ; which is as much to the purpose , as if men should knock heads to communicate to each other their conceits of wit ) it must needs follow that they will have their perceptions , inventions , and deliberations apart ; which when they put in execution , must cause a marvelous confusion in the body , some of them commanding the parts this way , others driving them another way : or if their factions have many divisions and subdivisions , every one will be so weak , that none of them will be able to command it any way . but we find no such strugling or countermands of any thing in us , that would act our body one way when we would another ; as if when one was a going to write 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — something stronger in him , whose conceits he is not privy to , should get the use of his hand , and , in stead of that , write down arma virúmque cano . and the like may be said of any other spontaneous motion , which being so constantly within our command as it is , it is a sufficient argument to prove that it is not such a lubricous substance as the animal spirits , nor so disunited ; but something more perfectly one and indivisible . . we need not instance any further concerning the power of invention and reason , how every particle of these animal spirits has a liberty to think by it self , and consult with it self , as well as to play by it self , and how there is no possible means of communicating their thoughts one to another , unless it should be , as i have said , by hitting one against another : but that can onely communicate motion , not their determinate thought ; unless that these particles were conceived to figure themselves into the shape of those things they think of , which is impossible by axiome . and suppose it were possible one particle should shape it self , for example , into a george on horse-back with a lance in his hand , and another into an inchanted castle ; this george on horse-back must run against the castle , to make the castle receive his impress and similitude . but what then ? truly the encounter will be very unfortunate . for st. george indeed may easily break his lance , but it is impossible that he should by justling against the particle in the form of a castle conveigh the entire shape of himself and his horse thereby , such as we find our selves able to imagine of a man on horse-back . which is a truth as demonstrable as any theorem in mathematicks , but so plain at first sight , that i need not use the curiosity of a longer demonstration to make it more firm . nor is there any colourable evasion by venturing upon a new way , as if this particle having transformed it self into a castle , and that into an horse-man , all the others then would see them both . for by what light , and how little would they appear , and in what different places , according to the different posture of the particles of the animal spirits , and with what different faces , some seeing one side , others another ? but besides this , there is a further difficulty , that if such sensible representations as these could be conveighed from one particle to another by corporeall encounters and justlings , or by that other way after alledged ; logicall and mathematicall notions can not . so that some of the animal spirits may think of one demonstration in mathematicks , or of part of that demonstration , and others of another : insomuch that if a mathematician be to write , while he would write one thing upon the determination of these animal spirits , others may get his hand to make use of for the writing something else , to whose thoughts and counsell he was not at all privy ; nor can tell any thing , till those other animal spirits have writ it down . which absurdities are so mad and extravagant , that a man would scarce defile his pen by recording them , were it not to awaken those that dote so much on the power of matter ( as to think it of it self sufficient for all phaenomena in the world ) into due shame and abhorrence of their foolish principle . . the last faculty i will consider is memory , which is also necessarily joyned with the rest in the common percipient ; of which not onely the fluidity of parts , but also their dissipability , makes the animal spirits utterly uncapable . for certainly , the spirits by reason of their subtilty and activity are very dissipable , and in all likelihood remain not the same for the space of a week together ; and yet things that one has not thought of for many years , will come as freshly into a mans minde , as if they were transacted but yesterday . . the onely evasion they can excogitate here is this , that as there is a continuall supply of spirits by degrees , so , as they come in , they are seasoned , fermented , and tinctured with the same notions , perceptions and propensions that the spirits they find there have . these are fine words , but signifie nothing but this , that the spirits there present in the brain communicate the notions and perceptions they have to these new-comers ; which is that which i have already proved impossible in the foregoing sections . and therefore it is impossible that the animal spirits should be that common percipient , that hears , sees , moves , remembers , understands , and does other functions of life that we perceive performed in us or by us . . we have now particularly evinced , that neither the whole body , nor any of those parts that have been pitched upon , if we exclude the presence of a soul or immaterial substance , can be the seat of common sense . in which i would not be so understood , as if it implyed that there are none of these parts , but some or other have affirmed might be the common sensorium , though we had no soule ; but because they have been stood upon , all of them , by some or other to be the seat of common sense , supposing a soule in the body , that there might no imaginable doubt or scruple be left behind , i have taken the pains thus punctually and particularly to prove , that none of them can be the place of common sense without one . and thus i have perfectly finished my main design , which was to demonstrate that there is a soule or incorporeall substance residing in us , distinct from the body . but i shall not content my self here , but for a more full discovery of her nature and faculties , i shall advance further , and search out her chief seat in the body , where and from whence she exercises her most noble functions , and after enquire whether she be confined to that part thereof alone , or whether she be spred through all our members ; and lastly consider after what manner she sees , feels , hears , imagines , remembers , reasons , and moves the body . for beside that i shall make some good use of these discoveries for further purpose , it is also in it self very pleasant to have in readiness a rationall and cohaerent account , and a determinate apprehension of things of this nature . chap. vii . . his enquiry after the seat of common sense , upon supposition there is a soule in the body . . that there is some particular part in the body that is the seat of common sense . . a generall division of their opinions concerning the place of common sense . . that of those that place it out of the head there are two sorts . . the invalidity of helmont's reasons whereby he would prove the orifice of the stomack to be the principall seat of the soule . . an answer to helmont's storyes for that purpose . . a further confutation out of his own concessions . . mr. hobbs his opinion confuted , that makes the heart the seat of common sense . . a further confutation thereof from experience . . that the common sense is seated somewhere in the head. . a caution for the choice of the particular place thereof . . that the whole brain is not it ; . nor regius his small solid particle ; . nor any externall membrane of the brain , nor the septum lucidum . . the three most likely places . . objections against cartesius his opinion concerning the conarion answered . . that the conarion is not the seat of common sense ; . nor that part of the spinall marrow where the nerves are conceived to concurre , but the spirits in the fourth ventricle of the brain . . it will therefore be requisite for us to resume the former opinions , altering the hypothesis ; and to examine which of them is most reasonable , supposing there be a substance immateriall or soule in man. . that there is some particular or restrained seat of the common sense , is an opinion that even all philosophers and physitians are agreed upon . and it is an ordinary comparison amongst them , that the externall senses and the common sense considered together are like a circle with five lines drawn from the circumference to the centre . wherefore as it has been obvious for them to finde out particular organs for the externall senses , so they have also attempted to assign some distinct part of the body for to be an organ of the common sense ; that is to say , as they discovered sight to be seated in the eye , hearing in the eare , smelling in the nose , &c. so they conceived that there is some part of the body wherein seeing , hearing and all other perceptions meet together , as the lines of a circle in the centre : and that there the soule does also judge and discern of the difference of the objects of the outward senses . they have justly therefore excluded all the externall parts of the body from the lightest suspition of any capacity of undergoing such a function as is thus generall , they being all employed in a more particular task , which is to be the organ of some one of these five outward senses ; and to be affected no otherwise , then by what is impressed upon themselves , and chiefly from their proper objects , amongst which five , touch properly so called has the greatest share , it being as large as the skin that covers us , and reaching as deep as any membrane and nerve in the limbs and trunk of the body , besides all the exteriour parts of the head. all which can no more see , then the eye can hear , or the eare can smell . . besides this , all those arguments that doe so clearly evince that the place of common sense is somewhere in the head , is a plain demonstration that the whole body cannot be the seat thereof , and what those arguments are you shall hear anon . for all those opinions that have pitched on any one part for the seat of common sense , being to be divided into two ranks , to wit , either such as assign some particular place in the body , or else in the head , we will proceed in this order ; as first to confute those that have made choice of any part for the seat of common sense out of the head ; and then in the second place we will in generall shew , that the common sensorium must be in some part of the head ; and lastly , of those many opinions concerning what part of the head this common sensorium should be , those which seem less reasonable being rejected , we shall pitch upon what we conceive the most unexceptionable . . those that place the common sensorium out of the head , have seated it either in the upper orifice of the stomack , or in the heart . the former is van-helmont's opinion , the other mr. hobbs his . . as for van-helmont , there is nothing he alledges for his opinion but may be easily answered . that which mainly imposed upon him was the exceeding sensibility of that part , which nature made so , that , as a faithfull & sagacious porter , it might admit nothing into the stomack that might prove mischievous or troublesome to the body . from this tender sensibility , great offences to it may very well cause swoonings , and apoplexies , and cessations of sense . but fear and joy and grief have dispatched some very suddainly , when yet the first entrance of that deadly stroak has been at the eare or the eye , from some unsupportable ill newes or horrid spectacle . and the harsh handling of an angry sore , or the treading on a corn on the toe , may easily cast some into a swoon , and yet no man will ever imagine the seat of the common sense to be placed in the foot. in fine , there is no more reason to think the common sensorium is in the mouth of the stomack , because of the sensible commotions we feel there , then that it is seated in the stars , because we so clearly perceive their light , as des-cartes has well answered upon like occasion . nor can phrensies and madnesses , though they may sometimes be observed to take their rise from thence , any more prove that it is the seat of the common sense , then the furor uterinus , apoplexies , epilepsies , and syncopes proceeding from the wombe , doe argue that the common sensorium of women lyes in that part . . and if we consider the great sympathy betwixt the orifice of the stomack and the heart , whose pathemata are so alike and conjoyned , that the ancients have given one name to both parts , calling them promiscuously 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the pains of the stomack 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as also that the heart is that part from which manifestly are the supplyes of life , whence the pulse ceasing life cannot long continue for want of warmth and spirits ; here is an evident reason , how it may happen that a wound about the mouth of the stomack may dispatch a man more suddainly then a wound in the head , they being both supposed mortal , though the seat of the sensitive soule be not chiefly in the aforesaid orifice . for partly the naturall sympathy betwixt the orifice of the stomack and the heart , and partly the horrour and pain perceived by the soule in the common sensorium , which we will suppose in the head , does so dead the heart , that , as in the suddain passions above named , it ceases to perform the ordinary functions of life , and so pulse and sense and all is gone in short time ; when as the head being wounded mortally , perception is thereby so diminished , that the heart scapes the more free from the force of that lethiferous passion ; and so though sense be gone , can continue the pulse a longer time : which is a perfect answer to helmont's stories he recites in his sedes animae . . to all which i may adde , that himself does acknowledg in the end of that treatise , that the power of motion , of will , memory and imagination , is in the brain ; and therefore unless a man will say and deny any thing , he must say that the common sense is there also . . the opinion of mr. hobbs bears more credit and countenance with it , as having been asserted heretofore by philosophers of great fame , epicurus , aristotle , and the school of the stoicks : but if we look closer to it , it will prove as little true as the other ; especially in his way , that holds there is no soule in a man , but that all is but organized matter . for let him declare any mechanicall reason whereby his heart will be able to move his finger . but upon this hypothesis i have confuted this opinion already . it is more maintainable , if there be granted a soule in the body , that the heart is the chief seat thereof , and place of common sense , as aristotle and others would have it , as also the spring of spontaneous motion . but it is very unlikely , that that part that is so continually employed in that naturall motion of contracting and dilating it self , should be the seat of that principle which commands free and spontaneous progressions : perceptions also would be horribly disturbed by its squeezing of it self , and then flagging again by vicissitudes . neither would objects appear in the same place when the heart is drawn up and when it is let down again , as i have above intimated : the extream heat also of it could not admit that it be affected with the gentle motions of the objects of sense , the blood being there in a manner scalding hot . and it is in this sense that that aphorisme in aristotle is to be understood , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that which must receive the variety of externall impresses , must not be it self in any high temper or agitation . . wherefore it is a very rash thing to assert , that the heart is the seat of common sense , unless by some plain experience it could be evinced to be so , whenas indeed experiments are recorded to the contrary . as , that if we bind a nerve , sense and motion will be betwixt the ligature and the brain , but not betwixt the heart and the ligature . and that the crocodile , his heart being cut cut , will live for a considerable time , and fight , and defend himself . the like is observed of the sea-tortoise , and the wild goat , as calcidius writes . to which you may adde what galen relates of sacrificed beasts , that their hearts being taken out and laid upon the altar , they have been seen in the mean time not onely to breath , and roar aloud , but also to run away , till the expence of blood has made them fall down . which narrations to me are more credible , i having seen with mine own eyes a frog quite exenterated , heart , stomack , guts and all taken out by an ingenious friend of mine , and dexterous anatomist , after which the frog could see , and would avoid any object in its way , and skipped as freely and nimbly up and down , as when it was entire , and that for a great while . but a very little wound in the head deprives them immediatly of life and motion . whence it is plain that the derivation of sense and spontaneous motion is not from the heart . for if the motion be intercepted betwixt the brain and the heart , by mr. hobbs his own concession , there will be no perception of the object . and there is the same reason of the orifice of the stomack : so that this one experiment does clearly evince these two opinions to be erroneous . . and that no man hereafter may make any other unhappy choice in the parts of the body , we shall now propose such reasons as we hope will plainly prove , that the common sensorium must needs be in the head ; or indeed rather repeat them : for some of those whereby we proved that the heart is not the seat of common sense , will plainly evince that the head is . as that out of laurentius , that a nerve being tied , sense and motion will be preserved from the ligature up towards the head , but downwards they will be lost . as also that experiment of a frog , whose brain if you pierce will presently be devoid of sense and motion , though all the entrals being taken out it will skip up and down , and exercise its senses as before . which is a plain evidence that motion and sense is derived from the head ; and there is now no pretence to trace any motion into a farther fountain , the heart ( from whence the nerves were conceived to branch by aristotle , and from whence certainly the veins and arteries doe , as appears by every anatomie ) being so justly discharged from that office . to which it may suffice to adde the consideration of those diseases that seize upon all the animal functions at once , such as are the lethargie , apoplexie , epilepsie , and the like , the causes of which physicians find in the head , and accordingly apply remedies . which is a plain detection that the seat of the soule , as much as concerns the animal faculties , is chiefly in the head. the same may be said of phrensy and melancholy , and such like distempers , that deprave a mans imagination and judgment ; physitians alwaies conclude something amiss within the cranium . lastly , if it were nothing but the near attendance of the outward senses on the soule , or her discerning faculty , being so fitly placed about her in the head ; this , unless there were some considerable argument to the contrary , should be sufficient to determine any one that is unprejudiced , to conclude that the seat of common sense , understanding , and command of motion , is there also . . but now the greatest difficulty will be to define in what part thereof it is to be placed . in which , unless we will goe over-boldly and carelesly to work , we are to have a regard to mechanicall congruities , and not pitch upon any thing that , by the advantage of this supposall , that there is a soule in man , may goe for possible ; but to chuse what is most handsome and convenient . . that the whole brain is not the seat of common sense , appears from the wounds and cuts it may receive without the destruction of that faculty ; for they will not take away sense and motion , unless they pierce so deep as to reach the ventricles of the brain , as galen has observed . . nor is it in regius his small solid particle . for besides that it is not likely the centre of perception is so minute , it is very incongruous to place it in a body so perfectly solid , more hard then marble , or iron . but this invention being but a late freak of his petulant fancy , that has an ambition to make a blunder and confusion of all des-cartes his metaphysicall speculations , ( and therefore found out this rare quirk of wit to shew , how though the soule were nothing but matter , yet it might be incorruptible and immortal ) it was not worth the while to take notice of it here in this hypothesis , which we have demonstrated to be true , viz. that there is a soule in the body , whose nature is immateriall or incorporeall . . nor are the membranes in the head the common sensorium ; neither those that envelop the brain , ( for they would be able then to see the light through the hole the trepan makes , though the party trepan'd winked-with his eyes ; to say nothing of the conveyance of the nerves , the organs of externall sense , that carry beyond these exteriour membranes , and therefore point to a place more inward , that must be the recipient of all their impresses ) nor any internall membrane , as that which bids fairest for it , the septum lucidum , as being in the midst of the upper ventricle . but yet if the levell of motion through the externall senses be accurately considered , some will shoot under , and some in a distant parallel , so that this membrane will not be struck with all the objects of our senses . besides that it seems odd and ridiculous that the centre of perception should be either driven out so into plates , or spread into hollow convexities , as it must be supposed , if we make either the externall or internall membranes of the brain the seat of common sense . . the most likely place is some one of those that the three last opinions point at , viz. either the conarion , or the concurse of the nerves in the fourth ventricle , or the animal spirits there . . the first is des-cartes opinion , and not rashly to be refused , neither doe i find any arguments hitherto that are valid enough to deface it . those that are recited out of bartholine , and subscribed to by the learned author of adenographia , in my apprehension have not the force to ruin it : we will first repeat them , and then examine them . the first is , that this glandula is too little to be able to represent the images of all that the soule has represented to her . the second , that the externall nerves doe not reach to the glandula , and that therefore it cannot receive the impress of sensible objects . the third , that it is placed in a place of excrements which would soile the species of things . the fourth , that the species of things are perceived there where they are carried by the nerves . but the nerves meet about the beginning or head of the spinall marrow , a more noble and ample place then the glandula pinealis . to the first i answer , that the amplitude of that place where the nerves meet in the spinall marrow , is not large enough to receive the distinct impresses of all the objects the mind retains in memory . besides , that the other parts of the brain may serve for that purpose , as much as any of it can . for it is the soule it self alone that is capable of retaining so distinct and perfect representations , though it may make an occasionall use of some private marks it impresses in the brain ; which haply may be nothing at all like the things it would remember , nor of any considerable magnitude nor proportion to them , such as we observe in the words arx and atomus , where there is no correspondency of either likeness or bigness , betwixt the words and the things represented by them . to the second , that though there be no continuation of nerves to the conarion , yet there is of spirits ; which are as able to conveigh the impresses of motion from externall sense to the conarion , as the aire and aether the impress of the stars unto the eye . to the third , that the glandula is conveniently enough placed , so long as the body is sound , for no excrementitious humours will then overflow it or besmeare it . but in such distempers wherein they doe , apoplexies , catalepsies , or such like diseases will arise ; which we see doe fall out , let the seat of common sense be where it will. to the last i answer , that the nerves , when they are once got any thing far into the brain , are devoid of tunicles , and be so soft and spongy , that the motion of the spirits can play through them , and that therefore they may ray through the sides , and so continue their motion to the conarion , whereever their extremities may seem to tend . . but though these arguments doe not sufficiently confute the opinion , yet i am not so wedded to it , but i can think something more unexceptionable may be found out , especially it being so much to be suspected , that all animals have not this conarion ; and then , that what pleased des-cartes so much in this invention , was that he conceited it such a marvelous fine instrument to beat the animal spirits into such and such pores of the brain , a thing that i cannot at all close with for reasons above alledged . besides that stones have been found in this glandula , and that it is apparent that it is environ'd with a net of veines and arteries , which are indications that it is a part assigned for some more inferiour office . but yet i would not dismiss it without fair play . . wherefore that opinion of the forecited author , who places the seat of common sense in that part of the spinall marrow where the nerves are suspected to meet , as it is more plain and simple , so it is more irrefutable , supposing that the soul's centre of perception ( whereby she does not onely apprehend all the objects of the externall senses , but does imagine , reason , and freely command and determine the spirits into what part of the body she pleases ) could be conveniently seated in such dull pasty matter as the pith of the brain is ; a thing , i must needs profess , that pleases not my palate at all , and therefore i will also take leave of this opinion too , and adventure to pronounce , that the chief seat of the soule , where she perceives all objects , where she imagines , reasons , and invents , and from whence she commands all the parts of the body , is those purer animal spirits in the fourth ventricle of the brain . chap. viii . . the first reason of his opinion , the convenient situation of these spirits . . the second , that the spirits are the immediate instrument of the soule in all her functions . . the proof of the second reason from the generall authority of philosophers , and particularly of hippocrates ; . from our sympathizing with the changes of the aire ; . from the celerity of motion and cogitation ; . from what is observed generally in the generation of things ; . from regius his experiment of a snaile in a glass ; . from the running round of images in a vertigo ; . from the constitution of the eye , and motion of the spirits there ; . from the dependency of the actions of the soule upon the body , whether in meditation or corporeall motion ; . from the recovery of motion and sense into a stupified part ; . and lastly from what is observed in swooning fits , of paleness and sharpness of visage , &c. . the inference from all this , that the spirits in the fourth ventricle are the seat of common sense , and that the main use of the brain and nerves is to preserve the spirits . . that which makes me embrace this opinion rather then any other is this , that first , this situation of the common sensorium betwixt the head and the trunk of the body , is the most exactly convenient to receive the impresses of objects from both , as also to impart motion to the muscles in both the head and in the body . in which i look upon it as equall with the last opinion , and superiour to all them that went before . for whatever may be objected is already answered in what i have said to the last objection against des-cartes . . but now in the second place , ( wherein this opinion of mine has a notorious advantage above all else that i know ) it is most reasonable that that matter , which is the immediate instrument of all the animal functions of the soule , should be the chiefest seat from whence and where she exercises these functions , and if there be any place where there is a freer plenty of the purest sort of this matter , that her peculiar residence should be there . now the immediate instrument of the functions of the soule is that thinner matter which they ordinarily call animal spirits , which are to be found in their greatest purity and plenty in the fourth ventricle of the brain . from whence it must follow that that precious and choice part of the soule which we call the centre of perception is to be placed in that ventricle , not in any pith of the brain thereabout , but in the midst of these spirits themselves ; for that is the most naturall situation for the commanding them into the parts of the head and body , besides a more delicate and subtile use of them at home , in pursuing various imaginations and inventions . . that this thin and spirituous matter is the immediate engine of the soule in all her operations , is in a manner the generall opinion of all philosophers . and even those that have placed the common sensorium in the heart , have been secure of the truth of this their conceit , because they took it for granted , that the left ventricle thereof was the fountain of these pure and subtile spirits , and please themselves very much , in that they fancied that oracle of physitians , the grave and wise hippocrates , to speak their own sense so fully and significantly , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say , that the mind of man is in the left ventricle of his heart , and that it is not nourished from meats and drinks from the belly , but by a clear and luminous substance that redounds by separation from the blood : which is that which happens exactly in the brain . for the spirits there are nothing else but more pure and subtill parts of the blood , whose tenuity and agitation makes them separate from the rest of the mass thereof , and so replenish the ventricles of the brain . . moreover our sympathizing so sensibly with the changes of the aire , which hippocrates also takes notice of , that in clear aire our thoughts are more clear , and in cloudy more obscure and dull , is no slight indication that that which conveighs sense , thoughts and passions immediately to the soule , is very tenuious and delicate , and of a nature very congenerous to the aire with which it changes so easily . . the strange agility also of motions and cogitations that we find in our selves , has forced the most sluggish witts , even such as have been so gross as to deem the soule corporeall , yet to chuse the freest , subtilest and most active matter to compound her of , that their imaginations could excogitate . and lucretius , the most confident of the epicurean sect , thinks he has hit the naile on the head in his choice , de rerum nat. lib. . where he concludes thus , nunc igitur quoniam est animi natura reperta mobilis egregie , per quam constare necesse est corporibus parvis & laevibus atque rotundis : whose testimony i account the better in this case , by how much the more crass philosopher he is , the necessity of the tenuity of particles that are to pervade the body of a man being convinced hence to be so plain , that the dimmest eyes can easily discover it . . but we will advance higher to more forcible arguments , amongst which this , i think , may find some place , that we cannot discover any immediate operation of any kind of soule in the world , but what it first works upon that matter which participates in a very great measure of this fineness and tenuity of parts , which will easily yield and be guided ; as may be universally observed in all generations , where the body is alwaies organized out of thin fluid liquor , that will easily yield to the plastick power of the soule . in which i doe not doubt but it takes the advantage of moving the most subtile parts of all first , such as des-cartes his first and second element , which are never excluded from any such humid and tenuious substance : which elements of his are that true heavenly or aethereal matter which is every where , as ficinus somewhere saith heaven is ; and is that fire which trismegist affirms is the most inward vehicle of the minde , and the instrument that god used in the forming of the world , and which the soul of the world , where-ever she acts , does most certainly still use . . and to make yet a step further , that ocular demonstration that henricus regius brings philos. natur. lib. . cap. . seems to me both ingenious and solid . it is in a snail , such as have no shells , moving in a glass : so soon as she begins to creep , certain bubbles are discovered to move from her tail to her head ; but so soon as she ceases moving , those bubbles cease . whence he concludes , that a gale of spirits that circuit from her head along her back to her tail , and thence along her belly to her head again , is the cause of her progressive motion . . that such thin spirits are the immediate instruments of sense , is also discovered by what is observed in a vertigo . for the brain it self is not of such a fluid substance as to turn round , and to make external objects seem to doe so . wherefore it is a sign that the immediate corporeal instrument of conveying the images of things is the spirits in the brain . . and that they are the chief organ of sight is plain in the exteriour parts of the eye ; for we may easily discern how full they are of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , pure and lucid substance which hippocrates speaks of , though he seat it in a wrong place ; and how upon the passions of the minde these spirits ebbe or flow in the eye , and are otherwise wonderful-significantly modified , insomuch that the soul even seems to speak through them , in that silent voice of angels , which some fancy to be by nothing but by dumb shews , but i doe not at all believe it . it is also plain enough , that dimness of sight comes from deficiency of these spirits , though the parts of the eye otherwise be entire enough . the wider opening also of the pupill of one eye upon the shutting of the other does indicate the flux and more copious presence of spirits there , as galen has ingeniously collected . . to which we may adde that in those more noble operations of the minde , when she meditates and excogitates various theorems , that either she uses some part of the body as an instrument then , or acts freely and independently of the body . that the latter is false is manifest from hence , that then the change of air , or distemper and diseasedness , could not prejudice her in her inventive and purely intellectuall operations ; but it is manifest that they doe , and that a mans minde is much more cloudy one time then another , and in one country then another , whence is that proverbiall verse , boeotûm crasso jurares aere natum . if she uses any part of the body , it must be either these animal spirits , or the brain . that it is not the brain , the very consistency thereof so clammy and sluggish is an evident demonstration , which will still have the more force , if we consider what is most certainly true , that the soul has not any power , or else exceeding little , of moving matter ; but her peculiar priviledge is of determining matter in motion ; which the more subtile and agitated it is , the more easily by reason of its own mobility is it determined by her . for if it were an immediate faculty of the soul to contribute motion to any matter , i doe not understand how that faculty never failing nor diminishing no more then the soul it self can fail or diminish , that we should ever be weary of motion . in so much that those nimble-footed maenades or she-priests of bacchus , with other agile virgins of the country , which dionysius describes dancing in the flowry meadows of maeander and cayster , might , if life and limbs would last , be found dancing there to this very day , as free and frolick as wanton kids ( as he pleases to set out their activity ) and that without any lassitude at all . for that immediate motive faculty of the soul can still as fresh as ever impart motion to all the body , and sooner consume it into air or ashes by heating and agitating it , then make her self weary or the body seem so . wherefore it is plain that that motion or heat that the soul voluntarily confers upon the body is by vertue of the spirits , which she , when they are playing onely and gently toying amongst themselves , sends forth into the exteriour members , and so agitates and moves them : but they being so subtile and dissipable , the soul spends them in using of them ; and they being much spent , she can hardly move the body any longer , the sense whereof we call lassitude . these are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of hippocrates , and the souls immediate engine of motion through all the parts of the body . . as they are also of sense in the more remote parts , as well as in the head , as spigelius handsomely insinuates by that ordinary example of a mans legge being stupified or asleep , as some call it , by compression or whatever hinderance may be of the propagation of the spirits into that part . for as sense and motion is restored , a man may plainly feel something creep into it tingling and stinging like pismires , as he compares it ; which can be nothing but the spirits forcing their passage into the part . wherein what they suffer is made sensible to the soul , they being her immediate vehicle of life and sense . . lastly , in swooning fits , when motion and sense fails , the exteriour parts are pale and fallen , the face looking more lean and sharp ; of which there can be no other meaning , then that that benign gale of vital air , that fill'd up the parts before , is now absent and retreated from them ; that is , that the fluid spirits are retired , without which no sense nor motion can be performed : whence it is apparent that they are the immediate instrument of both . . i have proved that the animal spirits are the souls immediate organ for sense and motion . if therefore there be any place where these spirits are in the fittest plenty and purity , and in the most convenient situation for animal functions ; that in all reason must be concluded the chief seat and acropolis of the soul. now the spirits in the middle ventricle of the brain are not so indifferently situated for both the body and the head , as those in the fourth are ; nor so pure . the upper ventricles , being two , are not so fit for this office , that is so very much one and singular . besides that the sensiferous impresses of motion through the eyes play under them ; to say nothing how the spirits here are less defaecate also then in the fourth ventricle . wherefore there being sufficient plenty , and greatest purity , and fittest situation of the spirits in this fourth ventricle , it is manifest that in these is placed the centre of perception , & that they are the common sensorium of the soul. and that as the heart pumps out blood perpetually to supply the whole body with nourishment , and to keep up the bulk of this edifice for the soul to dwell in , as also from the more subtile and agile parts thereof , to replenish the brain and nerves with spirits , which are the immediate instrument of the soul for sense and motion ; so it is plain likewise that the main use of the brain and nerves is to keep these subtile spirits from over speedy dissipation , and that the brain with its caverns is but one great round nerve ; as the nerves with their invisible porosities are but so many smaller productions or slenderer prolongations of the brain . chap. ix . . several objections against animal spirits . . an answer to the first objection touching the porosity of the nerves . . to the second and third from the extravasation of the spirits and pituitous excrements found in the brain . . to the fourth fetcht from the incredible swiftness of motion in the spirits . . to the last from ligation . . undeniable demonstrations that there are animall spirits in the ventricles of the brain . . before we proceed to our other two enquiries , we are forced to make a stop a while , and listen to some few objections made by some late authours , who against the common stream of all other philosophers , physitians and anatomists , are not ashamed to deny that there are any such things as spirits in the body ; or at least that there are any in the ventricles of the brain . for as for the nerves , say they , they have no pores or cavities to receive them ; and besides , it is plain that what is fluid in them is nothing but a milky white juice , as is observed in the pricking of a nerve . and as for the ventricles of the brain , those cavities are too big , and the spirits if they issue into them , will be as extravasated blood , whence they must needs be spoiled and corrupt . besides that they will evaporate at those passages through which the mucous or pituitous excrements pass from the brain . whose appearance there is , say they , another great argument that these ventricles were intended onely for receptacles and conveyances of such excrementitious humours which the brain discharges it self of . lastly , if spontaneous motion be made by means of these spirits , it could not be so extremely sudden as it is , for we can wagge our finger as quick as thought , but corporeal motion cannot be so swift . and if the spirits be continued from the head to the finger , suppose , in the ligation of the nerve there would be sense from the ligature to the fingers end ; which is , say they , against experience . these are the main objections i have met withall in hofman and others ; but are such as i think are very easily answered : and indeed they doe in some sort clash some of them one with another . . for how can the nerves derive juice if they have no pores , or are not so much as passable to these thin active spirits we speak of ? or from whence can we better conceive that juice to arise , then from these spirits themselves , as they loose their agitation , and flag into a more gross consistency ? . neither can the spirits be looked upon as extravasated in the ventricles of the brain , more then the blood in the auricles or ventricles of the heart . nor is there any fear of their sliding away through the infundibulum , the pituitous excrements having no passage there but what they make by their weight , as well as their insinuating moistness , which always besmearing these parts makes them more impervious to the light spirits , whose agility also and componderancy with the outward aire renders them uncapable of leaving the caverns in which they are . that arguing from the pituitous excrements found there , that they were made onely for a receptacle of such useless redundancy , is as ineptly inferred , as if a man should argue from what is found in the intestinum rectum , that the stomack and all the intestines were made for a receptacle of stercoreous excrement . the spirits in the ventricles of the brain , playing about and hitting against the sides of the caverns they are in , will in process of time abate of their agitation , the grosser parts especially ; and so necessarily come to a more course consistency , and settle into some such like moist sediment as is found at the bottome of the ventricles , which nature dischargeth through fit passages , whereby the spirits are left more pure . but because this necessary faeculency is found in these cavities , to conclude that that is the onely use of them , is as ridiculous as to inferre that because i spit at my mouth , and blow my nose , that that was the chief end and use of these two parts of my body , or that my eyes were not made for seeing , but weeping . . the nature of the swiftness of motion in these spirits is much like that of light , which is a body as well as they . but that lucid matter in the sun does not , so soon as he appears upon the horizon , fly so many thousand miles in a moment to salute our eyes ; but motion is propagated as it were at once from the sun to our eye through the aethereal matter betwixt . or suppose a long tube , as long as you will , and one to blow in it ; in a moment , so soon as he blows at one end , the motion will be felt at the other , and that downwards as well as upwards , and as easily ; to satisfie that other frivolous objection i find in hofman , as if it were so hard a business that these spirits should be commanded downwards into the nerves . but the opposers of this ancient and solid opinion are very simple and careless . . that of the ligature proves nothing . for though the nerve betwixt the ligature and the finger be well enough stored with spirits , yet the centre of perception being not there , and there being an interruption and division betwixt the spirits that are continued to their common sensorium , and these on the other side of the ligature ; 't is no more wonder , that we feel nothing on this side of the ligature , then that we see nothing in our neighbours garden , when a wall is betwixt , though the sun shine clearly on both sides of the wall . . we see how invalid their arguments are against this received opinion of almost all both physitians and philosophers : it is needless to produce any for the confirmation of it , those which we have made use of for proving that the spirits are the immediate instrument of the soule , being of equall force most of them to conclude their existence in the body . and yet for an overplus i will not much care to cast in a brief suggestion of the use of the lungs , which the best physitians and anatomists adjudge to be chiefly for conveighing prepared aire to the heart ; as also of the rete mirabile and plexus choroides , whose bare situation discover their use , that they may more plentifully evaporate the thinner and more agile particles of the blood into the ventricles of the brain . the diastole also of the brain keeping time with the pulse of the heart , is a manifest indication , what a vehement steam of spirits , by the direct and short passage of the arteriae carotides , are carried thither . for if one part of the blood be more fiery and subtill then another , it will be sure to reach the head. from whence considering the sponginess & laxness of the brain , and thinness of the tunicles in the little arteries that are there ; it will follow by mechanical necessity that the ventricles thereof will be filled with that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which hippocrates so fitly describes , though he fancy the seat of it in an unfitting place . but the purest of these spirits being in the fourth ventricle , as bartholine and others have judiciously concluded , it follows plainly from what has been alledged , that the common sensorium is to be placed in the midst of these purer spirits of the fourth ventricle of the brain . chap. x. . that the soule is not confined to the common sensorium . . the first argument from the plastick power of the soule . . which is confirmed from the graduall dignity of the soules faculties , of which this plastick is the lowest ; . externall sensation the next ; . after that imagination , and then reason . . the second argument from passions and sympathies in animals . . an illustration of the manner of naturall magick . . the third argument from the perception of pain in the exteriour parts of the body . . the fourth and last from the nature of sight . . we are now at leisure to resume the two remaining enquiries ; the former whereof is , whether the soule be so in this fourth ventricle , that it is essentially no where else in the body , or whether it be spread out into all the members . regius would coup it up in the conarion , which he believes to be the common sensorium , and so by consequence it should be confined to the fourth ventricle , and not expatiate at all thence , supposing that the seat of common sense . the reason of this conceit of his is this , that whatever is in the rest of the body , may come to pass by powers meerly mechanical ; wherein he does very superstitiously tread in the footsteps of his master des-cartes . but for my own part , i cannot but dissent , i finding in neither any sufficient grounds of so novell an opinion , but rather apparent reasons to the contrary . . as first the frame of the body , of which i think most reasonable to conclude the soule her self to be the more particular architect ( for i will not wholly reject plotinus his opinion ; ) and that the plastick power resides in her , as also in the soules of brute animals , as very learned and worthy writers have determined . that the fabrick of the body is out of the concurse of atomes , is a meer precarious opinion , without any ground or reason . for sense does not discover any such thing , the first rudiments of life being out of some liquid homogeneall matter ; and it is against reason , that the tumbling of atomes or corporeall particles should produce such exquisite frames of creatures , wherein the acutest wit is not able to find any thing inept , but all done exquisitely wel everywhere , where the foulness and courseness of matter has not been in fault . that god is not the immediate maker of these bodyes , the particular miscarriages demonstrate . for there is no matter so perverse and stubborn but his omnipotency could tame ; whence there would be no defects nor monstrosities in the generation of animals . nor is it so congruous to admit , that the plastick faculty of the soul of the world is the sole contriver of these fabricks of particular creatures ( though i will not deny but she may give some rude preparative stroaks towards efformation : ) but that in every particular world , such as man is especially , his own soule is the peculiar and most perfective architect thereof , as the soule of the world is of it . for this vitall fabrication is not as in artificiall architecture , when an external person acts upon matter , but implies a more particular and near union with that matter it thus intrinsecally shapes out and organizes . and what ought to have a more particular and close union with our bodies then our souls themselves ? my opinion is therefore , that the soule , which is a spirit , and therefore contractible and dilatable , begins within less compass at first in organizing the fitly-prepared matter , and so bears it self on in the same tenour of work till the body has attained its full growth ; and that the soule dilates it self in the dilating of the body , and so possesses it through all the members thereof . . the congruity of this truth will further discover it self , if we consider the nature of the faculties of the soule ( of which you may read more fully in enthusiasmus triumphatus artic. , , . ) in what a natural graduality they arise till they come to the most free of all . the deepest or lowest is this plastick power we have already spoke of , in virtue whereof is continued that perpetuall systole and diastole of the heart , as i am more prone to think then that it is meerly mechanical , as also that respiration that is performed without the command of our will : for the libration or reciprocation of the spirits in the tensility of the muscles would not be so perpetuall , but cease in a small time , did not some more mysticall principle then what is meerly mechanical give assistance , as any one may understand by observing the insufficiency of those devices that henricus regius propounds for adaequate causes of such motions in the body . these i look upon as the first faculties of the soule , which may be bounded by this generall character , that the exercise of them does not at all imply so much as our perception . . next to these is the sensation of any externall object , such as hearing , seeing , feeling , &c. all which include perception in an unresistible necessity thereof , the object being present before us , and no externall obstacle interposing . . imagination is more free , we being able to avoid its representations for the most part , without any externall help ; but it is a degree on this side will and reason , by which we correct and silence unallowable fancies . thus we see how the faculties of the soule rise by degrees ; which makes it still the more easy and credible , that the lowest of all is competible to her as well as the highest . . moreover , passions and sympathies , in my judgment , are more easily to be resolved into this hypothesis of the souls pervading the whole body , then in restraining its essentiall presence to one part thereof . for to believe that such an horrible object as , suppose , a bear or tiger , by transmission of motion from it through the eyes of an animal to the conarion , shall so reflect thence , as to determine the spirits into such nerves as will streighten the orifice of the heart , and lessen the pulse , and cause all other symptomes of fear ; seems to me little better then a meer piece of mechanical credulity . those motions that represent the species of things , being turned this way or the other way , without any such impetus of matter as should doe such feats as des-cartes speaks of in his book of passions . and that which he would give us as a pledg of this truth is so false , that it does the more animate me to dis-believe the theorem , artic. . for the wafting of one's hand neare the eye of a mans friend , is no sufficient proof that externall objects will necessarily and mechanically determine the spirits into the muscles , no faculty of the soule intermedling . for if one be fully assured , or rather can keep himself from the fear of any hurt , by the wafting of his friends hand before his eye , he may easily abstain from winking : but if fear surprise him , the soule is to be entitled to the action , and not the meer mechanisme of the body . wherefore this is no proof that the phaenomena of passions , with their consequences , may be salved in brute beasts by pure mechanicks ; and therefore neither in men : but it is evident that they arise in us against both our will and appetite . for who would bear the tortures of fears and jealousies , if he could avoid it ? and therefore the soule sends not nor determines the spirits thus to her own torture , as she resides in the head. whence it is plain that it is the effect of her as she resides in the heart and stomack , which sympathize with the horrid representation in the common sensorium , by reason of the exquisite unity of the soul with her self , & of the continuity of spirits in the body , the necessary instrument of all her functions . and there is good reason the heart & stomack should be so much affected , they being the chief seats of those faculties that maintain the life of the body ▪ the danger whereof is the most eminent object of fear in any animal . . from this principle , i conceive that not onely the sympathy of parts in one particular subject , but of different and distant subjects , may be understood : such as is betwixt the party wounded , and the knife or sword that wounded him , besmeared with the weapon-salve , and kept in a due temper : which certainly is not purely mechanical , but magical , though not in an unlawful sense ; that is to say , it is not to be resolved into meer matter , of what thinness or subtilty soever you please , but into the unity of the soul of the universe , and continuity of the subtile matter , which answers to our animal spirits . and in this sense it is that plotinus sayes , that the world is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the grand magus or enchanter . and i doe not question , but that upon this score meerly , without the association of any familiar spirit , several odde things may be done , for evil as well as good . for this spirit of the world has faculties that work not by election , but fatally or naturally , as several gamaitus we meet withall in nature seem somewhat obscurely to subindicate . of this principle we shall speak more fully in its due place . . but we have yet a more clear discovery , that our soul is not confined to any one part of the head , but possesses the whole body , from the perception of pain in the parts thereof : for it is plainly impossible , that so high a torture as is felt but in the pricking of a pin , can be communicated to the centre of perception upon a meer mechanical account . for whether the immediate instrument of sense be the pith of the nerves , as des-cartes would have it , or whether it be the spirits , as is most true ; it is ridiculous to think , that by the forcible parting of what was joyned together at ease ( when this case is not communicated to either the spirits , or pith of the nerves , from the place of the puncture , to the very seat of common sense ) that the soul there seated should feel so smart a torment , unless that her very essence did reach to the part where the pain is felt to be . for then the reason of this is plain , that it is the unity of soul possessing the whole body , and the continuity of spirits that is the cause thereof . and it is no wonder , if the continuation and natural composure of the spirits be rest and ease to the soul , that a violent disjoyning and bruising of them , and baring the soul of them , as i may so speak , should cause a very harsh and torturous sense in the centre of perception . this argument bears undeniable evidence with it , if we doe but consider the fuzziness of the pith of the nerves , and the fluidity of the spirits , and what little stress or crouding so small a thing as a pin or needle can make in such soft and liquid matter . chap. xi . . that neither the soul without the spirits , nor the spirits without the presence of the soul in the organ , are sufficient causes of sensation . . a brief declaration how sensation is made . . how imagination . . of reason and memory , and whether there be any marks in the brain . . that the spirits are the immediate instrument of the soul in memory also ; and how memory arises ; . as also forgetfulness . . how spontaneous motion is performed . . how we walk , sing , and play , though thinking of something else . . that though the spirits be not alike fine every where , yet the sensiferous impression will pass to the common sensorium . . that there is an heterogeneity in the very soul her self ; and what it is in her we call the root , the centre , and the eye ; and what the rayes and branches . . that the sober and allowable distribution of her into parts , is into perceptive and plastick . . after our evincing that the soul is not confined to the common sensorium , but does essentially reach all the organs of the body ; it will be more easy to determine the nature of sensation and other operations we mentioned . for we have already demonstrated these two things of main consequence ; that the spirits are not sufficient of themselves for these functions ; nor the soul of her self , without the assistance of the spirits : as is plain in the interception or disjunction of the spirits by ligature or obstruction ; whence it is , that blindness sometimes happens meerly for that the optick nerve is obstructed . . wherefore briefly to dispatch our third querie ; i say in general , that sensation is made by the arrival of motion from the object to the organ ; where it is received in all the circumstances we perceive it in , and conveyed by vertue of the souls presence there , assisted by her immediate instrument the spirits , by vertue of whose continuity to those in the common sensorium , the image or impress of every object is faithfully transmitted thither . . as for imagination , there is no question but that function is mainly exercised in the chief seat of the soul , those purer animal spirits in the fourth ventricle of the brain . i speak especially of that imagination which is most free , such as we use in romantick inventions , or such as accompany the more severe meditations and disquisitions in philosophy , or any other intellectuall entertainments . for fasting , fresh aire , moderate wine , and all things that tend to an handsome supply and depuration of the spirits , make our thoughts more free , subtile , and clear . . reason is so involved together with imagination , that we need say nothing of it apart by it self . memory is a faculty of a more peculiar consideration ; and if the pith of the brain contribute to the functions of any power of the mind , ( more then by conserving the animal spirits ) it is to this . but that the brain should be stored with distinct images ( whether they consist of the flexures of the supposed fibrillae , or the orderly puncture of pores , or in a continued modified motion of the parts thereof , some in this manner , and others in that ) is a thing , as i have already proved , utterly impossible . if there be any marks in it , it must be a kind of brachygraphie , some small dots here and there standing for the recovering to memory a series of things that would fill , it may be , many sheets of paper to write them at large . as if a man should tie a string about a friends finger to remember a business , that a whole daies discourse , it may be , was but little enough to give him full instructions in . from whence it is plain that the memory is in the soule , and not in the brain . and if she doe make any such marks as we speak of , she having no perception of them distinct from the representation of those things which they are to remind her of , she must not make them by any cognitive power , but by some such as is analogous to her plastick faculty of organizing the body , where she acts and perceives it not . . but whether the soule act thus or no upon the brain , is a matter of uncertain determination ; nor can it be demonstrated by any experiment that i know . and therefore if we will contain our selves within the capacities of the spirits , which i have so often affirmed to be the immediate instrument of the soule in all her operations , that position will be more unexceptionable . and truly i doe not understand but that they and the soule together will perform all the functions of memory that we are conscious to our selves of . and therefore i shall conclude that memory consists in this , that the soule has acquired a greater promptitude to think of this , or that phantasm , with the circumstances thereof , which were raised in her upon some occasion . which promptitude is acquired by either the often representation of the same phantasme to her ; or else by a more vivid impress of it from its novelty , excellency , mischievousness , or some such like condition that at once will pierce the soule with an extraordinary resentment ; or finally by voluntary attention , when she very carefully and on set purpose imprints the idea as deeply as she can into her inward sense . this promptitude to think on such an idea will lessen in time , and be so quite spent , that when the same idea is represented again to the soule , she cannot tell that ever she saw it before . but before this inclination thereto be quite gone , upon this proneness to return into the same conception , with the circumstances , the relative sense of having seen it before ( which we call memory ) does necessarily emerge upon a fresh representation of the object . . but forgetfulness arises either out of meer desuetude of thinking on such an object , or on others that are linked in with it , in such a series as would represent it as past , and so make it a proper object of memory . or else for that the spirits , which the soule uses in all her functions , be not in a due temper ; which may arise from overmuch coolness , or waterishness in the head , to which alone sennertus ascribes obliviousness . . the last thing we are to consider is spontaneous motion . which that it is performed by the continuation of the spirits from the seat of common sense to the muscles , which is the gross engine of motion , is out of doubt . the manner how it is , we partly feel and see ; that is to say , we find in our selves a power , at our own pleasure to move this or the other member with very great force , and that the muscle swels that moves the part ; which is a plain indication of influx of spirits , thither directed or there guided by our meer will : a thing admirable to consider , and worth our most serious meditation . that this direction of the impresse of motion is made by our meer will , and imagination of doing so , we know and feel it so intimately , that we can be of nothing more sure . that there is some fluid and subtile matter , which we ordinarily call spirits , directed into the muscle that moves the member , its swelling does evidence to our sight ; as also the experience , that moderate use of wine which supplyes spirits apace , will make this motion the more strong . as for the manner , whether there be any such valvulae or no in the nerve , common to the opposite muscles , as also in those that are proper to each , it is not materiall . this great priviledge of our soules directing the motion of matter thus , is wonderfull enough in either hypothesis . but i look upon the fibrous parts of the muscle as the main engine of motion ; which the soule moistning with that subtil liquor of the animal spirits , makes them swell and shrink , like lute-strings in rainy weather : and in this chiefly consists that notable strength of our limbs in spontaneous motion . but for those conceived valvulae that experience has not found out yet , nor sufficient reason , they are to wait for admission till they bring better evidence . for the presence of the animal spirits in this fibrous flesh , and the command of the soule to move , is sufficient to salve all phaenomena of this kind . for upon the will conceived in the common sensorium , that part of the soule that resides in the muscles , by a power near a-kin to that by which she made the body and the organs thereof , guides the spirits into such pores and parts , as is most requisite for the shewing the use of this excellent fabrick . . and in virtue of some such power as this , doe we so easily walk , though we think not of it , as also breath , and sing , and play on the lute , though our mindes be taken up with something else . for custome is another nature : and though the animal spirits , as being meerly corporeall , cannot be capable of any habits ; yet the soule , even in that part thereof that is not cognitive , may , and therefore may move the body , though cogitation cease ; provided the members be well replenished with spirits , whose assistance in naturall motions of animals is so great , that their heads being taken off , their body for a long time will move as before : as chalcidius relates of wasps and hornets , who will fly about , and use their wings , a good part of an houre after they have lost their heads : which is to be imputed to the residence of their soule in them still , and the intireness of the animal spirits , not easily evaporating through their crustaceous bodies . for it is but a vulgar conceit to think , that the head being taken off , the soule must presently fly out , like a bird out of a basket , when the lid is lifted up . for the whole world is as much throng'd with body , as where she is ; and that tye of the spirits as yet not being lost , it is a greater engagement to her to be there then any where else . this motion therefore in the wasp , that is so perfect and durable , i hold to be vitall ; but that in the parts of dismembred creatures , that are less perfect , may be usually mechanicall . . we have now , so far forth as it is requisite for our design , considered the nature and functions of the soule ; and have plainly demonstrated , that she is a substance distinct from the body , and that her very essence is spread throughout all the organs thereof : as also that the generall instrument of all her operations is the subtile spirits ; which though they be not in like quantity and sincerity every where , yet they make all the body so pervious to the impresses of objects upon the externall organs , that like lightning they pass to the common sensorium . for it is not necessary that the medium be so fine and tenuious as the matter where the most subtile motion begins . whence light passes both aire and water , though aire alone is not sufficient for such a motion as light , and water almost uncapable of being the seat of the fountain thereof . this may serve to illustrate the passage of sense from the membranes ( or in what other seat soever the spirits are most subtil and lucid ) through thicker places of the body to the very centre of perception . . lastly , we have discovered a kind of heterogeneity in the soule ; and that she is not of the same power every where . for her centre of perception is confined to the fourth ventricle of the brain ; and if the sensiferous motions we speak of be not faithfully conducted thither , we have no knowledg of the object . that part therefore of the soule is to be looked upon as most precious ; and she not being an independent mass , as matter is , but one part resulting from another , that which is the noblest is in all reason to be deemed the cause of the rest . for which reason ( as synesius calls god , on whom all things depend , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) so , i think this part may be called the root of the soule . which apprehension of ours will seem the less strange , if we consider that from the highest life , viz. the deity , there does result that which has no life nor sense at all , to wit the stupid matter . wherefore in very good analogie we may admit , that that pretious part of the soule in which resides perception , sense , and understanding , may send forth such an essential emanation from it self , as is utterly devoid of all sense and perception ; which you may call , if you will , the exteriour branches of the soule , or the rayes of the soule , if you call that nobler and diviner part the centre ; which may very well merit also the appellation of the eye of the soule , all the rest of its parts being but meer darkness without it . in which , like another cyclops , it will resemble the world we live in , whose one eye is conspicuous to all that behold the light . . but to leave such lusorious considerations , that rather gratifie our fancy then satisfy our severer faculties ; we shall content our selves hereafter , from those two notorious powers , and so perfectly different , which philosophers acknowledg in the soule , to wit , perception and organization , onely to term that more noble part of her in the common sensorium , the perceptive , and all the rest the plastick part of the soule . chap. xii . . an answer to an objection , that our arguments will as well prove the immortality of the souls of brutes , as of men. . another objection inferring the praeexistence of brutes souls , and consequently of ours . . the first answer to the objection . . the second answer consisting of four parts . . first , that the hypothesis of praeexistence is more agreeable to reason then any other hypothesis . . and not onely so , but that it is very solid in it self . . that the wisdome and goodness of god argue the truth thereof . . as also the face of providence in the world. . the second part of the second answer , that the praeexistence of the soul has the suffrage of all philosophers in all ages , that held it incorporeal . . that the gymnosophists of aegypt , the indian brachmans , the persian magi , and all the learned of the jews were of this opinion . . a catalogue of particular famous persons that held the same . . that aristotle was also of the same minde . . another more clear place in aristotle to this purpose , with sennertus his interpretation . . an answer to an evasion of that interpretation . . the last and clearest place of all out of aristotles writings . . having thus discovered the nature of the soul , and that she is a substance distinct from the body ; i should be in readiness to treat of her separation from it , did i not think my self obliged first , to answer an envious objection cast in our way , whereby they would make us believe , that the arguments which we have used , though they be no less then demonstrations , are meer sophisms , because some of them , and those of not the least validity , prove what is very absurd and false , viz. that the souls of brutes also are substances incorporeal , distinct from the body : from whence it will follow , that they are immortal . but to this i have answered already in the appendix to my antidote , &c. cap. . and in brief concluded , that they are properly no more immortal then the stupid matter , which never perishes , and that out of a terrestrial body they may have no more sense then it . for all these things are as it pleases the first creatour of them . . to this they perversly reply , that if the souls of brutes subsist after death , and are then sensless and unactive , it will necessarily follow that they must come into bodies again . for it is very ridiculous to think that these souls , having a being yet in the world , and wanting nothing but fitly-prepared matter to put them in a capacity of living again , should be always neglected , and never brought into play , but that new ones should be daily created in their stead : for those innumerable myriads of souls would lie useless in the universe , the number still increasing even to infinity . but if they come into bodies again , it is evident that they praeexist : and if the souls of brutes praeexist , then certainly the souls of men doe so too . which is an opinion so wilde and extravagant , that a wry mouth and a loud laughter ( the argument that every fool is able to use ) is sufficient to silence it and dash it out of countenance . no wise man can ever harbour such a conceit as this , which every idiot is able to confute by consulting but with his own memory . for he is sure , if he had been before , he could remember something of that life past . besides the unconceivableness of the approach and entrance of these praeexistent souls into the matter that they are to actuate . . to this may be answered two things . the first , that though indeed it cannot be well denied , but that the concession of the praeexistence of the souls of brutes is a very fair introduction to the belief of the praeexistence of the souls of men also ; yet the sequel is not at all necessary , but one may be without the other . . the second is this , that if the sequel were granted , that no absurdity can be detected from thence in reason , if the prejudices of education , and the blinde suggestion of unconcerned faculties , that have no right to vote here , be laid aside . to speak more explicitely , i say , this consequence of our souls praeexistence is more agreeable to reason then any other hypothesis whatever ; has been received by the most learned philosophers of all ages , there being scarce any of them that held the soul of man immortal upon the meer light of nature and reason , but asserted also her praeexistence ; that memory is no fit judge to appeal to in this controversy ; and lastly , that traduction and creation are as intricate and unconceivable as this opposed opinion . . i shall make all these four parts of my answer good in order . the truth of the first we shall understand , if we compare it with those opinions that stand in competition with it , which are but two that are considerable . the one is of those that say , the soule is ex traduce ; the other of those that say it is created , upon occasion . the first opinion is a plain contradiction to the notion of a soul , which is a spirit , and therefore of an indivisible , that is of an indiscerpible , essence . the second opinion implies both an indignity to the majesty of god , ( in making him the chief assistant and actour in the highest , freest , and most particular way that the divinity can be conceived to act , in those abominable crimes of whoredome , adultery , incest , nay buggery it self , by supplying those foul coitions with new created souls for the purpose : ) and also an injury to the souls themselves ; that they being ever thus created by the immediate hand of god , and therefore pure , innocent and immaculate , should be imprisoned in unclean , diseased and disordered bodies , where very many of them seem to be so fatally over-mastered , and in such an utter incapacity of closing with what is good and vertuous , that they must needs be adjudged to that extreme calamity which attends all those that forget god. wherefore these two opinions being so incongruous , what is there left that can seem probable , but the praeexistency of the soul ? . but i shall not press the reasonableness of this opinion onely from comparing it with others , but also from the concinnity that is to be found in it self . for as it is no greater wonder that every particular mans soul that lives now upon earth should be à mundo condito , then the particular matter of their bodies should ( which has haply undergone many millions of alterations and modifications , before it lighted into such a contexture as to prove the entire body of any one person in the world , has been in places unimaginably distant , has filed , it may be , through the triangular passages of as many vortices as we see stars in a clear frosty night , and has shone once as bright as the sun ( as the cartesian hypothesis would have all the earth to have done ) in so much that we eat , and drink , and cloath our selves with that which was once pure light and flame ; ) so that de facto they do bear the same date with the creation of the world , that unavoidable certainty of the praeexistence of the souls of brutes does , according to the very concession of our adversaries , fairly insinuate . . but this is not all . both the attributes of god , and face of things in the world , out of which his providence is not to be excluded , are very strong demonstrations thereof to reason unprejudiced . for first , if it be good for the souls of men to be at all , the sooner they are the better . but we are most certain that the wisdome and goodness of god will doe that which is the best ; and therefore if they can enjoy themselves before they come into these terrestrial bodies ( it being better for them to enjoy themselves then not ) they must be before they come into these bodies ; that is , they must be in a capacity of enjoying themselves without them for long periods of time , before they appeared here in this age of the world. for nothing hinders but that they may live before they come into the body , as well as they may after their going out of it : the latter whereof is acknowledged even by them that deny the praeexistence . wherefore the praeexistence of souls is a necessary result of the wisdome and goodness of god , who can no more fail to doe that which is best , then he can to understand it : for otherwise his wisdome would exceed his benignity ; nay there would be less hold to be taken of his goodness , then of the bounty of a very benign and good man , who , we may be well assured , will slip no opportunity of doing good that lies in his power , especially if it be neither damage nor trouble to him ; both which hinderances are incompetible to the deity . . again , the face of providence in the world seems very much to suit with this opinion ; there being not any so naturall and easy account to be given of those things that seem the most harsh in the affairs of men , as from this hypothesis , that their soules did once subsist in some other state ; where , in severall manners and degrees , they forfeited the favour of their creatour . and so according to that just nemesis that he has interwoven in the constitution of the universe , and of their own natures , they undergoe several calamities and asperities of fortune , and sad drudgeries of fate , as a punishment inflicted , or a disease contracted from the severall obliquities of their apostasie . which key is not onely able to unlock that recondite mystery of some particular mens almost fatal aversness from all religion and vertue , their stupidity and dulness and even invincible slowness to these things from their very child-hood , and their uncorrigible propension to all manner of vice ; but also of that squalid forlorneness and brutish barbarity , that whole nations for many ages have layen under , and many doe still lye under at this very day . which sad scene of things must needs exceedingly cloud and obscure the wayes of divine providence , and make them utterly unintelligible ; unless some light be let in from the present hypothesis we speak of . it is plain therefore that there are very weighty reasons may be found out , to conclude the praeexistence of soules . and therefore this opinion being so demonstrable from this faculty , and there being no other that can contradict it , ( for that the verdict of memory in this case is invalid i shall prove anon ) we are according to the light of nature undoubtedly to conclude , that the soules of men doe praeexist , by axiome . . and as this hypothesis is rationall in it self , so has it also gained the suffrage of all philosophers of all ages , of any note , that have held the soule of man incorporeal and immortall . and therefore i am not at all sollicitous what either the epicureans or stoicks held concerning this matter ; this contest being betwixt those onely that agree on this truth , that the soule is a substance immateriall . and such amongst the philosophers as held it so , did unanimously agree that it does praeexist . this is so plain , that it is enough onely to make this challenge ; every one in the search will satifie himself of the truth thereof . i shall onely adde , for the better countenance of the business , some few instances herein , as a pledge of the truth of my generall conclusion . let us cast our eye therefore into what corner of the world we will , that has been famous for wisdome and literature , and the wisest of those nations you shall find the assertours of this opinion . . in egypt , that ancient nurse of all hidden sciences , that this opinion was in vogue amongst the wise men there , those fragments of trismegist doe sufficiently witness . for though there may be suspected some fraud and corruption in severall passages in that book , in reference to the interest of christianity ; yet this opinion of the praeexistency of the soule , in which christianity did not interest it self , cannot but be judged , from the testimony of those writings , to have been a branch of the wisdome of that nation : of which opinion not onely the gymnosophists and other wise men of egypt were , but also the brachmans of india , and the magi of babylon and persia ; as you may plainly see by those oracles that are called either magicall or chaldaicall , which pletho and psellus have commented upon . to these you may adde the abstruse philosophy of the jewes , which they call their cabbala , of which the soules praeexistence makes a considerable part ; as all the learned of the jewes doe confess . and how naturally applicable this theory is to those three first mysterious chapters of genesis , i have , i hope , with no contemptible success , endeavoured to shew in my conjectura cabbalistica . . and if i should particularize in persons of this opinon , truly they are such , of so great fame for depth of understanding and abstrusest science , that their testimony alone might seem sufficient to bear down any ordinary modest man into an assent to their doctrine . and in the first place , if we can believe the cabbala of the jewes , we must assign it to moses , the greatest philosopher certainly that ever was in the world ; to whom you may adde zoroaster , pythagoras , epicharmus , empedocles , cebes , euripides , plato , euclide , philo , virgil , marcus cicero , plotinus , iamblicus , proclus , boethius , psellus , and severall others which it would be too long to recite . and if it were fit to adde fathers to philosophers , we might enter into the same list synesius and origen : the latter of whom was surely the greatest light and bulwark that antient christianity had ; who unless there had been some very great matter in it , was far from that levity and vanity , as to entertain an opinion so vulgarly slighted and neglected by other men : and the same may be said of others that were christians , as boethius , psellus , and the late learned marsilius ficinus . but i have not yet ended my catalogue : that admirable physitian johannes fernelius is also of this perswasion , and is not content to be so himself onely , but discovers those two grand masters of medicine , hippocrates and galen , to be so too ; as you may see in his de abditis rerum causis . cardan also , that famous philosopher of his age , expresly concludes , that the rationall soule is both a distinct being from the soule of the world , and that it does praeexist before it comes into the body : and lastly pomponatius , no friend to the soules immortality , yet cannot but confess , that the safest way to hold it , is also therewith to acknowledg her praeexistence . . and that nothing may be wanting to shew the frivolousness of this part of the objection , we shall also evince that aristotle , that has the luck to be believed more then most authors , was of the same opinion , in his treatise de anima lib. . cap. . where he speaks of the necessity of the qualification of the body that the soule is to actuate ; and blaming those that omit that consideration , sayes , that they are as careless of that matter , as if it were possible that , according to the pythagorick fables , any soule might enter into any body . whenas every animall , as it has its proper species , so it is to have its peculiar form . but those that define otherwise , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. they speak as if one should affirm that the skil of a carpenter did enter into a flute or pipe ; for every art must use its proper instruments , and every soule its proper body . where ( as cardan also has observed ) aristotle does not find fault with the opinion of the soules going out of one body into another , ( which implies their praeexistence : ) but that the soule of a beast should goe into the body of a man , and the soule of a man into a beasts body ; this is the absurdity that aristotle justly rejects , the other opinion he seems tacitely to allow of . . he speaks something more plainly in his de generat . animal . lib. . cap. . there are generated , saith he , in the earth , and in the moisture thereof , plants and living creatures ; because in the earth is the moisture , and in the moisture spirit , and in the whole universe an animal warmth or heat ; insomuch that in a manner all places are full of soules , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , adeò ut modo quodam omnia sint animarum plena , as sennertus interprets the place : aristotle understanding by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the same that he does afterwards by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that principle we call soule , according to the nobility whereof he asserts , that animals are more or less noble ; which assertion therefore reaches humane soules as well as these of beasts . . nor can this text be eluded by being so injurious to aristotle , as to make him to assert that there is but one soule in the world , because he sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for the text admitting of sennertus his exposition as well as this other ; that which is most reasonable is to be attributed to him . now if his meaning was , that there is but one soule in the world that goes through all things , and makes the universe one great animal , as the stoicks would have it , he need not say that all places are in a manner full of this soule , but absolutely full of it , as our body is wholly actuated by the soule in it . and therefore the sense must be , that all places indeed are in a manner full of soules : not that they have opportunity to actuate the matter , and shew their presence there by vitall operation ; but are there dormient as to any visible energie , till prepared matter engage them to more sensible actions . . we will adde a third place still more clear , lib. . chap. . where he starts this very question of the praeexistency of soules , of the sensitive and rationall especially ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whether both kindes doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is praeexist , before they come into the body , or whether the rationall onely ; and he concludes thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. it remains that the rationall or intellectual soule onely enter from without , as being onely of a nature purely divine , with whose actions the actions of this gross body have no communication . concerning which point he concludes like an orthodox scholar of his excellent master plato ; to whose footsteps the closer he keeps , the less he ever wanders from the truth . for in this very place he does plainly profess , what many would not have him so apertly guilty of , that the soule of man is immortall , and can perform her proper functions without the help of this terrestriall body . and thus i think i have made good the two first parts of my answer to the proposed objection ; and have clearly proved , that the praeexistence of the soule is an opinion both in it self the most rationall that can be maintained , and has had the suffrage of the renownedst philosophers in all ages of the world ; and that therefore this sequel from our arguments for the immortality of the soule is no discovery of any fallacy in them . chap. xiii . . the third part of the second answer , that the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the soules praeexistence . . what are the chief causes of forgetfulness . . that they all conspire , and that in the highest degree , to destroy the memory of the other state . . that mischances and diseases have quite taken away the memory of things here in this life . . that it is impossble for the soule to remember her former condition without a miracle . . the fourth part of the second answer , that the entrance of a praeexistent soule into a body is as intelligible as either creation or traduction . . as for the two last difficulties , concerning the soules memory of her former state , and the manner of her coming into the body ; i hope i shall with as much ease extricate my self here also , especially in the former . for if we consider what things they are that either quite take away , or exceedingly diminish our memory in this life ; we shall find the concurse of them all , and that in a higher degree , or from stronger causes , contained in our descent into this earthly body , then we can meet with here : they none of them being so violent as to dislodge us out of it . . now the things that take away our memory here , are chiefly these ; either the want of opportunity of being reminded of a thing , as it happens with many , who rise confident they slept without dreaming such a night , and yet before they goe to bed again , recover a whole series of representations they had in their last sleep , by something that sell out in the day , without which it had been impossible for them to recall to minde their dream . or else , in the second place , desuetude of thinking of a matter ; whereby it comes to pass , that what we have earnestly meditated , laboured for , and pen'd down with our own hands when we were at schoole , were it not that we saw our names written under the exercise , we could not acknowledg for ours when we are grown men . or lastly , some considerable change in the frame and temper of our body , whether from some externall mischance , or from some violent disease , or else from old age , which is disease enough of it self : which often doe exceedingly impaire , if not quite take away , the memory , though the soule be still in the same body . . now all these principles of forgetfulness , namely the want of something to reminde us , desuetude of thinking , and an extraordinary change in the body , are more eminently to be found in the descent of the soule into these earthly prisons , then can happen to her for any time of her abode therein . for there is a greater difference , in all probability , betwixt that scene of things the soule sees out of the body and in it , then betwixt what shee sees sleeping and waking : and the perpetuall occursions of this present life continue a long desuetude of thinking on the former . besides that their descent hither in all likelihood scarce befalls them but in their state of silence and inactivity , in which myriads of soules may haply be for many ages , as the maintainers of this opinion may pretend , by reason of the innumerable expirations of the aëreal periods of life , and the more narrow lawes of preparing terrestrial matter . and lastly , her coming into this earthly body is a greater and more disadvantageous change , for the utter spoiling of the memory of things she was acquainted with before , then any mischance or disease can be for the bringing upon her a forgetfulness of what she has known in this life . . and yet that diseases and casualties have even utterly taken away all memory , is amply recorded in history . as that messala corvinus forgot his own name ; that one , by a blow with a stone , forgot all his learning ; another , by a fall from an horse , the name of his mother and kinsfolks . a young student of montpelier , by a wound , lost his memory so , that he was fain to be taught the letters of the alphabet again . the like befell a franciscan after a feaver . and thucydides writes of some , who after their recovery from that great pestilence at athens , did not onely forget the names and persons of their friends , but themselves too , not knowing who themselves were , nor by what name they were called : atque etiam quosdam cepisse oblivia rerum cunctarum , neque se possent cognoscere ut ipsi ; as the poet lucretius sadly sets down in his description of that devouring plague , out of the fore-named historian . . wherefore without a miracle it is impossible the soule should remember any particular circumstance of her former condition , though she did really praeexist , and was in a capacity of acting before she came into this body , ( as aristotle plainly acknowledges she was ) her change being far greater by coming into the body then can ever be made while she staies in it . which we haply shall be yet more assured of , after we have considered the manner of her descent , which is the last difficulty objected . . i might easily decline this controversie , by pleading onely , that the entrance of the soule into the body , supposing her praeexistence , is as intelligible as in those other two wayes , of creation and traduction . for how this newly-created soule is infused by god , no man knowes ; nor how , if it be traducted from the parents , both their soules contribute to the making up a new one . for if there be decision of part of the soule of the male , in the injection of his seed into the matrix of the female , and part of the female soule to joyn with that of the males ; besides that the decision of these parts of their soules makes the soule a discerpible essence , it is unconceivable how these two parts should make up one soule for the infant : a thing ridiculous at first view . but if there be no decision of any parts of the soule , and yet the soule of the parent be the cause of the soule of the childe , it is perfectly an act of creation ; a thing that all sober men conclude incompetible to any particular creature . it is therfore plainly unintelligible , how any soul should pass from the parents into the body of the seed of the foetus , to actuate and inform it : which might be sufficient to stop the mouth of the opposer , that pretends such great obscurities concerning the entrance of praeexistent souls into their bodies . chap. xiv . . the knowledge of the difference of vehicles , and the soules union with them , necessary for the understanding how she enters into this earthly body . . that though the name of vehicle be not in aristotle , yet the thing is there . . a clearing of aristotles notion of the vehicle , out of the philosophy of des-cartes . . a full interpretation of his text. . that aristotle makes onely two vehicles , terrestriall and aethereall ; which is more then sufficient to prove the soul's oblivion of her former state . . that the ordinary vehicle of the soule after death is aire . . the duration of the soule in her severall vehicles . . that the union of the soule with her vehicle does not consist in mechanicall congruity , but vitall . . in what vitall congruity of the matter consists . . in what vital congruity of the soule consists , and how it changing , the soule may be free from her aiery vehicle , without violent precipitation out of it . . of the manner of the descent of souls into earthly bodies . . that there is so little absurdity in the praeexistence of soules , that the concession thereof can be but a very small prejudice to our demonstrations of her immortality . . but i shall spend my time better in clearing the opinion i here defend , then in perplexing that other that is so gross of it self , that none that throughly understand the nature of the soule , can so much as allow the possibility thereof : wherefore for the better conceiving , how a praeexistent soule may enter this terrestriall body , there are two things to be enquired into ; the difference of the vehicles of soules , and the cause of their union with them . the platonists doe chiefly take notice of three kindes of vehicles , aethereal , aereal , and terrestrial , in every one whereof there may be several degrees of purity and impurity , which yet need not amount to a new species . . this notion of vehicles , though it be discoursed of most in the school of plato , yet is not altogether neglected by aristotle , as appears in his de generat . animal . lib. . cap. . where , though he does not use the name , yet he does expresly acknowledge the thing it self : for he does plainly affirm , that every soule partakes of a body distinct from this organized terrestriall body , and of a more divine nature then the elements so called ; and that as one soule is more noble then another , so is the difference of this diviner body ; which yet is nothing else with him then that warmth or heat in the seed , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is not fire , but a spirit contained in the spumeous seed ; and in this spirit a nature analogous to the element of the stars . . of which neither aristotle himself had , nor any one else can have , so explicite an apprehension as those that understand the first and second element of des-cartes ; which is the most subtill and active body that is in the world , & is of the very same nature that the heaven and stars are , that is to say , is the very body of light , ( which is to be understood chiefly of the first element ) though so mingled with other matter here below that it does not shine , but is the basis of all that naturall warmth in all generations , and the immediate instrument of the soule , when it organizeth any matter into the figure or shape of an animall ; as i have also intimated elsewhere , when i proved , that the spirits are the immediate instrument of the soule in all vital and animal functions . in which spirits of necessity is contained this coelestiall substance , which keeps them from congealing , as it does also all other liquid bodies , and must needs be in the pores of them ; there being no vacuum in the whole comprehension of nature . . the full and express meaning therefore of aristotles text must be this , that in the spumeous and watry or terrene moisture of the seed is contained a body of a more spirituous or aëreal consistency , and in this aëreal or spirituous consistency is comprehended 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a nature that is analogous or like to the element of the stars , namely that is of it self aethereal and lucid . . and it is this vehicle that aristotle seems to assert that the soule does act in , separate from the body ; as if she were ever either in this terrestrial body , or in her aethereal one : which if it were true , so vast a change must needs obliterate all memory of her former condition , when she is once plunged into this earthly prison . but it seems not so probable to me , that nature admits of so great a chasme ; nor is it necessary to suppose it , for this purpose : the descent of the soule out of her aiery vehicle into this terrestrial body , and besmearing moisture of the first rudiments of life , being sufficient to lull her into an eternall oblivion of whatever hapned to her in that other condition ; to say nothing of her long state of silence and inactivity before her turn come to revive in an earthly body . . wherefore not letting go that more orderly conceit of the platonists ; i shall make bold to assert , that the soule may live and act in an aëreal vehicle as well as in the aethereal ; and that there are very few that arrive to that high happiness , as to acquire a coelestial vehicle immediatly upon their quitting the terrestrial one : that heavenly chariot necessarily carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soule of man is capable of : which would arrive to all men indifferently , good and bad , if the parting with this earthly body would suddainly mount us into the heavenly . wherefore by a just nemesis , the soules of men that are not very heroically vertuous , will finde themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous aire , as both reason it self will suggest , and the platonists have unanimously determined . . we have competently described the difference of those three kinds of vehicles , for their purity and consistency . the platonists adde to this the difference of duration , making some of them of that nature as to entertain the soule a longer time in them , others a shorter . the shortest of all is that of the terrestrial vehicle . in the aëreal the soule may inhabit , as they define , many ages , and in the aethereal for ever . . but this makes little to the clearing of the manner of their descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which cannot be better understood , then by considering their union with the body generated , or indeed with any kinde of body whatever , where the soul is held captive , and cannot quit her self thereof by the free imperium of her own imagination and will. for what can be the cause of this cohaesion , the very essence of the soul being so easily penetrative of matter , and the dimensions of all matter being alike penetrable every where ? for there being no more body or matter in a vessel filled with lead then when it is full of water , nor when full with water then when with aire , or what other subtiler body soever that can be imagined in the universe ; it is manifest that the crassities of matter is every where alike , and alike penetrable and passable to the soul. and therefore it is unconceivable how her union should be so with any of it , as that she should not be able at any time to glide freely from one part thereof to another as she pleases . it is plain therefore , that this union of the soul with matter does not arise from any such gross mechanical way , as when two bodies stick one in another by reason of any toughness and viscosity , or straight commissure of parts ; but from a congruity of another nature , which i know not better how to term then vital : which vital congruity is chiefly in the soul it self , it being the noblest principle of life ; but is also in the matter , and is there nothing but such modification thereof as fits the plastick part of the soul , and tempts out that faculty into act . . not that there is any life in the matter with which this in the soul should sympathize and unite ; but it is termed vital because it makes the matter a congruous subject for the soul to reside in , and exercise the functions of life . for that which has no life it self , may tie to it that which has . as some men are said to be tied by the teeth , or tied by the ear , when they are detained by the pleasure they are struck with from good musick or delicious viands . but neither is that which they eat alive , nor that which makes the musick , neither the instrument , nor the air that conveys the sound . for there is nothing in all this but meer matter and corporeal motion , and yet our vital functions are affected thereby . now as we see that the perceptive part of the soul is thus vitally affected with that which has no life in it , so it is reasonable that the plastick part thereof may be so too ; that there may be an harmony betwixt matter thus and thus modified , and that power that we call plastick , that is utterly devoid of all perception . and in this alone consists that which we call vital congruity in the prepared matter , either to be organized , or already shaped into the perfect form of an animal . . and that vital congruity which is in the soul , i mean in the plastick part thereof , is analogous to that pleasure that is perceived by the sense , or rather to the capacity of receiving it , when the sense is by agreeable motions from without or in the body it self very much gratified , and that whether the minde will or no. for there are some touches that will in their perception seem pleasant , whether our judgement would have them so or not . what this is to the perceptive part of the soul , that other congruity of matter is to the plastick . and therefore that which ties the soul and this or that matter together , is an unresistible and unperceptible pleasure , if i may so call it , arising from the congruity of matter to the plastick faculty of the soul : which congruity in the matter not failing , nor that in the soul , the union is at least as necessary as the continuation of eating and drinking , so long as hunger and thirst continues , and the meat and drink proves good . but either satiety in the stomack , or some ill tast in the meat may break the congruity on either side , and then the action will cease with the pleasure thereof . and upon this very account may a soul be conceived to quit her aiery vehicle within a certain period of ages , as the platonists hold she does , without any violent precipitation of her self out of it . . what are the strings or cords that tie the soul to the body , or to what vehicle else soever , i have declared as clearly as i can . from which it will be easy to understand the manner of her descent . for assuredly , the same cords or strings that tie her there , may draw her thither : where the carcass is , there will the eagles be gathered . not that she need use her perceptive faculty in her descent , as hawks and kites by their sight or smelling fly directly to the lure or the prey : but she being within the atmosphear ( as i may so call it ) of generation , and so her plastick power being reached and toucht by such an invisible reek , ( as birds of prey are , that smell out their food at a distance ; ) she may be fatally carried , all perceptions ceasing in her , to that matter that is so fit a receptacle for her to exercise her efformative power upon . for this magick-sphere , as i may so term it , that has this power of conjuring down souls into earthly bodies , the nearer the centre , the vertue is the stronger ; and therefore the soul will never cease till she has slided into the very matter that sent out those rays or subtile reek to allure her . from whence it is easy to conceive that the souls of brutes also , though they be not able to exercise their perceptive faculty out of a terrestrial body , yet they may infallibly finde the way again into the world , as often as matter is fitly prepared for generation . and this is one hypothesis , and most intelligible to those that are pleased so much with the opinion of those large sphears they conceive of emissary atomes . there is also another , which is the power and activity of the spirit of nature or inferiour soul of the world , who is as fit an agent to transmit particular souls , as she is to move the parts of matter . but of this hereafter . . what has been said is enough for the present to illustrate the pretended obscurity and unconceivableness of this mystery . so that i have fully made good all the four parts of my answer to that objection that would have supplanted the force of my strongest arguments for the souls immortality , and have clearly proved , that though this sequel did necessarily result from them , that the souls both of men and beasts did prae-exist , yet to unprejudiced reason there is no absurdity nor inconvenience at all in the opinion . and therefore this obstacle being removed , i shall the more chearfully proceed to the demonstrating of the souls actual separation from the body . chap. xv. . what is meant by the separation of the soul , with a confutation of regius , who would stop her in the dead corps . . an answer to those that profess themselves puzled how the soul can get out of the body . . that there is a threefold vital congruity to be found in three several subjects . . that this triple congruity is also competible to one subject , viz. the soul of man . that upon this hypothesis it is very intelligible how the soul may leave the body . . that her union with the aereal vehicle may be very suddain , and as it were in a moment . . that the soul is actually separate from the body is to be proved either by history or reason . examples of the former kinde out of pliny , herodotus , ficinus . . whether the exstasie of witches prove an actual separation of the soul from the body . . that this real separation of the soul in exstasie is very possible . . how the soul may be loosned and leave the body , and yet return thither again . . that though reason and will cannot in this life release the soul from the body , yet passion may ; and yet so that she may return again . . the peculiar power of desire for this purpose . . of cardans exstasies , and the ointment of witches , and what truth there may be in their confessions . . concerning the actual and local separation of the soul from the body , it is manifest that it is to be understood of this terrestrial body . for to be in such a separate state , as to be where no body or matter is , is to be out of the world : the whole universe being so thick set with matter , or body , that there is not to be found the least vacuity therein . the question therefore is onely , whether upon death the soul can pass from the corps into some other place . henricus regius seems to arrest her there by that general law of nature , termed the law of immutability ; whereby every thing is to continue in the same condition it once is in , till something else change it . but the application of this law is very grosly injust in this case . for as i have above intimated , the union of the soul with the body is upon certain terms ; neither is every peece of matter fit for every soul to unite with , as aristotle of old has very solidly concluded . wherefore that condition of the matter being not kept , the soul is no longer engaged to the body . what he here says for the justifying of himself , is so arbitrarious , so childish and ridiculous , that , according to the merit thereof , i shall utterly neglect it , and pass it by , not vouchsafing of it any answer . . others are much puzled in their imagination , how the soul can get out of the body , being imprisoned and lockt up in so close a castle . but these seem to forget both the nature of the soul , with the tenuity of her vehicle , and also the anatomy of the body . for considering the nature of the soul her self , and of matter which is alike penetrable every where , the soul can pass through solid iron and marble as well as through the soft air and aether ; so that the thickness of the body is no impediment to her . besides , her astral vehicle is of that tenuity , that it self can as easily pass the smallest pores of the body , as the light does glass , or the lightning the scabbard of a sword without tearing or scorching of it . and lastly , whether we look upon that principal seat of the plastick power , the heart , or that of perception , the brain ; when a man dies , the soul may collect her self and the small residue of spirits ( that may haply serve her in the inchoation of her new vehicle ) either into the heart , whence is an easy passage into the lungs , and so out at the mouth ; or else into the head , out of which there are more doors open then i will stand to number . these things are very easily imaginable , though as invisible as the air , in whose element they are transacted . . but that they may still be more perfectly understood , i shall resume again the consideration of that faculty in the plastick part of the soul , which we call vital congruity . which according to the number of vehicles , we will define to be threefold , terrestrial , aereal , and aethereal or coelestial . that these vital congruities are found , some in some kinde of spirits , and others in othersome , is very plain . for that the terrestrial is in the soul of brutes and in our own is without controversie ; as also that the aereal in that kinde of beings which the ancients called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and lastly , that the heavenly and aethereal in those spirits that antiquity more properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as being inhabitants of the heavens . for that there are such aereal and aethereal beings that are analogous to terrestrial animals ; if we compare the nature of god with the phaenomena of the world , it cannot prove less then a demonstration . for this earth that is replenisht with living creatures , nay put in all the planets too that are in the world , and fancy them inhabited , they all joyned together bear not so great a proportion to the rest of the liquid matter of the universe ( that is in a nearer capacity of being the vehicle of life ) as a single cumin-seed to the globe of the earth . but how ridiculous a thing would it be , that all the earth beside being neglected , onely one peece thereof no better then the rest , nor bigger then the smallest seed , should be inhabited ? the same may be said also of the compass of the aire ; and therefore it is necessary to enlarge their territories , and confidently to pronounce there are aethereal animals , as well as terrestrial and aereal . . it is plain therefore that these three congruities are to be found in severall subjects ; but that which makes most to our purpose , is to finde them in one , and that in the soule of man. and there will be an easy intimation thereof , if we consider the vast difference of those faculties that we are sure are in her perceptive part , and how they occasionally emerge , and how upon the laying asleep of one , others will spring up . neither can there be any greater difference betwixt the highest and lowest of these vitall congruities in the plastick part , then there is betwixt the highest and lowest of those faculties that result from the perceptive . for some perceptions are the very same with those of beasts ; others little inferiour to those that belong to angels , as we ordinarily call them ; some perfectly brutish , others purely divine : why therefore may there not reside so great a latitude of capacities in the plastick part of the soule , as that she may have in her all those three vitall congruities , whereby she may be able livingly to unite as well with the coelestial and aereal body , as with this terrestrial one ? nay , our nature being so free and multifarious as it is , it would seem a reproach to providence , to deny this capacity of living in these several vehicles ; because that divine nemesis which is supposed to rule in the world , would seem defective without this contrivance . but without controversy , eternall wisdome and justice has forecast that which is the best : and , unless we will say nothing at all , we having nothing to judge by but our own faculties , we must say that the forecast is according to what we , upon our most accurate search , doe conceive to be the best . for there being no envy in the deity , as plato somewhere has noted , it is not to be thought but that he has framed our faculties so , that when we have rightly prepared our selves for the use of them , they will have a right correspondency with those things that are offered to them to contemplate in the world . and truly if we had here time to consider , i doe not doubt but it might be made to appear a very rationall thing , that there should be such an amphibion as the soule of man , that had a capacity ( as some creatures have to live either in the water or on the earth ) to change her element , and after her abode here in this terrestrial vehicle amongst men and beasts , to ascend into the company of the aereal genii , in a vehicle answerable to their nature . . supposing then this triple capacity of vital congruity in the soule of man , the manner how she may leave this body is very intelligible . for the bodies fitness of temper to retain the soule being lost in death , the lower vitall congruity in the soule looseth its object , and consequently its operation . and therefore as the letting goe one thought in the perceptive part of the soule is the bringing up another ; so the ceasing of one vitall congruity is the wakening of another , if there be an object , or subject , ready to entertain it ; as certainly there is , partly in the body , but mainly without it . for there is a vitall aire that pervades all this lower world , which is continued with the life of all things , and is the chiefest principle thereof . whence theon in his scholia upon aratus interprets that hemistich — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in a secondary meaning as spoken of the aire , which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the naturall jupiter , in whom , in an inferiour sense , we may be said to live , and move , and have our being : for without aire , neither fishes , fowls , nor beasts can subsist , it administring the most immediate matter of life unto them , by feeding & refreshing their animal spirits . wherefore upon the cessation of the lowest vitall congruity , that aereal capacity awakening into act , and finding so fit matter every where to employ her self upon , the soule will not faile to leave the body ; either upon choice , by the power of her own imagination & will ; or else ( supposing the very worst that can happen ) by a naturall kinde of attraction , or transvection , she being her self , in that stound and confusion that accompanies death , utterly unsensible of all things . for the aire without being more whole some and vitall then in the corrupt caverns of the dead body , and yet there being a continuation thereof with that without ; it is as easy to understand , how ( that principle of joyning therewith in the plastick part of the soule being once excited ) she will naturally glide out of the body into the free aire , as how the fire will ascend upwards , or a stone fall downwards : for neither are the motions of these meerly mechanicall , but vitall or magicall , that cannot be resolved into meer matter , as i shall demonstrate in my third book . . and being once recovered into this vast ocean of life , and sensible spirit of the world , so full of enlivening balsame ; it will be no wonder if the soule suddainly regain the use of her perceptive faculty , being , as it were in a moment , regenerate into a naturall power of life and motion , by so happy a concurse of rightly-prepared matter for her plastick part vitally to unite withall . for grosser generations are performed in almost as inconsiderable a space of time ; if those histories be true , of extemporary sallads , sowne and gathered not many hours before the meale they are eaten at : and of the suddain ingendring of frogs upon the fall of rain , whole swarms whereof that had no being before , have appeared with perfect shape and liveliness in the space of half an houre , after some more unctuous droppings upon the dry ground ; as i find not onely recited out of fallopius , scaliger , and others , but have been certainly my self informed of it by them that have been eye-witnesses thereof ; as vaninus also professes himself to have been by his friend johannes ginochius , who told him for a certain , that in the month of july he saw with his own eyes a drop of rain suddenly turned into a frog . by such examples as these it is evident , that the reason why life is so long a compleating in terrestrial generations , is onely the sluggishness of the matter the plastick power works upon . wherefore a soule , once united with aire , cannot miss of being able , in a manner in the twinckling of an eye , to exercise all perceptive functions again , if there was ever any intercessation of them in the astonishments of death . . how the soule may live and act separate from the body , may be easily understood out of what has been spoken . but that she does so de facto , there are but two wayes to prove it ; the one by the testimony of history , the other by reason . that of history , is either of persons perfectly dead , or of those that have been subject to ecstasies , or rather to that height thereof which is more properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , when the soule does really leave the body , and yet return again . of this latter sort is that example that pliny recites of hermotimus clazomenius , whose soule would often quit her body , and wander up and down ; and after her return tell many true stories of what she had seen during the time of her disjunction . the same , maximus tyrius and herodotus report of aristaeus proconnesius . marsilius ficinus adjoyns to this rank that narration in aulus gellius , concerning one cornelius , a priest , who in an ecstasie saw the battel fought betwixt caesar and pompey in thessalie , his body being then at padua ; and yet could , after his return to himself , punctually declare the time , order and success of the fight . that in wierus of the weasell coming out of the souldiers mouth when he was asleep , is a more plain example : which , if it were true , would make aristaeus his pigeon not so much suspected of fabulosity as pliny would have it . severall relations there are in the world to this effect , that cannot but be loudly laughed at by them that think the soule inseparable from the body ; and ordinarily they seem very ridiculous also to those that think it is separable , but as firmly believe that it is never , nor ever can be , separate but in death . . bodinus has a very great desire , notwithstanding it is so incredible to others , that the thing should be true ; it being so evincing an argument for the soules immortality . and he thinks this truth is evident from innumerable examples of the ecstasies of witches : which we must confess with him not to be natural ; but that they amount to a perfect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or carrying away the soule out of the body , the lively sense of their meeting , and dancing , and adoring the devill , and the mutuall remembrance of the persons that meet one another there at such a time , will be no infallible demonstration that they were there indeed , while their bodies lay at home in bed. conformity of their confessions concerning the same conventicle is onely a shrewd probability , if it once could be made good , that this leaving their bodies were a thing possible . for when they are out of them , they are much-what in the same condition that other spirits are , and can imitate what shape they please ; so that many of these transformations into wolves and cats , may be as likely of the soule having left thus the body , as by the devils possessing the body and transfiguring it himself . and what these aiery cats or wolves suffer , whether cuttings of their limbs , or breaking the back , or any such like mischief , that the witch in her bed suffers the like , may very well arise from that magick sympathy that is seated in the unity of the spirit of the world , and the continuity of the subtill matter dispersed throughout . the universe in some sense being , as the stoicks and platonists define it , one vast entire animal . . now that this reall separation of the soule may happen in some ecstasies , will be easily admitted , if we consider that the soule in her own nature is separable from the body , as being a substance really distinct therefrom ; and that all bodies are alike penetrable and passable to her , she being devoid of that corporeall property which they ordinarily call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and therefore can freely slide through any matter whatsoever , without any knocking or resistance ; and lastly , that she does not so properly impart heat and motion to the body , as organization : and therefore when the body is well organized , and there be that due temper of the blood , the heart and pulse will in some measure beat , and the brain will be replenish't with spirits , and therewith the whole body , though the soule were out of it . in which case ( saving that the spirit of nature cannot be excluded thence ) it would be perfectly cartesius his machina without sense ; though seemingly as much alive as any animate creature in a deep sleep . whence it appears , that if the soule could leave the body , that she might doe it for a certain time without any detriment thereto , that is , so long as she might well live without repast . which fully answers their fears , who conceit that if the soule was but once out of the body , perfect death must necessarily ensue , and all possible return thither be precluded . . but all the difficulty is to understand how the soul may be loosned from the body , while the body is in a fit condition to retain her . that is a very great difficulty indeed , and in a manner impossible for any power but what is supernatural . but it is not hard to conceive that this vital fitness in the body may be changed , either by way of natural disease , or by art. for why may not some certain fermentation in the body so alter the blood and spirits , that the powers of the plastick part of the soul may cease to operate , as well as sometimes the perceptive faculties doe , as in catalepsies , apoplexies , and the like ? wherefore this passing of the soul out of the body in sleep , or ecstasie , may be sometime a certain disease , as well as that of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , those that walk in their sleep . now if it should happen that some such distemper should arise in the body , as would very much change the vital congruity thereof for a time , and in this paroxysm that other disease of the noctambuli should surprise the party ; his imagination driving him to walk to this or that place , his soul may very easily be conceived in this loosned condition it lies in , to be able to leave the body , and pass in the aire , as other inhabitants of that element doe , and act the part of separate spirits , and exercise such functions of the perceptive faculty , as they do that are quite released from terrestrial matter . onely here is the difference , that that damp in the body that loosned the union of the soul being spent ; the soul , by that natural magick i have more then once intimated , will certainly return to the body , and unite with it again as firm as ever . but no man can when he pleases pass out of his body thus , by the imperium of his will , no more then he can walk in his sleep : for this capacity is pressed down more deep into the lower life of the soul , whither neither the liberty of will , nor free imagination can reach . . passion is more likely to take effect in this case then either of the other two powers , the seat of passions being originally in the heart , which is the chief fort of these lower faculties ; and therefore by their propinquity can more easily act upon the first principles of vital union . the effect of these has been so great , that they have quite carried the soul out of the body , as appears in sundry histories of that kinde . for both sophocles and dionysius the sicilian tyrant died suddainly upon the news of a tragick victory ; as polycrita also a noble-woman of the isle of naxus , the poet philippides , and diagoras of rhodes , upon the like excess of joy. we might adde examples of sudden fear and grief , but it is needless . it is a known and granted truth , that passion has so much power over the vital temper of the body , as to make it an unfit mansion for the soul ; from whence will necessarily follow her disunion from it . now if passion will so utterly change the harmony of the blood and spirits , as quite to release the soul from the body by a perfect death ; why may it not sometime act on this side that degree , and onely bring a present intemperies , out of which the body may recover , and consequently regain the soul back again , by virtue of that mundane sympathy i have so often spoke of ? . now of all passions whatever , excess of desire is fittest for this more harmless and momentany ablegation of the soul from the body ; because the great strength thereof is so closely assisted with the imagination of departing to the place where the party would be , that upon disunion not amounting to perfect death , the power of fancy may carry the soul to the place intended ; and being satisfied and returned , may rekindle life in the body to the same degree it had before it was infested by this excess of desire . this is that , if any thing , that has made dying men visit their friends before their departure , at many miles distance , their bodies still keeping their sick bed ; and those that have been well , give a visit to their sick friends , of whose health they have been over-desirous and solicitous . for this ecstasie is really of the soul , and not of the blood or animal spirits ; neither of which have any sense or perception in them at all . and therefore into this principle is to be resolved that story which martinus del-rio reports of a lad who , through the strength of imagination and desire of seeing his father , fell into an ecstasie ; and after he came to himself , confidently affirmed he had seen him , and told infallible circumstances of his being present with him . . that cardan and others could fall into an ecstasie when they pleased , by force of imagination and desire to fall into it , is recorded and believed by very grave and sober writers : but whether they could ever doe it to a compleat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or local disjunction of the soul from the body , i know none that dare affirm ; such events being rather the chances of nature and complexion , as in the noctambuli , then the effects of our will. but we cannot assuredly conclude but that art may bring into our own power and ordering that which natural causes put upon us sometimes without our leaves . but whether those oyntments of witches have any such effect , or whether those unclean spirits they deal with , by their immediate presence in their bodies , cannot for a time so suppress or alter their vital fitness to such a degree as will loosen the soul , i leave to more curious inquisitors to search after . it is sufficient that i have demonstrated a very intelligible possibility of this actual separation without death properly so called . from whence the peremptory confessions of witches , and the agreement of the story which they tell in several , as well those that are there bodily , as they that leave their bodies behinde them , especially when at their return they bring something home with them , as a permanent sign of their being at the place , is ( though it may be all the delusion of their familiars ) no contemptible probability of their being there indeed where they declare they have been . for these are the greatest evidences that can be had in humane affairs : and nothing , so much as the supposed impossibility thereof , has deterred men from believing the thing to be true . chap. xvi . . that souls departed communicate dreams . . examples of apparitions of souls deceased . . of apparitions in fields where pitcht battels have been fought ; as also of those in churchyards , and other vaporous places . . that the spissitude of the air may well contribute to the easiness of the appearing of ghosts and spectres . . a further proof thereof from sundry examples . . of marsilius ficinus his appearing after death . . with what sort of people such examples as these avail little . . reasons to perswade the unprejudiced that ordinarily those apparitions that bear the shape and person of the deceased , are indeed the souls of them . . the examples of the other sort , viz. of the appearing of the ghosts of men after death , are so numerous and frequent in all mens mouths , that it may seem superfluous to particularize in any . this appearing is either by dreams , or open vision , in dreams , as that which hapned to avenzoar albumaron an arabian physitian , to whom his lately-deceased friend suggested in his sleep a very soverain medicine for his sore eyes . like to this is that in diodorus concerning isis queen of aegypt , whom he reports to have communicated remedies to the aegyptians in their sleep after her death , as well as she did when she was alive . of this kinde is also that memorable story of posidonius the stoick , concerning two young men of arcadia , who being come to megara , and lying the one at a victuallers , the other in an inne ; he in the inne while he was asleep dream'd that his fellow-traveller earnestly desired him to come and help him , as being assaulted by the victualler , and in danger to be killed by him : but he , after he was perfectly awake , finding it but a dream , neglected it . but faln asleep again , his murdered friend appeared to him the second time , beseeching him , that though he did not help him alive , yet he would see his death revenged ; telling him how the victualler had cast his body into a dung-cart , and that if he would get up timely in the morning , and watch at the town-gate , he might thereby discover the murder : which he did accordingly , and so saw justice done on the murderer . nor does the first dream make the second impertinent to our purpose : for as that might be from the strength of imagination , and desire of help in the distressed arcadian , impressed on the spirit of the world , and so transmitted to his friend asleep ( a condition fittest for such communications ; ) so it is plain that this after his death must fail , if his soul did either cease to be or to act . and therefore it is manifest that she both was and did act , and suggested this dream in revenge of the murder . of which kinde there be infinite examples , i mean of murders discovered by dreams , the soul of the person murdered seeming to appear to some or other asleep , and to make his complaint to them . but i will content my self onely to adde an example of gratitude to this of revenge . as that of simonides , who lighting by chance on a dead body by the sea side , and out of the sense of humanity bestowing burial upon it , was requited with a dream that saved his life . for he was admonisht to desist from his voyage he intended by sea , which the soul of the deceased told him would be so perillous , that it would hazard the lives of the passengers . he believed the vision , and abstaining was safe : those others that went suffered shipwrack . . we will adjoyn onely an example or two of that other kind of visions , which are ordinarily called the apparitions of the dead . and such is that which pliny relates at large in his epistle to sura , of an house haunted at athens , and freed by athenodorus the philosopher , after the body of that person that appeared to him was digged up , and interred with due solemnity . it is not a thing unlikely , that most houses that are haunted , are so chiefly from the soules of the deceased ; who have either been murdered , or some way injured , or have some hid treasure to discover , or the like . and persons are haunted for the like causes , as well as houses ; as nero was after the murdering of his mother ; otho pull'd out of his bed in the night by the ghost of galba . such instances are infinite : as also those wherein the soule of ones friend , suppose father , mother , or husband , have appeared to give them good counsell , and to instruct them of the event of the greatest affairs of their life . the ghosts also of deceased lovers have been reported to adhere to their paramours , after they had left their bodies ; taking all opportunities to meet them in solitude , whether by day or by night . . there be also other more fortuitous occursions of these deceased spirits ; of which one can give no account , unless it be , because they find themselves in a more easy capacity to appear . as haply it may be in fields after great slaughters of armies , and in publick buriall-places . though some would ridiculously put off these apparitions , by making them nothing but the reek or vapour of the bodies of the dead , which they fancy will fall into the like stature and shape with the man it comes from : which yet cardan playes the fool in as well as vaninus and others ; as he does also in his account of those spectra that appear so ordinarily in iseland , where the inhabitants meet their deceased friends in so lively an image , that they salute them and embrace them for the same persons ; not knowing of their death , unless by their suddain disappearing , or by after-information that they were then dead . this he imputes partly to the thickness of the aire , and partly to the foule food and gross spirits of the islanders ; and yet implies , that their fancies are so strong , as to convert the thick vaporous aire into the compleat shape of their absent and deceased acquaintance , and so perswade themselves that they see them , and talk with them , whenas it is nothing else but an aiery image made by the power of their own fancy . but certainly it had been better flatly to have denied the narration , then to give so slight and unprobable reason of the phaenomenon . . that the spissitude of the aire in that place may contribute something to the frequency of these spectra , is rationall enough . for it being more thick , it is the more easily reduced to a visible consistency : but must be shaped , not by the fancy of the spectatour , ( for that were a monstrous power ) but by the imagination of the spirit that actuates its own vehicle of that gross aire . for the same reason also in other places these apparitions haply appear oftner in the night then in the day , the aire being more clammy and thick after the sun has been some while down then before . to which also that custome of the lappians , a people of scandia , seems something to agree ; who , as caspar peucerus relates , are very much haunted with apparitions of their deceased friends . for which trouble they have no remedy but burying them under their hearth . which ceremony can have no naturall influence upon these lemures , unless they should hereby be engaged to keep in a warmer aire , & consequently more rarified , then if they were interred elsewhere , or rather because their bodies will sooner putrify by the warmth of the hearth ; whenas otherwise the coldness of that clime would permit them to be sound a longer time , and consequently be fit for the souls of the deceased to have recourse to and replenish their vehicle with such a cambium or gluish moisture , as will make it far easier to be commanded into a visible consistence . . that this facilitates their condition of appearing , is evident from that known recourse these infestant spirits have to their dead bodies . as is notorious in the history of cuntius , which i have set down at large in my antidote , lib. . cap. . and of the silesian shoomaker and his maid in the foregoing chapter . to which you may adde what agrippa writes out of the cretian annals , how there the catechanes , that is the spirits of the deceased husbands , would be very troublesome to their wives , & endeavour to lye with them , while they could have any recourse to their dead bodies . which mischief therefore was prevented by a law , that if any woman was thus infested , the body of her husband should be burnt , and his heart struck through with a stake . which also put a speedy end to those stirs and tragedies the ghost of cuntius and those others caused at pentsch and breslan in silesia . the like disquietnesses are reported to have hapned in the year . at trawtenaw a city of bohemia , by one stephanus hubener , who was to admiration grown rich , as cuntius of pentsch , and when he died , did as much mischief to his fellow-citizens . for he would ordinarily appear in the very shape he was when he was alive , and such as he met would salute them with so close embraces , that he caused many to fall sick and several to die by the unkinde huggs he gave them . but burning his body rid the town of the perilous occursations of this malicious gobling . all which instances doe prove not onely the appearing of souls after they have left this life , but also that some thickning matter , such as may be got either from bodies alive , or lately dead , or as fresh as those that are but newly dead ( as the body of this hubener was , though it had lyen weeks in the grave , ) or lastly from thick vaporous air , may facilitate much their appearing , and so invite them to play tricks , when they can doe it at so cheap a rate ; though they have little or no end in doing them , but the pleasing of their own , either ludicrous , or boisterous and domineering , humour . . but of any private person that ever appeared upon design after his death , there is none did upon a more noble one then that eximious platonist marsilius ficinus ; who having , as baronius relates , made a solemn vow with his fellow-platonist michael mercatus ( after they had been pretty warmly disputing of the immortality of the soul , out of the principles of their master plato ) that whether of them two died first should appear to his friend , and give him certain information of that truth ; ( it being ficinus his fate to die first , and indeed not long after this mutual resolution ) he was mindful of his promise when he had left the body . for michael mercatus being very intent at his studies betimes on a morning , heard an horse riding by with all speed , and observed that he stopped at his window ; and therewith heard the voice of his friend ficinus crying out aloud , o michael , michael , vera , vera sunt illa . whereupon he suddenly opened the window , and espying marsilius on a white steed , called after him ; but he vanisht in his sight . he sent therefore presently to florence to know how marsilius did ; and understood that he died about that hour he called at his window , to assure him of his own and other mens immortalities . . the examples i have produced of the appearing of the souls of men after death , considering how clearly i have demonstrated the separability of them from the body , and their capacity of vital union with an aiery vehicle , cannot but have their due weight of argument with them that are unprejudiced . but as for those that have their minds enveloped in the dark mist of atheism , that lazy and melancholy saying which has dropt from the careless pen of that uncertain writer cardan , orbis magnus est , & aevum longum , & error ac timor multum in hominibus possunt , will prevail more with them then all the stories the same authour writes of apparitions , or whatever any one else can adde unto them . and others that doe admit of these things , praeconceptions from education , that the soul when she departs this life , is suddenly either twitched up into the coelum empyreum , or hurried down headlong towards the centre of the earth , makes the apparitions of the ghosts of men altogether incredible to them ; they always substituting in their place some angel or devil which must represent their persons , themselves being not at leisure to act any such part . . but misconceit and prejudice , though it may hinder the force of an argument with those that are in that manner entangled , yet reason cannot but take place with them that are free . to whom i dare appeal whether ( considering the aereal vehicles of souls which are common to them with other genii , so that whatever they are fancied to doe in their stead , they may perform themselves ; as also how congruous it is , that those persons that are most concerned , when it is in their power , should act in their own affairs , as in detecting the murtherer , in disposing their estate , in rebuking injurious executors , in visiting and counselling their wives and children , in forewarning them of such and such courses , with other matters of like sort ; to which you may adde the profession of the spirit thus appearing , of being the soul of such an one , as also the similitude of person ; and that all this adoe is in things very just and serious , unfit for a devil with that care and kindness to promote , and as unfit for a good genius , it being below so noble a nature to tell a lie , especially when the affair may be as effectually transacted without it ; ) i say , i dare appeal to any one , whether all these things put together and rightly weighed , the violence of prejudice not pulling down the ballance , it will not be certainly carried for the present cause ; and whether any indifferent judge ought not to conclude , if these stories that are so frequent every where and in all ages concerning the ghosts of men appearing be but true , that it is true also that it is their ghosts , and that therefore the souls of men subsist and act after they have left these earthly bodies . chap. xvii . . the preeminence of arguments drawn from reason above those from story . . the first step toward a demonstration of reason that the soul acts out of her body , for that she is an immaterial substance separable therefrom . . the second , that the immediate instruments for sense , motion , and organization of the body , are certain subtile and tenuious spirits . . a comparison betwixt the soul in the body and the aereal genii , . of the nature of daemons from the account of marcus the eremite , and how the soul is presently such , having once left this body . . an objection concerning the souls of brutes : to which is answered , first by way of concession ; . secondly , by confuting the arguments for the former concession . . that there is no rational doubt at all of the humane soul acting after death . . a further argument of her activity out of this body , from her conflicts with it while she is in it . . as also from the general hope and belief of all nations , that they shall live after death . . but we proceed now to what is less subject to the evasions and misinterpretations of either the profane or superstitious . for none but such as will profess themselves meer brutes can cast off the decrees and conclusions of philosophy and reason ; though they think that in things of this nature they may , with a great deal of applause and credit , refuse the testimony of other mens senses if not of their own : all apparitions being with them nothing but the strong surprisals of melancholy and imagination . but they cannot with that ease nor credit silence the deductions of reason , by saying it is but a fallacy , unlesse they can shew the sophisme : which they cannot doe , where it is not . . to carry on therefore our present argument in a rational way , and by degrees ; we are first to consider , that ( according as already has been clearly demonstrated ) there is a substance in us which is ordinarily called the soul , really distinct from the body , ( for otherwise how can it be a substance ? ) and therefore it is really and locally separable from the body . which is a very considerable step towards what we aim at . . in the next place we are to take notice , that the immediate instrument of the soul are those tenuious and aereal particles which they ordinarily call the spirits ; that these are they by which the soul hears , sees , feels , imagines , remembers , reasons , and by moving which , or at least directing their motion , she moves likewise the body ; and by using them , or some subtile matter like them , she either compleats , or at least contributes to the bodies organization . for that the soul should be the vital architect of her own house , that close connexion and sure possession she is to have of it , distinct and secure from the invasion of any other particular soul , seems no slight argument . and yet that while she is exercising that faculty , she may have a more then ordinary union or implication with the spirit of nature , or the soul of the world , so far forth as it is plastick , seems not unreasonable : and therefore is asserted by plotinus ; and may justly be suspected to be true , if we attend to the prodigious effects of the mothers imagination derived upon the infant , which sometimes are so very great , that , unless she raised the spirit of nature into consent , they might well seem to exceed the power of any cause . i shall abstain from producing any examples till the proper place : in the mean time i hope i may be excused from any rashness in this assignation of the cause of those many and various signatures found in nature , so plainly pointing at such a principle in the world as i have intimated before . . but to return , and cast our eye upon the subject in hand . it appears from the two precedent conclusions , that the soul considered as invested immediately with this tenuious matter we speak of , which is her inward vehicle , has very little more difference from the aereal genii , then a man in a prison from one that is free . the one can onely see , and suck air through the grates of the prison , and must be annoyed with all the stench and unwholsome fumes of that sad habitation ; whenas the other may walk and take the fresh air , where he finds it most commodious and agreeable . this difference there is betwixt the genii and an incorporated soul. the soul , as a man faln into a deep pit , ( who can have no better water , nor air , nor no longer enjoyment of the sun , and his chearful light and warmth , then the measure and quality of the pit will permit him ) so she once immured in the body cannot enjoy any better spirits ( in which all her life and comfort consists ) then the constitution of the body after such circuits of concoction can administer to her . but those genii of the aire , who possess their vehicles upon no such hard terms , if themselves be not in fault , may by the power of their minds accommodate themselves with more pure and impolluted matter , and such as will more easily conspire with the noblest and divinest functions of their spirit . in brief therefore , if we consider things aright , we cannot abstain from strongly surmising , that there is no more difference betwixt a soule and an aëreal genius , then there is betwixt a sword in the scabbard and one out of it : and that a soule is but a genius in the body , and a genius a soule out of the body ; as the antients also have defined , giving the same name , as well as nature , promiscuously to them both , by calling them both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as i have elsewhere noted . . this is very consonant to what michael psellus sets down , from the singular knowledge and experience of marcus the eremite , in these matters ; who describes the nature of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as being throughout spirit and aire ; whence they heare and see and feel in every part of their body . which he makes good by this reason , and wonders at the ignorance of men that doe not take notice of it , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that it is neither bones , nor nerves , nor any gross or visible part of the body , or of any organ thereof , whereby the soule immediately exercises the functions of sense ; but that it is the spirits that are her nearest and inmost instrument of these operations : of which when the body is deprived , there is found no sense in it , though the gross organs and parts are in their usuall consistency , as we see in syncopes and apoplexies . which plainly shewes , that the immediate vehicle of life are the spirits ; and that the soules connexion with the body is by these ; as the most learned physicians doe conclude with one consent . whence it will follow , that this vinculum being broke , the soule will be free from the body , and will as naturally be carried out of the corrupt carkass that now has no harmony with the soule , into that element that is more congenerous to her , the vital aire , as the fire will mount upwards ; as i have already noted . and so principles of life being fully kindled in this thinner vehicle , she becomes as compleat for sense and action as any other inhabitants of these aiery regions . . there is onely one perverse objection against this so easy and naturall conclusion , which is this ; that by this manner of reasoning , the soules of brutes , especially those of the perfecter sort , will also not onely subsist , ( for that difficulty is concocted pretty well already ) but also live and enjoy themselves after death . to which i dare boldly answer , that it is a thousand times more reasonable that they doe , then that the soules of men doe not . yet i will not confidently assert , that they doe , or doe not ; but will lightly examine each hypothesis . and first , by way of feigned concession , we will say , they doe ; and take notice of the reasons that may induce one to think so . amongst which two prime ones are those involved in the objection , that they doe subsist after death ; and , that the immediate instrument of their vitall functions is their spirits , as well as in man. to which we may adde , that for the present we are fellow-inhabitants of one and the same element , the earth , subject to the same fate of fire , deluges and earthquakes . that it is improbable , that the vast space of aire and aether , that must be inhabited by living creatures , should have none but of one sort , that is the angels or genii , good or bad . for it would seem as great a solitude , as if men alone were the inhabitants of the earth , or mermaids of the sea. that the periods of vitall congruity , wound up in the nature of their soules , by that eternall wisdome that is the creatress of all things , may be shorter or longer , according as the property of their essence and relation to the universe requires ; and that so their descents and returns may be accordingly swifter or slower . that it is more conformable to the divine goodness to be so then otherwise , if their natures will permit it : and that their existence would be in vain , while they were deprived of vital operation when they may conveniently have it . that they would be no more capable of salvation in the other state , then they are here of conversion . that the intellectual inhabitants of the aire having also externall and corporeall sense , variety of objects would doe as well there , as here amongst us on earth . besides that historyes seem to imply , as if there were such kind of aereal animals amongst them , as dogs , horses , and the like . and therefore to be short , that the soules of brutes cease to be alive after they are separate from this body , can have no other reason , then immorality the mother of ignorance , ( that is , nothing but narrowness of spirit , out of over-much self-love , and contempt of other creatures ) to embolden us so confidently to adhere to so groundless a conclusion . . this position makes indeed a plausible shew , insomuch that if the objection drove one to acknowledge it for truth , he might seem to have very little reason to be ashamed of it . but this controversy is not so easily decided . for though it be plain that the soules of beasts be substances really separable from their bodies ; yet if they have but one vital congruity , namely the terrestriall one , they cannot recover life in the aire . but their having one or two , or more vital congruities , wholy depends upon his wisdome & counsel that has made all things . besides , the souls of brutes seem to have a more passive nature , then to be able to manage or enjoy this escape of death , that free and commanding imagination belonging onely to us , as also reminiscency . but brutes have onely a passive imagination , and bare memory ; which failing them in all likelyhood in the shipwrack of their body , if they could live in the aire , they would begin the world perfectly on a new score , which is little better then death : so that they might in this sense be rightly deemed mortall . our being co-inhabitants of the same element , the earth , proves nothing : for by the same reason , worms and fleas should live out of their bodies , and fishes should not , who notwithstanding , their shape , it may be , a little changed ( for there is no necessity that these creatures in their aiery vehicles should be exactly like themselves in their terrestriall ones ) might act and live in the more moist tracts of the aire . as for the supposed solitude that would be in the aire , it reaches not this matter . for in the lower regions thereof , the various objects of the earth and sea will serve the turn . the winding up of those severall circuits of vitall congruity may indeed pass for an ingenious invention , as of a thing possible in the soules of brutes : but , as the schools say well , a posse ad esse non valet consequentia . as for that argument from divine goodness , it not excluding his wisdom which attempers it self to the natures of things , & we not knowing the nature of the soules of brutes so perfectly as we doe our own , we cannot so easily be assured from thence what will be in this case . a musitian strikes not all strings at once ; neither is it to be expected that every thing in nature at every time should act : but when it is its turn , then touched upon it will give its sound ; in the interim it lies silent . and so it may be with the soules of brutes for a time , especially when the vitall temper of earth and aire and sea shall fail ; yea and at other times too , if none but intellectual spirits be fit to manage aereall vehicles . i confess indeed , that salvation can no more belong to the soules of brutes then conversion ; but that is as true of the soules of plants , ( if they have any distinct from the universall spirit of nature ) but yet it does not prove that the soules of vegetables shall live and act in aiery vehicles , after an herbe or tree is dead and rotten here . to that of conveniency of variety of objects for the aiery inhabitants i have answered already . and for the apparitions of horses , doggs and the like , they may be the transformation of the aerial genii into these shapes : which though it be a sign that they would not abhor from the use and society of such aeriall animals , if they had them ; yet they may the better want them , they being able so well themselves to supply their places . we will briefly therefore conclude , that from the meer light of reason it cannot be infallibly demonstrated , that the soules of brutes doe not live after death , nor that it is any incongruity in nature to say they do . which is sufficient to enervate the present objection . . but for the life and activity of the soules of men out of this body , all things goe on hand-smooth for it , without any check or stop . for we finding the aerial genii so exceeding near-a-kin to us in their faculties , we being both intellectuall creatures , and both using the same immediate instrument of sense and perception , to wit , aeriall spirits , insomuch that we can scarce discover any other difference betwixt us then there is betwixt a man that is naked and one clad in gross thick cloathing ; it is the most easy and naturall inference that can be , to conclude , that when we are separate from the body , and are invested onely in aire , that we shall be just like them , and have the same life and activity they have . for though a brute fall short of this priviledge , it ought to be no disheartning to us , because there is a greater cognation betwixt the intellectual faculties and the aiery or aethereal vehicle , then there is betwixt such vehicles and those more low and sensuall powers common to us with beasts . and we finde , in taking the fresh aire , that the more fine and pure our spirits are , our thoughts become the more noble & divine , and the more purely intellectuall . nor is the step greater upwards then downwards : for seeing that what in us is so divine and angelicall may be united with the body of a brute , ( for such is this earthly cloathing ) why may not the soule , notwithstanding her terrestriall congruity of life , ( which upon new occasions may be easily conceived to surcease from acting ) be united with the vehicle of an angel ? so that there is no puzzle at all concerning the soul of man , but that immediately upon death she may associate her self with those aeriall inhabitants , the genii or angels . . which we may still be the better assured of , if we consider how we have such faculties in us , as the soul finds hoppled and fettered , clouded and obscured by her fatal residence in this prison of the body . in so much that , so far as it is lawful , she falls out with it for those incommodations that the most confirmed brutish health brings usually upon her . how her will tuggs against the impurity of the spirits that stir up bestial passions , ( that are notwithstanding the height and flower of other creatures enjoyments ) and how many times her whole life upon earth is nothing else but a perpetual warfare against the results of her union with this lump of earth that is so much like to other terrestrial animals . whence it is plain she finds her self in a wrong condition , and that she was created for a better and purer state ; which she could not attain to , unless she lived out of the body : which she does in some sort in divine ecstasies and dreams ; in which case she making no use of the bodies organs , but of the purer spirits in the fourth ventricle of the brain , she acts as it were by her self , and performs some preludious exercises , conformable to those in her aiery vehicle . . adde unto all this , that the immortality of the soul is the common , and therefore naturall , hope and expectation of all nations ; there being very few so barbarous as not to hold it for a truth : though , it may be , as in other things , they may be something ridiculous in the manner of expressing themselves about it ; as that they shall retire after death to such a grove or wood , or beyond such a hill , or unto such an island , such as was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the island where achilles ghost was conceived to wander , or the insulae fortunatae , the noted elysium of the ancients . and yet , it may be , if we should tell these of the coelum empyreum , and compute the height of it , and distance from the earth , and how many solid orbs must be glided through before a soul can come thither ; these simple barbarians would think as odly of the scholastick opinion as we do of theirs : and it may be some more judicious and sagacious wit will laugh at us both alike . it is sufficient , that in the main all nations in a manner are agreed that there is an immortality to be expected , as well as that there is a deity to be worshipped ; though ignorance of circumstances makes religion vary , even to monstrosity , in many parts of the world . but both religion , and the belief of the reward of it , which is a blessed state after death , being so generally acknowledged by all the inhabitants of the earth ; it is a plain argument that it is true according to the light of nature . and not onely because they believe so , but because they do so seriously either desire it , or are so horribly afraid of it , if they offend much against their consciences : which properties would not be in men so universally , if there were no objects in nature answering to these faculties , as i have elsewhere argued in the like case . chap. xviii . . that the faculties of our souls , and the nature of the immediate instrument of them , the spirits , doe so nearly symbolize with those of daemons , that it seems reasonable , if god did not on purpose hinder it , that they would not fail to act out of this earthly body . . or if they would , his power and wisdome could easily implant in their essence a double or triple vital congruity , to make all sure . . a further demonstration of the present truth from the veracity of god. . an answer to an objection against the foregoing argument . . another demonstration from his justice . . an answer to an objection . . an answer to another objection . . another argument from the justice of god. . an objection answered . . an invincible demonstration of the souls immortality from the divine goodness . . a more particular enforcement of that argument , and who they are upon whom it will work least . . that the noblest and most vertuous spirit is the most assurable of the souls immortality . . but finally , to make all sure , let us contemplate the nature of god , who is the author and maker of all things , according to whose goodness , wisdome and power all things were created , and are ever ordered ; and let us take special notice how many steps towards this immortality we now treat of , are impressed upon the very nature of the soul already ; and then seriously consider , if it be possible that the soveraign deity should stop there , and goe no further , when there are so great reasons , if we understand any thing , that he perfect our expectations . for we have already clearly demonstrated , that the soul of man is a substance actually separable from the body , and that all her operations & functions are immediately performed , not by those parts of the body that are of an earthly and gross consistency , but by what is more aeriall or aethereall , the vitall and animall spirits ; which are very congenerous to the vehicles of the angels or genii . insomuch that if the divine power did but leave nature to work of it self , it might seem very strange , considering those divine and intellectuall faculties in us , ( as conformable to the essences or soules of angels as our animal spirits are to their vehicles ) if it would not be an immediate sequel of this priviledge , that our soules , once separate from the body , should act and inform the aire they are in with like facility that other genii doe , there being so very little difference betwixt both their natures . . or if one single plastick power , in a subject so near a-kin to these aerial people , will not necessarily suffice for both states , certainly it must be a very little addition that will help out : and how easy is it for that eternall wisdome to contrive a double or triple vitall congruity , to wit , aeriall and aethereal , as well as terrestrial , in such an essence , whose faculties and properties doe so plainly symbolize with those purer inhabitants of both the aether and aire ? . but this is not all we have to say . for if there be one thing more precious in the deity then another , we shall have it all as a sure and infallible pledge of this present truth , that our souls will not fail to prove immortall . and for my own part , i know nothing more precious in the godhead then his veracity , justice and goodness ; and all these three will assure us and secure us , that we shall sustain no loss or damage by our departure out of these earthly bodies , in either life or essence . for it were a very high reproach to that attribute of god which we call his veracity , he so plainly and universally promising to all the nations of the world , where there is any religion at all , a happy state after this life ; if there should in reality be no such thing to be expected . for he does not onely connive it the errour , if it be one , by not declaring himself against it , ( as any upright person would , if another should take upon him , in his presence or hearing , to tell others that he intended to bestow such and such gifts and revenues upon them , when there was no such matter : ) but he has , as a man may say , on set purpose indued men with extraordinary parts and powers , to set this opinion on foot in the earth ; all prophets and workers of miracles that have appeared in the world , having one way or other assured to man-kind this so weighty truth . and the most noble & vertuous spirits in all ages have been the most prone to believe it . and this not onely out of a sense of their own interest ; but any one that ever had the happiness to experience these things , may observe , that that clearness & purity of temper that most consists with the love and admiration of god and vertue , and all those divine accomplishments that even those that never could attain to them give their highest approbation of , i say , that this more refined temper of minde does of it self beget a wonderful proneness , if not a necessity , of presuming of the truth of this opinion we plead for . and therefore if it be not true , god has laid a train in nature , that the most vertuous and pious men shall be the most sure to be deceived : which is a contradiction to his attribute of veracity . . nor can the strength of this argument be evaded by replying , that god may deceive men for their good , as parents doe their children ; and therefore his wisdome may contrive such a naturall errour as this , to be serviceable for states and polities , to keep the people in awe , and so render them more faithfull and governable . i must confess that there does result from this divine truth such an usefulness , by the by , for the better holding together of common-weals ; but to think that this is the main use thereof , and that there is nothing more in it then so , is as idioticall and childish , as to conclude , that because the stars , those vast lights , doe some small offices for us by night , that therefore that is all the meaning of them , and that they serve for nothing else . besides , there is no father would tell a lye to his child , if he were furnisht with truth as effectual for his purpose ; and if he told any thing really good , as well as desirable , to his childe , to induce him to obedience , if it lay in his power , he would be sure to perform his promise . but it is in the power of god to make good whatever he has propounded for reward ; nor need he make use of any falshood in this matter . wherefore if he doe , he has less veracity then an ordinary honest man ; which is blasphemous , and contradictious to the nature of the deity . . again upon point of justice , god was engaged to contrive the nature and order of things so , that the soules of men may live after death , and that they may fare according to their behaviour here upon earth . for the godhead , as the philosopher calls him , is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and does immutably and inevitably distribute justice , both reward and punishment , in the world . but how difficult a thing it is to be good and to live according to vertue , the common practise and complaint of all men doe confess with one consent ; and that it is exceeding hard to perswade any one to doe that violence to their own natures , as to endeavour after a due degree and right sense of vertue ( for craft and policy are easy enough , and other things there are that , set against the contrary vices , look like vertues , but are not : ) but to perswade to those that truly are , is , i say , exceeding hard , if not impossible , without the inculcation of this grand concernment , the state of the soule after death , and the reward that will then follow a vertuous life . of which hopes if we be frustrated by the soules mortality , we are defrauded of our reward , and god of the honour of justice . . nor can the force of this argument be enervated by either that high pretension of stoicisme , that vertue to it self is a sufficient reward ; or that the very hopes of this immortality , it being accompanied with so much joy , tranquillity and contentment , will countervail all the pain and trouble of either acquiring , or keeping close to vertue once acquired . for as for the first , it is one thing to talk high , and another thing to practise . and for my own part , i think in the main , that epicurus , who placed the chiefest good in pleasure , philosophized more solidly then the paradoxical stoicks . for questionless that is that which all men ought to drive at , if they had the true notion of it , and knew wherein to place it , or could arrive to the purest and most warrantable sense of it . but there can be no pleasure , ( without a perfect miracle ) while our spirits are disturbed and vitiated by sordid and contemptible poverty , by imprisonments , sicknesses , tortures , ill diet , and a number of such adversities , that those that are the most exactly vertuous have been in all ages most lyable to . besides the care and sollicitude of perpetually standing upon their guard , the stings of calumny and defamation , and a continuall vexation to see the baseness and vileness of mens tempers , and ugly oblique transactions of affairs in the world . which inquietudes cannot be avoided by any other remedy but what is as ill as the disease , or worse , it being altogether incompetible to a true heroicall tenour of minde ; i mean their stoical apathy ; of which the best that can be said is , that it is a kind of constant and safe piece of fullenness , stating us onely in the condition of those that are said to have neither wone nor lost : so poor a reward is persecuted and distressed vertue of it self , without the hope of future happiness . . but to say , the hope thereof without enjoyment is a sufficient compensation , is like that mockery plutarch records of dionysius towards a fidler , whom he caused to play before him , promising him a reward ; but when he demanded it of him for his pains , denied it him , or rather said it was paid already , putting him off with this jest , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. so long as you pleased me with playing , so long you rejoyced your self with hoping after the reward ; so that you are sufficiently paid already . which piece of injurious mirth may be passable in a ludicrous matter , and from a tyrant , where height of fortune makes proud and forgetful mortality contemn their inferiours : but in a thing of this nature , that concerns not onely this transient life , but the sempiternal duration of the soul , injustice there is unspeakably grievous ; and so much the more harsh and uncomely , if we consider that it is supposed to be committed , not by a frail earthly potentate , ( the height of whose honours may make him regardless of smaller affairs and meaner persons , ) but by the god of heaven , who can with the like ease attend all things as he can any one thing ; and who is perfectly and immutably just , not doing nor omitting any thing by changeable humours , as it happens in vain men , but ever acting according to the transcendent excellency and holiness of his own nature . . neither is divine justice engaged onely to reward , but also to punish ; which cannot be , unless the souls of men subsist after death . for there are questionless many thousands that have committed most enormous villanies , persecuted the good , taking away their possessions , liberties , or lives ; adding sometimes most barbarous tortures and reproachful abuses ; and in all this highly gratified their covetousness , ambition and revenge ; nay , it may be the bestial ferocity of their own spirits , that have pleased themselves exceedingly to bring the truly religious into disgrace , and have laughed at all vertuous actions as the fruits of ignorance and folly ; and yet for all this have died in peace on their beds , after their lives have been as thick set with all sensual enjoyments of honour , riches and pleasure , as their story is with frauds , rapines , murders , sacriledges , and whatever crimes the impious boldness of lawless persons will venture on . . such things as these happen proportionably through all the ranks and orders of men . nor is it sufficient to reply that their own consciences , as so many furies , do lash them and scorch them in this life : for we speak of inveterate and successful wickedness , where that principle is utterly laid asleep ; or if it at any time wake and cry , the noise of the affairs of the world , and hurry of business , and continual visits of friends and flatterers , false instructions of covetous priests or mercenary philosophers ( who for gain will impudently corrupt and pervert both the light of nature and sense of religion ) the sound and clatter of these , i say , will so possess the ear of the prosperously wicked , that the voice of conscience can be no more heard in this continual tumult , then the vagient cries of the infant jupiter amidst the rude shuffles and dancings of the cretick corybantes , and the tinckling and clashing of their brazen targets . and therefore if there be no life hereafter , the worst of men have the greatest share of happiness , their passions and affections being so continually gratified , and that to the height , in those things that are so agreeable , and , rightly circumstantiated , allowable to humane nature : such as are the sweet reflection on the success of our political management of the affairs of the world ; the general tribute of honour and respect for our policy and wit , and that ample testimony thereof , our acquisitions of power or riches ; that great satisfaction of foiling and bearing down our enemies , and obliging and making sure our more serviceable friends ; to which finally you may adde all the variety of mirth and pastime that flesh and blood can entertain it self with , from either musick , wine , or women . . thirdly and lastly , the mortality of the soul is not onely inconsistent with the veracity and justice of god , but also with his goodness , the most soveraign and sacred attribute in the deity , and which alone is enough to demonstrate , that the soul of man cannot perish in death . for suppose that god had made no promise to us , either by any extraordinary prophet , or by the suggestion of our own natural faculties , that we shall be immortal , and that there was neither merit nor demerit in this life , so that all plea from either the divine veracity or justice were quite cut off ; his goodness alone ( especially if we consider how capable the soul is of after-subsistence ) is a sufficient assurance that we shall not fail to live after death . for how can that soveraign goodness , assisted by an omnipotent knowledge , fail to contrive it so ; it being so infinitely more conformable to his transcendent bounty , to ordain thus then otherwise ? that is to say , so soon as he created the world , to make it so compleat , as at once to bring into being not onely all corporeal substance ( according as all men confess he did ) but also all substances immaterial or incorporeal , and as many of them as can partake of life , and of enjoyment of themselves and the universe , to set them upon living and working in all places and elements that their nature is able to operate in ; and therefore amongst other beings of the intellectual order , that the souls of men also , whereever they were , or ever should be , especially if it were not long of themselves , should have a power of life and motion , and that no other nemesis should follow them then what they themselves lay the trains of ; nor this to utter annihilation , but by way of chastisement or punishment : and that they being of so multifarious a nature , as to have such faculties as are nearly a-kin to brutes , as well as such as have so close an affinity with those of the aereal genii and celestial angels , that their vital congruity should be as multifarious , and themselves made capable of a living union with either celestial , aerial , or terrestrial vehicles ; and that the leaving of one should be but the taking up of another , so long as the elements continue in their natural temper , and as soon as the laws of generation will permit . . these , and a long series of other things consonant to these , represent themselves to their view that have the favour of beholding the more hidden treasures of the divine benignity . but they being more then the present occasion requires , i shall content my self with what precisely touches the matter in hand , which is , that the soul of man being capable to act after this life in an aerial vehicle , as well as here in an earthly ; and it being better that she do live and act , then that she be idle and silent in death ; and it depending meerly upon the will of god whether she shall or no ; he ordering the natures of things infallibly according to what is best , must of necessity ordain that the souls of men live and act after death . this is an unavoidable deduction of reason to those that acknowledge the being of god , and rightly relish that transcendent attribute in the divine nature . for those that have a true sense thereof , can as hardly deny this conclusion as the existence of the deity . nor can they ever be perswaded , that he who is so perfectly good in himself , and to whom they have so long adhered in faithful obedience and amorous dedevotion , has made them of such a nature , that when they hope most to enjoy him , they shall not be able to enjoy him at all , nor any thing else ; as not being in a capacity to act but in an earthly body . but to those that be of a meer animal temper , that relish no love but that of themselves and their own interest , nor care for any but those that are serviceable to them , and make for their profit , these being prone to judge of god according to the vileness of their own spirit , will easily conceit , that gods care of us and tenderness over us is onely proportionable to the fruit he reaps by us ; which is just none at all . . and therefore this argument especially , and also the two former , though they be undeniable demonstrations in themselves , yet they requiring a due resentment of morality , that is of veracity , justice and goodness , in him that is to be perswaded by them ; it will follow , that those whose mindes are most blinded and debased by vice , will feel least the force of them ; and the noblest and most generous spirit will be the most firmly assured of the immortality of the soule . book iii. chap. i. . why the authour treats of the state of the soul after death , and in what method . . arguments to prove that the soule is ever united vitally with some matter or other . . further reasons to evince the same . . that the soule is capable of an aiery and aethereal body , as well as a terrestrial . . that she ordinarily passes out of an earthly into an aereal vehicle first . . that in her aiery vehicle she is capable of sense , pleasure , and pain . . that the main power of the soule over her aereal vehicle is the direction of motion in the particles thereof . . that she may also adde or diminish motion in her aethereal . . how the purity of the vehicle confers to the quickness of sense and knowledge . . of the soules power of changing the temper of her aereal vehicle ; . as also the shape thereof . . the plainness of the last axiome . . we have , i hope , with undeniable evidence demonstrated the immortality of the soule to such as neither by their slowness of parts , nor any prejudice of immor●ality , are made incompetent judges of the truth of demonstrations of this kind : so that i have already perfected my main design . but my own curiosity , and the desire of gratifying others who love to entertain themselves with speculations of this nature , doe call me out something further ; if the very dignity of the present matter i am upon doth not justly require me , as will be best seen after the finishing thereof : which is concerning the state of the soule after death . wherein though i may not haply be able to fix my foot so firmly as in the foregoing part of this treatise , yet i will assert nothing but what shall be reasonable , though not demonstrable , and far preponderating to whatever shall be alledged to the contrary , and in such clear order and method , that if what i write be not worthy to convince , it shall not be able to deceive or entangle by perplexedness and obscurity ; and therefore i shall offer to view at once the main principles upon which i shall build the residue of my discourse . axiome xxvii . the soule separate from this terrestrial body is not released from all vital union with matter . . this is the general opinion of the platonists . plotinus indeed dissents , especially concerning the most divine souls , as if they at last were perfectly unbared of all matter , and had no union with any thing but god himself : which i look upon as a fancy proceeding from the same inequality of temper , that made him surmise that the most degenerate soules did at last sleep in the bodies of trees , and grew up meerly into plantal life . such fictions as these of fancyfull men have much depraved the ancient cabbala and sacred doctrine which the platonists themselves doe profess to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a holy tradition received from the mouth of god or angels . but however plotinus himself does not deny but till the soule arrive to such an exceeding height of purification , that she acts in either an aiery or celestial body . but that she is never released so perfectly from all matter , how pure soever and tenuious , her condition of operating here in this life is a greater presumption then can be fetcht from any thing else , that she ever is . for we finde plainly that her most subtil and most intellectual operations depend upon the fitness of temper in the spirits ; and that it is the fineness and purity of them that invites her and enables her to love and look after divine and intellectual objects : which kind of motions if she could exert immediately by her own proper power and essence , what should hinder her but that , having a will , she should bring it to effect , which yet we finde she cannot if the spirits be indisposed . nor can the soule well be hindred by the undue temper of the spirits in these acts , if they be of that nature that they belong to the bare essence of the soule quite praescinded from all union with matter . for then as to these acts it is all one where the soule is , that is , in what matter she is ( and she must be in some , because the universe is every where thick-set with matter ) whether she be raised into the purest regions of the aire , or plunged down into the foulest receptacles of earth or water ; for her intellectual actings would be alike in both . what then is there imaginable in the body that can hinder her in these operations ? wherefore it is plain that the nature of the soule is such , as that she cannot act but in dependence on matter , and that her operations are some way or other alwaies modified thereby . and therefore if the soule act at all after death , ( which we have demonstrated she does ) it is evident that she is not released from all vitall union with all kind of matter whatsoever : which is not onely the opinion of the platonists , but of aristotle also , as may be easily gathered out of what we have above cited out of him , lib. . cap. . . besides , it seems a very wilde leap in nature , that the soul of man , from being so deeply and muddily immersed into matter , as to keep company with beasts , by vitall union with gross flesh and bones , should so on a suddain be changed , that she should not adhere to any matter whatsoever , but ascend into an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 competible haply to none but god himself ; unless there be such creatures as the platonists call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pure intellects . this must seem to any indifferent man very harsh and incongruous , especially if we consider what noble beings there are on this side the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that all the philosophers that ever treated of them acknowledge to be vitally united with either aerial or aethereal vehicles . for of this condition are all the genii or angels . it is sufficient therefore that the soule never exceed the immateriality of those orders of beings ; the lower sort whereof that they are vitally united to vehicles of aire , their ignorance in nature seems manifestly to bewray . for it had been an easy thing , and more for their credit , to have informed their followers better in the mysteries of nature ; but that themselves were ignorant of these things , which they could not but know , if they were not thus bound to their aiery bodies . for then they were not engaged to move with the whole course of the aire , but keeping themselves steddy , as being disunited from all matter , they might in a moment have perceived both the diurnal and annual motion of the earth , and so have saved the credit of their followers , by communicating this theory to them ; the want of the knowledge whereof spoiles their repute with them that understand the systeme of the world better then themselves , for all they boast of their philosophy , so as if it were the dictate of the highest angels . axiome xxviii . there is a triple vitall congruity in the soule , namely aethereall , aeriall , and terrestriall . . that this is the common opinion of the platonists , i have above intimated . that this opinion is also true in it self , appears from the foregoing axiome . of the terrestrial congruity there can be no doubt ; and as little can there be but that at least one of the other two is to be granted , else the soule would be released from all vital union with matter after death . wherefore she has a vital aptitude at least to unite with aire : but aire is a common receptacle of bad and good spirits ( as the earth is of all sorts of men and beasts ) nay indeed rather of those that are in some sort or other bad , then of good , as it is upon earth . but the soule of man is capable of very high refinements , even to a condition purely angelicall . whence reason will judge it fit , and all antiquity has voted it , that the souls of men arrived to such a due pitch of purification must at last obtain celestial vehicles . axiome xxix . according to the usual custome of nature , the soul awakes orderly into these vital congruities , not passing from one extreme to another without any stay in the middle . . this truth , besides that at first sight it cannot but seem very reasonable , according to that known aphorism , natura non facit saltum ; so if it be further examined , the solidity thereof will more fully appear . for considering how small degrees of purification the souls of almost all men get in this life , even theirs who pass vulgarly for honest and good men , it will plainly follow that very few arrive to their aethereal vehicle immediately upon quitting their terrestrial body ; that being a priviledge that has appertained to none but very noble and heroical spirits indeed , of which history records but very few . but that there may be degrees of purity and excellency in the aerial bodies , is a thing that is not to be denied , so that a just nemesis will finde out every one after death . axiome xxx . the soul in her aerial vehicle is capable of sense properly so called , and consequently of pleasure and pain . . this plainly appears from the . and . axiomes . for there is a necessity of the resulting of sense from vital union of the soul with any body whatsoever : and we may remember that the immediate instrument of sense , even in this earthly body , are the spirits : so that there can be no doubt of this truth . and pleasure and pain being the proper modifications of sense , and there being no body but what is passible , it is evident that these vehicles of air are subject to pain as well as pleasure , in this region where ill things are to be met with as well as good . axiome xxxi . the soul can neither impart to nor take away from the matter of her vehicle of air any considerable degree of motion , but yet can direct the particles moved which way she pleases by the imperium of her will. . the reasonableness of this axiome may be evinced , partly out of the former ; for considering the brushiness and angulosity of the parts of the air , a more then ordinary motion or compressive rest may very well prove painful to the soul , and dis-harmonious to her touch ; and partly from what we may observe in our own spirits in this body , which we can onely direct , not give motion to , nor diminish their motion by our imagination or will , ( for no man can imagine himself into heat or cold , the sure consequences of extraordinary motion and rest , by willing his spirits to move faster or slower ; but he may direct them into the organs of spontaneous motion , and so by moving the grosser parts of the body , by this direction he may spend them , and heat these parts in the expence of them ; and this is all we can doe ) and partly from that divine providence that made all things , and measures out the powers and faculties of his creatures according to his own wisdome and counsel , and therefore has bound that state of the soul to straighter conditions , that is competible to the bad as well as to the good . axiome xxxii . though the soul can neither confer nor take away any considerable degree of motion from the matter of her aiery vehicle , yet nothing hinders but that she may doe both in her aethereal . . the reason hereof is , because the particles of her aethereal vehicle consist partly of smooth sphaericall figures , and partly of tenuious matter , so exceeding liquid that it will without any violence comply to any thing : whenas the aire , as may be observed in winde-guns , has parts so stubborn and so stiff , that after they have been compressed to such a certain degree that the barrel of the piece grows hot again , they have not lost their shapes nor virtue ; but like a spring of steel , liberty being given , they return to their natural posture with that violence , that they discharge a bullet with equal force that gun-powder does . besides that the goodness of that deity on whom all beings depend , may be justly thought to have priviledged the aethereal congruity of life ( which awakes onely in perfectly-obedient souls , such as may be trusted as throughly faithful to his empire ) with a larger power then the other , there being no incompetibleness in the subject . for it is as easy a thing to conceive that god may endow a soul with a power of moving or resting matter , as of determining the motions thereof . axiome xxxiii . the purer the vehicle is , the more quick and perfect are the perceptive faculties of the soul. . the truth of this we may in a manner experience in this life , where we finde that the quickness of hearing , seeing , tasting , smelling , the nimbleness of reminiscency , reason , and all other perceptive faculties , are advanced or abated by the clearness , or foulness and dulness of the spirits of our body ; and that oblivion and sottishness arise from their thickness and earthiness , or waterishness , or whatsoever other gross consistency of them : which distemper removed , and the body being replenished with good spirits in sufficient plenty and purity , the minde recovers her activity again , remembers what she had forgot , and understands what she was before uncapable of , sees and hears at a greater distance ; and so of the rest . axiome xxxiv . the soul has a marvellous power of not onely changing the temper of her aiery vehicle , but also of the external shape thereof . . the truth of the first part of this axiome appears from daily experience ; for we may frequently observe how strangely the passions of the mind will work upon our spirits in this state , how wrath , and grief , and envy will alter the body , to say nothing of other affections . and assuredly the finer the body is , the more mutable it is upon this account : so that the passions of the minde must needs have a very great influence upon the souls aereal vehicle ; which though they cannot change into any thing but air , yet they may change this air into qualifications as vastly different as vertue is from vice , sickness from health , pain from pleasure , light from darkness , and the stink of a gaol from the aromatick odours of a flourishing paradise . . the truth of the latter part is demonstrable from the latter part of the . axiome . for supposing a power in the soul of directing the motions of the particles of her fluid vehicle , it must needs follow that she will also have a power of shaping it in some measure according to her own will and fancy . to which you may adde , as no contemptible pledge of this truth , what is done in that kinde by our will and fancy in this life : as , onely because i will and fancy the moving of my mouth , foot , or fingers , i can move them , provided i have but spirits to direct into this motion ; and the whole vehicle of the soul is in a manner nothing else but spirits . the signatures also of the foetus in the womb by the desire and imagination of the mother , is very serviceable for the evincing of this truth : but i shall speak of it more fully in its place . axiome xxxv . it is rational to think , that as some faculties are laid asleep in death or after death , so others may awake that are more sutable for that state . . the truth of this axiome appears from hence , that our souls come not by chance , but are made by an all-wise god , who foreseeing all their states , has fitted the excitation or consopition of powers and faculties , sutably to the present condition they are to be in . axiome xxxvi . whether the vital congruity of the soul expire , as whose period being quite unwound , or that of the matter be defaced by any essential dis-harmony , vital union immediately ceases . . this last axiome is plain enough of it self at first sight , and the usefulness thereof may be glanced at in his due place . these are the main truths i shall recurre to , or at least suppose , in my following disquisitions : others will be more seasonably delivered in the continuation of our discourse . chap. ii. . of the dimensions of the soul considered barely in her self . . of the figure of the souls dimensions . . of the heterogeneity of her essence . . that there is an heterogeneity in her plastick part distinct from the perceptive . . of the acting of this plastick part in her framing of the vehicle . . the excellency of des-cartes his philosophy . . that the vehicles of ghosts have as much of solid corporeal substance in them as the bodies of men. . the folly of the contrary opinion evinced . . the advantage of the soul , for matter of body , in the other state , above this . . that we may now have a more clear and determinate apprehension of the nature and condition of the soul out of the body , let us first consider her a while , what she is in her own essence , without any reference to any body at all , and we shall finde her a substance extended and indiscerpible , as may be easily gathered out of what we have written , lib. . cap. , , . as also lib. . cap. , . and it is a seasonable contemplation here ( where we consider the soul as having left this terrestrial body ) that she hath as ample , if not more ample , dimensions of her own , then are visible in the body she has left . which i think worth taking notice of , that it may stop the mouths of them that , not without reason , laugh at those unconceivable and ridiculous fancies of the schools ; that first rashly take a way all extension from spirits , whether soules or augels , and then dispute how many of them booted and spur'd may dance on a needles point at once . fooleries much derogatory to the truth , and that pinch our perception into such an intolerable streightness and evanidness , that we cannot imagine any thing of our own being ; and if we doe , are prone to fall into despair , or contempt of our selves , by fancying our selves such unconsiderable motes of the sun. . but as it is very manifest that the soule has dimensions , and yet not infinite , and therefore that she is necessarily bounded in some figure or other ; so it is very uncertain whether there be any peculiar figure naturall to her , answerable to animal shape , or whether she be of her self of either a round or oval figure , but does change her shape according as occasion requires . it is not material to define any thing in this question more then thus , that when the soule acts in terrestrial matter , her plastick part is determined to the organization of the body into humane forme ; and in the aereal or aethereal , that she is neither more nor less determined to any shape then the genii or angels , and that if their vehicles are more naturally guided into one shape then another , that hers is in the same condition ; so that in her visible vehicle she will bear the ordinary form of angels , such a countenance , and so cloathed , as they . . that which is more material , i think is more easy to be defined , and that is , whether the soule be one homogeneal substance , or whether it be in some manner heterogeneal . that the latter is in some measure true , is manifest from what we have written lib. . cap. . viz. that the perceptive faculty reaches not throughout the whole soule , but is confined to a certain part , which we called the centre or eye of the soule , as also her perceptive part ; but all the rest plastick . but here arises a further scruple , whether there be not an heterogeneity in the very plastick part also of the soule . the aristotelians seem to be confident there is not , and doe affirm that if there were an eye in the toe , the toe would see as well as the head. of which i very much doubt : for hence it would follow that some creatures would have a glimmering of light all over , they being in a manner all over transparent ; and some thin and clear complexions might haply have the perception of light betwixt the lower parts of their fingers , which are in some good measure pellucid ; and therefore life and spirits being continued from thence to the conarion , as they are , or to the fourth ventricle of the brain , it would follow that the soule would have a perception of some glimmerings of light from thence , which were to see there as well as to feel . . wherefore it seems more rationall to admit an heterogeneity in the plastick part of the soule also , and to acknowledge that every removall from the seat of common sense , that is to say , every circle that surrounds the centre of the soule , has not the same bounds of power , neither for number nor extent . but that as concerning the former , there is a gradual falling off from the first excellency , which is the perceptive part of the soule ; the closest circle to which is that part of the plastick that is able to convey objects of sight as well as of touch and hearing , and what other senses else there may be in the soule . the next circle is hearing without seeing , though not without touch : for touch spreads through all , but in its exteriour region , which is excessively the greatest , it transmits the circumstantiated perceptions of no objects but those that are tactile ; but to others it is onely as a dead medium , as the circle of hearing is but as a dead medium to the objects of sight . so that if we would please our imagination with ficinus , in fancying the soule as a star , we shall doe it more perfectly , if we look upon her in her circles , as having an halo about her : for the soule to our reason is no more homogeneal , then that spectacle is to our sight . . but if we look upon the soule as ever propending to some personall shape , the direction of the plastick rayes must then tend to a kind of organization , so far as is conducent to the state the soule is in , whether in an aiery or aethereal vehicle . for that the plastick power omits or changes as she is drawn forth by the nature of the matter she acts upon , is discoverable in her organization of our bodies here . for in all likelihood the soule in her self is as much of one sex as another ; which makes her sometimes signe the matter with both , but that very seldome : and therefore it is manifest that she omits one part of her plastick power , and makes use of the other , in almost all efformations of the foetus . whence it is easy to conclude , that supposing her plastick power naturally work the aethereal or aereal vehicle into any animal shape , it may put forth onely such stroaks of the efformative vertue as are convenient and becoming the angelical nature . but according to this hypothesis haply all objects of sense will not arrive to the centre of the soule from every part of the horizon ; no not though this organization were not naturall but meerly arbitrarious . but be the soule conceived either bound up thus into animal forme , or spread loose into any careless round shape , according as her rayes shall display themselves in her vehicle of aire or aether , yet the seat of sight will be duely restrained , which is a consideration of no contemptible consequence . . this in generall may suffice concerning the very nature of the soule it self , her extension and heterogeneity . i shall onely adde to this one observable concerning her aiery and aethereal vehicle , and then i shall descend to more particular disquisitions . rash fancies and false deductions from misunderstood experiments have made some very confident that there is a vacuum in nature , and that every body by how much more light it is , so much less substance it has in it self . a thing very fond and irrational , at the first sight , to such as are but indifferently well versed in the incomparable philosophy of renatus des-cartes , whose dexterous wit and through insight into the nature and lawes of matter , has so perfected the reasons of those phaenomena , that demooritus , epicurus , lucretius and others have puzzled themselves about , that there seems nothing now wanting as concerning that way of philosophizing , but patience and an unprejudiced judgment to peruse what he has writ . . according therefore to his philosophy and the truth , there is ever as much matter or body in one consistency as another ; as for example , there is as much matter in a cup of aire as in the same cup filled with water , and as much in this cup of water as if it were filled with lead or quicksilver . which i take notice of here , that i may free the imagination of men from that ordinary and idiotick misapprehension which they entertain of spirits that appear , as if they were as evanid and devoid of substance as the very shadowes of our bodies cast against a wall , or our images reflected from a river or looking-glass : and therefore from this errour have given them names accordingly , calling the ghosts of men that present themselves to them , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and umbrae , images and shades . the which , the more visible they are , they think them the more substantial ; fancying that the aire is so condensed , that there is not onely more of it , but also that simply there is more matter or substance , when it appears thus visible , then there was in the same space before . and therefore they must needs conceit that death reduces us to a pittifull thin pittance of being , that our substance is in a manner lost , and nothing but a tenuious reek remains , no more in proportion to us , then what a sweating horse leaves behind him as he gallops by in a frosty morning . which certainly must be a very lamentable consideration to such as love this thick and plump body they beare about with them , and are pleased to consider how many pounds they outweighed their neighbour the last time they were put in the ballance together . . but if a kinde of dubious transparency will demonstrate the deficiency of corporeal substance , a pillar of crystal will have less thereof then one of tobacco-smoak ; which though it may be so doubtful and evanid an object to the eye , if we try it by the hand , it will prove exceeding solid : as also these ghosts that are said to appear in this manner have proved to them that have touched them , or have been touched by them . for it is a thing ridiculous and unworthy of a philosopher , to judge the measure of corporeal matter by what it seems to our sight ; for so air would be nothing at all : or what it is to our handing or weighing of it ; for so indeed a cup of quick-silver would seem to have infinitely more matter in it then one fill'd with air onely , and a vessel of water less when it is plung'd under the water in the river , then when it is carried in the air. but we are to remember , that let matter be of what consistency it will , as thin and pure as the flame of a candle , there is not less of corporeal substance therein then there is in the same dimensions of silver , lead , or gold. . so that we need not bemoan the shrivell'd condition of the deceased , as if they were stript almost of all substance corporeal , and were too thinly clad to enjoy themselves as to any object of sense . for they have no less body then we our selves have , onely this body is far more active then ours , being more spiritualized , that is to say , having greater degrees of motion communicated unto it ; which the whole matter of the world receives from some spiritual being or other , and therefore in this regard may be said the more to symbolize with that immaterial being , the more motion is communicated to it : as it does also in that which is the effect of motion , to wit the tenuity and subtilty of its particles , whereby it is enabled to imitate , in some sort , the proper priviledge of spirits that pass through all bodies whatsoever . and these vehicles of the soul , by reason of the tenuity of their parts , may well pass through such matter as seems to us impervious , though it be not really so to them . for matter reduced to such fluid subtilty of particles as are invisible , may well have entrance through pores unperceptible . whence it is manifest that the soul , speaking in a natural sense , loseth nothing by death , but is a very considerable gainer thereby . for she does not onely possess as much body as before , with as full and solid dimensions , but has that accession cast in , of having this body more invigorated with life and motion then it was formerly . which consideration i could not but take notice of , that i might thereby expunge that false conceit that adheres to most mens fancies , of that evanid and starved condition of the other state . chap. iii. . that the natural abode of the soul after death is the air. . that she cannot quit the aerial regions till the aethereal congruity of life be awakened in her . . that all souls are not in the same region of the aire . . cardans conceit of placing all daemons in the upper region . . the use of this conceit for the shewing the reason of their seldome appearing . . that this phaenomenon is salved by a more rational hypothesis . . a further confutation of cardans opinion . . more tending to the same scope . . the original of cardans errour concerning the remote operations of daemons . . an objection how daemons and souls separate can be in this lower region , where winds and tempests are so frequent . . a preparation to an answer from the consideration of the nature of the winds . . particular answers to the objection . . a further answer from the nature of the statick faculty of the soul. . another from the suddain power of actuating her vehicle . . what incommodations she suffers from haile , rain , &c. . those more particular enquiries we intend to fall upon , may be reduced to these few heads : viz. the place of the souls abode , her employment , and her moral condition after death . that the place of her abode is the aire , is the constant opinion of the ancient philosophers and natural theologers , who doe unanimously make that element the receptacle of souls departed : which therefore they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because men deceased are in a state of invisibility , as the place they are confined to is an element utterly invisible of its own nature , and is accloy'd also with caliginous mists , and enveloped by vicissitudes with the dark shadow of the earth . the truth of this opinion of theirs is plainly demonstrable from the . and . axiomes . for nature making no enormous jumps , it must needs follow , that separate souls must take their first station in the aire , because that vital congruity that fits an aerial vehicle does of order awaken immediately upon the quitting of the earthly body . . wherefore the soul being thus vitally united with a body or vehicle of aire , it is impossible that she should drive out of those regions : because her motions are onely according to the capacity of her vehicle , she being not able to alter the consistency thereof into any more subtile or purer temper then the aire will admit of , keeping still its own species . onely she may conspissate the aire by directing the motion thereof towards her , and so squeezing out a considerable part of the first and second element may retain more aire then ordinary : but she cannot command the air from her so entirely , as to actuate these two elements alone , or any considerable part of them , because the aethereal congruity of life is as yet wholy asleep ; nor is it in the power of the soul to awake it as she pleases : and therefore it would be pain and death to her to attempt the removal of the aerial matter quite from her . besides that it would require such a force as would imply a contribution of motion to it , as well as direction of it , to make it able to bear against other parts of the aire that love not to be streightned nor crouded : which though it may haply be done in some measure , yet that she may by this force of direction recover a whole vehicle of aether , seems excessively improbable , as is plain from the . axiome . . wherefore it is necessary that the soul departed this life should be somewhere in the aire , though it be not at all necessary that they should inhabit all of them the same region thereof . for as some souls are more purified then others when they leave the body , so a more pure degree of vital congruity will awake in them : whence by that divine nemesis that runs through all things , they will be naturally conveyed to such places , and be associated to such company as is most congruous to their nature ; and will be as distinctly sorted by that eternal justice that god has so deeply ingrafted in the very essential contexture of the universe , as humane laws dispose of persons with us , sending some to prisons , some to pest-houses , and others to the prytaneum . . it will therefore , in all likelihood , fall to some of their shares to be fatally fettered to this lower region of the aire , as i doubt not but many other spirits are ; though cardan much pleases himself with a peculiar conceit of his own , as if the supreme region of the aire was the onely habitation of all daemons or spirits whatever , and that their descent to us is as rare as the diving of men into the bottome of the sea , and almost as difficult , this thick aire we breathe in being in a manner as unsutable to their tenuious consistencies as the water is to us ; in which we are fain to hold out breath , and consequently to make a very short stay in that element . besides that he fancies the passage of the middle region tedious to them , by reason of its coldness ; which therefore he saith is as it were a fence betwixt us and them , as the sea is betwixt the fishes and us ; whom though we exceed much in wit and industry , and have a great desire to catch them and kill them , yet we get very few into our hands in comparison of those that scape us : and so these daemos , though they bear us no good will , by bodily conflict they can hurt none of us ( as being so difficult a thing to come at us ) and very few of us by their art and industry . for this fancyfull philosopher will have them onely attempt us as we do the fishes , by baits , and nets , and eel-spears , or such like engines which we cast into the bottom of the water : so these aerial genii , keeping their station above in the third region of the aire ( as we doe on the bank of the river , or in a boat on the sea , when we fish ) by sending down dreams and apparitions , may entangle some men so , that by affrightments and disturbances of minde at last , though at this distance , they may work their ruine and destruction . . this hypothesis , i suppose , he has framed to give an account why the appearing of the genii is so seldome , and why so little hurt is done by them as there is . for an answer would be ready , that this lower a●●e is no element for them to abide in : and that it is as foolishly argued by those that say there are no spirits , because they are so seldome seen , as if the fishes , upon a concession of speech and reason to their mute tribe , should generally conclude , that there are no such creatures as men or horses , because it happens so very seldome that they can see them ; and should contemn and laugh ac those fishes that , having had the hap to meet with them , should say they have seen such creatures , as if they were fanatick and lunatick , and not well in their wits , or else too much in them , and that they contrived such fictions for some political design . . which parable may hold good , though not upon the same grounds , onely by substituting difference of condition for distance of place ; and the similitude will prove as sound as before . for , for a spirit to condensate his vehicle to almost a terrestrial grossness and visibility , is as rare and uncouth as for terrestrial animals to dive to the bottom of the sea , and its likely every jot as difficult : and so the reason as obvious why so few are seen , & the confident denial of their existence as rash and foolish , by then that have not seen them themselves . for it is as if the fishes should contest amongst themselves about the existence of men , and their diving into the water , and whether there were any places haunted in the sea ; as those would be the most famous where they fish for pearls , or that cause the most frequent shipwracks , or are most pleasant to swim in . and some notable occasion , mischance , or weighty design , such as occurre more rarely , must be reasonably conceived the onely invitements to the genii to expose themselves to our view . . that there is so little hurt done by them , need not be resolved into the distance of their habitation , but into the law of the universe , whose force penetrates through all orders of beings . besides , it is too trivial and idiotick a conceit , & far below the pitch of a philosopher , to think that all aerial spirits are haters of mankinde , so as to take delight meerly in destroying them . for men do not hate fishes because they live in another element different from theirs , but catch them meerly in love to themselves , for gain and food ; which the aiery genii cannot aim at in destroying of us . but to doe mischef meerly for mischiefs sake , is so excessive an enormity , that some doubt whether it be competible to any intellectual being . and therefore cardan ought to have proved that first : as also , if there be any so extremely degenerate , that there be many of them , or rather so many that they cannot be awed by the number of those that are less depraved . for we may observe that men amongst our selves that are sufficiently wicked , yet they abhor very much from those things that are grossly & causlesly destructive to either man or beast ; & themselves would help to destroy , punish , or at least hinder the attempters of such wild & exorbitant outrages that have no pretence of reason , but are a meer exercise of cruelty and vexation to other creatures . he also ought to have demonstrated , that all mankind are not the peculium of some spirits or other , and that there are not invisible governours of nations , cities , families , and sometime of particular men ; and that at least a political goodness , such as serves for the safety of persons and what belongs to them , is not exceedingly more prevalent even in these kingdomes of the aire , then gross injustice . for all this may be on this side of the divine life : so that there is no feare of making these aerial inhabitants over-perfect by this supposition . in a word , he should have proved that political order , in the full exercise thereof , did not reach from heaven to earth , and pierce into the subterraneous regions also , if there be any intellectual creatures there . for this will suffice to give a reason that so little hurt is done , though all places be full of aerial spirits . . adde unto all this , that though they may not be permitted to doe any gross evill themselves , and to kill men at pleasure without their consents , yet they may abet them in such wayes , or invite them to such courses , as will prove destructive to them : but , it may be , with no greater plot then we have when we set doggs together by the eares , fight cocks , bait beares and bulls , run horses , and the like ; where often , by our occasion , as being excited and animated by us , they pursue their own inclinations , to the loss of their lives . but though we doe not care to kill a dog or a cock in this way ; yet there is none so barbarous as to knock these creatures on the head meerly because they will doe so . so these worser kind of genii , according as their tempers are , may haply follow some men prone to such or such vices , in which they may drive them in way of contest , or to please their own fancies , to the utmost they can doe in it ; and , taking their parts , sport themselves in making one man overcome another in duelling , in drinking , in craft and undermining , in wenching , in getting riches , in clambering to honours ; and so of the rest . where it may be their pastime to try the victory of that person they have taken to ; and if he perish by the hurry of their temptations and animations , it is a thing they intended no more , it may be , then he that sets his cock into the pit desires his neck should be broke : but if it happen so , the sorrow is much alike in both cases . and therefore these spirits may doe mischief enough in the world , in abetting men that act it , though haply they neither take pleasure in doing of it upon any other termes , nor if they did , are able to doe it , there being so many watchfull eyes over them . for these aerial legions are as capable of political honesty , and may as deeply resent it , as the nations of the earth doe , and it may be more deeply . . but if these creatures were removed so far off as cardan would have them , i doe not see how they could have any communion at all with us , to doe us either good or hurt . for that they are able to send apparitions or dreames at this distance , is it self but a dream , occasioned from that first errour in the aristotelian philosophy , that makes god and the intelligences act from the heavenly sphears , and so to produce all these effects of nature below ; such as can never be done but by a present numen and spirit of life that pervades all things . . this conceit therefore of his shall be no hindrance to our concluding , that this lower region of the aire is also replenisht with daemons . which if it be , it is not unlikely but that the impurer souls wander there also ; though i have taken all this pains to bring still greater trouble upon my self . for it is obvious to object that which lucretius has started of old , that this region being so obnoxious to windes and tempests , the souls will not be able to keep their vehicles of aire about them , but that they will be blown in pieces by the roughness of these storms . but we may be easily delivered of this solicitude , if we consider the nature of the windes , the nature of these vehicles , & the statick power of the soule . for to say theywil make as good shift as the genii here , is not fully satisfactory , because a man would also willingly understand how the genii themselves are not liable to this inconvenience . my answer therefore shall reach both . . that windes are nothing else but watery particles at their greatest agitation , cartesius has very handsomely demonstrated in his meteors : which particles doe not so much drive the aire before them , as pass through it , as a flight of arrowes and showers of haile or rain . one part of the aire therefore is not driven from another ; but it is as if one should conceive so many little pieces of haire twirling on their middle point as at quarter-staffe , and so passing through the aire ; which motion would pass free , without carrying the aire along with it . this therefore being the nature of winde , the aire is not torn apieces thereby , though we finde the impetus of it moveing against us , because it cannot penetrate our bodies with that facility that it does the aire . . but the vehicles of the genii and souls deceased are much-what of the very nature of the aire ; whence it is plainly impossible that the winde should have any other force on them , then what it has on the rest of that element ; and therefore the least thing imaginable will hold all the parts together . which is true also if the winde did carry along the aire with it : for then the vehicles of the genii would move along with the stream , suffering little or no violence at all , unless they would force themselves against it . which they are not necessitated to doe , as indeed not so much as to come into it , or not at least to continue in it , but may take shelter , as other living creatures doe , in houses , behind walls , in woods , dales , caverns , rocks and other obvious places ; and that maturely enough , the change of aire and prognostick of storms being more perceptible to them then to any terrestrial animal . . and yet they need not be so cautious to keep out of danger , they having a power to grapple with the greatest of it , which is their statick faculty ; which arises from the power of directing the motion of the particles of their vehicle . for they having this power of directing the motion of these particles which way they please , by axiome . it necessarily followes , that they can determinate their course inwards , or toward the centre ; by which direction they will be all kept close together , firm and tight : which ability i call the statick power of the soule . which if it can direct the whole agitation of the particles of the vehicle , as well those of the first and second element as those of the aire , and that partly towards the centre , and partly in a countertendency against the storme , this force and firmness will be far above the strongest windes that she can possibly meet with . . wherefore the soules vehicle is in no danger from the boisterousness of the winds , and if it were , yet there is no fear of cessation of life . for as the wind blowes off one part of aire , it brings on another which may be immediately actuated by the presence of the soule ; though there be no need to take refuge in so large an hypothesis . and it is more probable that she is more peculiarly united to one part of the aire then another , and that she dismisses her vehicle but by degrees , as our spirits leasurely pass away by insensible perspiration . . we see how little the souls vehicle can be incommodated by storms of winde . and yet rain , haile , snow and thunder will incommodate her still less . for they pass as they doe through other parts of the aire , which close again immediately , and leave neither wound nor scarre behinde them . wherefore all these meteors in their mediocrity may be a pleasure to her and refreshment ; and in their excess no long pain , nor in their highest rage any destruction of life at all . from whence we may safely conclude , that not onely the upper region , but this lower also , may be inhabited both by the deceased souls of men and by daemons . chap. iv. . that the soule once having quitted this earthly body becomes a daemon . . of the externall senses of the soule separate , their number and limits in the vehicle . . of sight in a vehicle organized and unorganized . . how daemons and separate souls hear and see at a vast distance : and whence it is that though they may so easily hear or see us , we may neither see nor hear them . . that they have hearing as well as sight . . of the touch , smell , tast , and nourishment of daemons . . the external employment that the genii and souls deceased may have out of the body . . that the actions of separate souls , in reference to us , are most-what conformable to their life here on earth . . what their entertainments are in reference to themselves . . the distinction of orders of daemons from the places they most frequent . . the next thing we are to enquire into is the employment of the soul after death ; how she can entertain her self , and pass away the time , and that either in solitude , in company , or as she is a political member of some kingdome or empire . concerning all which in the general we may conclude , that it is with her as with the rest of the aerial genii , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for the soul having once put off this terrestrial body becomes a genius her self ; as maximus tyrius , xenocrates , philo and others expresly affirm . but we shall consider these things more particularly . . as for those employments wherewith she may entertain her self in solitude , they are either objects of the external senses , or of the inward minde . concerning the former whereof it is more easie to move questions then satisfy them ; as whether she have the same number of senses she had in this life . that she is endued with hearing , sight and touch , i think there can be no scruple , because these will fall to her share necessarily , whether her vehicle be organized or not ; and that of seeing and touch is the most uncontrovertible of all . for the sense of visible objects being discovered to us by transmission of motion through those spherical particles that are continued along from the object through the aire to our very organ of sight ( which sees meerly by reason of these particles vitally united with the soul ) the same particles pervading all the souls vehicle , it is impossible but that she should see . but the question is , whether she sees in every part thereof . to which i must answer , no : partly from what i have already declared concerning the heterogeneity of her plastick part ; and partly from a gross inconvenience that would follow this supposition . for if we should grant that the soul saw in every part of her vehicle , every object that is near would not onely seem double , but centuple , or millecuple ; which would be a very ugly enormity and defacement of sight . wherefore we have , with very good reason , restrained the visive faculty of the soul in this state of separation , as well as it was in the terrestrial body . . but this hinders nothing but that the soul , when she lies in one homogeneal orb of aire , devoid of organization , may see round about her , behinde , before , above , beneath , and every way . but if she organize her vehicle , sight may haply be restrain'd , as in us who cannot see behinde us . which consideration we toucht upon before . . it is plain therefore that these aerial spirits , though we cannot see them , cannot miss of seeing us ; and that , it may be , from a mighty distance , if they can transform their vehicle , or the organ of sight , into some such advantageous figure as is wrought in dioptrick glasses . which power will infinitely exceed the contracting and dilating of the pupil of our eye , which yet is a weaker and more defectuous attempt towards so high a priviledge as we speak of : which notwithstanding may seem very possible in spirits from . and . axiomes . the same also may be said of their hearing . for the same principle may enable them to shape themselves organs for the receiving of sounds , of greater art and excellency then the most accurate acoustick we read of , or can excogitate . wherefore it is a very childish mistake to think , that because we neither see the shape nor hear the discourse of spirits , that they neither hear nor see us . for soft bodies are impressible by hard ones , but not on the contrary ; as melted wax will receive the signature of the seal , but the seal is not at all impressed upon by the wax . and so a solid body will stop the course of the aire , but the aire will not stop the course of a solid body ; and every inconsiderable terrestrial consistency will reflect light , but light scarce moves any terrestrial body out of its place , but is rebounded back by it . that therefore that is most tenuious and thin , is most passive , and therefore if it be once the vehicle of sense , is most sensible . whence it will follow , that the reflexion of light from objects being able to move our organs , that are not so fine , they will more necessarily move those of the genii , and at a greater distance . but their bodies being of diaphanous aire , it is impossible for us to see them , unless they will give themselves the trouble of reducing them to a more terrestrial consistency , whereby they may reflect light . nor can we easily hear their ordinary speech , partly because a very gentle motion of the aire will act upon their vehicles , and partly because they may haply use the finer and purer part of that element in this exercise , which is not so fit to move our sense . and therefore unless they will be heard datâ operâ , naturally that impress of the aire in their usual discourse can never strike our organ . . and that we may not seem to say all this for nought ; that they will have hearing as well as seeing , appears from what i have intimated above , that this faculty is ranged near the common sensorium in the vehicle , as well as that of sight , and therefore the vehicle being all aire , such percussions of it as cause the sense of sound in us will necessarily doe the like in them ; but more accurately , haply , if they organize their vehicle for the purpose , which will answer to the arrection of the ears of animals , for the better taking in the sound . . that they have the sense of touch is inevitably true , else how could they feel resistance , which is necessary in the bearing of one body against another , because they are impenetrable ? and to speak freely my mind , it will be a very hard thing to disprove that they have not something analogical to smell and tast , which are very near a-kin to touch properly so called . for fumes and odours passing so easily through the aire , will very naturally insinuate into their vehicles also : which fumes , if they be grosser and humectant , may raise that diversification of touch which we mortals call tasting ; if more subtile and dry , that which we call smelling . which if we should admit , we are within modest bounds as yet in comparison of others ; as cardan , who affirms downright that the aerial genii are nourished , and that some of them get into the bodies of animals to batten themselves there in their blood and spirits . which is also averred by marcus the mesopotamian eremite in psellus , who tells us that the purer sort of the genii are nourished by drawing in the aire , as our spirits are in the nerves and arteries ; and that other genii , of a courser kinde , suck in moisture , not with the mouth as we doe , but as a sponge does water . and moses aegyptius writes concerning the zabii , that they eat of the blood of their sacrifice , because they thought it was the food of the daemons they worshipped , and that by eating thereof they were in a better capacity to communicate with them . which things if they could be believed , that would be no such hard probleme concerning the familiars of witches , why they suck them . but such curiosities , being not much to our purpose , i willingly omit . . the conclusion of what has been said is this , that it is certain that the genii , and consequently the souls of men departed , who ipso facto are of the same rank with them , have the sense of seeing , hearing , and touching , and not improbably of smelling and tasting . which faculties being granted , they need not be much at a loss how to spend their time , though it were but upon external objects ; all the furniture of heaven and earth being fairly exposed to their view . they see the same sun and moon that we doe , behold the persons and converse of all men , and , if no special law inhibit them , may pass from town to town , and from city to city , as hesiod also intimates , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . there is nothing that we enjoy but they may have their fees out of it ; fair fields , large and invious woods , pleasant gardens , high and healthful mountains , where the purest gusts of aire are to be met with , crystal rivers , mossy springs , solemnity of entertainments , theatrick pomps and shews , publick and private discourses , the exercises of religion , whether in temples , families , or hidden cells . they may be also ( and haply not uninteressed ) spectators of the glorious and mischievous hazards of war , whether sea-fights or land-fights ; besides those soft and silent , though sometimes no less dangerous , combats in the camps of cupid ; and a thousand more particularities that it would be too long to reckon up , where they haply are not men spectators but abettors , as plutarch writes : like old men that are past wrestling , pitching the barre , or playing at cudgels themselves , yet will assist and abet the young men of the parish at those exercises . so the souls of men departed , though they have put off with the body the capacity of the ordinary functions of humane life , yet they may assist and abet them , as pursuing some design in them ; and that either for evil or good , according as they were affected themselves when they were in the body . . in brief , whatever is the custome and desire of the soul in this life , that sticks and adheres to her in that which is to come ; and she will be sure , so farre as she is capable , either to act it , or to be at least a spectator and abettor of such kinde of actions . — quae gratia currûm armorumque fuit vivis , quae cura nitentes pascere equos , eadē sequitur tellure repostos . which rightly understood is no poetical fiction , but a professed truth in plato's philosophy . and maximus tyrius speaks expresly even of the better sort of soules , who having left the body , and so becoming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. being made ipso facto genii in stead of men , that , beside the peculiar happiness they reap thereby to themselves , they are appointed by god , and have a mission from him , to be overseers of humane affairs : but that every genius does not perform every office , but as their naturall inclinations and customes were in this life , they exercise the like in some manner in the other . and therefore he will have aesculapius to practise physick still , and hercules to exercise his strength , amphilochus to prophesy , castor and pollux to navigate , minos to hear causes , and achilles to war. which opinion is as likely to hold true in bad souls as in good ; and then it will follow , that the souls of the wicked make it their business to assist and abet the exercise of such vices as themselves were most addicted to in this life , and to animate and tempt men to them . from whence it would follow , that they being thus by their separate state daemons , as has been said already , if they be also tempters to evil , they will very little differ from meer devils . . but besides this employment in reference to us , they may entertain themselves with intellectuall contemplations , whether naturall , mathematical , or metaphysical . for assuredly knowledge is not so easy and cheap in this state of separation , but that they may advance and improve themselves by exercise and meditations . and they being in a capacity to forget by reason of desuetude , it will be a new pleasure to them to recall to minde their almost obliterate speculations . and for those that take more pleasure in outward sense then in the operations of their understanding ; there being so much change in nature , and so various qualifications of the aire and these inferiour elements , which must needs act upon their aerial bodies to more or less gratification or dislike , this also will excuse them from being idle , and put them upon quest after such refreshments and delights as nature will afford the multifarious presages and desires of their flitting vehicles . . not but that they keep constant to some generall inclination , which has divided these aerial wanderers into so many orders or tribes ; the ancient philosophers and poets ( which are philosophers of the antientest standing of all ) having assigned places proper to each order : the sea , rivers and springs to one , mountains and groves to others , and so of the rest . whence they imposed also those names of the nereides , naiades , oreades , dryades , and the like : to which you may adde the dii tutelares of cities and countries , and those that love the warmth of families and homely converse of men , such as they styled lares familiares . all which , and hundreds more , which there is no need to recite , though they be engaged ever in one natural propension , yet there being so great variety of occasions to gratify it more or less , their thoughts may be imployed in purchasing and improving those delights that are most agreeable to their own nature . which particularities to run over would be as infinite as useless . these short intimations are sufficient to make us understand that the genii and separate souls need want no employment , no not in solitude : for such must their stay also amongst us be esteemed , when they doe not sensibly and personally converse with us . chap. v. . that the separate soule spends not all her time in solitude . . that her converse with us seems more intelligible then that with the genii . . how the genii may be visible one to another , though they be to us invisible . . of their approaches , and of the limits of their swiftness of motion : . and how they far exceed us in celerity . . of the figure or shape of their vehicles , and of their privacy , when they would be invisible . . that they cannot well converse in a meer simple orbicular forme . . that they converse in humane shape , at least the better sort of them . . whether the shape they be in proceed meerly from the imperium of their will and fancy , or is regulated by a natural character of the plastick part of the soule . . that the personal shape of a soule or genius is partly from the will , and partly from the plastick power . . that considering how the soul organizes the foetus in the womb , and moves our limbs at pleasure ; it were a wonder if spirits should not have such command over their vehicles as is believed . . a further argument from an excessive vertue some have given to imagination . . but the separate state of the soule does not condemn her to this solitude , but being admitted into the order of the genii , she is possessed of their priviledges , which is to converse personally with this aerial people , and also upon occasion with the inhabitants of the earth ; though the latter with far more difficulty . . as for her converse with the aerial genii and other souls separate , it must be in all reason concluded to be exceeding much more frequent then that with men , and yet this latter is in some sort more intelligible ; because it is certain she can see us , light being reflected from our opake bodies unto her sense , and by conspissating her vehicle she may make her self visible to us . but the vehicles of the genii and of souls being in their natural consistence purely aerial , and air being a transparent body , it will transmit the light wholly ; and so no reflexion being made from these aiery bodies , they can have no perception of one anothers presence , and therefore no society nor communion one with another . . this seems a shrewd difficulty at the first view . but it is easily taken off , if we consider that aire will admit of many degrees of rarefaction and condensation , and yet still appear unto us alike invisible , as one may observe in the weather-glass . but it were more proper to propose in this case the experiment of the wind-gun , wherein the aire is compressed to a great number of degrees of condensatiō beyond its natural state ; within the compass of many whereof there is no doubt , if not in the utmost , that the aire does remaine invisible to us . but there is no scruple to be made but that in the progress of these degrees of condensation the aire , if it were in a glass-barrel , might become visible to the genii , by reason of the tenderness and delicacy of their senses , before it would be so to us . whence it followes , that the vehicles of the genii may have a consistency different from the aire , and perceptible to them , that is to say , to one anothers sight , though it be as unperceptible to us as the rest of the aire is . as , it may be , a man that has but bad eyes would not be able to distinguish ice immersed in the water from the water it self by his sight , though he might by his touch. or if their vehicles could be supposed purer and finer then the rest of the aire , their presence might be perceptible by that means too . for this vaporous aire having without question a confused reflection of light in it , every way in some proportion like that in a mist , or when the sun shines waterishly and prognosticks rain ; these repercussions of light being far more sensible to the genii then to us , the lessening of them would be more sensible , and therefore the diminution of reflection from their vehicles would be sufficient to discover their presence one to another : and for the illustrating of this hypothesis , the experiment of the weather-glass is more proper . but the other supposition i look upon as the more likely to be true ; and that as the aquatil animals that live in the sea have a consistency grosser then the element they move in , so it is with these that live in the aire , though there be nothing near so great a difference here as in that other element . . it is plain therefore , that the persons of the genii and separate souls are visible one to another . but yet not at any distance , and therefore there is necessity of approaching to one another for mutual converse : which enforces us to say something of their local motion . which is neither by fins nor wings , as in fishes or birds , who are fain to sustain themselves by these instruments from sinking to the bottome of either element : but it is meerly by the direction of the agitation of the particles of their vehicle toward the place they aime at ; and in such a swiftness or leasureliness as best pleases themselves , and is competible to their natures . for they can goe no swifter then the whole summe of agitation of the particles of their vehicle will carry so much matter , nor indeed so swift ; for it implies that their vehicles would be turned into an absolutely hard body , such as brass or iron , or whatever we find harder ; so that necessarily they would fall down to the earth as dead as a stone . those therefore are but phantastick conceits that give such agility to spirits , as if they could be here and there and every where at once , skip from one pole of the world to another , & be on the earth again in a moment : whenas in truth they can pass with no greater swiftness then the direction of such a part of the agitation of the particles of their vehicles will permit , as may be spared from what is employed in keeping them within a tolerable compass of a due aerial fluidity . . and this alone will suffice to make them exceed us in activity and swiftness by many degrees . for their whole vehicle is haply at least as thin and moveable as our animal spirits , which are very few in comparison of this luggage of an earthly body that they are to drive along with them . but the spiritual bodies of the genii have nothing to drive along with them but themselves ; and therefore are more free and light , compared to us , then a mettl'd steed that has cast his rider , compared with a pack-horse loaden with a sack of salt. . the next , thing to be considered , touching the mutual conversation of these aerial genii , is the shape they appear in one to another , of what figure it is , and whether the figure be natural , or arbitrarious , or mixt. for that they must appear in some figure or other is plain , in that their vehicles are not of an infinite extension . it is the more general opinion , that there is no particular figure that belongs unto them naturally , unless it be that which of all figures is most simple , and most easy to conform to , even by external helps , which is the equal compression of the aire on every side of the vehicle , by which means drops of dew and rain and pellets of hail come so ordinarily into that shape . which also will more handsomely accord with the nature of the soul , supposing she consist of central and radial essence , as i have above described , and the common sensorium be placed in the midst . in this figure may the soul reside in the aire , and haply melt her self , i mean her vehicle , into near so equal a liquidity with that part of that element adjacent to her , that it may be in some measure like our retiring into secrecy from the sight of men , when we desire to be private by our selves . . but she may , if she will , and likely with farre more ease , change this consistency of her aerial body into such a degree of thickness , that there may be a dubious discovery of her , as in the glimpse of a fish under the water , and may still make her self more visible to her fellow - genii , though keeping yet this simple orbicular form . but what converse there can be betwixt two such heaps of living aire , i know not . they may indeed communicate their affections one to another in such a way as is discovered in the eye , wherein the motions of the spirits doe plainly indicate the passions of the minde : so that it may seem possible , in this simple figure , to make known their joy or grief , peaceableness or wrath , love or dislike , by the modification of the motion of the spirits of their vehicle . but how there can well be entertained any intellectual or rational conference , without any further organization of their aiery bodies , i profess my self at a loss to understand . . wherefore the genii and separate souls , whatever their shape be in private , appear in a more operose and articulate form when they are to converse with one another . for they can change their figure in a manner as they please , by axiome . which power , i conceive , will be made use of not onely for service , but ornament and pulcritude . and the most unexceptionable beauty , questionless , is that of man in the best patterns ( chuse what sex you will ) and far above the rest of creatures ; which is not our judgement onely , but his that made us . for certainly he would give to the principal of terrestrial animals the noblest form and shape ; which though it be much obscured by our unfortunate fall , yet questionless the defacement is not so great , but that we may have a near guess what it has been heretofore . it is most rational therefore to conclude , that the aerial genii converse with one another in humane shape , at least the better sort of them . . but the difficulty now is , whether that humane shape that the soul transforms her vehicle into , be simply the effect of the imperium of her will over the matter she actuates , or that her will may be in some measure limited or circumscribed in its effect by a concomitant exertion of the plastick power ; so that what proceeds from the will may be onely more general , that is , that the souls will may onely command the vehicle into an animal form ; but that it is the form or shape of a man , may arise in a more natural way from the concomitant exertion of the plastick vertue . i say , in a more easy and natural way : for vehemency of desire to alter the figure into another representation may make the appearance resemble some other creature : but no forced thing can last long . the more easy and natural shape therefore that , at least , the better genii appear in , is humane : which if it be granted , it may be as likely that such a determinate humane shape may be more easy and natural then another , and that the soul , when she wills to appear in personal figure , will transform her vehicle into one constant likeness , unless she disguise her self on set purpose . that is , the plastick power of every soul , whether of men , or of the other genii , does naturally display it self into a different modification of the humane shape , which is the proper signature of every particular or individual person : which though it may be a little changed in generation by vertue of the imagination of the parents , or quality of their seed , yet the soul set free from that body she got here , may exquisitely recover her ancient form again . . not that the plastick virtue , awakened by the imperium of her will , shall renewall the lineaments it did in this earthly body ( for abundance of them are useless and to no purpose , which therefore , providence so ordaining , will be silent in this aiery figuration , and onely such operate as are fit for this separate state ; and such are those as are requisite to perfect the visible feature of a person , giving him all parts of either ornament or use for the pleasure of rational converse ; ) nor that this efformative power does determine the whole appearance alone ( for these aerial spirits appear variously clad , some like beautiful virgins , others like valiant warriours with their helmets and plumes of feathers , as philostratus would make us believe achilles did to apollonius : ) but there is a mixt action and effect , resulting partly from the freeness of the will and imagination , and partly from the natural propension of the plastick virtue , to cast the vehicle into such a personal shape . . which prerogative of the soul , in having this power thus to shape her vehicle at will , though it may seem very strange , because we doe not see it done before our eyes , nor often think of such things ; yet it is not much more wonderful then that she organizes the foetus in the womb , or that we can move the parts of our body meerly by our will and imagination . and that the aerial spirits can doe these things , that they can thus shape their vehicles , and transform themselves into several appearances , i need bring no new instances thereof . those narrations i have recited in my third book against atheism doe sufficiently evince this truth . and verily , considering the great power acknowledged in imagination by all philosophers , nothing would seem more strange , then that these aiery spirits should not have this command over their own vehicles , to transform them as they please . . for there are some , and they of no small note , that attribute so wonderful effects to that faculty armed with confidence and belief ( to which passion fear may in some manner be referred , as being a strong belief of an imminent evil , and that it will surely take effect , as also vehement desire , as being accompanied with no small measure of perswasion that we may obtain the thing desired , else desire would not be so very active ) i say , they attribute so wonderful force to imagination , that they affirm that it will not onely alter a mans own body , but act upon anothers , and that at a distance ; that it will inflict diseases on the sound , and heal the sick ; that it will cause hail , snows and winds ; that it will strike down an horse or camel , and cast their riders into a ditch ; that it will doe all the feats of witchcraft , even to the making of ghosts and spirits appear , by transforming the adjacent aire into the shape of a person that cannot onely be felt and seen , but heard to discourse , and that not onely by them whose imagination created this aiery spectrum , but by other by-standers , whose fancy contributed nothing to its existence . to such an extent as this have avicenna , algazel , paracelsus , pomponatius , vaninus and others , exalted the power of humane imagination : which if it were true , this transfiguration of the vehicles of the separate souls and genii were but a trifle in comparison thereof . chap. vi. . more credible instances of the effects of imagination . . a special and peculiar instance in signatures of the foetus . . that what fienus grants , who has so cautiously bounded the power of fancy , is sufficient for the present purpose . . examples approved of by fienus . . certain examples rejected by him , and yet approved of by fernelius and sennertus . . three notorious stories of the power of the mothers imagination on the foetus , out of helmont . . a conjectural inference from those stories , what influence the spirit of nature has in all plastick operations . . a further confirmation of the conjecture from signatures on the foetus . . an application thereof to the transfiguration of the vehicles of daemons . . but i shall contain my belief within more moderate bounds , that which the most sober authors assent to being sufficient for our turn ; and that is the power of imagination on our own bodies , or what is comprehended within our own , viz. the foetus in the womb of the mother . for that imagination will bring real and sensible effects to pass is plain , in that some have raised diseases in their own bodies by too strongly imagining of them ; by fancying bitter or soure things , have brought those real sapours into their mouths ; at the remembring of some filthy object , have faln a vomiting ; at the imagining of a potion , have faln ▪ a purging ; and many such things of the like nature . amongst which , that of prefixing to ones self what time in the morning we will wake , is no less admirable then my . which alterations upon the spirits for the production of such qualities , is every jot as hard as the ranging them into new figures or postures . but the hardest of all is , to make them so determinately active , as to change the shape of the body , by sending out knobs like horns , as it hapned to cyppus , of which agrippa speaks in his occult. philosoph . which i should not have repeated here , had i not been credibly informed of a later example of the like effect of imagination , though upon more fancyful grounds . that feare has killed some , and turned others gray , is to be referred to imagination also : the latter of which examples is a signe that the plastick power of the soule has some influence also upon the very haires : which will make it less marvellous that the souls vehicle may be turned into the live effigies of a man , not a haire , that is necessary to the perfecting of his representation , being excluded , free imagination succeeding or assisting the plastick power in the other state . . but of all examples , those of the signatures of the foetus by the imagination of the mother come the nearest to our purpose . for we may easily conceive , that as the plastick power in the foetus is directed or seduced by the force of the mothers fancy ; so the efformative virtue in souls separate and the genii may be governed and directed or perverted by the force of their imagination . and so much the more surely by how much the union is more betwixt the imagination of the soule and her own plastick faculty , then betwixt her and the plastick power of another soule ; and the capacity of being changed , greater in the yielding aerial vehicle , then in the grosser rudiments of the foetus in the womb. . and yet the effects of the force of the mothers imagination in the signing of the foetus is very wonderful , and almost beyond belief , to those that have not examined these things . but the more learned sort both of physitians and philosophers are agreed on the truth thereof , as empedocles , aristotle , pliny , hippocrates , galen , and all the modern physitians , being born down into assent by daily experience . for these signatures of less extravagance and enormity are frequent enough , as the similitude of cherries , mulberries , the colour of claret-wine spilt on the woman with child , with many such like instances . and if we stand but to what fienus has defined in this matter , who has , i think , behaved himself as cautiously and modestly as may be , there will be enough granted to assure us of what we aime at . for he does acknowledge that the imagination of the mother may change the figure of the foetus so as to make it beare a resemblance , though not absolutely perfect , of an ape , pig , or dog , or any such like animal . the like he affirms of colours , haires , and excrescencies of several sorts : that it may produce also what is very like or analogous to horns and hoofs , and that it may encrease the bigness and number of the parts of the body . . and though he does reject several of the examples he has produced out of authors , yet those which he admits for true are indications plain enough , what we may expect in the vehicle of a departed soule or daemon . as that of the hairy girle out of marcus damascenus ; that other out of guilielmus paradinus , of a child whose skin and nails resembled those of a bear ; and a third out of balduinus ronsaeus , of one born with many excrescencies coloured and figured like those in a turky-cock ; and a fourth out of pareus , of one who was born with an head like a frog ; as lastly that out of avicenna , of chickens with hawks heads . all which deviations of the plastick power hapned from the force of imagination in the females , either in the time of conception , or gestation of their young . . but he scruples of giving assent to others , which yet are assented to by very learned writers . as that of black-moores being born of white parents , and white children of black , by the exposal of pictures representing an aethiopian or european : which those two excellent physitians , fernelius and sennertus , both agree to . he rejects also that out of cornelius gemma , of a child that was born with his forehead wounded and running with blood , from the husbands threatning his wife , when she was big , with a drawn sword which he directed towards her forehead . which will not seem so incredible , if we consider what sennertus records of his own knowledg , viz. that a woman with child seeing a butcher divide a swines head with his cleaver , brought forth her child with its face cloven in the upper jaw , the palate , and upper lip to the very nose . . but the most notorious instances of this sort are those of helmont de injectis materialibus . the one of a taylors wife at mechlin , who standing at her doore , and seeing a souldiers hand cut off in a quarrel , presently fell into labour , being struck with horrour at the spectacle , and brought forth a child with one hand , the other arm bleeding without one , of which wound the infant died by the great expense of blood . another woman , the wife of one marcus de vogeler merchant of antwerp , in the year . seeing a souldier begging who had lost his right arme in ostend-siege , which he shewed to the people still bloody , fell presently into labour , and brought forth a daughter with one arme struck off , nothing left but a bloody stump to employ the chirurgions skill : this woman married afterwards to one hoochcamer merchant of amsterdam , and was yet alive in the year . as helmont writes . he adds a third example , of another merchants wife which he knew , who hearing that on a morning there were thirteen men to be beheaded ( this hapned at antwerp in duke d' alva his time ) she had the curiosity to see the execution . she getting therefore a place in the chamber of a certain widow-woman , a friend of hers that dwelt in the market-place , beheld this tragick spectacle ; upon which she suddainly fell into labour , and brought forth a perfectly-formed infant , onely the head was wanting , but the neck bloody as their bodies she beheld that had their heads cut off . and that which does still advance the wonder is , that the hand , arme , and head of these infants , were none of them to be found . from whence van-helmont would infer a penetration of corporeal dimensions ; but how groundlessly i will not dispute here . . if these stories he recites be true , as i must confess i doe not well know how to deny them , he reporting them with so honest and credible circumstances ; they are notable examples of the power of imagination , and such as doe not onely win belief to themselves , but also to others that fienus would reject , not of this nature onely we are upon , of wounding the body of the infant , but also of more exorbitant conformation of parts , of which we shall bring an instance or two anon . in the mean time , while i more carefully contemplate this strange virtue and power of the soule of the mother , in which there is no such measure of purification or exaltedness , that it should be able to act such miracles , as i may call them , rather then natural effects ; i cannot but be more then usually inclinable to think that the plastick faculty of the soule of the infant , or whatever accessions there may be from the imagination of the mother , is not the adaequate cause of the formation of the foetus : a thing which plotinus somewhere intimates by the by , as i have already noted , viz. that the soule of the world , or the spirit of nature , assists in this performance . which if it be true , we have discovered a cause proportionable to so prodigious an effect . for we may easily conceive that the deeply-impassionated fancy of the mother snatches away the spirit of nature into consent : which spirit may rationally be acknowledged to have a hand in the efformation of all vital beings in the world , and haply be the onely agent in forming of all manner of plants . in which kinde whether she exert her power in any other elements then earth and water , i will conclude no further , then that there may be a possibility thereof in the calmer regions of aire and aether . to the right understanding of which conjecture , some light will offer it self from what we have said concerning the visibility and consistency of the aerial daemons in their occursions one with another . . but this is not the onely argument that would move one to think that this spirit of nature intermeddles with the efformation of the foetus . for those signatures that are derived on the infant from the mothers fancy in the act of conception , cannot well be understood without this hypothesis . for what can be the subject of that signature ? not the plastick part of the soul of the mother ; for that it is not the mothers soul that efforms the embryo , as sennertus ingeniously conjectures from the manner of the efformation of birds , which is in their egges , distinct from the hen , and they may as well be hatched without any hen at all , a thing ordinarily practised in aegypt ; nor the body of the embryo , for it has yet no body ; nor its soul , for the soul , if we believe aristotle , is not yet present there . but the spirit of nature is present every where , which snatcht into consent by the force of the imagination of the mother , retains the note , and will be sure to seal it on the body of the infant . for what rude inchoations the soul of the world has begun in the matter of the foetus , this signature is comprehended in the whole design , and after compleated by the presence and operation of the particular soul of the infant , which cooperates conformably to the pattern of the soul of the world , and insists in her footsteps ; who having once begun any hint to an entire design , she is alike able to pursue it in any place , she being every where like or rather the same to her self . for as our soul being one , yet , upon the various temper of the spirits , exerts her self into various imaginations and conceptions ; so the soul of the world , being the same perfectly every where , is engaged to exert her efformative power every where alike , where the matter is exactly the same . whence it had been no wonder , if those chickens above-mentioned with hawks heads had been hatched an hundred miles distant from the hen , whose imagination was disturbed in the act of conception : because the soul of the world had begun a rude draught , which it self would as necessarily pursue every where , as a geometrician certainly knows how to draw a circle that will fit three points given . . this opinion therefore of plotinus is neither irrational nor unintelligible , that the soul of the world interposes and insinuates into all generations of things , while the matter is fluid and yielding . which would induce a man to believe , that she may not stand idle in the transfiguration of the vehicles of the daemons , but assist their fancies and desires , and so help to cloath them and attire them according to their own pleasures : or it may be sometimes against their wills , as the unwieldiness of the mothers fancy forces upon her a monstrous birth . chap. vii . . three notable examples of signatures , rejected by fienus : . and yet so farre allowed for possible , as will fit our design . . that helmonts cherry and licetus his crab-fish are shrewd arguments that the soul of the world has to do with all efformations of both animals and plants . . an example of a most exact and lively signature out of kircher : . with his judgement thereupon . . another example out of him of a child with gray hairs . . an application of what has been said hitherto , concerning the signatures of the foetus , to the transfiguration of the aiery vehicles of separate souls and daemons . . of their personal transformation visible to us . . those other examples of the signation of the foetus from the mothers fancy , which fienus rejecteth , the one of them is out of wierus , of a man that threatned his wife when she was bigge with child , saying , she bore the devil in her womb , and that he would kill him : whereupon , not long after , she brought forth a child well shaped from the middle downwards , but upwards spotted with black and red spots , with eyes in its forehead , a mouth like a satyre , ears like a dog , and bended horns on its head like a goat . the other out of ludovicus vives , of one who returning home in the disguise of a devil , whose part he had acted on the stage , and having to doe with his wife in that habit , saying he would beget a devil on her , impregnated her with a monster of a shape plainly diabolical . the third and most remarkable is out of peramatus , of a monster born at s. laurence in the west-indies , in the year ▪ the narration whereof was brought to the duke of medina sidonia from very faithful hands . how there was a child born there at that time , that besides the horrible deformity of its mouth , ears and nose , had two horns on the head , like those of young goats , long hair on the body , a fleshy girdle about his middle , double , from whence hung a peece of flesh like a purse , and a bell of flesh in his left hand , like those the indians use when they dance , white boots of flesh on his legges , doubled down : in brief , the whole shape was horrid and diabolical , and conceived to proceed from some fright the mother had taken from the antick dances of the indians , amongst whom the devil himself does not fail to appear sometimes . . these narrations fienus rejecteth , not as false , but as not being done by any natural power , or if they be , that the descriptions are something more lively then the truth . but in the mean time he does freely admit , that by the meer power of imagination there might be such excrescencies as might represent those things that are there mentioned ; though those diabolical shapes could not have true horns , hoofs , tail , or any other part , specifically distinct from the nature of man. but so farre as he acknowledges is enough for our turn . . but fortunius licetus is more liberal in his grants , allowing not onely that the births of women may be very exqulsitely distorted in some of their parts into the likeness of those of brutes , but that chimaerical imaginations in dreams may also effect it , as well as fancies or external objects when they are awake . of the latter sort whereof he produces an example that will more then match our purpose , of a sicilian matron , who by chance beholding a crab in a fishermans hand new caught , and of a more then ordinary largeness , when she was brought to bed , brought forth a crab ( as well as a child ) perfectly like those that are ordinarily caught in the sea. this was told him by a person of credit , who both knew the woman , and saw the crab she brought forth . helmonts cherry he so often mentions , and how it was green , pale , yellow , and red , at the times of year other cherries are , is something of this nature ; that is to say , comes near to the perfect species of a cherry , as this did of a crab , the plantal life of a cherry being in some measure in the one , as the life of an animal was perfectly in the other . which confirms what we said before , that strength of our desire and imagination may snatch into consent the spirit of nature , and make it act : which once having begun , leaves not off , if matter will but serve for to work upon ; and being the same in all places , acts the same upon the same matter , in the same circumstances . for the root and soul of every vegetable is the spirit of nature ; in virtue whereof this cherry flourisht and ripened , according to the seasons of the country where the party was that bore that live signature . these two instances are very shrewd arguments that the soul of the world has to doe with all efformations of either plants or animals . for neither the childs soul nor the mothers , in any likelihood , could frame that crab , though the mother might , by that strange power of desire and imagination , excite the spirit of the world that attempts upon any matter that is fitted for generation , some way or other , to make something of it ; and being determined by the fancy of the woman , might sign the humid materials in her womb with the image of her minde . . wherefore if fienus had considered from what potent causes signatures may arise , he would not have been so scrupulous in believing that degree of exactness that some of them are reported to have : or if he had had the good hap to have met with so notable an example thereof , as kircher professes himself to have met with . for he tells a story of a man that came to him for this very cause , to have his opinion what a certain strange signature , which he had on his arm from his birth , might portend ; concerning which he had consulted both astrologers and cabbalists , who had promised great preferments , the one imputing it to the influence of the stars , the other to the favour of the sealing order of angels . but kircher would not spend his judgement upon a meer verbal description thereof ; though he had plainly enough told him , it was the pope sitting on his throne , with a dragon under his feet , and an angel putting a crown on his head . wherefore the man desirous to hear a further confirmation of these hopes ( he had conceived from the favourable conjectures of others ) by the suffrage of so learned a man , was willing in private to put off his doublet , and shew his arm to kircher : who having viewed it with all possible care , does profess that the signature was so perfect , that it seemed rather the work of art then of exorbitating nature ; & yet by certain observations he made , that he was well assured it was the work of nature , and not of art , though it was an artificial piece that nature imitated , viz. the picture of pope gregory the thirteenth , who is sometimes drawn according as this signature did lively represent , namely on a throne , with a dragon under his feet , leaning with one hand on his seat , and bearing the other in that posture in which they give the benediction , and an angel removing a curtain , and reaching a crown towards his head . . kircher therefore leaving the superstitions and fooleries of the spurious cabbalists and astrologers , told him the truth , though nothing so pleasant as their lies and flatteries , viz. that this signature was not impressed by any either influence of the stars , or seals of angels , but that it was the effect of the imagination of his mother that bore him , who in some more then ordinary fit of affection towards this pope , whose picture she beheld in some chappel or other place of her devotion , and having some occasion to touch her arm , printed that image on the arm of her child , as it ordinarily happens in such cases . which doubtless was the true solution of the mystery . . the same author writes , how he was invited by a friend to contemplate another strange miracle ( as he thought that did invite him to behold it ) that he might spend his judgement upon it . which was nothing else but an exposed infant of some fourteen days old , that was gray-hair'd , both head and eye-brows . which his friend , an apothecary , look't upon as a grand prodigy , till he was informed of the cause thereof . that the mother that brought it forth , being married to an old man whose head was all white , the fear of being surprized in the act of adultery by her snowy-headed husband , made her imprint that colour on the child she bore . which story i could not omit to recite , it witnessing to what an exact curiosity the power of fancy will work , for the fashioning and modifying the matter , not missing so much as the very colours of the hair , as i have already noted something to that purpose . . to conclude therefore at length , and leave this luxuriant theme . whether it be the power of imagination carrying captive the spirit of nature into consent , or the soule of the infant , or both ; it is evident that the effects are notable , and sometimes very accurately answering the idea of the impregnate , derived upon the moist and ductil matter in the womb : which yet , not being any thing so yielding as the soft aire , nor the soule of the mother so much one with that of the infant as the separate soule is one with it self , nor so peculiarly united to the body of the infant as the soule separate with her own vehicle , nor having any nearer or more mysterious commerce with the spirit of nature , then she has when her plastick part , by the imperium of her will and imagination , is to organize her vehicle into a certain shape and form , which is a kind of a momentaneous birth of the distinct personality , of either a soule separate , or any other daemon ; it followes , that we may be very secure , that there is such a power in the genii and separate souls , that they can with ease and accuracy transfigure themselves into shapes and forms agreeable to their own temper and nature . . all which i have meant hitherto in reference to their visible congresses one with another . but they are sometimes visible to us also , under some animal shape , which questionless is much more difficult to them then that other visibility is . but this is also possible , though more unusual by far , as being more unnatural . for it is possible by art to compress aire so , as to reduce it to visible opacity , and has been done by some , and particularly by a friend of des-cartes , whom he mentions in his letters as having made this experiment ; the aire getting this opacity by squeezing the globuli out of it . which though the separate souls and spirits may doe by that directive faculty , axiome . yet surely it would be very painful . for the first element lying bare , if the aire be not drawn exceeding close , it will cause an ungratefull heat ; and if it be , as unnatural a cold ; and so small a moment will make the first element too much or too little , that it may , haply , be very hard , at least for these inferiour spirits , to keep steddily in a due mean. and therefore , when they appear , it is not unlikely but that they soak their vehicles in some vaporous or glutinous moisture or other , that they may become visible to us at a more easy rate . chap. viii . . that the better sort of genii converse in humane shape , the baser sometimes in bestial . . how they are disposed to turn themselves into several bestial forms . . of psellus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or igneous splendours of daemons , how they are made . . that the external beauty of the genii is according to the degree of the inward vertue of their minds . . that their aerial forme need not be purely transparent , but more finely opake , and coloured . . that there is a distinction of masculine and feminine beauty in their personal figurations . . after this digression , of shewing the facility of the figuring of the vehicles of the genii into personal shape , i shall return again where we left ; which was concerning the society of these genii and souls separate , and under what shape they converse one with another ; which i have already defined to be humane , especially in the better sort of spirits . and as for the worst kind , i should think that they are likewise for the most part in humane form , though disguised with ugly circumstances ; but that they figure themselves also in bestial appearances ; it being so easy for them to transform their vehicle into what shape they please , and to imitate the figures as dexterously as some men will the voices of brute beasts , whom we may hear sing like a cuckow , crow like a cock , bellow like a cow and calfe , bark like a dog , grunt and squeak like a pig , and indeed imitate the cry of almost any bird or beast whatsoever . and as easy a matter is it for these lower genii to resemble the shapes of all these creatures , in which they also appear visibly oftentimes to them that entertain them , and sometimes to them that would willingly shun them . . nor is it improbable , but the variety of their impurities may dispose them to turn themselves into one brutish shape rather then another ; as envying , or admiring , or in some sort approving and liking the condition and properties of such and such beasts : as theocritus merrily sets out the venereousness of the goatheard he describes , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if he envied the happiness of the he-goats , and wisht himself in their stead , in their acts of carnal copulation . so according to the several bestial properties that symbolize with uncleanness and vitiousness of the tempers of these daemons , they may have a propension to imitate their shape rather then others , and appear ugly , according to the manner and measure of their internal turpitudes . . as it is likely also that those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , those igneous splendours psellus makes mention of , ( as the end and scope of the nefarious ceremonies those wicked wretches , he describes , often used ) were coloured according to the more or less feculency of the vehicle of the daemon that did appear in this manner , viz. in no personal shape , but by exhibiting a light to the eyes of his abominable spectatours and adorers : which , i suppose , he stirred up within the limits of his own vehicle ; the power of his will and imagination , by axiome , commanding the grosser particles of the aire and terrestrial vapours , together with the globuli , to give back every way , from one point to a certain compass , not great , and therefore the more easy to be done . whence the first element lyes bare in some considerable measure , whose activity cannot but lick into it some particles of the vehicle that borders next thereto , and thereby exhibit , not a pure star-like light ( which would be , if the first element thus unbared , and in the midst of pure aire , were it self unmixt with other matter ) but the feculency of those parts that it abrades and converts into fewel , and the foulness of the ambient vehicle through which it shines , makes it look red and fiery like the horizontal sun seen through a thick throng of vapours . which fiery splendour may either onely slide down amongst them , and so pass by with the motion of the daemons vehicle , which psellus seems mainly to aime at ; or else it may make some stay and discourse with them it approaches , according as i have heard some narrations . the reason of which lucid appearances being so intelligible out of the principles of cartesius his philosophy , we need not conceit that they are nothing but the prestigious delusions of fancy , and no real objects , as psellus would have them ; it being no more uncompetible to a daemon to raise such a light in his vehicle , and a purer then i have described , then to a wicked man to light a candle at a tinderbox . . but what we have said concerning the purity and impurity of this light , remindes me of what is of more sutable consequence to discourse of here , which is the splendour and beauty of personal shape in the better sort of the genii . which assuredly is greater or lesser , according to the degrees of vertue and moral affections in them . for even in this body , that is not so yielding to the powers of the mind , a man may observe , that according as persons are better or worse inclined , the aire of their visage will alter much , and that vicious courses , defacing the inward pulcritude of the soul , doe even change the outward countenance to an abhorred hue . which must therefore necessarily take place , in a far greater measure , in the other state ; where our outward form is wholy framed from the inward imperium of our minde : which by how much more pure it self is , it will exhibit the more irreprehensible pulcritude in the outward feature and fashion of the body , both for proportion of parts , the spirit and aire of the countenance , and the ornament of cloaths and attirings : there being an indissoluble connexion in the soule of the sense of these three things together , vertue , love , and beauty ; of all which she her self is the first root , and especially in the separate state , even of outward beauty it self : whence the converse of the most vertuous there must needs afford the highest pleasure and satisfaction ; not onely in point of rational communication , but in reference to external and personal complacency also . for if vertue and vice can be ever seen with outward eyes , it must be in these aerial vehicles , which yield so to the will and idea of good and pure affections , that the soule in a manner becomes perfectly transparent through them , discovering her lovely beauty in all the efflorescencies thereof , to the ineffable enravishment of the beholder . . not that i mean , that there is any necessity that their vehicle should be as a statue of fluid crystal ; but that those impresses of beauty and ornament will be so faithfully and lively represented , according to the dictates of her inward sense and imagination , that if we could see the soule her self , we could know no more by her then she thus exhibits to our eye : which personal figuration in the extimate parts thereof , that represent the body , face and vestments , may be attempered to so fine an opacity , that it may reflect the light in more perfect colours then it is from any earthly body , and yet the whole vehicle be so devoid of weight , as it will necessarily keep its station in the aire . which we cannot wonder at , while we consider the hanging of the clouds there , less aerial by far then this consistency we speak of : to say nothing of aerial apparitions as high as the clouds , and in the same colours and figures as are seen here below , and yet no reflexions of terrestrial objects , as i have proved in my third book against atheism . . the exact beauty of the personal shapes and becoming habits of these aiery beings , the briefest and safest account thereof that philosophy can give , is to referre to the description of such things in poets : and then , when we have perused what the height and elegancy of their fancy has penn'd down . to write under it , an obscure subindication of the transcendent pulcritude of the aerial genii , whether nymphs or heroes . for though there be neither lust , nor difference of sex amongst them ( whence the kindest commotions of minde will never be any thing else but an exercise of intellectual love , whose object is vertue and beauty ; ) yet it is not improbable but that there are some general strictures of discrimination of this beauty into masculine and feminine : partly because the temper of their vehicles may encline to this kinde of pulcritude rather then that ; and partly because several of these aerial spirits have sustained the difference of sex in this life , some of them here having been males , others females : and therefore their history being to be continued from their departure hence , they ought to retain some character , especially so general a one , of what they were here . and it is very harsh to conceit that aeneas should meet with dido in the other world in any other form then that of a woman : whence a necessity of some slighter distinction of habits , and manner of wearing their hair , will follow . which dress , as that of the masculine mode , is easily fitted to them by the power of their will and imagination : as appears from that story out of peramatus , of the indian monster that was born with fleshy boots , girdle , purse , and other things that are no parts of a man , but his cloathing or utensils ; and this meerly by the fancy of his mother , disturb'd and frighted , either in sleep or awake , with some such ugly appearance as that monster resembled . chap. ix . . a general account of the mutual entertains of the genii in the other world. . of their philosophical and political conferences . . of their religious exercises . . of the innocent pastimes and recreations of the better sort of them . . a confirmation thereof from the conventicles of witches . . whether the purer daemons have their times of repast or no. . whence the bad genii have their food . . of the food and feastings of the better sort of genii . . we have now accurately enough defined in what form or garb the aerial genii converse with one another . it remains we consider how they mutually entertain one another in passing away the time . which is obvious enough to conceive , to those that are not led aside into that blind labyrinth which the generality of men are kept in , of suspecting that no representation of the state of these beings is true , that is not so confounded and unintelligible that a man cannot think it sense , unless he wink with the inward eyes of his minde , and command silence to all his rational faculties . but if he will but bethink himself , that the immediate instrument of the soul in this life is the spirits , which are very congenerous to the body of angels ; and that all our passions and conceptions are either suggested from them , or imprest upon them ; he cannot much doubt but that all his faculties of reason , imagination and affection , for the general , will be in him in the other state as they were here in this : namely , that he will be capable of love , of joy , of grief , of anger ; that he will be able to imagine , to discourse , to remember , and the rest of such operations as were not proper to the fabrick of this earthly body , which is the officine of death and generation . . hence it will follow , that the souls of men deceaed , and the rest of the aerial daemons , may administer much content to one another in mutual conferences concerning the nature of things , whether moral , natural , or metaphysical . for to think that the quitting the earthly body entitles us to an omnisciency , is a fable never enough to be laught at . and socrates , somewhere in plato , presages , that he shall continue his old trade when he comes into the other world ; convincing and confounding the idle and vain-glorious sophists whereever he went. and by the same reason platonists , aristotelians , stoicks , epicureans , and whatever other sects and humors are on the earth , may in likelihood be met with there , so far as that estate will permit ; though they cannot doubt of all things we doubt of here . for these aerial spirits know that themselves are , and that the souls of men subsist and act after death , unless such as are too deeply tinctured with avenroism . but they may doubt whether they will hold out for ever , or whether they will perish at the conflagration of the world , as the stoicks would have them . it may be also a great controversie amongst them , whether pythagoras's or ptolemies hypothesis be true concerning the motion of the earth ; and whether the stars be so bigge as some define them . for these lower daemons have no better means then we to assure themselves of the truth or falshood of these opinions . besides the discourse of news , of the affairs as well of the earth as aire . for the aerial inhabitants cannot be less active then the terrestrial , nor less busie , either in the performance of some solemn exercises , or in carrying on designs party against party ; and that either more private or more publick ; the events of which will fill the aerial regions with a quick spreading fame of their actions . to say nothing of prudential conjectures concerning future successes aforehand , and innumerable other entertains of conference , which would be too long to reckon up , but bear a very near analogy to such as men pass away their time in here . . but of all pleasures , there are none that are comparable to those that proceed from their joynt exercise of religion and devotion . for their bodies surpassing ours so much in tenuity and purity , they must needs be a fitter soil for the divinest thoughts to spring up in , and the most delicate and most enravishing affections towards their maker . which being heightned by sacred hymns and songs , sung with voices perfectly imitating the sweet passionate relishes of the sense of their devout minds , must even melt their souls into divine love , and make them swim with joy in god. but these kinds of exercises being so highly rapturous and ecstatical , transporting them beyond the ordinary limits of their nature , cannot in reason be thought to be exceeding frequent ; but as a solemn repast , after which they shall enjoy themselves better for a good space of time after . . wherefore there be other entertainments , which though they be of an inferiour nature to these , yet they farre exceed the greatest pleasure and contentments of this present state . for the animal life being as essential to the soul as union with a body , which she is never free from ; it will follow that there be some fitting gratifications of it in the other world. and none greater can be imagined then sociableness and personal complacency , not onely in rational discourses , which is so agreeable to the philosophical ingeny , but innocent pastimes , in which the musical and amorous propension may be also recreated . for these three dispositions are the flowr of all the rest , as plotinus has somewhere noted : and his reception into the other world is set out by apollo's oracle , from some such like circumstances as these . — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . of the meaning of which verses that the reader may not quite be deprived , i shall render their sense in this careless paraphrase : now the blest meetings thou arriv'st unto of th' airy genii , where soft winds do blow , where friendship , love , & gentle sweet desire fill their thrice-welcom guests with joys entire , ever supply'd from that immortal spring whose streams pure nectar from great jove doe bring : whence kind converse and amorous eloquence warm their chast minds into the highest sense of heav'nly love , whose myst'ries they declare midst the fresh breathings of the peaceful aire . and he holds on , naming the happy company the soul of plotinus was to associate with , viz. pythagoras , plato , and the purer spirits of the golden age , and all such as made up the chorus of immortal love and friendship . these sing , and play , and dance together , reaping the lawful pleasures of the very animal life , in a far higher degree then we are capable of in this world. for every thing here does as it were tast of the cask , and has some coursness and foulness with it . the sweet motions of the spirits in the passion of love can very hardly be commanded off from too near bordering upon the shameful sense of lust ; the fabrick of the terrestrial body almost necessitating them to that deviation . the tenderer ear cannot but feel the rude thumpings of the wood , and gratings of the rosin , the hoarsness , or some harshness and untunableness or other , in the best consorts of musical instruments and voices . the judicious eye cannot but espy some considerable defect in either the proportion , colour , or the aire of the face , in the most fam'd and most admired beauties of either sex : to say nothing of the inconcinnity of their deportment and habits . but in that other state , where the fancy consults with that first exemplar of beauty , intellectual love and vertue , and the body is wholly obedient to the imagination of the minde , and will to every punctilio yield to the impresses of that inward pattern ; nothing there can be found amiss , every touch and stroak of motion and beauty being conveyed from so judicious a power through so delicate and depurate a medium . wherefore they cannot but enravish one anothers souls , while they are mutual spectators of the perfect pulcritude of one anothers persons , and comely carriage , of their graceful dancing , their melodious singing and playing , with accents so sweet and soft , as if we should imagine the aire here of it self to compose lessons , and send forth musical sounds without the help of any terrestrial instrument . these , and such like pastimes as these , are part of the happiness of the best sort of the aerial genii . . which the more certain knowledge of what is done amongst the inferiour daemons will further assure us of . for it is very probable that their conventicles , into which witches and wizzards are admitted , are but a depraved adumbration of the friendly meetings of the superiour genii . and what musick , dancing and feasting there is in these , the free confession of those wretches , or fortuitous detection of others , has made manifest to the world , viz. how humane and angelical beauty is transformed there into bestial deformity , the chief in the company ordinarily appearing in the figures of satyres , apes , goats , or such like ugly animals ; how the comely deportments of body , into ridiculous gesticulations , perverse postures and antick dances ; and how innocuous love and pure friendship degenerates into the most brutish lust and abominable obscenity that can be imagined : of which i will adde nothing more , having spoke enough of this matter in the appendix to my antidote chap. . . what is most material for the present , is to consider , whether as the musick and dancing of these lower and more deeply-lapsed daemons , are a distorted imitation of what the higher and more pure daemons doe in their regions ; so their feasting may not be a perverted resemblance of the others banquetings also : that is to say , it is worth our enquiring into , whether they doe not eat and drink as well as these . for the rich amongst us must have their repast as well as the poor , and princes feed as well as prisoners , though there be a great difference in their diet . and i must confess , there is no small difficulty in both , whence the good or bad genii may have their food ; though it be easy enough to conceive that they may feed and refresh their vehicles . for supposing they doe vitally actuate some particular portion of the aire that they drive along with them , which is of a certain extent , it is most natural to conceive , that partly by local motion , and partly by the activity of their thoughts , they set some particles of their vehicles into a more then usual agitation , which being thus moved , scatter and perspire ; and that so the vehicle lessens in some measure , and therefore admits of a recruite : which must be either by formal repast , or by drawing in the crude aire onely , which haply may be enough ; but it being so like it self alwaies , the pleasure will be more flat . wherefore it is not improbable but that both may have their times of refection , for pleasure at least , if not necessity ; which will be the greater advantage for the good , and the more exquisite misery for the bad , they being punishable in this regard also . . but , as i said , the greatest difficulty is to give a rationall account whence the bad genii have their food , in their execrable feasts , so formally made up into dishes . that the materials of it is a vaporous aire , appears as well from the faintness and emptiness of them that have been entertained at those feasts , as from their forbidding the use of salt at them , it having a virtue of dissolving of all aqueous substances , as well as hindering their congelation . but how the aire is moulded up into that form and consistency , it is very hard to conceive : whether it be done by the meer power of imagination upon their own vehicles , first dabled in some humidities that are the fittest for their design , which they change into these forms of viands , and then withdraw , when they have given them such a figure , colour , and consistency , with some small touch of such a sapour or tincture : or whether it be the priviledge of these aerial creatures , by a sharp desire and keen imagination , to pierce the spirit of nature , so as to awaken her activity , and engage her to the compleating in a moment , as it were , the full design of their own wishes , but in such matter as the element they are in is capable of , which is this crude and vaporous aire ; whence their food must be very dilute and flashie , and rather a mockery then any solid satisfaction and pleasure . . but those superiour daemons , which inhabit that part of the aire that no storm nor tempest can reach , need be put to no such shifts , though they may be as able in them as the other . for in the tranquillity of those upper regions , that promus-condus of the universe , the spirit of nature , may silently send forth whole gardens and orchards of most delectable fruits and flowers , of an aequilibrious ponderosity to the parts of the aire they grow in , to whose shape and colours the transparency of these plants may adde a particular lustre , as we see it is in precious stones . and the chymists are never quiet till the heat of their fancy have calcined and vitrified the earth into a crystal-line pellucidity , conceiting that it will be then a very fine thing indeed , and all that then growes out of it : which desirable spectacle they may haply enjoy in a more perfect manner , whenever they are admitted into those higher regions of the aire . for the very soile then under them shall be transparent , in which they may trace the very roots of the trees of this superiour paradise with their eyes , and if it may not offend them , see this opake earth through it , bounding their sight with such a white splendour as is discovered in the full moon , with that difference of brightness that will arise from the distinction of land and water ; and if they will recreate their palats , may tast of such fruits , as whose natural juice will vie with their noblest extractions and quintessences . for such certainly will they there find the blood of the grape , the rubie-coloured cherries , and nectarines . and if for the compleating of the pleasantness of these habitations , that they may look less like a silent and dead solitude , they meet with birds & beasts of curious shapes and colours , the single accents of whose voices are very grateful to the ear , and the varying of their notes perfect musical harmony ; they would doe very kindly to bring us word back of the certainty of these things , and make this more then a philosophical conjecture . but that there may be food and feasting in those higher aerial regions , is less doubted by the platonists ; which makes maximus tyrius call the soul , when she has left the body , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the above-cited oracle of apollo describes the felicity of that chorus of immortal lovers he mentions there , from feasting together with the blessed genii , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that the nectar and ambrosia of the poets may not be a meer fable . for the spirit of nature , which is the immediate instrument of god , may enrich the fruits of these aerial paradises with such liquors , as being received into the bodies of these purer daemons , and diffusing it self through their vehicles , may cause such grateful motions analogical to our tast , and excite such a more then ordinary quickness in their mindes , and benign cheerfulness , that it may far transcend the most delicate refection that the greatest epicures could ever invent upon earth ; and that without all satiety and burdensomeness , it filling them with nothing but divine love , joy , and devotion . chap. x. . how hard it is to define any thing concerning the aerial or aethereal elysiums . . that there is political order and lawes amongst these aiery daemons . . that this chain of government reaches down from the highest aethereal powers through the aerial to the very inhabitants of the earth . . the great security we live in thereby . . how easily detectible and punishable wicked spirits are by those of their own tribe . . other reasons of the security we find our selves in from the gross infestations of evil spirits . . what kind of punishments the aerial officers inflict upon their malefactours . . i might enlarge my self much on this subject , by representing the many concamerations of the aerial and aethereal elysiums , depainting them out in all the variety of their ornaments : but there is no prudence of being lavish of ones pen in a matter so lubricous and conjectural . of the bare existence whereof we have no other ground , then that otherwise the greatest part of the universe by infinite measure , and the most noble , would lye as it were uncultivate , like a desart of sand , wherein a man can spie neither plant nor living creature . which though it may seem as strange , as if nature should have restrained all the varieties she would put forth to one contemptible mole-hil , and have made all the rest of the earth one homogeneal surface of dry clay or stone , on which not one sprig of grass , much less any flower or tree , should grow , nor bird nor beast be found once to set their foot thereon : yet the spirits of us mortals being too pusillanimous to be able to grapple with such vast objects , we must resolve to rest either ignorant , or sceptical , in this matter . . and therefore let us consider what will more easily fall under our comprehension , and that is the polity of the aiery daemons . concerning which , that in general there is such a thing among them , is the most assuredly true in it self , and of the most use to us to be perswaded of . to know their particular orders and customes is a more needless curiosity . but that they doe lye under the restraint of government , is not onely the opinion of the pythagoreans ( who have even to the nicity of grammatical criticisme assigned distinct names to the law that belongs to these three distinct ranks of beings , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , calling the law that belongs to the first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the third 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) but it is also the easy and obvious suggestion of ordinary reason , that it must needs be so , and especially amongst the aerial genii in these lower regions , they being a mixt rabble of good and bad , wise and foolish , in such a sense as we may say the inhabitants of the earth are so , and therefore they must naturally fall under a government , and submit to lawes , as well & for the same reasons as men doe . for otherwise they cannot tolerably subsist , nor enjoy what rights may some way or other appertain to them . for the souls of men deceased and the daemons , being endued with corporeal sense , by axiome . and therefore capable of pleasure and pain , and consequently of both injury and punishment , it is manifest , that having the use of reason , they cannot fail to mould themselves into some political form or other ; and so to be divided into nations and provinces , and to have their officers of state , from the king on his throne to the very lowest and most abhorred executioners of justice . . which invisible government is not circumscribed within the compass of the aiery regions , but takes hold also on the inhabitants of the earth , as the government of men does on several sorts of brute beasts , and the aethereal powers also have a right and exercise of rule over the aerial . whence nothing can be committed in the world against the more indispensable laws thereof , but a most severe and inevitable punishment will follow : every nation , city , family and person , being in some manner the peculium , and therefore in the tutelage , of some invisible power or other , as i have above intimated . . and such transgressions as are against those laws without whose observance the creation could not subsist , we may be assured are punished with torture intolerable , and infinitely above any pleasure imaginable the evil genii can take in doing of those of their own order , or us mortals , any mischief . whence it is manifest that we are as secure from their gross outrages ( such as the firing of our houses , the stealing away our jewels , or more necessary utensils , murdering our selves or children , destroying our cattel , corn , and other things of the like sort , ) as if they were not in rerum natura . unless they have some special permission to act , or we our selves enable them by our rash and indiscreet tampering with them , or suffer from the malice of some person that is in league with them . for their greatest liberty of doing mischief is upon that account ; which yet is very much limited , in that all these actions must pass the consent of a visible person , not hard to be discovered in these unlawful practices , and easy to be punished by the law of men. . and the aerial genii can with as much ease inflict punishment on one another , as we mortals can apprehend , imprison , and punish such as transgress against our laws . for though these daemons be invisible to us , yet they are not so to their own tribe : nor can the activity and subtilty of the bad over-master the good commonwealths-men there , that uphold the laws better then they are amongst us . nor may the various transfiguration of their shapes conceal their persons , no more then the disguises that are used by fraudulent men . for they are as able to discern what is fictitious from what is true and natural amongst themselves , as we are amongst our selves . and every aerial spirit being part of some political subdivision , upon any outrage committed , it will be an easy matter to hunt out the malefactor . no daemon being able so to transfigure himself , but upon command he will be forced to appear in his natural and usual form , not daring to deny upon examination to what particular subdivision he belongs . whence the easy discovery of their miscarriages , and certainty of insupportable torment , will secure the world from all the disorder that some scrupulous wits suspect would arise from this kinde of creatures , if they were in being . . to which we may adde also , that what we have , is useless to them , and that it is very hard to conceive that there are many rational beings so degenerate as to take pleasure in ill , when it is no good to themselves . that socrates his aphorism , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , may be in no small measure true in the other world , as well as in this . that all that these evil spirits desire , may be onely our lapse into as great a degree of apostasy from god as themselves , and to be full partakers with them of their false liberty ; as debauched persons in this life love to make proselytes , and to have respect from their nurslings in wickedness . and several other considerations there are that serve for the taking away this panick fear of the incursations and molestations of these aerial inhabitants , and might further silence the suspicious atheist ; which i willingly omit , having said more then enough of this subject already . see cap. . sect. , . . if any be so curious , as to demand what kinde of punishment this people of the aire inflict upon their malefactors , i had rather referre them to the fancies of cornelius agrippa , de occult. philosoph . lib. . cap. . then be laught at my self for venturing to descend to such particularities . amongst other things he names their incarceration , or confinement to most vile and squalid habitations . his own words are very significant : accedunt etiam vilissimorum ac teterrimorum locorum habitacula , ubi aetnaei ignes , aquarum ingluvies , fulgurum & tonitruorum concussus , terrarum voragines , ubi regio lucis inops , nec radiorum solis capax , ignaráque splendoris syderum , perpetuis tenebris & noctis specie caligat . whence he would make us believe , that the subterraneous caverns of the earth are made use of for dungeons for the wicked daemons to be punished in : as if the several volcano's , such as aetna , vesuvius , hecla , and many others , especially in america , were so many prisons or houses of correction for the unruly genii . that there is a tedious restraint upon them upon villanies committed , and that intolerable , is without all question ; they being endued with corporeal sense , and that more quick and passive then ours , and therefore more subject to the highest degrees of torment . so that not onely by incarcerating them , & keeping them in by a watch , in the caverns of burning mountains , where the heat of those infernal chambers and the steam of brimstone cannot but excruciate them exceedingly , but also by commanding them into sundry other hollows of the ground , noysome by several fumes and vapours , they may torture them in several fashions and degrees , fully proportionable to the greatest crime that is in their power to commit , and farre above what the cruellest tyranny has inflicted here , either upon the guilty or innocent . but how these confinements and torments are inflicted on them , and by what degrees and relaxations , is a thing neither easy to determine , nor needful to understand . wherefore we will surcease from pursuing any further so unprofitable a subject , and come to the third general head we mentioned , which is , what the moral condition of the soul is when she has left this body . chap. xi . . three things to be considered before we come to the moral condition of the soul after death : namely , her memory of transactions in this life . . the peculiar feature and individual character of her aerial vehicle . . the retainment of the same name . . how her ill deportment here lays the train of her misery hereafter . . the unspeakable torments of conscience worse then death , and not to be avoided by dying . . of the hideous tortures of external sense on them , whose searedness of conscience may seem to make them uncapable of her lashes . . of the state of the souls of the more innocent and conscientious pagans . . of the natural accruments of after-happiness to the morally good in this life . . how the soul enjoys her actings or sufferings in this life for an indispensable cause , when she has passed to the other . . that the reason is proportionably the same in things of less consequence . . what mischief men may create to themselves in the other world by their zealous mistakes in this . . that though there were no memory after death , yet the manner of our life here may sow the seeds of the souls future happiness or misery . . for the better solution of this question , there is another first in nature to be decided ; namely , whether the soul remembers any thing of this life after death . for aristotle and cardan seem to deny it ; but i doe not remember any reasons in either that will make good their opinion . but that the contrary is true , appears from what we have already proved lib. . cap. . viz. that the immediate seat of memory is the soul her self , and that all representations with their circumstances are reserved in her , not in the spirits ( a thing which vaninus himself cannot deny ) nor in any part of the body . and that the spirits are onely a necessary instrument whereby the soul works ; which while they are too cool and gross and waterish , oblivion creeps upon her , in that measure that the spirits are thus distempered ; but the disease being chased away , and the temper of the spirits rectified , the soul forthwith recovers the memory of what things she could not well command before , as being now in a better state of activity . whence , by the . axiome , it will follow , that her memory will be rather more perfect after death , and conscience more nimble to excuse or accuse her according to her deeds here . . it is not altogether beside the purpose to take notice also , that the natural and usual figure of the souls aerial vehicle bears a resemblance with the feature of the party in this life ; it being most obvious for the plastick part ( at the command of the will to put forth into personal shape ) to fall as near to that in this life as the new state will permit . with which act the spirit of nature haply does concurre , as in the figuration of the foetus ; but with such limits as becomes the aerial congruity of life , of which we have spoke already : as also how the proper idea or figure of every soul ( though it may deflect something by the power of the parents imagination in the act of conception , or gestation , yet ) may return more near to its peculiar semblance afterwards , and so be an unconcealable note of individuality . . we will adde to all this , the retainment of the same name which the deceased had here , unless there be some special reason to change it : so that their persons will be as punctually distinguisht and circumscribed as any of ours in this life . all which things , as they are most probable in themselves , that they will thus naturally fall out , so they are very convenient for administration of justice , and keeping of order in the other state. . these things therefore premised , it will not be hard to conceive how the condition of the soul after this life depends on her moral deportment here . for memory ceasing not , conscience may very likely awake more furiously then ever ; the mind becoming a more clear judge of evil actions past , then she could be in the flesh , being now stript of all those circumstances and concurrences of things that kept her off from the opportunity of calling her self to account , or of perceiving the ugliness of her own ways . besides , there being that communication betwixt the earth and the aire , that at least the fame of things will arrive to their cognoscence that have left this life ; the after ill success of their wicked enterprises and unreasonable transactions may arm their tormenting conscience with new whips and stings , when they shall either hear , or see with their eyes , what they have unjustly built up , to run with shame to ruine , and behold all their designs come to nought , and their fame blasted upon earth . . this is the state of such souls as are capable of a sense of dislike of their past-actions : and a man would think they need no other punishment then this , if he consider the mighty power of the minde over her own vehicle , and how vulnerable it is from her self . these passions therefore of the soule that follow an ill conscience , must needs bring her aiery body into intolerable distempers , worse then death it self . nor yet can she die if she would , neither by fire , nor sword , nor any means imaginable ; no not if she should fling her self into the flames of smoaking aetna . for suppose she could keep her self so long there , as to indure that hideous pain of destroying the vital congruity of her vehicle by that sulphureous fire ; she would be no sooner released , but she would catch life again in the aire , and all the former troubles and vexations would return , besides the overplus of these pangs of death . for memory would return , and an ill conscience would return , and all those busie furies , those disordered passions which follow it . and thus it would be , though the soule should kill her self a thousand and a thousand times ; she could but pain and punish her self , not destroy her self . . but if we could suppose some mens consciences seared in the next state as well as this , ( for certainly there are that make it their business to obliterate all sense of difference of good and evil out of their minds ; & hold it to be an high strain of wit ( though it be nothing else but a piece of bestial stupidity ) to think there is no such thing as vice and vertue , and that it is a principall part of perfection , to be so degenerate as to act according to this principle without any remorse at all ; ) these men may seem to have an excellent priviledge in the other world , they being thus armour-proof against all the fiery darts of that domestick devil : as if the greatest security in the other life were , to have been compleatly wicked in this . but it is not out of the reach of meer reason and philosophy to discover , that such bold and impudent wretches as have lost all inward sense of good and evil , may there against their wills feel a lash in the outward . for the divine nemesis is excluded out of no part of the universe ; and goodness and justice , which they contemn here , will be acquainted with them in that other state , whether they will or no ▪ i speak of such course spirits that can swallow down murder , perjury , extortion , adultery , buggery , and the like gross crimes , without the least disgust , and think they have a right to satisfy their own lust , though it be by never so great injury against their neighbour . if these men should carry it with impunity , there were really no providence , and themselves were the truest prophets and faithfullest instructers of mankind , divulging the choicest arcanum they have to impart to them , namely that there is no god. but the case stands quite otherwise . for whether it be by the importunity of them they injure in this life , who may meet with them afterward , as cardan by way of objection suggests in his treatise of this subject ; or whether by a general desertion by all of the other world that are able to protect , ( such monsters as i describe being haply far less in proportion to the number of the other state , then these here are to this ; ) they will be necessarily exposed to those grim and remorsless officers of justice , who are as devoid of all sense of what is good as those that they shall punish . so that their penalty shall be inflicted from such as are of the same principles with themselves , who watch for such booties as these , and when they can catch them , dress them and adorn them according to the multifarious petulancy of their own unaccountable humours ; and taking a speciall pride and pleasure in the making and seeing creatures miserable , fall upon their prey with all eagerness and alacrity , as the hungry lions on a condemned malefactour , but with more ferocity and insultation by far . for having more wit , and , if it be possible , less goodness then the soule they thus assault , they satiate their lascivient cruelty with all manner of abuses and torments they can imagine , giving her onely so much respite as will serve to receive their new inventions with a fresher smart and more distinct pain . neither can any reason or rhetorick prevail with them , no expostulation , petition or submission . for to what purpose can it be , to expostulate about injury and violence with them whos 's deepest reach of wit is to understand this one main principle , that every ones lust , when he can act with impunity , is the most sacred and soveraign law ? or what can either petitions or submissions doe with those who hold it the most contemptible piece of fondness and filliness that is , to be intreated to recede from their own interest ? and they acknowledging no such thing as vertue and vice , make it their onely interest to please themselves in what is agreeable to their own desires : and their main pleasure is , to excruciate and torture , in the most exquisite wayes they can , as many as opportunity delivers up to their power . and thus we see how , in the other life , the proud conceited atheist may at last feel the sad inconvenience of his own practises and principles . for even those that pleased themselves in helping him forward , while he was in this life , to that high pitch of wickedness , may haply take as much pleasure to see him punisht by those grim executioners , in the other . like that sportful cruelty ( which some would appropriate to nero's person ) of causing the vestal virgins to be ravisht , and then putting them to death for being so . . but this subject would be too tedious and too tragical to insist on any longer . let us cast our eyes therefore upon a more tolerable object ; and that is the state of the soul that has , according to the best opportunity she had of knowledge , liv'd vertuously and conscientiously , in what part or age of the world soever . for though this moral innocency amongst the pagans will not amount to what our religion calls salvation ; yet it cannot but be advantageous to them in the other state , according to the several degrees thereof ; they being more or less happy or miserable , as they have been more or less vertuous in this life . for we cannot imagine why god shoud be more harsh to them in the other world then in this , nothing having happened to them to alienate his affection but death ; which was not in their power to avoid , and looks more like a punishment then a fault : though it be neither to those that are well-meaning and consciencious , and not professed contemners of the wholsome suggestions of the light of nature , but are lovers of humanity and vertue . for to these it is onely an entrance into another life , — ad amoena vireta fortunatorum nemorum , sedesque beatas , which truth i could not conceal , it being a great prejudice to divine providence to think otherwise . for to those that are free , her wayes will seem as unintelligible in overloading the simple with punishment , as in not rewarding the more perfectly righteous and illuminate . for from a fault in either they will be tempted to a misbelief of the whole , and hold no providence at all . . let there therefore be peculiar priviledges of morality , every where , to those that pass into the other state. for unless god make a stop on purpose , it will naturally follow , that memory after death suggesting nothing but what the conscience allows of , much tranquillity of minde must result from thence , and a certain health and beauty of the aerial vehicle ; also better company and converse , and more pleasant tracts and regions to inhabit . for what plotinus speaks of the extreme degrees , ennead . . lib. . cap. . is also true of the intermediate , else divine justice would be very maime . for a man , saith he , having once appropriated to himself a pravity of temper , and united with it , is known well what he is ; and according to his nature is thrust forward to what he propends to , both here , and departed hence , and so shall be pulled by the drawings of nature into a sutable place . but the good man his receptions and communications shall be of another sort , by the drawing as it were of certain hidden strings transposed and pulled by natures own fingers . so admirable is the power and order of the universe , all things being carried on in a silent way of justice , which none can avoid , and which the wicked man has no perception nor understanding of , but is drawn , knowing nothing whither in the universe he ought to be carried . but the good man both knows and goes whither he ought , and discerns before he departs hence where he must inhabit , and is full of hopes that it shall be with the gods. this large paragraph of plotinus is not without some small truth in it , if rightly limited and understood ; but seems not to reach at all the circumstances and accruments of happiness to the soul in the other state , which will naturally follow her from her transactions in this life . . for certainly , according to the several degrees of benignity of spirit , and the desire of doing good to mankinde in this life , and the more ample opportunities of doing it , the felicity of the other world is redoubled upon them ; there being so certain communication and entercourse betwixt both . and therefore they that act or suffer deeply in such causes as god will maintain in the world , and are just and holy at the bottome , ( and there are some principles that are indispensably such , which providence has countenanced both by miracles , the suffrages of the wisest men in all ages , and the common voice of nature ) those that have been the most heroical abetters and promoters of these things in this life , will naturally receive the greater contentment of minde after it , being conscious to themselves how seriously they have assisted what god will never desert , and that truth is mighty , and must at last prevail ; which they are better assured of out of the body , then when they were in it . . nor is this kinde of access of happiness to be confined onely to our furtherance of what is of the highest and most indispensable consideration here , but in proportion touches all transactions that proceed from a vertuous and good principle , whereof there are several degrees : amongst which those may not be esteemed the meanest that refer to a national good . and therefore those that , out of a natural generosity of spirit and successful fortitude in warre , have delivered their country from bondage , or have been so wise and understanding in politicks , as to have contrived wholsome laws for the greater happiness and comfort of the people , while such a nation prospers and is in being , it cannot but be an accrument of happiness to these so considerable benefactors , unless we should imagine them less generous and good in the other world , where they have the advantage of being better . and what i have said in this more notable instance , is in a degree true in things of smaller concernment , which would be infinite to rehearse . but whole nations , with their laws and orders of men , and families may fail , and therefore these accessions be cut off ; but he that laies out his pains in this life , for the carrying on such designs as will take place so long as the world endures , and must have a compleat triumph at last , such a one laies a train for an everlasting advantage in the other world , which , in despite of all the tumblings and turnings of unsetled fortune , will be sure to take effect . . but this matter requires judgement as well as heat and forwardness . for pragmatical ignorance , though accompanied with some measure of sincerity and well-meaning , may set a-foot such things in the world , or set upon record such either false , or impertinent and unseasonable , principles , as being made ill use of , may very much prejudice the cause one desires to promote ; which will be a sad spectacle for them in the other state. for though their simplicity may be pardonable , yet they will not fail to finde the ill effect of their mistake upon themselves . as he that kills a friend in stead of an enemy , though he may satisfy his conscience that rightly pleads his innocency , yet he cannot avoid the sense of shame and sorrow that naturally follows so mischievous an error . . such accruencies as these there may be to our enjoyments in the other world , from the durable traces of our transactions in this , if we have any memory of things after death , as i have already demonstrated that we have . but if we had not , but aristotles and cardan's opinion were true , yet vertue and piety will not prove onely useful for this present state . because according to our living here , we shall hereafter , by a hidden concatenation of causes , be drawn to a condition answerable to the purity or impurity of our souls in this life : that silent nemesis that passes through the whole contexture of the universe , ever fatally contriving us into such a state as we our selves have fitted our selves for by our accustomary actions . of so great consequence is it , while we have opportunity , to aspire to the best things . chap. xii . . what the spirit of nature is . . experiments that argue its real existence ; such as that of two strings tuned unisons . . sympathetick cures and tortures . . the sympathy betwixt the earthly and astral body . . monstrous births . . the attraction of the loadstone and roundness of the sun and stars . . we had now quite finished our discourse , did i not think it convenient to answer a double expectation of the reader . the one is touching the spirit of nature , the other the producing of objections that may be made against our concluded assention of the souls immortality . for as for the former , i can easily imagine he may well desire a more punctual account of that principle i have had so often recourse to , then i have hitherto given , and will think it fit that i should somewhere more fully explain what i mean by the terms , and shew him my strongest grounds why i conceive there is any such being in the world. to hold him therefore no longer in suspence , i shall doe both in this place . the spirit of nature therefore , according to that notion i have of it , is , a substance incorporeal , but without sense and animadversion , pervading the whole matter of the universe , and exercising a plastical power therein according to the sundry predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon , raising such phaenomena in the world , by directing the parts of the matter and their motion , as cannot be resolved into meer mechanical powers . this rude description may serve to convey to any one a conception determinate enough of the nature of the thing . and that it is not a meer notion , but a real being , besides what i have occasionally hinted already ( and shall here again confirm by new instances ) there are several other considerations may perswade us . . the first whereof shall be concerning those experiments of sympathetick pains , asswagements and cures , of which there are many examples , approved by the most scrupulous pretenders to sobriety and judgment , and of all which i cannot forbear to pronounce , that i suspect them to come to pass by some such power as makes strings that be tuned unisons ( though on several instruments ) the one being touched , the other to tremble and move very sensibly , and to cast off a straw or pin or any such small thing laid upon it . which cannot be resolved into any mechanical principle , though some have ingeniously gone about it . for before they attempted to shew the reason , why that string that is not unison to that which is struck should not leap and move , as it doth that is , they should have demonstrated , that by the meer vibration of the aire that which is unison can be so moved ; for if it could , these vibrations would not fail to move other bodies more movable by farre then the string it self that is thus moved . as for example , if one hung loose near the string that is struck a small thred of silk or an hair with some light thing at the end of it , they must needs receive those reciprocal vibrations that are communicated to the unison string at a far greater distance , if the meer motion of the material aire caused the subsultation of the string tuned unison . which yet is contrary to experience . besides that , if it were the meer vibration of the aire that caused this tremor in the unison string , the effect would not be considerable , unless both the strings lay well-nigh in the same plane , and that the vibration of the string that is struck be made in that plane they both lie in . but let the string be struck so as to cut the plane perpendicularly by its tremulous excursions , or let both the strings be in two several planes at a good distance above one another , the event is much-what the same , though the aire cannot rationally be conceived to vibrate backwards and forwards , but well-nigh in the very planes wherein the strings are moved . all which things do clearly shew , that pure corporeal causes cannot produce this effect : and that therefore we must suppose , that both the strings are united with some one incorporeal being , which has a different unity and activity from matter , but yet a sympathy therewith ; which affecting this immaterial being , makes it affect the matter in the same manner in another place , where it does symbolize with that other in some predisposition or qualification , as these two strings doe in being tuned unisons to one another : and this , without sending any particles to the matter it does thus act upon ; as my thought of moving of my toe being represented within my brain , by the power of my soul i can , without sending spirits into my toe , but onely by making use of them that are there , move my toe as i please , by reason of that unity and activity that is peculiar to my soul as a spiritual substance that pervades my whole body . whence i would conclude also , that there is some such principle as we call the spirit of nature , or the inferiour soul of the world , into which such phaenomena as these are to be resolved . . and i account sympathetick cures , pains and asswagements to be such . as for example , when in the use of those magnetick remedies , as some call them , they can make the wound dolorously hot or chill at a great distance , or can put it into perfect case , this is not by any agency of emissary atoms . for these hot atoms would cool sufficiently in their progress to the party through the frigid aire ; and the cold atoms , if they could be so active as to dispatch so far , would be warm enough by their journey in the summer sun. the inflammations also of the cowes udder by the boyling over of the milk into the fire , the scalding of mens entrails at a distance by the burning of their excrements , with other pranks of the like nature , these cannot be rationally resolved into the recourse of the spirits of men or kine mingled with fiery atoms , and so re-entring the parts thus affected , because the minuteness of those toms argues the suddainness of their extinction , as the smallest wires made red hot soonest cool . to all which you may adde that notable example of the wines working when the vines are in the flower , and that this sympathetick effect must be from the vines of that country from which they came : whence these exhalations of the vineyards must spread as far as from spain and the canaries to england , and by the same reason must reach round about every way as far from the canaries , besides their journey upwards into the aire . so that there will be an hemisphere of vineall atoms of an incredible extent , unless they part themselves into trains , and march onely to those places whither their wines are carried . but what corporeal cause can guide them thither ? which question may be made of other phaenomena of the like nature . whence again it will be necessary to establish the principle i drive at , though the effects were caused by the transmission of atoms . . the notablest examples of this mundane sympathy are in histories more uncertain and obscure , and such as , though i have been very credibly informed yet , as i have already declared my self , i dare onely avouch as possible , viz. the souls of men leaving their bodies , and appearing in shapes suppose of cats , pigeons , wezels , and sometimes of men , and that whatever hurt befalls them in these astral bodies , as the paracelsians love to call them , the same is inflicted upon their terrestrial lying in the mean time in their beds or on the ground . as if their astral bodies be scalded , wounded , have the back broke , the same certainly happens to their earthly bodies . which things if they be true , in all likelihood they are to be resolved into this principle we speak of , and that the spirit of nature is snatcht into consent with the imagination of the soules in these astral bodies or aiery vehicles . which act of imagining must needs be strong in them , it being so set on and assisted by a quick and sharp pain and fright in these scaldings , woundings , and stroaks on the back ; some such thing happening here as in women with child , whose fancies made keen by a suddain fear , have deprived their children of their arms , yea and of their heads too , as also appears by two remarkable stories sr. kenelme digby relates in his witty and eloquent discourse of the cure of wounds by the powder of sympathy , besides what we have already recited out of helmont . see lib. . cap. . sect. , , . . which effects i suppose to be beyond the power of any humane fancy unassisted by some more forceable agent ; as also that prodigious birth he mentions of a woman of carcassona , who by her overmuch sporting and pleasing her self with an ape while she was with child , brought forth a monster exactly of that shape . and if we should conclude with that learned writer , that it was a real ape , it is no more wonderfull , nor so much , as that birth of a crabfish or lobster we have above mentioned out of fortunius licetus ; as we might also other more usual , though no less monstrous births for the wombs of women to bear . of which the soul of the mother cannot be suspected to be the cause , she not so much as being the efformer of her own foetus , as that judicious naturalist dr. harvey has determined . and if the mothers soule could be the efformer of the foetus , in all reason her plastick power would be ever particular and specifick as the soul it self is particular . what remains therefore but the universal soule of the world or spirit of nature that can doe these feats ? who , vertumnus like , is ready to change his own activity and the yielding matter into any mode and shape indifferently as occasion engages him , and so to prepare an edifice , at least the more rude stroaks and delineaments thereof , for any specifick soule whatsoever , and in any place where the matter will yield to his operations . but the time of the arrival thither of the particular guest it is intended for , though we cannot say how soon it is , yet we may be sure it is not later then a clear discovery of sensation as well as vegetation and organization in the matter . . the attraction of the load-stone seems to have some affinity with these instances of sympathy . this mystery des-cartes has explained with admirable artifice as to the immediate corporeal causes thereof , to wit , those wreathed particles which he makes to pass certain screw-pores in the load-stone and iron . but how the efformation of these particles is above the reach of the meer mechanical powers in matter , as also the exquisite direction of their motion , whereby they make their peculiar vortex he describes about the earth from pole to pole , and thread an incrustated star , passing in a right line in so long a journey as the diameter thereof without being swung to the sides ; how these things , i say , are beyond the powers of matter , i have fully enough declared & proved in a large letter of mine to v. c. and therefore that i may not actum agere , shall forbear speaking any farther thereof in this place . to which you may adde , that meer corporeal motion in matter , without any other guide , would never so much as produce a round sun or star , of which figure notwithstanding des-cartes acknowledges them to be . but my reasons why it cannot be effected by the simple mechanical powers of matter , i have particularly set down in my letters to that excellent philosopher . chap. xiii . . that the descent of heavy bodies argues the existence of the spirit of nature , because else they would either hang in the aire as they are placed , . or would be diverted from a perpendicular as they fall near a plate of metall set stooping . . that the endeavour of the aether or aire from the centre to the circumference is not the cause of gravity , against mr. hobbs . . a full confutation of mr. hobbs his opinion . . an ocular demonstration of the absurd consequence thereof . . an absolute demonstration that gravity cannot be the effect of meer mechanical powers . . the latitude of the operations of the spirit of nature , how large and where bounded . . the reason of its name . . it s grand office of transmitting souls into rightly-prepared matter . . and a farther confirmation that i am not mistaken therein , is what we daily here experience upon earth , which is the descending of heavy bodies , as we call them . concerning the motion whereof i agree with des-cartes in the assignation of the immediate corporeal cause , to wit , the aetherial matter , which is so plentifully in the air over it is in grosser bodies ; but withall doe vehemently surmise , that there must be some immaterial cause , such as we call the spirit of nature or inferiour soule of the world , that must direct the motions of the aetherial particles to act upon these grosser bodies to drive them towards the earth . for that surplusage of agitation of the globular particles of the aether above what they spend in turning the earth about , is carried every way indifferently , according to his own concession ; by which motion the drops of liquors are formed into round figures , as he ingeniously concludes . from whence it is apparent , that a bullet of iron , silver or gold placed in the aire is equally assalted on all sides by the occursion of these aethereal particles , and therefore will be moved no more downwards then upwards , but hang in aequilibrio , as a piece of cork rests on the water , where there is neither winde nor stream , but is equally plaied against by the particles of water on all sides . . nor can the endeavour of the celestial matter from the centre to the circumference take place here . for besides that des-cartes , the profoundest master of mechanicks , has declin'd that way himself ( though mr. hobbs has taken it up , ) it would follow , that near the poles of the earth there would be no descent of heavy bodies at all , and in the very clime we live in none perpendicular . to say nothing how this way will not salve the union of that great water that adheres to the body of the moon . . adde unto all this , that if the motion of gross bodies were according to meer mechanical laws , a bullet , suppose of lead or gold , cast up into the aire , would never descend again , but would persist in a rectilinear motion . for it being farre more solid then so much aire & aether put together as would fill its place , and being moved with no less swiftness then that wherewith the earth is carried about in twenty four hours , it must needs break out in a straight line through the thin aire , and never return again to the earth , but get away as a comet does out of a vortex . and that de facto a canon bullet has been shot so high that it never fell back again upon the ground , des-cartes does admit of as a true experiment . of which , for my own part , i can imagine no other unexceptionable reason , but that at a certain distance the spirit of nature in some regards leaves the motion of matter to the pure laws of mechanicks , but within other bounds checks it , whence it is that the water does not swill out of the moon . . now if the pure mechanick powers in matter and corporeal motion will not amount to so simple a phaenomenon as the falling of a stone to the earth , how shall we hope they will be the adaequate cause of sundry sorts of plants and other things , that have farre more artifice and curiosity then the direct descent of a stone to the ground . nor are we beaten back again by this discovery into that dotage of the confounded schools , who have indued almost every different object of our senses with a distinct substantial form , and then puzzle themselves with endless scrupulosities about the generation , corruption , and mixtion of them . for i affirm with des-cartes , that nothing affects our senses , but such variations of matter as are made by difference of motion , figure , situation of parts , &c. but i dissent from him in this , in that i hold it is not meer and pure mechanical motion that causes all these sensible modifications in matter , but that many times the immediate director thereof is this spirit of nature ( i speak of ) one and the same every where , and acting alwaies alike upon like occasions , as a clear-minded man and of a solid judgment gives alwaies the same verdict in the same circumstances . for this spirit of nature intermedling with the efformation of the foetus of animals ( as i have already shewn more then once ) where notwithstanding there seems not so much need , there being in them a more particular agent for that purpose ; 't is exceeding rational that all plants and flowers of all sorts ( in which we have no argument to prove there is any particular souls ) should be the effects of this universal soule of the world. which hypothesis , besides that it is most reasonable in it self , according to that ordinary axiome , frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora , is also very serviceable for the preventing many hard problems about the divisibility of the soules of plants , their transmutations into other species , the growing of slips , and the like . for there is one soule ready every where to pursue the advantages of prepared matter . which is the common and onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of all plantal appearances , or of whatever other phaenomena there be , greater or smaller , that exceed the pure mechanical powers of matter . we except onely men and beasts , who having all of them the capacity of some sort of enjoyments or other , it was fit they should have particular souls for the multiplying of the sense of those enjoyments which the transcendent wisdome of the creatour has contrived . . i have now plainly enough set down what i mean by the spirit of nature , and sufficiently proved its existence . out of what has been said may be easily conceived why i give it this name , it being a principle that is of so great influence and activity in the nascency as i may so call it , & coalescency of things : and this not onely in the production of plants , with all other concretions of an inferiour nature , and yet above the meer mechanical lawes of matter ; but also in respect of the birth of animals , whereunto it is preparatory and assistent . i know not whether i may entitle it also to the guidance of animals in the chiefest of those actions which we usually impute to natural instinct . amongst which none so famous as the birds making their nests , and particularly the artificial structure of the martins nests under the arches of church-windowes . in which there being so notable a design unknown to themselves , and so small a pleasure to present sense , it looks as if they were actuated by another , inspired and carried away in a natural rapture by this spirit of nature to doe they know not what , though it be really a necessary provision and accommodation for laying their eggs , and hatching their young , in the efformation whereof this inferiour soule of the world is so rationally conceived to assist and intermeddle : and therefore may the better be supposed to over-power the fancy , and make use of the members of the birds to build these convenient receptacles , as certain shops to lay up the matter whereon she intends to work , namely the eggs of these birds whom she thus guides in making of their nests . . but this argument being too lubricous , i will not much insist upon it . the most notable of those offices that can be assigned to the spirit of nature , and that sutably to his name , is the translocation of the souls of beasts into such matter as is most fitting for them , he being the common proxenet or contractor of all natural matches and marriages betwixt forms and matter , if we may also speak metaphors as well as aristotle , whose aphorisme it is , that materia appetit formam ut foemina virum . this spirit therefore may have not onely the power of directing the motion of matter at hand , but also of transporting of particular souls and spirits in their state of silence and inactivity to such matter as they are in a fitness to catch life in again . which transportation or transmission may very well be at immense distances , the effect of this sympathy and coactivity being so great in the working of wines , as has been above noted , though a thing of less concernment . whence , to conclude , we may look upon this spirit of nature as the great quarter-master-general of divine providence , but able alone , without any under-officers , to lodge every soule according to her rank and merit whenever she leaves the body : and would prove a very serviceable hypothesis for those that fancy the praeexistence of humane souls ; to declare how they may be conveighed into bodies here , be they at what distance they will before ; and how matter haply may be so fitted , that the best of them may be fetcht from the purest aethereal regions into an humane body , without serving any long apprentiship in the intermediate aire : as also how the souls of brutes , though the earth were made perfectly inept for the life of any animal , need not lye for ever useless in the universe . but such speculations as these are of so vast a comprehension and impenetrable obscurity , that i cannot have the confidence to dwell any longer thereon ; especially they not touching so essentially our present designe , and being more fit to fill a volume themseves , then to be comprised within the narrow limits of my now almost-finish'd discourse . chap. xiv . . objections against the souls immortality from her condition in infancy , old age , sleep and sicknesses . . other objections taken from experiments that seem to prove her discerpibility . . as also from the seldome appearing of the souls of the deceased ; . and from our natural fear of death . . a subterfuge of the adverso party , in supposing but one soule common to all creatures . . an answer concerning the littleness of the soule in infancy : . as also concerning the weakness of her intellectuals then , and in old age . . that sleep does not at all argue the souls mortality , but rather illustrate her immortality . . an answer to the objection from apoplexies and catalepsies : . as also to that from madness . . that the various depravations of her intellectual faculties doe no more argue her mortality , then the worser modifications of matter its natural annihilability . and why god created souls sympathizing with matter . . as for the objections that are usually made against the immortality of the soule ; to propound them all , were both tedious and useless , there being scarce above one in twenty that can appear of any moment to but an indifferent wit and judgment . but the greatest difficulties that can be urged i shall bring into play , that the truth we doe maintain may be the more fully cleared , and the more firmly believed . the most material objections that i know against the souls immortality , are these five . the first is from the consideration of the condition of the soule in infancy , and old age , as also in madness , sleep , and apoplexies . for if we doe but observe the great difference of our intellectual operations in infancy and dotage from what they are when we are in the prime of our years , and how that our wit grows up by degrees , flourishes for a time , and at last decayes , keeping the same pace with the changes that age and years bring into our body , which observes the same lawes that flowers and plants ; what can we suspect , but that the soule of man , which is so magnificently spoken of amongst the learned , is nothing else but a temperature of body , and that it growes and spreads with it , both in bigness and virtues , and withers and dies as the body does , or at least that it does wholly depend on the body in its operations , and therefore that there is no sense nor perception of any thing after death ? and when the soule has the best advantage of years , she is not then exempted from those eclipses of the powers of the minde that proceed from sleep , madness , apoplexies , and other diseases of that nature . all which shew her condition , whatever more exalted wits surmise of her , that she is but a poor mortal and corporeal thing . . the second objection is taken from such experiments as are thought to prove the soule divisible in the grossest sense , that is to say , discerpible into pieces . and it seems a clear case in those more contemptible animals which are called insects , especially the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle describes them , and doth acknowledge that being cut into pieces , each segment will have its motion and sense apart to it self . the most notable instance of this kind is in the scolopendra , whose parts aristotle ( histor. animal . lib. . cap. . ) affirmes to live a long time divided , and to run backwards and forwards ; and therefore he will have it to look like many living creatures growing together , rather then one single one , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . de juvent . & senect . cap. . but yet he will not afford them the priviledge of plants , whose slips will live and grow , being set in the earth . but the instances that belong to this objection ascend higher , for they pretend that the parts of perfect animals will also live asunder . there are two main instances thereof . the one , that of the eagle fromondus mentions , whose head being chopt off by an angry clown , for quarrelling with his dog , the body flew over the barn near the place of this rude execution . this was done at fromondus his fathers house : nor is the story improbable , if we consider what ordinarily happens in pigeons and ducks , when their heads are cut off . the other instance is , of a malefactour beheaded at antwerp , whose head when it had given some few jumps into the crowd , and a dog fell a licking the blood , caught the dogs eare in its teeth , and held it so fast , that he being frighted ran away with the mans head hanging at his eare , to the great astonishment and confusion of the people . this was told fromondus by an eye-witness of the fact . from which two examples they think may be safely inferred , that the souls of men , as well as of the more perfect kinde of brutes , are also discerpible . that example in the same authour out of josephus acosta , if true , yet is finally to this purpose . for the speaking of the sacrificed captive , when his heart was cut out , may be a further confirmation indeed that the brain is the seat of the common sense , but no argument of the divisibility of the soule , she remaining at that time entire in the body , after the cutting out of the heart , whose office it is to afford spirits , which were not so far yet dissipated , but that they sufficed for that suddain operation of life . . the third objection is from the seldome appearāce of the souls of the deceased . for if they can at all appear , why do they not oftner ? if they never appear , it is a strong suspicion that they are not at all in being . . the fourth is from the fear of death , and an inward down-bearing sense in us at some times , that we are utterly mortal , and that there is nothing to be expected after this life . . the fifth and last is rather a subterfuge then an objection , that there is but one common soul in all men and beasts , that operates according to the variety of animals and persons it does actuate and vivificate , bearing a seeming particularity according to the particular pieces of matter it enforms , but is one in all ; and that this particularity of body being lost , this particular man or beast is lost , and so every living creature is properly and intirely mortal . these are the reallest and most pertinent objections i could ever meet withall , or can excogitate , concerning the souls immortality : to which i shall answer in order . . and to the first , which seems to be the shrewdest , i say , that neither the contractedness of the soule in infancy , nor the weakness of her intellectual operations either then or in extream old age , are sufficient proofs of her corporeity or mortality . for what wonder is it that the soule , faln into this low and fatal condition , where she must submit to the course of nature , and the lawes of other animals that are generated here on earth , should display her self by degrees , from smaller dimensions to the ordinary size of men ; whenas this faculty of contracting and dilating of themselves is in the very essence and notion of all spirits ? as i have noted already lib. . cap. . so she does but that leisurely and naturally now , being subjected to the lawes of this terrestrial fate , which she does , exempt from this condition , suddainly and freely : not growing by juxta-position of parts , or intromission of matter , but inlarging of her self with the body meerly by the dilatation of her own substance , which is one and the same alwaies . . as for the debility of her intellectuals in infancy and old age , this consideration has less force to evince her a meer corporeal essence then the former , and touches not our principles at all , who have provided for the very worst surmise concerning the operations of the minde , in acknowledging them , of my own accord , to depend very intimately on the temper and tenour of the souls immediate instrument , the spirits ; which being more torpid and watry in children and old men , must needs hinder her in such operations as require another constitution of spirits then is usually in age and childhood : though i will not profess my self absolutely confident , that the soule cannot act without all dependence on matter . but if it does not , which is most probable , it must needs follow , that its operations will keep the lawes of the body it is united with . whence it is demonstrable how necessary purity and temperance is to preserve and advance a mans parts . . as for sleep , which the dying philosopher called the brother of death , i doe not see how it argues the souls mortality , more then a mans inability to wake again : but rather helps us to conceive , how that though the stounds and agonies of death seem utterly to take away all the hopes of the souls living after them ; yet upon a recovery of a quicker vehicle of aire , she may suddainly awake into fuller and fresher participation of life then before . but i may answer also , that sleep being onely the ligation of the outward senses , and the interception of motion from the external world , argues no more any radical defect of life and immortality in the soul , then the having a mans sight bounded within the walls of his chamber by shuts , does argue any blindness in the immured party : who haply is busy reading by candle-light , and that with ease , so small a print as would trouble an ordinary sight to read it by day . and that the soule is not perpetually employed in sleep , is very hard for any to demonstrate ; we so often remembring our dreams meerly by occasions , which if they had not occurred , we had never suspected we had dreamed that night . . which answer , as also the former , is applicable to apoplexies , catalepsies , and whatever other diseases partake of their nature , and witness how nimble the soule is to act upon the suppeditation of due matter , and how life and sense and memory and reason , and all return , upon return of the fitting temper of the spirits , suitable to that vital congruity that then is predominant in the soule . . and as for madness , there are no apprehensions so frantick but are arguments of the souls immortality , not as they are frantick , but as apprehensions . for matter cannot apprehend any thing , either wildly or soberly , as i have already sufficiently demonstrated . and it is as irrational for a man to conclude , that the depraved operations of the soule argue her mortality , as that the worser tempers , or figures , or whatever more contemptible modifications there are of matter , should argue its annihilation by the meer power of nature ; which no man that understands himself will ever admit . the soule indeed is indued with several faculties , and some of them very fatally passive , such as those are that have the nearest commerce with matter , and are not so absolutely in her own power , but that her levity and mindlesness of the divine light may bring her into subjection to them ; as all are , in too sad a sort , that are incarcerate in this terrestrial body , but some have better luck then other some in this wild and audacious ramble from a more secure state . of which apostasy if there be some that are made more tragick examples then others of their stragling from their soveraign happiness , it is but a merciful admonition of the danger we all have incurr'd , by being where we are ; and very few so wel escaped , but that if they could examine their desires , designs , and transactions here , by that truth they were once masters of , they would very freely confess , that the mistakes and errours of their life are not inferiour to , but of worse consequence then , those of natural fools and mad-men , whom all either hoot at for their folly , or else lament their misery . and questionless the souls of men , if they were once reduced to that sobriety they are capable of , would be as much ashamed of such desires and notions they are now wholly engaged in , as any mad-man , reduced to his right senses , is of those freaks he played when he was out of his wits . . but the variety of degrees , or kindes of depravation in the intellective faculties of the soule , her substance being indiscerpible , cannot at all argue her mortality , no more then the different modifications of matter the annihilability thereof , as i have already intimated . nor need a man trouble himself how there should be such a sympathy betwixt body and soule , when it is so demonstrable that there is . for it is sufficient to consider , that it is their immediate nature so to be by the will and ordinance of him that has made all things . and that if matter has no sense nor cogitation it self , as we have demonstrated it has not , it had been in vain , if god had not put forth into being that order of immaterial creatures which we call souls , vitally unitable with the matter : which therefore , according to the several modifications thereof , will necessarily have a different effect upon the soule , the soule abiding still as unperishable as the matter that is more mutable then she . for the matter is dissipable , but she utterly indiscerpible . chap. xv. . an answer to the experiment of the scolopendra cut into pieces . . and to the flying of an headless eagle over a barn , as also to that of the malefactours head biteing a dog by the eare . . a superaddition of a difficulty concerning monsters born with two or more heads and but one body and heart . . a solution of the difficulty . . an answer touching the seldome appearing of the souls of the deceased : . as also concerning the fear of death ; . and a down-bearing sense that sometimes so forcibly obtrudes upon us the belief of the souls mortality . . of the tragical pompe and dreadful praeludes of death , with some corroborative considerations against such sad spectacles . . that there is nothing really sad and miserable in the universe , unless to the wicked and impious . . nor doe those instances in the second objection prove any thing to the contrary , as if the soule it self were really divisible . the most forcible example is that of the scolopendra , the motion of the divided parts being so quick and nimble , and so lasting . but it is easy to conceive , that the activity of the spirits in the mechanical conformation of the pieces of that insect , till motion has dissipated them , will as necessarily make them run up and down , as gunpowder in a squib will cause its motion . and therefore the soule of the scolopendra will be but in one of those segments , and uncertain in which , but likely according as the segments be made . for cut a wasps head off from the body , the soule retires out of the head into the body ; but cut her in the wast , leaving the upper part of the body to the head , the soule then retires into that forepart of the wasp . and therefore it is no wonder that the head being cut off , the body of the wasp will fly and flutter so long , the soule being still in it , and haply conferring to the direction of the spirits for motion , not out of sense , but from custome or nature : as we walk not thinking of it , or play of the lute though our minde be running on something else , as i have noted before . but when the wast is left to the head , it is less wonder , for then the animal may not be destitute of sense and fancy , to conveigh the spirits to move the wings . . the former case will fit that of the headless eagle that flew over the barn. but the mans head that catcht the dog by the ear would have more difficulty in it ( it not seeming so perfectly referrible to the latter case of the wasp ) did not we consider how hard the teeth will set in a swoon . as this head therefore was gasping while the dog was licking the blood thereof , his ear chanced to dangle into the mouth of it , which closing together as the ear hung into it , pinched it so fast that it could not fall off . besides it is not altogether improbable , especially considering that some men die upwards , and some downwards , that the soul may , as it happens , sometimes retire into the head , and sometimes into the body , in these decollations , according as they are more or less replenisht with spirits , and by the lusty jumping of this head , it should seem it was very full of them . many such things as these also may happen by the activity of the spirit of nature , who , its like , may be as busy in the ruines of animals , while the spirits last , as it is in the fluid rudiments of them when they are generated . but the former answers being sufficient , it is needless to enlarge our selves upon this new theme . . to this second objection might have been added such monstrous births , as seem to imply the perceptive part of the soul divided actually into two or more parts . for aristotle seems expresly to affirm , de generat . animal . lib. . cap. . that that monstrous birth that has two hearts is two animals , but that which has but one heart is but one . from whence it will follow that there is but one soul also in that one-hearted monster , though it have two or more heads ; whence it is also evident , that the perceptive part of that one soule must be actually divided into two or more . this opinion of aristotle sennertus subscribes to , and therefore conceives that that monstrous child that was borne at emmaus , in theodosius his time , with two heads and two hearts , was two persons ; but that other borne anno . with two heads & but one heart , who lived till he was a man , was but one person . which he conceives appears the plainer , in that both the heads professed their agreement perpetually to the same actions , in that they had the same appetite , the same hunger and thirst , spoke alike , had the same desire to lye with their wife , and of all other acts of exonerating nature . but for that other that had two hearts , and was divided to the navel , there was not this identity of affection and desire , but sometimes one would have a mind to a thing , and sometimes another , sometimes they would play with one another , and sometimes fight . see sennert . epitom . scient . natural . lib. . cap. . . but i answer , and first to aristotles authority , that he does not so confidently assert , that every monster that has but one heart is but one animal . for his words run thus ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . where he onely speaks hypothetically , not peremptorily , that the heart is that part where the first principle of life is , and from which the rest of life in soul or body is to be derived . for indeed he makes it elswhere the seat of common sense , but that it is a mistake we have already demonstrated , and himself seems not confident of his own opinion ; and therefore we may with the less offence decline it , and affirm ( and that without all hesitancy ) that a monster is either one or more animals according to the number of the heads of it , and that there are as many distinct souls as there are heads in a monstrous birth . but from the heads downwards the body being but one , and the heart but one , that there must needs be a wonderful exact concord in the sense of affections in these heads , they having their blood and spirits from one fountain , and one common seat of their passions and desires . but questionless whenever one head winked , he could not then see by the eyes of the other ; or if one had pricked one of these heads , the other would not have felt it : though whatever was inflicted below , it is likely they both felt alike , both the souls equally acting the body of this monster , but the heads being actuated by them onely in several . which is a sufficient answer to sennertus . . the weakness of the third objection is manifest , in that it takes away the existence of all spirits , as well as the souls of the deceased . of whose being notwithstanding none can doubt that are not dotingly incredulous . we say therefore that the souls of men , being in the same condition that other spirits are , appear sometimes , though but seldome . the cause in both being , partly the difficulty of bringing their vehicles to an unnatural consistency , and partly they having no occasion so to doe , and lastly it being not permitted to them to doe as they please , or to be where they have a minde to be . . as for the fear of death , and that down-bearing sense that sometimes so uncontroulably suggests to us that we are wholly mortal : to the first i answer , that it is a necessary result of our union with the body , and if we should admit it one of the imperfections or infirmities we contract by being in this state , it were a solid answer . and therefore this fear and presage of ill in death is no argument that there is any ill in it , nor any more to be heeded then the predictions of any fanatical fellow that will pretend to prophecie . but besides this , it is fitting that there should be in us this fear and abhorrency , to make us keep this station providence has plac't us in ; otherwise every little pet would invite us to pack our selves out of this world , and try our fortunes in the other , and so leave the earth to be inhabited onely by beasts , whenas it is to be ordered and cultivated by men. . to the second i answer , that such peremptory conclusions are nothing but the impostures of melancholy , or some other dull and fulsome distempers of blood that corrupt the imagination ; but that fancy proves nothing , by axiome . and that though the soul enthroned in her aethereal vehicle be a very magnificent thing , full of divine love , majesty and tranquillity ; yet in this present state she is inclogg'd and accloy'd with the foulness and darkness of this terrestrial body , she is subject to many fears and jealousies , and other disturbing passions , whose objects though but a mockery , yet are a real disquiet to her minde in this her captivity and imprisonment . which condition of hers is lively set out by that incomparable poet and platonist , aeneid . . where , comparing that more free and pure state of our souls in their celestial or fiery vehicles with their restraint in this earthly dungeon , he makes this short and true description of the whole matter . igneus est ollis , vigor , & coelestis origo seminibus ; quantū non noxia corpora tardant , terrenique hebetant artus , moribundáque membra : hinc metuunt , cupiúntque , dolent , gaudéntque , nec auras respiciunt , claust tenebris & carcere caeco . to this sense , a fiery vigour from an heavenly source is in these seeds , so far as the dull force of noxious bodies does not them retard , in heavy earth and dying limbs imbar'd . hence , fool'd with fears , foul lusts , sharp grief , vain joy , in this dark gaol they low and groveling lie , nor with one glance of their oblivious minde look back to that free aire they left behinde . this is the sad estate of the more deeply-lapsed souls upon earth ; who are so wholly mastered by the motions of the body , that they are carried headlong into an assent to all the suggestions and imaginations that it so confidently obtrudes upon them ; of which that of our mortality is not the weakest . but such melancholy fancies , that would beare us down so peremptorily that we are utterly extinct in death , are no more argument thereof , then those of them that have been perswaded they were dead already , while they were alive ; and therefore would not eat , because they thought the dead never take any repast , till they were cheated into an appetite , by seeing some of their friends disguised in winding-sheets feed heartily at the table , whose example then they thought fit to follow , and so were kept alive . . i cannot but confess that the tragick pomp and preparation to dying , that layes wast the operations of the minde , putting her into fits of dotage or fury , making the very visage look ghastly and distracted , and at the best sadly pale and consumed , as if life and soule were even almost quite extinct , cannot but imprint strange impressions even upon the stoutest minde , and raise suspicions that all is lost in so great a change . but the knowing and benign spirit though he may flow in tears at so dismal a spectacle , yet it does not at all suppress his hope and confidence of the souls safe passage into the other world ; and is no otherwise moved then the more passionate spectatours of some cunningly-contrived tragedy , where persons whose either vertue , or misfortunes , or both , have wonne the affection of the beholders , are at last seen wallowing in their blood , and after some horrid groans and gasps , lye stretcht stark dead upon the stage : but being once drawn off , find themselves well and alive , and are ready to tast a cup of wine with their friends in the attiring room , to solace themselves really , after their fictitious pangs of death , and leave the easy-natur'd multitude to indulge to their soft passions for an evil that never befell them . . the fear and abhorrency therefore we have of death , and the sorrow that accompanies it , is no argument but that we may live after it , and are but due affections for those that are to be spectatours of the great tragick-comedy of the world ; the whole plot whereof being contrived by infinite wisdome and goodness , we cannot but surmise that the most sad representations are but a shew , but the delight real to such as are not wicked and impious ; and that what the ignorant call evil in this universe is but as the shadowy stroaks in a fair picture , or the mournful notes in musick , by which the beauty of the one is more lively and express , and the melody of the other more pleasing and melting . chap. xvi . . that that which we properly are is both sensitive and intellectual . . what is the true notion of a soul being one. . that if there be but one soule in the world , it is both rational and sensitive . . the most favourable representation of their opinion that hold but one. . a confutation of the foregoing representation . . a reply to the confutation . . an answer to the reply . . that the soule of man is not properly any ray either of god or the soule of the world. . and yet if she were so , it would be no prejudice to her immortality : whence the folly of pomponatius is noted . . a further animadversion upon pomponatius his folly , in admitting a certain number of remote intelligencies , and denying particular immaterial substances in men and brutes . . as for the last objection , or rather subterfuge , of such as have no minde to finde their souls immortal , pretending indeed they have none distinct from that one universal soule of the world , whereby notwithstanding they acknowledge that the operations we are conscious to our selves of , of reason and other faculties , cannot be without one ; we shall easily discover either the falsness or unserviceableness of this conceit for their design , who would so fain slink out of being , after the mad freaks they have played in this life . for it is manifestly true , that a man is most properly that , whatever it is , that animadverts in him ; for that is such an operation that no being but himself can doe it for him . and that which animadverts in us does not onely perceive and take notice of its intellectual and rational operations , but of all sensations whatsoever that we are conscious of , whether they terminate in our body or on some outward object . from whence it is plain , that that which we are is both sensitive and intellectual . . now if we rightly consider what is comprehended in the true and usual notion of the unity of a soule , it is very manifest that the animadversive thereof is but one , and that there is no sensation nor perception of any kinde in the soule , but what is communicated to and perceived by the whole animadversive . . which things being premised , it necessarily follows , that if there be but one soule in the world , that soule is both rational and sensitive , and that there cannot be any pain , pleasure or speculation , in one mans soule , but the same would be in all , nay that a man cannot lash a dog , or spur a horse , but himself would feel the smart of it : which is flatly against all experience , and therefore palpably false . of this wilde supposition i have spoken so fully in my poems , that i need adde nothing here in this place , having sufficiently confuted it there . . but not to cut them so very short , let us imagine the most favourable contrivance of their opinion we can , and conceit that though this soule of the world be of it self every where alike , and that the animadversive faculty is in it all in like vigour ; yet it being engaged in severally-tempered bodies , animadversion is confin'd to that part of matter onely which it actuates , and is stupid and unsensible of all other operations , whether sensitive or intellectual , that are transacted by her without , in other persons : a thing very hard to conceive , and quite repugnant to the idea of the unity of a soule , not to be conscious to her self of her own perceptions . but let it pass for a possibility , and let us suppose that one part of the soule of the world informs one man , and another another , or at least some vital ray there , yet notwithstanding , this opinion will be incumbred with very harsh difficulties . for if several parts of the soul of the world inform several parts of the matter , when a man changes his place , he either tears one part of the soul of the world from another , or else changes souls every step ; and therefore it is a wonder that he changes not his wits too , and loses his memory . unless they will say that every part of the soul of the world , upon the application of a new body , acts just so in it as that part acted which it left , if there be no change or alteration thereof : whence every part of the soul of the world will have the self-same thoughts , errours , truths , remembrances , pains , pleasures , that the part had the body newly left . so that a man shall always fancy it is himself , whereever he goes , though this self be nothing but the soul of the world acting in such a particular body , and retaining and renewing to her self the memory of all accidents , impressions , motions and cogitations , she had the perception of in this particular piece of organized matter . this is the most advantageous representation of this opinion that can possibly be excogitated . but i leave it to those that love to amuse themselves in such mysteries , to try if they can make any good sense of it . . and he that can fancy it as a thing possible , i would demand of him , upon this supposition , who himself is ; and he cannot deny but that he is a being perceptive and animadversive , which the body is not , and therefore that himself is not the body ; wherefore he is that in him which is properly called soul : but not its operations , for the former reason ; because they perceive nothing , but the soul perceives them in exerting them : nor the faculties , for they perceive not one anothers operations ; but that which is a mans self perceives them all : wherefore he must say he is the soul ; and there being but one soul in the world , he must be forc'd to vaunt himself to be the soul of the world. but this boasting must suddainly fall again , if he but consider that the soul of the world will be every mans personal ipseity as well as his ; whence every one man will be all men , and all men but one individual man : which is a perfect contradiction to all the laws of metaphysicks and logick . . but reminded of these inconveniences , he will pronounce more cautiously , and affirm that he is not the soul of the world at large , but onely so far forth as she expedites or exerts her self into the sense and remembrance of all those notions or impresses that happen to her , whereever she is joyned with his body ; but that so soon as this body of his is dissipated and dissolved , that she will no longer raise any such determinate thoughts or senses that referre to that union , and that so the memory of such actions , notions and impressions , that were held together in relation to a particular body , being lost and laid aside upon the failing of the body to which they did referre , this ipseity or personality which consisted mainly in this , does necessarily perish in death . this certainly is that ( if they know their own meaning ) which many libertines would have , who are afraid to meet themselves in the other world , for fear they should quarrel with themselves there for their transactions in this . and it is the handsomest hypothesis that they can frame in favour of themselves , and farre beyond that dull conceit , that there is nothing but meer matter in the world ; which is infinitely more lyable to confutation . . and yet this is too scant a covering to shelter them and secure them from the sad after-claps they may justly suspect in the other life . for first , it is necessary for them to confess that they have in this life as particular and proper sense of torment , of pleasure , of peace , and pangs of conscience , and of other impressions , as if they had an individual soul of their own distinct from that of the world , and from every ones else ; and that if there be any daemons or genii , as certainly there are , that it is so with them too . we have also demonstrated , that all sense and perception is immediately excited in the soul by the spirits ; wherefore with what confidence can they promise themselves that the death of this earthly body will quite obliterate all the tracts of their being here on earth ? whenas the subtiler ruines thereof , in all likelihood , may determine the thoughts of the soul of the world to the same tenour as before , and draw from her the memory of all the transactions of this life , and make her exercise her judgement upon them , and cause her to contrive the most vital exhalations of the terrestrial body into an aerial vehicle , of like nature with the ferment of these material rudiments of life , saved out of the ruines of death . for any slight touch is enough to engage her to perfect the whole scene , and so a man shall be represented to himself and others in the other state , whether he will or no ; and have as distinct a personal ipseity there as he had in this life . whence it is plain , that this false hypothesis , that we are nothing but the soul of the world acting in our bodies , will not serve their turns at all that would have it so ; nor secure them from future danger , though it were admitted to be true . but i have demonstrated it false already , from the notion of the unity of a soul. of the truth of which demonstration we shall be the better assured , if we consider that the subtile elements , which are the immediate conveyers of perceptions in our souls , are continued throughout in the soul of the world , and insinuate into all living creatures . so that the soul of the world will be necessarily informed in every one , what she thinks or feels every where , if she be the onely soul that actuates every animal upon earth . . that other conceit , of our souls being a vital ray of the soul of the world , may gain much countenance by expressions in ancient authors that seem to favour the opinion : as that of epictetus , who saith that the souls of men are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and philo calls the minde of man , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and trismegist , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all which expressions make the soul of man a ray or beam of the soul of the world or of god. but we are to take notice that they are but metaphorical phrases , and that what is understood thereby , is , that there is an emanation of a secondary substance from the several parts of the soul of the world , resembling the rayes of the sun. which way of conception , though it be more easy then the other , yet it has difficulties enough . for this vital ray must have some head from whence it is stretched , and so the body would be like a bird in a string , which would be drawn to a great length when one takes long voyages , suppose to the east or west indies . or if you will not have it a linear ray , but an orb of particular life ; every such particular orb must be hugely vast , that the body may not travel out of the reach of the soul. besides , this orb will strike through other bodies as well as its own , and its own be in several parts of it ; which are such incongruities and inconcinnities as are very harsh and unpleasing to our rational faculties . wherefore that notion is infinitely more neat and safe , that proportions the soul to the dimensions of the body , and makes her independent on any thing but the will of her creator ; in which respect of dependence she may be said to be a ray of him , as the rest of the creation also ; but in no other sense that i know of , unless of likeness and similitude , she being the image of god , as the rays of light are of the sun. . but let every particular soul be so many rayes of the soul of the world , what gain they by this , whenas these rayes may be as capable of all the several congruities of life , as the soul is in that sense we have described ? and therefore personality , memory and conscience will as surely return or continue in the other state , according to this hypothesis , as the other more usual one . which also discovers the great folly of pomponatius ( and of as many as are of the same leven with him ) who indeed is so modest and judicious as not to deny apparitions , but attributes all to the influence of the stars , or rather the intelligencies of the celestial orbs. for they giving life and animation to brute animals , why may they not also , upon occasion , animate and actuate the aire into shape and form , even to the making of them speak and discourse one shape with another ? for so pomponatius argues in his book of the immortality of the soul , from aquinas his concession , that angels and souls separate may figure the aire into shape , and speak through it ; quare igitur intelligentiae moventes corpora coelestia haec facere non possunt cum suis instrumentis quae tot ac tanta possunt quae faciunt psittacos , picos , corvos & merulas , loqui ? and a little after , he plainly reasons from the power the intelligencies have of generating animals , that it is not at all strange that they should raise such kinde of apparitions as are recorded in history . but if these celestial intelligencies be confined to their own orbs , so as that no secondary essence reach these inferiour regions , it is impossible to conceive how they can actuate the matter here below . but if there be any such essential emanations from them , whereby they actuate the matter into these living species we see in the world , of men and brutes ; nothing hinders but the same emanations remaining , may actuate the aire when this earthly fabrick fails , and retain the memory of things transacted in this life , and that still our personality will be conserved as perfect and distinct as it was here . . but this conceit of pomponatius is farre more foolish then theirs that make onely one anima mundi that passes through all the matter of the world , and is present in every place , to doe all feats that there are to be done . but to acknowledge so many several intellectual beings as there be fancied celestial orbs , and to scruple , or rather to seem confident , that there are not so many particular souls as there be men here on earth , is nothing but humour and madness . for it is as rational to acknowledge eight hundred thousand myriads of intellectual and immaterial beings , really distinct from one another , as eight ; and an infinite number , as but one , that could not create the matter of the world. for then two substances , wholly independent on one another , would be granted , as also the infinite parts of matter that have no dependence one on the other . why may not there be therefore infinite numbers of spirits or souls that have as little dependence one on another , as well as there should be eight intelligencies ? whenas the motions and operations of every animal are a more certain argument of an immaterial being residing there , then the motions of the heavens of any distinct intelligencies in their orbs , if they could be granted to have any : and it is no stranger a thing to conceive an infinite multitude of immaterial , as well as material , essences , independent on one another , then but two , namely the matter and the soule of the world. but if there be so excellent a principle existent as can create beings , as certainly there is ; we are still the more assured that there are such multitudes of spiritual essences , surviving all the chances of this present life , as the most sober and knowing men in all ages have professed there are . chap. xvii . . that the authour having safely conducted the soule into her aerial condition through the dangers of death , might well be excused from attending her any further . . what reasons urge him to consider what fates may befall her afterwards . . three hazzards the soule runs after this life , whereby she may again become obnoxious to death , according to the opinion of some . . that the aerial genii are mortal , confirmed by three testimonies . . the one from the vision of facius cardanus , in which the spirits that appeared to him profest themselves mortal . . the time they stayed with him , and the matters they disputed of . . what credit hieronymus cardanus gives to his fathers vision . . the other testimony out of plutarch , concerning the death of the great god pan. . the third and last of hesiod , whose opinion plutarch has polisht and refined . . an enumeration of the several paradoxes contained in facius cardanus his vision . . what must be the sense of the third paradox , if those aerial speculatours spake as they thought . . another hypothesis to the same purpose . . the craft of these daemons , in shuffling in poysonous errour amongst solid truths . . what makes the story of the death of pan less to the present matter , with an addition of demetrius his observations touching the sacred islands neare britain . . that hesiod his opinion is the most unexceptionable , and that the harshness therein is but seeming , not real . . that the aethereal vehicle instates the soule in a condition of perfect immortality . . that there is no internal impediment to those that are heroically good , but that they may attain an everlasting happiness after death . . we have now , maugre all the oppositions and objections made to the contrary , safely conducted the soule into the other state , and installed her into the same condition with the aerial genii . i might be very well excused , if i took leave of her here , and committed her to that fortune that attends those of the invisible world : it being more seasonable for them that are there , to meditate and prefigure in their mindes all futurities belonging to them , then for us that are on this side the passage . it is enough that i have demonstrated , that neither the essence nor operations of the soule are extinct by death ; but that they either not intermit , or suddainly revive upon the recovery of her aiery body . . but seeing that those that take any pleasure at all in thinking of these things , can seldome command the ranging of their thoughts within what compass they please , and that it is obvious for them to doubt whether the soule can be secure of her permanency in life in the other world , ( it implying no contradiction , that her vital congruity , appropriate to this or that element , may either of it self expire , or that she may by some carelesness debilitate one congruity , and awaken another , in some measure , and so make her self obnoxious to fate ; ) we cannot but think it in a manner necessary to extricate such difficulties as these , that we may not seem in this after-game to loose all we won in the former ; and make men suspect that the soule is not at all immortal , if her immortality will not secure her against all future fates . . to which she seems liable upon three accounts . the one we have named already , and respects an intrinsecal principle , the periodical terms of her vital congruity , or else the levity and miscarriage of her own will. which obnoxiousness of hers is still more fully argued from what is affirmed of the aerial genii ( whose companion and fellow-citizen she is ) whom sundry philosophers assert to be mortal . the other two hazards she runs are from without , to wit , the conflagration of the world , and the extinction of the sun. . that the aerial genii are mortal , three main testimonies are alledged for it . the vision of facius cardanus , the death of the great god pan , in plutarch , and the opinion of hesiod . i will set them all down fully , as i finde them , and then answer to them . the vision of facius cardanus is punctually recited by his son hieronymus in his de subtilitate lib. . in this manner . . that his father facius cardanus , who confessed that he had the society of a familiar spirit for about thirty years together , told him this following story often when he was alive , and after his death he found the exact relation of it committed to writing , which was this . the . day of august . after i had done my holy things , at the . houre of the day , there appeared to me , after their usual manner , seven men cloathed in silk garments , with cloaks after the greek mode , with purple stockins and crimson cassocks , red and shining on their breasts ; nor were they all thus clad , but onely two of them who were the chief . on the ruddier and taller of these two other two waited , but the less and paler had three attendants ; so that they made up seven in all . they were about fourty years of age , but lookt as if they had not reacht thirty . when they were asked who they were , they answered that they were homines aerii , aerial men , who are born and die as we ; but that their life is much longer then ours , as reaching to . years . being asked concerning the immortality of our souls , they answered , nihil quod cuique proprium esset superesse , that they were of a nearer affinity with the divi then we ; but yet infinitely different from them : and that their happiness or misery as much transcended ours , as ours does the brute beasts . that they knew all things that are hid , whether monies or books . and that the lowest sort of them were the genii of the best and noblest men , as the basest men are the trainers up of the best sort of dogs . that the tenuity of their bodies was such , that they can doe us neither good nor hurt , saving in what they may be able to doe by spectres and terrours , and impartment of knowledge . that they were both publick professors in an academy , and that he of the lesser stature had . disciples , the other . cardan's father further asking them why they would not reveal such treasures as they knew unto men ; they answered , that there was a special law against it , upon a very grievous penalty . . these aerial inhabitants stai'd at least three hours with facius cardanus , disputing and arguing of sundry things , amongst which one was the original of the world. the taller denied that god made the world ab aeterno : the lesser affirmed that he so created it every moment , that if he should desist but one moment , it would perish . whereupon the othèr cited some things out of the disputations of avenroes , which book was not yet extant , and named several other treatises , part whereof are known , part not , which were all of avenroes his writing , and withall did openly profess himself to be an avenroist . . the record of this apparition cardan found amongst his fathers papers , but seems unwilling to determine whether it be a true history or a fable , but disputes against it in such a shuffling manner , as if he was perswaded it were true , and had a mind that others should think it so . i am sure he most-what steers his course in his metaphysical adventures according to this cynosura , which is no obscure indication of his assent and belief . . that of the death of the great god pan , you may read in plutarch in his de defectu oraculorum ; where philippus , for the proof of the mortality of daemons , recites a story which he heard from one aemilianus a roman , & one that was remov'd far enough from all either stupidity or vanity : how his father epitherses being shipt for italy , in the evening , near the echinades , the winde failed them ; and their ship being carried by an uncertain course upon the island paxae , that most of the passengers being waken , many of them drinking merrily after supper , there was a voice suddainly heard from the island , which called to thamus by name , who was an aegyptian by birth , and the pilot of the ship : which the passengers much wondred at , few of them having taken notice of the pilots name before . he was twice called to before he gave any sign that he attended to the voice , but after giving express attention , a clear and distinct voice was heard from the island , uttering these words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the company was much astonisht at the hearing of the voice : and after much debate amongst themselves , thamus resolved that , if the wind blew fair , he would sail by and say nothing ; but if they were becalmed there , he would doe his message : and therefore they being becalmed when they came to palodes , neither winde nor tide carrying them on , thamus looking out of the poop of the ship toward the shore , delivered his message , telling them that the great pan was dead . upon which was suddainly heard as it were a joynt groaning of a multitude together , mingled with a murmurous admiration . . the opinion of hesiod also is , that the genii or daemons within a certain period of years doe die ; but he attributes a considerable longaevity to them , to wit of nine thousand seven hundred and twenty years , which is the utmost that any allow them , most men less . plutarch , under the person of others , has polisht this opinion into a more curious and distinct dress : for out of the mortality of the daemons , and the several ranks which hesiod mentions of rational beings , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he has affixed a certain manner and law of their passing out of one state into another , making them to change their elements as well as dignities ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but other , he saith , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not having sufficient command of themselves , are again wrought down into humane bodies , to live there an evanid and obscure life , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as he phrases it . . these are the most notable testimonies for the mortality of daemons that i have met withall , and therefore the more worth our reviewing . that vision of facius cardanus , if it be not a fable , contains many paradoxes . as first , that these aerial genii are born at set times as well as we . not that any she - daemons are brought to bed of them , but that they seem to have a beginning of their existence , from which they may be reckoned to have continued , some more years and some less . a thing unconceivable , unless we should imagine that there is still a lapse or descent of souls out of the higher regions of the aire into these lower , or that these that leave these earthly bodies pass into the number of the aiery daemons . as neither their death can so well be understood , unless we should fancy that their souls pass into more pure vehicles , or else descend into terrestrial bodies . for cardan himself acknowledges they perish not ; which also is agreeable with his opinion of the praeexistence of our souls . secondly , that these aerial genii live but about . years , which is against he siod and the greatest number of the platonists , unless they should speak of that particular order themselves were of ; for it is likely there may be as much difference in their ages , as there is in the ages of several kinds of birds and beasts . thirdly , that our souls are so farre mortal , as that there is nothing proper to us remaining after death . fourthly , that they were nearer allied to the gods then we by farre , and that there was as much difference betwixt them and us , as there is betwixt us and beasts . which they must understand then concerning the excellency of their vehicles , and the natural activity of them , not the preeminency of their intellectual faculties . or if they doe , they must be understood of the better sort of those aerial spirits . or if they mean it of all their orders , it may be a mistake out of pride : as those that are rich and powerful as well as speculative amongst us , take it for granted that they are more judicious and discerning then the poor and despicable , let them be never so wise . fifthly , that they know all secret things , whether hidden books or monies : which men might doe too , if they could stand by concealedly from them that hide them . sixthly , that the lowest sort of them were the genii of the noblest men , as the baser sort of men are the keepers and educators of the better kinde of dogs and horses . this clause of the vision also is inveloped with obscurity , they having not defined whether this meanness of condition of the tutelar genii be to be understood in a political or physical sense ; whether the meanness of rank and power , or of natural wit and sagacity ; in which many times the groom exceeds the young gallant who assigns him to keep his dogs and horses . seventhly , that such is the thinness and lightness of their bodies , that they can doe neither good nor hurt thereby , though they may send strange sights and terrors , and communicate knowledge ; which then must be chiefly of such things as belong to their aerial region . for concerning matters in the sea , the fishes , if they could speak , might inform men better then they . and for their corporeal debility , it is uncertain whether they may not pretend it , to animate their confabulators to a more secure converse , or whether the thing be really true in some kindes of them . for that it is not in all , may be evinced by that narration that cardan a little after recites out of erasmus , of the devil that carried a witch into the aire , and set her on the top of a chimney , giving her a pot , and bidding her turn the mouth downwards , which done the whole town was fired , and burnt down within the space of an hour . this hapned april the . anno . the towns name was schiltach , eight german miles distant from friburg . the story is so well attested , and guarded with such unexceptionable circumstances , that though cardan love to shew his wit in cavilling at most he recites , yet he finds nothing at all to quarrel at in his . eighthly , that there are students and professors of philosophy in the aerial world , and are divided into sects and opinions there , as well as we are here . which cannot possibly be true , unless they set some value upon knowledge , and are at an eager loss how to finde it , and are fain to hew out their way by arguing and reasoning as we doe . ninthly and lastly , that they are reduced under a political government , and are afraid of the infliction of punishment . . these are the main matters comprehended in facius his vision , which how true they all are , would be too much trouble to determine . but one clause , which is the third , i cannot let pass , it so nearly concerning the present subject , and seeming to intercept all hopes of the souls immortality . to speak therefore to the summe of the whole business ; we must either conceive these aerial philosophers to instruct facius cardanus as well as they could , they being guilty of nothing but a forward pride , to offer themselves as dictating oracles to that doubtful exorcist ( for his son cardan acknowledges that his father had a form of conjuration that a spaniard gave him at his death ; ) or else we must suppose them to take the liberty of equivocating , if not of downright lying . now if they had a minde to inform facius cardanus of these things directly as they themselves thought of them , it being altogether unlikely but that there appeared to them , in their aerial regions , such sights as represented the persons of men here deceased , it is impossible that they should think otherwise then as we have described their opinion in the fore-going chapter , that hold there is but one soul in the world , by which all living creatures are actuated . which , though but a meer possibility , if so much , yet some or other of these aerial speculators may as well hold to it as some doe amongst us . for pomponatius and others of the avenroists are as ridiculously pertinacious as they . and therefore these avenroistical daemons answered punctually according to the conclusions of their own school , nihil proprium cuiquam superesse post mortem . for the minde or soul being a substance common to all , and now disunited from those terrestrial bodies which it actuated in plato , suppose , or socrates , and these bodies dead and dissipated , and onely the common soul of the world surviving , there being nothing but this soul and these bodies to make up socrates and plato ; they conclude it is a plain case , that nothing that is proper survives after death . and therefore , though they see the representation of socrates and plato in the other world , owning also their own personalities , with all the actions they did , and accidents that befell them in this life ; yet according to the sullen subtilties and curiosities of their school , they may think and profess , that to speak accurately and philosophically it is none of them , there being no substance proper to them remaining after death , but onely the soul of the world , renewing the thoughts to her self of what appertained to those parties in this life . . this is one hypothesis consistent enough with the veracity of these daemons ; but there is also another , not at all impossible , viz. that the vehicles of the souls of men departed are as invisible to this order of the genii that confabulated with facius cardanus as that order is to us : and that therefore , though there be the appearances of the ghosts of men deceased to them as well as to us ; yet it being but for a time , it moves them no more then our confirmed epicureans in this world are moved thereby : especially it being prone for them to think that they are nothing but some ludicrous spectacles that the universal soule of the world represents to her self and other spectatours , when , and how long a time she pleases , and the vaporous reliques of the dead body administer occasion . now that the vehicles of the souls of men departed this life , after they are come to a setled condition , may be farre thinner and more invisible then those of the fore-named daemons , without committing any inconcinnity in nature , may appear from hence : for the excellency of the inward spirit is not alwaies according to the consistency of the element with which it does incorporate ; otherwise those fishes that are of humane shape , and are at set times taken in the indian sea , should have an● higher degree of reason and religion then we that live upon earth , and have bodies made of that element . whence nothing hinders but that the spirit of man may be more noble then the spirit of some of the aerial daemons . and nature not alwaies running in arithmetical , but also it geometrical progression , one remove it one may reach far above what is before it for the present in the other degrees of progression . as a creeping worm is above a cad-worm , and any four-footed beasts above the birds , till they can use their leggs as well as they ; but they are no sooner even with them , but they are straight far above them , and cannot onely goe , but fly . as a peasant is above an imprison'd prince , and has more command ; but this prince can be no sooner set free and become even with the peasant in his liberty , but he is infinitely above him . and so it may be naturally with the souls of men when they are freed from this prison of the body , their steps being made in geometrical progression , as soon as they seem equal to that order of daemons we speak of , they may mount far above them in tenuity and subtilty of body , and so become invisible to them ; and therefore leave them in a capacity of falsly surmising that they are not at all , because they cannot see them . . but if they thought that there is either some particular ray of the soule of the world , that belongs peculiarly suppose to socrates or plato , or that they had proper souls really distinct , then it is evident that they did either equivocate or lye . which their pride and scorn of mankinde ( they looking upon us but as beasts in comparison of themselves ) might easily permit ; they making no more conscience to deceive us , then we doe to put a dodge upon a dog , to make our selves merry . but if they had a design to winde us into some dangerous errour , it is very likely that they would shuffle it in amongst many truths , that those truths being examined , and found solid at the bottome , we might not suspect any one of their dictates to be false . wherefore this vision being ill meant , the poison intended was , that of the souls mortality ; the dangerous falseness of which opinion was to be covered by the mixture of others that are true . . as for that relation of aemilianus , which he heard from his father epitherses , it would come still more home to the purpose , if the conclusion of the philologers at rome , after thamus had been sent for , and averred the truth thereof to tiberius caesar , could be thought authentick , namely , that this pan , the news of whose death thamus told to the daemons at palodes , was the son of mercury and penelope ; for then 't is plain that pan was an humane soule , and therefore concerns the present question more nearly . but this narration being applicable to a more sacred and venerable subject , it looses so much of its force and fitness for the present use . that which demetrius adds , concerning certain holy islands neare britain , had been more fit in this regard . whither when demetrius came , suddainly upon his arrival there happened a great commotion of the air , mighty tempests & prodigious whirlwinds . after the ceasing whereof , the inhabitants pronounced , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that some of a nature more then humane was dead . upon which plutarch , according to his usual rhetorick , descants after this manner , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. as the lightning of a lamp brings no grievance with it , but the extinction of it is offensive to many ; sogreat souls , while they remain kindled into life , shine forth harmlesly and benignly , but their extinction or corruption often stirs up windes and tempests , as in this present example , and often infects the aire with pestilential annoiances . . but the last testimony is the most unexceptionable , though the least pretending to be infallible , and seems to strike dead both waies . for whether the souls of men that goe out of these earthly bodies be vertuous or vitious , they must die to their aerial vehicles . which seems a sad story at first sight , and as if righteousness could not deliver from death . but if it be more carefully perused , the terrour will be found onely to concern the wicked . for the profoundest pitch of death is the descent into this terrestrial body , in which , besides that we necessarily forget whatever is past , we doe for the present lead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a dark and obscure life , as plutarch speaks , dragging this weight of earth along with us , as prisoners and malefactours doe their heavy shackles in their sordid and secluse confinements . but in our return back from this state , life is naturally more large to them that are prepared to make good use of that advantage they have of their aiery vehicle . but if they be not masters of themselves in that state , they will be fatally remanded back to their former prison in process of time ; which is the most gross death imaginable . but for the good and vertuous souls , that after many ages change their aerial vehicle for an aethereal one , that is no death to them , but an higher ascent into life . and a man may as well say of an infant , that has left the dark wombe of his mother , that this change of his is death , as that a genius dies by leaving the gross aire , and emerging into that vehicle of light , which they ordinarily call aethereal or coelestial . . there may be therefore , by axiome . a dangerous relapse out of the aerial vehicle into the terrestrial , which is properly the death of the soule that is thus retrograde . but for those that ever reach the aethereal state , the periods of life there are infinite ; & though they may have their perige's as well as apoge's , yet these circuits being of so vast a compass , and their perige's so rare and short , and their return as certain to their former apsis , as that of the coelestial bodies , and their athereal sense never leaving them in their lowest touches towards the earth ; it is manifest that they have arrived to that life that is justly styled eternal . . whence it is plain , that perseverance in vertue , if no external fate hinder , will carry man to an immortal life . but whether those that be thus heroically good , be so by discipline and endeavour , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by a special favour and irresistible design of god , is not to be disputed in this place ; though it be at large discussed somewhere in the dialogues of plato . but in the mean time we will not doubt to conclude , that there is no internal impediment to those that are highly and heroically vertuous , but that , in process of time , they may arrive to an everlasting security of life and happiness , after they have left this earthly body . chap. xviii . . the conflagration of the world an opinion of the stoicks . . two ways of destroying the world the ancients have taken notice of , & especially that by fire . . that the conflagration of the world , so far as it respects us , is to be understood onely of the burning of the earth . . that the ends of the stoicks conflagration is competible onely to the earths burning . . an acknowledgement that the earth may be burnt , though the proof thereof be impertinent to this place . . that the conflagration thereof will prove very fatal to the souls of wicked men and daemons . . five several opinions concerning their state after the conflagration ; whereof the first is , that they are quite destroy'd by fire . . the second , that they are annihilated by a special act of omnipotency . . the third , that they lye sensless in an eternal death . . the fourth , that they are in a perpetual furious and painful dream . . the fifth and last , that they will revive again , and that the earth and aire will be inhabited by them . . that this last seems to be fram'd from the fictitious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the stoicks , who were very sorry metaphysicians , and as ill naturallists . . an animadversion upon a self-contradicting sentence of seneca . . the unintelligibleness of the state of the souls of the wicked after the conflagration . . that the aethereal inhabitants will be safe . and what will then become of good men and daemons on the earth and in the aire . and how they cannot be delivered but by a supernatural power . . as for the external impediments , we shall now examine them , and see of what force they will be , and whether they be at all . the former of which is the conflagration of the world. which is an ancient opinion , believed and entertain'd , not onely by religious , but by philosophers also , the stoicks especially , who affirm that the souls of men doe subsist indeed after death , but cannot continue any longer in being then to the conflagration of the world. but it is not so much material what they thought , as to consider what is the condition indeed of the souls of men and daemons after that sad fate . . those that will not have the world eternal have found out two ways to destroy it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by water or by fire . which , they say , does as naturally happen in a vast period of time , which they call annus magnus , as winter and summer doe in our ordinary year . inundatio non secus quam hyems , quam aestas lege mundi venit . but for this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it not being so famous , nor so frequently spoken of , nor so destructive , nor so likely to end the world as the other way , nor belonging so properly to our enquiry , we shall let it pass . the general prognostick is concerning fire now , not onely of the stoicks , as zeno , cleanthes , chrysippus , seneca ; but of several also of different sects , as heraclitus , epicurus , cicero , pliny , aristocles , numenius , and sundry others . . but though there be so great and unanimous consent that the world shall be burnt , yet they doe not express themselves all alike in the business . seneca's vote is the most madly explicite of any , making the very stars run and dash one against another , and so set all on fire . but posidonius and panaetius had more wit , who did not hold that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the other stoicks did . for the destroying of the aethereal regions by fire is as foolish a fancy as the sentencing of the eele to be drown'd , because the matter of the aether is too fine and subtile for fire to rage in , it being indeed nothing but a pure . light or fire it self . and yet this aethereal matter is infinitely the greatest portion of the world. wherefore the world cannot be said properly to be lyable to the destruction of fire from any natural causes , as the stoicks would have it . which is demonstratively true upon des-cartes his principles , who makes fire nothing but the motion of certain little particles of matter , and holds that there is no more motion at one time in the world then at another ; because one part of the matter cannot impress any agitation upon another , but it must lose so much it self . this hideous noise therefore of the conflagration of the world must be restrain'd to the firing of the earth onely , so farre as it concerns us . for there is nothing else combustible in the universe but the earth , and other planets , and what vapours and exhalations arise from them . . this conflagration therefore that philosophers , poets , sibyls , and all have fill'd the world with the fame of , is nothing but the burning of the earth . and the ends the stoicks pretend of their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , may be competible to it , but not to the burning of the heavens or aether at all ; as any but meanly skilled in philosophy cannot but acknowledge . for their nature is so simple that they cannot corrupt , and therefore want no renovation , as the earth does . nor do the inhabitants of those heavenly regions defile themselves with any vice ; or if they doe , they sink from their material station as well as moral , and fall towards these terrestrial dreggs . and therefore that part of the happy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seneca speaks of , omne animal ex integro generabitur , dabitúrque terris homo inscius scelerum , & melioribus auspiciis natus , will take no place with those aethereal creatures . . we are willing then to be born down , by this common and loud cry of fire that must burn the world , into an acknowledgement that the earth may within a certain period of time be burnt , with all those things that are upon it or near it . but what concurse of natural causes may contribute to this dismal spectacle , is not proper for me to dispute , especially in this place . i shall onely take a view of what sad effects this conflagration may have upon the souls of daemons and men. for that those those that have recovered their aethereal vehicles are exempt from this fate , is evident , the remoteness of their habitation securing them from both the rage and noisomness of these sulphureous flames . . the most certain and most destractive execution that this fire will doe , must be upon the unrecovered souls of wicked men and daemons ; those that are so deeply sunk and drown'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the very consistency of their vehicles does imprison them within the confines of this thick caliginous aire . these souls or spirits therefore that have so inextricably entangled themselves in the fate of this lower world , giving up all their senses to the momentany pleasures of the moist luxurious principle , which is the very seat of death , these , in the mystical philosophy of the ancients , are the nymphs , to whom though they allot a long series of years , yet they doe not exempt them from mortality and fate . and demetrius in plutarch pronounces expresly out of hesiod , that their life will be terminated with the conflagration of the world , from what the poet intimates aenigmatically , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . but to leave these poetical riddles , and take a more serious and distinct view of the condition of the soul after the conflagration of the earth ; we shall finde five several sorts of opinions concerning it . the first hold , that this unmerciful heat and fire will at last destroy and consume the soul as well as the body . but this seems to me impossible , that any created substance should utterly destroy another substance , so as to reduce it to nothing . for no part of matter , acting the most furiously upon another part thereof , does effect that . it can onely attenuate , dissipate and disperse the parts , and make them invisible . but the substance of the soul is indissipable and indiscerpible , and therefore remains entire , whatever becomes of the body or vehicle . . the second opinion is , that after long and tedious torture in these flames , the soul by a special act of omnipotency is annihilated . but , me thinks , this is to put providence too much to her shifts , as if god were so brought to a plunge in his creating a creature of it self immortal , that he must be fain to uncreate it again , that is to say to annihilate it . besides that that divine nemesis that lies within the compass of philosophy , never supposes any such forcible eruptions of the deity into extraordinary effects , but that all things are brought about by a wise and infallible or inevitable train of secondary causes , whether natural or free agents . . the third therefor ●● to avoid these absurdities , denies both absumption by fire and annihilation ; but conceives , that tediousness and extremity of pain makes the soul at last , of her self , shrink from all commerce with matter ; the immediate principle of union , which we call vital congruity , consisting of a certain modification of the body or vehicle as well as of the soul , which being spoiled and lost , and the soul thereby quite loosned from all sympathy with body or matter , she becomes perfectly dead , and sensless to all things , by axiome . and , as they say , will so remain for ever . but this seems not so rational ; for , as aristotle somewhere has it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . wherefore so many entire immaterial substances would be continued in being to all eternity to no end nor purpose , notwithstanding they may be made use of , and actuate matter again as well as ever . . a fourth sort therefore of speculators there is , who conceive that after this solution of the souls or spirits of wicked men and daemons from their vehicles , that their pain is continued to them even in that separate state , they falling into an unquiet sleep , full of furious tormenting dreams , that act as fiercely upon their spirits , as the external fire did upon their bodies . but others except against this opinion as a very uncertain conjecture , it supposing that which to them seems not so sound , viz. that the soul can act when it has lost all vital union with the matter ; which seems repugnant with that so intimate and essential aptitude it has to be united therewith . and the dreams of the soul in the body are not transacted without the help of the animal spirits in the brain , they usually symbolizing with their temper . whence they conclude , that there is no certain ground to establish this opinion upon . . the last therefore , to make all sure , that there may be no inconvenience in admitting that the souls or spirits as well of evil daemons as wicked men , disjoyned from their vehicles by the force of that fatal conflagration , may subsist , have excogitated an odde and unexpected hypothesis , that when this firing of the world has done due execution upon that unfortunate crue , and tedious and direful torture has we aried their afficted ghosts into an utter recess from all matter , and thereby into a profound sleep or death ; that after a long series of years , when not onely the fury of the fire is utterly slaked , but that vast atmosphere of smoak and vapours , which was sent up during the time of the earths conflagration , has returned back in copious showres of rain ( which will again make seas and rivers , will binde and consolidate the ground , and , falling exceeding plentifully all over , make the soil pleasant and fruitful , and the aire cool and wholsome ) that nature recovering thus to her advantage , and becoming youthful again , and full of genital salt and moisture , the souls of all living creatures belonging to these lower regions of the earth and aire will awaken orderly in their proper places . the seas and rivers will be again replenished with fish ; the earth will send forth all manner of fowls , four-footed beasts , and creeping things ; and the souls of men also shall then catch life from the more pure and balsamick parts of the earth , and be clothed again in terrestrial bodies ; and lastly , the aerial genii , that element becoming again wholsome and vital , shall , in due order and time , awaken and revive in the cool rorid aire . which expergeraction into life is accompanied , say they , with propensions answerable to those resolutions they made with themselves in those fiery torments , and with which they fell into their long sleep . . but the whole hypothesis seems to be framed out of that dream of the stoicks , concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the world after the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thereof . as if that of seneca belonged to this case , epist. . mors , quam pertimescimus ac recusamus , intermittit vitam , non eripit . veniet iterum qui nos in lucem reponet dies , quem multi recusarent , nisi oblitos reduceret . but how coursly the stoicks philosophize when they are once turned out of their rode-way of moral sentences , any one but moderately skilled in nature and metaphysicks may easily discern . for what errors can be more gross then those that they entertain of god , of the soul , and of the stars , they making the two former corporeal substances , and feeding the latter with the vapours of the earth , affirming that the sun sups up the water of the great ocean to quench his thirst , but that the moon drinks off the lesser rivers and brooks ; which is as true as that the ass drunk up the moon . such conceits are more fit for anacreon in a drunken fit to stumble upon , who to invite his companions to tipple , composed that catch , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , then for to be either found out or owned by a serious and sober philosopher . and yet seneca mightily triumphs in this notion of foddering the stars with the thick foggs of the earth , and declares his opinion with no mean strains of eloquence : but i loving solid sense better then fine words , shall not take the pains to recite them . . at what a pitch his understanding was set , may be easily discerned by my last quotation , wherein there seems a palpable contradiction . veniet iterum qui nos in lucem reponet dies , quem multi recusarent , nisi oblitos reduceret . if nos , how oblitos ? if oblitos , how nos ? for we are not we , unless we remember that we are so . and if mad-men may be said , and that truly , to be besides themselves , or not to be themselves , because they have lost their wits ; certainly they will be far from being themselves that have quite lost the memory of themselves , but must be as if they had never been before . as lucretius has excellently well declared himself , de rerum naturâ lib. . nee , si materiam nostram conlegerit aetas post obitū , rursumque redegerit ut sita nunc est , atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae , pertineat quicquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum , interrupta semel cum sit retinentia nostri . where the poet seems industriously to explode all the hopes of any benefit of this stoical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and to profess that he is as if he had never been , that cannot remember he has ever been before . from whence it would follow , that though the souls of men should revive after the conflagration of the world , yet they have not escaped a perpetual and permanent death . . we see therefore how desperately undemonstrable the condition of the soule is after the conflagration of the earth , all these five opinions being accompanied with so much lubricity and uncertainty . and therefore they are to be looked upon rather as some night-landskap to feed our amused melancholy , then a clear and distinct draught of comprehensible truth to inform our judgment . . all that we can be assured of is , that those souls that have obtained their aethereal vehicles are out of the reach of that sad fate that followes this conflagration ; and that the wicked souls of men and daemons will be involved in it . but there are a middle sort betwixt these , concerning whom not onely curiosity but good will would make a man sollicitous . for it is possible , that the conflagration of the world may surprise many thousands of souls , that neither the course of time , nor nature , nor any higher principle has wrought up into an aethereal congruity of life , but yet may be very holy , innocent and vertuous . which we may easily believe , if we consider that these very earthly bodies are not so great impediments to the goodness and sincerity of the minde , but that many , even in this life , have given great examples thereof . nor can that aerial state be less capable of , nor wel be without , the good genii , no more then the earth without good men , who are the most immediate ministers of the goodness and justice of god. but exemption from certain fates in the world is not alwaies entailed upon innocency , but most ordinarily upon natural power . and therefore there may be numbers of the good genii , and of very holy and innocuous spirits of men departed , the consistency of whose vehicles may be such , that they can no more quit these aerial regions , then we can fly into them , that have heavy bodies , without wings . to say nothing of those vertuous and pious men that may haply be then found alive , and so be liable to be overtaken by this storm of fire . undoubtedly , unless there appear , before the approach of this fate , some visible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or jupiter sospitator , as the heathens would call him , they must necessarily be involved in the ruine of the wicked . which would be a great eye-sore in that exact and irreprehensible frame of providence , that all men promise to themselves who acknowledge that there is a god. wherefore according to the light of reason , there must be some supernatural means to rescue those innocuous and benign spirits out of this common calamity . but to describe the manner of it here how it must be done , would be to entitle natural light and philosophy to greater abilities then they are guilty of ; and therefore that subject must be reserved for its proper place . chap. xix . . that the extinction of the sun is no panick feare , but may be rationally suspected from the records of history and grounds of natural philosophy . . the sad influence of this extinction upon man and beast , and all the aerial daemons imprison'd within their several atmospheres in our vortex . . that it will doe little or no damage to the aethereal inhabitants in reference to heat or warmth . . nor will they find much want of his light . . and if they did , they may pass out of one vortex into another , by the priviledge of their aethereal vehicles ; . and that without any labour or toile , and as maturely as they please . . the vast incomprehensibleness of the tracts and compasses of the waies of providence . . a short recapitulation of the whole discourse . . an explication of the persians two principles of light and darkness , which they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and when and where the principle of light gets the full victory . . that philosophy , or something more sacred then philosophy , is the onely guide to a true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . the last danger that threatens the separate soule is the extinction of the sun ; which though it may seem a meer panick fear at first sight , yet if the matter be examined , there will appear no contemptible reasons that may induce men to suspect that it may at last fall out , there been , at certain times , such near offers in nature towards this sad accident already . pliny , though he instances but in one example , yet speaks of it as a thing that several times comes to pass . fiunt , saith he , prodigiosi & longiores solis defectus , qualis occiso dictatore caesare , & antoniano bello , totius anni pallore continuo . the like happened in justinians time , as cedrenus writes ; when , for a whole year together , the sun was of a very dim and duskish hue , as if he had been in a perpetuall eclipse . and in the time of irene the empress it was so dark for seventeen dayes together , that the ships lost their way on the sea , and were ready to run against one another , as theophanes relates . but the late accurate discovery of the spots of the sun by shiner , and the appearing and disappearing of fixt stars , and the excursions of comets into the remoter parts of our vortex , as also the very intrinsecal contexture of that admirable philosophy of des-cartes , doe argue it more then possible that , after some vast periods of time , the sun may be so inextricably inveloped by the maculae that he is never free from , that he may quite loose his light . . the preambles of which extinction will be very hideous , and intolerable to all the inhabitants of the planets in our vortex , if the planets have then any inhabitants at all . for this defect of light and heat coming on by degrees , must needs weary out poor mortals with heavy languishments , both for want of the comfort of the usual warmth of the sun , whereby the bodies of men are recreated , and also by reason of his inability to ripen the fruits of the soile ; whence necessarily must follow famine , plagues , sicknesses , and at length an utter devastation and destruction of both man and beasts . nor can the aerial daemons scape free , but that the vital tye to their vehicles necessarily confining them to their several atmospheres , they will be inevitably imprisoned in more then cimmerian darkness . for the extinction of the sun will put out the light of all their moons , and nothing but ice , and frost , and flakes of snow , and thick mists , as palpable as that of aegypt , will possess the regions of their habitation . of which sad spectacle though those twinkling eyes of heaven , the stars , might be compassionate spectatours ; yet they cannot send out one ray of light to succour or visit them , their tender and remote beams not being able to pierce , much less to dissipate , the clammy and stiff consistency of that long and fatal night . . wherefore calling our mind off from so dismal a sight , let us place it upon a more hopeful object ; and consider the condition of those souls that have arrived to their aethereal vehicle , and see how far this fate can take hold of them . and it is plain at first sight , that they are out of the reach of this misty dungeon , as being already mounted into the secure mansions of the purer aether . the worst that can be imagined of them is , that they may finde themselves in a condition something like that of ours when we walk out in a clear , starlight , frosty night , which to them that are sound is rather a pleasure then offence . and if we can beare it with some delight in these earthly bodies , whose parts will grow hard and stiff for want of due heat , it can prove nothing else but a new modification of tactual pleasure to those aethereal inhabitants , whose bodies are not constipated as ours , but are themselves a kinde of agile light and fire . all that can be conceived is , that the spherical particles of their vehicles may stand a little more closely and firmly together then usual , whence the triangular intervals being more straight , the subtilest element will move something more quick in them , which will raise a sense of greater vigour and alacrity then usual . so little formidable is this fate to them in this regard . . but their light , you 'l say , will be obscured , the sun being put out , whose shining seems to concern the gods as well as men , as homer would intimate , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but i answer , that that of homer is chiefly to be understood of the aerial daemons , not the aethereal deities , who can turn themselves into a pure actual light when they please . so that there is no fear but that their personal converse will be as chearful and distinct as before , white letters being as legible upon black paper as black upon white . but this is to suppose them in the dark , which they are not , but in a more soft and mild light , which is but a change of pleasure , as it is to see the moon shine fair into a roome after the putting out of the candle . and certainly the contribution of the light of the stars is more to their quick and tender senses , then the clearest moon-shine night is to ours ; though we should suppose them no nearer any star then we are . but such great changes as these may have their conveniences for such as providence will favour , as well as their inconveniences . and the extinction of our sun may be the augmentation of light in some star of a neighbouring vortex . which though it may not be able to pierce those cimmerian prisons i spake of before , yet it may give sufficient light to these spirits that are free . besides that the discerption and spoil of our vortex , that will then happen , will necessarily bring us very much nearer the centre of some other , whose star will administer sufficient light to the aethereal genii , though it be too weak to relieve the aerial . and that so remote a distance from these central luminaries of the vortices is consistent with the perfectest happiness , we may discern partly , in that the coelestial matter above saturn , till the very marge of the vortex , is more strongly agitated then that betwixt him and the sun , and therefore has less need of the suns beams to conserve its agility and liquidity ; and partly , in that those huge vast regions of aither would be lost , and in vain in a manner , if they were not frequented by aethereal inhabitants , which in all reason and likelihood are of the noblest kinde , according to the nature of their element . and therefore all the aethereal people may retire thither upon such an exigency as this , and there rest secure in joy and happiness , in these true intermundia deorum which epicurus dream'd of . . which we may easily admit , if we consider the grand priviledges of the aethereal vehicle , wherein so great a power of the soul is awakened , that she can moderate the motion of the particles thereof as she pleases , by adding or diminishing the degrees of agitation , axiome . whereby she is also able to temper the solidity thereof , and , according to this contemperation of her vehicle , to ascend or descend in the vortex as she lists her self , and that with a great variety of swiftness , according to her own pleasure . by the improvement of which priviledge she may also , if she please , pass from one vortex into another , and receive the warmth of a new vesta , so that no fate imaginable shall be ever able to lay hold upon her . . nor will this be any more labour to her , then sailing down the stream . for she , having once fitted the agitation and solidity of her vehicle for her celestial voiage , will be as naturally carried whither she is bound , as a stone goes downward , or the fire upward . so that there is no fear of any lassitude , no more then by being rowed in a boat , or carried in a sedan . for the celestial matter that environs her vehicle , works her upward or downward , toward the centre or from the centre of a vortex , at its own proper pains and charges . lastly , such is the tenuity and subtilty of the senses of the aethereal inhabitants , that their prevision and sagacity must be , beyond all conceit , above that of ours , besides that there will be warnings and premonitions of this future disaster , both many , and those very visible and continued , before the sun shall fail so far , as that they shall at all be concerned in his decay ; so that the least blast of misfortune shall never be able to blow upon them , nor the least evil imaginable overtake them . . this is a small glance at the mysteries of providence , whose fetches are so large , and circuits so immense , that they may very well seem utterly incomprehensible to the incredulous and idiots , who are exceeding prone to think that all things will ever be as they are , and desire they should be so : though it be as rude and irrational , as if one that comes into a bad , and is taken much with the first dance he sees , would have none danced but that , or have them move no further one from another then they did when he first came into the room ; whenas they are to trace nearer one another , or further off , according to the measures of the musick , and the law of the dance they are in . and the whole matter of the universe , and all the parts thereof , are ever upon motion , and in such a dance , as whose traces backwards and forwards take a vast compass ; and what seems to have made the longest stand , must again move , according to the modulations and accents of that musick , that is indeed out of the hearing of the acutest ears , but yet perceptible by the purest minds and the sharpest wits . the truth whereof none would dare to oppose , if the breath of the gainsayer could but tell its own story , and declare through how many stars and vortices it has been strained , before the particles thereof met , to be abused to the framing of so rash a contradiction . . we have now finisht our whole discourse , the summary result whereof is this ; that there is an incorporeal substance , and that in man , which we call his soul. that this soul of his subsists and acts after the death of his body , and that usually first in an aerial vehicle , as other daemons doe ; wherein she is not quite exempt from fate , but is then perfect and secure , when she has obtain'd her aethereal one , she being then out of the reach of that evil principle , whose dominion is commensurable with misery and death . which power the persian magi termed arimanius , and resembled him to darkness , as the other good principle , which they called oromazes , to light , styling one by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the other by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . of which there can be no other meaning that will prove allowable , but an adumbration of those two grand parts of providence , the one working in the demoniacal , the other in the divine orders . betwixt which natures there is perpetually more or less strife and contest , both inwardly and outwardly . but if theopompus his prophecy be true in plutarch , who was initiated into these arcana , the power of the benign principle will get the upper hand at last , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. at length hades or arimanius will be left in the lurch , who so strongly holds us captive , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and men shall then be perfectly happy , needing no food , nor casting any shadow . for what shadow can that body cast that is a pure and transparent light , such as the aethereal vehicle is ? and therefore that oracle is then fulfilled , when the soul has ascended into that condition we have already described , in which alone it is out of the reach of fate and mortality . . this is the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to speak according to the persian language , with whose empty title emperours and great potentates of the earth have been ambitious to adorn their memory after death ; but is so high a priviledge of the soul of man , that meer political vertues , as plotinus calls them , can never advance her to that pitch of happiness . either philosophy , or something more sacred then philosophy , must be her guide to so transcendent a condition . and not being curious to dispute , whether the pythagoreans ever arrived to it by living according to the precepts of their master , i shall notwithstanding with confidence averre , that what they aimed at , is the sublimest felicity our nature is capable of ; and being the utmost discovery this treatise could pretend to , i shall conclude all with a distich of theirs ( which i have elswhere taken notice of upon like occasion ) it comprehending the furthest scope , not onely of their philosophy , but of this present discourse . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to this sense , who after death once reach th' aethereal plain are straight made gods , and never die again . the contents of the several chapters contained in this treatise . book i. chap. . . the usefulness of the present speculation for the understanding of providence , and the management of our lives for our greatest happiness ; . for the moderate bearing the death and disasters of our friends ; . for the begetting true magnanimity in us , . and peace and tranquillity of minde . . that so weighty a theory is not to be handled perfunctorily . pag. chap. . . that the souls immortality is demonstrable , by the authors method , to all but meer scepticks . . an illustration of his first axiome . . a confirmation and example of the second . . an explication of the third . . an explication and proof of the fourth . . a proof of the fifth . . of the sixth . . an example of the seventh . . a confirmation of the truth of the eighth . . a demonstration and example of the ninth . . penetrability the immediate property of incorporeal substance . . as also indiscerpibility . . a proof and illustration of the tenth axiome . chap. . . the general notions of body and spirit . . that the notion of spirit is altogether as intelligible as that of body . . whether there be any substance of a mixt nature , betwixt body and spirit . chap. . . that the notions of the several kinds of immaterial beings have no inconsistency nor incongruity in them . . that the nature of god is as intelligible as the nature of any being whatsoever . . the true notion of his ubiquity , and how intelligible it is . . of the union of the divine essence . . of his power of creation . chap. . . the definition belonging to all finite and created spirits . . of indiscerpibility , a symbolical representation thereof . . an objection answered against that representation . chap. . . axiomes that tend to the demonstrating how the centre or first point of the primary substance of a spirit may be indiscerpible . . several others that demonstrate how the secondary substance of a spirit may be indiscerpible . . an application of these principles . . of the union of the secondary substance considered transversly . . that the notion of a spirit has less difficulty then that of matter . . an answer to an objection from the rational faculty . . answers to objections suggested from fancy . . a more compendious satisfaction concerning the notion of a spirit . chap. . . of the self-motion of a spirit . . of self-penetration . . of self-contraction and dilatation . . the power of penetrating of matter . . the power of moving , . and of altering the matter . chap. . . four main species of spirits . . how they are to be defined . . the definition of a seminal form ; . of the soul of a brute ; . of the soul of a man. . the difference betwixt the soul of an angel and an humane soul. . the definition of an angelical soul. . of the platonical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . that des-cartes his demonstration of the existence of the humane soul does at least conclude the possibility of a spirit . chap. . . that it is of no small consequence to have proved the possibility of the existence of a spirit . . the necessity of examining mr. hobbs his reasons to the contrary . . the first excerption out of mr. hobbs . . the second excerption . . the third . . the fourth . . the fifth . . the sixth . . the seventh . . the eighth and last excerption . chap. . . an answer to the first excerption . . to the second . . an answer to the third . . to the fourth excerption . . an answer to the fifth . . to the sixth . . to the seventh . . an answer to the eighth and last . . a brief recapitulation of what has been said hitherto . chap. . . three grounds to prove the existence of an immaterial substance , whereof the first is fetcht from the nature of god. . the second from the phaenomenon of motion in the world . . that the matter is not self-moveable . . an objection that the matter may be part self-moved , part not . . the first answer to the objection . . the second answer . . other evasions answered . . the conclusion , that no matter is self-moved , but that a certain quantity of motion was impressed upon it at its first creation by god. chap. . . that the order and nature of things in the universe argue an essence spiritual or incorporeal . . the evasion of this argument . . a preparation out of mr. hobbs to answer the evasion . . the first answer . . the second answer . . mr. hobbs his mistake , of making the ignorance of second causes the onely seed of religion . chap. . . the last proof of incorporeal substances from apparitions . . the first evasion of the force of such arguings . . an answer to that evasion . . the second evasion . . the first kinde of the second evasion . . a description out of virgil of that genius that suggests the dictates of the epicurean philosophy . . the more full and refined sense of that philosophy now-a-days . . the great efficacy of the stars ( which they suppose to consist of nothing but motion and matter ) for production of all manner of creatures in the world . chap. . . that the splendor of the celestial bodies proves no fore-sight nor soveraignty that they have over us . . that the stars can have no knowledge of us , mathematically demonstrated . . the same conclusion again demonstrated more familiarly . . that the stars cannot communicate thoughts , neither with the sun nor with one another . . that the sun has no knowledge of our affairs . . principles laid down for the inferring that conclusion . . a demonstration that he cannot see us . . that he can have no other kind of knowledge of us , nor of the frame of any animal on earth . . that though the sun had the knowledge of the right frame of an animal , he could not transmit it into terrestrial matter . . an answer to that instance of the signature of the foetus . , . further answers thereto . . a short increpation of the confident exploders of incorporeal substance out of the world . book ii. chap. . . an addition of more axiomes for the demonstrating that there is a spirit or immaterial substance in man. . the truth of the first of these axiomes confirmed from the testimony of mr. hobbs . . the proof of the second axiome . . the proof of the third . . the confirmation of the fourth from the testimony of mr. hobbs , as also from reason . . an explication and proof of the fifth . . a further proof thereof . . a third argument of the truth thereof . . an answer to an evasion . . another evasion answered . a further answer thereto . . a third answer . . a fourth answer , wherein is mainly contained a confirmation of the first answer to the second evasion . . the plainness of the sixth axiome . . the proof of the seventh . chap. . . that if matter be capable of sense , inanimate things are so too : and of mr. hobbs his wavering in that point . . an enumeration of several faculties in us that matter is utterly uncapable of . . that matter in no kind of temperature is capable of sense . . that no one point of matter can be the common sensorium . . nor a multitude of such points receiving singly the entire image of the object . . nor yet receiving part part , and the whole the whole . . that memory is incompetible to matter . . that the matter is uncapable of the notes of some circumstances of the object which we remembred . . that matter cannot be the seat of second notions . . mr. hobbs his evasion of the foregoing demonstration clearly confuted . . that the freedome of our will evinces that there is a substance in us distinct from matter . . that mr. hobbs therefore acknowledges all our actions necessary . chap. . . mr. hobbs his arguments whereby he would prove all our actions necessitated . his first argument . . his second argument . . his third argument . . his fourth ment . . what must be the meaning of these words , nothing taketh beginning from it self , in the first argument of mr. hobbs . . a fuller and more determinate explication of the foregoing words ; whose sense is evidently convinced to be , that no essence of it self can vary its modification . . that this is onely said by mr. hobbs , not proved , and a full confutation of his assertion . . mr. hobbs imposed upon by his own sophistry . . that one part of this first argument of his is groundless , the other sophistical . . the plain proposal of his argument , whence appears more fully the weakness and sophistry thereof . . an answer to his second argument . . an answer to the third . . an answer to a difficulty concerning the truth and falshood of future propositions . . an answer to mr. hobbs his fourth argument , which , though slighted by himself , is the strongest of them all . . the difficulty of reconciling free-will with divine prescience and prophecies . . that the faculty of free-will is seldome put in use . . that the use of it is properly in moral conflict . . that the soul is not invincible there neither . . that divine decrees either finde fit instruments or make them . . that the more exact we make divine prescience , even to the comprehension of any thing that implies no contradiction in it self to be comprehended , the more clear it is that mans will may be sometimes free : . which is sufficient to make good my last argument against mr. hobbs . chap. . . an enumeration of sundry opinions concerning the seat of common sense . . upon supposition that we are nothing but meer matter , that the whole body cannot be the common sensorium ; . nor the orifice of the stomack ; . nor the heart ; . nor the brain ; . nor the membranes ; . nor the septum lucidum ; . nor regius his small and perfectly solid particle . . the probability of the conarion being the common seat of sense . chap. . . how perception of external objects , spontaneous motion , memory and imagination , are pretended to be performed by the conarion , spirits and muscles , without a soul. . that the conarion , devoid of a soul , cannot be the common percipient , demonstrated out of des-cartes himself . . that the conarion , with the spirits and organization of the parts of the body , is not a sufficient principle of spontaneous motion , without a soul. . a description of the use of the valvulae in the nerves of the muscles for spontaneous motion . . the insufficiency of this contrivance for that purpose . . a further demonstration of the insufficiency thereof , from whence is clearly evinced that brutes have souls . . that memory cannot be salved the way above described ; . nor imagination . . a distribution out of des-cartes of the functions in us , some appertaining to the body , and others to the soul. . the authors observations thereupon . chap. . . that no part of the spinal marrow can be the common sensorium without a soul in the body . . that the animal spirits are more likely to be that common percipient . . but yet it is demonstrable they are not : . as not being so much as capable of sensation ; . nor of directing motion into the muscles ; . much less of imagination and rational invention ; . nor of memory . . an answer to an evasion . . the authors reason , why he has confuted so particularly all the suppositions of the seat of common sense , when few of them have been asserted with the exclusion of a soul. chap. . . his enquiry after the seat of common sense , upon supposition there is a soul in the body . . that there is some particular part in the body that is the seat of common sense . . a general division of their opinions concerning the place of common sense . . that of those that place it out of the head there are two sorts . . the invalidity of helmont 's reasons , whereby he would prove the orifice of the stomack to be the principal seat of the soul. . an answer to helmont 's stories for that purpose . . a further confutation out of his own concessions . . mr. hobbs his opinion confuted , that makes the heart the seat of common sense . . a further confutation thereof from experience . . that the common sense is seated somewhere in the head. . a caution for the choice of the particular place thereof . . that the whole brain is not it ; . nor regius his small solid particle ; . nor any external membrane of the brain , nor the septum lucidum . . the three most likely places . . objections against cartesius his opinion concerning the conarion answered . . that the conarion is not the seat of common sense ; . nor that part of the spinal marrow where the nerves are conceived to concurre ; but the spirits in the fourth ventricle of the brain . chap. . . the first reason of his opinion , the convenient situation of these spirits . . the second , that the spirits are the immediate instrument of the soul in all her functions . . the proof of the second reason from the general authority of philosophers , and particularly of hippocrates ; . from our sympathizing with the changes of the aire ; . from the celerity of motion and cogitation ; . from what is observed generally in the generation of things ; . from regius his experiment of a snail in a glass ; . from the running round of images in a vertigo ; . from the constitution of the eye , and motion of the spirits there ; . from the dependency of the actions of the soul upon the body , whether in meditation or corporeal motion ; . from the recovery of motion and sense into a stupified part ; . and lastly from what is observed in swooning fits , of paleness and sharpness of visage , &c. . the inference from all this , that the spirits in the fourth ventricle are the seat of common sense and that the main use of the brain and nerves is to preserve the spirits . chap. . . several objections against animal spirits . . an answer to the first objection touching the porosity of the nerves . . to the second and third from the extravasation of the spirits and pituitous excrements found in the brain . . to the fourth fetcht from the incredible swiftness of motion in the spirits . . to the last from ligation . . undeniable demonstrations that there are animal spirits in the ventricles of the brain . chap. . . that the soul is not confined to the common sensorium . . the first argument from the plastick power of the soul. . which is confirmed from the gradual dignity of the souls faculties , of which this plastick is the lowest ; . external sensation the next ; . after that imagination , and then reason . . the second argument from passions and sympathies in animals . . an illustration of the manner of natural magick . . the third argument from the perception of pain in the exteriour parts of the body . . the fourth and last from the nature of sight . chap. . . that neither the soul without the spirits , nor the spirits without the presence of the soul in the organ , are sufficient causes of sensation . . a brief declaration how sensation is made . . how imagination . . of reason and memory , and whether there be any marks in the brain . . that the spirits are the immediate instrument of the soul in memory also ; and how memory arises ; . as also forgetfulness . . how spontaneous motion is performed . . how we walk , sing , and play , though thinking of something else . . that though the spirits be not alike fine every where . yet the sensiferous impression will pass to the common sensorium . . that there is an heterogeneity in the very soul her self ; and what it is in her we call the root , the centre , and the eye ; and what the rayes and branches . . that the sober and allowable distribution of her into parts , is into perceptive and plastick . chap. . . an answer to an objection , that our arguments will as well prove the immortality of the souls of brutes , as of men. . another objection inferring the praeexistence of brutes souls , and consequently of ours . . the first answer to the objection . . the second answer consisting of four parts . . first , that the hypothesis of praeexistence is more agreeable to reason then any other hypothesis . . and not onely so , but that it is very solid in it self . . that the wisdome and goodness of god argue the truth thereof . . as also the face of providence in the world. . the second part of the second answer , that the praeexistence of the soul has the suffrage of all philosophers in all ages , that held it incorporeal . . that the gymnosophists of aegypt , the indian brachmans , the persian magi , and all the learned of the jews were of this opinion . . a catalogue of particular famous persons that held the same . . that aristotle was also of the same minde . . another more clear place in aristotle to this purpose , with sennertus his interpretation . . an answer to an evasion of that interpretation . . the last and clearest place of all out of aristotles writings . chap. . . the third part of the second answer , that the forgetting of the former state is no good argument against the souls praeexistence . . what are the chief causes of forgetfulness . . that they all conspire , and that in the highest degree , to destroy the memory of the other state . . that mischances and diseases have quite taken away the memory of things here in this life . . that it is impossible for the soul to remember her former condition without a miracle . . the fourth part of the second answer , that the entrance of a praeexistent soul into a body is as intelligible as either creation or traduction . chap. . . the knowledge of the difference of vehicles , and the souls union with them , necessary for the understanding how she enters into this earthly body . . that though the name of vehicle be not in aristotle , yet the thing is there . . a clearing of aristotles notion of the vehicle , out of the philosophy of des-cartes . a full interpretation of his text. . that aristotle makes onely two vehicles , terrestrial and aethereal ; which is more then sufficient to prove the souls oblivion of her former state . that the ordinary vehicle of the soul after death is aire . . the duration of the soul in her several vehicles . . that the union of the soul with her vehicle does not consist in mechanical congruity , but vital . . in what vital congruity of the matter consists . . in what vital congruity of the soul consists , and how it changing , the soul may be free from her aiery vehicle , without violent precipitation out of it . . of the manner of the descent of souls into earthly bodies . . that there is so little absurdity in the praeexistence of souls , that the concession thereof can be but a very small prejudice to our demonstrations of her immortality . chap. . . what is meant by the separation of the soul , with a confutation of regius , who would stop her in the dead corps . . an answer to those that profess themselves puzled how the soul can get out of the body . . that there is a threefold vital congruity to be found in three several subjects . . that this triple congruity is also competible to one subject , viz. the soul of man. . that upon this hypothesis it is very intelligible how the soul may leave the body . . that her union with the aerial vehicle may be very suddain , and as it were in a moment . . that the soul is actually separate from the body is to be proved either by history or reason . examples of the former kinde out of pliny , herodotus , ficinus . . whether the ecstasie of witches prove an actual separation of the soul from the body . . that this real separation of the soul in ecstasie is very possible . . how the soul may be loosned and leave the body , and yet return thither again . . that though reason and will cannot in this life release the soul from the body , yet passion may ; and yet so that she may return again . . the peculiar power of desire for this purpose . . of cardans ecstasies , and the ointment of witches , and what truth there may be in their confessions . chap. . . that souls departed communicate dreams . . examples of apparitions of souls deceased . . of apparitions in fields where pitcht battels have been fought ; as also of those in church-yards , and other vaporous places . . that the spissitude of the aire may well contribute to the easiness of the appearing of ghosts and spectres . . a further proof thereof from sundry examples . . of marsilius ficinus his appearing after death . . with what sort of people such examples as these avail little . . reasons to perswade the unprejudiced that ordinarily those apparitions that bear the shape and person of the deceased , are indeed the souls of them . chap. . . the praeeminence of arguments drawn from reason above those from story . . the first step towards a demonstration of reason that the soul acts out of her body , for that she is an immaterial substance separable therefrom . . the second , that the immediate instruments for sense , motion , and organization of the body , are certain subtile and tenuious spirits . . a comparison betwixt the soul in the body and the aerial genii . . of the nature of daemons from the account of marcus the eremite , and how the soul is presently such , having once left this body . . an objection concerning the souls of brutes : to which is answered , first by way of concesson ; . secondly , by confuting the arguments for the former concession . . that there is no rational doubt at all of the humane soul acting after death . . a further argument of her activity out of this body , from her conflicts with it while she is in it . . as also from the general hope and belief of all nations , that they shall live after death . chap. . . that the faculties of our souls , and the nature of the immediate instrument of them , the spirits , doe so nearly symbolize with those of daemons , that it seems reasonable , if god did not on purpose hinder it , that they would not fail to act out of this earthly body . . or if they would , his power and wisdome could easily implant in their essence a double or triple vital congruity , to make all sure . . a further demonstration of the present truth from the veracity of god. . an answer to an objection against the foregoing argument . . another demonstration from his justice . . an answer to an objection . . an answer to another objection . . another argument from the justice of god. . an objection answered . . an invincible demonstration of the souls immortality from the divine goodness . . a more particular enforcement of that argument , and who they are upon whom it will work least . . that the noblest and most vertuous spirit is the most assurable of the souls immortality . book iii. chap. . . why the author treats of the state of the soul after death , and in what method . . arguments to prove that the soul is ever united vitally with some matter or other . . further reasons to evince the same . . that the soul is capable of an aiery and aethereal body , as well as a terrestrial . . that she ordinarily passes out of an earthly into an aerial vehicle first . . that in her aiery vehicle she is capable of sense , pleasure , and pain . . that the main power of the soul over her aerial vehicle is the direction of motion in the particles thereof . . that she may also adde or diminish motion in her aethereal . . how the purity of the vehicle confers to the quickness of sense and knowledge . . of the souls power of changing the temper of her aerial vehicle ; . as also the shape thereof . . the plainness of the last axiome . chap. . . of the dimensions of the soul considered barely in her self . . of the figure of the souls dimensions . . of the heterogeneity of her essence . . that there is an heterogeneity in her plastick part distinct from the perceptive . . of the acting of this plastick part in her framing of the vehicle . . the excellency of des-cartes his philosophy . . that the vehicles of ghosts have as much of solid corporeal substance in them as the bodies of men. . the folly of the contrary opinion evinced . . the advantage of the soul , for matter of body , in the other state , above this . chap. . . that the natural abode of the soul after death is the aire . . that she cannot quit the aerial regions till the aethereal congruity of life be awakened in her . . that all souls are not in the same region of the aire . . cardans conceit of placing all daemons in the upper region . . the use of this conceit for the shewing the reason of their seldome appearing . . that this phaenomenon is salved by a more rational hypothesis . . a further confutation of cardans opinion . . more tending to the same scope . . the original of cardans errour concerning the remote operations of daemons . . an objection how daemons and souls separate can be in this lower region , where winds and tempests are so frequent . . a preparation to an answer from the consideration of the nature of the winds . . particular answers to the objection . . a further answer from the nature of the statick faculty of the soul. . another from the suddain power of actuating her vehicle . . what incommodations she suffers from hail , rain , &c. chap. . . that the soul once having quitted this earthly body becomes a daemon . . of the external senses of the soul separate , their number and limits in the vehicle . . of sight in a vehicle organized and unorganized . . how daemons and separate souls hear and see at a vast distance : and whence it is that though they may so easily hear or see us , we may neither see nor hear them . . that they have hearing as well as sight . . of the touch , smell , tast , and nourishment of daemons . . the external employment that the genii and souls deceased may have out of the body . . that the actions of separate souls , in reference to us , are most-what conformable to their life here on earth . . what their entertainments are in reference to themselves . . the distinction of orders of daemons from the places they most frequent . chap. . . that the separate soul spends not all her time in solitude . . that her converse with us seems more intelligible then that with the genii . . how the genii may be visible one to another , though they be to us invisible . . of their approaches , and of the limits of their swiftness of motion : . and how they farre exceed us in celerity . . of the figure or shape of their vehicles , and of their privacy , when they would be invisible . . that they cannot well converse in a meer simple orbicular form . . that they converse in humane shape , at least the better sort of them . . whether the shape they be in proceed meerly from the imperium of their will and fancy , or is regulated by a natural character of the plastick part of the soul. . that the personal shape of a soul or genius is partly from the will , and partly from the plastick power . . that considering how the soul organizes the foetus in the womb , and moves our limbs at pleasure ; it were a wonder if spirits should not have such command over their vehicles as is believed . . a further argument from an excessive vertue some have given to imagination . chap. . . more credible instances of the effects of imagination . . a special and peculiar instance in signatures of the foetus . . that what fienus grants , who has so cautiously bounded the power of fancy , is sufficient for the present purpose . . examples approved of by fienus . . certain examples rejected by him , and yet approved of by fernelius and sennertus . . three not orious stories of the power of the mothers imagination on the foetus , out of helmont . . a conjectural inference from those stories , what influence the spirit of nature has in all plastick operations . . a further confirmation of the conjecture from signatures on the foetus . . an application thereof to the transfiguration of the vehicles of daemons . chap. . . three notable examples of signatures , rejected by fienus : . and yet so farre allowed for possible , as will fit our design . . that helmonts cherry and licetus his crab-fish are shrewd arguments that the soul of the world has to doe with all efformations of both animals and plants . . an example of a most exact and lively signature out of kircher : . with his judgement thereupon . . another example out of him of a child with gray hairs . . an application of what has been said hitherto , concerning the signatures of the foetus , to the transfiguration of the aiery vehicles of separate souls and daemons . . of their personal transformation visible to us . chap. . . that the better sort of genii converse in humane shape , the baser sometimes in bestial . . how they are disposed to turn themselves into several bestial forms . . of psellus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or igneous splendours of daemons , how they are made . . that the external beauty of the genii is according to the degree of the inward vertue of their minds . . that their aerial form need not be purely transparent , but more finely opake , and coloured . . that there is a distinction of masculine and feminine beauty in their personal figurations . chap. . . a general account of the mutual entertains of the genii in the other world . . of their philosophical and political conferences . . of their religious exercises . . of the innocent pastimes and recreations of the better sort of them . . a confirmation thereof from the conventicles of witches . . whether the purer daemons have their times of repast or no. . whence the bad genii have their food . . of the food and feastings of the better sort of genii . chap. . . how hard it is to define any thing concerning the aerial or aethereal elysiums . . that there is political order and laws amongst these aiery daemons . . that this chain of government reaches down from the highest aethereal powers through the aerial to the very inhabitants of the earth . . the great security we live in thereby . . how easily detectible and punishable wicked spirits are by those of their own tribe . . other reasons of the security we find our selves in from the gross infestations of evil spirits . . what kinde of punishments the aerial officers inflict upon their malefactours . chap. . . three things to be considered before we come to the moral condition of the soul after death : namely , her memory of transactions in this life . . the peculiar feature and individual character of her aerial vehicle . . the retainment of the same name . . how her ill deportment here lays the train of her misery hereafter . . the unspeakable torments of conscience worse then death , and not to be avoided by dying . . of the hideous tortures of external sense on them , whose searedness of conscience may seem to make them uncapable of her lashes . . of the state of the souls of the more innocent and conscientious pagans . . of the natural accruments of after-happiness to the morally good in this life . . how the soul enjoys her actings or sufferings in this life for an indispensable cause , when she has passed to the other . . that the reason is proportionably the same in things of less consequence . . what mischief men may create to themselves in the other world by their zealous mistakes in this . . that though there were no memory after death , yet the manner of our life here may sow the seeds of the souls future happiness or misery . chap. . . what the spirit of nature is . . experiments that argue its real existence ; such as that of two strings tuned unisons . . sympathetick cures and tortures . . the sympathy betwixt the earthly and astral body . . monstrous births . . the attraction of the loadstone and roundness of the sun and stars . chap. . . that the descent of heavy bodies argues the existence of the spirit of nature , because else they would either hang in the aire as they are placed , . or would be diverted from a perpendicular as they fall near a plate of metal set slooping . . that the endeavour of the aether or aire from the centre to the circumference is not the cause of gravity , against mr. hobbs . . a full confutation of mr. hobbs his opinion . . an ocular demonstration of the absurd consequence thereof . . an absolute demonstration that gravity cannot be the effect of meer mechanical powers . . the latitude of the operations of the spirit of nature , how large and where bounded . . the reason of its name . . it s grand office of transmitting souls into rightly prepared matter . chap. . . objections against the souls immortality from her condition in infancy , old age , sleep and sicknesses . . other objections taken from experiments that seem to prove her discerpibility . . as also from the seldome appearing of the souls of the deceased ; . and from our natural fear of death . . a subterfuge of the adverse party , in supposing but one soul common to all creatures . . an answer concerning the littleness of the soul in infancy : . as also concerning the weakness of her intellectuals then , and in old age . . that sleep does not at all argue the souls mortality , but rather illustrate her immortality . . an answer to the objection from apoplexies and catalepsies : . as also to that from madness . . that the various depravations of her intellectual faculties doe no more argue her mortality , then the worser modifications of matter its natural annihilability . and why god created souls sympathizing with matter . chap. . . an answer to the experiment of the scolopendra cut into pieces . . and to the flying of an headless eagle over a barn , as also to that of the malefactors head biting a dog by the eare . . a superaddition of a difficulty concerning monsters born with two or more heads and but one body and heart . . a solution of the difficulty . . an answer touching the seldome appearing of the souls of the deceased : . as also concerning the fear of death ; . and a down-bearing sense that sometimes so forcibly obtrudes upon us the belief of the souls mortality . . of the tragical pomp and dreadful praeludes of death , with some corroborative considerations against such sad spectacles . . that there is nothing really sad and miserable in the universe , unless to the wicked and impious . chap. . . that that which we properly are is both sensitive and intellectual . . what is the true notion of a soul being one. . that if there be but one soul in the world , it is both rational and sensitive . . the most favourable representation of their opinion that hold but one. . a confutation of the foregoing representation . . a reply to the confutation . . an answer to the reply . that the soul of man is not properly any ray either of god or the soul of the world. . and yet if she were so , it would be no prejudice to her immortality : whence the folly of pomponatius is noted . . a further animadversion upon pomponatius his folly , in admitting a certain number of remote intelligencies , and denying particular immaterial substances in men and brutes . chap. . . that the author having safely conducted the soul into her aerial condition through the dangers of death , might well be excused from attending her any further . . what reasons urge him to consider what fates may befall her afterwards . . three hazzards the soul runs after this life , whereby she may again become obnoxious to death according to the opinion of some . . that the aerial genii are mortal , confirmed by three testimonies . . the one from the vision of facius cardanus , in which the spirits that appeared to him profest themselves mortal . . the time they stayed with him , and the matters they disputed of . . what credit hieronymus cardanus gives to his fathers vision . . the other testimony out of plutarch , concerning the death of the great god pan. . the third and last of hesiod , whose opinion plutarch has polisht and refined . . an enumeration of the several paradoxes contained in facius cardanus his vision . . what must be the sense of the third paradox , if those aerial speculators spake as they thought . . another hypothesis to the same purpose . . the craft of these daemons , in shuffling in poysonous errour amongst solid truths . . what makes the story of the death of pan less to the present matter , with an addition of demetrius his observations touching the sacred islands near britain . . that hesiod his opinion is the most unexceptionable , and that the harshness therein is but seeming , not real . . that the aethereal vehicle instates the soul in a condition of perfect immortality . . that there is no internal impediment to those that are heroically good , but that they may attain an everlasting happiness after death . chap. . . the conflagration of the world an opinion of the stoicks . . two ways of destroying the world the ancients have taken notice of , and especially that by fire . . that the conflagration of the world , so farre as it respects us , is to be understood onely of the burning of the earth . . that the ends of the stoicks conflagration are competible onely to the earths burning . . an acknowledgement that the earth may be burnt , though the proof thereof be impertinent to this place . . that the conflagration thereof will prove very fatal to the souls of wicked men and daemons . . five several opinions concerning their state after the conflagration ; whereof the first is , that they are quite destroy'd by fire . . the second , that they are annihilated by a special act of omnipotency . . the third , that they lie sensless in an eternal death . . the fourth , that they are in a perpetual furious and painful dream . . the fifth and last , that they will revive again , and that the earth and aire will be inhabited by them . . that this last seems to be fram'd from the fictitious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the stoicks , who were very sorry metaphysicians , and as ill naturalists . . an animadversion upon a self-contradicting sentence of seneca . . the unintelligibleness of the state of the souls of the wicked after the conflagration . . that the aethereal inhabitants will be safe . and what will then become of good men and daemons on the earth and in the aire . and how they cannot be delivered but by a supernatural power . chap. . . that the extinction of the sun is no panick feare , but may be rationally suspected from the records of history and grounds of natural philosophy . . the sad influence of this extinction upon man and beast , and all the aerial daemons imprison'd within their several atmospheres in our vortex . . that it will doe little or no damage to the aethereal inhabitants in reference to heat or warmth . . nor will they find much want of his light . . and if they did , they may pass out of one vortex into another , by the priviledge of their aethereal vehicles ; . and that without any labour or toil , and as maturely as they please . . the vast incomprehensibleness of the tracts and compasses of the waies of providence . . a short recapitulation of the whole discourse . . an explication of the persians two principles of light and darkness , which they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and when and where the principle of light gets the full victory . . that philosophy , or something more sacred then philosophy , is the onely guide to a true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . finis . errata . pag. . l. . for gamaitus , read gamaieu's . ● . l. . for tyc , r. tye. . l. . for immortality , r. immorality . . l. . for stooping , r. slooping . . l. . for e f h , r. angle e f h. . l. . for inclogg'd , r. in , clogg'd . . l. . for lightning , r. lighting . . l. ult . dele those . psychodia platonica, or, a platonicall song of the soul consisting of foure severall poems ... : hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of apollo consulted by amelius, about plotinus soul departed this life / by h.m., master of arts and fellow at christs colledge in cambridge. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) psychodia platonica, or, a platonicall song of the soul consisting of foure severall poems ... : hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of apollo consulted by amelius, about plotinus soul departed this life / by h.m., master of arts and fellow at christs colledge in cambridge. more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ], , [ ], , [ ] p. printed by roger daniel ..., cambridge : . first word in title, "psychodia" transliterated from greek. each poem has special t.p. and separate paging. first ed. cf. bm. errata: p. [ ] at end. cf. hoe, r. catalogue of books by english authors ... before the year , - , v. , p. - . reproduction of original in british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng plotinus. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - judith siefring sampled and proofread - judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion ΨΥΞΩΔΙΑ platonica : or a platonicall song of the soul , consisting of foure severall poems ; viz. ΨΥΞΟΖΩΙΑ ΨΥΞΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ ΑΝΤΙΨΥΞΟΠΑΝΝΥΞΙΑ ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΞΙΑ hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of apollo consulted by amelius , about plotinus soul departed this life . by h. m. master of arts , and fellow of christs colledge in cambridge . nullam majorem afferre solet ignaris inscitia voluptatem 〈◊〉 expeditum factidiosúmque contemptum . scal. cambridge printed by roger daniel , printer to the universitie . . to the reader . but whom lust , wrath , and fear controul , scarce know their body from their soul , if any such chance heare my verse , dark numerous nothings i rehearse to them , measure out an idle sound in which no inward sense is found . thus sing i to cragg'd clifts and hills , to sighing winds , to murmuring rills , to wastefull woods , to empty groves , such things as my dear mind most loves . but they heed not my heavenly passion , fast fixt on their own operation . on chalky rocks hard by the sea , safe guided by fair cynthia , i strike my silver-sounded lyre , first struck my self by some strong fire ; and all the while her wavering ray reflected from fluid glasse doth play on the white banks . but all are deaf unto my muse , that is most lief to mine own self . so they nor blame my pleasant notes , nor praise the same . nor do thou , reader , rashly brand my rhymes 'fore thou them understand . h. m. ΨΥΞΟΖΩΙΑ , or a christiano-platonicall display of life , written in the beginning of the year of our lord . and now published for all free phisophers and well-willers to the true christian life . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , trismeg . cambridge printed by roger daniel , printer to the universitie , . to the reader , upon the first book of psychozoia . this first book , as you may judge by the names therein , was intended for a mere platonicall description of universall life , or life that is omnipresent , though not alike omnipresent . as in noahs deluge , the water that overflowed the earth was present in every part thereof , but every part of the water was not in every part of the earth , or all in every part ; so the low spirit of the universe , though it go quite through the world , yet it is not totally in every part of the world ; else we should heare our antipodes , if they did but whisper : because our lower man is a part of the inferiour spirit of the universe . ahad , aeon , and psyche are all omnipresent in the world , after the most perfect way that humane reason can conceive of . for they are in the world all totally and at once every where . this is the famous platonicall triad : which though they that slight the christian trinity do take for a figment ; yet i think it is no contemptible argument , that the platonists , the best and divinest of philosophers , and the christians , the best of all that do professe religion , do both concur that there is a trinity . in what they differ , i leave to be found out , according to the safe direction of that infallible rule of faith , the holy word . in the mean time i shall not be blamed by any thing but ignorance and malignity , for being invited to sing of the second unity of the platonicall triad , in a christian strain and poeticall scheme , that which the holy scripture witnesseth of the second person of the christian trinity . as that his patrimony is the possession of the whole earth . for if it be not all one with christ , according to his divinity ( although their attributes sute exceeding well : for that second unity in the platonicall triad , is called filius boni , the son of the good ; the christian second person , the sonne of god ; he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the first beauty or lustre ; he , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that , the first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and sometime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : as in trismeg : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he , the truth ; that , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or true platform according to which every thing was made and ought to be made : that aeon ; he , eternall life : he , the wisdome of god ; that the intellect : he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ) yet the platonists placing him in the same order , and giving him the like attributes , with the person of the sonne in christianity , it is nothing harsh for me to take occasion from hence to sing a while the true christian autocalon , whose beauty shall adorn the whole earth in good time ; if we believe the prophets . for that hath not as yet happened . for christ is not where ever his name is : * but as he is the truth , so will he be truly displayed upon the face of the whole earth . for god doth not fill the world with his glory by words and sounds , but by spirit , and life , and realtie . now this eternall life i sing of , even in the midst of my platonisme : for i cannot conceal from whence i am , viz. of christ ; but yet acknowledging , that god hath not left the heathen , plato especially , without witnesse of himself . whose doctrine might strike our adulterate christian professours with shame and astonishment ; their lives falling so exceeding short of the better heathen . how far short are they then of that admirable and transcendent high mystery of true christianisme ? to which plato is a very good subservient minister ; whose philosophy i singing here in a full heat , why may it not be free for me to break out into an higher strain , and under it to touch upon some points of christianitie ; as well as all-approved spencer sings of christs under the name of pan ? saint paul also transfers those things that be spoken of jupiter , to god himself , arat. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . those latter words he gives to the christian god , whom he himself preached . i will omit the usual course of the spirit of god in holy writ , to take occasion from things that have some resemblance of divine things , under them to speak of the true things themselves . all this out of a tendernesse of mind , being exceeding loth to give any man offence by my writings . for though knowledge and theory be better then any thing but honesty and true piety , yet it is not so good , as that i should willingly offend my neighbour by it . thus much by way of preparation to the first piece of this poem . i will now leave thee to thine own discretion and judgement . upon the second book . this second book , before we descend to particular lives , exhibits to our apprehension , by as fit a similitude as i could light upon , the universe as one simple uniform being , from ahad to hyle : no particular straitned being as yet being made ; no earth or any other orb as yet kned together . all homogeneall , simple , single , pure , pervious , unknotted , uncoacted , nothing existing but those eight universall orders , there god hath full command , builds and destroyes what he lists . that all our souls are free effluxes from his essence , what followes is so plain that the reader wants no direction . upon the third book . there is no knot at all in this last book if men do not seek one . i plainly and positive●…y declare no opinion , but show the abuse of ●…ose opinions there touched , crouding a number ●…f enormities together , that safely shroud themselves there , where all sinfulnesse surely may easi●…y get harbour , if we be not well aware of the ●…evil , that makes even true opinions oftentimes ●…rve for mischief . nothing else can be now expected for the easy ●…nd profitable understanding of this poem , but ●…e interpretation of the names that frequently ●…ccur in it . which i will interpret at the end of ●…ese books , ( as also the hard terms of the other ●…oems ) for their sakes whose reall worth and ●…nderstanding is many times equall with the ●…est , onely they have not fed of husks and shels , ●…s others have been forced to do , the superficiary ●…nowledge of tongues . but it would be well , that ●…either the linguist would contemne the illiterate ●…r his ignorance , nor the ignorant condemne the ●…arned for his knowledge , for it is not unlearndnesse that god is so pleased withall , or sillines ●…f mind , but singlenesse and simplicity of heart . h. m. the argument of psychozoia . lib. . this song great psyches parentage with her fourefold array , and that mysterious marriage , to th' reader doth display . nor ladies loves , nor knights brave martiall deeds , ywrapt in rolls of hid antiquity ; but th' inward fountain , and the unseen seeds , from whence are these and what so under eye doth fall , or is record in memory , psyche , i 'll sing , psyche ! from thee they spreng . o life of time , and all alterity ! the life of lives instill his nectar strong , and psych ' inebriate , while i sing psyches song . but thou , who e're thou art that hear'st this strain , or read'st these rimes which from platonick rage do powerfully flow forth , dare not to blame my forward pen of foul miscarriage ; if all that 's spoke , with thoughts more sadly sage doth not agree . my task is not to try what 's simply true . i onely do engage my self to make a fit discovery , give some fair glimps of plato's hid philosophie . what man alive that hath but common wit ( when skilfull limmer ' suing his intent shall fairly well pourtray and wisely hit the true proportion of each lineament , and in right colours to the life depaint the fulvid eagle with her sun-bright eye ) would woxen wroth with inward cholar brent cause 't is no buzard or discolour'd pye ? why man ? i meant it not : cease thy fond obloquie . so if what 's consonant to plato's school , ( which well agrees with learned pythagore , aegyptian trismegist and th' antique roll of chaldee wisedome all which time hath tore but plato and deep plotin do restore ) which is my scope , i sing out lustily . if any twitten me for such strange lore , and me all blamelesse brand with infamy , god purge that man from fault of foul malignity . th' ancient of dayes , sire of aeternitie , sprung of himself , or rather nowise sprong . father of lights and everlasting glee , who puts to silence every daring tongue and flies mans sight , shrouding himself among his glorious rayes , good hattove , from whom came all good that penia spies in thickest throng of most desired things , all 's from that same , that same , that hattove hight and sweet abinoam . now can i not with flowring phantasie to drowsie sensuall souls such words impart , which in their sprights may cause sweet agony , and thrill their bodies through with pleasing dart , and spread in flowing sire their close-twist heart , all-chearing fire , that nothing wont to burn that hattove lists to save : and his good art is all to save that will to him return , that all to him return , nought of him is sorlorn . for what can be forlorn , when his good hands hold all in life , that of life do partake ? o surest confidence of loves strong bands ! love loveth all that 's made ; love all did make and when false life doth fail , it 's for the sake of better being . riving tortures spight , that life disjoints , and makes the heart to quake , to good the soul doth nearer reunite : so ancient hattove hence all-joyning ahad hight . this ahad of himself the aeon fair begot , the brightnesse of his fathers grace : no living wight in heaven to him compare , ne work his goodly honour such disgrace , nor lose thy time in telling of his race . his beauty and his race no man can tell : his glory darkeneth the suns bright face ; or if ought else the suns bright face excell , ●…is splendour would it dim , and all that glory quell . this is that ancient eidos omniform , fount of all beauty , root of flowring glee . hyle old hag , foul , filthy and deform , can not come near . joyfull eternity admits no change or mutability , no shade of change , no imminution , no nor increase ; for what increase can be to that that 's all ? and where hyl ' hath no throne ●…n ought decay ? such is the state of great aeon . farre otherwise it fares in this same lond of truth and beauty , then in mortall brood of earthly lovers , who impassion'd with outward formes ( not rightly understood , from whence proceeds this amorous sweet flood , and choise delight which in their spright they feel : can outward idol yield so heavenly mood ? ) this inward beauty unto that they deel ●…at little beauteous is : thus into th' dirt they reel . like to narcissus , on the grassie shore , viewing his outward face in watery glasse ; still as he looks , his looks adde evermore new fire , new light , new love , new comely grace to 's inward form ; and it displayes apace it's hidden rayes , and so new lustre sends to that vain shadow : but the boy , alas ! unhappy boy ! the inward nought attends , 〈◊〉 in foul filthy mire , love , life and form he blends . and this i wote is the souls excellence , that from the hint of every painted glance of shadows sensible , it doth from hence it s radiant life and lovely hue advance to higher pitch , and by good governance may wained be from love of fading light in outward formes , having true cognisance , that those vain shows are not the beauty bright that takes men so , but that they cause in humane spright . farre otherwise it fares in aeons realm . o happy close of sight and that there 's seen ! that there is seen is good abinoam , who hattove hight : and hattubus i ween , cannot be lesse then he that sets his eyen on that abysse of good eternally , the youthfull aeon , whose faire face doth shine while he his fathers glory doth espy , which waters his fine flowring forms with light from hi●… not that his forms increase , or that they die . for aeon land , which men idea call , is nought but life in full serenitie , vigour of life is root , stock , branch , and all ; nought here increaseth , nought here hath its fall : for aeons kingdomes alwaies perfect stand , birds , beasts , fields , springs , plants , men and minerall , to perfectnesse nought added be there can . this aeon also hight autocalon and on. this is the eldest sonne of hattove hore : but th' eldest daughter of this aged sire , that virgin wife of aeon , uranore . she uranora hight , because the fire of aethers essence she with bright attire , and inward unseen golden hew doth dight , and life of sense and phancie doth inspire . aether's the vehicle of touch , smell , sight , of taste and hearing too , and of the plastick might . whylom me chanced ( o my happy chance ! ) to spie this spotlesse pure fair uranore . i spi'd her , but , alas ! with slighter glance beheld her on the hattubaean shore , she stood the last : for her did stand before the lovely autocal . but first of all was mighty hattove , deeply covered o're with unseen light . no might imaginall ●…ay reach that vast profunditie . whiles thus they stood by that good lucid spring of living blisse , her fourefold ornament i there observ'd ; and that 's the onely thing that i dare write with due advisement . fool-hardy man that purposeth intent far 'bove his reach , like the proud phaeton , who clomb the fiery car and was yshent through his fond juvenile ambition : ●…h ' unruly flundring steeds wrought his confusion . now rise , my muse , and straight thy self addresse to write the pourtraiture of th' outward vest , and to display its perfect comlinesse : begin and leave where it shall please thee best . nor do assay to tell all , let the rest be understood . for no man can unfold the many plicatures so closely prest at lowest verge . things 'fore our feet yrold , ●…they be hard , how shall the highest things be told ? it s unseen figure i must here omit : for thing so mighty vast no mortall eye can compasse ; and if eye not compasse it , the extreme parts , at lest some , hidden lye : and if that they lie hid , who can descry the truth of figure ? bodies figured receive their shape from each extremity . but if conjecture may stand in truths stead ●…he garment round or circular i do aread . as for its colour and materiall , it silken seems , and of an azur hew , if hew it have or colour naturall : for much it may amaze mans erring view . those parts the eye is near give not the shew of any colour : but the rurall swains , o easie ignorance ! would swear 't is blew , such as their phyllis would , when as she plains their sunday-cloths , and the washt white with azur sta●… but this fair azur colour 's fouly stain'd by base comparison with that blew dust . but you of uranore are not disdain'd , o silly shepherds , if you hit not just in your conceits , so that you 're put in trust you duly do attend . if simple deed accord with simple life , then needs you must from the great urauore of favour speed , though you can not unfold the nature of her weed . for who can it unfold , and reade aright the divers colours , and the tinctures fair , which in this various vesture changes write of light , of duskishnesse , of thick , of rare consistences : ever new changes marre former impressions . the dubious shine of changeable silk stuffs this passeth farre . farre more variety , and farre more fine , then interwoven silk with gold or silver twine . lo what delightfull immutations on her soft flowing vest we contemplate ! the glory of the court , their fashions , and brave agguize with all their princely state , which poets or historians relate this farre excels , farther then pompous cour●… : excels the homeliest garb of country rate : unspeakable it is how great a sort . of glorious glistring showes in it themselves disport . there you may see the eyelids of the morn with lofty silver arch displaid i th' east , and in the midst the burnisht gold doth burn ; a lucid purple mantle in the west doth close the day , and hap the sun at rest . nor doe these lamping shewes the azur quell , or other colours : where 't beseemeth best there they themselves dispose ; so seemly well ●…th light and changing tinctures deck this goodly veil . but 'mongst these glaring glittering rows of light , and flaming circles , and the grisell gray , and crudled clouds with silver tippings dight , and many other deckings wondrous gay , as iris and the halo , there doth play still-pac'd euphrona in her conique tire ; by stealth her steeple-cap she doth assay to whelm on th' earth : so school-boyes do aspire ●…ith coppell'd hat to quelm the bee all arm'd with ire . i saw pourtray'd on this sky-coloured silk two lovely lads , with wings fully dispread of silver plumes , their skin more white then milk , their lilly limbs i greatly admired , their cheary looks and lustie livelyhed : athwart their snowy breast a scarf they wore of azur hew , fairly bespangoled was the gold fringe . like doves so forth they fore : ●…me message they , i ween , to monocardia bore . o gentle sprights , whose carefull oversight tends humane actions , sons of solyma ! o heavenly salems sons ! you send the right , you violence resist , and fraud bewray ; the ill with ill , the good with good you pay . and if you list to mortall eye appear , you thick that veil , and so your selves array with visibility : o mystery rare ▪ that thickned veil should maken things appear more bare ▪ but well i wote that nothing's bare to sense ; for sense cannot arrive to th' inwardnesse of things , nor penetrate the crusty fence of constipated matter close compresse : or that were laid aside , yet nathelesse things thus unbar'd , to sense be more obscure . therefore those sonnes of love when they them dre●… for sight , they thick the vest of uranure , and from their centre overflow't with beauty pure . thus many goodly things have been unfold of uranures fair changing ornament : yet far more hiddenly , as yet untold ; for all to tell was never my intent , neither all could i tell if i so ment . for her large robe all the wide world doth fill : it s various largenesse no man can depaint : my pen's from thence , my books , my ink ; but skill from uranures own self down gently doth distill . but yet one thing i saw that i 'll not passe , at the low hem of this large garment gay number of goodly balls there pendent was , some like the sun , some like the moons white ray , some like discoloured tellus , when the day discries her painted coat : in wond'rous wise these coloured ones do circle , float and play , as those far-shining rounds in open skies : their course the best astronomer might well aggrize . these danc'd about : but some i did espie that steddy stood , 'mongst which there shined one , more fairly shineth not the worlds great eye , which from his plenteous store unto the moon kindly imparteth light , that when he 's gone , she might supply his place , and well abate the irksome uglinesse of that foul drone , sad heavie night , yet quick to work the fate of murdered travellers , when they themselves belate . o gladsome life of sense that doth adore the outward shape of the worlds curious frame ! the proudest prince that ever sceptre bore ( though he perhaps observeth not the same ) the lowest hem doth kisse of that we name the stole of uranore , these parts that won to drag in dirty earth ( nor do him blame ) these doth he kisse : why should he be fordonne ? 〈◊〉 sweet it is to live ! what joy to see the sunne ! but o what joy it is to see the sunne of aeons kingdomes , and th' eternall day that never night o'retakes ▪ the radiant throne of the great queen , the queen uranura ! then she gan first the sceptre for to sway , and rule with wisdome , when hattubus old , hence ahad we him call , did tie them tway with nuptiall charm and wedding-ring of gold : ●…n sagely he the case gan to them thus unfold : my first born sonne , and thou my ' daughter dear , look on your aged sire , the deep abysse , 〈◊〉 which and out of which you first appear ; 〈◊〉 ahad hight , and ahad onenesse is : therefore be one ; ( his words do never misse ) they one became . i hattove also hight , ●…id he ; and hattove goodnesse is and blisse : ●…herefore in goodnesse be ye fast unite : ●…nitie , love , good , be measures of your might . ●…hey straight accord : then he put on the ring , ●…he ring of lasting gold on uranure ; ●…en gan the youthfull lads aloud to sing , ●…men ! o hymen ! o the virgin pure ! ●…holy bride ! long may this joy indure . ●…er the song hattove his speech again ●…news . my son , i unto thee assure 〈◊〉 judgement and authoritie soveraign ▪ ●…ake as unto one : for one became those twain . to thee each knee in heaven and earth shall bow , and whatsoever wons in darker cell under the earth : if thou thy awfull brow contract , those of the aethiopian hell shall lout , and do thee homage ; they that dwell in tharsis , tritons fry , the ocean-god , iam and ziim , all the satyres fell that in empse ilands maken their abode : all those and all things else shall tremble at thy rod. thy rod thou shalt extend from sea to sea , and thy dominion to the worlds end ; all kings shall vow thee faithfull fealtie , then peace and truth on all the earth i 'll send : nor moody mars my metalls may mispend , of warlike instruments they plow-shares shall and pruning-hooks efform . all things shall wend for th' best , and thou the head shalt be o're all . have i not sworn thee king ? true king catholicall ! thus farre he spake , and then again respired ; and all this time he held their hands in one ; then they with chearfull look one thing desired , that he nould break this happy union . i happy union break ? quoth he anon : i ahad ? father of community ? then they : that you nould let your hand be gone off from our hands . he grants with smiling glee : so each stroke struck on earth is struck frō these same 〈◊〉 these three are ahad , aeon , uranore : ahad these three in one doth counite . what so is done on earth , the self-same power ( which is exert upon each mortall wight ) is joyntly from all these . but she that hight fair uranore , men also psyche call . great psyche men and angels dear delight , invested in her stole ethereall , which though so high it be , down to earth doth fall . the externall form of this large flowing stole , my muse so as she might above displaid : but th' inward triple golden film to unroll , ah! he me teach that triple film hath made , and brought out light out of the deadly shade of darkest chaos , and things that are seen made to appear out of the gloomy glade of unseen beings : them we call unseen , not that they 're so indeed , but so to mortall eyen . the first of these fair films , we physis name . nothing in nature did you ever spy but there 's pourtraid : all beasts both wild and tame , each bird is here , and every buzzing fly ; all forrest work is in this tapestry : the oke , the holm , the ash , the aspin tree , the lonesome buzzard , th' eagle , and the py , the buck , the bear , the boar , the hare , the bee , the brize , the black-arm'd clock , the gnat , the butterflie ; snakes , adders , hydraes , dragons , toads , and frogs , th' own-litter-loving ape , the worm and snail , th' undaunted lion , horses , men and dogs ; their number 's infinite , nought doth 't avail to reckon all : the time would surely fail : and all besprinkeled with centrall spots , dark little spots , is this hid inward veil : but when the hot bright dart doth pierce these knots , each one dispreads it self according to their lots . when they dispread themselves , then gins to swell , dame psyches outward vest , as th' inward wind softly gives forth , full softly doth it well forth from the centrall spot ; yet as confin●…d to certain shape , according to the mind of the first centre , not perfect circlar wise , it shoots it self : for so the outward kind of things were lost , and natures good devise of different forms would hiddenly in one agguize . but it according to the imprest art ( that arts impression's from idea lond ) so drives it forth before it every part according to true symmetry : the bond and just precinct ( unlesse it be withstond ) it alwayes keeps . but that old hag that hight foul hyle mistresse of the miry strond , oft her withstands , and taketh great delight to hinder physis work , and work her all despight . the self same envious witch with poyson'd dew , from her foul eben-box , all tinctures stains which farely good be in hid physis hew : that film all tinctures fair in it contains ; but she their goodly glory much restrains ; she colours dims ; clogs tastes ; and damps the sounds of sweetest musick ; touch to skorching pains she turns , or baser tumults ; smels confounds . o horrid womb of hell , that with such ill abounds . from this first film all bulk in quantity doth bougen out , and figure thence obtain . here eke begins the life of sympathy , and hidden virtue of magnetick vein , where unknown spirits beat , and psyche's trane drag as they list , upon pursuit or flight ; one part into another they constrain through strong desire , and then again remit . each outward form 's a shrine of its magnetick spright . the ripen'd child breaks through his mothers womb , the raving billows closely undermine the ragged rocks , and then the seas intombe their heavie corse , and they their heads recline on working sand : the sun and moon combine , then they 're at ods in site diametrall : the former age to th' present place resigne : and what 's all this but wafts of winds centrall that ruffle , touze , and tosse dame psyche's wrimpled ve●… so physis . next is arachnea thin , the thinner of these two , but thinn'st of all is semele , that 's next to psyches skin . the second we thin arachnea call , because the spider , that in princes hall takes hold with her industrious hand , and weaves her daintie tender web ; far short doth fall of this soft yielding vest ; this vest deceives the spiders curious touch , and of her praise bereaves . in midst of this fine web doth haphe sit : she is the centre from whence all the light dispreads , and goodly glorious forms do flit hither and thither . of this miroir bright haphe's the life and representing might haphe's the mother of sense-sympathy ; hence are both hearing , smelling , taste and sight : haphe's the root of felt vitality ; ●…ut haphe's mother hight all-spread community . in this clear shining miroir psyche sees all that falls under sense , what ere is done upon the earth ; the deserts shaken trees , the mournfull winds , the solitary wonne of dreaded beasts , the lybian lions moan , when their hot entrals skorch with hunger keen , and they to god for mea●… do deeply groan ; he hears their crie , he sees of them unseen ; ●…is eyelids compasse all that in the wide world been . he sees the weary traveller sit down in the waste field ofttimes with carefull chear : his chafed feet , and the long way to town , his burning thirst , faintnesse , and panick fear , because he sees not him that stands so near , fetch from his soul deep sighs with count'nance sad , but he looks on to whom nought doth dispear : o happy man that full perswasion had of this ! if right at home , nought of him were ydrad . a many sparrows for small price be sold , yet none of them his wings on earth doth close lighting full soft , but that eye doth behold , their jets , their jumps , that miroir doth disclose . thrice happy he that putteth his repose in his all-present god. that africk rock but touch'd with heedlesse hand , auster arose with blust'ring rage , that with his irefull shock and moody might he made the worlds frame nigh to roc●… and shall not he , when his anointed be ill handled , rise , and in his wrathfull stour disperse and quell the haughty enemie , make their brisk sprights to lout and lowly lour ? or else confound them quite with mighty power ? touch not my kings , my prophets let alone , harm not my priests ; or you shall ill indure your works sad payment and that deadly lone ; keep off your hand from that high holy rock of stone . do not i see ? i slumber not nor sleep . do not i heare ? each noise by shady night my miroir represents : when mortals sleep their languid limbs in morpheus dull delight , i hear such sounds as adams brood would fright . the dolefull echoes from the hollow hill mock houling wolves : the woods with black bedight answer rough pan , his pipe and eke his skill , and all the satyr-routs rude whoops and shoutings shrill . the night 's no night to me : what ? shall the owl and nimble cat their courses truly steer , and guide their feet and wings to every hole so right , this on the ground , that in the aire ? and shall not i by night see full as clear ? all sense doth in proportion consist , arachnea doth all proportions bear : all sensible proportions that fine twist contains : all life of sense is in great haphes list . sense and concent , and all abhorrency , be variously divided in each one partic'lar creature : but antipathy cannot be there where fit proportion strikes in with all things in harmonious tone . thus haphe feels nought to her self cont raire : in her there 's tun'd a just diapason for every outward stroke : withouten jar thus each thing doth she feel , and each thing easly bear . but haphe and arachne i 'll dismisse , and that fourth vest , rich semele display : the largest of all foure and loosest is this floting flouring changeable array . how fairly doth it shine , and nimbly play , whiles gentle winds of paradise do blow , and that bright sun of the eternall day upon it glorious light and forms doth strow , and ahad it with love and joy doth overflow ! this all-spread semele doth bacchus bear , impregn'd of iove or on. he is the wine that sad down-drouping senses wont to rear , and cheerlesse hearts to comfort in ill tine . he ' flames chaste poets brains with fire divine ; the stronger spright the weaker spright doth sway : no wonder then each phansie doth incline to their great mother semel , and obey the vigorous impresse of her enforcing ray . she is the mother of each semele : the daughters be divided one from one ; but she grasps all . how can she then but see each semels shadows by this union ? she sees and swayes imagination as she thinks good ; and if that she think good she lets it play by 't self , yet looketh on , while she keeps in that large strong-beating flood that gars the poet write , and rave as he were wood . prophets and poets have their life from hence ; like fire into their marrow it searcheth deep . this flaming fiery flake doth choak all sense , and binds the lower man with brasen sleep : corruption through all his bones doth creep , and raging raptures do his soul outsnatch : round-turning whirlwinds on olympus steep do cast the soul , that earst they out did catch : then stiller whispering winds dark visions unlatch . but not too farre , thou bold platonick swain ! strive not at once all myst'ries to discover of that strange school : more and more hard remain as yet untold . but let us now recover strength to our selves by rest in duly hower . great psyches parentage marriage and weeds we having song according to our power , that we may rise more fresh for morning deeds , let 's here take inne and rest our weary sweating steeds . the argument of psychozoia . lib. . here 's taught how into psychanie souls from their centrall sourse go forth . here beirons ingeny old mnemon doth discourse . i sang great psyche in my former song , old hattoves daughter , sister unto on , mother of all that nimble atom-throng of winged lives , and generation . when psyche wedded to autocalon , they both to ahad forthwith straight were wed : for as you heard , all these became but one , and so conjoyn'd they lie all in one bed , and with that foure-fold vest they be all overspred . here lies the inmost centre of creation , from whence all inward forms and life proceed : here 's that aereall stole , that to each fashion of sensibles is matter for their weed . this is the ground where god doth sow his seed , and whilest he sowes with whispering charms doth bid this flourish long , and that to make more speed , and all in order by his word doth rid : so in their fatall round they 'pear and then are hid . beginning , end , form and continuance th' impression of his word to them doth deal . occurrences he sees , and mindeth chance : but chance hath bounds . the sea cannot ●…'reswell its just precincts ; or rocky shores repell its foming force ; or else its inward life and centrall rains do fairly it compell within it self , and gently ' pease the strife , or makes it gnaw the bit with rore and rage full rife . so fluid chance is set its certain bound , although with circling winds it be ytost ; and so the pilots skill doth quite confound with unexpected storms , and men have lost their time , their labour , and their precious cost . yet there 's a neptune sovereigne of this sea , which those that in themselves put not their trust to rude mischance did never yet betray : it s he , whom both the winds and stormy seas obay . now sith my wandring bark so far is gone , and flitten forth upon the occan main , i thee beseech that just dominion hast of the sea , and art true sovereigne of working phansie when it floats amain with full impregned billows and strong rage enforceth way upon the boyling plain , that thou wouldst steer my ship with wisdome sage , that i with happy course may run my watery stage . my mind is mov'd dark parables to sing of psyche's progeny that from her came , when she was married to that great king , great aeon , who just title well may claim of every soul , and brand them with his name . it s he that made us , and not our own might : but who , alas ! this work can well proclaim ? we silly sheep cannot bleat out aright the manner how : but that that giveth light is light . then let us borrow from the glorious sun a little light to illustrate this act , such as he is in his solstitiall noon , when in the welkin there 's no cloudy tract for to make grosse his beams , and light refract . then sweep by all those globes that by reflection his long small shafts do rudely beaten back , and let his rayes have undenied projection , and so we will pursue this mysteries retection . now think upon that gay discoloured bow : that part that is remotest from the light doth duskish hew to the beholder show ; the nearer parts have colours far more bright , and next the brightest is the subtle light ; then colours seem but a distinct degree of light now failing , such let be the sight of his far spreaden beams that shines on high : ●…et vast discoloured orbs close his extremity . the last extreme , the fardest off from light , that 's natures deadly shadow , hyle's cell . o horrid cave , and womb of dredded night ! mother of witchcraft and the cursed spell , which nothing can avail 'gainst israel . no magick can him hurt ; his portion is not divided nature ; he doth dwell in light , in holy love , in union : not fast to this or that , but free communion . dependence of this all hence doth appear , and severall degrees subordinate . but phansie's so unfit such things to clear , that oft it makes them seem more intricate : and now gods work it doth disterminate too far from his own reach : but he withall more inward is , and far more intimate then things are with themselves . his ideall and centrall presence is in every atom-ball . therefore those different hews through all extend so far as light : let light be every where : and every where with light distinctly blend those different colours which i nam'd whilere the extremities of that far shining sphere . and that far shining sphere , which centre was of all those different colours , and bright chear , you must unfasten ; so o'respred it has , or rather deeply fill'd , with centrall sand each place . now sith that this withouten penetrance of bodies may be done : we clearly see ( as well as that pendent subordinance ) the nearly couching of each realtie , and the creatours close propinquitie , to ev'ry creature . this be understood of differentiall profundity . but for the overspreading latitude ; why may 't not equally be stretch'd with th' ocean floud ▪ there proteus wonnes and fleet idothea , where the low'st step of that profunditie is pight ; next that is psyche's out array : it tasis hight : physis is next degree : there psyche's feet impart a smaller fee of gentle warmth . physis is the great womb from whence all things in th' universitie yclad in diverse forms do gaily bloom , and after fade away , as psyche gives the doom . next physis is the tender arachne ; there in her subtile loom doth haphe sit : but the last vest is changing semele : and next is psyches self . these garments fit her sacred limbs full well , and are so knit one part to other , that the strongest sway of sharpest axe , them no'te asunder smite . the seventh is aeon with eternall ray : the eighth hattove , steddy cube , allpropping adonai . . upon this universall ogdoas is founded every particularment : from this same universall diapase each harmony is fram'd and sweet consent . but that i swerve not farre from my intent , this ogdoas let be an unitie one mighty quickned orb of vast extent , throughly possest of lifes community , and so those vests be seats of gods vitality . now deem this universall round alone , and rayes no rayes but a first all-spread light , and centrick all like one pellucid sun ; a sun that 's free , not bound by natures might , that where it lists exerts his rayes outright , both when it lists , and what , and eke how long , and then retracts so as it thinketh meet . these rayes be that particular creature-throng : their number none can tell but that all-making tongue . now blundring naturalist behold the spring of thy deep-searching soul , that fain would know whether a mortall or immortall thing it be , and whence at first it gan to flow ; and that which chiefest is where it must go . some fixt necessity thou fain wouldst find : but no necessity , where there 's no law , but the good pleasure of an unty'd mind : therefore thy god seek out , and leave nature behind . he kills , he makes alive ; the keys of hell and death he hath . he can keep souls to wo when cruell hands of fate them hence expell : or he in lethe's lake can drench them so , that they no act of life or sense can show . they march out at his word , and they retreat ; march out with joy , retreat with footing slow in gloomy shade , benumm'd with pallid sweat , and with their feeble wings their fainting breasts they beat . but souls that of his own good life partake he loves as his own self ; dear as his eye they are to him : he 'll never them forsake : when they shall dye , then god himself shall dye . they live , they live in blest eternity . the wicked are not so ; but like the dirt ; trampled by man and beast , in grave they ly : filth and corruption is their rufull sort : themselves with death and worms in darknesse they disport their rotten relicks lurk close under ground : with living wight no sense or sympathy they have at all ; nor hollow thundring sound of roring winds , that cold mortality can wake , ywrapt in sad fatality . to horses hoof that beats his grassie dore he answers not : the moon in silency , doth passe by night , and all bedew him o're with her cold humid rayes ; but he feels not heavens po●… o dolefull lot of disobedience ! if god should souls thus drench in lethe lake . but o unspeakable torture of sense , when sinfull souls do life and sense partake , that those damn'd spirits may the anvils make of their fell cruelty , that lay such blow●… that very ruth doth make my heart to quake when i consider of the drery woes , and tearing torment that each soul then undergoes . hence the souls nature we may plainly see : a beam it is of th' intellectuall sun , a ray indeed of that eternity ; but such a ray as when it first out shone , from a free light its shining date begun . and that same light when 't list can call it in ; yet that free light hath given a free wonne to this dependent ray : hence cometh sin ; from sin drad death and hell : these wages doth it win . each life a severall ray is from that sphere that sphere doth every life in it contain . arachne , semel , and the rest do bear their proper virtue , and with one joynt strain and powerful sway they make impression plain , and all their rayes be joyned into one by ahad : so this womb withouten pain doth flocks of souls send out that have their won where they list most to graze●… as i shall tell anon . the country where they live psychania hight , great psychany , that hath so mighty bounds , if bounds it have at all : so infinite it is of bignesse , that it me confounds to think to what a vastnesse it amounds ; the sun saturnus , saturn the earth exceeds the earth the moon ; but all , those fixed rounds ; but psychany those fixed rounds exceeds , 〈◊〉 farre as those fix'd rounds excell small mustard-seeds . two mighty kingdomes hath this psychany , the one self-feeling autaesthesia ; the other hight god-like theoprepy . autaesthesy's divided into tway : one province cleeped is great adamah , which also hight beirah of brutish fashion ; the other province is dizoia : there you may see much mungrill transformation , ●…h monstrous shapes proceed from niles foul inundation . great michael ruleth theoprepia , a mighty prince . king of autaesthesy is that great giant who bears mighty sway , father of discord , falshood , tyranny , his name is daemon , not from sciency , although he boasteth much in skilfull pride ; but he 's the fount of foul duality , that wicked witch duessa is his bride : ●…m his dividing force this name to him betide . or for that he himself is quite divided down to the belly ; there 's some unity : but head and tongue and heart be quite discided ; two heads , two tongues , and eke two hearts there be . this head doth mischief plot , that head doth see wrong fairly to o'reguild . one tongue doth pray , the other curse . the hearts do ne're agree but felly one another do upbray : 〈◊〉 uggly clo●…en foot this monster doth upstay . two sons great daemon of duessa hath : autophilus the one ycleeped is ; in dizoie he worketh wond'rous scath : he is the cause what so there goes amisse , in psyches stronger plumed progenies . but philosomatus rules beirah . this proud puft giant whilom did arise , born of the slime of autaesthesia , and bred up these two sons yborn of duessa . duessa first invented magick lore , and great skill hath to joyn and disunite : this herb makes love , that herb makes hatred sore ; and much she can against an edomite ; but nought she can against an israelite , whose heart 's upright and doth himself forsake . for he that 's one with god no magick might can draw or here or there through blind mistake . magick can onely quell natures daemoniake . but that i may in time my self betake to straighter course , few things i will relate , of which old mnemon mention once did make . a jolly swain he was in youthfull state , when he mens natures gan to contemplate , and kingdomes view : but he was aged then when i him saw : his years bore a great date ; he numbred had full te●… times ten times ten : there 's no pythagorist but knows well what i mean. old mnemons head and beard was hoary white ; but yet a chearfull countenance he had : his vigorous eyes did shine like starres bright , and in good decent freez he was yclad , as blith and buxom as was any lad of one and twenty cloth'd in forrest green ; both blith he was , and eke of counsell sad : like winter morn bedight with snow and rine and sunny rayes , so did his goodly eldship shine . of many famous towns in beirah , and many famous laws and uncouth rites he spake : but vain it is for to assay to reckon up such numbers infinite . and much he spake where i had no insight ; but well i wote that some there present had ; for words to speak to uncapable wight of foolishnesse proceeds or phrensie mad . 〈◊〉 alwayes some , i wis , could trace his speeches pad . but that which i do now remember best , is that which he of psittacusa lond did speak . this psittacuse is not the least , or the most obscure country that is found in wastefull beiron : it is renownd for famous clerks yclad in greenish cloak , like turkish priests : if amorilish ground we call 't , no cause that title to revoke . ●…t of this land to this effect old mnemon spoke . i travelled in psittacusa lond : th' inhabitants the lesser adamah do call it ; but then adam i have found it ancienter , if so i safely may unfold th'antiquity they by one day are elder then old adam , and by one at least are younger then arcadia ; o'th'sixth day adam had 's creation ; ●…ose on the fifth , the arcades before the moon . in this same land as i was on the rode , a nimble traveller me overtook : fairly together on the way we yode . tho i gan closely on his person look , and eye his garb , and straight occasion sook to entertain discourse : he likewise saught , though none could find ; yet first me undertook : ●…o sone as he gan talk , then straight i laught : ●…e sage himself represt , but thought me nigh distraught . his concave nose , great head , and grave aspect , affected tone , words without inward sense , my inly tickled spright made me detect by outward laughter ; but by best pretence i pur'gd my self , and gave due reverence . then he gan gravely treat of codicils , and of book readings passing excellence , and tri'd his wit in praysing gooses quills : o happy age ! quoth he , the world minerva fills . i gave the talk to him , which pleas'd him well : for then he seem'd a learned cleark to been , when none contrayr'd his uncontrolled spell , but i alas ! though unto him unseen , did flow with tears , as if that onyons keen had pierc'd mine eyen . strange virtue of fond joy : they ought to weep that be in evil teen . but nought my lightsome heart did then annoy : so light it lay , it mov'd at every windy toy . as we yode softly on , a youngster gent , with bever cockt and arm set on one side ( his youthfull fire quickly our pace out-went ) full fiercely pricked on in madcap pride , the mettle of his horses heels he tri'd . he hasted to his country pithecuse . most hast worst speed : still on our way we ride , and him o'retake halting through haplesse bruse ; we help him up again , our help he nould refuse . then gan the learn'd and ag'd don psittaco , when he another auditour had got , to spruse his plumes , and wisdome sage to show , and with his sacred lore to wash the spot of youthfull blemishes ; but frequent jot of his hard setting jade did so confound the words that he by papyr-stealth had got , that their lost sense the youngster could not sound , though he with mimicall attention did abound . yet some of those faint-winged words came near , of god , of adam , and the shape divine , which adams children have ; ( these pierc'd his ear ) and how that man is lord of every kind of beasts , of birds , and of each hidden mine of natures treasures . he to adams sonne the wide world for his kingdome doth designe : and ever naming god , he look'd aboven : ●…thecus straight plac'd god a thought above the moon . pithecus , so they call this gentile wight , the docible young man eas'ly could trace his masters steps , most quick and expedite . when psittaco look'd up to holy place , pithecus straight with sanctimonious grace cast up his eyes ; and when the shape divine , which adam had from god , he gan to praise , pithecus drawes himself straight from that line , ●…nd phansies his sweet face with heavenly hew to shine . he pinch't his hat , and from his horses side stretcht forth his russet legs , himself inclin'd now here , now there , and most exactly eyed his comely lineaments , that he might find what ever beauty else he had not mind as yet in his fair corse . but that full right and vast prerogative did so unbind his straited sprights , that with tyrannick might ●…e forct his feeble beast , and straight fled out of sight . then i and psittaco were left alone ; and which was strange , he deeply silent was : whether some inward grief he from that fone conceiv'd , and deemed it no small disgrace , that that bold youngster should so little passe his learned speech ; or whether nought to sayn he had then left ; or whether a wild chase of flitting inconsistent thoughts he than ●…rsu'd , which turn'd and toy'd in his confused brain : or whether he was woxen so discreet , as not to speak till fit occasion . ( to judge the best , that charity counts meet ) therefore that senior sad i gan anon thus to bespeak , good sr , i crave pardon if so i chance to break that golden twist you spin , by rude interpellation , that twist of choisest thoughts . no whit i miss'd the mark i aimed at ; to speak he had great list . so then his spirits gan to come again , and to enact his corps and impart might unto his languid tongue , and every vein received heat , when due conceived right i did to him ; and weend he plainly see 't that i was toucht with admiration of his deep learning , and quick shifting sight : then i gan quire of the wide behiron . behiron , quoth that sage , that hight anthropion . anthropion we call 't ; but th' holy tongue ( his learning lay in words ) that behiron , which we anthropion , calls , as i among the rabbins read : but sooth to say no tone , nor tongue , or speech , so sweet as is our own , or so significant . for mark the sense : from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is anthropion ; and we are all of an upright presence ; nor i 'll be drawn from this conceit by no pretence . i prais'd his steddy faith and confidence , that stood as fast as trunk or rock of stone ; yet nathelesse , said i , the excellence of stedfastnesse is not to yield to none , but stiff to stand till mov'd by right reason ; and then by yielding , part of victory to gain . what fitnesse in anthropion ? baboons and apes , as well as th' anthropi do go upright , and beasts grown mad do view the sky . then marken well what great affinity there is twixt ape , mad beast , and satyrs wild , and the inhabitants of anthropie , when they are destitute of manners mild ; and th' inward man with brutishnesse defil'd hath life and love and lust and cogitation fixt in foul sense , or moving in false guile ; that holy tongue the better nomination , ●…arre i know , may give : 't is ghesse not full perswasion . therefore , o learned sr , aread aright , what may this word beiron signifie ? he wond'rous glad to shew his grammer might , this same word behiron doth signifie the brutish nature , or brutality , said he : and with his voyce lift up his front . then i his skill did gayly magnifie , and blest me , i an idiot should light on 't ●…happily , that never was a scholar count ; and said , then holy tongue is on my side ; and holy tongue is better then profane . he angry at his courtesie , reply'd that learned men ought for to entertain discourse of learned tongues , and country swain of country fairs . but for to answer thee , this i dare warrant surely to maintain , ●…f to contrair the holy tongue should be ●…urd , i find enough such contrariety . then i in simple sort him answered thus , 〈◊〉 ken not the strange guize of learned schools , but if gods thoughts be contrair unto us , let not deep wonderment possesse our souls , if he call fools wisemen , and wisemen fools . if rich he poore men term , if poore men rich , if craftie states-men silly country gulls , beasts men , men beasts , with many other such : 〈◊〉 seeth not as man seeth , god speaks not in mans speech . straight he to higher pearch , like bird in cage , did skip , and sang of etern destiny , of sight and foresight he with count'nance sage did speak , and did unfold gods secresie , and left untoucht no hidden mystery . i lowly louting held my cap in hand : he askt what ment that so sudden coursie . i pardon crave , said i , for manners fond ; you are heavens privie counsellour i understand , which i wist not before : so deep insight into the hidden things of god who can attain unto without that quickning spright of the true god ? who knows the mind of man but that same spright that in his breast doth won ? therefore the key of gods hid secresie is his own spright , that 's proper to his son , and those of that second nativitie , which holy temples are of the divinity . therefore as th' sacred seat o' th' deity , i unto you seemly behaviour make , if you be such as you may seem to be ( it is mans nature easily to mistake ) my words his mind did quite asunder break : for he full forward was all to assume that might him gild with glory , and partake with god ; and joyed greatly in vain fume , and prided much himself in his purloined plume , so that full loth he was for to undo my fairly winded up conclusion ; yet inwardly did not assent unto my premises : for foul presumption he thought , if that a private idiot man by his new birth should either equalize , or else outstrip the bookish nation . perhaps some foul deformities disguise their life : pshah ! that to knowledge is no prejudice , but he nould say so : for why ? he was bent to keep the credit which he then had got , as he conceiv'd : for it had been yblent ; it might have hazarded half of his lot , to wit his godlike hew withouten spot , if so be such deep knowledge could consist with wicked life : but he nould lose one jot of his so high esteem , nor me resist . ●… i escap'd the souse of his contracted fist . by this we came into a way that did divide it self into three parts : the one to leontopolis ; that in the mid did lead straight forth out of wide beiron , that was the way that i mote take alone ; the third way led unto onepolis : and thitherward don psittaco put on . with both these towns , alopecopolis ●…in firm league , and golden myrmecopolis . for nothing they attempt without the aid of these two cities . they 'll not wagen war , nor peace conclude , nor permit any trade , nor make dec●…ees , nor slake the civil jar , nor take up private wrongs , nor plead at bar , nor temples consecrate , nor mattins say ; they nought begin divine or secular , but they advisen with those cities tway . 〈◊〉 potent citizens that bear so great a sway ! no truth of justice in beirah lond : no sincere faith void of sly subtlety , that alwayes seeks it self , is to be found : but law-delusion and false policy , false policy that into tyranny would quickly wend , did not stern fear restrain and keep in aw . th' onites democracie is nought but a large hungry tyrant-train : ●…ppression from the poore is an all-sweeping rain . a sweeping torrent that beats down the corn , and wasts the oxens labour , headlong throws the tallest trees up by the root ytorn , its ranging force in all the land it shows ; wood rent from hence its rowling rage bestows in other places that were bare before , with muddied arms of trees the earth it strows : the list'ning shepherd is amazed sore , while it with swift descent so hideously doth rore . such is the outrage of democracy , when fearlesse it doth rule in beirah : and little better is false monarchy , when it in this same country bears the sway . ( is 't not a part of autaesthesia ? ) so to an inward sucking whirlpools close they change this swelling torrents surquedry much treasure it draws in , and doth inclose in'ts winding mouth , but whether then , there 's no mā kno●… o falsest beironites , what gars you plain one of another , and vainly accuse of foul offence ? when you all entertain tyrannick thoughts . you all alike do muse of your own private good , though with abuse of those you can tread down with safety , no way to wealth or honour you refuse . faise onople doth grudge , and grone , and cry , because she is denied a greater tyranny . two of that city whilom on the way , with languid lugs , and count'nance gravely sad , did deeply sigh , and rudely rough did bray gainst leontopolis . the equall pad of justice now , alas ! is seldome trad , said they ; the lions might is law and right . where 's love or mercy now ? with that out strad a little dog , his dames onely delight , and ran near to their tails , and bark'd with all his might . the sourly irefull onopolitan without all mercy kickt with iron heel the little bawling curre , that at him ran ; it made his feeble corse to th' earth to reel , that was so pierc'd with the imprinted steel , that it might grieve an heart of flinty stone : no herbs , no salves the breach could ever heal ; the good old wife did then keep house alone . ●…alse hearted carles , is this your great compassion ? there 's no society in behirah , but beastlike grazing in one pasture ground : no love but of the animated clay with beauties fading flowers trimly crownd , or from strong sympathies heart-striking stound : no order but what riches strength and wit prescribe . so bad the good eas'ly confound . is honesty in such unruly fit that it 's held in no rank ? they ' steem it not a whit . but i am weary of this uncouth place ; if any man their bad condition and brutish manners listeth for to trace , we may them reade in the creation of this wide sensible : where every passion of birds and beasts distinctly do display , to but an ord'nary imagination the life and soul of them in behirah : this beirah that hight the greater adamah . the swelling hatefull toad , industrious ant , lascivious goat , parrot , or prating pye , the kingly lion , docil elephant , all-imitating ape , gay butterflie , the crafty fox famous for subtilty , majestick horse , the beast that twixt two trees ( a fit resemblance of full gluttony ) when he hath fill'd his gorge , himself doth squeeze to feed afresh , court spaniels , and politick bees ; with many more which i list not repeat ; some foul , some fair : to th' fair the name they give of holy virtues ; but 't is but deceit , none in beiron virtuously do live ; none in that land so much as ever strive for truth of virtue , though sometimes they wont , as swine do swine , their own blood to relieve . beiron's all bruits , the true manhood they want , if outward form you pierce with phansie fulminant . so having got experience enough of this ill land , for nothing there was new , my purpose i held on , and rode quite through that middle way , and did th' extremes eschew . when i came near the end there was in view no passage : for the wall was very high , but there no doore to me it self did shew : looking about at length i did espy a lively youth , to whom i presently gan cry . more willing he 's to come then i to call : simon he hight , who also's call'd a rock : simon is that obedientiall nature , who boysterous seas and winds doth mock ; no tempest can him move with fiercest shock ; the house that 's thereon built doth surely stand : nor blustring storm , nor rapid torrents stroke can make it fall ; it easily doth withstand the gates of death and hell , and all the stygian band . when i gan call , forthwith in seemly sort he me approch'd in decent russet clad , more fit for labour then the flaunting court : when he came near , in chearfull wise he bad tell what i would : then i unto the lad gan thus reply , alas ! too long astray here have i trampled foul behirons pad : out of this land i thought this the next way , but i no gate can find , so vain is mine assay . then the wise youth , good s r , you look too high : the wall aloft is raised ; but that same dore where you must passe in deep descent doth lie : but he bad follow , he would go before . hard by there was a place , all covered o're with stinging nettles and such weedery , the pricking thistle the hard'st legs would gore , under the wall a strait dore we descry : the wall hight self-conceit ; the doore humility . when we came at the doore fast lockt it was , and simon had the key , but he nould grant that i into that other land should passe , without i made him my concomitant . it pleas'd me well , i mus'd not much upon 't , but straight accord : for why ? a jolly swain methought he was ; meek , cheerfull and pleasant . when he saw this , he thus to me again , 〈◊〉 , see you that sad couple ? then i , i see those twain . a sorry couple certainly they be . the man a bloody knife holds at his heart with cheerlesse countenance , as sad is she . or eld , or else intolerable smart , which she cannot decline by any art , doth thus distort and writhe her wrinkled face ; a leaden quadrate swayes hard on that part that 's fit for burdens ; foulnesse doth deface ●…er aged looks ; with a straight staff her steps she stayes . right well you say , then said that iusty swain : yet this poore couple be my parents dear : nor i can hence depart without these twain : these twain give life to me , though void of chear they be themselves . then let 's all go ▪ yfere . the young mans speech caus'd sad perplexity within my breast , but yet i did forbear , and fairly ask'd their names . he answered me , ●…c autaparnes hight ; but she hypomene . i simon am the sonne of this sad pair , who though full harsh they seem to outward sight ; yet when to dizoie men forth do fare , no company in all the land so meet they find as these ; their pacefull well i weet is very slow , and so to youthfull haste displeasing , and their counsells nothing sweet to any beironite : but sweetest taste doth bitterst choler breed , and haste doth maken waste . nor let that breast impierc'd with dropping wound , an uncouth spectacle , disturb your mind . his blood 's my food : if he his life effund to utmost death , the high god hath design'd that we both live . he in my heart shall find a seat for his transfused soul to dwell : and when that 's done , this death doth eke unbind that heavie weight that doth hypom'ne quell , then i anaut aesthetus hight , which seems me well . so both their lives do vanish into mine , and mine into hattubus life doth melt : which fading flux of time doth not define , nor is by any autaesthesian felt . this life to on the good hattubus delt : in it's all joy , truth , knowledge , love and force ; such force no wight created can repel't . all strength and livelyhood is from this sourse , all lives to this first spring have circular recourse . a lecture strange he seemd to reade to me ; and though i did not rightly understand his meaning , yet i deemed it to be some goodly thing , and weary of that land where then i stood , i did not him withstand in his request , although full loth i were slow-footed eld the journey should command ; yet we were guided by that sory pair , and so to dizoie full softly we do fare . the argument of psychozoia . lib. . strange state of dizoie mnemons skill here wisely doth explain , ida's strong charms , and eloim-hill , with the drad dale of ain . but now new stories i 'gin to relate , which aged mnemon unto us did tell , whiles we on graffie bed did lie prostrate under a shady beach , which did repell the fiery skorching shafts which uriel from southern quarter datted with strong hand . no other help we had ; for gabriel his wholesome cooling blasts then quite restrain'd . ●…e lions flaming breath with heat parcht all the land . here seemly sitting down thus gan that sage , last time we were together here ymet , beirah wall , that was the utmost stage of our discourse , if i do not forget : when we departed thence the sun was set , yet nathelesse we past that lofty wall that very evening . the nights nimble net that doth encompasse every opake ball , ●…hat swims in liquid aire , did simon nought apall . when we that stately wall had undercrept , we straightway found our selves in dizoie : the melting clouds chill drizzeling tears then wept ; the misty aire swet for deep agony , swet a cold sweat , and loose frigidity fill'd all with a white smoke ; pale cynthia did foul her silver limbs with filthy die , whiles wading on she measured out her way , ●…nd cut the muddy heavens defil'd with whitish clay . no light to guide but the moons pallid ray , and that even lost in misty troubled aire : no tract to take , there was no beaten way ; no chearing strength , but that which might appear from dians face : her face then shin'd not clear , and when it shineth clearest , little might she yieldeth , yet the goddesse is severe . hence wrathfull dogs do bark at her dead light : christ help the man thus clos'd and prison'd in drad nig●… ▪ o'rewhelm'd with irksome toil of strange annoyes in stony stound like senselesse stake i stood , till the vast thumps of massie hammers noise , that on the groning steel laid on such load , empierc'd mine ears in that sad stupid mood . i weening then some harbour to be nie , in sory pace thitherward slowly yode , by eare directed more then by mine eye , but there , alas ! i found small hospitality . foure grisly black-smiths stoutly did their task upon an anvile form'd in conick wise : they neither minded who , nor what i ask , but with stern grimy look do still avise upon their works ; but i my first emprise would not forsake , and therefore venture in . or none hath list to speak , or none espies , or hears : the heavie hammers never lin ; and but a blew faint light in this black shop did shi●… . there i into a darksome corner creep , and lay my weary limbs on dusty flore , expecting still when soft down-sliding sleep should seize mine eyes , and strength to me restore : but when with hovering wings she proch'd , e'rmore the mighty souses those foul knaves laid on , and those huge bellows that aloud did rore , chac'd her away that she was ever gone before she came , on pitchy plumes , for fear , yflone . the first of those rude rascalls lypon hight , a foul great stooping slouch with heavie eyes , and hanging lip : the second ugly sight pale phobon , with his hedgehog-haires disguise : ●…elpon is the third , he the false skies no longer trusts : the fourth of furious fashion ●…hrenition hight , fraught with impatiencies , the bellows be ycleep'd deep suspiration : ●…h kanve these bellows blow in mutuall circulation . there is a number of these lonesome forges ●…n bacha vale ( this was in bacha vale ) there be no innes but these , and these but scourges ; in stead of ease they work much deadly bale to those that in this lowly trench do trale their feeble loins . ah me ! who here would fare ? ●…ad ghosts oft crosse the way with visage pale , ●…harp thorns and thistles wound their feeten bare ; ●…happy is the man that here doth bear a share . when i in this sad vale no little time had measured , and oft had taken inne , and by long penance paid for mine ill crime methought the sun it self began to shine , and that i had past dians discipline . ●…ut day was not yet come , 't was perfect night : phoebus head from ida hill had seen ; ●…or ida hill doth give to men the sight , phoebus form , before aurora's silver light . ●…ut phoebus form from that high hill's not clear nor figure perfect . it 's inveloped 〈◊〉 purple cloudy veil ; and if 't appear 〈◊〉 rounder shape with skouling dreary head 〈◊〉 glowing face it shows , ne rayes doth shed of lights serenity , yet duller eyes with gazing on this irefull sight be fed : ●…est to their pleasing , small things they will prize , 〈◊〉 never better saw , nor better can devise . on ida hill their stands a castle strong , they that it built call it pantheothen . hither resort a rascall rabble throng of miscreant wights : but if that wiser men may name that fort , pandaemoniothen they would it cleep . it is the strong'st delusion that ever daemon wrought ; the safest pen that e're held silly sheep for their confusion . ill life and want of love , hence springs each false concl●… that rabble rout that in this castle won , is irefull-ignorance , unseemly-zeal , strong-self-conceit , rotten-religion , contentious-reproch-'gainst-michael - if-he-of-moses-body-ought-reveal - which-their-dull-skonses-cannot eas'ly-reach , love-of-the-carkas , an inept-appeal - t' uncertain papyrs , a-false-formall-fetch - of-seigned-sighes , contempt-of poore-and-sinfull-wretch . a deep self-love , want of true sympathy - with all mankind , th' admiring their own heard , fond pride , a sanctimonious crueltie - 'gainst those , by whom their wrathfull minds be stirr'd ▪ by strangling reason , and are so aseard - to lose their credit with the vulgar sort ; opinion and long speech 'fore life preferr'd , lesse reverence of god then of the court , fear and despair , evil surmises , false report . oppression-of-the-poore , fell rigourousnesse , contempt-of-government , fiercenes , fleshly lust , the-measuring-of all-true righteousnesse by-their own-model , cleaving unto-dust , rash-censure , and despising-of-the-just - that-are-not-of-their-sect , false-reasoning - concerning-god , vain-hope , needlesse mistrust , strutting-in knowledge , egre slavering - after hid-skill , with every inward fulsome thing . these and such like be that rude regiment , that from the glitering sword of michael fly : they fly his outstretch'd arm , else were they shent if they unto this castle did not hie , strongly within its wals to fortifie themselves . great daemon hath no stronger hold then this high tower. when the good majesty shines forth in love and light , a vapour cold ●…d a black hellish smoke from hence doth all infold . and all that love and light and offer'd might is thus chok'd up in that foul stygian steem : if hells dark jawes should open in despight , and breathe its inmost breath which foul'st i deem ; yet this more deadly foul i do esteem ; and more contagious , which this charmed tower ever spues forth , like that fell dragons steem which he from poyson'd mouth in rage did poure 〈◊〉 her , whose first-born child his chaps might not devour . but lest the rasher wit my muse should blame , as if she did those faults appropriate ( which i even now in that black list did name ) unto pantheothen ; the self same state i dare a vouch you 'll find , where ever hate backd with rough zeal , and bold through want of skill , all sects besides its own doth execrate . this peevish spright with wo the world doth fill , ●…hile each man all would bind to his fierce furious will. o hate ! the fulsome daughter of fell pride , sister to surly superstition , that clean out-shining truth cannot abide , that loves it self and large dominion , and in false show of a fair union would all encroch to 't self , would purchase all at a cheap rate , for slight opinion . thus cram they their wide-gaping crumenall : ●…t now to ida hill me lists my feer recall . no such inchantment in all dizoie as on this hill ; nor sadder sight was seen then you may in this rufull place espy . 'twixt two huge walls on solitary green , of funerall cypresse many groves there been , and eke of ewe , eben , and poppy trees : and in their gloomy shade foul grisly fiend use to resort , and busily to seize the darker phansied souls that live in ill disease . hence you may see , if that you dare to mind , upon the side of this accursed hill , many a dreadfull corse ytost in wind , which with hard halter their loathd life did spil . there lies another which himself did kill with rusty knife , all roll'd in his own bloud , and ever and anon a dolefull knill comes from the fatall owl , that in sad mood with drery sound doth pierce through the death-shadow●… 〈◊〉 who can expresse with pen the irksome state of those that be in this strong castle thrall ? yet hard it is this fort to ruinate , it is so strongly fenc'd with double wall . the fiercest but of ram no'te make them fall : the first inevitable destiny of gods decree ; the other we do call invincible fleshly infirmity : but keeper of the tower , unfelt hypocrisie . what poets phansies fain'd to be in hell are truly here . a vultur tityus heart still gnaws , yet death doth never tityus quell : sad sisyphus a stone with toylsome smart doth roul up hill , but it transcends his art , to get it to the top , where it may lye . on steddy plain , and never backward start : his course is stopt by strong infirmity : his roul comes to this wall , but then back it doth fly . here fifty sisters in a sieve do draw through-sipping water : tantalus is here , who though the glory of the lord oreflow the earth , and doth incompasse him so near , yet waters he in waters doth requere . stoop tantalus and take those waters in . what strength of witchcraft thus blinds all yfere twixt these two massie walls , this hold of sinne ? ●…ye me ! who shall this fort so strongly fenced win ! i heare the clattering of an armed troup : my ears do ring with the strong pransers heels . ( my soul get up out of thy drousie droop , and look unto the everlasting hills ) the hollow ground , ah ! how my sense it fills with sound of solid horses hoofs . a wonder it is to think how cold my spirit thrills with strange amaze . who can this strength dissunder ? ●…rk how the warlik steeds do neigh their necks do thunder all milkwhite steeds in trappings goodly gay , on which in golden letters be ywrit these words ( even he that runs it readen may ) true righteousnesse unto the lord of might . o comely spectacle ! o glorious sight ! 't would easily ravish the beholders eye to see such beasts , so fair , so full of spright , all in due ranks to pranse so gallantly , ●…aring their riders arm'd with perfect panoply . in perfect silver glistring panoply they ride , the army of the highest god : ten thousands of his saints approchen nie to judge the world , and rule it with his rod : they leave all plain where ever they have trod . each rider on his shield doth bear the sun with golden shining beam dispread abroad , the sun of righteousnesse at high day noon , 〈◊〉 this same strength , i wene , this fort is easly wonne . they that but heare thereof shall straight obey ; but the strange children shall false semblance make , but all hypocrisie shall soon decay , all wickednesse into that deadly lake , all darknesse thither shall it self betake : that false brood shall in their close places fade . the glory of the lord shall ne're forsake the earth again , nor shall deaths dreadfull shade return again . him praise that this great day hath made . this is the mighty warlick michaels hoste , that easily shall wade through that foul spue which the false dragon casts in every coste , that the moon-trampling woman much doth rue his deadly spaul ; but no hurt doth accrew to this strong army from this filthy steam : nor horse nor man doth fear its lutid hew , they safely both can swim in this foul stream : this stream the earth sups up cleft ope by michaels beam ▪ but whiles it beareth sway , this poysons might is to make sterill or prolong the birth , to cause cold palsies , and to dull the sight by sleepy sloth ; the melancholick earth it doth increase that hinders all good mirth . yet this dead liquor dull pantheothen before the nectar of the gods preferr'th : but it so weakens and disables men , that they of manhood give no goodly specimen . here one of us began to interpeal old mnemon . tharrhon that young ladkin hight , he prayed this aged sire for to reveal what way this dragons poysonous despight , and strong pantheothens inwalling might , we may escape . then mnemon thus gan say , some strange devise , i know each youthfull wight would here expect , or lofty brave assay : but i 'll the simple truth , in simple wise convay . good conscience , kept with all the strength and might that god already unto us hath given ; a presse pursuit of that foregoing light that egs us on ' cording to what we have liven , and helps us on ' cording to what we have striven , to shaken off the bonds of prejudice , nor dote to much of that we have first conceiven ; by hearty prayer to beg the sweet delice 〈◊〉 gods all-loving spright : such things i you aduise . can pity move the heart of parents dear , when that their haplesse child in heavy plight doth grieve and moan ? whiles pinching tortures tear his fainting life , and doth not that sad sight of gods own sonne empassion his good spright with deeper sorrow ? the tender babe lies torn in us by cruell wounds from hostile might : is gods own life of god himself forlorn ? 〈◊〉 was he to continuall pain of god yborn ? or will you say if this be gods own sonne , let him descend the crosse : for well we ween that he 'll not suffer him to be fordonne by wicked hand , if gods own sonne he been . but you have not those sacred misteries seen , true-crucifying jews ! the weaker thing is held in great contempt in worldly eyen : but time may come when deep impierced sting ●…all prick your heart , and it shall melt with sorrowing . then you shall view him whom with cruell spear you had transfix'd , true crucified sonne of the true god , unto his father dear , and dear to you , nought dearer under sun . through this strong love and deep compassion , how vastly god his kingdome would enlarge you 'll easly see , and how with strong iron he 'll quite subdue the utmost earthly verge . ●…foolish men ! the heavens why do you fondly charge ? subtimidus , when tharrhon sped so well , took courage to himself , and thus 'gan say to mnemon , pray you sr. vouchsafe to tell what antaparnes and hypomene and simon do this while in dizoe . with that his face shone like the rosy morn with maiden blush from inward modesty , which wicked wights do holden in such scorn , sweet harmles modesty a rose withouten thorn . old mnemon lov'd the lad even from his face , which blamelesse blush with sanguin light had dyed ; his harmlesse lucid spright with flouring grace his outward form so seemly beautifyed . so the old man him highly magnified for his so fit enquiry of those three ; and to his question thus anon replyed , there 's small recourse ( till that fort passed be ) to simon autaparnes or hypomene . for all that space from behirons high wall unto pantheothen , none dares arise from his base dunghill warmth ; such magicall attraction his flagging soul down ties ▪ to his foul flesh : 'mongst which , alas ! there lyes a litle spark of gods vitality , but smoreing filth so close it doth comprize that it cannot flame out nor get on high : this province hence is hight earth-groveling aptery . but yet fair semblances these apterites do make of good , and sighen very sore , that god no stronger is . false hypocrites ! you make no use of that great plenteous store of gods good strength which he doth on you poure : but you fast friends of foul carnality , and false to god , his tender sonne do gore , and plaud your selves , is 't be not mortally ; nor let you him live in ease , nor let you him fairly die . like faithlesse wife that by her frampard guize , peevish demeanour , sullen sad disdain doth inly deep the spright melancholize of her aggrieved husband , and long pain at last to some sharpe sicknesse doth constrain his weakned nature to yield victory : his skorching torture then count death a gain . but when death comes , in womanish phrensy ●…at froward femal wretch doth shreek and loudly cry . so through her moody importunity from downright death she rescues the poore man : self-favouring sense ; not that due loyalty doth wring from her this false compassion , compassion that no cruelty can well equalize . her husband lies agast ; death on his horrid face so pale and wan doth creep with ashy wings . he thus embrac'd ●…rforce too many dayes in deadly woe doth wast . this is the love that 's found in aptery to gods dear life . if they his sonne present halfe live , halfe dead , handled despightfully , or sunk in sicknesse or with deep wound rent , so be he 's not quite dead they 'r well content . and hope sure favour of his sire to have . they have the signes how can they then be shent ? the god of love for his dear life us save ●…om such conceits , which men to sinne do thus inslave . but when from aptery we were ygone , and past pantheothens inthralling power ; then from the east chearfull eous shone , and drave away the nights dead lumpish stour : he took by th' hand aurora's vernall houre ; these freshly tripp'd it on the silver'd hills , and thorow all the fields sweet life did shower : then gan the joyfull birds to try their skills ; ●…hey skipt , they chirpt amain , they pip'd they danc'd their fills . this other province of dizoia hight pteroessa ; on the flowry side of a green bank , as i went on my way strong youthfull gabriel i there espide , courting a nymph all in her maiden pride , not for himself : his strife was her to win to michael in wedlock to be tide . he promised she should be michaels queen , and greater things then care hath heard or eye hath seen ▪ this lovely maid to gabriel thus replide , thanks , sr , for your good news ; but may i know who michael is that would have me his bride . it s michael , said he , that works such wo to all that fry of hell ; and on his foe those fiends of da●…knesse such great triumphs hath : the powers of sinne and death he down doth mow . in this strong arm of god have thou but faith , that in great daemons troups doth work so wondrous 〈◊〉 the simple girl believed every word , nor did by subtle querks elude the might and profer'd strength of the soul-loving lord ; but answered thus , good sr , but reade aright when shall i then appear in michaels sight ? when gabriel had won her full assent , and well observ'd how he had flam'd her spright , he answered , after the complishment of his behests , and so her told what hests he ment . she willingly took the condition , and pliable she promised to be : and gabriel sware he would wait upon her virginship , whiles in simplicity his masters will with all good industry she would fulfill . so here the simple maid strove for her self in all fidelity , nor took her self for nothing ; but sh●… plaid her part , she thought , as if indentures had been made . for she did not with her own self ginthink so curiously , that it is god alone that gives both strengths whe●… ever we do swink : graces and natures might be both from one , who is our lifes strong sustentation . impossible it is therefore to merit , when we poore men have nothing of our own : certes by him alone she stands upright ; and surely falls without his help in per'lous fight . but we went on in pteroessa lond . the fresh bright morning was no small repast after the toil in aptery we found , so that with merry chear we went full-fast : but i observed well that in this haste simon wax'd faint , and feeble , and decay'd in strength and life before we far had past : and by how much his youthfull flower did fade , so much more vigour to his parents was repay'd . for that old crumpled wight gan go upstraight , and autaparnes face recovered blood ; but simon looked pale withouten might , withouten chear , or joy , or livelyhood : cause of all this at last i understood . for autaparn that knife had from him cast , and almost clos'd the passage of that flood . that flood , that blood , was that which simons taste alone could fit : if that were gone the lad did waste . and his old mother , call'd hypomene , did ease her back from that down-swaying weight , that leaden quadrate , which did miserably annoy her crazy corse ; but that more light she might fare on , she in her husbands sight threw down her load , where he threw down his blade . and from that time began the pitious plight of sickly simon : so we ●…m perswade back to retreat , and do th●… dying son some aid . though loth , yet at the length they do assent : so we return unto the place where lay the heavy quadrate , and that instrument of bleeding smart : it would a man dismay to think how that square lead her back did sway ; and how the halfeclos'd wound was open tore with that sharpe-pointed knife : and sooth to say simon himself was inly grieved sore , seeing the deadly smart that his dear parents bore . so we remeasure the way we had gone , still faring on toward theoprepy . great strength and comfort 't was to think upon our good escape from listlesse aptery , and from the thraldome of infirmity . now nought perplex'd our stronger plumed spright , but what may be the blamelesse verity : oft we conceiv'd things were peracted right ; and oft we found ourselves guld with strong passions might ▪ but now more feeble farre we find their force then erst it was , when as in aptery to strong pantheothen they had recourse : for then a plain impossibility it was to overcome their cruelty . but here encouraged by gabriel we strongly trust to have the victory . and if by chance they do our forces quell ; it 's not by strength of armes but by some misty spell . so bravely we went on withouten dread , till at the last we came whereas a hill with steep ascent highly lift up his head : to th' aged foot it worken would much ill to cl●…mb this cliffe ; with weary ache 't would ●…ill his drier bones . but yet it 's smooth and plain upon the top . it passeth farre my skill the springs , the bowers , the walks , the goodly train of fair chaste nymphes that haunt that place for to explain i saw three sisters there in seemly wise together walking on the flowry green , yclad in snowy stoles of fair agguize . the glistring streams of silver waving shine , skillfully interwove with silken line , so variously did play in that fair vest , that much it did delight my wondring eyne : their face with love and vigour was ydrest , ●…ith modesty and joy , their tongue with just behest . their locks hung loose . a triple coronet , of flaming gold and star-like twinkling stone of highest price , was on their temples set : the amethyst , the radiant diamond , the jasper , enemy to spirits wonne , with many other glorious for to see . these three enameld rimmes of that fair crown be these : the first hight dicaeosyne , ●…ilosophy the next , the last stiff apathy . i gaz'd , and mus'd , and was well nigh distraught with admiration of those three maids , and could no further get , ne further saught ; down on the hill my weary limbes i laid , and fed my feeble eyes , which me betray'd unto loves bondage : simon lik'd it not to see me so bewitchd , and thus assay'd by wisest speech to loose this magick knot : great pity things so fair should have so foul a spot . what spot , said i , can in these fair be found ? both spot in those white vests , and eke a flaw in those bright gems wherewith these maids be crown'd , if you 'll but list to see i 'll easly show . then i , both love of man and holy law exactly 's kept upon this sacred hill ; true fortitude that truest foes doth awe , justice and abstinence from sweetest ill , and wisdome like the sun doth all with light o'respill . thanks be to god we are so well ariv'd to the long-sought for land , theoprepy . nay soft good sr , said simon , you 'r deceiv'd , you are not yet past through autaesthesy : with that the spot and flaw he bad me see which he descry'd in that goodly array . the spot and flaw self-sens'd autopathy was hight , the eldest nymph pythagerissa , next platonissa hight , the last hight stoicissa . but this high mount where these three sisters wonne , said simon , cleeped is , har-eloim . to these it s said , do worship to my sonne : it s right , that all the gods do worship him , there 's none exempt : those that the highest climbe are but his ministers , their turns they take to serve as well as those of lower slime . what so is not of christ but doth partake of th' autaesthesian soil , is life daemoniake . his words did strangely work upon my spright , and wean'd my mind from that i dearly lov'd ; so i nould dwell on this so pleasing sight , but down descended , as it me behov'd , and as my trusty guide me friendly mov'd . so when we down had come , and thence did passe on the low plain , simon more clearly prov'd , that though much beauty there and goodnesse was , yet that in theoprepia did far surpasse . so forward on we fare , and leave that hill , and presse still further ; the further we go , simon more strength , more life and godly will , more vigour he and livelyhood did show ; but autaparnes wox more wan and wo : he faints , he sinks , ready to give up ghost , and ag'd hypomne trod with footing slow , and staggerd with her load ; so ill dispos'd their fading spirits were , that life was well nigh lost . by this in sight of that black wall we came , a wall by stone-artificer not made : for it is nought but smoke from duskish flame , which in that low deep valleys pitchy shade doth fiercely th' autopathian life invade , with glowing heat , and eateth out that spot . this dreadfull triall many hath dismaid : when autaparnes saw this was his lot , ●…ear did his sense benumme , he wox like earthly clot . in solemn silency this vapour rose from this dread dale , and hid the eastern sky with its deep darknesse , and the evening close forestall'd with stygian obscurity , yet was 't not thick , nor thin , nor moist , nor dey ; nor stank it ill , nor yet gave fragrant smell , nor did't take in through pellucidity the penetrating light , nor did't repell through grosse opacity the beams of michael . yet terrible it is to psyche's brood , that still retain the life daemoniake ; constraining fear calls in their vitall flood , when the drad magus once doth mention make of the deep dark abysse ; for fear they quake at that strong-awing word : but they that die unto self-feeling life , naught shall them shake : base fear proceeds from weak autopathy . this dale hight ain , the fumes hight anautaesthesy . into this dismall dale we all descend : here autaeparnes and hypomene their languid life with that dark vapour blend . thus perished fading vitality , but nought did fade of lifes reality . when these two old ones their last gasp had fer , in this drad valley their dead corps did lie ; but what could well be sav'd to simon flet . here simon first became spotlesse anautaesthet . when we had waded quite through this deep shade , we then appeard in bright theoprepy : here phoebus ray in straightest line was laid , that earst lay broke in grosse consistency of cloudy substance . for strong sympathy of the divided natures magick band was burnt to dust in anautaesthesie : now there 's no fear of deaths dart-holding hand : fast love , fixt life , firm peace in theoprepia land . when mnemon hither came , he leaned back upon his seat , and a long time respired . when i perceiv'd this holy sage so slack to speak ( well as i might ) i him desired still to hold on , if so he were not tired , and tell what fell in blest theoprepy ; but he nould do the thing that i required , too hard it is , said he , that kingdomes glee to show ; who list to know himself must come and see . this story under the cool shaddowing beach old mnemon told of famous dizoie : to set down all he said passeth my reach , that all would reach even to infinity . strange things he spake of the biformity of the dizoians ; what mongrill sort of living wights ; how monstrous shap'd they be , and how that man and beast in one consort ; goats britch , mans tongue , goose head , with monki's mouth disto●… ▪ of centaures , cynocephals , walking trees , tritons and mermaydes , and such uncouth things ; or weeping serpents with fair womens eyes , mad making waters , sex trans-forming springs ; of foul circean swine with golden rings , with many such like falshoods ; but the straight will easly judge all crooked wandrings , suffice it then we have taught that ruling-right ▪ the good is uniform , the evil infinite . ΨΥΞΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ platonica : or platonicall poem of the immortality of souls , especially mans soul. by h. m. master of arts , and fellow of christs colledge in cambridge . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , empedocles . omnia mutantur , nihil interit , ovid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , trismegist . cambridge printed by roger daniel , printer to the universitie : . the preface to the reader . the very nerves and sinews of religion is hope of immortality . what greater incitement to virtue and justice then eternall happinesse ? what greater terriculament from wickednesse , then a full perswasion of after-judgement and continuall torture of spirit ? but my labour is superfluous . men from their very childhood are perswaded of these things . verily , i fear how they are perswaded of them when they become men . else would not they , vvhom the fear of hell doth not affright , die so unvvillingly , nor vvicked men so securely ; nor vvould so many be vvicked . for even naturall-providence vvould bid them look forvvard . beside , some men of a melancholick temper ( vvhich commonly distrust and suspicion do accompany ) though othervvise pious , yet out of an exceeding desire of eternall being , think they can never have security enough for this so pleasing hope and expectation , and so even vvith anxiety of mind busie themselves to prove the truth of that strongly , vvhich they desire vehemently to be true . and this body , vvhich dissolution vvaits upon , helpeth our infidelity exceedingly . for the soul not seeing it self , judgeth it self of such a nature , as those things are to which she is nearest united : falsly saith , but yet ordinarily , i am sick , i am weak , i faint , i die ; when it is nough : but the perishing life of the body that is in such plight , to which she is so close tied in most intimate love and sympathy . so a tender mother , if she see a knife struck to her childs heart , would shreek and swound as if her self had been smit ; whenas if her eye had not beheld that spectacle , she had not been moved though the thing were surely done . so i do verily think that the mind being taken up in some higher contemplation , if it should please god to keep it in that ecstasie , the body might be destroyed without any disturbance to the soul. for how can there be or sense or pain without animadversion ? but while we have such continuall commerce with this frail body , it is not to be expected but that we shall be assaulted with the fear of death and darknesse . for alas ! how few are there that do not make this visible world , their adonai , their stay and sustentation of life , the prop of their soul , their god ? how many christians are not prone to whisper that of the heathen poet , soles occidere & redire possunt ; nobis cùm semel occidit brevis lux nox est perpetua una dormienda . the sunne may set and rise again ; if once sets our short light , deep sleep us binds with iron chain , wrapt in eternall night . but i would not be so injurious , as to make men worse then they are , that my little work may seem of greater use and worth then it is . admit then that men are most what perswaded of the souls immortality , yet here they may reade reasons to confirm that perswasion , and be put in mind , as they reade , of their end , and future condition , which cannot be but profitable at least . for the pleasure they 'll reap from this poem , it will be according as their genius is fitted for it . for as plato speaks in his io , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or according to the more usuall phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. the spirit of every poet is not alike , nor his writings alike suteable to all dispositions . as io , the reciter of homers verses , professeth himself to be snatcht away with an extraordinary fury or ecstacie at the repeating of homers poesie , but others so little to move him that he could even fall asleep . so that no man is rashly to condemn another mans labour in this kind , because he is not taken with it . as wise or wiser then himself may . but this is a main piece of idolatry and injustice in the world , that every man would make his private genius an universall god ; and would devour all mens apprehensions by his own fire , that glowes so hot in him , and ( as he thinks ) shines so clear . as for this present song of the immortality of the soul , it is not unlikely but that it will prove sung montibus & sylvis to the waste woods and solitary mountains . for all men are so full of their own phansies and idiopathyes , that they scarce have the civility to interchange any words with a stranger . if they do chance to heare his exotick tone , they entertain it with laughter , a passion very incident upon that occasion to children and clowns . but it were much better neither to embosome nor reject any thing , though strange , till we were well acquainted with it . exquisite disquisition begets diffidence ; diffidence in knowledge , humility ; humility , good manners and meek conversation . for mine own part , i desire no man to take any thing . i write upon trust , vvithout canvasing ; and vvould be thought rather to propound then to assert vvhat i have here or elsevvhere vvritten . but continually to have exprest my diffidence in the very tractates themselves , had been languid and ridiculous . it vvere a piece of injustice to expect of others , that vvhich i could never indure to stoup to my self . that knovvledge vvhich is built upon humane authority is no better then a castle in the aire . for vvhat man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or at least can be prov'd to us to be so ? wherefore the foundation of that argument will but prove precarious , that is so built . and we have rather a sound of words signifiing the thing is so , then any true understanding that the thing is so indeed . what ever may seem strange in this poem , condemne it not , till thou findest it dissonant to plato's school , or not deducible from it . but there be many arguments , that have no strangenesse at all to prove the soules immortality ; so that no man that is not utterly illiterate shall lose his labour in reading this short treatise . i must confesse i intended to spin it out to a greater length ; but things of greater importance then curious theory , take me off ; beside the hazard of speaking hard things to a multitude . i make no question , but those that are rightly acquainted with platonisme , will accept of that small pains , and make a good construction of my poetry . for i will assure thee ( reader ) that it will be nothing but igorance of my scope , that shall make any do othervvise i fly too high to take notice of lesser flaws . if thou seest them , i give thee free liberty to mend them . but if thou regardest not lesser trifles , we be well met . farewell . h. m. the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . struck with strong sense of gods good will the immortalitie of souls i sing ; praise with my quill plato's philosophie . vvhatever-man he be that dares to deem true poets skill do spring of earthly race , i must him tell , that he doth misesteem their strange estate , and eke himself disgrace by his rude ignorance . for there 's no place for forced labour , or slow industry of flagging wits , in that high fiery chace , so soon as of the muse they quickned be , at once they rise , and lively sing like lark in skie . like to a meteor , whose materiall is low unwieldy earth , base unetuous slime , whose inward hidden parts ethereall ly close upwrapt in that dull sluggish fime , ly fast asleep , till at some fatall time great phoebus lamp has fir'd its inward spright , and then even of it self on high doth climb ; that earst was dark becomes all eye , all sight , bright starre , that to the wise of future things gives light : even so the weaker mind , that languid lies knit up in rags of dirt , dark cold and blind , so soon that purer flame of love unties its clogging chains , and doth its spright unbind , it sores aloft ; for it it self doth find well plum'd ; so rais'd upon its spreaden wing , it softly playes , and warbles in the wind , and carols out its inward life and spring of over-flowing joy , and of pure love dothsing . it sings of purest love , not that base passion that fouls the soul with filth of lawles lust , and circe-like its shape doth all misfashion ; but that bright slame that 's proper to the just , and eats away all drosse and cankred rust with its refining heat , unites the mind with gods own spright , who raiseth from the dust the slumb'ring soul , and with his usage kind makes't breath after that life that time hath not desin'd . so hath he rais'd my soul , and so possest my inward spright , with that unfeigned will he bears to psyche's brood , that i ne're rest but ruth or ragefull indignation fill my troubled veins , that i my life near spill with sorrow and disdain , for that foul lore that crept from dismall shades of night , and quill steep'd in sad styx , and fed with stinking gore suckt from corrupted corse , that god and men abhorr●… . such is thy putid muse , lucretius , that fain would teach that souls all mortall be : the dusty atoms of democritus certes have fall'n into thy feeble eye , and thee bereft of perspicacity . others through the strong steem of their dull bloud , without the help of that philosophy , have with more ease the truth not understood , and the same thing conclude in some sad drooping mood . but most of all my soul doth them refuse that have extinguish'd natures awfull light by evil custome , and unkind abuse of gods young tender work , that in their spright he first gins frame . but they with heddy might of over-whelming liquour that life drownd , and reasons eye swell up or put out quite . hence horrid darknesse doth their souls confound , and foul blasphemous belch from their furd mouth resounds thus while false way they take to large their spirit by vaster cups of bacchus , they get fire without true light , and ' cording to demerit infernall blasts blind confidence inspire : bold heat to uncouth thoughts is their bad hire . which they then dearly hug , and ween their feet have clombe , whither vulgar men dare not aspire . but it s the fruit of their burnt sootie spright : thus dream they of drad death , and an eternall night . now in the covert of dame natures cell they think they 'r shrowded , and the mysterie of her deep secrets they can wisely spell ; and ' pprove that art above true pretie ; laugh at religion as a mockerie , a thing found out to aw the simpler sort : but they , brave sparks , have broke from this dark tie : the light of nature yields more sure comfort . alas ! too many souls in this fond thought consort . like men new made contriv'd into a cave that ner'e saw light , but in that shadowing pit , some uncouth might them hoodwink hither drave , now with their backs to the dens mouth they sit , yet shoulder not all light from the dern pit , so much gets in as optick art counts meet to shew the forms that hard without do flit . with learned quaere each other here they greet : true moving substances they deem each shadow slight : when fowls flie by , and with their swapping wings beat the inconstant aire , and mournfull noise stirre up with their continuall chastisings in the soft yielding penitent ; the voice these solemn sages nought at all accoyes . 't is common ; onely they philosophize , busying their brains in the mysterious toyes of flittie motion , warie well advize on'●… inward principles the hid entelechyes . and whereabout that inward life is seated , that moves the living creature , they espie passing in their dim world . so they 'r defeated , calling thin shadows true realitie , and deeply doubt if corporalitie , ( for so they term those visibles ) were stroy'd whether that inward first vitalitie could then subsist . but they are ill accloy'd with cloddie earth , and with blind duskishnesse annoy'd . if roaring lion or the neighing horse , with frisking tail to brush off busie flies , approch their den , then haply they discourse from what part of these creatures may arise those greater sounds . together they advise , and gravely do conclude that from the thing that we would term the tail , those thund'ring neyes do issue forth : tail of that shadovving they see then moved most , while he is whinneying . and so the lions huge and hideous roat they think proceeds from his rugg'd flowing mane , which the fierce winds do tosse and tousell sore ; unlesse perhaps he stirre his bushie train : for then the tail will carrie it again . thus upon each occasion their frail wit bestirres it self to find out errours vain and uselesse theories in this dark pit : fond reasoning they have , seldome or never hit . so soon new shadows enter in the cave , new entelechias they then conceive brought forth of nature ; when they passed have their gloomy orb ( false shades eas'ly deceive ) not onely they that visible bereave of life and being , but the hidden might and root of motion unliv'd unbeen'd they leave in their vain thoughts : for they those shadows light do deem sole prop and stay of th' hidden motive spright . this is that awfull cell where naturalists brood deep opinion , as themselves conceit ; this errours den where in a magick mist men hatch their own delusion and deceit , and grasp vain shows . here their bold brains they beat and dig full deep , as deep as hyle's hell , unbare the root of life ( o searching wit ! ) but root of life in hyles shade no'te dwell . for god's the root of all , as i elsewhere shall tell . this is the stupid state of drooping soul , that loves the bodie and false forms admires ; slave to base sense , fierce 'gainst reasons controul , that still it self with lower lust bemites ; that nought believeth and much lesse desires things of that unseen world and inward life , nor unto height of purer truth aspires : but cowardly declines the noble strife 'gainst vice and ignorance ; so gets it no relief . from this default , the lustfull epicure democrite , or th' unthankfull stagirite , most men preferre 'fore holy pythagore , divinest plato , and grave epictete : but i am so inflam'd with the sweet sight and goodly beautie seen on eloim-hill , that maugre all mens clamours in despight i 'll praise my platonissa with loud quill ; my strong intended voice all the wide world shall fill . o sacred nymph begot of highest jove ! queen of philosophie and virtuous lear ! that firest the nobler heart with spotlesse love , and sadder minds with nectar drops dost chear , that oft bedrencht with sorrows while we 're here exil'd from our dear home , that heavenly soil . through wandring wayes thou safely dost us bear into the land of truth , from dirtie foil thou keepst our slipping feet oft wearied with long toil . when i with other beauties thine compare , o lovely maid , all others i must scorn . for why ? they all rude and deform'd appear : certes they be ill thew'd and baser born : yet thou , alas ! of men art more forlorn . for like will to its like : but few can see thy worth ; so night-birds flie the glorious morn thou art a beam shot from the deitie , and nearest art ally'd to christianitie . but they be sprung of sturdie giants race , ally'd to night and the foul earthie clay , love of the carcase , envie , spight , disgrace , centention , pride , that unto th' highest doth bray , rash labour , a titanicall assay to pluck down wisdome from her radiant seat , with mirie arms to bear her quite away . but thy dear mother thorough-cleansing virtue hight : here will true wisdome lodge , here will the deigne to light . come , gentle virgin , take me by the hand , to yonder grove with speedie pace wee 'll hie : ( it s not farre off from alethea land ) swift as the levin from the sneezing skie , so swift wee 'll go , before an envious eye can reach us . there i 'll purge out the strong steem of prepossessing prejudice , that i perhaps may have contract in common stream , and warie well wash out my old conceived dream . and when i 've breath'd awhile in that free aire , and clear'd my self from tinctures took before , then deigne thou to thy novice to declare thy secret skill , and hid mysterious lore , and i due thanks shall plenteously down poure . but well i wote thou 'lt not envaffall me : that law were rudenesse . i may not adore ought but the lasting spotlesse veritie . well thewed minds the mind doth alwayes setten free . free to that inward awfull majestie hight logos , whom they term great son of god , who fram'd the world by his deep sciency , the greater world . al 's makes his near abode in the lesse world : so he can trace the trod of that hid ancient path , when as he made this stately fabrick of the world so broad . he plainly doth unfold his skilfull trade , when he doth harmlesse hearts by his good spright invade . o thou eternall spright , cleave ope the sky , and take thy flight into my feeble breast , enlarge my thoughts , enlight my dimmer eye that wisely of that burthen closely prest in my straight mind , i may be dispossest : my muse must sing of things of mickle weight ; the souls eternity is my great quest : do thou me guide , that art the souls sure light , grant that i never erre , but ever wend aright . the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . what a soul is here i define , after i have compared all powers of life : that stamp divine show that brutes never shared . now i 'll addresse me to my mighty task , so mighty task that makes my heart to shrink , while i compute the labour it will ask , and on my own frail weaknesse i gin think . like tender lad that on the rivers brink , that fain would wash him , while the evening ●…een with sharper aire doth make his pores to wink , shakes all his body , nips his naked skin , at first makes some delay but after skippeth in : so i upon a wary due debate with my perplexed mind , after perswade my softer heart . i need no longer wait . lo ! now new strength my vitalls doth invade and rear again , that earst began to fade , my life , my light , my senses all revive that fearfull doubts before had ill apaid . leap in , my soul , and strongly fore thee drive the fleeting waves , and when thee list to th' bottome dive . for thou canst dive full well , and flote aloft , dive down as deep as the old hyle's shade , through that slight darknesse glid'st thou sly and soft , through pitchy cumbring fogs strongly canst wade , nor in thy flight could'st thou be ever staid , if in thy flight thou flewedst not from him , that for himself thine excellent might hath made . contract desire , repulse strong magick steem , then even in foul cocytus thou mayest fearlesse swim . like that strange uncouth fish lucerna hight , whose wonne is in the brackish seas , yet fire she easily carries and clear native light in her close mouth : and the more to admire , in darkest night when she lists to aspire to th' utmost surface of the watery main , and opes her jawes that light doth not expire , but lively shines till she shut up again : nor liquid sea , nor moistned aire this light restrain . or like a lamp arm'd with pellucid horn , which ruffling winds about do rudely tosse , and felly lash with injury and scorn , but her mild light they cannot easly crosse ; she shines to her own foes withouten losse : even so the soul into its self collected , or in her native hew withouten drosse , in midst of bitter storms in no●… ejected , nor her eternall state is any whit suspected . as cynthia in her stouping perigee , that deeper wades in the earths duskish cone , yet safely wallows through in silency till she again her silver face hath shown , and tells the world that she 's the self-same moon , not now more listlesse then i was whileare when i was hid in my apogeon , for i my self alike do alwayes bear in every circling race : blind ignorance breeds fear . nor being hid after my monthly wane , long keppen back from your expecting sight , dull damps and darknesse do my beauty stain ; when none i show then have i the most light , nearer to phoebus more i am bedight with his fair rayes . and better to confute , all vain suspicion of my worser plight , mark aye my face , after my close salute with that sharp-witted god , seem i not more acute ? this is the state of th' ever-moving soul , whirling about upon its circling wheel ; certes to sight it variously doth roll , and as men deem full dangerously doth reel , but oft when men fear most , it self doth feel in happiest plight conjoin'd with that great sun of lasting blisse , that doth himself reveal more fully then , by that close union , though men , that misse her here , do think her quite undone . but lest we rashly wander out too farre , and be yblown about with wanton wind , withouten stern , or card , or polar starre , in its round little list so close confin'd : let the souls nature first be well defin'd ; then we 'll proceed . but all the while i crave when e'r i speak ' cording to plato's mind , that you my faultlesse drift do not deprave . for i the free-born soul to no sect would inslave . divers conceipts the wizards of old time have had concerning that we here inquire , and would set forth in an eternall rhyme ; but we list not our dainty muse to tire . in such foul wayes , and plunge her in the mire . strange dreams their drowsie scholars they have taught , the heart , the heart-blood , brains , fleet aire , hot fire to be the thing that they so presly sought , some have defin'd , some temper , some a●…omes , some nought . but i must needs decline this wandring path ; for well i wote errour is infinite , but he that simple truth once reached hath needs not with every single shade to fight : one stroke will put all falsities to flight . so soon as sol his fiery head doth rear above the eastern waves his glowing sight as angry darknesse so long rule did bear , straight all night trifling sprights doth chace away with fear . long have i swonk with anxious assay to finden out what this hid soul may be , that doth herself so variously bewray in different motions . other we her see when she so fairly spreads the branching tree ; other when as sh' hath loos'd her self from ground , and opes her root , and breaths in heaven free , and doth her wants in the wide air resound , speaks out her joy , no longer whispers under-ground . such is the noise of chearfull chirping birds , that tell the sweet impressions of the spring ; or 'fore some storm , when their quick sprights be stird with nearer strong appulse and hid heaving , that fills their little souls , and makes them sing , puft up with joy and o'rflowing delight : eftsoons with ratling winds the air doth ring . the sturdy storm doth make them take their flight into thick bush or hedge to save them from heavens spight . from this same sourse of sense are murmuring moans of bellowing bullocks , when sharp hunger bites ; hence whining dog so pittifully groans when as with knotted whip his lord him smites ; and every beast when with death pangs he fights . but senslesse trees nor feel the bleaker wind , that nip their sides , nor the suns scorching might , nor the sharp ax piercing their ruggid rind ; yet have they soul , whose life in their sweet growth we find . so plants spring up flourish and fade away , not marking their own state : they never found themselves , when first they ' pear'd in sunny day ; nor never sought themselves , though in the ground they search full deep : nor are they wak'd by wound of biting iron , to nought they are attent that them befalls , when cold humours abound and clog their vitall heat , or when they 're brent with sirius flame , or when through eld they waxen faint . or whatsoever diseases them betide that hasten death , they nought at all regard : but when to plantall life quick sense is ti'd , and progging phansie , then upon her guard she gins to stand , and well her self to ward from foes she plainly feels , pursues her joy , remembers where she well or ill hath ●…r'd , or swiftly flies from that that doth annoy , or stoutly strives her fierce destroyer to destroy . thus have we run thorow these two degrees of the souls working seen in beast and plant ; the third hight reason , of common energies the best : of this the humane race doth vaunt as proper to themselves . but if we ska●…'t sa●…s prejudice , it 's not in them alone ; the dog , the horse , the ape , the elephant , will all rush in striving to make up one , and sternly claim their share in use of right reason . but whether brutes do reason and reflect upon their reasoning , i 'll not dispute ; nor care i what brisk boyes will here object long task it were all fondlings to confute . but i 'll lay down that which will better sute with that high heavenly spark , the soul of man ; his proper character ( i would he knew 't ) is that which adam lost by wily train of th' old sly snake that eve beguil'd with speeches vain . this was the image of the highest god , which brutes partake not of . this image hight true justice , that keeps ever the even trod , true piety that yields to man the sight of heavenly beauty , those fair beams so brigat of th' everlasting deity , that shed their sacred fire within the purer spright , the fruit of ●…den wherewith souls be sed , mans awfull majesty of eyery beast ydred . nor is that radiant force in humane kind extinguisht quite , he that did them create can those dull rusty chains of sleep unbind , and rear the soul unto her priftin state : he can them so inlarge and elevate aud spreaden out , that they can compasse all , when they no longer be incarcerate in this dark dungeon , this foul fleshy wall , nor be no longer wedg'd in things corporeall : but rais'd aloft into their proper sphere , that sphere that hight th' orb intellectuall , they quiet sit , as when the flitting fire that natures mighty magick down did call into the oyly wood , at its own fall grows full of wrath and rage , and gins to fume , and roars and strives 'gainst its disquietall , like troubled ghost forc'd some shape to assume ; but it its holding foe at doth last quite consume . and then like gliding spright doth straight dispear , that earst was forc'd to take a fiery form : full lightly it ascends into the clear and subtile aire devoid of cloudy storm , where it doth steddy stand , all-uniform , pure , pervious , immixt , innocuous , mild , nought scorching , nought glowing , nought enorm , nought destroying , not destroy'd , not defil'd ; foul fume being spent , just 'fore its flight it fairly smil'd . thus have i trac'd the soul in all its works , and severall conditions have displaid , and show'd all places where so e'r she lurks , even her own lurkings of her self bewray'd , in plants , in beasts , in men , while here she staid ▪ and freed from earth how then she spreads on high her heavenly rayes , that also hath been said . look now , my muse , and cast thy piercing eye on every kind , and tell wherein all souls agree . here dare i not define't , th' entelechy of organized bodies . for this life , this centrall life , which men take souls to be , is not among the beings relative ; and sure some souls at least are self-active withouten body having energie . many put out their force informative in their ethereall corporeity , devoid of heterogeneall organity . self-moving substance , that be th' definition of souls , that longs to them , in generall : this well expresseth that common condition of every vitall centre creaturall . for why ? both that hight form spermaticall hath here a share , as also that we term soul sensitive , i 'll call 't form bestiall , it makes a beast added to plantall sperin ; adde rationall form , it makes a man as men affirm . all these be substances self-moveable : and that we call virtue magneticall ( that what 's defin'd be irreproveable ) i comprehend it in the life plantall : mongst trees there 's found life sympatheticall ; though trees have not animadversive sense . therefore the soul 's autocinelicall alone . what ere 's in this defining sense is soul , what ere 's not soul is driven far from heace . but that each soul 's autocineticall , is easly shown by sitting all degrees of souls . the first are forms spermaticall , that best be seen in shaping armed trees , which if they want their fixt centreities , by which they fairly every part extend , and gently inact with spred vitalities the flowring boughs . how natures work doth wend who knows ? or from what inward stay it doth depend ? forthy let first an inward centre hid be put . that 's nought but natures fancie ti'd in closer knot , shut up into the mid of its own self : so our own spirits gride with piercing wind in storming winter tide contract themselves and shrivell up together , like snake the countrey man in snow espi'd , whose spright was quite shrunk in by nipping weather . from whence things come , by foman forc'd they backward thither the rigid cold had forc'd into its centre this serpents life ; but when the rurall swain plac'd her upon warm hearth , and heat did enter into her ●…ummed corps , she gan to strain and stretch herself , and her host entertain with scornfull hisse , shooting her anchor'd tongue , threatning her venom'd teeth ; so straight again she prov'd a living snake , when she along her corse free life had drove from centre steddie strong . so doth the gentle warmth of solar heat eas'ly awake the centre seminall , that makes it softly streak on its own seat , and fairly forward force its life internall . that inward life 's th' impresse imaginall of natures art , which sweetly flowreth out from that is cleep'd the sphere spermaticall : for there is plac'd the never fading root of every flower or herb that into th' aire doth shoot . fairly invited by sols piercing ray and inward tickled with his chearing spright , all plants break thorough into open day , rend the thick curtain of cold cloying night , the earths opakenes enemie to light , and crown themselves in signe of victorie with shining leaves ; and goodly blossomes bright . thus called out by friendly sympathie their souls move of themselves on their centreitie . but it's more plain in animalitie , when fierie coursers strike the grassie ground with swift tempestuous feet , that farre and nigh they fill mens eares with a broad thundring sound ( from hollow hoof so strongly it doth rebound ) what 's that that twitcheth up their legs so fast , and fiercely jerks them forth , that many wound they give to their own mother in their hast ? with eager steps they quickly mete the forrest wast . that outward form is but a neurospast ; the soul it is that on her subtile ray , that she shoots out , the limbs of moving beast doth stretch straight forth , so straightly as she may . bones joynts and sinews shap'd of stubborn clay cannot so eas'ly lie in one straight line with her projected might , much lesse obey direct retractions of these beames fine : so straight retreat they must of necessitie decline . but yet they follow in a course oblique , with angular doublings , as the joints permit : so go they up together , not unlike an iron candle-stick the smith hath fit with many junctures , whom in studious sit some scholar set a work : but to return , lest what we aim'd at we unwares omit ; if souls of beasts their bodies move and turn , and wield at phansies beck , as we describ'd beforn ; then be the souls of beasts self-moving forms , bearing their bodies as themselves think meet , invited or provok'd , so they transform at first themselves within , then straight in sight those motions come , which suddenly do light upon the bodies visible , which move according to the will of th' inward spright . in th' inward spright be anger , hate and love : hence claws , horns , hoofs they use the pinching ill t' amove . thus have i plainly prov'd that souls of beasts and plants do move themselves . that souls of men should be more stupid , and farre lesse releast from matters bondage , surely there 's none can admit of , though but slightly they do scan the cause . but for to put all out of doubt , let 's take again the same way we have ran , break down all obstacles that hinder mought our future course to make all plain all clear throughout . if there be no self-motion in mans soul , that it nor this nor that way can propend of its owe self , nor can no whit controll nor will of its own self , who can offend ? for no man●…self ( if you do well perpend ) guiltie's of ought when nought doth from him flow . whither do learning , laws , grave speeches tend ? speaks the rude carter to the waggon slow with threat'ning words , or to the beasts that do it draw ? surely unto the beasts that eas'ly go : for there 's the principle of motion , such principle as can it self foreslow , or forward presse by incitation : which though it moves by commination , so stifly strives , yet from it self it strives , bears it self forth with stout contention , and ever and anon the whip revives that inward life , so bravely on the rustick drives . again , all that sweet labour would be lost that gods good spirit takes in humane mind , so oft we courted be so often cross'd : but nor that tender amorous courtship kind hath any place , where we no place can find for a self-yielding love ; or if self-will be not in us , how eas'ly were declin'd all crosses ? none could happen us untill , how will i want , and want no crosse passeth my skill . pesides when reason works with fantasie , and changeable conceits we do contrive , purging and pruning with all industrie , what 's dead or uselesse , lesse demonstrative , what 's dull or flaccid , nought illustrative , quenching unfitted phantasmes in our brain , and for our better choice new flames revive ; the busie soul thus doth her reason strain to write or speak what envious tong ●…e may never stain : or when quite heedlesse of this earthie world she lifts her self unto the azure ski●… , and with those wheeling gyres around is hurld , turns in herself in a due distancie the erring seven ; or a stretch'd line doth t●…e o' th' silver-bowed moon from horn to horn ; or finds out phoebus vast soliditie by his diametre , measures the morn , girds the swoln earth with linear list , though earth she scorn . all this is done , though bodie never move : the soul about it self circumgyrates her various forms , and what she most doth love she oft before her self stabilitates ; she stifly stayes't and wistly contemplates , or lets it somewhat slowlier descend down to the nether night ; she temperates her starrie orb , makes her bright forms to wend even as she list : anon she 'll all with darknesse blend . thus variously she doth herself invest with rising forms , and reasoneth all the way ; and by right reason doth herself devest of falser phancies . who then can gainsay but she 's self-mov'd when she doth with self-sway thus change herself , as inward life doth feel ? if not , then some inspiring sprights bewray each reasoning . yet though to them we deal first motion , yet our selves ought know what they reveal . but if nor of our selves we moved be at first , without any invasion of stirring forms that into energie awake the soul ; nor after-motion from its own centre by occasion doth issue forth ; then it 's not conscious of ought : for so 't will want adversion . but nothing can animadvert for us : therefore all humane souls be self-vivacious . thus have i prov'd all souls have centrallmotion springing from their own selves . but they 'll object gainst th' universalnesse of this clear notion , that whiles self-flowing sourse i here detect in plants , in brutes , in men , i ought reject no soul from wished immortalitie , but give them durance when they are resect from organized corporeitie : thus brutes and plants shall gain lasting eternitie . 't is true , a never fading durancie belongs to all hid principles of life ; but that full grasp of vast eternitie longs not to beings simply vegetive , nor yet to creatures merely sensitive : reason alone cannot arrive to it . onely souls deiform intellective unto that height of happinesse can get ; yet immortalitie with other souls may fit . no force of nature can their strength annoy . for they be subtiler then the silken aire , which fatall fire from heaven cannot destroy . all grossenesse its devo●…ing teeth may sheare , and present state of visibles empare ; but the fine curtains of the lasting skie , though not of love , yet it perforce must spare ▪ if they could burn , each spark from flint would trie , and a bright broad-spread flame to either pole would hi●… but if all souls survive their bulks decay , another difficultie will straight arise , concerning their estate when they 're away flit from this grosser world . shall paradise receive the sprights of beasts ? or wants it trees , that their sweet verdant souls should thither take ? who shall conduct those stragling colonies ? or be they straightway drench'd in lethe lake ? so that cold sleep their shriveld life from work doth slake . or if that all or some of them awake , what is their miserie ? what their delight●… how come they that refined state forsake ? or had they their first being in our sight ? whither to serve ? what is the usefull might of these spirituall trees ? doth fearfull hare flie the pursuing dog ? doth soaring kite prey upon silly chickins ? is there jarre , or be those sprights agreed , none to other contraire ? if some contraire ; then tell me , how 's their fight ? what is the spoil ? what the stout victors meed ? no flesh , no bloud whereon to spend their spight , or whereupon these hungry souls may feed . or doth the stronger suck the aierie weed wherewith the other did it self invest ? and so more freshly deck it self at need ? an aierie prey for aierie spright is best ; or do they want no food , but be still full and rest ? die they again ? draw they in any breath ? or be they sterill ? or bring forth their young ? beat their light feet on the soft aierie heath ? expresse they joy or sorrow with their tongue ? enough ! who ere thou art that thus dost throng my tender muse with rough objections stout , give me but leave to tell thee thou●…rt wrong , if being of a thing thou call'st in doubt cause its more hid conditions shine not clearly out . who questions but there is a quantitie of things corporeall , a trinall dimension , of solid bodies ? yet to satisfie all doubts that may be made about extension would plunge the wisest clerk. i 'll onely mention that quaere , of what parts it doth consist , whether of atoms ; or what strange retention still keepeth so much back , that if god list he could not count the parts of a small linear twist . for his division never could exhaust the particles , say they , of quantitie . o daring wit of man that thus doth boast it self , and in pursuit of sciencie forget the reverend laws of pietie . what thing is hid from that all-seeing light ? what thing not done by his all-potencie ? he can discern by his clear-piercing might the close-couch'd number of each bignesse comes in sight : and so can count them out even part by part ; in number , measure , weight , he all things made ; each unite he dissevets by his art ; but here this searching reason to evade , each quantum's infinite , straight will be said , that 's against sense . if it be infinite of parts , then tell me , be those parts out-spread ? or not extent ? if extended outright each flie in summer even is higher then heavens hight . if not extended , then that quantum's nought . some be extended , others not extent already ( answers a vain shifting thought ) but those potentiall parts , how be they meint with those that now be actually distent ? even thus you grant , that those that actuall be be plainly finite , against your intent , grant me but that , and we shall well agree . so must sleight atoms be sole parts of quantitie . but if 't consist of points : then a scalene i 'll prove all one with an isosceles : with as much ease i 'll evince clear and clean that the crosse lines of a rhomboides that from their meeting to all angles presse be of one length , though one from earth to heaven would reach , and that the other were much lesse then a small digit of the lowest of seven so as she'pears to us , yet i could prove them even . and that the moon ( though her circumference be farre more straight then is the earthie ball ) sometime the earth illumineth at once and with her grasping rayes enlights it all ; and that the sunnes great bodie sphericall greater then th' earth , farre greater then the moon , even at midday illumines not at all this earthie globe in his apogeon ; so that we in deep darknesse sit , though at high noon . of will , of motion , of divine foresight , here might i treat with like perplexitie . but it 's already clear that 't is not right to reason down the firm subsistencie of things from ignorance of their propertie . therefore not requisite for to determ the hid conditions of vitaliti●… or shrunk or sever'd ; onely i 'll affirm it is , which my next song shall further yet confirm . the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . ore whelm'd with grief and pitious wo for fading lifes decayes ; how no souls die , from lunar how , a nymph to me displayes . in silent night , when mortalls be at rest , and bathe their molten limbs in slothfull sleep , my troubled ghost strange cares did straight molest , and plung'd my heavie soul in sorrow deep : large floods of tears my moistned cheeks did steep , my heart was wounded with compassionate love of all the creatures : sadly out i creep from mens close mansions , the more to improve my mournfull plight , so softly on i forward move . aye me ! said i , within my wearied breast , and fighed sad , wherefore did god erect this stage of misery ? thrice , fouretimes blest whom churlish nature never did eject from her dark womb , and cruelly object by sense and life unto such balefull smart ; every slight entrance into joy is checkt by that soure step-dames threats , and visage tart : our pleasure of our pain is not the thousandth part . thus vex'd i was 'cause of mortality : her curst remembrance cast me in this plight , that i grew sick of the worlds vanity . ne ought recomfort could my sunken spright , what so i hate may do me no delight . few things ( alas ) i hate , the more my wo , the things i love by mine own sad foresight make me the greater torments undergo , because i know at last they 're gone like idle show . each goodly sight my sense doth captivate when vernall flowers their silken leaves display , and ope their fragrant bosomes , i that stare would not have changed but indure for aye ; nor care to mind that that fatall decay is still recured by faithfull succession . but why should ought that 's good thus fade away ? should steddy spring exclude summers accession ? or summer spoil the spring with furious hot oppression ? you chearfull chaunters of the flowring woods , that feed your carelesse souls with pleasant layes , o silly birds ! cease from your merry moods : ill suits such mirth when dreary deaths assayes so closely presse your sory carkases : to mournfull note turn your light verilayes , death be your song , and winters hoary sprayes , spend your vain sprights in sighing elegies : i 'll help you to lament your wofull miseryes . when we lay cover'd in the shady night of senselesse matter , we were well content with that estate , nought pierc'd our anxious spright , no harm we suffered , no harm we ment ; our rest not with light dream of ill was blent : but when rough nature , with her iron ho●…d , pull'd us from our soft ease , and hither hent , disturbing fear and pinching pain we fou●…d , full many a bitter blast , full many a dreadfull stound . yet life 's strong love doth so intoxicate our misty minds , that we do fear ●…o dy . what did dame nature brood all things of hate ? and onely give them life for misery ? sense for an undeserved penalty ? and show that if she list , that she could make them happy ? but with spightfull cruelty doth force their groaning ghosts this house forsake ? and to their ancient nought their empty selves betake ! thus in deep sorrow and restlesse disdain against the cankered doom of envious fate , i clove my very heart with riving pain , while i in sullen rage did ruminate the creatures vanity and wofull state ; and night that ought to yield us timely rest , my swelling griefs did much more aggravate : the sighs and groans of weary sleeping beast seem'd as if sleep it self their spirits did molest : or as constrain'd perforce that boon to wrest from envious nature . all things did augment my heavy plight , that fouly i blam'd the hest of stubborn destiny cause of this wayment . even sleep that 's for our restauration ment , as execrable thing i did abhorre , cause ugly death to th' life it did depeint : what good came to my mind i did deplore , because it perish must and not live evermore . thus wrapt in rufull thought through the waste field i staggred on , and scattered my woe , bedew'd the grasse with tears mine eyes did yield , at last i am ariv'd with footing slow near a black pitchy wood , that strongest throw of starry beam no'te easly penetrate : on the north side i walked to and fro in solitary shade . the moons sly gate had cross'd the middle line : it was at least so late . when th' other part of night in painfull grief was almost spent , out of that solemn grove there issued forth for my timely relief , the fairest wight that ever sight did prove , so fair a wight as might command the love of best of mortall race ; her count'nance shee●… the pensive shade gently before her drove , a milde sweet light shone from her lovely eyne : she seem'd no earthly branch but sprung of stock divine . a silken mantle , colour'd like the skie with silver starres in a due distance set , was cast about her somewhat carelesly , and her bright flowing hair was not ylet by arts device ; onely a chappelet of chiefest flowers , which from far and near the nymphe in their pure lilly hands had set , upon her temples she did seemly wear ; her own fair beams madd all her ornaments appear . what wilfull wight doth thus his kindly rest forsake ? said she , approching me unto . what rage , what sorrow boils thus in thy chest that thou thus spend'st the night in wasting wo ? oft help he gets that his hid ill doth show . ay me ! said i , my grief 's not all mine own ; for all mens griefs into my heart do flow , nor mens alone , but every mourn full grone of dying beast , or what so else that grief hath shown . from fading plants my sorrows frshly spring : and thou thy self that com'st to comfort me , wouldst strongst occasion of deep sorrow bring , if thou wert subject to mortality : but i no mortall wight thee deem to be , thy face thy voice immortall thee proclaim . do i not well to wail the vanity of fading life , and churlish fates to blame that with cold frozen death lifs chearfull motions tame ? thou dost not well , said she to me again , thou hurt'st thy self , and dost to them no good . the sighs thou sendest out cannot regain life to the dead , thou canst not change the mood of stedfast destiny . that man is wood that weetingly hastes on the thing he hates : dull sorrow chokes the sprights , congeals the blood , the bodies fabrick quickly ruinates . yet foolish men do fondly blame the hasty fates . come , hasty fates , said i , come take away my weary life , the fountain of my wo : when that 's extinct or shrunk into cold clay , then well i wore that i shall undergo no longer pain . o! why are you so slow ! fond speech , said she , nor chang'd her countenance , no signe of grief or anger she did show ; full well she knew passions misgovernance , though her clear brest fond passion never yet did lance . but thus spake on , sith friendly sympathy with all the creatures thus invades thy brest , and strikes thine heart with so deep agony for their decay , cording to that behest which the pure sourse of sympathy hath prest on all that of those lovely streams have drunk , i 'll tell thee that that needs must please thee best , all life 's immortall ; though the outward trunk may changed be , yet life to nothing never shrunk . with that she bad me rear my heavy eye up toward heaven . i rear'd them toward th' east , wherein a roscid cloud i did espy a lunar rainbow in her painted vest ; the heavenly maid in the meanwhile surceast from further speech while i the bow did view : but mine old malady was more increas'd , the bow gan break , and all the gawdy hew dispeared , that my heart the sight did inly rue . thus life doth vanish as this bow is gone , said i : that sacred nymph forthwith reply'd , vain showes may vanish that have gayly shone to feeble sense ; but if the truth be try'd , life cannot perish or to nothing slide : it is not life that falleth under sight ; none but vain flitting qualities are ey'd by wondring ignorance . the vitall spright as surely doth remain as the suns lasting light . this bow , whose breaking struck thy troubled heart , of causelesse grief , i hope shall thee recure , when i have well explain'd with skilfull art by its resemblance what things must indure , what things decay and cannot standen sure . the higher causes of that coloured ark , what e're becomes of it , do sit secure . that so ( the body failing ) lifes fair spark is safe , i 'll clearly show if you but list to mark . there be six orders 'fore you do descend to this gay painted bow : sols centrall spright to the first place , to th' next we must commend his hid spread form , then his inherent light , the fourth his rayes wherewith he is bedight , the fifth that glistring circle of the moon , that goodly round full face all silver bright , the sixth be beams that from her visage shone ; the seventh that gawdy bow that was so quickly gone . the fluid matter was that dewy cloud , that faild as faithlesse hyle wont to sail : new guest being come , the old she out doth croud ; but see how little hyle did prevail , or sad destruction in this deemed bale ! sols spright , had form , fair light and out-gone rayes , the moons round silver face withouten veil do still remain , her beams she still displayes , the cloud but melt , not lost , the bow onely decayes . this number saits well with the universe : the number 's eight of the orbs generall , from whence things flow or wherein they converse , the first we name nature monadicall , the second hight life intellectuall , third psychicall , the fourth imaginative , fifth sensitive , the sixth spermaticall , the seventh be fading forms quantitative , the eighth hyle or ananke perverse , coactive . that last is nought but potentiality , which in the lower creature causeth strife , destruction by incompossibility in some , as in the forms quantitative . all here depend on the orb unitive , which also hight nature monadicall ; as all those lights and colours did derive themselves from lively phoebus life centrall . nought therefore but vain sensibles we see caducall . and that the first every-where-unitie is the true root of all the living creatures , as they descend in each distinct degree , that god's the sustentacle of all natures ; and though those outward forms and gawdy features may quail like rainbowes in the roscid sky , or glistring parelies or other meteors ; yet the clear light doth not to nothing fly : those six degrees of life stand sure , and never dy . so now we plainly see that the dark matter is not that needfull prop to hold up life ; and though deaths engines this grosse bulk do shatter , we have not lost our orb conservative , of which we are a ray derivative . the body sensible so garnished with outward forms these inward do relieve , keep up in fashion and fresh lively-hed ; but this grosse bulk those inward lives stands in no sted . nor can one inward form another slay , though they may quell their present energy , and make them close contract their yielding ray and hide themselves in their centreity till some friendly appulse doth set them free , and call them out again into broad day . hence lives gush not in superfluity into this world , but their due time do stay , though their strong centrall essence never can decay . in earth , in aire , in the vast flowing plain , in that high region hight aethereall , in every place these atom-lives remain , even those that cleeped are form●… seminall . but souls of men by force imaginall easly supply their place , when so they list appear in thickned aire with shape externall display their light and form in cloudy mist , that much it doth amaze the musing naturalist . wherefore sith life so strongly sealed is , purge out fond thoughts out of thy weary mind , and rather strive that thou do nought amisse , then god to blame and nature as unkind when nought in them we blamable can find . when groaning ghosts of beasts or men depart , their tender mother doth but them u●…ind from grosser setters , and more to ●…some smart . bless'd is the man that hath true knowledge of her art. and more for to confirm this mystery , she vanish'd in my presence into aire , she spread her self with the thin liquid sky ; but i thereat fell not into despair of her return , nor wail'd her visage fair , that so was gone . for i was wo●…en strong in this belief , that nothing can empair the inward life , or its hid effenc●… wrong . o the prevailing might of a sweet learned tongue ! by this the suns bright waggon gan ascend the eastern hill , and draw on chearfull day ; so i full fraught with joy do homeward wend , and fed my self with that that nymph did say , and did so cunningly to me convey , resolving for to teach all willing men lifes mystery , and quite to chase away mind-mudding mist sprung from low fulsome fen : praise my good will , but pardon my weak faultring pen. the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . that hyle or first matter 's nought but potentialitie ; that god's the never-fading root of all vitalitie . vvhat i was wisely taught in that still night , that hyle is the potentialitie of gods dear creatures , i embrace as right , and them nigh blame of deep idolatrie that give so much to that slight nullitie , that they should make it root substantiall of nimble life , and that quick entitie that doth so strongly move things naturall , . that life from hence should spring , that hither life should fall that all that springs from hence should be resolv'd into this mirksome sourse , first matter hight , this muddie myst'rie they no'to well unfold . if it be onely a bare passive might with gods and natures goodly dowries dight , bringing hid noughts into existencie , or sleeping something 's into wide day-light , then hyle's plainly potentialitie , which doth not straight inferre certain mortalitic . for the immortall angels do consist of outgone act and possibilitie ; nor any other creature doth exist , releast from dreary deaths necessitie , if it potent●…alnesse so certainly ensuen must . if substance actuall they will avo●…ch this first matter to be , fountain of forms , and prop fiduciall of all those lives and beings cleeped naturall ; then may it prove the sphere spermaticall , or sensitive ( if they would yield it life ) or that is next , the orb imaginall , or rather all these orbs ; withouten strife so mought we all conclude that their ●…elief and first existence from this sphere they drew : and so our adversaries , loath or lief , must needs confesse that all the lore was true concerning life , that that fair nymph so clearly shew ; and that particular lives that beyborn into this world , when their act doth dispear , do cease to be no more then the snails ●…orn , that she shrinks in because she cannot bear the wanton boys rude touch , or heavy chear of stormi●… winds . the secundarie light as su●…ely shineth in the heavens clear , as do the first fair beams of phoebus bright , lasting they are as they , though not of so great might . so be the efs●…uxes of those six orders , unfading lives from fount of live●…ihood : onely what next to strifefull hyle borders , particular visibles deaths dreary●…ood can seize upon . they passe like sliding flood . for when to this worlds dregs lives downward hie , they stroy one th' other in fell cankred mood , beat back their rayes by strong antipathie , or some more broad-spread cause do choke their energie . but to go on to that common conceit of the first matter : what can substance do , poore , naked substance , megre , drie , dull slight , inert , unactive , that no might can show of good or ill to either friend or soe , all livelesse , all formlesse ? she doth sustain . and hath no strength that task to undergo ? besides that work is needlesse all in vain ▪ each centrall form its rayes with ease can well up-stayen . what holds the earth in the thin fluid aire ? can matter void of fix'd soliditie ? but she like kindly nurse her forms doth chear . what can be suck'd from her dark dugges drie ? nor warmth , nor moistnesse , nor fast densitie belong to her . therefore ill nurse i ween she 'll make , that neither hath to satisfie young-craving life , nor firmnesse to susteen the burden that upon her arms should safely leen . therefore an uselesse superfluitie it is to make hyle substantiall : onely let 's term 't the possibilitie of all created beings . lives centrall can frame themselves a right compositall , while as they sitten soft in the sweet rayes or vitall vest of the lives generall , as those that out of the earths covert raise themselves , fairly provok'd by warmth of sunnie dayes . and thus all accidents will prove the beams of inward forms , their flowing energie ; and quantitie the extension of such streams , that goes along even with each qualitie . thus have we div'd to the profunditie of darkest matter , and have found it nought but all this worlds bare possibilitie . nought therefore ' gainst lifes durance can be brought from hyles pit , that quenchen may that pleasant thought . the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . mans soul with beasts and plants i here compare ; tell my chief end his immortality's to clear ; show whence grosse errours wend. but hitherto i have with fluttering wings but lightly hover'd in the generall , and taught the lasting durance of all springs of hidden life . that life hight seminall doth issue forth from its deep root cent all , one onely form entire , and no't●… advert what steals from it . beasts life phantasticall lets out more forms , and eke themselves convert to view the various frie from their dark wombs exert . but mans vast soul , the image of its maker , like god that made it , with its mighty sway and inward fiat ( if he nould forsake he●… ) can turn sad darknesse into lightsome day , and the whole creature 'fore it self display : bid them come forth and stand before its sight , they straight slush out and her drad voice obey : each shape each life doth leapen out full light , and at her beck return into their usuall night . of god himself here listeth to appear , though not perforce yet of his own frank will sheds his sweet life , dispreads his beauty clear , and like the sunne this lesser world doth sill , and like the sunne doth the foul python kill with his bright darts , but cheareth each good spright . this is the soul that i with presser quill must now pursue and fall upon down-right , not to destroy but prove it of immortall might . nor let blind momus dare my muse backbite , as wanton or superfluously wise for what is past . she is but justly quit with lucrece , who all souls doth mortalize : wherefore she did them all immortalize . besides in beasts and men th' affinitie doth seem so great , that without prejudice to many proofs for th' immortalitie of humane souls , the same to beasts we no'te denie . but i herein no longer list contend . the two first kinds of souls i 'll quite omit , and ' cording as at first i did intend bestirre me stifly , force my feeble wit to rescue humane souls from deaths deep pit ; which i shall do with reasons as subtile as i can find : slight proofs cannot well fit in so great cause , nor phansies florid wile ; i 'll win no mans assent by a false specious guile . i onely wish that arguments exile may not seem nought unto the duller eye ; nor that the fatter phansie my lean style do blame : it 's fittest for philosophie . and give me leave from any energie that springs from humane soul my cause to prove , and in that order as they list to flie of their own selves , so let them freely rove . that naturally doth come doth oft the stronger move . self-motion and centrall stabilitie i have already urg'd in generall ; al 's did right presly to our soul applie those properties , who list it to recall unto their minds ; but now we 'll let it fall as needlesse . onely that vitalitie , that doth extend this great universall , and move th' inert materialitie of great and little worlds , that keep in memorie . and how the mixture of their rayes may breed th' opinion of uncertain qualitie , when they from certain roots of life do spreed ; but their pure beams must needs ychanged be when that those rayes or not be setten free thinly dispers'd , or else be closely meint with other beams of plain diversitie , that causeth oft a strong impediment : so doth this bodies life to the souls high intent . the lower man is nought but a fair plant , whose grosser matter is from the base ground ; the plastick might thus finely did him paint , and fill'd him with the life that doth a●…ound in all the places of the world around . this spirit of life is in each shapen'd thing , suck'd in and changed and strangely confound , as we conceive : this is the nourishing of all ; but spermall form , the certain shapening . this is that strange-form'd statue magicall , that hovering souls unto it can allure when it 's right fitted ; down those spirits fall like eagle to her prey , and so endure while that low life be in good temperature . that a dead bodie without vitall spright and friendly temper should a guest procure of so great worth , without the dear delight of joyous sympathie , no man can reckon right . but here unlucky souls do waxen sick of an ill surfeit from the poison'd bait of this sweet tree , yet here perforce they stick in weak condition , in a languid state . many through ignorance do fondly hate to be releas'd from this imprisonmen●… , and grieve the walls be so nigh ruinate . they be bewitch'd so with the blandishment of that fresh strumpet , when in love they first were ment . others disdain this so near unitie , so farre they be from thinking they be born of such low parentage , so base degree , and fleshes foul attraction they do scorn , they be th' outgoings of the eastern morn , alli'd to god and his vitalitie , and pray to their first spring , that thus forlorn and left in mud , that he would set them free , and them again possesse of pristine puritie . but seemeth not my muse too hastily to soare aloft , that better by degrees unto the vulgar mans capacitie mought show the souls so high excellencies , and softly from all corporeities it heaven up unto its proper seat , when we have drove away grosse falsities , that do assault the weaker mens conceit , and free the simple mind from phansies foul deceit . the drooping soul so strongly's coloured with the long commerce of corporealls , that she from her own self awide is led , knows not herself , but by false name she calls her own high being , and what ere befalls her grosser bodie , she that miserie doth deem her own : for she herself miscalls or some thin bodie , or spread qualitie , or point of qualitie , or fixt or setten free . but whether thin spread body she doth deem her self , dispersed through this grosser frame ; or doth herself a qualitie esteem , or queint complexion , streaming through the same ; or else some lucid point herself doth name of such a qualitie , in chiefest part strongly fix'd down ; or whether she doth clame more freedome for that point , in head nor heart fast seated ; yet , saith she , the bodies brat thou art . thence thou arose , thence thou canst not depart : there die thou must , when thy dear nurse decayes : but these false phansies i with reason smart shall eas'ly chace away , and the mind raise to higher pitch . o listen to my layes , and when you have seen fas●… seald eternitie of humane souls , then your great maker praise for his never fading benignitie , and feed your selves with thought of immortalitie . the argument of psychathanasia . book : cant. . sense no good judge of truth : what 's spright , what body we descrie : prove from the souls inferiour might her incorp'reitie . while i do purpose with my self to sing the souls incorporeitie , i fear that it a worse perplexitie may bring unto the weaker mind and duller eare ; for she may deem herself ' stroyd quite and clear while all corporealls from her we expell : for she has yet not mark'd that higher sphere where her own essence doth in safetie dwell , but views her lower shade , like boy at brink of well ; dotes upon sense , and its base energie , busied about vain forms corporeall ; contemnes as nought unseen exilities , objects of virtue intellectuall , though these of substances be principall . but i to better hope would fainly lead the sunken mind , and cunningly recall again to life that long hath liggen dead . awake ye drooping souls ! shake off that drousi head ! why do you thus confide in sleepy sense , ill judge of her own objects ? who 'll believe the eye contracting phoebus orb immense into the compasse of a common sieve ? if solid reason did not us relieve , the host of heaven alwayes would idle stand in our conceit , nor could the sun revive the nether world , nor do his lords command . things near seem further off ; farst off , the nearst at hand . the touch acknowledgeth no gustables ; the tast no fragrant smell or stinking sent ; the smell doth not once dream of audibles ; the hearing never knew the verdant peint of springs gay mantle , nor light from heaven sent that doth discover all that goodly pride : so that the senses would with zeal fervent condemne each other , and their voyce deride if mutually they heard such things they never try'd . but reason , that above the sense doth sit , doth comprehend all their impressions , and tells the touch it s no fanatick sit that makes the sight of illustrations so stifly talk upon occasions , but judgeth all their voyces to be true concerning their straight operations , and doth by nimble consequences shew to her own self what those wise five yet never knew . they never knew ought but corporealls : but see how reason doth their verdict rude confute , by loosening materialls into their principles , as latitude profundity of bodies to conclude . the term of latitude is breadthlesse line ; a point the line doth manfully retrude from infinite processe ; site doth confine this point ; take site away it s straight a spark divine . and thus unloos'd it equally respects the bodyes parts , not fixt to any one . let 't be diffused through all . thus it detects the soul's strange nature , operation , its independency , loose union with this frail b●… . so is this unity great , but without that grosse extension , exceeding great in her high energie , extended farre and wide from her non-quantity . if yet you understand not , let the soul , which you suppose extended with this masse , be all contract and close together roll into the centre of the hearts compasse : as the suns beams that by a concave glasse be strangely strengthned with their strait constraint into one point , that thence they stoutly passe , fire all before them withouten restraint , the high arch'd roof of heaven with smouldry smoke they taint . but now that grosnesse , which we call the heart , quite take away , and leave that spark alone without that sensible corporeall part of humane body : so when that is gone , one nimble point of life , that 's all at one in its own self , doth wonderfully move , indispers'd , quick , close with selfe-union , hot , sparkling , active , mounting high above , in bignesse nought , in virtue like to thundring jove . thus maugre all th●… obmur●…urings of sense we have found an essence incorporeall , a shifting centre with circumference , but she not onely sits in midst of all , but is also in a manner centrall in her outflowing lines . for the extension ▪ of th' outshot rayes circumferentiall be not gone from her by distrought distension , her point is at each point of all that spread dimension . this is a substance truly spiritall , that reason by her glistring lamp hath shown : no such the sense in things corporeall can ere find out . may this perswasion , o sunken souls , slaves of sensation , rear up your heads and chase away all fear how ( when by strong argumentation i shall you strip of what so doth appear corporeall ) that you to nought should vanish clear . the naked essence of the body 's this matter extent in three dimensions ( hardnesse or softnesse be but qualities ) withouten self reduplications or outspread circling propagations of its own presence . this being's corporall , and what with this in such extension singly's stretch'd out , is form materiall . whether our soul be such we 'll now bring unto triall . if souls be bodies , or inanimate they be , or else endowed with life . if they be livelesse , give they life ? if animate , then tell me what doth life to them convey ? some other body ? here can be no stay . straight we must ask whether that livelesse be or living . then , what ' lives it . thus we 'll play till we have fore'd you to infinity , and make your cheeks wax red at your philosophy , again , pray tell me , is this body grosse or fluid , and thin you deem the soul to be ? if grosse , then either strongly it is cross'd from entring some parts of th' outward body , and so they want their due vitality ; or if it penetrate this bulk throughout , it breaks and tears and puts to penalty this sory carcas if 't thin and fluid be thought , how pulls it up those limbs and again jerks them out ? besides , if stretchen corporeity longs to the soul , then augmentation must likewise thereto appertain . but see th' absurdities that this opinion will drag on with it : for effluxion of parts will spoil the steddy memory , and wash away all intellection , deface the beauty of that imagery that once was fairly graven in her phantasie . but oft when the weak bodie 's worn and wasted and far shrunk in , the nimble phantasie ( so far shee 's from being withered & blasted ) more largely worketh , and more gli●…terandly displayes her spreaden forms , and chearfully pursues her sports . again , the greater corse would most be fill'd with magnanimity : but oft we see the lesse hath greater force , to fight , or talk ; the greater oft we se●… the worse . all which if weighed well , must ill agree with bodyes natures , which merely consist in a dull , silent , stupid quantity , stretching forth mirksome matter , in what list or precincts no man knows . no natura list can it define , unlesse they adde a form that easly curbs the thing that no'●…e resist , and after its own will can it inform . it still and stupid stands and thinks nor good nor harm . the man is mad , that will at all agree that this is soul : or if forme bodily non-replicate , extent , not setten free , but straight stretch'd out in corporeity ( betwixt these two there 's that affinity ) as little wit that man will seem to have . which i shall plainly prove by th' energic of sense , though that same force seem not so brave , yet for the present i 'll not climbe to higher stave . if souls be substances corporeall , be they as big just as the body is ? or shoot they out to th' height aethereall ? ( of such extent are the sights energies ) if they shoot out , be they equally transmisse around this body ? or onely upward start ? if round the body , nature did amis to lose her paines in half of the soules part , . that part can finden nought that through the earth doth dart or will you say she is an hemisphere ? but a ridiculous experiment will soon confute it : list you but to rear your agill heels towards the firmament , and stand upon your head ; that part is bent down through the earth , that earst did threat the skie : so that your soul now upward is extent no higher then your heels , yet with your eye the heavens great vastnesse as before you now discry . you 'll say , this souls thin spread exility turns not at all . how doth it then depend upon this body ? it has no unity therewith , but onely doth of cur'sy lend it life , as doth the worlds great lamp down send both light and warmth unto each living wight ; and if they chance to fail and make an end , it s nought to him , he shineth yet as bright as ere he did . this showes the soul immortall quite . but if the soul be justly coextent with this straight body , nought can bigger be●… then is our body , that she doth present ; ' cording to laws of corporeity so must she represent each realty . thus tallest gyants would be oft defyed by groveling pygmees : for they could not see the difference , nor mete his manly stride , nor ween what matchlesse strength did in his armes reside . for they must judge him just as their own selves of the same stature , of the self-same might ; all men would seem to them their fellow elves ; nor little curs would tremble at the sight of greater dogs ; nor hawks would put to slight the lesser birds . th' impression of a seal can be no larger then the wax ; or right as big , or lesse it is . therefore repeal this grosse conceit , and hold as reason doth reveal . again , if souls corporeall you ween ; do the light images of things appear upon the surface , slick , bright , smooth and sheen as in a lookingglasse ? or whether dare they passe the outside and venture so farre as into the depth of the souls substance ? if this ; then they together blended are that nought we see with right discriminance : if that ; the object gone , away those forms do glance . thus should we be devoid of memory , and be all darknesse , till the good presence of outward objects put in energie our sleeping soul. but this experience plainly confutes for even in their absence we do retain their true similitude : so lovers wont to maken dalliance with the fair shade their minds do still include , and wistly view the grace wherewith she is endude . but now new reasons i will set on foot , drawn from the common sense , that 's not extense but like a centre that around doth shoot its rayes ; those rayes should be the outward sense as some resemble them . but by no pretence would i the outward senses should be thought to act so in a spread circumference that the seat of their forms should be distrought , or that by reach of quantities dead arms they wrought . for see how little share hath quantitie in act of seeing , when we comprehend the heavens vast compasse in our straitend eye ; nor may the ox with the eagle contend , because a larger circle doth extend his slower lights . so that if outward sense in its low acts doth not at all depend on quantity , how shall the common-sense , that 's farre more spiritall , have thence l●…s dependence ? but still more presly this point to pursue ; by th' smelling , odours ; voyces by the eare ; by th' eye we apprehend the coloured hew of bodies visible . but what shall steer the erring senses ? where shall they compear in controversie ? what the difference of all their objects can with judgement clear distinguish and discern ? one common-sense ; for one alone must have this great preeminence . and all this one must know , though still but one ; else't could not judge of all . but make it two ; then tell me , doth the soul by this alone apprend this object that the sense doth show , and that by that ; or doth it by both know both objects ? suppose this colour and that sound . if both knew both , then nature did bestow in vain one faculty , it doth redound : but if this that , that this , what shall them both compound , and by comparison judge of them both ? therefore that judge is one . but whether one without division , le●…s now try that troth . if it be any wise extent , you 're gone by the same reason that afore was shown . suppose't a line the least of quantity . or sound is here , there colour , or each one of the lines parts receive them both . if we grant that , again we find a superfluity . if this part this , and that part that receive , we are at the same losse we were afore , for one to judge them both , or we bereave our souls of judgement . for who can judge more than what he knowes ? it is above his power . therefore it 's plain the common sense is one , one individed faculty . but store of parts would breed infinite confusion , when every part mought claim proper sensation . if not , nor all could exercise the act of any sense . for could a power of sense arise from stupid parts that plainly lack'd that might themselves . thus with great confidence we may conclude that th' humane souls essence is indivisible , yet every where in this her body . cause th' intelligence she hath of whatsoever happens here : the aking foot the eye doth view , the hand doth cheere . what tells the hand or head the toes great grief , when it alone is pinch'd with galling shooes ? do other parts not hurt call for relief for theirown fellow ? ill messenger of woes that grieveth not himself . can they disclose that misery without impression upon themselves ? therefore one spirit goes through all this bulk , not by extension but by a totall self-reduplication . which neither body , nor dispersed form , nor point of form dispersed e'r could do : and bodies life or spright for to transform into our soul , though that might this undo , but yet so rash conceit to yield unto cannot be safe : for if it propagate . it 's self and 'ts passions , yet they free may go unmark'd , if sense would not them contemplate . so doth the mundane spright not heeded circulate . besides , if from that spirit naturall the nurse of plants , you should dare to assert that lively inward animadversall to springen out , it would surely invert the order of the orbs from whence do stert all severall beings and of them depend . therefore the orb phantastick must exert all life phantasticall ; sensitive send the life of sense ; so of the rest unto each end . there 's nought from its own self can senden forth ought better then it self . so nought gives sense that hath not sense it self , nor greater worth then sense , nor sense , nor better springs from thence . nor that which higher is can have essence lesse active , lesse reduplicate , lesse free , lesse spiritall , then that 's amov'd from hence , and is an orb of a more low degree . wherefore that centrall life hath more activitie , and present is in each part totally of this her body . nor we ought diffide , although some creatures have vitalitie , and stirre and move when we have them divide and cut in twain . thus worms in sturdie pride do wrigge and wrest their parts divorc'd by knife ; but we must know that natures womb doth hide innumerable treasures of all life ; and how to breaken out upon each hint they strive . so when the present actuall centrall life of sense and motion is gone with one part to manage it , straight for the due relief of th' other particle there up doth start another centrall life , and tries its art : but it cannot raigne long , nor yet recure that deadly wound . the plantall lifes depare , and flitten or shrunk spright , that did procure her company , being lost , make her she 'll not endure . and so at last is gone , from whence she came , for soon did fade that sweet allurement , the plantall life , which for a while d●…d flame with sympathetick fire , but that being spent straight she is flowne . or may you this content ? that some impression of that very soul that 's gone , if gone , with plantall spirit meint the broken corse thus busily may roll . long 't is till water boild doth stranger heat controul . thus have we prov'd ' cording to our insight that humane souls be not corporcall ( with reasons drawn from the sensitive might ) nor bodies , nor spread forms materiall , whether you substances list them to call or qualities , or point of these . i 'll bring hereafter proofs from power rational in humane souls , to prove the self same-thing . mount up aloft , my muse , and now more shrilly sing . the argument of psychathanasia . book : cant. . the souls incorporeitie from powers rationall we prove ; discern true pietie from bitternesse and gall . like carpenter entred into a wood to cut down timber for some edifice of stately structure , whiles he casts abroad his curious eye , he much perplexed ●…s ( there stand in view so many goodly trees ) where to make choice to enter his rugg'd saw : my muse is plung'd in like perplexities , so many arguments themselves do show , that where to pitch my wavering raind doth yet scarce know . one taller then the rest my circling eye hath hit upon , which if 't be sound at heart will prove a goodly piece to raise on high the heavenly structure of that deemed part of man , his soul , and by unerring art set his foundation 'bove the bodies frame on its own wheels , that it may thence depart intire , unhurt . so doth the scythian swain drive his light moving house on the waste verdant plain . i 'll sing of pietie , that now i mean that trismegist thus wisely doth define , knowledge of god. that 's pietie i ween , the highest of virtues , a bright beam divine which to the purer soul doth sweetly shine . but what 's this beam ? and how doth it enlight ? what doth it teach ? it teacheth to decline self-love , and frampard wayes the hypocrite doth trample in , accloy'd with dirt and dismall night . not rage , nor mischief , nor love of a sect , nor eating irefulnesse , harsh crueltie contracting gods good will , nor conscience checkt or chok'd continually with impietie , fauster'd and fed with hid hypocrisie ; nor tyranny against perplexed minds , nor forc'd conceit , nor man-idolatrie , all which the eye of searching reason blinds , and the souls heavenly flame in dungeon darknesse binds . can warres and jarres and fierce contention , swoln hatred , and consuming envy spring from pietie ? no. 't is opinion that makes the riven heavens with trumpets ring , and thundring engine murd'rous balls out-sling , and send mens groning ghosts to lower shade of horrid hell . this the wide world doth bring to devastation , makes mankind to fade : such direfull things doth false religion perswade . but true religion sprong from god above is like its fountain full of charity , embracing all things with a tender love , full of good will and meek expectancy , full of true justice and sure verity , in heart and voice ; free , large , even in finite , not wedg'd in straight particularity , but grasping all in its vast , active spright , bright lamp of god! that men would joy in thy pure light ! can souls that be thus universalis'd , begot into the life of god e're die ? ( his light is like the sunne that doth arise upon the just and unjust ) can they sly into a nothing ? and hath god an eye to see himself thus wasted and decay in his true members ? can mortality seize upon that that doth it self display above the laws of matter , or the bodies sway ? for both the bodie and the bodies spright doth things unto particulars confine , teaching them partiall friendship and fell spight . but those pure souls full of the life divine look upon all things with mild friendly cyne ready to do them good . thus is their will sweetly spread out , and ever doth incline the bent of the first goodnesse to fulfill . ay me ! that dreary death such lovely life should spill ! besides this largenesse in the will of man and winged freenesse , now let 's think upon his understanding , and how it doth scan gods being , unto whom religion is consecrate . imagination that takes its rise from sense so high ascent can never reach , yet intellection or higher gets , or at least hath some sent of god , vaticinates , or is parturi●…nt . for ask it whether god be this or that , a body infinite , or some mighty spright , yet not almighty , it condemnes such chat ; whether all present , or in some place pight , whether part here part there , or every whit in every point , it likes that latter well : so that its plain that some kind of insight of gods own being in the soul doth dwell , though what god is we cannot yet so plainly tell . as when a name lodg'd in the memory , but yet through time almost obliterate , confusely hovers near the phantasie : the man that 's thus affected bids relate a catologue of names . it is not that , saith he , nor that ; that 's something like to it , that nothing like , that 's lik'st of all i wot , this last you nam'd it 's not like that a whit ; o that 's the very name , now we have rightly hit . thus if 't be lawfull least things to compare with greatest , so our selves affected be concerning gods high essence : for we are not ignorant quite of this mystery , nor clearly apprehend the deity , but in mid state , i call 't parturient , and should bring forth that live divinity within our selves , if once god would consent to shew his specious form and nature eminent : for here it lies like colours in the night unseen and unregarded , but the sunne displayes the beauty and the gladsome plight of the adorned earth , while he doth runne his upper stage . but this high prize is wonne by curbing sense and the self-seeking life ( true christian mortification ) thus god will his own self in us revive , if we to mortifie our straightned selves do strive . but can ought bodily gods form receive ? or have it in its self potentially ? or can ought sprung of this base body heve it self so high as to the deitie to clamber ? strive to reach infinitie ? can ought born of this carcase be so free as to grasp all things in large sympathie ? can lives corporeall quite loosened be from their own selves , casheering their centreitie ? these all ill suit with corporeitie : but do we not amisse with stroke so strong all to dispatch at once ? needed we flie so high at first ? we might have chose among the many arguments that close do throng and tender their own selves this cause to prove , some of a meaner rank , and then along fairly and softly by degrees to move . my muse kens no such pomp , she must with freedome rove and now as chance her guides , compendiously the heads of many proofs she will repeat , which she lists not pursue so curiously , but leaves the reader his own brains ●…o beat , to find their fuller strength . as the souls meat , of which she feeds , if that she feed at all ; she is immortall if she need not eat ; but if her food prove to be spiritall , then can we deem herself to be corporeall ? the souls most proper food is veritie got and digest by contemplation . hence strength , enlargement , and activitie she finds , as doth this bulk by infusion of grosser meats and drinks ( concoction well perfected ) the body is strong by these ; the soul by reasons right perswasion : but that truth's spiritall we may with ease find out : for truth the soul from bodies doth release . next argument let be abstraction , when as the soul with notion precise keeps off the corporall condition , and a nak'd simple essence doth devise against the law of corporeities , it doth devest them both of time and place , and of all individualities , and matter doth of all her forms uncase . corporeall wight such subtile virtue never has . now shall the indivisibilitie of the souls virtues make an argument . for certainly there 's no such qualitie resideth in a body that 's extent : for , tell me , is that qualitie strait pent within a point of that corporeall ? or is it with some spreaden part distent ? if in a point , then longs it not at all to th'body : in spread part ? then 't is extentionall . but that some virtue 's not extentionall may thus be proved . is there no science of numbers ? yes . but what is principall and root of all : have we intelligence of unities ? or else what 's sprong from thence we could not know : what doth the soul then frame within her self ? is that idea extense ? or indivisible ? if not : we 'll blame the soul of falshood , and continuall lying shame . again , if we suppose our intellect corporeall , then must we all things know by a swift touch : what ? do we then detect the truth of bignesse , when one point doth go of our quick mind ? ( it need not be o'reslow for infinite parts be found in quantitie ) or doth it use its latitude ? if so remember that some things unspreaden be , how shall it find them out ? or if 't use both we 'll see . that both be unsufficient i prove . a point cannot discern loos●… unity freed from all site . that latitude must move on all the body that it doth descry . so must it be upstretch'd unto the skie and rubbe against the starres , surround the sunne and her own parts to every part apply , then swiftly fridge about the pallid moon : thus both their quantities the mind hath strangely wonne . adde unto these , that the soul would take pains for its destruction while it doth aspire to reach at things ( that were her wofull gains ) that be not corporall , but seated higher above the bodyes sphere . thus should she tire her self to ' stroy her self . again , the mind receives contrary forms . the feverish fire makes her cool brooks and shadowing groves to find within her thoughts , thus hot and cold in one she binds . nor is she chang'd by the susception of any forms : for thus her self contraire would be unto her self . but union she then possesseth , when heat and cold are together met : they meet withouten jarre , within our souls . such forms they be not true you 'll say . but of their truth lest you despair , each form in purer minds more perfect hew obtains , then those in matter we do daily view . for there , they 're mixt , soild and contaminate , but truth doth clear , unweave , and simplifie , search , sever , pierce , open , and disgregate all ascititious cloggings ; then doth eye the naked essence and its property . or you must grant the soul cannot define ought right in things ; or you must not deny these forms be true that in her self d●… shine : these be her rule of truth , these her unerring line . bodies have no such properties . again , see in one cluster many arguments compris'd : she multitudes can close constrain into one nature . things that be fluent , as flitting time , by her be straight retent unto one point ; she joyns future and past , and makes them steddy stand as if present : things distant she can into one place cast : calls kinds immortall , though their singulars do waste . upon her self she strangely operates , and from her self and by her self returns into her self ; thus the soul circulates . do bodies so ? her axle-tree it burns with heat of motion . this low world she spurns , raiseth her self to catch infinity . unspeakable great numbers how she turns within her mind , like evening mist the eye discerns , whose muddy atomes 'fore the wind do fly . stretcheth out time at both ends without end , makes place still higher swell , often creates what god nere made , nor doth at all intend to make , free phantasms , laughs at future fates , foresees her own condition , she relates th' all comprehension of eternity , complains she 's thirsty still in all estates , that all she sees or has no'te satisfie her hungry self , nor fill her vast capacity . but i 'll break off ; my muse her self forgot , her own great strength and her foes feeblenesse , that she her name by her own pains may blot , while she so many strokes heaps in excesse , that fond grosse phansie quite for to suppresse of the souls corporal'ty . for men may think her adversaries strength doth thus her presse to multitude of reasons , makes her swink with weary toil , and sweat out thus much forced ink : or that she loves with trampling insultations to domineere in easie victory . but let not men dare cast such accusations against the blamelesse . for no mastery , nor fruitlesse pomp , nor any verity of that opinion that she here destroyes made her so large . no , 't is her jealousie 'gainst witching falshood that weak souls annoyes , and oft doth choke those chearing ho●…es of lasting joyes . the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . the souls free independency ; it s drery dreadfull state in hell ; its tricentreity : what brings to heavens gate . well said that man , whatever man that was , that said , what things we would we straight believe upon each slight report to have come to passe : but better he , that said , slow faith we give to things we long for most ▪ hope and fear rive distracted minds , as when nigh equall weights cast on the trembling scales , each ●…ug and strive to pull the other up . but the same sleights by turns do urge them both in their descents and heights : thus waves the mind in things of greatest weight ; for things we value most are companied with fear as well as hope : these stifly fight . the stronger hope , the stronger fear is fed ; one mother both and the like livelyhead , one object both , from whence they both do spring , the greater she , the greater these she bred , the greater these , the greater wavering and longer time to end their sturdy struggeling . but is there any thing of more import then the souls immortality ? hence fear and hope we striving feel with strong effort against each other ; that nor reason clear nor sacred oracles can straight down bear that sturdy rascall , with black phantasies yclad , and clouded with drad dismall chear ; but still new mists he casts before our eyes , and now derides our prov'd incorporeities , and grinning saith , that labour 's all in vain . for though the soul were incorporeall , yet its existence to this bulk restrain , they be so nearly link'd , that if one fall the other fails . the eare nor hears our call in stouping age , nor eye can see ought clear ; benumming palfies shake the bodies wall , the soul hath lost its strength and cannot steer its crasie corse , but staggering on reels here and there . so plain it is ( that though the soul 's a spright , not corporall ) that it must needs depend upon this body , and must perish quite when her foundation falls . but now attend and see what false conceits vain fears do send . 't is true , i cannot write without a quill , nor ride without an horse . if chance that rend or use make blunt , o're-labouring this kill , then can i walk not ride , not write but think my sill our body is but the souls instrument ; and when it fails , onely these actions cease that thence depend . but if new eyes were sent unto the aged man with as much ease and accuratenesse , as when his youth did please the wanton lasse , he now could all things see . old age is but this fading bulks disease : the soul from death and sicknesse standeth free : my hackney fails , not i ; my pen , not sciencie . but as i said , of things we do desire so vehemently we never can be sure enough . therefore , my muse , thou must aspire to higher pitch , and fearfull hearts secure not with slight phansie but with reason pure , evincing the souls independency upon this body that doth her imn ure , that when from this dark prison she shall fly all men may judge her rest in immortality . therefore i 'll sing the tricentreity of humane souls , and how they wake from sleep , in which ywrapt of old they long do ly contract with cold , and drench'd in lethe deep , hugging their plantall point . it makes me weep now i so clearly view the solemn spring of silent night , whose magick dew doth steep these drousie souls of men , whose dropping wing keeps off the light of life , and blunts each siery sting . three centres hath the soul ; one plantall hight : our parents this revive in nuptiall bed . this is the principle that hales o●… night , subjects the mind unto dull drow siehead : if we this follow , thus we shall be led to that dark straitnesse that did bind before our sluggish life : when that is s●… rivelled into its sunken centre , we no more are conscious of life : what can us then restore ? unlesse with fiery whips fell nemesis do lash our sprights , and cruelly do gore our groning ghosts ; this is the way , i wisse , the onely way to keep 's from morpheus power . both these so dismall are that i do showr uncessant tears from my compassionate eyes : alas ! ye souls ! why should or s●…eep devour sweet functions of life ? or hellist cries to tender heart resound your just calamities ? thus may you all from your dead drow sinesse be wak'd by inward sting and pinching wo , that you could wish that that same heavinesse might ever you o'represse , and lethe flow upon your drowned life . but you shall glow with urging fire , that doth resuscitate your middle point , and makes it self to gnaw it self with madnesse , while't doth ruminatc on its deformity and sterill vexing state . continuall desire that nought effects , perfect hot glowing fervour out to spring in some good world : with fury it affects to reach the land of life , then struck with sting of wounding memory , despairs the thing , and further off it sees it self , the more it rageth to obtain : thus doth she bring more fewell to her flame that scorched sore with searching fire , she 's forc'd to yell and loudly rore . thus she devours her self , not satisfies her self , nought hath she but what 's dearly spun from her own bowells , jejune exilties : her body 's gone , therefore the rising sun she sees no more , nor what in day is done , the sporting aire no longer cools her bloud , pleasures of youth and manhood quite are gone , nor songs her eare , nor mouth delicious food doth fill . but i 'll have this more fully understood . three centres hath mans soul in unity together joynd ; or if you will , but one . those three are one , with a triplicity of power or rayes . th' high'st intellection , which being wak'd the soul's in union with god. if perfectly regenerate into that better world , corruption hath then no force her blisse to perturbate . the low'st do make us subject to disturbing fate . but low'st gins first to work , the soul doth frame this bodies fabrick , imploy'd in one long thought so wholy taken up , that she the same observeth not , till she quite hath wrought . so men asleep some work ●…o end have brought not knowing of it , yet have found it done : or we may say the matter that she taught and suck'd unto her self to work upon is of one warmth with her own spright , and feels as one . and thus the body being the souls work from her own centre so entirely ●…ade , seated i' th' heart , for there this spright doth lurk , it is no wonder 't is so easly sway'd a●… its command . but when this work shall fade , the soul dismisseth it as an old thought . 't is but one form ; but many be display'd amid her higher rayes , dismist , and brought back as she list , and many come that ne're were sought . the soul by making this strange edifice makes way unto it self to exercise functions of life , and still more waked is the more she has perfected her fine devise , hath wrought her self into sure sympathies with this great world . her ears like hollow caves resound to her own spright the energies of the worlds spright . if it ought suffered have , then presentifick circles to her straight notice gave . we know this world , because our soul hath made our body of this sensible worlds spright and body . therefore in the glassie shade of our own eyes ( they having the same might that glasse or water hath ) we have the sight of what the mundane spirit suffereth by colours , figures , or inherent light : sun , stars , and all on earth it hur●…eth to each point of it self so far as 't circuleth . and where it lighteth on advantages , its circulings grow sensible . so hills that hollow be do audible voices resound . the soul doth imitate that skill in framing of the eare , that sounds may swell in that concavitie . the crystall springs reflect the light of heaven , if they be still and clear ; the soul doth imitate and bring the eye to such a temper in her shapening . so eyes and eares be not mere perforations , but a due temper of the mundane spright and ours together ; else the circulations of sounds would be well known by outward sight , and th' eare would colours know , figures and light . so that it 's plain that when this bodie 's gone , this world to us is clos'd in darknesse quite , and all to us is in dead silence drown . thus in one point of time is this worlds glory flowne . but if 't be so , how doth psyche heare or see that hath nor eyes nor eares ? she sees more clear then we that see but secundarily . we see at distance by a circular diffusion of that spright of this great sphere of th' universe : her sight is tactuall . the sunne and all the starres that do appear she feels them in herself , can distance all , for she is at each one purely presentiall . to us what doth diffusion circular , and our pure shadowed eyes , bright , crystalline , but vigorously our spright particular . affect , while things in it so clearly shine ? that 's done continually in the heavens sheen . the sunne , the moon , the earth , blew-glimmering hell , scorch'd aetna's bowels , each bulk you can divine to be in nature , every dern cell with fire-eyed dragons , or what else therein doth dweil : these be all parts of the wide worlds excesse , they be all seated in the mundane spright , and shew just as they are in their bignesse to her . but circulation shews not right the magnitude of things : for distant site makes a deficience in these circulings . but all things lie ope-right unto the sight of heavens great eye ; their thin shot shadowings and lightned sides . all this we find in natures springs . the worlds great soul knows by protopathie all what befalls this lower spright ; but we can onely know 't by de●…eropathie , at least in sight and hearing . she doth see in our own eyes , by the close unitie of ours and the worlds life , our passion , plainly perceives our idiopathie , as we do hers , by the same union ; but we cannot see hers in that perfection . fresh varnish'd groves , tall hills , and gilded clouds arching an eielid for the gloring morn , fair clustred buildings which our sight so crouds at distance , with high spires to heaven yborn , vast plains with lowly cottages forlorn rounded about with the low wayering skie , cragg'd vapours , like to ragged rocks ytorn , she views those prospects in our distant eye : these and such like be the first centres mysterie . or if you will the first low energie of that one centre , which the soul is hight , which knows this world by the close unitie concorporation with the mundane spright , unloos'd from this she wants a certain light , unlesse by true regeneration she be incorporate with god , unite with his own spright ; so a new mansion sh' has got , oft sook with deepest suspiration . but robb'd of her first clothing by hard fate , if she fall short of this , wo's mel what pains she undergoes ? when this lost former state so kindled hath lifes thirst , that still remains . thus her eternitie her nothing gains but hungry flames , raging voracitie feeding on its own self . the heavens she stains with execrations and foul blasphemie . thus in foul discontent and smoth'ring fire they frie. vain man that striv'st to have all things at will ! what wilt thou do in this sterilitie ? whom canst thou then command ? or what shall fill thy gaping soul ? o depth of miserie ! prepare thy self by deep humilitie : destroy that fretting fire while thou art here , forsake this worlds bewitching vanitie , nor death nor hell then shalt thou need to fear . kill and cast down thy self , to heaven god shall thee rear . this middle centrall essence of the soul is that which still survives asleep or waking : the life she shed in this grosse earthly moul is quite shrunk up , lost in the bodies breaking , now with slight phantasms of her own fond making she 's clad ( so is her life drie and jejune ) but all flit souls be not in the same taking : that state this lifes proportion doth tune , so as thou livest here , such measure must ensuen . but they whose souls deiform summitie is waken'd in this life , and so to god are nearly joynd in a firm unitie ( this outward bodie is but earthie clod digested , having life transfus'd abroad , the worlds life and our lower vitalitie unite in one ) their souls have their aboad in christs own body , are eternally one with our god , by true and strong communitie . when we are clothed with this outward world , feel the soft aire , behold the glorious sunne , all this we have from meat that 's daily hurld into these mouthes . but first of all we wunne this priviledge by our first union with this worlds body and diffused spright . i' th' higher world there 's such communion : christ is the sunne that by his c●…earing might awakes our higher rayes to joyn with his pure light . and when he hath that life elici●…ed , he gives his own dear body and his bloud to drink and eat . thus dayly we are fed unto eternall life . thus do we bud , true heavenly plants , suck in our lasting food from the first spring of life , incorporate into the higher world ( as erst i show'd our lower rayes the soul to subjugate to this low world ) we fearlesse sit above all fate , safely that kingdomes glory contemplate , o'reflow with joy by a full sympathie with that worlds spright , and blesse our own estate , praising the fount of all felicitie , the lovely light of the blest deitie . vain mortalls think on this , and raise your mind above the bodies life ; strike through the skie with piercing throbs and sighs , that you may find his face . base fleshly fumes your drowsie eyes thus blind . so hath my muse according to her skill discovered the soul in all her rayes , the lowest may occasionate much ill , but is indifferent . who may dispraise dame natures work ? but yet you ought to raise your selves to higher state . eternitie is the souls rest , and everlasting dayes : aspire to this , and hope for victorie . i further yet shall prove her immortalitie . the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . from many arguments we show the independencie of humane souls : that all lives flow from a free deitie . three apprehensions do my mind divide concerning the souls preexistencie , before into this outward world she glide , so hath my mule with much uncertaintie exprest herself , so as her phantasie strongly inacted guides her easie pen ; i nought obtrude with sowr anxietie , but freely offer hints to wiser men . the wise from rash assent in darksome things abstein . or souls be well awake but hovering , not fixt to ought , but by a magick might drawable here and there , and so their wing struck with the steem of this low mundane spright may lower flag and take its stooping flight into some plantall man , new edified by its own plastick point . or else ( deep night drawn on by drooping phansie ) it doth slide into this world , and by its self that skill is tried ; makes to it self this fleshly habitation ; for this worlds spirit hath provok'd these rayes : then drown in sleep it works that efformation of its own body , all its parts displayes , as doth the senselesse plant . the two next wayes are these : a reall tricentreitie . first centre ever wakes , unmoved stayes , hight intellect . the next in sleep doth lie till the last centre burst into this open skie . and then the middle wakes . but the last way makes but one centre , which doth sleep likewise till its low life hath reach'd this worlds glad day . a fourth we 'll adde that we may all comprise . take quite away all preexistencies of humane souls , and grant they 're then first made when they begin this bodies edifice , and actually this outward world invade . none of these wayes do show that they must ever fade . the first way might be well occasioned by what we feel in the souls energies . she works sometime as though she quite had fled all commerce with this bulks vitalities , yet falls she down at last and lowly lies in this base mansion , is so close contract that sleep doth seise her actualities , retains no memorie of that strange fact , nor of her self that soar'd in that high heavenly tract . the second way that makes the soul tricentrall , the highest awake , the other with sleep drownd , may spring from hence . none would vouchsafe the entrall into this life , if they were but once bound to that vast cintre where all things are found , hight intellect . the lowest is not awake , therefore the midst lies close in sleep upwound . three centres made , that souls may quite forsake this baser world when union with the lowest they break . again , because this bodie 's fashioned without our knowledge , reason doth suggest that it could no wise be thus figured from our own centre , and yet we not prest to any adversion . therefore we are drest with this grosse clothing by some plantall spright centred in nature . so that glorious vest the deiform intellect not by our own might is made , but we have rayes which each of these will fit . ardent desire , strong breathing after god , at length may work us to that better place , body or clothing , that high sure aboad that searching weather nor time can deface . but to go on in our proposed race , the third and fourth way have the same foundation , not multiplying beings to surpasse their use . what needs that numerous clos'd centration , like wastefull sand ytost with boisterous inundation ? let wiser clerks the truth dare to define i leave it loose for men to muse upon view at their leasure : but yet this call mine ; though we should grant the souls condition before its deep incorporation into dull matter to be nothing more but bare potentiality , yet none can prove from thence that it must fade therefore , when to its earth this earth the trusty fates restore . for though she and her body be at once , yet of her bodie she doth not depend but it of her : she doth its members branch , pierce , bind , digest , and after makes it wend at her own will , when she hath brought to end her curious work , and hath consolidate its tender limbs which earst did feebly bend through weaknesse ; then this world she contemplates , and life still blazing higher seeks an heavenly state . breaths after the first fountain of all life , her sweet creatour , thither doth aspire , would see his face , nor will she cease this strife till he fulfill her thirsty fierce desire : nothing can quench this so deep rooted fire but his own presence . so she gins despise this bodies pleasures , ceaseth to admire ought fair or comely to these outward eyes : or if she do , from hence she higher doth arise . but can she higher rise then her own head ? therefore her spring is god : thence doth she pend , thence did she flow , thither again she 's fled . when she this life hath lost , and made an end of this low earthly course , she doth ascend , unto her circles ancient apogie lifted aloft , not again to descend , nor stoups nor sets that sunne , but standeth free on never shaken pillars of aeternity . but still this truth more clearly to evince , remember how all things are from one light , it shall thy reason forceably convince that nought but god destroyes a centrall spright . if he sucks in his beams , eternall night seiseth upon that life , that it no'te flow in energie , and hath no being quite but gods own power . he lets his breath out go , the self-same things again so eas'ly doth he show . let be noon day , the welk in clear , the moon i' th' nether world , reflecting the sunnes rayes to cheer the irksome night . well! that being done , call out some wondrous might , that listlesse stayes in slower phansies . bid't break all delayes ; surround with solid dark opacity the utmost beams that phoebus light displayes , softly steal on with equall distancy , till they have close clapt up all his explendency . all 's now in darknesse : tell me , what 's become of that infinity of rayes that shone ? were second centres from whence out did come other faint beams ? what be they all quite flone ? all perish'd quite ? you stiflers now be gone . let fall that smoring mantle . do not straight all things return ? the nether world the moon , the sunne enlightens us . the self fame light now shines , that shone before this deep and dismall night . if not the same . then like to flowing stream you deem the light that passeth still away , new parts ever succeeding . the sunne-beam hath no reflection then , if it decay so fast as it comes forth : nor were there day ; for it would vanish 'fore it could arrive at us . but in a moment sol doth ray . one end of his long shafts then we conceive at once both touch himself and down to us do dive . beside , this aire is not the sustentation of spreaden light ; for then as it did move the light would move . and sturdy conflictation of struggling winds , when they have fiercely strove , phoebus fair golden locks would rudely move out of their place ; and eastern winds at morn would make more glorious dayes , while light is drove from that bright quarter : southern blasts do burn from midday sun , but yet northwinds like light have born . what then must be the channell of this river , if we 'll have light to flow as passing stream ? so plain it is that nature doth dissever the light and th' aire , that those bright sunny beams be not upheld by it , as the warm gleems or heat that lodgeth there . from this firm might nought leaning on the aire , well may we 'r deem some subtile body , or some grosser spright depending of fair phoebus , of no other wight . and when these rayes were forced to retire into their fountain , they were not so gone but that the same sprong out from their first fire . so fine spunne glittering silk crumpled in one changeth not ' ●…s individuation from what it was , when it was gaily spread in fluttering winds to th' admiration of the beholder . thus is nought so dead but god can it restore to its old livelyhead . for all the creature 's but the out gone-rayes of a free sunne , and what i meaned most of him alone depend . hee deads their blaze by calling in his breath . though things be tost and strangely chang'd , yet nought at all is lost unlesse he list . nor then so lost but he can them return . in every thing compost each part of th' essence its centreity keeps to it self , it shrinks not to a nullity . when that compounded nature is dissolv'd , each centre 's safe , as safe as second light or drove into the sunne , or thence out-rol'd . so all depend on th' universall spright from hight to depth , as they are ranked right in their due orders . lifes full pregnancy breaks out when friendly sympathy doth smite . the higher rank the higher enegie , from natures lowly lap to gods sublimity : but well may man be call'd the epitome of all things . therefore no low life him made . the highest holds all in his capacity . therefore mans soul from gods own life outray'd , his outgone centre 's on that centre staid . what disadvantage then can the decay of this poore carcase do , when it doth fade ? the soul no more depends on this frail clay , then on our eye depends bright phoebus glist'ring ray . but in this argument we 'll no longer stay , consider now the souls conversion into it self . nought divisible may close with it self by revolution . for then or part in this reflexion is drove into a part , or part to th' whole , or whole to part , or near compression the whole into the whole doth closely roll . but easly all these wayes right reason will controll . if part turn into part , part into whole , whole into part , the thing doth not convert into it self ; the thing it self is all not part of 't self : if all to all revert , each part then into each part is insert . but tell me then how is their quantity if every part with each part is refert ? thus swallowed up , they 'll have no distancy ; so you destroy suppos'd divirsibilitie . wherefore that thing is individuous what ever can into it self reflect , such is the soul as hath been prov'd by us before , and further now we do detect by its foure wheels : the first hight intellect , wherewith she drives into her nature deep and finds it out ; next will , this doth affect her self found out . her self then out doth peep into these acts , she into both doth easly creep . but this conversion's from the body free ; begins not thence , nor thither doth return : nor is the soul worse then its energie , if in its acts it be far higher born then they should pend on this base bulk forlorn : then also she hath no dependency upon this body , but may safely scorn that low condition of servility , and blame all that averre that false necessity . if she should issue from this nether spring , nearer she kept to her originall she were the stronger , and her works would bring to more perfection ; but alas ! they fall they fail by near approch . the best of all wax weak and faint by too close union with this foul fount . might intellectuall grows misty by this strait conjunction ; the will is woxen weak , its vigour quite is gone . but o! how oft when she her self doth cut from nearer commerce with the low delight of things corporeall , and her eyes doth shut to those false fading lights , she feels her spright fill'd with excessive pleasure , such a plight she finds that it doth fully satisfie her thirsty life . then reason shines out bright , and holy love with mild serenity doth hug her harmlesse self in this her purity . what grave monitions and sure prophesie have men in sicknesse left ? a true testation of the souls utter independency on this poore crasie corse . may that narration of aristotles move easie perswasion of his eudemus , to whom sic●… at phere while sleep his senses bound , this revelation a gentle youth did bring with goodly cheer , and jolly blith deportment , chacing needlesse fear . told him that sicknesse would not mortall prove , he should grow well e'r long , but deaths drad power on that towns tyrant should be shortly drove , swift vengeance on his cursed head should showr : both proved true . i could in plenty poure such like examples , as of pherecyde , calanus , him of rhodes , and others more ; but it is needlesse , 't is a truth well tried , the higher works the soul the more it is untied . then quite set loose from this bulks heavy chain she is in happiest plight , so far she is from being nought or perishing . again , we find such utter contrarieties betwixt the bodies and her energies , that we can no wayes think she pends at all of that with which she has such repugnancies . what thing doth fight with its originall ? the spring and stream be alwayes homogeneall . but the high heaven-born soul sprung out from jove ever is clashing with the foolery of this dull body , which the sense doth love , and erring phansie . it were long to trie in every thing : o how 't would magnifie the height of pleasures that fall under sense . this well describ'd would-prove its deity . a vast round body cloth'd with th' excellence of glorious glistring light through the wide aire extense , bravely adorn'd with diverse colours gay , even infinite varieties that shine with wond'rous brightnesse , varnish'd with the ray of that clear light , with motion circuline let turn about and stir up sounds divine , that sweetly may affect th' attentive eare . adde fragrant odours wast with gentle wind , adde pleasant taste , soft touch to venus dear ; this is the bodies god , this is its highest sphere . but from far higher place and brighter light our reason checks us for this vanity , calls to us , warns us that that empty sight lead not our soul unto idolatry , make us not rest in easie falsitie . if thou be stirred up by working sire to search out god , to find the deity . take to thy self not what thine eyes admire or any outward sense , or what sense can desire . behold a light far brighter then the sunne ! the sun 's a shadow if you them compare , or grosse cimmerian mist ; the fairest noon exceeds not the meridian night so far as that light doth the sun. so perfect clear so perfect pure it is , that outward eye cannot behold this inward subtile starre , but indisperst is this bright majesty , yet every where out shining in in finitie ; unplac'd , unparted , one close unity , yet omnipresent ; all things , yet but one ; not streak'd with gaudy multiplicity , pure light without discolouration , stable without circumvolution , eternall rest , joy without passing sound : what sound is made without collision ? smell , taste , and touch make god a grosse compound ; yet truth of all that 's good is perfectly here found . this is a riddle unto outward sense : and heavie phansie , that can rise no higher then outward senses , knows no excellence but what those five do faithfully inspire from their great god , this world ; nor do desire more then they know : wherefore to consopite or quench this false light of bold phansies fire , surely must be an act contrary quite unto this bodies life , and its low groveling spright . wherefore the body 's not originall of humane soul when it doth thus resist that principle : which still more clearly shall be proved . oft when either drowsie mists provoke to sleep , or worst of senses lists to ease its swelling veins , or stomach craves its wonted food , that it too long hath mist , or our dry lungs cool liquor fain would have , or when in warre our heart suggests the fear of grave : yet high desire of truth , and deep insight into gods mystery makes us command these low attractions ; and our countries right bids march on bravely , stout and stifly stand in bloudy fight , and try 't by strength of hand . thus truth and honesty so sway our will , that we no longer doubt to break the band of lower nature , and this body kill or vex , so we the laws of reason may fulfill . this proves the soul to sit at liberty , not wedg'd into this masse of earth , but free unloos'd from any strong necessity to do the bodies dictates , while we see clear reason shining in serenity , calling above unto us , pointing to what 's right and decent , what doth best agree with those sweet lovely ideas that do show some glimps of their pure light . so sol through clouds doth flow . how oft do we neglect this bodies life , and outward comely plight , for to adorn our soul with virtuous ornaments ? and strive to fat our mind with truth , while it 's forlorn , squallid , half-nasty , pallid , wan , deform ? can this desire from the base body spring ? no sure such brave atchievements be yborn within the soul , tend to her perfecting , see th' independent mind in her self circuling ! best plight of body hinders such like acts . how doth she then upon the body pend ? to do those subtle , high , pure , heavenly facts ? what ? doth the sun his rayes that he out-sends smother or choke ? though clouds that upward wend may raised be by him , yet of those clouds that he doth congregate he no'te depend . nor doth the soul that in this flesh doth croud her self rely on that thick vapour where she 's shroud . but still to prove it clearer : if the mind without the bodyes help can operate of its own self , then nothing can we find to scruple at , but that souls separate safely exist , not subject unto fate , nothing depending on their carcases , that they should fade when those be ruinate : but first perpend well both their energies , that we may better see their independencies . the living body where the soul doth ' bide these functions hath , phansie , sense , memory . how into sense these outward forms do glide i have already told . vitality and presentisick circularity is spread through all : there is one mundane spright and body , vitall corporality we have from hence . our souls be counite with the worlds spright and body , with these herself she has dight . our body struck by evolution of outward forms spread in the worlds vast spright , our listning mind by its adversion doth notice take , but nothing is empight in it . of old gods hand did all forms write in humane souls , which waken at the knock of mundane shapes . if they were naked quite of innate forms , though heaven and earth should rock with roring winds , they 'd heare no more then sensles stock . phansy's th' impression of those forms that flit in this low life : they oft continue long , when as our spright more potently is hit by their incursions and appulses strong . like heated water , though a while but hung on fiercer fire , an hot impression long time retains ; so forms more stoutly flung against our spright make deep insculption ; long time it is till their clear abolition . hence springeth that which men call memory , when outward object doth characterize our inward common spright ; of when that we from our own soul stir up clear phantasies which be our own elicited idees , springing from our own contrall life , by might of our strong fiat as oft as we please , with these we seal that under grosser spright , make that our note-book , there our choisest notions write . but sith it is not any part of us , but longeth unto the great world , it must be chang'd ; for course of time voraginous with rapid force is violently just , makes each thing pay with what it was intrust . the common life sucks back the common spright , the body backward falls into the dust ; it doth it by degrees . hence phancie , sight , and memorie in age do not their functions right . often disease , or some hard casualtie doth hurt this spirit , that a man doth lose the use of sense , wit , phansie , memorie ; that hence rash men our souls mortall suppose through their rude ignorance ; but to disclose the very truth , our soul 's in safetie in that distemper , that doth ill dispose her under spright . but her sad miserie is that so close she 's tied in a prone unitie . leans on this bodies false vitalitie , seeks for things there , not in herself nor higher , extremely loves this bodies company , trusts in its life , thither bends her desire . but when it gins to fail , she 's left i' th' mire . yet hard upon us hangs th' eternall light the ever-live idees , the lamping fire of lasting intellect , whose nearnesse might illumine , were our minds not lost in that frail spright . that spright and we are plain another thing : which now i 'll clearly show that we may see our independence on its existing , which i must prove by eithers energie . that spright hath no preceptibilitie of her impressions : phantasie nor sense perceive themselves ; often with open eye we look upon a man in our presence , and yet of that near object have no cognoscence . and so of phansies that be fresh enough , even deeply seald upon that lower spright , unlesse we seek them out and pierce them through with aiming animadversion , they in night do lurk unknown to us , though they be bright in their own selves . again , some object may in its great vigour , lustre , sweying might this spirit wound by its fierce riving ray ; our sight is hurt by th' eye of the broad blasing day . beside the senses each one are restraind to its own object : so ●…s phantasie . that in the spirits compasse is containd ; as likewise the low naturall memorie . but sooth to say , by a strong sympathie we both are mov'd by these , and these do move . as the light spider that makes at a flie , her self now moves the web she subt'ly wove , mov'd first by her own web , when here the flie did rove . like spider in her web , so do we sit within this spirit , and if ought do shake this subtil loom we feel as it doth hit ; most part into adversion we awake , unlesse we chance into our selves betake our selves , or listen to the lucid voice of th'intellect , which these low tumults slake : but our own selves judge of what ere accloyes our muddied mind , or what lifts up to heavenly joyes . all the five senses , phansie , memorie , we feel their work , distinguish and compare , find out their natures by the subtiltie of sifting reason . then they objects are of th' understanding , bear no greater share in this same act then objects wont to do . they are two realties distinguish'd clear ▪ one from the other , as i erst did show . she knows that spright , that sprigh ▪ our soul can never know . sense , phansie , memorie , as afore was said be hurt by stronger objects , or be spoild by longer exercise : our soul ne're fades , but doth its spright commiserate long toild with agitation , when it feels it moild descends to comfort it , and gives it rest ; but she grows quicker , vaster , never foild with contemplations that this spright molest : the inward soul 's renew'd as cannot be exprest . how soul and spright be severed we see , but how 't works by it self is not yet shown ; i mean without this sprights assistencie , though not quite by its self . high light doth crown its summitie , when sleep that spright doth drown wrapt into highest heavens in ecstasie it sees such things as would low life confound , enrage with a tumultuous agonie , burst this pent spright for want of fit capacitie . then it is joynd with the eternall idees , which move our souls as sights do here below : joynd with the spright of god we gaze on these , as by the mundane spright th' out-world we know . our soul hangs twixt them both , and there doth go where either spright doth snatch her . either raise her inward forms , which leap out nothing-slow when sympathie them calls . thus she displayes her inward life , gods light views with her wakened rayes . when we confute a pregnant falsitie cloth'd with strong phantasms in our snared mind , as this suppose , the earths stabilitie , what help can we in our low phansie find , possest of this impression ? what shall bind this stubborn falshood so inveterate ? that spright so stifly set can't be inclin'd by ought but by the soul that contemplates truth by her self , brings out her forms that be innate ? flies she to sense ? sense pleads for ptolemee ? flies she to her low phansie ? that 's so swayd by sense , and fore-imprest astronomie by botch'd inculcate paradigmes made by senses dictate , that they 'll both perswade that philolaus and wise heraclide be frantick both , copernicus twice mad . she cannot then this question well decide by ought but her own forms that in her self reside . which she calls out unto her faithfull aid , commands deep silence to fond phantasie , whose odious prating truth i ath oft betraid , and in its stead brought in rash falsitie , seated in sowr inert stupiditie . then farewell sense , and what from sense hath sprong , saith she , i 'll contemplate in puritie , and quit my self of that tumultuous throng : what then she finds shall be unfold in my next song . the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . that th' earth doth move , proofs physicall unto us do descrie ; adde reasons theosophicall , al 's ' adde astronomie . blest souls first authours of astronomie ! who clomb the heavens with your high reaching mind , s●…al'd the high battlements of the lofty skie , to whom compar'd this earth a point you find ; your bodies lesse , what measure hath defin'd ? what art that mighty vastnesse ? such high facts the ancient giants swoln with raging wind could not effect . a subtile parallax , a dark eclipse do quite obscure their braving acts . o the great might of mans high phantasie ! that with a shade or a divided line , that nought , this but a thin exilitie , can do farre more then strength enrag'd with tine , hoysted with haughty pride . that brood combine to clamber up to heaven . hill upon hill , ossa upon olympus doth recline : their brawnie arms redoubled force doth fill , while they their spirits summon t' effect their furious will ? but all in vain they want the inward skill ▪ what comes from heaven onely can there ascend . not rage nor tempest that this bulk doth fill can profit ought , but gently to attend the souls still working , patiently to bend our mind to sifting reason , and clear light , that strangely figur'd in our soul doth wend shifting its forms , still playing in our sight , till something it present that we shall take for right . the busie soul it is that thither hent by strength of reason , the true distancies of the erring planets , and the vast extent of their round bodies , without outward eyes hath view'd , told their proportionalities , confounded sense by reasons strange report ( but wiser he that on reason relies then stupid sense low-sunken into dirt ) this weapon i have got none from me may extort ▪ o you stiff-standers for ag'd ptolemee , i heartly praise your humble reverence if willingly given to antiquitie ; but when of him in whom's your confidence , or your own reason and experience in those same arts , you find those things are true that utterly oppugne our outward sense , then are you forc'd to sense to bid adieu , not what your sense gainsayes to holden straight untrue . though contraire unto sense , though it be new ( but sooth to sayen th' earth●… motion is of tri'd antiquitie , as i above did shew : in philolaus and in heraclide those subtile thoughts of old did close reside ) yet reason ought to bear away the bell . but irefull ignorance cannot abide to be outtopd , reprochfully 't will yell , call's mad , when it s own self doth with foul furie swell . but let them bark like band-dogs at the moon , that mindlesse passeth on in silencie : i 'll take my flight above this outward sunne , regardlesse of such fond malignitie , life my self up in the theologie of heavenly plato . there i 'll contemplate the archtype of this sunne , that bright idee of steddie good , that doth its beams dilate through all the worlds all lives and beings propagate . but yet in words to tride i will deigne a while : they may our mind fitly prepare for higher flight ; we larger breath may gain by a low hovering . these words they are all found in that old oracle of clare . that heavenly power which iao hight the highest of all the gods thou mayst declare , in spring named zeus , in summer helios bright , in autumne call'd iao , aides in brumall night . these names do plainly denotate the sunne , in spring call'd zeus , from life or kindly heat ; in winter , 'cause the dayes so quickly done , he aides hight , he is not long in sight ; in summer , 'cause he strongly doth us smite with his hot darts , then helios we him name from eloim or eloah so hight ; in autumne jao , jehovah is the same : so is the word deprav'd by an uncertain fame . so great similitude twixt phoebus light and god , that god himself the nations deem the sun . the learned seventy have boldly pight a tent therein for the true eloim , the sensible deity you 'll reckon him , if hermes words bear with you any sway , or if you christian clerks do ought esteem , in davids odes they make gods christ a day ; his father 's then the sunne from whence this light doth ray . then by all the wide worlds acknowledgement , the sunne's a type of that eternall light which we call god , a fair delineament of that which good in plato's school is hight , his t'agathon with beauteous rayes be dight , let 's now consult with their theologie , and that idea with our inward sight behold , casheering sensibility then in clear reason view this correspondency . one steddy good , centre of essencies , unmoved monad , that apollo hight , the intellectuall sunne whose energies are all things that appear in vitall light , whose brightnesse passeth every creatures sight , yet round about him stird with gentle fire all things do dance ; their being , action , might , they thither do direct with strong desire , to embosome him with close embracements they aspire . unseen , incomprehensible he moves about himself each seeking entity that never yet shall find that which it loves . no finite thing shall reach infinity , no thing dispers'd comprend that unity , yet in their ranks they seemly foot it round , trip it with joy at the worlds harmony struck with the pleasure of an amorous stound , so dance they with fair flowers from unknown root ycrownd . still falling short they never fail to seek , nor find they nothing by their diligence ; they find repast , their lively longings eke kindled , continued , by timely influence . thus all things in distinct circumference move about him that satisfies them all . nor be they thus stird up by wary sense or foresight , or election rationall , but blindly reel about the heart of lives centrall . so doth the earth one of the erring seven wheel round the fixed sunne , that is the shade of steddy good , shining in this out-heaven with the rest of those stars that god hath made of baser matter , all which be array'd with his far-shining light . they sing for joy , they frisque about in circulings unstay'd , dance through the liquid aire , and nimbly toy - cloy . while sol keeps clear their spright , consumes what may ac - better the indigent be mov'd , then he that wanteth nought : he fills all things with light and kindly heat : through his fecundity peoples the world ; by his exciting spright wakens the plants , calls them out of deep night . they thrust themselves into his fostring rayes , stretch themselves forth stird by his quickning might . and all the while their merry roundelayes ( as lightsome phansies deem ) each planet sprightly playes . but sooth to say that sound so subtile is made by percussion of th' ethereall fire against our aire ( if it be not transmisse by its exility , ) that none ought admire that we no'te heare what well we mought desire heavens harmony . ' cording to others lear the sound 's so big that it cannot retire into the windings of a mortall eare ; so cannot the egyptian niles catadupa bear . there ought to be certain proportion betwixt the object and the outward sense . rash man that dost inferre negation from thy dead eare , or non-experience . then let them dance and sing , raise influence from lively motion , that preserves their spright from foul corruption : motion 's the best fense to keep off filth in children of cold night , whose life is in dull matter ; but the sunne's all light. therefore full safely he may steddy stond , unmov'd , at least not remov'd out of place . i 'll not deny but that he may turn round on his own centre . so the steps we 'll trace of essence , plato's on , which steddy stayes and moves at once , that same iao hight in that old clarian oracle , that sayes it is the sunne . this answer will aright to iehova or first essence , as plato school desery't . that same first being , beauty , intellect , turns to his father ( of whom he was born ) in a brief instant . but who can detect such hidden mysteries ? back mine eyes i 'll turn , lest in this light like fluttering moth i burn . enough is shown of correspondency twixt this worlds sunne and centre of hid morn , the radiant light of the deep deity . thus have i fairly prov'd the sunnes stability . then must the earth turn round , or we want day , or never be in night . now i 'll descend cloth'd with this truth . as wrathfull dogs do bay at spectres solemn cynthia doth send ; so now i backward to the senses wend : they 'll bark at th' shape of my disguised mind , as stranger wights , they wrathfully will rend this uncouth habit . they no such thing find 'mongst their domestick forms , to whom they are more kind . and weaker reason which they wont misguide will deem all this nothing mysterious , but my strong-winged muse feebly to slide into false thoughts and dreams vertiginous , and plainly judge us woxen furious , thus in our rage to shake the stable earth , whirling it round with turns prodigious ; for it doth stedfast stand as it appear'th from the unshaken buildings it so safely bear'th . if it should move about , then would it sting from of it self those fair extructed loads of carved stone : the aire aloud would sing with brushing trees : beasts in their dark aboads would brained be by their own caves ; th' earth strowd with strange destruction . all would shatter'd lye in broken shivers what mad frantick mood doth thus invade wary philosophy , that it so dotes on such a furious falsity ? but still more subt'lie this cause to pursue , the clouds would alwayes seem to rise from th' east , which sense and oft-experience proves untrue ; they rise from all the quarters , south , north , west , from every part , as aeolus thinketh best . again the earths sad stupid gravity unfit for motion shows its quiet rest . lastly an arrow shot unto the sky would not return unto his foot that let it fly . adde unto these that contrariety of motion , when as the self same things at the same time do back and forward hie : as when for speed the rider fiercely dings his horse with iron heel , layes the loose strings upon his neck , westward they swiftly scoure , when as the earth , finishing her dayly rings , doth eastward make with all her might and power , she quite hath run her stage at end of twice twelve houres . these and like phansies do so strongly tye the slower mind to ancient ptolemee , that shamefull madnesse't were for to deny so plain a truth as they deem this to be . but yet , alas ! if they could standen free from prejudice , and heavie swaying sense that dims our reason that it cannot see what 's the pure truth , enough in just defense of pythagore we find though with small diligence , one single truth concerning unity of sprights and bodies , how one spirit may inact a various corporeity , keep 't up together and its might display through all the bulk , make 't constantly obey the powerfull dictates of that centrall spright , which being one can variously play : this lore if we but once had learnd aright , all what was brought against us would vanish at first sight . for that magnetick might doth so combine earth , water , aire , into one animate , whose soul or life so sweetly't doth incline , so surely , easly , as none can relate but he that 's exercis'd in every state of moving life . what ? can the plastick spright so variously it and its bulk dilate , downward to hell upward to heaven bright , and strangely figur'd leaves and flowers send into sight ? can one poore single centre do all this in a base weed that suddenly decayes ? and shall not the earths life that is transmisse through sea and aire , and with its potent rayes informs all this ( all this on that life stayes ) shall 't not obtain the like variety of inward ruling motion ? your minds raise , o sluggish men ! single centrality you 'l find shall do , what ere 's admit by phantasy . now see if this clear apprehension will not with ease repell each argument which we rehers'd with an intention for to refute . the earths swift movement , because 't is naturall not violent , will never shatter buildings . with straight line it binds down strongly each partic'larment of every edifice . all stones incline unto that centre ; this doth stoutly all combine . nor is lesse naturall that circular motion , then this that each part to the centre drives : so every stone on earth with one commotion goes round , and yet with all right stifly strives to reach the centre , though it never dives so deep . who then so blind but plainly sees how for our safety nature well contrives , binding all close with down-propensities ? but now we 'll frame an answer to the loud-singing trees . walls , towers , trees , would stirre up a strange noise , if th' aire stood still , while the earth is hurled round . as doth the switch oft shak'd by idle boyes that please themselves in varying of the sound . but this objection we with reason sound have well prevented , while we plainly taught earth , water , aire in one to be fast bound by one spermatick spright , which easly raught to each part : earth , sea , aire so powerfully hath it caught . all these as one round entire body move upon their common poles ; that difficulty of stirring sounds , so clearly we remove . that of the clouds with like facility we straight shall chace away . in th' aire they ly and whirl about with it , and when some wind with violence afore him makes them fly , then in them double motion we find , eastward they move , and whither by those blasts they 're inclin'd . what they pretend of the earths gravity , is nought but a long taken up conceit : a stone that downward to the earth doth hy is not more heavy then dry straws that jet up to a ring made of black shining jeat . each thing doth tend to the loud-calling might of sympathy . so 't is a misconceit that deems the earth the onely heavy weight . they ken not the strange power of the strong centrall spright were there a shiver cut from off the moon and cast quite off from that round entire masse , would 't fall into our mouths ? no , it would soon make back to th' centre from whence forc'd it was : the same in mars and sol would come to passe , and all the stars that have their proper centres . so gravity is nought but close to presse unto one magick point , there near to enter ; each sympathetick part doth boldly it adventure . thus in each starry globe all parts may tend unto one point , and mean time turn around ; nor doth that sway its circling ought offend : these motions do not at all confound one th' others course . the earth 's not heavy found , but from that strong down-pulling centrall sway , which hinders not but that it may turn round , sith that it moves not a contrary way . which answer i will bend against the fifth assay : an arrow shot into the empty aire , which straight returning to the bowmans foot , the earths stability must proven clear . thus these bad archers do at random shoot , whose easie errour i do thus confute . the arrow hath one spirit with this sphere , forc'd upward turns with it , mov'd by the root of naturall motion . so when back't doth bear it self , still eastward turns with motion circular . so 't is no wonder when it hath descended it falleth back to th' place from whence itflew , sith all this while its circular course hath bended toward the east , and in proportion due that arcuall eastern motion did pursue : nearer the earth the slower it must go ; these arks be lesse , but in the heavens blew those arks increase , it must not be so slow . thus must it needs return unto its idle bow . nor ought we wonder that it doth conform its motion to the circles of the aire , sith water in a woden bucket born doth fit it self unto each periphere , by hight or depth , as you shall change the sphere . so lowly set more water 't will contain , 'cause its round tumour higher then doth bea●… it self up from the brims . so may 't be sayen the lowlier man the larger graces doth obtain . but now to answer to the last objection , t is not impossible one thing to move contrary wayes , which by a fit retection i strongly will evince and clearly prove . take but the pains higher for to remove a clock with hanging plummet . it goes down at that same time you heave it high above its former place . thus fairly have we won the field 'gainst stupid sense , that reason fain would drown . now let 's go on ( we have well cleard the way ) more plainly prove this seeming paradox and make this truth shine brighter then midday , neglect dull sconses mowes and idle mocks . o constant hearts , as stark as thracian rocks , well grounded in grave ignorance , that scorn reasons sly force , its light slight subtile strokes . sing we to these wast hills , dern , deaf , forlorn , or to the cheerfull children of the quick-ey'd morn ? to you we sing that live in purer light , escap'd the thraldome of down-drooping sense , whose nimble spirit and clear piercing sight can easly judge of every conference withouten prejudice , with patience can weigh the moments of each reason brought while others in tempestuous vehemence blow all away with bitter blasts . untought in subtilties , they shew themselves in jangling stout . i have the barking of bold sense confuted , it s clamorous tongue thus being consopite , with reasons easie shall i be well suited , to show that pythagore's position's right . copernicks , or whosoever dogma't hight . the first is that that 's wisely signifi'd by moses maymons son , a learned wight , who saith each good astronomer is ty'd to lessen the heavens motions vainly multiply'd , and the foul botches of false feigned orbs : whose uselesse number reason must restrain , that oft the loose luxuriant phansie curbs , and in just bounds doth warily contain : to use more means then needs is all in vain . why then , o busie sonnes of ptolemee ! do you that vast star-bearing sphere constrain to hurl about with such celerity , when th' earth may move without such strange velocity ? what needlesse phansy's this that that huge sphere in one short moment must thus whirl around , that it must fly six hundred thousand sheere of germane miles . if that will not confound , for pomp adde fourty thousand more , that ' bound ; three thousand more , if it were requisite , you might annex , and more , if they have found the measure right ; when as the earth's flow flight in that time , of a mile goes but the sixteenth bit . but if this all be liquid , pervious , one fine ethereall ( which reason right will soon admit : for 't is ridiculous thus for to stud the heaven with nails bright , the stars in fluid sky will standen tight , as men do feigne the earth in the soft aire to be unmov'd ) how will proportion fit ? so vast a difference there doth appear of motions in those stars that the same bignesse bear . besides that difficulty will remain of unconceivable swift motion in the equinoctiall stars , where some contain this earthy globes mighty dimension , ten thousand times twise told . they hurry o●… with the same swiftnesse i set down before , and with more pains . a globes extension , the bigger that it growes , groweth still more nigh to a flat fac'd figure , and finds resistance sore . but now that all the heavens be liquid , hence i 'll fetch an argument . those higher stars they may as well hang in fluid essence , as do the planets . venus orb debars not mars , nor enters he with knock and jars ; the soft fine yielding aether gives admission : so gentle venus to marcurius dares descend , and finds an easie intromission , casts ope that azur curtain by a swift discission . that famous star nail'd down in cassiopee , how was it hammer'd in your solid sky ? what pinsers pull'd it out again , that we no longer see it , whither did it fly ? astronomers say 't was at least as high as the eighth sphere . it gave no parallax , no more then those light lamps that there we spy . but prejudic'd minds before themselves they 'll tax of holy writ and the heavens they 'll make a nose of wax . what man will now that 's not vertiginous hurrie about his head these severall lights , so mighty vast with so voracious and rapid course whirling them day and night about the earth , when the earths motion might save that so monstrous labour , with lesse pains , even infinitely lesse ? but thoughts empight once in the mind do so possesse the brains , that hard it is to wash out those deep ancient stains . two things there be whose reason 's nothing clear : those cool continuall breathings of east wind under the line ; the next high comets are , in which three motions philosophers do find , concerning which men hitherto are blind , that have not mov'd the earth unto their aid ; diurnall and an annuall course they have mind like to the sunnes , beside , by what they 're sway'd to north or south . this myst'ry's easly thus display'd . the ecliptick course , and that diurnall moving , is but apparent as the sunnes , not true : but that the earth doth move , that still wants proving , you 'll say . then if you will , these comets shew one proof for her two motions . whence issue those meteors turnings ? what shall hale them on , and guide their steps , that in proportion due they dance sols measure ? what occasion or fruit can be of that strange double motion ? nought but the earths circumvolution doth cause this sight , and but in outward show this sight of double sunlike motion seen in the comets . for the winds that blow under the aequinoctiall , who doth know any other cause , that still they breathe from th' east ? that strange effect from whence else can it flow , then from the earths swift hurring from the west ? mid partis strongliest rouz'd , the poles do sleep in rest . wherefore men under th' aequinoctiall , where the earths course most rapid is and swift , sensibly 're dash'd 'gainst that aereall pure liquid essence . that clear aire is left not snatch'd away so fast , not quite bereft of its own nature , nor like th' other skie unmoved quite ; but slow pac'd is yclef : and driven close together ; sensibly so feel we that fine aire that seems from east to flie . those parts be in farre greater puritie devoid of earthy vapours . thence it is they 're not so easly turn'd by sympathie , the aire there having lesse of earthinesse ; so that they move not with one speedinesse , the earth and it . yet curious men have fun something like this , even in the mid-land sea ; ships foure times sooner the same stages run , when westward they do slie , then when they there begun . but that disgracement of philosophie from flux and reflux of the ocean main with its spread arms , we by this theorie might take 't away and shew the causes plain . some parts of th' earth do much more swiftnesse gain , when as their course goes whirling on one way with th' annuall motion , which must needs constrain the sluid sea with unexpected sway . long time it were this mysterie fully to display . wherefore i 'll let it passe , my self betake unto some reasons astronomicall , to which if 't please the nimble mind t' awake and shake off prejudice , that wont forestall the ablest wit , i fear not but he 'll fall into the same opinion , magnifie that subtile spirit that hath made this all , and hath half-hid his work from mortall eye , to sport and play with souls in sweet philosophie . but with crabb'd mind wisdome will nere consort , make its abode with a sowr ingenie ; that harmlesse spright it self will nere disport with bloudie zeal , currish malignitie , with wrathfull ignorance , grave hypocrisie . mirth , and free mindednesse , simplicitie , patience , discreetnesse , and benignitie , faithfulnesse , heart-struck teneritie ; these be the lovely play-mates of pure veritie . the eternall sonne of god , who logos hight , made all things in a fit proportion ; wherefore , i wote , no man that judgeth right in heaven will make such a confusion , that courses of unlike extension , infinitely unlike , in like time shall be run by the flight starres . such vast distension of place shews that their time is not all one ; saturn his ring no'te finish as quick as the moon . yet if the earth stand stupid and unmov'd , this needs must come to passe . for they go round in every twise twelve houres , as is prov'd by dayly experience . but it would confound the worlds right order , if 't were surely found a reall motion . wherefore let it be in them but seeming , but a reall round in th' earth it self . the world so 's setten free from that untoward disproportionalitie . for so the courses of the erring seven with their own orbs will fitly well agree ; their annuall periods in the liquid heaven they onely finish then : which as they be or lesse or greater , so the time they flie in their own circlings hath its difference . the moon a moneth , saturn years ten times three ; those have the least and bigg'st circumference . so all their times and orbs have mutuall reference . next light 's , the planets dark opacitie , which long time hath been found in the low moon : hills , valleys , and such like asperitie through optick glasses thence have plainly shone : by the same trick it hath been clearly shown that venus moon-like grows corniculate what time her face with flusher light is blown : some such like things others have contemplate in mercurie , about the sunne both circulate . when venus is the furthest off from us , then is she in her full . when in her full , she seemeth least ; which proves she's exterous beyond the sunne , and further off doth roll . but when her circling nearer down doth pull , then gins she swell , and waxen bug with horn , but loose her light , parts clad with darknesse dull she shows to us . she and mercury ne're born farre from the sunne , proves that about him both do turn . they both opake , as also is the moon that turns about the earth ( so turn those foure 'bout jupiter , tend him as he doth run his annuall course ) then tellus so may scoure th' ethereall plain , and have the self saine power to run her circuits in the liquid skie about the sunne , the mind that doth not lour , drooping in carthie dregs , will not denie , sith we so well have prov'd the starres opacitie . about the great the lesser lamps do dance , the medicean foure reel about jove ; two round old saturn without nominance , luna about the earth doth nimbly move : then all as it doth seemly well behove , about the bigg'st of all great phoebus hight , with joy and jollitie needs round must rove , tickled with pleasure of his heat and light . what tumbling tricks they play in his farre piercing sight ! but my next argument ( could i't well expresse with poets pen ) it hath so mighty force , that an ingenious man 't would stoutly presse to give assent unto the annuall course of this our earth . but prejudice the nurse of ignorance stoppeth all free confession , al 's keeps the way that souls have not recourse to purer reason , chok'd with that oppression . this argument is drawn from the stars retrocession . planets go back , stand still , and forward flie with unexpected swiftnesse : what 's the cause that they thus stagger in the plain-pav'd skie ? or stupid stand , as if some dull repose did numb their spirits and their sinews lose ? here'gins the wheel-work of the epicycle ; thus patch they heaven more botch'dly then old cloths . this prettie sport doth make my heart to tickle with laughter , and mine eyes with merry tears to trickle . o daring phansie ! that dost thus compile the heavens from hasty thoughts , such as fall next ; warie philosophers cannot but smile at such feat gear , at thy rude rash context . an heap of orbs disorderly perplext , thrust in on every hint of motion , must be the wondrous art of nature , next here working under god. thus , thus vain man intitles alwayes god to his opinion ; thinks every thing is done as he conceives ; would bind all men to his religion ; all the world else of freedome he bereaves , he and his god must have dominion , the truth must have her propagation : that is his thought , which he hath made a god , that furious hot inust impression doth so disturb his veins , that all abroad with rage he roves , and all gainsayers down hath trod . but to return from whence my muse hath flown , all this disordred superfluitie of epicycles , or what else is shown to salve the strange absurd enormitie of staggering motions in the azure skie ; both epicycles and those turns enorm would all prove nought , if you would but let slie the earth in the ecliptick line yborn , as i could well describe in mathematick form . so could i ( that 's another argument ) from this same principle most clearly prove in regresse and in progresse different of the free planets : why saturn should rove with shorter startings , give back lesse then jove ; jove lesse then mars ; why venus flincheth out more then mercurius ; why saturn doth move ofter in those back jets then jove doth shoot ; but mercury more oft then venus and mars stout : and why the sunne escap'd an epicycle , when as th' old prodigall astronomie on the other six bestowed that needlesse cycle ; why saturn , jove , and mars be very nigh unto the earth , show bigger in our eye at eventide when they rise acronycall ; why farre remov'd with so vast distancie when they go down with setting kronycall : all these will plain appear from th' earths course annuall . many other reasons from those heavenly motions might well be drawn , but with exilitie of subtile mathematicks obscure notions , a poets pen so fitly no'te agree ; and curious men will judge't a vagrancy to start thus from my scope . my pitched end was for to prove the immortalitie of humane souls : but if you well attend , my ship to the right port by this bow'd course did bend . for i have clearly show'd that stout resistence of the pure soul against the mundane spright and bulk , whereof's the lower mans consistence ; how it doth quell by force of reason right those grosse impressions which our outward sight seald in our lower life : from whence we see that we have proper independent might , in our own mind , behold our own idee , which needs must prove the souls sure immortality . the argument of psychathanasia . book . cant. . iustice , true faith in the first good , our best perswasion of blest eternity unmov'd , th' earths conflagration . it doth me good to think what things will follow that well prov'd thesis in my former song ; how we in liquid heavens more swift then swallow do sail on tellus lap . that doth among the other starres of right not rudely throng , we have vvhat highest thoughts of man desire : but highest thoughts of man are vain and vvrong . in outvvard heaven vve burn vvith hellish fire , hate , envy , covetise , revenge , lust , pride and ire . in the eighth sphere andromeda from chains is not releast ; fearfull orion flyes the dreaded scorpion . alas ! vvhat gains then is't to live in the bright starrie skyes ? it no man can exeem from miseries . all you that seek for true felicity , rend your ovvn hearts : there god himself descryes himself ; there dvvells his beauteous majesty ; there shines the sunne of righteousnesse in goodly glee . and you who boldly all gods providence confine to this small ball , that tell us hight , and dream not of a mutuall influence , and how that she may shine with beamsbright at a farre distance clad with sols lent light , as venus and the moon ; o you that make this earth gods onely darling dear delight , all th' other orbs merely for this orbs sake so swiftly for to runne with labour never slack , to dance attendance on their princesse earth in their quick circuits , and with anger keen would bite him , that or serious or in mirth doubts the prerogative of your great queen ! best use of that your theory , i ween , in this , that as your selves monopolize all the whole world , so your selves back again you wholy give to god. who can devise a better way ? mans soul to god this closely tyes . but if the earth doth thankfully reflect both light and influence to other starres , as well as they to it , where 's the defect ? that sweet subordination it mars ; gods love to us then not so plain appears : for then the starres be mutually made one for another : each all the good then bears of the universe , for 'ts single labour paid with the joint pains of all that in the heavens wade . rare reason ! why ! then god would be too good what judgeth so but envy , and vain pride , and base contract self-love ? which that free floud of bounty hath so confidently tied unto it self alone . large hearts deride this pent hypocrisie . is he good to me ? that grace i would not ere should be deny'd unto my fellow : my felicity is multiply'd , when others i like happy see . but if the rolling starres with mutuall rayes serve one another ; sweet fraternity and humble love , with such like lore we 'll raise , while we do see gods great benignity thus mutually reflected in the skie , and , these round-moving worlds communicate one with another by spread sympathie : this all things friendly will concatenate ; but let more hardy wits that truth determinate . it me behoves t' hold forward on my way , leaving this uncouth strange philosophy , in which my lightsome pen too long did play , as rigid men in sad severity may deem ; but we right carelesse leave that free unto their censure . now more weighty thought doth sway our mind , thinking how all doth flee whatever we have painfully ytaught . so little fruit remains of all my skill hath wraught . o th' emptinesse of vain philosophy ! when thin-spunne reason and exile discourse make the soul creep through a strait theory , whither the blunter mind can never force it self ; yet oft , alas ! the case is worse of this so subtile wight , when dangers deep approch his life , then his who learnings sourse did never drink of , nere his lips did steep in plato's springs , nor with low gown the dust did sweep . certes such knowledge is a vanity , and hath no strength t' abide a stormy stoure ; such thin slight clothing will not keep us dry , when the grim heavens , all black and sadly soure with rage and tempest , plenteously dovvn shovver great floods of rain . dispread exility of slyer reasons fails : some greater povver found in a lively vigorous unity with god , must free the soul from this perplexity . say now the dagger touch'd thy trembling breast , couldst thou recall the reasons i have shown to prove th' immortall state of men deceast ? evolved reason cannot stand at one stoutly to guard thy soul from passion . they passe successively like sand i' th' glasse ; while thou look'st upon this the other's gone but there 's a plight of soul such virtue has which reasons weak assistance strangely doth surpasse . the just and constant man , a multitude set upon mischief cannot him constrain to do amisse by all their uprores rude , not for a tyrants threat will he ere stain his inward honour . the rough adrian tost with unquiet winds doth nothing move his steddy heart . much pleasure he doth gain to see the glory of his master jove , when his drad darts with hurrying light through all do rove . if heaven and earth should rush with a great noise , he fearlesse stands , he knows whom he doth trust , is confident of his souls after joyes , though this vain bulk were grinded into dust . strange strength resideth in the soul that 's just : it feels the power how 't commands the spright of the low man , vigorously finds it must be independent of such feeble might whose motions dare not 'pear before its awfull sight . but yet , my muse , still take an higher flight , sing of platonick faith in the first good , that faith that doth our souls to god unite so strongly , tightly , that the rapid floud of this swift flux of things , nor with foul mud can stain , nor strike us off from th' unity , wherein we stedfast stand , unshak'd , unmov'd , engrafted by a deep vitality . the prop and stay of things is gods benignity . al 's is the rule of his oeconomie . no other cause the creature brought to light but the first goods pregnant fecundity : he to himself is perfect full delight ; he wanteth nought , with his own beams bedight he glory has enough . o blasphemy ! that envy gives to god or soure despight ! harsh hearts ! that feigne in god a tyranny , under pretense t' encrease his sovereigne majesty . when nothing can to gods own self accrew , who 's infinitely happy ; sure the end of this creation simply was to shew his flowing goodnesse , which he doth out send not for himself ; for nought can him amend ; but to his creature doth his good impart , this infinite good through all the world doth wend to fill with heavenly blisse each willing heart . so the free sunne doth ' light and ' liven every part . this is the measure of gods providence , the key of knowledge , the first fair idee , the eye of truth , the spring of living sense , whence sprout gods secrets , the sweet mystery of lasting life , eternall charity . but you o bitter men and soure of spright ! which brand gods name with such foul infamy as though poore humane race he did or slight , or curiously view to do them some despight ; and all to shew his mighty excellency , his uncontrolled strength : fond men ! areed , is 't not as great an act from misery to keep the feeble , as his life to speed with fatall stroke ? the weak shak'd whisling reed shows boreas wondrous strong ! but ignorance and false conceit is the foul spirits meed ; gods lovely life hath there no enterance ; hence their fond thoughts for truth they vainly do advance . if god do all things simply at his pleasure because he will , and not because its good , so that his actions shall have no set measure ; is 't possible it should be understood what he intends ? i feel that he is lov'd of my dear soul , and know that i have born much for his sake ; yet is it not hence prov'd that i shall live , though i do sigh and mourn to find his face ; his creatures wish he 'll slight and scorn . when i breath out my utmost vitall breath , and my dear spirit to my god commend , yet some foul feigne close lurking underneath my serious humble soul from me may rend : so to the lower shades down we shall wend , though i in hearts simplicity expected a better doom ; sith i my steps did bend toward the will of god , and had detected strong hope of lasting life , but now i am rejected . nor of well being , nor subsistency of our poore souls , when they do hence depart , can any be assur'd , if liberty we give to such odde thoughts , that thus pervert the laws of god , and rashly do assert that will rules god , but good rules not gods will. what ere from right , love , equity , doth start , for ought we know then god may act that ill , onely to show his might , and his free mind fulfill . o belch of hell ! o horrid blasphemy ! that heavens unblemish'd beauty thus dost stain , and brand gods nature with such infamy : can wise , iust , good , do ought that 's harsh or vain ? all what he doth is for the creatures gain , not seeking ought from us for his content : what is a drop unto the ocean main ? all he intends is our accomplishment . his being is self-full , self-joy'd , self-excellent . he his fair beams through all has freely sent : purge but thy soul that thou mayst take them in . with froward hypocrite he never went , that finds pretexts to keep his darling sinne . through all the earth this spright takes pains to winne unto it self such as be simply true , and with malignant pride resist not him , but strive to do what he for right doth shew ; so still a greater light he brings into their view . all lives in severall circumference look up unto him and expect their food ; he opes his hand , showrs down their sustinence : so all things be yfild with their wish'd good , all drink , are satisfi'd from this free flood . but circling life that yet unsettled is grows straight , as it is further still remov'd from the first simple good , obtains lesse blisse , sustains sharp pains inflicted by just nemesis . but why do i my soul loose and disperse with mouldring reason , that like sand doth flow . life close united with that good , a verse cannot declare , nor its strange virtue show . that 's it holds up the soul in all its wo , that death , nor hell , nor any change doth fray . who walks in light knows whither he doth go ; our god is light , we children of the day . god is our strength and hope , what can us then dismay ? goodnesse it self will do to us this good , that godly souls may dwell with him for aye . will god forsake what of himself 's belov'd ? what ever lives may shrink into cold clay ; yet good mens souls death hests shall not obey . where there 's no incompossibility of things , gods goodnesse needs must bear the sway you virtuous brood take 't for sure verity , your souls shalt not fall short of blest eternity . but yet bold men with much perplexity will here object against this principle , heaping up reasons ( strange fecundity of ignorance ! ) that goodly might to quell of my last argument , so fairly well set down , right strongly the unsettled spright to have confirmed at my last far-well : but contraire forces they bring into sight , and proudly do provoke me with that rout to sight . whence was 't , say they , that god the creature made no sooner ? why did infinite delay precede his work ? should god his goodnesse staid so long a time ? why did he not display from infinite years this out-created ray ? the mighty starres why not inhabited , when god may souls proportion to their clay as well as to this earth ? why not dispred the world withouten bounds , endlesse , uncompassed ? poore souls ! why were they put into this cave of misery , if they can well exist without the body ? why will not god save all mankind ? his great wisdome if it list could so contrive that they 'd at last desist from sinning , fallen into some providence that sternly might rebuke them that have mist their way , and work in them true penitence : thus might they turn to god with double diligence . why be not damned souls devoyd of sense , if nothing can from wickednesse reclame , rather then fry in pain and vehemence of searching agony ? or why not frame . another form , so with new shape and name again to turn to life ? one centrall spright why may 't not many forms in it contain , which may be wak'd by some magnetick might , cording as is the matter upon which they light ? for when two severall kinds by venus knit do cause a birth , from both the soul doth take a tincture ; but if free it were transmit uncloth'd with th' others seed , then it would make one simple form ; for then they could not slake one th' others energie . why 's the world still stark nought , through malice , or through blind mistake ? why had the first-made-man such a loose will , that his innumerous of-spring he should fouly spill . why was not this unlucky world dissolv'd as soon as that unhappy adam fell ? i itch till of this knot i be resolv'd : so many myriads tumble down to hell , although partakers of gods holy spell . beside , 't is said , they that do not partake of christian lore , for ever they must dwell with cursed fiends , and burn in brimstone lake . such drery drad designes do make my heart to quake . one of a multitude of myriads shall not be sav'd , but broyl in scorching wo ; innumerous mischiefs then to mischiefs addes this worlds continuance if that be so ; ill infinitely more then good doth grow . so god would show much more benignity if he the ribs of heaven about would strow , powder the earth , choke all vitality , call back the creature to its ancient nullity . but thou , who ere thou art , that thus dost strive with fierce assault my ground-work to subvert , and boldly dost into gods secrets drive , base fear my manly face no'te make m'avert . in that odde question which thou first did stert , i 'll plainly prove thine incapacity , and force thy feeble feet back to revert , that cannot climb so high a mystery : i 'll show thee strang perplexed inconsistency . why was this world from all infinity not made ? saist thou : why ? could it be so made ? say i. for well observe the sequency : if this out world continually hath wade through a long long-spun time that never had beginning , then there as few circulings have been in the quick moon as saturn sad ; and still more plainly this clear truth to sing , as many years as dayes or flitting houres have been . for things that we conceive are infinite , one th' other no'te surpasse in quantity . so i have prov'd with clear convincing light , this world could never from infinity been made . certain deficiency doth alwayes follow evolution : nought's infinite but tight eternity close thrust into it self : extension that 's infinite implyes a contradiction . so then for ought we know this world was made so soon as such a nature could exist ; and though that it continue , never fade , yet never will it be that that long twist of time prove infinite , though nere desist from running still . but we may safely say time past compar'd with this long future list doth show as if the world but yesterday were made , and in due time gods glory out may ray . then this short night and ignorant dull ages will quite be swallowed in oblivion ; and though this hope by many surly sages be now derided , yet they 'll all be gone in a short time , like bats and owls yflone at dayes approch . this will hap certainly at this worlds shining conflagration . fayes , satyrs , goblins the night merrily may spend , but ruddy sol shall make them all to fly . the roring lions and drad beasts of prey rule in the dark with pittious cruelty ; but harmlesse man is master of the day , which doth his work in pure simplicity . god blesse his honest usefull industry . but pride and covetize , ambition , riot , revenge , self-love , hypocrisie , contempt of goodnesse , forc'd opinion ; these and such like do breed the worlds confusion . but whither am i gone ? the eagre mind impatiently expects i should proceed unto the next objection ; that defin'd , then thorough on . his vote it must not speed , danger of plenteous speech is the sure meed , and cynthius pulls me by my tender care , such signes i will observe with wary heed . therefore my restlesse muse at length forbear , thy silver sounded lute hang up in silence here . ΑΝΤΙΨΥΞΟΠΑΝΝΥΞΙΑ , or a confutation of the sleep of the soul after death ; ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΞΙΑ , or that all souls are not one ; a paraphrase on apollo's answer concerning plotinus soul . by h. m. master of arts , and fellow of christs colledge in cambridge . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , plotin . ennead . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , john . cambridge printed by roger daniel , printer to the universitie . . the preface to the reader . to preface much concerning these little after-pieces of poetry , i hold needlesse , having spoke my mind so fully before . the motives that drevv me to adde them to the former are exprest in the poems themselves . my drift is one in them all : vvhich is to raise a certain number of vvell ordered phantasms , fitly shaped out and vvarily contrived , vvhich i set to skirmish and conflict vvith all the furious phansies of epicurisine and atheisme . but here 's my disadvantage , that victory vvill be no victory , unlesse the adversary acknovvledge himself overcome . none can acknovvledge himself overcome , unlesse he perceive the strength , and feel the stroke of the more povverfull arguments . but the exility and subtletie of many , and that not of the meanest , is such ( nor can they be othervvise ) that they vvill ( as that kind of thunder vvhich the poets do commonly call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from it s over quick and penetrating energie ) go through their more porous and spongie minds vvithout any sensible impression . sure i am that sensuality is alvvayes an enemy to subtilty of reason , vvhich hath its rise from subtilty of phansie : so that the life of the body , being vigorous and radiant in the soul , hinders us of the sight of more attenuate phantasms . but that being supprest or very much castigate and kept under , our inward apprehension grows clearer and larger . few men can imagine any thing so clearly awake , as they did when they were asleep . and what 's the reason , but that the sense of the body is then bound up or dead in a manner ? the dark glasse-windows will afford us a further illustration for this purpose . why is it that we see our ovvn faces there by night ? what can reflect the species ( as they phrase it ) when the glasse is pervious and transparent ? surely reflection in the ordinary apprehension is but a conceit . the darknesse behind the glasse is enough to exhibit visibly the forms of things within , by hiding stronger objects from the eye , which would burie these weak idola in their ●…ore orient lustre . the starres shine and fill the aire with their species by day , but are to be seen onely in a deep pit , which may fence the sunnes light from striking our sight so strongly . every contemptible candle conquers the beams of the moon , by the same advantage that the sunnes doth the starres , viz. propinquitie . but put out the candle , and you will presently find the moon-light in the room ; exclude the moon , and then the feeblest of all species will step out into energie , we shall behold the night . all this is but to shew , how the stronger or nearer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth obscure the weaker or further off ; and how that one being removed , the energie ' of the other will easily appear . now that our comparison may be the fitter , let us consider what aristotle saith of phansie , that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . thus much i will take of him , that phansie is sense ; and adde to it that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and what i have intimated in some passages of these poems , that the soul doth alwayes feel it self , it s own actuall idea , by its omniform centrall self . so that the immediate sense of the soul is nothing else but to perceive its own energie . now sith that , that which we call outward sense , is indeed the very energie of the soul , and inward sense which is phansie can be but the very energie of the soul , there seems to be no reall and intrinsecall difference betwixt the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of any form ; no more then there is betwixt a frog born by the sunne and mere slime , and one born by copulation : for these are but extrinsecall relations . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the soul it self is all one . but now sith it is the same nature , why is there not the same degree of energie in both ? i say there is , as appears plainly in sleep , where we find all as clear and energeticall as when we wake . but here these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( for i have prov'd them all one ) do as greater and lesser lights dim one another ; or that which is nearest worketh strongliest . hence it is that the light or life of this low spirit or body of ours , stirring the soul into a perpetuall sensuall energie , if we foster this and unite our minds , will , and animadversion with it , will by its close nearnesse with the soul dim and obscure those more subtil and exile phantasms or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 risen from the soul it self , or occasioned by other mens writings . for they will be in the flaring light or life of the body as the stars in the beams of the sunne , scarce to be seen , unlesse we withdraw our selves out of the flush vigour of that light , into the profunditie of our own souls , as into some deep pit . wherefore men of the most tam'd and castigate spirits are of the best and most profound judgement , because they can so easily withdraw themselves from the life and impulse of the lower spirit of this body . thus being quit of passion , they have upon any occasion a clear though still and quiet representation of every thing in their minds , upon which pure bright sydereall phantasms unprejudiced reason may safely work , and clearly discern what is true or probable . if my vvritings fall into the hands of men othervvise qualified , i shall gain the lesse approbation . but if they vvill endeavour to compose themselves as near as they can to this temper ; though they vvere of another opinion then vvhat my writings intend to prove , i doubt not but they vvill have the happinesse to be overcome , and to prove gainers by my victorie . to say any thing more particularly concerning these last i hold it needlesse . onely let me excuse my self , if any chance to blame me for my 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as confuting that which no man will assert . for it hath been asserted by some ; as those mauri whom ficinus speaks of ; and the question is also discussed by plotinus in his fourth ennead , where he distinguisheth of , all souls being one , after this manner , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the latter member is that , vvhich my arguments conclude against . though they vvere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet vvere vve safe enough ; as safe as the beams of the sunne the sunne existing . but the similitude of praxiteles broken glasse is brought in , according to the apprehension of such , as make the image to vanish into nothing , the glasse being taken away : and that as there is but one face , though there be the appearances of many ; so though there be the appearances of many souls , by reason of that ones vvorking in divers bodies , yet there is but one soul ; and understanding sense and motion to be the acts of this one soul informing severall bodies . this is that which both plotinus and i endeavour to destroy , vvhich is of great moment : for if one onely soul act in every body , vvhat ever vve are novv , surely this body laid in the dust vve shall be nothing . as for the oracles ansvver to amelius , if any vulgar conceited man think it came from a devil with bats vvings and a long tail , the seventies translation of the eighth verse of chapter of deuteronomie may make it at least doubtfull . when the most high divided to the nations their inheritance , when he separated the sonnes of adam he set the bounds of the people , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . he did not then deliver them into the hand and jurisdiction of devils , nor to be instructed and taught by them . but if apollo who gave so good a testimony of socrates vvhile he vvas living , and of plotinus after his death , vvas some foul fiend , yet t is no prejudice to their esteem , since our saviour christ vvas acknovvledged by the devil . but i have broke my vvord , by not breaking off my speech before this . reader , t is time novv to leave thee to the perusall of my vvritings , vvhich if they chance to please thee , i repent me not of my pains ; if they chance not to please , that shall not displease me much , for i consider that i also with small content and pleasure have read the vvritings of other men . yours h. m. the argument of antipsychopannychia . cant. i. adams long sleep , will , mind compar'd with low vitality , the fondnesse plainly have unbar'd of psychopannychie . the souls ever durancy i sung before , ystruck with mighty rage . a powerfull sire held up my lively muse and made her soar so high that mortall wit , i fear , she 'll tire to trace her . then a while i did respire . but now my beating veins new force again invades , and holy fury doth inspire . thus stirred up i 'll adde a second strain , lest , what afore was said may seem all spoke in vain . for sure in vain do humane souls exist after this life , if lull'd in listles sleep they senselesse lie wrapt in eternall mist , bound up in foggy clouds , that ever weep benumming tears , and the souls centre steep with deading liquour , that she never minds or feeleth ought . thus drench'd in lethe deep , nor misseth she her self , nor seeks nor finds her self . this mirksome state all the souls actions binds . desire , fear , love , joy , sorrow , pleasure , pain , sense , phancy , wit , forecasting providence , delight in god , and what with sleepy brain might sute , slight dreams , all banish'd far from hence . nor pricking nor applauding conscience can wake the soul from this dull lethargie ; that 'twixt this sleepy state small difference you 'll find and that men call mortality . plain death 's as good as such a psychopannychie . what profiteth this bare existency , if i perceive not that i do exist ? nought longs to such , nor mirth nor misery , such stupid beings write into one list with stocks and stones . but they do not persist , you 'll say , in this dull dead condition . but must revive , shake off this drow sie mist at that last shrill loud-sounding clarion which cleaves the trembling earth , rives monuments of stone . has then old adam snorted all this time under some senselesse sod with sleep ydead ? and have those flames , that steep olympus climbe , right nimbly wheeled o're his heedlesse head so oft , in heaps of years low-buried : and yet can ken himself when he shall rise wakend by piercing trump , that farre doth shed its searching sound ? if we our memories and wit do lose by sicknesse , falls , sloth , lethargies ; if all our childhood quite be waste away with its impressions , so that we forget what once we were , so soon as age doth sway our bowed backs , sure when base worms have eat his mouldring brains , and spirits have retreat from whence they came , spread in the common fire , and many thousand sloping sunnes have set since his last fall into his ancient mire , how he will ken himself reason may well admire : for he must know himself by some impression left in his ancient body unwash'd out : which seemeth strange . for can so long succession of sliding years that great colosses mought well moulder into dust , spare things ywrought so slightly as light phantasms in our brain , which oft one yeare or moneth have wrenched out and left no footsteps of that former stain , no more then 's of a cloud quite melted into rain ? and shall not such long series of time , when nature hath dispread our vitall spright and turn'd our body to its ancient slime , quite wash away what ever was empight in that our spirit ? if bulk and soul unite lose such impressions , as were once deep seald and fairly glisterd like to comets bright in our blew chaos , if the soul congeald with her own body lose these forms as i reveald , then so long time of their disjunction ( the body being into dust confract , the spright diffus'd , spread by dispersion ) and such lethean sleep that doth contract the souls hid rayes that it doth nothing act must certainly wipe all those forms away that sense or phansie ever had impact . so that old adam will in vain assay to find who here he was , he 'll have no memorie . nor can he tell that ere he was before : and if not tell , he 's as if then first born . if as first born , his former life's no store . yet when men wake they find themselves at morn . but if their memory away were worn with one nights sleep , as much as doth respect themselves , these men they never were beforn , this day 's their birth day : they cannot conject they ever liv'd till now , much lesse the same detect . so when a man goes hence , thus may he say , as much as me concerns i die now quite . adiew , good self ! for now thou goest away , nor can i possibly thee ever meet again , not ken thy face , nor kindly greet . sleep and dispersion spoyls our memory . so my dear self hence forth i cannot weet . wherefore to me it 's perfectly to die , though subtiler wits do call 't but psychopannychie . go now you psychopannychites ! perswade to comely virtues and pure piety from hope of joy , or fear of penance sad . men promptly may make answer , who shall try that pain or pleasure ? when death my dim eye shall close , i sleep not sensible of ought : and tract of time at least all memory will quite debarre , that reacquainten mought my self with mine own self , if so my self i sought . but i shall neither seek my self , nor find my self unsought : therefore not deprehend my self in joy or wo. men ought to mind what longs unto them . but when once an end is put unto this life , and fate doth rend our retinence ; what follows nought at all belongs to us : what need i to contend , and my frail spright with present pain to gall for what i nere shall judge my self did ere befall ? this is the uncouth state of sleeping soul , thus weak of its own self without the prop of the base body , that it no'te out-roll its vitall raies : those raies death down doth lop , and all its goodly beauty quite doth crop with its black claws . wisdome , love , piety , are straight dried up : death doth their fountain stop . this is those sleepers dull philosophy , which fairly men invites to foul impiety . but if we grant , which in my former song i plainly prov'd , that the souls energic pends not on this base corse , but that self-strong she by her self can work , then when we sly the bodies commerce , no man can deny but that there is no interruption of life ; where will puts on , there doth she hie . or if she 's carried by coaction , that force yet she observes by presse adversion . and with most lively touch doth feel and find her self . for either what she most doth love she then obtains ; or else with crosse , unkind contrary life since her decease she hath strove , that keeps her wake , and with like might doth move to think upon her self , and in what plight she 's fallen . and nothing able to remove deep searching vengeance , groans in this sad night , and rores , and raves , and storms , & with her self doth fight . but hearty love of that great vitall spright , the sacred fount of holy sympathy , prepares the soul with its deep quickning might to leave the bodyes vain mortality . away she flies into eternity , finds full accomplishment of her strong desire ; each thing would reach its own centrality : so earth with earth , and moon with moon conspire . our selves live most , when most we feed our centrall fire . thus is the soul continually in life withouten interruption . if that she can operate after the fatall knife hath cut the cords of this bulks sympathy : which she can do , if that some energy she exercise ( immur'd in this base clay ) which on this bulk hath no dependency . for then the like she 'll do , that done away , these independent acts , its time now to display . all comprehending will , proportionate to whatsoever shall fall by gods decree or prudent sufferance , sweetly spread , dilate , stretch'd out to embrace each act or entity that creep from hidden cause that none can see with outward eyes . next intellect , whose hight of working 's then , when as it stands most free from sense and grosser phansie , deep empight in this vild corse , which to purg'd minds yields small delight . both will and intellect-then worketh best , when sense and appetite be consopite , and grosser phansie lull'd in silent test : then will grown full with a mild heavenly light shines forth with goodly mentall rayes bedight , and finds and feels such things as never pen can setten down , so that unexpert wight may reade and understand . experienc'd men do onely know who like impressions sustain . so far 's the soul from a dependency ( in these high actions ) on the body base . and further signe is want of memory of these impressions wrought in heavenly place , i mean the holy intellect : they passe leaving no footsteps of their former light , when as the soul from thence descended has . which is a signe those forms be not empight in our low proper chaos or corporeall spright . for then when we our mind do downward bend like things we here should find : but all is gone soon as our flagging souls so low descend as that straight spright . like torch that droppeth down from some high tower , hold steddy clearly shone , but in its fall leaves all its light behind , lies now in darknesse on the grail , or stone , or dirty earth : that erst so fully shin'd , within a glowing coal hath now its light confin'd . so doth the soul when from high intellect to groveling sense she takes her stooping flight , falling into her body , quite neglect , forget , forgo her former glorious sight , grosse glowing fire for that wide shining light ; for purest love , foul fury and base passion ; for clearest knowledge , fell contentious fight sprong from some scorching false inust impression which she 'll call truth , she gains . o witlesse commutation ! but still more clear her independent might in understanding and pure subtile will to prove : i will assay t' explain aright the difference ( ' cording to my best skill ) 'twixt these and those base faculties that well from union with the low vitality of this out-world , that when my curious quill , hath well describ'd their great disparity , to th' highest we may give an independency . the faculties we deem corporeall , and bound unto this earthy instrument ( so bound that they no'te operate at all without the body there immerse and meint ) be hearing , feeling , tasting , sight , and sent . adde lower phansie , mundane memory : those powers be all or more or lesse ypent in this grosse life : we 'll first their property set down , and then the others contrariety . this might perceives not its own instrument . the taste discovers not the spungy tongue ; nor is the mundane spright ( through all extent ) from whence are sense and lower phansie sprong , perceived by the best of all among these learned five , nor yet by phantasie : nor doth or this or those so nearly throng unto themselves as by propinquity to apprehend themselves . they no'te themselves descry ; nor ever learnd they their own energie . the mind held somewhere else in open sight , what ever lies , unknown unto the eye it lies , though there its image be empight , till that our soul look on that image right . wherefore themselves the senses do not know , nor doth our phansie ; for each furious wight hath phansie full enough , so full't doth show as sense ; nor he , nor 's phansie doth that phansie know . age , potent objects , too long exercise do weaken , hurt , and much debilitate those lower faculties . the sun our eyes confounds with dazeling beams of light so that for a good while we cannot contemplate ought visible : thus thunder deafs the eare and age hurts both , that doth quite ruinate our sense and phansie : so if long we heare or see , 't sounds not so sweet , nor can we see so clear . lastly , the senses reach but to one kind of things . the eye sees colours , so the eare hears sounds , the nostrills snuff perfumed wind ; what grosse impressions the out-senses bear the phansie represents , sometimes it dare make unseen shapes , with uncouth transformation , such things as never in true nature are . but all this while the phansies operation is bound to law of bodies : such is her figurat on . this is the nature of those faculties that of the lower mundane spright depend . but in our intellect farre otherwise we'st see it , if we pressely will attend and trace the parallels unto the end . there 's no self-knowledge . here the soul doth find her self . if so , then without instrument . for what more fit to show our inward mind then our own mind ? but if 't be otherwise defind ; then tell me , knows she that fit instrument ? if the kens not that instrument , how can she judge , whether truly it doth represent her self ? there may be foul delusion . but if she kens this organ ; straight upon this grant , i 'll ask how kens she this same tole ? what ? by another ? by what that ? so go on till to infinity you forward roll , an horrid monster count in philosophick school . the soul then works by it self , and is self-liv'd , sith that it acts without an instrument : free energies from her own self deriv'd flow round . but to go on . the eyes yblent do blink even blind with objects vehement , so that till they themselves do well recure lesse matters they no'te see . but rayes down sent from higher sourse the mind do maken pure , do clear , do subtilise , do fix , do settle sure . that if so be she list to bend her will to lesser matters , she would it perform more excellently with more art and skill : nor by long exercise her strength is worn ; witnesse wise socrates , from morn to morn that stood as stiff as any trunck of tree : what eye could bear in contemplation so long a fix'dnesse , none so long could see , it s watery tears would wail its frail infirmity . nor feeble eld , sure harbenger of death , doth hinder the free work of th' intellect . when th' eye growes dim and dark that it unneath can see through age , the mind then close collect into it self , such misteries doth detest by its far-piercing beams , that youthfull heat doth count them folly and with scorn neglect , his ignorance concludes them but deceit ; he hears not that still voyce , his pulse so loud doth beat . lastly sense , phansie , though they be confin'd to certain objects , which to severall belong ; yet sure the intellect or mind apprehends all objects , both corporeall , as colours , sounds ; and incorporeall , as virtue , wisdome , and the higher spright , gods love and beauty intellectuall ; so that its plain that she is higher pight then in all acts to pend on any earthly might . if will and appetite we list compare , like difference we easly there discover , this pent , contract , yfraught with furious jar and fierce antipathy . it boyleth over with fell revenge ; or if new chance to cover the former passion . suppose lust or fear . yet all are tumults , but the will doth hover no whit enslav'd to what she findeth here , but in a free suspense her self doth nimbly bear . mild , gentle , calm , quick , large , subtill , serene , these be her properties which do increase the more that vigour in the bodies vein doth waste and waxen faint . desires decrease when age the mundane spright doth more release from this strait mansion . but the will doth flower and fairly spread , near to our last decease embraceth god with much more life and power then ever it could do in its fresh vernall hower . . wherefore i think we safely may conclude that will and intellect do not rely upon the body , sith they are indew'd with such apparent contrariety of qualities to sense and phantasie , which plainly on the body do depend : so that departed souls free energie may well exert , when they have made an end of this vain life , nor need to lethe lake descend . the argument of antipsychop annychia . cant. . bondage and freedom's here set out by an inverted cone : the self-formd soul may work without incorporation . fountain of beings ! the vast deep abysse of life and love and penetrating will , that breaks through narrow night , and so transmisse at last doth find it self ! what mortall skill can reach this mysterie ? my trembling quill much lesse may set it forth ; yet as i may i must attempt this task for to fulfill . he guide my pen while i this work assay who all , through all himself doth infinitely display . my end 's loose largenesse and full libertie to finden out . most precious thing i ween . when centrall life it s outgone energie doth spreaden forth , unsneep'd by foe-man keen , and like unclouded sunne doth freely shine . this is right libertie , whose first idee and measure is that holy root divine of all free life , hight ahad , unitie : in all things he at once is present totally . each totall presence must be infinite : so is he infinite infinitie . those infinites you must not disunite : so is he one all-spreaden unitie . nor must you so out-spread this deitie , but that infinitie so infinite must be in every infinite : so we must multiplie this infinite single sight above all apprehension of a mortall wit. what is not infinitely infinite , it is not simply infinite and free : for straitnesse ( if you do conceive aright is the true daughter of deficiencie . but sith there 's no defect in unitie , or ahad , ahad this first centre hight in poetrie as yet to vulgar eye unpublish'd ) him first freedome infinite we may well style . and next is that eternall light ; sonne unto ahad , aeon we him name ( in that same poeme ) like his father free , even infinitely free i him proclaim every where all at once . and so is she which psyche hight : for perfect unitie makes all those one . so hitherto we have unmeasurable freedome . semele is next , whom though fair fluttering forms embrave , yet motion and defect her libertie deprave . imagination's not infinite , yet freer farre then sense ; and sense more free then vegetation or spermatick spright . even absent things be seen by phantasie ; by sense things present at a distancie ; but that spermatick spright is close consin'd within the compasse of a stupid tree , imprison'd quite in the hard rugged rind , yet there defective reduplication we find : farre more defective then in phantasie or sense ; yet freer is the plastick spright then quantitie , or single qualitie , like quantitie it self out stretched right devoid of all reduplicative might : if any such like qualities there were so dull , so dead , so all devoid of light as no communicative rayes to bear ; if there be such to hyle they do verge most near . but hyle's self is perfect penurie , and infinite straitnesse : here we finden nought , nor can do ought . if curiously we prie into this mirksome corner quite distraught from our own life and being , we have brought our selves to nothing or the sooth to sayen the subtilest soul herself hath never wrought into so strait a place , could nere constrain herself to enter , or that hagge to entertain . lo ! here 's the figure of that mighty cone , from the strait cuspis to the wide-spread base , which is even all in comprehension . what 's infinitely nothing here hath place ; what 's infinitely all things steddie stayes at the wide basis of this cone inverse , yet it s own essence doth it swiftly chace , oretakes at once ; so swiftly doth it pierce that motion here 's no motion . suppose the sunne so much to mend his pace , that in a moment he did round the skie , the nimble night how swiftly would he chace about the earth ? so swift that scarce thine eye could ought but light discern . but let him hie so fast , that swiftnesse hath grown infinite , in a pure point of time so must he flie around this ball , and the vast shade of night quite swallow up , ever steddie stand in open sight . for that which from its place is not away one point of time , how can you say it moves ? wherefore the sunne doth alwayes steddie stay in our meridian , as this reason proves . and sith that in an instant round he roves , the same doth hap in each meridian line ; for in his instantaneous removes he in them all at once doth fairly shine , nor that large stretchen space his freenesse can confine . the sunne himself at once stands ●…n each point of his diurnall circle . thus we see that rest and motion cannot be disjoynt , when motion 's swift even to infinitie . here contrarieties do well agree , eternall shade and everlasting light with one another here do well complie ; instant returns of night make one long night . wherefore infinitie is freedome infinite . no hinderance to ought that doth arrive to this free camp of fair elysium : but nearer that to hyle things do dive , they are more pent , and find much lesser room . thus sensuall souls do find their righteous doom which nemesis inflicts , when they descend from heavenly thoughts that from above do come to lower life , which wrath and grief attend , and scorching lust , that do the souls high honour blend . wherefore the soul cut off from lowly sense by harmlesse fate , far greater libertie must gain : for when it hath departed hence ( as all things else ) should it not backward hie from whence it came ? but such divinitie is in our souls that nothing lesse then god could send them forth ( as plato's schools descrie ) wherefore when they retreat a free abode they 'll find , unlesse kept off by nemesis just rod. but if kept off from thence , where is she then ? she dwells in her own self , there doth reside , is her own world , and more or lesse doth pen her self , as more or lesse she erst did side with sense and vice , while here she did abide . steril defect and nere obtaind desire create a cone , whose cusp is not more wide then this worlds cone . here close-contracted fire doth vex , doth burn , doth scorch with searching heat & ire . nor easly can she here fall fast asleep to slake her anguish and tormenting pain : what drisling mists may here her senses steep ? what foggie fumes benumb her moistned brain ? the flitten soul no sense doth then retain . and sleep ariseth from a sympathie with these low sprights that in this bulk remain . but when from these the soul is setten free , what sleep may bind her from continuall energie ? here they 'll replie , it is not a grosse sleep that binds the soul from operation . but sith that death all phantasms clean doth wipe out of the soul , she no occasion can have of will or intellection . the corpse do rot , the spirit wide is spread , and with the mundane life fallen into one : so then the soul from these quite being fled , unmov'd of ought must lie , sunk in deep drowsihead . nought then she hath whereon to contemplate , her ancient phantasms melt and glide away , her spright suck'd back by all-devouring fate and spread abroad , those forms must needs decay that were therein imprinted . if they stay , yet sith the soul from them is disunite , into her knowledge they can never ray . so wants she objects the mind to excite : wherefore asleep she lies wrapt in eternall night . to which i answer , though she corporate vvith no world yet , by a just nemesis kept off from all ; yet she thus separate may oft be struck with potent rayes transmisse from divers worlds , that with such mockeries kindling an hungry fire and eagre will , they do the wretched soul but tantalize , and with fierce choking flames and furie fill , so vext , that if she could in rage herself she 'd kill . if any doubt of this perplexitie , and think so subtil thing can suffer nought : what 's gnawing conscience from impietie by highest parts of humane soul ywrought ? for so our very soul with pain is fraught , the body being in an easie plight . through all the senses when you have presly sought , in none of them you 'll find this sting empight : so may we deem this dart the soul it self to hit . again , when all the senses beybound in sluggish sloth , the soul doth oft create so mighty pain , so cruelly doth wound it self with tearing torture , such a state brings on herself , that none could tolerate . which must be in herself ; for once return'd unto her body new resuscitate from sleep , remembring well how erst she mourn'd , marvels how all so soon to peace and ease is turn'd . wherefore the soul it self receiveth pain from her own self , withouten sympathie with something else , whose miserie must constrain to deep compassion . so if struck she be with secret ray , or some strong energie of any world , or lives that there remain , she 's kept awake . besides fecunditie of her own nature surely doth contain innate idees ; this truth more fully i 'll explain . strong forward bearing will or appetite , a never wearied importunitie , is the first life of this deep centrall spright : thus thrusts she forth before her some idee whereby herself now actuall she doth see . her mighty fiat doth command each form t' appear : as did that ancient majestie this world of old by his drad word ●…form , and made the soul of man thus divine deiform . thus in a manner the humane soul creates the image of her will : when from her centre her pregnant mind she fairly explicates by actuall forms , and so doth safely enter to knowledge of her self . flush light she sendeth forth , and live idees : those be the glasse whereby the soul doth paint her . sweet centrall love sends out such forms as please ; but centrall hate or fear foul shapes with evill ease . the manner of her life on earth may cause diversity of those eruptions , for will , desire , or custome do dispose the soul to such like figurations . propension brings imaginations , unto their birth . and oft the soul le ts fly such unexpected eructations , that she her self cannot devisen why , unlesse she do ascribe it to her pregnancy . it is an argument of her forms innate which blazen out , perchance when none descry this light is lost , sense doth so radiate with mundane life , till this poore carcase die . as when a lamp , that men do sitten by , in some wide hall in a clear winter night , being blown out or wasted utterly , unwares they find a sly still silver light ; the moon the wall or pavement with mild raies hath dight . so when the oyl of this low life is spent , which like a burning lamp doth waste away ; or if blown out by fate more violent ; the soul may find an unexpected ray of light ; not from full faced cynthia , but her own fulnesse and quick pregnancy : unthought of life her nature may display unto her self ; not by forc'd industry , but naturally it sprouts from her fecundity . now sith adversion is a property so deeply essentiall to the rationall soul ? this light or life from her doth not so fly , but she goes with it as it out doth roll . all spirits that arround their raies extoll possesse each point of their circumference presentially . wherefore the soul so full of life , when it raies out with presse presence , oretakes each outgone beam ; apprends it by advertence . thus plainly we perceive the energie of the departed soul : if we could find strong reason to confirm th' innate idee , essentiall forms created with the mind . but things obscure no'te easly be defind , yet some few reasons i will venture at , to show that god's so liberall and kind as , when an humane soul he doth create , to fill it with hid forms and deep idees innate . well sang the wise empedocles of old , that earth by earth , and sea by sea we see , and heaven by heaven , and fire more bright than gold by flaming fire , so gentle love descry by love , and hate by hate . and all agree that like is known by like . hence they confesse that some externall species strikes the eye like to its object , in the self-same dresse . but my first argument hence i 'll begin to presse . if like be known by like , then must the mind innate idolums in it self contain , to judge the forms she doth imprinted find upon occasions . if she doth not ken these shapes that flow from distant objects , then how can she know those objects ? a dead glasse ( that light and various forms do gaily stain ) set out in open streets , shapes as they passe as well may see ; lutes heare each foaming diapase . but if she know those species outsent from distant objects ; tell me how she knows these species . by some other ? you nere ment to answer so . for straight the question goes unto another , and still forward flows even to infinity . doth the object serve its image to the mind for to disclose ? this answer hath as little sense or nerve : now reel you in a circle if you well observe . wherefore no ascititious form alone can make us see or hear ; but when this spright that is one with the mundane's hit upon ( sith all forms in our soul be counite and centrally lie there ) she doth beget like shapes in her own self ; that energie by her own centrall self who forth it let , is view'd . her centrall omniformity thus easly keepeth off needlesse infinity . for the quick soul by it self doth all things know . and sith withouten apt similitude nought's known , upon her we must needs bestow essentiall centrall forms , that thus endew'd with universall likenesse ever transmew'd into a representing energie of this or that , she may have each thing view'd by her own centrall self-vitality which is her self-essentiall omniformity . if plantall souls in their own selves contain that vitall formative fecundity , that they a tree with different colour stain , and divers shapes , smoothnesse , asperity , straightnesse , acutenesse , and rotundity , a golden yellow , or a crimson red , a varnish'd green , with such like gallantry ? how dull then is the sensitive ? how dead , if forms from its own centre it can never spread ? again , an universall notion , what object ever did that form impresse upon the soul ? what makes us venture on so rash a matter , as ere to confesse ought generally true ? when neverthelesse we cannot ever runne through all singulars . wherefore in our own souls we do possesse free forms and immateriall characters . hence 't is the soul so boldly generall truth declares . what man that is not dull or mad would doubt whether that truth ( for which pythagoras , when he by subtile studdy found it out , unto the muses for their helping grace an hecatomb did sacrifice ) may passe in all such figures wheresoever they be ▪ yet all rectangle triangles none has viewed as yet , none all shall ever see . wherefore this free assent is from th' innate idee . adde unto these incorporeity apprehended by the soul , when sense nere saw ought incorporeall . wherefore must she from her own self such subtile idols draw . again , this truth more clearly still to know , let 's turn again to our geometry . what body ever yet could figure show perfectly perfect , as rotundity exactly round , or blamelesse angularity ? yet doth the soul of such like forms discourse , and finden fault at this deficiency , and rightly term this better and that worse ; wherefore the measure is our own idee , which th' humane soul in her own self doth see . and sooth to saye●… when ever she doth strive to find pure truth , her own profundity she enters , in her self doth deeply dive ; from thence attempts each essence rightly to descrive . last argument , which yet is not the least , wise socrates dispute with theaetete concerning learning fitly doth suggest . a midwifes sonne ycleeped phenarete , he calls himself : then makes a quaint conceit , that he his mothers trade did exercise . all witlesse his own self yet well did weet by his fit questions to make others wise ; a midwife that no'te bear anothers birth unties . thus jestingly he flung out what was true , that humane souls be swoln with pregnancy of hidden knowledge , if with usage due they were well handled , they each verity would bringen forth from their fecunditie , wise framed questions would facilitate this precious birth , stirre up th' inward idee , and make it streme with light from forms innate . thus may a skilfull man hid truth clicitate . what doth the teacher in his action but put slight hints into his scholars mind ? which breed a solemn contemplation whether such things be so ; but he doth find the truth himself . but if truth be not sign'd in his own soul before , and the right measure of things propos'd , in vain the youth doth wind into himself , and all that anxious leasure in answering proves uselesse without that hid treasure . nor is his masters knowledge from him flit into his scholars head : for so his brain in time would be exhaust and void of wit , so would the sory man but little gain though richly paid . nor is 't more safe to sain as fire breeds fire , art art doth generate , the soul with corporeity 't would stain : such qualities outwardly operate , the soul within ; her acts there closely circulate . wherefore the soul it self by her idee , which is her self , doth every thing discover ; by her own centrall omniformity brings forth in her own self when ought doth move her ; till mov'd a dark indifferency doth hover . but fierce desire , and a strong piercing will makes her those hidden characters uncover . wherefore when death this lower life shall spill , or fear or love the soul with actuall forms shall fill . the argument of antipsychopannychia . cant. . departed souls by living night suckt in , for pinching wo no'te sleep ; or if with god unite , for joyes with which they flow . my hardest task is gone , which was to prove that when the soul by death's cut off from all , yet she within her self might live and move , be her own world , by life imaginall . but sooth to sain , 't seems not so naturall . for though a starre , part of the mundane spright , shine out with rayes circumferentiall so long as with this world it is unite ; yet what 't would do cut off , so well we cannot weet . but sith our soul with god himself may meet , ●…nacted by his life , i cannot see what scruple then remains that moven might least doubt , but that she wakes with open eye , when fate her from this body doth untie . wherefore her choisest forms do then arise , rowz'd up by union and large sympathy with gods own spright ; she plainly then descries such plenitude of life , as she could nere devise . if god even on this body operate , and shakes this temple when he doth descend , or with sweet vigour doth irradiate , and lovely light and heavenly beauty lend . such rayes from moses face did once extend themselves on sinai hill , where he did get those laws from gods own mouth , mans life to mend ; and from messias on mount saron set farre greater beauty shone in his disciples sight . al 's socrates , when ( his large intellect being fill'd with streaming light from god above ) to that fair sight his soul did close collect , that inward lustre through the body drove bright beams of beauty . these examples prove that our low being the great deity invades , and powerfully doth change and move . which if you grant , the souls divinity more fitly doth receive so high an energy . and that god doth illuminate the mind , is well approv'd by all antiquity ; with them philosophers and priests we find all one : or else at least philosophy link'd with gods worship and pure piety : witnesse pythagoras , aglaophemus , zoroaster , thrice-mighty mercury , wise socrates , nothing injurious , religious plato , and vice-taming orpheus . all these , addicted to religion , acknowledg'd god the fount of verity , from whence flows out illumination upon purg'd souls . but now , o misery ! to seek to god is held a phantasie , but men hug close their loved lust and vice , and deem that thraldome a sweet liberty ; wherefore reproch and shame they do devise against the braver souls that better things emprise . but lo ! a proof more strong and manifest : few men but will confesse that prophesie proceeds from god , when as our soul 's possest by his all-seeing spright ; al 's ecstasie wherein the soul snatch'd by the deity , and for a time into high heaven hent doth contemplate that blest divinity . so paul and john that into patmos went , heard and saw things inestimably excellent . such things as these men jointly do confesse to be from gods immediate energie , but if that god ought on the soul impresse before it be at perfect liberty , quite rent from this base body ; when that she is utterly releast , she 'll be more fit to be inform'd by that divine idee hight logos , that doth every man enlight that enters into life , as speaks the sacred writ . behold a fit resemblance of this truth , the sunne begetteth both colours and s●…ght , each living thing with life his heat indew'th , he kindles into act each plastick spright : thus he the world with various forms doth dight , and when his vigour hath fram'd out an eye in any living wight , he fills with light that organ , which can plainly then descry the forms that under his far-shining beams do ly . even so it is with th' intellectuall sunne , fountain of life , and all-discovering light , he frames our souls by his creation , al 's he indews them with internall sight , then shines into them by his lucid spright . but corporall life doth so obnubilate our inward eyes that they be nothing bright . while in this muddy world 〈◊〉 they lie , and with blind passions be intoxicate . fear , anger , hope , fierce vengeance , and swoln hate , tumultuous joy , envy and discontent , self-love , vain-glory , strife and fell debate , unsatiate covetise , desire impotent , low-sinking grief , pleasure , lust violent , fond emulation , all these dim the mind that with foul filth the inward eye yblent , that light that is so near it cannot find . so shines the sunne unseen on a trees rugged rind . but the clean soul by virtue purifi'd collecting its own self from the foul steem , of earthly life , is often dignify'd , with that pure pleasure that from god doth streem , often's enlighten'd by that radiant beam , that issues forth from his divinity , then feelingly immortall she doth deem her self , conjoynd by so near unity with god , and nothing doubts of her eternity . nor death nor sleep nor any dismall shade of low contracting life she then doth fear , no troubled thoughts her settled mind invade , th' immortall root of life she seeth clear , wisheth she were for ever grafted here : no cloud , no darknesse , no deficiency in this high heavenly life doth ere appear ; redundant fulnesse , and free liberty , easie flowing knowledge , never weary energy , broad open sight , eternall wake fulnesse , withouten labour or consuming pain : the soul all these in god must needs possesse when there deep-rooted life she doth obtain , as i in a few words shall maken plain . this bodies life by powerfull sympathy the soul to sleep and labour doth constrain , to grief , to wearinesse and anxiety , in fine , to hideous sense of dread mortality . but sith no such things in the deity are to be found ; she once incorporate with that quick essence , she is setten free from ought that may her life obnubilate , what then can her contract or maken strait ? for ever mov'd by lively sympathy with gods own spright , an ever-waking state she doth obtain . doth heavens bright blazing eye ever close , ywrapt in sleep and dead obscurity ? but now how full and strong a sympathy is caused by the souls conjunction vvith the high god , i 'll to you thus descry . all men will grant that spread dispersion must be some hinderance to close union : al 's must confesse that closer unity more certainly doth breed compassion ; not that there 's passion in the deity , but something like to what all men call sympathy . now sith the soul is of such subtlety , and close collectednesse , indispersion , full by her centrall omniformity , pregnant and big without distension , she once drawn in by strong attraction should be more perfectly there counite in this her high and holy union then with the body , where dispersion's pight . ( but such hard things i leave to some more learned wight ) the first pure being's perfect unity , and therefore must all things more strongly bind then lives corporeall , which dispersed be . he also the first goodnesse is defin'd wherefore the soul most powerfully's ●…nclin'd , and strongly drawn to god. but life that 's here , when into it the soul doth closely wind , is often sneep'd by anguish and by fear , with vexing pain and rage that she no'●… easly bear . farre otherwise it fares in that pure life that doth result in the souls unitie with god : for there the faster she doth strive to tie herself , the greater libertie and freer welcome , brighter puritie she finds , and more enlargement , joy and pleasure overflowing , yet without satietie , sight without end , and love withouten measure : this needs must close unite the heart to that hid treasure . this plainly's seen in that mysterious cone which i above did fairly well descrive : there freenesse and incarceration were plainly setten forth . what down doth dive into the straitned cuspis needs must strive with stringent bitternesse , vexation , anxious unrest ; in this ill plight they live : but they that do ascend to th' top yflown be free , yet fast unite to that fair vision . thus purged souls be close conjoynd to god , and closer union surer sympathie ; wherefore so long as they make their abode in him , incorporate by due unitie they liven in eternall energie . for israels god nor slumbers , nor doth sleep ; nor israel lost in dull lethargie must listlesse lie , while numbing streams do steep his heavy head , overwhelmed in oblivion deep . but here more curious men will straight enquire , whither after death the wicked soul doth go , that long hath wallowed in the sinfull mire . before this question i shall answer to , again the nature of the soul i 'll show . she all things in herself doth centrally contain ; what ever she doth feel or know , she feels or knows it by th' innate idee : she 's allproportion'd by her omniformitie . god , heaven , this middle world , deep-glimmering hell with all the lives and shapes that there remain , the forms of all in humane souls do dwell ; she likewise all proportions doth contain that sits her for all sprights . so they constrain by a strong pulling sympathie to come , and straight possesse that fitting vitall vein that 'longs unto her , so her proper roon she takes as mighty nemesis doth give the doom . now ( which i would you presly should observe ) though oft i have with tongue balbutient prattled to th' weaker care ( lest i should sterve my style with too much subtiltie ) i nere ment to grant there 's any such thing existent as a mere body : for all 's life , all spright , though lives and sprights be very different . three generall sprights there be , ●…ternall light is one , the next our world , the last infernall night . this last lies next unto old nothingnesse hight hyle , whom i term'd point of the cone : her daughter night is full of bitternesse , and strait constraint , and pent privation : her sturdie ray's scarce conquer'd by the moon . the earths great shade breaks out from this hid spright , and active is ; so soon the sunne is gone , doth repossesse the aire shotten forth right from its hid centrall life , ycleep'd infernall night . in this drad world is scorching phlegel●…n , hot without flame , burning the vexed sense ; there hatefull styx and sad cocytus run , and silent acheron . all drink from hence , from this damn'd spright receiven influence , that in our world or poyson do outspue or have an uggly shape and foul presence : that deadly poison and that direfull hue from this nocturnall spright these uggly creatures drew . this is the seat of gods eternall ire , when unmixt vengeance he doth fully powre upon foul souls fit for consuming fire : fierce storms and tempests strongly doth he showre upon their heads : his rage doth still devoure the never-dying soul. here satanas hath his full swing to torture every houre the grisly ghosts of men , when they have passe from this mid world to that most direfull dismall place . did nature but compile one mighty sphere of this dark stygian spright , and close collect its scatter'd being , that it might appear aloft in the wide heaven , it would project dark powerfull beams , that solar life ycheckt with these dull choking rayes , all things would die , infernall poyson the earth would infect , incessant showrs of pitchie shafts let flie against the sunne with darknesse would involve the skie . nor is my muse wox mad , that thus gives life to night or darknesse , sith all things do live . but night is nothing ( straight i 'll end that strife ) doth nought impressions to the sense derive ? if without prejudice you 'll deigne to dive into the matter , as much realtie to darknesse as to coldnesse you will give . both night and coldnesse have their energie , both strike the sense , they both have reall entitie . again , 't is plain that that nocturnall spright sends forth black eben-beams and mirksome rayes , because her darknesse as the sunne his light more clearly doth reflect on solid place . as when a wall , a shade empighten has upon it , sure that shade farre darker is then is the aire that lies in the mid space . what is the reason ? but that rayes emisse from centrall night the walls reflection multiplies . the light 's more light that strikes upon the wall , and much more strongly there affects the eye , then what 's spread in the space aereall : so 't is with shadows that amid do lie in the slight aire ; there scarce we them descrie , but when they fall upon the wall or ground , they gain a perfect sensibilitie . scarce ought in outgone light is to be found but this nocturnall ray's with like indowments crown'd . but why doth my half-wearied mind pursue dim sculking darknesse , a fleet nimble shade ? if moses and wise solomon speak true , what we assert may safely well be said . did not a palpable thick night invade the land of egypt , such as men might feel and handle with their hands ? that darknesse ray'd from nether hell , and silently did steal on th' enemies of god , as scripture doth reveal . the womb of night then fully flowred cut : for that all-swaying endlesse majestie which penetrateth those wide worlds throughout , this thin spread darknesse that dispers'd doth lie summon'd by his drad voice , and strong decree . much therefore of that spirit close u●…te into one place did strike the troubled eye with horrid blacknesse , and the hand did smite with a clam pitchie ray shot from that centrall night . this centrall night or universall spright of wo , of want , of balefull bitternesse , of hatred , envy , wrath , and fell despight , of lust , of care , wasting disquietnesse , of warre , contention , and bloud-thirstinesse , of zeal , of vengeance , of suspicion of hovering horrour , and sad pensivenesse , this stygian stream through all the world doth run , and many wicked souls unto it self hath wonne . lo ! here 's the portion of the hypocrite , that serveth god but in an outward show . but his drad doom must passe upon his spright , where it propends there surely must he go . due vengeance neither sleepeth nor is slow . hell will suck in by a strong sympathie what 's like unto it self : so down they flow , devouring anguish and anxietie do vex their souls , in piteous pains , alas ! they lie . thus with live hell be they concorporate , united close with that self-gnawing spright : and this i wote will breed no sleeping state ; who here descends finds one long restlesse night may this the dreaming psychopannychite awake , and make him seriously prepare and purge his heart , lest this infernall might suck in his soul 'fore he be well aware . kill but the seeds of sinne then are you past this fear . thus have i prov'd by the souls union with heaven and hell , that she will be awake when she from this mid nature is ygone . but still more curious task to undertake ; and spenden time to speak of lethe lake , and whether at least some souls fall not a sleep . ( which if they do of hell they do partake ) whether who liv'd like plant or grazing sheep , who of nought else but sloth and growth doth taken keep ; whose drooping phansie never flowred out , who relish'd nought but this grosse bodies food , who never entertaind an active thought , but like down-looking beasts was onely mov'd to feed themselves , whither this drousie mood so drench the lowring soul and inly sleep that she lies senselesse drownd in lethe floud ; who will let dive into this mysterie deep : into such narrow subtilties i list not creep . but well i wote that wicked crueltie , hate , envie , malice , and ambition , bloud-sucking zeal , and lawlesse tyrannie , in that nocturnall spright shall have their wonne , which like this world admits distinction . but like will like unto it strongly draw : so every soul shall have a righteous doom . according to our deeds god will bestow rewards : unto the cruell he 'll no mercie show . where 's nimrod now , and dreadfull hannibal ? where 's that ambitious pert pellean lad , whose pride sweld bigger then this earthly ball ? where 's cruel nero , with the rest that had command , and vex'd the world with usage bad ? they 're all sunk down into this nether hell ; who erst upon the nations stoutly strad are now the devils footstool . his drad spell those vassals doth command , though they with furie swell . consuming anguish , styptick bitternesse , doth now so strangle their imperious will , that in perpetuall disquietnesse they roll and rave , and roar and rage their fill , like a mad bull that the slie hunters skill hath caught in a strong net . but more they strive the more they kindle that tormenting ill . woe 's me ! in what great miserie they live ! yet wote i not what may these wretched thralls relieve . the safest way for us that still survive is this , even our own lust to mortifie ; so gods own will will certainly revive thus shall we gain a perfect libertie , and everlasting life . but if so be we seek our selves with ardent hot desire , from that infernall night we are not free ; but living hell will kindle a fierce fire . and with uncessant pains our vexed soul will tire . then the wild phansie from its horrid wombe will senden forth foul shapes . o horrid sight . overgrown toads fierce serpents thence will come , red-scaled dragons with deep burning light in their hollow eye-pits : with these she must fight ; then thinks her self ill wounded , sorely stung . old fulsome hags with scabs and skurf bedight , foul tarry spittle tumbling with their tongue on their raw lether lips , these near will to her clung , and lovingly salute against her will , closely embrace , and make her mad with wo ; she 'd lever thousand times they did her kill , then force her such vile basenesse undergo . anon some giant his huge self will show , gaping with mouth as vast as any cave , with stony staring eyes , and footing slow : she surely deems him her live-walking grave , from that dern hollow pit knows not her self to save . after a while , tost on the ocean main a boundlesse sea she finds of misery ; the fiery snorts of the leviathan ( that makes the boyling waves before him fly ) she hears , she sees his blazing morn-bright eye : if here she scape , deep gulfs and threatning rocks her frighted self do straightway terrifie ; steel-coloured clouds with rattling thunder knocks , with these she is amaz'd , and thousand such like mocks . all which afflict her even like perfect sense : for waxen mad with her sore searching pain she cannot easly find the difference , but toils and tears and tugs , 〈◊〉 all in vain ; her self from her own self she cannot strain . nocturnall life hath now let ope th' idee of innate darknesse , from this fulsome vein the soul is fill'd with all deformity . but night doth stirre her up to this dread energie . but here some man more curious then wise perhaps will ask , where night or hell may be : for he by his own self cannot devise , sith chearfull light doth fill the open sky . and what 's the earth to the souls subtilty ? such men i 'd carry to some standing pool , down to the water bid them bend their eye , they then shall see the earth possest and full of heaven , dight with the sunne , or starres that there do roll . or to an hill where 's some deep hollow cave dreadfull for darknesse ; let them take a glasse , when to the pitchie hole they turned have their instrument , that darknesse will find place even in the open sunne-beams , at a space which measures twice the glasses distancy from the caves mouth . this well discovered has how hell and heaven may both together lie , sith darknesse safely raies even in the sunnie skie . but cease , my restlesse muse , be not so free ; thy chiefest end thou hadst accomplished long since , shak'd of the psychopannychie ; and rouz'd the soul from her dull drousiehead ; so nothing now in death is to be dred of him that wakes to truth and righteousnesse : the bulk lies here , the soul aloft is fled unto the fount of perfect happinesse . full freedome , joy , and peace she lively doth possesse . the argument of antimonops yc hia. the all-devouring unity of souls i here disprove ; show how they bear their memory with them when they remove . who yields himself to learning and the muse , is like a man that leaves the steddy shore , and skims the sea . he nought then can refuse what ever is design'd by neptunes power , is fiercely drove in every stormy stoure , slave to the water and the whisling wind : even so am i , that whylom meant recover the wished land , but now against my mind am driven fiercely back , and so new work do find . what though the rationall soul immortall be , and safely doth exist this bulk being gone , and then existing hath full energie perfectly wake , if all souls be but one ? or , though a number , if oblivion of all things past , put them in such a state that they can no-wise guesse that ere upon this earth they trode , even this seems to abate their happinesse . they 'll deem themselves then first create . wherefore to ease us of this double doubt , with mighty force great phoebus doth inspire my raving mind . he 'll bear me strongly out , till i have perfected his own desire ; nor will he suffer me once to respire till i have brought this song unto an end . o may it be but short though a quick fire ! such rage and rapture makes the body bend , doth waste its fading strength and fainting spirits spend . now comes the story of praxitele : into my mind , whom looking in a glasse , with surly countenance , it did much displease , that any should so sourely him outface ; yet whom he saw his dogged self it was : tho he with angry fist struck his own shade . thus he the harmlesse miroir shattered has to many shivers ; the same shapes invade each piece , so he a many surly sad faces made . these shapes appeard from the division of the broke glasse : so rasher phansies deem the rationall soul ( whom they suppose but one ) by the divided matter many to seem : disjoined bulks broke glasses they esteem : which if they did into one substance flow , one single soul in that one glasse would sheen ; if that one substance also were ygo , one onely soul is left , the rest were but a show . well is their mind by this similitude explaind . but now le ts sift the verity of this opinion , and with reason rude rub , crush , touze , rifle this fine phantasie , as light and thin as cob-webs that do fly in the blew aire , caus'd by th' antumnall sun , that boils the dew that on the earth doth lie . may seem this whitish rag then is the scum , unlesse that wiser men make 't the field-spiders loom . but such deep secrets willingly i leave to grand philosophers . i 'll forward go in my proposed way . if they conceive there 's but one soul ( though many seem in show ) which in these living bodies here below doth operate ( some such opinion that learned arab held hight aven-roe ) how comes't to passe that she 's so seldome known in her own self ? in few she thinks her self but one . seems not this soul or intellect very dull , that in so few she can her self discover to be but one in all , though all be full of her alone ? besides , no soul doth love her because she sucks up all : but what would move her thus to detest her self , if one she be in all mens bodies ? right reason surely dtove her thus to condemne this lonesome unitie of mind or soul : which reason 's her own energy . thoughts good and bad that universall mind must take upon it self ; and every ill , that is committed by all humane kind , they are that souls . alas , we have no will , no free election , nor yet any skill , but are a number of dull stalking trees that the universall intellect doth fill with its own life and motion : what it please that there it acts . what strange absurdities are these ? all plotted mischief that sly reason wrought , all subtill falsities that nimbly fly about the world , that soul them all hath brought ; then upon better thoughts with penalty doth sore afflict her self , doth laugh and cry at the same time . here aristophanes doth maken sport with some spruse comedie ; there with some tragick strain sad sophocles strikes the spectatours hearts , makes many weeping eyes . such grief this soul must in her self conceive and pleasure at one time . but here you 'll say we ought not grief nor pleasure for to give unto the soul. to what then ? this live clay ? it feels no grief if she were gone away : therefore the soul at once doth laugh and cry . but in this argument i 'll no longer stay , but forward on with swifter course will hie , and finden out some grosser incongruity . let now two men conceiven any form within their selves , suppose of flaming fire ; if but one soul doth both their corpse inform , there 's but one onely species intire . for what should make it two ? the idee of fire , that is but one , the subject is but one , one onely soul that all men doth inspire . let one man quench that form he thought upon , that form is now extinct and utterly ygone ; so that the other man can think no longer , which all experience doth prove untrue . but yet i 'll further urge with reason stronger , and still more clearly this fond falshood shew . can contraries the same subject imbew ? yes ; black and white , heat , cold may both possesse the mind at once ; but they a nature new do there obtain , they 're not grosse qualities , but subtill sprights that mutually themselves no●…e presse : but contradiction , can that have place in any soul ? plato affirms idees ; but aristotle with his pugnacious race as idle figments stifly them denies . one soul in both doth thus philosophise , concludes at once contradictoriously to her own self . what man can here devise a fit escape , if ( what 's sure verity ) he do but grant the souls indivisibility ? which stifly is maintaind in that same song which is ycleeped psychathanasie , and safely well confirmd by reasons strong : wherefore i list not here that truth to trie , but wish the reader to turn back his eye , and view what there was faithfully displaid . now if there be but one centrality of th' universall soul which doth invade all humane shapes ; how come these contradictions made ? for that one soul is judge of every thing , and heareth all philosophers dispute ; it self disputes in all that jangling , in reasoning fiercely doth it self confute , and contradictions confidently conclude : that is so monstrous that no man can think to have least shew of truth . so this pursuit i well might now leave off : what need i swink to prove what 's clearly true , and force out needlesse ink . again , she would the same thing will and nill at the same time . besides , all men would have the self-same knowledge , art , experience , skill ; the frugall parent might his money save , the pedagoge his pains : if he engrave his grammer precepts but in one boyes mind , or decent manners : he doth thus embrave vvith single labour all the youth you 'll find under the hollow heavens , they 'll be alike enclin'd . and every man is skill'd in every trade , and every silent thought that up doth spring in one mans breast , doth every man invade ; no counsel-keeper , nor no secret thing vvill then be found ; they 'll need no whispering nor louder voice . let orators be dumb , nor need the eager auditours make a ring ; though every one keep himself close at home , the silent preachers thoughts through all the world will roam , find each man out , and in a moment hit vvith unavoyded force : or sooth to sain they all begin at once to think what 's sit , and all at once anon leave off again . a thousand such incongruities vain vvill follow from that first absurdity , vvhich doth all souls into one centre strain , and make them void of self-centrality . strange soul from whence first sprong so uncouth falsity . now all the arguments that i have brought for to disprove the souls strange solitude , that there is not one onely soul , well mought be urg'd ( and will with equall strength conclude ) to prove that god his creature hath indewd with a self centrall essence , which from his doth issue forth , with proper rayes embewd , and that not all the very godhead is : for that would straight beget the like absurdities . for he is indivisibly one being , at once in every place , and knoweth all ; he is omnipotent , infinite in seeing : wherefore if creatures intellectuall ( and in that order humane souls will fall ) were god himself , they would be alike wise , know one anothers thoughts imaginall , which no man doth : such falshoods would arise with many more , which any idiot might well despise . nor will mens souls that now be different be god himself hereafter , and all one : for thus they were quite lost ; their life ylent and subtill being quite away are flone . this is a perfect contradiction , they are all one with god , and yet they are . if they be one with god , then they alone did make themselves , and every rolling starre : for god alone made these , and god himself they are . before the sunne and all the host of heaven , the earth , the sea , and mans deep centrall spright ; before all these were made , was not god even with his own self ? what then him moven might to waste his words and say , let there be light , if the accomplishment of all things be , that all be god himself . this is not right . no more perfection , no more energie there will be then , then at the former nullity . or will you say , that god himself delights to do and undo ? but how can this stand with self-sufficiency ? there 's nought that might adde to his happinesse ( if i understand his nature right . ) but he with open hand doth easly feed the creature that he made as easly . wherefore if the truth be scand this goodnesse would that nought should be decay'd ; his mind is all should live ; no life he would should fade . but if the finall consummation of all things make the creature deiform , as plato's school doth phrase it ; there is none that thence need fear to come to any harm : for god himself will then inact , inform , and quicken humane souls at the last day ; and though the devill rore , and rage , and storm , yet deaths drad power shall be done away , nor living night on men its poysonous beams shall ray . he hasten it that makes that glorious day ! for certainly it is no fearfull thing but unto pride , and love of this base clay : it 's their destruction , but the perfecting of the just souls . it unto them doth bring their full desire , to be more close unite with god , and utter cleans'd from all their sin . long was the world involv'd in cloudy night , but at the last will shine the perfect christian light . thus the souls numerous plurality i have prov'd , and shew'd she is not very god ; but yet a decent deiformity have given her : thus in the middle trod i safely went , and fairly well have row'd as yet . part of my voyage is to come , which is to prove that the souls new aboad in heaven or hell ( what ever is her doom ) nought hinders but past forms even there again may bloom . which if they did not , she could never tell why she were thus rewarded , wherefore ●…ll or good she doth enjoy , whether ill or well she lived here . remembrance death did spill . but otherwise it fares ; as was her will and inclination of her thirsty spright , impressions of like nature then doth fill her lively mind , whether with sad affright disturb'd , which she long feard ; or in hop'd-for delight . the life that here most strongly kindled was ( sith she awakes in death ) must needs betray the soul to what nearest affinity has with her own self ; and likenesses do sway the mind to think of what ever did play in her own self with a like shape or form ; and contraries do help the memory : so if the soul be left in case forlorn , remembrance of past joy makes her more deeply mourn . 't is also worth our observation , that higher life doth ever comprehend the lower energie : sensation the soul some fitten hint doth promptly lend to find out plantall life ; sense is retaind in subtiller manner in the phantasie ; al 's reason phantasies doth well perpend : then must the highest of all vitality contain all under life . thus is there memory . this faculty is very intimate and near the centre , very large and free , extends it self to whatsoever that the soul peracts there is no subtilty of intellect , of will , no energy of sense , nor uncouth strange impression from damned night , or the blest deity , but of all these she hath retention , and of their former being makes a prompt agnition . this memorie the very bond of life you may well deem . if it were cut away our being truly then you might contrive into a point of time . the former day were nought at all to us : when once we lay our selves to sleep , we should not know at morn that e're we were before ; nor could we say a whit of sense : so soon as off we turn one word , that 's quite forgot . coherence thus is torn . now sith it is of such necessitie , and is the bundle of the souls duration , the watchman of the soul , lest it should flie or steal from its own self , a sure fixation and centrall depth it hath , and free dilation , that it takes notice of each energie of intellect , sense , or imagination : wherefore this virtue no dependencie hath of this body , must be safe when it doth die . but if dispersed lifes collection , which is our memorie , safely survive ( which well it may , sith it depends not on the mundane spirit ) what can fitly drive it into action ? in heaven it doth live so full of one great light , it hath no time to such low trifles , as past sights , to dive , such as she gathered up in earthly slime : foreknowledge of herself is lost in light divine . but can she here forget our radiant sunne ? of which its maker is the bright idee , this is her shadow ; or what she hath done now she 's rewarded with the deitie ? suppose it : yet her lifes centralitie so sprightly's quickned with near union with god , that now wish'd-for vitalitie is so encreas'd , that infinitely sh' has fun herself , her deep'st desire unspeakably hath wonne . and deep desire is the deepest act , the most profound and centrall energie , the very selfnesse of the soul , which backt with piercing might , she breaks out , forth doth flie from dark contracting death , and doth descrie herself unto herself ; so thus unfold that actuall life she straightwayes saith , is i. thus while she were in this live bulk infold , of this low life , as of herself oft tales she ●…old . in dangerous sicknesse often saith , i die ; when nought doth die but the low plantall man , that falls asleep : and while nature ●…oth tie the soul unto the body ; she nere can avoid it , but must feel the self-same pain , the same decay , if hereto she her mind do bend . when stupid cold her corse ●…reran , she felt that cold ; but when death quite doth bind the sense , then she herself doth dead and senselesse find . or else at least just at the enterance of death she feels that slie privation , how now it spreads ore all : so living sense perceives how sleep creeps on , till quite o'recome with drousinesse , animadversion doth cease : but ( lower sense then fast ybound ) the soul bestoweth her adversion on something else : so oft strange things hath found in sleep , from this dull carcase while she was unbound . so though the soul , the time she doth advert the bodies passions takes her self to die ; yet death now finish'd , she can well convert herself to other thoughts . and if the eye of her adversion were fast sixt on high . in midst of death 't were no more fear or pain , then 't was unto elias to let flie his uselesse mantle to that hebrew swain , while he rode up to heaven in a bright fierie wain . thus naved stoutly rescued the soul from centrall death or pure mortalitie , and from the listlesse flouds of lethe dull , and from the swallow of drad unitie , and from an all-consuming deitie . what now remains , but since we are so sure of endlesse life , that to true pietie we give our minds , and make our conscience pure , lest living night in bitter darknesse us inmure . finis . a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of apollo , when he was consulted by amelius whither plotinus soul went when he departed this life . i tune my strings to sing some sacred verse of my dear friend ; in an immortall strein his mighty praise i loudly will reherse with hony-dewed words : some golden vein the strucken chords right sweetly shall resound . come , blessed muses , let 's with one joint noise , with strong impulse , and full harmonious sound , speak out his excellent worth . advance your voice , as once you did for great aeacides , wrapt with an heavenly rage , in decent dance , mov'd at the measures of meonides . go to , you holy quire , let 's all at once begin , and to the end hold up the song . into one heavenly harmonie conspire ; i phoebus with my lovely locks y●…ong the midst of you shall sit , and life inspire . divine plotinus ! yet now more divine then when thy noble soul so stoutly strove in that dark prison , where strong chains confine , keep down the active mind it cannot move to what it loveth most . those fleshly bands thou now hast loos'd , broke from necessitie . from bodies storms , and frothie working sands of this low restlesse life now setten free , thy feet do safely stand upon a shore , which foaming waves beat not in swelling rage , nor angry seas do threat with fell uprore ; well hast thou swommen out , and left that stage of wicked actours , that tumultuous rout of ignorant men . now thy pure steps thou stay'st in that high path , where gods light shines about , and perfect right its beauteous beams displayes . how oft , when bitter wave of troubled flesh , and whirl-pool-turnings of the lower spright , thou stoutly strov'st with , heaven did thee refresh , held out a mark to guide thy wandring flight , while thou in tumbling seas didst strongly toyl to reach the steddie land , struckst with thy arms the deafing surges , that with rage do boyl ; stear'd by that signe thou shunn'st those common harms . how oft , when rasher cast of thy souls eye had thee misguided into crooked wayes , wast thou directed by the deitie ? they held out to thee their bright lamping rayes : dispers'd the mistie darknesse , safely set thy feeble feet in the right path again . nor easie sleep so closely ere beset thy eyelids , nor did dimnesse ere so stain thy radiant sight , but thou such things didst see even in that tumult , that few can arrive of all are named from philosophie to that high pitch , or to such secrets dive . but sith this body thy pure soul divine hath left , quite risen from her rotten grave , thou now among those heavenly wights dost shine , whose wonne this glorious lustre doth embrave : there lovely friendship , mild-smiling cupid's there , with lively looks and amorous suavitie , full of pure pleasure , and fresh flowring cheer ; ambrosian streams sprung from the deitie do frankly flow , and soft love-kindling winds do strike with a delicious sympathie those tender spirits , and sill up their minds with satisfying joy . the puritie of holy fire their heart doth then invade , and sweet perswasion , meek tranquillitie , the gentle-breathing aire , the heavens nought sad , do maken up this great felicitie . here rhadamanthus , and just aeacus , here minos wonnes , with those that liv'd of yore i' th' golden age ; here plato vigorous in holy virtue , and fair pythagore . these been the goodly of spring of great jove , and liven here , and whoso fill'd the quire and sweet assembly of immortall love , purging their spirits with refining fire ; these with the happie angels live in blisse , full fraught with joy , and lasting pure delight , in friendly feasts , and life-outfetching kisse . but , ah ! dear plotin , what smart did thy spright indure , before thou reach'st this high degree of happinesse ? what agonies , what pains thou underwent'st to set thy soul so free from baser life ? it now in heaven remains mongst the pure angels . o thrice-happy wight ! that now art got into the land of life , fast plac'd in view of that eternall light , and fitt'st secure from the foul bodies strife . but now , you comely virgins , make an end , break off this musick , and deft seemly round , leave off your dance : for plotin my dear friend thus much i meant my golden harp should sound . the interpretation of the more unusuall names or words that occurre in the foregoing poems . if any man conceive i have done amisse in using such obscure words in my writings , i answer , that it is sometime fit for poeticall pomp sake , as in my psychozoia : othersome time necessitie requires it , propter egestatem linguae , & rerum novitatem , as lucretius pleads for himself in like case . again , there is that significancie in some of the barbarous words ( for the greeks are barbarians to us ) that , although not out of superstition , yet upon due reason i was easily drawn to follow the counsel of the chaldee oracle , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not to change those barbarous terms into our english tongue . lastly , if i have offended in using such hard names or words , i shall make amends now by interpreting them . a ahad . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , one , or , the one. the platonists call the first originall of all things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for these reasons : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or one , because the multitude or pluralitie of beings is from this one , as all numbers from an unite : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the good , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because all things are driven drawn or make haste to partake of it . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , procl . theolog. plat. lib. . cap . abinoam . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , pater amoenitatis , father of delight . autocalon , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the very beauty . arachnea hath its name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a spider . adonai . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the lord , or the sustainer of all things , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the basis or foot of a pillar . autaestthesid , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , self sensednesse . adamah . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 earth , the earthly or naturall 〈◊〉 abode . autophilus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a lover of himself . anthropion , the same with adamah : onely adamah signifies earthlinesse ; anthropion from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , uprightnesse of body or looking up . alopecopolis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the fo●…es citie or politie . autaparnes , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . simon , autaparnes and hypomene are but the soul , thrice told over . autaparnes is the soul denying it self ; hypomone the soul bearing the anguish and agonie of this deniall of it self : from these two results simon , the soul obedient to the spirit of christ. now there is no self-deniall where there is no corrupt or evil life to be supprest and unsatisfied ; nor any patience or hypomone , where there is no agonie from the vexation of self-deniall . so that the soul , so long as it is autaparnes or hypomone , is a thing complex or concrete , necessarily including the corruption of that evil life or spirit , which is the souls self for a time . hence is that riddle easily opened , how the strength of autaparnes is the weakning of simon ; and the destruction of him and hypomone in the valley of ain simons consummation and perfection , or rather his translation or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . anautaesthetus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , one that feels not himself , or at least relisheth not himself . aelpon , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not hoping , or without hope . apterie , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from a negative , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a wing . it signifies the want of wings . apathie , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to be without passion . autopathie , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , denotates ●…he being self-strucken , to be sensible of what harms us , rather then what is absolutely evil . ain , not to be , to be nothing ; from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non , nihil , 〈◊〉 nemo . anautaestthesie , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , without self-sensednesse , or relishing ones self . aeon , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , eternitie . aether , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to burn . the fluid fier●… nature of heaven , the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifie as much . viz. a fierie fluour , or a fluid fire . aides . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it ordinarily signifies o●…cus or pluto ; here the ▪ winter sunne : the etymon fits both , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . hell is dark , and the sunne in winter leaves us to long nights . apogee , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is that absis or ark of the circle of a planet , in which the planet is further off from the earth , as the word it self intimates . autocineticall , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that which moves it self . africk rock . see pompon . mel. lib. . cap. . rom. . . . cor. . . . pet. . . revel . . . psal. . . ananke , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the same that hyle is . but the proper signification of the word is necessitie . see hyle . alethea-land , that is , the land of truth , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the platonists call it . acronychall . see cronychall . b beirah or beiron , the brutish life , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . brutum . bacha , weeping . bacha vale is the valley of tears ; from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 flevit . c chaos . in our blew chaos , that is , in our corporeall spirit . for that is the matter that the soul raiseth her phantasmaticall forms in , as the life of the world doth bodily shapes in the heavens or aire . cronychall or acronychall , that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , vespertine , or at the beginning of night . so a starre is said to rise or set acronychall when it riseth or setteth at the sunne-setting ; for then is the beginning of night . clare . claros a citie of ionia , famous for apollo's temple and answers , amongst which was this , which i have interpreted in psychathanasia : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , macrob. saturnal . lib. . cap. . d dizoia , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , double-livednesse . daemon , any particular life , any divided spirit ; or rather the power ruling in these . this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ●…ivido . duessa , division or dualitie . daemoniake , that which is according to that divided life or particular spirit , that rules for it self . dicaeosyne , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , justice or morall righteousnesse . diana , the moon , by which is set out the dead light or letter of the law . deuteropathie , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is a being affected at second rebound , as i may so say . we see the sunne not so properly by sympathie as deuteropathie . as the mundane spirit is affected where the sunne is , so am i in some manner ; but not presently , because it is so affected , but because in my eye the sunne is vigorously represented . otherwise a man might see the sunne if he had but a body of thin aire . e eidos , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , form or beautie . eloim . or eloah , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie , properly the strong god. entelechia , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : it is nothing else but forma , or actus , and belongs even to the most contemptible forms , as for example to motion , which is defined by arist ▪ in the third of his physicks , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . scaliger in his exercitation against cardan descants very curiously upon this word : cùm igitur formam dixeris ( that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) intelliges immaterialitatem , simplicitatem , potestatem , perfectionem , informationem . hoc enim est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : quod innuit maximus poetarum , totósque infusa per artus . hoc est , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : quia est ultima forma sub coelestibus , & princeps inferiorum , finis & perfectio . hoc'est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , posse . this goodly mysterie and fit significancie seems plainly forced or fictitious , if you compare it with what was cited out of arist , about motion , so that when we have made the best of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it is but the form of any thing in an ordinary and usuall sense . if we stood much upon words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would prove more significant of the nature of the soul , even according to scaligers own etymon , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : from its permeation and colligation or keeping together the bodie from defluxion into its ancient principles , which properties be included in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 moves forward the body thus kept together : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimates the possession or retention of the body thus mov'd , that it is rather promov'd by the soul then amov'd from the soul. but of these words enough , or rather too much . energie , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is the operation , efflux or activity of any being : as the light of the sunne is the energie of the sunne , and every phantasm of the soul is the energie of the soul. euphro●…a , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the night . g gabriel , the strength of god ; from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 robustus fuit , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deus . h hyle , materia prima , or that dark fluid potentiality of the creature ; the straitnesse , repugnancy and incapacity of the creature : as when its being this , destroyes or debilitates the capability of being something else , or after some other manner . this is all that any wary platonist will understand by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . in plutarchs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . hattove , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the good , or that eminent good or first good from whence all good is derived . see ahad . haphe , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the touch . hypomone , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , patience . see autaparnes . har-eloim , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the mount of angels , genii , or particular spirits . helios , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the sunne . heterogeneall , is that which consists of parts of a diverse nature or form : as for example , a mans body of flesh , bones , nerves , &c. homogeneall , that whose nature is of one kind . i idea-lond , the intellectuall world . idothea , the fleet passage of fading forms ; from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , forma , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , curro . ida. see pompon . mel. lib. . cap. . isosceles , a triangle with two sides equall . idiopathie , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is ones proper peculiar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , mine or thine , being affected thus or so upon this or that occasion ; as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is this or that mans proper temper . but this property of affection may also belong unto kinds . as an elephant hath his idiopathy and a man his , at the hearing of a pipe ; a cat and an eagle at the sight of the sunne ; a dogge and a circopithecus at the sight of the moon , &c. iao. a corruption of the tetragrammaton . greek writers have strangely mash'd this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , some calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is very likely that from this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 came bacchus his appellation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the maenades acclamations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in his orgia . which sutes well with the clarian oracle , which saith that in autumne , the sun is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is the time of vintage . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . see fullers miscel. . book . l logos , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the appellation of the sonne of god. it is ordinarily translated , the word , but hath an ample signification . it signifieth reason , proportion , form , essence , any inward single thought or apprehension ; is any thing but matter , and matter is nothing . leontopolis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the lions city or politie . lypon , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sorrow . m monocardia , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , single-heartednesse . myrmecopolis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the city or polity of pismires . michael , who like unto god ? from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 similitudinis , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deus . monad , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is unitas , the principle of all numbers , an emblem of the deity ; and so the pythagoreans call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god. it is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , stable and immoveable , a firm cube of it self . one time one time one remains still one . see ahad . n neurospast , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a puppet or any machina that's moved by an unseen string or nerve . o on , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the beeing . ogdoas , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , numerus octonarius , the number of ●…ight . onopolis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the asses city or politie . p psyche , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , soul or spirit . penia , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , want , or poverty . physis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , nature vegetative . proteus , vertumnus , changeablenesse . psychania , the land of souls . philosomatus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a lover of his body . psittacusa , the land of parots . pithecusa , the land of apes . pithecus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an ape . phobon , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , fear . phrenition , anger , impatiency , fury ; from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , phrensie or madnesse . ira furor brevis est . pantheothen , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all from god. which is true in one sense , false in another . you 'll easly discern the sense in the place you find the word . this passage of panthcothen contains a very savory & hearty reproof of all , be they what they will , that do make use of that intricate mystery of fate and infirmity , safely to guard themselves from the due reprehensions and just expostulations of the earnest messengers of god , who would rouse them out of this sleep of sin , and stirre them up seriously to seek after the might and spirit of christ , that may work wonderfully in their souls to a glorious conquest and triumph against the devil , death and corruption . pandemoniothen , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all from the devil ; viz. all false perswasions and ill effects of them . panoply , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , armour for the whole body . pteroessa , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the land of winged souls ; from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a wing . perigee , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is that absis or ark of a planets circle , in which it comes nearer the earth . psychicall , though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be a generall name and belongs to the souls of beasts and plants , yet i understand by life psychicall , such centrall life as is capable of aeon and ahad . parelies , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are rorid clouds which bear the image of the sunne . psittaco , don psittaco , from psittacus a parot , a bird that speaks significant words , whose sense notwithstanding it self is ignorant of . the dialogue betwixt this parot and mnemon sets out the vanity of all superficiall conceited theologasters , of what sect soever , having but the surface and thin imagination of divinity , but truly devoid of the spirit and in ward power of christ , the living well-spring of knowledge and virtue , and yet do pride themselves in pratling and discoursing of the most hidden and abstruse mysteries of god , and take all occasions to shew forth their goodly skill and wonderfull insight into holy truth , when as they have indeed scarce licked the out-side of the glasse wherein it lies . plastick , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is that 〈◊〉 might in the seed that shapes the body in its growth phantasme , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , any thing that the soul conceives in it self , without any present externall object . parallax , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is the distance betwixt the true and seeming place of a starre ; proceeding from the sensible difference of the centre , and the height of the superficies of the earth in reference to the starre , and from the stars declining from the zenith . protopathy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is a suffering or being affected at first , that is , without circulation . if any man strike me i feel immediately ; because my soul is united with this body that is struck : and this is protopat●…y . if the aire be struck aloof off , i am sensible also of that , but by circulation or propagation of that impression unto my eare ; and this is deuteropathy . see , deuteropathy . periphere , peripheria , it is the line that terminates a circle . q quadiate , a figure with foure equall sides and foure right angles . the rightnesse of the ●…ngles , is a plain embleme of erectnesse or uprightnesse of mind : the number of the sides , as also of the angles , being pariter par , that is equally divisible to the utmost unities ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as it is in aristotle ) intimates equity or ●…ustice . the sides are equall one with another and so are 〈◊〉 angles ; and the number of the sides and angles equall one with another . both the numbers put together are a number pariter par again , and constitute the first cube which is eight : that addes steddinesse and perseverance in true justice and uprightnesse toward god and man. hypomone bears all this , that is , all that dolour and vexation that comes from the keeping our perverse heart to so strait and streight a rule . r rhomboides , is a parallelogrammicall figure with unequall sides , and oblique angles . s sperm . it signifies ordinarily seed . i put it for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the ratio seminalis , or the invisible plasticall form that shapes every visible creature . solyma , or salem from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , peace . simon , intimates obedience from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , obedivit . semele , imagination ; from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , imago . scalen , a triangle with all sides unequall . t tasis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , extension . tagathon , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the good ; the same with hattove . u uranore , the light or beauty of heaven , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lux , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pulchritudo . z zeus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , jupiter , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ferveo , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , vivo . thus have i briefly run through the more obscure terms in my poems , which i shall god willing hereafter , if mens acceptance of these my first endeavours invite me to it , and mine own occasions permit , expound more sully , and speak more determinately of those speculations , which i now have but propos'd to mens more serious considerations , to weigh freely and warily , not so little a moment as the inconsiderable assent of the authour cast in , to prejudice their judgements . the drift of the whole book is this , to stirre men up to take into their thoughts , these two main points ; the heartie good will of god to mankind , even in the life of this world , made of the commixture of light and darknesse , that he will through his power rescue those souls , that are faithfull in this their triall , and preferre the light before the dark ; that he will , i say , deliver them from the power of living death , and hell , by that strong arm of their salvation , jesus christ , the living god enthron'd in the heart of man , to whom all the geni●… of the universe , be they never so goodly and glorious shall serve . they and all their curious devices and inventions shall be a spoil , prey , and a possession to him that is most just , and shall govern the nations in righteousnesse and equitie . and that , beside this happinesse on earth , every holy soul hereafter shall enjoy a never-fading felicitie in the invisible and eternall heaven , the intellectuall world . which if it be not true , i must needs confesse , it seems almost indifferent whether any creature be or no. for what is it to have lived suppose years , wherein we have been dead or worse above two third parts of them ? sleep , youth , age and diseases , with a number of poore and contemptible employments , swallow up at least so great a portion : that as good , if not better , is he that never was , then he is , that hath but such a glance or glimps of passing life to mock him . and although the succession of ●…ighteousnesse upon earth may rightly seem a goodly great and full spread thing , and a matter that may bear an ample correspondencie even to the larger thoughts of a good and upright man ; yet , to say the truth , no man is capable of any large inheritance , whose life and existence is so scant that he shall not be able so much as to dream of the least happinesse once seised on by death . but there are continually on earth such numbers of men alive , that if they liv'd well it would be an heaven or paradise . but still a scant one to every particular man , whose dayes are even as nothing . so that the work of god seems not considerable , in the making of this world , if humane souls be extinguished when they go out of it . you will say that those small particles of time that is thus scattered and lost among men in their successions , a●…e comprehended and collected in god who is a continuall witnesse of all things . but , alas ! what doth the perpetuall repetition of the same life or deiform image throughout all ages adde to him , that is at once infinitely himself , viz. good , and happy ? so that there is nothing considerable in the creation if the rationall creature be mortall . for neither is god at all profited by it , nor man considerably . and were not the angels a great deal better employed in the beholding the worth of their creatour , then to diminish their own happinesse , by attending those , whom nothing can make happie ? looking on this troubled passing stream of the perishing generations of men , to as little purpose almost , as idle boyes do on dancing blebs and bubbles in the water . what designe therefore can there be in god in the making of this world that will prove 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , worthy of so excellent a goodnesse and wisdome ; but the triall of the immortall spirit of man ? it seems the deepest reach of his counsel in the creation ; and the life of this world but a prelude to one of longer durance and larger circumference hereafter . and surely it is nothing else but the heavy load of this bodie , that keeps down our mind from the reaching to those so high hopes , that i may not say from a certain sense and feeling of that clear and undisturbd state of immortalitie . i will close all with the praise of those two main indowments of the mind , viz. charitie and humilitie , which certainly will make us meet eternall mansions for the ever-living deitie . but without these , mans soul after this life becomes but a den of devils , a dungeon of dark and restlesse phantasms , being incorporate into the ever-gnawing and corroding spirit of hell. an hymne in the honour of those two despised virtues , charitie and humilitie . farre have i clambred in my mind but nought so great as love●… find : deep-searching wit , mount moving might are nought compar'd to that good spright . life of delight and soul of blisse ! sure source of lasting happinesse ! higher then heaven ! lower then hell ! what is thy tent ? where maist thou dwell ? my mansion hight humilitie , heavens vastest capabilitie . the further it doth downward tend the higher up it doth ascend ; if it go down to utmost nought it shall return with that it sought . lord stretch thy tent in my stra●… breast , enlarge it downward , that sure rest may there be pight ; for that pure fire wherewith thou wontost to inspire all self-dead souls . my life is gone sad solitude is my irksome wonne . cut off from men and all this world in lethes lonesome ditch i am hurld . nor might nor sight doth ought me move , nor do i care to be above . o feeble rayes of mentall light ! that 〈◊〉 be seen in this dark night , what are you ? what is any strength if it be not laid in one length with pride or love ? i nought desire but a new life or quite t' expire . could i demolish with mine eye strong towers , stop the fleet starres in skie , bring down to earth the pale-fac'd moon , or turn black midnight to bright noon : though all things were put in my hand , as parch'd as dry as th' libyan sand would be my life if charity were wanting . but humility is more then my poore soul durst crave that lies intombd in lowly grave . but if 't were lawfull up to send my voice to heaven , this should it rend . lord thrust me deeper into dust that thou ●…ayst raise me with the just . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . finis . errata . psychozoia . p. . l. . reade ybrent . p. . l. . rage full rise . p. . l. . with all . p. d . . drearyhead . p. . l. . counts . psychathanasia . p. . l. . to spring . p. . l. . do . p. . l. . mov'd . p. . l. . where in . p. . l. . fell discontent . p. . l. . divisibilitie . p. . l. . lap , that . p. . l. . is . antipsychopannychia . p. . l. . -ruption , if . p. . l. . detect . antimonopsychia . p. . l. . his. notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e * this opinion , though it have its moments of reason , yet every mans judgement is left free , and will ever be , where there is no demonstration to bind it to assent . some cursory reflexions impartially made upon mr. richard baxter his way of writing notes on the apocalypse, and upon his advertisement and postcript / by phililicrines parrhesiastes. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) some cursory reflexions impartially made upon mr. richard baxter his way of writing notes on the apocalypse, and upon his advertisement and postcript / by phililicrines parrhesiastes. more, henry, - . [ ], p. printed for walter kettilby ..., london : . reproduction of original in huntington library. errata: p. 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ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng baxter, richard, - . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - judith siefring sampled and proofread - judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion some cursory reflexions impartially made upon mr. richard baxter his way of writing notes on the apocalypse , and upon his advertisement and postscript . by phililicrines parrhesiastes . dan. . . many shall be purified , and made white , and tried : but the wicked shall do wickedly , and none of the wicked shall understand , but the wise shall understand . london , printed for walter kettilby at the bishops-head in st. paul's church-yard . . the preface . reader , that thou mayst not misinterpret what is well-meant , nor think me over-severe in exposing the odd and indeed impious carriage of r. b. in his manner of demeaning himself in his pretence of writing notes upon the apocalypse , i will give thee a brief account what moved me to make these reflexions on this surprising performance of his . i did deeply resent the gross injury he has done , first , to the spirit of prophecy in the holy scriptures , and consequently to the whole church of christ , to which it is to be a guide , and is indeed a marvellous strong bulwark against atheism and infidelity . secondly , and more peculiarly , to the church of england . and lastly , to that industrious and faithful member thereof , dr. h. m. who has so sincerely laid out his pains ( having no bribe in his hand from any party , but the meer moments of naked truth to sway him ) in explaining the visions of the apocalypse and daniel ; and that , as for the good of the church in general , so particularly for the just interest of the church and crown of england , as well against all fanatical fury , as against all the finenesses of rome . and what an enormous outrage the first is , we may easily conceive from hence ; that by the same slight that he slurs the intelligibleness of the visions of the apocalypse , all the prophecies of the scripture may be slurred and made useless , as having no certain sense at all , because men have presumed to expound them differently . which plainly is to destroy the main strength and glory of our christian religion , and that support which is in such an extraordinary way peculiar to it ; no religion in the world being so confirmed by completion of prophecies , as it is . which completion of prophecies does not onely strengthen the christian religion , but is an assured sign of the truth of natural religion also , that there is a god , and providence , and spirits or angels , and an immortal spirit in man , and a life to come . all which advantages r. b. gives away in an unaccountable freak of scepticism , and an affected professing ( after an operose proposing of the diverse interpretations of writers on the apocalypse ) that he knows not which is true . the sense of which dealing , to any man that is not shallow witted , must needs seem an ostentation of his singular nasuteness , that when others are such fools as to think they understand these prophecies , he discerns that they are plainly unintelligible , and so in an overweening conceit of his own perspicacity and discernment , proudly tramples upon all the learned and pious endeavours of such as have attempted to find out the genuine sense of these holy oracles of god. would any one take the pains so operosely to set out his own ignorance to the world in good earnest , but that his blind and haughty heart did project therein an esteem to himself of a peculiar knowledge , viz. that nothing at all is to be known in scripture prophecies ? his ineptness to which studies , it 's likely , made the doughty rationalist divert to other theories , and employ his fiery unquiet spirits to the framing a method of theology , and so to entertain young students with a sack stuffed full of an infinite number of dry chips , sine succo & sanguine , unless besprinkled here and there with the blood of priscian ' s broken pate . but this is something extra oleas : let us pass to the second injury propounded . and this is against the church of england , whom he could not but know to be an express declarer against the idolatries of the church of rome , as is plain out of the homilies , and to apply some visions of the apocalypse to the case : which is very rationally done , it seeming incredible , if not impossible , that that book of visions setting out the state of the christian church from its beginning , to the end of the world , should omit the visionary noting of such an huge degeneracy in the church as idolatry , and bloody persecution for not submitting thereto . whence our church of england observing visions so easily and naturally interpretable that way , could not miss of applying them to the present state of things , and declare the church of rome , babylon , out of which god's people are warned to depart . which voice is a most plain and solid iustification for our separating from the church of rome . now for r. b. to make it such an heinous thing to interpret any of the apocalyptick visions against such gross enormities of the roman church , and to make such a tragical deal ado about it , as if it were such an inflamer of the rage of the romanists , that they would destroy all those that presumed to make any such application ; this demeanour of his seemed to me to proceed out of a malicious pique against our church , as if he would cry hallow to the pontificians , to worry the church of england , and devour it . which , as it is a salvage injury to our church , so it is a gross indignity offered to our english romanists , who are men of a more humane spirit , and not prone to take any more offence at our churches conceiving their church to be prefigured by the city of babylon , than we do take at their deeming us hereticks , which is as criminal a reproach as can be charged upon any person . but though these be the terms of theological disputants on each side , yet neighbourliness and good-nature washes them out of the remembrance of both . and the fair interpretation of these two severe terms , babylon and heretick , may be onely this , that the one party is resolved never to return into babylon , out of which god's people are bid to depart ; nor the other to forsake rome , for danger of becoming hereticks , till god shall give better light. but in the mean time , though they cannot join in a religious society , nothing hinders but that they may accord in common offices of civility and humanity , and of hearty neighbourliness one towards another . and now , thirdly , and lastly ; for the injury done to dr. h. m. besides what he suffers in common with the church of england , there seems a particular spite vented against him in r. b. his demeaning himself thus in what he has writ in reference to the apocalypse ; he moving a many sleeveless questions , unseasonably , to ensnare him , and entangle him : when as there is none of them , but if wilful blindness , and natural ineptitude to these things , be no bar , r. b. might fully satisfie himself out of what the doctor has already written . but that which r. b. seems to desire to perstringe most in the doctor , is his great confidence of the truth of his interpretations in the most concerning visions : which r. b. his unacquaintedness with clearness of conception , makes him the more wonder at . for certainly those that conceive things clearly and distinctly , will be confident of the truth they discover , whether they will or no. but men that have a turbid and tumultuary fancy and conception , may read much , and write much , and be certain of nothing when they have done ; or if they seem to themselves so to be , may prove grosly deceived , as undoubtedly r. b. was in his making the soul of man fire . which dream of his ( and all men dream waking , till their pure intellectual faculties be sufficiently excited , out of the dull sopour they are held in by this terrestrial body ) proceeded in all likelihood from the furious fiery complexion of his very body , and over-heated spirits ; and i wish the annotator's digression , that exposes r. b. his folly , in medling with theories he was not able to master , may not have stuck in his stomach , and so instigated him to take this opportunity of revenge . but as for the doctor 's confidence , and his profession thereof in matters that tend so much to the good of mankind , to the good of the church in general , and more particularly to the good of the church and monarchy of england , i shall sufficiently consider that , and the reasons thereof , in my reflexions ; and my preface has run out further already than i intended . but by this time i hope i have declared enough to prepare thee with candour to peruse what i have cursorily writ , for the justly exposing the rude and vile dealings of r. b. with the prophecies of scripture , with the church of england , and particularly with the doctor , a faithful and dutiful son thereof ; that what of mirth , or satyr , or sharpness of reproof thou meetest with , thou mayst be the less surpris'd thereby , but interpret all things candidly . and if thou chance to be pleased , i freely tell thee , it is more than i my self am , who take no pleasure in such contrasts ; but necessity extorted it from him who is an earnest lover of truth and sincerity , and a professed foe to all hypocrisie and guile : but in the mean time , as thou art also a lover of truth , from his study in alethopolis , march . a. d. . thy hearty friend , and humble servant , phililicrines parrhesiastes . errata . pag. . l. . for corruption read corruptions . ibid. l. . for ch . v. . r. ch . . v. . p . l. . for names r. pains . p. . l. . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ibid. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . for have an r. have made an . p. l. . for the world r. this world. some cursory reflexions , &c. the argument . the occasion of parrhesiastes his writing these reflexions . r. b. his preferring an affected ignorant pride before humble and useful knowledge . the weakness and ignorance in his performance on the apocalypse , a flat contradiction to the physiognomy of his picture before his book . not want of sagacity , but rashness and laziness , has made r. b. such a puzzled creature in the meanings of the apocalypse . an apologie for r. b. his bringing in several interpretations on the apocalypse , while ignorant himself where the truth lies . his discretion in not deciding , his iudgment being so grosly faulty where he does . the onely commendable good stroke in his notes on the apocalypse . the disease of scripturiency in r. b. taken notice of . his indigested reading of many writers on the apocalypse , and disingenuous presumption in flurring them before he understood them . his unskilful denying the calling of the jews . a swarm of crawling difficulties that the exposition of dr. h. m. is unconcerned in . some approvable passages in r. b. his advertisement . his absurd if not impious humour , in acknowledging the degeneracy of the church to the height , and yet denying it to be predicted in the apocalypse . seven unapprovable particulars noted in the said advertisement . an answer to the said particulars . certain passages in his postscript . the tediousness of his writings . his uncharitable conceit of the pontificians , as if they bore such an ill mind against the church of england , for the interpreting some part of the apocalypse of the degeneracy of their church . that this looks like a mischievously intended dog-trick in r. b. against our church . his courting of mr. gadbury to cast his nativity , by dropping in the mention of david blundel and pope jone in his postscript . mr. foulis his opinion of the story of that female pope . that the church of england ' s cause depends not on such trifles . a serious advertisement to r. b. his followers , and to all other sectaries . after i had the opportunity of perusing in ms. dr. h. more his paralipomena prophetica ; so it hapned , that a friend of mine gave me notice , and also procured me the sight of what mr. baxter had done upon the revelations ; of whom i having heard heretofore , what a confident man he was of the unintelligibleness of that book , though i was assured of the vanity of that confidence , yet i thought he had studied that sacred writing with that care and searchingness , that he was able to find such flaws in what mr. mede and dr. more have writ , that it might give the doctor just occasion to enlarge his paralipomena , in clearing such shrewd difficulties as r. b. was able to propose , and rectifie , if any thing were amiss in the doctor 's interpretations , by what r. b. had searched out by his anxious diligence . but things have fallen out quite contrary to my expectation , there being nothing either in his notes on the revelation , or in his advertisement or his postscript , offered as difficulties , but such as with reading either mr. mede or the doctor , ( if r. b. his parts be not very low sunk ) he might easily satisfie himself in . but i perceive it was never his intent to be satisfied in these studies , preferring an affected ignorant pride , before humble and useful knowledge ; nay , before the glory of god , and a due acknowledgment of his care and providence over his church , in setting out the state thereof from the beginning of it to the end of the world ; which is incredible but he should do in this volumn of visions , the apocalypse , which begins with the church , and reaches to the day of judgment , according to r. b. his own acknowledgment . wherefore that there should be no visions touching the great degeneracy of the church , and of the late reformation from such gross corruptions , which r. b. himself confesses that they deserved greater punishments than the beast and false prophet mentioned in the revelations , ( advertis . p. . ) is a thing incredible altogether , nay , i may say , impossible . nor can all the wars , persecution , and victories of the church , prefigured in this book , be restrained to the pagan empire , and the times of the primitive christians : a thing which r. b. disowns , on apoc. ch . v. . where , says he , i cannot conceive those two learned mens exposition ( meaning grotius and dr. hammond ) who make the apocalypse an history in a prophetick stile , and say , that most or very much of it was done before it was written : and yet to slur the learned and pious labours of mr. mede , he equally , if not more , inclines to their two senses of the prophecies , than to the other . so inconsistent is he with himself . and indeed he has quitted himself so sorrily and triflingly , if i may be so free as to censure the writings of one who has writ so much , that some toying wit may be tempted to fansie the weakness of his performance , and professed ignorance , a flat contradiction to the very physnomy of his face prefixed before his book , whose vast , eminent , arched nose promises no small reach of wit , and comprehension of understanding : but behold the todcaster . prodigy , — lignosum structum sine flumine pontem . an huge , massie nose , devoid of all sagacity under it . but to vindicate r. b. and his nose from any such slur , though he makes nothing of flurring the learned and pious of others ; it is not that he wants either nose or wit to find out the true sense of the book of the apocalypse , which he slurs , together with the best intepreters , not to say the spirit himself that writ it , in making the sense thereof so desperately uncertain and unintelligible , and so to signifie nothing : but he has been , according to his own confession , either rash or lazy in the matter , ( advertis . p. . ) forty four years ago , says he , i studied it , i doubt , too soon , ( so do i , or at least that you did it too carelesly ) ; and then he reckons up several authors which he read , names some , and intimates more . and amongst those he names , are mede and potter ; and after that he read mr. durham , dr. more , grotius , and dr. hammond , but withal he confesses he did it superficially . so that rightly to plead his cause , it was not for want of nose or wit , but due and seasonable industry to master the books he read , or for want of good luck or direction to betake himself to the best writers in the kind , or the best pieces of their writings , that has rendred him such a puzzled thing as he professes himself . i appeal to him , if he ever was fully master of mr. mede's synchronisms . i dare say , his desultory and tumultuary phancy would never be fettered to so close animadversion . but if he had with patience and steadiness of mind applied himself to the synchronistical part , so as thorowly to have understood it , it is impossible but he should have avoided this foul scepticism touching these holy visions . but without this synchronistical skill , and the knowledge of the prophetick style , to pretend to understand the apocalypse , or to judge whether it be intelligible or no , is as fond , as to pretend to give the true and certain meaning , or to be able to judge whether the said meaning can be given , of a greek or latin author , while one is very raw and ignorant in the lexicographal part , and quite devoid of the skill of grammar or syntax . and this has made r. b. that he can onely ( having read a world of authors to no better purpose ) , in stead of informing the judgment of him that peruses his notes , onely distract his mind with abundance of variety of opinions , not able to decide which is truth . which is such an impertinent stuffage of the mind , that the understanding is not thereby perfected , but burdened ; and serves for no use , unless for r. b. his vain ostentation of having read so many books , though he has concocted nothing : like marriot of grays-inn ( as i remember ) , who was a prodigious eater , but neither a stronger man , nor a better lawyer , for being such an helluo ciborum , as this other , librorum . but not to be wanting to r. b. in any just defence that may excuse the matter ; his producing all along so many several opinions , is not altogether useless : for though he himself cannot decide what is true , yet the reader may ; and for this end he sets down so many opinions , that others may decide what is true . which is something like the story a friend told me , of one robbin , an hind in a country-gentleman's house , that could no read a letter on the book , but yet was earnest with the gentleman's son , a young scholar , that went to school , and could write well , to teach him to write . to which the young scholar saying , why , robbin , thou canst not read ; to what purpose therefore is it to learn thee to write ? o master , says he , do but teach me to write , i will get some body else to read it . so r. b. has got the faculty of writing and reading , or rather of reading and writing of multifarious opinions , but he must leave the office of spelling out which is the truest , to some other . that also further recommends his great modesty , in that he so seldom takes upon him to decide ; forasmuch as when he does it the most peremptorily , to any indifferent man he must needs seem to do it most injudiciously ; as in that of the vision of the seven churches having a prophetical meaning : this , says he , being impossible to be proved , is rather to pretend another revelation , than to expound this . this is very pertly and magisterially spoken . but the doctor with no less than twenty solid arguments , in his exposition of the seven churches , has so demonstrated there must be a prophetical sense of that vision , that he may well challenge r. b. or any more able than he , to confute them if he can . and apoc. . . he dogmatizes there again , and tells us , those under the earth are the antipodes , on the other side of the earth . as unphilosophically as magisterially decided ! the antipodes are no more under the earth , than we are ; both being above and equidistant from the lowest center of the earth . but this is pardonable in a person so little conversant in philosophy . and now to shew how impartial i am , i will take notice of something that is commendable , and that i would recommend to the rest of his fanatick brethren , such especially as fansie monarchy and political government inconsistent with the reign of christ , or his kingdom . and it is his note on apoc. c. . v. . now is come salvation , and strength , and the kingdom of our god , and the power of his christ. note , says he , if christian kingdoms be so honourable , and called the kingdoms of god , and the power of christ , and the fall of devils ; let them better consider it , that cry them down under the name of national churches , and would have churches onely to be some gathered out of the multitude . this is the onely remarkable sincere stroke that occurs in all his notes on the revelation , so far as i can remember , if he be therein sincere , and heartily contradict his opinions and practices in former times . to pass by therefore the mawkish , raw , and dough-bak'd fancies that are scattered in his annotations on the apocalypse , i proceed to his advertisement , where i will use all possible brevity that can be . i have already noted out of the first page , how unseasonably , according to his own confession , some forty years ago he betook himself to the study of the apocalypse . i doubt , too soon , says he ; and i do not doubt but too negligently . but then , says he , i read brightman , napier , pareus , &c. and after that , mede , potter , and many more , besides dounhamus de antichristo , broughton , and other such ; and also the answerers of bellarmine . he conversed with his fellow-labourer mr. stevens , ( during the schism against the church of england ) who has written of it , and was much upon it in his discourse ; but i durst not be drawn to a deep study of it . and when since i read mr. durham , dr. more , &c. and grotius , and dr. hammond , and many annotators , i confess despair , and more needful business , made me do it but superficially . this is his own account of his preparedness to write on the apocalypse , when he having scambled through a multitude of authors carelesly and superficially , he was , for any certain sense of the main and most weighty visions of that divine writing , as unresolved of the truth of things , as when he first began . so that having nothing to deliver to satisfie the understanding reader , or confirm the faith of them that want a guide ; yet , as if he laboured under the scripturient disease even to a tenesmus , could not forbear to write on the apocalypse , though he had nothing to write . wherefore , according to his own confession , the case stands thus ; that his mind wanting those faculties , which in the bodily nourishment answer to the concoctive and expulsive faculty , which secernes that which is exerementitious from what is good nourishment ; he wanting , i say , this secerning faculty , was not edified by the reading , or rather gutling up so many books as he has hastily read , being not able to distinguish betwixt what was sound food , and what was to be sent packing and egested as course excrement . and therefore , as he has taken them in , so he has put them out all alike , or rather vomited them up altogether without any digestion or concoction ; contrary to the boast of that considerate writer , that excused his slow performances with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i am not of the number of those that vomit , but that weigh accurately what they publish to the world. this i declare , to the end that no man may be so foolish as to think the apocalypse really the less intelligible for r. b. his not understanding it , after his reading so many authors about it , in his tumultuary and superficial way : when as intended concealment , as well as certainty of revealment , was the measure of the framing of the visions of the apocalypse . and as they are not to be understood by the lazy , perfunctory , or prejudiced peruser of them , and of their best interpreters ; so are they clearly and certainly to be understood by those who with diligence and humility , by those who orderly and methodically set themselves to study them , as mr. mede to his everlasting commendation did . and therefore he first published his clavis apocalyptica , a little book , but of vast moment for the right understanding of the apocalypse . r. b. should have first so fully understood that book , as that he might be able to judge whether his synchronisms would hold or not : this is the course the doctor took , whereby he was enabled as to be assured of the truth of most of his synchronisms , so to reject his placeing of the vials before the seventh trumpet and rising of the witnesses , which was an unlucky mistake of mr. medes , and which therefore the doctor has rectified in his synchronistical scheme , which r. b. may see in his epilogue placed after his exposition of the apocalypse , where he defends the rest of mr. medes synchronisms against the allegations of r. h. which small treatise , that epilogue , i suspect r. b. never read , no not so much as superficially . but if he had read it diligently , and made himself master of it , it is impossible i think he should remain so ignorant of these apocalyptick points as he pretends he is . it is the firm ground the doctors exposition stands upon , and we may safely challenge r. b. to enervate it if he can . but to read an author superficially , and then to slight him , is like the villany of those men that insinuate themselves into the company of such as they have a mind to have a pretence of saying of them what they please . and thus has r. b. served the most pious , serious , and learned performances of the best interpreters of the apocalypse . but what a wooden soul this r. b. has , one may further discern ( pag. . ) by his huge averseness from the calling of the iews , and his marvelous weak arguing against it : and yet his strait and narrow mind hugs her self in this cold and crudled infidelity . and indeed r. b. seems to me not only to have a wooden soul , but a stony heart , which neither the authority of the ancient church , which generally held that there would be such an illustrious calling of the iews towards the end of the world ( as you may see in cornelius a lapide upon rom. . . ) nor those many predictions of the ancient prophets , which plainly imply as much , nor that noble discourse of st. paul in the eleventh to the romans about this point , have been able to pierce , for the admittance of so glorious and gracious a catastrophe of gods providence towards his own peculiar people the iews , who have suffered so great and durable calamities and severities of affliction from him , who yet is stiled the god of abraham , isaac , and iacob , and is said to have an everlasting covenant with that people . to let go those several pertinent passages in the old testament , we will only set before the eyes of r. b. what st. paul says , rom. . . for i would not , brethren , that ye should be ignorant of this mystery , that blindness in part is happened to israel , until the fulness of the gentiles be come , and so all israel shall be saved . here israel in both places is evidently opposed to the gentiles , and israel's being detain'd in unbelief for a time , till the fulness of the gentiles come in , opposed to the gentiles belief . and this is called a mystery , a great arcanum of divine providence , concerning which the apostle breaks out into those expressions of profound admiration , v. . o the depth of the riches , both of the wisdom and knowledge of god ; how unsearchable are his iudgments , and his ways past finding out . that this belongs to such a shriveled account as r. b. gives of this chapter , is a thing incredible . so that i wonder with what face he could put out his notes on this chapter to the romans , after he had perused those of sam. clark ; who has given so easie , natural , and genuine sense of the said chapter all along , and of whom r. b. himself gives this testimony , that he is a person of great judgment , piety , integrity and meekness , humility i suppose he means , and he should have remembred in the perusing his notes on this chapter , that god resisteth the proud , and gives grace and wisdom to the humble and meek . the want of which made r. b. impatient of being better instructed by his iunior . but that a man so operosely and affectedly professing himself for peace and love should be content that god should be so irreconcileably in wrath toward the nation of the iews , as to leave them in the lurch for ever , after so many splendid predictions and promises by his prophets , is a sign that there is little in the bottom of that principle in him , but that it is onely an hypocritical boast thereof . but i have run out further on this theme than i intended . r. b. his crude indigestion of the many books he has read , has filled the fifth , sixth , seventh , eighth , and part of the ninth page of his advertisement with a number of objections , first bred in his brain , and after scattered on the paper , like so many little crawling worms or serpents ; but such as can sting none but himself , or such as are as ignorant or more ignorant than himself : they are about the whore , and the beast , and the like ; and he renders his reason of producing these pretended difficulties , pag. . i mention , says he , what i have done , to tell you why i understand not the revelations . but by this i plainly understand , that he has not at all consider'd the doctor 's exposition of the beast and the whore , though he pretends to have read his books . for not one of this numerous fry or swarm of difficulties do in the least enervate his exposition of the apocalypse . but he raises difficulties against such authors , or passages in them , as are most obnoxious to delude and seduce the ignorant . this seems to me very disingenuous dealing . but now , from his tenth page , to the seventeenth , there are miscellanious matters scattered in him , of a different interpretation , some better , some worse . the better sort are such things as these : that popes and papists , that allow all those things which he sets down as the miscarriages charged on that church , ( pag. . ) are liable before god to greater punishments than the beast and false prophet mentioned in the revelations , &c. and , that love is christ's work and character , and hatred the devil 's ; and that we must avoid all unnecessary division , wrath , and hatred . and , pag. . that we must not call every thing antichristian that displeaseth us , or that the church of rome has used , or doth use . and , p. . to own christ and his gospel , and to murder thousands or millions in his name , for not obeying the pope in professing transubstantiation , is incomparably a more aggravated crime , than the most bloody pagan persecution was . and , ( p. . ) christ has one diffused visible church over the world , and the pope made another by usurpation and rebellion , which was regnum in regno , as any rebel might do that could get strength to set up a party in power , to call himself king in some part of a kingdom . such an antichristianity as this , says he , i make no doubt but the papacy became guilty of . and i will insert here what he says in his notes on thess. . i can easily see many and great points in which popery is contrary to the word of god ; and i am most moved by such moral arguments as dr. h. more useth in his mystery of iniquity ; he means that part which is called idea antichristianismi . but to return to his advertisement , pag. . where he says , let them prove that popes have not been antichrists , that can ; it 's none of my work. but if you are never so sure that it is he indeed , pull him not down by calling truths , duty , or things lawful , antichristian ; nor by telling men , that all protestants are idolaters or antichristian , if they forsake not the communion of all our parochial protestant churches , that the papists may re-enter into them as deserted garrisons , &c. now let any man judge what an humorist this r. b. is , who allowing that such things are found in the papacy that may well furnish out an antichrist , and that are worse than pagan as to the matter of persecution ; and whose constitution is such , that those that act accordingly , deserve greater punishment than the false prophet and the beast mentioned in the apocalypse ; and intimates , that the doctor 's idea of antichristianism is a right representation of such points of popery as are contrary to the word of god ; and yet will not acknowledge this strange degeneracy of the church to be prefigured in a book of prophecies , the apocalypse , which was writ on purpose to set out the state of the church from the beginning thereof , to the end of the world. what can be more incredible ? as many as acknowledge the gross superstitions , idolatries , and most salvage persecutions of the church of rome , and yet deny that they are prefigured in the apocalypse , seem to envy christ the glory of so faithfully and punctually predicting the state of his church ; and the church yet unreformed , such an excellent help to her reformation ; and the whole church such a special corroboration of their faith in god and christ , and of a divine providence that watches over the affairs of men , and of his church especially ; and seem peevishly to obscure that privilege that christianity has above all other religions in the world , the visions of daniel and the apocalypse clearly understood , being the peculiar strength and glory of our christian religion . and therefore i must consess it has raised my zeal and indignation against r. b. his mawkish notes on the apocalypse , which look more like prophane buffonry , to rogue and abuse so sacred a writing , than a business of any edification to the people of god. and for r. b. his care that those things should not be called antichristian that really were not so , that was one of the ends of the doctor 's writing his idea of antichristianism , as himself has declared in the very first chapter thereof . and what he speaks for christian love , and against unnecessary division , o that mr. baxter had had those sentiments about forty years ago , and that he had been as tender of unnecessary dividing from the so well constituted church of england , as he would now make shew he is from the church of rome ; certainly he might enjoy a more peaceful conscience , and serene mind . but i take no pleasure in raking into such a sore . the things i like not in some of these eight last pages , are such as these . ( . ) he intimates , p. . that they that interpret babylon of rome papal , turn religion into love-killing faction ; and they that believe such an interpretation , hate and abhor all romanists merely because they are such , nor have any evidence for their opinion , but that such or such a private teacher has told them so . ( . ) he conceives , that this interpreting the usual places of the revelations , ( p. . ) of the papacy , that all romanists are tempted thereby to hate us and destroy us . ( . ) to make such interpretations as these , is to add to the sense of the book , and to incur the curse thereof , rev. . . the plagues written in the book . ( . ) he says , the sense must needs be uncertain , where five of the wisest are of four minds . ( . ) i blame not modest conjectures , saith he , if men will but confess their uncertainty when they are uncertain , nor use their interpreting to kindle a partial , hating , dividing zeal . ( ) i confess , saith he , i am less able to expound prophecies than daniel , who yet thus concludes , ch . . . and i heard , but understood not . then said i , o my lord , what shall be the end of these things ? and he said , go thy way , daniel ; for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end . and yet , he says , he makes no doubt but the revelation is god's word , though he understands it not . ( . ) and lastly , pag. . to them that say ▪ saith he , the pope is the beast , the whore of babylon , the man of sin , the antichrist , you have a shift of the contempt of his words , as of a controverted , uncertain thing ; but who knoweth not that the plain law of god concludeth , that the proud , the worldly , the malignant , the idolatrous , murderers , persecutors , liars , the enemies of christ's gospel and serious godliness , are satan's slaves , and shall not enter into the kingdom of god ? there is something of good mingled in some of these sayings ; but little good intended , so far as i discern . but i shall briefly answer to each particular . to the ( . ) first , i say , here r. b. bewrays an ill nature ( as they that have the jaundies , things seem to them yellow . ) i know by experience the contrary , and the doctors interpretations of the apocalypse , of the truth of which i am sufficiently confident , though they make the papal corruptions concerned in the vision of the beast , the whore and false-prophet , yet i never had the more hatred or disgust against the romanists for that . but as for their corruptions , i thought their being shewn them in those and the like visions to be so lively prefigured , were the most likely way to make them reflect on their condition , and seek timely by an orderly reformation to amend it , those interpretations ever avoiding the least shew of encouragement for such a reformation as is to be carried on by popular tumults and the sword , and suggesting also that the most effectual instruments in the hands of princes and prelates will be those that he calls the philadelphian church , who are made up of loyalty to their prince , be he of the reformèd or unreformed religion , and of an hearty sincere love to all christendom , and to universal mankind . this spirit aromatizes the doctors whole interpretation of the apocalypse . but there are some diseased persons that cannot bear the scent of sweet odours . grosser minds are for a gross war , and gross revenge , which is diametrically opposite to the doctors interpretations . which it may be therefore , r. b. being of a more iron , martial spirit , may be the more averse from , if age has not , as he pretends , mellowed him into a better mind . and as for such interpretations as concern the papacy , that they are onely the dictates of some private teachers , the antichristianity of the papacy was the general doctrine of the reformed churches . and r. b. upon his private spirit adventuring to be a separative guide , has thus bewildred himself and his followers . whenas this antichristianity of the church of rome is a doctrine own'd by the church of england , and jewel against harding was ordered to be placed in every parish church . and the main things of this kind are so plain , that ordinary people are able to understand them , and not believe them onely because the reformed churches say so . to the ( ) second , it seems to me to be a piece of uncharitableness in r. b. that he should have such an harsh opinion of the romanists , when they cannot but see , that it is not any malice in us protestants , but the natural interpretableness of the apocalypse that way , that we use those prophetick scriptures to defend our own religion , and convince them of the errour of theirs . for my own part i think better of them , nor can i ( who have so often admired those divine strains of morality in that pagan emperours meditations , m. antoninus , notwithstanding his idolatrous religion that could not debase his noble nature , ) forbear heartily to imbrace that virtue , piety , faithfulness and generosity that shines forth in any romanist in despight of his romanism that cannot suppress it . these horrid conceits of r. b. of hatred and murder from the papists on this account are effects of melancholy and old age. if the doctor be murdered for speaking truth in the behalf of the church of england , he will find good company in the other world , and be bid welome by that glorious martyr of our church , the pious , wise , and virtuous charles the first ; or rather our blessed lord jesus , who was martyr'd and crucified for us , will be ready to receive those that conscientiously suffer for maintaining his truth and honour . ye believe in god , believe also in me , saith he , in my fathers house there are many mansions . if it were not so i would have told you . i go to prepare a place for you , and if i go and prepare a place for you , i will come again and recieve you to my self , that where i am , there you may be also . as certainly as christ himself after his sufferings enjoys any thing in the other state , he that conscientiously suffers for him , will thereupon be happy in the other world. and who would not adventure all in one bottom with him to whom the prophecies of old have given such ample testimony ( besides the history of his miracles , and that stupendious volume of visions the apocalypse imparted by him to his church ) and whom so great a part of the world acknowledge to be the son of god and saviour of mankind ? certainly divine providence is more benign and faithful , than to lay such a train as to entrap the most intelligent and sincere to the loss of their lives in the world ( as it fared with the primitive martyrs under the pagan dragon , and with some hundred thousands under the healed beast ) if there be no recompense for such sufferers in the world to come . to the ( ) third , if to make such interpretations as r. b. counts uncertain , which yet may be true , according to his own account , for ought he knows , be to add to the book , and incur the plagues written therein , what does his buffonry incur in his notes , that takes away in a manner all that is writ of chiefest concern for the instruction and amendment of the church , roguing all the most useful visions , and indeed all in a manner ( casting away also the prophetical sense of the seven churches ) into a meer sapless and useless unintelligibleness ? let him scape the plagues as well as he can , he will certainly incur the loss of all the precious promises recorded in this book . to the ( ) fourth , i answer ; it is meer sophistry , and such as whereby all philosophy and religion would be taken out of the world. there is the christian religion , the jewish , the mahometan , and pagan . here any three disagree from the fourth ; therefore they are all uncertain , or false . but besides this , there is a general consent of protestant interpreters touching those visions that concern the corruptions of the papacy , viz. that they are concerned therein , though some expedite the matter better than others . and grotius his way , and dr. hammond's , is meer : novelty ; and they may be both excused for so strangely straining their wits for such glosses . for passion edges the invention , hatred as well as love. and grotius was deeply sensible of what he suffered from the states of holland , and dr. hammond more highly and nobly concerned for that outrage which was done to the most vertuous and pious king , and best constituted church in the world. to which villany and misery the vulgar expositions of the apocalypse were made use of , which frighted the good doctor into another way . but the usual protestant way , well rectified , does infinitely more service to the crown of england , and the church , than such forced , incredible glosses , such as r. b. himself is able to confute , though he be so staggering that he can stand to nothing . to the ( . ) fifth , that men should confess their uncertainty , when they think themselves uncertain , i easily admit . but i do not think it fair , that any trouble themselves , much less the world , with what they are conscious to themselves is a meer conjecture . for this makes but a rumble and babble in the minds and mouths of men , and makes them think , because they read much , and write much , they are learned and knowing , when there is nothing but noise and empty fancy and ignorance at the bottom . assured knowledge , and useful , is the firm food of the soul. uncertain fancies and opinions are no more than superfluous and noxious humours in a bloated body . for my part , i should make a conscience in abusing the world with such trash . and therefore the doctor has openly declared , especially for the main and most useful parts of his exposition of the apocalypse , that to him it is most certain and undoubted knowledge . and his confidence thereof he hath publickly professed , both at the end of his epilogue annexed to his exposition of the apocalypse , and also in his preface to his exposition of the visions of daniel , sect . and he hath invited and provoked all that he could , to find what flaws they could in his expositions : and how he hath quit himself against s. e. the remarker , let the world judge ; and also how well he further makes good what he hath writ , by his paralipomena prophetica . every one is bound , before he publishes a thing , to study the point so throughly , that he can discern whether it will amount any further than to a conjecture , or whether it is a firm and solid truth ; and then if it be also useful , to impart it to the world ; and the more useful , with the greater expression of confidence , he being assured of the truth . and the doctor 's exposition of the apocalypse being so apparently useful , for the shewing the excellency of the constitution of the church of england , it being the most choice part of the completion of the prophecy of the rising of the witnesses , a church that had the honour to be so learnedly defended by the royal pen of king iames the first of blessed memory , and to be witnessed to by the sacred blood of that glorious martyr king charles the first , the most pious and vertuous prince that ever sway'd scepter in christendom ; a church renowned for singular loyalty and love of monarchy , insomuch that king charles the second ( whose late death we all still lament , though we are abundantly comforted in so gracious a successor ) was heard to say , that the church of england-men were the best subjects in the world ; and lastly , such a church as our present gracious soveraign king iames the second ( whom god grant a long , peaceful , and prosperous reign over us ) , though ( for our sins , i fear ) of the other religion himself , yet has graciously promised to maintain and support ; this doing , of his own most noble and free mind , which was the onely thing that could with reason and equity be desired . but thus has his heroical spirit found the opportunity to remonstrate to the world his right to the crown , not onely by lineal descent , but personal merit . i say therefore , that the doctor 's exposition of the apocalypse tending to the winning of men to such a church as this , where not onely truth and purity of worship , but loyalty and monarchy is secured against republicanism , blood , and rebellion ; so that he has disarm'd the fanaticks from either pretense of right , or hints of time , to plot their mischievous designs , he having demonstrated the days to be passed , and the rising of the witnesses but a partial fall of antichristianism . which things tend naturally , as i conceive , to the keeping of the crowns of monarchs on their heads , and their heads on their shoulders . and therefore i say , the matter being of so mighty moment , i hope r. b. will excuse his novice ( who yet is somewhat older than himself , though he write . ) whom he would tutour and instruct , if he cannot be so demure and modest as he would have him to be , in matters that are so plain to him , and of so mighty importance for the peace and security of princes against the fanatical rabble , who are as mad against iesus christ's vicegerents , as the iews were against iesus himself , who would have no king but caesar ; nor these any monarchs but a fictitious king iesus of their own , and domineering presbytery , or shattered anarchy . i will not be so uncharitable as to think r. b. seeing the fanatical sort of men so disappointed by the doctor 's exposition , from hatching any evil against the church of england and monarchy out of the apocalypse , has been so peevish as to represent the book , as much as in himself lies , utterly unintelligible , that because they can breed no mischief our of it , it may prevent its doing any good. the thing looks over-suspiciously on it . but i leave that to the search of his own conscience . the latter part of his fifth particular concerns not the doctor , whose expositions are onely for the evincing of truth , and the convincing of the conscience , against killing and slaying by the arm of flesh. he is for no division as to civil society , nor for re-union of protestants with papists in religion , till they be better reformed in doctrine and worship . but r. b. expresses himself so odly in these things , as if he insinuated himself popishly and protestantishly affected in one breath . such a way of writing , to me smells very mustily of juggles and hypocrisie . and now , ( . ) to that freakish and impertinent application of that passage of daniel , i oppose the very following verse in that chapter : many shall be purified , made white , and tried , ( ver . . ) but the wicked shall do wickedly , and none of the wicked shall understand , but the wise shall understand . now whether it be the want of holiness or wisdom in r. b. or both , that he understands so little in daniel and the apocalypse , i leave him to consult his own heart therein , and to consider what a pleasant thing it is to flesh and blood to be a segregative rabboni , and to be applauded by a sect , though wise and good men understand as little the reason why , as he understands daniel and the apocalypse . but while he acknowledges the apocalypse to be the word of god , and yet to be unintelligible , what is it but to reproach god and his word too at once ? daniel tells us better news : the wicked shall not understand , but the wise shall understand . and yet this vain r. b. affects the esteem of more than ordinary wisdom , in pretending not to understand these visions ; else why does he take the pains to ostentate his ignorance , and so in effect to glory in his shame ? and , ( . ) to the last , i say , the romanists do more familiarly elude all those charges of idolatry , murder , persecution , lying , and the like , charged upon them from reason and scripture . for to these they will answer ; but since this demonstrative way by synchronisms , that so plainly prove that those visions which the ancient fathers interpret of antichrist , necessarily fall into the times of the papacy , they have , so far as i know , ever had the discretion to decline answering . indeed r. b. tells us , that the arguments he has writ against popery in eight or nine books , the romanists have not answered ; he , like a suffenus , fancying they forbear to answer them till he be dead or disabled ; when questionless it is because they slight them ; or else , why is it that they have answered the ablest champions of our english church , ( who yet meddle with no prophecies ) and thus declined the answering him ? when the writings of these , excel those of r. b. as much as the richest arras , the meanest kedderminster-stuff , as one wittily has made the comparison . this conceitedness of his performance i meet with in his postscript , which i have read over , thinking to meet with something new ; but it is but crambe bis cocta , and his seventeen questions so poor , that the meanest capacity , that has any kind of propension to these studies , may easily satisfie himself , by consulting the latest writers touching these points . to read r. b. his writings , is as tedious to me , as to walk upon unsound ground , quagmire , or quicksand , arena sine calce ; and therefore i will give my self no longer a fatigue : though i cannot but take notice , how again he harps much upon that jarring string , where he supposes the romanists so brutish and salvage , that they will kill and murder all such as from the prophecies of scripture conclude their church antichristian ; when as himself cannot deny , but what they hold and practise , is so . what disease of ferocity has so tinctured the mind and fancy of r. b. that he should have such horrid conceits of the pontifician party in england ? when as they and our church of england men , both of highest and lowest degree , have lived in all civility , kindness , and neighbourliness , for these many years , notwithstanding their difference of religion , though the romanists in the mean time , according to the language of their church , could not but deem us hereticks , of what quality soever we were , noble or simple : when as yet no phrase , neither proper nor symbolical , imports a man a more vile , detestable , and criminal wretch , than an heretick , with them ; they adjudging them also to the worst and most reproachful punishments , such as the most execrable criminals are adjudged to : and yet i am certain our church of england men have not at all been enraged or provoked against the romanists , for all this . why then should r. b. have so uncharitable a conceit of the romanists , ( they are men , or rather english-men , as well as we ) that they should be so enraged like wolves and tygers against the church of england men , though they , keeping to the style of their church , must deem the constitution of the romish , as r. b. himself does , antichristian ; and that this state thereof is predicted in scripture ? this looks as if he still retained his inveterate spite against the church of england , and even now in his grunting and groaning condition , as he represents himself , as if he had one foot in charon's boat , yet would shew us a mischievous dog-trick at the last , and excite the roman wolves ( as he fancies them , he cloathing them in his own skin , or as much as he can transfusing his own mischievous spirit into them at his hour of death ) to tear us and devour us . — quanquam media jam morte tenetur , non tamen abstinuit — so fierce and unreconcileable an hatred does he bear ( or acts so as if he did bear it ) to our church , that the approach of the extinction of this life cannot extinguish it . but having once injured the church , he knows how , and not the church him , he seems desirous to follow his first blow with repeated strokes even to his last breath . the finis rei in this carriage of his , or natural tendency , is truly such : but whether it be finis personae , i leave to his own conscience to examine . i will note but one thing more in this post-script , which is his mentioning david blundel and pope ione ; which i should have omitted , but that it put me in mind of what fine sport mr. gadbury makes on that subject in his cardines coeli , &c. which would make a man suspect r. b. to have let drop this in his post-script to please mr. gadbury , whom he seems humbly to beseech to give him a cast of his skill in calculating nativities . for if not , why does he conclude his advertisement thus ? london , . nov. . natali authoris . aetat . suae . it is true , he has not set down the hour of his birth : but mr. gadbury , by animodar , trutina hermetis , or accidentia nati , by any one of these , as well as by the rest will rectifie the time to a cows thumb , and then will find in a trice some cardinal sign in the ascendent of this great man , r. b. which of all the four is least likely to be libra , he having writ so much , and weighing so little what he writes : or if it be libra , it may denote , that in his balance the moments of reason for all different expositions of the apocalypse are of equal weight with him , even as the sun at his entrance into libra makes the day and night equal . but as for mr. blundel and pope ione , i will refer mr. gadbury , or any other judicious reader , to bishop iewel against harding , from pag. , to pag. , and to mr. foulis his history of romish treasons and usurpations , pag. . who at last concludes thus , as for mine own iudgment , i shall wrap it up without partiality or passion , in this , that i am so far from being satisfied with the reasons brought against the being of such a woman pope , that i may fancy those that assert a pope jone afford better authority , testimony and arguments , than those that deny it . and as cook in english has sufficiently answered floromondus and the rest , so does maresius in latine , and congnard in french abundantly confute david blundel , though a man of great reading . but be it this way or that way , it shall never trouble me , and so let every man think as he pleaseth . to which i easily say , amen . for the church of england's cause against her opponents , whether romanists or fanaticks , depends not on such curiosities . i find my self concern'd to say little more than to advertise seriously mr. baxter's followers , and in them all sectaries , what a dreadful and dangerous thing it is to separate from an authentick church , reformed to the pattern of the symmetral or primitive ages , and to follow the guidance of a private spirit ; and i shall pray god , that mr. baxter may repent sincerely , as of his former enormous sins against the church of england , and the crown or sacred monarchy thereof , so likewise , that he may become really sensible and ashamed of his present crooked versuteness and hypocrisie , and of rogueing and abusing the divine visions of iohn and daniel ( which the lord iesus out of his faithful care and providence has procured of his father for the guidance and instruction of christendom ) by this his rude and profane buffonry . finis . the theory and regulation of love a moral essay, in two parts : to which are added letters philosophical and moral between the author and dr. henry more / by john norris ... norris, john, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing n estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) the theory and regulation of love a moral essay, in two parts : to which are added letters philosophical and moral between the author and dr. henry more / by john norris ... norris, john, - . more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed at the theatre for hen. clements, oxford : . errata on p. [ ] at end. advertisement on p. 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ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng love -- early works to . conduct of life -- early works to . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images - john latta sampled and proofread - john latta text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the theory and regulation of love a moral essay . in two parts . to which are added letters philosophical and moral between the author and d r henry more . by john norris m. a. and fellow of allsouls college in oxford . quod ergo nos coelo restituit , non dei cognitio est , sed amor. marsilius ficinus tom. . p. . oxford , printed at the theatre for hen. clements . . to the lady masham at oates in essex . madam , the esteem , wherewith your ladyship honour'd my former writings , has at once obliged me to an high measure of gratitude , and pointed me out a way of shewing it . for i was hence led to conclude , that if any thing of mine could afford you pleasure and entertainment , when you had no other interest in it than in the common light of the sun , much more would it be acceptable , if made yours by some peculiar right and property . the difference of advantage seeming to me much the same , as between taking a turn in a common walk , and enjoying the retirements of one's own private garden . one only objection stood in my way . i was a little scrupulous whether the oblation were worthy the altar , whether so mean a performance could strike the tast , much more deserve the patronage of a person of such nice and refined sense , and whom nature and your own unassisted curiosity have conspired to accomplish beyond what the present age can parallel , or ( unless your ladyship will be perswaded to bequeath some monument of your extraordinary genius to the world ) the future will ever believe . this consideration i confess , did a little arrest my pen , till i confronted it with another , that your ladyship is as eminent for candour and goodness , as for parts and ingenious attainments , and that you have mildness and sweetness enough to temper the severity even of your own iudgment . these madam , were the considerations that embolden'd me to entitle your ladyship to this work . concerning which ( whatever faults it may be charged with ) i have something to boast , which i am sure all writers have not , that i make an offering of that which is purely my own. which if your ladyship please to accept , there will be much added both to the happiness and to the duty of madam , your ladyship 's most humble and devoted servant j. norris . all-souls coll. march . . to the reader . having accounted in the first section for the general design of this undertaking , i have here no more to do than only to prepare the reader , by giving him some few advertisements concerning the manner of its performance . in the first place , i make no apologies ; for i would not have exposed these papers to the view of the world if i thought they needed any . neither do i desire any favour or kind allowances from my reader , i only desire that he would be so kind to himself , and so just to me , as to afford me his closest and most unprejudiced attention , that he would suspend his iudgment till he has gone over the whole , and that then he would censure no farther than he understands . this request is at all times reasonable , but now i think it in a manner necessary . for i have here used great liberty of thinking , and accordingly could not avoid lighting upon several notions , which are remote from common observation , and some that are directly contrary to the vulgar sentiments . and these i have endeavour'd to dispose according to the greatest accuracy of order and method , and to carry on with a thred of more than ordinanary connexion and dependence . all which , as it requires a great deal of attention and application of mind in the composer , so does it almost as much in the reader , who can no more expect with an hasty and careless glance to comprehend the recesses and retirements of a nice speculation , than a man that rides post can discern the artful strokes and curiosities of a fine-wrought picture . attention therefore is the thing that i do again commend to him that shall find leasure to persue these meditations ; though for his comfort i must tell him , that i have endeavour'd to ease him of this trouble as much as i could , by expressing my notions with all possible distinctness and perspicuity . in order to which i found it necessary sometimes to use new terms , and such as would raise more clear and distinct ideas than those which had before obtain'd , which i hope will easily be excused by those who consider , that words are purely in order to thoughts , and would therefore rather think rightly , than speak customarily . and this i was the more necessitated to do , by reason of the novelty and singularity of my design . for i must further observe to the reader , that this way of writing ethics is intirely new and unblown upon . for though the reduction of all vertue and vice to the various modification of love be obvious enough to any one that will consider , yet i do not know of any moralist that ever drew up a scheme of morality upon this hypothesis . i hope the reader will find it here done to his satisfaction , though i must tell him that i do not descend to a particular consideration of virtues and vices , it being not my design to insist minutely upon particulars , but only to lay down such general principles upon which a more particular scheme of morality may be erected , or into which those particular morals which are already extant may and ought to be ultimately resolv'd . the whole i have endeavour'd to comprize within as little room as may be . i have set my self this law , to write nothing but what is directly and perpendicularly to the point in hand , and to express what is so in as few words as i could with perspicuity . for i think it the perfection of discourse to come as nigh intuition as may be , and that none are so far removed from the measures of angels , as prolix and voluminous writers . it would have been more for my own ease to have been lax and popular , but i thought it of more concern to consult the patience , the time , and the purse of the reader . joh. norris . the general contents of the whole . part . i. sect . i. the general design of this undertaking , and its great usefulness to the whole drift of morality . pag. . sect . ii. of the dignity and nature of love in general , and of the first and great division of it . pag. . sect . iii. the analogy between love and motion , particularly with the motion of the heart , with a further illustration of the first and great division of love. pag. . sect . iv. of the first great branch of love , viz. love of concupiscence or desire , with the several kinds of it . pag. . sect . v. of the second great branch of love , viz. love of benevolence , its division into self-love and charity , where also t is inquired whether all love be self-love . pag. . part . ii. sect . i. that love requires some measures of regulation , and why love as dirigible is made the subject of morality rather than vnderstanding . pag. . sect . ii. the measures of love of concupiscence all reduced to these two general heads , what we must desire , and what we may desire . the measures of these , both in general and in particular . whether sensual pleasure be in its self evil , with an account of the true notion of original concupiscence , and of mortification . pag. . sect . iii. the measures of love of benevolence , particularly of self-love . p. . sect . iv. the measures of common charity . p. . sect . v. the measures of friendship . pag. . motives to the study and practice of regular love by way of consideration . pag. . part . i. sect . i. the general designe of this undertaking , and its great usefullness to the whole drift of morality . the subject of these contemplations is love. a thing that has employ'd many curious pens to little purpose , and has been perhaps the most and withall the worst written upon of any subject in the world . 't is i confess , strange that men should write so darkly and confusedly of that which they feel and experiment so intimately , but i must take the boldness to say that what i have hitherto seen upon this subject , has been so confused , ambiguous and indistinct , that i was thereby rather distracted , than inform'd in my notions concerning it . finding therefore no satisfaction in advising with books , i was fain to shut my eyes and set my self a thinking , without having any regard to what others had observ'd upon the same matter , so as to be in the least sway'd or determin'd in my conclusions by it . a method that would tend more to the discovery of truth , and to the advancement of all notional learning , than that narrow straitlaced humour of adhering to the dictates of those , who have nothing more to recommend them , but only the luck of being born before us . my design therefore here is to employ my meditations about two things , st . the theory of love according to its full latitude and comprehension , and ly . the measures of its regulation . the discharge of which double undertaking will thoroughly exhaust the subject , and answer the ends both of speculation and practise . i think it requisite to begin with the theory of love. for since the physitian thinks it necessary to know the anatomy of that body which he is to cure , and the logician to open the nature of those intellectual operations which he is to direct , i know not why the moralist should not think himself equally concern'd to frame a just theory of that affection of the soul which he is to regulate . the whole work i conceive to be of great usefulness and general importance to all the purposes of morality , nay indeed to contain the whole sum and substance of it . for what is the grand intendment and final upshot of morality but to teach a man to love regularly ? as a man loves so is he . love is not only the fulfilling , but also the transgressing of the law , and vertue and vice is nothing else but the various application and modification of love. by this a good man is distinguish'd from a bad , and an angel of light from an angel of darkness . this is that which discriminates the orders of men here , and will consign us to different portions hereafter , according to that of st. austin faciunt civitates duas amores duo . hierusalem facit amor dei : babylonem amor saeculi . interroget ergo se quisque quid amet , & inveniet unde sit civis . the two loves make the two cittys . the love of god makes hierusalem , the love of the world babylon . let every one therefore ask himself what 't is he loves , and he will find to which citty he belongs . he therefore that shall rightly state the nature , and prescribe due measures for the regulation of love , not only serves the cause of morality , but may be truely sayd to discharge the whole province of a moralist ; this i take to be a sufficient apology for the undertaking it self , and if the performance come up to the moment of the design ( whereof the world is to judge ) i know of nothing wanting to render it both serviceable and acceptable to the public . sect . ii. of the dignity and nature of love in general , and of the first and great division of it . let us make man in our image , after our own likeness , sayd god. now among other instances of resemblance wherein man may be likened to god , such as the internal rectitude of his nature , or self-dominion , and his external dominion over the creatures and the like , this i think may be consider'd as one , and perhaps as the chiefest of all , that as in the divine nature there are two processions , one by way of intellect which is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or word , and the other by way of love which is the h. spirit , so likewise in the humane nature there are as it were two processions , and that of the same kind too as in the divine , vnderstanding and love. these are the two noble facultys that branche out from the soul of man , and whereby he becomes a little image of the trinity . and altho' we generally value our selves most upon the former ; yet i know not whether there be not an equality in these as there is in the divine processions , and whether it be not as much the glory of man to be an amorous , as to be a rational being . sure i am that in the gentile theology and in the most refined philosophy of the ancients the preheminence is given to love. socrates in plato's symposion says concerning love , that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the eldest and most honorable of the gods. and we know love is made the first hypostasis in the platonic triad . the holy scripture goes yet higher , and does not only in several places set forth love as the flower of the divinity , and magnify the divine essence chiefly from that excellence , but seems to resolve all the perfection of the deity into this one point . for when it defines god it does not say he is wisdom or power , no not so much as wise or powerfull , but seems to overlook all his other perfections , and says in the abstract that he is love. they are great words of st. iohn , and such as make much for the great dignity of this divine affection , god is love , and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in god. so noble a thing is love , and so deserving of our most intense theory and inspection . and indeed it needs it , as well as deserves it . for there is nothing that darken's the nature of things , and obscures the clarity of our conceptions more than ambiguity of terms , and i know nothing that is more equivocal and full of latitude than this word , love. it is given to things whose ideas are notoriously different , and men seem to have agreed together not to detect the fallacy , and from the identity of the name to conclude the identity of the thing . to give one instance out of many , what is there that passes for an axiom of a more simple , certain and uniform signification than that common proposition in divinity , that we must love god for himself , and our neighbor for god's sake . but now when we come to examin what ideas we have under these words , 't is plain that that idea which is express'd by love in the first part of the proposition , is not the same with that which is express'd by love in the second . for love in reference to god signifys simple desire , and in reference to our neighbor , wishing well to , which ideas are as different as east and west , and yet because of the commonnes of the name , and the jingling turn of the proposition , this passes smoothly and unquestionably for one and the same love. but tho' this word love be used to signify ideas so very different that they seem to have nothing in common but the name , yet i think there is one thing wherein they all agree and whereof they all partake , and which may therefore be acknowledg'd as the general and transcendental notion of love. and that is , a motion of the soul towards good . this i say is the first and most general notion of love , and which runs throughout all the species of it . but then this includes two things . for as in the motion of bodys we first conceive gravity or a connaturality to a certain term of motion , and then the motion it self which is consequent upon it , so also in love ( which is the motion of the soul ) order requires that we first conceive a certain connaturality or coaptation of the soul to good , whence arises all the variety of its actual motions and tendencys toward it . this i take to be that peculiar habitude of the soul to good which the schools call complacentia boni a complacence , a liking or relish of good , which i consider as really distinct from and antecedent to its actual motion towards it . for as 't is observ'd by aristotle with more than ordinary nicenes in his d de anima ; the motion of love is in a circle . first good moves and acts upon the soul , and then the soul moves and exerts it self towards good , that so there may be the end whence was the rise of its motion . this first alteration of the soul from good answers to gravity in bodys , and may be call'd for distinction sake the moral gravity of the soul , the second to gravitation or actual pressure , and may as fitly be call'd the moral gravitation of the soul. i further consider that this moral gravity is impress'd upon the soul primarily and originally by good in general , or by the universal good or essence of good , that is , by god himself , who is the sum and abstract of all goodness , and the centre of all love. so that this moral gravity of the soul will be its connaturality to all good , or good in general , that is , to god as its primary and adequate object , and to particular goods only so far as they have somthing of the common nature of good , something of god in them . whence it will also follow that the moral gravitation of the soul does naturally and necessarily respect good in common or god as the term of its motion and tendency . so that upon the whole to speak more explicitly the most general and comprehensive notion of love will be found to be , a motion of the soul towards god. but now in this motion there is great difference . for god having unfolded his perfections in the creation with almost infinite variety , and as it were drawn out himself into a numerous issue of secondary goods , our love becomes also multiplied , and divides its cours among several chanels , and tho' after all its turnings and windings we may at last trace it up to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as plato speaks , the greot sea of beauty and head fountain of all being and perfection ( for we love particular goods only as they carry some impress of the universal , or to speak more properly , we love the universal good in the particulars ) yet it must be acknowledg'd that the immediat object of our love becomes hereby more various and multiplied , and consequently our love too , as receiving its specification from it . nor does our love receive lesse variety and diversity from the manner of its motion or tendency , motion being specify'd from the manner of it as well as from its term. and it may be also lastly diversify'd according to the nature of the part moved , whether it be the superiour or the inferiour part of the soul. from these three , the term of motion , the manner of motion , and the nature of the part moved , arise all the different kinds of love , such as divine and worldly , spiritual and carnal , charity and friendship , love of concupisccnce and love of benevolence , intellectual and sensitive , natural , animal and rational love , with several others which i shall not stand to enumerate . but notwithstanding this variety i believe all will be comprehended under these two in general , concupiscence and benevolence . this i take to be the first and great division of love , to which all the several kinds of it may be aptly reduced . for when i consider the motion of love , i find it tends to two things , namely to the good which a man wills to any one , whether it be to himself or to another , and to him to whom this good is will'd . so that the motion of love may be consider'd either barely as a tendency towards good , or as a willing this good to some person or being . if it be consider'd in the first way , then 't is what we call concupiscence or desire , if in the second , then 't is what we call benevolence or charity . for there is the same proportion in love that there is in hatred , which also involves a double motion . either a declining or tending from evill , which the greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the latins fuga , in our own language aversion or abhorrence , or else a willing evil to some person or other , which we call malice or malevolence . concupiscence or desire answers to the former of these , and benevolence or charity to the latter . there is indeed this difference to be observ'd between the motions of love and the motions of hatred , that those of hatred are not necessarily concomitant . for there may be a simple aversion without any malice or wishing ill to , tho' perhaps the latter can hardly be conceiv'd without the former . but now in love these motions are always concomitant and reciprocal . there is no desire without benevolence , and no benevolence without desire . for every thing that is desired is desired to some body , and so again , desiring to some body implies and supposes simple desire . and this i suppose has been the occasion of that great confusion which has been generally incurr'd in this matter , men being very apt from union and concomitancy to infer indistinction and identity . but notwithstanding this connexion , the ideas of desire and benevolence are very distinct , as will easily and clearly appear to any close and attentive thinker . sect . iii. the analogy between love and motion , particularly with the motion of the heart , with a further illustration of the first and great division of love. having in the foregoing section fix'd the general idea of love in the motion of the soul towards good , and this being a term somwhat metaphorical , and withall not so often applied by scholastic writers to this purpose , i thought it concern'd me to draw here a short parallel between love and physical motion , and to shew the admirable agreement and correspondency that is between them : whereby 't will appear that the general idea of love could not have had a more convenient representation . the excellent monsieur malebranche undertaking to describe the nature of the mind , and considering its idea to be very abstract , and such as did not fall within the sphere of imagination , thought it best to shadow it forth by the two eminent propertys of matter , viz. that of receiving various figures , and that of motion or mobility . to the property of receiving various figures he resembles that faculty of the mind which we call understanding . and to motion or mobility he liken's the will. the first of these parallels he persues and illustrates in many particulars , but when he comes to the last he gives only this one instance of resemblance , that as all motions naturally proceed in a right line , unless by the interposition of external and particular causes they are otherwise determin'd , so all the inclinations which we have receiv'd from god , are right , and would tend only to the true good , were they not turn'd aside to ill ends by the impulse of some forreign cause . this indeed is finely observ'd by this ingenious and learned theorist , but for an inlargement of the parallel i consider further , that as in the motion of bodys gravity precedes actual gravitation , that is , we necessarily conceive a certain congruity or connaturality of a body to a certain term before its actual tendency thither , so in the soul there is a natural complacency or liking of good , before its actual exerting it self towards it , for we desire nothing but what we like or relish as convenient and agreeable to us . but this i have touch'd upon already , and shall therefore no longer insist upon it . further therefore , as this affection call'd gravity in bodys , is nothing else but that first impression or alteration made upon them by the various actings of those effluviums or streames of particles which issue out from the womb of the great magnet , the earth , so that if there were either no such magnetic body , or a vacuum to intercept its influences , there would be no such thing as gravity ; so in the like manner this radical complacency and connaturality of the soul towards good ( which i call her moral gravity ) is nothing else but that first alteration or impression which is made upon her by the streaming influences of the great and supreme magnet , god , continually acting upon her , and attracting her by his active and powerfull charms . so that if either there were no god , or this his influence never so little a while intercepted , there would be no such thing as this complacency or moral gravity of the soul. again , as this physical gravity causes in bodys an actual effort or tendency toward the centre , and that with such necessity that they cannot but tend thither even while violently detain'd , and when at liberty hasten with all possible speed to this last term of their motion , so by vertue of this moral gravity the soul actually puts forth and exerts her self towards the great magnet , good in general or god , and that with as much necessity as a stone falls downwards . and tho' detain'd violently by the interposition of her body , yet still she endeavours towards her centre , and is no sooner set at liberty but she hastens away to it and unites her self with it . for the will notwithstanding all her soveraignty and dominion acts according to nature and necessity when she tends to her perfection . nay i take this necessity to be such , that i think it absolutely impossible for god to create a soul without this tendency to himself , and that not only because 't is against order and decorum that he should do so , but also because this moral gravity of the soul whence proceed all her actual tendencys , is caused by the continual acting of god upon her by this attractive and magnetic influences . for god is the first mover in moral as well as in natural motions , and whatever he moves he moves to himself . again i consider , that as the gravitation or actual endeavour of bodys towards the centre is always alike and uniform however their real progress may be hinder'd or the swiftness of it resisted by accidental letts and impediments , so is this moral gravitation or actual indeavour of the soul towards good in general or god always equal and uniform ( for a man does not desire to be happy more at one time than at another as i have elsewhere shewn ) i say this endeavour of the soul towards good is always equal , however her real advancing to it be hinder'd or resisted by the interposition of the body . again i consider , that as natural motion is a tendency or translation of a body from an undue and incongruous place to a place of rest and acquiescence , whereby it acquires as it were a new form of perfection , so love is extatical , and carries a man out from himself as insufficient to be his own good towards good without him , which by union he endeavours to make his own , and so to better and improve his being , till at length his desire be swallow'd up in the fruition of the universal good , and motion be exchanged for rest and acquiescence . this parallel between love and motion in general might be carried on much further , but besides that 't is convenient to leave somthing for the contemplative reader to work out by himself , i have also another parallel to make between love and a certain particular motion , namely that of the heart , wherein as there is as much harmony and correspondency in other respects , so there is this peculiar in it , that this is a motion perform'd within a man's self , and depending upon an intrinsic and vital principle as well as the other . first then we may consider that the heart is the great wheel of the humane machine , the spring of all animal and vital motion , and the head-fountain of life , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as hippocrates somwhere calls it , and that its motion is the first and leading motion of all , that it begins as soon as the flame of life is kindled , and ends not till the vital congruity be quite dissolv'd . and thus 't is in love. this is the great wheel of the intellectual frame as the other is of the natural , this is the spring and ferment of the soul , that gives her life and energy , and without which she would be utterly torpid and unactive . love is the first and mother motion that both prevents and actuates all the rest . 't is from her that all the inclinations and passions of the soul take their rise , and did we not first love we should neither hope nor fear , nor hate nor be angry , nor envy nor be any other way affected . nay we love and desire before we can apprehend , judge , reason or discourse , nay our love is then commonly most impetuous and high-set ; we love long before we know what 't is to love , nay before we know whether we love or no , even as soon as we receive the breath of life . and as 't is the first , so it is also the last motion . 't is the vltimum moriens of the intellectual , as the heart is of the natural structure . this is the motion that out lives and sees the funeral of all the other operations of the soul. for when either age or sickness by disturbing the crasis of the body has also untuned and disorder'd the facultys of the soul , when the man can no longer understand , nor discourse , nor remember , when all his rational facultys are as 't were benumm'd and death-struck , yet still he loves , and inclines towards happiness with as much weight as ever ; for love is strong as death , and as importunate as the grave , many waters cannot quench love , neither can the floods drown it again we may consider , that as by the pulsation of the heart the arterial blood is transmitted to the brain , whereby are generated those animal spirits which are the instruments of motion throughout the body , and which very animal spirits do again return and assist the motion of the heart by contracting its muscular fibres , and so straitning its ventricles to expel the blood contain'd in them into the arteries ; the same reciprocation may we observe in the motion of love. that moral gravity and gravitation of the soul impress'd on her by the universal good acting attractively upon her , and whereby she stands inclined to good in general , first moves the understanding , which as the schools allow , is moved by the will quoad exercitium actus , tho' not quoad specificationem . and then the understanding moves the will as to particular and actual volitions concerning particular goods . for as to these we will nothing but what we first know and judge pro hic & nunc fit to be will'd . which by the way may give great light to that intricate and perplex'd controversy , whether the will moves the understanding or the understanding the will. for they both move one another , tho' in different respects . even as the heart by its motion sends spirits to the brain , and is by those very spirits assisted in her motion . this indeed is a wonderful instance of resemblance , and the more i consider it the more strange i think it , and full of mystery . again as by the continual reciprocation of the pulse there is caused a circulation of the blood , which is expell'd out of the heart into the arteries , out of these into the parts which are to be nourish'd , from whence 't is imbibed by the capillary veins , which lead it back to the vena cava and so into the heart again ; and same may in proportion be applied to love. this is the great pulse of the body politic , as the other is of the body natural . 't is love that begets and keeps up the great circulation and mutual dependence of society , by this men are inclined to maintain mutual commerce and intercourse with one another , and to distribute their benefits and kindnesses to all the parts of the civil body , till at length they return again upon themselves in the circle and reciprocation of love. and if we further meditate upon the motion of the heart we shall find that it is not only an apt embleme of love in general , but that it also mystically points out to us the two great species of love , concupiscence and benevolence . the motion of the heart we know is double , dilatation and contraction . dilatation whereby it receives blood into its ventricles , and contraction whereby it expels it out again . and is it not so also in this great pulse of the soul , love ? is there not here also the like double motion ? for we desire good , which answers to the dilatation and immission of the blood , and we also wish well to , which answers to the contraction and emission of it . i know not what some may think of this , and i know there are a sort of men in the world that never think themselves , and look with scorn and contempt upon such notions as are not to be found out without more than ordinary thinking ; but for my part i must needs own that i stand amazed at this wonderful harmony and correspondence , and that i am thereby the more confirm'd in that celebrated notion of the platonists , that as the soul is the image of god , so the body is the image of the soul , and that this visible and material is but the shadow , or ( as plotinus will have it ) the echo of the invisible and immaterial world. sect . iv. of the first great branch of love viz. love of concupiscence or desire , with the several kinds of it . we have consider'd the nature of love in general , and have shewn it to consist in a motion of the soul towards good , whence we took occasion to represent the analogy between love and physical motion , which we find to be exact and apposite even to surprise and admiration ; we have also discover'd the double motion of this mystical pulse , and accordingly have branch'd out love into two general parts , love of concupiscence and love of benevolence . i come now to treat of each of these severally . and first of love of concupiscence or desire . the general idea of which i conceive to be a simple tendency of the soul to good , not at all considering whether it wills it to any person or being or no. not that there is or can be any desire without wishing well to , ( for as i observ'd before these are always inseperable concomitants ) but their ideas being very distinct , i think i may very well abstract from the one , when my business lies only to consider the other . concerning this love of desire i further consider , that the primary and adequate object of it is the same that is of all love , namely good in general or god. for we desire good as good , or good in common , before we desire this or that good in particular . and when we do desire any particular good , 't is still for the sake of the universal good whereof it partakes , and according to the degree of this participation either real or apparent so we measure out and dispence our love. so that good in general is the primary and adequate object of desire . but now this general or universal good being variously participated by particular beings , hence it comes to pass that our desire has many subordinate and secondary objects , which it tends to with more or less inclination according as the marks and footsteps of the universal good appear in them more or less discernable . for the universal good is so congenial and connatural to the soul as always acting upon it and attracting it to it self , that we love every thing that carries the least image or semblance of it . there is this difference only between the love of the universal , and the love of particular goods . our love to the universal good is natural , necessary and unavoidable . we have no more command over this love than we have over the circulation of our blood or the motion of our pulse . for god is the centre of spirits , as the earth is of bodys , and in our love of him we are as much determin'd as fire is to burn , or a stone to descend . and the blessed in heaven love him with the highest degree of necessity and determination . but now we are not thus determin'd to the love of particular goods . i say not thus determin'd . for it must be acknowledg'd that there is a sort of determination even here also . for good being desirable as good and consequently in every degree of it , so far as we consider any thing as good we must needs love it with a natural inclination , that which the schools term a velleity or voluntas naturae , or a loving a thing secundum quid , according to a certain respect ; but it being possible that this lesser particular good may in some circumstances come into competition with a greater particular good or with the greatest of all , the universal good , and so upon the whole become evill , 't is not necessary , nor are we determin'd to love it absolutely , thoroughly and efficaciously , but may nill and decline it absolutely , tho' still we retain a natural love or velleity towards it as before . for the case is the same here as 't is in evill . we necessarily hate evill as evill , and the greatest evill we hate absolutely as well as necessarily . but for particular and lesser evills , tho' we necessarily hate them too by a natural aversion as far as we consider them as evill , yet 't is not necessary that we should always hate them absolutely , but may in some circumstances absolutely will them as a means either to avoid a greater evil , or to obtain a greater good . and in the same proportion as any evil less than the greatest tho' it be necessarily nill'd and declined in some respect , may yet be absolutely will'd and embraced , so any particular good tho' it be in some respect necessarily lov'd , may yet absolutely be nill'd and refused . indeed the excellent monsieur malebranche in his treatise of nature and grace , asserts this non determination of our love to particular goods in more large and unlimited terms , when he tells us , that the natural motion of the soul to good in general , is not invincible in respect of any particular good . and in this non invincibility he places our liberty or free will. but in my judgement this proposition of his must either be corrected , or better explain'd . for without this our distinction , it will not hold true . our love to particular good is invincible secundum quid or as to a certain respect , but absolutely and simply speaking it is not invincible . and if in this absolute non invincibility he will have our liberty or free will to consist , i readily agree with him , and do think the notion to be very sound and good . and thus the difference between our love of the universal , and our love of particular goods is clear and apparent . our love to the universal good is primary and immediate , but our love to particular good secondary and mediate . our love to the universal good is invincible absolutely and simply , we will it necessarily , and we will throughly , but our love to particular good is invincible only in some certain respect . we do not always love it thoroughly and effectually , tho' we must always love it . in short , our love to the universal good is like the motion of our blood within our veins , which we have no manner of empire or command over , but our love to particular good is like the motion of respiration , partly necessary , and partly free. we cannot live without breathing at all , and yet we can suspend any one turn of respiration in particular , but yet not without a natural inclination to the contrary . and so in like manner we can't live without loving some particular good or other , but when we point to this or that particular good , there is not one but what we may nill and refuse absolutely and simply , tho' yet in some respect we must love it too , with a natural love. thus far i have consider'd the general nature of this first great branch of love , love of concupiscence or desire . i come now to the kinds of it . for the right distribution of which i consider first that any motion of the soul is specify'd from the quality of the object or term to which it tends . now the object of desire being good it follows that the kinds of desire must receive their distinction from the kinds of good . now good is relative , and the relation that it implies is a relation of convenience either to the soul or body , that is , either to the soul directly and immediately , or indirectly and by the mediation of bodily sensations . so that all good is either intellectual or sensual , and consequently the same members of divisition will be the adequate distribution of desire . that is an intellectual desire whose object is an intellectual good , and a sensual desire is that whose object is a sensual good . but i further observe , that this same denomination of intellectual and sensitive may be taken from the nature of the part moved as well as from the quality of the object . the appetitive faculty in man is double as well as the cognoscitive , and consists of a superiour and inferiour , of a rational and sensitive part . for as in the cognoscitive part there is pure intellect whereby ideas are apprehended without any corporeal image , and imagination whereby objects are presented to our minds under some corporeal affection , so also in the appetitive there is a pure and mere act of tendency or propension to the agreeable object , which answers to pure intellect and is what we call will or volition , and there is also such a propension of the soul as is accompany'd with a commotion of the blood and spirits , and this answers to imagination , and is the same with what we usually term the passion of love. and 't is in the divided tendency or discord of these two wherein consists that lucta or contention between the flesh and spirit . that which our b. lord intimated when he sayd the spirit truly is willing , but the flesh is weak , and which st. paul calls the law of the mind and the law of the members . i say in the divided tendency of these two . because sometimes the intellectual and sensitive appetite may both point one way , and conspire in the same object , as it does either in men very wicked , who sin with unity and intireness of consent without any check or remorse from the superiour part , or in men eminently good , who have reduced even their very bodily inclinations to the order of the spirit , and have attain'd to the highest degree of mortification and simplification of desire . and it may yet be observ'd further , that so far as this denomination of intellectual and sensitive is taken both from the quality of the object , and from the part moved , our desire may be at the same time both intellectual and sensitive . for that desire which is intellectual in respect of the part may be also sensitive in respect of the object , ( for we may will a sensual good as well as passionately desire it ) and so on the other side , that desire which is sensitive in respect of the part may be intellectual in respect of the object . for there may be a sensitive appetite of an intellectual good , and we may love even god himself passionately as well as rationally . thus is love of desire divided in general into intellectual and sensual . but as for the particular kinds under these they are almost infinite , and therefore i shall not offer at a distinct recital of them . i shall only remarque some few things concerning intellectual love , and by the way shall also briefly touch upon the principal and most eminent species of sensual love , and so end this section . and first concerning intellectual love , i consider that the general object of it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or beauty . for intellectual love is that whose object is an intellectual good , and an intellectual good is that which pleases the intellect , and the intellect is pleas'd with nothing but as 't is proportionable , harmonious and some way or other beautifull . whence it follows that intellectual love has beauty in general for its proper object . . but then this beauty which is the proper object of intellectual love , is either the first and original beauty , or created and derivative beauty ; if the first and original beauty , then the love of it is divine love , and if this be in a very high degree such as is the product of an intense contemplation , then 't is what we call seraphic love , which is the greatest exaltation , and perfection of intellectual love , and withall the greatest happiness the soul of man is capable of in this state , as i have shewn at large in another treatise . but if it be created and derivative beauty , then i consider that either we ascend by and from the love of it to the love of the first and originary beauty , or else we stick there , or we descend to the desire of corporal contact , and the delight arising from it . if we take occasion to ascend , then 't is what we call platonic love , which ( as i have elsewhere more at large explain'd the notion ) is the ascent of the soul to the love of the divine beauty from the aspect of beauty in bodys . but if we terminate and stick in this sensible form or pulchritude , tho' this affection be not so noble and generous as that which ascends higher , yet still this is pure intellectual love , so long as 't is free from all desire of corporal application , and for distinction's sake may be call'd the love of abstracted beauty . and let not any one think it strange that i make this abstract love of sensitive beauty an intellectual love. for beauty let the subject of its inherence be what it will , consists in harmony and proportion which is the immediate good of the soul , that only being capable both of understanding it , and of being primarily affected with it . and tho we give it the name of sensible beauty , yet that is only because the senses are the instruments of conveiances , not as being the part primely affected , and to distinguish it from those beautys which are immediately intelligible , such as the beauty of truth , the beauty of vertue and the like ; but in reference to the part directly and immediately affected all beauty , even sensible beauty is an intellectual good , and is one of the fainter rays of the divine glory , one of the remoter mirours that reflect the supreme and original beauty . the sublime platonist marsilius ficinus has a fine notion to this purpose . he takes the first beauty to be nothing else but the splendour of gods glory , and of this he says there is a threefold reflection . for he supposes angelical minds , rational souls , and beautiful bodys as three glasses of different colours , which reflect this one and the same light after different manners . his words are , ipsa certe pulcritudo prima nihil aliud est quam splendor gloriae penes patrem luminum , & figura substantiae ejus . vnde triplex emicat pulcritudo . prima quidem per angelicos intellectus , secunda vero per intellectuales animas , tertia per corpora ubique formosa quasi lumen unum per tria quaedam vitra coloribus inter se varia , ideoque varium ex primo splendorem subinde reddentia . the first beauty certainly is nothing else but the splendour of glory with the father of lights , and the figure of his substance . whence there shines forth a threefold beauty . the first through the angelical minds , the second thro' intelligent souls , the third thro' beautifull bodys , which reflect the same light as it were through three glasses of diferent colours , and accordingly they successively reflect a different splendour from the first . so that sensible and corporeal beauty is one of the glasses that reflect and represent the first beauty , and tho' it must be confess'd that we see through this glass darkly , yet still it represents according to its proportion , and is only as a picture remotely drawn after several copies , a weaker and further projected ray of god. and therefore it must needs be an intellectual good , and consequently the love of it , if abstracted from corporal applications , must also be a pure intellectual love. but if we do not stick and terminate here , but are by the aspect of sensible beauty precipitated down to the desire of corporal contact , and the pleasure thence arising , then this is sensual love , that is , a desire of a sensual good . i may add of the greatest sensual good , and consequently that this is the most sensual love. and 't is so common with men thus to descend , rather than love platonically or abstractedly , that the name of love is almost wholely appropriated to this affection , and to be in love signifies as much as to be inclined to corporal contact by the occasion of corporeal beauty . as if there were no other good but this kind of sensual good , and no other love but this sensual love. and accordingly plato in his symposion distinguishing between his two cupids , intellectual and sensual love , stiles the latter by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the vulgar or epidemical love. indeed this is a very strange affection , and has so universally prevail'd as to turn all other love almost out of the world. this is a passion that has made more slaves than the greatest conquerours , more stir and disturbance in the world than either ambition , pride or covetousness , and has caused more sin and folly than the united force of all the powers of darkness . it has wounded almost as many as death , and devour'd like a contagion or the grave . it makes no distinction , the wise man is as little secure from it as the fool , age submits to it as well as youth , the strong as well as the weak , the hero as well as the coward . in fine , this one passion sets on fire the whole course of nature , rages and spreads with an unlimited contagion , and is an image of the universal conflagration . and that which increases the wonder is the vilenes of that structure which is made the object of this sensual love. 't is not indeed much to be wonder'd that we should love corporeal pleasure , all pleasure being in its proportion lovely , but that the imbracing such poor materials should afford any , that 's the wonder . should one angel fall in love with the pure and refined vehicle of another , tho' matter even in its highest exaltation is but a poor sort of being , there would however be somthing of proportion in this : but to see a man idolize and dote upon a masse of flesh and blood , that which the apostle calls our vile body , or as 't is in the original more emphatically , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the body of our humiliation , that is at present the reversion of worms , and may the very next minute be a carcase , this is indeed so strange to one that thoughtfully considers it , that one would think all mankind were intoxicated with some general philtrum or love potion , that has thus charm'd them into this most stupid and wretched degree of idolatry . so that whether we consider the greatness of the effects , or the slenderness of the cause , this kind of sensual love is of all the most wonderfull and unaccountable . one thing more i have to observe concerning this kind of sensual love , the desire of corporal contact occasion'd by the aspect of sensible beauty , and that is , that this is a passion peculiar to man. brutes are below it , and angels are above it . for man being a middle sort of creature between an angel and a beast , 't is requisite he should have somthing to distinguish him from each , and that in his appetitive as well as in his intellective part. and thus it is , in his intellective part he has reason and discourse , which is above sensible knowledge , and short of intuition . and so likewise in his appetitive there is this desire of corporal contact arising from the sight of beauty , which is a mixt love , partly intellectual and partly sensual , and is thereby distinguish'd from the love of brutes , which is purely sensual ( for they are not affected with beauty ) and the love of angels which is purely intellectual . so great harmony and proportion is there in the works of him who made all things in number , weight , and measure . sect . v. of the second great branch of love viz. love of benevolence , its division into self-love and charity , where also 't is enquired whether all love be self-love . having dispatch'd the first great branch of love , love of concupiscence or desire , with the several kinds of it , i come now to consider the second , viz. love of benevolence . by this i understand a desiring or willing of good to some person or being that is capable of it . and herein 't is differenc'd from love of concupiscence . the idea of love of concupiscence is , a simple tendency of the soul to good , not at all considering whether it wills it to any person or being or no. but the idea of benevolence is a desiring or willing this good to some being or other . as far as 't is a desiring or willing of good , it agrees with love of concupiscence , but it is distinguish'd from it in that it wishes well too . for as in physical motion a body may be consider'd either as simply moving towards another , or as moving this other to some certain body , so in love which is a moral motion , the soul may be consider'd either as simply desiring or willing good ( which is concupiscence ) or as desiring or willing it to some capable being , and this is that species of love which we call benevolence . and i further meditate that as in motion the body that moves another may either move it towards it self as in circular motion , or towards some other body as in direct motion . so in the love of benevolence this wishing well to , may either be a willing of good to ones self , or to some other being . if to ones self , then 't is that special sort of benevolence which we call self-love . if to another , then 't is what we call charity . then again as to charity , this may be consider'd either as extended to all men in common , grounded upon one common consideration , viz. similitude of nature , and a capacity of being benefitted , which is common charity ; or as confined to one or two , and as mutual , and as mutually known , and withall as in a special degree of intensness and application , and then 't is friendship , which differs not from common charity but as 't is qualify'd by the preceding modifications . but this our division is in danger of being closed up again by some who contract all these kinds of benevolence into one , by telling us that all love is self-love . thus the epicureans of old , who by this plea thought to evade the necessity of owning a providence . for when you argue from the perfections of god that the world is cared for and govern'd by him ; no say they , the quite contrary follows . for all love is self-love , and proceeds from indigency , if therefore god be such a full and perfect being as you suppose , he cannot be concern'd for any thing abroad , as having no self-interest to serve . and indeed the conclusion would be right , were the principle so . for if all benevolence did proceed from indigence , it would certainly follow that the more perfect and self-sufficient any being is , the less he must needs regard the good of others , and consequently a being that is absolutely perfect , must necessarily be utterly void of all benevolence or concern for anothers welfare . but to hear an epicurean maintain this principle is no wonder . even plato himself in some places seems to look favourably towards it , particularly in his lysis , where purposely treating of friendship he concludes toward the end of the dialogue that friendship arises from indigence , necessity and privation . the same he again insinuates in his symposion , when he makes penia indigence or poverty to be the mother of love. but the roman plato , cicero , in his book of friendship will by no means allow this notion , but contends that love proceeds rather from nature , than from indigence or imbecility . there is in the other opinion somthing of truth , and somthing of errour , or rather 't is either true or false as 't is understood . how far true and how far false , i shall determin in the following conclusions . and first i do acknowledge that all love of concupiscence does proceed from indigence , and ends in self-love . for all desire is in order to further perfection , and improvement , and did we not want something within , we should not endeavour towards any thing without . and accordingly god , the self-sufficiency of whose nature excludes all want of indigency , is by no means capable of love of concupiscence . again i acknowledge that even love of benevolence or charity may be , and ( such is our present infirmity ) is for the most part occasion'd by indigence , and when unravel'd to the bottom concludes in self-love . our charity not only begins at home , but for the most part ends there too . for it must be confess'd that we generally love others with respect to our own interest , and dispense kindnesses upon the consideration of common infirmity , and that both the condition and the releif may be our own another day . i do also further acknowledge that things are so happily twisted and complicated together , that a man cannot benefit another without doing some kindness to himself , either in the consequence & final issue of things , or in the very act of benefaction , it being not only a pleasure to do good to others , but perhaps one of the greatest pleasures in the world . and this pleasure is withal inseparable from acts of kindness , so that 't is as impossible for a man to bestow a kindness to his neighbour , without having it some way or other redound to himself ; as 't is for the sun to shine upon the earth , without having his light reflected back again toward his own orb. all this is true , and thus far i grant that love proceeds from indigence , and that all love is self-love . but if the meaning of the assertion be that all love of benevolence does so necessarily depend upon indigence and so necessarily point to self interest , that were not a man indigent himself , and had an eye to his own advantage , he could not possibly wish well or do well to another , in this sense i deny that all love is self love . and i think not without just reason . for first there is nothing in the nature of the thing to hinder but that there may be a pure and disinteressed benevolence . for i consider that the good of another consider'd as anothers may be the object of volition as well as ones own . for the object of volition is good in common , or that which is agreeable to any intellectual being , whether ones self or any other . but now good as anothers or to another , is good as well as ones own , and therefore may be the object of volition , and consequently we may will good to another independently on our own interest . if it be objected that there is no such thing as pure malice , for when we wish ill to another we consider his evil as making for own good , and therefore why should there be any such thing as pure benevolence . i answer , the difference lies in this . that in malice the thing which we wish to another is evil . now evill being not any way desireable whether to ones self or another , as evil , it must in order to eligibility be considerd under the formality of good in some respect or other . but now it cannot have the formality of good with respect to our neighbor , for to him we wish it as evil. it must therefore appear good with reference to our selves . that is , we consider anothers evil as making for our good some way or other , and so will it to him . but now in charity or benevolence the thing which we will to another being supposed to be good already , there is no cessity that in order to the willing of it we should further consider it under the formality of being our own . the nature of good in common being sufficient for that . and this i conceive to be the reason that although there cannot be a pure and uninteressed malice , yet there may be a pure and uninteressed charity . besides , this love of benevolence is frequently exercised without any design of prospect , nay sometimes where there is no possibility of any self advantage . this is plain in god , who as he is the most self-sufficient and unbenefitable , so is he also the most beneficient and communicative being . and i question not but that it may be so in men also . for not to mention our doing kindnesses to those , whom we are certain never to see again , to dying persons , who cannot live to requite us , or to the living when we our selves are dying , and can't live to be requited , and the like , i only consider , that we often rejoice at the happiness of those who were born and lived before us , and hear with pleasure the successes of good men , with whom ( as being of another age ) our interest cannot be at all concern'd . now what we rejoice at we do implicitly and vertually will , for nothing can be matter of ioy which is not according to our will. lastly i consider that if all benevolence did necessarily spring from indigence and self-love , then it would certainly follow that our inclination to do good would be continually abated as our fortune rises , and we make nigher advances to full-ness and self-sufficiency . but now i dare appeal to common observation and experience , whether there be not many generous spirits , who retain the same propension to be beneficial , when they are set at the greatest distance from poverty , as they had before when at the lowest ebb , which yet could never be , if benevolence did necessarily depend on indigence . more i might add , but this i thing sufficient to shew that all love is not , as some pretend , resolvable into self-love , or founded upon indigence , and consequently that my division of benevolence into self love and charity is sufficiently accurate and contra-distinct . the second part of the discourse which contains the measures whereby our love is to be regulated . hitherto shalt thou come , but no further , and here shall thy proud waves be stayed , job . . . part . ii. sect . i. that love requires some measures of regulation , and why love as dirigible is made the subject of morality rather than understanding . having finish'd the theory of love , i come now to consider the measures of its regulation . a great and important work this ; for next to the regulating of our love , i know nothing either more difficult or more useful and necessary , than to prescribe measures how it ought to be regulated . indeed it is very necessary to six the bounds of regulating our love ; and that both because of the difficulty of loving regularly , and because of the moment and consequence of it . for the difficulty , as t is impossible not to love at all , so is it one of the hardest things in the world to love well . solus sapiens scit amare , says the stoic , the wise man only knows how to love. and there are very few of these wise men in the world , and to love regularly is oftentimes more than the wisest of us all can do . for first the appetite which we have to good in general is so strong and craving that it hurries us on to all sorts and degrees of particular good , and makes us fasten wherever we can trace the least print or foot-step of the universal good . now this promiscuous and indefinite prosecution of particular goods must needs oftentimes engage us in sin and irregularity . for though these particular objects of love separately considered are good , as being participations of the universal good , yet consider'd as they stand in relation either to one another or to the universal , they may become evil , in as much as there may be a competition , and the the lesler may hinder the greater . as for instance , the pleasure of sense ( as indeed all pleasure ) singly and separately consider'd is good , but the enjoyment of it may in some circumstances be against a greater good , the good of society , and then 't is evil as in fornication or adultery . but now we are so violently push'd on to particular good , by that general thirst after good in common , that we don't mind how things are in combination , but only how they are singly and separately in themselves . for to observe how things are in combination requires thought and reflexion , which in this hurry we are not at leisure to make , but to find how things are singly in themselves there needs nothing but direct tast and natural sensation . whence it comes to pass that we more readily do the one than the other , and so are very apt to transgress order , and to love irregularly . this is one ground of the difficulty of loving well , and as i conceive a very considerable one , tho' no one that i know of did ever assign this as the cause of this difficulty . but there is also another . for as from the love of good in general we are eagerly carried out to particular goods , so from the original pravity and degeneracy of our nature , among all these particular goods , that which we most eagerly propend to , is sensual good . the lower life is now highly invigorated and awaken'd in us , the corruptible body ( as the wise man complains ) presses down the soul , and the love , which we have to good in general , does now by the corruption of our nature almost wholly display and exert it self in the prosecution of this one particular good , the good of sense . . now though good of sense be as truely good as good of the intellect , as being a rivulet of the same sea , and a ray of the same sun , yet ( as i said before ) it may in some circumstances and combinations cross and thwart some higher interest , and so become evil. and the strong inclination , which we now have to the good of sense in general , will often betray us into the love and enjoyment of it in those particular circumstances wherein it is evil , and against order . and that oftentimes , even when we consider it as evil , that is , when we do not only mind it as it is singly in it self , but as it is in a certain combination . for this sensual concupiscence in us may be so strong , that though we do actually consider a sensual pleasure so circumstantiated as evil , yet we may for that time think it a lesser evil than to deny our selves the gratification of so importunate an appetite , and so chuse it , and be guilty of an exorbitant and irregular love. and if we further consider how we are perpetually sorrounded with sensible goods , which by troops thrust themselves upon us , while those that are intellectual require our search and inquisition , how early they attack us , and what deep impressions they make upon our then tender faculties , how much the animal part is aforehand with the rational , that we live the life of plants and beasts before we live the life of men , and that not only in the sense of aristotle , while we are in the womb , but long after we have beheld the sun , that the seducer eve is form'd while adam sleeps , and that sensuality comes to be adult and mature , when our discourses are but young and imperfect . so that by that time we arrive to some competent use of our reason , there has been laid in such a stock of animal impressions , that 't is more than work enough for our riper age , even to unravel the prejudices of our youth , and unlive our former life ; i say if we consider this , the difficulty of regular love will appear so great , that instead of admiring at the ill course of the world , one should rather be tempted to wonder that men love so regularly as they do . so great reason had the stoic to say , the wise man only knows how to love . but were it onely a piece of difficulty to steer the ship right , and were there not also danger of splitting against rocks , and of other ill contingencys , the pilot might yet be secure and unconcern'd , commit himself to his pillow , and his vessel to the winds . but 't is otherwise , there is moment and consequence in loving regularly as well as difficulty . no less a thing than happiness depends upon it , private happiness and publick happiness , the happiness of single persons , and the the happiness of the community , the happiness of this world , and the happiness of the next . for as motion is in the natural , so is love in the moral world . and as the good state of the natural world depends upon those laws of regular motion , which god has establish'd in it , in so much that there would need nothing else to bring all into confusion and destruction , but the irregular motion of those bodies which it consists of , so does the welfare and happy state of the intellectual world depend upon the regularity of love. according as this motion proceeds , so is the moral world either an harmonical frame , or a disorderly chaos , and there needs nothing but the irregularity of love to undermine the pillars of happiness , and to put the foundations of the intellectual world out of course . and accordingly we see that god who loves order , and takes care for the perfection of both worlds , has prescribed both laws of motion and laws of love. and for the same reason 't is a thing of great importance and necessity to state these laws and measures , the welfare of the moral world being as much concern'd in love , as that of the natural is in motion . and this is the reason why love as dirigible is made the subject of morality rather than understanding . for the happiness of life is not so much concern'd in the acts of our understanding , as in the acts of our love ; indeed not at all in our understanding any further , than as our understanding affects our love , and opinion influences practise . and then indeed it is , which is the ground of that obligation to orthodoxy , which we are under as to those articles of faith which are call'd fundamental . otherwise in matters of pure speculation the happiness of society is not at all concern'd in what we think , as for instance in that celebrated mathematical problem , whether the pertual approximation of some lines be consistent with the impossibility of their concourse , what does it signify to the good estate of society which way this be held ? 't is indifferent therefore which side we take . but now we can't advance one step in the motion of love , but something or other comes on 't in relation to political happiness , as there is not the least motion in nature but what tends either to generation or corruption . for the difference is this , the acts of our understanding are immanent , and ineffective of any alteration upon things without us , but the acts of love are transient , and leave external and permanent effects behind them in the course of things , and for this reason love , as dirigible , is made the immediate and proper subject of moral consideration , and understanding is here no otherwise concern'd than as it influences and determines our love . what the measures of regulating our love are , i come now to define . sect . ii. the measures of love of concupiscence , all reduced to these two general heads , what we must desire , and what we may desire ; the measures of these , both in general and in particular . whether sensual pleasure be in its self evil , with an account of the true notion of original concupiscence and of mortification . being now to define the measures of love , i shall first begin with love of concupiscence . and here i consider that duty and liberty divide between them the bounds of morality , which ought wholely to be taken up in the consideration of these two things , what we must or ought to do , and what we may do without being peccant . and accordingly i shall reduce all the measures of love of concupiscence to these two general heads , what we must desire , and what we may desire . concerning the first , all that we must desire will i suppose be comprehended under these three , god , the good of the community , and all those things which have a natural connexion with it . god , as the greatest and last end absolutely and simply , the good of the community , as the greatest of subordinate ends , and all those things which have a natural connexion with it , as means without which 't is not to be obtain'd . wherein is also comprehended the obligation of not desiring , or avoiding whatever has naturally a contrary or opposite tendency . the first thing which we must love or desire is god. but now god may be loved two waies , either confusely and implicitly , or distinctly and explicitly . the confuse and implicit love of god is natural and necessary , for t is the same with the love of good in common or happiness , to which our nature is originally and invincibly determin'd , and consequently cannot be morally obliged . but that which we are here obliged to , is to love or desire him distinctly and explicitly , that is , to contract and concentre that natural and original love , which we have to good in general or happiness , upon god , as being the true and only cause of all that happiness , to which we so blindly and necessarily aspire . the love of god therefore , to which we are obliged , includes two things , a desire and an explicit desire of him . and this indeed is the only love of him to which we can be morally obliged . for as to loving him confusely , that we can't be obliged to , because 't is necessary and unavoidable ; and as to loving him with love of benevolence or wishing well to , that we cannot be obliged to because 't is unpracticable ; the former we cannot be obliged to , because of the condition of our own nature , and the latter we cannot be obliged to , because of the nature of god. i know very well that i am singular in this point , and that nothing is more common , among those that treat of the love of god , than to talk of it as of a love of benevolence , and accordingly they alwaies express our love to god , and our love to our neighbour under the same common appellation of charity , as if they were both one and the same love , whereby we love god , and whereby we love our neighbour . but there is i remember an old rule , that we may talk with the many , but must think with the few , and i think t is very applicable in this case . for however we may use the word charity in respect of god , to comply with popular modes of speaking , yet i cannot see how in strictness and propriety of notion god may be lov'd with love of benevolence . for certainly as indigence in the lover is the ground of his loving with love of concupiscence , so indigence in the person lov'd is the ground of our loving him with love of benevolence . but now what can we wish to god that he has not already ? my goodness extendeth not to thee , but to the saints which are in the earth , sayes the psalmist , and to speak truely we can no more love god with love of benevolence , than he can love us with love of desire . god is as much above this our love as he is above our understanding , he can indeed wish well to us , but we can only desire him . and i observe that in scripture our love of god is set forth in such expressions as import not any benevolence to him , but a desire of him . as when the psalmist saies , like as the hart desireth the water-brooks , so longeth my soul after thee o god ; and again ; my soul is a thirst for god , when shall i come to appear before the presence of god ? and again , my soul breaketh out for fervent desire . again , whom have i in heaven but thee , and there is none upon earth that i desire in comparison of thee . and so again in the canticles which express the very soul and spirit of divine love , saies the inamour'd spouse , the church , let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth , for thy love is better than wine . again , tell me o thou whom my soul loveth , where thou feedest . but most emphatically of all , when she saies , i charge you o daughters of ierusalem , if ye find my beloved , tell him , that i am sick of love. thus again the angel expresses the seraphic temper of daniel , by calling him a man of desires ; for so the hebrew criticks chuse to read it . i shall mention but one place more , and that is in the of tim. where the apostle describing a sort of wicked men , saies of them , that they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , lovers of pleasure more than lovers of god. which plainly intimates that our love of god is of the same sort with that love wherewith we love pleasure ; but now we don't love pleasure with love of benevolence , but only with love of desire , and consequently that is the love wherewith we love god. if it be here objected that though there be no room for wishing well to god formally and directly , yet we may rejoyce and take a complacency in those perfections of his , which make him uncapable of our more express benevolence , which will amount ( as was urged before ) to an implicit and vertual willing them to him , i answer , that what we rejoyce at we do implicitly will , if it be in a being who either might not have had that happiness , or holds it precariously and may hereafter be deprived of it , for here is still some indigence in the person to make him capable of our good wishes ; but now the happiness of god is as necessary as his existence , and consequently however we may rejoyce in his being happy , we can no more will him to be happy , than we can will him to exist . for to will him to be happy necessarily supposes , that he has not the perfect possession of that happiness which we will him , for if he has , why do we yet will it to him ? here therefore is no room for benevolence . nay i do not conceive how we can wish well to god so much as ex hypothesi , on supposition that he were not happy in that respect wherein we would wish well to him . for the supposition is impossible , and takes away the very subject of our benevolence . for if god were not completely happy , he would not be what he is , but some other being . i would by no means straiten or retrench our love to god , but am rather for inlarging and multiplying its chanels as much as may be , and therefore if any think that god may be lov'd with love of benevolence , let them enjoy and ( if they can ) act according to their notion . for my part i cannot bring my self to any clear conception of it , and i am very scrupulous in venturing upon any thing whereof i have no distinct idea . which ought to be apology sufficient for me , if i make love of desire to be the only love , wherewith we are obliged to love god. and that we are obliged thus to love him , i shall briefly make out from the consideration of our own nature , and from the nature of god. as to our own nature , i consider that our thirst after good or happiness in general is so natural , so necessary , and so vehement , that as at present we can neither suspend , nor moderate , nor in the least interrupt it , so we can never expect fully to quench or extinguish it , but in the enjoyment of that object , which has all that happiness in it , on which the whole bent of our soul is so strongly set . from the strength and invincible necessity of this our inclination to good in general , i conceive 't will follow that 't is highly reasonable , that that being wherein is all this happiness , to which we indefinitely are inclined , ought to be lov'd and desired expressly by us , and not only so , but with the very same love wherewith we love happiness it self . for otherwise we should contradict our first and grand appetite , and act against the very frame and constitution of our nature . this admitted , i consider secondly that god is that full and rich being , that has all this happiness in him . he is not only the cause of all good , but the very essence and nature of it . he is ( as the divine philosopher stiles him ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 good it self , lovely it self , and desirable it self . he is indeed the first desirable as well as the first intelligible , and as we see and understand all things in him , so in him we desire all that we desire . in short , he is the complement and perfection of good , the end and the centre of the whole intelligent creation , and all that we can desire or enjoy ; and consequently as we cannot love beyond him , so we ought not to love short of him . st. austin has words to this purpose worth citing . summa bonorum deus . neque infra remanendum nobis est , neque ultra quaerendum . alterum enim periculosum , alterum nullum est - god is the sum of all good . we are neither to fix on this side of him , nor to seek any thing beyond him , the former is dangerous , and the latter is nothing . and as we are obliged to love god , so ought we to love him beyond all other things whatsoever . we cannot indeed love him as he is lovely at all , nor can we love him to our utmost till we shall see him as he is , but we may & must now prefer him in our love . thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart , with all thy soul , with all thy mind , and with all thy strength ; so runs the commandment . and very just we should . for if even in particular goods order requires that the most lovely should be loved most , much more ought we to love him who is the very essence of good , good it self , beyond all derivative and secondary good . for there is here no proportion or comparison at all . and for the same cause we can never love god too much . as moderation has here no excellence , so excess has here no place . an infinite desirable can never be too much desired . god is the measure of all love , every thing being lovely only so far as it participates of him , and consequently the measure of loving him is to love him without measure . the philosopher sayes well in his politics , that the appetite of the end is alwaies without end or term , and that bounds and stints are only in those things that are in order to the end. god therefore being our end we can never love him to excess , no nor the angels in heaven neither . indeed the thing is absolutely as well as relatively impossible , for as the narrowness of our nature will hinder us from loving him enough , so the infinite fulness of his own makes him uncapable of being lov'd too much . . and thus much for the love of god. the next thing that we are to desire is the good of the community . this next to god is the greatest possible good . for 't is the good of the whole , than which nothing can be greater . the good of the community is the end , the measure , the accomplishment and the final result of all private goods . hither they all point , and here they all conspire and concentre . and consequently this is the greatest beauty , the greatest order , and the greatest harmony that can possibly result from the creature , and is the very next resemblance of the perfection of god , who is all in all . this therefore being the greatest delectable good in it self , it ought to be so also to us , who are to love and desire this good of the community beyond all private good whatsoever . nay we ought to desire private good no further than as 't is conducive to , or at least consistent with the public interest . for i consider society as a musical instrument , consisting of variety of strings of different sizes , and strain'd up to different pitches , some of whose sounds , though ungrateful in some junctures , are yet musical as they stand in relation to others , and in order to a common design . now tho 't is natural to desire the grateful sound of every string singly , were this equally conducing to the harmony of the whole , yet certainly no body is so unreasonably absurd , as to desire that this or that discord should be turned into a sound singly more grateful , to the prejudice of the general harmony , which is of infinitely greater consequence , than the single gratefulness of one or two particular strings . and this is the case of us men in society , and this ought to be our measure . we ought to consider our selves as so many strings of one great instrument , and not affect any pitch or degree more grateful to our selves , to the prejudice of the common harmony , the good of the community , which is the most delectable good , and ought by us to be most cordially tender'd , and principally regarded . especially considering that this is the good which god himself cheifly proposes , and principally regards both in the creation and government of the nniverse . and now since the desire of the end necessarily includes the desire of the means , the next object of our desire must be all things which have a natural connexion with the good of the community . and here 't is supposed in the first place , that there are some things that have this natural connexion with it . and 't is necessary so to suppose . for as god cannot make a natural world according to any particular system whatsoever , but there will necessarily arise upon it some certain relations and habitudes of agreement and disagreement ; some motions will naturally make for its order and perfection , and some against it . so is it impossible for god to make an intellectual word , that is , to constitute society in any particular condition , scheme or posture , but relations of agreeable and disagreeable will naturally and necessarily arise ; some things will naturally make for its order and convenience , and some things will be as naturally contrary to it . and this without any arbitrary interposition of god by the mere natural result and necessity of things . for to recur again to the instance of a musical instrument , let an instrument be so and so made , so and so strung , and so and so tuned , and some certain strokes upon it will necessarily be harmonical , and other some as necessarily disharmonical . but now let the instrument be tuned another way , and the relations of convenience and disconvenience will alter , the same strokes , that were before disharmonical , may be now harmonical , and so on the contrary . but yet still some strokes will be naturally agreeable and some disagreeable , let the instrument be set which way you please . the application of this to society is too obvious to insist upon . to proceed therefore , it being supposed that there are some things , which have a natural connexion with the good of the community , the next obligation of our love will be , that whatsoever has this natural connexion be will'd and desired by us . for as the good of the community is the greatest delectable good , so that which has a natural connexion with it is the greatest proffitable good , and is therefore to be lov'd with the same love wherewith we love the good of the community it self , wherein is also implied that whatever has an opposite relation is in the same manner to be hated and abhorred . for this is the general reason of moral good and evil , of vertue and vice , and the prime fundamental law of nature , which never can cease of expire , however the particular instances may change according to the variation of the intellectual systeme : as i have more fully shewn in another discourse , and shall therefore here no further enlarge upon it . . and now because with relation to the present posture of the intellectual world , there are some particular things in specie , which have this natural connexion with the interest of the community , such as justice , temperance , fortitude , patience , humility , veracity , fidelity and the like ; hence it comes to pass that these are to be lov'd and will'd by us , by vertue of that general canon , that whatever naturally serve to the good of the community is to be loved , to which these are reduced as special instances and exemplifications . but i do not think my self obliged to descend to a particular prosecution of these or any other vertues , it being not my design to insist upon particulars , but only to lay down such general principles , upon which a more particular scheme of morality may be erected , or into which those particular morals which are already extant may and ought to be resolv'd . and besides having brought the reader into the road , i think i may now be excused from attending him any further , and shall therefore advance to some other theoryes of more remote and uncommon observation . having therefore fix'd the general bounds of duty by shewing what we must desire , i proceed to consider the bounds of liberty by shewing what we may desire . now the measures of this are either general or particular . the general measures are two . the first is , that we may desire any thing that is not contrary to what we must desire . from this arises the second general measure , which is that we may desire any thing that is not contrary or prejudicial to the good of society . now as to the particular measures , there is too much variety in them to be all minutely and punctually consider'd . and besides it would be a needless as well as a tedious undertaking . i shall therefore only touch upon the more considerable instances , and such as have not been made the subject of ordinary speculation . and the first instance of our liberty which i shall consider , is that we may desire pleasure . first because the desire of it is necessary and invincible , implanted in us by the author of our nature , and which we can no more devest our selves of , than we can of any the most essential part of our constition . ly because pleasure as such in the common nature of it is singly and simply good , and in no respect or combination evil . it is singly and simply good , because convenient and agreeable , and in no respect or combination evil , because as such not against the good of the community . for if pleasure as such were against the good of the community , then every particular pleasure would be so , because every particular pleasure partakes of the common nature of pleasure , which would then be enough to render it evil , the least defect being a sufficient reason to make any thing so . but now this is so far from being true , that not only some pleasures are laudable and excellent , but on the contrary no particular pleasure is evil so far as pleasure , but only by reason of some accidental combinations and circumstances , wherein some higher interest is opposed by it . now this is so far from making against pleasure , that it makes strongly for it . for if the enjoyment of particular pleasures be then only and in such instances and circumstances restrain'd , when the interest of some greater happiness is thereby cross'd , it follows that pleasure it self is a thing principally regarded and provided for by god ; and consequently that it is good in it self , and therefore may be desired by us . so much as to the desire of pleasure in general , or as such . now concerning particular pleasures i propose these two general canons , which i think will hold in all instances whatsoever . first that that pleasure which has no trouble or pain annex'd , may , nay indeed cannot but be embraced ; as on the contrary , that pain which has no pleasure annex'd is to be avoided . the other canon is , that that pleasure which either hinders a greater pleasure , or causes a greater pain is to be nill'd and avoided , as on the contrary that pain which either takes off a greater pain , or causes a greater pleasure is to be will'd and embraced . by these two general canons we are to regulate our desire of particular pleasures . but now of particular pleasures , some are intellectual and some are sensual . as to intellectual pleasures there is no question to be made , but that any of them may be desired as to their kind , only there are some measures to be observ'd with reference to their degree , time , place , and other circumstances which are too numerous to define , and withal too obvious to need it , and may therefore be left to the discretion of common prudence to determine according to the two preceding general canons . but now concerning sensual pleasure , especially that eminent species of it which we call venereal , there is more difficulty . of this it may be doubted whether it be in its self evil or no. some we know among the ancients have expressly thought so , and upon this ground have condemn'd the use of marriage , as namely , the sect of the essenes among the jews , tatianus , marcion , manichaeus and others . and though these were censured as hereticks , yet nothing more common even among orthodox and approv'd writers , than to let fall such expressions , from which the same conclusion will follow . for when they tax the immorality of some particular instances of sensual pleasure ( suppose adultery or fornication ) they don't ground their charge wholely upon those civil inconveniences , which either of them bring upon society in their respective circumstances , but resolve part of their immorality into sensuality as such , abstracted from those other ill consequences . they condem them not only as unjust , as injurious , as inconvenient to the public , &c. but also as sensual : now if any particular sensual pleasure be evil as sensual , then 't will unavoidably follow that sensual pleasure as such is evil . and that it is so , a man might be further induced to think , when he observes that in the divine writings ( not to say any thing of our common way of discourse ) such peculiar epithets of infamy are given to certain instances of sensual pleasure , which can belong to them on no other score than as as sensual . nay and as if here lay the very point of the immorality , they often receive a denomination from the sensual pleasure , but never from the injustice , unfaithfulness or the like . thus is adultery call'd the sin of vncleanness . and adulterers are common call'd unclean persons , filthy , brutish , &c. in like manner david in his penitentials for that sin insists cheifly upon the sensual part of it , and accordingly speaks of washing , cleansing , and making clean . from all which a man would be tempted to gather that the moral ilness of adultery were at least partly to be resolv'd into the sensuality of it , and consequently that sensual pleasure is in it self or as such evil . and this seems yet more probable from the consideration of a certain instance of sensual pleasure , wherein there seems to be nothing besides the mere sensuality . as namely voluntary pollution . and yet this is universally condemn'd as immoral , and consequently sensual pleasure seems to be in it self evil . . as it does yet further from those sharp invectives , which the moral writers of all ages have ever used against it as a low , base , brutish and dishonorable thing , and from that shame which naturally attends it , even in circumstances professedly lawful , whereby men seem naturally conscious of some moral incongruity in the thing purely as such . but now to all this i need oppose but these two things . first that if sensual pleasure were evil in it self or as such , it would be so in all its instances . this is an undeniable consequence . but now that it is not so in all its instances , is plain from the divine institution of marriage . and therefore it is not evil in its self . for it must not be thought ( as some seem to fancy ) that marriage makes that good which was in it self evil . for if once evil in it self , it must eternally and universally be so , and consequently even in marriage it self , that as to sensual pleasure being the same with fornication or adultery . but sensual pleasure is not evil in marriage , therefore not in it self or as such . this is demonstration . to this i further add that even the grossest pleasure of sense , is one of the remoter participations of god. for it must be granted to be at least a natural good , and every particular good be it what it will , is a ray and emanation of the universal good . but now nothing of god can be simply and absolutely evil . and besides , i consider that in the human frame god has prepared organs and instruments for the use of sensual pleasure , and that he has also given us natural appetites and inclinations to it . whereby it appears that god has provided for the gratification of the animal as well as the divine life . and though this is to be chiefly nourish'd , yet the other is not to be starv'd . for it is a tree of gods own planting , and therefore the fruit of it may be good for food , as well as fair to the eye . for there can be nothing simply evil in the paradise of god. as t is finely made out by the excellent doctor more in several places of his conjectura cabalistica , where the reader may find this argument copiously and very excellently managed . i conclude therefore that sensual pleasure is not in its own simple nature evil , and consequently that no particular instance of it is evil barely as being sensual ( for if so then sensual pleasure as such would be evil ) but only as it stands invested with some circumstances , which make it inconsistent with some higher good , the good of society . thus in voluntary pollution there is a deordination from the end of nature , generation , and herein consists its evil , not in its being a sensual pleasure . and accordingly we find that those other pleasures of sense , which are not appropriated by nature to any peculiar end , are in their use wholely indifferent , as using rich perfumes , drinking delicious wines , &c. thus again in fornication , though the end of generation may be here serv'd , yet the ends of convenient education cannot . and herein lies the evil of this , not in its being an act of sensuality or a sensual pleasure . but because there are some that are ready to call in question the natural immorality of simple fornication , and those that do allow it are scarce resolv'd where to fix it , 't will not be amiss to prosecute this a little further . the best account that i know of this matter , is that which is given by tho. aquinas , and indeed i think it very full , rational and satisfactory . and because i cannot do it in better words , i will give it in his own . it is to be consider'd ( sayes he ) that in those animals , in which the female alone is sufficient for the bringing up of the young , the male and female after copulation remain no time together , as in dogs . but among those animals in which the female is not sufficient for the bringing up of the young , the male and female after copulation remain together , as long as is necessary for the education and instruction of the young . as it appears in some birds , whose young ones can 't get their living presently after they are brought forth . for since birds don't nourish their young with milk ( which nature has made ready at hand , as in beasts ) but are forc'd to go forrage abroad for meat , and besides to cherish their young while they feed them , the female would not be sufficient alone for all this . and therefore by the order of providence the male among such creatures is naturally inclined to abide with the female for the education of the young . now 't is plain that in human kind the woman would by no means suffice alone for the education of the child , since the necessity of human life requires many things which cannot be supplied by one only . it is therefore convenient according to human nature that the man after conjunction should abide by the woman , and not presently depart , and take up indifferently with any body , as 't is among those that fornicate . neither will the case be alter'd by the womans being so rich as to be able to nourish her child by ber self . because the natural rectitude of human actions is not to be measured according to those things , which happen by accident in one individual , but according to those things which follow the whole species . again it is to be consider'd , that in human kind the off-spring does not only need nourishment as to the body , like other animals , but also instruction as to the soul. for other animals have natural instincts by which they may provide for themselves . but now man lives by reason , and must attain to discretion by long experience . whence it becomes necessary that children be instructed by their experienc'd parents . nor are they capable of this instruction assoon as they are born , but after a considerable time , and chiefly when they come to years of discretion . for to this instruction a great deal of time is required , and even then too by reason of the violence of passion by which the iudgment is perverted , they will want not only to be instructed , but to be subdued . now for this the woman alone is not sufficient , but this is rather to be the work of the man , whose reason is better able to instruct , and his strength to correct . 't is necessary therefore in human kind to take care of the off-spring not for a short time as in birds , but for a considerable space of life . and therefore whereas t is necessary in all creatures that the male abide with the female as long as the office of the male is requisite for the off-spring , 't is natural to mankind that the man associate not for a little while but alwaies with one determinate woman . and this society we call matrimony . matrimony is therefore natural to mankind . and fornicarious mixture , which is besides matrimony , is against the good of man , and for this reason must of necessity be a sin . thus this excellent and most exact theorist , whose words i should not have transcribed at length , were they not of more than ordinary weight and moment . by this it appears , that simple fornication is naturally immoral , and wherein its immorality lies . not in its being a sensual pleasure , but in its being so circumstantiated as not to comport with the good of society . and what i observe here in particular of simple fornication , the same may be said of any other forbidden instance of sensual pleasure , that they are not evil as sensual , but upon the consideration of some accident or circumstance , whereby they interfere with the publick interest . to the objections therefore on the other side i answer , first that it must be own'd that nothing is more common , even among approv'd writers , than when they tax the immorality of some particular instances of sensual pleasure to condemn them under the formality of their being sensual . but herein is their mistake , and if men will talk confusedly of things , and assign false causes for true ones , who can help it ? to the second i answer , that when the scripture gives such peculiar epithetes of infamy to some instances of sensual pleasure , that can belong to them on no other score than as sensual , it must be confess'd that the sensual part is then tax'd . but then this is not , must not be understood as to the kind , but as to the degree . not the degree of pleasure , but the degree of affection , it being a plain argument , that men are too much set upon sensual pleasure , when for the sake of it they will adventure to gransgress order , and trespass against the good of society . and this indeed is a culpable sensuality . to the third i answer , that in that certain condemn'd instance of sensual pleasure wherein there seems to be nothing besides the mere sensual perception , there is really something besides , tho not according to a physical , yet according to a moral estimation . for it is not barely a sensual pleasure , but a sensual pleasure deordinated from the end of god and nature , namely , generation , for which it was design'd . and in this deordination not in the sensuality consists its natural evil and moral turpitude . to the fourth i answer that those severe declamations which the moralists of all ages have made against sensual pleasure in general , as a low , base , brutish and dishonourable thing , must either be understood comparatively , with respect to the higher character of intellectual pleasures , or they are ill grounded and unreasonable . and then as to the shame , which naturally attends the acting of this sensual pleasure in all its instances , though it may in the first place be question'd whether this shame be from nature or no , and not rather from education and arbitrary usages , yet for the present i will suppose it natural , and the account of it i conceive must be this , it being a thing of vast consequence and moment to the interest of sociable life , that man should be propagated in a decent and regular way , and not as brutes are , god thought it convenient for this purpose to imbue our natures with this impression of shame with respect to venereal pleasure in general . not because this sensual delectation is in its own nature simply evil , but lest our inclination to sensual pleasure in general should betray us into those instances of it which are so . which this natural impression was intended as a curb to prevent . by all which it plainly appears notwithstanding all the intricacy , wherewith some confused thinkers have entangled this matter , that sensual , even the grossest sensual pleasure cannot be in its own nature and as such evil , and consequently that it may be desired by us in such convenient circumstances , wherein no higher good is opposed . now from this hypothesis it will follow first , that original concupiscence must be far otherwise stated than usually it is . it is commonly understood to be a vicious disposition or depravation of nature , whereby we become inclined to evil . now if you ask , what evil . they tell you , t is carnal or sensual pleasure . but now ( as it has been abundantly demonstrated ) this is not simply and in its own nature evil , but only as 't is circumstantiated . and this original concupiscence is not so particular ( as being a blind appetite ) as to point to sensual pleasure in this or that circumstance , but is carried only to sensual pleasure in common or as such . which being not evil , neither can the inclination that respects it be evil or sinful , every act or inclination being specified from its object . it must not be said therefore , that this originary concupiscence , or natural impression toward sensible good , is formally evil and sinful , the most we can allow is , that it is an occasion of evil , the strong tendency we have to sensual pleasure in common , being very apt to betray us to consent to the enjoyment of it in inconvenient instances and circumstances . another consequent from the premises is this , that the duty and vertue of mortification does not consist ( as 't is vulgarly apprehended ) in removing and killing the natural desire of sensual pleasure . for the natural desire of sensual pleasure is not evil , its object not being so , and consequently not to be eradicated . but that it consists in such a due repression and discipline of the body , that our natural desire of sensual pleasure in common may not carry us to the express willing of it in such instances as are against order , and the good of society . sect . iii. the measures of love of benevolence , particularly of self-love . having prescribed some general measures for the regulation of the first great branch of love , love of concupiscence , i come now to set bounds to the other arm of the same great sea , love of benevolence . and because this is first divided into self-love and charity , or wishing well to ones self , and wishing well to some other being , i shall in the first place state the measures of regulating self-love . this sort of love is generally the most irregular of any , and that which causes irregularity in all the rest . we love our selves first , and last , and most of all . here we alwaies begin , and here we most commonly end , and so immoderate are we in it that we prosecute our own private interest , not only without any respect to the common good , but oftentimes in direct opposition to it , and so we can but secure to our selves a plank , care not what becomes of the vessel we sail in . this is the great sucker of society , and that which robbs the body politick of its due nourishment , and drains the common fountain to feed our own lesser streams . nay so foolishly immoderate and inordinate are we in the love of our selves , that we prefer our own little interest not only before greater of the public , but before greater of our own , and love our bodyes better than our souls , a lesser interest that 's present better than a greater that's distant , tho equally sure , ond infinitely greater . in short , t is from the inordinateness of this one principle , self-love , that we ruin the good of the community here , and our own selves both here and hereafter . here therefore is great need of regulation . now i suppose the measures of self-love may all be reduced to this one in general , viz. that self-love is never culpable , when upon the whole matter all things being taken into the account , we do truely and really love our selves . it is then only culpable , when we love our selves by halves , and in some particular respects only to our greater disadvantage in others of more importance . and because this we generally do , hence it comes to pass that self-love is commonly taken in a bad sense , as if 't were a thing evil and irregular in it self . but that 's a mistake , self-love is a principle and dictate of nature , and the instrument of attaining to that happiness , which is the end of our creation , and consequently can never be faulty , when upon the whole matter all things consider'd , it is a true love of our selves , now to make it so , three things are required . first that we do not mistake our true selves by wishing well to , or consulting the welfare of our worser part in prejudice to our better , by feeding the brute and starving the man. this would be to love our selves in a little , and to hate our selves in much , and would therefore upon the whole , better deserve the name of self-hatred than self-love . if therefore we would love our selves truely and regularly , we must learn in the first place not to mistake our true selves . the next requisite is , that we do not mistake our true interest , by willing to our selves a lesser good , when the having it will cost us the loss of a greater . this is properly that foolish exchange condemn'd by our b. saviour ; 't is to gain a world , and loose a soul ; and what gain 's that ? this is indeed the bargain of fools and madmen , and yet such bargains we usually make , and what adds to the folly , think that we love our selves all the while . but this is not to love our selves truely , and therefore not regularly . the third and last requisite for the regulation of self-love is , that we do not will any good to our selves , that is not consistent with the good of the community . and that not only because the publick good is of greater consequence than any private good can be , but also because that which is against the good of the community , cannot be upon a final consideration of things really for the good of any particular person in it . for the good of the whole is the good of the part , and the evil of the whole is the evil of the part , and all private interest is so twisted , complicated and imbarqued with the publick , that there is no prejudicing this without prejudicing that . this indeed may not be the present and immediate effect , but 't will prove so in the consequence and final upshot . for society is like an arch in a building , where one stone supports another , and in supporting others they support themselves . and so on the contrary , should they undermine one another , they would at length by consequence undermine themselves . he therefore that out of love to himself prosecutes any private interest to the prejudice of society , trespasses against his own good as well as that of the community , and when all is computed , cannot be said truely and really to love himself . the sum is , to make our self-love regular and according to order , we must take care not to mistake our true selves , nor our true interest , and that we don't prejudice the publick welfare , and then we can never love our selves too much . sect . iv. the measures of common charity . concerning common charity . i consider that the measures of it may all breifly be absolv'd in these two , the object of it , and the order of it . as to the object of charity , 't is of a very great and diffused latitude , and takes in first all men , whether good or bad , friends or enemies , neighbours or strangers , and in all respects , whether as to soul or body , name or goods &c. it extends also in some measure to the very irrational creatures , it being one of the characters of a good man in scripture to be merciful to his beast . nay it reaches to the angelical natures themselves , and indeed to the whole intellectual , rational and sensitive world that are capable of the least degree of benefit . in all this there is no difficulty , only it may be here question'd , whether the devils and damn'd spirits are to be comprehended within the sphere of our charity ? to which i answer , that there are two things that may render any being uncapable of being an object of our charity or wishing well to . either perfect fulness , or perfect indigence . now 't is the perfection of indigence to be reduced to such a degree of want as not to be in a capacity of ever being releiv'd . the former is the condition of god , which makes him uncapable of being made the object of our benevolence , as was observ'd before , the latter is the case of devils and damn'd spirits : and for this reason we cannot will any good to them , as not being capable of any . for we cannot exert any act of love which we know to be in vain and to no purpose at all , let the incapacity proceed either from extream fulness or extream indigence ; for what is there that should excite any such act ? and besides if we could possibly wish well to such beings , yet i don't see how we may do it lawfully and regularly . for our will would not be then conformable to gods , but directly opposite to it , and besides we should disapprove , at least tacitly and interpretatively , the iustice of his waies , by thus loving them whom he extremely hates , and blessing them whom he curses and abandons for ever . thus far of the object of our charity . now concerning the order of it , let these general measures be observ'd . first that we wish well to him most , who is most likely to be serviceable to the publick , supposing the good which we will him , to be such , as by the having it , he become more capable of serving the publick . thus had i the disposal of an ecclesiastical benefice , which is a thing wherein the good of the publick is highly concern'd , i ought certainly to bestow it upon him who i thought would do most good in it . tho at the same time i had never so many friends or relations that wanted it . for this is a sure and never failing rule , that the good of the publick is alwaies to be prefer'd before any private interest whatever . secondly that of two that are equally serviceable to the publick , we will this good wherein the publick is concern'd , to him that is most indigent ; for after the publick exigence is provided for , private necessity comes in to be regarded . but if both equally serviceable and equally indigent , then we are to will it to him that is most our neighbour , friend , or relation , or any other way indear'd to our affection . but thirdly , supposing the good to be such that the interest of the public is not concern'd who has it , then i am only to consult the good of the person to whom i will it , and consequently here equity will require that the preference be given to those that are near me before strangers , and among those that are near to those that are nearest , whether by nature , choice , or place , or in any other respect . and among strangers 't is equitable that the indigent be prefer'd in our charity before the rich , the good before the bad , and the more good before the less good , and the like . but still with this necessary reserve , that all other things be equal between them . for ly , 't is utterly unreasonable , that i should prefer the convenience of my friend before the necessity of my enemy . no , i ought to do the contrary , and prefer the necessity of my worst enemy before the convenience even of my dearest friend . thus i would leave my friend in the mire , to save my enemy from drowning . for in this and such like cases the greatness of the necessity compensates for the want of merit in the person . the last general measure that i shall prescribe is , that as we ought not to prefer any man's convenience before another man's necessity , so neither ought we to prefer any man 's own convenience before his own necessity . my meaning is , that we ought to consider our neighbours true and best interest , will and do him that good which he stands most in need of , and not do him a little kindness which will end in a greater mischief . hence it follows that we ought to tender the interest of his soul , more than the good of his body ; the direction of his conscience more than the ease and security of it ; that we stick not to prick and launce him in order to his cure ; and ( when both can't be done ) that we chuse rather to proffit him than to please him . for this is true charity , tho a severer sort of it , and he is a fool , who when saved from drowning , complains of being pluckt out of the water by the hair of his head . sect . v. the measures of friendship . i am now come to my last stage , where i am to give measures to the greatest rarity , and the greatest excellency in all the world . for indeed among all human enjoyments nothing is so rarely acquired , so dearly possess'd , and so unhappily lost as a true friend . indeed true friendship is so great a rarity , that i once thought it hardly worth while , to prescribe measures to a thing that so seldom happens , and when it does , those few excellent persons , that are fit for so sacred a union , can never want to be instructed how to conduct it . but then considering withal the great excellency , and usefulness of it to human life , i could not forgive my self so considerable an omission , as the passing by the regulation of so noble a charity . i call it charity , for 't is a special modification of it , and differs no otherwise from common charity , than as 't is qualify'd by some particular modifications and circumstances , as was above described . it is a sacred inclosure of that benevolence , which we owe to all mankind in common , and an actual exercise of that kindness to a few , which we would willingly shew to all , were it practicable and consistent with our faculties , opportunities , and circumstances . 't is indeed a kind of revenging our selves upon the narrowness of our faculties , by exemplifying that extraordinary charity upon one or two which we both owe , and are also ready and disposed , but by reason of the scantiness of our condition , are not sufficiently able to exercise towards all . we are willing that even this our love should be as extensive and diffused as the light , ( as for common charity , that must and ought to be so ) but then finding that the rayes of it would be too faint and weak , to give any body any considerable warmth , when so widely spread and diffused , we are fain to contract them into a little compass to make them burn and heat , and then our charity commences friendship . now as to the measures of friendship , these have been already so amply and excellently stated by the seraphic pen of a great prelate of our church , in a just discourse upon this occasion , that there needs nothing to be further added ; nor should i offer to write an iliad after such an homer , did i not think it more necessary to the intireness of this work in general , than to make up any defect in this particular part , which that excellent author has not supplied . i shall therefore be the more brief and sparing in this account . now i suppose all that is necessary for the regulation of friendship may conveniently be reduced to these three general considerations . first what measures are to be observed in the contracting of friendship . ly what measures are to be observ'd in the conducting or maintaining it . ly what measures are to be observ'd in the dissolving of it . in the contracting of friendship our first care must be to make such a choice as we shall never have cause to repent of . for when ever we cease to love a friend , 't is great odds if we do not mortally hate him . for 't is hard to maintain a mediocrity ; and nothing can reflect more upon our prudence and discretion , than to hate him whom we once thought worthy of our highest love . now that we may not repent of our choice , the measures to be observ'd are these . first , that the person whom we mark out for a friend , be a good and vertuous man. for an ill man can neither long love , nor be long belov'd . not by a good man to be sure , nor indeed by one as bad as himself . for this is a true observation , that however men love evil in themselves , yet no man loves it in another , and tho a man may be a friend to sin , yet no body loves the sinner . and accordingly we find that the friendships of wicked men are the most temporary and short-lived things in the world , and indeed are rather to be call'd conspiracies than friendships . and besides their interests will draw them several waies , and so distract and divide their union ; for vice is full of variety and contradiction , sets one and the same man at odds with himself , much more with another . but now virtue is a thing of oneness , simplicity and uniformity , and indeed the only solid foundation for friendship . the next measure is that we chuse a person of a sweet , liberal and obliging humour . for there are a thousand little endearments and compliances in the exercise of friendship , that make good nature and necessary as rigid virtue and honesty . strict vertue in friendship is like the exact rules of mathematicks in musical compositions , which indeed are necessary to make the harmony true and regular , but then there must be something of ayre and delicacy in it too , to sweeten and recommend it , or else 't will be but flat and heavy . the next measure to this purpose is that we chuse a person of a humour and disposition as nigh our own as we can . this will make our friendly communications both more pleasant and more lasting . the other qualities are as the materials in building , this answers to figure and shape . and unless the materials be of an agreeable and correspondent figure , though otherwise never so good , the structure will neither be sightly to the eye , nor hold long together . one thing more i would have remember'd in the contracting of friendship , and that is , that we don't make our selves over to too many . marriage which is the strictest of frienships admits but of one , and indeed inferiour friendship admits not of many more . for besides that the tide of love , by reason of the contractedness of our faculties , can't bear very high when divided among several channels , 't is great odds but that among many we shall be deceiv'd in some , and then we must be put upon the inconvenience of repentance and retractation of choice , which in nothing is so uncomely and inconvenient as in friendship . be kind therefore to all , but intimate only with a few . now the measures of conducting and maintaining friendship may be such as these . . that we look upon our friend as another self , and treat him accordingly . . that we love him fervently , effectually and constantly . . that we use his conversation frequently , and alwaies prefer it . . that we trust him with our secrets and most important concerns . . that we make use of his help and service , and be not shy of being obliged to him . . that we don't easily entertain any jealousies or suspicions of him . . that we defend his reputation when we hear it wrongfully charged . . that we wink at those small faults which he really has . . that we take the freedom to advise , and if need be , to reprove him , and that we be well contented to take the same usage from him again . . that we freely pay him that respect and just acknowledgment that 's due to his merits , and that we shew our selves pleased when the same is done by others . . that we do not envy him when advanced above us , nor despise him when fallen beneath us . . that we relieve him plentifully and liberally when reduced to any streights or exigencyes . and lastly , that we alwaies prefer the good of his soul before any other interest of his , and make it our strictest concern to promote his happy condition in the other world . this indeed is the most excellent and necessary office of friendship , and all without this is but of little signification . . and thus much for the conducting of friendship . i proceed now to the measures that are to be observ'd in the dissolution of it . and here two things come to be consider'd , the cause , and the manner of dissolving it . and first , 't is supposed that there may be a cause for the dissolution even of friendship . the wise man tells us , that for some things every friend will depart , and marriage , which is the strictest frindship , has its divorce . for t is with the union of two friends , as with the union of soul and body . there are some degrees of distemperature that , although they weaken and disturb the union , yet however they are consistent with it , but then there are others again , that quite destroy the vital congruity , and then follows separation . now as to the cause , that may justify a dissolution of friendsh , it can be no other than something , that is directly contrary to the very design and essence of friendship , such as a notorious apostacy to vice and wickedness , notorious perfidiousness , deliberate malice or the like . to which ( were i to speak my own sense ) i would add , a desperate and resolv'd continuance in all this , for i think as long as there is any hopes of amendment , the man is rather to be advised than deserted . but if hopeless and irreclaimable , we may and must desert him . but let it be with all the tenderness imaginable , with as much unwillingness and reluctancy as the soul leaves her over-distemper'd body . and now our greatest care must be that our former dearness turn not to inveterate hatred . there is great danger of this , but it ought not to be so . for tho the friend be gone , yet still the man remains , and tho he has forfetted my friendship , yet still i owe him common charity . and 't were well if we would rise a little higher , and even yet pay him some little respect , and maintain a small under-current of affection for him , upon the stock of our former dearness and intimacy . for so the deceased ghost loves to hover for a while about her old companion , though by reason of its utter discongruity , it be no longer fit for the mutuall intercourses of life and action . motives to the study and practice of regular love by way of consideration . . consider o my soul , that the very essence of the most perfect being is regular love. the very same apostle that saies god is love , saies also in another place that god is light , and that in him there is no darkness at all , joh. . . god therefore is both love and light ; light invigorated and actuated by love , and love directed and regulated by light. he is indeed a lucid and bright act of love , not arbitrary love , but love regulated by the exactest rules and measures of essential perfection . for how regular a love must that needs be , where the same being is both love and light ! . consider again my soul , that the material world the offspring and emanation of this lucid love , is altogether conformable to the principle of its production , a perfect sample and pattern of order and regularity , of beauty and proportion , the very reflexion of the first pulchritude , and a most exact copy of the divine geometry . and if thou could'st but see a draught of the intellectual world , how far more beautiful and delightsom yet would that orderly prospect be . and wilt thou my soul , be the only irregular and disorderly thing among the productions of god ? wilt thou disturb the harmony of the creation , and be the only jarring string in so composed and well-tuned an instrument ? as thou wilt certainly be if thou dost not love regularly . for consider my soul , that 't is regular love that makes up the harmony of the intellectual world , as regular motion does that of the natural . that regularity of the understanding is of no other moment or excellency , than as it serves to the regulating of love. that herein lies the formal difference between good and bad men in this world , and between the good and bad spirits in the other . brightness of understanding is common to both , and for ought we know , in an equal measure , but one of these loves regularly and the other does not , and therefore one we call an angel , and t'other a devil . for 't is regular love upon which the welfare and civil happiness of society depends . this is in all respects the same to the moral world , as motion is to the natural . and as this is maintain'd in its course by regularity of motion , so must the other be upheld by regularity of love. and therefore further . . consider o my soul , that the god of order , he that is both light and love , has prescribed two sort of laws with respect to the two worlds , laws of motion , and laws of love. indeed the latter have not their effect as necessarily and determinately as the former ; for the laws of motion god executes by himself , but the laws of love he has committed to the execution of his creatures , having endow'd them with choice and liberty . but let not this my soul be used as an argument to make thee less studious of loving regularly , because thou art not irresistibly determin'd and necessitated to love according to order , but art left to thy own choice and liberty . neither do thou fancy god less concern'd for the laws of love , than for the laws of motion , because he has not inforced those , with the same necessity as he has these , for . consider yet further my soul , that god has taken as much care for the regulation of love as is consistent with the nature of free agents . for has he not prescribed laws of regular love ? and has he not furnish'd thee with a stock of natural light and understanding , of reason and discourse to discern the antecedent equity and reasonableness of these laws ? and lest thou should'st be negligent in the use of this discursive light , has he not as a farther security of thy regular love against the danger either of ignorance or inconsideration , furnish'd thee with certain moral anticipations and rational instincts , which prevent all thy reasonings and discoursings about what thou oughtest to love , and point out the great lines of thy duty , before thou art able , and when thou dost not attend enough to see into the natural grounds of it . and left all this should prove insufficient or ineffectual , has he not bound thy duty upon thee by the most weighty sanctions , and most prevailing ingagements of rewards and punishments , of eternal happiness , and eternal misery ? and to make all this efficacious , does he not assist thee by the graces of his spirit in the regulation of thy love ? and what can god do more with the safety of his own wisdom , and of thy liberty ? and lest thou should'st fancy that 't is either in vain , or unnecessary to apply thy self to the study of regular love , . consider yet further my soul , that the great mystery of godliness is nothing else but a mysterious expedient for the promotion of regular love. as it proceeded from love , so does it wholly tend to the regulation of it . 't was to attone for the irregularities of love , that the son of god became a sacrifice to his father . to attone for it so far , that all the lapses and misapplications of our love should be forgiven , provided we return to the regularity of love for the future . had he not done so much , to return to regular love had been in vain , and had he done more , it had been needless . but herein is the mystery of godliness , that by the wise dispensation of god the matter is so order'd , that happiness is attainable by the order of love , and not without it . and can there be a stronger ingagement , o my soul , to perswade thee to the study of regular love , or to convince thee that god is not less concern'd for the harmony of the moral , than of the natural world , for the order of love , than for the order of motion ? be wise then o my soul , and consult the ends of god , the harmony of the world , and thy own eternal happiness . and that these thy considerations may be the more effectual , apply thy self with all possible elevation of spirit to the god of light and love. the prayer . o god of order and beauty , who sweetly disposest all things , and hast establish'd a regular course in the visible world , who hast appointed the moon for certain seasons , and by whose decree the sun knoweth his going down , let the moral world be as regular and harmonious as the natural , and both conspire to the declaration of thy glory . and to this end grant that the motion of our minds may be as orderly as the motion of bodyes , and that we may move as regularly by choice and free election , as they do by natural instinct and necessity . o god of light and love , warm and invigorate my light , and direct and regulate my love. in thy light let me see light , and in thy love let me ever love. lord i am more apt to err in my love than in my understanding , and one errour in love is of worse consequence than a thousand in judgment , o do thou therefore watch over the motions of my love with a peculiar governance , and grant that i my self may keep this part with all diligence , seeing hence are the issues of life and death . o spirit of love , who art the very essence , fountain and perfection of love , be thou also its object , rule , and guide . grant i may love thee , and what thou love'st , and as thou love'st . o clarify and refine , inlighten and actuate my love , that it may mount upward to the center and element of love , with a steddy , chast , and unfullied flame ; make it unselvish , universal , liberal , generous and divine , that loving as i ought i may contritribute to the order of thy creation here , and be perfectly happy in loving thee , and in being lov'd by thee eternally hereafter . amen . letters philosophical and moral , to d r henry more , with the doctor 's answers . advertisment to the reader . the publication of this correspondence was almost extorted from me by the importunity of some friends , who would not endure to think that any remains of so great and extraordinary a person should be lost . and truely when i consider'd , how curious and busy some men are in recovering a few broken fragments of some old dull author that had scarce any thing to recommend him but only , that he lived a great while ago , i began to think there was some force in the argument , and that i should be unkind to the world as well as to the memory of my deceased friend , should i detain in obscurity such rich treasures of excellent theory as are contain'd in these letters . to the publishing of which i was yet the less unwilling to consent , because of that near relation which some of them have to the matter of some part of this book , which may receive some further light from what is herein contain'd . but there is more in the business yet . i had formerly in a discourse , at first printed by it self and dedicated to the doctor , but now inserted in my collection of miscellanies lately publish'd , laid down an hypothesis concerning the root of liberty , which whether for its novelty and singularity , or because not well understood , underwent a great deal of censure at its first appearing ; and the excellent dr. himself was pleased to animadvert upon it ; and i think has urged all that can be said against it . but i think i have sufficiently vindicated the truth of the notion , and was therefore willing it should now appear to the world in its full strength and evidence , which could not have been more abundantly confirm'd to me , than in its being able to stand the shock of so severe a speculatist . epistola prima ad clarissimum virum henricum more . vir eximie , quum eruditionem tuam & humanitatem ex scriptorum tuorum genio pari passu ambulare animadvertam , & insuper in ipso libri tui vestibulo te coram profitentem audiam , te non tibi soli laborare , sed etiam pro omnibus iis qui exquirunt sapientiam , eousque mihi nativus exolevit pudor , ut ad te ( ignotum licet ) oraculi vice de quibusdam arduis sciscitatum mitterem . duo igitur sunt ( ut apud virum horarum quam parcissimum compendio agam ) quae animum meum suspensum tenent . in enchiridio tuo metaphysico demonstrare satagis immobile quoddam extensum à mobili materia distinctum existere ; quod demonstrationum tuarum nervis adductus non solum concedere paratus sum , sed etiam firmissime credo . illud tantum me male habet , quod dimensionem istam incorpoream ( quam spatii nomine designare solemus ) in infinitum porrigas , & undequaque immensam statuas . hoc equidem ut admittam nondum à facultatibus meis impetrare potui . quum enim spatium illud sit quantitas permanens , cujus omnes partes , quotquot sunt vel esse possunt , simul existunt , contradictoria mihi videtur affirmare quisquis illud infinite extensum dixerit . infinitum enim esse & tamen secundum omnes partes actu existere repugnant . nam secundum omnes partes actu existere est certis limitibus claudi . eodem modo ac quilibet numerus ( quantuscunque assignetur ) continetur sub certa specie numeri , proindeque finitus concludi debet . fateor aliter se rem habere in quantitate successiva , cujus partes existunt aliae post alias , quae quoniam post quantamcunque appositionem incrementi ulterius capax est , suo modo cenferi possit infinita . cujus vero partes omnes coexistunt ( cujusmodi est spatium ) finitum sit necesse videtur , quum partes ejus ( prout etiam innuit terminus ille inclusivus ( omnes ) sub certam numeri speciem cadant . altera quam ejusdem enchiridii tui lectio mihi suggerit difficultas est de penetrabilitate spiritus . dicis spiritus non obstante illorum extensione posse se mutuo penetrare , hoc est , idem ubi occupare . quod tamen explicas per sui contractionem , & illustras exemplo cerae in minus spatium convolutae . quod innuere videtur , te per spirituum penetrationem nihil aliud intelligere , quam quod duo spiritus per situs mutationem in pressiorem formam reducti , eundem illum locum occupare possint quem situ non mutato unus illorum forsan impleret . itane ? sed haec non est penetratio illa in scholis adeo decantata , scilicet coexistentia dimensionum in eodem ubi , sed solum juxta positio in eodem loco communi , quae non minus corporibus quam spiritibus competit . haec forsan à me non adeo dilucide prolata sunt , verum tu tam meae quam propriae mentis facilis esse potes interpres . rogo igitur ut in tenebris hisce ( modo per alia majoris momenti non stet ) facem mihi accendere non graveris . non oppugnatoris sed quaesitoris personam gero , nec ut te inscitiae arguam haec scribo , sed ut propriae ignorantiae medelam quaeram . opera tua omnia tribus voluminibus latine edita studiose perlegi , & ob summam illorum eruditionem ut in bibliotheca nostra statione donarentur , curavi . utinam metaphysicam quam exorsus es pertexeres . scire vehementer aveo quodnam tibi de ista re sit consilii . dolenda profecto res esset , si tam admirandum opus mancum semper maneret & imperfectum . maneat vero necesse est , nisi te authore ad exitum perducatur . quis enim alter erit apelles , qui dimidiato operi manum ultimam admovere sustineat ? noli igitur curiosos speculatores spe tanta in aeternum frustrari . quod superest deum ex animo precor ut te lucidissimum in orbe literato sidus diu ab occasu praeservet , & post decursum stadium beatorum choro immisceat , & ex ipso sapientiae fonte immensam tuam cognoscendi sitim tandem expleat . sic exoptat dovotissimus tui & tuorum scriptorum cultor johannes norris . dabam oxon. ex coll. om. an. jan. . . d r more 's answer . sir , i have received your very civil and elegant latin letter , but answer you according to my constant use to our own countrey men , in english. you have therein such significations of your kindness and esteem for me and my writings , that you have thereby obliged me to a professed readiness to serve you in any thing that lies in my power . and therefore without any further ceremony i shall endeavour , as touching those two difficulties you propound , to give you the best satisfaction i can . the first difficulty , if i understand you aright , is this : how that immobile extensum distinct from matter which in my enchiridium metaphysicum i demonstrate to exist , can truely be said to be infinite , when as it has all its parts that are or can be coexistent at once . because to exist according to all its parts at once is to be included within certain limits , as any number how big soever is conteined under some certain species of number , and therewithal conceived finite as the term [ all ] also implyes . and therefore successive quantity seems more capable of being infinite then permanent quantity , because there may be still more parts coming on ; when as in permanent quantity all the parts are at once , and that term [ all ] includes an actual bounding of the whole . this i conceive is the full scope of the first difficulty propounded . to which i breifly answer first , that that immobile extensum distinct from matter , being really a substance incorporeal , i do not conceive that the term [ parts ] in a physical sense does properly belong thereto , every incorporeal substance or spirit , according to my notion of things , being ens unum per se & non per aliud , and therefore utterly indiscerpible into parts , it implying a contradiction , that this of the substance or essence should be divided from that , the entire substance being ens unum per se & non per aliud . but understanding by parts onely notional or logical parts , which will consist with this indiscerpibility , wee 'll admit the phrase in this sense for more easy and distinct discourse sake , and also of totum and omne and whatever is a kin to them . and the same caution i premize touching the word [ quantity ] that we take it not in that crass physical sense , such as belongs to matter and bodyes , but meerly in that notional and logical sense , which is so general that it clashes not at all with the sacrosanctity , as i may so speak , of incorporeal substances . and now secondly to come nearer to the point , if we mind closely and distinctly , what sense we have of those terms totum and omne , we shall certainly discern , that they may signify either the entireness-indefectuousness or perfection of the thing they are pronounced of , or meerly that there is nothing left out of that subject they are spoken of , or else they imply also a comprehensibleness , limitableness , or exhaustableness of the number of those parts which are said all to be there . in this sense is totum plainly used in summa totalis at the foot of a reckoning . but for those that hold infinity of worlds at once , and infinite matter , when they will easily acknowledge , that omnes partes materiae sunt divisibiles , understanding by materia a congeries of atoms ; omnes mundi generabiles & corruptibiles , and tota materia mundana impenetrabilis , without the least suspicion that they thereby imply , that there is onely a finite number of worlds , or parts of matter , or that all the matter of the universe taken together is but finite ; it is plain that to them the former sense is as easy and natural of totum and omne as the latter ; and indeed to speak my own mind , i think it is the most natural and proper of all and the onely true logical sense of omne and totum ; which suspends it self from making the subject , of which it is pronounced , either finite or infinite , but declares onely whatever it be that there is no part left out of that subject it pronounces of . so that if totum , or omne , or omnes partes be pronounced of a subject infinite , it leaves nothing of that infinite subject out nor omits any parts , and consequentially implies the perfect infinity thereof . so far is it from curbing or terminating it , it reaching as far as that absolute infinity it is pronounced of . so that it is the subject of which omne & totum are pronounced , when it is finite that makes them have a finite signification , and not the intrinsick sense of those terms themselves . whence i think we may discern , that there is no repugnancy to assert that all the parts of that immobile extensum distinct from matter do exist together at once , though it be infinite , and that [ all ] in this enunciation does not curb the immensity of this extensum , but rather necessarily implyes it according to the true logical notion thereof , that term being alwaies commensurate , when it is truely used to the subject it is spoken of . and lastly , it is onely permanent quantity , and spiritual , and indiscerpible , whose parts are all at once , that is capable of absolute infinity . but as for successive quantity , it is not capable of being infinite , neither a parte ante nor a parte post . but your phancy seems unawares to have transferred the property of successive quantity to the permanet , and so because , so soon as we can say of successive quantity there is all of it , it implyes certainly there is an end of it , and so it is finite ; so you seem unawares to have imagined , because it is true of the parts of permanent quantity that there is all of them at once , therefore they are now exhausted , as the parts of successive quantity were , and therefore are finite . this i think is the sophisme you put upon your self . but you are the best judge of your own meaning . now as for the second difficulty , it seems such to you from your missing my meaning in my bringing in that instance of wax drawn out an ell long . and after reduced into the form of a globe , suppose no bigger than of an ordinary nutmeg : an heedless or idiotick spectator of this change may haply imagine the dimension of longitude quite lost thereby , whenas there is not one atom of the quantity thereof lost by this change of site , no more than there is of the substance of the wax . but what seems lost in longitude , it is compensated in latitude and profundity . so say i of the contraction of a created spirit , suppose from a spherical form , ( for we must take some figure or other ) of half a yard diameter , to a sphear of a quarter by the retraction of it self into so much less an vbi ( eight times less than before ) for as much as nothing of its substance is annihilated thereby , nothing of its dimensions is , but what seems to be lost in longitude , latitude , and profundity , is gained or compensated in essential spissitude , which is that fourth dimension i stand for , that it is in rerum natura . which tho it is more particularly belonging to the contraction of one and the same spirit into it self , yet it is also truely found , when any two substances whatever adequately occupy the same vbi ; as suppose a spirit occupyd a cube of matter of such a side or diameter . the spirit and the cube have their proper dimensions each of them in the same vbi , and therefore are an instance of a real essential spissitude in that vbi . and if there were another spirit in like manner occupying the same cube , there would be still a greater essential spissitude . and he that will not grant this essential spissitude , he must either list himself with that ridiculous sect of the nullibists , or that wretched sect of the materialists , or atheists , that hold there is nothing but matter in the universe , which i conceive i have again and again demonstrated to be false in this enchiridium of mine . but i suppose out of what has been said , you see plainly now that by the contraction of a spirit , i mean that of the same spirit , whereby it may occupy a less vbi than before , and not of several spirits so contracted , that they may take up no more space then any one of them did before contraction . and these hints i doubt not are sufficient to one of such quick parts as yours , to make you thoroughly and distinctly understand the meaning of the th section of the th chapter of my enchiridium metaphysocum . to satisfy your desire of knowing my intention touching the finishing the said enchiridium , i must confess to you freely , that i have no purpose of so doing . i am now of a great age , above threescore and ten , and have other designs also . and besides , this first part which i have finished is the most useful , the most assured , and yet i add the most difficult of all ; and having thoroughly made out the main truths of the existence of spiritual substance , and what its nature and essence is , intelligibly and demonstratively , i make account the greatest business is done , and i may leave the rest to others , especially there being laid in so much already in other treatises of mine , as you may observe in reading the scholia upon the sect. of the th chapter of the enchiridium . where yet i have left out what is considerable , my cabbala philosophica , & exposition of the iewish mercava , or ezechiels vision , the right understanding whereof contains the choicest secrets of the iewish theosophy or metaphysicks . this is all for the present , but the repeating of my thanks for the great kindness you seem to have for worthy sir , your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . c.c.c. jan. . / the second letter to d r more . sir , the civility and profound subtilety of your letter are both so very extraordinary , that i know not which most to admire . indeed i cannot but look upon it as an infinite obligation , that a person of your age , worth , and character in the world , should vouchsafe an answer ( and that so candid a one ) to such a green student as my self , one that just begins to climb that tree of knowledg , upon whose utmost bough you sit , and is so far from spreading his name ( like you ) far and near , that he has scarce lustre enough to enlighten the little orb wherein he moves . this great condescention of yours bespeaks you to be a person of an excellent spirit , as well as understanding , and ingages me ( if possible ) to honour and esteem you more than i did before , and to say of you as cicero in his book de legibus does of plato , quem admiror , quem omnibus antepono , quem maxime diligo . sir , i have consider'd and digested your letter , and i find my satisfaction increases with my perusal of it . which gives me incouragement to trouble you with another inquiry , especially since i find you willing as well as able to inform , and that you do not send away those that inquire of you , as the sullen oracle did augustus , asking concerning his successour with — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the thing then is this . i am not well resolv'd concerning the moral turpitude of sensuality . not of such species of it as are complicated and accompany'd with civil incommodotyes , such as adultery , fornication , &c. ( concerning which 't is easy to account from those mischeifs , which , considering the present system of the intellectual world , they necessarily bring upon mankind ) but of sensuality as such . now concerning this i inquire , . whether there be any moral turpitude in it or no. and ly , supposing there is , wherein it lies . for my own part i am so divided betwixt arguments on both sides , that i know not what to resolve . for first that there is some moral , or intrinsick turpitude , in sensuality as such , i am tempted to suspect from the authority of many great moralists ( especially among the antients ) who , when they lay open the immorality of adultery or fornication , do not fetch their arguments wholely from those ill effects , which either of them has upon the welfare of society , but resolve part of their immorality into sensuality as such , abstracted from those other ill consequences . besides i observe , that in the divine writings ( not to say any thing of our ordinary oral discourses ) such peculiar epithetes and adjuncts of infamy are given to adultery , which can belong to it on no other score , than as 't is an act of sensuality . nay , and as if that were the principal ingredient , it oftentimes receives a denomination from the sensuality , but never from the injustice , infaithfulness , or the like . thus it is call'd the sin of uncleanness . and adulterers are said to be unclean persons , filthy , brutish , &c. in the like manner david , in his penitentials for that sin , insists much upon its sensuality , and accordingly speaks of washing , and cleansing , and making clean . all which seems to imply , that the immorality of adutery is not wholly to be deriv'd from those mischeivous effects it has upon society , but does also partly ( if not chiefly ) consist in the mere sensuality , and consequently that sensuality as such is immoral . again ly ( to proceed from mental abstraction to real separation ) there are some acts of sensuality ( such as voluntary pollutions &c. ) which are really separated from such ill effects , and yet these by the consent of all nations were ever condemn'd as dishonorable and immoral , and yet there is nothing in them besides the sensuality , and consequently there seems to be a moral turpitude even in sensuality as such . again ly , that there is some natural turpitude in sensuality as such , i am apt to believe , when i consider how unanimously 't is vilify'd and decry'd by those , who were mere strangers to revelation , and so could not derive this notion from the prohibition of some certain species of it . sir i need not tell you , what a continual topic for invectives this has been to the platonists and stoicks . now how these men , who follow'd the mere conduct of nature , should all conspire in such abject and disdainful thoughts of sensuality , unless it were some way or other disagreeable to the unsophisticate and genuin relish of the soul , i cannot comprehend . again ly and lastly , that there is some natural intrinsick turpitude in sensuality as such , seems to receive no small confirmation from that natural shame , which attends the acting of it , and that not only in circumstances professedly unlawful , but also in those which are otherwise reputed , whereby men seem conscious to themselves of some incongruity in the thing as such . from this and more that might be alledg'd , it seems to me that there must be some moral turpitude in sensuality as such . but now wherein this immorality should ly , i am still to seek . as also i am how to unwind my self from the difficulties of the other side . for first , i find that the more modern masters of morality ( such as grotius , dr cumberland , puffendorf with many others ) resolve the immorality of adultery wholly into those pernicious effects it has upon society , without bringing in the sensuality as such into any part of the account , which they could not do , did they apprehend any moral turpitude in sensuality as such . again ly , that there is no moral turpitude in sensuality as such , seems to appear from hence , that if there were , it would be so in all its instances , and consequently even in marriage it self . but 't is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that hence arises a considerable difficulty . for if there be no moral turpitude in sensuality as such , then all abstracted acts of it ( as voluntary pollutions &c. ) must be held lawful , which are yet condemn'd . and if there be , then marriage must be condemn'd , which yet is held lawful . again ly , i can see no reason why that sort of corporal indulgency , which is emphatically call'd sensuality , should be charged with any moral turpitude , when as other pleasures of sense ( and those perhaps equally intense ) are not so . such as using choice perfumes , eating delicious sweet-meats , &c. t is plain these all agree in this , that they are gratifications of sense , and therefore why there should be a moral turpitude in one , and not in another , i am yet to learn. again ly and lastly , to argue from the simple and absolute nature of the thing , i cannot imagine how it should be a moral incongruity for a man to please himself . what malice is there in it either against god , himself , or his neighbour ? for that there is in some particular instance ( as in adultery ) or in degree ( as in intemperance ) is purely accidental , and therefore ought not to be charged upon sensuality as such . these considerations do prevail with me to think , that there is no moral turpitude in sensuality as such , that all the pleasures of sense are in themselves equally indifferent , like the trees of paradise . so that if that , which we here treat of , only be evil , it must be ( as the forbidden fruit ) because made so by a positive law ( which yet i know not of ) as an instance to try our obedience . but how to reconcile this with the former difficulties , i profess i know not . and here sir , i desire your unerring hand to lead me out of this labyrinth , and that at your own leisure , ( for i am not in hast , and would by no means be troublesome to you ) you would be pleased to give me a resolution of this whole matter , and that you would not only satisfy the doubts , but also pardon the boldness of most worthy sir , your most real friend and most humble servant j. norris . allsouls coll. ian. . ● d r more 's answer . sir , you may very well judge me more than ordinarily rude and uncivil , that i have not all this time answered your so friendly and affectionate letter . but i have such abundance of business lying upon my hands , that i could not find time till now , and foreseeing that i shall be suddenly more busy than before , in this strait of time that i am in , i have chosen , rather than to be still silent , to write , though but briefly , and it may be brokenly to the point you propound . viz. concerning the moral turpitude of sensuality . you have shewed a great deal of not onely wit and eloquence , but solidity of reason in pleading pro and con in the case . but you had proceeded more clearly , if you had first defined what you meant by sensuality , ( which , according to the ordinary acception of the word , signifies immorally , and insinuates an irregular and ungovernable indulgence of the pleasure of the grosser senses ) and so the business had been less difficult . but considering the whole matter of your arguing on both sides , i perceive you mean no more by sensuality , then the pleasure of what iul. scaliger in his exercitations calleth the sixt sense . for so he counts that tactus venereus , which some are so taken with . and therefore , if you will , we will state the question according to his phrase , and it shall be , whether the pleasure of the sixt sense have any moral turpitude in it . wherein i will adventure to pronounce , that it has not as such . but to be captivated to that pleasure , so as to make us less capable of that , which is better , or to break the laws of what is just and decorous , this is the turpitude that is contracted therein , and argues him , that is thus captivated , to be brutish and sensual in the ordinary sense of the word . and therefore it is no wonder such persons are stiled filthy , brutish , and unclean in the holy scriptures , because the goatish nature has got dominion over them . you have urged excellently well for the turpitude of sensuality hitherto taken in the usual sense , though prescinded from the consequent inconveniencies thereof . but now that platonists decry without revelation , the delight of corporeal pleasures , and that there is a natural shame of having to do with those pleasures of the sixt sense , this looks like a shrewd argument for an innate turpitude in those very pleasures themselves , though in lawful circumstances ; but yet i conceive this instinct of natural shame , if rightly interpreted , does not so much intimate any moral turpitude in having to do with the pleasures of the sixt sense , as admonishes us , that though these things rightly circumstantiated have no moral turpitude in them , yet such is the nobleness of the soul of man , that such gross enjoyments are exceedingly below her , who is designed for an angelical life , where they neither marry , nor are given in marriage , and therefore even nature has taught her to sneak , when , she being heaven-born , demits her noble self to such earthly drudgery . if this passion of venereal shame be rightly interpreted , i suppose this is all it signifies , and not that there is any intrinsick immorality or turpitude in the pleasures of the sixt sense . but for sensuality taken in the ordinary sense , of which adultery is a specimen , most certainly there is a foulness and uncleanness in it , distinct from what it sins against political society , which by no means is the adequate measure of sound morality , but there is a moral perfection of human nature antecedent to all society . i pray read what i have writ on this argument in my scholia on the sect. of the chapter of the first book of my enchriridium ethicum . which will save me the labour of adding any thing more here . but when the matter is simply the perception of the sixt sense , there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this rightly phrasing the point in question takes away all the difficulties , that would infer no moral turpitude , where there is such , or any moral turpitude , where there is none . to your third plea for no moral turpitude i answer , that corporeal pleasures in eating and drinking &c. if they be irregular or excessive , have a moral turpitude in them . viz. if they are so much as to hinder and lessen the better enjoyments of the soul , and obstruct the design of living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle some where speaks , and makes our bodies a less commodious temple for the spirit of god to dwell in . and to your fourth and last , wherein you say you cannot imagine how it should be a moral incongruity for a man to please himself . what malice is there in it either against god , himself , or his neighbour ? you say right , he may mean no ill to himself , but he may mistake himself , and out of ignorance of the dignity of his own nature , take that to be chiefly himself , which is least of all himself , or the meanest part of him , i mean that part which is common to him with the brutes , the pleasures of which life the more he endeavours to shun , as far as is consistent with the health of his body , and disdains to be captivated with the gratifications of the flesh , the more surely will he arise into the enjoyment of such a life , as is unexpressibly above all the pleasures this mortal flesh can afford . but he that layes his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of god. there must be assiduity , constancy , and a perpetual guard and watchfulness over a mans waies , over the inclinations of of his mind and outward words and actions , and devotional addresses to god for further illumination & strengths , to carry on the work of real regeneration , and the issue will at last be ineffably pleasing and glorious . and he , that gives himself up to such a dispensation of life , will not miss of meeting with the clearness of all useful truths . and when his true self is awakened in him , it will be a moral congruity to please himself , that is , that intellectual and godlike life and sense raised in him . and all the trees of paradise , which god has planted , the pleasures of all the six senses , he may tast of , so long as he keeps in the life aforesaid , and makes that the measure of all his inferiour enjoyments , that he is not lessened above , by being captivated by any thing below . then the pleasure of the sixt sense is not forbid , nor is there any thing forbid in the paradise of god , but the irregularity of our own lust and will. i hope out of this you will pick out my meaning , though this pinch of time that i am in , has made me but huddle up things together with less order than i usually endeavour to do . thus in some hast committing you to gods gracious keeping , i take leave and rest , dear sir your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . c. c c. april . . . the third letter to dr. more . sir , suddainly after my receiving your last , i withdrew into the country , whence i am but lately return'd . i had no manner of conveniency of writing to you there , but now i have , i think , my self obliged to use it forthwith , left you should suspect that i am forgetful of you , or of the thanks i owe you for your last excellent letter . it gave me much satisfaction in several things , and i read it ( as indeed i do every thing of yours ) with a peculiar pleasure . but since i have begun to move a question , and you have been so kind as to communicate to me your thoughts concerning it , i hope you will not take it amiss , if in order to the clearing up the whole matter i here reassume it , and desire from you some further satisfaction obout it . the summ of the determination which you give to the difficulty i proposed , is ( if i understand you right ) in short this . you distinguish of sensuality as it signifies concretely and immorally either as to measure or other circumstance , or as 't is simply the perception of the pleasure of the sixth sense . which last ( that which i meant in my inquiry ) you acquit from all moral turpitude . now i confess i am and ever was perfectly herein of your judgment , and that ( among other reasons ) because of the divine institution of matrimony . only there is one thing that still sticks with me . i find my self still intangled in one of my difficulties which , tho in your answer you take notice of it , appears to my apprehension the most considerable of all . 't is this , that if there be no moral turpitude in the simple perception of venereal pleasure , then all abstracted acts of it , such as voluntary pollutions , lascivious embraces &c. must be accounted lawful , which are yet condemn'd by all moral and divine writers . the reason of the consequence is , because there seems to be nothing in such abstracted acts , besides the simple peception of the pleasure of the sixth sense . for as for excess , captivation of spirit , too sensitive applications and the like , these are merely accidental , and equally incident to the same acts in all other circumstances . this is the short of the difficulty , which i need not persue in more words to a person of your exquisite conception . sir i humbly crave your sense in this point , ( the only thing not clear'd in your answer ) which if you please to vouchsafe me , you will no less ingage the affections than inform the iudgment of ( most worthy sir ) your most real and highly obliged friend and servant j. norris . d r more 's answer . sir , it is now above a month since i received yours . but indisposition of body , and several unexpected occurrences have hindred me from writing till now . if my memory fail me not , i intimated to you in my last , that i would read over again that sermon , which you was pleased to dedicate to me , and signify to you more of my mind touching it . wherefore to be as good as my word , i will take notice of a passage or two , before i answer this present letter . you fall , pag. . upon a very subtile subject , viz. what it is , in which our pretense to free agency may be safely grounded , whether in the will or understanding . and in order to decide the point in hand , you do with good judgment declare against talking of the will and understanding , as faculties really distinct either from one another , or the soul her self . but tho you begin thus hopefully , yet methinks you run your self into an unnecessary nooze of fatality , by granting the soul necessarily wills as she understands ; you know that of the poet. — video meliora proboque , deteriora sequor . — and for my part , i suspect there are very few men , if they will speak out , but they have experienced that truth . else they would be in the state of sincerity , which over few are . but now that you would salve the phenomenon of free agency , pag. . by making it depend upon the degrees of advertency or attention which the soul uses , and which to use either more or less , is fully and immediatly in her own power , this is an invention ingeniously excogitated , to escape the difficulty you have cast your self into , by admitting the soul necessarily wills as she understands , and necessarily understands as the object appears to her . for thus indeed we were frozen up in a rigid fatality and necessity . but this does not cast the ground of free agency upon the soul as intelligent , more than as volent , if so much . for unless she will exert her advertency or attention , how can she to any degree advert or attend to the object ? so that the ground of free agency will be still resolved into the soul , not as intelligent , but as volent , and willing to understand the nature of every object she is concerned to speculate . moreover , though the soul be willing to exert her advertency or attention to the object , this alone seems but a defective principle as to the redeeming us into the ability and freedome of closing with what is best , as discerning it to be so . for as the eye , let it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never so much , if it be vitiated in it self , cannot rightly discern the condition of the visible object it fixes its sight upon ; so the mind of man , let him set himself never so diligently to contemplate any moral or intelligible object , if she be made dim by moral corruptions and impurities , will not be able or free to close with what is best in the circumstances that lye before her , being held captive by the vices the party has not yet purifyed himself from . wherefore the true ground of our being able and free to chuse what is best , consists rather in the purity of the soul from vice , than in advertency and attention to the object , while the mind is vitiated and obscured for want of due purification . which the best philosophers and christians have alwaies declared to be requisite to true illumination . and that notable instance of martyrdome , which you bring in to illustrate the case , methinks , may be made rather to illustrate and confirm what i drive at . viz. that there is something of greater weight than advertence or attention , that will enable a man to witness to the truth with his blood . for notwithstanding the mere being notionally convinced , that sin , or such a sin as the denying of christ , is the greatest evil in the world , though he never so closely attend to this truth in the notion thereof , if the old man or carnal mind be still alive in him , that crafty serpent will not fail to suggest such evasions or tergiversations , as will excuse him from suffering , and that , it may be , though he do firmly believe the torments of hell , and joyes of heaven after this life . for the mercy of god , and future repentance , and violence of the temptation , or pretense of making amends some other way , and i know not how many other such slim insinuations , may be fool the unregenerate man from ever adventuring to suffer martyrdome . but he that is to a due degree regenerate , and made , as s. peter speaks , partaker of the divine nature ; the spirit of life in the new birth being awakened in him , and the love of god in him perfected ; this new nature in him into which he is born from above , having rather quicker sensations than the animal nature it self , this is the thing indeed that will secure the crown of martyrdom to him , nor will he be liable to be imposed upon by the carnal mind , to listen to such evasions and tergiversations as i mentioned before , but had rather dye a thousand natural deaths , than wound and pain that life and spirit into which he is regenerate . wherefore no fear of pain from man can shake him ; the love of the lord jesus and of his life , into which he is regenerate , being stronger than death , and all pains of the natural life more tolerable by far to him , than to wound and pain and grieve that life and spirit in him , which is supernatural and divine . and this is that which the beloved apostle s. iohn witnesses , joh. . . that there is no fear in love , but perfect love casteth out fear . because fear hath torment . he that feareth is not perfected in love . and towards the beginning of that chapter he saies , greater is he that is in us , than he that is in the world . speaking of the spirit of christ , and the spirit of the world. these things i hint to you to let you understand , that sometimes more than the notional attending to the hainousness of sin is required to furnish out a martyr . and that our being redeemed into an ability or freedom of chusing what is best , is not from mere attention to the object , but from purification , illumination and real regeneration into the divine image . but i cannot insist largely on any thing . verbum sapienti sat est . i will onely take notice of one place more in your ingenious discourse , and that is , pag. . where i stumbled a little at your seeming severity towards the severe masters , as you call them , of spiritual mortification . i confess some passages in them lye fair for your lash . but the high and hyperbolical expressions of holy and devout men are not to be tryed by the rigid rules of logick and philosophy , but to be interpreted candidly , according to the scope they aym at . which is a perfect exinanition of our selves , that we may be filled with the sense of god , who worketh all in all , and feelingly acknowledge what ever good is in us to be from him , and so be no more elated for it , than if we had none of it , nor were conscious to our selves we had any such thing . and to be thus self-dead and self-annihilated is the onely sure safe passage into eternal life , peace and glory . and is the most safe and lovely condition of the soul that possibly can be attained to . all knowledg to this is but vain fluttering , a feather in a mans cap tossed with the wind . here is firm achorage , rest , and such a peace as passes all understanding . this is the proper character of christ and his followers . learn of me for i am humble and meek , and you shall find rest for your souls . and blessed are the poor in spirit , for theirs is the kingdom of heaven . this mystical death or spiritual annihilation , whereby all self-wishing is destroy'd , is the peculiar transcendency of the christian state above that of the noblest heathen philosophers that ever were . and who ever feels it will find it so . for these are divine sensations , and lye deeper than imaginative reason and notion . nor is there any mistake in this state devoid of all self-attribution . for tho the soul attribute not to her self what good she has in possession , yet she denyes not but that she has it . like that profession of s. paul gal. . . i am crucifyed with christ , nevertheless i live , yet not i but cbrist liveth in me , namely by his spirit . and being this christian state is the most perfect state the soul of man is capable of , we are obliged by way of duty to endeavour after it as much as we can , according to that of the stoick , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but i have dwelt upon this point also longer than i intended . and i know you will pardon my freedom in thus descauting upon these two passages of your learned and elegant discourse . i will pass now to your letter , and endeavour to finish the point betwixt us there , and make up what you think defective in my other letter . we are both agreed in this , that the simple perception of the pleasure of the sixt sense hath no moral turpitude in it . but you say hereupon that there is one difficulty still you are entangled in , which , though i took no notice of in my letter , yet seems to you the greatest and most considerable of all , namely , if there be no moral turpitude in the simple perception of venereal pleasure , then all abstracted acts of it , such as voluntary pollutions , lascivious embraces , &c. must be accounted lawful , which are yet condemned by all moral and divine writers . and the reason of the consequence , you say is , because there is nothing in such abstracted acts besides the simple perception of the pleasure of the sixt sense . for as for excess , captivation of spirit , too sensitive applications and the like , these are merely accidental , and equally incident to the same acts in all other circumstances . i suppose you mean in the state of matrimony , where the perception of this pleasure is lawful and allowed . there was in my former letter what might answer this difficulty , tho you took no notice of it . but here i will answer more fully and gradually . first therefore , though we should admit , that the perception of the pleasure of the sixt sense in such circumstances , as you describe , had nothing in it immoral , yet certainly it were a thing disangelical , if i may so speak , and undivine ; whenas we being born to that high condition of angels , we ought to breath after that state , and as aristotle somewhere adviseth ( against that vulgar proverb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) we ought 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to affect the life of the immortal angels , who neither marry nor are given in marriage , and therefore to have nothing to do with that pleasure farther then necessity requires , not for the mere pleasures sake , which nature has stigmatized with the sense of shame accompanying it , on purpose to remind us of that immortal and angelical condition we are called to , where that pleasure is perfectly silent ; though at the resurrection , we then having organized bodies , it were hard to conceive , that we should be like the idols of the heathen , have eyes and see not , ears and hear not , noses and smell not , no not so much as the fragrant odours of paradise , nor tast of the food of angels , as the psalmist somewhere expresses it . which philosophical hypothesis , if it be true , there is an obvious reason why the sixt sense has the stamp of shame upon it , and the other five not , and is no contemptible argument of the immortal state of the soul out of this earthly body : so handsomely are these things complicated gether . secondly , it being apparent to any , that has but the least sagacity in interpreting nature , that the pleasure of the sixt sense is in order to that weighty end of propagation , it is most manifestly a gross abuse of the pleasure of the sixt sense , to affect it , and excite it merely for the pleasures sake , the end of god and nature being frustrated at the same time , and the due use of that sensation grosly perverted . if this be not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an unnatural act or the transgression of the law of nature , what is ? so that it cannot be said that this is the simple perception of the pleasure of the sixt sense , but is the perception thereof in such circumstances , as make it abominable . and here are broken the laws of what is fit and decorous , as i intimated to you in my former letter , and which might have afforded an answer to this scruple you now again raise in this . but thirdly and lastly , there is an analogie betwixt the pleasure of the sixt sense , and the pleasure of tast. the former as it is in order to the propagation of the species of living creatures , so the latter is in order to the sustentation of the individuals . the pleasure of the tast is to engage the animal to eat sufficiently to nourish him and to renew his strength . now suppose any man had found some art or trick , to enjoy the pleasure of the tast of meats and drinks all the day long in a manner , and from day to day , though he eat no more for strength and sustenance than others do , were not this man most wretchedly sensual and gluttonous ? how then can the exciting of the venereal pleasure by voluntary pollutions , &c. be thought to be any other than the foulest act of lust that may be , thus to indulge to this carnal pleasure meerly for the pleasures sake , against the law of god and nature . wherefore you see that the reason of your consequence is very infirm , and that there is something in those abstract acts , as you call them besides the simple perception of the pleasure of the sixt sense . for the very abstractiveness of this pleasure from the natural end and use of it , is its essential filth or moral turpitude , to be abhorred of all holy souls , and abominated for the reasons i have mentioned . nor is the pleasure of the sixt sense lawfully enjoyed , but in the state of matrimony . but excess captivation of spirit , &c. are lawful in no state that i know of . and thus you have as full resolution of this point as i can give , and if it may have the success to prove satisfactory to you , i shall think my pains well bestow'd . but if upon a deliberate perusal of what i have writ , and an impartial improvement thereof to your best satisfaction you can , there should chance to remain any further scruple , i shall , if you write me word of it , readily endeavour to ease you thereof as it becomes dear sir , your faithful and affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . c. c. c. ian. . / . the fourth letter to d r more . sir , there was no need of an apology either for the lateness of your answer , or your freedom in descanting upon some passages in my sermon . i can very easily be contented to stay for what by its excellency will reward my patience , and can easily forgive him that will make me wiser . for i am concern'd for no opinion any farther than i think it true , and so far i am , and therefore as i profess my self heartily obliged to you for your kind and excellent endeavours to rescue me from an errour , so i must beg your leave to return something in defence of my hypothesis . which i question not but you will readily grant , especially when i assure you that i argue only to be better inform'd . and that your authority is so sacred with me that nothing less than the desire of truth should ingage me to oppose it . presuming therefore upon your pardon , i shall first offer something in confirmation of my opinion , and then consider what you alledge to the contrary . and in the first place 't is agreed betwixt us that there must be a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , some principle of free agency in man. all that does or can fall under debate is what is the primary and immediate subject of this free agency . now this being a rational perfection must be primarily subjected either in the understanding or in the will , or ( to speak more accurately ) either in the soul as intelligent , or in the soul as volent . that the latter cannot be the root of liberty will be sufficiently clear , if this one proposition be fully made out , viz. that the will necessarily follows the dictate of the understanding , or that the soul necessarily wills as she understands . now for the demonstration of this , i shall desire but this one postulatum , which i think all the schools of learning will allow me , viz. that the object of the soul as volent is apparent good , or that the soul cannot will evil as evil. now good apparent or evil apparent , is the same in other terms with that , which is apprehended or judg'd to be good or evil respectively . ( for to appear thus or thus does not ponere aliquid in re , but is an extrinsecal denomination of the object in reference to the faculty . ) if therefore good apparent be the object of the will , good apprehended will be so too , and consequently the soul necessarily wills as she understands , otherwise she will chuse evil as evil , which is against the supposition . this i take to be as clear a demonstration of the souls necessarily willing as she understands upon the supposition that our postulatum be true , as can be afforded in the mathematicks . but for more illustration , we will bring it to an example . and for the present let it be that of s. peter's denying of his master . here i say that s. peter judged that part most eligible which he chose , that is , he judged the sin of denying his master , at that present juncture , to be a less evil than the danger of not denying him , and so chose it . otherwise if he had then actually thought it a greater evil , all that whereby it exceeded the other , he would have chosen gratis , and consequently would have will'd evil as evil . there was therefore undoubtedly an errour in his understanding , before there was any in his will. and so it is in the case of every sinner , according to those trite sayings , omnis peccans ignorant , and nemo malus gratis &c. and therefore t is that in scripture , vertue is expressed by the names of wisdom and understanding , and vice goes under the names of folly and errour . all who commit sin think it , at the instant of commission , all things consider'd , a lesser evil , otherwise 't is impossible they should commit it . but this ( as the psalmist expresses it ) is their foolishness , and in another place , have they any understanding that work wickedness ? from all which i conclude that the will is necessarily determin'd by the dictate of the understanding , or that the soul necessarily wills as she understands , so that in this sense also that of the stoick is verify'd , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the soul therefore as volent cannot be the immediate subject of liberty . if therefore there be any such thing as free agency , the seat of it must be in the soul as intelligent . but does not the soul necessarily understand as the object appears , as well as she necessarily wills as she understands ? she does so , and therefore i do not place the seat of liberty in the soul as judging or forming a judgment , for that i confess to be determin'd by the appearance of things . but though it be necessary that the soul judge as things appear , yet 't is not necessary ( except only in self evident propositions ) that things should appear thus or thus , but that will wholely depend upon the degrees of advertency or attention ; such a degree being requisite to make the object appear thus , and such a degree to appear otherwise . and this advertency is that wherein i place the seat of free agency . lower than this i discern not the least glimps of it , and higher i cannot go . here therefore i conceive i have good reason to fix , and to affirm that the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the soul consists in her having an immediate power to attend or not attend , or to attend more or less . i say an immediate power , for if you will have an express act of the will interposed , that act of the will must have a practical iudgment , that judgment an objective appearance , that appearance another attention , that attention another will , and so on ad infinitum . i think it therefore reasonable to stop at the first . i shall now apply my self to your objections . and first , against the necessity of the soul 's willing as she understands you alledge that of the poet , concerning medea — video meliora proboque , deteriora sequor — i answer by distinguishing the antecedent , a thing may be judg'd good either by a speculative or universal knowledg , and that i do not alwaies follow , or by a practical knowledg , when i look upon it and pronounce of it pro hic & hunc as cloath'd with all its circumstances , and that i do alwaies follow . but you farther urge that if so , then there would be no such thing as sin against knowledg . or ( which is the same otherwise worded ) that then men would be in a state of sincerity . to this i answer , that a sinner according to this hypothesis may be said to sin both knowingly and ignorantly too in different respects . he sins knowingly in as much as he knows in the theory or by an habitual judgment , that such a fact is a sin , and yet he sins ignorantly too , in as much as either he does not actually attend to that speculative and habitual judgment of his , that such a thing is a sin , or if he does , yet he thinks it upon the whole matter to be a lesser evil ; which indeed is implicitly and confusely though not explicitly that t is not a sin , because that which is truely a lesser evil cannot be a sin , for a sin can never be eligible , but a lesser evil may . and whereas you say that advertency , or attention to the object is a defective principle as to the redeeming us into the ability of closing with what is discern'd best , i confess i can easily conceive how a man may be defective in his attention , but not how attention it self if duely applied can be defective towards true illumination though in the midst of moral corruptions . all that can be said is , that these moral corruptions may divert the soul from sufficiently attending to the beauty of holiness , and this i take to be the true and ultimate ground of all sin , and here t is i fix the necessity of grace and divine assistence . and whereas you say , that the instance of martyrdom which i alledg for my opinion , does rather confirm that there must be something of more weight than advertency to inable a man to dy for the truth ; and that though a man be notionally convinc'd that the denying of christ is the greatest evil in the world , and attend never so closely to this notion , he may yet find such evasions as will excuse him from suffering ; for you say the mercy of god , and future repentance , and of the temptation , or pretence of making amends some other way , may do it . to this i reply , that he who is notionally convinc'd that the denying of christ is the greatest evil in the world , cannot possibly chuse it so long as he continues that judgment , or notional conviction , there being according to his then apprehension no greater evil for the avoiding of which he should think it eligible . if thefore he should then chuse it , he must chuse it as a greater evil , that is , simply as evil , than which i think there can be no greater absurdity . as for those considerations therefore which you subjoyn , the mercy of god , future repentance , &c. these cannot prevail with him to chuse the denying of christ while he judges it the greatest evil , any more than they can induce him to chuse evil as such . they may indeed prevail with him in the present juncture not to think it the greatest evil , nay to pronounce it a lesser evil than the evil of pain , and then no wonder if he chuse it . but this i do not conceive to make any thing against my hypothesis , but to be rather according to it . as to what you remark concerning humility and spiritual mortification , i think i may be perfectly of your mind without retracting or altering any thing of my sermon , for i don't find , if the business be sifted to the bottom , that we differ any thing at all . your determination concerning the pleasure of the sixt sense , i submit to as very full and satisfactory . and i have only one thing more to move concerning it . which is , that since you make the abstractedness of this pleasure from the natural end of it , that of propagation , to be its essential turpitude , whether this does not conclude against all those who marry in such an age , when 't is impossible according to the course of nature , that this end should be serv'd . and whether there be any difference according to your measures between the enjoyment of the sixt sense in such circumstances or the like , and voluntary pollutions . i would willingly know your sense in this matter . and now ( sir ) all i have to do is to return you extraordinary thanks for your many and great civilities , to desire a long continuance of your health and welfare , and favourable construction of the defence which i make against your reflections . that t is not in the least from a design of wrangling and opposition , but from a perswasion of my being at present in the right , and an earnest desire of being wiser . i am truely indifferent which side of the question be true , all that i am concern'd for is to know which is so . and being so indifferent , as i am the more likely to find the truth , so i hope i am so to obtain pardon from you who are so great a friend to it . which yet you will be the more ready to grant when you consider how much your judgment ( tho not in this particular fully assented to ) is yet admired and esteemed by ( most honour'd and dear sir ) your most obliged friend and servant j. norris . d r more 's answer . sir , i have received yours , and reading the confirmation of your hypothesis ( which i took the boldness a little to vellicate ) and your answer to my objections against it , i could not but observe your ingenious dexterity therein with pleasure . and yet i must ingenuously confess that i still stick where i was , nor can conceive but that the free agency we are conscious to our selves of , is placed in the soul as volent as much as intelligent , because this volency , as i may so speak , is implyed in her attention or advertency , and is a necessary requisite thereof . the thing therefore that i affirm being this viz. that this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is placed in the soul as volent as well as intelligent , the volency of the soul being required to make those free attentions or advertencies on the object , let us see how you demonstrate that it cannot be seated in the soul as volent . your argument in breif is this , ( for i intend to answer your letter with all possible brevity i can ) that since the soul cannot will evil as evil she must necessarily will and and chuse according as the betterness of the object appears to her understanding , otherwise she will chuse evil as evil which is against the supposition . to this i answer , that though she does not chuse according as the betterness of the object appears to her understanding , it does not thence follow that she will chuse evil as evil , but that she will chuse a natural good and prefer it before the moral . so that the absurdity of chusing evil as evil here vanisheth , and the demonstration falls to the ground . and this was the case of s. peter in denying christ. the object of his choice was that natural good , his security from pain and punishment , which he preferred before that moral good the faithful and professed adhesion to his lord and master christ jesus . nor could the understanding of s. peter err so grosly as not in the notion to think that faithfulness to his lord christ was better absolutely than the securing himself from pain and punishment ( as indeed there is no comparison betwixt the moral or divine good and the natural ) but there was wanting in this act the exertion of his will towards the divine good ; or else the divine nature or grace was wanting , whence he slipt into this choice of the meaner good . and as for that maxim , omnis peccans ignorant ; if it be true in that vniversality the sense is , that whoever sins it is out of defect of either notional knowledg or inward sense , such as accompanies real regeneration ; in which sense the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , insensati in scripture are to be understood , and on the contrary the pythagorick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . those that want this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , though they have a notional knowledg of the thing , yet they may sin , and that from the want of this sensibility of spirit . but he that is born of god sins not because the seed remains in him , this life or sensibility in the new birth which is an higher and more effectual principle then notional knowledg . which alone is not able to determine the choice of the soul to a moral or spiritual object without the accession of the other . for life and sense can onely counterpoise life and sense , not mere notion . whence the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. the moral or divine good is not followed , but what is pleasing and grateful to the animal nature . so that the soul here wills or chuses against the dictate of her understanding , which is the sin against conscience , otherwise there would be no such thing . the cheif pith of the last paragraph of your confirmation is this . though it be necessary the soul judg as things appear yet 't is not necessary ( except onely in self-evident propositions ) that things should appear thus or thus , but that will wholly depend upon the degrees of advertency or attention . and in this , say you , i place the seat of free agency , viz. in an immediate power in the soul of attending or not attending or of attending more or less to the objects that occur . i demand therefore is this any thing more then what is couched in that of the poet , quid verum atque bonum quaero & rogo & omnis in hoc sum , viz. a sincere inquisition ( and sincerity is immediatly in our power , that is , it is in our power to do as well as we can ) after that truth and good in which human happiness consists . which if it be done in a mere notional way there will still remain that liberty i mentioned above of the soul chusing contrary to the dictates of her understanding . so that there will be more liberties then you conclude for in this paragraph . but if this diligent and sincere inquisition , or sincere desire of knowing what is man and whereto serveth he , what is his good and what is his evil be absolutely sincere , it cannot fail to inquire what is the most safe and effectual way to have objects duly represent themselves to the understanding as the objects of sight to a pure and clear eye . and what can this be but the purification of the soul as i intimated in my last to you , which is by mortification and real regeneration , that the divine principle may be more fully awakened in us , and so become life and sense to us in virtue whereof the soul will be free and able to chuse what is absolutely the better , that is to prefer the moral or divine good before that which is animal or natural , and if this state advance to the highest , never to chuse any , if they stand in competition but the moral or divine , according to that of s. iohn above mentioned , he that is born of god sinneth not &c. wherefore so far as i see , it may be but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 betwixt us as to this point where you place the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the soul in her immediate power of using the best means she can to find out what is her best good or readiest means to true happiness and riddance of sin and errour . which taken in the full sense thereof as i have intimated , is , as i conceive , a sound and useful theorem and well adapted for the chastising of the world for their sloth and laziness in these things . we come now to your answers to my objections . and to that of video meliora proboque you answer indeed learnedly and scholastically , by saying , a thing may be judged good either by a speculative or vniversal knowledg , or by a practical knowledg when it is lookt upon and pronounced of pro hic & nunc as cloathed with all its circumstances , the former is not alwaies followed but the latter is . but is there any thing more in this but that the eligent ( when as both these knowledges are speculative or universal , the former already granted , the other plainly implyed by the choice of the eligent , who in such circumstances judges the choice is universally to be made , else how is he obliged to make it ? ) but that the humour of the eligent onely has made this latter practical by putting it into practice instead of the former , it being clothed with the circumstances of iucundum or vtile , when the other recommends it self onely upon the account of honestum : which though he sees ( as medea sayes video meliora proboque — and that hic & nunc , for she speaks of the present case and time , yet deteriora sequor ) notwithstanding he declines that which is absolutè & simpliciter melius according to his own judgment , and closes with that which seems melius , that is , vtilius and jucundius to himself , to his animal nature against the dictate of the divine . this is the clear case of the controversy freed from the clouds of the school . and therefore notwithstanding what you have answered it is plain that the soul may understand notionally and actually better then she practises , and not follow the dictate of her understanding but of her animal appetite . to my objection against your hypothesis , that thence every man would be sincere , nor any sin against knowledg , you answer , that a sinner may be said to sin both knowingly and ignorantly , he may know in theory or habitual judgment such a fact is a sin , and yet be ignorant by not actually attending to his habitual knowledg ; or by judging the sin upon the whole matter to be the lesser evil and thence implicitly to be no sin , and so not sin against knowledg . but i answer , it is incredible that one that has an habitual knowledg , that such a thing is a sin should not remember it is so when he meets with it or is entring upon it . it is as if one had the habitual idea of such a person in his mind , and should not remember it is he when he meets him in the very teeth . nor can he judg the sin upon the whole matter to be the lesser evil , but he must in the mean time remember it is a sin and so commit it against his knowledg , onely sugar'd over with the circumstance of iucundum or vtile or both . this composition though there be ratsbain in the sugar , makes the soul listen to the dictate of the animal appetite and let go that of moral reason , tho they both clamour in her ears at once . and there the soul against the understanding concludes for the suggestion of the animal appetite , that bears her in hand , that such a sin with pleasure and profit is better then an act of of virtue with pain and wordly loss . this i conceive is the naked case of the busines . nor does this choice seem to be of a lesser evil to the soul as intellectual , which dictates the contrary , but as sensual or animal . to your answer to my third objection of attention or ( advertency ) being a defective principle , that though a man may be defective in his attention , yet you cannot easily conceive how attention it self if duly applied can be defective : i reply , that mere attention of it self in a morally corrupt mind , let it be never so great can no better rightly discover the moral object , than the vitiated eye the natural . it is the purity of the soul through regeneration that enables her to behold the beauty of holiness as our saviour speaks , blessed are the pure in heart , for they shall see god. there is no seeing of god but by being purified and regenerate into his image . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as plotinus somewhere has it , touching the divine pulchritude . if thou beest it , thou seest it . if we be regenerate into the image of the eternal pulchritude we then shall see it , having ( if i may use the poets expression here ) — incoctum generoso pectus honesto . but if this principle of life be not sufficiently awakened in us , no attention is sufficient to make us rightly discern the beauty of holiness , but onely a shadowy notion or meager monogrammical picture thereof , which will not avail though you use all the attention in the world against the dictates of the animal sense and life unmortified , in the day of trial . whence the defect of this principle alone , is evident . but if you mean by sufficiently attending to the beauty of holiness the diligent and sincere inquisition after truth and holiness , which implies our serious entring into a method of purification and clearing our inward eye-sight by our resolved progress in the way of mortification and thereby of real regeneration , whereby the divine life and sense will sufficiently at length be awakened to counterpoise and overcome the sway and importunity of the animal life and sense ; the neglect of this we shall be both agreed in , that it is the ultimate ground of all sin , and that we shall discern , when we seriously make trial , the necessity of grace and divine assistance to carry us thro so weighty an enterprise as you rightly note in this paragraph ; which i hope i have sufficiently spoke to by this . i will onely add , that , what occurs psal. . vers . , , . seems a figure of this spiritual progress towards the beauty of holiness in virtue of which every one at last appears before god in sion , according to that promise of our saviour , blessed are the pure in heart , for they shall see god. and now lastly for your reply to what i said touching the instance of martyrdome , which reply of yours is this . that he that is notionally convinced that the denying of christ is the greatest evil in the world , cannot possibly chuse it so long as he continues that judgment , there being according to his then apprehension no greater evil for the avoiding of which he should think it eligible . if therefore he should then chuse it he must chuse it as a greater evil , that is , simply as evil , than which i think there can be no greater absurdity , &c. this reply is handsome and smart , but in my judgment not free from a fallacious subtilty . if where the greater evil is chosen the two compared evils were of one kind that absurdity would be manifestly consequent , but when one of the evils is moral , suppose the greatest moral evil that is , the other natural and very great or the greatest natural evil that is , suppose a painful torturous and ignominious death , in the avoiding of which is implied the securing to himself the natural ease and sweetness of this present life , tho upon this account he chuse that which is the greatest moral evil and is so esteemed in his notional judgment , yet he cannot be said then to chuse it as evil , but as the onely effectual means and therefore good or expedient for that end , viz. the avoiding the highest natural evil and enjoying the sweet of that great natural good , a life painless and at ease . and therefore upon this account he having onely a notional judgment of the moral evil of that highest sin mentioned , but a lively sense both of the natural evil and good here specified which are the one avoided the other secured by chusing the aforesaid moral evil : it is no wonder that , though retaining still his notional judgment of that greatest moral evil he yet chuses it to avoid that horrid natural evil , and to enjoy the sweet of that natural good , viz. this life with ease and safety , there being in one scale of the balance nothing but the mere truth of notion , in the other the urgent weight of life and sense which will easily preponderate , if there be not life and sense also , ( which is the state onely of the regenerate ) to weigh against it in the other scale of the balance . so that though the notional judgment be not corrupted , but that such a sin is still held the greatest moral evil that is , yet the soul is born down to follow the suggestion of the animal life and sense against the dictate of her notional discernment and may truely pronounce with medea . — video meliora proboque deteriora sequor . — nor need i proceed any further . for what is already said i hope will reach every particular of the whole paragraph which contains your reply to this last point . at least it will make good , that the soul does not chuse evil as evil in the present case , which is the main sting of your argument . that we agree in our sentiments touching humility and spiritual mortification , this profession of yours i easily beleive from reading what occurs in the latter part of your sermon which is excellently good solid and edifying . and that i have satisfied you in my determination concerning the pleasure of the sixt sense i am glad of that also . and as for this last scruple you move ; whether what i have said does not conclude against all those who marry in such an age when it is impossible according to the course of nature that this end of propagation should be served , i say it does not so conclude . because there is a considerable end of marriage besides that of propagation of children , which in our liturgie the office of marriage takes notice of , viz. mutual society help and comfort , which comprizeth all the handsome adjustments of the married parties , secular affairs and oeconomical conveniences , and also their mutual help to one another in piety and devout pursuance of fitting themselves for the future state , their age remainding them that it is not far off . and in this regard their mutual society may be very delectable to one another while their discourses and meditations are of the joyes of the other world , and so they may live chastly and comfortably without any frustranious abuse of their bodyes upon the titillation of lust , which exact christian temperance and holy meditations and discourses together of their joyous change into the other near approaching state ought to prevent . sir , i have told you freely my sentiments touching all the things you have propounded , but i dictate nothing but leave all to your own free judgment , and so wishing you good success in your vertuous studies , i take leave and rest dear sir , your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . c. c. c. febr. . / . the fifth letter to dr. more . sir , as i cannot express the thanks which i owe you for your great condescension and civility , so neither can i the pleasure which i had in perusing your ingenious and learned answer . it is spun throughout with a very fine thred , and richly fraught with curious and retired sense . but yet tho i was and still am exquisitely pleased , i am not fully satisfyed with it , whether the defect be in your letter , or in my apprehension i shall not take upon me to determine . but so it is i cannot as yet bring over my judgment to yours , and that i do not dissent without some considerable reason , it shall be the business of this paper briefly to shew you . and first then i observe , that the postulatum upon which i ground my demonstration of the will 's necessarily following the dictate of the understanding , is by you admitted , as indeed it is by all except only the school of the nominals , namely , that the soul cannot will evil as evil . this you admit by saying ( paragraph the second ) that the absurdity of chusing evil as evil vanishes , only you deny the consequence of that acknowledged absurdity upon such a choice as is made against the practical dictate , by saying , that it vanishes , here then is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the truth or falsehood of which i am content the demonstration should either stand or fall to the ground . now to make appear that this is a true consequence , that the will by not following the practical dictate would chuse evil as evil , i shall not add any positive and direct proof to the former demonstration , but only consider whether the consequence is any thing invalidated or evaded by what you have offer'd . you say , that although the soul does not chuse according as the betterness of the object appears to her understanding , it does not thence follow that she will chuse evil as evil , but that she will chuse a natural good and prefer it before the moral . true , but unless this natural good be in the present circumstance , all things consider'd , judg'd greater and more eligible than the moral , the chusing of it will not be the chusing of good , but of evil as evil . for a less good ( whether natural or any other it matters not ) tho good singly consider'd , yet in competition with a greater does induere speciem mali , as a less evil tho evil singly consider'd yet in competition with a greater does commence good and eligible . such a choice therefore as is here suppos'd would not be the choice of a natural good , nay not so much as of good , but of evil as evil . there is therefore no choice but what is according to the appearing betterness of the object ; which conclusion you your self seem unawares to slip into by using the word ( prefer ) for what is it to prefer , but to think or pronounce upon the whole matter to be better or more eligible . and thus you say again concerning st. peter that he prefer'd the natural good of security from pain before the moral good of adhesion to his lord. well , if so , then however strange it may seem , his understanding did err so grossly as at that instant not to think faithfulness to his master to be absolutely better than security from pain , otherwise his chusing the latter would have been the chusing of what he then thought a lesser good , and consequently of evil as such . nor will it suffice to say , that there was wanting in that act of his denial the exertion of his will toward the divine good , that indeed is true , but not the whole truth , for had there not been also a defect in his understanding , there would have been nothing amiss in his will. as for your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or sensibility of spirit , i have a very good liking to the notion , and do think it a concomitant if no● the principal part of real regeneration . but whereas you say , those that want this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tho right in their judgment may yet sin , and that because life and sense can only counterpoise life and sense , to this i reply , that the want of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may indeed in the heat of a temptation be the occasion of a wrong judgment ( and so indeed t is necessary to the prevention of sin that life and sense counterpoise life and sense ) but it can never be the occasion of sin with a right and practically unerring iudgment , for the reasons above mention'd . so that notwithstanding this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the reason of the action good or bad will be ultimately devolv'd upon the rectitude or obliquity of the iudgment . and in that respect only the axiom will hold true , omnis peccans ignorat . as to the close of this your third paragraph how sinning according to the dictate of the understanding and yet against conscience are consistent , i think they are very reconcileable . for he that commits a sin tho by not sufficiently attending to it at the moment of action either as a sin , or as a greater evil he comes to pronounce it eligible and so to chuse it , and so may be said to sin ignorantly , yet he sins knowingly and against conscience too , in as much as he does such a fact either against an actual dictate that t is a sin , or an habitual dictate that t is also a greater evil , as i intimated to you in my last . as to the question which in this next paragraph you are pleas'd to put to me , whether this attention , wherein i place the seat of free agency , differ any thing from what is coutch'd in that of the poet quid verum atque bonum quaero & rogo & omnis in hoc sum . i answer that it does , and that my notion may be more clearly conceiv'd , i shall here breifly explain what i mean by this power of attention . whereas therefore the operations and powers of the soul as intelligent are usually divided into these three , apprehension , iudgment , and discourse , i find it necessary to add a fourth , that of attention , which i look upon as really distinct from the other three , they being conversant about their objects as true and false , but this only as intelligible , and is only in short , a general power of converting the acies of the understanding towards any intelligible object , whether simple or complex , and answers exactly to the application of the eye to a sensible object , and accordingly is as distinct from either apprehension , iudgment or discourse as this application of the eye is from the very act of vision . in short 't is a kind of openness or wakefulness of soul , such as i conceive to be hinted at in scripture by such and the like expressions as these , watch lest you enter into temptation , awake to righteousness and sin not , awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead &c. the notion thus explain'd i will now shew how it differs from that of the poet. the difference is in this . that inquisition of the poet denotes a particular exertion and employment of all the faculties , a diligent use of all means , methods and opportunities , and that in order to the finding out a truth or a good not yet known , but this attention i speak of is onely a general wakefulness of the understanding , or application of mind to the speculation of a truth habitually known , which will make it actually present , and so determine the practical judgment , and by that the will. i come now to the place where you consider my answers to your objections . and here to that distinction of mine of speculative and practical knowledg , the latter of which i said was alwaies follow'd , though not the former , you say they are both speculative and universal , the first granted to be so , and the other plainly implied by the choice of the eligent , who in such circumstances judges the choice universally to be made . i answer , you may call them both speculative if you please , i shall not contend with you for a word , but then 't is to be consider'd that there will be two distinct speculative dictates , one that is habitual , out of the circumstance of action , that such a thing is a sin and a greater evil , and another that is actual , in the circumstance of action , that 't is a lesser evil , which therefore for distinction's sake i call practical , because of the immediate influence it has upon action . which latter is alwaies follow'd , tho the former is not . neither is this latter as you say made onely practical by being put into practice , but is so antecedaneously , being that which determines the choice of the eligent . as to the next paragraph , where you think it incredible that one , who has an habitual knowledg that such a thing is a sin , should not remember it to be so when he is entring upon it . i reply , that it seems to me most certain , that whoever commits sin must think it some way or other eligible . now this must come to pass one of these two waies , either by his not attending to it as sin , or not as a greater evil . the first of which in many cases i can easily conceive possible , and the latter in all cases i think certain . and this methinks you your self run into by saying ( paragraph the sixth ) that the animal appetite bears the soul in hand , and such a sin with pleasure and profit is better than an act of virtue with pain and worldly loss . for what is this but in other words to say , that the concupiscible may be so strong and rampant , that the soul may judg pro hic & nunc the uneasiness of abstaining to be a greater evil than an unlawful indulgence , so as upon that judgment to chuse the latter . to your next paragraph where you continue your charge upon mere attention as a defective instrument towards the discovery of a moral object in a morally corrupt mind , i make this short reply , that since for such a fact to be a sin , or for sin to be the greatest evil , are plain and obvious theorems , i cannot conceive but that constant and actual attention should prove a sufficient directory to the understanding , all the difficulty is to be thus actually and constantly attentive , and here ( as i said before ) is the work of grace and regeneration . and now lastly to your last paragraph concerning the instance of martyrdom , whereas i said that he , who is notionally convinc'd that the denying of christ is the greatest evil in the world , cannot possibly chuse it so long as he continues that judgment , there being , according to his then apprehension , no greater evil for the avoiding of which he should think it eligible , if therefore he should then chuse it , he must chuse it as the greatest evil , that is simply as evil , &c. this reply you say is not free from a fallacious subtilty , concerning which you thus distinguish . if where the greater evil is chosen the compared evils were of one kind , that absurdity would certainly follow ; but where one of the evils is moral , the other natural , tho a man should chuse the greatest moral evil , yet he cannot be said to chuse it as evil , but as the only means of avoiding the natural evil , and consequently as good . this is the sum of your answer . to which i return , that i cannot conceive how the diversity of the compared evils , as to their specifick nature , can any thing alter the case , the question as to eligibility being not concerning their specifick natures , but concerning their degrees , not which is natural and which moral , but which has most of the general nature of evil . so that if i chuse that which to me has the most of the general nature of evil , notwithstanding its being an evil of another kind , i certainly chuse evil as evil . neither can this be brought off by saying that t is chosen as a means of avoiding the natural evil , and consequently as good , for it can never be good to chuse a greater evil to avoid a less , that being all over loss and damage . and thus as briefly and as fully as i could have i set down the grounds of my opinion , which i am ready to part with upon the first conviction of their weakness or insufficiency . if you should find any thing in this paper worth your notice , you may return answer at your best leisure , for i would by no means divert you from more important concerns . i am very sensible what interruptions i have already given you , but i hope you will easily pardon me when you consider that t is the peculiar reverence i have for your judgment which has brought this trouble upon you from ( dear sir ) your highly obliged friend and servant j. norris . an appendix . considering with my self that those into whose hands these papers may light , may not all of them have that other book of mine , which contains the hypothesis here defended concerning the root of liberty , and that t is very necessary the hypothesis should be seen with its defence , i thought it convenient to set it down here for the benefit of the reader . the hypothesis runs thus . that the will cannot be the immediate subject of liberty , must be acknowledg'd plain , if the will necessarily follows the practical dictate of the understanding . and that it does so i think there is demonstration . 't is an unquestionable axiom in the schools of learning , that the object of the will is apparent good . now apparent good in other words is that which is judged to be good , and if so , then it follows that the will cannot but conform to the dictate of the understanding ; because otherwise somthing might be the object of the will that is not apprehended good , which is contrary to the supposition . in short , the will ( as aquinas well expresses it ) is the conclusion of an operative syllogism , and follows as necessarily from the dictates of the understanding , as any other conclusion does from its premises , and consequently cannot be the immediate subject of liberty . but then are we not involv'd in the same difficulty as to the understanding ? does not that act with equal ( if not more ) necessity than the will ? so i know 't is ordinarily taught . but if this be absolutly and universally true , i must confess it above the reach of my capacity to salve the notion of morality , or religion . for since t is evident that the will necessarily conforms to the dictates of the understanding , if those very dictates are also wholly and altogether necessary , there can be no such thing as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the man is bound hand and foot , has nothing left him whereby to render him a moral agent , to qualify him for law or obligation , virtue or vice , reward or punishment . but these are consequences not to be indured , and therefore i conclude according to the rules of right reasoning , the principle from which they flow to be so too . to clear up then the whole business , i shall no longer consider the understanding and will as faculties really distinct either from the soul it self , or from one another , but that the soul does immediately understand and will by it self , without the intervention of any faculty . and that for this demonstrative reason in short , because in the contrary hypothesis , either judgment must be ascribed to the will , and then the will immediately commences understanding , or the assent of the will must be blind , brutish , and unaccountable , both which are absurd . this being premised , i grant that as the soul necessarily wills as she understands , ( for so we must now speak ) so likewise does she necessarily understand as the object appears . and thus far our sight terminates in fatality , and necessity bounds our horizon . that then which must give us a prospect beyond it must be this , that altho the soul necessarily understands or judges according to the appearance of things , yet that things should so appear ( unless it be in propositions self-evident ) is not alike necessary , but depends upon the degrees of advertency or attention which the soul uses , and which to use either more or less is fully and immediately in her own power . and this indifferency of the soul as to attending or not attending i take to be the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bottom and foundation into which the morality of every action must be at length resolv'd . for a farther proof and illustration of which hypothesis , let it be apply'd to a particular case , that we may see how well it will answer the phenomena . in the case then of martyrdom , i look upon sin as an evil , and not only so but ( while i attend fully to its nature ) as the greatest of evils . and as long as i continue this judgment 't is utterly impossible i should commit it , there being according to my present apprehension no greater evil for the declining of which i should think it eligible . but now the evil of pain being presented before me , and i not sufficiently attending to the evil of sin , this latter appears to be the lesser evil of the two , and i accordingly pro hic & nunc so pronounce it , and in conformity to that dictate necessarily chuse it . but because t was at first absolutely in my power to have attended more heedfully , there was liberty in the principle , the mistake which influenc'd the action was vincible , and consequently the action it self justly imputable . this is the hypothesis . i shall now sum up the whole matter in this order of reasoning . . that a creature void of liberty cannot be capable of law or obligation , vertue or vice , reward or punishment , is certain . . that man is capable of all these , is certain . . that man therefore is indow'd with liberty , is certain . . that liberty is a rational perfefection , or a perfection belonging to an intellectual nature , is certain . . that therefore this liberty must be subjected either in the understanding or will , or ( to speak more properly ) in the soul as intelligent , or in the soul as volent , is certain . . that it cannot be subjected in that part which acts necessarily , is certain . . that the will necessarily follows the dictate of the understanding , or , that the soul necessarily wills according as she understands , is certain . . that therefore this liberty cannot be immediately subjected in the will , or , in the soul as volent , is certain . . that therefore it must be subjected in the soul as intelligent , is certain . . that even the soul as intelligent so far as it acts necessarily cannot be the immediate subject of liberty , is also certain . . that the soul as intelligent necessarily judges according as the object appears to her , is certain . . that therefore the soul as judging or forming a judgment , can no more be the immediate subject of liberty , than the soul as volent , is certain . . that , since the soul necessarily wills as she judges , and necessarily judges as things appear , we have thus far no glimps of liberty , is certain . . that therefore our liberty must be founded upon the no necessity of some certain things appearing determinately thus or thus , or that we have no liberty at all , is as certain . . that things appearing thus or thus ( unless in self-evident propositions ) depends upon the various degrees of advertency or attention , and nothing else , is certain . . that therefore we have an immediate power of attending or not attending , or of attending more or less , is certain . . that therefore this indifferency of the soul as to attending or not attending , or attending more or less is the prime root and immediate subject of human liberty , is no less certain , which was the point to be demonstrated . errata . pag. . for divisition read division . p. . for conveiances read conveionce . p. . line . after , for , add our . p. . l. . for of read or . p. . for pertual read perpetual . p. . for serve r. serves . p. . for common r. commonly . p. . l. . for as r. that . p. . l. . after , take , add , no. p. . for hunc r. nunc . p. . l. . before of the , r. violence . books printed and sold by henry clements . archaeologiae atticae libri septem , by francis rous , and zachary bogan . o. mr. rodericks visitation sermon at blanford-forum . o. . sermon at the consecration at the l d weymouths chappel at long leat . o . . education of young gentlemen , th . edition . o. angliae notitia , five praesens status angliae succinte enucleatus . o. . smith aditus ad logicam , o. brerewoodi elementa logicae . o. notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e de. civ . dei l. . cap. . tom. . . . . lib. . de inquirendâ veritate . p. . contemp. and love. p. . can. rom. . see idea of happiness . lib. de lumine tom. . cap. . p. . phil. . notes for div a -e psal. . psal. . psal. . psal. . . . . . . . dan. . lib. de mor. eccl. lib. . cap. . consid. upon the nature of sin. lib. . con . gent. cap. . enthusiasmus triumphatus, or, a discourse of the nature, causes, kinds, and cure, of enthusiasme; written by philophilus parresiastes, and prefixed to alazonomastix his observations and reply: whereunto is added a letter of his to a private friend, wherein certain passages in his reply are vindicated, and severall matters relating to enthusiasme more fully cleared. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; :e [ ]) enthusiasmus triumphatus, or, a discourse of the nature, causes, kinds, and cure, of enthusiasme; written by philophilus parresiastes, and prefixed to alazonomastix his observations and reply: whereunto is added a letter of his to a private friend, wherein certain passages in his reply are vindicated, and severall matters relating to enthusiasme more fully cleared. more, henry, - . more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed by j. flesher, and are to be sold by w. morden bookseller in cambridge, london, : mdclvi. [ ] philophilus parresiastes = henry more. title page in red and black. "observations upon anthroposophia theomagica, and anima magica abscondita. by alazonomastix philalethes [i.e. henry more]", a reply to the works by thomas vaughan, and "the second lash of alazonomastix", a reply to "the man-mouse taken in a trap" by vaughan, were originally published separately; each has separate title page dated ; pagination and register are continuous. annotation on thomason copy: "may ". reproduction of the original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by 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-- anima magica abscondita -- early works to . vaughan, thomas, - . -- anthroposophia theomagica -- early works to . vaughan, thomas, - . -- man-mouse taken in a trap -- early works to . ecstasy -- early works to . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images - tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread - tcp staff (michigan) text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion enthusiasmus triumphatus , or , a discourse of the nature , causes , kinds , and cure , of enthusiasme ; written by philophilus parresiastes , and prefixed to alazonomastix his observations and reply : whereunto is added a letter of his to a private friend , wherein certain passages in his reply are vindicated , and severall matters relating to enthusiasme more fully cleared . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 london , printed by i. flesher , and are to be sold by w. morden bookseller in cambridge , mdclvi . enthusiasmus triumphatus , or , a discourse of the nature , causes , kinds , and cure , of enthusiasme ; written by philophilus parresiastes , and prefixed to alazonomastix his observations and reply : whereunto is added a letter of his to a private friend , wherein certain passages in his reply are vindicated , and severall matters relating to enthusiasme more fully cleared . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 london , printed by i. flesher , and are to be sold by w. morden bookseller in cambridge , mdclvi . to the reader . reader , thou maist very well marvell what may be the meaning that i should publish the writings of another , the authour being yet alive and at leisure to do it himself : but i can inform thee , though it perhaps may seem a riddle to thee , that he is alive and not alive . for when i treated with him concerning this matter , i found him quite dead to all such kind of businesses . his constitution is grown so unexpectedly and astonishingly grave or sower , i know not whether to call it , that there is now , as i told him , some small hopes that he may be brought off in time , to put on a pair of sattin eares , or wear a silk cap with as many seams as there be streaks in the back of a lute , as himself expresses it , in the preface to his reply , assuredly , said i , mastix , thou hast an ambition of being one of those venerable idols , or stalking peices of gravity , to whom little boyes smack the top of their fingers so loudly , making long legges ; and young girls and women drop so demure courtsies to as they passe by in the street . how strongly is my friend mastix metamorphosed within this space of three or four yeares . but parresiastes , said he , is i perceive , the same man still , as merry and unluckie as ever : and for my self i am not so much changed or sunk into thy present temper , but that i can with the same patience bear with thy frolicks , as i could with others sullennesse in the dayes of my jollitie . but i know by certain and approved experience , that there is nothing so safe and permanently pleasant , as a staid mind and composed spirit ; not easily loosned into profuse mirth . for such jocantrie , while we are in these earthly tabernacles , is but like the dancing of men and women in an unswept room , it does but raise a dust and offend the eyes even of the revellers themselves , what ever it does to the spectatours . wherefore what a vain thing were it in me , to ruffle the calme composure of my own spirit , by perusing and republishing of that which proved so great an aggrievance to one , to whom i never did , nor yet do , bear the least enmity . i seeing mastix so seriously set against mirth , presently conjectured , for all his smooth speeches , that it might happily fare with him after the usuall manner of other mortalls , who commonly do not wholly quit themselves of their passions , but change them ; and therefore did not much mistrust , but that though i could not melt him into a merry temper , yet i might heat him into a fit of indignation and naturall sense of revenge . and to this purpose i set before his eyes the high insolencies of eugenius against the universities , his unpardonable incivilities to that miracle of ages the noble des-cartes , besides his outragious barbaritics upon mastix his own self ; where i exhibited to his view a whole catalogue of those honourable titles he so liberally bestows upon him throughout his writings , being so many and so uncouth , that they might stuff out a whole dictionary with terms of scurrility . these i spread before him , like the bloud of mulberries before● elephants in battel , to provoke his irascible . but to my amazement he seemed to me not at all moved , but in a carelesse manner made this answer , the grosser these revilements are , the greater christianity not to be incensed . besides , if either he or any others by his defamations think worse of me then i deserve , the injury is theirs , not mine ; as when one conceives a true proposition to be false , the proposition , saith epictetus , is not hurt , but he that is mistaken in it . when i saw these engines levelled at his affections could make no breach upon him , at last i betook me to more subtil weapons . well said i , mastix , it should seem you are grown a man of strange master-dome over your passions , or at least you are willing to appear so for the present ; but you have been as great a professor of reason heretofore . i pray you let me ask you one question ; whether do not you think your observations and reply very serviceable for that purpose you intended them , viz. for the discountenancing and quelling of vain fantastry and enthusiasme . here he putting upon himself a ctosse and unexpected garb of modesty , told me that it was unfit for him to speak any thing that may seem to tend to the commendation of his own writings ; but smilingly asked me what my opinion was thereof . i professe , said i , i cannot but think them very serviceable for that end , nor can imagine how that fanatick spirit can be better met withall , then by slighting and deriding it , there being alwayes so much pride at the root from whence these follies and vanities bloom . for fantasticks and enthusiasts seek nothing more then the admiration of men , wherefore there is no such soveraign remedy as scorn and neglect , to make them sober . but anxiously to contend in a drie way of reason with them that professe themselves above it , is indeed to condescend below a mans self , and use his sword there where he ought to have shown his whip , wh●ch was the mistake of the scythians when they fought against their slaves ; and therefore it being not so rational to prefer a private humor before a publick good , you ought not to be so shie in the matter i propound . i know not what you mean said mastix , your late laudable intentions , said i , have been as well against enthusiasme as atheisme , what pretence then have you that those two pamphlets against enthusiasme may not march in one body , i mean , be bound up in one volume with the rest of your treatises , for they would be then more in view , and consequently do more service . it may be so , said mastix , if they would do any at all . but you do not in the mean time consider what disservice they may do to the rest of my writings , which are so grave and serious , and how they may cause the reader , through incogitancy , to think me in good earnest no where having once found me so much in jest . now certainly , mastix , said i , it is not gravity but melancholy that makes such a prudent fool of thee . do not even the godliest and severest men that are , without either sin or scruple , laugh heartily at dinner and tell merry tales , though they begin and end their meal wi●h more then ordinary seriousnesse and devotion ? besides , the promiscuous jumbling of those divine raptures , in your reply , with your usuall merriment there , seems in my judgement far more harsh then the joyning both your observations and it with the rest of your discourses . this struck mastix home , as i thought , who a little changing his countenance , after some pause returned this answer . the truth is , said he , that confusion of so great seriousnesse with so humoursome mirth , is the very worst thing in all that book . which my spirits so ill relish now i am more cool , that i would gladly , if opportunity were offered , have my reply distinguished into sections with arguments before every section , that there may be a due time of interspiration betwixt the ending of the serious and the entring into the merry passages , as well as there was in my writing of them . but this may be done , though these two pamphlets be still kept apart from the rest in a lesser volume . that 's true , said i , but you do not observe that you endeavour the declining of that which is unavoidable . for as sure as your books will to the press again after your death , these two , which you would keep out , will croud in with the rest . here mastix began to scratch his head , and se●med utterly at a losse what to say . but at last recovering himself , what reason , said he , have i to take philophilus for a prophet , or admit of his presage as probable , that my wr●tings should be so much in ●equest hereafter , unlesse it be because they are in so little now , writers having the same fate that fashions , they all coming up by their turns and then going down again . but suppose your presage true , what then philophilus ? i● plainly then follows , said i , that you are to republish your two pamphlets , & joyn them with the rest of your writings , especially having opportunity thereby to cast your reply into sections , and make what corrections else you think fit in either of them . it does not at all follow , sayes he . it follows indeed , that it is fit the thing should be done , but it does not necessarily follow that i do ●t my self . friend mastix how captious are you , said i , my main drift was to demonstrate that the thing was fit to be done , not questioning but that that being proved , you would not stick to do it your self . well , said he , my friend philophilus , it is acknowledged then on both sides , that it is fit and requisite to be done , but my self refusing of it , will any body else think you do it ? not any body , said i : whether can you do it or no , said mastix to me . here i began to fumble , but i could not but confesse that i could do it . the whole businesse , said mastix , lies then betwixt you and me . as for my own part i am resolved i will not meddle with it , it being utterly against the present temper of spirit i am in . and a thing so fit to be done in your own judgement , which you can do if you will , and will not be done unlesse by you , must lie at your door as a neglected duty if you refuse it . i marry , said i , friend mastix this is rare indeed , i perceive though you can forego your wonted mirth , you have parted with little of your wit , that you can thus finely catch me in a noose of mine own making . well , i will not be unwilling to think it my duty for this once , since it can be no otherwise . and i have reader outdone his desire in the prosecuting thereof . for i have not onely cast his reply , but his observations also into sections , prefixing before each section the argument thereof , in which i might almost equalize my pains to his that first compiled the books , at least i might the fruits of them ; being well assured that they will prove ten times more plain and consequently more pleasant then they were before , especially if thou takest notice of what instructions i shall impart to thee in reference to their perusall . know therefore that in every argument of the sections of his observations , there is exhibited to thee the matter that mastix speaks to in each observation , & that so fully and faithfully , that if the discourse he writes against lay open before thine eyes , it would not make him more intelligible . now his observations being so punctually numbred and fully understood , it will follow that his reply will be as easie , the same numbring of the observations being kept there also , so that if thou beest not satisfied in the sense , it is but having recourse to the observation , the number does direct thee to in the foregoing pamphlet , and then all will be clear . the chief light therefore for understanding both , being the right framing of the arguments of the sections of his observations , which were so plainly to propose to thy view the matter that is first spoke to , it made me very carefull in contriving thereof . but i was lesse curious in the arguments of the sections of his reply , they being not so much to tell what is spoke to , as what is spoke in every particular section . besides this dividing his two pamphlets into sections , i have also prefixed a brief discourse concerning the nature , causes , kindes , and cure of enthusiasme , where though my pains seem more entirely my own , then in the following books , yet to confesse ingenuously , they are here farre lesse , i having had more easie and frequent accesse to mastix in this so serious and weighty a matter . after the whole compilement whereof it being reduced to that form thou seest it , desirous to leave out nothing , in so important a subject , that was of consequence to be put in ; i asked him if it seemed not somthing maimed in the enumeration of the causes of enthusiasme , because there is nothing set down there concerning the devil , nor the wilfull wickednesse of the mind of man ; but all is resolved into complexion or the present temper or distemper of the body , arising from naturall causes that necessarily act thereupon . for thus this discourse , said i , may seem as well an excuse for , as a discovery of this disease of enthusiasme . why , said mastix , i hope it is not your designe , i am sure it is not mine , to incense the mindes of any against enthusiasts as to persecute them : all that i aim at , is onely this , that no man may follow them . and your discourse already , i think , is effectuall enough for that purpose , it so plainly discovering that what seems so strange and taking in them , is not from god , but a meer constitution of body , the fanaticall workings whereof , though they may be much heightned by some peculiar vitiosity of the mind or subtile insinuations of the devil , yet because it is not alwayes so , and that it does very seldome plainly appear that there is any thing more of either devil or vitiosity in the enthusiast then in others , saving what his meer complexion leads him to , i think it is , said he , more safe to leave those considerations out , their causality being more lax and generall then to be appropriated to enthusiasme , and it being farre more laudable in my judgement and allowable to let the guilty go free , especially in matters of this nature , then to endanger the innocent . thus , reader , thou seest how thou art beholden to mastix , as well for what is judiciously left out , as what is fitly and usefully taken in to the following discourse . for i must confesse , that in the unridling of this riddle of enthusiasme , i have wholly plowed with his heifer , which having told thee , i shall now dismisse thee , being unwilling any longer to detain thee from the reaping of the harvest of my labours . philophilus parresiastes . the contents of the ensuing discourse . . the great vse and necessity of discovering the imposture of enthusiasme . . what inspiration is and what enthusiasme . . a search of the causes of enthusiasme in the faculties of the soul. . the severall degrees and natures of her faculties . . why dreams , till we awake , seem reall transactions . . the enormous strength of imagination the cause of enthusiasme . . sundry naturall and corporeall causes that necessarily work on the imagina●ion . . the power of meats to change the imagination . . baptista his potion for the same purpose . . the power of diseases upon the fancy . . of the power of melancholy , and how it often sets on some one absurd conceit upon the minde , the party in other things being sober . . severall examples thereof . . a seasonable application of these examples for the weakning of the authority of bold enthusiasts . . that the causality of melancholy in this distemper of enthusiasme is more easily traced then in other extravagancies . . melancholy apertinacious and religious complexion . . that men are prone to suspect some speciall presence of god or of a supernaturall power in whatever is great or vehement . . the mistake of heated melancholy for holy zeal and the spirit of god. . the ebbs and flowes of melancholy a further cause of enthusiasme . . the notorious mockery of melancholy in reference to divine love . . that melancholy partakes much of the nature of wine , and from what complexion poets & enthusiasts arise , & what the difference is betwixt them . . that a certain dos●s of sanguine mixt with melancholy is the spirit that usually inspires enthusiasts , made good by a large induction of examples . . more examples to the same purpose . . of enthusiasticall ioy. . of the mysticall allegories of enthusiasts . . of quaking and of the quakers . . that melancholy disposes to apoplexies and epilepsies . . of the nature of enthusiastick revelations and visions . . of extasie , the nature and causes thereof . . whether it be in mans power to cast himself into an enthusiastick apoplexie , epilepsie or extasie . . of ent●usiastick prophecy . . of the presage of a mans own heart from a supernaturall impulse sensible to himself , but unexplicable to others , where it may take place , and that it is not properly enthusiasme . . severall examples of politicall enthusiasme . . david george his prophecy of his rising again from the dead and after what manner it was fulfilled . . a description of his person , manners , & doctrine . . the evident causes of his power of speech . . an account of those seeming graces in him . . that he was a man of sanguine complexion . . further and more sure proofs that he was of that temper . . that it was a dark fulsome sanguine that hid the truth of the great promises of the gospel from his e●es . . the exact likenesse betwixt him and the father of the moderne nicolaitans , and the authours censure of them both . . a seasonable advertisement in the behalf of them that are unawares taken with such writers , as also a further confirmation that enthusiastick madnesse may consist with sobriety in other matters . . of philosophicall enthusiasme . . sundry chymists and theosophists obnoxious to this disease . . a promiscuous collection of divers odd conceits out of severall theosophists and chymists . . a particular collection out of paracelsus . . that it is he that has given occasion to the wildest philosophick enthusiasmes that ever was yet on foot . . that his philosophy , though himself intended it not , is one of the safest sanctuaries for the atheist , and the very prop of ancient paganisme . . how it justifies the heathens worshipping of the starres , derogates from the authority of the miracles of our saviour , makes the gospel ineffectuall for the establishing of the belief of a god , and a particular providence , gratifies that professed atheist vaninus in what he most of all triumphs in , as serving his turn the best to elude all religion whatsoever . . that paracelsus and his followers are neither atheisticall nor diabolicall , and what makes the chymist ordinarily so pittifull a philosopher . . the writer of this discourse no foe to either theosophist or chymist , onely he excuses himself from being over credulous in regard of either . . the cure of enthusiasme by temperance , humility , and reason . . what is meant by temperance . . what by humility and the great advantage thereof for wisdome and knowledge . , what by reason , and what the danger is of leaving that guide , as also the mistake of them that expect the spirit should not suggest such things as are rationall . . further helps against enthusiasme . . of the raised language of enthusiasts ; and of what may extraordinarily fall from them . . of enthusiastick prophecy that ordinarily happens to fools and madmen , and the reason why ; as also why extaticall men foresee things to come , and of the uncertainty of such predictions . . that if an enthusiast should cure some diseases by touching or stroaking the party diseased , that yet it might be no true mira●le . . of the remote notions , mysterious stile , and moving eloquence of enthusiasts . . how we shall distinguish betwixt pure religion and complexion . . that the devotional enthusiasm of holy & sincere souls has not at all been taxed in all this discourse . . that the fewell of devotion even in warrantable and sincere enthusiasme is usually melancholy . . that there is a peculiar advantage in melancholy for divine speculations , and a prevention of the atheists objection thereupon . . how it comes to passe that men are so nimble and dexterous in finding the truth of some things , and so slow and heavy in othersome , and that the dulnesse of the atheists perception in divine matters is no argument against the truth of religion . a short discourse of the nature , causes , kindes , and cure of enthusiasme . . having undertaken the republishing of the two following books , and reduced them both under one common title of enthusiasme , i think it not amisse to speak somewhat by way of preface , concerning the nature of that disease , partly because it may be the better discerned of what good use the authour's pains are against this distemper of fantastrie and enthusiasme , and partly because by a more punctuall discovery of this distemper , the distemper it self , or at least the ill influence of it upon the credulous & inconsiderate , may be prevented . for where the naturall causes of things are laid open , there that stupid reverence and admiration which surprises the ignorant , will assuredly cease . which is a thing of no lesse consequence then the preserving of that honest and rationall way of the education of youth in liberall arts and sciences , and upholding of christian religion it self from being supplanted and overturned from the very foundations , by the dazeling and glorious plausibilities of bold enthusiasts , who speaking great swelling words of vanity , bear down the weak and unskilfull multitude into such a belief of supernaturall graces and inspirations in their admired prophet , that they will not st●ck to listen to him , though he dictate to them what is contrary , not onely to solid reason and the judgement of the most learned and pious in all ages , but even to the undoubted oracles of the holy scriptures themselves . wherefore for the detecting of this mysterious imposture , we shall briefly , and yet , i hope , plainly enough , set out the nature , causes , kinds , and cure of this mischievous disease . . the etymologie , and varietie of the significations of this word enthusiasme i leave to criticks and grammarians , but what we mean by it here , you shall fully understand after we have defined what inspiration is : for enthusiasme is nothing else but a misconceit of being inspired . now to be inspired , is to be moved in an extraordinary manner by the power or spirit of god to act , speak , or think what is holy , just , and true . from hence it will be easily understood what enthusiasme is , viz. a full , but false perswasion in a man that he is inspired . . we shall now enquire into the causes of this distemper● how it comes to passe that a man should be thus befooled in his own conceit : and truly unlesse we should offer lesse satisfaction then the thing is capable of , we must not onely treat here of melancholy , but of the faculties of the soul of man , whereby it may the better be understood how she may become obnoxious to such disturbances of melancholy , in which she has quite lost her own judgement and freedome , and can neither keep out nor distinguish betwixt her own fancies and reall truths . . we are therefore to take notice of the severall degrees and natures of the faculties of the soul , the lowest whereof she exercises without so much as any perception of what she does , and these operations are fatall and naturall to her so long as she is in the body , and a man differs in them little from a plant , which therefore you may call the vegetative or plantall faculties of the soul. the lowest of those faculties of whose present operations we have any perception , are the outward senses , which upon the pertingencie of the object to the sensitive organ cannot fail to act , that is , the soul cannot fail to be affected thereby , nor is it in her power to suspend her perception , or at least , very hardly in her power . from whence it is plain that the soul is of that nature , that she sometimes may awake fatally and necessarily into phantasmes and perceptions without any will or consent of her own . which is found true also in imagination , though that facultie be freer then the former . for what are dreams but the imaginations and perceptions of one asleep , which notwithstanding steal upon the soul , or rise out of her without any consent of hers , as is most manifest in such as torment us , and put us to extreme pain till we awake out of them . and the like obreptions or unavoydable importunities of thoughts , which offer or force themselves upon the mind , may be observed even in the day time , according to the nature or strength of the complexion of our bodies ; though how the body doth engage the mind in thoughts or imaginations , is most manifest in sleep . for according as choler , sanguine , phlegme , or melancholy are predominant , will the scene of our dreams be , and that without any check or curb of dubitation concerning the truth and existence of the things that then appear : of which we can conceive no other reason then this , that the inmost seat of sense is very fully and vigourously affected , as it is by objects in the day , of whose reall existence the ordinary assurance is , that they so strongly strike or affect our sensitive facultie ; which resides not in the externall organs , no more then the artificers skill in his instruments , but in some more inward recesses of the brain : and therefore the true and reall seat of sense being affected in our sleep , as well as when we are awake , 't is the lesse marvell the soul conceits her dreams while she is a dreaming , to be no dreams but reall transactions . . now that the inward sense is so vigoroufly affected in these dreams , proceeds , as i conceive , from hence ; because the brains , animall spirits , or what ever the soul works upon within , in her imaginative operations , are not considerably moved , altered or agitated from any externall motion , but keep intirely and fully that figuration or modification which the soul necessarily & naturally moulds them into in our sleep , so that the opinion of the truth of what is represented to us in our dreams , is from hence , that imagination then ( that is , the inward figuration of our brain or spirits into this or that representation ) is far stronger then any motion or agitation from without , which to them that are awake dimmes and obscures their inward imagination , as the light of the sun doth the light of a candle in a room ; and yet in this case also according to aristotle fancy is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a kind of sense , though weak . but if it were so strong as to bear it self against all the occursions and impulses of outward objects , so as not to be broken , but to keep it self entire and in equall splendour and vigour with what is represented from without , and this not arbitrariously but necessarily and unavoydably , as has been already intimated , the party thus affected would not fail to take his own imagination for a reall object of sense : as it fell out in one that cartesius mentions , ( and there are several other examples of that kind ) that had his arm cut off , who being hoodwinkt , complained of a pain in this and the other finger , when he had lost his whole arm . and a further instance may be in mad or melancholy men , who have confidently affirmed that they have met with the devil , or conversed with angels , when it has been nothing but an encounter with their own fancie . . wherefore it is the enormous strength of imagination ( which is yet the soul's weaknesse or unweildinesse whereby she so farre sinks into phantasmes , that she cannot recover her self into the use of her more free faculties of reason and understanding ) that thus peremptorily engages a man to believe a lie . and if it be so strong as to assure us of the presence of some externall object which yet is not there , why may it not be as effectuall in the begetting of the belief of some more internall apprehensions , such as have been reported of mad and fanaticall men , who have so firmly and immutably fancied themselves to be god the father , the messias , the holy ghost , the angel gabriel , the last and chiefest prophet that god would send into the world , and the like ? for their conceptions are not so pure or immateriall , nor solid or rationall , but that these words to them are alwayes accompanied with some strong phantasme or full imagination ; the fulnesse and clearnesse whereof , as in the case immediately before named , does naturally bear down the soul into a belief of the truth and existence of what she thus vigorously apprehends ; and being so wholly and entirely immersed in this conceit , and so vehemently touched therewith , she has either not the patience to consider any thing alledged against it , or if she do consider and find her self intangled , she will look upon it as a piece of humane sophistry , and prefer her own infallibility or the infallibility of the spirit before a●l carnall reasonings whatsoever ; as those whose fancies are fortified by long use and education in any absurd point of a false religion , though wise enough in other things , will firmly hold the conclusion notwithstanding the clearest demonstration to the contrary . now what custome and education doth by degrees , distempered fancy may do in a shorter time . but the case in both is much like that in dreams , where that which is represented is necessarily taken for true , because nothing stronger enervates the perception . for as the ligation of the outward organs of sense keeps off such fluctuations or undulations of motion from without , as might break or obscure these representations in sleep ; so prejudice and confidence in a conceit , when a man is awake , keeps his fond imagination vigorous and entire from all the assaults of reason that would cause any dubitation . nor is it any more wonder that his intellectualls should be sound in other things , though he be thus delirous in some one point , no more then that he that thinks he sees the devil in a wood , should not be at all mistaken in the circumstance of place , but see the very same path , flowers , and grasse that another in his wits sees there as well as himself . to be short therefore , the originall of such peremptory delusions as mankind are obnoxious to , is the enormous strength and vigour of the imagination ; which faculty though it be in some sort in our power , as respiration is , yet it will also work without our leave , as i have already demonstrated , and hence men become mad and fanaticall whether they will or no. . now what it is in us that thus captivates our imagination , & carries it wide away out of the reach or hearing of that more free and superiour faculty of reason , is hard particularly to define . but that there are sundry materiall things that do most certa●nly change our mind or fancy , experience doth sufficiently witnesse . for our imagination alters as our blood and spirits are altered , ( as i have above intimated and instanced in our dreams ) and indeed very small thing● will alter them even when we are awake ; the meer change of weather and various tempers of the aire , a little reek or suffumigation , as in those seeds pomponi●u mela mentions , which the thracians , who knew not the use of wine , wont at their feasts to cast into the fire , whereby they were intoxicated into as high a measure of mirth , as they that drink more freely of the blood of the grape : the virtue of which is so great , that as iosephus phrases it , it seems to create a new soul in him that drinks it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it transforms and regenerates the soul● into a new nature . but it doth most certainly bring a new scene of thoughts very ordinarily into their minds that have occasion to meddle with it . which made the persians undertake no weighty matter nor strike up a bargain of any great consequence , but they would consider of it first both welnigh fuddled and sober . for if they liked it in all the representations that those two contrary tempers exhibited to their minds , they thought themselves well assured that they might proceed safely and succesfully therein . and yet wine doth not alwayes so much change the thoughts and alter our temper as heighten it , in so much that its effect proves sometime contrary , onely by reason of the diversity o● persons ; some being weeping drunk , others laughing , some kind , others raging ; as it happens also in those that are stung with the tarantula . alii perpetuò rid●nt , alii canunt , alii plorant , &c. as sennertus observes out of matthiolus . but that which they both seem most to admire is , that the fancie of the tarantulati should be so mightily carried away with musick ; for they do not onely forget their pain , but dance incessantly . of which epiphanius ferdinandus tells a very remarkable story of an old man ninety foure yeares of age , that could scarce creep with a staff , who yet being bit by the tarantula , presently upon the hearing of musick leaped and skipped like a young kid . akin to this is that kind of madnesse which they call s. vitus his dance , which disease sennertus rightly affirms to proceed from a certain malignant humour gendred in the body , of near cognation with this poyson of the tarantula ; which will help us for the explicating of the causes of stranger workings on the fancie then has yet been mentioned . as for example , in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which are distempers of the mind , whereby men imagine themselves to be wolves , cats , or doggs . . there are severall relations in the forenamed authour concerning the power that nourishment has to work upon imagination , and to change a mans disposition into the nature of that creature whose bloud or milk doth nourish him . a wench at bresla being struck with an epilepsie upon the seeing of a malefactours head cut off by the executioner , when severall other remedies failed , was perswaded by some to drink the blood of a cat , which being done , the wench not long after degenerates into the nature and propertie of that animal , cries and jumps like a cat , and hunts mice with like silence and watchfulnesse that they do , pursuing them as close as she could to their very holes . this narration he transcribes out of weinrichius , and has another short glance upon another in the same writer , of one that being long fed with swines blood , took a speciall pleasure in wallowing and tumbling himself in the mire : as also of another girle who being nourished up with goats milk , would skip like a goat and brouze on trees as goats use to do . we might adde a fourth , of one , who by eating the brains of a bear became of a bear-like disposition ; but we will not insist upon smaller considerations . . baptista porta drives on the matter much further , professing that he had acquaintance with one that could , when he pleased , so alter the imagination of a man , as he would make him fancie himself to be this or that bird , beast , or fish , and that in this madnesse the party thus deluded would move his body , as near as it was capable , so as such creatures use to do ; and if they were vocall , imitate also their voyce . this intoxicating potion is made of the extract of certain hearbs , as solanum manicum , mandrake , and others , together with the heart , brain , and some other parts of this or that animal , with whose image they would infect the fancie of the party . and he doth affirm of his own experience that trying this feat upon some of his comrades , when he was young , one that had gormundized much beef , upon the taking the potion , strongly imagined himself to be surrounded with bulls , that would be ever and anon running upon him with their horns . . what happens here in these cases where we can trace the causes , sometimes falls out where we cannot so plainly and directly find out the reason . for physicians take notice of such kind of madnesses as make men confidently conceit themselves to be doggs , wolves , and cats , when they have neither eat the flesh nor drunk the blood of any cat , dog , or wolf , nor taken any such artificiall potion as we even now spake of to bring them into these diseases . the causes of which cannot be better guessed at then has been by sennertus in that of s. vitus his dance . for as there the body is conceived to be infested by some malignant humour near akin to the poyson of the tarantula , so in these distempers we may well conclude that such fumes or vapours arise into the brain from some foulnesse in the body ( though the particular causes we do not understand ) as have a very near analogie to the noxious humours or exhalations that move up and down and mount up into the imagination of those that have drunk the bloud of cats , or have been nourished with the milk of those animals above named , or taken such intoxicating potions as baptista porta has described . . we have given severall instances of that mighty power there is in naturall causes to work upon and unavoidably to change our imagination . we will name something now more generall , whose nature notwithstanding is so various and vertumnus-like , that it will supply the place of almost all particulars , and that is melancholy ; of which aristotle gives witnesse that according to the severall degrees and tempers thereof men vary wonderfully in their constitutions , it making some slow and sottish , others wild , ingenious , and amorous , prone to wrath and lust , others it makes more eloquent and full of discourse , others it raises up even to madnesse and enthusiasme : and he gives an example of one maracus a poet of syracuse , who never versified so well as when he was in his distracted fits . but it is most observable in melancholy when it reaches to a disease , that it sets on some one particular absurd imagination upon the mind so fast , that all the evidence of reason to the contrary cannot remove it , the parties thus affected in other things being as sober and rationall as other men . and this is so notorious and frequent that aretaeus , sennertus , and other physicians define melancholy from this very effect of it . . aristotle affords us no examples of this kind , others do . democritus junior , as he is pleased to style himself , recites severall stories out of authours to this purpose . as out of laurentius one concerning a french poet , who using in a feaver● vnguentum populeum to anoint his temples to conciliate sleep , took such a conceit against the smell of that ointment , that for many yeares after he imagined every one that came near him to sent of it , and therefore would let no man talk with him but aloof off , nor would he wear any new clothes , because he fancied they smelt of that ointment ; but in all other things he was wise and discreet , and would talk as sensibly as other men . another he has of ● gentleman of limosen ( out of anthony verduer ) who was perswaded he had but one leg , affrighted into that conceit by having that part struck by a wild boar , otherwise a man well in his wits . a third he hath out of platerus , concerning a countreyman of his , who by chance having fallen into a pit where frogs and frogs-spawn was , and having swallowed down a little of the water , was afterward so fully perswaded that there were young frogs in his belly , that for many yeares following he could not rectifie his conceit : he betook himself to the study of physick for seven yeares together to find a cure for his disease : he travelled also in italy , france , and germany to confer with physicians about it , and meeting with platerus consulted him with the rest . he fancied the crying of his guts to be the croaking of the frogs , and when platerus would have deceived him by putting live frogs into his excrements that he might think he had voided them and was cured ; his skill in physick made that trick ineffectuall . for saving this one vain conceit , the man was , as he reports , a learned and prudent man. we will adde onely a fourth out of laurentius , which is of a nobleman of his time , a man of reason and discretion in all other things , saving that he did conceit himself made of glasse ; and though he loved to be visited by his friends , yet had a speciall care that they should not come too near him , for fear they should break him . not much unlike to this is that of a baker of ferrara , that thought he was compos'd of butter , and therefore would not sit in the sun , nor come near a fire for fear he should be melted . it would be an infinite task to set down all at large . sennertus has given some hints of the variety of this distemper , remitting us to schenkius , marcellus , donatus , forestus and others for more full narrations . some , saith he , are vexed and tormented with the fear of death , as thinking they have committed some crime they never did commit , some fancy they are eternally damned , nay they complain that they are already tormented with hell fire , others take themselves to be a dying , others imagine themselves quite dead , and therefore will not eat , others fear that the heavens will fall upon them , others dare not clinch their hands for fear of bruising the world betwixt their fists , some fancy themselves cocks , some nightingales , some one animal , some another , some entertain conference with god or his angels , others conceit themselves bewitched or that a black man or devil perpetually accompanies them , some complain of their poverty , others fancie themselves persons of honour , dukes , princes , kings , popes , and what not ? much to this purpose may you see in sennertus , and more in democritus junior . . that which is most observable and most usefull for the present matter in hand is ; that notwithstanding there is such an enormous lapse of the fancy aud judgement in some one thing , yet the party should be of a sound mind in all other , according to his naturall capacities and abilities ; which all physicians acknowledge to be true , and are ready to make good by innumerable examples . which i conceive to be of great moment more thorowly to consider . i do not mean how it may come to passe ( for that we have already declared ) but what excellent use it may be of , for to prevent that easie and ordinary sophisme which imposes upon many , who , if an enthusiast speak eloquently , and it may be rationally and piously ( you may be sure zealously and fervently enough and with the greatest confidence can be imagined ) are so credulous , that , because of this visible dresse of such laudable accomplishments , they will believe him even in that which is not onely not probable , but vain and foolish , nay , sometime very mischievous and impious to believe ; as , that the party is immediately and extraordinarily inspired of god , that he is a speciall messenger sent by him , the last and best prophet , the holy ghost come in the flesh , and such like stuff as this : which has been ever and anon set on foot in all ages by some enthusiast or other . amongst whom i do not deny but there may be some who for the main practicall light of christianity might have their judgments as consistent , as those melancholists above named had in the ordinary prudentiall affairs of the world , but as for this one particular of being supernaturally inspired , of being the last prophet , the last trumpet , the angel in the midst of heaven with the eternall gospel in his hand , the holy ghost incorporated , god come to judgement , and the like , this certainly in them , is as true , but farre worse , dotage , then to fancy a mans self either a cock or bull , when it is plain to the senses of all that he is a man. . but it being of so weighty a concernment i shall not satisfie my self in this more generall account of enthusiasme , that it may very well be resolved into that property of melancholy whereby men become to be delirous in some one point , their judgement standing untouched in others . for i shall . easily further demonstrate that the very nature of melancholy is such , that it may more fairly and plausibly tempt a man into such conceits of inspiration and supernaturall light from god , then it can possibly do into those more extravagant conceits of being glasse , butter , a bird , a beast or any such thing . . for besides that which is most generall of all , that melancholy enclines a man very strongly and peremptorily to either believe or misbelieve a thing ( as is plain in that passion of suspicion and iealousie , which upon little or no occasion will winne so full assent of the mind , that it will engage a man to act as vigorously as if he were certain that his jealousies were true ) it is very well known that this complexion is the most religious complexion that is , and will be as naturally tampering with divine matters ( though in no better light then that of her own ) as apes and monkies will be imitating the actions and manners of men . neither is there any true spirituall grace from god but this meer naturall constitution , according to the severall tempers and workings of it , will not onely resemble , but sometimes seem to outstrip , by reason of the fury and excesse of it , and that not onely in actions , but very ordinarily in eloquence and expressions ; as if here alone were to be had that live sense and understanding of all holy things , or at least as if there were no other state to be paralleld to it . the event of which must be , if a very great measure of the true grace of god do's not intervene , that such a melancholist as this must be very highly puffed up , and not onely fancy himself inspired , but believe himself such a speciall piece of light and holinesse that god has sent into the world , that he will take upon him to reform , or rather annull the very law and religion he is born under , and make himself not at all inferiour to either moses or christ , though he have neither any sound reason nor visible miracle to extort belief . . but this is still too generall , we shall yet more particularly point out the causes of this imposture . things that are great or vehement , people are subject to suspect they rise from some supernaturall cause ; insomuch that the wind cannot be more then ordinary high , but they are prone to imagine the devil raised it , nor any sore plague or disease , but god in an extraordinary manner to be the authour of it . so rude antiquity conceiv'd a kind of divinity in almost any thing that was extraordinarily great . whence some have worshipped very tall trees , others large rivers , some a great stone or rock , othersome high and vast mountains , whence the greeks confound great and holy in that one word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that signifies both . and the hebrews by the cedars of god , the mountains of god , the spirit of god , and the like , understand high cedars , great mountains , and a mighty spirit or wind. we may adde also what is more familiar , how old women and nurses use to tell little children when they ask concerning the moon , ●●●ting at it with their fingers , that it is gods candle , because it is so great a light in the night . all which are arguments or intimations , that mans nature is v●●y prone to suspe●t some speciall presence of god in any thing that is great , or vehement . whence it is a stro●g temptation with a melancholist when he feels a storm of devotion or zeal come upon him like a mighty wind , his heart being full of affection , his head pregnant with clear and sensible representations , and his mouth flowing and streaming with fit and powerfull expressions , such as would astonish an ordinary auditorie to hear ; it is i say a shrewd temptation to him to think that it is the very spirit of god that then moves supernaturally in him , when as all that excesse of zeal and affection and fluencie of words is most palpably to be resolved into the power of melancholy , which is a kind of naturall inebriation . and that there is nothing better then nature in it , it is evident both from the experience of good and discreet men , who have found themselves strangely vary in their zeal , devotion and elocution as melancholy has been more or lesse predominant in them , and also from what all may observe in those that have been wicked , mad and blasphemous , and yet have surpassed in this mistaken gift of prayer ; as is notorious in hacket , who was so besotted with a conceit of his own zeal and eloquence , that he fancyed himself the holy-ghost . . and when men talk so much of the spirit , if they take notice what they ordinarily mean by it , it is nothing else but a strong and impetuous motion whereby they are zealously and fervently carried in matters of religion : so that fervour , zeal , and spirit is in effect all one . now no complexion is so hot as mel●●●oly when it is heated , being like boiling water , as aristotle observs ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ) so that it transcends the flame of fire , or it is 〈◊〉 heated stone or iron when they are red hot , for they are then more hot by far then a burning coal . we shall omit here to play the grammarian , and to take notice how well aristotles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 suites with the very word zeale of which we speake , but shall cast our eyes more carefully upon the things themselves , and parallel out of the same philosopher what they call spirit , to what he affirmes to be contained in melancholy . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the spirit then that wings the enthusiast in such a wonderful ●anner , is nothing else but that flatulency which is in the melancholy complexion , & rises out of the hypochondriacal humour upon some occasionall heat , as winde out of an aeolipila applied to the fire . which fume mounting into the head , being first actuated and spirited and somewhat refined by the warmth of the heart , fills the mind with variety of imaginations , and so quickens and inlarges invention , that it makes the enthusiast to admiration fluent and eloquent , he being as it were drunk with new wine drawn from that cellar of his own that lies in the lowest region of his body , though he be not aware of it , but takes it to be pure nectar , and those waters of life that spring from above . aristotle makes a long parallelisme betwixt the nature and effects of wine and melancholy , to which both fernelius and sennertus do referre . . but this is not all the advantage that melancholy affords towards enthusiasme , thus unexpectedly and suddenly to surprise the minde with such vehement fits of zeal , such streams & torents of eloquence in either exhorting others to piety , or in devotions towards god ; but it addes a greater weight of beliefe that there is something supernatural in the business , in that the same complexion discovers it selfe to them that lie under it in such contrary effects . for as it is thus vehemently hot , so it is as stupidly cold ; whence the melancholist becomes faithlesse , hopelesse , heartlesse and almost witlesse . which ebbs of his constitution must needs make the overflowing of it seem more miraculous and supernatural . but those cold and abject fits of his make him also very sensibly and winningly rhetorical , when he speaks of disconsolation , desertion , humilitie , mortification , and the like , as if he were truely and voluntarily carried through such things , when as onely the fatal necessity of his complexion has violently drag'd him thorow the meer shadows and resemblances of them . but he finding himselfe afterwards beyond all hope or any sense or presage of any power in himselfe lifted aloft again , he does not doubt that any thing less was the cause of this unexspected joy and triumph , then the immediate arme of god from heaven that has thus exalted him , when it is nothing indeed but a paroxysme of melancholy which is like the breaking out of a flame after a long smoaking and reeking of new rubbish laid upon the fire . but because such returnes as these come not at set times , nor make men sick , but rather delight them , they think there is something divine therein , and that it is not from natural causes . . there is also another notorious mockery in this complexion , nature confidently avouching her self to be god , whom the apostle calls love , as if it were his very essence ; when as indeed it is here nothing else but melancholy that has put on the garments of an angel of light . there is nothing more true then that love is the fulfilling of the law , and the highest perfection that is competible to the soul of man ; and that this also is so plain and unavoidable , that a man may be in a very high degree mad , and yet not fail to assent unto it . nay , i dare say , melancholy it self would be his monitour to reminde him of it , if there were any possibility that he should forget so manifest and palpable a truth . for the sense of love at large is eminently comprehended in the temper of the melancholist , melancholy and wine being of so near a nature one to the other . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but wine makes men amorous ; which the philosopher proves in that a man in wine will kisse such persons as a sober man would scarce touch with a pair of tongs , by reason of their age and uglinesse . and assuredly it was the fumes of melancholy that infatuated the fancie of a late new fangled religionist , when he sat so kindly by a gipsie under an hedge , and put his hand into her bosome in a fit of devotion , and vaunted afterwards of it as if it had been a very pious and meritorious action . . but now that melancholy partakes much of the nature of wine , he evinces from that it is so spiritous ; and that it is so spiritous , from that it is so spumeous : and that melancholy is flatuous or spiritous , he appeals to the physitians , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . wherefore the philosopher assignes another companion to venus besides the plump youth bacchus , which the poets bestow upon her , who , though more seemingly sad , yet will prove as faithfull an attendant as that other , and this is melancholy . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . now besides this flatulencie that solicits to lust , there may be such a due dash of sanguine in the melancholy , that the complexion may prove stupendiously enravishing . for that more sluggish du●cour of the blood will be sometime so quickned and actuated by the fiercenesse and sharpnesse of the melancholy humour ( as the fulsomnesse of sugar is by the acrimony of lemons ) that it will afford farre more sensible pleasure ; and all the imaginations of love , of what kind soever , will be ●arre more lively and vigorous , more piercing and rapturous , then they can be in pure sanguine it self . from this complexion are poets , and the more highly pretending enthusiasts : betwixt whom this is the great difference , that a poet is an enthusiast in jest , and an enthusiast is a poet in good earnest ; melancholy prevailing so much with him , that he takes his no better then poeticall fits , and figments for divine inspiration and reall truth . . but that it is a meer naturall flatuous and spiritous temper with a proportionable dosis of sanguine added to their melancholy , not the pure spirit of god that thus inacts them ; is plainly to be discovered not onely in their language , which is very sweet and melting , as if sugar plums lay under their tongue , but from notorious circumstances of their lives . and in my apprehension it will be a sufficient pledge of this truth if we set before our eyes those that have the most highly pretended to the spirit , and that have had the greatest power to delude the people . for that that pride and tumour of minde whereby they are so confidently carried out to professe , as well as to conceive so highly of themselves , that no lesse title must serve their turns , then that of god , the holy-ghost , or paraclet , the messias , the last and chiefest prophet , the iudge of the quick and the dead , and the like ; that all this comes from melancholy is manifest by a lower kind of working of that complexion . for to begin with the first of these impostours , simon magus , who gave out that he was god the father , he prov'd himself to be but a wretched lecherous man by that inseparable companion of his , helena , whom he called selene ; and affirmed to be one of the divine powers , when she was no better then a lewd strumpet . there was also one menander a samaritan , that vaunted himself to be the saviour of the world , a maintainer of the same licentious and impure opinions with simon . montanus professed himself to be the spirit of god , but that it was the spirit of melancholy that besotted him , his two drabs prisca and maximilla evidently enough declare , who are said to leave their own husbands to follow him . we might adde a third , one quintilla , a woman of no better fame and an intimate acquaintance of the other two , from whence the montanists were also called quintillians . manes also held himself to be the true paraclet , but lest a sect behind him indoctrinated in all licentious and filthy principles . mahomet more successefull then any , the last and chiefest prophet that ever came into the world , ( if you will believe him ) that he was melancholy , his epilepticall fits are one argument , and his permission of plurality of wives and concubines , his lascivious descriptions of the joyes of heaven or paradise , another . but i must confesse i do much doubt whether he took himself to be a prophet or no ; for he seems to me rather a pleasant witty companion , and shreud politician , then a meer enthusiast : and so wise as not to venture his credit or success upon meer conceits of his own , but he builds upon the weightiest principles of the religion of jews and christians : such as , that god is the creatour and governor of the world , that there are angells and spirits , that the soule of man is immortall , and that there is a judgement and an everlasting reward to come after the natural death of the body . so that indeed mahometisme seems but an abuse of certain principles of the doctrine of moses and christ to a political design , and therefore in it selfe far to be preferred before the vain and idle enthusiasmes of dâvid george ; who yet was so highly conceited of his own light , that he hoped to put mahomet's nose out of joynt , giving out of himselfe that he was the last and chiefest prophet , when as lef● to the intoxication of his own melancholy and sanguine , he held neither heaven nor hell , neither reward nor punishment after this life , neither devil nor angell , nor the immortalitie of the soul ; but though born a christian , yet he did mahomitise in this that he also did indulge plurality of wives . it should seem that so dark and fulsome a dash of blood there was mixed with his melancholy , that though the one made him a pretended prophet , yet the other would not suffer him to entertain the least presage of any thing beyond this mortal life . he also that is said to insist in his steps , and talks so magnificently of himself , as if he was come to judge both the quick and the dead , by an injudicious distorting and forcing of such plain substantial passages of scripture as assure us of the existence of angels and spirits , and of a life to come , bears his condemnation in himselfe , and proclaims to all the world that he is rather a priest of venus or a meer sydereal preacher out of the sweetness and powerfulness of his own natural complexion , then a true prophet of god , or a friend of the mystical bride-groom christ iesus ; to whose very person as to her lord and soveraigne , the church his spouse , doth owe all reverential love and honour . but such bloated and high swoln enthusiasts that are so big in the conceit of their own inward worth , have little either sense or beliefe of this duty , but fancy themselves either equal or superiour to christ ; whom notwithstanding god has declared supreme head over men and angels . and yet they would disthrone him , and set up themselves , though they can show no title but an unsound kind of popular eloquence , a rapsodie of sleight and soft words , rowling and streaming tautologies , which if they at any time bear any true sense with them , it is but what every ordinary christian knew before ; but what they oft insinuate by the by , is a bominably false , as sure as christianity it self is true . yet such fopperies as these seem fine things to the heedless and pusillanimous : but surely christ will raise such a discerning spirit in his church , that by evidence and conviction of reason , not by force or external power , such mock-prophets and false messiasses as these will be discountenanced and hissed off of the stage ; nor will there be a man that knows himselfe to be a christian that will receive them . , we have i think by a sufficient induction discovered the condition and causes of this mysterious mockery of enthusiastical love in the highest workings of it , and shown how it is but in effect a natural complexion , as very often religious zeal in general is discovered to be : as is also observable from the tumultuous anabaptists in germany : for amongst other things that they contended for , this was not the least , to wit , a freedome to have many wives : so that it should seem that for the most part this religious heat in men , as it arises meerly from nature , is like aurum fulminans , which though it flie upward somewhat , the greatest force when it is fired is found to go downward . this made that religious sect of the beguardi conceit that it was a sin to kiss a woman , but none at all to lie with her . the same furnisht carpocrates and apelles , `two busie sectaries in their time , the one with his marcellina , the other with his philumena to spend their lust upon . . but enough of this . neerest to this enthusiastical affection of love is that of ioy and triumph of spirit , that enthusiasts are several times actuated withall to their own great admiration . but we have already intimated the neer affinity betwixt melancholy and wine , which cheers the heart of god and man , as is said in the parable . and assuredly melancholy that lies at first smoaring in the heart and blood , when heat has overcome it ( it consisting of such solid particles , which then are put upon motion and agitation ) is more strong and vigorous then any thing else that moves in the blood and spirits , and comes very neer to the nature of the highest cordialls that are . which aristotle also witnesses , asserting that melancholy while it is cold , causes sadnesse and despondency of minde , but once heated , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , extasies and raptures with triumphant joy and singing . . there are three delusions yet behinde which because they come into my memory i will not omit to speak of , viz. mystical interpretations of scripture , quakings , and visions , all which are easily resolved into effects of melancholy . for as for the first we have already shown that melancholy as well as wine , makes a man rhetoricall or poetical ; and that genius how fancieful it is , and full of allusions and metaphors and fine resemblances , every one knows . and what greater matter is there in applying moral and spiritual meanings to the history of the bible , then to the history of nature ? and there is no rhetorician nor poet but does that perpetually . or how much easier is it to make a story to set out a moral meaning , then to apply a moral sense to such stories as are already a foot ? and for the former aesop was old excellent at it without any suspicion of inspiration , and the later sir francis bacon has admirably wel performed in his sapientia veterum , without any such peculiar or extraordinary illapses of a divine spirit into him , a business , i dare say , he never dreamt of , and any man that understands him will willingly be his compurgatour . . and for quaking , which deluded soules take to be an infallible sign they are in actuated by the spirit of god ; that it may be onely an effect of their melancholy is apparent : for none have so high passions as melancholists ; and that fear , love or veneration in the height will cause great trembling , cannot be denied . and to these passions none are any thing nigh so obnoxious as those of the melancholy complexion , because of the deepness of their resentments and apprehensions . that fear causes trembling there is nothing more obvious , and it is as true of love , which the comoedian had judiciously noted in that passage where phaedria upon the sight of his thais , speaking to parmeno , totus tremo , say's he , horreóque post quam aspexi hanc . and for veneration , which consists in a maner of these two mixt together , it is a passion that melancholy men are soundly plunged in whether they will or no , when they are to make their addresses to any person of honour or worth , or to go about some solemn or weighty performance in publick , they wil quake & tremble like an aspinleaf ; some have bin struck silent , others have faln down to the ground . and that fancy in other cases wil work upon the spirits , and cause a tumultuous and disorderly comotion in them , or so suffocate the heart that motion will be in a manner quite extinct , and the party fall down dead , are things so familiarly known , that it is enough onely to mention them . wherefore it is no wonder the enthusiast fancying these natural paroxysms with which he is surprised , to be extraordinary visits of the deity , and illapses of the holy ghost into his soul ; which he cannot but then receive ; with the highest veneration imaginable ; it is no wonder , i say , that fear , and ioy , and love should make such a confusion in his spirits , as to put him into a fit of trembling and quaking . in which case the fervour of his spirits and heat of imagination may be wrought-up to that pitch that it may amount to a perfect epilepsie , as it often happens in that sect they call quakers , who undoubtedly are the most melancholy sect that ever was yet in the world . . now that melancholy disposes a man to apoplexies and epilepsies is acknowledged both by philosophers and physicians . for what is narcotical and deads the motion of the spirits , if it be highly such , proves also apoplectical . besides grosse vapours stopping the arteriae carotides and plexus coroides , and so hindring the recourse and supply of spirits , may doe the same . some would illustrate the matter from the fumes of charcoale ; that has often made men fall down dead . but take any or all of these , melancholy is as like to afford such noxious vapours as any other temper whatsoever . and that an epilepsie may arise from such like causes , these two diseases being so neer a kin , as galen writes , is very reasonable ; and that the morbifick matter is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as his master pelops expresses it , it is evident from the suddain and easy discussion of the fit . . but in both these there being a ligation of the outward senses , what ever is then represented to the mind is of the nature of a dream . but these fits being not so ordinary as our naturall sleep , these dreams the praecipitant and unskilfull are forward to conceit to be representations extraordinary and supernatural , which they call revelations or visions , of which there can be no certainty at all no more then of a dream . . the mention of dreams puts me in mind of another melancholy symptome , which physitians call extasie , which is nothing else but somnus praeter naturam profundus , the causes whereof are none other then those of natural sleep , but more intense and excessive ; the effect is the deliration of the party after he awakes ; for he takes his dreams for true histories and real transactions . the reason whereof , i conceive , is the extraordinary clearness and fulness of the representations in his sleep , arising from a more perfect privation of all communion with this outward world , and so there being no interfareings or cross-strokes of motion from his body so deeply overwhelmed and bedeaded with sleep , what the imagination then puts forth of her self , is as clear as broad day , and the perception of the soul is at least as strong and vigorous as it is at any time in beholding things awake , and therefore memory as thoroughly sealed therewith , as from the sense of any external object . the vigour and clearness of these visions differs from those in ordinary sleep , as much as the liveliness of the images let in artificially into a dark room accurately darkned from those in one carelesly made dark , some chinks or crevises letting in light , where they should not . but strength of perception is no sure ground of truth : and such visions as these let them be never so clear , yet they are still in the nature of dreams . and he that regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow , or followeth after the wind , as syracides speaks . . whether it be in any mans power to fall into these epilepsies , apoplexies , or extasies when he pleases , is neither an useless nor a desperate question : for we may find a probable solution from what has been already intimated ; for the enthusiast in one of his melancholy intoxications ( which he may accelerate by solemn silence and intense and earnest meditation ) finding himself therein so much beyond himselfe , conceits it a sensible presence of god , and a supernatural manifestation of the divinity , which must needs raise that passion of veneration , and most powerful devotion , which consists of love , fear , and joy , which single passions have been able to kill men or cast them into a trance , how can they then ( if they be well followed by imagination and desire in the enthusiast of a neerer union with this inward light ) fail to cast him into tremblings , convulsions , apoplexies , extasies , and what not ; melancholy being so easily changeable into these symtomes ? and it is very probable that this may be the condition of some of those they call quakers . but for st. austins african presbyter ( who was named restitutus ) who by a lamenting voice or mournful tone would be cast into such an extasie , he is found alone in that , and is hardly imitable , it arising from some proper & peculiar constitution of his own . that cardan and facius his father could cast themselves when they would into an extasie , i can as easily believe as that the laplanders could , and doe in my own judgment refer them both to one cause , which sennertus notes that cardan somewhere does intimate concerning his father , that he had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which i conceive also to be the case of the worser sort of quakers . but this kind of enthusiasme i doe not so much aim at as that which is natural . as for those visions that enthusiasts see wakeing , we have already referred their causes to that strength of imagination in a melancholy spirit . . and for that fervour of minde whereby they are carried out so confidently to foretell things to come , that there is nothing supernatural in it may be evidenced in that either some probable grounds , that ordinary prudence may discover , might move them to think this or that , the vehemency of their own melancholy adding that confidence to their presage as if god himself had set it upon his spirit ; or else in that they most frequently presage false , and therefore when they foretell true , it is justly imputed to chance . as a man that dreams a nights , it is a hard case if in so many years dreams he light not on some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as they are called , such as are plainly and directly true , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as they that shoot oft may some times hit the mark , ( as plutarch speaks ) but t is more by luck then good skil . . and yet notwithstanding humbly conceive that there may be such a presage in the spirit of a man that is to act in things of very high concernment to himselfe or to the publick , as may be a sure guide to him , especially if he continue sincerely devout and pious . for it is not at all improbable but such as act in very publick affairs in which providence has a more special hand , that these agents driving on her design may have a more special assistance and animation from her . of which , as others have not the sense , so neither can they imagine the manner of it . and this is the case , i thinke , wherein that of syracides may be verified , that a mans own heart will tell him more then seven watchmen on an high tower. but this is enthusiasme in the better sense , and therefore not so proper for our discourse who speak not of that which is true , but of that which is a mistake ; the causes whereof we having so fully laid down , we will now consider the kindes of it , bur briefly and onely so far forth as suits with our present purpose and design . wherefore setting aside all accuracie , we shall content our selves to distribute it from the condition of the persons in which it resides , into political and philosophical . for enthusiasme most-what works according to the natural genius of the party it doth surprise . . wherefore those whose temper carries them most to political affaires , who love rule and honour and have a strong sense of civil rights , melancholy heating them makes them sometimes fancy themselves great princes ( at least by divine assignment ) & deliverers of the people sent from god , such as were in likelyhood the false messiasses that deceived the people of the jews , as theudas and that aegyptian impostor , also barcocab , ionathas , dositheus and several others , who it's likely , it being the common fame amongst the jews that the messias the deliverer was about that time to come , according to the heat and forwardness of their own melancholy , conceited themselves to be him . which is the easier to believe , there being several instances in history of those that have fancyed themselves monarchs , popes , and emperours , when as yet they have been but foot-boys , grooms , and serving-men . whether there might not be as much of villany as melancholy in some of these false messiasses , if it be suspected , it will be hard to take off the suspicion . but there was a german in whom we may more safely instance not many yeers ago here in england , that stiled himselfe a warrior of god , david the second , who in deep compassion of the sufferings of his countrey would very fain have got some few forces here in england to carry over ; with which he was confident he could have silenced the enemy and setled all germany in peace . the man seemed to be a very religious man , and a great hater of tyranny and oppression , and very well in his wits to other things , onely he was troubled with this infirmity that he fancyed himfelfe that david the prophets foretell of , who should be that peaceable prince and great deliverer of the jews . he published a short writing of his which i had the opportunity of seeing , which was full of zeal and scripture-eloquence : i saw his person in london , if he that showed me him was not mistaken . he was a tal proper man , of a good age , but of a very pale wasted melancholy countenance . another also of later yeers i had the hap to meet withall , whose discourse was not onely rational but pious , and he seemed to have his wits very well about him , nor could i discover the least intimation to the contrary , onely he had this flaw that he conceited that he was by god appointed to be that fifth monarch of which there is so much noise in this age , which imagination had so possessed him , that he would sometime have his servant to serve him all in plate , and upon the knee , as a very learned and religious friend of mine told me afterward . . wherefore i do not look upon this man as so sober as the former , nor on either as comparable to that david that was born at delph , lived first in lower germany with those of his sect , after came to basil , anno . and there dyed , . and was digged up again , . wherein his prophecy of himselfe was in an ill-favoured manner fulfilled , who to uphold the fluctuating minds of his followers , whom he would have perswaded that he was immortall , told them at his death , that he should rise again within three yeares , presaging that of himself that he denied would ever come to passe in any one else . this david george a man of very low parentage , was yet in the judgement of his very enemies , one of notable naturall parts , a comely person to look upon , and of a gracefull presence . he was also square of body , yellow-bearded , gray ey'd bright and shining , grave and sedate in speech ; in a word , all his motions , gestures and demeanours were so decent and becoming , as if he had been wholly composed to honesty and godlinesse . he lived very splendidly and magnificently in his house , and yet without the least stir or disorder . he was a religious frequenter of the church , a liberall reliever of the poor , a comfortable visiter of the sick , obedient to the magistrate , kind and affable to all persons , discreet in all things , very cunning in some , as in his closenesse and reservednesse in his doctrine to those of basil , where he liv'd , to whom he communicated not one iota of it , but yet he sedulously dispersed it in the further parts of germany both by books and letters , the main heads whereof you shall hear as follows . . that the doctrine hitherto delivered by moses , the prophets , christ himself , and his apostles , is maimed and imperfect , published onely to keep men in a childish obedience for a time , till the fulnesse and perfection of david george his doctrine should be communicated to the world , which is the onely doctrine that can make man-kind happy , and replenish them with the knowledge of god. . that david george is the true christ and messias , the dear son of god , born not of the flesh but of the holy ghost and spirit of christ , which god had reserved in a secret place , his body being reduced to nothing , and has infused it wholly into the soul of david george . . that this david the messias is to restore the house of israel , and reerect the tabernacle of god , not by the crosse , afflictions and death , as the other messias ; but by that sweetnesse and love and grace that is given to him of his father . . that the power of remission of sins is given to this david george , and that it is he that is now come to judge the world with the last judgement . . that the holy scriptures , the sayings and testimonies of the prophets , of christ and of his apostles do all point , if rightly understood in the true mystery of them , to the glorious coming of david george , who is greater then christ himself , as being born of the spirit and not of the flesh . . that all sin and blasphemy against the father or the sonne may be remitted or pardoned , but the sin against the holy ghost , that is , against david george , is never to be remitted . . that the resurrection of christ out of the grave , and the resurrection of the dead is a meer mysterie or allegorie . . that angels and devils are onely good men and evil men , or their virtues and vices . . that matrimony is free , no obligation , and that no man thereby is confined to one woman ; but that procreation of children shall be promiscuous or in common to all those that are born again or regenerated by the spirit of david george . these things are recorded in the life and doctrine of david george , published by the rector and university of basil . . as for his own writings not a little admired by some , his moving eloquence , his powerfull animations to the great duties of godlinesse , i have already laid down such naturall principles as they may be easily resolved into , without any recourse to any supernatura●l spirit . for a man illiterate , as he was , but of good parts , by constant reading of the bible will naturally contract a more winning and commanding rhetorick then those that are learned , the intermixture of tongues and of artificiall phrases debasing their style , and making it sound more after the manner of men , though ordinarily there may be more of god in it then in that of the enthusiast . . if he may with some zeal and commotion of mind recommend to hi● reader , patience , peaceablenesse , meeknesse , brotherly kindnesse , equity , discretion , prudence , self-deniall , mortification , and the like , there is nothing in all this but what his own sanguine temper may suggest without any inspiration from god. for there is no christian virtue to be named which concerns manners , but complexion will afford a spurious imita●ion of it : and therefore they answering in so near similitude one to another , it will be an easie thing to colour over those meer mock-graces with scripture phrases ; so that he that has but these complexionall virtues and a scripturall style , amongst the lesse skilfull will look like an apostle or prophet , but amongst the rude multitude he may boast himself to be what he will without suspicion or contradiction . the most unlikely of all these imitations is self-deni●ll , which seems abhorrent from a sanguine temper ; but enthusiasme is not without a mixture of melancholy● and we are speaking now of e●thusiastick sanguine , in which the fiercer passions will also lodge , and therefore this self-denial & mortification may be nothing else but the sanguines cenflict and victory over the most harsh and fierce melancholy . and that it is the reign of sanguine , not the rule of the spirit , is discoverable both from the complexion of the head of this sect , as also from the general disposition of his followers , and that tender love they bear to their own dear carkases , who would not , i dare say , suffer the least aching of their little fingers by way of external martyrdome for any religion ; and therefore their prudence and discretion consists most in juglings , aequivocat●ons , and slight tergiversations , peaceable compliances with an●thing rather then to suffer in body or goods : which is the natural dictate of sanguine triumphant ; which dominion yet seems far better then the tyranny of choler and melancholy , whose pragmatical ferocity can neither prove good to it selfe nor just to others ; bei●g prone to impose , and as forward to avenge the refusal of every frivolous and impertinent foppery or abhorred falsitie with inhumane and cruel persecutions . . now that sanguine was the complexion of david george , the foregoing description of his person will probably intimate to any physiognomer . for it is very hard to finde an healthy body very comely and beautiful , but the same proves more then ordinarily venereous and lustful . we might instance in several both men and women . helena , lais , faustina , alcibiades , ismael sophi of persia , and demetrius , who is said to have been of an admirable countenance , and majestick graceful presence , mingled with gravity and benignity , also exceeding full of clemency , justice , piety and liberality but so libid●nous and volup●uous , that no king was ever to be compared to him . . but two surer signes are yet behind of this prophets natural constitution , which are , his denying of a life to come and existence of angels or spirits , and his allowing of plurality or community of wives . the former whereof i must confesse i cannot so much impute to any thing as to a more luscious and fulsome mixture of sanguine in his enthusiastick complexion . for nothing will so slake a mans desires , or dead his belief of that more spiritual and immaterial state and condition , as this sweet glut of blood that so thickens and clouds the spirits , that the mind cannot imagine or presage any thing beyond the present concernment of this mortal body . and of the latter i think it is acknowledged by all , that no such genuine cause can be assigned as this same complexion of sanguine that disposes men so strongly to the love of women . wherefore this enthusiast being overborne by the power of his own constitution into the misbeliefe of those great promises of eternal life , set forth in the scripture , took the holy writers thereof either to be mistaken , or onely to have intended allegories by what they writ ; and that fervour that he found in himself to love , and peace , and equity and the like , boyling so high as to the driving of him into a perswasion that he was inspired , he conceited his misbelief of those precious promises of immortality and glory in the heavens , a special piece of illumination also ; and the resurrection of the dead to be nothing else but to be raised into a like ardency towards such things with himselfe , and to a like misbelief with him of that celestial crown the apostle speaks of . and therefore he not being able to raise his minde by faith to heaven , he brought heaven to earth in his vain imagination : which was lesse pains then mahomet took , who was fain to walk to the mountain , when he saw the mountain would not move to him . . this is a brief account of david george , whose error the father of our modern nicolaitans did drink in so carefully , as if he were loath one drop should spill beside . never was that in solomon so plainly verified in any as in these two , as face answers to face , so the heart of man to man. wherefore concerning them both i dare pronounce , that though they equalized themselves to christ , and made themselves judges of the quick and the dead , yet they were more devoid of true judgment in matters of religion then the meanest of sincere christians ; and though they have so deified , or ( as they phrase it ) begodded themselves all over , i might say bedaubed themselve● with the faigned and counterfeit colours or paint of high swelling words of vanity to amaze the vulgar , yet they were in truth meer men , of shallow mindes and liquorsome bodies , cleaving to the pleasures of the flesh , and so deeply relishing the sweet of this present life , that all hope or desire of that better was quite extinct in them ; and therefore their setled and radicate ignorance made them so enthusiastically confident in their own errour . . but that my zeal to the truth may not turn to the injury of any , i cannot pass by this advertisement ; that this poyson we speak of is so subtilly conveyed , and silently supposed in the reading these writings , that a good man and a true christian may be easily carried away into an approbation of them without any infection by them ( as not minding what they imply or drive at ) or yet any defection from the main principles of christianity ; and indeed by how much the heat seems greater toward the highest perfection of holiness , the reader is made the more secure of the writers soundness in the main essentials of religion , though it be far otherwise at the bottome . for madness and melancholy drive high , and we have prov'd by divers instances that a man may be most ridiculously and absurdly wilde in some one thing , and yet sound and discreet in the rest , as gazeus handsomely sets it out in a story of an old man that conceited himselfe god the father . and acosta verifies it in a true history of his own knowledge concerning a certain learned and venerable professor of divinity in the k●●gdome of peru , whom he doth affirm to have been as per●ectly in his senses , as to soundness of brain , as himself was at that time when he wrote the narration ; which being something long ● shall transcribe only what precisely makes to my purpose . this peruvia● doctor would sadly and soberly affirme that he should be a king , yea and a pope too , the apostolical sea being translated to those parts , as also that holinesse was granted unto him above all angels and heavenly hosts , and above all apostles , yea , that god made profer unto him of hypostatical union , but that he refused ●o accept of it . moreover that he was appointed to be redeemer of the world as to matter of efficacie , which christ , he said , had been no further then to sufficiency onely . that all ecclesiastical estate was to be abroga●ed , and that he would make new laws , plain and easy , by which the restraint of clergy-men from marriage should be taken a way , and multitude of wives allowed , and all necessi●y of confession avoided . which things he did maintain before the judges of the inquisition with that earnestness and confidence , with so many and so large citations out of the prophets , apocalyps , psalmes , and other books , with such unexpected applications , and allegorical interpretations of them , that the auditotory knew not whether they should laugh more at his fancy , or admire his memory . but himselfe was so well a●sured of the matter , that nothing but death could quit him of the delirium . for he dyed a martyr to this piece of madness of his , to the eternal infamy of his judges , who were either so unwise as not to know that melancholy may make a man delirous as to some one particular thing , though his intellectuals be sound in others , or else so cruel and barbarous as to murder a poor distracted man. the story you may read more at large in a late treatise concerning enthusiasme ; what i have transplanted hither , is further to evidence the truth of what physicians say of melancholy , that it may onely befool the understanding in some one point , and leave it sound in the rest ; as also to confirme what i did above observe , that enthusiasts for the most part are intoxicated with vapours from the lowest region of their body , as the pythiae of old are conceived to have been inspired through the power of certain exhalations breathed from those caverns they had their recesse in . for what means this bold purpose of contriving a new law for plurality of wives amongst christians , but that his judgment was over-clouded by some venereous fumes and vapours ? . that other kinde of enthusiasme i propounded was philosophical , because found in such as are of a more speculative and philosophical complexion ; and melancholy here making them prone to religion and devotion , as well as to the curious contemplation of things , these natural motions and affections towards god may drive them to a beliefe that he has a more then ordinary affection towards them , and that they have so special an assistance and guidance from him , nay such a mysterious , but intimate and real union w●th him , that every fine thought or fancy that steals into their mind , they may look upon as a pledge of the divine savor , and a si●gular illumination from god ; imitating in this the madness of elionora meliorina a gentlewoman of mantua , who being fully perswaded she was married to a king , would kneel down and talk with him , as if he had been there present with his retinue ; and if she had by chance found a piece of glasse in a muck-hill , light upon an oyster shell , piece of tin or any such like thing that would glister in the sun-shine , she would say it was a jewel sent from her lord and husband , and upon this account fild her cabinet full of such trash . in like manner those inspired melancholists stuff their heads and writings with every flaring fancy that melancholy suggests to them , as if it were a precious truth bestowed upon them by the holy spirit , and with a devotional reverence they entertain the unexpected paroxysmes of their own natural distemper , as if it were the power and presence of god himself in their souls . . this disease many of your chymists and several theosophists , in my judgement , seem very obnoxious to , who dictate their own conceits and fancies so magisterially and imperiously as if they were indeed authentick messengers from god almighty . but that they are but counterfeits , that is , enthusiasts , no infallible illuminated men , the gross fopperies they let drop in their writings will sufficiently demonstrate to all that are not smitten in some measure with the like lunacy with themselves . i shall instance in some few things concealing the names of the authors , because they are so sacred to some . . listen therefore attentively , for i shall relate very great mysteries . the vertues of the planets doe not ascend , but descend . experience teaches as much , viz. that of venus or copper is not made mars or iron , but of mars is made venus , as being an inferior sphere . so also iupiter or tinne is easily changed into mercury or quick-silver , because iupiter is the second from the firmament , and mercury the second from the earth . saturn is the first from the heaven , and luna the first from the earth . sol mixeth it self with all , but is never bettered by his inferiours . now know that there is a great agreement betwixt saturn or lead , and luna or silver , iupiter and mercury , mars and venus , because in the midst of these sol is placed . what can it be but the heaving of the hypochondria that lifts up the mind to such high comparisons from a supposition so false and foolish ? but i have observed generally of chymists and theosophists , as of severall other men more palpably mad , that their thoughts are carryed much to astrology , it being a fancyfull study built upon very sleight grounds , and indeed i do not question , but a relique of the ancient superstition and idolatry amongst the rude heathens , which either their own melancholy , or something worse , instructed them in . there are other pretty conceits in these writers concerning those heavenly bodies , as , that the starres and planets , the moon not excepted , are of the same quality with precious stones that glister here on the earth , and that though they act nothing , yet they are of that nature as that the wandring spirits of the air see in them as in a looking-glasse things to come , and thereby are inabled to prophecy . that the starres are made of the sun , and yet that the sun enlightens them . that our eyes have their originall from the starres , and that that is the reason why we can see the starres . that our eyes work or act upon all they see , as well as what they see acts on them . that also is a very speciall mysterie for an inspired man to utter ; that there is onely evening and morning under the sun. that the starres kindle heat in this world every where for generation , and that the difference of starres makes the difference of creatures . that were the heat of the sun taken away , he were one light with god. that all is gods self . that a mans self is god , if he live holily . that god is nothing but an hearty loving , friendly seeing , good smelling , well t●sting , kindly feeling , amorous kissing , &c. nor the spirit , say i , that inspires this mystery any thing but melancholy and sanguine . that god the father is of himself a dale of darknesse , were it not for the light of his sonne . that god could not quell lucifers rebellion , because the battle was not betwixt god and a beast , or god and a man but betwixt god and god , lucifer being so great a share of his own essence . that nature is the body of god , nay god the father , who is also the world , and whatsoever is any way sensible or perceptible . that the starre-powers are nature , and the starre-circle the mother of all things , from which all is subsists and moves . that the waters of this world are mad , which makes them rave and run up and down so as they do in the channels of the earth . that the blew orb is the waters above the firmament . that there be two kinds of fires , the one cold and the other hot , and that death is a cold fire . that adam was an hermaphrodite . that the fire would not burn , nor there have been any darknesse , but for adams fall . that it is a very suspicable matter that saturn before the fall was where mercury , and mercury where saturn is . that there are three souls in a man , animall , angelicall , and divine ; and that after death the animal soul is in the grave , the angelicall in abrahams bosome , and the divine soul in paradise . that god has eyes , eares , nose , and other corporeall parts . that every thing has sense , imagination , and a fiduciall knowledge of god in it , metals , meteors and plants not excepted . that this earth at last shall be calcined into crystall . that at the center of the earth is the fire of hell , which is caused and kindled by the primum mobile and influences of the starres . that the artick pole draws waters by the axeltree , which after they are entered in , break forth again by the axeltree of the antartick . that the moon as well as the starres are made of a lesse pure kind of fire mixed with air . that the pure blood in man answers to the element of fire in the great world , his heart to the earth , his mouth to the artick pole , and the opposite orifice to the antartick pole . that the proper seat of the mind or understanding is in the mouth of the stomack or about the splene . that earthquakes and thunders are not from naturall causes , but made by angels or devils . that there were no rain-bowes before noahs flood . that the moon is of a conglaciated substance , having a cold light of her own , whereby the light of the sun which she receives and casts on us becomes so cool . . hitherto our collections have been promiscuous , what follows is out of paracelsus onely ; as for example : that the variety of the altitudes of the sun do's not cause summer and winter , because the sun has the same heat , be he higher or lower , but that there be aestivall and hybernall starres that are the grand causes of these seasons . that the absence of the sun is not the cause of night , for as much as his light is so great that it may illuminate the earth all over at once as clear as broad day , but that night is brought on by the influence of dark starres that raye out darknesse and obscurity upon the earth , as the sun does light . that the gnomi , nymphae , lemures and penates , spirits endued with understanding as much or more then men , are yet wholly mortall , not having so much as an immortall soul in them . that the starres are as it were the phials , or cucurbits , in which the meteoricall sal. sulphure , and mercury are contained , and that the windes which are made of these , by the aethereall vulcanes , are blown forth out of these emunctories , as when a man blows or breaths out of his mouth . that the starres are as it were the pots in which the archeus or heavenly vulcan prepares pluvious matter , which exhaled from thence first appears in the form of clouds , after condenses to rain . that hail and snow are also the fruits of the starres , proceeding from them as flowers and blossomes from hearbs or trees . that thunder is caused by the penates , who taking aethereall sulphure , sal-nitre and mercury , and putting them into their al●del , that is their star , after a sufficient preparation there , the starre then powres them forth into the aire , and so they become the matter of thunder , whose sound is so great and terrible , because it is re-echoed from the arched roof of heaven , as when a gun is let off under an hollow vault . that the lightnings without thunder are as it were the deciduous flowers of the aestivall starres . that the starres eat and are nourished , and therefore must ease themselves , and that those falling starres , as some call them , which are found on the earth in the form of a trembling gelly are their excrement . that those meteors called dracones volantes have a brutish understanding and sense in them . that the parelii and paraselenae are made by the penates as by artificers , that counterfeit the form and shape of a silver pot in adulterate metall . that all humane and naturall understanding is in the starres , and conveyed from thence to man , and that he must suck it from thence to feed his soul , as he takes in meat to nourish his body . that the reason of divination is this , that a man has a sydereall body besides this terrestriall which is joyned with the starres ; and so when this sydereall body is more free from the elements , as in sleep , this body and the starres confabulating together , the mind is informed of things to come . that the starres are struck with a terrour or horrour of the approach of any mans death , whence it is that no man dies without some sign or notice from them , as the dances of dead men , some noise in the house or the like . that as by a divine faith the dead are raised and mountains cast into the midst of the sea , so by the faith of nature the influence of the starres , who know all the secrets of nature , is to be commanded , and thereby a man may know naturally what is to come . that giants , nymphs , gnomi and pygmies were the conceptions and births of the imaginative power of the influence of the starres upon matter prepared by them , and that they had no souls , as it is most likely the inhabitants of the more remote parts of the world have none , as not being the off-spring of adam . that a fowler by the help of his starre need not go after birds , for they will flie after him , and so fishes swimme to the fisherman , and wilde beasts follow the hunter upon the same account of his starres . that the separation of the three parts of the world , europe , asia , africa , is a certain representation of the three chymicall principles , sal , salphure and mercury , of which three the whole world was made . that there is an artificiall way of making an homunculus , and that the fairies of the woods , nymphs and giants themselves had some such originall , and that these homunculi thus made will know all manner of secrets and mysteries of art , themselves receiving their lives , bodies , flesh , bone , and blood from an artificiall principle . . these are the rampant and delirous fancies of that great boaster of europe paracelsus , whose unbridled imagination and bold and confident obtrusion of his uncouth and supine inventions upon the world has , i dare say , given occasion to the wildest philosophicall enthusiasmes that ever was broached by any either christian or heathen . that last conceit of his some have endevoured to allegorise , as the persians do the alcoran , ashamed of the grosse sense of it , but in my apprehension so frigidly and unsutably , that it would confirm a man the more , that the letter is the intended truth ; and if one compare it with what he writes of nymphs , giants , and fairies in his scientia astronomica , he will make no further doubt of it . . there is some affectation of religion , i confesse , in his writings and farre more in his followers , who conceive themselves taught of god , when i plainly discern , their brains are mee●ly heated and infected by this strong spirit of phantastrie that breaths in paracelsus his books . i know it is no part of prudence to speak slightly of those that others admire , but that prudence is but craft that commands an unfaithfull silence . and i know not how any honest man can discharge his conscience in prudentially conniving at such falsities as he sees insnare the minds of men , when they do not onely abuse their intellectualls by foppish and ridiculous conceptions , but insinuate such dangerous and mischievous opinions as supplant and destroy the very fundamentalls of christian religion . for i appeal to any man , what is nearer to ancient paganisme then what this bold writer has uttered concerning the starres ? or what sanctuary so safe for the atheist that derides and eludes all religion , then such a miraculous influence of the heavens as paracelsus describes in his scientia astronomica ? wherefore i should be very much amazed at the madnesse and inconsistency of him and his followers , who have ever and anon a fling against heathen philosophy , when themselves take into their writings the very dregs of it , viz. the grosse principles of the ancient pagan superstition and idolatry , did i not remember that they are enthusiasts and follow not the guidance of reason , but the strength of fancy . iupiter est quodcunque vides , &c. this taken in the coursest sense , i make no question but it was the grand principle from whence did flow so many varieties and impurities of the pagan superstition , they fancying they met god in every object of their senses ; and our exorbitant enthusiasts professe , that every thing is god in love or wrath : which , if i understand any thing , is no better then atheisme . for it implies that god is nothing else but the vniversall matter of the world , dressed up in severall shapes and forms , in sundry properties and qualities ; some gratefull , some ungratefull ; some holy , some profane ; some wise , some senselesse ; some weak , some strong , and the like . but to slice god into so many parts is to wound him and kill him , and to make no god at all . . again , how does paracelsus justifie the heathens worshipping the starres , he making them such knowing , powerfull , and compassionate spectatours of humane affairs ! and why might they not pray to them as anne bodenham the witch did to the planet iupiter for the curing diseases , if they have so much power and knowledge as to generate men here below , and conferre gifts upon them ? for it would be no more then asking a mans father or godfather blessing . for if it be admitted that any one nation is begot by the starres , the atheist will assuredly assume that they are all so . moreover how shall we repair the losse ( and damage done to the authority of our blessed saviour his miracles ? whereby not onely christianitie , but the first fundamentalls of all true religion are eminently established , viz. the discovery of a speciall and particular providence of god ; and an hope of a life to come . for if the starres can make such living creatures of prepared matter that have sense and understanding , which yet have no immortal souls , but wholy return into dead mater again , why is it not so with men as well as them ? and if they can contribute the power of such wonder-working wisdome as was in moses and in christ , or what is so very nigh to it , what footsteps does there remain of proof that there is any god or spirits ? for all is thus resolvable into the power of the stars . a thing that that zealous and industrious atheist caesar vaninus triumphs in exceedingly in his amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae : where he cites several astrological passages out of cardan under pretence to refute them , in which he fetches the original of those three eminent law-givers , moses , christ , and mahomet , from the influence of the stars . the law of moses is from saturn , saies cardan , that of christ from iupiter and mercury , that of mahomet from sol and mars : the law of the idolaters from the moon and mars . and in another place cardan imputes that sweetness , and meeknesse , and wisdome , and eloquence that was in our saviour , whereby he was able to dispute in the temple at twelve yeers of age , to the influence of iupiter . pomponatius also acknowledges the wisdome and miracles of christ , but refers all to the starrs , a man as far laps't into atheisme , i conceive , as vaninus himselfe ; so that these wilde fancies of the enthusiasts are in truth the chiefe props or shelters that atheists uphold or defend themselves by . but how fancieful and confounded an account there is of astrology , let any man that has patience as well as sobriety of reason , judge . . i do not speak these things as if i thought either paracelsus or his followers thus atheistical , but to shew their phantastrie and enthusiasme , they so hotly pretending to matters of christianity and religion , and yet handling them so grosly and indiscreetly , blurting out any garish foolery that comes into their mind , though it be quite contrary to the analogie of faith , nor has any shew of ground in solid reason , onely to make themselves to be stared upon and wondred at by the world . but the event of it is , that as some admire them , so others execrate them , as men of an impious and diabolical spirit . which i confesse i think too harsh a censure , well meaning men being lyable to melancholy and lunacies as well as to agues and burning feavers . yet a man should be so far off from thinking the better of any discovery of truth by an enthusiastick spirit , that he should rather for that very cause suspect it , because that temper that makes men enthusiastical is the greatest enemy to reason , it being more thick and muddy , and therefore once heated intoxicates them like wine in the must , and is more likely to fill their brains full of odde fancies then with any true notions of philosophy . but men of a purer blood , and finer spirits , are not so obnoxious to this distemper : for this is the most natural seat of sublimer reason ; when as that more mechanical kind of genius that loves to be tumbling of and trying tricks with the matter ( which they call making experiments ) when desire of knowledge has so heated it that it takes upon it to become architectonical and flie above its sphere , it commits the wildest hallucinations imaginable , that material or corporeal fancie egregiously fumbling in more subtile and spiritual speculations . this is that that commonly makes the chymist so pitiful a philosopher , who from the narrow inspection of some few toys in his own art , conceives himself able to give a reason of all things in divinity and nature ; as ridiculous a project , in my judgment , as that of his that finding a piece of a broken oar on the sand , busied his brains above all measure to contrive it into an entire ship . . what i have hitherto spoken , i would have so understood as coming from one that neither contemns the well-meaning of the theosophist , or disallows of the industry of the chymist , but i shall ever excuse my selfe from giving any credit to either , any further then some lusty miracle , transcendent medicine , or solid reason shall extort from me . . we have spoken of the kindes of enthusiasme so far as we held it serviceable for our design , we shall now touch upon the cure of this disease . where waving all pretense to the knowledge of physick or acquaintance with the apothecaries shop , we shall set down onely such things as fall under a moral or theological consideration , giving onely instructions for the guidance of a mans life in reference to this grand errour of enthusiasme : which a sober man cannot well determine whether it be more ridiculous , or deplorable and mischievous . now the most soveraign medicine that i know against it , is this diatrion or composition of three excellent ingredients , to wit , temperance , humility , and reason , which as i doe not despair but that it may recover those that are somewhat farre gone in this enthusiastick distemper , so i am confident , that it will not fail to prevent it in them that are not as yet considerably smitten . . by temperance i understand a measurable abstinence from all hot or heightning meats or drinks , as also from all venereous pleasures , and tactual delights of the body , from all softnesse and effeminacy , a constant and peremptory adhesion to the perfectest degree of chastity in the single life , and of continency in wedlock , that can be attain'd to . for it is plain in sundry examples of enthusiasme above named , that the more hidden and lurking fumes of lust had tainted the fancies of those pretenders to prophecy and inspiration . we will adde also to these , moderate exercise of body , and seasonable taking of the fresh aire , a due and discreet use of devotion , whereby the blood is ventilated and purged from dark oppressing vapors ; which a temperate dyet , if not fasting , must also accompany ; or else the more hot and zealous our addresses are , the more likely they are to bring mischief upon our own heads , they raising the feculency of our intemperance into those more precious parts of the body the brains , and animal spirits , and so intoxicating the mind with fury and wildnesse . . by humility i understand an entire submission to the will of god in all things , a deadness to all self-excellency and preheminency before others , a perfect privation of all desire of singularity or attracting of the eyes of men upon a mans own person : as little to relish a mans own praise or glory in the world , as if he had never been born into it ; but to be wholly contented with this one thing , that his will is a subduing to the will of god , and that with thankfulnesse and reverence he doth receive what ever divine providence brings upon him ; be it sweet or sour , with the hair or against it , it is all one to him , for what he cannot avoid it is the gift of god to the world in order to a greater good . but here i must confesse , that he that is thus affected , as he seeks no knowledge to please himselfe , so he cannot avoid being the most knowing man that is . for he is surrounded with the beams of divine wisdome as the low depressed earth with the raies of the stars his deeply and profoundly humbled soul being as it were the center of all heavenly illuminations , as this little globe of the earth is of those celestial influences . i professe i stand amazed while i consider the ineffable advantages of a mind thus submitted to the divine will , how calm , how comprehensive , how quick and sensible she is , how free , how sagacious , of how tender a touch and judgment she is in all things . when as pride and strong desire ruffles the mind into uneven waves and boisterous fluctuations , that the aeteranl light of reason concerning either nature or life , cannot imprint its perfect and distinct image or character there ; nor can so subtile and delicate motions and impressions be sensible to the understanding disturbed and agitated in so violent a storm . that man therefore who has got this humble frame of spirit , which is of so mighty concernment for acquiring all manner of wisdome as well natural as divine , cannot possibly be so foolish as to be mistaken in that which is the genuine result of a contrary temper , and such is that of enthusiasme , that puffs up men into an opinion that they have a more then ordinary influence from god that acts upon their spirits , and that he designes them by special appointment to be new prophets● new law-givers , new davids , new messiasses , and what not ? when it is nothing but the working of the old man in them in a fanatical maner . . by reason i understand so setled and cautious a composure of mind , as will suspect every high flown and forward fancy that endevours to carry away the assent before deliberate examination ; she not enduring to be gulled by the vigour or garishnesse of the representation , nor at all to be born down by the weight or strength of it ; but patiently to trie it by the known faculties of the soul , which are either the common notions that all men in their wits agree upon , or the evidence of outward sense , or else a cleer and distinct deduction from these . what ever is not agreable to these three , is fancy , which testifies nothing of the truth or existence of any thing , and therefore ought not , nor cannot be assented to by any but mad men or fools . and those that talk so loud of that higher principle the spirit with exclusion of these , betray their own ignorance , and while they would by their wilde rhetorick disswade men from the use of their rational faculties under pretence of expectation of an higher and more glorious light , do as madly , in my mind , as if , a company of men travailing by night with links , torches and lanthorns , some furious orator amongst them should by his wonderful strains of eloquence so befool them into a misconceit of their present condition , comparing of it with the sweet and cheerful splendor of the day , that they should through impatience and indignation beat out their links , and torches and break a pieces their lanthorns against the ground , and so chuse rather to foot it in the dark with hazard of knocking their noses against the next tree they meet , and tumbling into the next ditch , then to continue the use of those convenient lights that they had in their sober temper prepared for the safety of their journey . but the enthusiasts mistake is not onely in leaving his present guide before he has a better , but in having a false notion of him he does expect . for assuredly that spirit of illumination , which resides in the soules of the faithful is a principle of the purest reason that is communicable to the humane nature . and what this spirit has , he has from christ ( as christ himselfe witnesseth ) who is the eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the all-comprehending wisdome and reason of god , wherein he sees through the natures and ideas of all things with all their respects of dependency and independency , congruity and incongruity , or what ever habitude they have one to another , with one continued glance at once . and what ever of intellectual light is communicated to us is derived from hence , and is in us particular reason , or reason in succession , or by peece-meal . nor is there any thing the holy spirit did ever suggest to any man but it was agreeable to , if not demonstrable from , what we call reason . and to be thus perswaded , how powerful a curb it will be upon the exorbitant impressions and motions of melancholy and enthusiasme , i leave it to any man to judge . . to these three notable and more generall helps , we might adde some particular considerations whereby we may keep off this enthusiastical pertinacity from our selves , or discover it when it has taken hold upon others . as for example ; if any man shall pretend to the discovery of a truth by inspiration that is of no good use or consequence to the church of god , it is to me little less then a demonstration , that he is fanatical . if he heaps up falshoods as well as truths , and pretends to be inspired in all , it is to me an evidence he is inspired in none of those my steries he offers to the world . . there are certain advantages also that enthusiasts have , which are to be taken notice of , whereby they have imposed upon many ; as , that they have spoken very raisedly and divinely , which most certainly has happened to sundry persons a little before they have grown stark mad ; and that they may hit of something extraordinary is no pledge of the truth of the rest . for this unquiet and tumultuous spirit of melancholy shaking their whole bodily frame , is like an earth-quake to one in a dungeon , which for a small moment makes the very walls gape and cleave , and so lets in light for a while at those chinks ; but all closes up again suddenly , and the prisoner is confined to his wonted darknesse ; this therefore was a chance in nature , not a gratious visit of the spirit of god. . hereunto you may also joyn the luck of prophecy , be it sleeping or waking ; for such things have happened to mad men and fools , and aristotle offers at a pretty reason that may reach both . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to which he also addes why extaticall men foresee future things , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all which intimates thus much , that an alienation of mind and rest from our own motions fits us for a reception of impressions from something else , and so by a quick sense and touch we may be advertised through a communication of motion from the spirit of the world what is done at a distance , or passe● which turning off again make the prediction false : for every thing that offers to be , does not come into actuall being . wherefore all these presages are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but may be onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they are the words of aristotle , but such as some skilful platonist will most easily explain . all that i aim at is this . that prophesie may arise from on this side of the pure and infallible deity , and it is our mistake that we think that what predictions fall out true , are certainly foreknown by the foreteller . for the present conspiracy of causes that shoot into the vacant mind may corrupt and alter , and be blown away like clouds , that at first seem to assure the husbandman of a following rain . . but there is yet a stronger allurement then prophecy to draw on belief to the enthusiast , which is a semblance of doing some miracle , as the curing some desperate disease ; as it happened very lately in this nation . for it is very credibly reported , and i think cannot be denied , that one by the stroaking of a mans arm that was dead and uselesse to him , recovered it to life and strength . when i heard of it , and read some few pages of that miraculous physicians writing , my judgement was that the cure was naturall , but that his blood and spirits were boyled to that height that it would hazard his brain , which proved true ; for he was stark mad not very long after . there may be very well a healing and sanative contagion as well as morbid and venemous . and the spirits of melancholy men being more massy , and ponderous , when they are so highly refined and actuated by a more then ordinary heat and vigour of the body , may prove a very powerfull elixir , nature having outdone the usuall pretenses of chymistrie in this case . . whatever credit the enthusiast may conciliate to himself from his moving eloquence , his mysterious style and unexpected notions , they are easily to be resolved into that principle of melancholy above named , the sense of which complexion is so deep and vigorous , that it cannot fail to inable the tongue to tell her story with a great deal of life and affection ; and the imagination is so extravagant that it is farre easier for her to ramble abroad and fetch in some odde skue conceit from a remote obscure corner , then to think of what is nearer and more ordinarily intelligible . but these things are so fully and plainly comprehended in those generall causes of enthusiasme we have already declared , besides what we have particularly touched upon before , that it will not be worth our labour to insist any longer upon them . when we have satisfied a scruple or two concerning what we have said of melancholy and enthusiasme , i think we shall have omitted nothing materially pertinent to this present speculation . . and the first is , how we can distinguish betwixt religion and melancholy , we having attributed so notable effects thereunto . the second is , whether we have not reviled and vilified all enthusiasme whatsoever , and invited men to a cold pharisaicall stupidity and acting , merely according to an outward letter without an inward testimony of life . the meaning of the first scruple must be restrain'd to such things as in their externals are laudable and approveable , viz. whether such as they , be out of a divine or naturall principle , whether from god or complexion . for in those things that are at their very first view discerned to be culpable , it is plain that they are not from god. i answer therefore , that there are three main discriminations betwixt the spirit and the most specious complexion . the first is , that that piety or goodnesse which is from the spirit of god is universall , extirpating every vice and omitting nothing that is truely a divine virtue . the second is , a belief of those holy oracles comprehended in the old and new testament , they being rightly interpreted , and particularly , of that article , that iesus christ , even he that died on the crosse at ierusalem betwixt two thieves , is the sonne of god , and soveraigne of men and angels , and that he in his own person shall come again to judge the quick and the dead . the third and last is , an universall prudence , whereby a man admits nor acts nothing , but what is solidly rationall at the bottome , and of which he can give a good account , let the successe be what it will. he that finds himself thus affected , may be sure it is the spirit of god , not the power of complexion or nature that rules in him . but this man to others , if they be unbelieving and so rude and unprepared as not to be capable of reason , he is nothing to them , unlesse he can do a miracle . how vain then is the enthusiast that is destitute of both ? but those ancient records of miracles done in the behalf of christianity , are a sufficient testimony of the truth of our religion to those whose hearts are rightly fitted for it . . to the second scruple i answer , that there has not one word all this time been spoken against that true and warrantable enthusiasme of devout and holy souls , who are so strangely transported in that vehement love they bear towards god , and that unexpressible joy and peace they find in him . for they are modest enough and sober in all this , they witnessing no other thing to the world then what others may experience in themselves , and what is plainly set down in the holy scriptures , that the kingdome of god is righteousnesse and peace and joy in the holy-ghost . but in none of these things do they pretend to equallize themselves to christ , whom god has exalted above men and angels , but do professe the efficacie of his spirit in them to the praise and glory of god , and the comfort and incouragement of their drooping neighbour . but what is above this , without evident reason or a miracle , is most justly deemed to proceed from no supernaturall assistance but from some hypochondriacall distemper . . moreover for these rapturous and enthusiasticall affections even in them that are truely good and pious , it cannot be denied but that the fuell of them is usually naturall o●●●ntracted melancholy , which any man may perceive that is religious , unlesse his soul and body be blended together , and there be a confusion of all ; as it is in mistaken enthusiasts , that impute that to god which is proper to nature . but melancholy usually disposes , and the mind perfects the action through the power of the spirit . and a wise and holy man knows how to make use of his opportunity according to that monition of the apostle , if a man be sad , let him pray ; if cheerfull , let him sing psalmes . . but there is also a peculiar advantage in melancholy for divine speculations ; and yet the mysteries that result from thence , are no more to be suspected of proving meer fancies , because they may occasionally spring from such a constitution , then mathematicall truths are , who ow their birth to a mathematicall complexion ; which is as truly a complexion as the religious complexion is ; and yet no sober man will deny the truth of her theorems . and as it would be a fond and improper thing to affirm that such a complexion teaches a man mathematicks , so it would also be to affirm that melancholy is the onely mother of religion . . but most certain it is and observation will make it good , that the souls of men while they are in these mortall bodies are as so many prisoners immured in severall prisons with their fingle loop-holes looking into severall quarters , and therefore are able to pronounce no further then their proper prospect will give them leave . so the severall complexions of mens bodies dispose or invite them to an easie and happy discovery of some things , when yet notwithstanding if you conferre with them concerning other some that lie not within their prospect or the limits of their naturall genius , they will be enf●●●ed either to acknowledge their ignorance , or if they will take upon them to judge ( which is the more frequent ) they will abundantly discover their errour and mistake . which sometimes seems so grosse and invincible that a man may justly suspect that they want not onely the patience but even the power of contemplating of some objects , as being not able to frame any conception of what they are required to think of ; and such are the duller sort of atheists that rank the notion of a spirit and consequently of a god in the list of inconsistencies and ridiculous non-sense . wherein though they seek to reproach religion , they seem to me mainly to shame themselves , their atheisme being very easie to be paralleld with enthusiasme in this regard . for as some enthusiasts being found plainly mad in some one thing , have approved themselves sober enough in the rest ; so these atheists though they show a tolerable wit and acutenesse in other matters , yet approve themselves sufficiently slow and heavy in this . finis . observations upon anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . by alazonomastix philalethes . psalm . they reel to and fro , and stagger like a drunken man , and are at their wits end . london , printed by i. flesher . . to eugenius philalethes the author of anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . sir , the great deserved fame that followed this noble work of yours ( the due recompense of all eminent performances ) engaged me to peruse the same , with much eagerness of mind , and yet with no lesse attention ; i being one of those , that professe themselves much more willing to learn , then able to teach . and that you may see some specimen of the fruits of your labour and my proficiency , i thought fit to present you with these few observations . which , considering the barrennesse of the matrix , ( as you chymists love to call it ) in which they were conceived , may be termed rather many then few : and that imputed to the alone virtue , or magicall multiplication , or theomagical fecundity of your divine writings , not at all to the sterility of my disfurnished braine . which now notwithstanding , having gathered both warmth and moisture from the heat and luxuriancy of your youthfull fansie , findes it selfe after a manner transformed into your own complexion , and translated into the same temper with your selfe . in so much that although i cannot with the height of a protestation in the presence of my glorious god ( as your selfe has gallantly done ( in pag. . lin . . of anthropos . theomag . ) affirme that the affection and zeale to the truth of my creatour has forced mee to write , yet i dare professe in the word of an honest man , that nothing but an inplacable enmity to immorality and foolery has moved me at this time to set pen to paper . and i confesse my indignation is kindled the more , having so long observed that this disease is growne even epidemicall in our nation . viz. to desire to be filled with high-swolne words of vanity , rather then to feed on sober truth , and to heate and warme our selves rather by preposterous and fortuitous imaginations , then to move cautiously in the light of a purified minde and improved reason . wherefore i being heightned with the same zeale of discountenancing of vanitie and conceitednesse , that your selfe is of promoting the truth , you will permit to me the same freedome in the prosecution thereof . for as we are growne neare akin in temper and complexion , so we ought mutually to allow each other in our actings alike , according to our common temper and nature , and the accustomed liberty of the philalethean family . in confidence whereof till wee meete againe in the next page , i take leave and subscribe my selfe , a chip of the same block alazonomastix philalethes . observations upon anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . sect . i. eugenius taxed of vain glory . three main ways he atempts to approve himself an extraordinary knowing man to the world . his affectation of seeming a magician discovered in his so highly magnifying agrippa , in the dress of his title-page , and his submissive address to the rosie-brotherhood . his indiscreet exprobration of ignorance to the aristoteleans for not knowing the very essence or substance of the soule . his uncivil calling aristotle an ape , and ignorant taxation of his school concerning the frame of the world . the disproportionable delineation of eugenius his world-animal ; and his unjust railing against aristotles writings , which he uncivilly tearms his vomit . and now brother philalethes , that we are so well met , let us begin to act according to the freenesse of our tempers , and play the tom tell-troths . and you indeed have done your part already . my course is next . which must be spent in the observations i told you of , upon those profound treatises of yours , anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . and my first and general observation is this , that the genius of my brother eugenies magical discourse is such , that magus-like , he seems to have a very liquoursome desire to be thought to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , some great man in the world. and for the prosecution of this main end , he layes himself out chiefly in these three subordinate designes . first , to be thought to have found out some new concerning truths , hitherto undiscovered . secondly , to be more learned & knowing then aristotle , that great light of these european parts , for these many hundred years together : and not onely so , but to be so far above him , that he may be his master , that he may tew him , and lugge him , and lash him more cruelly , then any orbilius or cholerick pedagogue , his puny scholars . thirdly and lastly , that he may strike home for the getting of a fame of profound learning indeed , he do's most affectedly and industriously raise in the reader a strong surmise and suspicion that he is very deeply seen in art magick , and is a very knowing disciple of agrippa , and puts in as far for the name of a magician , as honesty will permit , and safety from that troublesome fellow hopkins the witch-finder . and indeed the very clatter of the title of his book , anthroposophia theomagica , sounds not much unlike some conjuration , or charm , that would either call up , or scare away the devil . and zoroaster forsooth , at the bottome of the page , that old reputed magician , must stand as an assistent to this preludiall exorcism ; with this oracle in his mouth , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , audi ignis vocem . that is in plain english , hear the voice or noise of fire . me thinks i smell a gunpowder-plot . what can this voice of fire be ? why ! how now anthroposophus ! you intend certainly to make the rosy brotherhood merry with squibs and crackers . for certainly your mysteriousnesse does not mean those lesser or greater fire-squirts , carbines or cannons . so might the fratres r. c. be received with like solemnity that those apostles at rome , the cardinals . but the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( which implies a subsultation , or skipping this way and that way ) which is in the context of this oracle , seems to allude to , and prognosticate of , fire-crackers and squibs rather then cannons or carbines . but how ever if this dog-trick fail , anthroposophus has another as puerile and innocent a present , to entertain that reverend fraternity : and that 's a very queint and trim latine epistle , which he , like a good schoolboy , to shew them what a good proficient he is grown in his latine grammar , presents to their assembled gravities . 't is a good child , anthroposophus ! and 't is well done . qui nescit obedire , nescit imperare . he that knows not how to submit himself in the form of a breeching boy to the fratres r. c. how can he know so unmercifully to whip and domineer over poor aristotle ? surely , anthroposophus ! when the rosy brethren ride swooping through the air in their theomagicall chariots , they will hail down sugar plums , and carua's on thy blessed pate , if thou hast but the good hap at that time to walk abroad with thy hat off , to cool thy heated nodle . but stay a while , i am afraid i am mistaken . it may well be , that anthroposophus rides along with them , as being the proloquutour of their assembly . for he writes himself oratoris vestri . how can that belong to a short epistle , unlesse it were some title of office ? but it may be my gentleman , being not so dextrous and quick in latine as in english , measured the length of it more by his labour then the lines , and thought that that which took him so much pains , could not prove so little as an epistle ; and therefore would insinuate that it was an oration made to the fratres r. c. i suppose at their meeting at fryer bacon's brasen head in oxford . well ● be it what it will be , my observation here , anthroposophus , is , that you would also by your addresse to the fratres r. c. make the world bel●eve , that you are now mellowing a pace , and are not much unripe for admission into that society . and then anthroposophus would be a rare theomagician indeed . but enough of this vein of mirth and levity . now philalethes ! your brother tel-troth , intends to fall more closely on your bones , and to discover whether you have not a greater minde to seem to be wise then to be so indeed , or to make others so . but yet you may assure your self , i will onely find flaws , not make any in you ; but rather candidly passe over what may receive any tolerably good interpretation , nor touch the sore any where , but where i may hope to heal it , either in your self or others . and that this may be done without any tedious taking a pieces of what you have put together , i shall fairly passe from page to page without any analyticall artifice . and truly from the first page to the middle of the fourth page of your epistle to the reader , there be many pretty , smart , elegant , humourous contextures of phrases and things . but there , presently after fryer bacons fool and his fellow , you fall upon our peripateticks as such superficiall philosophasters , because they cannot lay open to you the very essence of the soul. why ! anthroposophus ! can you tell the very essence of any substantiall thing ? hereby you show your self very raw & unexercised in meditation , in that you have not yet taken notice what things are knowable , what not . and thus may you have as ill a trick put upon you , for want of this discerning , as the old dim and doting woman had , that with her rotten teeth endeavoured to crack a round pebble stone in stead of a nut , which was a thing impossible . nor will any mans understanding , be it as sharp as it will , enter the bare essence of any thing . but the nearest we can get , is , to know the powers , and operations , the respects , and fitnesses that things have in themselves , or toward others . which is so true , that any man in a little search , will presently satisfie himself in the evidence thereof . from the middle of this fourth page to the middle of the sixth , is continued a dance of anticks , or various ridiculous shiftings and postures of phansie● to make aristotle and his followers contemptible . but such generall railings , as they are mis-beseeming the writer , so they teach the reader nothing but that the authour of them is a mome , or a mimick , and more like an ape by far then him that he compares to one . if this man clap the wings so when he has really got the foil , ( for hitherto he has charged aristotle with no particular piece of ignorance but of what is impossible to be known ) what would he do if he h●d the victory ? the second particular taxation ( for generals i hold nothing , dolosus ambulat in universalibus ) is that the peripateticks fancy god to have made the world , as a carpenter of stone and timber . but this is false , because they give an inward principle of motion to all naturall bodies , and there is one continuity of all , as much as of the parts of water among themselves . but their grand fault is that they do not say the world is animate . but is not yours far greater , anthroposophus ! that gives so ridiculous unproportionable account of that tenet ? the whole world is an animal , say you , whose flesh is the earth , whose bloud is the water , the air the outward refreshing spirit in which it breath● , the interstellar skies his vitall waters , the stars his sensitive fire . but are not you a meer animal your self to say so ? for it is as irrationall and incredible , as if you should tell us a tale of a beast , whose bloud and flesh put together , bears not so great a proportion to the rest of the more fluid parts of the animal , suppose his vitall and animal spirits , as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the earth . and beside this , how shall this water which you call bloud , be refreshed by the air that is warmer then it ? and then those waters which you place in the outmost parts towards his dappled or spotted skin the coelum stellatum , what over-p●oportionated plenty of them is there there ? in so much that this creature you make a diseased animall from its first birth , and ever labouring with an anasarca . lastly , how unproperly is the air said to be the outward refreshing spirit of this animal , when it is ever in the very midst of it ? and how rashly is the flux and reflux of the sea assimilated to the pulse , when the pulse is from the heart , not the brain ; but the flux and reflux of the sea from the moon not the sun , which they that be more discreetly phantasticall then your self , do call cor mundi . wherefore , anthroposophus ! your phansies to sober men , will seem as vain and puerile , as those of idle children that imagine the fortuitous postures of spaul and snivell on plaster-walls , to bear the form of mens or dogs faces , or of lyons , and what not ? and yet see the supine stupidity and senslesnesse of this mans judgement , that he triumphs so in this figment of his as so rare and excellent a truth , that aristotles philosophy must be groundlesse superstition and popery in respect of it , this the primevall truth of the creation ; when as it is a thousand times more froth , then his is vomit . my friend anthroposophus ! is this to appear for the truth ( as you professe ) in a day of necessity ? certainly she 'll be well holpe at a dead lift , if she find no better champions then your self . verily philalethes , if you be no better in your book then in your preface to the reader , you have abused moses his text beyond measure . for your principles will have neither heaven nor earth in them , head nor foot , reason nor sense . they will be things extra intellectum , and extra sensum , meer vagrant imaginations seated in your own subsultorious & skip-jack phansie onely . but what they are we shall now begin to examine , according to the number of pages . anthroposophia theomagica . sect . ii. . mastix makes himself merry with eugenius his rash assertion , that all souls at their entrance into the body have an explicite knowledge of things . . and that after a whole springs experience he had found out those two known principles of aristotle , matter , and privation . his absurd hope of seeing substances . . the vanity of devotion without purification of the mind . that aristotle agrees with moses in acknowledging the world to be framed by a knowing principle , . life alwayes accompanied with a naturall warmth . . eugenius his fond mistake , as if either the divine light or ideas could be kept out any space of time from shining in the opakest matter . . the little fruit of that rarity of doctour marci in making the figure of a plant suddenly rise up in a glasse . . eugenius his naturall idea ( which he affirms to be a subtile invisible fire ) no idea at all . . his vain boasting of himself as if he were more knowing amd communicative then any that has wrote before him . . his tearming the darknesse or the first matter the fuliginous spawn of nature . . his inconstancy in creating and uncreating this matter . . the horrible confused qualme he fancies in the moist matter at the creation of the world , heat and siceitie the two active qualities in the principle of light assisting by their mid-wifry . observation . pag. . l. . so have all souls before their entrance , &c. but hear you me mr. anthroposophus ! are you in good earnest that all souls before their entrance into the body have an explicite methodicall knowledge ? and would you venture to lose your wit so much by imprisoning your self in so dark a dungeon , as to be able to write no better sense in your preface to the reader ? but i 'll excuse him , it may be he was riding before his entrance into the body on some theomagicall jade or other , that stumbled and flung him into a mysticall quagmire against his will , where he was so soused and doused and bedaubed and dirtyed , face and eyes and all , that he could never , since the midwife raked him out all wet and dropping like a drown'd mouse , once see clearly what was sense and what non-sense to this very day . wherefore we will set the saddle on the right horse ; and his theomagick nag shall bear the blame of the miscarriage . observation . pag. . lin. . i took to task the fruits of one spring , &c. here anthroposophus is turned herbalist for one whole spring , damned to the grasse , and fields like nebuchadnezzar when he went on all four among the beasts . but see how slow this snail amongst the herbs is , in finding out the truth ; when he confesses it was the work of one whole spring to find out , that the earth or seeds of flowers are nothing like the flowers . there 's not any old garden-weeder in all london , but without a pair of spectacles will discover that in four minutes , which he has been a full fourth part of a year about . but certainly , he intends a great deal of pomp and ceremony , that will not take up such a conclusion as this , ( viz. that things that are produced in nature , are out of something in nature which is not like the things produced ) but upon the full experience and meditation of one entire spring . and now after this whole springs meditation and experience , he is forced to turn about to him whom he so disdainfully flies , and confesse two of the three principles of the aristotelean physicks . viz. mat●er and privation , that homo is ex non homine , arbor ex non arbore , &c. but this matter , he sayes , ( and it is the wisest word he has spoken yet ) he knows not what it is . but presently blots his credit again with a new piece of folly , intimating he will finde it out by experience . which is as good sense as if he should say , he would see it when his eyes are out . for it is alike easie to see visibles without eyes , as to see invisibles with eyes . but he flies off hence , and is in quest after a substance , which he smels out like a nosegay in natures bosome ; which substance he hopes to see by art. why ! eugenius , are you so sharp sighted that you can see substances ? a kind of philosophick hog , he can see the wind too i warrant you . but how can you hope to see that substance , when nature onely exposes it , as you say , to her own vitall celestiall breath ? and tell what this breath is , and do not amaze us with strange words , or else keep your breath to your self to cool your pottage . observation . pag. . here a fit of devotion has taken him , and i am neither so irreligious nor uncivill as to interrupt him . but now sir you have done , i hope it will not be any offence to addresse my discourse to you again . and it will not be unseasonable to tell you , that truth is not to be had of god almighty for an old song , no nor yet for a new one . and that no man is to measure his wisdome by his devotion , but by his humility and purity of mind and unprejudicate reason ; nor that any man is wiser by making others seem more contemptibly foolish , as your juvenility has thought good to deal with poor aristotle & his orthodox disciples all this time . nay , and that you may not take sanctuary at moses his text , let me also tell you , that before you prove any thing thence , you ought first to make good , that scripture is intended for naturall philosophy as well as a divine life . but we need not arm our selves so well yet ; for from the fourth page to the eight page nothing is said , but that god from a knowing principle made the world. which aristotle also seems to assert , while he is so frequent in telling the ends of naturall things , which could not be sense , unlesse he supposed that nature was guided by a knowing principle , which is to acknowledge a god after the best manner . and that subtil philosopher iulius scaliger uses no contemptible arguments to prove , that aristotles philosophy furnisheth us also with the knowledge of a trinity in god , so that anthroposophus is very unkind and uncivill to so good a master . observation . pages . and . what an aristotelean would dispatch in a word or two , viz. that life is alwayes accompanied with a naturall warmth , he is mysteriously fumbling out and drayling on to the length of almost two whole pages . observation . pag. . lin. . the divine light pierced the bosome of the matter , &c. this compared with what is at the bottome of the fourth page , we see that this rare philosopher tells us , that the matter is an horrible empty darknesse . and me thinks his description is an hideous empty fancie , and conveys not so much to the understanding as aristotles description of the matter , which he would describe to be , the first subject out of which every thing is . this latter is more clean and sober , the other more slabby and fantasticall . and to call it primitive waters is but yet metaphors and poetry : for you do not mean waters such as we wash our hands in . but they must be waters and dark , that you may bring in the conceit of the light shining in them , that like as in rivers and pools the images of trees & birds , and clouds and stars , and what not , may be seen in them . and this must help us to conceive , that upon the breaking through of the light , the divine idea's shone in the waters , and that the holy spirit , not being able to see till then , by looking then upon those images , framed the matter into form . but i pray you tell me , mr. anthroposophus ! that would be so wise as if you stood by while god made the world , doe not you think that god can now see in the dark , or behold his own idea's in the depth of the earth ? you 'l say you doe not mean this natural light but a divine light . if so , was ever the matter so st●ff and clammy dark , as to be able to keep it out ? so that the divine idea's shone in the water so soon as god was , and the spiritus opifex could see to begin his work ab omni retro aeternitate . and it could never be dark in your blind sense . is it not so anthroposophus ? observation . lin. . si plantam quasi momento nas●i , &c. if anthroposophus had such a device as this in a glasse , what a fine gew-gaw would it be for the lad ? what fine sport would he make with his companions ? he would make them believe then that he was a conjurer indeed . but what other use there would be of it , anthroposophus ! truly i do not know . for it would not state one controversie in philosophy more then what may be done without it . for whether there be any such things as rationes seminales , or whether these forms visible arise from heat , which is motion , and the conspiracy of fitted particles , is as well and safely determined from your experiments of one spring , as from this strange whim-wham in a glasse . but weak stomachs and weak wits long most after rarities . observation . pag. . lin. . two-fold idea , divine , natural , &c. anthroposophus ! your natural idea , is but an idea of your own brain . for it is no more an idea then a sheath is a knife , or the spittle that wets the seal is the seal● or the grease the saw , or the water the grindle-stone . but you must strike betwixt this and the divine id●a , or else you will misse of your natural one . and so will be forced to do that of penury , which he did of choise and for brevity sake , divide your text into one part . but your quotation of moses here neer the bottom of the page , is either nothing to your natural idea , or if you mean it of the divine , is no new notion , but nimmed out of philo the iew. and yet in the beginning of the following page you magnify your self , as one that concerning this primitive supernatural part of the creation as you call it , though you have not said so much as you can say by far , ( as being a nip-crust or niggard of your precious speculations ) yet you have produced not a little new . observation . pag. . lin. . some authors , &c. and the reason why the world is beholding to this gentleman more then to any for new discoveries of mighty truths , is , that whereas some authors have not searched so deeply into the center of nature , and others not willing to publish such spiritual mysteries , this new writer is the onely man , that is both deeply seen into the center of nature , and as willing also to publish these spiritual mysteries . so that he goes beyond them all . o brave anthroposophus ! what a fine man would you fain appear to the world. in the residue of this page , anthroposophus his phansie is pudled so and jumbled in the limbus or huddle of the matter , that he cannot distinguish betwixt god and the creature ; for he knows not whether the chaos be created or uncreated . how much wiser are you now then aristotle , mr. eugenius ! that made the world eternal ? if you can admit this ; by the rule of proportion you might swallow the greatest gudgeon in aristotle without kecking or straining . observation . pag. . lin. . fuliginous spawn of nature . a rare expression ! this magicician has turned nature into a fish by his art. surely such dreams float in his swimmering brains as in the prophets , who tells us so authentick stories of his delicious albebut . observation . lin. . the created matter . before the matter was in an hazard of not being created , but of being of it self eternal . certainly eugenius ! you abound with leasure that can thus create and uncreate , doe and undoe because the day is long enough . observation . lin. . a horrible confused qualm , &c. here nature like a child-bearing woman has a qualm comes over her stomach , and eugenius like a man-midwife stands by very officiously to see what will become of it . let her alone , eugenius ! it is but a qualm , some cold raw rhewme . margret will escape wel● enough . especially if her two handmaids heat and siccity , which you mention , do but help with their aquavitae bottles . what a rare mode or way of creation has eugenius set out ? certainly it cannot but satisfie any unreasonable man , if there be any men without reason ; and i begin to suspect there is , for eugenius his sake , such as feed as savourly on the pure milk of fansie , as the philosophers asse on sow-thistles . sect . iii. . he asserts , that there was a vast portion of light in the extract from the chaos which surrounded the whole earth . . he compares ptolemees heavens to a rumbling confused labyrinth . . he calls the firmament cribrum naturae . . affirmes that the light before the fourth day equally possest the whole creation . . that the night peeps out like a baffled giant when the sun is down . . that the shadow of the earth is natures black bagg . . he prays to be delivered from the dark tincture which at last by the protochymist shall be expeld beyond the creation . . he allows onely two elements , earth and water . ● . he speakes of water and fire ( which is apuleius his psyche and cupid ) of their bedding together . . cites an obscure aphorisme out of sendivow . . affirmes that the air is the magicians ba●k doore . . and our animal oyl the fuell of the vital and sensual fire in us . observation . pag. . this page is spent in extracting from the chaos● , a thin spiritual celestial substance to make the caelum empyreum of , and the body of angels , and by the by , to be in stead of a sun for the first day . but then in the second extraction was extracted the agill air filling all betwixt the masse and the coelum empyreum . but here i have so hedged you in mr. anthroposophus , that you will hardly extricate your self in this question . the empyreal substance encompassing all● how could there be morning aud evening till the fourth day ? for the mass was alike illuminated round about at once . and for your interstellar water you do but fancy it implyed in moses text , & can never prove that he drives at any thing higher in the letter thereof , than those hanging bottles of water , the clouds . observation . pag. . lin. . a rumbling confused labyrinth . 't is only erratum typographicum . i suppose you mean , a rumbling wheel-barrow ; in allusion to your wheel-work and epicycles aforementioned . but why small diminutive epicycles ? eugenius ! you are so profound a magician , that you are no astronomer at all . the bignesse of them is as strong a presumption against them as any thing : they are too big to be true . observation . lin. . this is cribrum naturae . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i warrant you . the very sive that iupiter himself pisses through , as aristophanes sports it in his comedies . observation . pag. . lin. . equally possest the whole creature . therefore again i ask thee , o eugenius ! how could there be evening and morning , the light being all over equally dispersed ? observation . lin. . like a baffled gyant . poetical eugenius ! is this to ●ay the sober and sound principles of truth and philosophy ? observation . pag. . lin. . a black bag. i tell thee eugenius ! thy phansie is snapt in this female black-bag , as an unwary retiarius in a net. do's madam nature wear her black-bag in her middle parts ? ( for the earth is the center of the world ) or on her head as other matrons doe ? that philalethes may seem a great and profound student indeed , he will not take notice whether a black-bag be furniture for ladies heads or their haunches : well! let him injoy the glory of his affected rusticity and ignorance . observation . lin. . good lord deliver us . how the man is frighted into devotion by the smut and griminesse of his own imagination . observation . lin. . earth and water , &c. concurrunt element a ut materia , ergo duo sufficiunt , says cardan . ●tis no new-sprung truth , if true , mr. eugenius ! but seeing that aethereal vigour and celestial heat with the substance thereof , ( for coelum pervadit omnia ) is in all things , and the air excluded from few or no living creatures , if we would severely tug with you , mr. anthroposophus ! you will endanger the taking of the foil . observation . pag. . lin. . both in the same bed . why did you ever sneak in eugenius , and take them , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the very act ? 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the lawyers speak ? this is but poeticall pomp in prose . and ovid philosophizes better in verse , where speaking of heat and moisture , he expresses himself apertly and significantly . quippe ubi temperiem sumpsere humorque calorque concipiunt , & ab his generantur cuncta duobus . observation . lin. . spiritus aquae invisibilis congelatus melior est quàm terra vniversa . now as you are philalethes , tell me truly if you understand any determinate and usefull sense of this saying . if you do , why do you not explain it ? if you do not , for ought you know , it may be onely a charm to fox fishes . and i pray you , philalethes ! make triall of the experiment . observation . pag. . lin. . it is the magicians back-doore . here i cannot but take notice at the great affectation of philalethes to appear to be deeply seen in magick . but i suppose if he were well searched , he would be found no witch , nor all his back-door of air worth the winde of an ordinary mans back-doore . observation . pag. . lin. . the air is our animal oil , the fuell of the vitall . now eugenius ! you are so good natured as to give aristotle one of his two elements again , that you wrested from him . if this be our animall oil , and fuell of the vitall , it is plain our animall and vitall spirits are from the air , and that the air is one element amongst the rest . and your moist silent fire that passes through all things , must be a principle of all things , and may be well attempered heat to your forenamed oil . so that aristotle and you that before seemed as disagreeing as fire and water , now in a love-fit again embrace as close as your apulejus his psyche and cupid . but why will you be thus humorous mr. eugenius ! and be thus off and on to the trouble of others and your self ? sect . iv. . eugenius having finished his generall exposition of the world , mastix gives an account of it , shows the contradiction in it , discovers the vanity of drawing the letter of the scripture to a rigid philosophicall meaning . . eugenius his ill manner of laying down the fundamentalls of sciences , . his celestiall earth , magnet , or jacobs ladder . . his little suns and moones in every compound of nature that are mimulae majoris animalis , and wantonly imitate the two great luminaries of the world. . his aenigmaticall receit of the medicine or philosophers stone . . his fixing of the earth into a pure diaphanous substance . . his praetension of explaining the nature of man. . his censure of all that know not the earth adam was made out of ( which is the philosophicall medicine ) as quacks and pis-pot doctours . . his two portions the soul consists of , ruach and nephesh . and how the angels scorning to ●t●end adam according as they were commanded , contrived to supplant him . observation . pag. . l. . performed an exposition of the world. an excellent performance ! which if a man take● a narrow view of he will finde to amount to no more then this , that god made a dark masse of matter , out of which he extracted , ( chymist-like ) first an empyreall body , ●hen an aereall , &c. which is a very lank satisfaction to the noble reason of man. nay , anthroposophus ! i believe you have spoke such stuff that will amount to little better then a contradiction ●o free reason . for you make as if the masse did contain in a far l●sse compasse above all measure , all that was after extracted . wherefore there was , ( for these are all b●dies ) either a penetration of dimensions then , or else a vacuum now : & the ascending particles of the masse lie some distance one from another . besides i observe that in you , that i do in all others , that fantastically and superstitiously force philosophy out of the sacred writ ( which is intended certainly for better purposes ) . for as ovid in his metamorphoses , after a long pursuit of a fabulous story , at last descends to something in nature and common use , ( as that of daphne turned into a lawrell , which tree is in nature and according to the accustomary conceit of the heathens was holy to apollo ) so these running a wild-goose chase of melancholy imaginations and fancies , think it evidence enough for what they have said , to have the thing but named in some text of scripture . nay even those that are so confident they are inspired , and live of nothing but the free breathings of the divine spirit ; if you observe them , it is with them as with the lark , that is so high in the air , that we may better hear her then see her , as if she were an inhabitant of that region onely and had no allyance to the earth , yet at last you shall see her come down and pi●k on the ground as other birds . so these pretended inspired men though they flie high , and seem to feed of nothing but free truth , as they draw it from gods own breathing ; yet they took their ground first from the text , though they ran a deal of fancyfull division upon it ; and if a man watch them , he shall finde them ●all flat upon the text again , and be but as other mortals are for all their free praetensions and extraordinary assistances . but let us leave these theosophists ( as they love to be called ) to themselves , and trace on the steps of our anthro posophus ! observation . pag. . he exhorts us in the foregoing page to be curious & diligent in this subsequent part of his discourse , as being now about to deliver the fundamentals of science . but anthroposophus ! you are so deeply magicall that you have conjured your self down , below the wit of an ordinary man. the fundamentals of science should be certain , plain , reall and perspicuous to reason ; not muddy and imaginary as all your discourse is from this to your page . for in this present page & the former , setting aside your superstitious affectation of trinities & triplicities , which teach a man nothing but that you are a very fantasticall and bold man , and lift at that which is too heavy for you ; you do nothing but scold very cholerickly at the colliers and kitchen-maids , and like a dog return again to the vomit , i mean that vomit you cast a while ago on aristotle . is that so elegant an expression that you must use it twice in so little a space ? where is your manners anthroposophus ! observation . pag. . lin. . and . the magnet , the mystery of union , not one of ten thousand knows the substance or the use of this nature . yet you tell it us in this page , that it will attract all things physicall or metaphysicall , at what distance soever . but you are a man of ten thousand , anthroposophus ! and have the mystery , questionlesse , of this magnet . whence i conclude you king or prince of the gypsies , as being able at the farthest distance to attract metall out of mens purses . but take heed that you be not discovered , lest this iacobs ladder raise you up with your fellow pick-pockets to heaven in a string . observation . pag. . this page is filled with like gypsie gibberish , as also the th . yet he pretends to lend us a little light from the sun and moon . which he calls the great luminaries and conservatours of the great world in generall . how great , anthroposophus ! do you think would the moon appear if your magick could remove you but as far as saturn from her ? will she not appear as little as nothing ? besides , if eugenius ever tooted through a galileo's tube , he might discover four moons about iupiter , which will all prove competitours with our moon for the conservatour-ship of the universe . but though eugenius admits of but one great broad-faced sun and moon , yet he acknowledgeth many mimulae or monky-faced suns and moons , which must be the conservatriculae of the many microcosmes in the great world. certainly anthroposophus ! the speculum of your understanding is cracked , and every fragment gives a severall reflexion , and hence is this innumerable multitude of these little diminutive suns and moons . but having passed through much canting language , at the bottome of the page we at last stumble on the philosophers stone , which he intends i suppose to fling at aristotle and brain the stagirite at one throw . observation . lin. ult . a true receipt of the medicine , r. limi coelestis partes , &c. come out tom-fool from behinde the hangings , that peaks out with your devils head and horns , and put off your vizard , and be aper● and intelligible , or else why do you pretend to lay the fundamentalls of science , and crave our diligence and attention to a non-significant noise and bu●ze ? unlesse you will be understood ; it may as well , for ought any bodie knows , be a plaister for a gauld horses back , or a medicine for a mad-dog , as a receipt of the philosophers stone . observation . pag. . in this page magicus prophesies of a vitrification of the earth , and turning of it into a pure diaphanous substance . to what end ? magicus ! that the saints and angels at each pole of the earth may play at boe-peep with one another through this crystallized globe ? magicus has rare imaginations in his noddle . observation . pag. . at the end of this page magicus begins to take to task the explication of mans nature . but magicus you must first learn better to know your self , before you attempt to explain the knowledge of man to others . observation . pag. . lin. . the philosophicall medicine . this is the philosophers stone . and they that are ignorant in this point are but quacks and pispot doctours . ho! dr. h. dr. p. dr. r. dr. t. and as many doctours more as will stand betwixt london and oxenford , if you have not a sleight of art to metamorphize your selves into triorchises , and have one stone more then nature hath bestowed upon you ( which is forsooth the philosophers stone ) have amongst you blind harpers , magicus will not stick to teem urinals on your heads , and crown you all , one after another , with the pispot , and honour you with the title of quack-salvers . what ? magicus ! is it not sufficient that you have no sense nor wit , but you will have no good manners neither ? observation . pag. . this thirtieth page teaches that the soul of man consists of two parts , ruach and nephesh , one masculine and the other feminine . and anthroposophus is so tickled with the application of the conceit unto marriage , which he very feelingly and savourly pursues , that he has not the patience to stay to tell us how these two differ , he being taken up so with that powerfull charm and thence accrewing faculty of crescite & multiplicamini . observation . pag. . this page has the legend that the alcoran has concerning the envy of the angels . but all goes down alike with him , as if every thing printed were gospel . in so much that i am perswaded that he doubts not but that every syllable of his own book is true , now it has passed the p●esse . sect . v. . eugenius broaches an old truth for a new doctrine . . his errour that the sensitive part in man is a portion of anima mundi . . his rash rejection of peripateticall forms . . his odde conceit of blind mens seeing in their sleep . . and of the flowers of hearbs , framed like eyes , having a more subtile perception of heat and cold then other parts of them have . . his distinguishing the rationall or angelicall spirit in man from the sensitive . . mastix commends eugenius for his generous discourse of the excellency of the soul. . rebukes him for his enmity with the peripateticks and school-divines , and for his rash swearing and protesting solemnly before god that he wrote onely out of zeal to the truth of his creatour . . check● his bold entitling of his own writings to the sacrosanctity of mysteries . . taxes his vain idolizing of ag●ippa . . shows him the fruitlesse effects of enthusiastick poetry without the true knowledge of things . . approves of severall collections of his concerning god and the soul , but disallows of his rash censure of aristotles philosophy , challenging him to show any solution of philosophick controversies by his chymicall experiments . . sports himself with his solicitude of what acceptance his writings will have in the world . . as also with his modest pride in disclaiming all affectation of rhetorick . . and his lanck excuse in that he wrote in the dayes of his mourning for the death of his brother . . his ridiculous tergiversation in not submitting his writings to the censure of any but god alone . observation . pag. . this page ridiculously places peter ramus amongst the schoolmen against all logick and method . and at the last line thereof bids us arrigere aures , and tells he will convey some truth never heretofore discovered , viz. that the sensitive gust in a man is the forbidden fruit ; with the rest of the circumstances thereof . which theory is so farre from being new , that it is above a thousand years old . it is in origen and every where in the christian platonists . observation . pag. . lin. . it is part of anima mundi . why ! is anima mundi ( which , you say , in men and beasts can see , feel , tast and smell ) a thing divisible into parts and parcells ? take heed of that anthroposophus ! lest you crumble your own soul into atoms ; indeed make no soul , but all body . observation . pag. . lin. . blind peripateticall forms . what impudence is this o magicus ! to call them so unlesse you make your anima mundi more intelligible ? this is but to rail at pleasure , not to teach or confute . observation . pag. . lin. . as it is plain in dreams . blind men then see in their sleep it seems , which is more then they can do when they are awake . are you in jest eugenius ! or in good earnest ? if you be , i shall suspect you having a faculty to see when you are asleep , that you have another trick too , that is , to dream when you are awake . which you practised i conceive very much in the comp●lement of this book , there being more dreams then truth by farre in it . observation . lin. . represent the eyes . how fanciful and poeticall are you mr. magicus ! i suppose you allude to the herb euphrasia or eyebright : which yet sees or feels as little light or heat of the sun , as your soul do's of reason or humanity . observation . lin. . angelicall or rationall spirit . do's not this see and hear too in man ? if it do not , how can it judge of what is said or done ? if it do's ; then there are two hearing and seeing souls in a man. which i will leave to anthroposophus his own thoughts , to find out how likely that is to be true . observation . , , , . pages . truly , anthroposophus ! these pages are of that nature , that though you are so unkind to aristotle , as to acknowlege nothing good in him ; yet i am not so inveterate a revengefull assertor of him , but i will allow you your lucida intervalla . what you have delivered in these pages concerning the soul of man , bating a few hyperboles , might become a man of a more settled brain than anthroposophus . but while you oppose so impetuously what may with reason be admitted , and propound so magisterially what is not sense , i must tell you anthroposophus ! that you betray to scorn and derision even those things that are sober in the way that you affect , and hazard the soiling of the highest and most delicate truths , by your rude and unskilfull handling of them : and now the good breath , that guided you for these four pages together , is spent , you begin to rave again after the old manner , and call galen antichrist in the fiftieth page ; observation . pag. . and quarrel again with the peripateticks , and provoke the school-divines . and then you fancie that you have so swinged them , that in revenge they 'l all fall upon you at once , and so twerilug you : when as they good men feel not your strokes , and find themselves something else to do , then to refute such crazy discourses as this . it is i onely , it is i , your brother philalethes , that am moved with pi●ie towards you● and would , if i could , by carefully correcting you in your distempers , bring you to a sober mind , and set you in your right senses again . and i beseech you brother philalethes● forbear this swearing : an honest mans word is as good as his oath . no body will believe you more for swearing , then he would without it , but think you more melancholick and distracted . observation . lin. . whiles they contemn mysteries , &c. in this heat all that philalethes writes must be termed holy mysteries . his project certainly is , now neither episcopacie nor presbyterie can be setled , to get his book established jure divino . a crafty colt ! ha , ha , he ! philalethes , are you there with your bears ? observation . lin. . next to god i owe all i have to agrippa . what ? more then to the prophets , and apostles , anthroposophus ? the businesse is , for your fame-sake , you have more desire to be thought a conjurer then a christian. observation . pag. , . great glorious penman ! a piping hot paper of verse●●ndeed , anthroposophus ! but say truly ! what can you do in or out of this heat more then other men ? can you cure the sick ? rule and counsell states and kingdomes more prudently for the common good ? can you find bread for the poor ? give a rationall account of the phoenomena of nature , more now then at another time ? or more then other men can do ? can you tell me the nature of light ? the causes of the rainbow ? what makes the flux and reflux of the sea ? the operations of the loadstone , and such like ? can you tell us in a rationall , dependent , and coherent way the nature of such things as these , or foretell to us what will be hereafter , as certainly and evidently as the prophets of old ? but if there be neither the evidence of reason , nor the testimony of notable effect , you can give us ; you must give me leave anthroposophus ! to conjecture ; that all this is but a frisk and dance of your agitated spirits , and firinesse of your fancie , of which you will find no fruit , but a palsied , unsteddy apprehension , and unsound judgement . observation . pag. . from this page to the . your theomagicall nag has been prettie sure-footed , philalethes ! and it is a good long lucidum intervallum you have ambled out . nay and you have done very well and soberly in not plainly pretending any new thing there . for they are both old and well seasoned , if the church be so pleased to esteem of them . but what you have toward the latter end of the page , that is , a word of your self , and another o● the common philosophie , has in it a spice of the old maladie , pride and con●●it●dnesse : as if you had now finished so famous a piece of work , as that all the world would stand amazed , and be inquisitive after you , asking who is this philalethes , and what is he ? presbyterian or independent ? sir , may it please you , he is neither papist , though he bid fair enough for purgatorie in his exposition of st. peter in the foregoing page ; nor sectarie , though he had rather style himself a protestant then a christian : but be he what he will be , he is so great in his own conceit , that though you have not the opportunitie to ask his judgment , yet he thinks it fit unasked to set himself on the seat of judicature , and disgorge his sentence on our ordinary philosophie . he means you may be sure the aristotelean in use for so many hundred years in all the universities of europe . and he pronounces of it , that it is an inconsistent hotch-potch of rash conclusions , built on meer imagination without the light of experience . you must suppose he means chymicall experiments , for you see no small pretensions to that in all his treatise . and this very title page , the first of the book , has the priviledge to be first adorned with this magnificent term of art , protochymistry . but tell me , mr. alchymist ! in all your skill and observation in your experiments , if you have hit on any thing that will settle any considerable point controverted amongst philosophers , which may not be done as effectually at lesse charges . nay , whether you may not lose nature sooner then find her by your industrious vexing of her , and make her appear something else then what she really is ; like men on the rack or overwatched witches , that are forced many times to confesse that which they were never guiltie of . but it being so unsatisfactorie to talk in generall , and of so tedious purpose to descend to particulars , i will break off this discourse . onely let me tell you thus much mr. philalethes ! that you are a very unnaturall son to your mother oxenford , and to her sister universitie ; for if they were no wiser then you would make them , you would hazard them and all their children to be begg'd for fools : and there would be a sad consequent of that . but your zeal and heated melancholie considers no such things , anthroposophus ! observation . pag. . lin. . i have now done , reader ! but how much to my own prejudice i cannot tell . verily nothing at all philalethes ! for you have met with a friend that hath impartially set out to you your own follies and faults . and has distorted himself often into the deformities of your postures , that you may the better see your ●elf in another , and so for ●hame amend . observation . lin. . paint and trim of rhetorick . how modest are you grown philalethes ! why ? this affectation of humour and rhetorick is the most conspicuous thing in your book . and shines as oriently , as false gold and silver lace on a linsie-woolsie coat . observation . lin. . of a brothers death . some young man certainly that killed himself by unmercifull studying of aristotle . and philalethes writ this book to revenge his death . observation . lin. . i ●xpose it not to the mercy of man , but to god. see , the man affects an absolute tyranny in philosophie . he 'll be accountable to none but god. you no papist philalethes ? why ! you would be a very pope in philosophie , if you would not have your dictates subject to the canvase of mans reason . observations upon his advertisement to the reader . the first thing you require is , that he that attempts your book , should make a plain and positive exposition of all the passages . why man ? that is more assuredly then your self can do . for you are so weak and supine in many things that are intelligible , that i am confident you are worse in that which you have made lesse intelligible . for as socrates reading an obscure authour , when he found all things he understood very good , did charitably conclude , what he understood not was much better : so i finding in this obscure treatise of yours , many things very ill , i also in charity will think you had the wit to conceal those things which are the worst ; or , which will serve the turn , that you understand them not your self . but have an itching desire that some reader skilfuller then your self , should tell you whether you have wrote sense or non-sense : like the countrey clown , that desired his young master to teach him to write , and being asked how he would be able to read his own writing , being as yet never acquainted so much as with the christ-crosse-row , made answer he would get some body else to read it for him . and so you philalethes ! though you can read your own writing , yet you desire to get some body else to understand it for you , or to interpret to you what you have writ . your second request is not much unlike the former , and too big a business for your self to doe , and therefore you beg it of another . your third request is to have your book handled after your own maner and method . which is as ridiculous , as if you should request your enemy to smite softly , or to strike after such a fashion ; & at such a part as you will appoint him . can it be reasonable for you to expect from an aristotelean ( for you must think it would be they of all men that would flie about your ears first ) when you have used their master aristotle , as they would not , to be used of them as you would● but notwithstanding philalethes ! you see i have bin fair with you , and , though provoked , i shall continue the same candour in my observations on your following peece . but before i pass , i must take notice of your two admonitions to the ingenuous reader , for i suppose you mean me , philalethes ! the first is , that i would not despise your endevours , because of your yeers , for they are but few . why man ! who knew that but your selfe , if you could have kept your own counsell ? your name is not at your book , much less your age . but indeed many things are so well managed of you , that if you had not told us so , we might have shrewdly suspected , you have scarcely reached the yeers of discretion . but you are so mightily taken with your own performance , that to increase admiration , and for the bringing in a phrase or sentence out of proclus , you could not with-hold from telling us that you are but a young man , and so we easily believe it . but the more saucy boy you to be so bold with reverend master aristotle , that grandeval patriarch in points of philosophy . for the second admonition , it is little more then a noise or clatter of words , or if you will , a meer rattle for a boy to play with . and so i leave it in your hand to passe away the time , till i meet you againe in your anima magica abscondita . upon the preface to the reader . now god defend ! what will become of me ! in good faith , philalethes ! i doe not know what may become of you in time , but for the present , me thinks , you are become a fool in a play , or a jack-pudding at the dancing on the ropes , a thing wholly set in a posture to make the people laugh . phy ! phy ! philalethes ! doe these humorous and mimical schemes of speech become so profound a theomagician , as your self would seem to be ? do's this ridiculous levity become a man of your profession ? you doe not a little disparage your self by these boyish humors , my good philalethes ! for mine own part , i am neither so light-headed no● light-footed , as to dance the morisco with you measure to measure , through this whole toy of yours to the reader . i shall dispatch what i have to say at once . your main drift here is to prove agrippa's dogs no divels , and their master no papist , and consequently your selfe no unlawful magician or conjurer . and truly if the assembly of divines be no more suspicious of you then my self , i am abundantly satisfied , that you are rather a giddy fantastick then an able conjurer , so that without any offence to me , you may take wierus his office if you will , and for want of imployment , lead about agrippa's beagles in a string . in the mean time i shall busie my selfe almost to as little purpose in the perusal of your anima magica abscondita . upon anima magica abscondita . sect . i. . eugenius his maimed citation of aristotles definition of nature . . his illogical exception against him for using of a general notion in this definition , and a difference expressing onely what nature does , not what she is . . his ridiculous exception against magirus his definition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forma , quae absolvit , expolit , informat rem naturalem , ut per eam una ab altera distinguatur . . his barbarous translation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 consummatio or finitatio , and a repetition of his former cavil . . he exhorts the peripateticks to change their abstractions into extractions , that they may discerne the substantial formes themselves in the inward closet of matter . . tells us that the motions of the heavens are from an internal principle , and that intelligences are fabulous . . reproaches the scriblers concerning mat●er and forme , as writing nothing to their own credit , or profit of the reader . . informes us that the anima mundi retained in the matter and missing a vent organizeth bodies . . his misapplication of that hemistichium of virgil — auraï simplicis ignem . the passive spirit the inmost vestment of the soul applying to generation , and that the vital liquour or aethereal water attracts the passive spirit . . his chain of descent whereby the soule is caught in the matter . . his declaring of the foregoing mystery makes him suspect that he has too publikely prostituted the secrets of nature . observation . and here philalethes ! in the very threshold you begin to worrey the poor perepateticks more fiercely then any english mastive , and bark and scold into the air ( that is , in general ) more cursedly and bitterly then any butter-quean ; but at last in the first line of the second page , you begin to take to task some particular documents of aristotles . viz. the description of nature , of form , and of the soul. whereby we shall understand of what great judgement and perspicacity you are in other points of philosophy . and first of the definition of nature , which you say is defined , principium motus & quietis . a little thing serves your turn , anthroposophus ! is this the entire definition of nature , in aristotle ? but what you unskilfully take no notice of , i willingly wink at , and will deal with you onely about those things that you produce and oppose . observation . pag. . lin. . nature is a principle . here you cavil that nature is said to be a principle , because you cannot find out the thing defined by this general intimation . but here , philalethes ! you are a pitiful logician , and know not so much in logick as every freshman in our university doth , viz. that that part of the definition which is general do's not lead us directly home unto the thing defined , and lay our hand upon it ; but it is the difference added that do's that . as if so be we should say onely that , homo est animal , that assertion is so floating and hovering , that our mind can settle on nothing , which it may safely take for a man ; for that general notion belongs to a slea , or a mite in a chees as well as to a man ; but adding rationale , then it is determined and restrained to the nature of man. and your allegation against the difference here annexed in the definition of nature , is as childish . for you only alleadge that it tels us what nature do's , not what it is . my dear philalethes ! certainly thou hast got the knack of seeing further into a millstone then any mortal else . thou hast discovered , as thou thinkest , dame nature stark naked , as actaeon did diana ; but for thy rash fancy deservest a pair of asses ears , as well as he did his bucks-horns for his rash sight . can any substantial form be known , otherwise then by what it can do or operate . tell me any one substantial form that thou knowest any better way then this , & phillida solus habeto , take phillis to thy self , and her black-bag to boot . thou art , good anthroposophus ! i perceive , a very unexperienced novice in the more narrow and serious search and contemplation of things . observation . pag. . lin. . this is an expresse of the office and effect of formes , but not of their substance or essence . why ! philalethes ! as i said before , have you ever discovered the naked substance or essence of any thing ! is colour , light , hardnesse , softnesse , &c. is any of these or of such like , essence & substance it selfe ? if you be so great a wizard , show some one substantial form in your theomagical glasse . poor kitling ! how dost thou dance and play with thine own shadow , and understandest nothing of the mystery of substance and truth ! observation . pag. . here in the third place you cavil at aristotles definition of the soul , and by your slubbering and barbarous translating of the term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 smother the fitnesse of the sense . what more significant of the nature of a soul , then what this term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is compounded of ? viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . — totamque inf●sa per artus mens agitat molem . or if we read the word as cicero , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it wil be more significant , as being made up of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and that which do's inwardly pervade and penetrate , that which do's hold together , and yet move this way and that way , and lastly still moving possess and command an organical body , &c. what is this but a soul , or what better definition can be given of it then this ? but here this peremptory opposer do's still inculcate the same cavil , that the naked substance or essence of the soul , is not set out by this , but its operations . but still out of the same ignorance , supposing that a substantial form can be better known then by its proper operations . and this ignorance of his makes him so proud , that he does fellow at every word , if not sirrah , prince aristotle ; because he has not done that which is impossible to doe , unbare to us the very substance of the form. what an imperious boy is this ! a wrangling child in philosophy , that screams and cries after what is impossible , as much as peevish babes , after what is hurtful . aud in this humorous straining and wrigling bemarres both his mother and his aunt , both the universities at once , casting dirt and filth upon their education of youth , as if they taught nothing , because they cannot teach what is impossible to be learned . observation . pag. . here anthroposophus begins to be something earnest and rude with nature , not content any longer to use his adulterous phansie , but to break open with his immodest hands her private closet , search her cabinet , and pierce into her very center . what rare extractions he will make thence , i leave to himselfe to enjoy . sure i am , that if any skilful cook , or chymist , should take out philalethes brains , and shred them as small as mincemeat , and tumble them never so much up and down with a trencher-fork , he would not discover by this diligent discussion any substantial form of his brains , whereby they may be discovered from what lies in a calfs head . nay , if they were stewed betwixt two dishes , or distilled in an alembek , neither would that extraction be any crystalline mirror to see the substantial form stark naked in , and discover the very substance of that spirit , that has hit upon so many unhappy hallucinations . but you are a youth of rare hopes , anthroposophus ! observation . pag. . lin. . where by the way i must tell you , &c. viz. that the heavens are not moved by intelligences . who cannot tell us that ? but indeed you are forward to tell us any thing , that do's but seem to sound high , or make any show . there 's no body now but would laugh to hear , that a particular angell turns about every orb , as so many dogs in wheels turn the spit at the fire . so that it seems far below such a grand theomagician as you are , to tell us such incredible fopperies as these to be false . observation . lin. . for the authours credit and benefit of the reader . good philalethes ! what credit do you expect from your scribling , though it be the onely thing you aim at in all your book ? when yet nothing of truth but this aim of yours is to be understood throughout all this writing . observation . lin. . this anima retain'd in the matter and missing a vent , &c. a similitude , i suppose , taken from the bung-hole of a barrell ; or more compendiously from bottled bear ; or it may be from the corking up close the urine of a bewitched party , and setting it to the fire . for anthroposophus will not be lesse then a magician in all things , nor seem lesse wise then or witch or devil . but me thinks , anthroposophus ! your expression of the nature of this anima , that must do such fine feats in the world , by the efformation of things and organizing the matter into such usefull figuration and proportion in living creatures , had been as fitly and as much to your purpose expressed ; if you had fancied her tied up like a pig in poke , that grunting and nudling to get out , drove the yielding bag out at this corner and that corner , and so gave it due order and disposition of parts . but , o thou man of mysteries ! tell me i pray thee , how so so subtil a thing as this anima is , can be either barrel'd up , or bottled up , or tied up in a bag , as a pig in a poke ! when as the first materiall rudiments of life be so lax and so fluid , how can they possibly hopple or incarcerate so thin and agil a substance as a soul ? so that the union betwixt them is of some other nature , then what such grosse expressions can represent , and more theomagicall then our theomagician himself is aware of . observation . pag. . here anthroposophus tells us rare mysteries concerning the soul , that it is a thing stitched and cobled up of two parts . viz. of aura tenuissima , and lux simplicissima . and for the gaining of credence to this patched conceit , he abuses the authority of that excellent platonist and poet virgilius maro , taking the fag end of three verses which all tend to one drift , but nothing at all to his purpose . aeneid . . donec longa dies perfecto temporis orbe concretam exemit labem , purumque reliquit aethereum sensum , atquo aurai simplicis ignem . this is not spoken of the soul it self , but of the aethereall vehicle of the soul , and so is nothing to your purpose mr. philalethes ! you tell us also in this page in what shirts or sheets the souls wrap themselves when they apply to generation , ( as your phrase is ) as if you were groom of their bed-chamber , if not their pa●der . you tell us also of a radicall vitall liquor that is of like proportion and complexion with the superiour interstellar waters , which is as learnedly spoken , as if you should compare the sack at the globe-tavern , with certain supernall wine-bottles hung round orions girdle : which no man were able to smell out , unlesse his nose were as atlantick as your rauming and reaching fancy . and yet no man that has not lost his reason , but will think this as grave a truth in philosophie as your interstellar waters . but interstellar , indeed , is a prettie word and sounds well , and it is pitie but there were some fine philosophick notion or other dld belong to it . but now , philalethes ! if i would tyrannize over you as you do over aristotle , for the manner of your declaring the nature of the soul , where you pretend to shew us the very naked essence of it , and first principles whereof it doth consist , you have laid your self more bare to my lash , then you endeavoured to lay bare the soul to our view : for you do plainly insinuate to us , that either the soul is light , or else a thin air , or that it is like to them . if onely like these bodies of light and air , how pitifully do you set out the nature of the soul , when you tell us the principles of it onely in a dry metaphor ? is not the nature of the soul far better known from the proper operations thereof ( as aristotle has defined it ) then from this fantasticall metaphoricall way ? but if you will say that the soul is properly light or air , then be they never so thin , or never so simple ( unlesse you will again use a metaphor ) the soul must be a body . and how any corporeall substance thick or thin , fluid or dry , can be able to think , to reason , to fancy , &c. nay to form matter into such cunning and wise frames and contrivancies as are seen in the bodies of living creatures , no man of lesse ignorance and confidence then your self will dare to endeavour to explain , or hold any way probable . observation . pag. . in this page you are curiously imployed in making of a chain of light and matter , surely more subtill and more uselesse then that that held the flea prisoner in the mechanicks hand . but this is to hold the anima , the passive spirit and celestiall water together . our theomagician here grows as imperious as wrathfull xerxes . will you also fetter the hellespont philalethes ? and binde the winde and waters in chains ? buc let 's consider now the link of this miraculous chain of his . light. matter . anima of of portions passive spirit of of portions celestiall waters of of portions this is your chain , philalethes ! now let 's see what apish tricks you 'll play with this your chain . the three portions of light must be brought down by the two , the two ( if not indeed five , the two and three being now joyn'd ) brought down by one , and so the whole chain drops into the water . but would any ape in a chain if he could speak , utter so much incredible and improbable stuff , with so much munky and mysterious ceremony ? his very chain would check his both thoughts and tongue . for is it not farre more reasonable that three links of a chain should sway down two , and two or five one , then that one should sway two or five , or two three ? or do we find when we fling up a clod of earth , that the whole ball of the earth leaps up after that clod , or the clod rather returns back to the earth , the greater ever attracting the lesse , if you will stand to magneticall attraction . but truly philalethes ! i think you do not know what to stand to , or how to stand at all ; you are so giddy and intoxicated with the steam and heat of your disturbed fancie and vain minde . observation . pag. . lin. . but me thinks nature complains of a prostitution , &c. did not i tell you so before , that philalethes was a pander ? and now he is convinced in his own conscience and confesses the crime , and his eares ring with the clamours and complaints of madam nature , whom he has so lewdly prostituted . sad melancholist ! thou art affrighted into the confession of crimes that thou art not onely not guilty of , but canst not be guilty of if thou wouldst . is there never a one of our citie divines at leasure to comfort him and compose him ? i tell thee , madam nature is a far more chast and discreet lady , then to lie obnoxious to thy prostitutions . these are nothing but some unchast dreams of thy prurient and polluted fancie . i dare quit thee of this fact , philalethes ! i warrant thee , thou hast not laid madam nature so naked as thou supposest , onely thou hast , i am afraid , dream'd uncleanly , and so hast polluted so many sheets of paper with thy nocturnall conundrums , which have neither life , sense , nor shape , head nor foot , that i can find in them . sect . ii. . that spiders and other brute creatures have knowledge in them from the first intellect . . that the seminall forms of things are knowing and discerning spirits . . that the world is from god , and all true wisdome : which is to be found by experiments , not in aristotles writings . . because of the abuse of logick he takes up the letan●e of st. augustine . . his three magicall principles ; viz. the first created unity ; the binarius or this unity defiled with matter ; the ternarius or this binarius refined by art. . that this ternarius ( which he calls the magicians fire , mercurius philosophorum , microcosmos , and adam ) is the magicall maze where students lose themselves ; and that this magicall fire moves in shades and tyffanies here below , above in white etheriall vestures . . his periphrasis of agrippa ( after a long citation out of him ) this is he with the black spaniel , &c. . his self-condemnation for going counter to all the world in making use of scripture for physiologie . the mosaicall heaven and earth are mercury and sulphur . uxor solis a certain principle in every starre and in the whole world . the coition of these two , their ejection of seed , with many such lascivious m●taphors . . light a certain principle that applied to any body whatsoever perfects it in suo genere , and that this light is onely multipliable . observation . pag. . here philalethes is taken like a fly in a spiders web. he is altogether for subtilties . but spins but a thick thred from them , such as any rusticks hand would draw out as well as his own , viz. that spiders have some light of knowledge in them . who knows not that philalethes ? but in the fifteenth page observation . pag. . he is so lavish of what he has so little of himself , that he bestows it on every plastick materiall form ; and not a rose can grow in nature but some seeing and knowing hyliard with his invisible pencill must draw it , and thus by his meer rash dictate do's he think he has dash'd out that long and rationall dogma in philosophy of the particular 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or rationes seminales . whose fondnesse in this groundlesse assertion it were easie to confute ; but he that will not bring any reasons for what he sayes , is not worthy to have any reasons brought against him . for as for that onely slight reason which he intimates , that the matter being contrived into such a rational or artificial disposure of parts , the immediate artificer thereof must have animadversion and reason in it , it is onely said , not proved , and will reach no further , but that the ratio seminalis must at least proceed from something that is knowing , and be in some sense rational , but not have reason and animadversion in it self . the like confidence and ignorance is repeated and insisted upon in the and pages : but i let them passe . observation . pag. , . these pages contain a certain preachment , which would have done well if it had been from some one that had more wit in knowing when to preach and when to hold his peace , and more charity to abstain from such undeserved chidings of aristotle . but your unmeasureable and unmercifull chastisings of him , and so highly advancing and soothing up your self in your own windy conceits and fluttering follies make all your serious applications ridiculous and ineffectual . observation . pag. . petition of st. augustine , a logica libera nos domine , lin . . assuredly , philalethes , ever since the church litanie was put down , has used this of st. augustine , and that with such earnestnesse and devotion that he has even extorted from heaven the full grant of his petition , and has become as free and clean from all sense and reason , as he is luxuriant and encumbred with disturbed and unsetled fancies and undigested imaginations . observation . pages . lin. . these three principles are the clav●s of all magick , &c. here philalethes like the angel of the bottomless pit , comes jingling with the keyes of magick in his hands . but he opens as hokus pokus do's his fists , where we see that here is nothing and there is nothing . but something he will seem to say , viz. that the first principle is one in one , and one from one . he that has so many years so devoutly pray'd against logick , do you expect when he speaks to hear reason ? this is as much as to say nothing . one in one , and one from one ? suppose a ripe apple should drop into the rotten hollow of the tree that bore it . is this apple your mysterious magical principle ? it may be that , as well as any thing else , by this description . for it is one apple , in one hollow , from one tree . o but he addes . it is a pure white virgin. some religious nun i warrant you . no she may not be a nun neither . for she is uxor dei & stellarum . it seems then , there is a kinde of plato's common-wealth betwixt god and the stars , and they have community of wives amongst them . but if she be so pure a virgin-wife as you make her , how come some of her husbands to wear horns as they doe , viz. aries , capricorn and others ? but is this to philosophize , or to play the theomagician , philalethes ! thus to tell us of virgins , or wives with white peticoats , or to tell us that from this one there is a descent into four , & c ? this is but idle treading of the air , and onely a symptome of a light swimmering fancy , that can have patience to write such hovering undeterminate stuffe as this , that belongs either almost to any thing or nothing . you even weary your reader out , philalethes ! with such metaphysicall dancings and airy fables . observation . pag. . lin. . this is a labyrinth and wilde of magick where a world of students have lost themselves . and you philalethes ! have not scaped scot-free . for you have lost your reason before as i told you , and your so much and so confidently conversing with mere unities and numbers , which in themselves design nothing , will teach you in time , to speak words without any inward phantasm of what you say . so that you shall bid fair for the losing of your fancy too , and then you will be as you are near it already , vox , praeterea nihil , a mere noise and clatter of words . lin. . it moves here below in shades and tiffanies , &c. what a description is this of the magicians fire ? i suppose you mean the magicians thais . it moves in shades , that is , ( for the text is very dark and wants a commentary ) in the evening or twilight . tiffanies , is plain english , but white etheriall vestures , must be white peticoats and white aprons , or else white aprons upon blew peticoats , and that she is exposed to such a publick prostitution passing through all hands , every one having the use of her body ; this theomagicians fire seems to me to be no other then some very common strumpet . but if you mean any thing but a strumpet , you have a wondrous infected fancy , that dresses up your theomagicall notions in such whorish attire . but of a sudden my theomagician has left those more grosse and palpable expressions , and now dances very high in the air quite out of the ken of our eye , like some chymicall spirit that has broke its hermeticall prison , and flown away out of the artist's sight and reach ; being farre more invisible and thin now , then the finest tiffany that ever took his sight , and more arid and slight then the faintest shade . i tell you once more , anthroposophus ! that ternaries , and qu●ternaries , and decads and monads , and such like words of number have no usefull sense nor signification , nor virtue , if unapplied to some determinate substance or thing . but our great theomagician having no project in this writing that i see , but to amaze the world , contents himself onely to rattle his chain , and to astonish the rude and simple as if some spirit or conjurer was at hand , and so those words that are most sonorous and consist of the greatest number of syllables , please him better , then what have more solid signification , and a more setled and sober sense . observation . pag. . lin. . he with the black spaniell . as for your ador'd magus with the black spaniell , and that dark disciple of libanius gallus , what i have said to you already , will serve here too . but my controversie is with you onely , philalethes ! a sworn enemy of reason and aristotle , and me thinks you are very like your self still in the twenty seventh page . observation . pag. . lin. . i am certain the world will wonder i should make use of scripture to establish philosophy , &c. here , philalethes , you seem self-condemned even from your own speech , being conscious to your self , that all the world will be against you in this superstitious abuse of the scripture . for are you wiser then all the world beside in this matter , because you have pray'd away all your logick in st. augustines letanie ? what profane boldnesse is this to distort that high majesty of the holy scripture to such poor and pitiful services , as to decide the controversies of the world and of nature ? as well becoming it is , as to set pies and pasties into the oven with the sacred leaves of the bible ? this is but a fetch of imperious melancholy and hypocriticall superstition , that under pretense of being more holy would prove more tyrannicall , and leave the understanding of man free in nothing at all , but bring in a philosophy too , iure divine ! and i can further demonstrate to you ( beside what i have intimated from the transcendency of the scripture , and high scope and aim thereof ) that the scripture teacheth no secret or principle of philosophy , of which there is any doubt amongst men in their wits . for either ( as where it seems to speak ex professo of any such things ) it do's it so obscurely that men rather father their own notions fetch'd from elsewhere , upon the scripture ; or else if it speak more plainly and litterally , yet it being allow'd by all sober men as well jews as christians , ( as it is indeed undeniably evident from the passages themselves in scripture ) that it speaks so ordinarily according to the rude and vulgar use & apprehension of men , there can be no deciding collections in matters of philosophy safely gathered out of it . though i will not deny but that some philosophick truths may have an happy and useful illustration and countenance from passages in scripture ; and their industry is not to be vilified that take any pains therein . but i do not believe that any man that has drove the proper use of the scripture home to the most full and most genuine effect of it in himself , but will be so wise and so discreet , that he will be ashamed in good earnest to allow any such philosophick abuse of it . but questionless the scripture is the beginner , nourisher and emprover of that life and light which is better then all the philosophy in the world . and he that stands in this light , the firmer and fuller he is possessed of it , he is the more able to judge both of nature , reason , and scripture it self . but he that will speak out of his own rash heat , must needs run the hazard of talking at randum . and this i make the bolder in charity to pronounce , because i observe that the reverentiall abuse , and religious misapplication of the holy writ to matters of philosophy , for which it was not intended , do's in many well-meaning men eat out the use of their reason , for the exercise whereof philosophy was intended . and hence so much spurious and fantastick knowledge multiplies now adayes , to the prejudice of mans understanding , and to the intangling him in vain and groundlesse imaginations , fortuitously sprung up from uncircumspect melancholy , dazled and stounded with the streamings and flashes of its own pertinacious fancy : which sometime is so powerful as to over-master the melancholist into a credulity , that these flarings of false light in his dark spirit are not from himself , but from a divine principle , the holy ghost . and then bidding a due to reason , as having got some principle above it , measures all truth merely by the greatnesse and powerfulnesse of the stroke of the phantasme . what ever fills the imagination fullest , must be the ●ruest . and thus a rable of tumultuary and crasse representations must go for so many revelations , and every heaving up by an hypochondriacall flatulency must be conceited a rapture of the spirit ; they professing themselves to receive things immediately from god , when they are but the casuall figurations of their anxious fancy , busily fluttering about the text ; which they alwayes eye ( though they dissemble it ) as hauks and buzzards , flie they never so high , have their sight bent upon the earth . and indeed if they should not forge their fancies into some tolerable suteablenesse with the letter of the scripture , they would never be able to believe themselves , or at least to beget belief in others , that they are inspired : and so that high conceit insinuated into them by that wonderfull yet ordinary imposterous power of melancholy would fall to nothing , and they appear not so much as to themselves either prophe●s or inspired . but this i have touched elsewhere . i will let it go . onely let me cast in thus much : that he that mis-believes and layes aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of reason , upon the praetence of hankering after some higher prinple , ( which a thousand to one proves but the infatuation of melancholy and a superstitious hallucination ) is as ridiculous as if he would not use his naturall eyes about their proper object till the presence of some supernaturall light , or till he had got a pair of spectacles made of the crystalline heaven , or of the coelum empyreum , to hang upon his nose for him to look through . the truth is , he that layes aside reason , casts away one of the most soveraign remedies against all melancholick impostures . for i conceive it would be very hard for men either to be deluded themselves , or to delude others by their conceited inspirations , if they would expect that every revelation should be made good either by sound reason , or a palpable and conspicuous miracle . which things if they were demanded of the inspired people when they come to seduce , surely they would sneak a way like the common fidlers , being asked to play a lesson on the organs , or on the theorbo . observation . pag. , . in the former page you could not part till you had made god and nature mysteriously kisse . in this , you metamorphize mercury and sulphur into two virgins , and make the sun to have more wives then ever solomon had concubines . every star must have in it , vxor solis . but what will become of this rare conceit of yours , if the stars themselves prove suns ? and men far more learned then your self are very inclinable to think so . but now he has fancied so many wives , he falls presently upon copulation helter skelter , and things done in private betwixt males and females , &c. verily , anthroposophus ! if you had but the patience to consider your own book seriously , and examine what philosophick truth you have all this while delivered since your contemning of aristotle's definition of nature , form , and soul ; you shall find in stead of his sober description from the proper operations and effects of things , nothing but a dance of foolish and lascivious words : almost every page being hung with lawns and tiffanies , and such like tapestry , with black shadowing hoods , white aprons and peticoats , and i know not what . and this must be a sober and severe tractate of anima abscondita . as if the soul were dressed in womans apparell , the better to be concealed , and to make an escape . and to as much purpose is your heaps of liquorsome metaphors , of kissing , of coition , of ejection of seed , of virgins , of wives , of love-whispers , and of silent embraces , and your magicians sun and moon , those two universall peers , male and female , king and queen regents , alwayes young and never old ; what is all this but a mere morris-dance and may-game of words , that signifie nothing , but that you are young , anthroposophus ! and very sportfull , and yet not so young but that you are marriageable , and want a good wife , that your sense may be as busie as your fancy about such things as those , and so peradventure in due time , the extravagancy of your heat being spent , you may become more sober . observation . pag. . lin. . it is light onely that can be truly multiplyed . but if you tell us not what this light is , we are stil but in the dark . i doe not mean whether light be a virgin or a wife , or whose wife , or what clothes she wears , tiffanies or cobweblawns , but in proper words what the virtue and nature of it is . whether corpus or spiritus , substance or accident , &c. but , anthroposophus ! you doe not desire at all to be understood , but please your self onely to rant it in words , which can procure you nothing but the admiration of fools . if you can indeed doe any thing more then another man , or can by sound reason make good any more truth to the world then another man can , then it is something ; if not , it is a meer noise and buzze for children to listen after . sect . iii. . certain notable quotations of eugenius his out of scripture and other writers . , he presages what ill acceptance his high mysteries will have with the school-divines . . he acknowledges the scriptures obscure and mystical . . some philosophers that have attain'd to the ternarius , could not for all that obtain the perfect medicine ; there being but six atuhors he ever met with that understood that mystery fully . . that this medicine transformes the body into a glorified state , and that the material parts are never seen more . the divine spirit swallowing them into invisibility . . he complains how ready the world will be to boy him out of countenance for his presumption in so high mysteries , especialy the reverend doctors , who , he says , sustain their gravity on these two crutches , pretended sanctity and a beard . . he advises us not to tamper with this theomagical medicine rashly . . adding a monition out of the poet. . that the spirit whereby a man becomes magically wise & a lawful worker of miracles , is the christian philosophers stone and the white stone . . he entreats the reader not to mistake him as if he had as yet attain'd to this stone , because god is no debtor of his . . he only affirmes himself to be an indicatour of it to others , as a mercury to a traveller on the way . . and that if you could show him one good christian capable of the secret , he would show him an infallible way to come by it . observation . pag. . from this page to the , you have indeed set down the most couragious and triumphant testimonies , and of the highest , and most concerning truth that belongs to the soul of man , the attainment whereof is as much beyond the philosophers stone , as a diamond is beyond a peble stone . but the way to this mystery lies in a very few words , which is , a peremptory & persistent unraveling & releasing of the soul by the power of god , from all touch and sense of sin and corruption . which every man by how much the more he makes it his sincere aim , by so much the more wise and discreet he will appear , and will be most able to judge what is sound and what is flatuous . but to deal plainly with you , my philalethes ! i have just cause to suspect that there is more wind then truth as yet in your writings . and that it is neither from reason nor from experience , that yon seem to turn your face this way ; but high things and fiery and sonorous expressions of them in authors , being sutable to your youthfulnesse and poetical phansie , you swagger and take on presently , as if , because you have the same measure of heat , you were of the same fraternity with the highest theomagicians in the world. like as in the story , where the apples & horsdung were caryed down together in the same stream , the fragments of horsdung cryed out , nos poma natamus . pardon the homelyness of the comparison . but you that have flung so much dirt upon aristotle , and the two famous universities , it is not so unjust if you be a little pelted with dung your self . observation . pag. . lin. . i know some illiterate school-divines , &c. he cannot be content to say any thing that he thinks is magnificently spoken , but he must needs trample upon some or other by way of triumph and ostentation , one while clubbing of aristotle , another while so pricking the schoolmen , and provoking the orthodoxe divines , that he conceits they will all run upon him at once , as the iews upon the young martyr st. steven , and stone him for his strange mysteries of his theomagick stone . truly , anthroposophus ! there are some good things fall from you in your own style , and many cited out of considerable authors , but you do so soil and bemar all with your juvenile immoralities and phantastries , that you lose as much in the one a you get in the other . observation . pag. . lin. . the scripture is obscure and mystical , &c. and therefore say i , philalethes ! a very uncertain foundation to build a philosophy on ; but indeed such a mystical philosophy as you would build , may be erected upon any ground , or no ground , may hang as a castle in the air . observation . pag. . lin. . i never met in all my reading but with six authors , &c. but how do you know that these six did perfectly understand the medicine , and this stupendious mystery , unlesse you understood it perfectly your selfe ? so that you would intimate to the world that you doe perfectly understand it . observation . lin. . after this the material parts are never more to be seen . this is the nature of the medicine then , not to rectifie a visible body but to destroy it . like the cure of the head-ake , by cutting off the neck . death indeed will cure all diseases . but you will say this is not death , but a change or translation . nor the other a medicine , but spiritus medicus . so that in multitude of words you doe but obscure knowledge . observation . pag. . lin. . boy me out of countenance , &c. here philalethes is mightily well pleased to think that one of his greenness of yeers should arrive to this miraculous ripenesse and maturity of knowledge in the most hidden mysteries of theosophy . and comparing himselfe with the reverend doctors , finds the greatest difference to be this , that they indeed have more beard , but he more wit. and i suppose he would intimate unto us , that they have so little wit that they know not the use of their own limbs . for if he make their beards their crutches , they cannot scape going on their heads , as if they were not inverted but rightly postured plants , or walking stipites . in good truth you are a notable wagg , philalethes ! observation . lin. . let me advise thee , i say , not to attempt any thing rashly . and i commend your wit , anthroposophus ! in this point . for you are so wary of putting your finger into the fire , that like the monkey you will rather use the cats foot then your own , as you will evidently show anon . observation . lin. . orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano . keep your self there philalethes ! 't is a great deal better peece of devotion then that of augustine , a logic â libera nos domine . observation . pag. . . lin. . this is the christian philosophers stone , and , this is the white stone . which you , philalethes ! have covered over with so much green mosse , that you have made it more hidden then ever before . having little will , and lesse power to show it , but in all likelyhood a great purpose of ostentating your self . observation . pag. . lin. . but reader ! be not deceived in me , i am not a man of any such faculties , &c. i warrant you , anthroposophus ! i am not so easily deceived in you . you have walked before me in very thin transparent tiffanies all this while ; or , if you will , danced in a net . i suspected you from the very first that you would prove so good and so wise as you now plainly professe your self . but that you are no better then you are , you say is because god is no debtor of yours . why ! do's god almighty run so much in some mens arrears that he is constrain'd to pawn to them that precious jewell , or to give them the white stone , to quit scores with them ? how far is this from popery , philalethes ! that you seem elsewhere so much to disclaim ? observation . lin. . i can affirme no more of my self , &c. right ! philalethes ! right ! your fancy was never so happy as in transfiguring your self into a wooden mercury , that points others the way which it self knows not , nor can ever goe , but stands stock still . observation . lin. . shew me but one good christian , &c. why ! then it seems philalethes ! that you are no good christian your selfe , and uncapable of the secret you are so free to impart to others . or it is your discretion to attempt nothing your selfe rashly , but as i said before to doe as the ape or monkey , take the cats foot to rake the chesnut out of the fire . sect . iv. , he speaks here of the natural coelestial medicine more ordinary then the former , which after the middle nature-fire is sublimed per trigonum & circulum and the terra media , which is betwixt the unarius and binarius , is separated from the magical compounded earth , becomes the true petra crystallina , a bright virgin earth , terra maga in aethere clarificata , carying in its belly wind and fire ; to which if you unite the heaven in a triple proportion , applying a generative heat to both , they will attract from above the star-fire of nature , and thus you shall have gloriam totius mundi , & fugiet à te omnis obscuritas . . though the law of nature be infallible in it self , yet god can repeal in particular what he has enacted in the general . . eugenius his slight ground of faith , which is the hope or desire that what we believe might be true . certain moral instructions of his to his student of magick . . his salutation of the river yska from whom he pretends to have learned many virtues . . he walks all night long by this river side a stargazing . . he endeavours to make his mind as cleer as yska's crystalline streams . . admires the lownesse of his banks . . as also their homely cloathing , one and the same all the yeer long . . he learns a lesson of simplicity from hence . . is transported in beholding the pure type of piety in the river . . is astonished at the benignity of his streams , they inriching those shoars that infringe their liberty by keeping them in their channel . . he takes instruction from the river to swim up to heaven in his tears , as the river runs down to the sea , but expresses himselfe so obscurely , that he seems to suppose the river to run to heaven to show him the way thither . observation . pag. . he tells us here an obscure aenigmatical story of attaining the natural coelestial medicine , and that without any retractation , as if he himself had been a potent and successeful operatour in the mysterie . but let me once more take notice of the fondness of this affected obscurity in words , that no man be any whit taken with that sleight of imposture , and become guilty of that passion of fools , causeless admiration . for the most contemptible notion in the world , may be so uncertainly and obscurely set out by universal and hovering tearms taken from arithmetick and geometry which of themselves signifie no real thing , or else from the catachrestical use of the terms of some more particular and substantial science , that the dark dresse thereof may bring it into the creditable suspicion o● proving some venerable mystery ; when as , ( if it were but with faithfulness and perspicuity discovered and exposed to the judgement & free censure of sober men ) it would be found but either some sorry incon●iderable vulgar truth , or light conjectural imagination , or else a ghastly prodigious lie . but say in good sadnesse , philalethes ! is not all this that you tattle in this page , a mere vapour and tempestuous buzz● of yours , made out of words you meet in books you understand not ? and casuall fancies sprung from an heedlesse brain ? is it any thing but the activitie of your desire to seem some strange mysterious sophist to the world ; and so to draw the eyes of men after you ? which is all the attraction of the star-fire of nature you aim at , or can hope to be able to effect . did your sculler , or shittle skull ever arrive at that rock of crystall you boast of ? or did you ever , saving in your fancie , soil that bright virgin earth ? did your eyes , hands , or experience ever reach her ? tell me what gyant could ever so lustily show you lincoln-calves , or hold you up so high by the eares , as to discover that terra maga in aethere clarificata . till you show your self wise and knowing in effect , give me leave to suspect you a mere ignorant boaster from your airy unsettled words . and that you have nothing but fire and winde in your brains , what ever your magicall earth has in its belly . observation . pag. . lin. . he can repeal in particular . now , anthroposophus ! you make good what i suspected , that is , that you do not tell us any thing of this coelestiall naturall medicine , of your own experience . for you being conscious to your self of being no good christian , as you confessed before , and god having not given so full a charter to the creature but he may interpose and stop proceedings , surely at least you had so much wit , as not to try where there was so just cause of fear of frustration and miscarriage . so that you go about to teach the world what you have not to any purpose learned your self . observation . lin. . and who is he that will not gladly believe , &c. a most rare and highly rais'd notion . you resolve then that holy expectancy of the saints of god concerning the life to come , into that fond kind of credulity and pleasant self-flattery , facilè credimus quod fieri volumus , and yet you seem to unsay it again toward the end of this period . and we will permit you , anthroposophus ! to say and unsay , to do and undo ; for the day is long enough to you , who by your magick and celestiall medicine are able to live till all your friends be weary of you . observation . pag. . in this whole page anthroposophus is very gnomicall and speaks aphorisms very gracefully . but as morall as he would seem to be , this is but a prelude to a piece of poetick ostentation , and he winds himself into an occasion of shewing you a paper of verses of his . if you do but trace his steps , you shall see him waddle on like some otter or water-rat and at last flounce into the river vsk. where notwithstanding afterward he would seem to dresse himself like a water-nymph at those crystall streams , and will sing as sweet as any siren or mermaid . and truly , master anthroposophus , if that heat that enforces you to be a poet , would but permit you in any measure to be prudent , cautiously rationall , and wise , you would in due time prove a very considerable gentleman . but if you will measure the truth of thing● by the violence and overbearing of fancy and windy representations , this amabilis insania will so intoxicate you , that to sober men you will seem little better then a refined bedlam . but now to the poetry it self . observation . pag. . 't is day my crystall vsk , &c. here the poet begins to sing , which being a sign of joy is intimation enough to us also to be a little merry . the four first verses are nothing else but one long-winded good-morrow to his dear yska . where you may observe the discretion and charity of the poet , who being not resaluted again by this master of so many virtues , the river vsk ; yet learns not this ill lesson of clownishnesse , nor upbraids his tutor for his rustici●y . was there never an eccho hard by to make the river seem affable and civil , as well as pure , patient , humble , and thankfull ? observation . lin. . and weary all the planets with mine eyes . a description of the most impudent star-gazer that ever i heard of , that can outface all the planets in one night . i perceive then , anthroposophus ! that you have a minde to be thought an astrologian as well as a magician . but me thinks , an hill had been better for this purpose then a river . i rather think that your head is so hot and your minde so ill at ease , that you cannot lie quiet in your bed as other mortals do , but you sleeping waking are carryed out , like the noctambuli in their dreams , and make up a third with will with , the wisp , and meg with the lanthorn , whose naturall wandrings are in marish places , and near rivers sides . observation . lin. ultima . sure i will strive to gain as clear a minde . which i dare swear you may do at one stroke , would you but wipe at once all your fluttering and fortuitous fancies out of it . for you would be then as clearly devoid of all shew of knowledge , as aristotle's abrasa tabula , or the wind , or the flowing , water of written characters . observation . pag. . lin. . how i admire thy humble banks ! why ! be they lower then the river it self ? that had been admirable indeed . otherwise i see nothing worthy admiration in it . observation . lin. . but the same simple vesture all the year . this river yska then i conceive , according to your geography , is to be thought to crawl under the aequatour , or somewhere betwixt the tropicks . for were it in great britain or ireland , certainly the palpable difference of seasons there , would not permit his banks to be alike clad all the year long . the fringe of reed and flagges , besides those gayer ornaments of herbs and flowers , cannot grow alike on your yskaes banks all summer and winter . so that you fancy him more beggerly then he is , that you may afterward conceit him more humble then he ought to be . observation . lin. . i 'le learn simplicity of thee , &c. that 's your modesty , anthroposophus ! to say so : for you are so learned that you may be a doctour of simplicity your self , and teach others . observation . lin. . let me not live , but i 'm amaz'd to see what a clear type thou art of pietie . how mightily the man is ravished with the contemplation of an ordinary water-course ! a little thing will please you i perceive , as it do's children , nay amaze you . but if you be so much inamoured on your yska , do that out of love that aristotle did out of indignation , embrace his streams , nay drown your self , and then you will not live . you are very hot antroposophus ! that all the cool air from the river yska will not keep you from cursing your self , with such mortall imprecations . observation . lin. . why should thy flouds enrich those shores , &c. why ! how now ! what 's the matter , philaleehes● that you and the banks no better agree ? if you could so soon fall into the river as you fall out with the shore , you would to your great honour like aristotle , be drown'd indeed . in good truth you are a very sickle-headed gentleman , philalethes ! thus in a moment to reproach what you did so highly admire even now , viz. the banks of yska , which you then made so simple , so humble , and so innocent , that you fancied them an eximious pattern of those virtues for your self to imitate . but now all of a sudden , your poeticall rapture i suppose spoiling your memory , you sling durt on those banks that before you looked on as holy ground ; and accuse them of injury , tyranny , and cruelty against the streams of your beloved yska . but any ordinary advocate may easily make good the banks part against the river . for i say unto thee , o thou man of light imaginations ! that the banks of yska are just , in keeping but the ground that ever was allotted them ; but where ever they have lost ground , it is the violence and the usurpation of the injurious river , that has worn them away and overrunne them in an hostile manner . besides i say , that the banks aforesaid are very charitable and pious as well as just , and do not return revenge for injury . for whereas the aforesaid river , both by open force and secret undermining , doth dayly endeavour to wear away and destroy the banks , and encroach upon the neighbouring ground , ( which attempt is as sottish and foolish as unjust , for so the river would be lost and drunk up by the earth ; nor can there be any river without banks , more then an hill without a valley ; ) yet notwithstanding all this provocation of the river aforesaid , the banks are so patient , charitable , and of so christian-like nature , that they preserve in being and good plight their inveterate enemy , and keep up that carefully and stoutly in its right form and perfection , that daily practises and plots their expected destruction . what do you answer to this , philalethes ! all that virtue and piety which you fancie in the river , you see now plainly growing upon the banks . so that you may gather it , if you have a minde to it , without wetting your finger . observation . lin. ultima . help me to runne to heavon , as thou dost there . ha , ha , he ! why ! i pray thee , do's yska run to heaven there ? no it runs down into the sea , as the devils and the heard of swine did ; whither i hope you do not desire to go for company , philalethes ! but i wonder you being a whole day and a night on the banks of yska , that no fish not so much as a small stittlebag has leapt up into your fancie all this time . you might have learned many rare lectures of moralitie from them too . as for example ; in stead of due vigilancie you might learn from the fishes eyes never closing , to sleep and dream waking ; or in stead of being mute as a fish when you have nothing to say , to say nothing to the purpose , or to expresse your self as unintelligibly as if you had said nothing . but these and the like accomplishments naturally growing in you , you wanted no outward emblems to reminde you of them , so that i hold you here excusable . but before i leave this rare poem of yours , let me onely take notice thus far : that your leyitie and fantastrie do's much eclipse the glorious suspicion of your theomagicall facultie . for it will seem very incredible that so light and fancifull a poet should ever prove a grave and wonder working magician . sect . v. . he recommends the walking and meditating by river sides and in groves . . he discredits all modern writers saving michael sendivow and the authour of physica restituta . . he taxes that incomparable philosopher des-cartes , as if he wrote nothing but whimzies . . he conceits himself to have been strutting on the stage all this while in the view of the world , but at last gives place to the next actor . . he suspects some peripatetick will take the next turn , whom he professes he shall at all adventures receive with scorn and laughter . . he takes it for granted that whosoever shall presume to write against him , will but prove himself a fool , and professes that the best way to convince such is to neglect them . observation . pag. . l. . this is the way i would have thee walk in &c. viz. in majestick groves , and woods , and by river sides . you are not then i perceive , an anti-peripatetick , philalethes ! though you be so violent an anti-aristotelean . but with such pompous gravitie to give such slight precepts as of walking by rivers sides and in groves , &c. argues more then enough of moping distempered melancholie in you , and that it may , if you take not heed , make you indulge so much to delusive fancie , that you will be never able to set your eye again upon solid reason , but range and ramble like one lost in a wood. observation . lin. . to trust no modern but mich. sendivow , and physica restituta . how mightily are these two heholden to you , philalethes , if you had but so many grains of judgement and discretion as to make you able to passe sentence upon any considerable authour ? but what do you mean by trusting ? to give faith and credence to them as to holy writ ? if so , i perceive you have also a triplicity of bibles , viz. the usuall one , mich. sendivow , and physica restituta . but we ordinary mortalls hope to be as wise and as happy with our single one , as you with your advantage of three . observation . lin. . with the whymzies of des-cartes . this young man has as little manners as wit , to speak thus reproachfully of the most admirable philosophie , that ever yet appeared in these european parts since noahs floud . certainly , anthroposophus ! you are set upon it to demonstrate your self a pure pitifull novice in knowledge , whom onely ignorance makes so magisterially confident . but for thy want of due sagacitie , i will take thee by the nose , o philalethes , with this one dilemma , which shall pinch thee as hard , as st. dunstan did the roring fiend with a red-hot pair of tongs . thus ; either thou hast read des cartes his naturall philosophie , or thou hast not . if thou hast read it , thus to contemn it and term it a whymzie , ( whereas there was never any thing proposed to the world in which there is more wary , subtil , and close contexture of reason , more coherent uniformitie of all parts with themselves , or more happy conformitie of the whole with the phaenomena of nature ) is to proclaim to all that understand des-carte's philosophie , that thou hast a very broken , impatient , and unsteddie apprehension , or a very dull and slow wit , and such as cannot discern when it lighteth upon what is most exactly rationall , and when not . but what is most exactly rationall , as his philosophie indeed is to any competent judge of reason , is least of all whymzicall ; but whymzies more naturally lodge in their brains that are loosly fancifull , not in theirs that are mathematically and severely wise . so that this reproach returns upon thine own addle pate , o inconsiderate philalethes ! but if thou didst never read his philosophie , and yet pronouncest thus boldly of it ; that is not onely impudently uncivil , but extremely and insufferably unjust . observation . pag. . lin. . i will now withdraw , and leave the stage to the next actour . exit tom fool in the play . observation . lin. . some peripatetick perhaps whose sic probo shall serve me for a comedie . so it seems if a man had seriously argued with you all this time , you would onely have returned him laughter in stead of a solid answer , and so from tom fool in the play , you would have become a naturall fool. but we have had the good hap to prevent you , & in stead of sic probo's , to play the fool for company , that is , to answer a fool according to his foolishnesse , that is , to rail and call names , and make ridiculous . into which foolish postures as often as i have distorted my self , so often have i made my self a fool that you may become wise , and amend that in your self , that you cannot but dislike in me . nor would i ever meddle with you , as merry as i seem , but upon this and the like serious intentions . and must needs reckon it amongst the rest of your follies , that you expected that some severe peripatetick would have laid batterie against you , with syllogisme upon syllogisme , and so all confuted your book , that there had not been left one line entire . but assure your self philalethes ! the peripateticks are not altogether given so much to scolding , that they will contest with a shadow , or fight with the winde . nor so good marks-men , as to level at a wilde-goose flying . you are so fluttering and unsettled in your notions , and obscure in your terms , that unlesse you will be more fixt , and sit fair , and draw your wood-cocks head out of the bush or thicket , they will not be able to hit your meaning . which i suspect you will never be perswaded to do , that you may keep your self more secure from gunshot . observation . lin. . and the best way to convince fools , &c. how wise anthroposophus is to what is evil ! here he makes sure of calling him fool first who ever shall attempt to write any thing against his book . but it is no such mischief , anthroposophus ! to be called fool . the worst jest is when a man is so indeed . and if you had but the skill to winnow away all the chaffe of humorous words and uncouth freaks and fetches of fancie , and affected phrases , which are neither the signes nor causes of any wisdome in a man ; all that will be left of this learned discourse of yours , will prove such a small mo●tie of that knowledge your presumptuous mind conceited to be in her self , that you would then very sadly of your own accord ( which would be your first step to become wise indeed ) confesse your self a fool. and this i understand of your knowledge in nature . now for that in moralitie ; it is true , you often take upon you the gravitie to give precepts of life , as especially in the and pages of this tractate . but you do it so conceitedly , with such chiming and clinching of words , antithetal librations , and symphonical rappings , that to sober men you cannot but seem rather like some idle boy playing on a pair of knick-knacks to please his own ear and fancie , then a grave moralist speaking wholesome words and giving weightie counsel of life and manners . so that the best that you do , is but to make the most solemn things ridiculous , by your apish handling of them . i suppose because a religious humour has been held on in some treatises , with that skill and judgement , or at least good successe , that it has won the approbation and applause of most men ; an eager desire after fame has hurried you out upon the like attempt . and though you would not call your book religio magici , as that other was religio medici ; yet the favourable conceit you had of your own worth , made you bold to vie with him , and in imitation of that , you have stuffed your book here and there with a tuft of poetrie , as a gammon of bacon with green hearbs , to make it tast more savourly . but all will not do , poor magicus ! for now your designe is discovered , you are as contemptible as any juggler is before him that knows all his tricks aforehand . and you run the same fortune that aesop's asse , who ineptly endeavouring to imitate the courtship and winning carriage of his masters fawning and leaping spaniel , in stead of favour found a club for his rude performance . but you , magicus ! do not onely paw ill-favouredly with your fore-feet , but kick like mad with your hinder feet , as if you would dash out al the aristoteleans brains . and do you think that they are all either so faint-hearted , that they dare not , or so singularly moralized , that socrates-like , if an asse kick they will not kick again ? yes certainly next to your self they are as like as any to play the asses , and to answer you kick for kick , if you will but stand fair for them . but you h●ve got such a magicall sleight of hiding your head , and nipping in your buttocks , like the hob-gobling that in the shape of an horse dropt the children off one by one off his tail into the water , that they cannot finde you out nor feel whereabout you would be , else certainly they would set a mark upon your hinder parts . for if i , my dear eugenius ! who am your brother philalethes , am forced out of care and judgement to handle you so seeming harshly and rigidly as i do , what do you think would become of you , si incideres in ipsas belluas , if you should fall amongst the irefull aristoteleans themselves ? would you be able to escape alive out of their hands ? wherefore good brother philalethes ! hereafter be more discreet , and endeavour rather to be wise then to seem so , and to quit your self from being a fool , then to fancy the aristoteleans to be such . finis . upon the authors generous designe , in his observations , of discovering and discountenancing all mysteriously masked non-sense , and imposturous fancy ; the sworn enemies of sound-reason and truth . nobly design'd ! let not a sunday sute make us my gaffer for my lord salute : nor his saints cloathes deceive , o comely dresse ! like to a long-lane doublets wide excesse . how like a sack it sits ? less far would fit , did he proportion but his garb and wit. the wight mistakes his size , each wiseman sees his mens fourteens shrink to a childrens threes . fill out thy title , man ! think'st thou canst daunt by pointing to the sword of iohn of gaun● ? thou canst not wield it yet ; an emptie name do's no more feats then a meer painted flame . rare soul ! whose words refin'd from flesh and blood are neither to be felt nor understood : but if they sacred be , because not sense ; to bedlam , sirs ! the best divines come thence . your new-found lights may like a falling starre , seem heavenly lamps , when they but gellies are . an high swoln wombs bid fair , but time grown nigh the promis●d birth proves but a tympanie . should superstition , what it most doth fly , seek to take shelter in philosophy ? and sacred writ , sole image of sure truth , be pull'd by th'nose by every idle youth ? and made to bend as seeming to incline to all the fooleries hee 'l call divine ? find out the word in scripture , all is found swarms of conceits buzze up from this one ground . as if the cobler all his trade would show from mention made of gibeon's clouted shooe : or bakers their whole art at large would read from the short record of the mouldy bread. is this the spirit ? thus confus'dly mad ? antipodal to him the chaos had ? fell boistrous blast ● that with one magick puff turns the schools glory to a farthing snuff● and 'gainst that ancient sage the world adores , like to a lapland whirlewind loudly roares . yet from thy travels in the search of things , ridiculous swain ! what shallow stuff thou bring'st ! what cloaths they wear , vails , tiff'nies , dost relate , thou art philosophies tom coriat . else brave des cartes , whom fools cannot admire , had nere been sindg'd by thy wild whimzie fire . poor galen's antichrist● though one purge of his might so unmagick thee as make thee wise . physick cures phrenzie , knows inspired wit o●t proves a meer hypochondriack fit . agrippa's cur sure kennels in thy weamb , thou yelpest so and barkest in a dream ; or if awake , thou dost on him so fawn , and bite all else that hence his dog th' art known . but i will spare the lash , t' was my friends task who rescuing truth engag'd put on this mask . thus do's some careful prince disguised goe , to keep his subjects from the intended blow ; nor could his lofty soul so low descend , but to uncheat the world ; a noble end ! and now the night is gone , we plainly find 't was not a light but rotten wood that shin'd . we owe this day ( my dearest friend ) to thee , all eyes but night-birds now th' imposture see . i. f. finis . the second lash of alazonomastix ; conteining a solid and serious reply to a very uncivill answer to certain observationsupon anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . proverb . he that reproves a scorner , gets to himself a blot . ecclesiastic . be not proud in the device of thine own mind , lest thy soul rend thee as a bull. london , printed by i. flesher . . to his singularly accomplish'd friend mr. iohn finch . sir , i know that your modesty cannot but be much amazed at this unexpected dedication . but the causes once discovered admiration will cease . eugenius , as children use to do ( who fallen into the dirt by their own folly , commonly make a lamentable complaint to their father or mother against them that help them up , as if they had flung them down ) has told a hideous story to his tutour , as if i had soyl'd him and dirtied him , when as i onely reminded him that he lay in the dirt , which in this case is all one as to help him out of it . wherefore , that i might hold up the humour every way of opposing my adversary ( as i must for fashion-sake call him ) he making his false and grievous accusation to his tutour , i thought fit to direct this my true and pleasant reply to you my pupil . but if i should say , that this is so much as the least part of what moved me to this act , i confesse i should dissemble . for to say nothing of the noblenesse of your descent , which is held ordinarily a sufficient ground for such a respect as this : it is indeed the sweetness and candour of your nature , your great civility and pleasantnesse of conversation , your miraculous proficiencie in the choicest parts of philosophy , your egregious perspicacity and kindly wit , your generous freedome of spirit , and true noblenesse of mind ( whom the surly countenance of sad superstition cannot aw , but the lovely face of virtue , and radiant beauty of divine knowlodge do most potently command to approve and prosecute what is really best ) that has extorted this testimony of love and respect from your affectionate friend to serve you , alaz . philalethes . to his learned friend alazonomastix philalethes , upon his reply . dear friend ! as oft as i with care peruse this strange reply of thine , i cannot chuse but wonder at thy rare complexion , where wit , mirth , iudgement thus conspire in one . where inspirations which make others mad , unto thy reason , grace and credit add ; and passion , that like dungeon dark , do's blind , proves the free fiery chariot of thy mind . go surly stoick , with deep furrowed brow , natures rude pruner , that wilt not allow what 's right and good . here nought too much appears , unlesse on thy shorn head thine own large ears . since mastix merry rage , all now believe passion 's an arm of man , no hanging sleeve . brave generous choler ! whose quick motions pierce swift like the lightning through the universe ; and in their hasty course as on they fare , do clense mens souls of vice , as that , the air. noble contention ! which like brushing winds that sweep both land and sea , doth purge our minds . it is thy free and ever-active fire that rooseth men from snorting in the mire : and roos'd , thy aw makes them to tread the stage in a due order and right equipage . thy hiss more dreadfull is then wounding sting of serpents teeth , that certain death do bring : and conscious souls start at thy laughter loud as at a thunder-clap broke from a cloud , when jove some flash of world rebuking wit le ts flie , and faultlesse gods all laugh at it : for so ridiculous vice in ugly guize is made the sport and pastime of the wise . but when fond men themselves to their own face have their foul shapes reflected , the disgrace and conscience of deformity so stings their gauled minds , and fretted entrayls wrings , that even grown wild with pain in vain they tire themselves to shake off this close searching fire ; that sticks like burning pitch , and makes them wood as hercules wrapt in the centaurs blood . this is thy fate , eugenius ! thy odde look reflected to thy self from mastix book has so amaz'd thee with the sudden glance , that all thy wits be struck into a trance . but grief and vengeance thou dost so revive , as if to them alone thou wert alive . and onely takest care with language foul to soil his person , that would clense thy soul. thus the free chearfull sun with his bright rayes shines upon dunghils , fens , and foul high wayes , while they return nought back for his pure beams but thick unwholsome mysts and stinking steams . but yet at length near his meridian height dispells the morning-fogs by fuller light . go on brave mastix then , those noysome fumes thy first appearance rais'd , sure this consumes . johannnes philomastix . to the reader . reader , if thou hast perused my observations upon the two magicall treatises of eugenius philalethes , and his answer to them , i do not doubt but that seeming and personated sharpnesse of mine will now seem just nothing at all , to thy indifferent judgement ; if thou compare it with his unchristian bitternesse and inhumane railings against me . for mine own part , i was so farre from all malice , that if i have trespassed , it was from that over-pleasantnesse of temper i was in , when i wrote : which made me perhaps too heedlesse how much i might displease the party with whom i dealt , being secure of the truth of that saying in the poet , — ridentem dicere verum quis vetat ? — but i find that i have so nettled him unawares , as if his senses lay all in his backside , and had left his brains destitute : which hath made him very ill-favouredly wrong both himself , the rod , and the correctour . verily if i had thought his retentive faculty had been so weak , i would not have fouled my fingers with medling with him . nor would i now lay on this second gentle lash ( i seeing the disposition of my young eugenius ) if it were not as well to wipe my self , as to whip him . i could have been content to have been represented to the world as ignorant of nature and philosophy , as he hath by his bold and very bad speeches to me , endeavoured to represent me . for i am not bound in conscience to know nature , but my self ; nor to be a deep philosopher ; but to be and approve my self a plain and honest christian. this forced me to this reply . but i thought fit to cast in also , what will prove me no lesse a philosopher then no rayler . but i am not contented to justifie my self onely from the successe ; but to thy further satisfaction , i shall not think much to acquaint thee with my purposes and principles . the truth is , eugenius , though he be so highly conceited of himself , that he thinks his worth is great enough to contract my envy ; yet he is so little in my eyes , and my self ( i thank god ) so little envious , that in this regard he is not at all considerable to me . but my drift was to whip that genius & dispensation he is for the present under , upon eugenius his own back , as having deserved to be an instrument to so good an end . and i perswade my self there are those parts and that freedome in some measure already in this young philosopher , that in a little time he will say that he deserved this correction , and will laugh for company at the merry punishment , and will freely confesse that i am his brother philalethes , a lover of him and of truth : and that he that whipped the money-changers out of the temple , is as much the first mastix , as adam the first magicus . but for the present he is under that dispensation which is as pernicious to the nature of man and christianity it self , as it is , to the sober and wise , ridiculous . for he is even in a feaverish thirst after knowledge and fame , and ( as he hath made it manifest to t●e world ) more after fame by farre then knowledge . wherefore , i observing in his theomagicall tumour and loftinesse nothing but confident misapplying or conceitedly interpreting the holy writ , ( the drift and meaning whereof is farre above all naturall philosophy or tricks of magick whatsoever ) and then sleighting and scorning those that , i dare say , he doth not understand , who yet are very rationall and intelligible , i mean such as des cartes : and down-right rayling against the aristoteleans and galenists , who yet have many sober and usefull truths amongst them : moreover , i noting a melancholick , flatuous and heedlesse fancy to appear in his writings , clothed with sonorous and amazing terms , such as might rather astonish the ignorant , then teach the docible : adde unto all this , that it is too too common a disease now adayes to be driven by heedlesse intoxicating imaginations under pretense of higher strains of religion and supernaturall light , and by bidding adieu to sober reason and a purified minde , to grow first fanaticall , and then atheisticall and sensuall , even almost to the height of abhorred gnosticisme : i thought in good earnest it was very fit , out of my indignation to foolery and imposture , out of my detestation to beastlinesse , atheisme , and sensuality , and lastly out of that honourable respect and tender affection i bear to the plainnesse and simplicity of the life of christ and true divine wisdome , to take occasion to write in such a manner as i did , and to discountenance that genius , that defaces the new appearing face of christendome , and is a reproach to that just liberty that belongs to all those that seek after god in sincerity and truth . i but you will say , this indeed may be well meant : bu● what title or right have you to intermeddle , or to correct another mans follies ? this is usurpation and incivility . to this may many things be answered . it is true ; the inward rottennesse of men hath made very smooth laws to themselves in favour of their own follies and vices , and mutuall connivence at what is bad is held the best manners ; as if mankind pack'd and conspired together to keep wickednesse warm in her usurped seat by never taking the boldnesse to examine her title . but to judge more charitably of the generations of men , i think it is more out of self-love , then love to her , and out of a tender dotage toward this imposturous knot of atoms , our earthly personality . which yet i thought i was more favourable to here , having to do onely with fictitious names , not any known person . but it doth not follow , though this be the mode , that therefore it is the right fashion : and quando ego non curo tuum , nè cura meum , is but surlily said of the old man in the comedy . that 's the principle of cain , am i my brothers keeper ? there was more divine generosity in that noted cynick , then in civility it self , when it is so soft that it will not prick nor hurt vice . he would not spare to speak where things went amisse , however he sped for it ; tanquam pater omnium , tanquam frater omnium , as they report of him . and i think i have sped ill enough for my but seasonable speaking . but if this be to appeal to too high a law , i answer further , that eugenius had forfeited his priviledges he might claim by the laws of civility , he himself having so uncivilly dealt with others that are above all comparison better then he . i but you 'll say , why do you make him so ridiculous in your reproving him ? single reproof had been enough . i answer , i did not make him ridiculous , but found him so . he put on himself the pyde coat , and i onely drew aside the curtain . did not the thracian girl rightly laugh at thales when she see him stumble into a ditch , whiles he was staring up at the starres ? and are not they as ridiculous , that pretend to seraphick mysterious theories , and are not masters yet of common sense and plamest truths of christianity ? that stumble at the threshold , or rather grope for the dore as the blinded sodomites ? all the faculties of man are good in themselves , and the use of them , is at least permitted to him , provided that with seasonable circumstances and upon a right object . and i have made it already manifest that my act was bounded with these cautions . i , but there is yet something behind unsatisfied . though eugenius be ridiculous ; yet is it not ridiculous , for one that pretends so much to the love of christianitie as your self , so publickly to laugh at him ? that pinches indeed . why ! am i so venerable a personage ? i am sure i never affected to seem any such to the world yet . i wear no sattin ears , nor silk cap with as many seams as there are streaks in the back of a lute . i affect neither long prayers , nor a long beard , nor walk with a smooth-knobbed staff to sustain my gravity . if i be a precisian , as eugenius would have me , it must be from hence , that i precisely keep my self to the naked truth of christianity . as for sects , ceremonies , superstitious humours , or specious garbs of sanctimony , i look on them all , if affected , as the effects of ignorance , or masks of hypocrisie . and thus am i 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a gentleman in querpo , a meer man , a true man , a christian . one that never thinks himself so great , as to grow unweildy and unready to put himself into any shape or posture for a common good . and i prethee , reader , why may not such a christian as this laugh ? or tell me , who is he in heaven that laughs them to scorn , that has the opposers of the reigne of christ in derision ? god is not a man that he should laugh , no more then cry or repent , as much as concerns thē divine essence it self : but as god is in a deiform man , he may be said to laugh , and he can be said to laugh no where else . and if he might , yet that which is attributed to god , though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , cannot mis-become a good man. thus reader , is your argument again●● laughing as solidly argued as sportingly laughed out of countenance ; and affected austerity made ridiculous by the plain and unaffected reasonings of eugenius his merry adversary , but your sober and serious friend alazonomastix philalethes . to eugenius philalethes . eugenius , the reason why you heard not from me sooner , is because yours arrived to my hands later then i exspected . it was so hot , it seems , that none of my acquaintance had so hard and brawny fingers as to indure the dandling of this glowing coal till its conveyance where you would have it . it is a brand from that fire , that hath not onely cal●ined , but so vitrif●ed eugenius that it hath made him transparent to all the world . all men may see now through his glassy sides how unevenly and disorderly his black heart beats and pants ; they need not feel his pulse to find his distemper● aesops fair water but a little warmed hath proved a very ●ffectuall emet●ck , for thee , o philalethes , and hath made thee vomit up thy shame and folly in the sight of the world , as his accu●er did the figs before his master . so that that which you falsly supposed me to have e●deavoured , you have fatally brought upon your self , above the desire , i should think , of your bitterest enemies ; i am sure beyond the expectation of me that am your reall friend . i did not endeavour your personall disgrace , but the discountenancing of that , which in my judg●ment is the disgrace of your person and many other persons besides . and now that you have done me the greatest despight you can imagine , and show'd your malice to the full● so that in the court of heaven and according to the doctrine of christ you are no better then a murderer , yet for all this i am benignly affected t● you still , and wish you as much good , as i do those that never endeavoured to provoke me . and really i speak it from my soul , if it lay in my power to do it , you should find it . but for the pres●nt , i could in my judgement do nothing more proper , considering all circumstances , then what i have done , and still do , in advertising you of what is for the best . and truly , ( looking upon you in some sort as a noctambulo , one that walks in his sleep ) that book which hath proved so mischievous a scandal , i intended onely for a stumble to wake you , ( that you might shrugg and rub your eyes , and see in what a naked condition you are , ) not a stone of offense for you to fall upon and hurt you . but you are fallen and hurt , and yet do not awake , as if mercuries rod , or i know not what other force of magick , still held fast your eyes . you onely mutter against the present disturbance , as one shogged while he dreams upon his pillow , but you still sleep . you cry out as one cramp'd in your bed , but your closed sight can not discern whether it be a friend in sport or for better purpose , or whether it be your foe to torture you . awake eugenius ! awake , behold , it is i , your sportfully troublesome friend , or what you will in due time acknowledge , though in this present drowsie humour you puff at it , and kick against it , your carefull and vigilant brother alazonomastix philalethes . ¶ the second lash of alazonomastix . sect . i. mastix sports himselfe with eugenius his title-page [ the man-mouse taken in a trap , &c. ] taxes his indiscretion for dedicating so foul a paper to his grave tutor . sleights his friends poetry . apologizes for his own liberty of speech . vindicates himselfe from that unjust aspersion of being uncivil or immoral by answering to every particular passage alledged against him out of his observations . declares the true causes of his writing against eugenius . and now , eugenius , if it be as lawfull to speak to one asleep , as it was for diogenes to talk to pillars and posts that are not in a capacity of ever being awake : let me tell you ( to begin with your title-page first ) that you doe very much undervalue and wrong your selfe , that you being a gentleman of that learning and parts that you are , you will thus poorly condescend to that contemptible trade of a mous-catcher : and that you are not content to abuse your self onely , but you doe abuse scripture too , by your ridiculous applying st. pauls fighting with beasts at eph●sus , to your combating with , and overcoming of a mouse . truly , philalethes , i think , they that have the meanest opinion of you , would give you their suffrage for a taller office then this , and adjudge you at least worthy of the place of a rat-catcher . as for your epistle dedicatory , i conceive you have a very indulgent tutor , else you would not be so bold to utter so foul language in his hearing . you have a very familiar friend of him , if you can without breach of civilitie thus freely vomit up your figs into his bosome . but for p. b. of oxenford his verses , i will only set this one verse of virgil's against them all ; qui bavium non odit , amet tua carmina maevi . thus you sre how gladly i would rid my selfe of all your foul language and fooleries . i have nimbly run through these . i shall leap over the rest as so many dirty ditches . your slovenly speeches and uncivil raylings , you must seek an answer for them in billingsgate or amongst the butchers ; nobis non licet esse tam disertis . but where you bring any thing that bears any shew of reason with it , i will ( though it be far below me to answer so foul a mouth ) return what in the judgment of the sober , i hope will not fail to be approved as satisfactorie . pag. , and . in these pages yo● accuse me of very high incivility and immorality . and it is an accusation worth the answering , especially being set off with that great aggravation of being committed against one that is a christian. but verily , philalethes . i doe not meet with any man now that takes you to be such , after this specimen , as i call it , of your kainish and unchristian dealing with me , whom indifferent judges will not think to have deserved the hundredth part of this revenge . i tell thee , eugenius , there is no christian but who is partaker of the holy unction , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of the divine nature , and of that pure and peaceable love . but if thou thinkest thy meer baptisme will make thee a christian ( while in the mean time thy heart is possessed of uncleannesse and hatred , which the law of christ interprets murder ) the heathen poet is able to shew thee thy grosse errour in this point ; ah nimium faciles ! qui tristia crimina caedis flumine â tolli posse putatis aquâ , oh fools and credulou● ! that think you may by water wash sad guilt of blood away . but to the accusation and charge it selfe which is this , that i say you are simon magus-like , a heated noddle , a mome , a mimick , an ape , a meer animal , a snail , a philosophick hog , a nip-crust , a pick-pocket , a niggard , tom fool with a devils head and horns , one that desires to be a conjurer more then a christian. this is the first part of your charge . but before i answer to the particulars of it , or proceed to the other , these two things are to be noted ; first , that you have drained all the sharper humour that was but thinly dispersed through the body of my book into two narrow places , that you may make them appear like two angry boyls , or malignant pushes in the bodie which if it were done in the soundest bodie that is there would be the like seeming distemper . se●ondly , it is to be considered that i did profess that i would put my self in some seeming posture of harshnesse and incivilitie , that i might shew you your own real miscarriage to others , by imitating and personating the same toward your self . but the thing that i contend for now , is , that this persona●ed incivilitie and harshnesse of mine is nothing so harsh and uncivil as you doe here make it , as will appear from the causes or occasional circumstances of this hard language you have thus culled out . for to begin with the first ; you having a designe to seem no small thing in the world , and also pretending to magick ; how easily● how naturally does it fall into the mind of a man , to compare you to simon magus in these regards ? and if you did not walk as all touchy proud men doe , as it were with their skins flean off , such a light thing as this would not smart nor hurt you so sore . heated noddle . that 's the onely mischief of it that it is true , and your flame and smoke is as conspicuous as that of aetna and vesuvius : — quis enim celaverit ignem ? enitet indicio prodita flamma suo . for who can fire conceal ? whose flame shoots out and shining shews it self to all about . as your heat and fire has sufficiently done , especially in this your last against me , to your great credit ; i am sure to mine , for you have writ so , as if you intended to save me from all suspicion of being mistaken in you . a mome , a mimick , and an ape . i onely said that you were more like those then aristotle : and if you distrust my judgement , i pray you aske any body else . and to call you a meer animal occasionally in our dispute , whether the world be an animal or no ; what rudenesse is there in it ? worse then this is held no incivility between those two famous phlosophers cardan and scaliger , whom your magisterialnesse has made bold to use at least as coursely as i seem to have used you . but you would it seems have the whole monopoly of reprehension to your selfe . and much good may it do you eugenius ! my generous liberty of speech has been so well entertained by ●ome in the world that i shall take up that prudential resolution for the future , si populus decipi vult , decipiatur . a snail . but that a poor snail should stick in your stomach so , philalethes , i much wonder at it . certainly as fair as you bid for a magician , yet i perceive you will be no gypsie by your abhorrencie from this food . but a philosophick hog : there 's a thwacking contumely indeed . truly you are young , eugenius : and i pray you then please your selfe , if you had rather be called a philosophick pig . but then you would be afraid that some presbyterian may click you up for a tithe-pig , and eat you . ( this is a pig of your own sow , philalethes , a piece of your own wit. ) but being a philosophick pig you may be secure : that 's too tough meat for every countrey presbyter . but i prethee phil. why art thou so offended at the term of philosophick hog ? the meaning is onely , that thou wouldst pretend to see invisible essences , as that creature is said to see the wind . dos christ call himselfe thiefe , when he says his coming shall be as a thiefe in the night ? peace for shame caviller , peace . niggard and nip-crust , viz. of your theomagical notions . that 's all i said , and i am such a nip-crust and niggard of my speech , that i will say no more . pick-poket , to this i answer fully at observ. . where i shew thee that there being no suspicion at all of any such fact in you , it makes the conceit harmlesse and without scurrility . and as little scurrilous is that which follows , viz. tom fool with the devils head and horns . for my speaking of it in such such sort as i did , implies onely that i look upon you , as a merry wag , playing the child and fooling behind the hangings , and putting out your head by fits , with a strange vizard to scare or amaze your familiar comrades and companions . and i pray you what bitternesse is in all this ? but you have made the foulest , ugliest vizard for me in this your book , and put it on my head , to make the world believe that i were both fool and devil incorporate into one person . and this you have done out of malice , magicus , and implacable revenge . but i wish you had some black bag or vail , to hide your shame from the world : that is the worst i wish you . one that desires to be a conjurer more then to be a christian : if you like not conjurer write exorcist . that 's all i would have meant by it . there is a conjuring out as well as conjuring up the devil . and i wish you were good at the former of these , for your own sake . but now to apply my emollient to the other boyl you have made in the body of my little book . you have made the sharp humour swell into this second bunch by your unnatural draining . a fool in a play , a iack-pudding , a thing wholly set in a posture to make the people laugh , a giddy phantastick conjurer , a poor kitling , a calfshead , a pander , a sworn enemy to reason , a shittle scull , no good christian , an otter , a water-rat , will with the wisp , and meg with the lan●horn , tom fool in a play , a natural fool . a fool in a play , a iack-pudding , &c. let the reader consult the place if there be not a seasonable occasion of reminding you of your over much lightnesse , you taking so grave a task upon you as to be a publick professor of theomagicks . a giddy fantastick conjurer . no conjurer there but a phantastick . i admit in you the lesser fault to discharge you of the greater . is this to revile you , or befriend you ? a poor kitling . poor kitling ! take it into thy lap , phil. and stroke it gently : i warrant thee it will not hurt thee . be not so shie , why thou art akin to it , phil. by thy own confession . for thou art a mous-catcher which is neer akin to a cat , which is also a catcher of mice : and a cat is sire to a kitling . a calfs-head . i did not call thee calfshead . eugenius , but said that no chymist could extract any substantial visible form out of thy brains , whereby they may be distinguished from what lies in a calfshead . and there is a vast difference in simply calling you pander , and calling you pander to madam nature ; who , you confesse , complains of your prostitutions . a sworn enemy to reason . why , doe you not pray against reason , a logicâ libera nos domine ? and i think any body would swear you are a real enemy to that you pray against , unless your devotions be but a mockerie . a shittle scull . my words were , did your sculler or shittle skull . i hope you do not think , that i meant your skull was so flue and shallow that boies might shittle it , and make ducks and drakes on the water with it , as they do with oyster-shells : or that your self was so magical , that you could row to the crystal rock in it , as witches are said to do on the seas in egg-shells . excuse me phil. i meant no such high mysteries . it was onely a pitiful dry clinch , as light as any nut-shell : something like that gingle of thine , nation and indignation . no good christian. in that place you bad us show you a good christian , and you would &c. there i inferre , that ( you being at all other times so ready to show your selfe , and here you slinking back ) you were conscious to your selfe that you were no good christian. otter and water-rat . i said onely that you did waddle on toward the river vsk like an otter or water-rat . will with the wisp , and meg with the lanthorn . i do not call you will , nor meg : but tell you , if you walk by river sides and marish places , you may well meet with such companions there as those , to take a turn or two with you . tom-fool in a play . why , is not your name tom ? they tell me it is tom vaughan of iesus colledge in oxford . well then tom , do not you make your self an actour in a play ? for these are your words : i will now withdraw and leave the stage to the next actour . so here is tom in the play . but where is the fool ? say you . where is the wisest man ? say i. my selfe saies tom vaughan i warrant you . why , then say i , tom vaughan is tom fool in the play . for the fool in the play is to be the wisest man , according to the known proverb . but how will ye wipe off that aspersion of calling me natural fool ? says wise tom. that indeed i confess impossible , because it was never yet laid on . i said only , if you had answered the aristoteleans sic probo's , with meer laughter , you would have proved your selfe a natural fool . but he hath not done so , nor is tom vaughan a natural fool , i dare swear for him . he has too much natural heat to be a natural fool . bless thee from madness , tom , and all will be well . but there is yet something else behind , worse then all this : that all these terms of incivilitie must proceed from spight and provocation . and this you place betwixt the two bilious tumours you have raised , as a ductus communis , or common chanel to convey the sharp malignant humour to swell them to the full . it is true , my words run thus ; that i have been very fair with you , and though provoked , &c. but this was spoken in the person of an aristotelean , whom your scornfull usage of their master aristotle you may be sure did and does provoke . but in good truth , philalethes , you did not provoke me at all with your book , unlesse to laugh at you for your puerilities . i , but you have an argument for it , that i was provoked , viz. because your theomagicall discourse has so out done or undone my ballade of the soul ( as you scornfully call it ) that my ignorance in the platonick philosophy has now appeared to the world . o rem ridiculam ! thou art a merry greek indeed , philalethes , and art set upon 't to make the world sport . thou dost then professe openly to all the world ; that thou hast so high a conceit of thy anthroposophia , that it may well dash me out of countenance with my philosophicall poems ; and that through envy , i being thus wounded , i should by my alazonomastix endeavour for the ease of my grief , to abate thy credit . what a suffenus art thou in the esteeming of thy own works , o eugenius ? and of what a pitifull spirit dost thou take alazonomastix to be ? i do professe ex animo , that i could heartily wish that my self were the greatest ignaro in the world , upon condition i were really no more ignorant then i am : so little am i touched with precellency or out-stripping others . ( but thou judgest me to have wrote out of the same intoxicating principle that thou thy self hast , that is , vain glory . ) or however if there was any thing of that wh●n i wrote those poems , which , i thank god , if any , was very little ; yet long ago ( i praise that power that inabled me ) i brought it down to a degree far lesse then thy untamed heat for the p●esent can imagine possible . but you 'll say , this is a mysterie above all magick . what then was the impulsive of writing against your book ? i have told you already , but you are loth to be●ieve me : mere emnity to immorality and foolery . but if it were any thing that might respect my self , it was onely this ; that you so carelesly and confidently adventuring upon the platonick way , with so much tainted heat and distemper , that to my better composed spirit you seemed not a little disturbed in your fancie , and your bloud to be too hot to be sufficiently rectified by your brain , i thought it safe for me to keep those books i wrote out of a spirit of sobernesse from reprochfull mistake : for you pretending the same way that i seem to be in , as in your bold and disadvantagious asserting , the soul to pre-exist , and to come into the bodie open-ey'd as it were , that is , full fraught with divine notions ; and making such out-ragiously distorted delineaments of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the stoicks call it , the enlivened universe , with sundry other passages of like grossnesse , i was afraid that men judging that this affectation of platonisme in you , might well proceed from some intemperies of bloud and spirit ; and that , there no body else besides us two dealing with these kinds of notions , they might yoke me with so disordered a companion as your self : reasoning thus with themselves ; vaughan of iesus in oxenford holds the pre-existencie of the soul , and other platonick paradoxes , and we see what a pickle he is in : what think you of more of christ's , that writ the platonicall poems ? nay , what think you of platonisme it self ? surely , it is all but the fruit of juvenile distemper and intoxicating heat . but i say , it is the most noble and effectuall engine to fetch up a mans mind to true virtue and holinesse , next to the bible , that is extant in the world . and that this may not suffer , i have suffered my self to observe upon you what i have observed , my young eugenius . this is true , my friend , to use your own phrase . sect . ii. mastix provoked by the unworthy surmises of eugenius , gives the world a tast of that spirit that actuated him when he wrote his poems . eugenius his abuse of des-cartes the greatest personall impulsive to mastix to write his observations . the divine accomplishments of the soul farre beyond all naturall knowledge . what is true deiformitie . a vehement invective against the deified rout of ranters and libertines . mastix magnifies the dominion of his own minde over the passions of the body , preferring it before the empire of the world , and all the power of magick that eugenius so bankers after . and now that the world may know that i have not wrote like some bestrid pythonick or hackneyed enthusiastick , let them look and read under what light i sat and sung that divine song of the soul. but yet , my muse , still take an higher flight , sing of platonick faith in the first good , that faith that doth our souls to god unite so strongly , tightly , that the rapid stood of this swift flux of things , nor with foul mud can stain , nor strike us off from th' vnity wherein we stedfast stand , unshak'd , unmov'd , engrafted by a deep vitalitie . the prop and stay of things is gods benignity . al 's is the rule of his oeconomie , no other cause the creature brought to light , but the first goods pregnant fecundity : he to himself is perfect-full delight . he wanteth nought . with his own beams bedight he glory has enough . o blasphemy ! that envy gives to god , or sowre despight . harsh hearts ! that feign in god a tyranny vnder pretense to encrease his soveraign majesty . when nothing can to gods own self accrew who 's infinitely happy ; sure the end of his creation simply was to shew his flowing goodnesse , which he doth outsend not for himself : for nought can him amend , but to his creature doth his good impart . this infinite good through all the world doth w●nd , to fill with heavenly blisse each willing heart : so the free sun doth light and liven every part . this is the measure of gods providence , the key of knowledge , the first fair idee , the eye of truth , the spring of living sense , whence sprout gods secrets , the sweet mystery of lasting life , eternall charity , &c. and elsewhere in my poems . when i my self from mine own self do quit , and each thing else ; then all-spreaden love to the vast vniverse my soul doth fit , makes me half equall to all-seeing iove . my mighty wings high stretch'd then clapping light , i brush the stars and make them shine more bright . then all the works of god with close embrace i dearly hug in my enlarged arms , all the hid pathes of heavenly love i trace , and boldly listen to his secret charms , then clearly view i where true light doth rise , and where eternall night low-pressed lies , &c. this , philalethes , is that lamp of god in the light whereof my reason and fancie have wrought thus many years . this is that true chymicall fire that has purged my soul and purified it , and has crystallized it into a bright throne and shining habitation of the divine majesty . this free light is that , which having held my soul in it self for a time ; taught me in a very sensible manner ●hat vast difference betwixt the truth and freedome of the spirit , and anxious impostures of this dark personalïty and earthly bondage of the body . this is my oracle , my counsellour , my faithfull instructer and guide , my life , my strength , my glory , my joy , my communicated god. this is that heavenly flame and bright sun of righteousnesse , that puts out the light , and quenches the heat of all worldly imaginations , and desires whatsoever . all the power and knowledge in nature , that is , all the feats and miraculous performances done by witches , magicians , or devils , they be but toyes and tricks , and are no solid satisfaction of the soul at all , ( yea , though we had that power upon lawfull terms ) if compared with this . and as for divine knowledge , there is none truly so called , without it . he that is come hither , god hath taken him to his own familiar friend , and though he speak to others aloof off in outward religions and parables , yet he leads this man by the hand , teaching him intelligible documents upon all the objects of his providence ; speaks to him plainly in his own language ; sweetly insinuates himself , and possesses all his faculties , understanding , reason , and memory . this is the darling of god , and a prince amongst men , farre above the dispensation of either miracle or prophesie . for him the deep searchers and anxious soliciters of nature drudge and toyl , contenting themselves with the pitifull wages of vain glory , or a little wealth . poor giboonites ! that how wood and draw water for the temple . this is the temple of god , this is the son of god , whom he hath made heir of all things , the right emanuel , the holy mysterie of the living members of christ hallelujah . from this principle which i have here expressed , have all those poems i have wrote had their originall : and as many as are moved with them aright , they carry them to this principle from whence they came . but to those , whose ignorance makes them contemn them , i will onely say to them what our saviour said to nicodemus ; the wind bloweth where it listeth , and thou hearest the sound thereof , but knowest not from whence it comes , nor whither it goes . but i am afraid i have stood all this time in a little too high a station for thee , my philalethes : i descend now and come a little nearer to thee . and now i tell thee further , that thy rash and unworthy abuse of des-cartes did move me to write so as i did , more then any personall regard else whatsoever . for i love the gentleman for his excellent and transcendent naturall wit , and like his philosophy as a most rationall , coherent , subtil piece , and an hypothesis accurately and continuedly agreeing with the phaenomena of nature . this is he whom thou callest my fellow fool , to thy own great disparagement . but this is he that i call the wisest naturalist that ever came to my hands . and having not had the good hap to light on such a rare piece of my own invention , i thought it was the best office i could do the world to bestow my judgment & censure of his . and so now you will say i am become so great a cartesian that i begin to think but meanly of platonisme . a wise inference ! as if divine and naturall knowledge were inconsistent . i tell thee no , philalethes : nor am i become cold to my own poems . for i say that that divine spirit and life that lies under them , is worth not onely all the magick that thou pretendest to , but all that thou art ignorant of beside , yea , and des-cartes his philosophy to boot . ●i say it is worth all that a thousand times told over . des-cartes philosophy is indeed a fine neat subtil thing , but for the true ornament of the mind bears no greater proportion to that principle i told you of , then the dry bones of a snake made up elegantly into a hatband , to the royall clothing of solomon . but other naturall philosophies in respect of des-cartes his , are even lesse then a few chips of wood to a well erected fabrick . but i say that a free divine universalized spirit is worth all . how lovely , how magnificent a state is the soul of man in , when the life of god inactuating her , shoots her along with himself through heaven and earth , makes her unite with , and after a sort feel herself animate , the whole world , as if she had become god and all things ? this is the precious clothing and rich ornament of the mind , far above reason or any other experiment . and in this attire thou canst not but dance to that musick of the sibyll . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i am iehovah , ( well my words perpend ) clad with the frory sea , all mantled over with the blue heavens , shod with the earth i wend , the stars about me dance , th' air doth me cover . this is to become deiform , to be thus suspended ( not by imagination , but by union of life , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , joyning centers with god ) and by a sensible touch to be held up from the clotty dark personality of this compacted body . here is love , here is freedome , here is justice and equity in the superessentiall causes of them . he that is here , looks upon all things as one , and on himself , if he can then mind himself , as a part of the whole . and so hath no self-interest , no unjust malicious plot , no more then the hand hath against the foot , or the ear against the eye . this is to be godded with god , and christed with christ , if you be in love with such affected language . but you , o ye cages of unclean birds , that have so be godded your selves , that you are grown foul and black like brutes or devils , what will become of you ? o you sinks of sinne ! you that have heretofore followed religion to excuse you from reall righteousnesse and holinesse , and now have found a trick to be abominably wicked without any remorse of conscience . you are gods and goddesses every bit of you , and all actions in you divine . he leads you up into the bed of a whore , and uncases you both for the unclean act. and when you tell obscene stories in a rapture , you are caught up into god. o you foul mouthes ! you blebs of venery , you bags of filth ! you dishonour of christendome and reproach of men ! is not all this righteously come upon you , because you never sought after religion , as a thing within you , holy , and divine ; but as an excuse to save you from wrath , and yet to remain in your sinnes ? but that cannot be : you are in the fewell of wrath while you are in your sinnes , and that fewel will be set on fire some time or other . but that you may be secure of wrath you say there is no sinne , but that it is onely a conceit and a name . is it not a sinne to be lesse happy ten thousand times then god would have you ? doth not both sense and reason discover to you , ( i am sure it doth to others ) that you walk in the wayes of hell and death ? but you are still secure , you your selves are as much god as any thing else is , and so you may make your hell as favourable to your selves as you please ; but o you fools and blind ! i see you cannot ; but you are entangled with the cords and snares that the divine nemesis hath laid for the wicked in all the parts of the world . but you are not yet any thing moved , o ye dead in trespasses and sinnes ! for there is no god , say you , more then a dog or a horse is god. behold , o ye forlorn wretches and miserably mistaken ! behold , he is come down to you : nay , he is ever with you , and you see him not . ask of him , and he shall answer you . demand of him , and he shall declare unto you , not in obscure words or dark sayings , not in aenigmaticall speeches or parables ; but he will speak unto your own reason and faculties which he hath given you : propound therefore unto him why you think the soul of man is mortal , and why you deny an omnipotent and omniscient god distinct from nature and particular beings : propound unto him , and he will plainly answer you . but alas ! alas ! your are neither fit to hear , nor able to propound , for you have destroyed those faculties that he hath given you by sinning against the light of them ; and now you have drunk out your eyes , you swear there is no sun in the firmament : and now you have whored away your brains , you are confident there is no god. o sunk and helplesse generation ! how have you sop'd and soaked , overflown and drown'd the highest seat and acropolis of your soul , that through your sensuality it is grown as rotten and corrupt as a dunghil ? you have made your selves as fit to judge of reason , as if your heads were stuffed with wet straw . these things hath the divine indignation uttered against you , but more for reproof then reproach . but your sinne hath made you sottish , and your sottishnesse confident and secure . but his anger burns against you ; o you false religionists ! and the wrath of god will overtake you when you are not aware : and your shame shall ascend up like the smoke of the bottomlesse pit , and your stink shall be as the filthinesse in the valley of the children of hinnom . this will be the portion of all those that barter away sound reason and the sober faculties of the soul for boisterous words of vanity , and unsetled conceits of enthusiasts , that having neither reason , nor scripture , nor conspicuous miracle , row down with the stream of mens corruptions , and ripen and hasten the unclean part in man , to a more full and speedy birth of sinne and ungodlinesse . but what 's all this to me ? saith philalethes . i tell thee , phil. i neither wrote before nor do i now write onely for thy sake , but for as many as my writings may reach for their good . nor am i out of my wits as some may fondly interpret me in this divine freedome . but the love of god compelled me . nor am i at all , philalethes , enthusiasticall . for god doth not ride me as a horse , and guide me i know not whither my self ; but converses with the as a friend , and speak● to me in such a dialect as i understand fully , & can make others understand , that have not made shipwrack of the faculties that god hath given them , by superstition or sensuality : for with such i cannot converse because they do not converse with god ; but onely pity them , or am angry with them , as i am merry and pleasant with thee . for god hath permitted to me all these things , and i have it under the broad seal of heaven . who dare charge me ? god doth acquit me . for he hath made me full lord of the four elements , and hath constituted me emperour of the world . i am in the fire of choler , and am not burned : in the water of phlegme , and am not drowned : in the aiery sanguint , and yet not blown away with every blast of transient pleasure , or false doctrines of men : i descend also into the sad earthy melancholy , and yet am not buryed from the sight of my god. i am , philalethes , ( though i dare say thou takest me for no bird of paradise ) incola coeli in terra , an inhabitant of paradise and heaven upon earth : and the white stone is mine , however thou scramblest for the philosophers stone . ( i wish thou hadst them both , that is all the harm i wish thee . ) i still the raging of the sea , i clear up the sowring heavens , and with my breath blow away the clouds . i sport with the beasts of the earth , the lion licks my hand like a spaniell , and the serpent sleeps upon my lap and stings me not . i play with the fowls of heaven , and the birds of the air sit singing on my fist . all the creation is before me , and i call every one of them by their proper names . this is the true adam , o philalethes : this is paradise , heaven , and christ. all these things are true in a sober sense . and the dispensation i live in , is more happinesse above all measure , then if thou couldst call down the moon so near thee by thy magick charms that thou mightest kisse her , as she is said to have kissed endymion , or couldest stop the course of the sunne , or which is all one , with one stamp of thy foot , stay the motion of the earth . all this externall power in nature were but as a shop of trinkets and toyes , in comparison of what i have declared unto you . and an adulterous generation onely seeks after a signe , or idiots , such as love to stare on a dexterous jugler when he playes his tricks . and therefore they being of so little consideration in themselves ; i see and am satisfied why miracles are no more frequent in the world . god intends an higher dispensation , and greater happinesse for these later times , wherein divine love and reason , and for their sakes liberty will lay claim to the stage . for he will as i told you draw us with the cords of a man , not ride us as with a bridle-like a horse , or tug us along like a mad stear in a band . he will sanctifie our inward faculties , and so take possession of the earth . but that a man may not deplore what is lamentable , or be angry at what is injurious to god or goodness , or laugh at what is ridiculous , this is not any part of that law that is made manifest in the heavenly life , but the arbitrarious precepts of supercilious stoicks , or surly superstitionists . for god hath sanctified and will sanctifie all these things . nor am i at all mad or fanatick in all this , o you unexperienced and unwise ! for as our saviour said of his body , touch me and handle me : so say i of my soul : feel and try all the faculties of it if you can find any crack or flaw in them . where is my reason inconsequent or inconsistent with the attributes of god , the common notions of men , the phaenonema of nature or with it self ? where is my fancie distorted , unproportionate , unproper ? but for the bottome of all these , that , i confesse , you cannot reach to nor judge of , that is divine sense , the white stone , in which there is a name written that none can read but he that hath it . but for the guidance of my reason and imagination , they have so safe a stearsman , viz. that divine touch of my soul with god , and the impregnation of my understanding from the most high ; that judgement and caution have so warily built the outward fabric of words and fancy , that i challenge any man to discover any ineptitude in them , or incoherencie . and now verily the serious consideration of these weighty matters hath so composed my mind , that i find it some difficultie to discompose it into a temper childish enough to converse with my young eugenius . but as high as i have taken my station , i will descend , and go lesse my self , to bring him to what is greater . behold , i leap down as from the top of some white rocky cloud , upon the grassie spot where my philalethes stands , and i shall now begin the game of my personated enmitie , or sportfull colluctation with him . sect . iii. eugenius his skill in grammar , rhetorick and logick . that an essentiall definition doth not pretend to set out to us the very naked substance of the thing defined . that the frame of the world is not like the inanimate frame of an house according to the aristoteleans . mastix his excuse for the manner of writing against eugenius , from his want of knowledge of either his name or person . his further justification of himself from the warrantable end of his enterprise . his dexterous discovery of the grand folly of his vaunting adversary , and serious exhortation to him to lay aside his vain affectation of magick and to become a good christian . pag. . lin . . high swoln words of vanity , i tell you , i have found them in your ballade . ballade is a good old english word , from which i abhorre no more then spencer , or lucretius from old latine , who yet was something younger then tully . is not the song of solomon called the ballade of ballades , in some church-bibles ? thou art so angry that thou art not able to rail with judgement . but what high swoln words of vanitie are there in that ballade of mine ? thou art so ignorant , that terms of art seem heathen greek to thee . but for those words that i interpreted for the ignorants sake ( you see what care i have of you , o unthankfull eugenius ! ) there is an apologie prefixt that will satisfie the ingenuous , and for others it matters not . pag. . lin. . with a bull rampant . you bestow upon me many bulls , eugenius : but when you are so kind as to give me them for nothing , you may well expect that i will be so thankfull , as to return you a calf for every bull i have gratis . let us begin , &c. and you indeed have done your part already . the sense is , but you indeed have done your part already : what is this but an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ? but you have i see as little skill in rhetorick as civilitie . the calf take thee , phil. or take thou the calf . there is one to begin thy herd . pag. . lin. . what , both tell-troths ? before thou wast no rhetorician , now thou art no logician nor philosopher , that canst not distinguish betwixt veritie and veracitie . veracitie is enough to make a tom tell-troth , though his narration be false . hence it is demonstrable that two men may be both tel-troths , though their stories be point-blank contrary to one another . the sense of my words is this ; you have told what you thought aristotle was blameable in : i will now tell what i think you are blameable in . you may be against aristotle , and i for him , and both with veracitie , though not with veritie . pag. . lin. ● . found out some new truth . yes , i say , there are passages in your book , that imply so much at least . we shall see when we come at them : and i shall shew that you found them before they were lost . pag. . lin. . the third project is the same with the first . why , is to be skilful in art magick , and to find out new truths all one ? it seems then you suppose there are no new truths to be found out but magicall ones . blessed age that we live in ! all other arts are brought to their non plus ultrá . physicians , geometricians , astronomians , astrologians , musicians , put up your pipes . claudite jam rivos pueri . there is nothing remains to be done by you . all is perfected . but let me ask you one sober question , phil. have you gone through all these arts and throughly understand them , that you do so boldly pronounce them compleat and perfect ? i know philalethes is not so immodest as to say so ; i am sure the world is not so foolishly credulous as to believe so . so that i must conclude , eugenius , that thou art so outragiously distempered in thy mind , that thou art a weaker arithmetician then the rude thracians . they told to foure● thou art out at three , and must begin again . pag. . lin. . how many more syllables in anthroposophia , then in antipsychopannychia ? not so many . so that if i had affected to be so magical as your learned self , the same conceit would have fitted my title-page . but i begin now to suspect , you are so nimble at comparing , that your title-page was a kind of apish imitation of mine in the first edition of my song of the soul. but wast thou so simple as to think that any body thought better of my book for those hard words in the frontispice of it ? i onely set them there as a wind-mill on a stack of corn , by the clack of it to scare away sparrows and crows , that it might be reserved entire for men . but i perceive for all that , that , thy rooks bill has been pecking there . but much good may it do thee , phil. i envy it thee not . pag. . lin. . vim sermonis esse in verbis , &c. i say , the force and warrant both of nouns and verbs is from their use , quem penes arbitrium est , & jus , & norma loquendi . but if you will have , orator , to be good and proper : this epistle of yours must then be no epistle , though you call it so , but an oration to the fratres r. c. which you spoke to them when they were god knows where , and they will answer you god knows when . verily , philalethes , thou art a fine fellow to have made an oratour of in king midas his time ; for he had , they say , very long eares : and so mightest thou have made an oration before the king in his absence . pag. . lin. . a twofold definition , accidentall and essentiall . that 's true , phil. what freshman but knows that ? but how it is to be understood i perceive thou dost not know . i am ashamed that i must be fain to rub up in thee the very first rudiments of logick , or rather teach thee them . for couldst thou ever forget what is meant by accidentall , what by essentiall ? accidentall is that which may be or not be in a thing , and yet the thing be : as a horse may be a horse , be it black or white . essentiall is that which so belongs to the thing to which it is said to be essentiall , that the thing cannot be conceiv'd to exsist without it ; now , say i , these faculties of understanding , reason , and sense are essentiall to the soul of man , because we cannot conceive a soul without a power or faculty of understanding , reasoning , &c. and aristotle has defined a soul from these . therefore would a peripatetick say , with an essentiall definition : but eugenius , no : this is but circumstantiall , sayes he . therefore i do inferre , eugenius , that thou dost dream of knowing the very naked substance of the soul ; which thou wilt as soon know , as see the wind . and thus i spoke to that that thou must needs mean , if thou meanest any thing : but it is a plain cafe , thou dost not know thy own meaning . but aristotle doth sufficiently countenance mine , with what he has very luckily let fall somewhere in his analyticks ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and thus is it manifestly true in that sense that you your self meant ; that the very essence of any substance is not to be known , nor is there any such essentiall definition . this is as true , tom. vaughan , as two and two are foure , though i do not call you owl for your ignorance , as you do me for my knowledge . but we shall have another bout again with this , in your anima magica abscondita . pag. . to the . to have made the world as a carpenter , of stone and timber . thou hast misplaced a comma in the sentence to make a cavil . put on thy spectacles , and see if there be any comma before of in my book . if you understood common sense you could not but understand , that my meaning is this ; that you tax the peripateticks for fancying god to have made the world as a carpenter makes houses of stone and timber . now pitifull caviller ! but to the point . i say this is a false taxation , eugenius : for the parts of the world , according to the peripateticks own doctrine , are set in this order they are , from an inward principle of motion , and their own proper qualities : so that they do as the stones and trees are said to have done at the musick of orpheus and amphion , move of themselves . but the stone and timber in the work of a carpenter , do not move themselves into their places they ought to be , for the building up of an house . but you answer two things to this : first , that the parts of the world do not move themselves : secondly , that if they do , then they have infusion of life . to the first : why , do's not any part of the earth move it self downward , if it be in an higher place then is naturall to it , and the aire and fire upward , &c. and this from an inward principle of motion ? nay , is not the very definition of nature , principium motûs & quietis , &c. wherefore we see plainly , that according to the aristoteleans , all to the very concave of the moon have an inward principle of motion . and for the heavens themselves , the most sober and cautious of the peripateticks hold them to be moved from an inward principle , their forma informans , as they call it . so that though they do not allow life infused into the world , yet they allow an inward principle of motion in naturall bodies , which is their substantiall forms , by virtue whereof they are ranged in this order as we see ; or at least according to which they are thus ranged and ordered . and this is not so dead a businesse as the carpenters building with stone and timber . but in the second place you say , that if they have this motion from an inward principle , then they have also infusion of life . but do not you see plainly , that ( according to the mind of the more sober peripateticks ) they have motion from an inward principle ? therefore you should have been so farre from taxing them to look upon god as a carpenter , that you should have concluded rather that they held infusion of life . pag. . lin. . thou hast abused me basely . verily , if that were true i should be very forrie for it : for i would not willingly abuse any man living , of what condition soev●r . but the thing has happened unluckily . i read thy book , i knew not thy person , nor thy name , nor thy nature , further then it was exprest in thy book , which did not represent it so ill as now i find it . if i had thought my galenical purge had met with such a constitution , i should have tempered it more carefully : for i delight not in the vexation of any man. the truth is , my scope in writing that book was laudable and honest , and such as might become a very good christian , and my mirth and pleasantnesse of mind much and reall ; but the sharpnesse of my style personated , and aristotelicall ; and therefore being but affected and fictitious , i felt it not , there was no corrosion at all ; but all that was unkind in it , ( if you will call that passion unkindnesse ) was a certain light indignation that i bore , and ever do bear , against magnificent folly . and there being no name to your book , i thought i had the opportunity of doing it with the least offence , as meeting with the thing disjoyned and singled from the person . but i ver●ly think i should not have medled at all , if you had spared your incivilities to des-carters , whose worth and skill-in naturall philosophy ( be it fate or judgement that constrains me to it , let the world judge ) i cannot but honour and admire . he is rayled at , but not confuted by any that i see , in his naturall philosophy , and that 's the thing i magnifie him for . though his metaphysicks have wit and strength enough too , and he hath made them good against his opposers . line . and assure thy self i will persecute thee , so long as there is ink or paper in england . assuredly thou wilt not , philalethes : for why , i am dead already , taken in thy trap and tortured to death : will not this suffice thee ? i am dead , and thou thy self but mortall ; wilt thou entertain immortall enmity against me ? but how canst thou persecute me being dead ? wilt thou raise my soul up , o magicus , by thy necromancy ? and then combate with me over my grave ? i hope thou art but in jest , eugenius : if thou beest not , i must tell thee in good earnest , thy present bitternesse will make thee magus-like , as well as thy former boasting . o thou confounded and undone thing ! how hast thou shamed thy self ! thy vizard is fallen off , and thy sanctimonious clothing torn from about thee , even as it was with the apes and monkies , that being attired like men and wearing vizards over their faces did daunce , and cringe , and kisse , and do all the gestures of men so artificially & becomingly , that the countrey people took them to be a lesser size of humane race , till a waggish fellow that had more wit then the rest , dropt a few nuts amongst them , for which they fell a scrambling so earnestly , that they tore off their vizards , and to the great laughter of the spectatours show'd what manner of creatures they were . o magicus ! do not dissemble before me : for thou dost not know with what eyes i behold thee . were it not better for thee and all the world beside , to make it their businesse to be really and fully possest of those things that are undoubtedly good and christian , nay , indeed if they be had in the right principle , are the very buds and branches of the tree of paradise , the limbs and members of the divine nature , such as are meeknesse , patience , and humility , discretion , freedome from self-interest , chastity , temperance , equity , and the like : is it not better to seek after these things , then to strain at high words and uncertain flatuous notions that do but puff up the mind and make it seem full to it self , when it is distended with nothing but unwholsome wind ? is not this very true , my dear philalethes ? sect . iv. the confutation of eugenius his world-animal from the unmercifull disproportion and ugly dissimilitude of the parts thereof compared with a true animal , reinforced and invincibly confirmed . pag. . we are now come to that rare piece of zoography of thine , the world drawn out in the shape of an animal . but let 's view the whole draught as it lies in your book , because you make such a foul noise about it in your answer . your words are these . besides the texture of the vniverse clearly discovers its animation . the earth which is the visible naturall basis of it , represents the grosse carnall parts . the element of the water answers to the bloud , for in it the pulse of the great world beats ; this most men call the flux and reflux , but they know not the true cause of it . the air is the outward refreshing spirit , where this vast creature breathes though invisibly yet not insensibly : the interstellar skies are his vitall ethereall waters ; and the starres his animal sensuall fire . now to passe my censure on this rare zoographicall piece , i tell thee , if thy brains were so confusedly scattered as thy fancy is here , thou wert a dead man philalethes : all the chymistrie in the world could not recover thee . thou art so unitive a soul , phil. and such a clicker at the slightest shadows of similitude , that thou wouldst not stick to match chalk and cheese together , i perceive , and mussi●ate a marriage betwixt an apple and an oyster . even those proverbiall dissimilitudes have something of similitude in them , will you then take them for similes that ha●e so monstrous a disproportion and dissimilitude ? but you are such a sophister that you can make any thing good . let 's try . ●he earth must represent the flesh , because they noth be grosse : so is chalk and cheese , or an apple and an oyster . but what think you of the moon ? is not that as much green cheese as the earth is flesh ? what think you of venus , of mercury , and the rest of the planets ? which they that know any thing in nature , know to be as much flesh as the earth is , that is , to be dark and opake as well as she . what! is this flesh of the world then torn apieces and thrown about , scattered here and there like the disjoynted limbs of dragg'd hippolytus ? go to phil. where are you now with your fine knacks and similitudes ? but to the next analogie . the element of water answers to the bloud . why ? for in it is the pulse of the great world . but didst thou ever feel the pulse of the moon ? and yet is not there water too ? thou little , sleepy , heedlesse endymion : the bloud is restagnant there , i warrant you and hath no pulse . so that the man with the thorn● on his back lives in a very unwholesome region . but to keep to our own station here upon earth ; dost thou know what thou sayest when thou venturest to name that monosyllable , pulse , dost thou know the causes and the laws of it ? tell me , my little philosophaster , where is there in the earth or out of the earth in this world-animal●of ●of thine , that which will answer to the heart , and the systole and diastole thereof to make this pulse ? and besides this , there is wanting rarefaction and universall diffusion of the stroke at once . these are in the pulse of a true animal , but are not to be found in the flux of the sea ; for it is not in all places at once , nor is the water rarefied where it is . now my pretty parabolist , what is there left to make your similitude good for a pulse in your great animal more then when you spill your pottage , or shog a milk-bowl ? but believe it eugenius , thou wilt never make sense of this flux and reflux , till thou calm thy fancy so much as to be able to read des-cartes . but to tell us it is thus from an inward form , more aristotelico ; is to tell us no more , then that it is the nature of the beast , or to make latine words by adding onely the termination bus , as hosibus and shoosibus , as sir kenhelm digby hath with wit and judgement applied the comparison in like case . but now to put the bloud , flesh and bones together , of your world-animal : i say they bear not so great a proportion to the more fluid parts . viz. the vitall and animal spirits thereof , as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the earth . so that if thou hadst any fancy or judgement in thee , thy similitude would appear to thine own self outragiously ugly and disproportionable , and above all measure ridiculous : nor do not think to shuffle it off , by demanding , if there be so little earth , to tell thee where it is wanting . for i onely say , that if the world be an animal , there will be much bloud and flesh wanting , philalethes , for so great a beast . nor do not you think to blind my eyes with your own tobacco smoke , ( i take none my self , eugenius , ) for to that over ordinary experiment , i answer two things . first , that as you took upon the parts of the body of a true animal , in the same extension that they now actually are , not how they may be altered by rarefaction ; so you are also look upon the parts of your world-animal , as they are de facto , extended , not how they may be by rarefaction . and thus your argument from tobacco , will vanish into smoke . but if you will change the present condition of any lesser animal by burning it , and turing many of the grosse parts into more thin and fluid , you destroy the ground of your comparison , betwixt the world animal and it ; for you take away the flesh of your lesser animal thus burnt . and besides , the proportion betwixt the vapour or thinner parts extension to the remaining ashes , is not yet so big , as of the thin parts of the world-animal in respect of its solid parts , by many thousand and thousand millions . nay , i shall speak within compasse , if i say ( as i said before ) that there is a greater disproportion then betwixt the globe of the earth and a mite in a cheese . this is plainly true to any that understands common sense . for the earth in respect of the world is but as an indivisible point . adde to all this , that if you will rarefie the tobacco or hercules body by fire , i will take the same advantage , and say , that the water and many parts of the earth may be also rarefied by fire , and then reckon onely upon the remaining ashes of this globe , and what is turned into vapour must be added to the more fluid parts of the world-animal , to increase that over-proportion . so that thou hast answered most wretchedly and pitifully every way , poor anthroposophus ! but besides , in the second place : when any thing is burnt , as for example , your tobacco , i say it takes up then no more room then it did before : because rarefaction and condensation is made , per modum spongiae , as a sponge is distended by the coming in , and contracted again by the going out of the water it had imbib'd . but the aristotelic●ll way● which is yours , ( o profound magicus ! that hast the luck to pick out the best of that philosophy ) implies i say , grosse contradictions , which thou c●nst not but understand , if thou canst distinguish corporeall from incorporeall beings . thy way of rarefaction and condensation , o eugenius , must needs imply p●netration of dimensions , or something as incongruous , as every lad in our universities , at a year or two standing at least , is able to demonstrate to thee . but if thou thinkest it hard , that so little a body as a pipe of tobacco , should be multiplied into so very much superficies above what it had before , go to those that beat out leaf gold , and understand there how the superficies of the same body may be , to wonder , increased . and beside , i could demonstrate to thee , that a body whose basis thou shouldst imagine at the center of the earth , and top as farre above the starry heaven , as it is from thence to the earth , without any condensation used thereunto , is but equal to a body that will he within the boll of a tobacco-pipe . where art thou now , thou miserable philosophaster ? but to the next analogie . the aire is the outward refreshing spirit , where this vast creaure breaths . two things i here object , to shew the ineptnesse and incongruity of this comparison . the one is taken from the office of respiration , which is to refresh by way of refrigerating or cooling . is not the main end of the lungs to cool the bloud , before it enter into the left ventricle of the heart ? but thou art so magical , thou knowst none of these sober and usefull mysteries of nature . all that thou answerest to this is , that we are refresh'd by heat as well as by coolnesse . why then is that generall sufficient to make up your analogie or similitude ? this is as well fancied as it is reasoned , when men conclude affirmatively in the second figure . there are laws in fancy too , philalethes : and i shall shew thee anon , how ridiculous thou hast made thy self by transgressing them . if thou meanest by refresh'd , to be cheared or restored onely , and what ever do's this must be ground enough to fancy a respiration ; then thou breathest in thy cawdle , when thou eatest it , and hast spoyled that conceit of his , that said he never would drink sack whilst he breathed ; for if sack do in any sense refresh and comfort a man , it seems he breaths while he drinks . i tell thee , in the homologi termini of similitudes , there ought to be something in some sort peculiar and restrained , or else it is flat , ridiculous , and non-sense . the other objection was taken from the situation of this aire that is to he the matter of respiration in this great animal . what a wild difference is there in this ? the aire that an ordinary animal breaths in , is external ; the aire of this world-animal , internall ; so that it is rather wind in the guts , then aire for the lungs ; and therefore we may well adde the colick to the anasarca . is the wind-colick an outward refreshing spirit , or an inward griping pain ? being thou hast no guts in thy brains , i suspect thy brains have slipt down into thy guts , whither thy tongue should follow to be able to speak sense . answer now like an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , o thou man of magick ! he answers , and the point and sting of all the sense of his answer is in the tail of it : pag. . lin . . and it is their outward refreshing spirit . he means the earths and the waters . o feeble sting ! o foolish answer ! this onely reaches so farre as to save the earth alive from my jugulating objection . the globe of earth and water indeed may be still an animal for all that objection . but thou saidst the whole world was an animal . what , is the whole world an animal because the earth is one ? o bundle of simples ! ( to return thee thine own parcell of ware again , for it belongs not to me ) this is as well argued as if thou shouldest say , that a cheese is an animal , because there is one living mite in it . but that this earth neither is a breathing animal , is plain enough : for what respiration , what attraction and reddition of aire is there in it ? there may be indeed something answering to sweating and perspiration , nothing to respiration , my good philalethes . but to shew thee thy folly , i will follow thy liberty , and impudently pronounce that a pair of bellows is an animal . why , is it not ? it has a nose to breathe through , that 's plain , the two handles are the two eares , the leather the lungs , and that which is the most seemly analogie of all , the two holes in the back-side are the two eyes ; as like the eyes in the fore-side of a crab as ever thou seest any thing in thy life : look thee , phil. are they not ? you 'll say , the analogie of the nose is indeed as plain as the nose on a mans face : but how can the handles be eares , when they stand one behind another ? whereas the eares of animals stand one on one side , and the other on the other side of the head . and then how can the leather be lungs , they being the very outside of its body ? or those two holes eyes ? they have neither the situation , as being placed behind , nor office of eyes . answer me all these objections . o mastix ! i can fully answer them , o magicus ! this is an animal drawn out according to thine own skill and principles . the leather sayst thou must be no lungs , because it is without . why then the aire must be no aire for thy world-animal to breath , because it is within : and if thou canst dispense with within and without , much more mayst thou with before and behind , or behind and on the sides . so the eares and lungs of this animal hold good against thee still . now to preserve my monsters eyes against this harpy that would scratch them out ; they are no eyes say you , because they have not the situation of eyes . but i told thee before , thou makest nothing of situation . but they have not the office of eyes . why ? they can see as much as the eyes of thy world-animal , for ought thou knowest . i but this bellows-animal breaths at these eyes : and have not i shewed thee thy world-animal breaths in his guts ? but i will make it plain to thee that those two holes are eyes : for they are two , as the two eyes are ; and transmit the thin air through them , as the eyes do the pure light . so that they agree gainly well in the generall : as your respiration in the world-animal , in refreshing , though by heat , when in others it is by cold . fie on thee , for a zoographicall bungler . these bellows thou seest is not my animal but thine , and the learned shall no longer call that instrument by that vulgar name of a pair of bellows , but tom vaughans animal . so famous shalt thou grow for thy conceited foolery . the interstellar skies are his vitall ethereall waters . here i object , o eugenius ! that there is an over-proportionated plenty of those waters in thy world-animal and that thus thou hast distended the skin of thy animal , god knows how many millions of miles off from the flesh . o prodigious anasarca ! but what dost thou answer here ? viz. that i say , that the body which we see betwixt the starres , namely , the interstellar waters , is excessive in proportion . no , i do not say so : but that they are too excessive in proportion to be the fluid parts of a world-animal . but however , as if i had said so , he goes about to prove , that there is no excesse of proportion in them . dost thou hear , mastix ? sayes he , look up and see . well , i hear , phil. i look up . but do not chock me under the chin , thou wag , when i look up . now , what must i see ? what a number of bonefires , lamps , and torches are kindled in that miraculous celestiall water . yes , i see them all . i suppose they burn so clear for joy and triumph , that my reason and sense have so victoriously overthrown thy fantastry and non-sense . but why miraculous waters , phil ? i see the cause : bonefires and torches burn in the waters . that were a miracle indeed , eugenius ; but that it is a falsity . thou givest things false names , & then wouldst amaze us with verbal miracles . and the starres his animal sensuall fire . what is thy meaning here , little phil. ( for i never called thee to account for this yet ) that this world-animal has sense onely in the starres ? to call them the eyes of the world is indeed pretty and poeticall . and plato's delicious spirit may seem to countenance the conceit in that elegant distich upon his young friend aster , ( which in plain english in starre ) whom he instructed in the art of astronomie : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . thou viewest the starres , my star , were i the skies ! that i might fix on thee so many eyes . but what , eugenius , wilt thou venture in philosophick coolnesse , to say the sense of thy world-animal lies in the starres ? i prethee , what can those starry eyes spy out of the world ? they are very quick-sighted , if they can see there , where there is nothing to be seen . but it may be , this animal turns its eyes inward and views it self , i would philalethes were such an animal too ; he would then find so much amisse within , that he would forbear hereafter to be so censorious without . but what ? is there sense then onely in the starres ? ( for sense can be no where but where there is accesse for the animal spirits : ) so it seems , the starres must hear as well as see , nay , feel and tast ; as they do questionlesse , as often as they lick in , and eat up that starre-fodder , the vapours , wherewith in seneca they are fantastically said to be nourished . and thus you see , that tom vaughans animal , i mean the bellows now may see at the very same two holes that it breathes at , for he confounds all by his indiscreet fancy . how art thou blown about like a feather in the air , o thou light-minded eugenius ! how vain and irrationall art thou in every thing ! art thou the queen of sheba , as thy sanguin a little overflowing thy choler would dresse up thy self to thy soft imagination , and make thee look smugg in thy own eyes ? had that queen so little manners , in her addresses to so great a philosopher ? no , thy language in all thy book , is the language of a scold and of a slut . and for thy wit , if thou wilt forgo thy right to the ladle and bells , thy feminine brains , as thou callest them , may lay claim to the maid-marians place in the morris-dance : while my strong cruds , ( as thou tearmest my masculine understanding ) which are as sweet as strong , not tainted with the fumes of either revenge or venery , shall improve their utmost strength , for the interest of truth and virtue . and thus have i taken all thy outworks , eugenius , yea and quite demolished them . yet now i look better about me , there is i perceive , one half-moon standing still . wherefore have at thy lunatick answer to that which thou callest my lunatick argument , which thou propoundest thus ; that the flux and reflux cannot be the pulse of the great world , because it proceeds , from the moon , not from the sunne . i say , philalethes , the sunne being the heart of the world , according to those that be more discreetly fantasticall ( consult dr. fludd , thou art but a bad chip of that block ) it was to be expected , if thou wouldst have the flux and reflux to be the pulse , that it should come from the sun , that is reputed the heart of the world ; but it comes from the moon . to this you answer ; that it comes no more from the moon , then from that fictitious anti-selene or anti-moon , as you venture to call it . you say thus , but prove nothing . but there is such an apparent connexion betwixt this phaenomenon of the flux and reflux , and so constant with the course of the moon , that it is even unimaginable but that there should be the relation of cause and effect betwixt them . but i think you will not say , that the motion of the sea has any power or effect upon the course of the moon ; wherefore it must be granted , that the course of the moon has an effectuall influence upon the flux of the sea. and therefore fromundus speaks very expressely concerning this matter , and very peremptorily in these words : si ex effectis de causa conjectatio valere potest , tam compertum videtur ●stus effici & gubernari à lunari sydere , quàm calorem ab ignibus effundi , aut lumen à sole : to this sense ; if we can gather any thing from effects concerning the cause , it seems to be as experimentally sure , that the ebbing and flowing of the sea is made and governed by the moon , as that heat flows from the fire , or light from the sunne . for indeed how could there be kept such inviolable laws , as that the ocean should alwayes swell at the moons ascending ; and not onely so , but attemperately and proportionably to her motion , ( for she coming every day later and later above the horizon , the flux of the sea is later and later every time , according to her recession toward the east in her monethly course ) i say , how could these laws be so accurately observed , mr. eugenius , if the moon were not accessory to , nay , the principall causer of this flux and reflux of the sea ? and if thou beest not wilfully blin● , this is enough to convince thee , that that which thou callest the pulse of thy world-animal , is from the moon , not from the sunne , nor from its own inward ●orm : for thou seest it is caused and regulated by an externall agent . but for a more full discovery of this mysterie , i send thee to des-cartes in the fourth part of his principia philosophiae ; or to what i have taken from thence and made use of in the notes upon my philosophicall poems . in which poems the intelligent reader may understand , how far , and in what sense any sober platonist will allow the world to be an animal . nor do's one part of it acting upon another , as the moon upon the sea , hinder its animation . for in men and beasts , one part of the body do's plainly act upon another , though all be actuated by the soul. and now , philalethes , i have taken all thy out-works , none excepted ; out of which thou hast shot many a slovenly shot against me . but thy foul piece has re●oyled against thy self , in all sober mens opinions , and has beat thee backward into the dirt . and truly , i know not whether i should pity thee , or laugh at thy childish ars but thou hast given thy self . for thou railest at me now thou art down , and threatnest him that is ready to set thee up upon thy feet , provided thou wilt not prick up thy eares too , and look too spruntly upon the businesse . but thou wantest no help , thou art a giant , an invincible man of warre , great goliah of ga●h . i a meer punie , as thou callest me ; nay , a munkey , a mouse . what , dost thou bid defiance to three at once , philalethes ? i tell thee , any one of these three would be hard enough for thee . but what wilt thou do , now thou art to deal with a man ? for i shall fight with thee , onely with a mans weapon , reason . as for thy railings and quibblings , i shall not take notice of them ; so that the battel is likely to be the sharper & shorter for it . onely let 's be a little merry at the beginning , it will be like shaking of hands at the taking up of the cudgells . sect . v. mastix makes himself merry with eugenius upon his abuse of the argument of one of the cantoes of his poems . that reminiscency is no proof for the praeexistencie of the soul. that eugenius is enforced to acknowledge the two aristotelean principles , matter and privation . his ridiculous mistake of finding out and seeing the first matter . observation . art thou the hobling poet who sometime — prays'd with his quill plato's philosophie ? i am the poet that did , and do with my pen , my mouth , and from my heart praise that excellent philosophy of plato , as the most consistent and coherent metaphysicall hypothesis , that has yet been found out by the wit of man. but why hobling poet ? thou hobling asse or hobby-horse , choose thee whether . thou hast so diseased and crazie a brain , that it cannot endure it seems the least jotting● and so thou hadst rather be carried in a sedan , as those that are rotten with the neapolitan disease , or else going the way to it ; then be bravely hurryed in my open magnificent chariot , whose tempestuous wheels dance and leap while they are wearing down the cragginesse and asperity of philosophick difficulties into plainnesse and easinesse . but i know the vulgar , those poor merchants of eel-skins , that deal with nothing but the exuvia of things , words and phrases , are more taken with smooth non-sense , or superficiall flourishes , then with the deepest knowledge in a carelesse dresse . dost thou not know that those men , that make it their businesse to be compt and elegant in their clothes and carriages , commonly have little else but this in them ? and so it is too often with poems and other writings . but how i slight your simple censures , o ye skin-sucking flies ! ye wasps with rush stings in your tayls ! ye winged inhabitants of crowland ! i will shew you now , not in the prose of more , but in the very trot and loll of spencer , as this naturall with his tongue lolling out of his driveling mouth , uncivilly calls it . as gentle shepherd in sweet eventide when ruddy phoebus 'gins to welk in west , high on an hill his flock to viewen wide , marks which do bite their hasty supper best , a cloud of cumb'rous gnats do him molest , all striving to infix their feeble stings , that from their ' noyance he no where can rest , but with his clownish hands their tender wings he brusheth oft , and oft doth marre their murmurings . nor have i here called my self clown by craft , no more then the poet calls the knight so . but thy indiscreet wit cannot distinguish betwixt the formale and materiale of that whence the similitude is fetched ; which made thee so ill digest my philosophick bacon . it was thine own magick , phil. or perverse imagination that turned thee into an hog with tusks and bristles , not i. but to return to the businesse : o thou judicious critick ! what is the fault ? where is the flaw in what thou hast recited ? — praise with my quill plato's philosophy . thou dost onely play wich the feather of the quill . but for what is writ with the inky end thereof , in those poems of mine , i challenge thee to shew me if thou canst , where my fancy or reason hath really tript . thou indeed hast attempted something in the platonick way , but i have made it manifest , thou hast writ with the quill of a goose . but i have penned down the praise of plato's philosophy in this canto , with the skill of a man , as any man that hath skill will acknowledge . but thy spirit is not yet prepared for the knowledge of such divine matters . it is not yet fine , gentle , and benigne enough , to receive so delicious impressions . put thy soul into a crysiple , o pragmaticall chymist , and set it on that fire that will excoct and purge out thy drosse , and then judge of platonisme . art not thou the chymicall monkey that art very busie to little purpose about the glasses of h. blunden , an honest man and an happy operatour in chymistrie as i hear ? but thou dost nothing but lear and look up at the reek of the furnace , and sendest as high theomagicall meditations after every fold or curle of smoke that mounteth up , as the musing ape after the flur and farre flight of every partridge he let out of the basket . but enough of levity . now to expiate the excesse of this mirth with something more solid and sober . i am ready to answer what thou alledgest , and to make good that my first observation is no oversight . thou art here mistaken in two things . first , in that thou conceivest that reminiscency is so strong an argument to prove the preexistency of the soul before her entrance into the body . i say it is not any argument worth the insisting upon . for though the soul do finde truth in her self , questions being wisely proposed to her ; yet she doth not perceive that she ever though● of those things before , and therefore cannot acknowledge any such reminiscency in herself . and i appeal unto thine own reason , eugenius , if god should create an humane soul , and put it into a body fit and complyable with contemplation , whether that soul would not be able to answer all the questions propounded in plato's meno , as well as those that are supposed to preexist . and therefore i have not made use of this argument in all my platonical poems . for i tell thee , phil. i am a very wary philosopher , and he must rise betimes that goes about to impose upon my reason . thy second mistake is , that thou thinkest i condemn thy opinion of the preexistency of the soul , which indeed i might well do as personating an aristotelean . but what i really blame there , is thy boldnesse and disadvantagious rashnesse in the proposall of it , thou intimating , as if the soul descended into the body with her eyes broad awake , which the first page of thy praeface to the reader doth plainly imply . let any one read and judge . but if any one ask what my opinion is , i answer , it is no matter what my opinion is , as it is mine , ( for what man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ? ) but the discussion of the truth of these things he may find in my poems . observation . here , philalethes , i charged thee with three absurdities . the first was affectation of pomp and ceremony in the finding out those things which cannot be hid from the eyes of the meanest capacity . as pretending it was a whole springs task , to find out this conclusion , viz. that things that are produced in nature , are out of something in nature unlike the things produced . to this thou answerest ; that thou art not to be understood , as if thou wert a whole spring in finding out this co●clusion : for thou onely saist , i took to task the fruits of one spring . but i say , that one spring may signifie a whole spring , and your making a task of it seems to determine the words to that sense . and unlesse thou tookest the pains of examining all the flowers that grew in the spring , one after another , i mean their kinds ; it would prove no task , or at least be no proof for thy conclusion . and therefore in all likelihood , one spring should signifie here a whole spring . the second was , that thou art fain to admit of two of aristotles principles , matter and privation . and this i inferred from the foregoing conclusion . but thou answerest , that thou hast not so much as named privation , much lesse acknowledged it for a principle . that 's no matter . though thou hold thy peace , thy observations speak it . that viola est ex non viola , rosa ex non rosa , &c. which is the very same thing the peripateticks observe to be necessarily included in all generation , and therefore they make a principle of it , and call it privation . the third absurditie was , that you seemed so simple , as to ptomise your self that you would find out the first matter , or the common matter of all things , by experience . to which you answer , that you have found it out , felt it , and seen it . well , eugenius , thou art grown a great proficient , i perceive , since the last time i met thee . for then thou wast to seek for this first matter , now thou hast found it and felt it . hast not thou felt the ephialtes , phil ? or is not thy fancy as grosse and thick as a syrup ? i believe thou art as much iesuite as i puritan , tell me truly philalethes , dost not equivocate in this answer ? and understandest by this first matter , onely the first matter of some things , as meal is the first matter of pudding , and pycrust , and bread , and the like . but if thou saist thou hast seen and felt the first matter of all things whatsoever , thou hast pronounced what is impossible to be proved , and therefore as impossible to be believed by the sober and wise . and yet unlesse thou pronounce thus , thou pronouncest nothing to the present purpose . for , by first matter , is understood the common matter of all things . but now to rebuke thy boldnesse in this assertion : let me ask thee a sober question or two . this first matter , which thou soughtest after , and now hast found , whether hadst thou any marks to know it by , when thou didst light on it ? for as venus in the poet , when she sends hue and cry after her little fugitive , describes him from his marks ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so what ever is sought for by us , we ought to have an idea of it , that we may know it when we find it . as he that is to seek an horse in the field , if he have not an idea of an horse and of a cow , &c. he may bring one for the other . to be short , he that seeks without an idea of what is sought , seeks for he knows not what , and he will find it he knows not when . so that it was necessary for thee to have an idea of the first matter in thy mind , when thou wentest about to find it out . now tell me , what the idea of the first matter can be , if not this ? a substance out of which all corporeall things are made , but it self out of nothing . and this is , if thou understandest truth when it is propounded to thee , as true an idea of the first matter , as , to have three angels , is the right idea of a triangle . but answer me now , eugenius , in good earnest . is that matter which thou saist thou hast seen and handled , such as will fit with this idea ? how canst thou ever prove but that that matter was made of some other matter otherwise modified , as well as other things may be made of this ? but i will deal very candidly with thee , philalethes : for i would fain have thee speak some sense . the idea of thy first matter thou meanest may happily be this . matter so prepared and qualified by the art of chymistry , that it is fit to receive any form whatsoever , or matter that is reduced to such a temper as it all was of at first , when it lay fitted for receiving of all forms of what nature so ever , and by this fitnesse engaged them to lodge in her large bosome . and thus though this matter of thine be made of another matter , yet , because it is reduced to the state it was in first of all , before it received any forms , and was contrived into this order and distinction of parts that constitute the world , it may in this sense be called the first matter . but tell me , eugenius , how knowst thou that thou hast light on such a matter as this ? thou hadst no preconceived idea of the colour and consistency of this matter which thou saist thou hast felt and ●een , unlesse somebody hath described it to thee , from certain sensible qualities . but then i would ask both them and thee , how they know that a body of this consistency and colour is the first matter ? it is either because that they observe , that , what ever they resolve by their chymicall fires is resolved into this at last , or because they have observed that all things will arise out of this matter . but for the first : i say , they have not , nor can make triall of all things by their art. for how many things appear above us out of our reach ? besides what he eternally buried below . they can not distill the stars , as some say , glow-worms may be , and make them lamps of them to study by . besides , why is that which is left , to be the first matter more then what is flown away and evaporated ? and that which will not evaporate , i demand whether that is the first matter of air and light ? adde to all this , that you do not so much find this first matter as make it in all likelyhood . for how incredible a thing is it , but that by your fires or heats , ( you putting the body that is under your operation into a perpetuall motion , so that the parts fridge one against another uncessantly ) the nature of it should be quite changed by you . so that you do not by a kind of analysis discover what is at the bottome , but by genesis modifie the matter into a new dresse . but that 's no matter you 'll say , so long as it is reduced to such a temper as it was , when the whole world was to be impregnated with several forms . but there is no way now left for you to know that you have thus reduced it , unlesse you have seen this matter of yours , vertumnus-like to appear before you in all shapes tell me then , philalethes , have you seen it put on the form of a sponge ? of a pumex ? of adamant ? of marble ? have you seen it put on the shape of all plants whatsoever and animals ? to say nothing of metals and mineralls . have you play'd with it in the shape of a dog ? or has it roared against you in the form of a lion ? or have you made sport with the mustacho's of it in the figure of a mouse ? ha's paracelsus his homunculus come tumbling out of it , with his tail upwards in signe of good luck ? or hast thou conferr'd with it in the dresse of a wanton lady , clothed with transparent lawns or sybariticall tiffanies ? if thou hast not , ( and darest thou say thou hast ? ) thou hast no reason at all to say thou hast seen and felt the first matter of all things . it is but vain boasting and bold imposture . adde unto all this ; that if there were any such matter as thou meanest , so fit for all forms , and yet fitted with none , the mundus vitae , or world of lives and forms ) being every where present so as it is , this destitute widow , or marriageable virgin could be no more kept from being ma●ch'd with one form or other , then dana● could be from iupiter , who notwithstanding the close custody she was under , descended into her lap in a golden shower . wherefore i conclude , that it is not any certain experience , but rash juvenilitie and confidence , that makes thee pronounce thou hast seen and felt the first matter . sect . vi. rules whereby we may better assure our selves that we use our reason aright . mastix as well as eugenius calls the matter darknesse , but mastix poetically , eugenius philosophically . the true and rationall notion of the first matter according to aristotle . eugenius his ridiculous division of an idea . of the divine and naturall idea according to philo. eugenius his self-contradiction in making the earth inviron'd with light , and yet a vicissitude of day and night . that the letter of the scripture speaks according to the vulgar conceit of men , and therefore extends the world no higher then the clouds or thereabout . observation . here thou wouldst fain carp at my hymne of humility and charity , but thy pride and unchristian bitterresse onely makes thee grin at it , it representing that which is so contrary to thine own nature . but here is nothing said to any purpose , and therefore 't is to no purpose to apply an answer . as for thy cavills against those expressions of mine , that we are to mea●●re our wisedome by unprejudicate reason , by humilty and purity of mind , and not by devotion ; the sene is , that we are to try how wise we are , or how ●afely we may conclude our selves to be wise , by exa●ining whether we have put off all prejudice , and ●se our reason impartially , whether we be humble an● set free from all corruption of flesh and spirit . ior by these we may better and more safely conclude ●at we have used our understanding aright , and are n●t mistaken in what we conceive , then by long , or hot , or humorous devotions , such as men seem b● to play with god in , and rather shew the world what fine heats they have , then heartily desire the tr●e good from him , whom they seem to solicite for it but thou art so galled with the sense , that thou wo●dst fain revenge thy self upon the words . ●n what sense i call the disciples of aristotle orthodox , any body that hath any wit and urbanity in them may easily discern , and then my praises of plato and des-cartes may consist very well with this passage . but as for scaligers making use of aristotles text to make good athanasius his creed , i will be very fair with thee , phil. he did first believe firmly , that there is such a trinitie , and then made aristotle speak to that purpose . now do thou but first prove strongly thy philosophicall positions by reason , and then i give thee leave for further countenance to call in moses his text . observation . do you mention no life here , eugenius ? but then georgius venetus do's for you . omne quod vivit , propter inclusum calorem vivit : indè coll●gitur , caloris naturam vim habere in se vitalem i● mundo passim diffusam , &c. construe it , phil. and be pacified . observation . when you call the matter darknesse i● your own verse . why , it seems then you had a mi●d to write poeticall prose , which i am sure mr. bu●● of eaton had like to have whipt me for when i was aboy . but i wonder how thou comest to stumble on ths stanza of mine above the rest . let us bring it all forth entire into view . the last extreme the farthest off from light , that 's natures deadly shadow , hyle's cell . o horrid cave , and womb of dreaded night ! mother of witchcraft and accursed spell , which nothing can avail 'gainst israel , no magick can him hurt , his portion is not divided nature , he doth dwell in light , in holy love , in union , not fast to this or that , but free communion . o! now i see the reason , there is the word magick named in it . but tell me , o magicus ! do'st thou understand what i have writ there ? if thou didst , as thou shouldst do , and hadst an inward sense and feeling of it , thou wouldst make a bonefire of all thy books of curious arts , as the magicians did in the apostles time for joy of finding a better light . but i cannot expresse what i mean better then i have already in that stanza . page . lin . . prethee , mastix , what is this subject ? i 'le tell thee . nay , aristotle shall tell thee : these are his words , phys. l. . c. ult . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . thou wil● not say that this is in nature , neither 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as thou barbarously speakest . and thou must give me leave to correct thy greek , when there is need , as well as thou doest my english where there is no need . thy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a monster , and hath one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 too much , but i will not tread on this toe of thine too hard . i passe off , and come to thy head , that , i mean , that should dwell there ; if there be any body within , let them answer me . is not that defined there by aristotle , ( the sense whereof is sufficiently set out in my description of the idea of the first matter ) is it not in nature , neither 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ? i appeal to thine own reason if thou canst any wayes shift it , but that thou must conceive a matter variously changed into severall succeeding forms . therefore that which continues the same numericall substance , though in its notion incomplete , and sustains the succeeding form , that is a thing in nature . but when we precisely conceive it utterly devoid of all forms , that 's a separation made onely by the fire of our understanding ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the oracles call it ) not by your chymicall fire : and this is not in nature , but in our apprehension . wherefore your assertion is false , when you say that this matter is neither 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in nature . for though the notionall respect be not in nature , the thing it self is . and this , i say , is a sober description , and signifies something . but your horrible empty darknesse , which you say here is the first matter , doth but mock a mans fancy in the dark . page . line . the holy spirit , say you , is not able to see , &c. i say , anthroposophus , that it is you that have put things together so ill-favouredly , as if you implied so much ; as the reader may judge by perpending the ninth page of your anthroposophia . page . line . as soon as god was . where is thy logick , eugenius ? doth that imply there was a time when god was not ? when we say , that one is as wise as a wisp , does that imply the wisp is wise ? i tell thee , a wisp is no wiser then thou art , mr. magicus . so if i say that the light of the idea's was not later then the existence of god , that saying does neither stint nor stretch out the duration of gods existence , but onely it coextends the light of the idea's with that duration . page . lin . . but the water was not so . but what was the horrible empty darknesse ? o thou man in the dark ! was that ab aeterno , or not ? and if that was , could not the divine light shine in that darknesse ? but i will wrestle no longer with such lemures in the dark , as thy shifting fancie proves it self , o anthroposophus ! let 's go on , and see if we can get into the light . observation . and speak of rationes seminales . yes , i spake of them , and mov'd a very materiall question concerning them , to wit , what that experiment in a glasse could do , for the confirming or confuting the rationes seminales . it had been your duty here to have satisfied this quaere , but i perceive your inabilitie , and pardon you . observation . line . i my self make the naturall idea no idea at all . so then , anthroposophus , this is the story . there is a twofold idea , a divine idea , and an idea which is no idea at all : ha ha he ! thou hadst abused me so unmercifully in this bitter book of thine , that i thought i should never have been able to laugh again as long as i liv'd : but this would make a dog burst his halter with laughing , i must now laugh or die . what , art thou now turned preacher , phil ? though no puritane by no means , and tel'st us of three kinds of seekers , that they are either those which are both seekers and finders ; or those that are finders , but no seekers ; or lastly , such as are neither seekers nor finders ? certainly when thou wrotest this book , thou hadst a plot to eternize thy fame , and leave thy folly upon record . page . line . cite him then , and produce his words . here they are philalethes : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , page . he there proves , that there are divine idea's before the creation of the visible plants , from that text of moses , gen. . v. , . philo's own words are these upon that text ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sayes he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , does not he manifestly set before us incorporeall and intellectuall idea's , which are the seals of gods sensible works ? for before the earth sent forth herbs , there was even then ( saith moses ) herbs , in rerum natura ; and before the grasse grew , there was invisible grasse . can you desire any thing more plain and expresse ? but to make thee amends for laughing at thy division of the idea which had but one member , and hopped like one of the monocoli upon a single legge , i will give thee another idea besides this out of the same philo , and such as may be truly called both an idea and a naturall one , a thing betwixt thy ideal vestiment , and the divine idea it self : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pag. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is , but the fruits was not onely for nourishment for living creatures , but preparations also for the perpetuall generation of the like kind of plants , they having in them seminal substances , in which the hidden and invisible forms of all things become manifest and visible by circumvolutions of seasons . these are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or rationes seminales , the seminall forms of things . observation . page , line . mastix is deliver'd of a bull. this is a calf of thy own begetting ; but i have forgot all this while to render thee a calf for a bull as i promis'd thee . i am not toyish enough for thee , my little phil. do i say heat and siccity are aqua vitae bottles ? but may not heat , and siccity , and aqua vitae be consentany arguments ? what repugnancy is there in it ? answer , logician : therefore there is no bull here , till thou be grown up to thy full stature . observation . here i told you that you incompassing all with the empyreal substance , you had left no room for evening and morning upon the masse of the earth . what do you answer to this ? that the empyreal substance was a fire which had borrowed its tincture from the light , but not so much as would illuminate the masse of it self . no , philalethes ? do not you say it retain'd a vast portion of light ? and is not that enough to illuminate the masse of it self ? nay , you say it made the first day without the sunne , but now you unsay it again . pitifull baffled creature ! but as for those terrible mysterious radiations of god upon the chaos , and dark evaporations of the chaos towards god , which thou wouldst fain shusfle off thy absurdities by ; i say , they are but the flarings of thine own fancy , and the reeks and fumes of thy puddled brain . dost thou tell me this from reason or inspiration , phil ? if from reason , produce thy arguments ; if from inspiration , shew me thy miracle . page . line . the clouds are in the aire , not above it , &c. but if the clouds be the highest parts of the world , according to the letter of moses , which is accommodated , as i shall prove , to the common conceit and sense of the vulgar ; then in the judgement of sober men it will appear , that thy argument hath no agreement neither with philosophy nor common sense . now therefore to instruct thee , as well as i do sometimes laugh at thee ; i will endeavour to make these two things plain to thee . first , that scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense and vulgar conceit of men . secondly , that following this rule , we shall find the extent of the world to be bounded no higher then the clouds , or thereabout : so that the firmament , viz : the air , ( for the hebrews have no word for the air , distinct from heaven or firmament , moses making no distinction ) may be an adequate barre betwixt the lower and upper waters . which it was requisite for moses to mention , vulgar observation discovering that waters came down from above , viz. showers of rain , and they could not possibly conceive , that unlesse there were waters above , that any water should descend thence . and this was it that gave occasion to moses , of mentioning those two waters , the one above , the other beneath the firmament . but to return to the first point to be proved , that scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense , and vulgar conceit of men . this i say is a confessed truth with the most learned of the hebrews . amongst whom it is a rule for the understanding of many and many places of scripture . loquitur lex secundùm linguam filiorum hominum , that is , that the law speaks according to the language of the sonnes of men : as moses aegyptius can tell you . and it will be worth our labour now to instance in some passages . gen. . v. . the sunne was risen upon the earth when lot entred into zoar. which implies , that it was before under the earth : which is true onely according to sense , and vulgar fancy . deuteronom . . v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; implies that the earth is bounded at certain places , as if there were truly an hercules pillar , or non plus ultrá : as it is manifest to them , that understand but the naturall signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for those words plainly import the earth bounded by the blue heavens , and the heavens bounded by the horizon of the earth : they touching one another mutually . which is true onely to sense and in appearance , as any man that is not a meer idiot will confesse . ecclesiastic . cap. . v. . the discourse of a godly man is alwayes with wisdome , but a fool changeth as the moon . that 's to be understood according to sense and appearance . for if a fool changeth no more then the moon doth really , he is a wise and excellently accomplished man , semper idem , though to the sight of the vulgar different . for at least an hemisphear of the moon is alwayes enlightned , and even then most , when she least appears to us . hitherto may be referr'd also that , . chron. . . also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim ●o brim round in compasse , and five cubits the height thereof , and a line of thirty cubits did compasse it round about . a thing plainly impossible that the diameter should be ten cubits and the circumference but thirty . but it pleaseth the spirit of god here to speak according to the common use and opinion of men , and not according to the subtilty of archimedes his demonstration . again psalme . in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sunne , which as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber , and rejoyceth as a strong man to runne his race . this , as mr. iohn calvin observes , is spoken according to the rude apprehension of the vulgar , whom david should in vain have endeavoured to teach the mysteries of astronomy . haec ratio est ( saith he ) cur dicat tentorium ei paratum esse , deinde egredi ipsum ab una coeli extremitate , & transire celeriter ad partem oppositam ; neque enim argutè inter philosophos de integro solis circuitu disputat , sed rudissimis quibusque se accommodans , intra ocularem experientiam se continet ; ideoque dimidiam cursûs partem quae sub hemisphario nostro non cernitur , subticet . i. e. this is the reason , to wit , the rudenesse of the vulgar , why the psalmist saith there is a tent prepared for the sunne , and then that he goes from one end of the heaven and passes swiftly to the other : for he doth not here subtily dispute amongst the philosophers of the intire circuit of the sunne , but accommodating himself to the capacity of every ignorant man , contains himself within ocular experience ; and therefore saith nothing of the other part of the course of the sun , which is not to be seen as being under our hemisphear . thus m. calvin . i 'le adde but one instance more , ioshua . v. . sunne stand thou still upon gibeon , and thou moon in the valley of ajalon . where it is manifest that ioshua speaks not according to the astronomicall truth of the thing but according to sense and appearance . for suppose the sunne placed and the moon at the best advantage you can so that they leave not their naturall course , they were so farre farre from being one over ajalon and the other over gibeon , that they were in very truth many hundreds of miles distant from them . and if the sun and moon were on the other side of the equatour , the distance might amount to thousands . i might adjoyn to these proofs the suffrages of many fathers and modern divines , as chrysostome , ambrose , augustine , bernard , aquinas , &c. but 't is already manifest enough that the scripture speaks not according to the exact curiosity of truth , describing things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to the very nature and essence of them ; but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to the●r appearance in sense , and the vulgar opinion of men . nor doth it therefore follow that such expressions are false , because they are according to the appearance of things to sense and obvious fancy , for there is also a truth of appearance . and thus having made good the first part of my promise , i proceed to the second ; which was to shew , that the extent of the world is to be bounded no higher then the clouds , or there abouts , that it may thence appear , that the upper waters mentioned in moses , are the same with those aquae in coelo stantes mentioned by pliny , lib. . his words are these , quid esse mirabilius potest aquis in coelo stantibus ? and these waters can be nothing else , but that contain'd in the clouds , which descends in rain ; and so the whole creation will be contain'd within the compasse of the aire , which the hebrews call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ibi aquae : because it is sedes nubium , the place of clouds and rain . and that the world is extended no higher then thus , according to scripture , it is apparent . first , because the clouds are made the place of gods abode ; whence we are to suppose them plac'd with the highest . there he lives , and runnes , and rides , and walks . he came walking upon the wings of the wind , in the . psalm . who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters , who maketh the clouds his chariot , and walketh on the wings of the wind . laieth the beams of his chambers in the waters , to wit , the upper waters which are the clouds . the almighties lodgings therefore according to the letter , are placed in the clouds . thereabout also is his field for exercise and warre , deut. . . there is none like to the god of ieshurun , who rideth upon the heavens for thy help in his excellency on the skie , that is , upon the upper clouds , as buxtorf interprets it , and indeed what can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifie above , but clouds ? for below it signifies pulvis tenuissimus , small dust ; and the clouds are as it were the dust of heaven . vatablus also interprets that place of gods riding on the clouds . and this agrees well with that of nahum , chap. . v. . the lord hath his way in the whirlwind , and the clouds are the dust of his feet . here he is running as swift as a whirlwind , and raiseth a dust of clouds about him . you shall find him riding again , psalme . . and that in triumph ; but yet but on the clouds : sutably to that in deut. sing unto god , sing praises unto his name , extoll him that rideth upon the heavens by his name iah , and rejoyce before him. that rideth upon the heavens ; the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which i would be bold with aben ezraes leave , to translate , that rideth upon the clouds : for clouds cause darknesse , and the root from whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies obtenebrari , obscurari . but for the ground of this rabbies interpretation , to wit , vpon the heavens , it is taken out of the . verse of the . psalme , to him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens of old . but if we read on there , we shall find that those heavens of heavens , in all probability , reach no higher then the clouds . for let 's read the whole verse together , to him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens that were of old ; lo , he doth send out his voice , and that a mighty voice : what 's that but thunder ? and whence is thunder but out of the clouds ? and where then doth god ride but on the clouds ? the following verse makes all plain : ascribe ye strength unto god ; his excellency is over israel , and his strength is in the clouds , which doth notably confirm , that the extent of the heavens , according to the letter of moses and david too , are but about the height of the clouds . for here the heaven of heavens is the seat of thunder , and gods strength and power is said to be in the clouds . nor doth this expression of this height , to wit , the heaven of heavens of old , imply any distance higher . for sith all the firmament from the lower to the upper waters is called heaven ; it is not a whit unreasonable that the highest part of this heaven or firmament , be called the heaven of heavens . and this is my first argument that the heaven or firmaments extent is but from the sea to the clouds , because god is sea●ed no higher in the outward phrase of scripture . my second argument is taken from the adjoyning the heavens with the clouds exegetically , one with another , for the setting out of that which is exceeding high as high as we can expresse . and this the psalmist doth often , psalme . . thy mercy , o lord , is in the heavens , and thy faithfulnesse reacheth unto the cloud● . and psalme . . for thy mercy is great unto the heavens , and thy truth unto the clouds . and psalme . . for thy mercy is great above the heavens , and thy truth reacheth above the clouds . where heaven and clouds set off one and the same height , that which is exceeding high , the mercie and truth of god. my last argument is from the psalmists placing the sunne , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the clouds , or in the cloudy heaven . for the word must so signifie as i did above prove both from testimony , and might also from the etymon of the word . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies comminuere , contundere , to beat to dust : and what are clouds but the dust of heaven , as i may so speak . psalme . v. , . his seed shall endure for ever , and his throne as the sunne before me . it shall be established for ever as the moon , and as the faithfull witnesse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in heaven : that is , in the sky , the place where the clouds are . the drawing down therefore of the sun , that faithfull witnesse in heaven , so low as the clouds , implies that the letter of the scripture takes no notice of any considerable part of the firmament above the clouds , it terminating its expressions alwayes at that extent . and this sutes very well with moses his calling the sun and the moon the great lights , and making nothing as it were of the starres , as is manifest out of the verse of the first of genesis . and god made two great lights , the greater light to rule the day , and the lesse to rule the night ; he made the stars also . but they come as cast into the bargain , as not so considerable , when as indeed a starre of the first magnitude is ( according to the calculation of the astronomers ) twenty thousand times bigger then the earth , and the earth five and fourty times bigger then the moon ; so that one starre of the first magnitude will prove about nine hundred thousand times bigger then the moon . which notwithstanding , according to the letter of moses , is one of the two great lights , the sole empresse of the night . but here the letter of moses is very consistent with it self . for sith that the extent of heaven is not acknowledged any higher then the clouds , or thereabout wherein , ( as i shewed you ) the sun is , and consequently the moon , aud it will not be more harsh to mak the stars stoop so low too ; nay , they must indeed of necessity all of them be so low , they having no where else to be higher , according to the usuall phrase of scripture ) the appearances of the starres will then to our sight sufficiently set out their proportions one to another , and the sun and the moon ( according to this hypothesis ) will prove the two great lights , and the starres but scatter'd sky-pebbles . wherefore from all this harmony and correspondency of things , i think i may safely conclude , that the extent of the firmament according to moses , is but the distance from the sea to the clouds , or thereabouts , as well as it is to our sight , which cannot discern any intervall of altitudes betwixt the clouds and the moon , the moon and the sunne , and lastly , betwixt the sunne and the fixed starres . which interpretation i am confident any man will admit of , that can bring down the tumour of his philosophick fancy unto a vulgar consistency , and fit compliance with the sweetnesse and simplicity of moses his style . and thus , philalethes , have i proved that there is no room for thy interstellar waters within the compasse of moses his creation , unlesse they run into one , and mingle with the rain or clouds . sect . vii . eugenius his ignorance in the english tongue . his grosse mistakes concerning the epicycles of ptolemie . that aire is an element of our body . that the vulgar notion of rarefaction and condensation implies a contradiction . of eugenius his magnet . that temperance and charity is of more consequence to man-kinde then his philosophers stone . his misapplication of s. johns prophecie for the proving of a vitrification of the earth . observation . here i called the ptolemaick systeme a rumbling confused labyrinth . so you did philalethes , and i perceive you will do so again . but prethee tell me , dost thou mean the heavens rumble ? and so understandest or rather hearest the rumbling harmony of the sphears ? or dost thou mean the labyrin●h rumbles ? i tell thee ; philaleth●s , a wheel-barrow may be said to rumble , for to rumble is to make an ill-favour'd ungratefull noise ; but no body will say the heavens or a labyrinth doth rumble , but such as are no englishmen , as you say somewhere you are not , and so do not understand the language . pag. . a confused wheel-barrow is a bull . is a wheel-barrow a bull ? what a bull is that ? but confused , i added not confused to wheel-barrow , that 's thy doing thou authour of confusion● line . the epicycles in respect of their orb●●re but as a mite in●● cheese . do yo● say so , mr. lilly ? no. do you say so , mr. booker ? no. look thee now , phil. how thy confident ignorance hath abused those two learned artists as thou callest them . they are ashamed to utter such loud nonsense . and now they have denied it , darest thou venture to say it , anthroposophus ? tell me then how little and diminutive those epicycles will prove in respect of their orbs , that have their diameters equall to the diameter of the orbit of the earth , or which is all one of the sun . thou wilt answer me with the cyclops in erasmus , istiusmodi subtilitates non capio . i do not believe thou understandest the question , though it be plainly propounded , and so i shall expect no answer . but come thy wayes hither again , phil. thou shalt not scape thus . i will not let thee go till i have called thee to an account for thy great bull of basan as thou wouldst call it . thou sayest , that the epicycles of ptolomy though they are too bigge to be true , yet that they are very diminutive things in respect of their orbs that sustain them ; as little and diminutive as mites in a cheese in respect of the cheese . to speak the most favourably of this assertion of thine that may be , it is sublime astronomicall nonsense . and if we could find any nonsense sublunary to parallel it , it would be some such stuff as this : although the cannon bullets in the tower be as bigge as mount athos , yet they are so little that they will not fill the compasse of a walnut . this is a bundle of falsities and so is that . that is , both the parts of these compound axioms are false , and the composition it self also illegitimate . these are discrete axioms , eugenius , and both the parts ought to be true , but they are both false here . and there ought also , especially these notes quamvis and tamen being in them , to be onely a discretion of parts , but here is an implacable opposition : things put together that imply a contradiction . in the latter of these axioms it is manifest ; but i will shew you , it is so also , in that former of yours . for first , the epicyoles of ptolemy , are not too bigge to be true . for they do not suppose them bigger then will be contained within the thicknesse of their own orbs . and you your self say that they are but as mites in a cheese in respect of their orbs . so that it is plain according to what you your self grant , as well as according to the hypothesis of ptolemy , that they are not too bigge to be true . but secondly , i say they are not as little as mites in respect of the cheese they are in . for the semi-diameter of saturns epicycle is to the semi-diameter of h●s eccentrick , at least as to . and the semi-diameter of iupiters epicycle to the semi-diameter of his eccentrick more then as to . but mars his as to , or thereabout , and the semidiameter of the epicycle of venus to the semidiameter of her eccentrick more then as to by a good deal . and is it not plain hence eugenius , that thy mite in a cheese must swell up at least to the bignesse of a mouse in a cheese , though thy cheese were almost as little as a trundle bed wheel , or a box of marmalade ? and what a vast difference is there betwixt a mite and a mouse , but thy ignorance emboldens thee to speak any thing . but now in the last place , the putting these two falsities together is contradiction , as well as they are severally false . for it is evident , that if the epicycles be too bigge to be true , they cannot be so little as mites in a cheese , in respect of their orbs . for then would they be easily contain'd within the crassities or thicknesse of their orbs . but their not being able to be contained within the crassities of their orbs , that 's the thing that must make them too bigge to be true . and questionlesse if we will joyn the epicycle with its right office , which is to bring down the planet to its lowest perigee , then the epicycles of the planets will be too bigge to be true . for there will be of them that are half as big again as their deferents , nay five times if not ten times as big . and of these epicycles i said ( and ptolemies ought to have been such , unlesse they did desert their office ) that they were too bigge to be true . but thou pronouncest concerning these things thou knowst not what , and therefore art easily tost up and down like a shittle cock thou knowst not whither , how do i blow thee about as the dust or the down of thistles ? — ut plumas avium pappósque volantes . observation . thou moore à 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as much as à 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . thou art so drunk and intoxicated with thine own bloud ( as aristotle saith of all young men that they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) that thou seest double , two o's in my name for one . observation . see what i answer at observation the . observation . phy , phy , some rose-water . who speaks like a puritan now , phil ? but why some rose water ? hast thou devoured an orenge like an apple , pulp and pill and all , and so made thy mouth bitter , o thou man of wales ! but it is to wash hur mouth from bawdry . why wilt thou be so bold then as to name the lawyers phrase rem in re ! or hast thou a purpose to call all the lawyers , bawdy gentlemen , by craft ? i tell thee , phil. to the pure all things are pure ; but thy venerious fancy which i rebuked in this passage thou exceptedst against , doth soyl and corrupt what is chast and pure . observation . i do , mastix . i do . why doest thou not then explain it , thou little mastigia ? observation . here i have you fast , philalethes , for all your wrigling . for if our vitall and animal spirits , which are as much a part of us , as any other part of our body is , be fed and nourished by the aire , then the aire is an element of our body . but here he would fain save himself , by saying that the aire is rather a compound then an element : but let any man judge how much more it is compounded then the earth , and then water which nourisheth by drinking , as well as the aire can do by breathing . observation . page . line . how can darknesse be called a masse ? &c. no it cannot . nor a thin vaporous matter neither . thy blindnesse cannot distinguish abstracts from concrets . thy soul sits in the dark , philalethes , and nibbles on words as a mouse in a hole on cheese ●arings . but to slight thy injudicious cavil at masse , and to fall to the matter . i charged thee here to have spoke such stuff as implies a contradiction . thou saidest that this masse ( be it black or white , dark or bright , that 's nothing to the controversie here ) did contain in a farre less compass all that was after extracted . i say this implies a contradiction . but you answer , this is nothing but rarefaction and condensation according to the common notion of the schools . i but that notion it self implies a contradiction , for in rarefaction and condensation there is the generation or deperdition of no new matter , but all matter hath impenetrable dimensions . therefore if that large expansion of the heavens lay within the compass of the mass , that matter occupyed the same space that the masse did , and so dimensions lay in dimensions , and thus that which is impenetrable was penetrated , which is a contradiction . what thou alledgest of the rarefaction of water into clouds or vapours , is nothing to the purpose . for these clouds and vapours are not one continued substance , but are the particles of the water put upon motion , and playing at some distance one from another , but do really take up no more place then before . observation . to say nothing at thy fond cavil at words in the former observation● and thy false accusation that i called thee dog ( for i would not dishonour diogenes●o ●o much as to call thee so ) and leaving it to the censure of the world , how plain and reall thy principles are , i am come now to my observation on the page of thy anthroposophia , where thou tellest us , that there is a threefold earth , viz. elementary , celestiall , spirituall . now let us see what an excellent layer of the fundamentalls of science thou wil● prove thy self . and here he begins to divide before he defines . thou shouldest fi●st have told us what earth is in generall before thou divide it . this is like a creature with a cloven foot , and never a head . but when thou didst venture to define these members , where was thy logick ? ought not every definition , nay , ought not every precept of art to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ? but i will not vex thy head with these severities . the magnet is the second member , the object of this observation . here you say , i condemn this magnet , but i do not offer to confute it . but i answer , i have as substantially confuted it as merrily ; but thou dost not take notice of it . i have intimated that this precept of art is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , nay , that it is plainly false : for it affirms that which hath no discovery by reason or experience , viz. that there is a certain earth which you call the magnet , that will draw all things to it at what distance so ever . quodcunque ostendis mihi sic , incredulus odi . so farre am i from approving thy magnet , o magicus . nor do the pages thou here citest , of which i give a favourable censure , prove any such thing . let the reader peruse them , and judge . indeed certain operations of the soul are highly and hyperbolically there set out by thee ; but the magnet came dropping in at the latter end of the story . i gave no allowance to that . i will not have my soul so ill taught , as to attract metall out of mens purses at any distance whatsoever . page . line . didst thou ever hear or know that i was a pick-pocket ? if i had had the least suspicion of thee that thou wer● so , i would not have called thee so , for it had been an unmercifull jest . but if thou wert as full of candour and urbanity , as i deem thee clear of that crime , thou wouldst not have interpreted it malice but mirth . for such jests as these are not uncivill nor abusive to the person , when the materiality of them are plainly and confessedly incompatible to the party on whom they are ●ast . observation . page . line . prethee why a galileo's tube , were there more galileo's then one ? certainly , phil. thou dost not look through a galileo's glasse , but through a multiplying glasse , that seest in my english more galileos then one . go thy wayes for the oddest correctour of english that ever i met with in all my dayes . observation . page . line . for i fear god. the devils also believe and tremble : but do'st thou love god , my philalethes ? if thou didst , thou wouldst love thy brother also . but shall i tell thee truly what i fear ? truly i fear , that thou hast no such precious medicine to publish , which thou makest so nice of ; and that thou dost onely make religion a cover for thine ignorance . but let me tell thee this sober truth , that temperance will prevent more diseases by farre , then thy medicine is like to cure ; and christian love would relieve more by many thousands , then thy philosophers stone that should convert baser mettals into gold . there is gold enough in the world , and all necessaries else for outward happiness ; but the generations of men make themselves miserable by neglecting the inward . this is palpably true , and it would astonish a man to see how they run madding after the noise of every pompous difficulty , and how stupid and sottish they are to those things which god has more universally put in their power , and which would ( if they made use of them ) redound to their more generall and effectuall good . observation . so doth s. iohn prophesie too . but magicus is too wise to understand him . s. iohn tells us of a new heaven , and of a new earth . here , magicus having recourse to his chymistrie , in the height of his imagination prefigures to himself not onely crystalline heavens , but also a vitrifide earth . but i consulting with scripture , and with the simplicity of mine own plain spirit , think of a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness● he 's for an eden with flowry walks , and pleasant trees ; i am for a paradise , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where virtue , wisdome , and good order meet , as the chalde● oracles describe it . he is for a pure clear place , i place my happinesse in a clear and pure mind , which is the holy place or temple of god. observation . tecum habita . i will not urge that precept too strictly upon thy self , because i wish thee a better companion . observation . for thy ho ! sounds like the noise of a s●w-gelder . as much as the celestiall orbs or labyrinth rumble like a wheel-barrow . this is but the crowing of thine own brain to the tune of the sow-gelders horn . sect . viii . the useless mysterie of the souls being an hermaphrodite . of the uncleannesse of aristotle . that the shame of lust is an argument that something better then the condition of this mortall body belongs to the soul. that the soul of man is not propagated as light from light . that though she perceive nothing but her own energie , yet the distinction of the inward and outward sense is not without its use . that eugenius asserts that blinde men do see in their sleep . that there is but one sentient spirit in a man which is the rationall soul her self . of understanding without phantasmes . mastix takes notice of eugenius his vain boasting of his quick parts . that a bad man cannot be so much as a friend to himself . the great satisfaction of the plain truths of christianitie above the zeal and intricacie of sects . eugenius his injudicious poetry wherein intending to praise the vniversity of oxford he plainly abuses it . that comparison implies not alwayes a positive . that mastix affects not to confute every thing but what he can plainly show to be false . observation . here in answer to my objection thou tellest me that ruac and nephesh , the parts whereof the soul of man consists , differ as male and female . all the mysterie then is to make mans soul an hermaphrodite . thou shouldst have told us here what operations were proper to ruach , what to nephesh , whether vegetation belong to the one● reason and sense to the other : or whether in this the divine life were seated , in that the animal and fleshly reason , and the like . but the subtiltie of thy wit reacheth no further then the discrimination of sexes , and the grossely pointing out of male and female . page . line . for your sodomite patron aristotle allows of it in his politicks . more wretched beast he if it be so : but i do not remember any such passage in his politicks , and yet have read them through , but long since ; and it is sufficient for me if i remember the best things in authours i read , i can willingly let go the worst . but what thou sayest of aristotle is not unlikely ; for he is tax'd for this unnaturall practise in diogenes laertius , with one hermias a foul friend of his , in the praise of whom notwithstanding he hath wrote a very fair and elegant hymne , which begins thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to this sense , virtue ! that putst humane race vpon so hard toyl and pains ; lifes fairest prize ! thy lovely face bright virgin , the brave greek constrains to undergo with an unwearied mind long wasting labours , and in high desire to throng through many deaths to find thee ; that dost fire mans soul with hopes of such immortall fruit no gold can sute , nor love of parents equalize , nor slumbers sweet that softly seize the eyes . so easie a thing is it for bad men to speak good words . it is recorded by the same authour out of aristippus , that the same philosopher was also so much taken with the conversation of hermias's whore , that in lieu of that pleasure he reap'd by her , he did the same ceremonies and holy rites to her , that the athenians were wont to do to their goddesse ceres eleusinia . from whence it seems that his soul did consist of two parts , male and female , he having to do with both . so that he is more like to prove thy patrone then mine , philalethes ! for i have to do with neither . page . line . but i am tickled say you . yes , i say you are so tickled and do so tickle it up in your style with expressions fetched from the gynaeceum , that you are ridiculous in it , and i thought good to shew you to be such as you are . but for mine own part i am moved neither one way nor another with any such things , but think good to affix here this sober consideration . that there being generally in men and women that are not either heroically good , or stupidly and beastly naught , a kind of shame and aversation in the very naming of these things ; that it is a signe that the soul of man doth in its own judgement find it self here in this condition of the body , as i may so speak , in a wrong box and hath a kind of presage and conscience that better and more noble things belong unto it , else why should it be troubled at its own proclivity to that which is the height , and flower of the pleasure of the body , as they that are given to this folly do professe . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to this sense . what life ? what sweet without the golden tie of venus ? dead to this , streight let me die . but that there is a naturall shame of these acts and the propension to them , that story of typhon in diodorus siculus is no obscure argument . for when he had murdered his brother osiris , that he might more sacramentally bind to him , for his future help and security , his twenty foure accomplices in this act , he hew'd the body of his brother into so many pieces , but was fain to fling the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his pudendum into the river , they every one being unwilling to take that for their share . so much aversation is there naturally from these obscenities , that even those that are otherwise execrably wicked , have some sense of it . but i do not speak this as if marriage it self were a sinne as well as whoredome and adultery , for questionlesse it is permitted to the soul in this case shee 's in . but if she be not monstrous and degenerate , she cannot but be mindfull that she is made for something farre better . observation . to this observation thou answerest like a man with reason and generosity and with a well beseeming wit , how unlike to thy self art thou here , anthroposophos ? observation . i perceive by thy answer to this observation thou art not at all ocquaitted with ramus what ere thou art with the schoolmen , bnt i passe over this and come to what is of more moment . page . line . this is one of your three designes . yes , it is one of those three designs i tax'd you for in the beginning of my observations . and here i make it good out of your own text anthroposophia pag. . line . these are your words . and now reader , arrige aures , come on without prejudice and i will tell thee that , which never hitherto hath been discovered . what can be more plain if you will but prick up your eares and attend to what you say your self . but now i have discovered that this is but a boast of yours concerning a known notion among the christian platonists , you begin to pluck in your eares and confesse your self a plagiary . in the rest of your answer you do but teach your grannam to crack nuts , i go on magicus to the next . observation . as a flame of one candle can light a thousand candles more . your answer then to this observation is this . that the soul is propagated as light is from light ; that there is a multiplication without decision or division . but for thine and the readers fuller satisfaction i shall answer thee here , as thou somewhere demandest , in the verse of spencer but in the reason and sense of more , out of these four stanzaes in my canto of the preexistency of the soul. wherefore who thinks from souls new souls to bring , the same let presse the sunne beams in his fist , and squeeze out drops of light , or strongly wring the rain-bow , till it die his hands well prest ; or with uncessant industry persist th' intentionall species to mash and bray in marble morter , till he has exprest a soveraine eye-salve to discern a fay. as easily as the first all these effect you may . ne may queint similes this fury damp , which say that our souls propagation is , as when lamp we lighten from a lamp , which done withouten diminution of the first light , shews how the soul of man though indivisible may another rear imparting life . but if we rightly scan this argument , it cometh nothing near . to light the lamp's to kindle the sulphureous gear . no substance new that act doth then produce . onely the oyly atomes 't doth excite and wake into a flame . but no such use there is of humane sperm . for our free sprite is not the kindled seed , but substance quite distinct there from . if not : then bodies may so changed be by nature and stiffe fight of hungry stomachs , that what earst was clay then hearbs , in time it self in sence may well display . for then our soul can nothing be but bloud , or nerves , or brains , or body modifyde ; whence it will follow that cold stopping crud hard mouldy cheese , dry nuts , when they have rid due circuits through the heart , at last shall speed of life and sense , look thorough our thin eyes , and view the close wherein the cow did feed whence they were milk'd ; grosse py-crust will grow wise , and pickled cucumbers sans doubt philosophize . observation . bid adiew to thy reputation mastix . well , now i perceive that thou thinkest that thou hast hit the nail on the head indeed : but all that thou dost or canst collect from what is in my preface to the canto concerning the sleep of the soul , is but this : that whether we see or imagine , that both of these are but the very e●ergie of the soul , and that the soul doth not , nor can perceive any thing immediately but her own energie . but what of all this ? it doth not thence follow that the inward and outward sense is all one , but onely unitate genericâ . no more then if i should say , that to be an animal is but to have , corporeall substance , life , and sense , it would thence follow that an horse and a man are all one . look thee now , magicus , how i have passed through this huge mound and bulwark of thine , with as much ease and stilnesse as a gliding spirit through a mud-wall . i will onely look back and laugh at thee magicus , for a man of no logick . but if any man doubt whether thou saist blind men see in their sleep , it is apparent thou doest . for in thy anthroposophia , page . line . thou saist , that the visible power is not destroyd as is plain in the dreams of blind men . here if thou knowst what thou saist , thou arguest from the effect to the cause , from the operation to the faculty , but is the operation of the visive faculty ( for thou dost barbarously call it visible ) any thing else but seeing ? therefore thou dost plainly assert that blind men see in their sleep . it would be well if they could walk in their sleep too : for then they would scarce have any losse of their eyes . observation . magicus , i do not altogether contemn the symboles and signatures of nature , but i believe that euphrasia or eye-bright that hath the signature of the eye , sees or feels no more , then the pulp of a walnut that hath the signature of the brain , doth understand or imagine . observation . what a pittifull account dost thou give me here of the difficulties i urged thee with . my queres were these , you making two spirits in a man , the rationall and sensitive . first , whether the rationall spirit doth not hear and see in a man ? here you distinguish . the sensitive spirit sees the object ( say you ) and the rationall the species . but i say unto thee , that sensation is nothing else , but the perceiving of some present corporeall object ; and that the rationall soul doth . for when two men discourse , that in them that reasons , hears the words , and sees the party with whom it reasoneth , does it not ? therefore they both see the object : but you will say , one sees by a species , the other without . i say nothing can be discerned without a species , that is , without an actuall representation of the thing discerned : so that that distinction is in vain . and i would adde this further , that every sentient spirit must perceive by its own species , and not by anothers . but thou sayest , this sensitive spirit like a glasse represents the species of externall objects . then it seems the sensitive spirits office is to be the glasse of the soul to see things in ; but glasses themselves , magicus , are not sentient , nor need this spirit be so , that is the souls glasse ; and it is plain it is not . for if these two were two different sensitive spirits , then they would have two different animadversions ; but there is but one animadversive spirit in a man , and therefore but one sensitve . and that there is but one animadversive spirit in a man , is plain from hence , that if the rationall animadversive bestow its animadversion fully elsewhere , the sensitive in man cannot perform the thousandth part of that which is performed in brutes . we should lose our selves in the most triviall matters , when notwithstanding this sensitive spirit in man would have as quick a vehicle as in most brutes . besides , this sensitive spirit having this animadversion , would have also a memory apart , and would be able while the rationall is busied about something else , to lay up observations such as beasts do by it self ; and then long after to shew them to the rationall , to its sudden amazement and astonishment . but none of these things are . and in my apprehension it is in a very grosse and palpable way sensible to me , that there is but one animadversive in me , and i think i am no monster ; if i be , it is ( it seems ) in that i am all rationall spirit , and have had the luck to misse of the sensitive , the beast . page . line . if this be true , then there be two hearing and seeing souls in a man. this is my second quere ; i ask'd if there be . to this you answer , ha ha he ! a very profound answer . this is no laughing matter , my friend . have i not already shew'd you some difficulties , this asserting two sensitive spirits in a man , is laden with ? answer them , phil. i should gladly heare thee use thy tongue as well as see thee shew thy teeth by laughing . for that slender faint reason that follows thy loud laughing , viz. the objects are different , and the senses are different , that is taken a way already . for the sting of my argument is not this , that there would be two sensitive souls of the same nature in the body of a man ; but that there should be two sensitive souls at all . and indeed , considering that the superiour soul contains the faculties of the inferiour , it is altogether needlesse . and that is a very sober truth , entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate : which is to the same sense with that so often repeated in aristotle and theophrastus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god and nature do nothing in vain . and the right organization of parts , and due temperature of the body , and proportion of animal spirits , this is all the glasse the soul of man wants in this life to see by , or receive species from . but his glasse hath no more sense it self , then an urinall or looking-glasse hath . where are you now , phil. with your ha ha he ? line . i could , mastix , teach thee an higher truth . yes truly , magicus , you are best of all at those truths which dwell the highest . you love to soar aloft out of the ken of sense and reason , that you may securely raunt it there in words of a strange sound and no signification . but though thou fliest up so high , like a crow that hath both his eyes bor'd out , yet i have thee in a string , and can pluck thee down for all thy fluttering . thou sayest that a soul may understand all things , sine conversione ad phantasmata : this i suppose thou wouldst say to contradict aristotle ; but i do not suspect thee of so much learning as to have read him . he tells us in his book de anima , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that there is no understanding without phantasmes . yon say that we may understand all things without them . what think you of individualls , magicus ? of which it is controverted amongst the platonists , whether there be any idea's of them or no. but being you are so confident an assertor , let 's heare how stout a prover you are of your assertions . know you this you have spoken by sense , reason , or divine revelation ? by this string i have pluck'd this blind crow down ; i have him as tame in my hand as a titmouse : look how he pants , and gapes , and shews the white tip of his tongue , but sayes nothing . go thy wayes , phil. for a pure philosophick thraso . observation . three quarters of a year hast thou spent , &c. o magicus , magicus ! thou art youthfull and vain-glorious , and tellest thy tutour that this hasty cookery thou entertainest him with , was dispatch'd and dress'd up some ten daies after the presse was deliver'd of my observations . how many ten dayes doest thou mean , by thy some ten dayes ? thou wouldst have thy tutour to stroke thee on the head for a quick-parted lad , i perceive , eugenius . but hadst thou not better have staid longer , and writ better sense , more reason , and with lesse rayling ? but i poore slow beast ! how long dost tho● think i was viewing and observing that other excellent piece of thine ? i confesse , magicus , because thou forcest me to play the fool as well as thy self , i was almost three quarters of a moneth about it ; and how much more is that then some ten dayes , though but twice told over ? and i will not be so curiously vain-glorious , as to tell thee how great a share of this time was daily taken from me by necessary imployments . this is to answer thy folly with folly . but i thank god that i glory in nothing , but that i feel my self an instrument in the hand of god , to work the good of men. the greatest strength of a man is weaknesse , and the power of reason , while we are in this state , depends so much of the organs of the body , that its force is very uncertain and fickle . is not the whole consistency of the body of man , as a crudled cloud or coagulated vapour ? and his personality a walking shadow and dark imposture ? all flesh is grasse , and the glory thereof as the flower of the field : but the word of the lord endureth for ever . verily the people are as grasse . observation . have at you my friends the independents . the independents indeed may be thy friends , magicus ; but i dare say thou art not in a capacitie to be theirs , as having not yet wit and morality enough to be a friend unto thy self . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . a bad man cannot be friendly disposed towards himself , as having nothing in himself amiable and friendly , aristot. eth. ad nicom . lib. . cap. . observation . mastix , you denied formerly the scripture was intended for philosophie . but you contending that it was , how fondly do you preferre agrippa before moses and christ. this you would have called blasphemy ; but i have learned no such hard language . observation . for the naturall queres i put to thee here concerning the nature of light , the rainbow , the flux and reflux of the sea , and the load-stone ; i tell thee thou wilt never be able to answer sense to them , unlesse thou turn cartesian , and explain them out of that philosophy . but in the generall . i mean , that the heats which the soul takes from personall admiration , make her neither wise , nor just , nor good ; but onely disturbe the spirits , and disadvantage reason . observation . page . line . mastix would gladly put those asunder , whom god hath put together . you mean then that a protestant and christian , are termini convertibiles . what a rare independent is magicus ! he is an independent of the church of england ; which is as good sense as if he should say , he is a protestant of the church of rome . truly , magicus , i think thou art an independent in nothing but in thy reasons and speeches ; for in them indeed there is no dependency at all . they are arena sine ●alce , and hang together like thum-ropes of sand . but before i be merry with thee ; and i fore-see i shall be when i come to thy verses , hear this sober aphorisme from me . if that those things which are confessedly true in christianity were closely kept to by men , it would so fill and satisfie their souls with an inward glorious light and spirituall joy , that all those things that are with destroying zeal and unchristian bitternesse prosecuted by this and that church , would look all of them as contemptibly , as so many rush-candles in the light of the sun. line . you fall on my person . well , i 'le let your person go now , and fall on your poetry . where i believe , i shall prove you a notable wagge indeed , and one that ha's abused your mother oxford and all her children very slyly and dryly . dry punick statues . you make your own brothers of oxford then so many dry pumices , things that have no sap or juice in them at all . i wish you had been so too phil , for you have been to me a foul wet spunge , and have squeazed all your filth upon my person , as you call it . but if thou knewest how reall a friend i am to thy person , excesse of kindnesse would make thee lick it all off again . might make a marble weep to bear your verse . it seems then by you that those of oxford make such dull heavy verses , that it would make a monument of marble like an overladen asse , weep to bear the burden of them . shee heav'd your fancies . what heavy leaden fancies are these that want such heaving . up heavy heels . but how high did she heave them , phil ? as high as the other lead was heaved that covers the roof of your churches and chappels ? nay higher . above the very pinacles , mastix ! she heaved your fancies higher then the pride of all her pinnacles . a marvellous height , but the jack-daws of our university sit higher then thus , so it seems that the souls of the sonnes of your mother oxford are elevated , according to your poetry , as high as the bodies of the jack-daws in the university of cambridge . what large elevated fancies have your academicks that reach almost as ●arre as the eye and sense of an ordinary rustick ! your phansie's higher then the pinnacles , his sight higher then the clouds , for he may see the sunne and the starres too , if he be not blind . go thy wayes phil , for an unmercifull wit. i perceive thou wilt not spare neither father presbyter as thou callest him , nor thy mother , nor thine own brothers , but thou wilt break thy jest upon them . well i now forgive thee heartily for all thy abuses upon me , i perceive thou wilt not spare thy dearest friends . observation . thou art not well acquainted with gold , thou art not a man of that mettall . here , magicus , thy want of logick hath made thee a little witty . for if thou hadst understood that comparison doth not alwayes imply any positive degree in the things compared , this conceit had been stifled before the birth . thou saist somewhere , that i am a thin , lean philosopher ; but i say , i am as fat as a hen is on the forehead . whether do i professe my self lean or fat now ? as lean as thou dost . now when i say as orient as false gold , do i say that false gold is orient . thou art a meer auceps syllabarum , magicus , or to look lower , a mouse-catcher in philosophy . observation . philalethes , say you , writ this book to revenge his death . no , now i think you mention his death , onely to bring this latine sentence into your book . et quis didicit scribere in lucta lacrymarum & atramenti . observation . i excluded not thy censure but thy mercy . thy words are , i expose it not to the mercy of man but of god. but it is no exposall or hardship at all to be exposed to mercy , therefore by mercy thou must needs understand censure . page . line . you skud like a dogge by nilus . here your fancy is handsome and apposite to what you would expresse , but that which you would expresse is false . for i fear no crocodile , but the fate of aesops dog who catching at the shadow lost the substance . because i more then suspect that there is nothing reall in those places i passed by , but onely tremulous shadows of an unsettled fancy . page . line . did not i bid thee proceed to the censure of each part ? what is your meaning , philalethes ! that you would have me confute all , right or wrong ? no , phil , i have done as s. george in his combate with the drogon , thrust my spear under the monsters wing , into the parts which are most weak or least scaly . what i have excepted against was with judgement and reason , and so good , that all that i have said hitherto , stands as strong and unshaken of thy weak reasonings and impotent raylings , as rocks of adamant and pillars of brasse at the shooting off of a childes eldern-gunne against them . let 's now see how like a man thou hast quit thy self in the ensuing discourse . anima magica abscondita . sect . ix . the shrimpishnesse of the second part of eugenius his answer . his maim●d definition of nature . that form is not known otherwise then by its operations . of the union of the soul with the body . that the soul is not intelligent fire prov'd by sundry arguments . well , eugenius , i have now perused this second part of thy answer , which doth not answer at all in proportion to thy first . how lank ! how little is it ! thou hast even wearyed thy self with scolding , and now thou art so good natured as to draw to an end . faint , phil , faint ? let me feel thy pulse . assuredly it strikes a myurus , which is a signe thou art languid at the heart . or is thy book troubled with the cramp , and so hath its leggs twitch'd up to its breech ? or hath it been on procrustes his bed and had the lower parts of it cut off ? whatever the cause is , the effect is apparent ; that thou art wrinkled up at the end like a pigs tayl , and shriveled on heaps like a shred of parchment . how many sober passages of morality ? how many weighty arguments of reason ? how many froli●ks of wit hast thou slipt over and not so much as mentioned , much lesse applyed any sutable answer ? but i hope thou wilt make good use of them silently with thy self , and rectifie thy fancy hereafter by my judgement , though thou thinkest it as harsh , as standing on the presbyteriall stool , to give me publick thanks . in the mean time , reader , be contented , that i onely reply to what he hath thought good to oppose . but what he runnes away from so cowardly , i will not run after him with it , nor be so cruel as to force him to abide . observation . page . line . it is plain then , that the body and substance of the definition is contained in these few words , principium motûs & quietis . why , magicus , because you make up the rest with thinking ? suppose thy picture were drawn to the waste , & thou thoughtest of the rest of thy body . doth that picture therefore contain the full draught of thy body ? away , thou bird of athens . observation . you tell me a form cannot be known otherwise then by what it can do or operate . i told thee so phil , and do tell thee so again . and thou onely deniest it , thou dost not disprove it ; wherefore phyllis is mine yet , and not the willow garland ; but the willow rod is thine , for not learning this plain lesson any better all this while . for , ( to speak to thy own sense and conceit of the soul , that it is an intelligent fire , or light ) thou canst not frame any notion of intelligent , but from intellectuall operations ; nor of light , but from what it operates upon thy sense , thy sight ; which is a truth most evidently plain to any man that is not stark blind . page . line . you say mastix , i have not considered the difference added in the definition of nature . no , you had not when you cavilled at the genus , as angry at it , because it did not monopolize the whole office of the definition to it self , and supply also the place of a difference . fond cavil ! but thou supposed'st , it seems , that i would never deigne to answer so unclean an adversary as thou hast shown thy self , and that thy readers would never take the pains to see whether thou spoke true or false ; and that hath made thee say any thing , & that with undaunted confidence and foulest insultations , that the simple might be sure to belieue thee , without any more ado . eugenius , enjoy thou the applause of the simple . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . — but one wise man to me is as much as ten thousands of such , and infinite swarms of them not so much as one . i am fully of heraclitus his mind for that , philalethes . observation . here , philalethes , you contemning definitions made from the proper operations of the things defined , i intimate to you , that you necessarily imply , that you look after the knowledge of a stark-naked substance , which is impossible ever to be had . what do you answer to this ? nothing . let the reader judge else . observation . let any body compare thy finihabia with the expositions of those terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , made by iulius scaliger ( for it is he that is more cunning at nonsense then the devil , not i ) and he shall find that thou hast spent a page and an half here to no purpose , but onely to shew some few faint flashes of wit. for at last thou dost acknowledge the aptnesse and significancie of the words , but still complainest that there is no news of the substance of the soul in them . to which i answer again , a substance is a thing impossible to be kno●n otherwise then by its proper operations , or peculiar relations to this or that , as i have often inculcated . but how do you take away this answer ? onely by making a wry mouth , away ! away ! have i not already demonstrated unto thee , that it is impossible to know substances themselves , but onely by their operations ? here he answers again , that that cannot be ; for then a plowman would be as wise as himself , and mother bunch as his mother oxenford . but to satisfie this inconvenience , ( if it be any , to grant a plow-man wiser then thou art ) i say , thou and thy mother may be wiser then a plow-man in other things , though not in this ; and in this , if your notion be more adequate and precise then his is , that is , if you are able , according to the rules of logick , to examine whether your assertion may go for an axiome , that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and are able to rest fatisfied , by finding your selves to know according to the capacity of the subject . but now , phil. you indeavour to go so far beyond the plow-man , that you fall short of him , and reach at so high strains , that you have strain'd your self till you seem half crackt to the sober . for this truth , that a substance is not to be known , but by its proper operations , is a truth so clear , that it is clear that he is destitute of sight and judgement , that doth not discern it even at the first proposall . observation , , . what thou answerest to these th , th , and th observations is nothing at all to the purpose , and therefore to no purpose at all to answer any thing to them , as i have already said in the like case , and i must leave something to the candour and judgement of the reader . observation . page . line . mastix , you place the difficulty in the rudiments or sperms , because they are lax and fluid . no , magicus , but i do not . for i think they are alwayes so , or else the ratio seminalis would have a hard task of it . but when thou sayest , that the anima in the matter missing a vent , &c. the difficulty is , how a thing so subtile as a soul is , should misse a vent in so lax a matter as the first rudiments of life . this is the difficulty , magicus . but thou understandest not the force of any thing i propound to thee , thy apprehension is so out of tune with straining at high things nothing to the purpose . but i perceive , though thou wouldst dissemble it , magicus , that i have beat thee from the bung-hole , and that rude expression borrowed thence . and now thou art as busie as a moth about a candle , to fetch a metaphor thence . for thou tellest us , that this union is like that betwixt the candle and the flame . this indeed for some poeticall illustration may do well : but what philosophicall satisfaction is there in it , philalethes ? for first , the flame is w●thout the candle , not in it ; but the soul within the body , not without it . secondly , the flame is ●n effect of the candle , but the soul is not an effect of the body , the body is not the pabulum thereof , and the very substance of which it is made , by superinducing a new modification . thirdly , and lastly , the soul is still the same individuall soul ; but the flame is no more the same flame , then the water betwixt such and such banks of the river , is still the same water , if thou hadst put thy finger into thy nose , and said , lo the mystery of the union of the soul and body ; it had been as much philosophicall satisfaction as this , from the union of flame and candle . thou pitifull puzled thing ! thou are not yet able to weigh what thou sayest . and now i have drove thee from the flame of the candle , thou hast scudded away quite into the dark , flown to i know not what strange obscure expressions , a story , of old grand-dame nature , with a set ruff and a gold chain about her neck , which thou callest propinquity of complexions , and i know not what . i prethee how much doth this differ from sympathy and antipathy , which all knowing men call asylum ignorantiae : and now i have drove thee thither , i will leave thee in that sanctuary of fools , what i have said , i have already made good , that the souls union with the body is more theomagicall then magicus himself is aware of . observation . page . line . this aethereall sense and fire of simple aire , both which he makes to be one and the same thing . all that i say there is , that those verses are understood of the vehicle of the soul , not of the soul it self ; and it is theupolus his opinion as well as mine , who cites those verses of virgil , and gives that sense of them ; to wit , that the two-fold vehicle of the soul is there meant , the aethereall and spirituous , not the soul it self , academic . contemplat . lib. . so that virgil doth not at all patronize thy grosse conceit of making the soul consist of fire and aire . page . line . i grant the soul to be a hodily substance that hath dimensions too . why phil ? is there any bodily substances without dimensions ? i could very willingly grant thee a mere body without a soul , thou hast so little reason and sense in thee ; or if thou hast a soul , that it is a corporeall one , and it may well be so : but my question is meant of souls that have sense and reason in them , whether they be corporeall substances or no ? yes , say you , they are . they are intelligent fire and light. i say , phil. thou art all fire , but no light , nor intelligent at all . thou art the hottest fellow that ever i met with in all my dayes , as hot as a taylours goose when it hisseth , and yet as dark . but let 's endeavour ( if it be possible ) to vitrifie thy opake carcase , and transmit a little light into th●e . doest thou know then what fire is ? how it is a very fluid body , whose particles rest not one by another , but fridge one against another , being very swiftly and variously agitated . in this condition is the matter of fire . but now i demand of thee ; is there any substance in this fire thou speakest of , ( for thou sayest it is really fire , and usest no metaphor ) which we may call the essentiall form thereof , or no ? if there be , i ask thee whe●her that form be intelligent or no ? if it be , then that is the soul , and this subtile agitated matter is ●ut the vehicle . but if thou wilt say , that the subtile fiery matter is the intelligent soul , see what inconveniencies thou intanglest thy self in . for fire being as homogeneall a body as water is , and having all the parts much what alike agitated ; how can this fire do those offices that commonly are attributed to the soul ? first , how can it organize the body into so wise a structure and contrivement , the parts of this fire tending as much this way as that way , or at least tending onely one way , suppose upward . secondly , how can it inform the whole body of an embryo in the wombe , and of a grown man ? for if it was but big enough for the first , it will be too little for the latter ; unlesse you suppose it to grow , and to be nourished . but thus , you will not have the same indiuiduall soul you was christened with , and must be forced to turn not onely independent , but anabaptist , that your new soul may be baptized ; for it is not now the same that you was christened with before . for i say , that ten spoonfulls of water added to one should rather individuate the whole , then that one of that whole number should individuate the ten . thirdly , how can it move it self , or the body in a spontaneous way ? for all the particles of this fiery matter wriggling and playing on their own centers , or joyntly endeavouring to tend upwards , makes nothing to a spontaneous motion , no more then the atomes of dust that are seen playing in the sun beams , striking through a chink of a wall into a dark room , can conspire into one spontaneous motion , and go which way they please . wherefore i say , there ought to be some superintendent form that takes hold of all these fiery particles and commands them as one body , and guides them this way or that way , and must be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of this fiery substance , that is , there must be such an essence in this fiery matter ( and that is noted by the preposition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) as doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that doth hold together , that doth drive this way , according to its nature or will , and yet thus driving doth keep possession of this fiery matter ; and what is this but ● soul ? not the indument , the smock or peticote of the soul as thou call'st it . eugenius , thou art old excellent at finding out naked essences , it seems , that takest the garment for the body . thou art so young that thou canst not distinguish betwixt a living barn , and a baby made of clouts . but this is not all that i have to say phil. fourthly , i say that this fire cannot be the soul , because fire is devoid of sense . i but you say you understand an intelligent fire . learnedly answered , and to as much purpose as if you should say , that a soul is a post or a pillar , and then you should distinguish and tell me ; you meant an intelligent post or pillar , but i say fire hath no more sense then a post or pillar has reason . for if it have sense , it must have that which the schools call sensus communis . and now tell me phil , to which of all the playing particles of this ignis fatuus of thine thou wilt appoint the office of the sensus communis , or why to any one more then to the rest ? but if thou appoint all , there will be as many severall sensations , as there are particles : indeed so many distinct living things . and thou wilt become more numerous within , then the possessed in the gospel , whose name was legion , because they were many . but if thou wilt pitch upon any one particle above the rest , tell me where it is ? in the middle or at the out-side of this fire ? i will interpret thee the most favourably , and answer for thee ; in the middle . but i demand of thee , why shall this in the middle have the priviledge of being the sensus communis rather then any other , or how will it be able to keep it self in the middle in so fluid a body ? and if it were kept there , what priviledge hath it but what the most of the rest have , as well as it , to make it fit for the office of a sensus communis ? for it must be , either because it is otherwise moved on its center , then the other are on theirs , which you can not prove either to be , or if it were , to be to any purpose : or it must be , because it hath some advantage in consideration of the joynt motion of the particles . let the joynt motion therefore of the particles be either rectilinear or circular . if rectilinear , as suppose in a square , let the processe of motion be from side to side parallel . hath not then any particle in a right line that is drawn through the center of this square figure , parallel to two of the sides , equal advantage for this office ( the transmission of outward sense being perpendicular to the said right line ) that the middle particle hath ? for thus it can receive but what comes in one line , transmission of sense being parallel , as is supposed . nay , the points of any other inward line parallel to this , will do as well as the points of this middle line , which is as plainly true , as two and two is four , if thou understandest sense when it is propounded to thee . well , but it may be you may think you can mend your self by supposing the joynt motion of this fiery matter to be circular . i say no. for then that of this motion , that respects externall objects is from the center to the circumference , as it is plain in that ordinary experiment of a sling . and thus motion is from the middle particle , not towards it . but you should say here , if you could answer so wisely , that motion bearing forward from this center toward the object , that reciprocally the object will bear against it ; and so there will be a transmission of sense round about from all the circumferentiall parts of this fiery orb which thou calledst the naked soul. but i say , magicus , if the middle point of this orb get the place of the sensus communis , because there is a common transmission of motion from sensible objects thereunto : i say then that there be more sensus communes in this orb then one , because such transmissions as are not perpendicular to this orb , will meet in severall points distant from the middle point or center of this orb , and there are enough such externall transmissions as these . i might adde also , that the middle point or particle being though a minute one , yet a body , and consequently divisible , that that will also bid fair for a multiplicity of common senses . but i will adde onely this , that i hope to see the day wherein thou wilt be so wise as to be able to confesse , that the authour of anthroposophia theomagica , &c. was the most confident ignaro that ever wet paper with ink . but before i leave this fourth argument , let me onely cast in one thing more which equally respects both hypotheses , either of rectilinear or circular motion . and that 's this , if any one particle of this fiery substance be the common sense , it must be also the principle of spontaneous motion to the whole substance . for we see plainly that that which hath the animadversive faculty in man , or the office of common sense , moves the whole man , or that the motion of him is directed at the beck of this . but i prethee phil , tell me if thou canst possibly imagine , that any one particle in this fiery substance should be able to impresse spontaneous motion upon the whole ; i know thou canst not but think it impossible . fifthly , if the soul be fire ( fire being so fluid and unsteddy a substance ) how can there be any memory in it ? you remember that expression in catullus , whereby he would set forth sudden obl●teration and forgetfulness of things , that it is like writing in the water or in the aire , in vento aut rapidâ scribere oportet aquâ . but what think you of fire then , will that consistency bear more durable characters ? the perpetuall fridging and toying of the fiery particles dorh forthwith cancell whatever is impressed , and now there is neither common sense nor memory to be found in your fire , we may be secure there is no reason to be found there . for the discursive faculty requires some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , something fixt to tread upon as well as the progressive : but in your fire all is aflote , nothing fixt . sixthly and lastly , if the soul of man be either fire or aire , or both , i do not see that it will prove immortall ; but that its consistency will be dispersed and scattered like the clouds . it will not be able to conflict with the boistrous winds , or scape blowing out , or being lost in the thinne aire , as other flames are , it once being uncased of the armature of the body . and these vehicles which you will have to be the very soul it self , they being so changeable and passive within the body , it will not be absurd with lucretius to inferre that they will be utterly dissolved when they are without : haec igitur tantis ubi morbis corpore in ipso iactentur , miserísque modis distracta laborent , cur eadem credis sine corpore , in aere aperto , cum validis ventis aetatem degere posse ? to this sense , if in the body rack'd with tort'rous pain and tost with dire disease they 're wearied so ; this shelter lost , how can they then sustain the strong assaults of stormy winds that blow ? i tell thee phil , such a soul as thou fanciest would be no more able to withstand the winds , then the dissipable clouds , nor to understand any more sense then a soul of clouts , or thy own soul doth . but now i have so fully confuted thy grosse opinion of the soul , it may be happily expected that i would declare mine own . but phil , i onely will declare so much , that i do not look on the soul as a peripateticall atome , but as on a spirituall substance , without corporeall dimensions , but not destitute of an immateriall amplitude of essence , dilatable and contractible . but for further satisfaction in this point , i referre to my philosophicall poems . and do professe that i have as distinct , determinate , and clear apprehension of these things , and as wary and coherent , as i have of any corporeall thing in the world . but heat and fantastry to suddled minds are as good companions as caution and reason to the sober . but the durablenesse of that satisfaction is uncertain , whereas solid reason is lasting and immutable . sect . x. the confutation of eugenius his magicall chain explained and confirmed . his arguments for knowledge or understanding in the seminall forms of things utterly subverted . the fondnesse of his definition of the first principle of his clavis : a demonstration that the starres receive not any light from the sun. eugenius taxed of enormous incivility . mastix his friend vindicated . his conjecture of magia adamica . his censure of the present ill temper of eugenius . observation . pag. . my book also informes you that this descent of light proceeds not from any weight , but from a similitude and symbole of nature . you are indeed very good at similitudes phil. as i have proved heretofore out of your skill in zoography . but this is another businesse . for here you professe to speak of the symbolizing and sympathizing of things one with another in nature , and so mutually moving to union , by a kind of attractive power , according to that saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . well be it so that there is a mutuall attractive power in things that symbolize one with another ( for the attraction is mutuall as well as the similitude mutuall ) what is this to take away what i have objected ? nothing . but i will shew you how you are hang'd in your own chain . for it is as plain , as one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that where two things of the same nature act , the greater is stronger , and the stronger prevails . wherefore three portions of light should fetch up two , or five one ; rather then one should fetch down three , or five , or two . this is the bare point of my reason which i covered with a double comparison . viz. from the greater number of the lincks of a chain preponderating the lesse number , and from the greater portion of earth prevailing over the lesse ; as in that instance , when a clod taken from the earth and let go in the free aire , the earth commands it back to it self again , according to that conceit of magnetisme . and here the argument was à pari , not à specie , and there may be a collation of parity even in contraries . and your ignorance of that logicall notion , hath inabled you to rayl so much , and speak so little to the purpose on this observation , as any logician may very easily discern . observation . page . line . answer if thou darest to any one of these questions . assure thy self , eugenius , i can give a very rationall answer to every one of them . but for thy sake i think fit to answer none of them . but what is in my philosophicall poems will salve them all . i will now rather examine what force of arguments you have to prove that that which orders matter into shape and form , is animadversive and intelligent . your first argument is ; that if there were no animadversion in the ratio seminalis , ( or call it what you will ) that shapes the matter into form , the agent would mistake in his work . secondly , that he would work he knew not what , nor wherefore , and that therefore all generations would be blind casualties . thirdly , there would not be that method , infallibility of action nor proportion and symmetry of parts in the work . fourthly and lastly , that there would be no end nor impulsive cause to make him to work . to all these unsound reasons , i have already answered very solidly and truly ; that the force of them reached no further then thus : that the ratio seminalis must at least proceed from something that is knowing , and be in some sense rationall , but not have reason and animadversion in it self . and this is the opinion of plotinus , marsilius ficinus , and all the platonists that i have met with . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. ennead . . lib. . to this sense . for the ratio seminalis acts in the matter , and that which acts thus naturally , neither understands nor sees , but hath onely a power to transform the matter , not knowing any thing , but making onely as it were a form or shape in the water . and ficinus compares this ratio seminalis , to an artifice cut off from the mind of the artificer and made self-subsistent , and able to work upon prepared matter , but without knowledge , as being disjoyned from all animadversive essence . this is the right notion of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and this fully takes away the force of all your arguments . for these being divine art imbodied in nature and matter , and working naturally , they will first , mistake no more , then a stone will in its journey downwards , or the fire in its course upward ; which go alwayes right , if no externall obstacle hinder them . and these will work right , if the matter be duly prepared . secondly , though they work they know not what , yet they work right in virtue of that cause from whence they came , the divine intellect : and their operation is no more casuall then the ascent of fire , and descent of earth ; for it is naturall . thirdly , this third falls in with the second , and the same answer will serve both . fourthly , there is an impulsive cause and end of their working , though unknown to them , yet not unknown to the authour of them . as in the orderly motion of a watch the spring knows not the end of its motion , but the artificer doth . yet the watch moves , and orderly too , and to a good end. but this fourth falls in also with the second or first . and you see now that they are indeed all fallen to nothing at all . so easily is confidence overcome when unbacked with solid reason . observation , . page . line . did ever man scribble such ridiculous impertinencies ? never any man before eugenius philalethes . but why will you scribble such stuff , phil. that will put you to the pains of reproaching of it when you have done ? my exception against your definition of the first principle of your clavis was as solid as merry . for , one in one , and one from one , is no definition of any one thing in the world . for definitio , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is a bounding and limiting what you define . but here is no bounds nor limits at all . for every thing that is , is one in one , and one from one , viz. in one world and from one god. and then in your other attempt this way , to define it , a pure white virgin walking in shades and tiffanies , is a meer foolery in philosophy , and teacheth nothing but that your fancy is very feminine . now in answer to all this , you contrive two ridiculous paralogisines , and then laugh at them when you have done . page . line . made their god iupiter an adulterer . and you eugenius , bestow a wife on the god of israel , and make her after an adulteresse , and then call me blasphemous for deriding your folly . page . line . which thou dost blasphemously call pitifull services . yes , philalethes , and i ought to call them so , in comparison of that high good that is intended to us by scripture . they are pitiful things indeed in comparison of that . and thou art a pitifull fellow to make an independent of , that hast no more wit nor christianity in thee then to call this blasphemy . but a man may easily discern how religious thou art , though by moon light , at the latter end of the page , where thou dost display thine own immomodesty , by talking of displaying of petticotes . observation . line . the starres could not receive any light from the sunne . now you shew how wise you are , in straining at so high a philosophicall notion . i tell thee , phil. the starres cannot receive any light from the sun , no more then this earth can from one single starre . for the sunne to our sight at the distance he is from the fixed stars , would seem no bigger then they , if so big . for according to the computation of astronomers , the stars of the first magnitude are really far bigger then the sunne : yet you see how little light they impart to the earth , and how very small they appear to us . and yet the lively vibration of their light shews plainly that it is their own , not borrowed . so that it is plain , that if the sun and starres be man and wife , this immense distance makes them live in a perpetuall divorce . observation . line . now at last reader , he perceives his errour , and grants it no death but a change . therefore there needed none of your correction . and i wish you could of your self perceive yours too , that you may need none of mine . but i perceive by what follows here , thou dost not know my meaning by spiritus medicus . which i pardon in thee , thou dost so seldome understand thy own . observation . . line . otherwise grasse could not grow on the banks of it all the yeare long . i said the fringes of reeds and flags , and those gayer ornaments of herbs and flowers , could not grow all the yeare long on the banks of yska , if it were a river in great britain or ireland . what is now become of thy faint ha ha he ? line . he thinks yska runnes to heaven . do i so , phil ? why then i gave thee friendly counsel when i bid thee fling thy self into its stream . for then thou wouldst with ease have gone along with the stream to heaven , when others are fain to row hard against the stream , and scarce arive thither when they have done all they can . i knew thy meaning by thy mumping , phil. but thou expressedst it so disadvantagiously , that thou gavest me good occasion to be merry with thee . but thou hast no mirth nor urbanity at all in thee , but wrath and foul language , which without any heed or discretion thou flingest upon every one that comes in thy way . and here in this page , thou bidst fair for the calling of that noble philosopher des-cartes , knave , as heretofore thou didst call him fool . what wit , civility , or judgement is there in this philalethes ? thou art resolved to be recorded to posterity the most immortall and ignorant man that ever appeared yet in publick . but thou hast as much confuted his philosophy , by saying it is a whim and a wham , as thou hast solidly answered thy observatour . i have made it apparent , that thou hast not spoke sense scarce to any one thing i objected against thee . but hast discovered thy grosse ignorance in logick and philosophy so farre , that i professe i did not suspect thou hadst been any thing near so weak as i have found thee : but i willingly leave the censure of it to the judicious . i will onely speak thus much in favour to thee and for thy excuse , that the strength of thy passion may very well have more then ordinarily weakened thy reason . now for that ingenuous young gentleman , the smartnesse of whose poetry hath so wrung thee , and vext thy guts , that it hath brought upon thee the passio iliaca , and made thee so foul mouthed , i will onely say so much , phil. and speak within compasse , that he hath more wit and philosophy in one hair of his head , then thou hast in thy whole noddle . and that his verse was not obedient to my prose ; but the muses were very obsequious to his wit and humour of representing thee such as thou art . and in this onely he was no poet , in that he doth not write fictions as thou doest in prose . but it seems he hath so paid thee home , that the sense of my gentle strokes are struck out by his quicker lash . for thou sayest i am a good harmlesse sneaking observatour , thy ala● . that is , thy , thou knowst not what , but no mastix by no means , but onely one that gave thee a flap with a fox-tail . verily , thou sayest true , i did not intend to hurt thee , and thou makest me so weak as if i were not able . why doest thou raise then so mighty trophies upon the victory of so harmlesse and unable an enemy ? for as inconsiderable as i am , to make himself considerable to the world , he makes a colosse , a gyant , a monster of nine acres long of me . but how can this consist with thy putting me up into a little box . parturiunt montes — or rather , debiscunt montes , tandem intrat ridiculus mus . the colosse falls , the mountains gape , and at length enters in the merry mouse . an excellent jest my masters ! but why into a box with wire grates , rather then into an iron cage , as tamberlain us'd bajazeth , and so carried him up and down in triumph ? i wonder thou didst not take this jest by the turkish mustachoes , rather then that . but this it is , to have a wit no larger then a mouse-catchers ; or a fancy heav'd up no higher then the pinacles of oxenford . thou wilt in time , phil. make a fellow of a fit size to shew the lions and rattoon at the tower ; and i suppose thou fawnest upon the independents so as thou doest , to get their good will for the next reversion of that office . but enough my philalethes , of levity and folly . i will not abuse my liberty to excesse , onely let me in some way answer the expectation of those that may happily expect my censure of thy magia adamica . but i shall not so much answer it , as frustrate it : for i professe , i take no pleasure in the censuring of any mans writings ; i can imploy my self better . i was in a very merry frolick when i ventur'd upon this ; yet the judicious may discern that there was sobriety enough at the bottome of all that mirth . but as for this magia adamica , i confesse i have not read it ; but i do favourably conjecture , that the authour thereof is as well skilled in those books of magick that adam read by the fire-side in winter nights , while eve held to him the candle , as any young man is in these european parts . i let adamicus alo●e , my businesse is onely with anthroposophus , over whom now i having so full a victory , it will be expected , perhaps , that i lead him about in triumph . but i must answer my friends in christian sobernesse , that i am the right philalethes , a lover of truth more then a lover of victory , and of victory more then of triumph ; — satis est prostrásse leoni . onely i will say , not of his person , but of that dispensation and genius in which he is in for the present ; lo , there lies the contagious spectrum of ephesus , which i have discovered to be the pest of the common-wealth of learning , and of humane and divine reason , as much as that demoniacall imposture was the walking plague of that famous city : and now he hath been pelted a little with hard language , as apollonius commanded the ephesians to stone that hypocriticall old mendicant with stones , he appears in the very same shape with him at the uncovering of the heap , that is , an uggly huge black mastife sprawling for life , and foaming forth a●undance of filthy stinking scum , after the manner of mad dogs . and thus have i approv'd my self wise as apollonius , in discovering imposture ; and valiant as hercules , who over-mastered that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as dionysius calls him , that brazen-barking cerberus . sect . xi . mastix his oration to the men of ephesus . a threfold dispensation under which christians are . the way to be delivered from the impostures and fooleries of the second dispensation . the nature of the third dispensation or second covenant . in what sense mastix is puritane or independent . that he is above all sects whatsoever as sects . the transfiguration of his inward man into a breathing colosse , speaking from heaven , and what he thence utters . that mastix is no enthusiast for all this . his friendly and faithfull monitions to eugenius , freely discovering to him the true causes of his being defeated in his great designes upon fame , and knowledge . that a wise man will not onely not be hurt but be profited by his enemy . and now , o men of ephesus ! i mean all you that reap the fruit of this noble exploit of mine , rear me up my deserved trophey , and inscribe this tetrastich upon it , for an everlasting monument of your gratitude to me , and love to the truth : religions heat as yet unpurged quite from fleshly sense and self , when 't makes a stir about high myst●ries above reasons light , is at the bottome but a rabid curre . but that i may conceal nothing from you , o men of ephesus , i must tell you , that whether you rear up this monument , or whether you forbear all is one . for the truth of these verses is already written in the corner stones of the universe , and engraven on the lasting pillars of eternity . heaven and earth may passe away , but no● one tittle of this truth shall passe away . high and windy notions do but blow up and kindle more fiercely the fire of hel in the hearts of men , from whence is pride , and contention , and bitter zeal . this is the pest and plague of mankind , and the succeeding torture of the sons of adam . for while the mind of man catcheth at high things , of which she is uncapable till she be refined and purged , she doth but fire the frame of her little world by her overbusie motion , which burning in grosse fewel , fills all with smoke . and thus the soul is even smothered and stifled in her narrow mansion . her first enlargement here must therefore be , by temperance and abstemiousnesse : for without this breathing-hole for fresh aire , devotion it self will choak her still more and more , heating her thick and polluted spirits in such sort , that they cannot be sufficiently rectified by the power of the brain . but in this dispensation especially is lodged a strong voice , weak sense , and a rude contempt of any thing that will trouble the head , as reason , philosophy , or any but ordinary subtilty in learning . but they love christ very heartily after their grosse way , as their protectour and securer from what outward evil naturally attends so bad an inward condition . but being so immersed in brutish sense , and yet with conscience of sinne ; if any body have but the trick to perswade them that sinne is but a name , he will be a very welcome apostle to them , and they will find more ease to their beastly nature , in fancying nothing to be sinne , then they did in making their hypocriticall addresses to an offended saviour . and then ( poore souls ) through the foulnesse of the flesh , are they easily inveigled into atheisme it self . in so great danger are we of the most mischievous miscarriages , by contemning of tho●● known and confessed virtues of temperance , continence , and chastity . but we 'le suppose men in a great measure temperate ; yet how farre off are they still from reall happinesse in themselves , or from not disturbing the happinesse of others , so long as envy , ambition , covetousnesse , and self-respect doth still lodge in them ? here indeed reason may happily get a little more elbow-room ; but it will be but to be patron to those vices , and to make good by argument harsh opinions of god , and peremptorily to conclude the power of christ weaker then the force of sinne . and the fancy in these something more refined spirits , will be more easily figurable into various conceits , but very little to the purpose . of which some must go for sober truths , and those that are more fully shining , in the midst of a shadowy melancholiz'd imagination , must bid fair for diuine inspiration , though neither miracle nor reason countenance them . but you , o men of ephesus ! if any one tell you strange devises , and forbid you the use of your reason , or the demanding of a miracle ; you will be so wise as to look upon him as one that would bid you wink with your eyes , that he might the more easily give you a box of the eare , or put his hand into your pockets . now out of this second dispensation , innumerable swarms of sects rise in all the world . for falsehood and imagination is infinite , but truth is one . and the benignitie of the divine spirit , having no harbour in all this varietie of religious pageantry ; envy , covetousnesse , and ambition must needs make them bustle , and tear all the word in pieces , if the hand of providence did not hold them in some limits : quin laniant mundum ; tanta est discordia fratrum : as he saith of the winds . in this dispensation lodgeth anger and active zeal concerning opinions and ceremonies , uncertainty and anxiety touching the purposes of god , and a rigid injudicious austerity , of which little comes but the frighting men off from religion : which notwithstanding if it be had in the truth thereof , is the most chearfull and lovely thing in the world . these men having not reached to the second covenant , will also thank any body that could release them from the first , for whereas true religion is the great joy and delight of them that attain to it , theirs is but their burden . and so it is not impossible that these may be also wound off to the depth of wickednesse , and sink also in time even to atheisme it self . for what is reall in them will work , but what is imaginary will prove it self ineffectuall . wherefore , is it not farre better for men to busie all their strength in destroying those things which are so evidently destructive of humane felicity , then to edge their spirits with fiery notions and strange fantasmes , which pretend indeed to the semblance of deep mysterious knowledge and divine speculation ; but do nothing hinder but that the black dog may be at the bottome , as i said before ? but you will ask me , how shall we be rid of the importunity of the impostures and fooleries of this second dispensation . but i demand of you , is there any way imaginable but this ? viz. to adhere to those things that are uncontrovertedly good and true , and to bestow all that zeal , and all that heat , and all that pains for the acquiring of the simplicity of the life of god , that we do in promoting our own interest , or needlesse and doubtfull opinions . and i think it is without controversie true to any that are not degenerate below men , that temperance is better then intemperance , justice then injustice ; humility then pride , love then hatred , and me●cifulnesse then cruelty . it is also uncontrovertedly true , that god loves his own image , and that the propagation of it is the most true dispreading of his glory ; as the light which is the image of the sunne , is the glory of the sunne . wherefore it is as plainly true , that god is as well willing , as able to restore this image in men , that his glory may shine in the world . this therefore is the true faith , to believe that by the power of god in christ we may reach to the participation of divine nature : which is a simple , mild , benigne light , that seeks nothing for it self as it self ; but doth tenderly and cordially endeavour the good of all , and rejoyceth in the good of all , and will assuredly meet them that keep close to what they plainly in their consciences are convinced is the leading to it . and i say , that sober morality , conscienciously kept to , is like the morning light reflected from the higher clouds , and a certain prodrome of the sunne of righteousnesse it self . but when he is risen above the horizon , the same virtues then stream immediately from his visible body , and they are the very members of christ according to the spirit . and he that is come hither , is a pillar in the temple of god for ever and ever ; for he teacheth the second covenant , whic he can in no more likelihood break , then lay violent hands on himself to the taking away of his naturall life . nay , that will be farre more easie then this ; for a man may kill himself in a trice , but he cannot extinguish this divine life without long and miserable torture . if this be to be a puritane , eugenius , i am a puritane . but i must tell thee , that by how much more a man precisely takes this way , the more independent he will prove . and the pure simplicity of the life of god revealed in iesus christ , will shine with so amiable a lustre in his inward mind , that all the most valuable opinions that are controverted amongst churches and sects , will seem no more comely then a fools coat compared with the uniform splendour of the sunne . but if thou meanest by either puritane or independent , one in the second dispensation , i should dissemble in the presence of heaven , if i should not say i am above them ; as i am above all sects whatsoever as sects . for i am a true and free christian ; and what i write and speak is for the interest of christ , and in the behalf of the life of the lamb which is contemned . and his interest is the interest of the sonnes of men ; for he hath no interest but their good and welfare . but because they will not have him to rule , the nations of the world ( by a divine nemesis ) are given up into the hands of wolves , foxes , and lions : the earth is full of darknesse and cruell habitations . wherefore , eugenius , thou doest very unskilfully , in endeavouring to tumble me off from the independents , to cast me amongst the puritanes , as thou callest them . for it is not in thy power to cast me so low as any sect whatsoever ; god hath placed me in a dispensation above them , and wilt thou throw me down ? no , eugenius , i shine upon them both as the sunne in the firmament , who doth not wink on one side , or withdraw his rayes , but looks openly upon all , imparting warmth and light . thou hast encountred with a colosse indeed ( though thou callest me so but in sport and scorn ) farre bigger then that stradling statue at rhodes , and that reacheth far higher . and yet no statue neither , but one that will speak what nothing but ignorance and hypocrisie can deny . wherefore with my feet wading amidst the sects of the earth and with my head stooping down out of the clouds , i will venture to trie the world with this sober question . tell me therefore , o all ye nations , people , and kindreds of the earth , what is the reason that the world is such a stage of misery to the sonnes of men ? is it not from hence , that that which should be their great guidance , their religion and highest lights of their minds , is but heat and squabbling about subtile uncertain points , and foolish affectation of high mysteries ; while the uncontroverted sober truths of virtue and piety are neglected , and the simplicity of the life of god despised , as a most contemptible thing . and i had no sooner uttered these words in my mind , but me thought i heard an answer from all the quarters of the world , from east , west , north and south , like the noise of many waters , or the voice of thunder , saying , amen . halelujah . this is true . nor is this any vain enthusiasme , philalethes , but the triumph of the divine light in my rationall spirit , striking out to my exteriour faculties , my imagination and sense . for my head was so filled with the noise , that it felt to me as bound and straitened , as being not able to contain it , and coldnesse and trembling seised upon my flesh . but you will say , all this is but a triviall truth that you are so zealous and triumphant in . but verily , eugenius , is it not better to be zealous about those things that are plainly true , then those that are either uncertain or false ? 't is true , what i have said to thy soaring minde may seem contemptible . but if thou once hadst the sight of that principle from whence it came , thou wouldest be suddenly ashamed of that patched clothing of thy soul , stitch'd up of so many unfutable and heedlesse sigurations of thy unpurged fancy , and wouldst endeavour to put on that simple uniform light . and now , eugenius , that i find my self in an advantagious temper to conuerse with thee , come a little nearer me , or rather i will come a little nearer to thee . hitherto i have play'd the part of a personated enemy with thee , give me leave now to do the office of an open friend . i perceive there is in you , as you have made it manifest to all the world , an eager desire after knowledge , and as insatiable thirst after fame : both which are to be reputed farre above that dull and earthy pronenesse of the mind of some men , whose thoughts are bent upon little else but the bed and the board . but i tell thee , that this desire of thine being kindled so high in thy melancholy complexion , there arise these three inconveniences from this inordinate heat . first , thy spirits are so agitated , that thou canst not soberly and cautiously consider the objects of thy mind , to see what is truly consequent , what not ; and so thy reason goes much to wrack . secondly , thy melancholy being so highly heated , it makes thee think confidently thou hast a phantasme or idea of a thing belonging to this or that word , when thou hast not ; which is a kind of inward phrensie , and answers to the seeing of outward apparitions when there is nothing before the sight . thus art thou defeated in thy designe of knowledge in divine and naturall things by this distemper . but thirdly , the same untamed heat causeth boldnesse , confidence and pride . and hence ariseth thy imprudence . for i tell thee , eugenius , there is no such imprudent thing in the world as pride . wot'st thou not what the humour of all men is ; how they think themselves no inconsiderable things in the world ? you know the story in herodotus , how when the greeks had overcome the persians and after it was debated amongst them , to whom the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 belonged , who should have the honour of being reputed most valiant in that service , every one did acknowledge that next to himself themistocles did best . wherefore it is plain that he that will not let any man go before him , provokes all men . here therefore was thy imprudence , eugenius , that thou wouldst take the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to thy self without so much as any debate or asking leave , when every galenist , aristotelean , cartesian , and theosophist , thinks it belongs to him as much as to thee . thus hast thou provoked all men against thee , and made ship-wrack of thy fame , as well as fallen short of learning . but you 'le say , why ? what would you have me to have done as some others do , who ( though they be proud , yet ) put on a handsome dresse of modesty and squeamish humility ? that i tell thee had been indeed something more like prudence , which thy raised heat could not stoop to , but i must confesse it had been but a kind of morall sneaking . for as the bending down of the upper parts of the body , so that the talnesse of the stature thereof is concealed , is the sneaking of the body : so to make a mans self more humble then he is , or lesse high-minded , is the sneaking of the soul. but the first point of wisdome is to be really humble indeed . for an humble mind is as still as the night , and as clear as the noon-day . so that it is able without any impatiency or prejudice to discern all things , and rightly to judge of all things . this christian temper is so sober , and wise , that no imposture can surprize it , nor ever will it hurt it self by rashnesse and imprudency . this is the heir of god , the treasury of all humane , divine , and naturall knowledge , and the delight and praise of men where ever it appears . but the inseparable companions of haughtinesse , are ignorance , shame , and enmity . but believe it , eugenius , as this divine humility is of more worth , so is it of more labour then to find the philosophers stone , or the famous medicine you talk of ; i am certain of more consequence by ten thousand times . and me thinks now at length through all those waves and rufflings of thy disordered mind , i see something at the bottome in thee , o eugenius , that begins to assent to what i say , that begins to shine and smile , and look upon me as a very pleasant apostle , sent ( not without providence ) to toy and sport thee into a more sober temper , and advertise thee of the highest good that the soul of man is capable of ; and thou wilt i am confident very suddenly say , and that from thy heart , that better are the wounds of a friend , then the kisses of an enemy . or if thou canst not yet fancy him a friend that hath worn the vizard of a foe so long , yet i do not mistrust but that thou wilt be so wise , as , according to xenophons principle , not onely not to be hurt , but also to be profited by thine enemy . an enemy indeed is not a thing to be embosomed and embraced , as the satyr would have done the fire when he first saw it , and therefore was forewarned by prometheus to abstain , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but in the , mean time , that which it would pain or consume , may by observing the right laws of using it , receive kindly warmth and vigour from it , and work excellent things in virtue of its heat or light . did not telephus heal his wound by his enemies spear ? and had not iason his impostume cured by that weapon that was meant for his deadly dispatch ? you know also the story of hiero , eugenius , who when his enemy had upbraided him with his stinking breath , chid his wife when he came home , because she never had it discovered to him all● that time of their living together : but she being very honest and simple , told her husband that she thought all mens breaths smelt so . you see then how much more easie it is , to hear what is true concerning us , of our professed adversaries , then of our bosome friends . but methinks i hear thee answer that neither a bosome friend nor an embittered enemy can be competent judges of a mans vices or virtues : for the one would be too favourable , and the other too severe . what then ? wouldst thou have some third thing , a mean betwixt both , ( according to that known aphorisme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) whom thou mightest hope would prove an impartiall judge ? why , that 's i , phil. whom , i dare say thou art confident to be no friend to thee ; and i dare swear i am no enemy . and therefore why should i despair , but that my fitnesse and skill may prove as successefull in allaying of eugenius his tumour , as that unskilfull hand was lucky in lancing iasons impostume . and being once cured , do not then repine , that there was a time wherein thou wast unsound , no more then alexander the great , that he was once so little as to be lodged within the narrow compasse of his mothers wombe ; or milo who at length could lift an ox , that he was once so weak that he could not stirre a lamb . and what think'st thou phil. of plato , empedocles , democritus , socrates , and other profound sages of the world , can you imagine that when they had arrived to that pitch of knowledge , that it was any shame or regret to them , that there was once a time when they knew not one letter of the alphabet . why then should my eugenius be troubled , that he was once childish , ignorant , proud and passionate , when he is well cured of those distempers . we are what we are , and what is past is not , and therefore is not to afflict us . but he that is more anxious concerning fame then virtue , and seeks onely to seem a gallant and invincible thing to the whole world , when in the mean time his mind is very weak and vulnerable . i know my eugenius is so wise , that such a man as this , will seem as irrationall to him , as if one having by ill chance cut his shinne , he should be lesse solicitous about healing of his legge then mending of his stocken . finis . the contents of mastix his letter . . the reason why he permitted his observations and reply to be reprinted . . of david george and jacob behmen . . that there are two main wayes of assenting to truth viz. the evidence of reason , or the vigour of fancy , and to which of these two jacob behmens complexion carried him . . the great use of that consideration , and a vindication of jacob behmen from the calumnie of his adversaries . . mastix suspects the objections here propounded to be his friends own , though he dissemble it , but the willinglier answers to them for his sake . . a generall apologie for the mirth of his observations . . an apologie for the whole second section of his reply . . the faith of the platonists and of christians in reference to a blessed immortality in what they agree and in what they differ , and the preheminence of the one above the other . . that god is not united after the same manner with every christian , that he is with christ himself , and yet that god is communicated to every true christian . . deification what it is , and how warrantable a term , and yet discountenanced by mastix , and the reason why . . that the wise and virtuous are truly kings and priests according to the suffrage both of christians and heathen philosophers , and the reason why mastix put on so gorgeous a scheme of grandiloquence towards his antagonist . . that it is not enthusiasme but thankfulnesse to professe what knowledge we have , to have received it from god. . the vast difference betwixt articles of faith and opinions , and the great price mastix sets on the one , though he slights the other . . that he is a professed friend to all sects whatsoever , provided that they revolt not from the essentialls of christianity . . bertius his partiality against the calvinists taxed , and that a conscientious christian that keeps to the plain truths of the gospel , sits free and secure from the distraction of sects . . mastix his opinion concerning the quakers . . what may be the most dangerous designe of the devil in that sect. . how to defeat this designe of his ; with an intimation of the reason why god may permit this errour to spread . . mastix his dream of the beginning of the late commotions in england . . the interpretation of his dream . , the occasion of his dream , and the comparing thereof with the figuration of his phansie by day into a breathing colosse . . that that fit was not properly enthusiasme , but ordinary ( though very vehement ) devotion ; and that there was nothing divine therein , but that truth which was there uttered , viz. that the christian life is farre to be preserred before conformity of opinions . . what happened to mastix nearest to the nature of vision or enthusiasme of any thing that ever befell him , and his descant thereupon . . that the guidance of dreams is more proper for action then speculation , and more fit to determine us ( when we are plainly at a losse ) what to do , then what to conceive in points of philosophy or religion . . mastix apologizeth for taking the liberty of telling his own dreams , excusing himself from the example of cardan . . the reason why he sets himself so zealously and professedly against enthusiasme . . the exceeding great advantage the staid and sad mind has above the light and merry . . why melancholy men may become more holy and illuminate then others , and the great danger of miscarriage in that complexion . mastix his letter to a private friend concerning his reply . sir , i received yours ●ome three weeks or a moneth after the date thereof . i suppose the tedious length of the way and many digressions , and by-visits of the bearer , made it to come so late ; but it is not the more unwelcome or lesse seasonable . your good opinion of what i have wrote against atheisme is no small satisfaction to me for my pains therein . for that men of so exquisite judgement as your self allow of a performance , it is to me a plain argument , that if others do not concurre● that the fault is more to be suspected in him that reades , then in him that writes the discourse . . if my observations and reply be shortly reprinted , as you hear , it is through the importunity of our friend parresiastes , who would not let me be quiet till i had given him leave to do it . the strongest engine that he had to move me to it , was the consideration , that if i would not let them be reprinted while i might amend such things as i thought fit , that they might hereafter be republished whether i would or no , with what ever disadvantages hang upon them . that you wish they were as effectuall an antidote against enthusiasme , as that other is against atheisme , it does imply that you think they are not ; and i thank you for your freedome in declaring your opinion ; to which i willingly subscribe . but parresiastes will prefix a treatise concerning the nature , causes , kindes , and cure of enthusiasme , that in my judgement will strike home to the purpose● so that mingling all together they may happily prove as soveraign a medicine against enthusiasme as you conceive that other to be against atheisme● . methinks he is something bold with some authours that considerable men set no small price upon . but let him look to that ; you know the man and the manner of his disposition , how free and exert he is , and what a sincere zeal he has to the truth . what he writes concerning david george and that other so near akin to him , i must confesse i dare not blame his boldnesse therein , they seeming to me ( so farre as i can possibly fathome them ) at the best but enthusiastick sadduces . but as for iacob behmen i do not see but that he holds firm the fundamentalls of the christian religion , and that his minde was devoutly united to the head of the church , the crucified iesus , to whom he breathed out this short ejaculation with much fervency of spirit upon his death-bed , thou crucified lord iesus , have mercy on me , and take me into thy kingdome . but though i be very well assured of the sanctity of the man , and look upon him as one that is as much beyond the other two , as his boastings of his own person are lesse then theirs who either equalized themselves with , or set themselves above our saviour , who is god blessed for ever ; yet it is to me no argument at all , that whatsoever he writes is from an infallible spirit ; but the case seems to me to stand thus . . there being two main wayes whereby our mind is wonne off to assent to things . viz. the guidance of reason , or the strength and vigour of fancy ; and according to the complexion or constitution of the body we being led by this faculty rather then by that , suppose , by the strength or fulnesse of fancy rather then the closenesse of reason ( neither of which faculties are so sure guides that we never miscarry under their conduct ; in so much that all men , even the very best of them that light upon truth , are to be deemed rather fortunate then wise ) iacob behmen , i conceive , is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative facultie has the preheminence above the rationall ; and though he was an holy and good man , his naturall complexion notwithstanding was not destroyed , but retained its property still ; and therefore his imagination being very busie about divine things , he could not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast , and of receiving divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigour of his phansie : which being so well quallified with holinesse and sanctity , proved not unsuccesfull in sundry apprehensions , but in others it fared with him after the manner of men , the sagacity of his imagination failing him , as well as the anxietie of reason does others of like integrity with himself . . which things i think very worthy of noting , that no mans writings may be a snare to any ones minde , that none may be puzled in making that true which of it self is certainly false ; nor yet contemne the hearty and powerfull exhortations of a zealous soul to the indispensable duties of a christian by any supposed deviations from the truth in speculations that are not so materiall nor indispensable . nay though something should fall from him in an enthusiastick hurricano that seems neither sutable to what he writes elsewhere , nor to some grand theorie that all men in their wits hitherto have allowed for truth , yet it were to be imputed rather to that pardonable disease that his naturall complexion is obnoxious to , then to any diabolicall designe in the writer ; which rash and unchristian reproach is , as farre from the truth , if not further , as i conceive , then the credulitie of those that think him in every thing infallibly inspired . . i cannot but interpret it as an argument of the sincerity of your affection and friendship that you discover some measure of sollicitudes , what successe this second edition of the forenamed pamphlets may have , and must give you many thanks for your so seasonable and particular intimations of what you have observed most liable to the hasty censure , as you say , of either the heedlesse or malevolent reader ; but i suspect it is but an handsome scheme of suggesting to me your own dissatisfaction in severall of those passages which you propound . and therefore i am the more willing for surenesse to answer to all , to ease you of that anxiety your mind may be any way burdened with on my behalf , when you shall understand that all is right at the bottome , let things appear at first sight as they will. . first then as for my observations , let the mirth and humours therein be as wilde and exorbitant as they may , provided they be no other then may well be found in some angry aristotelean that has taken pepper in the nose , upon the sleights and abuses put upon his master aristotle , the dramatist has offended nothing in all this , having throughout kept the decorum of such a person as he intended to represent . and must confesse that on set purpose that the writer might be the more certainly concealed , i gave my self leave to let slip sometimes such passages as were least likely to fall from my pen. but understanding what an enraged antagonist i had got , that he might not adde injustice to wrathfulnesse , and discharge his choler at randome where ever his suspicion and jealousie should carry him , i thought it better to be so courteous as to satisfie the inquisitive , and so just as to prevent that injury that might fall upon the falsly suspected , then to shelter my self any longer by concealing the authour of that merry exploit . but as concerning my reply , i cannot there give so succinct an account , the impatiency and fury of my adversary having torn off our masks , and constraind us to act in our known persons , but must descend particularly to those severall exceptions that you observe to have been made against sundry passages of that writing , and i shall take them in that order of pages as they lie . . what you intimate concerning the whole second section ( according as parresiastes has divided the book ) as if it smelt too much of pride and magnifying my self , you are ●irst to consider what a showre of dirt my antagonist had powred upon me in his foul answer , endeavouring to tread me down into a dunghill if he could ; and therefore it is more pardonable if i rise up with more courage and shake off all suspicion of being so pittifull a creature as he would make me ; and truly i had a conceit that shewing the inward frame of my mind so freely to him , it might have proved as successefull as the flying open of prince arthurs shield in his combate with the gyant orgoglio ; but it seems he had no eyes to behold that kind of lustre . but in the second place that which is more considerable , i magnifie my self in nothing , but in the common accomplishments of every sincere christian , and that i set them off in so high and lofty a strain , is but a zealous profession that the ordinary christian graces are farre to be preferred before all the miracles of magick that my antagonist hankers after , all the knowledge of nature , and what ever else the world will afford ; but i have apologised to this purpose already in my preface to my antidote . . pag. . line . sing of platonick faith. what you write as if some men conceited from this passage that i affected a faith that was not christian , i wonder much at their mistake . these verses are transcribed out of my poems of the immortality of the soul , and contain a very considerable argument thereof , which is the goodnesse or benignity of god , on which the platonists or better sort of the heathen relyed , or reposed themselves upon , in their expectation of happinesse from him ; that is , they had their recumbency upon that principle in god which moved him in the fulnesse of time to send iesus christ into the world , according as it is written , god so loved the world , that he gave his onely begotten sonne , &c. which is a greater and more particular manifestation of the love of god , then the poore heathen ever did enjoy . but yet so farre forth as they did rely on the goodnesse of god , they did not differ in their faith from us christians , who also rely upon the same , though upon more explicite terms , and from a more certain and particular knowledge thereof revealed in christ iesus , that noble pledge of the love of god towards us . besides , the resurrection and ascension of christ is a more palpable argument of a blessed immortality then any the philosophers could ever produce . . pag. . l. . my glory , my joy , my communicated god. that some have been scandalised with this passage i conceive is , because they have fancied that i understood thereby a more mysterious union with god then is competible to any saving christ himself . but for my own part i am so farre from thinking that the union of a christian with god is hypostaticall , that i hold it utterly inconsistant with christian religion to think so . for if our union with god be the same that christs union is , we are as much god as he , and as lawfull objects of adoration : whith in my apprehension destroyes the whole frame of christianity . but to those that have no mind to cavill , this place have been found void of all offence , it signifying no more then what is expressely in the scripture if you compare s. peters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with that of s. john , god is love , and he that abideth in love , abideth in god and god in him . but it is a riddle to me that god who is love , should communicate himself so fully as to live and abide in a man , and yet that he should not be for all that communicated to him , which they do plainly imply that cavill at this passage . . pag. . l. . this is to be godded with god and christed with christ. those that reprehend this passage , they seem to me to be very reprehensible themselves , as having fallen into two errours : the one is , that they think it so enormous and extravagant an expression of men being called gods , when as very sober and holy writers have made use of the phrase , being warranted thereunto as they conceive from scripture it self which expresly bestows upon us the title of sonnes of god , john . filios dei fieri , h●e . deos , say they , nam quis nisi deus potest esse filius dei , isa. cafaub . and the same authour out of the fathers . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . s. augustine speaks very roundly to the same purpose , templum dei aedificaxi ex iis quos facit non factus deus , and athanasius ad adelphium , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , christ became man , that he might make us gods. but what this deification is , he doth distinctly and judiciously set down thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to be made god , sayes he , is to be united with the deitie by the partaking of the spirit of god. and for my own part i understand nothing else by deification which is so often repeated in that excellent manual theologia germanica , in which , though there be much of melancholy , yet i think there is more true and savory divinity then in thousands of other writings that make a greater noise in the world . the other errour my reprehenders are reprehensible in is , in that they look upon me here as countenancing such phrases as these , when it is plain i check the users of them , for their affectation of such high language , especially they having abused it , not onely to an unmannerly usurpation of an equall estate or paritie with christ , but to a wilde presumption that there is no other god but such as themselves are . which abominable opinion of theirs presenting it self then so fully to my mind , carried me forth in that zeal and vehemencie you see , and therefore may be a sufficient excuse for so large an excursion , i keeping my self still so well within compasse , as not to let go my main designe , which was against phantastrie and enthusiasme , and do here plainly show that it may well lead a man at length to down right ranting and atheisme . . pag. . l. . lord of the foure elements , and emperour of the world. it is in my apprehension but an extravagant censure of those that say these expressions are so extravagant . if these words were to be literally understood , i confesse it were the voice rather of a mad man , then of one in his right senses : but they being to be understood morally , they are not onely sober in themselves but contain in them a consideration very proper and effectuall for the making others sober also , i mean such as by their naturall complexion , being hurried on too fast after high things , are liable to grow mad with excessive desire of being in some great place of honour and rule amongst men , or else of being admired for some strange magicall power over nature and externall elements ; we reminding them hereby , that there is a more noble empire and more usefull magick to be fought after , then what so pleases their mistaken fancies ; in endeavouring after which they shall neither forfeit their bodies to the soveraigne power they ought to obey , nor yet their souls to the devil , nor squander away the use of their wits and reason upon meer lying deceits and vanities . besides , this inward command ouer a mans self , which the wisest have alwayes accounted the highest piece of wisdome and power , has ever been by all good men compared with and preferred before scepters and kingdomes ; so that i do but speak in the common dialect of all those that have professed themselves to have had that right esteem of wisdome and virtue which it deserves . the philosophers are very loud in their expressions concerning this matter , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , laert. zen. and horace following their steps , or rather outgoing them , writes thus ; ad summam sapiens uno minor est iove , dives , liber , honoratus , pulcher , rex denique regum . nay they are not onely content to set out the dignity of their wise man as they call him by the title of a king , but will not allow any to be truely so called besides him . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and dem●philus addes that he is the onely priest also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : christianity joynes both titles together , the scripture teaching us that all true christians are both kings and priests : so sober and warrantable are those metaphors taken from politicall dignities . but is it not a piece of pride to speak of a mans self in such high terms ? i answer , is it not a piece of basenesse for a man to be ashamed to professe himself a christian , and his high esteem he has of that calling , especially he being so fairly invited thereunto , partly to wipe off the foul calumnies of his adversary who would make the world believe , i wrote against him out of envy , the poorest and most sneaking of all passions , and utterly contrary to all magnanimity and true gallantry of spirit ; and partly to recommend to all generous souls the love of christianity and virtue . under the notion of a very royall and magnificent state and condition ( which i do in most parts of this present section ) and so to win over , if it were possible , my antagonist himself , from the vain affectation of magick to a more sacred and more truly glorious power over his own nature . pag. . l. . i still the raging of the sea , &c. impera ventis & tempestatibus , dic mari , quiesce ; & aquiloni , ne flaveris , &c. is the very allegorie that that devout soul thomas à kempis uses in his devotions lib. . cap. . see also my morall cabbal● and the defence thereof , and it will warrant to a syllable every thing that i have wrote in this section of this kind . . pag. . l. . and impregnation of my understanding from the most high , &c. here you say they demand of me if i take my self to be inspired . yes , in such sort as other well meaning christians are , that take a speciall care of venting any thing but what they can , or at least think they can , give a sufficient reason for . i suppose that every one that is wise , it is the gift of god to him : and elihu is right in this , though much out in his censure of iob , i said , dayes should speak , and multitude of yeares should teach wisdome . but there is a spirit in a man ; and the inspiration of the almighty gives them understanding . the apostle also bids , that if any one lack wisdome , that he ask it of god , wherefore if any one find any measure of wisdome in himself , or at least think he does , he is to give him the glory of it : but whether wisdome thus obtained of god be inspiration , or no , i leave to those to dispute that love to bring all things into a form of controversie . . pag. . l. . the most valuable opinions that are controverted amongst churches and sects , &c. that from this place and some others of my reply , some would gather that i make nothing of the articles of the christian faith , it is a signe to me that they either want reason or charity . for in my own thoughts i make a vast difference betwixt the articles of the christian faith and opinions , and cannot forbear to professe that my judgement is , that if sects differ in these , some of them will not fail to prove maimed or defective christians ; of which sort i conceive are such articles as these ; namely , the existence of a god omnipotent , omniscient , and infinitely good , together with the trinity of the godhead , the divinity of christ , that he is a sacrifice for sin . that he came into the world to root out the works of the devil , and every plant that is not of his fathers planting , that is , all manner of idolatry and wickednesse of either flesh or spirit . that he rose corporeally out of the grave . that he ascended up into heaven visibly in the sight of his disciples . and that he will in due time return visibly from thence to take vengeance on the wicked , and recompence the good when he shall change their vile bodies into the similitude of his glorious body , crowning them with everlasting life and joy . these and such like truths as these so plainly comprehended in the sacred text , it never came into my mind to debase them so much as to cast them into the rank of opinions , though of the best sort that can be imagined : for these are not the objects of opinion to any reall christian but of faith , by which i understand a steady and unshaken belief that they are true . and whosoever contradicts any of these , i make bold to pronounce ( let him talk as sweetly and graciously as he will ) that it is nothing but either puzzled nature , obfuscating melancholy , or some diabolicall mysterie working in him , that imboldens him to contradict so holy a truth . . pag. . l. . to cast me amongst the puritans as thou callest them . it is also groundlesly spoken of those that vote me for a peculiar enemy to the puritanes , from this passage and some others of like nature , when as if they read but on a little further in this place , they may see i openly professe my self a friend to all sects whatsoever in the christian world . for what warrant have i to be a foe to them that god himself is a friend to ; as i make no question but he is to any , in any sect that hold the fundamentalls of christianity with a conscionable endeavour of living accordingly , and does mercifully wink at their childishnesse in the rest . but if in stead of children they prove bears and lyons , and devour their neighbours out of a zeal to their own follies , or it may be out of a worse principle , pride , covetousnesse and revenge ; i must confesse i think they are not then christians at all , but wolves in sheeps clothing . . and verily every sect , as a sect , is of this nature and condition , and they want nothing but opportunity to show their fangs , and therefore i think bertius has done very unjustly in laying all the load upon the calvinists , as if that were peculiar to them that is the disease of all opinionists whatsoever . but for my part my ambition is to be found rather amongst them that are sound then those that are diseased , containing my self within the sober limits of the word of god for the articles of my faith , and shall be so civill to others , as to give them leave to believe what they will , so they do not believe against what is plainly and expresly contained in scripture . for for a man to be hot for some point that with a great deal of study and care he has hammered out of the text , and imperiously to obtrude it upon others , seems to me as absurd , as if some conceited artisan should force another to buy some elaborate toy , that he has spent a great deal of time and pains upon , at his own rate , when the chapman professes he has no need of any such impertinent curiosities . and i doubt not but that this is the condition of every man that has an hearty and favoury sense and firm belief of the grand truths of christianitie , such as are , that there is an all-seeing eye of providence that takes notice of all our actions to reward or punish them . that if we sinne and unfainedly repent thereof , that we have a mediatour jesus christ the righteous , who is a propitiation for our sins . that we may through him in time have a very considerable victory or conquest over them , we keeping as close to his precepts and example as we can , and earnestly imploring the aid of his spirit for a further proficiency dayly in that life that has begun to appear in us , and to ●each us ; that denying all ungodlinesse and worldly lusts , we should live soberly , righteously , and godly in this present world , looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great god and our saviour iesus christ , who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity , and purifie unto himself a peculiar people , zealous of good works ; i say , a constant endeavour after such a pitch of holinesse as this , and a firm belief of his return to judgement whom we most affectionately love , adore , and to the utmost of our power imitate in our conversations , is so warm and filling a cordiall to the sincere soul , that he will either loath , or at least not much long for what ever humane invention can afford him as an overplus . for if a man stick to such plain things as these , and others of the same nature that are to be found and easily understood in scripture , he has built his house on the rock of ages , and all the sectarian gibberish in the world cannot distract him , nor dissettle or bring him into any diffidence but that he is safe and well . . pag. . l. . coldnesse and trembling seized upon my flesh . what you say some have collected from this place , is the most fair and probable calumniation of any . for for my own part i have so little esteem of any sect whatsoever , that comparing their title with that of a christian , i conceive it little better then a reproach or calumny . but to tell you my opinion of that sect which are called quakers , though i must allow that there may be some amongst them good and sincere hearted men , and it may be nearer to the purity of christianity for the life and power of it , then many others ; yet i am well assured that the generality of them are prodigiously melancholy , and some few perhaps possessed with the devil . and i conceive that he doth work more cunningly and despightfully against the kingdome of christ in that sect then in any open sect that has appeared in these latter times . for they intermingling so great severity and conspicuous signes of mortification , the close keeping to the light within , and the not offending in the least manner the dictates of our consciences , but to walk evenly and sincerely before god and man , they intermingling , i say , these wholesome things with what is so abominable and dangerous , viz. the slighting of the history of christ and making a meer allegory of it , thereby voiding all that wisdome of god that is contained in the mysterie of christianity , as it referres to the very person of christ ; this , i say , cannot proceed from any thing so likely as from the craft and watchfull malice of lucifer , who undoubtedly envies christ his throne both in heaven and in earth , and therefore would bring one of these two mischiefes upon his church , that is , either the slurring of the person of our saviour , or else of that , without which he can take no complacency in his church , and that is , true and reall sanctity or holinesse . . wherefore this is the perverse dilemma he thinks he has caught us in . that if this leaven of the quakers prevail , the person of christ will be outed and the mysterie thereupon depending cancelled , and all that advantage to life and godlinesse therein comprehended taken away ; which he will be as able to effect as to pull the sunne out of the firmament . but though it succeeds not this way , yet he at least promises himself that these instruments of his speaking so loudly for and acting ( so farre as many can discern ) so earnestly and seriously according to the stricktest rules of a christian life , and calling upon every one so vehemently to do the like , to mortifie the old man with all his lusts and concupiscences , and to put on the new man which is created in righteousnesse and true holinesse , adding , that god will enable us to do all this if we will but cordially set our selves to it , and that unlesse we do this , all the rest of our religion profits us nothing ( which things are most true and precious ) he hopes , i say , that this their so lavish profession of these duties will make them be still mo●e coldly entertained by them that otherwise are zealous enough in that other part of christianity , they being thus blemisht and besmeared with the foul fingerings of such execrable persons as they must needs seem to be , and indeed are , that set so little by him whom god of a truth hath exalted above men and angels : and so like children they will forsake their meat because some ugly body has touched it , as hucsters aud victuallers in turkie let go for nought what ever a slave , as he passes by , layes his hand on , no body after vouchsafing to eat thereof . now in as many as this stratagem takes effect , the end of christianity is supplanted as christianity it self was endeavoured to be supplanted before . for christ gave himself , that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie unto himself a peculiar people , zealous of good works , as was above rehearsed out of the apostle . . but the plot being discovered , the mischief may be certainly prevented viz. if besides all that honour we otherwise give christ , we adde a faithfull and constant obedience to his will : which will of his is that we become perfect , as his father which is in heaven is perfect : and we shall be the better spurred up to mend our pace towards these accomplishments , or be more forcibly driven thereunto , if we seriously set our selves to enquire into the true causes , why god permits such a mysterie as this to work , that tends in very truth to the utter ouerthrow of that warrantable , though more externall , frame of christianity that the scripture it self points out to us , and which should be as a rich cabinet wherein that jewell the diuine life is to be found , viz. whether it be not , that we hypocritically content our selves with this empty tabernacle though the presence and power of god abide not therein ( as it does not unlesse we find our selves purified from all filthinesse of flesh and spirit , or at least hold our selves bound in duty with all earnestnesse possible to endeavour thereafter ) whether , this i say , be not the cause that god threatens thus unto us the utter overthrow of that religion under which , against the mind of our law-giver we would shelter our selves with all our hypocrisies and abominations . as for those that from this passage of this aenigmaticall colosse , that my imagination was transfigured into , conceive me to affect divine visions as you say , and extraordinary revelations , and so to be sick of that disease that i would pretend to cure others of ; i must confesse i was transported so farre in this place , that it is pardonable if they do suspect me of some such distemper , they not knowing of what frame of spirit i am . but as for my self , there is nothing at all in this that happened to me , that seemed to me extraordinary , and that onely i look upon as divine in it which such men as these in all likelihood would the least of all esteem as such , which i think i shall easily make you understand , by comparing what has hapned to me in my sleep with this that befell me awake . . at the beginning of the late commotions here in england i dream'd thus . me thought i was at a friends house in the rode betwixt london and scotland , where having gone out into the outward court in a bright moon-shine night ; a little before i returned in again , i looked first towards the north , where i saw in the heavens a woman with a child on her lap , holding her arm over it , with that care and tendernesse that mothers and nurses usually do over young children . i afterward turned me toward the south , and looking up i beheld the effigies of a very old man with a long beard , lying on his side all along stretcht parallel to the horizon . this representation was , as i easily discerned , made of a very bright cloud , that had imbibed plentifully the light of the moon . i looking steddily upon him , he began to move his right arm , but from the elbow onely , and that very leasurely , raising it but a little height , and then let it fall to the same posture it was before . he moved it thus , so farre as i can remember , some six or seven times , lifting this part of his arm every bout higher then other , and keeping the same distance of time in all ; but the last stroke was struck by his whole arm from the very shoulder . when he had thus done , i turned my face , returning into the house ; but before i had reached the door , he sent these words after me , with an hollow voice much like thunder afarre off , there is indeed love amongst you , but onely according to the flesh . . not at all dismaid neither with the sight nor the voice i passed into the hall and told them what had hapned , expounding the generall meaning of my dream in my dream , advertising them that the old man his manner of striking so gradually , was an embleme of the proceedings of god when he chastises a nation , adding certain reasons out of aristotles mechanicks , which i had very lately read , why those strokes must needs be one heavier then another and the last ( which represented the hand of god striking to a more signall overthrow if not finall destruction ) by farre the most heavy of all . that this was the method of god in plagueing a people , but that which provoked him to wrath or brought mischief upon them was the want of that life and spirit of christianity which is the divine love , whereby the eagernesse of the love of the world with all the honours and pleasures thereof is abated and all christian duties , we owe one to another , thereby the more easily performed . for whereas that carnall love will amount to no more then what is found in wilde beasts and base vermin , that rake and roven and tear away their prey where ever they can get it , pulling it into their own dens and dark holes to provide for themselves and their young ones ; that better love which is the spirit of god communicated to us , makes us more universally benigne and kinde , desiring and endeavouring the good of all , being as ill at ease at the calamity of our neighbours , as if it had hapned to our selves ; and rejoycing as much in their welfair as if it were our own ; which assuredly is the indispensable condition of every true christian ; and therefore if we were such , christendome could not be embroyled in such warres , disturbances and confusions as it has been these many ages . to this purpose i spake in my sleep , which being no more then i thought oftentimes before , while i was awake , could seem to me to have nothing in it extraordinary . . that which may seem most strange to others is the vision ( as i may so call it ) in this dream , which would have amused my self , had i not remembred that over night i had looked upon the frontispiece of ptolomies maps , where my fancy it seems having laid hold on his venerable beard , drew in thereby the whole scene of things that presented themselves to me in my sleep ; and though some may think this dream to be more particularly applicable to what has hapned of late yeares here in england , yet no man can demonstrate but that the congruity may be onely casuall . now as occasionally from the picture of ptolomie my fancy was carried into that dream by night , so was it also in the day time transfigured into this breathing and speaking colosse , by eugenius his mentioning of and comparing me with that enormous statue . for that the fancy will work of it self without any leave or direction from our superiour faculties , is very plain , and that as well by day as by night . but the difference is , that a man awake has ordinarily the power , if he think good , to curb such fantasmes when they appear , and so i could have done this knowing right well it was but an occasionall fancy , but such as would serve my turn to set off that truth i had to declare unto the world , with more force and vigour ; and therefore i let it go on . nor is there in all this any thing either extraordinary or divine , the naturall causes being so apparent to any mans capacity . . but that truth which this breathing colosse uttered to the world is not onely divine , but one of the most concerning divine truths that christiandome can take notice of . for it arises out of the height of that life that is truely and indispensably christian , and without which those happy times , which the prophets have prophecyed of and very good and precious men hope for , will never come upon the earth . and if that of the deity that lies hid in men ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the philosopher speaks ) raised it self up more then ordinarily at this bout , it producing nothing but a more quick and sensible gust of a truth , so sacred and evident to every one in whom the grace of god does abide , it cannot amount to that which men call enthusiasme , but is to go onely for a sober and warrantable , though a very vehement and affectionate fit of love and devotion , upon a fuller and clearer impresse or manifestation of the excellency of that life and spirit which christ came to communicate to the world . of which by how much every one does partake , by so much the more he will slight the curiosities of opinions , and in this light plainly see that the zeal after a conformity to them does more then any thing hinder the growth of truth , and the advancement of the kingdome of christ upon the earth . for while they have that whereby they may make a show of godlinesse before others , they are the more easily retain'd in the estate of hypocrisie , they fancying that they serve god well enough in the promoting of their own conceits and inventions which they shamefully call the truth of god. and besides , they hinder that good which sincere christians may do in the world , who have so much the fear of god before their eyes , that they will not lie and dissemble for their own advantage , and therefore men of least conscience , carelesse what is true or false in religion , but very crafty for themselves , and that will conform to any thing to mend their livelihood ( and those that are the most atheisticall , will be able to do this the most exquisitely ) get into power and place in the church , and so the wolf having put on the shepherds coat and taken his crook into his hand , very formally tends the flocks of christ , and undoubtedly will give a wonderfull fair account of his office at the last to that great pastour and bishop of our souls . this therefore that is so intelligible and rationall so manifest and commonly known to all that have made that due progresse in christianity which they may , is not to be held as an extraordinary piece of enthusiasme but a plain , though very zealous , declaration of an indispensable truth . . that which came the nearest to vision or enthusiasme that ever hapned to me , was about seven or eight and twenty yeares ago , when on a morning in my bed after break of day i heard , as i thought , a sound of a trumpet very shrill and piercing , the longer it sounded , the more shrill and piercing it was , so that it pain'd my eare more and more . methought i was then in an open place and in a free horizon , saving that something a thick mist hundred my prospect , but it grew thinner and thinner , and an innumerable company of angels , blew and purple colour'd about the shoulders , filled the heavens round about , but the sight was obscure by reason of the mist. but according as the trumpet sounded louder and louder , the mist grew thinner and the vision clearer : but the shrilnesse of the trumpet did pierce my eare with such a great pain , that i could not go on till the sight was perfectly cleared up . that which might perswade a man that there was something more then ordinary in it , is this , that whereas i was really asleep ; yet i did plainly find in my self a power of waking my self , if i would ; which seems almost impossible for one that is asleep . but out of the great desire that i had to see the vision cleared up . i forbore the waking of my self so long as i could , and endured the great torture the shrill sound of the trumpet put me to ; but at last it growing intolerable , i was fain to awake my self out of this dream . that a man should be in such intolerable torture may also seem to some to be beyond the causality of a dream : but to me it does not at all , who , upon the reading of aristotle's mechanicks , where he speaks of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the power of removing timber thereby , fell into a dream of moving a great piece of timber by this ordinary engine , that caused a pain unspeakable . for every time i pressed down the lever with my body , i was in as great a torment , as if my bowells had been torn out , so that groaning very pitteously , my chamberfellow called to me , thereby ridding me of my dream and pain at once . and in my apprehension that other circumstance of finding it in my own power to awake my self if i would , is not much unlike their case that are troubled with the ephialtes , that perceive themselves in some sort asleep , and endeavour to waken themselves as well as they can . that which seems most unanswerable to my self is what it is impossible to propound to another , as being unexpressable , and that is that admirable temper and frame of spirit i found my self in upon my waking , which , if it were in my power to relate , would seem to most men incredible ; so that , for this passage sake , i should be prone to suspect something more then naturall in what preceded it , did i not consider that sometimes there may be of it self such a tenour and disposition of body , that may either suggest or imitate what is most holy and divine : so uncertain a guide shall we have of whatsoever offers it self to us , and would inform us of any thing that cannot be made good out of reason or scripture : and i know nothing worth the taking notice of in all divinity that is not determinable by these two . . but for those dreams or night-visions that do not ptetend to instruct us in any generall speculation or theoreticall mysterie , but concern the management of our affairs , and particular negotiations , humane prudence being so lubricous a principle , when we are once really at a plunge ; i think it not at all unwarrantable in a matter not unjust to follow such intimations as these , if they be offered , there being therein more of self-resignation and a fuller relyance upon that providence which by such uncertain becks and nods ( as they must needs seem to strangers ) doth notwithstanding hereby sometimes most clearly and certainly communicate her mind and purpose to her own favourites , to their singular advantage and stupendious successe . . sir you will pardon my garrulitie , as you may be enduced to term it from theophrastus his example , who makes the telling of a mans dreams a character of that vice : but the best is it must be then to a stranger , which will i hope excuse me that have told mine to an intimate friend ; and i might further justifie my self from the practice of cardan , that published severall of his to all the world , which i think are of as little consequence as these of mine . . i have now answered to the chief exceptions made against any particular passage of my reply . what you say of some that they much marvell at the whole designe in generall , that i do so zealously and industriously oppose enthusiasme , they not seeing that it is worth the while so to do ; certainly this censure must come from such men as are either tainted with this disease themselves , or else such strangers to it , that they have not so much as observed the mischievous workings thereof . but for my own part i being so throughly perswaded in my judgement of the truth and solidity of christian religion and that it is maintainable by reason against all cavills and sophistries whatsoever ( let the adversary oppose as fiercely and cunningly as he can ) and obseruing likewise that the whole businesse of enthusiasts is to decry reason as an impure and carnall thing , i could not but look upon enthusiasme as the onely sleight and most effectuall engine ( seem it to others as despicable as it will ) to unhinge christiandome , dethrone christ and annull that great and precious mysterie of christianity , in which the wisedome and goodnesse of god does more clearly shine forth , then in any dispensation of his providence that he ever set a foot as yet in the world . and what is to come , must be but the accomplishment of this period . wherefore it seemed to me very unjust and ignoble , not to endeavour to the utmost , by any means possible and lawfull , to hinder the progresse of so dangerous an evil , and to provide so well for the honour of that religion i was born under and do professe ; that it should not be basfled or dashed out of countenance by that which is neither religion , solid reason , nor any thing else laudable , but merely a bold and wilde distemper of a melancholy spirit . . to what some particularly except against the merriment of my reply i have said enough elsewhere , and therefore will onely adde this , that if that false gravity , which is nothing else but a sower kinde of pride , take the chair of censure , mirth appealing thence to any indifferent judge , will need no pleader ; but if she stand in competition with that sedatenesse and benigne sadnesse of spirit wherein dwells true gravity indeed , she will then deserve none . for assuredly this temper is beyond all comparison better then that merry complexion . for whereas mirth and levity do often betray the soul , so that she is surprised by what is foolish and vain , this stayednesse and gravity does not onely guard her from what is evil , but restrains her from what is triviall , and makes her spend her pains upon no enterprise but what is worthy so noble a nature as her own ; which is no pride , but true magnanimity and generosity of spirit . besides , such as are of a light genius that is alwayes so pleasant and well contented , even to a redoundancy of toyishnesse and sport ; it is a signe that their desires are shallow , in that they are so easily and continuedly satisfied , and therefore in a present incapacity of valuing the representations of more weighty objects . whence it is that the profoundest & most concerning mysteries of philosophy and religion are never infused into such slight & flue vessels . but the grave and sad minde that seldome ruminates on small matters , whose carriage being calme and quiet to the world , yet is full of workings within and strong breathings after the noblest acquisitions , does not fail in the conclusion to enjoy her contentment secretly and apart from others , being fully compensated for her patience with all that wisdome and holinesse that the spirit of god bestows on them that have long waited for him . . and in this i conceive , melancholy men have their speciall advantage , that complexion making their desires vast and vehement , and their resentments very deep and vivid , and therefore very fit for the highest communications , their desires , joy and thankfulnesse bearing a more answerable proportion to the weighty matters they receive . hence it is they are more frequently blest with a greater share of illumination and extraordinary sanctification then others , if there be no let by reason of some flaw in nature , or some default in themselves . for then instead of proving better then others , they may prove farre worse , that complexion exposing them to errours and mistakes proportionable to the greatnesse of their spirits and vastnesse of their desires , and so makes them often degenerate from the state of men that seem'd to the world extraordinarily holy and illuminate , into meer mock-prophets and ridiculous enthusiasts ; afterwards ranters , atheists , and what not . sir , i have now answered to all the intimations in your letter , saving what is generally intimated , or rather fully expressed in them all , which is your faithfulnesse and unfained friendship , which cannot be answered by words , but by an earnest endeavour of really approving as well as professing my self your affectionate friend to serve you , m. errata insigniora sic corrige . pag. . l. . for live sense reade lively sense . p. . l. . como●ion r. commotion . p. . l. . his spirit r. their spirit . p. . l. . and this r. and his . p. . l. . slea r. flea . p. . l. ult . then all-spreaden r. then an all-spreaden . p. . l. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . immortall r. immorall . p. . l. . religions r. religious . p. . l. . divine r. the divine . p. . l. ult . reacheth r. hath reached to . p. . l. . lights r. light. p. . l. . it discovered reade discovered it . p. . l. . reade and i. p. . l. . r. ex diis p. . l. . r. pag. . in the epistle pag. . l. . r. how strangely . p. . l. . r. into this . free-parliament quæres: proposed to tender consciences; and published for the use of the members now elected. by alazonomastix philalethes. more, henry, - . this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a of text r in the english short title catalog (thomason e _ ). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo a wing m a thomason e _ estc r this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; :e [ ]) free-parliament quæres: proposed to tender consciences; and published for the use of the members now elected. by alazonomastix philalethes. more, henry, - . [ ], p. s.n.], [london : printed in the year of our redemption. . alazonomastix philalethes = henry more. place of publication from wing. annotation on thomason copy: "april ". reproduction of the original in the british library. eng england and wales. -- parliament -- early works to . great britain -- politics and government -- - -- early works to . a r (thomason e _ ). civilwar no free-parliament quæres:: proposed to tender consciences; and published for the use of the members now elected. by alazonomastix philalethes more, henry a this text has no known defects that were recorded as gap elements at the time of transcription. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - jonathan blaney sampled and proofread - jonathan blaney text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion free-parliament quaeres : proposed to tender consciences ; and published for the use of the members now elected . by alazonomastix philalethes . spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici ? printed in the year of our redemption . . free-parliament quaeres , &c. . vvhether coffee be not the most fitting drink for the english nation , since we have equalled , nay out-gone the turks themselves ; for though they murdered the father , yet they presently set up the son ? . whether our late rumpers deserve not that that saying , nulla fides pietasve viris qui castra sequuntur , should be thus interpreted , there is neither faith nor pity to be shewed to them nor their janizaries ? . whether hell at westminster be not likely to lose its customers , since the devils are turned out of the parliament house ? . whether thom. scot can pretend to liberty of conscience , since he made an arch-bishops house a prison or gaol ? . whether by the covenant , sir arthur haslerigg ought not to be ejected from the bishoprick of durham , since by that we have sworn against all limbs of episcopacy ? . whether hanging or drowning be the best waies of transportation of our late republicans to the common-wealths of vtopia or oceana ? . whether that prophecy the saints shall rule the earth , be not meant of barbadoes , jamaica , or some terra incognita ? . whether col. john s. can keep off the taxes of an execution , by the profit he got by printing the late act of assessement ? . whether f. and h. the late common-wealth printers should not change names , since the first swells like a mountain , and the other is but a poor leveller ? . whether sir arthur haslerigg hath not a president of patience , in this his falling into the pit of adversity , from his falling into the ditch at leicester ? . whether bradshaw and dun did not accompany each other to hell , that the devil having got such a judge , might not want a fit executioner ? . whether the losse of writing the news of england , was not the cause that nedham was so busie with the news from brussels ? . why since england hath so long been made bedlam , the sectarians should rather be called fanaticks than franticks ? . whether the army be not dispossessed of the devil , and sir arthur , since they begin to submit to the civil authority ? . whether the souldiers ought not to tear off their red coats , since oliver first instituted them , that they might resemble the devils pensioners , in flaming doublets ? . whether the fanaticks do not hate monck now , as much as ever they did the church , their king , or country ? . if the proverb be true , when knaves fall out , honest men may come by their goods ; then whether lamberts switching the rump out of doors , and their driving him into the tower , may not open a door of hope for something further ? . whether a long parliament , a lord , and five members , might not , were they now conjoyned together , be termed the devils coach with six horses ? . whether there is not like to be a lesse arbibitrary administration of justice in hell , if bradshaw be made president there , instead of minos , rhadamanthus , or aeacus ? . vvhether the next parliament ought not to condemn dr. john owens primer , to be burnt by the common hangman , since it was made for the use of the children of the rump ? . whether any of the late rump could have stood for parliament-men , if neither fools nor knaves had been capable of election ? . whether it be not the cheapest way of buying lands , with col. harvey and others , to agree with the state for three moieties , and then cozen them of two ? . whether that comedie , called the costly whore , was not intended for the life of the lady sands , and was written by henry martin ? . whether the bastard , a tragedie , was compiled by mr. goff , or written by j. ireton ? . whether orlando furioso that antient italian poem , was not meant for a prophetical relation of the life of sir arthur haslerigg ? . whether the discontented collonel , be not the fittest play to be acted by our cashiered officers , since they have now no more to do in state comedies ? . whether sir arthur did not act the raging turk in westminster-hall , when he saw the admission of the secluded members ? . whether it was to know if he should be chosen for parliament man , or when he should take his turn at tyburn , that the said gentleman lately addressed himself to the star-cheater lilly ? . whether col. s. creditors have any assurance of his honestie , since he may , being a printer , so easily change the first letters of his name , and make it cheater ? . whether atkins be the anagram of a stink , or a stink of atkins ; and whether that be not a very fitting name for a member of the rump ? . whether the fift of november , or the twenty one of february , deserve the greater solemnity , as a day of delivery from the grander traytors ? . why a rump being a small and worst part of a man , so many good saints should go together to the making of it up ? . whether ever doctors commons might more fitly be called the spiritual court than lately , when none but saints were judges and proctors ? . whether the proverb that saith , facilis descensus averni , the way to hell is easie , be not a mistake , since our late states-men took such pains in it ? . whether the so stately equipping of the naseby frigat , be not for the bringing home of the son , since the father lost his crown and dignity at that fatal place , that so there may be an allusion to that proverb ? — quâ cuspide vulnus acutâ tulerat , hâc ipsâ cuspide tulit opem. . whether an act of oblivion can ever be really passed for the late men of the tail ; since they can never forget their former rogueries , if they be suffered to injoy the profits of them ? . whether the salt of the english wits is not strangely unprofitable , since it makes the rump to stink more and more in the nostrils of the people ? . lastly , whether it be not good service to the nation , to keep the stink of them thus fresh in their noses , that they may for the future avoid fouling their fingers with them ? finis . tetractys anti-astrologica, or, the four chapters in the explanation of the grand mystery of holiness which contain a brief but solid confutation of judiciary astrology, with annotations upon each chapter : wherein the wondrous weaknesses of john butler, ... his answer called a vindication of astrology, &c. are laid open ... / by hen. more. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) tetractys anti-astrologica, or, the four chapters in the explanation of the grand mystery of holiness which contain a brief but solid confutation of judiciary astrology, with annotations upon each chapter : wherein the wondrous weaknesses of john butler, ... his answer called a vindication of astrology, &c. are laid open ... / by hen. more. more, henry, - . j. b. (john butler). most sacred and divine science of astrology. [ ], viii, p. printed by j.m. for walter kettilby ..., london : . running title: a confutation of astrology. a reprint of four chapters of the author's an explanation of the grand mystery of godliness. errata on p. . reproduction of original in the cambridge university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic 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should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng astrology -- early works to . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images - rina kor sampled and proofread - rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion tetractys anti-astrologica , or , the four chapters in the explanation of the grand mystery of godliness , which contain a brief but solid confutation of judiciary astrology , with annotations upon each chapter : wherein the wondrous weaknesses of iohn bvtler , b. d. his answer called a vindication of astrology , &c. are laid open to the view of every intelligent reader . by hen. more , d. d. jerem. ch. . . thus saith the lord , learn not the way of the heathen , and be not dismai'd at the signs of heaven , for the heathen are dismai'd at them . london , printed by i. m. for walter kettilby , at the bishops-head in s t paul's church-yard , . the preface to the reader . reader , i present thee here with the four last chapters of the seventh book of my explanation of the grand mystery of godliness , which comprize , as i conceive , a solid confutation of the pretended grounds of judiciary astrology . the occasion of my thus publishing them apart is this . there was lately sent to me a book written by john butler bachelor of divinity , and minister of the gospel in the church of england ; the first part whereof is entitled , the most sacred and divine science of astrology , the other , astrology vindicated from the calumnies of dr. more , in his explanation of the grand mystery of godliness . i read them both with care and patience . but find my self concerned most in the second . of which casting up the sum , i found it to consist of these two parts , railing and reasoning . and truly to give the author his due , in the former he is admirable . i mean admirably copious , coarse and scurrilous , insomuch , that if there were any such thing as iudiciary astrology , one might rationally suspect him so profoundly skilful therein , that he chose such a nick of time for his assault upon me , as the whole spouts or cataracts of influence from the so fitly posited heavens , might carry him on with a stream or flood as it were of dirty eloquence , and drive him into so foul a flux or diarrhoea of frothy wit and filthy language , as to stain so many sheets of paper as he has done . but nobis non licet esse tam disertis . we are bound up to more sober and sacred laws , as we are men , one would think , and most of all as christians . and truly i thought every minister of the gospel had been a christian , at least a man. not to render railing for railing , we are taught by st. peter , but rather blessing . and our saviour himself commands us to bless them that curse us , to do good to them that hate us and despitefully use us and persecute us . now i demand of this minister of the gospel , or word of god , as he stiles himself , how well he has kept to this rule of the word and gospel of our lord iesus , of which he boasts himself a minister , that he should thus fiercely worry , not only his fellow creature , and his fellow christian , but his fellow minister of the word and gospel ; and that always of the church of england , never communicating with any other church besides . when as this angry man , that his wit may be sure to appear not to exceed his malice , has not been content to use all imaginable scurrility against me , but also represents me as one stained with the schism of the late times , and as if i were either presbyterian or independent . when as my nearest relations were deep sufferers for the king , and my self exposed ( by constantly denying the covenant ) to the loss of that little preferment i had before those times , as i never received any employment or preferment in them . so deep a malice has this minister of the gospel conceived against me , that he will not stick to raise slanders of me at all adventures , for my being an anti-astrologer , as he would pretend , and for my just reprehensions of the folly of that fictitious art. but i am resolved exactly to follow those rules that he has so notoriously neglected or transgressed , and to give no answer to his railing , but that of st. peter , that we ought not to render railing for railing : which is a just and necessary excusing me from engaging in that more ungentile and ungrateful part of my task . only i hold it fit so far to concern my self in his railing , as to show he had no just pretense thereto : and for this cause especially have i set before thee these four chapters which he pretends to be the occasion of his being so provoked , though never any astrologer that i heard of was provoked by them before . nay , there was of the most able of them , as i have been told by those that were thoroughly acquainted with them , that confessed that i had solidly confuted the ordinary acknowledged grounds of astrology , though they had found so much truth in the experiencing the feats of that art , that they could not of a sudden quit it for all that . i but there are passages , will mr. butler say , that particularly concern my person , in your confutation , forasmuch as i have adventured to calculate our saviours nativity as well as hieronymus cardanus , of whom you write , that nothing but levity of mind and vain-glory could induce him to ingage in so rash an act. and in another place , you call it , the unparallel'd presumption , and wicked sauciness of the vain-glorious cardan . here it seems it is that the shooe pinches him . but alas ! mr. butler , how could i possibly help this ? my self was never any astrologer , nor ever had any conceit of that faculty , though you are pleased to account it a divine science ; and what i have wrote i writ twenty years ago . how could i then possibly prognostick that one mr. john butler , as great zealot for astrology , would parallel the then unparallel'd presumption , as i thought , and wicked sauciness of vain-glorious cardan ? i beseech you , sir , whose fault is it , mine who writ this some twenty years ago ( justly condemning , as i will stand to it , that profane presumption of cardan ) or your own , who of your own accord , without any invitation from me , i trow , would imitate so foul an example ? and this charge against cardan i will make good in my annotations when i come to the place , and will examine there impartially what you have said for him or for your self in defending of him . in the mean time i will only advertise the reader , what was the true occasion of my writing with that quickness and sharpness of reprehension against astrology and astrologers , and with some scopticism , as elias spake against the priests of baal . for sharp , nay scoptical reprehension when it is used from a right principle , and upon a due object , not out of any self-design , but to suppress poysonous error and imposture , and to signify a mans just contempt of the conceitedness and loftiness of atheistical wits , by mr. butlers favour , is no railing but wholsom reproof . now that which moved my zeal and indignation was this , that when i had demonstrated the real and literal truth of the history of christ , his miraculous birth , resurrection , ascension , apparition of angels , and the hardest and most incredible things of our religion declared in scripture , so that vaninus himself could not deny the matter of fact , that this sure ground , i say , of our salvation should be whifled away by that phantastical supposition of astrologers , viz. that all things here upon earth are done or caused by the influence of the stars and various aspects of the heavenly bodies , and as pomponatius , cardan , and vaninus would have it , that famous law-givers and prophets have no other original , whose religions come on and go off according to the configurations of heaven , and that christ himself and his religion is subjected to the same laws ; there being indeed no religion exempted from the vertue and power whether good or bad of the stars : so that all miracles , prophecies , apparitions of angels , resurrections from the dead , are but transitory blasts of their influence . certainly any body that has any sincere sense and kindness for true religion , i mean the christian , cannot but be moved with indignation at such mischievous and impious fopperies as these . this is that which made me write against astrology and astrologers with that scorn and contempt of both their art and them , i mean the profaner sort of them , that neither christian religion nor any well-meaning christian may receive any prejudice by them . and moreover , that not any phrase has slipt from me that exceeds the demerit of their profane or frivolous pretences shall be made good in its proper place . from all which it will appear , that there was no just occasion given to mr. butler to rail , from any railing of mine against astrology or astrologers , unless he will call just and necessary reproof , with a quickness and sharpness proportioned to the measure and nature of the fault , and pride , and conceitedness of the persons , railing and reviling . and if he had conceived that i railed , he being a minister of the gospel , ( and so expresly professing himself , and as it were boasting himself , in the title pages of both his books , so to be , and therefore pretending not only to be a christian , but a light and guide to christians ) he should have practised that word , that he saith he is a minister of , and not have rendred railing for railing , and thus dishonoured his ministry in the sight of all the world , and that in the behalf of a cause , which if it were true ( as it is ridiculously false ) is of no such consequence ( the fortunes of greece , as the proverb is , do not depend upon it ) as that he should fare so like a distempr'd man in the behalf of it , as if it were his great diana , and the sole sovereign or mistress of his heart . and this is all that i intend by way of answer to the railing part of his book , namely , the thus showing that he had no just occasion for his so barbarous and scurrilous revilings , and that it is against my principles , as i am a man , much more as i am a christian , to render railing for railing . and truly i am of that temper , that i have always avoided to have any contests in points of divinity especially , with any members of our own church , it but making sport for the common adversary ; but this looking more like a controversy of philosophy , it goes the less against the hair with me . and therefore , having rid my hands thus of this worse part of his book , viz. his railing , i shall now not stick to apply my self to the other part , and examine his reasoning . which i doubt not but i shall , in my annotations , make to appear , to the unprejudiced , to be as weak , as the other is rude and virulent . h. m. the explanation of the grand mystery of godliness . book vii . chap. xiv . . objections of the iews against their messiah's being come , answered . . a pompous evasion of the aristotelean atheists , supposing all miracles and apparitions to be the effects of the intelligences and heavenly bodies . . vaninus his restraint of the hypothesis , to one anima coeli . . his intolerable pride and conceitedness . . a confutation of him , and the aristotelean atheism from the motion of the earth . . that vaninus his subterfuge is but a self contradiction . . that christianitie's succeeding judaism is by the special counsel of god , not by the influence of the stars . . cardanus his high folly in calculating the nativity of our saviour , with a demonstration of the groundlesness of vaninus his exultation in his impious boldness of making mahomet , moses and christ sidereal law-givers of like authority . . that the impudence and impiety of these two vain glorious pretenders constrains the author more fully to lay open the frivolousness of the principles of astrology . . the ‖ objections we were a mentioning are from two hands ; from the iew , or from the atheist . that from the iew is chiefly this , that the condition of the times under christ is not conformable to what is prophesied concerning the times of the messiah . * there is not that peace and concord , no not in christendom it self , neither in the church nor state ; nor is idolatry extirpated , nor the israelites replanted and setled in their own land : all which things notwithstanding are foretold to come to pass in the days of the messiah . whence , say they , it is plain he is not yet come . but i briefly answer , . that the prophetical promises of the coming of the messiah were absolute , as i have ‖ already noted , the extent of the effect of his coming , conditional ; men being free agents , and not fatal actors , in all things , as the jews themselves cannot deny . . that the nature of the gospel tends altogether to the accomplishing of those promises of universal peace and righteousness , and did begin fair in the first times of the church as much as respects the church it self . . that whatever relapse or stop there has been , things are not so hopeless but in time they may be amended ; and that they in those days when they are true converts to christ , may , if they will then desire it , return to their own land. but after this serious conversion and real renovation of their spirits into a true christian state , i cannot believe they will continue so childish as to value such things ; but will find themselves in the spiritual canaan already , and on their march to that ierusalem which is above , the mother of us all , and that it will not be in the power of any but themselves to turn them out of the way . . the other objection , or rather evasion of that wholesome use that may be made of the truth of the history of christ , is from that sort of atheists that love to be thought aristoteleans : for there are two chief kinds of atheism , epicurean and aristotelean . the former denies all incorporeal substance whatsoever , and all apparitions , miracles and prophecies that imply the same . who are sufficiently confuted already by this undeniable declaration we have made . the other are not against all substances incorporeal , nor against prophecies , apparitions , and miracles , though of the highest nature ; insomuch that they will allow the history of christ , his resurrection , and appearance after death , the prophecies concerning him , and what not ? but they have forsooth this witty subterfuge to save themselves from receiving any good therefrom , in imagining that there is no such particular providence , as we would infer from hence , because all this may be done by the influence of the coelestial bodies , actuated by the intelligences appertaining to each sphere , and deriving in a natural way from him that sits on the highest of the orbs , such influences as according to certain periodical courses of nature will produce new law-givers , induing them with a power of working miracles , assisting them by apparitions and visions of angels , making them seem to be where they are not , and appear after they cease to be , namely after their death : when in the mean-time there be neither angels , nor souls separate , but all these things are the transient effects of the power of the heavens and configurations of the celestial bodies , which slacks by degrees , and so the influence of the stars failing , one religion decays and another gets up . thus iudaism hath given place to christianity , and christianity in a great part of the world to mahometism , being establishments resulting from the mutable course of nature , not by the immediate finger of god , who keeps his throne in the eighth sphere , and intermeddles not with humane affairs in any particular way , but aloof off hands down , by the help and mediation of the celestial intelligences and power of the stars , some general casts of providence upon the generations of the earth . . * a goodly speculation indeed , and well befitting such two witty fools in philosophy as pomponatius and vaninus : the latter of which seem not to give himself up to this fine figment altogether fully and conformably to the ancient doctrine of aristotle , but having a great pique against incorporeal beings , is desirous to lessen their number as much as he can , and seems pleased that he has found out , that one only soul of the heavens will serve as effectually to do all these things as the aristotelean intelligences ; and therefore ever and anon doubts of those , and establisheth this as the only intellectual or immaterial principle and highest deity ; but such as acts no otherwise than in a natural way by periodical influences of the heavenly bodies . where you may observe the craft and subtilty of the man , what a care he has of his own safety , and how he has imprisoned the divinity in those upper rooms for fear of the worst , that he may be as far out of his reach as the earth is from the moon . so cautious a counsellor in these matters is an evil and degenerate conscience . . this is the chiefest arcanum that the amphitheatrum and famed dialogues , of this stupendious wit will afford ; who was so tickled and transported with a conceit of his own parts , that in that latter book he cannot refrain from writing down himself a very god for wisdom and knowledge . when as , assuredly , * there was never any mans pride and conceitedness exceeded the proportion of his wit and parts so much as his . for there is nothing considerable in him , but what * that odd and crooked writer hieronymus cardanus had , though more modestly , vented to the world before : only vaninus added thereto a more express tast of bold impiety and prophaness . . i have elsewhere intimated how the attributing such noble events to the power of the stars , is * nothing but a rotten relique of the ancient pagan superstition ; and have in my book of the ‖ immortality of the soul , plainly enough demonstrated , that there is no such inherent divinity in the celestial bodies as that ancient superstition has avouched , or modern philosophasters would imagine . and i shall evidently prove against this great pretender , that his removal of the deity at that distance from the earth is impossible . for there are scarce any now that have the face to profess themselves philosophers , but do as readily acknowledge the motion of the earth , as they do the reality of the antipodes , or the circulation of the blood. i would ask then vaninus but this one question , whether he will not admit that the sun is in that heaven where he imagines his anima coeli ; and whether this heaven be not spread far beyond the sun , and be not also the residence of this celestial goddess of his ? there is none will stick to answer for him , that it is doubtlesly so . wherefore i shall forthwith infer , that let his unskilful phansy conceit us at this moment in as low a part of the universe as he will , within the space of six months we shall be as far above or beyond the sun as we are beneath him now , and yet then phansy our selves as much beneath him as before . which plainly implies that our earth and moon swim in the liquid heavens , which being every where , this deity of vaninus must be every where , though his degenerate spirit was afraid of so holy a neighbourhood , nor could abide the belief of so present a numen . thus has the annual course of the earth dashed off all that superstitious power and sanctity that ancient paganism has given , and the aristotelean atheist would now give to the sun , planets and stars ; and we are forced even by the light of nature and humane reason to acknowledge the true principle from whence all miraculous things come , that is , a god , every where present , in whom we live , and move , and have our being . . besides this , suppose that all prodigies , apparitions and prophecies were from the intermediate influence of the celestial bodies , these intelligences , or that anima coeli working thereby upon the persons of men , to inspire them , and turning the air into representations and visions to converse with them ; this covering is too scant to hide the folly of this sorry sophist , his supposition plainly ruinating it self . for he does acknowledge that those inspirations and prophecies are true that are thus derived from those sidereal powers . but it is evident , that those that have been the most illustrious prophets , have had converse with angels , and talked with them , and have so recorded the matter to the world. as for example , the prophet daniel , who discoursed with the angel gabriel ; christ also discoursed with moses and elias on mount tabor , and moses with the angel of god on mount sinai . besides , christ , who was so highly inspired and assisted from heaven , has over and over again pronounced a future happiness after this life . all which , allowing them for a while to be the dictates or representations of the astral influences , i demand of vaninus , how he comes to be wiser than those , who were so miraculously assisted , that these visions of angels should not be so as they that saw them have related , that moses and elias should not be the spirits of moses and elias , but only transient figurations of the air raised by the influence of the heavens ? moreover i would ask of him if he think that that heavenly assistance that can according to his own acknowledgment inform men of things to come at a thousand years distance , ( for such was the prediction of the death of iulius caesar in the senate , though a matter very contingent , ) cannot certainly inform them whom it pleases so wonderfully to assist , whether the souls of men be mortal or immortal ? which is far more cognoscible to those aethereal powers than the other . wherefore this wretched figment of his to excuse himself from the acknowledgment of the existence of angels or daemons , and the subsistence of the soul after death , from which he so much abhors , will stand him in no stead , but argues him more intoxicated , whifling and giddy , in admitting the truth of such narrations , and yet denying the genuine consequences of them , than they that give no credence to the narrations themselves . . that which was objected of christianity justling out iudaism , and of mahometism ( in a great part of the world ) justling out christianity , is partly false , and partly nothing to the purpose . that christianity hath properly justled out iudaism is very false . for iudaism has rather been ripened into the perfection of christianity , than been stifled and sufflaminated by any counter-blast of those sidereal influences he dreams of . for we see how things have gone on in one continued design from ‖ abraham to christ , as the prophecies and predictions in scripture plainly testifie . god promised to abraham , that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed . iacob foretels on his death-bed , that the jewish polity and religion should not fail till the messiah , a iew and son of abraham , was come , to whom the gathering of the gentiles should be : and so in other ‖ prophecies which we have already recited and applied . from whence it is manifest , that it is the hand and counsel of god who is constant to himself , and whose wisdom and providence reaches from end to end , that has begun and carried on this matter according to his own will and purpose , and not any bustles or counter-blasts of various aspects of the heavenly bodies , that do and undo according to the diversities and contrarieties of their schematisms and configurations . . * nor could any thing but levity of mind and vain-glory induce cardan to pretend the calculating of our saviours nativity , when as the year of his birth is so uncertain amongst the most accurate chronologers ; and astrology it self a thing wholly groundless and frivolous , as i shall demonstrate anon . nor is it any specimen of his wit , but of his gross impiety , so boldly to equalize the rise of mahometism to that of iudaism and christianity , as if moses , christ and mahomet were all astral law givers , alike assisted and inspired from the influence of the stars . a conceit that vaninus is so transported with , that he cannot tell what ground to stand upon when he cites the passage out of cardan , he is so tickled with joy . but that this exultation of his is very childish and groundless , appears , both in that he falsly attributes prophecies , divine laws and miracles , to the influence of the stars ( a superstitious errour that arises only out of the ignorance of the right systeme of the world ; ) and then again ( if it were true ) that he imagines mahomet ( who was a mere crafty politician , and did neither miracles , nor could prophesie ) to be a law-giver set up by the miraculous power of the heavens , such as enables divine law-givers and prophets to do real miracles . to which you may add the ridiculous obstinacy of this perverse sophist , who the more we give him of what he contends for , ( viz. that mahomet also is a star-inspired prophet , that is to say , illuminated from the anima coeli , which according to his opinion is the highest and most infallible principle of miracles and divine wisdom ) the more ample testimony we have against his own folly , that so peremptorily denies the existence of daemons , and subsistence of the soul after death . which are openly avouched by this third witness of his own introducing : and therefore he abhorring so from such truths as are certainly dictated from the celestial bodies , did not excess of pride and conceitedness blind his judgment and make him senseless , he could not but have found himself stung with that lash of the satyrist , o curvae in terris animae , & coelestium inanes ! but i have even tired my self with running the wild-goose chase after these fickle and fugitive wits , whose careless flirts and subsultorious fancies are as numerous as slight and weak , against the firm and immovable foundations of solid reason and religion . . i should now pass to the fourth part of my discourse , * did not the reflection upon the insufferable impudence of cardan , in pretending to cast our saviours nativity , and that villainous insulting of vaninus thereupon , ( as if all religion were but an influence of nature and transient blast of the stars ) invite me , nay indeed provoke me , * to lay open the vanity of their accursed art , wherein they have combined together to blaspheme god , and to make religion contemptible and useless to the world. annotations . chap. xiv . sect. i. there is not that peace and concord , no not in christendom it self , neither in church nor state , nor is idolatry extirpated , &c. i had brought my demonstration for the truth of christianity to that completeness in the fore-going part of my mystery of godliness , that i could find nothing to pretend to enervate it , but this objection of the jews , and that other of the aristotelean atheists , that impute all things to the natural influence of the heavens and stars . and though the former is nothing to our present purpose , yet i thought fit not to leave it out , that the chapter might be entire . and since it is here , i will only note that besides those answers i give here to this objection of the iews , there is one special answer more taken notice of in my preface to my exposition of the apocalypse , sect. . that this idolatry of the church was predicted by christ himself in that excellent volume of prophecies . the study of which ancient prophecies , i think , much better becomes a protestant minister of the church of england , as mr. butler stiles himself , than the vain affectation of astrological prognostications . but he is so full of that empty phantastry , that he does not only neglect that laudable and solid study of the prophecies of holy scripture , himself , but derides them that are followers thereof , as he does me , in his vindication of astrology , p. . the doctor , sayes he , has been all day in deep study of the revelation of s. john the divine , &c. which plainly reflects upon the very title page of my exposition of the apocalypse ; and may have respect also to his own book coming out so immediately upon mine , namely his hagiastrologia , which he interprets , the most sacred and divine science of astrology , as if he would set up this his most sacred and divine science of astrology as a corrival with the serious study of the revelation of st. john the divine , so that instead of being divines or theologers , we may turn phancyful star-gazers or astrologers . and wot you not what great encouragement there is for it ? for besides his hagiastrologia , which is newly come out piping hot , he mentions a little tract of astrology written by himself , for the satisfaction of the ignorant , and his christologia , or his treatise of christ , for so the word will signifie whether he will or no , which treatise notwithstanding pretends only to tell us the time of christs birth : as if that genethliacal or astrological moment of his nativity were j. b.'s whole christ. and lastly , he tells us ( which i might have put in the first place , it occurring hagiastr . p. . ) of the doctrine of nativities , written by his friend mr. gadbury , a person famous as well for astronomy as astrology . these i must confess are great motives , and if i did not consider , that the apocalypse is a book writ by truly divine and infallible inspiration , and that the rudiments of astrology are but the mere imaginations and gross hallucinations of deceived mortals , unacquainted with sound philosophy and the true knowledge of nature , they might have made me seem to give ground a little . but being as it is , i stand perfectly unmoved in my self , and do in the mean time take notice , that j. b. in his publishing presently , upon the coming out of my apocalypsis apocalypseos , this rudely swaggering piece of his ( where there is nothing of reason or philosophy , but a meer endeavour in the grossest way of buffonry to make my person as vile and contemptible as he can ) acteth like one that does not endeavour more to vindicate his beloved astrology than to stifle the good effect of my studying those divine oracles , which tell not into what quarter an horse , or sow and pigs have gone astray , but how much the church pretended catholick and apostolick have gone astray from the rule of the word , and wandred from the city of god , the holy ierusalem , to the bloody , prophane , and idolatrous city of babylon . i say his virulent book coming out in such a nick of time as this , may justly move a suspicion in me or any one else beyond the probability of any figure cast by an astrologer , that this latter is the principal meaning and chief scope of his publishing this book of his at this time . which thing i leave to his own conscience and the judgment of others to consider : especially if they will but take along with them what he writes in his astrology vindicated , p. . where speaking of my mystery of godliness . it was full ten years date , sayes he , from its first coming out , ere i had the hap to meet with a fight of this explanation , &c. and my christologia was in the press first ; and also i had written my little tract of astrology , for the satisfaction of the ignorant in that art ; and an answer to mr. selden , by way of post script , before this of dr. mores came to my hands . only i had heard of such a treatise , and heard it very much commended by certain anti-astrologers , &c. out of which passage it is plain , that his christologia was writ some ten years ago , my mystery of godliness having been published near these twenty years . wherefore that he should either be or feign himself to be in such a rage , so soon after the publishing of my apocalypsis apocalypseos , i leave to the sagacious to smell out the reason . but this is only by the bye . we come now to what in these chapters concerns astrology and astrologers . sect. . a goodly speculation indeed and well befitting two such witty fools as pomponatius and vaninus , &c. answer . but what ( sayes j. b. p. . ) are all fools that just jump not with the doctors will ? repl. i must confess i think all are fools that close with that atheistical hypothesis , which i have above described in the foregoing section , and deny a particular providence . and that vaninus was a fool , is demonstrable out of the scripture , which this minister of gods word cannot for shame deny . psalm . the fool hath said in his heart there is no god. if he be a fool that sayes in his heart there is no god , what a great fool is he , that not only sayes it in his heart , but speaks it out with his mouth , and makes it his business to proselyte others to the same impiety ? which was the case of vaninus , who was so great a fool or madman as to become martyr for atheism . the history whereof you may see in that ingenious writer dr. sam. parker , in his disputationes de deo , disp. . sect. . as he has taken it out of gabr. barthol . gramond . in his history of france , from the death of henry the fourth , lib . his story is sufficiently tragical , and his case to be lamented ; an atheist being a more proper object of scorn or pity , than of the extremity of such severity . it were a more expeditious way to free the world of this kind of cattle , to exhibit religion in a more credible and creditable dress than it hath been for over many ages . and yet they that have been the most effectual makers of atheists , have been the most forward to burn them . but this i have also complained of elsewhere . but j. b. further objects . but why a witty fool , does not wit make wise ? repl. i say no , wit may make witty , but 't is wisdom that makes wise . it is called wit when imagination and reason dance the anticks , and shew a dexterity by freakish tricks to insinuate false and mischievous opinions , and disparage what is true and useful , what is holy , sacred and serious . but wisdom is an ability of maintaining weighty and useful truths , by firm and invincible arguments . but the atheist being so great a sot that he is sunk from the belief and relish of any such things , i look upon him , let his wit otherwise be what it will , as on one , that is not wise , but a fool. and most assuredly he will find himself so in the conclusion . sect. . never any mans pride and conceitedness exceeded the proportion of his wit and parts so much as his . here j. b. being he does merely rail and offer no reason to confute what i say , i am excused from answering any thing to him . but for the readers satisfaction i will not stick to declare , that vaninus as to his philosophy is a meer pedant , and that his dialogues he bears himself so high upon , are very shallow things , and tiresome to any man of any skill and judgment to read them ; and would be the flattest entertainment to all men that can be , but that some have a palate for atheism and infidelity , though never so homely dressed or poorly served up : i never met with any one yet , though never so free a philosopher , but he had the same opinion of vaninus that i profess . and what freakish nay doltish conceits he has of apparitions , will appear to my one by what i have writ against him in my immortality of the soul , book . chap. . and in my enchiridium metaphysicum , cap. . now for his pride and conceitedness none can be greater , he making himself a very gold for wisdom and knowledge , as i have observed in this section . and if any one would have a more full description of his excessive pride , let him either read vaninus his own dialogues , or what dr. parker has transcribed thence in in the abovesaid treatise , and in the same place i named before . that odd and crooked writer heironymus cardanus , &c. here j. b. p. . cries out , he all to be calls him , and yet gives no account why he was either the one or the other , unless because he was a learned astrologer . repl. this character of cardan is so notoriously known to them that are conversant in his writings , that it wanted no proof . of what an odd , or if you will uneven temper and irregular he was , he himself does freely confess , and calls it , anomalam suae naturae indolem . which makes him write of things off and on , in so much that it is thuanus his elogium of him , in quibusdam plus homine , sapere , in pluribus minus pueris intelligere videri . and dr. parkers censure of him is with good judgment , in that he esteems him rather a fanatick or madman , than an atheist . but to descend to instances of these things would swell my annotations too much . sect. . nothing but a rotten relique of the ancient pagan superstition , &c. answ. to this j. b. answers p. . lo , in sacred times where we find moses and daniel famous astrologers amongst the best of jewish writers , and in christian times we have cardan , junctinus , philip melancthon , pezelius , morinus , and divers others famous christian astrologers , and yet the doctor blushes not to call it a rotten relique of pagan superstition . repl. that there have been several good men amongst the christians that have without any ill mind , studied astrology properly so called ▪ as some also , nay , many myriads of mortals ▪ out of ignorance have practised idolatry , i will easily grant . but that moses and daniel were such astrologers as calculated nativities , and answered horary questions by casting of figures , i utterly deny . as theologia signifies the doctrine or learning touching the nature of god from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so astrologia from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , may signify the doctrine of the nature of the stars , their situation , distances , and motion , which now adays is more properly called astronomia . of which calculation of eclipses is a part . but astrologia of it self signifies no more the art of predicting or divining , touching the fate and affairs of men from the stars , than theologia signifies the art of predicting things from god. but because j. b. is so far from thinking astrology , properly so called , to be a relique of pagan superstition , that he pretends it to be a sacred and divine science , i will here in this very place , before i go any further , examine all his allegations , where-ever they occur , in either of his books , for the proveing it so sacred and divine . first then he pretends that astrology came out from paradise , and that our father adam after the fall communicated it out of his memoires of the state of innocency , to his son seth , and that seth made impressions of the same in certain permanent pillars which were able to withstand both fire and water , and that hence enoch had it and noah , and from him shem , and so it came to abraham , who taught the chaldeans and aegyptians the principles thereof . pref. to hagiastrolog . p. . again , ( p. . of the same book ) he contends that moses , that great man of god , was an astrologer , as being learned in all the wisdom of the aegyptians , of which astrology was a part , which they were taught by abraham when he was in aegypt . thirdly , that moses was an astrologer , he sayes is apparent by his predictions touching the tribes , as to what should betide them for the time to come , deuteron . . which he not doing by revelation , nor dream , nor vision , ( for when it was so , the scripture was wont to say how it was so ) he must needs have done it by astrology . fourthly , the patriarch jacob was also an astrologer , by his predictions to his sons , and that the opinion of the learned origen was , that he was so indeed . fifthly , that joseph was also an astrologer , he being the very hermes trismegistus that diodorus speaks of , who taught osiris and isis many learned matters both concerning religion and state , and concerning things to come , and who lived about the same time that joseph , and taught a religion by himself , contrary to all the ways of worship as was ever known amongst the aegyptians , before him , he assisted osiris in the art of the plough , and counselled many things conducing to the benefit of mans life , and was in great honour with king osiris , as joseph with pharaoh : so that osiris must be pharaoh and hermes trismegistus , joseph . and of this man , sayes diodore , he was one of the first that was skilled in the stars : and the astrological aphorisms of hermes trismegistus , are extant to this day . sixthly , the children of issachar were astrologers , chron. . . for so are they described , men that had understanding of the times to know what israel had to do . these were also among the number of the bands that were ready armed to war , and came to david to hebron to turn the kingdom of saul to him according to the word of the lord : these issacharians therefore were learned astrologers , able to answer an horary question in such a case as was now depending , whether they should follow david or saul . seventhly , the seers in samuels time were horary question-men ( p. . ) who gave answers to them that enquired after lost goods , what was become of them . which was not by any divine prophecy or extraordinary revelation , but by some industrious art , because it was mercenary , as it appears , sam. ch . . v. . but behold if we go , what shall we bring the man ? which is said concerning samuel himself , who v. . is called the seer , and of whom was enquired what was become of the lost asses of sauls father . eighthly , daniel , shadrach , mesech and abednego , were astrologers ( p. . ) students of the faculty under their tutor melzar , dan . . and were accounted as members of some schools in babylon , where the science was taught by abraham , and after that , belus the father of nimrod built the school-house of learning , and much propagated the art : and in these schools studied the learned daniel , &c. ninthly , and lastly , several passages in scripture favour astrological influences and predictions ; as deut. . concerning joseph , it is said by moses , that his blessing shall be of the pretious things of the sun and moon . again , deut. . . moses sayes , that the sun , moon and stars , god has distributed to all nations under heaven , p. . thirdly , p. . when barak and deborah were victorious against king jabin and sisera his chieftain , the stars of heaven ( judg. . . ) were at the battel , and fought in their courses against sisera . and in the last place , which j. b. ever and anon harps upon , there is brought in our saviour his concession or assertion , that the redness of the skie prognosticks fair weather at evening , and that a red and lowring skie in the morning prognosticks foul , matth. . . these are all the forces that my memory can muster up , which j. b. has produced to make good that astrology is a sacred and divine science . which how strong they are , now let us try . the first indeed is a sweet amiable conceit , as fetching astrologies first original from paradise . but he brings no proof for it but that one passage in josephus , antiqu. lib. . c. . which makes against himself . for what is impressed of the knowledge of the celestial bodies , upon those pillars of stone and brick , were no paradisiacal traditions but the inventions of the sons of seth ( who also built the pillars ) the words in josephus are , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . they excogitated the knowledge or science of the heavenly bodies ; that is , the order , situation , and motion of them , and so understood the true systeme of the world , or were well skilled in astronomy . but there is not the least hint here of iudiciary astrology , which j. b. is so fond of . to the second i answer , that moses was indeed learned in all the wisdom of the aegyptians as it testified , acts . . of which i admit astronomy to be one part ; but j. b. precariously supposes astrology properly so called , the same that i write against , to be another . now i say , and i have proved , that that pretended art is no part of wisdom but folly , and therefore never professed nor acknowledged by moses ; he can be said to be an astrologer in no sense , but as astrology and astronomy is taken for one and the same thing . and to his third argument ( whereby he would enforce the former ) that he was an astrologer , from his predicting the future conditions of the twelve tribes ; i say it was no fruit of his astrology , but an effect of the divinity of his pious soul inacted by the spirit of god. and it is a fond thing to think in these circumstances , he should take up the form , after usual amongst the prophets , thus saith the lord. was it by astrology that our saviour predicted the destruction of jerusalem , because it is not set down whether it was by revelation , dream , or vision , that that prophecy of the destruction of the city and of the end of the world was communicated to him ? not to add , that the entrance into this prophecy of moses is too high and majestick for an astrological figure-flinger . the lord came from sinai , and rose up from mount seir unto them , he shined forth from mount paran , &c. to the fourth ; where he would make jacob also an astrologer , because though he was blind or exceeding dim-sighted , could contrary to joseph's mind lay his right hand on ephraim , and his left on menasseh , gen. . and predict the fates of the twelve tribes , ch . . to this i say , that truly i thought when men had lost their sight , they had not been so fit to cast figures . but he seems to urge this more faintly , and would support it only by the opinion of learned origen , as if he in his homilies upon these two chapters , had made jacob an astrologer . but here j. b. is either imposed upon himself by those that play the wag with him , or else would impose upon his reader . for there is no homily of origen on the . chapter , and in his homily on the . not one syllable of jacobs being an astrologer . there is something in eusebius touching origen's making jacob to predict the destinies of the tribes , as haveing read them in tabulis coeli , but this j. b. seems ignorant of , or to omit it , as not deeming it much to his purpose . if he had produced it we had had an answer ready for it , but to say any thing now is superfluous . and to the fifth i answer , that i acknowledge that according to chronologers , osiris and joseph lived about the same time , else all the fat had been in the fire , and that hermes to osiris , in assisting him in husbandry , and in being in such high favour with him , was such as joseph to pharaoh . but diodorus whom he cites for this fair story , does not represent hermes as one professing and practising a religion by himself , contrary to the religion of the aegyptians , but that he ordered matters of religion for them touching sacrifices and the worship of the gods : which is incredible that joseph did for pharaoh . and as touching the telling of them of things to come , there is not one syllable of it in diodorus . and on the other side he is said to teach them letters , and to speak articulately , and to teach them to wrastle and play on the harp and other feats of musick . of which not one syllable in the history of joseph . but let hermes and joseph be the same man. what then ? o then it is plain that joseph was an astrologer , because diodorus writes he was one of the first that was skilled in the stars . and astrological aphorisms go under hermes the aegyptian his name . but i answer , that his skill in the stars is set down in diodorus , only in these words , that he was , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an observer of the order of the stars for their situation and motion , which josephus above called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the disposition and order of the celestial bodies ; which expressions in neither place reach any further than to astronomy , there is not the least hint here of judiciary astrology , properly so called . for to know when it will be summer and winter , spring and fall , i do not call judiciary astrology , though j. b. do , hagiastrolog . p. . such is astronomy with me . and for those hermetical aphorisms , it is so frequent to father new spurious inventions upon ancient names , that j. b. himself is justly diffident in that point of the argument , if there be any such extant . to the sixth i answer , that the phrase concerning the issacharians , that they were men that had understanding of the times , implies no more than that they were sagacious men and good politicians , and knew , in rebus agundis , when to act and when to forbear . the hebrew words are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that had skill to act pro re nata , as the time and occasion required . but what is this to astrology ? i remember a doctor of physick that so doted on the philosophers stone , that he would alledge places of scripture from genesis to the revelation , in the behalf thereof . the application is easie , i go on . the seventh argument looks the most handsomely of any . as if the ancient seers were horary-question-men , because they told men where their lost goods were , as our figure-flingers pretend to do in this age ; and because they were mercenary and took an hire or reward for their pains . but that these seers were no such men but prophets . j. b. might have discovered out of the very text , if he had not overlooked it , sam. . . before time in israel when a man went to enquire of god , thus he spake , come and let us go to the seer . for he that is now called a prophet was before time called a seer . wherefore it is manifest , that these seers were prophets divinely inspired , no horary astrologers as j. b. would have them . nor is sauls solicitude for a present to bring to samuel the seer , as he is here called , any argument that these seers were mercenary figure-flingers . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is , as our english translation renders it , a present , properly made to a great person in way of honour and respect . which these ancient seers or prophets might accept or refuse as they saw occasion . see grotius on the place , and what he has written on matth. . . for it will satisfie any unprejudiced man. to the eighth i say , that there is nothing in the book of daniel whereby it is apparent that daniel , shadrach , mesech and abednego , were students in iudiciary astrology under their tutor melzar , but only learners of the chaldee tongue , that they might be fitted the better to serve the king and converse with him as occasion might be . but as for the knowledge of things they are supposed to have it already , ch . . v. ▪ . where ashpenaz the master of the eunuchs is ordered to bring of the children of israel , well-favoured persons , skilful in all wisdom , and cunning in knowledge , and understanding science , whom they might teach 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to be able to read and spake chaldee . wherefore melzar was a tutor to them in nothing but this . and when they got the ready use of the chaldee tongue , and communed with the king , all his magicians and astrologers seemed but a company of idiots to him , in comparison of them , v. . he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm . but that daniel was a student in any astrological schools , is as true as that belus the father of nimrod built them , after abraham had taught astrology in babylon . when as belus reigned above two hundred years before abraham was born . and now in the ninth place , as for those passages in scripture ; to the first i answer , that the pretious things of the sun and of the moon , are the fruits of the earth produced or helped on by the heat of the one , and moisture from the other . of these virgil speaks in his georgicks . — vestro si numine tellus chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit aristâ . and to deut. . . i shall answer when i have brought into view the whole context . and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven , and when thou seest the sun , and the moon and stars , even all the host of heaven , shouldest be driven to worship them and serve them , which the lord thy god has divided unto all nations under the whole heaven . but the lord hath taken you and brought you forth out of the iron furnace , even out of aegypt , to be unto him a people of inheritance , as ye are this day . he must have a strong imaginative faculty that can phancy an argument for the sacredness and divineness of iudiciary astrology from this place . for whether we interpret the distributing the stars to the nations , as vatablus and others have done , in ministerium omnium gentium creavit , as they are palpably useful to them all , by the enjoyment of their light , and by the observation of their course for the knowing of times and seasons , besides the comfortable heat of the sun , and the refreshing moistness of the air from the moon , to further the growth of herbs and plants . ( but what is all this to the whimzies of iudiciary astrology ? ) or if with st. augustine ( and grotius seems also thither inclined ) we conceive that this host of heaven , sun , moon and stars , are divided to the nations and permitted by god for a time to be worshipped by them , though strictly forbid to his own peculiar people ( see drusius and grotius upon the place ) what is this to the sacredness of astrology , but rather a confirmation that it is a rag of the old pagan idolatry ? and i have heard with mine own ears from them that have been addicted much to that art , that they have prayed to the stars ; as anne bodenham the witch confessed she prayed sometimes to the planet jupiter . to the third i answer , the stars in their courses fighting against sisera makes nothing for astrology , stars there according to the prophetick and cabbalistick stile signifying angels . and it is a song framed in the height of prophetick , and if you will of poetick eloquence . and vatablus likewise interprets it of the angels , as also grotius , who adds , angeli stellarum nomine appellantur ob coelestem naturam ac splendorem . see my alphabet of prophetick iconisms . and as for the last allegation , the prognostick of weather from the redness of the skie acknowledged by our saviour , though j. b. often mentions that instance , i do not see how it makes more for astrology than the neat-herds brended cow , by whose frisking and gadding he could prognostick it would be rain , or any of those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which aratus recites in his astronomical poem . these things are meteorological not astrological , neither is that redness of the skie in the heavens but in this lower part of our atmosphere . thus i think i have sufficiently answered all his arguments whereby he would prove astrology a sacred and divine science . and at most all these allegations , if they had any weight in them at all , could but prove it is a lawful science , not sacred or divine . because joseph taught the aegyptians astrology , therefore astrology is a sacred or divine science . you may as well argue , because he taught them the use of the fiddle , and of the plough , as diodorus sayes hermes did , that fidling and ploughing are divine sciences . but enough of this . and that it is rather a rag of old paganism than a divine science , appears from that of deuteronomy above-cited , the pagans being worshippers of the host of heaven , as rulers and disposers of all things here on earth . what then could be a greater accomplishment of a pagan priest , than to know in what time and order , and in what aspects one with another these celestial deities dispose things here below , and what a temptation to him to pretend he knew it whether he did or no , and also to the vagrant daemons of the air , to further him in the entanglements of this vanity . this i hope j. b. himself will think no rash conjecture , especially if he consider withal what jeremias sayes , ch . . thus saith the lord , learn not the way of the heathen , and be not dismai'd at the signs of heaven . for the heathens are dismai'd at them . by which text , not only clarius , but the catholick church and chiefest fathers , do hold astrologers and they that believe them , to be perstringed ; the conceit , that the configuration of the heavenly bodies is the cause of all our wo or weal here below , driving the nations headlong into idolatry . and grotius himself upon the text , juxta vias gentium nolite discere . chaldaeos , sayes he , maximè intelligit , unde nomen arti chaldaicae , that is to say , astrologiae . sect. . nor could any thing but levity of mind and vain-glory , induce cardan to pretend the calculating our saviours nativity , &c. this sentence of mine with others ( p. . ) j. b. perstringes , as if it were unjustly spoken concerning cardan . but for his levity of mind and vain-glory , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that so frequently occurs in his writings , is sufficient testimony to any one that has read them , though not altogether so much as i have done . and that ingenious writer whom i above mentioned names this amongst the chiefest things that hurried cardan on to that madness and disorder of mind he seemed to labour under , viz. immoderatam gloriae cupidinem , excessive desire of fame and glory , or of an immortal memory , which himself acknowledges himself thirsty after . so little wrong is done to him in this . and there was a levity of mind and temerity in this feat of his , both because the year of christs birth was accounted uncertain amongst the learned , and because astrology it self is but a thing groundless and vain , as i hope i have made plain in the ensuing chapters , and shall solidly maintain what i have said against all j. b. his evasions or exceptions . and astrology it self a thing wholly groundless and frivolous , &c. to this he answers ( p. . ) but he forgets , sayes he , his former acknowledgments ( he means my after-acknowledgments , for those acknowledgments are made in the following chapters , if at all , not in the chapter going before ) how there was much in the effects and acts of the moon , and that the effect of the sun in his course is conspicuous , in making an annual resurrection as it were of plants and animals , &c. repl. but he is to consider , that this is no part of that astrology that i oppose , which is that which stands upon such imaginary fundamentals as i have described from the second section of ch . . to the end of that chapter . and besides , in that whole fifteenth chapter i set down what astrologers hold , not what i acknowledge . and i expect that their grounds should be established either upon sense or reason . now the pretended qualities and effects of the other planets , are not sensible to us as those of the sun and moon , nor is it rationally deduced , that if these two planets whose discus's appear so big ; have a real influence upon things here on earth , that therefore all the planets and stars , be their discus's never so little in comparison of the others , shall have considerable effects and influences also . which methinks is as unskilfully concluded , as if one should say , because the moon eclipses the sun , therefore mercury and venus must eclipse the sun , they being planets as well as the moon , not considering how much nearer they are to the sun and further off from us , so that the cones of their shadows cannot reach us . sect. . did not the reflection upon the insufferable impudence of cardan , &c. it will not be amiss here to take notice what j.b. has writ touching all the hard language ( as he conceives ) in this chapter against cardan and vaninus , and how he concerns himself in it . which i do the rather to do j. b. right , that his protestation whereby he would clear himself , may be heard . j. b. therefore on this chapter writes thus ( p. , . ) and whereas my self missing of the hap to read the mystery of godliness according to this doctors explanation , and therefore little dreaming of any blasphemy or irreligion , or accursedness in the art of astrology , but rather verily expecting to do god almighty and his holy church all possible right and honour by it , even i my self also , without consulting cardan , have calculated a scheme of our ever blessed saviours nativity , and made use of this very astrology , against which the doctor is so bitterly angry , together with other circumstances to demonstrate the certainty of the day and year of christs birth , which the doctor sayes is so uncertain amongst the most accurate chronologers : and ere i was aware , by so doing , i find my self dropt within the compass of the doctors long lash , and unhappily situated in company with the high-minded , vain-glorious , insufferably impudent , villanous , insulters , blasphemers , and irreligious students of the accursed art. only i have this advantage , that i am yet alive , and have my pen in my hand to answer for my self . which had cardan and vaninus also been able to perform , certainly the doctor had never written of them at this rate as we read him . i have transcribed this long passage mainly in behalf of mr. butler himself , for whom i must confess i have so much charity as to believe his profession , touching his calculating our saviours nativity to be so far true , namely that he had no irreligious design in it . and if cardan and vaninus had been persons of whom i suspected as little as of mr. butler , knowing nothing at all of him , i should never have run out into this sharpness of stile against them , nor against astrology . but by reading of vaninus , understanding that cardan fetched the law of moses from saturn , of christ from jupiter and mercury , of mahomet from sol and mars , and the law of idolaters from the moon and mars , making moses , christ and mahomet , all of them mere sydereal prophets alike , as i have here described in this fourteenth chapter , and how vaninus exults in these principles of cardan , in whose writings i had observed many passages that tend to irreligion and atheism , though it may be he was more a mad-man than a fixed atheist ; these things i say , how could they but excite any serious mans indignation against them , they offering such principles to the world as must needs make the christian religion contemptible , and defeat the ends thereof : and , which i was here more particularly concerned in , elude the solidity of such arguments as i had brought for the demonstration of christianity . and , would it not raise any mans zeal to see the truth and usefulness of such a religion whifled away by so vain an imposture as astrology . read my enthusiasmus triumphatus , sect. . which i wrote before my mystery of godliness . now let us compare the harshness of my language with the hainousness of the offence in cardan and vaninus . touching cardan's light-mindedness and vain-glory , i have spoke already , and need not repeat it . for the terming of it , his insufferable impudence in pretending by his calculating christs nativity that he had found him to be but a brat of the stars , whom we believe to have been conceived by the holy ghost ; if that language , insufferable impudence ; be not within moderation here , let the whole christian world judge . and it is the greater impudence that he durst declare so from such a groundless , whimzical , and falsly so called science , as iudiciary astrology is . and the case standing thus , and vaninus so exulting in these phantastick principles of cardan , and insulting over the christian religion in vertue of them , how can this gear be called less than villainous , unless such words must be expunged the dictionary , and never come into use amongst men ? and then for cardan and vaninus , their combining together to blaspheme god ; is it not manifest they blaspheme god , when they deny his particular providence , and reproach christ who is the son of god , and miraculously conceived by the holy ghost , in making him but the off-spring of the stars , which they make every brute as much as he . and if any instrument which is made use of for some direful and accursed action , in an ordinary strain of rhetorick is called accursed , much more may such a vain art made use of for such impious purposes be called an accursed art also . but that j. b. conceits , that if cardan and vaninus had been alive with their pens in their hands , i had never adventured to write at this rate against them , that is only his surmize . for they had nothing but railing and reasoning to oppose me with , and as for the former , i should have served them as i have j. b. their fellow astrologer , neither be troubled at it nor have troubled my self with answering it . and as for the latter , i am confident , vaninus was a less skilful astrologer than j. b. and cardan not more able to shuffle for himself in a sophistical show of reason than he . and therefore if i vanquish j. b. it may justly go for a victory over them both . which we shall try when i come to reply upon his allegations against my sixteenth chapter , where i confute the fundamentals of astrology . but in the mean time i will observe the injurious cunning of j. b. who has thus raked together all the harsh language of this chapter against cardan and vaninus and their beloved art , but concealed the occasions given for such sharpness of speech , that it may the easilier seem railing . but the reader i hope , having perused the whole chapter will readily acquit me of that unjust charge . i will only take notice what he saith ( p. . ) particularly touching that passage , to lay open the vanity of their accursed art , and then i shall pass to the following chapters . ans. but then belike , sayes he , moses and daniel , and the three children , and the famous melancthon , were all accursed persons for studying of it , at least they were so in the doctors eye , how ever holy writ and all good men may say to the contrary . repl. as for the making of moses and daniel , and the three children students of astrology , that it is a mere amiable dream of j. b.'s , i have proved above . and admit that melancthon was a student of astrology , it follows not from any thing that i have writ , that he was an accursed person , or that i thought him so . the axe that cut off king charles his head , would any think it a forced strain of speech to call it an accursed axe , it being abused to such an accursed purpose as i have answered above ? i think it argued melancthon less considerate , that he would embrace or countenance so vain a study , if he did so , but that will not amount to make him to be , or to be esteemed by me or any one else that is reasonable , an accursed person . my self had , but that more important occasions drew me away , turned student of the astrological game , a friend of mine giving me a copy of his ms. he wrote of it , and my self providing my self with astrological chess-men , as i may so call them , a double set of the seven planets , and of caput and cauda draconis . which , if mr. j. b. be a practitioner of the sport , they are at his service . and i think the study of astrology is rather a play or game , such as chess , which is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , than any natural science , much less divine . nor am i of so rude a nature as not to bear with the ludicrous humours of others , nor yet so sensless as not to be offended with their impieties , or what ever approaches over near it , as any serious christian ought to be . and therefore though j. b. has made a fair protestation in his own behalf , as if he verily expected to do god almighty and his holy church all possible right and honour by calculating the nativity of our saviour , and that any candid reader ought to accept of his protestation so far forth as it excuses him from any evil intent against religion and our blessed lord : yet i cannot but declare , that no man can excuse him from great temerity and imprudence , who reads and observes , in his descant on christs nativities-scheme , which he pretends to have described , those things he has writ in that bold and rash manner . christolog . p. . though iupiter , sayes he , on the ascendant promises well , yet mars is set as if he stood on purpose to destroy a nativity , so opposite to iupiter and the ascendant , and being strong withal , he seems to threaten all good qualities with an overturn , infusing nothing but choler , fury , and malice into the natives head , and disposing of the moon he makes her do so too . the sun also looks upon the cusp ascending with an evil quadrature , and such as usually renders a native much more proud and ambitious than either wise or good natured , and mercury complying with sol in the same aspect , endeavours to encline this sacred person to theft and lies . this , to speak freely , looks like a nativity-libel against our saviour , and an anticipative accusation exhibiting an ill character of him , before by his age he was in a capacity of doing either good or evil . but to do j. b. right , after he has thus broken our saviours head , he gives him a plaister . but what now , sayes he , was iesus thus , or rather does not astrology bely him ? no neither . for had these evil aspects courted an ordinary nature unto evil manners naturally , yet would they not have forced him , but he might have overcome all by gracious habits ; but much more than this must we note in the ever blessed our lord jesus christ , &c. for my own part i am willing to receive this as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as a plaister broad enough to cover the wound he has given our ever blessed lord iesus . but how he will be able to hold the fingers of his beloved vaninus , that great patron of astrology , and his atheistical followers from raking into this sore , notwithstanding the fence of his plaster , i cannot tell . i have heard of a story of an hector-like wit , who hearing this descant of j. b.'s on our saviours nativity-scheme , that mercury in such a posture inclined him to theft , rapt out a great oath and said it was very likely , and that his sending his disciples for another mans colt ( luk. . ) to bring him to him , was an effect of that aspect of mercury . which notwithstanding was very ignorantly as well as impiously appli'd ; the colt being brought away not without the owners consent ; besides that christ was true owner and lord of all . the earth is the lords and the fulness thereof , as the psalmist speaks : not to add that cabbalistical notion , that the soul of the messias is domina quatuor mundorum . and to this in all likelihood might our saviour allude when he bad his disciples say , the lord hath need of him . see psalm . but to hold on . and now will not others be as prone to impute his high zeal in whipping the buyers and sellers out of the temple , to the influence of mars infusing nothing but choler and fury into the natives head , as j. b. phrases it ? and his declaring himself to be the son of god , and that his father works hitherto and he works , and that he is said , hebr. . for the joy that was set before him to have endured the cross , and to have despised the shame , and to have sat down at the right hand of the throne of god ; will they not be prone to impute all this to the sun 's looking upon the cusp ascending with an evil quadrature , and such as renders the native more proud and ambitious than either good-natured or wise ? for such certainly would be his beloved vaninus's descant upon this last point , who suggests in his dialogues , that christ offered himself to be crucified , ad comparandam apud posteros aeterni nominis gloriam , which , if that had been all , had proved him indeed more ambitious than wise , to cut himself off in the midst of his days , for an empty name . and in the same dialogues he sayes ; great conjunctions of the stars happening , and by their influences miracles here appearing upon earth , some cunning man observing this , and being thirsty after eternal fame , gives himself out for a prophet and one sent from god , and ascribing these miracles to his own fictitious omnipotency , ( they being indeed done by the stars ) is admired and adored by the deluded people . and thus vaninus will accommodate the aspect of mercury , not only to theft , but also to lies , and all that christ assumed to himself , or did or suffered , that made way to his exaltation , he will apply to the evil quadrature of the sun so looking upon the cusp ascending . insomuch , that considering the wound , and the plaister that j. b. has given our saviour , as touching his nativity , i must confess , though i am loth to speak any thing harsh or grating , that his venting of such strange stuff , is too apparent an argument of either gross imprudence , or deep hypocrisy , the thing being so abusable by wicked and atheistical men , such as vaninus and his crue ; notwithstanding the whole business of astrology is a mere imposture , and if there were any thing in it , that j. b. is quite out , not only in the hour or minute , but in the year of christs nativity ( as i shall show in its due place ) and that our saviours zeal in whipping the buyers and sellers out of the temple , was out of a deep love and pity to the gentiles , despised by the iews , not out of rage and malice , which mars is pretended to infuse in his nativity , nor the joy set before him the gratifying any ambition that the evil quadrature of the sun might signify , but his desire of being in an universal capacity of saving the souls of men . nor lastly , was it suggested to him by mercury to give out that he was a prophet , and the son of god , but a voice from heaven witnessed so in audience of the people , and his own sense and conscience illuminated by the holy ghost , and answered by the perpetual assistances and operations of him that sent him assured him thereof . but notwithstanding , i say , all these most certain truths the vaninian atheists will click at and stick to what they would have , and will be gaily gratified by this extravagant , immodest , and imprudent essay of j. b. for i would be loth to charge him of so deep hypocrisy as he would lie obnoxious to , if he had been aware of these grand inconveniencies . and therefore , i hope , by this time he is so sensible of his mistake , that he could wish he had employed his time better than in such a mischievous and scandalous curiosity , and that he will think more favourably of my just though sharp reprehensions of cardan and vaninus , than either to deem it or term it railing or reviling . chap. xv. . the general plausibilities for the art of astrology propounded . . the first rudiments of the said art. the qualities of the planets , and their penetrancy through the earth . . that the earth is as pervious to them as the air , and of their division of the zodiack into trigons , &c. . the essential dignities of the planets . . their accidental dignities . . of the twelve celestial houses , and the five ways of erecting a scheme . . the requisiteness of the exact knowledge of the moment of time , and of the true longitude and latitude of the place . . direction what it is , and which the chiefest directors or significators . . of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or apheta and anaereta , and the time when the anaereta gives the fatal stroke . . i shall therefore make this short digression to expose to your view the extreme folly and frivolousness of the whole pretended art of astrology , whose main general reasons and particular principles are in brief as followeth . first , they alledge , that it is a thing beyond all belief , that such an innumerable company of stars , whose light is not considerable , nor their position so exact for ornament , should be made for nothing else but to look upon . therefore , say they , there is some other mystery in it , and that they are endued with certain hidden influences , and have their several peculiar virtues , as distinct as the herbs and flowers of the field , and it is their art of astrology that professeth the knowledge thereof . again , the earth and water being such simple bodies as they are , the various productions in nature could not be , were it not for that infinite variety of those celestial bodies , the stars , and their several influences upon the earth . this their great champion sir christopher heydon urges as a principal argument for them . thirdly , that it is plain that the moon hath a moist influence , and that at her full the brains of beasts generally , the eyes of cats , and the meat of shell-fishes are swell'd to a greater bigness ; and that they are lessened in the change. fourthly , that the moon also , to our wonderment , guides the ebbing and flowing of the sea , whose influence is equally seen when she is under the horizon as when above , when near our nadir as when near our zenith . whence , say they , it is plain , that the heavenly bodies have not only a power or influence , besides light , but more searching and penetrating than light it self , as being able to make its way through the thickness of the earth , and to reach its effect on the further side thereof . both which wonders they further confirm from the magnetical needle , that looks toward the pole-star , though on the other side of the tropick of capricorn ; where the north pole will be hidden twenty or thirty degrees below the horizon . whence it is manifest , say they , that the influence of the pole-star pierces through the bowels of the earth ; and is a notorious argument of that secret and irresistible virtue of the rest of the heavenly bodies . fifthly , the station , direction and repedation of the planets is a thing so strange and mysterious , that it is not likely they should make those odd motions , unless those waglings this way and that way , those goings backward and forward were a certain reeling or spinning the fates and fortunes of things or persons here below . sixthly and lastly , yearly experience teaches us that the approach of the sun renews the world and makes an annual resurrection of plants and insects , and such living creatures as are born of putrefaction , and have no other father than the fiery-bearded sun. if then this one planet does such rare feats , certainly the rest of the planets and fixed stars do not stand for cyphers , but have their virtues and operations as well as he , whose efficacy and influence , say these star-gazers , our art does punctually and particularly define . you may add if you will out of origanus , the heat of the dog-star , and the moist influence of arcturus and the hyades . * these are the general plausibilities that these deceivers endeavour to countenance their profession by . but we shall now set down the main particular principles and fundamental rudiments of their so much-admired science , as they would have it esteemed , and then shall orderly answer to them both . . according therefore to origanus , whom i shall chiefly follow in setting down these astrological principles , i do not say all , but what is sufficient ; nor will i set down any but what they acknowledge for principles , nor omit any that are so considerable as these i set down : first , it is thought by them , that the planets have the most influence upon terrestrial bodies , but that the fixt stars also as well as they have virtues so potent as to pierce the very penetrals of the earth : * that of the planets the sun is hot and moist rather than drying : that mars is hot and parchingly drying : that saturn hinders the warm influence of the other stars , and is in an high degree frigefactive , as also exsiccative . from these two qualities contrary to the principles of life , saturn is termed infortuna major , mars , infortuna minor ; because heat is not contrary to life , though driness be . iupiter is also deemed fortuna major , because he hath sufficient moisture well tempered with heat : but venus , fortuna minor , because her moisture exceeds her warmth . from this distinction of hot , cold , dry and moist , the planets are also divided into masculine and feminine , diurnal and nocturnal , &c. so that if these conceits of driness , moistness , coldness and heat fail , all the rest fail . . but i think that principle more observable which is touched upon already , that the influence of the stars and planets do pass freely through the earth ; which is implied in that aphorism of ptolemy cited by origanus , masculescere & efficaciores dici planetas , qui ab horizonte ortivo vel occiduo deducuntur ad meridianum supra vel infra terram , effoeminari vero qui contrá . which plainly implies , that their influences pass as easily through the earth as through the air : otherwise surely those planets that tended from the western horizon toward the meridian under the earth , would have the disadvantage of it . that also goes upon the same hypothesis , that the earth is no impediment , namely , that iupiter being consignificatour in the second house , denotes riches ; and that by how many more planets there be in the sixth house , by so much more subject to diseases the child will be . that the fixt stars and planets do most potently act in the cardines of the celestial theme , of which imum coeli is one . which supposes the earth as pervious as the very air to the celestial influences . to omit other divisions of the signs into mobilia , fixa , and bicorporea , into masculine and feminine , &c. i shall only set down that more noised division of them into trigons , viz. the fiery trigon , aries , leo , sagittarius ; the earthly , taurus , virgo , capricorn ; aerial , gemini , libra , aquarius ; watery , cancer , scorpius , pisces . . they teach us also fine things of the dignities of the planets : which are either essential or accidental . an essential dignity is nothing else but the encrease of the innate virtue of the planet by being in such or such a sign of the zodiack , as origanus hath defined . the first essential dignity is the house of the planet . as for example , leo is the house of the sun , cancer of the moon . and because there are more signs than planets , it falls to the share of the rest to have two houses a piece , so aspected to the houses of the luminaries as becomes the goodness or malignity of their natures . as for example , capricorn and aquarius must be the houses of unfortunate saturn , because their aspect is opposite to the houses of the luminaries . sagittarius and pisces the houses of iupiter , because the aspect to the foresaid houses of the sun and moon , is a benign aspect , namely , trine . but now mars has aries and scorpius for his houses , because he forsooth himself being a malignant planet may have his * houses in a malignant posture to the houses of the sun and moon , namely , in a quartile aspect , &c. and as to be in their own houses is a dignity , so to be in the sign opposite they call exilium , and account it a great detriment to the planet . the second essential dignity is exaltation : as aries is the exaltation of the sun , because his efficacy is so apparent in spring , and therefore his casus must be in libra : which must on the contrary be the exaltation of saturn , that planet being of a cold temper contrary to the sun. the dragon's head also is exalted in gemini , as albumasar out of hermes has given us to understand , and depressed in sagittarius . the third essential dignity is triangularity or triplicity , whereby certain planets are constituted the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of their respective trigons . sol and iupiter of the fiery trigon ; the moon and venus of the earthly trigon ; saturn and mercury of the aereal : and because there are not eight planets , but seven only , mars is the sole trigonocrator of the watery triplicity . i omit to say any thing of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or dignity of terms in which the two luminaries are not concerned . carpentum , which is the fifth dignity , is but * a coacervation of the four precedent . persona or almugea is when there is the same configuration betwixt the sun and moon , and another planet , as there is betwixt their houses . decanat is the prefecture of the planets * over every ten degrees of the signs in the zodiack . mars over the first ten degrees of aries , sol over the second , venus over the third ; mercury over the first ten of taurus ; the moon over the second ; saturn over the third ; and so on according to the order of the planets , till all the ten degrees of the zodiack be gone through . the last essential dignity is gaudium , which is competible only to those planets that have two houses , and is when a planet is placed in that house which is most agreeable to his nature . the chief of these dignities are house , exaltation , and triplicity . for the first has five powers , the second four , the third three . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has but two , and almugea and gaudium but one apiece . . the accidental dignities arise either from their posture to the sun , or from their motion in their orbs , or from their mutual configuration . in regard of their position to the sun , they are either in cazimi , or combust or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or free from combustion , or oriental or occidental . to be in cazimi is to be corporally joined with the sun , and gives the planet five fortitudes . to be combust or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be distant some ten or fifteen degrees from the sun , &c. this position puts four or five detriments on the planet . to be free from combustion adds five fortitudes . saturn , iupiter and mars from their conjunction to their opposition with the sun are oriental , and gain two fortitudes ; but from their opposition to their conjunction are occidental , and incur two detriments . in regard of their motion the planets are either direct , retrograde , swift , slow or stationary . direction has four fortitudes , retrogradation five debilities , station two debilities . configuration or aspect is either sextile , quartile , trine , opposition or conjunction . the conjunction of benign planets adds five fortitudes , of malign five debilities . sextile and trine are benign aspects , quartile and opposition malign , &c. . but to climb nearer to the top of their artifice , let us now set down their witty contrivance of the heavens into twelve houses in their erection of their astrological scheme . the first house begins at the east horizon , and is to be numbred according to the series of the signs eastward , and is called horoscopus and domus vitae . the second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus lucri . the third 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus fortunae . the fourth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , imum coeli , and domus patrimonii . the fifth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus liberorum . the sixth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus aegritudinum . the seventh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus nuptiarum . the eighth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus mortis . the ninth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and domus religionis . the tenth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , cor coeli and domus honorum . the eleventh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or domus amicorum . the twelfth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or domus carceris . every one of these houses has its consignificator . the first house , saturn , the second iupiter , the third mars , the fourth sol , and so on , according to the ptolemaical order of the planets . according to which also they constitute their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or alfridarii , giving the planets a septennial dominion in succession from the nativity . the first septennium to the moon , the second to mercury , the third to venus , &c. now this erection of a scheme and distribution of the heavens into twelve houses , is no less than five manner of ways , as ‖ origanus has set down . the first of iulius firmicus , who draws his circles through the poles of the zodiack . the second of aben ezra , who divides the aequator into twelve equal parts , as the other did the zodiack , by the drawing of six great circles through the mutual sections of the horizon and meridian , and through each thirtieth degree of the aequator . the third is that of campanus , who divides the principal vertical into twelve equal parts , by arches drawn through the common intersections of the meridian and horizon . fourthly , alcabitius draws the circles through the poles of the world , and certain equidistant points in the semidiurnal and seminocturnal arches of the ascension of the ecliptick . and lastly , porphyrius divides the two oriental parts of the zodiack intercepted betwixt the horizon and meridian above and below into three equal parts apiece . so many ways are there of building houses or castles in the air. . that the erection of a scheme may foretel right the fate of the infant , the time of the birth is to be known exactly . for if you miss a degree in the time of the birth , it will breed a years errour in the prognostication ; if but five minutes , a month , &c. for which purpose also it is as necessary to know the longitude and latitude of the place . . after the erection of so accurate a scheme , they pretend to be able to foretel the time of the main accidents of a mans life , and that either by profection annual and transition , or by direction . the last is the chief : and therefore not to fill your ears overmuch with the wretched gibberish of gypsies , when i have intimated that the first of the two former run all upon aspects , and that transition is nothing else but the passing of a planet through the places of the nativity , whether its own , or of other planets , or of the horoscope , &c. i shall force my self a little more fully to define to you , out of ‖ origanus , the nature of direction . which is , the invention of the arch of the aequator , which is intercepted betwixt two circles of position , drawn through two places of the zodiack , the one whereof the significator possesses , the other the promissor , and ascends or descends with the arch of the ecliptick in the posture of the sphere given . the term from which the computation is made is the significator , the term to which , the promissor . as if sol be directed to mars , sol signifies dignities , and mars the nature of those dignities ; and the distance of the time is computed by direction . i shall omit to tell you that all the planets and all the houses are capable of direction , if we would accurately examine a scheme . but the chiefest directors or significators are , . * the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which the arabians call hylech from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the latines , emissor or prorogator vitae . . the moon for the affections of the mind . . the sun , even then also when he is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the condition of life and dignities . . the horoscope for health and peregrinations . . the medium coeli for marriage and procreation of children . . * the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or the part of fortune for increase or decrease of riches . . but the chiefest of all is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as respecting life it self , which is directed to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or interfector , or slayer . which is , suppose , either some planet which is present in the eighth house , as saturn or mars , or the almuten of the eighth house , or the planet join'd to the almuten , or the almuten of the planet , or the almuten of the lord of the eighth house . but the huge mystery is , and that a sad one , that when the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comes to the place of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , the emissor to the place of the interfector , then wo be to the brat that ever he was born under so unlucky stars ; for there is no remedy but he must die the death . nor will his * alcochodon , or almuten hylegii avail him any thing , when his hyleck or emissor is once come into the hands of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or that celestial butcher . these are the most fundamental and most solemn fooleries ( for so i must call them ) of their whole art : and i shall now set my self to demonstrate them to be so , after i have answered those more general plausibilities they would countenance themselves by . annotations . chap. xv. sect. i. these are the general plausibilities , &c. i shall only here note how faithful i have been , and impartial in setting out with the utmost advantages the cause of the astrologers , in laying down the most plausible arguments they can alledge , with the best gloss i could . which is a thing so notorious , that my antagonist himself cannot but acknowledge it . which he does with a free and pretty humoursome strain of rhetorick , p. . and the truth is , saith he , the doctor has so ingeniously compiled the arguments on astrologies behalf altogether in one chapter , and set them out in such neat apparel and so good order , that as they stand holding together so unanimously , and maintaining their cause so chearfully , methinks they look so confidently sweetly on the opposer , as if they were at strife whether to wooe , or daunt the adversary to their side . with such an overcoming beauty , it seems , have i drawn the portraiture of his beloved mistress , the most sacred and divine science of astrology , that either awe or pity would turn any one off from defacing so fair and lovely an image as his enamoured phancy conceives it to be . but it is in pity to himself and all others that are deluded with this fair but false show , that i have discovered the foul flaws thereof , and as much as in me lies demolished this deceitful idol . which , that i have really done , i shall show anon by making good my sixteenth and seventeenth chapters against the answers of my adversary , where he offers any shew of reason . but for his ill language , i shall not so much as bring it into play , whether it come alone or attended with some offers at reasoning , which i shall ever strip of the ill language as near as i can , and deal with the bare argument it self . sect. . that of the planets the sun is hot , and moist rather than drying , that mars is hot and parchingly drying . because my antagonist ( p. . ) denies this to be acknowledged by the astrologers , i will set down the very words in origanus , part. . de effect . cap. . where , of the sun , he sayes , solis natura est quam sensu percipimus , . potenter calefacere . . paululum exsiccare . vivificus enim ejus calor est & non vehementer siccus , quoniam quasi humido jungitur , as if the heat of the sun were mingled with moisture , and had something of the nature of warm oyl , according to origanus his mind , who is one of their prime astrologers . and then of mars , martis est , saith he , . exsiccare & arefacere . . in calefaciendo urere ; which surely will amount to what we have expressed , that mars is hot and parchingly drying . sect. . in a malignant posture to the houses of the sun and moon , namely in a quartile aspect , &c. for that quartile is a malignant aspect with the astrologers is expresly acknowledged by dariot in his judicial astrology , chap. . some of these , saith he , are aspects of amity , as the trine , and sextile , others of enmity and hatred , as the quadrate and opposition . see also origanus , part. . de effect . cap. . a coacervation of the four precedent , &c. rather an adjection of some of the precedent dignities . quinta dignitas , sayes origanus ( part. . de effect . cap. . ) composita est ex aliis simplicibus quae hactenus declaratae sunt , & vocatur carpentum , thronus , seu regium solium ; veluti venus in tauro & domo & trigono potens , signo illo ut regio curru utitur . over every ten degrees of the signs of the zodiack . these decads dariot calls faces , as origanus , facies signorum . sect. . the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the arabians call hylech , &c. the entire place in origanus is this . part. . de effect . cap. . prorogator vitae ( qui graecis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , item 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quasi emissarius , arabibus verò hylech ambulator ab herbraeo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ambulare , dicitur ) est vel planeta vel locus coeli ex cujus digressione vel directione de statu vitae judicant astrologi . and a little after , plerique , sayes he , imprimis nobilis ille cyprianus leovitius , gradum ascendentis tantummodo assumunt pro hylech . and near the beginning of that chapter , horoscopus , saith he , propriissimus est significator vitae , foelix futura sit an infelix . foelix quidem est foelicis & benefici planetae signo ac termino , vel etiam beneficorum planetarum radiis , vel praesentiâ . veluti , vitae validae statuuntur quibus aries vel leo ascendit & sol est in nona , decima , undecima , vel septima domo . vel taurus aut cancer & luna in his existit . infelix autem est vel termino malo , quando videlicet , maleficus corpore obsidet horoscopum , vel etiam horoscopus incidit in malignum aspectum malefici , praecipue interfectoris . the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or the part of fortune , &c. pars fortunae is defined by the astrologers , locus zodiaci in quem , numerando ab ariete , cadit numerus conflatus ex gradu oriente seu horoscopi , & distantia solis & lunae . sect. . nor will his alcochodon , &c. alchochoden est stella virtutis ex qua de annis quibus natus secundum naturae cursum victurus est judicium sumitur ( from whence the reason of the name seems to be derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stella ad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 judicare ) nisi ratione directionis vel alterius violenti & subiti casus vita nati citius abrumpatur . origan . part. . de affectibus cap. . these few things i thought worth the while to add for the more easy and full understanding of these brief rudiments of astrology , rather than to seem to have said nothing on this chapter : as indeed there was very little to be said of it , j. b. with other astrologers , being agreed on the principles which i have laid down as theirs . but now we are to see how well j. b. has defended them against my objections , or confutation of them in the following chapters . which we will do with what brevity and clearness we can . chap. xvi . . that the stars and planets are not useless though there be no truth in astrology . . that the stars are not the causes of the variety of productions here below . . that the sensible moistening power of the moon is no argument for the influence of other planets and stars . . nor yet the flux and reflux of the sea , and direction of the needle to the north pole. . that the station and repedation of the planets is an argument against the astrologers . . that the influence attributed to the dog-star , the hyades and orion , is not theirs but the suns , and that the suns influence is only heat . . the slight occasions of their inventing of those dignities of the planets they call exaltations and houses , as also that of aspects . . their folly in preferring the planets before the fixt stars of the same appearing magnitude , and of their fiction of the first qualities of the planets , with those that rise therefrom . . their rashness in allowing to the influence of the heavenly bodies so free a passage through the earth . . their groundless division of the signs into moveable and fixt , and the ridiculous effects they attribute to the trigons , together with a demonstration of the falsness of the figment . . a confutation of their essential dignities . . as also of their accidental . . a subversion of their erection of schemes , and distributing of the heavens into twelve celestial houses . . their fond pretences to the knowledge of the exact moment of the infants birth . . a confutation of their animodar and trutina hermetis . . as also of their method of rectifying a nativity per accidentia nati . . his appeal to the skilful , if he has not fundamentally confuted the whole pretended art of astrology . . wherefore to their first general pretence , that the very being of the stars and planets would be useless , if there be nothing in the art of astrology , i answer , that though there were certain influences and virtues in every one of them , yet it does not follow that they are discovered in their art : and then again , that though there were none saving that of light and heat in the fixt stars , it will not follow that they are useless . * because the later and wiser philosophers have made them as so many ‖ suns : * which hypothesis our astrologers must confute before they can make good the force of their first argument . and for the planets , they have also suggested that they may have some such like use as our earth has , i. e. to be the mother of living creatures , though they have defined nothing concerning the natures of them ; whereby their opinion becomes more harmless , and unexceptionable * as it is in it self highly probable : forasmuch as the earth , as well as saturn , iupiter , and the rest , moves about the sun , and is as much a planet as any of them ; as the best astronomers do not at all stick now adays to affirm . which does utterly enervate the force of this first general pretence of the astrologians . . to the second i answer , that the stars are but lights of much the same nature as our sun is , only they are further removed , so that their contribution is much-what the same . and again , nothing turns off their more subtil influence , according to their own concession ; and therefore though there were this variety in them , * yet because all this variety reaches every point of the earth , the product would be the same , unless the particles of the earth were diversified by some other cause , which assuredly they are . and thirdly , that neither their own variety , nor the influences of the heavens , if they be merely material , are sufficient causes of productions here below . fourthly , * that the celestial matter is every where , and that the earth swims in it , as wood doth in water , so that we need not have recourse to so remote , unknown , activities . and lastly , that that general 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or spirit of nature , is also every where ready to contrive the matter into such shapes and virtues as its disposition makes toward . and this is enough and more than enough to take off the edge of the knights argument . . i do acknowledge that the moon in her full swells certain things with moisture ; which effect is both sensible and palpable , and also reasonable , by reason of her proximity , and of the reflection of the suns beams from her body , which being but of a moderate power , * melt the air and vapours into an insinuating liquidness , but do not dissipate them , as his direct beams do by day . which feat i do not doubt but that any other of the planets would perform , * if they were so placed that their discus would seem of equal bigness with the moons , and she were removed into their place . * but it is an unsufferable folly to argue from such both reasonable and palpable effects of the moon , that the other planets also and fixt stars , have as powerful effects upon us ; which yet we can deprehend by neither reason nor experience . . the like may be answered concerning the flux and reflux of the sea ; the ground whereof is rational from what des cartes has set down in his princip . philos. part. . namely , * that the ellipsis of the celestial matter is streightned by the moons body , which makes the aether flow more swift : which is a plain and mechanical solution of the phaenomenon . and then we find by certain experience , that this flux and reflux depends on the course of the moon , so that there can be no deceit in the business . but when there is no reason nor sufficient experience , that this is the cause of that , to attribute the one to the other is no good logick . and to that of the load-stone and polar-star , i say again , as i have said already , that it does not follow , because there are some sensible effects from the heavens , certain and constant , that therefore we may imagine what effects we please to proceed from this or that particular star , without due experience or reason for the same . and then in the next place , that it is not so much the influence of the heaven , as the magnetism of the earth , in which this direction of the needle toward the north consists . for the needle varies in certain meridians , and some three miles from rosseburg , a town near upon the very corner where the finnick seas , and sinus finnicus are join'd , the needle amidst a many sea rocks turns about , nor ceases so to do for the space of a whole mile . which is a further demonstration that the direction of the needle depends upon the magnetism of the earth . but truly if the events which the astrologers take upon them to predict , did as steadily point to the causes they alledge , this planet or that configuration of planets , signs or stars , as the needle and axis of the earth to the north ; though they could give no reasons thereof , i could easily allow their art. but there being such demonstrative reasons against their grounds , and no certain experience for them , these particular allegations concerning the moon and pole star will stand them in no stead . . the station and retrogradation of the planets is a very considerable argument against them , and shews how foolish and imaginary their art is , that is upheld by such gross mistakes . for they that understand the right systeme of the world , * know very well that those phaenomena are not real but seeming : which is a scurvy slur to the astrologers . but this i shall meet with again hereafter . . to the last i answer , * that neither the dog-star , arcturus , the hyades , nor orion , are conceived to have any such effects as are attributed to them , but then when the sun is in such places of the zodiack as himself without them would bring forth . and therefore they do fallaciously attribute to those stars what is really the virtue of the heat of the sun approaching nearer us , or abiding longer upon us . and as for the wrath of the dog , which is abated already in some considerable manner , how tame a creature think you will he be , when the anticipation of the aequinoxes shall appoint him his kennel as low as capricorn , if the world should so long continue ? these may serve for poetical expressions ( such as that of virgil , who attributes that to the signs which belongs to the sun ; candidus auratis aperit cùm cornibus annum taurus — when the white bull opens with golden horns the early year : ) but they will not endure the severity of the laws of an art , which is , to speak properly , not to entitle things circumstantial and concomitant to real causality . but as for the suns efficacy it self , i will not deny it , nor yet acknowledge it any more than in the general influence of heat , which cherishes and excites the seminal principles of things into act and perfection . * which is no more mysterious than the aegyptians and livia's maids of honour hatching of eggs without the help of the hen ; the same which the sun does to the ostriches left upon the sand . and i will also acknowledge that the rest of the stars do not stand for cyphers , but that at a competent distance they will have their effect : which the sun it self has not when removed from us but to the other side of the aequator , whereby his rayes become more oblique . how inconsiderable then think you would he be , if he were removed as far as the fixt stars , all whose influence put together cannot supply his absence in the depth of winter ? whence it is plain , that it is a very fond inference to argue that those remote bodies of the fixt stars and planets have an influence upon us , because the sun and moon that are so near us have ; when as if they were as far removed , their influence would assuredly be as insensible as that of the five planets and fixt stars . . and yet notwithstanding such is the intolerable impudence of the inventors of astrology , that they have at random attributed such things to the other planets and stars as they have only ground for , if any at all , in the two luminaries . as for example , * because they might observe some more sensible mutation in the air and earth at the suns entring aries , it would be the more tolerable to phansie that sign his exaltation . but now to appoint places of exaltation to other planets , as taurus to the moon , libra to saturn , is a mere running the wild-goose chase , from one single hint to matters where there is nothing of like reason or experience . so likewise because they had some intimation * to make leo the house of the sun , his heat being then most sensible , and cancer the house of the moon , because then she would be most vertical to us ; * they have without either fear or wit bestowed houses , two a piece , upon the rest of the planets , though there be neither reason nor effect answerable . and lastly , for aspects . in all likelihood the sensible varieties of the phases of the moon in opposition , trine , and quartile , gave them first occasion to take notice of aspects : * and then another thing happening , though independent on the course of the moon , namely , that every seventh day , in an acute disease , is critical , and that there are usually at those returns the greatest stirs and alterations in the patient , and the quartile aspect of the moon happening also about seven days from the conjunction , and then about seven dayes more she being in opposition ; this natural circuit of fermentations in acute diseases , has given them occasion to slander the moon in those cases , and for her sake to reproach the aspects of opposition and quadrature , in all the rest of the planets . such small hints as these are the solidest foundations of the phantastick structure of astrology . which we shall now something more nearly lay battery to , and so shatter it , that it shall not so much as find room in the imaginations of men . . to begin therefore with the first of their principles i have set down , that they prefer the planets before the fixt stars ( i mean those so remote ones , that they seem but about the bigness of the greater stars ) is without all reason ; * the planets being but heaps of dead matter much like that of the earth , and having no light but what they reflect from the sun. for that which seems to be the innate light of the moon , is but the reflection of the suns beams from the earth . wherefore their activity and influence may justly seem less * than that of the fixt stars , which shine not with borrowed but innate light . and for their powerful penetrating into the bowels of the earth , that is a mistake arising from the supposed influence of the moon , on the flux and reflux of the sea , even when she is on the other side of the earth ; to which with the like fallacious inference i have ‖ answer'd already . but then , for the qualities of the planets , where they define the sun to be hot and moist , rather than drying , but mars hot and parchingly dry , and saturn dry and cold ; what will not these impudent impostors dare to obtrude upon us , when they will vent such stuff as is liable to confutation by our very senses ? for does not our very sense tell us that the sun is the most hot and drying planet that is ? his heat it is , and not that of mars , that withers the grass and flowers , and parches the tops of mountains , and even roasts the inhabitants of the earth , when they expose their bodies to his more direct rays . but what faculty could ever inform us , that mars was such a parching and heating planet , and saturn so cold ? assuredly he that will expose his head to their acronycal rays , which are most potent , and profess he feels more cold from one , and heat from the other , than he does from the other parts of heaven , will approve himself as mad as that old dotard that pretended that he could as often as he listened , plainly hear the harmony of the celestial spheres . * all the planets are opaque bodies , and whatever their colour is , are as cold as earth . for neither yellow nor red clay cast any more heat than white , nor has any soil any sensible influence but what is drawn in by the nose , which sometimes proves wholesome and savory , and sometimes offensive . but how our star-gazers proboscides should be drawn out to that length as to smell out the different virtues of the planets , i can no way understand . wherefore the pronouncing of mars hot and dry , and saturn cold and dry , &c. is a shameless foolery , and a demonstration of the vanity of the rest of their allotments of the first qualities to the planets . * and since from these they are reputed malign or benign , masculine or feminine , and the like , all this part of their pretended science is but a rhapsody of fooleries also . . to the second , of the earths being so pervious to the influence of the stars and planets , i say ▪ first , that it is a principle without proof , as i have already evinced : and then secondly , if i give them it , they will be fain to vomit it up again , it being destructive to their whole art. for if the rayes and influence of the stars and planets have free passage through the body of the earth , the whole ceremony of erecting a scheme for such a longitude and latitude is needless ; nay , as to the heavens , the fates of all men would be alike . * for that hidden influence which governs all would reach to all points from all parts of heaven at once . . thirdly , concerning the division of their signs into mobilia , fixa and bicorporea . the mobilia are the aequinoctial and solstitial signs . the latter whereof might deserve better the name of fixa than mobilia . and in my apprehension the tempers of the year might as well be said to be begun , suppose the cold in sagittarius , and fixed in capricorn , and the heat in gemini , and fixed in cancer , as begun in capricorn , and fixed in aquarius , &c. but we will wink at small matters . * that of the fiery , aery , earthy and watry trigons is more notorious , and i cannot but smile when i read the effects of them . as for example , in physick , as dariot has set down , the moon and ascendent in the fiery signs comfort the virtue attractive , in the earthy signs the retentive , the aery the digestive , and the watery the expulsive . would any man dare to administer physick then without consulting the precepts of astrology ? also in husbandry that 's a notable one of sir christophers , who tells us how we may cause a plant to shoot deep into the earth or higher into the air , by setting of it at such an aspect of the moon ; namely , if the moon be in the earthy triplicity , the root will shoot more downward into the earth ; if in the airy more upward into the air. which is a rare secret . now , to omit the groundless and arbitrarious division of the zodiack into these four trigons , of which there is only this one hint , that i can imagine , namely , the fitness of leo for one part of the fiery trigon , the sun being most hot in that sign ; ( from which little inlet all the four elements flew up into heaven , and took their places in their respective triplicities in the zodiack , with great nimbleness and agility , playing at leap frog and skipping over one anothers backs in such sort , that dividing themselves into three equal parts , every triental of an element found it self a fellow-member of a trine aspect : ) the best jest of all is , * that there is no such zodiack in heaven , or , if you will , no heaven for such a zodiack as these artists attribute these triplicities to . for this heaven , and this zodiack we speak of is only an old error of ptolemie's and his followers who not understanding the true systeme of the world , and the motion of the earth , in which in salv'd the anticipation of the aequinoxes , have phansied a heaven above the coelum stellatum , and a zodiack that did not recede from west to east as the starry zodiack does . and this figment which later ages have laughed off of the stage , is the only subject of these renouned trigons and triplicities , which therefore are justly laughed off of the stage with it . which discovery is a demonstration that the whole art of astrology is but upon frivolous and mere imaginary principles , as we shall further make manifest . and therefore physicians proclaim themselves either cheats or fools , that would recommend their skill from such vain observations . . fourthly , now for the essential dignities of the planets , sith it is nothing but the increase of their innate virtue by being in such or such a sign , and these being the signs of that zodiack which has no heaven , nor is any thing ; it is manifest , that the whole doctrine of essential dignities falls to the ground . but we will also cast our eye upon the distinct parts of this vain figment . and therefore as to the first essential dignity , the house of the planet ; there is no sagacious person but can easily smell out the meaning of making leo the house of the sun , namely , not that that sign has any virtue to increase heat , but that the sun then has been long near the tropick of cancer , and so has more than ordinarily heated the earth by so long a stay in so advantageous a posture . and this is it , not the being in his house then , that makes the heat so great ; for those beyond the other tropick sure are cold enough . the same may be said of cancer , the moons house , that it is posture , not the nature of the place , that makes her virtue more then to us , but less to our antoeci . from this small hint from sense and mistakes of reason , have they without all reason and sense bestowed houses on the rest of the planets , * guiding themselves by the conceit of the malignity and benignity of aspects . which to be a mere figment i have ‖ noted already , it having no ground but that rash joining together of critical days with the aspects of the moon . what a small preferment astrological exaltation is , you may understand from albumazar's liberality , who amongst the planets has advanced the head and tail of the dragon to the same dignity , which yet are * nothing else but intersections of the imaginary circles of the course of the moon and the ecliptick . but of this dignity i have ‖ spoke enough already , and therefore i pass to the next . as for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or lords of the trigons , what great pity it was there were not just eight planets , * that each trigon might have had its two consuls , and mars not rule solitarily in his watery one ? but the foolery of the trigons being already confuted , i need add nothing further concerning this dignity . * the prerogative of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is destroyed by that first general argument , the parts of the signs being as fictitious as the whole . and as for the carpentum or royal seat or throne , it being a compound dignity compacted of the former , the parts being but imaginary , it is evident , that the whole is a mere nothing . and that persona planetae , or almugea is as little , appears from hence , in that aspect is an empty conceit , raised upon no solid ground , as i have more than once already intimated . and that the lords of the decanats have but imaginary provinces , is again plain , for that their whole zodiack wherein all those fripperies are lodged , is but imaginary , and their order also of assignation upon a false hypothesis , viz. according to that rangeing of the planets that is in ptolemie's system . and lastly , gaudium , the last of the essential dignities , supposes two falsities ; that there are houses in this fictitious zodiack , and that planets are masculine and feminine : which supposition has been confuted already . so that all these essential dignities are devoid of all substance and reality , and the numbering of their particular fortitudes is the telling out so many nullities to no purpose . . nor can you hope for a better account of their accidental dignities . cazimi , combustion and freeness from combustion . how fond and inconsistent conceits are they ? for first it is unreasonable , if they know the nature of the planets , of the sun , and of the celestial vortex , to make a planet in cazimi to gain five fortitudes : * for beyond the sun the planet is at the furthest distance it can be from us : and saturn , iupiter and mars , a whole diameter of the suns orbit , more distant than when they are in opposition to the sun : and venus and mercury half of their own . * besides , how can their virtue pass the body of the sun , * or the bearing of the vortex against the planet and against us , and all the attempts of influence from the planet not be eluded ? * again , if cazimi on this side the sun be good , why should not beyond the sun be bad ? and if venus or mercury in the body of the sun be so considerable , * how much more are the spots of the sun that are far greater ? which their ignorance could never reckon in the compute of their dignities . besides , what wild and disproportionable jumps are these , * that cazimi should be five fortitudes , and yet combustion , which is to be but a little distance from the sun , should be five debilities ; and yet to be free from combustion , that is further removed from the body of the sun , should be again five fortitudes ? things so arbitrarious and groundless , that none but sick-brain'd persons can ever believe them . that also is notoriously foolish , * that saturn , iupiter and mars from ‖ their conjunction with the sun to their opposition should have two fortitudes , and from their opposition to conjunction should have two debilities . for in a great part of that semi-circle that carries from opposition to conjunction , they are far nearer , and therefore much stronger than in the beginning of that semi-circle that leads from their conjunction to opposition . moreover those dignities and debilities that are cast upon planets from direction , station and retrogradation , the thing is mainly grounded upon a mistake of the system of the world , and ignorance of the earths annual motion , and from an idiotick application of accidents or phrases amongst men . and therefore because when things succeed ill they are said to go backwards , and when we are weary we go more slow , or stand still to breath us , or when we are most vigorous we run swiftest ; therefore must station be two debilities , retrogradation no less than five , but direction must be five fortitudes : whereas in reason * station should rather seal on the effect of the planet more sure . but the truth is , a * planet is neither stationary nor retrograde truly , but in appearance , and therefore these debilities no true ones but imaginary . the last accidental dignity is configuration or aspect , the vain grounds whereof have been ‖ already taxed . to which i add , that it is utterly unreasonable to conceive , * that sextile and trine should be good , and yet quartile that is betwixt both be stark naught . nay , it were far more reasonable to conceive , that if conjunction and sextile were good , * that quartile should be better than trine , as being further from opposition , and because * the planets thus aspected are in better capacity both of them to strike with more direct raies on the earth , than if they were in a trine aspect . and therefore i know no reason imaginable that could move them to have so ill a conceit of quartile aspect , but because of the great unquietness of acute diseases that happens about every seventh day , which is the time also of the quartile aspect of the moon : and therefore the whole mystery of aspects is to be resolved into this rash misapplication . you have seen now how little worth all the astrological dignities are ; and yet out of these huge nothings of their fictitious art is the whole fabrick built of whatever predictions they pretend to : so that we may be assured that all is vain and ridiculous . . concerning their twelve houses of the nativity , the division is arbitrarious , * and their erecting of a scheme so many ways , and that with like success , an evidence that the success is not upon art but fortuitous . * the configuration also of the houses and those ‖ septennial 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or alfridarii do intimate that the whole business is but a figment , going upon that false hypothesis of ptolemy , that the planets and the earth have not the sun to their centre . but this is not all we have to say against these celestial tenements . * for either the earth is pervious to all the raies of the planets and stars , as well beneath as above the horizon , or only they above the horizon shed their virtue on the child . if the former be true , all nativities are alike . if the latter , why have they any more than six houses , and why any at all under the horizon ? and in good sadness what is the meaning that their horoscope , and the sixth house , being houses of so great concernment , should be under the horizon ; especially when they are pleased at other times to pronounce ; * that a star or planet that is vertical is most efficacious ? and can it be thought any thing but a meer phancy that led them to make the horoscope the house of life , namely , because the stars arise from thence , and are as it were born into the world ? whence ( as i have shewed their custom to be in other things ) they have feigned the rest of the houses at random . and that you may still be more sure that there is nothing in these houses , ( or rather that the houses themselves are nothing ) they are but the distribution of that imaginary zodiack and heaven , which ( i told you ‖ before ) the error of ptolemy brought into the world , into twelve imaginary sections , beginning at the east point of this zodiack : so that their art is perpetually built upon nothing . . now for the exact time of the nativity , that one should know the very moment when the child is born , i say it is a curiosity nothing to the purpose . for first , if the hard and thick earth be pervious to the raies of heaven , how easily may those thin coverings of the womb be penetrated continually by the power of the stars ? and therefore * even then is the child as much exposed to them , as when it is newly born . or if it be not ; why may not it some moments after its being born , be still as liable to their influence as in the moment when it was born ? for cannot these influences that pierce the very metalline bowels of the earth , pierce a childs tender skin without any resistance ? but supposing this curiosity to be to the purpose ; how hard and lubricous a matter is it to come to that exactness they pretend to be requisite ? * for first they must know the exact longitude of the place , ( a thing of extream uncertainty ) or else the exactness of time will do them no good . and yet again , their affectation of exactness seems ridiculous , when we cannot well determine the proper time of his birth . * for he is born by degrees , and few or none come out , after first they appear , in a shorter space than half a quarter of an hour . wherefore their head being exposed to the starry influence , why should not that celestial infection pervade their whole body ? but suppose that to be the moment of their birth wherein the whole body is first out , how shall this moment be known ? by an exact minute watch , such as tycho had , and sir christopher heydon professes himself to have had , which would exactly give him the minute and second scruple of time . but how few nativity-casters can boast of the same priviledge ? or if they could , to what purpose is it , when it seldom happens that they are in the same house , much less in the same room where the party is delivered ? wherefore the report of the midwife is the best certainty they have : and how many nativities have been cast without so much as that ? and yet they will confidently predict fates and destinies upon an uncertain time given them . for they can , say they , correct it , and reduce it to the right moment of the nativity , and that by no less than three several ways ; by trutina hermetis , animodar , and accidentia nati : which how bold and groundless a boast it is , let us now see . . trutina hermetis goes upon this ground , that that degree of the zodiack the moon is in at the time of conception , the same is the horoscope of the nativity . but what a foolish subterfuge is this when-as the exact time of conception , is as hard to be known as that of the nativity ? and if it were known , there is yet no certainty , some coming sooner , some later , as every mother , nurse or midwife knows full well ; nor will any of them presume to tell to a day when a woman shall be brought to bed. in animodar the nativity is either conjunctional or preventional , that is , either after or before the conjunction of the sun and moon . if the interlunium precede the time of the birth , the degree is to be noted in which it happens ; if the plenilunium , that degree in which that luminary is that is above the horizon in the time of opposition , the sun by day , the moon by night . the degrees thus given , the almuten almusteli is to be found out , which is the planet that has most dignities in that place of opposition or conjunction ; which are trigon , house , altitude , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and aspect . then the degree of the sign is to be noted , in which the almuten was at the time of the estimated birth , &c. for i need not hold on ; enough has already been said to demonstrate the whole process a ceremonious foolery . for the computation being to be made from the place of the almuten almusteli , and his election by dignities , and dignities being nothing but empty phansies and vanities , as i have already proved , the correction of the nativity by animodar must needs be idle and vain . besides that , the almuten being one and the same , as belonging to one and the same conjunction or opposition of the luminaries , how can it be a rule to children born at the same times in diverse climates ? for it is evident , the horoscope alters with the clime . and lastly , not only picus , a foe to astrology , professes how false both this method of animodar , as also that rule of hermes is , and clashing one with another ; but origanus himself , a friend to the art , advises us rather to listen to the relations of mother midnight , than to give any credit to either of these ways . the most certain way of correcting a scheme of nativity in origanus his judgment , is per accidentia nati , whether good or bad , as honours , preferments , gifts , sickness , imprisonment , falls , conflicts , &c. which way notwithstanding at the first sight is very lubricous . for it is at least disputable and uncertain , whether there be liberty of will in man or no. but i will venture further , that for my own part , i think it demonstrable from inward sense , reason and holy writ , that there is free will in men ; whence it will necessarily follow , quòd multa accidunt hominibus praeter naturam praeterque fatum . diseases therefore , imprisonments , disgraces and preferments may be brought upon us by the free agency of our selves or others , and that sooner or later , according as mens virtues or vices act . * which takes away all certainty of computation per accidentia nati . . besides , that the manner of it is very frivolous and ridiculous . for it being threefold , as origanus has set down , profection annual , transition and direction ; there is none of them that are any thing more than meer phancies and figments . for what can be more vain and imaginary than their annual profection , which makes the horoscope and the rest of the houses move thirty degrees a year till the whole period be finished in twelve ? * is this circuit of the nativity-scheme any where but in their own brain ? and then their predictions or corrections , are by aspects of the cusp of the root with the cusps of the present scheme calculated for this or that year . and how aspects themselves are nothing , i have again and again taken notice . and for transition , what is more monstrous than to think that a planet by passing the same place in which it self or others planets were at the nativity , should cause some notable change in the party born ? as if the planets walked their rounds with perfumed socks , or that they smelt stronger at the nativity than at other times , and * that another planet come into the trace thereof should exult in the scent , or the same increase the smell : or what is it that can adhere in these points of heaven that the planets were found in at the nativity ? or why is not the whole tract of the same scent , or why not expunged by the passage of other planets ? but what will not madness and effascination make a man phancie to uphold his own prejudices ? and truly these two origanus himself is willing to quit his hands of , as less found and allowable : but direction is a principal business with him . which yet in good truth will be found as frivolous as the rest . for as in transition , so also in direction , the great change must happen when a planet , or cuspe , or aspect come to the place where such a planet or cuspe were at the nativity . when the significator comes to the place of the promissor , then the feat does not fail to be done . for the promissor is conceived as immoveable , and such as stands still and expects the arrival of the significator : * which is a demonstration that this promissor is either imaginary space or nothing : and which of these two think you will keep promise best ? nay , the significator also , if it be the horoscope or any other house , is imaginary too , as i have demonstrated . and if it be a planet , seeing yet the planets move not as a bird in the air , or fishes in the waters , but as cork carried down the stream ; * it is plain , how this planet never gets to that part of the celestial matter in which the promissor was at the nativity , the promissor ever sliding away with his own matter in which he swims : and therefore if he hath left any virtue behind him , it must again be deposited in an imaginary space . which is an undeniable argument that the whole mystery of direction is imaginary . wherefore if profection annual , transition and direction are so vain that they signifie nothing forward , how can we from events ( though they should be judged and reasoned from exactly according to these phantastick laws ) argue backward an exact indication of the time of the nativity ? if they could have pretended to some rules of nature or astronomy to have rectified a geniture by , they had said something ; but this recourse to their own phantastick and fictitious principles proves nothing at all . . and thus have i run through the eighth and ninth sections of the foregoing chapter before i was aware . and he that has but moderate skill in the solid principles of natural philosophy and astronomy , and but a competent patience to listen to my close reasonings therefrom , cannot but acknowledge , that i have fundamentally confuted the whole art of astrology , and that he has heard all their fine terms of horoscope , and the celestial houses , exaltation , triplicity , trigons , aspects benign and malign , station , retrogradation , combustion , cazimi , significator , promissor , apheta , anaereta , trigonocrator , horecrator , almugea , almuten , alcochodon , together with the rest of their sonorous nothings , to have fallen down with a clatter like a pile of dry bones by the battery i have laid against them . and truly here i would not stick to pronounce i have perfectly vanquished the enemy , did i not spie a little blind fort , to which these fugitives usually make their escape . and surely by the title it should be a very strong one ; they call it experience or observation of events , which they boast to be accurately agreeable to their predictions . annotations . chap. xvi . sect. i. because the later and wiser philosophers have made them as so many suns . ans. as if because they are suns , sayes j. b. ( p. . ) it were excuse enough for them to stand for cyphers . whereas standing for suns the more rather is expected from them , the sun being the prince of all stars , &c. repl. if they be suns they cannot stand for cyphers , but be of the same import that our sun is , who administers light and heat to those in his respective vortex . neither , it being once admitted , that the fixed stars are suns , can any one sun be the prince of all the stars , but only of the planets of his own vortex . j. b. his ignorance of the cartesian or rather ancient pythagorick philosophy , makes him argue so weakly in this point . which hypothesis our astrologers must confute , &c. answ. the hypothesis it self , sayes he , ( p. . ) is but a meer conceit without proof , and yet forsooth we must confute it . repl. amongst the learned in philosophy , especially the cartesians , it is so well known and generally admitted , that it wanted no proof . and it were too long here to insist on it . let j. b. lay his beloved astrology a while aside , and read galilaeus his systema cosmicum , or des-cartes his principia , or my first epistle to v. c. and then let him tell me whether the opinion of the fixt stars being suns be a meer conceit without proof . but suppose them so many suns , saith he , and without all influence but light and heat , whom is it that they are made to shine to or make warm ? as for us we feel nothing of their heat , and make ten times more use of a candle than of their light . repl. as if there were no sensitive creatures in this vast liquid aether of the vniverse , but the men and brutes on our earth . our sun having the satellitium of so many planets of which our earth is one , why may we not rationally conclude , that other suns have planets about them , at least some of them , as well as our sun , as also that the vortices of all the suns or fixt stars are replenished with intellectual inhabitants , or aethereal genii ? and all genii or angels according to the ancient cabbala and primitive fathers , having bodies of aether , or the celestial matter , and being able to see , and in a capacity of having their bodies conveniently and inconveniently affected , why may not the sun minister to the gratifications of these aethereal inhabitants , and that be true of the blind poet , as you call him in reproach ( who was not the less capable of philosophizing by being bodily blind , sith democritus deprived himself of his eye-sight that he might the better philosophize ) why may not that , i say , of his be true concerning the sun. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is to say , he rose to shine to gods as well as men. and it is in it self highly probable ; forasmuch as the earth as well as saturn , iupiter , &c. answ. it is highly probable , and that 's the utmost of his argument , sayes j. b. ( p. . ) and yet how confidently he concludes , that this first general pretense is utterly enervated ! repl. what a vain insultation is here over the modesty of an expression , though backed with little less than a demonstration from the proof and acknowledgment that our earth is a planet as well as those other so called ? and the earth being habitable and created to that end , unless nature be defective , what less can be surmised of the rest of the planets , especially those that are called primary planets ? and if the secondary planets as the moon which the pythagoreans called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is as much as terra ex opposito sita ( and the spots in it shew , that there is water or sea there as well as land ) be habitable as some contend she is , much more the primary . these things are highly rational to them that have reason , but men of phancy phancie things as it happens . but j. b. goes on . but what says he , if the earth were certainly a planet , and the planets saturn , jupiter , &c. were all mothers of living creatures as well as the earth , what is all this to the purpose ? god made the stars for us and to influence us , &c. repl. but if they be mothers of living creatures , it is manifest they were not made for us alone . nor does it follow they being made also for us , that they were made in an astrological sense to influence us , but to be marks of time and serviceable to chronology , and to exercise the wit of man in making observations touching their courses , which is the art of astronomy . so that it is manifest , that they have manifold uses , partly in regard of others , and partly in regard of our selves , without astrological influence , and that therefore the force of this first general pretense of the astrologians is defeated . sect. . yet because all this variety reaches every point of the earth , the product would be the same , &c. ans. the doctor knoweth , saith he ( p. . ) that the weapon-salve points meerly at one wound , viz. that which the weapon made , besmeared now with that salve , and be there ten thousand wounds between , yet it misseth them all . and so may he as well conceive , that the influence of every star and of every part of heaven , does not like water scatter it self into all pores of the earth as it flies along , but though one star may have more than millions of influences ( which if they have , what need so many stars ) going at once , yet as the weapon salve , sends it forth each unto its proper object , and all this without diversifying the earth or any part thereof . repl. this is very pretty in good sooth , but altogether as impertinent . it does not reach the case nor the defence of sir christopher heydon's argument , which is the thing in hand . he would prove the necessity of variety of influence of the stars from the non-variety , simplicity or homogeneity of the parts of the water and earth . wherefore j. b. his reasoning is upon a quite contrary supposition to sir christopher's , whose argument yet he pretends to defend . and then releasing him from his obligation to sir christopher , whom he has served such a slippery trick as to slide quite from the concern of his cause , what is this instance of the weapon-salve which i mention in my immortality of the soul , book . ch. . sect. . to the influence of the stars in a conception or nativity ? which conception is a pure crystalline homogeneous liquor , as dr. harvey describes it , unvariegated of it self , and to be variegated or modified by the stars . but the wound is modified already to cause a peculiar sympathy betwixt it and the weapon-salve on the knife that made it . wherefore there being no premodification in the conception , but it being to be modified by the stars , and the stars by reason of the simplicity of it , reaching it by their influence alike , can give no peculiar modification unto it . and so for the nativity it self . forasmuch i say as it is supposed , that whoever is born under such a precise positure of the heavens , is impressed precisely by such an influence , it is plain , that the difference of impression he is modified with , is not at all from himself but from that particular positure of the heavens at his birth , and therefore cannot be resolved into this principle of distinctive sympathy . and indeed , if the difference of modification of the birth , came not from the stars , but from the birth it self , as the healing of the wound from being the wound of such a knife with salve upon it , this would destroy the very pretense of astrology , which differenceth the birth according to the difference of the schemes of heaven . and therefore the distinction not being in the birth , it is liable to be imprest upon by all the stars alike . the celestial matter is every where and the earth swims in it , &c. ans. neither the earth , says j. b. ( p. . ) nor the air about it can be so situated as to swim all parts of it at once in the celestial matter , much less to apply every part of the earth to its proper instrument of nature , so as to be wrought by it with an immediate conjunction , but these productions here below must necessarily be caused by the activity of remote instruments and their influences , &c. and these instruments , as remote as they are , that they may send down their influence to the earth , he would prove from the polar star , which draws the magnetical needles pointing upon it self from the utmost southern coasts . and from the working of the weapon-salve at a great distance by sympathy . this is the main of what he alledges against this passage . repl. the former part whereof is from his being not skilled in the cartesian philosophy , and his want of rightly conceiving what the celestial matter is , it being a substance so subtile , that it will pass the very pores of glass , much more of air , and water and earth , so that all parts of this terraqueous globe , together with its atmosphere , is easily understood to swim in the celestial matter , it penetrating throughout . and this is the most immediate material instrument of nature , that is to say , of the omniform spirit of nature , that guides and modifies the gross matter according to certain vital laws the creator of all things hath indued it with . so that we need not have recourse to those remote instruments for the production of the varieties of things below , and himself avows there is such a spirit of the world , and acknowledges it to be vegetative or plastical , but the delicacy of his phancy it seems carries him out to such remote instruments of generation according to the proverb , that far fetcht and dear bought is good for ladies . and for the mystery of the load stone i will refer him to gilbert and des cartes , in whose philosophy he will find rationally asserted , that the magnetical particles , which the cartesians call the particulas striatas , come from a certain part of the heaven , and cause this posture of the earth's axis , and of the magnetical needles accordingly . but if j. b. has been so profoundly taken up with his divine science of astrology , as to neglect philosophy , these brief annotations will not afford space to instruct him therein . but in the mean time he may take notice , that some few certain effects from the heavens , that are constant and palpable , are no warrant for the uncertain , slight and imaginary pretences of astrology . and as for the sympathy of the weapon-salve , how little it makes to his astrological purpose i have shewn above , and that its distinctive symphathy is ill applyed to the free influence of the stars , their operation being determinative not determined in nativities . and that there are de facto any such remote influences , besides those that are constant and palpable , his own concession of the spirit of the world shews to be vain and needless . sect. . melt the air and vapours into an insinuating liquidness , &c. ans. well but which way , says j. b. ( p. . ) gets this liquidness into the brains or eyes of living creatures ? repl. how come wooden doors to be so much swelled in a moist air ? why may not the subtile moisture of the air thus liquified by the moderate beams of the moon , insinuate it self into the head , brains and eyes of animals , as well as ordinary moisture doth in rainy weather into wooden doors ? certainly there are as open passages to the brains and eyes of living creatures as there are into the body of wood , and more open too . if they were so placed that their discus would seem of equal bigness with the moon 's , &c. from this passage j. b. ( p. . ) would collect that i grant that saturn , jupiter , mars , venus and mercury , have indeed astrological influences in them , but that they only want proximity to discover them . but for the matter of proximity , sayes he , the doctor it seems is yet to learn how the heavenly bodies are neither helped by proximity , nor hindred by longinquity in the exercise of their power , or in the pouring down of their influences . it seems either he had forgotten , or did not know that the farther the moon is from the sun the greater is the light she receives from him , and the nearer she is to him , she receives still less and less . repl. but as for the moistening faculty of the moon , i deny that it is any astrological influence , i having given so apparent reason of the phaenomenon . and that of the flux and reflux , we shall consider it in the next section , and therefore if saturn , jupiter , mars , venus and mercury , should exhibit any such effect as the moist moon by their proximity , it were not properly astrological . but for that astrological axiome of his , that the heavenly bodies are neither helped by proximity , nor hindred by longinquity , it is point-blank against what he writes ( p. . ) where his express words are these . all astrologers do hold the moon to be the nearest to us , and nimblest plying about us above all other planets , and therefore to have more powerful effects upon us than any other planet has . and then for his argument , it is utterly false , nay the thing is quite contrary . for the moon , the nearer she is the sun , the more she is illuminated , according to the known principles of opticks , though by reason of her positure the light is less reflected to us . but it seems j. b. was yet to learn that optick maxime , that a round opaque body , whose diameter is less than that of a round lucid body , the nearer it approaches the lucid body the more it is illuminated . but it is insufferable folly to argue from such both reasonable and palpable effects of the moon , &c. ans. if the moon , says j. b. ( p. . ) which is one planet , have such and such influences , which are so apparent that they cannot be denied , what hinders but that it may aptly follow , that her fellow planets may have influences too , &c. repl. the fellow planets of the moon are all secondary planets , she being of that classis and attending her primary planet the earth , and so the conclusion is rational enough for her fellow planets , that is , the secondary planets , that they may have some palpable effects on their own primary planets , as this secondary planet the moon has on its primary planet the earth . but it does not hence follow , that other planets so far removed and of so small an appearance , have any effect on our planet to cause any considerable change to any thing there . sect. . that the ellipsis of the celestial matter is streightned by the moon 's body , which makes the aether flow more swift , which is a plain and mechanical solution of the phaenomenon , &c. in answer to this section , j. b. ( p. , , , . ) by reason of his not being acquainted with either gilbert de magnete , or , which is of most consequence , with the theory of the flux and reflux of the sea in des cartes his principles , part. . artic. , , &c. and of the magnet , artic. , , &c. he is so bewildered in his phancies and reasonings , that it would be too operose a business to reduce him into the way . it is not worth the while for me to read philosophy lectures to him , but i desire that himself would set so much time apart from the divine science of astrology , as to be vacant a while to the study of these theories in natural philosophy . and then i don't despair but that he will discern the solidity of what i return in answer to the experiment of the loadstone , and to this phaenomen of the flux and reflux of the sea depending on the course of the moon . i will only advertise thus much by the by , that whereas i say , it is a plain and mechanical solution of the phaenomenon , the sense is , that this mechanical way of solution makes the doctrine of the flux and reflux , plain and intelligible . but that it is not merely mechanical , i have shewed in my enchiridion metaphysicum , cap. . of which the natural upshot is , that the laws of the aestus marinus are executed sympathetically and synenergetically by the spirit of the world , and by the body of the moon mechanically as by his instrument , and not by any strange influence from her . and so the spirit of the world in magnetical phaenomenons acts synenergetically and sympathetically from it self , but mechanically by those instruments of his operation , the magnetick particles which cartesius calls the particulae striatae . sect. . know very well that these phaenomena are not real but seeming , &c. ans. here j. b. ( p. . ) but however seeming , sayes he , this station and retrogradation is , by experience such is it found unto us as if it were really so . and a little above he says , it is well known that we astrologers understand the phaenomenon beyond mistake . repl. but did your great author ptolemy understand it ? and your rules went upon the faith of his hypothesis . and what was taken upon this ground , credulity phansied afterward to be confirmed by experience . sect. . that neither the dog-star , arcturus , the hyades , nor orion , &c. touching this notion of ours of the nature of these stars or constellations , j. b. spends almost three whole pages , , , . but the main lies in a very little room . for as touching arcturus , the hyades and orion , he quotes job . . canst thou bind the sweet influences of the pleiades , or loose the bands of orion ? canst thou bring forth mazaroth in his season , or canst thou guide arcturus with his sons ? this is in job , which is acknowledged to be an highly rhetorical poem , and therefore to use such figures of speech as other poetry does , and accordingly it is expounded by sober interpreters . wherefore not taking notice of j. b. his confounding of hyades and pleiades , as if they were the same , i shall set down grotius his gloss , and it is the sense of vatablus , and other interpreters . canst thou bind the sweet influences ( the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deliciae simply , there is nothing of influence in the word ) of the pleiades ? which are a clustre of little stars in taurus a vernal sign , in which when the sun is , it is spring . whence grotius glosses it thus , potésne impedire flores vernos vergiliarum ? and loose the bands of orion ? the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which hierom translates , orion sydus hybernum , says grotius , est autem frigoris constringere . and , orion tempore hyberno assurgit , sayes vatablus , and adds this short gloss on this last part of the verse , efficiésne , says he , ut tempore hyberno flores erumpant ? and grotius , poterísne tu rusticis facultatem dare laborandi ubi labores orion inhibet ? but this constriction of cold is attributed to orion , because when he rises achronychally the sun is in his winter signs . so that it is really the absence of the sun , or his lowness that occasions this cold . but to fancy any stars efficiently and positively to cause cold , is as extravagant and ridiculous as that conceit of paracelsus , that imagined that it was not the absence of the sun but certain tenebrificous stars that caused night . but now as for arcturus , there is nothing touching him but his motion . and the sense of both the verses put together is only this , canst thou change the seasons of summer and winter , or is it thou that makest mazaroth , viz. the twelve signs of the zodiack to ascend , and guidest arcturus with the lesser stars about him in their circuit ? but of astrological influence in the hebrew text there is not one syllable . and , as to the pleiades and orion is attributed what really belongs to the site of the sun , so is it also in the dog-star , whatever j. b. will pretend to the contrary , which i will give you in his own words , p. , . but when the doctor , says he , doth thus entail the heat and cold to the place of the sun , he forgets how that in ptolemie's time , when the dog-days were long since observed , they happened in may and june , a whole month before what they do now . and therefore had the sultry season pertained to the sun only after he had heated the earth , how came it to pass that in those olden days it happened so soon ere the sun came to its full heat ? or why is it that this sultry air goes along with the dog as he meets with the sun , and that varying as the dog varies , and not fixing to any point of the sun's circle ? repl. that the dog-days should happen in ptolemie's time a whole month before they do now , is not likely . for timocharis , who lived about three hundred and thirty years before christ observed azemech or spica virginis to be placed in the beginning of the . degree of virgo . and two hundred years after abrachis , who usually is called hipparchus , observed the same star to be in the beginning of the . degree of virgo . whence it is concluded , that the motion of the coelum stellatum , to speak in the ptolemaick language , moves from west to east about one degree in an hundred years . and from that time and ptolemie's , who was a little junior to hipparchus , to this day , it has got but to the . degree of libra . so that from ptolemie's time to this it has not gone passing . degrees , which falls short about a fourth part of a month . and therefore reckoning from the . of july , to the . of june , it will want some . days of having the dog-days begin in any part of may , and in those hotter countries , where ptolemy lived , it is no wonder that the sun being entred so many degrees into cancer , should cause very hot weather though the dog-star stand for a cypher in the case . but by reason of the sun's heat coming into that sign , cancer is called , though figuratively , yet judiciously , the burning crabb by dionysius afer in his geographical poem . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is to say , round in the heavens is whirl'd the burning crabb . but here let j. b. give me leave to ask him whether he thinks that when the dog-star and the sun join forces together , that our antoeci feel any such sultry heat . and for my own part i have observed more sultry hot weather before the dog-days as they are now placed , than in them . so that this sultry heat is by no string tied to the dog's collar . and because he will have adam and seth astrologers , i desire to know of him whether in their almanacks ( reckoning according to his account , that makes the dog-days in may , in ptolemies time , which therefore would be in march in those olden times ) whether , i say , in the month of march in adam or seth's almanack it was writ down , weather hot and sultry . which is no more mysterious than the aegyptian 's and livia 's maids of honour hatching of eggs without the help of the hen , &c. here j. b. ( p. , , . ) makes long but weak ambagious steps toward an answer , but the most pertinent part of it is this , that in these eggs there was a seed of life fore-prepared by the influence of the sun and moon , and other planets , insomuch that nothing was wanting but heat only to perfect the act of producing the fruit . and that that very heat too , whereby they were produced , was influenced by the quickening and qualifying faculty of the sun. repl. this is the main , and shews that my antagonist can phansie rather any thing than disphansie his divine science of astrology , or be brought out of conceit with it . for certainly he must have a wonderful peremptory phancy , that can imagine that plastick power , which is in the seed of animals or their conception , to be the mere influence of the stars , as if they guided the work into organization . and as needless a phancy it is with j. b. he acknowledging a spirit of nature and arguing better for it , than for any thing that i see he manages in his whole book . wherefore there being a plastick power , whether the spirit of nature , or proper to the soul of the animal it self , what needs any other vivisick power but this and a well moderated heat to make the matter more pliable to the operations of the plastick upon it ? what ever is besides this is precarious and imaginary . sect. . because they might observe some more sensible mutation in the air and earth at the sun 's entring into aries , &c. ans. there are some , saith j. b. ( p. . ) who are not satisfied with this reason , if that were all , because there is the like sensible mutation at his entrance into cancer , libra and capricorn . repl. who those some are i know not , but origanus part. . de effect . cap. . writes expresly thus . sol exaltatur in ariete , quia cùm id signum ingreditur , in septentrionalem mundi partem supra aequatorem exsurgens , calorem vivificum , quo in subjectam terram ac animantium corpora agit , vehementer intendit , lucisque diurnae sensibile incrementum efficit . and dariot speaks to the like purpose in his judicial astrology , chap. . and it is evident to sense that mutations are not so notable , either in cancer , libra , or capricorn , as in aries , when the world seems to awaken into a natural resurrection . omnia tunc florent , tunc est nova temporis aetas . as ovid ( fast . lib. . ) argues it with janus , for the beginning of the year with spring . to make leo the house of the sun , his heat being then the most sensible , and cancer the house of the moon , because she would then be most vertical to us , &c. ans. as for leo , says j. b. ( p. . ) if that were sol's house only for his sensible heat there , why then was not capricorn the moon 's house because of her sensible cold there , she being a planet as much delighted in coldness as the sun in heat ? and as for cancer , were that the moon 's house only because there she is most vertical , why then was not cancer sols house too , because he is also most vertical there as well as the moon ? and if that were all , how is it that the moon doth not change her houses as she hath to do with the change of countries , seeing that in some places she is vertical in gemini , and elsewhere in taurus and aries . but had the doctor a little better perused ptolemy , or the arabians , or origanus , whom he sometimes quotes , he would have found that cancer is generally esteemed the moons house , as well in those countries where she is not vertical , as where she is . and that leo is the house of the sun , as well there where he has less heat as where he has most . repl. full moon in capricorn causes no more cold than full moon in cancer , nor so much i trow . for if she be in the full in capricorn , the sun must be in cancer , and then i think j. b. will acknowledge it hot enough . but full moon in cancer supposes the sun in capricorn , and therefore i should think her cold and moist influence should be most sensible then , though i be not so deeply studied in this divine science of astrology as j. b. and that cancer is not sol's house , though he be more vertical to us then , is , because the effects of his heat are more sensible in leo than in cancer , as also the moon 's in cancer more than any where else . and therefore these two signs are with fairest colour constituted the houses , the one of the moon , the other of the sun , and they the proper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of them . but that the moon 's being more vertical to us in cancer , should make that sign her house , does not at all infer that her houses should change with the change of countries , to which any sign is vertical . and j. b. is to remember that his divine art of astrology was invented by them that liv'd on this side the tropick of cancer , and that to all those of this side that tropick the moon is most vertical in that sign , that is , is the nearest to them , but the inventers of the art were not concerned for any that liv'd in the torrid zone or beyond it . and i would have j. b. to consider , where he says , that leo is the house of the sun , as well in those countries where he was less heat as where he has most , whether the inhabitants of the temperate zone beyond the tropick of capricorn , if they had made an astrology , would ever have constituted leo the house of the sun , his heat being so inconsiderable to them when he is there . they have without either fear or wit bestowed houses , two apiece , upon the rest of the planets . &c. ans. that there is the very same reason ( p. . ) why aquarius should be the house of saturn , as he himself alledges , why leo should be the house of the sun. and as much reason why capricorn should be the other house of saturn , as he affirms why cancer should be the moon 's house . for if the hottest planet may have that house where is at hottest ; why may not the coldest planet have that house where he is the coldest ? and if the moon who is a friend of nature , may be housed in the most vertical sign , why may not saturn who is the enemy of nature , dwell in the most unvertical ? and a little after in the same page : why does he charge us to have no reason for the houses of the other planets , besides the sun and moon ? for if he had asked we could have told him reason enough . repl. but i answer first , that it is not so apparent that saturn is cold , as that the sun is hot , but 't is only the astrologers imagination ; nor that saturn is such an enemy to nature , as it is that the moon is friendly to her by her kindly moisture . and besides , this account does not reach down to the rest of the planets . but i perceive j. b. has other reasons in his budget if he would produce them , nor do i question but they are those that origanus and dariot offer , the latter , astrolog . judicial . chap. . the former , part. . de effect . cap. . briefly therefore saturn has aquarius and capricorn for his two houses , because he being a malign planet his two houses are to be in a malign aspect to the houses of sol and luna , and capricorn is in opposition to leo , and aquarius to cancer . but sagittarius and pisces beholding the lion and crabb with a trine aspect , are the houses of the benign planet jupiter . but aries and scorpio beholding the crabb and lion with a quartile aspect , which is a malign aspect , are the houses of mars who is no friend to nature . and taurus and libra which are in sextile aspect to cancer and leo , which is a benign aspect , are the houses of venus , she being more friendly to nature . and lastly , mercury has for his houses gemini and virgo , because they behold the houses of the two luminaries with no aspect , neither benign nor malign , as he himself is a planet neither good nor bad of himself , but such as he keeps company with . and is not this a trim distribution of the houses amongst the planets ? but yet it seems such , as j. b. himself thought would not hold water , else why did he not produce it ? if the benignity and malignity , as well of aspects as the planets , were solidly made out , this account were handsome , and had some shew of congruity in it ; but these being imaginary figments , not grounded upon reason and certain experience , to give such an account of things , is but cum ratione ineptire . and then another thing happening , though independent on the course of the moon , namely , that every seventh day in an acute disease is critical , &c. answ. as for acute diseases , saith j. b. ( p. . ) all men are not apt to believe the doctor , that every seventh day they are so critical and stirring , &c. repl. whether all will believe me or no i know not , but that this has been an ancient tradition , that every seventh day from the beginning of an acute disease is critical , you may read in a. gellius , noct. attic. lib. . cap. . who calls them dies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and that famous physitian daniel sennertus , in his chapter de causis dierum criticorum writes thus , and i suppose pretty well to the tooth of j. b. himself . quantas luna , says he , in conjunctionibus , oppositionibus & quadraturis mutationes in inferioribus hisce efficiat notissimum est . and then a little below , non sine causa statuitur , lunam etiam in morbis insignes quasdam mutationes excitare in iis locis , quae locum in quo luna initio morbi fuit quadrato vel opposito radio aspiciat , & cùm eousque progressa sit , ut novam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 & insignem luminis mutationem subeat . crises tamen fortiores sunt ubi septenarii exactè incidunt in lunae quadras . and lastly , quocunque ergo díe , says he , in morbum quis incidat , in primo morbi insultu conjunctio quasi fit morbi & lunae . hinc ubi tria signa emensa est luna seu gradus peragravit , & primum quadratum attigit , primus fit dies criticus . ubi sex signa seu gradus peragravit , oppositúmque signum attigit , secundus dies criticus incipit . ubi ab opposito signo and secundum quadratum pervenit , tertius criticus initium sumit si eousque extendatur morbus . where it is plainly asserted by sennertus , that every seventh day in a. gellius his sense and mine , is critical , though most critical of all when the very conjunction of the moon falls in with the beginning of the disease , or with the beginning of some quarter of the moon . but from hence may any sagacious person easily smell out , that the phases of the moon were the shop wherein this conceit of the aspects of the planets was forged , and the natural determination of the crises of acute diseases to septenaries , gave that unfortunate character of malignity to the quartile aspect and opposition . for that there is no real malignity in the moon 's oppositional aspect more than in her conjunctional , appears by the frequent prescribing medicines about the time the moon is in conjunction and opposition . but the seventh day being critical , and the night before the crisis happens being most trouble some and painful , according to that known aphorism , nox ante crisin est molestissima , hence opposition and quartile , first in the moon , and then in all the rest of the planets and parts of heaven , have been phansied inauspicious or malign . and that it is the critical days independent of the moon , that has given occasion of phansying this malignity in the aspects of quartile and opposition , is plain from that passage in sennertus , in primo insultu morbi conjunctio quasi fit morbi & lunae , and then they number by those critical septenaries , that answer to the seven days of the moon 's quarters , as if the moon were in quartile aspect and then in opposition in reference to the beginning of the disease . which plainly betrays the imaginariness of the business as to the moon and her aspects , as also the imaginariness of the malignity or benignity of astrological aspects in general ; the critical septenaries depending nothing on the moon but on the nature of the disease , no more than the paroxysmes of a tertain or quartan do of the moon , but of the nature of these diseases . these things can't but seem plain to those that are not effascinated with astrological prejudices . sect. . the planets being but heaps of dead matter , much like that of the earth , and having no light but what they reflect from the sun , &c. here j. b. ( p. , , . ) trifles egregiously and flutters in empty words , of which the most weighty are those that pretend that i only think so , as if the assertion were without proof , or as if it were my private conceit , whenas there is no philosopher of note now adays , but thinks the planets as inert and opaque masses of matter as our earth is , the earth it self so apparently approving it self to be a planet by moving about the sun as other planets do . and j. b. himself in that passage seems to acknowledge the moon to be opaque . the moon , says he , has no innate light but what she borrows , this is reasonable and palpable , but what reason or experience can deprehend that saturn , jupiter , mars and mercury , must therefore have none also ? repl. it was wisely or luckily done of the man that he left out the mention of venus , in whom philosophers observe so palpably such phases as are observed in the moon . and she moreover is a primary planet . so that it is manifest , that two primary planets are opaque : to say nothing of mercury in whom such like phases have been also noted by some , though not with like confidence . but his body appearing blackish when he is in the discus of the sun , as well as the moon 's body does , it is a plain argument of his opacity . wherefore four of the planets being found opaque , viz. the moon , mercury , venus , and our earth , it fairly leads to the belief that saturn , jupiter , and mars , are so too , sith it cannot be expected of them by reason of their situation , that they should either be seen in the discus of the sun , or exhibit such phases as the moon . but mercury shining with the briskest raies , and saturn with the dullest , the one being the nearest , the other the remotest from the sun , it is a sign their light is mutuatitious and borrowed from him . these hints are sufficient and beyond a think so , to assure us that all the planets properly so called are opaque . but j. b. had rather think or unthink any thing than that his beloved astrology should be thought a foolery , as it will undoubtedly be so thought by all wise men and considerate . but he will at last allow them opaque ( p. . ) and yet pretends to gain by the bargain , because they are thereby more nearly apt to sute with and make impression upon our bodies , which are neither light nor air , but rather earth , whence , says he , the planets are the greatest agents at least , if not the noblest bodies . repl. as if opaque bodies at such a vast distance acted by virtue of their similitude . no more than one bullet of lead at a distance acts upon another . and what influence more than a bullet of lead has our earth , or any other planet beyond their atmospheres ? besides that there is a great deal of fire and air in mens constitutions , or else they could not so nimbly weild their bodies of earth . then that of the fixt stars which shine not with borrowed but innate light , &c. to this j. b. answers ( p. . ) that is the doctors think so touching the innate light of the stars . for he has no other proof . repl. and who i beseech you ever thought otherwise ? so that there was no need of any proof . the light of the planets we see depend of the sun. but no such discovery is made of the fixt stars . nay it is impossible they should be illuminated by the sun so far distant from them , that if we were where they are , the sun would seem no bigger that an ordinary star. what light therefore could such a solitary star afford when so many put together afford so little light in the night ? besides it is a thing well known amongst the best philosophers , that the fixt stars are so many suns , they being fixt as he is ? wherefore if our sun have innate light , the fixt stars have innate light also . and lastly , the scintillation of the fixt stars which is not observed in the planets , is another argument of their innate light. and he must be blind in the mysteries of philosophy that does not see the reasonableness of these things . define the sun to be hot and moist rather than drying , &c. ans. i will not say , says he ( p. . ) the doctor lies , but i am sure it 's false that he says , astrologers holding no such thing , as that either the sun is hot and moist , or that mars is parchingly dry . repl. and yet that famous astrologer david origanus , expresly declares , that the sun is not vehementer siccus quoniam quasi humido jungitur , but that mars does exsiccare & arefacere , & in calefaciendo urere . what in latin can be more significant of what we have declared in english ? see what we have said upon ch. . sect. . all the planets are opaque bodies , and what ever their colour be are as cold as earth , &c. here again j. b. swaggeringly denies ( p. . ) the planets to be opaque bodies , but i have proved them already to be opaque , so that i need insist no further thereon . and whereas he would insinuate that in [ all the planets ] i do imply the sun , 't is a mere cavil , the planets that move about the sun being peculiarly called planets , and the sun improperly as being fixt , and having no planetary motion at all . and since from these they are reputed ( namely from the first qualities ) benign or malign , masculine or feminine , &c. ans. here says j. b. ( p. . ) the consequence is unsufferable , that if the planets be opaque bodies they cannot be male and female . ash-trees are opaque bodies without dispute , and yet by all herbarists are allowed to be male and female , &c. repl. he makes here a foolish consequence of his own , and then tragically exclaims against it , as if i were the author of it . i no where say , if the planets be opaque bodies they cannot be male and female ; but that since astrologers account the planets male and female from those first qualities phansied in them without any reason , the grounds of this distinction into male and female failing , the astrological distinction it self necessarily fails . so that all the course buffoondry he uses in this page returns upon himself . but ( p. . ) to repair the loss of the first qualities in the planets he will not have mars hot and dry as is the sun , or as fire , but as pepper or salt. repl. certainly j. b. must have a long neck or a long tongue to reach a tast of the planet mars to perceive it has a smack of salt or pepper , which is as true as that the moon is made of green cheese . which if it were , the salt or pepper of mars were excellent correctives of the phlegmatickness thereof , that it may the easilier digest in an astrologers stomach . but in good sadness , how can we be more assured of this salt or pepper in mars , or internal cold in saturn , than of the elemental heat or cold in either ? so evident is it , that these are pitiful subterfuges , and that the whole distinction of planets into hot and cold , and consequently into masculine and feminine , is a meer phancie . sect. . for that hidden influence which governs all , would reach to all points , &c. here j. b. has recourse again to the weapon-salve ( p. . ) and to the magnetical particles . but i have so sufficiently baffled this evasion upon sect. . of this chapter , that i need say nothing here . but by reason of the anticipation of the aequinoxes , a phaenomenon , whose cause is to be resolved into the motion of the earth , the unskilful in philosophy rashly collected these two things . . that there was a motion of the coelum stellatum from west to east . . and then a primum mobile that had only a diurnal motion , not any from west to east , in which a fixt zodiack was , wherein the course of the sun observed his cardinal points , and did not anticipate . and this is the astrologers zodiack divided into triplicities or trigons , the main basis of their art for houses and triplicities , which if it had any truth in it when they used the real signs of the zodiack of the coelum stellatum , must now necessarily be judged vain and ridiculous . for now for example , the fiery trigon is not the real aries , leo , sagittarius in the coelum stellatum , def , but the imaginary one ♈ , ♌ , ♐ , in the figure above described , and so of the rest . whence it is plain , that when dr. dariot and sir christopher attribute such virtues to such a triplicity , they miss almost a whole sign in their account , pitching upon ad for dg , and so of the rest , if you respect the coelum stellatum , and so they put one triplicity for another , the watery trigon for the fiery , and suppose aries the horoscop . when 't is pisces . and if you respect a heaven distinct from the coelum stellatum , which was forged upon the ignorance of the true cause of the anticipation of the aequinoxes , they do yet toto coelo errare , that fictitious heaven being a mere mistake as all philosophers now of any note are well assured of . and therefore i think any understanding man may well smile at these sweet conceits of dr. dariot and sir christopher , touching the use and observation of the heavenly trigons in physick and husbandry . that there is no such zodiack in heaven , or if you will no heaven for such a zodiack , &c. ans. this is a very confident one , says he , ( p. . ) all astronomers agreeing to the contrary that there is such an one , &c. repl. i speak of that zodiack which clavius and other ptolemaick astronomers call zodiacus fixus , and conceive to be in the primum mobile , and whose signs do not recede from west to east , as those of the coelum stellatum are said to do . and i beseech j. b. to tell me if all astronomers agree that there is such an one . no copernican can without a contradiction to his profession admit of such a zodiack . but this zodiack is the subject of these four famous triplicities of astrologers . which therefore for all the pudder j. b. makes ( p. , . ) are plainly deprehended to be a mere figment , a conceit at least worth a smiling at , if not laughing outright . if j. b. had but read the first rudiments of astronomy in johannes de sacro bosco , he might easily understand the strength of my argument , but he seems to study astrology in an implicit faith , and to be either of a slow saturnine perception , or else an exercised shuffler off of such reasons as himself cannot but be convinced of , that they are unanswerable . sect. ii. guiding themselves by the conceit of the benignity and malignity of the aspects , &c. ans. thus strangely , says j. b. ( p. . ) abounds the doctor in his own sense , concluding all the utmost of our reasonings not to extend one tittle farther than just as he imagines , &c. repl. that these aspects , their benignity and malignity , are the grounds of conferring such houses upon such planets , is manifest both out of dariot and out of origanus . for after the astrologers had assigned leo for the house of the sun , and cancer for the house of the moon ( undoubtedly for the reasons i have alledged in this section ) and they looking upon these two luminaries as the parents of generation and friends to nature , saturn being a malign planet , they gave him two houses in a malign aspect to the houses of the moon and of the sun , namely they assigned to him capricorn and aquarius . but jupiter who is a benign planet , has sagittarius and pisces for his houses , because they behold the lyon and crabb with a benign aspect , namely , with trine . but mars being a malign planet , aries and scorpio are his houses , because they behold cancer and leo with a malign aspect , viz. that of a quartile . but of this i having spoken so fully upon sect. . i need give no further intimations here , saving only to remind the reader , that i having above made it good against j. b. that aspects are a mere phancy , it plainly follows , that the assignment of houses to the planets , upon that ground , must be a mere phancy also . nothing but intersections of the imaginary circles of the course of the moon and the ecliptick , &c. here j. b. ( p. . ) instead of [ intersections of imaginary circles ] puts [ imaginary circles ] and is so fond himself , or would make me so fond as to call the caput , and cauda draconis , imaginary circles , whenas they are the same with the nodi , which are points rather than circles . they are the intersections , or as it were points of the intersections of two imaginary circles . such a nullity are they of themselves , and yet forsooth they must have their exaltation . for which empty conceit he brings only the bare pretence of a sound argument , that is experience . which is impossible to discover to be from the caput draconis it self , suppose in gemini , if the moon be not near that node , or to conceive the node it self , which is a mere imaginary thing , and only a phancying that in that place the moon has or will cut the ecliptick , to have any effect , unless she be a cutting it , and then it is the moon not the nodus that gives the effect , if there be any . and let j. b. if he can , produce any astrological authentick record where it has been discovered that the mere nodes themselves , or caput and cauda draconis , have had their distinct effect and did not stand for cyphers . that each trigon might have its two consuls , and mars not rule solitarily in his watery one , &c. ans. this is like a man , says j. b. ( p. . ) that would confute the doctrine of the antipodes by crying [ pish ] repl. as if there were no force of argument in this passage , because j. b. is either so blind as that he cannot see it , or so perverse that he will not see it . for whereas it is a maxime in philosophy , that nature is neither wanting in necessaries , nor affects superfluities , surely if this business of trigons and trigonocratores were a real thing in nature and not a mere phancy of astrologers , she would not have been so superfluous as to have furnisht three of the trigons with two lords apiece , or so defective as to afford but one to the fourth . for if one will serve one trigon , it is superfluous to have two , and if two be requisite , 't is a defect to have but one . the prerogative of the horecratores is destroyed by that first general argument , &c. ans. when the doctor is at a full point , says he ( p. . ) as his ha , ha , will extend no further , then flies he to the main shift that there is no zodiack , &c. and a little after , yet for certain there is an heaven as no body can deny . repl. it is to me a wonder , that j. b. should have so little skill in the first rudiments of his own professed art , which supposes a heaven distinct from the starry heaven , which i say is a fictitious heaven , and the zodiack fictitious in it ; or yet so little conscience , that understanding this , and that i oppose this fictitious heaven only , which has a zodiack that is said not to have a motion from west to east , as the starry heaven's zodiack is said to have , he should play the buffoon for almost two pages together to prove there is a real heaven , and that it is divisible into parts , and that these parts are real , which neither i nor any one else will deny , but the weakness of his cause puts him upon such sorry and sordid tricks . but being conscious to himself of his inability of answering my confutation of the rest of the essential dignities as well as the former , he shuffles all off ( p. . ) with saying , the doctor goes madly on in a kind of enthusiastick humour , that the heaven is nothing , and the parts of heaven is nothing , whereby i would destroy the rest of the essential dignities . repl. but that that heaven on which these essential dignities are founded , is nothing , i have noted above , that the best philosophers are now agreed upon it , and that the zodiacus fixus , distinct from the zodiack of the starry heaven , is a figment forged in the dark shop of the gross ignorance of the true system of the world. and i would have j. b. seriously to consider that truth i hinted , that in aristotles time there was only one zodiack , which was that of the starry heaven , whose real signs gave names to that fictitious one that astrologers now build their houses upon , and that therefore that ancient and venerable divine science of astrology , which j. b. would have as old as adam or seth , divided the starry heavens zodiack into twelve houses , and supposed the peculiar virtue of each house placed there in each sign of the starry heaven . from whence it will follow , that our modern astrologers building their houses on that zodiacus immobilis , or fixus , and the zodiacus mobilis of the starry heaven having receded since those older times , at least two whole signs from west to east , ( and the antique astrology conveighed out of the memoirs of adam when he was in innocency , being the most holy , sacred , certain , and authentick astrology ) i say it will follow that our modern astrologers , and j. b. good man amongst the rest , do err no less than two whole signs in all their astrological calculations . this is a morsel that i leave to j. b. to chamble in his mouth to see how he relishes it , or to swallow it down as a pill to purge out the astrological humour , if it may happily cure his sick mind and rid him of this malady . sect. . for beyond the sun the planet is at the farthest distance it can be from us , &c. ans. the distance of situation , sayes he ( p. . ) can no ways impede the force of the planets operation , as is apparently seen by the moon , which never receives more light and force of solar virtue than when she is farthest from him . repl. sith all created beings are of a finite virtue , it is impossible but that the spheres of their operation must be finite , and therefore according as they are more and more distant from the object , their virtue be less and less . again , he contradicts his own self and the vote of astrologers , as i have noted above . for p. . he writes thus : all astrologers do hold the moon to be the nearest to us , and nimblest plying about us above all other planets , and therefore to have more powerful effects upon us than any other planet . which yet is a perfect contradiction to what he says p. . viz. the doctor it seems is yet to learn how the heavenly bodies are neither helped by proximity , nor hindred by longinquity in the exercise of their powers , &c. thus vacillant and contradictious to himself is j.b. but the astrologers are on my side , as appears by the former citation , and if that will not suffice , i will also add the particular authority of origanus , who de effectibus part. . cap. . writes thus , omnes planetae juxta excentrici & epicycli apogeum minorem efficaciam habent & aerem minus movent . in opposito autem augis robustiores sunt , aeremque validius turbant . omne enim agens naturale tanto validius agit quanto proximius est passo . which is point-blank against j. b. but his instance of the moons having most light at the greatest distance from the sun , heals his credit again . and of this example he is so fond that he could not stay but brought it in in another place as well as here , viz. p. . where he says , i either had forgotten or did not know , that the further the moon is from the sun , the greater is the light she receives from him , and the nearer she is to him she receives still less and less . but this shows j. b. his gross ignorance in opticks , as i have noted above . nor did i forget but ever knew to the contrary , even from my youth , when i wrote my philosophical poems , namely , that the moon the nearer she is the sun the more light she receives , as i have expressed it in my psychathanasia , book . cant. . stanz . . nor being hid after my monthly wane , long keppen back from your expecting sight , dull damps and darkness do my beauty stain ; when none i shew , then have i the most light : nearer to phoebus more i am bedight with his fair rays . and better to confute all vain suspicion of my worser plight , mark aye my face after my close salute with that sharp-witted god seem i not more acute ? wherefore it is as clear as the sun , that j. b. has said nothing to the purpose hitherto in his answer to my confutation of this first accidental dignity called cazimi . besides , how can their virtue pass the body of the sun , &c. ans. the sun is a thin and pure body as the air , &c. repl. but it is an hot consuming body being as it were a boiling fire , as they that have made the most accurate observations of him have described him , and the maculae are his scum . how can then the influential vapours of a planet pierce his body , and not be spent and lost ? or the bearing of the vortex against the planet , &c. ans. he says , the planets in conjunction do comply and not at all clash influences . repl. i had thought that that had been a peculiar humour of mercury to be so sociable and compliable with that planet he is conjoined . but besides this , though the bearing of the vortex against us is no such matter , yet it bearing against the planet , and transfusing a celestial stream of most subtile matter against it , carries away the planets influence from us , as a contrary wind does odours and sounds . if cazimi on this side the sun be good , why should not beyond the sun be bad ? ans. because , says he , cazimi works a perfect compliance betwixt the sun and the planets in cazimi . repl. learnedly spoken ! it is so , because it is so . a body is white by whiteness , black by blackness , hoosibus and shoosibus , as sir kenhelm digby pleasantly applies that country story . but i leave j. b. to excogitate a better answer to this present difficulty . the subtile matter flowing from the sun , and driving the effluvia of the planet in cazimi on this side of the sun upon us , if this be good how can cazimi beyond the sun be good , the stream of the subtile matter from the sun driving the effluvia from us ? that is the point , consider it at leisure . how much more are the spots of the sun that are far greater , &c. ans. here j. b. gives us a tast of his education and elegancy of wit. does not every scullion-girl , says he ( p. . ) know the difference betwixt a blemish and a beauty-spot , though both at once on the same face ? repl. i confess i never converse with scullion girls to know the extent of their capacity and judgment ; if j. b. does , i envy him not that piece of curiosity of knowledge . that and astrology together may strike far to the making up a compleat gentleman . but now as to the fitness of the comparison , i would know of j. b. touching the macula solaris , and the planet in disco solis , suppose venus or mercury , which is the blemish and which the beauty-spot , or what he means by a beauty-spot , an artificial black patch , or some naevus in venere ; let him consult with his sibyl in the kitchen to be able to give a right answer to these queries , and then i shall give him a more full reply . but he stills holds on , which i did not observe , and makes his sibyl of the kitchen wiser and wiser ; adding , or between a mere dead patch and an operative plaister : what a discerning girl is this ! but to avoid ambages i shall ask j. b. himself which is the dead patch and which the operative plaister . and methinks i hear him promptly answer , the dead patch are the maculae solares , and the operative plaister the bodies of mercury and venus in cazimi on this side the sun. how well the bodies of mercury and venus , which are as round as any mustard ball , and god knows how many thousand miles distant from the face of the sun , resemble a flat spread plaister applied immediately to the face of any male or female , i dare refer to his stale girl , or sibyl of the kitchen . but as for the philosophy of his answer , that the maculae solares are dead patches , it is an unskilful supposition of his , and contradictious to his own profession , that allows a soul or plastick spirit of the world , which implies , that all the matter of the vniverse is enlivened , and those spots assuredly as much as either venus or mercury ( which are no more alive than our earth ) and therefore as fit for astrological influence as either mercury or venus . but for such a caput mortuum as some chymists phancy , there is none such in rerum natura , unless it be the heads of those that are devoid of wit and judgment . that cazimi should be five fortitudes , and yet combustion which is to be but a little distance from the sun , should be five debilities , &c. to shuttle off this invincible argument he abounds with similitudes , as if he were unacquainted with that trite aphorism , similia non probant . but that i may not be tedious , i will bring only one of them into view , there being the same reason of the rest . and indeed it is a sweet one and remarkable one . behold , sayes he ( p. . ) but the rosy bush , how it is set with now a sweet rose , and next an offensive prickle , and then a rose again . repl. and even so there must be three fairy circles about the sun , one of fortitudes , the next of debilities , and the third of fortitudes again . for the earth moving about the sun there is neccessity of whole circles of this difference to go about the sun to salve the supposed astrological phenomenon . nay moreover there must be twice three such circles ; the one three for mercury , the other for venus , and thrice three such for the superior planets , yet all this will not do . for the circles of the planets are the same in cazimi as out of it , and if in cazimi by reason of the circle there all to bestrewed with roses , it have five fortitudes , it being still as much as ever it was in the same circle , removed from cazimi , it must have five fortitudes still . so that j. b. his rosy comparison withers to nothing : to let pass here his contradiction to himself , who in his hagiastrologia , plainly affirms the heaven to be a most simple and clear body like to refined crystal ▪ which is inconsistent with this heterogeneity , which to stop a gap he has introduced in this place . and lastly , how homogeneal the celestial matter is , the cartesian philosophy does well set out to them that have a capacity to understand it . that saturn , iupiter and mars from their conjunction with the sun to their opposition , &c. ans. here he bewrays more of his old ignorance . says he ( p. . ) as if the fortitudes of planets stood in the nearness of their distance , &c. repl. but that it is none of my ignorance but his that he does not think as i do , i have sufficiently prov'd above , and therefore need say nothing further here . station should rather seal on the effect of the planet more sure . ans. experience , says he ( p. . ) and reason joined together do evidence the contrary , namely , that a stationary planet is standed in the influence of his virtues as well as of his body during that station . this is his answer entire . repl. but as for reason he brings none unless he thinks that a reason , that because the influence is then standed as he calls it , it is called the station of the planet from thence . when as by the consent of all astronomers a planet is said to be stationary , because he seems to stand still as to any motion from west to east . and as for experience , as i said above , let him bring any authentick astrological record whence it does appear that a planet for being stationary was clogged with two debilities . and the truth is , the annual motion , as i may so call it , of the planets , especially the superiour , is so slow , and their diurnal in comparison so exceeding swift , that it is incredible that the modifications of their annual motion by station , direction , or retrogradation , should signifie any thing . is neither stationary nor retrograde truly but in appearance , &c. ans. it is not so , says he ( p. . ) for although the planet of it self make no returns , but is always moving directly on , yet going round his circle after he has past his utmost distance , as we stand , he really returns upon us in his perambulation , and the time between this going on and return is unto us a real station , his motion looking upon us for some days altogether from the same point . this is his entire answer in his own words whereby he would prove that there is a real retrogradation and station in the planets , which is his first answer . but he has another which i will give you also in his own words : but however , says he , were the retrogradation and station no more but in a mere appearance , yet it does not follow but the debilities arising from that appearance , shall be real and not imaginary . repl. but as touching the first , i dare say he had no distinct notion of what he utter'd , though he give his suffrage for copernicus , hagiastrolog . p. . and if he ever knew , had forgot the nature of the station and retrogradation of the planets , this answer of his being incumbred with such gross absurdities and harsh repugnancies to these astronomical phaenomena . for by this account which is taken from the circular perambulation of the planet it self in its own course secundum ordinem signorum , which may by analogy be called the annus of that planet , or annual course thereof ; jupiter suppose shall make but two stations and one retrogradation in the space of twelve years , when as he makes twelve retrogradations in that time ; and saturn who in thirty years makes about thirty retrogradations , and sixty stations , shall make but two stations and one retrogradation in that time . which gross ignorance of j. b. makes me suspect that he bore himself merely upon his faculty of sordid and foul language when he adventured to publish this pretended answer to my confutation of the vain art of astrology . and to do the man all right that may be , as being something conscious to himself of his own confused ignorance in the present point , not knowing whether his first answer was sense or non-sense , he offers at a second , wherein he sayes , were the station and retrogradation no more but in mere appearance , yet it does not follow but the debilities arising from that appearance shall be real and not imaginary . repl. but i beseech you , mr. j. b. how do you prove that there do arise any such debilities from that appearance ? if there were any such debilities arising , it would follow they were real not imaginary . but how can any thing real arise from what is mere appearance , unless it be that the subject it acts upon be a perceptive subject , and the action or impress upon it quatenus perceptivè : as the mere appearance of truth in the divine or sacred science of astrology , so deemed by j. b. has had a real effect of intoxicating all his faculties both moral and intellectual , whereof this present book of his is an ample testimony . but that station or retrogradation of planets that is in mere appearance or imaginary should have any real effect upon the nativity of infants , who have no imagination thereof , is as perfect a contradiction , as if one should say there is an effect without any cause . but j. b. it seems is so taken up with his divine science of astrology derived to us from the sacred memoirs of adam in paradise , that it has drown'd in him all the sense and memory of the indubitable principles of logick and philosophy . that sextile and trine should be good , and yet quartile which is betwixt both be stark naught . ans. do but observe him , sayes he ( p. ) a quartile cannot be stark naught , because betwixt a sextile and a trine . his slovenly comparison i will omit , as being as well nasty as superstuous , because the force of his reason is as entirely couched in his following comparison , where he says , nor can that creature be an ass which stands betwixt two men . as if he should say , that quartile aspect betwixt two good aspects , sextile and trine , may as well be bad as an ass be an irrational creature placed betwixt two men , who are rational ones . repl. but this is a reason only to impose upon asses . for the ass here is specifically distinct from the two men , nor can their site destroy this specification . but the degrees in heaven being homogeneal , that sixty of them should be good , and an hundred and twenty good , but ninety which takes up all the same sixty , and also thirty of the whole hundred and twenty , should be naught , is such a repugnancy , that it can fit the head of no animal but that of j. b's naming , placed betwixt two men . but he has a more seemingly material answer ( p. . ) that astrologers do not account the quartile aspect stark naught . for first they hold it better than opposition , and the quartile aspects of the fortunes in some senses are good . repl. if they don't account it stark naught , how comes it to pass that in the table of aspects it has no better credit than that of opposition ? for first they divide the aspects of planets into good , as sextile and trine ; and evil , as quartile and opposition : and of these latter aspects it is expresly said , that quartile and opposition in good planets is not evil , as quartile or opposition in jupiter and venus , which jupiter and venus are the two fortunes . but quartile and opposition in evil planets is evil , as quartile or opposition in saturn and mars . and quartile and opposition of good with evil is evil , as quartile and opposition of jupiter with mars . and so quartile and opposition go hand in hand in property through the whole table of aspects . but it is no where said , that quartile aspect of the fortunes is in some senses good , much less very good ; whence it is apparent , that if opposition be stark naught , quartile is very little better . see g. c. his mathematical physick , p. . that quartile should be better than trine as being further from opposition . there is a most fulsome , slovenly answer to this passage , as stinking and noisome as one i omitted before , which no ingenuous pen would deign to transcribe or answer , and it is the less requisite to do it , it being a like argument with that of the ass betwixt two men , as weak , and more rude and sordid than it . these are the odoriferous flosculi of his saturnine rhetorick , as if he had been nursed in an house of office , as well as disciplined under the old girl , his discerning sibyl of the kitchen . for shame mr. j. b. why would you write such a book , and profess your self in the mean time a minister of gods word , and a protestant of the church of england , as if you intended a slur and disgrace to our church and function ? both which are very sacred and honourable , and not to be exposed by such lewd doings to the scorn of their enemies . the planets thus aspected are in better capacity , both of them to strike with more direct rays on the earth than if they were in a trine aspect . ans. but the aspect of opposition , says he , ( p. . ) strikes better and with more direct rays , and therefore by the same rule should be best of all . repl. what an impertinent answer is this of j. b. to this passage ? in the aspect of opposition indeed the planets seem more directly ( as being diametrically opposite ) to ray one against another , but they do not jointly to one point on the earth , suppose where the foetus is , ray more directly . j. b. his answers are such , as if he did either not understand , or not care what he said as to reason ; as if railing and rude language were the only province he had undertaken . sect. . and the erecting a scheme so many ways , and that with like success , is an evidence that the success is not upon art but fortuitous . ans but why names he not these many ways , says he ( p. . ) for either these many ways are all the same in effect , and then the doctors consequence is false ; or else they are not the same in effect , and then the doctors allegation is utterly untrue . repl. this is an answer indeed that seems to have some smartness in it , as a nettle , if you touch it gingerly , but press it boldly and you feel nothing . to the former therefore , i reply that i have reckoned up those several ways , ch. . sect . adding at the end , that there are so many ways of building houses or castles in the air. to the latter , i say , they are the same as to any certainty of effect . there is never a barrel better herring of them , as the proverb hath it : all alike fond and frustraneous . sometimes hitting , sometimes missing . for why did they invent this variety , but that the foregoing structure was vacillant and lubricous ? and thus one being supposed as good as another , my consequence will come in , that the success when it hits right is not from art , but fortuitous . the configuration also of the houses , and those septennial chronocratores or alfridarii , do intimate , that the whole business is but a figment going upon that false hypothesis of ptolemy , &c. ans. this is an horrible falshood , says he ( p. . ) for our configuration of the houses depends no more upon that of ptolemy than it does upon that hypothesis of copernicus . repl. what a marvellous antagonist have i got , that huffs , and sputters , and cocks his beaver , as the invincible champion of the astrologers , and understands neither the hypothesis of ptolemy nor copernicus ? it is the zodiacus fixus which the ptolemaick hypothesis necessarily implies , that is the ground , which all your astrological houses are built upon , as i observed above more than once . and it is undeniably true , though this bold champion for astrology calls it an horrible falshood . but i commend his modesty or discretion rather , that he will make but one grand vapour at once , when as i intimated also , that the alfridarii have their septennial dominion according to the order of the planets in the ptolemaick hypothesis , and ch. . sect. . that the consignificators of the houses observe the same order . but an answer to these things he discreetly declines to make his single bravado more passable . for either the earth is pervious to all the raies of the planets and stars , &c. ans. the earth is pervious , saith he ( p. . ) to all the rays of the planets and stars , as well beneath as above the horizon . and yet does it not follow that all nativities are alike . for is it not plain , that all kinds of plants are pervious to the virtues and influences of the same earth , and yet how far off are they from being all alike , or from bringing forth leaves and flowers alike ? repl. no considerate philosopher will admit any other influence of the earth but the particles thereof which constitute several consistencies and juyces , and the plants are concerned only in those juyces or moistures that are next them , nor in any more particles of them that are fitted for their pores . wherein the mystery of placing of plants near one another consists , namely , when their construction of parts is such , that they do not suck away , to speak in the vulgar language , the same particles of juice , and so do not beguile one another . but the astrological influence of the stars is a thing so subtile and penetrating , that it stands not upon pores , but passes peremptorily through all the earth from one side to another . so that j.b. his comparison falls wonderously short in the present case . that a star or planet that is vertical is most efficacious . ans. as to matters of honour , sayes he , a star is most efficacious when vertical , but as to matter of life and nature , he is most efficacious when he ascends . repl. this is a mere put off , for both origanus and cardan in origanus absolutely declare thus . stellae supra verticem alicujus regionis vel civitatis , quae inde verticales dicuntur , maximae efficaciae sunt ; quae autem remotae sunt , tanto minus possunt quanto plus à vertice removentur . de effectibus part. . cap. . here is no restriction to honour , but it is spoke absolutely and at large . and if for honour why not for other things as the nature of the planet is ? direct and perpendicular raies being acknowledged by all to be most effectual . but if the earth be perfectly pervious to the rays , then our other argument holds good against the astrologers . sect. . even then ( viz. in the womb ) is the child as much exposed to them as when it is newly born . ans. in his answer to this j. b. does so faulter and fumble . ( p. . ) that i profess i can hardly make sense of it . but the main is couched in the close , that as soon as the child draws breath of its own , the former imployment of the heavens upon it being ended , a new begins , and so the imployment of the stars upon the child begins immediately as it draws its breath . repl. when as the influence of the stars freely penetrate the thick crusts of the earth from side to side as freely as if there were nothing to resist ; how is it possible the stars not acting voluntarily but necessarily , as all natural agents do , but that they should continue the same influence in the womb and out of the womb , the respects of the childs being in or out of the womb , signifying nothing as to the stars , and therefore the time of his nativity as little ? for first they must know the exact longitude of the place , &c. ans. the exact longitude , says he ( p. . ) matters us not , therefore that 's false . repl. very pertly and assuredly answered . but those that have been more accurately studied in this pretended science , i am sure i have heard complain of this very defect . and it stands to all reason it should be considered . for there are the same hours from twelve a clock numerable from the meridians of all the degrees of longitude , and therefore the true longitude of a place is also to be known for the right adjusting of the site of heaven and earth one to another at the nativity . but what a bold assured thing is ignorance ! for he is born by degrees , &c. ans. but the child , says he ( p. . ) does not draw its breath by degrees , nor is the navil-string cut off from the womb by degrees . repl. but i demand of j. b. whether the child begin to breath first , or has his navil-string cut first , concerning which there is a great deal of circumstances and curiosity , and sometimes longer , and sometimes sooner done . and whether to the first breathing of christ , or the cutting of his navil-string he refers that minute of the time of christs nativity in his christologia . sect. . which takes away all certainty of computation , per accidentia nati . though we should allow a particular influence of the stars in mens nativities , so that they incline them to this or that , yet by reason of mans free will there could be no finding of the time of the nativity , per accidentia nati . this i contend for . nor can j. b. for his life elude the force of the argument , he asserting as he would seem to do ( p. . ) that sapiens dominabitur astris , how much more then shall a serious and sincere christian ? and whereas himself acknowledges that the free will of man , according as he is good or bad , may retardate or accelerate the effect of the influence of the stars , though not wholly take it away , how is it possible to come to the true time of the nativity by the accidentia nati ? but j. b. writes as if he were asleep and not minded what he said , else his pen could not pass such gross contradictions . and it is but said by him not prov'd , that the stars will necessarily have their effect , though slower in time and less violent in good men that make use of their free will , and resist the power of the stars . for what does j. b. think of socrates , who by his temperance as a. gellius writes , liv'd all the days of his life inoffensâ valetudine ? and in that great devastating pestilence in the peloponnesian war , he in athens where it raged most , by his course of living kept his health of body , nor was obnoxious to that common contagion of stronger force certainly than any influence of the stars can be deemed to be . and if socrates liv'd so much above the power of the stars , what shall we think of the prophets and apostles ? what of christ himself ? who was not only able to resist the power of the stars , which j.b. allows every wise man able to do , but was carried in all his actions of concern by the immediate inspiration of the holy spirit . and yet ( than which nothing can be more prophane and ridiculous ) j. b. in his christologia pretends per accidentia nati , to come to the very minute of our saviours nativity . but such delirances as these they are justly permitted to fall into , who mock at the study of the revelation of saint john the divine , and so highly magnify this vain imposturous art of astrology for a most sacred and divine science . i might add in this place , that not only the free will of the party , whose nativity is considered , breaks this pretence of calculating per accidentia nati , but the free wills also of all those that he has to do with , nay the free wills of them that have been before him , his ancestors , the lawgivers of the place or country , &c. but it would be an endless argument to enter upon , and enough has been hinted already to satisfie the unprejudiced . sect. . is this circuit of the nativity scheme any where but in their own brain ? ans. and against profection , says he ( p. . ) he falls foul , saying , is it any where but in their own brain ? but produces nothing of absurdity against it , and therefore needs no answer to it . repl. how heedless and oscitant is j. b. here , that neither feels nor perceives what is even put into his mouth ! what greater argument can there be against profection annual having any influence upon men and their nativities , than in that it is only in the brains of the astrologer , and therefore can work no change in nature ? and that it is only in the brains of the astrologer , the very description of it in origanus and others plainly implies . for the very words of origanus are , tales significatorum in consequentia progressiones quibus , singulis annis singula signa conficere cogitantur , profectiones annuae appellantur . and a little before , nam loca zodiaci quae vel ipsa significatum aliquod habent vel aphetas & significatores alios cujuscunque nominis & muneris continent , fixa perpetuò non manent , sicut in primo hominis exortu disposita esse deprehenduntur , sed cum suis aphetis & significatoribus subinde aequabiliter progredi secundum seriem signorum cogitantur , &c. and indeed they can be only imagined to do so . for , that slow-paced saturn should go thirty degrees in a year in consequentia ( much less the horoscope and medium coeli when they are loca hylegialia , as they call them , which are conceived to be in zodiaco fixo , and therefore can make no progress at all , secundum seriem signorum , they being parts of those immoveable signs ) is i think an absurdity with a witness , and implies no less than a gross contradiction , you imagining the same thing to move slower and faster , or to move and not to move at the same time . or that another planet coming to the trace thereof should exult in the scent , &c. here j. b. for at least two pages together puts himself upon the pin of extravagant mirth and buffoonry , which is as graceful a spectacle in this grave minister of gods word , as the dancing of a cow or a camel. but to pass by all that horse-play , let us see what reason he offers . ans. if an hare , says he ( p. . ) or a fox , or a man with shooes on , does leave such a scent in every step he treads , that a dog coming after some hours will discern every place as the foot went in the wide field , although horses , hogs , or other men have crossed the way ; how much more shall the stars be able , &c. repl. i understand you mr. j. b. very well what you would be at , but withal that it is nothing at all to the purpose . for when hogs , or horses , or men pass that way in the field , their feet do not fall in exactly with the feet of the hare or the man , whose scent is searcht after , but the planets or stars come into the same place , by reason of the diffusive subtility of their raies or influence , reach every atome of those parts of the heaven which you suppose perfumed before . which perfume neither can rationally be supposed to continue till the other come , especially such slow-footed planets as saturn and jupiter , nor indeed in such liquid subtile matter as the heavens are , to continue any considerable time at all , if there were any such influence : but as the sun so long as he shines into the air makes it light some , but at his removal the air is as it was before : such in all likelihood are the influential raies of the stars and planets . in short their influence if any is so subtile that nothing keeps it out , when it does come , and the aethereal matter is so fine , fiery and consuming , that no influential effluvia transmitted into it can be retain'd , but vanish as perfumes , when the odoriferous body is removed in the free air. wherefore gross ignorance in philosophy and in the nature of the heavenly matter , is the mother of j. b. his beloved art of astrology . nor will his instance of the weapon-salve prove any salve for this sore ( p. . ) for both the weapon salve and the weapon are bodies of a due consistency , the weapon to imbibe the spirits of the body wounded , and the weapon-salve to lodge such sanative virtues as are proper in such cases of wounding . but the effect is not by a transit of the weapon-salve over the weapon , ( which will do the wounded party no more good than if a crow flew over his head ) but by a corporeal and tactual application of the weapon-salve to the weapon . and yet he would have me admire with himself how strangely that salve in its transit only over the place of that weapon where the nativity of the wound was made , does cause some not able change upon the wound that was then born . 't is pretty , and pity , that in so amiable a phansie the analogy will not hold . nor do i think that j.b. knew distinctly , or ever thought on it , which were the termini homologi in the comparison . but if he will examine the business he will find what he would have been at , is this , that as the weapon-salve is to the weapon , so is the planet in its transitus by the cuspes of the houses , and the rest of the chief places of the nativity , to the said cuspes or places of the nativity , wherein it seems some special virtue was lodged of starry or heavenly influence at the nativity , by that nativity-configuration of the heavens and heavenly bodies at that time . now i appeal to j.b. how like the fluid material heaven which i have described above , is to a weapon of steel , which made the wound , and the transcent planet at such a distance to the close corporeally applied weapon-salve . nay indeed how much the cuspes of the houses which are so many nothings phansied in an imaginary heaven and zodiack , are like to one of the most firm bodies we find upon earth . so that this comparison stands upon feet so rotten or disproportionated , that i will leave it to fall of its own accord . his pretence to experience is a thread-bare shuffle , and liable to so many exceptions that he can never make any thing of it , and there will be occasion of examining it in the next chapter if he will venture there upon the pikes . which is a demonstration that the promissor is imaginary space or nothing , &c. ans. there is , says he ( p. . ) a certain and real space measured out into degrees and minutes between the significator and promissor . repl. but what is this to the promissor himself , who being supposed immoveable , which the real matter of the heavens is not , i say , is imaginary space or nothing ? it is plain how this planet ( viz. the significator ) never gets to that part of the celestial matter in which the promissor was at the nativity , &c. ans. i wonder , says he ( p. . ) whether the doctor knows his own meaning , &c. repl. and i wonder that so acute a man , and so well exercised in the phantastries of astrology , does not easily guess at it at first sight . to shew how desperate the cause of the astrologers is in this point of direction , i put the case of the significator's being a planet , and the promissor , we supposing in the same superficies with him , we cannot allow to be the body of another planet , but its influence levening or tincturing at such a distance the celestial matter . as for better understanding the business , let mars be the significator ( for all the planets may be so according to both origanus and ranzovius ) and jupiter the promissor , to which mars is directed in trine aspect . the influence of jupiter lodged in the celestial matter at this distance from mars , but in his way is the promissor , but both mars and this influence of jupiter being carried along in the celestial matter as corks in water , the significator here will never overtake the promissor . but that mars may overtake jupiter by way of transit , or give him a go-by , he being six times more swift in his course , who can be ignorant of that ? observe the definition of a promissor , as ranzovius has defined . he says it is , planetae vel corpus vel radius , &c. ad quem cùm significator pervenerit , significatio effectum suum editura creditur . which is also the sense of other astrologers . but though they phrase it as if the significator were to come corporally to the very promissor , to challenge and receive his promise , yet j. b. does not interpret it so grosly ( as neither do the persians some passages of the alchoran ) but glosses thus on it ( p. . ) it is , sayes he , as much as to say , the virtue of the significator being at a distance , at the nativity , from the promissor , will be a certain number of years and days according to the rules of art in direction , ere it comes to maturity . repl. as if the promissor stood only for an index of time but promised nothing concerning the thing it self . which is point-blank against the rudiments of astrology . what astrologer will ever say , that the horoscope for example directed in trine aspect to venus as promissor , the same thing is promised as when it is directed in trine aspect to mars ? but while j. b. despoils the promissor of all office but the indication of time , he yields the cause to me , and makes it all one as if it were empty space or nothing . and withal insinuates a very considerable notion to the sagacious . that these aspects are so sacred with the astrologers , merely that they may hence take occasion or find a pretence to foretel the time of the accidents of humane life , as the physicians do the time of the paroxysms of the disease by the aspects of the moon , the phantastry of which conceits i have above sufficiently laid open . and that this numbring of years by direction when the feat will come to pass , is a mere arbitrarious phansie , does further appear , whenas all the planets may be significators , yet their courses are extreamly different in swiftness , the moon 's being about . times swifter than that of saturn , and yet the moon directed in trine aspect to saturn , there are promised such things to the infant as cannot easily belong to him till he be thirty or forty years old . which is a plain intimation that this pretence of prognosticating the fate of the infant by direction , is a mere phansy , as i have , though briefly , yet clearly proved against j. b. all the rudiments of astrology to be . and whether he will acknowledge my just triumph hitherto or no , it is all one to me . there 's no unprejudiced reader but certainly will. the main subterfuge behind is their pretence of events answering to their art. which if he speak any thing material to , we shall have occasion to consider it upon the next chapter . chap. xvii . . their fallacious allegation of events answering to predictions . . an answer to that evasion of theirs , that the error is in the artist , not in the art. . further confutations of their bold presumption , that their art always predicts true . . that the punctual correspondence of the event to the prediction of the astrologer does not prove the certainty of the art of astrology . . the great affinity of astrology with daemonolatry , and of the secret agency of daemons in bringing about predictions . . that by reason of the secret agency or familiar converse of daemons with pretended astrologers , no argument can be raised from events for the truth of this art. . a recapitulation of the whole matter argued . . the just occasions of this astrological excursion , and of his shewing the ridiculous condition of those three high-flown sticklers against christianity , apollonius , cardan and vaninus . . but here their hold is not so strong as their impudence great , that they will so boldly bear us in hand , that by virtue of the principles of their art they have foretold any thing to come . * there are many ludicrous ways of divination wherein no man is in good earnest , and yet the predictions and present personal descriptions of men sometimes fall right ; but no sober man will impute this to art , but to chance . it was but a fallacy of neptune's priest , when he would have carried the spectator into admiration of that deity from the many donaries hung up in his temple by votaries . but he whom he would have thus impos'd upon was too cunning for him . for he demanded straightway a catalogue of those votaries that had suffered shipwrack . and so do i of those predictions that have prov'd false . * cardan , a reputed prince in this faculty , complains that scarce ten in forty prove true : and picus , a narrow searcher into the art , professes that he has found of his own experience nineteen in twenty false ; and that in the prognostication of weather , where no free agents intermeddle to interrupt or turn off the natural influence of the stars . . but all the aberrations that either themselves or others may have observed , will not bring off the more devoted admirers of astrology to acknowledge the vanity thereof . for their excuse is , first , that by history , private information , and by their own experience they are assured , that the predictions sometimes do fall punctually true to a year , nay to a day , and sometimes to an hour , and that the circumstances of things are so particularly set out , that it cannot be chance but art that arrives to that accuracy . and then , secondly , that the profession of others , and also their own observation , does witness to them , that when there is any mistake , * the errour is in the artist , not in the art. for when they have examined their astrological scheme , they find the event was there signified , and that it was their own oversight to miss it . but to answer to the latter first , i say , they cannot pretend their observation universal ; and they that understand astrology best , will acknowledge there is that intanglement usually and complication of things , that it requires a very long time to give due judgment according to art concerning a nativity . and therefore , i say , the representation of the event being so doubtful , if they chance to predict right at first , they easily perswade themselves that was the meaning of the celestial theme . if they miss , they will force on their way further , till they find out what is answerable to the events ; which then must needs be the meaning of the art , though the artist oversaw it : nor will they urge themselves to any further accuracy of inquisition , for fear they should find it disagree again ; or rather out of a strong credulity , that if it hit right , it is surely from the true meaning and principles of their beloved science : when as in truth their themes have no certainty in their representation , but are as a piece of changeable stuff , or creased pictures , look this way it is this colour , that way that , this way a virgin , that way an ape ; or like the oracles of apollo , who was deservedly called loxias , whose crooked answers winded so this way and that way , that nothing but the event could tell whither they pointed . . i might add further , that the pretence of the schemes themselves ( be they never so exact ) i say , the pretence of their always representing the events aright , is a most impudent and rash presumption ; because ( as i have intimated already ) * the objects of their predictions are so alterable by the interposal of free agents , which interrupt ever and anon the series of causality in natural inclinations . whence in reason a man can expect no certain predictions at all from the significations of the stars , nor that any trial can be made whether there be any thing in the art or no. and it cannot but seem to every one a very bold surmise , to imagine that all that fall in one fight by the edge of the sword , suffer ship-wrack in one storm , or are swept away in one pestilence , had their emissors and interfectors in their nativity answerable to the times of their death . * the artists themselves dare not avouch it , and therefore bring in an unobserved caution of having recourse to eclipses . comets , and blazing-stars , to calculate the general fortune of the place , nay , of their parents and ancestors , and of their familiar friends , of which there is no news in the most famous predictions of astrologers : and therefore these and the like considerations being left out , it is a sign their divinations fell true by chance . wherefore it is a shameless piece of imposture to impute the truth of predictions to art , where the rules of art are not observed ; i may add where they are so palpably by experience confuted . for so it is in twins , whose natures should be utterly the same according to their art ; and if they could be born at one moment , the moment of their death should be the same also . and * yet those undissevered twins born in scotland , who lived till twenty eight years of their age , prov'd very often dissenting brethren , would wrangle and jangle ; and one also died before the other . in answering to which instance , in my judgment , that ingenious knight sir christopher is very shrewdly baffled . . and now to the ‖ former , i say , the reasoning is not right , to conclude the certainty of the art from the punctual correspondence of the event to the prediction . for it is also true , that the event has been punctually contrary thereto . and therefore this is as good a demonstration that it is no art , as the other that it is : but * it is easie to conceive that both may happen by chance . again , as for that exact punctuality of time , it is most likely to be by chance , because ( as i have proved above ) there is no way of rectifying a nativity to that accuracy they pretend . and for particular circumstances * in horary questions , why may not they be by under-hand information , or some tricks and juglings that are usual amongst cheats ? but if the predictions of astrologers be free from this , and yet be punctual in time and other circumstances , and so many that it may seem improbable to be imputed to chance , ( though chance has such a latitude , that it is difficult to say any thing is not by chance that happens , suppose but four times seldomer than the contrary ) it will not yet follow , that they are free from other things which are assuredly worse , more horrid , and more execrable ; * such as the consulting of ghosts and familiar spirits : a wickedness that that zealous patron of astrology , sir christopher heydon , acknowledges to be too frequently palliated under the pretence of this art. . and truly for my own part i do not much doubt but that astrology it self is an appendix of the old pagans superstition , who were worshippers of the host of heaven , and whose priests were confederates of the devil ; and therefore it is no wonder if daemonolatry creep in upon astrology , and renew their old acquaintance with one enother . and assuredly it is a pleasant spectacle to those aiery goblins , those haters and scorners of mankind , to see the noble faculties of men debased and entangled in so vile and wretched a mystery , which will avail nothing to divination unless these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , these malicious deceivers act their parts in the scene . for it is not unconceivable how these invisible insidiators may so apply themselves to a mans curiosity that will be tampering and practising in this superstition , that , ( suppose ) in horary questions , * they may excite such persons and at such a time to make their demands , that according to the fore-known rules of astrology the theme of heaven will decypher very circumstantially the person , his relations , or his condition , and give a true solution of the demand , whether about decumbitures , stollen goods , or any such questions as are set down in dariot's introduction . which needs must enravish the young astrologer , and inflame him with the love and admiration of so strange an art. and as for nativities and punctual predictions of the time of ones death , and it may be of the manner of it , ( which either only , or most ordinarily happens in such as are addicted to , or devoted admirers of this art ) it is very suspicable that the same invisible powers put to their helping hand to bring about the effect ; and * so those whose misfortunes and deaths are predicted , must to the pot , to credit the art , and be made sacrifices to the lust and ambition of those rebellious fiends , to whose secret lash and dominion men expose themselves when they intermeddle with such superstitious curiosities as are appendages to ancient paganism , and were in all likelihood invented or suggested by those proud and ludicrous spirits , to intangle man in by way of sport and scorn , and to subjugate him to the befoolments of their tricks and delusions . for it is not unreasonable to think , that by certain laws of the great polity of the invisible world * they gain a right against a man without explicit contract , if he be but once so rash as to tamper with the mysteries of the dark kingdom , or to practise in them , or any way to make use of them . for why not here as well as in the ceremonies of witchcraft ? ( but i must not make too large excursions . ) and therefore i think it the safest way for every one that has given his name to god and christ , not to meddle nor make with these superstitious curiosities of astrology , either by practising them himself , or consulting them that do , that no ill trick be put upon him by being made obnoxious to the invisible scourge , or by making others so in whose behalf he consults . . i say then , these vagrant daemons of the air , either secretly insinuating themselves into the actions of astrologers , or after , more apparently offering themselves to familiarity and converse , for to grace their profession by oral revelation of things past , present , or to come , in such a way as is above humane power ; i demand how it shall appear that cardan's , for example , and ‖ ascletarion's deaths , and others more punctually , that i could name , predicted by themselves or others , was not by the familiarity of daemons , but the pure principles of astrology ? and so of whatsoever honour or other events that have been found to fall out just according to astrological predictions , * i demand how it can be proved that astrology was not here only for a vizard , and that a magician or wizzard was not underneath ? by how much accurater their predictions are , by so much the more cause of suspicion . . now therefore to conclude , seeing that the principles of astrology are so groundless , frivolous , nay contradictious one with another , and built upon false hypotheses and gross mistakes concerning the nature and system of the world ; seeing it has no due object by reason of the interposing of the free agency of both men and angels to interrupt perpetually the imagined natural series of both causality and events ; seeing there is not sufficient experience to make good the truth of the art , they that have practised therein having not observed the pretended laws thereof with due accuracy , and therefore if any thing has hitherto hit true , it must be chance , which quite takes away their plea from events ; so that their art is utterly to seek , not only for principles which i have demonstrated to be false , but for experience and effects , which hitherto have been none ; ( and assuredly they make nothing to pronounce loudly that such or such a configuration will have such an event , though they never experienced it at all , or very seldom , as it must needs be in the conjunction of saturn , iupiter and mars , which returns not in seven hundred years ; ) seeing also that those predictions that are pretended to have fallen right are so few , that they may justly be deemed to have fallen right by chance , and that if any thing has been foretold very punctually and circumstantially , * it may as well , nay better , be supposed to proceed from the secret insinuations or visible converse with the aiery wanderers , than from the indication of the stars ; and lastly , seeing there is that affinity and frequent association of astrology with daemonolatry and ancient pagan superstition , that person certainly must have a strangely-impure and effascinable passivity of phancy , that can be bound over to a belief or liking of a foolery so utterly groundless as astrology is , and so nearly verging toward the brinks of apostasie and impiety . . i have now finished my astrological excursion , to which i was strongly tempted , in a just zeal and resentment * of that unparallel'd presumption and wicked sauciness of the vain-glorious cardan , who either in a rampant fit of pride and thirst after admiration , or out of a malicious design to all true piety , would make the world believe , that the divinity and sacrosanctity of christian religion was subjected to his imaginary laws of the stars , and that the fate of christ the son of god , miraculously born of the holy ghost , was writ in his nativity , which forsooth he pretended to have calculated : as if all that iustice , meekness and power of working of miracles were derived upon our saviour from the natural influence of the configuration of the heavens at his birth ; and as if he did not willingly lay down his life for the world , ‖ as he himself professes , but were surprized by fate , and lay subject to the stroke of an astrological 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or sidereal interfector . as also to meet * with that enormous boaster and self-conceited wit , the prophane and giddy-headed vaninus , a transported applauder and admirer of that wild and vain supposition of cardan , upon which he so much dotes , that it is the very prop and master-piece of his impious writings , the both basis and finishing of all his villainous distorted doctrines against the truth and sacredness of the christian religion . to which two you may add also apollonius , though long before them , a high pretender to divine revelations , and hot instaurator of decaying paganism ; but withal , a very silly affecter of ‖ astrological predictions , by which it is easily discoverable at what a pitch he did either divine or philosophize . and methinks it is a trim sight * to see these three busy sticklers against christianity , like three fine fools so goodly gay in their astromantick disguises , exposed to the just scorn and derision of the world for their so high pretensions against what is so holy and solid as the christian faith is , and that upon so fond and frivolous grounds as this of astrology . annotations . chap. xvii . sect. i. there are many ludicrous ways of divination wherein no man is in good earnest , &c. ans. very good , says he , ( p. . ) and therefore be there never so many serious ways of prediction , none shall be believed to be otherwise but mere chance . as who would say , because zidkijah the son of chenaanah was a false prophet , therefore micaiah the son of imlah could not be a true one . repl. the serious and solid ways of prediction are to be attended to , nor do the false pretences of some to them , null the right of those whose pretences are just and true . but we have abundantly proved , this very way of divining by astrology to be vain and frivolous , when as the answer supposes it solid and serious . and the instance of zidkijah and micaiah is as little to the purpose , they both pretending to a solid priviledge where it is obtain'd , viz. inspiration from the lord. but judiciary astrology it self is wholly a cheat and foppery , as i have made good clearly and evidently against j.b. and lastly , this answer shoots quite besides the mark , my argument here being against their appeal to events answering sometimes to their astrological predictions . which i say makes nothing for them , the same happening in divinations confessedly ludicrous . cardan a reputed prince in this faculty complains that scarce ten in forty prove true . and picus a narrow searcher into the art , &c. ans. he quotes cardan , sayes he , ( p. . ) but names not where , enquire if he bely him not . he quotes picus , but picus had no skill in astrology , &c. repl. i must confess i have not the book by me , but it is cardan lib. de judic . cap. . as 't is quoted by gassendus in his physicks , sect. . lib. . cap. . whereupon gassendus cries out , confessionem habes quam vel ex nolente veritas extorserit . and a little after in the same place , he notes , how cardan commends that saying of marlianus , si vis divinare , contrarium ad unguem dicito ejus quod astrologi aut pollicentur aut minitantur . and my self have made observation how exactly false they have spoken . and as for picus , what he says of his own observation , the like gassendus testifies of his . and for their skill in astrology it must be j. b's great ignorance of what they have writ touching that pretended art , or else excessive immodesty that he does not readily acknowledge their skill much to exceed his own . they had indeed so much as clearly to discern the foppery of it , which he perversly calls their enmity thereto . sect. . the errour is in the artist not in the art , &c. ans. i would fain know , says he , what art or science humane it is , whose professors are clear of errour . there be many physicians miss of their cure , and yet are there not true physicians ? repl. this is again as above a fallacious answer , it supposing what is not , that astrology is a real art , to be made out by experience and reason , whenas i have clearly shewed it is not , but that all the principles thereof , which are proper to it , are merely imaginary , not to be proved by sense nor reason ; but it is quite otherwise in physick , theology , and other arts or sciences . a man is certain of and feels the operations of such and such methods of physick , that it was that which altered his body , but who could ever distinctly perceive , that such a natalitious theme of heaven wrought upon him ? it is merely the phansie of the astrologer , and of such fools as believe him . cardan , who is accounted the greatest and most skilful astrologer that ever was , so that it could not be imputed to the defect of the artist , yet having calculated the nativity of his eldest son johannes babtista , which you may be sure he did with all care imaginable , yet he missed the most notorious accident of his life , his poisoning of his own wife , and his shameful punishment by the hand of the hangman for that villainous crime . this mistake was plainly a defect in the art , it being perfectly casual as other ludicrous modes of divination are , and not in the artist , cardan being accounted the most incomparable prince of astrologers . sect. . the objects of their predictions are so alterable by the interposal of free agents , &c. ans. all he answers to this is , he comes up again with the old objection which needs no more answer . repl. a compendious piece of discretion to decline an argument too hot and heavy for his fingering , as i have shewn sufficiently above , and that free will is a perfect repugnancy to the pretence of astrological predictions . the artists themselves dare not avouch it , &c. ans. the artists may and do avouch it , says he ( p. . ) and the recourse to eclipses is but out of modesty , &c. repl. this seems a great piece of immodesty in j. b. to affirm a thing so peremptorily that is new , and cite no author that has broke the ice before him . but he urges further , it is apparent , says he , in the late fire in london , by many examples , and by all as can be gathered up , that every mans loss was predicted in his nativity . repl. i would here ask j. b. how many those many were ( for they ought to be a very great many indeed to signifie any thing when such an huge multitude . suffered loss ) and whether their nativities were calculated before the fire or after . ( for they have a trick to squeeze what they please out of their celestial themes , and to drag them some way or other to their known event ) and whether he will warrant there were no themes suppressed , which served not the astrologers turn , and could not so hand somely be forced to confess this loss by fire . vnless these things be cleared , it is but a lame answer , and deserves no further reply . yet those two indissevered twins born in scotland proved very often dissenting brethren , and one also died before the other , &c. ans. but what of that , say he , ( p. . ) there are some men so froward that they are seldom at peace in their own selves , &c. and are there not many men afflicted with a dead palsie , in whom one side is dead while the other is alive , &c. repl. but this frowardness in himself complies well enough with the astrological principles and pretended influence of the stars , it being the same person , and so the same person having the same conflicts with himself . but two persons exactly under the same influence of the stars , from their nativity to clash one with another , plainly clashes with the principles of your astrology . as also does that other answer clash with the same , viz. that a man , who is all of him born as well one side of him as the other at one time , should have his left side suppose dead before the other , as if the left side breathed before the right , or had its navil-string cut before the other . so that this other answer is really another objection against the principles of astrology . sect. . it is easie to conceive that both may happen by chance . that is , that the prediction may prove exquisitely true , or exquisitely false , as i have observed my self in the latter . and when the former happens it is no more admirable than the feat of my tutor r.g. his linnet , who gotten out of the cage , and flying to a book that lay open , muted upon the very word sterquilinium , and yet the linnets tail could neither write nor read , much less understand latin , or any language else . but j. b. here returns a swaggering answer ( p. . ) we are able , says he , to produce our rules , and by our rules to say this child shall be certainly fortunate , and that unfortunate , this year it shall have a fever , and that year it shall be well . but how well this agrees with cardan's own profession , who i trow was a far better astrologer than j. b. i leave to the prudent to consider . in horary questions they use tricks and juglings to deceive , &c. ans. and what then , sayes he ( p. . ) are these the blame of astrologers because there are cheaters amongst them ? repl. it is the blame of such professors of astrology as impute that to their art which they do by under-hand information . and these falsly pretended divinations filling up the catalogue of the proofs for the art of astrology , shews plainly the rottenness of that topick , and that there is no arguing from events . such as the consulting of ghosts and familiar spirits , &c. a wickedness which sir christopher heydon acknowledges to be too frequently palliated under the pretence of this art , &c. ans. what a strange kind of wickedness is here , says he ( p. . ) we astrologers are all of us an ancient relique of pagans , confederate with the devil and guilty of daemonolatry , &c. repl. that he may seem to be able to give an answer he lays the charge false , as if i had said all astrologers consult with ghosts and familiar spirits , whenas i only say some do , which are over many though not all . and to make good the charge that i have laid , besides the witness of sir christopher , i will bring in j.b. himself to witness against his fellow astrologers , who in his preface to his hagiastrologia ( p. . ) expresly confesses , that without the heavenly or supernatural wisdom , astrological skill would become rank poison to the astrologer , as being such a thing as would lead them to the devil sooner than to god , and draw them into sorcery and other evil arts , whereby they would be intangled with diabolical familiarities ere they were aware , even as are witches and conjurers . and here i would ask j. b. how many of the many astrologers now adays have attained to that celestial and supernatural wisdom , that is requisite to keep them from falling in with the devil , and becoming sorcerers , to use his own phrase , p. . and again in the treatise it self , p. . i would have the reader to know , sayes he , that there are many that under colour of astrology , do practise other diabolical arts of magick or sorcery , which are quite different things , and of no kin to astrology . and this theme he writes copiously and freely upon for three or four pages there together . i will only set down one passage more which shall serve for all the rest , p. . but true it is that too many astrologers using their skill more prophanely than religiously , and finding that their rules of natural art cannot tell them all things they would know , or so easily or quickly as they would know them , they fall into the study and practice of geomancy , sorcery , and plain witchcraft . the devil though he be a most damned apostate , yet is an angel , and as such has skill in all natural causes , and the reasons of future contingencies , beyond the most learned of mortal men that ever wrote , except such who wrote and spake by divine inspiration . now if any man will so far fall from god as to be confederate with this apostate , or any of his infernal imps , there is no doubt but he may save the labour of a world of study which it costs other men , and he shall have his astrology at second hand by a kind of diabolical inspiration , and that more readily and punctually to the purpose than they that by great labour and pains come more honestly by it . lo , what an ample testimony j. b. has given to confirm this charge of mine against the professors of astrology , whenas he himself confesses of them , that many betake themselves to the confederacy of infernal imps , and the consulting with familiar spirits , or the having some way their assistance , who have a faculty to raise the very scene of the things enquired before their sight or imagination , as i have heard also from experienced parties . wherefore many astrologers predicting or divining by these unlawful and hellish assistances , and imputing what they do to the art of astrology , it is manifest , that this destroys the force of the argument fetcht from the truth of their divinations or predictions , when they are true : it seldom happening that one can be assured that it was not from diabolical assistance , while astrology is pretended , besides that other topick of chance . sect. . they may excite such persons and at such a time to make their demands , &c. ans. now although , says j. b. ( p. . ) the devils may very possibly excite men to make their demands , yet be sure the heavens at those times it is not in the devils power to frame at all , &c. repl. it need not be in the devil's power to frame the heavens at that time , he having observed in that frame they then are , that from the fictitious rules of astrology the artist will give answer according to truth , that coincidence of things happening so at that time as to agree with the principles of astrology ( as the linnet muted on the word dunghil ) which coincidence the devil observing without any changing the heavens but only by exciting the party to go at that nick of time , occasioneth the astrologer luckily to hit the mark . so those whose misfortunes and deaths are predicted must to the pot to credit the art , &c. ans. it seems then with the doctor ( p. . ) these devils can kill whom and when they list , and that as well saints as sinners , and the anti-astrologists as well as the philo-astrologists . for thus was predicted the death of picus as well as cardan , and of gassendus as well as ascletarion . repl. neither whom nor when they list . for in this section i restrain it to the devoted admirers of astrology , nor to them , but when they have superstitiously given their lives or fortunes to be determined by the vain rules of that art. and as for picus and cardan i would wish j. b. to read gassendus touching the case , who tells us how gauricus himself writes how three genethliaci of those times predicted only that picus would die before the thirty sixth year of his age , which naturally implies , that he would live to the thirty fifth thereof , when as he liv'd but thirty one years . and ballantius that pretended to hit the mark at the thirty third year of his age , over-shot himself two years or thereabout . so that it is a vain allegation to say the devil then had power to kill picus the anti-astrologist , when he neither did assist those genethliaci , or if he did , was ignorant of the time of his death , and consequently was no cause thereof . and as for cardan he pined away himself to death , being impatient of being laughed at for out-living his own prediction . and for the prediction of gassendus his death by astrologers , i will consider it after i know it . he quotes no author for it , and therefore i shall defer any answer to it till he does . and for ascletarion , cardan himself suspects it for a fable , as you may see in gassendus . but if there had been any truth , either touching cardan's death . as the astrologers report it , or ascletarion's , i have spent my judgment of it already , sect. . and for those other three predictions he mentions , after i have certain information how the punctual time of the birth of cromwel , philip prosper , and charles gustavus was known , and am acquainted with the person of that most ingenious artist j. g. as well as himself , i hold it time enough to give an answer . and i think i have answered all pretences sufficiently already , in maintaining the former chapter against j. b. and so plainly demonstrating that all the supposed rudiments of astrology are mere fooleries . they gain a right against a man without explicit contract , &c. ans. what 's all this to the purpose , says he , ( p. . ) unless there could be no such things as conjurers but what are first astrologers ? repl. yes it is to the purpose . for though this be not the only way to be entangled in diabolical superstitions , yet because it is one way , and that a special one , it is worth the while to take notice of it . sect. . i demand how it can be proved that astrology was not here only for a vizard , and that a magician or wizard was not underneath , &c. ans : you must note now , says he ( p. . ) that to have familiarity with these daemons so as to predict or tell any thing by virtue of such a familiarity , is punishable with death both by the law of god and man , &c. repl. that there are many that under the vizard of astrology are really magicians or wizards , i have abundantly proved already to be the opinion of j. b. himself . and therefore my question is raised upon a ground acknowledged in common by us both , and he is bound to answer any seeming inconvenience from the opinion as much as my self . nor does it at all follow , because such an astrological prediction , it is uncertain whether it be the exploit of a magician or a mere astrologer , that he that predicts it is to arraigned for a magician , but that such a prediction is no proof for the solidity of astrology , unless it can be proved that the predictor is no wizard or magician ; and if he be certainly cleared thereof ( without he predict better than cardan allows astrologers to predict ) unless it be proved also that it is not chance but art , that he predicted true . sect. . it may as well nay better be supposed to proceed from the secret insinuations or visible converse of the aery wanderers , &c. ans. well now , says he ( p. . ) we are beholden to the doctor , he doth not call us downright conjurers , sorcerers or witches , but it is to be suspected so , &c. repl. but not always , but when things fall out punctually right . for then unless they will take sanctuary in the linnets tail , and acknowledge they predicted so exactly by chance , according to j. b. his own concessions , it is too too probable there was the assistance of some infernal imp in the business , with whom the astrologer is confederate , who has this his astrology at the second hand as j. b. phrases it , by a kind of diabolical inspiration , and that more readily and punctually to the purpose , than they that by great labour and pains come more honestly by it ; they are his own words above recited . and now let any indifferent reader judge , whether these punctual predictions be not , unless they happen by chance , better imputed to diabolical inspiration , as j.b. calls it , than to the pretended art of astrology ; which quite spoils the pretence of arguing for astrology from some events punctually answering the predictions . sect. . of that unparallel'd presumption , and wicked sauciness of vain-glorious cardan . ans. the answer to this charge or what ever is like it against cardan ( p. . ) is very slim and shuffling , and does not at all come home to the matter . for first , he says , cardan tells in what position the heavens were at christ's birth , which is no more than astronomers do , who calculate the planets places for any time . repl. this i confess there is no hurt in if they knew the time exactly of christ's birth ; but to pretend to give the configuration of the heavens in a mistaken time of christ's birth , as cardan and j. b. have done , is an apparent piece of folly . secondly , says he , cardan avers , that as the heavens were then posited , that such and such manners , complexion , and ordinary accidents were wont to follow as befel our saviour . and if this be culpable then wo be to all physicians , who out of their readings and experiments collect receits of medicines from their skill in herbs . repl. as if the stars had as natural and effectual operation upon the person of our saviour to make him to be , do , and suffer , what he was , did and suffered , as physick has upon a patient . from whence it will follow that the sanctity of his person , which was from the holy ghost , the power of doing miracles , which was also supernatural ; and the laying down of his life which was from himself merely and voluntary , should be from the influence of the stars , as cardan expresly confesses ( as i shall note anon ) that the law of christ and moses is from the stars as well as that of mahomet and the pagans . and here i appeal to all the world if it be not a wild presumption and wicked sauciness of cardan thus to subject the holy jesus and his divine law to the influence of the stars , and place them in the same classes with mahometism and paganism . if this be not enormous presumption and sauciness , considering the greatness of our saviours person , and gross wickedness and impiety , considering his holiness , i dare appeal to j. b. himself . but he goes on . thirdly and lastly , cardan asserts , says he , that by virtue of his astrological experience ( or at least j. b. phansies he does , that he may seem to do as he does ) and the nature of the position of the heavens compared with the life of our saviour , he found some confirmation of the truth of the time of christs nativity , and that the truth of the time of christ's birth was some confirmation of the truth and worth of astrology . and if this be blasphemy , &c. then sure the scriptures must needs be as much too , which affirm the time of christ's birth , and declare of the wise men how they found him out by their starry intelligence , or indeed by their astrological skill . repl. as for cardan's making use of his calculation of christ's nativity to find out the time thereof exactly , or to conciliate authority to astrology thereby , so far as i can find , they are the mere surmises of j. b. but to affirm , that there is as much blasphemy or impious sauciness to set down simply the time of christ's birth as the scripture does , as there is to pretend to know it by cardan's principles of astrology , which determine the condition of the person and law of christ to the influence of the heavens and stars in such sort as they do the religion of mahomet and of the pagans , is such a piece of extravagancy and wildness , that nothing can be more . and yet that is a marvellous freak also to understand that , matth. . . as j. b. does . when they had heard the king they departed , and loe , the star which they saw in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was . vpon which he glosses thus . the scripture declares of the wise men how they found christ out by their starry intelligence , or indeed by their astrological skill . whenas the following this star required no more skill in astrology than to follow a lantern-carrier , or a link-boy in a winter night . it was neither planet , nor fixt star , nor any natural comet , especially as to its motion , but rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or an angel or good genius displaying his visibility in the form of a star , according to the opinion of the ancients . and that the genii do appear in such a form , there is frequent mention in history . i have already sufficiently made good my charge against cardan of his presumption and wicked sauciness in calculating our saviour's nativity in that sense , in which he understands his own act , and we see how weak and vain j. b. his defence is . which shall yet be made out more fully by what i shall reply to his answers to other passages of this present section . with that enormous boaster and self-conceited wit , the prophane and giddy-headed vaninus , and transported applauder and admirer of that wild and vain supposition of cardan , &c. ans. has he , says j. b. ( p. . ) named any thing out of vaninus that proves either his enormous boasting , or any thing of his merely self-conceited wit , or ought that shews him prophane and giddy-headed ? does he name any of his writings that must needs be impious , or any of his doctrines which are so villainous , distorted , and against the truth and sacredness of christian religion ? repl. has j. b. read vaninus himself , whereby he may pretend that i have given a wrong character of him upon his own knowledge ? as for the proof of vaninus his boasting and self-conceitedness , i have put j. b. in a way already ( upon the fourteenth chapter ) whereby he may be satisfied . and for his giddy-headedness and whimzicalness , his admiration of so vain and frivolous an art as astrology , and his building so great matters on it , is proof enough . to say nothing how he shifts and flings about to shuffle off those certain truths of apparitions in the air of humane shape , &c. one while phancying that they may be images or statues librated in the air by certain mathematical laws . another while that an image full of rifts and little holes , newly coloured and moist , applied to smoak , the smoak carries the representation of the image on high . other sometimes that some light image may be carried up into the air by being hung at the foot of some kite or eagle . another while that these appearances are nothing but the reek of mens bodies which therefore represent humane shapes carried on high . with several other as vain conceits , whereby he would elude the truth of such apparitions in the vulgar sense , and the existence of daemons , which is his main scope . so in like manner , that there may be no witches that have any confederacy with familiar spirits , he phansies that old ones do all their mischief by the filthiness of their breath , by which they corrupt whole fields of corn , the young ones by the strength of their phansie , with many such whimzical things which it would be tedious to recite . j. b. may read them at his leisure in vaninus , beginning at the . and holding on to the . dialogue . but my charge of prophaneness and impiety is of more consequence to make good . and here i will appeal to the judgment of j. b. himself , what he may think of such suggestions as these in vaninus . . christum se crucifigendum obtulisse ad comparandam apud posteros aeterni nominis gloriam . . mosen vivum se in abyssum dejecisse , ut in coelum raptum esse populus crederet . . unicum esse verum cultum , legem naturae , quae & deus est ; caeteras leges figmenta esse à principibus ad subditorum paedagogiam excogitata & à sacrificulis ob honoris & auri aucupium , confirmata , non miraculis , sed scripturâ ( cujus originale nullibi invenitur ) quae miracula ficta recitet , & bonarum ac malarum actionum repromissiones polliceatur , in futurâ tamen vitâ , ne fraus detegi possit . . miracula & portenta religionum aut fuisse sacerdotum imposturas aut ad causas naturales referri posse . ( these you may see in dialogue the . and dialogue the . which is the fifth passage which i will note . ) . omnia orta occidere & aucta senescere , non solùm arbores , bruta animalia , homines , sed urbes , regna & religiones . . mundum esse aeternum ideoque qui nunc sunt in usu ritus centies millies fuisse , totiesque renasci quoties ceciderunt . . corpora coelestia de regibus , de regnis , de civitatibus & de rebus magnis in universum sollicita esse , ac proinde ubi illis immutatio imminet , in coelo , in elementis , in plantis , in brutis , & in hominibus diversa nobis signa & prodigia objicere . . corpora verò coelestia si reges , regna , & civitates curant , multo magis religiones & legislatores , quos ipsa constituunt divinae voluntatis praenuntios , qui & dei filii meritò nuncupari possunt . . religiones in sui ortu & interitu non in medio miracula ostentare , cujus rei hanc esse causam , quia in longissimis temporum intervallis intercedunt planetarum conjunctiones : quo tempore novam religionem institui ac proinde veterem cessare . eque magnis siderum conjunctionibus , quum inferiora haec summam nanciscantur potestatem , admiranda opera proferri , hominum voluntates tunc immutari , phantasian quâ intellectus voluntatis consiliarius utitur coelo subjici . virum igitur sapientem sacrosque aeterni nominis honores appetentem cum haec futura praevidit , prophetam se à deo missum praedicare , quaeque necessariâ coelestium corporum vi miracula fiunt , confictae sui ipsius omnipotentiae adscribere , atque ita delusam plebeculam illum admirari & adorare . . ea demum esse vera miracula quae post longissimas coelorum circuitiones accidunt , non quae naturae vires superant . . coelestia corpora vates instruere , rerum futurarum species in ipsorum intellectu effingendo . nam si sol dat muris formam in fimeto , quantò facilius eventi futuri speciem in phantasia ? . ex cardani sententia unam in omnibus animantibus esse animam , quae pro materiae dispositione plus minusve se alicui communicat . but i hope by this time j. b. is tired out or surfeited with such prophane stuff , and blushes that he should stand up for such a patron of astrology as this . but if he like it , he may find more of the same suit in the following dialogues . so little injury have i done vaninus in saying he is impious and prophane . nay , i shall bring vaninus his self against himself , or the general sense of all christians , and upon this very point of cardans saucy presumption of calculating the nativity of our saviour . in his amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae divino-magicum exercit. . there says vaninus , that petrus pomponatius allows indeed the miracles of both religions , jewish and christian , to be true , but that the efficient cause of them is to be referred to the stars , or the strength of imagination . and concerning the stars , he says , hieronymus cardanus is of the same opinion , namely , where he declares , that , lex iudaica est à saturno , christiana à jove & mercurio , mahometica à sole & marte , & idololatria à luna & marte , &c. whereupon vaninus cries out , o os impudentissimum ! o linguam execrandam ! o sermones inquinatissimos ! o voces detestandas ! which he speaks either ironically or seriously ; if seriously , it is a testimony with a vengeance , both against himself and j. b. if ironically , which is more consonant to that in his dialogues , then it is an exultation of vaninus in this bold conceit of cardan . but there is another more notable passage to the same purpose in the same exercitation . where cardan again is brought in speaking thus , lex nostra & servator ipse sub arietis conjunctione superiorum natus est , & ipsa lex orta ; promulgata verò sub conjunctione superiorum in sagittario , in regione arieti subjectâ , &c. whereupon vaninus again exclaims , o sacrilegam doctrinam & ex hominum consortio eliminandam ! o impietatem nefariam & post homines natos inauditam , prophetarum vaticinia , christianam religionem à deo institutam , à deo miraculis confirmatam , ad fabulosam & commentitiam arietis conjunctionem referre ! here i appeal to j.b. if i have spoke any thing either concerning cardan or vaninus more harsh than these exclamations of vaninus against cardan . in which if he be in good earnest , he does in foulest manner condemn both cardan and himself , and let j. b. look to himself too that he come not into the bargain . but if he speaks by way of irony , yet being he personates the whole pious christian world , and speaks but what they would naturally express , there is the whole christian world justifying my sharp reprehensions of cardan and vaninus against the cavils of j. b. but out of what has been produced above , it is sufficiently clear , what an impious and prophane soul vaninus was . to see these three busy sticklers against christianity , &c. ans. he charges them all three , says he ( p. . ) as sticklers against christianity and high pretenders against the christian faith , whenas all well read men do know that cardan was a christian philosopher and physician , and died a professor of the christian faith , and so did vaninus too . repl. as if a professor of christianity may not yet be no good christian , or not really stickle against it , and more dangerously while he professes it . a very atheist may be a professor of christianity , which yet i will not say cardan was . but some passages of his are so atheistical that they that befriend him most are fain to acknowledge him to be mad , that he may not seem an atheist . what an unchristian thing is that to make the religion of christ draw its original from no higher a principle than mahometism does , that is , from the influence of the planets , that from jupiter and mercury , as this from sol and mars , and expresly to declare of all the miraculous things in christ that the reason of them may be resolved into the power of the stars . the words of cardan in vaninus are these , amphitheatr . aetern . provid . exercit. . est genesis domini nostri jesu christi in quâ tot videbis & tanta mirabilia ut judices , etsi naturalibus rationibus solummodo insistendum esset , christi nativitatem fuisse admirabilem , naturamque illi tribuisse , quantum concursu omnium coelorum excogitari poterat . and in the same exercitation he attributes christ's poverty , that he had not where to lay his head , to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he calls sors ) its being under the earth in the terms of saturn . and exercit. . his disputing in the temple at twelve years of age , to jupiter his being in his ascendant . and his putting an end to the iewish religion , to his having saturn retrograde in the ninth house . which he says signified , studium evertendae religionis in quâ natus erat . when yet our saviour expresly professes he came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it , that is , to carry it on to further perfection and completion , which ill agrees with the retrogradation of saturn . and in the same exercitation . after cardan has attributed the iewish religion to saturn , the christian to jupiter and mercury , the mahometan to sol and mars , and the idolatrous pagan to the moon and mars , he madly holds on , saying , solvitur autem unaquaeque lex à suo contrario . saturnum debellat iupiter authoritate , & mercurius ratione . iovem & mercurium debellat mars non audiens rationes & saeviens contra authoritatem . martem & solem debellant saturnus & venus , haec lasciviâ , ille dolis . martem & lunam debellant sol & iupiter authoritate , dignitate & veritate . vpon which he concludes , ob hoc christiani erigite capita ; qui potest capere , capiat . as if he had predicted some excellent state or overspreading empire of the christian religion upon the conversion of the turks . but what he has writ he acknowledges to be obscure , though it be in the mean time clear enough that he imputes all religions alike to the natural influence of the heavens and stars . whence his faith cannot be christian but a phansie , the true faith in christ being to believe his mission supernatural , and the condition in which he was in all his miraculous respects not to proceed from the aspects of the heavenly bodies at his nativity , but from the immediate assistance of the holy ghost , who also overshadowed the virgin in his conception . now i demand of j. b. how little the distant from blasphemy it is to subjugate the holy ghost to the laws of the stars , as if he were determined by them to act , or if he be free , that he should chuse to over-shadow the holy virgin at such a time that his nativity would fall out under such a configuration of the heavens as might indicate all the great concerns of our blessed saviour , as proceeding from the influence of the stars , and so expose him to be thought a mere natural prophet not a supernatural one , and give occasion to this damnable conceit of cardan and vaninus , that prophets and religions , of what sort soever , are but the effects of the stars . certainly this had not become the wisdom of the holy ghost , and therefore it is a reproach and contumely against him to suppose it . whence j. b. his pretence of calculating of our saviours nativity , and finding out the very minute of his birth , per accidentia nati , is quite blown away . and christ himself professes , john . , . therefore doth my father love me , because i lay down my life that i might take it again . no man taketh it from me , but i lay it down my self . which i leave to j. b. to consider how well it consists with his making our saviour obnoxious to an astrological 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or sydereal interfector . but to return to cardan , i would have j. b. to consider what a kind of christian philosopher cardan can be reputed , and in what a kind of profession of the christian faith he could die , who made our saviour christ only an astral prophet , or sydereal law-giver , who makes him born of the stars , as he phansies moses and mahomet to have been , when as it is an article of our creed that he was conceived by the holy ghost , nor was obnoxious to any astrological anaereta , but laid down his life of himself . and i demand of j. b. did the stars unite him hypostatically with the eternal logos , or raise him out of his grave the third day ? assuredly therefore there was an immediate power of god and wholly supernatural that effected all those wonderful things that all true christians believe and profess concerning the holy iesus . besides , vaninus has noted in his dialogues , that cardan held but one common soul in the vniverse , which diversly communicates it self to diversly prepared matter . how this will consist with that life and immortality which christ brought to light through his gospel , i leave again to j. b. to consider . and now for vaninus himself , how well he could be thought to have died in the profession of the christian faith , let his dialogues answer for him , out of which i have above produced so many prophane and impious passages , as i had noted them in my adversaria . moreover at the point of his death , when he was brought to execution , which no good christian can think of without pity and horrour , he affecting to act the part of a constant and magnanimous philosopher , was so far from professing himself a christian , that in vainly magnifying himself he insulted over the meritorious agony of our ever blessed saviour . for the monk that accompanied him offering him a crucifix to contemplate , he rejected it with scorn to the crucified iesus , saying , illi in extremis prae timore imbellis sudor , ego imperterritus morior . and yet j. b. declares of vaninus too , that he died likewise in the profession of the christian faith. as if it were impossible for any one that was an admirer of astrology ( which j. b. will have a science most sacred and divine ) but he should be also a good christian. when yet in another mood he will freely acknowledge that many by the affecting that art have fallen into the snares of the infernal fiends . by this time , i hope , i have made it good by these my brief annotations . first , that though i writ something sharply and satyrically against cardan and vaninus , and such like astrologers , yet i have not exceeded their demerit , but have dealt justly and faithfully in the business . secondly , that i have clearly shewn the impertinences and weaknesses of the very chiefest of j. b. his pretended answers to my confutation of the main principles of astrology . and thirdly and lastly , that there being nothing considerable in his answers to my arguments against astrology , that it is very probable he thought to make it up in sordid railing and rude buffoonry , hoping to engage me in his own element that i might so be brought to encombate him as a cock on his own dunghil . but true philosophy and christianity has taught us a better lesson . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but he thought me to be a very march-bird at the game , and as he professes ( p. . ) he expected no better language from me than cardan and vaninus met with at my hands , and therefore arms himself with such a patience , that shall quench all the utmost brands of my fury , insomuch as can my pen sputter out altogether wild-fire , yet i shall never hurt him . so furious an assailant out of his deep insight into iudiciary astrology did he prognostick i would be . but good man , the superstitious presages of his art have made him more scared than hurt . which might be another argument amongst the rest of the vanity of his astrological profession , that he can't tell aforehand in his contentions and brangles he begins with men , whether he shall carry the cause or his adversary . and yet if he had liv'd at the time that our saviour was born in , and had been of that age or rather skill in astrology that he was when he wrote his christologia , he would infallibly have foretold all the accidents of our saviour's life . and to give him his due , his nativity-schemes of our saviour christ and s. john baptist , with his astrological descant thereon , by operose pulling and stretching of things , looks speciously and prettily at first sight , and i must confess , i have neither the leisure , nor think it worth the while , to examine them according to the principles of his own art , which i have abundantly demonstrated to be but a foolery . but in my slight perusal i cannot but observe , that these two great astrologers cardan and j. b. give quite contrary judgments of the natural qualities of our saviour's person . for whenas cardan will have the heavenly influence to breath into him nothing but piety , justice , faithfulness , simplicity and charity , j. b. on the contrary reports , as i have noted above , that though jupiter indeed on the ascendent promises well , yet , says he , mars is set as if he stood on purpose to destroy a nativity so opposite to jupiter and the ascendent , and being strong withal , he seems to threaten all good qualities with an overturn , infusing nothing but choler , fury and malice into the natives head . and disposing of the moon he makes her so too . the sun also looks upon the cuspe ascending with an evil quadrature , and such as usually renders a native much more proud and ambitious than either wise or good-natured . and mercury complying with sol in the same aspect endeavours to encline this sacred person to theft and lies . can there be two characters more contrary the one to the other than these , or a greater argument of the folly and madness of astrology ? but i noted also , that whereas j. b. out of christ's nativity-scheme declares our saviour of an healthful , robustious complexion , and exceeding able to struggle with death , how ill this consorts with that passage of scripture which says , he was found dead on the cross before the two thieves that were crucified with him , so that there was no need to break his legs to hasten his dying . and lastly , i appeal to j. b. who cannot but be acquainted with all the pullings and stretchings , and the pressing of small things , and the suppressing of what is not for their turn with astrologers ; if a turkish astrologer had been to give judgment on this nativity-scheme of christ , where the moon sits upon the cuspe of the eighth house , or the house of death , whether he would not ( according to that conceit of the turks , that god would not suffer so good a man as christ to be crucified , but that judas was trussed up in his stead ) have declared with albohaly , that the moon in this posture did not prognostick a violent death but great straits and danger , & natum fore fugitivum , and so to escape with his life . but j. b. will answer , the moon was also in near conjunction with algol's head. repl. but that ( as astrologers use to do ) i conceive the turkish astrologer would either willingly oversee or conveniently omit . but suppose algol's head put in its nose here too , and that the moon must be lethiferous in this case , yet hear what cardan says to the point , mergit aquis luna in octavâ existens , the moon in the eighth house drowns men , not hangs them either on cross or gallows ; and any ordinary man would have thought that he that is orn'd to be drown'd could not have been hang'd , if there were any thing in astrology , as he , according to the proverb , that is orn'd to be hang'd will never be drown'd . but this is but a slight velitation in comparison of what i shall now produce to the convincing of j. b. of his folly in pretending to calculate our saviour's nativity , or indeed in pretending at large that there is any thing in astrology . for these two nativity-schemes of christ , and s. john the baptist , being as specious and plausible as any of them can offer ( i 'le appeal to j. b. himself if it be not so ) if i prove that j. b. is so far from telling the day and minute of christ's birth , that he has missed of the year , i hope he will according to his promise ( p. . ) observing these two such elaborate nativity-schemes to prove but the fruit of the ludicrous principles of astrology , and his own working phansie , for ever bid adieu to that vain imposture . i will with all possible brevity intimate to him what may convince him of this his mistake in time . and the first thing is , that his first main ground , which is , that there are just . years from the creation of the first adam to the incarnation of the second , is not only precarious , as being built upon an uncertain interpretation of the . cubits of waters , ezech. ch. . ( those . cubits being capable of a symbolical sense as well as a numeral ) : but it is further evident , that his interpretation ( s. john having manifestly prevented him in his description of the river of paradise , apoc. ch. . and determined that vision in ezekiel to the times of the new hierusalem , when the fulness of the gentiles will be come in , and all israel be saved , as the apostle speaks , rom. . . ) it is evident , i say , that his interpretation is false ; those waters measured by the angel , and the description of the river and trees bringing their monthly fruits , prefiguring such a state of the church as will not appear at least till the seventh vial , but is to be most properly accomplished under the second and third thunders : so that he has plainly err'd already near one thousand seven hundred years . secondly , he cannot adjust the seventy weeks of daniel to this scope and time of the incarnation in which he would have the seventy weeks end ; he founding the adjustment of them upon a very false ground , namely , upon the three weeks or twenty one days of hindrance mentioned dan. c. . v. . . which he interprets so many years , that upon the expiration of those twenty one years of hindering the building of the temple , &c. he might fix the going forth of the decree , c. . on the second year of darius hystaspis . and this he acknowledges to be the main argument ( christolog . p. . ) that evinceth that there began the seventy weeks , namely , upon the expiration of the three weeks of hindrance . which he point-blank against the text interprets three weeks of years , when the text says expresly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 three weeks of days , and the septuagint so interpret it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 three weeks of days , as the hebrew has it . where [ of days ] is added on purpose in counterdistinction to the seventy weeks to be understood of years . and the one and twenty days , v. . being the same with these three weeks , it is manifest that they are to be understood literally too . moreover he understands this hindrance of the hindrance from building the temple , when the text says expresly it was the hindrance of the angel that he could come no sooner to daniel to instruct him in such things as his soul was carried in fervent devotion and desire after . and daniel is said to afflict himself with mourning all that time of the one and twenty days , or three weeks , which therefore cannot be understood of years . and lastly , this may he takes he is fain to pull back the single week ( in the midst whereof the messias is said to make the daily sacrifice and oblation to cease ) and place it in the beginning of the weeks ( p. . ) than which nothing can be more wild and preposterous . but now in the third place , suppose his adjustment were not encumbred with these absurdities , he can never make sense of the prophecy of those seventy weeks if they expire in the incarnation of our blessed saviour , but such an epocha is to be chosen of the going forth of the decree , as the weeks continued in the order they are mentioned , our saviour may be found to be crucified , and so to put an end to the iewish sacrifies and oblations , in the midst of the last week . and fourthly and lastly , that incomparable chronologer and pious learned person thomas lydiat , hath with solid judgment pitched upon the twentieth year of artaxerxes longimanus , for this epocha , reckoning from whence our saviour will be found to have suffered in the midst of the last of the seventy weeks of daniel , according to the natural sense of the prophecy . and moreover , which is more precisely to our purpose , he has convincingly shewn , that our saviour was born , l. aelius lamia , and m. servilius geminus being consuls , anno juliano . v. c. . whenas j. b. will have him born anno juliano , or . and u. c. , or . so that there will be two whole years difference . and whereas j. b. places the crucifixion of our saviour in the nineteenth year of tiberius , thomas lydiat has prov'd it to fall out in the twenty second of his reign , about the middle of that year , as also in the middle of the last of daniels seventy weeks , which seals all sure . and therefore missing so wide of the time of that chief accident of the life of christ , he must be very foully out in the exercise of his art , if it were any , of coming to the right time of the birth of our saviour per accidentia nati . but the scheme of our saviour's nativity , as also of s. john the baptist's calculated by him , being so trimly contrived and hitting so handsomely , as it may seem to himself , and he would perswade others , and so suitably to the conditions of them both , and the occurrences of their lives , and yet things falling out so , though their nativities are grosly mistimed , methinks it ought to a conviction to j. b. himself , and to all men , that the whole business of judiciary astrology is a mere piece of phantastry , in which they may make quidlibet ex quolibet , or that things hit by chance as in other ludicrous ways of divination , and that there is nothing sound at the bottom . and that the boast of j. b. is very vain in pretending to have found out the nativity of our saviour to the very minute of an hour , whenas he has missed in the hypothesis of time , * some whole years . not to add , that suppose he had arrived to the very minute of his birth ( whenas yet the exact day is as unnecessary as in the celebrating his passion or resurrection , which are of as great concernment as his birth , and celebrated with as much devotion , though it is taken for granted they are not the same days on which he was crucified , and rose again ) or that by a general council his discovery were accepted of , and established by so great an authority , i would here demand of j. b. besides the sacrificing to his own vain glory , what good would come to the christian church thereby ? for it is a very weak allegation of those that slight the celebrating the nativity of our saviour , because the day of his birth is uncertain . for we are certain we do not keep the day of his passion and resurrection , the very same day as they fell , easter being acknowledged a moveable feast , and yet that cools no mans devotion . it is sufficient that there be anniversary commemorations of these great occurrences in the life of christ the son of god , that they may take impression on the minds of our children , and childrens children to all posterities , and endear the person of our saviour to them , by the pious performance of the solemnities of those days . but were the day and minute of christ's birth agreed upon by the vniversal suffrage of the church upon the astrological pretence of j. b. which he seems rather to wish than hope for , it would look more like the celebrating the resurrection of astrology , than of the nativitiy of our saviour , and would set all men agog so upon studying of j. b. his most sacred and divine science , that thousands being impatient of not finding themselves so soon masters as they would , of what it is impossible for them ever to be masters of ( astrology being a mere cheat and vanity , no solid art at all ) would inevitably be drawn into contract with that grand apostate spirit lucifer , or some of his infernal imps , as j. b. himself confesses they are prone to be ( p. . ) and so this his idle astrological freak of pretending to have found out the birth of our saviour to the minute of an hour , if once countenanced by the church , would make the christian world swarm with witches and wizards , who by their wicked confederacy with the infernal powers , would lose their souls , which christ was born into the world to save and redeem from everlasting misery . wherefore to make a friendly conclusion with my so much incensed adversary , i do in all meekness and kindness desire him to consider with himself , if it had not been more advisable for him ( being as he stiles himself a preacher of gods word , and a protestant minister of the church of england ) and more for the honour of the gospel-ministry in general , and for the credit of our church it self , ( whose genius is fair , peaceable , prudent and gentile , as well as serious and pious ) not to have run out in that sordid scurrility and rage against a professed member of the same communion , having no personal provocation from him , but only the pretence that he had so sharply inveighed against the folly and vanity of astrology , and the impiety of some astrologers , and this out of mere zeal for christianity , whose authority and efficacy he saw was undermin'd under colour of this art. and whether he had not better have busied himself in calculating the nativity or conception of christ according to the spirit ( answerably to that saying of the apostle , my little children of whom i travail in birth until christ be formed in you ) i say , in calculating the nativity of christ in the hearts of those that are committed to his charge , when , and in how many he had been instrumental to form christ in them , and so render them true and living christians , and to compute when in himself christ was thus born ( for as face answers to face , so the heart of man to man , and he that has christ really living in his own heart , can the more easily discern whether he be living in anothers ) whether this i say had not been a more proper imployment for a minister of gods word , than to be taken up with so vain and mischievous a curiosity as i have made good that astrology is ; and experimentally to have understood what are the greatest enemies to the birth of the spiritual christ in us ; and what his birth consists in , and whether the principle of regeneration be not a divine reality and living sense quite different from what is resolvible into the natural sentiments of self-love ; and whether pride and selfishness , and wrath , and quarrelsomeness with men , be not of a more direful aspect to the spiritual nativity of christ than mars in the eighth house , or the moon conjoin'd with algols head , to the natural nativity of him . these great points i leave to j. b. seriously and in the fear of god to consider with himself , and shall give him no further disturbance , nor be any further disturbed by him , nor by any one else that shall write in such an vnchristian manner as he has done . in which he has wronged himself and his profession more than me . but i pray god forgive him it all . errata sic corrige . pref . p. vi . l. . r. influence : certainly ] p. . l. . r. seems , p. . l. . r. alchochodon , p. . l. . r. ignorance , saith he , p. . l. . r. near twelve , p. . l. . r. baptista , p. . l. . r. albohali . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e ‖ chap. . sect. . ‖ see book . chap. . sect. . ‖ see pref. sect. . and book . chap. . ‖ see book . chap. . sect. . ‖ book . chap. , , . ‖ de motibus part. . cap. . ‖ de motibus part. . cap. . ‖ see book . chap. . sect. . also immortal . book . chap. . sect. , , . ‖ see sect. . see sir christopher heydon his defence of judicial astrology , c. . p. . ‖ see sect. . ‖ see sect. . ‖ see chap. . sect. . ‖ see sect. . ‖ see chap. . sect. . ‖ see sect. . see origan . par. . cap. . see his defence of judicial astrology , cap. ii. ‖ sect. . ‖ sueton. in vitâ domitiani , sect. . ‖ john . . ‖ see book . ch. . sect. . * see my exposition of the prophecies of daniel notes on vision vi. p. . annotations upon the two foregoing treatises, lux orientalis, or, an enquiry into the opinion of the eastern sages concerning the prae-existence of souls, and the discourse of truth written for the more fully clearing and further confirming the main doctrines in each treatise / by one not unexercized in these kinds of speculation. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm 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ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng glanvill, joseph, - . -- lux orientalis. rust, george, d. . -- discourse of truth. pre-existence. truth. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - rina kor sampled and proofread - rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion annotations upon the two foregoing treatises , lux orientalis , or , an enquiry into the opinion of the eastern sages concerning the prae-existence of souls ; and the discourse of truth . written for the more fully clearing and further confirming the main doctrines in each treatise . by one not unexercized in these kinds of speculation . london : printed for j. collins , and s. lounds , over against exeter-change in the strand . . annotations upon lux orientalis . these two books , lux orientalis and the discourse of truth , are luckily put together by the publisher , there being that suitableness between them , and mutual support of one another . and the arguments they treat of being of the greatest importance that the mind of man can entertain herself with , the consideration thereof has excited so sluggish a genius as mine to bestow some few annotations thereon , not very anxious or operose , but such as the places easily suggest ; and may serve either to ●…ctifie what may seem any how oblique , or illustrate what may seem less clear , or make a supply or adde strength where there may seem any further need . in which i would not be so understood as that i had such an anxiety and fondness for the opinions they maintain , as if all were gone if they should fail ; but that the dogmata being more fully , clearly , and precisely propounded , men may more safely and considerately give their judgments thereon ; but with that modesty as to admit nothing that is contrary to the judgment of the truly catholick and apostolick church . chap. . p. . that he made us pure and innocent , &c. this is plainly signified in the general mosaick history of the creation , that all that god made he saw it was good ; and it is particularly declared of adam and eve , that they were created or made in a state of innocency . pag. . matter can do nothing but by motion , and what relation hath that to a moral contagion ? we must either grant that the figures of the particles of matter and their motion , have a power to affect the soul united with the body , ( and i remember josephus somewhere speaking of wine , says , it does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , regenerate , as it were , the soul into another life and sense of things ) or else we must acknowledge that the parts of matter are alterable into qualifications , that cannot be resolved into mere mechanical motion and figure ; whether they be thus altered by the vital power of the spirit of nature , or however it comes to pass . but that matter has a considerable influence upon a soul united thereto , the author himself does copiously acknowledge in his fourth chapter of this book ; where he tells us , that according to the disposition of the body , our wits are either more quick , free , and sparkling , or more obtuse , weak , and sluggish ; and our mind more chearful and contented , or else more morose , melancholick , or dogged , &c. wherefore that he may appear the more consistent with himself , it is likely he understands by this moral contagion the very venome and malignity of vitious inclinations , how that can be derived from matter , especially its power consisting in mere motion and figuration of parts . the psalmist's description is very apposite to this purpose , psal. . the ungodly are froward even from their mothers womb ; as soon as they are born they go astray and speak lyes . they are as venomous as the poyson of a serpent , even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear . that there should be such a difference in the nativity of some from that of others , and haply begot also of the same parents , is no slight intimation that their difference is not from their bo●… but their souls ; in which there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eruptions of vitious inclinations w●… 〈◊〉 had contracted in their former stat●… 〈◊〉 pressed nor extinct in this , by reason o●… 〈◊〉 lapse , and his losing the paradisiacal 〈◊〉 which he was created , and which should , 〈◊〉 had not been for his fall , been transmitted to his posterity ; but that being lost , the several measures of the pristine vitiosity of humane souls discover themselves in this life , according to the just laws of the divine nemesis essentially interwoven into the nature of things . pag. . how is it that those that are under continual temptations to vice , are yet kept within the bounds of vertue , &c. that those that are continually under temptations to vice from their childhood , should keep within the bounds of vertue , and those that have perpetual outward advantages from their childhood to be vertuous , should prove vitious notwithstanding , is not rationally resolved into their free will ; for in this they are both of them equal : and if they had been equal also in their external advantages or disadvantages , the different event might well be imputed to the freedom of their will. but now that one , notwithstanding all the disadvantages to vertue should prove vertuous , and the other , notwithstanding all the advantages to vertue should prove vitious ; the reason of this certainly to the considerate will seem to lie deeper than the meer liberty of will in man. but it can be attributed to nothing , with a more due and tender regard to the divine attributes , than to the pre-existent state of humane souls , according to the scope of the author . pag. . for still it seems to be a diminutive and disparaging apprehension of the infinite and immense goodness of god , that he should detrude such excellent creatures , &c. to enervate this reason , there is framed by an ingenious hand this hypothesis , to vie with that of pre-existence : that mankind is an order of beings placed in a middle state between angels and brutes , made up of contrary principles , viz. matter and spirit , indued with contrary faculties , viz. animal and rational , and encompassed with contrary objects proportioned to their respective faculties , that so they may be in a capacity to exercise the vertues proper and peculiar to their compounded and heterogeneal nature . and therefore though humane souls be capable of subsisting by themselves , yet god has placed them in bodies full of brutish and unreasonable propensions , that they may be capable of exercising many choice and excellent vertues , which otherwise could never have been at all ; such as temperance , sobriety , chastity , patience , meekness , equanimity , and all other vertues that consist in the empire of reason over passion and appetite . and therefore he conceives that the creating of humane souls , though pure and immaculate , and uniting them with such brutish bodies , is but the constituting and continuing such a species of being , which is an order betwixt brutes and angels ; into which latter order , if men use their faculties of the spiritual principle in them well , they may ascend : forasmuch as god has given them in their spiritual principle ( containing free will , and reason to discern what is best ) a power and faculty of overcoming all their inordinate appetites . this is his hypothesis , mostwhat in his own words , and all to his own sence , as near as i could with brevity express it : and it seems so reasonable to himself , that he professes himself apt to be positive and dogmatical therein . and it might very well seem so to him , if there were a susficient faculty in the souls of men in this world , to command and keep in order the passions and appetites of their body , and to be and do what their reason and conscience tells them they should be and do , and blames them for not being and doing . so that they know more by far than they find an ability in themselves to perform . extreamly few there are , if any , but this is their condition : whence all philosophers ( that had any sense of vertue and holiness ) as well as jews and christians , have looked upon man as in a lapsed state , not blaming god , but deploring the sad condition they found themselves in by some foregoing lapse or fault in mankind . and it is strange that our own consciences should fhe in our faces for what we could never have helped . it is witty indeed which is alleadged in the behalf of this hypothesis , viz. that the rational part of man is able to command the lower appetites ; because if the superiour part be not strong enough to govern the inferiour , it destroys the very being of moral good and evil : forasmuch as those acts that proceed out of necessity cannot be moral , nor can the superiour faculties be obliged to govern the inferiour , if they are not able , because nothing is obliged to imposs●…bilities . but i answer , if inabilities come upon us by our own fault , the defects of action then are upon the former account moral , or rather immoral . and our consciences rightly charge us with the vitiosities of our inclinations and actions , even before we can mend them here , because they are the consequences of our former guilt . wherefore it is no wonder that there is found a flaw in a subtilty that would conclude against the universal experience of men , who all of them , more or less , that have any sense of morality left in them , complain that the inferiour powers of the soul , at least for a time , were too hard for the superiour . and the whole mass of mankind is so generally corrupt and abominable , that it would argue the wise and just god a very unequal matcher of innocent souls with brutish bodies , they being universally so hugely foiled or overcome in the conflict , if he indeed were the immediate matcher of them . for how can that be the effect of an equilibrious or sufficient free will and power , that is in a manner perpetual and constant ? but there would be near as many examples one way as the other , if the souls of men in this state were not by some precedent lapse become unable to govern , as they ought , all in them or about them that is to be subjected to their reason . no fine fetches of wit can demolish the steady and weighty structure of sound and general experience . pag. . wherein he seeth it , ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt , &c. the expression [ ten thousand to one ] is figurative , and signifies how hugely more like it is that the souls would be corrupted by their incorporation in these animal or brutish bodies , than escape corruption . and the effect makes good the assertion : for david of old ( to say nothing of the days of noah ) and paul after him , declare of mankind in general , that they are altogether become abominable ; there is none that doth good , no not one . wherefore we see what efficacy these bodies have , if innocent souls be put into them by the immediate hand of god , as also the force of custom and corrupt education to debauch them ; and therefore how unlikely it is that god should create innocent souls to thrust them into such ill circumstances . pag. . to suppose him assistent to unlawful and unclean coitions , by creating a soul to animate the impure foetus , &c. this seemed ever to those that had any sense of the divine purity and sanctity , or were themselves endued with any due sensibleness and discernment of things , to be an argument of no small weight . but how one of the more rude and unhewen opposers of pre-existence swaggers it out of countenance , i think it not amiss to set down for a pleasant entertainment of the reader . admit , says he , that gods watchful providence waits upon dissolute voluptuaries in their unmeet conjunctions , and sends down fresh created spirits to actuate their obscene emissions , what is here done which is not very high and becoming god , and most congruous and proportionable to his immense grandeur and majesty , viz. to bear a part amongst pimps and bawds , and pocky whores and woremasters , to rise out of his seat for them , and by a free act of creation of a soul , to set his seal of connivance to their villanies ; who yet is said to be of more pure eyes than to endure to behold wickedness . so that if he does ( as his phrase is ) pop in a soul in these unclean coitions , certainly he does it winking . but he goes on : for in the first place , says he , his condescension is hereby made signal and eximious ; he is gloriously humble beyond a parallel , and by his own example lessons us to perform the meanest works , if fit and profitable , and to be content even to drudge for the common benefit of the world. good god! what a rapture has this impure scene of venerie put this young theologer into , that it should thus drive him out of his little wits and senses , and make him speak inconsistences with such an affected grace and lofty eloquence ! if the act of gods freely creating souls , and so of assisting wretched sinners in their foul acts of adultery and whoredom , be a glorious action , how is it an abasement of him , how is it his humiliation ? and if it be an humbling and debasing of him , how is it glorious ? the joyning of two such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are indeed without parallel . the creating of an humane soul immortal and immaculate , and such as bears the image of god in it , as all immaculate souls do , is one of the most glorious actions that god can perform ; such a creature is it , as the schools have judged more of value than the frame of the whole visible world. but to joyn such a creature as this to such impure corporeal matter , is furthermore a most transcendent specimen of both his skill and soveraignty ; so that this is an act of further super-exaltation of himself , not of humiliation . what remains then to be his humiliation , but the condescending to assist and countenance the unclean endeavours of adulterers and adulteresses ? which therefore can be no lesson to us for humility , but a cordial for the faint-hearted in debauchery , and degeneracy of life ; wherein they may plead , so instructed by this rural theolog , that they are content to drudge for the common profit of the world. but he proceeds . and secondly , says he , hereby he elicits good out of evil , causing famous and heroick persons to take their origine from base occasions ; and so converts the lusts of sensual varlets to nobler ends than they designed them . as if an heroick off-spring were the genuine effect of adultery or fornication , and the most likely way to people the world with worthy personages . how this raw philosopher will make this comply with his profession of divinity , i know not ; whenas , it teaches us , that marriage is honourable , but whoremongers and adulterers god will judge ; and that he punishes the iniquities of the parents on their children . but this bold sophist makes god adjudge the noblest off-spring to the defiled bed , and not to punish , but reward the adultery or whoredom of debauched persons , by giving them the best and bravest children : which the more true it could be found in experience , it would be the stronger argument for pre-existence ; it being incredible that god , if he created souls on purpose , should crown adultery and whoredom with the choicest off-spring . and then thirdly and lastly , says he , hereby he often detects the lewdness of sinners , which otherwise would be smothered , &c. as if the all-wise god could find no better nor juster means than this to discover this villany . if he be thus immediately and in an extraordinary way assistant in these coitions , were it not as easie for him , and infinitely more decorous , to charge the womb with some mola or ephemerous monster , than to plunge an immaculate humane soul into it ? this would as effectually discover the villany committed , and besides prevent the charge parishes are put to in maintaining bastards . and now that we have thus seen what a mere nothing it is that this strutter has pronounced with such sonorous rhetorick , yet he is not ashamed to conclude with this appeal to i know not what blind judges : now , says he , are not all these actions and concerns very graceful and agreeable to god ? which words in these circumstances no man could utter , were he not of a crass , insensible , and injudicious constitution , or else made no conscience of speaking against his judgment . but if he speak according to his conscience , it is manifest he puts sophisms upon himself , in arguing so weakly . as he does a little before in the same place , where that he may make the coming of a soul into a base begotten body in such a series of time and order of things as the pre-existentiaries suppose , and gods putting it immediately upon his creating it into such a body , to be equally passable , he uses this slight illustration : imagine , saith he , god should create one soul , and so soon as he had done , instantly pop it into a base begotten body ; and then create another the matter of an hours space before its precipitation into such a receptacle : which of these actions would be the most diminutive of the creators honour ? would not the difference be insensible , and the scandal , if any , the same in both ? yet thus lies the case just betwixt the pre-existentiaries and us . let the reader consider how senseless this author is in saying the case betwixt the pre-existentiaries and him is just thus , when they are just nothing akin : for his two souls are both unlapsed , but one of the pre-existentiaries lapsed , and so subjected to the laws of nature . in his case god acts freely , raising himself , as it were , out of his seat to create an immaculate soul , and put into a foul body ; but in the other case god onely is a looker on , there is onely his permission , not his action . and the vast difference of time , he salves it with such a quibble as this , as if it were nothing , because thousands of ages ago , in respect of god and his eternity , is not an hour before . he might as well say the difference betwixt the most glorious angel and a flea is nothing , because in comparison of god both are so indeed . wherefore this anti-pre-existentiary is such a trifler , that i am half ashamed that i have brought him upon the stage . but yet i will commend his craft , though not his faithfulness , that he had the wit to omit the proposing of buggery as well as of adultery , and the endeavouring to shew how graceful and agreeable to god , how congruous and proportionate it were to his immense grandeur and majesty , to create a soul on purpose ( immaculate and undefiled ) to actuate the obscene emissions of a brute having to do with a woman , or of a man having to do with a brute : for both women and brutes have been thus impregnated , and brought forth humane births , as you may see abundantly testified in fortunius licetus ; it would be too long to produce instances . this opinion of gods creating souls , and putting them into bodies upon incestuous and adulterous coitions , how exceeding absurd and unbecoming the sanctity of the divine majesty it seemed to the churches of aethiopia , you may see in the history of jobus ludolphus . how intolerable therefore and execrable would this doctrine have appeared unto them , if they had thought of the prodigious fruits of successful buggery ? the words of ludolfus are these : perabsurdum esse si quis deum astrictum dicat pro adulterinis & incestuosis partubus animas quotidie novas creare . ●…st . aethiop . lib. . cap. . what would they then say of creating a new soul , for the womb of a beast bugger'd by a man , or of a woman bugger'd by a beast ! pag. . methinks that may be done at a cheaper rate , &c. how it may be done with more agreeableness to the goodness , wisdom , and justice of god , has been even now hinted by me , nor need i repeat it . pag. . it seems very incongruous and unhandsome , to suppose that god should create two souls for the supply of one monstrous body . and there is the same reason for several other monstrosities , which you may take notice of in fortunius licetus , lib. . cap. . one with seven humane heads and arms , and ox-feet ; others with mens bodies , but with a head the one of a goose , the other of an elephant , &c. in which it is a strong presumption humane souls lodged , but in several others certain . how does this consist with gods fresh creating humane souls pure and innocent , and putting them into bodies ? this is by the aforesaid anti-pre-existentiary at first answered onely by a wide gape or yawn of admiration . and indeed it would make any one stare and wonder how this can consist with gods immediately and freely intermeddling with the generation of men , as he did at first in the creation . for out of his holy hands all things come clean and neat . many little efforts he makes afterwards to salve this difficulty of monsters , but yet in his own judgment the surest is the last ; that god did purposely tye fresh created souls to these monstrous shapes , that they whose souls sped better , might humbly thank him . which is as wisely argued , as if one should first with himself take it for granted that god determines some men to monstrous debaucheries and impieties , and then fancy this the use of it , that the spectators of them may with better pretence than the pharisee , cry out , lord , we thank thee that we are not as these men are . there is nothing permitted by god , but it has its use some way or other ; and therefore it cannot be concluded , because that an event has this or that use , therefore god by his immediate and free omnipotence effected it . a pre-existentiary easily discerns that these monstrosities plainly imply that god does not create souls still for every humane coition , but that having pre-existed , they are left to the great laws of the universe and spirit of nature ; but yet dares not conclude that god by his free omnipotence determines those monstrous births , as serviceable as they seem for the evincing so noble a theory . pag. . that god on the seventh day rested from all his works . this one would think were an argument clear enough that he creates nothing since the celebration of the first seventh days rest . for if all his works are rested from , then the creation of souls ( which is a work , nay a master-piece amongst his works scarce inferiour to any ) is rested from also . but the above-mentioned opposer of pre-existence is not at a loss for an answer ; ( for his answers being slight , are cheap and easie to come by : ) he says therefore , that this supposeth onely that after that time he ceased from creating new species . a witty invention ! as if god had got such an easie habit by once creating the things he created in the six days , that if he but contained himself within those kinds of things , though he did hold on still creating them , that it was not work , but mere play or rest to him , in comparison of his former labour . what will not these men fancy , rather than abate of their prejudice against an opinion they have once taken a toy against ! when the author to the hebrews says , he that has entred into his rest , has ceased from his own works , as god ceased from his ; verily this is small comfort or instruction , if it were as this anti-pre-existentiary would have it : for if god ceased onely from creating new species , we may , notwithstanding our promised rest , be tyed to run through new instances of labours or sins , provided they be but of those kinds we experienced before . to any unprejudiced understanding , this sence must needs seem forced and unnatural , thus to restrain gods rest to the species of things , and to engage him to the dayly task of creating individuals . the whole aethiopian church is of another mind : qui animam humanam quotidiè non creari hoc argumento asserunt , quòd deus sexto die perfecerit totum opus creationis . see ludolfus in the place above-cited . chap. . pag. . since the images of objects are very small and inconsiderable in our brains , &c. i suppose he mainly relates to the objects of sight , whose chief , if not onely images , are in the fund of the eye ; and thence in vertue of the spirituality of our soul extended thither also , and of the due qualification of the animal spirits are transmitted to the perceptive of the soul within the brain . but how the bignesses and distances of objects are conveyed to our cognoscence , it would be too tedious to signifie here . see dr. h. moore 's enchiridion metaphysicum , cap. . pag. . were it not that our souls use a kind of geometry , &c. this alludes to that pretty conceit of des cartes in his dioptricks , the solidity of which i must confess i never understood . for i understand not but that if my soul should use any such geometry , i should be conscious thereof , which i do not find my self . and therefore i think those things are better understood out of that chapter of the book even now mentioned . pag. . and were the soul quite void of all such implicit notions , it would remain as senseless , &c. there is no sensitive perception indeed , without reflection ; but the reflection is an immediate attention of the soul to that which affects her , without any circumstance of notions intervening for enabling her for sensitive operations . but these are witty and ingenious conjectures , which the author by reading des cartes , or otherhow , might be encouraged to entertain . to all sensitive objects the soul is an abrasa tabula , but for moral and intellectual principles , their idea's or notions are essential to the soul. pag. : for sense teacheth no general propositions , &c. nor need it do any thing else but exhibit some particular object , which our understanding being an ectypon of the divine intellect necessarily , when it has throughly sisted it , concludes it to answer such a determinate idea eternally and unalterably one and the same , as it stands in the divine intellect , which cannot change ; and therefore that idea must have the same properties and respects for ever . but of this , enough here . it will be better understood by reading the discourse of truth , and the annotations thereon . pag. . but from something more sublime and excellent . from the divine or archetypal intellect , of which our understanding is the ectypon , as was said before . pag. . and so can onely transmit their natural qualities . they are so far from transmitting their moral pravities , that they transmit from themselves no qualities at all . for to create a soul , is to concreate the qualities or properties of it , not out of the creator , but out of nothing . so that the substance and all the properties of it are out of nothing . pag. . against the nature of an immaterial being , a chief property of which is to be indiscerpible . the evasion to the force of this argument by some anti-pre-existentiaries is , that it is to philosophize at too high a rate of confidence , to presume to know what the nature of a soul or spirit is . but for brevities sake , i will refer such answerers as these to dr. h. moore 's brief discourse of the true notion of a spirit , printed lately with saducismus triumphatus ; and i think he may be thence as sure that indiscerpibility is an essential property of a spirit , as that there are any spirits in the universe : and this methinks should suffice any ingenuous and modest opposer . but to think there is no knowledge but what comes in at our senses , is a poor , beggarly , and precarious principle , and more becoming the dotage of hobbianism , than men of clearer parts and more serene judgments . pag. . by separable emissions that pass from the flame , &c. and so set the wick and tallow on motion . but these separable emissions that pass from the flame of the lighted candle , pass quite away , and so are no part of the flame enkindled . so weak an illustration is this of what these traducters would have . chap. . pag. . which the divine piety and compassion hath set up again , that so , so many of his excellent creatures might not be lost and undone irrecoverably , but might act anew , &c. to this a more elegant pen and refined wit objects thus : now is it not highly derogatory to the infinite and unbounded wisdom of god , that he should detrude those souls which he so seriously designes to make happy , into a state so hazardous , wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt and defile themselves , and so make them more miserable here and to eternity hereafter ? a strange method of recovering this , to put them into such a fatal necessity of perishing : 't is but an odd contrivance for their restauration to happiness , to use such means to compass it which 't is ten thousand to one but will make them infinitely more miserable . this he objects in reference to what the author of lux orientalis writes , chap. . where he says , it is a thousand to one but souls detruded into these bodies will corrupt and desile themselves , and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter . and much he quotes to the same purpose out of the account of origen . where the souls great disadvantages to vertue and holiness , what from the strong inclinations of the body , and what from national customs & education in this terrestrial state , are lively set out with a most moving and tragical eloquence , to shew how unlikely it is that god should put innocent and immaculate souls of his own creation immediately , into such bodies , and so hard and even almost fatal condition of miscarrying . upon which this subtile anti-pre-existentiary : thus you see , saith he , what strong objections and arguments the pre-existentiaries urge with most noise and clamour , are against themselves . if therefore these phaenomena be inexplicable , without the origenian hypothesis , they are so too with it ; and if so , then the result of all is , that they are not so much arguments of pre-existence as aspersions of providence . this is smartly and surprizingly spoken . but let us consider more punctually the state of the matter . here then we are first to observe , how cunningly this shrewd antagonist conceals a main stroke of the supposition , viz. that the divine pity and compassion to lapsed souls , that had otherwise fallen into an eternal state of silence and death , had set up adam for their relief , and endued him with such a paradisiacal body of so excellent a constitution to be transmitted to all his posterity , and invesled him , in vertue of this , with so full power non peccandi , that if he and his posterity were not in an happy flourishing condition as to their eternal interest of holiness and vertue , it would be long of himself . and what could god do more correspondently to his wisdom and goodness , dealing with free agents , such as humane souls are , than this ? and the thing being thus stated , no objections can be brought against the hypothesis , but such as will invade the inviolable truths of faith and orthodox divinity . secondly , we are to observe , how this cunning objector has got these two pre-existentiaries upon the hip for their youthful flowers of rhetorick , when one says , it is hundreds to one ; the other , ten thousand to one , that souls will miscarry put into these disadvantages of the terrestrial state , by which no candid reader will understand any more , than that it is exceeding difficult for them to escape the pollutions of this lower world once incorporated into terrestrial bodies . but it being granted possible for them to emerge , this is a great grace and favour of the divine goodness to such peccant wretches , that they are brought out of the state of eternal silence and death , to try their fortunes once more , though incumbred with so great difficulties which the divine nemesis suffers to return upon them . that therefore they are at all in a condition of recovery , is from the goodness and mercy of god ; that their condition is so hard , from his justice , they having been so foully peccant . and his wisdom being only to contrive what is most agreeable to his mercy and justice , it is not at all derogatory to the infinite and unbounded wisdom of god thus to deal with lapsed souls . for though he does seriously intend to make them happy , yet it must be in a way correspondent to his justice as well as mercy . thirdly and lastly , besides that the spirit of the lord pervades the whole earth ready to assist the sincere ; there is moreover a mighty weight of mercy added in the revelation of our lord jesus christ to the world , so that the retriving of the souls of men out of their death and silence into this terrestrial state , in which there is these helps to the sincere , it is manifestly worthy the divine wisdom and goodness . for those it takes no effect with , ( they beginning the world again on this stage ) they shall be judged onely according to what they have done here , there being an eternal obliteration as well as oblivion of the acts of their pre-existent state ; but those that this merciful dispensation of god has taken any effect upon here , their sincere desires may grow in●…o higher accomplishments in the future state . which may something mitigate the honour of that seeming universal squalid estate of the sons of men upon earth . which in that it is so ill , is rightly imputed by both jews and christians and the divinest philosophers to a lapse , and to the mercy and grace of god that it is no worse . from whence it may appear , that that argument for pre-existence , that god does not put newly created innocent souls into such disadvantageous circumstances of a terrestrial incorporation , though partly out of mercy , partly out of justice , he has thought fit lapsed souls should be so disposed of , that this i say is no aspersion of divine providence . pag. . and now i cannot think of any place in the sacred volume more , that could make a tolerable plea against this hypothesis , &c. it is much that the ingenious author thought not of rom. . . [ for the children being not yet born , neither having done either good or evil , that the purpose of god according to election might stand , not of works , but of him that calleth . ] this is urged by anti-pre-existentiaries , as a notable place against pre-existence . for , say they , how could esau and jacob be said neither to have done good nor evil , if they pre-existed before they came into this world ? for if they pre-existed , they acted ; and if they acted , they being rational souls , they must have done either good or evil . this makes an handsome shew at first sight ; but if we consult gen. . we shall plainly see that this is spoke of jacob and esau yet strugling in the womb ; as it is said in this text , for the children being not yet born ; but strugling in the womb , as you may see in the other . which plainly therefore respects their actions in this life , upon which certainly the mind of st. paul was fix'd . as if he should have expresly said : for the children being not yet born , but strugling in the womb , neither having done either good or evil in this life as being still in the womb , it was said of them to rebeckah , the elder shall serve the younger . which sufficiently illustrates the matter in hand with st. paul ; that as jacob was preferred before esau in the womb , before either of them was born to act here on the earth , and that therefore done without any respect to their actions ; so the purpose of god touching his people should be of free election , not of works . that of zachary also , chap. . . i have heard alledged by some as a place on which no small stress may be laid . the lord is there said to be the former of the spirit of man within him . wherefore they argue , if the spirit of man be formed within him , it did never pre-exist without him . but we answer , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and then the sence is easie and natural , that the spirit that is in man , god is the former or creator of it . but this text defines nothing of the time of forming it . there are several other texts alledged , but it is so easie to answer them , and would take up so much time and room , that i think fit to omit them , remembring my scope to be short annotations , not a tedious commentary . pag. . mr. ben israel in his problems de creatione assures us , that pre-existence was the common belief , &c. that this was the common opinion of the wiser men amongst the jews , r. menasse ben israel himself told me at london with great freedom and assurance , and that there was a constant tradition thereof ; which he said in some sence was also true concerning the trinity , but that more obscure . but this of pre-existence is manifest up and down in the writings of that very ancient and learned jew philo judaeus ; as also something toward a trinity , if i remember aright . chap. . pag. . we should doubtless have retained some remembrance of that condition . and the rather , as one ingeniously argues , because our state in this life is a state of punishment . upon which he concludes , that if the calamities of this life were inflicted upon us only as a punishment of sins committed in another , providence would have provided some effectual means to preserve them in our memories . and therefore , because we find no remainders of any such records in our minds , 't is , says he , sufficient evidence to all sober and impartial inquirers , that our living and sinning in a former state is as false as inevident . but to this it may be answered , that the state we are put in , is not a state only of punishment , but of a merciful trial ; and it is sufficient that we find our selves in a lapsed and sinful condition , our own consciences telling us when we do amiss , and calling upon us to amend . so that it is needless particularly to remember our faults in the other world , but the time is better spent in faithfully endeavouring to amend our selves in this , and to keep our selves from all faults of what nature soever . which is a needless thing our memory should discover to us to have been of old committed by us , when our consciences urge to us that they are never to be committed ; and the laws of holy law-givers and divine instructers , or wise sages over all the world , assist also our conscience in her office . so that the end of gods justice by these inward and outward monitors , and by the cross and afflicting rancounters in this present state , is to be attained to , viz. the amendment of delinquents if they be not refractory . and we were placed on this stage as it were to begin the world again , so as if we had not existed before . whence it seems meet , that there should be an utter obliteration of all that is past , so as not to be able by memory to connect the former life and this together . the memory whereof , if we were capable of it , would be inconsistent with the orderly proceedings of this , and overdoze us and make us half moped to the present scene of things . whenas the divine purpose seems to be , that we should also experience the natural pleasures and satisfactions of this life , but in an orderly and obedient way , keeping to the prescribed rules of virtue and holiness . and thus our faithfulness being exercised 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in those things which are more estranged from our nobler and diviner nature , god may at last restore us to what is more properly our own . but in the mean time , that saying which the poet puts in the mouth of jupiter , touching the inferiour deities , may not misbeseem the mercy and wisdom of the true god concerning lapsed souls incorporate into terrestrial bodies . has quoniam coeli nondum dignamur honore , quas dedimus certè terras habitare sinamus . let them not be distracted betwixt a sensible remembrance of the joys and glories of our exteriour heaven above , and the present fruition of things below , but let them live an holy and heavenly life upon earth , exercising their graces and vertues in the use and enjoyment of these lower earthly objects , till i call them up again to heaven , where , after this long swoond they are fallen into , they will more seasonably remember their former paradisiacal state upon its recovery , and reagnize their ancient home . wherefore if the remembring or forgetting of the former state depend absolutely upon the free contrivance of the divine wisdom , goodness , and justice , as this ingenious opposer seems to suppose , i should even upon that very point of fitness conceive that an utter oblivion of the former state is interwoven into the fate and nature of lapsed souls by a divine nemesis , though we do not conceive explicitely the manner how . and yet the natural reasons the author of lux orientalis produces in the sequel of his discourse , seem highly probable . for first , as we had forgot some lively dream we dreamt but last night , unless we had met with something in the day of a peculiar vertue to remind us of it , so we meeting with nothing in this lower stage of things that lively resembles those things in our former state , and has a peculiar fitness to rub up our memory , we continue in an utter oblivion of them . as suppose a man was lively entertain'd in his sleep with the pleasure of dreaming of a fair crystal river , whose banks were adorned with trees and flags in the flower , and those large flies with blue and golden-colour'd bodies , and broad thin wings curiously wrought and transparent , hovering over them , with birds also singing on the trees , sun and clouds above , and sweet breezes of air , and swans in the river with their wings sometimes lifted up like sails against the wind . thus he passed the night , thinks of no such thing in the morning , but rising goes about his occasions . but towards evening a servant of a friend of his presents him with a couple of swans from his master . the sight of which swans striking his perceptive as sensibly as those in his dream , and being one of the most extraordinary and eximious objects of his night-vision , presently reminds him of the whole scene of things represented in his sleep . but neither sun , nor clouds , nor trees , nor any such ordinary thing could in any likelihood have reminded him of his dream . and besides , it was the lively resemblance betwixt the swans he saw in his sleep , and those he saw waking , that did so effectually rub up his memory . the want therefore of such occurrences in this life to remind us of the passages of the former , is a very reasonable account why we remember nothing of the former state . but here the opposers of pre-existence pretend that the joyous and glorious objects in the other state do so pierce and transport the soul , and that she was inured to them so long , that though there were nothing that resembled them here , the impression they make must be indelible , and that it is impossible she should forget them . and moreover , that there is a similitude betwixt the things of the upper world and the lower , which therefore must be an help to memory . but here , as touching the first , they do not consider what a weapon they have given into my hand against themselves . for the long inuredness to those celestial objects abates the piercingness of their transport ; and before they leave those regions , according to the platonick or origenian hypothesis , they grow cooler to such enjoyments : so that all the advantages of that piercing transport for memory , are lost . and besides , in vertue of that piercing transport , no soul can call into memory what she enjoyed formerly , but by recalling herself into such a transport , which her terrestrial vehicle makes her uncapable of . for the memory of external transactions is sealed upon us by some passionate corporeal impress in conjunction with them ( which makes them whip boys sometimes at the boundaries of their parish , that they may better remember it when they are old men ; ) which impress if it be lost , the memory of the thing it self is lost . and we may be sure it is lost in souls incorporate in terrestrial vehicles , they having lost their aereal and celestial , and being fatally incapacitated so much as to conceit how they were affected by the external objects of the other world , and so to remember how they felt them . and therefore all the descriptions that men of a more aethereal and entheous temper adventure on in this life , are but the roamings of their minds in vertue of their constitution towards the nature of the heavenly things in general , not a recovery of the memory of past experience ; this state not affording so lively a representment of the pathos that accompanied the actual sense of those things , as to make us think that we once really enjoyed them before . that is onely to be collected by reason ; the noble exercise of which faculty , in the discovering of this arcanum of our pre-existence , had been lost , if it could have been detected by a compendious memory . but if ever we recover the memory of our former state , it will be when we are re-entred into it ; we then being in a capacity of being really struck with the same pathos we were before , in vertue whereof the soul may remember this was her pristine condition . and therefore to answer to the second , though there may be some faintness of resemblance betwixt the things of the other state and this , yet other peculiarities also being required , and the former sensible pathos to be recovered , which is impossible in this state , it is likewise impossible for us to remember the other in this . the second argument of the author for the proving the unlikeliness of our remembring the other state is , the long intermission and discontinuance from thinking of those things . for 't is plain that such discontinuance or desuetude bereaves us of the memory of such things as we were acquainted with in this world. insomuch as if an ancient man should read the verses or themes he made when he was a school-boy , without his name subscribed to them , though he pumpt and sweat for them when he made them , could not tell they were his own . how then should the soul remember what she did or observ'd many hundreds , nay thousands of years ago ? but yet our authors antagonist has the face to make nothing of this argument neither : because , forsooth , it is not so much the desuetude of thinking of one thing , but the thinking of others , that makes us forget that one thing . what a shuffle is this ! for if the soul thought on that one thing as well as on other things , it would remember it as well as them . therefore it is not the thinking of other things , but the not thinking of that , that makes it forgotten . usus prompt●…s facit , as in general , so in particular . and therefore disuse in any particular slackens at first , and after abolishes the readiness of the mind to think thereof . whence sleepiness and sluggishness is the mother of forgetfulness , because it disuses the soul from thinking of things . and as for those seven chronical sleepers that slept in a cave from decius his time to the reign of theodosius junior , i dare say it would have besotted them without a miracle , and they would have rose out of their sleep no more wise than a wisp ; i am sure not altogether so wise as this awkward arguer for memory of souls in their pre-existent state after so hugely long a discontinuance from it . but for their immediately coming out of an aethereal vehicle into a terrestrial , and yet forgetting their former state , what example can be imagined of such a thing , unless that of the messias , who yet seems to remember his former glorious condition , and to pray that he may return to it again ? though for my part i think it was rather divine inspiration than memory , that enabled him to know that matter , supposing his soul did pre-exist . our authors third and last argument to prove that lapsed souls in their terrestrial condition forget their former state , is from observation how deteriorating changes in this earthly body spoils or quite destroys the memory , the soul still abiding therein ; such as . casualties , diseases , and old age , which changes the tenour of the spirits , and makes them less useful for memory , as also 't is likely the brain it self . wherefore there being a more deteriorating change to the soul in coming into an earthly body , instead of an aereal or aethereal , the more certainly will her memory of things which she experienced in that state , be washed out or obliterated in this . here our authors antagonist answers , that though changes in body may often weaken , and sometimes utterly spoil the memory of things past , yet it is not necessary that the souls changing of her body should therefore do so , because it is not so injurious to her faculties . which if it were , not onely our memory , but reason also should have been casheered and loft by our migration out of those vehicles we formerly actuated , into these we now enliven ; but that still remaining sound and entire , it is a signe that our memory would do so too , if we had pre-existed in other bodies before , and had any thing to remember . and besides , if the bare translocation of our souls out of one body into another , would destroy the memory of things the soul has experienced , it would follow , that when people by death are summoned hence into the other state , that they shall be quite bereaved of their memory , and so carry neither applause nor remorse of conscience into the other world ; which is monstrously absurd and impious . this is the main of his answer , and most what in his own words . but of what small force it is , we shall now discover , and how little pertinent to the business . for first , we are to take notice that the deteriorating change in the body , or deteriorating state by change of bodies , is understood of a debilitative , diminutive , or privative , not depravative deterioration ; the latter of which may be more injurious to the faculties of the soul , though in the same body , such a deteriorating change causing phrensies and outragious madness . but as sor diminutive or privative deterioration by change , the soul by changing her aereal vehicle for a terrestrial , is ( comparing her latter state with her former ) much injured in her faculties or operations of them ; all of them are more slow and stupid , and their aptitude to exert the same phantasms of things that occurred to them in the other state , quite taken away , by reason of the heavy and dull , though orderly constitution of the terrestrial tenement ; which weight and stupor utterly indisposes the soul to recall into her mind the scene of her former state , this load perpetually swaying down her thoughts to the objects of this . nor does it at all follow , because reason is not lost , therefore memory , if there were any such thing as pre-existence , would still abide . for the universal principles of reason and morality are essential to the soul , and cannot be obliterated , no not by any death : but the knowledge of any particular external objects is not at all essential to the soul , nor consequently the memory of them ; and th●…refore the soul in the state of silence being stript of them , cannot recover them in her incorporation into a terrestrial body . but her reason , with the general principles thereof , being essential to her , she can , as well as this state will permit , ex●…rcise them upon the objects of this scene of the earth and visible world , so far as it is discovered by her outward senses , she looking out at those windows of this her earthly prison , to contemplate them . and she has the faculty and exercise of memory still , in such a sense as she has of sensitive perception , whose objects she does remember , being yet to all former impresses in the other state a mere abrasa tabula . and lastly , it is a mere mistake of the opposer , or worse , that he makes the pre-existentiaries to impute the loss of memory in souls of their former state , merely to their coming into other bodies ; when it is not bare change of bodies , but their descent into worser bodies more dull and obstupifying , to which they impute this loss of memory in lapsed souls . this is a real death to them , according to that ancient aenigm of that abstruse sage , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we live their ●…eath , namely of separate souls , but are dead to their life . but the changing of our earthly body for an aereal or aethereal , this is not death , but reviviscency , in which all the energies of the soul are ( not depressed , but ) exalted , and our memory with the rest quickened ; as it was in esdras after he had drunk down that cup ofsered to him by the angel , full of liquor like fire , which filled his heart with understanding , and strengthned his memory , as the text says . thus we see how all objections against the three reasons of lapsed souls losing the memory of the things of the other state , vanish into smoak . wheresore they every one of them single being so sound , all three put together methinks should not fail of convincing the most refractory of this truth , that though the soul did pre-exist and act in another state , yet she may utterly forget all the scenes thereof in this . pag. . now if the reasons why we lose the remembrance of our former life be greater , &c. and that they are so , does appear in our answer to the objections made against the said reasons , if the reader will consider them . pag. . and thereby have removed all prejudices , &c. but there is yet one reason against pre-existence which the ingenious author never thought of , urged by the anti-pre-existentiaries , namely , that it implies the rest of the planets peopled with mankind , it being unreasonable to think that all souls descended in their lapse to this onely earth of ours . and if there be lapsed souls there , how shall they be recovered ? shall christ undergo another and another death for them ? but i believe the ingenious author would have looked upon this but as a mean and trifling argument , there being no force in any part thereof . for why may not this earth be the onely hospital , nosocomium or coemeterium , speaking platonically , of sinfully lapsed souls ? and then suppose others lapsed in other planets , what need christ die again for them , when one drop of his bloud is sufficient to save myriads of worlds ? whence it may seem a pity there is not more worlds than this earth to be redeemed by it . nor is it necessary they should historically know it . and if it be , the eclipse of the sun at his passion by some inspired prophets might give them notice of it , and describe to them as orderly an account of the redemption , as moses does of the creation , though he stood not by while the world was framed , but it was revealed to him by god. and lastly , it is but a rash and precarious position , to say that the infinite wisdom of god has no more ways than one to save lapsed souls . it is sufficient that we are assured that this is the onely way for the saving of the sons of adam ; and these are the fixt bounds of revealed truth in the holy scripture which appertains to us inhabitants on earth . but as for the oeconomy of his infinite wisdom in the other planets , if we did but reflect upon our absolute ignorance thereof , we would have the discretion not to touch upon that topick , unless we intended to make our selves ridiculous , while we endeavour to make others so . chap. . pag. . now as the infinite goodness of the deity obligeth him always to do good , so by the same to do that which is best , &c. to elude the force of this chief argument of the pre-existentiaries , an ingenious opposer has devised a way which seems worth our considering , which is this ; viz. by making the idea of god to consist mainly in dominion and soveraignty , the scriptures representing him under no other notion than as the supream lord and soveraign of the universe . wherefore nothing is to be attributed to him that enterferes with the uncontroulableness of his dominion . and therefore , says he , they that assert goodness to be a necessary agent that cannot but do that which is best , directly supplant and destroy all the rights of his power and dominion . nay , he adds afterwards , that this notion of gods goodness is most apparently inconsistent , not onely with his power and dominion , but with all his other moral perfections . and for a further explication of his mind in this matter , he adds afterwards , that the divine will is indued with the highest kind of liberty , as it imports a freedom not onely from foreign violence , but also from inward necessity : for spontaneity , or immunity from coaction , without indifferency , carries in it as great necessity as those motions that proceed from violence or mechanism . from whence he concludes , that the divine will cannot otherwise be determined than by its own intrinsick energie . and lastly , forasmuch as no courtisie can oblige , but what is received from one that had a power not to bestow them , if god necessarily acted according to his goodness , and not out of mere choice and liberty of will , there were no thanks nor praise due to him ; which therefore would take away the duties of religion . this is the main of his hypothesis , whereby he would defeat the force of this argument for the pre-existence of souls , taken from the goodness of god. which this hypothesis certainly would do , if it were true ; and therefore we will briefly examine it . first therefore i answer , that though the scriptures do frequently represent god as the lord and soveraign of the universe , yet it does not conceal his other attributes of goodness and mercy , and the like . but that the former should be so much inculcated , is in reference to the begetting in the people awe and obedience to him . but it is an invalid consequence , to draw from hence that the idea of god does mainly consist in dominion and soveraignty ; which abstracted from his other attributes of wisdom and goodness , would be a very black and dark representation of him , and such as this ingenious writer could not himself contemplate without aversation and horror . how then can the idea of god chiefly consist in this ? it is the most terrifying indeed , but not the most noble and accomplishing part in the idea of the deity . this soveraignty then is such as is either bounded or not bounded by any other attributes of god. if bounded by none , then he may do as well unwisely as wisely , unjustly as justly . if bounded by wisdom and justice , why is it bounded by them , but that it is better so to be than otherwise ? and goodness being as essential to god as wisdom and justice , why may not his soveraignty be bounded by that as well as by the other , and so he be bound from himself of himself to do as well what is best as what is better . this consists with his absolute soveraignty , as well as the other . and indeed what can be absolute soveraignty in an intelligent being , if this be not ? viz. fully and entirely to follow the will and inclinations of its own nature , without any check or controul of any one touching those over whom he rules . whence , in the second place , it appears that the asserting that gods goodness is a necessary agent ( in such a sense as gods wisdom and justice are , which can do nothing but what is wise and just ) the asserting , i say , that it cannot but do that which is the best , does neither directly nor indirectly supplant or destroy any rights of his power or dominion , forasmuch as he does fully and plenarily act according to his own inclinations and will touching those that are under his dominion . but that his will is always inclined or determined to what is best , it is the prerogative of the divine nature to have no other wills nor inclinations but such . and as for that in the third place , that this notion of gods goodness is inconsistent with all his other moral perfections , i say , that it is so far from being inconsistent with them , that they cannot subsist without it , as they respect the dealings of god with his creatures . for what a kind of wisdom or justice would that be that tended to no good ? but i suspect his meaning is by moral perfections , perfections that imply such a power of doing or not doing , as is in humane actions ; which if it be not allowed in god , his perfections are not moral . and what great matter is it if they be not , provided they be as they are and ought to be , divine ? but to fancy moral actions in god , is to admit a second kind of anthropomorphitism , and to have unworthy conceits of the divine nature . when it was just and wise for god to do so or so , and the contrary to do otherwise , had he a freedom to decline the doing so ? then he had a freedom to do unjustly and unwisely . and yet in the fourth place he contends for the highest kind of liberty in the divine will , such as imports a freedom not onely from forreign violence , but also from inward necessity , as if the divine will could be no otherwise determined , than by its own intrinsick energie , as if it willed so because it willed so ; which is a sad principle . and yet i believe this learned writer will not stick to say , that god cannot ●…ye , cannot condemn myriads of innocent souls to eternal torments . and what difference betwixt impossibility and necessity ? for impossibility it self is onely a necessity of not doing ; which is here internal , arising from the excellency and absolute perfection of the divine nature . which is nothing like mechanism for all that ; forasmuch as it is from a clear understanding of what is best , and an unbyassed will , which will most certainly follow it , nor is determined by its own intrinsick energy . that it is otherwise with us , is our imperfection . and lastly , that beneficence does not oblige the receiver of it to either praise or thanksgiving when it is received from one that is so essentially good , and constantly acts according to that principle , when due occasion is offered , as if it were as absurd as to give thanks to the sun for shining when he can do no otherwise ; i say , the case is not alike , because the sun is an inanimate being , and has neither understanding nor will to approve his own action in the exerting of it . and he being but a creature , if his shining depended upon his will , it is a greater perfection than we can be assured would belong to him , that he would unfailingly administer light to the world with such a steadiness of will , as god sustains the creation . undoubtedly all thanks and praise is due to god from us , although he be so necessarily good , that he could not but create us and provide for us ; forasmuch as he has done this for our sakes merely ( he wanting nothing ) not for his own . suppose a rich christian so inured to the works of charity , that the poor were as certain of getting an alms from him , as a traveller is to quench his thirst at a publick spring near the highway ; would those that received alms from him think themselves not obliged to thanks ? it may be you will say , they will thank him , that they may not forfeit his favour another time . which answer discovers the spring of this misconceit , which seems founded in self-love , as if all duty were to be resolved into that , and as if there were nothing owing to another , but what implied our own profit . but though the divine goodness acts necessarily ▪ yet it does not blindly , but according to the laws of decorum and justice ; which those that are unthankful to the deity , may find the smart of . but i cannot believe the ingenious writer much in earnest in these points , he so expresly declaring what methinks is not well consistent with them . for his very words are these : god can never act contrary to his necessary and essential properties , as because he is essentially wise , just and holy , he can do nothing that is foolish , unjust , and wicked . here therefore i demand , are we not to thank him and praise him for his actions of wisdom , justice , and holiness , though they be necessary ? and if justice , wisdom , and holiness , be the essential properties of god , according to which he does necessarily act and abstain from acting , why is not his goodness ? when it is expresly said by the wisdom of god incarnate , none is good save one , that is god. which must needs be understood of his essential goodness . which therefore being an essential property as well as the rest , he must necessarily act according to it . and when he acts in the scheme of anger and severity , it is in the behalf of goodness ; and when he imparts his goodness in lesser measures as well as in greater , it is for the good of the whole , or of the universe . if all were eye , where were the hearing , &c. as the apostle argues ? so that his wisdom moderates the prompt outflowings of his goodness , that it may not outflow so , but that in the general it is for the best . and therefore it will follow , that if the pre-existence of souls comply with the wisdom , justice , and holiness of god , that ▪ none of these restrain his prompt and parturient goodness , that it must have caused humane souls to pre-exist or exist so soon as the spirits of angels did . and he must have a strange quick-sightedness that can discern any clashing of that act of goodness with any of the abovesaid attributes . chap. . pag. . god never acts by mere will or groundless humour , &c. we men have unaccountable inclinations in our irregular and depraved composition , have blind lusts or desires to do this or that , and it is our present ease and pleasure to fulfil them ; and therefore we fancy it a priviledge to be able to execute these blind inclinations of which we can give no rational account , but that we are pleased by fulfilling them . but it is against the purity , sanctity , and perfection of the divine nature , to conceive any such thing in him ; and therefore a weakness in our judgments to fancy so of him , like that of the anthropomorphites , that imagined god to be of humane shape . pag. . that god made all things for himself . it is ignorance and ill nature that has made some men abuse this text to the proving that god acts out of either an humourous or selfish principle , as if he did things merely to please himself as self , not as he is that soveraign unself-inreressed goodness , and perfect rectitude , which ought to be the measure of all things . but the text implies no such matter ▪ for if you make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a compound of a preposition and pronoun , that so it may signifie [ for himself ] which is no more than propter se , it then will import that he made all things to satisfie his own will and pleasure , whose will and pleasure results from the richness of his eternal goodness and benignity of nature , which is infinite and ineffable , provided always that it be moderated by wisdom , justice , and decorum . for from hence his goodness is so stinted or modified , that though he has made all things for his own will and pleasure who is infinite goodness and benignity , yet there is a day of evil for the wicked , as it follows in the text , because they have not walked answerably to the goodness that god has offered them ; and therefore their punishment is in behalf of abused goodness . and bayns expresly interprets this text thus : universa propter seipsum fecit dominus ; that is , says he , propter bonitatem suam ; juxta illud augustini , de doctrina christiana , quia bonus est deus , sumus & in quantum sumus boni sumus . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be a compound of a participle and a pronoun , and then it may signifie [ for them that answer him ] that is , walk anserably to his goodness which he affords them , or [ for them that obey him ] either way it is very good sence . and then in opposition to these , it is declared , that the wicked , that is , the disobedient or despisers of his goodness , he has ( not made them wicked , but they having made themselves so ) appointed them for the day of evil. for some such verb is to be supplied as is agreeable to the matter , as in that passage in the psalms ; the sun shall not burn thee by day , neither the moon by night . where [ burn ] cannot be repeated , but some other more suitable verb is to be supplied . chap. . pag. . since all other things are inferiour to the good of being . this i suppose is to be understood in such a sence as that saying in job , skin for skin , and all that a man has , will he give for his life . otherwise the condition of being may be such , as it were better not to be at all , whatever any dry-fancied metaphysicians may dispute to the contrary . pag. . indeed they may be morally immutable and illapsable ; but this is grace , not nature , &c. not unless the divine wisdom has essentially interwoven it into the natural constitution of our souls , that as after such a time of the exercise of their plaistick on these terrestrial bodies , they , according to the course of nature , emerge into a plain use of their reason , when for a time they little differed from brutes ; so after certain periods of time well improved to the perfecting their nature in the sense and adherence to divine things , there may be awakened in them such a divine plastick faculty , as i may so speak , as may eternally fix them to their celestial or angelical vehicles , that they shall never relapse again . which faculty may be also awakened by the free grace of the omnipotent more maturely : which if it be , grace and nature conspire together to make a soul everlastingly happy . which actual immutability does no more change the species of a soul , than the actual exercise of reason does after the time of her stupour in infancy and in the womb. pag. . i doubt not but that it is much better for rational creatures , &c. namely , such as we experience our humane souls to be . but for such kind of intellectual creatures as have nothing to do with matter , they best understand the priviledges of their own state , and we can say nothing of them . but for us under the conduct of our faithful and victorious captain , the soul of the promised messias , through many conflicts and tryals to emerge out of this lapsed state , and regain again the possession of true holyness and vertue , and therewith the kingdom of heaven with all its beauty and glories , will be such a gratification to us , that we had never been capable of such an excess thereof , had we not experienced the evils of this life , and the vain pleasures of it , and had the remembrance of the endearing sufferings of our blessed saviour , of his aids and supports , and of our sincere and conscientious adhering to him , of our conflicts and victories to be enrolled in the eternal records of the other world. pag. . wherefore as the goodness of god obligeth him not to make every planet a fixt star , or every star a sun , &c. in all likelihood , as galilaeus had first observed , every fixed star is a sun. but the comparison is framed according to the conceit of the vulgar . a thing neither unusual with , nor misbecoming philosophers . pag. . for this were to tye him to contradictions , viz. to turn one specifical form or essence into another . matter indeed may receive several modifications , but is still real matter , nor can be turned into a spirit ; and so spirits specifically different , are untransmutable one into another , according to the distinct idea's in the eternal intellect of god. for else it would imply that their essential properties were not essential properties , but loose adventitious accidents , and such as the essence and substance of such a spirit , could subsist as well without as with them , or as well with any others as with these . pag. . that we should have been made peccable and liable to defection . and this may the more easily be allowed , because this defection is rather the affecting of a less good , than any pursuing of what is really and absolutely evil . to cavil against providence for creating a creature of such a double capacity , seems as unreasonable as to blame her for making zooph●…ton's , or rather amphibion's . and they are both to be permitted to live according to the nature which is given them . for to make a creature fit for either capacity , and to tye him up to one , is for god to do repugnantly to the workmanship of his own hands . and how little hurt there is done by experiencing the things of either element to souls that are reclaimable , has been hinted above . but those that are wilfully obstinate , and do despite to the divine goodness , it is not at all inconsistent with this goodness , that they bear the smart of their obstinacy , as the ingenious author argues very well . chap. . pag. . have asserted it to be impossible in the nature of the thing , &c. and this is the most solid and unexceptionable answer to this objection , that it is a repugnancy in nature , that this visible world that consists in the motion and succession of things , should be either ab aeterno , or insnite in extension . this is made ou●… clearly and amply in dr. h. moore 's enchiridion metaphysicum , cap. . which is also more briefly toucht upon in his advertisements upon mr. jos glanvil's letter written to him upon the occasion of the stirs at tedworth , and is printed with the second edition of his saducismus triumphatus . we have now seen the most considerable objections against this argument from the goodness of god for proving the pre-existence of souls , produced and answered by our learned author . but because i find some others in an impugner of the opinion of pre-existence urged with great confidence and clamour , i think it not amiss to bring them into view also , after i have taken notice of his acknowledgment of the peculiar strength of this topick , which he does not onely profess to be in truth the strongest that is made use of , but seems not at all to envy it its strength , while he writes thus . that god is infinitely good , is a position as true as himself ; nor can he that is furnished with the reason of a man , offer to dispute it . goodness constitutes his very deity , making him to be himself : for could he be arayed with all his other attributes separate and abstract from this , they would be so f●…r from denominating him a god , that he would be but a prodigious fiend , and plenipotentiary devil this is something a rude and uncourtly ass●…veration , and unluck●…y div●…on of the godhead into two parts , and calling one part a devil . but it is not to be imputed to any impiety in the author of no-pre-existence , but to the roughness and boarishness of his style , the texture whereof is not onely fustian , but over-often hard and stiff buckram . he is not content to deny his assent to an opinion , but he must give it disgraceful names . as in his epistle to the reader , this darling opinion of the greatest and divinest sages of the world visiting of late the studies of some of more than ordinary wit and learning , he compares it to a bug and sturdy mendicant , that pretends to be some person of quality ; but he like a skilful beadle of beggars , lifting up the skirts of her veil , as his phrase is , shews her to be a counterfeit . how this busie beadle would have behaved himself , if he had had the opportunity of lifting up the skirts of moses's veil when he had descended the mount , i know not . i dare not undertake for him , but that according to the coarsness of his phancy he would have mistaken that lucid spirit shining through the skin of moses's face , for some fiery fiend , as he has somewhere the spirit of nature for an hobgobling . but there is no pleasure in insisting upon the rudenesses of his style ; he is best where he is most unlike himself , as he is here in the residue of his description of the divine goodness . 't is goodness , says he , that is the head and glory of gods perfect essence ; and therefore when moses importuned him for a vision of his glory , he engaged to display his goodness to him . could a man think that one that had engaged thus far for the infiniteness of gods goodness , for its headship over the other attributes , for its glory above the rest , nay for its constitutiveness of the very deity , as if this were the onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or god himself , the rest of him divided from this , a prodigious fiend , or plenipotentiary devil , should prove the author of no-pre-existence a very contradiction to this declaration ? for to be able to hold no-pre-existence , he must desert the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of god , and betake himself to the devil-part of him , as he has rudely called it , to avoid this pregnant proof for pre-existence taken from the infinite goodness of god. and indeed he has pickt out the very worst of that black part of god to serve his turn , and that is self will in the worst sence . otherwise goodness making god to be himself , if it were his true and genuine self-will , it were the will of his infinite goodness , and so would necessarily imply pre-existence . but to avoid the dint of this argument , he declares in the very same section for the supremacy of the will over the goodness of the divine nature . which is manifestly to contradict what he said before , that goodness is the head and glory of gods perfect essence . for thus will must have a supremacy over the head of the deity . so that there will be an head over an head , to make the god-head a monster . and what is most insufferable of all , that he has chosen an head out of the devil-part of the deity , to use his own rude expression , to controul and lord it over what is the onely god himself , the rest a fiend separate from this , according to his own acknowledgment . these things are so infinitely absurd , that one would think that he could have no heart to go about to prove them ; and yet he adventures on it , and we shall briefly propose and answer what he produceth . and this supremacy of the will , saith he , over the goodness of the divine nature , may be made out both by scripture and other forcible evidences . the scriptures are three ; the first , psal. . . whatsoever the lord pleased , that did he in heaven , and in the earth , and in the seas , and in all deep places . now if we remember but who this lord is , viz. he whom goodness makes to be himself , we may easily be assured what pleased him , namely , that which his wisdom discerned to be the best to be done ; and therefore it is very right , that whatsoever he pleased he should do throughout the whole universe . the second place is mat. . . is it not lawful for me to do what i will with mine own ? yes i trow , every one must acknowledge that god has an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( for the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the original ) to dispose of what is his own ; and indeed all is his . no one has either a right or power to controul him . but this does not prove that he ever disposes of any thing otherwise than according to his wisdom and goodness . if his goodness be ever limited , it is limited by his wisdom , but so then as discerning such a limitation to be for the best . so that the measure of wisdoms determination is still goodness , the only head in the divine nature , to which all the rest is subordinate . for that there are different degrees of the communication of the divine goodness in the universe , is for the good of the whole . it is sufficient to hint these things ; it would require a volume to enlarge upon them . and then for the last place , exod. . . i will be gracious to whom i will be gracious . this onely implies that he does pro suo jure , and without any motive from any one but himself , communicate more of his goodness to some men or nations than others . but that his wisdom has not discovered this to be best for the whole constitution of things , i challenge any one to prove . but of this we shall have occasion to speak more afterward . these are the scriptures . the other forcible evidences are these : the first , the late production of the world. the second , the patefaction of the law but to one single people , namely , the jews . the third , the timing the messias's nativity , and bringing it to pass , not in the worlds infancy or adolescence , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , heb. . . in its declining age. the fourth , the perpetuity of hell , and interminableness of those tortures which after this life shall incessantly vex the impious . the fifth and last , god 's not perpetuating the station of pre-existent souls , and hindering them from lapsing into these regions of sin and death . these he pretends to be forcible evidences of the soveraignty of gods will over his goodness , forasmuch as if the contrary to all these had been , it had been much more agreeable to the goodness of god. as for the first of these forcible arguments , we have disarmed the strength thereof already , by intimating that the world could not be ab aeterno . and if it could not be ab aeterno , but must commence on this side of eternity , and be of finite years , i leave to the opposer to prove that it has not been created as soon as it could be ; and that is sufficient to prove that its late production is not inconsistent with that principle , that gods goodness always is the measure of his actions . for suppose the world of as little continuance as you will , if it was not ab aeterno , it was once of as little ; and how can we discern but that this is that very time which seems so little to us ? as for the second , which seems to have such force in it , that he appeals to any competent judge , if it had not been infinitely better that god should have apertly dispensed his ordinances to all mankind , than have committed them onely to israel in so private and clancular a manner ; i say , it is impossible for any one to be assured that it is at all better . for first , if this priviledge which was peculiar , had been a favour common to all , it had lost its enforcement that it had upon that lesser number . secondly , it had had also the less surprizing power with it upon others that were not jews , who might after converse with that nation , and set a more high price upon the truths they had travelled for , and were communicated to them from that people . thirdly , the nature of the thing was not fitted for the universality of mankind , who could not be congregated together to see the wonders wrought by moses , and receive the law with those awful circumstances from mount sinai or any mount else . fourthly , all things happened to them in types , and themselves were a type of the true israel of god to be redeemed out of their captivity under sin and satan , which was worse than any aegyptian servitude : wherefore it must be some peculiar people which must be made such a type , not the whole world. fifthly , considering the great load of the ceremonial law which came along with other more proper priviledges of the jews , setting one against another , and considering the freedom of other nations from it , unless they brought any thing like it upon themselves , the difference of their conditions will rather seem several modifications of the communicated goodness of god to his creatures , than the neglecting of any : forasmuch as , sixthly and lastly , though all nations be in a lapsed condition , yet there are the reliques of the eternal law of life in them . and that things are no better with any of them than they are , that is a thousand times more rationally resolved into their demerits in their pre-existent state than into the bare will of god , that he will have things for many ages thus squalid and forlorn , merely because he will. which is a womans reason , and which to conceive to belong to god , the author of no-pre-existence has no reason , unless he will alleadge that he was styled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the ancients for this very cause . wherefore the divine nemesis lying upon the lapsed souls of men in this terrestrial state , whose several delinquencies in the other world and the degrees thereof god alone knows , and according to his wisdom and justice disposes of them in this : it is impossible for any one that is not half crazed in his intellectuals , to pretend that any acts of providence that have been since this stage of the earth was erected , might have been infinitely better otherwise than they have been , or indeed better at all . power , wisdom , goodness , sure did frame this universe , and still guide the same ; but thoughts from passion sprung , deceive vain mortals : no man can contrive a better course than what 's been run since the first circuit of the sun. this poetical rapture has more solid truth in it than the dry dreams and distorted fancies , or chimerical metamorphoses of earthly either philosophers or theologs , that prescinding the rest of the godhead from his goodness , make that remaining part a foul fiend or devil ; and yet almost with the same breath pronounce the will of this devil of their own making , which is the most poysonous part of him , to have a supremacy o●…er the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , over the divine goodness ; which makes god to be himself , that is , to be god , and not a plenipotentiary devil . wherefore we see from these few small hints , ( for it were an infinite argument fully to prosecute ) how feeble or nothing forcible this second evidence is . now for the third evidence , the timing of the messiah's nativity , that it was not in the infancy of the world , but rather in its declining age , or in the latter times . in which times the ancient of days , according to his counsel and purpose , ( which the eternal wisdom that was to be incarnate assented and subscribed to ) sent his son into the world , the promised messiah . this did the ancient of days and the eternal wisdom agree upon . but oh the immense priviledge of tou●…h and confidence ! the author of no-pre existence says , it had been better by far , if they had agreed upon the infancy of the world. as if this young divine were wiser than the ancient of days , or the eternal wisdom itself . i , but he will modestly reply . that he acknowledges that the ancient of days and the eternal wisdom are wiser than he , but that they would not make use of their wisdom . they saw as clearly as could be , that it was far better that the messiah should come in the infancy of the world ; but the father would not send him then , merely because he would not send him : that his will might act freely as mere will prescinded from wisdom and goodness . this is the plain state of the business , and yet admitted by him , who with that open freeness and fulness professes , that 〈◊〉 the divine goodness from the godhead , what remains is a prodigious fiend or devil . what is then mere will and power left alone , but a blind hurricane of hell ? which yet must have the supremacy , and over-power the divine wisdom and goodness itself . his zeal against . pre-existence has thus infatuated and blinded this young writers intellectuals , otherwise he had not been driven to these absurdities , if he had been pleased to admit that hypothesis . as also that wisdom and justice , and fitness and decorum attend the dispensation of divine goodness ; so that it is not to be communicated to every subject after the most ample manner , nor at every time , but at such times , and to such subjects , and in such measures as , respecting the whole compages of things , is for the best . so that goodness ●…ears the soveraignty , and according to that rule , perpetually all things are administred , though there be a different scene of things and particulars in themselves vastly varying in goodness and perfection one from another as the parts of the body do . and so for times and ages , every season of the year yield different commodities : nor are we to expect roses in winter , nor apples and apricocks in spring . now the infinite and incomprehensible wisdom of god comprehending the whole entire scene of his providence , and what references there are of one thing to another , that this must be thus and thus , because such and such things preceded : and because such things are , such and such must be consequent ; which things past and to come lie not under our eye : i say , if this hasty writer had considered this , he need not have been driven to such a rude solution of this present problem , why the messiah came no sooner into the world , viz. merely because god willed it should be so , though it had been far better if it had been otherwise ; but he would have roundly confessed , that undoubtedly this was the best time and the fittest , though it was past his reach to discover the reasons of the fitness thereof . this as it had been the more modest , so it had been the more solid solution of this hard problem . i but then it had not put a bar to this irrefragable argument from the goodness of god , for proving pre-existence : which he is perswaded in his own conscience is no less than a demonstration , unless it be acknowledged that the will of god has a supremacy over his goodness ; and therefore in spight to that abhorred dogma of pre-existence , he had rather broach such wild stuff against the glory of god , than not to purchase to himself the sweet conceit of a glorious victory over such an opinion that he has taken a groundless toy against , and had rather adventure upon gross blasphemies than entertain it . the devout psalmist , psal. . speaking of the decrees of god and his providence over the creation , thy righteousness , says he , is as the great mountains , thy judgments are a great deep . and st. paul , rom. . after he has treated of intricate and amazing points , cries out , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of god! how unsearchable are his judgments , and his ways past finding out ! now according to the rudeness of our young writer , there is no such depth of wisdom , or unsearchablen●…ss in the judgments and decrees of god and his providences in the world that most amaze us , but the reasons of them lie very obvious and shallow . where we fancy that things might have been better otherwise , ( though of never so grand import , as the coming of the messiah is ) it is easily resolved into the supremacy of the will of god , which it has over his wisdom and goodness . he willed it should be so , because he would it should be so , though it had been sar better if the messiah had come sooner . but see the difference betwixt an inspired apostle , and a young hot-headed theologist : this latter resolves these unsearchable and unintelligible decrees of god and passag●…s of providence , into the mere will of god , lording it over the divine wisdom and goodness : but the apostle , by how much more unsearchable his judgments and decrees are , and the ways of his providence past finding our , the greater he declares the depth of the richness of his wisdom , which is so ample , that it reaches into ways and methods of doing for the best beyond the understandings of men . for most assuredly , while the depth of the wisdom of god is acknowledged to carry on the ways of providence , it must be also acknowledged that it acts like itself , and chuseth such ways as are best , and most comporting with the divine goodness ; or else it is not an act of wisdom , but of humour or oversight . but it may be the reader may have the curiosity to hear briesly what those g●…at arguments are , that should induce this young writer so confidently to pronounce , that it had been far better that the messiah should have come in the infancy of the world , than in the times he came . the very quintessence of the force of his arguing extracted out of the verbosity of his affected style , is neither more nor less than this : that the world before the coming of christ , who was to be the light of the world , was in very great darkness ; and therefore the sooner he came , the better . but to break the assurance of this arguer for the more early coming of christ , first , we may take notice out of himself , chap. . that the light of nature is near akin not onely to the mosaick law , but ●…o the gospel itself ; and that even then there were the assistances of the holy ghost to carry men on to such vertuous accomplishments as might avail them to eternal salvation . this he acknowledges probable , and i have set it down in his own words . whence considering what a various scene of things there was to be from the fall of adam to the end of the world , it became the great and wise dramatist not to bring upon the stage the best things in the first act , but to carry on things pompously and by degrees ; something like that saying of elias , two thousand years under the light of nature , two thousand under the law , and then comes the nativity of the messiah , and after a due space the happy millennium , and then the final judgment , the compleated happiness of the righteous in heaven , and the punishment of the wicked in hell-fire . but to hasten too suddenly to the best , is to expect autumn in spring , and virility or old age in infancy or childhood , or the catastrophe of a comedy in the first act. secondly , we may observe what a weak disprover he is of pre-existence , which like a gyant would break in upon him , were it not that he kept him out by this false sconce of the supremacy of the divine will over his wisdom and goodness ; which conceit , how odious and impious it is , has been often enough hinted already . but letting pre-existence take place , and admitting that there is , according to divine providence , an orderly insemination of lapsed souls into humane bodies , through the several ages of the world , whose lapses had several circumstantial differences , and that men therefore become differently sitted objects of grace and favour ; how easie is it to conceive god according to the fitnesses of the generality of souls in such or such periods of times , as it was more just , agreeable , or needful for them , so and in such measures to have dispensed the gifts of his ever-watchful and all-comprehending providence to them , for both time and place . this one would think were more tolerable than to say , that god wills merely because he wills ; which is the character of a frail woman , rather than of a god , or else , as this writer himself acknowledges , of a fiend or devil . for such , says he , is god in the rest of his attributes , if you seclude his goodness . what then is that action which proceeds onely from that part from which goodness is secluded ? so that himself has dug down the sconce he would entrench himself in , and lets pre-existence come in upon him , whether he will or no , like an armed giant ; whom let him abhor as much as he will , he is utterly unable to resist . and thirdly and lastly , suppose there were no particular probable account to be given by us , by reason of the shortness of our understandings ▪ and the vast fetches of the all-comprehensive providence of god , why the coming of the messiah was no earlier than it was ; yet according to that excellent aphorism in morality and politicks , optimè praesum●…ndum est de magistratu , we should hope , nay ●…e assured it was the best that he came when he did , it being by the appointment of the infinite good and all-wise god ▪ and cry out wi●…h st. paul , oh the depth of the riches of both the wisdom and knowledge of god! how unsearchable are his judgments , and his ways past finding out ! and in the psalmist , thy judgments are like a great deep , o lord , thou preservest man and beast . and so acknowledge his wisdom and goodness in the ordering his creatures , even there where his ways are to our weak and scant understandings most inexplicable and unsearchable . which wisdom and goodness as we have all reason to acknowledge in all matters , so most of all in matters of the greatest concernment , that there most assuredly god wills not thus or thus merely because he wills , but because his wisdom discerns that it is for the best . and this is sufficient to shew the weakness of this third evidence for proving the supremacy of the divine will over his wisdom an●… goodness . his fourth evidence is , the perpetuity of hell , and interminableness of those tortures which after this life vex the wicked . for , says he , had the penalties of mens sins here been rated by pure goodness , free and 〈◊〉 by any other principle , it is not pro●…able that th●…y should have been punished by an eternal calamity , the pleasures of them being 〈◊〉 and sugitive . thu●… he argues , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the very same ●…ords ; and there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the ●…thority of gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and ●…ro suo 〈◊〉 , having the supremacy over his goodness , over-swayed the more benign decree ; and will , because it would have it so , doomed sinners to these eternal torments . but i would ask this sophister , did the will of god in good earnest sentence sinners thus in decree , merely because he willed it , not because it was either good or just ? what a black and dismal reproach is here cast upon the divine majesty ! that he sentences sinners thus because he will , not because it is just . the sence whereof is , so he will do , right or wrong . but the patriarch abraham was of another mind , shall not the judge of the whole earth do right ? this he said even to gods face , as i may so speak . wherefore god doing nothing but what is just , does nothing but what is also good . for justice is nothing but goodness modified . not is it asserted by those that make goodness the measure of gods providence , that the modification and moderation thereof is not by his wisdom and justice . so that this sophister pu●…s [ pure ] to goodness , merely to obscure the s●…nce , and put a fallacy upon his reader . the sins of men here are not rated by pure goodness , but by that modification of goodness which is termed justice ; which is not a distinct principle from goodness , but a branch thereof , or goodness it self under such a modification , not mere will acting because it will , right or wrong , good or evil . wherefore the state of the question is not , whether the eternal torments of hell are consistent with the pure goodness of god , but with his justice . but if they are eternal merely from his will , without any respect to justice , his will does will what is infinitely beyond the bounds of what is just , because endless is infinitely beyond that which has an end . such gross absurdities does this opposer of pre-existence run into , to setch an argument from the supposititious supremacy of the will of god over his wisdom and goodness . but as touching the question rightly proposed , whether the perpetuity of hell to sinners consists with the justice of god , a man ought to be chary and wary how he pronounces in this point , that he slip not into what may prove disadvantageous to the hearer . for there are that will be scandalized , and make it serve to an ill end , whether one declare for eternal torments of hell , or against them . some being ready to conclude from their eternity , that religion itself is a mere scarecrow that frights us with such an incredible mormo ; others to indulge to their pleasures , because the comm●…tion is not frightful enough to deter them from extravagant enjoyments , if hell torments be not eternal . but yet i cannot but deem it a piece of great levity in him that decided the controversie , as the complesant parson did that about the may-pole ; they of his parish that were for a may-pole , let them have a may-pole ; but they that were not for a may-pole , let them have no may-pole . but this in sobriety one may say , that the use of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in scripture is indifferent to signifie either that which is properly everlasting , or that which lasts a long time . so that by any immediate infallible oracle , we are not able to pronounce for the eternity or perpetuity of hell-torments . and the creeds use the phrase of scripture , and so some may think that they have the same latitude of interpretation . but it is the safest to adhere to the sence of the catholick church , for those that be bewilder'd in such speculations . but what the writer of no-pre-existence argues from his own private spirit , though it be not inept , yet it is not over-firm and solid . but that the penancies of reprobates are endless , i shall ever thus perswade my self , saith he , either the torments of hell are eternal , or the felicities of heaven are but temporary ( which i am sure they shall never be : ) for the very same word that is used to express the permanence of the one , measures out the continuance of the other ; and if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denotes everlasting life , a blessedness that shall never end , ( mat. . ult . ) what can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the same verse signifie , but perpetual punishment , a misery that shall never cease ? this is pretty handsomly put together , but as i said , does not conclude firmly what is driven at . for it being undeniably true that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as well that which onely is of a long continuance , as what is properly everlasting ; and it being altogether rational , that when words have more significations than one , that signification is to be applied that is most agreeable to the subject it is predicated of , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in that higher sence of property and absolutely everlasting , not being applicable to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but upon this writers monstrous supposition that the will of god has a supremacy over his wisdom , goodness , and justice ( as if the righteous god could act against his own conscience , which no honest man can do ) it is plain , that though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie properly everlasting , that there is no necessity that it should signifie so in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but have that other signification of long continuance , though not of everlastingness , and that continuance so long , as if considered , would effectually rouze any man out of his sins ; and eternity not considered , will not move him . this one would think were enough to repress the confidence of this young writer . but i will adde something more out of his fellow anti-pre-existentiary . that comminations are not , though promises be obligatory . forasmuch as in comminations the comminator is the creditor , and he that is menaced the debtor that owes the punishment ( with which that latine phrase well agrees , dare poena●… ) but in promises , he that promiseth becomes debtor , and he to whom the promise is made , creditor . whence the promiser is plainly obliged to make good his promise , as being the debtor : but the comminator , as being the creditor , is not obliged to exact the punishment , it being in the power of any creditor to remit the debt owing him if he will. wherefore in this commination of eternal fire , or everlasting punishment , though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie here properly everlasting , as well as in everlasting life , yet because this latter is a promise , the other onely a commination , it does not follow , that as surely as the righteous shall be rewarded with everlasting life , so surely shall the wicked be punished with everlasting fire , in the most proper and highest extent of the signification of the word . because god in his comminations to the wicked is onely a creditor , and has still a right and power to remit either part or the whole debt ; but to the righteous , by vertue of his promise , he becomes a debtor , and cannot recede , but must punctually keep his word . to all which i adde this challenge : let this writer , or any else if they can , demonstrate that a soul may not behave herself so perversely , obstinately , and despightfully against the spirit of grace , that she may deserve to be made an everlasting hackstock of the divine nemesis , even for ever and ever . and if she deserve it , it is but just that she have it ; and if it be just , it is likewise good . for justice is nothing else but goodness modified in such fort , as wisdom and sense of decorum sees fittest . but the election of wisdom being always for the best , all things considered , it is plain that justice and the execution thereof , is for the best ; and that so goodness , not mere will upon pretence of having a supremacy over goodness , would be the measure of this sentencing such obdurate sinners to eternal punishment . and this eternal punishment as it is a piece of vindicative justice upon these obdurate sinners , so it naturally contributes to the establishment of the righteous in their celestial happiness . which , this opposer of pre-existence objects somewhere , if souls ever fell from , they may fall from it again . but these eternal torments of hell , if they needed it , would put a sure bar thereto . so that the wisdom and goodness also of god is upon this account concerned in the eternal punishments of hell , as well as his justice . that it be to the unreclaimable , as that orphick hemistichium calls it , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the fifth and last forcible argument , as he calls them , for the proving the soveraignty of gods will over his goodness , is this . if gods goodness , saith he , be not under the command of his will , but does always what is best , why did it not perpetuate the station of pre-existent souls , and hinder us ( if ever we were happy in a sublimer state ) from lapsing into these regions of sin and death ? but who does not at first sight discern the weakness of this allegation ? for it is plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an absurd thing , and contrary to reason , to create such a species of being , whose nature is free and mutable , and at the first dash to dam up or stop the exercise of that freedom and capacity of change , by confining it to a fixt station . as ridiculous as to suppose a living creature made with wings and feet , and yet that the maker thereof should take special care it should never flie nor go . and so likewise , that the mere making of such an order of beings as have a freedom of will , and choice of their actions , that this is misbecoming the goodness of god , is as dull and idiotical a conceit , and such as implies that god should have made but one kind of creature , and that the most absolutely and immutably happy that can be , or else did not act according to his goodness , or for the best : which is so obvious a falshood , that i will not confute it . but it is not hard to conceive that he making such a free-willed creature as the souls of men , simul cum mundo condito , and that in an happy condition , and yet not fixing them in that station , may excellently well accord with the soveraignty of his goodness , nor any one be constrained to have recourse to the supremacy of his will over his goodness , as if he did it because he would do it , and not because it was best . for what can this freedom of will consist in so much as in a temptableness by other objects that are of an inseriour nature , not so divine and holy as the other , to which it were the security of the soul to adhere with all due constancy , and therefore her duty . but in that she is temptable by other objects , it is a signe that her present enjoyment of the more divine and heavenly objects , are not received of her according to their excellency , but according to the measure and capacity of her present state , which though very happy , may be improved at the long run , and in an orderly series of times and things , whether the soul lapse into sin or no. for accession of new improvements increaseth happiness and joy. now therefore , i say , suppose several , and that great numbers , even innumerable myriads of pre-existent souls , to lapse into the regions of sin and death , provided that they do not sin perversely and obstinately , nor do despight to the spirit of grace , nor refuse the advantageous offers that divine providence makes them even in these sad regions , why may not their once having descended hither tend to their greater enjoyment , when they shall have returned to their pristine s●…tion ? and why may not the specifical nature of the soul be such , that it be essentially interwoven into our being , that after a certain period of times or ages , whether she sin or no , she may arrive to a fixedness at last in her heavenly station with greater advantage to such a creature , than if she had been fixed in that state at first . the thing may seem least probable in those that descend into these regions of sin and mortality . but in those that are not obstinate and refractorie , but close with the gracious means that is offered them for their recoverie , their having been here in this lower state , and retaining the memorie ( as doubtless they do ) of the transactions of this terrestrial stage , it naturally enhances all the enjoyments of the pristine selicitie they had lost , and makes them for ever have a more deep and vivid resentment of them . so that through the richness of the wisdom and goodness of god , and through the merits and conduct of the captain of their salvation , our saviour jesus christ , they are , after the strong conslicts here with sin and the corruptions of this lower region , made more than conquerours , and greater gainers upon the losses they sustained before from their own solly . and in this most advantageous state of things , they become pillars in the temple of god , there to remain for ever and ever . so that unless straying souls be exceedingly perverse and obstinate , the exitus of things will be but as in a tragick comedy , and their perverseness and obstinacie lies at their own doors for those that finally miscarrie , whose number this confident writer is to prove to be so considerable that the enhanced happiness of the standing part of pre-existent souls and the recovered does not far preponderate the infelicitie of the others condition . which if he cannot do , as i am confident he cannot , he must acknowledge , that god in not forcibly fixing pre-existent souls in the state they were first created , but leaving them to themselves , acted not from the supremacy of his will over his goodness , but did what was best , and according to that soveraign principle of goodness in the deitie . and now for that snitling dilemma of this eager opposer of pre-existence , touching the freedom of acting and mutabilitie in humane souls , whether this mutabilitie be a specifick property and essential to them , or a separable accident . for if it were essential , says he , then how was christ a persect man , his humane nature being ever void of that lapsabilitie which is essential to humanitie ? and how come men to retain their specifick nature still , that are translated to celestial happiness , and made unalterable in the condition they then are ? to this i answer , that the pre-existentiaries will admit , that the soul of the messiah was created as the rest , though in an happie condition , yet in a lapsable ; and that it was his peculiar merit , in that he so faithfully , constantly , and entirely adhered to the divine principle , incomparably above what was done by others of his classis , not withstanding that he might have done otherwise ; and therefore they will be forward to extend that of the author to the hebrews . chap. . v. . ( thy throne , o god , is for ever and ever , the scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom . thou hast loved righteousness , and hated iniquity ; therefore god , even thy god , hath anointed thee with the oyl of gladness above thy fellows ) to his behaviour in his pre-existent state , as well as in this . and whenever the soul of christ did exist , if he was like us in all things , sin onely excepted , he must have a capacitie of sinning , though he would not sin ; that capacitie not put into act being no sin , but an argument of his vertue , and such as if he was always devoid of , he could not be like us in all things , sin onely excepted . for posse peccare non est peccatum . and as ●…or humane souls changing their species in their unalterable heavenly happiness , the species is not then changed , but perfected and compleated ; namely , that facultie or measure of it in their plastick , essentially latitant there , is by the divine grace so awakened , after such a series of time and things , which they have experienced , that now they are sirmly united to an heavenly body or ethereal vehicle for ever . and now we need say little to the other member of the dilemma , but to declare , that free will , or mutability in humane souls , is no separable accident , but of the essential contexture of them ; so as it might have its turn in the series of things . and how consistent it was with the goodness of god and his wisdom , not to suppress it in the beginning , has been sufficiently intimated above . wherefore now forasmuch as there is no pretext that either the wisdom or justice of god should streighten the time of the creation of humane souls , so that their existence may not commence with that of angels , or of the universe , and that this figment of the supremacy of gods mere will over his other attributes is blown away , it is manifest that the argument for the pre-existence of souls drawn from the divine goodness , holds firm and irrefragable against whatever opposers . we have been the more copious on this argument , because the opposer and others look upon it as the strongest proof the pre-existentiaries produce for their opinion . and the other party have nothing to set against it but a fictitious supremacy of the will of god over his goodness and other attributes . which being their onely bulwark , and they taking sanctuary nowhere but here , in my apprehension they plainly herein give up the cause , and establish the opinion which they seem to have such an antipathy against . but it is high time now to pass to the next chapter . chap. . p. . to have contracted strong and inveterate habits to vice and lewdness , and that in various manners and degrees , &c. to the unbyassed this must needs seem a considerable argument , especially when the parties thus irreclaimably profligate from their youth , some as to one vice , others to another , are found such in equal circumstances with others , and advantages , to be good ; born of the same parents , educated in the same family , and the like . wherefore having the same bodily extraction , and the same advantages of education , what must make this great difference as they grow up in the body , but that their souls were different before they came into it ? and how should they have such a vast difference in the proclivity to vice , but that they lived before in the state of pre-existence , and that some were much deeper in rebellion against god and the divine reason , than others were , and so brought their different conditions with them into these terrestrial bodies ? pag. . then how a swallow should return to her old trade of living after her winter sleep , &c. indeed the swallow has the advantages of memory , which the incorporate soul has not in her incorporation into a terrestrial body after her state of silence . but the vital inclinations , which are mainly if not onely ●…ted in the plastick , being not onely revived , but ( signally vitious of themselves ) revived with advantage , by reason of the corruption of this coarse earthly body into which the soul is incorporate , they cannot fail of discovering themselves in a most signal manner , without any help of memory , but from the mere pregnancie of a corrupt body , and formerly more than ordinarily debauched plastick in the state of pre-existence . pag. . whenas others are as fatally set against the opinions , &c. and this is done , as the ingenious author takes notice , even where neither education nor custom have interposed to sophisticate their judgments or sentiments . nay , it is most certain , that they sometime have sentiments and entertain opinions quite contrary to their education . so that that is but a slight account , to restore this phaenomenon into education and custom , whenas opinions are entertained and stiffly maintained in despight of them . this i must confess implies that the aerial inhabitants philosophize , but conjecturally onely , as well as the inhabitants of the earth . and it is no wonder that such spirits as are lapsed in their morals , should be at a loss also in their intellectuals ; and though they have a desire to know the truth in speculations , it suiting so well with their pride , that yet they should be subject to various errours and hallucinations as well as we , and that there should be different , yea opposite schools of philosophie among them . and if there be any credit to be given to cardans story of his father facius cardanus , things are thus de facto in the aereal regions . and two of the spirits which facius cardanus saw in that vision ( left upon record by him , and of which he often told his son hieronymus while he was living ) were two professors of philosophie in different academies ; and were of different opinions ; one of them apertly professing himself to be an aven-roist . the story is too long to insert here . see dr. h. moore his immortality of the soul , book . chap. . so that lapsed souls philosophizing in their aerial state , and being divided into sects , and consequently maintaining their disserent or opposite opinions with heat and affection which reaches the plastick , this may leave a great propension in them to the same opinions here , and make them almost as prone to such and such errours , as to such and such vices . this , i suppose , the ingenious author propounds as an argument credible and plausible , though he does not esteem it of like force with those he produced before . nor does his opposer urge any thing to any purpose against it . the main thing is , that these propensities to some one opinion are not universal , and blended with the constitution of every person , but are thin sown , and grow up sparingly . where there are five , says he , naturally bent to any one opinion , there are many millions that are free to all . if some , says he , descend into this life big with aptnesses and proclivities to peculiar theories , why then should not all , supposing they pre-existed together , do the like ? as if all in the other aereal state were professors of philosophie , or zealous followers of them that were . the solution of this difficulty is so easie , that i need not insist on it . pag. . were this difference about sensibles , the influence of the body might then be suspected for a cause , &c. this is very rationally alleadged by our author , and yet his antagonist has the face from the observation of the diversity of mens palates and appetites , of their being differently affected by such and such strains of musick , some being pleased with one kind of melodie , and others with another , some pleased with aromatick odours , others offended with them , to reason thus : if the bodie can thus cause us to love and dislike sensibles , why not as well to approve and dislike opinions and theories ? but the reason is obvious why not ; because the liking or disliking of these sensibles depends upon the grateful or ungrateful motion of the nerves of the bodie , which may be otherwise constituted or qualified in some complexions than in other some . but for philosophical opinions and theories what have they to do with the motion of the nerves ? it is the soul herself that judges of those abstractedly from the senses , or any use of the nerves or corporeal organ . if the difference of our judgment in philosophical theories be resolvible into the mere constitution of our bodie , our understanding itself will hazard to be resolved into the same principle also : and bodie will prove the onely difference betwixt men and brutes . we have more intellectual souls because we have better bodies , which i hope our authors antagonist will not allow . pag. . for the soul in her first and pure nature has no idiosyncrasies , &c. whether there may not be certain different characters proper to such and such classes of souls , but all of them natural and without blemish , and this for the better order of things in the universe , i will not rashly decide in the negative . but as the author himself seems to insinuate , if there be any such , they are not such as fatally determine souls to false and erroneous apprehensions . for that would be a corruption and a blemish in the very natural character . wherefore if the soul in philosophical speculations is fatally determined to falshood in this life , it is credible it is the effect of its being inured thereto in the other . pag. . now to say that all this variety proceeds primarily from the mere temper of our bodies , &c. this argument is the less valid for pre-existence , i mean that which is drawn from the wonderful variety of our genius's , or natural inclinations to the employments of life , because we cannot be assured but that the divine providence may have essentially , as it were , impressed such classical characters on humane souls , as i noted before . and besides , if that be true which menander says , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that every man , as soon as he is born , has a genius appointed him to be his instructer and guide of his life : that some are carried with such an impetus to some things rather than others , may be from the instigations of his assisting genius . and for that objection of the author's antagonist against his opinion touching those inclinations to trades , ( which may equally concern this hypothesis of menander ) that it would then be more universal , every one having such a genius ; this truth may be smothered by the putting young people promiscuously to any trade , without observing their genius . but the chineses suppose this truth , they commonly shewing a child all the employs of the citie , that he may make his own choice before they put him to any . but if the opinion of menander be true , that every man has his guardian genius , under whose conduct he lives ; the merchant , the musician , the plowman , and the rest ; it is manifest that these genii cannot but receive considerable impressions of such things as they guide their clients in . and pre-existent souls in their aereal estate being of the same nature with these daemons or genii , they are capable of the same employment , and so tincture themselves deep enough with the affairs of those parties they preside over . and therefore when they themselves , after the state of silence , ar●… incorporated into earthly bodies , they may have a proneness from their former tincture to such methods of life as they lived over whom they did preside . which quite spoils the best argument our author's antagonist has against this topick ; which is , that there are several things here below which the geniusses of men pursue and follow with the hottest chase , which have no similitude with the things in the other state , as planting , building , husbandrie , the working of manufactures , &c. this best argument of his , by menander's hypothesis , which is hard to confute , is quite defeated . and to deny nothing to this opposer of pre-existence which is his due , himself seems unsatisfied , in resolving these odd phaenomena into the temper of bodie . and therefore at last hath recourse to a secret causality , that is , to he knows not what . but at last he pitches upon some such principle as that whereby the birds build their nest , the spider weaves her webs , the bees make their combs , &c. some such thing he says ( though he cannot think it that prodigious hobgoblin the spirit of nature ) may produce these strange effects , may byass also the fancies of men in making choice of their employments and occupations . if it be not the spirit of nature , then it must be that classical character i spoke of above . but if not this , nor the preponderancies of the pre-existent state , nor menander's hypothesis , the spirit of nature will bid the fairest for it of any besides , for determining the inclinations of all living creatures in these regions of generation , as having in itself vitally , though not intellectually , all the laws of the divine providence implanted into its essence by god the creator of it . and speaking in the ethnick dialect , the same description may belong to it that varro gives to their god genius . genius est deus qui praepositus est , ac vim habet omnium rerum gignendarum , and that is the genius of every creature that is congenit to it in vertue of its generation . and that there is such a spirit of nature ( not a god , as varro vainly makes it , but an unintelligent creature ) to which belongs the nascency or generation of things , and has the management of the whole matter of the universe , is copiously proved to be the opinion of the noblest and ancientest philosophers , by the learned dr. r. cudworth in his system of the intellectual world , and is demonstrated to be a true theorem in philosophie by dr. h. moore in his euchiridion metaphysicum , by many , and those irrefutable arguments ; and yet i dare say both can easily pardon the mistake and bluntness of this rude writer , nor are at all surprized at it as a noveltie , that any ignorant rural hobthurst should call the spirit of nature ( a thing so much beyond his capacitie to judge of ) a prodigious hobgoblin . but to conclude , be it so that there may be other causes besides the pristine inurements of the pre-existent soul , that may something forcibly determine her to one course of life here , yet when she is most forcibly determined , if there be such a thing as pre-existence , this may be rationally supposed to concur in the efficiencie . but that it is not so strong an argument as others to prove pre-existence , i have hinted alreadie . pag. . for those that are most like in the temper , air , complexion of their bodies , &c. if this prove true , and i know nothing to the contrarie , this vast difference of genius's , were it not for the hypothesis of their classical character imprinted on souls at their very creation , would be a considerably tight argument . but certainly it is more honest than for the avoiding pre-existence to resolve the phaenomenon into a secret causality , that is to say , into one knows not what . pag. . there being now no other way left but pre-existence , &c. this is a just excuse for his bringing in any argument by way of overplus that is not so apodictically concluding . if it be but such as will look like a plausible solution of a phaenomenon ( as this of such a vast difference of genius's ) pre-existence once admitted , or otherwise undeniably demonstrated , the proposing thereof should be accepted with favour . chap. . pag. . and we know our saviour and his apostles have given credit to that translation , &c. and it was the authentick text with the fathers of the primitive church . and besides this , if we read according to the hebrew text , there being no object of job's knowledge expressed , this is the most easie and natural sence : knowest thou that thou wast then , and that the number of thy days are many ? this therefore was reckoned amongst the rest of his ignorances , that though he was created so early , he now knew nothing of it . and this easie sence of the hebrew text , as well as that version of the septuagint , made the jews draw it in to the countenancing of the tradition of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , the pre-existence of souls , as grotius has noted of them . pag. . as reads a very credible version . r. menasse ben israel reads it so : [ i gave thee wisdom , ] which version , if it were sure and authentick , this place would be fit for the defence of the opinion it is produced for . but no interpreters besides , that i can find , following him , nor any going before him , whom he might follow , i ingenuously confess the place seems not of force enough to me to infer the conclusion . he read , i suppose , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in piel , whence he translated it , indidi ●…ibi sapientiam ; but the rest read it in cal. pag. . and methinks that passage of our saviours prayer , father , glorifie me with the glorie i had before the world began , &c. this text , without exceeding great violence , cannot be evaded . as for that of grotius interpreting [ that i had ] that which was intended for me to have , though it make good sence , yet it is such grammar as that there is no school-boy but would be ashamed of it ; nor is there , for all his pretences , any place in scripture to countenance such an extravagant exposition by way of parallelism , as it may appear to any one that will compare the places which he alleadges , with this ; which i leave the reader to do at his leisure . let us consider the context , joh. . . i have glorified thee upon earth , during this my pilgrimage and absence from thee , being ●…ent hither by thee . i have finished the work which thou gavest me to do , and for the doing of which i was sent , and am thus long absent . and now , o father , glorifie me , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , apud teipsum , in thine own presence , with the glorie which i had before the world was , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , apud te , or in thy presence . what can be more expressive of a glorie which christ had apud patrem , or at his fathers home , or in his presence before the world was , and from which for such a time he had been absent ? now for others that would salve the business by communication of idioms , i will set down the words of an ingenious writer that goes that way : those predicates , says he , that in a strict and ●…igorous acception agreed onely to his divine nature , might by a communication of idioms ( as they phrase it ) be attributed to his humane , or at least to the whole person compounded of them both , than which nothing is more ordinarie in things of a mixt and heterogeneous nature , as the whole man is stiled immortal from the deathlessness of his soul : thus he . and there is the same reason if he had said that man was stiled mortal ( which certainly is far the more ordinarie ) from the real death of his bodie , though his soul be immortal . this is wittily excogitated . but now let us apply it to the text , expounding it according to his communication of idioms , affording to the humane nature what is onely proper to the divine , thus . father , glorifie me [ my humane nature ] with the glorie that i [ my divine nature ] had before the world was . which indeed was to be the eternal , infinite , and omnipotent brightness of the glory of the father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this is the glory which his divine nature had before the world was . but how can his humane nature be glorified with that glory his divine nature had before the world was , unless it should become the divine nature , that it might be said to have pre-existed ? ( but that it cannot be . for there is no confusion of the humane and divine nature in the hypostasis of christ : ) or else because it is hypostatically united with the divine nature ; but if that be the glory , that he then had already , and had it not ( according to the opposers of pre-existence ) before the world was . so we see there is no sence to be made of this text by communication of idioms , and therefore no sence to be made of it without the pre-existence of the humane nature of christ. and if you paraphrase [ me ] thus , my hypostasis consisting of my humane and divine nature , it will be as untoward sence . for if the divine nature be included in [ me ] then christ prays for what he has already , as i noted above . for the glory of the eternal logos from everlasting to everlasting , is the same , as sure as he is the same with himself . pag. . by his expressions of coming from the father , descending from heaven , and returning thither again , &c. i suppose these scriptures are alluded to , john . . . . . . i came down from heaven not to do my own will , but the will of him that sent me . i came forth from the father , and am come into the world ; again i leave the world , and go to the father . whereupon his disciples said unto him lo now speakest thou plainly , and speakest no parable . but it were a very great parable , or aenigm , that one should say truly of himself , that he came from heaven , when he never was there . and as impossible a thing is it to conceive how god can properly be said to come down from heaven , who is alwaies present every where . wherefore that in christ which was not god , namely his soul , or humane nature , was in heaven before he appeared on earth , and consequently his soul did pre-exist . nor is there any refuge here in the communication of idioms . for that cannot be attributed to the whole hypostasis , which is competent to neither part that constitutes it . for it was neither true of the humane nature of christ , if you take away pre-existence , nor of the divine , that they descended from heaven , &c. and yet john . , . where christ prophesying of his crucifixion and ascension , saith , no man hath ascended up to heaven , but he that came down from heaven , even the son of man , [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] who was in heaven . so erasmus saith , it may be rendred a participle of the present tense , having a capacity to signifie the time past , if the sence require it , as it seems to do here . qui erat in coelo , viz. antequam descenderat . so erasmus upon the place . wherefore these places of scripture touching christ being such inexpugnable arguments of the pre-existence of the soul of the messiah ; the writer of no pre-existence , methinks , is no where so civil or discreet as in this point . where , he saies , he will not squabble about this , but readily yield that the soul of christ was long extant before it was incarnate . but then he presently flings dirt upon the pre-existentiaries , as guilty of a shameful presumption and inconsequence , to conclude the pre-existence of all other humane souls from the pre-existence of his . because he was a peculiar favourite of god was to undergo bitter sufferings for mankind ; and therefore should enjoy an happy pre-existence for an anti-praemium . and since he was to purchase a church with his own most precious bloud , it was fit he should pre-exist from the beginning of the world , that he might preside over his church as guide and governour thereof ; which is a thing that cannot be said of any other soul beside . this is a device which , i believe , the pre-existentiaries , good men , never dreamt of , but they took it for granted , that the creation of all humane souls was alike , and that the soul of christ was like ours in all things , sin onely excepted ; as the emperour justinian , in his discourse to menas patriarch of constantinople , argues from this very topick to prove the non-pre-existence of our souls , from the non-pre-existence of christs , he being like us in all things , sin onely excepted . and therefore as to existence and essence there was no difference . thus one would have verily thought to have been most safe and most natural to conclude , as being so punctual according to the declaration of scripture , and order of things . for it seems almost as harsh and repugnant to give angelical existence to a species not angelical , as angelical essence . for according to them , it belongs to angels onely to exist a mundo condito , not to humane souls . let us therefore see what great and urgent occasions there are , that the almighty should break this order . the first is , that he may remonstrate the soul of the messiah to be his most special favourite . why ? that is sufficiently done , and more opportunely , if other souls pre-existed to be his corrivals . but his faithful adhesion above the rest to the law of his maker , as it might make him so great a favourite : so that transcendent priviledge of being hypostatically united with the godhead , or eternal logos , would , i trow , be a sufficient testimony of gods special favour to him above all his fellow pre-existent souls . and then , which is the second thing for his anti-praemial happiness ( though it is but an hysteron proteron , and preposterous conceit , to fancie wages before the work ) had he less of this by the coexistence of other souls with him , or was it not rather the more highly encreased by their coexistencie ? and how oddly does it look , that one solitary individual of a species should exist for god knows how many ages alone ? but suppose the soul of the messiah , and all other souls created together , and several of them fallen , and the soul of the messiah to undertake their recovery by his sufferings , and this declared amongst them ; surely this must hugely inhance his happiness and glory through all the whole order of humane souls , being thus constituted or designed head and prince over them all . an●… thus , though he was rejected by the jews and despised , he could not but be caressed and adored by his fellowsouls above , before his descent to this state of humiliation . and who knows but this might be part at least of that glory which , he says , he had before the world was ? and which this ungrateful world denied him , while he was in it , who crucified the lord of life . and as for the third and last , that the soul of the messiah was to pre-exist , that he might preside over the church all along from the beginning of it : what necessity is there of that ? could not the eternal logos and the ministry of angels sufficiently discharge that province ? but you conceive a congruity therein ; and so may another conceive a congruity that he should not enter upon his office till there were a considerable lapse of humane souls which should be his care to recover ; which implies their pre-existence before this stage of the earth : and if the soul of the messiah , united with the logos , presided so early over the church ; that it was meet that other unlapsed souls , they being of his own tribe , should be his satellitium , and be part of those ministring spirits that watch for the churches good , and zealously endeavour the recovery of their sister-souls , under the conduct of the great soul of the messiah , out of their captivity of sin and death . so that every w●…y pre-existence of other souls will handsomly fall in with the pre-existence of the soul of the messiah , that there may be no breach of order , whenas there is no occasion for it , nor violence done to the holy writ , which expressly declares christ to have been like to us in all things ( as well in existence as essence ) sin onely excepted ; as the emperour earnestly urges to the patriarch menas . wherefore we finding no necessity of his particular pre-existing , nor convenience , but what will be doubled if other souls pre-exist with him ; it is plain , if he pre-exist , it is as he is an humane soul , not as such a particular soul ; and therefore what proves his soul to pre-exist , proves others to pre-exist also . pag. . since these places have been more diffusely urged in a late discourse to this purpose . i suppose he means in the letter of resolution concerning origen , where the author opens the sense of philip. . . learnedly and judiciously , especially when he acknowledges christs being in the form of god , to be understood of his physical union with the divine logos . which is the ancient orthodox exposition of the primitive fathers , they taking this for one notable testimony of scripture , for the divinity of christ. whenas they that understand it politically of christs power and authority onely , take an excellent weapon out of the hands of the church wherewith she used to oppose the impugners of christs divinity . but how can christ being god ( verus deus , as vatablus expounds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ) empty himself , or any way deteriorate himself as to his divinity , by being incarnate , and taking upon him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of the terrestrial adam ? for every earthly man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the apostle seems to intimate , rom. . . as this ingenious writer has noted ; and the apostle likewise seems so to expound it in the text , by adding presently by way of exegesis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and was made in the likeness of men ; like that gen. . . adam begot a son in his own likeness , a terrestrial man as himself was . wherefore the incarnation of christ being no exinanition to his divinity , there was an humanity of christ , viz. his soul , in a glorious state of pre-existence , to which this voluntary exinanition belonged . pag. . was it for this mans sin , or his fathers , that he was born blind ? for the avoiding the force of this argument for proving that pre-existence was the opinion of the jews ; and that christ when it was so plainly implied in the question , by his silence , or not reproving it , seemed to admit it , or at least to esteem it no hurtful opinion : they alledge these two things : first , that these enquirers having some notions of the divine prescience , might suppose that god foreknowing what kind of person this blind man would prove , had antedated his punishment . the other is , that the enquirers may be conceived to understand the blind mans original sin . so that when they enquired whether the man was born blind for his own or his parents sin , they might onely ask whether that particular judgment was the effect of his parents , or of his own original pravity . this is camerons . but see what forced conceits learned men will entertain , rather than not to say something on a text. what a distorted and preposterous account is that found , that god should punish men before they sin , because he foresees they will sin ? and he onely produces this example , and a slight one too , that jeroboams hand was dried up as he stretched it forth to give a sign to apprehend the prophet . and the other is as fond an account , that god should send such severe judgments on men for their original pravity , which they cannot help . and original pravity being so common to all , it could be no reason why this particular man should be born blind , more than others . wherefore grotius far more ingenuously writes thus upon the place : quaerunt ergo an ipse peccaverit , quia multi judaeorum credebant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 animarum . and as our saviour christ passed it for an innocent opinion , so did the primitive church , the book of wisdom being an allowable book with them , and read in publick , though it plainly declare for pre-existence , chap. . . chap. . p. . therefore let the reader , if he please , call it a romantick scheme , or imaginary hypothesis , &c. this is very discreetly and judiciously done of the author , to propose such things as are not necessary members or branches of pre-existence , and are but at the best conjectura●… , as no part of that otherwise-useful theory . for by tacking too fast these unnecessary tufts or tassels to the main truth , it will but give occasion to wanton or wrathful whelps to worry her , and tug her into the dirt by them . and we may easily observe how greedily they catch at such occasions , though it be not much that they can make out of them , as we may observe in the next chapter . chap. . pag. . pill . . to conceive him as an immense and all-glorious sun , that is continually communicating , &c. and this as certainly as the sun does his light , and as restrainedly . for the suns light is not equally imparted to all subjects , but according to the measure of their capacity . and as nature limits here in natural things , so does the wisdom and justice of god in free creatures . he imparts to them as they capacitate themselves by improving or abusing their freedom . pag. . pill . . be resolved into a principle that is not meerly corporeal . he suspects that the descent of heavy bodies , when all is said and done , must be resolved into such a principle . but i think he that without prejudice peruses the eleventh and thirteenth chapters ( with their scholia ) of dr. mores enchiridion metaphysicum , will find it beyond suspition , that the descent of heavy bodies is to be resolved into some corporeal principle ; and that the spirit of nature , though you should call it with the cabalists by that astartling name of sandalphon , is no such prodigious hobgoblin , as rudeness and presumptuous ignorance has made that buckeram writer in contempt and derision to call it . pag. . as naturally as the fire mounts , and a stone descends . and as these do not so ( though naturally ) meerly from their own intrinsick nature , but in vertue of the spirit of the universe ; so the same reason there is in the disposal of spirits . the spirit of nature will range their plasticks as certainly and orderly in the regions of the world , as it does the matter it self in all places . whence that of plotinus may fitly be understood , that a soul enveigled in vitiousness , both here and after death , according to her nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is thrust into the state and place she is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if she were drawn thither by certain invisible or magical strings of natures own pulling . thus is he pleased to express this power or vertue of the spirit of nature in the universe . but i think that transposition she makes of them is rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , than either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a transvection of them , rather than pulsion or traction . but these are over-nice curiosities . pag. . as likely some things relating to the state of spirits , &c. that is to say , spirits by the ministry of other spirits may be carried into such regions as the spirit of nature would not have transmitted them to , from the place where they were before , whether for good or evil . of the latter kind whereof , i shall have occasion to speak more particularly in my notes on the next chapter . pag. . pill . . the souls of men are capable of living in other bodies besides terrestrial ; &c. for the pre-existentiaries allow her successively to have lived , first , in an ethereal body , then in an aereal ; and lastly , after the state of silence , to live in a terrestrial . and here i think , though it be something early , it will not be amiss to take notice what the anti-pre-existentiaries alledge against this hypothesis ; for we shall have the less trouble afterwards . first , therefore , they say , that it does not become the goodness of god to make mans soul with a triple vital congruity , that will fit as well an aereal and terrestrial condition , as an aethereal . for from hence it appears , that their will was not so much in fault that they sinned , as the constitution of their essence : and they have the face to quote the account of origen , pag. . for to strengthen this their first argument . the words are these : they being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this terrestrial matter , it seems necessary according to the course of nature that they should sink into it , & so appear terrestrialmen . and therefore , say they , there being no descending into these earthly bodies without a lapse or previous sin , their very constitution necessitated them to sin . the second argument is , that this hypothesis is inconsistent with the bodies resurrection . for the aereal bodie immediately succeeding the terrestrial , and the aethereal the aereal , the business is done , there needs no resuscitation of the terrestrial body to be glorified . nor is it the same numerical body or flesh still , as it ought to be , if the resurrection-body be aethereal . the third is touching the aereal body ; that if the soul after death be tyed to an aereal body ( and few or none attain to the aethereal immediately after death ) the souls of very good men will be forced to have their abode amongst the very devils . for their prince is the prince of the air , as the apostle calls him ; and where can his subjects be , but where he is ? so that they will be enforced to endure the companie of these foul fiends ; besides all the incommodious changes in the air , of clouds , of vapours , of rain , hail , thunder , tearing tempests and storms ; and what is an image of hell it self , the darkness of night will overwhelm them every four and twenty hours . the fourth argument is touching the aethereal state of pre-existence . for if souls when they were in so heavenly and happy an estate could lapse from it , what assurance can we have , when we are returned thither , that we shall abide in it ? it being but the same happiness we were in before : and we having the same plastick with its triple vital congruity , as we had before . why therefore may we not lapse as before ? the fifth and last argument is taken from the state of silence . wherein the soul is supposed devoid of perception . and therefore their number being many , and their attraction to the place of conception in the womb being merely magical , and reaching many at a time , there would be many attracted at once ; so that scarce a foetus could be formed which would not be a multiform monster , or a cluster of humane foetus's , not one single foetus . and these are thought such weighty arguments , that pre-existence must sink and perish under their pressure . but , i believe , when we have weighed them in the balance of unprejudiced reason , we shall find them light enough . and truly , for the first ; it is not only weak and slight , but wretchedly disingenuous . the strength of it is nothing but a maimed and fraudulent quotation , which makes ashew as if the author of the account of origen , bluntly affirmed , without any thing more to do , that souls being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this terrestrial matter , it seems necessary , according to the course of nature , that they should sink into it , and so appear terrestrial men : whenas if we take the whole paragraph as it lies , before th●…y cast themselves into this fatal necessity , they are declared to have a freedom of will , whereby they might have so managed their happy estate they were created in , that they need never have faln . his words are these : what then remains , but that through the faulty and negligent use of themselves , whilst they were in some better condition of life , they rendred themselves less pure in the whole extent of their powers , both intellectual and animal ; and so by degrees became disposed for the susception of such a degree of corporeal life , as was less pure , indeed , than the former ; but exactly answerable to their present disposition of spirit . so that after certain periods of time they might become far less fit to actuate any sort of body , than the terrestrial ; and being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this too , and in it to exercise the powers and functions of life , it seems necessary , &c. these are the very words of the author of the account of origen , wherein he plainly affirms , that it was the fault of the souls themselves , that they did not order themselves then right when they might have done so , that cast them into this terrestrial condition . but what an opposer of pre-existence is this , that will thus shamelesly falsifie and corrupt a quotation of an ingenious author , rather than he will seem to want an argument against his opinion ! wherefore briefly to answer to this argument , it does as much become the goodness of god to create souls with a triple vital congruity , as to have created adam in paradise with free will , and a capacity of sinning . to the second , the pre-existentiaries will answer , that it is no more absurd to conceive ( nor so much ) that the soul after death hath an airy body , or it may be some an ethereal one , than to imagine them so highly happy after death without any body at all . for if they can act so fully and beatifically without any body , what need there be any resurrection of the body at all ? and if it be most natural to the soul to act in some body , in what a long unnatural estate has adams soul been , that so many thousand years has been without a body ? but for the soul to have a body , of which she may be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , certainly is most natural , or else she will be in an unnatural state after the resurrection to all eternitie . whence it is manifest , that it is most natural for the soul , if she act at all , to have a body to act in . and therefore , unless we will be so dull as to fall into the drouzie dream of the pyschopannychites , we are to allow the soul to have some kind of body or other till the very resurrection . but those now that are not psychopannychites , but allow good souls the joys and glories of paradise before the resurrection of the body , let them be demanded to what end the soul should have a resurrection-body ; and what they would answer for themselves , the pre-existentiaries will answer for their position that holds the soul has an aethereal body already , or an aereal one which may be changed into an aethereal body . if they will alledge any concinnity in the business , or the firm promise of more highly compleating our happiness at the union of our terrestrial bodies with our souls at the resurrection ; this , i say , may be done as well supposing them to have bodies in the mean time as if they had none . for those bodies they have made use of in the interval betwixt their death and resurrection , may be so thin and dilute , that they may be no more considerable than an interula is to a royal robe lined with rich furrs , and embroidered with gold. for suppose every mans bodie at the resurrection framed again out of its own dust , bones , sinews and flesh , by the miraculous power of god , were it not as easie for these subtile spirits , as it is in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to enter these bodies , and by the divine power assisting , so to inactuate them , that that little of their vehicle they brought in with them , shall no more destroy the individuation of the body , than a draught of wine drunk in , does the individuation of our body now , though it were , immediately upon the drinking , actuated by the soul. and the soul at the same instant actuating the whole aggregate , it is exquisitely the same numerical bodie , even to the utmost curiosity of the schoolmen . but the divine assistance working in this , it is not to be thought that the soul will loose by resuming this resurrection-body , but that all will be turned into a more full and saturate brightness and glory , and that the whole will become an heavenly , spiritual , and truly glorified body , immortal and incorruptible . nor does the being thus turned into an heavenly or spiritual body , hinder it from being still the same numerical body , forasmuch as one and the same numerical matter , let it be under what modifications it will , is still the same numerical matter or body ; and it is gross ignorance in philosophie that makes any conceive otherwise . but a rude and ill-natured opposer of pre-existence is not content that it be the same numerical body , but that this same numerical body be still flesh , peevishly and invidiously thereby to expose the author of the account of origen , who , pag. . writes thus : that the bodie we now have , is therefore corruptible and mortal , because it is flesh ; and therefore if it put on incorruption and immortality , it must put off it self first , and cease to be flesh . but questionless that ingenious writer understood this of natural flesh and bloud , of which the apostle declares , that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdom of god. but as he says , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body : so if he had made application of the several kinds of flesh he mentions , of men , of beasts , of fishes , and birds , he would have presently subjoyned , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , there is a natural flesh and there is a spiritual flesh . and 't is this spiritual flesh to which belongs incorruption and immortality , and which is capable of the kingdom of heaven . but for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the natural flesh , it must put off it self , and cease to be natural flesh , before it can put on immortality and incorruption . so little inconsistency is there of this hypothesis ( as touching the souls acting in either an aereal of aethereal vehicle , during the interval betwixt the resurrection and her departure hence ) with the resurrection of the bodie . but in the mean time , there is a strong bar thereby put to the dull dream of the psychopanychites , and other harshnesses also eased or smoothed by it . now as for the third argument , which must needs seem a great scare-crow to the illiterate , there is very little weight or none at all in it . for if we take but notice of the whole atmosphere , what is the dimension thereof , and of the three regions into which it is distributed , all these bugbears will vanish . as for the dimension of the whole atmosphere , it is by the skilful reputed about fifty to italick miles high , the convex of the middle region thereof about four such miles , the concave about half a mile . now this distribution of the air into these three regions being thus made , and the hebrew tongue having no other name to call the expansum about us , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 heaven , here is according to them a distribution of heaven into three , and the highest region will be part of the third heaven . this therefore premised , i answer , that though the souls of good men after death be detained within the atmosphere of the air , ( and the air it self haply may reach much higher than this atmosphere that is bounded by the mere ascent of exhalations and vapours ) yet there is no necessity at all that they should be put to those inconveniencies , which this argument pretends , from the company of devils , or incommodious changes and disturbances of the air. for suppose such inconveniencies in the middle and lowest region , yet the upper region , which is also part of the third heaven , those parts are ever calm and serene . and the devils principality reaching no further than through the middle and lowest region next the earth , ( not to advertise that his quarters may be restrained there also ) the souls of the departed that are good , are not liable to be pester'd and haunted with the ungrateful presence or occursions of the deformed and grim retinue , or of the vagrant vassals of that foul feind , that is prince of the air , he being onely so of these lower parts thereof , and the good souls having room enough to consociate together in the upper region of it . nor does that promise of our saviour to the thief on the cross , that that very day he should be with him in paradise , at all clash with this hypothesis of aereal bodies , both because christ by his miraculous power might confer that upon the penitent thief his fellow-sufferer , which would not fall to the share of other penitents in a natural course of things ; and also because this third region of the air may be part of paradise it self : ( in my fathers house there are many mansions ) and some learned men have declared paradise to be in the air , but such a part of the air as is free from gross vapours and clouds ; and such is the third region thereof . in the mean time we see the souls of good men departed , freed from those panick fears of being infested either by the unwelcome company of fiends and devils , or incommodated by any dull cloudy obscurations , or violent and tempestuous motions of the air. onely the shadowy vale of the night will be cast over them once in a nycthemeron . but what incommodation is that , after the brisk active heat of the sun in the day-time , to have the variety of the more mild beams of the moon , or gentle , though more quick and chearful , scintillations of the twinkling stars ? this variety may well seem an addition to the felicity of their state . and the shadowyness of the night may help them in the more composing introversions of their contemplative mind , and cast the soul into ineffably pleasing slumbers and divine extasies ; so that the transactions of the night may prove more solacing and beatifick sometimes , than those of the day . such things we may guess at afar off , but in the mean time be sure , that these good and serious souls know how to turn all that god sends to them to the improvement of their happiness . to the fourth argument we answer , that there are not a few reasons from the nature of the thing that may beget in us a strong presumption that souls recovered into their celestial happiness will never again relapse , though they did once . for first , it may be a mistake that the happiness is altogether the same that it was before . for our first paradisiacal bodies from which we lapsed , might be of a more crude and dilute aether , not so full and saturate with heavenly glory and perfection as our resurrection-body is . secondly , the soul was then unexperienced , and lightly coming by that happiness she was in , did the more heedlessly forgo it , before she was well aware ; and her mind roved after new adventures , though she knew not what . thirdly , it is to be considered , whether regeneration be not a stronger tenour for enduring happiness , than the being created happie . for this being wrought so by degrees upon the plastick , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with ineffable groans and piercing desires after that divine life , that the spirit of god co-operating exciteth in us ; when regeneration is perfected and wrought to the full by these strong agonies , this may rationally be deemed a deeper tincture in the soul than that she had by mere creation , whereby the soul did indeed become holy , innocent and happie , but not coming to it with any such strong previous conflicts and eager workings and thirstings after that state , it might not be so firmly rooted by far as in regeneration begun and accomplished by the operation of gods spirit , gradually but more deeply renewing the divine image in us . fourthly , it being a renovation of our nature into a pristine state of ours , the strength and depth of impression seems increased upon that account also . fifthly , the remembrance of all the hardships we underwent in our lapsed condition , whether of mortification or cross rancounters , this must likewise help us to persevere when once returned to our former happiness . sixthly , the comparing of the evanid pleasures of our lapsed or terrestrial life , with the fulness of those joys that we find still in our heavenly , will keep us from ever having any hankering after them any more . seventhly , the certain knowledge of everlasting punishment , which if not true , they could not know , must be also another sure bar to any such negligencies as would hazard their setled felicity . which may be one reason why the irreclaimable are eternally punished , namely , that it may the better secure eternal happiness to others . eighthly , though we have our triple vital congruity still , yet the plastick life is so throughly satisfied with the resurrection-body , which is so considerably more full and saturate with all the heavenly richness and glorie than the former , that the plastick of the soul is as entirely taken up with this one bodie , as if she enjoyed the pleasures of all three bodies at once , aethereal , aereal , and terrestrial . and lastly , which will strike all sure , he that is able to save to the utmost , and has promised us eternal life , is as true as able , and therefore cannot fail to perform it . and who can deny but that we in this state i have described , are as capable of being fixed there , and confirmed therein , as the angels were after lucifer and others had faln ? and now to the fifth and last argument against the state of silence , i say it is raised out of mere ignorance of the most rational as well as most platonical way of the souls immediate descent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for the first mover or stirrer in this matter , i mean in the formation of the foetus , is the spirit of nature , the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the universe , to whom plotinus somewhere attributes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first predelineations and prodrome irradiations into the matter , before the particular soul , it is preparing for , come into it . now the spirit of nature being such a spirit as contains spermatically or vitally all the laws contrived by the divine intellect , for the management of the matter of the world , and of all essences else unperceptive , or quatenus unperceptive , for the good of the universe ; we have all the reason in the world to suppose this vital or spermatical law is amongst the rest , viz. that it transmit but one soul to one prepared conception . which will therefore be as certainly done , unless some rare and odd casualty intervene , as if the divine intellect it self did do it . wherefore one and the same spirit of nature which prepares the matter by some general predelineation , does at the due time transmit some one soul in the state of silence by some particularizing laws ( that fetch in such a soul rather than such , but most sure but one , unless as i said some special casualty happen ) into the prepared matter , acting at two places at once according to its synenergetical vertue or power . hence therefore it is plain , that there will be no such clusters of foetus's and monstrous deformities from this hypothesis of the souls being in a state of silence . but for one to shuffle off so fair a satisfaction to this difficulty , by a precarious supposing there is no such being as the spirit of nature , when it is demonstrable by so many irrefragable arguments that there is , is a symptome of one that philosophizes at random , not as reason guides . for that is no reason against the existence of the spirit of nature , because some define it a substance incorporeal , but without sense and animadversion , &c. as if a spirit without sense and animadversion were a contradiction . for that there is a spirit of nature is demonstrable , though whether it have no sense at all is more dubitable . but through it have no sense or perception , it is no contradiction to its being a spirit , as may appear from dr. h. mores brief discourse of the true notion of a spirit . to which i direct the reader for satisfaction , i having already been more prolix in answering these arguments than i intended . but i hope i have made my presage true , that they would be found to have no force in them to overthrow the hypothesis of a threefold vital congruity in the plastick of the soul. so that this fourth pillar , for any execution they can do , will stand unshaken . pag. . for in all sensation there is corporeal motion , &c. and besides , there seems an essential relation of the soul to body , according to aristotles definition thereof , he defining it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that which actuates the boby . which therefore must be idle when it has nothing to actuate , as a piper must be silent , as to piping , if he have no pipe to play on . chap. . pag. . the ignobler and lower properties or the life of the body were languid and remiss , v●… as to their proper exercises or acting for themselves , or as to their being regarded much by the soul that is taken up with greater matters , or as to their being much relished , but in subserviency to the enjoyment of those more divine and sublime objects ; as the author intimates towards the end of his last pillar . pag. . and the plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body , &c. it may be added , and keep it in its due form and shape . and it is well added [ accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required ] for the plastick by reason of its vital union with the vehicle , is indeed the main instrument of the motion thereof . but it is the imperium of the perceptive that both excites and guides its motion . which is no wonder it can do , they being both but one soul. pag. . to pronounce the place to be the sun , &c. which is as rationally guessed by them , as if one should fancy all the fellows and students chambers in a colledge to be contained within the area of the hearth in the hall , and the rest of the colledge uninhabited . for the sun is but a common focus of a vortex , and is less by far to the vortex , than the hearth to the ichnographie of the whole colledge , that i may not say little more than a tennis-ball to the bigness of the earth . pag. . yet were we not immuta●…ly so , &c. but this mutability we were placed in , was not without a prospect of a more full confirmation and greater accumulation of happiness at the long run , as i intimated above . pag. . we were made on set purpose defatigable , that so all degrees of life , &c. we being such creatures as we are and finite , and taking in the enjoyment of those infinitely perfect and glorious objects onely pro modulo nostro , according to the scantness of our capacity , diversion to other objects may be an ease and relief . from whence the promise of a glorified body in the christian religion , as it is most grateful , so appears most rational . but in the mean time it would appear most irrational to believe we shall have eyes and ears and other organs of external sense , and have no suitable objects to entertain them . pag. . yea , methinks 't is but a reasonable reward to the body , &c. this is spoken something popularly and to the sense of the vulgar , that imagine the body to feel pleasure and pain , whenas it is the soul onely that is perceptive and capable of feeling either . but 't is fit the body should be kept in due plight for the lawful and allowable corporeal enjoyments the soul may reap therefrom for seasonable diversion . pag. , that that is executed which he hath so determined , &c. some fancy this may be extended to the enjoying of the fruits of the invigouration of all the three vital congruities of the plastick , and that for a soul orderly and in due time and course to pass through all these dispensations , provided she keep her self sincere towards her maker , is not properly any lapse or sin , but an harmless experiencing all the capacities of enjoying themselves that god has bestowed upon them . which will open a door to a further answer touching the rest of the planets being inhabited , namely , that they may be inhabited by such kind of souls as these , who therefore want not the knowledge and assistance of a redeemer . and so the earth may be the onely nosocomium of sinfully lapsed souls . this may be an answer to such far-fetched objections till they can prove the contrarie . pag. . adam cannot withstand the inordinate appetite , &c. namely , after his own remissness and heedlessness in ordering himself , he had brought himself to such a wretched weakness . pag. . the plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken , &c. there are three vital congruities belonging to the plastick of the soul , and they are to awake orderly , that is , to operate one after another downward and upward , that is to say , in the lapse , the aereal follows the aethereal , the terrestrial the aereal . but in their recovery or emergency out of the lapse , the aereal follows the terrestrial , and the aethereal the aereal . but however , a more gross turgency to plastick operation may haply arise at the latter end of the aereal period , which may be as it were the disease of the soul in that state , and which may help to turn her out of it into the state of silence , and is it self for the present silenced therewith . for where there is no union with bodie , there is no operation of the soul. pag. . for it hath an aptness and propensity to act in a terrestrial body , &c. this aptness and fitness it has in the state of silence , according to that essential order of things interwoven into its own nature and into the nature of the spirit of the world , or great archeus of the universe , according to the eternal counsel of the divine wisdom . by which law and appoyntment the soul will as certainly have a fitness and propensity at its leaving the terrestrial body to actuate an aereal o●…e . pag. . either by mere natural congruity , the disposition of the soul of the world , or some more spontaneous agent , &c. natural congruity and the disposal of the plastick soul of the world ( which others call the spirit of nature ) may be joyned well together in this feat , the spirit of nature attracting such a soul as is most congruous to the predelineated matter which it has prepared for her . but as for the spontaneous agent , i suppose , he may understand his ministry in some supernatural birth . unless he thinks that some angels or genii may be imployed in putting souls into bodies , as gardiners are in setting pease and beans in the beds of gardens . but certainly they must be no good genii then that have any hand in assisting or setting souls in such wombs as have had to do with adulterie , incest , and buggery . pag. . but some apish shews and imitations of reason , vertue and religion , &c. the reason of the unregenerate in divine things is little better than thus , and vertue and religion which is not from that principle which revives in us in real regeneration , are , though much better than scandalous vice and profaness , mere pictures and shadows of what they pretend to . pag. . to its old celestial abode , &c. for we are pilgrims and strangers here on the earth , as the holy patriarchs of old declared . and they that speak such things , saith the apostle , plainly shew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that they seek their native country , for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies . and truly if they had been mindful of that earthly country out of which they came , they might , saith he , have had opportunity of returning . but now they desire a better , to wit , an heavenly , hebr. . pag. . but that they step forth again into airy vehicles . this is their natural course , as i noted above . but the examples of enoch and elias , and much more of our ever blessed saviour , are extraordinary and supernatural . pag. . those therefore that pass out of these bodies before their terrestrial congruity be spoyled , weakened , or orderly unwound , according to the tenour of this hypothesis , &c. by the favour of this ingenious writer , this hypothesis does not need any such obnoxious appendage as this , viz. that souls that are outed these terrestrial bodies before their terrestrial congruity be spoiled , weakned , or orderly unwound , return into the state of inactivity . but this is far more consonant both to reason and experience or storie , that though the terrestrial congruity be still vigorous , as not having run out it may be the half part , no not the tenth part of its period , the soul immediately upon the quitting of this body is invested with a bodie of air , and is in the state of activity not of silence in no sense . for some being murdered have in all likelyhood in their own persons complained of their murderers , as it is in that story of anne walker ; and there are many others of the same nature . and besides , it is far more reasonable , there being such numerous multitudes of silent souls , that their least continuance in these terrestrial bodies should at their departure be as it were a magical kue or tessera forthwith to the aereal congruity of life to begin to act its part upon the ceasing of the other , that more souls may be rid out of the state of silence . which makes it more probable that every soul that is once besmeared with the unctuous moisture of the womb , should as it were by a magick oyntment be carried into the air ( though it be of a still-born infant ) than that any should return into the state of silence or inactivity upon the pretence of the remaining vigour of the terrestrial congruity of life . for these laws are not by any consequential necessity , but by the free counsel of the eternal wisdom of god consulting for the best . and therefore this being so apparently for the best , this law is interwoven into the spirit of the world and every particular soul , that upon the ceasing of her terrestrial union , her aereal congruity of life should immediately operate , and the spirit of nature assisting , she should be drest in aereal robes , and be found among the inhabitants of those regions . if souls should be remanded back into the state of silence that depart before the terrestrial period of vital congruity be orderly unwound , so very few reach the end of that period , that they must in a manner all be turned into the state of inactivity . which would be to weave penelope's web , to do and undo because the day is long enough , as the proverb is , whenas it rather seems too short , by reason of the numerosity of silent souls that expect their turn of recovery into life . pag. . but onely follow the clew of this hypothesis . the hypothesis requires no such thing , but it rather clashes with the first and chietest pillar thereof , viz. that all the divine designs and actions are laid and carried on by infinite goodness . and i have already intimated how much better it is to be this way that i am pleading for , than that of this otherwise-ingenious writer . pag. . since by long and hard exercise in this body , the plastick life is well ta●…ned and debilitated , &c. but this is not at all necessary , no not in those souls whose plastick may be deemed the most rampant . dis-union from this terrestrial body immediately tames it , i mean , the terrestrial congruity of life ; and its operation is stopt , as surely as a string of a lute never so smartly vibrated is streightways silenced by a gentle touch of the finger , and another single string may be immediately made to sound alone , while the other is mute and silent . for , i say , these are the free laws of the eternal wisdom , but fatally and vitally , not intellectually implanted in the spirit of nature , and in all humane souls or spirits . the whole universe is as it were the automatal harp of that great and true apollo ; and as for the general striking of the strings and stopping their vibrations , they are done with as exquisite art as if a free intellectual agent plaid upon them . but the plastick powers in the world are not such , but onely vital and fatal , as i said before . pag. . that an aereal body was not enough for it to display its force upon , &c. it is far more safe and rational to say , that the soul deserts her aereal estate by reason that the period of the vital congruity is expired , which according to those fatal laws i spoke of before is determined by the divine wisdom . but whether a soul may do any thing to abbreviate this period , and excite such symptoms in the plastick as may shorten her continuance in that state , let it be left to the more inquisitive to define . pag. . where is then the difference betwixt the just and the wicked , in state , place , and body ? their difference in place i have sufficiently shewn , in my answer to the third argument against the triple congruity of life in the plastick of humane souls , how fitly they may be disposed of in the air. but to the rude buffoonry of that crude opposer of the opinion of pre-existence , i made no answer . it being methinks sufficiently answered in the scholia upon sect. . cap. . lib. . of dr. h. mores immortalitas animae , if the reader think it worth his while to consult the place . now for state and body the difference is obvious . the vehicle is of more pure air , and the conscience more pure of the one than of the other . pag. . for according to this hypothesis , the gravity of those bodies is less , because the quantity of the earth that draws them is so , &c. this is an ingenious invention both to salve that phaenomenon , why bodies in mines and other deep subterraneous places should seem not so heavy nor hard to lift there , as they are in the superiour air above the earth ; and also to prove that the crust of the earth is not of so considerable a thickness as men usually conceive it is . i say , it is ingenious , but not so firm and sure . the quick-silver in a torricellian tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer air , though there be the same magnetism of the earth under it that was before . but this is not altogether so fit an illustration , there being another cause than i drive at conjoyned thereto . but that which i drive at is sufficient of it self to salve this phaenomenon . a bucket of water , while it is in the water comes up with ease to him that draws it at the well ; but so soon as it comes into the air , though there be the same earth under it that there was before , it feels now exceeding more weighty . of which i conceive the genuine reason is , because the spirit of nature , which ranges all things in their due order , acts proportionately strongly to reduce them thereto , as they are more heterogeniously and disproportionately placed as to their consistencies . and therefore by how much more crass and solid a body is above that in which it is placed , by so much the stronger effort the spirit of nature uses to reduce it to its right place ; but the less it exceeds the crassness of the element it is in , the effort is the less or weaker . hence therefore it is , that a stone or such like body in those subterraneous depths seems less heavy , because the air there is so gross and thick , and is not so much disproportionate to the grossness of the stone as our air above the earth here is ; nor do i make any doubt , but if the earth were all cut away to the very bottom of any of these mines , so that the air might be of the same consistency with ours , the stone would then be as heavy as it is usually to us in this superioor surface of the earth . so that this is no certain argument for the proving that the crust of the earth is of such thinness as this author would have it , though i do not question but that it is thin enough . pag. . and the mention of the fountains of the great deep in the sacred history , &c. this is a more considerable argument for the thinness of the crust of the earth ; and i must confess i think it not improbable but that there is an aqueous hollow sphaericum , which is the basis of this habitable earth , according to that of psalm . . for he hath founded it upon the seas , and established it upon the flouds . pag. . now i intend not that after a certain distance all is fluid matter to the centre ; that is to say , after a certain distance of earthly matter , that the rest should be fluid matter , namely , water and air , to the centre , &c. but here his intention is directed by that veneration he has for des cartes . otherwise i believe if he had freely examined the thing to the bottom , he would have found it more reasonable to conclude all fluid betwixt the concave of the terrestrial crust and the centre of the earth , as we usually phrase it , though nothing be properly earth but that crust . pag. . which for the most part very likely is a gross and foetid kind of air , &c. on this side of the concave of the terrestrial crust there may be several hollows of foetid air and stagnant water , which may be so many particular lodgings for lapsed and unruly spirits . but there is moreover a considerable aqueous sphaericum upon which the earth is founded , and is most properly the abyss ; but in a more comprehensive notion , all from the convex thereof to the centre may be termed the abyss , or the deepest place that touches our imagination . pag. . the lowest and central regions may be filled with flame and aether , &c. that there was the reliques of a sun after the incrustation of the earth and aqueous orb , is according to this hypothesis reasonable enough . and a kind of air and aether betwixt this diminished sun and the concave of this aqueous orb , but no crass and opake concamerations of hard matter interposed betwixt . which is an hypothesis the most kind to the ingenious author of telluris theoria sacra , that he could wish . for he holding that there was for almost two thousand years an opake earthy crust over this aqueous orb unbroke till the deluge , which he ascribes to the breaking thereof , it was necessary there should be no opake orb betwixt the central fire and this aqueous orb ; for else the fishes for so long a time had lived in utter darkness , having eyes to no purpose , nor ability to guide their way or hunt their prey . onely it is supposed , which is easie to do , that they then swam with their backs toward the centre , whenas as now they swim with their bellies thitherward ; they then plying near the concave , as now near the convex of this watry abyss . which being admitted , the difference of their posture will necessarilly follow according to the laws of nature , as were easie to make out , but that i intend brevity in these annotations . onely i cannot forbear by the way to advertise how probable it is that this central fire which shone clear enough to give light to the fishes swimming near the concave of this watry orb , might in process of time grow dimmer and dimmer , and exceeding much abate of its light , by that time the crust of the earth broke and let in the light of the sun of this great vortex into this watry region , within which , viz. in the air or aether there , there has been still a decay of light , the air or aether growing more thick as well as that little central fire or sun , being more and more inveloped with fuliginous stuff about it . so that the whole concavity may seem most like a vast duskish vault , and this dwindling over-clouded sun a sepulchral lamp , such as , if i remember right , was found in the monuments of olybius and tulliola . an hideous dismal forlorn place , and sit receptacle for the methim and rephaim . and the latin translation , job . . excellently well accords with this sad phaenomenon . ecce gigantes gemunt sub aquis , & qui habitant cum eis . here is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as symmachus translates the word . and it follows in the verse , nudus est infernus coram eo , hell is naked before god. and symmachus in other places of the proverbs puts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 together , which therefore is the most proper and the nethermost hell. and it will be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the highest sense , whenever this lurid light ( as it seems probable to me it sometime will be ) is quite extinct , and this central fire turned into a terrella , as it may seem to have already happened in saturn . but we must remember , as the author sometimes reminds us , that we are embellishing but a romantick hypothesis , and be sure we admit no more than reason , scripture , and the apostolick faith will allow . pag. . are after death committed to those squalid subterraneous habitations , &c. he seems to suppose that all the wicked and degerate souls are committed hither , that they may be less troublesom to better souls in this air above the earth . but considering the devil is call'd the prince of the air , & that he has his clients and subjects in the same place with him ; we may well allow the lower regions of the air to him , and to some wicked or unregenerate souls promiscuously with him , though there be subterraneous receptacles for the worst and most rebellious of them , and not send them all packing thither . pag. . that they are driven into those dungeons by the invisible ministers of justice , &c. he speaks of such dungeons as are in the broken caverns of the farth , which may be so many vexatious receptacles for rebellious spirits which these invisible ministers of justice may drive them into , and see them commited ; and being confined there upon far severer penalties if they submit not to that present punishment which they are sentenced to , they will out of fear of greater calamity be in as safe custody as if they were under lock and key . but the most dismal penalty is to be carried into the abyss , the place of the rephaim i above described . this is a most astonishing commination to them , and they extreamly dread that sentence . which makes the devils , luke . . so earnestly beseech christ that he would not command them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to pack away into the abyss . this punishment therefore of the abyss where the rephaim or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 groan , is door and lock that makes them , whether they will or no , submit to all other punishments and confinements on this side of it . michael psellus takes special notice how the daemons are frighted with the menaces 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with the menaces of the sending them away packing into the abyss and subterraneous places . but these may signifie no more than cavities that are in the ruptues of the earth , and they may steal out again if they will adventure , unless they were perpetually watched , which is not so probable . wherefore they are imprisoned through fear of that great horrid abyss above described , and which as i said is an iron lock and door of brass upon them . but then you will say , what is the door and lock to this terrible place ? i answer , the inviolable adamantine laws of the great sandalphon or spirit of the universe . when once a rebellious spirit is carried down by a minister of justice into this abyss , he can no more return of himself , than a man put into a well fortie fathoms deep is able of himself to ascend out of it . the unlapsed spirits , it is their priviledge that their vehicles are wholly obedient to the will of the spirit that inactuates them , and therefore they have free ingress and egress every where ; and being so little passive as they are , and so quick and swift in their motions , can perform any ministries with little or no incommodation to themselves . but the vehicles of lapsed spirits are more passive , and they are the very chains whereby they are tyed to certain regions by the iron laws of the spirit of the universe , or hylarchick principle , that unfailingly ranges the matter everie where according to certain orders . wherefore this serjeant of justice having once deposited his prisoner within the concave of the aqueous orb , he will be as certainly kept there , and never of himself get out again , as the man in the bottom of the well above-mentioned . for the laws of the same spirit of nature that keeps the man at the bottom of the well ( that everie thing may be placed according to the measure of its consistencie ) will inhibit this captive from ever returning to this superiour air again , because his vehicle is , though foul enough , yet much thinner than the water ; and there will be the the same ranging of things on the concave side of the aqueous orb , as there is on the convex . so that if we could suppose the ring about saturn inhabited with any living creatures , they would be born toward the concave of the ring as well as toward the convex , and walk as steadily as we and our antipodes do with our feet on this and that side of the earth one against another . this may serve for a brief intimation of the reason of the thing , and the intelligent will easily make out the rest themselves , and understand what an ineluctable fate and calamity it is to be carried into that duskish place of dread and horrour , when once the angel that has the keys of the abyss or bottomless pit has shut a rebellious spirit up there , & chained him in that hideous dungeon . pag. . others to the dungeon , and some to the most intolerable hell the abyss of fire . the dungeon here , if it were understood with an emphasis , would most properly denote the dungeon of the rephaim , of which those parts nearest the centre may be called the abyss of fire more properly than any vulcano's in the crust of the earth . those souls therefore that have been of a more fierce and fiery nature , and the causers of violence and bloodshed , and of furious wars and cruel persecutions of innocent and harmless men , when they are committed to this dungeon of the rephaim , by those inevitable laws of the subteraqueous sandalphon , or demogorgon if you will , they will be ranged nearest the central fire of this hellish vault . for the vehicles of souls symbolizing with the temper of the mind , those who are most haughty , ambitious , fierce , and fiery , and therefore , out of pride and contempt of others in respect of themselves and their own interest , make nothing of shedding innocent bloud , or cruelly handling those that are not for their turn , but are faithful adherers to their maker , the vehicles of these being more thin and fiery than theirs who have transgressed in the concupiscible , they must needs surmount such in order of place , and be most remote from the concave of the aqueous orb under which the rephaim groan , and so be placed at least the nearest to that abyss of fire , which our author terms the most intolerable hell. pag. . have a strict and careful eye upon them , to keep them within the confines of their goal , &c. that this , as it is a more tedious province , so a needless one , i have intimated above , by reason that the fear of being carried into the abyss will effectually detain them in their confinements . from whence if they be not released in time , the very place they are in may so change their vehicles , that it may in a manner grow natural to them , and make them as uncapable of the superiour air as bats and owls are , as the ingenious author notes , to bear the suns noon-day-beams , or the fish to live in these thinner regions . pag. . under severe penalties prohibit all unlicensed excursions into the upper world , though i confess this seems not so probable , &c. the author seems to reserve all the air above the earth to good souls onely , and that if any bad ones appear , it must be by either stealth or license . but why bad souls may not be in this lower region of the air as well as devils , i understand not . nor do i conceive but that the kingdom of darkness may make such laws amongst themselves , as may tend to the ease and safety of those of the kingdom of light. not out of any good-will to them , but that themselves may not further smart for it if they give license to such and such exorbitancies . for they are capable of pain and punishment , and though they are permitted in the world , yet they are absolutely under the power of the almighty , and of the grand minister of his kingdom , the glorious soul of the messiah . pag. . the internal central fire should have got such strength and irresistible vigour , &c. but how or from whence , is very hard to conceive : i should rather suspect , as i noted above , that the fire will more and more decay till it turn at last to a kind of terrella , like that observed within the ring of saturn , and the dungeon become utter darkness , where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth , as well as in the furnace of fire . pag. . and so following the laws of its proper motion shall fly away out of this vortex , &c. this looks like an heedless mistake of this ingenious writer , who though he speak the language of cartesius , seems here not to have recalled to mind his principles . for the earth according to his principles is never like to become a sun again . nor if it had so become , would it then become a comet . forasmuch as comets according to his philosophie are incrustated suns , and planets or earths in a manner , and so to be deemed so soon as they settle in any vortex , and take their course about the centre thereof . nor if the earth become a sun again , is it like to leave our vortex according to the cartesian principles , but rather be swallowed down into the sun of our vortex , and increase his magnitude ; the ranging of the planets according to des cartes mechanical laws being from the difference of their solidities , and the least solid next to the sun. whither then can this sol redivivus or the earth turned wholly into the materia subtilissima again be carried , but into the sun it self ? this seems most likely , especially if we consider this sol redivivus or the earth turned all into the materia subtilissima , in itself . but if we take into our consideration its particular vortex which carries about the moon , the business may bear a further debate which will require more time than to be entred upon here . but it seems plain at first sight , that though this sol redivivus should by vertue of its particular vortex be kept from being swallowed down into the sun and centre of the great vortex , yet it will never be able to get out of this great vortex , according to the frame of des cartes philosophy . so that there will be two suns in one vortex , a planetary one and a fixt one . which unexpected monstrositie in nature will make any cautious cartesian more wary how he admits of the earths ever being turned into a sun again ; but rather to be content to let its central fire to incrustrate it self into a terrella , there seeming to be an example of this in that little globe in the midst of the ring of saturn ; but of an earth turned into a sun no example at all that i know of . pag. . so that the central fire remains unconcerned , &c. and so it well may , it being so considerable a distance from the concave of the aqueous orb , and the aqueous orb it self betwixt the crust of the earth and it . but the prisoners of this gaol of the rephaim will not be a little concerned . this hell of a suddain growing so smothering hot to them all , though the central fire no more than it was . and whatever becomes of those spirits that suffer in the very conflagration it self , yet ab hoc inferno nulla est redemptio . pag. . those immediate births of unassisted nature will not be so tender , &c. besides , the air being replenisht with benign daemons or genii , to whom it cannot but be a pleasant spectacle to behold the inchoations and progresses of reviving nature , they having the curiositie to contemplate these births , may also in all likelihood exercise their kindness in helping them in their wants ; and when they are grown up , assist them also in the methods of life , and impart as they shall find fit the arcana of arts and sciences and religion unto them , nor suffer them to symbolize overmuch in their way of living with the rest of their fellow terrestrial creatures . if it be true that some hold , that even now when there is no such need , every one has his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , his genius or guardian angel , it is much more likely that at such a season as this , every tender foetus of their common mother the earth , would be taken into the care of some good daemon or other , even at their very first budding out into life . pag. . but all this is but the frolick exercise of my pen choosing a paradox . and let the same be said of the pen of the annotator , who has bestowed these pains not to gain proselytes to the opinions treated of in this discourse , but to entertain the readers intellectuals with what may something inlarge his thoughts ; and if he be curious and anxious , help him at a pinch to some ease of mind touching the ways of god and his wonderful providence in the world. pag. . those other expressions of death , destruction , perdition of the ungodly , &c. how the entring into the state of silence may well be deemed a real death , destruction and perdition , that passage in lucretius does marvelously well set out . nam si tantopere est animi mutata potestas , omnis ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum , non , ut opinor , ea ab letho jam longiter errat quapropter fateare necesse est , quae fuit ante interiisse , &c. de rerum natura , lib. . and again in the same book he says , though we were again just as we were before , yet we having no memory thereof , it is all one as if we were perfectly lost . and yet this is the condition of the soul which the divine nemesis sends into the state of silence , because afterwards she remembers nothing of her former life . his words are these : nec , si materiam nostram collegerit aetas post obitum , rursúmque redegerit ut sita nunc est , atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae , pertineat quicquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum interrupta semel quom sit retinentia nostri . pag. . in those passages which predict new heavens and a new earth , &c. i suppose he alludes especially to that place in the apocalypse , chap. . where presently upon the description of the lake of fire in the precedent chapter which answers to the conflagration , it is said , and i saw a new heaven and a new earth . but questionless that passage , as in other places , is politically to be understood , not physically , unless this may be the ingenious authors meaning , that the writer of the apocalypse adorning his style with allusions to the most rouzing and most notable real or physical objects ( which is observable all along the apocalypse ) it may be a sign that a new heaven and a new earth succeeding the conflagration , is one of those noble phaenomena true and real amongst the rest , which he thought fit to adorn his style with by alluding thereto . so that though the chief intended sense of the apocalypse be political , yet by its allusions it may countenance many noble and weighty truths whether physical or metaphysical . as , the existence of angels , which is so perpertually inculcated all along the book from the beginning to the ending : the divine shechina in the celestial regions : the dreadsul abyss in which rebellious spirits are chained , and at the commination whereof they so much tremble : the conflagration of the earth ; and lastly , the renewing and restoring this earth and heaven after the conflagration . pag. . the main opinion of pre-existence is not at all concerned , &c. this is very judiciously and soberly noted by him . and therefore it is by no means fairly done by the opposers of pre-existence , while they make such a pudder to confute any passages in this hypothesis , which is acknowledged by the pre-existentiaries themselves to be no necessary or essential part of that dogma . but this they do , that they may seem by their cavils ( for most of them are no better ) against some parts of this unnecessarie appendage of pre-existence , to have done some execution upon the opinion it self ; which how far it extends , may be in some measure discovered by these notes we have made upon it . which stated as they direct , the hypothesis is at least possible ; but that it is absolutely the true one , or should be thought so , is not intended . but as the ingenious author suggests , it is either this way or some better , as the infinite wisdom of god may have ordered . but this possible way shews pre-existence to be neither impossible nor improbable . pag. . but submit all that i have written to the authority of the church of england , &c. and this i am perswaded he heartily did , as it is the duty of every one , in things that they cannot confirm by either a plain demonstration , clear authority of scripture , manifestation of their outward senses , or some rouzing miracle , to compromise with the decisions of the national church where providence has cast them , for common peace and settlement , and for the ease and security of governours . but because a fancy has taken a man in the head , that he knows greater arcana than others , or has a more orthodox belief in things not necessarie to salvation than others have , for him to affect to make others proselytes to his opinion , and to wear his badge of wisdom , as of an extraordinarie master in matters of theory , is a mere vanitie of spirit , a ridiculous piece of pride and levitie , and unbeseeming either a sober and stanched man or a good christian. but upon such pretences to gather a sect , or set up a church or independent congregation , is intolerable faction and schism , nor can ever bear a free and strict examination according to the measures of the truest morals and politicks . but because it is the fate of some men to believe opinions , to others but probable , nor it may be so much ( as the motion of the earth suppose , and des cartes his vortices , and the like ) to be certain science , it is the interest of every national church to define the truth of no more theories than are plainly necessary for faith and good manners ; because if they either be really , or seem to be mistaken in their unnecessary decisions or definitions , this with those that are more knowing than ingenuous will certainly lessen the authority and reverence due to the church , and hazard a secret enmity of such against her . but to adventure upon no decisions but what have the authority of scripture ( which they have that were the decisions of general councils before the apostasie ) and plain usefulness as well as reason of their side , this is the greatest conservative of the honour and authority of a church ( especially joyned with an exemplary life ) that the greatest prudence or politicks can ever excogitate . which true politicks the church of rome having a long time ago deserted , has been fain , an horrid thing to think of it ! to support her authority and extort reverence by mere violence and bloud . whenas , if she had followed these more true and christian politicks , she would never have made herself so obnoxious , but for ought one knows , she might have stood and retained her authority for ever . in the mean time , this is suitable enough , and very well worth our noting , that forasmuch as there is no assurance of the holy ghost's assisting unnecessary decisions , though it were of the universal church , much less of any national one , so that if such a point be determined , it is uncertainly determined , and that there may be several ways of holding a necessary point , some more accommodate to one kind of men , others to another , and that the decisions of the church are for the edification of the people , that either their faith may be more firm , or their lives more irreprehensible : these things , i say , being premised , it seems most prudent and christian in a church to decline the decision of the circumstances of any necessary point , forasmuch as by deciding and determining the thing one way , those other handles by which others might take more fast hold on it are thereby cut off , and so their assent made less firm thereto . we need not go far for an example , if we but remember what we have been about all this 〈◊〉 it is necessarie to believe that we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immortal spirit capable of salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ●…ording as we shall behave 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 revealed to us , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but though this opinion or rather article of faith be but one , yet there are several waies of holding it . and it lies more easie in some mens minds , if they suppose it created by god at every conception in the womb ; in othersome , if they conceive it to be ex traduce ; and lastly in others , if it pre-exist . but the waies of holding this article signisie nothing but as they are subservient to the making us the more firmly hold the same . for the more firmly we believe it , the greater influence will it have upon our lives , to cause us to live in the fear of god , and in the waies of righteousness like good christians . wherefore now it being supposed that it will stick more firm and fixt in some mens minds by some one of these three waies , rather than by either of the other two , and thus of any one of the three ; it is manifest , it is much more prudently done of the church not to cut off two of these three handles by a needless , nay , a harmful decision , but let every one choose that handle that he can hold the article fastest by , for his own support and edification . for thus every one laying firm hold on that handle that is best sitted for his own grasp , the article will carry all these three sorts of believers safe up to heaven , they living accordingly ; whenas two sorts of them would have more slippery or uncertain hold , if they had no handle ossered to them but those which are less suitable to their grasp and genius . which shews the prudence , care , and accuracy of judgment in the church of england , that as in other things , so in this , she has made no such needless and indeed hurtful decisions , but left the modes of conceiving things of the greatest moment , to every ones self , to take it that way that he can lay the fastest hold of it , and it will lie the most easily in his mind without doubt and wavering . and therefore there being no one of these handles but what may be useful to some or other for the more easie and undoubted holding that there is in us an immaterial and immortal soul or spirit , my having taken this small pains to wipe off the soil , and further the usefulness of one of them by these annotations , if it may not merit thanks , it must , i hope , at least deserve excuse with all those that are not of too sowre and tetrick a genius , and prefer their own humours and sentiments before the real benefit of others . but now if any one shall invidiously object , that i prefer the christian discretion of my own church the church of england , before the judgment and wisdom of a general council , namely , the fisth oecumenical council held at constantinople in justinians time under the patriarch eutychius , who succeeded menas lately deceased , to whom justinian sent that discourse of his against origen and his errours , amongst which pre-existence is reckoned one : in answer to this , several things are to be considered , that right may be done our mother . first , what number of bishops make a general council , so that from their numerosity we may rely upon their authority and infallibility that they will not conclude what is false . secondly , whether in whatsoever matters of debate , though nothing to the salvation of mens souls , but of curious speculation , fitter for the schools of philosophers than articles of faith for the edification of the people ( whose memory and conscience ought to be charged with no notions that are not subservient to the rightly and duly honouring god and his onely begotten son our lord jesus christ , and to the faithful discharging their duty to man ) the assistance of the spirit of god can rationally be expected ; or onely in such things as are necessary to be professed by the people , and very useful for the promoting of life and godliness . and as moses has circumscribed his narrative of the creation within the limits of mundus plebeiorum , and also the chronology of time according to scripture is bounded from the first adam to the coming again of the second to judgment , and sentencing the wicked to everlasting punishment , and the righteous to life everlasting : so whether the decisions of the church are not the most safely contained within these bounds , and they faithfully discharge themselves in the conduct of souls , if they do but instruct them in such truths only as are within this compass revealed in sacred scripture . and whether it does not make for the interest and dignity of the church to decline the medling with other things , as unprofitable and unnecessary to be decided . thirdly , whether if a general council meet not together in via spiritus sancti , but some stickling imbitter'd grandees of the church out of a pique that they have taken against some persons get through their interest a general council called , whether is the assistance of the holy ghost to be expected in such a meeting , so that they shall conclude nothing against truth . fourthly , whether the authority of such general councils as providence by some notable prodigie may seem to have intimated a dislike of , be not thereby justly suspected , and not easily to be admitted as infallible deciders . fifthly , whether a general council that is found mistaken in one point , anathematizing that for an heresie which is a truth , forfeits not its authority in other points , which then whether falshoods or truths , are not to be deemed so from the authority of that council , but from other topicks . sixthly , since there can be no commerce betwixt god and man , nor he communicate his mind and will to us but by supposition , that our senses rightly circumstantiated are true , that there is skill in us to understand words and grammar , and schemes of speech , as also common notions and clear inferences of reason , whether if a general council conclude any thing plainly repugnant to these , is the conclusion of such a council true and valid ; and whether the indeleble notices of truth in our mind that all mankind is possessed of , whether logical , moral , or metaphysical , be not more the dictates of god , than those of any council that are against them . seventhly , if a council , as general as any has been called , had in the very midnight of the churches apostasie and ignorance met , and concluded all those corruptions that now are obtruded by the church of rome , as transubstantiation , invocation of saints , worshipping of images , and the like , whether the decisions of such a council could be held infallible or valid . what our own excellently well reformed church holds in this case , is evident out of her articles . for , eighthly , the church of england plainly declares , that general councils when they be gathered together , forasmuch as they be an assembly of men whereof all are not governed with the spirit and word of god , they may err , and sometimes have erred even in things pertaining to god. wherefore , saith she , things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority , unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy scripture . artic. . ninthly , and again , artic. . where she allows the church to have power to decree rites and ceremonies , and authority in controversies of faith , but with this restriction , that it is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing that is contrary to gods word written , neither may it so expound one place of scripture that it be repugnant to another ; she concludes : wherefore although the church be a witness and keeper of holy writ , yet as it ought not to decree any thing against the same , so besides the same ought it not to inforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation . what then , does she null the authority of all the general councils , and have no deference for any thing but the mere word of god to convince men of heresie ? no such matter . what her sense of these things is , you will find in eliz. cap. . wherefore , tenthly and lastly , what general councils the church of england allows of for the conviction of hereticks you may understand out of these words of the statute : they shall not adjudge any matter or cause to be heresies , but onely such as heretofore have been adjudged to be heresie by the authority of the canonical scriptures , or by the first four general councils or any of them , or by any other general council wherein the same was declared heresie by the express and plain words of the said canonical scriptures , by brief reflections upon some of these ten heads , i shall endeavour to lessen the invidiousness of my seeming to prefer the discretion of the church of england before the judgment of a general council , i mean of such a general council as is so unexceptionable that we may relie on the authority of their decisions , that they will not fail to be true . of which sort whether the fifth reputed general council be , we will briefly first consider . for reflecting on the first head , it seems scarcely numerous enough for a general council . the first general council of nice had above three hundred bishops ; that of chalcedon above six hundred : this fifth council held at constantinople had but an hundred sixty odd . and which still makes it more unlike a general council , in the very same year , viz. , the western bishops held a council at aquileia , and condemned this fifth council held at constantinople . secondly , the pre-existence of souls being a mere philosophical speculation , and indeed held by all philosophers in the affirmative that held the soul incorporeal ; we are to consider whether we may not justly deem this case referrible to the second head , and to look something like pope zacharies appointing a council to condemn virgilius as an heretick , for holding antipodes . thirdly , we may very well doubt whether this council proceeded in via spiritus sancti , this not being the first time that the lovers and admirers of origen for his great piety and knowledge , and singular good service he had done to the church of christ in his time , had foul play plai'd them . witness the story of theophilus bishop of antioch , who to revenge himself on dioscorus and two others that were lovers of origen and anti-anthropomorphites , stickled so , that he caused epiphanius in his see , as he did in his own , to condemn the books of origen in a synod . to which condemnation epiphanius an anthropomorphite , and one of more zeal than knowledge , would have got the subscription of chrysostome the patriarch of constantinople ; but he had more wisdom and honesty than to listen to such an injurious demand . and as it was with those synods called by theophilus and epiphanius , so it seems to be with the fifth council . piques and heart-burnings amongst the grandees of the church seemed to be at the bottom of the business . binius in his history of this fifth council takes notice of the enmity betwixt pelagius , pope vigilius's apocrisiarie , and theodorus bishop of caesarea cappadociae an origenist . and spondanus likewise mentions the same , who says , touching the business of origen , that pelagius the popes apocrisiarie , eam quaestionem in ipsius theodori odium movisse existimabatur . and truly it seems to me altogether incredible , unless there were some hellish spight at the bottom , that they should not have contented themselves to condemn the errours supposed to be origens ( but after so long a time after his death , there being in his writings such choppings and changings and interpolations , hard to prove to be his ) but have spared his name , for that unspeakable good service he did the church in his life-time . see dr. h. mores preface to his collectio philosophica , sect. . where origens true character is described out of eusebius . wherefore whether this be to begin or carry on things in via spiritus sancti , so that we may rely on the authority of such a council , i leave to the impartial and judicious to consider . fourthly , in reference to the fourth head , that true wisdom and moderation , and the holy assistance of gods spirit did not guide the affairs of this council , seems to be indicated by the divine providence , who to shew the effect of their unwise proceedings in the self-same year the council sate , sent a most terrible earthquake for forty days together upon the city of constantinople where the council was held , and upon other regions of the east , even upon alexandria it self and other places , so that many cities were levelled to the ground . upon which spondanus writes thus : haea verò praesagia fuisse malorum quae sunt praedictam synodum consecuta , nemo negare poterit quicunque ab eventis facta noverit judicare . this also reminds me of a prodigy as it was thought that happened at the sixth reputed general council , where nigh three hundred fathers were gathered together to decide this nice and subtile point , namely , whether an operation or volition of christ were to be deemed , una operatio sive volitio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to that axiom of some metaphysicians , that actio est suppositi , and so the humane and divine nature of christ being coalescent into one person , his volition and operation be accounted one as his person is but one ; or because of the two natures , though but one person , there are to be conceived two operations or two volitions . this latter dogma obtained , and the other was condemned by this third constantinopolitan council : whereupon , as paulus diaconus writes , abundance of cobwebs or spiders webs fell or rained , as it were , down upon the heads of the people , to their very great astonishment . some interpret the cobwebs of heresies : others haply more rightfully of troubling the church of christ with over-great niceties and curiosities of subtile speculation , which tend nothing to the corroborating her faith , and promoting a good life ; and are so obscure , subtile , and lubricous , that look on them one way they seem thus , and another way thus . to this sixth general council there seemed two operations and two wills in chri●… , because of his two natures . to a council called after by philippicus the emperour , and john patriarch o●… constantinople , considering christ as one person ●…ere appeared numerosissimo orientalium episcoporum collecto conven●…ui ▪ as spondanus ●…as 〈◊〉 but as binius , innumerle orientalium episcoporum multitudini congregat●…e , but one will and one operation . and ce●…tainly this numerous or innumerable company of bishops must put as fair sor a general council as that of less than three hundred ▪ but that the authority of both these councils are lessened upon the account of the second head , in that the matter they consulted about tended nothing to the corroboration of our faith , or the promotion of a good life , i have already intimat●…d . these things i was tempted to note , in reference to the tenth head. for it seems to me an undeniable argument , that our first reformers , which are the risen witnesses , were either exquisitely well seen in ecclesiastick history , or the good hand of god was upon them that they absolutely admitted onely the four first general councils ; but after them , they knew not where to be , or what to call a general council , and therefore would not adventure of any so called for the adjudging any matters heresie . but if any pretended to be such , their authority should no further prevail , than as they made out things by express and plain words of canonical scripture . and for other synods , whether the seventh , which is the second of nice , or any other that the church of rome would have to be general in defence of their own exorbitant points of faith or practice , they will be found of no validity , if we have recourse to the sixth , seventh , eighth and ninth heads . fifthly , in reference to the fifth head. this fifth council loseth its authority in anathematizing what in origen seems to be true according to that express text of scripture , john . . ( especially compared with others . see notes on chap. ii. ) i came forth from the father , and am come into the world ; again i leave the world , and go to the father . he came forth from his father which is in heaven , accordingly as he taught us to pray to him ( the divine shechina being in a peculiar manner there ) he leaves the world and goes to the father , which all understand of his ascension into heaven , whence his coming from the father must have the same sense , or else the antithesis will plainly fail . wherefore it is plain he came down from heaven ( as he signifies also in other places ) as well as returns thither . but he can neither be truly said to come from heaven , nor return thither , according to his divine nature . for it never lest heaven , nor removes from one place to another ; and therefore this scripture does plainly imply the pre existence of the soul of the messiah , according to the doctrine of the jews , before it was incarnate . and this stricture of the old cabala may give light to more places of st. johns writings than is fit to recite in this haste ; i will onely name one by the by , john . . every spirit that confesseth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that jesus is the christ come in the flesh , that is to say , is the christ incarnate , is of god. for the messiah did exist , viz. his soul , before he came into the flesh , according to the doctrine of the jews . which was so well known , that upon the above-cited saying ( john . . ) of our saviour , they presently answered , lo , now speakest thou plainly , and speakest no parable ; because he clearly discovers himself by this character to be the expected messias incarnate . nor is there any possible evasion out of the clearness of this text from the communication of idioms , because christ cannot be said to come down from heaven according to his humane nature before it was there , therefore his humane nature was there before it was incarnate . and lastly , the authority of the decision of this council ( if it did so decide ) is lessened , in that contrary to the second head ( as was hinted above ) it decides a point that faith and godliness is not at all concerned in . for the divinity of christ , which is the great point of faith , is as firmly held supposing the soul of the messias united with the logos before his incarnation , as in it . so that the spight onely of pelagius against theodorus to multiply anathematisms against origen , no use or necessity of the church required any such thing . whence again their authority is lessened upon the account of the third head. these things may very well suspend a careful mind , and loth to be imposed upon , from relying much upon the authority of this fifth council . but suppose its authority entire , yet the acts against origen are not to be found in the council . and the sixth council in its anathematisms , though it mention theodorets writings , the epistle of ibas and theodorus mopsuestenus who were concerned in the fifth council ; yet i find not there a syllable touching origen . and therefore those that talk of his being condemned by that fifth co●…ncil , have an eye , i suppose , to the anathematisms at the end of that discourse which justinian the emperour sent to menas patriarch of constantinople , according to which form they suppose the errours of origen condemned . which if it were true , yet simple pre-existence will escape well enough . nor do i think that learned and intelligent patriarch photius would have called the simple opinion of pre-existence of souls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but ●…or those appendages that the injudiciousness and rashness of some had affixed 〈◊〉 it . partly therefore re●…lecting upon that first anathematism in the emperours discou●…se that makes the pre-existent souls of men first to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if their highest felicity consisted in having no body to inactuate ( which plainly clashes with both sound philosophy and christianity , as if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and rephaim were all one , and they were not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 till they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , grown cold to the divine love , and onely gathered body as they gathered corruption , and were alienated from the life of god ; which is point-blank against the christian faith , which has promised us , as the highest prize , a glorified body : ) and partly what himself adds , that one soul goes into several bodies ; which are impertinent appendages of the pre-existence of the soul , false , useless and unnecessary ; and therefore those that add these appendages thereto , violate the sincerity of the divine tradition to no good purpose . but this simple doctrine of pre existence is so unexceptionable and harmless , that the third collection of councils in justellus , which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , though it reckon the other errours of origen condemned in the fifth council , omits this of pre-existence . certainly that ecclesiastick that framed that discourse for the emperour , if he did it not himself , had not fully , deliberately and impartially considered the dogma of pre-existence taken in its self , nor does once offer to answer any reasons out of scripture or philosophy that are produced for it . which if it had been done , and this had been the onely errour to be alledged against origen . i cannot think it credible , nay scarce possible , though their spight had been never so much against some lo●…ers of origen , that they could have got any general council to have condemned so holy , so able , so victorious a champion for the christian church in his life-time for an h●…retick , upon so tolerable a punctilio , about three hundred years after his death . what father that wrote before the first four general councils , but might by the malevolent , for some odd passage or other , be doomed an heretick , if such severity were admittable amongst christians ? but i have gone out further than i was aware ; and it is time for me to be think me what i intended . which was the justif●…ing of my self in my seeming to prefer the discretion of our own church in leaving us free to hold the incorporeity and immortality of the soul by any of the three handles that best fitted every mans genius , before the judgment of the fifth general council , that would abridge us of this liberty . from which charge i have endeavoured to free my self , briefly by these two ways : first , by shewing how hard it is to prove the fifth oecumenical council so called , to be a legitimate general or oecumenical council , and such as whose authority we may relie on . and secondly , if it was such , by shewing that it did not condemn simply the pre-existence of souls , but pre-existence with such and such appendages . so that there is no real clashing betwixt our church and that council in this . but however this is , from the eighth and ninth heads it's plain enough that the church of england is no favourer of the conclusions of any general council that are enjoyned as necessary to salvation , that be either repugnant to holy scripture , or are not clearly to be made out from the same ; which non-pre-existence of souls certainly is not , but rather the contrary . but being the point is not sufficiently clear from scripture either way to all , and the immortality of the soul and subsistence after death is the main useful point ; that way which men can hold it with most firmness and ease , her candour and prudence has left it free to them to make use of . and as for general councils , though she does not in a fit of zeal , which theodosius a prior in palestine is said to have done , anathematize from the pulpit all people that do not give as much belief to the four first general councils as to the four gospels themselves ; yet , as you may see in the tenth head , she makes the authority of the first four general councils so great , that nothing is to be adjudged heresie but what may be proved to be so either from the scripture or from these four councils . which encomium might be made with less skill and more confidence by that prior , there having been no more than four general councils in his time . but it was singular learning and judgment , or else a kind of divine sagacity in our first reformers , that they laid so great stress on the first four general councils , and so little on any others pretended so to be . but in all likelihood they being perswaded of the truth of the prediction of the apostasi●… of the church under antichrist how universal in a manner it would be , they had the most confidence in those general councils which were the earliest , and that were held within those times of the church which some call symmetral . and without all question , the two first general councils , that of nice , and that other of constantinople , were within those times , viz. within four hundred years after christ ; and the third and fourth within the time that the ten-horned beast had his horns growing up , according to mr. mede's computation . but the definitions of the third and fourth councils , that of ephesus , and that other of chalcedon ( which are to establish the divinity of christ , which is not to be conceived without the union of both natures into one person ; as also his theanthropy , which cannot consist with the confusion of both natures into one ) were vertually contained in the definitions of the first and second councils . so that in this regard they are all of equal authority , and that unexceptionable . first , because their decisions were concerning points necessary to be decided one way or other , for the settlement of the church in the objects of their divine worship . and therefore they might be the better assured that t●…e assistance of the holy ghost would not be wa●…ing upon so weighty an occasion . and secondly , in that those two first councils were called while the church was symmetral , and before the apostasie came in , according to the testimony of the spirit in the visions of the apocalypse . which visions plainly demonstrate , that the definitions of those councils touching the triunity of the godhead and divinity of christ are not idolatrous , else the apostasie had begun before the time these oracles declare it did ; and if not idolatrous , then they are most certainly true . and all these four councils driving at nothing else but these necessary points to be decided , and their decision being thus plainly approved by the suffrage of the holy ghost in the apocalypse , i appeal to any man of sense and judgment if they have not a peculiar prerogative to be believed above what other pretended general council soever ; and consequently with what special or rather divine sagacity our first reformers have laid so peculiar a stress on these four , and how consistent our mother the church of england is to herself , that the decisions of general councils have neither strength nor authority further than the matter may be cleared out of the holy scriptures . for here we see , that out of the holy scriptures there is a most ample testimony given to the decisions of these four general councils . so that if one should with theodosius the prior of palestine in a fit of zeal anathematize all those that did not believe them as true as the four evangelists , he would not want a fair plea for his religious fury . but for men after the symmetral times of the church , upon piques and private quarrels of parties , to get general councils called as they fancy them , to conclude matters that tend neither to the confirmation of the real articles of the christian faith , or of such a sense of them as are truly useful to life and godliness , and herein to expect the infallible assistances of the holy spirit , either upon such terms as these , or for rank worldly interest , is such a presumption as to a free judgment will look little better than simony , as if they could hire the assistance of the holy ghost for money . thus have i run further into the consideration of general councils , and the measure of their authority , than was requisite upon so small an occasion ; and yet i think there is nothing said , but if seriously weighed may be useful to the intelligent reader , whether he favour pre-existence or not . which is no further to be favoured than is consistent with the known and approved doctrines of the christian faith , nor clashes any thing with the soundest systemes of divinity , as dr. h. more shews his way of exhibiting the theorie does not , in his general preface to his collectio philosophica , sect. . whose cautious and castigate method i have imitated as near as i could in these my annotations . and he has indeed been so careful of admitting any thing in the hypothesis that may justly be suspected or excepted against , that his friend mr. glanvil might have enlarged his dedication by one word more , and called him repurgatorem sapientioe orientalis , as well as restauratorem , unless restaurator imply both : it being a piece of restauration , to free an hypothesis from the errours some may have corrupted it with , and to recover it to its primeval purity and sincerity . and yet when the business is reduced to this harmless and unexceptionable state , such is the modesty of that writer , that he declares that if he were as certain of the opinion as of any demonstration in mathematicks , yet he holds not himself bound in conscience to profess it any further than is with the good-liking or permission of his superiours . of which temper if all men were , it would infinitely contribute to the peace of the church . and as for my self , i do freely profess that i am altogether of the self-same opinion and judgment with him . annotations upon the discourse of truth . into which is inserted by way of digression , a brief return to mr. baxter's reply , which he calls a placid collation with the learned dr. henry more , occasioned by the doctors answer to a letter of the learned psychopyrist . whereunto is annexed a devotional hymn , translated for the use of the sincere lovers of true piety . london : printed for j. collins , and s. lownds , over against exeter-change in the strand . . the annotatour to the reader . about a fortnight or three weeks ago , while my annotations upon the two foregoing treatises were a printing , there came to my hands mr. baxter's reply to dr. mores answer to a letter of the learned psychopyrist , printed in the second edition of saducismus triumphatus : which reply he styles a placid collation with the learned dr. henry more . i being fully at leasure , presently fell upon reading this placid collation ; which i must confess is so writ , that i was much surprized in the reading of it , i expecting by the title thereof nothing but fairness and freeness of judgment , and calmness of spirit , and love and desire of truth , and the prosperous success thereof in the world , whether our selves have the luck to light on it , or where ever it is found . but instead of this , i found a magisterial loftiness of spirit , and a studie of obscuring and suppressing of the truth by petty crooked artifices , strange distortions of the sense of the doctors arguments , and falsifications of passages in his answer to the letter of the psychopyrist . which surprize moved me , i confess , to a competent measure of indignation in the behalf of the injured doctor , and of the truth he contends for : and that indignation , according to the idiosyncrasie of my genius , stirred up the merry humour in me , i being more prone to laugh than to be severely angry or surly at those that do things unhandsomely ; and this merry humour stirred up , prevailing so much upon my judgment as to make me think that this placid collation was not to be answered , but by one in a pleasant and jocular humor ; and i finding my self something so disposed , and judging the matter not of that moment as to be buzzed upon long , and that this more light some , brisk and jocular way of answering the placid collation might better besit an unknown annotatour , than the known pen and person of the doctor , i presently betook my self to this little province , thinking at first onely to take notice of mr. baxters disingenuities towards the doctor ; but one thing drawing on another , and that which followed being carefully managed and apparently useful , i mean the answering all mr. baxters pretended objections against the penetrability or indiscerpibility of a spirit , and all his smaller criticisms upon the doctors definition thereof , in finishing these three parts , i quickly completed the whole little work of what i call the digression , ( inserted into my annotations upon bishop rusts ingenious discourse of truth ) which , with my annotations , and the serious hymn annexed at the end ( to recompose thy spirits , if any thing over-ludicrous may chance to have discomposed them ) i offer , courteous reader , to thy candid perusal ; and so in some hast take leave , and rest your humble servant , the annotatour . annotations upon the discourse of truth . sect. . pag. . and that there are necessary mutual respects , &c. here was a gross mistake in the former impression . for this clause there ran thus : by the first i mean nothing else , but that things necessarily are what they are . by the second , that there are necessary mutual respects and relations of things one unto another . as if these mutual respects and relations of things one to another were truth in the subject , and not truth in the object ; the latter of which he handles from the fourth section to the eighteenth , in which last section alone he treats of truth in the subject or understanding . the former part of the discourse is spent in treating of truth in the object ; that is to say , of truth in the nature of things , and their necessary respects and mutual relations one to another . both which are antecedent in the order of nature to all understandings , and therefore both put together make up the first branch of the division of truth . so grosly had the authours ms. been depraved by passing through the hands of unskilful transcribers , as mr. j. glanvil complains at the end of his letter prefixed to this discourse . and so far as i see , that ms. by which he corrected that according to which the former impression was made , was corrupt it self in this place . and it running glibly , and they expecting so suddainly the proposal of the other member of the division , the errour , though so great , was overseen . but it being now so seasonably corrected , it gives great light to the discourse , and makes things more easie and intelligible . sect. . pag. . that any thing may be a suitable means to any end , &c. it may seem a monstrous thing to the sober , that any mans understanding should be so depraved as to think so . and yet i have met with one that took himself to be no small philosopher , but to be wiser than both the universities , and the royal society to boot , that did earnestly affirm to me , that there is no natural adaptation of means to ends , but that one means would be as good as another for any end if god would have it so , in whose power alone every thing has that effect it has upon another . whereupon i asked him , whether if god wo●…ld a foot-ball might not be as good an instrument to make or mend a pen withal , as a pen-knife . he was surprized ; but whether he was convinced of his madness and folly , i do not well remember . pag. . is it possible there should be such a kind of geometry , wherein any problem should be demonstrated by any principles ? some of the cartesians bid fair towards this freakishness , whenas they do not stick to assert , that , if god would , he could have made that the whole should be lesser than the part , and the part bigger than the whole . which i suppose they were animated to , by a piece of raillery of des cartes , in answering a certain objection ; where , that he may not seem to violate the absolute power of god for making what laws he pleased for the ordering of the matter of the universe ( though himself seems to have framed the world out of certain inevitable and necessary mechanical laws ) does affirm , that those laws that seem so necessary , are by the arbitrarious appointment of god , who , if he would , could have appointed other laws , and indeed framed another geometry than we have , and made the power of the hypotenusa of a right-angled triangle unequal to the powers of the basis and cathetus . this piece of drollery of des cartes some of his followers have very gravely improved to what i said above of the whole and part. as if some superstitious fop , upon the hearing one being demanded , whether he did believe the real and corporeal presence of christ in the sacrament , to answer roundly that he believed him there booted and spurred as he rode in triumph to jerusalem , should become of the same faith that the other seemed to profess , and glory in the improvement thereof by adding that the ass was also in the sacrament , which he spurred and rid upon . but in the mean time , while there is this phrensie amongst them that are no small pretenders to philosophy , this does not a little set off the value and usefulness of this present discourse of truth , to undeceiv●… them if they be not wilfully blind . pag. . therefore the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones ; namely , because a quadrangle is that which is comprehended of four right lines . it is at least a more operose and ambagious inference , if any at all . the more immediate and expedite is this , that the two internal alternate angles made by a right line cutting two parallels , are equal to one another : therefore the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones , p. ram. geom. lib. . prop. . is the reasoning had been thus : a quadrangle is that which is comprehended of ●…our right lines , therefore the three angles of a triangle are not equal to two right ones ; as the conclusion is grosly salse , so the proof had been egregiously ali●…n and impertinent . and the intention of the author seems to be carried to instances that are most extravagant and surprizing ; which makes me doubt whether [ equal ] was read in the true ms. or [ not equal ] but the sense is well enough either way . sect. . pag. . the divine understanding cannot be the fountain of the truth of things , &c. this seems at first sight to be a very harsh paradox , and against the current doctrine of metaphysicians , who define transcendental or metaphysical truth to be nothing else but the relation of the conformity of things to the theoretical ( not practical ) intellect of god ; his practical intellect being that by which he knows things as produced or to be produced by him , but his theoretical that , by which he knows things as they are ; but yet in an objective manner , as existent objectively , not really . and hence they make transcendental truth to depend upon the intellectual truth of god , which alone is most properly truth , and indeed the fountain and origine of all truth . this in brief is the sense of the metaphysical schools . with which this passage of our author seems to clash , in denying the divine intellect to be the fountain of the truth of things , and in driving rather at this , that the things themselves in their objective existence , such as they appear there unalterably and unchangeably to the divine intellect , and not at pleasure contrived by it ( for as he says , it is against the nature of all understanding to make its object ) are the measure and fountain of truth . that in these , i say , consists the truth in the object , and that the truth in the subject is a conception conformable to these , or to the truth of them whether in the uncreated or created understanding . so that the niceness of the point is this : whether the transcendental truth of things exhibited in their objective existence to the theoretical intellect of god consists in their conformity to that intellect , or the truth of that intellect in its conformity with the immutable natures and relations or respects of things exhibited in their objective existence , which the divine intellect finds to be unalterably such , not contrives them at its own pleasure . this though it be no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or strife about mere words , yet it seems to be such a contest , that there is no harm done whethersoever side carries the cause , the two seeming sides being but one and the same intellect of god necessarily and immutably representing to it self the natures , respects , and aptitudes of all things such as they appear in their objective existence , and such as they will prove whenever produced into act . as for example , the divine understanding quatenns exhibitive of idea's ( which a platonist would call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) does of its infinite pregnancy and fecundity necessarily exhibit certain and unalterable idea's of such and such determinate things , as suppose of a cylinder , a globe and a pyramid , which have a setled and unalterable nature , as also immutable properties , references and aptitudes immediately consequential thereto , and not arbitrariously added unto them , which are thus necessarily extant in the divine intellect , as exhibitive of such idea's . so likewise a fish , a fowl , and a four-footed beast , an ox , bear , horse , or the like , they have a setled nature exhibited in their idea's , and the properties and aptitudes immediately flowing therefrom . as also have all the elements , earth , water and air , determinate natures , with properties and aptitudes immediately issuing from them . nor is a whale fitted to fly in the air , nor an eagle to live under the water , nor an ox or bear to do either , nor any of them to live in the fire . but the idea's of those things which we call by those names being unchangeable ( for there are differences indeed of idea's , but no changing of one idea into another state , but their natures are distinctly setled ; and to add or take away any thing from an idea , is not to make an alteration in the same idea , but to constitute a new one ; as aristotle somewhere in his metaphysicks speaks of numbers , where he says , that the adding or taking away of an unite quite varies the species . and therefore as every number , suppose , binary , quinary , ternary , denary , is such a setled number and no other , and has such properties in it self , and references immediately accrewing to it , and aptitudes which no other number besides it self has ; so it is with idea's ) the idea's i say therefore of those things which we call by those names above-recited being unchangeable , the aptitudes and references immediately issuing from their nature represented in the idea , must be also unalterable and necessary . thus it is with mathematical and physical idea's ; and there is the same reason concerning such idea's as may be called moral . forasmuch as they respect the rectitude of will in whatever mind , created or uncreated : and thus , lastly , it is with metaphysical idea's , as for example ; as the physical idea of body , matter or substance material contains in it immediately of its own nature or intimate specifick essence real divisibility or discerpibility , impenetrability and mere passivity or actuability , as the proper fruit of the essential difference and intimate form thereof , unalterably and immutably as in its idea in the divine intellect , so in any body or material substance that does exist : so the idea of a spirit , or of a substance immaterial , the opposite idea to the other , contains in it immediately of its own nature indiscerpibility , penetrability , and self-activity , as the inseparable fruit of the essential difference or intimate form thereof unalterably and immutably , as in its idea in the divine intellect , so in any immaterial substance properly so called that doth exist . so that as it is a contradiction in the idea that it should be the idea of substance immaterial , and yet not include in it indiscerpibility , &c. so it is in the being really existent , that it should be substance immaterial , and yet not be indiscerpible , &c. for were it so , it would not answer to the truth of its idea , nor be what it pretendeth to be , and is indeed , an existent being indiscerpible ; which existent being would not be indiscerpible , if any could discerp it . and so likewise it is with the idea of ens summè & absolutè perfectum , which is a setled determinate and immutable idea in the divine intellect , whereby , were not god himself that ens summè & absolutè perfectum , he would discern there were something better than himself , and consequently that he were not god. but he discerns himself to be this ens summè & absolutè perfectum , and we cannot but discern that to such a being belongs spirituality , which implies indiscerpibility , ( and who but a mad man can imagine the divine essence discerpible into parts ? ) infinity of essence , or essential omnipresence , self-causality , or necessary existence immediately of it self or from it self , resulting from the absolute and peculiar perfection of its own nature , whereby we understand that nothing can exist ab aeterno of it self but he. and lastly , omniscience and omnipotence , whereby it can do any thing that implies no contradiction to be done . whence it necessarily follows , that all things were created by him , and that he were not god , or ens summè perfectum , if it were not so : and that amongst other things he created spirits ( as sure as there are any spirits in the world ) indiscerpible as himself is , though of finite essences and metaphysical amplitudes ; and that it is no derogation to his omnipotence that he cannot discerp a spirit once created , it being a contradiction that he should : nor therefore any argument that he cannot create a spirit , because he would then puzzle his own omnipotence to discerp it . for it would then follow , that he cannot create any thing , no not metaphysical monads , nor matter , unless it be physically divisible in infinitum ; and god himself could never divide it into parts physically indivisible ; whereby yet his omnipotence would be puzzled : and if he can divide matter into physical monads no further divisible , there his omnipotence is puzzled again ; and by such sophistical reasoning , god shall be able to create nothing , neither matter nor spirit , nor consequently be god , or ens summè & absolutè perfectum , the creator and essentiator of all things . this is so mathematically clear and true , that i wonder that mr. rich. baxter should not rather exult , ( in his placid collation ) at the discovery of so plain and useful a truth , than put himself , p. . into an histrionical ( as the latin ) or ( as the greek would express it ) hypocritical fit of trembling , to amuze the populacy , as if the doctor in his serious and solid reasoning had verged towards something hugely exorbitant or prophane . the ignorant fear where no fear is , but god is in the generation of the knowing and upright . it 's plain , this reasoning brings not the existence of god into any doubt , ( for it is no repugnance to either his nature or existence , not to be able to do what is a contradiction to be done ) but it puts the indiscerpibility of spirits ( which is a notion mainly useful ) out of all doubt . and yet mr. baxter his phancie stalking upon wooden stilts , and getting more than a spit and a stride before his reason , very magisterially pronounces , it 's a thing so high , as required some shew of proof to intimate that god cannot be god if he be almighty , and cannot conquer his own omnipotency . ans. this is an expression so high and in the clouds , that no sense thereof is to be seen , unless this be it : that god cannot be god , unless he be not almighty ; as he would discover himself not to be , if he could not discerp a spirit of a metaphysical amplitude when he has created it . but it plainly appears from what has been said above , that this discerping of a spirit , which is immediately and essentially of its own nature indiscerpible , as well as a physical monad is , implying a contradiction , it is no derogation to the almightiness of god that he cannot do it ; all philosophers and theologers being agreed on that maxim , that what implies a contradiction to be done , is no object of gods almightiness . nor is he less almighty for not being able to do it . so that the prick-ear'd acuteness of that trim and smug saying , that seemed before to shoot up into the sky , flags now like the slaccid lugs of the over-laden animal old silenus rid on when he had a plot upon the nymph●… by moon-shine . pardon the tediousness of the periphrasis : for though the poet was pleased to put old silenus on the ass , yet i thought it not so civil to put the ass upon old mr. baxter . but he proceeds , pag. . your words , says he , like an intended reason , are [ for that cannot be god from whom all other things are not produced and created ] to which he answers , ( . ) relatively , says he , ( as a god to us ) it 's true , though quoad existentiam essentiae , he was god before the creation . but , i say , if he had not had the power of creating , he had been so defective a being , that he had not been god. but he says ( . ) but did you take this for any shew of a proof ? the sense implyed is this [ all things are not produced and created by god , if a spiritual ample substance be divisible by his omnipotencie that made it : yea ; then he is not god. negatur consequentia . ans. very scholastically disputed ! would one think that reverend mr. baxter , whom dr. more for his function and grandevity sake handles so respectfully , and forbears all such juvenilities as he had used toward eugenius philalethes , should play the doctor such horse-play , having been used so civilly by him before ? what buffoon or antick mime could have distorted their bodies more ill-favour'dly and ridiculously , than he has the doctors solid and well-composed argument ? and then as if he had done it in pure innocency and simplicity , he adds a quaker-like [ yea ] thereunto . and after all , like a bold scholastick champion , or polemick divine , couragiously cries out , negatur consequentia . what a fardle of freaks is there here , and illiberal artifices to hide the doctors sound reasoning in the th section of his answer to the psychopyrists letter ? where having plainly proved that god can create an indiscerpible being though of a large metaphysical amplitude , and that there is nothing objected against it , nor indeed can be , but that then he would seem to puzzle his own omnipotency , which could not discerp such a being ; the doctor shews the vanity of that objection in these very words : the same , says he , may be said of the metaphysical monads ( namely , that god cannot discerp them ) and at that rate he shall be allow'd to create nothing , no not so much as matter ( which consists of physical monads ) nor himself indeed to be . for that cannot be god , from whom all other things are not produced and created . what reason can be more clear or more convincing , that god can create a spirit in the proper sense thereof , which includes indiscerpibility ? there being no reason against it but what is false , it plainly implying that he can create nothing , and consequently that he cannot be god. wherefore that objection being thus clearly removed , god , as sure as himself is , can create a spirit , penetrable and indiscerpible , as himself is , and is expresly acknowledged to be so by mr. baxter himself , pag. . and he having created spirits or immaterial substances of an opposite species to material , which are impenetrable and discerpible of their immediate nature , how can these immaterial substances be any other than penetrable and indiscerpible ? which is a very useful dogma for assuring the souls personal subsistence after death . and therefore it is a piece of grand disingenuity in mr. baxter , to endeavour thus to slur and obscure so plain and edifying a truth , by mére antick distortions of words and sense , by alterations and mutilations , and by a kind of sophistick buffoonry . this is one specimen of his disingenuity towards the doctor , who in his answer has been so civil to him . and now i have got into this digression , i shall not stick to exemplifie it in several others . as secondly , pag. . in those words : and when i presume most , i do but most lose my self , and misuse my understanding . nothing is good for that which it was not made for . our understandings , as our eyes , are made onely for things revealed . in many of your books i take this for an excess . so mr. baxter . let me now interpose a word or two in the behalf of the doctor . is not this a plain piece of disingenuity against the doctor , who has spent so great a part of his time in philosophie ( which the mere letter of the scripture very rarely reveals any thing of ) to reproach him for his having used his understanding so much about things not revealed in scripture ? where should he use his understanding and reason , if not in things unrevealed in scripture ; that is , in philosophical things ? things revealed in scripture are objects rather of faith than of science and understanding . and what a paradox is this , that our understandings , as our eyes , are made onely for things revealed ? when our eyes are shut , all the whole visible world , by the closing of the palpebroe is vailed from us , but it is revealed to us again by the opening of our eyes ; and so it is with the eye of the understanding . if it be shut through pride , prejudice , or sensuality , the mysteries of philosophy are thereby vailed from it ; but if by true vertue and unfeigned sanctity of mind that eye be opened , the mysteries of philosophy are the more clearly discovered to it , especially if points be studied with singular industry , which mr. baxter himself acknowledges of the doctor , pag. . onely he would there pin upon his back an humble ignoramus in some things , which the doctor , i dare say , will easily admit in many things , yea in most ; and yet , i believe , this he will stand upon , that in those things which he professes to know , he will challenge all the world to disprove if they can . and for probable opinions , especially if they be useless , which many books are too much stuffed withal , he casts them out as the lumber of the mind , and would willingly give them no room in his thoughts . firmness and soundness of life is much better than the multiplicitie of uncertain conceits . and lastly , whereas mr. baxter speaking of himself , says , and when i presume most , i do but most lofe my self ; he has so bewildered and lo●… him●…elf in the multifarious , and most-what needless points in philosophy or scholastick divinity , that if we can collect the measures of the cause from the amplitude of the effect , he must certainly have been very presumptuous . he had better have set up his staff in his saints everlasting rest , and such other edifying and useful books as those , than to have set up for either a philosopher or polemick divine . but it is the infelicity of too many , that they are ignorant — quid valeant humeri , quid ferre recusent , as the poet speaks , or as the pythagoreans — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and so taking upon them a part in a play which they are unfit for , they both neglect that which they are fit for , and miscarry , by reason of their unfitness , in their acting that part they have rashly undertaken ; as epictetus somewhere judiciously observes . but if that passage , and when i presume most , i do but most lose my self , was intended by him as an oblique socratical reproof to the doctor ; let him instance if he can , where the doctor has presumed above his strength . he has medled but with a few things , and therefore he need not envie his success therein , especially they being of manifest use to the serious world , so many as god has fitted for the reception of them . certainly there was some grand occasion for so grave a preliminary monition as he has given the doctor . you have it in the following page , p. . this premised , says he , i say , undoubtedly it is utterly unrevealed either as to any certainty or probability , that all spirits are souls , and actuate matter . see what heat and hast , or some worse principle has engaged mr. baxter to do ; to father a down-right falshood upon the doctor , that he may thence take occasion to bestow a grave admonition on him , and so place himself on the higher ground . i am certain it is neither the doctors opinion , that all spirits are souls , and actuate matter , nor has he writ so any where . he onely says in his preface to the reader , that all created spirits are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ souls ] in all probability , and actuate some matter . and his expression herein is both modest and true . for though it is not certain or necessary , yet it is very probable . for if there were of the highest orders of the angels that fell , it is very probable that they had corporeal vehicles , without which it is hard to conceive they could run into disorder . and our saviour christs soul , which actuates a glorified spiritual bodie , being set above all the orders of angels , it is likely that there is none of them is so refined above his humane nature , as to have no bodies at all . not to add , that at the resurrection we become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , though we have bodies then ; which is a shrewd intimation that the angels have so too , and that there are no created spirits but have so . thirdly , mr. baxter , pag. . wrongfully blames the doctor for being so defective in his studies as not to have read over dr. glisson de vita naturae ; and says he has talk'd with diverse high pretenders to philosophie , and askt their judgment of that book , and found that none of them understood it , but neglected it , as too hard for them ; and yet contemned it . his words to dr. more are these : i marvel that when you have dealt with so many sorts of dissenters , you meddle not with so subtile a piece as that of old dr. glissons , de vita naturae . he thinks the subtilty of the book has deterred the doctor from reading it , as something above his capacity , as also of other high pretenders to philosophie . this is a book it seems calculated onely for the elevation of mr. baxters subtile and sublime wit. and indeed by the benefit of reading this book he is most dreadfully armed with the affrightful terms of quoddities and quiddities , of conceptus formalis and fundamentalis , of conceptus adaequatus and inadaequatus , and the like . in vertue of which thwacking expressions he has fancied himself able to play at scholastick or philosophick quarter-staff with the most doughty and best appointed wits that dare enter the lists with him ; and as over-neglectful of his flock , like some conceited shepherds , that think themselves no small fools at the use of the staff or cudgil-play , take vagaries to fairs or wakes to give a specimen of their skill ; so he ever and anon makes his polemick sallies in philosophie or divinity to entertain the spectators , though very oft he is so rapt upon the knuckles , that he is forced to let fall his wooden instrument , and blow his fingers . which is but a just nemesis upon him , and he would do well to interpret it as a seasonable reproof from the great pastor of souls , to whom we are all accountable . but to return to his speech to the doctor ; i will adventure to answer in his behalf , that i marvel that whenas mr. baxter has had the cur●…osity to read so many writers , and some of them sure but of small concern , that he has not read that sound and solid piece of dr. more , viz. his epistola altera ad v. c. with the scholia thereon , where spinozius is confuted . which if he had read he might have seen volum . philosoph . tom. . pag. , , &c. that the doctor has not onely read that subtile piece of doctor glissons , but understands so throughly his hypothesis , that he has solidly and substantially confuted it . which he did in a faithful regard to religion . for that hypothesis , if it were true , were as safe , if not a sa●…er refuge for atheists , than the mere mechanick philosophie is : and therefore you may see there , how cuperus , brought up amongst the atheists from his very childhood , does confess , how the atheists now-a-daies explode the mechanick philosophie as not being for their turn , and betake themselves wholly to such an hypothesis as dr. glissons vita naturae . but , god be thanked , dr. h. more in the fore-cited place has perfectly routed that fond and foul hypothesis of dr. glisson , and i dare say is sorry that so good and old a knight errant in theologie and philosophie as mr richard baxter seems to be , should become benighted , as in a wood , at the close of his daies , in this most horrid dark harbour and dismal receptacle or randevouz of wretched atheists . but i dare say for him , it is his ignorance ▪ not choice , that has lodged him there . the fourth disingenuity of mr. baxter towards the doctor is , in complaining of him as if he had wronged him by the title of his answer to his letter , in calling it an answer to a psychopyrist , pag. . . as if he had asserted that materiality of spirits which belongs to bodies , pag. . in complaining also of his inconsistency with himself , pag. . as if he one while said that mr. baxter made spirits to be fire or material , and another while said he made them not fire or material . but to the first part of this accusation it may be answered , that if it is mr. baxter that is called the learned psychopyrist , how is the thing known to the world but by himself ? it looks as if he were ambitious of the title , and proud of the civil treating he has had at the hands of the doctor , though he has but ill repai'd his civility in his reply . and besides this , there is no more harshness in calling him psychopyrist , than if he had called him psycho-hylist , there being nothing absurd in psychopyrism but so far forth as it includes psycho-hylism , and makes the soul material . which psycho-hylism that mr. baxter does admit , it is made evident in the doctors answer , sect. . and mr. baxter in his placid collation ( as he mis-calls it , for assuredly his mind was turbid when he wrote it ) pag. . allows that spirits may be called fire analogicè and eminenter , and the doctor in his preface intimates that the sense is to be no further stretched , than the psychopyrist himself will allow . but now that mr. baxter does assert that materiality in created spirits that belongs to bodies in the common sense of all philosophers , appears sect. . where his words are these : but custom having made materia , but especially corpus to signifie onely such grosser substance as the three passive elements are ( he means earth , water , air ) i yield , says he , so to say , that spirits are not corporeal or material . which plainly implies that spirits are in no other sense immaterial , than fire and aether are , viz. than in this , that they are thinner matter . and therefore to the last point it may be answered in the doctors behalf , that he assuredly does nowhere say , that mr. baxter does not say that spirits are material , as material is taken in the common sense of all philosophers for what is impenetrable and discerpible . which is materia physica , and in opposition to which , a spirit is said to be immaterial . and which briefly and distinctly states the question . which if mr. baxter would have taken notice of , he might have saved himself the labour of a great deal of needless verbosity in his placid collation , where he does over-frequently , under the pretence of more distinctness , in the multitude of words obscure knowledge . fifthly , upon sect. . pag. . where mr. baxters question is , how a man may tell how that god that can make many out of one , cannot make many into one , &c. to which the doctor there answers : if the meaning be of substantial spirits , it has been already noted , that god acting in nature does not make many substances out of one , the substance remaining still entire ; for then generation would be creation . and no sober man believes that god assists any creature so in a natural course , as to enable it to create : and then i suppose that he that believes not this , is not bound to puzzle himself why god may not as well make many substances into one , as many out of one , whenas he holds he does not the latter , &c. these are the doctors own words in that section . in reply to which , mr. baxter : but to my question , saies he , why god cannot make two of one , or one of two , you put me off with this lean answer , that we be not bound to puzzle our selves about it . i think , saies he , that answer might serve to much of your philosophical disputes . here mr. baxter plainly deals very disingenuously with the doctor in perverting his words , which affirm onely , that he that denies that god can make two substances of one in the sense above-declared need not puzzle himself how he may make one of those two again . which is no lean , but full and apposite answer to the question there propounded . and yet in this his placid collation , as if he were wroth , he gives ill language , and insinuates , that much of the doctors philosophical disputes are such as are not worth a mans puzling himself about them ; whenas it is well known to all that know him or his writings , that he concerns himself in no theories but such as are weighty and useful , as this of the indiscerpibility of spirits is , touching which he further slanders the doctor , as if it were his mere assertion without any proof . as if mr. baxter had never read , or forgot the doctors discourse of the true notion of a spirit , or what he has writ in the further defence thereof . see sect. , , , . thus to say any thing in an angry mood , verily does not become the title of a placid collation . sixthly , the doctor in sect. . of his defence of his notion of a spirit , writes thus : i desire you to consider the nature of light throughly , and you shall find it nothing but a certain motion of a medium , whose parts or particles are so or so qualified , some such way as cartesianism drives at . to this mr. baxter replies against the doctor , pag. . really , sa●…es he , when i read how far you have escaped the delusions of cartesianism , i am sorry you yet stick in so gross a part of it as this is ; when he that knoweth no more than motion in the nature of fire , which is the active principle by which mental and sensitive nature operateth on man and brutes and vegetables , and all the passive elements ; and all the visible actions in this lower world are performed , what can that mans philosophie be worth ? i therefore return your counsel , study more throughly the nature of ethereal fire satis pro imperio ! very magisterially spoken ! and in such an igneous rapture , that it is not continuedly sense . does mental and sensitive nature act on brutes and vegetables and all the passive elements ? but to let go that : is all the doctors philosophie worth nothing if he hold with des cartes touching the phaenomenon of light as to the material part thereof ? it is the ignorance of mr. baxter , that he rejects all in des cartes , and judiciousness in the doctor , that he retains some things , and supplies where his philosophie is deficient . he names here onely the mechanical cause of light , viz. motion , and duly modified particles . but in his enchiridium he intimates an higher principle than either fire or aether , or any thing that is material , be it as fine and pure as you please to fancie it . see his enchirid . metaphys . cap. . where he shews plainly , that light would not be light , were there not a spiritus mundanus , or spirit of nature , which pervades the whole universe ; mr. baxters ignorance whereof has cast him into so deep a dotage upon fire and light , and fine discerpible corporeities , which he would by his magisterial prerogative dubb spirits , when to nothing that title is due , but what is penetrable and indiscerpible by reason of the immediate oneness of its essence , even as god the father and creator of all spirits is one indiscerpible substance or being . and therefore i would advise mr. baxter to studie more throughly the true nature of a spirit , and to let go these ignes fatui that would seduce him into thick mists and bogs . for that universal spirit of nature is most certainly the mover of the matter of the world , and the modifier thereof , and thence exhibits to us not onely the phaenomena of light and fire , but of earth and water , and frames all vegetables into shape and growth ; and fire of it self is but a dead instrument in its hand , as all is in the hand of god , who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as synesius , if i well remember , somewhere calls him in his hymns . seventhly , that is also less ingenuously done of mr. baxter , when the doctor so friendly and faithfully puts him in a way of undeceiving himself , sect. . touching the doctrine of atoms , that he puts it off so slightly . and so sect. . where he earnestly exhorts him to studie the nature of water , as mr. baxter does others to studie the nature of fire ; he , as if he had been bitten , and thence taken with that disease the physicians call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and which signifies the fear of water , has slunk away and quite neglected the doctors friendly monition ; and is so small a proficient in hydrostaticks , that pag. . he understands not what greater wonder there is in the rising of the dr.'s rundle , than in the rising of a piece of timber from the bottom of the sea. which is a sign he never read the th chapter of the dr.'s enchiridion metaphysicum , much less the scholia thereon . for if he had , he would discern the difference , and the vast usefulness of the one above that of the other to prove a principium hylarchicum distinct from the matter of the universe , against all evasions and tergiversations whatsoever . but these things cannot be insisted on here . eighthly , mr. baxter , pag. . charges the doctor with such a strange paradox as to half of it , that i cannot imagine from whence he should fetch it . tou seem , says he , to make all substance atoms , spiritual atoms and material atoms . the latter part of the charge the doctor i doubt not but will acknowledge to be true : but may easily prove out of mr. baxter , pag. . that he must hold so too . for his words there are these : that god is able to divide all matter into atoms or indivisible parts i doubt not . and can they be phy●…ically divided into parts of which they don't consist ? but mr. baxter by the same reason making spirits divisible by god , though not by any creature , makes them consist of spiritual atoms , for they cannot but consist of such parts as they are divisible into . and if they be divisible by god into larger shreds onely but not into atoms , then every created spirit , especially particular ones , are so many subtil living puppets made up of spiritual rags and clouts . but if god can divide them neither into spiritual atoms nor larger spiritual parcels , he can't divide them at all . and so according to what the doctor contends for , they will be , as they ought to be , absolutely indiscerpible . i omit here to take notice of another absurdity of mr. baxters , that though the substance of a spirit he will have to be divisible , yet he will have the form indivisible , pag. , . and yet both parts to be spirit still ; which implies a contradiction . for then one of the parts will be without the form of a spirit , and consequently be no spirit , and yet be a spirit according to mr. baxter , who makes spirits divisible into parts of the same denomination , as when water is divided into two parts , each part is still water , pag. . ninthly . that which occurrs pag. . is a gross disingenuity against the doctor , where mr. baxter says , and when you make all spirits to be souls and to animate some matter , you seem to make god to be but anima mundi . how unfair and harsh is this for you mr. baxter , who has been so tenderly and civilly handled by the doctor in his answer to your letter , he constantly hiding or mollifying any thing that occurred therein that might overmuch expose you , to represent him as a savourer of so gross a paradox as this , that there is no god but an anima mundi , which is the position of the vaninian atheists , which himself has expresly confuted in his mystery of godliness , and declared against lately in his advertisements on jos. glanvils letter to himself , in the second edition of saducismus triumphatus ? this looks like the breaking out of unchristian rancour , in a reply which bears the specious title of a placid collation . which is yet exceedingly more aggravable , for that this odious collection is not made from any words of the doctor , but from a siction of mr. baxter . for the doctor has nowhere written , nor ever thought that all spirits , but only all created spirits , might probably be souls , that is to say , actuate some matter or other . and those words are in his preface to his answer to the letter of the psychopyrist , as i noted before . i might reckon up several other disingenuities of mr. baxters towards the doctor in this his placid collation ; but i have enumerated enough already to weary the reader , and i must remember i am but in a digression . i shall onely name one disingenuity more , which was antecedent to them all , and gave occasion both to mr. baxters letter , and to the doctors answer thereto , and to this reply of mr. baxter . and that was , that mr. baxter in his methodus theologiae ( as he has done also in a little pamphlet touching judge hales ) without giving any reasons , which is the worst way of traducing any man or his sentiments , slighted and slurred those two essential attributes of a spirit , penetrability and indiscerpibility , which for their certain truth and usefulness the doctor thought fit to communicate to the world. but forasmuch as mr. baxter has in this his reply produced his reasons against them , i doubt not but the doctor will accept it for an amends . and i , as i must disallow of the disingenuity of the omission before , yet to be just to mr. baxter , i must commend his discretion and judgment in being willing to omit them ; they appearing to me now they are produced , so weak and invalid . but such as they are , i shall gather them out of his reply , and bring them into view . first then , pag. . it is alledged , that nothing hath two forms univocally so called . but if penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie be added to the virtus vitalis , to the vital power of a spirit , it will have two forms . therefore penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie are to be omitted in the notion of a spirit . see also p. . secondly , pag. . penetrable and indiscerpible can be no otherwise a form to spirits , than impenetrable and discerpible are a form to matter . but impenetrable is onely a modal conceptus of matter , and discerpible a relative notion thereof , and neither one nor both contrary to virtus vitalis in a spirit . thirdly , pag. . he sees no reason why quantity , and the trina dimensio , may not as well be part of the form of matter as discerpibilitie and impenetrabilitie . fourthly , pag. , . nothing is to be known without the mediation of sense , except the immediate sensation itself , and the acts of intellection and volition or nolition , and what the intellect inferreth of the like , by the perception of these . wherefore as to the modification of the substance of spirits , which is contrary to impenetrabilitie and divisibilitie , i may grope , says he , but i cannot know it positively for want of sensation . fifthly , pag. , . if indiscerpibilitie be the essential character of a spirit , then an atom of matter is a spirit , it being acknowledged to be indiscerpible . wherefore indiscerpibilitie is a false character of a spirit . sixthly , pag. , . [ penetrable ] whether actively or passively understood , can be no proper character of a spirit , forasmuch as matter can penetrate a spirit , as well as a spirit matter , it possessing the same place . see pag. . seventhly , pag. , . immaterialitie , says he , penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie , in your own judgment i think are none of them proper to spirit . for they are common to diverse accidents in your account , viz. to light , heat , cold. and again in his own words , eighthly , pag. . if your penetrabilitie , says he , imply not that all the singular spirits can contract themselves into a punctum , yea that all the spirits of the world may be so contracted , i find it not yet sufficiently explained . see also pag. , , , . ninthly , pag. . seeing , says he , you ascribe amplitude , q●…antitie , and dimensions and logical materialitie to the substantialitie of spirits , i see not but that you make them intellectually divisible , that is , that one may think of one part as here , and another there . and if so , though man cannot separate and divide them , if it be no contradiction , god can . tenthly , and lastly , pag. . the putting of penetrability and indiscerpibility into the notion of a spirit , is needless , and hazardous , it being sufficient to hold that god hath made spirits of no kind of parts but what do naturally abhor separation , and so are inseparable unless god will separate them , and so there is no fear of losing our personality in the other state. but penetrability and indiscerpibility being hard and doubtful words , they are better left out , lest they tempt all to believe that the very being of spirits is as doubtful as those words are . thus have i faithfully though briefly brought into view all mr. baxters arguments against the penetrability and indiscerpibility of spirits , which i shall answer in order as they have been recited . to the first therefore i say , that the doctors definition of a spirit , which is [ a substance immaterial intrinsecally indued with life and a faculty of motion ] where substance is the genus , and the rest of the terms comprize the differentia ( which mr. baxter calls conceptus formalis and forma ) i say , that this difference or form though it consist of many terms , yet these terms are not heterogeneal , as he would insinuate , pag. . but congenerous , and one in order to another , and essentially and inseparably united in that one substance which is rightly and properly called spirit , and in vertue of that one substance , though their notions and operations differ , they are really one inseparable specifick disserence or form , as much as mr. baxters virtus vitalis una-trina is ; that is to say , they are specifick knowable terms , succedaneous to the true intimate specifick form that is utterly unknowable ; and therefore i say , in this sense these knowable terms are one inseparable specifick difference or form whereby spirit is distinguished from bodie or matter in a physical acception . which the universality of philosophers hold to consist in impenetrability , and discerpibilitie , and self-inactivitie . which if mr. baxter would have been pleased to take notice of , viz. that a spirit is said to be a substance immaterial in opposition to matter physical , he might have saved himself the labour of a deal of tedious trifling in explication of words to no purpose . but to shew that this pretence of more forms than one in one substance is but a cavil , i will offer really the same definition in a more succinct way , and more to mr. baxters tooth , and say , as corpus is substantia materialis ( where materialis is the specifick difference of corpus comprized in one term : ) so spiritus is substantia immaterialis ( where immaterialis the specifick difference of spiritus is likewise comprized in one term , to please the humour of mr. baxter . ) but now as under that one term [ materialis ] are comprized impenetrabilitie , discerpibilitie , and self-inactivity ; so also under that one term [ immaterialis ] are comprized , as under one head , penetrability , indiscerpibility , and intrinsccal life and motion , that is , an essential facultie of life and motion , which in one word may be called self-activity . whence penetrability , indiscerpibility , and self-activity are as much one form of a spirit , as mr. baxters vita , . perceptio , and appetitus , is one form thereof . for though in both places they are three distinct notions , at least as mr. baxter would have it , yet they are the essential and inseparable attributes of one substance , and the immediate fruit and result of the specifick nature thereof . they are inseparably one in their source and subject . and this i think is more than enough to take off this first little cavil of mr. baxters against the doctors including penetrability and inseparability in the form or specifick difference of a spirit . for all that same is to be called form , by which a thing is that which it is , as far as our cognitive faculties will reach , and by which it is essentially distinguished from other things . and if it were not for penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie , spirit would be confounded with body and matter . and body or physical matter might be self-active , sentient , and intelligent . to the second i answer , that whosoever searches things to the bottom , he will sind this a sound principle in philosophie , that there is nothing in the whole universe but what is either substantia or modus . and when a mode or several modes put together are immediately and essentially inseparable from a substance , they are lookt upon as the form , or the onely knowable specifick difference of that substance . so that impenetrability and discerpibility , which are immediately essential to , and inseparable from body or matter , and self-inactivitie , ( as irrational is made the specifick difference of a brute ) may be added also : these , i say , are as truly the form or specifick difference of body or matter , as any thing knowable is of any thing in the world . and self-inactivity at least , is contrary to the virtus vitalis of a spirit , though impenetrability and discerpibility were not . so that according to this oeconomy , you see how plainly and exquisitely body and spirit are made opposite species one to another . and 't is these modal differences of substances which we only know , but the specifick substance of any thing is utterly unknown to us , however mr. baxter is pleased to swagger to the contrarie , p. , . where he seems to mis-understand the doctor , as if by essence he did not understand substance , as both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and essentia usually signifie ( especially with the ancients ) but any being at large . but of substance it is most true , we know it onely by its essential modes , but the modes are not the substance it self of which they are modes ; otherwise the substance would want modes , or every substance would be more substances than one . and mr. baxter himself saith , pag. . to know an essential attribute , and to know ipsam essentiam scientiâ inadaequatâ , is all one . which inadequate or partial knowledge , say i , is this , the knowing of the essential mode of the substance , and not knowing the substance it self ; otherwise if both the essential modes were known , and also the specifick substance to which the modes belong ( more than that those modes belong to that substance ) the knowledge would be full and adequate , and stretcht through the whole object . so that mr. baxters scientia inadoequata , and the doctors denying the bare substance it self to be known , may very well consist together , and be judged a mere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which is an exercise more grateful it 's likely to mr. baxter , than to the doctor . to the third i say , any one that considers may find a necessarie reason why quantitie or trina dimensio should be left out in the form of body or matter , especially why the doctor should leave it out , because he does professedly hold , that whatever is , has metaphysical quantitie or metaphysical trina dimensio ; which no man can denie that holds god is essentially present every-where . and no man , i think , that does not dote can denie that . wherefore allowing matter to be substance ; in that generical nature , trina dimensio is comprized , and need not be again repeated in the form. but when in the forma or differentia , discerpible and impenetrable is added , this is that which makes the trina dimensio ( included in the genus , substantia ) of a corporeal kind , and does constitute that species of things , which we call corpora . this is so plain a business , that we need insist no longer upon it . now to the fourth , i answer briefly , that from what knowledge we have by the mediation of the senses and inference of the intellect , we arrive not onely to the knowledge of like things , but of unlike , or rather contrary : as in this very example , we being competently well instructed , indeed assured by our senses , that there is such a kind of thing as body , whose nature is to be impenetrable and discerpible , and our reason certainly informing us , as was noted even now , that whatever is , has a kind of amplitude more or less , or else it would be nothing ; hence we are confirmed , that not extension or trina dimensio , but impenetrabilitie and discerpibilitie is the determinate and adequate nature of what we call body ; and if there be any opposite species to body , our reason tells us it must have opposite modes or attributes , which are penetrability and indiscerpibility . this is a plain truth not to be groped after with our fingers in the dark , but clearly to be discerned by the eye of our understanding in the light of reason . and thus we see ( and many examples more we might accumulate ) that by the help of our senses and inference of our understanding , we are able to conclude not onely concerning like things , but their contraries or opposites . i must confess i look upon this allegation of mr. baxter as very weak and faint . and as for his fifth , i do a little marvel that so grave and grandaevous a person as he should please himself in such little flirts of wit and sophistry as this of the indiscerpibility of an atom or physical monad . as if indiscerpibility could be none of the essential or specifical modes or attributes of a spirit , because a physical monad or atom is indiscerpible also , which is no spirit . but those very indiscerpibilities are specifically different . for that of a spirit is an indiscerpibility that arises from the positive perfection and oneness of the essence , be it never so ample ; that of an atom or physical monad , from imperfection and privativeness , from the mere littleness or smalness thereof , so small that it is impossible to be smaller , and thence onely is indiscerpible . the sixth also is a pretty juvenile ferk of wit for a grave ancient divine to use , that penetrability can be no proper character of a spirit , because matter can penetrate spirit as well as spirit matter , they both possessing the same space . suppose the bodie a. of the same amplitude with the bodie b. and thrust the bodie a. against the bodie b. the bodie a. will not nor can penetrate into the same space that the bodie b. actually occupies . but suppose the bodie a. a spirit of that amplitude , and according to its nature piercing into the same space which the bodie b. occupies , how plain is it that that active piercing into the same space that the bodie b. occupies , is to be attributed to the spirit a. & not to the bodie b ? for the bodie a. could not get in . these are prettie forc'd distortions of wit , but no solid methods of due reason . and besides , it is to be noted , that the main character of a spirit is , as to penetrability , that spirit can penetrate spirit , but not matter matter . and now the seventh is as slight as the fifth . diverse accidents , saith he , penetrate their subjects , as heat , cold , &c. therefore penetrabilitie is no proper character of a spirit . but what a vast difference is there here ! the one pierce the matter , ( or rather are in the matter merely as continued modes thereof ) the other enters into the matter as a distinct substance therefrom . penetration therefore is here understood in this character of a spirit , of penetratio substantialis , when a substance penetrates substance , as a spirit does spirit and matter , which matter cannot do . this is a certain character of a spirit . and his instancing in light as indiscerpible , is as little to the purpose . for the substance of light , viz. the materia sub●…ilissima and globuli , are discerpible . and the motion of them is but a modus , but the point in hand is indiscerpibilitie of substance . to the eighth i answer , that mr. baxter here is hugely unreasonable in his demands , as if penetrabilitie of spirits were not sufficiently explained , unless it can be made out , that all the spirits in the world , universal and particular , may be contracted into one punctum : but this is a theme that he loves to enlarge upon , and to declaim on very tragically , as pag. . if spirits have parts which may be extended and contracted , you will hardly so easily prove as say , that god cannot divide them . and when in your writings shall i find satisfaction into how much space one spirit may be extended , and into how little it may be contracted , and whether the whole spirit of the world may be contracted into a nut-shell or a box , and the spirit of a flea may be extended to the convex of all the world ? and again , pag. . you never tell into how little parts onely it may be contracted ; and if you put any limits , i will suppose that one spirit hath contracted itself into the least compass possible ; and then i ask , cannot another and another spirit be in the same compass by their penetration ? if not ; spirits may have a contracted spissitude which is not penetrable , and spirits cannot penetrate contracted spirits , but onely dilated ones . if yea ; then quoero , whether all created spirits may not be so contracted . and i should hope that the definition of a spirit excludeth not god , and yet that you do not think that his essence may be contracted and dilated . o that we knew how little we know ! this grave moral epiphonema with a sorrowful shaking of the head is not in good truth much misbecoming the sly insinuating cunning of mr. richard baxter , who here makes a shew , speaking in the first person [ we ] of lamenting and bewailing the ignorance of his own ignorance , but friendly hooks in , by expressing himself in the plural number , the doctor also into the same condemnation . solamen miseris — as if he neither did understand his own ignorance in the things he writes of , but will be strangely surprised at the hard riddles mr. baxter has propounded , as if no oedipus were able to solve them . and i believe the doctor if he be called to an account will freely confess of himself , that in the things he positively pronounces of , so far as he pronounces , that he is indeed altogether ignorant of any ignorance of his own therein ; but that this is by reason that he according to the cautiousness of his genius does not adventure further than he clearly sees ground , and the notion appears useful for the publick . as it is indeed useful to understand that spirits can both penetrate matter and penetrate one another , else god could not be essentially present in all the parts of the corporeal universe , nor the spirits of men and angels be in god. both which notwithstanding are most certainly true , to say nothing of the spirit of nature , which particular spirits also penetrate , and are penetrated by it . but now for the contraction and dilatation of spirits , that is not a propertie of spirits in general as the other are , but of particular created spirits , as the doctor has declared in his treatise of the immortalitie of the soul. so that that hard question is easily answered concerning gods contracting and dilating himself ; that he does neither , he being no created spirit , and being more absolutely perfect than that any such properties should be competible to him . and it is reasonable to conceive that there is little actually of that propertie in the spirit of nature , it being no particular spirit , though created , but an universal one , and having no need thereof . for the corporeal world did not grow from a small embryo into that vast amplitude it is now of , but was produced of the same largeness it now has , though there was a successive delineation and orderly polishing and perfecting the vast distended parts thereof . and to speak compendiously and at once , that god that has created all things in number , weight & measure , has given such measures of spiritual essence and of the facultie of contracting and dilating the same , as also of spiritual subtilty of substance , as serves the ends of his wisdom and goodness in creating such a species of spirit . so that it is fond , unskilful , and ridiculous , to ask if the whole spirit of the world can be contracted into a nut-shell , and the spirit of a flea extended to the convex of the universe . they that talk at this rate err , as aliens from the wisdome of god , and ignorant of the laws of nature , and indeed of the voice of scripture itself . why should god make the spirit of a flea , which was intended for the constituting of such a small animal , large enough to fill the whole world ? or what need of such a contraction in the spirit of nature or plastick soul of the corporeal universe , that it may be contrived into a nut-shell ? that it has such spiritual subtiltie as that particular spirits may contract themselves in it so close together , as to be commensurate to the first inchoations of a foetus , which is but very small , stands to good reason , and effects prove it to be so . as also this smalness of a foetus or embryo that particular spirits are so far contracted at first , and expand themselves leisurely afterwards with the growth of the bodie which they regulate . but into how much lesser space they can or do contract themselves at any time , is needless to know or enquire . and there is no repugnancie at all , but the spirit of nature might be contracted to the like essential spissitude that some particular spirits are ; but there is no reason to conceit that it ever was or ever will be so contracted , while the world stands . nor lastly is there any inconvenience in putting indefinite limits of contraction in a spirit , and to allow that after such a measure of contraction , though we cannot say just what that is , it naturally contracts no further , nor does another so contracted naturally penetrate this thus contracted spirit . for as the usefulness of that measure of self-penetrability and contraction is plain , so it is as plain , that the admitting of it is no incongruitie nor incommoditie to the universe , nor any confusion to the specifick modes of spirit and bodie . for these two spirits , suppose , contracted to the utmost of their natural limits , may naturally avoid the entring one another , not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in bodies or matter , but by a vital saturitie , or natural uneasiness in so doing . besides that , though at such a contracted pitch they are naturally impenetrable to one another , yet they demonstrate still their spirituality , by self-penetration , haply a thousand and a thousand times repeated . and though by a law of life ( not by a dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) , they are kept from penetrating one another , yet they both in the mean time necessarily penetrate matter , as undergoing the diverse measures of essential spissitude in the same . so that by the increase of that essential spissitude , they may approach near to a kind of hylopathick disposition of impenetrability , and thence , by the matter of the universe ( out of which they never are ) be curb'd from contracting themselves any further , than to such a degree ; and i noted at first , that spiritual subtilty , as well as amplitude , is given in measure to created spirits . so that penetrabilitie is still a steadie character of a spiritual essence or substance , to the utmost sense thereof . and to argue against impenetrability its being the propertie of matter from this kind of impenetrability of contracted spirits , is like that quibbling sophistrie against indiscerpibility being the propertie of a spirit , because a physical monad is also indiscerpible . the ninth objection is against . the indiscerpibility of spirits , and would infer , that because the doctor makes them intellectually divisible , therefore by divine power , if it imply no contradiction , a spirit is discerpible into physical parts . but this is so fully satisfied already by the doctor in his discourse of the true notion of a spirit , and its defence , to say nothing of what i have said already above to prove it does imply a contradiction , that i will let it go , and proceed . to the tenth and last allegation , which pretends , that these two terms penetrable and indiscerpible are needless and hazardous in the notion of a spirit . but how useful or needful pene●…rability is , is manifest from what we have said to the eighth objection . and the needfulness of indiscerpibility is also susficiently shewn by the doctor in his defence of the true notion of a spirit , sect. . but now for the hazardousness of these terms , as if they were so hard , that it would discourage men from the admitting of the existence of spirits ; it appears from what has been said to the eighth objection , that penetrability is not onely intelligible and admittable , but necessarily to be admitted , in the notion of a spirit , as sure as god is a spirit , and that there are spirits of men and angels , and that the souls of men are not made of shreds , but actuate their whole grown bodie , though at first they were contracted into the compass of a very small foetus . and that there is no repugnancie that an essence may be ample , and yet indiscerpible , mr. baxter himself must allow , who , pag. . plainly declares , that it is the vilest contradiction to say that god is capable of division . so that i wonder that he will call [ penetrable ] and [ indiscerpible ] hard and doubtful words , and such as might stumble mens belief of the existence of spirits , when they are terms so plain and necessary . nor can that unitie that belongs to a spirit be conceived or understood without them , especially without indiscerpibilitie . and indeed if we do not allow penetrability , the soul of a man will be far from being one , but a thing discontinued , and scatter'd in the pores of his corpcreal consistencie . we will conclude with mr. baxters conceit of the indivisibleness of a spirit , and see how that will corroborate mens faith of their existence , and put all out of hazard . various elements , saith he , pag. . vary in divisibility ; earth is most divisible ; water more hardly , the parts more inclining to the closest contact ; air yet more hardly ; and in fire , no doubt the discerpibility is yet harder : and if god have made a creature so stongly inclined to the unitie of all the parts , that no creature can separate them but god onely , as if a soul were such , it is plain that such a being need not fear a dissolution by separation of parts . ans. this is well said for an heedless and credulous multitude ; but this is not to philosophize , but to tell us that god works a perpetual miracle in holding the small tenuious parts of the soul together , more pure and fine than those of fire or aether ; but here is no natural cause from the thing it self offered , unless it be , that in every substance , or rather matter , the parts according to the tenuitie and puritie of the substance , incline to a closer contact and inseparable union one with another ; which is a conceit repugnant to experience , and easily confuted by that ordinarie accident of a spinner hanging by its weak thread from the brim of ones hat ; which seeble line yet is of force enough to divide the air , and for that very reason , because it consists of thinner parts than water or earth . as also , we can more easily run in the air than wade in the water , for the very same reason . these things are so plain , that they are not to be dwelt upon . but mr. baxter is thus pleased to shew his wit in maintaining a weak cause , which i am perswaded he has not so little judgment as that he can have any great confidence in . and therefore in sundry places he intimates that he does allow or at least not deny but that penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie is contained in the notion of a spirit ; but not as part of the conceptus formalis , but as dispositio or modus substantiae , but yet withal such a dispositio as is essential to the substance that with the conceptus formalis added , makes up the true notion of a spirit . see pag. , , , . and truly if mr. baxter be in good earnest and sincere in this agreement without all equivocation , that penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie is essential to the true notion of a spirit , onely they are to be admitted as dispositio substantiae , not as pars formae , i confess , as he declares pag. . that the difference betwixt him and the doctor lyeth in a much smaller matter than was thought ; and the doctor i believe will easily allow him to please his own fancy in that . but then he must understand the terms of penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie in the doctors sense , viz , of a spirits penetrating not inter partes , but per partes materiae , and possessing the same space with them . and of an indiscerpibleness not arising from thinner and thinner parts of matter , as he imagines air to be more hardly discerpible than earth or water , forasmuch as by reason of its thinness its parts lye closer together , as was above noted ; but from the immediate essential oneness of substance in a spirit , according to the true idea of an indiscerpible being in the divine intellect , which , whether in idea or in actual existence , it would cease to be , or rather never was such , if it were discerpible , and therefore implies a contradiction it should be so . but if a spirit be not penetrable in the doctors sense , it is really impenetrable ; and if not indiscerpible in his sense , it is really discerpible , and consequently divisible into physical monads or atoms , and therefore constituted of them , and the last inference will be that of the epigrammatist : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and thus the sairest and firmest structures of philosophical theorems in the behalf of the providence of god , the existence of spirits , and the immortality of the soul , will become a castle of come-down , and fall quite to the ground . whence it was rightfully done of the doctor to lay such stress upon these two terms penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie , they being the essential characteristicks of what is truly a spirit , and which if they were taken out of the world , all would necessarily be matter , i mean physical matter ( to prevent all quibblings and fiddlings about words and phrases ) and this physical matter would be the subject and source of all life whatever , intellective , sensitive and vegetative . and mr. baxter did ill in not onely omitting these terms himself in his notion of a spirit , but in publickly slighting and disgracing of the doctors using of them , and afterwards in so stomaching his vindication of the same in publick , whenas we see that without them there can be nothing but physical matter in the world , and god and angels and the souls of men must be such matter , if they be any thing at all : and therefore in such an errour as this , mr. baxter with christian patience might well have born with the doctors calling it , not onely a mistake , but a mischief . and i hope by this time he is such a proficient in that vertue , that he will chearfully bear the publication of this my answer in the behalf of the doctor to all his objections against these two essential and necessarie characters of a spirit ; and not be offended if i briefly run over his smaller criticisms upon the doctors definition of the same , which do occur , pag. , . and elsewhere , as i shall advertise . the doctors definition of a spirit in his discourse of that subject , sect. . is this [ a spirit is a substance immaterial intrinsecally indued with life and the facultie of motion ] where he notes that immaterial contains virtually in it penetrability and indiscerpibility . now let us hear how mr. baxter criticizes on this definition . first , saies he , pag. . your definition is common , good and true , allowing for its little imperfections , and the common imperfection of mans knowledge of spirits . if by [ immaterial ] you mean not [ without substance ] it signifieth truth , but a negation speaketh not a formal essence . ans. how very little these imperfections are , i shall note by passing through them all ; and for the common imperfection of mans knowledge of spirits , what an unskilful or hypocritical pretence that is , the doctor hath so clearly shewn in his discourse of the true notion of a spirit , sect. , , , . that it is enough to send the reader thither for satisfaction . but as for [ immaterial ] how can any one think that thereby is meant [ without substance ] but those that think there is nothing but matter in the physical sense of the word , in the world ? as if [ substance immaterial ] was intended to signifie [ substance without substance ] ! and lastly , the doctor will denie that [ in ] in immaterial signifies negatively here more than in immortal , incorruptible , or infinite , but that it is the indication of opposite properties to those of physical matter , viz. impenetrability and discerpibility , and that therefore immaterial here includes indiscerpibility and penetrability . secondly , pag. . spirit it self , saies he , is but a metaphor . ans. though the word first signified other things before it was used in the sense it is here defined , yet use has made it as good as if it were originally proper . with your logicians , in those definitions , materia est causa ex qua res est , forma est causa per quam res est id quod est ; materia and forma are metaphorical words , but use has made them in those definitions as good as proper ; nor does any sober and knowing man move the least scruple touching those definitions on this account . to which you may add , that aristotles caution against metaphors in defining things , is to be understood of the definition it self , not the definitum ; but spirit is the definitum here , not the definition . thirdly , [ intrinsecally indued with life ] tells us not that it is the form. qualities , and proper accidents are intrinsecal . ans. mr. baxter , i suppose , for clearness sake , would have had form written over the head of this part of the definition , as the old bungling painters were wont to write , this is a cock , and this a bull ; or as one wittily perstringed a young preacher that would name the logical topicks he took his arguments from , saying he was like a shoemaker that offered his shoes to sale with the lasts in them . i thought mr. baxter had been a more nimble logician than to need such helps to discern what is the genus in the definition , what the differentia or forma . and for [ intrinsecally indued ] i perceive he is ignorant of the proper force and sense of the word intrinsecùs , which signifies as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely , which implies that this life is from the intimate essence of a spirit quatenus a spirit , and therefore can be no common qualitie nor a facultie clarted on , as mr. baxter fancies god may clart on life the specifick form of spirit , as he himself acknowledges , on matter , though materia quatenus materia implies no such thing ; but , i say , spiritus quatenus spiritus does , which is both the source and proper subject of life . but it is the effect of an ill perturbed sight , to fancie flaws where there are really none . and to fancie that a vis vitalis , or power of living can belong to materia physica immediately , which power must necessarily be the result of an essence specifically distinct from physical matter , i think may justly be called clarting of this power on a subject it belongs not to , nor is intrinsecal to it , there being no new specifick essence from whence it should spring . fourthly , the [ facultie of motion ] saies he , is either a tautologie included in life , or else if explicatorie of life , it is defective . ans. it is neither tautological nor exegetical , no more than if a man should define homo , animal rationale risibile . [ risibile ] there , is neither tautological , though included in animal rationale ; nor exegetical , it signifying not the same with rationale . and the definition is as true with risibile added to it , as if omitted . but the addition of risibile being needless , is indeed ridiculous . but it is not ridiculous to add the faculty of motion in this definition of a spirit , because it is not needless , but is added on purpose to instruct such as mr. baxter , that an intrinsecal facultie of motion belongs to spirit quatenus spirit , and indued with life ; whenas yet he , pag. . will not admit that self-motion is an indication of life in the subject that moves itself , although it is the very prime argument that his beloved and admired dr. glisson useth to prove , that there is universally life in matter . but it is the symptome of an over - polemical fencer , to deny a thing merely because he finds it not for his turn . in the mean time it is plain the doctor has not added [ the facultie of motion ] rashly out of oversight , but for the instructing the ignorant in so important a truth , that there is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but there is life and spirit . this is so great a truth , that the platonists make it to be the main character of soul or spirit , to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as you may see in proclus . fifthly , no man , saith he , can understand that the negative [ immaterial ] , by the terms , includeth penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie . ans. no man that rightly understands himself but must conceive that [ immaterial ] signifies an opposite or contrary condition to [ material ] : and he knowing ( as who is ignorant of it ? ) that the proper and essential characters of [ material ] in substantia materialis , is to be impenetrable and discerpible , he will necessarily , even whether he will or no , discover that [ immaterial ] which signifies the opposite to these in substantia immaterialis , must denote penetrability and indiscerpibility . sixthly , you do not say here , saith he , that they are the form , but elsewhere you do ; and the form should be exprest , and not onely vertually contained , as you speak . ans. what would you have him in the very definition it self , which is so clear an one , say , this is the genus , this the form , as those bunglers i mentioned above writ the names of the animals they had so badly drawn ? and that the form should be exprest is true , but it is sufficient it be exprest in such a comprehensive term as contains under it all that belongs to such a species . as when we have divided vivens into planta and animal , if we then define animal to be vivens sensu praeditum , that one word sensus , is sufficient , because it reaches any species of animal , and none but animals . and yet here the doctor is not so niggardly as to pinch the expression of all the form or difference , into that one word immaterial , whereby he here onely intimates penetrability and indiscerpibility ; but for fuller explication addeth , intrinsecally induced with life and the facultie of motion . but lastly , for his elsewhere calling penetrability and indiscerpibility the form of a spirit , he nowhere makes them the whole form of a spirit , but makes the logical form or differentia of a spirit , to be all that which he has expressed in this definition , viz. [ immaterial ] which denotes penetrability and indiscerpibility , and [ intrinsecal life and motion ] . and it is evident that when he calls this differentia in his definition , form , that he does not mean the very specifick substance or essence , whereby a spirit is a spirit , but onely essential or inseparable attributes , which onely are known to us , and which are only in an improper sense said to be the form it self , or specifick nature . they are onely the result of the form and notes of an essence or substance specifically distinct from some other substance . it is not so in substantial forms as in geometrical forms or figures , as to visibilitie or perceptibilitie . dic tu formam hujus lapidis , says scaliger to cardan , & phyllida solus habeto . but there are inseparable and essential properties of a substantial form , necessarily resulting from the form it self , as there are in external forms or figures . as for example , from the form of a globe , which is a round form , defined from the equalitie of all lines from one point drawn thence to the superficies . from this form does necessarily and inseparably result the character of an easie rouling mobilitie . that a bodie of this form is the most easily moved upon a plain , of any bodie in the world . and so from the form of a piece of iron made into what we call a sword ; fitness for striking , for cutting , for stabbing , and for defending of the hand , is the necessarie result from this form thereof . and so i say that from the intimate and essential form of a spirit , suppose , essentially and inseparably result such and such properties by which we know that a spirit is a distinct species from other things , though we do not know the very specifick essence thereof . and therefore here i note by the by , that when the doctor saies any such or such attributes are the form of a spirit , he does datâ operâ balbutire cum balbutientibus , and expresses himself in the language of the vulgar , and speaks to mr. baxter in his own dialect . for it is the declared opinion of the doctor , that the intimate form of no essence or substance is knowable , but onely the inseparable fruits or results thereof . which is a principle wants no proof , but an appeal to every mans faculties that has ordinarie wit and sinceritie . seventhly , they are not the form , saith he , but the dispositio vel conditio ad formam . ans. you may understand out of what was said even now , that penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie are so far from being dispositio ad formam , that they are the fruits . and results of the intimate and specifick form of a spirit , and that they suppose this specifick form in order of nature to precede them , as the form of a globe precedes the rouling mobilitie thereof . in vertue of a spirits being such a specifick substance , it has such inseparable attributes resulting from it , as a globe has mobilitie . and as the globe is conceived first , and mobilitie inseparably resulting from it ; so the specifick nature of a spirit , which is its true and intimate form , and made such according to the eternal idea thereof in the intellect of god , being one simple specifick substance or essence , has resulting from it those essential or inseparable properties which we attribute to a spirit , itself in the mean time remaining but one simple self-subsistent actus entitativus , whose penetrabilitie and indivisibilitie mr. baxter himself , pag. . says is easily defendible . and the doctor , who understands himself , i dare say for him , defends the penetrabilitie and indivisibilitie of no essences but such . eighthly , if such modalities , says he , or consistence were the form , more such should be added which are left out . ans. he should have nominated those which are left out . he means , i suppose , quantity and trina dimensio , which it was his discretion to omit , they being so impertinent as i have shewn above , in my answer to his third objection against the penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie of a spirit . ninthly , penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie are two notions , and you should not give us , says he , a compound form. ans. this implies that penetrability and indiscerpibility are the form of a spirit ; but i have said again and again , they are but the fruits and result of the form. a spirit is one simple specifick essence or substance , and that true specifickness in its essence , is the real and intimate form , or conceptus formalis thereof , but that which we know not ( as i noted above out of julius scaliger ) though we know the essential and inseparable attributes thereof , which may be many , though in one simple specifick substance , as there are many attributes in god immediately and inseparably resulting from his most simple specifick nature . tenthly , yea you compound , saith he , penetrabilitie and indiscerpibilitie with a quite disserent notion [ life and the faculty of motion ] , which is truly the form , and is one thing , and not compounded of notions so difse●…ent as consistence and vertue or power . ans. i say ag●…in as i said before , that nei●…her penetrability nor indiscerpibility , nor life nor motion , are the specifick form it sel●… of a spirit , which is a simple substance , but the fruits and results of this specifick form ; and all these have a proper cognation with one another , as agreeing in immateriality or spirituality : and how the common sagacitie of mankind has presaged , that the most noble functions of life are performed by that which is most subtile and most one , as penetrability and indiscerpibility makes the consistence of a spirit to be , the doctor has noted in his discourse of the true notion of a spirit . mr. baxter in reading theological systems may observe , that attributes as much dissering among themselves as these , are given to the most simple essence of god. eleventhly , you say , says he , pag. . life intrin●…ecally issues from this immaterial substance : but the form is concreated with it , and issues not from it . ans. i grant that the form is concreated with the spirit . for a spirit is nothing else but such a specifick simple substance or essence , the specifickness of whose nature onely is its real intimate form. and if we could reach by our conception that very form it self , it would be but the conceptus inadaequatus of one simple substance , and be the true conceptus formalis thereof ; and the conceptus fundamentalis , to speak in mr. baxters or dr. glissons language , would be substance in general , which is contracted into this species by this real intimate form ; which both considered together , being but one simple essence , they must needs be created together , according to that idea of a spirit which god has conceived in his eternal mind . and life will as naturally and necessarily issue from such a species or specifick essence , or from substance contracted into such a species by the abovesaid form , as mobility does issue from the form of a globe . from whence it is plainly understood how life does intrinsecally issue from immaterial substance , nor is the form it self but the fruit thereof . and as it were but trifling to say that the power of easie rolling every way on a plain were the very form of a globe , the word power or vertue being but a dark , loose , general , dilute term , and which belongs to every thing , and is restrained onely by its operation and object ; but it is the form or figure of the globe that is the immediate cause that that vertue or power in general is so restrained to this easie rolling : so it is in mr. b●…xters pretended form of a spirit , which he makes virtus vitalis , a power of living : power there , is such a dark dilute term , loose and general . but that it is determined to life , it is by that intimate specifick form , which we know not ; but onely this we know , that it is to the power of living as the figure of a globe is to the power of easie rolling , and that in neither , one can be without the other . there must be a specifick essence , which is the root of those powers , properties , or operations from whence we conclude distinct species of things : for 't is too coarse and slovenly to conceit , that these are clarted on them , but the specifick powers arise immediately , and inseparably from the specifick nature of the thing ; else why might they not be other powers as well as these ? twelfthly and lastly , pag. . but do you verily believe , saith he , that penetrability or subtility is a sufficient efficient or formal cause of vitalitie , perception and appetite , and so of intellection and volition ? i hope you do not . ans. i hope so of the doctor too ; and before this , i hoped that mr. baxter had more insight into the nature of a formal cause and into the laws of logick , than once to imagine that any one in his wits could take penetrability to be the formal cause of intellection and volition . for then every spirit being penetrable , every spirit even of a plant , at least of the vilest animalculum , would have intellection and volition . nor , for the same reason , can any body think that penetrability is a sussicient esficient cause of intellection and volition . nor is it so much as the essicient cause of vitality , perception , appetite , much less the formal . so infinitely is mr. baxter out in these things . but the case stands thus : the substance of that species of things which we call a spirit , and is so by that intimate specifick form which i named before , this substance is the cause of vitality in such a sense as the round form of a globe , or any matter of that form is , quatenus of that form , the cause of its own rolling mobilitie . i say therefore , that vitality is as immediate and necessarie a fruit or effect of the real and intimate form of a spirit , as that easie mobilitie is of the form of a sphere or globe ; and such a kind of vitality , vegetative , sensitive , intellective of such a species of spirit : these kinds of vitalities are the fruits or effects necessarie and immediate of the abovesaid so specificated substances ; that is to say , they are immediately self-living , and all of them penetrable and indiscerpible of themselves , quatenus spirits , all these essential attributes arising from the simple essence or specificated substance of every spirit , of what classis soever , created according to its own idea eternally shining in the divine intellect . as for example ; in the idea of a plastick spirit onely ; penetrability , indiscerpibility , and plastick vitality , whereby it is able to organize matter thus and thus , are not three essences clarted upon some sourth essence , or glewed together one to another , to make up such an idea : but the divine intellect conceives in itself one simple specifick ess●…nce immediately and intrinsecally of it self , indued with these essential properties or attributes . so that when any thing does exist according to this idea , those three properties are as immediately consequential to it , and as e●…ectually , as mobility to the form o●… a globe . it is the specifick substance that is the necessary source of them , and that acts by them as its own connate or natural instruments , sitted for the ends that the et●…rnal wisdom and goodness of god has conceiv●…d or contrived them for . for it is manifest , that those essential attributes of a spirit contrarie to matter are not in vain . for whenas a plastick spirit is to actuate and organize matter , and inwardly dispose it into certain forms , penetrability is needful , that it may possess the matter , and order it throughout ; as also that oneness o●… essence and indiscerpibility , that it may hold it together . for what should make any mass of matter one , but that which has a special oneness of essence in it self , quite di●…erent fro●… that of matter ? and f●…rasmuch as all s●…uls are indued with the plastick whether of brutes or men , not to add the spirits of angels ; still there holds the same reason in all ranks , that spirits should be as well penetrable and indiscerpible as vital . and if there be any platonick ni●… , that have no plastick , yet penetrability must belong to them , and is of use to them , if they be found to be within the verges of the corporeal universe ( and why not they as well as god himself ? ) and indiscerpibility maintains their supposital unitie , as it does in all spirits that have to do with matter , and are capable of a vital coalescencie therewith . but i have accumulated here more theorie than is needful . and i must remember that i am in a digression . to return therefore to the particular point we have been about all this while . i hope by this time i have made it good , that the dr.'s desinition of a spirit is so clear , so true , so express , and usefully instructive ( and that is the scope of the doctors writings ) that neither he himself , nor any body else , let them consider as much as they can , will ever be able to mend it . and that these affected cavils of mr. baxter argue no defects or flaws in the doctors definition , but the ignorance and impotencie of mr. baxters spirit , and the undue elation of his mind , when notwithstanding this unexceptionableness of the definition , he , pag. . out of his magisterial chair of judicature pronounces with a gracious nod , you mean well — but all our conceptions here must have their allowances , and we must confess their weakness . this is the sentence which grave mr. baxter , alto supercilio , gives of the doctors accurate definition of a spirit , to humble him , and exalt himself , in the sight of the populacie . but is it not a great weakness , or worse , to talk of favourable allowances , and not to allow that to be unexceptionable against which no just exception is found ? but to give mr. baxter his due , though the extream or extimate parts of this paragraph , pag. . which you may fancie as the skin thereof , may seem to have something of bitterness and toughness in it , yet the belly of the paragraph is full of plums and sweet things . for he saies , and we are all greatly beholden to the doctor for his so industrious calling foolish sensualists to the study and notion of invisible beings , without which , what a carcass or nothing were the world ? but is it not pity then , while the doctor does discharge this province with that faithfulness and industrie , that mr. baxter should disturb him in his work , and hazzard the fruits and efficacie thereof , by eclipsing the clearness of his notions of spiritual beings , ( for bodies may be also invisible ) by the interposition or opposition of his own great name against them , who , as himself tells the world in his church-history , has wrote fourscore books , even as old dr. glisson his patron or rather pattern in philosophy arrived to at least fourscore years of age ? and mr. baxter it seems is sor the common proverb , the older the wiser ; though elihu in job be of another mind , who saies there , i said days should speak , and multitude of years should teach wisdom ; but there is a spirit in man , and the inspiration of the almighty giveth him understanding . but whither am i going ? i would conclude here according to promise , having rescued the doctors definition of a spirit from mr. baxters numerous little criticisms , like so many shrill busie gnats trumpeting about it , and attempting to infix their feeble proboscides into it ; and i hope i have silenced them all . but there is something in the very next paragraph which is so wrongfully charged upon the doctor , that i cannot sorbear standing up in his justification . the charge is this : that he has fathered upon mr. baxter an opinion he never owned , and nick-named him psychopyrist from his own ●…ction . as if , says he , we said that souls are ●…re , and also took fire , as the doctor does , for candles and hot irons , &c. onely . but i answer in behalf of the doctor , as i have a little toucht on this matter before , that he does indeed entitle a certain letter ( which he answers ) to a learned psychopyrist as the author thereof : but mr. baxters name is with all imaginable care concealed . so that he by his needless owning the letter , has notched that nick-name ( as he calls it ) of psychopyrist upon himself , whether out of greediness after that alluring epithet it is baited with , i know not ; but that he hangs thus by the gills like a fish upon the hook , he may thank his own self for it , nor ought to blame the doctor . much less accuse him for saying , that mr. baxter took fire in no other sense than that in candles and hot iron , and the like . for in his preface , he expresly declares on the psychopyrists behalf , that he does not make this crass and visible fire the essence of a spirit , but that his meaning is more subtile and refined . with what conscience then can mr. baxter say , that the doctor affirms that he took fire in no other sense than that in candles and hot iron , and the like , and that he held all souls to be such fire ? whenas the doctor is so modest and cautious , that he does not affirm that mr. baxter thinks any to be such ; though even in this placid collation , he professes his inclination towards the opinion , that ignis and vegetative spirit is all one , pag. , . i have oft professed , saith he , that i am ignorant whether ignis and vegetative spirit be all one , ( to which i most incline ) or whether ignis be an active nature made to be the instrument , by which the three spiritual natures , vegetative , sensitive , and mental work on the three passive natures , earth , water , air. and again , pag. . if it be the spirit of the world that is the nearest cause of illumination , by way of natural activity , then that which you call the spirit of the world , i call fire ; and so we differ but de nomine . but i have ( saith he as before ) professed my ignorance , whether fire and the vegetative nature be all one , ( which i incline to think ) or whether fire be a middle active nature between the spiritual and the mere passive , by which spirits work on bodie . and , pag. . i doubt not but fire is a substance permeant and existent in all mixt bodies on earth . in your bloud it is the prime part of that called the spirits , which are nothing but the igneous principle in a pure aereal vehicle , and is the organ of the sensitive faculties of the soul. and if the soul carry any vehicle with it , it 's like to be some of this . i doubt you take the same thing to be the spirit of the world , though you seem to vilifie it . and , pag. . i suppose you will say , the spirit of the world does this . but call it by what name you will , it is a pure active substance , whose form is the virtus motiva , illuminativa & calefactiva , i think the same which when it operateth on due seminal matter is vegetative . and lastly , pag. . i still profess my self in this also uncertain , whether natura vegetativa and ignea be all one , or whether ignis be natura organica by which the three superiour ( he means the vegetative , sensitive , and intellective natures ) operate on the passive . but i incline most to think they are all one , when i see what a glorious fire the sun is , and what operation it hath on earth , and how unlikely it is that so glorious a substance should not have as noble a formal nature as a plant. this is more than enough to prove that mr. baxter in the most proper sense is inclined to ' psychopyrism as to the spirit of the world , or vegetative soul of the universe ; that that soul or spirit is fire : and that all created spirits are fire , analogicè and eminenter , i have noted above that he does freely confess . but certainly if it had not been for his ignorance in the atomick philosophie which he so greatly despiseth , he would never have taken the fire it self , a congeries of agitated particles of such figures and dimensions , for the spirit of the world . but without further doubt have concluded it onely the instrument of that spirit in its operations , as also of all other created spirits , accordingly as the doctor has declared a long time since in his immortalitas animae , lib. . cap. . sect. . and finding that there is one such universal vegetative spirit ( properly so called ) or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the world , he could not miss of concluding the whole universe one great plant , or if some obscure degree of sense be given to it , one large zoophyton or plant-animal , whence the sun will be endued or actuated as much by a vegetative nature as any particular plant whatsoever ; whereby mr. baxter might have took away his own disficultie he was entangled in . but the truth is , mr. baxters defectiveness in the right understanding of the atomick philosophy , and his aversness therefrom , as also from the true system of the world , which necessarily includes the motion of the earth , we will cast in also his abhorrence from the pre-existence of souls ( which three theories are hugely nec●…ssary to him that would philosophize with any success in the deepest points of natural religion and divine providence ) makes him utter many things that will by no means bear the test of severer reason . but in the mean time this desectiveness in sound philosophie neither hinders him nor any one else from being able instruments in the gospel-ministrie , if they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a due measure ; if they have a firm faith in the revealed truths of the gospel , and skill in history , tongues and criticism , to explain the text to the people , and there be added a sincere zeal to instruct their charge , and ( that they may appear in good earnest to believe what they teach ) they lead a life devoid o●… scandal and osfence , as regulated by those go●…pel-rules they propose to others ; this , though they have little of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly so called , that reaches to the deepest account of things , ( but instead thereof , prudence and ingenuity ) will sufficiently enable them to be guides to the people , especially by adhering in matters of moment to the ancient apostolick and unapostatized church , and presuming nothing upon their private spirit against the same . such , questionless , will prove able and safe pastors , and will not fail of being approved of by our lord jesus the great shepherd and bishop of our souls . but if any such , as i noted above , for that they conceit themselves also dapper fellows at cudgils or quarter-stafs , shall , leaving their flocks solitary in the fields , out of an itch after applause from the country-fry , gad to wakes and fairs to give a proof of their dexterity at those rural exercises ; if they shall , i say , for their pains return with a bruised knuckle or broken pate , who can help it ? it will learn them more wit another time . thus much by way of digression i thought fit to speak , not out of the least ill-will to mr. baxter , but onely in behalf of the doctor , hoping , though it is far from all that may be said , that yet it is so much , and so much also to the purpose , that it will save the doctor the labour of adding any thing more thereto . so that he may either enjoy his repose , or betake himself to some design of more use and moment . in the mean time , i having dispatcht my digression , i shall return to the main business in hand . i think it may plainly appear from what has been said , that it is no such harsh thing to adventure to conclude , that the truth of the divine intellect quatenus conceptive , speculative , or observative , which a platonist would be apt to call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the divine intellect exhibitive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( for though it be but one and the same intellect , yet for distinctness sake we are fain to speak as of two ) does consist in its conformity with the divine intellect exhibitive , with the immutable idea's , respects and references of things there . in conceiving and observing them ( as i may so speak ) to be such as they are represented in the said intellect quatenus necessarily and unalterably representing such idea's with the immediate respects and references of them . in this consists the truth of the divine intellect speculative . but the transcendental truth of things consists in their conformity to the divine intellect exhibitive . for every thing is true as it answers to the immutable idea of its own nature discovered in the divine intellect exhibitive . to which also the same divine intellect quatenus conceptive , speculative , or observative , gives its suffrage steadily and unalterably , conceiving these immutable idea's of things in their objective existence what their natures will be , with their necessary references , aptitudes or ineptitudes to other things when they are produced into act . from whence we may discern , how that saying of this ingenious author of the discourse of truth is to be understood . where he writes , it is against the nature of all understanding to make its object . which if we will candidly interpret , must be understood of all understanding quatenus merely conceptive , speculative or observative , and of framing of its object at its pleasure . which as it is not done in the setled idea of a sphere , cylinder and pyramid , no more is it in any other idea's with their properties and aptitudes immediately issuing from them , but all the idea's with their inevitable properties , aptitudes , or ineptitudes are necessarily represented in the divine intellect exhibitive , immutably such as they are , a triangle with its three angles equal to two right ones , a right-angled triangle with the power of its hypotenusa equal to the powers of the basis and cathetus both put together : which things seem necessary to every sober man and rightly in his wits , our understanding being an abstract or copy of the divine understanding . but those that say that if god would , he might have made the three angles of a triangle unequal to two right ones , and also the powers of the basis and cathetus of a right-angled triangle unequal to the power of the hypotenusa , are either bussoons and quibblers , or their understandings being but creatural huffiness of mind and an ambition of approving themselves the broachers and maintainers of strange paradoxes , has crazed their intellectuals , and they have already entred the suburbs of down-right phrensie and madness . and to conclude ; out of what has been insinuated , we may reconcile this harsh sounding paradox of our author , that seems so point-blank against the current doctrine of the metaphysical schools , who make transcendental truth to depend upon the intellectual truth of god , which they rightly deem the fountain and origine of all truth , whenas he plainly declares , that the divine understanding cannot be the fountain of the truth of things : but the seeming absurdity will be easily wiped away , if we take notice of our distinction touching the divine understanding quatenus merely conceptive , speculative or observative , and quatenus necessarily ( through its own infinite and immutable pregnancie and foecundity ) exhibitive of the distinct and determinate idea's or natures of things , with their immediate properties , respects or habitudes in their objective existence , representing them such as they certainly will be if reduced into act . his assertion is not to be understood of the divine understanding in this latter sense , but in the former . but being it is one and the same understanding , though considered under this twofold notion , our author , as well as the ordinarie metaphysicians , will agree to this truth in the sense explained ; that the divine understanding is the fountain of the truth of things , and that they are truly what they are , as they answer to their idea's represented in the exhibitive intellect of god. how the author himself comes off in this point , you will better understand when you have read the fifteenth , sixteenth and seventeenth sections of his discourse . let this suffice in the mean time for the removing all stumbling-blocks from before the reader . pag. . nor the foundation of the references one to another ; that is to say , the divine understanding quatenus conceptive or speculative , is most certainly not the foundation of the references of things one to another ; but the divine understanding quatenus exhibitive , that represents the idea's or natures of things in their objective existence such as they would be if reduced really into act , represents therewith all the references and habitudes they have one to another . which habitudes are represented not as flowing from or arbitrariously founded in any intellect whatsoever , but as resulting from the natures of the things themselves that respect one another , and are represented in the exhibitive understanding of god. which is the main thing that this ingenious author would be at , and such as will serve all his intents and purposes . pag. . it is the nature of understanding ut moveatur , illuminetur , &c. namely , of understanding quatenus conceptive or speculative , not quatenus exhibitive . pag. . no idea's or representations either are or make the things they represent , &c. this assertion is most certainly true . but yet they may be such idea's and representations as may be the measure of the truth of those things they represent : and such are all the idea's in the divine intellect exhibitive , their setled distinct natures necessarily exhibited there in vertue of the absolute perfection of the deitie , though onely in their objective existence , are the measures of the truth of those things when they are reduced into act , as i have noted above ; but they are not the things themselves reduced into act , no more than an autographon is the very copy . ibid. all understanding is such ; that is , idea's and representations of the natures of things in their objective existence , the patterns of what and how they are when they exist , and what references and aptitudes they have . i suppose he means here by understanding , not any power of the mind to conceive any thing , but understanding properly so called , viz. that , whose objects are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the platonists speak , the idea's or representations of such things as are necessarily and unalterably such , not fictions at pleasure . let the intellect speculative be such idea's or representations as these , and then what it perceives , conceives , or observes , it does not make , but it is made to its hand , as not being able to be otherwise , nor it self to think otherwise . and therefore it is rightly inferred as follows : that no speculative understanding in that restrict sense above-named makes at pleasure the natures , respects and relations of its objects represented in the intellect exhibitive in their objective existence , but finds them there . nor does any intellect whatsoever make them at pleasure , but they are necessarily and unalterably represented in the exhibitive intellect of the deitie , both their natures , respects , and habitudes , as inoted above . sect. . pag. . it remains then that absolute , arbitrarious and independent will must be the fountain of all truth , &c. it being supposed that the divine understanding and the independent will of god are the onely competitours who should be the fountain of all truth , and the former section proving in a sense rightly understood , that the divine understanding cannot be the fountain of truth , it remains that the mere will of god should be the fountain of truth , and that things are true onely because he wills they be so . as if four bore a double proportion to two because god would have it so ; but if he would that two should bear a double proportion to four , it would immediately be so . ibid. which assertion would in the first place destroy the nature of god , &c. nay , if he will , it destroys his very existence . for if all truths depend upon gods will , then this truth , that god exists , does . and if he will the contrary to be true , namely , that he does not exist , what becomes of him then ? ibid. and rob him of all his attributes . that it robs him of science and assured knowledge , whose objects are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , things immutable and necessary , this section makes good . and that it despoils him of his rectitude of nature , the eighth section will shew . pag. . any angel or man may as truly be said to know all things as god himself , &c. because this supposition takes away all the steadie and scientifick knowableness in things , it taking away their setled , fixt and necessary habitudes one to another , as if double proportion of four to two did no more belong to it in truth and reality than sub-double , and that four in truth were no more the quaternarie number than the binary , but indifferently either , as the will of god will have it . this plainly pulls up by the roots all pretence of science or knowledge in god , angels , and men. and much more , flatly to assert , that if god will , contradictions may be true . for this plainly implies that there is really no repugnancy nor connection of one thing with another , and that therefore no one thing can be proved or disproved from another . pag. . if we distinguish those two attributes in god , &c. namely , of wisdom and knowledge , as if the one were noematical , the other dianoetical ; although that discursiveness is more quick than lightning , or rather an eternal intuitive discernment of the consequence or cohesion of things at once . sect. . pag. . because they suppose that god is immutable and unchangeable , &c. this can be no allegation against the other arguings , because we cannot be assured of the immutability or unchangeableness of god , but by admitting of what those arguings drive at , namely , that there is an immutable , necessary and unchangeable reference and respect or connection of things one with another . as for example , of immutableness or unchangeableness with perfection , and of perfection with god. for to fancie god an imperfect being is nonsense to all men that are not delirant ; and to fancie him perfect , and yet changeable in such a sense as is here understood , is as arrant a contradiction or repugnancie . wherefore they that would oppose the fore-going arguings by supposing god unchangeable , must acknowledge what is aimed at , that there is a necessary and unchangeable respect and connection betwixt things , or else their opposition is plainly weak and vain . but if they grant this , they grant the cause , and so truth has its just victory and triumph . this section is abundantly clear of it self . sect. . pag. . will spo●…l god of that universal rectitude which is the greatest perfection of his nature , &c. in the fifth section it was said , that the making the will of god the fountain of all truth robs him of all his attributes . and there it is proved how it robs him of his wisdom and knowledge . here it is shewn how it robs him of his justice , mercy , faithfulness , goodness , &c. pag. . for to say they are indispensably so because god understands them so , &c. this , as the author saies , must be extream incogitancy . for the truth of the divine understanding speculative consists in its conformitie with the idea's of things and their respects and habitudes in the divine understanding exhibitive , which necessarily , unchangeably and unalterably represents the natures of things with their respects and habitudes in their objective existence , such as they necessarily are when they do really exist . as of a sphere , pyramid , cube and cylinder . and there is the same reason of all natures else with their respects and habitudes , that they are as necessarily exhibited as the cube and cylinder , and their habitudes and respects one to another , as the proportion that a cylinder bears to a sphere or globe of the same altitude and equal diameter . which archimedes with incomparable clearness and subtiltie of wit has demonstrated in his treatise de sphaera & cylindro , to be ratio sesq●…altera , as also the superficies of the cylinder with its bases to bear the same proportion to the superficies of the sphere . and as these idea's are necessarily and unalterably with their respects and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 represented , so are all idea's else , physical and moral , as i have noted above . and the nature of justice , mercy , faithfulness and goodness are with their habitudes and respects as fixedly , determinately and unalterably represented in their idea's , as the sphere and cylinder , or any other form or being whatsoever . sect. . pag. . for we are to know that there is a god , and the will of god , &c. that is to say , if there be no setled natures and respects and habitudes of things in the order of nature antecedent to any will whatever , meditation or contrivance , nor there be any certain nature , respects , habitudes , and connections of things in themselves ; it will be necessary that we first know there is a god , and what his will is touching the natures , respects and habitudes of things . whether these which we seem to discern and do argue from are the same he means and wills , or some other . and so there will be a necessity of knowing god and his will , before we have any means to know him ; or , which is all one , we shall never have any means to know him upon this false and absurd hypothesis . sect. . pag. . then it infallibly follows that it is all one what i do or how i live , &c. this , as the following words intimate , is to be understood in reference to the pleasing god , and to our own future happiness . but it is manifest it is not all one what i do or how i live ( though i did suppose there were no real distinction betwixt truth and falshood , good and evil in the sense here intended ) in reference to this present condition in this world , where the sense of pain and ease , of imprisonment and liberty , and of the security or safety of a mans own person will oblige him to order his life in such a manner as hath at least the imitation of temperance , faithfulness , and justice . sect. . pag. . if the opposition of contradictory terms depend upon the arbitrarious resolves of any being whatsoever . the plainness and irrefragableness of this truth , that the opposition of contradictory terms is an affection , habitu●…e or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 betwixt those terms that no power in heaven or earth can abolish , methinks should assure any that are not pure sots or crazie fantasticks , that there may be many other such unalterable and immutable habitudes of terms , natures or things that are every jot as unabolishable as this . which is no derogation to the divine perfection , but an argument of it ; unless we should conceit that it is the height of the perfection of divine omnipotence to be able to destroy himself . and truly to fancie an ability in him of destroying or abolishing those eternal , necessary and immutable habitudes or respects of the natures of things represented in their idea's by the divine intellect exhibitive , is little less than the admitting in god an ability of destroying or abolishing the divine nature it self , because ipso facto the divine wisdom and knowledge would be destroyed , as was shewn in the fifth section , and what a god would that be that is destitute thereof ! wherefore it is no wonder that those men that are sober and in their wits , find it so impossible in themselves but to conceive that such and such natures are steadily such and no other , and betwixt such and such natures there are steadily and immutably such habitudes and respects and no others . forasmuch as the intellect of man is as it were a small compendious transcript of the divine intellect , and we feel in a manner in our own intellects the firmness and immutability of the divine , and of the eternal and immutable truths exhibited there . so that those that have their minds so crackt and shatter'd as to be able to fancy that if god would , he could change the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or common notions into their contradictories , as the whole is less than its part , &c. must have very crazy intellectuals , and have taken their lodging at least in the suburbs of downright dotage or phrensie , as i noted above . pag. . if any one should affirm that the terms of common notions have an eternal and indispensable relation to one another , &c. that this priviledge is not confined to the common notions they are abundantly convinced of , that have bestowed any competent study upon mathematicks , where the connection of every link of the demonstration is discerned to be as firmly and indissolubly knit , as the terms of a common notion are the one with the other . and it is our impatience , carelesness or prejudices that we have not more conclusions of such certitude than we have in other studies also . sect. . pag. . for if there be truth antecedently to the divine understanding , &c. this objection of the adversaries is framed something perversly and invidiously , as if the other party held , that there were truth antecedently to the divine understanding , and as if from thence the divine understanding would be a mere passive principle actuated by something without , as the eye by the sun. but it is a plain case , out of what has been declared , that the divine understanding ( though there be such eternal natures and unchangeable respects and habitudes of them represented in the idea's that are in the exhibitive intellect of the deity ) that it is , i say , before any external object whatever , and yet always had exhibited to it self the eternal and unalterable natures and respects of things in their idea's . and it was noted moreover , that the truth of the external objects , when brought into act , is measured by their conformity to these idea's . besides , the divine understanding being before all things , how could there be any truth before it , there being neither understanding nor things in which this truth might reside ? or the divine understanding be a mere passive principle actuated by something without , as the eye by the sun , whenas questionless the divine intellect quatenus exhibitive is the most active principle conceivable ; nay , indeed actus purissimus , the most pure act , as aristotle has defined god ? it is an eternal , necessary , and immutable energy , whose very essence is a true and fixt ideal representation of the natures of all things , with their respects and habitudes resulting eternally from the divine foecundity at once . how then can this , which is so pure and pregnant an energy , be a mere passive principle , or be actuated by any external object , when it was before any thing was ? but a further answer is to be found of the authour himself in the fifteenth section . pag. . which is to take away his independency and self sufficiency . namely , if there be mutual and unalterable congruities and incongruities of things , as if they would determine god in his actions by something without himself . which is a mere mistake . for the pregnant fulness of the divine essence and perfection eternally and necessarily exerting it self into an ideal display of all the natures , properties , respects and habitudes of things , whether congruities or incongruities , and these fixt , immutable , necessary and unchangeable in their ideal or objective existence ; and in time producing things according to these paradigms or patterns into actual existence by his omnipotence , and ever sustaining , supporting and governing them by his unfailing power and steady and unchangeable wisdom and counsel ; i say , when all things are thus from god , sustained by god , and regulated according to the natures he has given them , which answer the patterns and paradigms in him , how can any such determination of his will any way clash with his self-sufficiency or independency , whenas we see thus , that all things are from god and depend of him , and his actions guided by the immutable idea's in his own nature , according to which all external things are what they are , and their truth measured by their conformity with them . but there is a fuller answer of the author's , to this objection , in the sixteenth and seventeenth sections . sect. . pag. . and to fetter and imprison freedom and liberty it self in the fatal and immutable chains and respects of things , &c. this is a misconceit that savours something of a more refined anthropomorphitism , that is to say , though they do not make the essence of god finite and of an humane figure or shape , yet they imagine him to have two different principles in him , an extravagant and undetermined lust or appetite , as it is in man , and an intellectual or rational principle , whose laws are to correct the luxuriancies and impetuosities of the other , and to bridle and regulate them . but this is a gross mistake ; for there is no such blind and impetuous will in god upon which any intellectual laws were to lay a restraint , but his whole nature being pure and intellectual , and he acting according to his own nature , which contains those idea's and immutable respects , congruities and incongruities of things there eternally and unalterably represented , he acts with all freedom imaginable , nor has any chains of restraint laid upon him , but is at perfect liberty to do as his own nature requires and suggests . which is the most absolute liberty that has any sound or shew of perfection with it , that can be conceived in any being . sect. . pag. . and does as it were draw them up into its own beams . this is something a sublime and elevate expression . but i suppose the meaning thereof is , that the natures and respects of the things of this lower creation , the divine understanding applies to the bright shining idea's found in his own exalted nature , and observes their conformity therewith , and acknowledges them true and right as they answer to their eternal patterns . sect. . pag. . to tie up god in his actions to the reason of things , destroys his liberty , absoluteness , and independency . this is said , but it is a very vain and weak allegation , as may appear out of what has been suggested above . for reasons of things and their habitudes and references represented in the eternal idea's in their objective existence , which is the pattern of their natures when they exist actually , is the very life and nature of the divine understanding ; and as i noted above , the most true and perfective libertie that can be conceived in any being is , that without any check or tug , or lubricity and unsteadiness , it act according to its own life and nature . and what greater absoluteness than this ? for that which acts according to its own nature , acts also according to its own will or appetite . and what greater independencie than to have a power upon which there is no restraint , nor any modification of the exercise thereof , but what is taken from that which has this power ? for the eternal and immutable reasons of things are originally and paradigmatically in the divine understanding , of which those in the creatures are but the types and transitorie shadows . the author in this section has spoke so well to this present point , that it is needless to superadd any thing more . sect. . pag. . in this seventeenth section the author more fully answers that objection , as if gods acting according to the reasons of things inferred a dependency of him upon something without himself ; which he does with that clearness and satisfaction , that it is enough to commend it to the perusal of the reader . sect. . pag. . truth in the power or faculty is nothing else but a conformity of its conceptions or idea's unto the natures and relations of things which in god we may call , &c. the description which follows is ( though the author nowhere takes notice of that distinction ) a description of the divine understanding quatenus exhibitive , not conceptive or speculative . the truth of which latter does indeed consist in the conformity of its conception unto the natures and relations of things , but not of things ad extra , but unto the natures , habitudes and respects of things as they are necessarily , eternally and immutably represented in the divine understanding exhibitive , which is the intellectual world , which the author here describes , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the vast champion or boundless field of truth . so that in those words [ unto the natures and relations of things which in god we call an actual , steady , immoveable , eternal omniformity , &c. ] which is to be referred to [ the natures and relations of things ] as is evident to any that well considers the place . and with this sense that which follows the description is very coherent . pag. . now all that truth that is in any created being , is by participation and derivation from this first understanding ( that is , from the divine understanding quatenus exhibitive ) and fountain of intellectual light. that is , according to the platonick dialect , of those steady , unalterable and eternal idea's ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) of the natures and respects of things represented there in the divine understanding exhibitive in their objective existence ; in conformity to which the truth in all created things and understandings doth necessarily consist . pag. . antecedently to any understanding or will , &c. that is , antecedently to any understanding conceptive , observative or speculative whatsoever , or to any will ; but not antecedently to the divine understanding exhibitive . for that is antecedent to all created things , and contains the steady , fixt , eternal , and unalterable natures and respects or habitudes , before they had or could have any being . i say it contains the truth and measure of them ; nor can they be said to be truly what they are , any further than they are found conformable to these eternal , immutable idea's , patterns and paradigms , which necessarily and eternally are exerted , and immutably in the divine understanding exhibitive . and of these paradigmatical things there , what follows is most truly affirmed . pag. . for things are what they are , and cannot be otherwise without a contradiction , &c. this was true before any external or created things did exist . true of every form in that eternal omniformity , which the platonists call the intellectual world , as the author has observed above in this section . a circle is a circle , and a triangle a triangle there , nor can be otherwise without a contradiction . and so of a globe , cylinder , horse , eagle , whale , fire , water , earth , their ideal fixt and determinate natures , habitudes , aptitudes , and respects necessarily and immutably there exhibited , are such as they are , nor can be otherwise without a contradiction . and because it is thus in the divine nature or essence , which is the root and fountain of the exteriour creation , the same is true in the created beings themselves . things are there also what they are , nor can they be a globe suppose , or a cylinder , and yet not be a globe or a cylinder at once , or be both a globe and cylinder at once ; and so of the rest . as this is a contradiction in the intellectual world , so is it in the exteriour or material world , and so , because it is so in the intellectual . for the steadiness and immutableness of the nature of all things , and of their respects and habitudes , arise from th●… necessity , immutability , and unchangeableness of the divine essence and life , which is that serene , unclouded , undisturbed , and unalterable eternity , where all things with their respects and aptitudes , their order and series , are necessarily , steadily and immutably exhibited at once . p. . as they conform & agree with the things themselves , &c. 〈◊〉 the more platonical sense , and more conformable to that we have given of other passages of this learned and ingenious author is , if we understand the things themselves , at least primarily , to be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of plato , which is the term which he bestows upon his idea's , which are the patterns or paradigms according to which every thing is made , and is truly such so far sorth as it is found to agree with the patterns or originals in which all archetypal truth is immutably lodged . all created things are but the copies of these , these the original , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or writing it self , from whence plato calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if those archetypal forms were the forms or things themselves , but the numerous created beings here below , only the copies or imitations of them . wherefore no conception or idea's that we frame , or any intellect else as conceptive merely and speculative , can be true , but so far as they agree with these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in that sense we have declared , or with cre●…ted things so far as they are answerable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or archetypal things themselves . and from hence is sufficiently understood the nature of truth in the subject . these few cursory notes i thought worth the while to make upon these two lear●…ed and ingenious writers , the subjects they have written on being of no mean importance and use , and the things written in such a time of their age , as if men be born under an auspicious planet , best fits their minds for the relishing and ruminating upon such noble theories . for i dare say , when they wrote these discourses or treatises , they had neither of them reached so much as half the age of man as it is ordinarily computed . which has made them write upon these subjects with that vigour and briskness of spirit that they have . for the constitution of youth , in those that have not an unhappy nativity , is far more heavenly and angelical than that of more grown age , in which the spirit of the world is more usually awakened , and then begins that scene which the poet describes in his de arte poetica , quoerit opes & amicitias , inservit honori . their mind then begins to be wholly intent to get wealth and riches , to enla●…ge their interest by the friendship of great persons , and to hunt after dignities and preferments , honours and imployments in church or state , and ●…o those more heavenly and divine sentiments through disuse and the presence of more strong and filling impressions are laid asleep , and their spirits thickened and clouded with the gross fumes and steams that arise from the desire of earthly things ; and it may so fall out , if there be not special care taken , that this mud they have drawn in by their coarse desires , may come to that opaque hardness and incrustation , that their terrestrial body may prove a real dungeon , & cast them into an utter oblivion of their chiefest concerns in the other state. — nec auras respicient clausi tenebris & carcere coeco . which i thought sit to take notice of , as well for the instruction of others , as for a due appretiation of these two brief treatises of these florid writers , they being as it were the virgin-honey of these two attick bees , the primitioe of their intemerated youth , where an happy natural complexion , and the first rudiments of christian regeneration may seem to have conspired to the writing of two such useful treatises . useful , i say , and not a little grateful to men of refined fancies and gay intellectuals , of benign and philosophical tempers , and lovers of great truths and goodness . which natural constitution were a transcendent priviledge indeed , were there not one great danger in it to those that know not how to use it skilfully . for it does so nearly ape , as i may so speak , the divine benignity it self , and that unself-interessed love that does truly arise from no other seed than that of real regeneration ( which self-mortification and a serious endeavour of abolishing or utterly demolishing our own will , and quitting any thing that would captivate us , and hinder our union with god and his christ , does necessarily precede ) that too hastily setting up our rest in these mere complexional attainments , which is not spirit but flesh , though it appear marvellous sweet and goodly to the owner , if there be not ●…ue care taken to advance higher in that divine and eternal principle of real regeneration , by a constant mortification of our own will there may be a perpetual hazzard of this flesh growing corrupt and fly-blown , and sending up at l●…st no sweet savour into the nostrils of the almighty . that which is born of the flesh is flesh , and that which is born of the spirit is spirit ; and all flesh is grass , and the beauty thereof as the slower of the field ; but that which is born of the eternal seed of the living word , abideth for ever and ever . and therefore there is no safe anchorage for the soul , but in a perpetual endeavour of annihilating of her own will , that we may be one with christ , as christ is with god. otherwise if we follow the sweet enticing counsels of mere nature , though it look never so smugly on it , it will seduce us into a false liberty , and at last so corrupt our judgment , and blind us , that we shall scarce be able to discern him that is that great light that was sent into the world , but become every man an ignis fatuus to himself , or be so silly as to be led about by other ignes fatui , whenas it is most certain that christ is the only way , the truth and the life , and he that does not clearly see that , when he has opportunity to know it , let his pretence to other knowledge be what it will , it is a demonstration that as to divine things he is slark blind . but no man can really adhere to christ , and unwaveringly , but by union to him through his spirit ; nor obtain that spirit of life , but by resolved mortification of his own will , and a deadness to all worldly vanities , that we may be restored at last to our solid happiness which is through christ in god , without whose communion no soul can possibly be happy . and therefore i think it not amiss to close these my theoretical annotations on these two treatises , with that more practical and devotional hymn of a. b. that runs much upon the mortification of our own wills , and of our union and communion with god , translated into english by a lover of the life of our lord jesus . the devotional hymn . . o heavenly light ! my spirit to thee draw , with powerful touch my senses smite , thine arrows of love into me throw . with flaming dart deep wound my heart , and wounded seize for ever , as thy right . . o sweetest sweet ! descend into my soul , and sink into its low'st abyss , that all false sweets thou mayst controul , or rather kill , so that thy will alone may be my pleasure and my bliss . . do thou my faculties all captivate unto thy self with strongest tye ; my will entirely regulate : make me thy slave , nought else i crave , for this i know is perfect liberty , . thou art a life the sweetest of all lives , nought sweeter can thy creature taste ; 't is this alone the soul revives . be thou not here , all other chear will turn to dull satiety at last . . o limpid fountain of all vertuous leare ! o well-spring of true joy and mirth ! the root of all contentments dear ! o endless good ! break like a floud into my soul , and water my dry earth , . that by this mighty power i being reft of every thing that is not one , to thee alone i may be left by a firm will fixt to thee still , and inwardly united into one . . and so let all my essence , i thee pray , be wholly fill'd with thy dear son , that thou thy splendour mayst display with blissful rays in these hid ways wherein gods nature by frail man is won . . for joyned thus to thee by thy sole aid and working ( whilst all silent stands in mine own soul , nor ought's assay'd from self-desire ) i 'm made entire an instrument fit for thy glorious hands . . and thus henceforwards shall all workings cease , unless 't be those thou dost excite to perfect that sabbatick peace which doth arise when self-will dies , and the new creature is restored quite . . and so shall i with all thy children dear , while nought debars thy workings free , be closely joyn'd in union near , nay with thy son shall i be one , and with thine own adored deitie . . so that at last i being quite releas'd from this strait-lac'd egoity , my soul will vastly be encreas'd into that all which one we call , and one in 't self alone doth all imply . . here 's rest here 's peace , here 's joy and holy love , the h●…aven's here of true content , for those that hither sincerely move , here 's the true light of wisdom bright , and prudence pure with no self-seeking mient . . here spirit , soul and cleansed body may bathe in this fountain of true bliss of pleasures that will ne're decay , all joyful sights and hid delights ; the sense of these renew'd here daily is . . come therefore come , and take an higher flight , things perishing leave here below , mount up with winged soul and spright , quick let 's be gone to him that 's one , but in this one to us can all things show . . thus shall you be united with that one , that one where 's no duality ; for from this perfect good alone ever doth spring each pleasant thing , the hungry soul to feed and satisfie . . wherefore , o man ! consider well what 's said , to what is best thy soul incline , and leave off every evil trade . do not despise what i advise ; finish thy work before the sun decline . finis . books printed for , or sold hy samuel lownds , over against exeter exchange in the strand . parthenissa , that fam'd romance . written by the right honourable the earl of orrery . clelia , an excellent new romance , the whole work in five books . written in french , by the exquisite pen of monsieur de scudery . the holy court. written by n. cansinus . bishop saundersons sermons . herberts travels , with large additions . the compleat horseman , and expert farrier , in two books : . shewing the best manner of breeding good horses , with their choice , nature , riding and dieting , as well for running as hunting ; as also , teaching the groom and keeper his true office. . directing the most exact and approved manner how to know and cure all diseases in horses : a work containing the secrets and best skill belonging either to farrier or horse-leach : the cures placed alphabetically , with hundreds of medicines never before imprinted in any author . by thomas de grey . claudius mauger's french and english letters upon all subjects enlarged , with fifty new letters , many of which are on the late great occurrences and revolutions of europe ; all much amended and refined , according to the most quaint and courtly mode ; wherein yet the idiom and elegancy of both tongues are far more exactly suited than formerly . very useful to those who aspire to good language , and would know what addresses become them to all sorts of persons . besides many notes in the end of the book , which are very necessary for commerce . paul festeau's french grammar , being the newest and exactest method now extant , for the attaining to the elegancy and purity of the french tongue . the great law of consideration ; a discourse shewing the nature , usefulness , and absolute necessity of consideration , in order to a truly serious and religious life . the third edition , corrected and much enlarged , by anthony horneck , d. d. the mirror of fortune , or the true characters of fate and destiny , treating of the growth and fall of empires , the misfortunes of kings and great men , and the ill fate of virtuous and handsome ladies . saducismus triumphatus : or full & plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions , in two parts , the first treating of their possibility , the second of their real existence ; by joseph glanvil , late chaplain to his majesty , and fellow of the royal society . the second edition . the advantages whereof above the former , the reader may understand out of dr. henry more 's account prefixt thereunto . with two authentick but wonderful stories of swedish witches , done into english by anthony horneck , d. d. french rogue , being a pleasant history of his life and fortune , adorned with variety of other adventures of no less rarity . of credulity and incredulity in things divine and spiritual , wherein ( among other things ) a true and faithful account is given of platonick philosophy , as it hath reference to christianity . as also the business of witches and witchcraft , against a late writer , fully argued and disputed . by merick causabon , d. d. one of the prebends of canterhury . cicero against catiline , in four invective orations , containing the whole manner of discovering that notorious conspiracy . by christopher wase . 〈◊〉 jests , being witty alarms for melan●… spirits . by a lover of ha , ha , he. finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e to this sense : all a vain jest , all dust , all nothing deem , for of mere atoms all composed been . conjectura cabbalistica or, a conjectural essay of interpreting the minde of moses, according to a threefold cabbala: viz. literal, philosophical, mystical, or, divinely moral. by henry more fellow of christs college in cambridge. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m thomason e _ estc r this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (thomason tracts ; :e [ ]) conjectura cabbalistica or, a conjectural essay of interpreting the minde of moses, according to a threefold cabbala: viz. literal, philosophical, mystical, or, divinely moral. by henry more fellow of christs college in cambridge. more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed by james flesher, and are to be sold by william morden bookseller in cambridge, london : . the words "literal, .. moral." are bracketed together on title page. "the defence of the threefold cabbala" has separate dated title page; pagination and register are continuous. with eight final contents leaves. annotation on thomason copy: "nou. 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instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng bible. -- o.t. -- genesis i-iii -- commentaries -- early works to . creation -- early works to . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images - emma (leeson) huber sampled and proofread - emma (leeson) huber text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion conjectura cabbalistica . or , a conjectural essay of interpreting the minde of moses , according to a threefold cabbala : viz. literal , philosophical , mystical , or , divinely moral . by henry more fellow of christs college in cambridge . exod. . and when aaron and all the people of israel saw moses , behold , the skin of his face shones and they were afraid to come nigh him . wherefore moses while he spake unto them , put a veil on his face . matth . . there is nothing covered , that shall not be revealed ; and hid , that shall not be known . what i tell you in darknesse , speak you in light ; and what you hear in the ear , that preach you on the house-tops . london , printed by james flesher , and are to be sold by william morden bookseller in cambridge . . to his eminently learned , and truly religious friend , dr cudworth , master of clare hall , and hebrew professor in the university of cambridge . sir , concerning the choice of the subject matter of my present pains , i have , i think , spoke enough in the insuing preface . concerning the choice of my patron , i shall say no more , then that the sole inducement thereto , was his singular learning and piety . the former of which , is so conspicuous to the world , that it is universally acknowledged of all ; and for the latter , there is none that can be ignorant thereof , who has ever had the happiness , though but in a smaller measure , of his more free and intimate converse . as for my own part , i cannot but publickly profess , i never met with any yet so truly and becomingly religious , where the right knowledge of god and christ bears the inlightned minde so even , that it is as far removed from superstition as irreligion it self . and my present labours cannot finde better welcome or more judicious acceptance with any , then with such as these . for such free and unprejudiced spirits will neither antiquate truth for the oldnesse of the notion , nor slight her for looking young , or bearing the face of novelty . besides , there are none that can be better assured of the sincerity and efficacy of my present designe . for as many as are born of the spirit , and are not meer sons of the letter , know very well how much the more inward and mysterious meaning of the text makes for the reverence of the holy scripture , and advantage of godlinesse , when as the urging of the bare literal sense , has either made or confirmed many an atheist . and assuredly those men see very little in the affairs of religion , that do not plainly discover , that it is the atheists highest interest , to have it taken for granted , that there is no spiritual meaning , either in scripture or sacrament , that extends further then the meer grammatical sense in the one , or the sensible , grosse , external performance in the other . as for example , that to be regenerated , and become a true and real christian , is nothing else , but to receive the outward baptisme of visible water : and , that the mosaical philosophy concerning god , and the nature of things , is none other , then that which most obviously offers it self in the meer letter of moses . which if the atheist could have fully granted to him on all sides , and get but this in also to the bargain , that there is no knowledge of god , but what moses his text set on foot in the world , or what is traditional , he cannot but think , that religion in this dresse , is so empty , exceptionable , and contemptible , that it is but just with as many as are not meer fools , to look upon it as some melancholick conceit , or cunning fiction brought into the world , to awe the simpler sort , but behinde the hangings to be freely laughed at , and derided by those that are more wise ; and that it were an easie thing in a short time to raze the memory of it out of the mindes of men , it having so little root in the humane faculties . which for my own part i think as hopeful , as that posterity will be born without eyes and ears , and lose the use of speech . for i think the knowledge of god , and a sense of religion is as natural and essential to mankinde , as any other property in them whatsoever : and that the generations of men shall as soon become utterly irrational , as plainly irreligious . which , i think , my late treatise against atheisme wil make good to any one , that with care and judgement will peruse it . nor does it at all follow , because a truth is delivered by way of tradition , that it is unconcludable by reason . for i do not know any one theorem in all natural philosophy , that has more sufficient reasons for it , then the motion of the earth , which notwithstanding is part of the philosophick cabbala or tradition of moses , as i shall plainly shew in its due place . so likewise for the prae-existency of the soul , which seems to have been part of the same tradition , it is abundantly consentaneous to reason : and as we can give a genuine account of all those seeming irregularities of motion in the planets , supposing , they & the earth move round about the sun : so we may open the causes of all those astonishing paradoxes of providence , from this other hypothesis , and show that there is nothing here unsutable to the precious attributes of god , if we could place the eye of our understanding in that center of all free motions , that steady eternal good , & were not our selves carried aloof off from him , amongst other wandring planets , ( as s. jude calls them ) that at several distances play about him , & yet all of them in some measure or other , not onely pretending to him , but whether they pretend or not , really receiving something from him . for of this first , is all , both wisdome , pleasure , and power . but it is enough to have but hinted these things briefly and enigmatically , the wrath and ignorance of all ages receiving the most generous truths , with the greatest offence . but for my own part , i know no reason but that all wel-willers to truth & godliness , should heartily thank me for my present cabbalistical enterprise , i having so plainly therein vindicated the holy mystery of the trinity from being ( as a very bold sect would have it ) a meer pagan invention . for it is plainly shown here , that it is from moses originally , not from pythagoras , or plato . and seeing that christ is nothing but moses unveiled , i think it was a special act of providence that this hidden cabbala came so seasonably to the knowledge of the gentiles , that it might afore-hand fit them for the easier entertainment of the whole mystery of christianity , when in the fulness of time it should be more clearly revealed unto the world . besides this , we have also shown , that according to moses his philosophy , the soul is secure both from death , and from sleep after death , which those drowsie nodders over the letter of the scripture have very oscitantly collected , and yet as boldly afterwards maintained , pretending that the contrary , is more platonical , then christian , or scriptural . wherefore my designe being so pious as it proves , i could do nothing more fit then to make choice of so true a lover of piety as your self for a patron of my present labours . especially you being so well able to do the most proper office of a patron ; to defend the truth that is presented to you in them , & to make up out of your rich treasury of learning , what our penury could not reach to , or inadvertency may have omitted . and truly , if i may not hope this from you , i know not whence to expect it . for i do not know where to meet with any so universally and fully accomplished in all parts of learning as your self , as well in the oriental tongues and history , as in all the choicest kindes of philosophy ; any one of which acquisitions is enough to fill , if not swell , an ordinary man with great conceit and pride , when as it is your sole privilege , to have them all , and yet not to take upon you , nor to be any thing more imperious , or censorious of others , then they ought to be that know the least . these were the true considerations that directed me in the dedication of this book ; which if you accordingly please to take into your favourable patronage , and accept as a monument or remembrance of our mutual friendship , you shall much oblige your affectionate friend and servant h. more . the preface to the reader . what is meant by the tearm cabbala , and how warrantably the literal exposition of the text may be so called . that dispensable speculations are best propounded in a sceptical manner . a clear description of the nature and dignity of reason , and what the divine logos is . the general probabilities of the truth of this present cabbala . the design of the author in publishing of it . reader , i present thee here with a triple interpretation of the three first chapters of genesis , which in my title page i have tearmed a threefold cabbala ; concerning which , for thy better direction and satisfaction , i hold it not amisse to speak some few things by way of preface , such as thou thy self in all likelihood wouldst be forward to ask of me . as ; why , for example , i call this interpretation of mine a cabbala , and from whom i received it ; what may be the prohabilities of the truth of it ; and what my purpose is in publishing of it . to the first i answer ; that the jewish cabbala is conceived to be a traditional doctrine or exposition of the pentateuch which moses received from the mouth of god , while he was on the mount with him . and this sense or interpretation of the law or pentateuch , as it is a doctrine received by moses first , and then from him by joshua , and from joshua by the seventy elders , and so on , it was called cabbala from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 kibbel to receive : but as it was delivered as well as received , it was also called massora , which signifies a tradition ; though this latter more properly respects that critical and grammatical skill of the learned among the jews , and therefore was profitable for the explaining the literal sense as well as that more mysterious meaning of the text where it was intended . whence without any boldnesse or abuse of the word i may call the literal interpretation which i have light upon cabbala , as well as the philosophical or moral ; the literal sense it self being not so plain and determinate , but that it may seem to require some traditional doctrine or exposition to settle it , as well as those other senses that are more mystical . and therefore i thought fit to call this threefold interpretation that i have hit upon , cabbala's , as if i had indeed light upon the true cabbala of moses in all the three senses of the text , such as might have become his own mouth to have uttered for the instruction of a willing and well prepared disciple . and therefore for the greater comelinesse and solemnity of the matter , i bring in moses speaking his own minde in all the three several expositions . and yet i call the whole interpretation but a conjecture , having no desire to seem more definitively wise then others can bear or approve of . for though in such things as are necessary and essential to the happinesse of a man , as the belief that there is a god , and the like ; it is not sufficient for a man only to bring undeniable reasons for what he would prove , but also to professe plainly and dogmatically , that himself gives full assent to the conclusion he hath demonstrated : so that those that do not so well understand the power of reason , may notwithstanding thereby be encouraged to be of the same faith with them that do , it being of so great consequence to them to believe the thing propounded : yet i conceive that speculative and dispensable truths a man not onely may , but ought rather to propound them sceptically to the world , there being more prudence and modesty in offering the strongest arguments he can without dogmatizing at all , or seeming to dote upon the conclusion , or more earnestly to affect the winning of proselytes to his own opinion . for where the force of the arguments is perceived , assent will naturally follow according to the proportion of the discovery of the force of the arguments . and an assent to opinions meerly speculative , without the reasons of them , is neither any pleasure nor accomplishment of a rational creature . to your second demand , i answer ; that though i call this interpretation of mine cabbala , yet i must confesse i received it neither from man nor angel. nor came it to me by divine inspiration , unlesse you will be so wise as to call the seasonable suggestions of that divine life and sense that vigorously resides in the rational spirit of free and well meaning christians , by the name of inspiration . but such inspiration as this is no distracter from , but an accomplisher and an enlarger of humane faculties . and i may adde , that this is the great mystery of christianity , that we are called to partake of , viz. the perfecting of the humane nature by participation of the divine . which cannot be understood so properly of this grosse flesh and external senses , as of the inward humanity , viz. our intellect , reason , and fancie . but to exclude the use of reason in the search of divine truth , is no dictate of the spirit ▪ but of headstrong melancholy and blinde enthusiasme , that religious frensie men run into , by lying passive for the reception of such impresses as have no proportion with their faculties . which mistake and irregularity , if they can once away with , they put themselves in a posture of promiscuously admitting any thing , and so in due time of growing either moped or mad , and under pretence of being highly christians , ( the right mystery whereof they understand not ) of working themselves lower then the lowest of men . but for mine own part , reason seems to me to be so far from being any contemptible principle in man , that it must be acknowledged in some sort to be in god himself . for what is the divine wisdome , but that steady comprehension of the ideas of all things , with their mutual respects one to another , congruities and incongruities , dependences and independences ; which respects do necessarily arise from the natures of the ideas themselves , both which the divine intellect looks through at once , discerning thus the order and coherence of all things . and what is this but ratio stabilis , a kinde of steady and immovable reason discovering the connexion of all things at once ? but that in us is ratio mobilis , or reason in evolution , we being able to apprehend things onely in a successive manner one after another . but so many as we can comprehend at a time , while we plainly perceive and carefully view their ideas , we know how well they fit , or how much they disagree one with another , and so prove or disprove one thing by another ; which is really a participation of that divine reason in god , and is a true and faithful principle in man , when it is perfected and polished by the holy spirit . but before , very earthly and obscure , especially in spiritual things . but now seeing the logos or steady comprehensive wisdom of god , in which all ideas and their respects are contained , is but universal stable reason , how can there be any pretence of being so highly inspired as to be blown above reason it self , unlesse men will fancie themselves wiser then god , or their understandings above the natures and reasons of things themselves . wherefore to frame a brief answer to your second demand ; i say , this threefold cabbala you enquire after , is the dictate of the free reason of my minde ▪ heedfully considering the written text of moses , and carefully canvasing the expositions of such interpreters as are ordinarily to be had upon him . and i know nothing to the contrary , but that i have been so successeful as to have light upon the old true cabbala indeed . of which in the third place i will set down some general probabilities , referring you for the rest to the defence of the cabbala's themselves , and the introduction thereunto . and first that the literal cabbala is true , it is no contemptible argument , in that it is carried on so evenly and consistently one part with another , every thing also being represented so accommodately to the capacity of the people , and so advantageously for the keeping of their mindes in the fear of god , and obedience to his law , as shall be particularly shown in the defence of that cabbala . so that according to the sense of this literal cabbala , moses is discovered to be a man of the highest political accomplishments , and true and warrantable prudence that may be . nor is he to fall short in philosophy ; and therefore the philosophical cabbala contains the noblest truths , as well theological as natural , that the minde of man can entertain her self with ; insomuch that moses seems to have been aforehand , and prevented the subtilest and abstrusest inventions of the choicest philosophers that ever appeared after him to this very day . and further presumption of the truth of this philosophical cabbala is ; that the grand mysteries therein contained are most-what the same that those two eximious philosophers pythagoras and plato brought out of egypt , and the parts of asia into europe . and it is generally acknowledged by christians , that they both had their philosophy from moses . and numenius the platonist speaks out plainly concerning his master ; what is plato but moses atticus ? and for pythagoras it is a thing incredible that he and his followers should make such a deal of doe with the mystery of numbers , had he not been favoured with a sight of moses his creation of the world in six days , and had the philosophick cabbala thereof communicated to him , which mainly consists in numbers , as i shall in the defence of this cabbala more particularly declare . and the pythagoreans oath swearing by him that taught them the mystery of the tetractys , or the number four , what a ridiculous thing had it been if it had been in reference meerly to dry numbers ? but it is exceeding probable that under that mystery of four , pythagoras was first himself taught the meaning of the fourth days work in the creation , and after delivered it to his disciples . in which cabbala of the fourth day pythagoras was instructed , amongst other things , that the earth was a planet , and moved about the sun ; and it is notoriously well known , that this was ever the opinion of the pythagoreans , and so in all likelihood a part of the philosophick cabbala of moses . which you will more fully understand in my defence thereof . in brief , all those conclusions that are comprised in the philosophick cabbala , they being such as may best become that sublime and comprehensive understanding of moses , and being also so plainly answerable to the phaenomena of nature and attributes of god , as wel as continuedly agreeable without any force or distortion to the historical text ; this i conceive is no small probability that this cabbala is true : for what can be the properties of the true philosophick cabbala of moses , if these be not which i have named ? now for the moral cabbala it bears its own evidence with it all the way , representing moses as well experienced in all godlinesse and honesty , as he was skilful in politicks and philosophy . and the edifying usefulnesse of this mystical or moral cabbala , to answer to your last demand , was no small invitation amongst the rest to publish this present exposition . for moral and spiritual truth that so neerly concerns us being so strangely and unexpectedly , and yet so fitly and appositely represented in this history of moses , it will in all likelihood make the more forcible impresse upon the minde , and more powerfully carry away our affections toward what is good and warrantable , pre-instructing us with delight concerning the true way to virtue and godlinesse . nor are the philosophick nor literal cabbala's destitute of their honest uses . for in the former to the amazement of the meer naturalist ( who commonly conceits that pious men and patrons of religion have no ornaments of minde but scrupulosities about virtue , and melancholy fancies concerning a deity ) moses is found to have been master of the most sublime and generous speculations that are in all natural philosophy : besides that he places the soul of man many degrees out of the reach of fate and mortality . and by the latter there is a very charitable provision made for them that are so prone to expect rigid precepts of philosophy in moses his outward text. for this literal cabbala will steer them off from that toil of endevouring to make the bare letter speak consonantly to the true frame of nature : which while they attempt with more zeal then knowledge , they both disgrace themselves and wrong moses . for there are unalterable and indeleble idea's and notions in the minde of man , into which when we are awakened and apply to the known course and order of nature , we can no more forsake the use of them then we can the use of our own eyes , nor misbelieve their dictates no more , nor so much , as we may those of our outward senses . wherefore to men recovered into a due command of their reason , and well-skill'd in the contemplation and experience of the nature of things , to propound to them such kinde of mosaical philosophy , as the boldnesse and superstition of some has adventured to do for want of a right literal cabbala to guide them , is as much as in them lies , to hazard the making not only of moses , but of religion it self contemptible and ridiculous . whence it is apparent enough , i think , to what good purpose it is thus carefully to distinguish betwixt the literal and philosophick cabbala , and so plainly and fully to set out the sense of either , apart by themselves , that there may hereafter be no confusion or mistake . for beside that the discovering of these weighty truths , and high , but irrefutable paradoxes , in moses his text , does assert religion , and vindicate her from that vile imputation of ignorance in philosophy and the knowledge of things , so does it also justifie those more noble results of free reason and philosophy from that vulgar suspicion of impiety and irreligion . the literal cabbala . chap. i. the earth at first a deep miry abysse , covered over with waters , over which was a fierce wind , and through all darknesse . day made at first without a sun. the earth a floor , the heavens a transparent canopy , or strong tent over it , to keep off the upper waters or blew conspicuous sea from drowning the world . why this tent or canopy was not said to be good . the lower waters commanded into one place . herbs , flowers , and fruits of trees , before either sun or seasons of the year to ripen them . the sun created and added to the day , as a peculiar ornament thereof , as the moon and stars to the night . the creation of fish and fowl . the creation of beasts & creeping things . man created in the very shape and figure of god , but yet so , that there were made females as well as males . how man came to be lord over the rest of living creatures . how it came to passe that man feeds on the better sort of the fruits of the earth , and the beasts on the worse . wee are to recount to you in this book the generations and genealogies of the patriarchs from adam to noah , from noah to abraham , from abraham to joseph , and to continue the history to our own times . but it will not be amisse first to inform you concerning the creation of the world , and the original and beginning of things ; how god made heaven and earth , and all the garnishings of them , before he made man. but the earth at first was but a rude and desolate heap , devoid of herbs , flowers , and trees , and all living creatures , being nothing but a deep miry abysse , covered all over with waters , and there was a very fierce and strong wind that blew upon the waters ; and what made it still more horrid and comfortless , there was as yet no light , but all was inveloped with thick darknesse , and bore the face of a pitchy black and wet tempestuous night . but god let not his work lie long in this sad condition , but commanded light to appear , and the morning brake out upon the face of the abyss , and wheel'd about from east to west , being clearest in the middle of its course about noon , and then abating of its brightnesse towards the west , at last quite dis-appear'd , after such sort as you may often observe the day-light to break forth in the east , and ripen to greater clearnesse , but at last to leave the skie in the west , no sun appearing all the while . . and god saw the light , ( for it is a thing very visible ) that it was good , and so separated the darknesse from the light , that they could not both of them be upon the face of the earth together , but had their vicissitudes , and took their turns one after another . and he called the return of the light day , and the return of darkness he called night ; and the evening and the morning made up the first natural day . . now after god had made this basis or floor of this greater edifice of the world , the earth , he sets upon the higher parts of the fabrick . he commands therefore that there should be a hollow expansion , firm and transparent , which by its strength should bear up against the waters which are above , and keep them from falling upon the earth in excess . . and so it became a partition betwixt the upper & the lower waters ; so that by virtue of this hollow firmament , man might live safe from the violence of such destructive inundations , as one sheltred in a well-pitch'd tent from storm of rain : for the danger of these waters is apparent to the eye , this ceruleous or blew-coloured sea , that over-spreads the diaphanous firmament , being easily discern'd through the body thereof ; and there are very frequent and copious showers of rain descend from above , when as there is no water espyed ascending up thither ; wherefore it must all come from that upper sea , if we do but appeal to our outward sense . now therefore this diaphanous canopy or firmly stretched tent over the whole pavement of the earth , though i cannot say properly that god saw it was good , it being indeed of a nature invisible , yet the use of it shows it to be exceeding good and necessary . and god called the whole capacity of this hollow firmament , heaven . and the evening and the morning made up the second natural day . and now so sure a defence being made against the inundation of the upper waters , that they might not fall upon the earth , god betook himself the next day to order the lower waters , that as yet were spread over the whole face thereof ; at his command therefore the waters fled into one place , and the dry land did appear . and god called the dry land earth ; and the gathering together of the waters he called sea : and i may now properly say , that god saw that it was good , for the sea and the land are things visible enough , and fit objects of our sight . and forthwith before he made either sun , moon ▪ or stars , did god command the earth to bring forth grasse , herbs and flowers , in their full beauty , and fruit-trees , yeilding delicious fruit , though there had as yet been no vicissitude of spring , summer , or autumn , nor any approach of the sun to ripen and concoct the fruit of those trees . whence you may easily discern the foolishnesse of the idolatrous nations , that dote so much on second causes , as that they forget the first , ascribing that to the sun and moon , that was caus'd at first by the immediate command of god. for at his command it was , before there was either sun or moon in the firmament , that the earth brought forth grasse , and herb yeilding seed after his kind , and the tree yeilding fruit , whose seed was in it self , after his kinde ; so that the several sorts of plants might by this means be conserv'd upon the earth . and god saw that it was good . and the evening and the morning made up the third natural day . there have three days past without a sun , as well as three nights without either moon or stars , as you your selves may happily have observ'd some number of moonless and starlesse nights , as well as of sunlesse days , to have succeeded one another : and so it might have been always , had not god said , let there be lights within the firmament of heaven , to make a difference betwixt day and night , and to be peculiar garnishings of either . let them be also for signes of weather ▪ for seasons of the year , and also for periods of days , months , and years . moreover , let them be as lights hung up within the hollow roof or firmament of heaven , to give light to men walking upon the pavement of the earth : and it was so . and god made two great lights ; the greater one , the most glorious & princely object we can see by day , to be as it were the governor and monarch of the day ; the lesser , the most resplendent and illustrious sight we can cast our eyes on by night , to be governesse and queen of the night . and he made , though for their smalnesse they be not so considerable , the stars also . and he placed them all in the firmament of heaven , to give light upon the earth . and to shew their preheminence for external lustre , above what ever else appears by either day or night , and to be peculiar garnishings or ornaments to make a notable difference betwixt the light and the darknesse , the superaddition of the sun to adorn the day , and to invigorate the light thereof , the moon and the stars to garnish the night , and to mitigate the dulnesse and darknesse thereof . and god saw that it was good . and the evening and the morning was the fourth natural day . after this , god commanded the waters to bring forth fish and fowl , which they did in abundance , and the fowl flew above the earth in the open firmament of heaven . and god created great whales also as well as other fishes , that move in the waters ; and god saw that it was good . and god blessed them , saying , be fruitful and multiply , and fill the waters in the seas , and let the fowl multiply on the earth . and the evening and the morning made up the fifth natural day . then god commanded the earth to bring forth all creeping things , and four footed beasts , as before he commanded the waters to send forth fish and fowl ; and it was so . and when god had made the beast of the earth after his kinde , and cattel , and every creeping thing after his kinde , he saw that it was good . and coming at last to his highest master-piece , man , he encouraged himself , saying , go to , let us now make man , and i will make him after the same image and shape that i bear my self ; and he shall have dominion over the fish of the sea , and over the fowls of the air , and over the cattel , and over all the earth , and over every creeping thing , that creepeth upon the earth . so god created man in his own shape and figure , with an upright stature , with legs , hands , arms , with a face and mouth , to speak , and command , as god himself hath : i say , in the image of god did he thus create him . but mistake me not , whereas you conceive of god as masculine , and more perfect , yet you must not understand me , as if god made mankinde so exactly after his own image , that he made none but males ; for i tell you , he made females as well as males , as you shall hear more particularly hereafter . and having made them thus male and female , he bad them make use of the distinction of sexes that he had given them ; and blessing them , god said unto them , be fruitful and multiply , and fill the earth with your off-spring , and be lords thereof , and have dominion also over the fish of the sea , and over the fowls of the air , as well as over beasts and cattel , and every creeping thing that moves upon the earth . and god said , behold , i give you every frugiferous herb which is upon the face of the earth , such as the straw-berry , the several sorts of corn , as rye , wheat , and rice , as also the delicious fruits of trees , to you they shall be for meat . but for the beasts of the earth , and the fowls of the air , and for every living thing that creepeth upon the earth , the worser kind of herbs , and ordinary grasse , i have assign'd for them : and so it came to passe that mankinde are made lords and possessors of the choicest fruits of the earth , and the beasts of the field are to be contented with baser herbage , and the common grasse . and god viewed all the works that he had made , and behold , they were exceeding good ; and the evening and the morning was the sixt natural day . chap. ii. the original of the jewish sabbaths , from gods resting himself from his six days labours . herbs and plants before either rain , gardning or husbandry , and the reason why it was so . adam made of the dust of the ground , and his soul breathed in at his nostrils . the planting of paradise . a wonderful tree there , that would continue youth , and make a man immortal upon earth : another strange tree , viz. the tree of knowledge of good and evil . the rivers of paradise , phasis , gihon , tigris , euphrates . the high commendation of matrimony . adam gives names to all kinde of creatures , except fishes . woman is made of a rib of adam , a deep sleep falling upon him , his minde then also being in a trance . the first institution of marriage . thus the heavens and the earth were finisht , and all the creatures , wherewith they were garnisht and replenisht . and god having within six days perfected all his work , on the seventh day he rested himself . and so made the seventh day an holy day , a festival of rest , because himself then first rested from his works . whence you plainly see the reason and original of your sabbaths . these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth , which i have so compendiously recounted to you , as they were created in the days that the lord made heaven and earth , and the several garnishings of them . but there are some things that i would a little more fully touch upon , and give you notice of , to the praise of god , and the manifesting of his power unto you . as that the herbs and plants of the field did not come up of their own accords out of the earth , before god made them , but that god created them before there were any seeds of any such thing in the earth , and before there was any rain , or men to use gardning or husbandry , for the procuring their growth : so that hereafter you may have the more firm faith in god , for the blessings and fruits of the earth , when the ordinary course of nature shall threaten dearth and scarcity for want of rain and seasonable showers . for there had been no showers when god caused the plants , and herbs of the field to spring up out of the earth ; onely as i told you at the first of all , there was a mighty torrent of water , that rose every where above the earth , and cover'd the universal face of the ground , which yet , god afterward by his almighty power , commanded so into certain bounds , that the residue of the earth was meer dry land . and that you farther may understand how the power of god is exalted above the course of natural causes , god taking of the the dust of his dry ground , wrought it with his hands into such a temper , that it was matter fit to make the body of a man : which when he first had fram'd , was as yet but like a senslesse statue , till coming near unto it with his mouth , he breath'd into the nostrils thereof the breath of life ; as you may observe to this day , that men breath through their nostrils , though their mouths be clos'd . and thus man became a living creature , and his name was called adam , because he was made of the earth . but i should have told you first more at large , how the lord god planted a garden eastward of judea in the countrey of eden , about mesopotamia , where afterwards he put the man adam , whom he after this wise had form'd . and the description of this garden is this : out of the ground made the lord god to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight , and good for food . but amongst these several sorts of trees , there were two of singular notice , that stood planted in the midst of the garden ; the one of which had fruit of that wonderful virtue , as to continue youth and strength , and to make a man immortal upon earth , wherefore it was call'd the tree of life . there was also another tree planted there , of whose fruit if a man ate , it had this strange effect , that it would make a man know the difference betwixt good and evil ; for the lord god had so ordain'd , that if adam touched the forbidden fruit thereof , he should by his disobedience feel the sense of evil as well as good ; wherefore by way of anticipation it was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil . and there was a river went out of eden to water the garden , and from thence it was parted , and became into four heads . the name of the first was phasis , or phasi-tigris , which compasses the whole land of the chaulateans , where there is gold. and the gold of that land is excellent ; there is also found bdellium and the onyx-stone . and the name of the second river is gihon , the same is it that compasseth the whole land of the arabian-aethiopia . and the name of the third river is tigris , that is that which goeth towards the east of assyria , and the fourth river is euphrates . and the lord god took the man adam by the hand , and led him into the garden of eden , and laid commands upon him to dresse it , and look to it , and to keep things handsome and in order in it , and that it should not be any wise spoil'd or misus'd by incursions or careless ramblings of the heedlesse beasts . and the lord god recommended unto adam all the trees of the garden for very wholesome and delightful food , bidding him freely eat thereof . only he excepted the tree of knowledge of good and evil , which he strictly charg'd him to forbear , for if he ever tasted thereof , he should assuredly die . but to the high commendation of matrimony be it spoken , though god had placed adam in so delightful a paradise , yet his happinesse was but maimed and imperfect , till he had the society of a woman : for the lord god said , it is not good that man should be alone , i will make him an help meet for him . now out of the ground the lord god had form'd every beast of the field , and every fowl of the air , and these brought he unto adam , to see what he would call them , and whatsoever adam called every living creature , that was the name thereof . and adam gave names to all cattel , and to the fowls of the air , and to every beast of the field , but he could not so kindly take acquaintance with any of these , or so fully enjoy their society , but there was still some considerable matter wanting to make up adams full felicity , and there was a meet help to be found out for him . wherefore the lord god caus'd a deep sleep to fall upon adam ; & lo , as he slept upon the ground , he fell into a dream , how god had put his hand into his side , and pulled out one of his ribs , closing up the flesh in stead thereof : and how the rib , which the lord god had taken from him , was made into a woman , and how god when he had thus made her , took her by the hand , and brought her unto him . and he had no sooner awakened , but he found his dream to be true , for god stood by him with the woman in his hand which he had brought . wherefore adam being pre-advertised by the vision , was presently able to pronounce , this is now bone of my bone , and flesh of my flesh : what are the rest of the creatures to this ? and he bestowed upon her also a fitting name , calling her woman , because she was taken out of man. and the lord god said , thou hast spoken well , adam : and for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother , and shall cleave unto his wife , and they two shall be one flesh : so strict and sacred a tie is the band of wedlock . and they were both naked , adam and his wife , and were not ashamed ; but how the shame of being seen naked came into the world , i shall declare unto you hereafter . chap. iii. a subtile serpent in paradise , indued with both reason , and the power of speech , deceives the woman . the dialogue betwixt the woman and the serpent . how the shame of nakednesse came into the world . god walks in the garden ; and calls to adam . the dialogue betwixt adam and god. the reasons why serpents want feet , and creep upon the ground . the reason of the antipathy betwixt men and serpents . as also of womens pangs in child-bearing , and of their being bound in subjection to their husbands . also of the barrennesse of the earth , and of mans toil and drudgery . god teacheth adam and eve the use of leathern clothing . paradise haunted with apparitions : adam frighted from daring to taste of the tree of life , whence his posterity became mortal to this very day . and truly it cannot but be very obvious for you to consider often with your selves , not onely how this shame of nakedness came into the world , but the toil and drudgery of tillage and husbandry ; the grievous pangs of childe-bearing ; and lastly , what is most terrible of all , death it self : of all which , as of some other things also , i shall give you such plain and intelligible reasons , that your own hearts could not wish more plain and more intelligible . to what an happy condition adam was created , you have already heard ; how he was placed by god in a garden of delight , where all his senses were gratified with the most pleasing objects imaginable ; his eyes with the beautie of trees and flowers , and various delightsome forms of living creatures , his ears with the sweet musical accents of the canorous birds , his smell with the fragrant odours of aromatick herbs , his taste with variety of delicious fruit , and his touch with the soft breathings of the air in the flowry alleys of this ever-springing paradise . adde unto all this , that pleasure of pleasures , the delectable conversation of his beautiful bride , the enjoyments of whose love neither created care to himself , nor pangs of childe-bearing to her : for all the functions of life were performed with ease and delight ; and there had been no need for man to sweat for the provision of his family , for in this garden of eden there was a perpetual spring , and the vigour of the soil prevented mans industry ; and youth and jollity had never left the bodies of adam and his posterity , because old age and death were perpetually to be kept off by that soveraign virtue of the tree of life . and i know , as you heartily could wish , this state might have ever continued to adam and his seed , so you eagerly expect to hear the reason why he was depriv'd of it ; and in short it is this , his disobedience to a commandement which god had given him ; the circumstances whereof i shall declare unto you , as followeth . amongst those several living creatures which were in paradise , there was the serpent also , whom you know to this very day to be full of subtilty , & therefore you will lesse wonder , if when he was in his perfection , he had not onely the use of reason , but the power of speech . it was therefore this serpent that was the first occasion of all this mischief to adam and his posterity ; for he cunningly came unto the woman , and said unto her , is it so indeed , that god has commanded you that you shall not eat of any of the trees of the garden ? and the woman answered unto the serpent , you are mistaken , god hath not forbid us to eat of all the fruit of the trees of the garden . but indeed of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden , god hath strictly charged us , ye shall not eat of it , neither shall ye touch it , lest ye die . but the serpent said unto the woman , tush , i warrant you , this is only but to terrifie you , and abridge you of that liberty and happinesse you are capable of , you shall not so certainly die . but god knows the virtue of that tree full well , that so soon as you eat thereof , your eyes shall be opened , and you shall become as gods , knowing good and evil . and when the woman saw , that the tree was good for food , and that it was pleasant to the eye , and a tree to be desired to make one wise , she took of the fruit and did eat , and gave also to her husband with her , and he did eat . and the eyes of them both were opened , and they knew they were naked , and were ashamed , and therefore they sewed fig-leaves together , and made themselves aprons to cover their parts of shame . and the lord god came into the garden toward the cool of the evening , and walking in the garden , call'd for adam ; but adam had no sooner heard his voice , but he and his wife ran away into the thickest of the trees of the garden , to hide themselves from his presence . but the lord god called unto adam the second time , and said unto him , adam where art thou ? then adam was forc't to make answer , and said , i heard thy voice in the garden , and i was afraid , because i was naked , and so i hid my self . then god said unto him , who hath made thee so wise , that thou shouldst know that thou art naked , or wantest any covering ? hast thou eaten of the forbidden fruit ? and adam excus'd himself , saying , the woman whom thou recommendedst to me for a meet help , she gave me of the fruit , and i did eat . and the lord god said unto the woman , what is this that thou hast done ? and the woman excus'd her self , saying , the serpent beguiled me , and i did eat . then the lord god gave sentence upon all three ; and to the serpent he said , because thou hast done this , thou art cursed above all cattel , and above every beast of the field ; and whereas hitherto thou hast been able to bear thy body aloft , and go upright , thou shalt henceforth creep upon thy belly , like a worm , and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life . and there shall be a perpetual antipathy betwixt not only the woman and thee , but betwixt her seed and thy seed : for universal mankind shall abhorre thee , and hate all the cursed generations that come of thee . they indeed shall busily lie in wait to sting mens feet , which their skill in herbs however shall be able to cure ; but they shall knock all serpents on the head , and kill them without pity or remorse , deservedly using thy seed as their deadly enemy . and the doom of the woman was , her sorrow and pangs in childe-bearing , and her subjection to her husband . which law of subjection is generally observed in the nations of the world unto this very day . and the doom of adam was , the toil of husbandry upon barren ground . for the earth was cursed for his sake , which is the reason that it brings forth thorns , and thistles , and other weeds , that husbandmen could wish would not cumber the ground , upon which they bestow their toilsome labor . thus in the sweat of his face was adam to eat his bread , till he return to the dust out of which he was taken . and adam called his wife eve , because she was the mother of all men that ever were born into the world , and lived upon the face of the earth . and the generations of men were clothed at first with the skins of wilde beasts , the use of which god taught adam and eve in paradise . and when they were thus accoutred for their journey , and armed for greater hardship , god turns them both out : and the lord god said concerning adam , deriding him for his disobedience , behold , adam is become as one of us , to know good and evil : let us look to him now , lest he put his hand to the tree of life , and so make himself immortal . therefore the lord god sent him forth from the garden of eden , to till the ground , from whence he was taken . so he drove out adam , and his wife was forced to follow him : for there was no longer staying in paradise , because the place was terribly haunted with spirits , and fearful apparitions appeared at the entrance thereof , winged men with fiery flaming swords in their hands , brandished every way , so that adam durst never adventure to go back to taste of the fruit of the tree of life : whence it is that mankinde hath continued mortal to this very day . the philosophick cabbala . chap. i. the world of life or forms , and the potentiality of the visible vniverse created by the tri-une god , and referr'd to a monad or unite . the vniversal immense matter of the visible world created out of nothing , and referr'd to the number two. why it was not said of this matter that it was good . the ordering of an earth or planet for making it conveniently habitable , referr'd to the number three . the immense aethereal matter , or heaven , contriv'd into suns or planets , as well primary as secondary , viz. as well earths as moons , and referr'd to the number four. the replenishing of an earth with fish and fowl , referr'd to the number five . the creation of beasts and cattel , but more chiefly of man himself , referr'd to the number six . our designe being to set out the more conspicuous parts of the external creation , before we descend to the genealogies and successions of mankinde ; there are two notable objects present themselves to our understanding , which we must first take notice of , as having an universal influence upon all that follows : and these i do symbolically decypher , the one by the name of heaven and light ; for i mean the same thing by both these tearms ; the other by the name of earth . by heaven or light , you are to understand the whole comprehension of intellectual spirits , souls of men and beasts , and the seminal forms of all things which you may call , if you please , the world of life . by earth , you are to understand the potentiality , or capability of the existence of the outward creation : this possibility being exhibited to our mindes as the result of the omnipotence of god , without whom nothing would be , and is indeed the utmost shadow and darkest projection thereof . the tri-une god therefore by his eternall wisdome first created this symbolical heaven and earth . and this earth was nothing but solitude and emptinesse , and it was a deep bottomless capacity of being what ever god thought good to make out of it , that implyed no contradiction to be made . and there being a possibility of creating things after sundry and manifold manners , nothing was yet determined , but this vast capability of things was unsettled , fluid , and of it self undeterminable as water : but the spirit of god , who was the vehicle of the eternal wisdome , and of the super-essential goodnesse , by a swift forecast of counsel and discourse of reason truly divine , such as at once strikes through all things , and discerns what is best to be done , having hover'd a while over all the capacities of this fluid possibilitie , forthwith settled upon what was the most perfect and exact . wherefore the intire deity by an inward word , which is nothing but wisdome and power , edg'd with actual will , with more ease then we can present any notion or idea to our own mindes , exhibited really to their own view the whole creation of spiritual substances , such as angels are in their inward natures , the souls of men , and other animals , and the seminal forms of all things , so that all those , as many as ever were to be of them , did really and actually exist without any dependency on corporeall matter . and god approved of , and pleased himself in all this as good ; but yet though in designe there was a settlement of the fluid darknesse or obscure possibility of the outward creation , yet it remained as yet but a dark possibility : and a notorious distinction indeed there was betwixt this actual spiritual creation , and the dimme possibility of the material or outward world . . insomuch that the one might very well be called day , and the other night : because the night does deface and obliterate all the distinct figures and colours of things ; but the day exhibits them all orderly and clearly to our sight . thus therefore was the immateriall creature perfectly finisht , being an inexhaustible treasury of light and form , for the garnishing and consummating the material world , to afford a morning or active principle to every passive one , in the future parts of the corporeal creation . but in this first days work , as we will call it , the morning and evening are purely metaphysical ; for the active and passive principles here are not two distinct substances , the one material , the other spiritual . but the passive principle is matter meerly metaphysical , and indeed no real or actual entity ; and , as hath been already said , is quite divided from the light or spiritual substance , not belonging to it , but to the outward world , whose shadowy possibility it is . but be they how they will , this passive and active principle are the first days work : a monad or unite being so fit a symbole of the immaterial nature . and god thought again , and invigorating his thought with his will and power , created an immense deal of reall and corporeall matter , a substance which you must conceive to lie betwixt the foresaid fluid possibility of natural things , and the region of seminall forms ; not that these things are distinguisht locally , but according to a more intellectual order . and the thought of god arm'd with his omnipotent will took effect , and this immensely diffused matter was made . but he was not very forward to say it was good , or to please himself much in it , because he foresaw what mischief straying souls , if they were not very cautious , might bring to themselves , by sinking themselves too deep therein . besides it was little worth , till greater polishings were bestowed upon it , and his wisdome had contrived it to fitting uses , being nothing as yet , but a boundlesse ocean of rude invisible matter . wherefore this matter was actuated and agitated forthwith by some universal spirit , yet part of the world of life , whence it became very subtile and ethereal ; so that this matter was rightly called heaven , and the union of the passive and active principle in the creation of this material heaven , is the second days work , and the binarie denotes the nature thereof . i shall also declare unto you , how god orders a reall materiall earth , when once it is made , to make it pleasant and delightful for both man and beast . but for the very making of the earth , it is to be referred to the following day . for the stars and planets belong to that number ; and as a primary planet in respect of its reflexion of light is rightly called a planet , so in respect of its habitablenesse , it is as rightly tearmed an earth . these earths therefore god orders in such sort , that they neither want water to lie upon them , nor be covered over with water , though they be invironed round with the fluid air . but he makes it partly dry land , and partly sea , rivers , and springs , whose convenience is obvious for every one to conceive . he adorns the ground also with grasse , herbs , and flowers , and hath made a wise provision of seed , that they bring forth , for the perpetuation of such useful commodities upon the face of the earth . for indeed these things are very good and necessary both for man and beast . therefore god prepared the matter of the earth so , as that there was a vital congruity of the parts thereof , with sundry sorts of seminall forms of trees , herbs , and choicest kinds of flowers ; and so the body of the earth drew in sundry principles of plantall life , from the world of life , that is at hand every where ; and the passive and active principle thus put together , made up the third days work , and the ternary denotes the nature thereof . the ternary had allotted to it , the garnishing of an earth with trees , flowers , and herbs , after the distinction of land and sea : as the quinary hath allotted to it , the replenishing of an earth with fish and fowl ; the senary with man and beast . but this fourth day comprehends the garnishing of the body of the whole world , viz. that vast and immense ethereal matter , which is called the fluid heaven , with infinite numbers of sundry sorts of lights , which gods wisdome and power , by union of fit and active principles drawn from the world of life , made of this ethereal matter , whose usefulnesse is plain in nature , that they are for prognostick signes , and seasons , and days , and years . as also for administring of light to all the inhabitants of the world ; that the planets may receive light from their fountains of light , and reflect light one to another . and there are two sorts of these lights that all the inhabitants of the world must acknowledge great every where , consulting with the outward sight , from their proper stations . and the dominion of the greater of these kinde of lights is conspicuous by day ; the dominion of the lesser by night : the former we ordinarily call a sun , the other a moon ; which moon is truly a planet and opake , but reflecting light very plentifully to the beholders sight , and yet is but a secondary or lesser kind of planet ; but he made the primary and more eminent planets also , and such an one is this earth we live upon . and god placed all these sorts of lights in the thin and liquid heaven , that they might reflect their rayes one upon another , and shine upon the inhabitants of the world . and that their beauty and resplendency might be conspicuous to the beholders of them , whether by day or by night , which is mainly to be understood of the suns , that supply also the place of stars at a far distance , but whose chiefe office it is to make vicissitudes of day and night : and the universal dark aether being thus adorn'd with the goodly and glorious furniture of those several kindes of lights , god approved of it as good . and the union of the passive and active principle was the fourth days work , and the number denotes the nature thereof . and now you have heard of a verdant earth , and a bounded sea , and lights to shine through the air and water , and to gratifie the eyes of all living creatures , whereby they may see one another , and be able to seek their food , you may seasonably expect the mention of sundry animals proper to their elements . wherefore god by his inward word and power , prepared the matter in the waters , and near the waters with several vital congruities , so that it drew in sundry souls from the world of life , which actuating the parts of the matter , caus'd great plenty of fish to swim in the waters , and fowls to flye above the earth in the open air . and after this manner he created great whales also , as well as the lesser kindes of fishes , and he approved of them all as good . and the blessing of his inward word or wisdome was upon them for their multiplication ; for according to the preparation of the matter , the plastical power of the souls that descend from the world of life , did faithfully and effectually work those wise contrivances of male and female , they being once rightly united with the matter , so that by this means the fish filled the waters in the seas , and the fowls multiplyed upon the earth . and the union of the passive and active principle was the fift days work , and the quinary denotes the nature thereof . and god persisted farther in the creation of living creatures , and by espousing new souls from the world of life to the more mediterraneous parts of the matter , created land-serpents , cattel , and the beasts of the field . and when he had thus made them , he approved of them for good . then god reflecting upon his own nature , and viewing himself , consulting with the super-essential goodnesse , the eternal intellect , and unextinguishable love-flame of his omnipotent spirit , concluded to make a far higher kinde of living creature , then was as yet brought into the world ; he made therefore man in his own image , after his own likenesse . for after he had prepared the matter fit for so noble a guest as an humane soul , the world of life was forced to let go what the rightly prepared matter so justly called for . and man appeared upon the stage of the earth , lord of all living creatures . for it was just that he that bears the image of the invisible god , should be supreme monarch of this visible world . and what can be more like god then the soul of man , that is so free , so rational , and so intellectual as it is ? and he is not the lesse like him now he is united to the terrestrial body , his soul or spirit possessing and striking through a compendious collection of all kinde of corporeal matter , and managing it , with his understanding free to think of other things , even as god vivificates and actuates the whole world , being yet wholly free to contemplate himself . wherefore god gave man dominion over the fowls of the air , the fish of the sea , and the beasts of the earth : for it is reasonable the worser should be in subserviency to the better . thus god created man in his own image , he consisting of an intellectual soul , & a terrestrial body actuated thereby . wherefore mankinde became male and female , as other terrestrial animals are . and the benediction of the divine wisdome for the propagation of their kinde , was manifest in the contrivance of the parts that were framed for that purpose : and as they grew in multitudes , they lorded it over the earth , and over-mastered by their power and policy the beasts of the field ; and fed themselves with fish and fowl , and what else pleased them , and made for their content , for all was given to them by right of their creation . and that nothing might be wanting to their delight , behold also divine providence hath prepared for their palate all precious and pleasant herbs for sallads , and made them banquets of the most delicate fruit of the fruit-bearing trees . but for the courser grasse , and worser kinde of herbs , they are intended for the worser and baser kinde of creatures : wherefore it is free for man to seek out his own , and make use of it . and god considering every thing that he had made , approved of it as very good ; and the union of the passive and active principle was the sixt days work : and the senary denotes the nature thereof . chap. ii. gods full and absolute rest from creating any thing of anew , adumbrated by the number seven . suns and planets not only the furniture , but effects of the ethereal matter or heaven . the manner of man and other animals rising out of the earth by the power of god in nature . how it was with adam before he descended into flesh , and became a terrestrial animal . that the four cardinall virtues were in adam in his ethereal or paradisiacal condition . adam in paradise forbidden to taste or relish his own will under pain of descending into the region of death . the masculine and feminine faculties in adam . the great pleasure and solace of the feminine faculties . the masculine faculties laid asleep , the feminine appear and act , viz. the grateful sense of the life of the vehicle . that this sense and joy of the life of the vehicle is in it self without either blame or shame . thus the heavens and the earth were finisht , and all the garnishings of them , such as are trees , flowers , and herbs ; suns , moons , and stars ; fishes , fowls , and beasts of the field , and the chiefest of all , man himself . wherfore god having thus compleated his work in the senary , comprehending the whole creation in six orders of things , he ceased from ever creating any thing more , either in this outward material world , or in the world of life : but his creative power retiring into himself , he enjoyed his own eternal rest , which is his immutable and indefatigable nature , that with ease oversees all the whole compasse of beings , and continues essence , life , and activity to them ; and the better rectifies the worse , and all are guided by his eternal word and spirit ; but no new substance hath been ever created since the six days production of things , nor shall ever be hereafter . for this seventh day god hath made an eternal holy day , or festival of rest to himself , wherein he will only please himself , to behold the exquisite order , and motion , and right nature of things , his wisdome , justice , and mercy unavoidably insinuating themselves , according to the set frame of the world , into all the parts of the creation , he having ministers of his goodnesse and wrath prepared every where : so that himself need but to look on , and see the effects of that nemesis that is necessarily interwoven in the nature of the things themselves which he hath made . this therefore is that sabbath or festival of rest which god himself is said to celebrate in the seventh day , and indeed the number declares the nature thereof . and now to open my minde more fully and plainly unto you , i must tell you that those things which before i tearm'd the garnishings of the heaven and of the earth , they are not only so , but the generations of them : i say , plants and animals were the generations , effects , and productions of the earth , the seminal forms and souls of animals insinuating themselves into the prepared matter thereof , and suns , planets , or earths were the generations or productions of the heavens , vigour and motion being imparted from the world of life to the immense body of the universe , so that what i before called meer garnishings , are indeed the productions or generations of the heavens and of the earth so soon as they were made ; though i do not take upon me to define the time wherein god made the heavens and the earth : for he might do it at once by his absolute omnipotency , or he might , when he had created all substance as well material as immaterial , let them act one upon the other , so , and in such periods of time , as the nature of the production of the things themselves requir'd . but it was for pious purposes that i cast the creation into that order of six dayes , and for the more firmly rooting in the hearts of the people this grand and useful truth , that the omnipotency of god is such , that he can act above and contrary to natural causes , that i mention'd herbs and plants of the field , before i take notice of either rain or man to exercise gardning and husbandry : for indeed according to my former narration there had been no such kinde of rain , as ordinarily nowadays waters the labours of the husbandman . but yet there went up a moist vapour from the earth , which being matur'd and concocted by the spirit of the world , which is very active in the heavens or air , became a precious balmy liquour , and fit vehicle of life , which descending down in some sort like dewy showers upon the face of the earth , moistned the ground , so that the warmth of the sun gently playing upon the surface thereof , prepared matter variously for sundry sorts , not only of seminal forms of plants , but souls of animals also . and man himself rose out of the earth after this manner ; the dust thereof being rightly prepar'd and attemper'd by these unctuous showers and balmy droppings of heaven . for god had so contriv'd by his infinite wisdome , that matter thus or thus prepar'd , should by a vital congruity attract proportional forms from the world of life , which is every where nigh at hand , and does very throngly inequitate the moist and unctuous air . wherefore after this manner was the aereal or ethereal adam conveyed into an earthly body , having his most conspicuous residence in the head or brain : and thus adam became the soul of a terrestrial living creature . but how it is with adam before he descends into this lower condition of life , i shall declare unto you in the aenigmatical narration that follows , which is this ; that the lord god planted a garden eastward in eden , where he had put the man , which afterward he formed into a terrestrial animal : for adam was first wholly ethereal , and placed in paradise , that is , in an happy and joyful condition of the spirit ; for he was placed under the invigorating beams of the divine intellect , and the sun of righteousnesse then shone fairly upon him . and his soul was as the ground which god hath blest , & so brought forth every pleasant tree , and every goodly plant of her heavenly fathers own planting ; for the holy spirit of life had inriched the soil , that it brought forth all manner of pleasant and profitable fruits : and the tree of life was in the midst of this garden of mans soul , to wit , the essential will of god , which is the true root of regeneration ; but to so high a pitch adam as yet had not reacht unto , and the fruit of this tree in this ethereal state of the soul , had been immortality or life everlasting : and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there also , viz. his own will. and there was a very pleasant river that water'd this garden , distinguishable into four streams , which are the four cardinal virtues , which are in several degrees in the soul , according to the several degrees of the purity of her vehicle . and the name of the first is pison , which is prudence and experience in things that are comely to be done : for the soul of man is never idle , neither in this world , nor in any state else , but hath some province to make good , and is to promote his interest whose she is : for what greater gratification can there be of a good soul , then to be a dispenser of some portion of that universal good , that god lets out upon the world ? and there can be no external conversation nor society of persons , be they terrestrial , aereab , or ethereal , but forthwith it implies an use of prudence : wherefore prudence is an inseparable accomplishment of the soul : so that pison is rightly deemed one of the rivers even of that celestial paradise . and this is that wisdome which god himself doth shew to the soul by communication of the divine light ; for it is said to compasse the land of havilah . . where also idle and uselesse speculations are not regarded , as is plainly declared by the pure and approved gold , bdellium , and onyx , the commodities thereof . and the name of the second river is gihon , which is justice , as is intimated from the fame of the aethiopians , whose land it is said to compasse , as also from the notation of the name thereof . and the name of the third river is hiddekel , which is fortitude , that like a rapid stream bears all down before it , and stoutly resists all the powers of darknesse , running forcibly against assyria , which is situated westward of it . and the fourth river is perath , which is temperance , the nourisher and cherisher of all the plants of paradise ; whereas intemperance , or too much addicting the minde to the pleasure of the vehicle , or life of the matter , be it in what state soever , drowns and choaks those sacret vegetables . as the earth you know , was not at all fruitfull till the waters were removed into one place , and the dry land appeared , when as before it was drowned and slocken with overmuch moisture . in this paradise thus described , had the lord god placed man to dresse it , and to keep it in such good order as he found it . and the divine word or light in man charged him , saying , of every tree of paradise thou mayest freely eat . for all things here are wholesome as well as pleasant , if thou hast a right care of thy self , and beest obedient to my commands . but of the luscious and poisonous fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil , that is , of thine own will , thou shalt not by any means eat : for at what time thou eatest thereof , thy soul shall contract that languor , debility , and unsettlednesse , that in processe of time thou shalt slide into the earth , and be buried in humane flesh , and become an inhabitant of the region of mortality and death . hitherto i have not taken much notice in the ethereal adam of any other faculties , but such as carried him upwards towards virtue and the holy intellect ; and indeed this is the more perfect and masculine adam , which consists in pure subtile intellectual knowledge : but we will now inform you of another faculty of the soul of man , which though it seem inferiour , yet is far from being contemptible , it being both good for himself , and convenient for the terrestrial world ; for this makes him in a capacity of being the head of all the living creatures in the earth , as that faculty indeed is the mother of all mankinde . those higher and more intellectual accomplishments i must confesse , made adam very wise , and of a quick perception . for he knew very well the natures of the beasts of the field , and fowls of the air : i mean not only of the visible and terrestrial creatures , but also of the fallen and unfallen angels , or good and bad genii , and was able to judge aright of them , according to the principles they consisted of , and the properties they had . and his reason and understanding was not mistaken , but he pronounced aright in all . but however , he could take no such pleasure in the external creation of god , and his various works , without having some principle of life , congruously joyning with , and joyfully actuating the like matter themselves consisted of : wherefore god indued the soul of man with a faculty of being united with vital joy and complacency to the matter , as well as of aspiring to an union with god himself , whose divine essence is too highly disproportioned to our poor substances . but the divine life is communicable in some sort to both soul and body , whether it be ethereal , or of grosser consistence : and those wonderful grateful pleasures that we feel , are nothing but the kindely motions of the souls vehicle ; from whence divine joys themselves are by a kinde of reflexion strengthned and advanced . of so great consequence is that vital principle that joyns the soul to the matter of the universe . wherefore god to gratifie adam , made him not indefatigable in his aspirings towards intellectual things , but lassitude of contemplation , & of affectation of immateriality , ( he being not able to receive those things as they are , but according to his poor capacity , which is very small in respect of the object it is exercis'd about ) brought upon himself remisnesse and drowsinesse to such like exercises , till by degrees he fell into a more profound sleep ; at what time divine providence having laid the plot aforehand , that lower vivificative principle of his soul did grow so strong , and did so vigorously and with such exultant sympathy and joy actuate his vehicle , that in virtue of his integrity which he yet retain'd , this became more dear to him , and of greater contentment , then any thing he yet had experience of . i say , when divine providence had so lively and warmly stirr'd up this new sense of his vehicle in him , he straightway acknowledg'd that all the sense and knowledge of any thing he had hitherto , was more lifelesse and evanid , and seemed lesse congruous and grateful unto him , and more estranged from his nature : but this was so agreeable & consentaneous to his soul , that he looked upon it as a necessary part of himself , and called it after his own name . and he thought thus within himself , for this cause will any one leave his over-tedious aspires to unite with the eternal intellect , and universal soul of the world , the immensenesse of whose excellencies are too highly rais'd for us to continue long in their embracements , and will cleave to the joyous and chearful life of his vehicle , and account this living vehicle and his soul one person . thus adam with his new-wedded joy stood naked before god , but was not as yet at all ashamed , by reason of his innocency and simplicity ; for adam neither in his reason nor affection as yet had transgressed in any thing . chap. iii. satan tempts adam , taking advantage upon the invigoration of the life of his vehicle . the dialogue betwixt adam and satan . the masculine faculties in adam , swayed by the feminine ; assent to sin against god. adam excuses the use of that wilde liberty he gave himself , discerning the plastick power somewhat awakened in him . a dispute betwixt adam and the divine light , arraigning him at the tribunal of his own conscience . satan strucken down into the lower regions of the air. a prophecy of the incarnation of the soul of the messias , and of his triumph over the head and highest powers of the rebellious angels . a decree of god to sowre and disturb all the pleasures and contentments of the terrestrial life . adam again excuses his fall , from the usefulnesse of his presence and government upon earth . adam is fully incorporated into flesh , and appears in the true shape of a terrestrial animal . that immortality is incompetible to the earthly adam , nor can his soul reach it , till she return into her ethereal vehicle . now the life of the vehicle being so highly invigorated in adam , by the remission of exercise in his more subtile and immaterial faculties , he was fit with all alacrity and chearfulnesse to pursue any game set before him ; and wanted nothing but fair external opportunity to call him out into action . which one of the evil genii or faln angels observing , which had no small skill in doing mischief , having in all likelihood practised the same villany upon some of his own orders , and was the very ring leader of rebellion against god , and the divine light ; for he was more perversely subtile then all the rest of the evil genii or beasts of the field , which god had mad● angels ; but their beastiality they contract●● by their own rebellion . for every thing 〈◊〉 hath sense and understanding , and wants the divine life in it , in the judgement of all wise and good men is truly a beast . this old serpent therefore the subtilest of all the beasts of the field , cunningly assaulted adam with such conference as would surely please his feminine part , which was now so invigorated with life , that the best news to her would be the tidings of a commission to do any thing : wherefore the serpent said to the feminized adam , why are you so demure , and what makes you so bound up in spirit ? is it so indeed that god has confined you , taken away your liberty , and forbidden you all things that you may take pleasure in ? and adam answered him , saying , no ; we are not forbidden any thing that the divine life in us approves as good and pleasant . we are only forbidden to feed on our own will , and to seek pleasures apart and without out the approbation of the will of god. for if our own will get head in us , we shall assuredly descend into the region of mortality , and be cast into a state of death . but the serpent said unto adam , tush , this is but a panick fear in you , adam , you shall not so surely die as you conceit . the only matter is this ; god indeed ●●ves to keep his creatures in awe , and to hold them in from ranging too farre , and reaching too high ; but he knows very well , that if you take but your liberty with us , and satiate your selves freely with your own will , your eyes will be wonderfully opened , and you will meet with a world of variety of experiments in things , so that you will grow abundantly wise , and like gods know all things whatsoever , whether good or evil . now the feminine part in adam was so tickled with this doctrine of the old deceiver , that the concupiscible began to be so immoderate , as to resolve to do any thing that may promote pleasure and experience in things , & snatcht away with it adams will and reason by his heedlesnesse and inadvertency . so that adam was wholly set upon doing things at randome ; according as the various toyings and titillations of the lascivient life of the vehicle suggested to him , no longer consulting with the voice of god , or taking any farther aim by the inlet of the divine light. and when he had tired himself with a rabble of toyes , and unfruitful or unsatisfactory devices , rising from the multifarious workings of the particles of his vehicle , at last the eyes of his faculties were opened , and they perceived how naked they were ; he having as yet neither the covering of the heavenly nature , nor the terrestrial body . only they sewed fig-leaves together , and made some pretences of excuse , from the vigour of the plantal life that now in a thinner maner might manifest it self in adam , and predispose him for a more perfect exercise of his plastick power , when the prepared matter of the earth shall drink him in . in the mean time the voice of god , or the divine wisdome spake to them in the cool of the day , when the hurry of this mad carreer had well slaked . but adam now with his wife was grown so out of order , and so much estranged from the life of god , that they hid themselves at the sensible approach thereof , as wilde beasts run away into the wood at the sight of a man. but the divine light in the conscience of adam pursued him , and upbraided unto him the case he was in . and adam acknowledged within himself how naked he was , having no power , nor ornaments , nor abilities of his own , and yet that he had left his obedience and dependence upon god : wherefore he was ashamed , and hid himself at the approach of the divine light manifesting it self unto him to the reprehension and rebuke of him . and the divine light charg'd all this misery and confusion that had thus overtaken him , upon the eating of the forbidden fruit , the luscious dictates of his own will. but adam again excus'd himself within himself , that it was the vigour and impetuosity of that life in the vehicle which god himself implanted in it , whereby he miscarried : the woman that god had given him . and the divine light spake in adam concerning the woman ; what work hath she made here ? but the woman in adam excused her self ; for she was beguiled by that grand deceiver the serpent . in this confusion of mind was adam by forsaking the divine light , and letting his own will get head against it . for it so changed the nature of his vehicle , that ( whereas he might have continued in an angelical and ethereal condition , and his feminine part been brought into perfect obedience to the divine light , and had joyes multiplyed upon the whole man beyond all expression and imagination for ever ) he now sunk more and more towards a mortal and terrestrial estate , himself not being unsensible thereof , as you shall hear , when i have told you the doom of the eternal god concerning the serpent and him . things therefore having been carried on in this wise , the eternal lord god decreed thus with himself concerning the serpent and adam : that this old serpent , the prince of the rebellious angels , should be more accursed then all the rest ; and , ( whereas he lorded it aloft in the higher parts of the air , and could glide in the very ethereal region , amongst the innocent and unflan souls of men , and the good angels before ) that he should now sweep the dust with his belly , being cast lower towards the surface of the earth . and that there should be a general enmity and abhorrency betwixt this old serpent , as also all of his fellow-rebels , and betwixt mankinde . and that in processe of time the ever faithful and obedient soul of the messias should take a body , and should trample over the power of the devil , very notoriously here upon earth , and after his death should be constituted prince of all the angelical orders whatever in heaven . and concerning adam , the eternal lord god decreed that he should descend down to be an inhabitant of the earth , and that he should not there indulge to himself the pleasures of the body , without the concomitants of pain and sorrow , and that his feminine part , his affections should be under the chastisement and correction of his reason . that he should have a wearisome and toilsome travail in this world , the earth bringing forth thorns and thistles , though he must subsist by the corn of the field . wherefore in the sweat of his browes he should eat his bread , till he returned unto the ground , of which his terrestrial body is made . this was the counsel of god concerning adam and the serpent . now , as i was a telling you , adam though he was sinking apace into those lower functions of life , yet his minde was not as yet grown so fully stupid , but he had the knowledge of his own condition , and added to all his former apologies , that the feminine part in him , though it had seduced him , yet there was some use of this mis-carriage , for the earth would hence be inhabited by intellectual animals : wherefore he call'd the life of his vehicle , eve , because she is indeed the mother of all the generations of men that live upon the earth . at last the plastick power being fully awakened , adams soul descended into the prepared matter of the earth , and in due processe of time adam appear'd cloth'd in the skin of beasts ; that is , he became a down-right terrestrial animal , and a mortal creature upon earth . for the eternal god had so decreed , and his wisdome , mercy , and justice did but , if i may so speak , play and sport together in the businesse . and the rather , because adam had but precipitated himself into that condition , which in due time might have faln to his share by course ; for it is fitting there should be some such head among the living creatures of the earth , as a terrestrial adam , but to live always here were his disadvantage . wherefore when god remov'd him from that higher condition , he made sure he should not be immortal , nor is he in any capacity of reaching unto the tree of life , without passing through his fiery vehicle , and becoming a pure and defecate ethereal spirit : then he may be admitted to taste the fruit of the tree of life and immortality , and so live for ever . the moral cabbala . chap. i. man a microcosme or little world , in whom there are two principles , spirit and flesh . the earthly or fleshly nature appears first . the light of conscience unlistned to . the spirit of savory and affectionate discernment betwixt good and evil . the inordinate desires of the flesh driven aside and limited . hereupon the plants of righteousnesse bear fruit and flourish . the hearty and sincere love of god , and a mans neighbour , is as the sun in the soul of man. notionality and opinions the weak and faint light of the dispersed stars . those that walk in sincere love , walk in the day : they that are guided by notionality , travel in the night . the natural concupiscible brings forth by the command of god , and is corrected by devotion . the irascible also brings forth . christ the image of god is created , being a perfect ruler over all the motions of the irascible and concupiscible . the food of the divine life . the food of the animal life . the divine wisdome approves of whatsoever is simply natural , as good . wee shall set before you in this history of genesis , several eminent examples of good and perfect men , such as abel , seth , enoch , abraham , and the like : wherefore we thought fit , though aenigmatically , and in a dark parable , to shadow out in general the manner of progresse to this divine perfection ; looking upon man as a microcosm or a little world , who if he hold out the whole progresse of the spiritual creation , the processe thereof will be figuratively understood as follows wherefore first of all , i say , that by the will of god every man living on the face of the earth hath these two principles in him , heaven and earth , divinity and animality , spirit and flesh . but that which is animal or natural operates first , the spiritual or heavenly life lying for a while closed up at rest in its own principle . during which time , and indeed some while afterwards too , the animal or fleshly life domineers in darknesse and deformity ; the mighty tempestuous passions of the flesh contending and strugling over that abysse of unsatiable desire which has no bottome , and which in this case carries the minde to nothing but emptinesse and unprofitablenesse . but by the will of god it is , that afterwards the day-light appears , though not in so vigorous measure , out of the heavenly or spiritual principle . and conscience being thus enlightned , offers her self a guide to a better condition ; and god has fram'd the nature of man so , that he cannot but say , that this light is good , and distinguish betwixt the dark tumultuous motions of the flesh and it : and say , that there is as true a difference , as betwixt the natural day and night . and thus ignorance and enquiry was the first days progresse . but though there be this principle of light set up in the conscience of man , and he cannot say any thing against it , but that it is good and true , yet has he not presently so lively and savoury a relish in his distinction betwixt the evil and the good : for the evil as yet wholly holds his affections , though his fancy and reason be toucht a little with the theoretical apprehensions of what is good ; wherefore by the will of god the heavenly principle in due time becomes a spirit of savoury and affectionate discernment betwixt the evil and the good ; betwixt the pure waters that flow from the holy spirit , and the muddy and tumultuous suggestions of the flesh . and thus is man enabled in a living manner to distinguish betwixt the earthly and heavenly life . for the heavenly principle is now made to him a spirit of savoury discernment , and being taught by god after this manner , he will not fail to pronounce , that this principle , whereby he has so quick and lively a sense of what is good and evil , is heavenly indeed : and thus ignorance and enquiry is made the second days progresse . now the sweetnesse of the upper waters being so well relisht by man , he has a great nauseating against the lower feculent waters of the unbounded desires of the flesh ; so that god adding power to his will , the inordinate desires of the flesh are driven within set limits , and he has a command over himself to become more stayed and steady . and this steadinesse and command he gets over himself , he is taught by the divine principle in him to compare to the earth or dry land for safenesse and stability ; but the desires of the flesh , he looks upon as a dangerous and turbulent sea : wherefore the bounding of them thus , and arriving to a state of command over a mans self , and freedome from such colluctations and collisions as are found in the working seas , the divine nature in him could not but approve as good . for so it comes to passe by the will of god , and according to the nature of things , that this state of sobriety in man , ( he being in so good a measure rid of the boisterousnesse of evil concupiscence ) gives him leisure so to cultivate his minde with principles of virtue and honesty , that he is as a fruitful field whom the lord hath blessed , sending forth out of himself sundry sorts of fruit-bearing trees , herbs , and flowers ; that is , various kindes of good works , to the praise of god , and the help of his neighbour ; and god and his own conscience witnesse to him , that this is good . and thus ignorance and inquiry is made the third days progresse . now when god has proceeded so far in the spiritual creation , as to raise the heavenly principle in man to that power and efficacy that it takes hold on his affections , and brings forth laudable works of righteousnesse , he thereupon adds a very eminent accession of light and strength , setting before his eyes sundry sorts of luminaries in the heavenly or intellectual nature , whereby he may be able more notoriously to distinguish betwixt the day and the night ; that is , betwixt the condition of a truly illuminated soul , and one that is as yet much benighted in ignorance , and estranged from the true knowledge of god. for according to the difference of these lights , it is signified to a man in what condition himself or others are in , whether it be indeed day or night with them , summer or winter , spring time or harvest , or what period or progresse they have made in the divine life . and though there be so great a difference betwixt these lights , yet the meanest are better then meer darknesse , and serve in some measure or other to give light to the earthly man. but among these many lights which god makes to appear to man , there are two more eminent by far then the rest . the greater of which two has his dominion by day , and is a faithful guide to those which walk in the day ; that is , that work the works of righteousnesse . and this greater light is but one , but does being added , mightily invigorate the former day-light man walked by , and it is a more full appearance of the sun of righteousnesse , which is an hearty and sincere love of god , and a mans neighbour . the lesser of these two great lights has dominion by night , and is a rule to those whose inward mindes are held as yet too strongly in the works of darknesse : and it is a principle weak , and variable as the moon , and is called inconstancy of life and knowledge . there are alsoan abundance of other little lights thickly dispersed over the whole understanding of man , as the stars in the firmament , which you may call notionality or multiplicity of ineffectual opinions . but the worst of all these are better then down-right sensuality and brutishnesse , and therefore god may well be said to set them up in the heavenly part of man , his understanding , to give what light they are able to his earthly parts , his corrupt and inordinate affections . and as the sun of righteousnesse , that is , the hearty and sincere love of god , and a mans neighbour , by his single light and warmth with chearfulnesse and safety guides them that are in the day : so that more uneven and changeable principle , and the numerous light of notionality , may conduct them , as well as they are able , that are benighted in darknesse : and what is most of all considerable , a man by the wide difference of these latter lights from that of the day , may discern , when himself or another is benighted in the state of unrighteousnesse . for multifarious notionality and inconstancy of life and knowledge , are certain signs that a man is in the night : but the sticking to this one , single , but vigorous and effectual light , of the hearty and sincere love of god , and a mans neighbour , is a signe that a man walks in the day . and he that is arrived to this condition , plainly discerns in the light of god , that all this is very good . and thus ignorance and inquiry is made the fourth days progresse . and now so noble , so warm , and so vigorous a principle or light as the sun of righteousnesse , being set up in the heavenly part of the soul of man , the unskilful may unwarily expect that the next news will be , that even the seas themselves are dried up with the heat thereof , that is , that the concupiscible in man is quite destroyed : but god doth appoint far otherwise ; for the waters bring forth abundance of fish as well as fowl innumerable . thoughts therefore of natural delights do swim to and fro in the concupiscible of man , and the fervent love he bears to god causes not a many faint ineffectual notions , but an abundance of holy affectionate meditations , and winged ejaculations that fly up heaven-ward , which returning back again , and falling upon the numerous fry of natural concupiscence , help to lessen their numbers , as those fowls that frequent the waters devour the fish thereof . and god and good men do see nothing but good in all this . wherefore god multiplies the thoughts of natural delight in the lower concupiscible , as well as he does those heavenly thoughts and holy meditations , that the entire humanity might be filled with all the degrees of good it is capable of ; and that the divine life might have something to order and overcome . and thus ignorance and inquiry made the fift days progresse . nor does god only cause the waters to bring forth , but the dry land also , several living creatures after their kinde , and makes the irascible fruitful , as well as the concupiscible . for god saw that they were both good , and that they were a fit subject for the heavenly man to exercise his rule and dominion over . for god multiplies strength as well as occasions to employ it upon . and the divine life that hath been under the several degrees of the advancement thereof , so variously represented in the five fore-going progresses , god at last works up to the height , and being compleat in all things , styles it by the name of his own image ; the divine life arrived to this pitch being the right image of him indeed . thus it is therefore , that at last god in our nature fully manifests the true and perfect man , whereby we our selves become good and perfect , who does not only see and affect what is good , but has full power to effect it in all things : for he has full dominion over the fish of the sea , can rule and guide the fowls of the air , and with ease command the beasts of the field , and what ever moveth upon the earth . thus god creates man in his own image , making him as powerful a commander in his little world , over all the thoughts and motions of the concupiscible and irascible , as himself is over the natural frame of the universe or greater world. and this image is male and female , consisting of a clear and free understanding , and divine affection , which are now arrived to that height , that no lower life is able to rebel against them , and to bring them under . for god blesses them and makes them fruitful , and multiplies their noble off-spring in so great and wonderful a measure that they replenish the cultivated nature of man with such an abundance of real truth and equity , that there is no living figure , imagination , or motion of the irascible or concupiscible , no extravagant or ignorant irregularity in religious meditations and devotions , but they are presently moderated and rectified . for the whole territories of the humane nature is every where so well peopled with the several beautiful shapes or idea's of truth and goodnesse , the glorious off-spring of the heavenly adam , christ , that no animal figure can offer to move or wagge amisse , but it meets with a proper corrector and re-composer of its motions . and the divine life in man being thus perfected , he is therewith instructed by god , what is his food , as divine , and what is the food of the animal life in him , viz. the most virtuous , most truly pious , and divine actions he has given to the heavenly adam to feed upon , fulfilling the will of god in all things , which is more pleasant then the choicest sallads , or most delicate fruit the taste can relish . nor is the animal life quite to be starved and pin'd , but regulated and kept in subjection , and therefore they are to have their worser sort of herbs to feed on ; that is , natural actions consentaneous to the principle from whence they flow ; that that principle may also enjoy it self in the liberty of prosecuting what its nature prompts it unto . and thus the sundry modifications of the irascible and concupiscible , as also the various figurations of religious melancholy , and natural devotions , ( which are the fishes , beasts , and fowls in the animal nature of man ) are permitted to feed and refresh themselves in those lower kindes of operations they incline us to ; provided all be approved and rightly regulated by the heavenly adam . for the divine wisdome in man sees and approves all things which god hath created in us , to be very good in their kinde . and thus ignorance and inquiry was the sixt days progresse . chap. ii. the true sabbatisme of the sons of god. a description of men taught by god. the mysterie of that adam that comes by water and the spirit . obedience the tree of life : disobedience the tree of the knowledg of good & evil . the rivers of paradise ; the four cardinal virtues in the soul of man. the life of righteousnesse lost by disobedience . the meer contemplative and spiritual man sees the motions of the animal life , and rigidly enough censures them . that it is incompetible to man perpetually to dwell in spiritual contemplations . that upon the slaking of those , the kindly joy of the life of the body springs out , which is our eve. that this kindly joy of the body is more grateful to man in innocency , then any thing else whatsoever . nor is man mistaken in his judgement thereof . thus the heavenly and earthly nature in man were finisht , and fully replenisht with all the garnishings belonging to them . so the divine wisdome in the humane nature celebrated her sabbath , having now wrought through the toil of all the six days travel . and the divine wisdome looked upon this seventh day as blessed and sacred ; a day of righteousnesse , rest and joy in the holy ghost . these were the generations or pullulations of the heavenly and earthly nature , of the divine and animal life in man , when god created them . i mean those fruitful plants , and pleasant and useful herbs which he himself planted : for i have describ'd unto you the condition of a man taught of god , and instructed and cherisht up by his inward light , where there is no external doctrine to distil as the rain , nor outward gardener to intermeddle in gods husbandry . only there is a fountain of water , which is repentance from dead works , and bubbles up in the earthly adam , so as universally to wash all the ground . and thus the nature of man being prepar'd for further accomplishments , god shapes him into his own image , which is righteousnesse and true holinesse , and breathes into him the spirit of life : and this is that adam which is born of water and the spirit . hitherto i have shewed unto you how mankinde is raised up from one degree of spiritual light and righteousnesse unto another , till we come at last to that full command and perfection in the divine life , that a man may be said in some sort thus to have attain'd to the kingdome of heaven , or found a paradise upon earth . the narration that follows shall instruct you and forewarn you of those evil courses , whereby man loses that measure of paradisiacal happinesse god estates him in , even while he is in this world . i say therefore , that the lord god planted a garden eastward in eden , and there he put the man whom he had made ; that is , man living under the intellectual rayes of the spirit , and being guided by the morning light of the sun of righteousnesse , is led into a very pleasant and sweet contentment of minde , and the testimony of a good conscience is his great delight . and that the sundry germinations and springings up of the works of righteousnesse in him is a delectable paradise to him , pleasing both the sight and taste of that measure of divine life that is manifested in him : but of all the plants that grow in him , there is none of so soveraign virtue , as that in the midst of this garden ; to wit , the tree of life , which is , a sincere obedience to the will of god : nor any that bears so lethiferous and poisonous fruit , as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil , which is , disobedience to the will of god , as it is manifested in man. for the pleasure of the soul consists in conforming her self faithfully to what she is perswaded in her own conscience is the will of god , what ever others would insinuate to the contrary . and all the fruit-bearing trees of righteousnesse are watered by these four rivers , which winde along this garden of pleasure , which indeed are the four cardinal virtues . the name of the first is pison , which is prudence , not the suggestions of fleshly craft and over-reaching subtilty , but the indications of the spirit or divine intellect , what is fit and profitable and decorous to be done . here is well tryed and certain approved experience , healthful industry , and alacrity to honest labour . and the name of the second river is gihon , which is justice . and the name of the third river is hiddekel , which is fortitude ; and the fourth river is euphrates , which is temperance . this is the paradise where the lord god had placed the man , that he might further cultivate it and improve it . and the divine light manifested in the man , encourag'd the man to eat of the fruits of paradise freely , and to delight himself in all manner of holy understanding and righteousnesse . but withall he bade him have a speciall care how he relisht his own will or power in any thing , but that he should be obedient to the manifest will of god in things great and small , or else assuredly he would lose the life he now lived , and become dead to all righteousnesse and truth . so the man had a special care , and his soul wrought wholly towards heavenly and divine things , and heeded nothing but these , his more noble and masculine faculties being after a manner solely set on work , but the natural life ( in which notwithstanding , if it were rightly guided , there is no sin ) being almost quite forgot and dis-regarded . but the wisdome of god saw that it was not good for the soul of man , that the masculine powers thereof should thus operate alone , but that all the faculties of life should be set a float , that the whole humane nature might be accomplisht with the divine . now the powers of the soul working so wholly upwards towards divine things , the several modifications or figurations of the animal life ( which god acting in the frame of the humane nature , represented to the man , whence he had occasion to view them and judge of them ) by the quick understanding of man was indeed easily discern'd what they were , and he had a determinate apprehension of every particular figuration of the animall life , and did censure them , or pronounce of them , though truly , yet rigidly enough and severely ; but as yet was not in a capacity of taking any delight in them , there was not any of them fit for his turn to please himself in . wherefore divine providence brought it so to passe , for the good of the man , and that he might more vigorously and fully be enrich'd with delight , that the operations of the masculine faculties of the soul were for a while well slaked and consopited ; during which time the faculties themselves were something lessened or weakned , yet in such a due measure and proportion , that considering the future advantage that was expected , that was not miss'd that was taken away , but all as handsome and compleat as before . for what was thus abated in the masculine faculties , was compensated abundantly in exhibiting to the man the grateful sense of the feminine ; for there was no way but this to create the woman , which is to elicite that kindly flowring joy or harmlesse delight of the natural life , and health of the body ; which once exhibited and joyned with simplicity and innocency of spirit , it is the greatest part of that paradise a man is capable of upon earth . and the actuating of the matter being the most proper and essential operation of a soul , man presently acknowledg'd this kindly flowring joy of the body , of nearer cognation and affinity with himself then any thing else he ever had yet experience of , and he loved it as his own life . and the man was so mightily taken with his new spouse , which is , the kindly joy of the life of the body , that he concluded with himself , that any one may with a safe conscience forgoe those more earnest attempts towards the knowledge of the eternal god that created him , as also the performance of those more scrupulous injunctious of his mother the church , so far forth as they are incompetible with the health and ioy of the life of his natural body , and might in such a case rather cleave to his spouse , and become one with her ; provided he still lived in obedience to the indispensable precepts of that superiour light and power that begot him . nor had adam's reason or affection transgressed at all in this ; concluding nothing but what the divine wisdome and equity would approve as true . wherefore adam and his wife as yet sought no corners , nor covering places to shelter them from the divine light ; but having done nothing amisse , appeared naked in the presence of it without any shame or blushing . chap. iii. adam is tempted by inordinate pleasure from the springing up of the joy of the invigorated life of his body . a dialogue or dispute in the minde of adam betwixt the inordinate desire of pleasure , and the natural joy of the body . the will of adam is drawn away to assent to inordinate pleasure . adam having transgressed , is impatient of the presence of the divine light. a long conflict of conscience , or dispute betwixt adams earthly minde , and the divine light , examining him , and setting before him both his present and future condition , if he persisted in rebellion . he adheres to the joy of his body , without reason or measure , notwithstanding all the castigations and monitions of the divine light. the divine light takes leave of adam therefore for the present , with deserved scorn and reproach . the doom of the eternal god concerning laps'd man , that will not suffer them to settle in wickednesse , according to their own depraved wills and desires . but so it came to passe that the life of the body being thus invigorated in man , straightway the slyest and subtilest of all the animal figurations , the serpent , which is the inordinate desire of pleasure , craftily insinuated it self into the feminine part of adam , viz. the kindely joy of the body ; and thus assaulting man , whisper'd such suggestions as these unto him . what a rigid and severe thing is this businesse of religion , and the law of god , as they call it , that deprives a man of all manner of pleasure , and cuts him short of all the contentments of life ? but the womanish part in adam ; to wit , the natural and kindly joy of the body , could witnesse against this , and answered , we may delight our selves with the operations of all the faculties both of soul and body , which god and nature hath bestow'd upon us . . only we are to take heed of disobedience , and of promiscuously following our own will ; but we are ever to consult with the will of god , and the divine light manifested in our understandings , and so doe all things orderly and measurably : for if we transgresse against this , we shall die the death , and lose the life of virtue and righteousness , which now is awake in us . but the serpent , which is the inordinate desire of pleasure , befooled adam , through the frailty of his womanish faculties , and made him believe he should not die ; but with safety might serve the free dictates of pleasure or his own will and the will of god , that flesh and spirit might both rule in him , and be no such prejudice the one to the other : but that his skill and experience in things will be more enlarg'd , and so come nearer to divine perfection indeed , and imitate that fulnesse of wisdome which is in god , who knows all things whatsoever , whether good or evil . this crafty suggestion so insinuated it self into adams feminine faculties , that his fleshly concupiscence began to be so strong , that it carried the assent of his will away with it , and the whole man became a lawlesse and unruly creature : for it seem'd a very pleasant thing at first sight to put in execution what ever our own lusts suggest unto us without controll ; and very desirable to try all conclusions to gain experience and knowledge of things . but this brought in nothing but the wisdome of the flesh , and made adam earthly minded . but he had not rambled very far in these dissolute courses , but his eyes were opened , and he saw the difference , how naked now he was , and bare of all strength and power to divine and holy things ; and began to meditate with himself some slight pretences for his notorious folly and disobedience . for the voice of the divine light had come unto him in the cool of the day , when the fury and heat of his inordinate passions was something slaked : but adam could not endure the presence of it , but hid himself from it , meditating what he should answer by way of apology or excuse . but the divine light persisted , and came up closer to him , and upbraided unto him , that he was grown so wilde and estranged from her self , demanding of him in what condition he was , and wherefore he fled . then adam ingenuously confessed that he found himself in such a pitiful poor naked condition , that he was ashamed to appear in the presence of the divine light ; and that was the reason he hid himself from it , because it would so manifestly upbraid to him his nakednesse and deformity . and the divine light farther examined him , how he fell into this sensible beggerly nakednesse he was in , charging the sad event upon his disobedience , that he had fed upon , and taken a surfeit of the fruit of his own will. but adam excused his rational faculties , and said , they did but follow the natural dictate of the joy of the body , the woman that god himself bestowed upon him for an help and delight . but the divine light again blamed adam , that he kept his feminine faculties in no better order nor subjection , that they should so boldly and overcomingly dictate to him such things as are not fit . to which he had nothing to say , but that the subtile serpent , the inordinate desire of pleasure , had beguiled both his faculties , as well masculine as feminine , his will and affection was quite carried away therewith . then the divine light began to chastise the serpent , in the hearing of adam , pronouncing of it , that it was more accursed , then all the animal figurations beside ; and that it crept basely upon the belly , tempting to riot and venery , and relishing nothing but earth and dirt . this will always be the guise of it , so long as it lives in a man. but might i once descend so far into the man , as to take possession of his feminine faculties , i would set the natural joy of the body at defiance with the serpent ; and though the subtilty of the serpent may a little wound and disorder the woman for a while , yet her warrantable and free operations , she being actuated by divine vigour , should afterward quite destroy and extinguish the seed of the serpent ; to wit , the operations of the inordinate desire of pleasure . and she added farther in the hearing of adam concerning the woman , as she thus stood dis-joyn'd from the heavenly life , and was not obedient to right reason , that by a divine nemesis , she should conceive with sorrow , and bring forth vanity ; and that her husband , the earthly minded adam , should tyrannize over her , and weary her out , and foil her ; so that the kindly joy of the health and life of the body , should be much depraved , or made faint and languid , by the unbridled humours , and impetuous luxury and intemperance of the earthly minded adam . and to adam he said , who had become so earthly minded , by listening to the voice of his deceived woman , and so acting disobediently to the will of god ; that his flesh or earth was accursed for his sake , with labour and toil should he reap the fruits thereof all the while he continued in this earthly mindednesse . cares also and anxieties shall it bring forth unto him , and his thoughts shall be as base as those of the beasts in the field ; he shall ruminate of nothing but what is earthly and sensual . with sweat and anguish should he labour to satisfie his hunger and insatiablenesse , till he returned to the principle out of which he was taken ; for the earthly mindednesse came from this animated earth , the body ; and is to shrinke up againe into its owne principle , and to perish . after all these castigations and premonitions of the divine light , adam was not sufficiently awakened to the sense of what was good , but his minde was straightway taken up againe with the delights of the flesh , and dearly embracing the joy of his body , for all she was grown so inordinate , called her my life , professing she was the noursing mother and chiefe comfort of all men living , and none could subsist without her . then the divine wisdome put hairy coates made of the skins of wilde beasts upon adam and his wife , and deservedly reproached them , saying , now get you gone for a couple of brutes . and adam would have very gladly escaped so , if he might , and set up his rest for ever in the beastiall nature . but the eternall god of heaven , whose providence reaches to all things , and whose mercy is over all his workes , looking upon adam , perceived in what a pitifull ridiculous case he was ; who seeking to be like unto god for knowledge and freedome , made himselfe no better then a beast , and could willingly have lived for ever in that baser kinde of nature ; wherefore the eternall lord god , in compassion to adam , designed the contrary , and deriding his boldnesse and curiosity that made him transgresse , behold , sayes he , adam is become like one of us , knowing good and evill : and can of himselfe enlarge his pleasure , and create new paradises of his owne , which forsooth must have also their tree of life or immortality : and adam would for ever live in this foolish state he hath plac'd himselfe in . but the eternall lord god would not suffer adam to take up his rest in the beastial delight , which he had chosen , but drove him out of this false paradise , which he would have made to himself , and set him to cultivate his fleshly members , out of which his earthly mindednesse was taken . i say , he forcibly drove out adam from this paradise of luxury ; nor could he settle perpetually in the brutish life , because the cherubim with the flaming sword that turned every way , beat him off ; that is , the manly faculties of reason and conscience met him ever and anon in his brutish purposes , and convinced him so of his folly , that he could not set up his rest for ever in this bestial condition . the defence of the threefold cabbala . philo jud. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , that the whole law of moses is like to a living creature , whose body is the literal sense ; but the soul the more inward and hidden meaning , covered under the sense of the letter . r. moses aegypt . non omnia secundum literam intelligenda & accipienda esse quae dicuntur in opere bereschith seu creationis , sicut vulgus hominum existimat . sensum enim illorum literales vel gignunt pravas opiniones de natura dei opt. max. vel certè fundamenta legis evertunt , heresínque aliquam introducunt . london , printed by james flesher . . the preface to the reader . reader . the cabbala's thou hast read being in all likelihood so strange and unexpected , especially the philosophical , that the defence it self , which should cure and cese thy amazement , may not occasion in any passage thereof , any further scruple or offence , i thought fit a while to interrupt thee , that whatever i conjecture may lesse satisfie , may afore-hand be strengthned by this short preface . and for my own part i cannot presage what may be in any shew of reason alledged by any man , unlesse it be , the unusual mysterie of numbers ; the using of the authority of the heathen in explication of scripture ; the adding also of miracles done by them for the further confirming their authority ; and lastly , the strangeness of the philosophical conclusions themselves . now for the mysterie of numbers , that this ancient philosophy of moses should be wrapped up in it , will not seem improbable , if we consider that the cabbala of the creation was conserved in the hands of abraham , and his family , who was famous for mathematicks , ( of which arithmetick is a necessary part ) first amongst the chaldeans , and that after he taught the aegyptians the same arts , as historians write . besides prophetical and aenigmatical writings , that it is usual with them to hide their secrets , as under the allusions of names and etymologies , so also under the adumbrations of numbers , it is so notoriously known , and that in the very scriptures themselves , that it needs no proof ; i will instance but in that one eminent example of the number of the beast . as for citing the heathen writers so frequently ; you are to consider that they are the wisest and the most virtuous of them , and either such as the fathers say , had their philosophy from moses and the prophets , as pythagoras and plato , or else the disciples or friends of these philosophers . and therefore i thought it very proper to use their testimony in a thing that they seem'd to be so fit witnesses of for the main , as having receiv'd the cabbala from the ancient prophets ; though i will not deny , but they have mingled their own fooleries with it , either out of the wantonnesse of their fancy , or mistake of judgement ; such as are the transmigration of humane souls into brutes ; an utter abstinence from flesh ; too severe reproaches against the pleasures of the body ; vilification of marriage , and the like ; which is no more argument against the main drift of the cabbala , then unwarrantable superstitious opinions , and practises of some deceived churches are against the solid grounds of christianity . again , i do not alledge philosophers alone , but as occasion requires , fathers , and which i conceive as valid in this case , the jewish rabbins , who in things where prejudice need not blinde them , i should think as fit as any , to confirm a cabbalistical sense , especially if there be a general consent of them , and that they do not write their private fancy , but the minde of their whole church . now if any shall take offence at pythagoras his scholars , swearing as is conceived by their master that taught them the mystery of the tetractys , ( as you shall understand more at large in the explication of the fourth days work ) i must profess that i my self am not a little offended with it . but that high reverence they bore to pythagoras , as it is a sign of vanity , and some kind of superstition in them ; so is it also no lesse an argument of a stupendious measure of knowledge and sanctity in pythagoras himself , that he should extort from them so great honour , and that his memory should be so sacred to them . which profound knowledge and sanctity he having got by conversing with the jewish prophets , it ultimately tends to the renown of that church , and consequently to the christian , which inherits those holy oracles which were first peculiar to the jews . but what the followers of pythagoras transgressed in , is no more to be imputed to him , then the superstitions exhibited to the virgin mary can be laid to her charge . besides it may be a question whether in that pythagorick oath , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. they did not swear by god the first author of the cabbala , and that mysterious explication of the tetrctys , that is indeed , of all knowledge divine and natural , who first gave it to adam , and then revived or confirmed it again to moses . or if it must be understood of pythagoras , why may it not be look'd upon as a civill oath , or asseveration , such as joseph's swearing by the life of pharaoh , and noblemen by their honours ? neither of which notwithstanding for my own part i can allow or assure my self that they are meerly civill , but touch upon religion , or rather idolatrous superstition . as for the miracles pythagoras did , though i do not believe all that are recorded of him are true , yet those that i have recited i hold probable enough , they being not unbecoming the worth of the person : but those that suppose the transmigration of humane souls into the bodies of beasts , i look upon as fables , and his whispering into the ear of an oxe to forbear to eat beans , as a loudly . but it seems very consonant unto divine providence , that pythagoras having got the knowledge of the holy cabbala , which god imparted to adam and moses , that he should countenance it before the nations by enabling him to do miracles . for so those noble and ancient truths were more firmly radicated amongst the philosophers of greece , and happily preserved to this very day . nor can his being carried in the air make him suspected to be a meer magician or conjurer , sith the holy prophets and apostles themselves have been transported after that manner , as habakkuk from jewry to babylon , and philip after he had baptiz'd the eunuch to azotus . but for my own part , i think working of miracles is one of the least perfections of a man , and is nothing at all to the happinesse of him that does them , or rather seems to do them : for if they be miracles , he does them not , but some other power or person distinct from him . and yet here magicians and witches are greatly delighted in that this power is in some sort attributed to themselves , and that they are admired of the people , as is manifest in simon magus . but thus to lord it and domineer in the attribute of power with the prince of the air , what is it but meer pride , the most irrational and provoking vice that is ? and with what grosse folly is it here conjoin'd , they priding and pleasing themselves in that they sometimes do that , or rather suffer that , which herns and wlde geese , and every ordinary fowl can do of it self ; that is , mount aloft and glide through the fleeting air ? but holy and good men know that the greatest sweet and perfection of a virtuous soul , is the kindly accomplishment of her own nature in true wisdom and divine love. and if any thing miraculous happen to them , or be done by them , it is , that that worth & knowledg that is in them may be taken notice of , and that god thereby may be glorified , whose witnesses they are . but no other accession of happinesse accrues to them from this , but that hereby they may be in a better capacity of making others happy , which i confesse i conceive here pythagoras his case . and that men may not indulge too much to their own melancholy and fancy , which they ordinarily call inspiration , if they be so great lights to the world as they pretend , and so high that they will not condescend to the examination of humane reason , it were desirable that such persons would keep in their heat to concoct the crudities of their own conceptions , till the warrant of a miracle call them out ; and so they might more rightfully challenge an attention from the people , as being authorised from above to tell us something we knew not before , nor can so well know , as believe , the main argument being not reason but miracle . lastly , for the strangeness of the philosophical conclusions themselves , it were the strangest thing of all , if at first sight they did not seem very paradoxical and strange ; else why should they be hid and conceal'd from the vulgar , but that they did transcend their capacity , and were overmuch disproportioned to their belief ? but in the behalf of these cabbalistical conclusions , i will only note thus much , that they are such that supposing them true ( which i shall no longer assert , then till such time as some able philosopher or theologer shall convince me of their falshood ) there is nothing of any grand consideration in theology or nature , that will not easily be extricated by this hypothesis , an eminent part whereof is the motion of the earth , and the prae-existency of souls . the evidence of the former of which truths is such , that it has wonne the assent of the most famous mathematicians of our later ages ; and the reasonablenesse of the latter is no lesse : there having never been any philosopher that held the soul of man immortal , but he held that it did also prae-exist . but religion not being curious to expose the full view of truth to the people , but only what was most necessary to keep them in the fear of a deity and obedience to the law , contented her self with what meerly concerned the state of the soul after the dissolution of the body , concealing what ever was conceivable concerning her condition before . now i say , it is a pretty priviledge of falshood , ( if this hypothesis be false ) and very remarkable , that it should better sute with the attributes of god , the visible events of providence , the phaenomena of nature , the reason of man , and the holy text it self , where men acknowledge a mysterious cabbala , then that which by all means must be accounted true , viz. that there is no such motion of the earth about the sun , nor any prae-existency of humane souls . reader , i have done what lies on my part , that thou maist peruse this defence of mine without any rub or stumbling ; let me now request but one thing which thou art bound to grant , which is , that thou read my defence without prejudice , and that all along as thou goest , thou make not thy recourse to the customary conceits of thy fancy , but consult with thy free reason , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle somewhere speaks in his metaphysicks . for custome is another nature ; and therefore those conceits that are accustomary and familiar , we unawares appeal to , as if they were indeed the natural light of the minde , and her first common notions . and he gives an instance not altogether unsutable to our present purpose . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the philosopher may be as bold as he pleases with the ritual laws and religious stories of the heathens , but i do not know that he ever was acquainted with the law of moses . but i think i may speak it not without due reverence , that there is something of aristotles saying analogically true in the very history of the creation , and that the first impressions of the literal text , which is so plainly accommodated to the capacity of meer children and idiots , by reason of custome have so strongly rooted themselves in the minds of some , that they take that sense to be more true , then the true meaning of the text indeed . which is plain in no meaner a person then one of the fathers ; namely , lactantius ; who looking upon the world as a tent according to the description in the literal cabbala , did very stoutly and confidently deny antipodes ; so much did a customary fancy prevail over the free use of his reason . thus much for better caution i thought fit to preface . the rest the introduction to the defence , and the very frame and nature of the defence it self , i hope will make good to the judicious and ingenuous reader . the introduction to the defence . diodorus his mistake concerning moses , and other law-givers that have professed themselves to have received their laws from either god or some good angel. reasons why moses began his history with the creation of the world . the sun and moon the same with the aegyptians osiris and isis , and how they came to be worshipped for gods. the apotheosis of mortal men , such as bacchus and ceres , how it first came into the world . that the letter of the scripture speaks ordinarily in philosophical things according to the sense and imagination of the vulgar . that there is a philosophical sense that lies hid in the letter of the three first chapters of genesis . that there is a moral or mystical sense not only in these three chapters , but in several other places of the scripture . not to stay you with too tedious a prologue to the matter in hand concerning the author of this book of genesis , to wit , moses ; i shall look upon him mainly in reference to that publick induement , in which at the very first sight he will appear admirable , viz. as a politician or a law-giver . in which his skill was so great , that even in the judgement of heathen writers he had the preheminence above all the rest . diodorus has placed him in the head of his catalogue of the most famous law-givers under the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if iustin martin be not mistaken , or if he be , at least he bears them company that are reputed the best , reserv'd for the last and most notable instance of those that entituled their laws divine , and made themselves spokesmen betwixt god and the people . this mneves is said to receive his laws from mercury , as minos from iupiter , lycurgus from apollo , zathraustes from his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , his good genius , zamolxis from vesta , and moses from iao ; that is , iehovah . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but he speaks like a meer historian in the business . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word which he boldly abuses to the diminution of all their authorities promiscuously . for he says they feigned they received laws from these deities ; and addes the reason of it too , but like an errant statesman , or an incredulous philosopher , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . whether it be , sayes he , that they judged it an admirable and plainly divine project that redounded unto the profit of a multitude , or whether they conceived that hereby the people looking upon the greatnesse , and supereminence of their law-givers , would be more obedient to their laws . that saying in the schools is not so trivial as true . quicquid recipitur , recipitur ad modum recipientis , every thing is as it is taken , or at least appears to be so . the tincture of our own natures stains the appearance of all objects . so that i wonder not that diodorus siculus , a man of a meer political spirit , ( as it is very plain how neer history and policy are akin ) should count the receiving of laws from some deity rather a piece of prudential fraud and political forgery , then reality and truth . but to leave diodorus to his ethnicisme and incredulity ; as for us that ought to believe scripture , if we will not gain-say the authority of the greek text , we shall not only be fully perswaded of moses his receiving of laws from gods own mouth , but have some hints to believe that something analogical to it may have come to passe in other law-givers , deut. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. when the most high divided the nations , when he separated the sons of adam , he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of god , but jacob was the portion of iehovah , that is , iao , &c. so that it is not improbable but that as the great angel of the covenant , ( he whom philo calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , the eldest of the angels , the archangel , the word , the beginning , the name of god , which is iehovah ) i say , that as he gave laws to his charge , so the tutelar angels of other nations might be the instructers of those that they rais'd up to be law-givers to their charge ; though in processe of time the nations that were at first under the government of good angels , by their lewdnesse and disobedience might make themselves obnoxious to the power and delusion of those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as they are called , deceitful and tyrannical devils . but this is but a digression ; that which i would briefly have intimated is this , that moses the great law-giver of the jews , was a man instructed of god himself to prudence and true policy . and therefore i make account if we will but with diligence search , we may surely finde the foot-steps of unsophisticate policy in all the passages of the whole pentateuch . and here in the very entrance it will offer it self unto our view : where moses shews himself such as that noble spirit of plato desires all governors of commonwealths should be , who has in his epistle to dion and his friends foretold , that mankinde will never cease to be miserable , till such time as either true and right philosophers rule in the commonwealth , or those that do rule , apply themselves to true and sound philosophy . and what is moses his bereshith , but a fair invitation thereto , it comprehending at least the whole fabrick of nature and conspicuous furniture of the visible world ? as if he dare appeal unto the whole assembly of gods creation , to the voice of the great universe , if what he propounds to his people over whom god hath set him , be not righteous and true ; and that by acting according to his precepts , they would but approve themselves cosmopolitas , true citizens of the world , and loyal subjects to god and nature . it is philo's interpretation upon the place , which how true it is in moses vailed , i will not here dispute : that it is most true in moses unvailed , christ our lord , is true without all dispute and controversie . and whosoever followes him , follows a law justified by god and the whole creature , they speaking in several dialects the minde of their maker . it is a truth and life that is the safety of all nations , and the earnest expectation of the ends of the earth ; christ the same yesterday , to day , and for ever , whose dominion and law neither time nor place doth exclude . but to return to moses . another reason no lesse considerable , why that holy and wise law-giver moses , should begin with the creation of the world , is this : the laws and ordinances which he gave to the israelites , were given by him as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as statutes received from god. and therefore the great argument and incitement to obedience should lie in this first and highest law-giver , god himself , the great jehovah , whose wisdome , power , and goodnesse could not better be set out then by ascribing the creation of the whole visible world unto him . so that for his power he might be feared , admired for his wisdome , and finally , for his goodnesse be loved , adored , and deified : that as he was truly in himself the most high god , so he should be acknowledged of the people to be so . for certainly there is nothing that doth so win away , nay , ravish or carry captive the mindes of poor mankinde , as bounty and munificence . all men loving themselves most affectionately , and most of all the meanest and basest spirits , whose souls are so far from being a little rais'd and releas'd from themselves , that they do impotently and impetuously cleave and cling to their dear carkases . hence have they out of the strong relish , and favour of the pleasures and conveniencies thereof made no scruple of honouring them for gods , who have by their industry , or by good luck produced any thing that might conduce for the improvement of the happinesse and comfort of the body . from hence it is that the sun and moon have been accounted for the two prime deities by idolatrous antiquity , viz. from that sensible good they conferred upon hungry mankinde . the one watering as it were the earth by her humid influence ; the other ripening the fruit of the ground by his warm rayes , and opening dayly all the hid treasures of the visible world by his glorious approach , pleasing the sight with the variety of natures objects , & chearing the whole body by his comfortable heat . to these as to the most conspicuous benefactors to mankinde , was the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 given , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because they observed that these conceived deities were in perpetual motion . these two are the aegyptians osiris and isis , and five more are added to them as very sensible benefactors , but subordinate to these two , and dependents of them . and in plain speech they are these . fire , spirit , humidity , siccity , and air , but in their divine titles vulcan , jupiter , oceanus , ceres , and minerva . these are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as diodorus speaks . but after these mortal men were canonized for immortal deities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for their prudence and benefaction ; as you may see at large in diodorus siculus . i will name but two for instance , bacchus and ceres , the one the inventor of corn , the other of wine and beer : so that all may be resolved into that brutish aphorisme , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that which could please or pleasure degenerate mankinde in the body , ( they having lost the image of god in their souls , and become meer brutes after a manner ) that must be their god. wherefore it was necessary for moses having to deal with such terrestrial spirits , sons of sense and corporeity , to propose to them jehovah as maker of this sensible and corporeal world , that whatever sweet they suck out of the varieties thereof , they may attribute to him , as the first fountain and author , without whom neither they nor any thing else had been , that thereby they might be stirred up to praise his name , and accomplish his will revealed by his servant moses unto them . and this was true and sound prudence , aiming at nothing but the glory of god , and the good of the poor ignorant people . and from the same head springs the manner of his delivering of the creation ; that is , accommodately to the apprehension of the meanest : not speaking of things according to their very essence and real nature , but according to their appearances to us . not starting of high and intricate questions , and concluding them by subtile arguments , but familiarly and condescendingly setting out the creation , according to the most easie and obvious conceits they themselves had of those things they saw in the world ; omitting even those grosser things that lay hid in the bowels of the earth , as metals , and minerals , and the like , as well as those things that fall not at all under sense , as those immaterial substances , angels , or intelligences . thus fitly has the wisdome and goodnesse of god accommodated the outward cortex of the scripture , to the most narrow and slow apprehension of the vulgar . nor doth it therefore follow that the narration must not be true , because it is according to the appearance of things to sense and obvious fancie ; for there is also a truth of appearance , according to which scripture most what speaks in philosophical matters . and this position is the main key , as i conceive , and i hope shall hereafter plainly prove , whereby moses his bereshith may according to the outward and literal sense be understood without any difficulty or clashing one part against another . and my task at this time will be very easie , for it is but transcribing what i have already elsewhere occasionally published , and recovering of it into its proper place . first therefore i say , that it is a thing confessed by the learned hebrews , who make it a rule for the understanding of many places of scripture , loquitur lex juxta linguam humanam , that the law speaks according to the language of the sons of men . and secondly , which will come more home to the purpose , i shall instance in some places that of necessity are to be thus understood . gen. . . the sun was risen upon the earth when lot entred into zoar ; which implies that it was before under the earth , which is true onely according to sense and vulgar phancy . deuteronom . . v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , implies that the earth is bounded at certain places , as if there were truly an hercules pillar , or non plus ultra : as it is manifest to them that understand but the natural signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; for those words plainly import the earth bounded by the blew heavens , and the heavens bounded by the horizon of the earth , they touching one another mutually ; which is true only to sense and in appearance , as any man that is not a meer idiot , will confesse . ecclesiastic . . v. . the discourse of a godly man is always with wisdome , but a fool changeth as the moon . that is to be understood according to sense and appearance : for if a fool changeth no more then the moon doth really , he is a wise and excellently accomplished man ; semper idem , though to the sight of the vulgar different . for at least an hemisphere of the moon is always enlightned , and even then most when she least appears unto us . hitherto may be referred also that , chron. . . also he made a molten sea ten cubits from brim to brim , round in compasse , and five cubits the height thereof , and a line of thirty cubits did compasse it round about . a thing plainly impossible that the diameter should be ten cubits , and the circumference but thirty . but it pleaseth the spirit of god here to speak according to the common use and opinion of men , and not according to the subtilty of archimedes his demonstration . again psalm . in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sunne , which as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber , and rejoyceth as a strong man to run his race . this , as mr. john calvin observes , is spoken according to the rude apprehension of the vulgar , whom david should in vain have endevoured to teach the mysteries of astronomy . and therefore he makes no mention of the course of the sunne in the nocturnal hemisphere . i 'le adde but one instance more , joshua . v. . sunn● stand thou still upon gibeon , and thou moon in the valley of ajalon ; where it is manifest that ioshua speaks not according to the astronomical truth of the thing , but according to sense and appearance . for suppose the sun placed , and the moon , at the best advantage you can , so that they leave not their natural course , they were so far from being one over ajalon , and the other over gibeon , that they were in very truth many hundreds of miles distant from them . and if the sun and moon were on the other side of the aequator , the distance might amount to thousands . i might adjoyn to these proofs the suffrages of many fathers , and modern divines , as chrysostome , ambrose , augustine , bernard , aquinas , and the rest . but it is already manifest enough that the scripture speaks not according to the exact curiosity of truth , describing things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to the very nature and essence of them ; but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to their appearance in sense and the vulgar opinion . the second rule that i would set down is ●his : that there is a various intertexture of theosophical and philosophical truths , many physical and metaphysical theorems hinted ●o us ever and anon , through those words that at first sight seem to bear but an ordinary grosse sense , i mean especially in these three first chapters of genesis . and a man will be the better assured of the truth of this position , if he do but consider , that the literal text of moses that sets out the creation of the world , and offers reasons of sundry notable phaenomena of nature , bears altogether a most palpable compliance with the meer rude and ignorant conceits of the vulgar . wherefore the argument of these three chapters being so philosophical as it is , it seems unworthy of that knowing spirit of moses , or of religion it self , that he should not contrive under the external contexture of this narration , some very singular and choice theorems of natural philosophy and metaphysicks ; which his pious and learned successors should be able by some secret traditionary doctrine or cabbala to apply to his outward text. for what an excellent provision is this ▪ for such of the people whose pregnancy of parts and wit might make them rest unsatisfied , as well in the moral allegory ( into which they are first to be initiated ) as in the outward letter it self ; and also their due obedience , humility , and integrity of life , make them fit to receive some more secret philosophick cabbala from the mouth of the knowing priest ; the strange unexpected richnesse of the sense whereof , and highnesse of notion suddenly shining forth , by removing aside of the vail , might strike the soul of the honest jew with unexpressible pleasure and amazement , and fill his heart with joy and thankfulnesse to god for the good tidings therein contained , and conciliate greater reverence then ever to moses and to religion . wherefore such a philosophick cabbala as this being so convenient and desirable , and men in all ages having professed their expectation of solid and severe philosophy in this story of the creation by their several attempts thereupon , it seems to me abundantly probable that moses and his successors were furnished with some such like cabbala ; which i am still the more easily induced to believe , from that credible fame that pythagoras and plato had their philosophy from moses his text , which it would not so easily have suggested unto them , had they had no assistance from either iewish or aegyptian prophet or priest to expound it . the third and last rule that i would lay down is this : that natural things , persons , motions , and actions , declared or spoken of in scripture , admit of also many times a mystical , moral , or allegorical sense . this is worth the proving it concerning our souls more nearly then the other . i know this spiritual sense is as great a fear to some faint and unbelieving hearts , as a spectre or night-spirit . but it is a thing acknowledged by the most wise , most pious , and most rational of the iewish doctors ; i will instance in one who is ad instar omnium , moses aegyptius , who compares the divine oracles to apples of gold in pictures of silver : for that the outward nitor is very comely as silver curiously cut thorough and wrought , but the inward spiritual or mystical sense is the gold more precious and more beautiful , that glisters through those cuttings and artificial carvings in the letter . i will endevour to prove this point by sundry passages in scripture , psalm . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the easie and genuine sense of these words is , the secret of the lord is for them that fear him , and his covenant is to make them know it , viz. his secret , which implies that the mysterie of god lies not bare to false and adulterous eyes , but is hid and wrapped up in decent coverings from the sight of vulgar and carnal men . that his secrets are , as aristotle answered to alexander concerning his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or acroamatical writings , that they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , published and not published . and our saviour himself , though all goodnesse , was not so prodigal of his pearls as to cast them to swine . to them that were without he spake parables . and upon the same principles certainly it is not a whit unreasonable , to conceive moses to write types and allegories . and we have sufficient ground to think so from that of the apostle cor. ch . . where when he hath in short reckoned up some of the main passages that befell the israelites in their journey from egypt to canaan , ( which yet no man that hath any faith or the fear of god before his eyes , will deny to be a reall history ) he closes with this expression all these things being types befell them , but were written for our instruction , on whom the ends of the world are come . so galat. ch . . the history of abrahams having two sons ishmael and isaak , the one of the bond-woman , the other of the free , viz. agar and sara , the same apostle there speaks out , that they are an allegory , v. . i might adde many other passages to this purpose , but i will only raise one consideration concerning many histories of the old testament , and then conclude . if so be the spirit of god meant not something more by them then the meer history , i mean some useful and spiritual truth involved in them , they will be so far from stirring us up to piety , that they may prove ill precedents for falseness and injurious dealings . for what an easie thing is it for a man to fancy himself an israelite , and then to circumvent his honest neighbours under the notion of aegyptians ? but we will not confine our selves to this one solitary instance . what is jacob but a supplanter , a deceiver , and that of his own brother ? for taking advantage of his present necessity , he forced him to sell his birth-right for a m●sse of pottage . what a notorious piece of fraud is that of rebecca , that while industrious esau is ranging the woods and mountains to fulfill his fathers command , and please his aged appetite , she should substitute jacob with his both counterfeit hands and venison , to carry away the blessing intended by the good old man for his officious elder son esau ? jacobs rods of poplar , an ill example to servants to defraud their masters ; and rachels stealing labans t●●raphim ▪ and concealing them with a falshood , how warrantable an act it was , let her own husband give sentence ; with whomsoever thou findest thy gods , let him not live , gen. . . i might be infinite in this point ; i will only add one example of womans perfidious cruelty , as it will seem at first sight , and so conclude . sisera captain of jabins host being worsted by israel , fled on his feet to the tent of jael , the wife of heber the kenite , who was in league and confederacy with jabin : this jael was in shew so courteous as to meet sisera , and invite him into her tent , saying , turn in my lord , turn in to me , fear not . and when he had turned in unto her into the tent , she covered him with a mantle : and he said unto her , give me i pray thee a little water to drink ; and she opened a bottle of milk , and gave him drink , and covered him . in short , he trusted her with his life , and gave himself to her protection , and she suddenly so soon as he fell asleep drove a nail with an hammer into his temples , and betrayed his corps to the will of his enemies . an act certainly that the spirit of god would not have approved , much lesse applauded so much , but in reference to the mysterie that lies under it . my three rules for the interpreting of scripture , i have i hope by this time sufficiently established , by way of a more general preparation to the defence of my threefold cabbala . i shall now apply my self to a more particular clearing and confirming the several passages therein . the defence of the literal cabbala . chap. i. the genuine sense of in the beginning . the difference of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neglected by the seventy , who translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the ground of their mistake discovered , who conceive moses to intimate that the matter is uncreated . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no more then ventus magnus . that the first darkness was not properly night . why the seventy translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 firmamentum , and that it is in allusion to a firmly pitched tent. that the sensible effects of the sun invited the heathen to idolatry , and that their oracles taught them to call him by the name of jao . that the prophet jeremy divides the day from the sun , speaking according to the vulgar capacity . the reason why the stars appear on this side the upper caeruleous sea. the opinion of the anthropomorphites , and of what great consequence it is for the vulgar to imagine god in the shape of a man. aristophanes his story in plato of men and womens growing together at first , as if they made both but one animal . the first rule that i laid down in my introduction to the defence of my threefold cabbala , i need not here again repeat , but desire the reader only to carry it in minde , and it will warrant the easie and familiar sense that i shall settle upon moses his text in the literal meaning thereof . unto which , if i adde also reasons from the pious prudence of this holy law-giver , shewing how every passage makes for greater faith in god , and more affectionate obedience to his law , there will be nothing wanting i think ( though i shall sometimes cast in some notable advantages also from critical learning ) that may gain belief to the truth of the interpretation . vers . . in this first verse i put no other sense of in the beginning , then that it denotes to us the order of the history . which is also the opinion of maimonides , who deriving 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying the head , rightly observes the analogy ; that as the head is the forepart of a living creature , so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies that which is placed first in any thing else . and that thus the creation of the world is the head or forepart of the history that moses intends to set down . wherefore moses having in his minde ( as is plain from the title of this book , genesis , as well as the matter therein contained ) to write an history and genealogy from the beginning of the world to his own time , it is very easie and obvious to conceive , that in reference to what he should after add , he said , in the beginning : as if the whole frame of his thoughts lay thus . first of all , god made the heavens , and the earth , with all that they contain , the sun , moon , and stars , the day and night , the plants , and living creatures that were in the air , water , and on the earth , and after all these he made adam , and adam begot cain and abel , and so on in the full continuance of the history and genealogies . and this sense i conceive is more easie and natural then that of austin , ambrose , and besil , who will have in the beginning , to signifie in the beginning of time , or in the beginning of the world . and yet i thought it not amiss to name also these , that the reader may take his choice . god made heaven and earth . maimonides and manasseh ben israel observe these three words used in scripture , when creation of the world is attributed to god , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the production of things out of nothing , which is the schools notion of creation ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the making up a thing perfect and compleat , according to its own kinde and properties ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimates the dominion and right possession that god has of all things thus created or made . but though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the mind of the learned jews , signifies creation properly so called , yet the seventy observe no such criticisme , but translate it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is no more then made . and vulgar men are not at leisure to distinguish so subtilly . wherefore this latter sense i receive as the vulgar literal sense , the other as philosophical . and where i use the word creation in this literal cabbala , i understand but that common and general notion of making a thing , be it with what circumstances it will. neither do i translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the plural number , the trinity ; because , as vatablus observes out of the hebrew doctors , that when the inferiour speaks of his superiour , he speaks of him in the plural number . so esay . . tradam aegyptum in manum dominorum duri . and exod. . . et accipiet domini ejus , for dominus . the text therefore necessarily requiring no such sense , and the mysterie being so abstruse , it is rightly left out in this literal cabbala . vers . . in the first verse there was a summary proposal of the whole creation in those two main parts of it , heaven and earth . now he begins the particular prosecution of each days work . but it is not needful for him here again to inculcate the making of the earth : for it is the last word he spake in his general proposal , and therefore it had been harsh or needless to have repeated it presently again . and that 's the reason why before the making of the earth , there is not prefixed , and the lord said , let there be an earth . which i conceive has imposed upon the ignorance and inconsiderateness of some , so as to make them believe that this confused muddy heap which is called the earth , was an eternal first matter , independent of god , and never created by him : which if a man appeal to his own faculties , is impossible , as i shall again intimate when i come to the philosophick cabbala . the sense therefore is , that the earth was made first , which was covered with water , and on the water was the wind , and in all this a thick darkness . and god was in this dark , windy and wet night . so that this globe of earth , and water , and wind , was but one dark tempest and sea-storm , a night of confusion and tumultuous agitation . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not in the letter any thing more then ventus ingens , a great and mighty wind . as the cedars of god , and mountains of god , are tall cedars , great mountains , and so in analogy , the wind of god , a great wind. vers . . but in the midst of this tempestuous darkness , god intending to fall to his work , doth as it were light his lamp , or set up himself a candle in this dark shop . and what ever hitherto hath been mentioned , are words that strike the fancy and sense strongly , and are of easie perception to the rude people , whom every dark and stormy night may well reminde of the sad face of things till god commanded the comfortable day to spring forth , the sole author of light , that so pleases the eyes , and chears the spirits of man. and that day-light is a thing independent of the sun , as well as the night of the stars , is a conceit wondrous sutable to the imaginations of the vulgar , as i have my self found out by conversing with them . they are also prone to think , unlesse there be a sensible wind stirring , that there is nothing betwixt the earth and the clouds , but that it is a meer vacuity . wherefore i have not translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the air , as maimonides somewhere does , but a mighty wind ; for that the rude people are sensible of , and making the first deformed face of things so dismal and tempestuous , it will cause them to remember the first morning light with more thankfulness and devotion . vers . . for it is a thing very visible . see what is said upon the eighth verse . vers . . by evening and morning , is meant the artificial day , and the artificial night , by a synecdoche , as castellio in his notes tells us . therefore this artificial day and night put together , make one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or natural day . and the evening is put before the morning , night before day , because darkness is before light. but that primitive darkness was not properly night : for night is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as aristotle describes it , one great shaddow cast from the earth , which implies light of one side thereof . and therefore night properly so called could not be before light. but the illiterate people trouble themselves with no such curiosities , nor easily conceive any such difference betwixt that determinate conical shaddow of the earth , which is night , and that infinite primitive darkness , that had no bounds before there was any light. and therefore that same darkness prefixed to an artificial day makes up one natural day to them . which hesiod also swallows down without chewing , whether following his own fancy , or this text of moses , i know not . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , but of the night both day and skie were born . vers . . this basis or floor . that the earth seems like a round floor , plain and running out so every way , as to join with the bottome of the heavens , i have in my introduction hinted to you already , and that it is look'd upon as such in the phrase of scripture , accommodating it self to our outward senses and vulgar conceit . upon this floor stands the hollow firmament , as a tent pitched upon the ground , which is the very expression of the prophet esay , describing the power of god ; that stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain , and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in . and the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is usually rendred firmament , signifies diduction , expansion , or spreading out . but how the seventy come to interpret it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 firmamentum , fuller in his miscellanies gives a very ingenious reason , and such as makes very much to our purpose . nam coelum seu 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he , quandoquidem tentoxio saepissimè in sacris literis assimilatur , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dicitur , quatenus expanditur . sic enim expandi solent tent●ria , quum alligatis ad paxillos in terram depactos funibus distenduntur , atque hoc etiam pacto firmantur . itaque 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immensum quoddam ut ita dicam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ideóque & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non ineptè appelletur . the sense of which in brief is nothing but this : that the seventy translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , firmamentum , because the heavens are spread out like a well-fastned and firmly pitched ten. and i add also , that they are so stiffely stretched , that they will strongly bear against the weight of the upper waters ; so that they are not able to break them down , and therewith to drown the world . which conceit as it is easie and agreeable with the fancy of the people , so it is so far from doing them any hurt , that it will make them more sensible of the divine power and providence , who thus by main force keeps off a sea of water that hangs over their heads , which they discern through the transparent firmament , ( for it looks blew as other seas do ) and would rush at once upon them and drown them , did not the power of god , and the strength of the firmament hold it off . vers . . see what hath been already said upon the sixt verse . i will only here add , that the nearness of these upper waters makes them still the more formidable , and so are greater spurs to devotion : for as they are brought so near as to touch the earth at the bottome , so outward sense still being judge , they are to be within a small distance of the clouds at the top . and that these upper waters are no higher then so , it is manifest from other passages in scripture , that place the habitation of god but amongst the clouds , who yet is called the most high. psalm . . deut. . . nahum . . psalm ● . . but of this i have treated so fully elsewhere , that i hold it needless to add any thing more . ver. . i cannot say properly that god saw it was good . in the whole story of the three first chapters , it is evident , that god is represented in the person of a man , speaking with a mouth , and seeing with eyes . hence it is that the firmament being of it self invisible , that moses omits the saying , that god saw it was good : for the nature of the eye is onely to see things visible . some say , god made hell the second day , and that that is the reason it was not recorded , that he saw it was good . but if he did not approve of it as good , why did he make it ? however that can be none of the literal sense , and so impertinent to this present cabbala . ver. . and i may now properly say , &c. see what hath been said already upon verse the eight . ver. . whence you may easily discern , &c. this observation is philo the jew 's , which you may read at large in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and it was very fit for moses who in his law , which he received from god , does so much insist upon temporal blessings , and eating of the good things of the land , as a reward of their obedience , to lay down such principles as should beget a firm belief of the absolute power of god over nature . that he could give them rain , and fruitful seasons , and a plentiful year when he pleased ; when as he could cause the earth to bring forth without rain , or any thing else to further her births , as he did at the first creation . the meditation whereof might well cause such an holy resolution as that in the prophet habakkuk , although the fig-tree shall not blossome , neither fruit be in the vines , the labour of the olive fail , and the fields yeeld no meat ; yet i will rejoyce in the lord , i will joy in the god of my salvation . but that prudent and pious caution of moses against idolatry , how requisite it was , is plain if we consider that the power of the sun is so manifest , and his operation so sensible upon the earth for the production of things below , especially of plants , that he hath generally drawn aside the rude and simple heathen to idolize him for a god : and their nimble oracles have snatched away the sacred name of the god of israel , the true god , to bestow upon him , calling him jao , which is jehovah , as is plain from that clarian oracle in macrobius : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which i have translated thus in my poems : that heavenly power which jao hight , the highest of all the gods thou maist declare in spring nam'd zeus , in summer helios bright , in autumne called jao , aides in brumal night . these names do plainly denotate the sunne in spring call'd zeus from life or kindly heat ; in winter ' cause the day 's so quickly done , he aides hight , he is not long in sight ; in summer ' cause he strongly doth us smite with his hot darts , then helios we him name from eloim or eloah so hight ; in autumn jao , jehovan is the same , so is the word deprav'd by an uncertain fame . this oracle cornelius labeo interprets of bacchus , which is the same with the sun , who is the god of the vintage , and is here described according to the four quarters of the year . and so virgil , heathen-like attributes to the sun and moon under the name of bacchus and ceres , that great blessing of corn and grain . — vestro si numine tellus chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit aristâ . if by your providence the earth has born for course chaonian acorns , full-ear'd corn. but of this i have said so much in my introduction , that i need add nothing more . ver. . see ver . . ver. . see ver . . i have there shown how easily the fancie of the rude people admit of days without a sun. to whose capacities the prophet jeremy accommodating his speech , her sun , sayes he , is gone down while it was yet day . how can it be day when the sun is down , unless the day be independent of the sun , according to the fancie of the rude and illiterate ? which is wonderfully consonant to the outward letter of moses , that speaks not of the sun as the cause of the day , but as a badge of distinction from the night , though he does admit that it does increase the light thereof . ver. . in the hollow roof &c. though the caeruleous upper sea seems so neer us , as i have already signified , yet the lights of heaven seem something on this side it , as white will stand off drawn upon a darker colour , as you may see in the describing solid figures on a blew slate ; they will more easily rise to your eye then black upon white : so that the people may very well , consulting with their sight , imagine the firmament to be betwixt the lights of heaven , and the upper waters , or that blew sea they look upon , not on this side , nor properly betwixt the lights or stars . ver. . two great lights , &c. this is in counter-distinction to the stars , which indeed seem much less to our sight then the sun or moon , when as notwithstanding many stars according to astronomers computation , are bigger then the sun , all far bigger then the moon : so that it is plain the scripture speaks sometimes according to the appearance of things to our sight , not according to their absolute affections and properties . and he that will not here yeeld this for a truth , is , i think , justly to be suspected of more ignorance then religion , and of more superstition then reason . for their smalnesse , &c. the stars indeed seem very small to our sight , and therefore moses seems to cast them in but by the by , complying therein with the ignorance of the unlearned . but astronomers who have made it their business to understand their magnitudes , they that make the most frugal computation concerning the bigger stars , pronounce them no less then sixty eight times bigger then the earth , others much more . ver. . to be peculiar garnishings . see verse . ver. . fish and fowl. i suppose the mention of the fowl is made here with the fish by reason that the greatest and more eminent sorts of that kinde of creature , most of all frequent the waters , as swannes , geese , ducks , herons , and the like . ver. . in his own shape . it was the opinion of the anthropomorphites , that god had all the parts of a man , and that we are in this sense made according to his image : which though it be an opinion in it self , if not rightly understood , vain and ridiculous ; yet theirs seem little better to me , that imagine god a finite beeing , and take care to place him out of the stink of this terrestrial globe , that he may sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and so confine him to heaven , as aristotle seems to do , if he be the author of that book de mundo : for it is a contradiction to the very idea of god to be finite , and consequently to have figure or parts . but it is so difficult a thing for the rude multitude to venture at a notion of a beeing immatorial and infinite , that it seems their advantage to conceive of god as of some all-powerful person , that can do what ever he pleaseth , can make heavens and earths , and bestow his blessings in what measure and manner he lists , and what is chief of all , if need be , can personally appear to them , can chide them , and rebuke them , and , if they be obstinate , doe horrible vengeance upon them . this i say , will more strongly strike the inward sense and imagination of the vulgar , then omnipotency placed in a thin , subtile , invisible , immaterial beeing , of which they can have no perception at all , nor any tolerable conceit . wherefore it being requisite for the ignorant , to be permitted to have some finite and figurate apprehension of god , what can be more fit then the shape of a man in the highest excellencies that it is capable of , for beauty , strength , and bignesse . and the prophet esay seems to speak of god after this notion , god sits upon the circle of the earth , and the inhabitants thereof are as grashoppers ; intimating that men to god bear as little proportion , as grashoppers to a man when he sits on the grasse amongst them . and now there being this necessity of permitting the people some such like apprehensions as this , concerning god , ( and it is true prudence , and pious policy to comply with their weakness for their good ) there was the most strict injunctions laid upon them against idolatry and worshipping of images that might be . but if any one will say this was the next way to bring them into idolatry , to let them entertain a conceit of god as in humane shape ; i say it is not any more , then by acknowledging man to be god , as our religion does , in christ . nay , i add moreover , that christ is the true deus figuratus : and for his sake was it the more easily permitted unto the jews to think of god in the shape of a man. and that there ought to be such a thing as christ , that is , god in humane shape , i think it most reasonable , that he may apparently visit the earth , and to their very outward senses confound the atheist and mis-believer at the last day . as he witnesseth of himself , the father judges none , but he hath given all judgement unto the son. and , that no man can see the father , but as he is united unto the son. for the eternal god is immaterial and invisible to our outward senses : but he hath thought good to treat with us both in mercy and judgement , by a mediator and vicegerent , that partakes of our nature as well as his own . wherefore it is not at all absurd for moses to suffer the jews to conceive of god as in a corporeall and humane shape , since all men shall be judged by god in that shape at the last day . he made females as well as males . that story in plato his symposion , how men and women grew together at first till god cut them asunder , is a very probable argument that the philosopher had seen or heard something of this mosaical history . but that it was his opinion it was so , i see no probability at all : for the story is told by that ridiculous comedian aristophanes , with whom i conceive he is in some sort quit , for abusing his good old friend and tutor socrates , whom he brought in upon the stage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , treading the air in a basket , to make him a laughing-stock to all athens . the text is indeed capable of such a sense , but there being no reason to put that sense upon it , neither being a thing so accommodate to the capacity and conceit of the vulgar , i thought it not fit to admit it , no not so much as into this literal cabbala . ver. . frugiferous . castellio translates it so , herbas frugiferas , which must be such like herbs as i have named , strawberries , wheat , rice , and the like . chap. ii. the notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answerable to the breathing of adams soul into his nostrils . the exact situation of paradise . that gihon is part of euphrates ; pison , phasis , or phasi-tigris . that the madianites are called aethiopians . that paradise was seated about mesopotamia , argued by six reasons . that it was more particularly seated where now apamia stands in ptolemee's maps . the prudence of moses in the commendation of matrimony . why adam is not recorded to have given names to the fishes . abraham ben ezra's conceit of the names of adam and eve as they are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . moses his wise anthypophora concerning the naturall shame of nakednesse . in the four first verses all is so clear and plain , that there is no need of any further explication or defence , saving that you may take notice that in the second verse where i write within six days , the seventies translation will warrant it , who render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , on the sixt day . ver. . see what hath been said on the eleventh verse of the first chapter . ver. . the dust . the hebrew word signifies so , and i make no mention of any moistning of it with water . for god is here set out acting according to his absolute power and omnipotency . and it is as easie to make men of dry dust , as hard stones . and yet god is able even of stones to raise up children unto abraham . blew into the nostrils . breathing is so palpable an effect of life , that the ancient rude greeks also gave the soul its name from that operation , calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to breathe or to blow . ver. . eastward of judea . for so interpreters expound eastward in scripture , in reference to judea . to prevent any further trouble in making good the sense i have put upon the following verses concerning paradise , i shall here at once set down what i finde most probable concerning the situation thereof , out of vatablus and cornelius à lapide , adding also somewhat out of dionysius the geographical poet. in general therefore we are led by the four rivers to the right situation of paradise . and gihon , saith vatablus ; is tractus inferior euphratis illabens in sinum persicum ; is a lower tract or stream of euphrates that slides into the persian gulph . pison is phasis or phasitigris , that runs through havilah , a region near persis ; so that pison is a branch of tigris , as gihon is of euphrates . thus vatablus . and that gihon may have his aethiopia , cornelius à lapide notes , that the madianites and others near the persian gulph , are called aethiopians ; and therefore he concludes first at large , that paradise was seated about mosopotamia and armenia , from these reasons following . first , because these regions are called eastern in scripture , ( which as i have said is to be understood always in reference to judea ) according to the rule of expositors . and the lord is said to have planted this garden of paradise eastward . secondly , because man being cast out of paradise these regions were inhabited first , both before the floud , ( for cain is said to inhabite eden , gen. . . ) and also after the floud , as being nearer paradise , and more fertile , gen. . . also . . thirdly , paradise was in eden , but eden was near haran ; ezek. . . haran , and caunuch , and eden : but haran was about mesopotamia , being a city of parthia where crassus was slain ; authors call it charra . fourthly , paradise is where euphrates and tigris are . and these are in mesopotamia and armenia . they denominate mesopotamia , it lying betwixt them . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , the land 'twixt tigris and euphrates streame , all this mesopotamia they name . fiftly , because these regions are most fruitful and pleasant . and that adam was made not far from thence , is not improbable from the excellency of that place , as well for the goodliness of the men that it breeds , as the fertility of the soil . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , so excellent is that soil for herbage green , for flowry meads , and such fair godly men , as if the off-spring of the gods th' had been . as the same geographer writes . sixtly , and lastly , there is yet a further probability alledged , that paradise was about mesopotamia , that countrey being not far distant from judea . for it is the tradition of the fathers , that adam when he was ejected out of paradise , having travelled over some parts of the world , that he came at last to judea , and there died , and was buried in a mount , which his posterity , because the head of the first man was laid there , called mount calvary , where christ was crucified for the expiation of the sin of adam , the first transgressor . if the story be not true , it is pity but it should be , it hath so venerable assertors , as cyprian , athanasius , basil , origen , and others of the fathers , as cornelius affirms . but now for the more exact situation of paradise , the same author ventures to place it at the very meeting of tigris and euphrates , where the city of apamia now stands in ptolemees maps , eighty degrees longitude , and some thirty four degrees and thirty scruples latitude . thus have we according to the letter found paradise which adam lost , but if we finde no better one in the philosophick and moral cabbala , we shall but have our labour for our travel . ver. . that stood planted in the midst of the garden . for in this verse the tree of life is planted in the midst of the garden , and in the third chapter the third verse , the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is placed there also . for the lord god bad so ordained . expositors seem not to suspect any hurt in the tree it self , but that the fruit thereof was naturally good , only god interdicted it to try the goodness of adam . so that this law that prohibited adam the eating of the fruit , was meerly thetical , or positive , not indispensable and natural . ver. . from thence it was parted . this is the cause that paradise is conceived to have been situated where apamia stands , as i have above intimated . ver. . phasis . see verse . chaulateans . the affinity of name is apparent betwixt havilah and chaulateans , whom strabo places in arabia near mesopotamia . ver. . arabian aethiopia . see verse . ver. . see verse . ver. . high commendations of matrimony . moses plainly recommends to the jews the use of matrimony , & does after a manner encourage them to that condition : which he does like a right law-giver and father of the people . for in the multitude of people is the kings honour , but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince , as solomon speaks , prov. . besides , there was no small policy in religiously commending that to them , that most would be carried fast enough too on their own accords . for those laws are best liked that sute with the pleasure of the people , and they will have a better conceit of the law-giver for it . ver. . these brought he unto adam . viz. the beasts and fowls ; but there is no mention of the fishes , they being not fitted to journey in the same element . it had been over harsh and affected to have either brought the fishes from the sea , or to have carried adam to the shore , to appoint names to all the fishes flocking thither to him . but after he might have opportunity to give them names , as they came occasionally to his view . ver. . see verse , ver. . fell into a dream . for the seventy have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god cast adam into an extasie ; and in that extasie he might very well see what god did all the while he slept . ver. . see verse . & . ver. . so strict and sacred a tye , &c. that 's the scope of the story . to beget a very fast and indissoluble affection betwixt man and wife , that they should look upon one another as one and the same person . and in this has moses wisely provided for the happiness of his people in instilling such a principle into them , as is the root of all oeconomical order , delight , and contentment : while the husband looks upon his wife as on himself in the feminine gender , and she on her husband as on her self in the masculine . for grammarians can discern no other difference then so , betwixt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vir and virissa . but r. abraham ben ezra has found a mysterie in these names more then grammatical . for in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayes he , is the contracted name of jehovah contained , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so long therefore as the married couple live in gods fear and mutual love , god is with them as well as in their names . but if they cast god off by disobedience , and make not good what they owe one to the other , then is their condition what their names denotate to them , the name of god being taken out , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the fire of discord and contention here , and the eternal fire of hell hereafter . this is the conceit of that pious and witty rabbi . ver. . and were not ashamed . matrimony and the knowledge of women being so effectually recommended unto the jewes in the fore-going story , the wisdome of moses did foresee that it would be obvious for the people to think with themselves , how so good and commendable a thing should have so much shame and diffidency hovering about it . for there is a general bashfulness in men and women in these matters , and they ever desire to transact these affairs in secret out of the sight of others . wherefore moses to satisfie their curiosity , continues his history further , and gives the reason of this shame in the following chapter . chap. iii. how much it saves the credit of our first parents , that the serpent was found the prime author of the transgression . that according to s. basil all the living creatures of paradise could speak : undeniable reasons that the serpent could , according to the literal cabbala . the opinion of the anthropomorphites true , according to the literal cabbala . that the serpent went upright before the fall , was the opinion of s. basil . a story of the easie delivery of a certain poor woman of liguria . that the general calamities that lie upon mankinde , came by the transgression of a positive law , how well accommodate it is to the scope of moses . that paradise was not the whole earth . the apparitions in paradise called by theodoret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . in this third chapter , there are causes laid down , of some of the most notable , and most concerning accidents in nature . as of the hard travail and toil upon the sons of men , to get themselves a livelihood . of the antipathy betwixt men and serpents . of the incumbrance of the ground with troublesome weeds . of the shame of venery . of the pangs of childe-bearing ; and of death it self . of all these moses his wisdome held fit to give an account accommodately to the capacity of the people . for these fall into that grand question in philosophy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; whence sprung up evil ? which has exercised the wits of all ages to this very day . and every fool is able to make the question , but few men so wise , as to be either able to give , or fit to receive a sufficient answer to it , according to the depth of the matter it self . but it was very necessary for moses to hold on in his history , and to communicate to them those plain and intelligible causes of the evils that ever lay before their eyes ; he having so fully asserted god the creator of heaven and earth , and contriver of all things that we see : adding also that the laws that he propounded to them were delivered to him from god , and that all prosperity and happiness would accompany them , if they observed the same . that they should eat the good things of the land , and live a long and healthful age . now it was easie for the people , though they were but rude , and newly taken from making bricks for pharaoh in aegypt , to think thus with themselves ; if god made all things , how is it that they are no better then they are ? why do our wives bring forth their children with pain ? why are we obnoxious to be stung with serpents ? why may not god give us an endlesse life , as well as a long life ? and the like . to which moses in general answers , ( to the great advantage of the people , and for the faster binding them to the laws he delivered them from god ) that it was disobedience to his will , that brought all this mischief into the world ; which is most certainly true . but by what particular circumstances it is set out , you may here read in this third chapter . ver. . the serpent also . it had been too harsh and boistrous , and too grossely redounding to the dishonour of our first parents adam and eve , if they had immediately done violence to so express a command of god , and shown themselves professed rebels against him . and their posterity would have been scarce able to have remembred them without cursings and bitterness , for being so bold and apert authors of so much misery to them . but so it came to pass , that it was not of themselves , but by the subtilty of the serpent that they were deceived into disobedience , being overshort by his false suggestions . so that their mistake may be looked upon with pardon and pity , and our selves are fairly admonished to take heed that we forfeit not the rest . but the power of speech . i cannot be so large in my belief , as s. basil , who affirms , that all living creatures in paradise could speak , and understand one another . but according to the literal cabbala , i think it is manifest that the serpent could ; and that it was not the devil in the serpent , as some interpreters would have it . for , why should the serpent be cursed for the devils sake ? and beside , the whole business is attributed to the cunning and subtilty of the serpent , as doing it by the power of his own nature . therefore this were to confound two cabbala's into one , to talk thus of the serpent and the devil at once . not eat of any of the trees . so chrysostome , rupertus , and s. augustine ; as if the cunning serpent had made use of that damnable maxime , calumniare fortiter , aliquid adhaerebit : so at first he layes his charge high against god , as if he would debarre them of necessary food , and starve them , that at last he might gain so much , at least that he did unnecessarily abridge them of what made mightily for their pleasure and perfection . ver. . see verse . ver. . and the eyes of them both were opened . some gather from hence , that adam and eve were blinde till they tasted of the forbidden fruit . which is so foolish a glosse , that none but a blinde man could ever have stumbled upon it . for the greatest pleasure of paradise had been lost , if they had wanted their sight . therefore as grosse as it is , that can be no part of any literal cabbala , it having nothing at all of probability in it . it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ver. . god's walking in the garden , his calling after adam , his pronouncing the doom upon him , his wife , and the serpent , and sundry passages before , do again and again inculcate the opinion of the anthropomorphites , that god has an humane shape ; which i have already acknowledged to be the meaning of the literal cabbala . ver. . here the first original of mischief is resolved into the serpent , whereby adam and eves credits are something saved , and the root of misery to mankinde is plainly discovered . ver. . creep upon thy belly . it is plain according to the letter , that the serpent went upright , which is the opinion also of s. basil , else his doom signifies nothing , if he crept upon his belly before . ver. . perpetual antipathy . see verse . ver. . her sorrows and pangs in childe-bearing . see verse . but these pains are much increased to women by their luxury and rotten delicateness , that weakens nature , and enfeebles the spirits , so that they can endure nothing , when as those that are used to hardship and labor scape better . there is a notorious instance of it in a woman of liguria , who , as diodorus siculus writes , being hard at work in the field , was overtaken with that other labour . but she went but aside a while , and disburthening her self , with a quick dispatch , laid her childe as gainly as she could in some fresh leaves and grasse , and came immediately again to her task , and would not have desisted from her work , but that he that hired her , in commiseration to the infant paid her the whole days wages to be shut of her . as if providence had absolved her from the curse of eve , she voluntarily undergoing so much of adams , which was sweating in the field . ver. . see verse . ver. . observe the great wisdome of moses ; the statutes and ordinances which he delivered unto the people , they being most of them not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not natural and intrinsecally good , but positive and dispensable in themselves ; here according to this history , all those grand evils of toil and labour upon a barren ground , of pains in child-bed , and of death it self , are imputed to the transgression of a law that was but meerly positive ; whereby the law-giver does handsomely engage the people with all care and diligence to observe all the ceremonies and ordinances he gave them from god ; the whole posterity of adam finding the mischief of the breaking but that one positive law in paradise , the eating of the fruit of such a tree that was forbidden . when as otherwise positive laws of themselves would have been very subject to be slighted and neglected . ver. . called his wife eve. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies life . ver. . the use of which god taught . the two great comforts and necessaries of life , are food and clothing . wherefore it was fit to record this passage also to indear the peoples mindes to god , and increase their devotion and thankfulness to him , who was so particularly and circumstantially the author of those great supports of life . ver. . forth from the garden of eden . that shews plainly that paradise was not the whole earth , as some would have it . for he was brought into paradise by god , and now he is driven out again ; but he was not driven out of the world . ver. . haunted with spirits . this phrase is very significant of the nature of the thing it is to express , and fitly sets out the condition of paradise , when adam was driven out of it , and could no more return thither by reason of those spirits that had visibly taken possession of the way thereunto , and of the place . nor am i alone in this exposition , theodoret and precopius bearing me company , who call these apparitions at the entrance of paradise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and spectra terribili formâ . and i think that this may very well go for the literal sense of this verse , the existence of spirits and apparitions being acknowledged in all nations , be they never so rude or slow-witted . the defence of the philosophick cabbala . chap. i. why heaven and light are both made symbols of the same thing , viz. the world of life . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimate a trinity . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a title of the eternal wisdome the son of god , who is called also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well in philo as the new testament . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the holy ghost . the fit agreement of plato's triad with the trinity of the present cabbala . the pythagorick names or nature of a monad or unite applyed to the first days work . what are the upper waters : and that souls that descend 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are the naides or water nymphes in porphyrius . that matter of it self is unmoveable . r. bechai his notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 very happily explained out of des cartes his philosophy . that vniversal matter is the second days creation , fully made good by the names and property of the number two. the nature of the third days work set off by the number three . that the most learned do agree that the creation was perfected at once . the notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 strangely agreeing with the most notorious conclusions of the cartesian philosophy . that the corporeal world was universally erected into form and motion on the fourth day , is most notably confirmed by the titles and propertie of the number four. the true meaning of the pythagorick oath , wherein they swore by him that taught them the mysterie of the tetractys . that the tetractys was a symbole of the whole philosophick cabbala , that lay couched under the text of moses . why fish and fowl created in the same day . why living creatures were said to be made in the fift and sixt days . and why the whole creation was comprehended within the number six . i have plainly and faithfully set forth the meaning of moses his text , according to the literal cabbala , and made his incomparable policy , and pious prudence manifest to all the world . for whether he had this history of adam and eve , and of the creation immediately from god on the mount , or whether it was a very ancient tradition long before in the eastern parts , as some rabbines will have it , but approved of by god in the mount ; moses certainly could not have begun his pentateuch with any thing more proper and more material to his scope and purpose then this . and it is nothing but the ignorance of the atheist that can make him look upon it as contemptible , it being in it self as highly removed above contempt , as true prudence and staidness is above madness and folly. and yet i confess , i think there is still a greater depth and richness of wisdome in it , then has been hitherto opened in this literal cabbala , and such as shall represent moses as profoundly seen in philosophy , and divine morality , as he is in politicks . and against which the atheist shall have nothing at all to alledge , unless ignorance and confidence furnish his brain with impertinent arguments . for he shall not hear moses in this philosophick cabbala either tasking god to his six days labour , or bounding the world at the clouds , or making the moon bigger then the stars , or numbring days without suns , or bringing in a serpent talking with a woman , or any such like passages , which the atheists misunderstanding and perversenesse makes them take offence at ; but they shall finde him more large and more free then any , and laying down such conclusions as the wisest naturalists , and theosophers in all ages have looked upon as the choicest and most precious . such , i say , are those in the philosophick cabbala you have read , and i am now come to defend it , and make it good , that it is indeed the meaning of moses his text. and one great key for the understanding of it in this first chapter , will be those pythagorical mysteries of numbers , as i have intimated already in my preface . ver. . i mean the same thing by both . and there is good reason there should be meant the same thing by both . for , besides that those actuall conspicuous lights are in heaven , viz. the sun , and stars , heaven or the aetherial matter has in it all over the principles of light ; which are the round particles , and that very fine and subtile matter that lies in the intervals of the round particles . he that is but a little acquainted with the french philosophy , understands the business plainly . and in the expounding of moses , i think i may lay down this for a safe principle , that there is no considerable truth in nature or divinity , that moses was ignorant of , and so if it be found agreeable to his text , i may very well attribute it to him . at least the divine wisdom wherewith moses was inspired , prevents all the inventions of men. but now that i understand this heaven and earth in the first verse , as things distinct from heaven and earth afterwards mentioned , the very text of moses favours it , emphatically calling this heaven and earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , when as the heaven and earth in the second and third days creation he calls but plain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i may adde also the authority of philo , who expounds not this heaven and earth of the visible and tangible heaven and earth which are mentioned in the second and third day , but of an heaven and earth quite different from them : as also the suffrage of s. augustine , who understands likewise by heaven and light , one and the same thing , to wit , the angels ; and by earth the first matter : which is something like the sense of this present cabbala , only for his physical matter , we set down a metaphysical one , that other belonging most properly to the second day ; and for angels we have the world of life , which comprehends not angels only , but all substantial forms and spirits whatever . and that heaven or light should be symboles of the world of life or form , it is no wonder : for you may finde a sufficient reason in the cabbala it self , at the fift verse of this present chapter , and plotinus assimilates form to light , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for form is light. and lastly , in the second verse of this same chapter , there be plain reasons also laid down , why the meer possibility of the outward creation is called the earth , according to the description of the earth in the second verse of the first chapter of moses his text : unto which you may further adde , that as the earth is looked upon as the basis of the world , so the possibility of the outward creation is in some sense the basis thereof . the tri-une godhead . the hebrew words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do handsomely intimate a plurality , and singularity , the noun being in the plural , the verb in the singular number . whence i conceive there may be very well here included the mysterie of the trinity and vnity of the godhead , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and vatablus himself , though he shuffles with his grammatical notions here , yet he does apertly acknowledge three persons in one god , at the twenty sixt verse of this chapter . and that this was the philosophick cabbala of moses and the learned and pious of the jews , it is no small argument , because the notion of the trinity is so much insisted upon by the platonists and pythagoreans , whom all acknowledge ( and i think i shall make it more plain then ever ) to have got their philosophy from moses . by his eternal wisdome . ambrose , basil , and origen interpret in principio , to be as much as in filio ; and colossians the first , there the apostle speaking of the son of god , he saith , that he is the first-born of every creature , and that by him were all things created that are in heaven , and that are in earth . and that he is before all things , and by him all things consist . this is the wisdome of god , or the idea according to which he framed all things . and therefore must be before all things the beginning of the creatures of god. and very answerable to this of the apostle are those two attributes philo gives to the same subject , calling him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the first-born word of god , or the first-born form of god ; and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the beginning . he calls him also simply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is , the word , form , reason , or wisdome . and one of the chaldee paraphrasts also interprets in principio , in sapientia . and this agrees exceedingly well with that of solomon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the lord possessed me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 principium viae suae , that is , operum suorum , as vatablus expounds it , and the text makes it good . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oriens operum suorum ab antiquo , the sun-rise of his works of old . for there is no necessity of making of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 adverbs , they are substantives . and here wisdome is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the principle and morning of the works of god , not by way of diminution , but as supposing the east and the morning to be the womb of light , from whence springs all light and form , and form is light , as i told you before out of plotinus . and this notion of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sutes well with that passage in trismegist , where hermes speaks thus ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must signifie the divine intellect , the bright morning star , the wisdome of god : to which wisdome called in the eight of the proverbs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the beginning and morning of his works , is ascribed the creation of the world by solomon , as you may there see at large . i will only adde , that what the hebrew text here in genesis calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the chaldee calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is all one with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the essential wisdome of god , not an habit or property , but a substance that is wisdome . for true wisdome is substance . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it is the same that plotinus speaks . whence he is called in the apocalyps , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is but a periphrasis of jehovah , essence , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contains the future , present , and time past in it , in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as zanchius observes : this is the second hypostasis in the holy trinity , the logos , which was in the beginning of the world with god. all things were made by him , and without him was nothing made that was made , john . first created this . i cannot impute it to any reason at all , but to the slownesse of fancie , and heavy unweildinesse of melancholy , or the load of bloud and flesh , that makes men imagine , that creation is incompetible even to god himselfe ; when as i think , i have no lesse then demonstrated in my antidote against atheism , that it is impossible but god should have the power of creation , or else he would not be god. but because our will and minde can create no substance distinct from our selves , we foolishly conceit , measuring the power of god by our own , that he cannot create any substance distinct from himself . which is but a weak conclusion fallen from our own dulnesse and inadvertency . ver. . solitude and emptinesse . the very word signifies so in the original , as vatablus will tell you . which being abstract tearms ( as the schools call them ) do very fittingly agree with the notion we have put upon this symbolical earth , affirming it no real actual subject , either spiritual or corporeal , that may be said to be void and empty ; but to be vacuity and emptiness it self , onely joined with a capacity of being something . it is , as i have often intimated , the ens potentiale of the whole outward creation . but the spirit of god. not a great wind , but the holy ghost . this is the interpretation general of the fathers . and it is a sign that it is according to the true mosaical cabbala , it being so consonant to plato's school , which school i suspect now has more of that cabbala , then the jews themselves have at this day . having hovered a while . the word in the original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies a hovering or brooding over a thing as a bird does over her nest , or on her young ones . hence it is not unlikely is aristophanes his egge . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to this sense , vnder the wind below in dark some shade , there the black-winged night her first egge laid . and this manner of brooding thus is an embleme of dearest affection ; and who knows but that from this text the poets took occasion of feigning that ancient cupid the father of all the gods , the creator of all things , and maker of mankinde ? for so he is described by hesiod and orpheus , and here in this place of aristophanes , from whence i took the forecited verse . simmias rhodius describes this ancient love in verses which represent a pair of wings . i will not say according to this conceit of aristophanes his egge , which they should brood and hatch . but the longest quill of one of them writes thus : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to this sense : i am the king of the deep-bosom'd earth , my strength gave to the sea both bounds and birth . this spirit of god then , or the divine love which was from everlasting , will prove the third divine hypostasis . the first was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies strength , and a word rather common to the whole trinity . but jehovah , as the rabbines observe , is a name of god as he is merciful and gracious , which may be answerable to plato his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but that name is also communicated to christ , as we have already acknowledged . the second is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is wisdome , as has been prov'd out of the proverbs and answers to the platonical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the third we have now light upon , which must be love , and it has a lucky coincidence also with the third hypostasis in the platonick triad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whom plotinus calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the celestial venus . and to this after a more immediate manner is the creation of the world ascribed by that philosopher , as also by plato ; as here in moses the spirit of god is said to lie close brooding upon the humid matter for the actual production of this outward world . ver. . exist independently of corporeal matter . that which exists first it is plain is independent of what follows , and philo makes all immateriate beeings to be created in this first day : whence the souls of men are removed far from all fear of fate and mortality , which is the grand tenent of plato's school . ver. . matter meerly metaphysical . see hyle in my interpretation general at the end of my poems ; where you shall find that i have settled the same notion i make use of here , though i had no design then of expounding moses . monad or vnite . the fitnesse of the number to the nature of every days work , you shall observe to be wonderful . whence we may well conclude , that it was ordered so on purpose , and that in all probability pythagoras was acquainted with this cabbala ; and that that was the reason the pythagoreans made such a deal of doe with numbers , putting other conceits upon them , then any other arithmeticians do ; and that therefore if such theorems as the pythagoreans held , be found sutable and compliable with moses his text , it is a shrewd presumption that that is the right philosophick cabbala thereof . philo makes this first day spent in the creation of immateral and spiritual beeings , of the intellectual world , taking it in a large sense , or the mundus vitae , as ficinus calls it , the world of life and forms . and the pythagoreans call an unite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , form , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , life . they call it also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or the tower of jupiter , giving also the same name to a point or center , by which they understand the vital formative center of things , the rationes seminales : and they call an unite also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is seminal form. but a very short and sufficient account of philo's pronouncing that spiritual substances are the first days work , is , that as an vnite is indivisible in numbers , so is the nature of spirits indivisible ; you cannot make two of one of them , as you may make of one piece of corporeal matter two , by actuall division or severing them one piece from another . wherefore what was truly and properly created the first day ; was immaterial , indivisible , and independent of the matter , from the highest angel , to the meanest seminal form. and for the potentiality of the outward creation , sith it is not so properly any real beeing , it can breed no difficulty , but whatever it is , it is referrable fitly enough to incorporeal things , it being no object of sense , but of intellect , and being also impassible and undiminishable , and so in a sort indivisible . for the power of god being undiminishable , the possibility of the creature must be also undiminishable , it being an adaequate consequence of his power . wherefore this potentiality being ever one , it is rightly referred to the first day . and in respect of this the pythagoreans call an vnite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as well as the binary , as also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which names plainly glance at the dark potentiality of things , set out by moses in the first days creation . ver. . created an immense deal , &c. he creates now corporeal matter , ( as before the world of life ) out of nothing . which universal matter may well be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for extension is very proper to corporeal matter . castellio translates it liquidum , and this universal matter is most what fluid still , all over the world , but at first it was fluid universally . betwixt the aforesaid fluid possibility , &c. but here it may be you 'll enquire , how this corporeal matter shall be conceived to be betwixt the waters above , and these underneath . for what can be the waters above , maimonides requires no such continued analogy in the hidden sense of scripture , as you may see in his preface to his moreh nevochim . but i need not fly to that general refuge . for me thinks that the seminal forms that descend through the matter , and so reach the possibility of the parts of the outward creation , and make them spring up into act , are not unlike the drops of rain that descend through the heaven or air , and make the earth fruitful . besides , the seminal forms of things lie round , as i may so speak , and contracted at first , but spread when they bring any part of the possibility of the outward creation into act , as drops of rain spread when they are fallen to the ground . so that the analogy is palpable enough , though it may seem too elaborate and curious . we may adde to all this concerning the naides or water nymphs , that the ancients understood by them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all manner of souls that descend into the matter and generation . wherefore the watry powers ( as porphyrius also calls these nymphs ) it is not at all harsh to conceive , that they may be here indigitated by the name of the vpper waters . see porphyrius in his de antro nympharum . ver. . what mischief straying souls . the frequent complaints that that noble spirit in pythagoreans and platonists makes against the incumbrances and disadvantages of the body , makes this cabbala very probable . and it is something like our divines fancying hell to be created this day . ver. . actuated and agitated . this is consonant to plato's school , who makes the matter unmovable of it self , which is most reasonable . for if it were of its own nature movable , nothing for a moment would hold together , but dissolve it self into infinitely little particles ; whence it is manifest , that there must be something besides the matter , either to binde it or to move it ; so that the creation of immaterial beeings , is in that respect also necessary . rightly called heaven . i mean 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for this agitation of the matter brought it to des cartes his second principle , which is the true aether , or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for it is liquid as water , and yet has in it the fierce principle of fire , which is the first element and most subtile of all . the thing is at first sight understood by cartesians , who will easily admit of that notation of the rabbines in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as being from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fire , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 water . for so r. bechai , the heavens , sayes he , were created from the beginning , and are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fire and water ; which no philosophy makes good so well as the cartesian . for the round particles , like water , ( though they be not of the same figure ) flake the fierceness of the first principle , which is the purest fire . and yet this fire in some measure alway lies within the triangular intervals of the round particles , as that philosophy declares at large . and the binary . how fitly again doth the number agree with the nature of the work of this day , which is the creation of corporeal matter and the pythagoreans call the number two 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 matter . simplicius upon aristotles physicks , speaking of the pythagoreans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . they might well , sayes he , call one , form , as defining and terminating to certain shape and property whatever it takes holds of . and two they might well call matter , it being undeterminate , and the cause of bigness and divisibility . and they have very copiously heaped upon the number two , such appellations as are most proper to corporeal matter . as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , vnfigured , vndeterminated , vnlimited . for such is matter of it self till form take hold of it . it is called also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the fluidity of the matter . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because it affords substance to the heavens and starres . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , contention , fate , and death , for these are the consequencies of the souls being joined with corporeal matter , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , motion , generation , and division , which are properties plainly appertaining to bodies . they call this number also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because it is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the subject that endures and undergoes all the changes and alterations , the active forms put upon it . wherefore it is plain that the pythagoreans understood corporeal matter by the number two ▪ which no man can deny but that it is a very fit symbole of division , that eminent property of matter . but we might cast in a further reason of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being created the second day : for the celestial matter does consist of two plainly distinguishable parts , to wit , the first element , and the second ; or the materia subtilissima , and the round particles , as i have already intimated out of des cartes his philosophy . ver. . it is referred to the following day . you are to understand that these six numbers , or days , do not signifié any order of time , but the nature of the things that were said to be made in them . but for any thing in moses his philosophick cabbala , all might be made at once , or in such periods of time , as is most sutable to the nature of the things themselves . what is said upon this ninth verse , will be better understood , and with more full satisfaction , when we come to the fourth days work . ver. . and the ternary denotes . in this third day was the waters commanded into one place , the earth adorned with all manner of plants , paradise , and all the pleasure and plenty of it created , wherein the serpent beguiled eve , and so forth . what can therefore be more likely , then that the pythagoreans use their numbers as certain remembrancers of the particular passages of this history of the creation ; when as they call the number three , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. triton and lord of the sea ; which is in reference to gods commanding the water into one place , and making thereof a sea. they call also the ternary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : the former intimates the plenty of paradise , the latter relates to the serpent there . but now besides this we shall find the ternary very significant of the nature of this days work . for first , the earth consists of the third element in the cartesian philosophy , ( for the truth of that philosophy will force it self in whether i will or no ) and then again there are three grand parts of this third element necessary to make an earth habitable , the dry land , the sea , ( whence are springs and rivers and the air ; and lastly , there are in vegetables , which is the main work of this day , three eminent properties , according to aristotle , viz. nutrition , accretion , generation ; and also , if you consider their duration , there be these three cardinal points of it , ortus , acme , interitus . you may cast in also that minerals which belong to this day as well as plants , that both plants and they , and in general , all terrestrial bodies have the three chymical principles in them , sal , sulphur , and mercury . ver. . such as is the earth we live upon . as the matter of the universe came out in the second day , so the contriving of this matter into sunnes and planets , is contained in this fourth day , the earth her self not excepted , though according to the letter she is made in the first day , and as she is the nurse of plants , said to be uncovered in the third , yet as she is a receptacle of light , and shines with borrowed raies like the moon and other plants , she may well be referred to this fourth days creation . nor will this at all seem bold or harsh , if we consider that the most learned have already agreed that all the whole creation was made at once . as for example , the most rational of all the jewish doctors , r. moses aegyptius , philo judeus , procopius gazeus , cardinal cajetan● , s. augustine , and the schools of hillel and samai , as manasseh ben israel writes . so that that leisurely order of days is thus quite taken away , and all the scruples that may rise from that hypothesis . wherefore i say , the earth as one of the primary planets was created this fourth day . and i translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 primary planets . primary , because of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 emphatical , and planets , because the very notation of their name implies their nature ; for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is plainly from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vstio , or burning , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 extinction , nouns made from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to unexceptionable analogy . and the earth , as also the rest of the planets , their nature is such , as if they had once been burning and shining suns , but their light and heat being extinguished , they afterwards became opake planets . this conclusion seems here plainly to be contained in moses , but is at large demonstrated in des cartes his philosophy . nor is this notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 enervated by alledging that the word is ordinarily used to signifie the fixed stars , as well as the planets . for i do not deny but that in a vulgar notion it may be competible to them also . for the fixed stars according to the imagination of the rude people , may be said to be lighted up , and extinguished , so often as they appear and disappear ; for they measure all by obvious sense and fancie , and may well look upon them as so many candles set up by divine providence in the night , but by day frugally put out , for wasting : and i remember theodoret in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , has so glibly swallowed down the notion , that he uses it as a special argument of providence , that they can burn thus with their heads downwards , and not presently sweal out and be extinguished , as our ordinary candles are . wherefore the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , may very well be attributed to all the stars as well fixed , as planets , but to the fixed only upon vulgar seeming grounds , to the planets upon true and natural . and we may be sure that that is that which moses would aim at , and lay stresse upon in his philosophick cabbala . wherefore in brief , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 emphatical in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contains a double emphasis , intimating those true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or planets , and then the most eminent amongst those truly so tearmed . nor is it at all strange , that so abstruse conclusion of philosophy should be lodged in this mosaical text. for , as i have elsewhere intimated , moses has been aforehand with cartesius . the ancient patriarchs having had wit , and by reason of their long lives leisure enough to invent as curious and subtile theorems in philosophy , as ever any of their posterity could hit upon , besides what they might have had by tradition from adam . and if we finde the earth a planet , it must be acknowledged forthwith that it runs about the sun , which is pure pythagorisme again , and a shrewd presumption that he was taught that mysterie by this mosaical cabbala . but that the earth is a planet , besides the notation we have already insisted upon , the necessity of being created in this fourth day amongst the other planets , is a further argument . for there is no mention of its creation in any day else , according to this philosophick cabbala . ver. . inhabitants of the world . the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and i have made bold to interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not of this one individual earth , but of the whole species ; and therefore i render it the world at large . as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the twenty seventh of this chapter , is not an individual man , but mankinde in general . and so ver . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are interpreted after the same manner , rendring them the greater sort of lights , and the lesser sort of lights . so that no grammatical violence is done to the text of moses all this time . ver. . and the number denotes . this fourth days creation is the contrivance of matter into suns and planets , or into suns , moons , and earths . for the aethereal vortices were then set a going , and the corporeal world had got into an useful order and shape . and the ordering and framing of the corporeal world , may very well be said to be transacted in the number four ; four being the first body in numbers an aequilateral pyramid , which figure also is a right symbole of light , the raies entring the eye in a pyramidal form . and lights now are set up in all the vast region of the aethereal matter , which is heaven . the pythagoreans also call this number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , body , and the world , intimating the creation of the corporeal world therein . and further , signifying in what excellent proportion and harmony the world was made , they call this number four : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . harmony , vrania , and the stirrer up of divine fury and extasie ; insinuating that all things are so sweetly and fittingly ordered in the world , that the several motions thereof are as a comely dance , or ravishing musick , and are able to carry away a contemplative soul into rapture and extasie upon a clear view , and attentive animadversion of the order and oeconomy of the universe . and philo , who does much pythagorize in his exposition of moses , observes , that this number four contains the most perfect proportions in musical symphonies , viz. diatessaron , diapente , diapason , and disdiapason , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. for the proportion of diatessaron is as four to three , of diapente as three to two , of diapason as two to one , or four to two , of disdiapason as four to one. we might cast in also the consideration of that divine nemesis , which god has placed in the frame and nature of the universal creation , as he is a distributer to every one according to his works . from whence himself is also called nemesis , by aristotle , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because he every where distributes what is due to every one . this is in ordinary language justice , and both philo and plotinus out of the pythagoreans , affirms , that the number four is a symbole of justice . all which , makes towards what i drive at , that the whole creation is concerned in this number four , which is called the fourth day . and for further eviction , we may yet adde , that as all numbers are contained in four virtually , ( by all numbers is meant ten , for when we come to ten , we go back again ) so the root and foundation of all the corporeal creation is laid in this fourth days work , wherein suns , earths , and moons are made , and the ever whirling vortices . for as philo observes , pythagorean-like , ten ( which they call also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the world , heaven , and all-perfectnesse ) is made by the scattering of the parts of four : thus , , , , . put these together now and they are ten. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the vniverse . and this was such a secret amongst pythagoras his disciples , that it was a solemn oath with them to swear by him that delivered to them the mysterie of the tetractys , tetrad or number four. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . by him that did to us disclose the tetrads mysterie , where natures fount that ever flowes , and hidden root doth lie . thus they swore by pythagoras as is conceived , who taught them this mysterious tradition . and had it not been a right worshipful mysterie think you indeed , and worthy of the solemnity of religion and of an oath , to understand that , , , . make ten. and that ten is all , which rude mankinde told first upon their fingers , and arithmeticians discover it by calling them digits at this very day . there is no likelihood that so wise a man as pythagoras was , should lay any stress upon such trifles , or that his scholars should be such fools as to be taken with them . but it is well known that the pythagoreans held the motion of the earth about the sun , which is plainly implied according to the philosophick cabbala of this fourth days work . so much of his secrets got out to common knowledge and fame . but it is very highly probable , that he had the whole philosophick cabbala of the creation opened to him by some knowing priest or philosopher ( as we now call them ) in the oriental parts , that under this mysterie of numbers set out to him the choicest and most precious conclusions in natural philosophy , interpreting as i conceive , the text of moses in some such way as i have light upon , and making all those generous and ample conclusions good by demonstration and reason . and so pythagoras being well furnished with the knowledge of things , was willing to impart them to those whose piety and capacity was fit to receive them ; not laying aside that outward form of numbers , which they were first conveied to himself in . but such arithmetical nugacities as are ordinarily recorded for his , in dry numbers , to have been the riches of the wisdome of so famous a philosopher , is a thing beyond all credit or probability . wherefore i conceive , that the choicest and most precious treasures of knowledge , being laid open in the cabbala of the fourth day ; from thence it was that so much solemnity and religion was put upon that number , which he called his tetractys , which seems to have been of two kindes , the one , the single number four , the other thirty six , made of the four first masculine numbers , and the four first feminine , viz. of , , , . and of , , , . wherein you see that the former and more simple tetractys is still included and made use of ; for four here takes place again in the assignment of the masculine and feminine numbers . whence i further conceive , that under the number of this more complex tetrad which contains also the other in it , he taught his disciples the mysterie of the whole creation , opening to them the nature of all things as well spiritual as corporeal . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as a certain author writes ; for an even number carries along with it divisibility , and passibility . but an odde number , indivisibility , impassibility , and activity , wherefore that is called feminine , this masculine . wherefore the putting together of the four first masculine numbers to the four first feminine , is the joining of the active and passive principles together , matching the parts of the matter , with congruous forms from the world of life . so that i conceive the tetractys was a a symbole of the whole systeme of pythagoras his philosophy , which we may very justly suspect to be the same with the mosaical cabbala . and the root of this tetractys is six , which again hits upon moses ▪ and remindes us of the six days work of the creation . ver. . fish and fowl are made in the same day . and here moses does plainly play the philosopher in joining them together ; for there is more affinity betwixt them then is easily discerned by the heedlesse vulgar : for besides that fowls frequent the waters very much , many kindes of them i mean , these elements themselves of air and water , for their thinnesse and liquidity , are very like one another . besides , the sinnes of fishes and the wings of birds , the feathers of one and the scales of the other , are very analogical . they are both also destitute of vreters , dugges , and milk , and are oviparous . further , their motions are mainly alike , the fishes as it were flying in the water , and the fowls swimming in the air , according to that of the poet concerning daedalus , when he had made himself wings ; insuetum per iter gelidas enavit ad arctos . cast in this also , that as some fowls dive and swim under water , so some fishes fly above the water in the air , for a considerable space till their finnes begin to be something stiffe and dry . ver. . and the quinary denotes . philo does not here omit that obvious consideration of the five senses in animals . but it is a strange coincidence , if it was not intended that living creatures should be said to be made in the fift and sixt day , those numbers according to the pythagorical mysterie being so fitly significant of the nature of them . for five is acknowledged by them to be male and female , consisting of three and two , the two first masculine and feminine numbers . it is also an emblem of generation , for the number five drawn into five brings about five again , as you see in five times five , which is twenty five . so an eagle ingendring with an eagle , brings forth an eagle ; and a dolphin ingendring with a dolphin , a dolphin ; and so in the rest . whence the pythagoreans call this number five cytherea , that is , venus , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , marriage ; and in birds it is evident that they choose their mates . concerning the number six , i shall speak in its proper place . ver. . that it is so free , so rational . that the image of god consists in this rather then in the dominion over the creature , i take to be the right sense , and more philosophical , the other more political ; and philo interprets it after that manner we have made choice of , which is also more sutable to platonisme and pythagorisme , the best cabbala that i know of moses his text. ver. . male and female . it is a wonder , sayes grotius , to see how the explications of the rabbines upon this place , and those passages in plato's symposion agree one with another , which notwithstanding from whatsoever they proceeded , i make no question , sayes he , but they are false and vain . and i must confesse i am fully of the same opinion . but this strange agreement betwixt aristophanes his narration , in the forenamed symposion , and the comments of the rabbines upon this text , is no small argument that plato had some knowledge of moses , which may well adde the greater authority and credit to this our cabbala . but it was the wisdome of plato to own the true cabbala himself , but such unwarrantable fancies as might rise from the text , to cast upon such a ridiculous shallow companion as aristophanes , it was good enough for him to utter in that clubbe of wits , that philosophick symposion of plato . ver. . they lorded it . the seventy have it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is to domineer with an high hand , matth. . ver. . and the senary denotes . the senary or the number six has a double reference , the one to this particular days work , the other to the whole creation . for the particular days work , it is the creation of sundry sorts of land animals , divided into male and female . and the number six is made up of male and female . for two into three is six . the conceit is philo's ; and hence the pythagoreans called this number , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , matrimony , as clemens also observes , adding moreover that they did it in reference to the creation of the world , set down by moses . this number also in the same sort that the number five , is a fit embleme of procreation . for six drawn into six , makes thirty six . the conceit is plutarchs in his de ei apud delphos , though he speak it of an inferiour kinde of generation : but me thinks it is most proper to animals . here is something also that respects man , particularly the choicest result of this sixt days labour . the number of the brutish nature was five , according to philo ; but here is an unite superadded in man , reason reaching out to the knowledge of a god. and this unite added to the former five , makes six . but now for the reference that six bears to the whole creation , that the pythagoreans did conceive it was significant thereof , appears by the titles they have given it . for they call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the articulate and compleat efformation of the vniverse , the anvill , and the world. i suppose they call it the anvill from that indefatigable shaping out of new forms and figures upon the matter of the universe , by virtue of the active principle that ever busies it self every where . but how the senary should emblematize the world , you shall understand thus : the world is self-compleat , filled and perfected by its own parts ; so is the senarius , which has no denominated part but a sixt , third , and second , viz. , , . which put together make six , and euclide defines a perfect number from this property , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . a perfect number is that which is equall to its parts . wherefore this number sets out the perfection of the world , and you know god in the close of all , saw that all that he made was very good . then again the world is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , mas & foemina , that is , it consists of an active and passive principle , the one brought down into the other from the world of life ; and the senary is made by the drawing of the first masculine number into the first feminine , for three into two is six . thus you see continuedly , that the property of the number sets off the nature of the work of every day , according to those mysteries that the pythagoreans have observed in them ; and besides this , that the numbers have ordinarily got names answerable to each days work ; which , as i have often intimated , is a very high probability , that the pythagoreans had a cabbala referring to moses his text , and the history of the creation . and philo , though not in so punctual a way , has offered at the opening of the minde of moses by this key . but i hope i have made it so plain , that it will not hereafter be scrupled , but that this is the genuine way of interpreting the philosophick meaning of the mosaical text in this first chapter of genesis . chap. ii. the number seven a fit symbole of the sabbath , or rest of god. of adams rising out of the ground , as other creatures did . that pison is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and denotes prudence . the mystical meaning of havilah . that gihon is the same that nilus , sihor , or siris , and that pison is ganges . the justice of the aethiopians . that gihon is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and denotes that virtue . as hiddekel , fortitude . that those expressions of the souls sleep , and death in the body , so frequent amongst the platonists , were borrowed from the mosaical cabbala . . fallen angels assimilated to the beasts of the field . the meaning of those platonical phrases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the like . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in platonisme is the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in moses , that signifies angels as well as god. that there are three principles in man , according to plato's schoole ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that this last is eve. in this second chapter moses having spoke of the sabbath , returns to a more particular declaration of the creation of adam , which is referrable to the sixt days work . then he falls upon that mysterious story of paradise , which runs out into the next chapter . ver. . and the number declares the nature . the hebdomad or septenary is a fit symbole of god , as he is considered having finished these six days creation . for then , as this cabbala intimates , he creates nothing further . and therefore his condition is then very fitly set out by the number seven . all numbers within the decad , are cast into three ranks , as philo observes . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . some beget , but are not begotten ; others are begotten , but do not beget ; the last both beget , and are begotten . the number seven is only excepted , that is neither begotten , nor begets any number , which is a perfect embleme of god celebrating this sabbath . for he now creates nothing of anew , as himself is uncreatable . so that the creating and infusing of souls as occasion should offer , is quite contrary to this mosaical cabbala . but the cabbala is very consonant to it self , which declares that all souls were created at once in the first day , and will in these following chapters declare also the manner of their falling into the body . ver. . productions of the heavens . the original hath it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . here the suns and planets are plainly said to be generated by the heavens , or aethereal matter , which is again wonderfully consonant to the cartesian philosophy , but after what manner planets and stars are thus generated , you may see there at large . it cannot but be acknowledged ; that there was a faddome-lesse depth of wisdome in moses , whose skill in philosophy thus plainly prevents the subtilest and most capacious reaches of all the wits of the world that ever wrote after him . take upon me to define . that no set time is understood by the six days creation , hath been witnessed already out of approved authors , and the present cabbala plainly confirms it , shewing that the mysterie of numbers is meant , not the order or succession of days . ver. . like dewy showers of rain . vatablus plainly interprets the place of rain . but i conceive it better interpreted of something analogical to the common rain , that now descends upon the earth , which is lesse oily a great deal , and not so full of vitall vigour and principles of life . ver. . and man himself rose out of the earth . that god should shape earth with his own hands like a statuary , into the figure of a man , and then blow breath into the nostrils of it , and so make it become alive , is not likely to be the philosophick cabbala , it being more palpably accommodated to vulgar concern . but mention of rain immediately before the making of man , may very well insinuate such preparations of the ground , to have some causal concourse for his production . and if it be at all credible , that other living creatures rose out of the earth in this manner , it is as likely that man did so likewise ; for the same words are used concerning them both : for the text of moses , ver . . sayes , that out of the ground god formed every beast of the field , and every fowl of the air , as it sayes in the seventh verse , that he formed man of the dust of the ground . whence euripides the tragedian ( one that socrates lov'd and respected much for his great knowledge and virtue , and would of his own accord be a spectator of his tragedies , when as they could scarce force him to see other playes , as aelian writes ) this euripides , i say , pronouncing of the first generation of men , and the rest of living creatures , affirmed that they were born all after the same manner , and that they rose out of the earth . and that euripides was tinctured with the same doctrines that were in pythagoras , and plato's school , both the friendship betwixt him and socrates , as also the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or moral and philosophick sentences in his tragedies are no inconsiderable arguments . and as i have already intimated , the best philosophick cabbala of moses that is , i suspect to be in their philosophy , i mean of plato and pythagoras . ver. . where he had put the man. for there is no praeterpluperfect tense in the hebrew , and therefore as vatablus observes , if the sense require , the praeterperfect tense stands for it . wholly aethereal . for that 's the pure heavenly and undefiled vehicle of the soul , according to platonisme . beams of the divine intellect . i have already more at large shewed how the son of god or the divine intellect is set out by the similitude of the sun-rising , or east , which i may again here further confirm out of philo ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that the placing of paradise under the sun-rise , signifies the condition of a soul irrigated by the rayes of the divine intellect , which she is most capable of in her aethereal vehicle . but that the souls of men were from the beginning of the world , is the general opinion of the learned jewes , as well as of the pythagoreans and platonists , and therefore a very warrantable hypothesis in the philosophick cabbala . ver. . the essential will of god. by the essential will of god , is understood the will of god becoming life and essence to the soul of man ; whereby is signified a more thorough union betwixt the divine and humane nature , such as is in them that are firmly regenerated and radicated in what is good . philo makes the tree of life to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , piety or religion , but the best religion and piety is to be of one will with god : see john . . ver. . the four cardinal virtues . it is philo's exposition upon the place ; and then the river it self to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that general goodnesse distinguishable into these four heads of virtue . ver. . is pison . from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to spread and diffuse it self , to multiply and abound . this is wisdome or prudence , called pison , partly because it diffuses it self into all our actions , and regulates the exercise of the other three virtues , and partly because wisdome and truth , fills and encreases , and spreads out every day more then other . for truth is very fruitful , and there are ever new occasions that adde experience of things . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . according to our english proverb , the older the wiser . in the land of havilah . from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , deus indicavit , god hath shown it . ver. . pure gold , &c. an easie embleme of tried experience , the mother of true wisdome and prudence . and the virtue of bdellium is not unproper for diseases that arise from phlegmatick lazinesse ; and the very name and nature of the onyx stone also points out the signification of it , though there be no necessity , as i have told you already out of maimonides , to give an account in this manner of every particular passage in an allegory or parable . wherefore if any man think me too curious , they may omit these expositions , and let them go for nought . ver. . river is gihon . according to the history or letter we have made pison , phasis , and gihon a branch of euphrates . but the ancient fathers , epiphanius , augustine , ambrose , hieronymus , theodoret , damascen , and several others make pison , ganges , and gihon , nilus . and they have no contemptible arguments for it . for first , jerem. . . sihor , is a river of aegypt , which is not questioned to be any other then nilus , and its etymon seems to bewray the truth of it , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denigrari , from the muddy blacknesse of the river . and nilus is notorious for this quality , and therefore has its denomination thence in the greek , quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , acording to which is that of dionysius . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , for there 's no river can compare with nile , for casting mud , and fattening the soile . but now to recite the very words of the prophet , what hast thou to do with the way of egypt , to drink the waters of sihor ? the latine has it , ut bibas aquam turbidam . this is nilu● , but the seventy translate it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to drink the water of gihon ; which is the name of this very river of paradise : and the abyssines also even to this day call nilus by the name of guion . adde unto this , that gihon runs in aethiopia , so does nilus , and is siris , as it runs through aethiopia , which is from sihor it is likely , and then the greek termination makes it sioris , after by contraction siris . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is , the aethiopian him siris calls , syene , nilus , when by her he crawls . as the same author writes in his geographical poems . and that pison is ganges , has also its probabilities . ganges being in india a countrey famous for gold and precious stones . besides , the notation of the name agrees with the nature of the river . pison being from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 multiplicare . and there is no lesse a number then ten , and those great rivers that exonerate themselves into ganges : as there must be a conflux of multifarious experience to fill up and compleat that virtue of wisdome or prudence . so that we shall see that the four rivers of paradise have got such names , as are most advantageous and favourable to the mysterious sense of the story . wherefore regardlesse here of all geographical scrupulosities , we will say that gihon is nilus or siris , the river of the aethiopians , that is , of the just , and the virtue is here determinately set off from the subject wherein it doth reside : for by the fame of the justice and innocency of the aethiopians , we are assured which of the cardinal virtues is meant by gihon . and the ancient fame of their honesty and uprightnesse was such , that homer has made it their epithet , calling them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the blamelesse aethiopians ; adding further , that jupiter used to banquet with them , he being so much taken with the integrity of their conversation . and dionysius calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the divine , or deiforme aethiopians : and they were so styled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by reason of their justice , as eustathius comments upon the place . herodotus also speaking of them says , they are very goodly men , and much civilized , and of a very long life , which is the reward of righteousnesse . so that by the place where gihon runs , it is plainly signified to us , what cardinal virtue is to be understood thereby . notation of the name thereof . the name gihon as you have seen , fairly incites us to acknowledge it a river of aethiopia . the notation thereof does very sutably agree with the nature of justice , for it is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 erumpere . and justice is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , bonum alienum , as the philosopher notes , not confined within a mans self , but breaks out rather upon others , bestowing upon every one what is their due . ver. . is hiddekell . the word is compounded , says vatablus , from two words that signifie velox & rapidum , and this virtue like a swift and rapid stream , bears down all before it , as you have it in the cabbala . and stoutly resists . philo uses here the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to resist , which he takes occasion from the seventies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which he interprets against the assyrians . the hebrew has it , eastward of assyria , and therefore assyria is situated westward of it . now the west is that quarter of the world where the sun bidding us adieu , leaves us to darkness , whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the west wind , in eustathius , has its name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the wind that blows from the dark quarter . assyria therefore is that false state of seeming happiness , and power of wickednesse , which is called the kingdome of darknesse . and this is the most noble object of fortitude , to destroy the power of this kingdome within our selves . perath . from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fructificavit . ver. . in processe of time , &c. this is according to the minde of the pythagoreans and origen . and that pythagoras had the favour of having the mosaical cabbala communicated to him by some knowing priest of the jewes , or some holy man or other , i think i have continuedly in the former chapter made it exceeding probable . the region of mortality and death . nothing is more frequent with the platonists , then the calling of the body a sepulchre , and this life we live here upon earth , either sleep or death . which expressions are so sutable with this cabbala , and the cabbala with the text of moses , that mentions the death and sleep of adam , that it is a shrewd presumption that these phrases and notions came first from thence . and philo acknowledges that heraclitus , that mysterious and abstruse philosopher , ( whom porphyrius also has cited to the same purpose , in his de antro nympharum ) has even hit upon the very meaning that moses intends in this death of adam , in that famous saying of his , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . we live their death , ( to wit , of the souls out of the body ) but we are dead to their life . and euripides that friend of socrates , and fellow-traveller of plato's , in his tragedies speaks much to the same purpose . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; who knows whether to live , be not to die , and to die , to live ? so that the philosophick sense concerning adams death , must be this , that he shall be dead to the aethereal life he lived before , while he is restrained to the terrestrial , and that when as he might have lived for ever in the aethereal life , he shall in a shorter time assuredly die to the terrestrial : that the sons of men cannot escape either the certainty or speed of death . ver. . both good for himself , &c. for the words of the text doe not confine it to adams conveniency alone , but speaks at large without any restraint , in this present verse . wherefore there being a double convenience , it was more explicite to mention both in the cabbala . ver. . fallen and unfallen angels . the fallen angels are here assimilated to the beasts of the field , the unfallen to the fowls of the air. how fitly the fallen spirits are reckoned amongst the beasts of the field , you shall understand more fully in the following chapter . in the mean time you may take notice that the platonists , indeed plato himself , in his phaedrus , makes the soul of man before it falls into this terrestrial region , a winged creature . and that such phrases as these , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the like , are proper expressions of that school . and plato does very plainly define what he means by these wings of the soul , ( and there is the same reason of all other spirits whatsoever ) after this manner , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that the nature of the wing of the soul is such , as to be able to carry upward , that which otherwise would slugge downwards , and to bear it aloft and place it there , where we may have more sensible communion with god , and his holy angels . for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the plural number , is most sutably translated in such passages as these , and most congruously to the thing it self , and the truth of christianity . and it may well seem the lesse strange , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should signifie angels in the greek philosophers , especially such as have been acquainted with moses , when as with him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies so too , viz. angels as well as god. wherefore to conclude , the losse of that principle that keeps us in this divine condition , is the losing of our wings , which fallen angels have done , and therefore they may be very well assimilated to terrestrial beasts . ver. . a faculty of being united , &c. this vital aptitude in the soul of being united with corporeal matter , being so essential to her and proper , the invigorating the exercise of that faculty , cannot but be very grateful and acceptable to her , and a very considerable share of her happinesse . else what means the resurrection of the dead , or bodies in the other world ? which yet is an article of the christian faith. ver. . this new sense of his vehicle . there be three principles in man according to the platonists , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the first is intellect , spirit , or divine light ; the second the soul her self , which is adam the man , animus cujusque is est quisque , the soul of every man that is the man ; the third is the image of the soul , which is her vital energie upon the body , wherewith she does enliven it , and if that life be in good tune , and due vigour , it is a very grateful sense to the soul , whether in this body , or in a more thin vehicle . this ficinus makes our eve. this is the feminine faculty in the soul of man , which awakes then easiliest into act , when the soul to intellectuals falls asleep . ver. . over-tedious aspires . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is a solemn monition of aristotle somewhere in his ethicks . and it is a great point of wisdome indeed , and mainly necessary , to know the true laws and bounds of humane happinesse , that the heat of melancholy drive not men up beyond what is competible to humane nature , and the reach of all the faculties thereof : nor the too savoury relish of the pleasures of the flesh , or animal life , keep them down many thousand degrees below what they are capable of . but the man that truly fears god , will be delivered from them both . what i have spoken is directed more properly to the soul in the flesh , but may analogically be understood of a soul in any vehicle , for they are peccable in them all . ver. . stood naked before god. adam was as truly clothed in corporeity now as ever after ; for the aether is as true a body as the earth : but the meaning is , adam had a sense of the divine presence , very feelingly assured in his own minde , that his whole beeing lay naked and bare before god , and that nothing could be hid from his sight , which pierced also to the very thoughts , and inward frame of his spirit . but yet though adam stood thus naked before him , notwithstanding he found no want of any covering to hide himself from that presentifick sense of him , nor indeed felt himself as naked in that notion of nakednesse . for that sense of nakednesse , and want of further covering and sheltring from the divine presence , arose from his disobedience and rebellion against the commands of god , which as yet he had not faln into . not at all ashamed . shame is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the fear of just reprehension ▪ as gellius out of the philosophers defines it . but adam having not acted any thing yet at randome , after the swing of his own will , he had done nothing that the divine light would reprehend him for . he had not yet become obnoxious to any sentence from his own condemning conscience ; for he kept himself hitherto within the bounds of that divine law written in his soul , and had attempted nothing against the will of god. so that there being no sin , there could not as yet be any shame in adam . chap. iii. the serpent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in pherecydes syrus . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 names of spirits haunting fields and desolate places . the right notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that satan upon his tempting adam , was cast down lower towards the earth , with all his accomplices . plato's prophecie of christ . the reasonablenesse of divine providence in exalting christ above the highest angels . that adams descension into his terrestrial body , was a kind of death . how incongruous it is to the divine goodnesse , sarcastically to insult over frait man fallen into tragical misery . that it is a great mercy of god that we are not immortal upon earth . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are all one . a summary representation of the strength of the whole philosophick cabbala . pythagoras deemed the son of apollo , that he was acquainted with the cabbala of moses : that he did miracles ; as also abaris , empedocles , and epimenides , being instructed by him . plato also deemed the son of apollo . socrates his dream concerning him . that he was learned in the mosaical cabbala . the miraculous power of plotinus his soul. cartesius compared with bezaliel and aholiab , and whether he was inspired or no. the cabbalists apology . the first verse . this old serpent therefore . in pherecydes syrus , pythagoras his master , there is mention of one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , princeps mali , as grotius cites him on this place , which is a further argument of pythagoras his being acquainted with this mosaical philosophy . and that according to the philosophick cabbala , it was an evil spirit , not a natural serpent , that supplanted adam , and brought such mischief upon mankind . the beasts of the field . but now that these evil spirits should be reckoned as beasts of the field , besides what reason is given in the cabbala it self , we may adde further , that the haunt of these unclean spirits is in solitudes , and waste fields , and desolate places , as is evident in the prophet esay his description of the desolation of babylon , where he saith it shall be a place for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the fauni and sylvani , as castellis translates it , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the seventy : and these onocentauri in hesychius are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . a kinde of spirit that frequents the woods , and is of a dark colour . there is mention made also by the prophet ( in the same description ) of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all which expositors interpret of spirits . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are interpreted by the seventy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by castellio satyri , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 castellio renders fauni , the seventy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 clamores , strepitus , grotius suspects they wrote 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . out of both you may guesse , that they were such a kinde of spirit , as causes a noise and a stir in those desolate places , according to that of lucretius : haec loca capripedes satyros , nymphásque tenere finitimi fingunt , & faunos esse loquuntur ; quorum noctivago strepitu ludóque jocanti affirmant vulgo taciturna silentia rumpi . to this sense : these are the places where the nymphs do wonne , the fawns and satyres with their cloven feet , whose noise , and shouts , and laughters loud do runne through the still air , and wake the silent night . but the poet puts it off with this conceit , that it is only the shepheards that are merry with their lasses . but no man can glosse upon this text after that manner : for the prophet says , no shepheard shall pitch his fold there , nor shall any man passe through it for ever . the last strange creature in these direful solitudes , is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which interpreters ordinarily translate lamia , a witch ; and for mine own part , i give so much credit to sundry stories , that i have read and heard , that i should rather interpret those noises in the night , which luoretius speaks of , to be the conventicles of witches and devils ▪ then the merriment of shepheards and their shepheardesses . but the jewes understand by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a she devil , an enemy to women in childe-bed ; whence it is , that they write on the walls of the room where the woman lies in , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 adam , eve , out of doors lilith . and what i have alledged already , i conceive is authority enough to countenance the sense of the cabbala , that supposes evil spirits to be reckoned among , or to be analogical to the beasts of the field . but something may be added yet further , matth. . . there our saviour christ plainly allows of this doctrine , that evil spirits have their haunts in the wide fields and deserts , which grotius observes to be the opinion of the jewes , and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , daemones , have their name for that reason , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ager ▪ the field ; for if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it would be rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , shiddim , then shedhim , as grammatical analogy requires . ver. . and adam answered him . though the serpent here be look'd upon as a distant person from adam , and externally accosting him , yet it is not at all incongruous to make eve meerly an internal faculty of him . for as she is said to proceed fromhim , so she is said still to be one with him , which is wonderfully agreeable with the faculties of the soul ; for though they be from the soul , yet they are really one with her , as they that understand any thing in philosophy will easily admit . ver. . know all things . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all men have a natural desire of knowledge . it is an aphorisme in aristotle ; and this desire is most strong in those , whose spirits are most thin and subtile . and therefore this bait could not but be much taking with adam in his thinner vehicle . but what ever is natural to the soul , unlesse it be regulated and bounded with the divine light , will prove her mischief and bane , whether in this lower state , or in what state soever the soul is placed in . ver. . neither the covering of the heavenly nature . for adam by the indulging to every carelesse suggestion , at last destroyed and spoiled the pure frame of his aethereal or heavenly vehicle , and wrought himself into a dislike of the sordid ruines and distempered reliques of it , and in some measure awakening that lower plantal life , which yet had not come near enough the terrestrial matter , and with which he was as yet unclothed , found himself naked of what he presaged would very fitly sute with him , and ease the trouble of his present condition : see cor. ch . . v. , , , . ver. . that they hid themselves . they hate the light , because their deeds are evil . this is true of all rebellious spirits , be they in what vehicle they will. ver. . pursued him . praestantiorem animae facultatem esse ducem hominis atque daemonem . it is ficinus his out of timaeus , viz. that the best faculty that the soul is any thing awaked to , is her guide and good genius . but if we be rebellious to it , it is our daemon in the worse sense , and we are afraid of it , and cannot endure the sight of it . ver. . no power nor ornaments . for he found that though he could spoil and disorder his vehicle , it was not in his power so easily to bring it in order again . ver. . it was the vigour and impetuosity . there is some kinde of offer towards a reall excuse in adam , but it is manifest that he cannot clear himself from sin , because it was in his power to have regulated the motions of the life of his vehicle , according to the rule of the divine light in him . ver. . what work has she made here . adam touched in some sort with the conviction of the divine light , bemoans that sad catastrophe , which the vigorous life of the vehicle had occasioned ; but then he again excuses himself from the deceivablenesse of that facultie , especially it being wrought upon , by so cunning and powerful an assailant as the old serpent the devil . imagination for ever . that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the eternal god. it being a thing acknowledged , that god both speaks in a man , as in other intellectual creatures , by his divine light residing there , and that he also speaks in himself , concerning things or persons ; which speeches are nothing else but his decrees : it is not at all harsh , in the reading of moses , to understand the speakings of god , according as the circumstances of the matter naturally imply , nor to bring god in as a third person , in corporeal and visible shape , unlesse there were an exigency that did extort it from us . for his inward word , whereby he either creates or decrees any thing that shall come to passe , as also that divine light whereby he does instruct those souls that receive him , philosophy will easilier admit of these for the speakings of god , then any audible articulate voice pronounced by him in humane shape , unlesse it were by christ himself , for otherwise in all likelihood it is but a message by some angel. ver. . the prince of the rebellious angels . for the mighty shall be mightily tormented ; and the nature of the thing also implies it , because disgrace , adversity , and being trampled on , is far more painful and vexatious to those that have been in great place , then to those of a more inferiour rank . from whence naturally this chieftain of the devils , as mr. mede calls him , will be struck more deeply with the curse , then any of the rest of his accomplices . in the higher parts of the air , &c. this is very consonant to the opinion of the ancient fathers , whether you understand it of satan himself , or of the whole kingdome of those rebellious spirits . and it is no more absurd , that for a time the bad went amongst the good in the aethereal region , then it is now that there are good spirits amongst the bad in this lower air. but after that villany satan committed upon adam , he was commanded down lower , and the fear of the lord of hosts so changed his vehicle , and slaked his fire , that he sunk towards the earth , and at last was fain to lick the dust of the ground , see mr. mede in his discourse upon pet. . . ver. . messias should take a body . that the soul of the messias ▪ and all souls else did pre-exist , is the opinion of the jewes , and that admitted , there is no difficulty in the cabbala . plato , whether from this passage alone , or whether it was that he was instructed out of other places also of the holy writ , ( if what ficinus writes is true ) seems to have had some knowledge and presage of the coming of christ , in that being asked , how long men should attend to his writings ; he answered , till some more holy and divine person appear in the world , whom all should follow . notoriously here upon earth . as it came to passe in his casting out devils , and silencing oracles , or making them cry out . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — christ bruises the head of satan by destroying his kingdome and soveraignty , and by being so highly exalted above all powers whatsoever . and it is a very great and precious mysterie ; that dear compassion of our fellow-creatures , and faithful and fast obedience to the will of god , ( which were so eminently and transcendently in christ ) should be lifted above all power and knowledge whatsoever , in those higher orders of angels . for none of them that were , as they should be , would take offence at it , but be glad of it . but those that were proud , or valued power and knowledge before goodnesse and obedience , it was but a just affront to them , and a fit rebuke of their pride . but now how does satan bruise the heel of christ ? thus : he falls upon the rear , the lowest part of those that professe christianity , hypocrites , and ignorant souls , such as he often makes witches of ; but the church triumphant is secure , and the sincere part of the church militant . so mr. mede upon the place . ver. . the concomitance of pain and sorrow . and it is the common complaint of all mortals , that they that speed the best , have the experience of a vicissitude of sorrow as well as joy . and the very frame of our bodies as well as the accidents of fortune , are such , that to indulge to pleasure , is but to lay the seed of sorrow or sadnesse by diseases , satiety , or melancholy ▪ besides many spinosities and cutting passages that often happen unawares in the conversation of those from whom we expect the greatest solace and contents . to say nothing of the assaults of a mans own minde , and pricking of conscience , which ordinarily disturb those that follow after the pleasures of the body . lucretius , though an atheist , will fully witnesse to the truth of all this in his fourth book , de rerum naturâ , where you may read upon this subject at large . ver. . thorns and thistles . moses instances in one kinde of life , husbandry , but there is the same reason in all . — nil sine magno vita laebore dedit mortalibus — life nothing gratis unto men doth give ; but with great labour and sad toil we live . ver ▪ . euripides the friend of socrates , and a favourer of the pythagorean philosophy , writes somewhere in his tragedies , as i have already told you , to this sense ; who knows , says he , whether to live , be to die ; and whether again , to die , be not to live ? which question is very agreeable to this present cabbala : for adam is here as it were dying to that better world and condition of life he was in , and like as one here upon earth on his death-bed , prophec●es many times , and professes what he presages concerning his own state to come , that he shall be with god , that he shall be in heaven amongst the holy angels , and the saints departed , and the like : so adam here utters his apologetical prophecie , that this change of his , and departure from this present state , though it may prove ill enough for himself , yet it has its use and convenience , and that it is better for the vniverse ; for he shall live upon earth , and be a ruler there amongst the terrestrial creatures , and help to order and govern that part of the world . the life of his vehicle eve. for eve signifies life , that life which the soul derives to what vehicle or body soever she actuates and possesses . ver. . skin of beasts . this origen understands of adams being incorporated and clothed with humane flesh and skin . ridiculum enim est dicere , saith he , quòd deus fuerit adami coriarius & pellium sutor . and no man will much wonder at the confidence of this pious and learned father , if he do but consider , that the pre-existency of souls before they come into the body , is generally held by all the learned of the jews , and so in all likelihood was a part of this philosophick cabbala . and how fitly things fall in together , and agree with the very text of moses , let any man judge . ver. . but play and sport . this i conceive a far better decorum , then to make god sarcastically to jeer at adam , and triumph over him in so great and universal a mischief , as some make it ; and destitute of any concomitant convenience ; especially there being a principle in adam , that was so easily deceivable , which surely has something of the nature of an excuse in it . but to jeer at a man that through his own weakness , & the over-reaching subtilty of his adversary , has fallen into some dreadful and tragical evil and misery , is a thing so far from becoming god , that it utterly misbeseems any good man. ver. . he made sure he should not be immortal . for it is our advantage , as rupertus upon the place hath observed out of plotinus . misericordiae dei fuisse , quòd hominem ficerit mortalem , nè perpetuis cruciaretur hujus vitae aerumnis . that it is the mercy of god that he made man mortal , that he might not always be tormented with the miseries and sorrows of this present life . passing through his fiery vehicle . the following words explain the meaning of the cabbala ; it is according to the sense of that plato amongst the poets , ( as severus called him ) virgil , in the sixt book of his aeneids : donec longa diês perfecto temporis orbe concretam exemit labem , purúmque reliquit aethereum sensum , atque aurai simplicis ignem . to this sense : till that long day at last be come about , that wasted has all filth and foul desire ; and leaves the soul aethereal throughout , bathing her senses in pure liquid fire . which we shall yet back very fittingly with the two last golden verses , as they are called of the pythagoreans , who adde immortality to this aethereal condition : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . rid of this body , if the aether free you reach , henceforth immortal you shall bee . the greek has it , you shall be an immortal god which hierocles interprets , you shall imitate the deity in this , in becoming immortal . and plutarch in his defect of oracles , drives on this apotheosis , according to the order of the elements , earth refined to water , water to air , air to fire : so man to become of a terrestrial animal one of the heroes , of an heros a daemon , or good genius , of a genius a god , which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to partake of divinity , which is no more then to become one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or immortal angels , who are instar flammae , as maimonides writes , they are according to their vehicles , a versatile fire , turning themselves proteus-like into any shape . they are the very words of the forenamed rabbi upon the place . and philo judaeus , pag. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for there is , saith he , in the air , a most holy company of unbodied souls ; and presently he adjoins , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and these souls the holy writ uses to call angels . and in another place pag. . he speaking of the more pure souls , calls them , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. the officers of the generalissimo of the world , that are as the eyes and ears of the great king , seeing and hearing all things ; and then he addes , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . these , other philosophers call the genii , but the scripture angels . and in another place he says , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that a soul , genius , and angel , are three words that signifie both one and the same thing . as xenocrates also made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all one , adding that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , happy , that had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a virtuous soul. wherefore not to weary my reader , nor my self with overmuch philogy , we conclude , that the meaning of moses in this last verse , is this : that adam is here condemned to a mortal , flitting , and impermanent state , till he reach his aethereal or pure fiery vehicle , and become , as our saviour christ speaks , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as one of the angels . this , i say , is the condition of mankinde , according to the philosophick cabbala of moses . let us now take a general view of this whole cabbala , and more summarily consider the strength thereof ; which we may refer to these two heads , viz. the nature of the truths herein contained , and the dignity of those persons that have owned them in foregoing ages . and as for the truths themselves , first , they are such as may well become so holy and worthy a person as moses , if he would philosophize ; they being very precious and choice truths , and very highly removed above the conceit of the vulgar , and so the more likely to have been delivered to him , or to adam first by god for a special mysterie . secondly , they are such , that the more they are examined , the more irrefutable they will be found , no hypothesis that was ever yet propounded to men , so exquisitely well agreeing with the phaenomena of nature , the attributes of god , the passages of providence , and the rational faculties of our own minds . thirdly , there is a continued sutablenesse and applicability to the text of moses all along , without any force or violence done to grammar or criticisme . fourthly and lastly , there is a great usefulnesse , if not necessity , at least of some of them , they being such substantial props of religion , and so great encouragements , to a sedulous purification of our mindes , and study of true piety . now for the dignity of the persons , such as were pythagoras , plato , and plotinus , it will be argued from the constant fame of that high degree of virtue and righteousnesse , and devout love of the deity that is every where acknowledged in them , besides whatsoever miraculous has happened to them , or been performed by them . and as for pythagoras , if you consult his life in iamblichus , he was held in so great admiration by those in his time , that he was thought by some to be the son of apollo , whom he begot of parthenis his known mother ; and of this opinion was epimenides , eudoxus , and xenocrates , which conceit iamblichus does soberly and earnestly reject , but afterwards acknowledges , that his looks and speeches did so wonderfully carry away the minds of all that conversed with him , that they could not withhold from affirming , that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the off-spring of god. which is not to be taken in our strict theological sense , but according to the mode of the ancient greeks , who looked upon men heroically , and eminently good and virtuous , to be divine souls , and of a celestial extract . and aristotle takes notice particularly of the lacedemonians , that they tearmed such as were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , very good , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , divine men . according to which sense , he interprets that verse in homer concerning hector . — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but to return to him of whom we were speaking before . this eminency of his acknowledged amongst the heathen , will seem more credible , if we but consider the advantage of his conversation with the wisest men then upon earth ; to wit , the jewish priests and prophets , who had their knowledge from god , as pythagoras had from them . from whence i conceive that of iamblichus to be true , which he writes concerning pythagoras his philosophy : that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that it is a philosophy that at first was delivered by god , or his holy angels . but that pythagoras was acquainted with the mosaical or jewish philosophy , there is ample testimony of it in writers ; as of aristobulus an aegyptian jew , in clemens alexandrinus , and josephus against appion . s. ambrose addes , that he was a jew himself . clemens calls him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the hebrew philosopher . i might cast hither the suffrages of justine , johannes philoponus , theodoret , hermippus in origen against celsus , porphyrius , and clemens again , who writes , that it was a common fame that pythagoras was a disciple of the prophet ezekiel . and though he gives no belief to the report , yet that learned antiquary mr. selden seems inclinable enough to think it true , in his first book de jure naturali juxta hebraos , where you may peruse more fully the citations of the forenamed authors . besides all these , iamblichus also affirms , that he lived at sidon , his native countrey , where he fell acquainted with the prophets , and successors of one mochus , the physiologer , or natural philosopher . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which , as mr. selden judiciously conjectures , is to be read , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with the prophets that succeeded moses the philosopher . wherefore it is very plain , that pythagoras had his philosophy from moses . and that philosophy which to this very day is acknowledged to be his , we seeing that it is so fitly applicable to the text all the way , what greater argument can there be desired to prove that it is the true philosophick cabbala thereof ? but there is yet another argument to prove further the likelihood of his conversing with the prophets , which will also further set out the dignity of his person ; and that is the miracles that are recorded of him . for it should seem pythagoras was not only initiated into the mosaical theory , but had arrived also to the power of working miracles , as moses and the succeeding prophets did , and very strange facts are recorded both in porphyrius and iamblichus : as that pythagoras when he was going over a river with several of his companions , ( iamblichus calls the river nessus , porphyrius caucasus ) that he speaking to the river , the river answered him again with an audible and clear voice , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , salve pythagora . that he shewed his thigh to abaris the priest , and that he affirmed that it glistered like gold , and thence pronounced that he was apollo . that he was known to converse with his friends at metapontium , and tauromenium ( the one a town in italy , the other in sicily , and many days journey distant ) in one and the same day . to these and many others which i willingly omit , i shall only adde his predictions of earthquakes , or rather , because that may seem more natural , his present slaking of plagues in cities , his silencing of violent winds , and tempests ; his calming the rage of seas , and rivers , and the like . which skill empedocles , epimenides , and abaris having got from him , they grew so famous , that empedocles was surnamed alexanemus , epimenides , cathartes , and abaris , aethrobates , from the power they had in suppressing of storms and winds , in freeing of cities from the plague , and in walking aloft in the air : which skill enabled pythagoras to visit his friends after that manner at metapontium , and tauromenium in one and the same day . and now i have said thus much of pythagoras , ( and might say a great deal more ) there will be lesse need to insist upon plato and plotinus , their philosophy being the same that pythagoras his was , and so alike applicable to moses his text. plato's exemplarity of life and virtue , together with his high knowledge in the more sacred mysteries of god , and the state of the soul of man in this world , and that other , deservedly got to himself the title of divine , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but as for miracles , i know none he did , though something highly miraculous happened , if that fame at athens was true , that speusippus , clearchus , and anaxilides report to have been , concerning his birth , which is , that aristo his reputed father , when he would forcibly have had to do with perictione , she being indeed exceeding fair and beautiful , fell short of his purpose , and surceasing from his attempt , that he saw apollo in a vision , and so abstained from medling with his wife till she brought forth her son aristocles , who after was called plato but that is far more credible which is reported , concerning the commending of him to his tutor socrates , who the day before he came , dreamed that he had a young swan in his lap , which putting forth feathers a pace , of a sudden flew up into the air , and sung very sweetly . wherefore the next day when plato was brought to him by his father , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he presently said , this is the bird , and so willingly received him for his pupil . but for his acquaintance with the mosaical learning , as it is more credible in it self , so i have also better proof ; as aristobulus the jew in clemens alexandrinus ▪ s. ambrose , hermippus in josephus against appion ; and lastly , numenius the platonist , who ingenuously confesses , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; what is plato , but moses in greek ? as i have else where alledged . as for plotinus , that which porphyrius records of him , falls little short of a miracle , as being able by the majesty of his own minde , as his enemy olympius confessed , to retort that magick upon him which he practised against plotinus , and that sedately sitting amongst his friends , he would tell them ; now olympius his body it gathered like a purse , and his limbs beat one against another . and though he was not instructed by the jewish priests and prophets , yet he was a familiar friend of that hearty and devout christian and learned father of the church , origen ; whose authority i would also cast in , together with the whole consent of the learned amongst the jewes . for there is nothing strange in the metaphysical part of this cabbala , but what they have constantly affirmed to be true . but the unmannerly superstition of many is such that they will give more to an accustomed opinion , which they have either taken up of themselves ▪ or has been conveyed unto them by the confidence of some private theologer , then to the authority of either fathers , churches , workers of miracles , or what is best of all , the most solid reasons that can be propounded ; which if they were capable of , they could not take any offence at my admittance of the cartesian philosophy into this present cabbala . the principles , and the more notorious conclusions thereof , offering themselves so freely , and unaffectedly , and so aptly , and sittingly taking their place in the text , that i knew not how with judgement and conscience to keep them out . for i cannot but surmise , that he has happily and unexpectedly light upon that , which will prove a true restauration of that part of the mosaical philosophy , which is ordinarily called natural , and in which pythagoras may be justly deemed to have had no small insight . and that des cartes may bear up in some likely equipage with the forenamed noble and divine spirits though the unskilfulnesse in men commonly acknowledge more of supernatural assistance in hot unsettled fancies , and perplexed melancholy , then in the calm and distinct use of reason ; yet for mine own part , ( but not without submission to better judgements ) i should look upon des cartes as a man more truly inspired in the knowledge of nature , then any that have professed themselves so this six●een hundred years ; and being even ravished with admiration of his transcendent mechanical inventions , for the salving the phaenomena in the world , i should not stick to compare him with bezaliel and aholiab , those skilful and cunning workers of the tabernacle , who , as moses testifies , were filled with the spirit of god , and they were of an excellent understanding to finde out all manner of curious works . nor is it any more argument , that des cartes was not inspired , because he did not say he was , then that others are inspired , because they say they are ; which to me is no argument at all . but the suppression of what so happened , would argue much more sobriety and modesty , when as the profession of it with sober men would be suspected of some spice of melancholy and distraction , especially in natural philosophy , where the grand pleasure is the evidence and exercise of reason , not a bare belief , or an ineffable sense of life , in respect whereof there is no true christian but he is inspired . thus much in defence of my philosophick cabbala . it will not be unseasonable to subjoin something by way of apology for the cabbalist : for i finde my self liable to no lesse then three several imputations , viz. of trifling curiositie , of rashnesse , and of inconstancy of judgement . and as for the first , i know that men that are more severely philosophical and rational , will condemn me of too much curious pains in applying natural and metaphysical truths to an uncertain and lubricous text or letter , when as they are better known , and more fitly conveied by their proper proof and arguments , then by fancying they are aimed at in such obscure and aenigmatical writings . but i answer , ther is that fit and full congruity of the cabbala with the text , besides the backing of it with advantages from the history of the first rise of the pythagorical or platonical philosophy , that it ought not to be deemed a fancie , but a very high probability , that there is such a cabbala as this belonging to the mosaical letter , especially if you call but to minde how luckily the nature of numbers sets off the work of every day , according to the sense of the cabbala . and then again , for mine own part , i account no pains either curious or tedious , that tend to a common good : and i conceive no smaller a part of mankinde , concerned in my labours , then the whole nation of the jewes , and christendome ; to say nothing of the ingenious persian , nor to despair of the turk though he be for the present no friend to allegories . wherefore we have not placed our pains inconsiderately , having recommended so weighty and useful truths in so religious a manner to so great a part of the world . but for the imputation of rashnesse , in making it my businesse to divulge those secrets or mysteries that moses had so sedulously covered in his obscure text : i say , it is the privilege of christianity , the times now more then ever requiring it to pull off the vail from moses his face : and that though they be grand truths that i have discovered , yet they are as useful as sublime , and cannot but highly gratifie every good and holy man that can competently judge of them . lastly , for inconstancy of judgement , which men may suspect me of , having heretofore declared the scripture does not teach men philosophy : i say , the change of a mans judgement for the better , is no part of inconstancy , but a virtue , when as to persist in what we finde false , is nothing but perversenesse and pride . and it will prove no small argument for the truth of this present cabbala , in that the evidence thereof has fetch'd me out of my former opinion wherein i seemed engaged . but to say the truth , i am not at all inconsistent with my self , for i am still of opinion , that the letter of the scripture teaches not any precept of philosophy , concerning which there can be any controversie amongst men . and when you venture beyond the literal sense , you are not taught by the scripture , but what you have learned some other way , you apply thereto . and they ought to be no trash , nor trivial notions , nor confutable by reason , or more solid principles of philosophy , that a man should dare to cast upon so sacred a text , but such as one is well assured , will bear the strictest examination , and that lead to the more full knowledge of god , and do more clearly fit the phaenomena of nature , & external providence to his most precious attributes , and tend to the furthering of the holy life , which i do again professe is the sole end of the scripture . and he that ventures beyond the letter without that guide , will soon be bewilder'd , and lose himself in his own fancies . wherefore if this philosophick cabbala of mine , amongst those many other advantages i have recited , had not this also added unto it , the aim of advancing the divine life in the world , i should look upon it as both false and unprofitable , and should have rested satisfied with the moral cabbala . for the divine life is above all natural and metaphysical knowledge whatsoever . and that man is a perfect man that is truly righteous and prudent , whom i know i cannot but gratifie with my moral cabbala that follows . but if any more zealous pretender to prudence and righteousnesse , wanting either leisure or ability to examine my philosophick cabbala to the bottome , shall notwithstanding either condemn it or admire it , he has unbecomingly and indiscreetly ventured out of his own sphere , and i cannot acquit him of injustice , or folly. nor did i place my cabbala's in this order , out of more affection and esteem of philosophy , then of true holinesse , but have ranked them thus according to the order of nature : the holy and divine life being not at all , or else being easily lost in man , if it be not produc'd and conserv'd by a radicated acknowledgement of those grand truths in the philosophick cabbala , viz. the existence of the eternal god , and a certain expectation of more consummate happinesse upon the dissolution of this mortal body : for to pretend to virtue and holinesse , without reference to god , and a life to come , is but to fall into a more dull and flat kinde of stoicisme , or to be content to feed our cattel on this side of jordan in a more discreet and religious way of epicurisme , or at least of degenerate familisme . the defence of the moral cabbala . chap. i. what is meant by moral , explained out of philo. that the light in the first day improv'd to the height , is adam , in the sixt , christ , according to the spirit . in what sense we our selves may be said to doe what god does in us . why 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are rendred ignorance and inquiry . . plato's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the pythagoreans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , applied to the fourth days progresse . that virtue is not an extirpation , but regulation of the passions , according to the minde of the pythagoreans . plotinus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , applyed to the sixt days progresse . what the image of god is , plainly set down out of s. paul and plato . the divine principle in us , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , out of plotinus the distinction of the heavenly and earthly man , out of philo. the imposture of still and fixed melancholy , and that it is not the true divine rest , and precious sabbath of the soul. a compendious rehearsal of the whole allegory of the six days creation . wee are now come to the moral cabbala , which i do not call moral in that low sense the generality of men understand morality . for the processe and growth , as likewise the failing and decay of the divine life , is very intelligibly set forth in this present cabbala . but i call it moral , in counter-distinction to philosophical or physical ; as philo also uses this tearm moral , in divine matters . as when he speaks of gods breathing into adam the breath of life , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god breathes into adams face physically and morally . physically , by placing there the senses , viz. in the head . morally , by inspiring his intellect with divine knowledge , which is the highest faculty of the soul , as the head is the chief part of the body . wherefore by morality . i understand here divine morality , such as is ingendred in the soul by the operations of the holy spirit , that inward living principle of all godliness and honesty . i shall be the more brief in the defence of this cabbala , it being of it self so plain and sensible to any that has the experience of the life i describe ; but to them that have it not , nothing will make it plain , or any thing at all probable . ver. . a microcosme or little world. nothing is more ordinary or trivial , then to compare man to the universe , and make him a little compendious world of himself . wherefore it was not hard to premise that , which may be so easily understood . and the apostle supposes it , when he applies the creation of light here in this chapter , to the illumination of the soul as you shall hear hereafter . ver. . but that which is animal or natural operates first . according to that of the apostle , that which is spiritual is not first , but that which is animal or natural ; afterward that which is spiritual . the first man is of the earth , earthy ; the second man is the lord from heaven . but what this earthy condition is , is very lively set out by moses in this first days work . for here we have earth , water , and wind , or one tumultuous dark chaos , and confusion of dirt and water , blown on heaps and waves ; and unquiet night-storm , an unruly black tempest . and it is observable , that it is not here said of this deformed globe , let there be earth ; let there be water ; let there be wind ; but all this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the subject matter ; a thing ' made already , viz. the rude soul of man in this disorder that is described ; sad melancholy like the drown'd earth lies at the bottome , whence care , and grief , and discontent , torturous suspicion , and horrid fear , are washed up by the unquiet watry desire , or irregular suggestions of the concupiscible , wherein most eminently is seated base lust and sensuality ; and above these is boisterous wrath , and storming revengefulnesse , fool-hardy confidence , and indefatigable contention about vain objects . in short , whatever passion and distemper is in fallen man , it may be referred to these elements . but god leaves not his creature in this evil condition ; but that all this disorder may be discovered , and so quelled in us , and avoided by us , he saith , let there be light , as you read in the following verse . ver. . the day-light appears . to this alludes s. paul , when he says , god who commanded the light to shine out of darknesse , shine in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of god in the face of jesus christ . where the apostle seems to me to have struck through the whole six days of this spiritual creation at once . the highest manifestation of that light created in the first day , being the face of jesus christ , the heavenly adam , fully compleated in the sixt day . wherefore when it is said , let there be light , that light is understood that enlightens every man that comes into the world , which is the divine intellect as it is communicable to humane souls . and the first day is the first appearance thereof , as yet weaker and too much disjoin'd from our affections , but at last it amounts to the true and plain image and character of the lord from heaven , christ according to the spirit . ver. . and god hath framed the nature of man so , that he cannot but say , &c. god working in second causes , there is nothing more ordinary then to ascribe that to him that is done by men , even then when the actions seem lesse competible to the nature of god. wherefore it cannot seem harsh , if in this moral cabbala we admit that man does that by the power of god working in the soul , that the text says god does ; as the approving of the light as good , and the distinguishing betwixt light and darknesse , and the like ; which things in the mystical sense are competible both to god and man. and we speaking in a moral or mystical sense , of god acting in us , the nature of the thing requires that what he is said to do there , we should be understood also to do the same through his assistance . for the soul of man is not meerly passive as a piece of wood or stone , but is forthwith made active by being acted upon ; and therefore if god in us rules , we rule with him ; if he contend against sin in us , we also contend together with him against the same ; if he see in us what is good or evil , we , ipso facto , see by him ; in his light we see light : and so in the rest . wherefore the supposition is very easie in this moral cablala , to take the liberty , where either the sense or more compendious expression requires it , to attribute that to man , though not to man alone , which god alone does , when we recur to the literal meaning of the text. and this is but consonant to the apostle , i live , and yet not i. for if the life of god or christ was in him ; surely he did live , or else what did that life there ? only he did not proudly attribute that life to himself , as his own , but acknowledged it to be from god. ver. . as betwixt the natural day and night . it is very frequent with the apostles to set out by day and night , the spiritual and natural condition of man. as in such phrases as these ; the night is far spent , the day is at hand . walk as children of the light. and elsewhere , let us who are of the day ; and in the same place , you are all the sons of light , and sons of the day . we are not of the night , nor of darknesse . but this is too obvious to insist upon . and thus ignorance and inquiry . the soul of man is never quiet , but in perpetual search till she has found out her own happinesse , which is the heavenly adam , christ , the image of god , into which image and likenesse when we are throughly awakened , we are fully satisfied therewith ; till then we are in ignorance and confusion , as the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does fitly signifie . this ignorance , confusion , and dissatisfaction ; puts us upon seeking , according to that measure of the morning light that hath already visited us . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to seek , to consider , and inquire . this is the generation of those that seek thy face , o jacob , that is , the face of jesus christ , the result of the sixt days work , as i have intimated before . ver. . of savoury and affectionate discernment . wherefore he will not assent to solomons whore , who says , stoln water is sweet ; but will rather use the words of the samaritane woman to christ , when he had told her of those waters of the spirit , though she did not so perfectly reach his meaning ; sir , give me this water , that i thirst not , neither come hither to draw . for who would seek to satisfie himself with the toilsome pleasures of the world , when he may quench his desires with the delicious draughts of that true , and yet easie-flowing nectar of the spirit of god ? ver. . to compare to the earth . origen compares this condition to the earth for fruitfulnesse ; but i thought it not impertinent to take notice of the steadinesse of the earth also . but the condition of the ungodly is like the raging waves of the sea ; or as the prophet speaks , the wicked are as the troubled sea that cannot rest , whose waters cast up mire and dirt , esay . ver. . he is a fruitful field . this interpretation is origens , as i intimated before . ver. . according to the difference of these lights . what this difference is , you will understand out of the sixteenth and eighteenth verses . ver. . to this one single , but vigorous and effectual light. for indeed , a true and sincere sense of this one , comprehends all . for all the law is fulfilled in one word ; to wit , in this , thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart , and all thy soul , and thy neighbour as thy self ; and , to do so to others , as we our selves would be done to . wherefore for men to make nothing of this royal law of christ , and yet to pretend to be more accurate indagators into matters of religion , and more affectionate lovers of piety then ordinary , is either to be abominably hypocritical , or grossely ignorant in the most precious and necessary parts of christianity ; and they walk by star-light , and moon-light , not under the clear and warm enlivening raies of the sunne of righteousnesse . it is an excellent saying of plato's , in an epistle of his to dionysius , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that truth lies in a little room : and assuredly that which is best and most precious does ; when as the folly of every man notwithstanding so mis-guides him , that his toil and study is but to adorn himself after the mode of the most ridiculous fellow in all the graecian army , thersites , of whom the poet gives this testimony , that he was — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that he had a rabble of disordered notions , and fruitlesse observations ; but that neither he , nor any body else could make either head or foot of them , nor himself became either more wise or more honest by having them . that precept of the pythagoreans , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , simplifie your self , reduce your self to one , how wise , how holy , how true is it ? what a sure foundation is it of life , liberty , and easie sagacity in things belonging to virtue , religion , and justice ? i think no man is born naturally so stupid , but that if he will keep close to this single light of divine love , in due time , nay , in a short time , he will be no more to seek what is to be done in the carriage of his life to god or man , then an unblemished eye will be at a losse to distinguish colours . but if he forsake this one light , he will necessarily be benighted , and his minde distracted with a multitude of needlesse and uncomfortable scrupulosities , and faint and ineffectual notions ; and every body will be ready to take him up for a night-wanderer , and to chastise him for being out of his way ; and after , it may be , as friendly offer himself a guide to another path , that will prove as little to the purpose , unlesse he bring him into this via regia , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as saint james calls it , this royal law of the sincere love of god , and a mans neighbour . ver. . that is , that the concupiscible in man. that the waters are an emblem of this concupiscible , venus her being born of the sea does intimate ; which were not so much to the purpose , did not natural philosophy and experience certifie , that concupiscence is lodg'd in moisture . whence is that of heraclitus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( in porphyrius his de antro nympharum ) i. e. anima sicca sapientissima . and without all question the inordinate use of the concupiscible , does mightily befor the soul , and makes her very uncapable of divine sense and knowledge . and yet to endevour after an utter insensibility of the pleasures of the body , is as groundlesse and unwarrantable . but concerning this i shall speak more fully on the . and . verses of this chapter . ver. . winged ejaculations . whether mental or vocal , they are not unfitly resembled to fowls , according to that of homer , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and if vocal words have wings , the inward desires of the soul may well be said to have wings also , they being the words of the minde , as the other are of the mouth , and fly further for the most part , and get sooner to heaven then the other . note also , that origen likewise makes a difference here betwixt the fish and the fowl , and makes the fowl to be good cogitations , the fish evil . but i account them rather both indifferent , and to be regulated , not extirpated by the mystical adam christ , the image of god in man. and these strong heats and ejaculations are the effects of melancholy , wherein the divine principle in man , when it actuates it , works very fiercely and sharply , and is a great waster of the delightful moisture of the concupiscible , and weakens much the pleasures of the body , to the great advantage of the minde , if it be done with discretion and due moderation , otherways if this passion be over-much indulged to , it may lead to hecticks , phrenzies and distractions . the contrivance of the text mentioning only such fowls as frequent the waters , naturally points to this sense we have given it ; but if our imagination strike out further to other winged creatures , as the fowls of the mountains , and sundry sorts of birds , they may also have their proper meanings , and are a part of those animal figurations , that are to be subdued and regulated by the mystical adam , the spirit of christ in us . ver. . might have something to order . but if you take away all the passions from the soul , the minde of man will be as a general without an army , or an army without an enemy . the pythagoreans define righteousnesse , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the peace of the whole soul , the parts thereof being in good tune or harmony ; according to that other definition of theirs , describing righteousnesse to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that it is the harmony or agreement of the irrational parts of the soul with the rational . but quite to take away all the passions of the minde in stead of composing them to the right rule of reason and the divine light , is as if a man should cut away all the strings of an instrument , in stead of tuning it . ver. . and makes the irascible fruitful . religious devotions help'd on by melancholy , dry the body very much , and heat it , and make it very subject to wrath ; which if it be placed upon holy matters , men call zeal ; but if it be inordinate and hypocritical , the apostle will teach us to call it bitter zeal . this more fierce and fiery affection in man is plotinus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the lion-like nature in us , which if adam keep in subjection , there is no hurt in it , but good . and it is evident in the gospel , that our saviour christ was one while deeply impassionated with sorrow , another while very strongly carried away with zeal and anger , as you may observe in the stories of his raising up lazarus , and whipping the money-changers out of the temple . and this is no imperfection , but rather a perfection ; the divine life , when it has reached the passions and body of a man , becoming thereby more palpable , full and sensible . but all the danger is of being impotently passionate , and when as the body is carried away by its own distemper , or by the hypocrisie of the minde , notwithstanding to imagine or pretend , that it is the impulse of the divine spirit . this is too frequent a mistake god knows , but such as was impossible to happen in our saviour ; and therefore the passions of his minde were rather perfections then imperfections , as they are to all them that are close and sincere followers of him , especially when they have reach'd the sixt days progresse . ver. . by the name of his own image . what this image of god is , plato who was acquainted with these mosaical writings , as the holy fathers of the church so generally have told us , plainly expresses in these words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to be like unto god , is to be just , holy , and wise . like that of the apostle to the colossians , and have put on the new man , which is renewed in knowledge , after the image of him that created him : and that more full passage in the fourth of the ephesians ; and that you put on the new man , which after god is created in righteousnesse and true holinesse . there are all the three members of that divine image , knowledge , righteousnesse , and holinesse , which are mentioned in that foregoing description of plato's , as if plato had been pre-instructed by men of the same spirit with the apostle . the true and perfect man. plotinus calls that divine principle in us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the true man. the rest is the brutish nature , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as i said before . but has full power . wherefore if this definition of the image or likenesse of god which plato has made , does not involve this power in it in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to the description of justice by the pythagoreans , above recited , ( which implies that the rational and divine part of the soul has the passions at its command ) i should adde to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this one word more , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the description may un thus ; to be like unto god , is to be holy and just , together with wisdome and power . but i rather think that this power is comprehended in holinesse and justice : for unlesse we have arrived to that power as to be able constantly to act according to these virtues , we are rather well-willers to holinesse and righteousnesse , then properly and formally righteous and holy . ver. . in his little world. they are the words of philo , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that man is a little world , and that the world is one great man ; which analogy is supposed , as i said at first , in the moral cabbala of this present chapter , and origen upon this chapter calls man minorem mundum , a microcosme . ver. . the heavenly adam , christ . philo makes mention of the heavenly and earthly man , in these words ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . man is of two sorts , the one heavenly , the other earthly . and s. paul calls christ the heavenly adam , and philo's heavenly adam is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , created after the image of god , as saint paul in the forecited places to the colossians and ephesians also speaks concerning christ . ver. . the heavenly adam to feed upon , fulfilling the will of god. as christ professes of himself , it is my meat and drink to do the will of him that sent me . ver. . nor is the animal life quite to be starved . for a good man is merciful to his beast . see origen upon the place . ver. . approves all things which god hath created in us to be very good . not only the divine principle , but also the fishes , beasts , and birds ▪ vult enim deus ut insignis ista dei factura , homo , non solùm immaculatus sit ab his sed & dominetur eis : for it is the will of god , saith origen , not only that we should be free from any soil of these , ( which would be more certainly effected , if we were utterly rid of them , and they quite extirpated out of our nature ) but that we should rule over them without being any thing at all blemished , or discomposed by them . and for mine own part , i do not understand , how that the kingdome of heaven which is to be within us , can be any kingdome at all , if there be no subjects at all there to be ruled over , and to obey . wherefore the passions of the body are not to be quite extinguished , but regulated , that there may be the greater plenitude of life in the whole man. and those that endevour after so still , so silent , and demure condition of minde , that they would have the sense of nothing there but peace and rest , striving to make their whole nature desolate of all animal figurations whatsoever , what do they effect but a clear day , shining upon a barren heath , that feeds neither cow nor horse , neither sheep nor shepheard is to be seen there , but only a waste silent solitude , and one uniform parchednesse and vacuity . and yet while a man fancies himself thus wholly divine , he is not aware how he is even then held down by his animal nature ; and that it is nothing but the stilnesse and fixednesse of melancholy , that thus abuses him , and in stead of the true divine principle , would take the government to it self , and in this usurped tyranny cruelly destroy all the rest of the animal figurations ; but the true divine life would destroy nothing that is in nature , but only regulate things , and order them for the more full and sincere enjoyments of man , reproaching nothing but sinfulnesse and enormity , entituling sanguine and choler to as much virtue and religion as either phlegme or melancholy ▪ for the divine life as it is to take into it self the humane nature in general , so it is not abhorrent from any of the complexions thereof . but the squabbles in the world are ordinarily not about true piety and virtue , but which of the complexions , or what humour shall ascend the throne , and fit there in stead of christ himself . but i will not expatiate too much upon one theme ; i shall rather take a short view of the whole allegory of the chapter . in the first day there is earth , water and wind , over wh●ch , and through which , there is nothing but disconsolate darknesse , and tumultuous agitation ; the winds ruffling up the waters into mighty waves , the waves washing up the mire and dirt into the water ; all becoming but a rude heap of confusion and desolation . this is the state of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or earthly adam , as philo calls him , till god command the light to shine out of darknesse , offering him a guide to a better condition . in the second day , is the firmament created , dividing the upper and the lower waters , that it may feel the strong impulses , or taste the different relishes of either . thus is the will of man touch'd from above and beneath , and this is the day wherein is set before him life and death , good and evil , and he may put out his hand and take his choice . in the third day , is the earth uncovered of the waters , for the planting of fruit-bearing trees ; by their fruits you shall know them , saith our saviour , that is , by their works . in the fourth day , there appears a more full accession of divine light , and the sun of righteousnesse warms the soul with a sincere love both of god and man. in the fift day , that this light of righteousnesse , and bright eye of divine reason may not brandish its rayes in the empty field , where there is nothing either to subdue , or guide and order ; god sends out whole sholes of fishes in the waters , and numerous flights of fowls in the air , besides part of the sixt days work , wherein all kinde of beasts are created . in these are decyphered the sundry suggestions and cogitations of the minde , sprung from these lower elements of the humane nature , viz. earth and water , flesh and blood ; all these man beholds in the light of the sun of righteousnesse , discovers what they are , knows what to call them , can rule over them , and is not wrought to be over-ruled by them . this is adam , the master-piece of gods creation , and lord of all the creatures , framed after the image of god , christ according to the spirit , under whose feet is subdued the whole animal life , with its sundry motions , forms and shapes . he will call every thing by its proper name , and set every creature in its proper place ; the vile person shall be no longer called liberal , nor the churl bountiful . wo be unto them that call evil good , and good evil , that call the light darknesse , and the darknesse light . he will not call bitter passion , holy zeal ; nor plausible meretricious courtesie , friendship ; nor a false soft abhorrency from punishing the ill-deserving , pity ; nor cruelty , justice ; nor revenge , magnanimity ; nor unfaithfulnesse , policy ; nor verbosity , either wisdome or piety . but i have run my self into the second chapter before i am aware . in this first adam is said only to have dominion over all the living creatures , and to feed upon the fruit of the plants . and what is pride , but a mighty mountainous whale ; lust , a goat ; the lion , and bear , wilful dominion ; craft , a fox ; and worldly toil , an oxe ? over these and a thousand more is the rule of man ; i mean of adam , the image of god. but his meat and drink is to do the will of his maker ; this is the fruit he feeds upon . behold therefore , o man , what thou art , and whereunto thou art called , even to bee a mighty prince amongst the creatures of god , and to bear rule in that province he has assigned thee , to discern the motions of thine own heart , and to be lord over the suggestions of thine own natural spirit , not to listen to the counsel of the flesh , nor conspire with the serpent against thy creator . but to keep thy heart free and faithful to thy god ; so maist thou with innocency and unblameablenesse see all the motions of life , and bear rule with god over the whole creation committed to thee . this shall be thy paradise and harmlesse sport on earth , till god shall transplant thee to an higher condition of happinesse in heaven . chap. ii. the full sense of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that keeps men from entring into the true sabbath . the great necessity of distinguishing the innocent motions of nature from the suggestions of sin. that the growth of a true christian indeed doth not adaequately depend upon the lips of the priest . the meaning of this is he that comes by water and blood. the meaning of repent , for the kingdome of heaven is at hand . the seventh thousand years , the great sabbatism of the church of god. that there will be then frequent converse betwixt men and angels . the tree of life , how fitly in the mystical sense , said to be in the midst of the garden . a twofold death contracted by adams disobedience . the masculine and feminine faculties in man what they are . actuating a body , an essential operation of the soul ; and the reason of that so joyful appearance of eve to the humane nature . to the fift verse there is nothing but a recapitulation of what went before in the first chapter ; and therefore wants no further proof then what has already been alledged out of s ▪ paul and origen , and other writers . only there is mention of a sabbath in the second verse of this chapter , of which there was no words before . and this is that sabbatisme or rest , that the author to the hebrews exhorts them to strive to enter into , through faith and obedience . for those that were faint-hearted , and unbelieving , and pretended that the children of anak , the off-spring of the giants , would be too hard for them ; they could not enter into the promised land wherein they were to set up their rest , under the conduct of j●shua , a type of jesus . and the same author in the same place makes mention of this very sabbath that ensued the accomplishment of the creation , concluding thus : there remaineth therefore a sabbatisme or rest to the people of god : for he that has entred into his rest , he also has ceased from his own works , as god did from his . let us labour therefore to enter into that rest , lest any man fall after that example , of disobedience and unbelief . for the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , may well include both senses , viz , disobedience , or the not doing the will of god , according to that measure of power and knowledge he has already given us ; and vnbelief , that the divine life and spirit in us , is not able to subdue the whole creation of the little world under us , that is , all the animal motions and figurations , be they lions , bears , goats , whales , be they what they will be , as well as to cast out the children of anak before the israelites , as it is in that other type of christ , and of his kingdome in the souls of men. ver. . the generations of the animal life when god created them . for these are as truly the works of god , as the divine life it self , though they are nothing comparable unto it . nay , indeed they are but an heap of confusion without it . wherefore the great accomplishment is to have these in due order and subjection unto the spirit or heavenly life in us , which is christ ; and that you may have a more particular apprehension of these generations of the animal life , i shall give you a catalogue of some of them , though confusedly , so as they come first to my memory . such therefore are anger , zeal , indignation , sorrow , derision , mirth , gravity , open-heartednesse , reservednesse , stoutnesse , flexibility , boldness , fearfulness , mildeness , tartness , candour , suspicion , peremptoriness , despondency , triumph or gloriation . all the propensions to the exercise of strength , or activity of body ; as running , leaping , swimming , wrestling , justing , coursing , or the like : besides all the courtly preambles , necessary concomitants , and delightful consequences of marriage , which spring up from the love of women , and the pleasure of children . to say nothing of those enjoyments that arise from correspondent affections and meer natural friendship betwixt man and man , or fuller companies of acquaintance ; their friendly feastings , sportings , musick and dancings . all these and many more that i am not at leisure to reckon up , be but the genuine pullulations of the animal life , and in themselves they have neither good nor hurt in them . nay , indeed to speak more truly and impartially , they are good , according to the approbation of him that made them ; but they become bad only to them that are bad , and act either without measure , or for unwarrantable ends , or with undue circumstances ; otherwise they are very good in their kind , they being regulated and moderated by the divine principle in us . and i think it is of great moment for men to take notice of this truth for these three reasons : first , because the bounds of sin , and of the innocent motions of nature , being not plainly and apertly set out and defined , men counting the several animal figurations and natural motions for sins , they heap to themselves such a task , to wit , the quite extirpating that , which it were neither good , nor it may be possible utterly to extirpate , that they seem in truth hereby to insinuate that it is impossible to enter into that rest or sabbath of the people of god. wherefore promiscuously sheltring themselves under this confused cloud of sins , and infirmities , where they aggravate all , so as if every thing were in the same measure sinful ; if they be but zealous and punctual in some , they account it passing well , and an high testimony of their sanctimony . and their hypocrisie will be sure to pitch upon that which is least of all to the purpose ; that is , a man will spend his zeal in the behalf of some natural temper he himself is of , and against the opposite complexion . but for the indispensable dictates of the divine light , he will be sure to neglect them , as being more hard to perform , though of more concernment both for himself and the common good . but if it were more plainly defined what is sin , and what is not sin , a man might with more heart and courage fight against his enemy , he appearing not so numerous and formidable , and he would have the lesse opportunity for perverse excuses , and hypocritical tergiversations . the second reason is , that men may not think better of themselves then they are , for their abhorrency from those things that have no hurt in them , nor think worser of others then they deserve , when they do but such things as are approvable by god , and the divine light. and this is of very great moment for the maintaining of christian love , and union amongst men . the third and last is ; that they may observe the madness and hypocrisie of the world , whose religious contestations or secret censures are commonly but the conflict and antipathy of the opposite figurations of the animal life , who like the wilde beasts , without a master to keep good quarter amongst them , are very eagerly set to devour one another . but by this shall every man know , whether it be complexion or religion that reigns in him , if he love god with all his heart , and all his soul , and his neighbour as himself : and can give a sufficient reason for all his actions and opinions from that aeternal light , the love of god shed abroad in his heart ; if not , it is but a faction of the animal life , sed up and fostered by either natural temper or custome ; and he is far from being arrived to the kingdome of christ , and entring into that true rest of the people of god. ver. . where there is no external doctrine . pulpits , and preachings , and external ordinances , there is no such noise of them amongst the holy patriarchs , whose lives moses describes ; and therefore i conceive this sense i have here given the text more genuine and warrantable . but besides moses unvailed , being christianity it self , the manner of the growth of the true christian is here prefigured . that he is rather taught of god , then of men , he having the spirit of life in him , and needs no man to teach him : for he has the unction in himself , which will teach him all things necessary to life and godliness . ver. . which is repentance from dead works . in this verse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the philosophick cabbala , signified a vapour , but here i translate it a fountain of water , which i am warranted to do by the seventy , who render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; but that water is an embleme of repentance , it is so obvious that i need say nothing of it : john's baptizing with water to repentance , is frequently repeated in the gospels . ver. . and breathes into him the spirit of life . in allusion to this passage of moses in all likelihood is that of the psalmist ; thy hands have made me , and fashioned me , o give me understanding and i shall live ; as if like adam , he were but a statue of earth till god breathed into him the spirit of life and holiness . of the water and of the spirit . the water and the spirit are the two extremes ; the first and the last that makes up the creation of the spiritual adam , or christ , compleated in us , and includes the middle which is blood. first therefore is repentance from what we delighted in before . then the killing of that evil and corrupt life in us , which is resisting to blood , as the apostle speaks . and the epistle of john ch . . v. . what ever is born of god , overcomes the world ; who is he that overcomes the world , but he that believes that jesus christ ( the divine light and life in us ) is the son of god ? and therefore indued with power from on high to overcome all sin and wickednesse in us . this is he that comes by water and blood , by repentance and perseverance till the death of the body of sin , not by repentance only , and dislike of our former life , but by the mortification also of it . then the spirit of truth is awakened in us , and will bear witnesse of whatever is right and true . and according to this manner of testimony is it to be understood especially , that no man can say that jesus christ is the son of god , but by the spirit of god , as the apostle elsewhere affirms . this is the heavenly adam , which is true light and glory to all them that have attain'd to the resurrection of the dead , and into whom god hath breathed the breath of life , without which , we have no right knowledge nor sense of god at all , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; they are th● words of philo upon the place . for how should the soul of man , says he , know god , if he did not inspire her , and take hold of her by his power ? ver. . to the kingdome of heaven . and the end of the doctrine of john , which was repentance , was for this purpose , that men might arrive to that comfortable condition here described ; and therefore it was a motive for them to repent . for though sorrow endure for a night , yet joy will come in the morning . for the new jerusalem is to be built , and god is to pitch his tabernacle amongst men , and to rule by his spirit here upon earth ; which , if i would venture upon an historical cabbala of moses , i should presage would happen in the seventh thousand years , according to the chronology of scripture ; when the world shall be so spiritualized , that the work of salvation shall be finished , and the great sabbath and festival shall be then celebrated in the height : a thousand years are but as one day , saith the apostle peter , and therefore the seventh thousand years may well be the seventh day : wherefore in the end of the sixth thousand years , the kingdomes of the earth will be the second adams , the lord christs , as adam in the sixt day was created the lord of the world , and all the creatures therein ; and this conquest of his will bring in the seventh day of rest , and peace , and joy , upon the face of the whole earth . which presage will seem more credible , when i shall have unfolded unto you out of philo judaeus the mysterie of the number seven ; but before i fall upon that , let me a little prepare your belief , by shewing the truth of the same thing in another figure . adam , seth , enos , cainan , mahalaleel , jared , they died , not enjoying the richness of gods goodness in their bodies . but enoch who was the seventh from adam , he was taken up alive into heaven , and seems to enjoy that great blisse in the body . the world then in the seventh chiliad , will be assumed up into god , snatch'd up by his spirit , inacted by his power . the jerusalem that comes down from heaven , will then in a most glorious and eminent manner flourish upon earth . god will , as i said , pitch his tabernacle amongst men . and for god to be in us , and with us , is as much as for us to be lifted up into god. but to come now to the mysterie of the septenary , or number seven , it is of two kindes , the one is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the septenary within the decade is meerly seven unites ; the other is a seventh number , beginning at an vnite , and holding on in a continued geometrical proportion , till you have gone through seven proportional terms . for the seventh term there is this septenary of the second kinde , whose nature philo fully expresses in these words : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to this sense : for always beginning from an vnite , and holding on in double , or triple , or what proportion you will , the seventh number of this rank is both square and cube , comprehending both kindes as well the corporeal as incorporeal substanc●e ; the incorporeal , according to the superficies which the squares exhibite ; but the corporeal , according to the solid dimensions which are set out by the cubes . as for example ; . or . these are numbers that arise after this manner ; each of them are a seventh from an unite , the one arising from double proportion , the other from triple ; and if the proportion were quadruple , quintuple , or any else , there is the same reason , some other seventh number would arise , which would prove of the same nature with these , they would prove both cubes and squares , that is , corporeal and incorporeal : for such is sixty four , either made by multiplying eight into eight , and so it is a square , or else by multiplying four cubically . for four times four times four is again sixty four , but then it is a cube . and so seven hundred twenty nine , is made either by squaring of twenty seven , or cubically multiplying of nine , for either way will seven hundred twenty nine be made ; and so is both cube and square , corporeal and incorporeal . whereby is intimated , that the world shall not be reduced in the seventh day to a meer spiritual consistency , to an incorporeal condition , but that there shall be a co-habitation of the spirit with flesh , in a mystical or moral sense , and that god will pitch his tent amongst us . then shall be settled everlasting righteousnesse , and rooted in the earth , so long as mankind shall inhabite upon the face thereof . and this truth of the reign of righteousness in this seventh thousand years , is still more clearly set out to us in the septenary within ten. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as philo calls it , the naked number seven : for the parts it consists of are and , which put together make . and these parts be the sides of the first orthogonion in numbers , the very sides that include the right angle thereof . and the orthogonion what a foundation it is of trigonometry , and of measuring the altitudes , latitudes , and longitudes of things every body knows that knows any thing at all in mathematicks . and this prefigures the uprightness of that holy generation , who will stand and walk 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , inclining neither this way , nor that way , but they will approve themselves of an upright and sincere heart . and by this spirit of righteousness will these saints be enabled to finde out the depth , and breadth , and height of the wisdom and goodness of god , as somewhere the apostle himself phras●th it . but then again in the second place , this three and four comprehend also the conjunction of the corporeal and incorporeal nature ; three being the first superficies , and four the first body : and in the seventh thousand years i do verily conceive , that there will be so great union betwixt god and man , that they shall not only partake of his spirit , but that the inhabitants of the aethereal region will openly converse with these of the terrestrial ; and such frequent conversation and ordinary visits of our cordial friends of that other world , will take away all the toil of life , and the fear of death amongst men , they being very chearful and pleasant here in the body , and being well assured they shall be better when they are out of it : for heaven and earth shall then shake hands together , or become as one house , and to die , shall be accounted but to ascend into an higher room . and though this dispensation for the present be but very sparingly set a foot , yet i suppose there may some few have a glimpse of it , concerning whom accomplish'd posterity may happily utter something answerable to that of our saviours concerning abraham , who tasted of christianity before christ himself was come in the flesh ; abraham saw my day , and rejoyced at it . and without all question , that plenitude of happiness that has been reserved for future times , the presage and presensation of it , has in all ages been a very great joy and triumph to all holy men and prophets . the morning light of the sun of righteousnesse . this is very sutable to the text , paradise being said to be placed eastward in eden , and our saviour christ to be the bright morning starre , and the light that lightens every one that comes into the world , though too many are disobedient to the dictates of this light , that so early visits them in their mindes and consciences , but they that follow it , it is their peace and happiness in the conclusion . ver. . which is a sincere obedience to the will of god. the tree of life is very rightly said to be in the midst of the garden , that is , in the midst of the soul of man , and this is the will or desire of man , which is the most inward of all the faculties of his soul , and is as it were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or vital center of the rest , from whence they stream or grow . that therefore is the tree of life if it be touch'd truly with the divine life , and a man be heartily obedient to the will of god. for the whole image of divine perfection will grow from hence , and receives nourishment , strength , and continuance from it . but if this will and desire be broke off from god , and become actuated by the creature , or be a self-will , and a spirit of disobedience , it breeds most deadly fruit , which kills the divine life in us , and puts man into a necessity of dying to that disorder and corruption he has thus contracted . what ever others would insinuate to the contrary . for there is nothing so safe , if a man be heartily sincere , as not to be led by the nose by others ; for we see the sad event of it , in eves listening to the outward suggestions of the serpent . ver. . the four cardinal virtues . it is the exposition of philo. till verse . there is no need of adding any thing more then what has already been said in the defence of the philsophick cabbala . ver. . dead to all righteousnesse and truth . the mortality that adam contracted by his disobedience in the mortal or mystical sense is twofold ; the one a death to righteousness , and it is the sense of philo upon the place , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the death of the soul is the extinction of virtue in her , and the resuscitation of vice ; and he adds , that this must be the death here meant , it being a real punishment indeed to forfeit the life of virtue . the other mortality is a necessity of dying to unrighteousness , if he ever would be happy . both those notions of death , are more frequent in s. pauls epistles , then that i need to give any instance . his more noble and masculine faculties . what the masculine part in man is ▪ philo plainly declares in these words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . in us , saith he , the man is the intellect , the woman the sense of the body . whence you will easily understand , that the masculine faculties are those that are more spiritual and intellectual . ver. . that the whole humane nature may be accomplished with the divine . which is agreeable to that pious ejaculation of the apostle , thess . . and the god of peace sanctifie you wholly , or throughly ; and i pray god your whole spirit , soul and body , may be kept blamelesse , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by the presence or abode of jesus christ , the divine life or heavenly adam in you . this is the most easie and natural sense of that place of scripture , as it will appear to any man , whose minde is as much set on holiness , as hard theories . and it is very agreeable to the mystical sense of the second psalm , where the kingdome of christ reaches to the utmost ends of the earth ; that is , as far as soul and life can animate , so that our very flesh and body is brought under the scepter of christs kingdome . ver. . the figurations of the animal life . that the motions of the minde as they are suggested from the animal life of the body , are set forth by fishes , beasts and birds , i have already made good from the authority of origen . ver. . in a capacity of taking delight in them . for melancholy had so depraved the complexion of his body , that there was no grateful sense of any thing that belong'd to nature and the life of the vehicle . ver. . the greatest part of that paradise a man is capable of upon earth . this is a truth of sense and experience , and is no more to be proved by reason , then that white is white , or black is black. ver. . essential operation of the soul. the very nature of the soul , as it is a soul , is an aptitude of informing or actuating a body ; but that it should be always an organized body , it is but aristotles saying of it , he does not prove it . but for mine own part , i am very prone to think , that the soul is never destitute of some vehicle or other , though plotinus be of another minde , and conceives that the soul at the height is joined with god and nothing else , nakedly lodged in his arms . and i am the more bold to dissent from him in this exaltation of the soul , i being so secure in my own conceit of that other suspected extravagancy of his , in the debasement of them , that at last they become so drowsie and sensless , that they grow up out of the ground in that dull function of life , the efformation of trees and plants . and i am not alone in this liberty of dissenting from plotinus : for besides my own conceit this way , ( for i must confess i have no demonstrative reasons against his opinion ) i am emboldened by the example of ficinus , who is no small admirer of the forenamed author . that which i was about to say , is this ; the informing or actuating of a body being so indispensable and essential an act of the soul , the temper and condition of the body that it thus actuates , cannot but be of mighty consequence unto the soul that is conscious of the plight thereof , and reaps the joy of it or sorrow , by an universal touch and inward sense , springing up into her cognoscence and animadversion . and we may easily imagine of what moment the health and good plight of the body is to the minde that lodges there , if we do but consider the condition of plants , whose bodies we cannot but conceive in a more grateful temper , while they flourish and are sweet and pleasing to the eye , then when they are withered by age or drought , or born down to the earth by immoderate storms of rain . and so it is with the body of man , ( where there is a soul to take notice of its condition ) far better when it is in health by discretion and moderation in diet , and exercise , then when it is either parched up by superstitious melancholy , or slocken and drowned in sensuality and intemperance ; for they are both abaters of the joyes of life , and lessen that plenitude of happiness that man is capable of by his mystical eve , the woman that god has given every one to delight himself with . ver. . so far forth as they are incompetible with the health of the body . this is an undeniable truth , else how could that hold good that the apostle speaks , that godliness is profitable for all things , having the promise of this world , and that which is to come ; when as without the health of the body , there is nothing at all to be enjoyed in this present world ? and certainly god doth not tie us to the law of angels , or superiour creatures , but to precepts sutable to the nature of man. obedience to the precepts of that superiour light ▪ for if the life of the body grow upon us so , as to extinguish or hinder the sense of divine things , our dependence of god , and joyful hope of the life to come ; it is then become disorderly , and is to be castigated and kept down , that it pull not us down into an aversation from all piety , and sink us into an utter oblivion of god and the divine life . ver. . without any shame or blushing . see what has been said upon the philosophick cabbala . chap. iii. a story of a dispute betwixt a prelate and a black-smith , concerning adams eating of the apple . what is meant by the subtilty or deceit of the serpent . that religion wrought to its due height is a very chearful state ; and it is only the halting and hypocrisie of men that generally have put so soure and sad a vizard upon it . , that worldly wisdome , not philosophy , is perstringed in the mysterie of the tree of knowledge of good and evil . the meaning of adams flying after he had found himself naked . adam , the earthly-minded man , according to philo. what is meant by gods clothing adam and eve with hairy coats in the mystical sense . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or the paradise of luxury . that history in scripture is wrote very concisely , and therefore admits of modest and judicious supplements for clearing the sense . what is meant by the cherubim and flaming sword. plato's definition of philosophy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . a more large description of dying to sinne , and of the life of righteousness . that christian religion even as it referres to the external person of christ , is upon no pretence to be annull'd till the conflagration of the world . in this third chapter is the said catastrophe of the story , the fall of adam , and the original of all that misery and calamity that hath befallen mankind since the beginning of the world. of so horrid consequence was it , that our mother eve could no better suppress her longing , but upon the easie perswasion of the serpent , ate the forbidden fruit ; as a famous prelate in france , once very tragically insisted upon the point to his attentive auditory . but it should seem , a certain smith in the church , as bodinus relates , when he had heard from this venerable preacher , that universal mankinde , saving a small handful of christians , were irrevocably laps'd into eternal damnation by adams eating of an apple ; and he having the boldness to argue the matter with the prelate , and receiving no satisfaction from him in his managing the literal sense of the text , ( and his skill it should seem went no further ) the smith at last broke out into these words , tam multas rixas pro re tantilla ineptè excitari ; as if he should have said in plain english , what a deal of doe has there here been about the eating of an apple ? which blasphemous saying , as bodinus writes , had no sooner come to the ears of the court of france , but it became a proverb amongst the courtiers . so dangerous a thing is an ignorant and indiscreet preacher , and a bold , immodest auditour . bodinus in the same place does profess it is his judgement , that the unskilful insisting of our divines upon the literal sense of moses , has bred many hundred thousands of atheists . for which reason , i hope that men that are not very ignorant and humorous , but sincere lovers of god and the divine truth , will receive these my cabbala's with more favour and acceptance , especially this moral one , it being not of too big a sense to stop the mouth of any honest , free , inquisitive christian . but whatever it is , we shall further endevour to make it good in the several passages thereof . ver. . inordinate desire of pleasure . it is philo's , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the serpent is a symbole or representation of pleasure ; which he compares to that creature for three reasons ; first , because a serpent is an animal without feet , and crawls along on the earth upon his belly . secondly , because it is said to feed upon the dust of the earth . thirdly , because it has poisonous teeth that kill those that it bites . and so he assimilates pleasure to it , being a base affection , and bearing it self upon the belly , the seat of lust and intemperance , feeding on earthly things , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but never nourishing her self with that heavenly food , which wisdome offers to the contemplative , by her precepts and discourses . it is much that philo should take no notice of that which is so particularly set down in the text , the subtilty of the serpent , which me thinks is notorious in pleasure , it looking so smoothly and innocently on 't , and insinuating it self very easily into the mindes of men upon that consideration , and so deceiving them ; when as other passions cannot so slily surprise us , they bidding more open warre to the quiet and happiness of mans life , as that judicious poet spencer has well observed in his legend of sir guyon or temperance , cant. . a harder lesson to learn continence in joyous pleasure , then in grievous pain : for sweetness doth allure the weaker sense , so strongly that uneathes it can refrain from that which feeble nature covets fain ; but grief and wrath that be our enemies , and foes of life , she better can restrain : yet virtue vaunts in both her victories , and guyon in them all shews goodly masteries . what a rigid and severe thing , &c. this is the conceit of such , as are either utter strangers to religion , or have not yet arrived to that comfortable result of it , that may be expected . for god takes no delight in the perpetual rack of those souls he came to redeem , but came to redeem us from that pain and torture which the love of our selves , and our untamed lusts , and pride of spirit , makes us obnoxious to ; which men being loth to part with , and not having the heart to let them be struck to the very quick , and pulled up by the roots , the work not accomplished according to the full minde and purpose of god , there are still the seeds of perpetual anxiety , sadness , and inevitable pain . for to be dead , is easement , but to be still dying , is pain ; and it is most ordinarily but the due punishment of halting and hypocrisie . and mens spirits being long sowred thus , and made sad , their profession and behaviour is such , that they fright all inexperienced young men from any tolerable compliance in matters of religion , thinking that when they are once engaged there , they are condemned ad fodinas for ever , and that they can never emerge out of this work and drudgery in those dark caverns , till they die there like the poor americans , inslaved and over-wrought by the merciless spaniard . but verily if we have but the patience to be laid low enough , the same hand that depressed us , will exalt us above all hope and expectation . for if we be sufficiently baptized into the death of christ , we shall assuredly be made partakers of his resurrection to life , and that glorious liberty of the sons of god , according as it is written , if the son make you free , then are you free indeed ; free from sin , and secure from the power of any temptation . but if mortification has not had its perfect work , too mature a return of the sweetness of the animal life , may prove like the countreymans cherishing the snake by the fire side , which he had as he thought taken up dead in the snow , it will move and hisse , and bite , and sting . the strong presages of the manifold corporeal delights , and satisfactions of the flesh , may grow so big and boisterous in the minde , that the soul may deem her self too straitly girt up , and begin to listen to such whispers of the serpent as this ; what a rigid and severe thing is this business of religion ? &c. and account her self if she be not free to every thing , that she is as good as free to nothing . ver. , . but the womanish part in adam . 't is but one and the same soul in man entertaining a dialogue with her self that is set out by these three parts : the serpent , adam , and the woman . and here the soul recollecting her self , cannot but confess , that religion denies her no honest , nor fitting pleasure that is not hazardous to her greater happiness , and bethinks her self in what peril she is of losing the divine life , and due sense of god , if she venture thus promiscuously to follow her own will , and not measure all her actions and purposes by the divine light that for the present is at hand to direct her . ver. . but the serpent , &c. the sense of this verse is , that the eager desire of pleasure had wrought it self so far into the sweetness of the animal life , that it clouded the mans judgement , and made him fondly hope that the being so freely alive to his own will was no prejudice to the will of the spirit , and the life of god which was in him , when as yet notwithstanding the apostle expresly writes , what fellowship is there betwixt righteousness & unrighteousness ? what communion betwixt light and darkness ? what agreement betwixt christ and belial ? and he elsewhere tells us , that christ gave himself for his church , that he might so throughly purge it and sanctifie it , that it should have neither spot nor wrinkle : but that it should be holy and unblameable , a true virgin bride clothed with his divine life and glory . and those men that are so willing to halt betwixt two , the flesh and the spirit , and have house-room enough to entertain them both , ( as if there could be any friendship and communion betwixt them ) let them seriously consider whether this opinion be not the same that deceived adam was of , and let them suspect the same sad event , and acknowledge it to arise from the self-same principle , the inordinate desire of pleasing their own wills , without the allowance of the divine light , and consulting with the will of god. ver. . skill and experience in things . and some men make it no sin , but warrantable knowledge to know the world , and account others fools that are ignorant of that wicked mysterie . for man would be no slave or idiot , but know his own liberty , and gain experience , as he pretends , by the making use of it . but that the accurate exercise of reason in the knowledge of gods marvellous works in nature , or those innocent delightful conclusions in geometry , and arithmetick , and the like ; that these parts of knowledge should be perstringed by moses in this history , it seems to me not to have the least probability in it : for there are so very few in the world , whose mindes are carried any thing seriously to such objects , that it had not been worth the taking notice of . and then again it is plain that the miscarriage is from the affectation of such kinde of knowledge , as the woman , the flowring life of the body , occasioned adam to transgresse in . wherefore it is the fulfilling of the various desires of the flesh , not an high aspire after intellectual contemplations ; for they respect the masculine faculties , not the feminine , that made way to the transgression . wherefore i say , the wisdome that the serpent here promised , was not natural philosophy , or mathematicks , or any of those innocuous and noble accomplishments of the understanding of man , but it was the knowledge of the world , and the wisdome of the flesh . for the life of the body is full of desires , and presages of satisfaction in the obtaining of this or the other external thing , whether it be in honour , riches , or pleasure ; and if they shake off the divine guide within them , they will have it by hook or by crook . and this worldly wisdome is so plausible in the world , and so sweetly relished by the meer natural man , that it were temptation enough for a novice , if it were but to be esteemed wise , to adventure upon such things as would initiate him therein . ver. . but the wisdome of the flesh . the apostle calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which wisdome of the flesh , he saith , is enmity with god. but the free and cautious use of reason , the knowledge of the fabrick of the world , and the course of natural causes , to understand the rudiments of geometry , and the principles of mechanicks , and the like ; what man that is not a fool , or a fanatick , will ever assert that god bears any enmity to these things ? for again , these kind of contemplations are not so properly the knowledg of good and evil , as of truth and falshood , the knowledge of good and evil referring to that experience we gather up in moral or political encounters . but those men that from this text of scripture would perstringe philosophy , and an honest and gerous enquiry into the true knowledge of god in nature , i suspect them partly of ignorance , and partly of a sly and partial kinde of countenancing of those pleasures that beasts have as well as men , and i think in as high a degree , especially baboons and satyres , and such like letcherous animals . and i fear there are no men so subject to such mis-interpretations of scripture , as the boldest religionists , and mock-prophets , who are very full of heat and spirits , and have their imagination too often infected with the fumes of those lower parts , the full sense and pleasure whereof they prefer before all the subtile delights of reason and generous contemplation . but leaving these sanguine-inspired seers , to the sweet deception and gullery of their own corrupted fancy , let us listen and keep close to him that can neither deceive nor be deceived , i mean christ , and his holy apostles ; and now in particular , let us consider that grave and pious monition of s. peter , beloved , i beseech you , as strangers and pilgrims , abstain from fleshly lusts that warre against the soul . wherein , this holy man instructed of god , plainly intimates that the soul in this world is as a traveller in a strange countrey , and that she is journeying on to a condition more sutable to her , then this in the body . whence it follows , that the tender patronizing of those pleasures that are mortal and die with the body , is a badg of a poor , base , degenerate minde , and unacquainted with her own nature and dignity . ver. . how naked now he was , and bare of all strength and power to divine and holy things . this was adams mistake , that he thought he could serve two masters , the will of god , and the dictates of the flesh . but thus he became estranged to the divine life and power , which will not dwell in a body that is subject unto sin ; for the holy spirit of discipline will fly deceit , and remove from thoughts that are without understanding , ( viz. such as are suggested and pursued at randome ) and will not abide when unrighteousnesse cometh in . ver. . could not endure the presence of it . for the divine light now was only a convincer of his miscarriages , but administred nothing of the divine love and power , as it does to them that are obedient and sincere followers of its precepts , and therefore adam could no more endure the presence of it , then sore eyes the sun or candle-light . ver. . persisted and came up closer to him . this divine light is god , as he is manifested in the conscience of man , but his love and power are not fit to be communicated to adam in this dissolute and disobedient condition he is in , but meerly conviction , to bring him to repentance . and after the hurry of his inordinate pleasures and passions , when he was for a time left in the suds , as they call it , this light of conscience did more strictly , and particularly sift and examine him , and he might well wonder with himself that he found himself so much afraid to commune with his own heart . ver. . ingenuously confessed . for he presently found out the reason why he was thus estranged from the divine light , because he found himself naked of that power and good affection he had in divine things before , having lost those by promiscuously following the wilde suggestions of his own inordinate will , as you see in the following verse . wherefore he had no minde to be convinced of any obligation to such things as he felt in himself no power left to perform , nor any inclination unto . ver. . the sad event upon his disobedience . adams conscience resolved all this confusion of minde into his disobedience and following his own will , without any rule or guidance from the will of god. ver. . his rational faculties , and said . like that in the comedian . homo sum , humani nihil à me alienum puto . and so commonly men reason themselves into an allowance of sin , by pretending humane infirmities or natural frailties . ver. . that he kept his feminine faculties in no better order . that 's the foolish and mischievous sophistry amongst men , whereby they impose upon themselves , that because such and such things may be done , and that they are but the suggestions of nature , which is the work of god in the world , that therefore they may do them , how , and in what measure they please ; but here the divine light does not chastise adam for the exercise of his feminine faculties , but that in the exercise of them they were not regulated by an higher and more holy rule , and that he kept them in no more subjection unto the masculine . to which he had nothing to say , but , &c. the meaning is , that adams temptations were very strong , and so accommodate to the vigorous life of the body , that , as he thought , he could not resist . but the will of man assisted by god , as adam's was , if it be sincere , what can it not doe ? ver. . then the divine light began to chastise the serpent . from this verse to the . there seems to be a description of the conscience of a man plainly convincing him of all the ugliness and inconveniencies of those sinful courses he is engaged in , with some hints also of the advantages of the better life , if he converted to it , which is like a present flame kindled in his minde for a time , but the true love of the divine life , and the power of grace being not also communicated unto his soul , and his body being unpurg'd of the filth it has contracted by former evil courses , this flame is presently extinct , and all those monitions and representations of what so nearly concerned him are drowned in oblivion , and he presently settles to his old ill ways again . that it crept basely upon the belly . see what has been said out of philo upon ver . . ver. . but might i once descend so far . this the divine light might be very well said to speak in adam . for his conscience might well re-minde him , how grateful a sense of the harmless joyes of the body he had in his state of obedience and sincerity ; and if the divine light had wrought it self into a more full and universal possession of all his faculties , the regulated joyes of the body , which had been the off-spring of the woman , had so far exceeded the tumultuous pleasures of inordinate desires , that they would like the sun-beams playing upon a fire , extinguish the heat thereof , as is already said in this fifteenth verse . ver. . so that the kindly joy of the health of the body shall be much depraved . the divine light in the conscience of adam might very well say all this , he having had already a good taste of it in all likelihood , having found himself after inordinate satiating his furious desires of pleasure in a dull , languid , nauseating condition , though new recruits spurred him up to new follies . for the moral cabbala does not suppose it was one single mistaken act that brought adam to this confusion of minde , but disobedience at large , and leading a life unguided by the light and law of god. earthly minded adam . philo calls him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the earthly minde , pag. . ver. , , . adams conscience was so awakened by the divine light and reason , and experience so instructed him for the present , that he could easily read his own doom , if he persisted in these courses of disobedience , that he should be prick'd and vex'd in his wilde rangings after inordinate pleasure all the while the earthly mind was his light & guide . but after all this conviction , what way adam would settle in , did not god visit him with an higher pitch of superadvenient grace that would conveigh faith , power , and affection unto him , you see in the verse immediately following . ver. . adam was not sufficiently . for meer conviction of light disjoin'd from faith , power , and affection , may indeed disturb the minde and confound it , but is not able of it self to compose it and settle it to good , in men that have contracted a custome of evil . called her , my life . so soon as this reproof and castigation of the divine light manifested in adams conscience was over , he forthwith falls into the same sense of things , and pursues the same resolutions that he had in designe before , and very feelingly concludes with himself , that be that as true as it will , that his conscience dictated unto him , yet nothing can be more true then this ; that the joy of his body was a necessary solace of life , and therefore he would set up his happiness in the improvement thereof . and so adhering in his affection to it , counted it his very life , and that there was no living at all without it . they are almost the words of philo , speaking of the sense of the body , in which was this corporeal joy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. which corporeal sense the earthly minde in man , properly therefore called adam , when he saw efformed , though it was really the death of the man , yet he called it his life . this is philo's exposition of this present verse . ver. . put hairy coats . the philosophick cabbala , and the text have a marvellous fit and easie congruency in this place . and this moral sense will not seem hard , if you consider such phrases as these in scripture ; but as for his enemies let them be clothed with shame ; and elsewhere , let them be clothed with rebuke and dishonour ; besides other places to that purpose . and to clothe men according to their conditions and quality , what is more ordinary , or more fit and natural ? as those that are fools they ordinarily clothe them in a fools coat . and so adams will and affection being carried so resolvedly to the brutish life , it is not incongruous to conceive that the divine light judging them very brutes , the reproach she gives them is set out in this passage of clothing them with the skins of beasts . the meaning therefore of this verse is , that the divine light in the conscience of adam had another bout with him , and that adam was convinced that he should grow a kinde of a brute , by the courses he meant to follow . and indeed he was content so to be , as a man may well conceive , the pleasure of sin having so weakned all the powers of that higher life in him , that there was little or nothing , especially for the present , able to carry him at all upwards towards heaven and holiness . and of a truth , vile epicurisme , and sensuality will make the soul of man so degenerate and blinde , that he will not only be content to slide into brutish immorality , but please himself in this very opinion that he is a real brute already , an ape , satyre , or baboon , and that the best of men are no better , saving that civilizing of them and industrious education has made them appear in a more refined shape , and long inculcate precepts have been mistaken for connate principles of honesty and natural knowledge , otherwise there be no indispensable grounds of religion and virtue , but what has hapned to be taken up by over-ruling custome . which things , i dare say , are as easily confutable , as any conclusion in mathematicks is demonstrable . but as many as are thus sottish , let them enjoy their own wildeness and ignorance , it is sufficient for a good man that he is conscious unto himself that he is more nobly descended , better bred and born , and more skilfully taught , by the purged faculties of his own minde . ver. . design'd the contrary . the mercy of the almighty is such to poor man , that his weak and dark spirit cannot be always so resolvedly wicked as he is contented to be ; wherefore it is a fond surmise of desperate men , that do all the violence they can to the remainders of that light and principle of religion , and honesty left in them , hoping thereby to come to rest and tranquillity of minde , by laying dead , or quite obliterating all the rules of godliness & morality out of their souls . for it is not in their power so to do , nor have they any reason to promise themselves they are hereby secure from the pangs of conscience . for some passages of providence or other may so awaken them , that they shall be forced to acknowledg their errour and rebellion with unexpressible bitterness and confusion of spirit . and the longer they have run wrong , the more tedious journey they have to return back . wherefore it is more safe to close with that life betime , that when it is attained to , neither deserves nor is obnoxious to any change or death ; i mean when we have arrived to the due measure of it . for this is the natural accomplishment of the soul , all else but rust and dirt that lies upon it . ver. . out of this paradise of luxury . the english translation takes no notice of any more paradises then one , calling it always the garden of eden . but the seventy more favourable to our moral cabbala , that which they call a garden in eden at first , they after name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which may signifie the garden of luxury . but whether there be any force at all in this or no , that supplement i have made in the foregoing verse will make good the sense of our cabbala . and in the very letter and history of the scripture , if a man take notice , he must of necessity make a supply of something or another to pass to what follows with due cohaesion and clearness of sense . so in the very next chapter , where god dooms cain to be a vagabond , and he cryes out that every man that meets him will kill him , according to the concise story of the text ; there was none but adam and eve in the world to meet him , and yet there is a mark set upon him by god as if there had been then several people in the world , into whose hands he might fall , and lose his life by them . and then again at ver . . cain had no sooner got into the land of nod , but he has a wife and a childe by her , and he is forthwith said to build a city , when as there is no mention of any but himself , his wife , and his childe to be the artificers ; but any ingenious reader will easily make to himself fitting supplements , ever supposing due distances of time and right preparations to all that is said to be acted . and so in the story of samson , where he is said to take three hundred foxes , it may be rationally supposed , that countrey was full of such creatures , that he had a competency of time , a sufficient number to help him , and the like . that the history of scripture is very concise , no body can deny ; and therefore where easie , natural , and agreeable supplements will clear the sense , i conceive it is very warrantable to suppose some such supplies , and for a paraphrast , judiciously to interweave them . but now that paradise at first should signifie a state of divine pleasure , and afterward of sensual voluptuousness , it is no more harsh then that adam one while is the spiritual or intellectual man , another while the earthly and carnal . for one and the same natural thing may be a symbole of contrary spiritual mysteries . so a lion and a serpent are figures of christ , as well as of the devil ; and therefore it is not so hard to admit that this garden of eden may emblematize , while adam is discours'd of as innocent and obedient to god , the delights of the spirit ; but after his forsaking god , the pleasures of the flesh ; and consequently , that the fruit of the tree of life in the one , may be perseverance and establishment in the divine life ; in the other , a settlement and fixedness in the brutish and sensual . ver. . the manly faculties of reason and conscience . these i conceive may be understood by the cherubim and flaming sword. for the cherubim bear the image of a man , and reason is a cutting , dividing thing like a sword , the stoicks call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , dividing and distinguishing reason . for reason is nothing but a distinct discernment of the idea's of things , whereby the minde is able to sever what will not sute , and lay together what will. but if any body will like better of philo's interpretation here , of the cherubim and flaming sword , who makes the cherubim to signifie the goodness and power of god ; the flaming sword , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the effectual and operative wisdome or word of god ; it does not at all clash with what we have already set down . for my self also suppose , that god by his son the eternal word works upon the reason and conscience of man : for that word is living and powerful , sharper then any two-edged sword , piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit , and of the joints and marrow , and is the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart , neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight , but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do , heb. . that he could not set up his rest for ever . assuredly a mans heart is not so in his own hand , that he can do himself all the mischief he is contented to do . for we are more gods then our own , and his goodness and power has dominion over us . and therefore let not a man vainly fancy , that by violently running into all enormity of life , and extinguishing all the principles of piety and virtue in him , that he shall be able thus to hide himself from god , and never be re-minded of him again for ever . for though a man may happen thus to forget god for a time , yet he can never forget us , sith all things lie open to his sight . and the power of his ever-living word will easily cut through all that thickness and darkness , which we shrowd our selves in , and wound us so , as to make us look back with shame and sorrow at a time that we least thought of . but that our pain may be the lesse , and our happiness commence the sooner , it will be our wisdome to comply with the divine light betimes ; for the sooner we begin , the work is the easier , and will be the more timely dispatch'd through the power of god working in us . but this i must confess ( and i think my self bound , to bear witness to so true and useful a mysterie wrapt up in this mosaical covering ) that there is no other passage nor return into happiness then by death . whence plato also that had been acquainted with these holy writings , has defined philosophy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the meditation of death , viz. the dying to the lust of the flesh and inordinate desires of the body ; which purgatory if we had once passed through , there would soon spring up that morning joy , the resurrection from the dead , and our arrival to everlasting life and glory . and there is no other way then this that is manifestable either by scripture , reason , or experience . but those that through the grace of god and a vehement thirst after the divine righteousness , have born the crosse till the perfect death of the body of sin , and make it their business to have no more sense nor relish of themselves , or their own particular persons , then if they were not at all , they being thus demolished as to themselves , and turned into a chaos or dark nothingness , as i may so speak , they become thereby fitted for the new creation . and this personal life being thus destroyed , god calls unto them in the dead of the night , when all things are silent about them , awakes them and raises them up , and breathes into them the breath of everlasting life , and ever after actuates them by his own spirit , and takes all the humane faculties unto himself , guiding or allowing all their operations , always holding up the spirit of man so , that he will never sink into sin ; and from henceforth death and sorrow is swallowed up for ever , for the sting of death is sin. but whatever liberty and joy men take to themselves that is not founded in this new life , is false and frivolous , and will end but in sadness , bitterness , and intolerable thraldome . for the corporeal life and sense will so deeply have sunk into the soul , that it will be beyond all measure hard and painfull to dis-intangle her . but as many as have passed the death , have arrived to that life that abides for ever and ever . and this life is pure and immaculate love , and this love is god , as he is communicable unto man , and is the sole life and essence of virtue truly so called ; or rather , as all colours are but the reflexion of the rayes of the sun so all virtue is but this one variously coloured and figured from the diversity of objects and circumstances . but when she playes with ease within her own pure and undisturbed light , she is most lovely and amiable ; and if she step out into zeal , satyrical rebuke , and contestation , it is a condescent and debasement for the present , but the design is , a more enlarged exaltation of her own nature , and the getting more universal foot-hold in other persons , by dislodging her deformed enemy . for the divine love is the love of the divine beauty , and that beauty is the divine life which would gladly insinuate it self , and become one with that particular principle of natural life , the soul of man. and whatever man she has taken hold upon , and won him to her self , she does so actuate and guide , as that whatever he has , she gets the use of , and improves it to her own interest , that is , the advancement of her self . but she observing that her progress and speed is not so fast as she could wish , ( that is , that mankind is not made so fully and so generally happy by her , as she could desire , and as they are capable of ) she raises in a man his anger & indignation against those things that are obstacles and impediments in her way , beating down by solid reason such things as pretend to reason , and such things as are neither the genuine off-spring of the humane faculties , nor the effects of her own union with them , discountenancing them , and deriding them as monsters and mongrel things , they being no accomplishment of the humane nature , nor any gift of the divine . she observing also that mankind is very giddily busie to improve their natural faculties without her , and promise themselves very rare effects of their art and industry , which if they could bring to passe , would be in the end but a scourge and plague to them , and make them more desperately bold , sensual , atheistical , and wicked , ( for no fire but that of gods spirit in a man can clear up the true knowledge of himself unto us ) she therefore taketh courage ( though she see her self slighted , or unknown ) and deservedly magnifies her self above all the effects of art and humane industry , and boldly tells the world , what petty and poor things they are if compared unto her . nor doth she at all stick to pour out her scorn and derision unto the full upon those garish effects of fanatical fancy , where melancholy dictates strange and uncouth dreams , out of a dark hole , like the whispers of the heathen oracles . for it is not only an injury to her self , that such antick phantasmes are preferred before the pure simplicity of her own beauty , but a great mischief to her darling the soul of man , that he should forsake those faculties she has a minde to sanctifie and take into her self , and should give himself up to meer inconsiderate imaginations , and casual impresses , chusing them for his guide , because they are strongest , not truest , and he will not so much as examine them . such like as these and several other occasions there are , that oftentimes figure the divine life in good men , and sharpen it into an high degree of zeal and anger . but whom in wrath she then wounds , she pities , as being an affectionate lover of universal mankind , though an unreconcileable disliker of their vices . i have now gone through my threefold cabbala , which i hope all sincere and judicious christians will entertain with unprejudic'd candour and kinde acceptance . for as i have lively set out the mysteries of the holy and precious life of a christian , even in the mosaical letter , so i have carefully and on purpose cleared and asserted the grand essential principles of christianity it self , as it is a particular religion , avoiding that rock of scandal , that some who are taken for no small lights in the christian world have cast before men , who attenuate all so into allegories , that they leave the very fundamentals of religion suspected , especially themselves not vouchsafing to take notice , that there is any such thing as the person of christ now existent , much lesse that he is a mediatour with god for us , or that he was a sacrifice for sin , when he hung at jerusalem upon the crosse , or that there shall be again any appearance of him in the heavens , as it was promised by the two angels to his apostles that saw him ascend ; or that there is any life to come , after the dissolution of the natural body , though our saviour christ says expresly , that after the resurrection they neither marry , nor are given in marriage , but are like the angels of god. but to be so spiritual as to interpret this of a mysterious resurrection of a man in this life , is in effect to be so truly carnal , as to insinuate there is no such thing at all as the life to come , and to adde to sadducisme , epicurisme also or worse , that is , a religious liberty of silling one anothers houses with brats of the adulterous bed , under pretence that they are now risen to that state that they may without blame commit that , which in other mortals is down-right adultery . such unlawful sporting with the letter as this , is to me no sign of a spiritual man , but of one at least indiscreet and light minded , more grosse in my conceit then hymeneus and philetas , who yet affirmed that the resurrection was past , and so allegorized away the faith of the people . for mine own part i cannot admire any mans fancies , but only his reason , modesty , discretion and miracles , the main thing being presupposed ( which yet is the birth-right of the meanest christian ) to be truly and sincerely pious . but if his imagination grow rampant , and he aspire to appear some strange thing in the world , such as was never yet heard of , that man seems to me thereby plainly to bewray his own carnality and ignorance . for there is no better truths then what are plainly set down in the scripture already , and the best , the plainest of all . so that if any one will step out to be so venerable an instructer of the world , that no man may appear to have said any thing like unto him either in his own age , or foregoing generations ; verily i am so blunt a fool as to make bold to pronounce , that i suspect the party not a little season'd with spiritual pride and melancholy : for god be thanked , the gospel is so plain a rule of life and belief to the sincere and obedient soul , that no man can adde any thing to it . but then for comparison of persons , what dotage is it for any man , because he can read the common alphabet of honesty and a pious life , in the history of the old and new testament , finely allegorizing , as is conceiv'd , those external transactions to a mysterious application of what concerns the inward man , to either place himself , or for others to place him in the same level with jesus christ the son of god , the saviour of men , and prince of the highest angelical orders , who rose out of the grave by the omnipotent hand of his father , and was seen to ascend into heaven , by his apostles that gazed upon him as he passed through the clouds , and whom all true christians expect visibly to appear there again and re-visit the world according to the promise . now it seems to me a very unreasonable and rash thing , if not impious and blasphemous , to acknowledge any man whatsoever comparable to so sacred a person as our saviour christ every way approved himself , and was approved by a voice from heaven , saying , this is my beloved son , hear him . if any man therefore having none of these testimonies from above , nor being able to do any thing more then other men , shall be so unmannerly as to place himself in the same order and rank with christ the son of god , because he has got some fine fancies and phrases , and special and peculiar interpretations of scripture , which he will have immediately suggested from the spirit ; i cannot forbear again to pronounce , that this man is overtaken with an high degree of either pride or madness , and if he can perswade any others to look upon him as so sacred a prophet , that it must be in them at least inadvertency or ignorance ; nay , i think i shall not say amisse if i attribute their mistake to a kinde of pride also . for pride affects nothing more then singularity ; and therefore undervaluing the plain simplicity of ordinary christianity , such as at first sight is held forth in the gospel of christ , they think it no small privilege to have a prophet of their own ; especially they getting this advantage thereby , that they can very presently , as they fancy , censure and discern the truth or falshood of all that venture to speak out of the rode of their own sect ; as if every body were bound to conne their lessons according to their book . and it is a fine thing to become so accurately wise at so cheap a rate , and discover who is spiritual , or who is the carnal , or meer moral man. this is indeed the folly of all sects , and there is no way better that i know , to be freed from such inveiglements , then by earnestly endevouring after that which they all pretend to , and to become truly more holy and sincere then other men ; for the throughly purified man is certainly delivered from all these follies . these things i could not forbear to speak in zeal to the honour of my saviour , and the good and safety of his church . for if men once get a trick to call the world christian , where the death of christ on the crosse at jerusalem is not acknowledged a sacrifice for sin , nor himself now in his humane person a mediatour with god the father , and the head of his church militant and triumphant ; nor that there is any eternal life nor resurrection , but that in the moral or mystical sense : assuredly this will prove the most dangerous way imaginable , quite to take away that in time , which is most properly called christian religion , out of the world , and to leave meerly the name thereof behinde . but a religion so manifestly established by god in a most miraculous manner , and being so perfect , that the wit of man cannot imagine any thing more compleat , and better fitted for winning souls to god : it can be nothing but giddiness or light-mindedness , to think that this religion can be ever superannuated in the world , but that it shall last till christs corporeal appearance in the clouds . for there is no reason at all that the holy ghost should be thought to come in the flesh of some particular man , no more then god the father did under the law. for what can he tell us more or better , then christ already has told us ; or what himself may tell us without any personal shape ? and there is no prophecie of any such thing , but onely of that which is better , that christ will procure for all those that are his faithful and obedient followers , the spirit of truth and righteousnesse , and indue them with the divine life , and that it shall so at length come to pass , that justice , peace , and equity shall more universally and fully flourish in the world , then ever yet they have done . and that faith in god , and of the life to come shall be more vigorously sealed upon the hearts of men ; and that there shall be a neerer union and conjunction betwixt the humane and divine nature in us , then ever , and more frequent and sensible commerce betwixt the inhabitants of the aethereal and terrestrial region , according as i have already declared concerning the seventh day in this defence of the moral cabbala . but in the mean time though that full sabbatisme be so far off , yet i doubt not but there have been and are very sweet and joyful praelibations of it , in sundry persons , which quickens their hopes and desires of the compleatment thereof , and divine providence is not idle , all things working towards this last catastraphe ; and the heads of sects themselves , though i never saw any yet that my light and judgement could pronounce infallible and perfect , ( as i think there never will be any till christ himself come again , who will appear in no sectarian way , for himself hath given us an intimation , that if any one say , loe here is christ , or there is christ , believe it not ) yet such is the grosse ignorance or hypocrisie of ordinary carnal churches ( as they call them ) that some heads of sects , i say , have spoken very true and weighty things against them , very lively setting them out & depainting them in their own colors , insomuch that they will be able , not only to turn from them the affections of all plain hearted men , that are fast friends to the eternal righteousness of god , and prefer that before the most specious devices of arbitrarious superstition , but also to raise their anger and indignation against them . but it does not presently follow , that because a man can truly discover the gross faults & falsities that are in another , that therefore he is utterly blameless himself , and not at all imposed upon by his natural complexion , nor speaks any thing that is false , nor omits any thing that is both true and necessary . but be these sects what they will be , the grand churches themselves are so naked and obnoxious , that unlesse they cast away from them their hypocrisie , pride , and covetousnesse , they will in all likelihood raise such storms in all christendome , that in processe of time , not onely ecclesiastical but civil power it self will be involved in those ruines , and christ alone will be exalted in that day . for before he deliver up the kingdome to his father , he is to put down all rule , and all authority and power ; for he must reign till he have put all his enemies under his feet ; the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death : which as i have already signified unto you , though he be now the king of terrours , will in that great festival and sabbatisme , by reason of so sensible and palpable union betwixt the heavenly and earthly nature , be but a pleasant passage into an higher room , or to use that more mysterious expression of the rabbins concerning moses , in whose writings this sabbatisme is adumbrated , god will draw up a mans soul to himself by an amorous kisse ; for such was the death of that holy man moses , who is said to have died in moab 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the kisses and embracements of god. this shall be the condition of the church of christ for many hundred years ; till the wheel of providence driving on further , and the stage of things drawing on to their last period , men shall not onely be freed from the fear and pain of death , but there shall be no capacity of dying at all . for then shall the day of the lord come , wherein the heavens shall passe away with a noise , and the elements melt with fervent heat , and the earth with all the things in it shall be burnt up . thus christ having done vengeance upon the obstinately wicked and disobedient , and fully triumphed over all his enemies , he will give up his kingdome to his father , whose vicegerent hitherto he hath been in the affairs of both men and angels . but till then whosoever by pretending to be more spiritual and mystical then other men , would smother those essential principles of the christian religion , that have reference to the external person of christ , let him phrase it as well as he will , or speak as magnificently of himself as he can , we are never to let go the plain and warrantable faith of the word , for ungrounded fancies and fine sayings . wherefore let every man seek god apart , and search out the truth in the holy scripture , preparing himself for a right understanding thereof , by stedfastly and sincerely practising such things as are plainly and uncontrovertedly contained therein , and expect illumination according to the best communication thereof , that is , answerably to our own faculties , otherwise if we bid all reason , and history , and humane helps , and acquisitions quite adiew , the world will never be rid of religious lunacies and fancies . finis . an account of what is contained in the prefaces and chapters of this book . in the preface to the reader . what is meant by the tearm cabbala , and how warrantably the literal exposition of the text may be so called . that dispensable speculations are best propounded in a sceptical manner . a clear description of the nature and digniety of reason , and what the divine logos is . the general probabilities of the truth of this present cabbala . the designe of the author in publishing of it . the literal cabbala . chap. i. the earth at first a deep miry abysse , covered over with waters , over which was a fierce wind , and through all darknesse . day made at first without a sun. the earth a floor , the heavens a transparent canopy , or strong tent over it , to keep off the upper waters or blew conspicuous sea from drowning the world . why this tent or canopy was not said to be good . the lower waters commanded into one place . herbs , flowers , and fruits of trees , before either sun or seasons of the year to ripen them . the sun created to and added the day , as a peculiar ornament thereof , as the moon and stars to the night . the creation of fish and fowl. the creation of beasts and creeping things . man created in the very shape and figure of god , but yet so , that there were made females as well as males . how man came to be lord over the rest of living creatures . how it came to pass that man feeds on the better sort of the fruits of the earth , and the beasts on the worse . p. chap. ii. the original of the jewish sabbaths , from gods resting himself from his six days labours . herbs and plants before either rain , gardning , or husbandry , and the reason why it was so . adam made of the dust of the ground , and his soul breathed in at his nosthrils . the planting of paradise . a wonderful tree there , that would continue youth , and make a man immortal upon earth : another strange tree , viz. the tree of knowledge of good and evil . the rivers of paradise , phasis , gihon , tigris , euphrates . the high commendation of matrimony . adam gives names to all kinde of creatures , except fishes . woman is made of a rib of adam , a deep sleep falling upon him , his minde then also being in a trance . the first institution of marriage . chap. iii. a subtile serpent in paradise , indued with both reason , and the power of speech , deceives the woman . the dialogue betwixt the woman and the serpent . how the shame of nakednesse came into the world . god walks in the garden , and calls to adam . the dialogue betwixt adam and god. the reasons why serpents want feet , and creep upon the ground . the reason of the antipathy betwixt men and serpents . as also of womens pangs in childe-bearing , and of their being bound in subjection to their husbands . also of the barrennesse of the earth , and of mans toil and drudgery . god teacheth adam and eve the use of leathern clothing . paradise haunted with apparitions : adam frighted from daring to taste of the tree of life , whence his posterity became mortal to this very day . the philosophick cabbala . chap. i. the world of life or forms , and the potentiality of the visible vniverse created by the tri-une god , and referr'd to a monad or unite . the vniversal immense matter of the visible world created out of nothing , and referr'd to the number two. why it was not said of this matter that it was good . the ordering of an earth or planet for making it conveniently habitable , referr'd to the number three . the immense aethereal matter , or heaven , contriv'd into suns or planets , as well primary as secondary , viz. as well earths as moons , and referr'd to the number four. the replenishing of an earth with fish and fowl , referr'd to the number five . the creation of beasts and cattel , but more chiefly of man himself , referr'd to the number six . chap. ii. gods full and absolute rest from creating any thing of anew , adumbrated by the number seven . suns and planets not only the furniture , but effects of the ethereal matter or heaven . the manner of man and other animals rising out of the earth by the power of god in nature . how it was with adam before he descended into flesh , and became a terrestrial animal . that the four cardinal virtues were in adam in his ethereal or paradisiacal condition . adam in paradise forbidden to taste or relish his own will , under pain of descending into the region of death . the masculine and feminine faculties in adam . the great pleasure and solace of the feminine faculties . the masculine faculties laid asleep , the feminine appear and act , viz. the grateful sense of the life of the vehicle . that this sense and joy of the life of the vehicle is in it self without either blame or shame . pag. chap. iii. satan tempts adam , taking advantage upon the invigoration of the life of his vehicle . the dialogue betwixt adam and satan . the masculine faculties in adam swayed by the feminine ; assent to sin against god. adam excuses the use of that wilde liberty he gave himself , discerning the plastick power somewhat awakened in him . a dispute betwixt adam and the divine light , arraigning him at the tribunal of his own conscience . satan strucken down into the lower regions of the air. a prophecy of the incarnation of the soul of the messias , and of his triumph over the head and highest powers of the rebellious angels . a decree of god to sowre and disturb all the pleasures and contentments of the terrestrial life . adam again excuses his fall , from the usefulnesse of his presence and government upon earth . adam is fully incorporated into flesh , and appears in the true shape of a terrestrial animal . that immortality is incompetible to the earthly adam , nor can his soul reach it , till she return into her ethereal vehicle . the moral cabbala . chap. i. man a microcosme or little world , in whom there are two principles , spirit and flesh . the earthly or fleshly nature appears first . the light of conscience unlistned to . the spirit of savory and affectionate discernment betwixt good and evil . the inordinate desires of the flesh driven aside and limited . hereupon the plants of righteousnesse bear fruit and flourish . the hearty and sincere love of god , and a mans neighbor , is as the sun in the soul of man. notionality and opinions the weak and faint light of the dispersed stars . those that walk in sincere love , walk in the day : they that are guided by notionality , travel in the night . the natural concupiscible brings forth by the command of god , and is corrected by devotion . the irascible also brings forth . christ the image of god is created , being a perfect ruler over all the motions of the irascible and concupiscible . the food of the divine life . the food of the animal life . the divine wisdome approves of whatsoever is simply natural , as good . chap. ii. the true sabbatisme of the sons of god. a description of men taught by god. the mysterie of that adam that comes by water and the spirit . obedience the tree of life : disobedience the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . the rivers of paradise ; the four cardinal virtues in the soul of man. the life of righteousnesse lost by disobedience . the meer contemplative and spiritual man sees the motions of the animal life , and rigidly enough censures them . that it is incompetible to man perpetually to dwell in spiritual contemplations . that upon the slaking of those , the kindly joy of the life of the body springs out , which is our eve. that this kindly joy of the body is more grateful to man in innocency , then any thing else whatsoever . nor is man mistaken in his judgement thereof . chap. iii. adam is tempted by inordinate pleasure from the springing up of the joy of the invigorated life of his body . a dialogue or dispute in the mind of adam betwixt the inordinate desire of pleasure , and the natural joy of the body . the will of adam is drawn away to assent to inordinate pleasure . adam having transgressed , is impatient of the presence of the divine light. a long conflict of conscience , or dispute betwixt adams earthly minde , and the divine light , examining him , and setting before him both his present and future condition , if he persisted in rebellion . he adheres to the joy of his body , without reason or measure , notwithstanding all the castigations and monitions of the divine light. the divine light takes leave of adam therefore for the present , with deserved scorn and reproach . the doom of the eternal god concerning laps'd man , that will not suffer them to settle in wickednesse , according to their own depraved wills and desires . the contents of the defence of the threefold cabbala . in the introduction to the defence . diodorus his mistake concerning moses , and other law-givers , that have professed themselves to have received their laws from either god or some good angel . reasons why moses began his history with the creation of the world . the sun and moon the same with the aegyptians osiris and isis , and how they came to be worshipped for gods. the apotheosis of mortal men , such as bacchus and ceres , how it first came into the world . that the letter of the scripture speaks ordinarily in philosophical things according to the sense and imagination of the vulgar . that there is a philosophical sense that lies hid in the letter of the three first chapters of genesis . that there is a moral or mystical sense , not only in these three chapters , but in several other places of the scripture . the contents of the defence of the literal cabbala . chap. i. the genuine sense of in the beginning . the difference of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neglected by the seventy , who translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the ground of their mistake discovered , who conceive moses to intimate that the matter is uncreated . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no more then ventus magnus . that the first darknesse was not properly night . why the seventy translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 firmamentum , and that it is in allusion to a firmly pitched tent. that the sensible effects of the sun invited the heathen to idolatry , and that their oracles taught them to call him by the name of jao . that the prophet jeremy divides the day from the sun , speaking according to the vulgar capacity . the reason why the stars appear on this side the upper caeruleous sea. the opinion of the anthropomorphites , and of what great consequence it is for the vulgar to imagine god in the shape of a man. aristophanes his story in plato of men and womens growing together at first , as if they made both but one animal . chap. ii. the notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answerable to the breathing of adams soul into his nosthrils . the exact situation of paradise . that gihon is part of euphrates ; pison , phasis , or phasi-tigris . that the madianites are called aethiopians . that paradise was seated about mesopotamia , argued by six reasons . that it was more particularly seated where now apamia stands in ptolemee's maps . the prudence of moses in the commendation of matrimony . why adam is not recorded to have given names to the fishes . abraham ben ezra's conceit of the names of adam and eve , as they are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . moses his wise anthypophora concerning the natural shame of nakednesse . chap. iii. how much it saves the credit of our first parents , that the serpent was found the prime author of the transgression . that according to s. basil all the living creatures of paradise could speak : undeniable reasons that the serpent could , according to the literal cabbala . the opinion of the anthropomorphites true , according to the literal cabbala . that the serpent went upright before the fall , was the opinion of s. basil . a story of the easie delivery of a certain poor woman of liguria . that the general calamities that lie upon mankinde , came by the transgression of a positive law , how well accommodate it is to the scope of moses . that paradise was not the whole earth . the apparitions in paradise called by theodoret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the defence of the philosophick cabbala . chap. i. why heaven and light are both made symbols of the same thing , viz. the world of life . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimate a trinity . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a title of the eternal wisdome the son of god , who is called also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well in philo as the new testament . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the holy ghost . the fit agreement of plato's triad with the trinity of the present cabbala . the pythagorick names or nature of a monad or unite applyed to the first days work . what are the upper waters : and that souls that descend 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are the naides or water nymphes in porphyrius . that matter of it self is unmoveable . r. bechai his notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 very happily explained out of des cartes his philosophy . that vniversal matter is the second days creation , fully made good by the names and property of the number two. the nature of the third days work set off by the number three . that the most learned do agree that the creation was perfected at once . the notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 strangely agreeing with the most notorious conclusions of the cartesian philosophy . that the corporeal world was universally erected into form and motion on the fourth day , is most notably confirmed by the titles and propertie of the number four. the true meanning of the pythagorick oath , wherein they swore by him that taught them the mysterie of the tetractys . that the tetractys was a symbole of the whole philosophick cabbala , that lay couched under the text of moses . why fish and fowl created in the same day . why living creatures were said to be made in the fift and sixt days . and why the whole creation was comprehended within the number six . , chap. ii. the number seven a fit symbole of the sabbath , or rest of god. of adams rising out of the ground , as other creatures did . that pison is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and denotes prudence . the mystical meaning of havilah . that gihon is the same that nilus , sihor , or siris , and that pison is ganges . the justice of the aethiopians . that gihon is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and denotes that virtue . as hiddekel , fortitude . that those expressions of the souls sleep , and death in the body , so frequent amongst the platonists , were borrowed from the mosaical cabbala . fallen angels assimilated to the beasts of the field . the meaning of those platonical phrases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the like . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in platonisme is the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in moses , that signifies angels as well as god. that there are three principles in man , according to plato's school ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that this last is eve. chap. iii. the serpent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in pherecydes syrus . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 names of spirits haunting fields and and desolate places . the right notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that satan upon his tempting adam , was cast down lower towards the earth , with all his accomplices . plato's prophecie of christ . the reasonablenesse of divine providence in exalting christ above the highest angels . that adams descension into his terrestrial body , was a kind of death . how incongruous it is to the divine goodnesse , sarcastically to insult over frail man fallen into tragical misery . that it is a great mercy of god that we are not immortal upon earth . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are all one . a summary representation of the strength of the whole philosophick cabbala . pythagoras deemed the son of apollo , that he was acquainted with the cabbala of moses : that he did miracles ; as also abaris , empedocles , and epimenides , being instructed by him . plato also deemed the son of apollo . socrates his dream concerning him . that he was learned in the mosaical cabbala . the miraculous power of plotinus his soul. cartesius compared with bezaliel and aholiab , and whether he was inspired or no. the cabbalists apology . the defence of the moral cabbala . chap. i. what is meant by moral , explained out of philo. that the light in the first day improv'd to the height , is adam , in the sixt , christ , according to the spirit . in what sense we our selves may be said to do what god does in us . why 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are rendred ignorance and inquiry . plato's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the pythagoreans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , applyed to the fourth days progresse . that virtue is not an extirpation , but regulation of the passions , according to the minde of the pythagoreans . plotinus his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , applyed to the sixt days progresse . what the image of god is , plainly set down out of s. paul and plato . the divine principle in us , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , out of plotinus . the distinction of the heavenly and earthly man , out of philo. the imposture of still and fixed melancholy , and that it is not the true divine rest , and precious sabbath of the soul. a compendious rehearsal of the whole allegory of the six days creation . p. chap. ii. the full sense of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that keeps men from entring into the true sabbath . the great necessity of distinguishing the innocent motions of nature from the suggestions of sin. that the growth of a true christian indeed doth not adaequately depend upon the lips of the priest . the meaning of this is he that comes by water and blood. the meaning of repent , for the kingdome of heaven is at hand . the seventh thousand years , the great sabbatism of the church of god. that there will be then frequent converse betwixt men and angels . the tree of life , how fitly in the mystical sense , said to be in the midst of the garden . a twofold death contracted by adams disobedience . the masculine and feminine faculties in man what they are . actuating a body , an essential operation of the soul ; and the reason of that so joyful appearance of eve to the humane nature . , chap. iii. a story of a dispute betwixt a prelate and a black-smith , concerning adams eating of the apple . what is meant by the subtilty or deceit of the serpent . that religion wrought to its due height is a very chearful state ; and it is only the halting and hypocrisie of men that generally have put so soure and sad a vizard upon it . , that worldly wisdome , not philosophy , is perstringed in the mysterie of the tree of knowledge of good and evil . the meaning of adams flying after he had found himself naked . adam , the earthly-minded man , according to philo. what is meant by gods clothing adam and eve with hairy coats in the mystical sense . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or the paradise of luxury . that history in scripture is wrote very concisely , and therefore admits of modest and judicious supplements for clearing the sense . what is meant by the cherubim and flaming sword. plato's definition of philosophy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . a more large description of dying to sinne , and of the life of righteousness . that christian religion even as it referres to the external person of christ , is upon no pretence to be annull'd till the conflagration of the world . errata . pag. . lin . . read sacred . p. ▪ l. . r. sensus . p. . l. . r. wilde . p. . l. . r. goodly . p. . l. . r. run . p. . l. . r. generous . finis . an appendix to the late antidote against idolatry wherein the true and adequate notion or definition of idolatry is proposed. most instances of idolatry in the roman church thereby examined. sundry uses in the church of england cleared. with some serious monitions touching spiritual idolatry thereunto annexed. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) an appendix to the late antidote against idolatry wherein the true and adequate notion or definition of idolatry is proposed. most instances of idolatry in the roman church thereby examined. sundry uses in the church of england cleared. with some serious monitions touching spiritual idolatry thereunto annexed. more, henry, - . 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conversion an appendix to the late antidote against idolatry . wherein the true and adequate notion or definition of idolatry is proposed . most instances of idolatry in the roman church thereby examined . sundry uses in the church of england cleared . with some serious monitions touching spiritual idolatry thereunto annexed . london , printed by i. r. for walter kettilby , at the sign of the bishops-head in st. pauls church-yard , . reader , i shall not wonder if thou be at a loss , what to impute this my so sudden appearing in publick again upon the same subject , for i must confess , i my self am in some sort at a loss what to impute it to . whether to the excess of my zeal in a cause of so great importance , or to my impatience to be freed from these polemical engagements , which are not so suitable to my genius . but so far as i know my own meaning it is both . and therefore having since my last by further converse with either books or men , discovered , as i conceive , the utmost that can be said touching the point betwixt me and my antagonist , for the more timely assisting so weighty a truth , and for the freeing my self from any future trouble , i have here aforehand obviated whatever i can suspect he may return as material , in answer to my reply . this it may be , may save us both any further labour , at least it will my self . for i profess my self to have neither hope nor ability of satisfying others by any other evidences , than by which i find my self so fully and clearly satisfied . that i have vindicated some uses in our own church from all suspicions of idolatry , is but what i owe to her , as a professed member of her body , and to the honour and memory of our pious and judicious reformers . that i have annexed some few monitions touching spiritual idolatry , is for the rescuing my self also from the imputation of an over bigotical zeal against the external or ritual . for i am abundantly aware how little the avoyding the outward or ritual idolatry will avail to salvation unless we also seriously endeavour to purify our selves from the inward or spiritual , without which purity no man shall see god. but in pretence of cleansing our selves from the inward , to make nothing of the outward , is the fruit of that false spirit that appeared in the gnosticks of old , and has expresly showed it self in these latter times , amongst some high flown enthusiasts , who have had the boldness to declare that there is no such thing as external idolatry . which is spoken with as much soundness of truth , as if they should declare , that there is no such thing neither as outward murder , adultery , perjurie , and blasphemie . but our blessed saviour , that infallible example of life , has taught us a better lesson of fulfilling all righteousness . and they that will be externally wicked , what have they but their own vain boast to witness their integrity ? that god would deliver thee and my self and all men , from all manner of hypocrisie , that we may injoy god in the simplicity of heart and a good conscience , to our present and everlasting comfort , is the earnest desire of thine in the love of the truth , h. more . errata sic corrige . page . line . for chance , r. shame . p. . l. . for mind , r. mine , p . l. . r. fouly . p. . l. . r. real . p , . l. . r. it is . p. . l. . r. be , commensurate . p. . l. . for mind r. mine . p. . l. . r. bis bounty . p. . l. . for dispute , r. dispell . p. . l. . for a motion , r. admotion . p. . l. . r. at the name . p. . .l . r. live we as . p. . l. penult . for they r. these . p. . l. . r. john . . . an appendix to the late antidote against idolatry . i. a brief account of his proceeding in his antidote against idolatry . i have already , in my antidote against idolatry , with sufficient useful evidence and certainty discovered what is and ought to be held to be idolatry amongst christians ; but in such a way , that i only exhibited several cases or instances of idolatry , and proved them sometimes , rather by testimony either divine , or the common suffrage of men , i mean such as are christians , than from the intrinsick general notion of idolatry , not at all intended to be proposed in that treatise ; that method i then took , being sufficient for the use and purpose then aimed at , which was to convince the world by plain and obvious arguments , what things professed and practised in the roman church might justly be esteemed idolatrous . ii. the definition of idolatry with the usefulness thereof . but now for the greater satisfaction of the more curious and philosophical genius , out of those several instances in the abovesaid treatise , i shall draw one common notion or definition , both true and adaequate , which will be a certain measure whereby we may expeditely understand whatever is truly idolatry , and what not . for , it is plain , that to whatsoever the definition belongs , the thing defined belongs to the same , and to whatsoever the definition does not belong , the thing defined cannot belong to it . of so great importance is it therefore to propose a true and adaequate definition of idolatry . which i conceive is this ; cultus superstitiosus quo peculiaritates divinae violantur . idolatry is a kind of superstitious worship , whereby the peculiarities of the godhead are violated . there is no kind nor act of idolatry which will not fall under this general notion , nor any kind or act of ritual worship that falls under it , that is not idolatry , as will more plainly appear after our explication thereof . iii. the explication of the definition . as for the term defined , idolatry , there is no man so unskilfull , ( though according to the notation of the word , it signifies properly the worship of an image or idol , ) as to think that to be the adaequate sense of idolatry , since they that worship the sun are acknowledged to be idolaters , though they worship him without an image ; and therefore that scruple passed over , nothing hinders but that the notion of idolatry may be as large , as the proposed definition , which is , superstitious worship whereby the peculiarities of the godhead are violated . i add superstitious to worship , that the genus may be the more immediate ; and by superstitious , i understand pseudoreligious , if i may so speak , that is false , or depraved religious worship : and i name no object , because i would not restrain it to any one kind of object , but be the pretence of worshipping god , saints , angels , or what ever object else , when it is in such a way , as that the divine peculiarities are violated , that is idolatry according to this definition . superstitious worship therefore is the genus of the definition , what remains , the difference , viz whereby the peculiarities of the godhead are violated . i am fain to make use of this more general and abstract term , peculiarities , that it may comprehend whatever things are peculiar to god , whether his attributes or rites chosen and appropriate to his own worship , which his own choice is enough to make peculiar to him , though closely look't into , they may have also a natural significancy of those excellencies that are proper to the godhead . such are the having a temple and a symbolical presence erected for invocation and worship , praying before that symbolical presence , having incense burnt before it , and lamps or candles light up , &c. these and the like were the modes that god made choice of , to signify the honour and worship due to himself , and therefore to use them to any else , is a violation of his peculiarities . for by the violation of the peculiarities of the godhead , i understand any kind of prophanation or vilification of them , either by obscuring or lessening of them in himself , or else by communicating of them to others . as to set up such a symbolical presence to be worshipped towards , as pretends to represent god , who is irrepresentable , as being infinite in majesty and greatness , this were to lessen , obscure , or indeed to abolish the infinite glorious majesty of god , which is peculiar to him , and so to make an idol of him , and therefore were gross idolatry . but to erect a symbolical presence to a creature , that is idolatry upon the other score , it implying omnipresence or omnipercipience to be in that creature . iv. what a symbolical presence is . for , a symbolical presence is nothing else but some figure or imagerie , instituted or erected for the invoking of supplicating , or any way religiously worshipping that invisible power or spirit for whom it is erected or made . so that in brief , all idolatry is such as either turns god into an idol , or turns an idol , that is , the creature we give religious worship to , in some respect , into a god , in giveing it something which is peculiar unto him . v. that that religious worship of daemons which was truly idolatry , was really divine . whence for the utter taking away all litigiousness about terms , that religious worship which misapplyed or given to any creature constitutes idolatry , may rightly and truly be also called divine ; and is so , if it make the act idolatry : for that implyes that it violates some peculiarity of the godhead , and attributes it to the creature , which is , as to that respect , to make a god of it . and such divine worship as this was , that which the heathens gave to their daemons , though they took it to be only religious , and such as did not appertain peculiarly to god himself ; as is particularly observable in the platonists , whom yet neither st. austin , nor any other serious christian will stick to conclude to have been idolaters in their daemon-worship . and therefore , if we will but use just weights and measures , whatever christians do the like things to saints and angels , pretending it is not divine worship , but an inferiour religious worship , they must be also judged to commit idolatry . vi. the way of convincing the romanists of idolatry in this treatise . and this was one way of convincing the roman church of their idolatries . but laying aside all these more exteriour and obvious arguments , we will deal now more precisely and philosophically , and argue only from the most intrinsecal and essential topick in all logick , and examine the roman idolatries by the inmost notion and definition of the thing , shewing that even that which seems to be only by divine declaration idolatry , is also , if more rationally considered , idolatry according to the proposed definition . vii . that the forbidding to worship god by an image , is the natural sense of the second commandement . as the worshipping god by an image , is plainly declared idolatry by god himself in the second commandement , thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image , &c. thou shalt not bow down to it , nor worship it , &c. the bowing down to and worshipping a graven image , though in pretence to worship god thereby , is plainly prohibited by this commandement . for the prohibition of worshipping any other god , is sufficiently evident in the first commandement , thou shalt have no other gods but me . whereby he pronounces that he alone will be worshipped : whence it naturally follows , that this next precept is at least chiefly about the purity and congruity of his own worship , forbidding to worship him by any image , in bowing to it , or worshiping it , though in reference to himself . this is the most natural , and indeed the necessary sense of this precept , if we consider the extream incredibility of any other senses , that are offered , or can be offered . viii . all other senses plainly impossible and incredible . for let us suppose first , that the sense is , thou shalt not bow down to , nor worship the graven image ( that thou makest and settest up , ) thou shalt not worship the image it self instead of god or for god. it would be a prohibition of a thing even impossible to humane nature to do : that a jew suppose should worship an image that himself has made of some log of wood or stone , instead of or for the god that brought him out of the land of egypt , and the house of bondage , & indeed that created the whole world , as if he could take the image for this god , and not worship it in reference to him . how nugatorious would they make the divine law-giver by such a prohibition , to interdict those things which it is impossible for men to doe ? and now let us suppose the other sense of the precept to be , ( and i can neither meet with nor devise any more , ) thou shalt not make to thy self any idol , that is to say , no image of any heathen god or of any false god whatsoever ; that this cannot be the chiefly intended sense thereof is plain . first , from the apparent superfluity of this precept , that being so strictly and apertly interdicted before , viz. that they should have no pagan gods , nor any gods whatever besides jehovah . which while they hold to , it is impossible they should make to themselves any images or idols of those gods to bow down to or worship . so that this prohibition would be superfluous , if that was the only meaning of the commandement . and then in the second place , this sense is incoherent with the words following ; for i am a jealous god. which implyes suspicion of some foul dealing betwixt any member of his spouse , the church , and himself ; that they may communicate any thing of that which is peculiarly due to himself unto another . but if the jews should make an idol , that is , the image of some pagan god , and worship it , the matter would be past suspicion , they would apertly and professedly be found false to jehovah , and to commit adultery with another god. ix . the golden calf no intended image of apis , but the symbolical presence of jehovah . to which you may add in the third place , that god himself has thus interpreted this commandement , that he will not be worshipped by an image , though erected and worshipped in reference to himself ; as is most undeniably plain in the golden calf which aaron made , which was not intended for the image of apis the aegyptian god , but was the symbolical presence of jehovah . indeed st. steven sayes , act. . , . and in their hearts they turned back again into aegypt , ( it may be in the grossest sense if they could have brought aaron to their lure ) saying unto aaron , make us gods to go before us . but it is most likely , that this is only a reprehension of their aegyptianizing in matters of religion , desiring to have some visible object and figure to sustain their faith , and spend their devotion on , according to the mode of aegypt , who gave divine worship to images . this mode of religion their minds hanker'd after , as their mouths elsewhere watered after the flesh-pots of aegypt , for which they are also taxed , psal. . . they made a calf in horeb , and worshipped the molten image . thus they changed their glory , that is , the god of israel , or his divine presence , into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass . as if iehovah the almighty , infinite and eternal god , that did such great things in aegypt , wonderous works in the land of ham , and fearful things by the red-sea , could be representable by any such figure . so that in this they quite forgat god their saviour , both what an excellent being he is , and utterly irrepresentable by imagery , and forgat his commandement ( which is one special and material way of forgetting him ) thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image , thou shalt not bow down to it , nor worship it . x. that the history of the golden calf plainly implyes that sense thereof . but there is no place so convincing , that the golden calf which aaron made , was made and worshipped in reference to iehovah , as what occurres in the very history . god had promised to the people , he would send an angel before them to keep them in the way , exod. . . this the people knowing and despairing of moses being found again , or impatient of his stay so long in the mount , ( which st. steven interprets a rejecting of moses , or putting him from them , act. . . for that is spoken of moses , not of god ) they come to aaron , ( exod. . ) and say unto him , vp make us gods which shall goe before us , which aaron immediately assents to , and receiving their ear-rings , made a molten calf of them , whereupon they said , these are thy gods o israel , which brought thee out of the land of aegypt . and aaron built an altar before this image which himself had made , and made proclamation and said , to morrow is a feast to the lord , that is , to jehovah . and on the morrow , according to this proclamation , they celebrate the feast , and offered burnt offerings &c. to this image . now let any unprejudiced man judge to whom this symbolical presence could be erected but to jehovah . did not the israelites ask of aaron what god had promised ? the angel in whom god would place his name there ? did aaron at all stick to fulfill their desire ? do not the people say of this symbolical presence , these are thy gods o israel , or which is all one , this is thy god o israel , ( as nehemiah has it chap. . v. . ) that brought thee out of the land of aegypt , which is utterly impossible for them to understand of the golden calf which was but newly made , and therefore is necessarily understood of that god that brought them out of aegypt , which is jehovah , no aegyptian deity , but he that brought all those plagues on aegypt and delivered his people with an high hand . and lastly , is not an altar built before the same symbolical presence , and a feast proclaimed there to be celebrated to the lord ? what more perspicuous coherence can be desired for the certainty of the sense of any passage of scripture ? xi . the gross repugnancies impli'd in supposing the calf to be the symbolical presence of the god apis. all things run smooth on this hypothesis . but supposing this calf the symbolical presence of apis an aegyptian deity , who had the form of an ox , ( which might give some of the antients occasion , as i suppose , to think it was so , they not considering that cherub also signifies an ox or calf , and that one of the angelical forms in the chariot of god is both an ox , and is called a cherub , and that the cherubins in the ark were of this figure , which is a symbol of the angels , who are the chariot of god , psal. ▪ . the chariots of god are twenty thousands , even thousands of angels , and the lord among them as in sinai in the holy place , where this chariot or chariots ( because it consisted of four parts ) was seen by aaron , like that by ezekiel , where one part had the form of an ox or calf , and all four the feet of oxen. so little estranged is the form of an ox or calf from the use of representing the presence of the god of israel , ) but suppose , i say , it is not the symbolical presence of jehovah , but of the aegyptian apis , according to the conceit of some out of the respect they bear to the fathers , what an harsh and intolerable reproach is it in the mean time to gods high priest , to affirm that he did thus profanely and impiously make an aegyptian idol for the people of god to worship , and so assisted them in the grosly breaking of both the first and second commandement at once , and even then when the people did but desire the promise to be made good to them , that the visible presence of god , or his angel in whom his name was , might go along with them , and that aaron notwithstanding instead of this , should make the symbolical presence of a forraign god! besides that the people themselves had not this judgment of it , they declaring it to be the symbolical presence of him that brought them out of the land of aegypt . nor could they possibly believe the aegyptian apis to have done so , to have inflicted all those plagues on his own land in the behalf of a forraign people . besides that they were all along declared by moses to be done in the name of the god of israel : to whom also aaron builds an altar before this calf , and proclaimes a feast to jehovah , which , if by this calf were meant the aegyptian apis , would be as repugnant , as to say , apis and jehovah are all one . xii . the certainty hence , that the second commandement forbids the worshipping god by an image . wherefore we can be of nothing more sure than that this golden calf of cherub was erected by aaron to jehovah , and so understood by the people . the worshipping whereof notwithstanding is agreed on all sides to have been idolatry . from whence it plainly follows , that the second commandement forbids the worshipping god by an image , which was the thing to be proved nor do i know by what evasions those of the contrary opinion can escape the clearness of this proof and precept . god so plainly interpreting the meaning of his own law , by his severe vengeance on the worshippers of the golden calf , though erected to himself . xiii . two evasions to shun this sense , the first from the septuagints translation of pesel proposed and answered . the best and most ordinary evasions are these two . the first that the septuagint translating pesel not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sculptile , but idolum , do plainly enough insinuate , that an image to the true god is not there forbid for worship but idols only , or images , of the heathen gods , or any false gods. but those that argue thus do not consider that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in greek is of as indifferent and large a signification as imago in latin , or image in english . plotinus , when he was desired to sit to have his picture drawn , said , he would not have them give themselves the trouble of making 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an image of an image , or shadow of a shadow . so that we way with better reason imagine the septuagint to have chosen this word as an universal bar against not only statue-worship , but even picture-worship also : or to have made choice of idolon , rather than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sculptile , because it signifieth more determinately such sculptilia as are images , or have imagery on them , that they should not be bowed to in a religious way ; not forbidding to direct their worship towards every thing that is carved , when it does not at all pretend to make god representable , as imagery does . so that there being these reasons so obvious , why the septuagint might translate pesel idolon , rather than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sculptile , the inferring they did it in reference to the idols of the heathen , is of no force . and besides , suppose that pesel signifies an idol , in the sense of the adverse party ; what do they get by it , when as the text then will run thus , thou shalt not make to thy self any idol or image of any heathen god , nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above , or in the earth beneath , thou shalt not bow down to them , nor worship them . it is manifest that yet for all this all manner of image-worship , or picture-worship is forbidden ; not only of the heathen gods , but all whatsoever , and therefore they cannot be worshipped , no not in reference to the true god himself . or if you would understand the following words , viz. nor the likeness of any thing in heaven above , &c. still of the heathen gods images , ( which is perfectly illogical , and impossible for any one that attends to reason to admit , the object of the precept being plainly here distributed into two parts . the first part the idols or images of the heathen gods , the other whatever other similitudes or images besides : ) yet if these words could be drawn to the same sense with the other , so that the images of the heathen gods , or any false gods might be understood by them , and that the whole prohibition were concerning such like images or idols , that would also notwithstanding clash with the next words following , for i am a jealous god ▪ for in this case , as i noted above , the matter would be beyond jealousie , it would be a confessed act of spiritual adultery , w ch is idolatry . but to argue from the mention of gods jealousie , that the image must be meant of some strange god , ( for what husband would be jealous of his wife , for honouring or kissing his own picture ? ) that is no more than a witty sophism built upon a false hypothesis ; as if the mans picture could as easily rob the man of what is due to him from his wife , as an image rob god of what is due to him . for the image being visible , & god invisible , there is manifest danger of joyning ones devotion , which is all that god can have of us , to the garish image , more than to god , and the true notion of him in our minds ; and that by worshipping him in such a vile manner , we may be brought off afterwards to worship other gods , as mean as we have made him by this sort of worship . xiiii . the second evasion touching the cherubins on the mercy-seat , proposed and answered . the next evasion , which seems most considerable , is , in that they pretend that god himself has interpreted his own law to another sense than we would have , in commanding golden cherubins to be set on the mercy-seat for his own worship . this excuse is very trite amongst the romanists , and the second council of nice alledges the same , but it is plain that it falls exceeding short of the case . for the scope of the second commandement is not the forbidding all image-work in the places of worship , but the bowing to images and worshipping them , which the case of the cherubins does not reach . for the people was never commanded to bow down to or worship the golden cherubins , nor do the jews profess themselves to have done so , but to have bowed down to and worshipped god alone . and besides that they were not intended for an object of the peoples worship or adoration is plain , in that they were carefully hid from their sight . and if they could penetrate with their imagination through the vail , and make themselves present hard by the cherubins , their posture plainly shows they were never intended to be worshipped , their faces not being turned towards the people to receive their salutations , but towards one another . indeed if they were an object , that it was their declared duty to worship , when they saw them , the same religious affection may be conceived to be directed towards them through the vail . but formal adoration to a visible object while it is hid and made invisible , is , methinks , as uncouth and unnatural , as the bowing to some person on the other side a brick-wall , in which there is not the least loop-hole to see thorough . wherefore there being no precept to the people of the jews , to bow down to the golden cherubins , and to worship them , nor it being any professed practice of them , and the posture of the cherubins being such as intimates they were not made to be worshipped by them , and they being carefully hid from the eyes of the people that they might not see them , ( though they were symbols of the special presence of god , and notes or instruments for the directing their adoration thitherward to god in a special manner there present ) it is evident they were no object of the peoples worship , and that they were neither to bow down to them , nor worship them , though they bowed toward them , as a determinative circumstance of their worship of god. this is so plain , that i believe no man that considers it can have the confidence to deny it . viz. that the cherubins were not the object of the peoples worship , much less intended so by god. xv. a difficulty touching the high priests bowing in the holy of holies proposed . but the great difficulty , as it seems to some , is , how the high priest , when he went into the holy of holies , ( which he did once by the year , ) and bowed as they conceive before these cherubins bare and open to his sight , could so behave himself as not to be guilty of bowing to graven images and worshipping them . which if he did , i must confess that the romanists have no contemptible plea for their interpretation of the second commandement , as if it were not against worshipping the true god by an image . but to this difficulty i answer these two wayes . xvi . the first way of answering it , by denying the fact , if it could not be done without bowing towards the cherubins as an object . first , that if the high priest when he was in the holy of holies , could not bow to worship god by that gesture , but he must also bow towards the cherubins objectively , and not meerly circumstantially , i do flatly deny that he did bovv there . and they can never prove that he did , there being no mention thereof in the scripture , vvhere his behaviour in that place is described ▪ levit. . but there being a plain prohibition in the second commandement to bovv to graven images and to vvorship them , it is from hence demonstrable that the high priest in this case would not . for if to obey be better than sacrifice , and to hearken than the fat of rams , sam . . certainly the high priest could not but see that obedience to so plain and strict a commandement , as thou shalt not bow down to any graven images , nor worship them , &c. was better than the breaking that command under pretence of worshipping god by bowing unto them , namely to the cherubins . wherefore we may be certain that in this case he would not bow towards them . but if he could bow towards them without incurring this danger , the difficulty is taken away , and the true sense of the second commandement remains firm and inviolable ; that god himself is not to be worshipped by an image , by bowing to it and worshipping it . xvii . the second way by asserting that he might bow in such circumstances , as that the cherubins were no object of his worship . but now besides this , in the second place , if any one think it so probable that the high priest did bow some time towards the mercy seat , when he was in the holy of holyes , let us pitch upon that which is most likely , namely when he made his nearer approach thereto , to besprinkle it with blood : it is manifest there is no colour of saying , that in these circumstances he bowed to or worshipped the cherubins . . because the first thing that he was to do , when he was to enter within the vail , was to take a censure full of burning coales of fire , & his hands full of sweet incense beaten small , and to bring them within the vail , and to put the incense on the fire before the lord , that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimonie , that he die not . levit. . , . which is a sign that he was not to dare so much as to look towards the mercy seat , much less to worship towards it , till all on the mercy seat , the golden cherubins and all were hid in a cloud of incense , which is like the hiding of them from the sight of the people by the vail . and that therefore their golden luster was to be no object of worship , as being thus enveloped with smoak , not to be seen at any distance . . but now , when the high priest approaches up nearer to the mercy seat , which we have supposed the more likely time of worshipping , let us see what possibility there is of his appearing guilty of worshipping the cherubins , though he should then bow towards the throne of god , more than in that former circumstance . for the two cherubins were placed at the two ends of the mercy seat , and that with their faces one towards another , not to any that came up to the mercy seat , which is no fit posture to be worshipped in , if they could be seen by any glimmerings in this thick cloud of smoak . and if they could , they would be only a direction to the high priest , as well to overlook them , as to give them a go by , in following that intimation god has given him in exodus , chap. . and there will i meet with thee , and i will commune with thee from above the mercy seat , from between the two cherubins , which are upon the ark of the testimony . and in the psalms he is described sitting betwixt the two cherubins , psalm . . and . . this is a plain case then , that the high priest could not but conceive that special presence of god to be seated betwixt the two cherubins , and therefore directing his devotion and gesture according to that instruction , his bowing must be towards that presence , betwixt the two cherubins , from the mercy seat upwards ; as if the invisible majesty was seated there as on a throne or chair of state . the bowing to whom can no more concern the cherubins , than the bowing to a prince on a wide throne or chair can concern the imagery on the arms of the chair adorned , suppose , with two eagles heads or the like . can any one conceit any worship done to these two eagles heads , when the parties bowing is directed to the face and person of the prince above , and betwixt the eagles heads ; though the eagles heads stand in a fairer posture to be bowed to , than the faces of the cherubins . it is therefore every way plain and manifest , that as the people of the jews did not , so neither did their high priest bow to , or in any sense worship the cherubins in their bowing thitherward , but only him that sat betwixt the cherubins , which was the thing to be demonstrated . and that therefore there is no evasion left to elude the force of the second commandement , that so strictly prohibits the worship of the true god by any graven image , which therefore according to the sense of that commandement must be idolatry . xviii . the idolatry forbidden in the second commandement , reduced to the proposed definition of idolatry . it remains now that we reduce this kind of idolatry , ( as we in order shall also do all the rest , ) to our general definition of idolatry , that it may appear to be so , even according to the plain nature and notion of the thing , namely , in that by worshipping god by an image the peculiarities of the godhead are violated , which seems evident here upon a double score , both from making the infinite irrepresentable divine majesty representable by an animal-figure , which debases and vilifies the peculiar excellency of the godhead , which is so infinitely beyond any visible form whatsoever , and therefore no animal figure can pretend to be the representative thereof ; as also from the giving divine worship to these animal figures , or symbolical presences , which is peculiar to god. xix . no distinction betwixt hieroglyphical and representative images when divine worship is done to them . which divine worship does plainly argue them representative figures , not meerly hieroglyphical , whether they that worship them will call them so or no. as is apparent from the first of the romans , where the apostle plainly declares of those wise men of the heathen who knew god , yet were so foolishly subtil and phantastical as to worship him in the images of men , birds , four-footed beasts and creeping things , which they could not but know , were but at the best hieroglyphicks of him , no personal representatives of his godhead , yet forasmuch as they worshipped those figures , they are said to have changed the glory of the incorruptible god into the images of these corruptible creatures . for in worshipping these images in reference to god , they naturally acknovvledg or suppose a fitness in them to represent the glory of god , or his divine presence , vvhich therefore must needs be an unspeakable vilification of his infinite glorious majesty . and what pretence can there be for any figure , or symbolical presence to have divine worship done to it , or to be an object thereof in any sense , if it vvere conceived to have no fitness to represent the divinity . and therefore the psalmist according to this natural notion , inferres from the israelites vvorshipping the golden calf , that they turned the glory of god into that creature , psalm . . . they made a calf in horeb , and worshipped the molten image . thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass . which ansvvers very fitly to that of st. paul , they changed the glory of the incorruptible god into an image made like to a corruptible man , &c. rom. . . xx. that in worshipping these representative images in reference to god , divine worship is given unto them , as suppose to the image of god the father . and that the vvorshipping of these representative images in reference to god , is the giving of divine vvorship to them , is manifest out of scripture , as acts . and they made a calf in those dayes and sacrificed to the idol . to say it vvas but sacrificium relativum or transitivum , that passed to god , not terminativum , that terminated in the calf it self , is but school-cobvveb-stuff . sacrifice is a peculiar vvorship belonging to god , and by no distinction or evasion can any thing else partake in it , so as to have it offered to it . this is evident in this kind of divine vvorship , and there is the same reason of them all . they vvorshipped the calf in horeb , but in reference to jehovah , as plainly appears out of the historie , and therefore vvith latria relativa , or transitiva not terminativa . but does this distinction of so subtil texture cover their chance ? no certainly . if this distinction vvere good , and vvould justify their act , vvhy does either the psalmist , or st. steven find fault ? it is apparent therefore that divine vvorship is so due to god alone , that it is in no sense due to any thing else , but that even the meer natural or external act must be to him only . and therefore he will not be worshipped by an image , that the image may not in any sense partake of his worship ; which yet it will in the natural externality thereof , if we do it towards the visible image . for outwardly we behave our selves no otherwise towards the image than towards god himself , nor make any other external application to the one than to the other . as suppose there was an image of god the father in the shape of an old man , and one would make his adoration to god towards this image , with that mind , with that devout look , with that solemn and serious motion of the spirits in the eyes , that is befitting the profound reverence we owe to god , this natural , visible , and external act of worship passes plainly upon this image , as well and in such sort as on god himself , and is such as no greater nor more lively expression of his highest devotion can be made by any suppliant . to whom then but to god alone can this belong ? and therefore to make these expressions to a senseless stock and stone , is the foulest violation of the divine peculiarities that can be , by communicating them to so unworthy a subject , as well as by lessening , obscuring , or rather abolishing the infinite glorious majesty of the godhead , by supposing him or implying him representable by a wretched statue of wood , metal or stone , as i noted before . xxi . that there is the same reason concerning the image of christ. and now for the statue or image of christ , if it be worshipped towards with such a religious look and devout cast of the eyes as before , significative of the highest veneration that is due to god , or can by us be given to him , it is apparent that this exteriour ritual worship is done to this image also ; nor can be any more doubted , than if kissing of this image were the ritual performance and it were kissed , that this image was the object of the kissing with all the exteriour devotionalness used therein : and that therefore this image thus adored , though but relatively , partakes of divine worship . by which communication the peculiarities of the godhead are plainly violated , as well as by burning incense , or otherwise sacrificing to the image ; as st. steven complains of the israelites sacrificing to the golden calf , though in relation to jehovah , which cannot excuse the idolatry . xxii . that relative idolatry is as down-right idolatry as relative adultery and murder down-right murder and adultery . for let any one judge in common sense and reason , whether a foul unfit action to an undue object can be excused by an intended relation to a fit one . nothing can be more enormously incongruous , than the giving divine worship which is latria to a carved stock or stone , ordinarily called idolum , or imago . and the giving this latria to this idolum is that which is most properly idololatria . but if in giving latria to this idolum which is so hugely unfit an object , in relation to a fit one , all is well , and the fact lawful , the short and the long then is , that relative idolatry is lawful , which is as good sense as to say , that relative murder , or relative adultery is lawful . as if to kill the next innocent man to wreak ones revenge on the nocent , that deserved to be killed , would excuse that act from down-right murder ; or to lye with another woman with an intended kinde remembrance of his own in her absence were not down-right adultery . why then is not this relative idolatry down-right idolatry , as well as relative murder and adultery down-right adultery and murder ? and why is relative murder and adultery still down-right murder and adultery , but because that intended reference or relation takes not away the specifick turpitude of the fact ? how then can the intended relation in relative idolatry take away the specifick turpitude of that fact ? so that it remain not down-right idolatry still . xxiii . that relative idolatry is real and proper idolatry , even according to the nice notion of the schools . which it does even in the nice notion of the very schools , the latria in this case being really not transitive or relative , quatenus latria , but terminated on the very idol it self . for quatenus latria , it can pass no further in truth and reality but ends there ; and in relation to god the act ceases to be latria , the honouring or worshipping of him , but changes its species , and becomes an act of contempt , reproach , and disobedience against him , and a foul dishonouring of him . nor can the intention of the religionist alter the specification of the act , but that it will be a dishonouring of god , though the act cannot be avoided but it will have god for its object , but he will be the object of this act under this specification namely of dishonour : as in that physician that intended by such a medicine to cure such a patient , but does really poyson him thereby , the patient notwithstanding the physicians intention is no object of a real cure , but of the quite contrary of his poysoning him . wherefore no real latria passing to god in this relative idolatry , but only dishonour and reproach , the latria is in truth ( let the intention be what it will , ) terminated in the image or idol , and therefore is idolatry , in the most proper and scholastick sense . for one and the same act , as it may have two contrary specifications , in respect of two several objects , so it may have two several terminations in respect of the same . as suppose one person loves a rose , another has a great antipathy against it , a third brings a basket of roses into the room ; this one act is both a gratification and a displeasure ; a gratification to him that loves roses , a displeasure to him that has an antipathy against them ; the act of gratification terminates in one of these objects , the person that loves roses , the act of displeasure terminates on the other . just so the act of latria or divine honour terminates on the image or idol , the act of dishonour and reproach on god , who is provoked and disobeyed . what can be more plain ? wherefore the divine honour terminating on the image of christ , and not passing to him in reality and truth , but only in our fond intention , it is manifest that the peculiarities of god are here violated , and that it is proper idolatry . xxiv . whether the doing divine worship towards the image of christ violates the irrepresentableness of the godhead or no , as also towards the holy ghosts . but there is a more curious question whether the worshipping of the image of christ with divine worship does involve also the other violation of the peculiarities of the godhead in making it thus representable by an image . for christ being man as well as god seems to make the case different from that of the image of god the father . but i answer the case is still the same , christ being the eternal , infinite , glorious majesty of god , as well as he is man , and uncapable of divine worship but so far forth as he is that infinite majesty . wherefore he that sets up an image , and calls it the image of christ , and does divine worship towards it , does as palpably make the eternal infinite majesty of the godhead representable by a carved stock or stone , as he that does divine worship toward such a carved image of god the father . for the father and the son are equal , and therefore the son equally irrepresentable as to that of him which is capable of divine worship , which this image pretends to represent , in pretending to be the image of christ , and therefore violates that peculiarity of the infinite glorious majesty of god , that makes it irrepresentable by any bodily figure . he that worships christ , worships the very godhead , and therefore must not blaspheme his majesty , by making him representable by any corporeal image . the godhead indeed is hypostatically intempled in the humane nature of christ , but it is the the eternal and infinite divinity there that we adore . so little scruple need either jevv or turk have to turn christians , upon any idolatry vve are guilty of in vvorshiping christ. and vvhat i have said of the images or statues of the father and the son , the same is to be said of the image of the holy ghost . a dove may be the hieroglyphick of him as that description of the ancient of dayes in daniel is an hieroglyphick of god the father . but to do divine worship toward such an image of a dove , it is absolutely the same idolatry that was in so doing to the image of god the father , and of christ. xxv . that no symbolical presence but only the holy humanity of christ is capable of divine worship done towards it . no symbolical presence therefore or consistent visible animal figure saving the holy humanity of the lord jesus christ , which is hypostatically united with the eternal divinity , can have divine worship done towards it , but it is idolatry ipso facto . it the peculiar priviledge of the holy humanity of christ , to be capable of having divine worship done towards it , because of its union with the divinity , as it is the priviledge of the body of a wise and vertuous person , for the wisdom and vertues sake that resides only in his soul , to have that great reverence done towards it , by reason of the soul with which it is hypostatically united . but the soul once separate by death , the body according to the common sense and practice of all men ceases to have that reverence done towards it that it had before . so that there is naturally a peculiar middle kind of honour , greater than any creature besides has a capacity of , though less than divine , that accrews to christs humanity , in vertue of his being hypostatically united with the godhead , which the image of christ is not . and therefore besides that gross idolatry above specified , in doing divine worship towards his image , there is also a violation of the priviledge of this holy humanity of christ , towards which living symbolical presence of the godhead only it had been proper to do divine worship , when he was visible here upon earth ; upon a clear declaration of this union . which was more apertly , and more seasonably manifested afterwards by st. john. but considering the unexpressable profound humility of our saviour , who upon ones saying to him , good master , straight way rebuked him , declaring there was none good but one , which is god , mark . . it seems hugely probable , that if any would have done express divine worship towards his visible humanity , as the lycaonians would have sacrificed to paul and barnabas , that he would have declined it . but this only by the by . xxvi . the necessity of the romanists acknowledging of latria relativa done to images relating to god. hitherto of images relating to god , to which the second nicene council , ( that excellently learned and judicious patriarch of constantinople photius being interpreter ) assigned latria relativa , which azorius the jesuite also acknowledges to be the constant opinion of the roman theologers . and indeed it seems necessary it should be so , to make the best sense of that kind of religion : for they burn incense to these images which is a sacrifice . and they putting up their prayers before them , and lifting up their eyes and hands towards them , with compellations common to the image and prototype , this is also the sacrifice of prayer offered to them , as much if not more direct and express , than the sacrifices offered on the altar before the golden calf were to it ; which yet because it was done on the altar before that image , st. steven full of the holy ghost , declares , that they sacrificed unto the idol . wherefore it being so evident , that in these cases they are to acknowledg that they give latria to these images , it seemed the wittiest and safest invention to declare in general , that the images relating to god are to have latria done to them , but not absoluta but relativa , which , they conceive , makes it an inferiour kind of latria , since this relative latria ( because of its relativeness ) is incompetible to god. but how well this will do their business , i have already noted . but that this is the sense of their church , even of the council of trent it self , is noted and confessed by azorius , and natural if not necessary for every one to acknowledg , that is serious in the worship of these images . for if it were not latria relativa , but such a worship as the images were capable of , and might be the ultimate object of themselves , and it terminate there , how small and mean , and how lovv a kind of worship would this be ! so that it would prove to be a meer fooling or trifling with images to no purpose , the worship of the image though relating to god not at all advancing our adoration of him , but rather necessarily casting us ( by restraining the worship to what the image it self is the ultimate object of , ) into the faintest and meanest mode of worshipping that can be expressed , if it be but what it should be commensurate to so mean an object . wherefore it is altogether incredible , that this should be the meaning of worshipping of images relating to god , or that any of the people that are taught to vvorship them , should not vvorship them vvith that height of affection and veneration they use to god , for as much as the image relates to god , and that they are taught according to the very council of trent , that by the image of christ vvhich they vvorship , they vvorship christ himself . so plain is it , that the act of vvorship before an image relating to god , is an intended adoration of god himself , according the council of trent . but for the occasional shuffles of any private doctours of that church , that would have the worship of incurvation , and the signs of devotion accompanying it , terminated on the image it self , to make sure it may be in no sense latria , at what a loss vvill they be to ansvver touching the burning of incense , and praying to god before these images that relate to him . besides that the second commandement does plainly meet vvith such shufflers , vvhich universally forbids any bovving to , or vvorshipping images relating to god , and vvill not be put off by any evasion . for i am a jealous god , &c. nor vvas it unfit to give so forcible a stop , though less methodical to a subterfuge so unnatural and irrational . i vvill add also so repugnant to the council of trent , ( vvhich is the touchstone of their faith , ) vvho in these express vvords declare , per imaginem christi christum adoramus . and that adoration vvhich is done to christ , is divine adoration and consequently latria . xxvii . the reduction of the worship of saints and angels , to the proposed definition of idolatry , and particularly their invocation and making of vowes to them . we proceed now to the consideration of the images , or symbolical presences of saints and angels , and to all the modes of their religious worship : of which , invocation is the most principal , and as it were the scope and foundation of all the rest . which worship of theirs i shall also plainly discover to be idolatrous , by manifest reduction to my proposed definition of idolatry . which i will do with all brevity , there being no difficulty at all in the business . and i will begin with invocation , which as i have proved in my antidote , can belong to no invisible power or spirit , saving to god alone . forasmuch as no man can have any solid faith or assurance that they can hear our invocation , or that they have any omnipresence , or omnipercipience , no not so much as terrestrial . whence it it plain , that in invokeing them one of the divine peculiarities is violated or prophaned by being communicated to a creature , when of right it is only to be attributed to god ; the saints having no such omnipercipiency or omnipresency in them , as doctour thorndike himself cannot but confess , accordingly as i have noted at the end of my reply . but to invoke them or pray to them for such things as it is in gods power only to give , which all papists do , as dr. thorndike plainly asserts , nor can it be put off upon pretence of a figurative speech , ( as i have proved in my reply , ) this is double idolatry , as violating two divine peculiarities at once , both the omnipresence or omnipercipience of god , and also his omnipotence , they giving that power to a creature which is in god alone . but making vowes to any saint or angel in such dangers as a creature may have power to rid us from , is but the same kind of idolatry that simple invocation , if they be both mental , or both vocal . xxviii . the idolatry of erecting temples , altars , images , or symbolical presences to saints , or angels , reduced to the proposed definition . and novv for the erecting temples , altars , images or symbolical presences to saints or angels , all which is manifestly done in reference to their invocation , it is thence plain , that all this is done to an idolatrous end , and therefore upon this very consideration has the smut of idolatry upon it . but besides , more distinctly . god having appropriated these modes of being vvorshipped to himself , and his judgement being so infallible , vvhat befits him and is most proper for him , when he will be vvorshipped in a more external and ritual vvay , it is evident presumption and prophanation of the peculiarities of his godhead , as to external vvorship , to communicate them to the creature , as i have proved in my antidote . and lastly , the very nature of the thing demonstrates the idolatry , they being standing significations of the natural peculiarities of god communicated to a creature . for a temple and symbolical presence is fitly and securely erected to god , because we are sure of gods residence and presence there , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimates the inhabitation of the divinity in it . let there be as many symbolical presences and temples as you will , and at what distance you will , god is certainly at home in them all , as being omnipresent . but for a finite invisible power or spirit , though there were but one erected thereto , there is no assurance of that spirits residence there , or if the effect of any spirit be there , that it is not some other spirit than he to whom the temple or symbolical presence was erected , that it is not one angel or saint for another , nay , a divel instead of that saint or angel. but those temples and symbolical presences being erected in several distant places , it emplyes they are in several distant places at once , which is the only peculiarity of the godhead ; as i have noted in my reply . which incongruities are also to be observed in either one single altar , or many in distant places of the world , to the same saint or angel. and besides it has that odious relation to a sacrifice , and imports that the saints and angels are also sacrificed to , which is plain and confessed idolatry . xxix . an evasion obviated . nor is it any excuse , that the temple and altar is pretended to be erected and dedicated to god only in a principal sense , but to the saint in a secundarie respect , as less principal . for besides that god is jealous and impatient of any partner , in the honours that are due to himself , ( though they were only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) their intention cannot change the natural signification of building temples and altars to a finite creature . which as i have already noted , implyes its omnipresence which is proper and peculiar only to god ; and therefore this communicating a peculiarity of the godhead to a creature is idolatry according to the plain definition thereof , let us intend what we will. xxx . the idolatry of bowing to the images of saints and angels wherein it consists . as for their superstitious worship done towards the bare symbolical presences , or open images of saint or angel , supposing it the very same they would do to the saint or angel themselves if they were visible , that this implyes them representable is no idolatry . for the making them representable by an image , does not at all violate the peculiarities of the godhead . but the idolatry is in that the act naturally supposes them certainly present , for it is not sense to bow to an absent person ; and these symbolical presences being many , and at far distant places at once , that the saint or angel is in more places than one at once , and in such sort ommipresent as none can be acknowledged but god alone , and so that divine peculiarity is violated by this bowing to the symbolical presences or images of saint or angel. xxxi . the hazard of the vulgars doing that devotion which is due to god in their worshipping the images of saints and angels . and though there be no necessary connexion betwixt the things , yet there is an exceeding great hazard in the vulgar sort especially , when they bow to these images of saint or angel , or pray to them before the said images , there is an hazard of running into the highest devotion , and reverential affection and passion , that humane nature is excitable into or can express by his look or mind , and profoundly devout motion of the spirits of his eyes , which passion and signification thereof is due to god alone , and it is the most sordid idolatry imaginable to apply it to either saint or angel , much more to the very images of them made of wood or stone , though never so well painted or gilt . it is manifest i say , that by such a worship a special peculiarity of the godhead is violated , who alone is to be worshipped with that kind of devotion . which yet i have seen simple folk to express to the image of a saint , as fully as i could ever discern to be done by the devoutest man in his prayers to god. so that this note is not made at random , without just occasion and ground . and if this be done to the image of a saint , you may be sure it will not fail to be done to images that relate to god. but that is besides our present scope . xxxii . the reduction of burning of incense and setting up lights before them . as for t●e burning of incense and setting up lights before the symbolical presences of saints and angels , it being so plainly an imitation of the burning incense , and lighting up lamps before the symbolical presence of jehovah in the holy , it is plainly a violation of his peculiarities , so judged by his own election and choice . and as for the incense , it is a sacrifice , and the most noble and significant sacrifice , as i have noted in my reply . and they may as well depress the sacrificing of sheep and oxen into a lower ceremonie , as this of incense . for by the use and consent of nations , the one is no more restrained to the supream god than the other . and the lamps and shew bread seem to indicate jehovah to be the father of lights , from whom proceeds every good and perfect gift , and who feeds with bounty every living thing . and the lights set up before the images of saints and angels do at least intimate , that light and comfort is to be expected from suppliants that make their addresses to them at these symbolical presences , as if they were there present to assist them that invoke them , & implore their help . which i have again and again inculcated to be an implying and attributing an omnipresency or omnipercipiency to these finite created spirits , and consequently a violation of the peculiari●ies of the godhead . thus easily are the various acts of idolatry observed in the church of rome , in their worshipping saints and angels , reducible to the plain definition and true general notion of idolatry which we have proposed . as for those high compellations , to the blessed virgin especially , such as plainly signify the peculiar excellencies of the godhead , they are so openly idolatrous that they want no reduction . xxxiii . that the pretended intricacies in the mystery of the holy trinity , cannot with any reason at all be alledged against the clear demonstrations that the doctrine if transubstantiation is false . as neither their artolatria does to them that are free and believe that which is most certainly true , that the bread is not transubstatiated , as i have again and again undeniably demonstrated it not to be in my antidote against idolatry , and in my reply . the clearness of which demonstrations , the pretended intricacies in the mystery of the holy trinity cannot obscure ; there being so vast a difference both betwixt the objects themselves , and the faculties in this case , and that . for in transubstantiation the object is matter or body , a substance finite and comprehensible both by our senses and reason . in the mystery of the trinity , the object is the infinite incomprehensible deity , a substance incorporeal , or spirit , which is quite out of the reach of our senses in the lowest notion thereof ; but the transcendency of the triune godhead above our reason also , though not contrary unto it . and then our faculties conversant about transubstantiation , are all the five senses rightly circumstantiated , the organ , distance and medium duly fitted and proportionated , and therefore the senses necessarily capable of discerning what the object is , whether this body or that , suppose whether the body of a man , or a piece of bread . and besides this , not only the exteriour reason , but that which the greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which contains the first and self-evident common notions or axiomes , that are without syllogism noematically true , ) layes fast hold on the object in this controversy . transubstantiation being easily resolvible into a flat and manifest contradiction to these , as i have abundantly shown in my antidote and reply . but there is no contradiction at all , to either sensation or common notion in the mystery of the trinity , only exteriour reason and imagination raise some mists and obscurities about it . which well exercised minds in contemplation can easily discern , and dispute from this venerable mystery , so far forth as it is exhibited to us in the ancient symbols of the catholick church . wherefore of two desperate cases it is the more hopeful , that the bread being not tran●ubstantiated , and yet they taking it to be so , they may scape being idolaters , than that it is transubstantiated to save them from idolatry . xxxiv . that the believing the bread not to be there , does not all clear the romanists from down-right bread-worship which is idolatry . and i must confess i was once inclinable to this opinion my self , that in this case they are not idolaters ( see my idea of antichristianisme , book . chap. . sect . . ) before i had more closely and carefully considered the point . and the church of rome does not want at this day witty patrons , and of admirable art and eloquence , to perswade the heedless into this security , that though the bread should not prove transubstantiated , yet they cannot be bread-worshippers , while they believe it is ; for if they believe it is transubstantiated , they believe it not to be there , namely within the symbols or species , and thence they pretend it is demonstratively evident that they cannot worship it , but only christ , into whose substance it is believed to be transubstantiated . for whatever is taken , say they , for an object of worship , the understanding must affirm , ( either truly or falsly , ) that it is there whither the worship is directed . which arguing bears a smart plausibility with it . but i answer , that what is made an object of worship through mistake , there is no need the understanding affirm it is there , but rather the contrary . for it does not think the undue object is there but the due one . those that worshipped the sun , that is , that which we call the sun , and understand thereby a flammeous body devoid of sense and understanding , that appears alike to the sight of the sun-worshippers , and to ours , ( as the species appear the same to those that believe the bread transubstantiated , and to them that believe it not , ) be it called what it will , they did not believe that which we know to be the sun , to be there , but an intellectual deity , which the sun is not ; and yet we all acknowledg them for all that to have been sun-worshippers and idolaters . wherefore using just weights and measures , we must conclude the romanists bread-worshippers and idolaters , the bread not being transubstantiated , since their worship then lights upon bread instead of christ , as the sun-worshippers upon the sun instead of an intelligent deity . he that strikes his friend in the dusk of the evening , thinking it is his enemy , thinks his friend is not there , who notwithstanding finds himself the object of his stroak , and wishes he had not been there . this idolatry i must confess is committed through mistake , but so is all idolatry that is committed in good earnest , so that this cannot excuse the fact from so grievous a crime . and that it is idolatry is evident , divine worship being given to a piece of bread , which is a peculiarity of the godhead , and must be given to none but him . and the violation of any divine peculiarity is idolatry by the proposed definition thereof . xxxv . the application of the heathen idolatry to this definition , besides his present scope . by vertue of which we demonstratively have shown the sundry idolatries of the church of rome , in their worshipping the image of christ , in their worshipping and invocating saints and angels , and in their adoration of the eucharist . and in vertue of the same definition , the idolatries of the heathen might be as clearly demonstrated in their worshipping the supream god by images , and in their religious worship they did to daemons , which this definition would prove to be divine . but this would be quite besides my present purpose , and neither useful nor sutable to the subject in hand . xxxvi . the great difference betwixt religious respect and preference , and divine worship . it remains now only that we free several ceremonies used in our own church from the imputation of idolatry , by application to this definition , as well as we have evinced several of theirs to be idolatrous by the same . which will be a no less useful , and it may be a more pleasant consideration to our own , to see how little hold the adverse party can take of these small strings to pull us back again into popery . for if the definition of idolatry be unapplicable to them , it is manifest they cannot be idolatrous . and the inapplicability is so easily discoverable , that there will be no need to insist long on this matter . in the general then we are to note what a vast difference there is betwixt religious worship properly so called , which is the same with divine worship , and pious or religious affection and respect , or preference of one thing before another , for its relation it has to the objects , or exercise of our religion , or divine worship . it is but an homely proverb , love me and love my dog , but it may be of no impertinent significancy in this place . for it is not understood of the love of friendship , but of such a love as that inferiour creature is capable of , and is fit to give him in relation to his master , to whom we owe the love of friendship . so they that have a real divine reverence for god , it is no wonder they find an inclination in themselves of bearing some reverence , or having some respect to those things or persons , that in a special manner relate to him . whether it be priest or temple , or any holy utensil or the like . which reverence is quite different from that divine worship or reverence that is due to god himself , ( more different than the love to ones friend , and to his spaniel , ) and therefore can be no peculiarity of the godhead , and consequently no violation of his peculiarities to give it to another . which is the true notion of idolatry . xxxvii . the keeping our hats off in the church , freed from idolatry by this definition . we will illustrate this with some few examples , and so conclude . they that keep off their hats in the church , and do it even then when divine service is not a doing there , are not by any means conceived to do that divine reverence or worship which is peculiarly due to god , unto the fabrick they are under , but because this place is set apart for holy uses , and is of a different nature from ordinary places that have no such relation to god and his divine worship , out of an habitual deep devoutness toward god they also express this more inferiour affection and reverence to the place of his worship , by way of distinction and preference of it before other common places , be they never so magnificently built . which is not to give it a reverence any thing equal or of the same kind with that we give to god , but only a greater and another sort of reverence than we would give to any place that is not related to him . and this is no more idolatry than moses his putting off his shooes , because the ground was hallowed by the special presence of god there . and therefore it was not unfit to show some reverence thereto in those circumstances , and not to prophane it and soyl it by his dirty shooes . nay , indeed necessary , having that express command of god for it . or if one should do so of himself in such a meaning of reverence as i have intimated , though it might be superstitious under christianity , yet it could not be idolatrous , no peculiarities of the godhead being violated thereby . xxxviii . as also kissing the bible in the administration of oathes . kissing the bible also in the administration of oathes , which is in use amongst us , ( and might according to the proper notation of the latine word , be called adoration , that word signifying properly either the a motion of our mouth to the thing kissed , or the admotion of our own hand to our mouth , and so by kissing it signifying chiefly our kindness and affection , but withal our respect to the person or thing we in this manner salute , ) this ceremony here is only an expression of our love and value we have even for the material word of god , as i may so speak , by reading whereof we find such divine comforts and refreshments , and which gives us to know the will of god , and that salvation which is through jesus christ revealed in this book . and if a man after the serious reading of a chapter therein , his heart being full of joy and holy consolation , should at the close of all kiss the bible as he layes it down , out of a pious affection unto the very instrument of communicating such grace and comfort unto him , what more idolatry were there in this , than in such an ones hugging his bible in the pulpit before the people , to signify how dear it was to himself , and should be to them all ? xxxix . that bowing towards the altar or communion-table does not fall within the verge of the true notion or definition of idolatry . and as for bowing towards the altar , they that so do , questionless intend by that action , adoration to god properly , or in the highest sense , so called , so that it is one species of latria . which can be no idolatry in it self , to be directed towards a place , sith it cannot be done at all , but it will be directed toward some place or other . and if the church for uniformity sake appoint one place rather than another , so long as it is but towards it only , it can be no idolatry . for it is no more idolatry to worship god towards a place , than in a place : for both these are but circumstances , not objects of divine worship . but now it being concluded fitting to use adoration when we first come into gods house , as also for uniformity sake towards one certain place or part thereof , and all the place being in some sort holy , but yet a preference of one part before another , because of the more than ordinary devotion used there in celebrating the most endearing mysteries of our religion , the death and passion of our blessed saviour , and our union with him by participation of his flesh and blood , that place where the symbols of this are exhibited , and these great and endearing mysteries celebrated , it is no wonder if it have the preference in our religious affection and respect before all the places in the church , to be as it were the direct● eve instrument toward what part of the church we should do our adorations , namely that the altar or communion table should be this instrument of direction , and that this should be the peculiar honour done to it , to be so . in which sense it is bowed towards , as the mercy seat of old was by the jews , and the book of their law under a canopee in their synagogues now is , without the least shew or suspicion of idolatry . for divine worship is not at all done to that , in any of those cases , towards which it is directed , but only to god himself ; there being no animal figures exposed to receive the worship as in the case of the heathen , and the eucharistick bread being in no sense at all a symbolical presence as well as having no imagery on it , but both bread and wine mere tokens of the body of christ slaine , crucified or sacrificed , and of his blood shed for us . which therefore are not the person of christ , nor hypostatically united to his person in this condition , and consequently the symbols thereof cannot be any symbolical presence , as i have also noted in my reply . the altar therefore has the honour of being a directive instrument whither , as the church has where to do divine worship . but the worship is no more done to the altar , by being done towards it , than it is done to the church by being done in it . forasmuch as there is no animal figure thereon , as the ancient pagans conceived their gods to appear in several such shapes , and therefore worshipped them in them . for this would be a personal representative , and so receptive of the worship done towards it , according to the manifest sense of scripture , and natural interpretation of reason , but here being no such statue or image there erected all is safe . wherefore all the honour the altar receives in these adorations made towards it is this , that it is used as a directive instrument for people to show which way they are to set their faces , when they make these adorations to god , which is far from giving any divine worship to the table or altar , and therefore is far out of the reach of our definition of idolatry . lx. nor bowing to the name of iesus . and so whereas all the names and attributes of god are holy , and we have a greater reverence for them , than for any words or names that do not relate to god , ( though we do not owe divine worship or reverence to them , for as much as they are not god , but words that pass away as other sounds do , ) whereas i say , all the names of god are holy , yet because the name jesus exhibits to us the manifestation of god in the most endearing circumstances ; therefore as the mysteries celebrated on the altar caused that preference of it before all other parts of the church for to do our worship towards , so this name of jesus above all other names or words , that signify god or his attributes , may well be made use of to determine the time and occasion when in divine service we should more exuberantly vent our devotion in the worshipping god our saviour , especially the scripture seeming to hint some such thing to us . and this is the honour done to the name of jesus , that at the naming thereof we take occasion to do profound reverence and divine worship to our eternal redeemer . whence it is plain , that that honour that accrews to the name of jesus , or to the altar , by bowing at the naming of the one , and towards the site of the other , is far from any divine honour , and that therefore the peculiarities of the godhead are not thereby violated , nor any idolatry committed . xli . nothing that has the least shew of idolatry required of our church , in celebrating the lords supper . and now lastly , as for the eucharist or holy symbols of bread and wine , that we kneel not to them i have sufficiently intimated in my reply , but are in that posture as being in devout ejaculations to god , our hearts breathing towards him in the receiving this holy sacrament , and this is all the due reverence i see required by the rubrick of our church , or any direction thereof , for the celebrating these holy mysteries . and if any particular doctours of the church talk of worshipping the sacrament , if it be such affection and reverence as is expressed to the word of god , that this is without any violation of the divine peculiarities , i have above noted , and that therefore it can be no idolatry ; and if they speak of adoration properly so called , i charitably suspect they meant adoration done towards the symbols as i have above explained the doing of it towards the altar , that is , as using them as directive instruments towards which we doe our adoration to christ , but not to them as any objects thereof . which i should think would be hard for any man to imagine , that is conscious to himself , what a motion the soul is in , when it does an act of real and sincere adoration , or divine worship , and considers what it is to be in any sense the object thereof . he would find it such horrid ill syntax , to make any thing in any sense the object of adoration besides god , that he would be utterly ashamed of it , and find it more absonous and incongruous , more impertinent and troublesome , than if one when he were to worship the visible sun , should interpose a burning rush-candle betwixt his eye and the sun , and tye himself to worship that also , as an object in reference to the sun , while he pretends ultimately at the same time to worship the sun it self , it is plain it would be a distraction and impediment to him . xlii . the reason of some mens proneness to adoration of outward objects . which makes it suspicable that those that are so forward to have adoration done to outward objects , are not eager enough to joyn their hearts and minds with that eternal invisible power , which is best felt in the least distraction of thoughts , but would stick in these outward things , and so lay religion at last as flat as the earth , and suffer the souls of men to grow stupid in carnality . wherefore i presume better of any particular doctours of our church , than that they have any such meaning as to assert the lawfulness of adoration or divine worship to the eucharistick symbols , which is an undue object of that worship , that it may pass to a due one , that is to christ , for this i have plainly proved above to be idolatry . xliii . the sense of the church not to be interpreted by the rash expressions of any private doctour . but if any of our church should speak so inconsiderately , what is that to the church herself , that contains herself far within this compass ? and they that are of the church , are not tyed to any particular mens opinions , but to the general profession and practice of the church . which by these instances , that yet are those that are most scrupled at , you may see how clear she is from the least spot or soil of idolatry , according to the true notion and definition thereof , she using no rites of worship whereby the peculiarities of the godhead are violated . xliv . the great peril in leaving a more pure church for an idolatrous one . and therefore i hope these brief pains of mine , in so freely and faithfully examining the rites of the roman church and of our own , by this so intelligible a rule , will prove as well acceptable as seasonable to all that have any serious care of their salvation , and they will take heed in this slippery age , how they leave a pure church for a church so plainly soiled with manifold spots of idolatry , but those in that soiled church provide better for themselves , by entring communion with that church that is more pure . and in the mean time i hope they will excuse my more than ordinary zeal in a matter of so exceeding great moment , and which so ●early concerns our eternal happiness , it being so expresly declared in scripture , that no idolater shall inherit the kingdom of heaven . xlv . of spiritual idolatry , several instances thereof , as covetousness , which the apostle calls idolatry . which as it is undeniably true , and confessed on all sides , concerning this external ritual idolatry , so certainly is it no less true of the internal or spiritual , if we do not sincerely endeavour to rid our selves of it . for there are other sorts of idolatry , than we have hitherto insisted on , and such as we are as carefully to shun , as we tender our own salvation . saint paul expresly names one of this kind , and calls it by the very name , mortifie therefore your members which are upon earth , fornication , vncleanness , inordinate affection , evil concupiscence , and covetousness which is idolatry , colos. . . the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the love of money , which i suppose the apostle doth not count idolatry , for the imagery that ordinarily is upon coins , but for the trust and repose they put in uncertain riches . and there is the same reason in any worldly interest whatsoever , in power , friends , and what ever else . those that trust in these more than in the living god , do plainly commit spiritual idolatry . trust ye in the lord for ever , for in the lord iehovah is everlasting strength , isa. . . the lord is my rock and my fortress , my god , my strength in whom i will trust , psalm . . yea , though he kill me , yet will i trust him , saith job , job . . and so must we do , whomever he should permit to kill us , or any wayes persecute us , being assured that nothing can come amiss to them that are his , and put their trust in him . but if when visible comforts fail , our trust fails in the invisible god , it is a sign we made the creature the rock of our confidence , and gave that to it , which is a peculiarity of the godhead , which is plainly idolatry . xlvi . the harbouring a false idea of god , horrid and affrightful , another kind of spiritual idolatry . as is also to raise a false idea of god , more horrid and affrightful than the most terrible idols of the heathen , and to flatter this , and our selves as special favourites of it , because we believe it to be such as we have falsly imagined it , of adamantine severity or rather cruelty to infinitely the greatest part of mankind inevitably to be damned to everlasting ineffable torments , and our selves fatally and necessarily to be made happy out of a partial fondness to our persons , before the rest of the world , live as we list , meerly because he will have it so : and that this shall be the bottom of our faith and trust ; this certainly would be spiritual idolatry also , and an egregious violating that pretious divine attribute , if not the very nature of god , whom saint john has declared to be love , god is love , and he that abideth in love , abideth in god , and god in him , iohn . . xlvii . that those christians that persecute and kill one another for conscientious difference in religion , turn the god of the christians into a foul heathen idol . in the law of moses it is forbidden to offer strange incense or strange fire , and it is as strictly forbidden in the gospel of christ. for when his disciples would have had him fetch fire down from heaven , as elias did , for an affront done to their lord and master , he rebuked them saying , you know not of what spirit you are , luk. . . bitter and destructive zeal ( the apostle calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) is the strange fire or incense not to be offered to the lord under the gospel . for nothing is more estranged from the spirit of the gospel than it . john . . the time comes , saith our saviour , when any one that kills you will think he does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he does god an acceptable piece of divine worship or service , as if he offered an oblation or sacrifice to him . and this is indeed that strange incense , fire and sacrifice that all religionists offer to god , ( be they of what perswasion they will , pontifician or protestant ) that persecute and kill the one the other for conscientious difference in religion , as if they were the weapons of christs warfare . who yet has so expresly said , by this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another . but in persecuting , killing , and sacrificing one another thus in a barbarous zeal , thinking they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , make an oblation of divine worship to god thereby ; they turn the living god of the christians , which is love it self , into the foulest idols of the heathen , who used to be worshipped with the bloody sacrificing of men ; and therefore plainly commit spiritual idolatry , violating and defacing the peculiar character of the god of the christians , while they thus pretend to worship him. xlviii . the laying out all the strength of our bodies and souls , for the satisfaction of our own will , another instance of this idolatry . saint paul exhorts the romans , chap. . to present their bodies a living sacrifice , holy , acceptable unto god , which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , our reasonable latria , viz. that divine worship which is most fit and reasonable to give to god , namely , that we dedicate and devote all the powers and faculties of our souls and bodies , ( for in that it is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a living sacrifice , the soul is manifestly implyed ) unto his service . this is our reasonable and fitting latria we owe to god ; and therefore if we imploy all the powers of our mind and strength of our body , to serve our selves , and our own carnal and worldly desires , it is evident we make an idol of our selves , and give that worship to our selves , that is reasonable to give to god only . xlix . the letting out the fulness and entireness of our affection to any creature , another instance thereof . and whenas it is written , thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart and all thy soul , that is to say , the greatest strength and fulness of thy affection shall be entirely carryed out towards him , and other things be loved only for his sake , god challenging this as his peculiar due , if we let this height and entireness of affection go to any other person or thing , friend , wife , child , repute , pleasure or whatever else , this peculiarity of god is violated , and it is most certainly a kind of spiritual idolatry . which makes it less to be wondred at , that people are so frequently crossed in those things or persons that they so excessively love . and therefore it is our safety as well as our duty to have our affections moderate to all things saving to god alone , where there can be no danger of excess . l. the making our selves the ultimate end of our actions and services of god , an egregious instance of this spiritual idolatry . and lastly , ( for this is an argument so copious that a man may easily lose himself in it ) it is well known and cannot be denied but that god is the ultimate end of all . he is so in himself , and ought to be acknowledged so by us both in our words and actions . wherefore if we make our selves the ultimate end of our actions , and our own happiness as our own , and not as according to the will and nature of god , so that we serve and worship god for our own sakes , making as it were a crafty bargain with the all-wise god , and performing it too ( which is worst of all ) no further than it stands with our own present ease , security and interest , preferring these before his will and command , this also is manifest spiritual idolatry , and we again make an idol of our selves in making our selves the ultimate end of our actions . for there can be but one ultimate end , which is the will of the father , the light of the knowledg of god in the face of jesus christ manifested in us , who is the brightness of his glory and express image of his person . who declared in the flesh , he came not to doe his own will , but the will of him that sent him . this therefore is the supreme law and will of god touching the purity of his worship , that we have no will nor end of our own . for as we are to have but one god , hear o israel , the lord thy god is one god , deut. . . so we are to have but one will , even the will of the god whom we worship . which we have not , if we have any self-will , or self-ends , unsubordinate to the will of god. whose will and law is the law of an unself-interested love that is ready to act , and content to suffer any thing for the good of the creation of god , be it never so bitter and painful , as was most exemplarily conspicuous in our blessed saviour . and of this it is that that bosome friend of our lord jesus witnesses in the close of his epistle , john . . and we know that the son of god is come , and has given us an understanding that we may know him that is true , and we are in him that is true , even in his son jesus christ. little children , keep your selves from idols . amen . the end. notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e chaitable constructions of some private doctours expressions . the second lash of alazonomastix, laid on in mercie upon that stubborn youth eugenius philalethes, or, a sober reply to a very uncivill answer to certain observations upon anthroposophia theomagica, and anima magica abscondita more, henry, - . this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a of text r in the english short title catalog (wing m ). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) the second lash of alazonomastix, laid on in mercie upon that stubborn youth eugenius philalethes, or, a sober reply to a very uncivill answer to certain observations upon anthroposophia theomagica, and anima magica abscondita more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed by the printers to the university of cambridge, [cambridge] : . added extra t.p.: the second lash of alazonomastix : conteining a solid and serious reply to a very uncivill answer to certain observations upon anthroposophia theomagica, and anima magica abscondita. attributed by wing and nuc pre- imprints to more. includes index. a reply to thomas vaughan's the man-mouse taken in a trap. vaughan answered with the second wash, or, the moore scour'd once more."--nuc pre- imprints. errata: p. [ ] at end. reproduction of original in harvard university library. eng vaughan, thomas, - . -- man-mouse taken in a trap. vaughan, thomas, - . -- anima magica abscondita. vaughan, thomas, - . -- anthroposophia theomagica. alchemists -- controversial literature. a r (wing m ). civilwar no the second lash of alazonomastix laid on in mercie upon that stubborn youth eugenius philalethes: or a sober reply to a very uncivill answer more, henry f the rate of defects per , words puts this text in the f category of texts with or more defects per , words. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - melanie sanders sampled and proofread - melanie sanders text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion the second lash of alazonomastix laid on in mercie upon that stubborn youth eugenius philalethes : or a sober reply to a very uncivill answer to certain observations upon anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . proverb . he that reprooves a scorner , gets to himself a blot . ecclesiastic . be not proud in the device of thine own mind , lest thy soul rend thee as a bull . printed by the printers to the university of cambridge . . the second lash of alazonomastix : conteining a solid and serious reply to a very uncivill answer to certain observations upon anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . proverb . he that reproves a scorner , gets to himself a blot . ecclesiastic . be not proud in the device of thine own mind , lest thy soul rend thee as a bull . printed by the printers to the university of cambridge . . a to his singularly accomplish'd friend mr. john finch . sir , i know that your modestie cannot but be much amazed at this unexpected dedication . but the causes once discovered admiration will cease . eugenius , as little children use to do ( who fallen into the dirt by their own folly , commonly make a lamentable complaint to their father or mother against them that help them up , as if they had flung them down ) has told a hideous storie to his tutour , as if i had soyl'd him and dirtied him , when as i onely reminded him that he lay in the dirt , which in this case is all one as to help him out of it . wherefore , that i might hold up the humour every way of opposing my adversary ( as i must for fashion-sake call him ) he making his false and grievous accusation to his tutour , i thought fit to direct this my true and pleasant reply to you my pupil . but if i should say , that this is so much as the least part of what moved me to this act , i confesse i should dissemble . for to say nothing of the noblenesse of your descent , which is held ordinarily a sufficient ground for such a respect as this : it is indeed the sweetness and candour of your nature , your great civilitie and pleasantnesse of conversation , your miraculous proficiencie in the choicest parts of philosophy , your egregious perspicacity and kindly wit , your generous freedome of spirit , and true nobleness of mind ( whom the surly countenance of sad superstition cannot aw , but the lovely face of vertue , and radiant beautie of divine knowledge do most potently command to approve and prosecute what is really best ) that has extorted this testimony of love and respect from your affectionate friend to serve you , alaz . philalethes . to his learned friend alazonomastix philalethes , upon his reply . dear friend ! as oft as i with care peruse this strange reply of thine , i cannot chuse one . but wonder at thy rare complexion , where wit , mirth , judgement thus conspire in where inspirations which make others mad unto thy reason , grace and credit add ; and passion , that like dungeon dark , do's blind proves the free fiery chariot of thy mind . go surly stoick , with deep-furrowed brow , natures rude pruner , that wilt not allow what 's right & good . here nought too much appears unless on thy shorn head thine own large ears . since mastix merry rage , all now beleeve passion 's an arm of man , no hanging sleeve . brave generous choler ! whose quick motions pierce swift like the lightning through the universe ; and in their hasty course as on they fare do clense mens souls of vice , as that , the air . noble contention ! which like brushing winds that sweep both land and sea , doth purge our minds . it is thy free and ever-active fire that rooseth men from snorting in the mire : androoz'd , thy aw makes them to tread the stage in a due order and right equipage . thy hiss more dreadfull is then wounding sting of serpents teeth , that certain death do bring : and conscious souls start at thy laughter loud as at a thunder-clap broke from a cloud , when jove some flash of world-rebuking wit lets flie , and faultless gods all laugh at it : for so ridiculous vice in ugly guize is made the sport and pastime of the wise . but when fond men themselves to their own face have their foul shapes reflected , the disgrace and conscience of deformity so stings their gauled minds , and fretted entrayls wrings , that even grown wild with pain in vain they tire themselves , to shake off this close searching fire ; that sticks like burning pitch , and makes them wood as hercules wrapt in the centaurs blood . this is thy fate , eugenius ! thy odde look reflected to thy self from mastix book , has so amaz'd thee with the sudden glance , that all thy wits be struck into a trance . but grief and vengeance thou dost so revive , as if to them alone thou wert alive . and onely takest care with language foul to soyl his person , that would clense thy soul . thus the free chearfull sun with his bright rayes shines upon dnnghils , fens , and foul high-wayes , while they return nought back for his pure beams but thick unwholsome mysts & stinking steams . but yet at length neare his meridian height dispells the morning-fogs by fuller light . go on brave mastix then , those noysome fumes thy first appearance rais'd , sure this consumes . joannes philomastix . to the reader . reader , if thou hast perused my observations upon the two magicall treatises of eugenius philalethes , and his answer to them , i do not doubt but that seeming and personated sharpnesse of mine will now seem just nothing at all , to thy indifferent judgement ; if thou compare it with his unchristian bitternesse and inhumane railings against me . for mine own part , i was so farre from all malice , that if i have trespassed , it was from that over-pleasantnesse of temper i was in , when i wrote : which made me perhaps too heedlesse how much i might displease the party with whom i dealt , being secure of the truth of that saying in the poet , — ridentem dicere verum quis vetat ? — but i find that i have so nettled him unawares , as if his senses lay all in his backside , and had left his brains destitute . which hath made him very ill-favouredly wrong both himself , the rod , and the correctour . verily if i had thought his retentive faculty had been so weak , i would not have fouled my fingers with medling with him . nor would i now lay on this second gentle lash ( i seeing the disposition of my young eugenius ) if it were not as well to wipe my self , as to whip him . i could have been content to have been represented to the world as ignorant of nature and philosophy , as he hath by his bold and very bad speeches to me , endeavoured to represent me . for i am not bound in conscience to know nature , but my self ; nor to be a deep philosopher , but to be and approve my self a plain and honest christian . this forced me to this reply . but i thought fit to cast in also , what will prove me no lesse a philosopher , then no rayler . but i am not contented to justifie my self onely from the successe ; but to thy further satisfaction , i shall not think much to acquaint thee with my purposes and principles . the truth is , eugenius , though he be so highly conceited of himself , that he thinks his worth is great enough to contract my envy ; yet he is so little in my eyes , and my self ( i thank god ) so little envious , that in this regard he is not at all considerable to me . but my drift was to whip that genius and dispensation he is for the present under , upon eugenius his own back , as having deserved to be an instrument to so good an end . and i perswade my self there are those parts and that freedome in some measure already in this young philosopher , that in a little time he will say that he deserved this correction , & will laugh for companie at the merry punishment , and will freely confesse that i am his brother philalethes , a lover of him and of truth : and that he that whipped the money changers out of the temple , is as much the first mastix , as adam the first magicus . but for the present he is under that dispensation which is as pernicious to the nature of man and christianity it self , as it is , to the sober and wife , ridiculous . for he is even in a feaverish thirst after knowledge and fame , & ( as he hath made it manifest to the world ) more after fame by farre then knowledge . wherefore , i observing in his theomagicall tumour and loftinesse nothing but confident misapplying or conceitedly interpreting the holy writ , the drift and meaning whereof is farre above all naturall philosophy or tricks of magick whatsoever : and then a sleighting and scorning those that , i dare say , he doth not understand , who yet are very rationall and intelligible , i mean such as des cartes : and down right rayling against the aristoteleans and galenists , who yet have many sober and usefull truths amongst them : moreover , i noting a melancholick , flatuous and heedlesse phansie to appear in his writings , clothed with sonorous and amazing terms , such as might rather astonish the ignorant , then teach the docible : add unto al this , that it is too too common a disease now adayes to be driven by heedlesse intoxicating imaginations under pretense of higher strains of religion and supernaturall light , and by bidding adieu to sober reason and a purified mind , to grow first fanaticall ; and then atheisticall and sensuall , even almost to the height of abhorred gnosticisme : i thought in good earnest it was very fit , out of my indignation to foolery and imposture , out of my detestation to beastlinesse , atheisme , and sensuality , and lastly , out of that honourable respect and tender affection i bear to the plainesse and simplicity of the life of christ and true divine wisdome , to take occasion to write in such a manner as i did , and to discountenance that genius , that defaces the new appearing face of christendome , and is a reproach to that just liberty that belongs to all those that seek after god in sincerity and truth . i but you will say , this indeed may be well meant : but what title or right have you to intermeddle , or to correct another mans follies ? this is usurpation and incivility . to this may many things be answered . it is true ; the inward rottenness of men hath made very smooth laws to themselves in favour of their own follies and vices , and mutuall connivence at what is bad is held the best manners ; as if mankind pack'd and conspired together to keep wickedness warm in her usurped seat by never taking the boldnesse to examine her title . but to judge more charitably of the generations of men , i think it is more out of self-love , then love to her , and out of a tender dotage toward this imposturous knot of atoms , our earthly personality . which yet i thought i was more favourable to here , having to do onely with fictitious names not any known person . but it doth not follow , though this be the mode , that therefore it is the right fashion : and quando ego non curo tuum , ne cura meum , is but surlely said of the old man in the comedy . that 's the principle of cain , am i my brothers keeper ? there was more divine generosity in that noted cynick , then in civility it self , when it is so soft , that it will not prick nor hurt vice . he would not spare to speak where things went amisse , however he sped for it ; tanquam pater omnium , tanquam frater omnium , as they report of him . and i think i have sped ill enough for my but seasonable speaking . but if this be to appeal to too high a law , i answer further , that eugenius had forfeited his priviledges he might claim by the laws of civility , he himself having so uncivilly dealt with others , that are above all comparison better then he . i but you 'll say , why do you make him so ridiculous in your reproving him ? single reproof had been enough . i answer , i did not make him ridiculous , but found him so . he put on himself the pyde coat , and i onely drew aside the curtain . did not the thracian girl rightly laugh at thales when she see him stumble into a ditch , whiles he was staring up at the starres ? and are not they as ridiculous , that pretend to seraphick mysterious theories , and are not masters yet of common sense , and plainest truths of christianity ? that stumble at the threshold , or rather grope for the dore as the blinded sodomites ? all the faculties of man are good in themselves , and the use of them , is at least permitted to him , provided that with seasonable circumstances and upon a right object . and i have made it already manifest that my act was bounded with these cautions i but there is yet something behind unsatisfied . though eugenius be ridiculous ; yet is it not ridiculous , for one that pretends so much to the love of christianitie as your self , so publickly to laugh at him ? that pinches indeed . why ! am i so venerable a personage ? i am sure i never affected to seem any such to the world yet . i wear no sattin ears , nor silk cap with as many seams as there are streaks in the back of a lute . i affect neither long prayers nor a long beard , nor walk with a smooth-knobbed staff to sustein my gravity . if i be a precisian , as eugenius would have me , it must be from hence that i precisely keep my self to the naked truth of christianity . as for sects , ceremonies , superstitious humours , or specious garbs of sanctimony , i look on them all , if affected , as the effects of ignorance , or masks of hypocrisie . and thus am i {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , a gentleman in querpo , a meer man , a true man , a christian . one that never thinks himself so great , as to grow unweildy & unready to put himself into any shape or posture for a cōmon good . and i prethee , reader , why may not such a christian as this laugh ? or tell me , who is he in heaven that laughs them to scorn , that has the opposers of the reigne of christ in derision ? god is not a man that he should laugh , no more then cry or repent , as much as concerns the divine essence it self : but as god is in a deiform man he may be said to laugh , and he can be said to laugh no where else . and if he might , yet that which is attributed to god , though {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , cannot mis-become a good man . thus , reader , is your argument against laughing as solidly argued as sportingly laughed out of countenance ; and affected austerity made ridiculous by the plain and unaffected reasonings of eugenius his merry adversary , but your sober and serious friend alazonomastix philalethes . to eugenius philalethes . eugenius , the reason why you heard not from me sooner , is because yours arrived to my hands later then i exspected . it was so hot it seems , that none of my acquaintance had so hard and brawny fingers as to indure the dandling of this glowing coal till its conveyance where you would have it . it is a brand from that fire , that hath not onely calcined , but so vitrified eugenius , that it hath made him transparent to all the world . all men may see now through his glassy sides how unevenly and disorderly his black heart beats & pants ; they need not feel his pulse to find his distemper . aesops fair water but a little warmed hath proved a very effectuall emetick for thee , o philalethes , and hath made thee vomit up thy shame and folly in the sight of the world , as his accuser did the figs before his master . so that that which you falsely supposed me to have endeavoured , you have fatally brought upon your self , above the desire , i should think , of your bitterest enemies , i am sure beyond the exspectation of me that am your reall friend . i did not endeavour your personall disgrace , but the discountenancing of that , which in my judgement is the disgrace of your person , and many other persons besides . and now that you have done me the greatest despight you can imagine , and show'd your malice to the full , so that in the court of heaven and according to the doctrine of christ you are no better then a murderer , yet for all this i am benignly affected to you still , and wish you as much good , as i do those , that never endeavoured to provoke me . and really i speak it from my soul , if it lay in my power to do it , you should find it . but for the present , i could in my judgement do nothing more proper , considering all circumstances , then what i have done , and still do , in advertising you of what is for the best . and truly , ( looking upon you in some sort as a noctambulo , one that walks in his sleep ) that book which hath proved so mischeivous a scandal , i intended onely for a stumble to wake you , ( that you might shrugg and rub your eyes , and see in what a naked condition you are , ) not stone of offense for you to fall upon and hurt you but you are fallen and hurt , and yet do not awake as if mercuries rod , or know not what other force of magick still held fast your eyes . you onely mutter against the present disturbance , as one shogged while he dreams upon his pillow , but you still sleep . you cry out as one cramp'd in your bed , but your closed sight can not discern whether it be a friend in sport or for better purpose , or whether it be your foe to torture you . awake eugenius ! awake , behold , it is i , your sportfully troublesome friend , or what you will in due time acknowledge , though in this present drousie humour you puff at it , and kick against it , your carefull and vigilant brother alazonomastix philalethes . ¶ the second lash of alazonomastix . and now , eugenius , if it be as lawfull for me to speak to one asleep , as it was for diogenes to talk to pillars and posts that are not in a capacity of ever being awake : let me tell you ( to begin with your title-page first ) that you do very much undervalue and wrong your self , that you being a gentleman of that learning and parts that you are , you will thus poorly condescend to that contemptible trade of a mous-catcher : and that you are not content to abuse your self onely , but you do abuse scripture too , by your ridiculous applying st. pauls fighting with beasts at ephesus , to your combating with , and overcoming of a mouse . truly , philalethes , i think , they that have the meanest opinion of you , would give you their suffrage for a taller office then this , and adjudge you at least worthy of the place of a rat-catcher . as for your epistle dedicatory , i conceive you have a very indulgent tutour , else you would not be so bold to utter so foul language in his hearing . you have a very familiar friend of him , if you can without breach of civilitie thus freely vomit up your figs into his bosome , but for p. b. of oxenford his verses , i will onely set this one verse of virgil's against them all ; qui bavium non odit , amet tua carmina , maevi . thus you see how gladly i would rid my self of all your foul language and fooleries . i have nimbly run through these , i shall leap over the rest as so many dirty ditches . your slovingly speeches and uncivil raylings , you must seek an answer for them in billinsgate , or amongst the butchers ; nobis non licet csse tam disertis . but where you bring any thing that bears any shew of reason with it , i will ( though it be farre below me to answer so foul a mouth ) return what in the judgement of the sober , i hope will not fail to be approved as satisfactorie . pag. , and . in these pages you accuse me of very high incivility and immoralitie . and it is an accusation worth the answering , especially being set off with that great aggravation of being committed against one that is a christian . but verily , philalethes , i do not meet with any man now that takes you to be such , after this specimen , as i call it , of your kainish and unchristian dealing with me , whom indifferent judges will not think to have deserved the hundredth part of this revenge . i tell thee , eugenius , there is no christian but who is partaker of the holy unction , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} of the divine nature , and of that pure and peaceable love . but if thou thinkest thy mere baptisme will make thee a christian ( while in the mean time thy heart is possessed of uncleanness and hatred , which the law of christ interprets murder ) the heathen poet is able to shew thee thy grosse errour in this point ; ah nimiùm faciles ! qui tristia crimina caedis flumineâ tolli posse putatis aquâ , oh fools and credulous ! that think you may by water wash sad guilt of bloud away . but to the accusation and charge it self : which is this ; that i say you are simon magus-like , a heated noddle , a mome , a mimick , an ape , a mere animal , a snail , a philosophik hog , a nip-crust , a pick-pocket , a niggard , tom fool with a devils head and horns , one that desires to be a conjurer more then a christian . this is the first part of your charge . but before i answer to the particulars of it , or proceed to the other , these two things are to be noted ; first , that you have drained all the sharper humour that was but thinly dispersed through the body of my book into two narrow places , that you may make them appear like two angry boyls , or malignant pushes in the bodie ; which if it were done in the soundest body that is , there would be the like seeming distemper . secondly , it is to be considered that i did professe that i would put my self in some seeming posture of harshnesse and incivilitie , that i might shew you your own reall miscarriage to others , by imitating and personating the same toward your self . but the thing that i contend for now , is , that this personated incivility and harshnes of mine is nothing so harsh and uncivill as you do here make it , as will appear from the causes or occasionall circumstances of this hard language you have thus culled out . for to begin with the first : you having a designe to seem no smal thing in the world , and also pretending to magick ; how easily , how naturally do's it fall into the mind of a man , to compare you to simon magus in these regards ? and if you did not walk as all touchy proud men do , as it were with their skins flean off , such a light thing as this would not smart nor hurt you so sore . heated noddle . that 's the onely mischief of it that it is true , and your flame and smoke is as conspicuous as that of aetna and vesuvius : — quis enim celaverit ignem ? enitet indicio prodita flamma suo . for who can fire conceal ? whose flame shoots out and shining shews it self to all about . as your heat and fire has sufficiently done , especially in this your last against me , to your great credit : i am sure to mine , for you have writ so as if you intended to save me from all suspicion of being mistaken in you . a mome , a mimick , and an ape . i onely said that you were more like those then aristotle : and if you distrust my judgement , i pray you ask any body else . and to call you a mere animal occasionally in our dispute , whether the world be an animal or no : what rudenesse is there in it : worse then this is held no incivilitie betwixt those two famous philosophers cardan and scaliger , whom your magisterialnesse has made bold to use at least as coursely , as i seem to have used you . but you would it seems have the whole monopoly of reprehension to your self . and much good may it do you engenius . my generous liberty of speech has been so well entertained by some in the world , that i shall take up that prudentiall resolution for the future , si populus decipi vult , decipiatur . a snail . but that a poore snail should stick in your stomach so , philalethes , i much wonder at it . certainly as fair as you bid for a magician , yet i perceive you will be no gypsie by your abhorrencie from this food . but a philosophic hog , there 's a thwacking contumely indeed . truly you are young , eugenius : and i pray you then please your self , if you had rather be called a philosophick pig . but then you would be afraid that some presbyterian may click you up for a tithe-pig , and eat you . ( this is a pig of your own sow , phil. a piece of your own wit . ) but being a philosophick pig you may be secure : that 's too tough meat for a countrey presbyter . but i prethee phil. why art thou so offended at the term of philosophick hog ? the meaning is onely , that thou wouldst pretend to see invisible essences , as that creature is said to see the wind . do's christ call himself thief , when he sayes that his coming shall be as a thief in the night : peace , for shame caviller , peace . niggard and nip-crust , viz. of your theomagicall notions . that 's all i said : and i am such a nip-crust and niggard of my speech , that i will say no more . pick-pocket . to this i answer fully at observat. . pag. . where i shew that there being no suspicion at all of any such fact in you , it makes the conceit harmlesse and without scurrility . and as little scurrilous is that which follows , viz. tom-fool , with the devils head and horns . for my speaking of it in such sort as i did , implyes onely that i look upon you as a merry wag playing the child and fooling behind the hangings , and putting out your head by fits with a strange vizard to scare or amaze you● familiar comrades and companions . and i pray you , what bitternesse is in all this ? but you have made the foulest , ugliest vizard for me in this your book , and put it on my head , to make the world believe that i were both fool and devil incorporate into one person . and this you have done out of malice magicus , and implacable revenge . but i wish you had some black bag or veil , to hide your shame from the world : that is the worst i wish you . one that desires to be a conjurer more then to be a christian : if you like not conjurer , write exorcist . that 's all i would have meant by it . there is a conjuring out as well as a conjuring up the devil . and i wish you were good at the former of these , for your own sake . but now to apply my emollient to the other boyl you have made in the body of my little book . you have made the sharp humour swell into this second bunch by your unnaturall draining . a fool in a play , a jack-pudding , a thing wholly set in a posture to make the people laugh , a giddy phantastick conjurer , a poor kitling , a calfshead , a vaunting mountebank , a pander , a sworn enemy to reason , a shittle scull , no good christian , an otter , a wa●er-rat , will with the wisp , and meg with the lanthorn , tom-fool in a play , a naturall fool . a fool in a play , a jackpudding , &c. let the reader consult the place if there be not a seasonable occasion of reminding you of your over much lightnesse , you taking so grave a task upon you as to be a publick professour of theomagicks . a giddy phantastick conjurer . no conjurer there but a phantastick . i admit in you the lesser fault to discharge you of the greater . is this to revile you , or befriend you ? a poor kitling . poor kitling ! take it in to thy lap , phil. and stroke it gently : i warrant thee it will not hurt thee . be not so shie why thou art akin to it , phil. by thy own confession . for thou art a mouse-catcher which is near akin to a cat , which is also a catche of mice : and a cat is sire to a kitling . a calfshead . i did not call thee calfshead eugenius , but said that no chymist could extract any substantiall visible form out o● thy brains , whereby they may be distinguished from what lies in a calfshead . and 〈◊〉 vanting mountebank is no more , then vanting like a mountebank . and there is a vast difference in simply calling you pander , and calling you pander to madam nature : who , a● you confesse , complains of your prostitutions . a sworn enemy to reason . why , do you not pray against reason , a logicâ liber a ● domine ? and i think any body would swear you are a reall enemy to that you pray against , unlesse your devotions be but a mockery . a shittle skull . my words were , did your sculler or shittle skull . i hope you do not think , that i meant your skull was so flue and shallow that boyes might shittle it , and make ducks and drakes on the water with it , as they do with oyster-shels : or that your self was so magicall , that you could row to the crystall rock in it , as witches are said to do on the seas in an egg-shell . excuse me , phil. i meant no such high mysteries . it was onely a pittyfull dry clinch , as light as a nut-shell : something like that gingle of thine , nation and indignation . no good christian . in that place you bad us show you a good christian , and you would &c. there i inferre , that ( you being at all other times so ready to show your self , and here you slinking back ; ) you were conscious to your self that you were no good christian . otter and water-rat . i said onely that you did waddle on toward the river usk like an otter or water-rat . will with the wisp , and meg with the lanthorn . i do not call you will , nor meg : but tell you , if you walk by river sides and marish places , you may well meet with such companions there as those , to take a turn or two with you . tom-fool in a play . why , is not your name tom ? they tell me it is tom vaughan of jesus colledge in oxford . well then tom , do not you make your self an actour in a play ? for these are your words : i will now withdraw and leave the stage to the next actour . so here is tom in the play . but where is the fool ? say you . where is the wisest man ? say i. my self sayes tom vaughan , i warrant you . why , then say i , tom vaughan is tom fool in the play . for the fool in the play is to be the wisest man , according to the known proverb . but how will you wipe off that aspersion of calling me naturall fool , sayes wise tom. that indeed i confesse impossible , because it was never yet laid on . i said onely , if you had answered the aristoteleans sic probo's , with mere laughter , you would have proved your self a naturall fool . but he hath not done so , nor is tom vaughan a naturall fool i dare swear for him . he has too much naturall heat to be a naturall fool . blesse thee from madnesse , tom , and all will be well . but there is yet something else behind ' worse then all this : that all these terms of incivilitie must proceed from spight and provocation . and this you place betwixt the two bilious tumours you have raysed , as a ductus communis , or common chanel to convey the sharp malignant humour to swell them to the full . it is true , my words run thus ; that i have been very fair with you , and though provoked , &c. but this was spoken in the person of an aristotelean , whom your scornfull usage of their master aristotle you may be sure did and does provoke . but in good truth , philalethes , you did not provoke me at all with your book , unlesse to laugh at you for your puerilities . i but you have an argument for it , that i was provoked , viz. because your theomagicall discourse has so out-done or undone my ballade of the soul ( as you scornfully call it ) that my ignorance in the platonick philosophy has now appeared to the world . o rem ridiculam ! thou art a merry greek indeed , philalethes , and art set upon 't to make the world sport . thou dost then professe openly to all the world , that thou hast so high a conceit of thy anthroposophia , that it may well dash me out of countenance with my philosophicall poems ; and that through envie , i being thus wounded , i should by my alazonomastix endeavour for the ease of my grief , to abate thy credit . what a suffenus art thou in the esteeming of thy own works , o eugenius ? and of what a pitifull spirit dost thou take alazonomastix to be ? i do professe ex animo , that i could heartily wish that my self were the greatest ignaro in the world , upon condition i were really no more ignorant then i am : so little am i touched with precellency or out-stripping others . ( but thou judgest me to have wrote out of the same intoxicating principle that thou thy self hast , that is , vain glory . ) or however if there was any thing of that when i wrote those poems , which , i thank god , if any , was very little ; yet long ago ( i praise that power that inabled me ) i brought it down to a degree far lesse then thy untamed heat for the present can imagine possible . but you 'll say , this is a mysterie above all magick . what then was the impulsive of writing against your book ? i have told you already , but you are loth to believe me : mere enmity to immoralitie and foolery . but if it were any thing that might respect my self , it was onely this ; that you so carelessely and confidently adventuring upon the platonick way , with so much tainted heat and distemper , that to my better composed spirit you seemed not a little disturbed in your phansie , and your bloud to be too hot to be sufficiently rectified by your brain , i thought it safe for me to keep those books i wrote out of a spirit of sobernesse from reprochfull mistake : for you pretending the same way that i seem to be in , as in your bold and disadvantagious asserting , the soul to pre-exist , and to come into the bodie open-ey'd as it were , that is , full fraught with divine notions ; and making such out-ragiously distorted delineaments of that {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , as the stoicks call it , the enlivened universe , with sundry other passages of like grossnesse , i was afraid that men judging that this affectation of platonisme in you , might well proceed from some intemperies of bloud and spirit ; and that , there no body else besides us two dealing with these kinds of notions , they might yoke me with so disordered a companion as your self : reasoning thus with themselves ; vaughan of jesus in oxenford holds the pre-existencie of the soul , and other platonick paradoxes , and we see what a pickle he is in : what think you of more of christ's , that writ the platonicall poems ? nay , what think you of platonisme it self ? surely , it is all but the fruit of juvenile distemper and intoxicating heat . but i say , it is the most noble and effectuall engine to fetch up a mans mind to true virtue and holinesse , next to the bible , that is extant in the world . and that this may not suffer , i have suffered my self to observe upon you what i have observed , my young engenius . this is true , my friend , to use your own phrase : and that the world may know that i have not wrote like some bestrid pythonick or hackneyed enthusiastick , let them looke & read under what light i 〈◊〉 and sung that divine song of the soul . but yet , my muse , still take an higher flight , sing of platonick faith in the first good , that faith that doth our souls to god unite so strongly , tightly , that the rapid flood of this swift flux of things , nor with foul mud can stain , nor strike us off from th' unity wherein we stedfast stand , unshak'd , unmov'd , engrafted by a deep vitalitie . the prop and stay of things is gods benignity . all 's is the rule of his oeconomie , no other cause the creature brought to light , but the first goods pregnant secundity : he to himself is perfect full delight . he wanteth nought . with his own beams bedight he glory has enough . o blasphemy ! that envy gives to god , or sowre despight . harsh hearts ! that feign in god a tyranny under pretense to encrease his sovereign majesty . when nothing can to gods own self accrew , who 's infinitely happy ; sure the end of his creation simply was to shew his flowing goodnesse , which he doth outsend not for himself : for nought can him amend , but to his creature doth his good impart . this infinite good through all the world doth wend , to fil with heavenly blisse each willing heart . so the free sun doth light and ' liven every part . this is the measure of gods providence , the key of knowledge , the first fair idee , the eye of truth , the spring of living sense , whence sprout gods secrets , the sweet mystery of lasting life , eternall charity , &c. and elsewhere in my poems . when i my self from mine own self do quit , and each thing else ; then an all-spreaden love to the vast universe my soul doth fit , makes me half equall to all-seeing jove . my mighty wings high stretch'd then clapping light , i brush the stars and make them shine more bright . then all the works of god with close embrace i dearly hug in my enlarged arms , all the hid pathes of heavenly love i trace , and boldly listen to his secret charms , then clearly view i where true light doth rise , and where eternal night low-pressed lies , & c this , philalethes , is that lamp of god in the light whereof my reason and phansie have wrought thus many years . this is that true chymicall fire that has purged my soul and purified it , and has crystallized it into a bright throne , and shining habitation of the divine majesty . this free light is that , which having held my soul in it self for a time ; taught me in a very sensible manner , that vast difference betwixt the truth and freedome of the spirit , and anxious impostures of this dark personality & earthly bondage of the body . this is my oracle , my counsellour , my faithfull instructer and guide , my life , my strength , my glory , my joy , my communicated god . this is that heavenly flame and bright sun of righteousnesse , that puts out the light , and quenches the heat of all worldly imaginations , and desires whatsoever . all the power and knowledge in nature that is , all the feats and miraculous performances done by witches , magicians , or devils , they be but toyes and tricks , and are no solid satisfaction of the soul at all ( yea , though we had that power upon lawfull terms ) if compared with this . and as for divine knowledge , there is none truly so called , without it . he that is come hither , god hath taken him to his own familiar friend , & though he speak to others aloof off in outward religions and parables , yet he leads this man by the hand , teaching him intelligible documents upon all the objects of his providence ; speaks to him plainly in his own language ; sweetly insinuates himself , and possesses all his faculties , understanding , reason , and memory . this is the darling of god , and a prince amongst men , farre above the dispensation of either miracle or prophesie . for him the deep searchers and anxious soliciters of nature drudge and toyl , contenting themselves with the pitifull wages of vain glory or a little wealth . poor gibeonites ! that hew wood and draw water for the temple . this is the temple of god , this is the son of god , whom he hath made heir of all things , the right emmanuel , the holy mystery of the living members of christ . hallelujah . from this principle which i have here expressed , have all those poems i have wrote had their originall : and as many as are moved with them aright , they carry them to this principle from whence they came . but to those , whose ignorance makes them contemn them , i will onely say to them what our saviour said to nicodemus ; the wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof , but knowest not from whence it comes nor whither it goes . but i am afraid i have stood all this time in a little too high a station for thee , my philalethes : i descend now and come a little nearer to thee . and now i tell thee further , that thy rash and unworthy abuse of des-cartes did move me to write so as i did , more then any personall regard else whatsoever . for i love the gentleman for his excellent and transcendent naturall wit , and like his philosophy as a most rationall , coherent , subtill peice , and an hypothesis accurately and continuedly agreeing with the phaenomena of nature . this is he whom thou callest my fellow fool , to thy own great disparagement . but this is he that i call the wisest naturalist that ever came to my hands . and having not had the good hap to light on such a rare peice of my own invention , i thought it was the best office i could do the world to bestow my judgement and censure of his . and so now you will say i am become so great a cartesian that i begin to think but meanly of platonisme . a wise inference ! as if divine and naturall knowledge were inconsistent . i tell thee no , philalethes : nor am i become cold to my own poems . for i say that that divine spirit and life that lyes under them , is worth not onely all the magick that thou pretendest to , but all that thou art ignorant of beside , yea , and des-cartes his philosophy to boot . i say it is worth all that a thousand times told over . des-cartes philosophy is indeed a fine neat subtill thing , but for the true ornament of the mind bears no greater proportion to that principle i told you of , then the dry bones of a snake made up elegantly into a hatband , to the royall clothing of solomon . but other naturall philosophies in respect of des-cartes his , are even lesse then a few chips of wood to a well erected fabrick . but i say that a free divine universalized spirit is worth all . how lovely , how magnificent a state is the soul of man in , when the life of god inactuating her , shoots her along with himself through heaven and earth , makes her unite with , and after a sort feel herself animate the whole world , as if she had become god and all things : this is the precious clothing and rich ornament of the mind , farre above reason or any other experiment . and in this attire thou canst not but dance to that musick of the sibylle . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} i am jehovah , ( well my words perpend ) clad with the frory sea , all mantled over with the blue heavens , shod with the earth i wend , the stars about me dance , th' air doth me cover . this is to become deiform , to be thus suspended ( not by imagination , but by union of life , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , joyning centers with god ) and by a sensible touch to be held up from the clotty dark personality of this compacted body . here is love , here is freedome , here is justice and equity in the superessentiall causes of them . he that is here , looks upon all things as one , and on himself , if he can then mind himself , as a part of the whole . and so hath no self-interest , no unjust malicious plot , no more then the hand hath against the foot , or the ear against the eye . this is to be godded with god , and christed with christ , if you be in love with such affected language . but you , o ye cages of unclean birds , that have so begodded your selves , that you are grown foul and black like brutes or devils , what will become of you ? o you sinks of sinne ! you that have heretofore followed religion to excuse you from reall righteousnesse and holinesse , and now have found a trick to be abominably wicked without any remorse of conscience . you are gods and goddesses every bit of you , and all actions in you divine . he leads you up into the bed of a whore , and uncases you both for the unclean act. and when you tell obscene stories in a rapture , you are caught up into god . o you foul mouthes ! you blebs of venery , you bags of filth ! you dishonour of christendome and reproach of men ! is not all this righteously come upon you , because you never sought after religion , as a thing within you , holy , and divine ; but as an excuse to save you from wrath , and yet to remain in your sinnes ? but that cannot be : you are in the fewell of wrath while you are in your sinnes , and that fewell will be set on fire some time or other . but that you may be secure of wrath you say there is no sinne , but that it is onely a conceit and a name . is it not a sinne to be lesse happy ten thousand times then god would have you ? doth not both sense and reason discover to you , ( i am sure it doth to others ) that you walk in the wayes of hell and death ? but you are still secure , you your selves are as much god as any thing else is , and so you may make your hell as favourable to your selves as you please . but o you fools and blind ! i see you cannot , but you are entangled with the cords and snares that the divine nemesis hath laid for the wicked in all the parts of the world . but you are not yet any thing moved , o ye dead in trespasses and sinnes ! for there is no god , say you , more then a dog or a horse is god . behold , o ye forlorn wretches and miserably mistaken ! behold , he is come down to you : nay , he is ever with you and you see him not . ask of him , and he shall answer you . demand of him , and he shall declare unto you , not in obscure words or dark sayings , not in aenigmaticall speeches or parables ; but he will speak unto your own reason and faculties which he hath given you : propound therefore unto him why you think the soul of man is mortall , and why you deny an omnipotent and omniscient god distinct from nature & particular beings : propound unto him , and he will plainly answer you . but alas ! alas ! you are neither fit to hear nor able to propound , for you have destroyed those faculties that he hath given you by sinning against the light of them , and now you have drunk out your eyes , you swear there is no sun in the firmament : and now you have whored away your brains , you are confident there is no god . o sunk and helplesse generation ! how have you sop'd and soaked , overflown and drown'd the highest seat and acropolis of your soul , that through your sensuality it is grown as rotten and corrupt as a dunghill ? you have made your selves as fit to judge of reason as if your heads were stuffed with wet straw . these things hath the divine indignation uttered against you , but more for reproof then reproach . but your sinne hath made you sottish , and your sottishnesse confident and secure . but his anger burns against you ; o you false religionists ! and the wrath of god will overtake you when you are not aware : and your shame shall ascend up like the smoke of the bottomlesse pit , and your stink shall be as the filthinesse in the valley of the children of hinnom . this will be the portion of all those that barter away sound reason and the sober faculties of the soul for boisterous words of vanity , and unsetled conceits of enthusiasts , that having neither reason nor scripture nor conspicuous miracle , row down with the stream of mens corruptions and ripen and hasten the unclean part in man , to a more full and speedy birth of sinne and ungodlinesse . but what 's all this to me ? saith philalethes . i tell thee , phil. i neither wrote before nor do i now write onely for thy sake , but for as many as my writings may reach for their good . nor am i out of my wits as some may fondly interpret me in this divine freedome . but the love of god compelled me . nor am i at all , philalethes , enthusiasticall . for god doth not ride me as a horse , and guide me i know not whither my self ; but converses with me as a friend , and speaks to me in such a dialect as i understand fully , and can make others understand , that have not made shipwrack of the faculties that god hath given them , by superstition or sensuality : for with such i can not converse , because they do not converse with god ; but onely pity them , or am angry with them , as i am merry and pleasant with thee . for god hath permitted to me all these things , and i have it under the broad seal of heaven . who dare charge me ? god doth acquit me . for he hath made me full lord of the foure elements , and hath constituted me emperour of the world . i am in the fire of choler and am not burned : in the water of phlegme and am not drowned : in the aiery sanguine and yet not blown away with every vain blast of transient pleasure , or false doctrines of men : i descend also into the sad earthy melancholy , and yet am not buryed from the sight of my god . i am , philalethes , ( though i dare say thou takest me for no bird of paradise ) incola coeli in terrâ , an inhabitant of paradise , and heaven upon earth : and the white stone is mine , however thou scramblest for the philosophers stone . ( i wish thou hadst them both , that is all the harm i wish thee . ) i still the raging of the sea , i clear up the lowring heavens , and with my breath blow away the clouds . i sport with the beasts of the earth , the lion licks my hand like a spaniell , and the serpent sleeps upon my lap and stings me not . i play with the fowls of heaven , and the birds of the air sit singing on my fist . all the creation is before me , and i call every one of them by their proper names . this is the true adam , o philalethes : this is paradise , heaven , and christ . all these things are true in a sober sense . and the dispensation i live in , is more happinesse above all measure , then if thou couldst call down the moon so near thee by thy magick charms that thou mightest kisse her , as she is said to have kissed endymion , or couldest stop the course of the sunne , or which is all one , with one stamp of thy foot , stay the motion of the earth . all this externall power in nature were but as a shop of trinkets and toyes , in comparison of what i have declared unto you . and an adulterous generation onely seeks after a signe , or idiots , such as love to stare on a dexterous jugler when he playes his tricks . and therefore they being of so little consideration in themselves ; i see and am satisfied why miracles are no more frequent in the world . god intends an higher dispensation , and greater happinesse for these later times , wherein divine love and reason , and for their sakes liberty will lay claim to the stage . for he will as i told you draw us with the cords of a man , not ride us as with a bridle like a horse , or tug us along like a mad stear in a band . he will sanctifie our inward faculties , and so take possession of the earth . but that a man may not deplore what is lamentable , or be angry at what is injurious to god or goodnesse , or laugh at what is ridiculous , this is not any part of that law that is made manifest in the heavenly life , but the arbitrarious precepts of supercilious stoicks , or surly superstitionists . for god hath sanctified and will sanctifie all these things . nor am i at all mad or fanatick in all this , o you unexperienced and unwise ! for as our saviour said of his body , touch me and handle me : so say i of my soul : feel and try all the faculties of it if you can find any crack or flaw in them . where is my reason inconsequent , or inconsistent with the attributes of god , the common notions of men , the phaenonema of nature , or with it self ? where is my phansie distorted , unproportionate , unproper ? but for the bottome of all these , that , i confesse , you can not reach to nor judge of , that is divine sense , the white stone , in which there is a name written that none can read but he that hath it . but for the guidance of my reason and imagination , they have so safe a stearsman , viz. that divine touch of my soul with god , and the impregnation of my understanding from the most high , that judgement and caution have so warily built the outward fabrick of words and phansie , that i challenge any man to discover any ineptitude in them , or incoherencie . and now verily the serious consideration of these weighty matters have so composed my mind , that i find it some difficultie to discompose it into a temper childish enough to converse with my young eugenius . but as high as i have taken my station , i will descend , and go lesse my self , to bring him to what is greater . behold , i leap down as from the top of some white rocky cloud , upon the grassie spot where my philalethes stands , and i shall now begin the game of my personated enmitie , or sportfull colluctation with him . page . lin. . be sure in your next to give me an account of this disease in what books or persons , &c. mous-catcher , take away thy trap , and take off the tosted cheese from off the wire , and with thy fore-finger and thy thumb put it into thine own wide mouth , o thou tom vaughan of wales . lin. . i have found them in your ballade . ballade is a good old english word , from which i abhorre no more then spencer , or lucretius from old latine , who yet was something younger then tully . is not the song of solomon called the ballade of ballades , in some church-bibles ? thou art so angry that thou art not able to rail with judgement . but what high swoln words of vanitie are there in that ballade of mine ? thou art so ignorant that terms of art seem heathen greek to thee . but for those words that i interpreted for the ignorants sake ( you see what a care i have of you , o unthankfull eugenius ! ) there is an apologie prefixt that will satisfie the ingenuous , and for others it matters not . pag. . lin. . with a bull rampant . you bestow upon me many bulls , eugenius : but when you are so kind as to give me them for nothing , you may well expect that i will be so thankfull , as to return you a calf for every bull i have gratis . let us begin , &c. and you indeed have done your part already . the sense is , but you indeed have done your part already : what is this but an {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ? but you have i see as little skill in rhetorick as civilitie . the calf take thee , phil. or take thou the calf . there is one to begin thy herd . page . lin. . what , both tell-troths ? before thou wast no rhetorician , now thou art no logician nor philosopher , that canst not distinguish betwixt veritie and veracitie . veracitie is enough to make a tom tell-troth , though his narration be false . hence it is demonstrable that two men may be both tel-troths , though their stories be point-blank contrary to one another . the sense of my words is this ; you have told what you thought aristotle was blameable in : i will now tell what i think you are blameable in . you may be against aristotle , and i for him , and both with veracitie , though not with veritie . page . lin. . found out some new truths . yes , i say there are passages in your book , that imply so much at least . we shall see when we come at them : and i shall shew that you found them before they were lost . page . lin . . the third project is the same with the first . why , is to be skilful in art magick , and to find out new truths all one ? it seems then you suppose there are no new truths to be found out but magicall ones . blessed age that we live in ! all other arts are brought to their non plus ultrá . physicians , geometricians , astronomians , astrologians , musicians , put up your pipes . claudite jam rivos pueri . there is nothing remains to be done by you . all is perfected . but let me ask you one sober question , phil. have you gone through all these arts and throughly understand them , that you do so boldly pronounce them compleat and perfect ? i know philalethes is not so immodest as to say so ; i am sure the world is not so foolishly credulous as to beleeve so . so that i must conclude , eugenius , that thou art so outragiously distempered in thy mind , that thou art a weaker arithmetician then the rude thracians . they told to foure , thou art out at three , and must begin again . page . lin. . how many more syllables in anthroposophia , then in antipsychopannychia ? not so many . so that if i had affected to be so magical as your learned self , the same conceit would have fitted my title-page . but i begin now to suspect , you are so nimble at comparing , that your title-page was a kind of apish imitation of mine in the first edition of my song of the soul . but wast thou so simple as to think that any bodie thought better of my book for those hard words in the frontispiece of it ? i onely set them there as a wind-mill on a stack of corn , by the clack of it to scare away sparrows and crows , that it might be reserved entire for men . but i perceive for all that , that thy rooks bill has been pecking there . but much good may it do thee , phil. i envie it thee not . page . lin. . vim scrmonis esse in verbis , &c. i say , the force and warrant both of nouns and verbs is from their use , quem penes arbitrium est , & jus , & norma loquendi . but if you will have , oratour to be good and proper : this epistle of yours must then be no epistle , though you call it so , but an oration to the fratres r. c. which you spoke to them when they were god knows where , and they will answer you god knows when . verily , philalethes , thou art a fine fellow to have made an oratour of in king midas his time . for he had , they say , very long eares : and so mightest thou have made an oration before the king in his absence . page . line . a twofold definition , accidentall and essentiall . that 's true , phil. what freshman but knows that ? but how it is to be understood , i perceive thou dost not know . i am ashamed that i must be fain to rub up in thee the very first rudiments of logick , or rather teach thee them . for couldst thou ever forget what is meant by accidentall , what by essentiall ? accidentall is that which may be or not be in a thing , and yet the thing be : as a horse may be a horse , be it black or white . essentiall is that which so belongs to the thing to which it is said to be essentiall , that the thing cannot be conceiv'd to exist without it . now , say i , these faculties of understanding , reason , and sense are essentiall to the soul of man , because we cannot conceive a soul without a power or facultie of understanding , reasoning , &c. and aristotle has defined a soul from these . therefore would a peripatetick say , with an essentiall definition . but eugenius , no : this is but circumstantiall , sayes he . therefore i do inferre , eugenius , that thou dost dream of knowing the very naked substance of the soul ; which thou wilt as soon know , as see the wind . and thus i spoke to that that thou must needs mean , if thou meanest any thing : but it is a plain case , thou dost not know thy own meaning . but aristotle doth sufficiently countenance mine , with what he has verie luckily let fall some where in his analyticks ; and thus is it manifestly true in that sense that you your self meant ; that the very essence of any substance is not to be known , nor is there any such essentiall definition . this is as true , tom. vaughan , as two and two are foure , though i do not call you owl for your ignorance , as you do me for my knowledge . but we shall have another bout again with this , in your anima magica abscondita . page . to the . to have made the world as a carpenter , of stone and timber . thou hast misplaced a comma in the sentence to make a cavil . put on thy spectacles , and see if there be any comma before of in my book . if you understood common sense you could not but understand , that my meaning is this ; that you tax the peripateticks for phansying god to have made the world as a carpenter makes houses of stone and timber . now pitifull caviller ! but to the point . i say this is a false taxation , eugenius : for the parts of the world , according to the peripateticks own doctrine , are set in this order they are from an inward principle of motion , and their own proper qualities : so that they do as the stones and trees are said to have done at the musick of orphevs and amphion , move of themselves . but the stone and timber in the work of a carpenter , do not move themselves into their places they ought to be , for the building up of an house . but you answer two things to this : first , that the parts of the world do not move themselves : secondly , that if they do , then they have infusion of life . to the first : why , dos not any part of the earth move it self downward , if it be in an higher place then is naturall to it , and the aire and fire upward , &c. and this from an inward principle of motion ? nay , is not the very definition of nature , principium motûs & quietis , &c. wherefore we see plainly , that according to the aristoteleans , all to the very concave of the moon have an inward principle of motion . and for the heavens themselves , the most sober and cautious of the peripateticks hold them to be moved from an inward principle , their forma informans , as they call it . so that though they do not allow life infused into the world , yet they allow an inward principle of motion in natural bodies , which is their substantiall forms , by vertue whereof they are ranged in this order as we see ; or at least according to which they are thus ranged and ordered . and this is not so dead a businesse as the carpenters building with stone and timber . but in the second place , you say , that if they have this motion from an inward principle , then they have also infusion of life . but do not you see plainly , that ( according to the mind of the more sober peripateticks ) they have motion from an inward principle ? therefore you should have been so far from taxing them to look upon god as a carpenter , that you should have concluded rather that they held infusion of life . page . lin. i. thou hast abused me basely . verily , if that were true i shonld be very sorrie for it : for i would not willingly abuse any man living , of what condition soever . but the thing has happened unluckily . i read thy book , i knew not thy person , nor thy name , nor thy nature , further then it was exprest in thy book , which did not represent it so ill as now i find it . if i had thought my galenical purge had met with such a constitution , i should have tempered it more carefully : for i delight not in the vexation of any man . the truth is , my scope in writing that book was laudable and honest , and such as might become a very good christian , and my mirth and pleasantnesse of mind much and reall ; but the sharpnesse of my style personated , and aristotelicall ; and therefore being but affected and fictitious , i felt it not , there was no corrosion at all ; but all that was unkind in it , ( if you will call that passion unkindnesse ) was a certain light indignation that i bore , and ever do bear against magnificent folly . and there being no name to your book , i thought i had the opportunity of doing it with the least offence , as meeting with the thing disjoyned and singled from the person . but i verily think i should not have medled at all , if you had spared your incivilities to des-chartes , whose worth and skill in naturall philosophy ( be it fate or judgement that constrains me to it let the world judge ) i can not but honour and admire . he is rayled at but not confuted by any that i see , in his naturall philosophy , and that 's the thing i magnifie him for . though his metaphysicks have wit and strength enough too , and he hath made them good against his opposers . line . and assure thy self i will persecute thee , so long as there is ink or paper in england . assuredly thou wilt not , philalethes : for why , i am dead already , taken in thy trap and tortured to death : will not this suffice thee ? i am dead , and thou thy self but mortall , wilt thou entertain immortall enmity against me ? but how canst thou persecute me being dead ? wilt thou raise my soul up , o magicus , by thy necromancy ? and then combate with me over my grave ? i hope thou art but in jest , eugenius : if thou beest not , i must tell thee in good earnest , thy present bitternesse will make thee simon magus like , as well as thy former boasting . o thou confounded and undone thing ! how hast thou shamed thy self ! thy vizard is fallen off , and thy sanctimonious clothing torn from about thee , even as it was with the apes and monkies , that being attired like men and wearing vizards over their faces did daunce , and cringe , and kisse , and do all the gestures of men so artificially and becomingly , that the countrey people took them to be a lesser size of humane race , till a waggish fellow that had more with then the rest , dropt a few nuts amongst them , for which they fell a scrambling so earnestly , that they tore off their vizards , and to the great laughter of the spectatours , show'd what manner of creatures they were . o magicus ! do not dissemble before me : for thou dost not know with what eyes i behold thee . were it not better for thee and all the world beside , to make it their businesse to be really and fully possest of those things that are undoubtedly good and christian , nay , indeed if they be had in the right principle , are the very buds and branches of the tree of paradise , the limbs and members of the divine nature , such as are meeknesse , patience , and humility , discretion , freedome from self-interest , chastity , temperance , equity , and the like : is it not better to seek after these things , then to strain at high words and uncertain flatuous notions that do but puff up the mind and make it seem full to it self , when it is distended with nothing but unwholsome wind . is not this very true , my dear philatethes ? line ii. upon certain similitudes and analogies of mine . now we are come to that rare piece of zoography of thine , the world drawn out in the shape of an animal . but let 's view the whole draught as it lies in your book , because you make such a foul noise about it in your answer . your words are these . besides the texture of the universe clearly discovers its animation . the earth which is the visible naturall basis of it , represents the grosse carnall parts . the element of the water answers to the bloud , for in it the pulse of the great world beats ; this most men call the flux and reflux , but they know not the true cause of it . the air is the outward refreshing spirit , where this vast creature breathes though invisibly yet not insensibly : the interstellar skies are his vitall ethereall waters , and the starres his animall sensuall fire . now to passe my censure on this rare zoographicall peice . i tell thee if thy brains were so confusedly scattered as thy phansie is here , thou wert a dead man philalethes : all the chymistry in the world could not recover thee . thou art so unitive a soul , phil. and such a clicker at the slightest shadows of similitude , that thou wouldst not stick to match chalk and cheese together i perceive , and mussitate a marriage betwixt an apple and an oyster . even those proverbiall dissimilitudes have something of similitude in them , will you then take them for similes that have so monstrous a disproportion and dissimilitude ? but you are such a sophister that you can make any thing good . let 's try . the earth must represent the flesh because they both be grosse : so is chalk and cheese , or an apple and an oyster . but what think you of the moon ? is not that as much green cheese as the earth is flesh ? what think you of venus , of mercury , and the rest of the planets ? which they that know any thing in nature , know to be as much flesh as the earth is , that is to be dark & opake as well as shee . what! is this flesh of the world then torn apeices and thrown about , scattered here and there like the disjoynted limbs of dragg'd hippolytus ? go to phil : where are you now with your fine knacks and similitudes ? but to the next analogie . the element of water answers to the bloud . why ? for in it is the pulse of the great world . but didst thou ever feel the pulse of the moon ? and yet is not there water too ? thou little , sleepy heedlesse endymion : the bloud is restagnant there , i warrant you , and hath no pulse . so that the man with the thorns on his back lives in a very unwholesome region . but to keep to our own station here upon earth . dost thou know what thou sayest when thou venturest to name that monosyllable , pulse , dost thou know the causes and the laws of it ? tell me , my little philosophaster ; where is there in the earth or out of the earth in this world-animal of thine , that which will answer to the heart , and the systole and diastole thereof to make this pulse ? and beside this , there is wanting rarefaction and universall diffusion of the stroke at once . these are in the pulse of a true animal , but are not to be found in the flux of the sea ; for it is not in all places at once , nor is the water rarefied where it is . now my pretty parabolist , what is there left to make your similitude good for a pulse in your great animal more then when you spill your pottage , or shog a milk-bowl ? but believe it eugenius , thou wilt never make sense of this flux and reflux , till thou calm thy phansie so much as to be able to read des-cartes . but to tell us it is thus from an inward form , more aristotelico , is to tell us no more , then that it is the nature of the beast , or to make latine words by adding onely the termination bus , as hosibus and shoosibus , as sir kenhelm digby hath with wit and judgement applied the compárison in like case . but now to put the bloud , flesh and bones together , of your world-animal : i say they bear not so great a proportion to the more fluid parts , viz. the vitall and animal spirits thereof , as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the earth . so that if thou hadst any phansie or judgement in thee , thy similitude would appear to thine own self outragiously ugly and disproportionable , and above all measure ridiculous : nor do not think to shuffle it off , by demanding , if there be so little earth , to tell thee where it is wanting . for i onely say , that if the world be an animal , there will be much bloud and flesh wanting , philalethes , for so great a beast . nor do not you think to blind my eyes with your own tobacco smoke , ( i take none my self , eugenius , ) for to that over ordinary experiment , i answer two things . first , that as you look upon the parts of the body of a true animal , in the same extension that they now actually are , not how they may be altered by rarefaction ; so you are also to look upon the parts of your world-animal , as they are de facto extended , not how they may be by rarefaction . and thus your argument from tobacco , will vanish into smoke . but if you will change the present condition , of any lesser animal by burning it , and turning many of the grosse parts into more thinne and fluid , you destroy the ground of your comparison , betwixt the world-animal and it ; for you take away the flesh of your lesser animal thus burnt . and besides , the proportion betwixt the vapour or thinner parts extension to the remaining ashes , is not yet so big , as of the thin parts of the world-animal in respect of its solid parts , by many thousand and thousand millions . nay , i shall speak within compasse , if i say ( as i said before ) that there is a greater disproportion then betwixt the globe of the earth and a mite in a cheese . this is plainly true to any that understands common sense . for the earth in respect of the world is but as an indivisible point . adde to all this , that if you will rarefie the tobacco or hercules body by fire , i will take the same advantage , and say that the water and many parts of the earth may be also rarefied by fire , and then reckon onely upon the remaining ashes of this globe , and what is turned into vapour must be added to the more fluid parts of the world-animal , to increase that over-proportion . so that thou hast answered most wretchedly and pitifully every way , poor anthroposophus ! but besides , in the second place : when any thing is burnt , as for example , your tobacco . i say it takes up then no more room then it did before : because rarefaction and condensation is made , per modum spongiae , as a sponge is distended by the coming in , and contracted again by the going out of the water it had imbib'd . but the aristotelicall way , which is yours , ( o profound magicus ! that hast the luck to pick out the best of that philosophy ) implies , i say , grosse contradictions , which thou canst not but understand , if thou canst distinguish corporeall from incorporeall beings . thy way of rarefaction and condensation , o eugenius , must needs imply penetration of dimensions , or something as incongruous , as every lad in our universities , at a year or two standing at least , is able to demonstrate to thee . but if thou thinkest it hard , that so little a body as a pipe of tobacco , should be multiplied into so very much superficies above what it had before , go to those that beat out leaf gold , and understand there how the superficies of the same body may be , to wonder , increased . and beside , i could demonstrate to thee , that a body whose basis thou shouldst imagine at the center of the earth , & top as far above the starry heaven , as it is from thence to the earth , without any condensation used thereunto , is but equall to a body that will lie within the boll of a tobacco pipe . where art thou now , thou miserable philosophaster ? but to the next analogie . the aire is the outward refreshing spirit , where this vast creature breaths . two things i here object , to shew the ineptnesse and inconguity of this comparison . the one is taken from the office of respiration , which is to refresh by way of refrigerating or cooling . is not the main end of the lungs to cool the bloud , before it enter into the left ventricle of the heart ? but thou art so magical , thou knowst none of these sober and usefull mysteries of nature . all that thou answerest to this is , that we are refresh'd by heat as well as by coolnesse . why then , is that generall sufficient to make up your analogie or similitude ? this is as well phansied as it is reasoned , when men conclude affirmatively in the second figure . there are laws in phansie too , philalethes : and i shall shew thee anon , how ridiculous thou hast made thy self by transgressing them . if thou meanest by refresh'd , to be cheared or restored onely , and what ever do's this must be ground enough to phansie a respiration ; then thou breathest in thy cawdle , when thou eatest it , and hast spoyled that conceit of his , that said he never would drink sack whilst he breathed ; for if sack do in any sense refresh and comfort a man , it seems he breaths while he drinks . i tell thee in the homologi termini of similitudes , there ought to be something in some sort peculiar and restrained , or else it is flat , ridiculous , and non-sense . the other objection was taken from the situation of this aire that is to be the matter of respiration in this great animal . what a wild difference is there in this ? the aire that an ordinary animal breaths in , is externall , the aire of this world-animal , internall ; so that it is rather wind in the guts , then aire for the lungs ; and therefore we may well adde the cholick to the anasarca . is the wind-cholick an outward refreshing spirit , or an inward griping pain ? being thou hast no guts in thy brains , i suspect thy brains have slipt down into thy guts , whither thy tongue should follow to be able to speak sense . answer now like an {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , o thon man of magick ! he answers , and the point and sting of all the sense of his answer is in the tail of it : pag. . lin. . and it is their outward refreshing spirit . he means the earths and the waters . o feeble sting ! o foolish answer ! this onely reaches so far as to save the earth alive from my jugulating objection . the globe of earth and water indeed may be still an animal for all that objection . but thou saidst the whole world was an animal . what , is the whole world an animal because the earth is one ? o bundle of simples ! ( to return thee thine own parcell of ware again , for it belongs not to me ) this is as well argued as if thou shouldest say , that a cheese is an animal , because there is one living mite in it . but that this earth neither is a breathing animal , is plain enough : for what respiration , what attraction and reddition of aire is there in it ? there may be indeed something answering to sweating and perspiration , nothing to respiration , my good philalethes . but to shew thee thy folly , i will follow thy liberty , and impudently pronounce that a pair of bellows is an animal . why , is it not ? it has a nose to breathe through , that 's plain , the two handles are the two eares , the leather the lungs , and that which is the most seemly analogie of all , the two holes in the back-side are the two eyes ; as like the eyes in the fore-side of a crab as ever thou seest any thing in thy life : look thee , phil. are they not ? you 'll say , the analogie of the nose is indeed as plain as the nose on a mans face : but how can the handles be eares , when they stand one behind another ? whereas the eares of animals stand one on one side , and the other on the other side of the head . and then , how can the leather be lungs , they being the very out-side of its body ? or those two holes eyes ? they have neither the situation , as being placed behind , nor office of eyes . answer me all these objections , o mastix ! i can fully answer them , o magicus ! this is an animal drawn out according to thine own skill and principles . the leather sayst thou must be no lungs , because it is without . why then the aire must be no aire for thy world-animal to breath , because it is within : and if thou canst dispence with within and without , much more mayst thou with before and behind , or behind and on the sides . so the eares and lungs of this animal hold good against thee still . now to preserve my monsters eyes against this harpy that would scratch them out . they are no eyes say you , because they have not the situation of eyes . but i told thee before , thou makest nothing of situation . but they have not the office of eyes . why ? they can see as much as the eyes of thy world-animal , for ought thou knowest . i but this bellows-animal breaths at these eyes : and have not i shewed thee that thy world-animal breaths in his guts ? but i will make it plain to thee that those two holes are eyes : for they are two , as the two eyes are ; and transmit the thin aire through them , as the eyes do the pure light . so that they agree gainly well in the generall : as your respiration in the world-animal , in refreshing , though by heat , when in others it is by cold . fie on thee , for a zoographicall bungler . these bellows thou seest is not my animal but thine , and the learned shall no longer call that instrument by that vulgar name of a pair of bellows , but tom vaughans animal . so famous shalt thou grow for thy conceited foolerie . the interstellar skies are his vitall ethereall waters . here i object , o eugenius ! that there is an over-proportionated plenty of those waters in thy world-animal , and that thus thou hast distended the skin of thy animal , god knows how many millions of miles off from the flesh . o prodigious anasarca ! but what dost thou answer here ? viz. that i say , that the body which we see betwixt the starres , namely , the interstellar waters , is excessive in proportion . no , i do not say so : but that they are two excessive in proportion to be the fluid parts of a world-animal . but how ever , as if i had said so , he goes about to prove , that there is no excesse of proportion in them . dost thou hear , mastix ? sayes he , look up and see . well , i hear , phil. i look up . but do not chock me under the chin , thou wag , when i look up . now , what must i see ? what a number of bonefires , lamps , and torches are kindled in that miraculous celestiall water . yes , i see them all . i suppose they burn so clear for joy and triumph , that my reason and sense have so victoriously overthrown thy phantastry and non-sense . but why miraculous waters , phil ? i see the cause : bonefires and torches burn in the waters . that were a miracle indeed , eugenius ; but that it is a falsity . thou givest things false names , and then wouldst amaze us with verbal miracles . and the starres his animal sensuall fire . what is thy meaning here , little phil. ( for i never called thee to account for this yet ) that this world-animal has sense onely in the starres ? to call them the eyes of the world is indeed pretty and poeticall . and plato's delicious spirit may seem to countenance the conceit in that elegant distich upon his young friend after , ( which in plain english is starre ) whom he instructed in the art of astronomie : {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} thou viewest the starres , my star , were i the skyes ! that i might fix on thee so many eyes . but what , eugenius , wilt thou venture in philosophick coolnesse , to say the sense of thy world-animal lies in the starres ? i prethee , what can those starry eyes spy out of the world ? they are very quick-sighted , if they can see there , where there is nothing to be seen . but it may be , this animal turns its eyes inward and views it self . i would philalethes were such an animal too ; he would then find so much amisse within , that he would forbear hereafter to be so censorious without . but what ? is there sense then onely in the starres ? for sense can be no where but where there is accesse for the animal spirits . so it seems , the starres must hear as well as see , nay , feel and tast ; as they do questionlesse , as often as they lick in , and eat up that starre-fodder , the vapours , wherewith in seneca , they are phantastically said to be nourished . and thus you see , that tom vaughans animal , i mean the bellows now , may see at the very same two holes that it breathes at , for he confounds all by his indiscreet phansie . how art thou blown about like a feather in the air , o thou light-minded eugenius ! how vain and irrationall art thou in every thing ! art thou the queen of sheba , as thy sanguin a little overflowing thy choler would dresse up thy self to thy soft imagination , and make thee look smugg in thy own eyes ? had that queen so little manners , in her addresses to so great a philosopher ? no , thy language in all thy book , is the language of a scold and of a slut . and for thy wit , if thou wilt forgo thy right to the ladle and bells , thy feminine brains as thou callest them , may lay claim to the maid-marians place in the morris-dance : while my strong cruds , ( as thou tearmest my masculine understanding ) which are as sweet as strong , not tainted with the fumes of either revenge or venery , shall improve their utmost strength , for the interest of truth and virtue . and thus have i taken all thy outworks , eugenius , yea and quite demolished them . yet now i look better about me , there is i perceive one half-moon standing still . wherefore have at thy lunatick answer to that which thou callest my lunatick argument , which thou propoundest thus ; that the flux and reflux cannot be the pulse of the great world , because it proceeds from the moon , not from the sunne . i say , philalethes , the sunne being the heart of the world , according to those that be more discreetly phantasticall ( consult dr. fludd , thou art but a bad chip of that block ) it was to be expected , if thou wouldst have the flux and reflux to be the pulse , that it should come from the sun , that is reputed the heart of the world , but it comes from the moon . to this you answer ; that it comes no more from the moon , then from that fictitious anti-selene or anti-moon , as you venture to call it . you say thus , but prove nothing . but there is such an apparent connexion betwixt this phaenomenon of the flux and reflux , and so constant with the course of the moon , that it is even unimaginable but that there should be the relation of cause and effect betwixt them . but i think you will not say , that the motion of the sea has any power or effect upon the course of the moon ; wherefore it must be granted , than the course of the moon has an effectuall influence upon the flux of the sea . and therefore fromondus speaks very expressely concerning this matter , and very peremptorily in these words : si ex effect is de causa conjectatio valere potest , tam compertum videtur aestus effici & gubernari à lunari sydere , quàm calorem ab ignibus effundi , aut lumen à sole : to this sense ; if we can gather any thing from effects concerning the cause , it seems to be as experimentally sure , that the ebbing and flowing of the sea is made and governed by the moon , as that heat flows from the fire , or light from the sunne . for indeed how could there be kept such inviolable laws , as that the ocean should alwayes swel at the moons ascending ; and not onely so , but attemperately and proportionably to her motion , ( for she coming every day later and later above the horizon , the flux of the sea is later and later everie time , according to her recession toward the east in her monethly course ) i say , how could these laws be so accurately observed , mr. eugenius , if the moon were not accessory to , nay , the principall causer of this flux and reflux of the sea ? and if thou beest not wilfully blind , this is enough to convince thee , that that which thou callest the pulse of thy world-animal , is from the moon not from the sunne , nor from its own inward form . for thou seest it is caused and regulated by an externall agent . but for a more full discoverie of this mysterie , i send thee to des-cartes in the fourth part of his principia philosophiae , or to what i have taken from thence and made use of in the notes upon my philosophicall poems . in which poems the intelligent reader may understand , how far , and in what sense , any sober platonist will allow the world to be an animal . nor do's one part of it acting upon another , as the moon upon the sea , hinder its animation . for in men and beasts , one part of the bodie do's plainly act upon another , though all be actuated by the soul . and now , philalethcs , i have taken all thy out-works , none excepted ; out of which thou hast shot many a slovingly shot against me . but thy foul piece has recoyled against thy self , in all sober mens opinions , and has beat thee backward into the dirt . and truly , i know not whether i should pity thee , or laugh at thy childish arsbut thou hast given thy self . for thou railest at me now thou art down , and threatnest him that is ready to set thee up upon thy feet , provided thou wilt not prick up thy eares too , and look too spruntly upon the businesse . but thou wantest no help , thou art a giant , an invincible man of warre , great goliah of gath. i a mere punie , as thou callest me ; nay , a munkey , a mouse . what , dost thou bid defiance to three at once , philalethes ? i tell thee , any one of these three would be hard enough for thee . but what wilt thou do , now thou art to deal with a man ? for i shall fight with thee , onely with a mans weapon , reason . as for thy raylings and quibblings , i shall not take notice of them ; so that the battel is likely to be the sharper and shorter for it . onely let 's be a little merry at the beginning , it will be like shaking of hands at the taking up of the cudgells . observation . art thou the hobling poet who sometime — prays'd with his quill plato's philosophie ? i am the poet that did , and do with my pen , my mouth , and from my heart praise that excellent philosophy of plato , as the most consistent and coherent metaphysicall hypothesis , that has yet been found out by the wit of man . but why hobling poet ? thou hobling asse or hobby-horse , choose thee whether . thou hast so diseased and crazie a brain , that it cannot endure it seems the least jotting , and so thou hadst rather be carried in a sedan , as those that are rotten with the neopolitan disease , or else going the way to it ; then be bravely hurryed in my open magnificent chariot , whose tempestuous wheels dance and leap while they are wearing down the cragginesse and asperity of philosophick difficulties into plainnesse and easinesse . but i know the vulgar , those poore merchants of eel-skins , that deal with nothing but the exuviae of things , words and phrases , are more taken with smooth non-sense , or superficiall flourishes , then with the deepest knowledge in a carelesse dresse . dost thou not know that those men , that make it their businesse to be compt and elegant in their clothes and carriages , commonly have little else but this in them ? and so it is too often with poems and other writings . but how i slight your simple censures , o ye skin-sucking flies ! ye wasps with rush-stings in your tayls ! yee winged inhabitants of crowland ! i will shew you now , not in the prose of more , but in the very trot and loll of spencer , as this naturall with his tongue lolling out of his driveling mouth , uncivilly calls it . as gentle shepherd in sweet eventide when rnddy phoebus gins to welk in west , high on an hill his flock to viewen wide , marks which do bite their hasty supper best , a cloud of cumb'rous gnats do him molest , all striving to infix their feeble stings , that frō their ' noyance he no where can rest , but with his clownish hands their tender wings he brusheth oft , and oft doth marre their murmurings . nor have i here called my self clown by craft , no more then the poet calls the knight so . but thy indiscreet wit cannot distinguish betwixt the formale and materiale , of that whence the similitude is fetched ; which made theee so ill digest thy philosophick bacon . it was thine own magick , phil. or perverse imagination that turned thee into an hog with tusks and bristles , not i. but to return to the businesse : o thou judicious critick ! what is the fault ? where is the flaw in what thou hast recited ? — praise with my quill plato's philosophy . thou dost onely play with the feather of the quil . but for what is writ with the inky end thereof , in those poems of mine , i challenge thee to shew me if thou canst , where my phansie or reason hath really tript . thou indeed hast attempted something in the platonick way , but i have made it manifest , thou hast writ with the quil of a goose . but i have penned down the praise of plato's philosophy in this canto , with the skill of a man , as any man that hath skill will acknowledge , but thy spirit is not yet prepared for the knowledge of such divine matters . it is not yet fine , gentle , and benigne enough , to receive so delicious impressions . put thy soul into a crysiple , o pragmaticall chymist , and set it on that fire , that will excoct and purge out thy drosse , and then judge of platonisme . art not thou the chymicall monkey that art very busie to little purpose about the glasses of harry blunden , an honest man and an happy operatour in chymistry as i hear ? but thou dost nothing but lear and look up at the reek of the furnace , and sendest as high theomagicall meditations after every fold or curle of smoke that mounteth up , as the musing ape after the flur and farre flight of every partridge he let out of the basket . but enough of levity . now to expiate the excesse of this mirth with something more solid and sober . i am ready to answer what thou alleadgest , and to make good that my first observation is no oversight . thou art here mistaken in two things . first , in that thou conceivest that reminiscency is so strong an argument to prove the preexistency of the soul before her entrance into the body . i say it is not any argument worth the insisting upon . for though the soul do finde truth in her self , questions being wisely proposed to her ; yet she doth not perceive that she ever thought of those things before , and therefore cannot acknowledge any such reminiscency in herself . and i appeal unto thine own reason , eugenius , if god should create an humane soul , and put it into a body fit and complyable with contemplation , whether that soul would not be able to answer all the questions propounded in plato's meno , as well as those that are supposed to preexist . and therefore i have not made use of this argument in all my platonical poems . for i tell thee , phil. i am a very wary philosopher , and he must rise betimes that goes about to impose upon my reason . thy second mistake is , that thou thinkest i condemn thy opinion of the preexistency of the soul , which indeed i might well do as personating an aristotelean . but what i really blame there , is thy boldnesse and disadvantagious rashnesse in the proposall of it , thou intimating , as if the soul descended into the body with her eyes broad wake , which the first page of thy praeface to the reader doth plainly imply . let any one read and judge . but if any one ask what my opinion is , i answer , it is no matter what my opinion is , as it is mine , ( for what man is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ) but the discussion of the truth of these things he may find in my poems . observat. . here , philalethes , i charged thee with three absurdities . the first was affectation of pomp and ceremony in the finding out those things which can not be hid from the eyes of the meanest capacity . as pretending it was a whole springs task , to find out this conclusiō , viz. that things that are produced in nature , are out of something in nature unlike the things produced . to this thou answerest ; that thou art not to be understood , as if thou wert a whole spring in finding out this conclusion : for thou onely saist , i took to task the fruits of one spring . but i say , that one spring may signifie a whole spring , and your making a task of it seems to determine the words to that sense . and unlesse thou tookest the pains of examining all the flowers that grew in the spring , one after another , i mean their kinds , it would prove no task , or at least be no proof for thy conclusion . and therefore in all likelihood , one spring should signifie here a whole spring . the second was , that thou art fain to admit of two of aristotles principles , matter and privation . and this i inferred from the foregoing conclusion . but thou answerest , that thou hast not so much as named privation , much lesse acknowledged it for a principle . that 's no matter . though thou hold thy peace thy observations speak it . that viola est ex non viola , rosa ex non rosa , &c. which is the very same thing the peripateticks observe to be necessarily included in all generation , & therefore they make a principle of it , and call it privation . the third absurditie was , that you seemed so simple , as to promise your self that you would find out the first matter , or the common matter of all things by experience . to which you answer , that you have now found it out , felt it , and seen it . well , engenius , thou art grown a great proficient , i perceive , since the last time i met thee . for then thou wast to seek for this first matter , now thou hast found it and felt it . hast not thou felt the ephialtes , phil ? or is not thy phansie as grosse and thick as a syrup ? i believe thou art as much jesuite as i puritan , tell me truly philalethes , dost not equivocate in this answer ? and understandest by this first matter , onely the first matter of some things , as meal is the first matter of pudding , and pycrust , and bread , and the like . but if thou saist thou hast seen and felt the first matter of all things whatsoever , thou hast pronounced what is impossible to be proved , and therefore as impossible to be believed by the sober and wise . and yet unlesse thou pronounce thus , thou pronouncest nothing to the present purpose . for , by first matter , is understood the common matter of all things . but now to rebuke thy boldnesse in this assertion : let me ask thee a sober question or two . this first matter , which thou soughtest after , and now hast found , whether hadst thou any marks to know it by , when thou didst light on it ? for as venus in the poet , when she sends hue and cry after her little fugitive , describes him from his marks ; {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} so what ever is sought for by us , we ought to have an idea of it , that we may know it when we find it . as he that is to seek an horse in the field , if he have not an idea of an horse and of a cow , &c. he may bring one for the other . to be short , he that seeks without an idea of what is sought , seeks for he knows not what , and he will find it he knows not when . so that it was necessary for thee to have an idea of the first matter , in thy mind when thou wentest about to find it out . now tell me , what the idea of the first matter can be , if not this ? a substance out of which all corporeall things are made , but it self out of nothing . and this is , if thou understandest truth when it is propounded to thee , as true an idea of the first matter , as , to have three angles , is the right idea of a triangle . but answer me now , engenius , in good earnest . is that matter which thou saist thou hast seen and handled such as will fit with this idea ? how canst thou ever prove but that that matter was made of some other matter , otherwise modified , as well as other things may be made of this ? but i will deal very candidly with thee , philalethes : for i would fain have thee speak some sense . the idea of thy first matter thou meanest may happily be this . matter so prepared and qualified by the art of chymistry , that it is fit to receive any form whatsoever , or matter that is reduced to such a temper as it all was of at first , when it lay fitted for receiving of all forms of what nature so ever , and by this fitnesse engaged them to lodge in her large bosome . and thus though this matter of thine be made of another matter , yet , because it is reduced to the state it was in first of all , before it received any forms , and was contrived into this order and distinction of parts , that constitute the world , it may in this sense be called the first matter . but tell me , eugenius , how knowst thou that thou hast light on such a matter as this ? thou hadst no preconceived idea of the colour and consistency of this matter , which thou saist thou hast felt and and seen , unlesse somebody hath described it to thee , from certain sensible qualities . but then i would ask both them and thee , how they know that a body of this consistency and colour is the first matter ? it is either because that they observe , that , what ever they resolve by their chymicall fires is resolved into this at last , or because they have observed that all things will arise out of this matter . but for the first : i say , they have not , nor can make triall of all things by their art. for how many things appear above us out of our reach ? besides what lie eternally buried below . they can not distill the stars , as some say , glow-worms may be , and make them lamps of them to study by . besides , why is that which is left , to be the first matter more then what is flown away and evaporated ? and that which will not evaporate , i demand whether that is the first matter of air and light ? adde to all this , that you do not so much find this first matter as make it in all likelyhood . for how incredible a thing is it , but that by your fires or heats , ( you putting the body that is under your operation into a perpetuall motion , so that the parts fridge one against another uncessantly ) the nature of it should be quite changed by you . so that you do not by a kind of analysis discover what is at the bottome , but by genesis modifie the matter into a new dresse . but that 's no matter you 'll say , so long as it is reduced to such a temper as it was , when the whole world was to be impregnated with severall forms . but there is no way now left for you to know that you have thus reduced it , unlesse you have seen this matter of yours . vertumnus-like to appear before you in all shapes . tell me then , philalethes , have you seen it put on the form of a sponge ? of a pumex ? of adamant ? of marble ? have you seen it put on the shape of all plants whatsoever and animals ? to say nothing of metals and mineralls . have you play'd with it in the shape of a dog ? or has it roared against you in the form of a lion ? or have you made sport with the mustacho's of it in the figure of a mouse ? ha's paracelsus his homunculus come tumbling out of it , with his tail upwards in signe of good luck ? or hast thou conferr'd with it in the dresse of a wanton ladie , clothed with transparent lawns , or sybariticall tiffanies ? if thou hast not , ( and darest thou say thou hast ? ) thou hast no reason at all to say thou hast seen and felt the first matter of all things . it is but vain boasting and bold imposture . adde unto all this ; that if there were any such matter as thou meanest , so fit for all forms , and yet fitted with none , the mundus vitae , ( or world of lives and forms ) being every where present so as it is , this destitute widow , or marriageable virgin could be no more kept from being match'd with one form or other , then danae could be from jupiter , who notwithstanding the close custody she was under , descended into her lap in a golden shower . wherefore i conclude , that it is not any certain experience , but rash juvenilitie and confidence , that makes thee pronounce thou hast seen and felt the first matter . observ. . here thou wouldst fain carp at my hymne of humility and charitie , but thy pride and unchristian bitternesse onely makes thee grin at it , it representing that which is so contrary to thine own nature . but here is nothing said to any purpose , and therefore 't is to no purpose to apply an answer . as for thy cavills against those expressions of mine , that we are to measure our wisedome by unprejudicate reason , by humility and purity of mind , and not by devotion ; the sense is , that we are to try how wise we are , or how safely we may conclude our selves to be wise , by examining whether we have put off all prejudice , and use our reason impartially , whether we be humble and set free from all corruption of flesh and spirit . for by these we may better and more safely conclude that we have used our understanding aright , and are not mistaken in what we conceive , then by long , or hot , or humorous devotions , such as men seem but to play with god in , and rather shew the world what fine heats they have , then heartily desire the true good from him , whom they seem to solicite for it . but thou art so galled with the sense , that thou wouldst fain revenge thy self upon the words . in what sense i call the disciples of aristotle orthodox , any body that hath any wit and urbanity in them may easily discern , and then my praises of plato and des-chartes may consist very well with this passage . but as for scaligers making use of aristotles text to make good athanasius his creed , i will be very fair with thee , phil. he did first beleeve firmly , that there is such a trinitie , and then made aristotle speak to that purpose . now do thou but first prove strongly thy philosophicall positions by reason , and then i give thee leave for further countenance to call in moses his text . observ. . do you mention no life here , eugenius ? but then georgius venetus do's for you . omne quod vivit , propter inclusum calorem vivit : indè colligitur , caloris naturam vim habere in se vitalem in mundo passim diffusam , &c. construe it , phil. and be pacified . observ. . when you call it so in your own verse . why it seems then you had a mind to write poeticall prose , which i am sure mr. bust of eaton had like to have whipt me for when i was a boy . but i wonder how thou comest to stumble on this stanza of mine above the rest . let us bring it all forth intire into view . the last extreme the farthest off from light , that 's natures deadly shadow , hyle's cell . o horrid cave , and womb of dreaded night ! mother of witchcraft and accursed spell , which nothing can avail'gainst israel , no magick can him hurt , his portion is not divided nature , he doth dwell in light , in holy love , in union , not fast to this or that , but free communion . o! now i see the reason , there is the word magick named in it . but tell me , o magicus ! do'st thou understand what i have writ there ? if thou didst , as thou shouldst do , and hadst an inward sense & feeling of it , thou wouldst make a bonefire of all thy books of curious arts , as the magicians did in the apostles time , for joy of finding a better light . but i cannot expresse what i mean better then i have already in that stanza . page . lin. . prethee , mastix , what is this subject ? i 'le tell thee . nay , aristotle shall tell thee : these are his words , phys. l. . c. ult. {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . thou wilt not say that this is in nature , neither {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} nor {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , as thou barbarously speakest . and thou must give me leave to correct thy greek , when there is need , as well as thou doest my english where there is no need . thy {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} is a monster , and hath one {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} too much , but i will not tread on this toe of thine too hard . i passe off , and come to thy head , that , i mean , that should dwel there ; if there be any body within , let them answer me . is not that defined there by aristotle , ( the sense whereof is sufficiently set out in my description of the idea of the first matter ) is it not in nature , neither {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} nor {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ? i appeal to thine own reason if thou canst any wayes shift it , but that thou must conceive a matter variously changed into severall succeeding forms . therefore that which continues the same numericall substance , though in its notion incomplete , and sustains the succeeding form , that is a thing in nature . but when we precisely conceive it utterly devoid of all forms , that 's a separation made onely by the fire of our understanding ( {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , the oracles call it ) not by your chymicall fire : and this is not in nature , but in our apprehension . whefore your assertion is false , when you say that this matter is neither {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , nor {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} in nature . for though the notionall respect be not in nature , the thing it self is . and this , i say , is a sober description , and signifies something . but your horrible empty darknesse , which you say here is the first matter , doth but mock a mans fansie in the dark . page . line . the holy spirit , say you , is not able to see , &c. i say , anthroposophus , that it is you that have put things together so ill-favouredly , as if you implied so much ; as the reader may judge by perpending the ninth page of your anthroposophia . page . line . as soon as god was . where is thy logick , eugenius ? doth that imply there was a time when god was not ? when we say , that one is as wise as a wisp , does that imply the wisp is wise ? i tell thee , a wisp is no wiser then thou art , mr. magicus . so if i say that the light of the idea's was no later then the existence of god , that saying does neither stint nor stretch out the duration of gods existence , but onely it coextends the light of the idea's with that duration . page . line . but the water was not so . but what was the horrible empty darknesse ? o thou man in the dark ! was that ab aeterno , or not ? and if that was , could not the divine light shine in that darknesse ? but i will wrestle no longer with such lemures in the dark , as thy shifting fancie proves it self , o anthroposophus ! let 's go on , and see if we can get into the light . observ. . and speak of rationes seminales . yes , i spake of them , and mov'd a very materiall question concerning them , to wit , what that experiment in a glasse could do , for the confirming or confuting the rationes seminales . it had been your duty here to have satisfied this quaere , but i perceive your inabilitie , and pardon you . observ. . line . i my self make the naturall idea no idea at all . so then , anthroposophus , this is the storie . there is a twofold idea , a divine idea , and an idea which is no idea at all : ha ha he ! thou hadst abused me so unmercifully in this bitter book of thine , that i thought i should never have been able to laugh again as long as i liv'd : but this would make a dog burst his halter with laughing , i must now laugh or die . what , art thou now turned preacher , phil ? though no puritane by no means , and tel'st us of three kinds of seekers , that they are either those which are both seekers and finders ; or those that are finders , but no seekers ; or lastly , such as are neither seekers nor finders ? certainly when thou wrotest this book , thou hadst a plot to eternize thy fame , and leave thy folly upon record . page . line . cite him then , and produce his words . here they are philalethes : {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , page . he there proves , that there are divine idea's before the creation of the visible plants , from that text of moses , gen. . v. , . philo's own words are these upon that text ; {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , sayes he , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} that is , does not he manifestly set before us incorporeall and intellectuall idea's , which are the seals of gods sensible works ? for before the earth sent forth herbs , there was even then ( saith moses ) herbs , in rerum natura ; and before the grasse grew , there was invisible grasse . can you desire any thing more plain and expresse ? but to make thee amends for laughing at thy division of the idea which had but one member , and hopped like one of the monocoli upon a single legge , i will give thee another idea besides this out of the same philo , and such as may be truly called both an idea and a naturall one , a thing betwixt thy ideal vestiment , and the divine idea it self : {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} pag. . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} that is , but the fruits was not onely for nourishment for living creatures , but preparations also for the perpetuall generation of the like kind of plants , they having in them seminall substances , in which the hidden and invisible forms of all things become manifest and visible by circumvolutions of seasons . these are the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , or rationes seminales , the seminall forms of things . observ. . page . line . mastix is deliver'd of a bull . this is a calf of thy own begetting ; but i have forgot all this while to render thee a calf for a bull as i promis'd thee . i am not toyish enough for thee , my little phil. do i say heat and siccity are aqua vitae bottles ? but may not heat , and siccity , and aqua vitae be consentany arguments ? what repugnancie is there in it ? answer , logician : therefore there is no bull here , till thou be grown up to thy full stature . observ. . here i told you that you incompassing all with the empyreal substance , you had left no room for evening and morning upon the masse of the earth . what do you answer to this ? that the empyreal substance was a fire which had borrowed its tincture from the light , but not so much as would illuminate the masse of it self . no , philalethes ? do not you say it retain'd a vast portion of light ? and is not that enough to illuminate the masse of it self ? nay , you say it made the first day without the sunne , but now you unsay it again . pitifull baffled creature ! but as for those terrible mysterious radiations of god upon the chaos , & dark evaporations of the chaos towards god , which thou wouldst fain shuffle off thy absurdities by ; i say , they are but the flarings of thine own phansie , and the reeks and fumes of thy puddled brain . dost thou tell me this from reason or inspiration , phil ? if from reason , produce thy arguments ; if from inspiration , shew me thy miracle . page . line . the clouds are in the aire , not above it , &c. but if the clouds be the highest parts of the world , according to the letter of moses , which is accommodated , as i shall prove , to the common conceit and sense of the vulgar ; then in the judgement of sober men it will appear , that thy argument hath no agreement neither with philosophy nor common sense . now therefore to instruct thee , as well as i do sometimes laugh at theee ; i will endeavour to make these two things plain to thee . first , that scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense and vulgar conceit of men . secondly , that following this rule , we shall find the extent of the world to be bounded no higher then the clouds , or there about : so that the firmament , viz. the air , ( for the hebrews have no word for the air , distinct from heaven or firmament , moses making no distinctiō ) may be an adequate bar betwixt the lower and upper waters . which it was requisite for moses to mention , vulgar observation discovering that waters came down from above , viz. showers of rain , and they could not possibly conceive , that unlesse there were waters above , that any water should descend thence . and this was it that gave occasion to moses , of mentioning those two waters , the one above , the other beneath the firmament . but to return to the first point to be proved . that scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense , and vulgar conceit of men . this i say is a confessed truth with the most learned of the hebrews . amongst whom it is a rule for the understanding of many and many places of scripture . loquitur lex secundùm linguam filiorum hominum , that is , that the law speaks according to the language of the sonnes of men : as moses aegyptius can tell you . and it will be worth our labour now to instance in some few passages . gen. . v. . the sunne was risen upon the earth when lot entred into zoar. which implies , that it was before under the earth : which is true onely according to sense , and vulgar phansie . deuteronom. . . v. . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} or {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , implies that the earth is bounded at certain places as if there were truly an hercules pillar , or non plus ultrá . as it is manifest to them , that understand but the naturall signification of {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} and {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . for those words plainly import the earth bounded by the blue heavens , and the heavens bounded by the horizon of the earth : they touching one another mutually . which is true onely to sense and in appearance , as any man that is not a meer idiot will confesse . ecclesiastic . cap. . v. . the discourse of a godly man is alwayes with wisdome , but a fool changeth as the moon . that 's to be understood according to sense and appearance . for if a fool changeth no more then the moon doth really , he is a wise and excellently accomplished man , semper idem , though to the sight of the vulgar different . for at least an hemisphear of the moon is alwayes enlightned , and even then most when she least appears to us . hitherto may be referr'd also that , . chron. . . also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim round in compasse , and five cubits the heigth thereof , and a line of thirty cubits did compasse it round about . a thing plainly impossible that the diameter should be ten cubits and the circumference but thirty . but it pleaseth the spirit of god here to speak according to the common use and opinion of men , and not according to the subtilty of archimedes his demonstration . again psalme . in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sunne , which as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber , and rejoyceth as a strong man to runne his race . this , as m. john calvin observes , is spoken according to the rude apprehension of the vulgar , whom david should in vain have indeavoured to teach the mysteries of astronomy . haec ratio est . ( saith he ) cur dicat tentorium ei paratum esse , deinde egredi ipsum ab una coeli extremitate , & transire celeriter ad partem oppositam ; neque enim argutè inter philosophos de integro solis circuitu disputat , sed rudissimis quibusque se accommodans , intra ocularem experientiam se continet ; ideóque dimidiam cursûs partem que sub hemisphaerio nastro non cernitur , subticeti . e. this is the reason , to wit , the rudenesse of the vulgar , why the psalmist saith there is a tent prepared for the sunne , and then that he goes from one end of the heaven and passes swiftly to the other : for he doth not here subtily dispute amongst the philosophers of the intire circuit of the sunne , but accommodating himself to the capacity of every ignorant man , contains himself within ocular experience ; and therefore saith nothing of the other part of the course of the sunne , which is not to be seen as being under our hemisphear . thus m. calvin . i 'le adde but one instance more , joshuah v. . sunne stand thou still upon gibeon , and thou moon in the valley of ajalon . where it is manifest that joshuah speaks not according to the astronomicall truth of the thing , but according to sense and appearance . for suppose the sunne placed and the moon at the best advantage you can , so that they leave not their naturall course , they were so farre from being one over ajalon and the other over gibeon , that they were in very truth many hundreds of miles distant from them . and if the sun and moon were on the other side of the equatour the distance might amount to thousands . i might adjoyn to these proofs the suffrages of many fathers and modern divines , as chrysostome , ambrose , augustine , bernard , aquinas , &c. but 't is already manifest enough that the scripture speaks not according to the exact curiosity of truth , describing things {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , according to the very nature and essence of them ; but {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , according to their appearance in sense , and the vulgar opinion of men . nor doth it therefore follow that such expressions are false , because they are according to the appearance of things to sense and obvious phansie , for there is also a truth of appearance . and thus having made good the first part of my promise , i proceed to the second ; which was to shew that the extent of the world is to be bounded no higher then to the clouds , or thereabouts , that it may thence appear , that the upper waters mentioned in moses , are the same with those aquae in coelo stantes mentioned by pliny , lib. . his words are these , quid esse mirabilius potest aquis in coelo stantibus ? and these waters can be nothing else , but that contain'd in the clouds , which descends in rain ; and so the whole creation will be contain'd within the compasse of the aire , which the hebrews call {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} quasi {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ibi aquae : because it is sedes nubium , the place of clouds and rain . and that the world is extended no higher then thus , according to scripture , it is apparent . first , because the clouds are made the place of gods abode ; whence we are to suppose them plac'd with the highest . there he lives , and runns , and rides , and walks . he came walking upon the wings of the wind , in the psalm . who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters , who maketh the clouds his chariot , and walketh on the wings of the wind . laieth the beams of his chambers in the waters , to wit , the upper waters which are the clouds . the almighties lodgings therefore according to the letter , are placed in the clouds . there about also is his field for exercise and warre , deut. . . there is none like to the god of jeshurun , who rideth upon the heavens for thy help in his excellency on the sky , that is , upon the upper clouds , as buxtorf interprets it , and indeed what can {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} properly signifie above , but clouds ? for below it signifies pulvis tenuissimus , small dust ; and the clouds are as it were the dust of heaven . vatablus also interprets that place of gods riding on the clouds . and this agrees well with that of nahum , chap. . v. . the lord hath his way in the whirlwind , and the clouds are the dust of his feet . here he is running as swift as a whirlwind , and raiseth a dust of clouds about him . you shall find him riding again , psalme . . and that in triumph ; but yet but on the clouds : sutably to that in deut. sing unto god , sing praises unto his name , extoll him that rideth upon the heavens by his name j a h , and rejoyce before him . that rideth upon the heavens ; the hebrew is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , which i would be bold with aben ezraes leave , to translate , that rideth upon the clouds : for clouds cause darknesse , and the root from whence {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} is {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , which signifies obtenebrari , obscurari . but for the ground of this rabbies interpretation , to wit , upon the heavens , it is taken out of the verse of the psalme , to him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens of old . but if we read on there , we shall find that those heavens of heavens , in all probability , reach no higher then the clouds . for let 's read the whole verse together , to him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens that were of old ; lo , he doth send out his voice , and that a mighty voice : what 's that but thunder ? and whence is thunder but out of the clouds ? and where then doth god ride but on the clouds ? the following verse makes all plain : ascribe ye strength unto god ; his excellency is over israel , and his strength is in the clouds : which doth notably confirm , that the extent of the heavens , according to the letter of moses and david too , are but about the height of the clouds . for here the heaven of heavens is the seat of thunder , and gods strength and power is said to be in the clouds . nor doth this expression of this height , to wit , the heaven of heavens of old , imply any distance higher . for sith all the firmament from the lower to the upper waters is called heaven ; it is not a whit unreasonable that the highest part of this heaven or firmament , be called the heaven of heavens . and this is my first argument that the heaven or firmaments extent is but from the sea to the clouds , because god is seated no higher in the outward phrase of scripture . my second argument is taken from the adjoyning the heavens with the clouds exegetically , one with another , for the setting out of that which is exceeding high , as high as we can expresse . and this the psalmist doth often , psalme . . thy mercy , o lord , is in the heavens , and thy faithfulnesse reacheth unto the clouds . and psalme . . for thy mercy is great unto the heavens , and thy truth unto the clouds . and psalme . . for thy mercy is great above the heavens , and thy truth reacheth above the clouds . where heaven and clouds set off one and the same height , that which is exceeding high , the mercie and truth of god . my last argument is from the psalmists placing the sunne , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} in the clouds , or in the cloudy heaven . for the word must so signifie as i did above prove , both from testimony , and might also from the etymon of the word . for {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} signifies comminuere , contundere , to beat to dust : and what are clouds but the dust of heaven , as i may so speak . psalme . v. , . his seed shall endure for ever , and his throne as the sunne before me . it shall be established for ever as the moon , and as the faithfull witnesse {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} in heaven : that is , in the sky , the place where the clouds are . the drawing down therefore of the sunne , that faithfull witnesse in heaven , so low as the clouds , implies that the letter of the scripture takes no notice of any considerable part of the firmament above the clouds , it terminating its expressions alwayes at that extent . and this sutes very well with moses his calling the sun and the moon the great lights , and making nothing as it were of the starres , as is manifest out of the verse of the first of genesis . and god made two great lights , the greater light to rule the day , and the lesse to rule the night ; he made the starres also . but they come as cast into the bargain , as not so considerable , when as indeed a star of the first magnitude is ( according to the calculation of the astronomers ) twenty thousand times bigger then the earth , and the earth five and fourty times bigger then the moon ; so that one star of the first magnitude will prove about nine hundred thousand times bigger then the moon . which notwithstanding , according to the letter of moses , is one of the two great lights , the sole empresse of the night . but here the letter of moses is very consistent with it self . for sith that the extent of heaven is not acknowledged any higher then the clouds , or thereabout ( wherein as i shewed you , the sun is , and consequently the moon , and it will not be more harsh ro make the starres stoop so low too ; nay , they must indeed of necessitie all of them be so low , they having no where else to be higher , according to the usuall phrase of scripture , the appearances of the starres will then to our sight sufficiently set out their proportions one to another , and the sun and the moon ( according to this hypothesis ) will prove the two great lights , and the starres but scatter'd sky-pebbles . wherefore from all this harmony and correspondencie of things , i think i may safely conclude , that the extent of the firmament according to moses , is but the distance from the sea to the clouds , or there abouts , as well as it is to our sight , which cannot discern any intervall of altitudes betwixt the clouds and the moon , the moon and the sunne , and lastly betwixt the sunne and the fixed stars . which interpretation i am confident any man will admit of , that can bring down the tumour of his philosophick phansy unto a vulgar consistencie and fit compliance with the sweetnesse and simplicity of moses his style . and thus , philalethes , have i proved that there is no room for thy interstellar waters within the compasse of moses his creation , unlesse they run into one , and mingle with the rain or clouds . observat. . here i called the ptolemaick systeme a rumbling confused labyrinth . so you did philalethes , & i perceive you will do so again . but prethee tell me , dost thou mean the heavens rumble ? and so understandest or rather hearest the rumbling harmony of the sphears ? or dost thou mean the labyrinth rumbles ? i perceive the man hath now some guts in his brains , and he is troubled with the rumbling of them in their ventricles , and so thinks there is a noise when there is none . i tell thee , philalethes , a wheel-barrow may be said to rumble , for to rumble is to make an ill-favour'd ungratefull noise ; but no body will say the heavens or a labyrinth doth rumble , but such as are no englishmen , as you say somewhere you are not , and so do not understand the language . pag. . a confused wheelbarrow is a bull . is a wheel-barrow a bull ? what a bull is that ? but confused , i added not confused to wheel-barrow , that 's thy doing , thou authour of confusion ! line . the epicycles in respect of their orbs are but as a mite in a cheese . do you say so , mr lilly ? no. do you say so , mr booker ? no. look thee now , phil , how thy confident ignorance hath abused those two famous artists . they are ashamed to utter such loud nonsense . and now they have denyde it , darest thou venture to say it , anthroposophus ? tell me then how little and diminutive those epicycles will prove in respect of their orbs , that have their diameters equall to the diameter of the orbit of the earth , or which is all one of the sunne . thou wilt answer me with the cyclops in erasmus , istiusmodi subtilitates non capio . i do not not believe thou understandest the question , though it be plainly propounded , and so i shall expect no answer . but come thy wayes hither again , phil. thou shalt not scape thus . i will not let thee go til i have called thee to an account for thy great bull of basan as thou wouldst call it . thou sayest , that the epicycles of ptolemy though they are too bigge to be true , yet that they are very diminutive things in respect of their orbs that sustein them ; as little and diminutive as mites in a cheese in respect of the cheese . to speak the most favourably of this assertion of thine that may be , it is sublime astronomicall nonsense . and if we could find any nonsense sublunary to paralell it , it would be some such stuff as this : although the cannon bullets in the tower be as bigge as mount athos , yet they are so little that they will not fill the compasse of a walnut . this is a bundle of falsities and so is that . that is , both the parts of these compound axioms are false , and the composition it self also illegitimate . these are discrete axioms , eugenius , and both the parts ought to be true , but they are both false here . and there ought also , especially these notes quamvis and tamen being in them , to be onely a discretion of parts , but here is an implacable opposition : things put together that imply a contradiction . in the latter of these axioms it is manifest , but i will shew you , it is so also , in that former of yours . for first , the epicycles of ptolemy , are not too bigge to be true . for they do not suppose them bigger then will be conteined , within the thicknesse of their own orbs . and you your self say that they are but as mites in a cheese in respect of their orbs . so that it is plain according to what you your self grant , as well as according to the hypothesis of ptolemy , that they are not too bigge to be true . but secondly , i say they are not as little as mites in respect of the cheese they are in . for the semi-diameter of saturns epicycle is to the semi-diameter of his eccentrick , at least as to . and the semi-diameter of jupiters epicycle to the semi-diameter of his eccentrick more then as to . but mars his , as to , or thereabout , and the semidiameter of the epicycle of venus , to the semidiameter of her eccentrick more then as to by a good deal . and is it not plain hence eugenius , that thy mite in a cheese must swell up at least to the bignesse of a mouse in a cheese , though thy cheese were almost as little as a trundle bed wheel , or a box of marmalade : and what a vast difference is there betwixt a mite and a mouse , but thy ignorance emboldens thee to speak any thing . but now in the last place , the putting these two falsities together is contradiction , as well as they are severally false . for it is evident , that if the epicycles be too bigge to be true , they cannot be so little as mites in a cheese , in respect of their orbs . for then would they be easily contain'd within the crassities or thicknesse of their orbs . but their not being able to be conteined within the crassities of their orbs , that 's the thing that must make them too bigge to be true . and questionlesse if we will joyn the epicycle with its right office , which is to bring down the planet to its lowest perigee , then the epicycles of the planets will be too bigge to be true . for there will be of them that are half as big again as their deiferents , nay five times if not ten times as big . and of these epicycles i said ( and ptolemies ought to have been such , unlesse they did desert their office ) that they were too bigge to be true . but thou pronouncest concerning these things thou knowst not what , and therefore art easily tost up and down like a shittle cock thou knowst not whither . how do i blow thee about as the dust or the down of thistles ? — ut plumas avium pappósque volantes . observ. . thou moore à {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} as much as a {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} thou art so drunk & intoxicated with thine own bloud ( as aristotle saith of all young men that they are {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ) that thou seest double , two o's in my name for one . observ. . see what i answer at observation the . observ. . phy , phy , some rose-water . who speaks like a puritan now , phil ? but why some rose water ? hast thou devoured an orenge like an apple , pulp and pill and all , and so made thy mouth bitter , o thou man of wales ! but it is to wash hur mouth from bawdry . why wilt thou be so bold then as to name the lawyers phrase rem in re ! or hast thou a purpose to call all the lawyers , bawdy gentlemen , by craft ? i tell thee , phil. to the pure all things are pure ; but thy venerious phansie which i rebuked in this passage thou exceptedst against , doth soyl and corrupt what is chast and pure . observ. . i do , mastix , i do . why doest thou not then explain it , thou little mastigia ? observ. . here i have you fast , philalethes , for all your wriggling . for if our vitall and animal spirits , which are as much a part of us , as any other part of our body is , be fed and nourished by the aire , then the aire is an element of our body . but here he would fain save himself , by saying that the aire is rather a compound then an element : but let any man judge how much more it is compounded then the earth , and then water which nourisheth by drinking , as well as the aire can do by breathing . observ. . page . line . how can darknesse be called a masse ? &c. no it cannot . nor a thin vaporous matter neither . thy blindnesse cannot distinguish abstracts from concrets . thy soul sits in the dark , philalethes , & nibbles on words as a mouse in a hole on cheese parings . but to slight thy injudicious cavil at mass , & to fall to the matter . i charged thee here to have spoke such stuff as implies a contradiction . thou saidest that this masse ( be it black or white , dark or bright , that 's nothing to the controversie here ) did contain in a farre lesse compasse all that was after extracted . i say this implies a contradiction . but you answer , this is nothing but rarefaction and condensation according to the common notion of the schools . i but that notion it self implies a contradiction , for in rarefaction and condensation there is the generation or deperdition of no new matter , but all matter hath impenetrable dimensions . therefore if that large expansion of the heavens lay within the compasse of the masse , that matter occupyed the same space that the masse did , and so dimensions lay in dimensions , and thus that which is impenetrable was penetrated , which is a contradiicton . what thou alleadgest of the rarefaction of water into clouds or vapours , is nothing to the purpose . for these clouds and vapours are not one continued substance , but are the particles of the water put upon motion , and playing at some distance one from another , but do really take up no more place then before . observ. . to say nothing to thy fond cavil at words in the former observation , and thy false accusation that i called thee dog ( for i would not dishonour diogenes so much as to call thee so ) and leaving it to the censure of the world , how plain and reall thy principles are , i am come now to my observation on the page of thy anthroposophia , where thou tellest us , that there is a threefold earth , viz elementary , celestiall , spirituall . now let us see what an excellent layer of the fundamentals of science thou wilt prove thy self . and here he begins to divide before he defines . thou shouldest first have told us what earth is in generall before thou divide it . this is like a creature with a cloven foot , and never a head . but when thou didst venture to define these members , where was thy logic ? . ought not every definition , nay , ought not every precept of art to be {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} but i will not vex thy head with these severities . the magnet is the second member , the object of this observation . here you say , i condemn this magnet , but i do not offer to confute it . but i answer , i have as substantially confuted it as merrily ; but thou dost not take notice of it . i have intimated that this precept of art is not {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} nay , that it is plainly false : for it affirms that which hath no discovery by reason or experience , viz. that there is a certain earth which you call the magnet , that will draw all things to it at what distance so ever . quodcunque ostendis mihi sic , incredulus odi . so far am i from approving thy magnet , o magicus . nor do the pages thou here citest , of which i give a favourable censure , prove any such thing . let the reader peruse them , and judge . indeed certain operations of the soul , are highly and hyperbolically there set out by thee ; but the magnet came dropping in at the latter end of the story . i gave no allowance to that . i will not have my soul so ill taught , as to attract metall out of mens purses at any distance whatsoever . page . line . didst thou ever hear or know that i was a pick-pocket ? if i had had the least suspicion of thee that thou wert so , i would not have called thee so , for it had been an unmercifull jest . but if thou wert as full of candour and urbanity , as i deem thee clear of that crime , thou wouldst not have interpreted it malice but mirth . for such jests as these are not uncivil nor abusive to the person , when the materiality of them are plainly and confessedly incompatible to the party on whom they are cast . observ. . page . line . prethee why a gallileo's tube , were there more galileo's then one ? certainly , phil. thou dost not look through a galilco's glasse , but through a multiplying glasse , that seest in my english more galileos then one . go thy wayes for the oddest correctour of english that ever i met with in all my dayes . observ. . page . line . for i fear god . the devills also beleeve and tremble : but do'st thou love god , my philalethes ? if thou didst , thou wouldst love thy brother also . but shall i tell thee truly what i fear ? truly i fear , that thou hast no such pretious medicine to publish , which thou makest so nice of ; and that thou dost onely make religion a cover for thine ignorance . but let me tell thee this sober truth , that temperance will prevent more diseases by far , then thy medicine is like to cure ; and christian love would relieve more by many thousands , then thy philosophers stone that should convert baser metalls into gold . there is gold enough in the world , and all necessaries else for outward happinesse ; but the generations of men make themselves miserable by neglecting the inward . this is palpably true , and it would astonish a man to see how they run madding after the noise of every pompous difficulty , and how stupid and sottish they are to those things , which god has more universally put in their power , and which would ( if they made use of them ) redound to their more generall and effectuall good . observ. . so doth s. john prophesie too . but magicus is too wise to understand him . s. john tells us of a new heaven , and of a new earth . here , magicus , having recourse to his chymistrie , in the height of his imagination prefigures to himself not onely crystalline heavens , but also a vitrifide earth . but i consulting with scripture , and with the simplicity of mine own plain spirit , think of a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwels righteousnesse . he 's for an eden with flowry walks , and pleasant trees ; i am for a paradisc , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} where virtue , wisdome , and good order meet . as the chaldee oracles describe it . he is for a pure clear place , i place my happinesse in a clear and pure mind , which is the holy place or temple of god . observ. . tecum habita . i will not urge that precept too strictly upon thy self , because i wish thee a better companion . observ. . for thy ho ! sounds like the noise of a sowgelder . as much as the celestiall orbs or labyrinth rumble like a wheel-barrow . this is but the crowing of thine own brain to the tune of the sow-gelders horn . observ. . here in answer to my objection thou tellest me that ruach and nephesh , the parts whereof the soul of man consists , differ as male and female . all the mysterie then is to make mans soul an hermaphrodite . thou shouldst have told us here what operations were proper to ruach , what to nephesh , whether vegetation belong to the one , reason and sense to the other : or whether in this the divine life were seated , in that the animal and fleshly reason , and the like . but the subtiltie of thy wit reacheth no further then the discrimination of sexes , and the grossely pointing out of male and female . page . line . for your sodomite patron aristotle , allows of it in his politicks . more wretched beast he if it be so : but i do not remember any such passage in his politicks , and yet have read them through , but long since ; and it is sufficient for me if i remember the best things in authours i read , i can willingly let go the worst . but what thou sayest of aristotle is not unlikely ; for he is tax'd for this unnaturall practise in diogenes laertius , whith one hermias a foul friend of his , in the praise of whom notwithstanding he hath wrote a very fair and elegant hymne , which begins thus , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} to this sense , vertue ! that putst humane race upon so hard toyl and pains ; lifes fairest prize ! thy lovely face bright virgin , the brave greek constrains to undergo with an unwearied mind long wasting labours , and in high desire to throng through many deaths to find thee ; that dost fire mans soul with hopes of such immortall fruit no gold can sute , nor love of parents equalize , nor slumbers sweet that softly seize the eyes . so easie a thing is it for bad men to speak good words . it is recorded by the same authour out of aristippus , that the same philosopher was also so much taken with the conversation of hermias his whore , that in lieu of that pleasure he reap'd by her , he did the same ceremonies and holy rites to her , that the anthenians were wont to do to their goddesse ceres eleusinia . from whence it seems that his soul did consist of two parts , male and female , he having to do with both . so that he is more like to prove thy patrone then mine , philalethes ! for i have to do with neither . page . line . but i am tickled say you . yes , i say you are so tickled and do so tickle it up in your style with expressions fetched from the gynaeceum , that you are ridiculous in it , and i thought good to shew you to be such as you are . but for mine own part i am moved neither one way nor another with any such things , but think good to affix here this sober consideration . that there being generally in men and women that are not either heroically good , or stupidly and beastly naught , a kind of shame and aversation in the very naming of these things , that it is a signe that the soul of man doth in its own judgement find it self here in this condition of the body , as i may so speak , in a wrong box , and hath a kind of presage and conscience that better and more noble things belong unto it , ese why should it be troubled at its own proclivity to that which is the height and flower of the pleasure of the body as they that are given to this folly do professe . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} to this sense . what life ? what sweet without the golden tie of venus ? dead to this , streight let me die . but that there is a naturall shame of these acts and the propension to them , that story of typhon in diodorus siculus is no obscure argument . for when he had murdered his brother osiris , that he might more sacramentally bind to him for his future help and security , his twenty foure accomplices in this act , he hew'd the body of his brother into so many peices , but was fain to fling the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} his pudendum into the river , they every one being unwilling to take that for their share . so much aversation is there naturally from these obscenities that even those that are otherwise execrably wicked , have some sense of it . but i do not speak this as if marriage it self were a sinne as well as whoredome and adultery , for questionlesse it is permitted to the soul in this case shee 's in . but if she be not monstrous and degenerate she cannot but be mindfull that she is made for something farre better . observ. . to this observation thou answerest like a man with reason and generosity and with a well beseeming wit , how unlike to thy self art thou here , anthroposophos ? observ. . i perceive by thy answer to this observation thou art not at all acquainted with ramus what ere thou art with the schoolmen , but i passe over this and come to what is of more moment . page . line . this is one of your three designes . yes , it is one of those three designs i tax'd you for in the beginning of my observations . and here i make it good out of your own text anthroposophia pag. . line . these are your words . and now reader , arrige aures , come on without prejudice and i will tell thee that , which never hitherto hath been discovered . what can be more plain if you will but prick up your eares and attend to what you say your self . but now i have discovered that this is but a boast of yours concerning a known notion among the christian platonists , you begin to pluck in your eares and confesse your self a plagiary . in the rest of your answer you do but teach your grannam to crack nuts , i go on magicus to the next . observ. . as a flame of one candle can light a thousand candles more . your answer then to this observation is this . that the soul is propagated as light is from light ; that there is a multiplication without decision or division . but for thine and the readers fuller satisfaction i shall answer thee here , as thou somewhere demandest , in the verse of spencer but in the reason and sense of more , out of these four stanzaes in my canto of the preexistency of the soul . wherefore who thinks from souls new souls to bring the same let presse the sunne beams in his fist , and squeeze out drops of light , or strongly wring the rain-bow , till it die his hands well prest ; or with uncessant industry persist th' intentionall species to mash and bray in marble morter , till he has exprest a soveraine eye-salve to discern a fay . as easily as the first all these effect you may . ne may queint similes this fury damp , which say that our souls propagation is , as when lamp we lighten from a lamp , which done withouten diminution of the first light , shews how the soul of man though indivisible may another rear imparting life . but if we rightly scan this argument , it cometh nothing neere . to light the lamp 's to kindle the sulphureous gear no substance new that act doth then produce . onely the oyly atomes't doth excite and wake into a flame . but no such use there is of humane sperm . for our free sprite is not the kindled seed , but substance quite distinct there from . if not : then bodies may so changed be by nature and stiffe fight of hungry stomachs , that what earst was clay then hearbs , in time it self in sence may well display . for then our soule can nothing be but bloud , or nerves , or brains , or body modifyde ; whence it will follow that cold stopping crud hard mouldy cheese , dry nuts , when they have rid due circuits through the heart , at last shall speed of life and sense , look thorough our thin eyes , and view the close wherein the cow did feed whence they were milk'd ; grosse py-crust will grow wise and pickled cucumbers sans doubt philosophize observ. . bid adiew to thy reputation mastix . well , now i perceive that thou thinkest that thou hast hit the nail on the head indeed . but all that thou dost or canst collect from what is in my preface to the canto concerning the sleep of the soul , is but this : that whether we see or imagine that both of these are but the very energie of the soul , and that the soul doth not nor can perceive any thing immediately but her own energie . but what of all this ? it doth not thence follow that the inward & outward sense is all one , but only unitate genericâ , no more then if i should say , that to be an animal is but to have corporeal substance , life and sense , it would thence follow that an horse and a man are all one . look thee now , magicus , how i have passed through this huge mound and bulwark of thine , with as much ease and stilnesse as a gliding spirit through a mud-wall . i will onely look back and laugh at thee magicus , for a man of no logick . but if any man doubt whether thou saist blind men see in their sleep , it is apparent that thou doest . for in thy anthroposophia , page . line . thou saist , that the visible power is not destroyd as is plain in the dreams of blind men . here if thou knowst what thou saist , thou arguest from the effect to the cause , from the operation to the faculty , but is the operation of the visive faculty ( for thou dost barbarously call it visible ) any thing else but seeing ? therefore thou dost plainly assert that blind men see in their sleep . it would be well if they could walk in their sleep too : for then they would scarce have any losse of their eyes . observ. . magicus , i do not altogether contemn the symboles and signatures of nature , but i believe that euphrasia or eye-bright that hath the signature of the eye , sees or feels no more , then the pulp of a wal-nut that hath the signature of the brain , doth understand or imagine . observ. . what a pitifull account dost thou give me here of the difficulties i urged thee with . my queres were these , you making two spirits in a man the rationall and sensitive . first , whether the rationall spirit doth not hear and see in a man ? here you distinguish . the sensitive spirit sees the object ( say you ) and the rationall the species . but i say unto thee , that sensation is nothing else , but the perceiving of some present corporeall object ; and that the rationall soul doth . for when two men discourse , that in them that reasons , hears the words , and sees the party with whom it reasoneth , does it not ? therefore they both see the object : but you will say , one sees by a species , the other without . i say nothing can be discerned without a species , that is , without an actuall representation of the thing discerned . so that that distinction is in vain . and i would adde this further , that every sentient spirit must perceive by its own species , and not by anothers . but thou sayest , this sensitive spirit like a glasse represents the species of externall objects . then it seems the sensitive spirits office is to be the glasses of the soul to see things in , but glasses themselves , magicus , are not sentient , nor need this spirit be so , that is the souls glasse ; and it is plain it is not . for if these two were two different sensitive spirits , then they would have two different animadversions ; but there is but one animadversive spirit in a man , and therefore but one sensitive . and that there is but one animadversive spirit in a man is plain from hence , that if the rationall animadversive bestow its animadversion fully elsewhere , the sensitive in man cannot perform the thousandth part of that which is performed in brutes . we should loose our selves in the most triviall matters , when notwithstanding this sensitive spirit in man , would have as quick a vehicle as in most brutes . besides , this sensitive spirit having this animadversion , would have also a memory apart , and would be able while the rationall is busied about something else , to lay up observations such as beasts do by it self ; and then long after to shew them to the rationall , to its sudden amazement and astonishment . but none of these things are . and in my apprehension it is , in a very grosse and palpable way , sensible to me , that there is but one animadversive in me , and i think i am no monster ; if i be , it is ( it seems ) in that i am all rationall spirit , and have had the luck to misse of the sensitive , the beast . page . line . if this be true , then there be two hearing and seeing souls in a man . this is my second quere ; i ask'd if there be . to this you answer , ha ha he ! a very profound answer . this is no laughing matter , my friend . have i not already shew'd you some difficulties , this asserting two sensitive spirits in a man , is laden with ? answer them , phil. i should gladly heare thee use thy tongue as well as see thee shew thy teeth by laughing . for that slender faint reason that follows thy loud laughing , viz. the objects are different and the senses are different , that is taken away already . for the sting of my argument is not this , that there would be two sensitive souls of the same nature in the body of a man ; but that there should be two sensitive souls at all . and indeed , considering that the superiour soul contains the faculties of the inferiour , it is altogether needlesse . and that is a very sober truth , entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate . which is to the same sense with that so often repeated in aristotle and theophrastus , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} god and nature do nothing in vain . and the right organization of parts and due temperature of the body , and proportion of animal spirits , this is all the glasse the soul of man wants in this life , to see by or receive species from . but this glasse hath no more sense it self , then an urinall or looking-glasse hath . where are you now , phil. with your ha hahe ? line . i could , mastix , teach thee an higher truth . yes truly , magicus , you are best of all at those truths which dwell in the highest . you love to soar aloft out of the ken of sense and reason , that you may securely raunt it there in words of a strange sound and no signification . but though thou fliest up so high , like a crow that hath both his eyes bor'd out , yet i have thee in a string , and can pluck thee down for all thy fluttering . thou sayest that a soul may understand all things , sine conversione ad phantasmata : this i suppose thou wouldst say to contradict aristotle ; but i do not suspect thee of so much learning as to have read him . he tells us in his book de anima , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} that there is no understanding without phantasmes . you say that we may understand all things without them . what think you of individualls , magicus ? of which it is controverted amongst the platonists , whether there be any idea's of them or no . but being you are so confident an assertor , let 's heare how stout a prover you are of your assertions . know you this you have spoken by sense , reason , or divine revelation ? by this string i have pluck'd this blind crow down ; i have him as tame in my hand as a titmouse : look how he pants , and gapes , and shews the white tip of his tongue , but sayes nothing . go thy wayes , phil. for a pure philosophick thraso . observ. . three quarters of a year hast thou spent , &c. o magicus , magicus ! thou art youthfull and vain-glorious , and tellest thy tutour that this hasty cookery thou entertainest him with , was dispatch'd and dress'd up some ten daies after the presse was deliver'd of my observations . how many ten dayes doest thou mean , by thy some ten dayes ? thou wouldst have thy tutour to stroke thee on the head for a quick-parted lad , i perceive , eugenius . but hadst thou not better have staid longer , and writ better sense , more reason , and with lesse rayling ? but i poore slow beast ! how long dost thou think i was viewing and observing that other excellent piece of thine ? i confesse , magicus , because thou forcest me to play the fool as well as thy self , i was almost three quarters of a moneth about it ; and how much more is that then some ten dayes , though but twice told over ? and i will not be so curiously vain-glorious , as to tell thee how great a share of this time was daily taken from me by necessary imployments . this is to answer thy folly with folly . but i thank god that i glory in nothing , but that i feel my self an instrument in the hand of god , to work the good of men . the greatest strength of a man is weaknesse , and the power of reason , while we are in this state , depends so much of the organs of the body , that its force is very uncertain and fickle . is not the whole consistency of the body of man , as a crudled cloud or coagulated vapour ? and his personality a walking shadow and dark imposture ? all flesh is grasse , and the glory thereof as the flower of the field : but the word of the lord endureth for ever . verily the people are as grasse . observ. . have at you my friends the independents . the independents indeed may be thy friends , magicus ; but i dare say thou art not in a capacitie to be theirs , as having not yet wit and morality enough to be a friend unto thy self . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} a bad man cannot be friendly disposed towards himself , as having nothing in himself amiable and friendly , aristot. eth. ad nicom , lib. . cap. . observ. . mastix , you denied formerly the scripture was intended for philosophie . but you contending that it was , how fondly do you preferre agrippa before moses and christ . this you would have called blasphemy ; but i have learned no such hard language . observ. . for the naturall queres i put to thee here concerning the nature of light , the rainbow , the flux and reflux of the sea , and the load-stone ; i tell thee thou wilt never be able to answer sense to them , unlesse thou turn cartesian , and explain them out of that philosophy . but in the generall , i mean , that the heats which the soul takes from personall admiration , make her neither wise , nor just ; nor good , but onely disturbe the spirits , and disadvantage reason . observ. . page . line . mastix would gladly put those asunder , whom god hath put together . you mean then that a protestant and christian , are termini convertibiles . what a rare independent is magicus ! he is an independent of the church of england ; which is as good sense as if he should say , he is a protestant of the church of rome . truly , magicus , i think thou art an independent in nothing but in thy reasons and speeches ; for in them indeed there is no dependency at all . they are arena sine calce , and hang together like thum-ropes of sand . but before i be merry with thee ; and i fore-see i shall be when i come to thy verses , heare this sober aphorisme from me . if that those things which are confessedly true in christianity were closely kept to by men , it would so fill and satisfie their souls with an inward glorious light and spirituall joy , that all those things that are with destroying zeal and unchristian bitternesse prosecuted by this and that church , would , look all of them as contemptibly , as so many rush-candles in the light of the sun . line . you fall on my person . well , i 'le let your person go now , and fall on your poetry . where i believe , i shall prove you a notable wagge indeed , and one that has abused your mother oxford and all her children very slyly and dryly . dry pumick statues . you make your own brothers of oxford then so many dry pumices , things that have nothing in them at all . i wish you had been so too phil , for you have been to me a foul wet spunge , and have squeazed all your filth upon my person , as you call it . but if thou knewest how reall a friend i am to thy person , excesse of kindnesse would make thee lick it all off again . might make a marble weep to bear your verse . it seems then , you of oxford make such dull heavy verses , that it would make a monument of marble like an overladen asse , weep to bear the burden of them . shee heav'd your fancies . what heavy leaden fancies are these that want such heaving . up heavy heels . but how high did she heave them , phil ? as high as the other lead was heaved that covers the roof of your churches and chappels ? nay higher . above the very pinacles , mastix ! a marvellous height , but the jack-daws of our university sit higher then thus , so it seems that the souls of the sonnes of your mother oxford are elevated as high as the bodies of the jackdaws in the university of cambridge . what large elevated phansies have your academicks that reach almost as farre as the eye and sense of an ordinary rustick ! your phansie's higher then the pinacles , his sight higher then the clouds , for he may see the sunne and the starres too , if he be not blind . blest in her martyrdome had you but shed — a tear , &c. the sense is , i suppose , that your mother had been burnt for a blessed martyr if her sonnes had afore-hand quenched out the fire with their tears . - one poore sigh for her last breath — that we may say she liv'd before her death . here he accuseth his mother for sucking her childrens breath as , they say , a cat doth young childrens . go thy wayes phil , for an unmercifull wit . i perceive thou wilt not spare neither father presbyter , nor thy mother , nor thine own brothers , but thou wilt break thy jest upon them . well i now forgive thee heartily for all thy abuses upon me , i perceive thou wilt not spare thy dearest friends . observ. . thou art not well acquainted with gold thou art not a man of that metall . here , magicus , thy want of logick hath made thee a little witty . for if thou hadst understood that comparison doth not alwayes imply any positive degree in the things compared , this conceit had been stifled before the birth . thou saist somewhere , that i am a thin , lean philosopher ; but i say , i am as fat as a hen is on the forehead . whether do i professe my self lean or fat now ? as lean as thou dost . now when i say as orient as false gold , do i say that false gold is orient . thou art a meer auceps syllabarum , magicus , or to look lower , a mouse-catcher in philosophy . observ. . philalethes , say you , writ this book to revenge his death . no , now i think you mention his death , onely to bring this latine sentence into your book . et quis didicit scribere in lucta lacrymarum & atramenti . observ. . i excluded not thy censure but thy mercy . thy words are , i expose it not to the mercy of man but of god . but it is no exposall or hardship at all to be exposed to mercy , therefore by mercy thou must needs understand censure . page . line . you skud like a dogge by nilus . here your phansie is handsome and apposite to what you would expresse , but that which you would expresse is false . for i fear no crocodile , but the fate of esops dog who catching at the shadow lost the substance . because i more then suspect that there is nothing reall in those places i passed by , but onely tremulous shadows of an unsettled phansie . page . line . did not i bid thee proceed to the censure of each part ? what is your meaning , philalethes ! that you would have me confute all , right or wrong ? no , phil , i have done as st george in his combate with the dragon , thrust my spear under the monsters wing , into the parts which are most weak or least scaly . what i have excepted against was with judgement and reason , and so good , that all that i have said hitherto , stands as strong and unshaken of thy weak reasonings and impotent raylings , as rocks of adamant , and pillars of brasse at the shooting off of a childes eldern-gunne against them . let 's now see how like a man thou hast quit thy self in the ensuing discourse . anima magica abscondita . well , eugenius , i have now perused this second part of thy answer , which doth not answer at all in proportion to thy first . how lank ! how little is it ! thou hast even wearyed thy self with scolding , and now thou art so good natured as to draw to an end . faint , phil , faint ? let me feel thy pulse . assuredly it strikes a myurus , which is a signe thou art languid at the heart . or is thy book troubled with the cramp , and so hath its leggs twitch'd up to its breech ? or hath it been on procrustes his bed and had the lower parts of it cut off ? whatever the cause is , the effect is apparent ; that thou art wringled up at the end like a pigs tayl , and shriveled on heaps like a shred of parchment . how many sober passages of morality ? how many weighty arguments of reason ? how many frolicks of wit hast thou slipt over and not so much as mentioned , much lesse applyde any sutable answer ? but i hope thou wilt make good use of them silently with thy self , and rectifie thy phansie hereafter by my judgement , though thou thinkest it as harsh , as standing on the presbytercall stool : to give me publick thanks . in the mean time , reader , be contented , that i , onely reply to what he hath thought good to oppose . but what he runs away from so cowardly , i will not run after him with it , nor be so cruel as to force him to abide . observ. . page . line . it is plain then , that the body and substance of the definition is contained in these few words , principium motûs & quietis . why , magicus , because you make up he rest with thinking ? suppose thy picture vere drawn to the waste , and thou thoughtest of the rest of thy body . doth that picture therefore contain the full draught of thy body ? away , thou bird of athens . observ. . you tell me a form can not be known otherwise then by what it can do or operate . i told thee so phil , and do tell thee so again . and thou onely denyest it , thou dost not disprove it ; wherefore phyllis is mine yet , and not the willow garland , but the willow rod is thine , for not learning this plain lesson any better all this while . for , ( to speak to thy own sense and conceit of the soul , that it is an intelligent fire , or light ) thou canst not frame any notion of intelligent , but from intellectuall operations : nor of light , but from what it operates upon thy sense , thy sight ; which is a truth most evidently plain to any man that is not stark blind . page . line . you say mastix , i have not considered the difference added in the definition of nature . no , you had not when you cavilled at the genus , as angry at it , because it did not monopolize the whole office of the definition to it self and supply also the place of a difference . fond cavil ! but thou supposed'st , it seems , that i would never deigne to answer , so unclean an adversary as thou hast shown thy self , and that thy readers would never take the pains to see whether thou spoke true or false , and that hath made thee say any thing , and that with undaunted confidence and foulest insultations , that the simple might be sure to beleeve thee , without any more ado . eugenius , enjoy thou the applause of the simple . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} but one wise man to me is as much as ten thousands of such , and infinite swarms of them , not so much as one . i am fully of heraclitus his mind for that , philalethes . observ. . here , philalethes , you contemning definitions made from the proper operations of the things defined , i intimate to you , that you necessarily imply , that you look after the knowledge of a stark-naked substance , which is impossible ever to be had . what do you answer to this ? nothing . let the reader judge else . observ. . let any body compare thy finihabia with the expositions of those terms {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} and {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , made by julius scaliger ( for it is he that is more cunning at nonsense then the devil , not i ) and he shall find that thou hast spent a page and an half here to no purpose , but onely to shew some few faint flashes of wit . for at last thou dost acknowledge the aptnesse and significancie of the words , but still complainest that there is no news of the substance of the soul in them . to which i answer again , a substance is a thing impossible to be known otherwise then by its proper operations , or peculiar relations to this or that , as i have often inculcated . but how do you take away this answer ? onely by making a wry mouth , and crying , away ! away ! have i not already demonstrated unto thee , that it is impossible to know substances themselves , but onely by their operations ? here he answers again , that that cannot be ; for then a plow-man would be as wise as himself , and mother bunch as his mother oxenford . but to satisfie this inconvenience , ( if it be any , to grant a plow-man wiser then thou art ) i say , thou and thy mother may be wiser then a plowman in other things , though not in this ; and in this , if your notion be more adequate and precise then his is , that is , if you are able , according to the rules of logick , to examine whether your assertion may go for an axiome , that is , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , or {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , and are able to rest satisfied , by finding your selves to know according to the capacity of the subject . but now , phil. you indeavour to go so far beyond the plow-man , that you fall short of him , and reach at so high strains , that you have strain'd your self till you seem half crackt to the sober . for this truth , that a substance is not to be known , but by its proper operations , is a truth so clear , that it is clear that he is destitute of sight and judgement , that doth not discern it even at the first proposall . observ. , , . what thou answerest to these th , th , & th observations is nothing at all to the purpose , and therefore to no purpose at all to answer any thing to them , as i have already said in the like case , and i must leave something to the candour and judgement of the reader . observ. . page . line . mastix , you place the difficulty in the rudiments or sperms , because they are lax and fluid . no , magicus , but i do not . for i think they are alwayes so , or else the ratio seminalis would have a hard task of it . but when thou saiest , that the anima , in the matter missing a vent , &c. the difficulty is how a thing so subtile as a soul is , should misse a vent in so lax matter as the first rudiments of life . this is the difficulty , magicus . but thou understandest not the force of any thing i propound to thee , thy apprehension is so out of tune with straining at high things nothing to the purpose . but i perceive , though thou wouldst dissemble it , magicus , that i have beat thee from the bung-hole , and that rude expression borrowed thence . and now thou art as busie as a moth about a candle , to fetch a metaphor thence . for thou tellest us , that this union is like that betwixt the candle and the flame . this indeed for some poetical illustration may do well : but what pholosophicall satisfaction is there in it , philalethes ? for first , the flame is without the candle , not in it ; but the soul within the body , not without it . secondly , the flame is an effect of the candle , but the soul is not an effect of the bodie , the body is not the pabulum thereof , and the very substance of which it is made , by superinducing a new modification . thirdly , and lastly , the soul is still the same individuall soul ; but the flame is no more the same flame , then the water betwixt such and such banks of the river , is still the same water . if thou hadst put thy finger into thy nose , and said , lo the mystery of the union of the soul and body : it had been as much philosophicall satisfaction as this , from the union of flame and candle . thou pitifull puzled thing ! thou art not yet able to weigh what thou saiest . and now i have drove thee from the flame of the candle , thou hast scudded away quite into the dark , flown to i know not what strange obscure expressions , a story of old grand-dame nature , with a set ruff and a gold chain about her neck , which thou callest propinquity of complexions , and i know not what . i prethee how much doth this differ from sympathy and antipathy , which all knowing men call asylum ignorantiae : and now i have drove thee thither , i will leave thee in that sanctuary of fools . what i have said , i have already made good , that the souls union with the body is more theomagicall then magicus himself is aware of . observ. . page . line . both which he makes to be one and the same thing . all that i say there is , that those verses are understood of the vehicle of the soul , not of the soul it self ; and it is theupolus his opinion as well as mine , who cites those verses of virgil , and gives that sense of them ; to wit , that the twofold vehicle of the soul is there meant , the ethereall and spirituous , not the soul it self , academic . contemplat . lib. . so that virgil doth not at all patronize thy grosse conceit of making the soul consist of fire and aire . page . line . i grant the soul to be a bodily substance that hath dimensions too . why phil ? is there any bodily substances without dimensions ? i could very willingly grant thee a mere body without a soul , thou hast so little reason and sense in thee ; or if thou hast a soul , that it is a corporeall one , and it may well be so : but my question is meant of souls that have sense and reason in them , whether they be corporeall substances or no ? yes , say you , they are . they are intelligent fire and light . i say , phil. thou art all fire , but no light , nor intelligent at all . thou art the hottest fellow that ever i met with in all my dayes , as hot as a taylours goose when it hisseth , and yet as dark . but let 's endeavour ( if it be possible ) to vitrifie thy opake carcase , and transmit a little light into thee . doest thou know then what fire is ? how it is a very fluid body , whose particles rest not one by another , but fridge one against another , being very swiftly and variously agitated . in this condition is the matter of fire . but now i demand of thee ; is there any substance in this fire thou speakest of , ( for thou sayest it is really fire , and usest no metaphor ) which we may call the essentiall form thereof , or no ? if there be , i ask thee whether that form be intelligent , or no ? if it be , then that is the soul , and this subtile agitated matter is but the vehicle . but if thou wilt say , that the subtile fiery matter it self is the intelligent soul , see what inconveniencies thou intanglest thy self in . for fire being as homogeneall a body as water is , and having all the parts much what alike agitated ; how can this fire do those offices that commonly are attributed to the soul ? first , how can it organize the body into so wise a structure and contrivement , the parts of this fire tending as much this way as that way or at least tending onely one way , suppose upward . secondly , how can it inform the whole body of an embryo in the wombe , and of a grown man ? for if it was but big enough for the first , it will be too little for the latter ; unlesse you suppose it to grow , and to be nourished . but thus , you will not have the same individuall soul you was christened with , and must be forced to turn not onely independent , but anabaptist , that your new soul may be baptized : for it is not now the same that you was christened with before . for i say , that ten spoonfulls of water added to one , should rather individuate the whole , then that one of that whole number should individuate the ten . thirdly , how can it move it self , or the body in a spontaneous way ? for all the particles of this fiery matter wriggling and playing on their own centers , or joyntly endeavouring to tend upwards , makes nothing to a spontaneous motion , no more then the atomes of dust that are seen playing in the sunne beams , striking through a chink of a wall into a dark room , can conspire into one spontaneous motion , and go which way they please . wherefore i say , there ought to be some superintendent form that takes hold of all these fiery particles and commands them as one body , and guides them this way or that way , and must be the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} of this fiery substance , that is , there must be such an essence in this fiery matter ( and that is noted by the preposition {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ) as doth {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} and {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} that doth hold together , that doth drive this way or that way , according to its nature or will , and yet thus driving doth keep possession of this fiery matter ; and what is this but a soul ? not the indument , the smock or petticote of the soul as thou call'st it . eugenius , thou art old excellent at finding out naked essences , it seems , that takest the garment for the body . thou art so young that thou canst not distinguish betwixt a living barn , and a baby made of clouts . but this is not all that i have to say phil. fourthly , i say that this fire cannot be the soul , because fire is devoid of sense . i but you say you understand an intelligent fire . learnedly answered , and to as much purpose as if you should say , that a soul is a post or a pillar , and then you should distinguish and tell me , you meant an intelligent post or pillar , but i say fire hath no more sense then a post or pillar has reason . for if it have sense , it must have that which the schools call sensus communis . and now tell me phil , to which of all the playing particles of this ignis fatuus of thine thou wilt appoint the office of the sensus communis , or why to any one more then to the rest ? but if thou appoint all , there will be as many severall sensations , as there are particles . indeed so many distinct living things . and thou wilt become more numerous within , then the possessed in the gospel , whose name was legion , because they were many . but if thou wilt pitch upon any one particle above the rest , tell me where it is ? in the middle or at the out-side of this fire ? i will interpret thee the most favourably , and answer for thee ; in the middle . but i demand of thee , why shall this in the middle have the priviledge of being the sensus communis rather then any other , or how will it be able to keep it self in the middle in so fluid a body ? and if it were kept there , what priviledge hath it but what the most of the rest have , as well as it , to make it fit for the office of a sensus communis ? for it must be , either because it is otherwise moved on its center , then the other are on theirs , which you can not prove either to be , or if it were , to be to any purpose : or it must be , because it hath some advantage in consideration of the joynt motion of the particles . let the joynt motion therefore of the particles be either rectilinear or circular . if rectilinear , as suppose in a square , let the processe of motion be from side to side parallel . hath not then any particle in a right line that is drawn through the center of this square figure , parallel to two of the sides , equall advantage for this office ( the transmission of outward sense being perpendicular to the said right line ) that the middle particle hath ? for thus it can receive but what comes in one line , transmission of sense being parallel as is supposed . nay , the points of any other inward line parallel to this , will do as well as the points of this middle line , which is as plainly true , as two and two is four , if thou understandest sense when it is propounded to thee . well , but it may be you may think you can mend your self by supposing the joynt motion of this fiery matter to be circular . i say no . for then that of this motion , that respects externall objects is from the center to the circumference , as it is plain in that ordinary experiment of a sling . and thus motion is from the middle particle not towards it . but you should say here , if you could answer so wisely , that motion bearing forward from this center toward the object , that reciprocally the object will bear against it ; and so there will be a transmission of sense to the center round about from all the circumferentiall parts of this fiery orb which thou calledst the naked soul . but i say , magicus , if the middle point of this orb get the place of the sensus communis , because there is a common transmission of motion from sensible objects thereunto : i say then that there be more sensus communes in this orb then one , because such transmissions as are not perpendicular to this orb , will meet in severall points distant from the middle point or center of this orb , and there are enough such externall transmissions as these . i might adde also , that the middle point or particle being though a minute one yet a body , and consequently divisible , that that will also bid fair for a multiplicity of common senses . but i will adde onely this , that i hope to see the day wherein thou wilt be so wise as to be able to confesse , that the authour of anthroposophia theomagica , &c. was the most confident ignaro that ever wet paper with ink . but before i leave this fourth argument , let me onely cast in one thing more which equally respects both hypotheses , either of rectilinear or circular motion . and that 's this . if any one particle of this fiery substance , be the common sense , it must be also the principle of spontaneous motion to the whole substance . for we see plainly that that which hath the animadversive faculty in man , or the office of common sense , moves the whole man , or that the motion of him is directed , at the beck of this . but i prethee phil , tell me if thou canst possibly imagine , that any one particle in this fiery substance should be able to impresse spontaneous motion upon the whole . i know thou canst not but think it impossible . fifthly , if the soul be fire ( fire being so fluid and unsteddy a substance ) how can there be any memory in it ? you remember that experssion in catullus , whereby he would set forth sudden obliteration & forgetfulness of things , that it is like writing in the water or in the aire . in vento aut rapidâ scribere oportet aquâ . but what think you of fire then , will that consistency bear more durable characters ? the perpetuall fridging and toying of the fiery particles doth forthwith cancell whatever is impressed , and now there is neither common sense nor memory to be found in your fire , we may be secure there is no reason to be found there . for the discursive faculty requires some {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , something fixt to tread upon as well as the progressive . but in your fire all is aflote , nothing fixt . sixthly and lastly , if the soul of man be either fire or aire , or both , i do not see that it will prove immortall ; but that its consistency will be dispersed and scattered like the clouds . it will not be able to conflict with the boistrous winds , or scape blowing out , or being lost in the thinne aire , as other flames are , it once being uncased of the armature of the body . and these vehicles which you will have to be the very soul it self , they being so changeable and passive within the body , it will not be absurd with lucretius to inferre that they will be utterly dissolved when they are without . haec igitur tantis ubi morbis , corpore in ipso factentur , miserisque modis distracta laborent cur eadem credis sine corpore , in aere aperto , cum validis ventis aetatem degere posse ? to this sense . if in the body rack'd with tort'rous pain and tost with dire disease they 're wearied so ; this shelter lost , how can they then sustain the strong assaults of stormy winds that blow ? i tell thee phil , such a soul as thou fanciest would be no more able to withstand the winds then the dissipable clouds , nor to understand any more sense then a soul of clouts , or thy own soul doth . but now i have so fully confuted thy grosse opinion of the soul , it may be happily expected that i would declare mine own . but phil , i onely will declare so much , that i do not look on the soul as a peripateticall atome , but as on a spirituall substance , without corporeall dimensions , but not destitute of an immateriall amplitude of essence , dilatable and contractible . but for further satisfaction in this point , i referre to my philosophicall poems . and do professe that i have as distinct , determinate , and clear apprehension of these things , and as wary and coherent , as i have of any corporeall thing in the world . but heat and phantastry to suddled minds , are as good companions as caution and reason to the sober . but the durablenesse of that satisfaction is uncertain , whereas solid reason is lasting and immutable . observ. . page . line . but from a similitude and symbole of nature . you are indeed very good at similitudes phil. as i have proved heretofore out of your skill in zoography . but this is another businesse . for here you professe to speak , of the symbolizing and sympathizing of things one with another in nature , and so mutually moving to union , by a kind attractive power , according to that saying {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . well be it so that there is a mutuall attractive power in things that symbolize one with another ( for the attraction is mutuall as well as the similitude mutuall ) what is this to take away what i have objected ? nothing . but i will shew you how you are hang'd in your own chain . for it is as plain , as one of the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , that where two things of the same nature act , the greater is stronger , and the stronger prevails . wherefore three portions of light should fetch up two , or five one ; rather then one should fetch down three , or five , or two . this is the bare point of my reason which i covered with a double comparison . viz. from the greater number of the lincks of a chain preponderating the lesse number , and from the greater portion of earth prevailing over the lesse ; as in that instance , when a clod taken from the earth and let go in the free aire , the earth commands it back to it self again , according to that conceit of magnetisme . and here the argument was à pari , not à specie , and there may be a collation of parity even in contraries . and your ignorance of that logicall notion , hath inabled you to rayl so much , and speak so little to the purpose on this observation , as any logician may very easily discern . observ. . page . line . answer if thou darest to any one of these questions . assure thy self , eugenius , i can give a very rationall answer to every one of them . but for thy sake i think fit to answer none of them . but what is in my philosophicall poems will salve them all . i will now rather examine what force of arguments you have to prove that that which orders matter into shape and form , is animadversive and intelligent . your first argument is ; that if there were no animadversion in the ratio seminalis , ( or call it what you will ) that shapes the matter into form , the agent would mistake in his work . secondly , that he would work he knew not what , nor wherefore , and that therefore all generations would be blind casualties . thirdly , there would not be that method , infallibility of action nor proportion and symmetry of parts in the work . fourthly and lastly , that there would be no end nor impulsive cause to make him to work . to all these unsound reasons , i have already answered very solidly and truly . that the force of them reached no further then thus . that the ratio seminalis must at least proceed from something that is knowing , and be in some sense rationall , but not have reason and animadversion in it self . and this is the opinion of plotinus , marsilius ficinus , and all the platonists that i have met with . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} &c. ennead . . lib. . to this sense . for the ratio seminalis acts in the matter and that which acts thus naturally , neither understands nor sees , but hath onely a power to transform the matter , not knowing any thing but making onely as it were a form or shape in the water . and ficinus compares this ratio seminalis , to an artifice cut off from the mind of the artificer and made self-subsistent , and able to work upon prepared matter , but without knowledge , as being disjoyned from all animadversive essence . this is the right notion of the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . and this fully takes away the force of all your arguments . for these being divine art imbodied in nature and matter , and working naturally , they will first , mistake no more , then a stone will in its journey downwards , or the fire in its course upward ; which go alwayes right , if no externall obstacle hinder them . and these will work right if the matter be duly prepared . secondly , though they work they know not what , yet they work right in virtue of that cause from whence they came , the divine intellect : and their operation is no more casuall then the ascent of fire , and descent of earth ; for it is naturall . thirdly , this third falls in with the second , and the same answer will serve both . fourthly , there is an impulsive cause and end of their working , though unkown to them , yet not unknown to the authour of them . as in the orderly motion of a watch , the spring knows not the end of its motion , but the artificer doth . yet the watch moves , and orderly too , and to a good end . but this fourth falls in also with the second or first . and you see now that they are indeed all fallen to nothing at all . so easily is confidence overcome when unbacked with solid reason . observ. , , , , , . page . line . did ever man scribble such ridiculous impertinencies ? never any man before eugenius philalethes . but why will you scribble such stuff , phil. that will put you to the pains of reproaching of it when you have done ? my exception against your definition of the first principle of your clavis was as solid as merry . for , one in one , and one from one , is no definition of any one thing in the world . for definitio , or {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} is a bounding and limiting what you define . but here is no bounds nor limits at all . for every thing that is , is one in one , and one from one , viz. in one world and from one god . and then in your other attempt this way , to definc it , a pure white virgin walking in shades and tiffanies , is a meer foolery in philosophy , and teacheth nothing but that your phansie is very feminine . now in answer to all this , you contrive two ridiculous paralogismes , and then laugh at them when you have done . page . line . made their god jupiter an adulterer . and you eugenius , bestow a wife on the god of israel , and make her after an adulteresse , and then call me blasphemous for deriding your folly . page . line . which thou dost blasphemously call pitifull services . yes philalethes , and i ought to call them so , in comparison of that high good that is intended to us by scripture . they are pitifull things indeed in comparison of that . and thou art a pitifull fellow to make an independent of , that hast no more wit nor christianity in thee then to call this blasphemy . but a man may easily discern how religious thou art , though by moon-light , at the latter end of the page , where thou dost display thine own immodesty , by talking of displaying of petticotes . observ. . line . the starres could not receive any light from the sunne . now you shew how wise you are , in straining at so high a philosophicall notion . i tell thee , phil. the stars cannot receive any light from the sun , no more then this earth can from one single starre . for the sunne to our sight at the distance he is from the fixed starres , would seem no bigger then they , if so big . for according to the computation of astronomers , the starres of the first magnitude are really farre bigger then the sunne : yet you see how little light they impart to the earth , and how very small they appear to us . and yet the lively vibration of their light shews plainly that it is their own , not borrowed . so that it is plain , that if the sun and stars be man and wife , this immense distance makes them live in a perpetuall divorce . observ. . line . now at last reader , he perceives his errour : therefore there needed none of your correction . and i wish you could of your self perceive yours too , that you may need none of mine . but i perceive by what follows here , thou dost not know my meaning by spiritus medicus . which i pardon in thee , thou dost so seldome understand thy own . observ. . line . otherwise grasse could not grow on the banks of it all the yeare long . i said the fringes of reeds and flags , and those gayer ornaments of herbs and flowers , could not grow all the yeare long on the banks of yska , if it were a river in great britain or ireland . what is now become of thy faint ha ha he ? line . he thinks yska runnes to heaven . do i so , phil ? why then i gave thee friendly counsell when i bid thee fling thy self into its stream . for then thou wouldst with ease have gone along with the stream to heaven , when others are fain to row hard against the stream , & scarce arive thither when they have done all they can . i knew thy meaning by thy mumping , phil. but thou expressedst it so disadvantageously , that thou gavest me good occasion to be merry with thee . but thou hast no mirth nor urbanity at all in thee , but wrath and foul language , which without any heed or discretion thou flingest upon every one that comes in thy way . and here in this page , thou bidst fair for the calling of that noble philosopher des-cartes , knave , as neretofore thou didst call him fool . what wit , civility , or judgement is there in this philalethes ? thou art resolved to be recorded to posterity the most immorrall and ignorant man that ever appeared yet in publick . but thou hast as much confuted his philosophy , by saying it is a whim and a wham , as thou hast solidly answered thy observatour . i have made it apparent , that thou hast not spoke sense scarce to any one thing i objected against thee . but hast discovered thy grosse ignorance in logick and philosophy so far , that i professe i did not suspect thou hadst been any thing neare so weak as i have found thee : but i willingly leave the censure of it to the judicious . i will onely speak thus much in favour to thee and for thy excuse , that the strength of thy passion may very well have more then ordinarily weakened thy reason . now for that ingenuous young gentleman , the smartnesse of whose poetry hath so wrung thee , and vext thy guts , that it hath brought upon thee the passio iliaca , and made thee so foul mouthed , i will only say so much , phil. and speak within compasse , that he hath more wit and philosophy in one hair of his head , then thou hast in thy whole noddle . and that his verse was not obedient to my prose ; but the muses were very obsequious to his wit and humour of representing thee such as thou art . and in this onely he was no poet , in that he doth not write fictions as thou doest in prose . but it seems he hath so paid thee home , that the sense of my gentle strokes are struck out by his quicker lash . for thou sayest i am a good harmlesse sneaking observatour , thy alaz . that is , thy thou knowst not what , but no mastix by no means , but onely one that gave thee a flap with a foxtail . verily , thou sayest true , i did not intend to hurt thee , and thou makest me so weak as if i were not able . why doest thou raise then so mighty tropheyes upon the victory of so harmlesse and unable an enemie ? for as inconsiderable as i am , to make himself considerable to the world , he makes a colosse , a gyant , a monster of nine acres long of me . but how can this consist with thy putting me up into a little box . parturiunt montes — or rather , dehiscunt montes , tandem intrat ridiculus mus . the colosse fals , the mountains gape , and at length enters in the merry mouse . an excellent jest my masters ? but why into a box with wire grates , rather then into an iron cage , as tamberlain us'd bajazeth , and so carried him up and down in triumph ? i wonder thou didst not take this jest by the turkish mustachoes , rather then that . but this it is , to have a wit no larger then a mouse-catchers ; or a phansie heav'd up no higher then the pinacles of oxenford . thou wilt in time , phil. make a fellow of a fit size to shew the lions and rattoon at the tower ; and i suppose thou fawnest upon the independents so as thou doest , to get their good will for the next reversion of that office . but enough , my philalethes , of levity & folly . i will not abuse my liberty to excesse , onely let me in some way answer the expectation of those that may happily expect my censure of thy magia adamica . but i shall not so much answer it , as frustrate it : for i professe , i take no pleasure in the censuring of any mans writings ; i can imploy my self better . i was in a very merry frolick when i ventur'd upon this ; yet the judicious may discern that there was sobriety enough at the bottome of all that mirth . but as for this magia adamica , i confesse i have not read it ; but i do favourably conjecture , that the authour thereof is as well skilled in those books of magick that adam read by the fire-side in winter nights , while eve held to him the candle , as any young man is in these european parts . i let adamicus alone , my businesse is onely with anthroposophus , over whom now i having so full a victory , it will be expected , perhaps , that i lead him about in triumph . but i must answer my friends in christian sobernesse , that i am the right philalethes , a lover of truth more then a lover of victory , and of victory more then of triumph ; — sat is est prostrâsse leoni . onely i will say , not of his person , but of that dispensation and genius in which he is in for the present ; lo , there lies the contagious spectrum of ephesus , which i have discovered to be the pest of the common-wealth of learning , and of humane and divine reason , as much as that demoniacall imposture was the walking plague of that famous city : and now he hath been pelted a little with hard language , as apollonius commanded the ephesians to stone that hypocriticall old mendicant with stones , he appears in the very same shape with him at the uncovering of the heap , that is , an uggly huge black mastife sprawling for life , and foaming forth abundance of filthy stinking scum , after the manner of mad dogs . and thus have i approv'd my self wise as apollonius , in discovering imposture ; and valiant as hercules , who over-mastered that {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , as dionysius calls it , that brazen-barking cerberus . and now , o men of ephesus ! i mean all you that reap the fruit of this noble exploit of mine , rear me up my deserved trophey , and inscribe this tetrastich upon it , for an everlasting monument of your gratitude to me , and love to the truth : religious heat as yet unpurged quite from fleshly sense and self , when 't makes a stir about high myst'ries above reasons light , is at the bottome but a rabid curre . but that i may conceal nothing from you , o men of ephesus , i must tell you , that whether you rear up this monument , or whether you forbear , all is one . for the truth of these verses is already written in the corner stones of the universe , and engraven on the lasting pillars of eternity . heaven and earth may passe away , but not one tittle of this truth shall passe away . high and windy notions do but blow up and kindle more fiercely the fire of hell in the hearts of men . from whence is pride , and contention , and bitter zeal . this is the pest and plague of mankind , and the succeeding torture of the sons of adam . for while the mind of man catcheth at high things , of which she is uncapable till she be refined and purged , she doth but fire the frame of her little world by her over-busie motion , which burning in grosse fewel , fills all with smoke . and thus the soul is even smothered and stifled in her narrow mansion . her first enlargement here must therefore be , by temperance and abstemiousnesse : for without this breathing-hole for fresh aire , devotion it self will choak her still more and more , heating her thick and polluted spirits in such sort , that they cannot be sufficiently rectified by the power of the brain . but in this dispensation especially is lodged a strong voice , weak sense , and a rude contempt of any thing that will trouble the head , as reason , philosophy , or any but ordinary subtilty in learning . but they love christ very heartily after their grosse way , as their protectour and securer from what outward evil naturally attends so bad an inward condition . but being so immersed in brutish sense , and yet with conscience of sinne ; if any body have but the trick to perswade them that sinne is but a name , he will be a very welcome apostle to them , and they will find more ease to their beastly nature , in phansying nothing to be sinne , then they did in making their hypocriticall addresses to an offended saviour . and then ( poore souls ) through the foulnesse of the flesh , are they easily inveigled into atheisme it self . in so great danger are we of the most mischievous miscarriages , by contemning of those known and confessed vertues of temperance , continence , and chastity . but we 'le suppose men in a great measure temperate ; yet how farre off are they still from reall happinesse in themselves , or from not disturbing the happinesse of others , so long as envy , ambition , covetousnesse , and self-respect doth still lodge in them ? here indeed reason may happily get a little more elbow-room ; but it will be but to be patron to those vices , and to make good by argument harsh opinions of god , and peremptorily to conclude the power of christ weaker then the force of sinne . and the phansie in these something more refined spirits , will be more easily figurable into various conceits , but very little to the purpose . of which some must go for sober truths , and those that are more fully shining , in the midst of a shadowy melancholiz'd imagination , must bid fair for divine inspiration , though neither miracle nor reason countenance them . but you , o men of ephesus ! if any one tell you strange devises , and forbid you the use of your reason , or the demanding of a miracle , you will be so wise as to look upon him as one that would bid you wink with your eyes , that he might the more easily give you a box of the eare , or put his hand into your pockets . now out of this second dispensation , innumerable swarms of sects rise in all the world . for falsehood and imagination is infinite ; but truth is one . and the benignitie of the divine spirit , having no harbour in all this varietie of religious pageantry ; envy , covetousnesse , and ambition must needs make them bustle , and tear all the world in pieces , if the hand of providence did not hold them in some limits : quin laniant mundum ; tanta est discordia fratrum : as he saith of the winds . in this dispensation lodgeth anger and active zeal concerning opinions and ceremonies , uncertainty and anxietie touching the purposes of god , and a rigid injudicious austerity , of which little comes but the frighting men off from religion : which notwithstanding if it be had in the truth thereof , is the most chearfull and lovely thing in the world . these men having not reached to the second covenant , will also thank any body that could release them from the first . for whereas true religion is the great joy and delight of them that attain to it , theirs is but their burden . and so it is not impossible that these may be also wound off to the depth of wickednesse , and sink also in time even to atheisme it self . for what is reall in them will work , but what is imaginary will prove it self ineffectuall . wherefore , is it not farre better for men to busie all their strength in destroying those things which are so evidently destructive of humane felicity , then to edge their spirits with fiery notions and strange phantasmes , which pretend indeed to the semblance of deep mysterious knowledge , and divine speculation ; but do nothing hinder but that the black dog may be at the bottome , as i said before ? but you will ask me , how shall we be rid of the importunity of the impostures and fooleries of this second dispensation . but i demand of you , is there any way imaginable but this ? viz. to adhere to those things that are uncontrovertedly good and true , and to bestow all that zeal , and all that heat , and all that pains for the acquiring of the simplicity of the life of god , that we do in promoting our own interest , or needlesse and doubtfull opinions . and i think it is without controversie true to any that are not degenerate below men , that temperance is better then intemperance , justice then injustice , humility then pride , love then hatred , and mercifulnesse then crueltie . it is also uncontrovertedly true , that god loves his own image , and that the propagation of it is the most true dispreading of his glory , as the light which is the image of the sunne , is the glory of the sunne . wherefore it is as plainly true , that god is as well willing , as able to restore this image in men , that his glory may shine in the world . this therefore is the true faith , to beleeve that by the power of god in christ , we may reach to the participation of the divine nature . which is a simple , mild , benigne light , that seeks nothing for it self , as it self ; but doth tenderly and cordially endeavour the good of all , and rejoyceth in the good of all , and will assuredly meet them that keep close to what they plainly in their consciences are convinced is the leading to it . and i say , that sober morality , conscienciously kept to , is like the morning light reflected from the higher clouds , and a certain prodrome of the sunne of righteousnesse it self . but when he is risen above the horizon the same vertues then stream immediately from his visible body , and they are the very members of christ according to the spirit . and he that is come hither , is a pillar in the temple of god for ever and ever ; for he hath reached to the second covenant , which he can in no more likelihood break , then lay violent hands on himself to the taking away of his naturall life . nay , that will be farre more easie then this . for a man may kill himself in a trice , but he cannot extinguish this divine life without long and miserable torture . if this be to be a puritane , eugenius , i am a puritane . but i must tell thee , that by how much more a man precisely takes this way , the more independent he will prove . and the pure simplicity of the life of god revealed in jesus christ , will shine with so amiable a lustre in his inward mind , that all the most valuable opinions that are controverted amongst churches and sects , will seem no more comely then a fools coat , compared with the uniform splendour of the sunne . but if thou meanest by either puritane or independent , one in the second dispensation , i should dissemble in the presence of heaven , if i should not say i am above them ; as i am above all sects whatsoever as sects . for i am a true and free christian ; and what i write and speak is for the interest of christ , and in the behalf of the life of the lamb which is contemned . and his interest is the interest of the sonnes of men ; for he hath no interest but their good and welfare . but because they will not have him to rule , the nations of the world ( by a divine nemesis ) are given up into the hands of wolves , foxes , and lions : the earth is full of darknesse and cruell habitations . wherefore , eugenius , thou doest very unskilfully , in endeavouring to tumble me off from the independents , to cast me amongst the puritanes , as thou callest them . for it is not in thy power to cast me so low as any sect whatsoever ; god hath placed me in a dispensation above them , and wilt thou throw me down ? no , eugenius , i shine upon them both as the sunne in the firmament , who doth not wink on one side , or with-draw his rayes , but looks openly upon all , imparting warmth and light . thou hast encountred with a colosse indeed ( though thou callest me so but in sport and scorn ) far bigger then that stradling statue at rhodes , and that reacheth far higher . and yet no statue neither , but one that will speak what nothing but ignorance and hypocrisie can denie . wherefore with my feet lightly standing on the shoulders of all the sects of the earth ( for i would not tread hard like a statue to hurt them ) & with my head stooping down out of the clouds , i will venture to trie the world with this sober question . tell me therefore , o all ye nations , people , & kindreds of the earth , what is the reason that the world is such a stage of misery to the sonnes of men ? is it not from hence , that that which should be their great guidance , their religion and highest light of their minds , is but heat and squabbling about subtile uncertain points , and foolish affectation of high mysteries , while the uncontroverted sober truths of vertue and piety are neglected , and the simplicity of the life of god despised , as a most contemptible thing . and i had no sooner uttered these words in my mind , but me thought i heard an answer from all the quarters of the earth , from east , west , north and south , like the noise of many waters , or the voice of thunder , saying , amen . halelujah . this is true . nor is this any vain enthusiasme , philalethes , but the triumph of the divine light in my rationall spirit , striking out to my exteriour faculties , my imagination and sense . for my head was so filled with the noise , that it felt to me as bound and straitened , as being not able to contain it , and coldnesse & trembling seised upon my flesh . but you will say , all this is but a triviall truth that you are so zealous and triumphant in . but verily , eugenius , is it not better to be zealous about those things that are plainly true , then those that are either uncertain of false ? 't is true , what i have said to thy soaring soul may seem contemptible . but if thou once hadst the sight of that principle from whence it came , thou wouldst be suddenly ashamed of that patched clothing of thy soul , stitch'd up of so many unsutable and heedlesse figurations of thy unpurged phansie , and wouldst endeavour to put on that simple uniform light . and now , eugenius , that i find my self in an advantageous temper to converse with thee , come a little nearer me , or rather i will come a little nearer to thee . hitherto i have play'd the part of a personated enemy with thee , give me leave now to do the office of an open friend . i perceive there is in you , as you have made it manifest to all the world , an eager desire after knowledge , and as insatiable thirst after fame . both which are to be reputed farre above that dull and earthly pronenesse of the mind of some men , whose thoughts are bent upon little else but the bed and the board . but i tell thee , that this desire of thine being kindled so high in thy melancholy complexion , there arise these three inconvenieuces from this inordinate heat . first , thy spirits are so agitated , that thou canst not soberly and cautiously consider the objects of thy mind , to see what is truly consequent , what not ; and so thy reason goes much to wrack . secondly , thy melancholy being so highly heated , it makes thee think confidently thou hast a phantasme or idea of a thing belonging to this or that word , when thou hast not , which is a kind of inward phrensie and answers to the seeing of outward apparitions when there is nothing before the sight . thus art thou defeated in thy designe of knowledge , in divine and naturall things by this distemper . but thirdly , the same untamed heat causeth boldnesse , confidence and pride . and hence ariseth thy imprudence . for i tell thee , eugenius , there is no such imprudent thing in the world as pride . wot'st thou not what the humour of all men is ; how they think themselves no inconsiderable things in the world ? you know the story in herodotus , how when the greeks had overcome the persians and after it was debated amongst them , to whom the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} belonged , who should have the honour of being reputed most valiant in that service , every one did acknowledge that next to himself themistocles did best . wherefore it is plain that he that will not let any man go before him provokes all men . here therefore was thy imprudence , eugenius , that thou wouldst take the {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} to thy self without so much as any debate or asking leave , when every galenist , aristotelian , cartesian , and theosophist , thinks it belongs to him as much as to thee . thus hast thou provoked all men against thee , and made ship-wrack of thy fame , as well as fallen short of learning . but you 'le say , why ? what would you have me to have done as some others do , who though they be proud , yet put on a handsome dresse of modesty and squeamish humility ? that i tell thee had been indeed something more like prudence , which thy raised heat could not stoop to , but i must confesse it had been but a kind of morall sneaking . for as the bending down of the upper parts of the body , so that the talnesse of the stature thereof is concealed , is the sneaking of the body : so to make a mans self more humble then he is , or lesse high-minded , is the sneaking of the soul . but the first point of wisdome is to be really humble indeed . for , an humble mind is as still as the night , and as clear as the noon-day . so that it is able without any impatiency or prejudice to discern all things , and rightly to judge of all things . this christian temper is so sober , and wise , that no imposture can surprize it , nor ever will it hurt it felf by rashnesse and imprudency . this is the heir of god , the treasury of all humane divine & naturall knowledge , and the delight and praise of men where ever it appears . but the inseparable companions of haughtinesse , are ignorance , shame , and enmity . but beleeve it , eugenius , as this divine humility is of more worth , so is it of more labour then to find the philosophers stone , or the famous medicine you talk of ; i am certain of more consequence by ten thousand times . and methinks now at length through all those waves and rufflings of thy disordered mind , i see something at the bottome in thee , o eugenius , that begins to assent to what i say , that begins to shine and smile , and look upon me as a very pleasant apostle , sent ( not without providence ) to toy and sport thee into a more sober temper , and advertise thee of the highest good that the soul of man is capable of ; and thou wilt i am confident very suddenly say , and that from thy heart , that better are the wounds of a friend , then the kisses of an enemy . or if thou canst not yet phansie him a friend that hath worn the vizard of a foe so long , yet i do not mistrust but that thou wilt be so wise , as , according to xenophons principle , not onely , not to be hurt , but also to be profited by thine enemy . an enemy indeed is not a thing to be embosomed and embraced , as the satyr would have done the fire when he first saw it , and therefore was forewarned by prometheus to abstain , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} but in the mean time , that which it would pain or consume may by observing the right laws of using it , receive kindly warmth and vigour from it , and work excellent things in virtue of its heat or light . did not telephus heal his wound by his enemies spear ? and had not jason his impostume cured by that weapon that was meant for his deadly dispatch ? you know also the story of hiero , eugenius , who when his enemy had upbraided him with his stinking breath , chid his wife when he came home , because she never had discovered it to him all that time of their living together . but she being very honest and simple , told her husband that she thought all mens breaths smelt so . you see then how much more easie it is , to hear what is true concerning us , of our professed adversaries , then of our bosome friends . but methinks i hear thee answer , that neither a bosome friend nor an embittered enemy can be competent judges of a mans vices or vertues . for the one would be too favourable , and the other too severe . what then ? wouldst thou have some third thing , a mean betwixt both , ( according to that known aphorisme {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} ) whom thou mightest hope would prove an impartiall judge ? why , that 's i , phil. whom , i dare say thou art confident , to be no friend to thee ; and i dare swear i am no enemy . and therefore why should i despair , but that my fitnesse and skill may prove as successefull in allaying of eugenius his tumour , as that unskilfull hand was lucky in lancing jasons impostume . and being once cured , do not then repine , that there was a time wherein thou wast unsound no more then alexander the great , that he was once so little as to be lodged within the narrow compasse of his mothers wombe ; or milo who at length could lift an ox , that he was once so weak that he could not stirre a lamb . and what think'st thou phil. of plato , empedocles , democritus , socrates , and other profound sages of the world , can you imagine that when they had arrived to that pitch of knowledge , that it was any shame or regret to them , that there was once a time when they knew not one letter of the alphabet . why then should my eugenius be troubled , that he was once childish , ignorant , proud and passionate , when he is well cured of those distempers . we are what we are , and what is past is not , and therefore is not to afflict us . but he that is more anxious concerning fame then vertue , and seeks onely to seem a gallant and invincible thing to the world , when in the mean time his mind is very weak and vulnerable , i know my eugenius is so wise , that such a man as this , will seem as irrationall to him , as if one having by ill chance cut his shinne , he should be lesse solicitous about healing of his legge then mending of his stocken . finis . an index of the generall heads and more remarkable passages in the foregoing reply . m astix his apologie for his smart observations upon eugenius his anthroposophia theomagica , &c. from page , to the . that to laugh at the follies and defeatments of vain men , is lawfull in a christian . p. , , eugenius his title-page , the man-mouse taken in a trap , censured . p. , mastix his answer to two perverse charges of high incivilities gathered out of his observations . from p. . to p. his personall reasons that moved him to write his observations . p. , of platonisme , and of mastix his philosophicall poems , his song of the soul , &c. from what principle they were writ . p. . to p. of the philosophy of des-cartes , how far above all other naturall philosophyes , and yet how short of that noble , divine , universalizing spirit in christianity and platonisme . p. , , , a zealous invective against the atheists of these times , wherein sundry causes of atheisme are glanced at . p. . to mastix no enthusiast but speaks according to the faculties of a man actuated by god . p. a description of an heavenly dispensation upon earth , farre above either prophecie or miracle . p. , . and , whether there be any essentiall definitions of substances , and in what sense . p. , , whether the peripaleticks conceit god to have made the world , as a carpenter makes houses of stone and timber . p. , , eugenius his vizard of high affected sanctimony fallen off , all the people laugh at him . p. , the ridiculous analogies eugenius makes between his world-animal , and an ordinary animal . p. , the flesh of his world-animal confuted . p. , the pulse of his world-animal confuted . p. , of rarefaction and condensation , and of the miraculous multiplication of the superficies of bodie . p. , , the respiration of his world animal confuted . p. , , that a pair of bellows is an animal , according to eugenius his zoography . p. , the vitall moysture of his world-animal confuted . p. , the animal spirits of it confuted . p. , the causes of the flux and reflux of the sea , and that it cannot be the pulse of his world-animal . p. , , mastix his philosophicall poems censured and defended . p. , , reminiscency no argument for the preexistencie of the soul , p. , , a large demonstration that that matter which eugenius asfirms he hath often seen and felt , is not the first matter of all things . from p. . to p. his assertion that aristotles first matter is in nature neither {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} nor {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , confuted . p. , eugenius his ridiculous division of an idea into one part . p. a supply made to this hopping distribution , out of philo the few . p. , that eugenius doth so surround the masse with his ●mpyreall substance that there could be no morning nor evening as moses text requires p. that the scripture speaks according to outward sense and vulgar apprehension , proved by sundry passages of scripture , and testimonies of learned men . from p. , to that the extent of the world according to moses david &c. is but to the clouds or thereabout , very fully and largely demonstrated , and so consequently that there is no room for eugenius his interstellar waters in moses his text , unlesse he will make them all one with the clouds or vapours that be coagulated into rain . from p. , to p. eugenius his grosse mistake concerning orbs and epicycles , venting three absurdities in one assertion . p. , , , in what sense mastix said in his observations , that epicycles were too big to be true p. that rarefaction and condensation according to the schools implies a contradiction p. what a miserable layer of fundamentalls of sciences eugenius is . and in particular of his magnet p. , s. johns new heaven and new earth how mastix would interpret it , and how magicus . p. , aristotle taxed of sodomy . p. , his hymne in honour of hermias , and his doing the same rites unto his whore when he had married her , that the athenians did to their goddesse , ceres eleusinia p. , the naturall shame in men of obscene matters notoriously discovered in the story of osiris and typhon ; and that this shame is a signe that there is a certain conscience or presage in the soul of man , that a better condition belongs to her then this in the body . p. , that the soul of man is not propagated as light from light . p. , , that eugenius doth plainly assert that blind men see in their sleep . p. that there is not a sensitive spirit distinct from the rationall soul in a man . p. , , , how long mastix was making his observations upon eugenius his magicall treatises . p. , eugenius so unlucky in his poeticall encomiums of oxford , that whereas he intends to praise , he seems to abuse that learned and well-deserving universitie . p. , that the very substance of a thing cannot be known p. , , . the union betwixt the flame and the candle , not at all to set out the union of the soul and body , to any philosophicall satisfaction . p. , that the soul is not intelligent fire , proved by sundry arguments . p. , , &c. from her organization of the body p. from her information . p. from spontaneous motion . p. from sensation . p. , to from memory . p. from the souls immortality acknowledged by eugenius . p. , the bare point of mastix his argument against magicus his mysterious chain of light , more plainly discovered . p. , eugenius his foure arguments to prove that the seminal forms of things are understanding agents , propounded and confuted . from page , to what a ritio seminalis , or seminall form is according to plotinus and the platonists . p. , mastix his exception against eugenius his definition of the first principle of his clavis magica proved to be as solid as merry . p. , whether the starres receive any light from the sun . p. mastix his friend ● . t. vindicated . p. his favourable conjecture of the authour of magia ada mica . p. his power of discovering impostures parallel'd with apolionius . us . p , his victory , trophey , and inscription . p. his oration to the men of ephesus . p. , , &c. a description of a threefold dispensation under which christians are . from p. , to the first dispensation . p. , the second dispensation . from p. , to what is the way to be delivered from the impostures and fooleries of the second dispensation p. , the third dispensation , or second covenant . p. , in what sense mastix is puritane or independent . p. that he is above all sects whatsoever , as sects , as being a mere christian , p. , the transfiguration of his inward man into a breathing colosse , speaking from heaven , and reminding all the inhabitants of the earth , of the true cause of their perpetuall miseries and calamities . p. that mastix is no enthusiast for all this , but that it is onely the triumph of the divine light in his rationall spirit , striking through his exteriour faculties , and moving his very body with coldnesse and trembling . p. his friendly and faithfull monitions to eugenius , freely discovering to him the true causes of his being defeated in his great designes upon fame and knowledge . from p. , to that a wise man will not onely not be hurt , but be profited by his enemie . p. , &c. errata . page . line . read {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . page . line . read deferents . page . line . read glasse . page . line . for , in the highest , read , the highest . page . line . read {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} . page . line , . read , kind of attractive . saducismus triumphatus, or, full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions in two parts : the first treating of their possibility, the second of their real existence / by joseph glanvil. with a letter of dr. henry more on the same subject and an authentick but wonderful story of certain swedish witches done into english by anth. horneck. glanvill, joseph, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing g estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) saducismus triumphatus, or, full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions in two parts : the first treating of their possibility, the second of their real existence / by joseph glanvil. with a letter of dr. henry more on the same subject and an authentick but wonderful story of certain swedish witches done into english by anth. horneck. glanvill, joseph, - . more, henry, - . horneck, anthony, - . v. (various pagings) : ill. printed for j. collins and s. lownds, london : . reproduction of original in the british library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng witchcraft. apparitions. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - john latta sampled and proofread - john latta text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion saducismus triumphatus : or , full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions . in two parts . the first treating of their possibility , the second of their real existence . by joseph glanvil late chaplain in ordinary to his majesty , and fellow of the royal society . with a letter of dr. henry more on the same subject . and an authentick , but wonderful story of certain swedish witches ; done into english by anth. horneck preacher at the savoy . london : printed for j. collins at his shop under the temple-church , and s. lownds at his shop by the savoy-gate , . and saul perceiued that it was samuel , and he stouped with his face to the ground . and bowed himself . st samuel . chap : : ● . . w. faith orne . fecit to the right reverend father in god seth lord bishop of sarum , chancellor of the garter . this new and compleated edition of saducismus triumphatus is most humbly dedicated to your lordship , by , my lord , your lordships most obliged and humble servant ( the publisher ) james collins . the publisher to the reader . reader , that thou hast no sooner enjoyed this long-expected edition , thou canst not justly blame either the author or my self . not my self , for i could not publish the book before i had it ; nor the author , because many unexpected occasions drove off his mind to other matters , and interrupted him in his present design , insomuch that he was snatcht away by death before he had quite finished it . but though the learned world may very well lament the loss of so able and ingenious a writer , yet as to this present point , if that may mitigate thy sorrow , in all likelihood this book had not seen the light so soon if he had lived , so many emergent occasions giving him new interruptions , and offering him new temptations to further delay . indeed it had been desirable that it might have had the polishing of his last hand , as the peruser of his papers signifies in his last advertisement . but to compensate this loss , the said peruser , a friend as well to his design as to his person , as digested those materials he left , into that order and distinctness , and has so tied things together , and supplied them in his advertisements , that , to the judicious reader , nothing can seem wanting that may serve the ends of his intended treatise . not to intimate what considerable things are added , more than it is likely had been , if he had finished it himself : for , besides the advertisements of the careful peruser of his papers , and that notable late story of the swedish witches translated out of german into the english tongue , there is also added a short treatise of the true and genuine notion of a spirit , taken out of dr. more 's enchiridion metaphysicum , to entertain those that are more curious searchers into the nature of these things . the number also of the stories are much increased above what was designed by mr. glanvil , though none admitted , but such as seemed very well attested and highly credible to his abovesaid friend , and such , as rightly understood , contain nothing but what is consonant to right reason and sound philosophy , as i have heard him earnestly avouch , though it had been too tedious to have explained all ; and it may be more grateful to the reader to be left to exercise his own wit and ingeny upon the rest . these are the advantages this edition of mr. glanvil's daemon of tedworth , and his considerations about witchcraft have , above any edition before , though the last of them was so bought up , that there was not a copy of them to be had in all london and cambridge , but the peruser of his papers was fain to break his own to serve the press with ; if these intimations may move thy appetite to the reading so pleasant and useful a treatise . and yet i can add one thing more touching the story of the daemon of tedworth which is very considerable . it is not for me indeed to take notice of that meanness of spirit in the exploders of apparitions and witches , which very strangely betrayed it self in the decrying of that well-attested narrative touching the stirrs in mr. mompesson's house . where , although they that came to be spectators of the marvelous things there done by some invisible agents , had all the liberty imaginable ( even to the ripping of the bolsters open ) to search and try if they could discover any natural cause or cunning artifice whereby such strange feats were done ; and numbers that had free access from day to day , were abundantly satisfied of the reality of the thing , that the house was haunted and disturbed by daemons or spirits ; yet some few years after the stirrs had ceased , the truth of this story lying so uneasie in the minds of the disgusters of such things , they raised a report , ( when none of them , no not the most diligent and curious could detect any trick or fraud themselves in the matter ) that both mr. glanvil himself , who published the narrative , and mr. mompesson , in whose house these wonderful things happened , had confessed the whole matter to be a cheat and imposture . and they were so diligent in spreading abroad this gross untruth , that it went currant in all the three kingdoms of england , scotland , and ireland . an egregious discovery of what kind of spirit this sort of men are ! which , as i said , though it be not for me to take notice of , yet i will not stick to signifie ( it being both for mine own interest and the interest of truth ) that those reports raised touching mr. glanvil and mr. mompesson , are by the present edition of this book demonstrated to be false to all the world . that concerning mr. glanvil , by his preface to the second part of the book ; that touching mr. mompesson , by two letters of his own , the one to mr. glanvil , the other to my self , which are subjoyned to the said preface : which thing alone may justly be deemed to add a very great weight to the value , as of that story , so of this present edition . but i will not , upon pretence of exciting thy appetite , keep thee from the satisfying it by an overlong preface : which yet if it may seem to be defective in any thing , the doctors letter ( where amongst other things you shall meet with that famous and well-attested story of the apparition of anne walker's ghost to the miller ) will , i hope make an abundant supply . i shall add nothing more my self , but that i am your humble servant j. c. dr. h. m. his letter with the postscript , to mr. j. g. minding him of the great expedience and usefulness of his new intended edition of the daemon of tedworth , and briefly representing to him the marvellous weakness and gullerie of mr. webster's display of witchcraft . sir , when i was last at london , i called on your book-seller , to know in what forwardness this new intended impression of the story of the daemon of tedworth was , which will undeceive the world touching that fame generally spread abroad , as if mr. mompesson and your self had acknowledged the business to have been a meer trick or imposture . but the story , with your ingenious considerations about witchcraft , being so often printed already , he said , it behoved him to take care how he ventured on a new impression , unless he had some new matter of that kind to adde , which might make this new edition the more certainly salable ; and therefore he expected the issue of that noised story of the spectre at exeter , seen so oft for the discovering of a murther committed some thirty years ago . but the event of this business , as to juridical process , not answering expectation , he was discouraged from making use of it , many things being reported to him from thence in favour to the party most concerned . but i told him a story of one mrs. britton her appearing to her maid after her death , very well attested , though not of such a tragical kind as that of exeter , which he thought considerable . but of discoveries of murther i never met with any story more plain and unexceptionable than that in mr. john webster his display of supposed witchcraft . the book indeed it self , i confess , is but a weak and impertinent piece ; but that story weighty and convincing , and such as himself ( though otherwise an affected caviller against almost all stories of witchcraft and apparitions ) is constrained to assent to , as you shall see from his own confession . i shall for your better ease , or because you haply may not have the book , transcribe it out of the writer himself , though it be something long , chap. . page . about the year of our lord , ( as near as i can remember , having lost my notes and the copy of the letter to serjeant hutton , but am sure that i do most perfectly remember the substance of the story ) near unto chester in the street , there lived one walker a teoman-man of good estate , and a widower , who had a young woman to his kinswoman that kept his house , who was by the neighbours suspected to be with child , and was towards the dark of the evening one night sent away with one mark sharp , who was a collier , or one that digged coals under ground , and one that had been born in blakeburn - hundred in lancashire ; and so she was not heard of a long time , and no noise or little was made about it . in the winter-time after , one james graham or grime ( for so in that countrey they call them ) being a miller , and living about two miles from the place where walker lived , was one night alone very late in the mill grinding corn ; and as , about twelve or one a clock at night , he came down the stairs from having been putting corn in the h●…pper , the mill-doors being shut , there stood a woman upon the midst of the floor with her hair about her head hanging down and all bloody , with five large wounds on her head. he being much affrighted and amazed , began to bless him , and at last asked her who she was , and what she wanted ? to which she said , i am the spirit of such a woman , who lived with walker ; and being got with child by him , he promised to send me to a private place , where i should be well lookt to until i was brought in bed and well again , and then i should come again and keep his house . and accordingly , said the apparition , i was one night late sent away with one mark sharp , who , upon a moor ( naming a place that the miller knew ) slew me with a pick , ( such as men dig coals withal ) and gave me these five wounds , and after threw my body into a coal-pit hard by , and hid the pick under a bank : and his shoes and stockings being bloudy , he endeavoured to wash ; but seeing the bloud would not wash sorth , he hid them there . and the apparition further told the miller , that he must be the man to reveal it , or else that she must still appear and haunt him . the miller returned home very sad and heavy , but spoke not one word of what he had seen , but eschewed as much as he could to slay in the mill within night without company , thinking thereby to escape the seeing again of that frightful apparition . but notwithstanding , one night when it began to be dark , the apparition met him again , and seemed very fierce and cruel , and threatned him . that if he did not reveal the murder , she would continually pursue and haunt him . tet for all this , he still concealed it until st. thomas - eve before christmas , when being soon after sun set walking in his garden , she appeared again , and then so threatned him and affrighted him , that he faithfully promised to reveal it next morning . in the morning he went to a magistrate , and made the whole matter known , with all the circumstances ; and diligent search being made , the body was found in a coal-pit with five wounds in the head , and the pick , and shoes , and stockings yet bloody , in every circumstance as the apparition had related unto the miller . whereupon walker and mark sharp were both apprehended , but would confess nothing . at the assizes following ( i think it was at durham ) they were arraigned , found guilty , condemned , and executed , but i could never hear that they confessed the fact. there were some that reported that the apparition did appear to the judge , or the foreman of the jury , ( who was alive in chester in the street about ten years ago , as i have been credibly informed ) but of that i know no certainty . there are many persons yet alive that can remember this strange murder , and the discovery of it ; for it was , and sometimes yet is , as much discoursed of in the north-countrey , as any thing that almost hath ever been heard of , and the relation printed , though now not to be gotten . i relate this with the greater confidence . ( though i may fail in some of the circumstances ) because i saw and read the letter that was sent to serjeant hutton , who then lived at goldsbrugh in yorkshire , from the judge before whom walker and mark sharp were tried , and by whom they were condemned ; and had a copy of it until about the year ●… , when i had it and 〈◊〉 other books and papers taken from me . and this i confess to be one of the most convincing stories ( being of undoubted verity ) that ever i read , heard , or knew of , and carrieth with it the most evident force to make the most incredulous spirit to be satisfied that there are really sometimes such things as apparitions . thus far he. this story is so considerable , that i make mention of it in my scholia on my immortality of the soul , in my volumen philosophicum , tom. . which i acquainting a friend of mine with , a prudent intelligent person , dr. j. d. he of his own accord offered me , it being a thing of such consequence , to send to a friend of his in the north for greater assurance of the truth of the narration ; which motion i willingly embracing , he did accordingly . the answer to his letter from his friend mr. shepherdson , is this . i have done what i can to inform my self of the passage of sharp and walker . there are very few men that i could meet , that were then men , or at the tryal , saving these two in the inclosed paper , both men at that time , and both at the tryal . and for mr. lumley , he lived next door to walker ; and what he hath given under his hand , can depose if there were occasion . the other gentleman writ his attestation with his own hand ; but i being not there , got not his name to it . i could have sent you twenty hands that could have said thus much and more by hearsay , but i thought these most proper that could speak from their own eyes and ears . thus far mr. shepherdson , the doctor 's discreet and faithful intelligencer . now for mr. lumley's testimony , it is this . mr. william lumley of lumley , being an ancient gentleman , and at the tryal of walker and sharp upon the murder of anne walker , saith , that he doth very well remember that the said anne was servant to walker , and that she was supposed to be with child , but would not disclose by whom . but being removed to her aunts in the same town , called dame carie , told her aunt that he that had got her with child , would take care both for her and it , and bid her not trouble her self . after some time she had been at her aunts , it was observed that sharp came to lumley one night , being a sworn brother of the said walker ' s ; and they two that night called her forth from her aunts house , which night she was murdered . about fourteen days after the murder , there appeared to one graime a fuller , at his mill , six miles from lumley , the likeness of a woman , with her hair about her head , and the appearance of five wounds in her head , as the said graime gave it in evidence . that that appearance bid him go to a justice of peace , and relate to him how that walker and sharp had murthered her , in such a place as she was murthered : but he fearing to disclose a thing of that nature against a person of credit as walker was , would not have done it ; but she continually appearing night by night to him , and pulling the clothes off his bed , told him , he should never rest till he had disclosed it . upon which he the said graime did go to a justice of peace , and related the whole matter . whereupon the justice of peace granted warrants against walker and sharp , and committed them to prison . but they found bail to appear at the next assizes . at which time they came to their tryal , and upon evidence of the circumstances with that of graime of the appearance , they were both found guilty , and executed . will. lumley . the other testimony is of mr. james smart of the city of durham ; who saith , that the trial of sharp and walker was in the moneth of august , before judge davenport . one mr. fairhair gave it in evidence upon oath , that he see the likeness of a child stand upon walker ' s shoulders during the time of the trial : at which time the judge was very much troubled , and gave sentence that night the trial was ; which was a thing never used in durham before nor after . out of which two testimonies several things may be corrected or supplied in mr. websters story , though it be evident enough that in the main they agree : for that is but a small disagreement as to the year , when mr. webster says about the year of our lord . and mr. smart , . but unless at durham they have assizes but once in the year , i understand not so well how sharp and walker should be apprehended some little while after st. thomas day , as mr. webster has it , and be tried the next assizes at durham , and yet that be in august according to mr. smarts testimony . out of mr. lumley ' s testimony the christen name of the young woman is supplied , as also the name of the town near chester in the street , namely lumley . the circumstances also of walker ' s sending away his kinswoman with mark sharp , are supplied out of mr. lumley ' s narrative ; and the time rectified , by telling it was about fourteen days till the spectre appeared after the murther , whenas mr. webster makes it a long time . two errours also more are corrected in mr. webster ' s narration , by mr. lumley ' s testimony : the distance of the miller from lumley where walker dwelt , which was six miles , not two miles , as mr. webster has it . and also , that it was not a mill to grinde corn in , but a fullers mill. the apparition night by night pulling the clothes off graime ' s bed , omitted in mr. webster ' s story , may be supplied out of mr. lumley ' s. and mr. smart ' s testimony puts it out of controversie that the trial was at durham , and before judge davenport , which is omitted by mr. webster . and whereas mr. webster says , there were some ●…hat reported that the apparition did appear to the judge , or the fore man of the jury , but of that he knows no certainty : this confession of his , as it is a sign he would not write any thing in this story of which he was not certain for the main , so here is a very seasonable supply for this out of mr. smart , who affirms that he heard one mr. fairhair give evidence upon oath , that he saw the likeness of a child stand upon walker ' s shoulders during the time of the trial. it is likely this mr. fairhair might be the fore man of the jury ; and in that the judge was so very much troubled , that himself also might see the same apparition as mr. webster says report went , though the mistake in mr. webster is , that it was the apparition of the woman . but this of the child was very fit and apposite , placed on his shoulders , as one that was justly loaded or charged with that crime of getting his kinswoman with child , as well as of complotting with sharp to murder her . the letter also which he mentions writ from the judge before whom the trial was heard , to serjeant hutton , it is plain out of mr. smart ' s testimony , that it was from judge davenport ; which in all likelihood was a very full and punctual narrative of the whole business , and enabled mr. webster , in some considerable things , to be more particular than mr. lumley . but the agreement is so exact for the main , that there is no doubt to be made of the truth of the apparition . but that this , forsooth , must not be the soul of anne walker , but her astral spirit , this is but a fantastick conceit of webster and his paracelsians , which i have sufficiently shewn the folly of in the scholia on my immortality of the soul , volum . philos. tom. . p. . this story of anne walker i think you will do well to put amongst your additions in the new impression of your daemon of tedworth , it being so excellently well attested , and so unexceptionably in every respect ; and to hasten as fast as you can that impression , to undeceive the half-witted world , who so much exult and triumph in the extinguishing the belief of that narration , as if the crying down the truth of that story of the daemon of tedworth , were indeed the very slaying of the devil , and that they may now with more gaiety and security than ever sing in a loud note that mad drunken catch , hay ho ! the devil is dead , &c. which wild song , though it may seem a piece of levity to mention , yet believe me , the application thereof bears a sober and weighty intimation along with it , viz. that these sort of people are very horribly afraid there should be any spirit , lest there should be a devil , and an account after this life ; and therefore they are impatient of any thing that implies it , that they may with a more full swing , and with all security from an after-reckoning , indulge their own lusts and humours in this . and i know by long experience , that nothing rouzes them so out of that dull lethargy of atheism and sadducism , as narrations of this kind . for they being of a thick and gross spirit , the most subtile and solid deductions of reason does little execution upon them ; but this sort of sensible experiments cuts them and stings them very sore , and so startles them , that by a less considerable story by far than this of the drummer of tedworth , or of anne walker , a doctor of physick cry'd out presently , if this be true , i have been in a wrong box all this time , and must begin my account anew . and i remember an old gentleman in the country of my acquaintance , an excellent justice of peace , and a piece of a mathematician ; but what kind of philosopher he was , you may understand from a rhyme of his own making , which he commended to me at my taking horse in his yard ; which rhyme is this , ens is nothing till sense finde it out : sense ends in nothing , so nought goes about . which rhyme of his was so rapturous to himself , that at the reciting of the second verse , the old gentleman turned himself about upon his toe a , nimbly as one may observe a dry leaf whisked round in the corner of an orchard-walk by some little whirlwind . with this philosopher i have had many discourses concerning the immortality of the soul , and its distinction from the body , and of the existence of spirits . when i have ran him quite down by reason , he would but laugh at me , and say , this is logick , h. calling me by my christen-name . to which i replied , this is reason , father l. ( for so i used , and some others , to call him ) but it seems you are for the new lights , and immediate inspiration . which , i confess , he was as little for as for the other ; but i said so onely in way of drollery to him in those times . but truth is , nothing but palpable experience would move him : and being a bold man , and fearing nothing , he told me he had used all the magical ceremonies of conjuration he could to raise the devil or a spirit , and had a most earnest desire to meet with one , but never could do it . but this he told me , when he did not so much as think of it , while his servant wa●… pulling off his boots in the hall , some invisible hand gave him such a clap upon the back , that it made all ring again . so , thought he , now i am invited to the converse of some spirit ; and there fore so soon as his boots were off and his shoes onout goes he into the tard and next field , to finde out the spirit that had given him this familiar clap on the back , but found none , neither in the yard nor field next to it . but though he did not , this stroak , albeit he thought it afterwards ( finding nothing come of it ) a mere delusion ; yet not long before his death it had more force with him than all the philosophical arguments i could use to him , though i could winde him and nonplus him as i pleased ; but yet all my arguments , how solid soever , made no impression upon him . wherefore after several reasonings of this nature , whereby i would prove to him the souls distinction from the body and its immortality , when nothing of such subtile consideration did any more execution on his mind , than some lightning is said to do , though it melt the sword , on the fuzzy consistency of the scabbard : well , said i , father l. though none of these things move you , i have something still behind , and what your self has acknowledged to me to be true , that may do the business . do you remember the clap on your back when your servant was pulling off your boots in the hall ? assure your self , said i , father l. that goblin will be the first that will bid you welcome into the other world. upon that his countenance changed most sensibly , and he was more confounded with this rubbing up his memory , than with all the rational or philosophical argumentations that i could produce . indeed , if there were any modesty left in mankind , the histories of the bible might abundantly assure men of the existence of angels and spirits . but these wits , as they are taken to be , are so jealous , forsooth , and so sagacious , that whatsoever is offered to them by way of established religion , is suspected for a piece of politick circumvention ; which is as silly notwithstanding , and as childish , as that conceit of a friend of yours when he was a school boy in the lowest form of a country gramar school , who could not believe scarce that there were any such men as cato , and aesop , and ovid , and virgil , and tully , much less that they wrote any such books , but that it was a trick of our parents to keep us up so many hours of the day together , and hinder us from the enjoying our innocent pastime in the open air , and the pleasure of planting little gardens of flowers , and of hunting of butter-flies and bumble-bees . besides , though what is once true never becomes false , so that it may be truely said it was not once true ; yet these shrewd wits suspect the truth of things for their antiquity , and for that very reason think them the less credible : which is as wisely done as of the old woman the story goes of , who being at church in the week before easter , and hearing the tragical description of all the circumstances of our saviour's crucifixion , was in great sorrow at the reciting thereof ; and so sollicitous about the business , that she came to the priest after service with tears in her eyes , dropping him a courtsie , and asked him how long ago this sad accident hapned ; to whom he answering about fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago , she presently began to be comforted , and said , then in grace of god it may not be true . at this pitch of wit in children and old wives is the reason of our professed wit-would-be's of this present age , who will catch at any slight occasion o●… pretence of misbelieving those things that they cannot endure should be true . and for asmuch assuch course-grain'd philosophers as those hobbians and spinozians , and the rest of that rabble , slight religion and the scriptures , because there is such express mention of spirits and angels in them , things that their dull souls are so inclinable to conceit to be impossible ; i look upon it as a special piece of providence that there are ever and anon such fresh examples of apparitions and witchcrafts as may rub up and awaken their benummed and lethargick mindes into a suspicion at least , if not assurance that there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clad in heavy earth or clay . in this , i say , methinks the divine providence does plainly outwit the powers of the dark kingdom , in permiting wicked men and women and vagrant spirits of that kingdom to make leagues or covenants one with another , the confession of witches against their own lives being so palpable an evidence , ( besides the miraculous feats they play ) that there are bad spirits , which will necessarily open a door to the belief that there are good ones , and lastly that there is a god. wherefore let the small philosophick sir fopling of this present age deride them as much as they will , those that lay out their pains in committing to writing certain well-attested stories of witches and apparitions , do real service to true religion and sound philosophy , and the most effectual and accommodate to the confounding of infidelity and atheism , even in the judgement of the atheists themselves , who are as much afraid of the truth of these stories as an ape is of a whip ; and therefore force themselves with might and main to disbelieve them by reason of the dreadful consequence of them as to themselves . the wicked fear where no fear is , but god is in the generation of the righteous . and he that fears god and has faith in jesus christ , need not fear how many devils there be , nor be afraid of himself or his own immortality . and therefore it is nothing but a foul dark conscience within , or a very gross and dull constitution of blood , that makes men so averse from these truths . but however , be they as averse as they will , being this is the most accommodate medicine for this disease , their diligence and care of mankind is much to be commended that make it their business to apply it , and are resolved , though the peevishness and perversness of the patients makes them pull off their plaister , ( as they have this excellent one of the story of the daemon of tedworth by decrying it as an imposture , so acknowledged by both your self and mr. mompesson ) are resolved , i say , with meekness and charity to binde it on again , with the addition of new filletting , i mean other stories sufficiently fresh and very well attested and certain . this worthy design therefore of yours , i must confess , i cannot but highly commend and approve , and therefore wish you all good success therein ; and so , committing you to god , i take leave , and rest your affectionate friend to serve you , h. m. c. c. c. may . . the postscript . this letter lying by me some time before i thought it opportune to conveigh it , and in the mean while meeting more than once with those that seemed to have some opinion of mr. webster's criticisms and interpretations of scripture , as if he had quitted himself so well there , that no proof thence can hereafter be expected of the being of a witch , which is the scope that he earnestly aims at ; and i reflecting upon that passage in my letter , which does not stick to condemn webster's whole book for a weak and impertinent piece , presently thought fit , ( that you might not think that censure over-rash or unjust ) it being an endless task to shew all the weaknesses and impertinencies of his discourse , briefly by way of postscript , to hint the weakness and impertinency of this part which is counted the master-piece of the work , that thereby you may perceive that my judgement has not been at all rash touching the whole . and in order to this , we are first to take notice what is the real scope of his book : which if you peruse , you shall certainly finde to be this : that the parties ordinarily deemed witches and wizzards , are onely knaves and queans , to use his phrase , and arrant cheats , or deep melancholists ; but have no more to do with any evil spirit , or devil , or the devil with them , than he has with other sinners or wicked men , or they with the devil . and secondly , we are impartially to desine what is the true notion of a witch or wizzard , which is necessary for the detecting of webster's impertinencies . as for the words witch and wizzard , from the notation of them , they signifie no more than a wise man , or a wise woman . in the word wizzard , it is plain at the very first sight . and i think the most plain and least op●…rose deduction of the name witch , is from wit , whose derived adjective might be wittigh or wittich , and by contraction afterwards , witch ; as the noun wit is from the verb to weet , which is , to know . so that a witch , thus far , is no more than a knowing woman ; which answers exactly to the latine word saga , according to that of festus , sag●… dictae anus quae multa sciunt . thus in general : but use questionless had appropriated the word to such a kind of skill and knowledge , as was out of the common road or extraordinary . nor did this peculiarity imply in it any unlawfulness . but there was after a further restriction and most proper of all , and in which alone now adays the words witch and wizzard are used . and that is , for one that has the knowledge or skill of doing or telling things in an extraordinary way , and that in vertue of either an express or implicite sociation or consederacy with some evil spirit . this is a true and adequate definition of a witch or wizzard , which to whomsoever it belongs , is such , & vice versâ . but to prove or defend , that there neither are , nor ever were any such , is , as i said , the main scope of webster's book : in order to which , he endeavours in his sixth and eighth chapters to evacuate all the testimonies of scripture : which how weakly and impertinently he has done , i shall now shew with all possible brevity and perspicuity . the words that he descants upon , are deut. ch . . v. , . there shall not be found among you any one that useth divination , or an observer of times , or an enchanter , or a witch , or a charmer , or a consulter with familiar spirits , or a wizzard , or a necromancer . the first word or name in the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ kosem kesamim ] a diviner . here because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ kasam ] sometimes has an indifferent sen●…e , and signifies to divine by natural knowledge or humane prudence and sagacity ; therefore nothing of such a witch as is imagined to mak●… a visible league with the devil , or to have her body suckt by him , or have carnal copulation with him , or is really turned into a cat , hare , wolf , or dog , can be deduced from this word . a goodly inference indeed , and hugely to the purpose , as is apparent from the foregoing definition . but though that cannot be deduced , yet in that this divination that is here forbidden , is plainly declared abominable and execrable , as it is v. . it is manifest that such a divination is understood that really is so ; which cannot well be conceived to be , unless it imply either an express or implicite inveaglement with some evil invisible powers who assist any kind of those divinations that may be comprehended under this general term . so that this is plainly one name of witchcraft according to the genuine desinition thereof . and the very words of saul to the witch of endor , are , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say , divine to me , i pray thee , by thy familiar spirit . which is more than by natural knowledge or humane sagacity . the next word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ megnonen ] which though our english translation renders ( from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ gnon ] tempus ) an observer of times ; ( which should rather be a declarer of the seasonableness of the time , or unseasonableness as to success ; a thing which is enquired of also from witches ) yet the usual sence rendred by the learned in the language , is praestigiator , an imposer on the sight , sapientes prisci , says buxiorf , a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ gnajin , oculus ] deduxerunt & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ megnonen ] esse eum dixerunt , qui tenet & praestringit oculos , ut falsum pro vero videant . lo another word that signifies a witch or a wizzard , which has its name properly from imposing on the sight , and making the by-stander believe he sees forms or transformations of things he sees not . as when anne bodenham transformed herself before anne styles into the shape of a great cat ; anne styles her sight was so imposed upon , that the thing to her seemed to be done , though her eyes were onely deluded . but such a delusion certainly cannot be performed without confederacy with evil spirits . for to think the word signifies praestigiator in that sence we translate it in english , juggler , or an hocus-pocus , is so fond a conceit , that no man of any depth of wit can endure it . as if a merry juggler that plays tricks of legerdemain at a fair or market , were such an abomination to either the god of israel , or to his law-giver moses ; or as if an hocus-pocus were so wise a wight as to be consulted as an oracle : for it is said v. . for the nations which thou shalt possess , they consult 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ megnonenim ] . what , do they consult jugglers and hocus-pocusses ? no certainly they consult witches or wizzards , and diviners , as anne styles did anne bodenham . wherefore here is evidently a second name of a witch . the third word in the text , is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ menachesh ] which our english translation renders , an enchanter . and with mr. webster's leave , ( who insulteth so over their supposed ignorance ) i think they have translated it very learnedly and judiciously : for charming and enchanting , as webster himself acknowledges , and the words intimate , being all one , the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ menachesh ] here , may very well signifie enchanters or charmers ; but such properly as kill serpents by their charming , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ nachash ] which signifies a serpent , from whence comes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ nichesh ] to kill serpents or make away with them . for a verb in pihel , sometimes ( especially when it is formed from a noun ) has a contrary signification . thus from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 radix is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 radices cvulsit , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cinis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 removit cineres , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 peccavit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 expiavit à peccato ; and so lastly from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 serpens , is made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 liberavit à serpentibus , nempe occidendo vel fugando per incantationem . and therefore there seems to have been a great deal of skill and depth of judgment in our english translators that rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ menachesh ] an enchanter , especially when that of augur or south-sayer , which the septuagint call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( there being so many harmless kinds of it ) might seem less suitable with this black list : for there is no such abomination in adventuring to tell , when the wild geese sly high in great companies and cackle much , that hard weather is at hand . but to rid serpents by a charm , is above the power of nature ; and therefore an indication of one that has the assistance of some invisible spirits to help him in this exploit , as it happens in several others ; and therefore this is another name of one that is really a witch . the fourth word is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecasseph ] which our english translators render , a witch ; for which i have no quarrel with them , unless they should so understand it that it must exclude others from being so in that sence i have defined , which is impossible they should . but this , as the foregoing , is but another term of the same thing ; that is , of a witch in general , but so called here from the prestigious imposing on the sight of beholders . buxtorf tells us , that aben ezra defines those to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecassephim ] qui mutant & transformant res naturales ad aspectum oculi . not as jugglers and hocus-pocusses , as webster would ridiculously insinuate , but so as i understood the thing in the second name : for these are but several names of a witch , who may have several more properties than one name intimates . whence it is no wonder that translators render not them always alike . but so many names are reckoned up here in this clause of the law of moses , that , as in our common law , the sence may be more sure , and leave no room to evasion . and that here this name is not from any tricks of legerdemain as in common jugglers that delude the sight of the people at a market or fair , but that it is the name of such as raise magical spectres to deceive mens sight , and so are most certainly witches , is plain from exod. . . thou shalt not suffer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecassephah ] that is , a witch to live . which would be a law of extream severity , or rather cruelty , against a poor hocus-pocus for his tricks of legerdemain . the fifth name is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ chobher chebher ] which our english translators render charmer , which is the same with enchanter . webster upon this name is very tedious and slat , a many words , and small weight in them . i shall dispatch the meaning briefly thus : this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ chobher chebher ] that is to say , socians societatem is another name of a witch , so called specially either from the consociating together serpents by a charm , which has made men usually turn it ( from the example of the septuagints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) a charmer , or an enchanter : or else from the society or compact of the witch with some evil spirits ; which webster acknowledges to have been the opinion of two very learned men , martin luther , and perkins ; and i will adde a third , aben-ezra , ( as martinius hath noted ) who gives this reason of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ chobher ] an enchanter , which signifies socians or jungens , viz. quòd malignos spiritus sibi associat . and certainly one may charm long enough , even till his heart ake , e're he make one serpent assemble near him , unless helpt by this confederacy of spirits that drive them to the charmer . he keeps a pudder with the sixth verse of the fifty eighth psalm to no purpose : whenas from the hebrew , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if you repeat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you may with ease and exactness render it thus ; that hears not the voice of muttering charmers , no not the voice of a confederate wizzard or charmer that is skilful . but seeing charms , unless with them that are very shallow and sillily credulous , can have no such effects of themselves , there is all the reason in the world ( according as the very word intimates , and as aben-ezra has declared ) to ascribe the effect to the assistance , confederacy , and co-operation of evil spirits , and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ chobher chabharim ] or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ chobher chebher ] will plainly signifie a witch or a wizzard according to the true definition of them . but for j. webster's rendring this verse p. . thus , quae non audiet vocem mussitantium incantationes docti incantantis , ( which he saith is doubtless the most genuine rendring of the place ) let any skilful man apply it to the hebrew text , and he will presently find it grammatical nonsence . if that had been the sence , it should have been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the sixth word is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ shoel obh ] which our english translation renders , a consulter with familiar spirits ; but the septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which therefore must needs signifie him that has this familiar spirit : and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ shoel obh ] i conceive , ( considering the rest of the words are so to be understood ) is to be understood of the witch or wizzard himself that asks counsel of his familiar , and does by vertue of him give answers unto others . the reason of the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ obh ] 't is likely was taken first from that spirit that was in the body of the party , and swelled it to a protuberancy like the side of a bottle . but after , without any relation to that circumstance , obh signisies as much as pytho ; as pytho also , though at first it took its name from the pythii vates , signifies no more than spiritum divinationis , in general , a spirit that tells hidden things or things to come . and obh and pytho also agree in this , that they both signisie either the divinatory spirit itself , or the party that has that spirit . but here in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ shool obh ] it being rendred by the septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , obh is necessarily understood of the spirit itself , as pytho is acts . . if you read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with isaac casaubon ; but if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it may be understood either way . of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is recorded in that place , that paul being grieved , turned and said to that spirit , i command thee , in the name of jesus christ , to come out of her , and he came out at the same hour ; which signifies as plainly as any thing can be signified , that this pytho or spirit of divination , that this obh was in her : for nothing can come out of the sack that was not in the sack , as the spanish proverb has it ; nor could this pytho come out of her , unless it was a spirit distinct from her : wherefore i am amazed at the profane impudence of j. webster , that makes this pytho in the maid there mentioned , nothing but a wicked humour of cheating and couzening divination : and adds , that this spirit was no more cast out of that maid , than the seven devils out of mary magdalen , which he would have understood onely of her several vices ; which foolish familistical conceit he puts upon beza , as well as adie . wherein as he is most unjust to beza , so he is most grosly impious and blasphemous against the spirit of christ in st. paul and st. luke , who makes them both such fools as to believe that there was a spirit or divining devil in the maid , when according to him there is no such thing . can any thing be more srantick or ridiculous than this passage of st. paul , if there was no spirit or devil in the damsel ? but what will this prosane shussler stick to do in a dear regard to his beloved hags , of whom he is a sworn advocate and resolved patron ●…ght or wrong ? but to procced , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ obh ] signifies the spirit itself that divines , not onely he that has it , is manifest from levit. . v. . vir autem sive mulier cùm fuerit [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] in eis pytho . and sam. ch . . v. . divina quaeso mihi [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] per pythonem . in the septuagint it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , by that spirit that sometimes goes into the body of the party , and thence gives answers ; but here it onely signifies a familiar spirit . and lastly , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ bagnalath obh ] sam. . v. . quae habet pythonem ; there obh must needs signifie the spirit it self , of which she of endor was the owner or possessor ; that is to say , it was her familiar spirit . but see what brazen and slupid impudence will do , here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ bagnalath obh ] with webster must not signifie one that has a familiar spirlt , but the mistriss of the bottle . who but the master of the bottle , or rather of whom the bottle had become master , and by guzling had made his wits excessively muddy and frothy , could ever stumble upon such a foolish interpretation ? but because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ obh ] in one place of the scripture signifies a bottle , it must signifie so here , and it must be the instrument , forsooth , out of which this cheating quean of endor does whisper , peep , or chirp like a chicken coming out of the shell , p. , . and does she not , i beseech you , put her neb also into it sometimes , as into a reed , as it is said of that bird , and cry like a butterbump ? certainly he might as well have interpreted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ bagnalath obh ] of the great tun of heydleberg , that tom. coriat takes such special notice of , asof the bottle . and truly so far as i see , it must be some such huge tun at length , rather than the bottle , that is , such a spacious tub as he in his deviceful imagination fancies manasses to have built ; a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forsooth , or oracular aedifice , for cheating rogues and queans to play their couzening tricks in ; from that place chron. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 et fecit pythonem . now , says he , how could manasses make a familiar spirit , or make one that had a familiar spirit ? therefore he made a bottle , a tun or a large tub , a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or oracular aedifice for cheating rogues and queans to play their couzening tricks in . very wisely argued and out of the very depth of his ignorance of the hebrew tongue ! whenas if he had lookt but into buxtorf's dictionary , he might have understood that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies not onely fecit , but also paravit , comparavit , acquisivit , magnifecit , none of which words imply the making of obh in his sence , but onely the appointing them to be got , and countenancing them . for in webster's sence he did not make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ jidegnoni ] neither , that is wizzards , and yet manasses is said to make them both alike . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 et fecit pythonem & magos . so plain is it that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ obh ] signifies pytho , and that adequately in the same sence that pytho does , either a familiar spirit , or him that has that spirit of divination . but in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ bagnalath obh ] it necessarily signifies the familiar spirit itself , which assisted the witch of endor ; whereby it is manifest she is rightly called a witch . as for his stories of counterfeit ventriloquists , ( and who knows but some of his counterfeit ventriloquists may prove true ones ) that is but the threadbare sophistry of sadducees and atheists to elude the faith of all true stories by those that are of counterfeits or seigned . the seventh word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ jidegnoni ] which our english translators render a wizzard . and webster is so kind as to allow them to have translated this word aright . wizzards then webster will allow , that is to say , he-witches , but not she-witches . how tender the man is of that sex ! but the word invites him to it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ jidegnoni ] coming from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scire , and answering exactly to wizzard or wise-man . and does not witch , from wit and weet , signifie as well a wise woman , as i noted above ? and as to the sence of those words from whence they are d●…rived , there is no hurt therein ; and theresore if that were all , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ jidegnoni ] had not been in this black list. wherefore it is here understood in that more restrict and worst sence : so as we understand usually now adays witch and wizzard , such wise men and women whose skill is from the confed●…racy of evil spirits , and therefore are real wizzards and witches . in what a bad sence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ jidegnoni ] is understood , we may learn from levit. . . a man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit , or that is a wizzard [ jidegnoni ] shall be put to death , they shall stone them with stones , &c. the last word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ doresh hammethim , ] which our translators rightly render necromancers ; that is , those that either upon their own account , or desired by others , do raise the ghosts of the deceased to consult with ; which is a more particular term than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ bagnal obh : ] but he that is bagnal obh , may be also doresh hammethim a necromancer , as appears in the witch of endor . here webster by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ hammethim ] the dead , would understand dead statues ; but let him , if he can , any where shew in all the whole scripture where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ hammethim ] is used of what was not once alive . he thinks he hits the nail on the head in that place of isaias , ch . . v. . and when they shall say unto you , seek unto ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , such as the witch of endor was ) them that have familiar spirits , and to wizzards that peep and that mutter ; ( the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; that is , that speak with a querulous murmurant or mussitant voice , when they either conjure up the spirit , or give responses . if this be to peep like a chicken , isaiah himself peept like a chicken , ch . . . ) should not a people seek unto their god ? for the living , [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] to the dead ? where hammethim is so far from signifying dead statues , that it must needs be understood of the ghosts of dead men , as here in deuteronomy . none but one that had either stupidly , or wilfully forgot the story of samuel's being raised by that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ bagnalath obh ] the witch of endor , could ever have the face to affirm that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ hammethim ] here in isaiah is to be understood of dead statues , when wizzards or necromancers were so immediately mentioned before , especially not webster , who acknowledges that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ shoel obh ] signisies a necromancer in this deuteronomical list of abominable names . and therefore , forsooth , would have it a tautologie that doresh hammethim should signisie so too . but i say it is no tautologie , this last term being more express and restrict . and besides , this enumeration is not intended as an accurate logical division of witches or witchcraft into so many distinct kinds , but a reciting of several names of that ill trade , though they will intersere one with another , and have no significations so precisely distinct . but , as i said before , this fuller recounting of them is made , that the prohibition in this form might be the surer sence against the sin . and now therefore what will j. webster get by this , if doresh hammethim will not signific a witch of endor , when it must necessarily signifie a necromancer , which is as much against his tooth as the other ? nay indeed this necromancer is also a witch or wizzard , according to the definition produced above . the rest of the chapter being so inconsiderable , and i having been so long already upon it , i shall pass to the next , after i have desired you to take notice how weak and childish , or wild and impudent , mr. webster has been in the interpretation of scripture hitherto , in the behalf of his sage dames , to fence off their reproach of being termed witches ; whenas there is scarce one word in this place of deuteronomy that does not imply a witch or wizzard according to the real definition thereof . and truly he seems himself to be conscious of the weakness of his own performance , when after all this ado , the sum at last amounts but to this ; that there are no names in all the old testament that signifie such a witch that destroys men or beasts , that makes a visible compact with the devil , or on whose body he suckcth , or with whom he hath carnal copulation , or that is really changed into a cat , hare , dog , or such like . and to shew it amounts to no more than so , was the task we undertook in this chapter . but assure your self , if you peruse his book carefully , you shall plainly find that the main drist thereof is to prove , as i above noted , that there is no such witch as with whom the devil has any thing more to do than with any other sinner ; which notwithstanding , this conclusion of his a little before recited , comes infinitely short of : and therefore this sixth chapter , consisting of about thirty pages in folio , is a mere piece of impertinency . and there will be witches for all this , whether these particularities be noted in them or no : for it was susficient for moses to name those ill sounding terms in general , which imply a witch according to that general notion i have above delivered ; which if it be prohibited , namely the having any thing to do with evil spirits , their being suckt by them , or their having any lustful or venereous transactions with them , is much more prohibited . but for some of these particularities also they may seem to be in some manner hinted at in some of the words , especially as they are rendred sometimes by skilful interpreters : for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecasseph ] is translated by vatablus and the vulgar latine maleficus , by the septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , veneficus ; which words signifie mischievously enough both to man and beast . besides that mecasseph carries along with it the signification of transformation also ; and haply this may be the difference betwixt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecasseph ] and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ megnonen ] that the former uses prestigious transformations to some great mischief , as where olaus magnus tells of those that have transformed themselves into wolves to mens thinking , and have presently fall'n upon worrying of sheep . others transformed in their astral spirit , into various shapes , get into houses , and do mischief to men and children , as i remember remigius reports . and therefore it is less wonder that that sharp law of moses is against the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecassephah ] such a witch as this is , thou shalt not suffer a witch to live ; this may be a more peculiar signification of that word . and now for making a compact with the devil , how naturally does that name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ chobher chebher ] signifie that feat also ? but for sucking and copulation , though rightly stated it may be true , yet i confess there is nothing hinted towards that , so far as i see , as indeed it was neither necessary that the other should be . but these are the very dregs , the foex magorum & sagarum that sink into those abominations , against which a sufficient bar is put already by this prohibition of witchcraft in general by so many names . and the other is so silthy , base , and nasty , that the mention thereof was neither fit for the sacred style of moses his law , nor for the ears of the people . in my passing to the eighth chapter i will onely take notice by the way of the shameless impudence of j. webster , who in favour to his beloved hags , that they may never be thought to do any thing by the assistance of the devil , makes the victory of moses , with whom the mighty hand of god was , or of christ , ( who was the angel that appeared first to moses in the bush , and conducted the children of israel out of aegypt to the promised land ) to be the victory onely over so many hocus-pocusses , so many jugglers that were , as it seems , old excellent at the tricks of legerdemain ; which is the basest derogation to the glory of that victory , and the vilest reproach against the god of israel and the person of moses , that either the malicious wit of any devil can invent , or the dulness of any sunk soul can stumble upon . assuredly there was a real conflict here betwixt the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness and the evil spirits thereof , which assisted the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ hartummim ] the magicians of aegypt ; who before that name is named , that no man may mistake , are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecassephim ] such kind of magicians as can exhibit to the sight manifold prestigious transformations through diabolical assistance ▪ and are rendred malesici by good interpreters ▪ as i noted above ; that is , they were wizzards or he-witches . the self same word being used in that severe law of moses , thou shall not suffer a witch to live . are not these magicians then examples plain enough that there are witches ; that is to say , such wretc●…d wights as do strange miraculous things by the assistance or consociation of evil spirits . o no , says mr. webster , these are onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ chacamim ] wise men , and great naturalists , who all what they did , they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by their bright glittering laminae , for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forsooth must signifie . but what necessity thereof that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should signifie lamina ? there is onely the pretence of that one place , gen. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , where it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely that signifies the lamina , and that of a long form , scarce usual in those magical laminae with signatures celestial upon them , which j. webster would be at ; but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies meerly flamma ; so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by this account must signifie by their slames , if it be from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ardere , flammare : and therefore buxtorfius judiciously places the word under 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 abscondit , obvolvit , reading not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is as much as to say , occult is suis rationibus magicis , which is briefly rendred in english , by their enchantments ; which agrees marvellously well with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mecassephim , ] which is as much as praestigiatores magici , or such as do strange wonderous things in an hidden way by the help of evil spirits . but that the aegyptian magicians should do those things that are there recorded of them in exodus , by vertue of any lamels or plates of metal with certain sculptures or figures under such or such a cons●…ellation , is a thing so sottish and foolish , that no man that is not himself bewitched by some old hag or hobgoblin , can ever take sanctuary here to save himself or his old dames from being in a capacity , from this history in exodus , of being accounted witches . for if there may be he-witches , that is , magicians , such as these of aegypt were , i leave j. webster to scratch his head to find out any reason why there may not be she-witches also . and indeed that of the witch of endor , to pass at length to the eighth chapter , is as plain a proof thereof as can be desired by any man whose mind is not blinded with prejudices . but here j. webster , not impertinently , i confess , for the general , ( abating him the many tedious particular impertinencies that he has clogged his discourse with ) betakes himself to these two ways , to shew there was nothing of a witch in all that whole narration . first , by pretending that all the transaction on the woman of endor's part was nothing but collusion and a cheat , saul not being in the same room with her , or at least seeing nothing if he was . and then in the next place , that samuel that is said to appear , could neither be samuel appearing in his body out of the grave , nor in his soul ; nor that it was a devil that appeared : and therefore it must be some colluding knave suborned by the witch . for the discovering the weakness of his former allegation , we need but to appeal to the text , which is this , sam. . v. . and saul said , i pray thee , divine unto me by the familiar spirit , and bring me up whom i shall name unto thee , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; that is , do the office of a divineress or a wise woman , i pray thee , unto me , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ beobh ] by vertue of the familiar spirit , whose assistance thou hast , not by vertue of the bottle , as mr. webster would have it . does he think that damsel in the acts which is said to have had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , to have had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ obh ] carried an aquavitae-bottle about with her , hung at her girdle , whereby she might divine and mutter , chirp , or peep out of it , as a chicken out of an egg-shell , or put her neb into it to cry like a bittern , or take a dram of the bottle to make her wits more quick and divinatory ? who but one that had taken too many drams of the bottle could ever fall into such a fond conceit ? wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ obh ] in this place does not , as indeed no where else , signifie an oracular bottle or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , into which saul might desire the woman of endor to retire into , and himself expect answers in the next room ; but signifies that familiar spirit by vertue of whose assistance she was conceived to perform all those wondrous offices of a wise woman . but we proceed to verse . then said the woman , whom shall i bring up unto thee ? and he said , bring me up samuel . surely as yet saul and the woman are in the same room ; and being the woman askt , whom shall i bring up unto thee ? and he answering , bring up unto me samuel , it implies that samuel was so to be brought up that saul might see him , and not the witch onely . but we go on , verse . and when the woman saw samuel , she cried with a loud voice : and the woman spake to saul , saying , why hast thou deceived me ? for thou art saul . though the woman might have some suspicions before that it was saul , yet she now seeing samuel did appear , and in another kind of way than her spirits used to do , and in another hue , as it is most likely so holy a soul did , she presently cried out with a loud voice , ( not muttered , chirpt , and peept as a chicken coming out of the shell ) that now she was sure it was saul : for she was not such a fool as to think her art could call up real samuel , but that the presence of saul was the cause thereof : and josephus writes expresly , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; i. e. the woman seeing a grave god like man , is startled at it , and thus astonished at the vision , turned her self to the king , and said , art not thou king saul ? verse . and the king said unto her , be not afraid : for what sawest thou ? and the woman said unto saul , i saw gods ascending out of the earth . the king here assures the woman , that though he was saul , yet no hurt should come to her , and therefore bids her not be afraid : but she turning her face to saul , as she spake to him , and he to her , and so her sight being off from the object , saul asked her , what sawest thou ? and she in like manner answered , i saw gods , &c. for gods i suppose any free translator in greek , latine and english would say , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , genios , spirits . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies angels as well as gods ; and it is likely these wise women take the spirits they converse with to be good angels , as anne bodenham the witch told a worthy and learned friend of mine , that these spirits , such as she had , were good spirits , and would do a man all good offices all the days of his life ; and it is likely this woman of endor had the same opinion of hers , and therefore we need not wonder that she calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ elohim ] especially samuel appearing among them , to say nothing of the presence of saul . and that more than one spirit appears at a time , there are repeated examples in anne bodenham's magical evocations of them , whose history , i must confess , i take to be very true . the case stands therefore thus : the woman and saul being in the same room , she turning her face from saul , mutters to her self some magical form of evocation of spirits ; whereupon they beginning to appear and rise up , seemingly out of the earth , upon the sight of samuels countenance , she cried out to saul , and turning her face towards him spoke to him . now that saul hitherto saw nothing , though in the same room , might be either because the body of the woman was interposed betwixt his eyes and them ; or the vehicles of those spirits were not yet attempered to that conspissation that they would strike the eyes of saul , though they did of the witch . and that some may see an object others not seeing it , you have an instance in the child upon walker's shoulders appearing to mr. fairhair , and , it may be , to the judge , but invisible to the rest of the court ; and many such examples there are : but i proceed to verse . and he said unto her , what form is he of ? and she said , an old man cometh up , and is covered with a mantle . he asks here in the singular number , because his mind was onely sixt on samuel . and the womans answer is exactly according to what the spirit appeared to her , when her eye was upon it , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an old man coming up ; for he was but coming up when she looked upon him , and accordingly describes him : for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is a participle of the present tense , and the woman describes samuel from his age , habit , and motion he was in , while her eye was upon him . so that the genuine sense and grammatical in this answer to , what form is he of ? is this , an old man coming up , and the same covered with a mantle , this is his form and condition i saw him in . wherefore saul being so much concerned herein , either the woman or he changing their postures or standings , or samuel by this having sufficiently conspissated his vehicle and fitted it to saul's sight also , it follows in the text , and saul perceived it was samuel , and he stooped with his face to the ground and bowed himself . o the impudent profaneness and sottishness of perverse shufflers and whifflers , that upon the hearing of this passage can have the face to deny that saul saw any thing , and merely because the word [ perceived ] is used , and not [ saw ; ] when the word [ perceived ] plainly implies that he saw samuel , and something more , namely , that by his former familiar converse with him , he was assured it was he . so exquisitely did he appear and overcomingly to his senses , that he could not but acknowledge ( for so the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies ) that it was he , or else why did he stoop with his face to the very ground to do him honour ? no no , says j. webster , he saw nothing himself , but stood waiting like a drowned puppet ( see of what a base rude spirit this squire of hags is , to use such language of a prince in his distress ) in another room , to hear what would be the issue : for all that he understood was from her cunning and lying relations . that this gallant of witches should dare to abuse a prince thus , and feign him as much foolisher and sottisher in his intellectuals as he was taller in stature than the rest of the people even by head and shoulders , and merely , forsooth , to secure his old wives from being so much as in a capacity of ever being suspected for witches , is a thing extreamly coarse , and intolerably sordid . and indeed upon the consideration of saul's being said to bow himself to samuel , ( which plainly implies that there was there a samuel that was the object of his sight and of the reverence he made ) his own heart misgives him in this mad adventure . and he shifts o●…f from thence to a conceit that it was a confederate knave that the woman of endor turned out into the room where saul was , to act the part of samuel , having first put on him her own short cloak , which she used with her maund under her arm to ride to fairs or markets in . to this country-slouch in the womans mantle , must king saul , stooping with his face to the very ground , make his profound obeysance . what , was a market-womans cloak and samuel's mantle , which josephus calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a sacerdotal habit , so like one another ? or if not , how came this woman , being so surprized o●… a suddain , to provide her self of such a sa●…rdotal habit to cloak her consederate kna●… i●… 〈◊〉 was saul as well a blind as a drowned puppet , that he could not discern so gross and bold an imposture as this ? was it possible that he should not perceive that it was not samuel when they came to confer together , as they did ? how could that confederate knave change his own face into the same figure , look , and mien that samuel had , which was exactly known to saul ? how could he imitate his voice thus of a suddain , and they discoursed a very considerable time together ? besides , knaves do not use to speak what things are true , but what things are pleasing and moreover , this woman of endor , though a pythoness , yet she was of a very good nature and benign , which josephus takes notice of , and extols her mightily for it , and therefore she could take no delight to lay further weight on the oppressed spirit of distressed king saul : which is another sign that this scene was acted bonâ fide , and that there was no couzening in it . as also that is another ; that she spoke so magnificently of what appeared to her , that she saw gods ascending . could she then possibly adventure to turn out a country-slouch with a maund-womans cloak to act the part of so god-like and divine a personage as samuel , who was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the woman describes him in josephus antiqu. judaic . lib. . c. . unto all which you may add , that the scripture itself , which was written by inspiration , says expresly , v. . that it was samuel . and the son of sirach , ch . . that samuel himself prophesyed after his death , referring to this story of the woman of endor . but for our new-inspired seers , or saints , s. scot , s. adie , and if you will s. webster sworn advocate of the witches , who thus madly and boldly , against all sense and reason , against all antiquity , all interpreters , and against the inspired scripture itself , will have no samuel in this scene , but a cunning confederate knave , whether the inspired scripture , or these inblown buffoons , puffed up with nothing but ignorance , vanity , and stupid infidelity , are to be believed , let any one judge . we come now to his other allegation , wherein we shall be brief , we having exceeded the measure of a postscript already . it was neither samuel's soul , says he , joyned with his body , nor his soul out of his body , nor the devil ; and therefore it must be some confed●…rate knave suborned by that cunning cheating quean of endor . but i briesly answer , it was the soul of samuel himself ; and that it is the fruitfulness of the great ignorance of j. webster in the sound principles of theosophy and true divinity , that has enabled him to heap together no less than ten arguments to disprove this assertion , and all little to the purpose : so little indeed , that i think it little to the purpose particularly to answer them , but shall hint onely some few truths which will rout the whole band of them . i say therefore , that departed souls , as other spirits , have an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in them , such as souls have in this life ; and have both a faculty and a right to move of themselves , provided there be no express law against such or such a design to which their motion tends . again , that they have a power of appearing in their own personal shapes to whom there is occasion , as anne walker's soul did to the miller ; and that this being a faculty of theirs either natural or acquirable , the doing so is no miracle . and thirdly , that it was the strong piercing desire , and deep distress , and agony of mind in saul , in his perplexed circumstances , and the great compassion and goodness of spirit in the holy soul of samuel , that was the effectual magick that drew him to condescend to converse with saul in the womans house at endor ; as a keen sense of justice and revenge made anne walker's soul appear to the miller with her sive wounds in her head . the rigid and harsh severity that webster sancies samuel's ghost would have used against the woman , or sharp reproofs to saul ; as for the latter , it is somewhat expressed in the text , and saul had his excuse in readiness , and the good soul of samuel was sensible of his perplexed condition . and as for the former , sith the soul of samuel might indeed have terrified the poor woman , and so unhinged her , that she had been sit for nothing after it , but not converted her , it is no wonder if he passed her by ; goodness and forbearance more befitting an holy angelical soul , than bluster and fury , such as is fancied by that rude goblin that actuates the body and pen of webster . as for departed souls , that they never have any care or regard to any of their fellow-souls here upon earth , is expresly against the known example of that great soul , and universal pastor of all good souls , who appeared to stephen at his stoning , and to s. paul before his conversion , though then in his glorified body ; which is a greater condescension than this of the soul of samuel , which was also to a prince , upon whose shoulders lay the great affairs of the people of israel : to omit that other notable example of the angel raphael so called , ( from his office at that time , or from the angelical order he was adopted into after his death ) but was indeed the soul of azaria●… the son of ananias the great , and of tobit's brethren , tobit ch . . . nor does that which occurs , tob. . . at all clash with what we have said , if rightly understood : for his saying , i am raphael one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints , and which go in and out before the glory of the holy one , in the cabbalistick sence signisies no more than thus , that he was one of the universal society of the holy angels , ( and a raphael in the order of the raphaels ) which minister to the saints , and reinforce the prayers of good and holy men by joyning thereto their own ; and as they are moved by god , minister to their necessities , unprayed to themselves , which would be an abomination to them , but extream prone to second the petitions of holy sincere souls , and forward to engage in the accomplishing of them , as a truly good man would sooner relieve an indigent creature , overhearing him making his moan to god in prayer , than if he begged alms of himself , though he might do that without sin . this cabbalistical account , i think , is infinitely more probable , than that raphael told a downright lye to tobit , in saying he was the son of ananias when he was not . and be it so , will j. webster say , what is all this to the purpose , when the book of tobit is apocryphal , and consequently of no authority ? what of no authority ? certainly of infinitely more authority than mr. wagstaf , mr. scot , and mr. adie , that mr. webster so srequently and reverently quoteth . i but , will he further add , these apparitions were made to good and holy men , or to elect vessels ; but king saul was a wretched reprobate . this is the third liberal badge of honour that this ill-bred advocate of the witches has beslowed on a distressed prince . first , a drowned puppet , p. . then a distracted bedlam , in the same page , which i passed by before ; and now , a wretched reprobate : but assuredly saul was a brave prince and commander , as josephus justly describes him , and reprobate onely in type , as ismael and esau ; which is a mystery , it seems , that j. webster was not aware of . and therefore no such wonder that the soul of samuel had such a kindness for him , as to appear to him in the depth of his distress , to settle his mind , by telling him plainly the upshot of the whole business , that he should lose the battle , and he and his sons be slain , that so he might give a specimen of the bravest valour that ever was atchieved by any commander , in that he would not suffer his countrey to be over-run by the enemy , while he was alive , without resistance ; but though he knew certainly he should fail of success , and he and his sons dye in the fight , yet in so just and honourable a cause as the defence of his crown and his countrey , would give the enemy battle in the field , and sacrifice his own lise for the safety of his people . out of the knowledge of which noble spirit in saul , and his resolved valour in this point , ●…hose words haply may come from samuel , to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me , ( as an auspicious insinuation of their savourable reception into the other world ) in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in thalamo justorum , as munster has noted out of the rabbins . lastly , as for that weak imputation that this opinion of its being samuel's soul that appeared , is popish , that is very plebeianly and idiotically spoken , as if every thing that the popish party are for , were popish . we divide our zeal against so many things that we fancy popish , that we scarce reserve a just share of detestation against what is truly so : such as are that gross , rank , and scandalous impossibility of transubstantiation , the various modes of fulsome idolatry and lying impostures , the uncertainty of their loyalty to their lawful soveraigns by their superstitious adhesion to the spiritual tyranny of the pope , and that barbarous and ferine cruelty against those that are not either such fools as to be perswaded to believe such things as they would obtrude upon men , or are not so false to god and their own consciences , as knowing better , yet to profess them . as for that other opinion , that the greater part of the reformed divines hold , that it was the devil that appeared in samuel's shape ; and though grotius also seems to be enclined thereto , alledging that passage of porphyrius , de abstinentia animalium , where he describes one kind of spirit to be , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ( which is , i confess , very apposit●… to this story ; nor do doubt but that in many of these necromantick apparitions , they are ludicrous spirits , not the souls of the deceased that appear ) yet i am clear for the appearing of the soul of samuel in this story , from the reasons above alledged , and as clear that in other necromancies it may be the devil , or such kind of spirits as porphyrius above describes , that change themselves into omnifarious forms and shapes , and one while act the parts of daemons , another while of angels or gods , and another while of the souls of the deceased : and i confess such a spirit as this might personate samuel here , for any thing webster has alledged to the contrary . for his arguments indeed are wonderfully weak and woodden , as may be understood out of what i have hinted concerning the former opinion . but i cannot further particularize now . for i have made my postscript much longer than my letter , before i was aware ; and i n●…d not enlarge to you , who are so well vers●…d in these things already , and can by the quickness of your parts presently collect the whole m●…asure of h●…ules by his foot , and sufficiently understand by this time it is no rash censure o●… mine in my letter , that ●…ster's book is but a weak impertinent piece of work , the very 〈◊〉 thereof being so weak and impcrti●… ▪ and falling so short of the scope h●… aims it , which was really to prove that there was no such thing as a witch or wizzard , that is , not any mention thereof , in scripture , by any name of one that had more to do with the devil , or the devil with him , than with other wicked men ; that is to say , of one who in vertue of covenant either implicit or explicit did strange things by the help of evil spirits , but that there are many sorts of deceivers and impostors , and diverse persons , under a passive delusion of melancholy and fancy , which is part of his very title-page . whereby he does plainly insinuate , there is nothing but couzenage or melancholy in the whole business of the feats of witches . but a little to mitigate or smother the grossness of this false assertion , he adds , and that there is no corporeal league betwixt the devil and the witch ; and that he does not suck on the witches body , nor has carnal copulation with her , nor the witches are turned into dogs or cats , &c. all which things , as you may see in his book , he understands in the grossest manner imaginable , as if the imps of witches had mouths of slesh to suck them , and bodies of slesh to lye with them . and at this rate he may understand a corporeal league , as if it were no league or covenant , unless some lawyer drew the instrument , and engrossed it in vellum or thick parchment , and there were so many witnesses with the hand and seal of the party : nor any transformation into dogs or cats , unless it were real and corporeal , or grosly carnal ; which none of his witchmongers , as he rudely and slovenly calls that learned and serious person dr. casaubon and the rest , do believe . onely it is a disputable case of their bodily transformation , bctwixt bodinus and remigius ; of which more in my scholia . but that without this carnal transmutation a woman might not be accounted a witch , is so foolish a supposition , that webster himself certainly must be ashamed of it . wherefore if his book be writ onely to prove there is no such thing as a witch that covenants in parchment with the devil by the advice of a lawyer , and is really and carnally turned into a dog , cat , or hare , &c. and with carnal lips sucked by the devil , and is one with whom the devil lies carnally ; the scope thereof is manifestly impertinent , when neither dr. casaubon nor any one else holds any such thing . but as for the true and adequate notion of a witch or wizzard , such as at first i described , his arguments all of them are too too weak or impertinent , as to the disproving the existence of such a witch as this , who betwixt his deceivers , impostours , and melancholists on one hand , and those gross witches he describes , on the other hand , goes away shere as a hare in a green balk betwixt two lands of corn , none of his arguments reaching her or getting the sight of her , himself in the mean time standing on one side amongst the deceivers and impostours , his book , as to the main design he drives at , being a mere cheat and impostour . advertisement . this letter of dr. moor being left amongst other papers appertaining to this new-intended edition by mr. glanvil , and i perceiving in a letter of his to the doctor that he had a mind this letter should be published together with his book , it is done accordingly , and prefixed at the beginning thereof , as natural method requires , the letter being hortatory to quicken mr. glanvil to dispatch his intended new edition for the undeceiving of the world , and the postscript containing many things of a general insluence upon the whole book . but that the doctor may suffer no prejudice through this publishing of his letter and postscript , from the sharpness and satyricalness of them in some places , i shall for the more rightly understanding his meaning in the using that mode of writing upon this occasion , transcribe a passage of a letter of his to his friend mr. glanvil , relating thereto . i pray you send me word whether that postscript will not meet with all the elusory cavils of that profane busfoon , upon those places of holy scripture : his unworthy usage of the holy writ , and his derisorious interpretations of it in the behalf of his beloved hags , provoked my indignation to such schemes of deriding and exposing him , as otherwise i should never have condescended to . this is a sufficient testimony of the doctor 's aversness from such manner of writing . but as divines tell us , that anger and punishment are god's opus alienum , his strange work , as being more abhorrent from his nature ; but yet for the good of the universe he steps out sometimes into that dispensation : so i think it not misbecoming good men , sometimes to condescend , as the doctor calls it , to the chastising prophane drolls and abusers of holy things , by a just derision and satyrical reprehension for their freakish and impious sauciness , provided it be done sincerely , and sor the publick good . saducismus triumphatus : or , full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions . the first part thereof conteining philosophical considerations which defend their possibility . whereunto is added , the true and genuine notion , and consistent explication of the nature of a spirit , for the more full confirmation of the possibility of their existence . london : printed , . to the illustrious charles duke of richmond and lenox . my lord , your grace having been pleased to command the first , and more imperfect , edition of this discourse , i have presumed that your candour will accept the draught that hath had my last hand upon it . and though i am not fond enough to phancy any art or ornament in the composure to recommend it ; yet , i know , the essay is seasonable , and contains things which relate to our biggest interests ; the design being to secure some of the out-works of religion , and to regain a parcel of ground which bold infidelity hath invaded . and , my lord , i cannot but observe sadly , that while the sects are venting their animosities against each other , and scrambling for their conceits , and the particular advantages of their way , they perceive not that atheism comes on by large strides , and enters the breaches they have made . sober and considerate men see the formidable danger , and some of them have strenuously endeavoured to maintain the walls , while the factions within are so busie and so divided , that they cannot attend the desperate hazard , and will not joyn in a common defence . among those generous defendants i desire to pitch , and have undertaken to make good one of the forts upon which the enemy hath made impetuous assaults , and i hope with no contemptible success . for my part , my lord , i am very little concerned for the small pedlaries that some mens fondness calls religion , by which that sacred thing hath been exposed to a great deal of contempt and dishonour . but yet i think it my duty to have a zeal for those great and certain matters upon which our hopes in an other world are grounded : and that our expectations of a future being , are not imaginary and fantastick , we have reasonable evidence enough from the attributes of god , the phaenomena of providence , and the nature of our souls , to convince any , but those who will stupidly believe that they shall dye like beasts , that they may live like them . i confess the philosophick arguments that are produced for the desirable article , though very cogent , are many of them speculative and deep , requiring so great an attention and sagacity , that they take no hold upon the whissling spirits , that are not used to consider ; nor upon the common sort , that cannot reach such heights of argument : but they are both best convinced by the proofs that come nearest the sence , which indeed strike our minds fullest , and leave the most lasting impressions ; whereas high speculations being more thin and subtile , easily slide off even from understandings that are most capable to receive them . for this reason , among some others , i appear thus much concerned for the justification of the belief of witches , it suggesting palpable and current evidence of our immortality , which i am exceedingly sollicitous to have made good . for really , my lord , if we make our computes like men , and do not suffer our selves to be abused by the slatteries of sense , and the deceitful gay●…ties that steal us away from god , and from our selves , there is nothing can render the thoughts of this odd life tolerable , but the expectation of another . and wise men have said , that they would not live a moment , if they thought they were not to live again . this perhaps some may take to be the discontented paradox of a melancholick , vext and of mean condition , that is pinched by the straitness of fortune , and envies the heights of others selicity and grandeurs ; but by that time those that judge so , have spent the heats of frolick youth , and have past over the several stages of vanity ; when they come to sit down , and make sober reflections upon their pleasures and pursuits , and sum up the accomp●… of all that is with them , and before them , i doubt not but their considering thoughts will make solomon's conclusion , and find , that 't is but a misery to live , if we were to live for nothing else . so that if the content of the present life were all i were to have for the hopes of immortality . i should even upon that account be very unwilling to believe that i was mortal : for certainly the pleasures that result from the thoughts of another world in those that not onely see it painted in their imaginations , but feel it begun in their souls , are as far beyond all the titillations of sense , as a real lasting happiness is beyond the delusive images of a dream . and therefore they that think to secure the injoyment of their pleasures by the insamy of our natures in the overthrow of our future hopes , indeavour to dam up the fountain of the fullest and cleanest delights ; and seek for limpid waters in the sinks and puddles of the strects . you see , my lord , how my zeal for this mighty interest transports me to a greater length in th●… address , than perhaps may consist with strict decorum ; and i indulge my pen the rather in th●… licence , because possibly your grace's name may draw some eyes hither that have need of such suggestions , and those that have not need a great deal more . it cannot be proper to add here those large accounts which would be requisite in a design of full conviction : but for the present , if they shall please to look forward , they may likely meet some things not unfit for their serious thoughts ; and i intend to take a season to present them others , more particularly suitable to what i know is as much their interest , as i doubt it is their want . but , my lord , i fear i am importunate , and beseech your grace to pardon the boldness of my lord , your grace's most obedient servant , jos. glanvil . preface . there are a sort of narrow and confin'd spirits , who account all discourses needless , that are not for their particular purposes ; and judge all the world to be of the size and genius of those within the circle of their knowledge and acquaintance ; so that with a pert and pragmatique insolence , they censure all the braver designs and notices that lie beyond their ken , as nice and impertinent speculations : an ignorant and proud injustice ; as if this sort were the onely persons , whose humour and needs should be consulted . and hence it comes to pass , that the greatest and worthiest things that are written or said , do always meet with the most general neglect and scorn , since the lesser people , for whom they were not intended , are quick to shoot their bolt , and to condemn what they do not understand , and because they do not . whereas on the other side , those that are able to judge and would incourage , are commonly reserv'd and modest in their sentences ; or , if they should seek to do right to things that are worthy , they are sure to be out-voiced by the rout of ignorant contemners . upon which accounts i have often thought that he that courts and values popular estimation , takes not the right way if he endeavour any thing that is really excellent : but he must study the little plausibilities , and accommodate the humour of the mant , who are active ministers of fame , being zealous and loud in their applauses , as they are clamorous and impetuous in their oppositions . as for these , 't is one of my chief cares to make my self as much unconcern'd at their censures , as i am at the cacklings of a flock of geese , or at the eager displeasure of those little snarling animals , that are angry when i go along the streets . nor can any man be either wise or happy , till he hath arrived to that greatness of mind , that no more considers the tattling of the multitude than the whistling of the wind . not that i think the common people are to be contemned for the weakness of their understandings ; 't is an insolent meanness of spirit that doth that : but w●…n conceited ignorance sits down in the judgment seat , and gives peremplory verdicts upon things beyond its line ▪ the wise man smiles and passeth by . for such ( if that may signifie any thing to keep them from troubling themselves about the following considerations ) i desire they would take notice from me , that i writ not those things for such as they ; and they will do well to throw up the book upon this advertisement , ex●…pt they will stay to hear , that though philosophical discourses to justifie the common belief about witches , are nothing at all to them , or those of their measure ; yet they are too seasonable and necessary for our age , in which atheism is begun in sadducism : and those that dare not bluntly say , there is no god , content themselves ( for a sair step and introduction ) to deny there are spirits , or witches . which sort of infidels , though they are not ordinary among the meer vulgar , yet are they numerous in a little higher rank of understandings . and those that know any thing of the world , know , that most of the looser gentry , and the small pretenders to philosophy and wit , are generally deriders of the belief of witches and apparitions . and were this a slight or mere speculative mistake , i should not trouble my self or them about it . but i fear this errour hath a core in it that is worse than heresie : and therefore how little soever i care what men believe or teach in matters of opinion , i think i have reason to be concern'd in an affair that toucheth so near upon the greatest interests of religion . and really i am astonisht sometimes to think into what a kind of age we are fallen , in which some of the greatest impieties are accounted but bugs , and terrible names , invisible tittles , peccadillo's , or chimera's . the sad and greatest instances , are sacriledge , rebellion , and witchcraft . for the two former , there are a sort of men ( that are far from being profest enemi●…s to religion ) who , i do not know whether they own any such vices . we find no mention of them in their most particular confessions , nor have i observed them in those sermons that have contained the largest catalogues of the sins of our age and nation . 't were dangerous to speak of them as sins , for fear who should be found guilty . but my business at present is not with these , but the other , witchcraft , which i am sure was a sin of elder times ; and how comes it about that our age , which so much outdoes them in all other kinds of wickedness , should be wholly innocent in this ? that there may be witches and apparitions in our days , notwithstanding the objections of the modern sadduce , i believe i have made appear in the considerations following ; in which i did not primarily intend direct proof , but defence , as the title of the first edition , which is reslor'd in these later mention'd . and if it should be objected , that i have for the most part used onely supposals and conjectural things in the vindication of the common belief , and speak with no point-blank assurance in my particular answers , as i do in the general conclusion ; i need onely say , that the proposition i desend is matter of fact , which the disbelievers impugne by alledging that it cannot be , or it is not likely : in return to which , if i shew how those things may be , and probably , notwithstanding their allegations , though i say not downright that they are in the particular way i offer , yet 't is enough for the design of defence , though not for that of proof : for when one saith a thing cannot be , and i tell him how possibly it may , though i hit not the just manner of it , i yet defeat the objection against it , and make way for the evidence of the thing de facto ; which now i have added from the divine oracles , and two modern relations that are clear and unexceptionable . i have no humour nor delight in telling stories , and do not publish these for the gratification of those that have ; but i record them as arguments for the confirmation of a truth which hath indeed been attested by multitudes of the like evidences in all places and times . but things remote , or long past , are either not believed or forgotten : whereas these being fresh and near , and attended with all the circumstances of credibility ▪ it may be expected they should have the more success upon the obstinacy of unbelievers . but after all this , i must consess , there is one argument against me , which is not to be dealt with , viz. a mighty confidence grounded upon nothing , that swaggers , and huffs , and swears there are no witches . for such philosophers as these , let them enjoy the opinion of their own superlative judgements , and enter me in the first rank of fools for crediting my senses , and those of all the world , before their sworn dictates . if they will believe in scott , hobbes , and osborne , and think them more infallible than the sacred oracles , the history of all ages , and the full experience of our own , who can help it ? they must not be contradicted , and they are resolved not to be perswaded . for this sort of men , i never go about to convince them of any thing . i●… i can avoid it , i throw nothing before them , lest they should turn again , and rend me . their opinions came into their heads by chance , when their little reasons had no notice of their entrance ; and they must be let alone to go out again of themselves , the same way they ●…ntred . therefore not to make much noise to disturb these infallible hufsers ( and they cannot hear a little for their own ) i softly step by them , leaving onely this whisper behind me ; that though their worshipful ignorance and sottishness can relish nothing of a discourse that doth not minister to sensuality and unbelief , yet my considerations have had the good ●…ortune of a better reception from the braver and more generous spirits , than my fondest hopes could have expected ; and persons whose good thoughts i have reason to value , have assured me that their kindness to my book hath improved upon second and more careful perusals : which i mention for this purpose , that those that need my remarques , and cannot feel them in a running reading , may please to turn their eyes back , and deliberately think over what i have offered ; from which course i dare promise them more satisfaction than from their haste . bath june . . j. g. some considerations about witchcraft . in a letter to robert hunt , esq sect . i. sir , the frequent and late dealings you have had in the examination of witches , and the regards of one that hath a very particular honour for you , have brought you the trouble of some considerations on the subject . and though what i have to say , be but the unaccurate product of a little leisure ; yet i hope it may afford you some , not unreasonable , accounts of the odd phaenomena of witchcraft and fascination , and contribute to the defence of the truth and certainty of matters , which you know by experiments that could not deceive , in spite of the petty exceptions of those that are resolved to believe nothing in affairs of this nature . and if any thing were to be much admired in an age of wonders , not onely of nature , ( which is a constant prodigie ) but of men and manners ; it would be to me matter of astonishment , that men , otherwise witty and ingenious , are fallen into the conceit that there is no such thing as a witch or apparition , but that these are the creatures of melancholy and superstition , foster'd by ignorance and design ; which comparing the confidence of their disbelief with the evidence of the things denied , and the weakness of their grounds , would almost suggest that themselves are an argument of what they deny ; and that so confident an opinion could not be held upon such inducements , but by some kind of witchcraft and fascination in the fancy . and perhaps that evil spirit whose influences they will not allow in actions ascribed to such causes , hath a greater hand and interest in their proposition than they are aware of . for that subtile enemy of mankind ( since providence will not permit him to mischief us without our own concurrence ) attempts that by stratagem and artifice , which he could never effect by open ways of acting ; and the success of all wiles depending upon their secrecy and concealment , his influence is never more dangerous than when his agency is least suspected . in order therefore to the carrying on the dark and hidden designs he manageth against our happiness and our souls , he cannot expect to advantage himself more , than by insinuating a belief , that there is no such thing as himself , but that fear and fancy make devils now , as they did gods of old . nor can he ever draw the assent of men to so dangerous an assertion , while the standing sensible evidences of his existence in his practices by and upon his instruments are not discredited and removed . 't is doubtless therefore the interest of this agent of darkness to have the world believe , that the notion they have of him is but a phantôme and conceit ; and in order thereunto , that the stories of witches , apparitions , and indeed every thing that brings tidings of another world , are but melancholick dreams , and pious romances . and when men are arrived thus sar to think there are no diabolical contracts or apparitions , their belief that there are such spirits rests onely upon their faith and reverence to the divine oracles , which we have little reason to apprehend so great in such assertors , as to command much srom their assent ; especially in such things in which they have corrupt interests against their evidence . ●…o that he that thinks there is no witch , believes a devil gratis , or at least upon inducements , which he is like to find himself disposed to deny when he pleaseth . and when men are arrived to this degree of dissidence and infidelity , we are beholden to them if they believe either angel , or spirit , resurrection of the body , or immortality of souls . these things hang together in a chain of connexion , at least in these mens hypothesis ; and 't is but an happy chance if he that hath lost one link holds another . so that the vitals of religion being so much interessed in this subject , it will not be unnecessary employment particularly to discourse it . and in order to the proof that there have been , and are , unlawful confederacies with evil spirits , by vertue of which the hellish accomplices perform things above their natural powers : i must premise , that this being matter of fact , is onely capable of the evidence of authority and sense : and by both these the being os witches and diabolical contracts is most abundantly confirm'd . all histories are full of the exploits of those instruments of darkness ; and the testimony of all ages , not onely of the rude and barbarous , but of the most civiliz'd and polish'd world , brings tidings of their strange performances . we have the attestation os thousands of eye and car-witnesses , and those not of the easily deceivable vulgar onely , but of wise and grave discern●…rs ; and that , when no interest could oblige them to agree together in a common lye. i say , we have the light of all these circumstances to confirm us in the belief of things done by persons of despicable power and knowledge , beyond the reach of art and ordinary nature . standing publick records have been kept of these well-attested relations , and epocha's made of those unwonted events . laws in many nations have been enacted against those vile practices ; those among the jews and our own are notorious ; such cases have been often determined near us , by wise and reverend judges , upon clear and convictive evidence : and thousands in our own nation have suffered death for their vile compacts with apostate spirits . all these i might largely prove in their particular instances , but that 't is not needful , since those that deny the being of witches , do it not out of ignorance of these heads of argument , of which probably they have heard a thousand times ; but from an apprehension that such a belief is absurd , and the things impossible . and upon these presumptions they contemn all demonstrations of this nature , and are hardned against conviction . and i think , those that can believe all histories are romances ; that all the wiser world have agreed together to juggle mankind into a common belief of ungrounded fables ; that the sound senses of multitudes together may deceive them , and laws are built upon chimera's ; that the gravest and wisest judges have been murderers , and the sagest persons fools , or designing impostors : i say , those that can believe this heap of absurdities , are either more credulous than those whose credulity they reprehend ; or else have some extraordinary evidence of their perswasion , viz. that 't is absurd and impossible there should be a witch or apparition . and i am confident , were those little appearances remov'd which men have form'd in their fancies against the belief of such things , their own evidence would make its way to mens assent , without any more arguments than what they know already to enforce it . there is nothing then necessary to be done , in order to the establishing the belief i would reconcile to mens minds , but to endeavour the removal of those prejudices they have received against it : the chief of which i shall particularly deal with . and i begin with that bold assertion , that sect . ii. i. ( i. ) the notion of a spirit is impossible and contradictious , and consequently so is that of witches , the belief of which is founded on that doctrine . to which objection i answer , ( ) if the notion of a spirit be absurd as is pretended , that of a god and a soul distinct from matter , and immortal , are likewise absurdities . and then , that the world was jumbled into this elegant and orderly fabrick by chance ; and that our souls are onely parts of matter that came together we know not whence nor how , and shall again shortly be dissolv'd into those loose atoms that compound them ; that all our conceptions are but the thrusting of one part of matter against another ; and the idea's of our minds mere blind and casual motions . these , and a thou●…and more the grossest impossibilities and absurdities ( consequents of this proposition , that the notion of a spirit is absurd ) will be sad certainties and demonstrations . and with such assertors i would cease to discourse about witches and apparitions , and address my self to obtain their assent to truths infinitely more sacred . and yet ( ) though it should be granted them , that a substance immaterial is as much a contradiction as they can fancy ; yet why ●…hould they not believe that the air and all the regions above us , may have their invisible intellectual agents , of nature like unto our souls , be that what it will , and some of them at least as much degenerate as the vilest and most mischievous among men ? this hypothesis wil be enough to secure the possibility of witches and apparitions . and that all the upper stories of the universe are furnish'd with inhabitants , 't is infinitely reasonable to conclude , from the analogy of nature ; since we see there is nothing so contemptible and vile in the world we reside in , but hath its living creatures that dwell upon it ; the earth , the water , the inferiour air , the bodies of animals , the flesh , the skin , the entrails ; the leaves , the roots , the stalks of vegetables ; yea , and all kind of minerals in the subterraneous regions . i say , all these have their proper inhabitants ; yea , i suppose this rule may hold in all distinct kinds of bodies in the world , that they have their peculiar animals . the certainty of which , i believe the improvement of microscopical observations will discover . from whence i infer , that since this little spot is so thickly peopled in every atome of it , 't is weakness to think that all the vast spaces above , and hollows under ground , are desert and uninhabited . and if both the superiour and lower continents of the universe have their inhabitants also , 't is exceedingly improbable , arguing from the same analogy , that they are all of the meer sensible nature , but that there are at least some of the rational and intellectual orders . which supposed , there is good foundation for the belief of witches and apparitions , though the notion of a spirit should prove as absurd , and unphilosophical , as i judge the denial of it . and so this first objection comes to nothing . i descend then to the second prejudice , which may be thus formed in behalf of the objectors . sect . iii. ii. ( ii. ) there are actions in most of those relations ascribed to witches , which are ridiculous and impossible in the nature of things ; such are ( ) their flying out of windows , after they have anointed themselves , to remote places . ( ) their transformation into cats , hares , and other creatures . ( ) their feeling all the hurts in their own bodies which they have received in those . ( ) their raising tempests , by muttering some nonsensical words , or performing ceremonies alike impertinent as ridiculous . and ( ) their being suck'd in a certain private place of their bodies by a familiar . these are presumed to be actions inconsistent with the nature of spirits , and above the powers of those poor and miserable agents . and therefore the objection supposeth them performed onely by the fancy ; and that the whole mystery of witchcraft is but an illusion of crasie imagination . to this aggregate objection i return , ( ) in the general , the more absurd and unaccountable these actions seem , the greater confirmations are they to me of the truth of those relations , and the reality of what the objectors would destroy for these circumstances being exceeding unlikely , judging by the measures of common belief , 't is the greater probability they are not fictitious : for the contrivers of fictions use to form them as near as they can conformably to the most unsuspected realities , endeavouring to make them look as like truth as is possible in the main supposals , though withal they make them strange in the circumstance . none but a fool or madman would re●…ate , with a purpose of having it believed , that he saw in ireland men with hoofs on their heads , and eyes in their breasts ; or if any should be so ridiculously vain , as to be serious in such an incredible romance , it cannot be supposed that all travellers that come into those parts after him should tell the same story . there is a large field in fiction ; and if all those relations were arbitrary compositions , doubtless the first romancers would have framed them more agreeable to the common doctrine of spirits ; at least , after these supposed absurdities had been a thousand times laugh'd at , people by this time would have learn'd to correct those obnoxious extravagancies ; and though they have not yet more veracity than the ages of ignorance and superstition , yet one would expect they should have got more cunning . this suppos'd impossibility then of these performances , seems to me a probable argument that they are not wilful and designed forgeries . and if they are fancies , 't is somewhat strange , that imagination , which is the most various thing in all the world , should infinitely repeat the same conceit in all times and places . but again ( ) the strange actions related of witches , and presumed impossible , are not ascribed to their own powers ; but to the agency of those wicked confederates they imploy . and to affirm that those evil spirits cannot do that which we conceit impossible , is boldly to stint the powers of creatures , whose natures and faculties we know not ; and to measure the world of spirits by the narrow rules of our own impotent beings . we see among our selves the performances of some out-go the conceits and possibilities of others ; and we know many things may be done by the mathematicks and mechanick artifice , which common heads think impossible to be effected by the honest ways of art and nature . and doubtless , the subtilties and powers of those mischievous fiends are as much beyond the reach and activities of the most knowing agents among us , as theirs are beyond the wit and ability of the most rustick and illiterate . so that the utmost that any mans reason in the world can amount to in this particular , is onely this , that he cannot conceive how such things can be performed ; which onely argues the weakness and imperfection of our knowledge and apprehensions , not the impossibility of those performances : and we can no more from hence form an argument against them , than against the most ordinary effects in nature . we cannot conceive how the foetus is form'd in the womb , nor as much as how a plant springs from the earth we tread on ; we know not how our souls move the body , nor how these dislant and extream natures are united ; as i have abundantly shewn in my scepsis scientifica . and if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us , and the most considerable within our selves , 't is then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the creatures , to whom we are such strangers . briesly then , matters of fact well proved ought not to be denied , because we cannot conceive how they can be performed . nor is it a reasonable method of inserence , first to presume the thing impossible , and thence to conclude that the fact cannot be proved . on the contrary , we should judge of the action by the evidence , and not the evidence by the measures of our fancies about the action . this is proudly to exalt our own opinions above the clearest testimonies and most sensible demonstrations of fact : and so to give the lye to all mankind , rather than distrust the conceits of our bold imaginations . but yet further , ( ) i think there is nothing in the instances mention'd , but what may as well be accounted for by the rules of reason and philosophy , as the ordinary affairs of nature . for in resolving natural phaenomena , we can onely assign the probable causes , sheing how things may be , not presuming how they are . and in the particulars under our examen , we may give an account how 't is possible , and not unlikely , that such things ( though somewhat varying from the common road of nature ) may be acted . and if our narrow and contracted minds can furnish us with apprehensions of the way and manner of such performances , though perhaps not the true ones , 't is an argument that such things may be effected by creatures whose powers and knowledge are so vastly exceeding ours . i shall endeavour theresore briefly to suggest some things that may render the possibility of these performances conceivable , in order to the removal of this objection , that they are contradictions and impossible . for the first then , that the confederate spirit should transport the witch through the air to the place of general rendezvous , there is no difficulty in conceiving it ; and if that be true which great philosophers affirm , concerning the real separability of the soul from the body without death , there is yet less ; for then 't is easie to apprehend , that the soul having left its gross and sluggish body behind it , and being cloath'd onely with its immediate vehicle of air , or more subtile matter , may be quickly conducted to any place it would be at by those officious spirits that attend it . and though i adventure to affirm nothing concerning the truth and certainty of this supposition , yet i must needs say , it doth not seem to me unreasonable . and our experience of apoplexies , epilepsies , ecstasies , and the strange things men report to have seen during those deliquiums , look favourably upon this conjecture ; which seems to me to contradict no principle of reason or philosophy ; since death consists not so much in the actual separation of soul and body , as in the indisposition and unfitness of the body for vital union , as an excellent philosopher hath made good . on which hypothesis , the witches anointing her self before she takes her flight , may perhaps serve to keep the body tenantable , and in fit disposition to receive the spirit at its return . these things , i say , we may conceive , though i affirm nothing about them ; and there is not any thing in such conceptions but what hath been own'd by men of worth and name , and may seem fair and accountable enough to those who judge not altogether by the measures of the populace and customary opinion . and there 's a saying of the great apostle that seems to countenance this platonick notion ; what is the meaning else of that expression , [ whether in the body or out of the body , i cannot tell ] except the soul may be separated from the body without death ? which if it be granted possible , 't is sufficient for my purpose . and ( ) the transformations of witches into the shapes of other animals , upon the same supposal is very conceivable , since then 't is easie enough to imagine , that the power of imagination may form those passive and pliable vehicles into those shapes , with more ease than the fancy of the mother can the stubborn matter of the foetus in the womb , as we see it frequently doth in the instances that occur of signatures and monstrous singularities ; and perhaps sometimes the confederate spirit puts tricks upon the senses of the spectators , and those shapes are onely illusions . but then ( ) when they feel the hurts in their gross bodies , that they receive in their airy vehicles , they must be supposed to have been really present , at least in these latter ; and 't is no more difficult to apprehend how the hurts of those should be translated upon their other bodies , than how diseases should be inflicted by the imagination , or how the fancy of the mother should wound the foetus , as several credible relations do attest . and ( ) for their raising storms and tempests , they do it not , be sure , by their own , but by the power of the prince of the air , their friend and allie ; and the ceremonies that are enjoyn'd them are doubtless nothing else but entertainments for their imaginations , and are likely design'd to perswade them , that they do these strange things themselves . and ( lastly ) for their being suck'd by the familiar , i say ( ) we know so little of the nature of doemons and spirits , that 't is no wonder we cannot certainly divine the reason of so strange an action . and yet ( ) we may conjecture at some things that may render it less improbable . for some have thought that the genii ( whom both the platonical and christian antiquity thought embodied ) are recreated by the reeks and vapours of humane blood , and the spirits that proceed from them : which supposal ( if we grant them bodies ) is not unlikely , every thing being refresh'd and nourish'd by its like . and that they are not perfectly abstract from all body and matter , besides the reverence we owe to the wisest antiquity , there are several considerable arguments i could alledge to render it exceeding probable . which things supposed , the devil 's sucking the sorceress is no great wonder , nor difficult to be accounted for . or perhaps ( ) this may be onely a diabolical sacrament and ceremony to confirm the hellish covenant . to which i add , ( ) that which to me seems most probable , viz. that the familiar doth not onely suck the witch , but in the action infuseth some poysonous ferment into her , which gives her imagination and spirits a magical tincture , whereby they become mischievously influential ; and the word venefica intimates some such matter . now that the imagination hath a mighty power in operation , is seen in the just now mention'd signatures and diseases that it causeth ; and that the fancy is modified by the qualities of the blood and spirits , is too evident to need proof . which things supposed , 't is plain to conceive that the evil spirit having breath'd some vile vapour into the body of the witch , it may taint her blood and spirits with a noxious quality , by which her infected imagination , heightned by melancholy and this worse cause , may do much hurt upon bodies that are impressible by such influences . and 't is very likely that this ferment disposeth the imagination of the sorceress to cause the mentioned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or separation of the soul from the body , and may perhaps keep the body in sit temper for its re-entry ; as also it may facilitate transformation , which , it may be , could not be effected by ordinary and unassisted imagination . thus we see , 't is not so desperate to form an apprehension of the manner of these odd performances ; and though they are not done the way i have describ'd , yet what i have said may help us to a conceit of the possibility , which sufficeth for my purpose . and though the hypotheses i have gone upon will seem as unlikely to some , as the things they attempt to explain are to others ; yet i must desire their leave to suggest , that most things seem improbable ( especially to the conceited and opinionative ) at first proposal : and many great truths are strange and odd , till custome and acquaintance have reconciled them to our fancies . and i 'le presume to add on this occasion , ( though i love not to be confident in assirming ) that there is none of the platonical supposals i have used , but what i could make appear to be fair and reasonable , to the capable and unprejudic'd . sect . iv. iii. but ( iii. ) i come to another prejudice against the being of witches , which is , that 't is very improbable that the devil , who is a wise and mighty spirit , should be at the beck of a poor hag , and have so little to do , as to attend the errands and impotent lusts of a silly old woman . to which i might answer , ( ) that 't is much more improbable that all the world should be deceiv'd in matters of fact , and circumstances of the clearest evidence and conviction ; than that the devil , who is wicked , should be also unwise ; and that he that perswades all his subjects and accomplices out of their wits , should himself act like his own temptations and perswasions . in brief , there is nothing more strange in this objection , than that wickedness is baseness and servility ; and that the devil is at leisure to serve those , he is at leisure to tempt , and industrious to ruine . and again , ( ) i see no necessity to believe that the devil is always the witches confederate ; but perhaps it may fitly be considered , whether the familiar be not some departed humane spirit , forsaken of god and goodness , and swallowed up by the unsatiable desire of mischief and revenge , which possibly by the laws and capacity of its state it cannot execute immediately . and why we should presume that the devil should have the liberty of wandring up and down the earth and air , when he is said to be held in the chains of darkness ; and yet that the separated souls of the wicked , of whom no such thing is affirm'd in any sacred record , should be thought so imprison'd , that they cannot possibly wag from the place of their confinement , i know no shadow of conjecture . this conceit i 'm confident hath prejudic'd many against the belief of witches and apparitions ; they not being able to conceive that the devil should be so ludicrous as appearing spirits are sometimes reported to be in their frolicks ; and they presume , that souls departed never revisit the free and open regions ; which confidence , i know nothing to justifie : for since good men in their state of separation are said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , why the wicked may not be supposed to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the worst sense of the word , i know nothing to help me to imagine . and if it be supposed that the imps of witches are sometimes wicked spirits of our own kind and nature , and possibly the same that have been sorcerers and witches in this life : this supposal may give a fairer and more probable account of many of the actions of sorcery and witchcraft , than the other hypothesis , that they are always devils . and to this conjecture i 'le adventure to subjoyn another , which also hath its probability , viz. ( ) that 't is not impossible but the familiars of witches are a vile kind of spirits , of a very inferiour constitution and nature , and none of those that were once of the highest hierarchy , now degenerated into the spirits we call devils . and for my part i must confess , that i think the common division of spirits much too general ; conceiving it likely there may be as great a variety of intellectual creatures in the invisible world , as there is of animals in the visible : and that all the superiour , yea , and inferiour regions , have their several kinds of spirits differing in their natural perfections , as well as in the kinds and degrees of their depravities ; which being supposed , 't is very probable that those of the basest and meanest orders are they , who submit to the mention'd servilities . and thus the sagess and grandeur of the prince of darkness need not be brought into question . sect . v. iv. but ( iv ) the opinion of witches seems to some , to accuse providence , and to suggest that it hath exposed innocents to the fury and malice of revengeful fiends ; yea , and supposeth those most obnoxious , for whom we might most reasonably expect a more special tutelary care and protection ; most of the cruel practices of those presum'd instruments of hell , being upon children , who as they least deserve to be deserted by that providence that superintends all things , so they most need its guardian influence . to this so specious an objection i have these things to answer . ( ) providence is an unfathomable depth ; and if we should not believe the phaenomena of our senses , before we can reconcile them to our notions of providence , we must be grosser scepticks than ever yet were extant . the miseries of the present life , the unequal distributions of good and evil , the ignorance and barbarity of the greatest part of mankind , the fatal disadvantages we are all under , and the hazard we run of being eternally miserable and undone ; these , i say , are things that can hardly be made consistent with that wisdom and goodness that we are sure hath made and mingled it self with all things . and yet we believe there is a beauty and harmony , and goodness in that providence , though we cannot unriddle it in particular instances ; nor , by reason of our ignorance and imperfection , clear it from contradicting appearances ; and consequently , we ought not to deny the being of witches and apparitions , because they will create us some difficulties in our notions of providence . but to come more close , ( ) those that believe that infants are heirs of hell , and children of the devil as soon as they are disclosed to the world , cannot certainly offer such an objection ; for what is a little tri●…ling pain of a moment , to those eternal tortures , to which , if they die assoon as they are born , according to the tenour of this doctrine , they are everlastingly exposed ? but however the case stands as to that , 't is certain , ( ) that providence hath not secured them from other violences they are obnoxious to , from cruelty and accident ; and yet we accuse it not when a whole townful of innocents fall a victim to the rage and ferity of barbarous executioners in wars and massacres . to which i add ( ) that 't is likely the mischief is not so often done by the evil spirit immediately , but by the malignant influence of the sorceress , whose power of hurting consists in the fore-mention'd ferment , which is infused into her by the familiar . so that i am apt to think there may be a power of real fascination in the witches eyes and imagination , by which for the most part she acts upon tender bodies . nescio quis teneros oculus — for the pestilential spirits being darted by a spightful and vigorous imagination from the eye , and meeting with those that are weak and passive in the bodies which they enter , will not fail to infect them with a noxious quality that makes dangerous and strange alterations in the person invaded by this poisonous influence : which way of acting by subtile and invisible instruments , is ordinary and familiar in all natural efficiencies . and 't is now past question , that nature for the most part acts by subtile streams and aporrhoea's of minute particles , which pass from one body to another . or however that be , this kind of agency is as conceivable as any of those qualities ignorance hath call'd sympathy and antipathy , the reality of which we doubt not , though the manner of action be unknown . yea , the thing i speak of is as easie to be apprehended , as how infection should pass in certain tenuious streams through the air from one house to another ; or , as how the biting of a mad dog should fill all the blood and spirits with a venomous and malign ferment ; the application of the vertue doing the same in our case , as that of contact doth in this ▪ yea , some kinds of fascination are perform'd in this grosser and more sensible way , as by striking , giving apples , and the like , by which the contagious quality may be transmitted , as we see diseases often are by the touch . now in this way of conjecture a good account may be given why witches are most powerful upon children and timorous persons , viz. because their spirits and imaginations being weak and passive , are not able to resist the fatal invasion ; whereas men of bold minds , who have plenty of strong and vigorous spirits , are secure from the contagion ; as in pestilential airs clean bodies are not so liable to infection as other tempers . thus then we see 't is likely enough , that very often the sorceress her self doth the mischief ; and we know , de facto , that providence doth not always secure us from one anothers injuries : and yet i must confess , that many times also the evil spirit is the mischievous agent ; though this confession draw on me another objection , which i next propose . sect . vi. v. ( v. ) then it may be said , that if wicked spirits can hurt us by the direction , and at the desire of a witch , one would think they should have the same power to do us injury without instigation or compact ; and if this be granted , 't is a wonder that we are not always annoy'd and infested by them . to which i return , ( ) that the laws , liberties , and restraints of the inhabitants of the other world are to us utterly unknown ; and this way we can onely argue our selves into confessions of our ignorance , which every man must acknowledge that is not as immodest as ignorant . it must be granted by all that own the being , power , and malice of evil spirits , that the security we enjoy is wonderful , whether they act by witches or not ; and by what laws they are kept from making us a prey , to speak like philosophers , we cannot tell : yea , why they should be permitted to tempt and ruine us in our souls , and restrain'd from touching or hurting us in our bodies , is a mystery not easily accountable . but yet ( ) though we acknowledge their power to vex and torment us in our bodies also ; yet a reason may be given why they are less frequent in this kind of mischief , viz. because their main designs are levell'd against the interest and happiness of our souls ▪ which they can best promote , when their actions are most sly and secret ; whereas did they ordinarily persecute men in their bodies , their agency and wicked influence would be discover'd , and make a mighty noise in the world , whereby men would be awaken'd to a suitable and vigorous opposition , by the use of such means as would engage providence to rescue them from their rage and cruelties ; and at last defeat them in their great purposes of undoing us eternally . thus we may conceive that the security we enjoy may well enough consist with the power and malice of those evil spirits ; and upon this account we may suppose that laws of their own may prohibit their unlicens'd injuries , not from any goodness there is in their constitutions , but in order to the more successful carrying on the projects of the dark kingdom ; as generals forbid plunder , not out of love to their enemies , but in order to their own success . and hence ( ) we may suppose a law of permission to hurt us at the instance of the sorceress , may well s●…and with the policy of hell , since by gratifying the wicked person , they encourage her in malice and revenge , and promote thereby the main ends of their black confederacy , which are to propagate wickedness , and to ruine us in our eternal interests . and yet ( ) 't is clear to those that believe the history of the gospel , that wicked spirits have vexed the bodies of men , without any instigation that we read of ; and at this day 't is very likely that many of the strange accidents and diseases that befal us , may be the infliction of evil spirits , prompted to hurt us onely by the delight they take in mischief . so that we cannot argue the improbability of their hurting children and others by witches , from our own security and freedom from the effects of their malice , which perhaps we feel in more instances than we are aware of . sect . vii . vi. but ( vi ) another prejudice against the belief of witches , is , a presumption upon the enormous force of melancholy and imagination , which without doubt can do wonderful things , and beget strange perswasions ; and to these causes some ascribe the presum'd effects of sorcery and witchcraft . to which i reply briefly ; and yet i hope sufficiently , ( i. ) that to resolve all the clear circumstances os fact , which we find in well-attested and confirm'd relations of this kind , into the power of deceivable imagination , is to make fancy the greater prodigie ; and to suppose , that it can do stranger feats than are believed of any other kind of fascination . and to think that pins and nails , for instance , can by the power of imagination be convey'd within the skin ; or that imagination should deceive so many as have been witnesses in objects of sense , in all the circumstances of discovery ; this , i say , is to be infinitely more credulous than the assertors of sorcery and demoniack contracts . and by the same reason it may be believ'd , that all the battles and strange events of the world , which our selves have not seen , are but dreams and fond imaginations , and like those that are fought in the clouds , when the brains of the deluded spectators are the onely theatre of those fancied transactions . and ( ) to deny evidence of act , because their imagination may deceive the relators , when we have no reason to think so but a bare presumption that there is no such thing as is related , is quite to destroy the credit of all humane testimony , and to make all men liars in a larger sence than the prophet concluded in his haste . for not onely the melancholick and the fanciful , but the grave and the sober , whose judgements we have no reason to suspect to be tainted by their imaginations , have from their own knowledge and experience made reports of this nature . but to this it will possibly be rejoyn'd , and the reply will be another prejudice against the belief for which i contend , viz. sect . viii . vii . ( vii . ) that 't is a suspicious circumstance that watchcraft is but a fancy , since the persons that are accused are commonly poor and miserable old women , who are overgrown with discontent and melancholy , which are very imaginative ; and the persons said to be bewitch'd are for the most part children , or people very weak , who are easily imposed upon , and are apt to receive strong impressions from nothing : whereas were there any such thing really , 't is not likely , but that the more cunning and subtil desperado's , who might the more successfully carry on the mischievous designs of the dark kingdom , should be oftner engaged in those black confederacies , and also one would expect effects of the hellish combination upon others than the innocent and ignorant . to which objection it might perhaps be enough to return ( as hath been above suggested ) that nothing can be concluded by this and such like arguings , but that the policy and menages of the instruments of darkness are to us altogether unknown , and as much in the dark as their natures ; mankind being no more acquainted with the reasons and methods of action in the other world , than poor cottagers and mechanicks are with the intrigues of government , and reasons of state. yea peradventure ( ) 't is one of the great designs , as 't is certainly the interest of those wicked agents and machinators , industriously to hide from us their influences and ways of acting , and to work , as near as is possible , incognito : upon which supposal 't is easie to conceive a reason , why they most commonly work by , and upon the weak and the ignorant , who can make no cunning observations , or tell credible tales to detect their artifice . besides ( ) 't is likely a strong imagination , that cannot be weaken'd or disturb'd by a busie and subtile ratiocination , is a necessary requisite to those wicked persormances ; and without doubt an heightned and obstinate fancy hath a great influence upon impressible spirits ; yea , and as i have conjectur'd before , on the more passive and susceptible bodies . and i am very apt to believe , that there are as real communications and intercourses between our spirits , as there are between material agents ; which secret influences , though they are unknown in their nature and ways of acting , yet they are sufficiently felt in their effects : for experience attests , that some by the very majesty and greatness of their spirits , discovered by nothing but a certain noble air that accompanies them , will bear down others less great and generous , and make them sneak before them ; and some , by i know not what stupifying vertue , will tie up the tongue , and consine the spirits of those who are otherwise brisk and voluble . which thing supposed , the influences of a spirit possess'd of an active and enormous imagination , may be malign and fatal where they cannot be resisted ; especially when they are accompanied by those poysonous reaks that the evil spirit breathes into the sorceress , which likely are shot out , and applied by a fancy heightned and prepared by melancholy and discontent . and thus we may conceive why the melanchclick and envious are used upon such occasions , and for the same reason the ignorant , since knowledge checks and controuls imagination ; and those that abound much in the imaginative faculties , do not usually exceed in the rational . and perhaps ( ) the daemon himself useth the imagination of the witch so qualified for his purpose , even in those actions of mischief which are more properly his ; for it is most probable , that spirits act not upon bodies immediately , and by their naked essence , but by means proportionate , and sutable instruments that they use ; upon which account likely 't is so strictly required , that the sorceress should believe , that so her imagination might be more at the devotion of the mischievous agent . and sor the same reason also ceremonies are used in inchantments , viz. for the begetting this diabolical faith , and heightning the fancy to a degree of strength and vigour sufficient to make it a fit instrument for the design'd performance . those i think are reasons of likelihood and probability , why the hellish confederates are mostly the ignorant and the melancholick . to pass then to another prejudice . sect . ix . viii . ( viii . ) the frequent impostures that are met with in this kind , beget in some a belief , that all such relations are forgeries and tales ; and if we urge the evidence of a story for the belief of witches or apparitions . they will produce two as seemingly strong and plausible , which shall conclude in mistake or design ; inferring thence , that all others are of the same quality and credit . but such arguers may please to consider , ( ) that a single relation for an assirmative , sufficiently confirmed and at tested , is worth a thousand tales of forgery and imposture , from whence an universal negative cannot be concluded . so that , though all the objectors stories be true , and an hundred times as many more such deceptions ; yet one relation , wherein no fallacy or fraud could be suspected for our assirmative , would spoil any conclusion could be erected on them . and ( ) it seems to me a belief sufficiently bold and precarious , that all these relations of forgery and mistake should be certain , and not one among all those which attest the assirmative reality , with circumstances as good as could be expected , or wish'd , should be true ; but all fabulous and vain . and they have no reason to object credulity to the assertors of sorcery and witchcraft , that can swallow so large a morsel . and i desire such objectors to consider , ( ) whether it be fair to infer , that because there are some cheats and impostures , that therefore there are no realities . indeed frequency of deceit and fallacy will warrant a greater care and caution in examining ; and scrupulosity and shiness of assent to things wherein fraud hath been practised , or may in the least degree be suspected : but , to conclude , because that an old woman's fancy abused her , or some knavish fellows put tricks upon the ignorant and timorous , that theresore whole assises have been a thousand times deceived in judgements upon matters of fact , and numbers of sober persons have been forsivorn in things wherein perjury could not advantage them ; i say , such inferences are as void of reason , as they are of charity and good manners . sect . x. ix . but ( ix ) it may be suggested further , that it cannot be imagin'd what design the devil should have in making those solemn compacts , since persons of such debauch'd and irreclaimable dispositions as those with whom he is supposed to confderate , are pretty securely his , antecedently to the bargain , and cannot be more so by it , since they cannot put their souls out of possibility of the divine grace , but by the sin that is unpardonable ; or if they could so dispose and give away themselves , it will to some seem very unlikely , that a great and mighty spirit should oblige himself to such observances , and keep such ado to secure the soul of a filly body , which 't were odds but it would be his , though he put himself to no further trouble than that of his ordinary temptations . to which suggestions 't were enough to say , that 't is sufficient if the thing be well prov'd , though the design be not known . and to argue negatively à fine , is very unconclusive in such matters . the laws and affairs of the other world ( as hath been intimated ) are vastly differing from those of our regions , and therefore 't is no wonder we cannot judge of their designs , when we know nothing of their menages , and so little of their natures . the ignorant looker-on can't imagine what the limner means by those seemingly rude lines and scrawls which he intends for the rudiments of a picture ; and the figures of mathematick operation are nonsence , and dashes at a venture , to one uninstructed in mechanicks . we are in the dark to one anothers purposes and intendments ; and there are a thousand intrigues in our little matters , which will not presently confess their design even to sagacious inquisitors . and therefore 't is folly and incogitancy to argue any thing one way or other ●…rom the designs of a sort of beings , with whom we so little communicate ; and possibly we can take no more aim , or guess at their projects and designments , than the gazing beasts can do at ours , when they see the traps and gins that are laid for them , but understand nothing what they mean. thus in general . but i attempt something more particularly , in order to which i must premise , that the devil is a name for a body politick , in which there are very different orders and degrees of spirits , and perhaps in as much variety of place and state , as among our selves ; so that 't is not one and the same person that makes all the compacts with those abused and seduced souls , but they are divers , and those 't is like of the meanest and basest quality in the kingdom of darkness : which being supposed , i offer this account of the probable design of those wicked agents , viz. that having none to rule or tyrannize over within the circle of their own nature and government , they affect a proud empire over us , ( the desire of dominion and authority being largely spread through the whole circumference of degenerated nature , especially among those , whose pride was their original transgression ) every one of these then desires to get him vassals to pay him homage , and to be employ'd like slaves in the services of his lusts and appetites ; to gratifie which desire , 't is like enough to be provided and allowed by the constitution of their state and government , that every wicked spirit shall have those souls as his property , and particular servants and attendants , whom he can catch in such compacts ; as those wild beasts that we can take in hunting , are by the allowance of the law our own ; and those slaves that a man hath purchas'd , are his peculiar goods , and the vassals of his will. or rather those deluding fiends are like the seducing fellows we call spirits , who inveigle children by their false and slattering promises , and carry them away to the plantations of america , to be servilely employed there in the works of their profit and advantage . and as those base agents will humour and flatter the simple unwary youth , till they are on shipboard , and without the reach of those that might rescue them from their hands : in like manner the more mischievous tempter studies to gratifie , please , and accommodate those he deals with in this kind , till death hath lanch'd them into the deep , and they are past the danger of prayers , repentance , and endeavours ; and then he useth them as pleaseth him. this account i think is not unreasonable , and 't will fully answer the objection . for though the matter be not as i have conjectur'd , yet 't will suggest a way how it may be conceiv'd ; which nulls the pretence , that the design is unconceivable . sect . xi . x. but then ( x ) we are still liable to be question'd , how it comes about , that those proud and insolent designers practise in this kind upon so few , when one would expect , that they should be still trading this way , and every where be driving on the project , which the vileness of men makes so feisable , and would so much serve the interest of their lusts . to which , among other things that might be suggested , i return , ( ) that we are never liable to be so betrayed and abused , till by our vile dispositions and tendencies we have forfeited the tutelary care , and oversight of the better spirits ; who , though generally they are our guard and defence against the malice and violence of evil angels , yet it may well enough be thought , that sometimes they may take their leave of such as are swallowed up by malice , envie , and desire of revenge , qualities most contrary to their life and nature ; and leave them exposed to the invasion and solicitations of those wicked spirits , to whom such hateful attributes make them very sutable . and if there be particular guardian angels , as 't is not absurd to fancy , it may then well be supposed , that no man is obnoxious to those projects and attempts , but onely such whose vile and mischievous natures have driven from them their protecting genius . and against this dereliction to the power of evil spirits , 't is likely enough what some affirm , that the royal psalmist directs that prayer , psal. lxxi . ix , x. cast me not off in the time of old age ; forsake me not when my strength faileth . for — they that keep my soul [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the lxx and the vulgar latine , qui custodiunt animam meam ] they take counsel together , say ing , god hath forsaken him , persecute him and take him ; for there is none to deliver him . but i add , ( ) that 't is very probable , that the state wherein they are , will not easily permit palpable intercourses between the bad genii and mankind , since 't is like enough that their own laws and government do not allow their frequent excursions into this world. or , it may with as great probability be supposed , that 't is a very hard and painful thing for them , to force their thin and tenuious bodies into a visible consistence , and such shapes as are necessary for their designs in their correspondencies with witches . for in this action their bodies must needs be exceedingly compress'd , which cannot well be without a painful sense . and this is perhaps a reason why there are so few apparitions , and why appearing spirits are commonly in such haste to be gone , viz. that they may be deliver'd from the unnatural pressure of their tender vehicles ; which i confess holds more , in the apparitions of good than evil spirits ; most relations of this kind , describing their discoveries of themselves , as very transient , ( though for those the holy scripture records , there may be peculiar reason , why they are not so ) whereas the wicked ones are not altogether so quick , and hasty in their visits : the reason of which probably is , the great subtilty and tenuity of the bodies of the former , which will require far greater degrees of compression , and consequently of pain , to make them visible ; whereas the latter are more foeculent and gross , and so nearer allied to palpable consistencies , and more easily reduceable to appearance and visibility . at this turn , sir , you may perceive that i have again made use of the platonick hypothesis , that spirits are embodied , upon which indeed a great part of my discourse is grounded : and therefore i hold my self obliged to a short account of that supposal . it seems then to me very probable , from the nature of sense , and analogy of nature . for ( ) we perceive in our selves , that all sense is caused and excited by motion made in matter ; and when those motions which convey sensible impressions to the brain , the seat of sense , are intercepted , sense is lost : so that , if we suppose spirits perfectly to be disjoyn'd from all matter , 't is not conceivable how they can have the sense of any thing ; for how material objects should any way be perceived , or felt , without vital union with matter , 't is not possible to imagine . nor doth it ( ) seem suitable to the analogy of nature , which useth not to make precipitious leaps from one thing to another , but usually proceeds by orderly steps and gradations : whereas were there no order of beings between us , who are so deeply plunged into the grossest matter , and pure unbodied spirits , 't were a mighty jump in nature . since then the greatest part of the world consists of the finer portions of matter , and our own souls are immediately united unto these , 't is infinitely probable to conjecture , that the nearer orders of spirits are vitally joyned to such bodies ; and so nature by degrees ascending still by the more refin'd and subtile matter , gets at last to the pure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or immaterial minds , which the platonists made the highest order of created beings . but of this i have discoursed elsewhere , and have said thus much of it at present , because it will enable me to add another reason of the unfrequency of apparitions and compacts , viz. ( ) because 't is very likely , that these regions are very unsuitable , and disproportion'd to the frame and temper of their senses and bodies ; so that perhaps , the courser spirits can no more bear the air of our world , than bats and owls can the brightest beams of day . nor can the purer and better any more endure the noisom steams , and poysonous reeks of this dunghil earth , than the delicate can bear a confinement in nasty dungeons , and the foul squalid caverns of uncomfortable darkness . so that 't is no more wonder , that the better spirits no oftner appear , than that men are not more frequently in the dark hollows under ground . nor is 't any more strange that evil spirits so rarely visit us , than that fishes do not ordinarily sly in the air , as 't is said one sort of them doth ; or that we see not the batt daily fluttering in the beams of the sun. and now by the help of what i have spoken under this head , i am provided with some things wherewith to disable another objection , which i thus propose . sect . xii . xi . ( xi . ) if there be such an intercourse between evil spirits and the wicked , how comes it about that there is no correspondence between good angels and the vertuous ? since without doubt these are as desirous to propagate the spirit and designs of the upper and better world , as those are to promote the interest of the kingdom of darkness . which way of arguing is still from our ignorance of the state and government of the other world , which must be confest , and may , without prejudice to the proposition i defend . but particularly , i say , ( ) that we have ground enough to believe , that good spirits do interpose in , yea , and govern our affairs . for that there is a providence reaching from heaven to earth , is generally acknowledged ; but that this supposeth all things to be ordered by the immediate influence , and interposal of the supream deity , some think , is not very philosophical to suppose ; since , if we judge by the analogy of the natural world , all things we see are carried on by the ministery of second causes , and intermediate agents . and it doth not seem so magnificent and becoming an apprehension of the supream numen , to fancy his immediate hand in every trivial management . but 't is exceeding likely to conjecture , that much of the government of us , and our affairs , is committed to the better spirits , with a due subordination and subserviency to the will of the chief rector of the universe . and 't is not absurd to believe , that there is a government runs from highest to lowest , the better and more perfect orders of being still ruling the inferiour and less perfect . so that some one would fancy that perhaps the angels may manage us , as we do the creatures that god and nature have placed under our empire and dominion . but however that is , that god rules the lower world by the ministery of angels , is very consonant to the sacred oracles , thus , deut. xxxii . , . when the most high divided the nations their inheritance , when he separated the sons of adam , he set the bounds of the people , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to the number of the angels of god , as the septuagint renders it ; the authority of which translation , is abundantly credited and asserted , by its being quoted in the new testament , without notice of the hebrew text ; even there where it differs from it , as learned men have observed . we know also , that angels were very familiar with the patriarchs of old ; and jacob's ladder is a mystery , which imports their ministring in the affairs of the lower world. thus origen and others understand that to be spoken by the presidential angels , jerem. li. . we would have healed babylon , but she is not healed : forsake her , and let us go . like the voice heard in the temple before the taking of jerusalem by titus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and before nebuchadnezzar was sent to learn wisdom and religion among the beasts , he sees a watcher , according to the . an angel , and an holy one come down from heaven , dan. iv. . who pronounceth the sad decree against him , and calls it the decree of the watchers , who very probably were the guardian-genii of himself and his kingdom . and that there are particular angels that have the special rule and government of particular kingdoms , provinces , cities , yea and of persons , i know nothing that can make improbable : the instance is notorious in daniel , of the angels of persia and graecia , that hindred the other that was engaged for the concerns of judaea : yea , our saviour himself tells us , that children have their angels ; and the congregation of disciples supposed that st. peter had his . which things , if they be granted , the good spirits have not so little to do with us , and our matters , as is generally believed . and perhaps it would not be absurd , if we referr'd many of the strange thwarts , and unexpected events , the disappointments and lucky co-incidences that befal us , the unaccountable fortunes and successes that attend some lucky men , and the unhappy fates that dog others that seem born to be miserable ; the fame and favour that still waits on some without any conceivable motive to allure it , and the general neglect of others more deserving , whose worth is not acknowledg'd ; i say , these , and such like odd things , may with the greatest probability be resolved into the conduct and menages of those invisible supervisors , that preside over , and govern our affairs . but if they so far concern themselves in our matters , how is it that they appear not to maintain a visible and confest correspondence with some of the better mortals , who are most fitted for their communications and their influence ? to which i have said some things already , when i accounted for the unfrequency of apparitions ; and i now add what i intend for another return to the main objection , viz. ( ) that the apparition of good spirits is not needful for the designs of the better world , whatever such may be for the interest of the other . for we have had the appearance and cohabitation of the son of god ; we have moses and the prophets , and the continued influence of the spirit , the greatest arguments to strengthen faith , the most powerful motives to excite our love , and the noblest encouragements to quicken and raise our desires and hopes , any of which are more than the apparition of an angel ; which would indeed be a great gratification of the animal life , but 't would render our ▪ faith less noble and less generous , were it frequently s●… assisted : blessed are they that believe , and yet have not seen . besides which , the good angels have no such ends to prosecute , as the gaining any vassals to serve them , they being ministring spirits for our good , and no self-designers for a proud and insolent dominion over us . and it may be perhaps not impertinently added , that they are not always evil spirits that appear , as is , i know not well upon what grounds , generally imagined ; but that the extraordinary detections of murders , latent treasures , falsified and unfulfilled bequests , which are sometimes made by apparitions , may be the courteous discoveries of the better and more benign genii . yea , 't is not unlikely , that those warnings that the world sometimes hath of approaching judgements and calamities by prodigies , and sundry odd phaenomena , are the kind informations of some of the inhabitants of the upper world . thus , was jerusalem forewarned before its sacking by antiochus , by those airy horsemen that were seen through all the city , for almost forty days together , mac. v. , . and the other prodigious portents that fore-ran its destruction by titus : which i mention , because they are notorious instances . and though , for mine own part , i scorn the ordinary tales of prodigies , which proceed from superstitious fears , and unacquaintance with nature , and have been used to bad purposes by the zealous and the ignorant ; yet i think that the arguments that are brought by a late very ingenious author , to conclude against such warnings and predictions in the whole kind , are short and inconsequent , and built upon too narrow hypotheses . for if it be supposed , that there is a sort of spirits over us , and about us , who can give a probable guess at the more remarkable futurities , i know not why it may not be conjectured , that the kindness they have for us , and the appetite of foretelling strange things , and the putting the world upon expectation , which we find is very grateful to our own natures , may not incline them also to give us some general notice of those uncommon events which they foresee . and i yet perceive no reason we have to fancy , that whatever is done in this kind , must needs be either immediately from heaven , or from the angels , by extraordinary commission and appointment . but it seems to me not unreasonable to believe , that those officious spirits that oversee our affairs , perceiving some mighty and sad alterations at hand , in which their charge is much concerned , cannot chuse , by reason of their affection to us , but give us some seasonable hints of those approaching calamities ; to which also their natural desire to foretel strange things to come , may contribute to incline them . and by this hypothesis , the fairest probabilities , and strongest ratiocinations against prodigies , may be made unserviceable . but this onely by the way . sect . xiii . i desire it may be considered further , ( ) that god himself affords his intimacies and converses to the better souls , that are prepared for it ; which is a priviledge infinitely beyond angelical correspondence . i confess the proud and phantastick pretences of many of the conceited melancholists in this age , to divine communion , have prejudiced divers intelligent persons against the belief of any such happy vouchsafement ; so that they conclude the doctrine of immediate communion with the deity in this life to be but an high-flown notion of warm imagination , and over-luscious self-flattery ; and i acknowledge i have my self had thoughts of this nature , supposing communion with god to be nothing else but the exercise of vertue , and that peace , and those comforts which naturally result from it . but i have considered since , that god's more near and immediate imparting himself to the soul that is prepared for that happiness by divine love , humility , and resignation , in the way of a vital touch , and sense , is a thing possible in it self , and will be a great part of our heaven . that glory is begun in grace , and god is pleased to give some excellent souls the happy antepast . that holy men in ancient times have sought and gloried in this enjoyment , and never complain so sorely as when it was with held , and interrupted . that the expressions of scripture run infinitely this way , and the best of modern good men , do from their own experience attest it . that this spiritualizeth religion , and renders its enjoyments more comfortable and delicious . that it keeps the soul under a vivid sense of god , and is a grand security against temptation . that it holds it steady amid the flatteries of a prosperous state , and gives it the most grounded anchorage and sup port amid the waves of an adverse condition . that 't is the noblest encouragement to vertue . and the biggest assurance of an happy immortality . i say , i considered these weighty things , and wondred at the carelesness and prejudice os thoughts that occasion'd my suspecting the reality of so glorious a priviledge ; i saw how little reason there is in denying matters of inward sense , because our selves do not feel them , or cannot form an apprehension of them in our minds . i am convinced that things of gust and relish must be judg'd by the sentient and vital faculties , and not by the noetical exercises of speculative understandings : and upon the whole , i believe infinitely that the divine spirit affords its sensible presence , and immediate beatifick touch to some rare souls , who are divested of carnal self , and mundane pleasures , abstracted from the body by prayer and holy meditation ; spiritual in their desires , and calm in their affections ; devout lovers of god , and vertue , and tenderly affectionate to all the world ; sincere in their aims , and circumspect in their actions ; inlarged in their souls , and clear in their minds : these i think are the dispositions that are requisite to fit us for divine communion ; and god transacts not in this near way , but with prepared spirits who are thus disposed for the manifestation of his presence , and his influence : and such , i believe , he never fails to bless with these happy foretastes of glory . but for those that are passionate and conceited , turbulent and notional , confident and immodest , imperious and malicious ; that doat upon trifles , and run fiercely in the ways of a sect , that are lifted up in the apprehension of the glorious prerogatives of themselves and their party , and scorn all the world besides ; for such , i say , be their pretensions what they will , to divine communion , illapses , and discoveries , i believe them not ; their fancies abuse them , or they would us . for what communion hath light with darkness , or the spirit of the holy one with those whose genius and ways are so unlike him ? but the other excellent souls i described , will as certainly be visited by the divine presence , and converse , as the crystalline streams are , with the beams of light , or the fitly prepar'd earth whose seed is in it self , will be actuated by the spirit of nature . so that there is no reason to object here the want of angelical communications , though there were none vouchsafed us , since good men enjoy the divine , which are infinitely more satisfactory and indearing . and now i may have leave to proceed to the next objection , which may be made to speak thus : sect . xiv . xii . ( xii . ) the belief of witches , and the wonderful things they are said to perform by the help of the confederate daemon , weakens our faith , and exposeth the world to infidelity in the great matters of our religion . for if they by diabolical assistance , can inflict and cure diseases , and do things so much beyond the comprehension of our philosophy , and activity of common nature ; what assurance can we have , that the miracles that confirm our gospel were not the effects of a compact of like nature , and that devils were not cast out by beelzebub ? if evil spirits can assume bodies , and render themselves visible in humane likeness ; what security can we have of the reality of the resurrection of christ ? and if , by their help , witches can enter chambers invisibly through key-holes and little unperceived crannies , and transform themselves at pleasure ; what arguments of divinity are there in our saviour ' s shewing himself in the midst of his disciples , when the doors were shut , and his transfiguration in the mount ? miracles are the great inducements of belief , and how shall we distinguish a miracle from a lying wonder ; a testimony from heaven , from a trick of the angels of hell ; if they can perform things that astonish and confound our reasons , and are beyond all the possibilities of human nature ? this objection is spiteful and mischievous ; but i thus endeavour to dispatch it . ( ) the wonders done by confederacy with wicked spirits , cannot derive a suspicion upon the undoubted miracles that were wrought by the author and promulgers of our religion , as if they were performed by diabolical compact , since their spirit , endeavours , and designs , were notoriously contrary to all the tendencies , aims , and interests of the kingdom of darkness . for , as to the life and temper of the blessed and adorable jesus , we know there was an incomparable sweetness in his nature , humility in his manners , calmness in his temper , compassion in his miracles , modesty in his expressions , holiness in all his actions , hatred of vice and baseness , and love to all the world ; all which are essentially contrary to the nature and constitution of apostate spirits , who abound in pride and rancour , insolence and rude ness , tyranny and baseness , universal malice , and hatred of men. and their designs are as opposite , as their spirit and their genius . and now , can the sun borrow its light from the bottomless abyss ? can heat and warmth flow in upon the world from the regions of sno●… and ice ? can fire freeze , and water burn ▪ can natures , so infinitely contrary , communicate , and jump in projects that are destructive to each others known interests ? is there any balsom in the cockatrices egg ? or , can the spirit of life slow from the venome of the asp ? will the prince of darkness strengthen the arm that is stretcht out to pluck his usurpt scepter , and his spoils from him ? and will he lend his legions , to assist the armies of his enemy against him ? no , these are impossible supposals ; no intelligent being will industriously and knowingly contribute to the contradiction of its own principles , the defeature of its purposes , and the ruine of its own dearest interests . there is no fear then , that our faith should receive prejudice from the acknowledgement of the being of witches , and power of evil spirits , since 't is not the doing wonderful things that is the onely evidence that the holy jesus was from god , and his doctrine true ; but the conjunction of other circumstances , the holiness of his life , the reasonableness of his religion , and the excellency of his designs , added credit to his works , and strengthned the great conclusion , that he could be no other than the son of god , and saviour of the world . but besides , i say , ( ) that since infinite wisdom and goodness rules the world , it cannot be conceived , that they should give up the greatest part of men to unavoidable deception . and if evil angels by their confederates are permitted to perform such astonishing things , as seem so evidently to carry god's seal and power with them , for the confirmation of falshoods , and gaining credit to impostors , without any counter-evidence to disabuse the world ; mankind is exposed to sad and fatal delusion . and to say that providence will suffer us to be deceived in things of the greatest concernment , when we use the best of our care and endeavours to prevent it , is to speak hard things of god ; and in effect to affirm , that he hath nothing to do in the government of the world , or doth not concern himself in the affairs of poor forlorn men . and if the providence and goodness of god be not a security unto us against such deceptions , we cannot be assured , but that we are always abused by those mischievous agents , in the objects of plain sense , and in all the matters of our daily converses . if one that pretends he is immediately sent from god , to overthrow the ancient fabrick of established worship , and to erect a new religion in his name , shall be born of a virgin , and honour'd by a miraculous star ; proclaimed by a song of seeming angels of light , and worshipped by the wise sages of the world ; revered by those of the greatest austerity , and admired by all for a miraculous wisdom , beyond his education and his years : if he shall feed multitudes with almost nothing , and fast himself beyond all the possibilities of nature : if he shall be transformed into the appearance of extraordinary glory , and converse with departed prophets in their visible forms : if he shall cure all diseases without physick or endeavour , and raise the dead to life after they have stunk in their graves : if he shall be honoured by voices from heaven , and attract the universal wonder of princes and people : if he shall allay tempests with a beck , and cast out devils with a word : if he shall foretel his own death particularly , with its tragical circumstances , and his resurrection after it : if the veil of the most famous temple in the world shall be rent , and the sun darkned at his funeral : if he shall , within the time foretold , break the bonds of death , and lift up his head out of the grave : if multitudes of other departed souls shall arise with him , to attend at the solemnity of his resurrection : if he shall after death , visibly converse , and eat and drink with divers persons , who could not be deceived in a matter of clear sense , and ascend in glory in the presence of an astonisht and admiring multitude : i say , if such a one as this should prove a diabolical impostor , and providence should permit him to be so credited and acknowledged ; what possibility were there then for us to be assured , that we are not always deceived ? yea , that our very faculties were not given us onely to delude and abuse us ? and if so , the next conclusion is , that there is no god that judgeth in the earth ; and the best , and most likely hypothesis will be , that the world is given up to the government of the devil . but if there be a providence that superviseth us . ( as nothing is more certain ) doubtless it will never suffer poor helpless creatures to be inevitably deceived by the craft and subtilty of their mischievous enemy , to their undoing ; but will without question take such care , that the works wrought by divine power for the confirmation of divine truth , shall have such visible marks and signatures , if not in their nature , yet in their circumstances , ends , and designs , as shall discover ▪ whence they are , and sufficiently distinguish them from all impostures and delusions . and though wicked spirits may perform some strange things that may excite wonder for a while , yet he hath , and will so provide , that they shall be baffled and discredited ; as we know it was in the case of moses and the aegyptian magicians . these things i count sufficient to be said to this last , and shrewdest objection ; though some , i understand , except , that i have made it stronger than the answer i have applied . that i have urged the argument of unbelievers home , and represented it in its full strength , i suppose can be no matter of just reproof : for to triumph over the weakness of a cause , and to overlook its strength , is the trick of shallow and interessed disputers , and the worst way to defend a good cause , or confute a bad one . i have therefore all along urged the most cogent things i could think of , for the interest of the objectors , because i would not impose upon my reader or my self ; and the stronger i make their premises , the more shall i weaken their conclusion , if i answer them ; which whether i have done , or not , i refer my self to the judgments of the ingenious and considerate ; from whom i should be very glad to be informed in what particular points my discourse is defective . general charges are no proofs , nor are they easily capable of an answer . yet , to the mention'd exception i say that the strength of the objection is not my fault , for the reasons alledg'd ; and for the supposed incompetency of my return , i propose , that if the circumstances of the persons , ends , and issues be the best notes of distinction between true miracles and forgeries , divine and diabolical ones , i have then said enough to secure the miracles of our saviour , and the holy men of ancient times . but if these objectors think , they can give us any better , or more infallible criteria , i desire them to weigh what i have offer'd about miracles in some of the following leaves , before they enter that thought among their certainties . and if their other marks of difference will hold , notwithstanding those allegations , i suppose the inquisitive believing world would be glad to know them ; and i shall have particular obligations to the discoverer , for the strength with which he will thereby assist my answer . but till i see that , i can say nothing stronger ; or if i saw it , which i shall not in haste expect , i should not be convinced but that the circumstances of difference which i have noted , are abundantly sufficient to disarm the objection ; and to shew , that though apparitions , witchcraft , and daibolical wonders are admitted : yet none of these can fasten any slurre , or ground of dangerous doubt upon the miraculous performances of the h. jesus and his apostles . if the dissatisfied can shew it , i shall yield my self an humble - proselyte to their reasons ; but till i know them , the general suggestion will not convince me . now , besides what i have directly said to the main objection , i have this to add to the objectors , that i could wish they would take care of such suggestions ; which , if they overthrow not the opinion they oppose , will dangerously affront the religion they would seem to acknowledge . for he that saith , that if there are witches , there is no way to prove that christ jesus was not a magician , and diabolical impostor , puts a deadly weapon into the hands of the infidel , and is himself next door to the sin against the holt ghost : of which , in order to the perswading greater tenderness and caution in such matters , i give this short account . sect . xv. the sin against the holy ghost is said to be unpardonable ; by which sad attribute , and the discourse of our saviour , matth●… xii . from the . to the . verse , we may understand its nature . in order to which we consider , that since the mercies of god , and the merits of his son , are infinite , there is nothing can make a sin unpardonable , but what makes it incurable ; and there is no sin but what is curable by a strong faith , and a vigorous endeavour : for all things are possible to him that believeth . so that , that which makes a sin incurable , must be somewhat that makes faith impossible , and obstructs all means of conviction . in order to the sinding which , we must consider the ways and methods the divine goodness hath taken , sor the begetting faith , and cure of infidelity : which it attempted , first , by the prophets , and holy men of ancient times , who , by the excellency of their doctrine , the greatness of their miracles , and the holiness of their lives , endeavoured the conviction and reformation of a stubborn and unbelieving world. but though few believed their report , and men would not be prevail'd on by what they did , or what they said ; yet their insidelity was not hitherto incurable , because further means were provided in the ministry of john the baptist , whose life was more severe , whose doctrines were more plain , pressing , and particular ; and therefore 't was possible that he might have succeeded . yea , and where he failed , and could not open mens hearts and their eyes , the effect was still in possibility , and it might be expected from him that came after , to whom the prophets and john were but the twilight and the dawn . and though his miraculous birth , the song of angels , the journey of the wise men of the east , and the correspondence of prophecies , with the circumstances of the first appearance of the wonderful infant : i say , though these had not been taken notice of , yet was there a further provision made for the cure of infidelity , in his astonishing wisdom , and most excellent doctrines ; for , he spake as never man did . and when these were despised and neglected , yet there were other means towards conviction , and cure of unbelief , in those mighty works that bore testimony of him , and wore the evident marks of divine power in their foreheads . but when after all , these clear and unquestionable miracles which were wrought by the spirit of god , and had eminently his superscription on them , shall be ascribed to the agency of evil spirits , and diabolical compact , as they were by the malicious and spightful pharisees in the periods above-mentioned ; when those great and last testimonies against infidelity , shall be said to be but the tricks of sorcery , and complotment with hellish confederates , this is blasphemy in the highest , against the power and spirit of god , and such as cuts off all means of conviction , and puts the unbeliever beyond all possibilities of cure. for miracles are god's seal , and the great and last evidence of the truth of any doctrine . and though , while these are onely disbelieved as to the fact , there remains a possibility of perswasion ; yet , when the fact shall be acknowledg'd , but the power blasphemed , and the effects of the adorable spirit maliciously imputed to the devils ; such a blasphemy , such an infidelity is incurable , and consequently unpardonable . i say , in sum , the sin against the holy ghost seems to be a malicious imputation of the miracles wrought by the spirit of god in our saviour , to satanical confederacy , and the power of apostate spirits ; than which nothing is more blasphemous , and nothing is more like to provoke the holy spirit that is so abused , to an eternal dereliction of so vile and so incurable an unbeliever . this account , as 't is clear and reasonable in it self , so it is plainly lodg'd in the mention'd discourse of our saviour . and most of those that speak other things about it , seem to me to talk at random , and perfectly without book . but to leave them to the fondness of their own conceits , i think it now time to draw up to a conclusion of the whole . sect . xvi . therefore briefly , sir , i have endeavoured in these papers , which my respect and your concernment in the subject have made yours , to remove the main prejudices i could think of , against the existence of witches and apparitions : and i 'm sure i have suggested much more against what i defend , than ever i heard or saw in any that opposed it ; whose discourses , for the most part , have seemed to me inspired by a lofty scorn of common belief , and some trivial notions of vulgar philosophy . and in despising the common faith about matters of fact , and fondly adhering to it in things of speculation , they very grosly and absurdly mistake : for in things of fact , the people are as much to be believed , as the most subtile philosophers and speculators ; since here , sense is the judge . but in matters of notions and theory , they are not at all to be heeded , because reason is to be judge of these , and this they know not how to use . and yet thus it is with those wise philosophers , that will deny the plain evidence of the senses of mankind , because they cannot reconcile appearances with the fond crotchets of a philosophy , which they lighted on in the high-way by chance , and will adhere to at adventure . so that i profess , for mine own part , i never yet heard any of the confident declaimers against witcheraft and apparitions , speak any thing that might move a mind , in any degree instructed in the generous kinds of philosophy and nature of things . and sor the objections i have recited , they are most of them such as rose out of mine own thoughts , which i obliged to consider what was possible to be said upon this occasion . for though i have examined scot's discovert , fancying that there i should find the strong reasons of mens disbelief in this matter ; yet i profess i met not with the least suggestion in all that farrago , but what it had been ridiculous for me to have gone about to answer : for the author doth little but tell odd tales , and silly legends , which he confutes and laughs at , and pretends this to be a confutation of the being of witches and apparitions in all which , his reasonings are trifting and childish ; and when he ventures at philosophy , he is little better than absurd : so that 't will be a wonder to me , if any but boyes and buffoons imbibe any prejudices against a belief so infinitely confirmed , from the loose and impotent suggestions of so weak a discourser . but however , observing two things in that discourse that would pretend to be more than ordinary reasons , i shall do them the civility to examine them . it is said then , ( ) that the gospel is silent , as to the being of witches ; and 't is not likely , if there were such , but that our saviour or his apostles had given intimations of their existence . the other is , ( ) miracles are ceased , and therefore the prodigious things ascribed to witchcraft are supposed dreams and impostures . for answer to the first in order , i consider ( ) that though the history of the new testament were granted to be silent in the business of witches and compacts , yet the records of the old have a frequent mention of them . the law , exod. xxii . . against permitting them to live ( which i mention'd in the beginning ) is famous . and we have another remarkable prohibition of them , deut. xviii . , . there shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter pass through the fire , or that useth divination , or an observer of times , or an enchanter , or a witch , or a charmer , or a consulter with familiar spirits , or a wizzard , or a necromancer . now this accumulation of names , ( some of which are of the same sence and import ) is a plain indication that the hebrew witch was one that practised by compact with evil spirits . and many of the same expressions are put together in the charge against manasses , ii chron. xxxiii . viz. that he caused his children to pass through the fire , observed times , used enchantments , and witchcraft , and dealt with familiar spirits , and with wizzards . so that though the original word which we render witch and witchcraft , should , as our sadducees urge , signifie onely a cheat and a potsoner ; yet those others mention'd , plainly enough speak the thing ; and i have given an account in the former considerations , how a witch in the common notion is a poysoner . but why mere poysoning should have a distinct law against it , and not be concluded under the general one against murder ; why mere legerdemain and cheating should be so severely animadverted on , as to be reckon'd with enchantments , converse with devils , and idolatrous practices : i believe the denier of witches will find it hard to give a reason . to which i may add some other passages of scripture that yield sufficient evidence in the case . the nations are forbid to hearken to the diviners , dreamers , enchanters , and sorcerer's , jer. xxvii . . the chaldoeans are deeply threatned for their sorceries and enchantments , isa. xlvii . . and we read that nebuchadnezzar called the magicians , astrologers , sorcerers , and chaldoeans , to tell his dream . my mention of which last , minds me to say , that for ought i have to the contrary , there may be a sort of witches and magicians that have no familiars , that they know , nor any express compact with apostate spirits ; who yet may perhaps act strange things by diabolick aids , which they procure by the use of those forms , and wicked arts that the devil did first impart to his confederates : and we know not but the laws of that dark kingdom may enjoyn a particular attendance upon all those that practise their mysteries , whether they know them to be theirs , or not . for a great interest of their empire may be served by this project , since those that find such success in the unknown conjurations , may by that be toll'd on to more express transactions with those fiends , that have assisled them incognito : or , if they proceed not so far , yet they run upon a rock by acting in the dark , and dealing in unknown and unwarranted arts , in which the effect is much beyond the proper efficiency of the things they use , and affords ground of more than supicion that some evil spirit is the agent in those wondrous performances . upon this account i say , it is not to me unlikely but that the devils may by their own constitution be bound to attend upon all that use their ceremonies and forms , though ignorantly , and without design of evil ; and so conjuration may have been performed by those who are none of the covenant-sorcerers and witches . among those perhaps we may justly reckon balaam , and the diviners . for balaam , moncoeus hath undertaken to clear him from the guilt of the greater sorcery . and the diviners are usually distinctly mentioned from those that had familiar spirits . the astrologers also of elder times , and those of ours , i take to have been of this sort of magicians , and some of them under the colour of that mystical science , worse . and i question not , but that things are really done , and foretold by those pretended artists , that are much beyond the regular possibilities of their art ; which in this appears to be exceedingly uncertain and precarious , in that there are no less than six ways of erecting a scheme , in each of which the prediction of events shall be different , and yet every one of them be justifiable by the rules of that science . and the principles they go upon , are found to be very arbitrary and unphilosophical , not by the ordinary declaimers against it , but by the most profound inquirers into things , who perfectly understand the whole mystery , and are the onely competent judges . now those mystical students may in their first addresses to this science , have no other design , but the satisfaction of their curiosity to know remote and hidden things ; yet that in the progress being not satisfied within the bounds of their art , doth many times tempt the curious inquirer to use worse means of information ; and no doubt those mischievous spirits that are as vigilant as the beasts of prey , and watch all occasions to get us within their envious reach , are more constant attenders , and careful spyes upon the actions and inclinations of such , whose genius and designs prepare them for their temptations . so that i look on judicial astrology as a fair introduction to sorcery and witchcraft . and who knows but that it was first set on foot by the infernal hunters , as a lure to draw the curioso's into those snares that lie hid beyond it . and yet i believe also , it may be innocently enough studied by those , that aim onely to understand what it is , and how far it will honestly go ; and are not willing to condemn any thing which they do not comprehend . but that they must take care to keep themselves within the bounds of sober enquiry , and not indulge irregular solicitudes about the knowledge of things which providence hath thought fit to conceal from us ; which whoever doth , lays himself open to the designs and solicitations of evil spirits ; and i believe there are very few among those who have been addicted to those strange arts of wonder , and proediction , but have found themselves attacqued by some unknown solicitors , and inticed by them to the more dangerous actions and correspondencies . for as there are a sort of base and sordid spirits that attend the envy and malice of the ignorant , and viler sort of persons , and betray them into compacts by promises of revenge : so , no doubt , there are a kind of more airy , and speculative fiends , of an higher rank and order than those wretched imps , who apply themselves to the curious ; and many times prevail with them by offers of the more recondite knowledge . as we know it was in the first temptation . yea , and sometimes they are so cautious , and wary in their conversations with more refined persons , that they never offer to make any express covenants with them . and to this purpose i have been informed by a very learned and reverend doctor , that one mr. edwards a master of arts of trin. coll. in cambridge being reclaimed from conjuration , declared in his repentance , that the doemon always appeared to him like a man of good fashion , and never required any compact from him . and no doubt , they sort themselves agreeably to the state , port , and genius of those with whom they converse : yea , 't is like , as i conjectured , are assistant sometimes to those , to whom they dare not shew themselves in any openness of appearance , lest they should fright them from those ways of sin and temptation . so that we see , that men may act by evil spirits without their own knowledge that they do so . and possibly nebuchadnezzar's wisemen might be of this sort of magicians ; which supposal i mention the rather , because it may serve me against some things that may be objected : for , it may be said , if they had been in consederacy with devils , it is not probable , that daniel would have been their advocate , or in such inoffensive terms have distinguisht their skill , from divine revelation ; nor should he , one would think , have accepted the office of being provost over them . these circumstances may be supposed to intimate a probability , that the magi of babylon were in no profest diabolical complotment , and i grant it . but yet they might , and in all likelihood did , use the arts and methods of action , which obtain demonaick co-operation and assistance , though without their privity , and so they were a less criminal sort of conjurers ; for those arts were conveyed down along to them from one hand to another , and the successours still took them up from those that preceded without a philosophical scrutiny , or examen . they saw strange things were done , and events predicted by such forms , and such words ; how , they could not tell , nor 't is like , did not inquire ; but contented themselves with this general account , that 't was by the power of their arts , and were not sollicitous for any better reason . this i say was probably the case of most of those predictors , though , it may be , others of them advanced further into the more desperate part of the mystery . and that some did immediately transact with appearing evil spirits in those times , is apparent enough from express mention in the scriptures i have alledg'd . and the story of the witch of endor , sam. xxviii . is a remarkable demonstration of the main conclusion ; which will appear when we have considered and removed the fancy , and glosses of our author about it , in his discovert : where to avoid this evidence , he affirms , this witch to be but a cozener , and the whole transaction a cheat and imposture , managed by her self and a confederate . and in order to the perswading this , he tells a fine tale , viz. that she departed from saul into her closet , where doubtless , says he , she had a familiar , some lewd crafty priest , and made saul stand at the door like a fool , to hear the cozening answers . he saith , she there used the ordinary words of conjuration ; and after them , samuel appears , whom he affirms to be no other than either the witch her self , or her confederate . by this pretty knack and contrivance he thinks he hath disabled the relation from signifying to our purpose . but the discoverer might have considered , that all this is an invention , and without book . for there is no mention of the witches closet , or her retiring into another room , or her confederate , or her form of conjuration : i say , nothing of all this , is as much as intimated in the history ; and if we may take this large liberty in the interpretation of scripture , there is scarce a story in thē bible but may be made a fallacy , and imposture , or any thing that we please . nor is this fancy of his onely arbitrary , but indeed contrary to the circumstances of the text. for it says , saul perceived it was samuel , and bowed himself , and this samuel truly foretold his approaching fate , viz. that israel should be delivered with him into the hands of the philistines ; and that on the morrow he and his sons should be in the state of the dead , which doubtless is meant by the expression , that [ they should be with him . ] which contingent particulars , how could the cozener and her confederate foretel , if there were nothing in it extraordinary and preternatural ? it hath indeed been a great dispute among interpreters , whether the real samuel was rai sed , or the devil in his likeness ? most later writers suppose it to have been an evil spirit , upon the supposition that good and happy souls can never return hither from their coelestial abodes ; and they are not certainly at the beck and call of an impious hagg. but then those of the other side urge , that the piety of the words that were spoke , and the seasonable reproof given to despairing saul , are indications sufficient that they come not from hell ; and especially they think the prophecie of circumstances very accidental to be an argument , that it was not utter'd by any of the infernal predictors . and for the supposal that is the ground of that interpretation , 't is judged exceedingly precarious ; for who saith that happy departed souls were never employed in any ministeries here below ? and those dissenters are ready to ask a reason , why they may not be sent in messages to earth , as well as those of the angelical order ? they are nearer allied to our natures , and upon that account more intimately concerned in our assairs ; and the example of returning lazarus is evidence of the thing de facto . besides which , that it was the real samuel they think made probable by the opinion of jesus the son of syrac , ecclus. xlvi . , . who saith of him , that after his death he prophesied and shewed the king his end : which also is likely from the circumstance of the womans astonishment , and crying out when she saw him , intimating her surprize , in that the power of god had over-ruled her enchantments , and sent another than she expected . and they conceive there is no more incongruity in supposing god should send samuel to rebuke saul for this his last folly , and to predict his instant ruine , than in his interposing elias to the messengers of ahazias when he sent to beelzebub . now if it were the real samuel , as the letter expresseth , ( and the obvious sence is to be followed when there is no cogent reason to decline it ) he was not raised by the power of the witches enchantments , but came on that occasion in a divine errand . but yet attempts and endeavours to raise her familiar spirit , ( though at that time over-ruled ) are arguments that it had been her custom to do so . or if it were as the other side concludes , the devil in the shape of samuel , her diabolical confederacy is yet more palpable . sect . xviii . i have now done with scot , and his presumptions ; and am apt to fancy , that there is nothing more needful to be said to discover the discoverer . but there is an author infinitely more valuablè , that calls me to consider him , 't is the great episcopius , who , though he grants a sort of witches and magicians , yet denies compacts . his authority , i consess , is considerable , but let us weigh his reasons . his first is , that there is no example of any of the prophane nations that were in such compact ; whence he would infer , that there are no express covenants with evil spirits in particular instances . but i think that both proposition and consequence , are very obnoxious and defective . for that there were nations that did actually worship the devil is plain enough in the records of ancient times , and some so read that place in the psalms , the gods of the heathen are devils ; and sathan we know is call'd the god of this world. yea , our author himself confesseth that the nation of the jews were so strictly prohibited witchcraft , and all transaction with evil spirits ; because of their proneness to worship them . but what need more ? there are at this day that pay sacrifice , and all sacred homage to the wicked d●…e in a visible appearance ; and 't is well known to those of our own that traffick , and reside in those parts , that the caribbians worship the devil under the name of maboya , who frequently shews himself , and transacts with them ; the like travellers relate concerning divers other parts of the barbarous indies : and 't is confidently reported by sober intelligent men that have visited those places , that most of the laplanders , and some other northern people , are witches . that 't is plain that there are national confederacies with devils ; or , if there were none , i see not how it could be inferred thence , that there are no personal ones , no more , than that there were never any doemoniacks , because we know of no nation universally possessed ; nor any lunaticks in the world , because there is no country of madmen . but our author reasons again , ( ) to this purpose ; that the profligate persons who are obnoxious to those gross temptations , are fast enough before ; and therefore such a covenant were needless , and of no avail to the tempters projects . this objection i have answered already , in my remarques upon the ix prejudice ; and mind you again here , that if the designs of those evil spirits were onely in general to secure wicked men to the dark kingdom , it might better be pretended that we cannot give a reason for their temptations , and endeavours in this kind ; but it being likely , as i have conjectur'd , that each of those infernal tempters hath a particular property in those he hath seduced , and secured by such compacts , their respective pride and tyrannical desire of slaves , may reasonably be thought to engage them in such attempts in which their so peculiar interest is concerned . but i add what is more direct , viz. that such desperate sinners are made more safe to the infernal kingdom at large , by such hellish covenants and combinations ; since thereby they confirm , and harden their hearts against god , and put themselves at greater distance from his grace , and his spirit ; give the deepest wound to conscience , and resolve to wink against all its light and convictions ; throw a bar in the way of their own repentance , and lay a train for despair of mercy . these certainly are sure ways of being undone , and the devil we see , hath great interest in a project , the success of which is so attended . and we know he made the assault de facto upon our saviour , when he tempted him to fall down , and worship . so that this learned author hath but little reason to object ( ) that to endeavour such an express covenant is contrary to the interests of hell ; which indeed are this way so mightily promoted . and whereas he suggests , that a thing so horrid is like to startle conscience , and awaken the soul to consideration and repentance : i reply , that indeed considering man in the general , as a rational creature , acted by hopes , and fears , and sensible of the joyes and miseries of another world , one would expect it should be so : but then , if we cast our eyes upon man as really he is , sunk into flesh and present sense ; darkned in his mind , and governed by his imagination ; blinded by his passions , and besotted by sin and folly ; hardned by evil customs , and hurried away by the torrent of his inclinations and desires : i say , looking on man in this miserable state of evil , 't is not incredible that he should be prevailed upon by the tempter , and his own lusts to act at a wonderful rate of madness , and continue unconcerned and stupid in it ; intent upon his present satisfactions , without sense or consideration of the dreadfulness and danger of his condition ; and by this i am furnished also to meet a fourth objection of our author's , viz. ( ) that 't is not probable upon the witches part , that they will be so desperate to renounce god and eternal happiness , and so , everlastingly undo their bodies and souls , for a short and trivial interest ; which way of arguing will onely infer , that mankind acts sometimes to prodigious degrees of brutishness ; and actually we see it in the instances of every day . there is not a lust so base , and so contemptible , but there are those continually , in our eyes , that feed it with the sacrifice of their eternity , and their souls ; and daring sinners rush upon the blackest villanies with so little remorse , or sense , as if it were their design to prove , that they have nothing left them of that whereby they are men . so that nought can be inferred from this argument , but that humane nature is incredibly degenerate ; and the vileness and stupidity of men is really so great , that things are customary , and common , which one could not think possible , if he did not hourly see them . and if men of liberal education , and acute reason , that know their duty , and their danger , are driven by their appetites , with their eyes open , upon the most fatal rocks , and make all the haste they can from their god , and their happiness ; if such can barter their souls for trifles , and sell everlastingness for a moment , sport upon the brink of a precipice , and contemn all the terrours of the future dreadful day ; why should it then be incredible that a brutish , vile person , sotted with ignorance , and drunk with malice , mindless of god , and unconcerned about a future being , should be perswaded to accept of present , delightful gratifications , without duly weighing the desperate condition ? thus , i suppose , i have answered also the arguments of this great man , against the covenants of witches ; and since a person of such sagacity and learning , hath no more to say against what i defend , and another of the same character , the ingenious mr. s. parker , who directed me to him , reckons these the strongest things that can be objected in the case , i begin to arrive to an higher degree of confidence in this belief ; and am almost inclined to fancy , that there is little more to be said to purpose , which may not by the improvement of my considerations be easily answered ; and i am yet the more fortified in my conceit , because i have since the former edition of this book , sent to several acute and ingenious persons of my acquaintance , to beg their objections , or those they have heard from others , against my discourse or relations , that i might consider them in this : but i can procure none save onely those few i have now discuss'd , most of my friends telling me , that they have not met with any that need , or deserve my notice . sect . xix . by all this it is evident , that there were witches in ancient times under the dispensation of the law ; and that there were such in the times of the gospel also , will not be much more difficult to make good . i had a late occasion to say something about this , in a letter to a person of the highest honour , from which i shall now borrow some things to my present purpose . i say then ( ii ) that there were compacts with evil spirits in those times also , is methinks intimated strongly in that saying of the jews concerning our saviour , that he cast out devils by beelzebub . in his return to which , he denies not the supposition or possibility of the thing in general ; but clears himself by an appeal to the actions of their own children , whom they would not tax so severely . and i cannot very well understand why those times should be priviledged from witchcraft , and diabolical compacts , more than they were from possessions , which we know were then more frequent ( for ought appears to the contrary ) than ever they were before or since . but besides this , there are intimations plain enough in the apostles writings of the being of sorcery and witchcraft . st. paul reckons witchcraft next idolatry , in his catalogue of the works of the flesh , gal. v. . and the sorcerers are again joyn'd with idolaters in that sad denunciation , rev. xxi . . and a little after , rev. xxii . . they are reckoned again among idolaiers , murderers , and those others that are without . and methinks the story of simon magus , and his diabolical oppositions of the gospel in its beginnings , should af●…ord clear conviction . to all which , i add this more general consideration , ( ) that though the new testament had mention'd nothing of this matter , yet its silence in such cases is not argumentative . our saviour spake as he had occasion , and the thousandth part of what he did , and said , is not recorded , as one of his historians intimates . he said nothing of those large unknown tracts of america , nor gave he any intimations of as much as the existence of that numerous people ; much less did he leave instructions about their conversion . he gives no account of the affairs and state of the other world , but onely that general one of the happiness of some , and the misery of others . he made no discovery of the magnalia of art or nature ; no , not of those , whereby the propagation of the gospel might have been much advanced , viz. the mystery of printing , and the magnet ; and yet no one useth his silence in these instances as an argument against the being of things , which are evident objects of sense . i confess , the omission of some of these particulars is pretty strange , and unaccountable , and concludes our ignorance of the reasons , and menages of providence ; but i suppose , nothing else . i thought , i needed here to have said no more , but i consider , in consequence of this objection , it is pretended ; that as christ jesus drive the devil from his temples , and his altars , ( as is clear in the cessation of oracles , which dwindled away , and at last grew silent shortly upon his appearance ) so in like manner , 't is said , that he banisht him from his lesser holds in sorcerers , and witches ; which argument is peccant both in what it affirms , and in what it would infer . for ( ) the coming of the h. jesus did not expel the devil from all the greater places of his residence and worship ; for a considerable part of barbarous mankind do him publick , solemn homage , to this day : so that the very foundation of the pretence fails , and the consequence without any more ado comes to nothing . and yet besides , ( ) if there be any credit to be given to ecclesiastick history , there were persons possessed with devils some ages after christ , whom the disciples cast out by prayer , and the invocation of his name : so that sathan was not driven from his lesser habitations , assoon as he was forced from his more famous abodes . and i see no reason ( ) why , though divine providence would not allow him publiquely to abuse the nations , whom he had designed in a short time after , for subjects of his son's kingdom , and to stand up in the face of religion in an open affront to the divinity that planted it , to the great hindrance of the progress of the gospel , and discouragement of christian hopes ; i say , though providence would not allow this height of insolent opposition ; yet i see not why we may not grant , that god however permitted the devil to sneak into some private skulking holes , and to trade with the particular more devoted vassals of his wicked empire : as we know that when our saviour had chased him from the man that was possessed , he permitted his retreat into the herd of swine . and i might add , ( ) that 't is but a bad way of arguing , to set up phancied congruities against plain experience , as is evidently done by those arguers , who , because they think that christ chased the devil from all his high places of worship when he came ; that 't is therefore fit he should have forced him from all his other less notorious haunts : and upon the imagination of a decency , which they frame , conclude a fact , contrary to the greatest evidence of which the thing is capable . and once more ( ) the consequence of this imagined decorum , if it be pursued , would be this , that sathan should now be deprived of all the ways , and tricks of cozenage , whereby he abuseth us ; and mankind since the coming of christ , should have been secure from all his temptations ; for there is a greater congruity in believing , that , when he was sorced from his haunts in temples and publick places , he should be put also from those nearer ones , about us and within us in his daily temptations of universal mankind ; than , that upon relinquishing those , he should be made to leave all profest communication and correspondence with those profligate persons , whose vileness had fitted them for such company . so that these reasoners are very fair for the denial of all internal diabolical temptations . and because i durst not trust them , i 'le crave your leave here to add some things concerning those . in order to which , that i may obtain the favour of those wary persons , who are so coy , and shy of their assent , i grant ; that men frequently out of a desire to excuse themselves , lay their own guilt upon the devil , and charge him with things of which in earnest he is not guilty : for , i doubt not but every wicked man hath devil enough in his own nature to prompt him to evil , and needs not another tempter to incite him . but yet , that sathan endeavours to further our wickedness , and our ruine by his inticements , and goes up and down seeking whom he may devour , is too evident in the holy oracles , to need my endeavours particularly to make it good ; only those diffident men cannot perhaps apprehend the manner of the operation , and from thence are tempted to believe , that there is really no such thing . therefore i judge it requisite to explain this , and 't is not unsutable to my general subject . in order to it i consider , that sense is primarily caused by motion in the organs , which by continuity is conveyed to the brain , where sensation is immediately performed ; and it is nothing else , but a notice excited in the soul by the impulse of an external object . thus it is in simple outward sense . but imagination , though caused immediately by material motion also , yet it differs from the external senses in this , that 't is not from an impress directly from without , but the prime , and original motion is from within our selves : thus the soul it self sometimes strikes upon those strings , whose motion begets such , and such phantasms ; otherwhile , the loose spirits wandring up and down in the brain , casually hit upon such filments and strings whose motion excites a conception , which we call a fancy , or imagination ; and if the evidence of the outward senses be shut out by sleep or melancholy , in either case , we believe those representations to be real and external transactions , when they are onely within our heads ; thus it is in enthusiasms , and dreams . and besides these causes of the motions which s●…ir imagination , there is little doubt , but that spirits good , or bad can so move the instruments of sense in the brain , as to awake such imaginations , as they have a mind to excite ; and the imagination having a mighty influence upon the affections , and they upon the will and external actions , 't is very easie to conceive how good angels may stir us up to religion and vertue , and the evil ones tempt us to lewdness and vice , viz. by representments that they make upon the stage of imagination , which invite our affections , and allure , though they cannot compel , our wills . this i take to be an intelligible account of temptations , and also of angelical encouragements ; and perhaps this is the onely way of immediate influence that the spirits of the other world have upon us . and by it , 't is easie to give an account of dreams both monitory , and temperamental , enthusiasms , fanatick ecstasies , and the like , as i suggested . thus sir , to the first . but the other pretence also must be examined . sect . xx. ( ) miracles are ceast , therefore the presumed actions of witchcraft are tales , and illusions . ] to make a due return to this , we must consider a great and difficult problem , which is , what is a real miracle ? and for answer to this weighty question , i think , ( . ) that it is not the strangeness , or unaccountableness of the thing done simply , from whence we are to conclude a miracle . for then , we are so to account of all the magnalia of nature , and all the mysteries of those honest arts , which we do not understand . nor , ( ) is this the criterion of a miracle , that it is an action or event beyond all natural powers ; for we are ignorant of the extent and bounds of natures sphere , and possibilities : and if this were the character , and essential mark of a miracle , we could not know what was so ; except we could determine the extent of natural causalities , and six their bounds , and be able to say to nature , hitherto canst thou go , and no further . and he that makes this his measure whereby to judge a miracle , is himself the greatest miracle of knowledge , or immodesty . besides , though an essect may transcend really all the powers of meer nature ; yet there is a world of spirits that must be taken into our account . and as to them also i say , ( ) every thing is not a miracle that is done by agents supernatural . there is no doubt but that evil spirits can make wonderful combinations of natural causes , and perhaps perform many things immediately which are prodigious , and beyond the longest line of nature : but yet these are not therefore to be called miracles ; for , they are sacred wonders , and suppose the power to be divine . but how shall the power be known to be so , when we so little understand the capacities , and extent of the abilities of lower agents ? the answer to this question will discover the criterion of miracles , which must be supposed to have all the former particulars ; ( they are unaccountable , beyond the powers of meer nature , and done by agents supernatural ) and to these must be superadded , ( ) that they have peculiar circumstances that speak them of a divine original . their mediate authors declare them to be so , and they are always persons of simplicity , truth , and holiness , void of ambition , and all secular designs . they seldom use ceremonies , or natural applications , and yet surmount all the activities of known nature . they work those wonders , not to raise admiration , or out of the vanity to be talkt of ; but to seal and confirm some divine doctrine , or commission , in which the good and happiness of the world is concern'd . i say , by such circumstances as these , wonderful actions are known to be from a divine cause ; and that makes , and distinguisheth a miracle . and thus i am prepared for an answer to the objection , to which i make this brief return , that though witches by their confederate spirit do those odd , and astonishing things we believe of them ; yet are they no miracles , there being evidence enough from the badness of their lives , and the ridiculous ceremonies of their performances , from their malice and mischievous designs , that the power that works , and the end for which those things are done , is not divine , but diabolical . and by singular providence they are not ordinarily permitted , as much as to pretend to any new sacred discoveries in matters of religion , or to act any thing for confirmation of doctrinal impostures . so that whether miracles are ceased , or not , these are none . and that such miracles as are onely strange , and unaccountable performances , above the common methods of art or nature , are not ceas'd , we have a late great evidence in the famous greatrak ; concerning whom it will not be impertinent to add the following account which i had in a letter from the reverend dr. r. dean of c. a person of great veracity , and a philosopher . this learned gentleman then is pleased thus to write . the great discourse now at the coffee-houses , and every where , is about mr. g. the famous irish stroker , concerning whom it is like you expect an account from me . he undergoes various censures here , some take him to be a conjurer , and some , an impostor , but others again adore him as an apostle . i confess i think the man is free from all design , of a very agreeable conversation , not addicted to any vice , nor to any sect or party ; but is , i believe , a sincere protestant . i was three weeks together with him at my lord conwayes , and saw him , i think , lay his hands upon a thousand persons ; and really there is something in it more than ordinary ; but i am convinc'd it is not miraculous . i have seen pains strangely sly before his hand till he hath chased them out of the body , dimness cleared , and deafness cured by his touch ; twenty persons at several times in fits of the falling sickness , were in two or three minutes brought to themselves , so as to tell where their pain was , and then he hath pursued it till he hath driven it out at some extream part ; running sores of the kings evil dried up , and kernels brought to a suppuration by his hand ; grievous sores of many moneths date , in few days healed ; obstructions and stoppings removed , cancerous knots in the breast dissolved , &c. but yet i have many reasons to perswade me , that nothing of all this is miraculous : he pretends not to give testimony to any doctrine , the manner of his operation speaks it to be natural , the cure seldom succeeds without reiterated touches , his patients often relapse , he fails frequently , he can do nothing where there is any decay in nature , and many distempers are not at all obedient to his touch . so that , i confess , i refer all his vertue to his particular temper and complexion , and i take his spirits to be a kind of elixir , and universal ferment ; and that he cures ( as dr. m. expresseth it ) by a sanative contagion . enthusiasm . triumphat . sect. . this , sir , was the first account of the healer , i had from that reverend person , which with me signifies more , than the attestations of multitudes of ordinary reporters ; and no doubt but it will do so likewise , with all that know that excellent man's singular integrity and judgment . but besides this , upon my enquiry into some other particulars about this matter , i received these further informations . as for mr. g. what opinion he hath of his own gift , and how he came to know it ? i answer , he hath a different apprehension of it from yours , and mine , and certainly believeth it to be an immediate gift from heaven ; and 't is no wonder , for he is no philosopher . and you will wonder less , when you hear how he came to know it , as i have often received it from his own mouth . about three or sour years ago he had a strong impulse upon his spirit , that continually pursued him whatever he was about , at his business , or devotion , alone , or in company , that spake to him by this inward suggestion [ i have given thee the gift of curing the evil. ] this suggestion was so importunate , that he complained to his wife , that he thought he was haunted : she apprehended it as an extravagancy of fancy , but he told her he believed there was more in it , and was resolved to try . he did not long want opportunity . there was a neighbour of his grievously afflicted with the kings-evil , he stroked her , and the effect succeeded . and for about a twelve-moneth together he pretended to cure no other distemper . but then the ague being very rife in the neighbourhood . the same impulse after the same manner spoke within him , [ i have given thee the gift of curing the ague ; ] and meeting with persons in their fits , and taking them by the hand , or laying his hand upon their brasts , the ague left them . about half a year after the accustomed impulse became more general , and suggested to him [ i have given thee the gift of healing : ] and then he attempted all diseases indifferently . and though he saw strange effects , yet he doubted whether the cause were any vertue that came srom him , or the peoples fancy : to convince him of his incredulity , as he lay one night in bed , one of his hands was struck dead , and the usual impulse suggested to him to make trial of his vertue upon himself , which he did , stroking it with his other hand , and then it immediately returned to its former liveliness . this was repeated two or three nights ( or mornings ) together . this is his relation , and i believe there is so much sincerity in the person , that he tells no more than what he believes to be true . to say that this impulse too was but a result of his temper , and that it is but like dreams that are usually according to mens constitutions , doth not seem a probable account of the phoenomenon . perhaps some may think it more likely , that some genius who understood the sanative vertue of his complexion , and the readiness of his mind , and ability of his body , to put it in execution , might give him notice of that which otherwise might have been for ever unknown to him , and so the gift of god had been to no purpose . this , sir , is my learned and reverend friend's relation , and i judge his reflections as ingenious as his report is sincere . i shall say no more about it but this , that many of those matters of fact , have been since critically inspected and examined by several sagacious and deep searches of the royal society , whom we may suppose as unlikely to be deceived by a contrived imposture , as any persons extant and now , sir , 't is fit that i relieve your patience ; and i shall do so , when i have said , that you can abundantly prove , what i have thus attempted to defend : and that among the many obligations your country hath to you , for the wisdom and diligence of your endeavours in its service ; your ingenious industry for the detecting of those vile practisers , is not the least considerable . to which i will add no more , but the confession who it is that hath given you all this trouble ; which i know you are ready to pardon , to the respect and good intentions of sir , your affectionate and obliged honourer and servant , j. g. advertisement . hitherto reacheth the author's ingenious considerations about witchcraft . but understanding by his letters and papers , that he intended something further to enlarge this first part of his saducismus triumphatus , which concerns the possibility of the existence of spirits , apparitions , and witches , but that he has done nothing therein , being prevented by death , i thought it might prove not an unuseful supplement , to translate most of the two last chapters of dr. h. m. his enchiridion metaphysicum into english , and add it to this first part , as a suitable appendage thereto . which is as follows . an appendage to this first part , concerning the possibility of apparitions and witchcraft . containing the easie , true , and genuine notion , and consistent explication of the nature of a spirit , whereby the possibility of the existence of spirits , apparitions , and witchcraft is further confirmed . london : printed , . the easie , true , and genuine notion and consistent explication of the nature of a spirit . sect . i. the opinions of the nullibists and holenmerians proposed . that we may explicate the essence or notion of incorporeal beings or spirits , with the greater satisfaction and success , we are first to remove two vast mounds of darkness , wherewith the ignorance of some hath encumbred and obscured their nature . and the first is of those who though they readily acknowledge there are such things as incorporeal beings or spirits , yet do very peremptorily contend that they are no where in the whole world. which opinion , though at the very first sight it appears ridiculous , yet it is stiffly held by the maintainers of it , and that not without some fastuosity and superciliousness , or at least some more sly and tacite contempt of such philosophers as hold the contrary , as of men less intellectual and too too much indulging to their imagination . those other therefore because they so boldly affirm that a spirit is nullibi , that is to say , nowhere , have deservedly purchased to themselves the name or title of nullibists . the other mound of darkness laid upon the nature of a spirit , is by those who willingly indeed acknowledge that spirits are somewhere ; but add further , that they are not onely entirely or totally in their whole ubi or place , ( in the most general sence of the word ) but are totally in every part or point thereof , and describe the peculiar nature of a spirit to be such , that it must be totus in toto & totus in qualibet sui parte . which therefore the greeks would fitly and briefly call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , [ an essence that is all of it in each part ] and this propriety thereof ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) the holenmerism of incorporeal beings . whence also these other philosophers diametrically opposite to the former , may most significantly and compendiously be called holenmerians . sect . ii. that cartesius is the prince of the nullibists , and wherein chiefly consists the force of their opinion . the opinions of both which kind of philosophers having sufficiently explained , we will now propose and confute the reasons of each of them ; and first of the nullibists . of whom the chief author and leader seems to have been that pleasant wit renatus des cartes , who by his jocular metaphysical meditations , has so luxated and distorted the rational faculties of some otherwise sober and quick-witted persons , but in this point by reason of their over-great admiration of des cartes not sufficiently cautious , that deceived , partly by his counterfeit and prestigious subtilty , and partly by his authority , have perswaded themselves that such things were most true and clear to them ; which had they not been blinded with these prejudices , they could never have thought to have been so much as possible . and so they having been so industriously taught , and diligently instructed by him , how they might not be imposed upon , no not by the most powerful and most ill-minded fallacious deity , have heedlesly , by not sufficiently standing upon their guard , been deceived and illuded by a mere man , but of a pleasant and abundantly-cunning and abstruse genius ; as shall clearly appear after we have searched and examined the reasons of this opinion of the nullibists to the very bottom . the whole force whereof is comprised in these three axioms . the first , that whatsoever thinks is immaterial , and so on the contrary . the second , that whatever is extended is material . the third , that whatever is unextended is nowhere . to which third i shall add this fourth , as a necessary and manifest consectary thereof , viz. that whatsoever is somewhere is extended . which the nullibists of themselves will easily grant me to be most true . otherwise they could not seriously contend for their opinion , whereby they affirm spirits to be nowhere ; but would be found to do it only by way of an oblique and close derision of their existence , saying indeed they exist , but then again hiddenly and cunningly denying it , by affirming they are nowhere . wherefore doubtlesly they affirm them to be nowhere , if they are in good earnest , for this reason onely ; for fear they granting them to be somewhere , it would be presently extorted from them , even according to their own principles , that they are extended , as whatever is extended , is material , according to their second axiome . it is therefore manifest that we both agree in this , that whatever real being there is that is somewhere , is also extended . sect . iii. the sophistical weakness of that reasoning of the nullibists , who , because we can conceive cogitation without conceiving in the mean while matter , conclude , that whatsoever thinks is immaterial . with which truth notwithstanding we being furnished and supported , i doubt not but we shall with ease quite overthrow and utterly root out this opinion of the nullibists . but that their levity and credulity may more manifestly appear , let us examine the principles of this opinion by parts , and consider how well they make good each member . the first is , whatever thinks is immaterial , and on the contrary . the conversion of this axiome i will not examine , because it makes little to the present purpose . i will onely note by the by , that i doubt not but it may be false , although i easily grant the axiome itself to be true . but it is this new method of demonstrating it i call into question , which from hence , that we can conceive cogitation , in the mean time not conceiving matter , concludes that whatever thinks is immaterial . now that we can conceive cogitation without conceiving matter , they say is manifest from hence , that although one should suppose there were no body in the universe , and should not flinch from that position , yet notwithstanding he would not cease to be certain ; that there was res cogitans , a thinking being , in the world , he sinding himself to be such . but i further add , though he should suppose there was no immaterial being in nature , ( nor indeed material ) and should not flinch from that position , yet he would not cease to be certain that there was a thinking being , ( no not if he should suppose himself not to be a thinking being ) because he can suppose nothing without cogitation . which i thought worth the while to note by the by , that the great levity of the nullibists might hence more clearly appear . but yet i add further , that such is the nature of the mind of man , that it is like the eye , better fitted to contemplate other things than itself ; and that therefore it is no wonder that thinking nothing of its own essence , it does fixedly enough and intently consider in the mean time and contemplate all other things , yea , those very things with which she has the nearest affinity , and yet without any reflection that herself is of the like nature . whence it may easily come to pass , when she is so wholly taken up in contemplating other things without any reflection upon herself , that either carelesly she may consider herself in general as a mere thinking being , without any other attribute , or else by resolvedness afterwards , and by a force on purpose offered to her own faculties . but that this reasoning is wonderfully weak and trifling as to the proving of the mind of man to be nothing else ; that is to say , to have no other attributes but mere cogitation , there is none that does not discern . sect . iv. the true method that ought to be taken for the proving that matter cannot think . lastly , if cartesius with his nullibists would have dealt bona fide , they ought to have omitted all those ambagious windings and meanders of feigned abstraction , and with a direct stroke to have saln upon the thing itself , and so to have sisted matter , and searched the nature of cogitation , that they might thence have evidently demonstrated that there was some inseparable attribute in matter that is repugnant to the cogitative faculty , or in cogitation that is repugnant to matter . but out of the mere diversity of idea's or notions of any attributes , to collect their separability or real distinction , yea their contrariety and repugnancy , is most foully to violate the indispensable laws of logick , and to confound diversa with opposita , and make them all one . which mistake to them that understand logick must needs appear very coarse and absurd . but that the weakness and vacillancy of this method may yet more clearly appear , let us suppose that which yet philosophers of no mean name seriously stand for and assert , viz. that cogitative substance is either material or immaterial ; does it not apparently follow thence , that a thinking substance may be precisely conceived without the conception of matter , as matter without the conception of cogitation , when notwithstanding in one of the members of this distribution they are joyned sufficiently close together ? how can therefore this newfangled method of cartesius convince us that this supposition is false , and that the distribution is illegitimate ? can it from thence , that matter may be conceived without cogitation , and cogitation without matter ? the first all grant , and the other the distribution itself supposes ; and yet continues sufficiently firm and sure . therefore it is very evident , that there is a necessity of our having recourse to the known and ratified laws of logick , which many ages before this new upstart method of des cartes appeared , were established and approved by the common suffrage of mankind ; which teach us that in every legitimate distribution the parts ought consentire cum toto , & dissentire inter se , to agree with the whole , but disagree one with another . now in this distribution that they do sufficiently disagree , it is very manifest . it remains onely to be proved , that one of the parts , namely that which supposes that a cogitative substance may be material , is repugnant to the nature of the whole . this is that clear , solid and manifest way or method according to the known laws of logick ; but that new way , a kind of sophistry and pleasant mode of trisling and prevaricating . sect . v. that all things are in some sort extended , demonstrated out of the corollary of the third principle of the nullibists , as for the second axiome or principle , viz. that whatsoever is extended is material ; for the evincing the falsity thereof , there want no new arguments , if one have but recourse to the sixth , seventh , and eighth chapters of enchiridium metaphysicum , where by unanswerable reasonings it is demonstrated , that there is a certain immaterial and immovable extensum distinct from the movable matter . but however , out of the consectary of their third principle , we shall prove at once , that all spirits are extended as being somewhere , against the wild and ridiculous opinion of the nullibists . whos 's third principle , and out of which immediately and precisely they conclude spirits to be nowhere , is , whatsoever is unextended is nowhere . which i very willingly grant ; but on this condition , that they on the other side concede ( and i doubt not but they will ) that whatsoever is somewhere is also extended ; from which consectary i will evince with mathematical certainty , that god and our soul , and all other immaterial beings , are in some sort extended : for the nullibists themselves acknowledge and assert , that the operations wherewith the soul acts on the body , are in the body ; and that power or divine vertue wherewith god acts on the matter and moves it , is present in every part of the matter . whence it is easily gathered , that the operation of the soul and the moving power of god is somewhere , viz. in the body , and in the matter . but the operation of the soul wherewith it acts on the body and the soul itself , and the divine power wherewith god moves the matter and god himself , are together , nor can so much as be imagined separate one from the other ; namely , the operation from the soul , and the power from god. wherefore if the operation of the soul is somewhere , the soul is somewhere , viz. there where the operation . and if the power of god be somewhere , god is somewhere , namely , there where the divine power is ; he in every part of the matter , the soul in the humane body . whosoever can deny this , by the same reason he may deny that common notion in mathematicks , quantities that are singly equal to one third , are equal to one another . sect . vi. the apert confession of the nullibists that the essence of a spirit is where its operation is ; and how they contradict themselves , and are forced to acknowledge a spirit extended . and verily that which we contend for , the nullibists seem apertly to assert , even in their own express words , as it is evident in lambertus velthusius in his de initiis primae philosophiae , in the chapter de ubi . who though he does manifestly affirm that god and the mind of man by their operations are in every part or some one part of the matter ; and that in that sence , namely , in respect of their operations , the soul may be truly said to be somewhere , god everywhere ; as if that were the onely mode of their presence : yet he does expresly grant that the essence is nowhere separate from that whereby god or a created spirit is said to be , the one everywhere , the other somewhere ; that no man may conceit the essence of god to be where the rest of his attributes are not . that the essence of god is in heaven , but that his vertue diffuses itself beyond heaven . no by no means , saith he , wheresoever god's power or operation is , there is the nature of god ; forasmuch as god is a substance devoid of all composition . thus far velthusius . whence i assume , but the power or operation of god is in or present to the matter , therefore the essence of god is in or present to the matter , and is there where the matter is , and therefore somewhere . can there be any deduction or illation more close and coherent with the premises ? and yet that other most devoted follower of the cartesian philosophy , ludovicus de-la-forge , cannot abstain from the offering us the same advantage of arguing , or rather from the inferring the same conclusion with us , in his treatise de mente humana , chap. . where occur these words : lastly , when i say that god is present to all things by his omnipotency , ( and consequently to all the parts of the matter ) i do not deny but that also by his essence or substance he is present to them : for all those things in god are one and the same . dost thou hear , my nullibist , what one of the chiefest of thy condisciples and most religious symmists of that stupendious secret of nullibism plainly professes , namely , that god is present to all the parts of matter by his essence also , or substance ? and yet you in the mean while blush not to assert , that neither god nor any created spirit is any where ; than which nothing more contradictious can be spoke or thought , or more abhorring from all reason . wherefore whenas the nullibists come so near to the truth , it seems impossible they should , so all of a suddain , start from it , unless they were blinded with a superstitious admiration of des cartes his metaphysicks , and were deluded , effascinated and befooled with his jocular subtilty and prestigious abstractions there : for who in his right wits can acknowledge that a spirit by its essence may be present to matter and yet be nowhere , unless the matter were nowhere also ? and that a spirit may penetrate , possess , and actuate some determinate body , and yet not be in that body ? in which if it be , it is plainly necessary it be somewhere . and yet the same ludovicus de-la-forge does manifestly assert , that the body is thus possest and actuated by the soul , in his preface to his treatise de mente humana , while he declares the opinion of marcilius ficinus concerning the manner how the soul actuates the body in marsilius his own words , and does of his own accord assent to his opinion . what therefore do these forms to the body when they communicate to it their esse ? they throughly penetrate it with their essence , they bequeath the vertue of their essence to it . but now whereas the esse is deduced from the essence , and the operation flows from the vertue , by conjoyning the essence they impart the esse , by bequeathing the vertue they communicate the operations ; so that out of the congress of soul and body , there is made one animal esse , one operation . thus he . the soul with her essence penetrates and pervades the whole body , and yet is not where the body is , but nowhere in the universe ! with what manifest repugnancy therefore to their other assertions the nullibists hold this ridiculous conclusion , we have sufficiently seen , and how weak their chiefest prop is , that whatever is extended is material ; which is not onely confuted by irresragable arguments , chap. , , and . enchirid. metaphys . but we have here also , by so clearly proving that all spirits are somewhere , utterly subverted it , even from that very concession or opinion of the nullibists themselves , who concede or aver that whatsoever is somewhere is extended . which spirits are and yet are not material . sect . vii . the more light reasonings of the nullibists whereby they would confirm their opinion . the first of which is , that the soul thinks of those things which are nowhere . but we will not pass by their more slight reasonings in so great a matter , or rather so monstrous . of which the first is , that the mind of man thinks of such things as are nowhere , nor have any relation to place , no not so much as to logical place or ubi . of which sort are many truths as well moral as theological and logical , which being of such a nature that they are nowhere , the mind of man which conceives them is necessarily nowhere also . but how crazily and inconsequently they collect that the humane soul is nowhere , for that it thinks of those things that are nowhere , may be apparent to any one srom hence , and especially to the nullibists themselves ; because from the same reason it would follow that the mind of man is somewhere , because sometimes , if not always in a manner , it thinks of those things which are somewhere , as all material things are . which yet they dare not grant , because it would plainly follow from thence , according to their doctrine , that the mind or soul of man were extended , and so would become corporeal and devoid of all cogitation . but besides , these things which they say are nowhere , namely , certain moral , logical , and theological truths , are really somewhere , viz. in the soul itself which conceives them ; but the soul is in the body , as we proved above . whence it is manifest that the soul and those truths which she conceives are as well somewhere as the body itself . i grant that some truths as they are representations , neither respect time nor place in whatever sence . but as they are operations , and therefore modes of some subject or substance , they cannot be otherwise conceived than in some substance . and forasmuch as there is no substance which has not some amplitude , they are in a substance which is in some so●…t extended ; and so by reason of their subject they are necessarily conceived to be somewhere , because a mode is inseparable from a subject . nor am i at all moved with that giddy and rash tergiversation which some betake themselves to here , who say we do not well in distinguishing betwixt cogitation ( such as are all conceived verities ) and the substance of the soul cogitating : for cogitation itself is the very substance of the soul , as extension is of matter ; and that therefore the soul is as well nowhere as any cogitation , which respects neither time nor place , would be , if it were found in no subject . but here the nullibists , who would thus escape , do not observe that while they acknowledge the substance of the soul to be cogitation , they therewithal acknowledge the soul to have a substance , whence it is necessary it have some amplitude . and besides , this assertion whereby they assert cogitation to be the very substance of the soul , is manifestly false . for many operations of the soul , are , as they speak , specifically different ; which therefore succeeding one after another , will be so many substances specifically different . and so the soul of socrates will not always be the same specifical soul , and much less the same numerical ; than which what can be imagined more delirant , and more remote from common sense ? to which you may adde , that the soul of man is a permanent being , but her cogitations in a flux or succession ; how then can the very substance of the soul be its successive operations ? and when the substance of the soul does so perpetually cease or perish , what i beseech you will become of memory ? from whence it is manifestly evident , that there is a certain permanent substance of the soul , as much distinct or different from her succeeding cogitations , as the matter itself is from its successive figures and motions . sect . viii . the second reason of the nullibists , viz. that cogitation is easily conceived without extension . the second reason is somewhat coincident with some of those we have already examined ; but it is briefly proposed by them thus : there can be no conception , no not of a logical place , or ubi , without extension . but cogitation is easily conceived without conceiving any extension : wherefore the mind cogitating , exempt from all extension , is exempt also from all locality whether physical or logical ; and is so loosened from it , that it has no relation nor applicability thereto ; as if those things had no relation nor applicability to other certain things without which they might be conceived . the weakness of this argumentation is easily deprehended from hence , that the intensness of heat or motion is considered without any respect to its extension , and yet it is referred to an extended subject , viz. to a bullet shot , or red hot iron . and though in intent and defixed thoughts upon some either difficult or pleasing object , we do not at all observe how the time passeth , nor take the slightest notice of it , nothing hinders notwithstanding but those cogitations may be applied to time , and it be rightly said , that about six a clock , suppose , in the morning they began , and continued till eleven ; and in like manner the place may be defined where they were conceived , viz. within the walls of such an ones study , although perhaps all that time this so fixt contemplator did not take notice whether he was in his study or in the fields . and to speak out the matter at once , from the precision of our thoughts to infer the real precision or separation of the things themselves , is a very putid and puerile sophism ; and still the more enormous and wilde , to collect also thence , that they have no relation nor applicability one to another . for we may have a clear and distinct apprehension of a thing which may be connected with another by an essential tye , that tye being not taken notice of , ( and much more when they are connected onely with a circumstantial one ) but not a full and adequate apprehension , and such as sees through and penetrates all the degrees of its essence with their properties ; which unless a man reach to , he cannot rightly judge of the real separability of any nature from other natures . from whence it appears how soully cartesius has imposed , if not upon himself , at least upon others , when from this mental precision of cogitation from extension , he defined a spirit ( such as the humane soul ) by cogitation onely , matter by extension , and divided all substance into cogitant and extended , as into their first species or kinds . which distribution notwithstanding is as absonous and absurd , as if he had distributed animal into sensitive and rational . whenas all substance is extended as well as all animals sensitive . but he fixed his animadversion upon the specifick nature of the humane soul ; the generical nature thereof , either on purpose or by inadvertency , being not considered nor taken notice of by him , as hath been noted in enchiridion ethicum , lib. . cap. . sect . . sect . ix . the third and last reason of the nullibists , viz. that the mind is conscious to herself , that she is nowhere , unless she be disturbed or jogged by the body . the third and last reason , which is the most ingenious of them all , occurs in lambertus velthusius , viz. that it is a truth which god has infused into the mind itself , that she is nowhere , because we know by experience that we cannot tell from our spiritual operations where the mind is . and for that we know her to be in our body , that we onely perceive from the operations of sense and imagination , which without the body or the motion of the body the mind cannot perform . the sence whereof , if i guess right , is this ; that the mind by a certain internal sense is conscious to herself that she is nowhere , unless she be now and then disturbed by the motions or joggings of the body ; which is , as i said , an ingenious presage , but not true : for it is one thing to perceive herself to be nowhere , another not to perceive herself to be somewhere . for she may not perceive herself to be somewhere , though she be somewhere , as she may not take notice of her own individuality , or numerical distinction , from all other minds , although she be one numerical or individual mind distinct from the rest : for , as i intimated above , such is the nature of the mind of man , that like the eye , it is better fitted for the contemplating all other things , than for contemplating itself . and that indeed which is made for the clearly and sincerely seeing other things , ought to have nothing of itself actually perceptible in it , which it might mingle with the perception of those other things . from whence the mind of man is not to have any stable and fixt sense of its own essence ; and such as it cannot easily lay aside upon occasion : and therefore it is no wonder , whenas the mind of man can put off the sense and consciousness to itself of its own essence and individuality , that it can put off also therewith the sense of its being somewhere , or not perceive it ; whenas it does not perceive its own essence and individuality , ( of which hic & nunc are the known characters : ) and the chief objects of the mind are universals . but as the mind , although it perceives not its individuality , yet can by reason prove to herself that she is some one numerical or individual mind , so she can by the same means , although she by inward sense perceives not where she is , evince notwithstanding that she is somewhere , from the general account of things , which have that of their own nature , that they are extended , singular , and somewhere . and besides , velthusius himself does plainly grant , that from the operations of sense and imagination , we know our mind to be in our body . how then can we be ignorant that she is somewhere , unless the body itself be nowhere ? sect . x. an appeal to the internal sense of the mind , if she be not environed with a certain infinite extension ; together with an excitation of the nullibist out of his dream , by the sound of trumpeters surrounding him . the reasons of the nullibists whereby they endeavour to maintain their opinion , are sufficiently enervated and subverted . nor have we need of any arguments to establish the contrary doctine . i will onely desire by the by , that he that thinks his mind is nowhere , would make trial of his faculty of thinking ; and when he has abstracted himself from all thought or sense of his body , and fixed his mind onely on an idea of an indefinite or infinite extension , and also perceives himself to be some particular cogitant being , let him make trial , i say , whether he can any way avoid it , but he must at the same time perceive that he is somewhere , namely , within this immense extension , and that he is environ'd round about with it . verily , i must ingenuously consess , that i cannot conceive otherwise , and that i cannot but conceive an idea of a certain extension infinite and immovable , and of necessary and actual existence : which i most clearly deprehend , not to have been drawn in by the outward sense , but to be innate and essentially inherent in the mind itself ; and so to be the genuine object not of imagination , but of intellect ; and that it is but perversly and without all judgement determined by the nullibists , or cartesians , that whatever is extended , is also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the object of imagination ; when notwithstanding there is nothing imaginable , or the object of imagination , which is not sensible : for all phantasms are drawn from the senses . but this infinite extension has no more to do with things that are sensible and sall under imagination , than that which is most incorporeal . but of this haply it will be more opportune to speak elsewhere . in the mean time i will subjoyn onely one argument , whereby i may manifestly evince that the mind of man is somewhere , and then i will betake my self to the discussing of the opinion of the holenmerians . briefly therefore let us suppose some one environed with a ring of trumpeters , and that they all at the same time sound their trumpets . let us now see if the circumsonant clangor of those surrounding trumpets sounding from all sides will awake these nullibists out of their lethargick dream . and let us suppose , which they will willingly concede , that the conarion or glandula pinealis , a , is the seat of the common sense , to which at length all the motions from external objects arrive . nor is it any matter whether it be this conarion , or some other part of the brain , or of what is contained in the brain : but let the conarion , at least for this bout , supply the place of that matter which is the common sensorium of the soul. fig. . and whenas it is supposed to be surrounded with eight trumpeters , let there be eight lines drawn from them , namely , from b , c , d , e , f , g , h , i ; i say that the clangour or sound of every trumpet is carried from the ring of the trumpeters to the extream part of every one of those lines , and all those sounds are heard as coming from the ring b , c , d , e , f , g , h , i , and perceived in the conarion a ; and that the perception is in that part to which all the lines of motion , as to a common centre , do concur ; and therefore the extream parts of them , and the perceptions of the clangours or sounds , are in the middle of the ring of trumpeters , viz. where the conarion is : wheresore the percipient itself , namely the soul , is in the midst of this ring as well as the conarion , and therefore is somewhere . assuredly he that denies that he conceives the force of this demonstration , and acknowledges that the perception indeed is at the extream parts of the said lines , and in the middle of the ring of trumpeters , but contends in the mean time that the mind herself is not there , forasmuch as she is nowhere ; this man certainly is either delirant and crazed , or else plays tricks , and slimly and obliquely insinuates that the perception which is made in the conarion is to be attributed to the conarion itself ; and that the mind , so far as it is conceived to be an incorporeal substance , is to be exterminated out of the universe , as an useless figment and chimaera . sect . xi . the explication of the opinion of the holenmerians , together with their two reasons thereof proposed . fig. . but the reasons that induce them to embrace it , and so stifsly to maintain it , are these two onely , or at least chiesly , as much as respects the holenmerism of spirits . the first is , that whereas they grant that the whole soul does pervade and possess the whole body , they thought it would thence follow that the soul would be divisible , unless they should correct again this assertion of theirs , by saying , that it was yet so in the whole body , that it was totally in the mean time in every part thereof : for thus they thought themselves sure , that the soul could not thence be argued in any sort divisible , or corporeal , but still remain purely spiritual . their other reason is , that from hence it might be easily understood , how the soul being in the whole body c , d , e , whatever happens to it in c , or b , it presently perceives it in a ; because the whole soul being perfectly and entirely as well in c , or b , as in a , it is necessary that after what fashion soever c or b is affected , a should be affected after the same manner ; forasmuch as it is entirely and perfectly one and the same thing , viz. the whole soul , as well in c or b , as in a. and from hence is that vulgar saying in the schools , that if the eye were in the foot , the soul would see in the foot. sect . xii . the examination of the opinion of the holenmerians . but now , according to our custome , let us weigh and examine all these things in a free and just balance . in this therefore that they assert , that the whole soul is in the whole body , and is all of it penetrated of the soul by her essence , and therefore seem willingly to acknowledge a certain essential amplitude of the soul ; in this , i say , they come near to us , who contend there is a certain metaphysical and essential extension in all spirits , but such as is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , devoid of bulk or parts , as aristotle defines of his separate substances : for there is no magnitude or bulk which may not be physically divided , nor any parts properly where there is no such division . whence the metaphysical extension of spirits , is rightly understood not to be capable of either bulk or parts . and in that sence it has no parts , it cannot justly be said to be a whole . in that therefore we plainly agree with the holenmerians , that a soul or spirit may be said by its essence to penetrate and possess the whole body c , d , e ; but in this again we differ from them , that we dare not affirm that the whole spirit or whole soul does penetrate and possess the said body , because that which has not parts cannot properly be called a whole ; though i will not over-stiffly contend , but that we may use that word for a more easie explication of our mind , according to that old trite proverb , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , speak a little more unlearnedly that thou mayest speak more intelligibly or plainly . but then we are to remember that we do not speak properly , though more accommodately to the vulgar apprehension , but improperly . but now when the holenmerians add further , that the whole soul is in every part or physical point of the body d , c , e , in the point a and b , and all the rest of the points of which the body d , c , e , does consist , that seems an harsh expression to me , and such as may justly be deemed next door to an open repugnancy and contradiction : for when they say the whole soul is in the whole body d , c , e , if they understand the essence of the soul to be commensurate , and as it were equal to the body d , c , e , and yet at the same time , the whole soul to be contained within the point a or b , it is manifest that they make one and the same thing many thousand times greater or less than itself at the same time ; which is impossible . but if they will affirm , that the essential amplitude of the soul is no bigger than what is contained within the physical point a , or b ; but that the essential presence of the soul is diffused through the whole body d , c , e , the thing will succeed not a jot the better . for while they plainly profess that the whole soul is in the point a , it is manifest that there remains nothing of the soul which may be in the point b , which is distant from a : for it is as if one should say , that there is nothing of the soul which is not included within a ; and yet in the same moment of time , that not onely something of the soul , ( which perhaps might be a more gentle repugnancy ) but that the whole soul is in b , as if the whole soul were totally and entirely out of itself ; which surely is impossible in any singular or individual thing . and as for universals , they are not things , but notions we use in contemplating them . again , if the essential amplitude of the soul is no greater than what may be contained within the limits of a physical point , it cannot extend or exhibit its essential presence through the whole body , unless we imagine in it a stupendious velocity , such as it may be carried with in one moment into all the parts of the body , and so be present to them : which when it is so hard to conceive in this scant compages of an humane body , and in the soul occupying in one moment every part thereof , what an outragious thing is it , and utterly impossible to apprehend touching that spirit which perpetually exhibits his essential presence to the whole world , and whatever is beyond the world ? to which lastly , you may add that this hypothesis of the holenmerians , does necessarily make all spirits the most minute things that can be conceived : for if the whole spirit be in every physical point , it is plain that the essential amplitude itself of the spirit ( which the two former objections supposed ) is not bigger than that physical point in which it is , ( which you may call , if you will , a physical monad ) than which nothing is or can be smaller in universal nature : which if you refer to any created spirit , it cannot but seem very ridiculous ; but if to the majesty and amplitude of the divine numen , intolerable , that i may not say plainly reproachful and blasphemous . sect . xiii . a confutation of the first reason of the holenmerians . but now for the reasons for which the holenmerians adhere to so absurd an opinion ; verily they are such as can no ways compensate those huge difficulties and repugnancies the opinion itself labours under . for , for the first , which so solicitously provides for the indivisibility of spirits , it seems to me to undertake a charge either superfluous or ineffectual . superfluous , if extension can be without divisibility , as it is clearly demonstrated it can , in that infinite immovable extension distinct from the movable matter , enchirid. metaphys . cap. , , . but ineffectual , if all extension be divisible , and the essential presence of a spirit which pervades and is extended through the whole body c , d , e , may for that very reason be divided ; for so the whole essence which occupies the whole body c , d , e , will be divided into parts . no by no means , will you say , forasmuch as it is wholly in every part of the body . therefore it will be divided , if i may so speak , into so many totalities . but what logical ear can bear a saying so absurd and abhorrent from all reason , that a whole should not be divided into parts but into wholes ? but you will say at least we shall have this granted us , that an essential presence may be distributed or divided according to so many distinctly cited totalities which occupy at once the whole body c , d , e , yes verily , this shall be granted you , after you have demonstrated that a spirit not bigger than a physical monad can occupy in the same instant all the parts of the body c , d , e ; but upon this condition , that you acknowledge not sundry totalities , but one onely total essence ; though the least that can be imagined , can occupy that whole space , and when there is need , occupy , in an instant , an infinite one : which the holenmerians must of necessity hold touching the divine essence , because according to their opinion taken in the second sence , ( which pinches the whole essence of a spirit into the smallest point ) the divine essence itself is not bigger than any physical monad . from whence it is apparent the three objections which we brought in the beginning do again recur here , and utterly overwhelm the first reason of the holenmerians : so that the remedy is far more intolerable than the disease . sect . xiv . a confutation of the second reason of the holenmerians . fig. . and from hence the falsity of that common saying is detected , that if the eye was in the foot , the soul would see in the foot ; whenas it does not so much as see in those eyes which it already hath , but somewhere within the brain . nor would the soul by an eye in the foot see , unless by fitting nerves , not unlike the optick ones , continued from the foot to the head and brain , where the soul so far as perceptive , inhabiteth . in the other parts of the body the functions thereof are onely vital . again , such is the nature of some perceptions of the soul , that they are fitted for the moving of the body ; so that it is manifest that the very self-same thing which perceives , has the power of moving and guiding of it ; which seems impossible to be done by this soul , which , according to the opinion of the holenmerians , exceeds not the amplitude of a small physical point , as it may appear at first sight to any one whose reason is not blinded with prejudice . and lastly , if it be lawful for the mind of man to give her conjectures touching the immortal genii , ( whether they be in vehicles , or destitute of vehicles ) and touching their perceptions and essential presences whether invisible or those in which they are said sometimes to appear to mortal men , there is none surely that can admit that any of these things are competible to such a spirit as the holenmerians describe . for how can a metaphysical monad , that is to say , a spiritual substance not exceeding a physical monad in amplitude , fill out an essential presence bigger than a physical monad , unless it be by a very swist vibration of itself towards all parts ; as boys by a very swift moving of a fire-stick , make a fiery circle in the air by that quick motion . but that spirits , destitute of vehicles , should have no greater essential presence than what is occupied of a naked and unmoved metaphysical monad , or exhibited thereby , seems so absonous and ridiculous a spectacle to the mind of man , that unless he be deprived of all sagacity and sensibility of spirit , he cannot but abhor so idle an opinion . and as for those essential presences , according to which they sometimes appear to men , at least equalizing humane stature , how can a solitary metaphysical monad form so great a part of air or aether into humane shape , or govern it being so formed ? or how can it porceive any external object in this swift motion of itself , and quick vibration , whereby this metaphysical monad is understood of the holenmerians , to be present in all the parts of its vehicle at once ? for there can be no perception of the external object , unless the object that is to be perceived act with some stay upon that which perceiveth . nor if it could be perceived by this metaphysical monad thus swistly moved and vibrated towards all parts at once , would it be seen in one place , but in many places at once , and those , as it may happen , very distant . sect . xv. the egregious falsity of the opinions of the holenmerians and nullibists , as also their uselesness for any philosophical ends . but verily , i am ashamed to waste so much time in refuting such mere trifles and dotages which indeed are such , ( that i mean of the nullibists , as well as this other of the holenmerians ) that we may very well wonder how such distorted and strained conceits could ever enter into the minds of men , or by what artifice they have so spread themselves in the world ; but that the prejudices and enchantments of superstition and stupid admiration of mens persons are so strong , that they may utterly blind the minds of men , and charm them into dotage . but if any one , all prejudice and parts-taking being laid aside , will attentively consider the thing as it is , he shall clearly perceive and acknowledge , unless all belief is to be denied to the humane faculties , that the opinions of the nullibists and holenmerians , touching incorporeal beings , are miserably false ; and not that onely , but as to any philosophical purpose altogether useless . forasmuch as out of neither hypothesis there does appear any greater facility of conceiving how the mind of man , or any other spirit , performs those functions of perception and of moving of bodies , from their being supposed nowhere , than from their being supposed somewhere ; or from supposing them wholly in every part of a body , than from supposing them onely , to occupie the whole body by an essential or metaphysical extension ; but on the contrary , that both the hypotheses do entangle and involve the doctrine of incorporeal beings with greater difficulties and repugnancies . wherefore , there being neither truth nor usefulness in the opinions of the holenmerians and nullibists , i hope it will o●…end no man if we send them quite packing from our philosophations touching an incorporeal being or spirit , in our delivering the true idea or notion thereof . sect . xvi . that those that contend that the notion of a spirit is so difficult and imperscrutable , do not this because they are of a more sharp and piercing judgement than others , but of a genius more rude and plebeian . now i have so successfully removed and dissipated those two vast mounds of night and mistiness , that lay upon the nature of incorporeal beings , and obscured it with such gross darkness ; it remains that we open and illustrate the true and genuine nature of them in general , and propose such a definition of a spirit , as will exhibit no difficulty to a mind rightly prepared and freed from prejudice : for the nature of a spirit is very easily understood , provided one rightly and skilfully shew the way to the learner , and form to him true notions of the thing . insomuch that i have often wondred at the superstitious consternation of mind in those men , ( or the profaneness of their tempers and innate aversation from the contemplation of divine things ) who if by chance they hear any one professing that he can with sufficient clearness and distinctness conceive the nature of a spirit , and communicate the notion to others , they are presently astartled and amazed at the saying , and straightway accuse the man of intolerable levity or arrogancy , as thinking him to assume so much to himself , and to promise to others , as no humane wit , furnished with never so much knowledge , can ever perform . and this i understand even of such men who yet readily acknowledge the existence of spirits . but as for those that deny their existence , whoever professes this skill to them , verily he cannot but appear a man above all measure vain and doting . but i hope that i shall so bring it about , that no man shall appear more stupid and doting , no man more unskilful and ignorant , than he that esteems the clear notion of a spirit so hopeless and desperate an attempt ; and that i shall plainly detect , that this big and boastful profession of their ignorance in these things does not proceed from hence , that they have any thing more a sharp or discerning judgment than other mortals , but that they have more gross and weak parts , and a shallower wit , and such as comes nearest to the superstition and stupidity of the rude vulgar , who easilier fall into admiration and astonishment , than pierce into the reasons and notices of any difficult matter . sect . xvii . the definition of body in general , with so clear an explication thereof , that even they that complain of the obscurity of a spirit , cannot but confess they perfectly understand the nature of body . but now for those that do thus despair of any true knowledge of the nature of a spirit , i would entreat them to try the abilities of their wit in recognizing and throughly considering the nature of body in general . and let them ingenuously tell me whether they cannot but acknowledge this to be a clear and perspicuous definition thereof , viz. that body is substance material , of itself altogether destitute of all perception , life , and motion . or thus : body is a substance material coalescent or accruing together into one , by vertue of some other thing , from whence that one by coalition , has or may have life also , perception and motion . i doubt not but they will readily answer , that they understand all this ( as to the terms ) clearly and perfectly ; nor would they doubt of the truth thereof , but that we deprive body of all metion from itself , as also of union , life , and perception . but that it is substance , that is , a being subsistent by itself , not a mode of some being , they cannot but very willingly admit , and that also it is a material substance compounded of physical monads , or at least of most minute particles of matter , into which it is divisible ; and because of their impenetrability , impenetrable by any other body . so that the essential and positive difference of a body is , that it be impenetrable , and physically divisible into parts : but that it is extended , that immediately belongs to it as it is a being . nor is there any reason why they should doubt of the other part of the differentia , whenas it is solidly and fully proved in philosophie , that matter of its own nature , or in itself , is endued with no perception , life , nor motion . and besides , we are to remember that we here do not treat of the existence of things , but of their intelligible notion and essence . sect . xviii . the perfect definition of a spirit , with a full explication of its nature through all degrees . and if the notion or essence is so easily understood in nature corporeal or body , i do not see but in the species immediately opposite to body , viz. spirit , there may be found the same facility of being understood . let us try therefore , and from the law of opposites let us define a spirit , an immaterial substance intrinsecally endued with life and the faculty of motion . this slender and brief desinition that thus easily slows without any noise , does comprehend in general the whole nature of a spirit ; which lest by reason of its exility and brevity it may prove less perceptible to the understanding , as a spirit is to the sight , i will subjoyn a more full explication , that it may appear to all , that this definition of a spirit is nothing inferiour to the definition of a body as to clearness and perspicuity . and that by this method which we now fall upon , a full and perfect knowledge and understanding of the nature of a spirit may be attained to . go to therefore , let us take notice through all the degrees of the definitum , or thing defined , what precise and immediate properties each of them contain , from whence at length a most distinct and perfect knowledge of the whole definitum will discover itself . let us begin then from the top of all , and first let us take notice that a spirit is ens , or a being , and from this very same that it is a being ; that it is also one , that it is true , and that it is good ; which are the three acknowledged properties of ens in metaphysicks , that it exists sometime , and somewhere , and is in some sort extended , as is shewn enchirid. metaphys . cap. . sect . . which three latter terms are plain of themselves . and as for the three former , that one signifies undistinguished or undivided in and from itself , but divided or distinguished from all other , and that true denotes the answerableness of the thing to its own proper idea , and implies right matter and form duely conjoyned , and that lastly good respects the fitness for the end in a large sence , so that it will take in that saying of theologers , that god is his own end , are things vulgarly known to l●…gicians and metaphysicians . that these six are the immediate affections of being , as being is made apparent in the above-cited enchiridion metaphysicum ; nor is it requisite to repeat the same things here . now every being is either substance , or the mode of substance , which some call accident : but that a spirit is not an accident or mode of substance , all in a manner profess ; and it is demonstrable from manifold arguments , that there are spirits which are no such accidents or modes ; which is made good in the said enchiridion and other treatifes of dr. h. m. wherefore the second essential degree of a spirit is , that it is substance . from whence it is understood to subsist by itself , nor to want any other thing as a subject ( in which it may inhere , or of which it may be the mode or accident ) for its subsisting or existing . the third and last essential degree is , that it is immaterial , according to which it immediately belongs to it , that it be a being not onely one , but one by itself , or of its own intimate nature , and not by another ; that is , that , though as it is a being it is in some sort extended , yet it is utte●…ly indivisible and indiscerpible into real physical parts . and moreover , that it can penetrate the matter , and ( which the matter cannot do ) penetrate things of its own kind ; that is , pass through spiritual substances . in which two essential attributes ( as it ought to be in every perfect and legitimate distribution of any genius ) it is fully and accurately contrary to its opposite species , namely , to body . as also in those immediate properties whereby it is understood to have life intrinsecally in itself , and the saculty of moving ; which in some sence is true in all spirits whatsoever , for-asmuch as life is either vegetative , sensitive , or intellectual . one whereof at least every spiritual substance hath : as also the faculty of moving ; insomuch that every spirit either moves itself by itself , or the matter , or both , or at least the matter either mediately or immediately ; or lasty , both ways . for so all things moved are moved by god , he being the fountain of all life and motion . sect . xix . that from hence that the definition of a body is perspicuous , the definition of a spirit is also necessarily perspicuous . wherefore i dare here appeal to the judgment and conscience of any one that is not altogether illiterate and of a dull and obtuse wit , whether this notion or definition of a spirit in general , is not as intelligible and perspicuous , is not as clear and every way distinct as the idea or notion of a body , or of any thing else whatsoever which the mind of man can contemplate in the whole compass of nature . and whether he cannot as easily or rather with the same pains apprehend the nature of a spirit as of body , forasmuch as they both agree in the immediate genus to them , to wit substance . and the differentiae do illustrate one another by their mutual opposition ; insomuch that it is impossible that one should understand what is material substance , but he must therewith presently understand what immaterial substance is , or what it is not to have life and motion of itself , but he must straitway perceive what it is to have both in itself , or to be able to communicate them to others . sect . xx. four objections which from the perspicuity of the terms of the definition of a spirit infer the repugnancy of them one to another . nor can i divine what may be here opposed , unless haply they may alledge such things as these , that although they cannot deny but that all the terms of the definition and explication of them , are sufficiently intelligible , if they be considered single , yet if they be compared one with another they will mutually destroy one another . for this extension which is mingled with , or inserted into the nature of a spirit , seems to take away the penetrability and indivisibility thereof , as also its faculty of thinking , as its penetrability likewise takes away its power of moving any bodies . i. first , extension takes away penetrability ; because if one extension penetrate another , of necessity either one of them is destroyed , or two equal amplitudes entirely penetrating one another , are no bigger than either one of them taken single , because they are closed within the same limits . ii. secondly , it takes away indivisibility ; because whatsoever is extended has partes extra partes , one part out of another , and therefore is divisible : for neither would it have parts , unless it could be divided into them . to which you may further add , that forasmuch as the parts are substantial , nor depend one of another , it is clearly manifest that at least by the divine power they may be separate , and subsist separate one from another . iii. thirdly , extension deprives a spirit of the faculty of thinking , as depressing it down into the same order that bodies are . and that there is no reason why an extended spirit should be more capable of perception than matter that is extended . iv. lastly , penetrability renders a spirit unable to move matter ; because , whenas by reason of this penetrability it so easily slides through the matter , it cannot conveniently be united with the matter whereby it may move the same : for without some union or inherency ( a spirit being destitute of all impenetrability ) 't is impossible it should protrude the matter towards any place . the sum of which four difficulties tends to this , that we may understand , that though this idea or notion of a spirit which we have exhibited be sufficiently plain and explicate , and may be easily understood ; yet from the very perspicuity of the thing itself , it abundantly appears , that it is not the idea of any possible thing , and much less of a thing really existing , whenas the parts thereof are so manifestly repugnant one to another . sect . xxi . an answer to the first of the four objections . i. but against as well the nullibists as the hobbians , who both of them contend that extension and matter is one and the same thing , we will prove that the notion or idea of a spirit which we have produced , is a notion of a thing possible . and as for the nullibists , who think we so much indulge to corporeal imagination in this our opinion of the extension of spirits , i hope on the contrary , that i shall shew that it is onely from hence , that the hobbians and nullibists have taken all amplitude from spirits , because their imagination is not sufficiently defecated and depurated from the filth and unclean tinctures of corporeity , or rather that they have their mind over-much addicted and enslaved to material things , and so disordered , that she knows not how to expedite herself from gross corporeal phantasms . from which fountain have sprung all those difficulties whereby they endeavour to overwhelm this our notion of a spirit ; as we shall manifestly demonstrate by going through them all , and carefully perpending each of them . for it is to be imputed to their gross imagination , that from hence that two equal amplitudes penetrate one another throughout , they conclude that either one of them must therewith perish , or that they being both conjoyned together , are no bigger than either one of them taken single . for this comes from hence that their mind is so illaqueated or lime-twigged , as it were , with the idea's and properties of corporeal things , that they cannot but infect those things also which have nothing corporeal in them with this material tincture and contagion , and so altogether confound this metaphysical extension with that extension which is physical . i say , from this disease it is that the sight of their mind is become so dull and obtuse , that they are not able to divide that common attribute of a being , i mean extension metaphysical from special . extension and material , and assign to spirits their proper extension , and leave to matter hers . nor according to that known method , whether logical or metaphysical , by intellectual abstraction prescind the generical nature of extension from the abovesaid species or kinds thereof . nor lastly , ( which is another sign of their obtuseness and dulness ) is their mind able to penetrate with that spiritual extension into the extension material ; but like a stupid beast stands lowing without , as if the mind itself were become wholly corporeal ; and if any thing enter they believe it perishes rather and is annihilated , than that two things can at the same time coexist together in the same ubi . which are symptomes of a mind desperately sick of this corporeal malady of imagination , and not sufficiently accustomed or exercised in the free operations of the intellectual powers . and that also proceeds from the same source , that supposing two extensions penetrating one another , and adequately occupying the same ubi , they thus conjoyned are conceived not to be greater than either one of them taken by itself . for the reason of this mistake is , that the mind incrassated and swayed down by the imagination , cannot together with the spiritual extension penetrate into the material , and follow it throughout , but onely places itself hard by , and stands without like a gross stupid thing , and altogether corporeal . for if she could but , with the spiritual extension , insinuate herself into the material , and so conceive them both together as two really distinct extensions , it is impossible but that she should therewith conceive them so conjoyned into one ubi , to be notwithstanding not a jot less than when they are separated and occupy an ubi as big again : for the extension in neither of them is diminished , but their situation onely changed . as it also sometimes comes to pass in one and the same extension of some particular spirits which can dilate and contract their amplitude into a greater or lesser ubi without any augmentation or diminution of their extension , but onely by the expansion and retraction of it into ano ther site . sect . xxii . that besides those three dimensions which belong to all extended things , a fourth also is to be admitted , which belongs properly to spirits . and that i may not dissemble or conceal any thing , although all material things , considered in themselves , have three dimensions onely ; yet there must be admitted in nature a fourth , which fitly enough , i think , may be called essential spissitude ; which , though it most properly appertains to those spirits which can contract their extension into a less ubi ; yet by an easie analogie it may be referred also to spirits penetrating as well the matter as mutually one another : so that where-ever there are more essences than one , or more of the same essence in the same ubi than is adequate to the amplitude thereof , there this fourth dimension is to be acknowledged , which we call essential spissitude . which assuredly involves no greater repugnancy than what may seem at first view , to him that considers the thing less attentively , to be in the other three dimensions . namely , unless one would conceive that a piece of wax stretched out , suppose , to the length of an eln , and afterwards rolled together into the form of a globe , loses something of its former extension , by this its conglobation , he must confess that a spirit , neither by the contraction of itself into a less space has lost any thing of its extension or essence , but as in the abovesaid wax the diminution of its longitude is compensated with the augmentation of its latitude and profundity ; so in a spirit contracting itself , that in like manner its longitude , latitude , and profundity being lessened , are compensated by essential spissitude , which the spirit acquires by this contraction of itself . and in both cases we are to remember that the site is onely changed , but that the essence and extension are not at all impaired . verily these things by me are so perfectly every way perceived , so certain and tried , that i dare appeal to the mind of any one which is free from the morbid prejudices of imagination , and challenge him to trie the strength of his intellectuals , whether he does not clearly perceive the thing to be so as i have defined , and that two equal extensions , adequately occupying the very same ubi , be not twice as great as either of them alone , and that they are not closed with the same terms as the imagination falsly suggests , but onely with equal . nor is there any need to heap up more words for the solving this first difficulty ; whenas what has been briefly said already abundantly sufficeth for the penetrating their understanding who are prepossest with no prejudice : but for the piercing of theirs who are blinded with prejudices , infinite will not suffice . sect . xxiii . an answer to the second objection , where the fundamental errour of the nullibists , viz. that whatsoever is extended is the object of imagination , is taken notice of . ii. let us try now if we can dispatch the second difficulty with like success , and see if it be not wholly to be ascribed to imagination , that an indiscerpible extension seems to involve in it any contradiction . as if there could be no extension which has not parts real and properly so called into which it may be actually divided . viz. for this reason , that that onely is extended which has partes extra partes , which being substantial , may be separated one from another , and thus separate subsist . this is the summary account of this difficulty , which nothing but corrupt imagination supporteth . now the first source or fountain of this errour of the nullibists , is this ; that they make every thing that is extended the object of the imagination , and every object of the imagination corporeal . the latter whereof undoubtedly is true , if it be taken in a right sence ; namely , if they understand such a perception as is either simply and adequately drawn from external objects ; or by increasing , diminishing , transposing , or transforming of parts ( as in chimaera's and hippocentaurs ) is composed of the same . i acknowledge all these idea's , as they were sometime some way objects of sensation , so to be the genuine objects of imagination , and the perception of these to be ●…ghtly termed the operation of fancie , and that all these things that are thus represented , necessarily are to be look'd upon as corporeal , and consequently as actually divisible . but that all perception of extension is such imagination , that i confidently deny . forasmuch as there is an idea of infinite extension drawn or taken in from no external sense , but is natural and essential to the very faculty of perceiving ; which the mind can by no means pluck out of herself , nor cast it away from her ; but if she will rouze herself up , and by earnest and attentive thinking , fix her animadversion thereon , she will be constrained , whether she will or no , to acknowledge , that although the whole matter of the world were exterminated out of the universe , there would notwithstanding remain a certain subtile and immaterial extension which has no agreement with that other material one , in any thing , saving that it is extended , as being such that it neither falls under sense , nor is impenetrable , nor can be moved , nor discerped into parts ; and that this idea is not onely possible , but necessary , and such as we do not at our pleasure seign and invent , but do find it to be so innate and ingrafted in our mind , that we cannot by any force or artifice remove it thence . which is a most certain demonstration that all perception of extension is not imagination properly so called . which in my opinion ought to be esteemed one of the chiefest and most fundamental errours of the nullibists , and to which especially this difficulty is to be referred touching an indiscerpible extension . for we see they consess their own guilt , namely , that their mind is so corrupted by their imagination , and so immersed into it , that they can use no other saculty in the contemplation of any extended thing . and therefore when they make use of their imagination instead of their intellect in contemplating of it , they necessarily look upon it as an object of imagination ; that is , as a corporeal thing , and discerpible into parts . for , as i noted above , the sight of their mind by reason of this morbus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this materious disease , if i may so speak , is made so heavie and dull , that it cannot distinguish any extension from that of matter ▪ as allowing it to appertain to another kind , nor by logical or metaphysical abstraction prescind it from either . sect . xxiv . that extension as such includes in it neither divisibility nor impenetrability , neither indivisibility nor penetrability , but is indifferent to either two of those properties . and from hence it is that because a thing is extended they presently imagine that it has partes extra partes , and is not ens unum per se & non per aliud , a being one by itself , and not by vertue of another , but so framed from the juxtaposition of parts . whenas the idea of extension precisely considered in itself includes no such thing , but onely a trinal distance or solid amplitude , that is to say , not linear onely and superficiary , ( if we may here use those terms which properly belong to magnitude mathematical ) but every way running out and reaching towards every part . this amplitude surely , and nothing beside , does this bare and simple extension include , not penetrability nor impenetrability , not divisibility nor yet indivisibility , but to either affections or properties , or if you will essential differences , namely , to divisibility and impenetrability , or to penetrability and indivisibility , if considered in itself , is it altogether indifferent , and may be determined to either two of them . wherefore , whereas we acknowledge that there is a certain extension namely material , which is endued with so stout and invincible an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or impenetrability , that it necessarily and by an insuperable renitencie expels and excludes all other matter that occurs and attempts to penetrate it , nor suffers it at all to enter , although in the simple idea of extension , this marvellous virtue of it is not con tained , but plainly omitted , as not at all belonging thereto immediately and of itself ; why may we not as easily conceive that another extension , namely , an immaterial one , though extension in itself include no such thing , is of such a nature , that it cannot by any other thing whether material or immaterial be discerped into parts ; but by an indissoluble necessary and essential tie be so united and held together with itself , that although it can penetrate all things and be penetrated by all things , yet nothing can so insinuate itself into it as to disjoyn any thing of its essence any where , or perforate it or make any hole or pore in it ? that is , that i may speak briefly , what hinders but there may be a being that is immediately one of its own nature , and not held together into one by vertue of some other , either quality or substance ? although every being as a being is extended , because extension in its precise notion does not include any physical division , but the mind infected with corporeal imagination , does falsly and unskilfully feign it to be necessarily there . sect . xxv . that every thing that is extended has not parts physically discerpible , though logically or intellectually divisible . for it is nothing which the nullibists here alledge , while they say , that all extension inferreth parts , and all parts division . for besides that the first is false , forasmuch as ens unum per se , a being one of itself or of its own immediate nature , although extended yet includes no parts in its idea , but is conceived according to its proper essence as a thing as simple as may be , and therefore compounded of no parts : we answer moreover , that it is not at all prejudicial to our cause though we should grant that this metaphysical extension of spirits is also divisible , but logically onely , not physically ; that is to say , is not discerpible . but that one should adjoyn a physical divisibility to such an extension , surely that must necessarily proceed from the impotencie of his imagination , which his mind cannot curb , nor separate herself from the dreggs and corporeal foulnesses thereof ; and hence it is that she tinctures and infects this pure and spiritual extension with corporeal properties . but that an extended thing may be divided logically or intellectually , when in the mean time it can by no means be discerped , it sufficiently appears from hence , that a physical monad which has some amplitude , though the least that possible can be , is conceived thus to be divided in a line consisting of any uneven number of monads , which notwithstanding the intellect divides into two equal parts . and verily in a metaphysical monad , such as the holenmerians conceit the mind of man to be , and to possess in the mean time and occupie the whole body , there may be here again made a logical distribution , suppose , è subjectis , as they call it , so far forth as this metaphysical monad , or soul of the holenmerians is conceived to possess the head , or trunk , or limbs of the body . and yet no man is so delirant as to think that it follows from thence , that such a soul may be discerped into so many parts , and that the parts so discerped may subsist by themselves . sect . xxvi . an answer to the latter part of the second objection , which inferreth the separabilitie of the parts of a substantial extensum , from the said parts being substantial and independent one of another . from which a sufficiently fit and accommodate answer may be fetched to the latter part of this difficulty , namely , to that , which because the parts of substance are substantial and independent one of another , and subsisting by themselves ( as being substances ) would infer that they can be discerped , at least by the divine power , and disjoyned , and being so disjoyned , subsist by themselves . which i confess to be the chief edge or sting of the whole difficulty , and yet such as i hope i shall with ease file off or blunt . for first , i deny that in a thing that is absolutely one and simple as a spirit is , there are any physical parts , or parts properly so called , but that they are onely falsly seigned and fancied in it , by the impure imagination . but that the mind it self being susficiently defecated and purged from the impure dreggs of fancie , although from some extrinsecal respect she may consider a spirit as having parts , yet at the very same time does she in herself , with close attention , observe and note , that such an extension of itself has none . and therefore whenas it has no parts it is plain it has no substantial parts , nor independent one of another , nor subsistent of themselves . and then as much as concerns those parts which the stupid and impotent imagination fancieth in a spirit , it does not follow from thence , because they are substantial , that they may subsist separate by themselves . for a thing to subsist by itself , onely signifies so to subsist , that it wants not the prop of some other subject in which it may inhere as accidents do . so that the parts of a spirit may be said to subsist by themselves though they cannot subsist separate , and so be substance still . sect . xxvii . that the mutual independencie of the parts of an extended substance may be understood in a twofold sence ; with an answer thereto , taken in the first sence thereof . but what they mean by that mutual independencie of parts i do not fully understand : but i sufficiently conceive that one of these two things must be hinted thereby , viz. either that they are not mutual and effectual causes to one another of their existing , or that their existence is understood to be connected by no necessary condition at all . and as for the former sense , i willingly confess those parts which they fancie in a spirit are not mutual causes of one anothers existence ; but so , that in the mean time i do most firmly deny , that it will thence follow that they may be discerped , and thus discerpt , be separately conserved , no more than the intelligible parts of a physical monad which is divided into two by our reason or intellect ; which surely are no mutual causes of one anothers existence : or the members of the distribution of a metaphysical monad according to the doctrine of the holenmerians ( viz. the soul totally being in every part of the body ) which no man in his wits can ever hope that they may be discerped , although the said members of the division are not the mutual causes of one anothers existence : for they are but one and the same soul which is not the cause of itself , but was wholly and entirely caused by god. but you will say that there is here manifestly a reason extant and apparent why these members of the distribution cannot be discerped , and discerpt separately conserved , because one and the same indivisible monad occurs in every member of the distribution , which therefore since it is a single one , it is impossible it should be discerped from itself . to which i on the other side answer , that it is as manifestly extant and apparent how frivolously therefore and ineptly arguments are drawn from logical or intellectual divisions , for the concluding a real separability of parts . and i add further , that as that fictitious metaphysical monad cannot be discerped or pluckt in pieces from itself , no more can any real spirit , because it is a thing most simple and most absolutely one , and which a pure mind darkened and possessed with no prejudices of imagination does acknowledge no real parts at all to be in . for so it would ipso facto be a compound thing . sect . xxviii . an answer to the independency of parts taken in the second sence . from whence an easie entrance is made to the answering this difficulty understood in the second sence of the mutual independency of the parts of a spirit , whereby their coexistence and union are understood to be connected by no necessary law or condition . for that this is false , i do most constantly affirm without all demur : for the coexistences of the parts , as they call them , of a spirit , are connected by a law or condition absolutely necessary and plainly essential ; forasmuch as a spirit is a most simple being , or a being unum per se & non per aliud ; that is , one of itself or of its own nature immediately so , and not by another either substance or quality . for none of those parts , as the nullibists call them , can exist but upon this condition , that all jointly and unitedly exist together ; which condition or law is contained in the very idea or nature of every spirit . whence it cannot be created or any way produced unless upon this condition , that all its parts be inseparably and indiscerpibly one ; as neither a rectangle triangle , unless upon this condition , that the powers of the cathetus and basis , be equal to the power of the hypotenusa . whence the indiscerpibility of a spirit cannot be removed from it , no not virtute divina , as the schoolmen speak , no more than the above-said property be disjoyned from a rectangle triangle . out of all which i hope it is at length abundantly clear , that the extension of a spirit does not at all hinder the indiscerpibility thereof . sect . xxix . an answer to the third objection touching the imperceptivity of an extended substance , viz. that whatever is , is extended , and that the nullibists and holenmerians themselves cannot give a reason of the perceptive faculty in spirits , from their hypotheses . iii. nor is it any lett ( which is the third thing ) to the faculty of perceiving and thinking in spirits : for we do not thrust down a spirit by attributing extension to it , into the rank of corporeal beings , forasmuch as there is nothing in all nature which is not in some sense extended . for whatever of essence there is in any thing , it either is or may be actually present to some part of the matter , and therefore it must either be extended or be contracted to the narrowness of a point , and be a mere nothing . for , as for the nullibists and holenmerians , the opinions of them both are above utterly routed by me , and quite subverted and overturned from the very root , that no man may seek subterfuges and lurking holes there . wherefore there is a necessity that something that is extended have cogitation and perception in it , or else there will be nothing lest that has . but for that which this objection further urges , that there occurrs no reason why an extended spirit should be more capable of perception than extended matter , it is verily , in my judgment , a very unlearned and unskilful argutation . for we do not take all this pains in demonstrating the extension of a spirit , that thence we might fetch out a reason or account of its faculty of perceiving ; but that it may be conceived to be some real being and true substance , and not a vain figment , such as is every thing that has no amplitude and is in no sort extended . but those that so stickle and sweat for the proving their opinion , that a spirit is nowhere , or is totally in every part of that ubi it occupies , they are plainly engaged of all right , clearly and distinctly to render a reason out of their hypothesis of the perceptive faculty that is acknowledged in spirits , namely that they plainly and precisely deduce from hence , because a thing is nowhere or totally in every part of the ubi it occupies , that it is necessarily endued with a faculty of perceiving and thinking ; so that the reason of the conjunction of properties with the subject , may be clearly thence understood . which notwithstanding i am very confident , they can never perform ; and that perception and cogitation are the immediate attributes of some substance ; and that therefore , as that rule of prudence , enchirid. ethic. lib. . cap. . sect . . declares , no physical reason thereof ought to be required , nor can be given , why they are in the subject wherein they are found . sect . xxx . that from the generical nature of any species , no reason is to be fetcht of the conjunction of the essential difference with it , it being immediate . but so we are to conclude , that as substance is immediately divided into material and immaterial , or into body and spirit , where no reason can be rendred from the substance in spirit , as it is substance , why it should be spirit rather than body ; nor from substance in a body , as it is substance , why it should be body rather than spirit ; but these essential differences are immediately in the subject in which they are found : so the case stands in the subdivision of spirit into merely plastical and perceptive , supposing there are spirits that are merely plastical ; and then of a perceptive spirit into merely sensitive and intellectual . for there can be no reason rendred touching a spirit as a spirit in a spirit merely plastical , why it is a spirit merely plastical rather than perceptive : nor in a perceptive spirit , why it is a perceptive spirit rather than merely plastical . and lastly , in a perceptive spirit intellectual , why it is intellectual rather than merely sensitive ; and in the merely sensitive spirit , why it is such rather than intellectual . but these essential differences are immediately in the subjects in which they are found , and any physical and intrinsecal reason ought not to be asked , nor can be given why they are in those subjects , as i noted a little above out of the said enchiridion ethicum . sect . xxxi . that although the holenmerians and nullibists can give no reason , why that which perceives should be totally in every part , or should be nowhere rather than be in any sort extended or somewere , yet there are reasons obvious enough , why an extended spirit , rather should perceive than extended matter . but however , though we cannot render a reason why this or that substance as substance , be a spirit rather than body ; or why this or that spirit be perceptive rather than merely plastical ; yet as the reason is sufficiently plain , why matter or body is a substance rather than accident , so it is manifest enough why that which perceives , or is plastical , should be a spirit rather than matter or body ; which surely is much more than either the holenmerians or nullibists can vaunt of . for they can offer no reason why that which perceives should rather be nowhere than somewhere ; or totally in each part of the ubi it does occupie , than otherwise , as may be understood from what we have said above . but now since the matter or body which is discerpible and impenetrable is destitute of itself of all life and motion , certainly it is consonant to reason , that the species opposite to body , and which is conceived to be penetrable and indiscerpible , should be intrinsecally endued with life in general and motion . and whenas matter is nothing else than a certain stupid and loose congeries of physical monads , that the first and most immediate opposite degree in this indiscerpible and penetrable substance , which is called spirit , should be the faculty of union , motion , and life , in which all the sympathies and synenergies which are found in the world may be conceived to consist . from whence it ought not at all to seem strange , that that which is plastical should be a spirit . and now as for perception itself , undoubtedly all mortals have either a certain consused presage , or more precise and determinate notion , that as that , whatever it is in which the above-said sympathies and synenergies immediately are , so more especially that to which belongs the faculty of perceiving and thinking is a thing of all things the most subtile and most one that may be . wherefore i appeal here to the mind and judgment of any one , whether he can truly conceive any thing more subtile or more one than the essence or notion of a spirit as it is immediately distinguished from matter , and opposed thereto . for can there be any thing more one than what has no parts , into which it may be discerped ? or more subtile than what does not onely penetrate matter , but itself , or at least other substances of its own kind ? for a spirit can penetrate a spirit , though matter cannot penetrate matter . there is therefore in the very essence of a spirit , although it be metaphysically extended , no obscure reason why all the sympathies and synenergies , why all perceptions and all manner of cogitations should be referred rather to it , by reason of the unity and subtilty of its nature , than to matter , which is so crass , that it is impenetrable ; and is so far from unity of essence , that it consists of juxtaposited parts . but i hope by this i have abundantly satisfied this third difficulty . sect . xxxii . an answer to the fourth objection as much as respects the holenmerians and nullibists , and all those that acknowledge that the matter is created of god. iv. let us go on therefore to the fourth and last , which from the penetrability of a spirit concludes its unsitness for moving of matter . for it cannot move matter , but by impelling it ; nor can it impel it , because it does so easily , without all resistence , penetrate it . here therefore again , imagination plays her tricks , and measures the nature of a spirit by the laws of matter , fancying a spirit like some body passing through an over-large or wide hole , where it cannot stick by reason of the laxness of the passage . but in the mean time , it is to be noted , that neither the holenmerians nor nullibists can of right object this difficulty to us , whenas it is much more incredible that either a metaphysical monad , or any essence that is nowhere , should be more fit for the moving matter , than that which has some amplitude , and is present also to the matter that is to be moved . wherefore we have now onely to do with such philosophers as contend that the whole universe consists of bodies onely : for as for those that acknowledge there is a god , and that matter was created by him , it is not hard for them to conceive , that there may be a certain faculty in the soul , which in some manner , though very shadowishly , answers to that power in god of creating matter ; namely , that as god , though the most pure of all spirits , yet creates matter the most gross of all things ; so created spirits themselves may emit a certain material vertue , either spontaneously or naturally , by which they may intimately inhere in the subject matter , and be sufficiently close united therewith . which faculty of spirits in the appendix to the antidote against atheism , is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the hylopathy of spirits , or a power of affecting or being affected by the matter . but i confess that answer is less fitly used when we have to do with those who deny the creation of matter , and much more when with those that deny there is a god. sect . xxxiii . an answer to those that think there is nothing in the universe but matter or body . wherefore , whenas we have to do with such infense adversaries , and so much estranged from all knowledge and acknowledgement of incorporeal things , verily we ought to behave ourselves very cautiously and circumspectly , and something more precisely to consider the title of the question , which is not , whether we can accurately discern and declare the mode or way that a spirit moves matter , but whether its penetrability is repugnant with this faculty of moving matter . but now it is manifest , if a spirit could be united and as it were cohere with the matter , that it might easily move matter ; forasmuch as if there be at all any such thing as a spirit , it is according to the common opinion of all men to be acknowledged the true principle and fountain of all life and motion . wherefore the hinge of the whole controversie turns upon this one pin , whether it be repugnant that any spirit should be united and as it were cohere with matter , or by whatever firmness or sastening ( whether permanent or momentaneous ) be joyned therewith . now that it is not repugnant , i hope i shall clearly demonstrate from hence , that the unition of spirit with matter , is as intelligible as the unition of one part of matter with another . for that ought in reason to be held an axiome firm and sure , that that is possible to be , in which there is found no greater ( not to say less ) dissiculty of so being , than in that which we really find to be . but we see one part of matter really and actually united with another , and that in some bodies with a firmness almost invincible , as in some stones and metals , which are held to be the hardest of all bodies . but we will for the more fully understanding the business , suppose a body absolutely and perfectly hard , constituted of no particles , but the very physical monads themselves , and without all pores . i ask therefore here , by what vertue , or by what manner of way do the parts of so perfect a solid cohere ? undoubtedly they can alledge nothing here besides immediate contact and rest : for if they fly to any other affections which are allied to life and sense , they are more rightly and more easily understood to be in a spirit than in matter ; and we will presently pronounce that a spirit may adhere to matter by the same vertues . but that the parts of matter cohere by bare though immediate contact , seems as difficult , if not more difficult , than that a spirit penetrating matter should cleave together into one with it : for the contact of the parts of matter is every where onely superficial , but one and the same indiscerpible spirit penetrates and possesses the whole matter at once . but it half repents me that i have with so great preparation and pomp attacked so small a difficulty , and have striven so long with mere elusions and prestigious juggles of the imagination , ( which casts such a mist of fictitious repugnancies on the true idea of a spirit ) as with so many phantomes and spectres of an unquiet night . but in the mean time i have made it abundantly manifest that there are no other contradictions or repugnancies in this our notion of a spirit , than what the minds of our adversaries , polluted with the impure dregs of imagination , and unable to abstract metaphysical extension from corporeal affections , do foully and slovenly clart upon it , and that this idea lookt upon in itself does clearly appear to be a notion at least of a thing possible ; which is all that we drive at in this place . sect . xxxiv . how far the notion of a spirit here defended is countenanced and confirmed by the common suffrage of all adversaries . and that it may appear more plausible , we will not omit in the last place to take notice , how far it is countenanced and confirmed by the common suffrage of our adversaries : for the hobbians , and whatever other philosophers else of the same stamp , do plainly assent to us in this , that whatsoever really is , is of necessity extended . but that they hence infer that there is nothing in nature but what is corporeal , that truly they do very unskilfully and inconsequently collect , they by some weakness or morbidness of mind tumbling into so foul an errour . for it is impossible that the mind of man , unless it were laden and polluted with the dregs and dross of corporeal imagination , should suffer itself to sink into such a gross and dirty opinion . but that every thing that is , is extended , the nullibists also themselves seem to me to be near the very point of acknowledging it for true and certain . for they do not dissemble it , but that if a spirit be somewhere , it necessarily follows that it is also extended . and they moreover grant , that by its operation it is present to or in the matter , and that the essence of a spirit is not separated from its operations . but that a thing should be , and yet not be any where in the whole universe , is so wild and mad a vote , and so absonous and abhorrent from all reason , that it cannot be said by any man in his wits , unless by way of sport or some slim jest , as i have intimated above ; whence their case is the more to be pitied , who captivated and blinded with admiration of the chief author of so absurd an opinion , do solemnly and seriously embrace , and diligently endeavour to polish the same . and lastly , as for the holenmerians , those of them who are more cautious and considerate , do so explain their opinion , that it scarce seems to differ an hairs breadth from ours . for though they affirm that the soul is in every part , yet they say they understand it not of the quantity or extension of the soul , whereby it occupies the whole body , but of the perfection of its essence and vertue : which however true it may be of the soul , it is undoubtedly most true of the divine numen , whose life and essence is most perfect and most full every where , as being such as every where contains infinite goodness , wisdom , and power . thus we see that this idea or notion of a spirit which is here exhibited to the world , is not onely possible in itself , but very plausible and unexceptionable , and such as all parties , if they be rightly understood , will be found whether they will or no to contribute to the discovery of the truth and solidity thereof . and therefore is such as will not unusefully nor unseasonably conclude this first part of ●…ducismus triumphatus , which treats of the ●…ossibility of apparitions and witchcraft , but ●…ake the way more easie to the acknowledgement of the force of the arguments of the second part , viz. the many relations that are produced to prove the actual existence of spirits and apparitions . saducismus triumphatus . part the second saducismus triumphatus , or full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions . the second part. proving partly by holy scripture , partly by a choice collection of modern relations , the real existence of apparitions , spirits and witches . by jos. glanvil , late chaplain to his majesty , and fellow of the royal society . london , printed for j. collins , and s. lowdns . . the preface . i know it is matter of very little credit to be a relator of stories , and i of all men living , have the least reason to be fond of the imployment . for i never had any faculty in telling of a story , and have always had a particular indisposition and backwardness to the writing any such . but of all relations of fact , there are none like to give a man such trouble and disreputation , as those that relate to witchcraft and apparitions , which so great a party of men ( in this age especially ) do so railly and laugh at , and without more ado , are resolved to explode and despise , as meer winter tales , and old wives fables . such they will call and account them , be their truth and evidence what it will. for , they have unalterably fixt and determined the point , that witches and apparitions are things ridiculous , incredible , foppish , impossible ; and therefore all relations that assert them are lies , cheats and delusions , and those that afford any credit to them , are credulous gulls and silly easie believers . which things , if they should not be so , it would spoil many a jest , and those who thought themselves great wits , must have the discomfort of finding they are mistaken . they must fall back into common and vulgar belief , and lose the pretence to extraordinary sagacity , on which they valued themselves so much , and be brought to be afraid of another world , and be subjected to the common terrours which they despised before , as the juggles and contrivances of priests and politicians , and so must see themselves under a necessity of altering their lives , or of being undone . these are very hard and grievous things , and therefore the stories of witches and apparitions must be exploded and run down , or all is lost . this is the case with multitudes of brisk confident men in our days , so that to meddle on this subject , is to affront them greatly , to provoke their rage and contempt , and to raise the devil of their wit and buffoonry . all which considered , it must be confest to be a very bold and adventurous thing to undertake the province in which i have engaged . and besides the provocation which it must needs give to the huffers and witlings , there is another sort whose good opinion i greatly value ; some sober and ingenious spirits , who upon other grounds doubt of the existence of witches , who may be apt to judge me guilty of credulity , for the pains i take in this matter . this also hath been some trouble and discouragement . and upon the whole , i am assured before-hand , that no evidence of fact possible is sufficient to remove the obstinate prejudices of divers resolved men , and therefore ▪ i know i must fall under their heavy censures ; of which i have considered the worst , and am i hope pretty well prepared to bear the severest of them . but no man would expose himself to all this for nothing , nor have i. there were reasons for this engàgement , and they were briefly these that follow . having bèen at mr. mompessons house in the time of the disturbance , seen , and heard somewhat my self , and received an account from mr. mompesson , and other credible persons of the whole trouble ; i was perswaded to publish , and to annex the full account of it to the second or third edition of my considerations concerning witchcraft , to which the story had near relation . ' this i did , and they passed two or three editions together , without much further trouble to me . but of late , i have heard from all parts , and am amazed at it , that that so strongly attested relation is run down in most places as a delusion and imposture , and that mr. mompesson and my self , have confessed all to be a cheat and contrivance . concerning this , i have been asked a thousand times , till i have been weary of answering , and the questionists would scarce believe i was in earnest when i denied it . i have received letters about it from known friends and strangers out of many parts of the three kingdoms , so that i have been haunted almost as bad as mr. mompesson s house . most of them have declared that it was most confidently reported , and believed in all the respective parts , that the business was a cheat , that mr. mompesson had confessed so much , and i the same : so that i was quite tired with denying and answering letters about it . and to free my self from the trouble , i at last resolved to re-print the story by it self with my confutation of the invention that concerned me , and a letter i received from mr. mompesson ( now printed in this book ) which cleared the matter as to him . this accordingly i committed to my booksellers hands some years since to be printed . but it being not done , i was continually importuned by new solicitations and questions , and at length out comes mr. websters confident book , in which he saith , that my story of the drummer , and the other of witchcraft , are as odd and silly , as any can be told or read , and as fictitious , incredible , ludicrous and ridiculous as any can be , p . and again , p. . must not all persons that are of sound understanding , judge and believe that all those strange tricks related by mr. glanvil of his drummer at mr. mompessons house , which he calls the daemon of tedworth , were abominable cheats and impostures , as i am informed by persons of good quality , they were discovered to be . but neither did this confidence , nor his book ( i confess ) much move me ; for i was very loth to be troubled any more in this matter . but at last divers eminent men , and learned friends of mine having taken notice of it , and being troubled to see so considerable an evidence against saducism , as mr. mompesson s story is , so impudently run down by purposely contrived lyes , they urg'd me very much to re-print the relation , with my considerations about witchcraft ; and so give some check to the insultation and confidence of mr. webster . to this i stood long dis-inclined , but being prest by the consideration that such a re-enforcement might be a very considerable and seasonable service to religion , against the stupid saducisme and infidelity of the age , i was perswaded : and having signified my being now inclined to the design , i received great encouragement from some of the greatest spirits of our age and nation , who earnestly animated me to it . having resolved , i bethought me of making a small collection of the most credible and best attested stories of this kind that were near and modern , to accompany the second i had printed , and to confirm and prove the main subject . advertisement . this is the whole of the preface , that was found amongst mr. glanvil's papers , saving five or six words , which being superfluous to the sense of this last clause , and beginning something else not perfected , i thought better left out . but as for mr. mompesson's letter to mr. glanvil , which is mentioned in this preface , and designed to be printed in this intended edition ; it is out of the original copy as follows . mr. mompesson's letter to mr. glanvil , dated nov. . anno . worthy sir , meeting with dr. pierce accidentally at sir robert buttons , he acquainted me of something that passed between my lord of r — and your self about my troubles , &c. to which ( having but little leisure ) i do give you this account , that i have been very often of late askt the question , whether i have not confessed to his majesty or any other , a cheat discovered about that affair . to which i gave , and shall to my dying day give the same answer , that i must bely my self , and perjure my self also to acknowledge a cheat in a thing where i am sure there was nor could be any , as i , the minister of the ●…lace , and two other honest gentlemen deposed at the assizes , upon my impleading the drummer . if the world will not believe it , it shall be indifferent to me , praying god to keep me from the same , or the like affliction . and although i am sure this most damnable lye does pass for current amongst one sort of people in the world , invented only , i think , to suppress the belief of the being either of god or devil ; yet i question not but the thing obtains credit enough amongst those , whom i principally desire should retain a more charitable opinion of me , than to be any way a devisor of it , only to be talk't of in the world , to my own disadvantage and reproach ; of which sort i reckon you one , and rest in hast , sir , your obliged servant , jo. mompesson . nov. . . advertisement . concerning the attestation of mr. mompesson and others upon oath at the assizes , the same is mentioned also , and their names expressed in a letter to mr. james collins , which letter from the original copy is as follows . mr. mompesson's letter to mr. collins , dated aug. . anno . sir , i received yours , and had given you an earlier answer , had i not been prevented by some journeys . i now give you this ; that as to any additional part of the story , i shall not trouble you with at present , not knowing what is either already published or omitted , in regard i have not any of mr. glanvi's books by me . i never had but one , which was the last year borrowed of me for the use of the lord hollis , and is not yet returned . but as to the business of the assizes ( which is likely to work most on the incredulous , because the evidence was given on oath ) i shall here enlarge it to you . when the drummer was escaped from his exile , which he was sentenced to at glou●…ester for a felony , i took him up , and procured his committment to salisbury gaol , where i indicted him as a felon ' , for this supposed witchcraft about my house . when the fellow saw me in earnest , he sent to me from the prifon , that he was sorry for my affliction , and if i would procure him leave to come to my house in the nature of an harvest-man , he did not question but he should do me good as to that affair . to which i sent answer , i knew he could do me no good in any honest way , and therefore rejected it . the assizes came on , where i indicted him on the statute primo jacobi cap. . where you may find , that to feed , imploy , or reward any evil spirit is felony . and the indictment against him was , that he did quendam malum spiritum negotiare , the grand jury found the bill upon the evidence , but the petty jury acquitted him , but not without some difficulty . the evidence upon oath were my self , one mr. william maton , one mr. walter dowse , all yet living , and i think of as good repute , as any this country has in it , and one mr. jo , cragg , then minister of the place , but since dead . we all deposed several things that we conceived impossible to be done by any natural agents , as the motion of chairs , stools and bedstaves , no body being near them , the beating of drumms in the air over the house in clear nights , and nothing visible ; the shaking of the floor and strongest parts of the house in still and calm nights , with several other things of the like nature : and that by other evidence it was applied to him . for some going out of these parts to gloucester whilst he was there in prison , and visiting him , he ask't them what news in wilts . to which they replyed , they knew none . no , says the drummer , did you not hear of a gentlemans house that was troubled with the beating of drums ? they told him again , if that were news , they heard enough of that . ay , says the drummer , it was because he took my drum from me ; if he had not taken away my drum , that trouble had never befallen him , and he shall never have his quiet again , till i have my drum , or satisfaction from him . this was deposed by one thomas avis servant to one mr. thomas sadler of north-wilts , and these words had like to have cost the drummer his life . for else , although the things were never so true , it could not have been rightly applyed to him more than to another . i should only add , that the before mentioned witnesses were neighbours , and deposed , that they heard and saw these things almost every day or night for many moneths together . as to the sculpture you intend , you best understand the advantage , i think it needless . and those words [ you shall have drumming enough ] is more than i heard him speak : i rest your loving friend , jo. mompesson . tedworth aug. . . an introduction to the proof of the existence of apparitions , spirits and witches . sect . i. the great usefulness and seasonableness of the present argument , touching witches and apparitions , in subservieney to religion . the question , whether there are witches or not , is not matter of vain speculation , or of indifferent moment ; but an inquiry of very great and weighty importance . for , on the resolution of it , depends the authority and just execution of some of our laws ; and which is more , our religion in its main doctrines is nearly concerned . there is no one , that is not very much a stranger to the world but knows how atheisme and infidelity have advanced in our days , and how openly they now dare to shew themselves in asserting and disputing their vile cause . particularly the distinction of the soul from the body , the being of spirits , and a future life are assertions extreamly despised and opposed by the men of this sort , and if we lose those articles , all religion comes to nothing . they are clearly and fully asserted in the sacred oracles , but those wits have laid aside these divine writings . they are proved by the best philosophy and highest reason ; but the unbelievers , divers of them are too shallow to be capable of such proofs , and the more subtle are ready to scepticize away those grounds . but there is one head of arguments that troubles them much , and that is , the topick of witches and apparitions . if such there are , it is a sensible proof of spirits and another life , an argument of more direct force than any speculations , or abstract reasonings , and such an one as meets with all the sorts of infidels . on which account they labour with all their might to perswade themselves and others , that witches and apparitions are but melancholick dreams , or crafty impostures ; and here it is generally , that they begin with the young-men , whose understandings they design to debauch . they expose and deride all relations of spirits and witchcraft , and furnish them with some little arguments , or rather colours against their existence . and youth is very ready to entertain such opinions as will help them to phansie , they are wiser than the generality of men. and when they have once swallowed this opinion , and are sure there are no witches nor apparitions , they are prepared for the denial of spirits , a life to come , and all the other principles of religion . so that i think it will be a considerable and very seasonable service to it , fully to debate and settle this matter , which i shall endeavour in the following sheets , and i hope so , as not to impose upon my self or others , by empty rhetorications , fabulous relations , or sophistical reasonings , but treat on the question with that freedom and plainness , that becomes one that is neither fond , fanciful nor credulous . sect . ii. the true stating of the question by defining what a witch and witchcraft is . i know that a great part of the labour in most controversies , useth to be bestowed on things impertinent to the main business , and by them the minds of both sides are so confounded , that they wander widely from the point in difference , and at last lose it quite . it would quickly be thus in the question of witchcraft , and usually is so , without previous care to avoid it . but i shall take the best i can , that my pains on this subject be not so mis-bestowed , but closely applyed to the purpose : and in order thereunto shall briefly define the terms of the question , and then set down what i grant to mine adversaries , and what i demand from them . and when these preliminaries are well adjusted , we shall proceed with more distinctness , and still see whereabout we are , and know how far what is affirmed or proved , reaches the main matter in debate . the question is , whether there are witches or not . mr. webster accuseth the writers on the subject of defect , in not laying down a perfect description of a witch or witchcraft , or explaining what they mean , p. . what his perfect description is , i do not know ; but i think i have described a witch or witchcraft in my considerations , sufficiently to be understood , and the conception which i , and , i think , most men have is , that a witch is one , who can do or seems to do strange things , beyond the known power of art and ordinary nature , by vertue of a confederacy with evil spirits . ] strange things , not miracles ; these are the extraordinary effects of divine power , known and distinguished by their circumstances , as i shall shew in due place . the strange things are really performed , and are not all impostures and delusions . the witch occasions , but is not the principal efficient , she seems to do it , but the spirit performs the wonder , sometimes immediately , as in transportations and possessions , sometimes by applying other natural causes , as in raising storms , and inflicting diseases , sometimes using the witch as an instrument , and either by the eyes or touch , conveying malign influences : and these things are done by vertue of a covenant , or compact betwixt the witch and an evil spirit . a spirit , viz. an intelligent creature of the invisible world , whether one of the evil angels called devils , or an inferiour daemon or spirit , or a wicked soul departed ; but one that is able and ready for mischief , and whether altogether incorporeal or not , appertains not to this question . sect . iii. that neither the notation of the name that signifies indifferently , nor the false additions of others to the notion of a witch can any way dissettle the authors definition . this i take to be a plain description of what we mean by a witch and witchcraft : what mr. webster and other advocates for witches , talk concerning the words whereby these are exprest , that they are improper and metaphorical , signifying this , and signifying that , is altogether idle and impertinent . the word witch signifies originally a wise man , or rather a wise woman . the same doth saga in the latine , and plainly so doth wizzard in english signify a wise man , and they are vulgarly called cunning men or women . an art , knowledge , cunning they have that is extraordinary ; but it is far from true wisdom , and the word is degenerated into an ill sense , as magia is . so then they are called , and we need look no further , it is enough , that by the word , we mean the thing and person i have described , which is the common meaning ; and mr. webster and the rest prevaricate when they make it signify an ordinary cheat , a couzener , a poysoner , seducer , and i know not what . words signify as they are used , and in common use , witch and witchcraft , do indeed imply these , but they emply more , viz. deluding , cheating and hurting by the power of an evil spirit in covenant with a wicked man or woman : this is our notion of a witch . mr. webster i know will not have it to be a perfect description . he adds to the notion of the witch he opposeth , carnal copulation with the devil , and real transformation into an hare , cat , dog , wolf ; the same doth mr. wagstaffe . which is , as if a man should define an angel to be a creature in the shape of a boy with wings , and then prove there is no such being . of all men i would not have mr. webster to make my definitions for me ; we our selves are to have the leave to tell what it is that we affirm and defend . and i have described the witch and witchcraft , that sober men believe and assert . thus briefly for defining . sect . iv. what things the authour concedes in this controversie about witches and witchcraft . i shall let the patrons of witches know what i allow and grant to them ; first , i grant , that there are some witty and ingenious men of the opposite belief to me in the question . yea , it is accounted a piece of wit to laugh at the belief of witches as silly credulity . and some men value themselves upon it , and pride them in their supposed sagacity of seeing the cheat that imposeth on so great a part of believing mankind . and the stories of witches and apparitions afford a great deal of subject for wit , which it is pity that a witty man should lose . secondly , i own that some of those who deny witches have no design against , nor a disinclination to religion , but believe spirits , and a life to come , as other sober christians do , and so are neither atheists , sadducees , nor hobbists . thirdly , i allow that the great body of mankind is very credulous , and in this matter so , that they do believe vain impossible things in relation to it . that carnal copulation with the devil , and real transmutation of men and women into other creatures are such . that people are apt to impute the extraordinaries of art , or nature to witchcraft , and that their credulity is often abused by subtle and designing knaves through these . that there are ten thousand silly lying stories of witchcraft and apparitions among the vulgar . that infinite such have been occasioned by cheats and popish superstitions , and many invented and contrived by the knavery of popish priests . fourthly , i grant that melancholy and imagination have very great force , and can beget strange perswasions . and that many stories of witchcraft and apparitions have been but melancholy fancies . fifthly , i know and yield , that there are many strange natural diseases that have odd symptomes , and produce wonderful and astonishing effects beyond the usual course of nature , and that such are sometimes falsly ascribed to witchcraft . sixthly , i own , the popish inquisitours , and other witch-finders have done much wrong , that they have destroyed innocent persons for witches , and that watching and torture have extorted extraordinary confessions from some that were not guilty . seventhly and lastly , i grant that the transactions of spirits with witches , which we affirm to be true and certain , are many of them very strange and uncouth , and that we can scarce give any account of the reasons of them , or well reconcile many of those passages to the commonly received notion of spirits , and the state of the next world. if these concessions will do mine adversaries in this question any good , they have them freely . and by them i have already almost spoiled all mr. webster's and mr. wagstaffe's , and the other witch-advocates books , which prove little else , than what i have here granted . and having been so free in concessions , i may expect that something should be granted me from the other party . advertisement . those that are mentioned in the second concession , though they are not atheists , sadducees nor hobbists ; yet if they deny witches , it is plain they are antiscripturists , the scripture so plainly attesting the contrary . sect . v. the postulata which the authour demands of his adversaries as his just right . the demands that i make are ; first , that whether witches are or are not , is a question of fact : for it is in effect , whether any men or women have been , or are in convenant with evil spirits , and whether they by the spirits help , or he on their account performs such or such things . secondly , that matter of fact can only be proved by immediate sense , or the testimony of others , divine or humane . to endeavour to demonstrate fact by abstract reasoning and speculation , is , as if a man should prove that julius caesar founded the empire of rome , by algebra or metaphysicks . so that what mr. webster saith , p. . that the true and proper mediums to prove the actions of witches by , are scripture and sound reason , and not the improper way of testimony ( which we use in the opposition that testimony stands to scripture and sound reason ) is very non-sense . thirdly , that the history of the scripture is not all allegory , but generally hath a plain literal and obvious meaning . fourthly , that some humane testimonies are credible and certain , viz. they may be so circumstantiated as to leave no reason of doubt . for our senses sometimes report truth , and all mankind are not lyars , cheats and knaves , at least they are not all lyars , when they have no interest to be so . fifthly , that which is sufficiently and undeniably proved , ought not to be denyed , because we know not how it can be , that is , because there are difficulties in the conceiving of it . otherwise sense and knowledge is gone as well as faith. for the modus of most things is unknown , and the most obvious in nature have inextricable difficulties in the speculation of them , as i have shewn in my scepsis scientifica . sixthly and lastly , we are much in the dark , as to the nature and kinds of spirits , and the particular condition of the other world. the angels , devils and souls happiness and misery we know , but what kinds are under these generals , and what actions , circumstances and ways of life under those states we little understand . these are my postulata or demands , which i suppose will be thought reasonable , and such as need no more proof . proof of apparitions , spirits , and witches from holy-scripture . sect . i. the authours purpose of proving apparitions and witchcraft , to such as believe scripture , as first from the apparition of angels . and having thus prepared my way , i come to prove that there are witches against both the sorts that deny their existence , viz. those that believe the scriptures , and the wits or witlings that will not admit their testimony . to the first i shall prove the being of witches by plain evidence taken from the divine oracles , and to the other , and indeed to both , i shall evince the same by as full and clear testimonies , as matter of fact is capable of , and then answer the opposite objections , and those particularly of the three late confident exploders of witchcraft ; * mr. webster , mr. wagstaffe , and the authour of the doctrine of devils . the proof i intend shall be of these two things , viz. that spirits have sensibly transacted with men , and that some have been in such leagues with them , as to be enabled thereby to do wonders . these sensible transactions of spirits with men , are evident from apparitions and possessions . the apparition of angels , their discourses and predictions , sensible converses with men and women are frequently recorded in the scripture . an angel appeared to hagar , gen. . three angels in the shape of men appeared to abraham , gen. . two to lot in the same likeness , gen. . an angel called to hagar , gen. . . and so did one to abraham , gen. . an angel spake to and conversed with jacob in a dream , gen. . one of the same appeared to moses in the bush , exod. . an angel went before the camp of israel , exod. . an angel met balaam in the way , numb . . an angel spake to all the people of israel , judges . an angel appeared to gideon , judges . and to the wife of manoah , judges . an angel destroyed the people , sam. . an angel appeared to eliab , kings . an angel smote in the camp of the assyrians . kings . an angel stood by the threshing-floor of ornan , chron. . . an angel talked with zachariah the prophet , zach. . an angel appeared to the two mary's at our lords sepulchre , matth. . an angel foretold the birth of john baptist to zachariah the priest , luke . gabriel was sent to the holy virgin , luke . . an angel appeared to the shepherds , luke . an angel opened the prison door to peter and the rest , acts . i might accumulate many more instances , but these are enough . and many circumstances of sensible converse belong to most of them , which may be read at large in the respective chapters . and since the intercourses of angels were so frequent in former days , why should we be averse to the belief that spirits sometimes transact with men now ? advertisement . * i find amongst mr. glanvil 's papers , the first lineaments or strokes of an answer to mr. wagstaffe , and to the authour of the doctrine of devils , but more fully to mr. webster , at least seventeen sheets where he answers solidly and substantially where i can read his hand , but it reaches but to the sixth chapter . and in truth he has laid about him so well in these sheets that are published , that those may well seem the less necessary . sect . ii. the evasions his adversaries use to escape the force of these proofs of scripture from the apparition of angels , with the authours answer . there are several evasions , by which some endeavour to escape these texts ; as , first the sadducees of old , and familists of later days , who hold , to wit , these , that the angels we read of , were but divine graces , the other that they were divine phantasmes created to serve a present occasion , which ceased to be as soon as they disappeared . one would think that none that ever had read the scriptures , should entertain such a conceit as this , that is so contrary to the account they every where give of those celestial creatures . but there is nothing so absurd , but some men will embrace to support their opinions . let us consider a little how differently from this vain fancy the scripture describes them . they are called spirits , an attribute given to god himself the prime subsistence , who is by way of eminence called the father of spirits , not of phantasmes . and spirit imports as much substance as body , though without gross bulk . we read of elect angels , and the angels that stand before the throne of god continually , and that always behold the face of god. of the faln angels that kept not their first station , that are held in the chains of darkness ; and of everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels against the judgment of the great day . both had their order of superiority and inseriority , michael and his angels , the dragon and his angels . we are made little lower than the angels . in heaven we shall be as the angels of god. of the day of judgment knoweth no man , no not the angels . let all the angels of god worship him . which descriptions of the nature , order , condition , attributes of angels , and infinite more such up and down the scriptures , are not applicable to phantasms , but demonstratively prove that the angels of whose apparitions we hear so frequently there , were real permanent subsistences , and not mere phantasms and shadows . sect . iii. that the angels that are said to have appeared in scripture were not men-messengers , but inhabitants of the invisible world ; and whether they ate and drank or no. but were not those angels that so appeared , special prophets , divine messengers , sometimes in scripture confessedly called angels ? they did eat and drink with abraham , and with lot , by which it should seem that they were real men. but whoever shall look over the instances alledged of the apparition of angels , and read them in all the circumstances of the text , will plainly see that they could not be men. such could not be the angel that spake to abraham and hagar out of heaven , that conversed with jacob in a dream , that appeared to moses in the burning bush , that appeared to manoah , and ascended , in his and his wife's presence , in the slame of the sacrifice , that went before the camp of israel , that stood before balaam in the way unseen by him , that smote the army of the assyrians , that appeared to zacharias in the temple , and to the mary's at the sepulchre . these must be a sort of beings superiour to mankind , angels in the proper sense , who are sometimes in scripture called men , because they appear in our likeness . but whether these do receive refection or sustinence in their own world and state or not , i will not dispute . it is most probable , and it hath been the doctrine both of fathers and philosophers , that they are vitally united to aetherial and heavenly bodies , which possibly may need recruits some such way , and so angels food may be more than a metaphor . but certainly they cannot eat after our manner , nor feed on our gross dyet , except in appearance only . they may make shew of doing it ( as the angel raphael told tobit that he did , tob. . . all these days i did appear unto you , but i did neither eat nor drink , but you did see a vision ) but really they do it not . so that when abraham's and lot's angels are said to eat and drink with them , the scripture speaks as to them it seemed . and so the jerusalem targum reads , and they seemed as if they did eat and drink . and we may suppose that men's conceptions of angels were not very refined in those days , nor could they have borne their sensible and free converses , if they had look't on them as creatures of a nature so distant from their own . and therefore afterward , when they were better understood , those to whom they appeared were struck with great dread and amazement , and thought that they should presently dye . nor do we , as i remember , read any more of the angels eating or drinking after what seemed to abraham and lot. indeed manoah invited the angel to eat , judg. . . but it was before he knew he was an angel , and it is set down in excuse of the offer , v. . for manoah knew not that he was an angel of the lord , implying that the invitation had been absurd if he had known it . i have said this in answer to the objection , though the main cause is not concerned . for though i should grant that abraham's and lot's angels were men , yet the other instances in which that could not be said or supposed , are more than enough to carry my point , that real angels , inhabitants of the invisible world , did sometimes sensibly appear . sect . iv. that angels are still ministring spirits , as well as of old . but it will be said , when they did appear , it was upon divine errands , and god sent them to serve the ends of his government and providence ; which i grant . and god almighty hath the same ends to serve still , he governs the world now , and his providence is as watchful as ever , and the angels are the chief ministers of that providence , and ministring spirits for our good . the gospel was ushered in by the apparition of angels , and many things done by them in the carrying of it on . and why we should think they may not be sent , and should not appear on occasion now , i do not see . but this is more than i need say yet , being for the first step only to shew , that spirits have transacted with men. sect . v. proofs from the apparitions of evil spirits , recorded in scripture . those i have mentioned hitherto , have been good and benign spirits , but evil spirits have also appeared , and sensibly had to do with mankind . my first instance of this is one of the first businesses that was in the world , the temptation of eve by the devil in the serpent . an argument which those that adhere to the letter of those three first chapters cannot avoid . evil angels were sent among the aegyptians , psalm . . and those passed through and smote the land. but the destroyers , viz. the evil angels were not permitted to come into the israelites houses , exod. . . when god asked sathan whence he came , job . . he answered , from going to and fro in the earth . by divine permission he raised the great wind that blew down the house upon jobs children , v. . and smote his body all over with boyls , job . . he tempted our saviour in an external sensible way , carrying him from place to place , and urging the son of god to worship him , matth. . but more of this will appear by considering the second head proposed , viz. possession of evil spirits . sect . vi. proofs from possession of evil spirits , and that they were not diseases , as the witch-advocates would have them . that such possessions have been , we find frequently and plainly delivered in the history of the gospel , and so often , that i shall not need to recite particulars . the evasion that the witch-advocates have for this , is , that the devils and unclean spirits spoken of in those places , which our saviour is said to have cast out , were strange and uncommon diseases , which the jews thought to be devils , and christ who came not to teach men philosophy , complyed with their deceived apprehension , and the evangelists speak according to their conceit in this matter . but if this answer must pass , then in the first place , farewel all scripture , it may be made to say what we please ; and if when the scripture speaks in a plain history of un●…lean spirits and devils , we may understand diseases by it , then what we read of good angels may be graces and vertues , and what we read of christ himself , may all be interpreted of the christ within , and so all the scripture , and all religion shall signify what any man thinks fit . secondly , the cure of diseases is mentioned in many of the texts , distinctly from the casting out of devils . thus matth. . . he gave the disciples power against unclean spirits to cast them out , and to heal all manner of sicknesses , and all manner of diseases . this was a different power from the former , and all manner of sicknesses and diseases implies the uncommon and extraordinary , which our sadducees would have the devils to be , viz. diseases , as well as the ordinary and usual ones are . so luke . . he healed them of their diseases , and those that were vexed with unclean spirits , were brought to him , and he healed them likewise . and most plainly , matth. . . and they brought unto him all sick people , that were taken with divers diseases and torments , and those that were possessed with devils , and those that were lunatick , and those that had the palsie , and he healed them . the mad-men , and those that had the falling-sickness , the distempers which the witch-advocates make devils of , are here mentioned apart , and as distinct from those devils our saviour cast out . thirdly , many things are attributed to those devils that were cast out , which are not applicable to diseases . the devils in the possessed among the gergasens , matth. . . besought christ , saying , if thou cast us out , sufser us to go away into the herd of swine , and he gave them leave . mark . . sure the diseases did not beseech him ; but perhaps the men did . had they a mind to go into the swine ? and did they enter into them ? a sort of possession this , that was never heard of , a beast possest with a man. but st. luke tells us , they were the devils that went out of the men , and entered into the swine , luke . . the men did not go out of themselves , and therefore , if what went out was not the disease , it was really the d●…vil or unclean spirit . so luke . . in the synagogue there was a man that had a spirit of an unclean devil , and cryed out with a loud voice , saying , let us alone , &c. well , but might not this be the man himself that cryed out so ? therefore read a little on , v. . and jesus rebuked him , viz. him that spake , saying to the same still , hold thy peace and come out of him . which must be another person distinct srom the man himself , and who was that ? it follows , and when the devil had thrown him in the midst , he came cut of him , the same devil that spake ; that our saviour rebuked , and commanded to come out , which could be no other than a real evil spirit . and that those ejected devils were not diseases appears further , matth. . v. . there was brought unto him , one possessed with a devil , blind and dumb , and he healed him , insomuch ( to wit , the consequence of the ejecting the devil was ) that the blind and dumb both spake and saw . the pharisees , v. . impute this casting out devils to a confederacy with beelzebub the prince of the devils ; our saviour there argues , that then sathan should be divided against himself : namely , beelzebub the chief against the inferiour devils that he cast out ; who are of his kingdom , and doing the work of it : for there it follows , that his kingdom could not stand , v. . these things will be hardly applyed to diseases . and , fourthly and lastly , if the evangelist should call diseases devils , and unclean spirits , and speak of casting out devils in an history , with all the plainness and expresness of words , and phrase , and circumstance , that such an action could be described by , and yet mean nothing of it , what would this suggest , but that they falsly ascribed to christ wonders that he never did , and consequently that they were lyars and deceivers , and vain impostours ? for clear it is , that whoever shall read those passages in the gospel without a prepossest opinion , will be led into this belief by them , that our saviour did really cast devils out of persons possest . and if there be really no such thing as possession by evil spirits , but only diseases by the ignorant and credulous people taken for such , then the history imposeth on us , and leads men into a perswasion of things done by the power of christ that never were . and what execution this will do upon the truth , and credit of the whole history , is very easie to understand . sect . vii . that the witch-advocates cannot elude scripture-testimony of possession by evil spirits , by saying it speaks according to the received opinions of men. i but the scripture doth , we know , speak often according to the received opinions of men , though they are errours , which it is not concerned to rectify , when they concern no morality or religion . but first , the doctrine of spirits and devils was not the received opinion of all the jews : the sadducees a considerable sect were of another mind . so that the stories of ejecting such , must look to them as impostures . and the scriptures were not written only for the jews , and for that particular time alone , but for all places and all ages . most of which have no such use of calling diseases devils , and among them the history must either convey a false opinion , or lose the reputation of its truth . secondly , though the scripture doth not vary from the common forms of speech , where they are grounded upon harmless and lesser mistakes , yet when such are great and dangerous , prejudicial to the glory of god , and interest of religion , it is then much concerned to reform and rectify such errours . and according to the belief of the witch-advocates , the doctrine of possessions is highly such . for it leads to the opinion of witchcraft , which they make such a dismal and tragical error , blasphemy , an abominably idolatrous , yea an atheistical doctrine , the grand apostasie , the greatest that ever was or can be , that which cuts off christs head , and un-gods him , renounceth christ and god , and owns the devil , and makes him equal to them , &c. as the authour of the grand apostasie raves . and mr. webster saith little less of this opinion in his preface , viz. that it tends to advance superstition and popery , is derogatory to the wisdom , justice and providence of the almighty , tending to cry up the power of the kingdom of darkness , to question the verity of the principal articles of the christian faith , concerning the resurrection of christ , and generally tends to the obstructing of godliness and piety . and mr. wagstaffe loads it with as dreadful imputations in his preface ; as that it doth necessarily infer plurality of gods by attributing omnipotent effects to more than one , and that it supposeth many omnipotents , and many omniscients . if any thing of this be so , certainly our saviours inspired historians would not have connived at , much less would they have spoken in the phrase , that supposeth and encourageth a common error , that leads to such an horrid opinion . sect . viii . an answer to an objection from christs n●… mentioning his casting out devils to john's disciples , amongst other miracles . but saith the authour of the grand apestasie , p. . our saviour himself in his answer to the disciples of john the baptist , luke . doth not pretend to the casting out devils , but only the cure of diseases , and raising the dead . to which i say , first , we may not argue negatively from scripture in such matters , and certainly we ought not to argue from silence in one place , against plain assirmations in many . secondly , our saviour answers in reference to the things he was then doing , when the disciples of john came to him , v. . and in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues . evil spirits , it must be confessed , are also mentioned . some of those diseases it is like were occasioned by evil spirits , as ( ma●…th . . . ) the blindness and dumbness of th●… possessed person there was . and then the ●…jection of the evil spirit is implyed , when the disease is said to be cured . thirdly , the business of john's disciples was to enquire whether he was the messiah , and it was fit our saviour in his answer should give such proofs of his being so , as were plain and palpable . go your way , saith he , and tell john what things ye have seen and heard , luke . . they had heard him preach the gospel it is like , and had seen him cure diseases . these things were plain and sensible , and could admit of no dispute or doubt . but whether the distempers christ then healed , were inflicted by evil spirits , and whether those were cast out in the cure , did not plainly appear at that time . our saviour therefore did not bid them mention that instance to their master john , because they could not testify it on their own knowledge , as they could the things themselves saw and heard . sect . ix . an answer to two more objections ; the one , that st. john mentions no casting out devils in his gospel ; the other , that to have a devil , and to be mad are synonyma's . but the passionate witch-advocate goes on . st. john the evangelist , who especially sets himself upon the proof of the godhead of christ , hints nothing of his ejecting devils . which one would think should be no proof , since the other three do ; and st. john chiesly supplyed what they omitted . and since this evangelist so particularly sets himself upon the proof of christs divinity , he mentions no miracles , which were the proof , but such as were sensible and indisputable . and our authour himself after p. . saith , that the cure of diseases was more for christs honour , and the proof of his godhead , than the casting out devils could have been . for possibly , saith he , in that , there might have been some probable grounds of the pharisees blasphemy , that he cast out devils by beclzebub . so that he answers and contradicts himself at once : for p. . he saith , it had been a great oversight in st. john to neglect such an argument . if such a thing had ever been , this would have proved him to have been god indeed , and his power paramount above all principalities and powers , &c. p. . and yet now curing diseases proves it better , and the casting out devils will scarce do it at all , since it might , adds he , be in some sort credible , that he did it by favour , connivance , compliance , complotment , which is upon the borders of the highest blasphemy . again it is alledged by this writer , that to have a devil , and to be mad , seem to be synonyma's in scripture , p. . i answer , possession begot a certain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 furor , and madness ; and therefore when any were extravagant , the jews said in common speech , that they had a devil , as we do , the devil is in you , that is , you act unreasonably and madly . but as we do not mean by this metaphorical possession to exclude the belief of a real , so neither did they . yea , the very phrase , he hath a devil , or the devil is in him , applyed to those that act furiously and unadvisedly , doth imply that there is such a real thing as diabolical possession , to which madness and extream folly are resembled . see then how the patrons of witches argue , the jews sometimes used the having a devil metaphorically ; therefore there are no other possessions , or therefore all those passages of scripture , in which they are literally and plainly related , intend no other . indeed , if we argued from meer words and expressions of having devils , and casting out devils , there would be somewhat of more colour in our adversaries reasoning . but since we inferr chiefly from plain circumstances of history and fact , there is no force at all in it . sect . x. the ignorance of the authour of the grand apostasie , in his interpreting the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but what doth this writer mean , when he tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can scarce signify any thing else properly , but an unusual affliction from god , such as madness ; when all men and boys know that substantively it is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 daemon , taken already in scripture in an ill sense for an impure spirit . adjectively it signifies sometimes divinum quid , but so it is not understood in the places we dispute about , luke . . when the devil had thrown him , the possessed man , in the midst , he came out of him , the word is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the same v. . is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . by which & the latter circumstances of the history , it plainly appears that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is to be understood substantively for a person , viz. an evil spirit . so in the story of the devils entering into the herd of swine , luke . . the word we translate devils is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , called v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the same matth. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . besides the force of which words , i have shewn that the story also determines them to a substantive and personal meaning . but the authour saith , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can hardly with propriety signify any thing else but an extraordinary affliction from god , because of its derivation from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , p. . one would wonder at the confidence of these men , especially in their pretended criticisms , by which they would impose what sense upon words they please . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is notoriously known signifies daemon , taken often in the ill sense , and so particularly in the place newly mentioned , deriving from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scio , which degenerates here , as in saga , witch , wizzard and the like , and what then should this authour by this mean ? sect . xi . whether there were no feats performed by the demoniacks in the gospels , but what mad-men might perform . it is further objected by this w●…iter , that there are no feats recorded of those supposed demoniacks , but what mad-men could perform and often do . in which , he considered not the spirits in the possest , in the countrey of the gergasens , matth. . . st. mark and st. luke write ga●…arens , the countries lye near together . jos●…phus reckons gadara among the gre●…ian cities which pompey took from the jews , and according to him the people were mostly syrians . in this country where our saviour had not been before , nor after , that we read , two possest with devils , who had lived among the tombs , out of the conversation of mankind met him , and presently cryed out ; what have we to do with thee , jesus , thou son of god , art thou come to torment us before the time ? was there nothing now beyond the rate of ordinary mad-men in this ? how did they , who lived in such a dismal solitude among the tombs , in a place where no man passed , come to know this was jesus , who never had been thereabout before , as far as we can hear ? or how came those mad-men to know , and utter such a great truth , which our saviour did not presently publish , that he was the son of god ? did any come near to whisper this in their ear ? or was this a raving fancy only ? st. mark writes ( who speaks but of a single demoniack ) that when he saw jesus afar off , he came and worshipped him . he knew him presently , and understood his true condition before most of the jews about him ; and even some of his own disciples did . could a meer mad-man have done so ? but further they expected torment and from him , in the time to come , though they looked not for it so soon . art thou come to torment us before the time ? how applicable is this to the condition of evil spirits and their expectations ? we have a like acknowledgement of our saviour from another unclean spirit , mark . . i know thee who thou art , the holy one of god. and our saviour in what he saith , in answer plainly , implies it wa●… the evil spirit , not the mad-man that spake , or at least caused the confession . hold thy peace , and come out of him , v. . and that the demoniacks did things beyond the force of meer mad-men is further sufficiently declared in the history , mark . no man could bind him , no not with chains ; because he had been often bound with fetters and chains , and the chains had been pluckt in sunder by him . i would fain know , whether this be not beyond the force of meer natural madness ? advertisement . hitherto the paper was the same , and the hand the same , and so far of the copy transcribed . afterward the hand alters , and is mr. glanvil ' s own hand , but with an hiatus of above half a sheet of unwrit paper between , but the number of the pages is continued . something there was to intervene , to make a more full connexion ; but yet what follows , is of the same suit , and produced to prove out of scripture the negotiation of evil spirits with their clients . sect . xii . further proof of the negotiation of evil spirits with their clients from the history of the magicians of egypt ; mr. wagstaffe , mr. webster , and the authour of the doctrine of devils , their evasions proposed and answered . in the general , they all say the same thing ; viz. that the magicians were jugglers , who by their tricks and legerdemain , imposed upon pharaoh and the aegyptians . mr. wagstaffe is so modest , as not to describe the manner of the performance . but mr. webster thus ; the magicians holding a rod in their hands , and seeming to throw it down upon the ground , how soon might they throw down an artificial serpent in its stead , and immediately and unperceivably make conveighance of the rod , p. . this is his feat : and for the changing water into blood , and the producing of frogs , he saith , they were so easie to be done after the same manner , that they need not any particular explication , p. . this is the main answer , after a great deal of impertinence , and mr. webster hath done his business . but the authour of the doctrine of devils , hath devised a more particular way for this juggle . 't is probable , he saith , that these men having the art or knack of making , graving , or carving the pictures of men , beasts , serpents , reptiles , &c. had the feat also of colouring , painting and fucussing of them also , and so might easily , especially in the dark , or by their juggling-feats , as the text intimates , make a rod look like a serpent , &c. p. . but besides these knavish painters , the man hath found other jugglers to help on the deceit ; subtle and politick oratours , who with fallacious arguments , cunning pretences , and plausible rhetorick could so disguise truth , and flourish upon knavery and falshood , that falshood should seem truth , and truth falshood , p. . whatever the magicians of pharaoh were , any one that considers these answers , would take the framers of them for colourers , changers , perverters of the face of things , as this authour speaks , cunning oratours , jugglers , hocus-pocus , hiccius-doccius , whip the serpents , blood and frogs are gone . but let us look a little nearer to the business , and to these subtle men , witches of oratours , and examine what they tell us in the light of the text and impartial reason . the text saith , aaron cast down his rod before pharaoh , and before his servants , and it became a serpent , v. . and v. , . the magicians of aegypt , they also did in like manner with their enchantments . for they cast down every man his rod , and they became serpents , but aaron ' s rod swallowed up their rods. now , say the witch-advocates , the magicians were jugglers ; they did not in like manner , they did not cast down their rods , but made conveighance of them , they were not serpents but pictures . which are plain contradictions to the text , arbitrary figments , that have no ground . and if men may seign what they will , and put what borrowed sense they please upon plain relations of fact , all history will be a nose of wax , and be eafily shaped as the interpreter has a mind to have it . secondly , if this were so , and the serpents were but artificial pictures ; 't is strange , that neither pharaoh , nor his servants should perceive the difference between the carved or painted serpents and the real ones ; except they suppose also that pharaoh contrived the business in a dark room on purpose , as the authour of the doctrine of devils seems to intimate . and 't is stranger yet , that neither moses nor aaron that were concerned to detect the imposture that was so gross and thick , should not discern it , or if they did , 't is as strange , that they should keep the jugglers counsel , and say nothing of it . thirdly , aarons serpents are said to have swallowed up those of the magicians . what , did they swallow the wiars and pictures ? it seems they were very artificially done indeed , that the true serpents mistook them for real ones , as the birds once did the painted grapes . but it would be more wonderful yet , if all were but the oratory of the magicians , for then the serpents ate their words and rhetorick . fourthly , moses and aaron turned the rivers into blood , v. . and the magicians of aegypt did so with their enchantments , v. . they caused frogs to come up , and to cover the land , ch. . v. . and the magicians did so , and brought up frogs on the land of aegypt , v. . now , how did the jugglers do this , with painting and fucussing ; or how , by legerdemain and slight of hand were the waters made blood , and the frogs brought up out of the rivers on the land ? to turn a little water into the appearance of blood , was not the thing that was like to what moses and aaron did , and to shew an artificial frog , two or three was not bringing up of frogs on the land of aegypt , which implies , multitudes that covered the ground . so that the hocus-pocus tricks , and juggling and painting will not colour this part of the story . and i should wonder at mr. webster , if he did not afford so many occasions of wondring at him , when he passed this so slightly over , saying , p. . as to the changing water into blood , and the producing of frogs , they were so easie to be done after the same manner , viz. by wiers and juggling , that they need not any particular explication , for by this the manner of their performance may most easily be understood . how shall one deal with these men , and what will not their confidence affirm ? fifthly , 't is very strange also how those jugglers should know what signs moses and aaron would shew , and accordingly furnish themselves with counterfeit serpents , blood and frogs against the time ; or had they those always in their pockets ? if not , it was great luck for them that moses and aaron should shew those very miracles first , that they were provided to imitate . sixthly and lastly , if the magicians did all this by tricks and juggling , may not one fear what opinion these men have of the same things done by moses and aaron ? these indeed out-did the others in divers following instances , but may not they say , that that was by their having more cunning and dexterity in the art of juggling ? if they or their proselytes have a mind to say thus , they may by their principles , which will serve them to elude the history , in reference to moses and aaron , as well as it doth in relation to the magicians . they may with as much modesty turn all into allegory and metaphor . i think by all this it appears , that this shift of the witch-advocates is very vain , and that what the magicians did , was not mere juggling , much less only politick oratory and rhetorick . as if those magicians by their eloquence could perswade pharaoh and his servants against their senses , as these patrons of witches endeavour to do by us , they being the greatest witches in their own sense that are extant , and some of them are belyed , if they are not so in other senses . sect . xiii . that what the magicians of aegypt did perform , was at least by an implicit confederacy with evil spirits . vvell ! if there be any truth in the history , the magicians were not only couzeners and hocus-pocus men ; there was something done that was extraordinary beyond mans art and contrivance , or the effects of ordinary nature . and therefore must have either god , or some spirit or daemon , one or more for the authour . the former no one saith , the hand of god in this was only permissive . therefore it is plain the magicians did this by spirits , creatures of the invisible world. the text saith , by their enchantments , per arcana , the vulgar latin reads . which because it is a general word , mr. wagstaffe takes hold of it , and determines it to secret and sly tricks , those of legerdemain and couzenage , when as it is as applicable to any kind of secret ( and so to the diabolical art and confederacy ) as to his sense . and that it is so to be understood here , is plain from the matter of the history . by those arcana ( others read , incantationes , veneficia ) they did those strange things , viz. by secret confederacy with spirits , they obliged them to perform the wonders . but what did the spirits do , were the serpents , blood and frogs real or apparent only ? i am not obliged to say , who is of one opinion , and who of another in this , it matters not . the reality of the performance is most easie , and most suitable to the sacred story , and there is no difficulty in conceiving that spirits might suddenly conveigh serpents , with which aegypt abounded into the place of the rods , which they might unperceivably snatch away after they were thrown down ; this they could do , though the magicians of themselves could not . and they might be provided for the performances by knowing the command god had given moses and aaron , concerning the things he would have them do ; which the magicians could not know , at least not but by them . and for the blood and the frogs , they might by infusion , or a thousand ways that we cannot tell , make the water to all appearance bloody , or perhaps really transmute some ( we know not the extent of their powers . ) and to bring up the frogs from the lakes and rivers , was no hard thing for them to effect , though impossible for the magicians to do by tricks of juggling . we see the sense of the history is plain , and easie in our way , but forced , harsh , contradictious , and most absurd in the interpretation of the hag-advocates . to make the inference from these magicians to my point , yet more plain and demonstrative , i shall surther take notice , that if we do not suppose a confederacy , and formal compact between them and the spirits they act by , it must at least be granted that those magicians had a way to oblige them to act , either by words or ceremonies , which they have bound themselves to attend in order to further familiarity with the persons that so employ them , and at last to explicit compacts : and even this is sufficient for what i would inferr . i have thus dispatcht a great argument briefly , and yet i hope fully ; mr. webster is after his manner very voluminous about it . but all he hath said ▪ in five or six leaves in folio to the purpose , is in those few lines i have recited . all the rest is sensless , rambling impertinence , amusing his readers with actives and passives , mecassaphims , hartummims , talesmans , wonderful cures , and the vertues of plants , telling stories , and citing scraps from this man , and from that , all which serve only for ostentation , and the deception of the injudicious , but signify nothing to any purpose of reasoning . sect . xiv . the other grand instance of confederacy with evil spirits , in the witch of endor , whom saul consulted . a brief and plain narration of the story . i come to another grand instance , viz. that of the witch of endor . the story of her is related , sam. . and is briefly thus . samuel was dead , v. . and the philistines gathered themselves against saul , and pitcht in gilboa , v. . saul on this was much afraid , v. . and enquired of the lord , but had no answer from him , v. . upon this he bid his servants find him out a woman that had a familiar spirit , that he might enquire of her . they told him of one at endor , v. . he disguised himself , and with two men by night went to her , desired her to divine unto him by her familiar spirit , and to bring up him whom he should name , v. . the woman first excused her self , minding him how dangerous such a business might be to her , since saul had cut off those that had familiar spirits , and the wizzards out of the land. so that she was afraid that this proposition of his was a snare for her life , v. . but saul assured her by swearing , that no harm should come to her for this thing , v. . she then askt him whom she should bring up , and he said bring me up samuel , v. . samuel accordingly begins to appear , and when the woman saw him , she cried with a loud voice , being much surprised , it seems , to see samuel in good earnest , whom she probably expected not , but some familiar in his likeness . by this she knew saul , v. . he heartens her again , and asks whom she saw . she answers , she saw gods ascending out of the earth , an usual hebraism , the plural for the singular number , gods , to wit , a spirit , v. . saul asks what forme he was of , she answered , an old man cometh up , and he is covered with a mantle . then saul perceived it was samuel , and he bowed himself to him to the ground , v. . samuel ask't why he had disquieted him to bring him up ? he declares the distress he was in , and his desire to know what he was to do , v. . samuel reproves him , and declares his fate , viz. that the lord had rent the kingdome from him , and given it to david , v. . that the israelites should be delivered into the hands of the philistins , and that saul and his sons should to morrow be with him , viz. in the state of the dead , as eventually it was , v. . this is the history , and one would think it speaks very plainly , but nothing is plain to prejudice . the patrons of witches labour hard to avoid this evidence , and i shall propose and consider their shifts and slights of answering . sect . xv. the evasion of mr. reginald scot , concerning the witches closet , proposed and confuted . mr. reginald scot , the father of the modern witch-advocates , orders the matter thus . when saul , saith he , had told her that he would have samuel brought up to him , she departed from his presence into her closet , where doubtless she had her familiar , to wit , some lewd crafty priest , and made saul stand at the door like a fool ( as it were with his finger in a hole ) to hear the couzening answers , but not to see the couzening handling thereof , and the conterseiting of the matter . and so goeth she to work , using ordinary words of conjuration , &c. so belike after many such words spoken , she saith to her self ; lo ! now the matter is brought to pass . i see wonderful things . so as saul hearing these words longed to know all , and asked her what she saw . whereby you know that saul saw nothing , but stood without like a mome , whilest she plaid her part in her closet , as may most evidently appear by the twenty first verse of this chapter , where it is said , then the woman came out to saul , &c. scot , p. . now this is not interpreting a story , but making one . for we read nothing of her closet , or her going from saul into it , nothing of the crafty priest she had there , or of sauls standing at the door like a fool , like a drowned puppy mr. webster has it ( very respectful language for a prince in distress ! ) nothing of the words of conjuration , or of the womans talk to her self , but all this is whimsey and fiction . and according to this way of interpreting , a man may make what he will of all the histories in the bible , yea in the world. if one may supply , and put in what he pleaseth , any thing may be made any thing . but mr. scot saith , it evidently appears that saul saw nothing , but stayed without like a mome , whilest she played her part in her closet . it evidently appears by the twenty first verse of this chapter , where 't is said , then the woman came out unto saul . is it not evident from hence , that she had a closet , how else should she come out ? but the mischief of it is , there is nothing of coming out in the text , or any version of it . our translation is , and the woman came unto saul . the vulgar latine , ingressa est , she came in , which implies that she went out of doors rather , than into her closet . the septuagint read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , being the same sense with the vulgar latine . the chaldee paraphrase simply she came . so the syriack and the arabick : but we find nothing of coming out any where but in the discoverer . so that here is a text made too , as well as many a groundless comment . but whether she only came to saul , or in or out to him , it matters not much , for it implies only that she withdrew , while saul communed with samuel , out of respect , and after the communication , she returned and found the king in great disorder , and what is this to a closet ? sect . xvi . two of mr. websters arguments for the witches closet proposed and answered . but mr. webster pursues the business in the behalf of the discoverer ; first , if they were in the same room , and samuel a visible object , how comes it to pass that saul saw him not ? mr. glanvil , saith he , must pump to find it out , p. . but doth not mr. webster know , that it is usual in apparitions ( and he owns there are such ) for the spirit to appear to one , when it is not visible to another , though in the same room , and every ways capable of seeing ? in the famous story of walker and sharp , recited by him , p. , . which he confesseth to be of undoubted verity , he saith , it was reported that the apparition did appear in court to the judge , or fore-man of the jury ( and i have from other hands very credible attestation that it was so ) but the rest saw nothing . many other well attested relations of this kind speak of the like , and there are innumerable stories of people that have their second sight as they call it , to wit , a faculty of seeing spectres when others cannot discern them . in which there is nothing , either impossible , or unlikely . and why then should there be need of so much pumping to answer this objection ? samuel it seems appeared to the woman a little before saul saw him , shewing himself so , it may be , to prepare saul for the terrible sight by degrees , lest the suddenness of it might have affrighted him into an incapacity of hearing what he had to say to him . or it may be the body of the woman , or some other thing in the room might interpose between saul , and the first appearance of samuel , or he might be at an unfit distance , or out of due light to see presently as she did . so that there is no need of supposing them to be in two rooms on this account . but secondly , he argues further for the closet or another room ; the woman cryed out with a loud voice when she saw samuel ; what need of that , saith he , if they were in one room , might not an ordinary tone make him to have heard her ? 't is like it might , but that was not the cause of her crying out , but her surprise to see samuel ( if it were the real samuel ) when she expected only her familiar , appearing in some resemblance of him . and 't is like there were circumstances in this apparition , which she had never seen before , that might on the sudden affright and amaze her . and if it were samuel indeed , which is very probable , the sight of him assored her that the inquirer was saul . for though she might not conclude it presently from his requiring her to raise samuel , yet when he really and unexpectedly appeared , it was plain that he was come upon some great errand , and with whom could he probably have such business as with saul ? so that she seeing him , the importance of his appearance , and the relation he had to saul , brought the king presently to her mind , and with him her fears , and that this was one cause of her crying out , is plainly intimated in the next words . and the ●…oman spake to saul , saying , why hast thou decerved me , for thou art saul , v. . and that she was affrighted at that knowledge , is implied in sauls assuring her again , against her fears in his immediate answer . and the king said unto her , ●…be not afraid , v. . besides this , there is another thing that may be collected from the text , which might occasion her astonishment and crying out . for as soon as saul had said , bring me up samuel , v. . it immediately follows , v. . and when the woman saw samuel , she cryed with a loud voice . it seems he appeared before she had performed her usual conjurations ( so little ground is there for what mr. scot talks of her words of conjuration , and those she spake to her self ) and upon that she was surprised and affrighted . sect . xvii . other arguments of mr. webster for a room distinct from that saul was in , proposed and answered . mr. websters third argument to prove a closet , is that it had been incongruous for saul to have askt what sawest thou , if they had been in one room . but what is the incongruity , or what the wonder , if one in his condition should speak incongruously ? his fourth and fifth arguments , are to prove that saul had yet seen nothing , when he askt the woman upon her out-cry , what she had seen . they prove that she saw the apparition first , which is granted , but her being in another room , cannot thence be inferred , as i have shewn , though that be the thing he should make out , or all is impertinent . the sixth argument is , that after all , samuel was but coming up . an old man cometh up , which proves nothing for mr. webster but against him ; for now , she shews him to saul . she saw the first beginning of his appearing , which saul did not . when he was risen higher out of the earth , she shews him to the king , who , 't is said , perceived then it was samuel , and bowed himself , v. . which is very easie and congruous , applied to one and the same room . and what then makes mr. webster insult in the conclusion of this argument in these words ; now let mr. glanvil consider , and answer whether it be not only intimated , but clearly holden forth in the text , that either they were in two rooms , or that nothing visible did appear before saul , p. . his seeing nothing at first i grant , but the two rooms there is no ground for , and he doth not prove it . whether he did not see samuel after , i shall now inquire . hitherto i have nothing to do , but with the conceit of the closet , or the other room , which mr. scot made for the woman , and mr. webster endeavours to uphold , with much good will , but little success . sect . xviii . convincing argmuments brought to prove that saul saw samuel , which frustrates the figment of two rooms . after all , if he really saw the apparition , the figment of the two rooms is gone , or at least signifies nothing to their purpose . this the text intimates plainly . she said , an old man cometh up , and he is covered with a mantle , and it follows , and saul perceived that it was samuel , and he stooped with his face to the ground , and bowed himself , v. . he perceived it was samuel , he perceived it , saith mr. webster , by the description of the woman . but she had only said , an old man cometh up covered with a mantle ; this is but a very general description , and why must that needs notify samuel ? could the devil represent no other old man in a mantle , or could none of the dead appear so but samuel only ? by these words alone saul could not certainly perceive that it was he . but he perceived this so , that he could not but know and acknowledge it as the hebrew word seems to imply . i say this word [ perceived ] implies more than bare seeing . 't is that and somewhat else , viz. that he saw him so , as to be convinced that it was he indeed , the judgment was added to the sense . so that mr. webster's objection , that the word was not he [ saw ] it was samuel , is of no weight , he [ perceived ] implies that he saw it so as to be assured . if the saying of the woman had been all , the assurance had been none at all , and saul could not have perceived or understood any certainty of the thing from it . but secondly , it appears yet further , that his perceiving did imply seeing ; for he stooped with his face to the ground , and bowed himself . now , what did saul make this respectful reverence to , if he saw nothing ? was it to a samuel in his fancy ? mr. webster saith , surely in rational consequence it could be nothing else , p. . this is something an unusual courtesie to bare idea's and imaginations . but mr. webster gives a reason : all that the woman had done and said , being undeniably lyes and cheats , this also in just and right reason must be judged to be so also . which is assuming the thing to be proved . sect . xix . that it was a real apparition , not a confederate knave , as mr. webster fancies , that saul saw and did obeysance to . but did she not turn out her confederate knave to act the part of samuel ? and was not this he to whom saul bowed ? this mr. webster offers as part of his answer . the woman v. . describes samuel in the form of an old man covered with a mantle . such a shape she must have put the confederate knave into . it may be it was an old fellow , or she made him look old , but let that pass . but where got she the mantle ? a sacerdotal habiliment it was , according to josephus . had the woman a wardrobe of all habits for all purposes ? or was it some short cloak of her own , that she threw on him ? we will suppose either that will serve mr. websters turn best . but how did the fellow himself , or the old quean for him change his visage into the likeness of samuel , or how alter his voice so , as to make saul , who so well knew samuel , to believe it was even he ? these are hard questions . but if we should so far gratify mr. scot , mr. webster and the rest , as not to press with such untoward queries ; yet one cannot chuse but ask how the confederate knave came to foretel truly such contingent things , as that the israelites should be vanquished by the philistines , and saul and his sons slain on the morrow , as v. . how could the cheat , or the woman in another room tell this ? why ! saith mr. wagstasse , he spake it at a venture , and he or the witch gave a shrewd guess to the sequel , saith mr. scot. but what ground was there for conjecture ? and since there was none , the confederate might as well have chose to have told saul , that he and his sons should live and be victorious ; and this , if he were so cunning a fellow , as these cunning men make him , he would have done . for the witches business and his , was to get by their practice , and the likelier way to a good reward , had been to have prophesied grateful and pleasant things to the troubled king ; and if the prophesier knew nothing of the event , he might as well have chosen the good , as the evil side . which as it had been for his interest , it had been also for the better saving of the credit of his predictions . for if he had foretold the kings good success and victory , the woman and he , the confederate , in consequence had been sure of reputation and favour , and further rewards , if it had happened so ; but no evil could have befaln them from the contrary success . for if saul were killed , the falshood of the prediction would be buried with him ( for we read not that the two servants were at this communication , which in all likelihood was private ) and no other evil like to ensue . so that if it were a confederate knave , as the witch-advocates have contrived that made the answers , he was not so cunning as mr. scot , mr. webster and the rest pretend , but indeed a very silly juggler . he speaks very severe and disobliging things , and such as were not like to redound to his advantage , and indeed such things they were , as do not at all look as if they proceeded from a confederate couzener . they have that gravity , majesty , religion and vertue in them that became the true samuel , and are very unlike the words of a vicious cheating knave . to which may be added , that this woman , though otherwise an ill one , seems to have been of a kind and benign nature , by the courteous entertainment she gave the afflicted prince , and josephus extolls her much for her good nature . so that it is very improbable , that she would by her self or her confederate , lay such an heavy load of trouble and desperation upon the king , that was in such distress before . i think all these things put together , are abundantly sufficient to disprove , and shame the ungrounded fansie of the witch-advocates , that all was done by a confederate . and consequently it was a real apparition that saul saw , and did civil obeysance to . sect . xx. that it was not the witch her self that acted all ( as scot and webster for another shift would suppose ) putting her self into a trance , and delading saul by ventriloquy . but was it not the witch her self that acted all ? mr. scot saith , that if the exposition of the confederate like us not , he can easily frame himself to the opinion , that this pythoness being a ventriloque , that is , speaking as it were from the bottom of her belly , did cast her self into a trance , and so abused saul , answering to saul in samuel's name in her counterfeit hollow voice , p. . to the same purpose mr. webster also supposeth , that what she did or pretended to do , was only by ventriloquy , or casting her self into a feigned trance , lay groveling on the earth with her face downwards , and so changing her voice , did mutter and murmur , and peep , and chirp like a bird coming forth of the shell , or that she spake in some hollow cave or vault through some pipe , or in a bottle , and so amused and deceived poor timorous and despairing saul , p. , . what stuff is this ? and how shall one deal with such men , as set their wits upon the rack to invent evasions , and are ready to assert any non-sense or absurdity to pervert the sense of a plain and simple history ? what i have already spoke against the dream of a confederate , viz. saul's perceiving it was samuel , his bowing himself upon it ; his taking the voice for the prophet's , the suitableness and gravity of the words , and the contrivance of the prediction , and the truth of it , are as strong against this whim , as against the other idle fansie , and in some particulars of ●…re force , as will appear to any one that considers the matter duly . for ventriloquy , or speaking from the bottom of the belly , 't is a thing i think as strange and difficult to be conceived as any thing in witchcraft , nor can it , i believe , be performed in any distinctness of articulate sounds , without such assistance of the spirits , that spoke out of the daemoniacks . i would fain have any of the witch-advocates shew how it is naturally possible . so that this that they suppose , will infer the thing they would avoid . it cannot certainly in any reason be thought , that the woman could by a natural knack , speak such a discourse as is related from samuel , much less that she could from her belly imitate his voice , so as to deceive one that knew him as saul did . as for mr. websters peeping , chirping and muttering , they are nothing to the purpose , and his hollow cave , pipe and vault , are as arbitrary figments as the closet , and fall under the same confutations that disprove the rest of the chimaera ' s. sect . xxi . that it was samuel himself that appeared , not the devil , nor a confederate knave . but the witch-advocates have another argument to prove an imposture in this business . for , say they , the person denouncing the fate of saul could not be the true samuel , nor the devil in his likeness ; therefore it must be either the woman , or some cheating confederate . which conclusion follows not , for it is possible it might be a good spirit personating samuel . these the scripture assures us , are often imployed in errands and ministeries here below , and on those occasions they cloath themselves in humane shape and appearance . so that it is not absurd to think it might be thus here ; but this i affirm not . who actually it was hath been great matter of debate among interpreters , and considerable authours have been on either side . my cause doth not require that i should positively determine who the appearing person was , it might be one of them though i cannot tell which . i confess it seems to me most probable , that it was the true samuel , for the scripture calls the apparition so five times , that is , as often as he is mentioned . and when the woman saw samuel , v. . and saul perceived that it was samuel , v. . and samuel said to saul , v. . then said samuel , v. . then saul was fore afraid because of the words of samuel , v. . which expressions are neither from saul , nor the woman , but from that spirit that endited the holy scriptures . and if after all this , samuel was a k●…e , or the witch , or the devil , what assurance can we have in interpreting of scripture ? i know that it speaks sometimes agreeably to the deceived apprehensions of men ; but when it is so , there is something in the context or nature of the thing that leads us to make this judgment . and if we rashly suppose whenever we have a mind to it , that the scripture speaks according to deceived opinion ; we may by this rule make it say any thing . the plain letter , and most obvious sense is always to be followed , where there is no cogent reason to the contrary , and i shall shew by and by , that there is none to decline it here . according to the obvious plain sense , the words are interpreted , ecclesiastick . . . and after his death ( speaking of samuel ) he pr●…ied and shewed the king his end . and the circumstances of the story which i have already considered , seem to me very plainly to determine the sense this way . thus doth the surprise of the woman , who cryed out with astonishment upon the sight of the prophet , whom she was affrighted to see . h●…r knowing it was saul by the apparition , which she could not have done by the devil 's appearing in his likeness . the expression that saul perceived that it was samuel , he did not only fansie or think so . the divine and majestick words he spake , so becoming the true samuel , and so unlike the words of an evil spirit . and the prediction of events so coatingent as the loss of the battle , and the death of the king and his sons ▪ sect . xxii . the needlesness and impertinency of m. websters confutation of samuel's appearing with his body out of the grave . now there are several evasions , whereby some endeavour to shift off this evidence . but if we will deal plainly and sincerely , we must , i think , acknowledge the force of the arguments , which i have briefly and nakedly proposed . but all this mr. webster pretends to confute thus . it was not samuel's body with his soul joyned , nor his soul that appeared in his wonted shape and habit , p. , . the first he proves by these reasons . first , his body had lain too long in the grave , so that it must have been disfigured . secondly , it must have stunk . thirdly , there was no taylor in the grave to make him a mantle . fourthly , it must have been an omnipotent power to have done this . fifthly , a syllogism is brought to prove this contrary to the scripture , which saith , that those that dye in the lord rest from their labours . now the four first arguments he may take again , we have no concern with them . for 't is sensless to think , that the gross body came out of the grave ; and if he means the resting of the terrestrial body by the fifth , he may take that back too . and indeed as applyed to the body without the soul , the disturbing of it is non-sense . it s corruption in the grave is continual motion , and more disturbance than the raising it entirely would be , if it were any at all . but properly it is none , no more than is the taking of a stone out of a quarry . therefore if there be any argument in this , it falls under the next query . the sixth argument is a question , viz. who joyned the soul and body again ? not the witch nor the devil . the opinion is erroneous , impious and blasphemous . and for me let him call it what he pleaseth . his strength is in hard words , which here like the stones thrown sometimes by witchcraft light like wool , and here far also from the mark. sect . xxiii . that it was the soul of samuel that appeared , without his terrestrial body , and that it is an indifferent op●… , in which are d●…ided as well papists as p●…stants . but there is a second opinion yet to be consut●…d , viz. that it was samuel's soul in his wonted shape and habit , p. . he must m●…an his soul without the body , or else 't is the same again ; and if he means without any body , i am none of those that mean with him . it is most ●…ully and plainly proved by those excellent men , dr. c — and dr. m — , that souls departed are embodyed in aerial or aetherial vehicles ; and they have largely shewn that this was the doctrine of the greatest philosophers , and most ancient and learned fathers . and agreeable it is to the holy scripture and highest reason and philosophy , as i may have another occasion to shew . now samuel appeared here to saul in this his more pure aerial or aetherial body , which he could form into such an appearance and habit as he had in the terrestrial . against the opinion of samuel's soul appearing , mr. webster urgeth cogent arguments , as still he calleth his ; they are all manifest , cogent , irrefragable , unanswerable , even then when they are scarce sense . he prefaceth to them , by an intimation , that the doctrine is popish ; maintained , he saith , it is by the popish party . his hard words use to be his strongest arguments . but this is only to raise odium and prejudice to the opinion . for there are papists and protestants on both sides of this question . as also rabbins and fathers have divided upon it . some of the last sort , and those perhaps of the greatest and most c●nsiderable having been for it , as r. eleazer , r. saadias , the writers of the midrash , josephus also , justin , origen , augustine , basil , ambrose , &c. as some others have been against it . so that , i suppose , a man may freely and without offence declare his judgment , though it happen to be different from mr. websters . sect . xxiv . three arguments of mr. webster against the appearing of the soul of samuel proposed and answered . vvherefore to his arguments , first he could not , saith he , come whether god would or no. right ! secondly , he would not run on an errand without gods consent . no doubt . thirdly , that god did not command him , he saith , is most certain . here i must stop . how doth that appear to be so certain ? why ! they never were employed in ministries here below , because never created sor any such end or purpose , p. . they were never employed in ministries here below ! what thinks he of the souls of moses and elias , at the transfiguration on the mount ? were not they then employed in a ministry here below , or were they only phantasms ? or their glorifyed bodies without their souls ? and how then did they talk and converse with our lord ? but these he will say were sent on an extraordinary occasion . be it so , they are sometimes then imployed in such , and so mr. webster must eat his words . and if blessed souls are , or have been employed at any time , how is he so certain the real samuel was not sent here ? thus briefly to his bold assertion . but he pretends a reason . they were never created for this purpose . if that were so , what then ? the stars were never made to fight against sisera , nor any one . nor the waters to drown the world. nor the ravens to feed prophets or other men. may not they therefore be used in those services ? again , no sensitive being was made primarily for another , but to enjoy it self , and to partake of the goodness of its maker . may it not therefore minister to others ? and doth not every creature so ? all things serve him . thirdly , the angels are ministring spirits , he saith , ordained to be such . doth he think they were made for that purpose only to serve us ? fourthly , reasonable humane creatures are for one another . non nobis solùm , &c. souls are most proper to serve such , not here only , but in the next world. they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , like unto angels , and they are as proper at least for the service of men. they have the same nature and affections . they feel our infirmities , and consider us more than abstract spirits do . which is the reason given why our saviour took not upon him the nature of angels , but of men. fifthly , souls departed have life and sense and motion , capacity of being employed , and no doubt inclination to it ; and whither more properly may they be sent , than to those of their own nature , whom they affect , are allied to , and so lately came from ? sixthly , the angels are not confined to their celestial habitation , but are sent often to this nether world , as mr. webster and the rest confess , and why then should we think that the souls of the just are so limited and restrained ? and lastly , it is supposed both by jews and christians , that the soul of the messias appeared to the patriarchs , and was the angel of the covenant ; and we know he was pleased to appear to st. stephen at his martyrdom , though then in glory . and in the various apparitions of angels recorded in the scripture , we have reason to think that some were humane souls , called angels from their office. so that on the whole , we see we have no cause to rely on mr. websters certainty , that samuel's soul came not on a divine command . sect . xxv . other arguments of mr. webster against the appearing of the soul of samuel , proposed and answered . but mr. webster goes on : fourthly , saith he , mr. glanvil hath only affirmed , not proved it . which is not so , i alledge the same reasons i have mentioned here , in my philosophical considerations about witchcraft , sect. . and the srequent assirmations of the sacred t●…xt , were sufficient ground for the assertion , though no other reasons were added to them . he argues , fifthly , miracles are wrought to confirm truth , but this would have confirmed saul and the witch in their wicked ways , p. . i answer , miracles are not always wrought to confirm truth , but sometimes to declare it . and these sort are often for that purpose . such was this , to pronounce the final sentence and doom on saul , as to the concerns of this world. and the prophet's appearing so contrary to the womans expectation , and before she had performed her spells , struck her into dread and amazement , and so she could draw no incouragement thence , to countenance her trade of witchcraft . sixthly , he saith it is not credible , but that samuel would have reproved the sorceress . but that was not his business , and it is like she being one of that vile and diabolical profession was forsaken of god and good spirits , and given up to those evil ones that were her agents and familiars . such derelictions we sometimes read of . and certainly if any course of sinning occasions and brings such a judgment ( as some no doubt do ) this of witchcraft and confederacy with evil spirits , is one that most justly may . seventhly , but god had refused to answer saul by any living prophet , and eighthly would not vouchsafe him his spirit in the ordinary way , and therefore it is not probable he would do it by sending a prophet from the dead . which arguings can only discover our ignorance in the reasons of the divine counsels and actions . but yet it may be said , god had indeed withdrawn all comfortable and directive communications from him , but this was of another sort , a further instance of the divine displeasure , and declarative of the forsaken kings doom . which was no favour , but indeed a judgment to which the divine justice was probably further provoked by this his sin of dealing with the sorceress . but ninthly , abraham would not send lazarus upon the rich mans desire to his surviving brethren , p. . nor can any one think it follows that , because one came from the dead to an extraordinary person , and upon an occasion that was such ; that therefore prophets , or other souls shall be sent from thence , ordinarily to warn those that have other sufficient means of conviction and amendment . the tenth is to fill up tale . where doth mr. glanvil , saith he , find it in scripture , or orthodoxal divines , that ever any blessed soul was sent on a divine errand to any here below ? which he objected , and i answered before . sect . xxvi . that the soul of samuel might come of it self , as well as be sent by divine command , either opinion desensible . i have briefly recited , and i hope cleared mr. webster's objections , which he runs out into great length and numerous impertinencies . and indeed his arguments are often such confident nothings , that it is really a shame to go about to answer them . but i shall never pass by any thing of his strength . but though i have defended the opinion , that samuel's soul was sent on a divine errand to saul , against mr. websters contrary pretences ; yet is there another thing supposable , which is as probable , viz. that samuel came without any direct command , being barely permitted , and that the earnest and importunate desire of saul to have some communication with him in his distress , invited and inclined him to it . thus it might be , and there is no cause to think , but that blessed souls have sometimes such liberty allowed them ; which of these it was , i shall not presume to determine , both are defensible , and either sufficient for my purpose . sect . xxvii . several other objections against the appearing of the soul os samuel answered . but there are other objections besides mr. websters , against the tenent that it was the soul of samuel ; i shall not conceal any one that hath any force in it . first it is urged , that witches and magicians have no power over the spirits of the just , and therefore this pythoness could not raise samuel . nor do we say she did . he appeared ( as 't is probable from the text ) before she had made her conjurations . which might be one reason of her crying out . he came either sent from god , or of his own inclination . the devil nor witch had nothing to do in it . but secondly , would god send samuel at such a time , when he was seeking satisfaction from enchantment ? and why not as well that , as appoint the prophet to meet the messengers of ahaziah when he sent to beelzebub , kings ? that king sent to the idol of e●…ron to inquire his fate , and god acquainted him with it by his prophet elijah . thus also when balak had required balaam to curse the israelites , god put a prophecy into his mouth , and made him bless them , numb . . &c. thirdly , the woman said , she saw gods arising , a company of evil spirits ( so some interpret ) and what did samuel among them ? but i saw gods is more probably rendered by others a god , a divine personage , the plural number for the singular to express honour . and that it is so to be understood is signified plainly by the singular relative that follows ; of what form is he , v. . or if more be meant , why might they not be good genii that accompanied samuel , a great and divine personage , eminent no doubt in the other world as he was in this ? fourthly , some argue from the question of the apparition , v. . why hast thou disquieted me ? samuel , say they , whether sent by god , or coming of his own accord , could not be disquieted by appearing . nor was there any real disturbance in it , but the spirit of the prophet speaks our language , who are apt to fancy the dead to rest in their graves , and to be disturbed of their repose , when upon any occasion they appear among the living . fifthly , but he saith , that saul and his sons should be with him , viz. in thalamo justorum , which some think not unlikely , believing that saul was reprobate only in type . but more probably the meaning is , that he should be in the state of the dead in another world , as he the prophet was . sixthly and lastly , the spectre said , that to morrow he should be with him , which was not true , for several days intervened before the battle . but the word to morrow need not be taken in strictness , but in a latitude of interpretation for a short time . he was to dye in or upon the fight , and the enemies were now ready sor it , and so the event was to be within a very little while . the prediction of which , was a prophecy of a thing very contingent , and shews that the predictor was the real samuel . sect . xxviii . an answer to that objection , that if it was samuel s soul that appeared , it makes nothing to witchcraft . but if it were the real samuel , will they say , this story will then make nothing for the opinion of witchcraft . for samuel was not raised by enchantment , but came either of his own accord , or on a divine errand . to which objection , i say , first , here is at least proof of an apparition of a man after death . secondly , sauls going to this pythoness upon such an inquiry , and she undertaking to bring the person up , whom he should name ( at least the appearance of him ) intimated v. . are good proof that this had been her practice , though at this time over ruled , and that she acted by an evil spirit . for certainly when saul intreats her to divine to him by her familiar spirit , he did not mean that she should deceive , and delude him by a confederate knave . the senslesness of which figment i have already sufficiently disproved . that the woman was used to such practices , will appear fully when i come to prove witchcraft from * express texts . advertisement . * the express texts that he means , i suppose are such as these , exod. . , chron. . . gal. . . micah . . acts . . . and chap. . . and more especially deut. . . where almost all the names of witches are enumerated , namely , of all those that are inveigled by covenant with evil spirits , either explicitly , or by submitting to their ceremonies . see dr. h — m — his postscript . sect . xxix . they that hold it was an evil spirit that appeared to saul , that their opinion may be true for ought mr. webster brings against it . as to the opinion of divers divines , that the appearing samuel was indeed an evil spirit in his likeness , though i judge it not so probable as the other of the real samuel , yet the interpretation is not absurd nor impossible . and because i do not absolutely determine either way , i shall defend it against mr. websters contrary arguments , which whether it be so or not so , prove nothing . he saith , first , that this beggs two false suppositions , p. . as first , that the devils are simply incorporeal spirits . by which if he means incorporeal in their intrinsick essential constitution , such no doubt they are , as every intellectual being is . but if he mean by simply incorporeal , disunited from all matter and body , so perhaps ( and most likely ) they are not . but neither the one , or the other of these , is supposed by the opinion mr. webster impugnes . the second false supposition is , that devils can assume bodies . that they can appear in divers shapes and figures , like humane and other bodies , we affirm , and it is plain from the scripture as to angels , and i shall make the same good , in reference to other spirits in due place . so that we may suppose it still , till mr. webster hath evinced the contrary , as he promiseth . how he performs i shall consider in due place . his second argument is , that he is not of their opinion , that the devils move , and rove up and down in this elementary world at pleasure . which no one i know saith . they go to and fro , and compass the earth , but still within the bounds of the divine permission , the laws of the angelical world , and those of their own kingdom ; which prevent the troubles and disturbances in the world from them , which he saith would ensue . advertisement . thus far runs the proof of the existence of apparitions and witchcraft , from holy scripture , entire . the three or four lines that follow in the m s. and are left out , break off abruptly . but what is said , sufficiently subverts the force of mr. webster ' s arguments against their opinion , that say it was the devil that appeared to saul . i will only here take notice , that this part which reaches hitherto , though it be not fully finished , yet it abundantly affords proof for the conclusion , namely , for the existence of spirits , apparitions and witches , from testimony of holy scripture , to as many as yield to the authority thereof . but the following collection is a confirmation of the same things , as well to the anti-scripturists , as to them that believe scripture . and the leading story of the daemon of tedworth , i hope now will prove irrefragable and unexceptionable , if the reader retain in his mind , mr. glanvil ' s preface to this second part of his saducismus triumphatus , and mr. mompesson ' s letters , the one to mr. glanvil , the other to mr. collins , which cannot but abundantly undeceive the world. so that it is needless to record how mr. glanvil wrote to mr. william claget of bury , and professed , he had not the least ground to think he was imposed on in what he related , and that he had great cause from what he saw himself , to say , it was impossible there should be any imposture in that business . to the same purpose he wrote to mr. gilbert clark in northampton-shire , as also to my self , and undoubtedly to many more , as he has intimated in his preface . besides that , to the parties above named , he sent a copy of that letter of mr. mompesson , which was wrote to himself . so that that groundless rumour being thus fully silenced , we may now seasonably relate , and that with confidence , that assured and unexceptionably attested story of the daemon of tedworth . which is as follows . proof of apparitions , spirits and witches , from a choice collection of modern relations . relation i. which is the enlarged narrative of the daemon of tedworth , or of the disturbances at mr. mompesson s house , caused by witchcraft , and the villany of the drummer . mr. john mompesson of tedworth , in the county of wilts , being about the middle of march , in the year . at a neighboring town called ludgarshal , and hearing a drum beat there , he inquired of the bailiff of the town , at whose house he then was , what it meant . the bailiff told him , that they had for some days been troubled with an idle drummer , who demanded money of the constable by vertue of a pretended pass , which he thought was counterfeit . upon this mr. mompesson sent for the fellow , and askt him by what authority he went up and down the country in that manner with his drum. the drummer answered , he had good authority , and produced his pass , with a warrant , under the hands of sir william cawly , and colonel ayliff of gretenham . mr. mompesson knowing these gentlemens hands , discovered that the pass and warrant were counterfeit , and thereupon commanded the vagrant to put off his drum , and charged the constable to carry him before the next justice of the peace , to be further examined and punisht . the fellow then confessed the cheat , and begged earnestly to have his drum. mr. mompesson told him , that if he understood from colonel ayliff , whose drummer he said he was , that he had been an honest man , he should have it again , but in the mean time he would secure it . so he left the drum with the bailiff , and the drummer in the constables hands , who it seems was prevailed on by the fellows intreaties to let him go . about the midst of april following , when mr. mompesson was preparing for a journey to london , the bailiff sent the drum to his house . when he was returned from that journey , his wife told him , that they had been much affrighted in the night by thleves , and that the house had been like to have been broken up . and he had not been at home above three nights , when the same noise was heard that had disturbed his family in his absence . it was a very great knocking at his doors , and the outsides of his house . hereupon he got up , and went about the house with a brace of pistols in his hands . he opened the door where the great knocking was , and then he heard the noise at another door . he opened that also , and went out round his house , but could discover nothing , only he still heard a strange noise and hollow sound . when he was got back to bed , the noise was a thumping and drumming on the top of his house , which continued a good space , and then by degrees went off into the air. after this , the noise of thumping and drumming was very frequent , usually five nights together , and then it would intermit three . it was on the outsides of the house , which is most of it of board . it constantly came as they were going to sleep , whether early or late . after a months disturbance without , it came into the room where the drum lay , four or five nights in seven , within half an hour after they were in bed , continuing almost two . the sign of it just before it came , was , they still heard an hurling in the air over the house , and at its going off , the beating of a drum like that at the breaking up of a guard. it continued in this room for the space of two months , which time mr. mompesson himself lay there to observe it . in the fore part of the night , it used to be very troublesome , but after two hours all would be quiet . mrs. mompesson being brought to bed , there was but little noise the night she was in travail , nor any for three weeks after , till she had recovered strength . but after this civil cessation , it returned in a ruder manner than before , and followed and vext the youngest children , beating their bedsteds with that violence , that all present expected when they would fall in pieces . in laying hands on them , one should feel no blows , but might perceive them to shake exceedingly . for an hour together it would beat , round-heads and cuckolds , the tat-too , and several other points of war , as well as any drummer . after this , they should hear a scratching under the childrens bed , as if by something that had iron tallons . it would lift the children up in their beds , follow them from one room to another , and for a while haunted none particularly but them . there was a cock-loft in the house which had not been observed to be troubled , thither they removed the children , putting them to bed while it was fair day , where they were no sooner laid , but their troubler was with them as before . on the fifth of novemb. . it kept a mighty noise , and a servant observing two boards in the childrens room seeming to move , he bid it give him one of them . upon which the board came ( nothing moving it that he saw ) within a yard of him . the man added , nay let me have it in my hand ; upon which it was shov'd quite home to him . he thrust it back , and it was driven to him again , and so up and down , to and fro , at least twenty times together , till mr. mompesson forbad his servant such familiarities . this was in the day-time , and seen by a whole room full of people . that morning it left a sulphurous smell behind it , which was very offensive . at night the minister one mr. cragg , and divers of the neighbours came to the house on a visit . the minister went to prayers with them , kneeling at the childrens bed-side , where it was then very troublesome and loud . during prayer-time it withdrew into the cock-loft , but returned as soon as prayers were done , and then in sight of the company , the chairs walkt about the room of themselves , the childrens shooes were hurled over their heads , and every loose thing moved about the chamber . at the same time a bedstaff was thrown at the minister , which hit him on the leg , but so favourably that a lock of wool could not have fallen more softly , and it was observed , that it stopt just where it lighted , without rolling or moving from the place . mr. momp●…sson perceiving , that it so much persecuted the little children , he lodged them out at a neighbours house , taking his eldest daughter , who was about ten years of age into his own chamber , where it had not been a moneth before . as soon as she was in bed , the disturbance begun there again , continuing three weeks drumming , and making other noises , and it was observed , that it would exactly answer in drumming any thing that was beaten or called for . after this , the house where the children were lodged out , happening to be full of strangers , they were taken home , and no disturbance having been known in the parlour , they were lodged there , where also their persecutour found them , but then only pluckt them by the hair and night-cloaths without any other disturbance . it was noted , that when the noise was loudest , and came with the most sudden and surprising violence , no dog about the house would move , though the knocking was oft so boisterous and rude , that it hath been heard at a considerable distance in the fields , and awakened the neighbours in the village , none of which live very near this house . the servants sometimes were lift up with their beds , and then let gently down again without hurt , at other times it would lye like a great weight upon their feet . about the latter end of decemb. . the drummings were less frequent , and then they heard a noise like the gingling of money , occasioned , as it was thought , by somewhat mr. mompesson's mother had spoken the day before to a neighbour , who talkt of fayries leaving money , viz. that she should like it well , if it would leave them some to make amends for their trouble . the night after the speaking of which , there was a great chinking of money over all the house . after this it desisted from the ruder noises , and employed it self in little apish and less troublesome tricks . on christmas eve a little before day , one of the little boys arising out of his bed , was hit on a sore place upon his heel , with the latch of the door , the pin that it was fastened with , was so small that it was a difficult matter to pick it out . the night after christmas day , it threw the old gentlewomans cloaths about the room , and hid her bible in the ashes . in such silly tricks it was frequent . after this , it was very troublesome to a servant of mr. mompesson's , who was a stout fellow , and of sober conversation . this man lay within , during the greatest disturbance , and for several nights something would endeavour to pluck his cloaths off the bed , so that he was fain to tug hard to keep them on , and sometimes they would be pluckt from him by main force , and his shooes thrown at his head . and now and then he should find himself forcibly held , as it were bound hand and foot , but he found that whenever he could make use of his sword , and struck with it , the spirit quitted its hold . a little after these contests , a son of sir thomas bennet , whose workman the drummer had sometimes been , came to the house , and told mr. mompesson some words that he had spoken , which it seems was not well taken . for as soon as they were in bed , the drum was beat up very violently and loudly , the gentleman arose and called his man to him , who lay with mr. mompesson's servant just now spoken of , whose name was john. as soon as mr. bennet's man was gone , john heard a rusling noise in his chamber , and something came to his bedside , as if it had been one in silk . the man presently reacheth after his sword , which he found held from him , and 't was with difficulty and much tugging that he got it into his power , which as soon as he had done , the spectre left him , and it was always observed that it still avoided a sword. about the beginning of january . they were wont to hear a singing in the chimney before it came down . and one night about this time , lights were seen in the house . one of them came into mr. mompesson's chamber which seemed blue and glimmering , and caused great stiffness in the eyes of those that saw it . after the light something was heard coming up the stairs , as if it had been one without shooes . the light was seen also four or five times in the childrens chamber ; and the maids confidently affirm that the doors were at least ten times opened and shut in their sight , and when they were opened they heard a noise as if half a dozen had entred together . after which some were heard to walk about the room , and one rusled as if it ▪ had been in silk . the like mr. mompesson himself once heard . during the time of the knocking , when many were present , a gentleman of the company said , satan , if the drummer set thee to work , give three knocks and no more , which it did very distinctly and stopt . then the gentleman knockt , to see if it would answer him as it was wont , but it did not . for further trial , he bid it for confirmation , if it were the drummer , to give five knocks and no more that night , which it did , and left the house quiet all the night after . this was done in the presence of sir thomas chamberlain of oxfordshire , and divers others . on saturday morning , an hour before day , jan. . a drum was heard beat upon the out-sides of mr. mompesson's chamber , from whence it went to the other end of the house , where some gentlemen strangers lay , playing at their door and without , four or five several tunes , and so went off into the air . the next night , a smith in the village lying with john the man , they heard a noise in the room , as if one had been shoeing of an horse , and somewhat came , as it were with a pair of pincers , snipping at the smiths nose most part of the night . one morning mr. mompesson rising early to go a journey , heard a great noise below , where the children lay , and running down with a pistol in his hand , he heard a voice , crying a witch , a witch , as they had also heard it once before . upon his entrance all was quiet . having one night played some little tricks at mr. mompesson's beds feet , it went into another bed , where one of his daughters lay ; there it passed from side to side , lifting her up as it passed under . at that time there were three kinds of noises in the bed. they endeavoured to thrust at it with a sword , but it still shifted and carefully avoided the thrust , still getting under the child when they offered at it . the night after it came panting like a dog out of breath . upon which one took a bedstaff to knock , which was caught out of her hand , and thrown away , and company coming up , the room was presently filled with a bloomy noisome smell , and was very hot , though without fire , in a very sharp and severe winter . it continued in the bed panting and scratching an hour and half , and then went into the next chamber , where it knockt a little , and seemed to rattle à chain ; thus it did for two or three nights together . after this , the old gentlewomans bible was found in the ashes , the paper side being downwards . mr. mompesson took it up , and observed that it lay open at the third chapter of st. mark , where there is mention of the unclean spirits falling down before our saviour , and of his giving power to the twelve to cast out devils , and of the scribes opinion , that he cast them out through beelzebub . the next night they strewed ashes over the chamber , to see what impressions it would leave . in the morning they found in one place , the resemblance of a great claw , in another of a lesser , some letters in another , which they could make nothing of , besides many circles and scratches in the ashes . about this time i went to the house , on purpose to inquire the truth of those passages , of which there was so loud a report . it had ceased from its drumming and ruder noises before i came thither , but most of the more remarkable circumstances before related , were confirmed to me there , by several of the neighbours together , who had been present at them . at this time it used to haunt the children , and that as soon as they were laid . they went to bed that night i was there , about eight of the clock , when a maid-servant coming down from them , told us it was come . the neighbours that were there , and two ministers who had seen and heard divers times went away , but mr. mompesson and i , and a gentleman that came with me went up . i heard a strange scratching as i went up the stairs , and when we came into the room , i perceived it was just behind the bolster of the childrens bed , and seemed to be against the tick. it was as loud a scratching , as one with long nails could make upon a bolster . there were two little modest girls in the bed , between seven and eleven years old as i guest . i saw their hands out over the cloaths , and they could not contribute to the noise that was behind their heads . they had been used to it , and had still some body or other in the chamber with them , and therefore seemed not to be much affrighted . i standing at the beds-head , thrust my hand behind the bolster , directing it to the place whence the noise seemed to come . whereupon the noise ceased there , and was heard in another part of the bed. but when i had taken out my hand it returned , and was heard in the same place as before . i had been told that it would imitate noises , and made trial by scratching several times upon the sheet , as , and , and , which it followed and still stopt at my number . i searcht under and behind the bed , turned up the cloaths to the bed-cords , graspt the bolster , sounded the wall behind , and made all the search that possible i could to find if there were any trick , contrivance , or common cause of it ; the like did my friend , but we could discover nothing . so that i was then verily perswaded , and am so still , that the noise was made by some daemon or spirit . after it had scratcht about half an hour or more , it went into the midst of the bed under the children , and there seemed to pant like a dog out of breath very loudly . i put my hand upon the place , and felt the bed bearing up against it , as if something within had thrust it up . i graspt the feathers to feel if any living thing were in it . i looked under and every where about , to see if there were any dog or cat , or any such creature in the room , and so we all did , but found nothing . the motion it caused by this panting was so strong , that it shook the room and windows very sensibly . it continued thus , more than half an hour , while my friend and i stay'd in the room , and as long after , as we were told . during the panting , i chanced to see as it had been something ( which i thought was a rat or mouse ) moving in a linnen bag , that hung up against another bed that was in the room . i stept and caught it by the upper end with one hand , with which i held it , and drew it through the other , but found nothing at all in it . there was no body near to shake the bag , or if there had , no one could have made such a motion , which seemed to be from within , as if a living creature had moved in it . this passage i mention not in the former editions , because it depended upon my single testimony , and might be subject to more evasions than the other i related ; but having told it to divers learned and inquisitive men , who thought it not altogether inconsiderable , i have now added it here . it will i know be said by some , that my friend and i were under some affright , and so fancied noises and sights that were not . this is the eternal evasion . but if it be possible to know how a man is affected , when in fear , and when unconcerned , i certainly know for mine own part , that during the whole time of my being in the room , and in the house , i was under no more affrightment than i am , while i write this relation . and if i know that i am now awake , and that i see the objects that are before me , i know that i heard and saw the particulars i have told . there is , i am sensible , no great matter for story in them , but there is so much as convineeth me , that there was somewhat extraordinary , and what we usually call preternatural in the business . there were other passages at my being at tedworth , which i published not , because they are not such plain and unexceptionable proofs . i shall now briefly mention them , valeant quantum valere possunt . my friend and i lay in the chamber , where the first and chief disturbance had been . we slept well all night , but early before day in the morning , i was awakened ( and i awakened my bed-fellow ) by a great knocking just without our chamber door . i askt who was there several times , but the knocking still continued without answer . at last i said , in the name of god , who is it , and what would you have ? to which a voice answered , nothing with you . we thinking it had been some servant of the house , went to sleep again . but speaking of it to mr. mompesson when we came down , he assured us , that no one of the house lay that way , or had business thereabout , and that his servants were not up till he called them , which was after it was day . which they confirmed and protested that the noise was not made by them . mr. mompesson had told us before , that it would be gone in the middle of the night , and come agian divers times early in the morning about four a clock , and this i suppose was about that time . another passage was this , my man coming up to me in the morning , told me , that one of my horses ( that on which i rode ) was all in a sweat , and lookt as if he had been rid all night . my friend and i went down and found him so . i enquired how he had been used , and was assured that he had been well sed , and ordered as he used to be , and my servant was one that was wont to be very careful about my horses . the horse i had had a good time , and never knew but that he was very sound . but after i had rid him a mile or two , very gently over a plain down from mr. mompesson's house , he fell lame , and having made a hard shift to bring me home , dyed in two or three days , no one being able to imagine what he ailed . this i confess might be accident or some unusual distemper , but all things being put together , it seems very probable that it was somewhat else . but i go on with mr. mompesson's own particulars . there came one morning a light into the childrens chamber , and a voice crying , a witch , a witch , for at least an hundred times together . mr. mompesson at another time ( being in the day ) seeing some wood move that was in the chimney of a room , where he was , as of it self , discharged a pistol into it , after which they found several drops of blood on the harth , and in divers places of the stairs . for two or three nights after the discharge of the pistol , there was a calm in the house , but then it came again , applying it self to a little child newly taken from nurse . which it so persecuted , that it would not let the poor infant rest for two nights together , nor suffer a candle in the room , but carry them away lighted up the chimney , or throw them under the bed. it so scared this child by leaping upon it , that for some hours it could not be recovered out of the sright . so that they were forced again to remove the children out of the house . the next night after which something about mid-night came up the stairs , and knockt at mr. mompesson's door , but he lying still , it went up another pair of stairs , to his mans chamber , to whom it appeared standing at his beds foot . the exact shape and proportion he could not discover , but he saith he saw a great body with two red and glaring eyes , which for some time were fixed steadily upon him , and at length disappeared . another night strangers being present ; it purr'd in the childrens bed like a cat , at which time also the cloaths and children were list up from the bed , and six men could not keep them down . hereupon they removed the children , intending to have ript up the bed. but they were no sooner laid in another , but the second bed was more troubled than the first . it continued thus four hours , and so beat the childrens leggs against the bed-posts , that they were forced to arise , and sit up all night . after this , it would empty chamberpots into their beds , and strew them with ashes , though they were never so carefully watcht . it put a long piked iron into mr. mompesson's bed , and into his mothers a naked knife upright . it would fill porrengers with ashes , throw every thing about and keep a noise all day . about the beginning of april , . a gentleman that lay in the house , had all his money turned black in his pockets ; and mr. mompesson coming one morning into his stable , found the horse he was wont to ride , on the ground , having one of his hinder leggs in his mouth , and so fastened there , that it was difficult for several men to get it out with a leaver . after this , there were some other remarkable things , but my account goes no further . only mr. mompesson writ me word , that afterwards the house was several nights beset with seven or eight in the shape of men , who , as soon as a gun was discharged , would shuffle away together into an arbour . the drummer was tryed at the assizes at salisbury upon this occasion . he was committed first to gloucester gaol for stealing , and a wiltshire man coming to see him , he askt what news in wiltshire . the visitant said , he knew of none . no , saith the drummer ! do not you hear of the drumming at a gentlemans house at tedworth . that i do enough , said the other . i , quoth the drummer , i have plagued him ( or to that purpose ) and he shall never be at quiet , till he hath made me satisfaction for taking away my drum. upon information of this , the fellow was tryed for a witch at sarum , and all the main circumstances i have related , were sworn at the assizes by the minister of the parish , and divers others of the most intelligent and substantial inhabitants , who had been eye and ear witnesses of them , time after time for divers years together . the fellow was condemned to transportation , and accordingly sent away ; but i know not how ( 't is said by raising storms , and affrighting the seamen ) he made a shift to come back again . and 't is observable , that during all the time of his restraint and absence the house was quiet , but as soon as ever he came back at liberty , the disturbance returned . he had been a souldier under cromwel , and used to talk much of gallant books he had of an odd fellow , who was counted a wizzard . upon this occasion , i shall here add a passage , which i had not from mr. mompesson , but yet relates to the main purpose . the gentleman , who was with me at the house , mr. hill , being in company with one compton of summersetshire , who practiseth physick , and pretends to strange matters , related to him this story of mr. mompesson's disturbance . the physician told him , he was sure it was nothing but a rendezvouz of witches , and that for an hundred pounds , he would undertake to rid the house of all disturbance . in pursuit of this discourse , he talkt of many high things , and having drawn my friend into another room apart from the rest of the company , said , he would make him sensible he could do something more than ordinary , and askt him who he desired to see . mr. hill had no great confidence in his talk , but yet being earnestly prest to name some one , he said , he desired to see no one so much as his wife , who was then many miles distant from them at her home . upon this , compton took up a looking-glass that was in the room , and setting it down again , bid my friend look in it ; which he did , and there , as he most solemnly and seriously professeth , he saw the exact image of his wife in that habit which she then wore , and working at her needle in such a part of the room ( there represented also ) in which and about which time she really was as he found upon inquiry when he came home . the gentleman himself averred this to me , and he is a very sober , intelligent , and credible person . compton had no knowledge of him before , and was an utter stranger to the person of his wife . the same man we shall meet again in the story of the witchcrafts of elizabeth style , whom he discovered to be a witch by foretelling her coming into an house , and going out again without speaking , as is set down in the third relation . he was by all counted a very odd person . thus i have written the summ of mr. mompesson's disturbance , which i had partly from his own mouth related before divers , who had been witnesses of all , and confirmed his relation , and partly from his own letters , from which the order and series of things is taken . the same particulars he writ also to dr. creed , then doctor of the chair in oxford . mr. mompesson is a gentleman , of whose truth in this account , i have not the least ground of suspicion , he being neither vain nor credulous , but a discreet , sagacious and manly person . now the credit of matters of fact depends much upon the relatours , who , if they cannot be deceived themselves nor supposed any ways interessed to impose upon others , ought to be credited . for upon these circumstances , all humane faith is grounded , and matter of fact is not capable of any proof besides , but that of immediate sensible evidence . now this gentleman cannot be thought ignorant , whether that he relates be true or no , the scene of all being his own house , himself a witness and that not of a circumstance or two , but of an hundred , nor for once or twice only , but for the space of some years , during which he was a concerned , and inquisitive observer . so that it cannot with any shew of reason be supposed that any of his servants abused him , since in all that time he must needs have detected the deceit . and what interest could any of his family have had ( if it had been possible to have managed it without discovery ) to continue so long so troublesome , and so injurious an imposture ? nor can it with any whit of more probability be imagined , that his own melancholy deluded him , since ( besides that he is no crazy nor imaginative person ) that humour could not have been so lasting and pertinacious . or if it were so in him , can we think he infected his whole family , and those multitudes of neighbors and others , who had so often been witnesses of those passages ? such supposals are wild , and not like to tempt any , but those whose wills are their reasons . so that upon the whole , the principal relatour mr. mompesson himself knew , whether what he reports was true or not , whether those things acted in his house were contrived cheats , or extraordinary realities . and if so , what interest could he serve in carrying on , or conniving at a juggling design and imposture ? he suffered by it in his name , in his estate , in all his affairs , and in the general peace of his family . the unbelievers in the matter of spirits and witches took him for an impostour . many others judged the permission of such an extraordinary evil to be the judgment of god upon him , for some notorious wickedness or impiety . thus his name was continually exposed to censure , and his estate suffered , by the concourse of people from all parts to his house , by the diversion it gave him from his affairs , by the discouragement of servants , by reason of which he could hardly get any to live with him . to which if i add the continual hurry that his family was in , the affrights , vexations and tossings up and down of his children , and the watchings and disturbance of his whole house ( in all which , himself must needs be the most concerned person ) i say , if these things are considered , there will be little reason to think he could have any interest to put a cheat upon the world , in which he would most of all have injured and abused himself . or if he should have designed and managed so incredible , so unprofitable a delúsion , 't is strange that he should have troubled himself so long in such a business , only to deceive , and to be talkt of . and it is yet more so , that none of those many inquisitive persons that came thither purposely to criticize and examine the truth of those matters , could make any discoveries of the juggling , especially since many came prejudiced against the belief of such things in general , and others resolved before-hand against the belief of this , and all were permitted the utmost freedom of search and inquiry . and after things were weighed and examined , some that were before greatly prejudiced , went away fully convinced . to all which i add , that there are divers particulars in the story , in which no abuse or deceit could have been practised , as the motion of boards and chairs of themselves , the beating of a drum in the midst of a room , and in the air , when nothing was to be seen ; the great heat in a chamber that had no fire in excessive cold weather , the scratching and panting , the violent beating and shaking of the bedsteads , of which there was no perceivable cause or occasion : in these and such like instances , it is not to be conceived how tricks could have been put upon so many , so jealous , and so inquisitive persons as were witnesses of them . 't is true , that when the gentlemen the king sent were there , the house was quiet , and nothing seen nor heard that night , which was confidently and with triumph urged by many , as a confutation of the story . but 't was bad logick to conclude in matters of fact from a single negative and such a one against numerous affirmatives , and so affirm that a thing was never done , because not at such a particular time , and that no body ever saw what this man or that did not . by the same way of reasoning , i may inferr that there were never any robberies done on salisbury plain , ho●…nslow heath , or the other noted places , because i have often travelled all those ways , and yet was never robbed ; and the spaniard inferred well that said , there was no sun in england , because he had been six weeks here and never saw it . this is the common argument of those that deny the being of apparitions , they have travelled all hours of the night , and never saw any thing worse than themselves ( which may well be ) and thence they conclude , that all pretended apparitions are fancies or impostures . but why do not such arguers conclude , that there was never a cut-purse in london , because they have lived there many years without being met with by any of those practisers ? certainly he that denies apparitions upon the confidence of this negative against the vast heap of positive assurances , is credulous in believing there was ever any highway-man in the world , if he himself was never robb'd . and the trials of assizes and attestations of those that have ( if he will be just ) ought to move his assent no more in this case , than in that of witches and apparitions , which have the very same evidence . but as to the quiet of mr. mompesson's house when the courtiers were there , it may be remembred and considered , that the disturbance was not constant , but intermitted sometimes several dayes , sometimes weeks . so that the intermission at that time might be accidental , or perhaps the daemon was not willing to give so publick a testimony of those transactions , which possibly might convince those , who he had rather should continue in the unbelief of his existence . but however it were , this circumstance will afford but a very slender inference against the credit of the story , except among those who are willing to take any thing for an argument against things which they have an interest not to acknowledge . i have thus related the sum of the story , and noted some circumstances that assure the truth of it . i confess the passages recited are not so dreadful , tragical and amazing , as there are some in story of this kind , yet are they never the less probable or true , for their being not so prodigious and astonishing . and they are strange enough to prove themselves effects of some invisible extraordinary agent , and so demonstrate that there are spirits , who sometimes sensibly intermeddle in our affairs . and i think they do it with clearness of evidence . for these things were not done long ago , or at far distance , in an ignorant age , or among a barbarous people , they were not seen by two or three only of the melancholick and superstitious , and reported by those that made them serve the advantage and interest of a party . they were not the passages of a day or night , nor the vanishing glances of an apparition ; but these transactions were near and late , publick , frequent , and of divers years continuance , witnessed by multitudes of competent and unbyassed attestors , and acted in a searching incredulous age : arguments enough one would think to convince any modest and capable reason . advertisement . this narrative of the daemon of tedworth is published in an epistolar form in the former impressions . but the enlargement thereof , that is to say , the said narrative enlarged for this intended edition , is not in that form , and therefore is thus published according to mr. glanvil 's m. s. in this bare simple form it was found . as for mr. glanvil 's letter to dr. more , which was in the former impressions , though for the first parts sake it might seem ●…it here to be interserted , it containing objections and queries touching the stirrs at mr. mompesson 's house , yet the greater part by far being of another subject , and the most material of those objections and queries being so well satisfied in this more perfect narrative it self , i thought it more advisable to omit that letter in this present edition , that there might be left more room for what is more congenerous to the argument in hand . and therefore we will immediately proceed to the second relation . relat. ii. which is concerning witchcraft practised by jane brooks upon richard jones , son of henry jones of shepton mallet . on sunday . of novemb. . about three of the clock in the afternoon , richard jones then a sprightly youth about twelve years old , son of henry jones of shepton mallet , in the county of somerset , being in his fathers house alone , and perceiving one looking in at the windows , went to the door , where one jane brooks of the same town ( but then by name unknown to this boy ) came to him . she desired him to give her a piece of close bread , and gave him an apple . after which she also stroked him down on the right side , shook him by the hand , and so bid him good night . the youth returned into the house , where he had been lest well , when his father and one gibson went from him , but at their return , which was within an hour or thereabout , they found him ill , and complaining of his right side , in which the pain continued the most part of that night . and on munday following in the evening , the boy rosted the apple he had of jane brooks , and having eaten about half of it , was extreamly ill , and sometimes speechless , but being recovered , he told his father , that a woman of the town on the sunday before , had given him that apple , and that she stroked him on the side . he said he knew not her name , but should her person , if he saw her . upon this jones was advised to invite the women of shepton to come to his house , upon the occasion of his sons illness , and the child told him , that in case the woman should come in when he was in his fit , if he were not able to speak , he would give him an intimation by a jogg , and desired that his father would then lead him through the room , for he said he would put his hand upon her , if she were there . after this he continuing very ill , many women came daily to see him . and jane brooks the sunday after , came in with two of her sisters , and several other women of the neighbour-hood were there . upon her coming in , the boy was taken so ill , that for some time he could not see nor speak , but having recovered his sight , he gave his father the item , and he led him about the room . the boy drew towards jane brooks , who was behind her two sisters among the other women , and put his hand upon her , which his father perceiving , immediately scratcheth her face and drew blood from her . the youth then presently cryed out that he was well , and so he continued seven or eight days . but then meeting with alice coward , sister to jane brooks , who passing by said to him [ how do you my hony ] he presently fell ●…ll again . and after that , the said coward and brooks often appeared to him . the boy would describe the clothes and habit they were in at the time exactly , as the constable and others have found upon repairing to them , though brooks's house was at a good distance from jones's . this they often tryed , and always found the boy right in his descriptions . on a certain sunday about noon , the child being in a room with his father and one gibson , and in his fit , he on the sudden called out , that he saw jane brooks on the wall , and pointed to the place , where immediately gibson struck with a knife . upon which the boy cryed out , [ o father , cooz gibson hath cut jane brooks's hand , and 't is bloody ] the father and gibson immediately repaired to the constable a discreet person , and acquainting him with what had passed , desired him to go with them to jane brooks's house , which he did . they found her sitting in her room on a stool with one hand over the other . the constable askt her how she did ? she answered , not well . he askt again why she sat with one hand over the other ? she replied , she was wont to do so . he enquired if any thing were amiss with her hand ? her answer was , it was well enough . the constable desired he might see the hand that was under , which she being unwilling to shew him , he drew it out and found it bloudy according to what the boy had said . being askt how it came so , she said 't was scratched with a great pin. on the eighth of december , . the boy , jane brooks , and alice coward , appeared at castle-cary before the justices , mr. hunt and mr. cary. the boy having begun to give his testimony , upon the coming in of the two women and their looking on him was instantly taken speechless ; and so remained till the women were removed out of the room , and then in a short time upon examination he gave a full relation of the mentioned particulars . on the eleventh of january following , the boy was again examined by the same justices at shepton mallet , and upon the sight of jane brooks was again taken speechless , but was not so afterwards when alice coward came into the room to him . on the next appearance at shepton , which was on the seventeenth of february , there were present many gentlemen , ministers and others . the boy fell into his fit upon the sight of jane brooks , and lay in a man's arms like a dead person ; the woman was then willed to lay her hand on him , which she did , and he thereupon started and sprang out in a very strange and unusual manner . one of the justices to prevent all possibilities of legerdemain , caused gibson and the rest to stand off from the boy , and then that justice himself held him ; the youth being blindfolded , the justice called as if brooks should touch him , but winked to others to do it , which two or three successively did , but the boy appeared not concerned . the justice then called on the father to take him , but had privately before desired one mr. geoffry strode , to bring jane brooks to touch him at such a time as he should call for his father , which was done , and the boy immediately sprang out after a very odd and violent fashion . he was after touched by several persons and moved not , but jane brooks being again caused to put her hand upon him , he started and sprang out twice or thrice as before . all this while he remained in his fit and some time after ; and being then laid on a bed in the same room , the people present could not for a long time bow either of his arms or leggs . between the mentioned . of nov. and the . of jan. the two women appeared often to the boy , their hands cold , their eyes staring , and their lips and cheeks looking pale . in this manner on a thursday about noon , the boy being newly laid into his bed , jane brooks and alice coward appeared to him , and told him that what they had begun they could not perform . but if he would say no more of it , they would give him money , and so put a two-pence into his pocket . after which they took him out of his bed , laid him on the ground , and vanished , and the boy was found by those that came next into the room lying on the flour , as if he had been dead . the two-pence was seen by many , and when it was put into the fire and hot , the boy would fall ill ; but as soon as it was taken out and cold , he would be again as well as before . this was seen and observed by a minister a discreet person , when the boy was in one room and the two-pence ( without his knowledge ) put into the fire in another , and this was divers times tried in the presence of several persons . between the . of dec. and the . of feb. in the year mentioned , divers persons at sundry times heard in the boy a noise like the croaking of a toad , and a voice within him saying , jane brooks , alice coward , twelve times in near a quarter of an hour . at the same time some held a candle before the boys face , and earnestly looked on him , but could not perceive the least motion of his tongue , teeth or lips , while the voice was heard . on the . of feb. between two and three in the afternoon , the boy being at the house of richard isles in shepton mallet , went out of the room into the garden , isles his wife followed him , and was within two yards when she saw him rise up from the ground before her , and so mounted higher and higher till he passed in the air over the garden wall , and was carried so above ground more than yards , falling at last at one jordan's door at shepton , where he was found as dead for a time . but coming to himself told jordan , that jane brooks had taken him up by the arm out of isles his garden , and carried him in the air as is related . the boy at several other times was gone on the suddain , and upon search after him found in another room as dead , and at sometimes strangely hanging above the ground , his hands being flat against a great beam in the top of the room , and all his body two or three foot from ground . there he hath hung a quarter of an hour together , and being afterwards come to himself , he told those that found him , that jane brooks had carried him to that place and held him there . nine people at a time saw the boy so strangely hanging by the beam. from the . of nov. to the . of march following , he was by reason of his fits much wasted in his body and unspirited , but after that time , being the day the two women were sent to gaol , he had no more of those fits . jane brooks was condemned and executed at charde assizes , march . . this is the sum of mr. hunts narrative , which concludes with both the justices attestation , thus : the aforesaid passages were some of them seen by us : and the rest and some other remarkable ones , not here set down , were upon the examination of several credible witnesses taken upon oath before us . subscribed ; rob. hunt , john cary. this i think is good evidence of the being of witches ; if the sadducee be not satisfied with it , i would fain know what kind of proof he would expect . here are the testimonies of sense , the oaths of several credible attesters , the nice and deliberate scrutiny of quick-sighted and judicious examiners , and the judgment of an assize upon the whole . and now the security of all our lives and fortunes depends upon no greater circumstances of evidence than these . if such proof may not be credited , no fact can be proved , no wickedness can be punished , no right can be determined , law is at an end , and blind justice cannot tell how to decide any thing . advertisement . the most fit advertisement here is mr. glanvills transition to fresh evidences , out of mr. hunts examinations , which is this . thus far , saith he , the evidence of fact went in the former editions , but having resolved upon this reenforcement , i writ again to my honoured friend mr. hunt , knowing that he had more materials for my purpose , and such as would afford proof sufficient to any modest doubter . in answer he was pleased to send me his book of examinations of witches , which he kept by him fairly written . it contains the discovery of such an hellish knot of them , and that discovery so clear and plain , that perhaps there hath not yet any thing appeared to us with stronger evidence to confirm the belief of witches . and had not his discoveries and endeavours met with great opposition and discouragements from some then in authority , the whole clan of those hellish confederates in these parts had been justly exposed and punished . out of that book i have collected some main instances , the clearness of which i think will be enough to overcome and silence any indifferent prejudice . but some are so settled and obdurate , that no proof in the world is sufficient to remove them . i begin with the witchcrafts of elizabeth style . relat. iii. which containeth the witchcrafts of elizabeth style of bayford , widow . this elizabeth style of stoke trister , in the county of somerset , was accused by divers persons of credit upon oath before mr. hunt , and particularly and largely confessed her guilt her self , which was found by the jury at her trial at taunton ; but she prevented execution by dying in gaol , a little before the expiring of the term her confederate daemon had set for her enjoyment of diabolical pleasures in this life . i have shortned the examinations , and cast them into such an order , as i think fittest for the rendring the matter clear and intelligible . . exam. rich. hill of stoke trister , in the county of somerset yeoman , being examined upon oath , jan. . . before rob. hunt , esq one of his majesties justices for that county , concerning the bewitching of his daughter by eliz. style , declareth , that his daughter eliz. hill , about the age of years , hath been for about two months last past taken with very strange fits which have held her an hour , two , three and more ; and that in those fits the child hath told her father , the examinant and others , that one eliz. style of the same parish appeared to her , and is the person that torments her . she also in her fits usually tells what clothes eliz. style hath on at the time , which the informant and others have seen and found true . he saith further , that about a fortnight before christmas last , he told style that his daughter spoke much of her in her fits , and did believe that she was bewitched by her . whereupon francis white , and walter , and robert thick being present , willed her to complain to the justice against him for accusing of her . but she having used several put-offs , said she would do worse than fetch a warrant . after which the girl grew worse than before , and at the end of a fit she tells the examinant when she shall have another , which happens accordingly , and affirms , that style tells her when the next fit shall come . he informs further , that monday night after christmas day about nine of the clock , and four or five times since about the same hour of the night , his daughter hath been more tormented than formerly , and that though held in a chair by four or five people , sometimes six , by the arms , legs , and shoulders , she would rise out of her chair , and raise her body about three or four foot high . and that after , in her fits , she would have holes made in her hand-wrists , face , neck , and other parts of her body , which the informant and others that saw them conceived to be with thorns . for they saw thorns in her flesh , and some they hooked out . that upon the childs pointing with her finger from place to place , the thorns and holes immediately appeared to the informant and others looking on . and as soon as the child can speak after the fit , she saith that widow style did prick her with thorns in those several places , which was horrible torment , and she seemed to the informant and others standing by , to be in extream pain and torture . the child hath been so tormented and pricked with thorns four several nights , at which times the informant and many other people have seen the flesh rise up in little bunches in which holes did appear . the pricking held about a quarter of an hour at a time during each of the four fits , and the informant hath seen the child take out some of those thorns . the same rich. hill examined jan. . . informs , that when he rode from the justices house with a warrant to bring styles before him , his horse on a suddain sate down on his breech and he could not after ride him , but as soon as he atte●…ed to get up , his horse would sit down 〈◊〉 paw with his feet before . he saith further , that since styles was examined before the justice and made her consession to him , she hath acknowledged to the informant that she had hurt his daughter , and that one anne bishop , and alice duke , did joyn in bewitching of her . taken upon oath before me , rob. hunt. . exam. william parsons rector of stoke trister , in the county of somerset , examined the . of jan. . before rob. hunt , esq concerning the bewitching of rich. hill's daughter saith , that on monday night after christmas day then last past , he came into the room when eliz. hill was in her fit , many of his parishioners being present and looking on . he there saw the child held in a chair by main force by the people , plunging far beyond the strength of nature ; foaming and catching at her own arms and clothes with her teeth . this fit he conceives held about half an hour . after some time , she pointed with her finger to the left side of her head , next to her left arm , and then to her left hand , &c. and where she pointed he perceived a red spot to arise with a small black in the midst of it like a small thorn. she pointed also to her toes one after another , and exprest great sense of torment . this latter fit he guesses continued about a quarter of an hour , during most or all of which time her stomach seemed to swell , and her head where she seemed to be prickt did so very much . she sate foaming much of the time , and the next day after her fit , she shewed the examinant the places where the thorns were stuck in , and he saw the thorns in those places . taken upon oath before me subscribed , rob. hunt. william parsons rector of stoke trister . . exam. nicholas lambert of bayford , in the county of somerset yeoman , examined upon oath before rob. hunt , esq jan. . . concerning the bewitching of rich. hill's daughter by elizabeth style , testifieth , that monday after christmas day last , being with others in the house of rich. hill , he saw his daughter elizabeth taken very ill , and in fits that were so strong that six men could not hold her down in a chair in which she was sate , but that she would raise the chair up in spight of their utmost force . that in her fits being not able to speak , she would rest her body as one in great torment , and point with her finger to her neck , head , hand-wrists , arms and toes . and he , with the rest looking on the places to which she pointed , saw on the suddain little red spots arise with little black ones in the midst , as if thorns were stuck in them , but the child then onely pointed without touching her flesh with her finger . taken upon oath before me rob. hunt. . exam. richard vining of stoke trister butcher , examined jan. . . before rob. hunt , esq concerning the bewitching of his wife by eliz. style , saith , that about two or three days before s. james's day three years since or thereabou●… his late wife agnes fell out with eliz. style , and within two or three days after she was taken with a grievous pricking in her thigh , which pain continued for a long time , till after some physick taken from one hallet , she was at some ease for three or four weeks . about the christmas after the mentioned s. james's day , style came to the examinants house , and gave agnes his wife two apples , one of them a very fair red apple , which style desired her to eat , which she did , and in a few hours was taken ill and worse than ever she had been before . upon this , the examinant went to one mr. compton , who lived in the parish of ditch-eate , ( the same person that shewed my friend his wife in a glass , as i have related in the story of mr. mompesson ) for physick for his wife . compton told him he could do her no good , for that she was hurt by a near neighbour , who would come into his house and up into the chamber where his wife was , but would go out again without speaking . after vining came home , being in the chamber with his wife , style came up to them , but went out again without saying a word . agnes the wife continued in great pain till easter eve following , and then she dyed . before her death her hip rotted and one of her eyes swelled out , she declared to him then and at several times before , that she believed eliz. style had bewitched her , and that she was the cause of her death . taken upon oath before me , rob. hunt. whilst the justice was examining style at wincaunton , ( which is not above a mile and a half from stoke trister ) upon the former evidence against her , he observed that rich. vining looked very earnestly upon him . whereupon he askt vining if he had any thing to say unto him . he answered that style had bewitched his wife , and told the manner how , as is in his deposition related . the woman style upon this seemed appaled and concerned , and the justice saying to her , you have been an old sinner , &c. you deserve little mercy : the replied , i have askt god mercy for it . mr. hunt askt her , why then she would continue in such ill courses ? she said the devil tempted her : and then began to make some confession of his actings with her . upon this the justice sent her to the constables house at bayford , which is in the parish of stoke trister , ( the constable was one mr. gapper ) and the next morning went thither himself , accompanied with two persons of quality m r bull , and m r court , now justices of the peace in this county . now before i proceed further in the story , i shall take notice that here are three credible witnesses , swearing to the same particulars , in that the child elizabeth hill was sometimes in strange fits , in which her strength was encreased beyond the proportion of nature , and the force of divers men ; that then she pointed to the parts of her body , where they saw red spots arising , and black specks in the midst of them , that she complained she was prickt with thorns , and two of them saw thorns in the places of which she complained . some of which thorns , one swears that he and others saw hooked out , and that the girl her self pulled out others ; that in her sits she declared style appears to her ( as jane brooks did to richard jones , in the former relation ) and tells her when she shall have another fit , which happens accordingly ; that she describes the clothes the woman hath on , exactly as they find . but notwithstanding , all this shall be melancholy and fancy , or legerdemain , or natural distemper , or any thing but witchcraft , or the fact shall be denied , and the three witnesses perjured , though this confidence against the oaths of sober men , tend to the overthrow of all testimony and history , and the rendring all laws useless . i shall therefore proceed to further proof , and such as will abundantly strengthen this . it is the confession of style her self . i left mr. hunt , and the other two gentlemen at the constables house , where style was , upon business of further examination , where she enlarged upon the confession she had before begun to make , and declared the whole matter at that and two other times after in the particulars that follow . . exam. elizabeth styles her confession of her witchcrafts , jan. . and . and feb. . . before rob. hunt esq she then confessed , that the devil about ten years since , appeared to her in the shape of a handsome man , and after of a black dog. that he promised her mony , and that she should live gallantly , and have the pleasure of the world for twelve years , if she would with her blood sign his paper , which was to give her soul to him , and observe his laws , and that he might suck her blood. this after four solicitations , the examinant promised him to do . upon which he prickt the fourth finger of her right hand , between the middle and upper joynt ( where the sign at the examination remained ) and with a drop or two of her blood , she signed the paper with an [ o ] . upon this the devil gave her sixpence , and vanished with the paper . that since he hath appeared to her in the shape of a man , and did so on wednesday seven-night past , but more usually he appears in the likeness of a dog , and cat , and a fly like a millar , in which last he usually sucks in the poll about four of the clock in the morning , and did so jan. . and that it usually is pain to her to be so suckt . that when she hath a desire to do harm , she calls the spirit by the name of robin , to whom when he appeareth , she useth these words , o sathan give me my purpose . she then tells him what she would have done . and that he should so appear to her , was part of her contract with him . that about a month ago he appearing , she desired him to torment one elizabeth hill , and to thrust thorns into her flesh , which he promised to do , and the next time he appeared , he told her he had done it . that a little above a month since this examinant , alice duke , anne bishop and mary penny , met about nine of the clock in the night , in the common near trister gate , where they met a man in black clothes with a little band , to whom they did courtesie and due observance , and the examinant verily believes that this was the devil . at that time alice duke brought a picture in wax , which was for elizabeth hill. the man in black took it in his arms , anointed its fore-head , and said , i baptize thee with this oyl , and used some other words . he was godfather , and the examinant and anne bishop godmothers . they called it elizabeth or bess. then the man in black , this examinant , anne bishop , and alice duke stuck thorns into several places of the neck , hand-wrists , fingers , and other parts of the said picture . after which they had wine , cakes and roastmeat ( all brought by the man in black ) which they did eat and drink . they danced and were merry , were bodily there , and in their clothes . she further saith , that the same persons met again , at or near the same place about a month since , when anne bishop brought a picture in wax , which was baptized john , in like manner as the other was , the man in black was godfather , and alice duke and this examinant godmothers . as soon as it was baptized , anne bishop stuck two thorns into the arms of the picture , which was for one robert newman's child of wincaunton . after they had eaten , drank , danced and made merry , they departed . that she with anne bishop , and alice duke met at another time in the night , in a ground near marnhul , where also met several other persons . the devil then also there in the former shape , baptized a picture by the name of anne or rachel hatcher . the picture one durnford's wife brought , and stuck thorns in it . then they also made merry with wine and cakes , and so departed . she saith , before they are carried to their meetings , they anoint their foreheads , and hand-wrists with an oyl the spirit brings them ( which smells raw ) and then they are carried in a very short time , using these words as they pass , thout , tout a tout , tout , throughout and about . and when they go off from their meetings , they say , rentum tormentum . that at their first meeting , the man in black bids them welcome , and they all make low obeysance to him , and he delivers some wax candles like little torches , which they give back again at parting . when they anoint themselves , they use a long form of words , and when they stick in thorns into the picture of any they would torment they say , a pox on thee , i 'le spite thee . that at every meeting before the spirit vanisheth away , he appoints the next meeting place and time , and at his departure there is a foul smell . at their meeting they have usually wine or good beer , cakes , meat or the like . they eat and drink really when they meet in their bodies , dance also and have musick . the man in black sits at the higher end , and anne bishop usually next him . he useth some words before meat , and none after , his voice is audible , but very low . that they are carried sometimes in their bodies and their clothes , sometimes without , and as the examinant thinks their bodies are sometimes left behind . when only their spirits are present , yet they know one another . when they would bewitch man , woman or child , they do it sometimes by a picture made in wax , which the devil formally baptizeth . sometimes they have an apple , dish , spoon or other thing , from their evil spirit , which they give the party to whom they would do harm . upon which they have power to hurt the person that eats or receives it . sometimes they have power to do mischief by a touch or curse , by these they can mischief cattle , and by cursing without touching ; but neither without the devils leave . that she hath been at several general meetings in the night at high common , and a common near motcombe , at a place near marnhull , and at other places where have met john combes , john vining , richard diokes , thomas boster or bolster , thomas dunning , james bush a lame man , rachel king , richard lannen , a woman called durnford , alice duke , anne bishop , mary penny and christopher ellen , all which did obeysance to the man in black , who was at every one of their meetings . usually they have at them some picture baptized . the man in black , sometimes playes on a pipe or cittern , and the company dance . at last the the devil vanisheth , and all are carried to their several homes in a short space . at their parting they say [ a boy ! merry meet , merry part . ] that the reason why she caused elizabeth hill to be the more tormented was , because her father had said , she was a witch . that she has seen alice dukes familiar suck her , in the shape of a cat , and anne bishops suck her in the shape of a rat. that she never heard the name of god or jesus christ mentioned at any of their meetings . that anne bishop , about five years and a half since , did bring a picture in wax to their meeting , which was baptized by the man in black , and called peter . it was for robert newman's child at wincaunton . that some two years ago , she gave two apples to agnes vining , late wife of richard vining , and that she had one of the apples from the devil , who then appeared to her and told , that appls would do vining ' s wives business . taken in the presence of several grave and orthodox divines before me robert hunt. . exam. william parsons rector of stoke trister , examined feb. . . before rob. hunt esq concerning elizabeth style 's confession , saith , that he heard style before the justice of peace , at the time of her examination confess , as she hath done also to the examinant several times since , that she was in covenant with the devil , that she had signed it with her blood , that she had been with the devil at several meetings in the night , that at one time of those meetings , there was brought a picture in blackish wax , which the devil in the shape of a man in blakish clothes , did baptize by the name of eliz. hill , that she did stick in one thorn into the hand-wrists of the picture , that alice duke stuck thorns into the same , and that anne bishop and mary penny were present at that meeting with the devil . taken upon oath before me subscribed , robert hunt. william parsons rector of stoke trister . this confession of styles was free and unforced , without any torturing or watching , drawn from her by a gentle examination , meeting with the convictions of a guilty conscience . she confesseth that she desired the devil to torment eliz. hill , by thrusting thorns into her flesh , which he promised , and said he had done it . that a picture was baptized for her the said elizabeth , and that she , the familiar , and alice duke stuck thorns into several places of the neck , hand-wrists , fingers and other parts thereof , which exactly agrees with the strange effects related , concerning the torments the child suffered , and this mischief she confesseth she did , because her father said she was a witch . she confesseth she gave two apples to vinings wife , one of which she had from the devil , who said it would do the business , which sutes also with the testimony of vining concerning his wife . she confesseth further , that the devil useth to suck her in the poll , about four a clock in the morning , in the form of a fly like a millar , concerning which , let us hear testimony ( the other particulars of her confession we shall consider as occasion offers . ) . exam. nicholas lambert examined again jan. . . before rob. hunt esq concerning what happened after styles confession , testifyeth , that eliz. style having been examined before the justice , made her confession , and committed to the officer , the justice required this examinant , william thick and william read of bayford to watch her , which they did ; and this informant sitting near style by the fire , and reading in the practice of piety , about three of the clock in the morning , there came from her head a glistering bright fly , about an inch in length , which pitched at first in the chimney , and then vanished . in less than a quarter of an hour after , there appeared two flies more of a less size , and another colour , which seemed to strike at the examinants hand , in which he held his book but missed it , the one going over , the other under at the same time . he looking stedfastly then on style , perceived her countenance to change , and to become very black and gastly , the fire also at the same time changing its colour ; whereupon the examinant , thick and read conceiving that her familiar was then about her , looked to her poll , and seeing her hair shake very strangely took it up , and then a fly like a great millar flew out from the place , and pitched on the table-board , and then vanished away . upon this the examinant , and the other two persons looking again in styles poll , found it very red and like raw beef . the examinant askt her what it was that went out of her poll , she said it was a butterfly , and askt them why they had not caught it . lambert said , they could not . i think so too , answered she . a little while after , the informant and the others looking again into her poll , found the place to be of its former colour . the examinant demanding again what the fly was , she confessed it was her familiar , and that she felt it tickle in her poll , and that was the usual time when her familiar came to her . taken upon oath before me robert hunt. . exam. eliz. torwood of bayford , examined feb. . . before rob. hunt esq concerning the mark sound about eliz. style after her confession , deposeth , that she together with catharine white , mary day , mary bolster , and bridget prankard , did a little after christmas last , search eliz. style , and that in her poll they found a little rising which felt hard like a kernel of beef , whereupon they suspecting it to be an ill mark , thrust a pin into it , and having drawn it out , thrust it in again the second time , leaving it sticking in the flesh for some time , that the other women might also see it . notwithstanding which , style did neither at the first or second time make the least shew that she felt any thing . but after , when the constable told her he would thrust in a pin to the place , and made a shew as if he did , o lord , said she , do you prick me , whenas no one then touched her . the examinant further saith , that style hath since confessed to her , that her familiar did use to suck her in the place mentioned , in the shape of a great millar or butterfly . catharine white , mary day , mary bolster and bridget prankard do say , that the abovesaid examination of eliz. torwood is truth . taken upon oath before me rob. hunt. relat. iv. which is the examination and confession of alice duke , alias manning another witch of styles knot ) of wincaunton , in the county of somerset widdow , taken jan. . and feb. . . . . an. . before robert hunt esq. the examinant saith , that when she lived with anne bishop of wincaunton , about eleven or twelve years ago , anne bishop perswaded her to go with her into the church-yard in the night-time , and being come thither , to go backward round the church , which they did three times . in their first round , they met a man in black clothes , who went round the second time with them , and then they met a thing in the shape of a great black toad , which leapt up against the examinants apron . in their third round they met somewhat in the shape of a rat , which vanished away . after this the examinant and anne bishop went home , but before anne bishop went off , the man in black said somewhat to her softly , which the informant could not hear . a few days after , anne bishop speaking about their going round the church , told the examinant , that now she might have her desire , and what she would wish for . and shortly after , the devil appeared to her in the shape of a man , promising that she should want nothing , and that if she cursed any thing with a pox take it , she should have her purpose , in case she would give her soul to him , suffer him to suck her blood , keep his secrets , and be his instrument to do such mischief as he would set her about . all which , upon his second appearing to her , she yielded to , and the devil having prickt the fourth finger of her right hand between the middle and upper joynt ( where the mark is yet to be seen ) gave her a pen , with which she made a cross or mark with her blood on paper or parchment , that the devil offered her for the confirmation of the agreement , which was done in the presence of anne bishop . and as soon as the examinant had signed it , the devil gave her sixpence , and went away with the paper or parchment . further she confesseth , that she hath been at several meetings in lie common , and other places in the night , and that her forehead being first anointed with a feather dipt in oyl , she hath been suddenly carried to the place of their meeting . that about five or six weeks since ( or more ) she met in the said common in the night ; where were present anne bishop , mary penny of wincaunton , elizabeth style of bayford , and a man in black clothes with a little band , whom she supposeth to have been the devil . at the meeting there was a picture in wax , which the man in black took in his arms , and having anointed its forehead with a little greenish oyl , and using a few words , baptized it by the name of elizabeth or bess hill , for the daughter of richard hill. then the devil , this examinant , anne bishop , and elizabeth style stuck thorns in the neck , head , hand-wrists , fingers and other parts of the picture , saying , a pex on thee , i 'le spite thee . this done , all sate down , a white cloth being spread on the ground , and did drink wine , and eat cakes and meat . after all was ended , the man in black vanished , leaving an ugly smell at parting . the rest were on a sudden conveighed to their homes . on monday night after christmas day last , she met the same company again , near about the same place , and then anne bishop ( who was there in a green apron , a french wastcoat and a red petticoat ) brought in her apron a picture in blackish wax , which the devil baptized as before , by the name of john newman , for the son of rob. newman of wincaunton , and then the devil first , after anne bishop and this examinant thrust in thorns into the picture , anne bishop sticking in two thorns into the arms of it . the picture anne bishop carried away with her . they were all there present in their clothes , and the devil in the shape of a man in black . about five years and a half since , the same persons were at the baptizing of another image , by the name of peter newman , another son of robert newman , both which are since dead , and then anne bishop desired the examinant to joyn with her in bewitching of peter and john newman . at another time she was carried to a meeting in the night , to a green place near marnhull as she was then told , where were present anne bishop , eliz. style , mary penny , and some unknown to her . then also an image in wax was baptized by the devil , in the fore-related manner , by the name of anne or rachel hatcher one of marnhull , as she was then informed . after the ceremony was ended , they had wine , cakes , &c. she likewise confesseth , that she was at another such meeting , where twelve persons were present , many of whom were unknown to her , but she took notice of one lame man in blackish hair among them , and of the devil as before . she saith that after their meetings , they all make very low obeysances to the devil , who appears in black clothes and a little band. he bids them welcome at their coming , and brings wine or beer , cakes , meat , or the like . he sits at the higher end , and usually anne bishop sits next him . they eat , drink , dance , and have musick . at their parting they use to say , merry meet merry part , and that before they are carried to their meetings , their foreheads are anointed with greenish oyl that they have from the spirit which smells raw . they for the most part are carried in the air. as they pass , they say , thout , tout a tout , tout , throughout and about . passing back they say , rentum tormentum , and another word which she doth not remember . she consesseth that her familiar doth commonly suck her right breast about seven at night , in the shape of a little cat of a dunnish colour , which is as smooth as a want , and when she is suckt , she is in a kind of a trance . that she hurt thomas garret's cowes , because he refused to write a petition for her . that she hurt thomas conway , by putting a dish into his hand , which dish she had from the devil , she gave it him to give his daughter for good hansel . that she hurt dorothy the wife of george vining , by giving an iron slate to put into her steeling box. that being angry with edith watts , the daughter of edmond watts for treading on her foot , she cursed edith with a pox on you , and after touched her , which hath done the said edith much harm , for which she is sorry . that being provoked by swanton's first wife , she did before her death curse her , with a pox on you , believes she did thereby hurt her , but denies she did bewitch mr. swanton's cattle . she saith , that when the devil doth any thing for her , she calls for him by the name of robin , upon which he appears , and when in the shape of a man , she can hear him speak , but his voice is very low . he promised her when she made her contract with him , that she should want nothing , but ever since she hath wanted all things . taken before me rob. hunt. . exam. thomas conway of wincaunton , in the county of somerset , examined feb. . . before robert hunt esquire , concerning alice duke , informeth , that about twelve months since alice duke alias manning , brought a little pewter dish to this informant , and told him it was good hansel for his daughter . the examinant willed the said alice to carry it to her , she being within by the fire , but she forced the dish into his hand and went away . shortly after he was taken extreamly ill in all his limbs . of which illness the physicians , whom he applied himself to , could give no account . when she went from him , she was very angry and muttered much , because he would not sign a petition on her behalf . she hath confessed to him since that she had the dish from the devil , and gave it to him on purpose to hurt him . he hath been , and is since in great torment , and much weakned and wasted in his body , which he imputes to the evil practices of alice duke . taken upon oath before me rob. hunt. . exam. mary the wife of tho. conway , examined march . . before rob. hunt esq concerning alice duke , saith , that her husband tho. conway about a year ago delivered her a little pewter dish , telling her he had it from alice duke for good hansel for his daughter , who had lately lain in . in this dish she warmed a little deer-sewet and rose-water , anointing her daughters nipples with it , which put her to extream pain . upon which suspecting harm from the dish , she put it into the fire , which then presently vanished and nothing of it could afterwards be found . after , when she anointed her daughters nipples with the same deer-sewet and rose-water , warmed in a spoon , she complained not of any pain . she further saith , that her husband after he had received the dish from the hands of alice duke , was taken ill in all his limbs , and held for a long time in a very strange manner . taken upon oath before me rob. hunt. . exam. edward watts of wincaunton , in the county of somerset , examined mar. . : before robert hunt , esq concerning alice duke , saith , that he hath a child called edith , about ten years of age , who for the space of half a year hath languished and pined away , and that she told him that treading one day on the toe of alice duke , she in great anger cursed her with a pox on thee , and that from that time the child began to be ill and to pine away , which she hath done ever since . taken upon oath before me rob. hunt. advertisement . besides the plain agreement betwixt the witnesses , and the witches own confession , it may be worth the taking notice here , how well her confession of having her familiar such her in the shape of a cat , agrees with eliz. style 's confession , that she had seen alice dukes familiar suck her in that shape . as also how the bewitching of edward watts 's child by alice duke her saying , a pox on her , agrees with the promise of the devil to her , which is expresly , that if she cursed any thing with a pox take it , she should have her purpose . she also testifying of the baptizing the image of eliz. hill , and of those forms of words , thout , tout a tout , and rentum tormentum at their going to their meetings and departing , plainly shews that these things are not transacted in dreams but in reality . the devil also as in other stories leaving an ill smell behind him , seems to imply the reality of the business , those ascititious particles he held together in his visible vehicle , being loosened at his vanishing , and so offending the nostrils by their floating and diffusing themselves in the open air. relat. v. which is the examination and consession of christian green , aged about thirty three years , wife of rob. green of brewham , in the county of somerset , taken before rob. hunt , esq march . . this examinant saith , that about a year and a half since ( she being in great poverty ) one catharine green of brewham , told her , that if she would she might be in a better condition , and then perswaded her to make a covenant with the devil . being afterwards together in one mr. hussey's ground in brewham forrest about noon , catharine called for the devil , who appeared in the shape of a man in blackish clothes , and said somewhat to catharine which christian could not hear . after which the devil ( as she conceived him ) told the examinant that she should want neither clothes , victuals , nor money , if she would give her body and soul to him , keep his secrets , and suffer him to suck her once in twenty four hours , which at last upon his and catharine greens perswasion she yielded to ; then the man in black prickt the fourth finger of her right-hand between the middle and upper joints , where the sign yet remains , and took two drops of her blood on his finger , giving her fourpence halfpenny , with which she after bought bread in brewham . then he spake again in private with catharine and vanished , leaving a smell of brimstone behind . since that time the devil ( she saith ) hath and doth usually su●…k her left brest about five of the clock in the morning in the likeness of an hedg-hog , bending , and did so on wednesday morning last . she saith it is painful to her , and that she is usually in a trance when she is suckt . she saith also , that catharine green , and margaret agar of brewham , have told her that they are in covenant with the devil , and confesseth that she hath been at several meetings in the night in brewham common , and in a ground of mr. hussey's , that she hath there met with catharine green and margaret agar , and three or four times with mary warberton of brewham , that in all those meetings the devil hath been present in the shape of a man in black clothes . at their first coming he bids them welcome , but always speaks very low . that at a meeting about three weeks or a month since at or near the former place , margaret agar brought thither an image in wax , for elizabeth the wife of andrew cornish of brewham , and the devil in the shape of a man in black clothes did baptize it , and after stuck a thorn into its head ; that agar stuck one into its stomach , and catharine green one into its side . she further saith , that before this time , agar said to her this examinant , that she would hurt eliz. cornish , who since the baptizing of the picture hath been taken and continues very ill . she saith , that three or four days before jos. talbot of brewham dyed , margaret agar told her that she would rid him out of the world , because being overseer of the poor he made her children go to service , and refused to give them such good clothes as she desired . and since the death of talbot , she confessed to the examinant , that she had bewitcht him to death . he dyed about a year since , was taken ill on friday , and dyed about wednesday after . that her mother-in-law catharine green , about five or six years ago was taken in a strange manner . one day one eye and cheek did swell , another day another , and so she continued in great pain , till she dyed . upon her death she several times said in the hearing of the examinant , that her sister-in-law catharine green had bewitched her , and the examinant believes that she bewitcht her to death . that a little before michaelmas last , the said catharine cursed the horses of rob. walter of brewham , saying , a murrain on them horses to death . upon which the horses being three , all dyed . taken before me rob. hunt. relat. vi. containing further testimonies of the villainous feats of that rampant hagg margaret agar of brewham , in the county of somerset . . exam. elizabeth talbot of brewham , examined march . . before rob. hunt , esq saith , that about three weeks before her father jos. talbot dyed , margaret agar fell out with him , because he being overseer for the poor , did require agar's daughter to go to service , and said to him , that he was proud of his living , but swore by the blood of the lord , that he should not long enjoy it . within three weeks of which he was suddainly taken in his body as if he had been stabb'd with daggers , and so continued four or five days in great pain and then dyed . rob. hunt. . exam. jos. smith of brewham , husbandman , examined march . . before rob , hunt , esq saith , that some few days before jos. talbot dyed , he heard margaret agar rail very much at him , because he had caused her daughter to go to service , and said , that he should not keep his living but be drawn out upon four mens shoulders . that she should tread upon his jaws , and see the grass grow over his head , which she swore by the blood of the lord. taken upon oath before rob. hunt. . exam. mary the wife of william smith of brewham , examined march . . before rob. hunt , esq saith , that about two years since margaret agar came to her and called her whore , adding , a plague take you for an old whore , i shall live to see thee rot on the earth before i die , and thy cows shall fall and die at my feet . a short time after which , she had three cows that died very strangely , and two of them at the door of margaret agar . and ever since the examinant hath consumed and pined away , her body and her bowels rotting , and she verily believes that her cattle and her self were bewitcht by agar . taken upon oath before rob. hunt. . exam. catharine green alias cornish of brewham , widow , examined may . . before rob. hunt , esq saith , that on friday in the evening , in the beginning of march last , margaret agar came to her , and was earnest she should go with her to a ground called husseys-knap , which she did , and being come thither they saw a little man in black clothes with a little band . as soon as they came to him margaret agar took out of her lap a little picture in blackish wax , which she delivered to the man in black , who stuck a thorn into the crown of the picture , and then delivered it back to agar . upon which she stuck a thorn towards the heart of the picture , cursing and saying , a plague on you ; which she told the examinant was done to hurt eliz. cornish , who as she hath been told hath been very ill ever since that time . that a little above a year since jos. talbot late of brewham , being overseer for the poor , did cause two of agar's children to go to service . upon which she was very angry and said in the examinants hearing a few days before he fell sick and died , that she had trod upon the jaws of three of her enemies , and that she should shortly see talbot rot and tread on his jaws . and when this examinant desired her not to hurt talbot , she swore by the blood of the lord , she would confound him if she could . the day before he dyed , she said to the examinant , gods wounds i 'le go and see him , for i shall never see him more ; and the next day talbot dyed . that she heard margaret agar curse mary smith , and say , she should live to see her and her cattle fall and rot before her face . taken upon oath before rob. hunt. . exam. mary green of brewham , single woman , examined june . . before rob. hunt , esq saith , that about a month before jos. talbot late of brewham dyed , margaret agar fell out with him about the putting out of her child to service . after that she saw a picture in clay or wax in the hands of agar , which she said was for talbot , the picture she saw her deliver in redmore , to the fiend in the shape of a man in black about an hour in the night , who stuck a thorn in or near the heart of it , agar stuck another in the breast , and catharine green , alice green , mary warberton , henry walter and christian green , all of brewham , were then and there present , and did all stick thorns into the picture . at that time catharine green spake to agar not to hurt talbot , because she received somewhat from him often times , but agar replied , by the lords blood she would confound him , or words to that purpose . that a little before talbot was taken sick ; agar being in the house where the examinant lived , swore that she should e're long tread upon his jaws . and that if talbot made her daughter go to service for a year , yet if she came home in a quarter it would be time enough to see him carried out upon four mens shoulders and to tread upon his jaws . that on the day talbot dyed , she heard agar swear that she had now plagued talbot ; and that being in company with her some time before , and seeing a dead horse of talbot's drawn along by another of his horses , she swore that that horse should be also drawn out to morrow , and the next day she saw the well horse also drawn out dead . that above a month before margaret agar was sent to gaol , she saw her , henry walter , catharine green , jone syms , christian green , mary warberton and others , meet at a place called husseys-knap in the forrest in the night time , where met them the fiend in the shape of a little man in black clothes with a littleband , to him all made obeysances , and at that time a picture in wax or clay was delivered by agar to the man in black , who stuck a thorn into the crown of it , margaret agar one towards the breast , catharine green in the side ; after which agar threw down the picture and said , there is cornishes picture with a murrain to it , or plague on it . and that at both the meetings there was a noisom smell of brimstone . that about two years since in the night there met in the same place agar , henry walter , catharine green , jone syms , alice green and mary warberton . then also margaret agar delivered to the little man in black a picture in wax , into which he and agar stuck thorns , and henry walter thrust his thumb into the side of it . then they threw it down and said , there is dick greens picture with a pox in 't . a short time after which rich. green was taken ill and dyed . further he saith , that on thursday night before whitsunday last , about the same place met catharine green , alice green , jone syms , mary warberton , dinah and dorothy warberton and henry walter , and being met they called out robin . upon which instantly appeared a little man in black clothes to whom all made obeysance , and the little man put his hand to his hat , saying , how do ye ? speaking low but big . then all made low obeysances to him again . that she hath seen margaret clark twice at the meetings , but since margaret agar was sent to prison she never saw her there . taken before me rob. hunt. advertisement . before we pass to other relations , it will not be amiss further to remark upon these taken out of the examinations of mr. hunt : from the poisoned apples that jane brooks gave to rich. jones , and eliz. style to agnes vining , and the poisoned pewter-dish that alice duke put into the hands of thomas conway , ( which dish and apples they had from the devil ) we may observe in what a peculiar sense witches and wizzards are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , venefici and veneficoe , poysoners . not that they mischieve people ordinarily by natural poisons , as arsenick and the like , but rather by some hellish malignancy infused into things by the art and malice of the devil , or by the steams of their own body which the devil sucks . for the hand of jane brooks stroaking down rich. jones his side impressed a pain thereon . we may observe also what an eximious example of moses his mecassephah ( the word which he uses in that law , thou shalt not suffer a witch to live ) margaret agar is , and how fitly some interpreters render mecassephim , malefici , from the great mischief they do and delight in . and what a great credit this agar is to j. webster , and the rest of the hagg-advocates , which would make them to be meer couzening queans or melancholick fopps that had nothing to do with the devil . as if the man in black and a little band were but such another as j. webster , or any other haggadvocate that in waggery acted the part of the devil in husseys knap , or any such like place of a forrest , and so after all quickly and suddainly recoiling behind a bush and letting sly into the wind , the deluded haggs took it for the vanishing of the very fiend and his perfuming the air with the smell of brimstone . one that can resolve all the feats of the hartummim of egypt into tricks of legerdemain , cannot ●…e easily delude the company with such a feat as this , the old wives being thick of hearing and carrying their spectacles not on their noses but in their pockets ? and lastly srom the devils covenanting with the witches for their souls , it may be observed that the old haggs dealing bonâ fidde , and thinking they have souls surviving their bodies , are better philosophers than the huffy wits of our age that deny distinction of soul and body . but if they have not ( as these huffers would have it ) and the haggs think so themselves , it is a pretty paradox that these old fopps should be able to out-wit the very devil ; who does not in bartering for their bodies and souls buy a pig in a poke , as the proverb is , but a poke without a pig. but i rather believe that these huffing wits , as high as they are , may learn one true point of philosophy from these haggs and their familiars ; these evil spirits certainly making their bargains wisely enough in covenanting for the witches soul. which clause if it were not exprest , the soul were free from the familiars jurisdiction after death . wherefore it is no contemptible argument these evil spirits covenanting for the soul of the witch , that they know the soul survives the body , and therefore make their bargain sure for the possession of it as their peculium after death . otherwise if the soul were mortal they would tell the wit●…es so , the more easily to precipitate them into 〈◊〉 wickedness , and make them more eager by their ministry to enjoy this present life . but this doctrine is inconsistent with the form of his covenant , whereby they are assured to him after death . relat. vii . touching florence newton an irish witch of youghal , taken out of her trial at the assizes held for the country of corke , sept. . ann. . this florence newton was committed to youghall prison , by the major of the town , march . . for bewitching mary longdon , who gave evidence against her at cork assizes , as follows . mary longdon being sworn and examined what she could say against the said florence newton for any practice of witchcraft upon her self , and being bidden to look on the prisoner , her countenance changed pale , and she was very fearful to look towards her , but at last she did . and being askt whether she knew her , she said she did , and wisht she never had . being askt how long she had known her , she said for three or four years . and that at christmas last the said florence came to the deponent , at the house of john pyne in youghall , where the deponent was a servant . and askt the deponent to give her a piece of beef out of the powdering-tub . and the deponent answering her , that she could not give away her masters beef , she said florence seemed to be very angry , and said , thou hadst as good have given it me , and so went away grumbling . that about a week after , the deponent being going to the water with a pail of cloth on her head , she met the said florence newton , who came full in her face , and threw the pail off her head , and violently kist her , and said , mary , i pray thee , let thee and i be friends , for i bear thee no ill will , and i pray thee do thou bear me none . and that she the deponent went afterwards home , and that within a few days after , she saw a woman with a vail over her face , stand by her bed-side , and one standing by her like a little old man in silk clothes , and that this man which she took to be a spirit , drew the vail from off the womans face , and then she knew it to be goody newton , and that the spirit spake to the deponent , and would have had her promise him to follow his advice , and she should have all things after her own heart , to which she says , she answered , that she would have nothing to say to him , for her trust was in the lord. that within a month after the said florence had kist her , she this deponent fell very ill of fits or trances , which would take her on the sudden , in that violence that three or four men could not hold her . and in her fits she would often be taken with vomitings , and would vomit up needles , pins , horse-nails , stubbs , wooll and straw , and that very often . and being asked whether she perceived at these times what she vomited ? she said she did . for then she was not in so great distraction as in other parts of her fits she was . and that a little before the first beginning of her fits , several ( and very many ) smallstones would fall upon her as she went up and down , and would ●…llow her from place to place , and from one room to another , and would hit her on the head , shoulders , and arms , and fall to the ground and vanish away . and that she and several others would see them both ●…ll upon her , and on the ground , but could never take them , save onely some few , which she and her master caught in their hands . amongst which one that had a hole in it she tied ( as she was advised ) with a leather thong to her purse , but it was vanisht immediately though the leather continued tied on a fast knot . that in her fits she often saw this florence newton , and cryed out against her for tormenting of her , for she says that she would several times stick pins into her arms , and some of them so fast that a man must pluck three or four times to get out the pin , and they were stuck betwixt the skin and the flesh . that sometimes she should be removed out of her bed into another room , sometimes she should be carried to the top of the house laid on a board betwixt two sollar beams , sometimes put into a chest , sometimes under a parcel of wool , sometimes betwixt two feather-beds on which she used to lie , and sometimes betwixt the bed and the mat in her masters chamber in the day time . and being asked how she knew she was thus carried about and disposed of , seeing in her fits she was in a violent distraction ? she answered , she never knew where she was till they of the family and the neighbours with them would be taking her out of the places whither she was so carried and removed . and being asked the reason wherefore she cryed out so much against the said florence newton in her fits ? she answered , because she saw her and felt her torturing . and being asked how she could think it was florence newton that did her this prejudice ? she said , first because she threatned her , then because after she had kist her she sell into these fits , and that she both saw and felt her tormenting . and lastly , that when the people of the family by advice of the neighbours and consent of the major , had sent for florence newton to come to the deponent , she was always worse when she was brought unto her , and her fits more violent than at another time . and that after the said florence was committed at youghall , the deponent was not troubled , but was very well till a little while after the said florence was removed to corke , and then the deponent was as ill as ever before . and the major of youghall one mr. mayre , then sent to know whether the said florence were bolted ( as the deponent was told ) and finding she was not , order was given to put the bolts on her , which being done the deponent saith she was well again , and so hath continued ever since . and being asked whether she had such like fits before the said florence gave her the kiss , she saith she never had any , but believes that with that kiss she bewitcht her , and the rather because she hath heard from nicholas pyne and others , that the said florence had confessed as much this mary longdon having closed up her evidence , florence newton peep'd at her as it were betwixt the heads of the bystanders that interposed betwixt her and the said mary , and lifting up both her hands together as they were manacled cast them in an angry violent kind of motion ( as was seen and observed by w. aston , ) towards the said mary , as if she intended to strike at her if she could have reacht her , and said now she is down . upon which the maid fell suddainly down to the ground like a stone , and fell into a most violent fit , that all the people that could come to lay hands on her could scarce hold her , she biting her own arms and shreeking out in a most hideous manner to the amazement of all the beholders . and continuing so for about a quarter of an hour ( the said florence newton sitting by her self all that while pinching her own hands and arms as was sworn by some that observed her ) the maid was ordered to be carried out of court and taken into a house . whence several persons after that , brought word that the maid was in a vomiting fit , and they brought in several crooked pins and straws and wool , in white foam like spittle in great proportions . whereupon the court having taken notice that the maid had said she had been very well when the said florence was in bolts , and ill again when out of them , till they were again put on her , demanded of the gaoler if she were in bolts or no , to which he said she was not , but onely manacled . upon which order was given to put on her bolts , and upon putting them on she cryed out , she was killed , she was undone , she was spoiled , why do you torment me thus ? and so continued complaining grievously for half a quarter of an hour . and then came in a messenger from the maid and informed the court the maid was well . at which florence immediately and cholerickly uttered these words , she is not well yet . and being demanded how she knew she was not well yet ? she denied she said so , though many in court heard her say the words , and she said , if she did , she knew not what she said , being old and disquieted and distracted with her sufferings . but the maid being reasonably well come to her self , was , before the court knew any thing of it , sent out of town to youghall , and so was no further examined by the court. the fit of the maid being urged by the court with all the circumstances of it upon florence , to have been a continuance of her devilish practice , she denied it , and likewise the motion of her hands , or the saying , now she is down , though the court saw the first , and the words were sworn by one roger moor. and thomas harrison swore that he had observed the said florence peep at her and use that motion with her hands , and saw the maid fall immediately upon that motion , and heard the words , now she is down , uttered . nicholas stout was next produced by mr. attorney general , who being sworn and examined said , that he had oft tried her , having heard say that witches could not say the lords prayer , whether she could say that prayer or no ▪ and sound she could not . whereupon she said she could say it , and had oft said it . and the c●…rt being desired by her to hear her lay it , gave her leave . and four times together after these words [ give us this day our daily bread ] she continually said as we forgive them , leaving always out the words [ and forgive us our trespasses ] upon which the court appointed one near her to teach her these words she so left out . but she either could not or would not say them , using only these or the like words when these were repeated , ay ay trespasses , that 's the words . and being oft pressed to utter the words as they were repeated to her , she did not . and being asked the reason , she said she was old and had a bad memory ; and being asked how her memory served her so well for other parts of the prayer , and only fail her for that , she said she knew not , neither could she help it . john pyne being likewise sworn and examined , said that about january last the said mary longdon being his servant was much troubled with little stones that were thrown at her where ever she went , and that he hath seen them come as if they were thrown at her , others as if they dropped on her , and that he hath seen very great quantities of them , and that they would , after they had hit her , fall on the ground , and then vanish , so that none of them could be found . and further , that the maid once caught one of them , and he himself another , and one of them with a hole in it , she tyed to her purse , but it vanished in a little time , but the knot of the leather that tyed it remained unaltered . that after the stones had thus haunted her , she fell into most grievous fits , wherein she was so violently distracted , that sour men would have very much ado to hold her , and that in the highest extremity of her fits , she would cry out against gammer newton for hurting and tormenting of her . that sometimes the maid would be reading in a bible , and on a sudden he hath seen the bible struck out of her hand into the middle of the room , and she immediately cast into a violent fit . that in the fits he hath seen two bibles laid on her breast , and in the twinkling of an eye they would be cast betwixt the two beds the maid lay upon , sometime thrown into the middle of the room , and that nicholas pyne held the bible in the maids hand so fast , that it being suddainly snatcht away two of the leaves were torn . that in many other fits the maid was removed strangely , in the twinkling of an eye , out of the bed , sometimes into the bottom of a chest with linnen , under all the linnen , and the linnen not at all disordered , sometimes betwixt the two beds she lay on , some●…imes under a parcel of wool , sometimes betwixt his bed and the mat of it in another room , and once she was laid on a small deal board , which lay on the top of the house betwixt two sollar beams , where he was forced to rear up ladders to have her fetcht down . that in her fits she hath often vomited up wool , pins , horse-nails , stubs , straw , needles and moss , with a kind of white foam or spittle , and hath had several pins stuck into her arms and hands , that sometimes a man must pull three or four times before he could pull one of them out , and some have been stuck between the flesh and the skin , where they might be perfectly seen , but not taken ●…ut , nor any place seen where they were put in . that when the witch was brought into the room , where she was , she would be in more violent and longer lasting fits than at other times . that all the time the witch was at liberty , the maid was ill , and as soon as she was committed and bolted , she recovered and was well , and that when the witch was removed to corke , the maid fell ill . and thereupon the major of youghall sent to see if she were bolted or no , and to acquaint them the maid was ill , and desire them if the witch were not bolted , they would bolt her . that she immediately mended and was as well as ever she was : and when the messenger came from corke , and told them when the witch was bolted , it fell out to be the very time the maid amended at youghall . nicholas pyne being sworn , saith , that the second night after that the witch was in prison , being of march last , he and joseph thompson , roger hawkins , and some others went to speak with her concerning the maid , and told her that it was the general opinion of the town that she had bewitched her , and desired her to deal freely with them , whether she had bewitched her or no. she said she had not bewitched her , but it may be she had over-looked her , and that there was a great difference betwixt bewitching and over-looking , and that she could not have done her any harm if she had not toucht her , and that therefore she had kist her . and she said that what mischief she thought of at that time she kist her , that would fall upon her , and that she would not but confess she had wronged the maid , and thereupon fell down upon her knees , and prayed god to forgive her for wronging the poor wench . they wisht that she might not be wholly destroyed by her ; to which she said , it must be another that must help her , and not they that did the harm . and then she said , there were others , as goody half-penny , and goody dod in town , that could do these things as well as she , and that it might be one of them that had done the maid wrong . that towards evening , the door of the prison shook , and she arose up hastily and said , what makest thou here this time a night ? and there was a very great noise , as if some body with bolts and chains had been running up and down the room , and they asked her what it was she spoke to , and what it was made the noise ; and she said she saw nothing , neither did she speak , and if she did , it was she knew not what . but the next day she confest it was a spirit , and her familiar in the shape of a grey-hound . he saith further , that he and mr. edward perry and others , for trial of her took a tyle off the prison , next to the place where the witch lay , and carried it to the house where the maid lived , and put it into the fire till it was red hot , and then dropt some of the maids water upon it , and the witch was then grievously tormented , and when the water was consumed , she was well again . and as to the stones falling on and cast at the maid , as to the maids fits , her removal into the chest under the wool , betwixt the feather-beds , on the top of the deal board betwixt two sollar beams , concerning the bibles and their remove , his holding one of them in the maids hands till two leaves were torn , concerning the maids vomiting , and her calling out against the witch , he agreeth perfectly throughout with john pyne as before . edward perry being likewise sworn deposeth , that he , mr. greatrix and mr. blackwall went to the maid , and m. greatrix and he had read of a way to discover a witch , which he would put in practice . and so they sent for the witch , and set her on a stool , and a shoemaker with a strong awl endeavored to stick it in the stool , but could not till the third time . and then they bad her come off the stool , but she said she was very weary and could not stir . then two of them pulled her off , and the man went to pull out his awl , and it dropt into his hand with half an inch broke off the blade of it , and they all looked to have found where it had been stuck , but could find no place where any entry had been made by it . then they took another awl and put it into the maids hand , and one of them took the maids hand , and ran violently at the witches hand with it , but could not enter it , though the awl was so bent that none of them could put it streight again . then mr. blackwall took a launce and launc't one of her hands an inch and a half long , and a quarter of an inch deep , but it bled not at all . then he launc't the other ●…nd , and then they bled . he further saith , that after she was in prison , he went with roger hawkins and others to discourse with the witch about the maid , and they askt what it was she spake to the day before , and after some denyal , she said it was a greyhound which was her familiar , and went out at the window , and then she said if i have done the maid hurt , i am sorry for it . and being then asked whether she had done her any hurt , she said she never did bewitch her , but confessed she had overlooked her that time she kist her , but that she could not now help her , for none could help that did the mischief , but others . and further the deponent saith , that after at the assize at cashal , he meeting with one william lap , and discoursing about these passages with him , the said lap told the deponent , that if he would but take a tyle off the house near the place where the witch lay , and heat it red hot in the fire , and then take some of the maids water and drop upon it , that so long as this was doing , he should find the witch most grievously tormented : that afterwards he , edward perry , nicholas pyne and others put this in practice , and found that the witch was extreamly tormented and vexed , and when the experiment was over , she came to her self , and then they askt her how she came to hurt the maid ? and she said , that what evil she thought against the maid that time she kist her , that would fall upon her , and that she could not have hurt her except she had toucht her , and then she fell on her knees and confest she had wronged the maid , and desired god to forgive her . and then they put her upon saying the lord prayer , but she could not say the words , and forgive us our trespasses . mr. wood a minister being likewise sworn , and examined deposeth , that having heard of the stones dropt and thrown at the maid , and of her fits , and meeting with the maids brother , he went along with him to the maid , and found her in her fit crying out against gammer newton , that she prickt her and hurt her . and when she came to her self he asked her what had troubled her , and she said gammer newton . and the deponent said , why , she was not there . yes , said she , i saw her by my bed side . the deponent then asked her the original of all , which she related from the time of her begging the beef , and after kissing and so to that time . that then they caused the maid to be got up and sent for florence newton , but she refused to come , pretending she was sick , though indeed it appeared she was well . then the major of youghall came in and spoke with the maid , and then sent again and caused florence newton to be brought in , and immediately the maid fell into her fit far more violent , and three times as long as at any other time , and all the time the witch was in the chamber the maid cryed out continually of being hurt here and there , but never named the witch ; but as soon as she was removed , then she cryed out against her by the name of gammer newton , and this for several times . and still when the witch was out of the chamber the maid would desire to go to prayers , and he found good affections in her in time of prayer . but when the witch was brought in again , though never so privately , although she could not possibly , as the deponent conceives , see her , she would be immediately sensless and like to be strangled , and so would continue till the witch were taken out , and then though never so privately carried away she would come again to her senses . that afterwards mr. greatrix , mr. blackwall and some others , who would need satisfy themselves in the influence of the witches presence , tried it and found it several times . although he did it with all possible privacy , and so as none could think it possible for the maid to know either of the witches coming in or going out . richard mayre major of youghall , being likewise sworn saith , that about the th of march last , he sent for florence newton , and examined her about the maid , and she at first denied it , and accused goodwife halspenny and goodwife dod , but at length when he had caused a boat to be provided , and had thought to have tried the water experiment on them all three , then florence newton consessed she had overlooked the maid and done her wrong with a kiss . for which she was heartily sorry and desired god to forgive her . that then he likewise examined the other two women halspenny and dod , but they utterly deny'd , it and were content to abide any trial. whereupon he caused both florence , halspenny , and dod , to be carried to the maid . and he told her these two women , or one of them were said by gammer newton to have done her hurt , but she answered no no , they are honest women , but it is gammer newton that hurts me , and i believe she is not far off . that then they afterwards brought in newton privately , and then she fell into a most violent fit , ready to be strangled , till the witch was removed , and then she was well again , and this for three several times . he further deposeth , that there were three aldermen in youghall , whose children she had kist as he had heard them affirm , and all the children died presently after . and as to the sending to cork to have the bolts put on , swears as is formerly deposed . joseph thomson being likewise sworn said , that he went in march last with roger hawkins , nicholas pyne , and others to the prison to confer with florence newton about the maid . but she would confess nothing that time . but towards night there was a noise at the prison door as if something had shak't the door , and florence started up and said , what aileth thee to be here at this time of the night ? and there was much noise . and they asked her what she spoke to , and what made the great noise ? but she denied that she spake or that she knew of any noise , and said , if i spoke i said i knew not what . and they went their ways at that time and went to her again the next night , and asked her very seriously about the last nights passage and the noise . and then she confessed to them that it was a grayhound that came to her , and that she had seen it formerly , and that it went out at the window . and then she confest she had done the maid wrong , for which she was sorry and desired god to forgive her . hitherto we have heard the most considerable evidence touching florence newton's witchcraft upon mary longdon , for which she was committed to youghall prison , march . . but april following she bewitcht one david jones to death , by kissing his hand thr●ugh the grate of the prison , for which she was indicted at corke assizes , and the evidence is as follows . elenor jones relict of the said david jones , being sworn and examined in open court what she knew concerning any practice of witchcraft by the said florence newton upon the said david her husband ? gave in the evidence that in april last , the said david her late husband having been out all the night , came home early in the morning , and said to the said elenor his wife , where dost thou think i have been all night ? to which she answered she knew not . whereupon he replied , i and frank beseley have been standing centinel over the witch all night . to which she the said elenor said why what hurt is that ? hurt , quoth he ? marry , i doubt it 's never a jot the better for me . for she hath kist my hand through the grate , and ever since she kist my hand , i have had a great pain in that arm , and i verily believe she hath bewitched me if ever she bewitched any man. to which she answered , the lord forbid . that all the night and continually from that time he was restless and ill , complaining exceedingly of a great pain in his arm for seven days together , and at the seven days end he complained that the pain was come from his arm to his heart , and then kept his bed night and day grievously afflicted and crying out against florence newton , and about fourteen days after he dyed . francis beseley , being sworn and examined said , that about the time aforementioned meeting with the said david jones , and discoursing with him of the several reports then stirring concerning this florence newton ( who was then in prison at youghall for bewitching mary longdon ) viz. that she had several familiars resorting to her in sundry shapes , the said david jones told him th●… said francis beseley , that he had a great mind to watch her the said florence newton one night to see whether he could observe any cats or other creatures resort to her through the grate , as 't was suspected they did , and desired the said francis to go with him , which he did . and that when they came thither david jones called to florence , and told her that he heard she could not say the lords prayer : to which she answered she could . he then desired her to say it : but she excused her self by the decay of memory through old age. then david jones began to teach her , but she could not or would not say it , though often taught it . upon which the said david jones and beseley being withdrawn a little from her , and discoursing of her , not being able to learn this prayer , she called out to david jones , and said , david ! david ! come hither , i can say the lords prayer now . upon which david went towards her , and the said deponent would have pluckt him back , and perswaded him not to have gone to her . but he would not be perswaded , but went to the grate to her , and she began to say the lords prayer , but could not say , [ forgive us our trespasses ] . so that david again taught her . which she seemed to take very thankfully , and told him she had a great mind to have kist him , but that the grate hindred , but desired she might kiss his hand . whereupon he gave her his hand through the grate , and she kist it , and towards break of day , they went away and parted , and soon after the deponent heard that david jones was ill . whereupon he went to visit him , and found him about two or three days after very ill of a pain in the arm. which he exceedingly complained of , and told the deponent that ever since he parted with him he had been seized on with that pain , and that the old hag had bewitched him when she kist his hand , and that she had him now by the hand , and was pulling off his arm. and he said , do you not see the old hag how she pulls me ? well , i lay my death on her , she has bewitcht me . and several times after would complain , that she had tormented him , and had bewitched him , and that he laid his death on her . and after fourteen days languishing , he the said david jones dyed . advertisement . this relation is taken out of a copy of an authentick record , as i conceive , every half sheet having w. aston writ in the margin , and then again w. aston at the end of all , who in all likelihood must be some publick notary or record-keeper . but this witch of youghall is so famous , that i have heard mr. greatrix speak of her at my lord conway's at ragley , and remember very well he told the story of the awl to me there . there is in this relation an eximious example of the magical venome of witches ( whence they are called veneficae ) in that all the mischief this witch did , was by kissing , or some way touching the party she bewitched , and she confest unless she touched her , she could do her no hurt . which may be called a magical venome or contagion . but how over-looking and bewitching are distinguished with those of this hellish fraternity , i know not . but that mary longdon was bewitch'd by her over-looking her is manifest . whether this over-looking relates to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that the magical venome came out at her eyes when she kissed the maid , and whether this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was the first kind of witchery distinct from that of bewitching people by images made of wax , and afterward any bewitching by meer looking or touching , was called over-looking , we will leave to the criticks of that black school to decide . as also what is that , which in the witches shape , so haunts and torments the bewitched party . for that it is not the meer fancy of the bewitched seems reasonable to judge , because their meer fancy could not create such kinds of extream torments to them . and therefore it is either the witches familiar in her shape , or the astral spirit of the witch , because the witch is sometimes wounded by striking at her appearance , as it happened in the appearance of jane brooks , and also in that of julian cox , as you shall find in the relation following . relat. viii . the narrative of mr. pool , a servant and officer in the court to judge archer in his circuits , concerning the trial of julian cox for witchcraft ; who being himself then present an officer in the court , noted as follows , viz. julian cox , aged about years , was indicted at taunton in somersetshire , about summer assizes . before judge archer then judge of assize there , for witchcraft , which she practised upon a young maid , whereby her body languished , and was impaired of health , by reason of strange fits upon account of the said witchcraft . the evidence against her was divided into two branches ; first , to prove her a witch in general ; secondly , to prove her guilty of the witchcraft contained in the indictment . for the proof of the first particular , the first witness was an huntsman , who swore that he went out with a pack of hounds to hunt a hare , and not far off from julian cox her house , he at last started a hare . the dogs hunted her very close , and the third ring hunted her in view , till at last the huntsman perceiving the hare almost spent , and making towards a great bush , he ran on the other side of the bush to take her up , and preserve her from the dogs . but as soon as he laid hands on her , it proved to be julian cox , who had her head groveling on the ground , and her globes ( as he exprest it ) upward . he knowing her , was affrighted , that his hair on his head stood on end ; and yet spake to her , and askt her what brought her there . but she was so far out of breath , that she could not make him any answer . his dogs also came up with full cry to recover the game , and smelt at her , and so left off hunting any further . and the huntsman with his dogs went home presently , sadly affrighted . secondly , another witness swore , that as he passed by cox her door , she was taking a pipe of tobacco upon the threshold of her door , and invited him to come in and take a pipe , which he did . and as he was taking julian said to him , neighbour look what a pretty thing there is . he look't down , and there was a monstrous great toad betwixt his leggs , staring him in the face . he endeavoured to kill it by spurning it , but could not hit it . whereupon julian bad him forbear , and it would do him no hurt . but he threw down his pipe and went home , ( which was about two miles off of julian cox her house ) and told his family what had happened , and that he believed it was one of julian cox her devils . after , he was taking a pipe of tobacco at home , and the same toad appeared betwixt his leggs . he took the toad out to kill it , and to his thinking cut it in several pieces , but returning to his pipe , the toad still appeared . he endeavored to burn it , but could not . at length he took a switch and beat it . the toad ran several times about the room to avoid him , he still pursuing it with correction . at length the toad cryed and vanish't , and he was never after troubled with it . thirdly , another swore that julian past by his yard while his beasts were in milking , and stooping down scored upon the ground for some small time . during which time his cattle ran mad , and some ran their heads against the trees , and most of them dyed speedily . whereupon concluding they were bewitched , he was after advised to this experiment , to find out the witch , viz. to cut off the ears of the bewitched beasts and burn them , and that the witch would be in misery and could not rest till they were plucked out . which he tryed , and while they were burning , julian cox came into the house , raging and scolding that they had abused her without cause , but she went presently to the fire and took out the ears that were burning , and then she was quiet . fourthly , another witness swore that she had seen julian cox fly into her own chamber window in her full proportion , and that she very well knew her , and was sure it was she . fifthly , another evidence was the confession of julian cox her self upon her examination before a justice of peace , which was to this purpose , that she had been often tempted by the devil to be a witch , but never consented . that one evening she walkt out about a mile from her own house , and there came riding towards her three persons upon three broom-staves , born up abo●… yard and an half from the ground . two of them she formerly knew , which was a witch and a wizzard that were hanged for witchcraft several years before . the third person she knew not . he came in the shape of a black man , and tempted her to give him her soul , or to that effect , and to express it by pricking her finger , and giving her name in her blood in token of it , and told her that she had revenge against several persons that had wronged her , but could not bring her purpose to pass without his help , and that upon the terms aforesaid he would assist her to be revenged against them . but she said , she did not consent to it . this was the sum of the general evidence to prove her a witch . but now for the second particular , to prove her guilty of the witchcraft upon the maid whereof she was indicted , this evidence was offered : it was proved that julian cox came for an alms to the house where this maid was a servant , and that the maid told her , she should have none , and gave her a cross answer that displeased julian . whereupon julian was angry and told the maid she should repent it before night , and so she did . for before night she was taken with a convulsion fit , and after that left her , she saw julian cox following her and cryed out to the people in the house to save her from julian . but none saw julian but the maid , and all did impute it to her imagination onely . and in the night she cryed out of julian cox , and the black man , that they came upon her bed and tempted her to drink something they offered her . but she cryed out , she desied the devils drenches . this also they imputed to her imagination , and bad her be quiet , because they in the same chamber with her did not see or hear any thing , and they thought it had been her conceit onely . the maid the next night expecting the same conflict she had the night before , brought up with her a knife , and laid it at her beds head : about the same time of the night as before , julian and the black man came again upon the maids bed and tempted her to drink that which they brought , but she refused , crying in the audience of the rest of the family , that she defied the devils drenches , and took the knife and stabbed julian , and , as she said , she wounded her in the leg and was importunate with the witness to ride to julian cox's house presently to see if it were not so . the witness went and took the knife with him . julian cox would not let him in , but they forced the door open and found a fresh wound in julian's leg , as the maid had said , which did suit with the knife , and julian had been just dressing it when the witness came . there was blood also found upon the maids bed . the next morning the maid continued her out-cries that julian cox appeared to her in the house wall , and offered her great pins which she was forced to swallow . and all the day the maid was observed to conveigh her hand to the house wall , and from the wall to her mouth , and she seemed by the motion of her mouth as if she did eat something . but none saw any thing but the maid , and therefore thought still it might be her phansy , and did not much mind it . but towards night this maid began to be very ill and complained , that the pins that julian forced her to eat out of the wall , did torment her in all parts of her body that she could not endure it , and made lamentable out-cries for pain . whereupon several persons being present the maid was undressed , and in several parts of the maids body several great swellings appeared , and out of the head of the swellings several great pins points appeared . which the witnesses took out , and upon the trial there were about thirty great pins produced in court ( which i my self handled ) all which were sworn by several witnesses that they were taken out of the maids body in manner as is aforesaid . judge archer who tryed the prisoner , told the jury that he had heard that a witch could not repeat that petition in the lords prayer , viz. [ and lead us not into temptation ] and having this occasion he would try the experiment , and told the jury that whether she could or could not , they were not in the least measure to guide their verdict according to it , because it was not legal evidence , but that they must be guided in their verdict by the former evidences given in upon oath onely . the prisoner was called for up to the next bar to the court , and demanded if she could say the lords prayer ? she said she could , and went over the prayer readily till she came to that petition . then she said [ and lead us into temptation ] or [ and lead us not into no temptation ] but could not say [ and lead us not into temptation ] though she was directed to say it after one that repeated it to her distinctly . but she could not repeat it otherwise than is expressed already , though tried to do it near half a score times in open court. after all which the jury found her guilty , and judgment having been given within three or four days , she was executed without any confession of the fact. advertisement . this is a copy of the narrative sent by mr. pool , octob. . . to mr. archer of emanuel colledge , nephew to the judge upon the desire of dr. bright . but i remember here at cambridge , i heard the main passages of this narrative when they first were spread abroad after the assizes , and particularly by g. rust after bishop of dromore in ireland . nor do i doubt but it is a true account of what was attested before judge archer at the assizes . for it is a thing to me altogether incredible , that he that was an officer or servant of the judge and present in the court at the examination and trial , and there took notes , should write a narrative , when there were so many ear-witnesses besides himself of the same things , that would be obnoxious to the disproof of those who were present as well as himself . it may not be amiss here to transcribe what dr. m. did write to mr. g. touching this story in a letter dated dec. . . this narrative , says he , hath the most authentick confirmation that human affairs are capable of , sense and the sacredness of an oath . but yet i confess i have heard that judge archer has been taxed by some of overmuch credulity , for sentencing julian cox to death upon those evidences . but to deal freely i suspect by such as out of their ignorance misinterpreted several passages in the evidence , or were of such a dull stupid sadducean temper , that they believe there are no spirits nor witches . and truly i must confess that the huntsman , though he deposed upon oath , that when he came in to take up the hare at the bush , it proved to be julian cox with her face towards the ground , &c. his expressing of himself touching her globes and the doggs smelling , &c. looks something humoursomly and ludicrousty on it . but i must further add , that i think it was onely that his fancie was tickled with the featness of the phaenomenon , not that he would be so wicked as to tell a lye upon oath and that for nothing . sic vita hominum est , says tully , ut ad maleficium nemo conetur sine spe atque emolumento accedere . but that those half-witted people thought he swore false , i suppose was because they imagined that what he told implied that julian cox was turned into an hare . which she was not , nor did his report imply any such real metamorphosis of her body , but that these ludicrous daemons exhibited to the sight of this huntsman and his doggs the shape of an hare , one of them turning himself into such a form , and others hurrying on the body of julian near the same place , and at the same swiftness , but interposing betwixt that hare-like spectre and her body , modifying the air so that the scene there , to the beholders sight , was as if nothing but air were there , and a shew of earth perpetually suited to that where the hare passed . as i have heard of some painters that have drawn the sky in an huge large landskip , so lively that the birds have flown against it , thinking it free air , and so have fallen down . and if painters ' and juglers by the tricks of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the sight , it is no wonder that these airy invisible spirits as far surpass them in all such praestigious doings as the air surpasses the earth for subtilty . and the like praestigiae may be in the toad . it might be a real toad ( though actuated and guided by a daemon ) which was cut in pieces , and that also which was whipt about , and at last snatcht out of sight ( as if it had vanished ) by these aerial hocus-pocus ' s. and if some juglers have tricks to take hot coals into their mouth without hurt , certainly it is no strange thing that some small attempt did not suffice to burn that toad . that such a toad , sent by a witch and crawling up the body of the man of the house as he sate by the fire's side , was over-mastered by him and his wife together , and burnt in the fire ; i have heard sometime ago credibly reported by one of the isle of ely. of these daemoniack vermin , i have heard other stories also , as of a rat that followed a man some score of miles trudging through thick and thin along with him . so little difficulty is there in that of the toad . and that of julian cox ' s being seen to fly in at her own chamber window , there is no difficulty in it , if it be understood of her familiar , the black man , that had transformed himself into her shape . for this is no such unusual thing for witches to appear either in their astral spirits or by their familiars , as if it were their very bodily persons . but when she appeared to the maid together with the black man and offered her to drink , it is likely it was her astral spirit , and julians being wounded in her body by the wound on her astral spirit is just such another case , as that of jane brooks , which you your self note in your book of witchcraft . the most incredible thing is her eating of pins , she knowing them to be such . but they that are bewitched are not themselves , and being possessed are actuated in the parts of their body , and their mind driven by that ugly inmate in them , to what he will ; which is notorious in the story of mrs. frogmorton 's children . and for the pins thus swallowed , their comeing out into the exterior parts of her body , examples of this sort are infinite ; and far more strange than these are recorded by baptista van helmont , de injectis . these are the most incredible passages in this narrative , and yet you see how credible they are , if rightly understood . but those that believe no spirits will believe nothing never so credible of this kind , and others that have some natural aversion from these things will presently interpret them in the vulgar sense , and then sweetly snear at their own ignorance . but i must confess if this be a true relation of what passed in the court , i do not question but the things that were sworn did so appear to them that swore them . or else there is nothing to be credited in human affairs . but concerning the truth of the relation , besides what i hinted in my last to you , you would do well to write to some or other in taunton , &c. thus far dr. m. and if any one be so curious as to desire an account of mr. g. his further inquiry into this business , i can tell him that he wrote to mr. hunt who then busy in some court , yet made shift to read the narrative and wrote two or three lines to him back to this effect . that one principal evidence was omitted in the narrative , but that is nothing against the truth of the rest . but he adds also , that some things were false . which would stumble one and make him think that the credit of this narrative is quite blasted thereby . but this riddle is easily unriddled by him that considers , that mr. hunt may respect those things that are said to be confest by her in her examination before a justice of peace . for he also having some time examined her , and she making no such confession to him ( as mr. g. himself says in a letter to dr. m. that he perused that examination in mr. hunts book , and there was not any thing considerable therein ) might speak this in reference to the examination which he had taken , she then not confessing so freely as to some other justice , whose examination therefore was made use of in the court. but this cannot concern at all the rest of the narrative , which was given upon oath in the court in the hearing of all . this i thought fit not to omit as being desirous to deal with all faithfulness in concealing nothing , and not to impose upon the reader , but that he may make his judgment upon the whole matter . as for the witches being hurried along with that hare-like spectre , her being out of breath ( as the huntsman testified ) makes it most probable ; or at least that she was hurried from some other place on the earth , or in the air ( to meet there at length with the hare-like spectre ) but this invisibly by that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or prestigiatory art or faculty of these ludicrous daemons , whereby they can so modifie the air immediately next to the party they would conceal , that it looks there like the free skie , or what landskip they please ; as when they shew in a shew-stone or glass , the very room in which the party is , the daemon by the power of his imagination , so modifying at least his own vehicle . which power some of those of the atheistick brotherhood cannot wish any face deny , supposing there are daemons , they giving a greater power to the imagination of a man , as if it were able to transform the air into real birds or mice , or such like creatures livingly such for the present . but any thing must be believed , rather than the existence of witches and daemons . it will not be amiss here to take notice what an eminent example this julian cox is of moses his megnonenah or mecassephah taken in the same sense , that is , of such a witch as is thought by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or prestigiatory power ( though it is the devil that does these feats , not she ) to transform her self into strange shapes , and use other like deceptions of the sight . as also it is a notable instance of the astral spirits of witches , how strongly , though at a distance of place , they are tyed together in a fatal sympathy with their bodies , the body of julian being wounded by a stab at her astral spirit , as it fared also in jane brooks , and an old woman in cambridge-shire , whose astral spirit coming into a mans house , ( as he was sitting alone at the fire ) in the shape of an huge cat , and setting her self before the fire , not sar from him , he stole a stroke at the back of it with a fire-fork , and seemed to break the back of it , but it scambled from him , and vanisht be kn●…w not how . but such an old woman , a reputed witch , was found dead in her bed that very night , with her back broken , as i have heard some years ago credibly reported . that also is a marvellous magical sympathy in this story of julian cox , that the burning of the ears of the beast bewitched by her , should put her into such rage and torment . like the heating of the tile red hot in the story of florence newton , and pouring some of the bewitched maids water upon it . which puts me in mind of a very remarkable story of this kind , told me by mr. brearly , once fellow of christs colledge in cambridge , who boarded in an house in suffolk , where his landlady had been ill handled by witchcraft . for an old man that travelled up and down the country , and had some acquaintance at that house , calling in and asking the man of the house how he did and his wife ; he told him that himself was well , but his wife had been a long time in a languishing condition , and that she was haunted with a thing in the shape of a bird , that would flurr near to her face , and that she could not enjoy her natural rest well . the old man bid him and his wife be of good courage . it was but a dead spright , he said , and he would put him in a course to rid his wife of this languishment and trouble . he therefore advised him to take a bottle , and put his wives urine into it , together with pins and needles and nails , and cork them up , and set the bottle to the fire , but be sure the cork be fast in it , that it fly not out . the man followed the prescription , and set the bootle to the fire well corkt , which when it had felt a while the heat of the fire began to move and joggle a little , but he for sureness took the fireshovel , and held it hard upon the cork . and as he thought he felt something one while on this side , another while on that , shove the fireshovel off , which he still quickly put on again , but at last at one shoving the cork bounced out , and the urine , pins , nails and needles all flew up , and gave a report like a pistol , and his wife continued in the same trouble and languishment still . not long after , the old man came to the house again , and inquired of the man of the house how his wife did . who answered as ill as ever , if not worse . he askt him if he had followed his direction . yes , says he , and told him the event as is abovesaid . ha , quoth he , it seems it was too nimble for you . but now i will put you in a way , that will make the business sure . take your wive's urine as before , and cork it in a bottle with nails , pins and needles , and bury it in the earth ; and that will do the feat . the man did accordingly . and his wife began to mend sensibly , and in a competent time was finely well recovered . but there came a woman from a town some miles off to their house , with a lamentable out-cry , that they had killed her husband . they askt her what she meant and thought her distracted , telling her they knew neither her nor her husband . yes , saith she , you have killed my husband , he told me so on his death-bed . but at last they understood by her , that her husband was a wizzard , and had bewitched this mans wife , and that this counter-practice prescribed by the old man , which saved the mans wife from languishment , was the death of that wizzard that had bewitcht her . this story did mr. brearly hear from the man and womans own mouth who were concerned , and at whose house he for a time boarded , nor is there any doubt of the truth thereof . but it will be more easie for any rational man to believe stories of this kind , than to find out a satisfactory account of the operation and effect , or to assure the lawfulness of such counter-practice against witchcraft , unless they can be resolved into the sympathy and synenergy of the spiritus mundanus , ( which plotinus calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the grand magician ) such as the operation of the weapon-salve , and other magnetick cures are resolved into . and forasmuch as the power of a truly divine magick , such as prophets and holy law-givers are endued with , is too great and august to be sound in ordinary good men , that are to bring in no new law or religion into the world , the benignity of providence is to be acknowledged in that the villanies of witchcraft lye obnoxious to such a natural or ratified way of discoveries and counter-practices as these . but how this obnoxiousness of witches is complicated with their familiars sucking their bodies , is a point too nice and prolix to enter upon here . but it is most safe not to tamper at all with these things , and most happy to have no occasion for it . lastly , as for julian cox her not being able to say one of the petitions in the lords prayer , the case is like that of florence newton the irish witch , but unlike in this , that it was not the same petition florence newton stuck at . and i remember when i had the curiosity with a friend of mine , of examining certain witches at castle-hill in cambridge , the most notorious of them , who also was hanged for a witch , offered to say the creed and lords prayer , as an argument she was no witch , and so far as i remember , she said the lords prayer right , but was out at the creed ; nor do i think this any certain sign of their guilt or innocenty , and therefore judge archer did well to lay no stress on it . but these things are of less moment , and therefore i pass to the next relation , which looks not so much like witchcraft , as the apparition of the ghost of one deceased . relat. ix . which is a relation of thomas goddard of marlbrough , in the county of wilts , weaver , made the . nov. . vvho saith , that on monday the ninth of this instant , as he was going to ogborn at a style on the highway near mr. goddards ground , about nine in the morning , he met the apparition of his father in law , one edward avon of this town glover , who dyed in may last , having on , to his appearance , the same clothes , hat , stockings and shoes he did usually wear when he was living , standing by , and leaning over that style . which when he came near , the apparition spake to him with an audible voice these words , are you afraid ? to which he answered , i am , thinking on one who is dead and buried , whom you are like . to which the apparition replyed with the like voice , i am he that you were thinking on , i am edward avon your father in law , come near to me , i will do you no harm . to which goddard answered , i trust in him who hath bought my soul with his precious blood , you shall do me no harm . then the apparition said , how stand cases at home ? goddard askt what cases ? then it askt him how do william and mary , meaning as he conceived , his son william avon a shoemaker here , and mary his daughter the said goddards wife . then , it said , what! taylor is dead , meaning , as he thought , one taylor of london , who married his daughter sarah , which taylor dyed about michaelmas last . then the apparition held out its hand , and in it , as goddard conceived , twenty or thirty shillings in silver , and then spake with a loud voice : take this money and send it to sarah , for i shut up my bowels of compassion toward her in the time of my life , and now here is somewhat for her . and then said , mary ( meaning his the said goddards wife as he conceived ) is troubled for me . but tell her , god hath shewed mercy to me contrary to my deserts . but the said goddard answered , in the name of jesus christ , i refuse all such money . then the apparition said , i perceive you are afraid . i will meet you some other time . and immediately it went up the lane to his appearance . so he went over the same style , but saw it no more that day . he saith , the next night about seven of the clock , it came and opened his shop window , and stood in the like clothes , looked him in the face , but said nothing to him . and the next night after , as goddard went forth into his backside with a candle light in his hand , it appeared to him again in the same shape , but he being in fear ran into his house , and saw it no more then . but he saith , that on thursday the twelfth instant , as he came from chilton , riding down the hill between the mannor-house and axford-farm-field , he saw somewhat like a hare crossed his way , at which his horse frighted threw him in the dirt , and as soon as he could recover on his feet , the same apparition there met him again in the same habit , and there standing about eight foot directly before him in the way , spake again to him with a loud voice , source ( a word he commonly used when living ) you have stayed long , and then said to him , thomas , bid william avon take the sword that he had of me , which is now in his house , and carry it to the wood as we go to alton , to the upper end of the wood by the ways side . for with that sword i did wrong above thirty years ago , and he never prospered since he had that sword. and bid william avon give his sister sarah twenty shillings of the money which he had of me . and do you talk with edward lawrence , for i borrowed twenty shillings of him several years ago , and did say i had paid him , but i did not pay it him , and i would desire you to pay him twenty shillings out of the money which you had from james elliot at two payments . which money the said goddard now saith was five pounds , which james elliot a baker here owed the said avon on bond , and which he the said goddard had received from the said elliot since michaelmas at two payments , viz. s. at one , and l. s. at another payment . and it further said to him , tell margaret ( meaning his own wise as he conceived ) that i would desire her to deliver up the little which i gave to little sarah taylor to the child , or to any one she will trust for it . but if she will not , speak to edward lawrence to perswade her . but if she will not then , tell her that i will see her very suddenly . and see that this be done within a twelve-moneth and a day after my decease , and peace be with you . and so it went away over the rails into the wood there in the like manner as any man would go over a style to his apprehension , and so he saw it no more at that time . and he saith , that he paid the twenty shillings to edward lawrence of this town , who being present now doth remember he lent the said avon twenty shillings about twenty years ago , which none knew but himself and wife , and avon and his wife , and was never paid it again before now by this goddard . and this said goddard further saith , that this very day by mr. majors order , he with his brother in law william avon went with the sword , and about nine a clock this morning , they laid down the sword in the copse near the place the a●…parition had appointed goddard to carry it , and then coming away thence , goddard looking back , saw the same apparition again in the like habit as before . whereupon he called to his brother in law , and said , here is the apparition of our father , who said i see nothing . then goddard fell on his knees and said , lord open his eyes that he may see it . but he replyed , lord grant i may not see it , if it be thy blessed will. and then the apparition to goddards appearance , beckned with his hand to him to come to it . and then goddard said , in the name of the father , son and holy ghost , what would you have me to do ? then the apparition said to him , thomas , take up the sword and follow me . to which he said , should both of us come , or but one of us ? to which it answered , thomas , do you take up the sword. and so he took up the sword and followed the apparition about ten lugs ( that is poles ) further into the copse , and then turning back , he stood still about a lug and a half from it , his brother in law staying behind at the place where they first laid down the sword. then goddard laying down the sword upon the ground , saw something stand by the apparition like a mastiff dog of a brown colour . then the apparition coming towards goddard , he stept back about two steps , and the apparition said to him , i have a permission to you , and commission not to touch you , and then it took up the sword , and went back to the place at which before it stood , with a mastiff dog by it as before , and pointed the top of the sword into the ground and said . in this place lyes buried the body of him which i murdered in the year . which is now rotten and turned to dust . whereupon goddard said , i do adjure you in the name of the father , son and holy ghost , wherefore did you do this murder ? and it said , i took money from the man , and he contended with me , and so i murdered him . then goddard askt him , who was consederate with him in the said murder ? and it said , none but my self . then goddard said , what would you have me to do in this thing ? and the apparition said , this is that the world may know that i murdered a man , and buried him in this place in the year . then the apparition laid down the sword on the bare ground there , whereon grew nothing , but seemed to goddard to be as a grave sunk in . and then the apparition rushing further into the copse vanished , and he saw it no more . whereupon goddard and his brother in law avon , leaving the sword there and coming away together , avon told goddard he heard his voice , and understood what he said , and heard other words distinct from his , but could not understand a word of it , nor saw any apparition at all . which he now also present affirmeth , and all which the said goddard then attested under his hand , and affirmed he will depose the same when he shall be thereto required . in the presence of christ. lypyatt major , rolf bayly town-clerk , joshuah sacheverell rector of st. peters in malebrough , examined by me will. bayly . advertisement . that tho. goddard saw this apparition , sesms to be a thing indubitable ; but whether it was his father in law 's ghost , that is more questionable . the former is confirmed from an hand at least impartial , if not disfavourable to the story . the party in his letter to mr. g — writes briefly to this effect . . that he does verily think that this tho. goddard does believe the story most strongly himself . . that he cannot imagine what interest he should have in raising such a story , he bringing infamy on his wives father , and obliging himself to pay twenty shillings debt , which his poverty could very ill spare . . that his father in law edward avon , was a resolute sturdy fellow in his young years , and many years a bailiff to arrest people . . that tho. goddard had the repute of an honest man , knew as much in religion as most of his rank and breeding , and was a constant frequenter of the church , till about a year before this happened to him , he fell off wholly to the non-conformists . all this hitherto , save this laft of all , tends to the confirmation of the story . therefore this last shall be the first allegation against the credibility thereof . . it is further alledged , that possibly the design of the story may be to make him to be accounted an extraordinary some-body amongst the dissenting party . . that he is sometimes troubled with epileptical fits . . that the major sent the next morning to digg the place where the spectre said the murdered man was buried , and there was neither bones found nor any difference of the earth in that place from the rest . but we answer briefly to the first , that his falling off to the non-conformists though it may argue a vacillancy of his judgment , yet it does not any defect of his external senses , as if he were less able to discern when he saw or heard any thing than before : to the second , that it is a perfect contradiction to his strong belief of the truth of his own story , which plainly implies that he did not feign it to make himself an extraordinary some-body : to the third , that an epileptical person when he is out of his fits , hath his external senses as true and entire , as a drunken man has when his drunken fit is over , or a man awake after a night of sleep and dreams . so that this argument has not the least shew of force with it , unless you will take away the authority of all mens senses , because at sometimes they have not a competent use of them , namely in sleep , drunkenness or the like . but now lastly for the fourth which is most considerable , it is yet of no greater force than to make it questionable whether this spectre was the ghost of his father , or some ludicrous goblin that would put a trick upon thomas goddard , by personating his father-in-law , and by a false pointing at the pretended grave of the murdered make him ridiculous . for what porphyrius has noted , . doubt not but is true , that daemons sometimes personate the souls of the deceased . but if an uncossined body being laid in a ground exposed to wet and dry , the earth may in years space consume the very bones and assimilate all to to the rest of the mold , when some earths will do it in less than the fifteenth part of that space : or if the ghost of edward avon might have forgot the certain place ( it being no grateful object of his memory ) where he buried the murdered man , and only guessed that to be it because it was something sunk , as if the earth yielded upon the wasting of the buried body , the rest of the story will still naturally import that it was the very ghost of edward avon . besides , himself expresly declares , as that the body was buried there , so that by this time it was all turn'd into dust . but whether it was a ludicrous daemon or edward avons ghost , concerns not our scope . it is sufficient that it is a certain instance of a real apparition , and i thought sit as in the former story , so here to be so faithful as to conceal nothing that any might pretend to lessen the credibility thereof . stories of the appearing of souls departed are not for the tooth of the non-conformists , who , as it is said , if they generally believe this , it must be from the undeniable evidence thereof nor could thomas goddard gratifie them by inventing of it . and that it was not a phansy the knowledge of the shillings debt imparted to thomas goddard ignorant thereof before , and his brother avon ' s hearing a voice distinct from his in his discourse with the apparition , does plainly enough imply . nor was it goddard ' s own phansy , but that real spectre that opened his shop-window . nor his imagination , but something in the shape of an hare that made his horse start and cast him into the dirt ; the apparition of avon being then accompanied with that hare , as after with the mastiff-dog . and lastly the whole frame of the story , provided the relator does verily think it true himself ( as mr. s. testifies for him in his letter to mr. glanvil , and himself profest he was ready at any time to swear to it ) is such , that it being not a voluntary invention , cannot be an imposing phansy . relat. x. the apparition of the ghost of major george sydenham , to captain william dyke , taken out of a letter of mr. james douch of mongton , to mr. jos. glanvil . concerning the apparition of the ghost of major george sydenham ( late of dulverton in the county of somerset , ) to captain william dyke ( late of skilgate in this county also , and now likewise deceased ) be pleased to take the relation of it as i have it from the worthy and learned dr. tho. dyke , a near kinsman of the captains , thus : shortly after the major's death , the doctor was desired to come to the house to take care of a child that was there sick , and in his way thither he called on the captain , who was very willing to wait on him to the place , because he must , as he said , have gone thither that night , though he had not met with so encouraging an opportunity . after their arrival there at the house and the civility of the people shewn them in their entertainment , they were seasonably conducted to their lodging , which they desired might be together in the same bed , where , after they had lain a while , the captain knockt and bids the servant bring him two of the largest and biggest candles lighted that he could get . whereupon the doctor enquires what he meant by this ? the captain answers , you know cousin what disputes my major and i have had touching the being of a god , and the immortality of the soul. in which points we could never yet be resolved , though we so much sought for and desired it . and therefore it was at length fully agreed between us , that he of us that dyed first should the third night after his funeral , between the hours of twelve and one come to the little house that is here in the garden and there give a full account to the surviver touching these matters , who should be sure to be present there at the set time and so receive a full satisfaction . and this , says the captain , is the very night , and i am come on purpose to fulfill my promise . the doctor disswaded him , minding him of the danger of following those strange counsels , for which we could have no warrant , and that the devil might by some cunning device make such an advantage of this rash attempt , as might work his utter ruine . the captain replies , that he had solemnly engaged , and that nothing should discourage him : and adds , that if the doctor would wake a while with him , he would thank him , if not , he might compose himself to his rest ; but for his own part he was resolved to watch , that he might be sure to be present at the hour appointed . to that purpose he sets his watch by him , and as soon as he perceived by it that it was half an hour past eleven , he rises , and taking a candle in each hand , goes out by a back door of which he had before gotten the key , and walks to the garden-house , where he continued two hours and an half , and at his return declared that he neither saw nor heard any thing more than was usual . but i know , said he , that my major would surely have come , had he been able . about six weeks after the captain rides to eaton to place his son a scholar there , when the doctor went thither with him . they lodged there at an inn , the sign was the christopher , and tarried two or three nights , not lying together now as before at dulverton , but in two several chambers . the morning before they went thence the captain stayed in his chamber longer than he was wont to do before he called upon the doctor . at length he comes into the doctors chamber , but in a visage and form much differing from himself●… , with his hair and eyes staring , and his whole body shaking and trembling . whereat the doctor wondering , presently demanded , what is the matter , cousin captain ? the captain replies , i have seen my major . at which the doctor seeming to smile , the captain immediately confirms it , saying ; if ever i saw him in my life i saw him but now . and then he related to the doctor what had passed , thus : this morning after it was light , some one comes to my beds side and suddainly drawing back the curtains calls cap. cap. ( which was the term of familiarity that the major used to call the captain by ) to whom i replied , what my major ? to which he returns , i could not come at the time appinted , but i am now come to tell you , that there is a god and a very just and terrible one , and if you do not turn over a new leaf ( the very expression as is by the doctor punctually remembred ) you will find it so . ( the captain proceeded ) on the table by , there lay a sword which the major had formerly given me . now after the apparition had walked a turn or two about the chamber he took up the sword , drew it out , and finding it not so clean and bright as it ought , cap. cap. says he , this sword did not use to be kept after this manner when it was mine . after which words he suddainly disappeared . the captain was not only throughly perswaded of what he had thus seen and heard , but was from that time observed to be very much affected with it . and the humour that before in him was brisk and jovial , was then strangely altered . insomuch as very little meat would pass down with him at dinner , though at the taking leave of their friends there was a very handsome treat provided . yea it was observed that what the captain had thus seen and heard had a more lasting influence upon him , and it is judged by those who were well acquainted with his conversation , that the remembrance of this passage stuck close to him , and that those words of his dead friend were frequently sounding fresh in his ears , during the remainder of his life , which was about two years . advertisement . for a further assurance of the truth of the story , it will not be amiss to take notice what mr. douch writes in his second letter to mr. glanvil , touching the character of the major and the captain . they were both , saith he , of my good acquaintance , men well bred , and of a brisk humour and jolly conversation , of very quick and keen parts , having also been both of them university and inns of court gentlemen . the major i conceive was about forty five years old when he dyed , and i believe the captain might then be fifty or somewhat more . i cannot understand that the doctor and the captain had any discourse concerning the former engagement to meet , after the disappointment at that time and place , or whether the captain had after that any expectation of the performance of the promise which the major had made him . thus far mr. douch . and truly one would naturally think , that he failing the solemn appointed time , the captain would consequently let go all hopes and expectation of his appearing afterward . or if he did , that it would be at such-time of the night as was first determined of , and not at the morning light . which season yet is less obnoxious to the impostures of fancy and melancholy , and therefore adds some weight to the assurance of the truth of the apparition . i will only add one clause more out of that second letter that makes to the point . this story , saith he , has and doth still obtain credit from all that knew the captain , who it seems was not at all shie or scrupulous to relate it to any one that askt him concerning it , though it was observed he never mentioned it , but with great terrour and trepidation . relat. xi . being a postscript of the first letter of mr. douch , concerning the appearing of the ghost of sir george villiers , father to the first duke of buckingham . sir , since the writing of the premisses , a passage concerning an apparition of sir george villiers , giving warning of his son's ( the duke of buckingham's ) murther is come into my mind , which hath been assured by a servant of the dukes to be a great truth . thus : some few days before the dukes going to portsmouth ( where he was stabbed by felton ) the ghost of his father sir george villiers appeared to one parker ( formerly his own servant , but then servant to the duke ) in his morning chamber gown ; charged parker to tell his son that he should decline that employment and design he was going upon , or else he would certainly be murthered . parker promised the apparition to do it , but neglected it . the duke making preparations for his expedition , the apparition came again to parker , taxing him very severely for his breach of promise , and required him not to delay the acquainting his son of the danger he was in . then parker the next day tells the duke , that his fathers ghost had twice appeared to him , and had commanded him to give him that warning . the duke slighted it , and told him he was an old doting fool. that night the apparition came to parker a third time , saying , parker thou hast done well in warning my son of his danger , but though he will not yet believe thee , go to him once more however , and tell him from me by such a token ( naming a private token ) which no body knows , but only he and i , that if he will not decline this voyage , such a knife as this is ( pulling a long knife out from under his gown ) will be his death . this message parker also delivered the next day to the duke , who when he heard the private token believed that he had it from his fathers ghost , yet said that his honour was now at stake , and he could not go back from what he had undertaken , come life come death . this passage parker after the duke's murther communicated to his fellow servant one henry ceeley , who told it to a reverend divine a neighbour of mine , from whose mouth i have it . this henry ceeley has not been dead above twenty years , and his habitation for several years before his death was at north-currey but three miles from this place . my friend the divine aforesaid was an intimate acquaintance of this henry ceeley's , and assures me he was a person of known truth and integrity . advertisement . this story i heard ( but another name put for parker ) with great assurance and with larger circumstances from a person of honour , but i shall content my self to note onely what i find in a letter of mr. timothy locket of mongton , to mr. glanvil , that this apparition to mr. parker was all three times towards midnight when he was reading in some book , and he mentions that the dukes expedition was for the relief of rochel . the rest is muchwhat as mr. douch has declared . but i will not omit the close of mr. lockets letter . i was confirmed in the truth of the premisses , saith he , by mr. henry ceeley , who was then a servant with this mr. parker , to the duke , and who told me that he knew mr. parker to be a religious and sober person , and that every particular related was to his knowledge true . relat. xii . of the appearing of mr. watkinson's ghost to his daughter toppam , contained in a letter of mrs. taylor of the ford by st. neots , to dr. ezekias burton . sir ; my service to you and your lady . now according to your desire i shall write what my cousin told me : her name was mary watkinson , her father did live in smithfield , but she was married to one francis toppam , and she did live in york , with her husband being an ill one , who did steal her away against her parents consent , so that they could not abide him . but she came often to them , and when she was last with him upon their parting , she expressed that she feared she should never see him more . he answered her , if he should dye , if ever god did permit the dead to see the living , he would see her again . now after he had been buried about half a year , on a night , when she was in bed , but could not sleep , she heard musick , and the chamber grew lighter and lighter , and she being broad awake , saw her father stand at her bedside : who said , mal did not i tell thee that i would see thee once again ? she called him father , and talked of many things ; and he bad her be patient and dutiful to her mother . and when she told him that she had a child since he did dye , he said that would not trouble her long . he bad her speak what she would now to him , for he must go , and that he should never see her more till they met in the kingdom of heaven . so the chamber grew darker and darker , and he was gone with musick . and she said that she did never dream of him nor ever did see any apparition of him after . he was a very honest godly man as far as i can tell . advertisement . this story g. rust , who was after bishop of dromore , told me i remember with great assurance some twenty years ago , who was not at all credulous in these things . and it was so as mrs. taylor relates to dr. burton . the next relation shall be of a daughter appearing to her father . relat. xiii . the appearing of the ghost of the daughter of dr. farrar to him after her death , according to a brief narrative sent from mr. edward fowler to dr. h. more , anno . may . this week mr. pearson who is a worthy good minister of this city of london , told me , that his wife's grandfather a man of great piety and physician to this present king , his name farrar , nearly related ( i think brother ) to the famous mr. farrar of little giddon , i say this gentleman and his daughter ( mrs. pearsons mother a very pious soul ) made a compact at his intreaty that the first of them that dyed , if happy , should after death appear to the surviver , if it were possible ; the daughter with some difficulty consenting thereto . some time after , the daughter who lived at gillingham . lodge two miles from salisbury , fell in labour , and by a mistake being given a noxious potion instead of another prepared for her , suddainly dyed . her father lived in london , and that very night she dyed she opened his curtains and looked upon him . he had before heard nothing of her ilness , but upon this apparition confidently told his maid , that his daughter was dead , and two days after received the news . her grandmother told mrs. pearson this , as also an uncle of hers , and the abovesaid maid , and this mrs. pearson i know , and she is a very prudent and good woman . relat. xiv . the appearing of the ghost of one mr. bower of guilford , to an highway-man in prison , as it is set down in a letter of dr. ezekias burton , to dr. h. more . about ten years ago one mr. bower an antient man living at guilford in surrey , was upon the highway not far from that place found newly murdered very barbarously , having one great cut cross his throat , and another down his breast . two men were seized upon suspicion , and put into gaol at guilford to another , who had before been committed for robbing as i suppose . that night this third man was awakened about one of the clock and greatly terrified with an old man , who had a great gash cross his throat almost from ear to ear , and a wound down his breast . he also came in stooping and holding his hand on his back . thus he appeared but said nothing . the thief calls to his two new companions , they grumbled at him but made no answer . in the morning he retained so lively an impression of what he had seen , that he spoke to them to the same purpose again , and they told him it was nothing but his phantasy . but he was so fully perswaded of the r●…ality of this apparition , that he told others of it , and it came to the ears of my friend mr. reading justice of peace in surrey , and cousin to the gentleman that was murdered . he immediately sent for the prisoner and asked him in the first place whether he was born or had lived about guilford ? to which he answered , no. secondly , he enquired if he knew any of the inhabitants of that town or of the neighbourhood ? he replied that he was a stranger to all thereabout . then he enquired , if he had ever heard of one mr. bower ? he said no. after this he examined him for what cause those other two men were imprisoned ? to which he answered , he knew not , but supposed for some robbery . after these preliminary interrogatories he desired him to tell him what he had seen in the night ? which he immediately did , exactly according to the relation he had heard , and i gave before . and withal deseribed the old gentleman so by his picked beard , and that he was , as he called it , rough on his cheeks , and that the hairs of his face were black and white , that mr. reading saith he himself could not have given a more exact description of mr. bower , than this was . he told the highway-man that he must give him his oath ( though that would signifie little from such a rogue ) to which the man readily consented , and took oath before the justice of all this . mr. reading being a very discreet man concealed this story from the jury at the assizes , as knowing that this would be no evidence according to our law. however the friends of the murdered gentleman had been very inquisitive , and discovered several suspicious circumstances . one of which was , that those two men had washed their clothes , and that some stains of blood remained . another , that one of them had denied he ever heard that mr. bower was dead , when as he had in another place consest it two hours before . upon these and such like evidences those two were condemned and executed , but denied it to the last . but one of them said , the other could clear him if he would , which the by-standers understood not . after some time a tinker was hanged ( where , the gentleman has forgot ) who at his death said , that the murder of mr. bower of guilford was his greatest trouble . for he had a hand in it ; he confessed he struck him a blow on the back which fetcht him from his horse , and when he was down , those other men that were arraigned and executed for it cut his throat and rifled him . this is the first story which i had from mr. reading himself , who is a very honest prudent person and not credulous . i know you desire to have the names of all the persons referred to in this relation , and the exact time and place , but mr. reading cannot recollect them now , though he tells me he sent an exact and full narrative of all to one mr. onslow a justice of peace in that neighbourhood , with whom i have some acquaintance , and i will endeavour to retrieve it . advertisement . the names of all the persons and exact time and place of all the actions , i find not amongst mr. glanvil 's papers , but the story is so perfect as it is , and so credible , that i thought it worthy of a place amongst the rest . and this appearing of mr. bower is just such another thing as the appearing of anne walker . we proceed to the second story which mr. reading imparted to the doctor . relat. xv. another appearing of a ghost of a man of guilford , for the recovery of a field for his child unjustly detained by his brother , out of the abovesaid letter of dr. ezekias burton to dr. h. more . an inhabitant of the before-named town of guilford , who was possest of some copy-hold land , which was to descend to his children , or in default of such issue to his brother , dies having no child born . and his wife apprehending her self not to be with child ( which her husbands brother asked her immediately after his brothers death ) she told him she believed she was not , but afterward proved to be . which when she knew she went , by the instigation of neighbours , to her brother , and told him how it was with her . he rated her , called her whore , and told her that she had procured some body to get her with child , knowing that such a field must be inherited by the posterity of her husband , but her whoring should not fool him out of that estate . the poor woman went home troubled , that not only her child should lose the land , but which was worse , that she should be thought a whore. however she quieted her self , and resolved to sit down with the loss . when her time came she was delivered of a son , he grew up and one summers night as she was undressing him in her yard , her husband appeared , and bid her go to his brother and demand the field . which she did , but was treated very ill by him . he told her that neither she nor her devil ( for she had told him her husband appeared and bid her speak to him ) should make him forgoe his land . whereupon she went home again . but some time after as her brother was going out of this field homeward , the dead man appears to him at the stile , and bids him give up the land to the child , for it was his right . the brother being greatly frighted at this , runs away , and not long after comes to her and tells her , she had sent the devil to him , and bids her take the land , and so gave it up , and her son is now possest of it . his name is mat , he lived in the service of mr. readings brother for some years , but he has forgot his sir-name though he knows him very well . advertisement . though the sir-name of the party be wanting , yet he is determinated so by other circumstances , and the story so fresh , and told by so credible a person , that the narrative is sufficiently considerable as it is . but of recovery of land to the right owners , the story of mrs. brettons ghost appearing is an eximious example , which is as follows . relat. xvi . the appearing of the ghost of mrs. bretton , for the recovery of some lands into the hands of the poor , taken from them by some mistake in law or right , as it is in a narrative sent to dr. h. more from mr. edward fowler , prebendary of glocester . dr . bretton late rector of ludgate and dedford , lived formerly in herefordshire , and marryed the daughter of dr. s — this gentlewoman was a person of extraordinary piety , which she expressed as in her life , so at her death . she had a maid that she had a great kindness for , who was married to a near neighbour , whose name , as i remember , was alice . not long after her death , as alice was rocking her infant in the night , she was called from the cradle by a knocking at her door , which opening she was surprised at the sight of a gentlewoman not to be distinguisht from her late mistress , neither in person nor habit . she was in a morning-gown , the same in appearance with that she had often seen her mistress wear . at first sight she expressed very great amazement , and said , were not my mistress dead , i should not question but that you are she . she replied i am the same that was your mistress , and took her by the hand . which alice affirmed was as cold as a clod. she added , that she had business of great importance to imploy her in , and that she must immediately go a little way with her . alice trembled , and beseecht her to excuse her , and intreated her very importunately to go to her master , who must needs be more fit to be imployed . she answered , that he who was her husband was not at all concerned , but yet she had had a desire rather to make use of him , and in order thereunto had several times been in his chamber , but he was still asleep , nor had she power to do more than once uncover his feet towards the awakening of him . and the doctor said , that he had heard walking in his chamber in the night , which till now he could give no account of . alice next objected that her husband was gone a journey , and she had no one to look to her child , that it was very apt to cry vehemently , and she feared if it awaked before her return , it would cry it self to death , or do it self mischief . the spectre replied , the child shall sleep till you return . alice seeing there was no avoiding it , sorely against her will , followed her over a style into a large field , who then said to her , observe how much of this field i measure with my feet . and when she had taken a good large and leisurely compass , she said , all this belongs to the poor , it being gotten from them by wrongful means , and charged her to go and tell her brother , whose it was at that time , that he should give it up to the poor again forthwith as he loved her and his deceased mother . this brother was not the person who did this unjust act , but his father . she added , that she was the more concerned , because her name was made use of in some writing that related to this land. alice askt her how she should satisfy her brother that this was no cheat or delusion of her phansy . she replied , tell him this secret , which he knows that only himself and i are privy to , and he will believe you . alice having promised her to go on this errand , she proceded to give her good advice , and entertained her all the rest of the night with most heavenly and divine discourse . when the twilight appeared they heard the whistling of carters and the noise of horse-bells . whereupon the spectre said , alice i must be seen by none but your self , and so she disappeared . immediately alice makes all haste home ; being thoughtful for her child , but found it as the spectre had said , asleep as she left it . when she had dressed it , and committed it to the care of a neighbour , away she went to her master the doctor , who amazed at the account she gave him , sent her to his brother in law. he at first hearing alice's story and message , laughed at it heartily . but she had no sooner told him the secret , but he changed his countenance , told her he would give the poor their own , and accordingly he did it , and they now enjoy it . this with more circumstances hath several times been related by dr. bretton himself , who was well known to be a person of great goodness and sincerity . he gave a large narrative of this apparition of his wife to two of my friends . first , to one mrs. needham , and afterward a little before his death to dr. whichcot . some years after i received the foregoing narrative ( viz. near four years since ) i light into the company of three sober persons of good rank , who all lived in the city of hereford , and i travelled in a stage-coach three days with them . to them i happened to tell this story , but told it was done at deptford , for so i presumed it was , because i knew that there dr. bretton lived . they told me as soon as i had concluded it , that the story was very true in the main , only i was out as to the place . for 't was not deptford , but as i remember they told me pembridge near hereford , where the doctor was minister before the return of the king. and they assured me upon their own knowledge , that to that day the poor enjoyed the piece of ground . they added , that mrs. bretton's father could never endure to hear any thing mentioned of his daughters appearing after her death , but would still reply in great anger , that it was not his daughter , but it was the devil . so that he acknowledged that something appeared in the likeness of his daughter . this is attested by me this th . of feb. / . edward fowler . relat. xvii . of a dutch man that could see ghosts , and of the ghost he saw in the town of woodbridge in suffolk . mr. broom the minister of woodbridge in suffolk , meeting one day , in a barbers shop in that town , a dutch lieutenant ( who was blown up with obdam , and taken alive out of the water , and carried to that town where he was a prisoner at large ) upon the occasion of some discourse was told by him , that he could see ghosts , and that he had seen divers . mr. broom rebuking him for talking so idly , he persisted in it very stiffly . some days after lighting upon him again , he askt him whether he had seen any ghost since his coming to that town . to which he replyed , no. but not long after this , as they were walking together up the town , he said to mr. broom , yonder comes a ghost . he seeing nothing , askt him whereabout it was ? the other said , it is over against such a house , and it walks looking upwards towards such a side , flinging one arm with a glove in its hand . he said moreover , that when it came near them , they must give way to it . that he ever did so , and some that have not done so , have suffered for it . anon he said , 't is just upon us , let 's out of the way . mr. broom believing all to be a fiction , as soon as he said those words , took hold of his arm , and kept him by force in the way . but as he held him , there came such a force against them , that he was flung into the middle of the street , and one of the palms of his hands , and one knee bruised and broken by the fall , which put him for a while to excessive pain . but spying the lieutenant lye like a dead man , he got up as soon as he could , and applied himself to his relief . with the help of others he got him into the next shop , where they poured strong-water down his throat , but for some time could discern no life in him . at length , what with the strong-water , and what with well chafing him he began to stirr , and when he was come to himself , his first words were , i will shew you no more ghosts . then he desired a pipe of tobacco , but mr. broom told him , he should take it at his house ; for he feared , should he take it so soon there , it would make him sick . thereupon they went together to mr. broom's house , where they were no sooner entring in , but the bell rang out . mr. broom presently sent his maid to learn who was dead . she brought word that it was such an one , a taylor , who dyed suddenly , though he had been in a consumption a long time . and inquiring after the time of his death , they found it was as punctually as it could be guessed at the very time when the ghost appeared . the ghost had exactly this taylors known gate , who ordinarily went also with one arm swinging , and a glove in that hand , and looking on one side upwards . advertisement . this relation was sent to dr. h. more from mr. edw. fowler ; at the end whereof he writes , that dr. burton as well as himself , heard it from mr. broom ' s own mouth . and i can add , that i also afterwards heard it from his own mouth at london . relat. xviii . an irish story of one that had like to have been carried away by spirits , and of the ghost of a man who had been seven years dead , that brought a medicine to the abovesaid parties bed-side . a gentleman in ireland near to the earl of ororie's , sending his butler one afternoon to buy cards ; as he passed a field , he , to his wonder , espyed a company of people sitting round a table , with a deal of good cheer before them in the midst of the field . and he going up towards them , they all arose and saluted him , and desired him to sit down with them . but one of them whispered these words in his ear ; do nothing this company invites you to . he thereupon refused to sit down at the table , and immediately table and all that belonged to it were gone . and the company are now dancing and playing upon musical instruments . and the butler being desired to joyn himself to them , but he refusing this also , they fall all to work , and he not being to be prevailed with to accompany them in working any more than in feasting or dancing , they all disappeared , and the butler is now alone . but instead of going forwards , home he returns as fast as he could drive , in a great consternation of mind . and was no sooner entred his masters door , but down he falls , and lay some time sensless , but coming to himself again , he related to his master what had happened to him . the night following , there comes one of this company to his bed-side , and tells him , that if he offered to stir out of doors the next day , he would be carryed away . hereupon he kept within , but towards the evening , having need to make water , he adventured to put one foot over the threshold , several standing by . which he had no sooner done , but they espied a rope cast about his middle , and the poor man was hurried away with great swiftness , they following after him as fast as they could , but could not overtake him . at length they espyed a horseman coming towards them , and made signs to him to stop the man , whom he saw coming near him , and both the ends of the rope but no body drawing . when they met , he laid hold on one end of the rope , and immediately had a smart blow given him over his arm with the other end . but by this means the man was stopt , and the horseman brought him back with him . the earl of orory hearing of these strange passages , sent to the master to desire him to send this man to his house , which he accordingly did . and the morning following , or quickly after , he told the earl that his spectre had been with him again , and assured him that that day he should most certainly be carried away , and that no endeavours should avail to the saving of him . upon this he was kept in a large room , with a considerable number of persons to guard him , among whom was the famous stroker mr. greatrix , who was a neighbor . there were besides other persons of quality , two bishops in the house at the same time , who were consulted touching the making use of a medicine the spectre or ghost prescribed , of which , mention will be made anon , but they determined on the negative . but this by the by. till part of the afternoon was spent all was quiet , but at length he was perceived to rise from the ground , whereupon mr. greatrix and another lusty man clapt their arms over his shoulders , one of them before him , and the other behind , and weighed him down with all their strength . but he was forcibly taken up from them , and they were too weak to keep their hold , and for a considerable time he was carried in the air to and fro over their heads , several of the company still running under him to prevent his receiving hurt if he should fall . at length he fell and was caught before he came to ground , and had by that means no hurt . all being quiet till bed-time , my lord ordered two of his servants to lye with him , and the next morning he told his lordship , that his spectre was again with him , and brought a wooden dish with grey liquor in it , and bad him drink it off . at the first sight of the spectre he said he endeavoured to awake his bedfellows , but it told him that that endeavour should be in vain , and that he had no cause to fear him , he being his friend , and he that at first gave him the good advice in the field , which had he not followed , be had been before now perfectly in the power of the company he saw there . he added , that he concluded it was impossible but that he should have been carried away the day before , there being so strong a combination against him . but now he could assure him that there would be no more attempts of that nature , but he being troubled with two sorts of sad fits he had brought that liquor to cure him of them , and bad him drink it . he peremptorily refusing , the spectre was angry , upbraided him with great disingenuity , but told him that however he had a kindness for him , and that if he would take plantain juice he should be well of one sort of fits , but he should carry the other to his grave . the poor man having by this time somewhat recovered himself , ask't the spectre whether by the juice of plantain he meant that of the leaves or roots ? it replied , the roots . then it askt him whether he did not know him ? he answered , no. he replied , i am such a one ? the man answered : he hath been long dead . i have been dead said the spectre or ghost seven years , and you know that i lived a loose life . and ever since have i been hurried up and down in a restless condition with the company you saw , and shall be to the day of judgment . then he proceeded to tell him , that had he acknowledged god in his ways , he had not suffered such severe things by their means . and further said , you never prayed to god that day before you met with this company in the field , and also was then going about an unlawful business , and so vanisht . advertisement . this story was also sent from mr. e. fowler to dr. h. more , concerning which he further adds by way of postscript , that mr. greatrix told this story to mrs. foxcraft at ragley , and at her request he told it a second time in her hearing at the table . my lady roydon being then present , inquired afterwards concerning it of my lord orory , who confirmed the truth of it , acknowledging all the circumstances of this narrative to my lady roydon to be true except that passage , that the spectre told the man that he was that day going about an unlawful business . and mr. fowler further adds , that since an eminent doctor in this city told me that my lord told him , that he saw at his own house a man taken up into the air. lastly , i find dr. h. more in a letter to mr. glanvil , affirming that he also heard mr. greatrix tell the story at my lord conway ' s at ragley , and that he particularly inquired of mr. greatrix about the mans being carried up into the air above mens heads in the room , and that he did expresly affirm that he was an eye-witness thereof . relat. xix . the miraculous cure of jesch claes a dutch woman of amsterdam , accompanied with an apparition . the narrative taken by a dutch merchant from her own mouth begins thus . a miraculous cure upon jesch claes , a woman about fifty years of age : for this many years well known to my self and the neighbours . this woman for fourteen years had been lame of both legs , one of them being dead and without feeling , so that she could not go but creep upon the ground , or was carried in peoples arms as a child , but now through the power of god almighty she hath walked again . which came to pass after this manner , as i have taken it from her own mouth . in the year . about the th or th of this month october , in the night between one and two of the clock , this jesch claes being in bed with her husband who was a boatman , she was three times pulled by her arm , with which she awaked and cryed out , o lord ! what may this be ? hereupon she heard an answer in plain words : be not afraid , i come in the name of the father , son and holy ghost . your malady which hath for many years been upon you shall cease , and it shall be given you from god almighty to walk again . but keep this to your self till further answer . whereupon she cried aloud , o lord ! that i had a light , that i might know what this is . then had she this answer , there needs no light , the light shall be given you from god. then came light all over the room , and she saw a beautiful youth about ten years of age , with curled yellow hair clothed in white to the feet , who went from the beds-head to the chimney with a light which a little after vanished . hereupon did there shoot something or gush from her hip , or diffuse it self through her leg as a water into her great toe , where she did find life rising up , felt it with her hand , crying out , lord give me now again my feeling which i have not had in so many years . and further she continued crying and praying to the lord according to her weak measure . yet she continued that day wednesday , and the next day thursday , as before till evening at six a clock . at which time she sate at the fire dressing the food . then came as like a rushing noise in both her ears , with which it was said to her stand. your going is given you again . then did she immediately stand up that had so many years crept , and went to the door . her husband meeting her being exceedingly afraid drew back . in the mean while she cryed out , my dear husband i can go again . the man thinking it was a spirit drew back , saying , you are not my wife . his wife taking hold of him said , my dear husband i am the self same that hath been married these thirty years to you . the almighty god hath given my going again . but her husband being amazed drew back to the side of the room , till at last she claspt her hand about his neck , and yet he doubted and said to his daughter , is this your mother ? she answered , yes father , this we plainly see . i had seen her go also before you came in . this person dwells upon princes island in amsterdam . advertisement . this account was sent from a dutch merchant procured by a friend for dr. r. cudworth , and contains the main particulars that occur in the dutch printed narrative , which monsieur van helmont brought over with him to my lady conway at ragley , who having inquired upon the spot when he was there at amsterdam , though of a genius not at all credulous of such relations , found the thing to be really true . as also philippus limbergius in a letter to dr. h. more , sent this testimony touching the party cured , that she was always reputed a very honest good woman , and that he believed there was no fraud at all in the business . relat. xx. an house haunted some thirty years ago or more at or near bow , not far from london , and strangely disturbed by daemons and witches . a certain gentleman about thirty years ago or more , being to travel from london into essex , and to pass through bow , at the request of a friend he called at a house there , which began then to be a little disquieted . but not any thing much remarkable yet , unless of a young girl who was pluckt by the thigh by a cold hand in her bed who dyed within a few days after . some weeks after this his occasions calling him back he passed by the same house again , but had no design to give them a new visit , he having done that not long before . but it happening that the woman of the house stood at the door , he thought himself engaged to ride to her and ask how she did ? to whom she answered with a sorrowful countenance ; that though she was in tolerable health , yet things went very ill with them , their house being extreamly haunted especially above stairs , so that they were forced to keep in the low rooms , there was such flinging of things up and down , of stones and bricks through the windows and putting all in disorder . but he could scarce forbear laughing at her , giving so little credit to such stories himself , and thought it was the tricks onely of some unhappy wags to make sport to themselves and trouble to their neighbours . well says she , if you will but stay a while you may chance to see something with your own eyes . and indeed he had not stayed any considerable time with her in the street , but a window of an upper room opened of it self ( for they of the family took it for granted no body was above stairs ) and out comes a piece of an old wheel through it . whereupon it presently clapt to again . a little while after it suddainly flew open again and out come a brick-bat , which inflamed the gentleman with a more eager desire to see what the matter was , and to discover the knavery . and therefore he boldly resolved if any one would go up with him , he would in to the chamber . but none present durst accompany him . yet the keen desire of discovering the cheat , made him adventure by himself alone into that room . into which when he was come , he saw the bedding , chairs and stools , and candlesticks , and bedstaves , and all the furniture rudely scattered on the floor , but upon search found no mortal in the room . well! he stays there a while to try conclusions , anon a bedstaff begins to move , and turn it self round a good while together upon its toe , and at last fairly to lay it self down again . the curious spectator , when he had observed it to lye still a while , steps out to it , views it whether any small string or hair were tyed to it , or whether there were any hole or button to fasten any such string to , or any hole or string in the ceiling above ; but after search , he found not the least suspicion of any such thing . he retires to the window again , and observes a little longer what may fall out . anon , another bedstaff rises off from the ground of its own accord higher into the air , and seems to make towards him . he now begins to think there was something more than ordinary in the business , and presently makes to the door with all speed , and for better caution shuts it after him . which was presently opened again , and such a clatter of chairs , and stools , and candlesticks , and bedstaves , sent after him down stairs , as if they intended to have maimed him , but their motion was so moderated , that he received no harm , but by this time he was abundantly assured , that it was not mere womanish fear or superstition that so affrighted the mistress of the house . and while in a low room he was talking with the family about these things , he saw a tobacco-pipe rise from a side table , no body being nigh , and fly to the other side of the room , and break it self against the wall for his further confirmation , that it was neither the tricks of waggs , nor the fancy of a woman , but the mad frolicks of witches and daemons . which they of the house being fully perswaded of , roasted a bedstaff , upon which an old woman a suspected witch came to the house , and was apprehended , but escaped the law. but the house was after so ill haunted in all the rooms , upper and lower , that the house stood empty for a long time after . advertisement . this story is found amongst mr. glanvil's papers , written to him from dr. h. more , who says , some three months before , he had received it from the parties own mouth , that was at the haunted house in bow , and saw the motion of the bedstaves and tobacco-pipe , &c. and i very well remember , that about thirty or forty years ago , there was a great fame of an house haunted at bow , and such like feats us this spectator saw , was rumoured of it , and the time agrees with that of this spectator or eye-witness of the above recited feats . and a book was then said to be printed , though i never saw any but one of late without any date of the year , the things then being in fieri , when it was printed . and they seem to referr to the same haunted place , though the pamphlet names plaisto for bow. but the haunting of which the fame went so many years ago i very well remember was bow. but whether bow was talked of instead of plaisto , it being a place near , and of more note , i know not . and paul fox a weaver , was the man whose house was haunted in plaisto according to that pamphlet . if the gentleman that so well remembers the strange things he saw , had not forgot the mans name whose house was haunted ( and the strangeness of those things would six themselves in his memory , even whether he would or no , when the name of the master of the house might easily in thirty or forty years time slide out of it ) we might be sure whether it were plaisto or bow. but i am sure the fame went of bow , though the pamphlet name plaisto , and that might make the abovesaid party , who told dr. more the story , six the scene without all scruple in bow. but methinks i hear the reader complain , that it was a great omission in mr. glanvil , that he did not inquire of dr. more who this party was that told him the story , it seeming an headless piece without that part . wherefore i find in a paper ( whose title is doctor more ' s particulars about the stories ) these words in answer to mr. glanvil . that it is dr. gibbs a prebendary of westminster , and a sober intelligent person . and some dozen lines after , dr. more says , dr. gibbs told the story to my self , and to dr. outram , who brought me to him . and i have told you already , that he is a person of understanding and integrity . he has also some sermons in print as i take it . but for as much as it was about three months after dr. more had received this account of the story from dr. gibbs , that he wrote to mr. glanvil , it is not to be expected that he related it in the very same words , and in every punctilio as he heard it . but i dare undertake for him that for the main , and that which makes to the evincing of witchcraft , and the ludicrous feats of daemons , that he hath committed no errour therein , nor set down any thing whose substance was not related to him by the reverend dr. gibbs . relat. xxi . mr. jermin's story of an house haunted , and what disturbance himself was a witness of there at a visit of his wife's sister . one mr. jermin minister of bigner in sussex , going to see a sister of his wife 's , found her very melancholy , and asking her the reason , she replyed , you shall know to morrow morning . when he went to bed there were two maids accompanied him in his chamber , and the next day he understood that they durst not go into any room in the house alone . in the night , while he was in his bed , he heard the trampling of many feet upon the leads over his head , and after that the going off of a gun , upon which sollowed a great silence . then they came swiftly down stairs into his chamber , where they fell a wrestling and tumbling each other down , and so continued a great while . after they were quiet , they fell a whispering and made a great buzz , of which he could understand nothing . then one called at the door , and said , day is broke , come away . upon which they ran up stairs as fast as they could drive , and so he heard no more of them . in the morning his brother and sister came in to him , and she said , now brother you know why i am so melancholy , aft●…r she had askt him how he had slept , and he had answered , i never rested worse in my life , having been disturbed a great part of the night with tumblings and noises . she complained that her husband would force her to live there , notwithstanding their being continually scared . whereto the husband answered , their disturbers never did them any other mischief . at dinner they had a physician with them , who was an acquaintance . mr. jermin discoursing about this disturbance , the physician also answered that never any hurt was done , of which he gave this instance : that dining there one day , there came a man on horseback into the yard in mourning . his servant went to know what was his business , and found him sitting very melancholy , nor could he get any answer from him . the master of the house and the physician went forth to see who it was . upon which the man clapt spurs to his horse , and rode into the house up stairs into a long gallery whither the physician followed him , and saw him vanish in a fire at the upper end of the gallery . but though none of the family received hurt at any time ; yet mr. jermin fell into a feaver with the disturbance he experienced that indangered his life . advertisement . mr. scot and his wife heard this narrative from mr. jermin ' s own mouth . and i also have heard it from mr. scot , who is a minister of london , and the authour of a late excellent good treatise , which is entitled , the christian life , &c. relat. xxii . contained in a letter of mr. g. clark , to mr. m. t. touching an house haunted in welton near daventry . sir , i send you here a relation of a very memorable piece of witchcraft as i suppose , which would fit mr. more gallantly . i first heard the story related to sir justinian isham by a reverend minister , of his own experience . sir justinian would have had me gone to the place , which i could not then do . but a little after going to visit a friend , and not thinking of this , my friend told me the story , the place being near him , and the principal man concerned in the story being a relation of his , and one that i my self had some acquaintance with . he had occasion to go to this mans house for some deeds of land , and i went with him for satisfaction touching this story , which i had to the full , and in which i could not but acquiesce , though otherwise i am very chary , and hard enough to believe passages of this nature . the story is this , at welton within a mile of daventry in northamptonshire , where live together widdow cowley , the grandmother , widdow stiff the mother , and her two daughters . at the next house but one , live another widdow cowley , sister to the former widdow cowley , moses cowley my acquaintance her son , and moses his wife , having a good estate in land of their own , and very civil and orderly people . these three told me , that the younger of the two daughters , ten years of age , vomited in less than three days , three gallons of water to their great admiration . after this the elder wench comes running , and tells them , that now her sister begins to vomit stones and coals . they went and were eye-witnesses , told them till they came to five hundred . some weighed a quarter of a pound , and were so big , as they had enough to do to get them out of her mouth , and he professed to me , that he could scarce get the like into his mouth ; and i do not know how any one should , if they were so big as he shewed the like to me . i have sent you one , but not a quarter so big as some of them were . it was one of the biggest of them that were left and kept in a bag . this vomiting lasted about a fortnight , and hath witnesses good store . in the mean time they threw hards of flax upon the fire , which would not blaze though blown , but dwindled away . the bed-clothes would be thrown off the bed. moses cowley told me , that he laid them on again several times , they all coming out of the room , and go but into the parlour again , and they were off again . and a strike of wheat standing at the beds feet , set it how they would , it would be thrown down again . once the coffers and things were so transposed , as they could scarce stir about the room . once he laid the bible upon the bed , but the clothes were thrown off again , and the bible hid in another bed. and when they were all gone into the parlour , as they used to go together , then things would be transposed in the hall , their wheel taken in pieces , and part of it thrown under the table . in their buttery their milk would be taken off the table , and set on the ground , and once one panchion was broken , and the milk spilt . a seven pound weight with a ring was hung upon the spigot , and the beer mingled with sand and all spoiled , their salt mingled most perfectly with bran. moses his mother said that their flax was thrown out of a box , she put it in again , it was thrown out again ; she put it in again and lockt the box , trying by the hasp or lid ( as they use to do ) whether it was fast , it was so . but as soon as her back was turned the box was unlocked , and the flax was thrown out again . moses said that when he was coming out of the parlour , he saw a loaf of bread tumbled off the form , and that was the first thing he saw . after a womans patten rose up in the house , and was thrown at them . he heard the comb break in the window , and presently it flew at them in two pieces . a knife rose up in the window , and flew at a man , hitting him with the haft . an ink-glass was thrown out of the window into the floor , and by and by the stopple came after it . then every day abundance of stones were thrown about the house which broke the windows , and hat the people , but they were the less troubled , because all this while no hurt was done to their persons , and a great many people being in the room the wheat was thrown about amongst them . i was in the house where i saw the windows which were still broken , and the people themselves shewed me where the several particulars were done . the grandmother told me that she thought she had lost half a strike of wheat , and the like happened to some fitches in the barn. one mr. robert clark a gentleman being hat with the stones , bad the baker at the door look to his bread well , and by and by a handful of crums were thrown into his lap . they could see the things as they came , but no more . at last some that had been long suspected for witches were examined , and one sent to the gaol , where it is said she plays her pranks , but that is of doubtful credit . i asked the old woman whether they were free now . she said that one night since , they heard great knocking 's and cruel noise , which scared them worse than all the rest , and once or twice that week her cheese was crumbled into pieces and spoiled . i was there about may-day , . this is all that i remember at present . i have heard several other stories , and two or three notable ones lately from mens own experience , which in reason i was to believe as i did . but in my judgment this outgoes all that i know of , it having so much of sense and of the day time , so many and so credible witnesses beyond all cavil and exception . i will trouble you no further , but commending you to the protection of god almighty , i take my leave and rest loddington may th . . yours , g. clark. relat. xxiii . the relation of james sherring , taken concerning the matter at old gast s house of little burton , june . . as follows . the first night that i was there with hugh mellmore and edward smith , they heard as it were the washing in water over their heads . then taking a candle and going up the stairs there was a wet cloth thrown at them , but it fell on the stairs . they going up farther then , there was another thrown as before . and when they came up into the chamber there stood a bowl of water , some of it sprinkled over , and the water looked white as if there had been sope used in it . the bowl just before was in the kitchin , and could not be carried up but through the room where they were . the next thing that they heard the same night was a terrible noise as if it had been a slat of thunder , and shortly after they heard great scratching about the bedsted , and after that a great knocking with a hammer against the beds-head , so that the two maids that were in the bed cryed out for help . then they ran up the stairs , and there lay the hammer on the bed and on the beds-head , there were near a thousand prints of the hammer which the violent strokes had made . the maids said that they were scratched and pinched with a hand that was put into the bed which had exceeding long nails . they said that the hammer was locked fast up in the cupboard when they went to bed. this was that which was done the first night , with many other things of the like nature . the second night that james sherring and tho. hillary were there , james sherring sat down in the chimney to fill a pipe of tobacco . he made use of the fire-tongs to take up a coal to fire his pipe , and by and by the tongs were drawn up the stairs , and after they were up in the chamber , they were played withall as many times men do , and then thrown down upon the bed. although the tongs were so near him , he never perceived the going of them away . the same night one of the maids left her shoos by the fire , and they were carried up into the chamber , and the old mans brought down and set in their places . the same night there was a knife carried up into the chamber , and it did scratch and scrape the beds-head all the night , but when they went up into the chamber the knife was thrown into the loft . as they were going up the stairs there were things thrown at them , which were just before in the low room , and when they went down the stairs the old mans breeches were thrown down after them . these were the most remarkable things done that night , onely there was continual knocking and pinching the maids , which was usually done every night . the third night , when james sherring and thomas hillery were there , as soon as the people were gone to bed , their clothes were taken and thrown at the candle and put it out , and immediately after they cried out with a very hideous cry and said , they should be all choaked if they were not presently helped . then they ran up the stairs and there was abundance of feathers plucked out of the bolster that lay under their heads , and some thrust into their mouths that they were almost choaked . the feathers were thrown all about the bed and room . they were plucked out at a hole no bigger than the top of ones little finger . some time after they were vexed with a very hideous knocking at their heads as they lay on the bed. then james sherring and thomas hillery took the candle and went up stairs and stood at the beds feet , and the knocking continued . then they saw a hand with an arm-wrist hold the hammer which kept on knocking against the bedsted . then james sherring going towards the beds-head , the hand and hammer fell down behind the bolster and could not be found . for they turned up the bed-clothes to search for the hammer . but as soon as they went down the stairs the hammer was thrown out into the middle of the chamber . these were the most remarkable things that were done that night . the fourth and fifth nights , there was but little done more than knocking and scratching as was usually . the sixth and seventh nights , there was nothing at all but as quiet as at other houses . these were all the nights that they were there . the things that do follow are what james sherring heard the people of the house report . there was a saddle in the house of their uncle warrens of leigh , ( which it should seem they detained wrongfully from the right owner ) that as it did hang upon a pin in the entry would come off and come into the house , and as they termed it , hop about the house from one place to another , and upon the table , and so to another , which stood on the other side of the house . jane gast and her kinswoman took this saddle and carried it to leigh , and as they were going along in the broad common , there would be sticks and stones thrown at them , which made them very much afraid , and going near together their whittles which were on their shoulders were knit together . they carried the saddle to the house which was old warrens , and there left it and returned home very quiet . but being gone to bed at night the saddle was brought back from leigh , ( which is a mile and half at the least from old gasts house ) and thrown upon the bed where the maids lay . after that , the saddle was very troublesome to them , until they broke it in small pieces and threw it out into the highway . there was a coat of the same parties , who was owner of the saddle , which did hang on the door in the hall , and it came off from the place and flew into the fire and lay there some considerable time , before they could get it out . for it was as much as three of them could do to pluck it out of the fire , because of the ponderous weight that lay on it , as they thought . nevertheless there was no impression on it of the fire . old gast sat at dinner with a hat of this old warrens on his head , and there was something came and struck it off into the dish where his meat was . there was a pole which stood in the back-side about fourteen or fifteen foot in length , which was brought into the house , and carried up into the chamber , and thrown on the bed ; but all the wit they had could not get it out of the chamber , because of its length , until they took down a light of the window . they report that the things in the house was thrown about and broken , to their great dammage . one night there were two of this old ●…st his grand daughters in bed together , they were aged , one of them about twelve or thirteen years , and the other about sixteen or seventeen . they said , that they felt a hand in bed with them , which they bound up in the sheet , and took bed-staves and beat it until it were as soft as wool , then they took a stone which lay in the chamber , about a quarter of an hundred weight , and put on it , and were quiet all the night . in the morning , they found it as they left it the night before . then the eldest of the maids sware that she would burn the devil , and goes and fetches a fuz faggot to burn it , but when she came again , the stone was thrown away , and the cloth was found wet . there were many other things which is too long and tedious to write , it would take up a great deal of time . this which follows is the relation of jone winsor of long burton , she being there three nights , taken the third day of july , . she heard or saw nothing as long as the candle did burn , but as soon as it was out , there was something which did seem to sall down by the bed-side , and by and by it began to lay on the beds-head vvith a staffe , and did strike jone winsor on the head. she put forth her hand and caught it , but was not able to hold it fast . she got out of the bed to light a candle , and there was a great stone thrown after her , but it missed her . when the candle was lighted , they arose and went down to the fire . one of them went up to fetch the bed-clothes to make a bed by the fire , and there lay a heap of stones on the bed vvhereon they lay just before . as soon as the bed vvas made , and they laid down to take their rest , there was a scratching on the form that stood by them in an extream manner . then it came , and did heave up the bolster whereon they laid their heads , and did endeavour to throw them out . at last it got hold on one end of the pillow , and set it quite on end , and there it stood for some considerable time ; at last falling down in its place , they fell fast asleep , and so continued all that night . the staff that was spoken of before was jone winsors , and she says , she left it below in the kitchin. she says , that vvhich troubled , did endeavour to kill the people , if it had power . she put them to it , to know the reason vvhy they vvere so troubled , and they said they knew nothing , unless it was about the business of old warren . she vvas there three nights , and the trouble was much after the same manner , nothing that was more remarkable . this is the truth of what i heard them speak from their own mouths , and they will attest it if called thereunto . advertisement . a very considerable story this is , and sufficiently circumstantiated for time and place , saving that the county is not named . the reason whereof i conceive to be , that it was in the very county in which mr. glanvil lived , to whom the information was sent , namely in somersetshire . and there are burtons more than one there , and also leighs , but this burton is determined by the space of something more than a mile and an halfs distance from leigh . so that the topographical account is sufficiently exact . and the manner of the narrative is so simple , plain and rural , that it prevents all suspicion of fraud or imposture in the relatour . the transporting of things out of one room into another , and striking and the like by invisible agents , minds me of mr. lloyd ' s story , as 't is called in mr. glanvil ' s papers , whom in a letter he ' tells he may rely upon it for truth , as being sent from a person of quality and integrity in those parts . it is of an house haunted of one walter meyrick of the parish of blethvaugh , in the county of radnor , some two and twenty years ago . where besides strange kind of tunable whistlings in the rooms , where none was seen to whistle , there were stones flung down out of a loft of great weight , the doors bolted or barred against them on the inside , when returned from the church , no body being within . and at prayers at home when some of the women out of fear held one another by the arms , some invisible power would pluck asunder their arms , whether they would or no. by such an invisible force , one as he was sitting at supper , was struck flat to the ground , and a trencher struck out of the maids hand that waited , and a smart box on the ear given to another , no visible thing being near that did it . a purse lost with two gold rings , and six and four-pence in it , the party complaining thereof , the purse dropt down from the top of the room , which had no room over it , and four-pence only in it . that men were struck down with stones , and yet had no great hurt , shews plainly they were not flung but carried . but there was one beaten with two s●…aves black and blue , but none to be seen that thus belaboured him , though in the day . we pass by the frying-pan , beaten with a little piece of iron , and tinkling over a mans head in the night , to his being struck down with a stick by day , while he tended the goose roasting , which that invisible striker seemed to have a plot upon , as also by his knocking a pick-axe against the lid of a coffer , to have a design upon a bag of money . these and the like feats , that narrative relates , which mr. glanvil calls mr. lloyd ' s story , who assures him he may rely on the truth thereof , he procuring it from a justice of peace , who took the parties testimonies that dwelt in the house , or upon occasions were present there , and were eye-witnesses of the strange pranks that were plaid in the place . and there being that congeneracy betwixt james sherrings story and this , they mutually corroborate one another . relat. xxiv . mr. andrew paschall once fellow of queens colledge in cambridge , his narrative of three nights disturbance at his fathers house in london in soper-lane , in august . the first nights disturbance ; there was in family my father and mother , my eldest brother , and one of my sisters with a young maiden gentlewoman her bedfellow ( who seemed to be principally concerned ) besides a maid that lay in the same chamber . the gentlewoman before mentioned , being in bed with my sister in a chamber within that where my father and mother lay , ( the maid lying in another bed alone by ) there seemed to her then lying awake , to be one walking in the chamber , by a noise made as of a long gown or some trailing garment brushing and sweeping up and down the room . by and by , there vvas a noise of clattering their shoes under the bed , with a scratching and tugging of the mat under the bed likewise . this continued for some time , my sister being awakened heard it , so did the maid . after this my mother being called out of the next chamber where she was up ( to prepare a chymical water which required their being up all night ) came in , they being in a great fright . my brother went up also , who not gone to bed sate below . a candle was brought , and the noise ceased while they were in the chamber . presently after they were gone out again , and the light removed , the chamber door ( which shuts with difficulty ) flew to with a great bounce , it being wide open before , it shook the room where my mother was busied about the aforesaid preparation . after this one of the shoos that was by the bed side was flung over the bed with a mighty force against a press that stood on the other side . this put them to such a fright again that the gentlewoman rise . my brother went into the room again and sate up with them all night . this i received from my brother , who came to bed to me , ( who by reason of some ilness had gone to bed first in the family ) early the next morning . i was confirmed in it afterward by my mother , upon whose bare assertion i dare confidently believe any thing that shall be related . the second nights disturbance ; the next evening as we sate at supper , we all heard a great noise above in the chamber , at the end of the house , as it were slinging of chairs and stools about the room or removing of great trunks . and going up to see , all was still till we came down again : however the gentlewoman resolved to go to bed again that night in the same chamber . my sister went to bed with her , and the rest to their lodgings , onely my brother and i resolved to sit up some time and expect the event . within a while after we heard them knock earnestly above , we went both up , they told us there had been the same disturbance as the night before and something more . for besides the tugging of the mat under the bed , the bedclothes upon them were often tugged and pulled , insomuch as they were fain to hold them hard with their hands to keep them from being pulled off . all was quiet for a little time while we were in the chamber with a light , but we were no sooner out of the chamber with the candle , but the noise under the ●…ed , tugging of the mat , pulling of the bedclothes began again . moreover something came into the bed , which the gentlewoman said ran up on her by degrees , and seemed little and soft like a mole . upon this she skreekt out , and we came in again with the candle , then all was still again . we retired often with the candle , and presently the same disturbance returned , together with a low whispering ▪ noise in many places about the bed , but chiefly towards the beds head , which we all heard staying in the chamber , and removing the candle into the next room . my father and mother rise , and there were none of us but heard all or most part of this , but nothing appeared to us . the thing was continually moving and stirring in some part or other of the bed , and most commonly at the feet , where it usually came up first . at last it came to that boldness that it would make the same disturbance while the candle was in the chamber , if but a little shaded behind the door , so that we could sometimes see the clothes pull'd and tugg'd , and we frequently saw it heave and lift up the clothes upon the bed towards the feet , in a little hill or rising , which both my brother and i often clapt our hands upon , perceiving it to move , and withall to make a little clacking noise , which cannot any more than the former whispering be exprest in writing . we could not perceive any thing more than the clothes , as often as we saw them so moved and heaved up . the shoos were laid up upon the beds tester , the second night , to prevent the clattering which was made with them the night before , and whilst we were standing talking in the chamber , as i was some distance from the bed , one of the shoos flew off and hit me lightly on the head , my hat being on . and another came presently tumbling down after it none stirring the bed . afterwards the aforesaid little thing came upon the gentlewoman so frequently , that if we were but the least removed , she could not lie quiet in her bed . then she fate up in her bed with a mantle about her , which when we were retired was pulled at as if it would have been plucked from her . whereupon she cried out again , and i came into the chamber again , and was desired to hold fast upon the mantle about her , which notwithstanding upon removal of the candle was tugged hard again , which i very sensibly perceived . whereupon we perceiving no cessation , my brother and i continued in the chamber all that night till break of day , vvith a candle in the room . the tugging of the matt under the bed , the heaving of the clothes about the feet , and the other vvhispering noise continuing by sits , till light appeared . there vvas scarcely any of us , especially she her self , that did not conjure that whisperer by the most sacred names to speak out and tell us its intent , but nothing was to be seen , nor any answer made . the third nights disturbance ; the gentlewoman resolved now to change her chamber , to try if the disturbance would follow , she did so , my sister still accompanying of her . my brother and i sate up as before below expecting again what would follow . the same noise was heard this third night as the night before above in the chamber . we had not sate long below before we were summoned up with loud knocking 's again , they were in the same case as before , if not worse . a while after they were in bed in this other chamber there was a clattering heard at the door ; presently after the same noise under the bed , the same heaving of the clothes , and the same whispering as before . but towards midnight that thing which came into the bed before , came now so often with such ungrateful skippings up and down upon her , that she often skreekt and cried out . it seemed cold and very smooth as she related , and would commonly come in at her feet , and run all up on her by her side to her shoulder . once she desired meto clap my hand upon her back near her shoulder blade , as feeling it just then come up thither . i did so on a suddain , and there seemed a cold blast or puff of wind to blow upon my hand just as i clapt it on her . and one thing more remarkable was this , when the whispering was heard at her beds-head , after we had many times in vain conjured it to speak and tell us the intent of its whisperings and disturbance , i spake to it very earnestly to speak out or whisper louder . hereupon it hissed out much louder than before , but nothing intelligible to be heard . at last this disturbance with the thing in the bed being no longer tolerable to the gentlewoman , my mother rise ( lying in the next chamber and hearing their perplexity ) came into her chamber and prayed sometime at her bedside just by her . whereupon it pleased god within a very short time after to remove all those noises and that which disturbed her . after that night i cannot tell certainly that there hath been any thing of that nature heard in the house . advertisement . this narrative though it was not among mr. glanvil's papers , but i found it by chance in mine own study , yet it being made by an eye-witness whom i knew to be one of judgement and integrity , i thought fit to insert it . and the rather , because of that passage , that when he clapt his hand upon the shoulder of the gentlewoman where the ghost was , a cool blast or puff of air seemed to bear or blow against his hand . which is like mr. glanvil's experiment of pressing the linnen bag in which some spirit was moving as a living animal . which are notable instances of their easie percribration through porous bodies . this troublesome spirit i suspect to have been the ghost of some party deceased who would have uttered something , but had not the knack of speaking so articulately as to be understood . and when they can speak intelligibly , it is ordinarily in a hoarse and low voice , as is observable in many stories , and particularly in a very fresh story of the ghost of one deceased that spoke to jacob brent some two years ago , an apprentice then to one mr. lawrence in the little minories ; of which to give some brief account , i think fitting for the very same reasons that i have inserted this of mr. paschal , namely , that it is from an eye - witness , and a discreet and well-disposed young man , as they that know him do testifie : and i will set down no more , nor so much as he himself declared or acknowledged , not onely to dr. cudworth , mr. fowler , and mr. glanvil , but very lately to my self also , viz. that he had conference with the ghost of some deceased party for about a quarter of an hour : that he had a glimpse of the shape thereof , being called into the room where it was , by a voice , saying , here , here ; but that he presently cried out , good god , let me see nothing , he being so assrighted with the sight . but however , he entertained discourse with it for about the time above-mentioned , received several things in charge from it to be done , and was commanded secrecy in some special matters ; but it gave such instructions , and made such discoveries , as right might be done to some that had been wronged by the party deceased . upon which performance of jacob brent , the disturbance of the house ceased : but for about six weeks before , mr. lawrence his house was miserably disturbed , they being most nights affrighted with thumpings and loud knocking 's at the chamber-doors , sometimes with a strange whirling noise up and down the rooms , and clapping upon the stairs . and that night jacob brent sate up in the kitchin expecting some conference with the spirit for the quiet of the house , he heard the door of the room above him that was fast lockt , fly open , while he was reading in eusebius , and immediately a swift running down the stairs , and a great knock at the kitchin-door which stood a jarr , and a chinking of money on the stairs , as he passed from the kitchin towards the dining-room over against it , whose door was lockt when they went to bed , but now opened as the door of the other room above the kitchin. into this dining-room he was invited , as is abovesaid , by a voice saying , here , here ; and there he received , and after executed , such directions as gave quiet afterwards to the house ; and he received thanks from the ghost after he had made his journey abroad to fulfil its desire , at his returning home , with a promise it would never trouble the house more . and of the troubles of the house before , the whole family were witnesses , as also of the conference of j. b. and the spirit , that they heard two speaking in the dining-room , though they were not so near as to understand what they said ; onely they heard j. b. pray to god that he might see nothing . that the house was really haunted , besides what has been said already , is further confirmed by mr. bamfield , who was desired to lie in the house some days before this conference of j. b. with the spirit : who though he heard no noises , yet felt his clothes tuckt about him , and his hand kindly stroaked , he being awake all night . and that this could be no trick of j. b. is further evident from that great emotion of mind he was in after this for some two hours , even almost to distraction , and was fain afterwards to be let bloud . but for his constant temper , he is observed to be , and i take him to be such , of a sober honest and sensible genius ; nor is he any sectarian , but an orderly son of the church of england . and if the injunctions of the ghost he conversed with , and common rules of prudence , did not forbid the declaring of some particulars , this is an experiment that might convince the most incredulous touching such things . but mr. glanvil complains in a letter of his to dr. h. more , that this shyness and tender respect of persons has hindered him of many a considerable story ; as i have also taken notice long since how mutilate the story of the shoemaker of breslaw is made , by reason of martinus weinrichius his concealing the shoemaker's name . but the mentioning of lockt doors flying open of their own accord , reminds me of mr. alcock's story of a chest with three locks unlocking itself , and slying wide open , and then locking itself again . which is as follows . relat. xxv . the story of mr. john bourne of durley in ireland , about a mile from bridgwater , counsellor at law. mr. john bourne , for his skill , care , and honesty , was made by his neighbour john mallet esq of enmore , the chief of his trustees for his son john mallet , ( father to elizabeth now countess dowager of rochester ) and the rest of his children in minority . he had the reputation of a worthy good man , and was commonly taken notice of for an habitual saying by way of interjection almost to any thing , viz. you say true , you say true , you are in the right . this mr. bourne sell sick at his house at durley in the year , and dr. raymond of oake was sent for to him , who after some time gave the said mr. bourne over . and he had not now spake in twenty sour hours , when the said dr. raymond and mrs. carlisle ( mr. bourne's nephews wise , whose husband he made one of his heirs ) sitting by his bedside , the doctor opened the curtains at the beds feet , to give him air ; when on a suddain , to the horrour and amazement of dr. raymond and mrs. carlisle , the great iron chest by the window at his beds seet with three locks to it ( in which were all the writings and evidences of the said mr. mallet's estate ) began to open , first one lock , then another , then the third . afterwards the lid of the said iron chest lifted up itself , and stood wide open . then the patient mr. bourne , who had not spoke in twenty four hours , lifted himself up also , and looking upon the chest , cryed , you say true , you say true , you are in the right , i 'le be with you by and by . so the patient lay down and spake no more . then the chest fell again of itself , and lockt itself one lock after another , as the three locks opened ; and they tried to knock it open and could not , and mr. bourne died within an hour after . advertisement . this narrative was sent in a letter to j. c. for dr. h. more , from mr. thomas alcock of shear hampton ; of which in a letter to the said doctor he gives this account . i am , saith he , very confident of the truth of the story : for i had it from a very good lady , the eldest daughter of the said john mallet , ( whose trustee mr. bourne was ) and onely aunt to the countess of rochester , who knew all the parties ; and have heard dr. raymond and mr. carlisle relate it often with amazement , being both persons of credit . the curious may be inquisitive what the meaning of the opening of the chest may be , and of mr. bourne his say , you say true , &c. i 'le be with you by and by . as for the former , it is noted by paracelsus especially , and by others , that there are signs often given of the departure of sick men lying on their death-beds , of which this opening of the iron coffer or chest and closing again , is more than ordinary significant , especially if we consider the nearness of sound and sence betwixt coffer and coffin , and recal to mind that of virgil ; olli dura quies oculos & serreus urget somnus — though this quaintness is more than is requisite in these prodigies presaging the sick man's death . as for the latter , it seems to be nothing else but the saying amen to the presage , uttered in his accustomary form of speech : as if he should say , you of the invisible kingdom of spirits have given the token of my suddain departure : and you say true , i shall be with you by and by . which he was enabled so assuredly to assent to , upon the advantage of the relaxation of his soul now departing from the body . which diodorus siculus , lib. . notes to be the opinion of pythagoras and his followers , that it is the priviledge of the soul near her departure to exercise a fatidical faculty , and to pronounce truely touching things future , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that humane souls prognostick things to come at what time they are separating from their body . relat. xxvi . the apparition of james haddock to francis taverner near drum-bridge in ireland , comprized in a letter of thomas alcock to dr. h. more . at michaelmas . francis taverner , about twenty five years old , a lusty , proper , stout fellow , then servant at large ( afterwards porter ) to the lord chichester earl of donegal , at belfast in the north of ireland , county of antrim , and diccess of connor , riding late in the night from hilbrough homeward , near drum bridge , his horse , though of good metal , suddainly made a stand ; and he supposing him to be taken with the staggers , alighted to bloud him in the mouth , and presently mounted again . as he was setting forward , there seemed to pass by him two horsemen , though he could not hear the treading of their seet , which amazed him . presently there appeared a third in a white coat , just at his elbow in the likeness of james haddock formerly an inhabitant in malone , where he died near five years before . whereupon taverner askt him in the name of god who he was ? he replied , i am james haddock , and you may call to mind by this token ; that about five years ago i and two other friends were at your fathers house , and you by your fathers appointment brought us some nuts , and therefore be not afraid , says the apparition . whereupon taverner , remembring the circumstances , thought it might be haddock ; and those two who passed by before him , he thought to be his two friends with him when he gave them nuts , and courageously askt him why he appeared to him rather than any other . he answered , because he was a man of more resolution than others ; and if he would ride his way with him , he would acquaint him with a business he had to deliver him . which taverner refused to do , and would go his own way , ( for they were now at a quadrivial ) and so rode on homewards . but immediately on the departure there arose a great wind , and withal he heard very hideous screeches and noises , to his great amazement ; but riding forward as fast as he could , he at last heard the cocks crow , to his comsort ; he alighted off from his horse , and salling to prayer , desired god's assistance , and so got safe home . the night a●…ter there appeared again to him the likeness of james haddock and bid him go to elenor welsh , ( now the wife of davis living at malone , but formerly the wife of the said james haddock , by whom she had an onely son , to whom the said james haddock had by his will given a lease which he held of the lord chichester , of which the son was deprived by davis who had married his mother ) and to ask her if her maiden-name was not elenor welsh ; and if it were , to tell her , that it was the will of her former husband james haddock that their son should be righted in the lease . but taverner , partly loath to gain the ill will of his neighbours , and partly thinking he should not be credited but lookt on as deluded , long neglected to do his message , till having been every night for about a months space haunted with this apparition in several forms every night more and more terrible , ( which was usually preceded by an unusual trembling over his whole body , and great change of countenance manifest to his wife , in whose presence frequently the apparition was , though not visible to her ) at length he went to malone to davis's wife , and askt whether her maiden-name was not elenor welsh ; if it was , he had something to say to her . she replied , there was another elenor welsh besides her . hereupon taverner returned without delivering his message . the same night being fast asleep in his bed , ( for the former apparitions were as he sate by the fire with his wife ) by something pressing upon him , he was awakened , and saw again the apparition of james haddock in a white coat as at other times , who asked him if he had delivered his message ? he answered , he had been there with elenor welsh . upon which the apparition looking more pleasantly upon him , bid him not be afraid , and so vanished in a flash of brightness . but some nights after ( he having not delivered his message ) he came again , and appearing in many formidable shapes , threatned to tear him in pieces if he did not do it . this made him leave his house where he dwelt in the mountains , and betake himself to the town of belfast , where he sate up all night at one pierce's house a shoemaker , accompanied with the said pierce and a servant or two of the lord chichester , who were desirous to see or hear the spirit . about midnight as they were all by the fire-side they beheld taverner's countenance to change , and a trembling to fall on him , who presently espied the apparition in a room opposite to him where he sate , and took up the candle and went to it , and resolutely askt it in the name of god wherefore it haunted him ? it replied , because he had not delivered the message , and withal threatned to tear him in pi●…ces if he did not do it speedily ; and so , changing itself into many prodigious shapes , it vanisht in white like a ghost . whereupon francis taverner became much dejected and troubled , and next day went to the lord chichester's house , and with tears in his eyes , related to some of the family the sadness of his condition . they told it to my lord's chaplain mr. james south , who came presently to taverner , and being acquainted of his whole story , advised him to go this present time to malone to deliver punctually his message , and promised to go along with him . but first they went to dr. lewis downs then minister of belfast , who upon hearing the relation of the whole matter , doubted at first of the truth of it , attributing it rather to melancholy than any thing of reality . but being afterwards fully satisfied of it , the onely scruple remaining was , whether it might be lawful to go on such a business , not knowing whose errand it was ; since , though it was a real apparition of some spirit , yet it was questionable whether of a good or a bad spirit . yet the justice of the cause , ( it being the common report the youth was wronged ) and other considerations prevailing , he went with them . so they three went to davis's house , where the woman being desired to come to them , taverner did effectually do his message , by telling her , that he could not be at quiet for the ghost of her former husband james haddock , who threatned to tear him in pieces if he did not tell her she must right john haddock her son by him , in a lease wherein she and davis her now husband had wronged him . this done , he presently found great quietness in his mind ; and , thanking the gentlemen for their company , advice , and assistance , he departed thence to his brother's house at drum-bridge : where , about two nights after , the aforesaid apparition came to him again , and more pleasantly than formerly , askt if he had delivered his message ? he answered , he had done it fully . it replied , that he must do the same message to the executors also , that the business might be perfected . at this meeting taverner asked the spirit if davis would do him any hurt ; to which it answered at first somewhat doubtfully ; but at length threatned davis if he attempted any thing to the injury of taverner , and so vanisht away in white . the day following , dr. jeremie taylor bishop of down , connor , and dromore , was to go to keep court at dromore , and commanded me , who was then secretary to him , to write for taverner to meet him there , which he did . and there in the presence of many people he examined taverner strictly of this strange scene of providence , as my lord styl'd it ; and by the account given him both by taverner , and others who knew taverner and much of the former particulars , his lordship was satisfied that the apparition was true and real ; but said no more there to him , because at hilbrough , three miles from thence on his way home , my lord was informed that my lady conway and other persons of quality were come purposely to hear his lordship examine the matter . so tarverner went with us to hilbrough , and there , to satisfie the curiosity of the fresh company , after asking many things anew , and some over again , my lord advised him the next time the spirit appeared to ask him these questions . whence are you ? are you a good or a bad spirit ? where is your abode ? what station do you hold ? how are you regimented in the other world ? and what is the reason that you appear for the relief of your son in so small a matter , when so many widows and orphans are oppressed in the world , being defrauded of greater matters , and none from thence of their relations appear , as you do , to right them ? that night taverner was sent for to lisburne to my lord conway's three miles from hilbrough on his way home to belfast , where he was again strictly examined in the presence of many good men and women of the aforesaid matter , was ordered to lie at my lord conway's all night ; and about nine or ten a clock at night , standing by the fire-side with his brother and many others , his countenance changed , and he sell into a trembling , the usual prognostick of the apparition ; and , being loath to make any disturbance in his lordships house , he and his brother went out into the court , where he saw the spirit coming over the wall ; which , approaching nearer , askt him if he had done his message to the executor also ? he replied , he had , and wondered it should still haunt him . it replied , he need not fear , for it would do him no hurt , nor trouble him any more , but the executor if he did not see the boy righted . here his brother put him in mind to ask the spirit what the bishop bid him , which he did presently . but it gave him no answer , but crawled on its hands and feet over the wall again , and so vanisht in white , with a most melodious harmony . note , ( ) that pierce , at whose house , and in whose presence the apparition was , being askt whether he saw the spirit , said , he did not , but thought at that time he had a mist all over his eyes . ( ) what was then spoke to taverner was in so low and hollow a voice , that they could not understand what it said . ( ) at pierce's house it s●…ood just in the entry of a door ; and as a maid passed by to go in at the door , taverner saw it go aside and give way to the maid , though she saw it not . ( ) that the lease was hereupon disposed on to the boys use . ( ) the spirit at the last apparition at my lord conway's house , revealed somewhat to taverner , which he would not discover to any of us that askt him . this taverner , with all the persons and places mentioned in the story , i knew very well , and all wise and good men did believe it , especially the bishop , and dean of connor dr. rust : witness your humble servant thomas alcock . advertisement . it will not be amiss to set down here what mr. alcock addes by way of postscript in his letter . there is an odd story , saith he , depending on this , which i cannot chuse but tell you . the boys friends put the trustees and executor on this apparitions account into our courts , where it was pleasant to hear my lord talk to them on the whole matter . the uncle and trustee , one john costlet , forswore the thing , railed on taverner , and made strange imprecations , and wisht judgments might fall on him if he knew of any such lease ; but the fear of the apparitions menaces by taverner scar'd him into a promise of justice at least . about four or five years after , when my lord died , and the noise of the apparition was over , costlet began again to threaten the boy with law , &c. but being drunk at hill-hall by lisburne , coming home he fell from his horse , and never spake more . this is a sad truth to my knowledge . relat. xxvii . the story of david hunter neat-herd to the bishop of down and connor , at portmore in ireland , . from the same hand . david hunter neat-herd at the bishop's house at portmore , there appeared to him one night , carrying a log of wood into the dairie , an old woman , which amazed him , for he knew her not : but the fright made him throw away his log of wood and run into the house . the next night she appeared again to him , and he could not chuse but follow her all night ; and so almost every night for near three quarters of a year . whenever she came , he must go with her through the woods at a good round rate ; and the poor fellow lookt as if he was bewitcht and travelled off his legs . and when in bed with his wife , if she appeared , he must rise and go . and because his wife could not hold him in his bed , she would go too , and walk after him fill day , though she see nothing : but his little dog was so well acquainted with the apparition , that he would follow her as well as his master . if a tree stood in her walk , he observed her always to go through it . in all this while she spake not . but one day the said david going over a hedge into the high-way , she came just against him , and he cried out , lord bless me , would i was dead ; shall i never be delivered from this misery ? at which , and the lord bless me too , says she : it was very happy you spake first , for till then i had no power to speak , though i have followed you so long . my name , says she , is margaret — i lived here before the war , and had one son by my husband . when he died i married a souldier , by whom i had several children , which that former son maintained , else we must have all starved . he lives beyond the baun-water ; pray go to him and bid him dig under such a harth , and there he shall find s. let him pay what i owe in such a place , and the rest to the charge unpayed at my funeral ; and go to my son that lives here , which i had by my latter husband , and tell him that he lives a wicked and a dissolute life , and is very unnatural and ungrateful to his brother that maintained him ; and if he does not mend his life , god almighty will destroy him . david hunter told her he never knew her . no , says she , i died seven years before you came into the countrey : but for all that , if he would do her message , she would never hurt him . but he deferred doing as the apparition bid him , and she appeared the night after as he lay in bed , and struck him on the shoulder very hard ; at which he cried out , and askt her if she did not promise she would not hurt him ? she said , that was if he did her message ; if not , she would kill him . he told her he could not go now by reason the waters were out . she said she was content he should stay till they were abated ; but charged him afterwards not to fail her . so he did her errand , and afterwards she appeared and gave him thanks . for now , said she , i shall be at rest , therefore pray you lift me up from the ground , and i will trouble you no more . so david hunter lifted her up from the ground , and , as he said , she felt just like a bag of feathers in his arms . so she vanisht , and he heard most delicate musick as she went off , over his head ; and he never was more troubled . this account the poor fellow gave us every day as the apparition spake to him , and my lady conway came to portmore , where she askt the fellow the same questions and many more . this i know to be true , being all the while with my lord of down , and the fellow a poor neat-herd there . thomas alcock . advertisement . it is no small confirmation to my self of the truth of these two last stories , in both which my lady conway is mentioned , in that i received two letters from that incomparable lady out of ireland touching them both . the former is dated , lisburne , march . . wherein she writes thus : i have spoken lately with two simple country-people who have been much perplexed with two several persons who have died lately . the stories are too long to relate ; but the circumstances are such , as i know not how to misbelieve the stories . the persons cannot be suspected to have any design , and were altogether unacquainted in the families of them that appeared , and wholly ignorant of those things in them that they now relate , and have charge to sollicite the amendment of some miscarriages by some persons intrusted , which they could never hear of , as is supposed , by any other means . there are many other probabilities , but all evaded by several persons here . and to give you a taste of their goodly e●…asions , i will transcribe a passage out of the other letter of the said excellent lady , dated , lisburne , april . . wherein she writes thus : the relation i sent you of two in this country is certainly liable to as little exception ( there was mention of the drummer of tedworth before ) as any one shall meet with ; as may appear by the diligent search some have made for a flaw and objection against the parties , who , after all , they confess , must needs appear perfectly uninteressed , and impossible to have had from any concerned what they have delivered . but they believe that either drunkenness or desperate melancholy did by chance enable them to light upon greater truths than themselves thought of . thus far that excellent person . and it was enough for this noble lady onely to recite their solution of the phaenomenon into melancholy and drunkenness , it being so trisling and silly , that it wanted to further refutation than the mere recital . that drink may discover the secrets of him that is drunk , as the poet observes , is reasonable enough : but that a man by being drunk is better capacitated to understand the secrets of another man , or of his family , is so wilde a paradox , that no sober man can admit it . and what is melancholy but a natural drunkenness when it serments ? and moreover , it being but by chance that melancholy or drunkenness enables them to light upon such things , why may not sanguine and sobriety chance as well to do the same , and not rather better , if there be any betterness in things by chance : but if there be any advantage in fermenting melancholy or strong drink , it is because the soul is more excited , and made more ready to discover its own more inward furniture , as men in drink reveal their own secrets . but the soul has no innate idea's of particular things , and therefore the greatest estervescency of drink or melancholy will not a jot better dispose her to the knowledge of particulars , but indispose her for the reception of them from without . so blindly do these witlings philosophize touching things of this nature . and yet , i dare say , this was the very best of their evasions : which being no better against these two stories , and the stories so sifted and examined ( to say nothing of others ) by a person of so quick a wit , impartial judgment and sagacity , as i know that excellent lady to have been , i must confess , that to me it is a confirmation as strong as i can desire for the main strokes of the stories , of which i retain some memory , having heard a more particular account of them from her ladyship presently upon her return from ireland some sixteen years ago . nor do doubt but mr. alcock has approved himself a faithful reciter of them as to the main ; nor can there any one rightly be deemed more fit and able , he being present at the examination of taverner , and dwelling at portmore with the bishop of down , whose servant hunter was . relat. xxviii . the confessions of certain scotch witches , taken out of an authentick copy of their trial at the assizes held at paisley in scotland , feb. . . touching the bewitching of sir george maxwel . the tenour of the confessions taken before justices : as first of annabil stuart of the age of fourteen years , or thereby ; who declared that she was brought in the presence of the justices for the crime of witchcraft ; and declared , that on harvest last , the devil in the shape of a black man came to her mothers house , and required the declarant to give her self up to him ; and that the devil promised her that she should not want any thing that was good . declares , that she being enticed by her mother jannet mathie , and bessie weir , who was officer to their several meetings , she put her hand to the crown of her head , and the other to the sole of her foot , and did give herself up to the devil . declares , that her mother promised her a new coat for doing of it . declares , that her spirits name was enippa , and that the devil took her by the hand and nipped her arm , which continued to be sore for half an hour . declares , that the devil in the shape of a black man lay with her in the bed under the clothes , and that she found him cold . declares , that thereafter he placed her nearest himself . and declares , she was present in her mothers house when the effigies of wax was made ; and that it was made to represent sir george maxwel . declares , that the black man , janet mathie , the declarant's mother ( whose spirit 's name was landlady ; ) bessie weir , whose spirit 's name is sopha ; margaret craige , whose spirits name is rigerum ; and margaret jackson , whose spirit 's name is locas , were all present at the making of the said effigies ; and that they bound it on a spit , and turned it before the fire ; and that it was turned by bessie weir , saying , as they turned it , sir george maxwel , sir george maxwel ; and that this was expressed by all of them , and by the declarant . declares , that this picture was made in october last . and further declares , that upon the third day of january instant , bessie weir came to her mother's house , and advertised her to come to her brother john stuart's upon the night following . and that accordingly she came to the place , where she found bessie weir , margery craige , magaret jackson , and her brother john stuart , and a man with black clothes , a blue band , and white hand-cuffs with hogers , and that his feet were cloven . and the declarant sate down by the fire-side with them , when they made a picture of clay , in which they placed pins in the brest and sides : and declares , that they placed one in every side , and one in the breast . declared , that the black man did put the pins in the picture of wax ; but is not sure who put in the pins in the picture of clay . declares , that the effigies produced are the effigies she saw made . declares , that the black mans name is ejoall . this declaration was emitted before james dunlop of husil , william gremlaye , &c. jan. . . ita est . robertus park notarius publicus , &c. the second confession is of john stuart , who being interrogate anent this crime of witchcraft , declared , that upon wednesday the third day of january instant , bessie weir in pollocton came to the declarant late at night , who being without doors near his own house , the said bessie weir did intimate to him , that there was a meeting to be at his house the next day : and that the devil under the shape of a black man , margaret jackson , margery craige , and the said bessie weir , were to be present . and that bessie weir required the declarant to be there , which he promised . and that the next night , after the declarant had gone to bed , the black man came in and called the declarant quietly by his name . upon which he arose from his bed , and put on his clothes , and lighted a candle . declares , that margaret jackson , bessie weir , and margery craige did enter in at a window in the gavil of the declarant's house . and that the first thing that the black man required , was , that the declarant should renounce his baptism , and deliver himself up wholly to him : which the declarant did , by putting one hand on the crown of his head , and the other on the sole of his foot. and that he was tempted to it by the devil 's promising that he should not want any pleasure , and that he should get his heart filled on all that shall do him wrong . declares , that he gave him the name of jonas for his spirits name . declares , that thereafter the devil required every one of their consents for the making of the effigies of clay for the taking away the life of sir george maxwel of pollock , to revenge the taking of the declarants mother jannet mathie . declares , that every one of the persons above named gave their consent to the making of the said effigies , and that they wrought the clay , and that the black man did make the figure of the head and face and two arms to the said effigies . declares , that the devil set three pins in the same , one in each side , and one in the breast : and that the declarant did hold the candle to them all the time the picture was making . and that he observed one of the black man's feet to be cloven : and that the black man's apparel was black : and that he had a bluish band and handcuffs ; and that he had hogers on his legs without shoes : and that the black man's voice was hough and goustie . and further declares , that after they had begun the forming of the effigies , his sister annabil stuart , a childe of thirteen or fourteen years of age , came knocking at the door , and being let in by the declarant , she staid with them a considerable time , but that she went away before the rest , he having opened the door to her . declares , that the rest went out at the window at which they entred . declares , that the effigies was placed by bessie weir in his bedstraw . he further declares , he himself did envy against sir george maxwel for apprehending jannet mathie his mother : and that bessie weir had great malice against this sir george maxwel ; and that her quarrel was , as the declarant conceived , because the said sir george had not entred her husband to his harvest-service ; and also declares , that the said effigies was made upon the fourth day of january instant , and that the devil's name was ejoall . declares that his spirits name was jonas , and bessie weir's spirits name , who was officer , was sopha ; and that margaret jackson's spirit 's name was locas ; and that annabil stuart's , the declarant's sister 's was enippa ; but does not remember what margery craige's spirit 's name was . declares , that he cannot write . this confession was emitted in the presence of the witnesses to the other confession , and on the same day . ita est . robertus park notarius publicus , &c. the confession of margaret jackson relict of tho. stuart in shaws , who being examined by the justices anent her being guilty of witchcraft , declares , that she was present at the making of the first essigies and picture that was made in jannet mathie's house in october , and that the devil in the shape of a black man , jannet mathie , bessie weir , margery craige , and annabil stuart , was present at the making of the said essigies , and that it was made to represent sir george maxwel of pollock , for the taking away his life . declares , that fourty years ago , or thereabout , she was at pollockshaw-croft , with some few sticks on her back , and that the black man came to her , and that she did give up herself unto the black man from the top of her head to the sole of her foot ; and that this was after the declarants renouncing of her baptism ; and that the spirit 's name which he designed her was locas . and that about the third or fourth of january instant , or thereby , in the night-time when she awaked , she found a man to be in bed with her , whom she supposed to have been her husband , though her husband had been dead twenty years or thereby , and that the man immediately disappeared : and declares that this man who disappeared was the devil . declares , that upon thursday the fourth of january instant , she was present in the house of john stuart at night when the effigies of clay was made , and that she saw the black man there , sometimes sitting , sometimes standing with john stuart ; and that the black man's clothes were black , and that he had white handcuffs . and that bessie weir in pollockton , annabil stuart in shaws , and margery craige were at the aforesaid time and place of making the said effigies of clay ; and declares , that she gave her consent to the making of the same ; and declares that the devils name who compeired in the black man's shape was ejoall . sic subscribitur . ita est . robertus park notarius publicus , &c. now follow the depositions of certain persons agreeing with the confessions of the abovesaid witches . a●…dr . martin servitour to the lord of pollock , of the age of thirty years or thereby , depones , that he was present in the house of jannet mathie pannal when the picture of wax produced was found in a little hole in the wall at the back of the fire . depones , that sir george his sickness did fall upon him about the eighteenth of october or thereby . depones , that the picture of wax was found on the ** of december , and that sir george his sickness did abate and relent about the time the picture of wax was found and discovered in jannet mathie's house . depones , that the pins were placed in the right and left sides , and that sir george maxwel of pollock his pains , as he understood by sir george's complaining of these pains , lay most in his right and left sides . and depones , that sir george his pains did abate and relent after the finding of the said picture of wax and taking out of the pins as is said . and depones , that the pannal jannet mathie has been by fame and bruite reputed a witch these several years by past . and this is the truth as he shall answer to god. sic subscrib . andr. martin . laurence pollock secretary to the lord of pollock , sworn and purged of partial counsel , depones as follows , that on the ** day of december he was in the pannal jannet mathie's house when the picture was found ; and that he did not see it before it was brought to the pannal's door . depones , that sir george maxwel of pollock's sickness did seize upon him about the fourteenth of october or thereby , and he did continue in his sickness or distemper for six weeks or thereby . depones , that sir george his sickness did abate and relent after the finding of the said picture of wax and taking out of the pins that were in the effigies . depones , that by open bruit and common fame , jannet mathie , and bessie weir , and margery craige , are brandit to be witches . depones , that the truth is this as he shall answer it to god. sic subscrib . laurence pollock . lodovic stuart of auchunhead being sworn and purged of partial counsel , depones , that sir george his sickness fell upon him the fourteenth or fifteenth of october or thereby . depones , that he was not present at the finding of the picture of wax ; but that he had seen sir george maxwel of pollock after it was found ; and having seen him in his sickness oftentimes before , he did perceive that sir george had sensibly recovered after the time that the said picture was said to be found , which was upon the th or th of december . depones , that jannet mathie and margery craige two of the pannals are by report of the country said to be witches . depones , that he having come to pollock he did see sir george maxwel , whose pains did recur , and that his pains and torments were greatly encreased in respect of what they were before the finding of the picture of wax . depones , that upon the th of january when they left the said sir george maxwel of pollock , the deponent james dunlop of housil , allan douglace , and several others , did go to the house of john stuart warlock in pollock-shaw , and there he found a picture of clay in the said john stuart's bedstraw . depones , that there was three pins in the said picture of clay , and that there was one in each side , and one in the breast . and depones , that being returned to sir george his house , sir george told the deponent that he found great ease of his pains , and that it was before the deponent housil and the rest did reveal to him that they had found the said picture of clay ; and further depones , that to his own observation he did perceive that sir george had sensibly recovered . depones , that they took the said john stuart pannal prisoner with them at the finding of the said effigies . and depones , that this is truth as he shall answer it to god. sic subscrib . lodowick stuart . there follow more depositions in the copy , but these are the most for our purpose , and enough to discover that the consession of those witches are no fables nor dreams . advertisement . these confessions and depositions are transcribed out of the copy in the same scottish dialect that i found them ; and several words there are which i profess i understand not , as those for example concerning the black mans voice , that it was hough and goustie : but if the voice of this black man be like that of his who appeared to the witches whom mr. hunt examined , they may signifie a big and low voice . there is another scottish trial of witches amongst mr. glanvil's papers , with the same general subscription that this has , viz. robert martin clerk to the justice court. but that is of too old a date , it being in the year , to comply with the title of our stories . but it being a true copy of record so authentick , though not so fresh , it may haply not be amiss briefly to name some effects , kinds , or circumstances of witchcraft therein mentioned ; such especially as have not occurred in the foregoing stories ; as the giving and taking away power from sundry mens genitalmembers , for which jannet clark was accused . that which is observable in john fiene is , that the devil appeared to him not in black , but in white raiment ; but proposed as hellish a covenant to him as those fiends that appear in black . as also lying dead two or three hours , and his spirit tane , ( as the phrase in the record is ) ●…is being carried or transported to many mountains , and , as he thought , through the world , according to his own depositions . his hearing the devil preach in a kirk in the pulpit in the night by candle-light , the candle burning blue . that in a conventicle of witches , whose names are specified in the record , he with the rest at parting kissed the devil's breech ; the record speaks more broadly . his skimming on the sea in a boat with those of his gang , and his foretelling the leak in the queens ship by the help of the devil . his raising winds with the rest at the king's passage into denmark , by casting a cat into the sea , which the devil delivered to them , and taught them to cry hola when they cast it in . his raising a mist at the king's return from denmark , by getting satan to cast a thing like a foot-ball ( it appeared to john like a wisp ) into the sea , which made a vapour or reek to arise , whereby the king's majesty might be cast upon the coast of england . his hearing the devil again preach in a pulpit in black , who after pointed them to graves , to open and dismember the corpse therein ; which done , incontinently they were transported without words . his opening locks by sorcery , as one by mere blowing into a womans hand while he sa●…e by the fire . his raising sour candles on the luggs of an horse , and another on the top of the staff of his rider in the night , that he made it as light as day ; and how the man sell down dead at the entring within his house at his return home . his embarquing in a boat with other witches , and sailing over sea , and entring within a ship , and drinking good wine and ale there , and sinking the ship when they had done , with the persons in it . his kissing satan's breech again alter another conventicle . his being swistly carried above in the chasing of a cat to catch her to cast into the sea , thereby to raise winds , according to the prescription of satan . his pretending to tell any man how long he should live if he told him but the day of his birth . there are also several things in agnes sympson's witchcrast , such as there scarce occur the like in the foregoing stories . as her skill in diseases . that the sickness of will. black was an elf-shot . her heating also of them by sorcery , and foretelling the party whether he should live or die , and others how long they should live . her taking the sick parties pains and sickness upon herself for a time , and then translating it to a third person . her use of long scriptural prayers and rhymes containing the main points of christianity , so that she may seem to have been not so much a white witch as an holy woman . and yet it is upon record that she made a covenant with the devil in the shape of a man , and in suchlike hellish manner as other witches do . but when she sought for answers from the devil upon any occasion , he appeared to her in the shape of a dog ; but the formula of her dismissing of him , was , the charging him to depart on the law he lives on , as she did when she dismist him after her consulting him about the old lady edmonston's sickness ; but her invocation was , elva , come and speak to me , who came in the likeness of a dog. her sailing with her fellow-witches in a boat to a ship , where the devil caused her to drink good wine , she neither seeing the mariners , nor the mariners her . but after all , the devil raised a wind whereby the ship perished . her baptizing , and using other ceremonies upon a cat , with other witches , to hinder the queen's coming into scotland . her raising of a spirit to conjure a picture of wax for the destroying of mr. john moscrope . hitherto i have brought but small shreds out of this ancient record , but i will conclude with a full paragraph , it containing the confession of agnes sympson to king james then king of the scots : which is this . item , fyled and convict for sameckle as she confest before his majesty , that the devil in mans likeness met her going out in the fields from her own house at keith betwixt five and six at even , being alone , and commandit her to be at north-bervick-kirk the next night . and she past then on horseback , conveyed by her good-son called john couper , and lighted at the kirk-yard , or a little before she came to it , about eleven hours at even . they danced along the kirk-yard , geilie duncan plaid to them on a trump , john fien mussiled led all the rest ; the said agnes and her daughter followed next . besides , there were kate grey , george moilis wife , robert greirson , katharine duncan , bessie right , isabel gilmore , john graymaill , duncan buchanan , thomas barnhil and his wife , gilbert macgil , john macgil , katharine macgil , with the rest of their complices above an hundred persons , whereof there were six men , and all the rest women . the women made first their homage , and then the men. the men were turned nine times widdershins about , and the women six times . john fien blew up the doors and blew in the lights , which were like mickle black candles sticking round about the pulpit . the devil startit up himself in the pulpit like a mickle black man , and every one answered here. mr. robert greirson being named , they ran all hirdie girdie , and were angry : for it was promised he should be called robert the comptroller , alias rob the rowar , for expriming of his name . the first thing he demandit was , if they keept all promise , and been good servants , and what they had done since the last time they had conveined . at his command they opened up three graves , two within and ane without the kirk , and took off the joynts of their fingers , toes , and neise , and parted them amongst them : and the said agnes sympson got for her part a winding-sheet and two joynts . the devil commandit them to keep the joynts upon them while they were dry , and then to make a powder of them to do evil withal . then he commandit them to keep his commandments , which were to do all the evil they could . before they departed they kiss'd his breech ; the record speaks more broad , as i noted before . he had on him ane gown and ane hat , which were both black : and they that were assembled part stood and part sate : john fien was ever nearest the devil at his left elbock , graymaill keeped the door . i have retained the scotch dialect here also , for the more authentickness of the matter , and have adjoyned this large paragraph , the confession therein contained being in all probability a more special occasion of king james his changing his opinion touching the existence of witches , which he was , as is reported , inclinable to think to be but a mere conceit before . for he was then but young , not passing five or six and twenty years of age when this examination was had before him . and part of the third chapter of his second book of his daemonologie seems to be a transcript of this very confession . wheresore this being so considerable an occurrence touching a business of such moment , the bringing in here so old a story amongst those of fresher memory , will , i hope , bring along with it its own excuse . thus have we contrived all the relations in mr. glanvil's papers which were thought considerable , into this second part of his saducismus triumphatus . he once intended to subjoyn thereto an answer to webster , wagstaff , and the author of the doctrine of devils , as you may observe from the first section of his proof of apparitions , &c. from holy scripture : but partly by bringing in already the chief things in that rude draught begun , into what is here published , and partly by stating the question truly and with right judgement , he has prevented himself , and made that labour needless . as indeed in a manner it ever was , their objections against mr. glanvil's opinion on these points , being wondrous weak , sorry and sophistical , and such as it were pity that any man of parts who can bestow his time better should squander it away in confuting such trisles . there is nothing that makes any least shew of strength , but that touching the palpability of the consistency of the bodies of the familiars of witches , as if it weakened our saviour's argument to his disciples for his resurrection , where he bids them handle him and see , for a spirit has not flesh and bones as they see him have . and he bids thomas thrust his hand into his side , that they might be sure he was no spectre or spirit , but the very christ with his flesh , bloud , and bones as he had before his crucifixion ; and they were as well ascertained of this , as sense , nay the surest sense , that of touch or feeling , could make them , that he had really flesh and bones , and such a temperament as humane bodies have . nor can any cavil avail against this from the familiars of witches , that will not as well weaken the assurance that we converse with such or such a friend , but with some spectre like him ; so that the allegation is as weak as peevish and malicious . and if he should doubt whether it was his real friend , or some spectre , if his friend should offer himself , as our saviour did , to be touched , searched and felt , would not any body think it were sufficient assurance ? but for a perverse caviller or crazy sceptick , what is it that will satisfie them ? but it may be it will be said , that there be concomitant considerations that will assure the party it is his friend and not a spectre . and are there not concomitant considerations here also ? the ancient prophecies , and christ's own prediction that he should rise from the dead out of the grave . and that god is a god of truth , and not of unfaithfulness and imposture : which assurance is of a more high and divine tenour than that of feeling his body . and therefore our saviour saith to thomas ; thomas , because thou hast seen me thou hast believed , blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed : for it is a sign that a more noble and heavenly principle is awakened in them , that dispels that thick mist of sceptical stupor and dulness . it is a sign they are of a more holy , pure , and refined temper . and besides all this , what spectre ever challenged any one to make such a trial as this , to seel whether he was not very flesh and bone as real men are , when he would impose upon any ? or how is it proved , though spirits can bring their vehicle to a palpable consistency , that they can turn it into such as shall seel of the same articulate palpableness of flesh and bone and temperament that are in living men ? till this appear by confest experience to be in the palpable consistency of familiars or spirits that transact with witches , the allegation is infinitely weak upon that account also , as weak as spightful and perverse . but the hag-advocates will alledge any foolish thing , rather than seem to be able to say nothing . in the mean time i think it here seasonable to declare , that though this intended edition of saducismus triumphatus had not the happiness to be perfected by the ingenious author 's own hand before his death , yet such materials he left behind him , and the work in such a forwardness , that things being put together in that order and distinctness which they are , the discourse may prove as useful for the reclaiming men from saducism , though perhaps not altogether so delightful , as if his own hand had had the last polishing of it . and the publishing of it will also do him that right in the eyes of the world , that ( whereas he was suspected haply for some complaisance towards some persons that were over-inclinable to hobbianism , to have shrunk from the sense of such noble theories , with which his mind was enlightned in the morning of his days ) it from hence may appear that these things stuck close to him , and that he entertained them with a sincere warmth all along , as is evident from these papers then private within his own study-walls . as the profession of them broke out from him most expresly when he lay on his death-bed , as his intimate friend mr. thomas alcock largely sets down in a letter written to dr. h. more . and i think that is the time , if ever that men will speak their thoughts freely , as the poet hath observed in the like case , nam vere voces tum demum pectore ab imo ejiciuntur , & eripitur persona , manet res . to this sense , then 't is men from their hearts their mind declare , cast off their vizards , shew their faces bare . an account of what happened in the kingdom of sweden in the years , and . in relation to the persons that were accused for witches : and tried and executed by the king's command . printed at first in the swedish dialect by authority , and then translated into divers other languages ; and now , upon the requost of some friends , done into english. by anthony horneck preacher at the savoy . london : printed , . the translators preface to the reader . shewing , what credit may be given to the matter of fact related in the ensuing narrative . that we are to believe nothing but what we have seen , is a rule so false , that we dare not call our selves rational creatures , and avouch it ; yet as irrational as the maxime is , is become modish with some men , and those no ●…ery mean wits neither , to make use of it ; and though they will hardly own it in its full latitude , yet when it comes to particulars , let the reasons to the contrary be never so pregnant or convincing , they 'le hugg it as their sacred anchor , and laugh at all those credulous wretches that , without seeing , are so easily chous'd into an imprudent confidence . and this pitiful stratagem we find practised in no affair so much as that of spirits and witches , and apparitions , which must all be fancies , and hypocondriack dreams , and the effects of distempered brains , because their own are so dull as not to be able to pierce into those mysteries . i do not deny but the imagination may be , and is sometime , deluded ; and melancholy people may fancy they hear voices , and see very strange things , which have no other foundation but their own weakness , and like bubbles break into air , and nothing , by their own vanity . yet as no man doth therefore take unpolisht diamonds to be pebbles , because they do look like them , so neither must all passages of this nature we hear or read of , be traduced as self-conceit , or derided as old wives fables , because some smell strong of imposture and sophistication . we believe men of reason and experience , and free from fumes , when a person of ordinary intellectuals finds no great credit with us ; and if we think our selves wise for doing so , why should any man so much forget himself , as to be an infidel in point of such phaenomena's , when even the most judicious men have had experience of such passages ? it seems 〈◊〉 me no less than madness to contradict what both wise and unwise men do unanimously agree in ; and how jews . heathens , mahometans , and christians , both learned and unlearned , should come to conspire into this cheat , as yet seems to me un accountable . if some few melancholy monks , or old women had seen such ghosts and apparitions , we might then suspect that what they pretend to have seen might be nothing , but the effect of a disordered imagination ; but when the whole world , as it were , and men of all religions , men of all ages too , have been forced , by strong evidences , to acknowledge the truth of such occurrences , i know not what strength there can be in the argument drawn from the consent of nations in things of a sublimer nature , if here it be of no efficacy . men that have attempted to evade the places of scripture which speak of ghosts and witches , we see how they are forced to turn and wind the texts , and make , in a manner , noses of wax of them , and rather squeeze than gather the sence , as if the holy writers had spoke like sophisters , and not like men who made it their business to condescend to the capacity of the common people . let a man put no force at all on those passages of holy writ , and then see what sence they are like to yield . it 's strange to see how some men have endeavoured to elude the story of the witch of endor ; and as far as i can judge , they play more hocus-pocus tricks in the explication of that passage , than the witch herself did in raising the deceased samuel . to those straits is falshood driven , while truth loves plains , and undisguised expressions ; and errour will seek out holes and labyrinths to hide itself , while truth plays above board , and scorns the subterfuges of the sceptick interpreter . men and brethren , why should it seem a thing incredible with you that god should permit spirits to appear , and the devil to exert his power among men on earth ? hath god ever engaged his word to the contrary ; or is it against the nature of spirits to assume airy vehicles and bodies of condensed air , or to animate grosser substances to shew themselves to mortals upon certain occasions ? i am so much a prophet as to foresee what will be the fate of the ensuing story , nor can i suppose that upon the reading of it , mens verdicts will be much changed from what they were , if they have set up this resolution , to believe nothing that looks like the shadow of an apparition , though the things mentioned here cannot be unknown to any that have been conversant with forrain affairs of late years . and though there cannot be a greater evidence than the testimony of a whole kingdom , yet your nicer men will think it a disparagement to them to believe it ; nor will it ever extort assent from any that build the reputation of their wit upon contradicting what hath been received by the vulgar . the passages ▪ here related wrought so great a consternation , not onely on the natives , but strangers too , that the heer christian rumpf , then resident for the states general at stockholm , thought himself obliged to send away his little son for holland , lest he should be endangered by these villanous pra●…es , which seem'd to threaten all the inhabitants of the kingdom . and a friend of mine in town , being then in holstein , remembers very well that the duke of holstein sent an express to the king of sweden to know the truth of this famous witcheraft : to whom the king modestly replied , that his judges and commissioners had caused divers men , women , and children to be burnt and executed upon such pregnant evidences a●… were brought before them ; but whether the actions they confessed , and which were proved against them , were real , or onely effects of strong imagination , he was not as yet able to determine . add to all this , that the circumstances mentioned in the ensuing narrative , are at this day to be seen in the royal chancery at stockholm ; and a person of my acquaintance offered me ●…o procure a copy of them under the hands of publick registers , if i desired it : not to mention that in the year . baron sparr , who was sent embassadour from the crown of sweden to the court of england , did upon his word aver the matter of fact recorded here to be undoubtedly true , to several persons of note and eminency , with other particulars , stranger than those set down i●… these papers . and to this purpose divers ●…ters were sent from sweden and h●…urgh to several persons here in london : 〈◊〉 much , that should a man born in , or acquainted with those parts , hear any person dispute the truth of it , he would wonder where people have lived , or what sullen humour doth possess them , to disbelieve that which so many thousands in that kingdom have felt the sad effect of . that a spirit can lift up men and women , and grosser bodies , into the air , i question no more , than i doubt that the wind can overthrow houses , or drive stones upward from their centre . and though i cannot comprehend the philosophie of her committing venereal acts , and having children , and those children bringing forth toads and serpents ; yet i can very rationally conceive that he can animate dead bodies , and by the help of them commit those villanies which modesty bids us to conceal ; and he that was permitted , as we see in the gospel , to possess and actuate living men , and do with them almost what he pleased , why may not he commit wickedness by such instruments , and cast mists before the witches eyes , that they may not know who they are ? and he that could in aegypt produce frogs , either real or counterfeit ones , why may not he be supposed to be able to produce such toads and serpents out of any mishapen creatures , and of his own making ? spirits that know the nature of things better than man , and understand better how things are joyned and compounded , and what the ingredients of terrestrial productions are , and see things in their first principles , and have power over the air , and other elements , and have a thousand ways of shaping things and representing them to the sensual minds of men , what may not they be supposed to be able to do , if they have but god's permission to exert their power ? and that god doth sometimes permit such things , we have reason to believe , that see men sink into most sottish wickedness , which very often produces that fatal sentence we read of in the evangelist ; he that is filthy , let him be filthy still . and certainly there is such a judgement , that men are given up to believe a lye , and that god sends them strong delusions as punishments for their wilful obstinacy and resisting of the truth . spirits by being devils do not lose their nature ; and let any man in sober sadness consider what spirits are said to be able to do in scripture , and what they have done , and compare them with what is said in the following relation , and he will not think those things the witches confessed altogether impossible . i could add a known passage that happen'd in the year . at crassen in philesia , of an apothecarie's servant , one christopher manigh , who after his death returned to his master's shop , and seemed to be mighty busie there , walked about in the open streets , but spoke to no creature but to a maid-servant , and then vanished ; a thing which abundance of people , now living , will take their oath upon , that they saw him after his decease , at least his shape , and which occasioned publick disputations in the university of wittemberg : but it 's needless . if the stories related in the foregoing book are not sufficient to convince men . i am sure an example from beyond sea will gain no credit . it 's enough that i have shewn reasons which may induce my reader to believe , that he is not imposed upon by the following narrative , and that it is not in the nature of those pamphlets they cry about the streets , containing very dreadful news from the country of armies fighting in the air. farewel . a relation of the strange witchraft discovered in the village mohra in swedeland , taken out of the publick register of the lords commissioners appointed by his majesty the king of sweden to examine the whole business , in the years of our lord . and . the news of this witchraft coming to the kings ear , his maiesty was pleased to appoint commissioners , some of the clergy , and some of the laity , to make a journey to the town aforesaid , and to examine the whole business ; and accordingly the examination was ordered to be on the th of august ; and the commissioners met on the th instant , in the said village , at the parsons house , to whom both the minister and several people of fashion complained with tears in their eyes , of the miserable condition they were in , and therefore begg'd of them to think of some way whereby they might be delivered from their calamity . they gave the commissioners very strange instances of the devils tyranny among them ; how by the help of witches , he had drawn some hundreds of children to him , and made them subject to his power ; how he hath been seen to go in a visible shape through the country , and appeared daily to the people ; how he had wrought upon the poorer sort , by presenting them with meat and drink , and this way allured them to himself , with other circumstances to be mentioned hereafter . the inhabitants of the village added , with very great lamentations , that though their children had told all , and sought god very earnestly by prayer , they were carried away by him ; and therefore begg'd of the lords commissioners to root out these witches , that they might regain their former rest and quietness ; and the rather , because the children which used to be carried away there in the county or district of elfdale , since some witches had been burnt there , remained unmolested . that day being the last humiliation day instituted by authority for the removing of this judgment , the commissioners went to church , where there appeared a considerable assembly both of young and old : the children could read most of them , and sing psalms , and so could the women , though not with any great zeal or fervor . there were preached two sermons that day , in which the miserable case of those people that suffered themselves to be deluded by the devil , was laid open ; and these sermons were at last concluded with very ferverit prayer . the publick worship being over , all the people of the town were called together to the parsons house , near three thousand of them . silence being commanded , the kings commission was read publickly in the hearing of them all , and they were charged under very great penalties to conceal nothing of the truth , and to say nothing but the truth ; those especially who were guilty , that the children might be delivered from the clutches of the devil . they all promised obedience ; the guilty feignedly , but the guiltless weeping and crying bitterly . on the th of august the commissioners met again , consulting how they might withstand this dangerous flood ; after long deliberation , an order also coming from his majesty , they did resolve to execute such , as the matter of sact could be proved upon , examination being made ; for there were discovered no less than threescore and ten in the village aforesaid , three and twenty of which freely confessing their crimes , were condemned to dye ; the rest , one pretending that she was with child , and the other denying and pleading not guilty , were sent to fahluna , where most of them were afterwards executed . fifteen children which likewise confessed that they were engaged in this witchery , died as the rest ; six and thirty of them between nine and sixteen years of age , who had been less guilty , were sorced to run the gantlet ; twenty more , who had no great inclination , yet had been seduced to those hellish enterprizes , because they were very young , were condemned to be lash'd with rods upon their hands , for three sundays together at the church-door ; and the aforesaid six and thirty were also deem'd to be lashed this way once a week for a whole year together . the number of the seduced children was about three hundred . on the twenty fifth of august , execution was done upon the notoriously guilty , the day being bright and glorious , and the sun shining , and some thousands of people being present at the spectacle . the order and method observed in the examination was thus : first , the commissioners and the neighbouring justices went to prayer ; this done , the witches , who had most of them children with them , which they either had seduced , or attempted to seduce , from four years of age to sixteen , were set before them . some of the children complained lamentably of the misery and mischief they were forced sometime to suffer of the witches . the children being asked whether they were sure that they were at any time carried away by the devil ; they all declared they were , begging of the commissioners that they might be sreed from that intolerable yoak . hereupon the witches themselves were asked , whether the confessions of these children were true , and admonished to confess the truth , that they might turn away from the devil unto the living god. at first , most of them did very stifly , and without shedding the least tear , deny it , though much against their will and inclination . after this , the children were examined every one by themselves , to see whether their confessions did agree or no ; and the commissioners found that all of them , except some very little ones , who could not tell all the circumstances , did punctually agree in the confession of particulars . in the mean while the commissioners that were of the clergy examined the witches , but could not bring them to any confession , all continuing stedfast in their denyals , till at last some of them burst out into tears , and their consession agreed with what the children had said . and these expressed their abhorrency of the fact , and begg'd pardon ; adding , that the devil , whom they call'd loeyta , had stopt the mouths of some of them , and stopt the ears of others ; and being now gone from them , they could no longer conceal it , for they now perceived his treachery . the confession which the witches made in elfdale , to the judges there , agreed with the consession they made at mohra : and the chief things they confessed , consisted in these three points . . whither they used to go . . what kind of place it was they went to , called by them blockula , where the witches and the devil used to meet . . what evil or mischief they had either done or designed there . . of their journey to blockula . the contents of their confession . we of the province elfdale , do confess that we used to go to a gravel-pit which lay hard by a cross-way , and there we put on a garment over our heads , and then danced round , and after this ran to the cross-way , and called the devil thrice , first with a still voice , the second time somewhat louder , and the third time very loud , with these words , antecessor come and carry us to blockula . whereupon , immediately he used to appear , but in different habits ; but for the most part we saw him in a gray coat , and red and blue stockings : he had a red beard , a high-crown'd hat , with linnen of divers colours wrapt about it , and long garters upon his stockings . then he asked us whether we would serve him with soul and body . if we were content to do so , he set us on a beast which he had there ready , and carried us over churches and high walls ; and after all , we came to a green meadow where blockula lies . we must procure some shavings of altars , and church-clocks ; and then he gives us a horn with a salve in it , wherewith we do anoint our selves ; and then he gives us a saddle , with a hammer and a wooden nail , thereby to fix the saddle ; whereupon we call upon the devil , and away we go . those that were at the town of mohra , made in a manner the same declaration : being asked whether they were sure of a real personal transportation , and whether they were awake then when it was done ; they all answered in the affirmative , and that the devil sometimes laid something down in the place that was very like them . but one of them confessed , that he did onely take away her strength , and her body lay still upon the ground ; yet sometimes he took even her body with him . being asked how they could go with their bodies through chimneys and broken panes of glass , they said , that the devil did first remove all that might hinder them in their flight , and so they had room enough to go . others were asked how they were able to carry so many children with them ; and they answered , that when the children were asleep they came into the chamber , laid hold of the children , which straightway did awake , and asked them whether they would go to a feast with them ; to which some answer'd , yes , others no ; yet they were all forced to go . they only gave the children a shirt , a coat and a doublet , which was either red or blue , and so they did set them upon a beast of the devils providing , and then they rid away . the children confessed the same thing ; and some added , that because they had very fine cloaths put upon them , they were very willing to go . some of the children concealed it from their parents , but others discover'd it to them presently . the witches declared moreover , that till of late they never had that power to carry away children , but onely this year and the last , and the devil did at this time force them to it ; that heretofore it was sufficient to carry but one of their children , or a strangers child with them , which yet hapned seldom , but now he did plague them and whip them if they did not procure him children , insomuch that they had no peace nor quiet for him ; and whereas formerly one journey a week would serve turn , from their own town to the place aforesaid , now they were forced to run to other towns and places for children , and that some of them did bring with them some fifteen , some sixteen children every night . for their journey they said they made use of all so●…ts of instruments , of beasts , of men , of spits and posts , according as they had opportunity : if they do ride upon goats , and have many children with them , that all may have room , they stick a spit into the backside of the goat , and then are anointed with the aforesaid ointment . what the manner of their journey is , god alone knows . thus much was made out , that if the children did at any time name the names of those that had carried them away , they were again carried by force either to blockula , or to the cross way , and there miserably beaten , insomuch that some of them died of it : and this some of the witches consessed ; and added , that now they were exceedingly troubled and tortured in their minds for it . the children thus used lookt mighty bleak , wan , and beaten . the marks of the lashes the judges could not perceive in them , except in one boy , who had some wounds and holes in his back that were given him with thorns ; but the witches said they would quickly vanish . after this usage the children are exceeding weak ; and if any be carried over-night , they cannot recover themselves the next day ; and this happens to them by fits : and if a fit comes upon them , they lean on their mothers arms , who sit with them up sometimes all night ; and when they observe the paleness coming , they shake the children , but to no purpose . they observe further , that their childrens breasts grow cold at such times ; and they take sometimes a burning candle and stick it in their hair , which yet is not burnt by it . they swoun upon this paleness , which swoun lasteth sometimes half an hour , sometimes an hour , sometimes two hours ; and when the children come to themselves again , they mourn , and lament , and groan most miserably , and beg exceedingly to be eased : this two old men declared upon oath before the judges , and called all the inhabitants of the town to witness , as persons that had most of them experience of this strange symptome of their children . a little girl of elfdale confessed , that naming the name of jesus as she was carried away , she fell suddenly upon the ground , and got a great hole in her side , which the devil presently healed up again , and away he carried her ; and to this day the girl confessed she had exceeding great pain in her side . another boy confessed too , that one day he was carried away by his mistriss , and to perform the journey he took his own father's horse out of the meadow where it was , and upon his return she let the horse go in her own ground . the next morning the boys father sought for his horse , and not finding it , gave it over for lost ; but the boy told him the whole story , and so his father fetcht the horse back again ; and this one of the witches confessed . . of the place where they used to assemble , called blockula , and what they did there . they unanimously confessed that blockula is scituated in a delicate large meadow whereof you can see no end . the place or house they met at , had before it a gate painted with divers colours ; through this gate they went into a little meadow distinct from the other , where the beasts went that they used to ride on : but the men whom they made use of in their journey , stood in the house by the gate in a slumbering posture , sleeping against the wall . in a huge large room of this house , they said , there stood a very long table , at which the witches did sit down : and that hard by this room was another chamber where there were very lovely and delicate beds . the first thing they said they must do at blockula was , that they must deny all , and devote themselves body and soul to the devil , and promise to serve him faithfully , and confirm all this with an oath . hereupon they cut their fingers , and with their bloud writ their name in his book . they added , that he caused them to be baptized too by such priests as he had there , and made them confirm their baptism with dreadful oaths and imprecations . hereupon the devil gave them a purse , wherein there were shavings of clocks with a stone tied to it , which they threw into the water , and then were forced to speak these words ; as these shavings of the clock do never return to the clock from which they are taken , so may my soul never return to heaven . to which they add blasphemy and other oaths and curses . the mark of their cut fingers is not found in all of them : but a girl who had been slashed over her fingers , declared , that because she would not stretch out her fingers , the devil in anger had so cruelly wounded it . after this they sate down to table ; and those that the devil esteemed most , were placed nearest to him ; but the children must stand at the door , where he himself gives them meat and drink . the diet they did use to have there , was , they said , broth with colworts and bacon in it , oatmeal , bread spread with butter , milk and cheese . and they added , that sometimes it tasted very well , and sometimes very ill . after meals they went to dancing , and in the mean while swear and curse most dreadfully , and afterward they went to fighting one with another . those of elfdale consessed , that the devil used to play upon an harp before them , and afterwards to go with them that he liked best into a chamber , where he committed venereous acts with them ; and this indeed all confessed , that he had carnal knowledge of them , and that the devil had sons and daughters which he did marry together , and they did couple , and brought forth toads and serpents . one day the devil seemed to be dead , whereupon there was great lamentation at blockula ; but he soon awaked again . if he hath a mind to be merry with them , he lets them all ride upon spits before him ; takes afterwards the spits and beats them black and blue , and then laughs at them . and he bids them believe that the day of judgement will come speedily , and therefore sets them on work to build a great house of stone , promising , that in that house he will preserve them from god's fury , and cause them to enjoy the greatest delights and pleasures : but while they work exceeding hard at it , there falls a great part of the wall down again , whereby some of the witches are commonly hurt , which makes him laugh , but presently he cures them again . they said they had seen sometimes a very great devil like a dragon with fire round about him , and bound with an iron chain ; and the devil that converses with them tells them , that if they confess any thing , he will let that great devil loose upon them , whereby all swedeland shall come into great danger . they added , that the devil had a church there , such another as is in the town of mohra . when the commissioners were coming , he told the witches , they should not fear them ; for he would certainly kill them all . and they confessed , that some of them had attempted to murther the commissioners , but had not been able to effect it . some of the children talked much of a white angel which used to forbid them doing what the devil had bid them do , and told them that those doings should not last long : what had been done , had been permitted because of the wickedness of the people , and the carrying away of the children should be made manifest . and they added , that this white angel would place himself sometimes at the door betwixt the witches and the children ; and when they came to blockula he pulled the children back , but the witches they went in . . of the mischief or evil which the witches promised to do to men and beasts . they confessed that they were to promise the devil that they would do all that 's ill ; and that the devil taught them to milk , which was in this wise : they used to stick a knife in the wall , and hang a kind of a label on it , which they drew and stroaked ; and as long as this lasted , the persons that they have power over were miserably plagued , and the beasts were milked that way , till sometimes they died of it . a woman confessed , that the devil gave her a wooden knife , wherewith , going into houses , she had power to kill any thing she touched with it ; yet there were few that would confess that they had hurt any man or woman . being asked whether they had murthered any children , they confessed , that they had indeed tormented them , but did not know whether any of them had died of those plagues . and added , that the devil had shewed them several places where he had power to do mischief . the minister of elfdale declared , that one night these witches were , to his thinking , upon the crown of his head , and that from thence he had had a long continued pain of the head. one of the witches confessed too , that the devil had sent her to torment that minister : and that she was ordered to use a nail and strike it into his head , but it would not enter very deep ; and hence came that head-ach . the aforesaid minister said also , that one night he felt a pain as if it were torn with an instrument that they cleanse flax with , or a flax-comb ; and when he waked he heard some-body scratching and scraping at the window , but could see no-body . and one of the witches confessed , that she was the person that did it , being sent by the devil . the minister of mohra declared also , that one night one of these witches came into his house , and did so violently take him by the throat , that he thought he should have been choaked ; and waking , he saw the person that did it , but could not know her ; and that for some weeks he was not able to speak , or perform divine service . an old woman of elfdale confessed , that the devil had holpen her to make a nail , which she struck into a boys knee , of which stroke the boy remained lame a long time . and she added , that before she burnt or was execut●…d by the hand of justice , the boy would recover . they confessed also , that the devil gives them a beast about the bigness and shape of a young cat , which they call a carrier ; and that he gives them a bird too as big as a raven , but white . and these two creatures they can send any where ; and where-ever they come , they take away all sorts of victuals they can get , butter , cheese , milk , bacon , and all sorts of seeds whatever they find , and carry it to the witch . what the bird brings they may keep for themselves ; but what the carrier brings they must reserve for the devil , and that 's brought to blockula , where he doth give them of it so much as he thinks fit . they add likewise , that these carriers fill themselves so full , sometimes , that they are forced to spew by the way , which spewing is found in several gardens wherecolworts grow , and not far from the houses of those witches . it is of a yellow colour like gold , and is called butter of witches . the lords commissioners were indeed very earnest , and took great pains to perswade them to shew some of their tricks , but to no purpose ; for they did all unanimously confess , that since they had confessed all , they found that all their witchcraft was gone , and that the devil at this time appeared to them very terrible , with claws on his hands and feet , and with horns on his head , and a long tail behind , and shewed to them a pit burning , with a hand put out ; but the devil did thrust the person down again with an iron-fork ; and suggested to the witches , that if they continued in their confession , he will deal with them in the same manner . the abovesaid relation is taken out of the publick register , where all this is related with more circumstances . and at this time through all the country there are prayers weekly in all churches , to the end that almighty god would pull down the devils power , and deliver those poor creatures which have hitherto groaned under it . finis . advertisement . the swedish narrative with the preface being printed in the translator's absence , several gross errata's have crept in , which the reader is entreated to pardon , and to correct with his pen. preface , pagé . lin . . read , plain . pres . p. . l. . r. his committing . pres . p. . l. . r. crossen in silesia . l. . r. mon●…gk . p. . l. . r. yet they were carried . l. . r. carried away in the county . p. . l. . r. examination being made , there . p. . l. . r. of the town . p. . l. . r. singer . p. . l. . r. as if he were . p. . l. . r. he would deal errata sic corrige . in part the first . pag. . l. . r. grammar . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . r. imposture . considerations about witchcraft . p. . l. . r. shewing . p. . l. . r. silaments . p. . l. . r. trifling . p. . l. . r. marsilius , p. . l. . r. being as being is . p. . l. . r. genus . p. . l. . r. so solemnly . in the second part. p. . l. . r. father the examinant . p. . l. . r. wrest . p. . l. . r. she saith . p. . l. . r. fide . p. . l. . r. aversation . p. . l. . r. saying . p. . l. . r. ban-water . p. . l. . r. healing . p. . l. . r. verae . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e see figure . sect. . an exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches together with a brief discourse of idolatry, with application to the church of rome / by henry more ... more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) an exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches together with a brief discourse of idolatry, with application to the church of rome / by henry more ... more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ], p. printed by james flesher, london : . each part has special t.p.: the first with title, "a propheticall exposition of the seven epistles," and the second, "an antidote against idolatry." errata: p. [ ] at beginning. reproduction of original in union theological seminary library, new york. marginal notes. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and 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bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng catholic church -- controversial literature. bible. -- n.t. -- revelation i-iii -- commentaries. idols and images -- worship. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - john latta sampled and proofread - john latta text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion imprimatur . sam. parker . errata . in the pref. to the exposit. pag. . l. . interims , read , in terms . in the exposit. p. . l. . r. the church in thyatira . p. . l. . r. in thyatira . p. . l. . r. event . in the antidote . p. . l. ult . for at , r. all . p. . l. . r. impossible , or . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . an exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches ; together with a brief discourse of idolatry ; with application to the church of rome . by henry more d. d. prov . . . the lying tongue is but for a moment : but the lip of truth shall be established for ever . london , printed by james flesher . . to the right honourable , john lord robarts , baron of truro , lord privy seal , lord lieutenant of ireland , and one of his majestie 's most honourable privy council . my lord , what things single are usually thought sufficient to determine ones choice of a patron to any publick writing , whether it be private obligation from particular favours , or the desire of leaving to posterity a just and honourable testimony to the parts and vertues of some excellent person , or the design of obtaining the patronage and countenance of such a person , to what we adventure to make publick , as is able by his learning , judgement and publick repute to protect it from injury ; all these do so happily conspire in your lordship , that i should have thought it an omission unpardonable if i had not taken this opportunity of paying your lordship this due respect , and of doing that right to the truth i here professe as to put it under the wings of so fit and able a patron . which still ought to be done with the greater alacrity , there being that providentiall coincidence of things , that i should have a book ready in the presse at that very time that our gracious sovereign did think good to conferre upon your lordship that great honour and trust of being lord lieutenant of ireland . which conjuncture of circumstances could not but excite me with greater readinesse to make your lordship this congratulatory present upon your new honour . which all good christians that know the inflexible uprightnesse of your spirit , and cordiall adherence to the apostolick faith and just interest of reformed christendome , cannot but congratulate . for this it is indeed , my lord , that has begot in me a more special esteem of your lordship , that in this instable and uncertain age you have with that steadinesse of minde and clearnesse of judgement stuck to the truth and purity of the protestant religion , as discerning the vast difference betwixt it and popery , which yet too many now-adays , either because they are removed too great a distance from all religion , or else because their sight is extremely dim in matters of this nature , can not , or will not , discern . but this is spoke with a more particular regard to the second part of this small volume i present your lordship withall . but the first also has its speciall sutablenesse to the circumstances your lordship is placed in . for by how much more power any one is intrusted with by any protestant prince , by so much the more he is concerned to understand how sacred a province he undertakes , and how expresly that religion and profession is owned in the holy prophecies christ has delivered to his church , above and against the barbarous and idolatrous tyrannie of the church of rome . which things are set out with that plainnesse , evidence and easiness in this exposition of the epistles to the seven churches that i hope no impartial reader can fail of being made exceeding sensible of the sacrednesse of the protestant religion and interest by the perusall thereof . besides , that there are some notable hints in these oracles for the more happy and secure management of the affairs of reformed christendome . i shall onely name that passage to the sardian church , remember how thou hast received , and heard , and hold fast , &c. the verse runs out into a dreadfull commination of heavy judgements to the angel of the church of sardis for his loosenesse and slipperinesse in those points of apostolick doctrine which the reformers had recovered into the knowledge of so great a part of the world . and amongst the things that they had heard , that voice of the angel , apoc. . come out of her , my people , that ye be not partakers of her sins , &c. was not the least articulate . whereby the church of rome was openly declared to be that babylong the great , the mother of fornications and the abominations of the earth ; as also the pope with his clergie to be that notorious antichrist . this the sardian church had received from their evangelicall predecessours . and it had been their everlasting establishment never to have for got it , never to have let it die , or smothered it . but what mischief the halting betwixt two opinions is apt to doe , and the not taking notice how sacred a thing the protestant religion is in the sight of god , and how rejectaneous that of the church of rome , i believe neither your lordship nor any one else that has his eyes opened either into history or the affairs of the world can be ignorant of , or , if he be a good christian , make the observation without regrett and sorrow . but the prospect of what is to come is more pleasing and comfortable ; which is the state of the church of philadelphia , into which the sardian church , that is to say , reformed christendome or the protestant churches , are to passe , as being the next successive intervall . which therefore cannot but be a note of main importance for all reformed states and kingdomes to stear their affairs by , namely , to bend their course thitherward whither they are pointed to by the finger of god himself in his holy oracles . for they sail as it were with winde and tide whose carriage of affairs approaches the nearest to the purpose of divine fate . which is lively pourtray'd all along in this stupendious book of prophecies written by s. john. the most pleasing and enravishing part whereof is that which is typify'd or prefigured by the church of philadelphia , the church of brotherly love . which is the next scene divine providence has designed to introduce . and which all those do most grosly oppose who for difference in matters not revealed in holy scripture , nor necessary to salvation , think they have pretense enough with all unchristian keennesse and bitternesse of spirit to reproach and inveigh one against another , to nourish the highest animosities , and to watch all opportunities of persecuting , ruining , and trampling one another into the dirt. as this is extremely unchristian in it self , so is it also diametrically opposite to that dispensation that god intends to introduce into his church as the chiefest blessing he has in store for her , and is as it were knocking at the door to enter , if the lovd noise of hot and quarrelsome brawls about matters of smaller moment ( as indeed all things are exceeding small , unlesse of apostolicall institution , if they stand in competition with that royal law of love , ) did not drown the voice thereof , that it cannot so easily be heard . but assuredly , my lord , the letting this philadelphian dispensation in , or the approaching as near unto it as we can , will prove the most effectuall healing and consolidating the interest of reformed christendome , as well in the whole as in the parts thereof , as we can desire or expect . which therefore i humbly conceive , that all persons the more power they are intrusted with in any of the protestant dominions , are the more obliged to consider by how much more they are obliged to endeavour to promote the interest of their prince and countrey whose affairs they administer . and therefore the right understanding of the vision of the seven churches so manifestly giving this aim for the prosperous steering of affairs , i thought this my exposition of the said churches no unsutable present in these circumstances to be made unto your lordship . of the usefulnesse whereof i having spoken more particularly in my preface , i leave the whole to your lordship's judicious and favourable perusall , and wishing you all good successe in the great charge his majesty has intrusted you with , i cease to give you any farther trouble then in subscribing my self , my lord , your lordship 's most humble and affectionate servant , henry more . the preface to the reader , declaring the occasion , solidity and usefulnesse of the ensuing exposition . reader , how unexpected this of mine may prove to thee i know not , but sure i am , it cannot be more then to my self , who , as i have never yet affected to bestow my pains on these kind of subjects , so i thought my self secure , since the edition of the late dialogues touching the kingdome of god , from ever being engaged in them any more . for i made account that what was contained in mr. mede's writings , and in synopsis prophetica , and the above-said dialogues , might afford all usefull satisfaction to any sober enquirer into these mysteries ▪ and i find neither my will nor my abilities to reach to the service of men in needlesse curiosities . and therefore thou maist be sure i did not deem the propheticall exposition of these seven epistles to the seven churches in asia to be such , but rather that there was no such exposition that belonged unto them , and therefore rested in the literal sense , and an usefull moral application of them as they might sute any particular church in any age of the world placed in like circumstances with any of these seven churches . and these things methought were so obvious , that it would have been a needlesse labour to have attempted any thing in so facil a matter , where others have done sufficiently well before . . but having sent the above-said dialogues to a gentleman in the countrey , to whom they were not unacceptable , as being curious of subjects of this nature ; after his civil acknowledgements for my sending him the book , and some pertinent reflexions on the main matter , at last he falls upon this business of the seven churches in these words : i find not , saith he , any late writer apply the seven churches mystically , revel . . and . chapters ; mr. brightman having failed in his application . but i suppose the farther enquiry into that point may be worth your pains . i shall now onely hint , that the seven churches may represent the state of the whole visible church from christ's time to the day of judgement : viz. ephesus , till anno christi ; smyrna , till ; pergamus , declining towards popery , till the waldensian separation , about anno ; thyatira , emerging from popery , till the pacification at passaw in germany . and king edward the sixth's reformation in england ; sardis , the state of reformed christendome , ( the kingdome of god , ) since whole nations fell from rome , and untill rome shall be totally subdued ; philadelphia , when truth , peace and holinesse shall universally prevail , and the name of the new jerusalem shall be written upon the church , as is expresly promised chap. . . interims too august for such a poor church as that was literally taken . and this may be a key for all the rest . and lastly , laodicea , when towards the end of the thousand years satan shall be again let loose a little space , and gog and magog shall trouble the church , then luke-warm as in the days of noah . this was the whole ( verbatim ) of what that gentleman writ touching this matter . and this , reader , was the occasion of my undertaking , and the advantage i had for the more easily performing this task of expounding these seven epistles to the seven churches . for the intervalls here suggested , though they are most-what different from what upon due deliberation with my self i thought fittest to pitch upon , yet it is manifest that they could not but give aim toward a more speedy hitting the intended mark , and a more quick dispatch of this exposition which i present thee with . indeed , upon my endeavouring to frame out the same , and my searching into commentatours , i found that p. galatinus interprets these seven churches of seven intervalls of the church from the beginning to the end thereof . this cornelius à lapide notes , but not a word of the limits of these intervalls . and since my compleating this exposition , a learned friend of mine shew'd me a passage in mr. mede , lib. . c. . where he argues for a mysticall sense of these seven churches , and seems to insinuate that they should prophetically sample unto us a seven-fold successive temper and condition of the whole visible church , according to the severall ages thereof , answering to the pattern of the seven churches here , and that à principio ad finem , and takes notice of the fitly placing of philadelphia partly about the time the beast is falling , and partly after his destruction , accordingly as we had already set down in our exposition . but the bounds of these successive intervalls he has not attempted to define . that advantage therefore i had onely from the party i above mentioned , as well as the first invitation to undertake this present design . . but now as to the solidity of the performance , although i must confess the clearnesse of the matter appeared so great to me at last , as that it infinitely exceeded my first expectations of it , and proved satisfactory to my self beyond what i thought possible ; yet i will not here pre-ingage thy judgement or belief , but freely remit thee to the exposition it self , the preparations to it in the first and second chapters , and the brief recapitulation of the strength of it in the last . onely , that thou maist have nothing to stumble at , i will endeavour to prevent thee in some exceptions , the greatest i am aware of , and yet in my own judgement not considerable . . as first , i would not have thee , according to the manner of some , let thy minde dwell upon any thing that may seem less strong alone . as that chap. . sect. . where i intimate , that because , in the * interpreting the seven golden candlesticks , they are not apply'd nominatim to the seven particular churches in asia that are said to be writ to , it is an invitation to the thinking of a more released sense , and that some other seven churches in another kinde of meaning ( as well as they , if not rather then they , ) may be aimed at ; this ought to be no prejudice to the other arguments in the same chapter that are so cogent , but rather those other to afford strength to this , which is added as an easy probability , not a convictive demonstration , and therefore is not considerable but in conjunction with the rest , as is intimated in the very place . and i will onely adde here , that if there were no other sense then the literal to be look'd after , that in all likelihood , for sureness to keep men from errour , and from doing wrong to any church by a false interpretation , the spirit of god would have expresly said , that the seven candlesticks were the seven churches of asia that were there writ to , and that the seven stars were the seven bishops of those very churches . i must confess , in my own judgement , i think there is some such thing hinted at as i have declared , which made me not omit it . but i am also as sensible that it can signifie little to those that are averse , and are given to cavill , who are prone to dwell on what seems weak , that they may ease their minds of what is more strong and stringent . which is a fault that is punishment enough to him that commits it , he usually losing truth by thus indulging to his own ill humour . . i know not whether thou mayst mistake me also in the allusion i memtion of ephesus to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if it sounded like aphesus , which i would warrant from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( one of the matres lectionis before the use of points ) standing for both a and e ; whence i would argue the affinity of those two sounds : when as thou maist object , that martinius expresly speaking of these three matres lectionis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith , that the first stands for a , the second for e and i , and the third for o and u. but in hebrew writings without points there is nothing more familiar then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 standing for e , as in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the like . and in the greek tongue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are frequently changed into one another , according to diversity of dialect : so that there can be no difficulty touching this thing . . thirdly , it may haply be objected against our interpreting the ten days of affliction predicted to the church in smyrna , of the ten famous persecutions , that some reckon more then ten , adding an eleventh under constantius the arian , a twelfth under julian the apostate , and a thirteenth under the arian emperour valens . but prophecy being an anticipatorie history , it is sufficient that it speak according to the usual language of historians , whose reports run up on these ten so famously and distinctly taken notice of . and there are no more then ten in the intervall we set for the church of smyrna . after which conspicuously comes in the scene of pergamus , christianity having got the conquest over the old persecuting paganism . and julian reigned not two years , and his attempts were most-what of another kinde , and none considerable so as to break this number . besides that it happened in an intervall notoriously of another nature and denomination , and therefore is not to be taken notice of , it bearing no proportion at all to the contrary affairs of that period . indeed the arrian persecutions are very considerable , but they are of another nature from these ten. the church being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 became proud , as well as exalted out of the dust , and contentious , as well as proud , according to that of the wise man , prov. . . onely by pride cometh contention , but with the well-advised is wisedome . christ was therefore faithfull in his promise to the church in smyrna , and procured them the crown of life , and safety from the pagan cruelty and persecution . but that the church afterwards in pergamus fell out amongst themselves , was their own fault , none of his , that taught them expresly , that by this shall all men know ye are my disciples , if ye love one another . . fourthly , it may perhaps seem hard to thee , that i interpret the eating of things offered to idols of communicating with the church of rome in their idolatrous masse . for how can that consecrated bread be said to be offered to an idol ? it is true , he that they pretend to offer it to is no idol , but the true god. but by their idolatrous practices , communicating divine worship to what is not god , they debase the nature of the true god so far , as that they seem to lose the true notion of him , and in stead of him to worship an idol of their own brain . for the true god is not so mean a being that any others can partake in his worship . and therefore , according to the cutting and searching strain of the prophetick style , those that mingle idolatry with the worship of the true god are represented as having no true knowledge of him ; and therefore whatever religious worship they doe , they being devoid of the knowledge of the true god , they must necessarily be conceived to doe it to some idol . according to which sense is that of amos , o ye house of israel , have ye offered to me victimes and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wildernesse ? yea , ye took up the tabernacle of moloch , &c. where the true god , by reason of their idolatry in worshipping other objects , denies they at any time worshipped him , though questionless they thought they did offer victimes and sacrifices unto him . this is express and direct to the scruple propounded . but in our exposition it is onely insinuated , that there is a propheticall diorism , or a synecdoche , whereby idolatry in the general is signify'd by that particular species thereof , the eating things offered unto idols . which is used here with the greater fitness and elegancy , because that the idolatry is committed in that part of their religion that is performed in the eating of what is consecrated . and if we do but consider that the lord's supper is a feast upon a sacrifice , according to that of s. paul , christ our passeover is sacrificed for us ; therefore let us keep the feast , ( which notion is made out with abundant evidence by a late learned and judicious writer on that subject , ) we once supposing the eating of this sacrifice contaminated with idolatry , what can be a more natural and apposite reproach to it , then to parallel it to the feasts upon the pagan idolothyta , the eating of things offered unto idols ? wherefore there is not the least harshnesse imaginable in this interpretation . . fifthly , that it may be no prejudice to thy judgement touching the interpretation of antipas , and its signifying as much as one against the pope , because that learned and reverend expositour dr. hammond has styled it a wanton and vain phancy in mr. brightman , who presumed so to interpret it , thou art to consider , that this censure of that passage was not so much built upon any weakness in the passage it self , as that it was found in a farrago of conceits that were not so well managed as to support and countenance one another . and therefore for the general mr. brightman's exposition of these seven epistles being not so convictive , that judicious doctour was the more bold to speak so slightly of this passage thereof . which if it had been accompanied with other parts of his exposition of these epistles that had had the like unexceptionablenesse , it would never have been found fault with by so judicious a writer , as indeed there is no reason it should . for no name can be so fit and significant for this purpose as this of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , signifie one and the same thing , as eustathius and others from him usually do affirm . and it is most certainly true that they are both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as hesychius speaks . and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , have exquisitely the same signification . but to have found 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this supposed prophecy had been quite against the laws of the apocalyptick style , that is as regardfull of due concealment as of certainty of revealment . so that so plain a passage would have stood out very coursly and harshly above the rest of that smooth and delicate contexture of these visions , and occasioned a too-early intelligence of the meaning of these prophecies . besides that antipapas is no proper name of any man , and that the very literal story requires it should be antipas . wherefore the indication both for sense and for sound in this word antipas is as exquisite as , considering the nature of the apocalyptick style , it either could or ought to have been . so that he that would cavill at this interpretation must of necessity deny the hypothesis , and say there is no propheticall sense at all of these seven epistles . . nor needest thou scruple at my applying that passage of the martyr antipas to the albigenses and waldenses , that were slain in the field , as if they were not rightly termed martyrs . for he that can save his life by renouncing the truth , and yet parts with it , ( though it be in the field , ) is rightly deemed a martyr . which was the case of these men . and that is remarkable for this purpose which mr. mede takes notice of , that when simon , earl of monfort , had routed them , and made a great slaughter of them , and that the bishop of tolouse there present took thereupon the opportunity of exhorting them to return to the roman church , they seeing so plainly that the wrath of god was kindled against them for their separation from the church ; they answered in plain terms , that they were the people of god overcome by the beast , ( apoc. . . ) and knowing this to be their fate , yet would not flinch from the truth : and therefore the army returning upon them , they had all their throats cut in the field . whence it is manifest that they were martyrs properly so called , according to our definition thereof : as there were also severall antipas's in this intervall that suffered martyrdome in that way that thou canst not except against , that is to say , such as were merely passive , and made no resistence . some of them are named by mr. brightman , who if he had done as well on the other five churches as he has on this of pergamus and that of thyatira , his exposition of the seven churches had been considerable . . and lastly , to arm thee against the authority of the above-named venerable person touching the reason of the name of thyatira , as if it were as much as thygatira , a young daughter ; for which he perstringes mr. brightman , condemning the conceit for a mere groundless phancy ; i say , it is not evident that he so much reprehends him for the notation of the word , as for the application of it to such a sense as he there expresses : which is much different from that sense we have proposed , and far more dilute . but as for my self , i must confesse i could not but conceit that the notation of the word thyatira was alluded to , after i had read that passage in cornelius à lapide on the text : which , for thy fuller satisfaction , i shall transcribe . verùm strabo , lib. . plinius , lib. . cap. . & alii , passim tradunt eam ( that is , the city thyatira ) primitùs nuncupatam à seleuco , filio nicanoris , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ob laetum nuncium natae sibi filiae , unde nomen thyatirae . thyatira ergò graecè significat filiam ; quod aptè competit jezebeli illici , quae hîc arguitur . this of cornelius made me secure of the authentickness of this notation , he so precisely qùoting strabo and pliny for the same . and therefore i could not but persuade my self that the church of rome was here called thyatira with some allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . had it not been for this , i should have contented my self with the allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely . but these authorities made me search into the state of the church of rome in this intervall : and i found many things abundantly answerable to the title in the sense of this notation . amongst which if thou chance to think my reflexion upon the multitude of monks or friers in those days to bear the least strength with it , consider but what polydore virgil writes of that one order of franciscans , who , as some others , were the peculiarly-devoted to the blessed virgin : totum terrarum orbem , saith he , una haec implevit familia , ut vulgus jam tum stupefactum suspicaretur non tam pietatem , quàm otium & ignaviam interdum multis cordi esse . and to have such swarms of men that had renounced their virility , and led an idle life , and went gadding and gossipping up and down , telling odd stories to the people , as old wives and nurses do to children , having most of them chins as smooth as womens , and their faces mob'd in hoods , and long coats like petticoats , as if they had a greater ambition to appear the pedissequae or handmaids of the virgin mary , ( whom the doctours of that church love to call the daughter of god , ) then the men-servants and souldiers of jesus christ , who in this epistle to the church in thyatira , on purpose , one would think to reproach the roman church for this idolatrous corrivalry , or rather prelation , of the virgin in religious worship before christ , expresly calls himself the son of god ; this , i say , must assuredly be a consider able accession to the womanishnesse or daughterlinesse , if i may so speak , of the church of rome , which is here perstringed in this period by an allusion to thygatira , which signifies a daughter . . and although upon search after those places cited out of strabo and pliny i could not find what i sought for , yet i found no reason to recede from this part of my interpretation . first , because this passage cornelius cites may haply be found in some other place in those authours , though it be not in these . secondly , because there need be no such account of the notation of the word , sith paronomasticall allusion is sufficient , and thyatira of it self sounds near enough to thygatira , as must be generally allowed by all those that give their suffrage for the derivation therefrom . and it is not hard to prove it from the easie elision is made of the letter g out of sundry words . those in the english tongue are obvious . it is more pertinent to instance in the greek , where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amongst the poets is srequently for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and also in the middle of words , the boeotians pronouncing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . andfrom the latine magis is the french word mais , and from magister maister . and caninius in general pronounces , alia sunt innumerabilia quae deperdunt g : which implies it to be but a weak melting consonant , and such as easily degenerates into y , and , as it may be placed , is easily quite lost . which argues that the sound of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are near enough for paronomasticall allusion in any indifferent man's judgement whatsoever . and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , besides that common analogie of making nomina parasyllaba ( as they are called ) from the fifth declension , as from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , there is an example exquisitely answering this of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , namely , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that the word is unexceptionable . and lastly , though we should give it for granted that neither pliny nor strabo has any such passage as cornelius pretends , yet stephanus byzantius expresly has in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whose very words i will transcribe for thy better satisfaction . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say , thyatira , a city of lydia , was first called pelopea and semiramis ; but seleucus the son of nicanor waging war with lysimachus , and hearing that he had a daughter born to him , called the city thygatira . and it ought to be spoken in the feminine gender , though now they make it of the neuter . all this surely will abundantly warrant and secure a paronomasticall allusion in thygatira , which signifies a daughter . . and this may suffice for the making good the solidity of our exposition . and i say solidity , rather then perfection , affirming onely all to be right so far as we have gone , but not denying but that others better versed in history may more fully verifie what we have attempted . nor did all things occurr that my self had read , and should have noted if they had come to my minde . as those notorious ten years of the most bloudy persecution of all under diocletian , which , i think , may in special be alluded to by the ten days mentioned in the church of smyrna , as well as the ten persecutions in general , by a propheticall henopoeia . the notation also of the names of balaam and balac are very accommodate to pergamus ; pergamus signifying what is high , and balaam the lord of the people . which balaam being also the false prophet , and set here for the pope and his clergy , agrees excellently well with the lordlinesse of him in this pergamenian period , wherein he trode upon the necks of emperours , and kicked their crowns off with his feet . and balac , which is here the secular sovereignty , whether it signifie destruction or emptinesse , sutes very well with the state of that time , when the power of the pope had so overmastered all , that the secular magistrate was either but the bloudy executioner of his edicts , or else stood for a mere cypher , the temporal power being quite in a manner evacuated by the rampancy of the spiritual . and seeing all the names in this prophecy are so significant , i leave to the enquiry of the learned whether there may not be some proper significancy in the name of jezebel also ; for it seems not uncapable of a fitting etymologie , and that according to the pattern of a severe critick in the hebrew tongue ; who in his account of the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which is just such another composition as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ) says , that it may be compounded of either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ubi , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vae , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gloria . so therefore say i may 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be compounded of either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies habitaculum ; or else of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which in the chaldee ( which is but a dialect of the hebrew ) signifies stercus ; or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 insula , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stercus . which last is lesse accommodate to our purpose , unlesse insula here signifie symbolically , as mr. mede sometimes interprets it of a church as a place separate , as islands are by the sea , and holy , in that it is separate . and then the reproach will be upon the holy church of rome in this thyatirian intervall , as if it had become an island of filth and dung. which was too true of them , for all their outward gildings and paintings . but the other notations methinks are more simple and easie , and fitly accord with both the history of jezebel and the fate of the roman church at the end of the thyatirian intervall . for if we derive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ubi , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 habitaculum , it will plainly glance at jezebel's being slung out at the window from her habitation ; but most fitly prefigure the dispossession of the roman priests and friers at the beginning of the reformation , that they would be cast out of their habitations , and that their places should know them no more . so that the very name of jezebel bears in it the fate of that church at the close of that time . but if we derive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vae or heu , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stercus , both the fault and the punishment of the roman church will be found written in this name ; her filth and corruptions being compared to dung , and her punishment intimated not unlike that of jezebel's , as it is written , and the carcasse of jezebel shall be as the dung on the face of the earth . so that the notation of the name denotes with what foul reproach the papal power and superstition would be put down in those places out of which it was to be exterminated ; that it should be troden down into the very dirt. so that upon him that was in the pergamenian intervall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the lord of the people , ( the papal hierarchy domineering over all , ) at the close of this thyatirian intervall this insulting lamentation might be taken up with a paronomasticall allusion , not much unlike the foregoing etymologie in the sense thereof , and near enough to the sound of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , namely , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , alas the dung or dirt of the papal lordlinesse ! how is it troden down as the mire in the streets ! which was notoriously performed in the actings of martin luther against the pope and roman clergy . but whether this or what else may be alluded to by the sound of the name , i am not very solicitous , the story of the person being sufficient to warrant the meaning i have given of the text , as any one may see by perusing the expolition . and our performance ; i hope , will appear solid enough without descending to such curious niceties . we will therefore now onely adde something briefly touching the usesulnesse thereof , and so conclude . . and certainly our exposition of these seven epistles to the seven churches has an equal usefulnesse with any other exposition of the apocalyptick visions , and the more considerable , in that it is a more compendious comprehension of the main drift of them all . first then , it serves for the confirmation of our faith in the particular providence and watchfulnesse of christ over his church , it being so manifest from this exposition with what care and steddiness he hath carried on things hitherto in the first five intervalls , and that they have been no otherwise then he himself has predicted in these propheticall epistles . but then again , in the second place , here is an ample and timely testimony in the behalf of the protestants , i mean such as have declared against and forsaken the communion of the church of rome , from the time of the waldenses to the first reformers usually so called ; the waldenses being acknowledged the faithfull martyrs of christ , and those other that lived within the intervall of the church in thyatira carrying away no lesse encomium , as being thus described in the epistle to that church ; i know thy works , and charity , and service , and faith , and thy patience , and thy works , and the last to be more then the first . so that they approved themselves more and more , even till they broke out at last into a national reformation . and shall not our first reformers then be thought worthy of having the vision of the rising of the witnesses applied to them , who have so ample a testimony from christ himself , whom the father has constituted the judge of the whole world ? and shall not they rightly be said to have ascended into heaven in a politicall sense , to whom was made good that promise to the church in thyatira , to him that overcomes will i give power over the nations , & c ? this therefore of the church in thyatira does farther ratifie what we have * elsewhere delivered touching the rising of the witnesses , that the completion of that prophecy was in that wonderfull reformation god unexpectedly brought about by luther and others . whence it will follow , that the sound of the sixth trumpet is over , and that the forty two months , the one thousand two hundred and sixty days , or the time and times and half a time , are expired as to the fulfilling of prophecy ; and consequently , that it is in vain for any to compute any futurities upon the supposall of their expiration to come ; and that those that doe so will finde themselves confuted by the unsutablenesse of events , and thereby expose the endeavour of interpreting prophecies to reproach and scorn , and weaken mens belief even of those expositions that are true , and give great advantage to the common adversary . but as it is most true in it self , so it is most for the interest of reformed christendome , to take notice , that the protestant reformation is the fulfilling of the vision of the rising of the witnesses , and of their ascending into heaven ; that men may have that value for the reformation that is due thereto , ( it having thereby so plain a ratification from divine testimony of the rightfulnesse thereof against the tyrannies and idolatries of the church of rome , ) and that both magistrate and people may every-where be the better sodered together upon this consideration , and that all sects that keep the foundation may have the better esteem for one another , and not vilifie and hate one another in such sort as usually they do , but be in a readinesse for christian unity and love. for it is this dispensation of spirit that must give antichrist that most deadly blow that is to come , and not a flaming sword out of the mouth of the rider of the white horse literally understood , or large streams of fire spouted out of heaven upon him , or any such miraculous assistence , as some ignorantly expect at the finishing of the days . which groundlesse supposition is fit for nothing but to engender vain heats and presumptuous conceits , to which no answer will be given but shame and frustration . but the plain truth understood as it is , naturally tends to the begetting in all reformed christendome a mutuall esteem of one another , and the suppressing that vain presumption in parties , as if they were the sole people that the vision of the witnesses belonged to , and so ought to expect marvellous things for themselves conjoined with the destruction or suppression of all the rest that are not of their own party . which fond , or rather unchristian , conceits are quite expunged by the true and faithfull interpretation i have published to the world of the rising of the witnesses ; which puts them in a way rather of duly prizing one another , and of jointly endeavouring in the spirit of sobriety to advance the common interest of whole reformed christendome , then for any one party so vainly to presume of themselves above all the rest . and finally , this groundlesse expectation of any such wonderfull events upon the expiration of the days being thus wiped away , that time as to any fulfilling of prophecies being already expired , and no set time being defined for the future , but onely the order of things in the vision of the vials , it is left for the protestants to compute the approach of the final ruine of antichrist and the blessed millennium according to their own progresse in the mysterie of real regeneration and indispensable duties of christianity . by how much more holy , by how much more harmlesse , by how much more humble , by how much more heavenly-affected they finde one another , by how much more discreet , by how much more faithfull and obedient to the publick magistrate , by how much more kinde and loving to one another , and by how much more seriously affected for the advancing the publick good and the endeavouring the common welfare of all mankind , ( which will introduce the philadelphian intervall , ) by so much more near they may reckon the approach of the downfall of antichrist , and the glorious reign of christ in his saints at the happy millennium . but what other indications there be besides these in the visions of the prophets , whereby we may compute the nearnesse of those times , i must ingenuously confesse i know not . but this was a sudden excursion . we will return again into the way . . but thirdly , in that it is said , notwithstanding , i have a few things against thee , because thou sufferest that woman jezebel , which calleth her self a prophetesse , to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication , and to eat things sacrificed unto idols , &c. this is a perfect clearing of the protestant reformers from that hainous crime of schism that the church of rome so magisterially lays to their charge , it plainly implying that their separation from the church of rome was not onely no fault , but a vertue , and an indispensable point of obedience to the command of christ , and that it had been disobedience and rebellion against christ not to have separated , and therefore was impossible to be any schism . which is a thing worthy of our notice and consideration . as is also this , ( contrary to the opinion of some , otherwise learned , ) that to depart from the church of rome upon the very account of idolatry is not schism before god , but onely in the sight of men , and those , it is to be feared , of none of the purest minds , but rather such as have a greater sense of the carnal interest of the church then of the glory of god , and the purity of his worship . for christ , who is god blessed for ever , does here blame the church in thyatira , that she suffers the woman jezebel any longer , and does not cast her off , ( as the eunuchs cast her out of the window in the type , ) and that for this very cause , because she is a teacher of idolatry , and an abettour and countenancer of spiritual fornication ; as is manifest in the text. so that before god , or in the sight of god , both the church of rome stands guilty of idolatry , and also the protestants leaving her communion upon that account are acquitted from any the least taint or suspicion of schism . and that the spirit of god does but witnesse with our spirits in the truth of this matter , if thou hast not lost the free use of thy reason , that brief treatise of idolatry added to this present exposition will , i hope , abundantly satisfie thee : which therefore i have adjoined as a sutable appendage thereunto . . fourthly , in that reformed christendom ( especially after their remissnesse in life and manners , and contentionsnesse about trifles , ) is represented ( under the type of the church in sardis ) to be in such an imperfect condition , though emerged out of the grossnesse of the popish idolatry , ( for there is no farther complaint of either the doctrine of balaam or of jezebel here , ) this should teach us to be humble , and not over-fierce and confident in our opinions and doctrines , but meekly to bear one with another , and be ready to be instructed by one another for the clearing up the truth . but in the mean time things being no better then they are , sith they are no worse then they were predicted , we are hence to learn , that it is our duty never to suffer our mindes to relapse towards the flesh-pots of aegypt , or think we had as good goe back again to rome , as to be no better then we are . for this sardian state is like the wandring in the wildernesse betwixt aegypt and the promised land , which is the philadelphian state , into which there is no entrance till after the seven vials , that is , till the last of them be poured out , or at least a-pouring . as it is said in the fifteenth of the apocalypse ; and the temple was filled with smoak from the glory of god , and from his power ; and no man was able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled . where no man , according to the apocalyptick style , signifies , that that company of men that were to enter into , and make up , that state of the church which is here styled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the living temple of god , would not appear in that eminent condition till after the vials , the last either current or complete . which agrees admirably with that passage in the epistle to philadelphia , him that overcometh will i make a pillar in the temple of my god. so that these philadelphians shall not onely enter into the temple after the smoak of the vials , but never goe out of it again , according to the sense we have explained it in . wherefore because we are in a kinde of wildernesse-condition , we ought with faith and meeknesse and patience to abide till god shall bring us into that good land , and not to murmur against him , and reproach his providence , who hath thought fit to carry on things with such leisurely steps , nor peevishly and falsly to say that we had as good return to rome again , and that it is a question whether the reformation has done more good or hurt . for such thoughts or speeches are false , injudicious , and ingratefull reproaches against the sacred providence of god , whose ways these bitter , shallow and unsanctify'd spirits understand not , because the spirit of the world has blinded their eyes . and forasmuch as there is no complaint of idolatry in the epistle to this sardian church , nor the least hint to make any separation , as before , all the churches of reformed christendom , and all the particular sects and members thereof , ought to have a tender regard how they divide from one another or break communion for difference of ceremony or opinion ; but holding all the indispensable foundation , and bearing joint testimony against the grosse idolatries and wilde enormities of the church of rome , to study peace and mutuall compliance , that the body of reformed christendome may be more strong and compact to stand against the common enemie . but above all , we are with might and main to endeavour to perfect holinesse in the fear of god , and to purge our selves from all pollution of flesh and spirit , that we may prevent the extremity of that judgement which is threatned as suddenly and unexpectedly to come upon the church of sardis . and these , i think , are main usefulnesses discoverable in the interpretation of the epistle to the sardian church . . and fifthly , as for the exposition of the church of philadelphia , it is of main importance for the making of the world good . for it is the ordinary excuse for the reigning of impiety and immorality in the world , that men will be men as long as the world lasts , and that things are more likely ever to grow worse and worse then better : and therefore very few there are that will either attempt the amending of their own lives , or the encouraging others so to doe . when notwithstanding it is plain , according to the propheticall sense of the epistle to the church of philadelphia , that there will be a time when righteousnesse and true holinesse will have a most glorious reign upon earth . but those that are averse from this belief are usually averse also from believing any certitude in the expositions of prophecies . they will not , forsooth , be so presumptuous as to pretend they can understand them , especially such as either chastise the abominable wickednesses of the roman church , or such as promise times transcendently better . which is a piece of hypocrisie much like that of ahaz , when the prophet bid him ask a sign of the lord his god ; but he , good modest hypocrite , would not ask a sign , neither would he tempt the lord. the meaning whereof was , that he would not amuze nor distract his thoughts , nor render himself more obnoxious by taking notice of a supernatural evidence against the natural sentiments and persuasions of his own carnal minde , under whose government he was resolved to be , and not be dissettled by the inlets of any higher light. the application is very easie and obvious . . and lastly , admitting the propheticall meaning of the epistle to the church of laodicea , it is of great use for the establishing our faith in that grand point , that this terrestriall scene will have an end , and that at the close of all christ will visibly come in judgement to reward all men according to their works ; that he will judge both the quick and the dead according to the orthodox sense of the apostolick doctrine . to all which we may adde , that as the expositions of these seven epistles to the seven churches in asia are in a manner as convincing as any other visions in the whole apocalypse , so they are far more easie , and reach the main design in a lesse compasse of words , and have not that operosenesse of synchronisms necessarily hanging on them as the other have for the clearing of the sense ; but are onely seven intervalls manifestly succeeding one another , whose bounds so far as things are past are easily determinable . and we know that the intervall of sardis ends where that of philadelphia begins , and laodicea is the close of all . which facility and comprehensiblenesse must needs improve the usefulnesse of these expositions very considerably . and there wanting nothing but the significations of the names to be added for the easie applicability of the events to each intervall , i will , for the satisfaction of the reader , briefly furnish them that have no skill in the original languages with the sense and meaning of the names of all the seven churches aforehand . . ephesus therefore , with an allusion to the greek word ephesis , signifies desire , the first moving principle that drives on an activity for the attaining the main scope we aim at . but with an allusion to aphesis , it signisies remissnesse , for which this church of ephesus is blamed : or else , alluding again to aphesis , it signifies the starting or letting loose the racers at the beginning of the race . which agrees very fitly with this ephesine intervall , which is the beginning of the church , and of the whole course of providence concerning the same to the end of the world . smyrna signifies myrrh , intimating the bitter affliction of the primitive church under the ten pagan persecutions . pergamus signifies sublimity or exaltation , intimating the raising of the church out of her former dejected and afflicted condition under the aforesaid persecutions into a glorious triumph over paganism ; as it fell out upon the conquest of constantine the great . it signifies also , or prefigures , the enormous haughtinesse of the church of rome in that intervall . thyatira , in allusion to thygatira a daughter , intimates the more-then-ordinary womanishness of the church of rome in that intervall : but in allusion to thyateria , altars of incense or sweet odours , it signifies the more-then-ordinary frequentness of burning the blessed protestant martyrs with fire and faggot in this period . which cruelty though it was abominable in respect of that bloudy and barbarous church that committed it ; yet the suffering of those holy martyrs in this manner out of fidelity to christ and his truth was a sacrifice of sweet odours to him , and very gratefully accepted of him . sardis , in allusion to sarda or lapis sardius , ( the same that carnalina , ) signifies the imperfect and carnal condition of that intervall of the reformed church that is called sardian . philadelphia , which signifies charity in general , and particularly a more special love to them of the true houshold of faith , intimates the reign of the spirit , which is the spirit of love. for god is love , and he that abideth in love abideth in god , and god in him . this is that illustrious reign of christ in his millenniall empire of love , when the christian life shall take place , and opinions and persecutions shall be done away . and lastly , laodicea signifies a popular politicall or externally-legal righteousnesse , the outward form of the former philadelphian state , but , as in old age , the spirit much decay'd , though the outward figure of the body much-what the same . it signifies also the arraigning and judgeing of the people , that is , the nations of the world , when christ shall come to judge both the quick and the dead ; because this is to be performed at the close of this laodicean intervall . . the significancy of the names of these seven churches reckoned always in such an order , as that seven intervalls of the church , from the beginning to the end of all , answer exactly in the affairs of the church both to these names in this order they are reckoned , and to the conditions of the seven churches as they are orderly described in the seven epistles to them , is a plain demonstration to them that are not extremely refractory , ( especially if you adde the certainty that there must be a propheticall meaning of these epistles , as is made good in the first and second chapters of the ensuing book , ) i say , it is a plain demonstration , that our exposition is true , as well as so easie and comprehensible , and therefore of an universal usefulnesse as well to the illiterate as the learned . which i hope , reader , will be a sufficient excuse for the authour , that he has either invited thee to the pains of reading , or given himself the trouble of compiling , this present treatise . farewell . a propheticall exposition of the seven epistles sent to the seven churches in asia , from him that is , and was , and is to come . siracides . ch. . he that giveth his minde to the law of the most high , and is occupied in the meditation thereof , will seek out the wisedome of all the ancient , and be occupied in prophecies . a propheticall exposition of the seven epistles sent to the seven churches in asia . chap. i. a preparation toward the mysticall or propheticall interpretation of the seven epistles to the seven churches of asia . . we shall first premise , that as those two following prophecies of the seven seals , and of the opened book , reach from the beginning to the end of the church ; so this of the seven churches reaches also from the beginning of the church to the end of all . which seems congruous both from the nature of the vision it self , and from the following examples of the prophecies of the seven seals and the opened book . we shall premise in the second place , that as it is conspicuous that four of the names of these seven churches are directly significant of some state and condition they are in , viz. smyrna , pergamus , philadelphia and laodicea ; so it is exceeding credible that the other three names may allude to some thing that may set out their nature and condition also , viz. ephesus , thyatira and sardis ; as we shall take more express notice in the process of our exposition . lastly , which might as well ( if not better ) have been noted at first , this more mysticall sense , which we are now a-rendring of the seven churches , doth not at all clash with the literal sense of the same , nor exclude that usefull applicability of them for the reproof or praise of any churches particular in any time or age of the christian world , that are for the like things obnoxious or commendable . but the distinct providence of god , and his watchfulness and foresight of the affairs of his church , may haply be more illustrated and display'd by this mystical way of exposition then by that literal or moral . . we will therefore distinguish the whole duration of the church of christ , ( especially so far forth as it is within the limits of the roman empire , which also the other prophecies in the apocalyps seem chiefly to regard ) into seven intervalls , and will suppose the first intervall to end where the second begins , viz. in the tenth year of nero , or anno christi . . which period therefore of the ephesine church ending so early , even about thirty years before st. john's writing the apocalypse , agrees excellently well with that passage ch. . v. , . where , after christ's declaring himself the first and the last ; ( as before in the same chapter he is called he that was , and is , and is to come ) and his mentioning his own death and resurrection , and how that he will be alive to the end of the world to carry on the affairs of his church ; he presently inferrs , write therefore what things thou hast seen , what things are , and what things shall be hereafter , ( which he expresly and immediately calls the mystery of the seven stars and the seven golden candlesticks , ver . . which is worth the noting . ) what things thou hast seen already , in the times of thy life past , namely , the state of the ephesine church : what things are now present , viz. the smyrnian state of the church in which thou art , and tastest of the bitterness of it in this thy exile here in patmos ( for the ten persecutions were then already begun , and john was in the second of them : ) and what things shall be hereafter , namely , to the end of the world , in the residue of the period of the smyrnian church , and in the periods of the remainder of the seven churches succeeding . and questionless the vision of the rider of the * white horse respects what was then past , namely , christ's first warfare upon his conquest of death , and his being mounted into his glorify'd body ; who after from on high sent down succours to his apostles and disciples , and assisted and and managed that illustrious battel in the beginning of the apostolick times so successfully and gloriously , that infinite numbers of men were brought under the obedience of the gospel , even within the space of the ephesine period . . so that there can be no scruple of the church of ephesus representing a state of the church past ; but onely that it seems improper to direct an epistle to a church then out of being . but this can be no argument with them that hold the seven churches to be seven successive conditions of the church to the worlds end . for make the exitus of the ephesine church reach beyond s. john's time , suppose to anno christi , or thereabout ; the rest of the epistles will be writ to churches not yet in being , and some many hundreds , nay thousands of years ere they shall be : which yet they must not count absurd . . the briefest account therefore of this matter is this , that the spirit of god seems to drive on two main designs in the vision of these seven churches at once . the one , most effectually to animate and encourage the church to doe well , to stick to truth and holiness through all the trials and calamities of this present life ; as also to deterre them from all kind of sin and wickedness of what nature soever , whether apostasie from the faith , idolatry , sensuality , or what-ever remissness in manners : for which design this epistolar way is exceeding accommodate , it bearing the form of personally speaking to people , and so the more forcibly makes them take notice , in a manner whether they will or no , of what is said unto them . the other design , and that so laid as not to foregoe the former advantage , is to instruct the church in the providence of god and his foresight , to shew how all things lie bare before his eyes in such order and succession as they are in time to come to pass . in the literal sense of these epistles to the seven churches , that former design is plainly pursued and attained , understanding them directed to these seven churches in asia then in being ; and in a very great measure in the moral sense . these epistles , i say , being so applicable to any part of the catholick church in any age thereof , placed in the same or like circumstances of condition with these asiatick churches , this epistolar way will have a considerable efficacy and influence upon them , for either animation or reproof . . but now the great question is , why the prophetical design discoverable in the mystical interpretation should have been couched in this epistolar way , especially the epistle to ephesus , being writ after the ephesine period was expired . to which i answer , that this propheticall design was not intended for the ephesine church in this mysticall sense , but for future ages ; and therefore , it is taken in onely to make up the entireness of the whole succession of the church in its several distinct states from the beginning to the end of all . but this epistolar way is still retained in this mysticall sense , for the same usefulnesse it had in the literal to the seven churches in asia then really in being . for so soon as any of these letters by this mysticall sense is understood to be directed to any successive part of the church , as now , for example , ( as will appear anon ) the epistle to the church of sardis is directed to the protestant church or reformed christendome , this succession of the church ought to be as much concerned , as that particular church of sardis was in asia minor . and this intention of the holy ghost being once understood , it will be of the like usefulness to the philadelphian church especially , and also to the laodicean . wherefore the objections were but small , considering the usefulness of this epistolar way , though there were no other sense of these seven epistles and the seven churches but the mysticall . for as in an entire vision , where the beginning is touching something past or present , all goes under the title of propheticall , though that part that respects things past is but historicall representation : so in this entire epistolar vision , though the first part be epistolar , yet it is but historicall representation , exhibiting times and persons past ( as if they were present to be writ to ) and that for uniformity sake in the form of an epistle , as what is past in history under the form of propheticall vision , as the rider of the white horse , which is the first in the vision of the seals ; though the representation was of what was partly past , and partly present . but what is to come is the proper object of all vision propheticall . but now besides all this , in the literal sense there being then a church in ephesus when that epistle was wrote to it , and in a moral sense it being applicable to any church that does ephesize in any part of christendome and at any time ; the objection , in my judgment has melted into less then nothing . and therefore , notwithstanding this exception , we will not stick to place the end of the interval of the ephesine succession in the tenth of nero's reign , and in the year of christ . till then let the church of christ be represented under the title of ephesus ; from that time , till about three hundred and odd years after christ , under the name of smyrna : from thence , to the latter end of the persecution of the albigenses and waldenses , let her be the church dwelling in pergamus : from that time , till whole nations fell off from the pope , let the same church bear the name of thyatira : from that time protestantisme became the religion of nations , till the last vial , let this church bear the title of the church in sardis : from that time till the fourth thunder , let it wear the name of philadelphia : * from the fourth thunder till christ come visibly to judgement in the clouds , let the church bear the name of laodicea . these are the seven intervals , which how well they will fit with the titles of these distinct successive states of the church and the things spoken of them in the vision , i will anon endeavour to unfold . chap. ii. a farther preparation out of the first chapter of the apocalypse , whereby this propheticall meaning of the vision of the seven churches is more clearly assured . but in the mean time , for the greater assurance of this propheticall or mysticall sense , we will first make some farther remarks upon the first chapter of the apocalypso . where we will make onely this one modest supposition ; that the spirit of god sets down nothing immethodically nor in vain , or at least nothing vainly immethodicall . wherefore upon the very first verse , which bears the title of the whole book ; the revelation of jesus christ , which god gave unto him , to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass , that is , things to come to pass ; some shortly , and other some in succession of time , as all interpreters agree ; i cannot but note this , that if the spirit of god do but respicere titulum , ( as most certainly he will ) he will set down no entire visions , as this of the seven churches is , but they must in the main be of things to come to pass , not of things present merely , and not hid , but obvious to the eyes of men , as the state of the churches here mentioned was to the world at that time . and therefore something farther must be meant by them then can be contained in the literal sense ; which is not of things to come , as the title requires , but onely of things present , or some promises or threatnings that do not properly amount to the nature of prophetical prediction , no more then the law of moses to which they are annexed . . blessed is he that readeth , and they that hear the word of this prophecy , for the time is at hand . this again plainly shews that this book is all of it , i mean all the entire visions thereof , a book of prophecies ; which , as i intimated before , mere promises and threatnings cannot make it no more then they do those laws of moses to which they are adjoyned . and though the several states of the seven churches may be applicable to several states of particular churches of after-ages in christendome l yet it cannot properly be in this literal sense by way of prediction , but of example of vertue or vice , of pious or impious actions , which repeatedly happen in all history . whence if there be no more in it then thus , these epistles to the seven churches cannot be deemed any prophecy , and therefore are heterogeneous to the scope and title of the book . . but upon the so expresly calling this a book of prophecies for john to salute the seven churches in asia with this salutation , grace be unto you , and peace , from him which is , and which was , and which is to come ; methinks it does even forcibly drive a man to conceive that the vision of the seven churches which he so immediately falls upon , is a prophecy , according to the title immediately mentioned in the foregoing verse . besides that the description of the party in whose name he salutes them , which is , and which was , and which is to come , does very naturally insinuate that he is treating of what reaches from the beginning of the church to the latest ages thereof . which he insists more upon in the seventh verse ; ( after he has spoken of the person of christ ) behold , he cometh with the clouds , ( this reaches the last period of laodicea , when god will judge all people , ) and every eye shall see him , and they also which pierced him ; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him , ( for the earth shall then be burnt up with the works thereof : ) even so , amen . this will certainly come to pass about the seventh thunder , ( in that dark hollow dungeon , where there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth , ) let the sons of infidelity or unbelief conceit what they will to the contrary . wherefore the minde and scope of the spirit of prophecy seems here to be carried out even to the utmost ages of the world . . according as he declares in the next verse , i am alpha and omega , the beginning and the ending , saith the lord , which is , and which was , and which is to come , the almighty . that wisedome and power that reaches from one end to another mightily and sweetly orders all things . this methinks strongly insinuates that the vision of the seven churches ( as well as the vision of the seven seals and of the opened book ) reaches from the beginning of the church to the end of all things . which consideration is so repeated to us , that certainly it must not stand for nought , but is to give infallible aim at a higher meaning of the seven churches then we are at first aware of . for the summary of the vision , before he descends to the particular churches , begins and ends with this , v. . and . i am the first and the last , and have the keyes of hell and of death . which undoubtedly respects the execution of the final sentence under the seventh thunder . . but there is first this not able to be observed in the tenth verse : i was in the spirit on the lord's day , and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet . this pompous entrance with the sound of the trumpet into this vision of the seven churches , and the glorious appearance of the son of man walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks with seven stars in his right hand , comes up so near to that splendid preamble to the vision of the seven seals , that any sagacious man cannot but suspect that both the visions be of like extent and importance , and not of such private concern as merely to respect those seven churches in asia . for at the beginning of both these visions there is the glorious appearance of christ in the midst of the church : in the first , standing or walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks ; in the latter , sitting in the midst of the four beasts and four and twenty elders : and both these preambles to the future visions ushered in with the sound of the trumpet . wherefore the pomp being equal , the concern of each vision in all likelihood is equal . nor can it be pretended that the pomp before the vision of the seven churches was designed as a fair frontispice to the whole book of prophecies , because at least as splendid a frontispice is again erected before the vision of the seven seals . wherefore that former was entirely intended for the visions of the seven churches , and therefore portends some mighty concerning mysterie therein , and such as the present affairs of those seven particular churches in asia could not reach nor exhaust . but we proceed . . saying , i am alpha and omega , the first and the last : and what thou seest write in a book , and send it unto the seven churches which be in asia . here again , immediately before his sending to the seven churches of asia , he displays those titles of himself that least of all suit with the small continuance of those particular churches . but the holy catholick church endures from the beginning to the end of all . upon which therefore i cannot doubt but the spirit of prophecy had his eye at this time , and in the mystery understood by the seven churches in asia the holy catholick church divided into seven successive intervalls , according to the opinion of petrus galatinus . for indeed in all reason , ( if there was not some grand mysterie underneath , ) why should onely seven churches in asia be writ to , when there were others , many others , either there , or at least in other parts of the empire , in all likelihood as notorious for either the faults , the vertues , or the sufferings that are noted in these ? . you 'll say haply , that asia minor was the special diocese as it were of s. john. but they that answer thus forget that john was merely passive in these visions , and wrote no otherwise then he was moved by the holy ghost , which is no respecter of persons . besides that there were certainly other churches in asia besides these seven . why therefore just seven ? and why these ? but that seven signifies universality , is obvious in the prophetick style . therefore to the seven churches in asia is as much as to all the churches in asia . but it 's much that all the churches in asia minor should be thus carefully saluted by the holy ghost , and the rest of the churches in the christian world be taken no notice of : as if it were according to the proverb , that kissing goes by favour ; whenas yet it is expresly said in the scripture , that god is no respecter of persons , as i intimated before . . but you will farther urge , that we cannot possibly make it any more then all the churches in asia , unlesse asia were turned into an appellative . which consideration will put a bar to all attempts for any mysticall interpretation , so that we must necessarily rest in the literal . but hugo grotius , who interpreteth all the churches also mystically from the reason of their names , yet takes no notice of any allusive signification in the word asia . so that in this learned man's judgement that sequel is not so firm . but besides , though i do not love to play with words more then needs must , i think it not hard to finde out an allusive signification apposite enough in the name of asia to the mysticall sense intended . for both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( the former signifying fundamentum , the latter actio or effectio ) as to their paronomasticall sound are as near asia as the nicest criticall ear can require in these cases . and for the sense of them both , it is extremely accommodate to the present purpose . for then will this superscription , to the seven churches in asia , either signifie , to all the churches in the foundation , that is , that keep to the apostolick foundation in matter of doctrine and profession ; or else , to all the churches in action , that is to say , these epistles are writ to them with an intended censure of their actions . and it is said expresly by the logician touching the topick of effects and actions , hujus loci sunt laudes & vituperationes : upon which all these epistles altogether run . and , i know thy works , begins every epistle . besides that they are directed to none but such as profess the fundamentals of the christian faith , and nothing repugnant thereunto ; as will appear in our interpretation of them . nor is it strange that s. john , though writing in greek , should ( himself being a jew ) make an allusion to hebrew words ; nor is it without example . for the son of sirach does plainly in that passage in the greek text , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , allude to the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to hide , as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . these verbal allusions are so frequent in the prophetick style , that there is no need farther to take notice thereof : nor any doubt , i think , but the spirit of god would not in this book of prophecies , where all things are so comprehensive and majestick , salute onely seven particular churches of all the churches of the world , and that with such pompous circumstances ; nor when he had begun so magnificently a book of prophecies , and so expresly intitled it so , that he would immediately afterwards , as if he had forgot what he was about , bring in a large vision consisting of seven parts , wherein there is nothing at all propheticall , but onely the reproof or praises , the comminations or promises to a few particular churches . this is not according to the steddy order and method of divine wisedome , especially in this book , then which there never was nor ever will be any thing more accurately written . . and he had in his right hand seven stars . methinks it is extremely harsh to conceit that these seven stars are merely the seven bishops of any seven particular churches of asia , as if the rest were not supported nor guided by the hand of christ , or as if there were but seven in his right hand , but all the rest in his left . such high representations cannot be appropriated to any seven particular churches whatsoever . but seven must signifie all in both coexistence and in succession to the end of the world . which is a sense worthy so sublime a book as this of the apocalypse , and correspondent to the meaning of the rest of the septenaries that occur in this book of prophecy , they signifying an entire succession of some seven things or other which they are brought in to represent . . the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches , and the seven candlesticks which thou samest are the seven churches . though according to the literal sense these seven churches and the seven angels are easily applicable to those particular seven churches of asia above specify'd ; yet i cannot but conceive , that he not calling them here the seven churches of asia , but seven churches in general , it is an invitation to the searching out some more large propheticall sense , such as we drive at ; as also , in that he says the angels of the seven churches at large , and not of asia , nor names the churches by name ; but especially in that he calls them angels , in stead of bishops or pastours . for he continuing so in the propheticall style proper to this book , that ascribes all to the ministry of angels , it is a sign that the letters to the seven angels of the churches have also a propheticall sense as well as a literal , or rather that that is the sense that is most chiefly of all intended . . all these intimations put togegether out of this first chapter toward the assurance of a propheticall meaning of the seven churches of asia have that force with me , that though i could not my self produce such a continued mysticall or propheticall sense which would be all along easie and natural , yet i could not but vehemently suspect that there is some such sense , though it were not in my power to reach it . but if i have through the divine assistence light on such a sense as is both continually coherent , important , and according to the analogie of the propheticall style , i hope this preparation will even extort the belief thereof from the reader . but such as it is i shall now present to his view . chap. iii. the interpretation of the epistle to the ephesine church . . it was intimated out of the last verse of the foregoing chapter , that the omission of the appropriating the seven churches to asia by name was a fair invitation to us to suspect a more large and released sense of this vision of the seven churches . and indeed this releasement is more free in the greek copy then in our english translation . for the original runs thus ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are seven churches : not the seven churches which in the literal sense one might be prone to imagine to be none other then those situate in asia minor ; but this division of the churches into seven in the mysticall sense is rather distributio ex adjunctis then è subjectis , the whole catholick church in its succession from the beginning to the end being cast into seven intervalls , according to seven notorious qualifications or conditions thereof . for so we say , the primitive church , the apostatized church , the reformed church , &c. denoting not their place , but rather their time and quality ; which the genius of the prophetick style , if it were to express them , would exhibite as so many churches distinctly situate . . but besides this , it is farther to be noted , that the omission of the appropriating these seven churches to asia does also fairly quit the mysticall interpreter of giving any account of the signification of that name , it being omitted in the interpretation of the seven golden candlesticks . which i thought worth the noting , t●●● all pretense of cavill might be taken from them that may haply prove lesse satisfy'd with our giving an account of that greek name from an hebrew allusion , though their cavill to the more judicious i hope will seem altogether groundless . . nor , lastly , does the returning of the spirit of prophecy to the seven churches by name , in these epistles written to them , determine the vision solely and adequately to those seven churches of asia topically understood ; forasmuch as the names of all those churches at least by an easie allusion have an appellative signification , and manifestly denote their quality and condition ; as we shall see in the process of our exposition . . first therefore of the church of ephesus , which christ salutes after this manner : unto the angel of the church of ephesus write ; these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand , and who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks . that by angels , according to the apocalyptick style , all the agents under their presidency are represented or insinuated , i have already noted : and it is so frequent and obvious in the apocalypse , that none that is versed therein can any ways doubt of it . wherefore christ his writing to the angel of the church of ephesus in this mysticall sense , is his writing to all bishops , pastours and christians in this first apostolicall intervall of the church . and that particularly in this epistle to this church ( i mean , in the mysticall sense thereof ) he recommends himself to them under the character of him that holds the seven stars in his right hand , and who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks , the sense , stripp'd of this propheticall pomp , is , that i am he that supports all my bishops and pastours , and all that labour for the interest of my kingdome , from this time for ever : i am present with them , and uphold them . as he said at the first founding of the church , goe ye therefore and teach all nations , baptizing them in the name of the father , and of the son , and of the holy ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever i have commanded you . and , lo , i am with you alway , even unto the end of the world . he is in the midst of his church where-ever two or three are gathered together in his name : he walks through , in the midst of the successions of the seven intervalls of the church , the seven golden candlesticks , till the end of all . this is to encourage the beginning of his church , and is methodically put in the first place , as being general , and running through all the intervalls thereof till the end of the world . but that the frontispice , as i before called it , to this vision of the seven churches , which was the glorious character of our blessed saviour , is made use of by piece-meal for an entrance into the parts of this vision , as it is in them all ; i cannot but take notice how fitly it answers to the vision of the seals , where the parts of the frontispice are also made use of to usher in four of the seals ; for the four beasts one after another ( and that with apposite significancy , as here , ) at the opening of the four first seals are introduced uttering this voice , come and see . wherefore there being the like contrivance in both visions , it is a shrewd intimation that they are visions of like importance , that is , very reachingly and comprehensively propheticall ; as i endeavoured to evince out of the first chapter . . and how accommodate that part of the character of our blessed saviour is to this part of the vision that concerns the ephesine church , is already declared . we shall now confider the fitnesse of the paronomasticall allusion in the name . for that the propheticall style does affect such allusions , both grotius and mr. mede , and all interpreters that i know , are agreed upon . and grotius does particularly give the reason of the names of all these churches in his commentary on the apocalypse . so that there is nothing of levity or indiscretion in the attempting of the same . in ephesus therefore , for ought i know , there may be a double allusion , both to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , being one of the three matres lectionis , as they are called , contained in it both e and a , it does plainly intimate , that the sound of e and a are not so extremely different one from another . but as for the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it is hugely well and peculiarly accommodate to this church , it being the first intervall of the seven , as it were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the same , ) the careeres or lists from whence the race begins of the succession of all the seven churches , which ends in the end of the world . and s. paul compares the calling of christians to a race . . but as for the other word , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which grotius also expresly takes notice of , and pitches upon , the allusion thereto is unexceptionable both as to sound and signification . for it denotes that great servour and zealous desire the church in those first primitive and apostolick times had to the affairs of christ , and to the interest of his kingdome ; that they did sincerely and earnestly , under the conduct of that heros on the white horse , with his bow and arrow in his right hand , aim at and press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of god in christ jesus ; they were inflamed with the desire of enlarging the kingdome of christ here , and of obtaining that immarcescible crown hereafter , and of eating the fruit of eternall life in the celestiall paradise of god. this was the first love of this church , this was their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , their vehement and sincere desire , and onely scope of their actions , that they might serve christ here , and enjoy him afterwards in his heavenly kingdome . and therefore out of this fervent love to christ , and sense of their own happinesse , they did at first easily devour all difficulties . . as it is noted in the two following verses : i know thy works , and thy labour , and thy patience , and how thou canst not bear with such as are evil . for those that are sincerely and fervently good , it cannot but make them have an antipathy against what is evil , and discern them that bear themselves never so apostolically , and yet are not right at the bottome , to be but hypocrites and liers . and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles , and are not . that there were false apostles , deceitfull workers , transforming themselves into the apostles of christ , in the apostles time , ( within which the period of this church is , ) the apostle paul takes notice cor. . . which therefore is very agreeable to the intervall of this first church . for when should any pretend to be apostles sent from god , but in that age there were apostles sent into the world by him ? and hast born , and hast patience , and for my name 's sake hast laboured , and hast not fainted . what is here is much-what the same sense and words as were in the foregoing verse : but it is not repeated in vain . for these words i suppose , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , have a special correspondence to the reward promised in the . verse . he that will not labour shall not eat : but he that labours very much , and breaks not off by reason of any lazy fainting or culpable lassitude , is worthy to be fed with the bread of life . but besides , this labour and patience in the highest circumstances is here repeated , the better to set off the present remissness of some in this ephesine church , as it is in the next verse . . neverthelesse , i have something against thee , because thou hast left thy first love , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . grotius and dr. hammond expound it , because thou hast remitted of thy first love , and so allow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to signifie relaxation and remission in a contrary sense to intension of degrees : whence there may be another ground of allusion in ephesus to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and in counter distinction to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so that this ephesine church may have its name from its first intense love and its after remission thereof , by this double allusion . but as the allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is more perfect then that to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so questionless this first intervall of the church was more famous for their sincere and real love to christ , then for their remissnesse therein . which serves something for the countenancing of the term of this intervall . because thou hast left thy first love : that is to say , because thou hast ceased to be so fervent in spirit as at the first . which first love , being according to the measure of christ's own prescript , was certainly such as made the ephesine church love christ more then father , or mother , or wife , or children , or any worldly interest whatsoever , accordingly as he requires . but towards the end of the intervall of this first succession of the church this love and courage it seems began to abate , and too many began to gnosticize , as it is called , in that point , and think it a small thing to deny the faith in the time of persecution , even those that yet professed themselves of the church , and were believers . that this was within the intervall of the ephesine church ( in our sense ) several reproofs and exhortations in the epistles of the apostles do plainly evince . see dr. hammond's notes on this church , which fully reach our design . and the epistles of paul , and the first of peter , and that to the hebrews , were all writ within that intervall we have set for the ephesine church , and their faults committed before . which defaults this vision rebukes and threatens them for , by way of instruction for future ages , as it is in the following verse . . remember therefore from whence thou art fallen , and repent , and doe the first works . he bids them return to their first love , which was more strong then death . and it was fit to give this command and encouragement to the church , because of greater trials to come in her smyrnian condition . for before the ten persecutions martyrdome was more rare . or else i will come unto thee quickly , and will remove thy candlestick out of his place , except thou repent . that is , by an hypallage , i will remove thee from thy candlestick : which therefore is directed more especially to the bishops or pastours of the church at that time , as threatning them for falling into such a remiss degree of love themselves , or suffering their charges so to fall . for the seven candlesticks are the seven churches , ch. . v. . and the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches , that is to say , the bishops and pastours of the church . wherefore this commination to them may by an hypallage signifie their being removed from the church by some judgement or other , that is , as many of them as were thus carelesse and remisse . but to any members of the church the removing of the candlestick from them may be their amission of their church-membership ; as eripere alicui , or adimere alicui civitatem , is to make him cease to be a citizen any longer . which sense is also competible to the bishops or pastours ; christ may cut them off in foro divino from being any longer members of his church , and consequently from salvation . but there is yet another sense which pleaseth me best of all , in which victorinus , andreas , lyranus and alcazar do all agree , who interpret the removing of the candlestick out of its place , of the commination of some commotion or storm that should overtake this church ; not that this church should be carried quite away , but moved or agitated as in a storm or earthquake . this they understand of the ephesine church in asia literally : which is an argument that the interpretation seemed very easie and genuine unto them . and it is as easily applicable to our mysticall sense . but i would raise the storm a little higher , and make it signifie the storm of that dreadfull persecution that was to befall the church in the smyrnian intervall thereof . for it is look'd upon still as the apostolick church from the beginning to the end , though distinguished into these several intervalls . and it is observable , that there is in every epistle to the respective church some prediction to be fulfilled in the intervall of the following church . which i thought fit here to note at once , and shall particularly , as we proceed , take notice thereof in their proper places . the sense therefore seems to be this ; that unless the church in this ephesine intervall would be raised to an higher pitch of zeal , and love , and activity for the propagating of his kingdome , christ would excite their courage , and exercise it with such hot persecutions ( sanguis martyrum semen ecclesiae ) as would be more effectual for the bringing to pass his design . and it sell out accordingly in the ten persecutions within the smyrnian period of the church . . but this thou hast , that thou hatest the deeds of the nicolaitans , which i also hate . the church by this time had grown so soft and remisse , that there was not that zealous painfulnesse as heretofore in several of them , nor that resolved courage in suffering all things for christ's sake : yet they were not grown so corrupt and beastly as to be given up to the impurity of the nicolaitans , which in after-times some exercised from a mistake of an indiscreet act of one nicolas a deacon in these very times of the apostles . and from him were these beastly fellows called nicolaitans . but little or nothing of this impurity appeared within the period of this ephesine church , which yet the spirit of god foresaw would become detestably frequent and notorious in such wretches as , though they called themselves christians , the apostolick church would not own . this is allowed the ephesine church for their comfort and credit , that they are free from nicolaitism : and that they may adde to their purity invincible patience and fortitude , he adds , to him that overcometh will i give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of god. for their works and labour and pains-taking here is eating and refreshing promised them ; for their patience and hardship , a paradise of pleasure ; for their laying down their lives for the gospel , the enjoyment of eternal life in the kingdome of christ. lord , remember me when thou comest into thy kingdome . verily i say unto thee , this day shalt thou be with me in paradise . but we had almost forgot the former part of the seventh verse : he that hath an ear , let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . which being a common epiphonema to all these seven epistles , repeated in them from the first to the last , certainly must bear no small importance with it . two things therefore i conceive driven at by the affixing this epiphonema to each epistle . the one , to give us notice , that though there be a literal sense of these epistles , yet that they are every one of them also a parable ; which is intimated from this repeated form of speech which christ in his life-time usually added at the end of parables , he that has ears to hear , let him hear . besides that the very sense of the epiphonema implies so much ; which is , he that has an understanding to reach the depth of the meaning of these epistles , let him reach it . for it is not within the reach of every man's wit to find out the drift of them . the other thing driven at is , to intimate to us that there is a meaning lodged under these seven parabolicall epistles of exceeding great moment and concernment to the church . from whence i would inferre , that that interpretation of them that is of the greatest consequence is the most likely to prove true . and such i conceive this will approve it self to the judicious which we are now a-framing . and thus much of the first succession of the church , under the title of ephesus . chap. iv. the interpretation of the epistle to the church in smyrna . . and unto the angel of the church in smyrna write . we come now to the second succession of the state of the church , whose title is , the church in smyrna , and whose intervall is from the tenth of nero , or anno christi . till anno christi . when constantine the great , a zealous professour of christianity , had subdued the most potent enemies of it and himself . for then the church was raised out of the dust , or rather out of the mire and bloud that she was troden down into by the ten cruel persecutions , and began to be the church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the church in sublimity and exaltation , according to the signification of that word . but in this intervall of their afflictions and martyrdome she was the church in smyrna . now 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are all one , and signifie myrrh ; which whether you respect the plant it self , which grows in sandy , dry and uncultivated places , and is it self rough and thorny with sharp pricking leaves , or else the gumme of the tree , which is biting and bitter to the taste , and has its very name from thence in the syriack , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quia amara , as martinius notes , it is very significative of this intervall of the church that succeeds , wherein those horrible pagan persecutions raised against the christians are comprehended . so that smyrna signifies the bitter affliction and persecution of the church , as that lamp named wormwood does the sad calamity of the western caesareate . . to which you may add that smyrna , that is to say , myrrh , was a main ingredient in the embalming of the bodies of the dead : which again reflects upon the many funerals , or rather deaths and martyrdoms , of the members of the church which would be caused by the persecutions of those times . besides that , as myrrh keeps the body from corruption , it may be a symbol of the eternizing of the memory of the martyrs to all posterities . not to take notice of their conserving of their very bodies themselves , which they call reliques ; though this allusion can be no countenance to the abuses in those things . and lastly , this allusion to myrrh is still the more emphaticall , in that the body of our saviour , that faithfull witness , as he styles himself , after his martyrdome on the cross is said to be embalmed with myrrh , john . . these things saith the first and the last , who was dead , and is alive . the titles that christ adorns himself with when he speaks to the church of ephesus are , he that holds the seven stars in his right hand , and who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks , namely , through all the successions of them ; like that promise , behold , i am with you to the end of the world ; intimating thereby the presence of his spirit , through which he would in all difficulties sustain the bishops and pastours of his church . which general signification seems well enough proportioned or fitted to the condition of the church of ephesus , he expresly requiring of them no more then zeal and courage in the general : but now he speaks to the church in smyrna , and there enters a more bloudy scene and terrible , he seems to encourage them with higher and more palpable and particular animations in the very entrance of his discourse ; these things saith the first and the last , the same that began the war for this kingdome we strive for , and will be the last in the field to assist my friends and discomfit mine enemies , as well as i was the first . and be not afraid of dying for the truth ; for though i was crucify'd my self , yet , behold , i am now alive . and i tell you it for a pledge unto you of the same happinesse , if you lay down your lives ( as the times will shortly require it ) for me and for my gospel . this is very particular and apposite to the condition of the church in this smyrnian intervall , wherein there were to be so many and so bloudy persecutions . . i know thy works and tribulation and poverty : that is to say , i know the great affliction and misery thou art oppressed withall , being destitute of all the comforts of this present life , and in danger of death every moment . which is a right smyrnian condition indeed , according to the title of the church in smyrna . but thou art rich : namely , with those spiritual graces of meeknesse , of patience , of christian courage and fortitude , and of sincere and invincible love of the lord jesus even to the death it self . and i know the blasphemy of them that say they are jews , and are not , but are the synagogue of satan . that is , i take notice of the reproach that those men cast upon christianity , who call themselves christians , and yet make nothing of dissembling and denying the faith upon the arising of any persecutions for my name 's sake ; as if a christian could be such a vile , false and abject hypocrite . this is to blaspheme them that are called by my name . the right christian is the true jew , whose heart is circumcised , and therefore he will not lie with his tongue ; and whose faith is so strong in me , and hopes so firm of a better life , that he can , if the cause of my gospel so require , willingly part with this for the love of me and for the interest of my kingdome . these are the true members of my church who are for suffering , the other the synagogue of satan ; as i told peter , when he would have disswaded me from undergoing the death of the cross , get thee behind me , satan , for thou savourest not the things of god. that the jews signifie the christian church , there is nothing more frequent in the apocalyptick style then that . and this mention of these false christians in opposition to these smyrnian sufferers does plainly insinuate that sense which i have given . . fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer . do not imitate the base cowardise of this synagogue of satan , these hypocrites and dissemblers . after that sharp reprehension of flinchers from the faith , he returns to encourage and corroborate the church in smyrna : behold , the devil shall cast some of you into prison , that ye may be tried , and ye shall have tribulation ten days . the red dragon , that old serpent , in his fight with michael , ( for the things of that vision are co-incident with this smyrnian intervall of the church , ) i say , the pagans incensed by the old serpent , will cast several of you into prison , that your faith may be tried , and god may receive the glory of your fortitude and constancy . this you shall have for ten days , that is , till the time of consummation that victory and redemption be wrought for you , or that you die . or rather thus , you shall have tribulation for ten days : there will be ten seasons of bloudy persecutions which you must run through ; those ten persecutions so famous in church-history , and so frequent in the mouths of all men . which consideration , among others , does not a little ratifie this our exposition of the church of smyrna , and consequently gives strength to the whole hypothesis of the seven successive intervalls . be ye faithfull unto death , and i will give you the crown of life . that is to say , stand out till the consummation of the ten persecutions wherewith ye will be tried , and ye shall have the crown of life : i will crown you with the imperial crown , which shall prove a crown of life unto you . christianity shall become at length the religion of the empire , which will save you for the future from the deadly persecutions of the red dragon . you shall be no longer subject to the cruelty of roman paganism for the profession of your religion . this therefore will be a crown of life unto you . this is according to that apoc. . . and there shall be no more death ; that is , there shall be no more persecution and killing for conscience sake : which was the sad case of this smyrnian church under the pagan cruelty in an eminent manner . wherefore when they had wone their freedome , it was a crown of life to them , by the law of contraries . that this is the genuine sense will farther appear from what follows . . he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . this being an usual epiphonema to parables plainly intimates , that what hitherto has been said is a parabolicall prophecy . and the nature of a prophecy is , to foretell such things as are to be transacted here on earth . and therefore where the promise is not divine , or concerning the state after this life , the epiphonema follows : as is very conspicuous in the promise to the church of thyatira , which is the first example of the epiphonema coming last of all ; which is a sign that the whole epistle there is propheticall : verse . and he that overcometh and keepeth my words unto the end , to him will i give power over the nations , &c. which therefore concerns the stage of this earth . and therefore this promise here of the crown of life before the epiphonema , i would interpret of a reward in this life on this earth , according as i have expounded the passage . but now that which follows this epiphonema is a promise of another sort , viz. he that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death : for it is the securing of a blessed immortality after this life ; and seems farther to correspond with that passage in the apocalypse , ch. . v. . blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection : on such the second death hath no power . wherefore though not according to the inference of rigid syllogism , yet according to those nice and delicate hints in propheticall intimations , i would conclude that the promise of their portion in the first resurrection is here proposed to those afflicted smyrnians , which was the proper portion of martyrs and confessours , according to the opinion of the primitive church , as mr. mede has learnedly and judiciously observed . which granted does hugely corroborate this application of the epistle to the church in smyrna to this intervall which contains the times of all the sufferings in a manner of the primitive martyrs . the promise of a blessed immortality had been very proper and accommodate to this smyrnian state of the church , that were so frequently to lose their lives for profession of the gospel : but for it to be intimated to them that these shall have their portion in the first resurrection , which is proper to martyrs , as appears by the place above quoted , is so characteristicall of this intervall , wherein all the primitive martyrs suffered , viz. in those ten persecutions , that it does marvellously confirm the truth of the exposition of this present epistle in this mysticall way we have gone . and thus much of the church in smyrna , that is in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the bitternesse of oppression and affliction , as the allusion to that syriack word imports . we proceed to the church in pergamus . chap. v. the interpretation of the epistle to the church in pergamus . . and to the angel of the church in pergamus write . the intervall of this church is from the year of christ , when constantine utterly defeated the army of licinius , not above thirty thousand of one hundred and thirty thousand escaping , and so with his own victories made the church also triumphant out of her long and unsupportable miseries , raising her aloft from her sad oppressions and persecutions . from this year , i say , to the year , when the pope's legate amelin made an end of the albigensian war with trancavel bastard of the earl of beziers , let this be the intervall of the church in pergamus . . of the beginning of this intervall there can be no doubt . and for the termination of it , there are these two considerations to countenance it . the first , in that the latter of those numbers in the last of daniel , viz. the number , does point to the beginning of the affairs of the waldenses and albigenses , who are both one sect and from one authour , waldo of lyons , an holy and good man , whose preaching , and his own and his followers sufferings , were about the term of that number whose epoche is the prophanation of the temple by antiochus epiphanes . so considerable a passage of providence is the appearing of the waldenses in those times betwixt the year of christ and . for they were condemned for hereticks by pope alexander in the laterane council in the year , upon which you may be sure persecutions would immediately follow . and mr. mede with great judgement will have this latter number in daniel to point at these times . nor does that expression of daniel at all weaken his opinion , in that he saith , blessed is he that waiteth , and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days , because it is said in the apocalypse also , blessed are the dead that die in the lord , that is , that die for the cause of our lord jesus . and of the church of smyrna it is said , i know thy tribulation and poverty , but thou art rich . the judgement of the spirit of god and the judgement of carnal men are quite opposite in these things . what they call poverty , the spirit calls riches ; what they misery , the spirit blessednesse . wherefore the affairs of the waldenses or albigenses is a notable , distinct and conspicuous joint of time , even according to the judgement of the spirit of prophecy . but then , in the second place , i terminate the intervall of this church in pergamus , not in the beginning , but the conclusion , of these waldensian or albigensian affairs , because they being all in a manner one , and so plainly concluded in the year i have mentioned , their sufferings may the more punctually answer to the sufferings of that one martyr antipas , who is here said to be slain in pergamus . but the concinnity of these things we shall better understand after we have descanted upon the name pergamus . . that by pergamus is intimated a state of exaltation or sublimity , i intimated before . sublimia omnia dicta asiaticis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 notat hesychius , suidas , & servius , saith grotius upon apoc. . . whence he would have the church in pergamus to re-mind us of high and heavenly things . but this is a moral , not a propheticall sense . but with him howsoever i acknowledge that the signification of sublimity is alluded to in the general , but here most elegantly and seasonably in reference to the precedent state of the church in smyrna , which was a state of humiliation and bitter affliction . but at the very beginning of this present intervall she so conspicuously emerging out of this low , sad , affictive state into the state of glory , peace and prosperity , what can be more significant then to salute her with the title of the church in pergamus , accordingly as she is here saluted ; which is a kind of congratulation to her fresh emergency out of her late miseries . and this sense will hold good for a time in this intervall , namely , till tho days of her apostasy : but then the apostolick church will be the church in pergamus still , but in another kind of meaning . . according therefore to the richnesse of the prophetick style , pergamus has also another sense , such as the city babylon and the city tyrus , which are put for the city of rome . but then not in such a sense as to mean the walls or stones of the roman city , but the roman church , and her power and jurisdiction . and in such a sense is pergamus also here put for rome . so that this epistle written to the church of christ in pergamus , the truly catholick and apostolick church , is directed to this church dwelling under the roman church , or within the roman churche's jurisdiction , understanding old rome especially ; as all such apocalyptick visions perstringe her most . now that rome in this sense is perstringed by this pergamus , is very evident , first , in the easie allusion of pergamus to rome from the signification of the words . for as pergamus signifies sublimity , so ( as martinius notes ) rome is from the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exaltari . besides that her situation is high , and buildings lofty , according to that of the poet , collibus è septem totum circumspicit orbem . and the highest of all is the bishop of rome himself , who exalts himself above all that is called god , or is worshipped . is not this therefore a fit bishop of pergamus , that perks thus above all kings and emperours and princes of the earth ? and our intervall of the church of pergamus reaches the highest times of her exaltation , it taking in both gregory the seventh , who first excommunicated the emperour , and took upon him the power of making emperours himself , and alexander the third , who trode upon the neck of the emperour frederick ; as also caelestine the third , that crowned henry the sixth and his empress with his feet , and in scorn kick'd the emperour's crown off with his foot when he had crowned him . certainly the popes of rome were then the bishops of pergamus with a witnesse . nor after this intervall could they ever hold their crests so high . boniface the eighth indeed was a blusterer , and excommunicated philip the fair of france ; but he called him fool for his pains , and handled him in such sort , that , surprized at anagnia , he was disgracefully mounted on a poor jade , and so carried prisoner to rome , where pride and regret broke his heart , and so he there dy'd ingloriously . but secondly , it is said of this pergamus , that it was the most given to idolatry of all the cities of asia , ( so andreas cesariensis reports of it ; ) which is the notorious character of rome above all cities , and therefore elsewhere in the apocalypse she is called the whore of babylon for her insatiable spiritual fornications . thirdly , these pergamenians were very fierce and diligent accusers of the apostolick christians , to bring them to martyrdome , as dr. hammond upon the place notes out of ancient history . for which also rome is taxed elsewhere in the apocalypse , who is said to be drunk with the bloud of the saints , and with the bloud of the martyrs of jesus . fourthly , it is recorded of the prefect of this city pergamus , that he would persuade the christians to forsake the apostolick faith , and return to heathenism , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because the elder religion was the more precious and to be preferred : as antiquity is the great pretense of the papal church . that prefect said of christianity , that it was but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that it began but the other day : and so you may be sure the church of rome said of the religion of the waldenses and albigenses . see dr. hammond upon the place . and lastly , that it should be the martyr antipas that was slain in pergamus , can any name more directly and assuredly point at the church of rome or the papal church then this ? for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is father , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is papa , ●● but a reduplication of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as eustathius has noted : and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as much as against . and therefore who can be so blind as not to discern how fit a type this antipas is of them that within this intervall of the church should suffer for being against that holy father the pope , as he is called . nothing can sound more congruously or harmoniously , whatever any man by way of cavill can say against it . the main interpretation therefore of this present epistle to the church in pergamus will respect the pure apostolick church abiding within the jurisdiction of the roman , as this sense plainly implies ; the woman in the wildernesse , as the holy ghost elsewhere expresses it . these things saith he that hath the sharp sword with two edges . christ is set out thus in this epistle to the church in pergamns , because this sword of the spirit , which is the word of god , understood and rellished by the divine spirit in us , was the main weapon whereby the church in pergamus defended her self from the pergamenian corruptions , and so kept her self pure from the false glosses and unsound traditions of either superstitious men or crafty deceivers . . i know thy works , and where thou dwellest , even where satan's seat is ; and thou holdest fast my name , and hast not denied my faith , even in those days wherein antipas was my faithfull martyr , who was slain among you , where satan dwelleth . that is to say , i know thou doest well for the main , and to thy greater commendation i consider where thou dwellest , even where the first-born of lucifer has his throne , he that exalts himself above all that is called god or that is worshipped . ( so christ compares satan to lucifer or the king of babylon , ( of whom the prophet says , how art thou fallen , lucifer , thou son of the morning ! ) luke . . i beheld satan as lightning fall from heaven . ) and yet neither the awe nor glory of that church could cause thee to forsake my name , and , in stead of being a true christian , to become a member of antichrist , and so relinquish the pure apostolick faith , no not in those days that my faithfull martyr antipas , that is , those plain-hearted and openly-professed enemies of the pope and his adulterate and idolatrous religion , the waldenses and albigenses , were so cruelly persecuted and murthered , who were slain among you who stood out and yet escaped , though in the very synagogue of satan , that is to say , in that church which is a treacherous adversary to all my true members , and a very bitter censurer and accuser of them for their not complying with the laws of wickednesse which she hath established , and a worse adversary then the pagan dragon before , whom therefore my church overcame in a few ages . this satan , i say , is a more mischievous enemy then that red dragon , by reason of his cunning and hypocrisie , and his pretenses that he is for me , when indeed he is against me , and by reason of the abuse of my authority in pretense , against the members of my true church . wherefore i cannot but take notice where thou dwellest , and how in that regard thou art in a worse condition then the smyrnian church her self , who were onely to grapple with a professed enemy , but thou with both a malicious enemy , and a false and hypocritical friend . it is therefore well done of thee that thou holdest out in such hard and difficult circumstances . . this for the sense of that verse in general . but now particularly , why the waldenses and albigenses , that were persecuted in this intervall of the church , should be called antipas , why martyr , why faithfull , and why slain , rather then burnt , we shall briefly give this account . and that a company or successive body of men is represented in the prophetick style under one single person , is so trivial that i need not note it . alcazar makes jezebel , mentioned in the next epistle , to be the church of the jewes ; aretas , the sect of the nicolaitans ; dr. hammond , the gnosticks . but now that this one person should be called antipas , there is nothing more congruous to the doctrine of the waldenses and albigenses , who boldly preached that the pope was antichrist , the mass an abomination , the host an idol , and purgatory a fable . and waldo , the chief beginner of this sect , was of the same mind , denying the pope to be the head of the church , or that he had any authority over the kings and princes of the earth , who depend immediately upon god alone . was not this an antipas indeed then , and exactly opposing the sovereign paternity of his holiness of rome ? but they were faithfull , because they did so plainly declare to the world such concerning truths ; and martyrs , because they suffered death for so doing , it being for the cause of god , and for the interest of the kingdome of christ. and they are said to be slain , ( suppose with the sword or any weapon of war , ) not burnt , because burning was more rare within this intervall of the church ; but they were slain in the field many hundred thousands of them . a great number of the waldenses that took arms in germany were cut in pieces in the year , ( as matthew paris writes ; ) they being in such a disadvantageous place , betwixt marish ground and the sea , that they could make no escape . and mr. mede , out of petrus perionius in his book of this albigensian war , intimates that near ten hundred thousand of them were slain in battel at times , and that in france alone . wherefore slaying with the sword is very characteristically spoken here in this epistle of the faithfull martyr antipas ; burning as yet being in it self not so frequent , and bearing no proportion at all to this vast number slain in the field . whence this is a considerable note of distinction betwixt this present intervall of the church in pergamus from that of her abode in thyatira , as we shall see in its due place . . but i have a few things against thee , because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of balaam , who taught balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of israel , to eat things sacrificed unto idols , and to commit fornication . this is spoken to the whole body of those that in their judgements did condemn both the doctrine and practices of the church of rome . but these may be cast into three sorts : such as notwithstanding this judgement still held communion with her , and pretended they did well in so doing ; those that separated from her communion ; and those that not onely separated , but suffered death for so doing . these last were the martyr antipas above named ; the first the balaamites here reproved , that were of a more gnostick-like temper , too much leaning towards the flesh , thinking themselves wiser then the other in not exposing themselves for their judgement in religion . ye do well indeed , saith he , in declaring against the enormities of the papal church , and in condemning them in your own thoughts and consciences : but this i take ill of you , that ye permit ( some of you ) the doctrine of balaam to take effect , that is , by communicating with this church of rome in her idolatrous eucharist , and by eating her deus panaceus , ye commit spiritual fornication , and become guilty of idolatry . ( to eat things sacrificed to idols is one mode of idolatry , but by a propheticall diorism it signifies idolatry in general . ) that ye indulge this liberty to your selves or others , is to cast a stumbling-block before the children of israel , and to occasion and encourage many to adhere to the roman communion , when they ought to separate from her , that there be no prejudice done to my true church , nor dis-interest to my kingdome . . so hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the nicolaitans , which thing i hate . that also is a fault amongst some of you , that you do not possesse your vessels in that holinesse and sanctity ye ought to doe : and though you can discover the spiritual fornications of pergamus and their luciferian pride , yet ye are not so pure and clean as ye ought to be , and free from the lusts of the flesh , ( which vice is here noted by nicolaitism dioristically , as idolatry in general before by eating things sacrificed to idols . ) flesh and bloud is over-prone to think little ill of such things , because they are so natural and pleasing : but i declare a pertly unto you , that it is a thing that i hate . be ye holy even as i am holy . repent , or else i will come unto thee quickly , and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth . amend these faults , left i come to you suddenly in judgement . haply by the more sedulous activity of the lords of the inquisition , whose reign was most chiefly in the following intervall , as also of other judicatures ; the pragmaticalnesse of whose agents will be more then ordinarily ready to discover every one that dissembles his religion ; and the frequent terrour of being burnt alive at the stake will more effectually suppresse the flames of all wantonnesse and lust. and as i will come to you thus in judgement unlesse ye repent ; so i am resolved also farther to fight against your adversaries , the pergamenians or romanists , with the sword of my mouth , till i cut off great branches from the body of that far-spreading tree , and dismember whole nations from the community of that idolatrous church by the power of the word and the preaching of the gospel . this is that which is predictory of some events to happen in the following intervall , according to the genius of these epistles . . to him that overcometh will i give to eat of the hidden manna . the promise here following the epiphonema , ( he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear , ) must , according to the rule , signifie theologically or spiritually , not physically or politically . wherefore the sense is , those of pergamus indeed pretend , that when they give that white and sweet consecrated wafer into the mouths of their communicants , they give them the true manna , my very body and bloud which was shed on the crosse , and my very flesh that was there crucified and broken for them ; whenas notwithstanding they order their eucharist so , that they turn my supper into a feast of idolothyta , and make the partakers thereof guilty of idolatry or spiritual fornication , forasmuch as they give divine worship to that which is not god. so that as , in the case of balaam , the israelites were to eat things sacrificed to idols in order to carnal fornication , so they that partake of this perverted eucharist are necessarily ipso facto ( especially since the fourth laterane council ) drawn into spiritual fornication or idolatry . but he that is courageous and abstains from this illicit communion , and through faith overcomes all difficulties , for the quitting that outward white visible wafer , i will give him to eat of the hidden manna , of that true spiritual manna mentioned john . for my flesh is meat indeed , and my bloud is drink indeed . but the words i there speak they are spirit , and they are life . or if he die in the cause , i will give him the hidden manna , even the invisible food of angels , and his soul shall passe into the society of the blessed genii and holy souls of saints departed this life . . and i will give him a white stone , and in the stone a new name written , which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it . that is to say , though he be accused and reproached for an heretick and schismatick in the church of pergamus , where satan the accuser dwells , yet i will give him a white stone , and quit him in judgement , and establish the joy and peace of a good conscience unto him . or thus ; i will give him a white stone , in which there is a new name written ; that is , his old man shall be throughly crucified , and he shall attain to the state of the new man in the purity thereof , and enjoy that inestimable jewel of the divine nature pure and permanent , which no man knows the excellency of till he be made partaker thereof . i will consummate regeneration to him either in this life , or upon his passage into the other state , if he be snatched away by a sudden martyrdome . and this will more then countervail all the injuries the lofty church of pergamus can doe to him in life , goods , or good name . chap. vi. the interpretation of the epistle to the church in thyatira . . and to the angel of the church in thyatira write . the true church of christ is still in the power and within the jurisdiction of the church of rome : and therefore as rome has been set out by the city of babylon , tyre , and pergamus , so is it here in this intervall necessarily to be understood by the city of thyatira , i mean in such a sense as it was by the city of pergamus . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( from whence both strabo and pliny , and others that are criticks , fetch the reason of the name thyatira ) is alluded to , i am inclinable to think from those authorities ; and that the womanishnesse of the church of rome in this period is perstringed . that her softnesse and luxury was more then ordinarily increased in this intervall is not to be doubted , as certainly her covetousnesse , as also her prankings and adornings in the splendour of their altars , and churches , and copes , and the like . which could not be so continuedly and so high in the former intervall . but here all along she may well be looked upon as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , filia delicatula , a delicate damosel indeed , sitting like a queen , and knowing no sorrow , when a little before she was like to be over-run by the waldenses and albigenses , and was fain to enter the field , and fight manfully for her own safety . a little after the beginning of this intervall did innocent the fourth appoint in the council at lyons , that the cardinals should go in their rosie-coloured hats and robes , and ride upon horses with furniture and trappings sutable to the greatnesse of their order , and delicacy of their condition . and the mitre of paul the second is taken speciall notice of for the exceeding preciousnesse of the jewels therein . and no doubt there was the like encrease of the ecclesiastick bravery every-where . a little before the beginning of this intervall did honorius the third appoint the carmelites to goe in white , that they might look more maiden-like , and decreed that they should be called the family of the virgin. and the franciscans and dominicans are notorious all along this intervall , who had the virgin mary for their peculiar patronesse . and indeed within this intervall the roman church ran so much in the seminine strain , that they generally professed themselves more under the government and providence of our lady then of our lord jesus christ. gregory the ninth , a little before the beginning of this present intervall , ordained that salve regina , an hymn to the blessed virgin , should be sung in all churches . boniface the eighth , in the year , composed that oraison , ave , virgo gloriosa : and in the year , the mary psalter and her rosarie were composed by * alanus de rupe . . and how feminine this church was in this intervall , the observations of that excellent person sr. edwyn sandys ( though after the expiration thereof , when one would think they should in policy have been more castigate in their religion ) will give us fully to understand . the honour , faith he , which they doe to the virgin mary is double for the most part unto that which they doe unto our saviour . where one professes himself a devoto or peculiar servant of our lord , whole towns are the devoti of our lady . the stateliest churches are hers lightly , and in churches hers the fairest altars . where one prayeth before the crucifix , two before her image : where one voweth to christ , ten vow to her : and for one miracle reported to be wrought by the crucifix , not so sew perhaps as an hundred are voiced upon the images of the virgin . their devils in exorcism are also taught to endure the name of god or the trinity without trouble ; but at the naming of our lady , to tosse and seem much tormented . where one fasts on friday upon the account of the passion of our lord , many fast on saturday upon the account of his mother . and to their beads they string up ten salutations of our lady to one of our lord's prayers . the * bell also which is rung at sun-rise , at noon and sun-set , is called the ave-mary bell , whereby all men every-where at those set times might be engaged to doe their devotions to the virgin mary . and , lastly , their chief preachers do teach in pulpit , whatsoever is found in scripture spoken of christ the son of god , to apply it to our lady also , as being the daughter of god. is not therefore the church of rome rightly called thyatira , as alluding to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which both strabo and pliny would have to be the reason of the name of that city ? . i will onely adde one thing more . alsledius calls this intervall of time which we attribute to the church of thyatira regnum locustarum , because of the variety of the orders of monks that started up within this time . therefore when the church of rome swarmed so with monks and friers , that had abjured their virility by an irrevocable vow of caelibate , and went in sculking hoods and long coats like women , and so became petticoat-men at the best , was it not very congruous for the spirit of prophecy , by way of just reproach to this womanishness , so to characterize the church of rome at this time , by calling her thyatira , as if they had become rather the daughters of men then the sons of men by this so general effeminacy in more then those monkish garbs which i now mention ? besides that these petticoat-men , the dominicans especially , managed their opposition against the true church in a right feminine manner , not manly , as before , by meeting their enemy in the field , but sneakingly , by perfidiousness and treachery , to bring them into the inquisition , and then cruelly and insultingly in the upshot ; as it is easie to understand by reading the history of the holy inquisition , as they call it . therefore there being all these symptoms of feminity in the church of rome in this intervall , it is not unreasonable to conceive that this corruption of hers is perstringed by calling her the city of thyatira , alluding to thygatira , which signifies not a son of adam , but a daughter . . but were it not for the authority of strabo and pliny , there is another paronomastical allusion which i should prefer before this . wherefore , according to the richnesse of the prophetick style , i should also conceive thyatira to allude to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is , to break or bruise aromatick spices , which makes them give the sweeter savour : or else to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , altars for the burning of sweet odours . any of which methinks is lesse forced then either grotius his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or strabo's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and as to the sense , the paronomasia is very expressive of the persecutions of the true members of christ within this intervall , and agrees exactly with history , wherein there is little talk of flaying with the sword , as is intimated in that expression in the foregoing intervall , where the martyr antipas is said to be slain ; ( which agrees admirably well with that great slaughter of the waldenses and the albigenses , which were martyred in the field by the pontifician forces , as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies properly to slay , suppose with the sword or any such weapon of war ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ) but the persecutions in the thyatirian intervall were usually burnings , or rackings , and wasting away their lives in miserable imprisonments . but that which was most frequent and most famous in this period was the burning of men alive with fire and faggot . this filled thyatira with so many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . where though the cruelty of the persecutors was most execrable ; yet the faith , constancy and devout sincerity of our blessed protestant martyrs went up with the flames and globes of smoak , sweeter then any odours or incense , from the altar , into the presence of heaven , and were there accepted for his sake who gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to god for a sweet-smelling favour . . the frequency of these burnt-offerings in those times is noted by sanderus a papist ; infinitos lolhardos & sacramentarios in tota europa nuper ignibus traditos fuisse . but nothing can be so significative of the change of the scene of the persecution of the church in pergamus , where antipas was slain , to this in thyatira , whereby these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are alluded to , as that passage in the history of the albigenses , lib. . c. . which gave me occasion to terminate the pergamenian intervall in that year , viz. . here you see , saith he , the last attempt which we finde the albigenses to have made , and the last expedition of pilgrims levied against them . all the pursuit against them afterwards was by the monks the inquisitours , ( the dominicans he means , of whose father , dominicus , his mother when she went with child with him dream'd she was big of a dog that vomited fire out of his throat , ) which monks , saith he , now kindled their fires more then ever . and taking these poor people disarmed , and singling them out by retail , it was impossible for them any longer to subsist . and so this suffering church of christ passed out of that state where antipas was slain with the sword , to that of thyatira , where the holy martyrs of our reformed religion were burnt at the stake . and this , i think , will suffice to make us understand why the power and jurisdiction of the roman church in this intervall bears the title of thyatira . . these things saith the son of god , who hath his eys like to a flame of fire , and his feet are like fine brasse . the son of god is here christ , either personally , or mystically understood for his body the church . understanding it personally of christ , his flaming eyes denote his piercing and discerning foresight and providence ; it portends also his wrath and vengeance against the persecutors of his church with fire and faggot : but his feet like fine brasse , the peremptory constancy amd purity of his ways . but if we understand these feet like fine brasse of christ's mysticall body , we are to make a supply of the description out of the former chapter , ver . . and his feet like fine brass , as if they burned in a furnace ; whereby is insinuated the fiery trial of his church in this intervall of thyatira even in the grossest sense , so many of his servants standing at the stake with their leggs in the midst of flaming fire , kindled by their barbarous persecutors . that the son of god described in the foregoing chapter is also representative of his body mysticall , the description of his voice seems plainly to intimate . his voice being compared to the sound of many waters , that insinuates that this description respects also his body mysticall , which are a multitude . . i know thy works , and charity , and service , and faith . the true church then in thyatira being in oppression and affliction stood close to one another , and encouraged and comforted one another , and supported one another as well as they could , and endeavoured after an exemplarity of godlinesse and due proficiency in the power of religion , as being candidates for that deliverance which they by faith saw was not far off . and thy patience , and thy works , and the last to be more then the first . that is , i see the works of thy patience in suffering imprisonment , tortures and death , and particularly in giving up your selves , as an oblation of incense , to the fire and faggot in such numbers for the testimony of my truth . which being toward the latter end of this intervall , it is fitly said , and the last to be more then the first . this is according to what is found in history . . notwithstanding i have a few things against thee , because thou sufferest that woman jezebel , which calleth her self a prophetess , &c. viz. the papal hierarchy , that pretends to be infallible , and under colour of this brings in idolatry , which is spiritual fornication , and detains men in the communion of their idolatrous mass , which the spirit of god here parallels to the eating of things sacrificed unto idols . the prophetesse jezebel here therefore answers to the false prophet after mentioned in the revelations ; and this exprobration to the church in thyatira , of permitting jezebel thus to practice her deceits , to that voice of the angel , come out of her , my people , lest ye be partakers of her sins and of her plagues . it is a kind of solicitation of the princes and people in christendome , such as discerned the frauds and idolatries of the roman church , to make a defection from her , and suffer her trumperies no longer . for the time of that defection now drew near , and things were ripe for it , and it was in the power of them that disliked the condition of affairs to amend it : and therefore he saith , because thou sufferest that woman jezebel . for it is no fault in us to suffer those things which it is not in our power to help or redresse . . this jezebel is very expressive of the roman hierarchy , if we recurr to the story of the book of the kings : not onely for her painting of her self , ( which is notorious in the roman church , ( and especially in this intervall , ) and such as the homilies of our church in england take especial notice of , comparing all those rich and gorgeous adornings of the church of rome to the painting of the wrinkled face of an harlot , ) but also for her whoredomes and witchcraft , as it is noted kings . . what peace , so long as the whoredomes of thy mother jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many ? which is exactly parallel to the description of the whore of babylon , who is said to be the mother of fornications and abominations of the earth ; described also by that cup of sorcery in her hand , whereby she intoxicates the kings of the earth , and makes them drunk with the wine of her fornication . and whereas she is said to be drunk with the bloud of the saints , and with the bloud of the martyrs of jesus , jezebel also in her history is famous for murthering the prophets of god. . and those grosse wickednesses committed by ahab , who did very abominably in following idols , and in persecuting the servants of the true god , who is said to have sold himself to work wickednesse , are imputed to this subtil murtherous whore and witch , as the text plainly declares . but there was none like unto ahab , who did sell himself to work wickednesse in the sight of the lord , whom jezebel his wife stirred up . that is to say , the roman hierarchy ( according as both the vision of the whore of babylon and of the two-horned beast do plainly signifie , ) was the authour , contriver and instigatour unto all those murtherous and idolatrous practices that the secular magistrate has been guilty of , during their force and tyranny over the true servants of christ. the beast with two horns exercised all this power before the beast with ten horns , or rather made use of the secular power to effect all their devillish designs against the children of god ; as jezebel wrote letters in ahab's name , and sealed them with his seal . the church got the stamp of the imperial authority upon all the wicked dogmata of their religion and idolatrous practices , which they contrived for their own carnal advantages : and then if any naboth would not part with the inheritance of his fathers , the possession of an holy , righteous and rational conscience , nor profess nor act against the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , against those native truths and notions which god of his infinite mercy and faithfulnesse has implanted in the minds of all men that have not done violence to that innate light , the candle of the lord searching all the parts of the belly , he was through the murtherous contrivances of this strumpet jezebel falsely accused as a blasphemer of god and the king , as an enemy to both the catholick faith and secular magistrate , and so was sentenced to death . and death came by these wicked accusations in this intervall , as in the former intervall , wherein antipas was slain , by openly fighting in the field . thus apposite is the allusion to the history of jezebel , for the setting out the state of this intervall of the church under the tyranny of the church of rome . . nor is it all harsh , thus to interpret a vineyard to so spiritual a sense as to make it something within us , whenas both philo and other ancient interpreters have interpreted paradise to that sense , or the garden of eden . and others also cannot but acknowledge that that law of moses ; deut. . . thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds , has also a moral or mysticall meaning , and is a precept of simplicity or sincerity of heart . wherefore the vineyard of naboth may very well signifie the humane will and understanding that is sown onely or planted with such notions or notices of things as are from god , whether they be those innate idea's of the soul , or what is communicated farther by the spirit of god in the holy writings of inspired men , or are more immediately inspired into us by the abode of that spirit in us . all these plants are of our heavenly father 's own planting , and no other seed is to be sown among them repugnant thereunto . and this vineyard is the inheritance of all true christians , descending upon them from the apostles times to this very day . but the roman empire being perverted by the doctrines of the whore or two-horned beast , or by the eorruptions also of their own nature , had a mind to invade this ancient right as ahab had to get into his possession naboth's vineyard , under pretence that men giving up their will and understanding to the supreme power , government might be the more secure . and all that wondred after the beast gave up their vineyards into the hand of the secular power , and professed no otherwise then according to the faith of the empire , and so had their vineyards sown with divers seeds , nay indeed with what was repugnant to the apostolick plantation . their minds were filled with gross lies , foul-idolatries of all sorts , and murderous enmities against the true children of god. . but as for the vineyard of naboth , that is the vineyard of the true prophets or prophetesses , as the word naboth seems to intimate ; they were not given up , that is , those that were not christians for fashion-sake , and believed new invented lies and apostolick truth alike , but with a true and living faith acknowledged jesus to be the christ , these would rather lose their lives then quit their vineyards that yielded them that noble wine , that perpetual feast of a good conscience , and of peace and joy in the holy ghost . whence it was that this whore and sorceresse jezebel contrived their death , or persecution and oppression , as the two prophets are said to both mourn in sackcloath , and also to be slain . the vineyard therefore of naboth is that sense , and knowledge , and conscience and life of the spirit in the new birth , whereby a man discerning plainly & livingly betwixt the wayes of christ and of antichrist , does as necessarily loath the one , as adhere to the other . . for the true and firm belief in christ is from the new birth , as s. john also witnesses , every one that believeth that jesus is the christ is born of god. and therefore this spirit of life must needs have an antipathy against what is contrary to it self : and is also the spirit of prophecy in the most concerning sense : as john likewise intimates in his general epistle where upon his mentioning many false prophets gone out into the world , he presently adds , in this ye know the spirit of god , every spirit that confesseth that jesus is the christ come in the flesh , is of god. which agrees exactly with that in the apocalypse , where the angel says to john , i am thy fellow-servant , and of thy brethren that have the testimony of jesus , that is to say , of such as whose hearts do witnesse to them firmly and lively that jesus is the christ , and accordingly professe it ; which none can do unlesse he be born of god , and so have the spirit of god. which is implyed in the following words : for the testimony of jesus is the spirit of prophecy : that is to say , the being able in such sort to witnesse that jesus is the christ , is from the spirit and life of god in us which inspireth all holy truth . from whence the angel argues a kind of parity betwixt john and himself , and indeed all such as have the testimony of jesus according to the sense declared , and therefore would not be worshipped by them . . but this is something a digression , saving that it may illustrate that passage in the apocalypse , where the two witnesses are also called the two prophets , ( not so much from predicting things to come , as from witnessing to the truth from the spirit of life in the new birth , and being so firm in this faith as to suffer for it even to the death ) and may also facilitate the belief of this mystical sense of the story of naboths vineyard , or this vineyard of prophecy : it not implying any miraculous predictions , but the being inspired with a right sentiment of things from the spirit of life , and having the confidence to speak the truth as it is in jesus . this is all that need to be understood thereby . . to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication , and to eat things sacrificed unto idols . this woman of thyatira , ( whether the wife of the bishop of thyatira , or some other person of quality , for interpreters of the letter vary in that ) according to the literal sense , is described from her acts , as onely guilty of pretending her self to be a prophetesse , and that thereby she seduced the servants of christ to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols , which is a chief point of that which was called gnosticisme . and the truth of the supposed history here we do in no wise deny . but we also adde , that it is hugely improbable , that the spirit of prophecy would take notice so particularly of any one woman in so majestick a writing ( which alcazar also very seriously and vehemently urges ) if there were not some greater matter aimed at . wherefore i say , the spirit of god taking the advantage of the significancy of the miscarriages of this woman in thyatira ; which would set out part of the enormities of the church of rome here perstringed , added there to the name of jezebel , that the prophetick prefiguration might be the more complete , the church of rome in this intervall being lively adumbrated by this allusion to jezebel , joyned to what is reported of this woman in thyatira , viz. that she pretends to be a prophetess as the church of rome to be infallible , that she drew the servants of christ to idolatry and uncleannesse , as the church of rome does by engaging them in the masse and other superficial modes of serving god , that leave the minde sensual , and besides necessarily intangle them in idolatrous practices . thus much from the practice of this woman . . now in that she has this name given her of jezebel , assuredly the spirit of god points us to her story to make up this parallel betwixt this woman & rome , viz. as she is also a murderer of the prophets and servants of god , and a contriver of false accusations against them , as if by the keeping of the inheritance of their fathers , a pure conscience according to the ancient and apostolick faith and innate notions of truth that god has implanted in the minds of all men , they were blasphemers of god and the king , and obnoxious to both the civil and spiritual magistrate . and lastly , ( which is to be taken special notice of ) the church of rome in this intervall of the succession of the church of christ is called jezebel , because for all her paintings and fine meretricious pranking her self up , she was to be thrown out at the window , and her flesh to be devoured by dogs : which the just wrath of god and the zeal of jehu , ( the noble reformers ) stirred up by the spirit of god brought to passe at the end of this intervall of the church , as it is threatned also in the following parts of this epistle . . and i gave her space to repent her of her fornication , and she repented not . she had a fair time to consider of her grosse apostasies from the purity of my worship since the witnesse of the waldenses and albigenses against her , and yet she remains still obdurate and impenitent , and continues her old trade of whoring still . behold , i will cast her into a bed , and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation , except they repent of their deeds . unlesse she repent i will certainly cast her into a bed of sicknesse and languishment , for that bed of adultery wherein she has entertained the kings of the earth . her strength and glory shall be much diminished , and her paramours shall bewail the calamity i shall bring upon her : for there shall be of the kings that shall hate the whore , shall make her desolate in their dominions , and naked , and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire . as it fell out in the late defection of whole nations from her . and i will kill her children with death . that is , either slay them with the sword of the spirit , and so make them dead as to her by their conversion to the truth , or else kill them with a natural death , such i mean as come against my true church , whether whole armies or seditious emissaries , as has often happened since the reformation . and all the churches shall know that i am he that searches the reins and hearts , and will give unto every one of you according to his works . that is , it will be notoriously taken notice of in all christendome how just my judgements are , and that i deal not with jezebel according to her fair pretenses and titles , who calls her self holy church , and pretends all her cruelties , and imposturous and idolatrous trumperies to be for my glory , whenas they have run into all this degeneracy for their worldly interest . but mine eyes which are a flaming fire searching into the hearts and reins , clearly see their abominable hypocrisie , and my feet like fine brasse , that never goe out of the way of purity and justice , will be sure to overtake them and doe due vengeance upon them . i will reward every one according to his works . . but unto you i say , and unto the rest in thyatira as many as have not this doctrine . to you pastours of my true church in thyatira , and the rest which are your charge , that hold not the idolatrous doctrine or faith of the thyatirian , that is , of the roman church . and which have not known the depths of satan , as they speak , that is , which have not approved the deep mysteries ( as they speak ) of reason of state , or of the roman religion , ( such as murdering innocent men for the interest of holy church ; infallibility , transubstantiation and the like ) but i who search the heart and reins do apertly declare to be the depths of satan , they tending to nothing but to luciferian pride , barbarous persecutions and murders , and grosse imposture and idolatry . i will put upon you no other burden , but that which ye have already , hold fast untill i come : i have already shew'd you my approbation of your wayes , ver . . and in that ye do not communicate with the idolatrous jezebel , keep to where you are , and stand out to the last : let no persecutions dismay you till i come in judgement against this jezebel , the same with the little horn in daniel , which in the expiring of the time , and times , and half a time , will certainly be judged . . and he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end , to him will i give power over the nations . that company of men , those people that keep my works to the end , to the last semi-time of the seven , they shall have power over the pagan christians , they shall get them under and be no more domineered over by them . and he shall rule them with a rod of iron : that is , with sufficient power and strictnesse to keep them in subjection . as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers . the stone shall smite the image on the feet and break them to pieces . that shall be at the long-run . even as i received of my father . i in you , and you in me ; you in me by vertue of the power of my spirit shall thus reign ; and i in you , according as it is written , i shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance , the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession ; thou shalt break them with a rod of iron , thou shalt dash them in pieces as a potters vessel . but this is something further off . . and i will give him the morning star . in the mean time , and which is next to succeed , i will give them the morning star ; that is , a considerable dawning towards that greater day of the illustrious reign of christ upon earth , in his saints by his spirit . the phosphorus to the glorious sun-rise of the happy millennium properly so called . this intervall will be the same with that of the vials which are accompanied with such a smoake ; as here the promise , which is to be performed in the next succession of the church , and there continued , is not expressed with that vigour as elsewhere , where christ in reference to his kingdome is said to be the bright morning star , here onely the morning star without the ornament of that epithet : the kingdome of christ therefore under the first thunder may be said to be the morning star , but under the second , the bright morning star . and it is observable , that whereas in that other place he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in this he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which may also have the signification of more early then was expected , which exquisitely answers to the evert , it falling out toward the fore-part of the last semi-time . but these things are onely by the by . he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . there is nothing new remarkable in this epiphonema , but the placing of it here after the whole epistle , which is a sign that all the epistle is a parable , and is not onely meant of the church in thyatira in the literal sense ( but that the condition and affairs of some other church , the truely catholick and apostolick church in the intervall defined , are here prefigured and described prophetically . ) and that therefore the promises are to be performed on this stage of the earth , as of their own nature they appear to be such that have a political sense . which therefore therewithall assures us , that such a tenour of interpretation belongs to the three following epistles , because the epiphonema is the close of every one of them . and therefore we shall steer the course of our interpretation accordingly . chap. vii . the interpretation of the epistle to the church in sardis . . and unto the angel in the church of sardis write . that sardis was a city in asia is manifest ch. . and considered no otherwise then so , does not at all illustrate the condition of this fifth succession of the state of the church . but acknowledging here again a paronomastical allusion to sarda the precious stone , as grotius does : or , taking notice with pliny , that that stone is so called for its first being found about sardis , it may prove very significative of the condition of reformed christendome within that intervall , beginning from the rising of the witnesses , and ending in the last viall , in part of it i mean. after which the intervall of phyladelphia comes in , and takes up also the second and third thunder . some special qualities therefore of the church of sardis are to be read in this stone sarda , and some to her praise , others to her diminution . the virtue of this stone is , that carried about one it makes a man chearfull and couragious , and drives away witchcraft and enchantment , and expells poison rightly administred , which adumbrate some peculiar privileges in this sardian church . their chearfull security in justification by faith in christ's bloud , and their being rid of the poisonous idolatrous doctrines , and bewitching enchantments of the cup of the whore. here 's nothing of jezebel in this church , nor any mention of the eating of things offered to idols , nor in the two following epistles , which is no small ratification of the truth of these successions . both they and she are well and sound touching these points . . but this stone sarda , which is also called carnalina , and in the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , odem , as representing humane flesh and bloud so lively , seems also to insinuate something to the derogation of the sardian church , as if they were flesh , and not spirit ; which is the special dispensation of the church of philadelphia . and whereas christ's conquest over edom is , by letting out or squeezing out the corrupt bloud of old adam , this odem or carnalina is said to be of that virtue as to stanch bloud and stop it from running out , and therefore seems to be significative of whatever doctrines in the sardian church that hinder the due and requisite mortification of the old man , as loth to weaken him too much , and let too much of his bloud and life run out . . the meaning therefore is , that though the sardian church be well rid of the foul idolatries and grosse trumperies of the papal church , yet her state as yet is but carnal most-what . it is not the dispensation of the spirit of life , but the main stir is about external opinion & ceremony : they seem to know christ onely according to the flesh , not according to the power of his spirit , whereby he is able to subdue all things under him . whereas christ after he had said that his flesh was meat indeed , and his bloud was drink indeed , clearly explains himself , in declaring expresly , that the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that i speak unto you , they are spirit , and they are life ; yet a great part of this sardian church , i mean the lutherans , rack their own wits , and disturb the rest of reformed christendome , to maintain that odd paradox of consubstantiation , that so men may eat and drink that grosse flesh and bloud of christ that was crucify'd upon the crosse in the celebration of their eucharists . what can be more carnaline-like then this ? besides that there are over-many that do as grosly and carnally erre touching the nature of the resurrection-body , they phansying it as terrestrially modify'd ( though it be called a celestial or spiritual body in the scriptures , ) as that body is that we put into the grave , or is capable of the imbraces of the nuptial bed. to say nothing of other such like grosse carnal conceits that this sardian church has not yet expunged out of her mind . but as mischievous a mark as any of her carnality is her dissension and schismaticalnesse even to mutuall persecution , as also the unnatural and unchristian wars of one part of reformed christendome against the other . these things rankly savour of the flesh , and are infinitely contrary to the due dispensation of the spirit ; which when it shall appear will bring in the church of philadelphia , the church of unfeigned love and charity , wherein , according to the prediction of the prophets , there shall not be the noise of this unchristian war any more . these touches may suffice to shew why the spirit of god has denoted this succession of his church by the title of the church in sardis . . these things saith he that hath the seven spirits of god. the number seven signifies universality sometimes ; whence the pythagoreans call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the sense therefore is , that hath in readinesse to bestow all the spiritual or divine graces to make the man of god perfect to every good word and work . and the seven stars . that is to say , that holds the seven stars in his right hand : so it is in the description before his speech to the ephesine church , which is repeated here for encouragement ; christ hereby declaring his power , and promising his assistence to the renewing of christendome through the reformation , as well as he did to the forming of it at first , and rooting out paganism in the first beginning of the church , which is the ephesine intervall . i know thy works , that thou hast a name that thou livest , and art dead . i discern plainly thy state and condition . thou hast indeed a semblance of life , because thou hast a great deal of heat and zeal , and dost with an externall fervour doe many performances that may raise a fame of thee of being more then ordinarily religious . and many hot disputes there may be for this or that ceremony , for this or that opinion , and against them , much and very vehement discourse about faith and justification , and the like . which heat and activity bears a semblance of life in thee . but assure thy self , unlesse thou hast that faith that worketh by love , all this stir is but the noise of tinkling brasse or of sounding cymbals . and being thus alive , thou art notwithstanding in my sight little better then dead . and although thou dost thus imitate warm flesh and bloud , yet thou art but a cold sardius stone to my touch and discernment . as she that liveth wantonly is dead while she liveth , though she thinks she is then most of all alive : so it is with him that , devoid of christian love and charity , is enlivened with an hot , bitter , ignorant and preposterous zeal : this is not the life of god , but of mere nature and carnality . . be watchfull , and strengthen the things that remain that are ready to die . take heed that want of love and life hazard not faith too , and remissnesse in manners bring not in atheism and infidelity over all . for i have not found thy works perfect before me . those things that have life in them goe on to perfection . wherefore if they stop before , and make no progresse , it is a sign there is some deadly distemper at the very heart or root , and such a plant must wither and die . thy works are neither perfect , nor dost thou easily admit of such doctrines as lead most effectually to perfection . remember therefore how thou hast received and heard , and hold fast , and repent . that is to say , you that are my true apostolick church , remember what ye have received from me my self , or my apostles ; stand fast to the infallible word , which will impartially instruct and excite you to all the due measures of godlinesse . and believe not the rotten and corrupt glosses ofdeceitful men , that would sew pillows under mens arm-holes , and frame opinions and precepts to favour the lusts of the flesh . to dote upon men is a piece of carnality ; but to dote on them for their carnal opinions and fleshfavouring documents , is sardian or carnaline of a double dye . repent therefore , for the kingdome of god is at hand ; and he that has the seven spirits of god stands ready to assist and succour with his divine graces all that sincerely endeavour after righteousnesse . so that the fault lies at your own doors . if therefore thou shalt not watch , i will come on thee as a thief , and thou shalt not know what hour i come upon thee . if thou wilt not return to true sobriety and sincerity of manners , i shall bring some signal mischief upon thee before thou beest aware ; i shall suddenly come in judgment against thee when thou least dreamest thereof . god of his infinite mercy avert the ill omen , and change our hearts , that we may amend our lives , and he may be reconciled to us . . thou hast a few names even in sardis , which have not defiled their garments . notwithstanding the dispensation of the sardian church be so generally carnal , in the very hew of that carnaline-stone that looks so like mere flesh and bloud , yet there are some few that have not defiled their garments with that colour , but are as it were the primitiae of the dispensation of the spirit , whose inward man is renewed day by day into the image of my self , and are made partakers of the divine nature , and are the children of light. and they shall walk with me in white . these shall not onely enjoy glorious converses with me , and i communicate my spiritual graces abundantly to them , but they shall be very successfull and prosperous in their affairs . for to be cloathed in white signifies so in the onirocriticks , accordingly as you may see in achmetes . for they are worthy . for i doe to every one according to his work . . he that overcometh , the same shall be clothed in white raiment . he that overcometh all the lusts of this terrestrial body , to him will i communicate the celestial or divine . this is a more theologicall sense . but the political is most proper , the epiphonema concluding the whole epistle . wherefore to be clothed in white raiment , it being here the promise to him that overcomes , signifies ( and that rather then in the fore-going verse ) successe and prosperity in external affairs , and exemption from grief and affliction , as the onirocriticks do expresly interpret it . see achmetes . and i will not blot his name out of the book of life . the more proper and politicall sense may be , that when the church by overcoming has emerged into the philadelphian condition , it shall never change , at least as to the externall frame , but keep up to the end ; and god will avowedly acknowledge it to be his even to the last , even then when it is passed into the laodicean state , and the state of persecution shall never overwhelm it any more . so the book of life may signifie here as the crown of life before in the epistle to the church of smyrna . but i will confess his name before my father and before his angels . that is to say , i will acknowledge his nature to have become in a manner divine and angelical , and therefore to be a meet associate for their companies in my heavenly kingdome for ever . this may be a moral or theologicall sense . but the politicall is chiefly aimed at , as is intimated by the placing of the epiphonema last of all . the confessing therefore of the names of these few in sardis that are right as they should be , and as many as make up to the measure of their sanctity , ( which therefore are the seed of the philadelphian church , ) christ his confessing of their names before his father and before his holy angels , is the mentioning of their names as of a people more peculiarly his , and extraordinarily dear unto him ; that by thus owning them in such an endearing manner before god and his holy angels , they may be in a more special manner recommended to the favour and protection of god , and to the faithfull and watchfull ministry of his holy angels : which will be the efficient causes of their being cloathed in white , and of their name never being blotted out of the book of life ; that is to say , of the permanency of their outward prosperity and security from misery and oppression ; that thus innocency and outward felicity may goe hand in hand in the blessed millennium , which is in a manner the same with the philadelphian intervall of the church . these few names in sardis will amount to this at last . for salvation is to spring out of sardis , not out of babylon . nor is it any wonder that the ministry of the holy angels will be so extraordinarily exercised about a church which will then have become so angelicall , as is more fully noted in the divine dialogues . . these are the rousing motives which christ useth to excite the carnal church of sardis to more hearty endeavours after the dispensation of the spirit , that they may bring on the beginning of those most happy times ; the conduct of which affair is represented by that illustrious heros on his white horse , chap. . where his armies follow him on white horses clothed in fine linnen , white and clean . which appertains to the last end of the intervall of this church of sardis , a great part of whom by this time it 's likely may have turned their carnaline-colour into pure white , and be ready to march with him there to that spiritual warfare , as some are said here to walk with him in white , and that with marvellous success and prosperity , as their white cloathing does intimate . he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . reformed christendome especially , she is so much concerned therein . for she , as i said at first , is this sardian church ; the beginning of whose intervall , being adorned with more true holinesse and sincerity of zeal , the better deserved the title of the rising of the witnesses : and though they be here much reproved for their faults , yet they are acknowledged to be one of the seven churches in asia , chap. . . that is to say , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in fundamento , and are the true and apostolical church still , and justly witnesse against the idolatries and grosse antichristian practices of the church of rome , such , i mean , as with them have become a law , and thereby are properly antichristian . this i thought fit to adde , to stop the preposterous pronenesse of some toward the roman church from the consideration that all things are not so perfect in the reformed churches as might be desired . for though they be not so well as they should be , yet they must needs appear to any but an humorist exceeding much better then in the church of rome . and thus much of the sardian church . chap. viii . an interpretation of the epistle to the church in philadelphia . . and to the angel of the church in philadelphia write . the meaning of philadelphia is plain , and is no riddle . the word signifies brotherly love : which rightly understood is the fulfilling of the law. so that i understand by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , universal love , ( for we are all brothers in adam ; ) but especially the love of those of the houshold of faith ; that is to say , of christian believers . in the sardian church , the greatest noise and stir there is about faith , but her works were not found perfect before god. but the inscription of this church is love , which is the fulfilling of the law , as i hinted before . and his banner over me was love. this is the ensign of the church of philadelphia , who elsewhere is said to be beautifull and terrible as an army with banners ; who is she that looketh forth as the morning , fair as the moon , clear as the sun , and terrible as an army with banners ? why ? who can it be but this church of philadelphia , as famous for feats of arms as for love , as we shall see in the process ? for the intervall of this church begins in the last vial , and reaches to the fourth thunder . these things saith he that is holy. and speaks to that church that loves to hear those instructions : be ye holy , for i am holy ; and , be ye perfect , as your father which is in heaven is perfect . he that is true . he that will make good all his promises and glorious predictions touching his church in this state thereof which is figured out by the church of philadelphia , and writes to those that believe it , and have a firm faith in the power and spirit of christ and of god. he that hath the key of david , he that openeth and no man shutteth , and shutteth and no man openeth . what eliakim was to hezekias , who was of the stock of david , the same is christ to god the father , whom s. john calls love , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . he is chief minister of state under god , and carries all as he pleases by the authority committed to him ; of which a key is the symbol . ( see grotius upon the place . ) there is nothing so hard and impervious but he can make way through it , and open a door to successe , and again shut it against his enemies . . i know thy works . and that so as to approve of them , because they are the fruits of the divine love , then which there is nothing to me more precious . thou actest not out of bitter zeal and strife , or vain ostentation , or any secular respect , but merely out of love to me and my righteousnesse , and out of love to mankinde , whose both present and future happinesse thou dost sincerely endeavour to promote . behold , i have set before thee an open door , and no man can shut it . behold ; i have brought things about so by my providence , and will so effectually second what i have begun by my special assistence , that , maugre all the machinations of men and devils , thou shalt finde opportunities of most gloriously and successfully carrying on the interest of my kingdome . this is performed in the last vial , in that great battel of god almighty , when also the beast and the false prophet are said to be taken . see the divine dialogues . for thou hast a little strength . grotius himself interprets it , a little army : and so indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signifie , & appositely to the present scope , and answerably to the battel i named before . the sense is ; because , though ye be but a few in comparison of the rest of my church and kingdome , ( for the sardian church is his kingdome and church too , out of which the philadelphian church is emerging ) and especially in respect of the infidel and antichristian party , those under the dragon and the beast and the false prophet , yet ye have kept my word , and not denied my name , that is , have both kept to what is holy and true in your hearts , and professed it in your words and works : therefore i will be with you in this glorious manner , and make you so successfull in the promoting of the interest of my kingdome . of this church therefore of philadelphia are those armies seen in heaven , apoc . . following christ upon white horses clothed in fine linnen , white and clean ; which implies both the justnesse of their cause , and the certainty of their successe . as also those boanergesses in the last vial , ( synchronal to that other vision ) that thunder and lighten over the city divided into three parts , whereby the cities of the nations fell , and babylon and her daughters were utterly overthrown . . behold , i will make them of the synagogue of satan ( which say they are jews , but do lie . ) jews , as i noted before , according to the style of the apocalypse , are christians ; and the jews which professe themselves such , and are not , but do lie , are pseudo-christians , or the antichristian party ; but are judged here to be of the synagogue of satan , because of their abominable lies and bloudy murders . for the devil was a murderer from the beginning ; and he is also in the same place by our saviour termed a liar . besides the luciferian pride of that church , like satans , the prince of the devils . behold , i will make them come and worship before thy feet . even those that before kissed the feet of the pope , that lofty prelate . this answers very patly to that passage in the fore-named vision ; where the beast and false prophet are taken , and put alive into a lake of fire : that is to say , the bestian and pseudoprophetical power , as such , is burnt and destroyed and abolished , and the philadelphian power then appears above all , or rather the lord alone will be exalted in that day ; for to this time especially belongs that saying , not by might , nor by power , but by my spirit , saith the lord of hosts . for , indeed , the struggling of the sardian church hitherto against the city that is called sodom and aegypt , though it has been in its kind laudable , yet it has been in a manner edom against edom , a part something more refined against that which is more impure , i mean as to life and godlinesse ; and the weapons of their warfare have not been so spiritual as they ought , they have not rid upon white horses , nor have been clothed in fine linnen , white and clean ; they have not endeavoured to be that church which is without spot & wrinkle , or any such thing , but the sardian tincture has too much distained them . but as it is true in the natural sense , that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of god ; so it is also in the political , that those glorious times of the kingdome of god cannot appear till the church emerge out of the sardian or carnaline state into the philadelphian . against which church christ exhibits no complaint at all , but loves her , and likes her entirely , even as he is cordially loved of her . and without question the state of that church is so lovely , that she will charm even her enemies to a liking of her , and unto a submission to her , all things being so irreprehensible in her . but commonly wicked men are very domineering and ferocient against good men that have any blot or infirmity on them , unless they be of their own faction . and therefore this philadelphian church , if any , must be the church that can mollifie the hearts of the papists , and bring over as many as god pleaseth to the belief of the truth . but for the cities of the nations , their conquests will be unspeakable amongst them . for these are those powerfull thunderers , by whose thundering and lightening the cities of the nations are to fall , as i intimated before . and to know that i have loved thee . the papists themselves shall discern , by the stupendious successe of the philadelphian church , what a value christ puts upon her , and how far he prefers her integrity , simplicity , brotherly-kindnesse , humility , meeknesse and purity of worship , before the roman frauds and impostures , their barbarous persecutions and cruelties , their luciferian pride , and superstitious and idolatrous practices . . because thou hast kept the word of my patience ; that is , because thou art both meek-hearted , and hast been faithful and not flitting in the time of trial , but endurest all things for my names sake ; i will keep thee from the hour of temptation that shall come upon all the world . namely , at what time all the world will be in an hurly-burly , and cast into manifold streights and calamities . which is in the last vial , when the three unclean spirits goe forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world , to gather them to the battel of that great day of god almighty ; and when there shall be so great an earthquake as has not been since men were upon earth , so mighty an earthquake and so great . in this mighty tempest and hurry of things will i preserve thee from danger , and thou shalt carry it safe through all . thou shalt escape better then any party of men , by reason of thy conspicuous innocency , sincerity , and exemplarity of life , and unexceptionable apostolicalnesse of doctrine , and singular love to me and all mankind . because thou art milde and courteous and benign and beneficent to all ; because thou art a lover of unity , un-self-interessed , a foe to no body , and onely an enemy to the vices and miseries of men : this , with my singular favour to thee , shall protect thee in that great confusion and high fermentation of mens spirits under the last vial. who is he that will harm you , if you be followers of that which is good ? . behold , i come quickly . thou art already in that period of time wherein this great judgement will come upon the earth , namely , under the first thunder . or rather , because the philadelphian church is not supposed to be in distinct being or appearance till the last vial , the last vial must be this period . and then this coming in respect of that time will be quickly indeed . hold thou fast what thou hast , that no man take thy crown . thou art a church after my own heart , o philadelphia , and i blame thee for nothing , thou walkest uprightly with me and art perfect : wherefore hold that ground which thou hast got in truth and integrity , that thou mayst not be deprived of that crown i intend thee ; for in thee will i accomplish all the glorious promises touching my kingdome upon earth . . him that overcometh will i make a pillar in the temple of my god , and he shall goe no more out . ' o 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he that overcomes , that is , in the apocalyptick style , all , or the whole company that overcomes , which is here meant of the philadelphians . they shall be as a pillar in the temple of god ; that is , they shall be a steddy and standing holy people , a true holy catholick church that shall never fail , but shall last till i come in the clouds to judgment in the last day . all other forms and denominations shall fail , but this shall keep the sovereignty to the last . and i will write upon him the name of my god. this is in pursuance of the former metaphor of a pillar , with a farther allusion to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the ancients . these philadelphians shall have the name of god written upon them ; that is , their conversation and manners will be so holy and divine , that it will be as conspicuous to all , as if it were writ upon their foreheads that they are the holy church and chosen people of god. or more briefly and in a more political sense ; the name of my god may allude to jehovah shammah , intimating , that these philadelphians shall be that church which is represented by the city jerusalem described by ezekiel , which is called jehovah shammah . of which the following words seem to be a more expresse signification . and the name of the city of my god , which is , new jerusalem , which cometh down out of heaven from my god. the name of the city , the new jerusalem , as well as jehovah shammah , will be written upon them , the city where god dwelleth and ruleth by his spirit ; that is to say , they will be that city of jerusalem formally and actually under the second thunder . for to be called , and to be , are all one in the hebrew idiom . and his name is called the word of god , apo. . . is as much as , he is the word of god. wherefore this philadelphia under the second thunder passes into the same with the new jerusalem ; but the title of philadelphia begins sooner , and reaches farther to the fourth thunder . this inscription of the philadelphians , that they are called the new jerusalem , &c. in the very words in which it is described afterwards apoc. . is a notable indication that by the church of philadelphia is meant that succession of the church that is under the second and third thunder , but was emerging in the last vial. for it is the new jerusalem which cometh out of heaven from god. which therefore having this manifest political sense , would be very hardly attributed to that city of philadelphia in asia literally understood , but with an eye to this successive intervall of the church which we here speak of . and the promise was not performed to the literal church of philadelphia , which has perished ; that was no such lasting pillar . and therefore there is a necessity of a farther sense , mysticall or propheticall . . and i will write upon him my new name . it is expresly said , apoc. . . that christ has a name written upon his vesture and upon his thigh , king of kings , and lord of lords . this name grotius would have understood here . and there is no small reason for it , that name being so particularly and pompously set out for a special name of his . and though he has ever had a right unto it ; yet because the getting into possession of this right will be new and fresh in this philadelphian intervall after the battel of the heros on the white horse , it is rightly termed a new name , and very fittingly writ upon these philadelphians , because they are so instrumental in his atchievements . these are the boanergesses , ( thundering over the great city divided into three parts ) and also those horsemen on white horses , as i intimated before . christ therefore through these becomes king of kings and lord of lords ; or rather , he has made them the greatest kingdome upon earth . the mountain of the lord's house is exalted upon the top of the mountains , and all nations flow unto it ; as it is to come to passe under the third thunder . through which third and second thunder , and seventh vial , is drawn the intervall of the succession of the church of philadelphia , as i have hinted above . he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear , &c. we need not here urge the intimation of this political sense of things from the putting of the epiphonema last , the very nature of the expressions calling for it , though we had no such guide . but we may rather argue , that the things themselves being of so manifest political sense , not moral or spiritual , that it confirms our rule touching the position of this epiphonema . but this by the bye . we proceed to the church of laodicea . chap. ix . the interpretation of the epistle to the church of laodicea . . and to the angel of the church of the laodiceans write . the intervall of the succession of the church of laodicea is the fourth and fifth thunders , that is , from the loosing of satan to the appearing of christ coming to judgement under the sixth thunder . in this intervall the scene of philadelphia is past , and laodicea takes place : which is acknowledged a true church as to worship and doctrine , but is represented as a lazy , lethargical church ; in which that former philadelphian zeal is extinguished as to the generality of the church , though it 's likely this degeneracy comes on by degrees in this intervall . . thus therefore it is foreseen in the series of divine providence , that after that glorious estate of the church which is synchronal to the second and third thunder ( during which space and a little before the scene of philadelphia adorned the stage ) had well purged the christian world from all foolish opinions and superstitions , and of that accursed custome of persecuting one another for them , and that the truth of the gospel had clearly shined in the simplicity thereof , and so convictively against all the follies and impostures of the former ages , that the church had no great hazard of being again cheated with them ; and that they had seen all prophecies in a manner fulfilled before their eyes , so that there could be no doubt to them , but that the philadelphian church was the true church , nor be in any capacity of any change in faith or worship : after this , i say , as all things are in some sort or other variable under the sun , so it seems this philadelphian church was at last to degenerate into this laodicean state ; and that which was before the reign of the spirit and the living righteousnesse of god , would now become the church of laodicea ; which signifies a more popular or external politicall righteousnesse , or the righteousness of the people . an external profession and performance of that mode that was used by the philadelphians in a living way , and with the power of the spirit , the same will this church of laodicea hold on spiritlesly and lazily , with little life or zeal , and yet applaud themselves by reason of the abundance of knowledge she has , because of the completion of the prophecies , and by reason of the purity of the external worship she still retains , as if all was still well with her , and as if she wanted nothing . . this in brief is the condition of this church , as it is significantly intimated in the very name . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as much as the righteousnesse of the people . and the people are any multitude of mankind gathered into a body politick ; as is manifest in that notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and then again in homer , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — and therefore the people , being a body politick , are ruled by such and such laws , which if they observe , it is not regarded quo animo , or out of what principle , they observe them . the new nature , regeneration and the spirit , are quite out of this rode . and a national or oecumenical religion , doctrine or worship , as they are ab extrà , are but as a political law , and the righteousnesse therein but a laodicean righteousnesse , as has been abundantly inculcated already . but besides this meaning of the name laodicea , which i doubt not but is particularly intended , there may , according to the multifarious allusivenesse of the propheticall style , another notable meaning be also intimated , and that very appropriate to this church . for the ratio nominis in laodicea may be likewise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because in the intervall of this church god will in that most notorious and terrible manner come to judge the people . because the closure of this church brings in the last judgement properly so called , therefore this last intervall of the church is called laodicea , the judging of the people , all the nations of the world , at the last day . and there is nothing more frequent in the scripture , then the giving of names from some notable externall accident , that respects the thing or person so named . . these things saith the amen , the faithfull and true witnesse . paul , in his second epistle to the corinthians , says , that all the promises of god in christ are yea and amen ; that is to say , they are so sure and certain , that no man need doubt but they will be performed . wherefore this attribute of christ is seasonably brought in , as respecting both the completion of the promises already performed , in bringing his church to that admirable glorious condition in the succession of philadelphia , as also the performance of that material promise at the end of this epistle , touching eternal life or a blessed immortality in christ's heavenly kingdome ; which these laodiceans , or degenerated philadelphians , like our modern familists , that pretend to the philadelphian dispensation , may some of them , it 's likely , be prone to distrust . but christ is here also called the faithfull and true witnesse , because he does so impartially witnesse concerning the truth of the condition of the laodiceans , and so faithfully discover to them the danger thereof . and the declaration seeming so paradoxicall to them , it was the more requisite to inculcate into them his own truth and faithfulnesse , that he might gain belief of them against their own false sense and opinion of themselves . the beginning of the creation of god. this hath a more high meaning , like that in the beginning of s. john's gospel , and respects the divinity of christ , by whom all things were made , and in whom all things are . but i believe also that is more particularly insinuated here which is expresly declared of him ( according to the seventy ) by the prophet esay ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the beginner of that world or age under the messias ; wherein he having , as i intimated before , carried on all things so completely according to promise and prediction , this seems an advantageous repetition of what was intimated before in that attribute of amen : as if he should say , i was the beginner of this marvellous scene of things from the time of my living on this earth in the flesh to this very day , and you see how steddily all things have been carried on , according to predictions and prophecies : wherefore believe me in the rest ( whether comminations or promises ) which i shall now declare unto you . this seems to be the genuine sense of this preface to the epistle . . i know thy works , that thou art neither cold nor hot . i see thee to be in a tepid , formal , remisse dispensation : thou holdest still the outside of the philadelphian church for doctrine and worship : but thou art destitute of that spirit of life in the new birth which was the proper character of thy deceased sister of philadelphia . i would thou wert cold or hot . though it be not better in it self , yet it were better for thee thou wert not so externally good as thou art , that thou mightest the sooner be convinced of thine own wants , and get into the state of repentance , of mortification , and finally of regeneration , that so thou mightest partake of my spirit . but now thou art but an externall image of warm flesh out of which life and soul did lately depart , even then when thy sister philadelphia departed out of this world . thou art the external frame of that philadelphia , but the spirit has left thee . . so then , because thou art luke-warm , and neither cold nor hot , i will spew thee out of my mouth . that is , i will declare in a torrent of words against thee , how nauseous and distastfull thou art to me , and how my stomack rises against thee . which is done in the following verse , where he pours out those just reproaches against her , that she is wretched , and miserable , and poor , and blind , and naked . or , it may be , there may be a more profound , and yet not less solid , meaning in this commination , and that it may be predictive of her utter extermination ; that the continuance of the church of christ upon earth shall cease in her . for the immenseness of christ's divinity incompassing all things that are , he can vomit nothing out from him but it must therewith be cast into non-entity . and the laodicean church is the last scene of providence , and this church , and indeed the whole scene of affairs on this earth for her sake , is shortly to have an end . for in the next thunder to this laodicean intervall christ comes to judgement , and presently after is the conflagration . and satan is to be let loose but a little time ; so that the time of the laodicean church cannot be long . wherefore the commination , i will spew thee out of my mouth , may well be a prediction of the utter extermination of the church out of being , that is , as to the state of a church upon earth . for as before the coming of the floud god is said to repent him that he had made man upon the earth , and that it grieved him at his heart : so christ here expresseth how nauseous and stomack-sick he is against his church under this intervall and title of laodicea , how his choler and indignation rises against her luke-warmnesse ; and that therefore he will vomit her out in a floud of fire , and overwhelm her in a deluge of hot scalding sulphureous flames : which will come to passe at the conflagration . the state of the church now in its old age naturally growing worse , christ will think fit to put an end to the scene of things , and carry his to his celestial kingdome . . because thou sayest , i am rich , and increased with goods , and have need of nothing . and this is one reason of the spiritlesnesse and inactivity of the laodicean church , that she thinks she has all things desirable already , peace , plenty , power and dominion , security from enemies , profession of the truth , purity in externall worship , rid of superstition and idolatry , abundance of knowledge as well natural as theological , the understanding of all prophecies , by reason of their clear completion , and the faithfull and judicious interpretations of her predecessours ; no oppression , no persecution for conscience sake ; every man lives at quiet , and injoys himself under his own vine & under his own fig-tree : what want we therefore ? are we not still the true philadelphian church , and the new jerusalem descended from heaven , in all the riches and glories thereof ? one would think so indeed , according to the judgement of any carnal eye . but let us hear what the amen says , the true and faithfull witnesse . and knowest not that thou art wretched , and miserable , and poor , and blind , and naked . christ saith to the church in smyrna , i know thy works , and tribulation , and poverty ; but thou art rich . the primitive church , while the spirit of life was in them , though in the midst of the want of all externall comforts , and under most dreadfull persecutions , in the judgement of christ are accounted rich : but the laodiceans , in the affluence of all external blessings , because they want that spirit of life , are deemed poor , and miserable , and naked , as if they had not a rag to hang on their backs ; nay , blind also , for all their abundance of knowledge , because they are devoid of the knowledge and experience of the mysteries of the spirit of life in the new birth , and the renovation of the soul into inward living righteousnesse , but take up with the externall laodicean state or condition . . i counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire , that thou may est be rich . i advise thee , sincerely to endeavour ( for that is the price thou must pay for this gold ) after the recovery of thy self into the state of the new jerusalem descended from heaven ; which city was of pure gold , so purify'd in the fire , that it was as clear as transparent glasse . this is the new creature in thee , the transformation of thy nature into the image of the heavenly adam . this is solid and durable riches indeed , and such as will go along with thee into the highest heavens , when this earth and the metalls therein shall melt with fire . labour therefore after such a solid treasure as will abide those fatal flames , and will not perish with thee in the general conflagration . and the symbol of this treasure is this purify'd gold. and white rayment , that thou mayst be cloathed , and that the shame of thy nakednesse do not appear . groan then earnestly in this , o thou spiritlesse laodicea , desiring to be cloathed upon with that spiritual house which is from heaven ; that , being so cloathed , thou mayst not be found naked . for while thou art in this earthly tabernacle , thou oughtest to account it a burthen , and not to set up thy staff in the enjoyments of this life , because all things are peacefull and prosperous with thee . not that i would advise thee to shorten thy days here ; but that , being thus cloathed by this spiritual vestment , mortality might be swallowed up of life . and it is the spirit of life and the divine love that worketh in thee this one great thing that thou so greatly wantest , and yet art insensible thereof . and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve , that thou mayst see . that is , cleanse thy self with such a due measure of mortification , and purification of the inward man from all filthinesse of flesh and spirit , that thou mayst attain to the divinely-moral prudence which will enable thee to have a right judgement and discerning in all things . this therefore is the collyrion which i would advise thee to anoint thine eye-sight with , even the purgation of thy self from all the animal corruptions , that thou mayst perfect the inward righteousnesse in my fear : for the outward alone carries none to heaven . the ointment i prescribe will indeed smart ; but without it thou wilt still continue blind , and never finde the way to everlasting salvation . . as many as i love , i rebuke . i deal plainly , truly and faithfully with thee ; and not out of any ill will is it that i thus rebuke thee : but it is ex amore benevolentiae , though not ex amore complacentiae . for , as thou art , thou art but a nauseous and irksome spectacle to me . and therefore i thus rebuke thee and instruct thee , that thou mayst amend . and chasten , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which signifies to chastise and scourge , as well as to instruct . which therefore may seem to be the commination of some external calamity and affliction that christ would bring upon the laodiceans , if they did not repent them of their remissness ; and in such a way as themselves may haply be the causes of , through their remissnesse and luke-warmnesse . for that former philadelphian zeal and activity ceasing , which that church exercised in the behalf of the interest of the kingdome of god , their enemies may more then ordinarily encrease upon them , especially the devil being let loose , and being very active to deceive the nations ; whom they should counter-plot , by being as active to convert them to the truth . and this may be the time wherein the prediction of gog and magog is to be fulfilled , who are said to be gathered together to battel , and to encompasse the camp of the saints and the beloved city , which in this state is termed the church of laodicea ; but in that vision , the camp of the saints , because there were not onely many saints amongst them of the old philadelphian strain , but that they were still in their externall frame an holy people and an holy city , not prophaned by the gentiles , that is to say , not polluted by heathenish superstition , and idolatry , and imposture , and cruelty ; nor brought under their power and dominion that were . which yet was once the condition of the holy city for a time and times and half a time , or forty two months , apoc . . . . and it is still called the beloved city also for the same reason : but not the new jerusalem descended from heaven , because so generally that new and heavenly nature was lost amongst them . but this church of laodicea is still beloved of christ , partly for her own sake , and partly for her deceased sister's sake , the lovely philadelphia , whom she so much resembles in all her externall features , that dearest spouse of christ. and therefore the title of the beloved city agrees very well with this passage in the present text , whom i love , i rebuke , yea and scourge too . for these streights that the laodiceans are to be cast into by the siege of gog and magog seems the most probable way to rowze them out of their lukewarmnesse and lazy formality . but that things may not run the hazard of growing worse and worse , nor there be an infinite repetition of the vicissitude of scenes on the stage of this earth , providence will knock off at such a time as that the wicked and prophane rabble of the world shall not again get the dominion over his true church , but he will put a period to the contest by a deluge of fire from heaven , as it is intimated in that vision . but this is more then falls to the share of this present verse . be zealous therefore , and repent . that is , amend thy dead formality and lukewarmnesse , by attaining to the spirit of life through mortification and regeneration , that so thou mayst recover the old philadelphian zeal and love : for this is the onely thing thou wantest . . behold , i stand at the door and knock . do not pretend difficulties : i am ready not onely to assist thee , but do also importune thee : i suggest good motions to thee ; do thou but pursue them and improve them . if any man hear my voioe , and open the door ; that is , if any man obey those dictates of conscience and overtures of light and grace that christ ever and anon offers him , and so becomes sincere in all things , and not willingly offends him in any thing , great or small , ( which will not fail to be done where the desire is sincere ; and this sincere desire is the door that lets in christ , for he passes into us through an unfeigned hunger and thirst after righteousness ; ) then , says he , i will come in to him , and sup with him , and he with me . that is , i will communicate my nature and spirit unto him , and he shall eat my flesh , which is meat indeed , and drink my bloud , which is drink indeed : that is to say , he shall partake of my body & bloud , not in symbols onely , ( which ye doe well to keep up till i come , ) but in a true and living way ; whereby that shall be accomplished , i in my father , and ye in me , and i in you . if any man love me , he will keep my words , and my father will love him ; and we will come unto him , and make our aboad with him . wherefore , being thus replenished with the god of life and the father of lights , thou canst not fail of being full of the spirit , and of all alacrity and readinesse to every good work : thy luke-warmnesse and dulnesse will goe away . . to him that overcometh will i grant to sit with me in my throne ; even as i also overcame , and am set down with my father in his throne . and that thou mayst be the more effectually rowzed up out of this tepidity and lethargicalnesse , thou shalt not onely enjoy me and my father on this earthly stage , but , if thou strivest so as to get the victory in the way i have instructed thee , i will translate thee to that heavenly kingdome most naturally and properly so called ; where thou shalt sit down , and drink of the fruit of the vine in the kingdome of my father . as i , after i had overcome , ascended up to heaven into those glorious mansions , and there sate down at the right hand of god : so him that overcometh the temptations and incumbrances , the pleasures and enticements of this lower world , will i cause to sit down with me in the heavenly places at the last day . which monition is the more seasonable , by how much more near the approach of that great day is . for i shall come visibly to judgement in the very next thunder to the siege of gog and magog , when i will transform your vile bodies into the similitude of my glorious body , that ye may be fit companions for me in heaven for ever . behold , i shew you a mystery : ye shall not all sleep , yet ye shall all be changed ; that mortality may be swallowed up of life . this is a great and stupendious promise ; but thou art to consider that it is spoken by him that is the amen , the true and faithfull witnesse , and the beginning of the creation of god , and therefore both will and can carry on all his design to the very end , amen . . he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . from the epiphonema coming here last , as in all these four last epistles , one may haply raise this objection , as if this sense of the promise immediately preceding it were not politicall or propheticall enough , but merely theologicall , the promise being to be performed in the other world , and therefore not the proper object of prophecy , which concerns the affairs of the stage of this earth : and that this therefore is against our professed rule . but i answer , that though the promise of obtaining heaven after this life upon the death of the body be merely a theogicall promise , and of a thing more spiritual and invisible , and not to be seen upon the face of this earth ; yet this promise of obtaining heaven at the resurrection and general day of judgement , it being the day of that great and visible assizes wherein the souls of the saints shall appear in glorify'd bodies , may well be ranged in the same order with the rest of the promises immediately preceding the epiphonemata of each epistle , and to be accomplished visibly in this life . for the sense of the promise in brief is this ; that as christ , after his sufferings , his death and passion , ascended visibly into heaven , ( for heaven is said to be the throne of god in the scripture , ) and so heaven became also christ's throne ; so those of laodicea , who upon the mortification of their lusts should attain to the state of life in the new birth , should ascend visibly into christ's throne , that is , into heaven , in the open view of them that should be left here on the earth and in the inferiour regions of the air , sentenced to that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels . this is a plain and obvious sense of this promise , and such as the placing of the epiphonema requires , and is , in my judgement , no mean ratification of the true and literal sense of that article of our faith , touching the visible resurrection and glorification of our bodies , and their ascension into the heavenly regions , against such as would whiffle away all these truths by resolving them into a mere moral allegorie . thus consonant every way are the interpretations of these epistles both to themselves , and to the apostolick truth . chap. x. a recapitulation of the main evidences of the truth of this mysticall or propheticall exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches of asia , by way of solution of difficulties touching the said epistles and their circumstances , otherwise hardly or not at all to be solved . . as in natural hypotheses those are accounted truest that solve the phaenomena of nature the most naturally and easily , and especially if such as are no otherwise solvible then upon the proposed hypothesis : so that meaning of scripture , i mean especially of any considerable portion thereof , ought to be esteemed truest that can solve the most difficulties that may be raised concerning the same , or the contexts precedent or subsequent thereto ; and if all , still the more certain ; and if unsolvible otherwise , there is still the more assurance of undeniable demonstration . now how near this mysticall or propheticall exposition of these epistles approches to the clearnesse of this case , i will leave to the reader to judge , after he has considered the solutions of the questions easily raised out of the epistles themselves , or the precedent chapter , and not easily answered , nor at all satisfactorily , at least most of them , but upon the hypothesis we have gone . . as first , if a man enquire why the spirit of prophecy , after he has so expresly given notice that this book of the apocalypse is to shew unto his servants things that are to come , and called it plainly a book of prophecies , should start so unexpectedly from the title and intended subject , as to write no lesse then seven epistles to certain churches , that have nothing considerable of prophecy in them , before he deliver any prophecies properly so called , but onely promises and comminations ; and that he should doe this with as great pomp and as high a preamble as he does when he begins so famous prophecies as those of the seven seals , and the opened book . but according to our hypothesis the answer is easie ; viz. that though these seven epistles to the seven churches of asia have a literal sense , yet they are also a parable or prophecy , and of as high concern for both matter and extent of time ( they reaching from the beginning of the church to the end of the world ) as the prophecy of the seals and opened book ; and that they are ushered in with this great pomp on purpose to give us notice thereof . secondly , a man would be prone to enquire why the spirit dictates letters unto the churches in asia , and not rather to the churches in europe , asia and africk . for certainly the church had disspred it self into all these quarters of the world by that time . as if the spirit of truth were a respecter of persons . for these are not the letters of john , but of the holy ghost . but our answer is ready at hand , that for the significancy of the word asia to comport also with the significancy of the names of the seven churches , asia alone was pitched upon . but , according to the propheticall sense , the true catholick church is writ unto under such distinct conditions as she was to vary into unto the end of the world . so that there is no partiality nor acception of persons in this . thirdly , if a man demand touching the order or precedency of these seven churches that are writ unto : what a plain and manifest account is there to him that compares the epistles in their propheticall sense with the intervalls of the church catholick lying in that order that these churches are ranged ? this is a satisfactory reason , and worthy the spirit that wrote these epistles . but whether they are ranged in this order , because that a letter-carrier going from patmos , his first journey will be to ephesus , and then to smyrna , and so in order till he come to laodicea ; whether the holy spirit of prophecy regarded that in the dictating of his letters , ( though alcazar the jesuite be for it , ) i cannot but suspend my judgement , and that not without a smile . but of this ataxie more particularly anon . . fourthly , if it be demanded why just seven churches in asia are writ to , neither more nor lesse , ( especially that in thyatira , according to the acknowledgement of epiphanius , being then not founded , but after the writing of these epistles , ) it is hard to give a satisfactory answer in the literal sense . for to say this book of the apocalypse affects the number seven , and that , because it runs upon the number seven altogether in the insuing part of the book , which is propheticall , it therefore , for conformity sake , chuses this number in writing to the churches though literally understood , seems but a meagre , mean and trifling account , a design unworthy the holy spirit that dictated this book . but the using this number seven all over is rather an intimation that the book is propheticall all over , and that these epistles are also a prophecy , accordingly as we have explained them . and taking them so , the answer is plain and obvious , viz. the number seven is here chosen out as symbolicall , it being the note of universality ; whence the pythagoreans , as i above noted , call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . wherefore seven ( and no more then seven ) churches are writ unto , as standing for the seven intervalls of the church from the beginning to the end of all . fifthly , if it be demanded why these seven churches rather then any others , which in all likelihood may have the same vertues and vices that these are commended and taxed for : the reason of this is writ in the very notation of their names , every name being significative of the condition of the church catholick in that successive intervall of time that this or that church so named standeth for , and in such order as they are repeated . sixthly , if one require a reason why christ is described by holding the seven stars in his right hand in the epistles to the churches of ephesus and of sardis , why the same description in both , or why in either : in the literal sense it will be hard to finde any peculiar reason ; but in the propheticall sense already declared it is obvious . for the seven stars signifie all the pastours , whether in present existence , or succession . and ephesus is the beginning-state of the church ; and therefore it is both very seasonable and methodicall to represent the first founder , sustainer and continuer thereof by this emblem ; lo , i am with you to the end of the world . and that this again is hinted at in the epistle to the church of sardis , is with evident proportion and analogy to the affairs of the church there represented . for the church of sardis is as it were the beginning again or the emerging of the true church or kingdome of christ out of the power and kingdome of antichrist . . seventhly , why the church of ephesus , of all other churches , should be commended for their trying false apostles . why might not other churches be attaqued by them , and also discover them , as well as the church of ephesus ? the solution of which probleme is easie in this mysticall sense of the epistles , that places the ephesine intervall within the apostles times , but the rest on this side of them . eighthly , if any one demand why it is said to the church of smyrna , more then to any other church , be thou faithfull unto death , and i will give thee the crown of life ; and again , he that overcometh shall not be hurt by the second death : in the literal sense it will be very hard to finde any peculiar reason why this might not as well be said to the church in pergamus , where there was killing for religion , it seems , by the mention of the martyr antipas . i , but there was no obtaining the crown of life there in any peculiar sense ; but the crown of life , that is , the imperial crown , was given to the sufferings of the primitive martyrs under the ten persecutions : to whom also , according to the opinion of the ancient church , the promise of the first resurrection belonged . which is here obliquely glanced at , ( according to the mode of the apocalyptick style , that loves to hint things by ellipses , ) in that promise , he that overcometh shall not be hurt by the second death ; implying thereby , that he shall be made partaker of the first resurrection . ninthly , if any one will again object more particularly against the ataxie of the churches , that they are ranged neither according to the merit nor congeneracy of their conditions , pretending that it had been far better to have joyned the two irreprehensible churches together , smyrna and philadelphia , against whom there is no complaint at all ; and then ephesus , sardis and laodicea , against whom there is no complaint of eating things offered unto idols ; and afterwards pergamus and thyatira , in which churches alone there is : if any one , i say , contend that this method had been more exact ; truly , in the literal sense it will be hard to frame an handsome and satisfactory answer ; especially if he urge that god is the authour of method , as well as the god of order . but in this mysticall or propheticall sense the answer is solid and exquisite , and much-what the same that was given to the like difficulty more generally propounded before , namely , that the churches of asia are named in that order the successive intervalls of the church catholick were to proceed in , of which these asiatick churches are but the symbols or hieroglyphicks . and therefore those two intervalls of time which take in the reign of the beast and the false prophet , viz. the intervalls of the church of pergamus and of thyatira , must come after ephesus and smyrna , because till the expiration of those two intervalls idolatry had not again re-entred the apostatizing church . and the three following intervalls of sardis , philadelphia and laodicea , are the intervalls of the true church elapsed out of the hands of domineering idolatry ; and therefore we hear no more in them of things sacrificed unto idols , nor of any jezabel . and philadelphia , which is the most holy and the most glorious intervall of the church that is to appear on the face of the earth , is not to be named according to her dignity , but according to her succession in time , toward the latter end of the world , as she is here ranged . but of this more then enough , because we had touched of it in the general before . . tenthly , why is christ in his description before the epistle to the church in pergamus set out by a two-edged sword , coming , suppose , out of his mouth , ( according to the ellipticalnesse of the apocalyptick style ? ) what reason in the letter can be given of that ? for ( especially if this supplement be made ) it cannot respect the slaying of antipas with the sword . what peculiar thing then in this church of pergamus is there to require this description ? truly nothing at all appears in the letter . but in the propheticall sense it is very proper , the waldenses and albigenses in this intervall assaulting the church of rome , or at least defending themselves and their pure faith , so signally by this weapon , i mean , by the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god ; though themselves died so many thousands of them in the field by the sword for the faith they thus defended . and in the eleventh place , the description of christ before the epistle to the church in thyatira , and his feet like fine brasse , ( as if they burned in a furnace ; ) ( for that supplement is to be understood out of his description in the first chapter , as before : ) but now what peculiar significancy has this description , or what congruity to any thing in the church of thyatira literally understood ? surely none . but in the propheticall sense it is very expressive of those lower members of christ's body , his church here on earth , of their invincible zeal , and patience , and sincerity of affection , such as did abide the most fiery trialls that could be put upon them , and made them stand at the stake amongst burning faggots with the flames about their ears , and never flinch for it : as has been noted in the interpretation of that epistle . this was the state of that intervall of the church . twelfthly , in a book that is so full of aenigmaticall involutions , and coverings upon coverings , where he calls the churches golden candle-sticks , and the bishops or pastours stars and angels , even then when he interprets and offers to be more plain ; that the same authour should so openly and plainly mention any one by name as he does the martyr antipas , if there were not some farther mysterie in it , would be a great difficulty , and hardly to be digested by the more sagacious and curious . i must confesse i have often wondred at this naming antipas by name , till i understood a farther sense thereof , such as we have rendred in the exposition of that epistle . . in the thirteenth place , one might well demand why christ expresses a greater disgust against the church of laodicea then that of sardis . for though the former is said to be luke-warm ; yet the other , making a great show of life , is notwithstanding declared to be dead . that christ should be more enraged against luke warmnesse then hypocrisy , and threaten it more deeply then the other , i will spew thee out of my mouth , ( which is quite to cast a thing away , never to be resumed again , ) must seem marvellous to the considerate . certainly , if there were not some greater matter in it , the spirit of christ would not speak so severely onely to follow a metaphor . but in the propheticall sense the solution is easie , that passage being predictive of the extermination of the church from the face of the earth at the close of the world , as i have expounded it . in the fourteenth place , it may be demanded , why so affectedly and repeatedly in every epistle that phrase is used , i know thy works , without any variation or omission . which seems a thing but of small importance in the literal sense of these epistles : but in the propheticall it seems on purpose so repeated , to intimate an allusion in asia to the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was intended on purpose to answer to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) that asia may also be significant as well as the names of the seven churches : which they all being , it is a shrewd presumption this repetition was for some such design as has been declared . whereas the literal sense can give no account thereof . fifteenthly , alcazar himself is much stumbled , that the spirit of god should be thought to take notice of any one particular woman in the church of thyatira , and so call her by the name of jezabel , as is ordinarily supposed . and indeed these things are too little for the majesty of this writing of the apocalypse . but how can we help it in the literal sense , if we will interpret with constancy and coherency ? but in the propheticall sense there is no such incongruity . the object is worth the spirit 's taking notice of in this kinde ; this jezabel being that painted woman of rome , intoxicating the kings of the earth with the cup of her spiritual fornications , as has been shewn upon the text. . sixteenthly , it seems very strange that that promise of ruling over the nations , and receiving the morning-star , ( which doubtlesse are politicall promises , ) should be made to the church in thyatira , more then to that in pergamus , or ephesus , and others . what victories or dominion did the church in thyatira in asia get over the nations more then other churches ? this is an hard knot in the literal sense . but in the propheticall it is loosned at the first sight . for the closure of the intervall of the church of thyatira brings in the time wherein whole nations revolted from the pope and his idolatrous church , and professed the reformed religion , and so in these parts got the pontifician party under them . seventeenthly , in the epistle to the church in philadelphia there is mention made of a mighty temptation that is to come upon all the world , to try them that dwell upon the earth , touching which he saith , behold , i come quickly . why should this be said to the church of philadelphia more then to any other of the churches here specified ? there are not the least footsteps of reason to be found in the literal sense . but in the propheticall sense the thing is plain . for the intervall of philadelphia beginning in the last vial , wherein that mighty and terrible earthquake is to happen , the great temptation , what it is , is plainly thence understood , and how in respect of this philadelphian church it will come quickly , she commencing but in the very same vial that this is to happen under . eighteenthly , why upon this philadelphia , a private asiatick church , should the name of the city of god , the new jerusalem which cometh down out of heaven from god , ( the very same that is expressed apoc. . ) be said to be written ? this title were too big and turgent for any private church , were it not a type or symbol of some greater matter . but by the propheticall interpretation this difficulty is quite removed . for the intervall of the philadelphian church is co-incident with the times of the new jerusalem , ( mentioned at the end of the apocalypse , ) and of the millenniall empire of christ upon earth . . nineteenthly , the curious may be prone to enquire , why the church of laodicea in those times should account her self so hugely and extraordinarily rich , increased in goods , and to have no want of any thing . and truly why this should be her estate rather then any of the churches specify'd , from the literal ground we can fetch no reason . but admitting the propheticall sense , and that this is the last intervall of the church of christ , it will naturally so come to passe : for this laodicea will be left heir to all the riches of her sister philadelphia , to peace , prosperity , purity in worship , abundance of natural knowledge , universal skill in the interpretations of the prophecies , and what-ever good thing there is belonging to the church , saving the life and spirit which philadelphia carried along with her into the other world . how easily then and naturally , or rather necessarily , does this description of the church of laodicea fall upon the last intervall ? and , lastly , it is a question extremely obvious to demand , why that phrase , he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear , which our saviour so often is found to adde at the end of his parables to the people , should be used here so repeatedly in every epistle , they being no parables , but epistles sent to each of those seven churches in asia respectively : and then , why this epiphonema is sometimes the last close of the epistle , sometimes not . to which probleme there is no tolerable solution in the literal sense of these epistles . but supposing a mysticall or propheticall sense , there was a necessity of affixing this epiphonema , to shew there was a farther sense intended then that of the letter : and also , that sometimes this epiphonema should come last of all , ( as in the four last epistles , ) that the promise to the conquerour , to him that overcomes , might be more certainly understood to be of a proper propheticall or politicall sense , not merely theologicall , moral or spiritual ; as has been abundantly declared in the exposition . . we might have drawn many more questions and solutions from the consideration of the letter , and of this hypothesis we go upon , to shew its solidity and fitnesse , but that we hold it needlesse , having produced so many already : which jointly considered , with the perpetuall easinesse and naturalnesse of the whole exposition of all the epistles , and the exact correspondency of the names of the churches to the events of the successive intervalls of the true catholick church which they represent , one would think they should not fail fully to satisfie any unprejudiced peruser of our exposition of these epistles , touching the truth thereof . but i am abundantly taught by experience , that both the finding out , and receiving of divine truths found out by others , is a special gift of god. and therefore to him alone be the glory for ever and ever , amen . the end . an antidote against idolatry : or , a brief discourse containing sundry considerations or conclusions tending to the discovery of what is or ought to be held to be idolatry amongst christians . with application to the doctrine of the council of trent , and for the putting a stop to the romish infection . matth . . . thou shalt worship the lord thy god , and him onely shalt thou serve . to the reader . reader , . i suppose thou wilt expect something should be said of this ensuing discourse also , though it needs not be much . the occasion of writing it , and the fitnesse of joyning it to the foregoing exposition of the seven churches , will discover themselves to thee in the perusing of the treatise it self . i must confess i have treated of this argument elsewhere , namely , in my * mysterie of iniquity . but it is a subject of that great importance , that it deserves an entire treatise apart by it self , and that girt up in the most close and convictive method that may be : that those that are sanable or preservable from this dreadfull sin of idolatry may finde the efficacy of our antidote ; and those whose minds it cannot alter may ( however ) be found without excuse . and there is this considerable here above what i have done already on this subject , that here is such an expresse application made of the theorie to the grosse errours in this point and foul mispractices of the church of rome . . those of ours that speak the most favourably of that church cannot but declare them guilty of material idolatry , as they call it . and questionlesse there must be something among them very like that great sin , if there be any truth or sense in the visions of that divine volume of the apocalypse . for the order of things and demonstration of the synchronisms do necessarily cast those visions that represent the concerned as idolatrous ( chap. . and . ) upon the church of rome , ( as also ch. . v. — ; ) and they can belong to none else in the propheticall scope of the visions , time and place and the order of things having so unavoidably fixed them upon her . wherefore even according to divine suffrage they are guilty of idolatry in one sense or other , or come so nigh it , that the spirit of god in a jealousie , to exaggerate their wantonness , speaks to them as such , to deterre them from those suspected ways , and dangerous approches to so horrible a crime . and grant it were but thus , yet both in the vision of the * seven churches , and in that of the * whore of babylon , the people of god are expresly called unto and encouraged and commissioned to forsake the church of rome's communion . so that the protestants have not the least guilt of schism upon them for leaving her , no not upon this more favourable supposition . . but , alas ! alas ! this smooth hypothesis is but a pleasing dream arising from the softnesse and sleepinesse of the carnal minde , and the love of those things that must passe away as a dream or phantasm of the night . let god be true , and every man a liar , as the apostle speaks . and truly the spirit of god would scarce speak true , if what is spoken of idolatry so broadly and so expresly in those visions ( insomuch that they have been understood of the heathen idolatry even for this very reason by learned and able interpreters ) should , now we are necessitated to understand them of rome christian in her apostatized condition , not amount to the charge of any proper and formal idolatry at all . . but the desperatenesse of their case is , that if they were not represented by these visions as idolatrous , that is to say , if these visions had never been writ , or now they are writ , though they were to be understood of some others , and not of the church of rome ; yet appealing to the nature of the thing , to the true notion of idolatry properly and formally so called , and to the acknowledged doctrine of their church expressed in the council of trent , and their universal practices abetted by publick authority , this alone is sufficient to demonstrate them to be idolaters properly so called . which is the scope of this present treatise . . which therefore doth confirm and corroborate , and place beyond all exception , the orthodox protestant interpretations of those visions that concern the church of rome : which in this last age have been made so clear , and every way so natural and congruous , that this one thing granted of their idolatry , there cannot be the least scruple of the truth and congruity of the rest of the applications . . and i cannot but adore the faithfulnesse of divine providence , that has furnished his church with these oracles to be the guide of the faithfull in these latter ages , which are as it were the dregs of those times which the spirit of prophecy has set no good character upon ; wherein there is such an inundation of wickednesse and prophanenesse , that there is scarce any faith to be found upon earth . but that church which has deluded the world with so many fictions could never forge those prophecies that are so punctually true , and so cuttingly set out all her grosse miscarriages , and as expresly foretell her ruine , unlesse she will humble her self , and pluck in her horns , lay aside her bold boasts of infallibility , and be content to be taught to cast away her idols , and be cured of her dropsie and unnatural thirst after the bloud of the saints and the bloud of the martyrs of jesus . . nor can i on the other side sufficiently admire the stupidity of some of our own , and their grosse ingratitude to divine providence , that have so slight a regard to a book of that mighty weight and moment as the apocalypse is , and think it such a subject , as that any good wit must needs mis-place his time if he meddle with it : which is more then a pagan irreverence to so holy and so important oracles . the romans of old had another esteem for the verses of the sibylls : nihil enim ità custodiebant neque sanctum neque sacrum quemadmodum sibyllina oracula , as dionysius halicarnasseus testifies . and it was an high honour to be the keepers , much more the right expounders , of them . but that which god of his mercy offers to all , such is either the idlenesse , frivolousness or profaneness of the spirits of men , that it is scarce accepted of any . . the truth is , most men are loath to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to be messengers of ill news to the greatest , that is to say , to the corruptest , part of christendome ; but rather affect the glory and security of being accounted of so humane , of so sweet and ingratiating a temper , as that they can surmize well of all mens religions ; and so think to conciliate to themselves the fame of either civil and good natures , or of highly-raised and released wits , ( though it be indeed but a spice of the old abhorred gnosticism , ) that can comply with any religion , and make a fair tolerable sense of all . . but these are such high strains of pretense to wit or knowledge and gentility as i must confess i could never yet arrive to , nor i hope ever shall : though i am not in the mean time so stupid in my way , as to think i can write thus freely without offence . and yet on the contrary , i can deem my self no more uncivil then i do him that wrings his friend by the nose to fetch him out of a swound . . i am not insensible how harsh this charge of idolatry against the church of rome will sound in some ears , especially it being seconded with that other of murther , and that the most cruel and barbarous imaginable , and finally so severely rewarded with an impossibility of salvation to any now , so long as they continue in communion with that church . but , i believed , therefore i spake , and have no reason to recall my words , or to have concealed the truth , that their fishing may become lesse successfull in these parts ; and that it may be with my countrey-men according to that in salomon , surely in vain the net is spred in the sight of any bird . and therefore this is to open their eyes , that they may see what snares of destruction are laid for them ; and how those that promise others liberty are themselves the servants of corruption ; and how they that take upon them to be the onely absolvers from sin are themselves held fast in the snares of eternall death , and do as necessarily illaqueate all others therein whom they proselyte to their religion : so far are they from giving them any effectual absolution . . i doubt not but many will be prone to cry out , this is a very rude piece of uncharitablenesse to all romanists . but i say , it were a most perfidious kinde of civility , even to them themselves , ( to say nothing of the injury to our church and countrey , ) to declare otherwise . but if this be the main odium that sticks upon so true and usefull a conclusion , that it is so far estranged from the spirit of charity , hear but this brief parable , reader , and then i will leave it to thy self to judge , and conclude . there was a certain knight bravely mounted , as it might seem , and in goodly equippage , in bright armour , a rich scarf about his shoulders , and a large plume of feathers in his helmet , who was bound for the castle of health , seated on an high hill , not unlike to the domicilium salutis in cebes his table , which therefore he easily kept in his eye . but the way he was in being something stony and rough , and leading not so directly as he thought to the desired castle , he diverted out of the way , and descended into a green plain ; but not knowing whether it was all passable to the castle , called to some loyterers there in the field , to enquire of them ; who came right willingly to the knight , scraping many legs to him , and desiring him to tell his demands . . there was an old shepherd likewise not far off , who , by that time this idle people had got to the knight , had come down to him also . friends , said he , to those men he called , is the way passable and safe through this green plain to yonder castle ? pointing to the castle of health with his warder . very safe , may it please your worship , said they ; and , shrugging their shoulders , and scraping many legs , asked a largesse of the knight , pretending they had been at common work not far off . whereupon the knight put his hand into his pocket , and gave them liberally . but are there no bogs , said he , nor lakes betwixt this and the castle ? some small inconsiderable sloughs it may be , said they ; but you will meet with the holy society of the wipers every-where , who will be ready to wipe you as clean as a clock before you come at the castle . and being so excellently well mounted as we see you are , namely , upon that famous steed renowned over all the world , the infallible-footed aplanedo , so good an horse as that he never stumbles , your worship need fear no disaster at all : besides , the beast , god blesse him , has a nose like any hound , and by a miraculous sagacity , without any reason or humane literature , with an un-erring certainty he can smell out the right way , and so secure you from all danger . to say nothing how excellent he is at the swimming any water , and how he can tread the very air , he is so high-metall'd and light-footed . onely be sure to keep fast in the saddle . and then , sir knight , said the shepherd , if the wind blow fair , the plumes in your helmet may help to support you both ; but if not , some angel from heaven may take you by the crest of your helmet , as he did the prophet habakuk by the hair of his head , when he carried him through the air from judea into babylon . . the knight looking back , ( for he was not aware of the shepherd at this time , ) what con●e●●ed 〈◊〉 man is this , said he , that talks this phancifully ? may it please your worship , he is a shepherd , said they , and has a flock on yonder little hill hard by ; but he is one of the most self-conceited old fools that ever your worship met with in all your days : he thinks that all skill and knowledge lies within the compasse of his baldpate and wrinkled fore-head , though few or none are of the same opinions with himself . sir knight , said the shepherd , i pretend to no skill nor knowledge but what is certainly within mine own ken ; but what i know , i love to speak freely . and i tell you , sir knight , unlesse you be stark staring mad you will never follow these mens counsels , nor venture over this moor to that castle : for you will be swallowed up horse and man into a fathomlesse lake of ill-sented mire , for all the nice nostrills of aplanedo . you was in a more hopefull way before , though something rough ; but it is so streight before you come at the castle , that you could never have got through , unlesse you had left aplanedo behind you . he 's an old cholerick dotard , said those other fellows ; be but sure to keep the saddle , and we dare warrant your worship , ( our lives for yours ) that aplanedo will carry you safe through all dangers . wherefore upon the renewall of the high conceit the knight had before of his steed , and those confident animations of his mercenary counsellers , he set on in a direct line toward the castle over this moor ; the shepherd looking after him to see the event . but the knight had not rid two or three bow-shots from the place , but the shepherd saw them suddenly sink horse and man into the ground , so that they were both buried alive in the mire . . whereupon fetching a deep sigh after so tragicall a spectacle , he returned with a sad heart and slow pace towards his sheep on the top of the hill , drailing his sheephook behinde him , as they do their spears at the funeral of a souldier : whom his dog followed with a like soft pace , hanging down his head , and letting his tail flag , as if he had a minde to conform to both the sorrows and postures of his master . but those other false companions had somewhat before this got to a lone alehouse not far off , to spend the knight's largesse merrily with a bonny young hostesse , and in plenty of good ale and cakes to celebrate his funerall . . now , reader , i dare appeal to thy judgement which of these parties , the old free-spoken shepherd , or those mercenary flatterers , had the greater share of charity ; and to determine with thy self in what a sad condition those of the church of rome are , who , having the opportunity of being better instructed , as the knight had , are yet led away captive by such cunning deceivers . which is the main state of the controversie . if i had not come and spoken unto them , they had not had sin ; but now they have no excuse for their sin , saith our blessed saviour , in the gospel . the rest of the riddle , reader , i leave to thine own unravelling , and bid thee farewell . an antidote against idolatry . chap. i. what is idolatry according to divine declaration . . there are two ways in general of discovering what is or ought to be held to be idolatry amongst christians ; the one , divine declaration , the other , clear & perspicuous reason : which though they may haply reach the one no farther then the other , that is to say , that whatsoever may be concluded to be idolatry by divine declaration , the same may also by unprejudiced reason , and vice vers'd ; yet their joint concurrence of testimony is a greater assurance to us of the truth ; and two cords twisted together are stronger then either single . wherefore we will make use of both , and begin with divine declaration first . . the first conclusion therefore shall be , that as in civil governments it is the right of the supreme power to define and declare what shall be or be held to be treason , and punishable as such : so it is most manifestly the right of god almighty , who is also infinitely good and wise , to define and declare to his people what shall be or be held to be idolatry , which is a kind of treason against god , or crimen laesae majestatis divinae . and what is thus declared idolatry by god is to be held by us to be such , though the ludicrousnesse and fugitivenesse of our wanton reason might otherwise find out many starting-holes and fine pretences to excuse this thing or that action from so foul an imputation . but as in civil affairs the declaring such and such things to be treason does in a politicall sense make them so ipso facto : so god's declaring such and such things to be idolatry , they do to us ipso facto become idolatry thereby : though to an ordinary apprehension , perhaps , neither this would have seemed treason , nor that idolatry , without these antecedent declarations . but where the law-giver is infallible , there is all the reason in the world we should submit not onely to his power , but to his judgement in the definitions of things , and rest sure that that is idolatry which he has thought fit to declare so to be . . the second conclusion ; that what is declared idolatry by god to the jews ought to be acknowledged idolatry by us christians . the ground of this conclusion is fixed in the nature of the christian religion . for christianity being a far more spiritual religion then that of judaism , and therefore abhorring from all superstition , there cannot be the least relaxation to the most rancid of all superstitions , idolatry it self . wherefore whatsoever was accounted idolatry amongst the jews , and so defined by a divine law , must be reckoned much more such under christianity , there being not the least pretence for any relaxation . besides , there was nothing under the jews ( or can by any people be ) rightly deemed idolatry , but it is carefully enough cautioned against and plainly forbid in the first and second commandments of the decalogue . but the whole decalogue is moral , and so declared by god , in that it is said to be writ by his own finger on the tables of stone , ( which are symbols of the permanent substance of our souls , on which all the general precepts of morality are ingraven as innate notions of our duty . ) and therefore it is hereby intimated that the precepts of the decalogue are just and fitting , not onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not onely by an externall law , but engraffed in our very nature and reason ; and that the root and ground of them will easily be fetch'd from thence . to which you may adde , that it were a very immethodicall and heterogeneous botch , unworthy of the wisedome of god and of his servant moses , whenas all the rest of the decalogue is moral , to phansy one or two of the commandments of another nature . this is so rash and gross a reproach to the divine wisedome as truly , in my judgement , seems unexcusable . but besides this , the morality of the decalogue is also acknowledged by the church , it making part of their liturgie every-where , and we begging an ability of obeying the second commandment as well as the rest : and christ also referrs to the decalogue for eternall life . and lastly , it seems as it were singled from all the rest of moses laws , as a lasting and permanent law to the church of god , ( whence it is entred into our very catechisms , ) never to be abolished , or rather vigorously to be kept in force , for the second commandment's sake particularly , that it might strongly bear against those invitations to idolatry that may seem to offer themselves in the nature of our religion , or reclaim the church from it when they were fallen into it , as well as it was to keep back the jews from joyning in worship with their idolatrous neighbors round about them . wherefore all manner of idolatry being cautioned against by the moral decalogue given to the jews , there are no kinds thereof that ought to be entertained or allow'd of by any christians . . the third conclusion ; that what-ever was idolatry in the heathen , the same is idolatry in us , if we commit it . the reason of which assertion is this , because the heathen had not so express a declaration from god against all manner of idolatry as the jews and christians have : and therefore where-ever they are guilty of idolatry , the jew and christian , if they doe the like things , are much more . the fourth conclusion ; the idolatry of the pagans consisted in this , viz. in that they either took something to be the supreme god that was not , and worshipped it for such ; or else worshipped the supreme god in an image ; or gave religious worship , that is to say , erected altars , temples and images , offered sacrifice , made vows to , and invoked , such as they themselves knew not to be the supreme god , but either the souls of men departed , or other daemons , or else particular appearances or powers of nature . the fifth ; that both divine daeclaration and the common consent of christendome do avouch to us , that all the aforesaid pagan modes of idolatry practised by them were in those pagans practices of idolatry . and therefore , by the third conclusion , they must be much more so in either the jew or christian. . the sixth ; that giving religious worship , that is to say , erecting temples , building altars , invoking , making vows , and the like , to what is not the supreme god , though not as to him , but as to some inferiour helpfull being , is manifest idolatry . this is plain out of the precedent conclusion ; and may be farther confirmed from this consideration , that idolatry was very rare amongst the nations , especially the romans , if this mode of idolatry be not truly idolatry . and scarce any thing will be found idolatry amongst them , but taking that to be the supreme god which is not , and worshipping it for such . but if any being on this side the supreme god may be worshipped with religious worship void of idolatry , all things may , though some more non-sensically and ridiculously then others . wherefore to use any of the abovesaid modes of worship to what is inferiour to the supreme being , though not as to the supreme being , must be idolatry ; or else the roman paganism it self is very rarely , if at all , chargeable therewith , they having a notion accurate enough of the supreme god , and distinct enough from their other deities ; so that unlesse they chance to worship him in an image , they will seldome be found idolaters , or rather never , according to the opinion of some , who say , none that have the knowledge of the one true god can be capable of idolatry . . the seventh ; that to sacrifice , burn incense , or make any religious obeisance or incurvation to an image in any wise , as to an object of this worship , is idolatry by divine declaration . this is manifest out of the second conclusion and the first , as may appear at first sight . for it is plainly declared in the second precept of the decalogue touching images , thou shalt not bow to them , nor worship them : of which undoubtedly the sense is , they shall not be in any wise the object of that worship which thou performest in a religious way , whether by bowing down to them , or by what other way soever . for the second commandment certainly is a declaration of the mind of god touching religious worship , let the ceremonies be what they will. the eighth ; that to erect temples , altars , images , or to burn incense , to saints or angels , to invoke them , or make vows to them , and the like , is plain idolatry . this is apparent chiefly out of the third , fourth , fifth and sixth conclusions of this chapter . for the pagans daemons exquisitely answer to the christians saints and angels in this point ; saving that this spiritual fornication is a rape upon our saints and angels , but simple fornication in the heathen with their impure daemons . the ninth ; religious incurvation towards a crucifix , or the host , or any image , as to an object , and not a mere unconsidered accidental circumstance , is idolatry . this is manifest out of the seventh and eighth conclusions . but the worship of latria exhibited to the host upon the opinion of transubstantiation is idolatry by the third and fourth . . conclusion the tenth ; to use on set purpose in religious worship any figure or image onely circumstantially , not objectively , but so as to bow towards it , or to be upon a man's knees before it with eyes and hands devoutly lifted up towards it , but with an intention of making it in no sense any object of this religious worship , yet if this were in a country where men usually and professedly do , it were notwithstanding for all this intention a grosse piece of idolatry . but if the whole countrey should conspire to make this more plausible sense of those incurvations and postures ; admit we might hope it were not idolatry , yet it would be certainly a most impious and wicked mocking of god , and eluding his minde in the second commandment , ( that naturally implies the forbidding any worship or incurvation toward images in a way of religion , ) and a crime as scandalous and near to idolatry as the going into bed to another man's wife , with chast pretensions , would be to grosse adultery . nay , indeed , it is very questionable , if he knowingly and deliberately put himself into these postures before an image , whether the image will not be the object of those postures and incurvations whether he will or no. or rather it seems plain , beyond all questioning , that it will be so . for there is a corporeall action significative of honour and respect corporeally ( though not mentally ) directed towards and received by the image , and this at the choice of the religionist , which intitles him to the fact . but we need not labour much touching this last conclusion , the two former abundantly convincing the church of rome of multifarious idolatries , if they will stand to divine definitions , or the declarations of holy scripture touching this point . chap. ii. what is idolatry according to the determination of clear and free reason . . we will now try how obnoxious the romanists are out of the plain definitions and determinations of free and clear reason . in which method let us set down for the first conclusion , that idolatry is a kinde of injustice against god. that this is true , may appear from that definition of religion in tully , who defines it justitiam adversùs deum . which is not the sense of tully onely , but the very voice of reason and nature . and therefore idolatry being one kinde of irreligion or impiety , it must needs include in it a kind of injustice against god. . the second conclusion ; that idolatry is a very sore and grievous disease of the soul , vilely debasing her and sinking her into sensuality and materiality , keeping her at a distance from the true sense and right knowledge of god , and leaving her more liable to bodily lusts : that the natural tendency of idolatry is this , and yet the souls of men , in this lapsed state , are naturally prone to so mischievous a disease , as both history and daily experience do abundantly witnesse . see the mischiefs of idolatry in my mystery of iniquity , part . lib. . ch. . nor can it infringe the truth of this conclusion , that a man , retaining still the true notion of god according to his divine attributes , may , according to a sense of his own , bow down toward a corporeall object of worship . for he must retain it by force against such a practice as would and does naturally debauch the users of it . and besides , if he had really the life of god in him as well as the notion of him , he would feel such actions grate against his heart , and perceive how they would invade and attempt the abating and extinguishing the more true and pure sense of god and of his worship , and seduce the soul to externall vanity . but suppose a man or two could keep their minds from sinking down from a right notion of the deity ; yet they are as guilty of idolatry , if they give religious worship to corporeall objects , as he is of adultery and fornication that yet uses them so cautiously as neither to impair his bodily health , nor besott his natural parts thereby . and therefore , though there may be some few such , yet the laws against fornication and adultery ought notwithstanding to be very sacred to every one , even to those discreeter transgressours of them , and ever to be obeyed by them , because the observation of them is of such infinite importance to the publick . and what we have said of the worship of god is analogically true of honouring of the saints , who are best honoured by the remembrance and imitation of their vertues , not by scraping legs to or clinging about their images , which are no more like them then an apple is to an oister . . the third conclusion ; that those high expressions of the jealousie of god and his severe displeasure against idolatry are very becoming the nature of the thing , and his paternal care of the souls of men . this appears from the foregoing conclusions . for both the prerogatives and rights of the divine majesty himself are concerned , and also the perfection , nobilitation and salvation of the souls of men . this we discover by reason , and our reason is again more strongly ratify'd by divine suffrage . the fourth ; that idolatry , though it be so hainous a sin , yet where it is committed most in good earnest does necessarily involve in it ignorance or mistake , in the act of worship or in the object ; they either taking the object to be god when it is not , or to have some attribute of god when it has not , or to enjoy some prerogative of god which yet it does not , or else the worship not to be divine when it is ; or , lastly , they mistake in the application of the worship , thinking they do not apply divine worship to an object when they do . the fifth ; that to be mistaken in the object of worship , or in the kind of worship , or in the application , cannot excuse any-thing from being downright idolatry ; forasmuch as none are in good earnest idolaters without some of these mistakes . the sixth ; that the peculiar honour or worship which is given to god is given to him not so much as his honour and worship , as his due and right : insomuch that he that does not give it to god , or communicates it to another , does an injury to the divine majesty . this is plain , and consonant to what was said on the first conclusion , that religion is a kinde of justice towards god. and indeed if divine honour was not given to god as his due and right , it were no honour at all , but rather a benevolence . . the seventh ; the right of that peculiar honour or worship we doe to god is grounded either in the nature of his incommunicable excellencies , or in his excellencies so far as we know incommunicated to any creature , or , lastly , in divine declaration or prescription of the ways or modes of thus or thus worshipping him , which himself has some-time set down . the eighth ; that any actions , gestures or words directed to any creature as to an object , which naturally imply or signifie either the incommunicable or incommunicated eminencies of god , is the giving that worship that is the right and due of god alone to that creature , and that injury against the divine majesty which is termed idolatry . the evidence of this conclusion may appear from hence , because there is no other way of application of external worship then by directing such significant actions , gestures , or words , toward such a being as to an object . the ninth ; that the using any of those actions or gestures , or doing any of those things that the true and supreme god did chuse and challenge in the setting out the mode of his own worship , towards or in reference to any creature as to an object , this also is that injury against god which we term idolatry . the reason is this , because such a mode of worship does thus manifestly appear to be the peculiar right of god , which none can transferr to another but god himself . wherefore this right having not been communicated by him to any other , when-ever such a kind of worship is used , it must be used to him , and to none else . nor can his dereliction of any such mode of being worshipped warrant the use of it to any creature afterwards , because no creature can be god in those circumstances as he thought fit to institute such a worship for himself in : for no creature can be god at all , and therefore never capable of any of those modes of divine worship which god ever at any time instituted for himself . besides , if this dereliction and disuse of any mode of worship might make it competible to a creature , then might we sacrifice beeves and sheep ( besides other services of the temple ) to any saint or daemon . . the tenth ; an omnipercipient omnipresence , which does hear and see what-ever is said or transacted in the world , whether considered in the whole , or as distributed into terrestriall , celestiall , and supercelestiall , not onely all these omnipercipiencies but any one of them is a certain excellency in god , and , for ought we know , incommunicated to any creature . the eleventh ; that this omnipresence or omnipercipience terrestriall is one main ground of that religious worship due to god which we call invocation . this is plain , that upon this very ground that god hears and sees ( though himself be invisible ) what-ever is said or done upon earth , he has the honour of being invoked any-where or every-where , and of having temples built to him ; because he that is omnipresent cannot be absent from his temple , but is alway there to be invoked . the twelfth ; that if omnipresence or omnipercipience , at least terrestriall , ( if not celestiall , ) be not communicated to saints and angels by god , the invocation of either is palpable idolatry . this is manifest from the eighth conclusion . for invocation implies an incommunicated excellency in the saints or angels , and so communicates that right to them that appertains onely to god , and is that injury against god that is called idolatry . so that it is a vain evasion that pretends that we honour god the more in making him so good to the saints and angels , as to bestow this excellency on them ; whenas yet his wisedome has not thought fit so to doe . for we are so far from honoring him hereby , that we injure him in giving his right to another ; and we dishonour him in presuming he had done wiselier or better in doing what he has not done . whenas indeed , if he were so lavish in imparting his proper excellencies to creatures as some would make us believe he is , to palliate their own idolatries , it were the next way to make men forget all applications to god , and to cast him out of their memory , and take up with the more particular patronages of saints and angels . . the thirteenth ; that our thinking such a saint or angel can hear us where-ever we invoke him , is no excuse for our invocation of him , nor saves us from idolatry , since all idolatry committed in good earnest implies some mistake , as has been noted in the fourth conclusion . the fourteenth ; that all the modes or ways of the communication of this omnipercipiency to saints or angels are either very incredible , if not impossible , or extremely ridiculous as to any excuse for their invocation . for the usual residence of saints and angels being in sede beatorum , as the roman church holds , and that place on the coelum empyreum above all the stars , that the angels and saints should upon the account of the exaltednesse of their natures see and hear from thence what is done or said from one side of the earth to the other , is extremely incredible , if not impossible ; yea , sufficiently incredible , or rather impossible , though they had their abode on this side of the moon . and that they should see all things and transactions , hear all prayers and orations , in speculo divinitatis , is alike incredible ; a thing which the humanity of christ himself , though hypostatically united to the divinity , did not pretend to . but that god should either in this speculum or any otherwise advertise them that such a one prays to them that they would pray to him for that party , is it not at first sight above all measure ridiculous ? and alike ridiculous it is to pray to saint or angel , as if they were present and heard our prayers , when indeed they are absent , and cannot tell that we did pray , unlesse by some intelligencers . this devotion is an improper and unnatural act , and shews that we doe that to an invisible creature which is onely proper to be done to the invisible god ; and that therefore it is idolatry , as giving that right of worship to others which is onely congruous to him . . the fifteenth ; that though there were communicated by god to saints and angels at least a terrestriall omnipercipiency , yet if he have not communicated the knowledge thereof to us , as most certainly he has not , the invocation of them is notwithstanding a very presumptuous invasion of the indubitable rights of god , and the intrenching upon his prerogatives , and therefore as to the internall act no lesse then the sin of idolatry . the reasons of this conclusion are , first , that god concealing from us the knowledge of the communication of this excellency , does naturally thereby intimate that he would not have them invoked , but reserves the honour of our invocation of an invisible power unto himself onely . secondly , that whatsoever is not of saith is sin : and therefore the ground of invocation of saints or angels being at least dubitable , their invocation is sin ; and it being about the rights of god in his worship , what can it be better esteemed then idolatry ? thirdly , this principle of feigning or groundlesly coneeiting , without any revelation from god , that any creatures are capable of such honours as are god's indubitable right and prerogative , is the forge and shop , the palliation and pretense , for infinite sorts and odly-excogitated varieties of idolatrous objects : and therefore so presumptuous and so abominable a principle , which is the mother and nurse of such infinite ways of idolatry and injustice against god , even according to humane reason ought to be declared against as idolatrous ; and , consequently , all the practices thereupon are also to be declared idolatry , because they spring from a principle taken up which is such a fundamental piece of idolatry and injustice against god , and exposes him to all manner of idolatrous injuries . fourthly , to dare to doe an act we know not whether it may be idolatry or no , and this needlesly , our conscience not at all compelling us thereto , this is to dare to commit idolatry ; and the daring to commit idolatry , and so to doe defiance to the majesty of god , what is it less then to be an idolater ? for according to his inward man and the main morality of the action he is so : as he is morally a murtherer that , doubting or not knowing but that it is his own friend , by luck killed his intended enemy : for the sense is , that rather then not be revenged of his enemy , he will not stick to kill his dearest friend . and finally , this idolatry is the more discernible and aggravable in the invocation of saints or angels , their omnipercipiency being so extremely incredible , if not impossible or ridiculous , upon any ground , as appears by the foregoing conclusion . . the sixteenth ; that the erecting of a symbolicall presence with incurvations thitherward , the consecrating of temples and altars , the making of oblations , the burning of incense , and the like , were declared by the supreme god , the god of israel , the manner of worship due to him , and therefore , without his concession , this mode of worship is not to be given to any else ; as appears by conclusion the ninth . the seventeenth ; that the pagans worshipping their daemons , though not as the supreme god , by symbolicall presences , temples , altars , sacrifices , and the like , become ipso facto idolaters . this is manifest from the ninth , the fifteenth , and the foregoing conclusion . the eighteenth ; though it were admitted that there is communicated to saints and angels at least a terrestriall omnipercipiency , and that we had the knowledge of this communication , and so might speak to them in a civil way , though unseen ; yet to invoke them in such circumstances as at an altar and in a temple dedicated to them , or at their symbolicall presence , this were palpable idolatry . the truth is manifest agian from the ninth and sixteenth conclusions . . the nineteenth ; incurvation in way of religion towards any open or bare symbolicall presence , be it what-ever figure or image , as to an object , is flat idolatry : in the worship of saints , angels and daemons , double idolatry ; in the worship of the true god , single . the reason hereof is resolved partly into the ninth and sixteenth conclusions , and partly into the nature of application of worship . for externall worship is not any otherwise to be conceived to be apply'd to a symbolicall presence , but by being directed towards it as towards an object . wherefore if religious incurvation be directed towards any figure or image as to an object , this figure or image necessarily receives this religious incurvation , and partakes with god ( if the image be to him , ) in it ; which is manifest idolatry . for the direction of our intention here is but a jesuiticall juggle . and therefore i will set down for conclusion the twentieth , that religious incurvation toward a bare symbolicall presence , wittingly and conscienciously directed thither , though with a mental reserve , that they intend to use it merely as a circumstance of worship , is notwithstanding real idolatry . the reason is , because an externall action toward such a thing as is look'd upon as receptive of such an action , ( and has frequently received it , ) if it be thus or thus directed , will naturally conciliate the notions or respects of action and object betwixt these two , whether we intend it or no. and it is as ridiculous to pretend that their motions or actions toward or about such a symbolicall presence are not directed to it or conversant about it as an object , as it were for an archer to contend that the butt he shoots at is not the scope or object , but a circumstance , of his shooting ; and he that embraces his friend , that his friend is not an object , but a circumstance , of his embracing . which are conceits quite out of the rode of all logick . see the last conclusion of the foregoing chapter . . the twenty-first ; that the adoration of any object which we , out of mistake , conceive to be the true god made visible by hypostatical union therewith , is manifest idolatry . the reason is , because mistake does not excuse from idolatry , by conclusion the fourth and the fifth . and in this supposition we misse of one part of the object , and the onely part that single is capable of divine honour . for god to be disunited from this adored object is in this case all one as to be absent : for god is not considered nor intended in this act of adoration but as united with this visible object . which respect of union if it fail , that consideration or intention also fails , and the worship falls upon a mere creature . in brief , if out of mistake i salute some lively statue or dead body for such or such a living man , though this man or his soul were present , and saw and heard the salutation , yet i play the fool , and make my self ridiculous , and am conceived not to have saluted him i would : so if i doe adoration to any object , suppose the sun or some magicall statue , for the true deity visible , whenas neither of them are so , i play the idolater , and make my self impious , and have missed of the due object of my adoration . . the twenty-second ; that the adoration of the host upon the presumption that it is transubstantiated into the living body of christ is rank idolatry . this appears from the precedent conclusion . to which you may adde , that the romanists , making transubstantiation the true ground of their adoration of the host , do themselves imply , that without it were so their adoration thereof would be idolatry . but that it is not so , and that their ground is false , any body may be as well assured of as he can of any thing in the world : and no lesse assured that they are idolaters according to their own supposition and implication , as costerus indeed does most emphatically and expresly acknowledge it , if they be mistaken in their doctrine of transubstantiation ; as we shall hear anon . the twenty-third conclusion ; that adoration given to the host by protestants or any else that hold not transubstantiation is manifest idolatry . the reason is to be fetch'd from the nineteenth and twentieth conclusions . for it is religious veneration towards a bare corporeall symbol of the divine presence , and , to make the action more aggravable , towards a symbol that has imagery upon it , and that of the person that is pretended to be worshipped thereby . what can be idolatry if this be not ? the twenty-fourth ; that the invocation of saints and angels , though attended with these considerations , that both that excellency we suppose in them , and which makes them capable of that honour , is deemed finite , and also ( be it as great as it will ) wholly derived to them from god , yet it cannot for all this be excused from grosse idolatry . this is clear from the seventh , eighth , tenth , and so on till the sixteenth conclusion . for though this excellency be supposed finite , yet if it be so great as that it is no-where to be found but in god , it is his right onely to have such honours as suppose it . and though it be deemed or conceived to be derived from god , yet if it be not , we give an uncommunicate excellency to the creature , and rob god of his right and honour . and , lastly , though this excellency were communicated , but yet the communication of it unreveal'd to us , it were a treasonable presumption against the majesty of god , thus of our own head to divulge such things as may violate the peculiar rights of his godhead , and ( for ought we know ) fill the world with infinite bold examples of the grossest idolatry : and therefore all our practices upon this principle must be idolatrous , and treasonable against the divine majesty . consider well the fifteenth conclusion . . the last conclusion ; that this pretended consideration , that where christ is corporeally present , divine worship is not done to his humanity , but to his divinity , and that therefore , though the bread should not prove transubstantiated , the divine worship will still be done to the same object as before , viz. to the divinity , which is every-where , and therefore in the bread ; this will not excuse the adoration of the host from palpable idolatry . for first , that part of the pretense that supposes divine worship in no sense due or to be done to christ's humanity is false . for it is no greater presumption to say , that in some sense divine worship is communicable to the humanity of christ , then , that the divinity is communicated thereto . in such sense then as the divinity is communicated to the humanity , which are one by hypostaticall union , may divine worship also be communicated to it ; namely , as an acknowledgement that the divinity with all its adorable attributes is hypostatically , vitally and transplendently residing in this humanity of christ. which is a kinde of divine worship of christ's humanity , and peculiar to him alone , and due to him , i mean , to his humanity , though it be not god essentially , but onely hypostatically united with him that is ; and does as naturally partake of religious or divine worship in our addresses to the divinity , as the body of an eminently-vertuous , holy and wise man does of that great reverence and civil honour done to him for those excellencies that are more immediately lodged in his soul. which honour indistinctly passes upon the whole man : and as the very bodily presence of this vertuous person receives the civil honour , so in an easie analogy doth the humanity of christ receive the divine ; but both as partial objects of what they do receive , and with signification of the state of the whole case , viz. that they are united , the one with the divinity , the other with so vertuous a soul. hence they both become due objects of that entire externall worship done towards them , to the one civil , to the other divine . and therefore , in the second place , it is plain , that there is not one and the same due object capable of religious worship in either supposition , as well in that which supposes the bread transubstantiated , as in that which supposes it not transubstantiated . for in the former it is the true and living corporeall presence of christ , whose whole suppositum is , as has been declared , capable of divine honour ; but in the latter there is onely , at the most , but his symbolicall presence , whose adoration is idolatry , by the nineteenth , twentieth and twenty-first conclusions . and lastly , the pretending that though the bread be not transubstantiated , yet the divinity of christ is there , and so we do not misse of the due object of our worship ; this is so laxe an excuse , that it will plead for the warrantableness of the laplanders worshipping their red cloth , or the americans the devil , let them but pretend they worship god in them . for god is also in that red cloth and in the devil in that notion that he is said to be every-where . nay , there is not any object in which the ancient pagans were mistaken , in taking the divine attributes to be lodged there , whether sun , heaven , or any other creature , but by this sophistry the worshipping thereof may be excused from idolatry . for the divine attributes , as god himself , are every-where . to direct our adoration toward a supernatural and unimitable transplendency of the divine presence , or to any visible corporeall nature that is hypostatically united with the divinity , most assuredly is not that sunk and sottish , that dull and dotardly sin of idolatry . for , as touching this latter , to what-ever the divinity is hypostatically united , or ( to avoid all cavill about terms ) so specially and mysteriously communicated as it is to christ , the right of divine worship is proportionably communicated therewith , as i have already intimated . and as for the former , that through which the divine transplendency appears is no more the object of our adoration , then the diaphanous air is through which the visible humanity of christ appears when he is worshipped . but the eucharistick bread being neither hypostatically united with the divinity , nor being the medium through which any such supernatural transplendency of the divine presence appears to us , adoration directed toward it cannot fail of being palpable idolatry . for the eucharistick bread will receive this adoration as the object thereof , by conclusion the nineteenth and twentieth . but the adoration or any divine worship of an object in which the divine attributes do not personally reside , ( in such a sense as is intimated in those words of s. john , and the word was made flesh , ) but onely locally , as i may so speak , this , according to sound reason and the sense of the christian church , must be downright idolatry . chap. iii. that the romanists worship the host with the highest kinde of worship , even that of latria , according to the injunction of the council of trent ; and that it is most grosse idolatry so to doe . . and having thus clearly and distinctly evinced and declared what is or ought to be held idolatry amongst christians ; let us at length take more full notice of some particulars wherein , according to these determinations , the church of rome will be manifestly found guilty of idolatry , and that according to the very definitions of their own council of trent . as first , in the point of the adoration of the host , touching which the very words of the council are , latriae cultum , qui vero deo debetur , huic sanctissimo sacramento in veneratione esse adhibendum : and again , siquis dixerit , in sancto eucharistiae sacramento christum non esse cultu latriae etiam externo adorandum , & sole●●iter circumgestandum popul●que proponendum publicè ut adoretur , anathema sit . . this confident injunction of grosse idolatry , as it is certainly such , is built upon their confidence of the truth of their doctrine of transubstantiation . for the chapter of the adoration of the host succeeds that of transubstantiation , as a natural , or rather necessary , inference therefrom . nullus itaque dubitandi locus relinquitur , &c. that is to say , the doctrine of transubstantiation being established , there is no scruple left touching the adoration of the host , or giving divine worship to the sacrament ( or christ , as it is there called , ) when it is carried about , and exposed publickly in prócessions to the view of the people . but the doctrine of transubstantiation being false , it must needs follow , that the giving of divine worship to the host is as grosse a piece of idolatry as ever was committed by any of the heathens . for then their divine worship , even their cultus latriae , which is onely due to the onely-true god , is exhibited to a mere creature , and that a very sorry one too ; and therefore must be gross idolatry , by the twenty-first and twenty-second conclusions of the second chapter . . but now , that their doctrine of transubstantiation is false , after we have proposed it in the very words of the council , we shall evince by undeniable demonstration . per consecrationem panis & vini conversionem fieri totius substantiae panis in substantiam corporis christi , & totius substantiae vini in substantiam sanguinis ejus ; quae conversio convenienter & propriè à sancta catholica ecclesia transubstantiatio est appellata . and a little before , cap. . si quis negaverit in venerabili sacramento eucharistiae sub unaquaque specie , & sub singulis cujusque speciei partibus , separatione factâ , totum christum contineri , anathema sit . in which passages it is plainly affirmed , that not onely the bread is turned into the whole body of christ , and the wine into his bloud , but that each of them are turned into the whole body of christ , and every part of each , as often as division or separation is made , is also turned into his whole body . which is such a contradictious figment , that there is nothing so repugnant to the faculties of the humane soul. . for thus the body of christ will be in god knows how many thousand places at once , and how many thousand miles distant one from another . whenas amphitruo rightly expostulates with his servant sosia , and rates him for a mad-man or impostour , that he would go about to make him believe that he was at home , though but a little way off , while yet he was with him at that distance from home . quo id ( malúm ! ) pacto potest fieri nunc utî tu hîc sis , & domi ? and a little before , in the same colloquie with his servant , nemo unquam homo vidit , saith he , nec potest fieri , tempore uno homo idem duobus locis ut simul sit . wherein amphitruo speaks but according to the common sense and apprehension of all men , even of the meanest idiots . . but now let us examine it according to the principles of the learned , and of all their arts and sciences , physicks , metaphysicks , mathematicks and logick . it is a principle in physicks , that that internall space that a body occupies at one time is equal to the body that occupies it . now let us suppose one and the same body occupy two such internall places or spaces at once ; this body is therefore equal to those two spaces , which are double to one single space ; wherefore the body is double to that body in one single space , and therefore one and the same body double to it self . which is an enormous contradiction . again , in metaphysicks ; the body of christ is acknowledged one , and that as much as any one body else in the world . now the metaphysicall notion of one is , to be indivisum à se , ( both quo ad partes and quo ad totum , ) as well as divisum à quolibet alio . but the body of christ being both in heaven , and , without any continuance of that body , here upon earth also , the whole body is divided from the whole body , and therefore is entirely both unum and multa : which is a perfect contradiction . . thirdly , in mathematicks ; the council saying that in the separation of the parts of the species , ( that which bears the outward show of bread or wine , ) that from this division there is a parting of the whole , divided into so many entire bodies of christ , the body of christ being always at the same time equal to it self , it follows , that a part of the division is equal to the whole , against that common notion in euclide , that the whole is bigger then the part. and , lastly , in logick it is a maxime , that the parts agree indeed with the whole , but disagree one with another . but in the abovesaid division of the host or sacrament the parts do so well agree , that they are entirely the very same individuall thing . and whereas any division , whether logicall or physicall , is the division of some one into many ; this is but the division of one into one and itself , like him that for brevity sake divided his text into one part. to all which you may adde , that , unlesse we will admit of two sosia's and two amphitruo's in that sense that the mirth is made with it in plautus his comedy , neither the bread nor the wine can be transubstantiated into the intire body of christ. for this implies that the same thing is , and is not , at the same time . for that individual thing that can be , and is to be made of any thing , is not . now the individual body of christ is to be made of the wafer consecrated , for it is turned into his individual body . but his individual body was before this consecration . wherefore it was , and it was not , at the same time . which is against that fundamental principle in logick and metaphysicks , that both parts of a contradiction cannot be true ; or , that the same thing cannot both be , and not be , at once . thus fully and intirely contradictious and repugnant to all sense and reason , to all indubitable principles of all art and science , is this figment of transubstantiation ; and therefore most certainly false . reade the ten first conclusions of the brief discourse of the true grounds of faith , added to the divine dialogues . . and from scripture it has not the least support . all is , hoc est corpus meum , when christ held the bread in his hand , and after put part into his * own mouth , ( as well as distributed it to his disciples : ) in doing whereof he swallow'd his whole body down his throat at once , according to the doctrine of this council , or at least might have done so , if he would . and so all the body of christ , flesh , bones , mouth , teeth , hair , head , heels , thighs , arms , shoulders , belly , back , and all , went through his mouth into his stomach ; and thus all were in his stomach , though all his body intirely , his stomach excepted , was still without it . which let any one judge whether it be more likely , then that this saying of christ , this is my body , is to be understood figuratively ; the using the verb substantive in this sense being not unusual in scripture ; as in , i am the vine ; the seven lean kine are the seven years of famine ; and the like : and more particularly , since our saviour , speaking elsewhere of eating his flesh and drinking his bloud , says plainly , that the words he spake , they were spirit , and they were truth , that is to say , a spiritual or aenigmaticall truth , not carnally and literally to be understood . and for the trusting of the judgement of the roman church herein that makes it self so sacrosanct & infallible , the pride , worldliness , policy & multifarious impostures of that church , so often and so shamelesly repeated and practised , must needs make their authority seem nothing in a point that is so much for their own interest , especially set against the undeniable principles of common sense and reason , and of all the arts and sciences god has illuminated the mind of man withall . consider the twelfth conclusion of the above-named treatise , together with the other ten before cited . wherefore any one that is not a mere bigott may be as assured that transubstantiation is a mere figment or enormous falsehood , as of any thing else in the whole world . . from whence it will unavoidably follow , and themselves cannot deny it , that they are most grosse and palpable idolaters , and consequently most barbarous murtherers , in killing the innocent servants of god for not submitting to the same idolatries with themselves . costerus the jesuite speaks expresly to this point , ( and consonantly , i think , to the suppositions of the council ; ) viz. that if their church be mistaken in the doctrine of transubstantiation , they ipso facto stand guilty of such a piece of idolatry as never was before seen or known of in the world . for the errours of those , saith he , were more tolerable who worship some golden or silver statue , or some image of any other materials , for their god , as the heathen worshipped their gods ; or a red cloth hung upon the top of a spear , as is reported of the laplanders ; or some live animal , as of old the aegyptians did ; then of these that worship a bit of bread , as hitherto the christians have done all over the world for so many hundred years , if the doctrine of transubstantiation be not true . what can be a more full and expresse acknowledgement of the gross idolatry of the church of rome then this , if transubstantiation prove an errour ? then which notwithstanding there is nothing in the world more certain to all the faculties of a man ; as is manifest out of what has been here said . and therefore the romanists must be grosse idolaters , from the second , third , fourth , seventh and ninth conclusions of the first chapter , and from the fourth , fifth , eighth , ninth , twenty-first , twenty-second and twenty-fifth of the second chapter . all these conclusions will give evidence against them , that they are very notorious idolaters . . and therefore this being so high and so palpable a strain of idolatry in them touching the eucharist , or the eating the body and drinking the bloud of christ , wherein christ is offered by the priest as an oblation , and the people feed upon him as in a feast upon a sacrifice , which is not done without divine adoration done to the host , according to the precept of their church ; this does hugely confirm our sense of the eating of things offered unto idols in the epistles to the churches in pergamus and in thyatira , this worshipping of the host being so expresly acknowledged by the pope and his clergy , and in that high sense of cultus latriae , which is due to god alone . and therefore it is very choicely and judiciously perstringed by the spirit of prophecy above any other modes of their idolatry , it being such a grosse and confessed specimen thereof , and such as there is no evasion for or excuse . hoc teneas vultus mutantem protea ●odo . chap. iv. the grosse idolatry of the romanists in the invocation of the saints , even according to the allowance of the council of trent , and the authorized practice of that church . . but we will fall also upon those modes of idolatry wherein the church of rome may seem less bold ; though indeed this one , that is so grosse , is so often and so universally repeated every-where in the roman church , that by this alone , though we should take notice of nothing farther , idolatry may seem quite to have overspred her like a noisome leprosy . but , how-ever , we shall proceed ; and first to their invocation of saints . touching which the council of trent declares this doctrine expresly : sanctos utique unà cum christo regnantes orationes suas pro hominibus offerre , bonúmque atque utile esse suppliciter eos invocare ; & ob beneficia impetranda à deo per filium ejus jesum christum , ad eorum orationes , operam auxiliúmque confugere . where invocation of saints is plainly allow'd and recommended : and besides their praying for us , or offering up our prayers to god , it is plainly imply'd that there are other aids and succours they can afford , if they be supplicated , that is , invoked with most humble and prostrate devotion . and the pretending that this is all but the way of procuring those good things we want from god , the first fountain , and that through his son christ ; that makes the saints the more exactly like the pagans dii medioxumi , and the daemons that negotiated the affairs of men with the highest deity . . i say then that , though they went no farther then thus , even this is down-right idolatry which the council of trent thus openly owns , ( and consequently the whole church of rome , ) as appears from the third , fourth , fifth , sixth and eighth conclusions of the first chapter ; as also by the fifth , seventh , eighth , tenth , eleventh , twelfth , thirteenth , fourteenth , fifteenth and twenty-fourth of the second . but if we examine those prayers that are put up to the saints , their invocation is still the more unexcusable . . wherefore looking to the publick practice of the church of rome , authorized by the popes themselves , the invocation of a saint does not consist in a mere ora pro nobis , as people are too forward to phansy that the state of the question , ( though the mere invoking of them to pray for us would be idolatry , as is already proved : ) but , which is insinuated in the council it self , there are other more particular aids and succours that they implore of them , and some such as it is proper for none but god or christ to give : such as protection from the devil , divine graces , and the joys of paradise . but as the things they ask of the saints are too big for them to be the disposers of ; so the compellations , of the virgin mary especially , are above the nature of any creature . whence this invocation of saints will appear a most grosse and palpable mode of idolatry in that church . as i shall make manifest out of the following examples , taken out of such pieces of devotion as are not mutter'd in the corners of their closets , but are publickly read or sung with stentorian voices in their very churches . i will onely give the reader a tast of this kinde of their idolatry ; for it were infinite to produce all we might . . and first , to begin with the smaller saints , ( as indeed they are all to be reckoned in comparison of the blessed virgin , to whom therefore they give that worship which they call hyperdulia , as they give dulia to the rest of the saints , and latria to god alone , and to christ as being god : ) that prayer to s. cosmas and s. damian is plainly a petition to them to keep us from all diseases , as well of soul as of body , that we may attain to the life of the spirit , and live in grace here , and be made partakers of heaven hereafter . o medici piissimi , qui meritis clarissimi in coelis refulgetis , a peste , clade corporum praeservetis , & operum , moribus nè langueamus : nec moriamur spiritu , sed animae ab obitu velociter surgamus ; et vivamus in gratia , sacra coeli palatia donec regrediamur . . such a piece of devotion as this is that to s. francis : sancte francisce , properè veni ; pater , accelera ad populum , qui premitur & teritur sub o●ere , palea , luto , latere , & sepultos aegyptio sub sabulo nos libera , carnis extincto vitio . which is plainly a prayer to this saint that he would deliver us from the bondage and drudgery of sin , which is onely in the power of our great saviour and redeemer christ for to doe . that invocation of s. andrew is also for that spiritual grace of duly bearing the crosse here , that we may obtain heaven afterwards . jam nas foveto languidos , curámque nostrî suscipe , quò per crucis victoriam coeli petamus gratiam . but that to s. nicolas is against the assaults of the devil : ergò piè nos exaudi assistentes tuae laudi , nè subdamur hostis sraudi , nobis fer auxilia . nos ab omni malo ducas , vitâ rectâ nos conducas , post hanc vitam nos inducas ad aeterna gaudia . the like devotion is done to s. martin , s. andrew , s. james , s. bartholomew , and others , though not in the same words . . when i have given an example or two of their prayers put up to their she-saints , i shall a little more copiously insist on those to the blessed virgin. they beg of s. agnes the greatest grace that god is able to impart to the soul of man , that is to say , to serve god in perfect love. and this gift this one poor single she-saint is solicited to bestow on all men . ave , agnes gloriosa , me in fide serves recta , dulcis virgo & dilecta , te exoro precibus : charitate da perfectâ deum , per quem es electa , colere piè omnibus . that devotion put up to s. brigitt is , that she would play the skilfull pilot , and lead us through all the tempests and hazzards of this world so safely , that at last , by her good conduct , we may attain to everlasting life . the rhyme runs thus : o bregitta , mater bona , dulcis ductrix & matrona , nobis fer suffragia ; naufragantes in hoc mari tuo ductu salutari duc ad vitae bravia . . but that to s. catharine is a piece of devotion something of an higher strain , or rather more copious and expresse : but so great a boon they beg of her as is in the power of none to give but god alone . ave , virgo dei digna , christo prece me consigna , audi preces , praesta votum ; cor in bono fac immotum . confer mibi cor contritum ; rege visum & auditum ; rege gustum & olfactum , virgo sancta , rege tactum . ut in cunctis te regente , vivam deo purâ mente . christum pro me interpella , salva mortis de procella . superare fac me mundum , nè demergar in profundum . nè me sinas naufragari per peccata in hoc mari. visita tu me infirmum , et in bonis fac me firmum . agonista dei fortis , praestò sis in hora mortis . decumbentem fove ▪ leva , et de morte solve saeva ; ut resurgam novus homo civis in coelesti dome . . now it is observable in this devotionall rhyme to s. catharine , that whereas the council of trent advises men , ad sanctorum orationes , opem auxiliumque confugere , that in these many . verses there are not passing two or three that are an entreating of the saint to pray for us , but to aid and succour us in such a way as the story of the saint and the allusion to her name most naturally leads the phancy of the devotionist to think sutable for her : as if she were the giver of courage , of patience , and of purity of minde , and was to comfort and support us in the very agonie of death by her presence , which petition is very frequent to other saints also . so plain a thing is it , that this invocation of the saints is not a mere desiring of them to pray for us . but here the devotionist commits the whole regimen of both his soul and body unto this saint , to rule all his faculties and senses , and begs so high vertues and graces , as that none but god can supply us with them ; as i intimated at first . whence the invocation upon that very account also must appear most grosly idolatrous , as grotius , who yet is no such foe to the papists , does expresly acknowledge and declare . chap. v. forms of invocation of the blessed virgin used by the church of rome egregiously idolatrous . . and if they can contain themselves no better in their devotions towards these lesser saints , to whom their church-men will allow onely the worship they call dulia , how wilde and extravagant will they shew themselves in their addresses to the virgin marie , the mother of god , to whom they allow the worship they call hyperdulia ? and that is the thing i will now take notice of , though not according to the copiousnesse of the subject ; for it would even fill a volume . but some instances i will produce , and those such as are publick and authentick , as i intimated at first . in the rosarie of the blessed virgin she is saluted thus : reparatrix & salvatrix desperantis animae , irroratrix & largitrix spiritualis gratiae , quod requiro , quod suspiro , mea sana vulnera , et da menti te poscenti gratiarum munera ; ut sim castus , & modestus , dulcis , fortis , sobrius , pius , rectus , circumspectus , simultatis nescius , eruditus , & munitus divinis eloquiis , constans , gravis , & süavis , benignus , amabilis , corde prudens , ore studens veritatem dicere , malum nolens , deum volens pio semper opere . a very excellent prayer , if it had been directed to a due object . but such things are asked as are in the power of none but of jesus christ himself , as he is god , to give . . for the virgin mary is here made no lesse then a saviour and giver of all spiritual graces ; as she is also a giver of eternall life in what follows in prose . peccatorum causolatrix , infirmorum curatrix , errantium revocatrix , justorum confirmatrix , desolatorum spes & auxiliatrix , atque mea promptissima adjutrix , tibi , domina gloriosa , commendo bodie & quotidie animam meam ; ut me in custodiam tuam commendatum ab omnibus malis & sraudibus diaboli custodias , atque in hora mortis constanter mihi assistas , ac animam ad aeterna gaudia perducas . here is the commending of the soul of the devotionist into the protection of the virgin , that he may be kept from all evil , and from the frauds of the devil , and that she would assist at the hour of death to convey his soul to the eternall joys of heaven . . like that at the end of the rosarie ; cor meum illumina , fulgens stella maris , et ab hostis machina semper tuearis . o gloriosa virgo maria , mater regis aeterni , libera nos ab omni malo , & à poenis inferni . which is a petition for illumination of heart , for security from the devil and from eternall death : which is onely the privilege of the son of god , the eternall wisedome of the father , to grant , who is said also to have the keys of hell and of death . . but the thing which is very observable , and which i mainly drive at , is this , that the roman church toward the latter end , before the reformation broke out , had run so mad after the patronage of the virgin , that they had almost forgot the son of god , and spent all their devotions on her , whom they do at least equallize to christ , and so really make her , as well as some love to call her , the daughter of god , in as high a sense as christ is his son : as will farther appear in the process of our quotations . as in that prayer to the blessed virgin that follows in chemnitius : te , mater illuminationis cordis mei , te , nutrix salutis meae mentis , te obsecrant quantum possunt cuncta praecordia mea . exaudi , domina , adesto propitia , adjuva potentissima , ut mundentur sordes mentis meae , ut illuminentur tenebrae meae . o gloriosa domina , porta vitae , janua salutis , via reconciliationis , aditus recuperationis , obsecro te per salvatricem tuam foecunditatem , fac ut peccatorum meorum venia & vivendi gratia concedatur , & usque in finem hic servus tuus sub tua protectione custodiatur . which petition and compellations , saving what belongs to the sex , are most proper and natural to be used towards christ. but the virgin is here made our saviour and mediatour in the feminine gender . . as she is again most expresly in that prayer to her in her feast of visitation : veni , praecelsa domina maria ; tu nos visita : aegras mentes illumina per sacrae vitae munera . veni , salvatrix seculi ; sordes aufer piaculi ; in visitando populum poenae tollas periculum . veni , regina gentium ; dele flammas reatuum ; dele quodcunque devium ; da vitam innocentium . in which invocation the virgin mary is plainly called the saviour of the world , and pray'd unto for spiritual illumination of the soul , and for the purgation thereof from the filth both of sin and guilt : whereby she is plainly equallized to the son of god , and made as it were a she-christ , or daughter of god. to this sense also are those prayers put up to her in her feast of the conception and of the annunciation : but it were infinite to produce all . reade that prayer in chemnitius sung to her by the council of constance : it is a perfect imitation of the ancient prayer of the church to the holy ghost . chap. vi. more forms of invocation of the blessed virgin out of the mary-psalter , so called , extremely idolatrous and blasphemous . . we will now onely note some passages in the mary-psalter , as it is called , wherein how much at that time the church of rome had thrust themselves under the protection and patronage of the virgin , and made her the daughter of god , in stead of approving themselves faithfull touching the rights and prerogatives of the son and his worship , will be most notoriously evident . i will begin with the thirtieth psalm : in te , domina , speravi ; non confundar in aeternum . in gratiam tuam suscipe me ; inclina ad me aurem tuam , & in moerore meolaetifica me . tu es fortitudo mea & refugium meum , consolatio mea & protectio mea : ad te clamavi cùm tribularetur cor meum , & exaudîsti de vertice collium aeternorum . in manus tuas , domina , commendo spiritum meum , meam totam vitam , diem ultimum . this is that whole psalm to the virgin : jusr in such a form and with such a repose of spirit as david prays in to god himself . . but we will content our selves with transcribing onely some select pieces . as psalm . resperge , domina , cor meum dulcedine tuâ . fac me oblivisci miserias hujus vitae : concupiscentias aeternas excita in anima mea , & de gaudio paradiss inebria mentem meam . and again , psalm . salus sempiterna in manu tua est , domina ; qui te dignè honoraverint suscipient illam . clementia tua non deficiet à seculis aeternis , & misericordia tua à generatione in generationem . and psalm . dispositione tuâ mundus perseverat , quem tu , domina , cum deo fundâsti ab initio . tuus totus ego sum , domina ; salvum me fac , quoniam desiderabiles sunt laudes tuae in tempore peregrinationis meae . no man can say more to , or expect more from , the eternall god himself . whence they make the eternall godhead as hypostatically united with the virgin as with christ himself , and carry themselves to her as if she were as properly the daughter of god as he the son. for else how could she be said to have everlasting salvation in her power , and to have laid the foundations of the world from the beginning with the eternall deity ? . there are also other passages in this psalter whereby they make the virgin mary a she-christ , the daughter of god , as he is the son of god ; and that is by the applying of the very phrases spoken of him in the scripture , unto her . as in psalm . venite ad eam omnes qui laboratis & tribulati estis , & refrigerium & solatium dabit animabus vestris . and psalm . terge foeditatem me am , domina , quae semper rutilas puritate . fons vitae , influe in os meum , ex quo viventes aquae profluunt & emanant . omnes sitientes venite ad illam , & de fonte suo gratanter vos potabit . this is the gift of the spirit , belonging onely to christ to give to them that believe on him . and he is also said to be the ease and rest of all them that are weary and heavy laden . and again , psalm . omnes gentes , plaudite manibus , psallite in jubilo virgini gloriosae . quoniam ipsa est porta vitae , janua salutis , & via nostrae reconciliationis , spes poenitentium , solamen lugentium , pax beata cordium atque salus . this is attributed to the virgin , whenas it is christ alone that is the way of salvation and reconciliation with god. . this is a foul and tedious subject , and therefore to make an end at length , let us consider the blasphemy of the . psalm . quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum , ità ad amorem tuum anhelat anima mea , virgo sancta . quia tu es genitrix vitae meae , & altrix reparationis carnis meae : quia tu lactatrix salvationis animae meae , initium & finis totius salutis meae . here is that attributed to the virgin which is said of christ , that he is the authour and finisher of our faith and salvation . nay , the creation or generation of our life and flesh , as well as our salvation , is here ascribed to the virgin. which can have no sense or truth , unless she were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god-woman , in that sense that christ is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god-man , and , as i said , were as properly the daughter of god as he is the son of god. . as she is expresly called in her litanie , filia dei , the daughter of god. which , considering what high titles they give her both in that litanie and elsewhere , as , illuminatrix cordium , fons misericordiae , flumen sapientiae , mater dei , regina coeli , domina mundi , domina coeli & terrae , would be but a dwindling title , ( it belonging to all women that are believers , ) if there was not some such raised and sublime sense of it as i have intimated . and therefore their addresses to her being as if she were , as i said , a she-christ , and the daughter of god in as high a sense at least as christ is the son of god , and she being called the daughter of god in the litania mariae , in her litanie or publick supplication to her , it is plain , that in that intervall of the church wherein this most conspicuously and notoriously happened , the church of rome , by reason also of the abundance of their devotions then to the virgin , might be said to be rather the worshippers of the daughter of god then of the son of god. and that therefore the spirit of prophecy foreseeing these times , whenas for such a space he called rome pergamus , this succeeding scene coming on , he might very well change the title of pergamus into that of thyatira , with a derisorious allusion to the occasion of the name of that city , from the news of a daughter being born to nicanor . as if god almighty had the like occasion of changing the name of pergamus into thyatira , from the romanists turning the virgin mary into the daughter of god. . for a stop to which insolency christ seems on purpose in the epistle to the church in thyatira to resume to himself the title of the son of god , notwithstanding that he is called the son of man in the vision in the foregoing chapter , out of which he ever draws a description of himself for an entrance before each epistle to the churches . which , in my judgement , is a thing specially well worth the marking ; and that this making the virgin mary the daughter of god in this intervall , might alone be a sufficient occasion of changing the name of the church of rome from pergamus to thyatira . but other things that are apposite are also comprehended by a propheticall henopoeïa . . but this is an overplus to our present purpose , which was mainly to discover the grosse idolatry of the church of rome in the invocation of their saints , and especially of the virgin mary ; and how both the definition of the council of trent is idolatrous in this point , and much more the practice of the church countenanced by publick authority . . for this mary-psalter it self , that has the most enormous and blasphemous forms of idolatrous invocation of any , is not the private contrivance of some single , obscure , superstitious monk , but bears the title of that seraphick doctour s. bonaventure , once cardinal of rome : which is no small publick countenance thereto . and that nothing might be wanting to the grace and furtherance of so devotionall a piece of idolatry , there was instituted a peculiar society , entitled the fraternity of the many-psalter , confirmed afterward by sixtus the fourth , many indulgences being added anno . and innocent the eighth added to these indulgences plenarie remission à poena & culpa once in their life , and once in articulo mortis , to as many as entred into that fraternity . . and in such case stands the church of rome at this very day , that is to say , she is still thyatira , notorious for her idolatrous worship of the virgin mary . but the intervall of the true church in thyatira ceased upon the reformation , when we cast off the pope , or suffered jezebel to delude the servants of god no longer , nor to debauch them with idolatrous modes of worship . but this is onely by the bye . in the mean time it is abundantly manifest , that the invocation of saints in the roman church is not onely the praying to them that they would pray to god for us , but the asking aids of them , and such frequently as are in the power of none but of god , and of christ as he is god , for to give ; and therefore is still the grosser idolatry . chap. vii . that the doctrine of the council of trent touching the worshipping of images is idolatrous , and the reason of the doctrine weak and unsound . . and thus much for their idolatry in the invocation of saints . let us now consider what the sense of the council of trent is touching the worshipping of images . imagines porrò christi , deiparae virginis , & aliorum sanctorum , in templis praesertim , habendas & retinendas esse , eisque debitum honorem & reverentiam impertiendam . quoniam honos qui eis exhibetur refertur ad prototypa , quae illae repraesentant ; ità ut per imagines quas osculamur , & coram quibus caput aperimus & procumbimus , christum adoremus , & sanctos , quorum illae similitudinem gerunt , veneremur . id quod conciliorum , praesertim verò secundae nicaenae synodi , decretis contra imaginum oppugnatores est sancitum . the meaning of which in brief is this , that the images of christ , of the blessed virgin and other saints , are to be had and retain'd in churches , and that due honour and reverence is to be done to them . for which are produced two reasons . the first , in that the honour that is done to the images is referred to the prototypes . the second , in that this injunction is but what the second nicene council had of old decreed . . to which i answer , that thus much as the council of trent has declared touching images is plain and open idolatry by the seventh conclusion of the first chapter , and expresly against the commandment of god , who forbids us to make any graven image to bow down to or worship . but the council of trent says , yes , ye may make graven images of the saints , and set them up in their temples , and give them their due honour and worship ; nay , ye ought to doe so ; and instances in the very act of bowing or kneeling and prostrating our selves before them . this definition of the council is so palpably against the commandment of god , that they are fain to leave the second commandment out of the decalogue , that the people may not discern how grosly they goe against the express precepts of god in their so frequent practices of idolatry . see the first , ninth and tenth conclusions of the first chapter ; as also the third , fourth , fifth , eighteenth , nineteenth and twentieth of the second . . nor can all their tricks and tergiversations and subtil elusions serve their turn . for undoubtedly the decalogue was writ to the easie capacity of the people , and therefore their hearts and consciences are the best interpreters . not the foolish evasions and subterfuges of perfidious sophisters , who , to the betraying of weak souls to idolatry and damnation , and for the opening their purses , would make them believe that the council of trent's enjoyning of images in churches , and the honouring them or worshipping them and bowing down before them , can consist with god's forbidding to make any graven image , and to bow down to it and worship it . so that i say , the council it self does appoint flat idolatry to the christian world to be practised . and it being so monstrous a thing , i pray you now let us consider the reasons why they do so . . the first is , because the honour done to the image is referr'd to the prototype . but i answer , that this reference is either in virtue of that similitude the images have with those persons they represent , which the words of the council seem to imply , at least touching the saints , quorum illae similitudinem gerunt ; as when we praise a picture of such or such a person , that it is a very comely and lovely picture , this praise naturally has a reference to the person whose picture it is , in virtue of the similitude betwixt the picture and the party . or else this reference , without any regard to personal similitude , is from the direction of the intention of the devotionist , that he intends upon the seeing and bowing , suppose , to the image of christ , the blessed virgin , or any saint , to take this occasion to worship christ , the blessed virgin or the saint thereby , the image being but at large a symbolicall presence of them , it being not regarded whether the symbol or image have any personal similitude with the party it represents or no. . but now as for the former it is evident , that it is infinitely uncertain whether any image of christ , the blessed virgin , or of this or that saint , be like the carnal figure of these persons while they were alive upon earth , or no. nay , it is in a manner certain to the contrary , none of these holy souls being given to such follies as to have their pictures drawn while they were alive . see my * mysterie of iniquity . but being it is extremely improbable but an image should be like some or other , that are either now alive , or have lived on the earth since the beginning of the world , according to this first supposition , this honour or religious worship intended to christ , the blessed virgin , or any other saint , will not onely misse them , but certainly fall on some other who , in stead of being saints , haply are or have been very vile and wicked persons . . but besides , no saints are worshipped before they be in heaven , nor indeed are properly saints till then ; and the glories in their pictures that are about their heads shew plainly that they intend to represent the saints in their present condition of glory in heaven . whence it is plain that the images are nothing like them they are made for . for how can these images of brasse or stone or wood , or any other materials , bear the image of a separate soul , which all the saints are for the present ? and what likenesse can there be betwixt the glorious body of christ heavenly and spiritual , and an image of any terrestriall matter ? no more then betwixt a piece of dirt or soot and the sun or bright morning-star . and , which is most of all to be considered , what terrestriall image can possibly represent him that is truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god-man , and is not the object of our adoration but as he is this divine complexum as well of the divinity as the humanity ? but what statuarie can carve out the effigies of the deity ? so that the pretense of this reference of the honour to the prototype in this first sense thereof is very weak and vain . nor , though there were this natural reference , would it follow that we are to honour them this way , it being so plainly forbid , and there being better ways then this , viz. the commemorating and imitating their vertues . . and for that second sense , it is indeed disinvolved of those former difficulties ; but greater here occurr . for as touching our saviour christ , forasmuch as his pretended image is but his symbolicall presence , the doing of divine worship towards it is again plain idolatry , as appears by that example of the israelites , who worshipped the golden calf in reference to jehovah , as appears plainly in the story . and for the blessed virgin and the rest of the saints , that incurvation toward their symbolicall presences is flat idolatry , is manifest from the eighth , ninth and tenth conclusions of the first chapter , and the fifth , nineteenth and twentieth of the second of this treatise . and indeed thus to make the images of the saints so called onely their symbolicall presences , and so to worship them before these images , is an attributing divine honour to them . for this naturally does declare that they have at least a terrestriall omnipresency , which no invisible power which we know has but onely god. but to make a low obeisance to an absent person god knows how many millions of miles off , is still a more forced and ridiculous thing . and therefore the saluting of the saints thus at their symbolicall presences or images , and in the mean time acknowledging them to be in sede beatorum , ( which they do , and must do , unlesse they exclude them heaven , ) is to acknowledge one soul to fill heaven and earth with its presence , which is that vast privilege of god almighty onely ; and therefore this worship to them is gross idolatry , as supposing such a perfection in them as is no-where but in god. besides what was intimated before , that let this reference be what it will , there being an incurvation or prostration before images , whether they be mere symbols or exact representations , it must be ipso facto idolatry by the seventh conclusion of the first chapter . from whence it follows , that the saints are not honoured by this worshipping of their images , but hideously reproched , it supposing them to be pleased and gratify'd with that which is an abomination to the lord , and a grofs transgression of his express commands . it implies , i say , that they are ambitious , vain-glorious and rebellious against god. and therefore they that the most vehemently oppose this way of honouring of them by images and invocation are the most true and faithfull honourers of them , they so zealously vindicating them from the great reproches these others cast upon them . so far are they from being guilty herein of any rudenesse or clownishnesse against the saints of god. chap. viii . the doctrine of the second council of nice touching the worship of images , ( to which the council of trent refers , ) that it is grosly idolatrous also . . but now as for the other reason of these tridentine fathers , whereby they would support their determination in this point , viz. the authority of the second council of nice held about the year , ( to omit , that long before this time the church had become asymmetral , which yet is a very substantial consideration ) i shall onely return this brief answer . the god of israel , which is the father of our lord jesus christ , has given this expresse command to his church for ever , thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image , thou shalt not bow down to it , nor worship it . but the second council of nice says , thou mayst and shalt bow down to the image of christ , of the blessed virgin , and of the rest of the saints . now whether it be fit to believe and obey god , or men , judge ye : i might adde farther , men so silly and frivolous in the defense of their opinion , so false and fabulous in the allegation of their authorities and the recitall of miraculous stories , as chemnitius has proved at large in his examen of the council of trent . . i will give an instance or two . no man lighteth a candle , and putteth it under a bushell ; therefore the images of the saints are to be placed on the altars , and wax-candles lighted up before them , in due honour to them . again , psalm . but to the saints that are on the earth : but the saints are in heaven , say they , therefore their images ought to be on the earth , &c. as for the miracles done by images , as their speaking , the healing of the sick , the revenging of the wrong done to them , the distilling of rorid drops of balsame to heal the wounded , sick or lame , their recovering water into a dry well , and the like , it were too tedious to recite these figments . but that of the image of the virgin , to whom her devotionist spake when he took leave of her , and was to take a long journey , intreating her to look to her candle , which he had lighted up for her , till his return , i cannot conceal . for the story says , the same candle was burning six months after , at the return of her devoto . an example of the most miraculous prolonger that ever i met withall before in all my days . such an image of the virgin would save poor students a great deal in the expense of candles , if the thing were but lawfull and feasible . . from these small hints a man may easily discover of what authority this second council of nice ought to be , though they had not concluded so point-blank against the word of god. but because that clause in this paragraph of the council i have recited , id quod conciliorum , praesertim verò secundae nicaenae synodi , &c. may as well aim at the determination of what these fathers mean by that debitus honor & reverentia which they declare to be due to the images of christ and the saints , as confirm their own conclusion by the authority of that nicene council , we will take notice also what a kinde of honour and reverence to images the nicene council did declare for , and in short it is this ; that they are to be worshipped and adored and to be honoured with wax-candles , and by the smoaking of incense or perfumes , and the like . which smells rankly enough in all conscience of idolatry , as grotius himself upon the decalogue cannot but acknowledge . but this is not all . the invocation of saints , their mediation and propitiating god for us for adoring their images , healing of diseases , and other aids and helps , besides ora pro nobis , are manifestly involved in the worship of these images , according to that nicene council . . and truly , according to the collections of photius in justellus , one would think that they meant the cultus latriae to the image of christ , they using the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if that worship which was done to the image passed through to christ himself , which would not be sutable to him , if it were not divine worship . and where that word is not used , yet the sense makes hugely for it . as in this paragraph touching the second council of nice according to photius ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this seventh synod , saith he , ( that is to say , the second of nice ) with joint suffrages hath established and ratify'd the worshipping of the image of christ , for the honour and reverence of him that is expressed by it ; this worship and honour being done in such manner as when we approach the holy symbols or types of our most holy and divine worship : ( for the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ) for we do not stop at them , nor restrain our worship and devotion to them , nor are we divided toward heterogeneous and different scopes or objects ; but by that service and worship of them that appears divided are we carried up devoutly and undividedly unto the one and indivisible deity . whereby it is plainly declared , that that very worship which passes to the deity is done towards the image of christ first or jointly , as being one and the same undivided worship in truth and reality ; as also that this worship is that worship which is called latria , and is due to the highest god onely . . but that religious worship is done to the images of all the saints seems imply'd in what comes afterwards , where it is said , that this second council of nice , ( which photius calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that this council has not onely established and appointed that the image of christ should be honoured and worshipped , but the holy images of the virgin mary and of all the saints , according to the excellency and venerability of their prototypes . for even by these are we carried up into a certain unitive and conjunctive vision , and thereby are vouchsafed that divine and supernatural conjunction or contact with the highest of all desirables , that is , god himself . . can any thing more inflame the souls of men with that mysticall lust after idols then the doctrines of this nicene synod ? for as for the image of christ , the same devotion and worship is done to that which is done to god himself . and for the images of the virgin mary and the rest of the saints , though that worship is allotted them onely that is proportionable to their prototypes , yet they are worshipped such a way as that thereby , while we adhere to their images or statues , we are declared to be made fit for and to be vouchsafed a tactual union with god himself . what philtrum more effectual to raise up that idolomania , that being mad and love-sick after images and idols , then this ? what can inrage their affections more towards idolatry , then to phansie that while they worship idols , and cling about dead statues , that very individual act ( and therefore it cannot be too intense ) is that wherewith they are united to , and lie in the very embraces of , the ever-living and true god ? . the sense of the synod is , according to the representation of photius , that we worship and unite our selves with god as well in the worshipping the images of the virgin and of other saints , as in the worshipping of the image of christ. so that all is religious worship , and consequently grosse idolatry , it being done to stocks and stones and such like senslesse objects . for the drift of all idolatry is , when it is questioned , and craftily defended , that through the worship of daemons and images they reach at the worship of , and the joyning their devotion to , the first and highest godhead . wherefore the council of trent declaring with the second council of nice , that is to say , the blinde leading the blinde , they have both fallen into this dreadfull pit of idolatry . chap. ix . the meaning of the doctrine of the council of trent touching the worship of images more determinately illustrated from the general practice of the roman church and suffrage of their popes , whereby it is deprehended to be still more coursly and paganically idolatrous . . but it may be it may give more satisfaction to some , to know what is the church of rome's own sense of this honor debitus she declares ought to be done to the images of christ and the saints . putting off a man's hat , and lying prostrate before them , the council does not stick to instance in by the bye . but because the council calls this neither dulia , nor hyperdulia , nor latria , some will , it may be , be ready to shuffle it off with the interpretation of but a civil complement to these images or their prototypes . but since the council of trent has declared nothing farther , what can be a more certain interpreter of their meaning then the continued custome of their church , and the sense of such doctours as have been even sainted for their eminency , as thomas aquinas and bonaventure , who both of them have declared that the image of christ is to be worshipped with the worship of latria , the same that christ is worshipped with ? . and azorius the jesuite affirms that it is the constant opinion of the theologers , ( their own , he means , you may be sure , ) that the image is to be honoured and worshipped with the same honour and worship that he is whose image it is . which is not unlike that in the council of nice , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the foregoing citation . but that they are all capable of religious worship , the council of trent it self ( as well as bellarmine and others , if not all the theologers of that church , ) does plainly acknowledge , in that it determines for their invocation , which is competible to no invisible power but the godhead it self . wherefore it is manifest that their images are worshipped with religious worship also . . but we shall make still the clearer judgement thereof , if we consider the consecration of these images which the council of trent declares are to be worshipped . for the consecration and worshipping of them makes them perfectly as the idol-gods of the heathen , as octavius jearingly speaks of the heathen gods , that is , their idols , in minucius felix : ecce funditur , fabricatur , scalpitur ; nondum deus est . ecce plumbatur , construitur , erigitur ; nec adhuc deus est . ecce ornatur , consecratur , oratur ; tunc postremò deus est . behold it is clothed or adorned , it is consecrated and prayed unto ; then at length it becomes a god. and if this will doe it , the church of rome's images will prove as good idol-gods as any of them all . . chemnitius recites some forms of consecration : i will cull out onely those of the images of the blessed virgin and of s. john. that of the virgin is this : sanctify , o god , this image of the blessed virgin , that it may aid and keep safe thy faithfull people ; that thundrings and lightnings , if they grow too terrible and dangerous , may be quickly expelled thereby ; and that the inundations of rain , the commotions of civil war , and devastations by pagans , may be suppressed by the presence thereof . which is most effectual to make all men come and hurcle under the protection of the virgin 's image in such dangers , as under the wings of the great jehovah . this is hugely like the consecrated telesms of the pagans . but let us hear the form of the consecration of the image of s. john also : grant , o god , that all those that behold this image with reverence , and pray before it , may be heard in whatsoever streights they are . let this image be the holy expulsion of devils , the conciliating the presence and assistence of angels , the protection of the faithfull ; and that the intercession of this saint may be very powerfull and effectuall in this place . what a mighty charm is this to make the souls of the feeble to hang about these images as if their presence were the divine protection it self ? . these chemnitius recites out of the pontificall he perused . but the rituale romanum , published first by the command of paulus quintus , and again authorized by pope urban the eighth , will doe our businesse sufficiently , they being both since the council of trent ; and therefore by the exposition of these popes we may know what that debitus honor is which the tridentine fathers mention as that which ought to be done to the images of christ , the blessed virgin , or any other saint . for the consecration of their images runs thus : grant , o god , that whosoever before this image shall diligently and humbly upon his knees worship and honour thy onely-begotten son , or the blessed virgin , ( according as the image is that is a-consecrating , or this glorious apostle , or martyr , or confessor , or virgin , that he may obtain by his or her merits and intercession grace in this present life , and eternall glory hereafter . so that the virgin and other saints are fellow-distributers of grace and glory with christ himself to their supplicants before their images , and that upon their own merits , and for this service done to them in kneeling and pouring out their prayers before their statues or symbolicall presences . what greater blasphemy and idolatry can be imagined ? ornatur , consecratur , oratur , tunc postremò fit deus : that is to say , the image is pray'd before , but the daemon pray'd unto . there is no more in paganism it self . and yet by the pope's own exposition this is the debitus honor that is owing to the images of the saints . consider the latter end of the last conclusion of the first chapter , and the forms of invocation in the fourth and fifth , as also the eighteenth conclusion of the second chapter . . this is all plain and expresse according to the authority of their church . and that , besides their adoration and praying before th●se images , ( which , considering the postures of the supplicant and the image , is as much praying to them as the heathens will acknowledge done to theirs , ) there are also wax-candles burning before them , and the oblation of incense or perfuming them , feasts likewise , temples and altars to the same saints , and the carrying them in procession , ( which was the guize of ancient paganism , ) is so well known , that i need not quote any authours . and that this is the practice of the roman church jointly and coherently with their worship of images , is manifest to all the world ; and that therefore it is as arrant idolatry as paganism it self , and consequently real idolatry by the third conclusion of the first chapter . and lastly , it is to be noted that the council of trent , naming the debitus honor of images , and not excepting these in known practice then amongst them , must of all reason be conceived to mean these very circumstances , as paganicall as they are , of the worshipping of them . . and the rather , because they do pretend to rectify some miscarriages in the business of images , as any unlawfull or dishonest gain by them , all lascivious dresses of the images , all drunkenness and disorderly riot at their feasts , and the like . which methinks is done with as grave caution against idolatry , as if they had decreed that all the whores in rome should forbear to goe in so garish apparell , that they should be sure to wear clean linen , to be favourable to poor younger brothers in the price of a night's lodging , that they keep themselves wholsome and clean from the pox , and the like ; which were not the putting down , but the establishing , of whores and whoredome in the papacy . and so are these cautions touching images . exceptio firmat regulam in non exceptis . wherefore these circumstances of idolatry being not named by the tridentine fathers in their exception , they are thereby ratify'd . which yet are so like the old pagan idolatry , that ludovicus vives , one of their own church , could not abstain from professing , non posse aliquid discrimen ostendi , nisi quòd nomina tantùm & titulos mutaverint ; that onely the names and objects were changed , not the modes , of the ancient idolatry of the heathen . . if the council of trent would have really and in good earnest rectify'd their church in the point of images , they should have followed the example of that skilfull and famous physician dr. butler , they should have imitated his prescript touching the safe eating of a pear , viz. that we should first pare it very carefully , and then be sure to cut out or scoup out all the coar of it , and after that fill the hollow with salt , and when this is done , cast it forthwith into the kennell . this is the safest way of dealing with those things that have any intrinsick poison or danger in them . see those most wholesome and judicious homilies of our church of england against the perill of idolatry . . and thus much shall serve for the setting out the idolatry of the church of rome so far as it seems to be allow'd by the church it self . but for those more grosse extravagancies , which , though they have connived at , yet they would be loath to own upon publick authority , i will neither weary my self nor my reader by meddling with them . such as the making the images to sweat , their eyes to move , the making them to smile , or lour and look sad , to feel heavy or light , or the like . which does necessarily tend to the engaging of the people to believe and have ●●fiance in the very images themselves , as those consecrations also imply which i cited out of chemnitius , and which that rhyme seems to acknowledge which they say to that face of christ which they call the veronica . which rhyme runs thus : nos perduc ad patriam , felix ô figura , ad videndam faciem quae est christi pura . nos ab omni macula purga vitiorum , et tandem consortio junge beatorum . and with such like blinde devotion do they likewise speak to the crosse : o crux , spes unica , hoc passionis tempore auge piis justitiam , reisque dona veniam . this must sound very wildly and extravagantly to any sensible ear . and yet the invoking any saint before his image for aid and succour , ( the image bearing the name and representation of the saint , ) with eyes and hands lift up to it , is as arrant talking with a senslesse stock or a stone as this , and as gross a piece of * idolatry , though approved of by the authority of the roman church . but i intended to break off before . chap. x. severall important consectaries from this clear discovery of the gross idolatry of the church of rome ; with an hearty and vehement exhortation to all men , that have any serious regard to their salvation , to beware how they be drawn into the communion of that church . . thus have we abundantly demonstrated that the church of rome stands guilty of gross idolatry according to the concessions and definitions of their own council of trent ; that is to say , though we charge them with no more then with what the council it self doth own , touching the adoration of the host , the invocation of saints , and the worshipping of images . but we must not forget , in the mean time , that the crime grows still more course and palpable looking upon the particular forms of their invocation of the saints , and the circumstances of their worshipping their images , and yet ratify'd by the popes , and corroborated by the uncontrolled practice of their whole church : which therefore must in all reason be the interpreter of the minde of the council . so that there is no evasion left for them , but that they are guilty of as gross and palpable idolatry as ever was committed by the sons of men , no lesse grosse then roman paganism it self . . from whence , in the next place , it necessarily follows , that they are the most barbarous murtherers of the servants of god that ever appeared on the face of the earth . for indeed if they had had truth on their side so far , as that the things they required at the hands of the dissenters had been lawfull , ( though not at all necessary ; ) yet considering the expresse voice of scripture , which must be so exceeding effectual to raise consciencious scruples , and indeed to fix a man in the contrary opinions , besides the irrefragable votes of common sense and reason , and the principles of all arts and sciences that can pretend any usefulnesse to religion in any of its theoreticall disquisitions ; i say , when it is so easie from hence , if not necessary , for some men to be born into a contrary consciencious persuasion , it had undoubtedly even in this case been notorious murther in the pontifician party , to have killed men for dissenting from the doctrine and practice of their church . but now the murtherers themselves being in so palpable an errour , and requiring of the dissenters to profess blasphemies and commit gross idolatries with them , which is openly to rebell against god under pretense of obeying holy church , as they love to be called , they murthering so many hundred thousands of them for this fidelity to their maker , and their indispensable obedience to the lord jesus christ , this is murther of a double dye , and not to be parallel'd by all the barbarous persecutions under the red dragon , the pagan emperours themselves . . from which two main considerations it follows in the third place , that , considering the fit and easie congruity of the names of the seven churches and of the events of the seven intervalls ( denoted by them ) to the prefigurations in the visions , there can be no doubt but that by balaam mentioned in the epistle to the church in pergamus , wherein antipas , that is , the opposers of the pope , are murthered , the papal hierarchy is understood ; as it is also by the prophetesse jezebel in the epistle to the church in thyatira , who was also a murtheresse of the prophets of god , and both of them expresly patrons of idolatry , as is manifest in the very text. nor is it at all wonderfull that balaam and jezebel , the one a man , the other a woman , should signifie the same thing . for the false prophet and the whore of babylon in the following visions of the apocalypse signifie both one and the same thing , viz. the hierarchy of rome , from the pope to the rest of their ecclesiastick body . . and what i have said of the vision of those seven churches , the same i say of all those expositions of the thirteenth and seventeenth chapters of the apocalypse , and that of the little horn in daniel ; namely , the words of the prophecies being so naturally applicable to the affairs of that church , besides the demonstration of synchronism , that the weight of those two foregoing conclusions being added thereto , there cannot be the least doubt or scruple left , but that those interpretations are true ; and that the church of rome is that body of antichrist , that mother of fornications and abominations of the earth , that is , of multifarious modes of grosse idolatries , or that scarlet whore on the seven hills , that is also drunk with the bloud of the saints , and with the bloud of the martyrs of jesus . . and that therefore , in the fourth place , in the church of rome the poison exceeding the antidote , there can be no reason that salvation should be hoped for there . it is a sad and lamentable truth , but being a truth , and of such huge moment , it is by no means to be concealed . what god may doe in his more hidden ways of providence , he alone knows . and therefore we cannot say that every idolatrous heathen must perish eternally : but to speak no farther then we have commission , and according to the easy tenour of the holy scriptures , we must pronounce , though with great sadnesse of heart , that we have no warrant therefrom to think or declare any of the popish religion , so long as they continue so , to be in the state of salvation ; and especially , since that voice of the angel which sounded in the intervall of thyatira , saying expresly , come out of her , my people , that ye be not partakers of her sins , and receive not of her plagues ; and the apostle in his first epistle to the corinthians , be not deceived , neither fornicatours , nor idolaters , nor adulterers , &c. shall inherit the kingdome of god. and those of the church of rome are bound to continue idolaters as long as they live , or else to renounce their church ; and therefore they are bound to be damned by adhering to the roman church , unless they could live in it for ever . for he that dies in such a capital sin as idolatry without repentance , nay , in a blinde , obstinate perseverance in it , how can he escape eternal damnation ? . but though we had kept our selves to the apocalypse , the thing is clear in that book alone , ch . . ver . , . where all idolaters are expresly excluded from the tree of life : blessed are they that doe his commandments , ( and one of them , though expunged by rome , is , thou shalt not worship any graven image , ) that they may have right to the tree of life , &c. for without are dogs , and sorcerers , and whoremongers , and murtherers , and idolaters , and whoso loveth and maketh a lie. all these are excluded the heavenly jerusalem , and from eating the tree of life . of which who eateth not is most assuredly detain'd in eternall death . as it is written in the foregoing chapter , that murtherers , and whoremongers , and sorcerers , and idolaters , and all liars , shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone ; which is the second death . what sentence can be more expresse then this ? . but besides this divine sentence against them , they are also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they are self-condemned , or at least give sentence against themselves , while they so freely pronounce that no idolaters are to be saved ; which they frequently doe , to save their own church from the reproach of idolatry . for , because some protestants have declared for the possibility of salvation in the romish church , they farther improve the favour to the quitting themselves of the guilt , from others hopefull presages that by an hearty implicit repentance of all their sins ( even of those that are the proper crimes of that church , ) they may , through god's mercy in christ , be delivered from the punishment . this piece of charity in some of our party they turn to the fencing off all imputation of idolatry from themselves , arguing thus ; that no idolaters can be saved : but those in the romish church may be saved , according to those protestants opinion : therefore those in the romish church are no idolaters . but most assuredly while they thus abuse the charity of some , even by their own proposition they must bring the sentence of condemnation from all the rest upon their own heads , as they have herein given it against themselves , in saying that all idolaters are damned , or that no idolater can be saved . for it is demonstrated as clear as the noon-light , in this present discourse , that the church of rome are idolaters . . and in that of those of our church that say they may be saved upon a sincere and hearty implicit repentance of all their sins , ( wherein they include the idolatries and all other miscarriages which they know not themselves guilty of , by reason of the blinde mis-instructions of their church , ) no more is given them by this then thus , viz. that they are saved by disowning of and dismembring themselves from the roman church , as much as it is in their power so to doe , and by bitterly repenting them that they were ever of that church as such , and by being so minded , that if they did know what a corrupt church it is , they would forthwith separate from it . so that in effect those of the roman church that some of ours conceit may be saved , are no otherwise saved , if at all , then by an implicit renouncing communion with it , which in foro divino must goe for an actual and formal separation from it . in which position if there were any truth , it will reach the honest-minded pagans as well ; but it can shelter neither , unless in such circumstances , that they had not the opportunity to learn the truth , which since the reformation , and especially this last age , by the mercy of god , is abundantly revealed to the world . so that all men , especially those that live in protestant nations or kingdoms , are without all excuse ; and therefore become obnoxious to god's eternall wrath and damnation , if they relinquish not that false prophetesse jezebel , as she is called in the epistle to the church in thyatira , who by her corrupt doctrines deceives the people , and inveigles them into gross idolatrous practices . . thus little is conceded by those of our reformed churches that speak most favourably of those in the church of rome . and yet this little must be retracted , unless we can make it out , that any of that church are capable of sincere and unfeigned repentance while they are of it . for to repent as a thief , because he is afraid to be hanged , is not that saving repentance . but to repent as a true christian none can doe , unlesse he has the spirit of god , and be in the state of regeneration . for true repentance arises out of the detestation of the uglinesse of sin it self , and out of the love to the pulchritude and amiablenesse of the divine life and of true vertue , which none can be touched with but those that are regenerate or born of god. now those holy and divine sentiments of the new birth are so contrary to the frauds and impostures , to the grosse idolatries and bloudy murthers of the church of rome , which they from time to time have perpetrated upon the dear servants of christ , that it is impossible for any one that has this holy sense , but that he should incontinently fly from that church with as much horrour and affrightment as any countrey-man would from some evil spectre , or at the approach of the devil . . he that is born of god sinneth not , saith s. john : how then can they be so born whose very religion is a trade of sin , and that of the highest nature , they ever and anon exercising grosse acts of idolatry ? besides that they are consenting ( by giving up their belief and suffrage to the murtherous conclusions of that church ) to all the barbarous and bloudy persecutions of the saints that either have happened or may happen in their own times , or ever shall happen , by that church ; they become , i say , guilty thereof by adjoyning themselves to this bloud-thirsty body of men , with whom the murther of those that will not commit idolatry with them , and so rebell against god , is become an holy papal law and statute . and therefore , i say , how can any man conceive that those men are born of god who are thus deeply defiled with murtherous and idolatrous impurities , but rather that they are in a mere blinde carnal condition , and uncapable , while they are thus , of any true and sincere repentance , and consequently of repenting of their daily idolatries which they commit , and ordinarily ( to make all sure ) in ipso articulo mortis , and therefore are out of all capacity of salvation while they are members of that church ? as plainly appears both by this present reason fetch'd from the nature of regeneration , as also from the judgement of the romanists themselves touching the state of idolaters after this life , and chiefly from the expresse sentence of the spirit of god in scripture , as i intimated before . . and therefore , in the fifth and last place , it is exceeding manifest how stupid and regardless those souls are of their own salvation , that continue in the communion of the church of rome ; and how desperately wilde and extravagant they are who , never having been of it , but having had the advantage of better principles , yet can finde in their hearts to be reconciled to it . this must be a sign of some great defect in judgement , or else in their sincerity , that they ever can be allured to a religion that is so far removed from god and heaven . . but this church , as the woman in the proverbs , is , i must confess , both very fair of speech and subtil of heart , and knows how to tamper with the simple ones right skilfully . she knows how to overcome all their carnal senses by her luxurious enticements . she has deck'd her bed with coverings of tapestry , with carved works , with fine linens of aegypt . she has perfumed her bed with myrrh , aloes and cinnamon . she entertains her paramours with the most delicious strains of musick , and chants out the most sweet and pleasing rhymes , to lull them secure in her lap : such as those idolatrous forms of the invocation of the virgin marie , and of other saints , which i have produced , of which she has a numerous store . unto which i conceive the prophet isay to allude in that passage touching the city of tyre , representing there mystically the relapsing church of rome : take an harp , goe about the city , thou harlot that hast been forgotten , make sweet melody , sing many songs , that thou mayst be remembred . see synopsis prophetica , book . ch . . . she gilds her self over also with the goodly and specious titles of unity , antiquity , universality , the power of working miracles , of sanctity likewise , and of infallibility ; and boasts highly of her self , that she has the power of the keys , and can give safe conduct to heaven by sacerdotal absolution ; and , if need be , out of the treasury of the merits of holy men of their church , which she has the keeping and disposing of , can adde oyl to the lamps of the unprovided virgins , and so piece out their deficiency in the works of righteousnesse . such fair speeches and fine glozing words she has to befool the judgements of the simple . . but as to the first , it is plain that that unity that is by force is no fruit of the spirit , and therefore no sign of the true church : nor that which is from free agreement , if it be not to good ends. for salomon describes an agreement of thieves or robbers , heartening one another to spoil and bloudshed , and to enter so strict a society as to have but one purse . and therefore for a company of men , under the pretense of spirituality , to agree in the inventing or upholding such doctrines or fictions as are most serviceable for a worldly design , and for the more easily riding and abusing the credulous and carnal-minded , thereby to be masters of their persons and wealth , this is no holy unity , but an horrid and unrighteous conspiracy against the deluded sons of adam . . and for antiquity and universality , they are both plainly on the protestants side , who make no fundamentals of faith but such as are manifestly contained in the scripture ; which is much more ancient , and more universally received , then any of those things upon whose account we separate from the church of rome , which are but the fruits of that apostasie which , * after four hundred years or thereabout , the church was to fall into according to divine prediction . so that we are as ancient and universal as the apostolick church it self , nor do we desire to appear to be the members of any church that is not apostolicall . and for their boast of miracles , which are produced to ratifie their crafty figments , they are but fictions themselves framed by their priests , or delusions of the devil , according as is foretold concerning the coming of antichrist , that man of sin , ( which the pope and his clergy most assuredly is , ) namely , that his coming is after the working of satan , with all power , and signs , and lying wonders . so that they glory in their own shame , and boast themselves in the known character of antichrist , and would prove themselves to be holy church by pretending to the privileges of that man of sin , and by appealing to the palpable signs of the assistence of the devil . for from thence are all miracles that are produced in favour of practices that are plainly repugnant to the doctrines of the holy scriptures . . but now , as for their sanctity , what an holy church they are , any one may judge upon the reading of the lives of their popes and history of their cardinals , and other religious orders of that church of rome ; how rankly all things smell of fraud and imposture , of pride and covetousnesse , of ostentation and hypocrisy ; what monstrous examples of sensuality their holinesses themselves have ordinarily been , of fornication and adultery , of incest and sodomie ; to say nothing of simonie , and that infernall sin of necromancy . but for murther and idolatry , those horrid crimes are not onely made familiar to them , but have passed into a law with them , and are interwoven into the very essence of their religion . judge then how holy that church must be , whose religion is the establishment of idolatry and murther . of the latter of which crimes the holy inquisition is an instance with a witness . and yet that den of murtherers , whose office it is to kill men for not committing idolatry , with the church of rome must needs bear the title of holy. . and for their pretense of infallibility , it is expresly predicted in the apocalypse of s. john , as well as their laying claim to miracles . for as the two-horned beast is said to doe great wonders , and to bring fire from heaven , which two-horned beast is the pope and his clergy ; so jezebel , which is the same hierarchy , is called the woman that gives to her self the title of a prophetesse , whose oracles you know must be infallible . for she does not mean that she is a false prophetesse , though indeed and in truth she is so . and the pope with his clergy is judged to be so by the spirit of god , in that he is called the false prophet , as well as the two-horned beast , in those visions of s. john. and while he pretends himself to be a prophet , even without divine revelation , one may plainly demonstrate that he is a false one from this one notorious . instance of transubstantiation ; which is a doctrine repugnant to common sense and reason , and all the faculties of the mind of man , and bears a contradiction to the most plain and indubitable principles of all arts and sciences , as i have proved above . so that we may be more sure that this is false , then that we feel our own bodies , or can tell our toes and fingers on our hands and feet . judge then therefore whether is more likely , that the church of rome should be infallible , or transubstantiation a mere figment , especially it being so serviceable for their worldly advantages , and they being taken tardy in so many impostures and deceits . so that infallibility is a mere boast . . and now for their sacerdotal absolution , that they can so safely dismisse men to heaven or secure them from hell thereby , this power of their priest is such another vain boast as that of transubstantiation . except a man be born again , he cannot enter into the kingdome of god. and the form of words upon one's death-bed can no more regenerate any one , then their quinqueverbiall charm can transubstantiate the bread and wine into the body and bloud of christ. where the form of absolution has any effect , it must be on such persons as are already really regenerate and unfeignedly and sincerely penitent : which i have shewn to be incompetible to any one so long and so far forth as he adheres to the roman church . so that in this case one aethiopian does but wash another , which is labour spent in vain . there must be a change of nature , or no externall ceremonie nor words can doe any thing . for the form of absolution is not a charm , as i said , to change the nature of things , but onely a ticket to passe guards and scouts , and to procure safe conduct to the heavenly regions . but if by regeneration and due repentance one has not contracted an alliance and affinity with the saints and angels , but is really still involved in the impure and hellish nature , the grim officers of that dark kingdome will most certainly challenge their own , and they will be sure to carry that soul captive into a sutable place , let the flattering priest have dismissed her hence with the fairest and most hopefull circumstances he could . this is the most hideous , the most dangerous and the most perfidious cheat of that church of rome that ever she could light on for the damning of poor credulous souls , that thus superstitiously depend on the vain breath of their priest for the security of their salvation . . and yet they are not content with this device alone to lull men secure in wickednesse , but besides their pretense of singing them out of purgatory by mercenary masses , and pecuniarie redemptions by pardons and indulgences , and i know not what trumperies , they allure men to come into their church as having that great store and treasury of the merits of holy men and women , their works of supererogation , which they pretend to have the keeping and disposing of . so that a poor soul that is bankrupt of her self , and has no stock of good works of her own , may sufficiently be furnished for love or money by the merchants of this store-house . which , besides that it is a blasphemous derogation to the merits of christ , is the grossest falshood that ever was uttered . for these holy men , as they are called , and virgins , were , god wot , themselves most miserable sinners , and died in most horrid idolatries , as dying in the practices of that church ; and he that comes to that church does necessarily become a grosse idolater himself ; besides that he sets to his seal and makes himself accessory to all that innocent bloud , the bloud of those many hundred thousands of martyrs for the protestant truth , which that woman of bloud that sits on the seven hills has with the most execrable circumstances imaginable so frequently murthered . so that a soul otherwise passable of her self would be necessarily drown'd in this one foul deluge of guilt : so far is she from having any relief or advantage by reconciling her self to the church of rome . . wherefore who-ever thou art that hast any sense or solicitude for thy future state and salvation , believe not this woman of subtil lips and a deceitfull heart , and give no credit to her fictions and high pretensions ; but the more she goes about to magnifie her self , do thou humble her the more , by shewing her her ugly hue in the glasse of the holy scriptures . if she boast that she is that holy jerusalem , a city at unity within it self , whenas the rest of the world are so full of sects and factions ; tell her that she is that carnal jerusalem , wherein christ in his true members hath been so barbarously persecuted and murthered , and that the stones of her buildings are no living stones , but held together by a mere iron violence , and the cement of her walls tempered with the large effusion of innocent bloud ; forasmuch as she is that two-horned beast that gave life to the image of the beast , and caused him to decree that as many as would not obey his idolatrous edicts should be slain . this is the power of your unity , which is not from the spirit of god , but from the spirit of the devil , who was a murtherer from the beginning . but the division of us protestants is both a sign of our sincere search after the truth , and a more strong testimony against you of rome , in that we being so divided amongst our selves , yet we so unanimously give sentence against you : your miscarriages and crimes being so exceeding grosse , that no free eye but must needs discern them . . if she vaunts of her antiquity ; give her enough of it , and tell her she derives her pedigree from that great dragon , the old serpent , that is called the devil and satan , that murtherer of mankinde . ye are of your father the devil , saith our saviour , and the works of your father will ye doe . we grant that the visage and lineage of your church reaches even beyond the times of the apostles , the two-horned beast reviving the image of the pagan beast , the great red dragon , by bringing up again his old bloudy persecutions and idolatries . it suffices us , that our church began with the apostles . if she glories in her universality , and in her large territories ; tell her , she is that great city which spiritually is called sodom and aegypt , where our lord was crucified : and that she is babylon the great , the mother of fornications and the abominations of the earth . if she boast of the power of the keys , and of sacerdotal absolution ; tell her that he that is holy , he that is true , he that has the key of david , he that openeth and no man shutteth , and shutteth and no man openeth , that is to say , our lord jesus christ , will never part with these keys to his inveterate enemy , that notorious man of sin , or antichrist . if she spread before thee her goodly wares of mercenary masses , of pardons and indulgences , of the mutuatitious good works of their pretended holy men and women ; or the wealth and externall glories of their church , and varieties of rich preferments and dignities ; say unto her ; that she is that city of trade of whom it is written , that no man buieth her merchandise any more ; and again , alas , alas ! that great city that was cloathed in fine linnen and purple and scarlet , and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls : for in one hour so great riches are come to nought . for her merchants were the great men of the earth , and by her sorceries were all nations deceived . and in her was found the bloud of prophets , and of saints , and of all that were slain upon the earth . . if she would amaze thee with the stories of the wonderfull miracles done by her ; tell her that she is that two-horned beast that doth great wonders , and that deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to doe in the sight of the ten-horn'd beast ; or that false prophet working miracles , and deceiving them that receive the mark of the beast , and worship his image , who together with the beast is to be taken , and cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone ; or lastly , that man of sin and son of perdition , whose coming is after the working of satan , with all power , and signs , and lying wonders . if she would inveagle thee with her pretenses of infallibility ; tell her that she is that woman jezebel , that calleth her self a prophetesse ; or the prophet balaam , that insnared the israelites in idolatry ; and that very false prophet that together with the beast is to be cast alive into the lake of burning brimstone . . and lastly , if she would gull thee with that specious and much-affected title of holy church ; tell her that the spirit of truth in the divine oracles , let her commend her self as much as she pleases , gives no such character of her , but quite contrary , declaring the see of rome to be the * seat of satan , and their church a his synagogue ; the pope and his clergy to be b balaam the son of bozor , who loved the wages of unrighteousnesse , and who was the murtherer of christ's faithfull martyr antipas ; to be that c woman jezebel who calls her self a prophetesse , but was indeed a sorceresse , and a murtherer of the true prophets of the lord ; to be also that d false prophet , that is to be taken alive , and cast into the lake of fire and brimstone ; to be that e great city that spiritually is called sodom and aegypt , where our lord was crucified ; to be f the beast that has the horns of a lamb , but the voice of the dragon , decreeing idolatries and cruel persecutions against god's people ; to be that g babylon the great , the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth ; the woman on the seven hills , that is drunk with the bloud of the saints and with the bloud of the martyrs of jesus ; and , lastly , to be that h man of sin , that notorious antichrist , that opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called god or is worshipped , whose coming is with all deceivableness of unrighteousnesse in them that perish , because they receive not the love of the truth that they may be saved . for which cause god sends them strong delusion , that they believe a lie . that they all might be damned that believe not the truth , but have pleasure in unrighteousnesse . as well 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as well all they that love the romish lies and impostures , as all they that invent them , are here plainly declared in the state of damnation . with this nosegay of rue and wormwood antidote thy self against the idolatrous infection of that strange woman 's breath , whose lips yet drop as an hony-comb , and her mouth is more smooth then oyl . and be assured that that cannot be the true holy church wherein salvation is to be expected , which the spirit of god has marked with such unholy and hellish characters , let her boast of her own holiness as much as she will. . and if she return this answer to thee , that this is not to argue , but to rail in phrases of scripture ; do thou make this short reply , that whiles she accuses thee of railing against sinfull and obnoxious men , she must take heed that she be not found guilty of blaspheming the holy spirit of god. i confesse these propheticall passages apply'd to such persons as to whom they do not belong were an high and rude strain of railing indeed , and quite out of the road of christianity and common humanity : but to call them railings when they are apply'd to that very party to whom they are really meant by that spirit that dictated them , is indeed to pretend to a sense of civility towards men , but in the mean time to become a down-right blasphemer against the holy ghost that dictated these oracles . and that they are not mis-apply'd , any impartial man of but an ordinary patience and comprehension of wit may have all assurance desirable from that demonstration of the truth compriz'd in the eight last chapters of the first book of synopsis prophetica ; to say nothing of the present exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches in asia . . wherefore , o serious soul , whoever thou art , be not complemented out of the truth and an earnest pursuance of thine own salvation from a vain sense of the applauses or reproaches of men , or from any consideration what they may think of thee for attesting or standing to such verities as are so unwelcome to many ears , but of such huge importance to all to hear . for no lesse a game is at stake in our choice of what church we adhere to , that of rome or the reformed , then the possession of heaven and eternall life . wherefore stand stoutly upon thy guard , and whensoever thou art accosted by the fair words and sugar'd speeches of that cunning woman , ( who will make semblance of great solicitude for thy future happinesse , most passionately inviting thee to return into the bosome of holy church , ) be sure to remember what an holy church she is according to divine description ; and that if thou assentest to her smooth persuasions and crafty importunities , thou dost ipso facto ( pardon the vehemence of expression ) adventure thy self into the jaws of hell , and cast thy self into the arms of the devil . god of his mercy give us all grace to consider what has been spoken , that we may evermore escape these snares of death . amen . the end . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e * apoc. . . john , . apoc. . , . chap. . . cor. . . see dr. cudworth's discourse of the lord's supper . de rerum invent. lib. . cap. . ap●c . . . greg●r . ●ranc . ●xic . ●anct . t●t . . kings . . apoc. . . apoc. . , . apoc. . . * synops. prophet . book . c. . sect . . apoc. . . apoc. . . apoc. . . isa. . . apoc. . . john . . notes for div a -e * apoc. . ●● * see divine dialogues , dialogue . sect . . apoc. . . verse . verse . verse . verse . verse . verse . pet. ram. lib. . c. . eccles. . . verse . verse . chap. . v. . apoc. . . matth. . , . apoc. . verse , . verse . verse . verse . verse . luke . , . apoc. ch . . v. . verse . matt. . . verse . verse . apoc. ch . . v. . dan. . . verse . verse . verse . verse . verse . apoc. . . * see if there was not a marie's psalter before , antidote against idolat . chap. . sect . . * this was the institute of pope john . and within the fore-part of the intervall of thyatira . see polydore virgil. de rerum invent . lib. . c. . downham de antichrist . lib. . cap. . verse . verse . apoc. . . apoc. . . apoc. . kings . . king. . . apoc. . kings . . prov. . . kings . . apoc. . apoc. . john . . john . . apoc. . . apoc. . , . kings . . kings . . verse . verse . verse . verse . verse . verse . verse . psalm . verse . apoc. . . verse . apoc. . . john. . . john . . verse . verse . verse . verse . verse . apoc . ver . . cant. . . cant. . . verse . apoc. . and . apoc. . apoc. . , . verse . joh. . . apoc. . . verse . pet. . v. . verse . verse . verse . apoc. . . isa. . . verse . verse . gen. . . verse . verse . . verse . john . . ver . . verse . matt. . . cor. , , . verse . apoc. . , . apoc. . , . apoc. . . apoc. . . apoc. . . notes for div a -e * part . book . ch. . to the . chap. * apoc. . . * apoc. . . rom. . . cor. . . prov. . . pet. . . john . . notes for div a -e exod. . . mark . , . joh. . . concil . trident. sess. . cap. . ca● . . concil . trident. sess. . cap. . cap. . can . . * see paul. fag . upon deut. . . john . . gen. . . joh. . . francise . coster . enchirid. controvers . cap. . concil . trident. sess. . apoc. . . john . , . matth. . . apoc. . . apoc. . . concil . trid. sess. . * part . book . chap. . exod. . , . mat. . . * see ch. . conclus . . chap. . . apoc. . . john . . prov. . , . isa. . . prov. . . * synops. prophet . lib. . c. . thess. . . apoc. . . apoc. . . apoc. . . john . . psal. . . apoc. . apoc. . . john . apoc. . apoc. . a●●c . . apoc. . , . apoc. . . thess. . . apoc. ● . . apoc. . . apoc. . . * apoc. . . a apoc. . . b apoc. . , . c apoc. . . d apoc. . . e apoc. . . f apoc. . . g apoc. . h thess. . prov. . . matth. . . observations upon anthroposophia theomagica, and anima magica abscondita by alazonomastix philalethes. more, henry, - . this text is an enriched version of the tcp digital transcription a of text r in the english short title catalog (wing m ). textual changes and metadata enrichments aim at making the text more computationally tractable, easier to read, and suitable for network-based collaborative curation by amateur and professional end users from many walks of life. the text has been tokenized and linguistically annotated with morphadorner. the annotation includes standard spellings that support the display of a text in a standardized format that preserves archaic forms ('loveth', 'seekest'). textual changes aim at restoring the text the author or stationer meant to publish. this text has not been fully proofread approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. earlyprint project evanston,il, notre dame, in, st. louis, mo a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) observations upon anthroposophia theomagica, and anima magica abscondita by alazonomastix philalethes. more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed at parrhesia, but are to be sold, by o. pullen ..., [london] : . first edition. attributed to henry more, the platonist. cf. halkett & laing ( nd ed.) anthroposophia theomagica and anima magica abscondita were written by thomas vaughan under the pseudonym of eugenius philalethes. reproduction of original in huntington library. eng vaughan, thomas, - . -- anthroposophia theomagica. vaughan, thomas, - . -- anima magica abscondita. alchemy. a r (wing m ). civilwar no observations upon anthroposophia theomagica, and anima magica abscondita. by alazonomastix philalethes. more, henry c the rate of defects per , words puts this text in the c category of texts with between and defects per , words. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - kirk davis sampled and proofread - kirk davis text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion observations upon anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . by alazonomastix philalhthes psalm . they reel to and fro , and stagger like a drunken man , and are at their wits end . printed at parrhesia , but are to be sold , by o. pullen at the rose in pauls churchyard , . to eugenius philalethes the authour of anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . sir , the great deserved fame that followed this noble work of yours ( the due recompense of all eminent performances ) engaged me to peruse the same , with much eagernesse of minde , and yet with no lesse attention ; i being one of those , that professe themselves much more willing to learn , then able to teach . and that you may see some specimen of the fruits of your labour and my proficiency , i thought fit to present you with these few observations . which , considering the barrennesse of the matrix , ( as you chymists love to call it ) in which they were conceived , may bee termed rather many then few : and that imputed to the alone vertue , or magicall multiplication , or theomagicall fecundity of your divine writings , not at all to the sterility of my disfurnished braine . which now notwithstanding , having gathered both warmth and moisture from the heat and luxuriancy of your youthfull phansie , findes it selfe after a manner transformed into your owne complexion , and translated into the same temper with your selfe . in so much that although i cannot with the height of a protestation in the presence of my glorious god ( as your self has gallantly done ( in pag. . lin. . of anthropos . theomag . ) affirme that the affection and zeal to the truth of my creatour has forced mee to write , yet i dare professe in the word of an honest man , that nothing but an implacable enmity to immorality and foolery , has moved mee at this time to set pen to paper . and i confesse my indignation is kindled the more , having so long observed that this disease is grown even epidemicall in our nation . viz. to desire to bee filled with high-swoln words of vanity , rather then to feed on sober truth , and to heat and warm our selves rather by preposterous and fortuitous imaginations , then to move cautiously in the light of a purified minde and improved reason . wherefore i being heightened with the same zeale of discountenancing of vanity and conceitednesse , that your selfe is of promoting the truth , you will permit to mee the same freedome in the prosecution thereof . for as wee are growne near akin in temper and complexion , so we ought mutually to allow each other in our actings alike , according to our common temper and nature , and the accustomed liberty of the philalethean family . in confidence whereof , till wee meet againe in the next page , i take leave and subscribe my selfe , a chip of the same block alazonomastix philalethes . observations upon anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . and now , brother philalethes ; that we are so well met , let us begin to act according to the freenesse of our tempers , and play the tom telltroths . and you indeed have done your part already . my course is next . which must be spent , in the observations i told you of , upon those profound treatises of yours , anthroposophia theomagica , and anima magica abscondita . and my first and generall observation is this , that the genius of my brother eugenies magicall discourse is such , that simon magus-like , he seems to have a very liquoursome desire to be thought to be {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , some great man in the world . and for the prosecution of this main end , he layes himself out chiefly in these three subordinate designes . first , to be thought to have found out some new concerning truths , hitherto undiscovered . secondly , to be more learned and knowing then aristotle , that great light of these european parts for these many hundred years together : and not only so , but to be so far above him , that he may be his master , that he may tew him , and lugge him , and lash him more cruelly , then any orbilius or cholerick pedagogue , his puny scholars . thirdly and lastly , that he may strike home for the getting of a fame of profound learning indeed , he do's most affectedly and industriously raise in the reader a strong surmise and suspicion that he is very deeply seen in art magick , and is a very knowing disciple of agrippa , and puts in as far for the name of a magician , as honesty will permit , and safety from that troublesome fellow , hopkins the witch-finder . and indeed the very clatter of the title of his book , anthroposophia theomagica , sounds not much unlike some conjuration , or charm , that would either call up , or scare away the devill . and zoroaster forsooth , at the bottome of the page , that old reputed magician , must stand as an assistent to this preludiall exorcism ; with this oracle in his mouth , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , audi ignis vocem . that is in plaine english , hear the voice or noise of fire . methinks i smell out a gunpowder-plot . what can this voice of fire be ? why ! how now anthroposophus ! you intend certainly to make the rosy brotherhood merry with squibs and crackers . for certainly your mysteriousnesse does not mean those lesser or greater fire-squirts , carbines or cannons . so might the fratres r. c. be received with like solemnity that those apostles at rome , the cardinals . but the word {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} , ( which implyes a subsultation , or skipping this way and that way ) which is in the context of this oracle , seemes to allude to , and prognosticate of fire-crackers and squibs rather then cannons or carbines . but how ever if this dog-trick fail , anthroposophus has another as puerile and innocent a present , to entertain that reverend fraternity . and that 's a very queint and trim latine epistle , which he , like a good school-boy , to shew them what a good proficient he is grown in his latine grammar , presents to their assembled gravities . 't is a good child , anthroposophus ! and 't is well done . qui necit obedire nescit imperare . he that knows not how to submit himself in the form of a breeching boy to the fratres r. c. how can he know so unmercifully to whip and domineer over poor aristotle ? surely , anthroposophus ! when the rosy brethren , ride swooping through the air in their theomagicall chariots , they will hail down sugar plums , and carua's on thy blessed pate , if thou haft but the good hap at that time , to walk abroad with thy hat off , to cool thy heated nodle . but stay a while , i am afraid i am mistaken . it may well be , that anthroposophus rides along with them , as being the proloquutour of their assembly . for he writes himselfe oratoris vestri . how can that belong to a short epistle , unlesse it were some title of office ? but it may be my gentleman , being not so dextrous and quick in latine as in english , measured the length o● it more by his labour then the lines , and thought that that which took him so much pains could not prove so little as an epistle ; and therefore would insinuate that it was an oration made to the fratres r. c. i suppose at their meeting at fryer bacons brasen head in oxford . well! be it what it will be , my observation here , anthroposophus , is , that you would also by your addresse to the fratres r. c. make the world beleeve , that you are now mellowing apace , and are not much unripe for admission into that society . and then anthroposophus would be a rare theomagician indeed . but enough of this vein of mirth and levity . now philalethes ! your brother tel-troth , intends to fall more closely on your bones , and to discover whether you have not a greater minde to seem to be wise then to be so indeed , or to make others so . but yet you may assure your self , i will only find flaws not make any in you ; but rather candidly passe over what may receive any tolerably good interpretation , nor touch the soar anywhere , but where i may hope to heal it , either in your self or others . and that this may be done without any tedious taking a peeces of what you have put together , i shall fairly passe from page to page without any analytical artifice . and truly from the first page to middle of the fourth page of you to the reader , there be many pretty , smart , elegant , humorous contextures of phrases and things . but there , presently after fryer bacons fool and his fellow , you fall upon our peripateticks as such superficiall philosophasters , because they cannot lay open to you the very essence of the soul . why ! anthroposophus ! can you tell the very essence of any substantiall thing ? hereby you show your self very raw and unexercised in meditation , in that you have not yet taken notice what things are knowable , what not . and thus may you have as ill a trick put upon you , for want of this discerning , as the old dim and doting woman had , that with her rotten teeth endeavoured to crack a round pebble stone instead of a nut , which was a thing impossible . nor will any mans understanding , be it as sharp as it will , enter the bare essence of any thing . but the nearest wee can get , is , to know the powers , and operations , the respects and fitnesses that things have in themselves or toward others . which is so true , that any man in a little search , will presently satisfie himself in the evidence thereof . from the middle of this fourth page to the middle of the six , is continued a dance of anticks , or various ridiculous shiftings and postures of phansie , to make aristotle and his followers contemptible . but such generall railings , as they are mis-beseeming the writer , so they teach the reader nothing but that the authour of them is a mome , or a mimick , and more like an ape by far then him that he compares to one . if this man clap the wings so when hee has really got the foil ( for hitherto hee has charged aristotle with no particular piece of ignorance , but of what is impossible to be known ) what would he doe if he had the victory ? the second particular taxation ( for generals i hold nothing , dolosus ambulat in universalibus ) is that the peripateticks fancy god to have made the world , as a carpenter of stone and timber . but this is false : because they give an inward principle of motion to all naturall bodies , and there is one continuity of all , as much as of the parts of water among themselves . but their grand fault is , that they doe not say the world is animate . but is not yours far greater , anthroposophus ! that gives so ridiculous unproportionable account of that tenet ? the whole world is an animal , say you , whose flesh is the earth , whose bloud is the water , the air the outward refreshing spirit in which it breaths , the interstellar skies his vitall waters , the stars his sensitive fire . but are not you a mere animal your self to say so ? for it is as irrationall and incredible , as if you should tell us a tale of a beast whose bloud and flesh put together , bears not so great a proportion to the rest of the more fluid parts of the animal , suppose his vitall and animal spirits , as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the earth . and beside this , how shall this water which you call bloud , be refreshed by the air that is warmer then it ? and then those waters which you place in the outmost parts towards his dappeld or spotted skin the coelum stellatum , what over-proportionated plenty of them is there there ? in so much that this creature you make a diseased animall from its first birth , and ever labouring with an anasarca . lastly , how unproperly is the air said to be the outward refreshing spirit of this animal , when it is ever in the very midst of it ? and how rashly is the flux and reflux of the sea assimilated to the pulse , when the pulse is from the heart not the brain , but the flux and reflux of the sea from the moon not the sun , which they that be more discreetly phantasticall then your self , doe call cor mundi . wherefore , anthroposophus ! your phansies to sober men , will seem as vain and puerile , as those of idle children that imagine the fortuitous postures of spaul and snivell on plaster-walls , to bear the form of mens or dogs faces , or of lyons and what not . and yet see the supine stupidity and senslesnesse of this mans judgment , that he triumphs so in this figment of his as so rare and excellent a truth , that aristotles philosophy must be groundlesse superstition and popery in respect of it , this the primevall truth of the creation ; when as it is a thousand times more froth , then his is vomit . my friend anthroposophus ! is this to appear for the truth in a day of necessity ? certainly shee 'll be well holpe at a dead lift , if shee find no better champions then your self . verily philalethes if you be no better in your book then in your preface to the reader , you have abused moses his text beyond measure . for your principles will have neither heaven nor earth in them , head nor foot , reason nor sense . they will be things extra intellectum , and extra sensum , mere vagrant imaginations seated in your own subsultorious and skip-jack phansy only . but what they are we shal now begin to examine , according to the number of pages . anthroposophia theomagica . pag. . lio. . so have all souls before their entrance , &c. but hear you me mr. anthroposophus ! are you in good earnest that all souls before their entrance into the body have an explicite methodicall knowledge ? and would you venture to lose your wit so much by inprisoning your selfe in so darke a dungeon , as to be able to write no better sense in your preface to the reader ? but i 'le excuse him , it may be he was riding before his entrance into the body on some theomagicall jade or other , that stumbled and flung him into a mysticall quagmire against his will , where he was so soused and doused and bedaubed and dirtyed , face and eyes and all , that hee could never since the midwife raked him out all wet and dropping like a drown'd mouse , once see cleerly what was sense and what nonsense to this very day . wherefore we will set the saddle on the right horse ; and his theomagick nag shall bear the blame of the miscarriage . pag. . lin. . i tooke to task the fruits of one spring , &c. here anthroposophus is turned herbalist for one whole spring , damned to the grasse and fields like nebuchadnezzar when he went on all four among the beasts . but see how slow this snail amongst the herbs is , in finding out the truth ; when he confesses it was the work of one whole spring to find out , that the earth or seeds of flowers are nothing like the flowers . there 's not any old garden-weeder in all london , but without a pair of spectacles will discover that in four minutes , which he has beene a full fourth part of a year about . but certainely , he intends a great deal of pomp and ceremony , that will not take up such a conclusion as this , ( viz. that things that are produced in nature are out of something in nature which is not like the things produced ) but upon the full experience and meditation of one entire spring . and now after this whole springs meditation and experience , hee is forced to turn about to him whom hee so disdainfully flies , and confesse two of the three principles of the aristotelean physicks , viz. matter and privation , that homo is ex non homine , arbor ex non arbore , &c. but this matter , he says ( and it is the wisest word he has spoken yet ) he knowes not what it is . but presently blots his credit again with a new peece of folly , intimating hee will finde it it out by experience . which is as good sense as if hee should say , hee would see it when his eyes are out . for it is alike easie to see visibles without eyes , as to see invisibles with eyes . but he flyes off hence , and is in quest after a substance which he smels out like a nosegay in natures bosome . which substance hee hopes to see by art . why ! eugenius are you so sharp sighted that you can see substances ? a kind of philosophick hog , he can see the wind too i warrant you . but how can you hope to see that substance when nature only exposes it to her own vitall celestiall breath ? and tell what this breath is , and doe not amaze us with strange words , or else keep your breath to your self to cool your poctage . pag. . here a fit of devotion has taken him , and i am neither so irreligious nor uncivill as to interrupt him . but now sir you have done , i hope it will not be any offence to addresse my discourse to you again . and it will not be unseasonable to tell you , that truth is not to be had of god almighty for an old song , no nor yet for a new one . and that no man is to measure his wisdom by his devotion , but by his humility & purity of mind and unprejudicate reason ; nor that any man is wiser by making others seem more contemptibly foolish , as your juvenility has thought good to deal with poor aristotle , and his orthodox disciples all this time . nay , and that you may not take sanctuary at moses his text , let mee also tell you , that before you prove any thing thence , you ought first to make good , that scripture is intended for naturall philosophy as well as a divine life . but we need not arm our selves so well yet ; for from the fourth page to the eight page nothing is said , but that god from a knowing principle made the world . which aristotle also seems to assert , while he is so frequent in telling the ends of naturall things , which could not be sense , unlesse he supposed that nature was guided by a knowing principle , which is to acknowledge a god after the best manner . and that subtil philosopher julius scaliger uses no contemptible arguments to prove , that aristotles philosophy furnisheth us also with the knowledge of a trinity in god , so that anthroposophus is very unkind and uncivill to so good a master . pages . and . what an aristotelean would dispatch in a word or two , viz. that life is alwayes accompanied with a naturall warmth , hee is mysteriously sumbling out and drayling on to the length of almost two whole pages . pag. . lin. . the divine light pierced the bosome of the matter , &c. this compared with what is at the bottome of the fourth page , wee see that this rare philosopher tells us , that the matter is an horrible emptie darknesse . and me thinks his description is an hideous empty phansie , and conveys not so much to the understanding as aristotles description of the matter , which hee would describe to be , the first subject out of which every thing is . this latter is more cleane and sober , the other more slabby and phantasticall . and to call it primitive waters 〈…〉 s but yet metaphors and poetry . for you doe not mean waters such as we wash our hands in . but they must be waters and dark , that you may bring in the conceit of the light shining in them that like rivers and pooles the images of trees and birds , and clouds and stars , and what not , may bee seen in them . and this must help us coconceive , that upon the breaking through of the light , the divine idea's shone in the waters , and that the holy spirit , not being able to see till then , by looking then upon those images , framed the matter into form . but i pray you tell mee , mr. anthroposophus ! that would be so wise as if you stood by while god made the world , doe not you think that god can now see in the dark or behold his own idea's in the depth of the earth ? you 'll say you doe not mean this naturall light but a divine light . if so , was ever the matter so stiff and clammy dark , as to be able to keepe it out ? so that the divine idea's shone in the water so soon as god was , and the spiritus opifex could see to begin his work ab cmni retro aeternitate . and it could never be dark in your blind sense . is it not so anthroposophus ? lin . . si plantam quasi momento nasci , &c. if anthroposophus had such a device a 〈…〉 this in a glasse , what a fine gew-gaw would it be for the lad ? what fine sport would he make with his companions ? he would make them beleeve then that he was a conjurer indeed . but what other use there would be of it , anthroposophus ! truly i doe not know . for it would not state one controversie in philosophy more then what may be done without it . for whether there be any such things as rationes seminales , or whether these forms visible arise from heat , which is motion , and the conspiracy of fitted particles , is as well and safely determined from your experiments of one spring , as from this strange whimwham in a glasse . but weak stomachs and weak wits long most after rarities . pag. . lin. . two-fold idea , divine , naturall , &c. anthroposophus ! your naturall idea , is but an idea of your own brain . for it is no more an idea then a sheath is a knife , or the spittle that wets the seal the seal , or the grease the saw , or the water the grindle-stone . but you must strike betwixt this and the divine idea , or else you will misse of your naturall one . and so will be forced to do that of penury , which he did of choice , and for brevity sake , divide your text into one part . but your quotation of moses here near the bottom of the page , is either nothing to your naturall idea , or if you mean it of the divine is no new notion , but nimmed out of philo the jew . and yet in the beginning of the following page you magnifie your self , as one that concerning this primitive supernaturall part of the creation as you call it , though you have not said so much as you can say by far , ( as being a nip-crust and niggard of your precious speculations ) yet you have produced not a little new . pag. . lin. . some authors , &c. and the reason why the world is beholden to this gentleman more then to any for new discoveries of mighty truths , is , that whereas some authors have not searched so deeply into the center of nature , and others not willing to publish such spirituall mysteries , this new writer is the only man , that is both deeply seen into the center of nature , and as willing also to publish these spirituall mysteries . so that he goes beyond them all . o brave anthroposophus ! what a fine man would you fain appear to the world ? in the residue of this page , anthroposophus his phansie is pudled so and jumbled in the limbus or huddle of the matter , that hee cannot distinguish betwixt god and the creature . for he knows not whether the chaos be created or uncreated . how much wiser are you now then aristotle , mr. eugenius ! that made the world eternall . if you can admit this ; by the rule of proportion , you might swallow the greatest gudgeon in aristotle without kecking or straining . pag. . lin. . fuliginous spawn of nature . a rare expression ! this magician has turned nature into a fish by his art . surely such dreams sloat in his swimmering brains , as in the prophets , who tels us so authentick stories of his delicious albebut . lin. . the created matter . before the matter was in an hazard of not being created but of being of it self eternall . certainly eugenius ! you abound with leasure that can thus create and uncreate , doe and undoe , because the day is long enough . lin. . a horrible confused qualm , &c. here nature like a child-bearing woman , has a qualm comes over her stomach , and eugenius like a man-midwife stands by very officiously to see what will become of it . let her alone , eugenius ! it is but a qualm , some cold raw rheune . margret will escape well enough . especially if her two handmaids heat and siccity doe but help , with their aquavitae botles . what a rare mode or way of creation has eugenius set out ? certainly it cannot but satisfie any unreasonable man , if there be any men without reason . and i begin to suspect there is , for eugenius his sake , such as feed as savourly on the pure milk of phansie , as the philosophers asse on sow-thistles . pag. . this page is spent in extracting from the chaos , a thin spirituall celestiall substance to make the coelum empyreum of and the body of angels , and by the by , to be in stead of a sun for the first day . but then in the second extraction was extracted the agill air fitting all betwixt the masse and the coelum empyreum . but here i have so hedg●ed you in mr. anthroposophus that you will hardly extricate your self in this question . the empyreall substance encompassing all , how could there be morning and evening till the fourth day ? for the masse was alike illumined round about at once . and for your interstellar water you do but phansie it implyed in moses text , and can never prove that he drives at any thing higher in the letter thereof , than those hanging bottles of water , the clouds . pag. . lin. . a rumbling confused labyrinth . 't is only erratum typographicum . i suppose you mean , a rumbling wheel-barrow , in allusion to your wheel-work and epicycles aforementioned . but why small diminutive epicycles ? eugenius ! you are so profound a magician , that you are no astronomer at all . the bignesse of them is as strong a presumption against them , as any thing . they are too big to be true . lin. . this is cribrum naturaes . {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} i warrant you . the very sive that iupiter himself pisses through , as aristophanes sports it in his comedies . pag. . lin. . equally possest the whole creature . therefore again i ask thee , o eugenius ! how could there be evening and morning , the light being all over equally dispersed ? lin. . like a baffled gyant . poeticall eugenius ! is this to lay the sober and sound principles of truth and philosophy ? pag. . lin. . a black bag . i tell thee eugenius ! thy phansie is snap't in this femall black-bag , as an unwary retiarius in a net . do's madam nature wear her black-bag in her middle parts ? ( for the earth is the center of the world ) or on her head as other matrons doe ? that philalethes may seem a great and profound student indeed , hee will not take notice whether a black-bag be furniture for ladies heads or their haunches : well! let him enjoy the glory of his affected rusticity and ignorance . lin. . good lord deliver us . how the man is frighted into devotion by the smut and griminesse of his own imagination ! lin. . earth and water , &c. concurrunt elementa ut materia , ergo duo sufficiunt , says cardan . 't is no new-sprung truth , if true , mr. eugenius ! but seeing that aetherial vigour & celestial heat with the substance thereof ( for , coelum pervadit omnia ) is in all things , and the air excluded from few or no living creatures , if we would severely tug with you , mr. anthroposophus ! you will endanger the taking of the foil . pag. . lin. . both in the same bed . why did you ever sneak in , eugenius , and take them , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} in the very act ? {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} as the lawyers speak ? this is but poeticall pomp in prose . and ovid philosophizes better in verse , where speaking of heat and moisture , he expresses himself apertly and significantly . quippe ubi temperiem sumpsere humorque calorque concipiunt , & ab his generantur cuncta duobus . lin. . spiritus aquae invisibilis congelatus melior est quam terra universa . now as you are philalethes , tell me truly if you understand any determinate and usefull sense of this saying . if you doe , why doe you not explain it ? if you doe not , for ought you know , it may be onely a charm to fox fishes . and i pray you , philalethes ! make triall of the experimrnt . pag. . lin. . it is the magicians back-doore . here i cannot but take notice at the great affectation of philalethes to appear to be deeply seen in magick . but i suppose if he were well searched , he would be found no witch , nor all his back-doore of air worth the winde of an ordinary mans back-doore . pag. . lin. . the air is our animal oil , the fuill of the vitall . now eugenius ! you are so good natured as to give aristetle one of his two elements again , that you wrested from him . if this be our animall oil , and fuell of the vitall , it is plain our animall and vital spirits are from the air , and that the air is one element amongst the rest . and your moist silent fire that passes through al things must be a principle of all things , and may well be attempered heat to your forenamed oil . so that aristotle and you that before seemed as disagreeing as fire and water , now in a love fit again embrace as close as your apulejus his psyche and cupid . but why will you be thus humorous mr. eugenius ! and be thus off and on to the trouble of others and your self ? pag. . lin. . performed an exposition of the world . an excellent performance ! which if a man take a narrow view of , he will finde to amount to no more then this , that god made a dark masse of matter , out of which hee extracted , ( chymist like ) first an empyreall body , then an aereall , &c. which is a very lank satisfaction to the noble reason of man . nay , anthroposophus ! i beleeve you have spoke such stuff that will amount to little better then a contradiction to free reason . for you make as if the masse did contain in a far less compass above all measure , all that was after extracted . where fore there was , ( for these are all bodies ) either a penetration of dimensions then , or else a vacuum now : and the ascending particles of the masse , lye some distance one from another . besides i observe that in you , that i doe in all others , that phantastically and superstitiously force philosophy out of the sacred writ ( which is intended curtainly for better purposes ) for like ovid in his metamorphoses , ( who after a long pursuit of a fabulous story , at last descends to something in nature and common use , as that of daphne turned into a lawrell , which tree is in nature and according to the accustomary conceit of the heathens , was holy to apollo ) so these running a wild-goose chase of melancholy imaginations and phansies , think it evidence enough for what they have said , to have the thing but named in some text of scripture . nay even those that are so confident they are inspired , and live of nothing but the free breathings of the divine spirit , if you observe them , it is with them as with the lark , that is so high in the air , that we may better hear her then see her , as if shee were an inhabitant of that region only and had no allyance to the earth , yet at last you shall see her come down and pick on the ground as other birds . so these pretended inspired men though they flye high , and seem to feed of nothing but free truth , as they draw it from gods own breathing , yet they took their ground first from the text , though they ran a deal of phansyfull division upon it , and if a man watch them , he shall finde them fall flat upon the text again , and be but as other mortalls are for all their free pretensions , and extraordinary assistences . but le ts leave these theosophists ( as they love to be called ) to themselves , and trace on the steps of our anthroposophus ! pag. . he exhorts us in the foregoing page to be curious and diligent in this subsequent part of his discourse , as being now about to deliver the fundamentalls of science . but anthroposophus ! you are so deeply magicall that you have conjured your self down , below the wit of an ordinary man . the fundamentalls of science should bee certain , plain , reall and perspicuous to reason ; not muddy and imaginary as all your discourse is from this to your page . for in this present page and the former , setting aside your superstitious affectation of trinities and triplicities , which teach a man nothing but that you are a very phantasticall and bold man , and lift at that which is too heavy for you , you doe nothing but scold very cholerickly at the colliers and kitchen-maides , and like a dog return again to the vomit , i mean that vomit you cast awhile agoe on aristotle . is that so elegant an expression that you must use it twice in so little a space ? where is your manners anthroposophus ! pag. . lin. . & . the magnet , the mystery of union . not one of ten thousand knowes the substance or the use of this nature . yet you tell it us in this page , that it will attract all things physicall or metaphysicall , at what distance soever . but you are a man of ten thousand , anthroposophus ! and have the mystery , questionlesse , of this magnet . whence i conclude you king or prince of the gypsies , as being able at the farthest distance to attract mettall out of mens purses . but take heed that you be not discovered , lest this jacobs ladder raise you up with your fellow pick-pockets to heaven in a string . pag. . this page is filled with like gypsie gibberish , as also the th . yet he pretends to lend us a little light from the sun and moon . which he calls the great luminaries and conservatours of the great world in generall . how great , anthroposohus ! doe you think would the moon appear if your magick could remove you but as far as saturn from her ? will shee not appear as little as nothing ? besides , if fugenius ever tooted through a galileo's tube , he might discover four moons about jupiter , which will all prove competitours with our moon for the conservatour-ship of the universe . but though eugenins admits of but one great broad-faced sun and moon , yet he acknowledgeth many mimules or monky-faced suns and moons , which must be the conservatricules of the many microcosms in the great world . certainly anchroposophus ! the speculum of your understanding is cracked , and every fragment gives a severall reflection , and hence is this innumerable multitude of these little diminutive suns and moons . but having passed through much canting language , at the bottome of the page we at last stumble on the philosophers stone , which he intends i suppose to fling at aristotle and brain the stagirite at one throw . lin. ult. a true receipt of the medicine , r. limi coelestis partes , &c. come out tomfool from behinde the hangings , that peaks out with your divels head and hornes , and put off your vizard and be apert and intelligible , or else why doe you pretend to lay the fundamentalls of science , and crave our diligence and attention to a non-significant noise and buzze ? unlesse you will be understood , it may as well , for ought any bodie knowes , be a plaister for a gauld horses back , or a medicine for a mad-dog , as a receipt of the philosophers stone . pag. . in this page magicus prophesies of a vitrification of the earth , and turning of it into a pure diaphanous substance . to what end ? magicus ! that the saints and angels at each pole of the earth may play at boe-peep with one another through this crystallized globe ? magicus has rare imaginations in his noddle . pag. . at the end of this page magicus begins to take to task the explication of mans nature . but magicus you must first learn better to know your self , before you attempt to explain the knowledge of man to others . pag. . lin. . the philosophicall medicine . this is the philosophers stone . and they that are ignorant in this point are but quacks and pispot doctors . ho! dr. h. dr. p. dr. r. dr. t. and as many doctors more as will stand betwixt london and oxenford , if you have not a slight of art to metamorphize your selves into triorchises , and have one stone more then nature has bestowed upon you ( which is forsooth the philosophers stone ) have amongst you blind harpers , magicus will not stick to teem urinals on your heads , and crown you all one after another , with the pispot , and honour you with the title of quack-salvers . what ? magicus ! is it not sufficient that you haue no sense nor wit , but you will have no good manners neither ? pag. . this thirtieth page teaches that the soul of man consists of two parts , ruach and nephesh , one masculine and the other feminine . and anthroposophus is so tickled with the application of the conceit unto marriage , which he very feelingly and savourly pursues , that he has not the patience to stay to tell us how these two differ , hee being taken up so with that powerfull charm and thence accrewing faculty , of crescite & multiplicamini . pag. . this page has the same legend that the alcoran has concerning the envy of the angels . but all goes down alike with him , as if every thing printed were gospel . in so much that i am perswaded , that he doubts not but that every syllable of his own book it true , now it has passed the presse . pag. . this page ridiculously places peter ramus amongst the schoolmen against all logick and method . and at the last line thereof bids us arrigere aures , and tels us he will convey some truth never heretofore discovered , viz. that the sensitive gust in a man is the forbidden fruit : with the rest of the circumstances thereof . which theory is so far from being new , that it is above a thousand years old . it is in origen and every where in the christian platonists . pag. . lin . . it is part of anima mundi . why ! is anima mundi ( which you say , in men and beasts can see , feel , tast and smell ) a thiug divisible into parts and parcells ? take heed of that anthroposophus ! lest you crumble your own soul into atoms , iudeed make no soul , but all body . pag. . lin. . blind peripateticall formes . what impudcnce is this o magicus ! to call them so , unlesse you make your anima mundi more intelligible . this is but to rail at pleasure , not to teach or confute . pag. . lin. . as it is plain in dreams . blind men see in their sleep it seems , which is more then they can doe when they are awake . are you in jest eugenius ! or in good earnest ? if you be , i shall suspect you having a faculty to see when you are a sleep , that you have another trick too , that is , to dream when you are awake . which you practised i conceive very much in the compilement of this book , there being more dreams then truth by far in it . lin. . represent the eyes . how phansiful and poeticall are you mr. magicus ! i suppose you allude to the herb euphrasia or eye-bright . which yet sees or feels as little light or heat of the sun , as your soul do's of reason or humanity . lin. . angelicall or rationall spirit . do's not this see and hear too in man ? if it do not , how can it judge of what is said or done ? if it do's ; then there is two hearing and seeing souls in a man . which i will leave to anthroposophus his own thoughts , to find out how likely that is to be true . , , , . pages . truly , anthroposophus ! these pages are of that nature , that though you are so unkind to aristotle , as to acknowledge nothing good in him , yet i am not so inveterate a revengefull assertor of him , but i will allow you your lucida intervalla . what you have delivered in these pages , bating a few hyperboles , might become a man of a more setled brain then anthroposophus . but while you oppose so impetuously what may with reason be admitted , and propound so magisterially what is not sense , i must tell you anthroposophus ! that you betray to scorn and derision even those things that are sober in the way that you affect , and hazard the soiling of the highest and most delicate truths , by your rude and unskilfull handling of them : and now the good breath that guided you , forthese four pages together , is spent , you begin to rave again after the old manner , and call galen antichrist in pag. . and quarrel again with the peripateticks , and provoke the school-divines . and then you fancie that you have so swinged them , that in revenge they 'l all fall upon you at once , and so twerilug you : when as they good men feel not your strokes , and find themselves something else to doe , then to refute such crazy discourses as this . it is only , it is i , your brother philalethes , that am moved with pity towards you , and would if i could by carefully correcting you in your distempers , bring you to a sober mind , and set you in your right sense again . and i beseech you brother philalethes ! forbear this swearing , an honest mans word is as good as his oath . no body will beleeve you more for swearing , then he would doe without it , but think you more melancholick and distracted . lin. . whiles they contemn mysteries , &c. in this heat all that philalethes writes must be termed holy mysteries . his project certainly is , now neither episcopacy nor presbyteri can be setled , to get his booke established jure divino . a crafty colt ! ha , ha , he . philalethes , are you there with your bears ? lin. . next to god i owe all i have to agrippa . what ? more then to the prophe 〈…〉 and apostles , anthrosophus ? the businesse is for your fame-sake , you have more desire to be thought a conjurer then a christian . pag. , . great glorious penman ! a piping hot p 〈…〉 per of verses indeed anthroposophus ! but say truly ! what can you doe in or out of this heat more then other men . can you cure the sick ? rule and counsell states and kingdomes more prudently for the common good ? can you find bread for the poore ? give a rationall account of the phaenomena of nature , more now then at another time ? or more then other men can do ? can you tel me the nature of light ? the causes of the rainbow ? what makes the flux and reflux of the sea ? the operations of the loadstone , and such like ? can you tell us in a rationall , dependent , and coherent way the nature of such things as these , or foretell to us what will be hereafter , as certainly and evidently as the prophets of old ? but if there bee neither the evidence of reason , nor the testimony of notable effect , you can give us , you must give mee leave anthroposophus ! to conjecture ; that all this is but a friske and dance of your agitated spirits , and firinesse of your fancie , of which you will find no fruit , but a palsied , unsteddy apprehension , and unsound judgment . pag. . from this page to the . your theomagicall nag has been pretty sure-footed , philalethes ! and it is a good long lucidum intervallum you have ambled out . nay and you have done very well and soberly in not plainly pretending any new thing there . for they are both old and well seasoned , if the church be so pleased to esteem of them . but what you have toward the latter end of the page , that is , a word of your self , and another of the common philosophy , has in it a spice of the old malady , pride and conceitednesse : as if you had now finished so famous a peece of worke , as that all the world would stand amazed , and be inquisitive after you , asking who is this philalethes , and what is he ? presbyterian or independent ? sir , may it please you , he is neither papist , though hee bad faire enough for purgatory in his exposition of st. peter in the foregoing page ; nor sectary , though he had rather stile himself a protestant then a christian : but be he what he wil be , he is so great in his own conceit , that though you have not the opportunity to ask his judgment , yet he thinks it fit unasked to set himself on the seat of judicature , and disgorge his sentence on our ordinary philosophy he means you may be sure the aristotelean in use for so many hundred years in all the universities of europe . and he pronounces of it , that it is an inconsistent hotch-potch of rash conclusions , built on meer imagination without the light of experience . you must suppose he means chymicall experiments , for you see no small pretensions to that in all his treatise . and his very title page , the first of the book , has the priviledge to bee first adorned with this magnificent term of art , protochymistry . but tell me , mr. alchymist ! in all your skill and observation in your experiments , if you have hit on any thing that will settle any considerable point controverted amongst philosophers , which may not be done as effectually at lesse charges . nay , whether you may not lose nature sooner then find her by your industrious vexing of her , and make her appeare something else then what she really is : like men on the rack or overwatched witches , that are forced many times to confesse that which they were never guilty of . but it being so unsatisfactory to talk in generall , and of so tedious purpose to descend to particulars , i will break off this discourse . only let me tell you thus much mr. philalethes ! that you are a very unnaturall son to our mother oxenford , and to her sister university ; for if they were no wiser then you would make them , you would hazard them and all their children to be begg'd for fools . and there would bee a sad consequent of that . but your zeale and heated melancholy considers no such things , anthroposophus ! pag. . lin. . i have now done , reader ! but how much to my own prejudice i cannot tell . verily nothing at all philalethes ! for you have met with a friend that hath impartially set out to you your own follies and faults . and has distorted himself often into the deformities of your postures , that you may the better see your self in another , and so for shame amend . lin. . paint and trim of rhetorick . how modest are you grown philalethes ! why ? this affectation of humor and rhetorick is the most conspicuous thing in your book . and shines as oriently , as false gold and silver lace on a linsy-woolsy coat . lin. . of a brothers death . some young man certainly that killed himselfe by unmercifull studying of aristotle . and philalethes writ this booke to revenge his death . lin. . i expose it not to the mercy of man , but to god . see , the man affects an absolute tyranny in philosophy . he 'll be accountable to none but god . you no papist philalethes ? why ! you would be a very pope in philosophy , if you would not have your dictates subject to the canvase of mans reason . observations upon his advertisement to the reader . the first thing you require is , that hee that attempts your booke , should make a plain and positive exposition of all the passages . why man ? that is more assuredly then your selfe can doe . for you are so weak and supine in many things that are intelligible that i am confident you are worse in tha : which you have made lesse intelligible . for as socrates reading an obscure authour , when he found all things he understood very good , did charitably conclude , what be understood not was much better : so i finding in this obscure treatise of yours , many things very ill , i also in charity will think you had the wit , to conceal those things which are the worst ; or which will serve the turn , that you understand them not your self . but have an itching desire that some reader skilfuller then your self , should tel you whether you have wrote seuse or nonsense . like the country clown , that desired his young master to teach him to write , and being asked how he would be able to read his own writing , being as yet never acquainted somuch as with the christcrosse-row , made answer , he would get some body else to read it for him . and so you philalethes ! though you can read your own writing , yet you desire to get some body else to understand it for you , or to interpret to you what you have writ . your second request is not much unlike the former , and too big a businesse for your selfe to doe , and therefore you beg it of another . your third request is , to have your book handled after your owne manner and method . which is as ridiculous , as if you should request your enemy to smite softly , or to strike after such a fashion , and at such a part as you will appoint him . can it bee reasonable for you to expect from an aristotelean ( for you must think it would be they of all men that would fly about your ears first ) when you have used their master aristotle , as they would not , to be used of them as you would ? but notwithstanding philalethes ! you see i have been very fair with you , and though provoked i shall continue the same candour in my observations on your following peece . but before i passe , i must take notice of your two admonitions to the ingenuous reader , for i suppose you mean mee , philalethes ! the first is , that i would not despise your endeavours , because of your years , for they are but few . why man ! who knew that but your selfe , if you could have kept your own counsell ? your name is not at your book , much lesse your age . but indeed many things are so well managed of you , that if you had not told us so , we might have shrewdly suspected , you have scarce reached the years of discretion . but you are so mightily taken with your own performance , that to increase admiration , and for the bringing in a phrase or sentence out of proclus , you could not with-hold from telling us that you are but a young man , and so we easily beleeve it . but the more saucy boy you to be so bold with reverend mr. aristotle , that grandevall patriarch in points of philosophy . for the second admonition , it is little more then a noise or clatter of words , or if you will , a meere rattle for a boy to play with . and so i leave it in your hand to passe away the time , till i meet you againe in your anima magica abscondita . vpon the preface to the reader . now god defend ! what will become of me ! in good faith , philalethes ! i doe not know what may become of you in time . but for the present , me thinks , you are become a fool in a play , or a jack-pudding at the dancing on the ropes , a thing wholly set in a posture to make the people laugir . phy ! phy ! philalethes ! doe these humorous and mimicall schemes of speech , become so profound a thecmagician , as your self would seem to be ? do's this ridiculous levity become a man of your profession ? you doe not a little disparage your self by these boyish humours , my good philaletbes ! for mine own part i am neither so light-headed nor light-footed , as to dance the morisco with you measure to measure , through this whole toy of yours to the reader . i shall dispatch what i have to say at once . your main drift here is to prove agrippa's dogs no divels , and their master no papist , and consequently your self no unlawfull magician or conjurer . and truly if the assembly of divines be no more suspicious of you then my self , i am aboundantly satisfied , that you are rather a giddy phantastick then an able conjurer . so that without any offence to me you may take wierus his office if you will , and for want of better imployment , lead about agrippa's beagles in a string . in the mean time i shall busie my self almost to as little purpose in the perusall of your anima magica abscondita . upon anima magica abscondita . and here philalethes ! in the very threshold you begin to worrey the poor peripateticks more fiercely then any english mastive , and bark and scold into the air ( that is in general ) more cursedly and bitterly then any butter-quean , but at last in the . line of the second page , you begin to take to task some particular documents of aristotles . viz. the description of nature , of form , and of the soul . whereby wee shall understand of what great judgement and perspicacity you are in other points of philosophy . and first of the definition of nature , which you say is defined , principium motus & quietis . a little thing serves your turn , anthroposophus ! is this the intire definition of nature , in aristotle ? but what you unskilfully take no notice of , i willing ly wink at , and will deal with you only about those things that you produce and oppose . pag. . lin. . nature is a principle . here you cavill that nature is said to be a principle , because you cannot find out the thing defined by this generall intimation . but here , philalethes ! you are a pitifull logician , and know not so much in logick as every freshman in our university doth , viz. that that part of the definition which is generall do's not lead us directly home unto the thing defined , and lay our hand upon it , but it is the difference added , that do's that . as if so be we should say only that , homo est animal , that assertion is so floting and hovering , that our minde can settle on nothing , which it may safely take for a man , for that generall notion belongs to a flea or a mite in a cheese as well as to a man ; but adding rationale , then it is determined and restrained to the nature of man . and your allegation against the difference here annexed in the definition of nature , is as childish . for you only alleadge that it tels us what nature do's , not what it is . my dear philalethes ! certainly thou hast got the knack of seeing further into a milstone , then any living mortall else . thou hast discovered , as thou thinkest , dame nature stark naked , as actaeon did diana ; but for thy rash fancy deservest a pair of asses ears , as well as he did his bucks-horns for his rash sight . can any substantiall form be known , otherwise then by what it can doe or operate . tell me any one substantiall form that thou knowest any better way then this , & phyllida solus habeto , take phyllis to thy self , and her black-bag to boot . thou art , good anthroposophus ! i perceive a very unexperienced novice in the more narrow and serious search and contemplation of things . pag. . lin. . this is an expresse of the office and effect of formes but not of their substance or essence . why ! philalethes ! as i said before , have you ever discovered the naked substance or essence of any thing ? is colour , light , hardnesse , softnesse , &c. is any of these or of such like , essence and substance it self ? if you be so great a wizard , show some one substantiall form in your theomagicall glasse . poor kitling ! how dost thou dance and play with thine own shadow , and understandest nothing of the mystery of substance and truth ! pag. . here in the third place you cavil at aristotles definition of the soul , and by your slubbering and barbarous translating of the term {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} smother the fitnesse of the sense . what more significant of the nature of a soul , then what this tearm {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} is compounded of ? viz. {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} and {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} — totosque insusa per artus mens agitat molem . or if wee read the word as cicero , {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} it will be more significant , as being made up of {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} and that which do's inwardly pervade and penetrate , that which do's hold together and yet move this way and that way , and lastly still moving possesse and command an organicall body , &c. what is this but a soul , or what better definition can bee given of it it then this ? but here this peremptory opposer , do's still inculcate the same cavill , that the naked substance or essence of the soul , is not set out by this , but its operations . but still out of the same ignorance , supposing that a substantiall form can bee better known then by its proper operations . and this ignorance of his makes him so proud , that he do's fellow at every word , if not , sirra , prince aristotle , because hee has not done that which is impossible to doe , unbare to us the very substance of a form . what an imperious boy is this ! a rangling child in philosophy , that screams and cries after what is impossible , as much as peevish babes , after what is hurtfull . and in this humorous straining and wrigling , bemarres both his mother and his aunt , both the universities at once , casting dirt and filth upon their education of youth , as if they taught nothing , because they cannot teach what is impossible to be learned . pag. . here anthroposophus begins to bee something earnest and rude with nature , not content any longer to use his adulterous phansie , but to break open with his immodest hands her private closet , search her cabinet , and pierce into her very center . what rare extractions hee will make thence i leave to himself to enjoy . sure i am , that if any skilfull cook , or chymists should take out philalethes brains , and shred them as small as mincemeat , and tumble them never so much up and down with a trencher-fork , he would not discover by this diligent discussion any substantiall form of his brains whereby they may be distinguished from what lies in a calfs head . nay , if they were stew'd betwixt two dishes , or distilled in an alembeck , neither would that extraction bee any crystalline mirrour to see the substantiall form stark naked in , and discover the very substance of that spirit , that has hit upon so many unhappy hallucinations . but you are a youth of rare hopes , anthroposophus ! pag. . lin . . where by the way i must tell you , &c. viz. that the heavens are not moved by intelligences . who can not tell us that ? but indeed you are forward to tell us any thing , that do's but seem to sound high , or make any show . there 's no body now but would laugh to hear , that a particular angell turns about every orb as so many dogs in wheels turn the spit at the fire . so that it seems far below such a grand theomagician as you are , to tell us such incredible fopperies as these to be false . pag. . lin. . for the authors credit and benefit of the reader . good philalethes ! what credit doe you expect from your scribling , though it be the only thing you aim at in all your book ? when yet nothing of truth but this aim of yours is understood in all this writing : saving that you are also a confident phantastick and vanting mountebank . this is your greatest credit , and the greatest profit of the reader , to observe you to be so . lin. . this anima retain'd in the matter and missing a vent , &c. a similitude , i suppose , taken from the bung-hole of a barrell ; or more compendiously from bottled bear ; or it may be from the corking up close the urine of a bewitched party , and setting it to the fire . for anthroposophus will not be lesse then a magician in all things , nor seem lesse wise then or witch or divell . but me thinks , anthroposophus ! your expression of the nature of this anima , that must doe such fine feats in the world , by the efformation of things and organizing the matter into such usefull figuration and proportion in living creatures , had been as fitly and as much to your purpose expressed ; if you had phansied her tied up like a pig in a poke , that grunting and nudling to get out drove the yeelding bag out at this corner and that corner , and so gave it due order and disposition of parts . but , oh thou man of mysteries ! tell mee i pray thee , how so subtill a thing as this anima is , can be either barrel'd up or bottled up , or tide up in a bag , as a pig in a poke ! when as the first materiall rudiments of life be so laxe and so fluid , how can they possibly hopple or incarcerate so thin and agil a substance as a soul ? so that the union betwixt them is of some other nature , then what such grosse expressions can represent , and more theomagicall then our theomagician himself is aware of . pag. . here anthroposophus tells us rare mysteries concerning the soul , that it is a thing slitched and cobled up of two parts . viz. of aura tenuissima , and lux simplicisfima . and for the gaining of credence to this patched conceit , hee abuses the authority of that excellent platonist and poet virgilius maro , taking the fag end of three verses which all tend to one drift , but nothing at all to his purpose . aeneid . . donec long a dies perfecto temporis orbe concretam exemit labem , purumque reliquit aethereum sensum , atque aurai simplicis ignem . this is not spoken of the soul it self but of the aethereall vehicle of the soul , and so is nothing to your purpose mr. philalethes ! you tell us also in this page in what shirts or sheets the souls wrap themselves when they apply to generation , ( as your phrase is ) as if you were groom of their bed-chamber if not their pander . you tell us also of a radicall vitall liquor , that is of like proportion and complexion with the superiour interstellar waters , which is as learnedly spoken , as if you should compare the sack at the globe-tavern , with certain supernall wine-bottles hung round orions girdell . which no man were able to smell out , unlesse his nose were as atlantick as your rauming and reaching phancy . and yet no man that has not lost his reason , but will think this as grave a truth in philosophy as your interstellar waters . but interstellar , indeed , is a pretty word and sounds wel , and it is pity but there were some fine philosophick notion or other did belong to it . but now , philalethes ! if i would tyrannize over you as you doe over aristotle , for the manner of your declaring the nature of the soul , where you pretend to shew us the very naked essence of it and first principles whereof it doth consist , you have laid your self more bare to my lash , then you endeavoured to lay bare the soul to our view . for you doe plainly insinuate to us , that either the soul is light , or else a thin air , or that it is like to them . if only like these bodies of light and air , how pitifully doe you set out the nature of the soul , when you tell us the principles of it only in a dry metaphor is not the nature of the soul far better known from the proper operations thereof ( as aristotle has defined it ) then from this phantasticall metaphoricall way ? but if you will say that the soul is properly light or air , then be they never so thin , or never so simple ( unlesse you will again use a metaphor ) the soul must bee a body . and how any corporeall sustance thick or thin , fluid or dry , can be able to think , to reason , to phancy , &c. nay to form matter into such cunning and wise frames and contrivancies as are seen in the bodies of living creatures , no man of lesse ignorance and confidence then your selfe will dare to endeavour to explain , or hold any way probable . pag. . in this page you are curiously imployed in making of a chain of light and matter , surely more subtill and more uselesse then that that held the flea prisoner in the mechanicks hand . but this is to hold the anima , the passive spirit and celestiall water together . our theomagician here grows as imperious , as wrathfull xerxes . will you also fetter the hellespont philalethes ? and binde the winde and waters in chains ? but let 's consider now the links of this miraculous chain of his , light .   matter .   anima of of portions passive spirit celestial waters this is your chain , philalethes ! now let 's see what apish tricks you 'll play with this your chain . the three portions of light must be brought down by the two , the two , ( if not indeed five , the two and three being now joynd ) brought down by one , and so the whole chain drops into the water . but would any ape in a chain if he could speak , utter so much incredible and improbable stuff , with so much munky and mysterious ceremony ? his very chain would check his both thoughts and tongue . for is it not farre more reasonable that three links of a chain should sway down two , and two or five one , then that one should sway two or five , or two , three ? or doe we find when we fling up a clod of earth , that the whole ball of the earth leaps up after that clod , or the clod rather returnes back to the earth , the greater ever attracting the lesse , if you will stand to magneticall attraction . but truly philalethes ! i think you doe not know what to stand to , or how to stand at all ; you are so giddy and intoxicated with the steam and heat of your disturbed phancy and vaine minde . pag. . lin. . but meethinks nature complains of a prostitution , &c. did not i tell you so before , that philalethes was a pander ? and now hee is convinced in his own conscience and confesses the crime , and his ears ring with the clamours and complaints of madam nature , whom he has so lewdly prostituted . sad melancholist ! thou art affrighted into the confession of crimes that thou art not only not guilty of , but canst not be guilty of if thou wouldst . is there never a one of our city divines at leasure to comfort him and compose him ? i tell thee , madam nature is a far more chast and discreet lady , then to lye obnoxious to thy prostitutions . these are nothing but some unchast dreams of thy prurient and polluted phansie . i dare quit thee of this fact , philalethes ! i warrant thee , thou hast not laid madam nature so naked as thou supposest , only thou hast , i am afraid , dream'c uncleanly , and so hast polluted so many sheets of paper with thy nocturnall canundrums , which have neither life , sense , nor shape , head nor foot that i can find in them . pag. . here philalethes is taken like a fly in a spiders web . he is altogether for subtilties . but spins but a thick thred from them , such as any rusticks hand would draw out as well as his one . viz. that spiders have some light of knowledge in them . who knows not that philaletbes ? but in the pag. . hee is so lavish , of what hee has so little of himself , that hee bestows it on every plastick materiall from ; and not a rose can grow in nature but some seeing and knowing hyliad with his invisible pencill must draw it , and thus by his meer rash dictate do's hee think hee has dash'd out that long and rationall dogma in philosophy of the particular {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} {non-roman} or rationes seminales . whose fondnesse in this groundlesse assertion it were easie to confute , but he that will not bring any reasons for what he sayes , is not worthy to have any reasons brought against him . for as for that only slight reason which hee intimates , that the matter being contrived into such a rationall or artificiall disposure of parts , the immediate artificer thereof must have animadversion and reason in it , is only said , not proved , and will reach no further , but that the ratio seminalis , must at least proceed from something that is knowing , and be in some sense rationall , but not have reason and animadversion in it self . the like confidence and ignorance is repeated and insisted upon in the and pages : but i let them passe . pag. , . these pages contain a certain preachment , which would have done well if it had been from some one that had more wit in knowing when to preach and when to hold his peace , and more charity to abstain from such undeserved chidings of aristotle . but your unmeasureable and unmercifull chastisings of him , and so highly advancing and soothing up your self in your own windy conceits and fluttering follies make all your serious applications ridiculous and neffectuall . pag. . petition of st. augustine , a logica libera nos domine , lin. . assuredly , philalethes ever since the church litanie was put down has used this of st. augustine , and that with such earnestnesse and devotion that hee has even extorted from heaven the full grant of his petition , and has become as free and clean from all sense and reason , as hee is luxuriant and encumbred with disturbed and unsetled fancies and undigested imaginations . pag. . lin. . these three principles are the clavis of all magick , &c. here philalethes like the angell of the bottomlesse pit , comes jingling with the keyes of magick in his hands . but hee opens as hokus pokus do's his fists , where we see that here is nothing and there is nothing . but something he will seem to say , viz. that the first principle is one in one , and one from one . hee that has so many years so devoutly pray'd against logick , doe you expect when he speaks to hear reason ? this is as much as to say nothing . one in one and one from one ? suppose a ripe apple should drop into the rotten hollow of the tree that bore it . is this apple your mysterious magical principle ? it may be that as well as any thing else by this description . for it is one apple in one hollow , from one tree . o but hee addes . it is a pure white virgin . some religious nun i warrant you . no shee may not be a nun neither . for shee is uxor dei & stellarum . it seems then , there is a kinde of plato's common-wealth , betwixt god and the stars , and they have community of wives amongst them . but if shee be so pure a virgin wife as you make her , how come some of her husbands to wear horns as they doe , viz. aries , capricorn and others ? but is this to philosophize or to play the theomagician , philalethes ! thus to tell us of virgins , or wives with white peticoats , or to tell us that from this one there is a descent into four , &c. this is but idle treading of the air , and only a symptome of a light swimmering phansie that can have patience to write such hovering undeterminate stuffe , as this , that belongs either almost to any thing , or nothing . you even weary your reader out , philalethes ! with such metaphysicall dancings and airy fables . pag. . lin. . this is a labyrinth and wild of magick where a world of students have lost themselves , and you , philalethes ! have not scaped scot-free . for you have lost your reason before as i told you , and your so much and so confidently conversing with meere unities and numbers , which in themselves design nothing , will teach you in time , to speak words without any inward phantasm of what you say . so that you shall bid fair for the loosing of your phansie too , and then you will bee as you are near it already , vox , praeterea nihil a mere noise and clatter of words . lin. . it moves here below in shades and tiffanies , &c. what a description is this of the magicians fire ? i suppose you mean the magicians thais . it moves in shades , that is , ( for the text is very dark and wants a commentary ) in the evening or twilight . tiffanies , is plain english , but white etheriall vestures , must be white peticoats and white aprons , or else white aprons upon blew peticoats , and that shee is exposed to such a publick prostitution passing through all hands every one having the use of her body ; this theomagicians fire seems to me to be no other , then some very common strumpet . but if you mean any thing but a strumpet , you have a wondrous infected phansie , that dresses up your theomagicall notions in such whorish attire . but of a sodain my theomagician has lest those more grosse and palpable expressions , and now dances very high in the air quite out of the ken of our eye , like some chymicall spirit that has broke its hermeticall prison , and flown away out of the artist's sight and reach : being far more invisible and thin now , then the finest tiffany that ever took his sight , and more arid and slight , then the faintest shade . i tell you once more ; anthroposophus ! that ternaries , and quaternaries , and decads , and monads , and such like words of number have no usefull sense nor signification , nor vertue , if unapplyed to some determinate substance or thing . but our great theomagician having no project in this writing that i see , but to amaze the world , contents himself onely to rattle his chain , and to astonish the rude and simple as if some spirit or conjurer was at hand , and so those words that are most sonorous and consist of the greatest number of syllables , please him better , then what have more solid signification , and a more setled and sober sense . pag. . lin . . hee with the black spaniell . as for your ador'd magus with the black spaniell , and that dark disciple of libanius gallus , what i have said to you already will serve here too . but my controversie is with you onely , philalethes ! a sworn enemy of reason and aristotle , and mee thinks you are very like your self still in the pag. lin . . i am certain the world will wonder i should make use of scripture to establish philosophy , &c. here , philalethes , you seem self-condemned even from your own speech , being conscious to your self , that all the world will bee against you in this superstitious abuse of the scripture . for are you wiser then all the world beside in this matter , because you have pray'd away all your logick in st. augustines letanie ? what profane boldnesse is this to distort that high majesty of the holy scripture to such poor and pitifull services , as to decide the controversies of the world and of nature ? as well becoming it is , as to set pies and pasties into the oven with the sacred leaves of the bible ? this is but a fetch of imperious melancholy and hypocriticall superstition , that under pretense of being more holy would prove more tyrannicall , and leave the understanding of man free in nothing at all , but bring in a philosophy too , jure divino ! and i can further demonstrate to you ( beside what i have intimated from the transcendency of the scripture and high scope and aim thereof ) that the scripture teacheth no secret or principle of philosophy , of which there is any doubt amongst men in their wits . for either ( as where it seems to speak ex prefesso of any such things ) it do's it so obscurely that men rather father their own notions fetch'd from elsewhere , upon the scripture ; or else if it speak more plainly and literally , yet it being allow'd by all sober men as well jews as christians , ( as it is indeed undeniably evident from the passages themselves in scripture ) that it speakes so ordinarily according to the rude and vulgar use and apprehension of men , there can bee no deciding collections in matters of philosophy safely gathered out of it . though i will not deny but that some philosophick truths may have an happy and usefull illustration and countenance from passages in scripture . and their industry is not to be vilified that take any pains therein . but i doe not beleeve that any man that has drove the proper use of the scripture home to the most full and most genuine effect of it in himself , but will be so wise and so discreet , that hee will bee ashamed in good earnest to allow any such philosophick abuse of . but questionlesse the scripture is the beginner , nourisher and emprover of that life and light which is better then all the philosophy in the world . and he that stands in this light the firmer and fuller hee is possessed of it , he is the more able to judge both of nature , reason , and scripture it self . but hee that will speak out of his own rash heat , must needs run the hazard of talking at randum , and this i make the bolder in charity to pronounce , because i observe that the reverentiall abuse , and religious mis-application of the holy writ to matters of philosophy , for which it was not intended , do's in many well-meaning men eat out the use of their reason , for the exercise whereof philosophy was intended . and hence so much spurious and phantastick knowledge multiplies now adayes , to the prejudice of mans understanding , and to the intangling him in vain and groundlesse imaginations , fortuitously sprung up from uncircumspect melancholy , dazled and stounded with the streamings and flashes of its own pertinacious phansie . which sometime is so powerfull as to over-master the melancholist into a credulity , that these flarings of false light in his dark spirit are not from himself , but from a divine principle , the holy ghost . and then bidding a dieu to reason , as having got some principle above it , measnres all truth meerly by the greatnesse and powerfulnesse of the stroke of the phantasme . what ever fills the imagination fullest , must bee the truest . and thus a rabble of tumultuary and crasse representations must goe for so many revelations , and every heaving up by an hypochondricall flatulency must bee conceited a rapture of the spirit ; they professing themselves to receive things immediately from god , when they are but the casuall figurations of their anxious phansie , busily fluttering about the text ; which they alwayes eye ( though they dissemble it ) as hauks and buzzards , flye they never so high , have their sight bent upon on the earth . and indeed if they should not forge their phansies into some tolerable suteablenesse with the letter of the scripture , they would never be able to beleeve themselves , or at least to beget beleef in others , that they are inspired . and so that high conceit insinuated into them by that wonderfull yet ordinary imposterous power of melancholy would fall to nothing , and they appear not so much as to themselves either prophets or inspired . but this i have touched upon elsewhere . i will let it goe . onely let me cast in thus much : that he that mis-beleeves and layes aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of reason , upon the pretence of hankering after some higher principle , ( which a thousand to one proves but the infatuation of melancholy and a superstitious hallueination ) is as ridiculous as if hee would not use his naturall eyes about their proper object till the presence of some supernaturall light , or till hee had got a pair of spectacles made of the crystalline heaven , or of the coelum empyreum , to hang upon his nose for him to look through . the truth is , hee that layes aside reason , casts away one of the most soveraign remedies against all melancholick impostures . for i conceive it would bee very hard for men either to bee deluded themselves , or to delude others by their conceited inspirations , if they would expect that every revelation should bee made good either by sound reason , or a palpable and conspicuous miracle . which things if they were demanded of the inspired people when they come to seduce , surely they would sneak away like the common fidlers , being asked to play a lesson on the organs , or on the theorbo . pag. , . in the former page you could not part till you had made god and nature mysteriously kisse . in this , you metamorphize mercury and sulphur into two virgins , and make the sun to have more wives then ever solomon had concubines . every star must have in it , vxor solis . but what will become of this rare conceit of yours if the stars themselves prove suns ? and men far more learned then your self are very inclinable to think so . but now hee has phansied so many wives he falls presently upon copulation helter skelter , and things done in private betwixt males and females , &c. verily , anthroposophus ! if you had but the patience to consider your own book seriously , and examine what philosophick truth you have all this while delivered since your contemning of aristotle's definition of nature , form , and soul , you shall find in stead of his sober description from the proper operations and effects of things , nothing but a dance of foolish and lascivious words : almost every page being hung with lawns and tiffanies , and such like tapestry : with black shadowing hoods , white aprons and peticoats , and i know not what . and this must bee a sober and severe tractate of anima abscondita . as if the soul were dressed in womans apparell , the better to bee concealed , and to make an escape . and to as much purpose is your heaps of liquorsome metaphors , of kissing , of coition , of ejection of seed , of virgins , of wives , of love-whispers , and of silent embraces , and your magicians sun and moon , those two universall peers , male and female , king and queen regents , alwayes young and never old ; what is all this but a mere morris-dance and may-game of words , that signifie nothing , but that you are young , anthroposophus ! and very sportfull , and yet not so young but that you are marriageable , and want a good wife that your sense may bee as busie as your phansie about such things those , and so peradventure in due time , the extravagancy of your heat being spent , you may become more sober . pag. . lin. . it is light only that can be truly multiplied . but if you tell us not what this light is , wee are still but in the dark . i doe not mean whether light bee a virgin or a wife , or whose wife , or what clothes shee wears , tiffanies or cobweblawns , but in proper words what the vertue and nature of it is . whether corpin or spiritus , substance or accident , &c. but , anthroposophus ! you doe noe desire at all to bee understood , but pleas your self only to rant it in words ' which can procure you nothing but the admiration of fools . if you can indeed doe any thing more then another man , or can by sound reason make good any more truth to the world then another man can , then it is something ; if not , it is a mere noise and buzze for children to listen after . pag. . from this page to the , you have indeed set down the most courageous and triumphant testimonies , and of the highest and most concerning truth that belongs to the soul of man , the attainment whereof is as much beyond the philosophers stone , as a diamond is beyond a pebble stone . but the way to this mystery lies in a very few words , which is , a peremptory and persistent unravelling and releasing of the soul by the power of god , from all touch and sense of sin and corruption . which every man by how much the more hee makes it his sincere aim , by so much the more wise and discret he will appear , and will be most able to jndge what is sound and what is flatuous . but to deal plainly with you , my philalethes ! i have just cause to suspect that there is more winde then truth as yet in your writings . and that it is neither from reason nor from experience , that you seem to turn your face this way ; but high things , and fiery and sonorous expressions of them in authors , being sutable to your youthfulnesse and poeticall phansie , you swagger and take on presently , as if , because you have the same measure of heat , you were of the same fraternity with the highest theo magicians in the world . like as in the story , where the apples and horsdung were carryed downe together in the same stream , the fragments of horsdung cryed out , nos poma natamus . pardon the homelinesse of the comparison . but you that have slung so much dirt upon aristotle , and the two famous universities , it is not so unjust if you bee a little pelted with dung your self . pag. . lin. . i know some illiterate school-divines , &c. he cannot be content to say any thing that he thinkes is magnificently spoken , but hee must needs trample upon some or other by way of triumph and ostentation , one while clubbing of aristotle , another while so pricking the schoolmen and provoking the orthodoxe divines , that he conceits they will all run upon him at once , as the jewes upon the young martyr st. steven , and stone him for his strange mysteries of his theomagick stone . truly , anthrosophus there are some good things fall from you in your own style , and many cited out of considerable authors , but you doe so soil and bemar all with your juvenile immoralities and phantastries , that you lose as much in the one as you get in the other . pag. . lin. . the scripture is obscure and mysticall , &c. and therefore say i , philalethes ! a very uncertain foundation to build a philosophy on ; but indeed such a mysticall philosophy as you would build , may be erected upon any ground , or no ground , may hang as a castle in the air . pag. . lin. . i never met in all my reading but with six authors , &c. but how doe you know that these six did perfectly understand the medicine , and this stupendious mystery , unlesse you understood it perfectly your self ? so that you would intimate to the world that you do perfectly understand it . lin. . after this the materiall parts are never more to bee seen . this is the nature of the medicine , not to rectifie a visible body but to destroy it . like the cure of the head ake , by cutting off the neck . death indeed will cure all diseases . but you will say this is not death but a change or translation . nor the other a medicine , but spiritus medicus . so that in multitude of words you doe but obscure knowledge . pag. . lin . . boy mee out of countenance , &c. here philalethes is mightily well pleased to think that one of his greennesse of yeares should arive to this miraculous ripenesse and maturity of knowledge in the most hidden mysteries of theosophy . and comparing himselfe with the reverend doctours , findes the greatest difference to be this , that they indeed have more beard , but hee more wit . and i suppose he would intimate unto us , that they have so little wit that they know not the use of their own limbs . for if he make their beards their crutches , they cannot scape going on their heads , as if they were not inverted but rightly postured plants , or walking stipites . in good truth you are a notable wagg , philalethes ! lin. . let mee advise thee i say not to attempt any thing rashly . and i commend your wit , anthroposophus ! in this point . for you are so wary of putting your finger into the fire , that like the monkey you will rather use the cats foot then your own , as you will evidently show anon . lin. . orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano . keep your self there philalethes ! 't is a great deal better peece of devotion then that of augustine , a logica libera nos domine . pag. . . lin. . this is the christian philosophers stone , and , this is the white stone . which you , philalethes ! have covered over with so much green mosse , that you have made it more hidden then ever before . having little will and lesse power to show it , but in all likelyhood a great purpose of ostentating your self . pag. . lin. . but reader ! bee not deceived in mee , i am not a man of any such faculties , &c. i warrant you , anthroposophus ! i am not so easily deceived in you . you have walked before me in very thin transparent tiffanies all this while ; or , if you will , danced in a net . i suspected you from the very first that you would prove so good and so wise as you now plainly professe your self . but that you are no better then you are , you say is because god is no debter of yours . why ! do's god almighty runne so much in some mens arrears that hee is constrain'd to pawn to them that precious jewell , or to give them the white stone to quit scores with them ? how far is this from popery philalethes ! that you seem elsewhere so much to disclaim ? lin. . i can affirm no more of my self , &c. right ! philalethes ! right ! your phansie was never so happy as in transsiguring your selfe into a wooden mercury , that points others the way , which it self knows not , nor can ever goe , but stands stock still . lin. . shew mee but one good christian , &c. why then ! it seemes philalethes ! that you are no good christian your self , and uncapable of the secret you are so free to impart to others . or it is your discretion to attempt nothing your self rashly , but as i said before , to doe as the ape or monkey , take the 〈◊〉 foot to 〈◊〉 the chesnut out of the 〈◊〉 . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 solicitous of seeming a profound 〈…〉 ralist then a good christian , hee tells us in the pag. an obscure aenigmaticall story of attaining the naturall celestiall medicine , and that without any retractation , as if hee himself had been a potent and successefull operatour in the mystery . but let mee once more take notice of the soundnesse of this affected obscurity in words , that no man be any whit taken with that sleight of imposture , and become guilty of that passion of fooles , causelesse admiration . for the most contemptible notion in the world , may bee so uncertainly and obscurely set out by universall and hovering tearms taken from arithmetick and geometry , which of themselves signifie no reall thing , or else from the catachresticall use of the termes of some more particular and substantiall science , that the dark dresse thereof may bring it into the creditable suspicion of proving some venerable mystery , when as , ( if it were but with faithfulnesse and perspicuity discovered and exposed to the judgment and free censure of sober men ) it would bee found but either some sorry inconsiderable vulgar truth , or light conjecturall imagination , or else a ghastly prodigious lye . but say in good sadnesse , philalethes ! is not all this that you tattle in this page , a mere vapour and tempestuous buzze of yours ? made out of words you meet in books you understand not ? and casuall phansies sprung from an heedlesse brain ? is it any thing but the activity of your desire to seeme some strange mysterious sophist to the world ? and so to draw the eyes of men after you ? which is all the attraction of the star-fire of nature you aim at , or can hope to bee able to effect . did your sculler , or shittle skull ever arrive at that rock of crystall you boast of ? or did you ever saving in you phansie , soil that bright virgin earth ? did your eyes , hands or experience ever reach her ? tell mee what gyant could ever so lustily show you lincoln-galves , or hold you up so high by the eares , as to discover that terra maga in aethere clarificata ? till you show your self wise and knowing in effect , give mee leave to suspect you a meere ignorant boaster from your airy unsetled words . and that you have nothing but fire and winde in your brains , what ever your magicall earth has in its belly . pag. . lin. . hee can repeal in particular . now , anthroposophus ! you make good what i suspected , that is , that you doe not tell us any thing of this celestiall naturall medicine , of your own experience . for you being conscious to your selfe of being no good christian , as you confessed before , and god having not given so full a charter to the creature but he may interpose and stop proceedings , surely at least you had so much wit , as not to try where there was so just cause of fear of frustration and miscarriage . so that you goe about to teach the world what you have not to any purpose learned your self . lin . . and who is hee that will not gladly beleeve , &c. a most rare and highly rays'd notion . you resolve then that holy expectancy of the saints of god concerning the life to come , into that fond kind of credulity and pleasant self-flattery , facile credimus quod fieri volumus , and yet you seem to unsay it again toward the end of this period . and we will permit you , anthroposophus ! to say and unsay , to doe and undoe ; for the day is long enough to you , who by your magick and colestial medicine are able to live till all your friends be weary of you . pag. . in this whole page anthroposophus is very gnomicall , and speaks aphorisms very gracefully . but as morall as he would seem to bee , this is but a prelude to a peece of poetick ostentation , and hee windes himself into an occasion of shewing you a paper of verses of his . if you doe but trace his steps , you shall see him waddle on like some otter or water-rat & at last flounce into the river vsk. where notwithstanding afterward he would seem to dresse himself like a water-nymph at those crystall streams , and will sing as sweet as any siren or mermayde . and truly , master anthroposophus ! if that heat that enforces you to bee a poet , would but permit you in any measure to bee prudent , cautiously rationall , and wise , you would in due time prove a very considerable gentleman . but if you will measure the truth of things by the violence and overbearing of phansie and windy representations , this amabilis insania , will so intoxicate you , that to sober men you will seem little better then a refined bedlam . but now to the poetry it self . pag. . 't is day my crystall vsk , &c. here the poet begins to sing , which being a signe of joy is intimation enough to us also to be a little merry . the four first verses are nothing else but one long-winded good-morrow to his dear yska . where you may observe the discretion and charity of the poet , who being not resaluted again by this master of so many vertues , the river usk , yet learns not this ill lesson of clownishnesse , nor upbrayds his tutor for his rusticity . was there never an eccho hard by , to make the river seem affable and civill , as well as pure , patient , humble and thankfull ? lin . . and weary all the planets with mine eyes . a description of the most impudent star-gazer that ever i heard of , that can outface all the planets in one night . i perceive then , anthroposophus ! that you have a minde to be thought an astrologian as well as a magician . but methinks , an hill had been better for this purpose then a river . i rather think that your head is so hot , and your minde so ill at ease , that you cannot lye quiet in your bed as other mortals doe , but you sleeping waking are carryed out , like the noctambuli in their dreams , and make up a third with will with the wisp , and meg with the lanthorn , whose naturall wandrings are in marish places , and neer rivers sides . lin. ultima . sure i will strive to gain as clear a mind . which i dare swear you may doe at one stroke ! would you but wipe at once all your fluttering and fortuitous phansies out of it . for you would bee then as clearly devoid of all shew of knowledge , as aristotle's abrasa tabula , or the wind , or the flowing water of written characters . pag. . lin. . how i admire thy humble bankes ! why ! be they lower then the river it self ? that had been admirable indeed . otherwise i see nothing worthy admiration in it . lin. . but the same simple vesture all the year . this river yska then i conceive , according to your geography , is to bee thought to crawl under the aequatour or somewhere betwixt the tropicks . for were it in great britaine or ireland , certainly the palpable difference of seasons there , would not permit his banks to bee alike clad all the year long . the fringe of reed and flagges , besides those gayer ornaments of herbs and flowers , cannot grow alike on your yskaes banks all summer and winter . so that you phansie him more beggerly then hee is , that you may afterward conceit him more humble then hee ought to be . lin. . i 'le learn simplicity of thee , &c. that 's your modesty , anthroposophus ! to say so : for you are so learned that you may be a doctour of simplicity your self , and teach others . lin . . let mee not live , &c. how mightily the man is ravished with the contemplation of an ordinary water-course . a little thing will please you i perceive , as it do's children , nay amaze you . but if you bee so much inamoured on your yska , doe that out of love that aristotle did out of indignation , embrace his streames , nay drown your self , and then you will not live . you are very hot anthroposophus ! that all the cool air from the river yska will not keep you from cursing your self , with such mortall imprecations . lin . . why should thy flouds enrich those shores , &c. why ! how now ! what 's the matter , philalethes ! that you and the banks no better agree ? if you could so soon fall into the river as you fall out with the shore , you would to your great honour , like aristotle , be drown'd indeed . in good truth you a very fickle-headed gentleman , philalethes ! thus in a moment to reproach what you did so highly admire even now , viz. the banks of yska , which you then made so simple , so humble , and so innocent , that you phansied them an eximious pattern of those vertues for your self to imitate . but now all of a sodain , your poeticall rapture i suppose spoiling your memory , you fling dirt on those banks that before you looked on as holy ground ; and accuse them of injury , tyranny , and cruelty against the streams of your beloved yska . but any ordinary advocate may easily make good the banks part against the river . for i say unto thee , o thou man of light imaginations ! that the banks of yska are just , in keeping but the ground that ever was alloted them ; but where ever they have lost ground , it is the violence and the usurpation of the injurious river , that has worn them away and overrunne them in an hostile manner . besides i say , that the bankes aforesaid are very charitable and pious as well as just , and doe not return revenge for injury . for whereas the aforesaid river , both by open force and secret undermining , doth dayly endeavour to wear away and destroy the banks and encroach upon the neighbouring ground , ( which attempt is as sottish and foolish as unjust , for so the river would be lost and drunk up by the earth , nor can there be any river without banks , more then an hill without a valley ; ) yet notwithstanding all this provocation of the river aforesaid , the banks are so patient , charitable , and of so christian-like nature , that they preserve in being and good plight their inveterate enemy , and keep up that carefully and stoutly in its right form and perfection that dayly practises and plots their expected destruction . what doe you answer to this philalethes ! all that vertue and piety which you phansie in the river , you see now plainly growing upon the banks . so that you may gather it , if you have a minde to it , without wetting your finger . lin. ultima . help mee to runne to heaven , as thou dost there . ha , ha , he ! why ! i pray thee , do's yska run to heaven there ? no it runs down into the sea , as the divels and the heard of swine did ; whither i hope you doe not desire to goe for company , philalethes ! but i wonder you being a whole day and a night on the banks of yska , that no fish not so much as a small stittlebag has leapt up into your phansie all this time . you might have learned many rare lectures of morality from them too . as for example ; instead of due vigilancy you might learn from the fishes eyes never closing , to sleep and dream waking ; or instead of being as mute as a fish when you have nothing to say , to say nothing to the purpose , or to expresse your self as unintelligibly as if you had said nothing . but these and the like accomplishments naturally growing in you , you wanted no outward emblemes to reminde you of them , so that i hold you here excusable . but before i leave this rare poem of yours , let me only take notice thus far : that your levity and phantastry do's much eclipse the glorious suspicion of your theomagicall faculty . for it will seem very incredible that so light and phansifull a poet , should ever prove a grave and wonder-working magician . pag. . lin. . this is the way i would have thee walk in &c. viz. in majestick groves , and woods , and by river sides . you are not then i perceive , an anti-peripatetick , philalethes ! though you bee so violent an anti-aristotelean . but with such pompous gravity to give such slight precepts as of walking by rivers sides and in groves , &c. argues more then enough of moping distempered melancholy in you , and that it may , if you take not heed , make you indulge so much to delusive phansie , that you will be never able to set your eye again upon solid reason , but range and ramble like one lost in a wood . lin. . to trust no moderns but mich sendivow , and physica restituta . how mightily are these two beholden to you , philalethes ! if you had but so many grains of judgement and discretion as to make you able to passe sentence upon any considerable authour . but what doe you mean by trusting ? to give faith and credence to them as to holy writ ? if so , i perceive you have also a triplicity of bibles , viz. the usuall one , mich. sendivow , and physica restituta . but we ordinary mortalls hope to be as wise and as happy with our single one , as you with your advantage of three . lin. . with the whymzies of des-cartes . this young man , has as little manners as wit , to speak thus reproachfully of the most admirable philosophy , that ever yet appeared in these european parts since noahs floud . certainly , anthroposophus ! you are set upon it to demonstrate your self a pure pitifull novice in knowledge , whom only ignorance makes so magisterially confident . but for thy want of due sagacity , i will take thee by the nose , o philalethes ! with this one dilemma , which shall pinch thee as hard , as st. dunstan did the roaring fiend with a red-hot pair of tongs . thus ; either thou hast read des cartes his naturall philosophy , or thou hast not . if thou hast read it , thus to contemn it and term it a whymzie , ( whereas there was never any thing proposed to the world , in which there is more wary , subtill , and close contexture of reason , more coherent uniformity of all parts with themselves , or more happy conformity of the whole with the phaenomena of nature ) is to proclaim to all that understand descarte's philosophy , that thou hast a very broken , impatient , and unsteddy apprehension , or a very dull and slow wit , and such as cannot discern when it lighteth upon what is most exactly rationall , and when not . but what is most exactly rationall , as his philosophy indeed is to any competent judge of reason , is least of all whymzicall ; but whymzies more naturally lodge in their brains that are loosly phansifull , not in theirs that are mathematically and severely wise . so that this reproach returnes upon thine own addle pate , o inconsiderate philalethes ! but if thou didst never read his philosophy , and yet pronouncest thus boldly of it ; that is not only impudently uncivill , but extreamly and insufferably unjust . pag. . lin. . i will now withdraw and leave the stage to the next actour . exit tom fool in the play . lin. . some peripatetick perhaps whose sic probo shall serve mee for a comedie . so it seems if a man had seriously argued with you all this time , you would only have returned him laughter instead of a solid answer , and so from tom fool in the play , you would have become a naturall fool . but we have had the good hap to prevent you , and instead of sic probo's to play the fool for company , that is , to answer a fool according to his foolishnesse , that is , to rail and call names , and make ridiculous . into which foolish postures as often as i have distorted my self , so often have i made my self a fool that you may become wise , and amend that in your self , that you cannot but dislike in me . nor would i ever meddle with you , as merry as i seem , but upon this and the like serious intentions . and must needs reckon it amongst the rest of your follies , that you expected that some severe peripatetick would have laid battery against you , with syllogisme upon syllogisme , and so all confuted your book , that there had not been left one line entire . but assure your self philalethes ! the peripateticks are not altogether given so much to scolding , that they will contest with a shadow , or fight with the winde . nor so good marks-men as to levell at a wilde goose flying . you are so fluttering and unsetled in your notions , and obscure in your terms , that unlesse you will bee more fixt , and sit fair , & draw your woodcocks head out of the bush or thicket , they will not be able to hit your meaning . which i suspect you will never be perswaded to doe , that you may keep your self more secure from gunshot . lin. . and the best way to convince fooles , &c. how wise anthroposophus is to what is evill ! here he makes sure of calling him fool first who ever shall attempt to write any thing against his book . but it is no such mischief , anthroposophus ! to bee called fool . the worst jest is when a man is so indeed . and if you had but the skill to winnow away all the chaffe of humorous words , and uncouth freaks and fetches of phansie , and affected phrases , which are neither the signes nor causes of any wisdom in a man , all that will be left of this learned discourse of yours ; will prove such a small moity of that knowledge your presumptuous minde conceited to be in her self , that you would then very sadly of your owne accord ( which would bee your first step to become wise indeed ) confesse your self a fool . and this i understand of your knowledge in nature . now for that in morality ; it is true you often take upon you the gravity to give precepts of life , as especially in the and pages of this tractate . but you doe it so conceitedly , with such chiming and clinching of words , antithetall librations , and symphonicall rappings , that to sober men you cannot but seem rather like some idle boy playing on a pair of knick-knacks , to please his own ear and phansie , then a grave moralist speaking wholesome words and giving weighty counsell of life and manners . so that the best that you do , is but to make the most solemn things ridiculous , by your apish handling of them . i suppose because a religious humour has been held on in some treatises , with that skill and judgement , or at least good successe , that it has won the approbation and applause of most men , an eager desire after fame has hurried you out upon the like attempt . and though you would not call your book religio magici , as that other was religio medici : yet the favourable conceit you had of your own worth , made you bold to vie with him , and in imitation of that , you have stuffed your book here and there with a tuft of poetry , as a gammon of bacon with green hearbs , to make it tast more savourly . but all will not doe , poor magicus ! for now your designe is discovered , you are as contemptible as any juggler is before him , that knows all his tricks aforehand . and you run the same fortune that aesops asse , who ineptly endeavouring to imitate the courtship and winning carriage of his masters fawning and leaping spaniell , in stead of favour found a club for his rude performance . but you , magicus ! do not only paw ill-favouredly with your fore-feet , but kick like mad with your hinder-seet , as if you would dash out all the aristoteleans brains . and doe you think that they are all either so faint-hearted , that they dare not , or so singularly moralized , that socrates like , if an asse kick , they will not kick again ? yes certainly next to your self they are as like as any to play the asses , and to answer you kick for kick , if you will but stand fair for them . but you have got such a magicall sleight of hiding of your head , and nipping in your buttocks , like the hob-gobling that in the shape of an horse dropt the children off one by one of his tail into the water , that they cannot finde you out nor feel where about you would be , else certainly they would set a mark upon your hinder parts . for if i , my dear eugenius ! who am your brother philalethes , am forced out of care and judgement to handle you so seeming harshly and rigidly as i doe , what doe you think would become of you , st incideres in ipsas belluas , if you should fall amongst the irefull aristoteleans themselves ? would you be able to escape alive out of their hands ? wherefore good brother philaletbes ! hereafter be more discreet , and endeavour rather to be wise then to seem so , and to quit your self from being a fool , then to phansie the aristoteleans to be such . finis . vpon the authors generous designe , in his observations , of discovering and discountenancing all mysteriously masked non-sense , and impostorous phansie ; the sworn enemies of sound-reason , and truth . nobly design'd ! let not a sunday sute make us my gasser and my lord salute : nor his saints cloathes deceive , o comely dresse ! like to a long-lane doublets wide excesse . how like a sack it sits ? less far would fit , did he proportion but his garb and wit . the wight mistakes his size , each wiseman sees his mens fourteens shrink to a childrens threes . fill out thy title , man ! think'st thou canst daunt by pointing to the sword of iohn of gaunt ? thou canst not wield it yet ; an empty name do's no more feats then a meer painted flame . rare soul ! whose words refin'd from flesh and blood are neither to be felt nor understood : but if they sacred be , because not sense , to bedlam , sirs ! the best divines come thence . your new-found lights may like a falling starre seem heav'nly lamps , when they but gellies are . and high swoln wombs bid fair , but time grown nigh the promis'd birth proves but a tympanic . should superstition , what it most doth fly , seek to take shelter in philosophy ? and sacred writ , sole image of sure truth , be pull'd by th' nose , by every idle youth ? and made to bend as seeming to incline to all the fooleries hee 'l call divine ? find out the word in scripture ; all is found : swarms of conceits buzze up from this one ground , as if the cobler all his crade would show from mention made of gibeon's clouted shooe : or bakers their whole art at large would read from the 〈◊〉 record of the mouldy bread , is this the spirit ? thus confus'dly mad ? antipodall to him the chaos had ? fell boystous blast ! that with one magick puss turns the schools glory to a farthing snuff : and 'gainst that ancient sage the world adores , like to a lapland whirlewind loudly roares . yet from thy travels in the search of things , ridiculous swain ! what shallow stuff thou bring'st ! what cloathes they wear , vaiss , tiff'nies , dost relate , thou art philosophies tom cortat . else brave des cartes , whom fools cannot admire , had nere been sing'd by thy wild whimzy fire . poore galen's antichrist , though one purge of his might so unmagick thee as make thee wise . physick cures phrenzy , knows inspired wit oft proves a meer hypochondriack fit . agrippa's dog sure kennels in thy weambe , thou yelpest so and barkest in a dreame ; or if awake , thou dost on him so fawn , and bite all else , that hence his dog th' art known . but i will spare the lash ! 't was my friends task who rescuing truth engag'd , put on this mask . thus do's some carefull prince disguised goe , to keep his subjects from th' intended blow ; nor could his lofty soul so low descend but to uncheat the world ; a noble end ! and now the night is gone , we plainly find 't was not a light but rotten wood that thin'd . we owe this day ( my dearest friend ) to thee , all eyes but night-birds now th' imposaure see . j. t. finis . a brief discourse of the real presence of the body and blood of christ in the celebration of the holy eucharist wherein the witty artifices of the bishop of meaux and of monsieur maimbourg are obviated, whereby they would draw in the protestants to imbrace the doctrine of transubstantiation. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) a brief discourse of the real presence of the body and blood of christ in the celebration of the holy eucharist wherein the witty artifices of the bishop of meaux and of monsieur maimbourg are obviated, whereby they would draw in the protestants to imbrace the doctrine of transubstantiation. more, henry, - . wake, william, - . p. printed for walter kettilby, london : . attributed to henry more, and also to william wake--nuc pre- imprints. reproduction of original in the huntington library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a 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characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng bossuet, jacques bénigne, - . maimbourg, louis, - . transubstantiation. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - rina kor sampled and proofread - rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion imprimatur . guil. needham r mo in christo patri ac d. d. wilhelmo archiep. cantuar. à sacr . domest . ex aedib . lambeth . iul. . . a brief discourse of the real presence of the body and blood of christ in the celebration of the holy eucharist : wherein the witty artifices of the bishop of meaux and of monsieur maimbourg are obviated , whereby they would draw in the protestants to imbrace the doctrine of transubstantiation . john . v. , . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . calvin instit. lib. . cap. . in sacra sua coena jubet me christus sub symbolis panis ac vini corpus ac sanguinem suum sumere , manducare ac bibere . nihil dubito quin & ipse verè porrigat & ego recipiam . tantum absurda rejicio quae aut coelesti illius majestate indigna , aut ab humanae ejus naturae veritate aliena esse , apparet . london , printed for walter kettilby at the bishop's head in s t paul's church-yard , . a brief discourse of the real presence . chap. i. . the occasion of writing this treatise . . the sence of the church of england touching transubstantiation . . three passages in her articles , liturgie and homilies that seem to imply a real presence . . a yielding at least for the present that the church of england is for a real presence , but of that flesh and blood of christ which he discourses of in the sixth chapter of st. john's gospel , though she be for a real absence of that which hung on the cross. . that our saviour himself distinguishes betwixt that flesh and blood he bore about with him , and that he there so earnestly discourses of . . that this divine food there discoursed of , the flesh and blood of christ , is most copiously to be fed upon in the holy eucharist , and that our communion-service alludes to the same , nor does by such a real presence imply any transubstantiation . . the occasion of writing this short treatise was this . i observing the papers here in england , published in behalf of the church of rome , and for the drawing off people from the orthodox faith of the church of england , which holds with the ancient pure apostolick church in the primitive times , before that general degeneracy of the church came in , to drive at nothing more earnestly , than the maintaining their grand error touching the eucharist , viz. their doctrine of transubstantiation : into which they would bring back the reformed churches , by taking hold of some intimations , or more open professions of theirs , of a real presence ( though they absolutely deny the roman doctrine of transubstantiation ) and thus entangling and ensnaring them in those free professions touching that mystery of the eucharist , would by hard pulling hale them into that rightfully relinquish'd errour , for which and several others , they justly left the communion of the church of rome : i thought it my duty so far as my age , and infirmness of my body will permit , to endeavour to extricate the reformation , and especially our church of england from these entanglements with which these witty and cunning writers would entangle her , in her concessions touching that mysterious theory , and to shew there is no clashing betwixt her declaring against transubstantiation and those passages which seem to imply a real presence of the body and bloud of christ at the celebration of the holy eucharist . . concerning which , that we may the more clearly judge , we will bring into view what she says touching them both . and as touching the former ( article . ) her words are these : transubstantiation ( or the change of the substance of bread and wine in the supper of the lord ) cannot be proved by holy writ , but it is repugnant to the plain words of scripture , overthroweth the nature of a sacrament , and hath given occasion to many superstitions . and in the latter part of the rubrick at the end of the communion-service , she says , that the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very natural substances , and therefore may not be adored ( for that were idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful christians ) and the natural body and bloud of our saviour christ are in heaven and not here , it being against the truth of christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than one . this is sufficiently express against transubstantiation . . now those passages that seem to imply a real presence in the eucharist are these . in the above-named article . the body of christ , saith our church , is given , taken , and eaten in the supper only after an heavenly and spiritual manner . and the mean whereby the body of christ is received and eaten in the supper , is faith. against which our adversaries suggest ; that no faith can make us actually receive and eat that , which is god knows how far distant from us , and that therefore we imply that the body of christ is really present in the eucharist . another passage occurs in our catechism ; where it is told us , that the inward part of the sacrament , or thing signified , is the body and bloud of christ , which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the lord's supper . where [ verily ] and [ indeed ] seems to imply a real presence and participation of the body and bloud of christ. the last place shall be that in the homily , of worthy receiving and reverend esteeming of the sacrament of the body and bloud of christ. the words are these . but thus much we must be sure to hold , that in the supper of the lord there is no vain ceremony , no bare sign , no untrue figure of a thing absent . but as the scripture saith , the table of the lord , the bread and cup of the lord , the memory of christ , the annunciation of his death , yea the communion of the body and blood of the lord , in a marvellous incorporation , which by the operation of the holy ghost ( the very bond of our conjunction with christ ) is through faith wrought in the souls of the faithful . whereby not only their souls live to eternal life , but they surely trust to win their bodies a resurrection to immortality . and immediately there is added , the true understanding of this fruition and union which is betwixt the body and the head , betwixt the true believers and christ , the ancient catholick fathers both perceiving themselves , and commending to their people , were not afraid to call this supper , some of them , the salve of immortality , and sovereign preservative against death ; others the deifick communion , others the sweet dainties of our saviour , the pledge of eternal health , the defence of faith , the hope of the resurrection ; others the food of immortality , the healthful grace and the conservatory to everlasting life . there are so many high expressions in these passages , that our adversaries who would by this hook pluck us back again into the errour of transubstantiation , will unavoidably imagine and alledge from hence that if we will stand to the assertions of our own church , we must acknowledge the real presence of the body and bloud of our saviour in the sacrament . . and let us be so civil to them as at least for the present to yield , that understanding it in a due sense , we do acknowledge the real presence . but it does not at all follow from thence that we must hold that that very body of christ that hung upon the cross , and whose bloud was there shed , is really present in the sacrament , but that our church speaking conformably to christ's discourse on this matter in the sixth of iohn , and to the ancient primitive fathers , whose expressions do plainly allude to that discourse of our saviour's in the sixth of s. iohn , doth assert both a real presence of the body and bloud of christ to be received by the faithful in the eucharist , and also a real absence of that body and bloud that was crucified and shed on the cross. and this seems to be the express doctrine of our saviour in the above mentioned chapter of s. iohn , where the eternal word incarnate speaks thus — john . v. . i am the living bread which came down from heaven , ( viz. the manna which the psalmist calls the food of angels also ) if any eat of this bread he shall live for ever ( viz. of this true manna , of which the manna in the wilderness was but a type ) and the bread that i will give is my flesh ( which therefore still is that immortalizing manna , the true bread from heaven ) which i will give for the life of the world , that the whole intellectual creation may live thereby , it being their vivifick food . for as you may gather by vers . , . he does not understand his flesh that hung on the cross. and it was the ignorance of the iews that they thought he did : and therefore they cryed out on him , saying , v. . how can this man give us his flesh to eat ? and that is because they took him to be a mere man , or an ordinary man , not the incarnate logos . which logos clemens alexandrinus calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the impassible man ; and trismegistus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that one man the son of god born of him , which he says is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the author of regeneration , as having the life in him , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , iohn . v. . and this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or life the divine or spiritual body , one necessary element of regeneration , which mystery we cannot here insist upon . but in the mean time let us observe our saviour's answer to this scruple of the iews , he is so far from receding from what he said , that he with all earnestness and vehemency asserts the same again . then iesus said unto them , verily , verily , i say unto you , except you eat the flesh of the son of man ( that is of the messias , or the word incarnate ) and drink his bloud , you have no life in you . whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud hath eternal life , and i will raise him up at the last day . for my flesh is meat indeed , and my bloud is drink indeed . he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud dwelleth in me and i in him . as the living father hath sent me and i live by the father , so he that eateth me ( viz. that eateth his flesh and drinketh his bloud ) even he shall live by me . this is that bread that came down from heaven , not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead ; he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever . . this is that earnest , lofty and sublime discourse of our saviour touching his real flesh and blood , that the scandal given to the jews could not drive him off from , and persisting in it he gave also offence to his disciples , that muttered and said , this is an hard saying , who can hear it ? wherefore i must confess ingenuously , that it seems to me incredible , that under so lofty mysterious a style , and earnest asseveration of what he affirms , though to the scandal of both the iews and his own disciples , there should not be couched some most weighty and profound truth concerning some real flesh and blood of his , touching which this vehement and sublime discourse is framed , which is a piece of that part of the christian philosophy ( as some of the antients call christianity ) which origen terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the object of this eating and drinking is the flesh and blood of christ : but to rectifie the errour of his disciples , he plainly affirms , that he doth not mean what he said of the flesh and blood he then bore about with him . in v. , , . does this offend you ( saith he to them ) what and if you shall see the son of man ascend up where he was before ( then my particular natural body will be far enough removed from you , and your selves then from so gross a conceit as to think i understand this of my natural , particular body or flesh ) . no says he , the flesh profiteth nothing , it is the spirit that quickens ; the words that i speak unto you , they are spirit and they are life , that is to say , they are concerning that spiritual body and life or spirit that accompanies it ( that which is born of the flesh is flesh , and that which is born of the spirit is spirit ) the both seed and nourishment of those that are regenerate ; the principles of their regeneration , and the divine food for their nutrition , whereby they grow up to their due stature in christ. . and where , or where so fully is this divine food to be had , as in that most solemn and most devotional approaching god in the celebration of the communion of the body and blood of christ , where we both testifie and advance thereby our spiritual union with him , according as he has declared in iohn ch . . he that eateth my flesh , and drinketh my blood , dwelleth in me , and i in him . upon which our communion-service thus glosses : that if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive this holy sacrament , we then spiritually eat the flesh of christ and drink his blood , we dwell in christ and christ in us , we are one with christ and christ with us . and whereas the adversaries of our church object , we cannot eat the flesh of christ and drink his blood , in the celebration of the lords supper , unless his flesh and blood be really present ; we do acknowledge that that flesh and blood which our saviour discourses of in s t iohn , and which our liturgie alludes to , as also those notable sayings of the fathers above-cited out of the homily , touching the worthy receiving the lord's supper , is really present in the eucharist . and that there is that which christ calls his flesh and blood distinct from that which he then bore about with him , and was crucified on the cross , he does most manifestly declare in that discourse in s t iohn , as i have already proved . so manifest is it that the real presence does not imply any transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of christ. chap. ii. . the bishop of meaux his establishing transubstantiation upon the literal sense of [ this is my body ] . . that according to the literal sense , the bread that christ blessed was both bread and the body of christ at once , and that the avoiding that absurdity cast them upon transubstantiation . . that transubstantiation exceeds that avoided absurdity as contradicting the senses as well as reason , and labouring under the same absurdity it self . . further reasons why the road of the literal sense is to be left , and that we are to strike into the figurative , the former contradicting the principles of physicks . . of metaphysicks . . of mathematicks . . and of logick . . that transubstantiation implies the same thing is and is not at the same time . . a number of absurdities plainly resulting from transubstantiation . . and therefore to prop up this great mistake of transubstantiation , they are fain to recur and stick to a literal sense of those words of our saviour [ this is my body ] which i finding no where more handsomely done than by the right reverend bishop of meaux , i shall produce the passage in his own words ( that is the translation of them ) in his exposition of the doctrine of the catholick church , sect. . the real presence , says he , of the body and blood of our saviour is solidly established by the words of the institution ( this is my body ) which we understand literally ; and there is no more reason to ask us why we fix our selves to the proper and literal sense , than there is to ask a traveller why he follows the high road. it is their parts who have recourse to the figurative sense and who take by-paths , to give a reason for what they do . as for us , since we find nothing in the words which jesus christ makes use of for the institution of this mystery obliging us to take them in a figurative sense , we think that to be a sufficient reason to determine us to the literal . . in answer to this , i shall , if it be not too great a presumption , first accompany this venerable person in this high road of the literal sence of the words of institution ( this is my body ) and then shew how this road , as fairly as it looks , is here a mere angiportus that hath no exitus or passage , so that we must be forced to divert out of it , or go abck again . first then , let us take this supposed high road , and say the words ( this is my body ) are to be understood literally . wherefore let us produce the whole text and follow this kind of gloss , luke . . and he took bread , and gave thanks , and brake it , and gave unto them , saying , this is my body , which is given for you , this do in remembrance of me . likewise also the cup after supper , saying , this cup is the new testament in my blood , which is shed for you . now if we keep to the mere literal sense , this cup ( as well as this bread is the body of christ ) must be really the new testament in christ's bloud , which is a thing unavoidable if we tye our selves to the literal sense of the words . but why is not the cup the bloud or covenant in christ's bloud ? but that a cup and bloud are disparata , or in general , opposita , which to affirm one of another is a contradiction ; as if one should say a bear is a horse , and therefore we are constrained to leave the literal sense , and to recur to a figurative . but precisely to keep to the institution of that part of the sacrament that respects christ's body ; it is plain that what he took he gave thanks for , what he gave thanks for he brake , what he brake he gave to his disciples , saying , this ( which he took , gave thanks for , brake , and gave to his disciples , viz. the above-mentioned bread ) is my body . wherefore the literal sense must necessarily be , this bread ( as before it was this cup ) is my body . insomuch that according to this literal sense it is both really bread still , and really the body of christ at once . which , i believe , there is no romanist but will be ashamed to admit . but why cannot he admit this but that bread and the body of christ are opposita , and therefore the one cannot be said to be the other without a perfect repugnancy or contradiction to humane reason ; as absurd as if one should say a bear is a horse , or a rose a black-bird , whence , by the bye , we may note the necessary use of reason in matters of religion , and that what is a plain contradiction to humane reason , such as a triangle is a circle , or a cow an horse , are not to be admitted for articles of the christian faith. and for this reason , i suppose the church of rome fell into the opinion of transubstantiation , ( from this literal way of expounding these words [ this is my body ] ) rather than according to the genuine leading of that way , they would admit that what christ gave his disciples , was both real bread and the real body of christ at once . . but see the infelicity of this doctrine of transubstantiation , which does not only contradict the inviolable principles of reason in humane souls , but also all the outward senses , upon which account it is more intolerable than that opinion which they seem so much to abhor , as to prefer transubstantiation before it , though it contradict only reason , not the outward senses , which rightly circumstantiated are fit judges touching sensible objects , whether they be this or that , fish or fowl , bread or flesh. nay i may add that these transubstantiators have fallen over and above that contradiction to the rightly circumstantiated senses , into that very absurdity , that they seemed so much to abhor from , that is the confounding two opposite species into one individual substance , viz. that one and the same individual substance should be really both bread and christ's body at once . but by their transubstantiating the individual substance of the bread into the individual substance of christ's body , they run into this very repugnancy which they seemed before so cautiously to avoid ; two individual substances ( as species infimae ) being opposita , and therefore uncapable of being said to be the same , or to be pronounced one of the other without a contradiction . it is impossible that the soul of socrates , for example , should be so transubstantiated into the soul of plato , that it should become his soul , insomuch that it may be said of socrates his soul , that it is the soul of plato ; and there is the same reason of transubstantiating the substance of the bread into the substance of the body of christ. so that the substance of the bread may be said to be the body of christ , or the substance of his body , which it must either be , or be annihilated , and then it is not the transubstantiation of the substance of the bread , but the annihilation of it , into the body of christ. . and having rid in this fair promising road of the literal sense , but thus far , i conceive , i have made it manifest , that it is not passable , but that we have discovered such difficulties as may very well move me to strike out of it , or return back . and further , to shew i do it not rashly , i shall add several other reasons , as this venerable person ( that thinks fittest to keep in it still ) doth but rightfully require ; as declaring , it is their parts who have recourse to the figurative sense , and who take by-paths to give a reason why they do so . wherefore besides what i have produced already , i add these transcribed out of a treatise of mine writ many years ago . besides then the repugnancy of this doctrine of transubstantiation to the common sense of all men , according to which it cannot but be judged to be bread still , i shall now shew how it contradicts the principles of all arts and sciences ( which if we may not make use of in theology , to what great purpose are all the universities in christendom ? ) the principles , i say , of physicks , of metaphysicks , of mathematicks , and of logick . it is a principle in physicks , that that internal space or place that a body occupies , is equal to the body that occupies it . now let us suppose that one and the same body occupies two such internal places or spaces at once . this body therefore is equal to two spaces which are double to one single space ; wherefore the body is double to that body in one single space , and therefore one and the same body double to it self , which is an enormous contradiction . . again in metaphysicks , the body of christ is acknowledged one , and that as much as any one body else in the world. now the metaphysical notion of [ one ] is to be indivisum à se ( both quoad partes and quoad totum ) as well as divisum à quolibet alio ; but the body of christ being both in heaven , and without any continuance of that body here upon earth also , the whole body is divided from the whole body , and therefore is entirely both unum and multa , which is a perfect contradiction . . thirdly , in the mathematicks ( concil . trident. sess. . ) the council of trent saying , that in the separation of the parts of the species ( that which bears the outward show of bread and wine ) that from this division there is a parting of the whole , divided into so many entire bodies of christ , the body of christ being always at the same time equal to it self . it follows , that a part of the division is equal to the whole that is divided , against that common notion in euclid , that the whole is bigger than the part . . and lastly , in logick , it is a maxim , that the parts agree indeed with the whole , but disagree one with another ; but in the above said division of the host or sacrament , the parts do so well agree , that they are intirely the same individual thing . and whereas any division , whether logical or physical , is the division of some one into many , this is but the division of one into one and it self , which is a perfect contradiction . . to all which you may add , that the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of christ implys , that the same thing both is and is not at the same time ( which is against that fundamental principle in logick and metaphysicks , that both parts of a contradiction cannot be true ) which i prove thus . for that individual thing that can be made , or is to be made of any thing , is not ; the progress in this case being à privatione ad habitum , as the schools speak , and the terms of generation or of being made , viz. à quo and ad quem being non esse and esse , or non-existent and existent , so that that passing , is from non-existent to existent . now the individual body of christ is to be made of the wafer consecrated , for it is turned into his individual body . but his individual body was before this consecration ; wherefore it both was and was not at the same time . for in the making thereof there was a passing from the terminus à quo , which is the non-existency of the thing to be made , to the terminus ad quem , to the existency of it , which yet was in being before . . these difficulties are sufficient to show that this high road of the literal sense taken to establish transubstantiation is not passable , so that there is a necessity of diverting or going back . nor will it be much needful to hint briefly these or other like absurdities more intelligible to the vulgar capacity , such as , that the same body at the same time is greater and lesser than it self ; is but a foot distant from me or less , and yet many thousand miles distant from me : that one and the same person may be intirely present with himself , and some hundred thousand miles absent from himself at once : that he may sit still on the grass , and yet journey and walk at the same time : that an organized body that hath head , feet , hands , &c. is intirely in every part of it self , the comely parts in the more uncomely : that the same body now in heaven may really present it self on earth without passing any space either directly or circuitously : that our saviour christ communicating with his disciples in the last supper , swallowed down his whole intire body , limbs , back , belly , head and mouth and all into his stomach , which might amuze and puzzle one to conceive how it was possible for his disciples not to miss the sight of his hands and head , though his cloaths were still visible as not being swallowed down into his stomach . or , whether our saviour swallowed down his own body into his stomach or no , this puzzle will still remain , how his disciples could swallow him down without his cloaths , he being still in his cloaths ; or how they could swallow him down in his cloaths , the bread being not transubstantiated into his cloaths , but into his body only . these and several such absurdities it were easie to enumerate . but i hope i have produced so much already that i may , and any one else , be thought to have very good cause to leave this high road of the literal sense , and betake our selves to that more safe path of the figurative , whereby transubstantiation with all its absurdities is avoided . chap. iii. . an evasion of the incredibility of transubstantiation drawn from the omnipotency of god. . ans. that it is no derogation to god's omnipotency not to be able to do what it implies a contradiction to be done . . if this transubstantiation had been fecible , yet it had been repugnant to the goodness and wisdom of christ to have effected it . . a marvelous witty device of taking away all the absurdities of transubstantiation , by giving to christ's body a supernatural manner of existence . . that the neat artifice of this sophistry lies in putting the smooth term of supernatural for counter-essential or asystatal . . that it is an asystatal manner of existence , proved from the author's description thereof in several particulars . arguments from the multiplication of christ's body , and difference of time of its production . . from non-extension of parts . . from independency of place . . to make a body independent of place as unconceivable as to make it independent of time. . the argument from being whole in every part of the symbols . . out of which absurdities the most witty evasion offered to our consideration that i have met with , is in that ingenious and artfully composed treatise , entitled , a papist mis-represented and represented . in his chapter of the eucharist toward the end , it is well worth the transcribing that i may offer some brief answers to the things there comprized . the papist represented , saith he ( pag. . lin . . ) not at all hearkning to his senses in a matter where god speaks ; he unfeignedly confesses , that he that made the world of nothing by his sole word , that cured diseases by his word , that raised the dead by his word , that expelled devils , that commanded the winds and seas , that multiplied bread , that changed water into wine by his word , and sinners into just men , cannot want power to change bread and wine into his own body and bloud by his sole word . . it is an invidious thing to dispute the power of the eternal logos or word incarnate , who is god of god , very god of very god , and therefore omnipotent , and can do all things that imply no contradiction to be done , as most certainly none of these things there specifi'd do imply it . but things repugnant to be done we may , and that with due reverence , declare god cannot do . as the apostle does not stick to say , god cannot lye , hebr. . . and why is it impossible for god to lye , but that it is repugnant to the perfection of his nature , and particularly that attribute of his veracity . nor will any adventure to affirm that he can make a globe or cylinder which shall be equidistant from , or touch a plane though but in half of their spherical or cylindrical superficies : or a circle from whose center the lines drawn shall be unequal , or a rectangle triangle , the power of whose hypotenusa shall not be equal to both the powers of the basis and cathetus . and in fine , there are sixt and immutable ideas of things , and such necessary and inseparable respects and properties of them , that to imagine them mutable , or that god can change them , is to disorder and change the eternal and immutable intellect of god himself . of which those indeleble and necessary notions , which the minds of all mankind are conscious to themselves of , if they be but awakned into free attention thereto , is but a compendious transcript . and therefore god his being not able to do any thing that is a contradiction to those eternal ideas and habitudes of them in his own mind , is no lessening of his omnipotency , but to imagine otherwise , is to dissolve the eternal frame of the divine intellect , and under a pretence of amplifying his omnipotency , to enable god to destroy himself , or to make him so weak or impotent as to be capable of being destroyed by himself , which is a thing impossible . . but suppose the eternal word incarnate could have turned the bread and wine into his own individual body and bloud , and the thing it self were fecible , though it seems so palpably contradictious to us : yet there would be this difficulty still remaining , that it is repugnant to his wisdom and goodness so to do ( as the apostle says , it is impossible for god to lye ) in that manner he is supposed to have done it , that is , in declaring , a thing is done that is repugnant so apparently to our intellectual faculties , and leaves so palpable an assurance to all our senses , though never so rightly circumstantiated , that it is not done , but that it is still bread ; and yet that these species of bread and wine should be supported by a miracle , to obfirm or harden us in our unbelief of this mystery of transubstantiation . how does this sute with either the wisdom of god , if he would in good earnest have us to believe this mystery , or with his goodness , to give this scandal to the world , for whom christ died , and to occasion so bloudy persecutions of innumerable innocent souls , that could not believe a thing so contrary to all sense and reason , and indeed to passages of scripture it self , whose penmen he did inspire ? wherefore this is a plain evincement that our saviour meant figuratively when he said [ this is my body ] and that his disciples understood him so ( there being nothing more usual in the jewish language than to call the sign by the name of the thing signified ) and that this literal gloss has been introduced by after-ages without any fault of our saviour . but in defence of the literal sense which he would have to infer transubstantiation , our author holds on thus , viz. . that this may be done without danger of multiplying his body , and making as many christs as altars , or leaving the right hand of his father , but only by giving to his body a supernatural manner of existence , by which being left without extension of parts , and rendred independent of place , it may be one and the same in many places at once , and whole in every part of the symbols , and not obnoxious to any corporeal contingencies . and this kind of existence is no more than what in a manner he bestows upon every glorified body , than what his own body had when born without the least violation of his mother's virginal integrity , when he rose from the dead out of the sepulcher without removing the stone ; when he entered amongst his disciples , the doors being shut . . this is , as i said , a witty contrived evasion to elude the above-mentioned repugnancies i have noted , and exquisitely well fitted for the amusing and confounding of more vulgar and weak minds , or such as have not leisure to consider things to the bottom , and for the captivating them into a profession of what they have no determinate or distinct apprehension of , by distinctions and exemplifications that give no real support to the cause they are brought in for to maintain . for first , to pretend that by a supernatural manner of existence a body may be in more places than one at once , at the right hand of god the father in heaven , and on the altar at the same time , &c. the artifice of the sophistry lies in this , that he has put a more tolerable and soft expression in lieu of one that ( according to his explication of the matter ) would sound more harsh , but is more true and proper in this case . for this manner of existence of a body which he describes is not simply supernatural , which implies it is a body still , as a mill-stone by a supernatural power held up in the air is a mill-stone still , though it be in that supernatural condition . but the condition he describes is such as is not only supernatural but counter-essential or asystatal , that is , repugnant to the very being of a body , or of any finite substance in the universe . it is as if the mill-stone were not only supernaturally supported in the air , but were as transparent , as soft and fluid , and of as undetermined a shape as the air it self , or as if a right-angled triangle were declared to be so still , though the hypotenusa were not of equal power with the basis and cathetus , which is a thing impossible ; but if instead of a supernatural manner of existence , it had been said an asystatal manner of existence , that is , an existence repugnant to the very being of a body or any finite substance else , it would have been discovered to be a contradiction at the very first sight , and therefore such as ought to be rejected , as well as the affirming that what christ gave was really bread and really his body at once . . and now , notwithstanding this soft and smooth term of [ supernatural ] that it is an asystatal manner of existence , that is here given to the body of christ , may appear from our author's description thereof . for in vertue , he saith , of this supernatural manner of existence , there may be a transubstantiation without danger of multiplying christ's body , and making as many christs as altars . but it is impossible this absurdity should be avoided , supposing transubstantiation . for there is not a more certain and infallible sign of two bodily persons being two bodily persons , and not the same person , that distance of place , wherein they are separate one from another , and consequently two not one body , and this is the very case in transubstantiation , which manifestly implies , that the body of christ is in many thousand distant places at once . which imagined condition in it is not supernatural but asystatal , and contradictious to the very being of any finite substance whatever , as has been intimated and firmly proved before , chap. . and as distance of place necessarily infers difference of bodies or persons , so does also difference of time of their production . that which was produced , suppose sixteen hundred years ago and remains so produced cannot be produced suppose but yesterday , or at this present moment , and so be sixteen hundred years older or younger than it self . this is not only supernatural but asystatal , and implies a perfect contradiction ; but yet this is the very case in transubstantiation . the body of christ born suppose sixteen hundred years ago , is yet produced out of the transubstantiated bread but now or yesterday , and so the same body is sixteen hundred years older or younger than it self , which is a perfect contradiction . . secondly , the papist represented declares , that the body of christ by vertue of this supernatural manner of existence , is left without extension of parts , which is a perfect contradiction to the very nature and essence of a body , whose universally acknowledged definition is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , implying a trinal inpenetrable dimension or extension . besides , did christ's body at his last supper so soon as he had transubstantiated the bread into it , lose all extension of parts ? what then filled out his cloaths as he sat with his disciples at table ? or how could the jews lay hold on christ's body to crucifie it , if he had no extension of parts to be laid hold on ? how could there be hands and feet and organization of parts , either at the table or on the cross , if there were no extension of parts to be organized ? and lastly , being the transubstantiated bread is the very individual body of christ , if they would have this being left without extension of parts , to be understood of it , how can the very same individual body of christ have extension of parts and have no extension of parts , have organization of parts and have no organization of parts at once : so that the condition of christ's body here supposed is plainly asystatal , not as is smoothly expressed only supernatural . . thirdly , whereas the papist represented declares , that this supernatural manner of existence of christ's body renders it independent of place , what can the meaning of that be , but that by vertue of this priviledge it might exist without any place or ubi , which bodies in their natural condition cannot ? but this clashes with the very story of our saviour christ , who was certainly in the room in which he ate the passover with his disciples , after he had transubstantiated the bread into his individual body , and therefore it did not exist independently of place , in virtue of any such supernatural manner of existence as is imagined . and as this does not agree with matter of fact , so it is a perfect contradiction to the essence of any body or finite substance to be exempted from all connexion with place or ubi , but a finite substance must be in a definite ubi , and while it is in such a definite ubi , it is impossible to conceive that it is in another place or ubi , whether intra or extra moenia mundi . he that closely and precisely considers the point , he will not fail , i think , to discern the thing to be impossible . and what contradiction it implies i have demonstrated above . so that we see there can be no such supernatural manner of existence conferred on a body in making it independent of place or ubiety , as to capacitate it to be one and the same body in diverse places at once , but that this supposed supernatural manner is truly an asystatal manner , and such as is repugnant to the very being of a body , or any finite substance whatsoever . . to make a body in this sense independent of place or ubiety , is as unconceivable as to make it independent of time , which yet would so compleat this impossible hypothesis , that under this pretence when a thing has such a supernatural existence as exempts it from all connexion with or relation to time , but supposes it utterly independent thereof , as was explained before touching place , we may suppose what we will of a body , that it may be bread and not bread at the same time , that it may be at thebes and at athens at the same time , as we ordinary mortals would phrase it , sith it is lifted up above all relation and connexion with time , nor hath any thing to do with any time. but yet this assuredly is not a mere supernatural manner of existence , but plainly asystatal , and such as if god could cause , there would be no eternal and immutable truths , but under a pretext of exalting the omnipotence of god , they would imply him able to destroy his own nature , which would argue an impotency in him , and to extinguish and confound the inviolable ideas of the divine intellect , as i intimated above . . and fourthly and lastly , that in vertue of this supernatural manner of existence , the body of christ should be whole in every part of the symbols , and thereby become not obnoxious to any corporeal contingencies ; ( which is said , i suppose , to avoid the absurdity of grinding a pieces the body of christ with our teeth when we chew the supposed species ) thus to exist whole in every part , is not a mere supernatural manner of existing , but asystatal , and implies either that the least part of christ's body is as big as the whole , or that the whole body is god knows how many thousand times bigger than it self . for certainly the whole body comprized under the whole bread or species of bread , is many thousand times bigger than one particle thereof no bigger than a pins point . besides that this making the body of christ whole in every part , takes away all possibility of distinct organization of his body , unless you will have every pins point of it to have head , feet , hands , arms , and the rest of the parts of an humane body , or have the same individual body organized and unorganized at the same time , which are as palpable contradictions as any can occur to the understanding of a man. and thus much i thought fit to intimate touching this witty distinction of a natural and supernatural manner of existence of a body , and to shew that this pretended supernatural manner of the existence of christ's body , arising from the bread transubstantiated , as the papist represented describes it , is indeed an asystatal manner of existence , and inconsistent with the being of any body , or finite substance whatsoever . chap. iv. . the supernatural manner of the existence of a body consisting in non-extension of parts , independency of place , and being whole in every part. . the first exemplification of such a manner of existence in glorified bodies , not to reach the case . . nor the second , in christ's body born without the least violation of his mothers virginal integrity . . nor the third in christ's rising out of the sepuloher without the removing of the stone . . nor the fourth , in christ's entring amongst his disciples the doors being shut . . transubstantiation implying a number of contradictions as harsh as that of the same body being both christ ' s body and bread at once , and there being no salvo for them but this device of a supernatural manner of existence , and this so plainly failing , it is impossible that transubstantiation should be the true mode of the real presence . . it remains now that we only touch upon lightly the exemplifications of this supernatural manner of existence of a body , consisting in these peculiarities , non-extension of parts , independency of place , and being whole in every part , and to note how none of these instances reach the present case . . as first that of a glorified body . what scripture , reason or authority ever suggested to us that the glorified body of christ himself , much less every glorified body , is without extension of parts , has no relation to or connexion with place , or is whole in every part . for without extension of parts it cannot be so much as a body . and were not moses and elias together with christ at his transfiguration on mount tabor , at least lively figures of the state of a glorified body , but it is evident by the description that they had extension of parts , else what should shining garments do upon what is unextended , and what glory can issue from a single mathematical point as i may so call it ? and in that they were on mount tabor together , it is manifest they had a connexion with or dependency on place , nor did exist without being in some ubi . and that the glorified body of christ is in heaven not on earth , is plain from act. . . and touching his body he rose in , and therefore was his resurrection-body , matt. . . the angel says , he is not here , for he is risen ; which had been a mere non sequitur , if his body could have been in more places than one at once , which property the papist represented gives it upon account of transubstantiation . and for as much as the transubstantiated bread and the body of christ is one and the same individual body , and that this that is once christ's body never perishes , it is evident , that the body he rose in , being one and the same body with the transubstantiated bread , must have the capacity by this supernatural manner of existence above described , to be in more places than one at once , which is a perfect contradiction to the angels reasoning : he is not here , for he is risen , and gone hence . for according to this supernatural manner of existence , which they suppose in christ's body upon the account of transubstantiation , he might be both there and gone thence at once . . the second instance of this supernatural manner of existence of a body , is christ's body born without the least violation of his mothers virginal integrity , which is such a secret as the scripture has not revealed , nor any sufficient authority assured us of : the mother of christ still continuing a virgin , because she had nothing to do with any man , though that which was conceived in her by the overshadowing of the holy ghost came out of her womb in the same circumstances there , that other humane births do . but suppose the body of christ pass'd the wicket of the womb without opening it , as the sun-beams pass through a crystal or glass , does this import that his body is either independent of place , or is devoid of extension , or whole in every part ? surely no , no more than that light that passes through the pores of the crystal : so that there is nothing repugnant to the nature of a body in all this . no non-extension , no independency of place , no penetration of corporeal dimensions , nor any being whole in every part . . the third instance is christ's rising out of the sepulcher without removing the stone . but this instance may very justly be rejected , it disagreeing with the very history of the resurrection , which tells us the stone was removed , matt. . . and behold there was a great earthquake , for the angel descended from heaven , and rolled back the stone from the door , and sate upon it . wherefore we see the stone was removed . nor can i imagine why this should make a third instance , viz. christ's body passing out of the sepulcher , the stone unremoved from the door thereof , unless from an heedless reflection on the fore-going verse ( where mary magdalen and the other mary are said to go to see the sepulcher ) and connecting it to an ill grounded sense with what follows in the second verse , and behold there was a great earthquake ; as if it were implyed that the earthquake and the rolling away the stone were at that very time that these two women went to see the sepulcher , and christ having risen before , that it would follow that he rose before the stone of the sepulcher was removed ; but this is a mistake . for agreeably to vatablus his gloss ( who for erat [ & ecce erat terrae motus magnus ] puts fuerat , and for descendit , descenderat , and for devolvit lapidem , devolverat ) which implies the thing done before these women came to the sepulcher ; it is manifest out of the other evangelists that the matter was altogether so ; for mark . . it is said of the two above said parties , that very early in the morning , the first day of the week they came unto the sepulcher at the rising of the sun , and they said among themselves , who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulcher , and when they looked they saw the stone was rolled away , &c. and it is expresly said in luke , that they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher . and the like is recorded in st. john , ch . . so that it is a plain case the stone was rolled away before their going to the sepulcher . what time therefore can we imagine more likely of this rolling away the stone and terrible earthquake , than at the very resurrection of christ , who rose in this awful terrour to the keepers , the earth quaking , and the too glorious angels officiously opening the stony door of the sepulcher , that the king of glory might pass out , without any further needless or useless miracle , such as he ever declined in his life time , before his death and resurrection ? wherefore this third instance , it is plain , cannot with any shew be accommodated to the present case , it being raised out of a mere mistake of the story . . the fourth and last instance is , christ's entring amongst his disciples , the doors being shut , recorded john . , and . there the disciples are said to be gathered together privately or secretly for fear of the jews , for which cause they lockt or bolted the doors with-inside , that no man might suddenly come upon them . but while they were in this privacy or closeness , christ , notwithstanding , suddenly presented himself in the midst of them , for all this closeness or secrecy , and not without a miracle , supposing himself or some ministring angel to unlock or unbolt the door suddenly , and softly , sine strepitu , which upon this account would be more likely , in that if he had come in , the doors being still shut , that might have seemed as great an argument to thomas that he was a spirit , as the feeling his hands and side that he was no spirit . wherefore , i conceive , it is no sufficiently firm hypothesis , that christ entred among his disciples , the doors in the mean time , at his very entrance , remaining shut . but suppose they were so , this will not prove his body devoid of extension , to be independent of place , and whole in every part , more than his passing the wicket of the womb , like light through crystal , did argue the same in the second instance but the truth of the business will then be this , that he being then in his resurrection-body ( even that wherewith he was to ascend into heaven , which yet he kept in its terrestrial modification , and organization , for those services it was to do amongst his disciples while he conversed with them after his resurrection upon earth ; as he made use of it in a particular manner to s t thomas ) he had a power to modifie it into what consistencies he pleased , aerial , aetherial , or coelestial , it remaining still that individual body , that was crucified . this therefore might easily pass through the very pores of the door , and much more easily betwixt the door and the side-posts there , without any inconvenience more than to other spiritual bodies . for the resurrection-body is an heavenly and spiritual body , as s t paul himself expresly declares . but yet as truly a body as any body else ; that is , it hath impenetrable trinal dimension , is not without place or ubiety , nor whole in every part . this very story demonstrates all this , that his body is not without place . for it stood in the midst of the room amongst his disciples . nor the whole in every part ; for here is distinct mention of christ's hand and his side , as elsewhere of his flesh and bones , luke . . which would be all confounded , if every part were in every part . and if there be these distinct parts , then certainly his body hath extension , and this ingeniously excogitated distinction of the natural and supernatural manner of existence of a body , can by no means cover the gross repugnancies , which are necessarily imply'd in the doctrine of transubstantiation . . a doctrine raised from the literal sense of those words [ this is my body ] which literal sense if we were tyed to , it would also follow that that which christ gave to his disciples was as well real bread as his real body : [ this ] plainly referring to what he took , what he blessed , and what he gave , which was bread , and of this he says , this is my body . wherefore adhering to the literal sense , it would be both real bread and the real body of christ at once . but this , as being a repugnancy , as was noted above , and contradiction to the known inviolable and immutable laws of logick and humane reason , is justly rejected by the church of rome , for this very reason , that it implies a contradiction , that one and the same body should be bread and the real body of christ at once . wherefore transubstantiation containing , as has been proved , so many of such contradictions , every jot as repugnant to the inviolable and immutable laws of logick , or humane reason ( that unextinguishable lamp of the lord in the soul of man ) as this of the same body being real bread and the real body of christ at once : and there being no salvo for these harsh contradictions , but the pretence of a supernatural manner of existence of a body , which god is supposed to give to the bread transubstantiated into the body of christ , that is , into the very individual body of christ , they being supposed by transubstantiation to become one and the same body . i say this neat distinction of a supernatural manner of existing being plainly demonstrated ( so as it is by the papist represented , explained ) not to be a mere supernatural manner of existence , with which the being of a body would yet consist , but a counter-essential , asystatal , and repugnant manner of existence , inconsistent with the being of a body ; and none of the instances that are produced as pledges of the truth of the notion or assertion at all reaching the present case , it is manifest that though there be a real presence of christ's body and bloud in the celebration of the holy eucharist , acknowledged as well by the reformed as the pontifician party , that it is impossible that transubstantiation , which the papist represented here declares , should be the true mode thereof . chap. v. . the author's excuse for his civility to the papist represented , that he shews him that the road he is in is not the way of truth touching the mode of the real presence . . that the bishop of meaux makes the real presence the common doctrine of all the churches as well reformed as un-reformed , and that it is acknowledged to be the doctrine of the church of england , though she is so wise and so modest as not to define the mode thereof . . the sincere piety of our predecessors in believing the real presence , and their unfortunateness afterwards in determining the mode by transubstantiation or consubstantiation . . and therefore the papist represented , being in so palpable a mistake , and by keeping to the literal sense having so apparently wandred from the path of truth , i hope my thus industriously and carefully advertizing him thereof for his own good , will be no otherwise interpreted than an act of humanity or common civility , if not of indispensable christianity , thus of my own accord , though not roganti , yet erranti comiter monstrare viam , or at least to assure him that this of transubstantiation is not the right road to the due understanding of the manner or mode of the real presence of the body and blood of christ in the celebration of the holy eucharist . . which opinion of the real presence the bishop of meaux declares to be the doctrine of all the churches as well reformed as un-reformed ; as i must confess i have been of that perswasion ( ever since i writ my mystery of godliness ) that it is the doctrine of the church of england , and that the doctrine is true . and this i remember i heard from a near relation of mine when i was a youth , a reverend dignitary of the church of england , and that often , viz. that our church was for the real presence , but for the manner thereof , if asked , he would answer , rem scimus , modum nescimus , we know the thing , but the mode or manner thereof we know not . and the assurance we have of the thing is from the common suffrage of the ancient fathers , such as the above-cited place of our homilies glances at , and from the scripture it self , which impressed that notion on the minds of our pious predecessors in the church of god. . for i do verily believe that out of mere devotion and sincere piety , and out of a reverend esteem they had of the solemnity of the eucharist , they embraced this doctrine as well as broached it at the first . and if they had kept to the profession of it in general , without running into transubstantiation or consubstantiation , and had defined no further than the plain scriptural text in the sixth of st. iohn and the suffrages of the primitive fathers had warranted them , viz. that there was a twofold body and blood of christ , the one natural , the other spiritual or divine , which we do really receive in the holy communion ( within which limits i shall confine my self here without venturing into any farther curiosities ) it had been more for the peace and honour of the christian church , and it might have prevented much scandal to them without , and much cruelty and persecution amongst our selves : the history of which is very horrid even to think of . but though there have been these mistakes in declaring the mode , yet the thing it self is not therefore to be abandoned , it being so great a motive for a reverend approaching the lord's table , and duly celebrating the solemnity of the holy eucharist . nor can we , as i humbly conceive , relinquish this doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of christ , without the declining the most easie and natural sense of the holy scripture , as it stands written in the sixth chapter of st. iohn . chap. vi. . gratian his distinction of the flesh and blood of christ into spiritual or divine , and into that flesh that hung on the cross , and that bloud let out by the lance of the souldier . . the same confirmed out of s. austin , who makes the body and bloud of christ to be partaken of in baptism , and also from s. paul and philo. . other citations out of philo touching the divine logos agreeable with what christ says of himself in his discourse john . and out of which it further appears that the antient fathers ate the same food that we , the divine body of christ , but not that which hung on the cross. . a strong confirmation out of what has been produced , that gratian his distinction is true . . the first argument from our saviour's discourse , that he meant not his flesh that hung on the cross , because he says , that he that eats it has eternal life in him . . the second , because his flesh and bloud is the object of his discourse , not the manner of eating and drinking them . . the third , because of his answer to his murmuring disciples , which removes his natural body far from them , and plainly tells them , the flesh profiteth nothing . . gratian's distinction no novel doctrine . . out of which sixth chapter of s. iohn , that is manifest which a member of the roman church her self , has declared , an eminent canonist of theirs , gratian , in [ canon dupliciter ] as it is cited by philippus mornaeus , lib. . de eucharistiâ , cap. . dupliciter intelligitur caro christi & sanguis : vel spiritualis illa atque divina de quâ ipse dicit , caro mea verè est cibus , & sanguis meus verè est potus , & nisi manducaveritis carnem meam , & biberitis sanguinem meum , non habebitis vitam aeternam ; vel caro quae crucifixa est , & sanguis qui militis effusus est lanceâ . i the rather take notice of this passage , because he makes use of the very phrases which i used without consulting him in my philosophical hypothesis of the great mystery of regeneration , calling that body or flesh which christ so copiously discourses of , iohn . spiritual or divine , which he plainly distinguishes , as christ himself there does , from that body that hung on the cross , and that blood that was let out by the lance of the souldier . . for we cannot be regenerate out of these in baptism , and yet in the same place s. augustine says , we are partakers of the body and blood of christ in baptism ; and therefore as terrestrial animals are not fed ( as they say the chamaeleon is ) of the air , but by food of a terrestrial consistency , so our regeneration being out of spiritual principles , our inward man is also nourished by that food that is spiritual or divine . and that is a marvellous passage of st. paul , cor. . where he says , the fathers did all eat the same spiritual meat , and did all drink the same spiritual drink , for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them , and that rock was christ , where st. austin , anselm , thomas aquinas , and others , as you may see in iacobus capellus , avouch , that the ancient patriarchs ate the same spiritual food that we , which therefore must be the flesh and blood of christ , in that sense christ understands it in , iohn . and that passage of philo ( that grotius notes on the same place ) is worth our taking notice of , and that in two several treatises of his he interprets the manna of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the divine logos , which agrees hugely well with our supposing that the flesh and blood of which our saviour saith , it is meat indeed and drink indeed , he speaks this as he is the eternal logos , to whom appertains the universal divine body , as being the body of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , life or spirit , as i have noted in my analytical account of the fore-part of the first chapter of st. iohn's gospel . see my scholia at the end of my enchiridium ethicum . . and it is marvellously applicable to our purpose what philo says on that passage of deuteronomy , chap. . v. . he made him to suck honey out of the rock , and oyl out of the flinty rock ( in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) where he says the rock signifies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the solid , steady and infrangible wisdom of god ; implying the immutableness and unalterableness of the natures , properties , and respects of the ideas of things in the divine intellect , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not to be changed or violated for any superstitious purposes whatsoever , as i have intimated before . wherefore as s t paul calls christ , who is the eternal logos , a rock , so does philo , by saying , that rock moses mentions in his song is the steady , solid and infrangible wisdom of god. which therefore is that essential wisdom , the same that the divine logos , or second hypostasis of the trinity . and not many lines after in the same treatise , the lawgiver , says he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , calls this rock manna the divine logos that was before all beings , and without whom nothing was made that was made , as s t iohn testifies . and in his [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] speaking of israel , which he would have signifie one that sees god : he , says he , lifting up his eyes to heaven sees , and thence receives , ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) the manna , the divine logos , the heavenly incorruptible food of the soul devoted to holy speculation . which passages i could not forbear to produce , they having so great an affinity with that which our saviour professes of himself , that he is this bread from heaven , the true manna , and incorruptible food of the soul , whereby she is nourished to eternal life , iohn . out of all which may be more easily understood how the fathers did all eat the same spiritual meat , and drink the same spiritual drink , which cannot well be conceived but of such a divine body and bloud of christ , as is universal , not restrained to his particular humane nature , but belonging to him as he is the eternal logos , in whom is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 life or spirit , which goeth along with the divine body of this life or spirit of christ , and consequently is rightly called his body . which being the necessary principles of regeneration ( for ex eisdem nutrimur ex quibus constamus ) and there being no salvation without regeneration , and no regeneration continued and advanced without congenerous food ; we must necessarily conclude with s t paul , that , the fathers all ate the same spiritual meat , and drank all the same spiritual drink , water , honey , oyl out of the same rock , christ , the eternal word or logos . and certainly that body and blood of christ out of which the fathers were regenerate , and by which they were fed , cannot be the very body and bloud of christ which hung on the cross , and whose bloud was there let out by the lance of the souldier that pierced his side : and therefore there was a body and bloud of christ before he was incarnate , for the regenerate souls of the antient people of the iews to feed upon , belonging to him as he is the eternal logos ; in whom is the life and that spirit of which it is said , that which is born of the flesh is flesh , and that which is born of the spirit is spirit . which things are more fully treated of in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or a philosophical hypothesis touching the great mystery of regeneration . . wherefore there is all the reason in the world , if not plain necessity to admit , what we cited out of gratian that famous canonist of the church of rome . that we are to understand that there is a two-fold flesh and bloud of christ , either that spiritual and divine flesh , of which he himself says , my flesh is meat indeed , and my bloud is drink indeed , and , unless you eat my flesh and drink my bloud , ye shall not have everlasting life . or that flesh which was crucified , and that bloud that was let out of his side by the lance of the souldier , which we shall now endeavour briefly to demonstrate out of that discourse of our saviour in the sixth of s t iohn . . first then , that the flesh of christ that hung once on the cross , and into which the bread of the romanists is supposed to be transubstantiated in the sacrament of our lord's supper , is not the flesh here meant is plain from what is said thereof in this sixth chapter of s t iohn v. . whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud hath eternal life . but every one that eateth the bread transubstantiated into the body of christ , that once hung upon the cross , in the roman communion , has not eternal life in him . nay if that souldier that pierced our saviour's side and let out his bloud with his lance had drunk also thereof , and cut some piece of his flesh from his body and eaten it , is any one so fond as to think , that he thereby would have been made partaker of eternal life ? but if christ meant that body or flesh of his and not some other that is rightly also called his flesh or body , it would follow that that souldier by doing that savage and inhumane act , would have obtained everlasting life . wherefore it is plain from hence , that there is another body or flesh of christ and another blood , distinct from that blood that was shed on the cross , and from that body that hung there , which our saviour aims at in his discourse . . secondly , it is plain that our saviour's discourse in that chapter ( he passing from that temporal food which he had lately procured for the multitude , to a spiritual and eternal ) has for its object or subject not the manner or way of receiving his body and blood , as if it were meant of that very flesh and blood on the cross , but that it was to be received in a spiritual manner , which interpreters , several of them , drive at ; but the object of his discourse is his very flesh and blood it self , to be taken ( as the fish and loaves were wherewith he lately fed them ) or it is himself in reference to this flesh and blood which belongs to him as he is the eternal word , and in this sense he says , he is the bread of god that cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world , v. . and v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i am the bread of life , and speaking of the manna he presently adds , your fathers ate manna , and yet died , viz. the natural death , the natural manna being no preservative against the natural death . and v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as before he called himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for in him is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( iohn . ) or life and spirit , and this spirit or life in the divine body . i am the living bread coming down from heaven ( as the manna is said to do , and to which philo compares the divine logos ) if any one eat of this bread he shall live for ever . he speaks not of the manner of eating of it , but of the bread it self to be eaten , and yet immediately thereupon he calls this bread his flesh , which he says , he will give for the life of the world , that is to the end that they may be enlivened thereby , he thus communicating to them his divine body and spirit together . and then presently upon the iews striving amongst themselves and saying , how can this man give us his flesh to eat ? ( the reason whereof was because they took him to be a meer man , and thought that christ himself understood it of his humane flesh ) he affirms with greater earnestness and vehemency , verily , verily , i say unto you , unless ye eat the flesh of the son of man ( viz. of the messias , who is the logos incarnate ) and drink his bloud , ye have no life in you . whoso eateth my flesh , and drinketh my bloud hath eternal life , and i will raise him up at the last day . for my flesh is meat indeed , and my bloud is drink indeed . and so all along to the very end of his discourse , he speaks of a really eating his flesh , and drinking his blood , not of the manner of eating , as if it never came nigh them , but only they thought of flesh and blood god knows how far distant from them , and so ate the humane flesh of christ by meer thinking of it , and drank his bloud after the same imaginary manner , which would , i think , be a very dilute and frigid sense of such high and fervid asseverations of our saviour , if the mystery reached no farther than so . . but thirdly and lastly , that it does reach further than so , is exceeding evident from what our saviour utters upon his disciples being scandalized at this strange discourse of his , v. . when iesus knew in himself , that his disciples murmured at it , he said unto them , does this offend you ? what if you shall see the son of man ascending where he was before , which he must needs understand of his particular visible body which he bore about with him , and which his humane soul did actuate , and which was appropriated to his humane nature , which is finite and circumscribed . it is an elliptical speech of his , but thus naturally to be supplyed as i have also noted above , as if he suppressed by an aposiopesis this objurgatory sense insinuated thereby . will you then imagine so grosly as if i understood it of this very flesh i bear about with me , when as this particular body of mine after my ascension into heaven will be removed at a vast distance from you . i tell you this flesh of mine , as to this purpose i have all this time driven at , profiteth nothing , you cannot feed of it at such a distance if it were to be fed on . the text runs thus , v. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it is that quickening spirit i aim at in my discourse , that divine or spiritual body of mine . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that flesh , which you understand and are so scandalized at the eating thereof , profiteth nothing as to this purpose , nor the blood taken in your sense has any thing to do here . the words that i speak unto you they are spirit and they are life . the object of those words spoken is my spiritual body and blood , not as i am a man , but the eternal word , the divine logos , which contains in it the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or spirit , and my divine body universal , that belongs to that my life or spirit . this is the true mystery of the matter , for by these two things asserted by our saviour , . that we are to eat his flesh and drink his blood as we hope ever to have eternal life . . and his declaring his flesh profiteth nothing , it is manifest that that distinction of gratian is true , which he seems to have taken out of st. hierom , or some other ancient father , who tells us the flesh and blood of christ is twofold , the one natural and which he bore about with him and hung once on the cross , the other spiritual and divine , which we may really eat and drink , that is really receive and draw in at the celebrating the holy eucharist by a sincere , fervid and devotional faith. and consequently there is a real presence of the body and blood of christ in partaking of the lord's supper , whereby our souls are nourished to eternal , life . and in that , he says , his natural flesh profiteth nothing to this purpose ( for it cannot be said that it profiteth nothing at all , since in vertue of the crucifixion of that flesh , and effusion of that blood on the cross , we have the remission of our sins ) christ plainly infers that he has ( which cannot be well understood but as he is the eternal logos ) another flesh , viz. that spiritual and divine flesh , which is mainly profitable for this purpose , for the maintaining , perfecting and renewing the inward man , that he may attain to his due growth in christ. and lastly , how can christ say his flesh that was crucified on the cross profiteth nothing , when by being meditated upon at the solemnity of the holy eucharist , and also at other times , it may serve to kindle and inflame our love and devotion towards him , and so urge us to greater degrees of repentance and mortification , and serious holiness ; it therefore being useful and profitable for all this , i say , why does he then affirm it profiteth nothing , but that he does on purpose advertise us that it profiteth nothing as to the present case he has spoke to all this while , viz. to be the real meat and food of the inward man , and to be really received into him , to maintain and increase those divine principles in him out of which he is regenerated . this his particular flesh and blood , that hung on the cross , cannot be profitable for , nor can be come at , at such a distance , to be taken in and received ; which therefore plainly implies those other , which were mentioned above out of gratian ( the divine or spiritual flesh and blood of christ only ) to be properly useful to this purpose . . and for this divine and spiritual flesh and blood of our saviour distinguished from his natural ; besides st. hierome you have also the suffrage of clemens alexandrinus , in his paedagogus , lib. . cap. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the blood of our lord is twofold , the one carnal , by which we are redeemed from corruption ; the other spiritual , wherewith we are anointed , and by vertue of drinking thereof we attain to incorruption . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and as he makes the blood of our lord twofold , so we may be sure he makes his body or flesh , because his mystical body and blood go together . according to that which m r pelling in his pious and learned discourse of the sacrament , quotes out of s t ambrose , who , says he , speaking of that body which is received in the eucharist , calls it the spiritual body of christ , the body of a divine spirit ; and he does confidently affirm of all the antients who have either purposely interpreted , or occasionally quoted the words of christ , in the sixth of s t iohn , touching the eating his flesh and drinking his blood , that they all understand him to speak of a spiritual flesh and blood , distinct not only from the substance of the holy elements , but also from that natural body of christ which he took of the substance of the holy virgin , pag. . so little novelty is there in this distinction of the body and blood of christ into natural , and spiritual or divine . chap. vii . . an apology for being thus operose and copious in inculcating the present point from the usefulness thereof . . the first usefulness in that it defeats monsieur de meaux his stratagem to reduce us to transubstantiation , as if no real presence without it . . the second usefulness , for the rectifying the notion of consubstantiation . . the third for more fully understanding the mystery of the eucharist , with applications of it to several passages in our communion-service . . the fourth for a very easie and natural interpretation of certain passages in our church-catechism . . the priviledge of the faithful receiver , and of what great noment the celebration of the eucharist is . . the last usefulness in solidly reconciling the rubrick at the end of the communion-service , with that noted passage in our church-catechism . . the reader may haply think i have been over operose and copious in inculcating this distinction of gratian's , touching the body and blood of christ in the holy eucharist . but the great usefulness thereof , i hope , may apologize for this my extraordinary diligence and industry . for the notion being both true and unexceptionable , and not at all clashing , so far as i can discern , with either the holy scripture , or right reason and solid philosophy , to say nothing of the suffrage of the primitive fathers , but rather very agreeable and consentaneous to them all ; and also having , as i said , its weighty usefulness , it was a point , i thought , that was worth my so seriously insisting upon ; and as i have hitherto endeavoured faithfully to set out the truth thereof , i shall now , though more briefly , intimate its usefulness . . and the first usefulness is this , whereas that reverend prelate the bishop of meaux tugs so hard to pull back again the reformed churches to the communion of the church of rome , by this concession , or rather profession of theirs , that there is a real presence of the body and blood of christ at the celebration of the eucharist , to be received by the faithful , and that therefore they must return to the doctrine of transubstantiation , as if there were no other mode of a real presence to be conceived but it : the force of this inference is plainly taken away , by this distinction that gratian , one of their own church , hath luckily hit upon , or rather taken out of some antient father , and is more fully made out in this discourse , that there is a spiritual and divine body of christ , distinct from that particular body of his that hung on the cross , which the faithful partake of in the lord's supper . whence it is plain there is no need of transubstantiation , which is incumbred with such abundance of impossibilities and contradictions . . secondly , this notion of ours is hugely serviceable for the rectifying of the doctrine of consubstantiation in the lutheran church , who are for an ubiquity of the particular body of christ that hung on the cross , which assuredly is a grand mistake . but i believe in the authors thereof there was a kind of parturiency , and more confused divination of that truth , which we have so much insisted upon , and their mistake consists only in this , that they attributed to the particular body of christ , which belongs to his restrained and circumscribed humane nature , that which truly and only belongs to his divine body , as he is the eternal logos , in whom is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the life or spirit of the logos , to which spirit of his this body belongs , and therefore is rightly called his body , as appertaining to his spirit . for this body , this divine and spiritual flesh , as gratian calls it , is every where present , though not to be received as the food of the inward man , but only by the faithful and regenerate , so that according to this notion there may be a consubstantiation rightly interpreted , that is a compresentiation , or rather compresentiality of both the real bread and wine , and the real body and blood of christ at once ; so that they both may be really and indeed received by all true believers . and lutheranism in this point thus candidly interpreted , will prove a sound and unexceptionable doctrine . and i charitably believe the first authors of it , if they had fully understood their own meaning , meant no more than so . and i wish i had as much reason to believe that the pontificians meant no more by their transubstantiation , but a firm and fast hold of the real presence . i hope the most ingenuous of them at this time of the day mean no more than so , viz. that they are as well assured of the real presence of the body and blood of christ to be received in the celebration of the eucharist ; as if the very bread was turned into his body , and the wine into his blood by a miraculous transubstantiation . . thirdly , it is from this notion or distinction of the antient fathers , as i hinted above , of the body and blood of christ into natural and spiritual or divine , that we have ever been well appointed to give a more full and distinct account of the nature of the solemnity of the eucharist as it is celebrated in our church , it plainly comprizing these two things . the first the commemoration of the death of christ , of the breaking his body or flesh , viz. the wounding thereof with nails and spears . the other , the partaking of the divine body and blood of christ , by which our inward man is nourished to eternal life : which our eating the bread and drinking the wine are symbols of . both which in our communion-service are plainly pointed at . the first fully , in the exhortation to communicants , where it is said , and above all things you must give most humble and hearty thanks to god the father , the son , and the holy ghost , for the redemption of the world by the death and passion of our saviour christ , both god and man , who did humble himself even to the death upon the cross for us miseable sinners — and to the end we should always remember the exceeding great love of our master and only saviour jesus christ thus dying for us , and the innumerable benefits , which by his precious blood-shedding , he hath obtained to us , he has instituted and ordained holy mysteries as pledges of his love , and for a continual remembrance of his death . and in the prayer of consecration , the celebration of the eucharist is again said to be a continued or perpetuated commemoration of christ's precious death till his coming again . but now for our receiving the spiritual and divine body and blood of christ , such passages as these seem to intimate it . in the exhortation to the communicants , it is there said , if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive this holy sacrament , then we spiritually eat the flesh of christ and drink his blood , then we dwell in christ and christ in us , we are one with christ and christ with us . this passage plainly points to our saviour's discourse , iohn . v. . where he says , he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood , dwelleth in me and i in him . and he thus dwelling in us , he enlivens us , we becoming one with christ in a manner as the soul and body makes one , as it followeth in the next verse , as the living father has sent me , and i live by the father , so he that eateth me shall live by me , and so we become one with christ and christ with us , we living by christ as he by his father ; that is to say , as christ ▪ lives by his father , so we live by the spirit of christ dwelling in us , rom. . . which spirit or life of christ always implies the divine body . as he that is joined unto the lord in this body is one spirit , cor. . . now this exhortation so plainly alluding to this passage of our saviour's discourse , which speaks not of his particular natural flesh , but of that which is his spiritual or divine flesh , it is plain that the genuine sense of the exhortation in this place is , that we really though spiritually ( that is by a fervent and devotional faith ) eat or receive the real body and blood of christ , viz. that divine and spiritual body and blood of his above-mentioned . and this passage of our saviour's discourse is again alluded to in the prayer immediately before the prayer of consecration in these words , grant us therefore , gracious lord , so to eat the flesh of thy dear son jesus christ , and to drink his blood that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body , and our souls washed through his most precious blood , and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us , john . . and these two places so plainly alluding to our saviour's discourse in the sixth of s t iohn , it is very easie and natural to conceive that what occurs in the thanksgiving after our receiving the sacrament does sound to the same purpose . almighty and everlasting god , we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us who have duly received these holy mysteries , with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of thy son and our saviour jesus christ — the words even of themselves do very naturally point at a real though spiritual partaking or receiving into us the body and blood of christ , namely , of that flesh and blood which our saviour discourses of , iohn . and therefore we may be much more assured that they do so , if we take notice , the sense is so back'd and strengthned by the other two passages which do plainly relate to the body , or flesh and blood christ discourses of , in the sixth of s t iohn's gospel . i will only add one consideration more , and that is from the title of our communion-service . can there be any more likely reason why the lord's supper is called the holy communion , than that it refers to that of s t paul , cor. . . the cup of blessing which we bless , is it not the communion of the blood of christ ? the bread which we break , is it not the communion of the body of christ ? because there is one bread , we being many are one body . for we are all partakers of that one bread. which is that bread from heaven , which our saviour discourses of in the sixth of s t iohn . but the words i have chiefly my eye upon are those : the cup being called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the communion of the blood , and the bread , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the communion of the body of christ ; and the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in all likely hood , having the same sense that it had , pet. . . in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , where we are said to be called to the participation of the divine nature , communion here in s t paul's epistle to the corinthians must naturally imply our real receiving or partaking of the body and blood of christ in the celebrating of this holy communion , and that by thus partaking of that one divine body and blood of his , signified by the eating and drinking the bread and wine , we , though many , become one body : not in a political sense only , but , if i may so speak , divinely natural , we being made all members of that one universal divine body of christ , as he is the eternal logos , and so becoming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , pet. . . wherefore , that passage in s t paul's epistle to the corinthians , does marvelous-fully set out the nature of that part of the lord's supper , that is distinguished from the commemoration of his death ; and gives the most genuine reason of its being called the holy communion , it implying the real communication of that one divine body of christ to the faithful , and their real union thereby with christ and with one another , which is a full and perfect holy communion indeed . . fourthly , this notion of the fathers touching the spiritual or divine body and blood of christ , affords us a very easie and natural interpretation of that passage in our church-catechism , touching the sacrament of the lord's supper , where to the question , what is the inward part , or thing signified ? it is answered , the body and blood of christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the lord's supper . in the answer to a former question , why was the sacrament of the lord's supper ordained ? it is answered , for a continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of christ , and the benefits received thereby . one eminent benefit whereof is the remission of our sins through the bloud of christ shed on the cross , for without blood there is no remission ; the other is the feeding of the regenerate soul , or inward man , by the real , but spiritual or divine body and blood of christ , which contains in it our through sanctification , which is also a fruit or benefit of the sacrifice of the death of christ , forasmuch as we had not been capable of regeneration and of growth and degrees of sanctification by the feeding on and really receiving the spiritual and divine body of christ , without our reconciliation by his blood shed on the cross , which our church here calls the sacrifice of the death of christ. now as in this answer there is contained that great benefit of the remission of our sins in the blood of christ , and thereby of our reconciliation to god ; so in the answer mentioned before is contained that singular benefit of perfecting our sanctification by the nourishing and corroborating our inward man by eating or partaking of the spiritual or divine body and blood of our saviour , which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the lord's supper . [ verily ] that is to say , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , truly , in counterdistinction to typically , or symbolically , the bread and wine being but types or symbols of this . touching which in the answer to the question , what are the benefits whereof we are made partakers thereby ? it is said , the strengthening and refreshing our souls by the body and blood of christ , as our bodies are by the bread and wine , viz. which are but types of the true , spiritual or divine body and blood of christ , but they have a very handsome analogy the one to the other . but we proceed to the following words , [ and indeed ] that is to say , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , reverâ , or really , not as one scoptically would make us to profess , that this real participation of the body and blood of christ , has no reality any where but in our phancy , which we call faith. to which sense the translator of the peaceable method for the re-uniting protestants and catholicks , speaks in his preface to his translation . to which exception , this notion of the primitive fathers , according to which our communion-service is framed , and our homilies allude to , and we so much insist upon , is not lyable . [ by the faithful ] and that only by them , which body and blood the faithful do not receive by champing it with their teeth , and swallowing it down their throat . but by a fervid and living devotional faith more than ordinarily kindled at the celebrating the holy eucharist , they draw this divine and celestial food ( the true manna from heaven ) into their hearts , whereby their inward man is fed and strengthened , and nourished up to eternal life , and so the new birth getting growth daily , arrives at last to the due measure of the stature of christ. . this is the priviledge of the faithful receiver . but for those that are devoid of this true and living faith , though the divine body and blood of christ is every where present to the faithful , yet they who are unregenerate , and consequently devoid of the divine life , are capable of no union therewith , nor of any growth or strength therefrom . but it is like the light shining into a dead man's eye , of which there is no vital effect . but for those who are regenerate , and consequently have a real hunger and thirst after the righteousness of god , though the great feast upon this heavenly food is more especially and copiosely injoyed in the celebration of the holy eucharist , yet they may in some good measure draw it in day by day by faith and devotion , as without the presence of the bread and wine we may at any time devotionally think of the sacrifice of the death of our saviour . but certainly this solemn institution of celebrating his last supper , being particularly and earnestly injoyn'd us by christ , if we conscientiously observe the same , it will have a more than ordinary efficacy in us for the ends it was appointed . . sixthly and lastly , as those words of the catechism [ the body and blood of christ which are verily and indeed taken and received , &c. ] have , considered in themselves , a very easie and natural sense so explained , as we have according to the analogy of the doctrine of the primitive fathers and our church's homilies that allude to them , explained them ; so do they not at all clash with those words of the rubrick affixed at the end of the communion-service , where it is affirmed , that the sacramental bread and wine remains still in their very natural substances , and therefore may not be adored ( for that were idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful christians ) and the natural body and blood of our saviour christ are in heaven , and not here , it being against the truth of christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than one . there is i say , in this , no contradiction to what occcurs in the catechism , which affirms that there is a real presence of the body and blood of christ , which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the lord's supper , though here a real presence is denyed of the natural body of christ. but it is to be considered that this affirmation and negation is not of the same body of christ , and therefore can be no contradiction , and further to be observed , how the very rubrick suggests to us this distinction of the natural body of christ ( which is appropriated to his particular soul , and which hung on the cross and was crucified ) and his divine or spiritual body , the body of the essential life or spirit of the eternal logos , and therefore rightly termed the body of the logos incarnate , or of christ. and therefore when passages of the ancient fathers in the primitive times before the degeneracy of the church came in , may some of them favour a real absence , other a real presence of the body and blood of christ according as different places of the scripture might occur to their minds touching this matter , the controversy might well be composed by distinguishing betwixt the natural body of christ and his divine or spiritual body . according to the former whereof is the real absence , according to the latter the real presence of christ's body and blood , to be received by the faithful in the celebration of the holy eucharist . chap. viii . . monsieur maimbourg so cunning and cautious as not to attempt to bring the protestants to transubstantiation by their common consent in the real presence , but by a more general maxime , which , he says , we are all agreed in . . the aforesaid maxime with the explication thereof . . six supposals surmiz'd for the strengthening this engine for the pulling the protestants into the belief of transubstantiation . . a counter-engine consisting of sixteen common notions , in which , not only the romanists and we , but all mankind are agreed in . . an examination of the strength of monsieur maimbourg's engine , by recurring upon occasion to these common notions ; the first prop examined , viz. the churches infallibility by assistance of the spirit , and discovered to be weak from the dissention of churches in matters of faith in his sense . . from the promise of the spirit being conditional . . and from the predictions in the prophetical writings of a general degeneracy of the church . . the examination of the second prop , that would have transubstantiation believed upon the synodical decision of a fallible church . . the examination of the third prop , that would have the synodical decision pass into an article of faith. . the fourth prop examined by defining truly what heresy and schism is . . the fifth prop further explained by mounsieur maimbourg , in two propositions . . an answer to the two propositions . . i have , i hope by this time , sufficiently proposed and confirmed both the truth and usefulness of the distinction of the body and blood of christ ( which occurs in the primitive fathers ) into natural , and spiritual or divine . from whence it may plainly appear to any pious and uprejudiced reader , that the inference of a transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the real body and blood of christ , from a real presence of them in the lord's supper , is very weak and invalid . which monsieur maimbourg ( as well as the bishop of meaux , formerly bishop of condom ) though he take special notice of in his peaceable method , viz. that this real presence of the body and blood of christ in the lord's supper , is generally acknowledged by the protestants , chap. . whom he will have to hold , that the sacrament is not a figure or empty sign without efficacy , but they do maintain , saith he , that it does communicate unto us in a most real and effectual manner , the body of jesus christ to be the food of our souls ; and he will have monsieur claud himself acknowledge , that before this novelty of transubstantiation was introduced , every one believed that iesus christ is present in the sacrament , that his body and blood are there truly received by the faithful ; yet he is so wise and cautious as not to trust to the strength of this engine for the pulling us back into a belief and profession of that incredible hypothesis , but according to the fineness of his wit , has spread a more large net to catch us in and carry us captive , not only into this gross errour of transubstantiation , but into all other errours which the church of rome has broached , or may hereafter broach and propose as articles of faith. and therefore it is a point worth our closest consideration . . his general maxim is this , that that church in which are found two parties concerned , has ever had the power to determine all differences , and to declare that as matter of faith , which before there was no obligation to believe , and that we are bound to acquiesce in her decisions , under penalty of being schismaticks . by the church her declaring as matter of faith ( which seems to sound so harshly ) he does not mean , that the church has authority to frame new articles of faith , ( pag. . ) but that she is to act according to a rule , which is holy scripture , and tradition truly and purely apostolical , from which we have also received the holy scripture it self . and ( page . ) the church never did make , and undoubtedly never will make any new articles of faith , since it is not in her power to define any thing but according to the word of god , which she is always to consult with , as with her oracle , and the rule she is bound to follow . his meaning therefore must be this , that besides those plain and universally known articles of the christian faith , and acknowledged from the very beginning of christianity , such as are comprised in the apostles creed , there have been , and may be other articles of faith more obscurely and uncertainly delivered in scripture , which , until the church in a lawful synod or council has determined the sense of those places of scripture that appertain to the controversie , men have no obligation to believe , but go for the present , for but uncertain and indifferent opinions . but when once the true church , in which the parties differing in opinion are , and her lawful representative assisted by the holy ghost , ( as is affirmed chap. . pag. . ) a canonical assembly , which alone has full power and sovereign authority to say juridically ( chap. . pag. . ) it seemed good to the holy ghost and to us , has given definitive sentence touching the controversie , that which before was but an indifferent opinion , becomes now matter of faith , and is to be received as an article of faith by the dissenting party , upon penalty of being schismaticks and hereticks . this i conceive to be his precise meaning . but the great artifice of all is , that he will have this meaning of his to be the general opinion also of the protestant churches . who can , says he , ( page . ) question , but the protestant churches of england , france , germany , and switzerland and the low countries do hold as a fundamental maxim , that in such controversies as do arise concerning doctrine in matters of religion , the true church of which the dissenting parties are members , has full and sovereign power to declare according to the word of god , what is of faith , and that there is an obligation of standing to her decrees , under pain of being schismaticks . and ( page . ) i demand , saith he , nothing more for the present : i will content my self with what themselves do grant ; that that church of which the parties contesting are members , ( be she fallible or infallible ) has full power to decide differences , and her decrees do oblige under the penalty of being schismaticks . . now from this general maxim granted , as he conceives , on both sides , and which he does chiefly endeavour to prove from the carriage of the synod of dort , toward the arminians ( all which things to repeat here would be too moliminous and inconsistent with the brevity i intend , a full answer to monsieur maimbourg's method requiring some more able pen ) he declining , i say , all dispute touching the merit of the cause , the point of transubstantiation , he would hence draw us in , to the imbracing that doctrine merely because we were once of that church that has synodically determined for it , and consequently reconcile us to all the rest of the errours of the church of rome . but that we may not so easily be taken in this net , or pulled in by this engine , we will first examine the supposals that support the strength of it , or of which it does consist . the first and chiefest whereof is , that such synods to whose definitive sentence he would have us stand , are assisted by the holy ghost . the second , that whether they be or be not , we are to stand to their determination . the third , whatever matters of opinion ( as they are for the present but such ) are decided by such a synod , pass into articles of faith the fourth , that those that will not close with these decisions be they what they will , they are guilty of schism , as being bound to assent . the fifth , that these decisive synods or assemblies , are to decide according to the rule of the word of god. the sixth and last , that both the protestants and papists are agreed in all these . . now before i examine these particulars , these supposals , parts or props of his general maxim , by which he would draw the protestants again into the church of rome , and make them embrace transubstantiation , and all other superstitions and errours which they have synodically decided for matters of faith : i will , following the very method of this shrewd writer , propose not only one maxime , but several maximes , wherein both the romanists and we , and indeed all mankind are agreed in , and which therefore i will instead of maximes call common notions , in allusion to those of euclid . and the first shall be this , i. that which in it self is false , no declaring or saying it is true can make it true . ii. whatever is plainly repugnant to what is true is certainly false . iii. whatever is false can be no due article of a true faith or religion . iv. the senses rightly circumstantiated are true judges of their object , whether such an object be earth , air , fire , or water , body or spirit , and the like . besides that this is a common notion with all mankind , the incarnate wisdom himself has given his suffrage for it , in his arguing with s t thomas , iohn . v. . then saith he to thomas , reach hither thy finger , and behold my hands , and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side , and be not faithless but believing . what is this but the appealing to the truth of sense by our saviour himself ? and luke . v. . behold my hands and my feet that it is i my self , handle me and see , for a spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see i have . here is an appeal both to sense and reason at once , and that about the very body of christ , touching which the great controversie is raised . v. an essence or being that is one , so long as it remains so , as it is distinct from others , so it is undividable or inseparable from it self . vi. the whole is bigger than the part , and the part less than the whole . vii . in every division , though the parts agree with the whole , yet they disagree amongst themselves . so that the part a. is not the very part b. nor the part b. the very part c. nor can each part be truly and adequately the whole by the foregoing common notion . viii . the same body cannot be actually a cube and a globe at once , and there is the same reason of any other different figures of a body . ix . no revelation , the revealing whereof , or the manner of the revealing whereof is repugnant to the divine attributes , can be from god. x. no tradition of any such revelation can be true , for as much as the revelation it self is impossible . xi . no interpretation of any divine revelation that is repugnant to rightly circumstantiated sense and pure and unprejudiced reason , whether it be from a private or publick hand , can be any inspiration from god. xii . no body can be bigger and less than it self at once . xiii . that individual body that is already , nor ceaseth to be , cannot be made while it is already existing . xiv . one and the same body cannot be both present with it self and many thousand miles absent from it self at once . xv. one and the same body cannot be shut up in a box , and free to walk and run in the fields , and to ascend into the very heavens at the same time . xvi . and lastly ( to omit many other such self-evident truths or common notions ) it is impossible , that a man should swallow his whole body , head , feet , back , belly , arms , and thighs , and stomach it self , through his mouth , down his throat into his stomach , that is , every whit of himself into one knows not what of himself , less than a mathematical point or nothing . for if all be swallowed , what is there left of the man for it to be swallowed into , but a mere point or rather nothing ? . certainly all the world as well papists as protestants , as soon as they do but conceive the meaning of the terms , will assent to the truth of these propositions at the very first sight ; which therefore has made me call them common notions . let us now apply our selves to the use of them in the examining the strength of monsieur maimbourg's general maxime , wherein he will have the papists and protestants agreed . the first prop thereof is , that the true church is infallible by the promise made to her of being assisted by the holy ghost . but here i demand whether this promise be made to the universal church or any particular church or churches throughout all ages . that it is not made to the universal church throughout all ages , is plain , in that the parts thereof have been and are still divided in several matters of faith. that no such promise is made to any particular church or churches , is plain from hence , that these churches are not named in any part of the scripture ; which omission is incredible if there had been any such entailment of infallibility upon any particular church or churches . but of all churches , i humbly conceive , it is impossible it should be the church of rome , unless it be possible that all those common notions which i have set down , and in which all the world , even the church of rome her self , if they will speak their consciences , are agreed in , be false , which they must be if transubstantiation be true . and therefore let any man judge whether is themore likely , viz. that transubstantiation should be false or those common notions not true . . again , how does it appear that this promise of the assistance of the holy ghost is not conditional ? indeed christ says , iohn . . when the spirit of truth is come he will guide you into all truth , viz. the same spirit that is promised , chap. . v. , , . but the words of this pretended charter of infallibility are there set down more fully : if you love me keep my commandments ; and i will pray the father and he shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you for ever , even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive — the promise of the assistance of the holy ghost for the infallibly concluding what is true , even from the words of this pretended charter of infallibility , is conditional , that is to say , if they so love christ as to keep his commandments , and become not worldly and carnal ( for the world cannot receive this spirit of truth ) then this spirit which leadeth into all truth shall assist them . wherefore as many as christ sends this infallible spirit to , he first fits them for it by mortifying the spirit of the world in them , and making them members of his truly holy church ; for the calling themselves holy church , makes them never a jot the more holy , if they really be not so , by the first common notion . and besides , if the words of this charter of infallibility had not been so express , yet in common sense and reason this condition would necessarily have been understood . forasmuch as nothing can be more absurd than to imagine the assistance of the holy ghost to be so cheap and trivial a thing , as to be procured for the concluding controversies arising or set on foot in the church , which are needless and frivolous , or more for satisfying curiosity than edification , and which tend to division , and tearing the church violently into parts , which was one before and in a salvable condition without this decision , as monsieur maimbourg confesses himself : or that the holy ghost will assist such assemblies as are worldly and carnally minded , and are called to conclude for the worldly advantage and interest of a worldly polity , who for the upholding and increasing their temporal empire ( whereby they lord it over the world , and ride on the necks of kings and princes ) call themselves spiritual . certainly when all christian truth tends to real and indispensable holiness , if mankind were not left to the liberty of their own will , but christ would have them so infallibly wise , he would all along have prepared them for it , by making them unexceptionably holy , that they might become wise in his own way and method . and lastly , there being predictions in daniel and the apocalpyse of an antichristian state in the church to come ( in which there will be such a general apostasie from the apostolick purity ) even according to their own interpreters , i demand what assurance we have that these times came not ( in a very great measure ) upon the church , some hundreds of years before transubstantiation was concluded on by the roman church , which therefore must much invalidate the pretence of the infallibility of any such councils . and our church of england , as all know , in her homilies , whether by inspiration or by mere solid reason and judgement refers the vision of the seventeenth chapter of the apocalypse , to the church of rome . and , i hope , to any unprejudiced reader , that has leisure to examine things , i have even demonstratively made out that truth in my exposition of the apocalypse , and most punctually and distinctly of all in my ioint-exposition of the thirteenth and seventeenth chapters thereof , synops. prophet . book . chap. , , , &c. with the preparatory chapters thereto . let any one read them that please , and in the due fear of god consider them . wherefore , to conclude , touching this first prop of his general maxim , whereby he would insinuate that synods , to whose definitive sentence he would have us to stand , are assisted by the holy ghost , it does not only not underprop , but undermine his grand maxim. forasmuch as we have no assurance that those roman councils which have concluded for transubstantiation were assisted by the holy ghost , but rather quite contrary . . the second prop is , that whether a synod be or be not assisted by the holy ghost , we are to stand to their determination . if the synod be not assisted by the holy ghost then they are fallible , and may be in the wrong : so that the sense is , whether the synod determine right or wrong , yet we are to stand to their determination . which as odly as it sounds , yet in some sober sense , i must confess ingenuously , for ought i know , may be true , that is , in such things as are really disputable , and which for no sinister base design , but merely for the peace of the church and her edification , it has been thought fit to make a synodical decision of the controversie . but is this colour enough for the church of rome's determination to be stood to ? of making the bread in the sacrament to be transubstantiated into the very body of christ that hung on the cross at ierusalem ( and has ever since his ascension been in heaven ) by the priest's saying over it , this is my body , the bread still remaining bread to all outward appearance , as before , so that christ is fain to be at the expence of a perpetual miracle to make the transubstantiated bread look like bread still , though it be really the body of christ that hung on the cross at ierusalem . which , as i have noted above , is against his wisdom and goodness , in that , if transubstantiation be a true article of the christian faith , this is the most effectual way imaginable to make men , if left to their own free thought , to mis-believe it , however force and cruelty might constrain them to profess it : and so it is against his goodness , to expose so great a part of his church to such bloody persecutions as this article has occasioned in the christian world. that christ should do a perpetual miracle not that will confirm mens faith , but subvert it , not to edifie his church but distract it , and lay all in confusion and blood ! let any one consider how likely this is to be . this therefore could never be a point , bonâ fide , disputable , but to such as were horribly hoodwinkt with prejudice , and blinded with a desire of having a thing concluded by the church which was of such unspeakable advantage , as they then thought , for the magnifying the priest-hood , though i believe nothing will turn more to their disrepute and shame in the conclusion . now i dare appeal to monsieur maimbourg himself , whether we are to stand to the determination of a fallible synod in a point , that , besides what i have already hinted , contradicts all those common notions , which i have above recited , and in which all mankind are agreed . and such is this point of transubstantiation . . now for the third prop , that whatever matters of opinion ( as they are for the present but such ) are decided by such a synod , pass into articles of faith ; this prop is also really a puller down of this general maxim. for by an article of faith , must be meant such an article as after the synodical decision , is necessary to be believed by all parties upon pain of damnation but to this i answer , first , no falshood can be an article of faith , nor can what is in it self false , by all the declaring in the world that it is true , become true , by the first common notion . and secondly , since the whole church before , in which arose the controversie , were in a salvable condition , how unchristian an act must this be , to put so many thousand souls in the state of damnation , by so unnecessary , nay mischievous a synodical decision ! and therefore what pretence can there be to the assistance of the holy ghost , which christ has promised his church , when they machinate that , which so manifestly tends , according as the synod acknowledges , to the damnation of such a multitude of souls , which before the decision were in a salvable condition , and also to most barbarous persecutions of their persons , as it is notoriously known in history , touching transubstantiation . . the fourth prop charges those with the guilt of schism and heresie that will not close with the above-said synodical decisions , be they what they will. in which matter we cannot judge whether the charge be right , unless we first understand what is truly and properly heresie and schism . the former whereof i demand what it can be , but a dissent from the catholick church even in those things in it , that are apostolical . for whatever national church is found to have all and nothing else in it but what is apostolical , or not inconsistent with the apostolical doctrine and practice , is most assuredly one part of that one catholick and apostolick church , which we profess our belief of in our creed . and for the latter it can be nothing else but a separation from the catholick church , or from any church that is part thereof , even then , when she approves her self to be catholick , that is to say even then , when she is apostolick , or , though she be apostolick , and offers no opinions or usages but such as are conformable to the usages and doctrines of christ and his apostles , or have no repugnancy thereto . to separate from the church in such circumstances as these , certainly is that great crime of schism ; but to separate from that part of the church which imposes opinions and practices plainly repugnant to the precepts of christ and his apostles , this is no schism but union with the truly antient catholick and apostolick church . and the declaring it schism does not , nor can make it so , by common notion the first .. and if it were schism to separate from such a church as propounds things repugnant to the precepts of christ and his apostles , the guilt of this schism is not upon them that thus separate , but upon those that impose such anti-apostolical matters . . the fifth prop , that these decisive synods or assemblies are to decide according to the rule of the word of god , the strength of this prop he endeavours more fully to display pag. . and he calls upon the brethren of the reformed churches to reflect seriously upon these two propositions he sets down . the first is , that as the word of god is infallible in it self , so certainly the judgment of him who truly judges according to this rule is also infallible : and consequently they are obliged to believe , that the church when she judges according to this rule or the word of god , does not only not err , but that she also cannot err . the second , that they [ the reformed ] are bound [ as well as we the romanists ] to believe that the church of god deciding controversies of faith , does judge according to the true sense of the word of god : because upon the matter it is concerning this very sense that she gives judgment betwixt the parties , who give it a different sense , and who are obliged in conscience to submit to her judgment , under pain of being schismaticks and hereticks , as their synod of dort has positively declared . . the first of these propositions may pass for firm and sound , provided that the meaning of her judging according to this rule is the giving the right and genuine sense thereof : of which she can neither assure her self nor any one else , but by being assured of that holiness , integrity , and singleness of heart , in those of the synod , that makes them capable of the assistance of the holy ghost ; and also that their decision clashes not with those indeleble notions in the humane soul , that are previous requisites for the understanding the meaning of not only the holy scriptures , but of any writing whatever . and unto which if they find any thing in the letter of the sacred writ repugnant , they may be sure it is a symbolical or figurative speech , but in other writings , that it is either a figurative speech or nonsense . he that has not this previous furniture , or makes no use of it , it is impossible he should prove a safe judgeof the sense of scripture . and if he runs counter to what is certainly true , it is evident his interpretation is false by the second common notion , and that he is not inspired by common notion the eleventh . touching the second proposition , i demand how any can be bound to stand to the judgment of any synod , if they decline the previous requisites , without which it is impossible to understand the right meaning of any writing whatsoever ; and whether their pretending to judge according to a rule , does not imply , that there are some common principles , in which all parties are agreed in , according to which , though they cannot discern that the synod has certainly defined right , yet if the synod run counter to them , they may be sure they have defined wrong , touching the very sense controverted between the parties . their professing they judge according to the rule , implies the rule is in some measure known to all that are concerned . nor does it at all follow , because the object of their decision is the very sense controverted between the parties , that the synod may give what judgment she will , break all laws of grammar and syntax in the expounding the text , much less contradict those rules which are infinitely more sacred , and inviolable , the common notions which god has imprinted essentially on the humane understanding . if such a violence be used by any interpreters of scripture , neither the synod of dort , nor any reformed church , has or will declare , that under pain of being schismaticks and hereticks , they are obliged in conscience to submit to their determination . chap. ix . . the examination of the sixth prop , by demanding whether the maxime monsieur maimbourg proproses is to be understood in the full sense , without any appeal to any common agreed on principles of grammar , rhetorick , logick and morality . . instances of enormous results from thence , with a demand whether the protestant churches would allow of such absurd synodical decisions . . that the citations of history , touching the synod of dort , prove not , that all synodical decisions pass into proper articles of faith , with the authors free judgment touching the carriage of that synod , and of the parties condemned thereby . . his judgment countenanced from what is observed by historians to be the sentiments of king james in the conference at hampton court. . and yet the sixth and last prop of the general maxime implies as much , which affirms , that both the protestants and papists are agreed in all the five foregoing supposals , or to speak more compendiously in that his general maxime . that that church in which are found the two parties concerned , has ever had the power to determine all differences , and to declare that as matter of faith , which before there was no obligation to believe , and that we are bound to aquiesce in their decisions under the penalty of being schismaticks . but i demand here of monsieur maimbourg , whether he will have his maxime understood in a full latitude of sense , and that immediately without recourse to any principles in which the synod and the parties are agreed , and counter to which , if any determination be made it is null , such as grammatical syntax and lexicographical sense of words ; and ( which are laws infinitely more sacred and inviolable ) the common notions ( as i said before ) essentially imprinted on the soul of man , either of truth or morality , whether without being bounded by these , the protestant churches as well as the pontifician are agreed , that we are to stand to the determination of a synod , under the penalty of being schismaticks . . as for example , if a synod should interpret , drink ye all of this , of the clergy only , and declare it does not reach the laity , though the apostles and primitive church understood it did : if notwithstanding s t paul's long exhortation against religibus exercise in an unknown tongue , cor. . they should by some distinction or evasion conclude it lawful . if when as it is said , thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image to worship and fall down before it , they should distinguish and restrain it only to the graven images of the heathen gods. if when as it is said , thou shalt have no other gods but me , they should distinguish gods into supream and subordinate , and declare , we may have many subordinate gods , but only one supream . if when as it said , honour thy father and thy mother , they should restrain it to a father or mother of the same religion with our selves , whether political father or natural , otherwise we are free from this command , and may despise both our natural parents and our prince , if they be not of the same perswasion with our selves . and whereas it is said , thou shalt not commit adultery , if they should understand it only of such an adultery as is committed for the mere pleasure of the flesh , not for the health of the body , or assisting the conjugal impotency of his neighbour . if the commandment against murther , or killing an innocent person , they should restrain to murther that is accompanied with delight in cruelty , not that which is committed to raise a livelyhood , or secure an interest the murtherer has espoused . if the commandment against stealing , they should restrain to such theft as is against men of our religion and perswasion , but that we may rob and steal from others without sin . and according to the same tenour they should interpret , thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour , &c. i demand , i say , whether monsieur maimbourg does conceive , that the protestants , nay , or his own party , are agreed that all such determinations are to be submitted to upon penalty of being schismaticks . let him ask the reformed churches if they be thus agreed , or rather let him ask his own conscience , if he think they are . wherefore it is plain , that what he produces out of the history of the synod of dort , reaches not the point that he drives at , that is to say , that it is acknowledged by them , that after a synod has decided the controversie , or given the sense of places of scripture controverted , be it what it will be , the decision is to be stood to , under penalty of being schismaticks , and that there are not some commonly known truths , common notions of reason and morality , with which if the determination of a synod does clash , it is ipso facto null , and a demonstration that the spirit of god did not assist . . i observe farther , that all the citations that are produced either by monsieur maimbourg himself , or his translator , in his preface and appendix , will not amount to the protestants professing that every controversie or controverted opinion , after the decision of the synod , passes into an article of faith , which properly signifies such a doctrine , as without the belief of which , when it is proposed , he that mis-believes it forfeits his salvation ; for hereby the synod of dort had damned all the lutheran churches . for my own part i must confess , that in points that are so obscure , intricate , and abstruse , and which , as touching the main part of them , have exercised and much baffled humane understanding through all ages , it had been a great piece of christian prudence for that synod to have made decrees against all bitterness of speech of the disagreeing parties one against another , and to have admonished them that they were bound , notwithstanding their difference of opinion , to live in mutual love one to another , which is the true badge of christ's genuine disciples , rather than to have exasperated one party against another , by making that doctrine authentick , which is really in it self from places of scripture , and reason so intricate and disputable . but it seems to have been the sleight of satan for the weakning the reformed churches that drove them to it . but i must say , on the other side , that when the synod had determined , they who were determined against , ought to have submitted to her determination in a thing so really disputable , and by this christian policy to have conserved the peace of the church , and out-witted the devil . for if they had had any modesty in them , they might very well in such abstruse , dark and disputable points have compromised with the synod , and preferred the peace and safety of the reformed churches , before the satisfaction of their own opinionativeness . . and that wise prince , king iames the first of blessed memory , seems to come near to what i have said , in the words delivered by his embassadour at the synod of dort , as they are cited by monsieur maimbourg himself in his peaceable method , pag. . that for the allaying those troubles , there was but that one only means which the church had ever made use of , a national synod , which was to be judge in the case , and to decide which of the two opinions was more conformable to the word of god : or at least how and in what manner the one or the other might be tolerated in the church of god. which latter part is cunningly left out by the translator , in his preface , pag. . but in those latter words , king iames plainly intimates his moderate sentiments touching the controversy , and that he would not have the decision made too rigidly and pinchingly on either side . and sutably to this excellent judgment of his , in the conference at hampton-court , when the puritans would have had the nine lambeth articles , which are more full and express against the points of arminianism , to be embodyed into the articles of our church , concluded on in the convocation holden at london , in the year . the king earnestly refused it . and in his instructions to his divines he sent over to the synod of dort , this remarkable one was amongst the rest , that they would advise the churches that the ministers do not deliver in pulpit to the people those things for ordinary doctrines , which are the highest points of the schools , and not fit for vulgar capacities , but disputable on both sides . and we may be sure when he was so careful in this for the foreign churches , he would not neglect to infuse the same good principles into his own . and that he could not easily believe that upon the decision of the synod of dort , that passed into an article of faith , without which there is no salvation , which yet he would have hid from the knowledge of the people . chap. x. . what synodical decisions are capable of passing into proper articles of faith , and what not . . the necessity of distinguishing the doctrinal decisions of synods into articles of faith , properly so called , and articles of communion . . the meaning of the king's answer to mr. knewstub , in the conference at hampton-court : and that synods have unlimited power to put what sense they please on places of scripture , and make them pass into articles of faith , not proved to be the opinion of the protestant churches . . that our english church is against it , largely proved out of her articles . . no article of faith pre-existent in scripture that cannot be fetched thence but by interpreting against the proleptick principles of rightly circumstantiated sense and common notions ingrafted essentially in the humane understanding . . of decision of points necessary to salvation , and to the justifying the christian worship , and those that are less necessary , and less clear , and lastly , those that have an insuperable difficulty on both sides . . monsieur maimbourg's general maxime , that it is not agreed in by the protestant churches , abundantly demonstrated , with a note of the subtilty of the romanists in declining the dispute of the particular merits of their cause , and making it their business to perswade , first , that their church is infallible . . a meeting with monsieur maimbourg once more in his own method , and thereby demonstrating that transubstantiation is grosly false , and consequently the church of rome fallible , with an hint of a true peaceable method of reconciling papists and protestants . . wherefore it seems needful to take notice of this distinction of the doctrinal decisions of synods , that some pass into , or rather are of the nature of the articles of faith , the knowledge of them being necessary to keep us from sin and damnation . and such were the doctrinal decisions of those ancient primitive councils , who out of scripture plainly declared , the truth of the divinity of christ and triunity of the god-head , without which the church would be involved in gross idolatry . and therefore the decisions of the controversies did naturally pass into professed articles of the christian faith , and such as our salvation depended on . but to imagine that every doctrinal decision of a synod passes into a proper article of faith , without which there is no salvation , and that a synod has power to make that an article of faith , before which men were safe and sinless as to that point , is to put it into the power of a synod to damn god knows how many myriads of men which christ dyed for , and had it not been for these curious , or rather mischievous decisions , might have been saved ; than which what can be more prodigious ? . whence we see plainly it is most necessary to make this distinction in doctrinal decisions of synods , that some may be articles of faith , others only articles of communion , that if any oppose or disparage the said articles , whether they be of the clergy or laity , they make themselves obnoxious to excommunication ; and if a clergy-man does not subscribe to them , he makes himself uncapable of ecclesiastical imployment . this is all that monsieur maimbourg can squeeze out of all his citations out of the story of the synod of dort , so far as i can perceive , or his translator in his preface and appendix , out of those he produces touching the church of england . . and that which his translator in his preface would make such a great business of , viz , this wise kings answer to m r knewstubs , at the conference at hampton court , when he was asked , how far an ordinance of the church was to bind men without impeachment of their christian liberty : to which he said , he would not argue that point with him , but answer therein as kings are wont to speak in parliament , le roy s'avisera . and therefore i charge you never speak more to that point how far you are bound to obey when the church has once ordained it . i say nothing more can be collected out of this answer , but that he modestly intimated his opinion , that he meant not that all synodical decisions passed into articles of faith , but may be only articles of communion in the sense i have already explained . and what i have already said , if seriously and considerately applyed to what he produces in his appendix , will easily discover that they prove nothing more touching the church of england , than what we have already allowed to be her doctrine touching the authority of synods . but that a synod without any limitation or appeal to certain principles in which both the synod and parties contesting are all agreed in , may by her bare immediate authority , give what sense she pleases on places of scripture , alledged in the controversy , and that her decision passes into an artiticle of faith , which the parties cast are bound to assent to , under the pain of becoming hereticks and schismaticks . nothing can be more contrary than this to the declarations of the church of england . so far is it from truth , that all the protestant churches are agreed in his grand maxime above mentioned . . let the church of england speak for her self , artic. . as the church of jerusalem , alexandria , and antioch , so also the church of rome has erred , not only in their living and ceremonies , but also in matters of faith. and article . general councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of princes . and when they be gathered together ( forasmuch as they be an assembly of men , whereof all be not governed with the spirit and word of god ) they may err , and sometimes have erred even in things appertaining to god , wherefore things ordained by them , as necessary to salvation , have neither strength nor authority , unless it may be declared that they be taken out of the holy scriptures . here our church plainly declares , that forasmuch as a council or synod consists of fallible persons , they can determine nothing necessary to salvation , but what they can make out that it is clearly , to any unprejudiced eye , contained in the scripture , not fetched out by weak and precarious consequences , or phanciful surmises , much less by a distorted interpretation , and repugnant to common sense and reason , which are necessarily supposed in the understanding of any scripture or writing whatsoever , as i have intimated above . and even that article ( . ) which the translator produces in his preface , in the behalf of monsieur maimbourg's grand maxime , do but produce the whole article and it is plainly against it . for the words are these : the church has power to decree rites and ceremonies and autority in controversies of faith ; and yet it is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing that is contrary to god's word written , neither may it so expound one place of scripture that it be repugnant to another . wherefore although the church be a witness and keeper of holy writ , yet as it ought not to decree any thing against the same , so beside the same , ought it not to inforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation . it is true , the church is here said to have authority in controversies of faith. as certainly if any should raise new stirs in any national church , touching such points as the antient primitive synods have concluded for , in the behalf of the divinity of christ , and triunity of the god-head , pretending they have clearer demonstrations than ever yet were proposed against those decisions or any of like nature , which may concern the iustifiableness of our christian worship , and indispensable way of salvation , the church has authority as she ever had , in such controversies , to ratifie such articles of faith , but she is not said to have authority to make every synodical decision an article of faith , whether the nature thereof will bear it or no. nay her authority is excluded from inforcing any thing besides what is clearly enough contained in the scripture ( as assuredly those points are above mentioned , though with weak or cavilling men they have been made questionable ) to be believed for necessity of salvation . which is the proper character of an article of faith , according as the preface to the athanasian creed intimates . and monsieur maimbourg himself is so sensible of this main truth , that in the explication of his general maxime , he acknowledges that the church has no autority to coin any new articles of faith , but only to declare she has discovered them existent before in the scriptures , but not so clearly espi'd or discerned as by an assembled synod . . but certainly no article of faith , that is to say , no truth necessary to salvation can be said to be pre existent in the scriptures , and having lain hid to be discovered afterwards , that is not discovered but by such forced interpretations of the text , that are repugnant to common sense and reason . is not this a reproach to the wisdom of god , that he should inspire the holy penmen to set down truth necessary to salvation so obscurely , that the meaning cannot be reached without doing violence to common sense and reason , and running counter to those previous principles , without which it is impossible to make sense of any writing whatever ? or without interpreting one place of scripture repugnantly to the plain sense of another . which this article expresly forbids as unlawful . so plain is it that our church limits the authority of a synod to certain rules agreed of on all hands , against which they have no authority to define any thing : and plain places of scripture is one rule , contrary to which it is not lawful to interpret any either pretendedly or really obscure place . nor can any place at all be plain without the admittance of those proleptick principles of rightly circumstantiated sense and common undeniable notions essentially ingrafted in the mind of man , whether they relate to reason or morality . these , both synod and contesters , are supposed to be agreed on , and therefore no synodical decision repugnant to these according to our church in interpreting of scripture ( if i rightly understand her ) ought to have autority with it . . but as for doctrinal decisions , such as concern the justifiableness of the christian worship , and are of necessity to salvation , and such as , although either weak or willful cavilling men may make questionable , yet are clearly enough delivered in scripture , these , questionless , a synod has autority to determine as articles of faith. and such as have not the like clearness nor necessity , as also innocent and indifferent rites and ceremonies , when the one and the other seem advantagious to the church , such synodical decisions may pass into articles of communion , in that sense i have above explained . and lastly , as in that case of the synod of dort , when the points controverted have on both sides that invincible obscurity and intricacy , and there seems to be forcible arguments for either conclusion . what , i humbly conceive , is to be done in that case , i have fully enough expressed already , and therefore think it needless again to repeat . . in the mean time , i hope , i have made it manifoldly apparent that monsieur maimbourg's general maxime , viz. that the church , in which are found the two parties concerned , has ever had the power to determine all differences , and to declare that as matter of faith , which before there was no obligation to believe ; and that we are bound to acquiesce in her decisions under the penalty of being schismaticks , is not , ( especially as he would have his maxime understood ) agreed on by all churches , as well protestant as pontifician . and that therefore this snare or net , wherewith he would catch and carry captive the protestants into a profession of the infallibility of the church in synodical decisions ; so that the church must be first allow'd infallible , that we may glibly swallow down whatsoever she decides , even transubstantiation it self , with all other errours of the church of rome ; this net or snare , i hope , i have sufficiently broken . and i will only note by the bye , how the subtilest romanists declining the merits of the cause , labour tooth and nail to establish the absolute infallibility of their church . but our saviour tells us , by the fruit you shall know them . wherefore any man or company of men that profess themselves infallible , their infallibility must be examined by their doctrines , which if they be plainly any one of them false , their boast of infallibility most certainly is not true . . but forasmuch as an appeal to a maxime pretended to be agreed upon by both sides , both papists and protestants , is made use of with so much wit and artifice , to ingage the protestants to imbrace transubstantiation and the rest of the romish errours : i hope monsieur maimbourg will not take it amiss , if i civilly meet him again in his own way , and show him by an appeal , not only to one maxime but above a dozen at least of common notions , which i did above recite , and in which both papists and protestants , and all mankind are agreed , that it may demonstratively be made evident that the doctrine of transubstantiation is grosly false . for that which in it self is false , no declaring or saying it is true , though by the vote of an entire synod , can make it true , by the first of the common notions above-mentioned , chap. . sect. . secondly , whatever is plainly repugnant to what is true , is certainly false , and consequently can be no due article of a true faith or religion , by the second and third common notions . and therefore transubstantiation cannot pass into an article of faith by the authority of any synod whatever . thirdly , now that the doctrine of transubstantiation is false , is manifest from the assurance of our senses rightly circumstantiated . to which our saviour christ appeals , who is wiser than all the synods that ever were or will be , as was observed in common notion the fourth . but our senses assure us it is bread still , not the body of christ. fourthly , if transubstantiation be true , an essence or being that is one remaining still one , may be divided or separated from it self , which is repugnant to the fifth common notion . fifthly , if transubstantiation be true , the whole is not bigger than the part , nor the part less than the whole , which contradicts the sixth common notion . sixthly , if transubstantiation be true , the parts in a division do not only agree with the whole , but agree one with another , and are indeed absolutely the same ; for divide a consecrated wafer into two , viz. a. and b. this a. and b. are the same intire individual body of christ according to this doctrine , which contradicts the seventh common notion . seventhly , if the said doctrine be true , one and the same body may be a cube and a globe at once , have the figure of an humane body and of a pyramid and cylinder at the same time , according as they shall mould the consecrated bread , which is repugnant to the eighth common notion . eighthly , transubstantiation , if it be any truth at all , it is a revealed truth ; but no revelation the revealing whereof , or the manner of revealing is repugnant to the divine attributes , can be from god , by common notion the ninth : but if this doctrine of transubstantiation were a truth , it seems not to sute with the wisdom of god to reveal a truth that seems so palpably to overthrow and thwart all the innate principles of humane understanding , and the assurance of the rightly circumstantiated senses , to both which christ himself appeals , and without which we have no certainty of the miracles of christ and his apostles . and he hence exposes his church to be befool'd by all the lucriferous fictions of a fallacious priesthood . and besides this , the circumstances or manner of its first revelation at the lord's supper as they would have it , shows it cannot be ; for the consecrated bread retaining still the shape and all other sensible qualities of bread without any change , and that by a miraculous supporting them , now not inherent in their proper subject bread , which is transubstantiated into that very body that holds it in his hands , or seems so to do . i say , as i have also intimated before , to be thus at the expence of so vast a miracle here at his last supper , and to repeat the same miracle upon all the consecrations of the bread by the priest , which is the most effectual means to make all men infidels , as to the belief of transubstantiation , and to occasion thence such cruel and bloody persecutions , is apparently contrary to the divine wisdom and goodness ; and therefore neither pretended tradition nor fresh interpretation of the inspired text , can make so gross a falshood true , by the tenth and eleventh common notions . ninthly , if transubstantiation be true , one and the same body may be many thousand times bigger or less than it self at the same time , forasmuch as the least atom or particle of his body or transubstantiated bread is his whole body as well as the bigger lump according to this doctrine , which contradicts the twelfth common notion . tenthly , if this doctrine be true , the same individual body still existing and having existed many years , may notwithstanding be made whiles it already exists , which contradicts the thirteenth common notion . eleventhly , if transubstantiation be true , one and the same body may be present with it self and many thousands of miles absent from it self at once , be shut up in a box and free to walk in the field , and to ascend into heaven at the same time , contrary to the fourteenth and fifteenth common notions . and lastly , if this doctrine be true , a man may swallow his own body whole , head , feet , back , belly , arms , and thighs , and stomach it self through his mouth , down his throat into his stomach , that is to say , every whit of himself into one knows not what of himself , less than a mathematical point or nothing . this christ might have done , and actually did if he did eat the consecrated bread with his disciples , which contradicts the sixteenth common notion . wherefore since in vertue of one single maxim , monsieur maimbourg supposing the protestants as well as the paepists agreeing therein ( though in that , as i have show'd , he is mistaken ) would draw in the protestants to imbrace the doctrine of transubstantiation , and other ertors of the roman church , i appeal to him how much more reasonable it is , that he and as many as are of his perswasion should relinquish that doctrine , it contradicting so many common notions , which not only all papists and protestants , but indeed all the whole world are agreed in . and hence clearly discerning the infallibility of the roman church , upon which this and other erroneous doctrines are built ( such as invocation of saints , worshiping of images , and the like ) plainly to fail , that they should bethink themselves what need there is to reform their church from such gross errours , and to pray to god to put it into the mind of their governours so to do ; which would be a peaceable method indeed for the reuniting protestants and catholicks in matters of faith , and principally in the subject of the holy eucharist , as the title of his method has it . but to require an union , things standing as they are , is to expect of us that we cease to be men to become christians of a novel mode unknown to the primitive church , and under pretence of faith to abjure the indeleble principles of sound reason , those immutable common notions which the eternal logos has essentially ingrafted in our souls , and without which neither certainty of faith can consist , nor any assured sense of either the holy scriptures or any writing else be found out or understood . soli deo gloria . letters on several subjects with several other letters : to which is added by the publisher two letters, one to the reverend dr. sherlock, dean of st. paul's, and the other to the reverend mr. bentley : with other discourses / by henry more ; publish'd by e. elys. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) letters on several subjects with several other letters : to which is added by the publisher two letters, one to the reverend dr. sherlock, dean of st. paul's, and the other to the reverend mr. bentley : with other discourses / by henry more ; publish'd by e. elys. more, henry, - . elys, edmund, ca. -ca. . iv, p. printed by w. onely for john everingham, london : . imperfect: advertisement pages torn with loss of print. pages -end from the huntington library copy spliced at end. reproduction of original in the union theological seminary library, new york. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of england -- clergy -- correspondence. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - apex covantage keyed and coded from proquest page images - rina kor sampled and proofread - rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion licensed , nov. th , . d. p. letters on several subjects , by the late pious dr. henry more . with several other letters . to which is added , by the publisher , two letters , one to the reverend dr. sherlock , dean of st. paul's ; and the other to the reverend mr. bentley . with other discourses . publish'd by the reverend mr. e. elys . london : printed by w. onely , for iohn everingham , at the star in ludgate-street , near st. paul's . . the epistle dedidatory to sir thomas pope blunt , baronet . honoured sir , praise given to the descendants of hero's , is due more to the spring , ( generaly speaking ) than to the stream , whilst personal merits challenge it as their own right : but 't is your due , sir , on both accounts , for the honour of your family , and your own glory in the republic of letters , is known to the whole world. the small remains therefore of the learned dr. henry more , cannot meet with a fitter patron , than the learned sir thomas pope blunt. the brave and the learned sympathize with each other , so that you cannot be unwilling to be the living protector of our dead hero. 't is confess'd , that these letters of his are not so accurate and excellent as his more elaborate works ; but then it must be remember'd , that they are private , and familiar letters to his friend , the reverend mr. elys , and therefore only design'd easily to express his thoughts upon such occurrences as occasion'd their writing ; his love for the reverend divine they are directed to , and a vein of piety runs through 'em : and 't is not improbable that the doctor did not think they wou'd ever have been publish'd . but his friend , being highly sensible of the public merit of the doctor , reasonably suppos'd that any thing of so great a man wou'd be acceptable to his friends and admirers ; that is , to all the learn'd , who cannot but admire him with descartes ; who in one of his letters to him , declares , he never converst with any man with greater satisfaction . if we cut all away from the letters of cicero and pliny , that is not extraordinary , their number wou'd be much lessen'd : by which we find how well satisfy'd the world is with any thought or word of a great man. but i 'm sensible , sir , this apology for dr. more 's letters will be judg'd very superfluous ; and therefore i 'll not enlarge the impertinence on the account of the other familiar letters of this small volume , the names of the great men who wrote 'em , will more than justifie ' em . and as for those controversial letters , written by the reverend mr. elys , you 'll grant , i 'm sure , that they prove their author both a learned and a pious man ; qualities that will recommend his performances better to your protection , than what i can say , who have no share in the present i make you , but the propriety in the copy , given by my friend mr. elys ; and the value i have for the author 's concern'd in it , because i cou'd not hope any thing of my own wou'd be so worthy of your patronage , who are so celebrated and so learned a critic , as your works demonstrate . and this gains you the esteem , whilst your generous affability purchases the love of all men , as well as of , sir , your humble and obedient servant . letters on several subjects , by the late pious dr. henry more . sir , your very kind , and elegant latine letter , together with your pious and well-stated thesis , touching the extent of grace and salvation , i receiv'd by mr. d. — a good while ago . you 'll excuse my so long delay of returning you thanks for that undeserved respect you have done me in them both : for my hands being so full of business , and being of opinion , they might require a longer and more ample answer than i find now fit to under take , made me defer my writing till now . for as for your thesis , truly i think that you have hit the mark therein , and have as perspicuously as briefly coined the truth thereof ; tho it may be , i may be thought no competent judge , who my self have publickly declar'd , that besides the elect in a calvinistical sense , there be others also in a capacity of salvation , of whom , some i believe , obtain it , others fall short of it , through their own fault . as for my part , i think you have made a judicious choice of the character of such , viz. they that believe that the gospel of christ is true . for god has put into their hands such a talent , and is so ready to assist his own design , if they be not wanting to themselves , that i do not doubt but the work of salvation may go on in them also , and take effect , tho they be not absolutely , and irresistibly determin'd thereto . this is all that i think requisite to return touching your thesis , and to your extreamly kind and complemental letter , only that i am sir , your really affectionate friend and servant , c. c. c. december . . hen. more . sir , i have receiv'd yours of may d. . but no other letter before it since mine to you . i am glad that any things of mine do you any service or pleasure , and most of all that those that tend to the sanctification of the soul in the body . if we hold that such a soul when she is out of the body , or that body is dead , is in a state of happiness , and joy ; it is very indifferent to me what people think of the modes and circumstances thereof . that you keep so sincere a conscience as you describe ; it is a constant feast in the midst of any bitternesses from without . your free and sincere acknowledging of whatever good you meet with , is a right dove-like temper in you , but your defying of the contrary , because it may needlesly provoke , may have less of the serpent in it , than is lawful , or , it may be than commanded . our saviour joyns both . and it 's pity that so kind a heart should expose it self to any needless troubles : i am heartily sorry to hear you are subject to apoplectical distempers . observe a constant care in diet for meats and drinks , as to quantity and quality , that they be moderate , and a guard upon your self , that you be not too much transported in mind , which inflames the spirits , and spends them , and so makes nature subject to flag , and makes the principles of life vapid : this caution i conceive , is as material as can come from one that is no physitian . there was a good generous christian strain in the verses at the end of your letter ; and there was another such chain of verses , which mr. d. — sent to me as from you , which was very good . for both which i thank you , and remain your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . c. c. c. may th . . * deo opt. max. . . the paths thou leadst me in are those , which few , or none have trod before ; but though they are beset with woes , i 'll ne're go back , i 'll ne're deplore . . but chearfully i 'll walk alone , and trample on the world 's proud head : he wants not a companion , whom , god , the surest guide , doth lead . sir , since i receiv'd yours , i have been so unexpectedly busy , that i have not had the opportunity before now to write an answer . and i am even now upon a journy , and something streighten'd in-time ; but so much i must take , as to signifie to you , how sensible i am of your affection to my self ; tho i have had no occasion to oblige you , but that which is the main , to congratulate you , for that grace of god which he has shew'd you , in bringing you into so lively a sense of the best things . there is nothing better than what you drive at in both your greek and english poetry . love or charity , joyned with humility , is the most heavenly disposition that the soul of man is capable of : and the second , as it will ballast the first well , and prevent all the danger of over-much rapturousness , so it will direct the efficacy thereof to all useful services towards mankind , and especially such as are incumbent upon any duty of place , or calling . peter , lovest thou me ? feed my sheep , &c. which makes me conceive that flock happy , that have for their pastor so excellent a soul , so invigorated with that which must needs stir up all men to do their utmost for the salvation of others , and to serve them in whatever good they can . i am abruptly taken off by company , and have only time enough to tell you , that it is thought that one mr. hallywell , once fellow of our colledge , is the author of deus justificatus . this is all for the present , but that i am your affectionate friend and servant , hen. more . sir , i receiv'd yours a week or two ago , tho i have had no time till now , to signifie so much to you . the last time i wrote to you , i wrote also to mr. d. — but i have heard nothing since from him : i wish he be well . i superscrib'd my letter as heretofore . it 's pretty you should light on a tetrastick in greg. nazianzen , so like my 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : which upon receiving your translation of my 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , without translating that , i one morning turn'd into english thus , as near as i could . nor whence , nor who i am , poor wretch , know i : nor , o the blindness ! whither i shall go ; but in the crooked claws of grief i lye , and live ( i think ) thus tugged to , and fro . waking , and dreams all one . o father ! i own t is rare , we mortals live i' th clouds like thee . lyes , toyes , or some hid fate us fix , or move : all else being dark what 's life , i only see . your youthful poetical fire , you see , transfuses a little warmth into my old blood. your translation , both latin and english , is very well ; and indeed , your divine solitude is excellent . these expressions , as they are the emanations , and transient effluxes of a living fountain in a man , are both the effects and evidence of that divine happiness the soul is capable of , even in this life . i am something solicitous that i hear nothing from mr. d. — that he should not be well . when you write to him , i pray you tell him , that i writ to him the last time i wrote to you , and send me word of his health . i am yours affectionately hen. more . c. c. c. feb. . greg. naz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . quis priùs ipse fui , quis sum , quis eroque nec ipse novi , nec sophiae me quoque laude prior . sed vagor huc illuc caligine tectus opaca , nil horum , quae mens nostra requir it habens . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . unde huc adveni , vel quò miser ipse recedam , vel quis sim , diris tenebris mens obsita nescit . huc illuc agitant vario fata horrida motu : in vivis remanens vix possim cernere vitam . somnio sic vigilans . o iupeter ! o pater ! euge ! sunt etiam nebulae nobis habitacula ! nugas , falsiloquos homines , & inania nomina rerum , haec solum in vitâ memini vidisse misellâ . i know not whence i came , nor what i am , ( o wretched blindness ! ) nor to what i tend , but scratch't , and torn with sorrow , pain , and shame , i seem to live ; a thousand woes me rend . my waking thoughts are dreams . o father iove how brave is this ! ev'n we live in the clouds ! lyes , fancies , cheats , their strength in us do prove , but all good things the night of error shrouds . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . luminis aeterni radius de culmine coeli , elapsus coelum ( quanta haec sunt gaudia ! ) spiro . flammigeris alis rapidè me tollit in altum , sanctus amor : verâque animus bonitate potitur . vanida diffugiunt cum tristi somnia nocte , et circumvolvit nos lux super aethera fulgens . alma fides , sapiens , fortis , divina voluptas , vita est : sed reliquis , quantum est in rebus inane . nox & tenebrae , & nubila , confusa mundi , & turbida , lux intrat , albescit polus , christus venit , discedite . prudentius hymn . mat. beam of eternal light , from heav'n i came ; and ( o the pleasure ! ) unto heaven i go : now love infolds me in its tow'ring flame , i truly live , my thoughts with joy o're-flow . farewell to night and dreams . th' eternal sun doth us surround ; true uncreated light : faith , wisdom , joy and strength , our race to run , is life : but all things else are death , and night . divine solitude . . blest solitude ! in thee i found the only way to cure the wound of my perplexed heart . here i escap'd the worlds loud noise that drowns our blessed saviours voice , and makes him to depart . . whilst thus retir'd , i do attend toth ' words of my eternal friend , how my heart leaps for ioy ! love and rejoyce , says he ; but know , there 's no such thing as ioy below , the pleasures there destroy . . if thou wilt creatures love , be sure thou keep thy ▪ heart in me secure : know that i 'm all in all. then whatsoe're those creatures prove , thou never shall repent thy love ; thy hopes shall never fall . . thou shalt still have thy hearts desire , and sit down by th' eternal fire , when e're thy heart grows cold . but when i see a friends deep grief , i 'm griev'd methinks beyond relief ; this grief no words unfold . . if thy griev'd friend will love , says he , in dark affliction he shall see the nearest way to bliss . but if he mind the worlds fond toys , and take the sport of apes for joys ; he 's not thine , thou' rt not his . . and thus we talk , my lord , and i : so do i live above the skye , though here i move and breath . and when this vapours gone , i shall enjoy to 'th full my all in all , not die , but conquer death . sir , since my last to you , i have receiv'd four letters , and a book from you — — — — — — — the other next to this , mentions the divine dialogues , and takes occasion from those plain hymns at the end of the dialogues to fly aloft into an higher strain of poetry . i wish that book may have so good effect as your muse prognosticates . your kind letter dated in december , again mentions the divine dialogues , and does more confidently challenge me for the author of them , than the former . and indeed , i am so generally suspected , that i am fain to let it be so . i am glad they have so much gratified you in the reading ; the three first dialogues are more universally accepted , but the two last bear too much upon prophecies , which are not according to the gust and mode of this present age. whereas notwithstanding , they that complain of the uncertainty and obscurity of that subject , are too ordinarily drawn to give assent to such things as have not any thing near the like coherence or evidence . but every creature will go in its own tract . your reflections upon humility and rapture , are very useful and judicious . and he that improves his sincerity to the utmost will find his way through all without a monitor . i am glad you are so well satisfied with the discourse of the grounds of faith. i must confess , it seems to my self firm , and solid . — — — — i suppose you receiv'd mine , wherein i gave you an account of the author of deus iustificatus . no more for the present , but that i am , dear sir , your affectionate friend to serve you , hen. more . sir , i receiv'd yours of ian. . a pretty while ago , but had not leasure to return answer till now — — — — — — — — — in such cases it is most rational to rest in the determination of providence , and to keep a mans affections free from all things , and knit them only to that one , whose due they are , that what a mans arm is to his body , that his whole soul and all the powers thereof may be to the sovereign good , inseparably united thereto by a kind of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the arm is to the body , that not enduring to be disjoyned from the body , will let its hold go from any thing rather than endure that peril and pain . so whatever we lay hold on by our affections in the things of this world , we are ever to be free in that grasp , and not let them grow to the object , but be in a readiness to let go , and keep our own liberty entire for the only service of the sovereign good : and in good earnest to endeavour to die to all things of this world , and the allurements thereof , and to seek our satisfaction in that one that is above all , and affords more pleasure than all the things of this world . but if a man be not fully master of his body and complexion , it is impossible but it will shew him many a slim trick : for so far forth as we are subject to the suggestions of the body , we are captivated in fate and ignorance , and must be exposed to the impostures and mockeries of this vain world , and fall so far short of the desirable liberty of the sons of god. wherefore discreet devotion , and accurate and continued temperance is necessary to all such as have a desire to avoid these snares . i am glad the divine dialogues prov'd so seasonable and serviceable to you . it was a pretty curiosity betwixt you and mr. baxter ; but i think you would do best not to trouble your mind with such notions , as , though true , are not necessary . but i on the other side , much wonder at those that are so loath to admit , that the administration of gods providence is according to what is best , unless they choose rather to reproach god than acknowledge their ignorance in the excellencies of his providence ; but measure things according to the shallowness and narrowness of our own light or thoughts . you intimate some exceptions of men against the prophetick part of the dialogues , which i wonder not at ; many having neither a spirit nor competent patience to consider such things : but if you think good in your next to send me their most considerable objections , and from what sort of men they are , it will not be unacceptable . that you are so much concerned in the doctrine of the power to become holy , &c. i am glad to hear it from you : belief is but the first step ; and if men will not so much as embrace that , nothing will succeed . according to thy faith , so be it unto thee , saith our saviour . it is the hypocrisy of the world , that they are loath to have the blame lay'd at their own doors , that they are not so good as they should be . but they that have this belief with sincerity , it is a great cordial unto them , and will assuredly carry them very effectually to perfect holiness in the fear of god. in which noble pursuit , i wish you and all men good success , and abruptly take leave , and rest your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . sir , this is only to inform you , that i have since my last to you receiv'd your two books , one for dr. cudworth , and the other for my self . the doctor will find time , he says , to return you his thanks himself , as i do for mine , which i read over with a good relish . i have also receiv'd your last letter , and am glad that you feel your self with that satisfaction setled in your own element . your resolutition of managing your province , there is sober , christian , and laudable , and you will find every day more and more the comfort of it . that god would be pleased to confirm you and prosper you in so good a way , is the hearty desire of dear sir , your affectionate friend to serve you , hen. more . c. c. c. iune . . sir , i suppose yours of august . was the last you wrote to me , which therefore being above two months ago , and you hearing nothing from me all this time , you may easily surmise your letter miscarried , or that it is a miscarriage in me , that i have been so long silent : but i have been so hurried from one thing to another , that i knew not how the time went , and scarce believ'd this to be your last letter ( when i sought it ought amongst many others ) by reason of the oldness of the date . but having perus'd it again , i found it was the letter i had not yet answer'd . and it will not be easie to make an answer proportionable to the kindness and seriousness thereof : that you find so much satisfaction and pleasure in the reading my writings , is no ungrateful news to me , it being the only end ( so far as i know ) of writing them , to gratifie others for their good . all that i have writ being reducible to those grand queries of the wise man : what is man , and whereto serveth he ? what is his good , and what is his evil ? as i have particularly shewn in my proefatio generalissima . and so few concern themselves in this kind of knowledge , that i cannot hope to have many perusers of my writings in haste . you shew your sincerity as well as judgment , in giving a due value to that useful point , touching faith in the power of christ's spirit . there is nothing of more consequence than to be firmly fixt in that belief , that all sin , and corruption is conquerable through the might of the spirit of christ ; till one be persuaded of that , no man will set himself to resist his lusts to any purpose . and according to the weakness and smallness of their faith , such is their progress : as for what is past , and the opinions of men , i think it most advisable not to trouble your self with them , but to press on toward the mark of the high calling , whereunto we are called : nor to affect high raptures , or over-bearing inward sensations , which may happen from too great an inflamation of the spirits , but to examine our ardour of love to christ by what we do to his members , according as christ has signified to peter , lovest thou me more than the rest ? feed my sheep , &c. which i do not question , but you do perform in a good measure by what you intimate of the poor girl you often visited in her sickness ; and continuance in your seriousness will carry your further , and further on in such good offices . as for that book you mention , i cannot do any thing but pro re natâ , and it 's likely it will fall in course to me to do that , or something like it e're long . but there are many good books in the world already , if men would with sincerity make good use of them . i am glad you are setled in your weighty employment , to be guide of souls to heaven : in which , wishing you all good success , i commit you to god's gracious keeping , and rest yours , &c. hen. more . c. c. c. nov. th . . ad authorem enchiridii metaphysici . naturae aspiciens vultum tu lumine claro cernis in hoc rerum , fervidè amando , patrent illis se praebet solis natura videndam , diligere auctorem qui didicere suum . de vacuo tantas gaudens componere lites esse , quod appellat plebs nihil , omne probas . scilicet omnipotens vacuo se complet in ipso : namque hic ex nihilo rem sibi quamque dedit . ad lectorum enchiridii ethici . exhibet in parvis liber hic tibi maxima chartis : hic totum latium , totae pinguntur athenae . ad eximium virum , henricum morum cantabrigiensem . ut tantos veri causâ tolerare labores sustineas , bonitas certè te summa replevit lumine inexhausto , quo cuncta reducis ad unum , atque adeo ingenti studio requiescis in ipso . tot libris , variis vocum complexibus , illam simplicitatem animi foecundo numine pleni ex primis : ideas tam claro pectore rerum principio varias sanctè deducis ab uno . o quem te memorem ! volitent tua scripta per orbem terrarum : nusquam lateant haec lumina : et alis angelicis homines genius tuus excitet omnes , ut tibi consimilis , pennis adiutus amoris , summum quisque bonum , linquens alia , usque sequatur . sir , since my last to you , i received your tentamen theologicum , which is a pretty while ago , and perus'd it upon the receipt thereof , and return you my thanks for it . i like the air and spirit in it well . there was one ; it lying on my table , took it up , and read it over that very afternoon , but said , that you wrote like a quaker . and. i told him , that if all the church of england-men were such quakers , and all the quakers such church of england-men , the world would be well amended with us . — — — — — — — — — — — — what you intimated of the admitting amplitude in incorporeal beings , i conceive you are right in , and i find an usefulness , if not necessity in some , to have immaterial beings so represented ; and the schools themselves , tho' they speak so aenigmatically , do really at the bottom imply it — — — — — — — — — — i am so much taken up with the transcribing of the first part of my enchiridion metaphysicum , that you must excuse this brevity of mine , who am not in many words , but in truth your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . sir , i have receiv'd your melancholly letter , and am heartily sorry that there should be that occasion thereof , viz. that the young lady should be so irrecoverably ill , and that her death should be so hazardous to her affectionate mother . but as for your desiring of me to suggest to you what i conceive best for you to say to the young lady in your endeavours , to confirm her in her willingness to die : i do not believe i can suggest to you any thing but what either has , or will easily occur to your own mind . one thing is , she dying of a consumption , her passage will be in all likelyhood , very easy to her , which ordinarily makes death more terrible both to the dying party , and the by-standers . when she is once got into the other world , she being an innocent vertuous young lady , you may remind her , that there is nothing pleasing to her in this life , but the enjoyment will be incomparably more in the other . the friendship and society of amiable persons for feature and converse , the beauty of persons of the other world insinitely excelling that in this , as much as the purest star does a durty clod of earth : and these , whose persons and aspects are so lovely , it is the genuine eradiation of the life of their very souls or spirits , and they are as well assur'd of the cordial kindness they have one for another , and this at the very first entrance , as if they had been acquainted many years together ; nor is the affection of any father or mother to their only child , more dear and sincere , than that of the holy inhabitants of the other world toward good and innocent souls , that pass out of this earthly body into the condition of those heavenly spirits , those angelical ministers of the divine providence , who are ready about the godly when they die , to conduct their souls to the happy place provided for them : as our saviour himself has foretold us , in my fathers house are many mansions ; if it were not so , i would have told you . i go to prepare a place for you . and if i go to prepare a place for you , i will come again , and receive you unto my self , that where i am , there you may be also . this scripture handsomely opened , is apt to raise her affection to , and affiance in our saviour , who exhorts us in these words , ye believe in god , believe also in me , to have a confidence in him , and his promises . and for her dying young , you know that greek saying , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whom god loves , dies young . see the book of wisdom , chap. . vol. , , &c. the vanity , wickedness , and miseries we are incident to in this body of flesh , you cannot but think of . but if you could by chearful persuasions of the happiness of the departing into the other world , cause her to be pleas'd or desirous to leave this : i know not but it may contribute ( her mind being thus chear'd ) to the bettering the state of her body , and help on a recovery , if she be at all recoverable . but no doubt , but whatever shall happen from the providence of our gracious god will be for the best , to whose guidance and assistance , i commend you , and rest , dear sir , your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . c. c. c. march th . . an epitaph on the truly vertuous l. m. f. who dyed may th . . maid , wife , and widow , she did always shew her business was ▪ to give to all their due : to god , her husband , and her children dear , she gave her soul , her love , her constant care : her husbands death , of all her children too , and ev'ry thing that mortal men can call woe , with christian patience she did undergo : on earth she met whatever could ▪ molest , to fit her soul for everlasting rest . in solitudinem cui aliquot mensibus assuevit priùsquam sibi , innotuit praestantissimum virum , optimum amicorum , h. m. è vitâ discessisse . scilicet humani generis consortia vito , angelico ut valeam me sociare choro : arctiùs amplector te nunc , coelestis amice ; nulla venit sine te nox mihi , nulla dies . in somno visa est species morientes amici : ah quanto exardent pectora amore mea ! me placidè aspiciens flammantem hac voce repressit : irruat in mentem passio nulla tuam . — — poteris nec morte revelli . sir , yours of feb. th . i have receiv'd , &c. there is no pleasure comparable to the not being captivated by any external thing whatsoever , but to reserve himself entire for the service of god , and the lord jesus christ. your judgment touching the drinking of wine is true , and will stick with you the better , since it is built upon experience . amongst your other verses , i more particularly like that distich : i do but think my friends are good , but know my love is good which i on them bestow . that faith and belief in the power of god to become holy , &c. it is the great gift of god to you , that you are to acknowledge with all humility and thankfulness ; for it is of main importance for the making a man good , and it is a sign of a great measure of simplicity of spirit , that a man will own such a doctrine ; for it is a sign he seeks no excuses for the evil he commits , but openly lays the fault at his own door , and exposes himself to the more severe and envious censures of other men . but here a man must be sure to attribute all to the power of god , and that not only rationally and verbally , but feelingly and sincerely , and to confirm the truth of his profession by a most profound and exemplary humility of mind and conversation . whether it be in the power of all men to believe this so important doctrine , is a question more uncertain ; but the belief theréof being of that great importance for holiness of life , it is very ill done of any man to oppose it . i wrote to our friend mr. d. — the last time i wrote to you , and superscrib'd it according to his direction , but i know not whether it carry'd my letter to him ; if you know whether he has receiv'd it or no , and would give your self the trouble of sending me word thereof in your next , you would thereby oblige your affectionate friend and servant , hen. more . c. c. c. march th . sir , your last letter i have receiv'd , but your former long one , tho'i enquired after it at the post-house , yet i cannot recover it . i am glad you and mr. h. — are so well satisfied with my expositions . i hope mr. d. — is well , tho you have not heard from him of late . your chearful paraphrase of my 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were enough to revive him . you have translated it very well , saving your mistake in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by which i intended ; i truly live , in answer to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . if you be so long in translating one after the other , as i was in making of them , it will be some years . for i wrote 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when i was undergraduate , but my 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 after i was master of arts. my enchiridion ethicum , with the translation of the greek , has been out these two months at least . i am glad my pains are so well accepted as you intimate : it is the only reward i am sensible ▪ of . it is an excellent text your friend chose out of ieremiah , and very suitable to his purpose . i am glad you have your health so well , and that you do so well bestow it . your associating or not associating in the circumstances you name , you must your self be judge of according as you find your self in a capacity to do good thereby , and receive no harm . a man must feel his way in such things . i see nothing amiss in that passage of your divine solitude . there 's a good lively strain in both your paraphrases ; but the english seems the more easie , and nearer to the copy . i am much straitned in time , which has made me scribble so fast , and leave off so soon , and have a line or two to write to mr. d. — to see if he will speak to his and your affectionate friend and servant , h. more . c. c. c. jan. , . sir , the year is expired , and yet i have not answer'd yours of the th . of october , which i hope you will excuse , especially i having now the opportunity of wishing you a happy new year . i am glad my enchiridion metaphysicum gave you that satisfaction . the poetical heat it stirred up in you is sound and good , and the verses handsome : the other two parts of my metaphysics will be less needful , when my writings are translated into latine . in the first part , i have done what is most proper for me to do ; in what follows , there would be but what either others or my self have said already : but if i live to publish my second volume , viz. the philosophical , no new thoughts touching this metaphysical subject , shall be lost ; but i will contrive them in some form or other to go along with the philosophical volume . i am now altogether taken up with translating my writings into latine : if you see dr. t. — again , i pray you remember my service to him . dr. barrow is a very worthy person , and that discourse you mention , very good and christian . — — — — — — that saying of yours , touching the eternity of the world , is as true as handsome , as my judgment is now : but heretofore i thought so much of the goodness and power of god , that i did not so much consider the incapacity of the creature . — if it please god i live to finish the present task i am taken up with , it is likely enough i may write such a practical treatise in english , which i have long since call'd the safe guide ; but whatever becomes of me , i doubt not but god will stir up those that will assist his true church , and the main ends of religion . nothing more for the present , but that i am dear sir , yours affectionately hen. more . jan. . . sir , i have receiv'd yours of nov. . i was so full of business that i was fain to defer the answering of it till now . i told dr. cudworth what service his sermon did you on that place of scripture you mention : that saying of plotinus you have pickt out with judgment , it is very significantly exprest ; and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is that wherewith all men are in a manner always hurried ; scarce any attending to that which is more inward in the soul her self , and truly moral and divine . plotinus is raised to a great price it seems ; i bought one when i was iunior master for shillings , and i think i was the first that had either the luck or courage to buy him . as for my latin translation , my theological volume is now in the press , and i hope it will be finish't within this year or thereabout . when this is out , i intend , god willing , to set upon my philosophical writings to translate them , which wiil excuse me the going on in my enchiridion metaphysicum . but i shall , i believe , in an epistle give some brief account of what i should have done , if i had gone on , whereby nothing new shall be lost . i pray return my affectionate service — — wishing you both a chearful christmass , and an happy new year : i take leave , and rest dear sir , your affectionate friend to serve you , hen. more . c. c. c. decemb. th . . sir , i deliver'd your enclosed book to dr. cudworth , after i had run it over my self ; he returns his thanks to you for it , who has also run it over , but has not had leisure to observe things so closely and districtly , as to spy out those points you intimate that you differ from him in . i think you would do well , distinctly and expresly to signifie them to him , or me . i asked him about his second volume , but he says , he hath so many , both colledge occasions and domestick , that he cannot yet tell when he shall be in readiness to send the papers of his second volume to the press . i wish you all good success in your competition for your lecturers place in st. clements , and should be glad to hear that you have sped . there 's good , pious , and useful sense in your verses ; but that passage in which there is a star , and refers to gregory the great , is notwithstanding dark and obscure to me . your letter to the chancellor of denmark , has things in it not unsuitable to his condition , and fit to be thought on in all conditions : for he that makes it not his business to enlarge his own will and desire , is a real prisoner in his inward man , tho' his outward be free to go where he will. whoever permits himself in any sin , or is captivated with any thing but the love of god and true vertue , is his own prison and jailour . and in those things therefore every man is sincerely and impartially to examine himself , and forthwith to break the bands and cords of whatevervanity he finds himself held with , and cast them from him , that he may become the faithful servant of christ , whose service is perfect freedom . thus with my kind respects — committing you both to gods gracious keeping , i take leave , and rest your affectionate friend to serve you , hen. more . december d . . sir , i beg your pardon that i have not return'd my thanks for your civil and pious letter at this time , it being almost a quarter of a year since i receiv'd it : but i have been much taken up in business , and have but so much leasure as to excuse my self . your citations out of savanorola are pertinent and pious ; and certainly he was a ve-holy man : but picus mirandulanus has dress'd up his life , so that it looks like one of the rest of the roman legends . he knew more than those times would bear , and 't was his honesty and courage , that he would die in what he knew to be true . i am glad you find so much benefit in being persuaded of that main point of faith , in the assistance of christ's spirit for the subduing our corruptions . there is little hope of any progress in the ways of true holiness without it . and they that have it possess a jewel , if they make right use of it , and not entertain it as a true notion only , but as an indispensable principle of life , that will remind us perpetually , that it is long of our selves if we be not as we should be ; for as much as we are assur'd , there is in readiness so powerful a supply of strength and grace from christ , if we will sincerely set our selves to resist our spiritual enemies . as for the query you put to me , i think you are a little too early in forecasting about such things : let us speak what is true , and do what is just and righteous , and make it our business to kill , and consume all remainders of corruption in our souls and bodies in that condition we are , and god will give us wisdom when the time of suffering comes , to do what is most behooffal . no man can give advice at such a distance either to himself or any one else ( i am sure i cannot ) what he is to resolve of . but in general , the safest way is that in which there is the greatest self denyal , and that no interest of his own stands in competition with the interest of christ's church and kingdom . thus commending you to god's gracious guidance and keeping , i take leave , and rest your affectionate friend and servant hen. more . c. c. c. feb. . . sir , yours of iune d . came to cambridge first , but in my absence from thence was sent me to london , which i brought with me hither again ; but i have been in such an hurry of business both at london and here since my return , that i had no leasure to look out your letter , and peruse it till now . i am glad you are so much gratified with my philosophical volumes . the copies in quires is my gift to you ; but if you will indulge so much to your own proneness to lay out your mony that way , as to pay for the binding , you may follow your own humour in that , if you be so minded . the same party that you say declared to that french gentleman , that i wrote not satis terse , i have heard from other hands , that he has much commended my latine style : so that these things are as mens humours take them , and searce one of a thousand that can make shift to understand latine are competent judges of a style , but measure things by the scantness of their own skill in the tongue : as theophrastus his character of a country man , in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is , touching his receiving mony , that he would cry out , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because he had not the skill to discern what was current and what not . but for any little fidling 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , where any such occur , i leave the reader to mend , as i declare after the syllabus scriptorum , &c. to all the world. the employment you hug your self in , is a very noble and weighty employment ; and if you see your labour succeed in your hand , you need envy no man's happiness , that fancy themselves in an higher or more splendid condition ; besides that , our stay here upon earth is but for a moment : so that if men were not intoxicated with the unwholesome fumes of the world , they would be ashamed of their so much stickling to get the most counters , and cherry-cobs . these be seneca's pueri barbati : and to avoid that sarcasm , one would think it were the humour of the age so universally to cut off their beards , that such stoics may not pull them by them . how one should be affected in divine worship , your intimations are sound and right so far as i see ; and your study of condescending to the capacity of meaner people , highly laudable . and if you can engage sir s. — to read over with you that manual you mention , and seriously to consider it , i hope with god's blessing , it may do him much good . your poetry is handsome upon the anagram of the name of the gentleman's father : but still i advise you to heat your self no more than needs must . with my commendations — committing you all to god's gracious keeping , i take leave , and rest dear sir , your affectionate friend to serve you hen. more . c. c. c. aug. th . . sir , i humbly thank you for your accumulation of favours . — — ro. sharrock . these following verses i present to all pious readers , particularly to those who with me enjoy'd the friendship of these excellent men , whose names shall be esteem'd amongst the learned as better than pretious ointment , through all generations . reflections on a passage in some printed verses , entituled ; an essay of friendship : thy contemplation yields more ioy than all the transports of the winged boy . . where souls indeed united are without the mixture of gross sense ; no time or chance their ioys ▪ impair , advanc'd to pure intelligence . . wit , learning , beauty , vertue , all that comes from god they quickly spy ; not only what men here so call , but what 's such in capacity . . they who immortal souls can love , do all created beauty view : since beyond time their thoughts still move , what they enjoy is always new : . see , sprightly youths , substantial joy : what you pursue is but a sliade , in paradice your thoughts employ , there love's pure flowers shall never fade . upon my being recover'd out of a kind apoplectical fit , by a spoonful of cold water poured into my mouth , . baptismal water thus revives souls that by sin have lost their lives . my soul and body both restor'd to life by the almighty word : i' th' use of water i would be , my iesus , so devote to thee , that from henceforth there be no fire in me , but that which doth aspire to heav'n above ( from whence it came ) in one pure everlasting flame . thus water sprinkled on my fire , shall make the flame still mount the higher , that the remainder of this life may be no stay on earth , but an ascent to thee . my reverend friend , i receiv'd yours ( and that enclosed ) by the last post , and this comes ( with my love and respects ) to return my thanks . though i know well enough that i have many accusers ; it was in you the part of a friend to let me know what crimes they lay to my charge . for my not visiting my diocess , i have this to say : my great age and many infirmities disable me personally to do it , being now ( within a few months ) years old . when i came to the bishoprick , i appointed a visitation , printed articles , and sent them to the arch-deacons ; but when i should have set upon that work , i found that i was not able to take such large journies , and do the business which should have been done in them ; so that upon the sense of my own disability and my friends advice , i appointed my chancellor and commissioners to visit for me that time , and writ a long letter to my brethren the clergy , containing directions for their studies and conversation , such , as ( had i been able to have gone in person ) i should have deliver'd to them by word of mouth , in the speeches i was to make in several places . i did afterwards visit by my chancellour and commissioners once or twice . then my arch-deacons ( of which i have in my diocess ) visiting twice a year ; i gave them a charge , and directions diligently to do it ; and if any dubious or difficult business happen'd , which they could not so really reform : i requir'd them to bring it to me , that i might auxiliis & consiliis , assist them : and on this account i have personally determin'd more causes ( especially cases of conscience ) than any of my accusers ever did , or ( may be ) ever could . but innocence is no fence against a false tongue ; far better men have been calumniated ; and i have no reason to expect freedom from what ( all good men endure ) calumnies . however , i hope ( by god's blessing ) to have so much religion and christian charity , as to pardon , and pray for my enemies , and never ( though it were in my power ) do , nor wish them any harm . — — — — — — — — — — — i thank you for your animadversions upon dr. s. — how he will be able to justifie those propositions , or give any probable sense of them to free them from heresie ( if not blasphemy ) i know not , ipse viderit . i am your affectionate friend and brother , tho. lincolne . buckdon , sept. st . . reverend sir , sar. aug. . . i congratulate to you the truth of what you learn by the experience , that all things work together for good to them that love god , even crosses and afflictions sweetned with joy in the holy ghost ; and whilst you have that , you may part with sir sandy's fortescue as you did with your dearer friend , not with contentment only but comfort , whilst you live the life of faith , and do believe you shall go to them as well as after them . what you transcribe out of st. chrysostom , is as comfortable , as it is true . god deals with us , as we with our little ones sometimes , let 's us fall gently , that we must cry to him for help , and perfects us by sufferings as well as the captain of our salvation ; afflicts , because he loves us , and fits us for himself by both . my latine book you will have from mr. davis ( whom i hope you have written to for it ) you will find as full of typographical errors as any book of that bulk , tho such as will not hinder a man of your skill in the perusal . the main thing you are to mark , is , whether the book does not justifie the title in reconciling the points , the most knotty , and least agreed on by learned christians . if a copy of one or two leases of title congres is necessary , as you say , 't is sufficient , it shall be sent . but if 't will be sufficient to send a certificate under the hands of one or two publick notaries , that such leases there were and are in our authentick registers , of such and such dates , covenants , conditions , and parties , &c. 't will save much labour of transcribing , which yet we will not repine at , if it be needful . i know not who in oxford may stand in need of an ingraver ; but i will write and commend , and recommend mr. savage , whose father was a learned worthy person , and his mother a noble one . but i release you to your st. chryfostom , from whose conversation you must be no longer detained by your very affectionate humble servant , tho. pierce . worthy sir , beginning with that i am fullest of , my very hearty thanks to you for your epigrams in greek , and your latine writings annext , ( whereby i see and applaud your skill in both . ) i am sorry i must tell you ( and yet i must ) that i am as perfectly a stranger to the books you point at , and the author of them , as i am to your person and to the place of your abode : of which as soon as you know the cause , you will give me your pardon , if not your pity . for it is not my fault that i am president of a colledge , nor does so take me up with business , and wholly secular , that you mistake me very much if you believe me a student , or one who is acquainted with modern books as they come out . however , in pure respect to you , sir , i will as soon as i shall return from a long journy i am taking ; ( and i take very many , as i am head of this house , ) inquire after the author you do not name , and peruse the books you direct me to , whose passages which you transcribe , do so surprize me , that i am apt to believe , he only says such things by way of objection to be answered , or ex sententia adversariorum . but i 'll examine him at my return , and with my very first leisure , and make known what i find wheresoever it shall be found of most importance your obligedly affectionately and humble servant tho. pierce . m. c. ox. june . . worthy sir , this is to thank you for your anagram , and for the very great esteem which you express of dr. iackson , whom whilst you admire , you commend your self too ( tho out of gratitude only to him , not of vanity in your self , ) because of him it may be said ( as 't was of cicero by quintilian , ) scias multum profecisse cui iacksonus valde placuit . next i must thank you for your kindness and partiality to my self , expressed by your most friendly interpretation of my employments , and your opinion of the good you suppose me doing , as well as of the good which you think you may receive by my prayers for you . you shall have them as heartily as you ask them obligingly , that god will bless ( with a good effect ) your designs and indeavours of disseminating truth as far and wide as you are able . and that we both may so live , as to give life to such prayers , shall again be the prayer of your very affectionate humble servant , tho. pierce . m. c. aug. th . . reverend sir , m. c. apr. . . mine eyes are grown so sore with the damps of this place ( which , with the love i bear to privacy , and greater freedom from secular cares , hath been a chief cause of my resigning this dignity , and with it the best half of my whole revenue , ) that it hurts me to write or read . nor had i now written to you , but to thank you for your excerpta out of the excellent dr. iackson , which you have clad in good latine , i do not doubt ( for mine eyes are not yet in a condition to peruse it ) and with a very good zeal have made an antidote against the socinian poyson , wherewith many souls are of late infected . i am now leaving oxford , to try if i and mine only son left , can find better health upon gloucestershire , cotswold , and after that upon salusbury-plain . one of the first things i do , ( for i have divers and large ones , and some for the publick , ) shall be to read your whole book , and particularly your two letters to mr. parker , a rising man ( i assure you ) and very much prefer'd already by the arch-bishop with whom he lives . so as in that you shew your courage , and your impartiality , and the no-aims you have to rise by lambeth . i think as you do in the conclusion of your letter , of the world 's being distemper'd ; and as you pray , [ rapidos comprime fluctus ] so does he who is obligedly your affectionate humble servant , tho. pierce . worthy sir , this is to tell you i have receiv'd , and throughly read your exclamation , which gives me occasion to pay you thanks for the piety , and the zeal , the christian courage and indignation , which you express against the folly and the profaneness now in fashion , amongst a sort of carneadists , who think it below them to be religious , whom if your publick reprehensions does not convert , it will not condemn ; and you will have freed your own soul , whatever becomes of other men's , whom if rebukes do not inrage , they do but commonly make merry ; and therefore if you find them swine , you are not bound to cast more of your pearls before them ; for they may tear and rend you ; but you will never mend them , or make them ermyns . all you say is news to me , ( who never read mr. cowley , ) and does surprize me so much the more . but mr. vaughan does write so very much like a good man , that i am sorry i should not have heard ( as indeed i did not ) that there is any such author extant , whom it seems i might have read with equal profit and delight : nor in good earnest am i sure , whom you mean by the leviathan , mr. cowley publickly commended ; hobbs , or cromwell . that you will wonder at my ignorance of our lately printed books , and possibly compassionate my want of leisure to peruse them . but i rest satisfied in my condition , as very much better than i desire . and so far i am from envying , that i congratulate to others the injoyment of time for contemplation and reading , which is denyed to , your affectionate humble servant , tho. pierce . m. c. ian. . . i have a book in the press which i intend to send to you as soon as finish't , but that will hardly be till my return to this place , from which i am shortly to take a journy for a month. reverend sir , yours of the th . of the last month came to my hands on the th . of this , and acquaints me with your translation of my long elegy into latine , which 't is hard to do well , and so the more likely to commend your command of the latine tongue , if the poem does not loose very much in the translation . i acknowledge the great authorities you alledge for the practice and use of poetry , and 't is laudable in all , who are so much above their proper business , as to suffice both for that , and their recreations . such were nazianzen and grotius ; but the most excellent dr. hammond and bishop sanderson , were none of that number , much less am i : that you can discharge all the duties of your priest-hood ; to write in prose against the errors of iansenius ; and to write verses at the same time , and the hardest of the kind too ; a latine translation of arrant english gives me occasion to say with aristotle , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i grow in indispositions as well as years , and am so much more modest , or more timerous , or more judicious than when i was younger ( for i know not well what it is ) that i can seldom do any thing which i can readily approve of , and have contracted an averseness to divers things ( such as poetry and musick in special manner ) wherein i formerly most delighted , and thought i had the most skill in . but if you send me your translation ( as you say you do intend ) i will tell you what i think of it , as i did divers friends what i thought of their translations of my sermon against the papists . the thesis you held at oxford was very modest , and very safe . iustin martyr does go much farther , who yet ( you know ) was too primitive to be a pelagian . st. augustin is cited by the remonstrants and antiremonstrants , as a patron of both those ways into which he was betray'd by the usual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in his contrary disputes against the pelagians and the manichees ; so that reckon his authority none at all in those points , all things consider'd . and having cloy'd my self formerly with disputes on that subject ; i am grown averse to that also : but you it seems have now that youngness and inclination which i had then , and may with more plausibility oppose those errors in iansenius a papist , than i did in calvin , dr. twiss , dr. reynolds , dr. barlow , dr. bernard , mr. barloe , mr. whitfield , mr. baxter , mr. hickman , and some other writers , who had the advantage of being protestants , which made my writings ill resented by a protestant party , tho well received by the most and best of men amongst us , yea , by a multitude of the party i writ against , who have publickly thank't me for their conversions ; if so , i may call their change of judgment . i think you will do well to consider mr. sherlock ( a stranger to me ) before you condemn him , because i perceive , he has the best men's approbation , and may be taken by the wrong handle , as many orthodox men have been . they that quarrel dr. hammonds letters to dr. sanderson ( whose longest letter was to me , altho i sent it dr. hammond , in whose friendship we long had met , ) are hardly worth a wise man's anger , and you need not purchase them yours . sir , the sickliness you speak of , has invaded these parts too , and the share i have lately had of it , does make this employment the less in season to your affectionate brother and humble servant , tho. pierce . sarum , jan. . . reuerend sir , at my return out of a berkshire visitation , i met with yours at sarum of the th . of this month , wherein i read your translations of montross his epitaph on the king into good greek verse , and better latine ; these last being the happiest i have yet seen of yours , and so the fitter to be the last too . for you will never do better , and 't is filthly to perform worse and worse , which makes me fearful of ever more verfifying my self , and a dissuasor to other men who are grown in years , and have a greater as well as graver vocation to pursue . your weekly or frequent preaching , and your ingaging in the quinquarticular controversy , will require your whole man , whilst yet in health , and be too hard for all your faculties , when you grow valetudinary as you will by much study , do what you can in prevention of it . all your iansenists and calvinifts are well-performing writers against pelagius , and the massibienses , and so far useful only , they spoil the good they do , and make themselves more obnoxious by their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which carry'd them into the contrary , and ( in my opinion ) the worse extream . we are led between both , by the church of england , and i congratulate to you the happiness of being one of her sons . such i hope i shall die , as i have liv'd ; and as such i subscribe my self your affectionate brother and humble servant , tho. pierce . sarum , may th . . to dr. sherlock , . sir , i have seen a printed paper , wheren i find your pretended vindication of your error , in saying , that the three persons in the holy trinity are three infinite spirits : tho i was the first , say you , who had made use of those terms in such a sense , yet i ought not to be reprehended : in opposition to such a practice , as you conceit to be so excusable , the learned isaac casaubon produces these most important sayings of plato , epictetus , and galen , pl. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . epict. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . gal. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . certainly , no christian schollar was ever guilty of a greater piece of insolence than this , to use terms in a discourse concerning the holy , blessed , and glorious trinity in such a sense , which they were never us'd in by any other man. is not this to boast in your singularity , in a conceit of a kind of superiority to the communion of saints ? whose consent in this matter is exprest in these words of saint augustin , epist. . spiritus est deus ; & pater spiritus est , & filius , & ipse spiritus sanctus ; nec tamen tres spiritus , sed unus spiritus , sicut non tres dii , sed unus deus . i do not , say you , reprove the use of the word person ; but it were to be wish'd that those who first introduc'd this term into divinity , had given us a clear and proper notion of it . answ. their notion of it plainly imports , that a person is that , or somewhat which has an intelligent being or essence . now it implies no contradiction , that in the one absolutely infinite , and incomprehensible being , there should be the father , and the son , and the holy ghost ; of each of which three , it may be said . he is that which has an infinite intelligent essence . but it may not be said , that the father is the son or the holy ghost , or that the son is the father , &c. and yet we must acknowledge , that the father , and the son , and the holy ghost , have one essence absolutely infinite , that is to say , that these three are the one true and eternal god. the father is god , the son is god , and the holy ghost is god ; and yet they are not three gods but one god. you say , that you have demonstrated , that tho three finite spirits must needs be three different substances , yet it follows not that three infinite minds must be so . i answer , you never did , nor ever shall demonstrate , but that it is the most palpable contradiction that words can express , to say , there are three infinite minds or spirits : an infinite spirit is a being absolutely infinite . to say then , that there are three infinite spirits , is to say , there are three beings or effences absolutely infinite , that is , there are three gods . i am your servant in the vindication of the truth , e. e. to the reverend mr. richard bently . reverend sir , my reflections on the great wit and learning i find in your sermons , make me to hope , that you will with all christian candor , and tranquility of mind , peruse the animadversions i shall here present you on some part of your sermon , on acts , . p. . and . such a radical truth that god is , springing up together with the essence of the soul , and previous to all other thoughts , is not pretended to by religion . no such thing that i know of is affirmed , or suggested by the scriptures . animadv . 't is said expresly , genesis . . god created man in his own image : since god is a spirit , most certainly the principal part of man must be a spirit ; man being created in the image of god , in a peculiar manner made partaker of the eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the image of the invisible god ; so that the first reflexion that man makes on his own being , must carry him immediately to the perception of the divine being , in which he lives , and moves , and has his being , unless his intellect be obstructed in it's operation by the pravity of his will. i wonder that you say , no such thing is affirmed or suggested by the scriptures . i shall entreat you to consider these words of st. basil , epist. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ipsissima veritas deus noster est , primum enim , & principale cognoscibile deus est . agreeable hereunto are these words of that most excellent metaphysitian , dr. thomas barlow , late bishop of lincoln , in his fourth exercitation , the second edition , pag. . sicut impossibile est tactum , quam diu est tactus , non sentire ignem esse calidum , si ei . admoveatur , cum illud sit objectum tactus fortissimè motivum : sic dico intellectus , quam diu est intellectus , non potest non judicare deum esse , & esse colendum , cum hoc sit objectum ejus primarium , & fortissimè motivum , cum sit veritas prima in cordibus inscripta & firmissimè radicata . if this will not serve to convince you of your error , yet i hope you will not stand out against these plain words of the holy apostle , ( rom. . . ) speaking of the gentiles , which shew the work of the law written in their hearts . does not the apostle mean the law of god ? can there be any innate notion or natural sense of the law of god , without any apprehension of this truth , that god is ? i hope you will not say again , that no such thing that you know of is affirmed , or suggested by the scriptures , both of the old and new testament : if our apostle , say you , had asserted such an anticipating principle , engraven upon our souls before all exercise of reason , what , did he talk of seeking the lord , if haply they might feel after him , and find him ; seeing that the knowledge of him was in that manner innate , and perpetual , there would be no occasion of seeking , nor any hap or hazard in the finding ? such an inscription would be self-evident without any ratiocination , or study , and could not fail constantly to exert its energy in their minds . answ. the holy apostle in these words plainly shews , that the way to find the lord our god , is not to conceive as idolaters do , that he is far from us ; but to consider , that in him we live , and move , and have our being , viz. that the divine essence comprehends , or eminently contains the life , and every motion , or operation , and the nature or essence of every man in the whole world , and consequently the essence and operations of all other creatures ; so that the lord our god must be no other than a being infinite in all perfection : and since he is in all creatures , and in a peculiar manner in rational creatures , it must needs follow , that 't is impossible that any rational creature should not apprehend this fountain of all being in every regular , or orderly reflection it makes on it self [ or it s own being . ] — — such an inscription , say you , would be self-evident without any ratiocination , or study , and could not fail constantly to exert its energy in their minds . to this i answer , that it implyes a contradiction , that it should be perceiv'd by the soul without any reflexion on it : that there is such an inscription on the rational soul , you must at length grant , unless you will deny that those words were written by divine inspiration , which shew the work of the law written in their hearts . not only the admirable structure of animate bodies , and such other things as you speak of , but every thing in the whole creation shews the existence of the one infinite being . that any man is atheistical proceeds only from the pravity of his will , perverting his understanding . praesentem monstrat quae libet herba deum . i am unspeakably delighted with those words of the excellent ingenious and learned malebranche . de inquirenda veritate , lib. . cap. . an difficile est agnoscere deus existere ? quicquid deus fecit , id probat : quicquid homines , & bruta faciunt , idem etiam probat . quid plura ? nihil est quod existentiam dei non probet , aut saltem quod ingeniis attentis , & rerum omnium authorem inquirentibus illam non possit probare . — — — — — i wish you all happiness , and remain your servant in the love of the truth , edmund elys . sir , i humbly thank you for your accumulation of favours : your new present comes only to put me in mind , that i am your debtor for the first : quin fluctus in ipso fluctu . i had scarce recover'd from your first , when you pour out a new stream of poetry and rhetorick upon me , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 't is confessedly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i had almost like the unhappy bee , drown'd my self in anothers hony ; but that i found finis before i wish't it : and then i bethought my self , that you had observ'd the kings rule , solomons i mean , has thou found hony , eat as much as is sufficient ; for you give it out by doses , and measure your pieces by us that are to read them . i have sent your book to mr. boyle , and can assure you , that he received your letters , and had return'd you an answer , as his h. told me , had he known how to have directed it to you . i know you have good nature enough to pardon this hasty scrible , from sir , your most humble servant , ro. sharrock . july . . in obitum doctissimi viri , fidelissimi amici , thomae pierce , s. t. p. decani sarisburiensis . sanctus amor mihi te cum tot conjunxerit annos , tu certe nec jam morte revulsus eris . morte mori vostra videor , * doctissimi amici , hac ratione etiam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . . great ! good ! and just ! could i but rate , &c. montross , iustitia , bonitate ingens ! si quantus in imo corde mihi dolor est , si qualia fata ferebas , aequo animo possem factis ostendere , flerem quae totum obruerent lachrymarum flumina mundum . sed cum suppetias poscat vox sanguinis alta , non quas argi oculi , sed quas praestare briarei vis manuum poterit , cantus tuba clara sonabit funebres , titulos defuncti sang●●●e scribam . a letter to the author of a book , entituled , an enquiry into the constitution , discipline , unity , and worship of the primitive church . reverende domine , quis quis es , erudite vir , mihi certè videris esse rerum in ecclesiâ novandarum avidus . nos domini nostri jesu christi inimicum esse judicamus istius modi hominem , qui cum professus sit semetipsum esse ecclesiae anglicanae filium hominibus anglicanis persuadere velit , ut animum inducant credere non adeo esse necessarium orationis dominicae usum , ut eum existimat ecclesia anglicana . si tu mecum non consentias in omnibus , quae in hac dissertatiuncula exaravi , te rogo per istum , quem in proefatione tuâ professus es , candorem , ut mittas mihi aliquam à te scriptam oppositionem . ex collisione adversantium sententiarum veritas clariùs eluscesoet . vale. reverende domine , dissertatiunculam , quam mihi misisti , perlegi , ac in toto meo libro me contra patres , quos citâsti , aliquid soripsisse non memini , sed è contrario ad probandum dominicae orationis usum eosdem patres , aut saltem aliquos eorum in testes adduxisse . non sum , domine , domini nostri jesu christi inimicus , perfectioni orationis dominicae assentior , nec aliter rerum in ecclesiâ novandarum avidus , nisi ut lites nostrae componantur , & ecclesiae nostrae divisae unitas tandem reddatur . hoc quidem nitar , & deum pacis semper invocabo , ut det pacem in diebus nostris , & ut caeptis amorem , & unitatem quaerentium benedicat . vale. nov. th . . honoured sir , i thank you for your letter , in which you shew so great candour and civility , that i hope your design is not so ill as i feared it was ; tho i am very averse from several of your assertions , particularly that concerning the lord's prayer , viz. that the primitive church did not always use it in their solemn worship . — to which i answer , that it cannot be prov'd , that any bishop of the primitive church , or any one of the inferiour clergy with the allowance of his bishop , did ever undertake to perform the publick worship of almighty god , without the use of the lord's prayer . some of the greatest enemies of the church of christ in this kingdom , are those men who pretend to be true ministers of the gospel , without true ordination , and in their congregations never use the lord's prayer . i shall here recite some of my own words ( that have been published in two several papers : ) — it is most evident that those men are guilty of abominable iniquity , who endeavour to seduce any people from the communion of the church of england , in which the fundamental articles of the christian religion are so clearly and fully exprest , and those most important expressions so frequently repeated , that persons of the lowest intellectuals , who do not rebel against the light in frequenting our religious assemblies , may more easily attain to the knowledge of all things that are necessary to their salvation , than by hearing or reading the best sermons that have been , or shall be preached by any of the nonconformists to the end of the world ; which assertion is as evident as it is , that any illiterate persons may more easily meditate on truths plainly exprest , and frequently suggested to their remembrance , than collect the same truths out of divers large discourses , if they were therein implyed : so that it can hardly be imagin'd , how any man can be in any thing more serviceable to the destroyer of souls , than by teaching people to dispise our catechism and common prayer . sir , if you sincerely desire the peace of the church , i beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of our lord iesus christ , that you would deeply consider what i have here written in conscience of my duty at all times , and in all places , to love the truth and peace . your faithful servant , e. e. nov. th . . sir , i shall not give you the trouble of any preface , to what i shall write in vindication of this most important truth , that the primitive church in the publick worship of almighty god , did always use a liturgy , or form of sacred words , namely the lord's prayer , the psalms , and the gloria patri . you say , that origen prescribing a methed of prayer , speaks not a word of the lord's prayer , de oratione , sect. . i answer , that in the former part of his treatise , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he speaks very much of the lord's prayer , and plainly shews , that 't was us'd by all christians in their religious assemblies . i pray , sir , bestow your second thoughts upon these words , page . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ▪ pag. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , p. , . he plainly shews , that in what he speaks of the lord's prayer , he would be understood to have respect in a special manner to the puplick worship . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . lib. . contra celsam , edit . spenc. pag. . he speaks expresly of common prayers , in which he certainly implies the lord's prayer , of which he discourses so largely in his book , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . how great regard the primitive christians had to the gloria patri , is manifest by that holy aspiration of polycarpus , which you cite . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. and by those words of origen , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , page . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . you say , as to these prescribed forms , there is not the the least mention of them in any of the primitive writings , nor the least word nor syllable tending thereunto , that i can find , which is a most unaccountable silence , if ever such there were ; but rather some expressions intimating the contrary , as that famous controverted place of iustin. martyr , who describing the manner of the prayer before the celebration of the lord's supper , says , that the bishop sent up prayers and praises to god with his utmost ability , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , apol. . that is , that he pray'd with the best of his abllities invention , expression , judgment , and the like . answ. this famous place of iustin martyr is so far from favouring the conceit , that the christians in those days us'd extemporary prayers in their religious worship , that it clearly demonstrates the contrary : for the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , having reference to the laity ( of whom iustin martyr speaks in these words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , plainly shews , that the bishop did send forth , or pour out pryers and thanksgivings in like manner as the laity did , whose words no person of common sense will believe to be of their own composing : these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , plainly im-import the reciting or repeating of of words formerly us'd in prayer , and thanksgiving . hesychius . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , does not signifie the utmost strength of his faculty of framing extemporary expressions , in the way of prayer and thanksgiving , but the utmost intention of his heart and mind in the act of his devotion . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; here is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , luke . . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the same apology : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. i pray god to bless you , and to lead you by his holy spirit , into all truth . your faithful servant . e. e. jan. th . . ianuary th , . reverend sir , your letter of the th instant i have receiv'd . i thank you for your pains to inform me in any thing , wherein you imagine i have been mistaken , tho i think that in some things you misapprehend my meaning . you affirm in the first place , that the primitive church in the public worship of almighty god , did always use a liturgy , or form of sacred words , namely , the lord's prayer , the psalms , and the gloria patri . as for the psalms , i say the same with you , and i think that i have proved it beyond contradiction , pag. , . of my book . as for the lord's prayer , i say also , and have proved it , p. , , . that it was ordinarily and commonly used , and no more ; if so much can be collected from those places , which you cite out of origen , in his books 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and contra celsum as for the gloria patri , you never find it within the three first centuries ; that which you cite of origen and polycarp , proves only this , that they concluded their prayers with praise to god the father , son and holy ghost , as i think all christians now do . besides , by ascribing too great an antiquity to the present gloria patri , you put an argument into the hands of the socinians or unitarians , who will retort upon you , that you have changed that apostolical , or at least most ancient composure ( as you affirm it to be ) for that : whereas you now say , glory be to the father , and to the son , and to the holy ghost ; the primitive church , as in those very passages , which you quote , ( not to mention any more ) said , glory be to the father , by the son , in the holy ghost , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in iustin martyr , i do not say that it excludes the intention and fervency of the heart and mind , but that it includes that together with the exertion of his personal abilities . what you mean by extemporary prayers , i do not well understand : if you mean a confused , immethodical heap of words , i dislike that as much as you ; as you may see pag. . but if you mean the debarring of a minister from the exercise of his invention , judgment , expression , and such like gifts in prayer ; i must therein disagree from you , 'till i see more satisfactory proof . as sor your descant upon the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it is a good criticism , that may please the fancy , but not satisfie the judgment ; and as for iustin martyr's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it has not reference to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but to what iustin martyr related in the precedent page , which is the th of the edition i use , at colen ; and in particular to the eucharistical prayer , which the bishop alone made , and the people only testified their assent by saying , amen thus , sir , i have briefly consider'd your objections , and shall crave leave to inform you in short of my opinion , concerning the custom of the primitive church herein , that so you may not mistake me , viz. that they always used the psalms in their public worship , the lord's prayer commonly , and ordinarily , and for other prayers , the ministers were left to their own choice and liberty : i have one thing more to add , and that is , that you would not imagine every thing to be my particular opinion , which i have related in my book , or that i thought every thing necessary to be now used , which is contained therein : my design , as you may see in the preface , was only nakedly to relate the customs of the primitive church , without giving my particular sentiments in any one point whatsoever , unless it be in the conclusion of the last section of the second part. how far we are to submit to the authority of our governours , and to comply with the peace of the church , i neither there nor here determine . i beg almighty god to inspire our governours , and people , with a spirit of peace and love , of unity and charity , and that instead of promoting fiery disputations , and rigid impositions , we may joyn in mutual condescension and relaxations . i thank you for all your kindnesses , and beseech almighty god to bless your studies , and make you instrumental for the advance of his glory and honour . i am , reverend sir , your humble and affectionate servant . honoured sir , i give you most hearty thanks for your letter : i shall have no farther controversie with you concerning the gloria patri , since you ackowledge that the primitive christians concluded their solemn prayers with praise to god the father , son , and holy ghost . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in st. polycarp's doxology , is the same , as if he had said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which sufficiently obviates the wrangling of a socinian . i suppose , upon second thoughts , you will not deny , but that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has reference to the prayers of the laity , of whom the blessed martyr speaks in these words , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. i fully assent to all that our gracious soveraign king charles the first says concerning the public worship of almighty god : i believe his judgment is right in this , as in his other sentiments . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first edition , p. . i am not against a grave , modest , discreet , and humble use of ministers gifts , even in public , the better to fit , and excite their own , and the peoples affections to the present occasions . oremus invicem ut salvemur . your affectionate servant , e. e. feb. . . post-script . i shall make no other reply to what you say of the lord's prayer in your letter , than only by repeating what i said in mine , viz. that it cannot be prov'd , that any bishop of the primitive church , or any one of the inferiour clergy , with the allowance of his bishop , did ever undertake to perform the public worship of almighty god , without the use of the lord's prayer . i do most confidently aver , that the want of the practical understanding of the lord's prayer , is the chief cause of all the sins and errours in the christian world : wherefore i earnestly beseech all those that have named the name of christ , to joyn with me in the daily contemplation of the divine sence of these words deliver'd unto us by our blessed saviour , as a compleat directory for all our desires : our father , which art in heaven ; hastowed be thy name . thy kingdom come . thy will be done in earth , as it is in heaven . give us this day our daily bread. and forgive us our trespasses , as we forgive them that trespass against us . and lead us not into temptation , but deliver us from evil. for thine is the kingdom , and the power , and the glory , for ever and ever . amen . a vindication of the liturgy of the church of england . the author of these reflections most stedfastly resolves , by the help of almighty god , to embrace truth , and to reject error wheresoever he finds it . he desires , that the friends of r. b. would take these reflections into their deepest consideration , with the same candour and benevolence to all mankind , with which he communicates them to the world. i am glad to find these words , pag. , . i would not be understood as if i intended the putting away of all set times and places to worship ; god forbid i should think of such an opinion : nay , we are none of those that forsake the assembly of our selves together , but have even set times and places , in which we carefully meet together to wait upon god , and worship him . these words following in the same page require our animadversion . but the limitation we condemn , is , that whereas the spirit of god should be the immediate actor , moreover , perswader and influencer of man , in the particular acts of worship , when the saints are met together , this spirit is limited in its operations , by setting up a particular man , or men , to preach and pray in man's will , and all the rest are excluded from so much as believing , that they are to wait for god's spirit to move them in such things , and so they neglecting , that which should quicken them in themselves , and not waiting to feel the pure breathings of god's spirit , so as to obey them , are led meerly to depend upon the preacher , and hear what he will say . answ. i shall undertake , by god's assistance , to vindicate the use of the liturgy of the church of england , the principal parts whereof are the lord's prayer and the holy psalms ; i say , the psalms , for they are to be us'd in our religious assemblies , as the means or instruments to lift up our hearts unto god. i would here avoid all disputes concerning the ordination of ministers . in our assemblies the people bear a part with the minister or preacher , in using their voice in worshiping almighty god : the spirit cannot be limited in its operations by any thing that is taught or practised according to any order of the church of england . we are taught not to pray in man's will , but according to the will of god , which is our sanctification . we are taught to wait for god's spirit to move us to the performance of any thing he would have us to do ; but we are taught also to believe , that god's spirit is always ready to assist the sincere , those who desire above all things to do his will , to worship him in spirit and in truth , in saying or hearing the words of our liturgy in the congregation . the very moment that any soul truly devout waits for or expects the assistance of the spirit of christ , to help her to perform any known duty towards god , or towards man , she never fails to receive it . concerning the psalms i shall speak hereafter . it is the duty of all christians , at all times , and in all places , to retain in their hearts the habit , ground , or principle of all those holy desires which are exprest in the lord's prayer ; this 't is to pray continually . when the words of this prayer are recited in the congregation , it is impossible but those who have the habit of those holy desires in their hearts should worship god in spirit and in truth , viz. in the act or exercise of those desires , by the inspiration of the divine spirit , whose operation never ceases , but when man in his own will or self-love doth suppress or totally extinguish such holy desires or aspirations . i am very sorry to see so ingenious and learned a person as r. b. err so grosly about the lord's prayer , in which he shews himself tainted with that impurity of mind , for which dr. owen has been so often corrected , p. . we know not what we should pray for as we ought , but the spirit it self maketh intercession for us , &c. rom. . . but says r. b. if this prayer had been such a prescribed form of prayer to the church , that had not been true , neither had they been ignorant what to pray ; nor should they have needed the help of the spirit to teach them , p. . to this i answer , that it is impossible that any man should actually know as they ought to know the sence or meaning of any word in the lord's prayer , but by an actual influence of the divine spirit upon his heart and mind . i must therefore proclaim to all the world , that it was the spirit of error which suggested these words to r. b. if this prayer had been such a prescribed prayer to the church , that had not been true , neither had they been ignorant what to pray ; nor should they have needed the help of the spirit to teach them . by what i have already said , it appears , that if by these words , our adversaries , &c. p. . he means all those who worship god according to the english liturgy , he 's very uncharitable : our adversaries , says he , whose religion is all , for the most part , out-side , and such whose acts are the meer product of man's natural will and abilities ; as they can preach , so they can pray when they please , and therefore have their set particular prayers . answ. we acknowledge , that we can never pray as we ought , but by the assistance of the spirit of god , but his assistance is always ready for us : if at any time we fail of it , we our selves are the cause we have it not . as to set particular prayers , we own no prayer but the lord's prayer , further than the sense of it is implied in some part of that compleat body of vocal prayer , that divine summary or breviary of the expressions of all holy desires , p. . because this outward prayer depends upon the inward , as that which must follow it , and cannot be acceptably perform'd , but as attended with a superadded influence and motion of the spirit : therefore cannot we prefix set times to pray outwardly , so as to lay a necessity to speak words at such and such times , whether we feel this heavenly influence and assistance or no , for that , we judge , were a tempting of god , and a coming before him without due preparation . to this i answer , that whatever feeling we have , or have not in the sensitive powers or faculties of our souls , if our heart , our will , or spiritual appetite be rightly affected towards god , our prayers will most certainly be acceptable unto him : and his holy spirit is always ready to assist every man that believeth in iesus , so to order and dispose his own spirit , that it may comply with the will of god in all things . it cannot be a tempting of god , to depend upon him for his gracious assistance to do his will : and it is his will , that in our religious assemblies we should use words in prayer ; when ye pray , say , our father , &c. luk. . . p. . to desire a man to fall to prayer e're the spirit , in some measure , less or more , move him thereunto ; is to desire a man to see before he open his eyes . that is an irreverent expression , to fall to prayer ; but most certainly it is our duty to call upon all men , who profess christianity , to observe the times of the public worship of almighty god ; and to testifie to them , that if they will sincerely trust in god for christ's sake to assist them by his holy spirit , they shall never fail of his gracious assistance ; he will help their infirmities , and enable them to cry , abba father , rom. . , . p. . as for the formal customary way of singing , it hath in scripture no foundation , nor any ground in true christianity ; yea ▪ besides , &c. answ. if by the formal customary way of singing , he mean that way of singing psalms in metre , or the reading of them in prose , which the church of england is accustomed unto . it is a gross errour to say , there is no foundation for it in the scripture ; have we not received a precept from our blessed lord , by his apostle , to sing and make melody in our hearts to the lord ? and can there be any better means to do this , than what the apostle prescribes in these words , speaking to your selves in psalms , and hymns , and spiritual songs ? can there be any better psalms , &c. than those which were most certainly and unquestionably compos'd by divine inspiration ? yea , says he , besides all the abuses incident to prayer and preaching , it hath this more peculiar , that oftentimes great and horrid lyes are said in the sight of god ; for all manner of wicked prophane people take upon them to personate the experiences and conditions of blessed david , which are not only false as to them , but also as to some of more sobriety , who utter them forth ; as where they will sing sometimes ; psal. . . my heart is like wax , it is melted in the midst of my bowels . ver. . my strength is dryed up like a potsheard , and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws , and thou hast brought me into the dust of death . and , psal. . . i am weary with my groaning ; all the night make i my bed to swim ; i water my couch with my tears . and many more , which those that speak know to be false , as to them . to this i answer , that all the prayers of wicked prophane people , that is , of those who persist in their wickedness , whatever words they use in prayer , are an abomination to the lord. what then ? must they be forbid to pray ? no surely : but in praying they must cease to be wicked . and indeed , it is impossible that any wicked man should cease to be wicked before he begins to pray . prayer has always that priority to ceasing to be wicked , which logicians call priority of nature . before any man can be justly esteemed to be a member of any christian assembly or congregation , he must profess , that he believes the holy scriptures were written by divine inspiration , and consequently that they contain nothing but truth . and also , that he resolves by the help of god , to take the truth therein contained to be the rule of his life and conversation . if he be sincere in this profession ( and god only can judge whether he be so , or no , unless he violate his profession by some notorious contrary practice ) then most certainly he has in his heart those holy desires which are exprest in the lord's prayer . and as for the psalms , i pray god to make all the adversaries of the church of england duly sensible of this most important truth , that though indeed there are many passages in them , which none of us can apply to himself , as to the particularity of his own person , yet there is not one passage in the whole book , but what every true christian may and ought to apply to himself , upon account of the communion of saints , of the relation he has to the head , and to every member of the holy catholick church which is in heaven , or in earth : so that every expression in the book of psalms , every sincere christian ( so far as it is intelligible unto him ) may use as the means to stir him up to sing and make melody in his heart to the lord ; to form such thoughts and affections as shall be most acceptable to god through our lord jesus christ. certainly , every man that is confirm'd to the image of the son of god , who was all his days here upon earth , a man of sorrows , and acquainted with grief . i say , every sincere christian does most certainly pour out his soul before the lord , in such affections as are here exprest in the words of the psalmist , my heart is like wax , it is melted in the midst of my bowels , &c. i am highly delighted with many passages in robert barclay's apology , particularly with this , p. . it is plain , that men that are taken with love , whether it be of a woman , or any other thing , if it hath taken a deep place in the heart , and possess the mind , it will be hard for the man so in love to drive out of his mind the person or thing so loved : yea , in his eating , drinking , and sleeping his mind will always have a tendency that way ; and in business , or recreations , however intent he be in it , there will but a very short time be permitted to pass , but the mind will let some ejaculations forth towards its beloved . and albeit such a one must be conversant in those things that the care of this body and such-like things call for , yet will he avoid , as death it self , to do those things that may offend the party so beloved , or cross his design in obtaining the thing so earnestly desired , tho' there may be some small use in them : the great design , which is chiefly in his eye , will so balance him , that he will easily look over , and dispense with such petty necessities rather than endanger the loss of the greater by them . now , that men ought to be thus in love with god and the life to come , none will deny ; and the thing is apparent from these scriptures , mat. . . but lay up for your selves treasures in heaven : col. . . set your affections on things above . in the light of the sincere love of god may be clearly seen how abominable such conceits are , which have been publish'd of late by persons of great wit , professing christianity , and receiv'd by many with great applause , namely this , that it may be esteem'd a noble act for a man to starve himself to death . for this the memory of atticus is celebrated , as if he had perform'd an act of heroic virtue . but i shall take the confidence to say , that an heathen poet had the wit to scorn the gallantry of self-murther , however it comes to pass that some of the ingeniosi in this age excuse it , and some others admire it . martial . lib. . ep. . sit cato , dam vivit , sanè vel caesare major : dum moritur , num quid major othone fuit . let cato's life be more than cesar's brave : he dyed , like otho , ( vice's basest slave . ) let the wits prate and scribble as they please ; as long as the world stands there shall be some men in it who will ever most stedfastly believe , that there 's nothing noble but to follow the lord of glory ; there 's no true pleasure , but to bear his yoke , who saith , take my yoke upon you , and learn of me , for i am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls . for my yoke is easie , and my burden is light . animadversions on hobbs , concerning the thoughts of man. concerning the thoughts of man , i will consider them first singly , and afterwards in train , or dependance upon one another : singly , they are every one a representation , or apparence of some quality or other accident of a body without us ; which is commonly call'd an object . which object worketh on the eyes , ears , and other parts of man's body , and by diversity of working , produces diversity of apparances . the original of them all , is that which we call sense ( for there is no conception in a man's mind , which hath not at first totally , or by parts , been begotten upon the organs of sense ) : the rest are deriv'd from that original . chap. . a man can have no thought , representing any thing not subject to sense . here he lays the foundation of all sin , and errour : for certainly nothing can more incrassate , and sensuallize the intellect , than such an opinion , that we cannot have a conception of any thing , but what is sensible , or corporeal : for if this were true , it would necessarily follow , that we cannot have any conception , notion , or apprehension of god , viz. of a spirit , or being incorporeal , infinite in all perfection . this opinion , that a man can have no thought representing any thing , but what has first made its impression upon the organs of sense ) brought gassendus to that height of madness , that he says in plain terms , that he 's not able to think of god , but under some corporeal form : he says also , that the mind is wont to have a conception of god , as of some venerable old man. " o curvae in terris animae , & coelestium inanes ! chap. . these words of good , and evil , and contemptible , are ever us'd with relation to the person that useth them : there being nothing simply , and absolutely so ; nor any common rule of good and evil , to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves , but from the person of the man ( where there is no common-wealth , or in a common-wealth , from the person that representeth it ; or from an arbitrator , or judge , whom , men disagreeing , shall by consent , set up , and make his sentence the rule thereof . here 's a deep stream of that fountain of all uncleanness , above discovered : from this supposition , that there can be no conception , notion , or idea of a being incorporeal , infinite in all perfection , it must needs follow , that there can be no conception , or idea of any thing simply , and absolutely good to every man : but on the contrary , he that apprehends the existence of that most glorious being , must needs appehend , or conceive , that the enjoyment of him is simply and absolutely good , and that the being depriv'd of that enjoyment , is simply and absolutely evil. the definition of the will ( says he in the same chapter ) given commonly by the schools , that it is a rational appetite , is not good ; for if it were , then could there be no voluntary act against reason . no wonder , that he who makes so plain a profession that he knows not god , discovers here so gross ignorance of the nature of the will of man , in respect of which , it is written , that man was made in the image of god. as god alone is his own happiness , so god alone is the true happiness of man ; that is to say , is the true and proper satisfaction of his will , or rational appetite . finite objects affected , or inclined unto by the will , unless in reference to god are all but vanity and vexation of spirit , even those that are most satisfactory to the sensitive appetite . there be many that say , who will shew us any good ? lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us , psal. . v. . there is none good but one , that is god , mat. . . then could there be no voluntary act against reason . the consequence is a notorious falsehood : for the will is defin'd to be a rational appetite , not that it always follows reason , but that it is of such a nature that it can never be in any measure truly saissyed , but by the acceptance of those objects , which by reason , or the understanding influenced , with the truth , are propounded unto it . all such objects are no other than the various modes , or ways of enjoying god , who is all in all. chap. . covetousness of great riches and ambition of great honours are honourable , as signs of power to obtain them . nor does it alter the case of honour , whether an action , ( so it be great , and difficult , and consequently a sign of much power , be just , or unjust ; for honour consisteth only in the opinion of power . therefore the ancient heathen did not think they dishonoured , but greatly honoured the gods , when they introduc'd them in their poems , committing rapes , thefts , and other great , but unjust , or unclean acts , insomuch , as nothing is so much celebrated in iupiter , as his adulteries , &c. basest of mortals ! who endeavourest to fix the greatest disgrace , even upon the name of honour , which has been ever us'd by the best orators , as one of the strongest inducements to iust and noble actions , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , aristot. topic. . ' the ancient heathen , &c. was there ever such an impudent sophister ! would he not here insinuate into the thoughts of his unwary readers , that the generality of some of the most considerable of the learned heathen , did shew that their souls were fallen into that mire , which his so long wallowed in ? 't is true , some of the poets amongst the heathen were as wanton and impure in their imagination , as lascivious and profane in their writings , as t. hobbs's encomiast , ab. c. but were not the most eminent of the ancient philosophers ; yea , and many of the heathen poets of another mind ? does not aristotle say expresly , ethic. lib. . cap. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . he can never be worthy of honour , who is addicted to vice ; for honour is the reward of vertue , and is given to good and vertuous men. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . a good man is truly honourable what says the wisest of the latin authors , m. t. cicero , concerning the reasons of the honour they attributed to iupiter , ( by which name they signified the maker of heaven and earth ) lib. . de natura deorum : ipse jupiter , id est , iuvans pater , quem conversis casibus appellamus â iuvando iovem , â poetis , pater di●●●que hominumque dicitur ; â majoribus autem nostris , optimus , maximus ; & quidem , ante optimus , id est , beneficentissimus quàm maximus , quia majus est , certèque gratius , prodesse omnibus , quàm opes magnas habere . iupiter was called by our ancestors , the most good , and the most great ; and truly the most good , that is , the most gracious , and beneficient before the most great and powerful , because it is more great , and certainly more acceptable to do good to all men , than to have the fulness of wealth and power . could t. h. be ignorant of that divine saying of the poet iuvenal ? — nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus . vertue 's the only nobility ; that is to say , is that for which onely men ought to be honoured . prima mihi debes animi bona : sanctus haberi iustitiaeque tenax , factis , dictisque mereris agnosco procerem . juven . sat. . these and some of the preceding verses are thus traslated by my learned friend dr. barten holyday : though in thy hall wax-images we see , vertue 's the only true nobility . live like good paulus , cossus , drusus ; and before thy statues let these worthies stand : let these before thy consuls rods still go : to me the riches of the mind first owe. deserv'st to be held pure , and just tow'rds men , in word , and deed ? i 'll grant thee noble then . is not the word turpe , i. e. base and dishonourable , the epithet , which the ancient heathen gave to injustice and all other vice ? honour , saith he , consisteth only in the opinion of power . ans. honour consisteth indeed in the esteem of true power , but that is never separated from true goodness , which implies iustice , and all other vertues . go , ye hobbists , and hide your heads for shame , and never more appear in the defence of so vile a sophister ; who might have learnt from the admirable boetius ( if his pride had permitted him ) what power is ( which he saw but confusedly , as in a dream ) which is indeed the object of honour . lib. . de consolatione philosophiae : bonorum quidem potentia , malorum verò minimè dubit abilis apparet infirmitas , &c. veramque illam platonis esse sententiam liquet , solos quod desiderent facere posse sapientes : improbos verò exercere quidem quodlibeat , quod vero desiderent , explere non posse . faciunt enim quaelibet , dum per ea , quibus delectantur , id bonum , quod desiderant , se adepturos putant : sed minime adipiscuntur , quoniam ad beatitudinem probra non veniunt ? it is evident , that good men are always powerful ; that wicked men are most feeble and impotent . and the truth of that saying of plato cannot be doubted , that only wise men do what they desire ; but that the wicked exercise their lusts , but are never able to accomplish their desires ; for they do whatsoever their lusts prompt them unto , whilst by those courses , by which they gratifie their sensual inclinations , they hope to attain to that good which they desire , but they never attain thereunto ; for 't is impossible that villany should approach to true happiness . it is most evident , by t. h. his own words , chap. . ( felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another , the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter ) that he was one of those of whom plato spake , when he said , the wicked exercise their lusts , but are never able to accomplish their desires . chap. . the right of nature , says t. h. which writers commonly call ius naturale , is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself , for the preservation of his own nature ; that is to say , of his own life ; and consequently of doing any thing which in his own judgment and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto . here he expresses a plain contempt of the words of our blessed saviour , and consequently before all the world renounces his christianity . luk. . . if any man will come to me , and hate not his father and mother , and wife , and children , and brethren , and sisters , yea , and his own life also , he cannot be my disciple . it is manifest and unquestionable , that by a man's hating his own life , we are to understand his abhorring the preservation of it by any unlawful means : whereas this industrious agent for the kingdom of darkness would have us believe , that a man may do any thing by the right of nature , which he conceives to be the aptest means to preserve this transitory life , which heathens have been willing to part with , rather than they would violate their faith. what would the brave regulus have thought of this philosopher , falsely so call'd ? i flame with indignation against the spirit and genius of such an enemy to christianity , that has named the name of christ , considering the many excellent and christian-like sentences i read in the verses of some heathens , as well as in the writings of the stoicks , and other philosophers , particularly in his verses , who was so much taken with regulus ▪ s fidelity to his most cruel enemy . how like a christian does he write of a good man ? carm. lib. . ode . duramque callet pauperiem pati , pejusque letho flagitium timet ; non ille pro charis amicis , aut patriâ timidus perire . which that excellent person sir r. f. translates thus : if he know how hard want to bear , and fear a crime more than his end , if for his country , or his friend , to stake his life he doth not fear . as for t. h. his mad conceits concerning liberty and necessity , his asserting , that the holy one is the cause of all sinful purposes , &c. since they are so generally abhorr'd even by those persons who assert such propositions , from which the same most execrable conclusions may be inferr'd , i think it not requisite that i should spend any time in animadverting on them in these papers . and as for those propositions from which i say such black conclusions may be inferr'd , i think i have plainly refuted them by the truth i have demonstrated in my latin papers against iansenius and calvin , whose followers , i hope , will for the future be the more enclin'd to relinquish those wretched opinions , seeing them in the company of so many hellish conceits of that most horrid monster , the father of the leviathan . by his saying , that men can have no passion nor appetite to any thing , of which appetite god's will is not the cause , chap. . he plainly gives the greatest encouragement to the workers of iniquity to entertain a favourable conceit of the grossest ▪ enormities of their wicked lives . chap. . he talks perfectly like one in bethlehem : apparitions , quoth he , though no real substances , but accidents of the brain , yet when god raiseth them supernaturally to signifie his will they are not unproperly term'd god's messengers ; that is to say , his angels . what does he think of the angel we read of kin. . . and it came to pass that night that the angel of the lord went out , and smote in the camp of the assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand : and when they arose early in the morning , behold , they were all dead corps . this was a pretty stout accident of the brain , that could slay in one night men. no doubt there was an angel ( an evil one ) in the brain of t. h. without such an assistant he could hardly have hammer'd out so many diabolical imaginations . near the conclusion of this chapter he has a lucid interval : but , says he , the many places of the new testament , and our saviour's own words , and in such texts wherein is no suspicion of corruption of the scripture , have extorted from my feeble reason an acknowledgment and belief , that there be also angels substantial and permanent . i pray , reader , observe these words , have extorted from my feeble reason ; see how he discovers his cross humour and averseness , from a due compliance with the judgment of the church of god. he reproaches his reason for falling under the power of a great truth , which he had such a mind to oppose . by these words in the same chapter , — where by the spirit of god is meant god himself ; he provides a sophistical evasion for himself and his disciples , in case he or they shall be charged with the macedonian heresie . that young students may not be impos'd on by persons more likely to deceive them than t. h. by their perverse interpretations of texts of scripture , wherein there is express mention of the spirit of god , i shall most earnestly beseech them to peruse these books of the admirable saint basil , viz. adversus eunomium , & lib. de spiritu sancto ; and i desire , that in all their discourses concerning the nature and operation of the holy ghost , they would be ever mindful of those words with which he concludes his third book against eunomius , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. as for that wicked stuff which he delivers chap. . in a pretended defence of his cursed assertion , that we ought to deny our saviour before men , if we be commanded by our lawful prince ; it has such a smell of brimstone , that i abhor to recite it , or say a word to any one that undertakes to vindicate him herein : but the lord rebuke thee . his calumniating of the holy martyrs makes their wounds as it were to bleed afresh ; and this will make his memory to look horrid and ghastly to posterity . to his wicked paradoxes concerning the word church , and power ecclesiastical , i shall oppose these words of the most learned and pious mr. herbert thorndike , ( in his review of his discourse of the right of the church in a christian state , p. . ) seeing that the church is a society , community , corporation , or spiritual common-wealth , subsisting by the immediate revelation and appointment of god , without dependance upon those christian states , wherein it is harbour'd , as to the right by which it subsisteth , and the matter wherein it communicateth ; it followeth of necessity , that it is endowed with rights correspondent to those wherein the soveraignty of states consisteth . the power of the sword is the principal of rights into which the rest are resolv'd , when they are enforc'd to have recourse unto it , for the execution of that , which becomes requisite to make them available . and the church hath the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god , which is used two manner of ways , as the sword is , either to subdue strangers , or to cut off malefactors . chap. . t. h. has these mad expressions : substance and body signifie the same thing ; and therefore substance incorporeal are words which when they are joyned together destroy one another , as if a man should say an incorporeal body . but chap. . he has a lucid interval : to worship god , says he , as inanimating or inhabiting such an image or place , that is to say , an infinite substance in a finite place , is idolatry . here he acknowledges , that god is a substance infinite , and consequently incorporeal . this acknowledgment , the force of so great a truth , ( to use his own words ) extorted from his feeble reason . haec est summa delicti nolentium recognoscere , quem ignorare non possunt , tert. apol. chap. . he puts hell and purgatory together , as if the existence of one were no more credible than of the other : what is all the legend , says he , of fictitious miracles in the lives of the saints , and all the histories of apparitions and ghosts , alledg'd by the doctors of the church of rome , to make good their doctrine of hell and purgatory , the power of exorcism , and other doctrines , which have no warrant , neither in reason nor scripture . in the th chapter he has provided a comfortable state for the reprobate , after the resurrection , instead of that state of ineffable torments , which all true christians acknowledge to be signified by the torments of hell. the reprobate , says he , shall be in the estate that adam and his posterity were in after the sin committed . the wicked , says he in the same chapter , being left in the estate they were in after adam's sin , may at the resurrection live , as they did , marry , and give in marriage , and have gross and corruptible bodies , as all mankind now have , and consequently may engender perpetually after the resurrection , as they did before . are not these pleasant conceits for that sort of men , who would fain have the fear of hell removed out of the way , whilst they turn every one to his course , as the horse rusheth into the battel ? but the fear of death and hell they shall never be able to shake off , let them do what they can : — haeret lateri lethalis arundo . and now i doubt not but the ingenuous reader will concurr with me in the indignation i conceive against the most intolerable impudence of a late writer , who pretends to set forth an history of the life of t. h. he tells us , we are all mistaken , the black-moor is exceeding white . controversias quidem the logicas , says he , p. . maximè aversatus est . quicquid autem ad pietatis exercitia , au●●o●os mores conferret , plurimi fecit . to adorn the memory of such a man as t. h. what is it but to provide , that the corps of one that dyed of the plague may lye in state , that people coming to behold it may contract the infection ? if this author go on to publish any more books to as ill purposes as he has done this , whatever height of learning and eloquence he may attain unto by the continuance of his studies , he will certainly deserve no better character than that which was given by velleius paterculus to c. curio , hist. lib. . homo ingeniosissimè nequam , & facundus malo publico . most just is the severity of the censure past upon this most infamous writer , by the most reverend archbishop of armagh : the catching of the leviathan , chap. . thus we have seen how the hobbian principles do destroy the existence , the simplicity , the ubiquity , eternity , and infiniteness of god , the doctrin of the blessed trinity , the hypostatical union , the kingly , sacerdotal , and prophetical offices of christ ; the being and operation of the holy ghost , heaven , hell , angels , devils , the immortality of the soul , the catholick and all national churches , the holy scriptures , holy orders , the holy sacraments , the whole frame of religion , and the worship of god ; the laws of nature , the reality of goodness , justice , piety , honesty , conscience , and all that is sacred . i shall most earnestly entreat those young students in divinity , who shall cast an eye on these papers , that they would read all that has been written against t. h. by this most renowned archbishop , and hy the right reverend father in god the late bishop of salisbury , and by the reverend and learned dr. h. more , dr. sharrock , and dr. cumberland . other excellent men have abundantly confuted his wicked errors , but i have been chiefly conversant in the writings of those i have here mention'd . i cannot but recite a few lines of my lord bishop of salisbury's excellent sermon concerning the sinfulness , danger , and remedies of infidelity , which t. h. would not acknowledg to be a sin. the author of the leviathan , cap. . p. . tells us in plain terms , that we do not read any where ( in the scriptures ) that they which received not the doctrin of christ did therein sin . and again , that the injunctions of christ , and his apostles , men might refufe without sin. now , concerning this assertion , i cannot chuse but say , that had i not been acquainted with the works of that author , especially those relating to religion , i should exceedingly wonder at i● , because it supposes men never to look into their bibles ; which is the thing it would perswade . in the st of matthew our saviour asks the iews this question , did ye never read in the scriptures such a thing ? a question which i must repeat to the asserters of this doctrin : did they never read in the scriptures the sinfulness , the danger , the hainousness of infidelity ? surely he that runs may read it . his lordship 's exercitatio in thomae hobbii philosophiam , printed at oxford . prov'd a most effectual antidote against the plague of the hobbian errors , which at that time began to spread most dreadfully . since i had fitted these animadversions for the press , there came to my hands a book , entituled , an answer to a late book publisht by dr. bramhal , late bishop of derry , called , the catching of the leviathan . i wish some learned man would publish a reply to it , to vindicate the honour of that most renowned prelate . if the charge i have brought against t. h. in these animadversions be true , that monument of his reputation ( which some may conceit to have been ) erected in this book , will most certainly , in the judgment of all men , fall to the ground ; the weakness whereof in one particular i shall here demonstrate . he affirms , that atheism is a sin of ignorance ; and he conceits , that he sufficiently exposes the most reverend archbishop by this pitiful sophism . if it be not a sin of ignorance it must be a sin of malice : can a man malice that which he thinks has no being ? answ. to have an aversion to the notion or conception of a being infinite in all perfection , is to malice or hate god : and such an aversion is the grossest atheism . t. h. supposes that there is a god ; and from this supposition it must needs follow ( whether he would have it so or no ) that all rational creatures are capable of the foresaid notion . so that an aversion to it can proceed from no other cause , but only the pravity of the will perverting the undertaking . t. h. pretends to believe the holy scriptures : now it is written , this is the true light , that enlightneth every man that cometh into the world. the true light is god : it is written , god is light. if the true light enlightneth every man that cometh into the world , atheism is not only the not seeing of him , but an aversion to him ; no sin of ignorance , but of malice . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i shall not make any other apology for the sharpness of my stile , but this : that it is not enough not to consent to the hobbian errors , but we must hate them with a perfect hatred . i have no more to do at present , but only to recite those words of the blessed psalmist , with reference to every one of the disciples . of this most impious sophister , which i us'd in public , with reference to him , not long before his death : arise , o god , maintain thine own cause : remember how the foolish men blasphemeth thee daily . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 epitaphium r. sh . ll. doctoris . hic iacent reliquiae viri incomparabilis roberti sharrock , qui iacentem suscitavit philosophiam practicam , atheismum triumphantem debellavit : hobbii , spinosae , & caeterorum ejusdem furfuris homuncionum placita , specie quâdam eruditionis insignis ostentata , quam sint stolida ; quam improba clarissime demonstravit . virtutum , & vitiorum omnium veras , ac vivas effigies depingens horum odia , illarum amores in animis prudentium lectorum flagrantissimos accendit . striptis varii argumenti elaboratissimis usque ad consummationem seculi apud doctos , & pios permansuris famae suae exegit monumentum aere perennius . clarissimi viri domini georgii mackenzi epitaphium , a. d. . ingenio magno , ac verâ pietate refulget illius egregii candida fama viri . cum nihil hic fuerit , quo se ingens flamma foveret , ignea mens terras linquit , & astra petit. a letter to the author of a pamphlet , entituled , the doctrine of the trinity placed in its due light. non eloquimur magna , sed vivimus . sir , tho i acknowledge , that you deserve the character of a person ingenious and learned ; yet since you deny the catholic faith , whilst you pretend to be a true son of the church of england , i must say , you do not deserve the name of an honest man. i doubt not but any learned and impartial reader , that believes the holy scriptures were written by divine inspiration , will readily grant , that in two or three lines . i destroy your hypothesis , viz. that there is no other difference or distinction betwixt the father , son , and holy ghost , than there is betwixt infinite goodness , wisdom , and power . it is most agreeable to the holy scriptures , to say , that infinite goodness ; is infinite wisdom , and power , and that infinite wisdom is infinite goodness and power , and that infinite power is infinite goodness and wisdom : but it is most contrary to the holy scriptures , to say , that the father is the son , and the holy ghost ; and that the son is the father , and the holy ghost ; and that the holy ghost is the father and the son. your ridiculing the heavenly senniments of st. augustin concerning the divine beauty , is such an abomination , that i cannot recite it without an horresco referens as a preface to the recitation of such a blasphemous harangue . p. . let us seriously consider ; how could epicurus more graphically describe his idle voluptuous deity , than by comparing him to a beautiful lady , pleasing her self with the image of her fair face , reflected in a bright smooth glass ? or , how could he give a better account of his regardlesness of the world , than by saying , his life , his glory , and his pleasure are all his interest , and and these are determined to one another . now , i pray thee , reader , what is all this to thee , or me , but a discouragement from hoping any good from such a god , and consequently from paying him any love , or service ? be the lady never so perfect in beauty , her glass never so exactly clear , her delight in it never so ravishing ; what is this to the well-ordering of her family , but an hindrance ? a noble , eloquent , and judicious writer , in his advice to a daughter , telleth her , that her servants will more value her house-keeper than her ladyship , if they find she takes no care of them : and some will say , it is not so unreasonable to worship the sun , who is the world 's great benefactor , as that sun ' s creator , if he leaves them without farther regard to their happiness . now i pray thee , reader , what is all this to thee , or me ? is it nothing to me , that my god is the infinity of true beauty , that he is all that i can desire , all that deserves my love ? the divine beauty implies the glory of infinite goodness , wisdom , and power , and is all this nothing to me ? it implies the glory of the justice of the divine vengeance on impenitent sinners , as they are impenitent , and the glory of infinite mercy towards sinners , that repent , or such , who , tho they do not truly repent , have not so hardened their hearts , but that they are capable of repentance : and is all this nothing to me ? is it nothing to me , that the divine beauty being infinite , is in all things and events ( sin only excepted ) ; so that whilst i sincerely believe in iesus , all the objects of my thoughts are matter of joy and satisfaction unto me ? the king of terrors ceases to be terrible , and becomes a most useful subject to those that obey the royal law of liberty , and so become kings , and more than conquerors over all their enemies . this happiness they attain unto by a true sense , or practical knowledge of the divine beauty , the infinity of light and love : and is all this nothing to me ? certainly the divine beauty is all things to me . one glympse of it is enough to quench all such burning desires , which torment the souls of covetous , ambitious , and voluptuous men. this beauty do i see in the image of the invisible god , the brightness of the glory of the father of lights , and the express image of his person . your kind reflexion upon the mahometans , p. . puts me in mind of that most remarkable passage in a learned book , entituled , a discourse of natural , and reveal'd religion . chap. . before 〈◊〉 take my leave of mahomet , it will not be amiss to advertise my reader ( if he be a christian ) of the danger , both he , and all other christian are in of being reduc'd under the slavery of this mortal , and common enemy ; so that how prosperous soever the christian arms are , or have been , we are still in greater danger than ever , of being ruin'd by the legions of these infidels , not those of their spahi's or ianizaries , but by those of another order , far more mischievous ; forasmuch as they fight under our colours , and pretend to be of our party , such enemies are ever look'd upon as the most dangerous ; for they are rarely discovered , till they have given the mortal blow . now these are the socinians , which , tho exploded the world above a thousand years ago , under the appellation of arians , are in these our days , risen again from the grave , and like spectrums appear every where in the dark . p. . you say , that st. gregory nazianzen in his th oration , maketh the unity no other than p●cifical ; wherein he agreeth with his great friend st. basil , as appeareth by the letter sent him expresly upon this subject by that great father . have you any fear of god , or shame of the world , who have the impudence to publish so notorious a lye ! these are st. gregory nazianzen's words , in his th oration , and there is nothing in his th but what is fully agreeable to them . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this is the first verse of one of his hymns : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : that unity cannot be specifical , or under any genus , which is above all being absolutely infinite . there is not one word in any one of st. basil's epistle to st. gregory nazianzen , that might give any man an occasion to conceit . that he thought the unity no other then specifical . blush , and be confounded at the reading of these words of that holy father , wherein he expresses his sense of the divine unity : de spiritu sancto , cap. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . where the unity is specifical , there are ( actually , or potentially ) more than one of the same kind . i shall now give you some of my reflections upon the conclusion of your sophistical essay : some , i hope , say you , will find satisfaction in the very doctrine , as now stated : those that cannot fully grant their assent and consent to the doctrine for its own sake , may find some ease , if not full cure of their scruples , when they conform to our establish'd worship for peace sake : the former indeed is the best fruit ; but the later is not contemptible . if i obtain either of them , i have already a sufficient reward : yet i hope for a greater from that lord , whom i have thus endeavoured to serve , and who hath said , blessed are the peace-makers . here you plainly discover your develish design , to bring the socinians into the communion of the church of england , and consequently to corrupt and destroy her. i grant , that an unlawful petition in the public prayers , is no sufficient cause for any man to separate himself from such a religious assembly , which otherwise he should he obliged to frequent . but nothing can be more notoriously repugnant to the principles of common honesty , than for any man to make the most solemn and express profession of believing that which indeed he does not believe . every one that professes himself to be a member of the church of england , makes the most solemn and express profession of believing , that our lord iesus christ is god of god , light of light , very god of very god , begotten , not made , being of one substance with the father , by whom all things were made . blessed are the peace-makers , but cursed are they that deny our lord jesus christ to be the true and eternal god , whosoever thus detracts from him the infinity of his glory , he does not love him : and 't is known to all that read or hear the holy scriptures , what the apostle says : is any love not the lord jesus christ , let him be anathema , maran-atha . i am , your servant , &c. walonis messalini sententiae de episcopis & presbyteris examen : cui annexa est , animadversio in davidem blondellum . magna est veritas , & praevalebit . ad lectorem aerlanum . te oro , & obtestor , per eam , quam professus es , fidem christianam , ut mente pura , atque omnibus praejudiciis vacua pauca haec scripta perlegere digneris . veritas non quaerit angulos . in clara luce reponimus sententiam nostram : nullis obumbrata est rhetorices coloribus , nullo dialectices affectato acumine impedita ; sed sermone simplici , & aperto explicata proponitur , ac defenditur contra ejusmodi adversarios , qui sane ingenio pollent & eloquio . facile potes ipsam , quam tractamus rem totam inspicere . favorem tuum non petimus , sed aequum iudicium . opto te semper in christo bene valere , veritatem , ac pacem amare . walo messalinus in dissertatione contra d. petavium , p. . de se , suisque loquens haec verba habet : nusquam negarunt antiqua etiam tempora discrimen illud inter episcopos , & presbyteros agnovisse , qui sciunt rem esse antiquissimam , ut duo hi ordines in ecclesia fuerint distincti , episcoporum & presbyterorum , si excipiantur apostolica tempora , quorum aevo , ut eorum scripta testantur , nullam constat eorum ordinum fuisse distinctionem . resp. an scripta apostolica explicanda sint secundum novatorum commenta , vel secundum sensum communem sanctorum in ecclesia primitiva , quorum scripta adhuc in ecclesiae aedificationem per providentiam divinam conservantur , judicet quispiam veritatis evangelicae studiosus . p. . paulus in priore ad timotheum , cap. . postquam praecepta dedit episcopis , statim transit ad diaconos , non alios agnoscens presbyteros nisi qui confuso cum episcopis discrimine iidem haberentur . nullus itaque inter eos gradus interjectus , nec apostolo agnitus . viri apostolici , ioannis chrysostomi sententiam apostolicam walonis messalini sententiae adversam his verbis clarissime prolatam cernimus , hom. . in tim. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hom. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 phrasis ista , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hac ratione explicanda esse videtur . matt. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gal. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut per dextram potentiae significatur dextra , per quam exercitur potentia : et per dextras societatis significantur dextrae per quas exercetur mutuus amor , seu commune ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) sic etiam per manus presbyterii significantur manus per quas exercetur presbyterium , hoc est , presbyteri praesidentis , seu episcopi officium . p. . cum vocat eos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ipse se 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eorum appellat . recte : sed inde non sequitur omnes quos vocat presbyteros fuisse apostolos , quia illos in eodem cum seipso apostolo nomine conjungit , dum seipsum appellat sympresbyterum ; nec hinc sequitur omnes fuisse episcopos , seu in potestate ordinandi constitutos , qui illo tempore vocati erant episcopi . p. , cum presbyteri omnes ex aequo vocarentur , & episcopi pariter omnes , nullum inter eos tum discrimen fuisse dignitatis ex eo comprobatur , quia nullum esset appellationis . manifestum est temporibus apostolicis magnum fuisse discrimen dignitatis inter timotheum presbyterum atque alios qui tum etiam appellati erant presbyteri : fuit ille ea dignitate praeditus , quam jam tota ecclesia episcopalem vocat , quae data est illi cum impositione manuum presbyterii . scilicet is iurisdictionem , in ipsos presbyteros , atque ordinandi potestatem ab apostolo paulo accepit , tim. . . adversus presbyterum accusationem noli recipere , nisi sub duobus , aut tribus testibus . v. . manus cito ne cui imponito . p. . cum haec dicit hieronymus , quid facit excepta ordinatione episcopus , quod presbyter non faciat ? ad morem , jusque suae aetatis respexit . sed non ita se rem habuisse apostolorum aevo intellexit . eundem enim tunc fuisse presbyterum , & episcopum in commentariis ad titum scripsit , & presbyteros quoque habuisse ordinandi potestatem , quia presbyteri id erant , quod episcopi . idem est ergo , inquit , presbyter , qui & episcopus : — & antequam diaboli instinctu studia in religione fierent , & diceretur in populis , ego sum pauli , ego apollo , ego autem cephae , communi presbyterorum consilio ecclesiae gubernabantur . tunc temporis , id est , apostolorum aetate in commune presbyteri ecclesiam regebant , pares omnes honore , ac potestate . ab eo autem tempore , hoc est , ex quo studia in ecclesia facta sunt , postquam unusquisque eos quos baptizaverat suos putabat esse , non christi , in toto orbe decretum est , ut unus de presbyteris electus superponeretur caeteris , ad quem omnis ecclesiae cura pertineret , & schismatum semina tollerentur . post apostolorum itaque tempore hoc decretum in toto orbe factum est . resp. nos minime negamus quin ad reprimenda schismata necesse fuerit ut episcopi plus auctoritatis exercerent ; atque inde distinctio dignitatis episcopalis & presbyteralis clarius apparuit . communi presbyterorum consilio ecclesiae gubernabantur antequam inter ipsos presbyteros orta sint dissidia : tunc necesse erat ut ille presbyter , qui ordinandi ▪ potestatem habebat , atque hac ratione caeteris praestabat , jurisdictionem quandam exerceret ad reprimenda schismata . notandum est , quod ipse agnoscat heronymus inceptam fuisse hanc consuetudinem temporibus apostolorum ; nempe cum diceretur in populis ego sum pauli , ego apollo , ego autem cephae . in hac ipsa epistola in qua ista occurrunt verba , quid facit excepta ordinatione episcopus , quod presbyter non faciat , sic ille loquitur : ut sciamus traditione apostolicas sumptas de vetere testamento , quod aaron . & filii ejus , atque levitae in templo fuerunt hoc sibi episcopi , & presbyteri , & diaconi vendicent in ecclesia . hinc omnibus innotescat quam ▪ sit veritati inimicus adversarius noster , qui ausus est hanc voces proferre ? ad morem , jusque suae aetatis respexit . sed non ita rem habuisse apostolorum aevo intellexit . post apostolorum tempora hoc decretum in toto orbe factum est . quod spectat ad commune presbyterorum consilium in gubernanda ecclesia , de quo loquitur hieronymus , usque adhuc potestatem aliquam iuri episcopali subordinatam tenere simplices presbyteros quis non videt ? sed nunquam suit iis concessa ordinandi facultas . qualemcunque dignitatem , seu potestatem s. hieronymus , vel s. chrysostomus , vel alii sancti scriptores in ecclesia primitiva iis tribuerint , semper excepta est ordinatio . quàm plenus , ac perfectus sit consensus hieronymi & chrysostomi haec verba hieronymi clarissimè ostendunt . ad titum & timotheum de ordinatione dicitur : de presbyteris omnino reticetur , quia in episcopo & presbyter continetur . uterque loquitur quidem magnifice de presbyteri dignitate sed uterque denegat presbytero , tribuit episcopo ordinandi facultatem . ad walonem revertamur , p. . eadem est explicatio , inquit , ambrosii , vel illius commentatoris , qui nomen ejus ementitus est , in epistolam ad timotheum , cap. . post episcopum , inquit , diaconi ordinationem subjicit . quare ? nisi quia episcopi , & presbyteri una ordinatio est . uterque enim sacerdos est . sed episcopus primus est . sui saeculi , inquit walo , consuetudinem spectabat , cum haec scriberet , non apostolicorum temporum usum & morem . per haec verba una ordinatio est nihil aliud intelligere debemus quàm quod ipse dicit hieronymus , nempe in episcopo & presbyterum con●ineri . certè evidentissimum est eum spectasse apostolicorum temporum usum , & morem . post episcopum di●coni ordinationem subjicit . quis subjicit , nisi ipse apostolus , qui scripsit hanc epistolam , cujus enarrationem hic commentator instituit ? p. . inepte , & imperitè inscitiae carcinoma loyoliticum verba illa pauli ab hieronymo usurpata in eam traxit sententiam , quasi ex his inducere vellet , ab eo tempore , quo ista jactabantur apud corinthios sublatam fuisse inter pre●b teros aequalitatem , & unum omnibus impositum episcopum . resp. hieronymum sensisse temporibus apostolicis sublatam fuisse inter presbyteros inaequalitatem , nempe unum caeteris fuisse superpositum , evidentissimè constat ex hisce hieronymi verbis supra recitatis : ut sciamus traditiones apostolicas , &c. en ipse agnoscit hieronymus ex apostolicis traditionibus clarescere episcopum tam certò fuisse presbyteris superiorem , quàm aaronem filiis suis , & levitis . walonis messalini garrulitatem veritati evidentissimae adversam odio , ac contemptu magis , quàm responsione aliqua dignam , esse existimamus . p. . tertullianus , in libro de baptismo , etiam discretionem episcopalis ordinis , & presbyterici sola auctoritate ecclesiae introductam satis clarè innuit his verbis : dandi quidem baptismi jus habet sacerdos , qui est episcopus . de hinc presbyteri , & diaconi , non tamen sine episcopi auctoritate propter ecclesiae honorem , quo salvo salva pax est . majorem episcopi auctoritatem quàm presbyteri è sola ecclesiae constitutione & consuetudine descendere clarè dicit , cum ob ecclesiae honorem id constitutum significat , quo salvo pacem salvam esse ait . simul etiam inducans eandem causam fecisse ut episcopus praeponeretur presbyteris : quam & hieronymus posuit . ut schismata nempe tollerentur , & pax conservaretur & amulatio removeretur , quae schismatum mater est . ad jungendus igitur jam tibi ambrosio , hieronymo , & augustino tertullianus , qui non minus quàm illi disertè episcopalis ordinis , & presbyteralis differentiam humano instituto tribuit , id est , ecclesiae auctoritati . resp. episcopalis ordinis , & presbyterialis differentiam institutio plusquam humano tribuit , qui asserit eam ecclesiae auctoritate esse constitutam : nam ab ipso christo , domino , ac deo nostro ecclesiae derivata est auctoritas . an ulla ratione verisimile habeatur tertulliani aetate , hoc est , secundo post apostolos saeculo , constitutionem aliquam non-apostolicam tanti fuisse apud omnes in toto orbe christianos , judicet quicunque verum dicere maluerit , quàm hypothesi servire . utinam omnes qui prae se ferunt ultimam schismatum aversationem , hoc studio ducerentur , ut episcopus ubique sit presbyteris praepositus , quod olim hanc ob rationem constitutum fuisse vel ipsi presbyteriani agnoscunt : ut schismata nempe tollerentur , & pax conservaretur , & amulatio removeretur , quae schismatum mater est p. . bono finc institutum hoc fuisse nemo negat , cum optima ratio fuerit ita instituendi . nunc cum reipsa cognoscitur ex episcopali tyrannide certius in ecclesia malum , ac damnum majus oriri , quàm quod ex aemulatione aequalium metuebatur , quod bona de causa constitutum fuerat , meliore posse , imò & debere abrogari quis non videt ? quo judice , qua auctoritate id debet abrogari , quod à tota ecclesiâ erat constitutum ad schismata tollenda , quibus nullum in ecclesiâ majus malum oriri possit ? omnium haerese●n , atque actionum iniquissimarum origenes esse schismata quis non videt ? episcopalis tyrannis , ubicunque sit , humilitate , ac patientia populi christiani arguenda , ac reprimenda est ; non armis , phanaticis concionibus , clamoribus , omnimodo furore miscenda sunt omnia in illis regnis , in quibus perhibentur episcopi tyrannidem exercere . p. . curationem solam habuerunt primi episcopi , qui & iidem presbyteri , sinê potestate , sine imperio , sine jurisdictione . fals●ssimum est s. scripturae manifestè contrarium primos episcopos nullam habuisse potestatem , nullam jurisdictionem . certo certius est aliquam illos habere potestatem , quibus aliqua debita est obedientia , heb. . . obedite praepositis vestris , inquit apostolus . heu quantos errores , quot opinionum portenta , fomenta ista scelerum in orbem christianum induxit superbia literata quadam verbositate suffulta ! instabiles multorum animi flumini verborum obstare nequeunt : per insignem multiloquii violentiam rapiuntur in vastum errorum gurgitem . tristissimum hujus rei exemplum cernimus in controversia istade distinctione ordinis episcopalis à presbyterali tam fervidè agitata . scilicet hanc litem ad horrenda intereptos christianos ( pacificum nomen ) certamina provexit non magna aliqua presbyterianorum sententiae verisimilitudo ad alliciendos hominum mentes idonea , sed convenientia ista , quae in illo dogmate est , cum nativa generis humani nequitia , unde nimirum omnia oriuntur semina pervicacitatis , ac superbiae , cujus indoles hujusmodi est , ut auctoritati in universum semper refragetur , praesertim ecclesiasticae . degeneres animos arguit , homines generosos , dignitate aliqua saeculari praeditos , vel quoslibet ingenio , secundum suam opinionem praestantes , atque artium politicarum studiosos , licet è faece plebis oriundos degeneres animos arguit istiusmodi viros agnoscere ecclesiasticos auctoritatem aliquam seu potestatem habere . at , at , veniet profectò tempus , citò veniet , quo omnibus adami filiis clarissime innotescet haec veritas , quicquid agunt homines , quicquid aliqua ratione extat in tota rerum natura , nihil esse aestimandum , nisi in quantum spectat ad ecclesiam . qui gubernant ecclesiam in auctoritate exercenda , humilitatem vere christianam maximè conspicuam exhibeant ad reprimendam hujus saeculi superbiam . certè auctoritatis à christo derivatae nunquam poterint plenam exerere efficaciam , nisi cum seipsos ostenderint magistri opt. max. sequaces , qui dicit , si quis vult post me venire , abdicet semetipsum , & attollat crucem suam quotidie , & sequatur me. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 d. blondellus in apologiâ pro sententià hieronymi de episcopis , & presbyteris , p. . haec verba habet . consuetudo illa , non ex quo primum inter corinthios auditum fuit , go sum pauli , &c. sed paulatim invaluit . quod adversus eos diligentius notandum venit , quos hieronymianae phrase●s nudo cortici eo sine inhaerere mordicus juvat , quo liberius à clarissimi scriptoris mente aberrare sinantur . resp. eundem esse sensum , quem nos asseremus , hieronymianae phrase●s extra omnem controversiam ponitur per haec ipsa hieronymi verba in eadem epistola ad evagrium , in qua phrasis ista occurrit : ut sciamus traditiones apostolicas sumptas de vetere testamento , quod aaron , & filii ejus , atque levitae in templo fuerunt , hoc sibi episcopi , & presbyteri , & diaconi vendicent in ecclesia . p. . quoscunque spiritus sanctus episcopos , pascere ecclesiam , attendere gregi , &c. ii veri nominis ac dicti 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 episcopi consendi sunt ; quid enim aliud praestare suum putent , quos nunc 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 episcopos vocamus ? 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dicti 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 episcopi est , ut sit in potestate ordinandi constitutus , quod ne quaquam commune est illi cum aliis presbyteris . p. . nihil hieronymi seculo fecit episcopus excepta ordinatione , quod non faceret presbyter . manifestum est sanctum hieronymum in hisce verbis excepta ordinatione , non sua tantum tempora respexisse , sed etiam apostolica : namque asserit secundum traditiones apostolicas ( ut constat ex verbis supra recitatis ) in ecclesia episcopum tam certò fuisse presbytero superiorem , quàm in templo aaronem filiis suis , & levitis . p. . licet ecclesiastico jure non omnis presbyter episcopus sit , episcopi , & presbyteri una ordinatio est , adeóque idem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; sive enim per ordinationem consecrationis ritum , & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sive munus ipsum ad quod 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 destinatur consecratus , intelligere placeat , perinde est ; siquidem quorum eadem est generatio , seu actus , quo forma introducitur , eorum eadem est forma quae dat esse rei quorum eadem est functio , eorum eadem est potestas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 à forma manans . resp. quanquam isto respectu episcopi & presbyteri eadem ordinatio est , quod in ordinatione episcopi includatur presbyteri ordinatio , adeo ut in eum , qui in ordine episcopali est constitutus , collata sit potestas ea omnia faciendi quae presbyter faciat ; hoc tamen respectu diversa est eorum ordinatio , quod per ordinationem presbyteri non sit in ipsum collata potestas alios ordinandi , quae soli reservatur episcopo , semper excipienda ▪ ab ea potestate , quaecunque presbytero tribuitur . proculdubio quorum eadem est functio , eorum eadem est potestas ; sed pernegamus eandem esse ex omni parte episcopi , & presbyteri functionem . p. . interiacens aetate sua inter sacerdotes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 chrysostomus ob oculos habebat . resp. s. chrysostomus hanc reddidi rationem cur paulus apostolus in epistola ad timotheum nullam faceret mentionem simplicium presbyterorum , sed immediatè transiret ab episcopis ad diaconos nempe quia non alio dignitatis discrimine episcopi distabant à presbyteris , nisi sola ordinandi potestate . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 istiusmodi sophistae qui audet asserere s. chrysostomum hoc in loco suam tantum , non apostolorum aetatem respexisse . ejusdem farinae sunt ea omnia , quae ostentator iste multifariae , & immensae lectionis ad lassandum potius quam satiandum lectoris studium exprompsit . scilicet is speciem ingentis literaturae non falsam praefertur in opinionem falsam inducat quàm plurimos eorum , qui solent in famam scriptoris potius quam in ipsam rem scriptam inquirere ; praesertim si valdè velint , id verum haberi , cui speciem veritatis affingunt celeberrimi scriptores . cum igitur in nullo versemur dubio , quin plurimos eorum qui aussi sint asserere presbyteros potestatem habere presbyteros ordinandi in errorem istum potius induxerint perversae voluntatis indomitae vires , qnam aliqua imbecillitas intellectus , non tam opus est verbis , ut cum iis apud homines disputemus , quam perpetua , ac ferventissima apud deum oratione , ut ▪ istiusmodi hominum pectoribus suavitatem illam non-ennarrabilem infundat , quae non est aliunde percipienda , nisi e gustatis fructibus christianae humilitatis , atque obedientiae propter christum istis hominibus praestandae , quibus ille aliquam in nos regendos potestatem dedit . pater noster , qui es in coelis , veniat regnum tuum . a letter to mons. dela crose ; together with some reflections on the letter to charles blount esq , concerning natural religion , as oppos'd to divine revelation : and also on that infamous book , entituled , the naked gospel . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sir , i am heartily sorry that you have given so great scandal not only to the socinians , by asserting that most detestable conceit of the three infinite spirits , but also to the deists , by denying , that six of their seven propositions may be known without external revelation ; whereas it is most certain that they are all implied in the true notion or idea of god , whose existence , you grant , may be known without such a revelation . i assert , that the principal motive that any man can have to believe , that the holy scriptures were written by divine inspiration , is , that the sence of them is so agreeable to that which the only wise god hath written in the hearts of all men. the lord give you understanding in all things . so prayeth for you , and for all men , as he desires that all sincere christians should pray for him , your faithful servant , in the love of the truth , edmund elys . tho' i grant , that the truth of those seven propositions may be known without external revelation , yet i assert , that 't is ten thousand times more casie to come to that knowledge by the revelation which almighty god has given us in the holy scriptures than without it : and therefore we ought to give continual thanks to the god of truth , for vouchsafing to us so great a blessing . the seventh proposition is this : that when we err from the rules of our duty , we ought to repent , and trust in god's mercy for pardon . what it is to repent no man shall ever practically or effectually understand , unless he be taught of god : and 't is ten thousand times more likely that such a man will be taught of god , who with an honest heart reads or hears the holy scriptures , than he who is altogether ignorant of them , or who having read them will not believe that they were written by divine inspiration . to repent is to cease to live unto our selves , and to live unto him that dy'd for us , and arose again ; of which repentance we become capable only by the death of christ , whom the holy scriptures call the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. the apostle says expresly , cor. . . that he died for all , that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves , but unto him that died for them and rose again . in the ninth chapter of the epistle to the hebrews are these words : if the blood of bulls , and of goats , and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh , how much more shall the blood of christ , who through the eternal spirit offered up himself without spot to god , purge your conscience from dead works to serve the livingood ? from this concession of the deists , that god is infinitely just and insinitely merciful , i infer , that his hatred to sin , and his love to sinners , are both infinite . i suppose they will grant , that he is infinite in goodness , in wisdom , in power , and in all perfection . from hence i infer , that in his infinite wisdom he hath-contriv'd some way by his infinite power to make a demonstration to sinners of his infinite love , benevolence , or communicativeness of the true good even to them , so far as they are capable of it : but it implies a contradiction , that they should be capable of , or in a power to receive the true good or intellectual satisfaction , but only by repentance , or turning of their will or intellectual appetite to god , as to its principal or ultimate object . it implies a contradiction to say , that infinite wisdom could contrive a better way than this to bring sinners to repentance , viz. to demonstrate to them , that tho' the hatred which the great and good god has to every sin is infinite , nevertheless his love to every sinner capable of repentance is also infinite : and this demonstration of the infinite justice , and infinite mercy and ▪ goodness of god those that believe the gospel clearly perceive in the sacrifice of the death of christ. whatsoever we find in the holy scriptures concerning the death of christ , and the benefits which we receiue thereby , is most perfectly agreeable to all those notions of the divine justice and mercy , which are suggested unto us by the innate idea of god ; to the contemplation whereof i earnestly exhort all those men who call themselves deists , beseeching almighty god , the father of mercies and god of all consolation , to lift up the light of his countenance upon them , to give them the light of the knowledge of the glory of god in the face of jesus christ. i declare to all the world , that i have not such indignation to these open enemies , as i have to such traytors to the church of christ , as the author of that most execrable pamphlet , entituled , the naked gospel . i shall here impart to the candid reader some of my reflections on that infamous scribler , tho' it has been already sufficiently confuted . i consider that saying of the wise man , prov. . . in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin . and therefore i would rather chuse to be blamed by my best friends for using so few words in any theological controversie , than be ever guilty of publishing of any one assertion , especially concerning the doctrin of the holy , blessed , and glorious trinity , which i should not be able to vindicate against a more subtile sophister than socinus himself . a strange confidence it is in this anti-trinitarian , to scoff at us for saying , that the doctrin of the trinity is a mystery : does not the holy apostle say expresly , tim. . . without controversie great is the mystery of godliness ? god was manifest in the flesh , &c. is not the nature of god incomprehensible to any finite understanding ? and shall any man undertake to determine how god could be made man ; how the creator could assume a created nature ? but , that christ is god and man , is a truth as certain and unquestionable as it is that these texts of scripture were written by divine inspiration , iohn . , , . col. . , . acts . . i shall here recite some of the words of this antitrinitarian , whom surely we may most justly call anti-christian : p. . to this objection of the romanists , and to others of the unitarians , we have found an answer , that we must not infer from our own nature to god's , for that ours is finite , and gods is infinite . three persons among us are three men , because they agree in one common nature ; but the divine nature is not a common one , but a singular ; and therefore three persons do not make three gods. if you understand not this , you must not wonder , at least you must not gainsay it , for it is a mystery which reason may not presume to fathom . is there any thing more reasonable than to conceive , that in god , the one infinite essence , there may be a certain trinity which cannot in any wise appertain to any three persons of a finite nature ? can there ever be a more impious absurdity than this , to deny the truth of that which the almighty and incomprehensible god , father , son , and holy ghost , in whose name we are baptised , has reveal'd unto us concerning himself , because we cannot find any thing perfectly like it even amongst the best of his creatures ? to say , that we ought not to believe any thing but what our reason can fathom or comprehend , is in effect to say , we ought not to believe there is a god , it being essential to the deity to be infinitely beyond the comprehension of our reason . p. . the great question concerning the godhead of christ is impertinent to our lord's design . . fruitless to the contemplator's own purpose . . dangerous . p. . there is danger of blasphemy in examining the silly question concerning the eternity of the godhead of christ. answ. certainly it was most pertinent to our lord's design , that we should worship the father , son , and holy ghost , as the only true god ; and this we cannot do , unless we believe him to be eternal . to question the godhead of our saviour , is not only fruitless and dangerous , but diabolically impious and pernicious . but nothing can more require the greatest ardency of our most zealous endeavours , than to suppress the confidence of those men , who pretend by their reason to baffle the divine wisdom , and by the force of a little sophistry to eclipse the eternal brightness of the glory of the father of lights . it is fruitless to the contemplator's own purpose , to consider , that he whom he believes to be his saviour is a person of infinite power and majesty ? will not the genuine force and efficacy of this consideration produce in a true believer the fruit of the spirit , viz. love , ioy , peace , long-suffering , gentleness , goodness , faith , meekness , temperance ? most certainly he 's in great danger of hell-fire that calls this truth into question , that our lord iesus christ is the true and eternal god : but nothing can more conduce to our safety and everlasting consolation , than a firm adherence to this assertion , that our saviour is almighty , which he could not be , if he were not the true and eternal god : for , as there is but one eternal , so there is but one almighty . i have seen divers excellent books , that have been written against this wicked pamphlet , therefore i shall say no more of it , but only this ; that i wish its being burnt may mind the author of that fire which shall never be quenched . since the writing hereof , i have read a pamphlet with this fantastick title , the antapology of the melancholy stander-by . in pag. . i find such a scandalous objection against the creed of st. athanasius , that i think it my duty , with all possible speed , to publish my answer to it , and resentment of it , as coming from one who professes himself to be a son of the church of england : he recites these words of the creed : the father is eternal , the son eternal , and the holy ghost eternal , and yet they are not three eternals , but one eternal : as also there are not three incomprehensibles ; nor three uncreated , but one uncreated , and one incomprehensible . suppose now , says this anonymus , a man should thus argue hence ; if there are three , yet not three uncreated , but one uncreated , then two of the three must be created ; for the three must be either created or uncreated ; that is , eternally existent . i affirm , that if any man should thus argue , the answer would be ready , that the epithets incomprehensible and uncreated , are attributed to the father , son , and holy ghost , as these three are one , and have one essence uncreated , infinite , or incomprehensible . it does no more follow , that if there are three , yet not three uncreated , but one uncreated , and then two of the three must be created ; than that if there are three , yet not three gods , but one god , then two of the three must not be god. here the anonymus plainly discovers the falseness of his heart ; whatever he pretends , he is a deserter of the catholic faith. as for his most impious endeavours to make his reader to disgust that most wholsome petition in the litiny , which being rightly used , cures the soul of all sin and error , o holy , blessed , and glorious trinity , three persons , and one god , have mercy upon us miserable sinners ; i shall say no more at present but only this : that if this writer receive any temporal benefit , as a priest of the church of england , he deserves the character of a thief and a robber . and as i profess my self to be a true son of the church of england , and consequently of the universal church of christ , i make my appeal against him to the king of kings , and lord of lords , who is ready to judge both the quick and the dead . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . books printed for john evering● at the star in ludgate-street . miscellany essays , by monsieur de 〈◊〉 mont , upon history , philosophy 〈◊〉 morality , humanity , gallantry , &c. 〈◊〉 with a character by a person of hono● 〈◊〉 england ; continued by mr. dryden . . a new family-book ; or , the true 〈◊〉 of families : being directions to pa● 〈◊〉 children , and to those who are inst●ad of 〈◊〉 shewing them their several duties , with 〈◊〉 and meditations : to which is annexed , 〈◊〉 course about the right way of improvin● 〈◊〉 time ; with a preface by dr. horneck . . an answer to the brief history of the 〈◊〉 tarians , called also socinians . by william 〈◊〉 rector of st. swithin , london . . an enquiry into several remarkable 〈◊〉 of scripture in the old and new testam● which contain some difficulty in them ; with 〈◊〉 probable resolution of them : by iohn edwar● b. d. sometime fellow of st. iohn's college in cambridge . . moral maxims of reflections , in four parts written in french by the duke of rochefoucault now made english. . the gauger and measurer's companion being a compendious way of gauging superfice and solids , with the reasons of most multiplicators and divisors used in measuration ; all difficult points made easie ; with a way to gauge all quantities under a gallon ; also a brief description of the gauge-point , with a direction to find the same ; and the content of a circle in all its parts . the exact method of measuring land , board , glass , pavement , stone , be it of what form soever ; together with a globe and round timber ; with a table of cylinders , &c. . the royal english school for their majesties three kingdoms ; being a catalogue of all the words in the bible , with a praxis in prose and verse , all beginning with one syllable , and proceeding by degrees to eight , divided and not divided , whereby all persons , both young and old , of the meanest abilities , may with little help be able to read the whole bible over distinctly , easily , and more speedily than in any other method ; with directions to find out any word ; together with an exposition on the creed ; and variety of pictures . by tobias ellis , late minister of the gospel . . monarchia microcosmi : the origin , vicissitudes , and period of vital government in man , for a further discovery of diseases incident to human nature . by edw. maynwaring , m. d. . the divine art of prayer , containing the most proper rules to pray well ; with divers meditations and prayers suitable to the necessity of christians , useful in every family ; with several prayers for souldiers , both in their majesties army and fleet. by marius d' assigney , b. d. . phrascologia generalis : a full , large , and general phrase-book , comprehending whatever is necessary and most useful in all other phraseological books ( hitherto here published ) and methodically digested for the more speedy and prosperous progress of students in their humanity-studies . by william robertson , m. a. notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e * t.p. h.m. s. t. doctores . discourses on several texts of scripture by henry more. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) discourses on several texts of scripture by henry more. more, henry, - . worthington, john, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed by j.r. and are to be sold by brabazon aylmer, london : . "preface" signed: john worthington. reproduction of original in the union theological seminary library, new york. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng church of england -- sermons. sermons, english -- th century. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images - tcp staff (michigan) sampled and proofread - tcp staff (michigan) text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion discourses on several texts of scripture . by the late pious and learned henry more , d. d. london , printed by i. r. and are to be sold by brabazon aylmer , at the three pigeons against the royal exchange in cornhil . . the preface . i shall not bespeak the acceptance of these papers , by any large encomium , either of them , or of the author . this would detain the reader too long from the benefit of them ; and indeed to little or no purpose : for the discourses will sufficiently speak for themselves without the artifice of any commendatory preface . and as for the author ; his name is so well known , and deservedly admired in the world , upon the account of the many elaborate treatises which he published in his life-time , that these his posthumous pieces may find a welcome entertainment without any other invitation . the business therefore of this preface , is only to acquaint the reader with some things which concern this edition ; and this i shall do very briefly in the following particulars . . the first and chief thing which the reader is to be acquainted with , is the authenticness of these writings ; they being all of them printed by the authors own copies ; except discourse xii th and xiii th which were , with some of the other , transcribed from the originals in the authors life-time , by one whose faithfulness and exactness is evident in the rest , and is not in the least to be doubted of in these . . the next thing which i should tell the reader , is by whom these papers were committed to my care and management , in order to make them publick : but i am forbidden to name him ; and therefore i shall be silent as to this particular . . but here it may not be unfit to tell the reader , in general , that i have bestowed upon them all the care and pains which the shortness of time determined for the preparing of them for the press would admit of : and this is sufficient to satisfie any ingenuous person : whereas to speak of all the toil and difficulties which i met with therein , would be too tedious an exercise of the readers patience , and piece of vanity as burdensome to my self as to others . . and lastly , as for any defects therein , or for the errors which have escaped the press ; they are such as neither the authors name will suffer by reason of them , nor the papers be less acceptable to a candid and well-disposed reader . thus much i thought fit to advertise the reader of here , concerning this edition . as for the discourses themselves , i shall leave it . wholly to him to observe the stile and matter of them . only this i would suggest , that they are such as were prepared for no mean auditory ; some of them being university-sermons , and the rest college-exercises . i will conclude this preface with a short prayer : which i wish the reader may as seriously and devoutly put up , as the pious author did before one of the following discourses . o lord our god , the fountain of light , and the well-spring of all holy wisdom and knowledge ; without whose aid our search after thee and thy ways , is but tedious error and dangerous wandering from thee ; assist us mercifully in our endeavours after thee ; open our eyes , that we may see the wonders of thy law ; sanctifie our hearts unto obedience , that we may unfeignedly love thee , and worthily magnifie the holy name , through iesus christ our lord. amen . london , nov. . . john worthington . the texts of the following discourses . discourse i. pet. ii. . dearly beloved , i beseech you as strangers and pilgrims , abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. p. . discourse ii. psal. lxxxiv . . they go from strength to strength , every one of them appeareth before god in sion . p. discourse iii. mat. vi. , . the light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be single , thy whole body shall be full of light . but if thine eye be evil , thy whole body shall be full of darkness . if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness , how great is that darkness ! p. . discourse iv. prov . i. . the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom . p. . discourse v. john iv. , , , . in the mean time his disciples prayed him , saying , master , eat . but he said unto them , i have meat to eat that you know not of . therefore said the disciples one to another , hath any man brought him ought to eat ? iesus saith unto them , my meat is to do the will of him that sent me , and to finish his work . p. . discourse vi. jam . i. . be ye doers of the word , and not hearers only , deceiving your own selves . p. . discourse vii . prov . xv. . all the dayes of the afflicted are evil , but a good conscience is a continual feast . p. . discourse viii . psal. xvii . . as for me , i will behold thy face in righteousness : i shall be satisfied , when i awake , with thy likeness . p. . discourse ix . rom . viii . . and if children , then heirs ; heirs of god , and joint-heirs with christ : if so be that we suffer with him , that we may be also glorified with him . p. . discourse x. jam . i. . pure religion , and undefiled before god and the father , is this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep himself unspotted from the world . p. . discourse xi . heb. xiii . . to do good and communicate forget not , for with such sacrifices god is well pleased . p. . discourse xii . gal. vi. , , . but god forbid that i should glory , save in the cross of our lord iesus christ ; by whom the world is crucified unto me , and i unto the world . for in christ iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing , nor uncircumcision ; but a new creature . and as many as walk according to this rule , peace be on them , and mercy ; and upon the israel of god. p. . discourse xiii . pet. i. , . seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit , unto unfeigned love of the brethren ; see that ye love one another , with a pure heart , fervently : being born again , not of corruptible seed , but of incorruptible , by the word of god which liveth and abideth for ever . p. . discourse xiv . psal. cvi. . they joined themselves also unto baal-peor , and ate the sacrifices of the dead . p. . discourse xv. col . iii. . if ye then be risen with christ , seek those things which are above , where christ sitteth at the right hand of god. p. . appendix to discourse xiii . p. . imprimatur lambhith nov. . . ra. barker r mo in christo patri ac d no d no johanni archiepiscopo cant. a sacris dom. discourses on several texts of scripture . discourse i. pet. ii. . dearly beloved , i beseech you as strangers and pilgrims , abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. the text is an exhortation to abstinence from the lusts of the flesh : which duty the apostle endeavours to fix upon the spirits of his auditors by a twofold means or artifice . first , by insinuating into their affections by a kind and friendly compellation and humbleness of address [ dearly beloved , i beseech you : ] and then by convincing their reason by solid argumentation : which is fetch'd from a twofold topick , from the enmity and active hostility of these fleshly lusts against our souls , and from the dignity and sanctity of our souls themselves ; intimating that the state of this present world , with the enjoyments of it , is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a thing too much estranged from , unsuitable to , or unworthy of a being of so high a nature and divine extraction , as the soul of man to be engaged in , or any thing taken with . this is the summe of the text. we will begin with the duty we are exhorted to , the abstinence from fleshly lusts , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is too trivial to take notice that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does as well signifie desire at large , or natural appetite , in which there is no hurt , as inordinate desire , which we ordinarily understand by lust ; though that english word also was of an indifferent meaning in the ancient use thereof . but this honest and allowable sense of the word we may be sure is not meant in the text ; both because the precept were impossible to be performed without manifest violence and injury done to nature ; ( for we cannot live without eating , and drinking , and sleeping , ) and also because of that epithet added to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; which yet denotes the pravity of these desires , rather than their original : for flesh , in a natural sense , is of as harmless a signification as desire ; as where the apostle sayes , no man ever yet hated his own flesh , but nourisheth and cherisheth it . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or fleshly lust is taken in such a sense as it is , where it is opposed to the spirit , gal. . . for the flesh lasteth against the spirit , and the spirit against the flesh : and these are contrary the one to the other ; as appears more manifestly from their fruits or works . the works of the flesh are manifest ; saith the apostle in the same place , which are these , adultery , fornication , uncleanness , lasciviousness , idolatry , witchcraft , hatred , variance , emulations , wrath , strife , seditions , heresies , envyings , murders , drunkenness , revellings , and such like : but the fruit of the spirit is love , joy , peace , long-suffering , gentleness , goodness , faith , meekness , temperance . flesh therefore and fleshly lusts ( in the text ) is to be understood in such a sense as they are opposed to the nature and fruits of the spirit . and in rom. . let us walk honestly as in the day , not in rioting and drunkenness , not in chambering and wantonness , not in strife and envying : but put ye on the lord iesus christ , and make no provision for the flesh , to fulfil the lusts thereof . here the life or spirit of the lord jesus christ , is opposed to those works of the flesh , and to the caressing and providing for the satisfactions thereof . and indeed , if we examine either our own lives or others , it is manifest that our care and forecast is pitch'd upon some one thing that is the leading object to all our affections . in this sense therefore , so to indulge to the desires of the flesh as to make the satisfactions of the carnal life the joy and contentment of our souls , to make it the thing we long after , and would be at , either alwayes , or as repeatedly as we can find our selves reap the pleasures of such repetitions ; this is truly and properly to follow , not to abstain from fleshly lusts. but to keep at a due distance from all animal pleasures , not to resent them nor rellish them with too high a gusto , or penetrating delight ; not to let these poysonous waters enter even into our souls ( as the psalmist complains of the waters of affliction ) nor yet our souls to cleave to the dust ; but for our perceptive part to tamper with these things with a more suspensive or collective guard upon it self , not loosening it self , nor letting it self flow or melt into that which allures so strongly , and would captivate her will and affections into a base servitude to things beneath her ; but to admit only so much of them , as either tend to , or are consistent with the health and sanity of both soul and body ; thus to order our appetite , were properly to abstain from fleshly lusts , and to content our selves only with the fulfilling our harmless and natural desires , with which the apostle has no quarrel . in brief therefore our natural desires then become fleshly lusts , when their rellish is so high , that they either extinguish or obscure our capacities of those holy and divine joys , or exceed the end and scope of god and nature in planting them in us ; which was not for any mischief to either soul or body , but for the good of both , if men were but either skilful , or docible to learn the right uses and ends of them . edo ut vivam , non ut edam vivo , was the saying of an old philosopher somewhere ( socrates i think ) whereby he intimated the true end of eating and drinking , and perstringed the ignorance and enormity of gluttons and drunkards . the animal functions and delights of them are of so low an allay , that when men live to enjoy the exercise of these , it is an extreme inordinacy of life , and all the natural desires and pleasures become ipso facto , fleshly lusts. for surely they must be very highly taken with those things that they take to be the very ends of our living , and without which , life would not be vital : which is such an unhinging of true reason and nature , that that saying of antisthenes will appear from hence to bear with it a more sober and remarkable sense then we may be at first aware of , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i had rather be mad than struck with pleasure ; that is , in such a sense as has been declared . for to be transported with the pleasure of natural fruitions to that inordinacy , is both a madness and a piece of immorality besides ; and haply such as does more deeply wound the soul , than natural madness it self , and lay more certain trains of her future misery . to abstain therefore from fleshly lusts , is to resist or deny the inordinate cravings of our natural propensions or desires , and to held our soul in suspence from being carried into too great a transport in but the measurable use of them ; that they should not pierce into the inward life of the soul , but let that plant , our body , rejoyce by it self , if it can , in its grateful refreshments . trees and flowers flourish well enough , supply'd with rain and sunshine , without any such high transports : and the chearfulness of a pure mind and upright conscience will be sunshine enough to be added to the moderate irrigations of convenient nourishment , due to this plant-animal we carry about with us : that no man may think it his duty to exult in the enjoyment of corporeal pleasures for the health of his bodies sake , when every such perception so heartily and feelingly taken in , is either poyson , or a stab to the life of the soul. but that will be more seasonably considered anon . in the mean time , i hope i have made it clear enough , what is meant by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or fleshly lusts ; as also what it is to abstain from them . we come now to consider the second part of our discourse , the means or artifice the apostle uses to fasten this duty i have described , upon the hearts and consciences of his auditors , his humble address [ i beseech you ] and that kind and friendly compellation [ dearly beloved . ] and indeed the one implies the other . non bene conveniunt , nec in unâ sede mor antur majest as & amor — while , he calls them , dearly beloved , it is more comely and suitable to beseech them than command them : but the prudence and discretion of the apostle is very conspicuous in both , thus to insinuate himself into the affections of his auditors , by such sweet and wining rhetorick ; he being to convey something to them which is over bitter and distastful to flesh and blood ; and therefore he does well to besmear the brim of this cup of wormwood with the sweetness of honey , that his patients may the better take this wholesome potion , as lucretius uses this similitude , though in a subiect of less moment . sea veluti pueris absynthia tetra medentes cum dare conantur , priùs oras pocula circùm contingunt meltis dulci flavuque liquore . hard commands given with an harsh imperiousness , befits not the spirit of the gospel . and it is not so much external force , at the assurance of the kindness , integrity , and fidelity of the instructer , that can engage the affections and conscience of the auditor to the observance of such spiritual precepts as these . indeed the falsly-pretended successor of peter may by law and force keep men from eating flesh in lent , and engage them to observe such commandments of men , whereby they more easily make the commandments of god of no effect : but to win upon mens consciences indeed , to set upon the true and real mortification of our fleshly lusts , in such a sense as i have described ; this is more likely to proceed from the perswasion they have of him that gives this wholesome counsel , that it is out of sincere kindness and faithfulness to them for the safety of their souls , than if they discern it proceeds out of an affectation of dominion over their consciences ; and of exposing them to unnecessary faults and mulcts . while the apostle therefore layes aside all imperiousness of command , he seems to insinuate his sensibleness of the hardness of the task , and to suggest that it is not out of an affectation of dominion over their christian liberty that he offers this advice , but out of the mere indispensableness of the duty , in order to their salvation . for as he calls them [ dearly beloved ] so he treats them as in that endearing respect ; and seems to profess , that it is merely out of his brotherly love and tenderness towards them , and faithful care of their highest and most important concerns , that constrains him to offer this severer counsel unto them . those whom we dearly love , we cannot endure to hurt or grieve any way : and therefore professing this tender affection to them in the midst of severer counsel , it is a plain manifestation that nothing but the indispensableness thereof could extort from him the advice ; as when a tender mother perswades her child to endure the searing iron , or incision-knife , and to be content to quit some festred or gangren'd part of the securing of the whole body . this is the genuine sense of this wise and discreet insinuation of the apostle into the affections of his auditors , that his exhortation to abstinence from fleshly lusts may take the more certain effect with them . we proceed now to the last part of our discourse , which is to consider the apostles argumentation , whereby he would engage them to this duty . which argumentation ( as i said ) was fetched from a two-fold topick , first , from the dignity of an humane soul , especially christian. secondly , from that enmity or hostility of the fleshly lusts against her . . the dignity and excellency of humane souls is intimated in those words [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : ] the former whereof signifies such qui sedem habent extra patriam ; the latter , qui extra patriam peregrinantur ; as grotius notes upon the text. so that according to the sense of either of these expressions , it is manifest that we carry something about us that is of a far higher dignity than to be accounted a citizen or indigena of this terrestrial globe . if this round hillock of earth can lay claim to any thing of us born therein , or therefrom , it is only this earthly body . at verò animis aeterna coeli sedes quaerenda , eaque propriae illorum patria ; as cicero speaks . and something like this is intimated by the author to the hebrews , who ( according as philo judaeus also somewhere insinuates , touching the souls of the patriarchs here upon earth ) does declare them pilgrims and strangers in this present world upon their own confession , which he will also have further to imply that , in thus saying , they are pilgrims and strangers ; that they seek a country which belongs more peculiarly to them ; that they desired a better country , that is an heavenly ; and adds , wherefore god is not ashawed to be called their god , for he hath prepared for them a city , namely in heaven . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . we come into his world to sojourn , uot to dwell here ; for the soul of every wise man has heaven for its country , but this earth for its land of pilgrimage ; as philo speaks . like that of cato in tully , commorandi enim natura diversorium nobis , non habitandi locum dedit . and plato in his axiochus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and philo de somniis , does expresly make the history of the pilgrimages of abraham and the patriarchs , a type or shadow of the peregrination of humane souls here upon earth , but that they have their proper country in heaven , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : which methinks with more elegancy the holy apostle calls his tabernacle ; which alludes to the pilgrimage of the israelites through the wilderness into the promised land , that illustrious type of heaven , in which journey they liv'd in tabernacles , or booths . yea , i think it meet as long as i am in this tabernacle , to stir you up by putting you in remembrance , knowing that shortly i must put off this my tabernacle . which tabernacle being dissolved , we have a building of god , ( saith s. paul ) an house not made with hands , eternal in the heavens . that was only commorandi diversorium , this an everlasting habitation to dwell in . wherefore the littleness of the concerns of this life being proportioned to our short stay here , and the soul of man being capable of so high and lasting enjoyments , it is very unworthy and unbecoming so noble a being as the soul , not to abstain from fleshly lusts , not to be so much master of the natural desires of the flesh , as not to be enslaved to them , or transported by them ; either to seek them , or sue after them with over-much eagerness , whether riches , honours , the pleasures of the flesh , or whatever gratifications of the animal life ; or to embrace them with over much transportedness when they are offer'd unto us . epictetus expresses how we ought to be minded toward these things , excellently well , by a similitude taken from a feast or banquet . if a dish come to thee that thou likest , take part thereof with modesty and temperance : is it to be removed from thee , detain it not : is it not yet come at thee , stretch not thine appetite out to it , before its approach . if thou shalt be thus affected toward all the things of this world , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but if when they are offered thee , thou yet refuse them , thou shalt not only be a worthy guest , but even a fellow-prince amongst the gods. and truly if we would but duly consider the original of our souls , from what fountain and archetypon they are derived , and of what an excellent nature they are , and how little they are intended for this terrestrial condition ; methinks it should be no hard task to fulfil this precept of the stoick ; or rather that of s. iohn , in his general epistle , love not the world , neither the things of the world ; if any man love the world , the love of the father is not in him . for all that is in the world , the lust of the flesh , the lust of the eyes , and the pride of life , is not of the father but of the world . wherefore our original being so peculiarly divine , we are bound , if we bear a due respect to that , to gather up our affections from sinking towards the vain and transitory things of this world , and look upon our selves as very little concerned in them : christian souls especially , who by reason of their new birth , are of a noble and divine extraction indeed ; and therefore upon a double account , ought not so to undervalue themselves as to adhere to the fading pleasures and gratifications of this mortal life . if in vertue of this new birth , ye be risen with christ , into the sense of the divine life . and into a true and lively faith , seek those things which are above where christ fitteth on the right hand of god. set your affections on things above , not on things on the earth . for what is there that this earthly life affords , which we do not enjoy but as tenants in common with the very brutes ? eating , drinking , sleeping , hunting after a prey , or pursuing a project for the satisfaction of our carnal desires , begetting or bringing up our young ; applauses , caresses , the pleasure of dominion or revenge , and the like ; these set up but on one level with the beasts of the field , and do not at all reach the excellency of our proper nature . but yet this is the guise of this land of our pilgrimage , thus to be clad in the manners and habits of our fellow-animals of the earth , as well as strangers put on turbants in the turkish empire . but who would put on an odd habit in a strange country , but merely out of necessity ? could he strut and please himself in it , and be curious and sollicitous about a thing that he has no conceit or opinion of ? for us to make provision for the flesh , to fulfil the lusts thereof ( as the apostle speaks ) is as fond , as if some slave should be very curious to provide himself of chains and fetters , or other badges of his slavery ; or a fool should be very careful that his coat have all the peculiar laces or tassels of a fools-coat : and all this worldly pomp and enjoyments are no better , nor bear no more agreeable proportion to the nobleness of the soul , than a fools-coat to the body of a grave and wise man. nay , i think , that grave and wise philosopher plotinus took his own body to be such a coat , and therefore was loath to be painted in it , and so leave a durable disgrace of himself behind him . but suppose these worldly things were not altogether so vile and contemptible , yet our stay is here so short , that to us they cannot be valuable . for as both s. peter and plato have told us , this life is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a kind of pilgrimage here upon earth , and we are but passing through it into our own country . how fond a thing therefore would it be to love any thing of the world ; or to addict our affections to it , when we must so suddenly leave it ? as fond as if one should be inveigled with the love of his inn , or any thing there , when as he must leave it the next morning . wherefore being thus in a strange land , which we are to pass through , not to make any abode in , let not our minds be fixt or glued to any thing from which our persons are so suddenly to remove . and because we are strangers in the land , let us take heed how we tamper with any bewitching objects , lest that which looks fair may prove no safe food , but either a present or more lingring poyson , and we may find the mischief of it at our return into the other state. it is s. iudes character of some in the antient christian feasts of charity , that they fed themselves without fear ; as if they had made that perverse sense of our saviours saying , that which enters into the man , cannot defile him , by either quantity or quality . but we are environed with so much ignorance and inexperience in this strange land , that we ought carefully to stand upon our guard , and take heed how over-greedily or over-heartily we close with any tempting delight , remembring that there may lye hid the most dangerous poyson in the greatest sweetness . let us therefore trust no strange objects in this strange land , but keep close to what is nearest akin to us ; that is , to our true manhood , which is the sense of true honour and vertue , the fear and love of god , and whatever graces descend from that fountain of light , and giver of every good and perfect gift . but the gifts of this world are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which few can receive without parting with that which is infinitely better , a pure mind and a peaceable conscience , and the assured hopes of eternal happiness hereafter . and thus much for the apostles first argumentation , to perswade us to abstain from fleshly lusts , fetch'd from the dignity of the soul. . we come to the second , which is , the enmity and hostility of these lusts against the soul ; the law of the members warring against the law of the mind , and endeavouring to lead us captive into the bondage of sin . this hostility is exercised , . in treacherous circumventions . . in violent assaults : and . in the spoil and pillage of the soul upon victory . . the treachery and stratagems of the lusts against the soul , are usually these . first , a pretence of enlarging our knowledge and experience in things , that it is fit to know the world , and by real proof to judge of the estimate of things , and not to be cooped up within such narrow bounds , and thereby remain simple and ignorant . this was a stratagem of the old serpent , whereby he deceived eve ; ye shall not surely dye ; but god knows that in the day ye eat thereof , your eyes shall be opened , and ye shall be as gods , and know good and evil . ( gen. . ) but the soul must take heed of such false and mischievous insinuations as these , and remember , that experimentally to know evil , is to become evil and miserable ; and that the adequate object of our wills or desires , is that which is good , and that therefore knowledge it self is not desireable but upon this account , so far forth as it makes us good and happy . who would have the experimental knowledge of the rack , or of the stone and gout , or of a draught of poyson , though he may have his antidote ? none but condemned persons , and the slaves of mountebanks ; nor they neither , but that they are forced to it . to undergo therefore such base experiments , in which there is so much loathsomness and danger , is to submit our selves to be slaves , and is unworthy the nobleness of an humane soul. but if we will be experimenting , let us not experiment downwards , by plunging our selves into several sorts and degrees of lusts of the fleshly or animal life , but rather try how much we can emerge upwards into the various pleasures and perfections of the divine . let us taste and see how good the lord is , and what variety of joys and delights there is in him . all things come to an end , but thy commandments are exceeding large , saith the prophet david : here 's a field therefore wide enough to exercise our selves in , and to try variety of experiments in the progress of holiness ; adding to our faith vertue , to our vertue knowledge , to our knowledge temperance , to our temperance patience , to our patience godliness , to our godliness brotherly kindness , and to our brotherly kindness charity : whereby we become of one spirit with the very godhead it self , in whose presence is fulness of joy , and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore , and so great that we cannot desire to experiment any thing greater . secondly , well , but if this stratagem will not take , the next is a fair insinuation of kindred and friendship betwixt the fleshly lusts and the soul of man. homo es , humani nihil à te alienum puta ; or that proverbial phrase amongst the greeks , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but the soul here is to remember that the true man is the intellectual man , made in the image of god , according to righteousness and true holiness ; not the sensual part , common to us with the brutes ; and that though she may admit of natural ordinate desires , yet fleshly lusts have no pretence to lay any claim to her , they belonging either to the worst of brutes , or not being to be owned at all , as any part of the creation . wherefore it is a pittiful sophisme men put upon themselves , while they plead an indulgence to their sinful lusts upon the priviledge of their nature ; as if they were beasts and not men , or as if it were a priviledge to be a beast , or man were not to rule the beast in this case , and admit of no desires but such as are ordinate and allowable . thirdly and lastly , these fleshly lusts will plead for themselves from custom and the guize of the world ; and tell the soul it is but a piece of humanity , and discretion , and due civility to the rest of mankind to do as they do ; that it is more creditable and plausible , and how a man had better be out of the world than out of the fashion . but to stop this vain plea of the flesh , the soul may oppose that of the blessed apostle s. peter ; wherefore gird up the loins of your mind , be sober and hope to the end , for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of iesus christ ; as obedient children , not fashioning your selves according to the former lusts in your ignorance ; but as he which hath called you is holy , so be ye holy in all manner of conversation ; because it is written , be ye holy , for i am holy . and to be holy , is not to be mingled with the world , or conformable thereto , but separate and distinct from it . what therefore have we to do to conform our selves to the rest of the world that lies in wickedness ( as s. iohn saith ) when as we are a chosen generation , a royal priesthood , an holy nation , a peculiar people , who are to shew forth the praises of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light . ( pet. . . ) why then should we fashion our selves according to the sinful guize of the world , when as christ hath redeemed us from the earth , and from all our vain conversation . and therefore we being the peculiar people of god , we are strangers and pilgrims as to the world , and the guizes thereof ; and it would be as ill beseeming for us to conform our selves to the fashions of the world , as it would be for a civil european to put on the shells and feathers of a barbarous american . . but the lusts of the flesh being thus worsted and defeated in parley , they will attempt to do that by violence which they could not do by treachery and circumvention : by the force and vigour of their impress they will endeavour to carry us away captive . but against this the soul is to listen to that advice of our saviour , watch and pray , that ye be not led into temptation ; and that of the apostle s. peter , be sober , be vigilant , because your adversary the devil , as a roaring lyon , walketh about seeking whom he may devour . and he entred into iudas you know upon the eating of the sop ; which seems to intimate , that fasting and temperance is a good safeguard against him . we must with s. paul , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; keep the body under , lest this domestick thief ( as trismegist calls it ) be so strong and stubborn , that he fly in our faces , and over-master us . we must put on the whole armour of god , ( as the apostle exhorts the ephesians ) that we may be able to withstand in the evil day , and having done all to stand , to keep the field against our fiercest and stoutest enemies . we must have our loins girt with truth ; that is , with saving truth , with the knowledge of the best and most useful things : for this truth lies in a little room , and therefore will keep in , and gird up our affections more close , and not suffer any diffluency of our minds into folly and vanity . and we must put on the breast-plate of righteousness ; that is , of resolved uprightness and sincerity of heart . above all we must take the shield of faith , in the power of god , whereby we are enabled to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked . and we must take the helmet of hope , and sure expectation of everlasting life , which will keep us from being easily knock'd down to the earth by the fiercest assaults of our adversaries . and lastly we must take to us the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god , whereby we may divide betwixt good and evil , and admit the one , and reject the other . and being thus appointed , we must pray alwaies with all prayer and supplication in the spirit , watching thereunto with all perseverance : and especially to watch in such a sense as this , as to be extremely shy and careful how we admit any thing under the colour , or upon the rellish of animal pleasure , but rather eo nomine to decline it : which is an impregnable bulwark against the assaults of the flesh , and such as will ever defeat them . if we do these things we shall never fall , let the assaults of the fleshly lusts be as violent as they will. . but if we be overcome , let us now see what a lamentable spoil they will make of us , and how cruelly and tyrannically they will use us . for first , they will rob us of whatever is precious , that we have : they will take down , and carry away with them , that chearful and delightful furniture of the soul , peace and tranquillity of mind . for the mind of man is not of so base an original , as to enjoy it self in things so much below it self , as are the fleshly lusts ; whence it must needs be , that she will be ever and anon disturbed with loathings and regrets of conscience , amidst her so base condition and practices ; and instead of that steady peace and chearfulness of spirit , ( which are enjoyed in our adherence to holiness and vertue ) be exposed to many horrours and distractions , and confusions of thoughts , and an ungrateful sense of inward shame and reproach which accompanies such unworthy actions . secondly , they will disarm the soul of that honest activity and diligence which we ought to have in our affairs , and make us more uncareful and more unable to pursue and manage our business with that discretion and faithfulness we ought to do , to the scandal of the world , as well as to our own detriment . this lucretius notes of that notorious kind of fleshly lusts , the being addicted to women , languent officia atque aegrotat fama vacillans , but takes place also in gluttony , in drunkenness , and whatever other pleasure has once overcome the soul , and subdued her to it self . thirdly , these fleshly lusts rob a man of the safe use of his reason : they will make it wonderfully prevaricate in the behalf of themselves , and commit such paralogisms as the soul cannot but be ashamed of so soon as she has got out of the reach of their power . and they will in the conclusion , so weaken the faculties of the mind , that they shall very fondly dote in their verdicts , even touching such things as the fleshly lusts themselves are unconcerned in . for these lusts bereaving the mind of her purity , must needs dim and obscure her faculties more or less , in all uses of them where there is ordinarily any difference of sentiments amongst men . fourthly and lastly , these lusts deprive us of the life and influence of the divine spirit , and most dismally damp and dead the power of faith , and sense of religion in the soul , which is of more consequence than even reason it self ; which proves very weak in the assurance of these things , when the sagacity of a better life is extinguished or smothered by the soul impurities of the lusts of the flesh. but the soul being once purged from these , ipso facto unites with the spirit of god , and by an holy and divine instinct , is in a proneness and readiness to believe such things as god is truly said to have done , or to intend to do concerning the sons of men , by vertue of her union with the divine spirit , or that eternal mind that immutably contains the whole counsel of god touching things past , present , and to come . this miserable spoil do the fleshly lusts make of the poor soul , when they overcome her ; and not only so , but they use her cruelly to boot . that they put out her eyes , i have already intimated , in that i noted that they bereave her both of faith and reason . and that they pluck all her feathers out of her wings , it is as manifest , since our being captivated with fleshly lusts , keeps down the soul , and hinders all holy and heavenly aspires , and extinguishes the pure flames of devotion . nor are they content with this , but they also crucifie and nail the captive soul to this earthly body ; as plato complains , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all pleasure and grief nails ( saith he ) the soul to the body . nor is it impertinent to name enormous grief amongst the lusts of the flesh , since no grief is enormous but out of the enormity of self-love , or inordinate love of this corporeal personality of ours ; which if we could be sufficiently unconcerned for , and love and esteem nothing but the almighty lord of heaven and earth , and those divine laws and holy sentiments he has implanted in our souls , enormity of grief would not be able to seize upon us . nor do they only thus crucifie and kill that higher and diviner life of the soul , but by the exorbitant excitations of the contrary life into several enormous modes and forms , metamorphose men into so many abhorred monsters , whom they keep in the chains of this base servility and captivity , and then let them loose upon the most villainous outrages , or the basest and most contemptible actions imaginable . wrath and revenge , like a bear robb'd of her whelps , makes them tear apieces , and destroy all they meet with in their way . ambition and avarice , like an evening-wolf , makes them fall upon the sheepfolds , and suck the blood of innocent lambs , to satisfie their thirst . superstition and false zeal , turnes them into such furies or devils , that they destroy whole cities and countries with fire and sword , out of pride and impatience that others do not submit to their wisdom , and give themselves up to their guidance ; who yet have no light but those infernal torches of an ignorant and bitter zeal devoid of all christian charity , which they could light no where but from the flames of hell ; nor conduct a soul by this light any whither , but to the place of those infernal flames . the sting of lust transforms them into such satyrs and baboons , that they fly upon all promiscuously , not sparing their own mothers , sisters nor daughters . gluttony and drunkenness ( as circe did vlysses his companions ) changes their shapes into foul dirty swine . to say nothing of those ugly indecorums of effeminacy , that brings some into as base a servility as omphale did hercules , who made him put off his lyons-skin , and sit amongst her maids at the distaff and spindle . not to add what one would scarce dare to name , had not the apostle himself taken notice of it ; that this beastly lustfulness has made women change the natural use into that which is against nature ; and likewise also the men , leaving the natural use of the woman , burned in their lusts one towards another , men with men working that which is unseemly . rom. . with such base and inglorious , with such wretched and hideous servilities do the fleshly lusts tyrannize over the soul , when they have once captivated her ; carrying her thus in triumph , and exposing her to all baseness and lewdness , and dragging her by her chains of captivity through all filthiness and unseemliness ; and having thus besmear'd and defac'd her with the filth of all manner of sins in this life , fit her for a delivery to her fellow-devils in the other , to be reserv'd with them in everlasting chains of darkness , unto the judgment of the great day . this is the lamentable success of that warfare betwixt the lusts of the flesh and the soul , if she suffer her self to be overcome . and therefore it is no wonder the holy apostle uses all the reason and rhetorick he has , to make us stand upon our guard , and defend our selves from so subtle and malicious enemies ; dearly beloved , i beseech you as strangers and pilgrims , abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. discourse ii. psal. lxxxiv . . they go from strength to strength , every one of them appeareth before god in sion . the text is a presage of admirable prosperity and success to some sort of people ; so that it may well excite in us a desire of searching out who they may be : and if we begin further off at first , or go about , yet it may ( according to the proverb ) prove the nighest way home . if any one therefore demand who these are , i shall answer him out of the th psalm , ( the subject whereof seems to be the very same with this ) and in the words of the same prophet , this is the generation of them that seek him , that seek thy face o iacob ; the god of the people that prevail by their importunities and wrestlings with god , as iacob is said to do , gen. . whereby he purchased to himself the name of israel , because as a prince he had power with god. and david , as being one of this extraction himself , he seems to challenge a blessing from god on that very account , o lord god of hosts , hear my prayer ; give ear , o god of iacob , in the verse immediately following my text. in this present psalm , as also in the th and th psalms , the holy prophet so speaks of the court , tabernacle , temple , or house of god , as of a place of the highest enravishments that the soul of man can enjoy ; which expositors generally ( and i doubt not but truly ) interpret of the mosaical tabernacle and literal temple ; but that the mind of the prophet was carry'd up also to some higher matter , i do not at all question . and the first verse of the th psalm , lord who shall abide in thy tabernacle ? who shall dwell in thy holy hill ? ( which is almost verbatim repeated again in the th psalm ) the chaldee paraphrast does expresly interpret of heaven . so warrantable is it , not to be ty'd down to the letter , but to seek a further edifying mystery in the holy oracles of god. and such a temple as the abode wherein will be more suitable to such earnest breathings , and vehement expressions of the prophet ; ver. . . how amiable are thy tabernacles o lord of hosts ! my soul longeth , yea , even fainteth for the courts of the lord ; my heart and my flesh cryeth out for the living god. and again , ver. . blessed are they that dwell in thy house : they will be still praising thee . these things do not suit so well , methinks , to a house that is made of any earthly materials , into which the wicked can throng , as well as the just . nor does god dwell in any house made with hands , according to the apostolick philosophy , acts . any yet according to their doctrine , we are the temple of god ; at least design'd so to be . and the apostle paul sayes expresly , . cor. . . what ? know ye not that your body is the temple of the holy ghost ? and yet the same apostle , rom. . . i know , saith he , that in me ( that is in my flesh ) dwelleth no good thing . this earthly tabernacle is no house of god , as being from the earth . from whence it is that we groan earnestly , ( as the same apostle speaks , cor. . ) desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven . for we that are in this tabernacle do groan , being burdened : not for that we would be unclothed , but clothed upon , ( or further clothed ) that mortality might be swallow'd up of life . now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing , is god , who also hath given unto us the earnest of the spirit : that is to say , he that works us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into this condition , is god himself , by the operation of his spirit , which is the architect of its own house ( as it is said of the soul ) the builder of that holy temple in us , in which all is , fulfilled which the prophet david sets out in such devotional and vehement language . for when we are come to this state , we are then truly the temple of the living god ; and it is strength to a mans navel , and marrow to his bones . so that well may the holy prophet raise himself into so high expressions touching this condition , ver. . my soul longeth , yea even fainteth for the courts of the lord : my heart and my flesh cryeth out for the living god. for this earthly tabernacle destitute of this , is but a burden or body of vanity , wherein are all the seeds and fruits of sin and misery . but of this heavenly house , is that plentifully verify'd which the prophet david presageth , blessed are they that dwell in thy house , they will be still praising thee . and they that are arrived to this condition , will easily fulfil that precept of the apostle , ( eph. . , . ) be not drunk with wine , but be filled with the spirit , speaking to your selves in psalms , and hymns , and spiritual songs , singing and making melody in your heart to the lord. this is the real participation of the body or flesh of christ , the true bread from heaven , which is the immediate receptacle of the divine spirit ; so that he that comes hither , cannot fail to be replenish'd with righteousness , and peace , and joy in the holy ghost . and this may serve for a brief intimation , who these persons are , to whom such good success is promised in the text , and what the place is towards which they are journeying ; viz. the tabernacle , temple , or house of god , mystically understood . let us now consider , . the country through which they pass . . how well accoutred they are in their persons for the journey . . what convoy to guard them safe . . under what influences of heaven they travel . . what the more particular degrees of their progress : and . what welcome they find at their journeys end . . the country through which they travel is expresly set down in the psalm ; ver. . who going through the valley of baca , make it a well ; which is ordinarily interpreted the valley of tears : which though it has a sad appellation , yet bears with it a good omen , according to that in psalm ; they that sow in tears , shall reap in joy . but baca signifying also a mulberry-tree , some would have it denominated from thence , and also that it is so described , to set out the sterility and dryness of the soil ; as if as well the passage to , as the place where the house of god is situated , were all dry ground : for such indeed is mount sion it self ; as its very name also imports , which signifies aridity or ficcity : which any one will admit to bear ( without forcing ) an important signification , who reflects on that philosophical aphorism , anima sicca anima pura , or anima sicca sapientissima . and david , whose mind was so hugely taken up with the projecting for a place for the house of god ; psalm . ver . , , . ( i will not come into the tabernacle of my house , nor go up into my bed ; i will not give sleep to mine eyes , or slumber to mine eye-lids ; until i find out a place for the lord , an habitation for the mighty god of iacob ) immediately in the following verse , he in the spirit of prophecy delivers this great arcanum , lo ( saith he ) we heard of it at ephratah : but we found it in the fields of the wood . the common rumour indeed , and conceit was , that it should be built in ephratah ; that is , in regione frugiferâ , in a fat , rich , fertile soil ; but we find it in the fields of the wood , in loco non tam culto nec amoeno ( as calvin notes ) in a dry , barren , mountainous place ; indeed on mount moriah , which some would have so called as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , alluding to that in the canticles , as if it were a myrrhiferous mountain : and such wood indeed is a special demonstration of a dry and barren ground ; which is congenerous with the signification of mount sion , as also with what is observable in philadelphia , a type of the best state of the house of god in a collective sense ; it was placed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a region dry , barren , and burnt up with heat : as david professeth , that the zeal of gods house had even eaten him up , or consumed him : but as the outward man perisheth , the inward man is renewed day by day . but we had got to our journeys-end , the place of gods house , before we were well entred into our journey . that which i would observe is , that the region through which we pass to this state , which is called the holy temple or house of god , is no ephratah ; it is not a country of green fields , rich pastures , and rank flowry meadows ; but it is the valley of baca , a dry , barren soil , far from being fat , fulsom and luscious . and therefore all the self-favouring sweetnesses , and caressings of this terrestrial body , or carnal personality , are driven far from this region , with all that false wisdom or prudence which arises from the flesh , or from corrupt reasonings , touching the sovereign goodness of god ; the doctrine of love being abusable to the corruption of life , as well as the doctrine of faith , if men wander out of the valley of baca , into fools-paradises , made by their own carnal phansie and reason . and this for the present , shall serve briefly for the description of the country , through which these travellers to the house of god pass . . now how well they are provided for their iourney , is intimated also in this psalm ; and mainly it is in three things , knowledge , faith and sincerity . knowledge : ] namely , of the wayes of god that they are to walk in . ver. . blessed is the man whose strength is in thee , in whose heart are thy wayes . ( for so that translation of the psalms , which is appointed by our church to be read every day , has it ; and that that pronoun [ this ] is understood , as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i do not doubt , and therefore rightly expressed in this translation . ) who have the journey they are to take , the wayes and passages predelineated , as it were , in their hearts ; which denotes the best kind of knowledge , even that which is accompanied with affection , and hearty conviction . and surely it is not for nought that the spirit of god so frequently in scripture , names the heart for the chief seat of wisdom ; which is yet the less marvellous , considering that the wisdom which the scripture driveth at , is practical wisdom , moral or divine , wherein the heart is much concerned . and the sense and touch of those truths must pass the heart , as the colours do the eye , before the mind can give a steady assent to them . for what the eye is in reference to colours , that is the heart in reference to the discrimination of moral good and evil. and for this reason it is , that as seeing is attributed to the eye , so is vnderstanding to the heart , so frequently in the scripture . the thing is so plain , i need alledge no places . out of the heart proceed evil thoughts , saith our saviour ; and consequently good ones too ; for the heart is the fountain of the life and spirits ; and according as they are , so are our imaginations , whether sleeping or waking , such our ideas , thoughts and propensions to belief , especially in matters of life , whether natural or divine . and therefore we must be very careful how we let our pragmatical , light-minded reason , make laws of life for us , while our hearts have not undergone the due measures of purification ; because the thoughts and imaginations of our hearts will certainly impose upon that mercurial faculty , till the soul be made more judiciously discerning in vertue of her purity . but our safest way is with these travellers in the valley of baca , to have gods ways written in our hearts , for a map to guide us by . to the law and to the testimony . if they speak not according to this word , there is no light in them . whatever private suggestions arise in us , and how featly soever managed by that slight advocate , carnal or unregenerate reason , we are to guide our life by the commandments of christ , whom god has exhibited to the world as our infallible guide , confirming his authority and doctrine by signs and miracles , and by such wonderful prophecies , as it were madness in any man to prefer his own corrupt reasonings , imposed upon by an unsanctify'd heart , before those divine oracles , and unerring laws of life , which are given unto us by the son of god , so declared and manifested to the world. the first requisite point therefore , which is knowledge , is an hearty admittance of those laws of life which are prescribed us by christ and his apostles ; to take up these for principles to walk by , and not what our own self-favouring phancies suggest , or our vacillant reason , blind or drunk with the foul steams of an impure and unsanctify'd heart , would pretend to coin for us . blessed is the man , whose strength is in thee , in whose heart are thy wayes . the next is faith : by which i do not so much understand faith in general , as that which has for its proper object the power of god for the destroying of sin , and the erecting his kingdom in us . for out of this ariseth our strength in god , and our victory over the world. this is the victory that overcometh the world , even our faith , as s. iohn speaks . which requisite is also hinted in this psalm , the last verse ; o lord of hosts , blessed is the man that trusteth in thee . and indeed , sith our faith , and trust , and confidence is in the lord of hosts , how can we despair of the victory over any sin whatsoever . cannot he that created heaven and earth by his word , create in us a pure heart , and renew a right spirit within us ? i can do all things , ( saith s. paul ) through christ that strengthens me . certainly it is a contradiction , that omnipotency should not be able so effectually to assist a willing soul , as to bring all her enemies under her feet . can he that is the lord of hosts , and has the power over all nature , be baffled in his assaults upon the corrupt nature of any poor creature , so that he cannot reduce it if he will ? and can we possibly imagine god not to be willing to subdue sin in the world , who has given us such express laws against it , both within and without , who expresses his wrath and vengeance against it so frequently in scripture , who is so irreconcileable an enemy unto it , that nothing less than the death of his only begotten son , could make an atonement for it : and lastly , the holiness of whose nature is so contrary and diametrically opposite to the pollutedness of it . wherefore the fault most assuredly lyes at our own doors ; viz. because we are not sincerely willing to have our sins vanquished and overcome by the power of god. which therefore is the third and last requisite which the travellers in the valley of baca are said to be provided with , namely sincerity ; which comprehends not only a belief that all our sins ought to be subdued , and that they are all vanquishable through the assistance of gods spirit , but also an unfeigned willingness to have them subdued , and an hearty endeavour , to the utmost of that power we have received , to conquer them and subdue them . he that is provided of all these three , is fitly furnished for a prosperous journey toward the house of god ; and the almighty will be his safeguard in his travel . . which is the third particular we named , what convoy to guard them safe in their iourney , which is intimated in the psalm also ; for the lord is a sun and a shield , the lord will give grace and glory , and no good thing will he with-hold from them that walk uprightly ; that is to say , that walk sincerely . in which sincerity if they keep themselves , he will also be faithful unto them , and not suffer them to be tempted above what they are able , and will deliver them from all straits and assaults of their enemies both inward and outward . the lord will be their fortress and tower , their defence and shield , a present help in the day of trouble . the angels of the lord will encamp round about them , and deliver them . for such as these , as it is said of those few names in sardis , christ will confess their names before his father and his holy angels ; namely , profess how dear they are to him , and so commit them to their safe protection . . and surely the influences of heaven ( which is the fourth particular ) cannot but be very benign to those that are thus dear to the god of heaven . and therefore for light , and warmth , and kindly dews and showres , they shall not be destitute of these in this journey of theirs to the temple of god. and therefore god is said as well to be a sun to them as a shield , in the forecited verse of this psalm : and in ver. . they that pass through the valley of baca are said to make it a well , and that the rain filleth the pools : like that in psalm . o god , when thou wentest forth before thy people , when thou didst march through the wilderness , the clouds dropped at thy presence , thou sentest a gracious rain upon thy inheritance , and refreshedst it when it was weary . but in this present psalm , the rain is said to be received into some hollows of the earth dug out ; the latin renders it cisternas : i suppose any fossae or hollows of what form soever , will serve the turn , made by the diging away the earth , that this heavenly liquor may supply the vacuity . for that is a great mistake in the carnal-minded , that they think that when we empty our selves of the old adam , and the comforts of that life , that we thus stand empty for ever , and that religion is a forlorn disconsolate condition . no , dig away thy earth , and god will fill the vacuity with a substance from heaven . or starve away the fulsomness of thy flesh , by assiduous mortification and purification , and thou shalt make this arid soil , this valley of baca , a springing well , as it is suggested in the beginning of the verse . when our terrestrial substance becomes a dry barren soil , as to the fruits of the flesh , then will those well-springs of living water bubble up in us , as our saviour has promised , unto eternal life ; by which is understood the irrigation of the spirit . non datur vacuum , is a maxime as true in divinity as in philosophy . empty thy self therefore of thy earth , and thou shalt most certainly be replenished with heaven . . now for the fifth particular , which occurs in my text , properly so called ( for i have made the whole psalm in a manner my text hitherto ) it is of the greatest importance of all throughly to consider it ; namely , our gradual advance in this journey through the valley of baca. they go from strength to strength ; è virtute in virtutem , the latin has it , from vertue to vertue . and indeed this progress from strength to strength is nothing else but a proficiency in vertue ; either from one vertue to another , add to your faith fortitude , to your fortitude patience , &c. or from one degree of vertue to another . and this vertue is very significantly termed strength , there being no true vertue which is not such : it is but the imagination of vertue if it be not accompanied with life and power . and forasmuch as vertue and grace are all one , let every one take notice , that he that has no vertue has no grace , as well as he that has no power has no vertue . which is a plain note to examine a mans self by , that he may not lye lusking in his softnesses and infirmities , and in the mean time flatter himself , that he is notwithstanding one of the children of grace . and besides this , though he may have some grace and vertue in him , yet let him further consider , unless he do with these travellers in the valley of baca , pass e virtute in virtutem , from one vertue to another , and from one degree of vertue to another ; so that he can say with s. paul , that though my outward man perish , yet my inward man is renewed day by day ; he will never come to his journeys end , and never appear before god in sion . and that we may understand this point more distinctly , let us consider the several parts of this gradual proficiency ; that we may the better know whether we be at all as yet in the way to sion , and the temple of god , or no. we know in nature , that the weaker any thing is , the stronger ought to be the prop that is to support it ; and so the less our power is to do those things that are holy and good , for their own sakes , the stronger that passion ought to be , that must carry us to , or support us in such actions and performances . and truly the strongest and most enforcing passion seems to be that of fear ; we being more concerned not to be tormentingly miserable in intolerable pain and anguish , than to enjoy the greatest pleasure and happiness . wherefore the first degree of vertue and power is that which is so small , as if it were not enforced with the fear of the wrath and displeasure of the almighty , and those dreadful punishments that ensue thereupon , could not exercise it self in the ways of righteousness and piety , could not abstain from undue pleasures of the flesh , or from seeking unjust gains and advantages in worldly affairs , nor expose it self to any hazards and hardships for the truths sake , and for the interest of the kingdom of christ ; but yet in vertue of the fear of god , and of his dreadful displeasure , is carried through all these duties in some considerable measure : which therefore if men be not , it is a demonstration that either the fear of god is not before their eyes , or that they have not so much as this first degree of vertue , which jointly with the fear of god should enable them to become travellers in the valley of baca , that they may at last arrive to the vision of god. every man therefore must examine himself as to this point , and observe wherein his wayes are defectuous , and what it is that makes him so slack , or fail so much of his duty ; whether that due fear of god has not slipt from him , which should be a stay and prop to the small measure of vertue he has as yet attained to , and enforce and support the weakness thereof . which help if men let go unseasonably ( and it is unseasonable for every one to let it go , while he finds himself subject to fall into sin ) he will be like a city without walls ; and his security in the notional considerations of the goodness of god , and fond and perverse conclusions fetch'd from that sweet topick , will betray him to ruine . for being thus fudled , as it were , and made drunk with this delicious liquor of his own brewing , he will grow light-headed or light-minded , and presume of safety even when he is entring into the jaws of death : with agag they will come out delicately , saying , surely the bitterness of death is past , when as the sword of the lord stands ready to hew them in pieces . wherefore this fear of the lord is a tower of safety , and the strongest garrison against vice that is . it is true ( even in the vulgar sense of that place ) perfect love casts out fear ; but that love is not perfect , that will let in any sin , or admit of any defect of duty . indeed if a man had but so ardent a desire after the reward of righteousness , as that it would keep him in the performance of all duties required by the law of god ; that might excuse him from this less chearful state of fear : and it would be the second advance in this journey through the valley of baca , to be able upon the consideration of those joyes and glories that are to be enjoy'd amongst the blessed saints and angels in heaven , to abstain from all earthly lusts , and from whatever in our pilgrimage through this world , sollicits us to sin. this , i say , would be a further step in our journey toward the house of god. but we must by no means be content to stick here : for this is but the state of mercenaries ; and as it falls exceeding short of that perfection we are called unto , so he that takes up here , will most assuredly fall short of his journeys end . how far off then are they that endeavour no amendment of their lives , either out of the fear of punishment or hope of reward ; how sunk and besotted must the condition of such souls be , and how vastly removed from their eternal happiness ! the progress hitherto in vertue , which i have described , borrowing a term from plotinus we may call political ; it reaching no further than a conformity to an outward law upon the consideration of an external reward or punishment ; which yet i have made part of the journey in the valley of baca , because these wayes lead to a nearer approach to the house of god , as facilitating the soul to a speedier attainment to higher perfections . for temperance , and justice , and chastising the flesh , and keeping in a method of sobriety and abstinence , do of their own nature better dispose the soul to a more absolute purification , and quicker sensation of holy and divine things , and put her in a capacity of a more clear and certain conviction of the reasonableness of the commandments of god : so that though there were no external law to direct , yet we should be satisfy'd in our own minds and reasons , that such and such vertues are better than their contrary vices , and that we have as we are rational creatures , an obligation to follow the one , and decline the other . this is still a further step in the journey , but the state is but yet legal , if not political . this is rather a law of life and prescript ( though more intrinsecal than the former ) than a living law . for to be in that dispensation , which i call a living law , it not only to be convinced of the reasonableness of the precept in our imagination or reason , but to have it the genuine and natural ebullition of the spirit of life in us ; that it be not a notion in the head , but the very sentiment of our heart , and as it were essential to our life and being , that we should not deem our selves alive without it ; and as the carnal man will part with all he has to save his natural life , so we will be willing to part with our natural life , and all , rather than quit this ; this being the only principle in which we find and feel our selves to live indeed . he that has arrived hither is not far from the house of god : for this life and spirit is not drawn into the soul , but with the body of christ , which is the holy temple of god. wherefore when we come to that dispensation , which we call the living law , or the law that giveth life ; this is a main progress indeed in our journey through the valley of baca ; and in this especially is that verify'd , that it is turned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into a springing well , which ( as i intimated before ) is to be understood of the spirit . this spirit of life in us , the soul being one with it , she will cleanse her self of all dirtiness and uncleanness ; like a bubling spring , into which if a man fling any dirt , it will work it out again : and so will this spirit of life work out all filth and falshood out of the soul , it not enduring any such heterogeneous stuff in it . here therefore the vertues become cathartical in an eminent degree . but when corruption is laid aside and kept at a distance , when regeneration is compleated , and the new man well knit and compacted together , then is the house or temple of god built , which these travellers in baca seek after . and this degree of vertue you may if you will , in plotinus his phrase , call paradigmatical , though not in his sense ; who understands thereby a sensless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the soul , as if she had to do with no matter at all , and was to be reduced to a perfect apathy . but the body of christ and the temple of god , though they be very pure , holy and heavenly , yet they are not perfectly immaterial . and it is that idea or example that we are to imitate , and according to which our perfection is ; and therefore when vertue has arrived to this degree , it may well in this solid sense be called paradigmatical ; for all things are here according to the pattern in the mount. and we have now brought our travellers through the valley of baca to mount sion ; or rather to that part of that tract so called , in which the temple was built , which is mount moriah , the mountain of myrrhe , as some would have it signifie ; which implies the dryness and sterility of the soil , as well as the notation of sion does , which has its name from aridity or dryness . for this temperature wherein the lubricous and luxuriant moisture of the concupiscible , or desires of the flesh of what nature soever , and pleasures thereof , are dry'd up and consumed by that more heavenly heat and zealous desire after the house of god : this is the true terra sancta , the consecrated ground in which the temple of god will at last be erected , and wherein those travellers through the valley of baca , will at last to their unspeakable comfort find it , and with it the most solid happiness the soul of man is capable of ; which is the last particular . . the entertainment of these travellers at their iourneys end : it is no less than a beatifick vision ; they shall every one of them appear before god in sion : for these are the generation of them that seek him , even them that seek the face of the god of iacob . and here they are said to appear before the god of gods in sion , and so to see his face ; which is the greatest satisfaction that the soul of man can either desire or find ; according to that in the th psalm , as for me , i will behold thy face in righteousness : i shall be satisfied , when i awake into thy likeness : which men can never do till they are brought into this terra sancta ; the moist fumes and vapours of a foul lushious blood , and unsanctify'd and unpurify'd body , will keep them fast in an heavy sleep , accompanied at the best but with vain and frivolous dreams , and the false pleasures and joyes of this perishing life , till they enter seriously into this journey through the valley of baca , and ascend into the mountain of myrrh , which will prove to them the mountain of the vision of god , which is an indubitable etymology of mount moriah , in which the temple and presence of god was amongst the iews ; in which god exhibits himself visible to his people . blessed are the pure in heart , ( which is the true terra sancta ) for they shall see god. blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness ( whose soul thirsts after god as a thirsty land , as the psalmist speaks ) for these shall be satisfied . these are arriv'd to mount sion , that dry hungry and thirsty soil , and consequently to the holy temple ; and therefore will not fail of being satisfied with the fatness of gods house , and of drinking plentifully of the river of pleasures that flows there : for with thee is the fountain of life , and in thy light shall we see light ; that is to say , we shall see god who is light , by his communicating his image to us , and making us deiform . this will be the entertainment of these travellers through baca , when they are come to mount moriah ; the mountain of the vision of god , as the word signifies : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the god of gods will appear to them in sion ; the god of gods , the summum ronum . o lord our god , other lords besides thee have had dominion over us ; but in this thy holy temple we will make mention of thy name only . it was our ignorance of thee , and because we had not seen the beauty and comfort of thy countenance , that we have served other gods before thee ; that we have sought satisfaction in the power or riches of this world , in the honour or applause of men , in the lust and pleasures of the flesh , in needless and fruitless subtilities of knowledge , or from any self-reflections on our own conceited worth or precellency before others , or whatever else is rellish'd by the mere natural man : it was our ignorance that we were any time servants to these ; or that they were any way the guides of our life , or the joy of our hearts . but they are dead , dry'd up and withered , and shall not live ; they are deceased , and shall not rise to lord it again over us . for thou only art holy , thou only art the lord ; and thou only oughtest to possess us , who only art able to satisfie us and fill us ; and so to fill us and satisfie us , as that as there is no need , so there is no room left for any worldly or carnal satisfactions ; that nothing unholy or unclean may crowd into this thy holy temple , or approach this thy holy mountain , wherein thou hast appointed that day of feasting , that feast of fat things , that feast of refined wines , and of fat things full of marrow , as the prophet esay speaks . this is the entertainment of our travellers through the valley of baca , when they are once arrived to the house of god. god does not only show himself unto them , but welcome them after their long travel , with a joyful feast and all delicious refreshments . behold i stand at the door and knock : if any man hear my voice and open the door , i will come in to him , and will sup with him , and he with me . ( rev. . . ) see how friendly and familiarly they are entertained by christ , as if they feasted one another at a mutual collation : i will delight my self by the possession and actuation of the humane nature by my holy spirit ; and they shall be delighted and transported by the comfortable and enravishing influence of my divine nature , when they shall be filled with all the fulness of god. of such infinite consequence is it to attain to that body which is the proper house of god , or his holy temple ; that when he knocks and calls , we may yield obedience to that voice in the psalmist , who prophesies of this mystery , lift up your heads o ye gates , and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors , that the king of glory may come in ; that the lord of hosts with all his glorious retinue may fill his own house : for he is not there alone ( as it appear'd by that voice heard in the temple of the iews , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) but by his residence in us replenisheth us with all heavenly graces . we are strengthened with all might according to the glorious power of this lord of hosts , unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness ; as the apostle speaks . and that is most eminently verify'd to us , which occurs in s. iohn , greater is he that is in you , than he that is in the world . and as for being rooted in love ( as s. paul speaks in another place ) this glorious lord of hosts is also the god of love : for god is love , and he that abideth in love abideth in god , and god in him , as touching holy and divine things . this heavenly love has his abode in this aethereal tabernacle . and as for truth and knowledge , as s. iohn witnesses , where is it to be seen or heard , but in this lucid temple of god ? while we are out of this condition we know but in part , or rather quite miss the mark , by the giddiness and distortedness of an unpurify'd mind ; we hear and understand but faintly and unsetledly , like thunder afar off ; but in this holy temple , we do as it were distinctly from his own mouth , receive the living oracles of god. and briefly as for truth , this is that state wherein all figures and shadows do fly away : this is that grand mystery reserved more especially for these last approaching ages , and witnessed by a great voice out of heaven , behold the tabernacle of god is with men . apoc. . . these are some few strictures , or faint obscure strokes of the admirable and ineffable happy condition of the travellers through the valley of baca , when once they have arrived to their journeys end , and appear before the god of gods in sion . discourse iii. mat. vi . , . the light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be single , thy whole body shall be full of light . but if thine eye be evil , thy whole body shall be full of darkness . if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness , how great is that darkness ! the text seems to be a syllogistical parable : the argument is contained in those first words , [ the light of the body is the eye : ] from whence is this double inference , that if the eye be single , the whole body is full of light ; but if the eye be evil the whole body is full of darkness ; with this porisma or corollary annexed to the latter inference , if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness , how great is that darkness ! that is , it is wonderfully and unspeakably great . the force of the argument for the inferring the conclusions is so conspicuous , that it is altogether needless to say any thing toward the further clearing it . and therefore we will only take notice of the truths in several , manifestly comprized in the text. . the first whereof is , that the eye is the light of the body . . the second , that a single eye makes the whole body full of light . . the third , that an evil eye makes the whole body full of darkness . . the fourth and last , that if the eye it self be dark , the body is left in most wretched and miserable darkness ; such as the presence of no light , no not of the sun it self , can chase away : non radii solis nec lucida tela diei discutient . — these are the external truths of the letter of the parable ; but hitherto we do but lambere vitreum vas , sed pultem non attingimus . we must know therefore that every part of this parable is but the protasis of a similitude , and that all the skill will be to find out the true apodosis in every particular . and if our judgment fail us not in the first , we shall not easily mistake in the following parts of the parable . wherein ( i mean in the first ) if we make out this analogy , viz. [ that as the eye is to the body , so the vnderstanding is to the soul ] it would be neither inept in it self , nor unsupported by very great authorities . aristotle sayes expresly , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which may embolden us to make the soul the homologous term to the body : which galen does expresly ( as grotius cites him ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and to this purpose several other philosophers speak , and not without truth , though not so precisely accommodate to our purpose . this apodosis would be over-dry and philosophical , and such as will not reach that diviner meaning of our saviour . this analogy was obvious enough to the natural man ; i mean the comparing the intellectual or rational faculty of the soul , with the sight or visive faculty in the eye of the body . but having regard to our saviours discourse in this place , it is plain he intends not so much that which the philosophers call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for the homologous term to that of the eye , as what s. paul stiles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; which is not meer notion or perception , but implies with it a savour and relish of what is perceived . get thee behind me satan ( said christ to peter ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because thou savourest not the things that be of god. and the apostle expresly mentions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . in brief therefore , respecting the scope of our saviour ( as we shall see more clearly anon ) the analogy must run thus . . what the eye is for enlightning the body , that is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this relish , savour , sense or sapience ( in this peculiar sense ) for the illuminating the soul ; that is , this being so or so minded or affected . and this is the first analogy hinted in this parable . . the d is , that as the single eye enlightens thoroughly the body , so single-mindedness does thoroughly illuminate the soul. and this is that great and important arcanum of life that this parable affords us ; that that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which the apostle speaks of , cor. . . ) that godly simplicity and sincerity , is the eye of the soul , not only for its loveliness , but for its light which it so plentifully imparts unto her . that his godly simplicity and sincerity , that is devoid of all self-interest , of all self-reflection , or self-gloriation , but pursues what is simply good , meerly for the good 's sake , is that which answers to the single eye in the parable , is plain from the preceding and subsequent context ; where our saviour gives monitions against hypocrisie , that when we fast , we should not be as the hypocrites , of a sad countenance , disfiguring their faces , that they may appear unto men to fast ; and that we should lay up our treasure in heaven , not in earth ; that our heart or affection may not be distracted nor divided ; for where your treasure is there will your heart be also ; and likewise immediately after my text , he sayes , no man can serve two masters . it is therefore that oneness of purpose and affection , that seems here to be aimed at , as in several other parables of our saviour . he that layes his hand to the plough , and looks back , is not fit for the kingdom of god : which implies that there should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that our mind should be taken up with one thing only . martha is troubled with many things ; but mary has chosen the better part , which shall not be taken from her . the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hid in the field , for which a man selleth all that he hath , that he may purchase it ; or like that pearl of great price , for which a merchant parts with all that he hath , that he may buy it . to be at one therefore , or to have the lively savour or relish of some one most excellent , divine and indispensable principle , seems to be that which is figured out by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by this single eye in my text. which i conceive is this ; not to seek a mans self in any thing , but simply and entirely to follow the will and pleasure of god , or that which is simply good ; not pleasing and grateful to our animal relishes , or corresponding with our personal interest and concerns ; but that which comports with the interest of the kingdom of god , and the real good of mankind . to be thus affected , is to have this single eye , that is , this pure and clear eye ( for so the word will also signifie ) devoid of all self-tincture or self-colouring ; and therefore capable of receiving the pure light as it is , and every object in that hue and circumstances that they are . the being quit from our selves and all selfishness , and having our desires sincerely bent to what is simply the best in every thing , this is here that single eye of the soul which our saviour enigmatically indigitates by that of the body , but is not the light it self , as the eye of the body is not the natural light ; but they both be that which receives the light , the one the divine , the other the natural . nor yet is either this natural or spiritual eye to be said to be altogether devoid of light : but as plato conceiv'd , there was an innate light in the eye , and that by the conjunction of this with the external light ( which union in plutarch is termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) vision was performed : so we may not deny , but that in some sense this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we have described to be thus simply and sincerely affected ( as we have endeavoured to set forth , as well as we can in words ; for what words can communicate the sense of life , unless to them that have it ? ) that this sincere affection is the inward light of the soul , her diaphanous capacity of admitting divine truths , whether suggested from without , or from the spirit of god within ; in vertue of the happy meeting together of which inwardly pure disposition of the soul with those outward suggestions , she is assured of the reality of the divine and spiritual objects of the understanding , what is to be believed and what to be done , as well as the eye is assured of the truth of outward natural objects , by the corradiation of its innate light with the external rayes of the sun. what the spirits are in the diaphanous eye , that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the relish of the spirit in the pure soul. and this may suffice for the understanding the second analogy . . from whence we shall easily understand the third , after we have taken notice what is meant in this place by an evil eye , which is opposed to a single one . and the right meaning is easily fetch'd out from the opposition . for it is obvious to conceive , that it is that kind of evil of the eye that is opposed to the clearness , purity and diaphanousness thereof , which is signify'd by the single eye . for blindness , obscureness , or depravation of sight may come from sundry causes ; but the main is , and the only here aimed at , such as takes away the clearness and diaphanousness of the eye , whereby it ceases to be actuated by its own innate light and animal spirits , and becomes impervious and impenetrable by the beams of the sun , or any other external lights ; or at least is so infected by some impure tincture , that the rayes of light cannot enter , without being soiled and contaminated by that internal infection . now as such an evil eye as this leaves the body either wholly in the dark , or obnoxious to perpetual errour touching the right hue of external objects ; so the carnal relish , or carnal-mindedness , whereby we do so affectionately savour our personal concerns , our animal pleasure and interest ; this self-love , self-respect , self-desire , self-will , self-gloriation , self-prelation ; or whatever touch of smack there is of selfishness , be it brutish or diabolical , pride or lust , the inordinate desire of enjoying the pleasures of the body , or the desire of appearing some-body in the world , and the impatience and abhorrence of being thrust below every body , and to be in a worse condition than all other mortals , ( though our ever-blessed saviour submitted himself to that state : ) this carnal relish , i say , ( which with the apostle we will call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as we did the single eye 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) this carnal-mindedness will in such sort leave the soul to blindness and errour in things spiritual to be believed and practised , as the evil eye does the body in things natural . which is the third analogy . . and the fourth and last is this , that as that darkness which is the darkness of the eye , is in reference to the body , the most calamitous and deplorable darkness that is : so the ignorance and insensibleness of the relish of the spirit , is the most hideous and miserable ignorance that can befal the soul ; or ( which is all one ) to have no other light or sight but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is the most hideous and miserable darkness that can possess the mind . if carnal-mindedness become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the eye of the soul ( for so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signifie , ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; what a dismal darkness will there be then ? for the blind then leading the blind , both will fall into the infernal pit. the meaning of the text i conceive is now abundantly plain ; and that the scope and end of our saviours uttering this parable to his disciples was to stir them up to a constant and earnest endeavour of utterly disentangling themselves from all the attractions of the relish of the flesh , or spirit of the world ; and of joyning themselves entirely and cordially with , and of dwelling wholly in the relish , sense and life of the spirit of god , or of that divine spirit , whose suggestions are no dictates of self-love or partial interest , but the substantial concerns of the kingdom of god , and the good of the whole world : for which he who has this divine relish , will not stick to lay down his life , if need require , according to that endearing example of our ever-blessed and adored saviour . let it be therefore my task at this time to exhort you earnestly to endeavour after this great and indispensable attainment of this single eye , this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or wisdom of the spirit , which this parable of our saviour points to , and is indeed the proper spirit of christ , concerning which s. paul expresly declares , he that hath not the spirit of christ , is none of his . which ought to be a rousing argument to awaken us into a due sense of so great a want . for unless we regain this single eye , we shall never see the right way to heaven . there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in christ iesus ; namely to such as walk not after the flesh , but after the spirit : for the law of the spirit of life in christ iesus , hath freed me from the law of sin and of death . for the relish of the flesh , or carnal-mindedness , is death : but the relish of the spirit , or spiritual-mindedness , is life and peace . but the carnal mind is enmity against god , because it cannot submit it self to the law of god , but is in perpetual opposition against it , ever suggesting what is contrary to it . wherefore we must wholly withdraw our selves out of that principle , as we hope to attain to the glorious liberty of the sons of god. and assuredly whosoever has that law of the spirit of life in christ iesus , it will free him and rid him from the power of all the urgings , suggestions or subtil insinuations of that law of the sinful flesh , of self-love and self-interest . though he may feel these self-savouring suggestions , and the more clearly discern them to be such by the perspicuity of the single eye , the spirit of christ ; yet he is so freed from their power , that he will never act according to them , but constantly act according to the relish and suggestion of that pure principle of the spirit , which has not the least tincture of self-love or carnal interest . and there is a neceffity of perfectly clearing up at last into this single-mindedness , by reason of the war and enmity betwixt the carnal principle , and this of the spirit ; for without this there is no peace , nor joy , nor enjoyment in this life , nor in that which is to come . the law of the sinful life of the flesh therefore is utterly to be abrogated , nulled and annihilated ; and we are to judge and act in all things according to the discernments of that single eye , or pure principle of the spirit of christ. but i will rather confine the arguments of my exhortation to the text , and content my self with what it will afford ( namely , the four analogies i have produced and explained ) and so conclude . . the light of the body is the eye . ] what therefore the eye is to the body , that is some vital and sensible leading principle in the soul to the soul. is it not therefore of infinite consequence what this leading principle is , when it is of as much consequence to the soul as the eye is to the body , and the soul of incomparably more worth than the body ? what man would have the eye of a batt , of an owl , or of a mole , for the guidance of his body ; unless he were to have his abode under the earth with the mole , or to venture abroad only in the night with the batt and owl ? every animal is to have an eye congenerous to its own nature : and therefore that divine animal which we call man ( i mean the inward man , the soul ) is to have an eye congenerous to hers ; she is to have this single spiritual eye , unless she will converse only with brutes , or devils in their kingdom of darkness . . again , the single eye makes the whole body full of light ; ] that is , it is a fit and faithful guide to it which way soever it goes : and that is the law of the spirit of life in christ iesus to the soul : which assuredly is the law of divine love , which is not the love of a mans self , or any particular or partial interest , but the hearty love of god , and a mans neighbour ; that is , of all mankind ; when with a single heart he wishes them , and is ready to do them all the good they are capable of , and himself in a capacity to administer to them . this is that pure and lovely eye of the soul indeed , which fills her full of celestial light , and enrolls her in the book of life and of the children of light. this is that vnction from the holy one , even from the father of lights , whereby we know all things appertaining to life and godliness , and that iesus ( that stupendious pattern of this divine love ) is the lord and christ : and that that man of sin , that exalts himself above all that is called god , and supports his power , pride and pomp , with gross imposture and barbarous bloodshed , is that notorious antichrist ; he that has this single eye easily discerns this , and can hardly forbear to suspect , that they that do not see it , are blind through the spirit of the world , or else drunk with the steames of that cup of abominations , and see double . this simple and unself-interested spirit of love , is that anointing of which s. iohn saith , that if it abide in us , we need not that any man teach us , but the same anointing will teach us of all things , and is truth , and is no lie . it is very truth , substantial and essential , without any shadow of vanity or imposture in it ; and such as will seal our hearts with an eternal adhesion to our ever-blessed saviour , as being the communication of his own spirit to us ; and be evermore a safe guide to us in our passage thorough this present life . he that loveth his brother , abideth in the light , and there is no occasion of stumbling in him . wherefore as we tender our safe conduct through the wilderness of this world , through all the dangers and perils of so difficult a journey , we must earnestly endeavour the recovering of this single-mindedness ; this amiable eye of the pure love of the truth ; and sincere purpose of doing what is absolutely best , and of cleaving to what is absolutely best in all things , without any self-relish or self-respect whatsoever . a thing so lovely and desirable , that even the better sort of heathen seem vehemently to have breathed after it . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; o my dear soul , when wilt thou become one , and naked and simple ! it is the exhortation of that excellent emperour marcus antoninus to his own soul ; as that brief monition also , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , simplifie thy self , reduce thy self to perfect sincerity and single-mindedness . these strains i confess are so near the spirit and genius of christianity it self , that i half suspect the philosopher of playing the plagiary , and that he adorned himself at a distance with the practical philosophy of that religion , the truth of whose mysteries , either the shortness of his reason made him dissent from , or the reason of state hinder'd him from making profession of . but it may be a just reproach to the generality of christians , who though they publickly profess the faith of christ , yet let the life fall to the ground . but i proceed . . thirdly , but if thine eye be evil , thy whole body will be full of darkness ; ] that is , if thou be carnally-minded , and have not that spiritual eye , above described ; thy soul will be wholly left in the dark , or closely surrounded with a cimmerian mist , or egyptian fog ; thou wilt have no prospect , nor be able to see thy way at all , thou wilt be so closely besieged by the powers of darkness . the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of god , for they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know them , because they are spiritually discerned ; that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by that spiritual relish above-mentioned . but he that is spiritual discerneth all things , yet he himself is discerned of no man : he has a full prospect of light , a large horizon lies open to his view ; so that where-ever he turns himself , his way is plain before him . but he that has not that holy , divine and unself-interested spirit of love , that single eye of the soul ; he walks in the dark , and knows not whither he goes , because the darkness hath blinded his eyes , ( ioh. . . ) but in that the apostle s. paul saith , [ yet he himself is discerned of no man , ] that is to be understood , that no carnally-minded man can discern him ; according to what s. iohn writes in his gospel , and the light shined in darkness , and the darkness comprehended it not . for that maxime of the ancientest philosophers , is most assuredly true here , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . there must be a corresponding principle within , to be able to discern what occurs to us from without . as face answers to face , so the heart of man to man. and hence it is , i mean from this darkness , that the wicked give such rude justles against the truly-good , namely because they cannot discern them . for if they could duely discern them , it were impossible that they should hate them ; as being friends to every mans person ; and out of mere care and compassion to them , being only enemies to their vices . needless broils and quarrels , mistake upon mistake , mischief after mischief ; this is the necessary condition of him that by reason of the evil eye of the soul , cannot see his way distinctly , but is ever and anon caught in unexpected angiports and tedious labyrinths , out of which he can find no exitus , but is forc'd to go backwards and forwards , and to make indentures in his gate , like a sot and drunkard . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways . by reason of his want of that single eye , he has not yet discovered that one , simple , and indispensable object that his heart is eternally to cleave to : and therefore his eye being tainted and infected with the impurities of the animal life , as the inward complexion of his body changes , or the circumstances of external affairs alter , he adhering to nothing upon sincere grounds , may be now a reveller , anon a superstitious bigot ; now a sceptick , anon an inept and unskilful dogmatist ; make profession of one religion to day , of another to morrow , and next day of neither ; and at last ( if it prove plausible or fashionable ) of none at all . such wild contrary sallies is he subject to , that is under the guidance of the double eye . but that which is single and one , can never run contrary to it self , but will ever act uniformly , and correspondently to one end , the express whereof is the known will of god , and what is simply and absolutely the best . it is that only law of the spirit of life in christ iesus according to which we must act , if we would walk as children of the light : if we mingle any thing of the self-relish or carnal interest , this will supplant our goings , and we shall most certainly stumble in the dark ; and if the concerns in our interest grow high , we shall reel and stagger like a drunken man , and be at our wits end . be things at other times never so plain , yet all must be now obscure and uncertain ; we abhorring , from all evidence that is evidently against our own worldly advantage , to acknowledge and profess it . faithfulness and uprightness towards god , towards our prince , our countrey , our friend , it cannot be deny'd ( will some say ) but they are things very commendable ; and that this justice is to be performed to them , so far as it will consist with our private interest and security : and profession of truth ( such especially as is of great concern to the church of christ ) and so exemplarity of life , are things in themselves worthy and laudable , and ( caeteris paribus ) to be embraced before their corrivals . but if truth and vertue once become ridiculous , and the object of reproach and obloquy ; or the indispensable duties to god , our prince , our countrey , or friend , hazardous to our fortunes , liberty or life ; then the evil or carnal eye does very gravely suggest , that the great point of wisdom and prudence is to shift for one , and save a mans own silly inconsiderable self , whatever suffers through so base a perfidiousness . no better possibly can come of this mixt and mongrel principle of double-mindedness . this is that ugly and hateful mode of plowing with an oxe and an ass , or of wearing a linsy-woolsy coat ; not more expresly forbidden by the letter of moses , than severely prohibited by that law of the spirit of life which is through christ ; who has plainly declared in his gospel , that he that loves father or mother , son or daughter , more than him , is not worthy of him : and that he that loveth his life shall lose it , but he that hateth his life in this world , shall keep it unto life eternal . which law of christ notwithstanding ( let the carnal mind judge of it as it will ) is not so rigorous , but that some of the heathen philosophers have utter'd what is not much removed from it : aristotle himself affirming , that some things are so vile and wicked , that a man ought rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to undergoe death it self , with the most grievons circumstances thereof , than submit to the doing of them . and is there any thing more base and vile , than for a man knowingly and wittingly , for the fear or favour of men , to sin against his maker and gracious redeemer ? which if he can do in any case , how can he be secure but that he will do it in all cases , where his carnal interest is highly concerned ; and that he may not at last be brought off even to worship the devil himself ? for they whose guidance is by this evil eye , this mixt principle , that worship god conditionally , ( if it be safe , if it be profitable , if it be plausible , ) when these conditions fail , they are naturally left in the lurch , and may easily apostatize to the grossest practises imaginable . he that lives in this principle , it is impossible but that he must walk in dark and slippery places , and can have no fast hold at all on truth and righteousness . and therefore a man is never to rest till his soul clear up into such a simple principle of life , that he is conscious to himself , that neither security of his person , nor fortunes , nor the good opinion or applause of men , nor any sinister respects or conditions whatsoever , move him to do what he does ; but the plain and hearty love of the truth , and the sense of his indispensable duty to his gracious maker and redeemer , according to which he will act , and for which he will suffer , though he have no witness of either but god and his own conscience : this is to be a true single-eyed israelite indeed , in whom there is no guile : but whatever is on this side of it , is besmeared and smutted with rottenness and hypocrisie . . fourthly and lastly , if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , how great is that darkness ! ] indeed it will puzzle a man to say how great it is : it is even infinite for space , and so it will be for time , if we be not timely cured of this blindness . a man whose eye is pure and entire , in a dark dungeon indeed he sees nothing , and in a winter-night cannot so much as discern his own hand ; but bring a candle into the dungeon , or let but day-light return , he discerns all objects very well ; for the light in him is not darkness ; that is , he is not blind . but travel with a blind man from sun to sun , nay from one vortex to another , so that every star may be as a sun to him , yet in this infinite and endless journey , he is still in the dark and discerns nothing : even so it is with him that has the evil eye in the mystical sense , he that is spiritually blind , that instead of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is under the guidance of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of the carnal mind , he is every where in the dark , there is nothing sincere in all his actions , he can do no duty as he ought , neither to god nor man ; but not sensible of any more enlarged principle or prospect , hugs himself every where , and seeks nothing ultimately , but the satisfaction of his own carnal will and pleasure . carry him from one object to another , from one duty to another , he is so blind , that he will not fail of doing all things sordidly and basely in every place . he may indeed endeavour to flatter god almighty , and crouch to him ; but he cannot sincerely worship him . he may fear his prince ; but not affectionately honour him , and heartily wish him well , as the vicegerent of god. he may be tickled with popularity ; and yet set as little by the common good and welfare of the people , as he does by his meanest cattle , that he will not stick to kill and flea , or sell away , for his own advantage . and lastly , he may caress his friend and neighbour ; but it will be ever with an eye to himself , that he may lay the seeds of some worldly advantage . but if the service of these stand in any considerable competition with his own interest , he cannot fail , ( having no better principle ) but to betray both his god , his religion , his prince , his country , and his friend , to serve himself : these are his acts of darkness , his abode in which will make him so blind , that in the conclusion he will betray himself also to that everlasting darkness , wherein is weeping , and wailing , and gnashing of teeth for evermore . for to be carnally-minded is death , but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace . these short intimations from our saviours parable , methinks should be sufficient to well-disposed minds , to quicken their speed towards this great and necessary attainment of that single eye of the spirit , that we may live according to that one simple principle of the law of the spirit of life in christ iesus ; casting out the spirit of the world , that there may be no cross vibrations or paralytical motions in our soul ; but that our whole man may be throughly actuated by the spirit of god , we being born to this divine state , even to be members of god and christ : to whom till we be united , we are in an unnatural diluxation from our body , and being devoid of this spirit , ( though we cannot but depend of him ) yet we hang off from him as dead or paralytical members , of which the spirit of life has left its due hold ; which must be to every discerning eye a sad and calamitous spectacle . god of his infinite mercy amend it in us all . discourse iv. prov . i. . the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith the philosopher in his metaphysicks . and indeed most men are so eager and vehement in the pursuit of knowledge ; that they either afford not themselves time enough to consider , and deliberate , concerning the most efficacious means for obtaining it ; or have not the patience to use the means , though they be well perswaded of it : but in the heat of their pursuit , make a god of their own industry ; and take it for the shortest cut , to be their own carvers . not line upon line ; but tractate upon tractate ; volume upon volume ; ossa upon olympus : plainly according to the attempts of that sottish and boisterous generation of giants ; thinking to hale away captive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , her that assists god on his glorious throne in heaven ; by spider-web fetters spun and twisted out of the corrupt apprehensions of earthly-minded men . those did not the lord choose , neither gave he the way of knowledge unto them : but they were destroy'd because they had no wisdom , and perished through their own foolishness . who hath gone up to heaven and taken her , and brought her down from the clouds ? who hath gone over the sea and found her , and will bring her for pure gold ? no man knoweth her way , nor thinketh on her path . what then ? is it impossible to attain unto her ? no. her delight is with the sons of men , as solomon witnesseth of her . and s. iames bids us pray for her ; if any man want wisdom , let him ask it of god. so that when the prophet baruch saith , no man knoweth her way , nor thinketh on her path ; is as much as if he should say , no man , by the natural spirit of a man , can reach so far . but s. peter faith , that we have precious promises of being made partakers of the divine nature . and our blessed saviour argueth thus in the th of s. luke , if so be that men being evil , know how to give good gifts to their children : how much more shall your heavenly father give the holy spirit to them that ask him ? but what ? shall therefore every one that saith lord , lord , or that can repeat their pater noster , receive the holy spirit of wisdom ? no , in no wise : only they that do the will of my father which is in heaven ; saith our saviour . if i encline to wickedness in my heart ( saith the psalmist ) the lord will not hear my prayer . and indeed the old , blind poet , could see so far into divinity ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . he that obeys god , god hears him . so that we see that the foundation or beginning of this great work of wisdom , is that which the present text points at , viz. the fear of god. the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom . ] the words are plain and without ambiguity : in the english especially . the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not of so a determinate sense , but that it may signifie the principal , the first , best , or chiefest of wisdom , as well as the beginning of wisdom : but the latter i take to be the better , if not the only sense ; for fear hath torment ( saith the apostle ) but perfect love casteth out fear : wherefore this fear is not the choicest or chiefest of true wisdom . but if we compare this place with its parallel , we shall yet more plainly see , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies merely a beginning or entrance . prov. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the entrance , or first impenetration , into wisdom , is the fear of god : for the word comes from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying to boar or pierce . so that it is evident , that the english translation is the only sense of this place of scripture . in the handling whereof i will endeavour these two things . . to shew somewhat more largely , out of other places of scripture , the truth of this present text , [ that the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom . ] . why there is no other entrance than this , into true wisdom . the former is manifest out of many places of scripture . ( . ) ecclesiastie . . . for first she will walk with him by crooked wayes , and bring him unto fear and dread , and torment him with her discipline ; until she have tryed his soul , and have proved him by her judgments . then will she return the streight way unto him , and comfort him , and shew him her secrets , and heap upon him her treasures of knowledge . ( . ) also esai . . at the beginning of the chapter . thus saith the lord : the heaven is my throne , and the earth is my foot-stool : where is that house that you will build unto me ? and where is that place of my rest ? presently after he subjoineth , to him will i look ; even to him that is of a poor and contrite spirit , and trembleth at my words . he therefore that fears the lord shall become the temple of god. and it should seem no strange thing to us ; being the apostle makes mention of the same , more than once or twice : know you not that your bodies are the temples of the holy ghost ; in the first epistle to the corinthians : and in the same epistle ; know you not that you are the temple of god , and that the spirit of god dwelleth in you ? now what benefit accrues to us by being the temple of god , we may gather by the nature and use of these material temples , these temples made with hands . in these we know , amongst the heathen , were the initiations into the mysteries of whatsoever deity the place was consecrate to . but we need not straggle : we see the use of outward temples dayly here among our selves . they are for prayers , hymns , and for instruction out of the word of god ; the literal word of god in a gross material temple . therefore in analogy ; in the temple of our souls and spirits , shall the essential word , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the eternal word of god , or god himself , teach and instruct us . and who teacheth like him ? as is said in iob. there was so great vertue in the very presence of the person of socrates ( as you may see in plato ) that his scholars profited very much , merely by being in the same room with him , though he spake not unto them : how much more shall they profit , with whom the spirit of christ abideth , as in his own proper house and temple ? with what joy and admiration shall they be taken ; when in the synagogue of their hearts he shall stand up and read ; as in that synagogue at nazareth : he hath sent me that i should heal the broken-hearted ; that i should preach deliverance to the captives , and recovering of sight to the blind . when he shall begin to say , this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears : then shall all the powers and faculties of a mans soul bear him witness ; and wonder at the gracious words that proceed out of his mouth . such a teacher shall all such have that truly fear god. ( . ) again , that wisdom is usherd in by terrour , fear and horrour , seems to be the subject of the th psalm . the voice of the lord is upon the waters ; the god of glory maketh it to thunder ; the lord is upon the great waters . now that waters are an emblem of the moveable and tumultuous flowings of the earthly nature , that learned iew doth teach us ; when as he calls the waters of edom , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the waters towards which the king of egypt made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and the platonists make but a sliding passing dream of corporeal and sensible things ; saying of them , that they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that they slide continually from the true essence by perpetual flowing . so the soul being united cum rebus fluxis & caducis , dissolved as it were , and incorporate after a manner into their watery nature , and lost amongst it ; the mighty energy of the all-powerful voice of god , or word of god , doth operate upon these waters , for the producing of light in them , as in the first creation . and according to this analogy speaks the apostle , cor. . for god , who commanded the light to shine out of darkness , hath shined in our hearts , to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of god , in the face of iesus christ. but to proceed further in the psalm . the voice of the lord breaketh the cedars ; yea , the lord breaketh the cedars of lebanon . the voice of the lord maketh the wilderness to tremble ; the lord maketh the wilderness of kadesh to tremble . the voice of the lord maketh the hinds to bring forth young , and unbareth the thick bushes . every plant that my heavenly father hath not planted ( saith our saviour ) shall be rooted out : and indeed this was the end of his coming , utterly to eradicate what so is evil . and till he have his work in mans heart , there be not a few ill plants , rather a wilderness , a wood thick set with trees , not penetrable by any star , nothing capable of the light of heaven . but by the awful voice of god , the hinds , those fearful and timorous creatures , they bring forth ; the thick and shadowing bushes are unbared . and what follows ? in his temple doth every man speak of his glory . now what is that glory of god ; but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the glorious eradiation of the father of lights , the wisdom of god and the power of god. and the hinds , that is , those that fear and tremble , who they are , and what they bring forth , and how presently the thick bushes are unbared , so that they that were in darkness see a marvellous light , i leave to any man to judge , that is not as fraid of a spiritual sense as of a night-spirit . but if they will in this psalm ( so full of life and vigour ) have all body and no soul : how shall we expound the next verse , the lord sitteth upon the water-floods , and shall sit king for ever . what will you turn the god of heaven and earth to some triton or water-nymph ? or the great pastour of israel , who feeds the souls of his people like a flock , will you have him , proteus-like , to feed sea-monsters ? it is true , that all things , according to their several degrees , have their dependance and expectancy from god : yet so narrow and straitend sense as the bare letter , sutes not here ( i think ) with the majesty and divinity of the spirit of david , or rather the spirit of god in david . the summe is this : fear and honour goes before , and the light of god follows after . ( . ) i will only add this fourth proof , or illustration more , and so go on . kings . and the lord said unto elias , go forth , and stand upon the mount before the lord. and behold , the lord passed by , and a great and strong wind rent the mountains , and brake in pieces the rocks before the lord ; but the lord was not in the wind ; and after the wind came an earthquake , but the lord was not in the earthquake ; and after the earthquake fire , but the lord was not in the fire ; and after the fire a still small voice , the voice of him that spake , as never man spake . but i would not have any mistaken , as if the fear of god , which is said to be the beginning of wisdom , were but an hours amazement ; or at most , but a wonder of nine dayes . tam de repente . which errour will easily be wiped out of their phansie , if they observe but the description of the fear of god in holy scripture . the fear of the lord is to hate evil ; as pride and arrogancy , and the evil way . now that which a man truly hates , he will do the utmost of his endeavour to destroy , or else to sever himself from it , and decline it . so the prophet david , in psal. . where he professeth the teaching of the fear of the lord : eschew evil and do good , saith he . so that a lazy , inert , sluggish hatred is not sufficient . see how that victorious king uses his enemies , in psal. . i have pursued mine enemies , and taken them , and have not returned again till i had consumed them . i have wounded them that they are not able to rise ; they are fallen under my feet . i did beat them small as the dust before the wind : i did tread them flat as the clay in the streets . now a mans enemies are they of his own houshold , corruption residing in a mans own breast ; which he will never leave fighting against , till he have the victory , if he truly hate them ; which he will truly hate , if he unfeignedly fear god. so that the fear of god is the victory over corruption : which victory over corruption maketh us capable of the divine nature , ( as s. peter speaks ) which divine nature is nothing else but christ , the wisdom of god. wherefore whosoever would attain unto wisdom , the way is laid open , the old way , known to those antients of renown . trismegist long since could point it out : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . be godly my son , for he that is godly philosophizeth in the highest degree , or most efficacious manner . which sentence of trismegist puts me in mind of the septuagints paraphrastical variation of the text : for beside 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they add , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . in which variation , that which is most remarkable , is the substitution of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sense for wisdom . no man i believe is so devoid of reason , as to think the prerogative of the godly to be , to have a more exquisite sense than others . though too too many gape after as a reward of obedience , that which proves too oft the fewel of sensuality , sensible things . what 's then meant by sense ? there is a swimmering superficial knowledge ; a light phantastical impression , or abortive imagination , engendered of aery words , which many times neither the hearer nor speaker rightly understand ; false phantasms elicited out of misunderstood writings ; notional conjectures ; vain and temerarious efformations of that which we have not yet attained to ; so unlike the thing we would have it , that if we did not do , as the old bungling painters did in their uuskilfully scralled pieces , write on it [ knowledge ] , it would be hard to find what to call it . but this false-nam'd knowledge the fear of god doth not begin , but consume : as clear light makes all those shadows and resemblances to vanish , that by the opticks skill had been convey'd into a dark close room . but the fear of god is the beginning of sense . which is to be understood according to that in s. iohns epistle , that which was from the beginning , which we have heard , which we have seen with our eyes , which we have looked upon , and our hands have handled , of the word of life ; this declare we unto you . this is true science , quieting and setling the moveable mind . this is the right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , even according to aristotles etymon ; which begets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a rest and steddy standing in the soul ; and therefore is not to be found in cains progeny , nor to be light upon in all the land of nod. and thus much of the first part of my discourse , [ that the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom ] . i will now enter upon the reasons , why this is the only way that god hath pointed out for the attaining to wisdom . . one reason may be the falseness of mans spirit . the heart is deceitful above all things : so that god will not trust it with such inestimable treasures of durable wisdom , before a fearful tryal hath been upon it . deut. . thou shalt remember the way which the lord thy god led thee in the wilderness , that he might afflict thee and humble thee , that he might try thee , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the most secret penetrates of thy heart might be laid open , to discern whether thou wouldst keep the commandments , or no. now if the heart of a man be not right toward god , nor endued with requisite previous dispositions , if this great gift of god were confer'd upon them ; they would either swine-like prefer dirt and mire before this precious pearl , and so quench the good grace of god by beastly sensuality ( which god will not suffer ; he having taught nature not prodigally to cast away any thing of hers that is good , whose best things are not comparable to the meanest of the gifts of the holy spirit of god ) : or else , if they did affect and could retain this exceeding great grace , they would notwithstanding wax excessively proud . gellius in his noctes atticae , tells us of a grammarian disputing of genders and cases of nouns , tam arduis superciliis , with his eye-brows so highly display'd , and with so grave a composure of voice and countenance , as though he had been interpreting some dark weighty prophesie out of the sibylline oracles . now if the taking in of such superficial learning as this , doth so swell and puff up vain man , surely more solid knowledge would burst him . if we be naturally given to conceit highly of our selves , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( as the philosopher speaks ) so greatly to overvalue our selves for some small petty notions , how could we bear such a qualification of mind , as , that no sooner any obscurity or difficulty could appear in our souls , but the brightness of our understanding would consume it , as those thinner kind of clouds vanish before the face of the sun ? a third inconvenience may be added to these . there being no means so pregnant for the obtaining any end , as a clear , subtil , quick understanding ; a wicked man which makes himself his end in all his actions , besides this abuse he would make of wisdom , ( viz. that he might strut , and take upon him with more confidence , and be pointed at with an hic est ille demosthenes ) he might further abuse it for the obtaining of more mischievous and divelish ends . but be we assured , that that spirit that doth assert men into the glorious liberty of the sons of god , will not brook so unreasonable a bondage it self , as to become vassal to the will of corrupt man : so we see it strong enough from these inconveniences , that the all-disposing power , will not bestow this precious endowment upon unprepared persons . . but here is another argument that seems to strike deeper , which is incompossibility , cor. . . the natural man perceiveth not the things of the spirit of god : for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them , because they are spiritually discerned . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( saith the platonist in the vi book of his i. ennead ) the eye sees not the sun , unless it bear the image of the sun in it ; nor could it receive that impression were it covered with dirt and filth . so that it is plain , that the necessary foundation of true wisdom is unfeigned righteousness and pureness . the lights of heaven were made on the fourth day . now it is observable , ( saith that learned iew ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the quaternary number is the first quadrate , pariter par or equally equal , the measure of iustice and equity . and the heavenly light surely is begot in its holy quaternary , as those lights of heaven on the fourth day . but a further illustration for this purpose might be gathered , if we would further follow the explanation of this symbol : which i am the bolder with , because i make account it is no strange one ; it being aristotles own expression of a good man , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , homo quadratus sine culpa . now a quadrate , you know , consisting of right angles is a very useful instrument for taking the height , depth , length and breadth of bodies ; and all in vertue of a right angle ; which is nothing else , but the demission of one streight line upon another , perpendicular , so that it encline no way , but stand exactly upright . and there is an uprightness of heart and life resembled by this , which is when a man enclines neither to the right hand nor to the left ; no less needful for the inabling us to comprehend with all saints , what is that spiritual breadth and length , and depth and heigth , ( as the apostle speaks ) than that other is in geometrical measurings . so we see ( though in brief ) that both ethicks , physicks and mathematicks , have conspired together for the establishing and confirming of this so wholesome and useful a truth , that clearness of knowledge proceeds out of purity of life . to descend to a more particular handling of this matter [ as to shew you how the purging of a mans soul takes away those main impediments to truth of knowledge ; as are self-admiration ; doting upon that , which we our selves conceive of before the apprehension of others ; anger ; envy ; impatiency ; a pusillanimous over-estimation of others ; desire of victory rather than of truth ; blindness proceeding out of the love of riches or honour ; an heavy adhension of our minds to the sluggish inertness of sense ; suffocation or smothering the active spark of reason by luxury and intemperancy ; with many others , which be general impediments to whatsoever kind of knowledge a man aimes at ; ] to descend , i say , to such particulars , would ask more time than i am able to speak in , or you have the patience to hear . wherefore , i omit them ; and will only add this one argument more , to prove the incompossibility of true knowledge and iniquity in one subject : and that is the antipathy betwixt the holy spirit of discipline and unrighteousness . what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness , ( saith the apostle ) and what communion hath light with darkness ? and what concord hath christ with belial ? there is such a mutual abhorrency in their nature , that they chace one another ; as the night and day about the orb of the earth ; the approach of one is the putting to flight of the other . wisdom cannot enter into a wicked heart , nor dwell in a body that is subject unto sin : for the holy spirit of discipline fleeth from deceit , and withdraweth himself from thoughts that are without understanding , and is rebuked when wickedness cometh in . by this time i hope it is sufficiently evicted , that piety is the only key of true knowledge . and indeed , i fear not , but that all with one consent will confess it , so they may have the interpretation of it , and restrict it to that vvhich they call saving knovvledge , vvhich they say simple ignorant idiots , are capable of . now , what a conceit they frame out in their minds of saving knowledge , i will not here discourse . but if it be granted of all sides , that obedience and the fear of god , is the begetter of saving knowledge ; surely the practice of a godly life and conversation will notwithstanding be exceeding abundantly worth our labour , though it had not the promise of this life as well as that which is to come . but if i shall shew plainly , that there is a further abundant luxuriancy of the goodness of god upon an obedient mans understanding , intimated in this word [ wisdom ] ; i hope there will be nothing wanting for the inflaming of our desires to a godly life and conversation . prov. cap. . wisdom is said there to cry , and vnderstanding , to utter her voice ; to speak to men from the high places , and by the way of the places of the path ; to cry unto them beside the gates of the city ; to speak unto them at the entry of the doors ; to take all occasions to be acquainted with them : she would salute them at every turn : for the good spirit of wisdom is loving and sincere , aud would fain clasp with our souls if they were pure ; that she might discourse with us of the wonders of the almighty , and shew unto us his everlasting glory . now that this blessed spirit would reside with us is plain . what be her operations when she doth reside , will anon be as plain . i wisdom dwell with prudence , and i find forth knowledge and counsels . i have counsel and wisdom , i am understanding , and i have strength . i love them that love me ; and they that seek me early shall find me . this wisdom therefore will make a man no idiot , when it stores a man with prudence and counsels . but it affords not this only to the souls of holy men , but it gives them a theory of the hidden things of god : this wisdom was at the making of the world ; and so can best unfold the mysteries of the whole creation . when he prepared the heavens , i was there ; when he set the compass upon the deep , when he established the clouds above , when he confirmed the fountains of the deep , when he gave his decree to the sea , when he laid the foundations of the earth ; then was i with him as his darling , i was dayly his delight ; rejoycing alway before him , and took my solace in the compass of his earth ; and my delight is with the sons of mens . but it is yet more evident out of the th of wisdom : for he hath given me ( saith solomon ) the true knowledge of the things that are . so that i know how the world was made , and the powers of the elements , the beginning , and the end , and the middes of times ; how the times alter , and the change of seasons , the course of the year and the situation of the stars , the nature of living things , the furiousness of beasts , the powers of the winds , and the imaginations of men , the diversity of plants , and the vertue of roots ; and all things both secret and known , do i know : for wisdom the worker of all things hath taught me it . it is very apposite to this purpose , that which is in philo iudeus ( in his tractate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) upon these words of moses , [ and god saw all that he made , and behold it was very good ] 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 &c. for none else were able to discern and judge accurately of the things that were made , but he that was the maker of them . go to now ( saith he ) you seeming wife ones , full-fraught with pride , ostentation and ignorance : you that say not only you know every thing , but dare so boldly and confidently avouch this or that to be the causes of them ; as though you had been present at the making of the world , and had seen the composure of all things as they were put together ; as though the creator had consulted with you about the means and contrivements of his work . a just increpation of the bold and blind attempts of those that pursue after wisdom , without the guidance of god the giver of it . why ? what ( you will say ) must we think to get wisdom as solomon did ? nay , but i say rather , is it to be thought that we are already wiser than solomon , that we should have found out a better way to trafick for wisdom , than he could light on ? prayer , and a serious seeking after god , with industrious study , was the way that he went to compass it . and surely it is a way no whit mis-becoming any good christian : neither ought we to be inwardly ashamed of doing of that which the apostle openly exhorts us to , iames . . if any of you lack wisdom let him ask it of god , that giveth to all men liberally , and upbraideth not ; and it shall be given him . but what true christian can with patience think upon the stupid atheism that is so rife in these wicked ungodly dayes ? when as in the highest attempts of men , the power of heaven is held but for a cypher . their philosophy certainly hath removed god into so high and remote an excelsis , that they think him out of the call of mans voice , and man out of the reach of his sight . he must sit upon the primum mobile 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; so speaks aristotle ; afraid , forsooth , that the godhead should be defiled , if his presence should be among men on the earth : so he confines him to that fine phantastick place , the eighth sphere . o goodly and profound mystery ! like to that of mahomet , that makes god clamber back to heaven , when he had finished here his six days work . o high divinity ! and now who shall rule among men ? i know well enough who doth rule among men . verily the devil ; or that devilish natural spirit of man , who sets it self up for a deity , attributing all to its self , with detestable arrogancy . our good natural parts are our gods. or if they chance to fail , and not answer our desire in their performance ; whither go we ? right readily to some temple of bacchus , to the sacred tavern : where we do devoutly magnifie the miraculous power of that sparkling deity , enthron'd in his crystalline heaven ; and somewhat more largely partaking of that fiery aethereal spirit , our eyes ( no question ) are so illuminated , that vve see double . all things are then augmented and seem bigger , as the horizontal sun , by reason of muddy vapours . we find then our selves , and our comrades , such notable wiselins , as not vve our selves , nor others , could ever have suspected . o the deplorable vanity of misled youth ! when it hath cast off the memory of god , and due respect to its careful tutors , and faithful governours . is not this idolatry , in preferring the povver of sack before the spirit of god , a greater shame , than a timely practice of true piety , and adorning our minds vvith all manner of vertues in the highest degree ; fighting manfully against all manner of passions , to the utter suppression of that life of darkness in our lovver spirit , that the spirit of truth may shine in our purged souls , as the sun in a pure diaphanous substance ? and what hurt can come of this ? why , surely , we may come to be temperate , to be sober , to be chast , to be modest , to be humble , to study mortification of all wickedness in flesh and spirit ; being so persuaded that wisdom will not inhabit , where these be absent ; and in conclusion ( a dreadful thing to think of ) we may fall into the same heresie with s. iames and solomon , that wisdom is the gift of god , and that it is a point of wisdom to think so . but that no men rashly and arrogantly take upon them this gift before it be given , i could wish that all that are forward to profess themselves the scholars of god , nay his secretaries , his closet-counsel , his only children , born and brought up of him , the only wise and holy off-spring of god , full of wisdom and celestial understanding ; that they would examine themselves by that rule in s. iames , chap. . who is a wise man and endued with knowledge amongst you ? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom . but if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts , glory not an lye not against the truth . this wisdom descendeth not from above ; but is earthly , sensual , devilish . for where envying and strife is , there is contention and every evil work . but the wisdom that is from above , is first pure , then peaceable , gentle , and easie to be entreated , full of mercy and good fruits , without partiality and without hypocrisie . whosoever therefore is fervent and vehement in maintaining the truth , let him first be assured that he has the right knowledge , and the true mind of the spirit of god. and before he ascribes this spirit of wisdom , or heavenly understanding to himself , let him try if he have the qualifications of that celestial wisdom ; which are meekness , purity , peaceableness , gentleness , affability , mercy , bounty , impartialness and simplicity . he that hath not these , hath not the truth ; but is liable to be made the habitation of seducing devils , and to create mischief to men , and shame and eternal confusion to his own self . as sure as god doth impart his spirit of truth and divine knowledge to his children ; so surely true it is , that that spirit suggesteth no cruelty nor unrighteousness ; but patience , benignity , compassion , and boundless and unlimited charity . and if men otherwise qualified , pretending to the spirit , ( as histories testifie ) have plainly shewn that they were led by some fanatick erroneous fury , lodging in spiritual pride and infernal bitterness and distemper , yet this is no sufficient excuse of that common civil atheism in the world , that excludeth the operation of gods spirit in the hearts of men , and attributes all to nature and humane industry . for as nihil generat seipsum is true in philosophy , so , that no man can regenerate himself is as true in divinity . but now that this new creature , born at this second birth , should have its old eyes , and the same sight with the earthly adam , seems to me a thing monstrous and prodigious . surely there is a renovation of the understanding as well as the will ; and both by the divine spirit , the wisdom of god that worketh all in all . i , but here , some mischievous piece of modesty will object . can that spirit be communicable to us also , that hath such magnificent titles , in the th of wisdom ? she is the breath of the power of god ; and a pure influence that floweth from the glory of the almighty . she is the brightness of the everlasting light , the undefiled mirrour of the majesty of god , and the image of his goodness . i answer . here is the treasure of those precious promises s. peter speaks of . and hitherto may be referr'd that in the psalms , glorious things are spoken of thee , o thou city of god. but i need not have gone out of the same chapter , an answer being so nigh at hand : as there be many epithets of height and majesty , so there is one of humanity and courtesie . but these words are too weak to express that affection which is attributed there to this good spirit of wisdom ; it is said in the greek text to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a lover of men . therefore you shall find this spirit descending , in the th of that chapter , even sliding down into the souls of holy and humble men : and that not once or twice , as if it were afraid of such debasement ; but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from age to age . but there is yet a more plentiful testimony of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the th chapter , ver . . she goeth about seeking such as are meet for her , and sheweth her self chearfully unto them in the wayes , and meeteth them in every thought . and at the th verse . wisdom shineth , and never fadeth away ; and is easily seen of them that love her , and found of such as seek her . she preventeth them that desire her , that she may first shew her self unto them . whoso awaketh to her betimes shall have no great travail : for he shall find her sitting at his doors . blessed is the man that exerciseth himself in her , and he that layeth up her commandments in his heart shall be wise . if he do them he shall be strong in all things : for he setteth his steps in the light of the lord , which giveth wisdom to the godly . the lord be praised for evermore . so be it . so be it . and here i should willingly end , did i not suspect , that that which hath been spoken might move some scruples in the minds of the younger auditors . as whether wicked men have any knowledge at all or no ; whether this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exclude the use of books ; with such others ( as misapprehension is the most ready and plentiful suggestor of doubts and difficulties ) : but i will meddle only with these two i have named . . and first with the former . it would be a very distastful position to flesh and blood , to say that wicked men are mere ignaroes . for there being not many that are not conscious to themselves of some dearly fosterd wickedness in their breast , they would be put to a shreud strait ; for they must either undergo the doleful death of dying to their beloved corruption , or else be content to count themselves fools so long as they live : both which are gall and wormwood to natural pride and concupiscency . but let us brook it as we can , that spirit in esaiah dares give sentence in this cause . behold all you that kindle a fire , and are compassed about with sparks , walk in the light of your fire , and in the sparks that you have kindled : this shall you have at my hand , you shall lye down in sorrow . 't is true , the prophet here allowes them some light ; but a light of their own kindling . and if foolishness be the school-mistress , the scholars are not likely to be very wise . weak quickly-dying sparks they have , blindly and boldly mounting up , though their vehicle be but a filthy fuliginous vapour of darkness : but the sun of righteousness hath not yet shone upon them . gross fire they have for their light , as lame and deformed as the poets vulcan . it is fain to be underpropt with ill rubbish , crass fewel , to be fed with the foul oyl that sweats from that active body of sinful corruption ; and having so course a pabulum , it is no wonder that it is as all sublunary fires are , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . bitter ebullitions , and gross injuriousness , are the proper effects of such illumination . and although this fewel and blaze may transmit some strange steam into their brains , that they be drunkenly merry ; yet surely if they ever come to themselves , they will fall into as deep and dull a melancholly , to see how horribly they have been deceived : they shall lye down in sorrow . an emblem of this knowledge may be that egypt , from which the israelites were delivered . this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the earthly wisdom , as s. iames stiles it ; and indeed it sutes well with the emblem . for aegypt is watered by nilus , whose name is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as dionysius intimates in his geographical poem ; a river ever affording new mud . for although it be as that verse in strabo calls it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a river come from heaven ( as indeed every thing , as much as is good of it , is from the first being ) yet it abounds so with the admixture of earthly filth , that by its overflowing it begets nothing but half-formed , or rather deform'd monsters , glued to the slimy cloth of the earth . here is that numerous progeny of dirty ridiculous opinions . this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( as the same apostle calls it ) no better indeed , than the uncertain conjectures of misty-minded devils : whom , i must needs confess , i cannot conceive to be so great clerks , as they are vulgarly taken to be ; but rather wonder what madness possesseth mens minds , that they should either say that the perversness of corruption is stronger than gods grace , or the devil wiser than holy men . but i fear , such as cry up the power of evil , and the wisdom of that wicked spirit so partially ( as if they had sworn confederacy with them , ar become slaves to them ) magnifying them above the light and strength of god ; will then become wise themselves , when the devil becomes honest . what commission or authority these men have to set him at liberty and enjoyment of the light of the sun , whom god hath prison'd up in the darkest dungeon , i know not : sure i am , they are not able to procure him bail , they themselves being but fetter'd vassals of foulest ignorance . but see ! how basely disobedience contracts a mans spirits , that through the pusillanimity of his soul he casts himself down before every petty creature . how doth honour , riches , or the dull and languid beauty of sensible forms subjugate and enslave him ! nay , how highly doth he admire , and reverendly adore , with more than american superstition , that piece of darkness and deformity , the devil ! so we see what small hope we have of attaining to wisdom by any other means , than that which that wise king hath prescribed us , the fear of god. . as for that other query [ about books ] i will dispatch it in a word . it is said in wisdom , that it is not the increase of fruit that feedeth men : but it is the word that preserveth them that trust in god. and yet no man abstains from these outward ordinary helps for his preservation . therefore that this discourse beget in no man a lazy , superstitious phrensie ; let them be active in good , and read such books as conduce best for the finding of the truth of such theories as they aim at ; having alwayes a special care that they never disjoin knowledge from righteousness ; but that they ever prize such treatises , as point a man to obedience , and purging a mans soul from wickedness , far above those that do but vex a mans mind , and consume his body with unfruitful subtilties : which indeed would be no subtilties at all , did not our dull and slow apprehension make them so ; for we are rather weak-brain'd than they hard theories : or if you will , they are so subtil , that if a man could see clearly he would not see them at all ; they being indeed nothing , or else worse : and therefore rather to seek to have our eye-sight strengthen'd and clear'd by purity of life ; than to weary and weaken them still more by unprofitable objects : and alwayes to consider this , that our labour is nothing without the benediction of god , and his direction . nostra haec in literarum studiis peregrinatio sine supernâ luce miserabilis quaedam erratio est , is the ingenuous confession of that great scholar scaliger . and o! that we could sensibly feel , as well as imagine , that the subsistence of all things is but liberum spiraculum , a free breathing out of the mouth of the almighty ; which if he revoke , things are closely again locked up and gathered in , into their centre of darkness : and that true knowledge is nothing else but an arbitrarious emission of the pure rayes of god upon impolluted souls : and therefore wholly to depend upon him , and wait upon him in righteousness ; even upon the fountain of all truth and father of lights , the only wise god ; to whom be all honour , glory , power , praise , henceforth for ever . amen . discourse v. john iv . . , , . in the mean time his disciples prayed him , saying , master , eat . but he said unto them , i have meat to eat that you know not of . therefore said the disciples one to another , hath any man brought him ought to eat ? iesus saith unto them , my meat is to do the will of him that sent me , and to finish his work . our saviour christ here in the text propounds a riddle or parable to his disciples , [ i have meat to eat that you know not of . ] whatever is in the text may be hither refer'd , as the occasion or consequent thereof . the occasion of the proposal of this aenigma is in ver. . [ in the mean time his disciples prayed him saying , master , eat ; ] i. e. so soon as he had broken off his serious discourse with the samaritan woman , his disciples then took occasion to invite him to his seasonable repast : which gives him occasion to propound something to them aenigmatically , of more concernment , and of an higher nature , than this outward perishable food . ver. . [ i have meat to eat that you know not of . ] there 's the proposal of the riddle : of which there is a double consequent , the disciples misinterpretation or false collection ; and then our saviours own true solution : their misinterpretation , ver. . [ has any man brought him ought to eat ? ] his true solution , ver. . [ my meat is to do the will of him that sent me , and to finish his work . ] these parts i shall prosecute in the same order that they lye in the text , without further preface or more curious division . first therefore of the occasion . [ in the mean time his disciples prayed him , saying , master , eat . ] in the mean time ; i. e. in the interim , betwixt the departure of the samaritan woman , and her return with other samaritans to confer with our saviour , and to see if it were so indeed , that he was the messiah . but something is here to be premised , concerning the departure of the samaritan woman ; viz. that she was not disturb'd , but staid out her time to the full with our saviour : which is evident from these two passages . the first in the th verse , and upon this came his disciples , and marvelled that he talked with the woman : yet no man said what seekest thou , or why talkest thou with her . the other is the confession of the woman , ver. . come , see a man that told me all the things that ever i did . so it should seem she left him , fully satisfied ; without any interruption made by the disciples , though there present ; or without any with-holding or concealment of our saviours side , in those things she desired to be satisfied in . that therefore that is considerable is this , that the disciples wav'd their inviting him to eat , till the samaritan woman of her own accord had left our saviour ; tho' they marvelled within themselves what should mean that so long colloquy with her : that he should converse with a woman , 't was a thing unusual ; but with a samaritan woman , worse ; there being then a further incongruity in the matter ; as is plain in the th verse of this chapter , for the iews have no dealings with the samaritans . but yet notwithstanding all this disadvantage and hint of evil suspicion , they were carried no farther than a tacit admiration , which is the daughter of ignorance : they could suspect no ill of their lord and master , nor discern any great good in 's conferring with a woman of samaria . they were perplext and puzzled in their thoughts , they could conclude nothing in their minds concerning the nature of that business ; and therefore they concluded , it should seem , they would do nothing concerning the same . it is a thin and somewhat exile observation i would draw from hence ; a rude finger cannot feel out the worth of it : i would commend that which makes no noise at all in the world , modesty and cautious suspension from acting in those things , either by proving them or inhibiting them , where our selves have not sufficient light to clear the nature and quality of them to our own reason and judgment . for such was the discretion of the disciples , they being not able to approve or disapprove of our saviours carriage at that time , did no way at all intermeddle in the same , but left the business to its own issue ; which when it was dispatch'd , and the woman dismist , then they came to him , and prayd him saying , master , eat . that you may the better know how this falls in with the departure of the samaritan woman , it is said ver. . his disciples were gone into the city to buy meat ; while he fat , being wearied with his journey , at the side of iacobs well : whither came that samaritan woman to draw water , whom our saviour held in discourse till such time , and after his disciples had return'd from buying them victuals . and here truly our saviour christ is represented ( according to that description of himself ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a man without house or harbour . the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests , but the son of man has not where to lay is head . the eternal truth of god cloath'd in flesh goes wandring up and down in this strange country of the world , as a stranger and pilgrim , neglected and despised of all , a man of sorrow and weariness , and of disrespect ; a man scarce well known to his own disciples , of no grandeur or plausibility , not at all strengthened or countenanced by the favour , friendship and alliances of the world , nor at all effecting the greeting in the market-place , or the precedency in solemn meetings , conversing most-what with the meanest of men , condemned and hooted at by the great rabbies and sophies of the world. he hath no form or comeliness , no beauty that we should desire him . he is despised and rejected of men , a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs ; we hide our faces from him ; he is despised , and we esteem him not . isa. . , . this was the condition of everlasting wisdom and goodness of god incarnate , and conversing amongst men . and yet such was his humility and patience , that he would not set up himself by his own or his fathers power , to rid himself of this poor , sad , and contemptible condition . what ? could not he that raised lazarus's body from the dead , have kept his own bones from ach and weariness ? or he that turn'd water into wine , could not he have commanded the very stones before him to become bread ? or charged the cities of samaria to bring him in provision , as to their true soveraign and absolute lord ? and if they had discredited his word , to have made it good with the appearance and approach of the heavenly host , even legions of angels to assist him ? but nothing of all this is done : for indeed our saviour did not any thing for himself , but for the glory of god , and the good of poor lost mankind . wherefore omnipotency was not made use of to please his own flesh , or to shew himself more than man , and to be admired of the world ; but only then when the father saw fit , for the gaining of lost man to himself : wherefore we see our saviour here in this chapter weary , and resting his tired limbs on iacobs well , hungry also , and observing the usual hours of repast ; as it is plain out of the sixth verse ; iesus therefore being wearied with his journey , sat thus on the well : and it was about the sixth hour : i. e. about noon , dinner time . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as that witty epigram expresses it , or rather the scholion upon it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : he sayes that we must work till the sixth hour of the day , but after that , go to dinner . for the sixth hour of the day is the same with the twelfth with us ; as is very obvious and ordinary to observe , it should seem on the greek dials as well as the hebrew . wherefore we see plainly whence it is that our saviours disciples invite their master , saying , come and eat : for it was dinner time , and they had now return'd from buying food for them , and his and their labour required repast . but that which i would , before i pass from this point , observe , is this . being that our saviour christ , was according to the outward view , but a piece of mortality cover'd with passiveness , weakness and contempt ; that his outside was neither formidable for majesty and authority either ecclesiastick or civil , nor desirable for any external specious shew , and yet was the inward habitation of the divinity it self ; let us learn from hence to contemn no mans outward condition , as concerning spiritual truth and divine worth : but rather accept of heraclitus his blunt , but friendly invitation into his poor contemptible cottage , [ introito , etiam hic dii sunt . ] come in sir ; if god doth not lodge here also , [ sub sordido pallio latet sapientia . ] wisdom sometimes is no better covered than with rags . but i leave this point for your selves to enlarge upon . i pass on from this first part , viz. the occasion , with all the circumstances thereon depending , to the proposal of the parable , [ in the mean time his disciples prayed him saying , master , eat . but he made answer , i have meat to eat that you know not of . ] it is usual with our saviour to ascend from sensible and corporeal things to those things which are inward and spiritual . i need not look for instances far off . here in this very chapter , when as our saviour had arriv'd at iacobs well , at the heat of the day , faint and thirsty , and desired the samaritan woman that came to draw water , that she would give him to drink , and she reply'd , how is it that thou being a iew , askest drink of me which am a woman of samaria ? iesus answered and said unto her , if thou knewest the gift of god , and who it is that saith unto thee , give me to drink , thou wouldest have asked of him , and he would have given thee living water ; ( ver. , . ) viz. the very same water , that he speaks of , iohn . ver . . where he is said in the last day , that great day of the feast of tabernacles , to stand and cry . if any man thirst let him come unto me and drink . he that believeth in me , out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water . which speech was occasion'd ( as is not without reason conceiv'd ) from the custom of the day : for upon this day , by the institution of haggai the prophet and zacharias , and such like ; they did with joy and solemnity , bring great store of water from the river siloah to the temple ; where it being delivered to the priests , it was poured upon the altar together with wine , the people singing that of the prophet esaiah , ch. . with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation . from this visible solemnity and natural water , christ took occasion to invite them to an invisible and spiritual water : as he doth the samaritan woman here in this present chapter , shewing her that whosoever drinks of the water that he asked of her shall thirst again : but whosoever should drink of the water that he should give , shall never thirst ; but the water shall be in him a well of water , springing up into everlasting life . so at the th chapter of this gospel of s. iohn ; when our saviour had fed them with natural bread , he endeavours to raise their desire and appetite , to the bread of eternal life . ver. . ye seek me , not because ye saw the miracles , but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled . labour not for the meat that perisheth , but for that meat which endureth to everlasting life . and at the th verse ; moses gave you not that bread from heaven , but my father giveth you the true bread from heaven : for the bread of god is he which cometh down from heaven , and giveth life unto the world . i might instance in other examples , but this point is clear . it remains only that we imitate that pattern we understand so well : whether we would be teachers of others , or instructers of our selves : for indeed the whole world is ingens quoddam sacramentum , a large sign or symbol of some spiritual truths that nearly concern our souls . methinks when the morning sun rises upon us , the eyes of our souls should open at once with the eyes of our bodies , and our hearts should send out this ejaculation , lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us ; and our minds presage that promised happiness , in thy light shall we see light . when we breathe in the fresh air , it might mind us of something like that of the emperours , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . not only to draw in the common air , but also to be of one mind with that intellectual spirit that fills all the world. solitude and darkness that makes our hearts shrink within us , and overwhelms our souls with horrour and misdoubt , what is it in spirituals but a privation of perfect love , that casteth out fear , as the apostle speaks ? he that hateth his brother is in darkness , and walketh in darkness , and knoweth not whether he goeth . ioh. cap. . there is nothing that the natural man is sensible of in this outward world , but the spirit of god has made use of to prefigure and set out the condition and nature of reward and spiritual things ; that hence the soul may receive hints to raise her self towards him that made her for to inherit spirituality , and not alwayes lye groveling on the earth . whatsoever we see , or hear , or smell , or taste , or feel , we may in all these even very sensibly feel some hidden mystery , and find out in those shells and husks some more precious food than this that pleases our mortal body , and perishable senses : and he that doth not feel through these sensible creatures something better than themselves , certainly is exceedingly benum'd , or rather spiritually dead ; and has his conversation in the world no otherwise than the beasts of the field ; and nebuchadnezzars curse is upon him , till such a mind be restor'd unto him , that he doth acknowledge the most high , and find him residing even in this lower world , the habitation of mortal men . beauty , riches , strength , agility , sweetness , pleasure , harmony ; these are all better relish'd in the soul than in the body . our blessed saviour , in the midst of his thirst after the water of iacobs well , which he beg'd of the samaritan woman , was so refreshed with the remembrance of the spiritual and living waters which he enjoy'd within , that he had forgot his first request , his soul being inebriate as it were with the sweetness of that hidden spring in his heart . and this storehouse he found within , afforded him not drink only , but meat also , it should seem by his ansvver to his disciples , when they invited him to eat . he did not as those starvling souls , that not at all being able to entertain themselves with their own store , no not for a moment , so soon as the bodies treasure is exhaust ( men of this world , which have their portion in this life , and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure , as the psalmist speaks ) so soon , i say , as the carnal or outward man is emptyed and impoverished , have their desire strait way furiously kindled like a broad fiery meteor , that is swiftly wasted hither and thither , accordingly as the earthly unctuous vapour , its proper pabulum , is scattered in the air. and it is no wonder that they are thus furious and impatient : for what is desire but a living death , or an actual non-entity ? it is ; for 't is desire : but it is not , viz. that which it desires to be . and what soul can endure to be in such a case ? wherefore it is too too probable that that mind that can abstain from fleshly and bodily desires ( from their accomplishment i mean ) has some hidden contentment within , undiscover'd to the world. the heart knoweth his own bitterness , and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy . our saviour christ himself could not with such ease have slighted the cravings of nature , ( for he was a man like to us in all things , sin only excepted ) and disregarded his seasonable sustenance , had it not been so as he professes it was , in his answer to his disciples , i have meat to eat you know not of . and thus much of the occasion and proposal of the parable . i come now to the double consequent thereof ; viz. first , the disciples misapprehension , or false collection , [ hath any man brought him to eat ? ] secondly , our saviours true interpretation of the parable , [ my meat is to do the will of him that sent me , &c. ] hath any man brought him to eat ? ] it was obvious to think so , i confess , but not at all necessary . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; has any man ? the ravens fed elijah the tisbite , by the brook cherith which is before iordan ; they brought him bread and flesh in the morning , and bread and flesh in the evening , kings . . and not the fowls of the air only , but the winged host of heaven might have been employed for this purpose : they owe more than this to the son of god. but the mistake was not so much in the manner of the conveyance of this meat , as in the nature of the meat it self . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . meats for the belly , and the belly for meats , but god will destroy both it and them . he breaks and weakens that strong influence they have upon the minds of men , that circean magick that metamorphozes the souls of men into meer beasts , and changes their understandings . by the power of these , the disciples themselves seem stupid , and are at a loss , when their great teacher utters himself in heavenly parables . [ i have meat to eat you know not of . ] for the unfolding of this dark riddle , they look no higher than a sun-dyal , or at farthest , on the sun , and read there [ past twelve ; ] and without any great subtilty , can easily collect that it is dinner-time ; which now compar'd with their lately bought provision in the cities of samaria , and the savoury suggestions of their own stomachs , their thoughts are circumscribed within the margins of a platter , they have animam in patinis ( as the proverb goes ) and are not at leasure to think of any thing higher than bodily food , [ has any man brought him to eat ? ] i will observe two things from this passage , and so leave it . first , the slowness of the earthly mind to apprehend spiritual mysteries . there be two notable instances of it . one in those two disciples that went to emaus , to whom christ appeared , and part of whose discourse was , ( luke . ) concerning iesus of nazareth , a prophet mighty in deed and word before god and all the people . and how the chief priests and their rulers delivered him to be condemned to death , and have crucified him . but they trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed israel ; viz. from the roman yoke , according to that meer terrene apprehension the iewes , it should seem , then had , and at this time have , concerning the messias ; making him a temporal prince , and expecting a temporal happiness from him . the other instance is ; iohn . , . i am the living bread that came down from heaven : if any man eat of this bread , he shall live for ever : and the bread that i will give is my flesh , which i will give for the life of the world . the iews therefore strove amongst themselves , saying , how can this man give us his flesh to eat ? but the words our saviour christ here speaks are , as he himself professes ; they are spirit , and they are life ; and therefore spiritually to be discerned , and not by carnal eyes . the other point that i would observe , is the vneffectualness of our saviours presence , according to the flesh. if his spirit had been in them , as his body was with them , i make no question but their minds had been so heavenly disposed , that our saviours speeches would not have proved such aenigma's unto them . it is true , the very touch of christs garments healed the bodies of the sick sometime , but nothing under his spirit is effectual for recuring the soul. it is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing . ioh. . . i have many things to say unto you ; but you cannot bear them now . howbeit , when the spirit of truth is come , he will guide you into all truth . iohn . , . our saviours bodily presence could not convey those divine truths unto his disciples , that an inward principle of life , when they were partakers thereof , would convey to them . and therefore he prefers the mission of the holy ghost , before his own bodily conversing with them , at the th verse of that chapter ; i tell you the truth , it is expedient for you that i go away ; for if i go not away , the comforter will not come unto you : but if i depart , i will send him unto you . and this was s. pauls pious boast , . cor. . , . wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh : yea though we have known christ after the flesh , yet now henceforth know we him no more . therefore if any man be in christ , he is a new creature ; viz. if he be in christ , not after the flesh ; but be regenerate of the spirit . i hast on now to the last part of the text , our saviours own solution of this parable proposed by him to his disciples , and by them misunderstood . [ therefore said the disciples one to another , hath any man brought him to eat ? ] there 's the misinterpretation . [ iesus saith unto them , my meat is to do the will of him that sent me , and to finish his work . ] there 's our saviours explication of his own mind . the great truth , and mystery not inferiour to any mystery , contained in this interpretation , is this , that the will of god is the food of the soul. this i conceive to be plainly exhibited to us in this text. for the divinity of christ it cannot be said to feed of any thing ; it is self-sufficient and immutable , according to those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that mankind has of god : such spiritual food as the will of god , cannot belong to the body ; for those bodies grow fat that have no relish thereof : it remains therefore the soul of christ was that which was fed with the will of god. and his soul and ours are ejusdem speciei ; christ being utterly like us in all things , sin only excepted : wherefore i conclude this doctrine , [ the will of god is the food of mans soul ; ] i mean of regenerate man. i know the carnal appetite will pronounce it a very slight and slender sallet : but i will answer that objection , in short , the natural man is uncapable of the things of the spirit of god. . cor. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : he has no room for them ; i therefore leave him to disgorge himself : they are too great for him , though he phansies them too little ; and intùs existens prohibet extraneum : he is too full of his own supper ; so that he has no stomach nor appetite , nor the least relish or conceiving of christs supper . but whatever it is to him , i will endeavour to raise some apprehension of it in us ; if i may by any means speak that which may prove profitable unto us . there must be some near affinity and likeness betwixt that which is nourished and the nutriment it receiveth . mans body cannot be fed with stones or metals , but with plants and living creatures ; their flesh and substance being near enough the nature of our bodies , which are of the like nature with other animals and plants . our souls , ( i mean alwayes of the regenerate ) or we our selves , for 't is all one , have our birth and being of the will of god. iohn . . but as many as received him , to them gave he power to become the sons of god , even to them that believe on his name ; which were born not of blood , nor of the will of the flesh , nor of the will of man , but of god ; viz. of the will of god ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being to be repeated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and certainly the very depth , or essential bottom and centre of the new creature , is the divine will ; a will raised up in the soul of man , perfectly answerable to the will of god , though not so absolutely powerful . this is the very new birth , and the new creature . this is christ in us , and we in him : and he that is thus in christ , he is a new creature ; he that is not thus , never knew christ , unless according to the flesh. when i say the divine will is the very inward essence or heart of the new creature , i mean not any desire toward god and his outward service ; or to knowledge of him and his works , or the beautifying and adorning a mans soul with moral vertues ; but a full and absolute resignation of a mans self unto the will of god , our desires not at all circuling into our selves : ( for it is a sign then , that they sprung from our selves ) but our desire and will being melted as it were into one will with god , and desiring nothing but for god , and because god desires it and wills it . then shall not our natural will be the first mover in our desire of knowledge , or of vertue , or of power , or whatever is desirable ; but the divine will in us shall will all this for god , as he is in man , that is freely and without all hypocrisie or self-love . this is the very root of the new birth ; this is the divine life : and whatsoever is not of this , is either but natural or devilish . this is the new creature ; the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the plant of gods own planting ; whose will is in the law of the lord , and in that law doth he exercise himself both day and night . this is the lamp of god , the eye of god fixt in the soul of man , that loaths all objects represented to it , that arise from the will of the flesh , or the false hypocritical suggestions of mans heart ; but has its whole lust and desire after the will of god , hungers and thirsts meerly after it . this is that , that turns away at our prayers and praises , at our fasts and alms-deeds , at our censuring and conferring , at our zeal and devotion ; viz. as often as they are foul'd and beslutted with the filth of our own wills , and self-ingagements ; either of temper of body , or temporal projects . this is that righteous man that hateth lying , and before whom the wicked man is loathsome , and comes to shame . prov. . we having therefore thus found out the nature and constitution of the new creature , the regenerate soul , it is no wonder to us to find out the proper food of it . the first adam is of the earth earthly ; and therefore feeds of earthly food . the second adam , viz. the new creature , is not of the earth , but of the free heavenly substance , born of the will of god ; and therefore he breaths no other air , sucks in no other life or food , than the free will of god. this is that that satisfies ; and this alone can satisfie . and now we have found the food of the regenerate soul , it will not be hard to find out the poyson . if the will of god be the souls sustenance , then our own will , be it to us as sweet as it can be , it is our poyson and destruction : it is a cup of deadly wine , of which by how much more deep every man drinks , by so much more is he made stupid and sensless , as concerning the godly life ; till he be even perfectly dead drunk , and do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( as that phrase of plotinus is ) lye in the very dirt . these things are safelier felt then spoken . however it will not be amiss a little by way of analogy to open the nature of that spiritual food mentioned in the text , [ my meat is to do the will of him that sent me . ] the soul set on fire by the will of god , and become one divine flame , must as our natural flame , be kept alive by motion and agitation : the will of god is the pabulum of this flame ; but if it continue flaming , it must act and move , within at least , and without as oft as occasion permits or requires ; otherwise it will be suffocate and extinct . but we need not dwell so low as upon inanimates : let 's see what is food in reference to that which has life . health , growth , strength , sweetness of taste , and satisfying the stomach , these belong to the food of the body : let 's see if we can find these in the will of god , in reference to the regenerate soul. . health . ] prov. . , . be not wise in thine own eyes , fear the lord and depart from evil ; i. e. think not that the lust , desire and determination of thine own carnal and unregenerate mind is the best ; but abstain from that which it longs after , and fear thou god ; i. e. adhere to that which he has revealed to thee to be his will ; fear to transgress his law. it shall be health to thy navel , and marrow to thy bones : — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . yet the law of god is no charm , to cure the body ; but it must do it by making the soul first healthful . but to dispatch this truth in a word . what is the disease or languishment of the soul , but sin ? what is sin but velle contra ac deus vult ? wherefore he that wills as god wills , so long as he continues so , is safe from sin the disease of the soul. this diet-drink will not only keep the regenerate soul in health ; but even metamorphoze satan himself into a saint : when as self-will , and the feeding on our own desires , will so decay the constitution and complexion of the soundest saint , that he will be mis-shapen'd and transform'd into the figure of an abhorred fiend . . growth . ] as plants and living creatures spread and grow in bigness , in vertue of their nourishment : so the soul is enlarged by forsaking her own will , and by continual meditating upon , and endeavouring to do the will of god : for our own will and desire is a poor narrow contracted thing , pinching us down next to nothing , by confining us to our selves , and our own scant bottoms . but the essential will of god is free and large , even boundless as himself ; and the work of it upon us , when we receive it , is like unto it . our drawing and concentring all in our own will , is like the gathering together of the free light and warmth of the sun into a burning glass ; those rayes that before lay free , mild , and friendly in a larger room , thus forc'd together become surly , ireful and scorching : or like fire half-stifled in a bundle of green wood , it fumes and glowes , and is sad in it self , and utterly uncomfortable to others ; but when it breaks out into a free flame , how chearfully doth it shine , and laugh , and look pleasant , filling the whole house with lightsomeness and joy ! that is mans straiten'd will ; this the free spirit and will of god. pride , and ambition , and thirst after knowledge and the glory and applause of men , do puff up the soul , ( when these are satisfied ) make her look big and bloat : but that this food is not wholesome , nor the growth sound , every small prick of adverse fortune , or frowns of men , do demonstrate ; the tumour of the mind then shriveling up like an emptyed bladder . but that bulk and breadth that the soul gets by feeding on gods will , is sound and permanent , as the will of god is , which nothing can wash away . . and as strong , as large , doth the soul of man become by feeding on this celestial food : in so much that it can bear all things and endure all things . what makes the miseries and misfortunes of the world so tedious and irksome to men , what makes their souls sink and faint under this burden , but eating of that poysonous fruit , our own will ? which would not be , if we had no will of our own , but fed meerly on the good pleasure of god , giving thanks for whatever he brings upon us : for in all outward things , and to speak more fully , in all things that befall us , our soul , our body , our friends , or estate ; in all these the will of god is done , so far as sin intermeddles not : so that if we relish no will but the will of god , how strong shall we be to bear all these ! we shall be able 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , easily to digest either fortune , good or ill , life or death , honour or dishonour , riches or poverty ; all will down save our own will : this will choak the soul ; or poyson its complexion , make it lye in weakness and languishment , that it will be weak , sickly , peevish and infirm ; the whole creature of god will be a burden to it ; nay , the least of them may prove an importable aetna . . but i go on . the fourth thing considerable in food is the tast. and hitherto may be refer'd those affectionate expressions in the psalmist , who speaking of the laws of god , which is the interpretation of his will , giveth abundance of sweetness and pleasantness to them . psalm . the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether ; more to be desired then gold , yea , then much fine gold ; sweeter also then honey and the honey-comb . and hence it is that the holy and happy man so meditates and ruminates on the laws of god. psalm . his delight is in the law of the lord , and in his law doth he meditate day and night . psal. . my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness , and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips , when i remember thee upon my bed , and meditate on thee in the night-watches . and certainly if the will of the flesh be sweet , and to be longed after so by the carnal-minded man ; the will of the spirit , when it is once come , is much more sweet . for there is nothing in the sensual life of good , not so much as of seeming good , but it is really and fully in the life spiritual : which we must believe ; for we cannot know till such time as we have experience of it ; and that will be when we leave off our commerce and conversation with the will of the flesh. the lips of a strange woman drop as an honey-comb , and her mouth is sweeter than oyl : [ this is thy carnal-mind , the will of thy flesh , ( as maimonides expounds it ) a subtil inticing serpent lying ever in thy bosom ; and yet a strange woman , thy harlot , with whom thou feastest and sportest , and forgettest thy husband christ iesus , the will of god , the holy spirit , the divine life . ] but her end is bitter as wormwood , sharp as a two-edged sword : her feet go down to death , her steps take hold on hell. and here is the great difference betwixt the sweetness of our own will and the will of god : that ends in bitter choller , in wrath , and vengeance , and death ; but this is wholesome as well as toothsome , and is the very nexus and vinculum whereby vve are held in eternal life . lust is svveet , pride is svveet , revenge is exceeding svveet ; and above all svveetness is the svveetness of craft and carnal policy : but remember that as svveetly as thou lickest thy lips in secret , thou hast svvallovved dovvn poyson ; and it vvill burn in conclusion as the fire of hell. god has brought thee into the wilderness , that thou mayest enjoy the promised land ; offers thee angels food ; would feed thee with manna : let not thy mouth water after the flesh-pots of aegypt : say not with the grumbling israelites , who shall give us flesh to eat ? lest the lord in his anger , give you flesh to eat , not two days , nor five days , neither ten days nor twenty days , but even a whole moneth , until it come out at your nostrils , and it become loathsome unto you ; and while the flesh is betwixt your teeth the wrath of the lord be kindled against you : that you be so far engaged in your own will and head-strong wayes , that nothing but destruction can deal with you , and thus much of the taste of this food . . the fifth and last thing , is the satisfying of the stomach . bodinus tells us of a story of a noble of aspremont , who used to entertain those that came to his house , with all plenty and magnificency that may be ; the tables furnished with all variety of the most rare delicates , rich furniture , excellent attendance ; every thing point device from the stable to the dining-room , above desire or expectation : but that which is strange , so soon as they were gone out of his house , both horse and man was ready to dye with hunger . the like magick and imposture is there in all those things that our deceiv'd souls feed upon in this life : it is but as the prophet expresses it , a meer dream of eating and drinking . it is even as when a hungry man dreameth , and behold he eateth , but he awaketh and his soul is empty ; or as when a thirsty man dreameth , and behold he drinketh , but he awaketh and behold he is faint , and his soul hath appetite . isa. . such is the condition of all the adversaries of sion , the holy people of god , that hunger and thirst after god and his righteousness , the fulfilling of the will of god ; for this alone can fill the soul of man. he that feeds of any thing else , sucks but in a rotten mist or fog , of scarce so good as the prodigals husks , of no better than mahomets ezeck , that infernal tree , whose fruit be but devils heads , and root streams with flames of fire , and tracts of smoke ; of which who tasts , feeds not but is fed upon , ever consuming in unsatiable fiery appetite , and restless desire . but the sound and satisfying meal of the soul is the will of her maker ; not when it is done without her , but when her life is that , and she never finds her self to live , but in that . the very life and spirit of god drunk in by mans thirsty soul , that by continual repast from thence growes stronger and stronger , and sucks so sweet delight from these breasts , that she never hungers nor thirsts again ; never desires the tempting poysons , the pernicious pleasures , and false contentments of this vain world : this is christ alive in us , quite another principle of life , and another food , from all that feeds our eyes or ears , or worse than these , our inordinate desires of pleasure , profit or honour : this is that true manna , that bread from heaven : of this our saviour witnesses , viz. of himself ; i am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall never hunger , and he that believeth on me shall never thirst . iohn . . discourse vi. jam . i. . be ye doers of the word , and not hearers only , deceiving your own selves . not to be troublesome , neither to you nor to my self , by any tedious preface or introduction : the text will afford us at least these three doctrines . . we must be hearers of the word . . we must be doers of the word , as well as hearers . . we are not to deceive our selves . i. we must be hearers of the word . to exhort men to hear ( sith there is naturally in them such an itching desire of hearing and knowing ) it may seem but a losing of time and labour : but because some mens dispositions are low and groveling , veluti pecorum quae natura prona atque ventri obedientia finxit , ( as salust speaks ) all their desires and imagination tending downward ; it will not be amiss to shew what good causes there are , that men should give their mind to the hearing of the word . ( . ) and surely no mean one is the resuscitation of that better part of mans soul , that lieth slumbering in a trance ; which many times being strongly called upon by the word , with much adoe is reared up , and slowly and heavily moves its dull sight , that darkness so strongly had possessed before : but if so be a man here be not propitious to himself , and foster that life which is then given him , like one not perfectly recovered out of a swound , he sinks down again out of the hands of him that held him ; and many such neglects may enter his name amongst the dead , whom death gnaweth upon , because he heard not the monitions of his teachers . the eye that slighteth his fathers counsel , and despiseth the instruction of his mother , the ravens of the valley will pick it out : he lying thus like a dead carryon exposed to the fowls of the air , the accursed angels of darkness shall seize upon him , and quite eradicate the principles of true light and sight , in the valley of the shadow of death . wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , awake thou that sleepest , that christ may give thee light . surge , ne longus tibi somnus , unde non times detur . and indeed a man least of all suspects his friend to be his deadly enemy : yet it fares so with foolish wicked men . righteousness is immortal : but unrighteousness bringeth death ; and the ungodly call it unto them both with hands and words ; and while they think to have a friend of it , they come to nought . wisd. . which mischief might happily be prevented by giving due heed and attention to the word . ( . ) for this word , if we were grown fitly prepared for the receiving of it , is the seed of eternal life , whereby we may be born again , and regenerate into the image of christ : and it is our saviours own gloss ; the seed is the word of god. luke . wherefore as in nature , were it not for seed , there would be no herbs , no plants , no living creatures , so without the word there would be no generation of the new creature ; which s. paul also confirms : for this is plain , where no salvation no regeneration ; and without the calling upon the lord no salvation : for so it is written in the th to the romans ; whosoever shall call upon the name of the lord shall be saved . but how shall they call on him on whom they have not believed ? and how shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard ? and how shall they hear without a preacher ? and at last he concludes , then faith is by hearing , and hearing by the word of god. but here some ( for the infringing of the necessity of this seed ) perhaps may demand otherwise than the apostle ; for he presently annexeth , but i demand ; have they not heard ? some might be prone to say , have they heard ? but the answer is indifferent to both : no doubt , their sound went through all the earth , and their words to the end of the world . and this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the voice of the heavens , or the voice of that vast expansum from the earth upward . for that no man too confidently restrict and straiten this preaching , and this word that s. paul speaks of in this place , the quotation is a part of the th psalm , which begins , the heavens declare the glory of god , and the firmament sheweth his handy-work . this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( as theon calls it in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon aratus ) this far-stretched firmament , or all-incircling air , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — we never let rest , ever anvelling out its makers praise , by air-beating sounds and voices . yea that lower noise of the breathing of men and beasts , call aloud unto us for obedient thankfulness , to him that is the life and breath of all living things ; that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the life of the world ( as r. moses the aegyptian calls him ) who if he should draw in his rayes of livelihood out of this great universe , the world would be as a dead fabrick in silence and desolation . but this by the way for the due extent of s. pauls words in that place : for i conceive not that the spirit of god writes in lawyers lines , a little in a great deal ; but a great deal in a little . i could travel further in this seeming digression upon the apostles words ; and yet bring all home at the last ; but i will rather pull in the reins , and put on strait to the place i left . if then without hearing , ( at least in some sense or other ) no faith , without faith no calling upon god , without calling upon god no salvation , without salvation from the old man and his deceitful iust , no regeneration ; then surely it is very requisite , that we give heed to the word , and hearken to it , and dispose our selves aright , for the receiving of it , as the necessary seed for our new birth and holy regeneration . according to this analogy of calling the word seed , the auditors or disciples of them that teach the word are called children , as begotten of their spiritual parents by the effusion of this seed of the word . so amongst the hebrews , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sons of the wise men are as much as the disciples , or those that hear and are instructed of the wise men ; and so filii prophetarum . and accordingly s. paul , gal. . . my little children of whom i travel in birth again , till christ be formed in you . ep. to philemon , ver . . i beseech thee for onesimus , whom i have begotten in my bonds . but we commonly take this expression to be metaphorical , and the truth of every thing we ground in sense , and make account there is no generation but of natural bodies , which we may touch and see ; making thus the visible world the idea and paradigm of better essences , and like epicureans or saducees we make nothing of invisibles ; or at least not conceiving aright of them , set them in the scale of truth at least a staff lower . but if we could conceive that the spirit or life of every thing is the thing , and that we look upon to be but the tabernacle or husk of it , or any wise , the vehicle or receptacle of it , and not the thing it self : we might very easily conceive that this regeneration is as true and real generation as is in visible nature ; and there is as it were rather a succession of a new lord in this outward fabrick of our bodies , than the old , new-clad with superficial accidentary habits . can the fig-tree , my brethren , bring forth olives , either a vine figs ? so can no fountain make salt water and sweet . so new actions , in transient evolution , must have a new centre or bottom of essence , which is the heart of life , which is the being of every living creature . now the evolved life of man consists in this , in knowledge or apprehension of things , and a lively sympathy and antipathy with them , whereby he doth either desire or abhor from them . and if all the knowledge of these things which he now is perswaded of , together with desire and abhorrency , sympathy and antipathy , fear or hope of future matters , the memory of things past , the sense of things present were utterly taken from him , where would he be ? or how would he feel out himself or find out himself ? this would be but turning man to destruction . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . they would thus become a sleep ; a sleep that they sleep , that descend into the chambers of darkness , and whom god hath covered in the grave . and in some sence , those words of iob are excellent : o that thou wouldst hide me in the grave , and keep me secret till thy wrath were past , and wouldst give me time and remember me ! thou shalt call me , i shall answer thee , thou lovest the work of thine own hands . when this death is perfected , in which there is no life , but only a sense that we are utterly dead to all things , then god makes a new man contrary to that of the devils framing , and inspires a new life , and a new breath , and loves this work of his own hands , thou turnest man to destruction ; again thou sayest , return ye sons of men . so then if this be destruction and death , then must a new sense and apprehension of things , new sympathy and antipathy , new embracing and abhorrency , be a new life , a new generation , a new creature . therefore if any man be in christ he is a new creature . old things are passed away , behold , all things are become new . here is plainly a new species , to speak in the language of philosophy : for to distinguish species by outward figure and colour , befits children rather , and painters , than men of understanding , and true philosophers . the true and real inward difference betwixt a stone , plant , brute , and man , is , that the second exceeds the first by the spirit of vegetation , the third the second by sensation , and the fourth the third by reason . and that a regenerate man differs intrinsecally from a natural man , is , that his sympathy , sense , and knowledge is in the life of the spirit of god , and the others in the spirit of the world . cor. . so then the life of evolution or transient action in our souls being utterly other from the natural mans , surely the original or centre of life is now quite another : and here is generation of life ab intimo , as deep as understanding can conceive of , or apprehension penetrate to . if then this seed of the word be of such efficacy that it beget a man into a new species , even into the beautiful image of christ ; and that hereby we be linked into such noble kindred , as to have to our fathers such as are the sons of god by regeneration ; being born of god first themselves , and so begetting children in christ. ( otherwise they fling but seed as gardeners and husbandmen do , and that that grows is nothing like him that casts it . ) moreover we our selves being able , after full age in the strength of christ , to propagate the lovely image of the life of god ; surely it should be a sufficient incitement to receive the word with as much eagerness , as the dry womb of the earth , doth the refreshing rain after a long drought . ( . ) but as the word is seed to beget , so it hinders not but that it may be nourishment for the conservation and increase of that which is brought forth . pet. . . as new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word , that you may grow thereby . cor. . i could not speak unto you brethren , as unto spiritual , but as unto carnal , even as unto babes in christ , i gave you milk to drink , and not meat , for you were not yet able to bear it . there 's milk and meat . iohn . and iesus said unto them , i am the bread of life ; he that cometh to me shall never hunger , and he that believeth in me shall never thirst . there 's bread and drink . but this was such bread as the pharisees ill stomachs could not digest ; neither as yet can they . is not this iesus , the son of ioseph , whose father and mother we know ? how then saith he , i came down from heaven ? see how they go about to vilifie the meat , rather than any way suspect the foulness and weakness of their own ill stomachs . but as all are not to stretch out their hand to every dish , and intemperately and unseemlyly to seize upon that which is not meant for them : [ seek not out the things that are too hard for thee ( saith siracides ) neither search the things rashly that are too mighty for thee . but that which god hath commanded , think upon that with reverence , &c. ecclesiasticus . ] i say , as we are modestly to decline that which we are not as yet fitted for receiving : so no man hath excuse from receiving some or other of the variety of meats that he hath prepared , who feedeth with his goodness , every living thing . old men and babes , young men and children , they all are sustained by the word , according to every ones necessity and capability : or else how could the young ones increase ? or they of full age subsist ? both which is the will of god. that which theophrastus hath in his first book of his history of plants , belongs indifferently to all kind of generation , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . nature is not content with the bestowing of a being upon things , but works them up to the perfection of that being . as an little plants , that in time grow to their just bulk , blooming and bearing fruit plentifully . and it is said of our saviour , that he shall grow up like a plant : and our saviour saith of the kingdom of heaven , that it is like the growth of the mustard-seed tree . now as this new life is called a plant for its vegetation , so is it also termed a child for its tender sense and simplicity of meaning . that therefore that hath knowledge and sense , having also an appetite to nourishment , and that a nourishment proper to sustain its own nature ; and the word being the proper nourishment of those spiritual new-born babes ; then if there be no such desire in us to this word , it 's a sign there is no such principle of life in us , or if there be , that it is sick , or the stomach past by over-much fasting . but if this life , by not giving it its due nutriment , either for measure or quality , come to be extinguished ; we prove our selves ( it's an horrible thing to think of it ) no better than murderers of the innocent and just one : for murder is not the cutting and slashing of the visible body , but the extinguishing of life . and thus we have seen in brief , that for the raising of our souls from death , for the begetting of the holy life , and for the conservation and increase of the same , we ought to be hearers of the word . ii. we pass on now to that other doctrine proposed , that we ought not only to be hearers , but doers also of the word . that awing sense of god which is impressed ( if not upon all , yet at least ) upon most mens souls , together with a natural desire of security and tranquillity of mind , and every pleasing good ; that experience and acknowledgment of our own imbecillity and insufficiency , walking in the fear of darkness , and knowing not ( as the apostle speaks ) whither we go ; doth easily induce even our natural and fleshly minds , out of love to our selves , to lay hold upon somewhat , which we conceive stronger than our selves : and this we call god ; and that outward erected form of religion in all churches , as hearing , and saying of prayers , and giving attention to the word , we call gods worship . and a worship it is surely too too easie ; and so fit for the vafrous and subdolous spirit of the natural man to play its wily pranks in , that it being well instructed by the sly and subtle counsels of that old serpent , the devil and satan , it turns those good constitutions which should have been introductions to further holiness , into a strong fort or castle of false satisfaction of conscience , and most pernicious diabolical delusion ; whiles we take our selves to be distinguished from the wicked , reprobate brood , by outward performances of ear-labour and lip-labour , without the practice of that which is taught us out of moses or christ ; plainly according to the pharisees in our saviours time , whom the holy baptist sharply rebukes for such kind of imaginations . bring forth fruit worthy amendment of life ( saith he ) . and think not to say within your selves , we have abraham to our father : for i say unto you , that god is able even of these stones to raise up children unto abraham . surely it is out of the want of that feeling knowledge of that which is so acceptable to god , and a fond over-estimation of our own poor naked and contemptible souls ; or a conceit that god would want persons , ( if we christians be excluded ) to make up the number of the inheritors of heaven ; that makes us think that such superficial performances will make us allowable before god. but nothing is acceptable to him but a simple , humble and unfeigned obedient spirit : nothing glorious in his eyes , but his own life , the soul inacted and quickened by christ. all flesh is grass , and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field . the grass withereth , the flower fadeth , but the word of our god endureth for ever . this is the word and eternal life , on whom whosoever doth believe , and by true faith in his strength is regenerate into , shall obtain everlasting life ; otherwise he abideth in the sentence of death , and the wrath of god is upon him . 't is true there be notable preheminences and priviledges given even to the natural fleshly adam . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith hermes , the whole world subsists for mans sake . but this prerogative howsoever hath its condition , which follows , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the world for man , but man for god. and how for god ? to wit , that his life may be in us ; that his christ may be in us : not so many verbal points of christianity , not so many notions of divinity , not so many moon-shine imaginations , from the word heard or read , in books , in our hearts , in the visible world , in heaven , in earth , in men. christ is not dead and unprofitable phansie , but the vigorous ebullition of life . which life if it be not in us , then are we not partakers of that we were destinate to ; for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . man was made for a tabernacle for god ; he 's materials for his holy temple . but if we will not be living stones ( as the apostle speaks ) we shall have the same doom that unprofitable trees or timber ; they are fit for nothing , but to be hewn in pieces , and cast into the fire . this is the end of that frustraneous brood of the sons of belial , the off-spring of unprofitableness , that fall short of the end they were intended to by their own disobedient perversness . the best of them fare no better . man being in honour hath no understanding , but is like to the beasts that perish . i , but we learned scholasticks , have vnderstanding enough ; or at least , as much as any . as much as we have obedience . surely understanding is meant there the holy obedient wisdom ; which alone preserveth from death , as we may see out of the prophet baruch . they that had their pastime with the fowls of heaven , ( high and lofty contemplations ; they that played with the soaring eagle , and delighted themselves in her strong , acute sight ) these are come to nought , and gone down to hell ; and other men are come up in their stead . when they were young , they saw the light ; but they understood not the way of knowledge , neither perceived the paths thereof ; neither have their children received it , but they were far off from the way . it hath not been heard of in the land canaan , neither hath it been seen in theman . nor the agarens that sought after wisdom upon earth , and the merchants of nerran and of theman , nor the expounders of fables , nor the searchers out of wisdom , have known the way of wisdom , neither do they think of the paths thereof . see what a great deal of understanding is purchased by disobedience . though our outward and inward ears be enlarged , and plentifully drink down many rivers of outward instructions , or inward imaginations , and high and learned theories ; yet if we be void of that true wisdom , that hath its root in hearty obedience to the holy word , we are without understanding , and become as the beasts that perish . wherefore let us not hug our selves in a false conceit of unhappy knowledge ; since not the hearers of the word , but the doers , are justified before god. let us not say within our selves , we have christ for the head of our religion , we have read his words , we have heard his embassadors speak to us , we have fetch'd out many a notable notion in the christian theology , we are well instructed in all points of the holy faith , we have heard much within , we have received more from without , we are the holy church and true disciples of christ. let us not prize our selves too high for these empty respects ; and think that if we be excluded , god will want guests to sit down with abraham , isaac and iacob , in the kingdom of christ. no. god is able even out of stones and dust to raise up disciples unto christ. but if we be the disciples of christ , let us give more heed to the voice of our master . matth. . whosoever heareth my words , and doth the same , i will liken him to a wise man , which hath built his house upon a rock : and the rain fell , and the floods came , and the winds blew , and beat upon that house ; and it fell not , for it was founded on a rock . the doing of the word is the sure foundation , a foundation no less strong than a rock . but he that hears and doth not , is like him that founds his house upon the sand ; or builds castles in the air : he shall not abide the judgment of god that comes like a whirlwind , nor the fierce tempest of his destroying wrath ; but he shall be confounded in his thoughts , and all his imaginations shall vanish into smoke . but to handle this present proposition more distinctly : that we should be doers of the word , there are many reasons . . one argument is taken from the end of the word heard , which is practice and purification . it is aristo's saying in plutarch , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . a bath that purgeth not , and speech that reformeth not , be both alike unprofitable . but how can any admonition purge or reform , unless the hearer doth his endeavour to practise ? the word of god is no magical charm , that the meer hearing of it should be sufficient for this or that disease of the soul. it may indeed beget a desire or propension to that which is good ( for which cause the old serpent stops his ears , as close as he may , from the receiving of this spell ) but if we go no further , that motion is lost , and we recoyl further back into evil . so that we see what small profit we reap , if we rest in a bare hearing of the word : and it is as little for our credits , if we will believe the stoick . if any man brag that he hath the faculty of expounding chrysippus ( saith epictetus ) say thou to thy self , [ unless chrysippus wrote obscurely , this man hath no such great cause to boast . ] well i come to chrysippus , i understand not his writings , i seek an interpreter , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . hitherto ( saith he ) there 's no great matter done : but when i have got an expositor to instruct , it remains that i put in practice those precepts ; and this is the only magnificent thing ; the other are nothing . methinks the old lame man speaks perfect good sense to him that is not more sensless and blind than he was lame . three necessary points there be in philosophy ( saith the same stoick ) . the first consists in the use of precepts ; as , that we should be modest in our behaviour ; true in our speech . the other is the argument or demonstration , that we ought to be so . the third and last is a clear dilucid logical proof , that this argumentation proceeded right . the last is necessary for the second , the second for the first : but the most necessary , and where we ought to rest , is the first . but we quite contrary , bestow all our time in the latter , and utterly neglect the first , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. therefore ( saith he ) we lye nevertheless , but how to demonstrate , that we ought not to lye , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , we have it at our fingers ends . the case is plain , there wants no application . if so be we were as faithful and industrious to perform the christian life , as we are sedulous to be instructed in the christian truth , surely the reputed church of god would send a more acceptable savour into the nostrils both of god and man. but whiles religion is to whet our angry tusks in controversie of points , to scandal one another , contemn one another , and hate one another , contending more for the setting up of opinion , than for the purchasing of the precious life of christ ; it 's no wonder that the holy church , which should be as the fragrant paradise of god , be turned into the sink of satan , and a stinking sty of swine-like epicures . the gnosticks , a most wicked sect of christians , in plotinus time : when they could get one to be of their heresie , and had instructed him well in their principles ( which was all they aimed at ) then they out of self-favour , crown him with the magnificent title of the child of god ; though their life as abominable as the devil could wish , or man imagine . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. thou art now become the son of god ; but others whom thou admiredst before , they are no children of god , they are no body . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thou art greater than heaven , without labour or pain . a goodly religion indeed , that consists in a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , when they themselves are but in the jaws of hell , and in the arms of the destroyer . what ? ( saith plotinus ) can a man see god , and in the mean time abstain from no manner of pleasure , in anger impotent , in good fortune insolent , in adversity impatient ; remember the name of god , and in the mean while be held with all manner of passions , overcome no kind of perturbation ? vertue arrived at its due pitch , with true wisdom and prudence , shews god unto us ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : but without true vertue the naming of god 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is but a name , a word , a sound , an eccho , nothing . see how the heathen philosopher triumphs over those unworthy christians , whose religion was but opinion , and their life the depth of filth and corruption . or see rather how moderately and civilly he carries himself toward them , that in their controversies are ready to eat up and devour one another . . but i will endeavour to convince them with the apostles own argument ; viz. that they that hear and do not , deceive their own selves . there be many testimonies of scripture that will witness this deceit . gal. . , . be not deceived , god is not mocked , for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap : he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption , but he that soweth to the spirit , shall of the spirit reap life everlasting . so s. iohn . little children be not deceived , he that doth righteousness , he is righteous even as he is righteous . he that commits sin is of the devil ; for the devil sinneth from the beginning . cor. . be not deceived , neither fornicators , nor idolaters , nor adulterers , nor wantons , nor defilers of themselves with mankind , nor thieves , nor covetous , nor railers , nor extortioners , shall inherit the kingdom of god. how frequent are the apostles in inculcating this so plain a truth , that righteousness of life is that which leads to god and his eternal kingdom ! surely those holy watchmen of israel , did see the time would come , that the delusions of the devil would so strongly possess the heads and hearts of men , that they would be fast glewed in hypocritical holiness to some outward form of religion ; as the formal hearing of the word , and such like ; that they might with a more quiet false conscience , omit the greater things of the law ; as justice , temperance , charity , humility , and the whole quire of holy vertues . the other they ought to do , but by no means to leave these undone . but now i will endeavour to shevv how this simple sort of souls are befooled . galat. . if any man seem to himself that he is somewhat , when he is nothing , he deceiveth himself in his imagination . now these empty hearers of the word , that they think themselves to be somewhat , is plain from hence ; else would they seek something better ; but being that they set up their rest in this outward performance , it 's a sign that they seem to themselves not to have got nothing . but that they are as surely nothing , as it is sure they take themselves to be something , is easily proved out of cor. . though i speak with the tongue of men and angels , and have not charity , i am as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal . and although i had the gift of prophesie , and knew all secrets , and all knowledge ; yea if i had all faith , so that i could remove mountains , and had not love , i were nothing . now that they that are but idle hearers of the word have not charity , and so consequently are nothing , will be proved out of the effects of charity . love suffereth long : they are impatient . love is bountiful : they are griping and covetous . love envieth not : they are choaked with malice . love is not puffed up : they are swoln with deceitful imagination . love disdaineth not : they regard not the humble . it seeketh not its own : they are not contented with their own . it is not provoked to anger : they are implacable . it thinks no evil : they meditate no good . it rejoyceth in the truth : they are contemners of the truth . it believeth all things : they believe no more than serves their own turn . it fulfils the law : they only hear the law. the estate of this kind of people is well described by the prophet esay : the multitude of all nations that fight against the altar , shall be as a dream , or vision of the night . even all they that make the war against it , and strong-holds against it , and lay siege unto it . and it shall be , like as an hungry man dreams , and behold he eateth , and when he awaketh his soul is empty : or like as a thirsty man dreameth and lo he is drinking , and when he awaketh behold he is faint , and his soul longeth . so shall the multitude of nations be that fight against mount sion . that we are to sacrifice our selves , that is our wickedness and fleshly life , no man , i think , will deny . but so exceeding misery it is , and smart to flesh and blood , to undergo this mortification , and to lye broiling in this consuming fire , that there needs a steddy , strong upholding instrument for this so weighty performance ; which is all-bearing patience : this holds up the mortified soul in its extreme burning anguish ; and therefore is not unlike an altar that bears the sacrifice . now they that fight against this real service of god , which is the mortification of our sinful lusts , the sacrificing of our evil life ; and against sion , which god calls the hill of his holiness : let them dream never so strongly , nor phansie never so deeply , that such a measure of righteousness will serve their turn ; a formal hearing of the word , and a favourable false application out of the same ; all this sweet repast and imaginary trust and perswasion , will prove but a vision of the night , and a feasting upon phansie in deceivable sleep . for these dreamers , instead of purging the flesh by the sacrifice of fire , defile the flesh with the fire of lust : great pretenders to knowledge ; and therefore sedulous hearers , but no doers : clouds without water ; and they , you know , make a goodly show of whitish shining light ; though not so thoroughly enlightned as the blew sky : stars they are ; but wandering stars ; the end of whose staggering period , is to set in everlasting blackness of darkness . but i go on now to two other arguments . . a third argument is taken from the dignity of the word it self . thou hast magnified thy name and thy word above all things , saith the psalmist . hitherto belongs the purity of the word . thy word is most pure , therefore they servant loveth it . psal. . and it is philo's observation upon the manner of the giving of the law , out of fire , and smoke , and lightening , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. well and befittingly may the word of god be said to come out of the fire ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for the holy oracles of god are accurately purged , and tryed , even as gold in the fire . so the psalmist ; psalm . the words of the lord are pure words , even as silver which from the earth is tryed , and purifyed seven times in the fire . so great purity was conceived to be in the law of god , even the written word , that no heathen durst venture to intersert any pieces of it into their writings : so holy it was accounted that they durst not contaminate it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with their profane mouths ; as iosephus writes , from the testimony of hecataeus . demetrius in the same historian reports , that one theopompus grew distracted by being too bold and busie with these writings : and that theodectes the tragaedian , lost his sight . and no wonder ; for by iosephus's relation , these men sought rather for flowers to adorn their works , than for wholesome instructions to reform their lives . theodectes ( it's likely ) spyed somewhat there that would grande sonare , that would sound gravely , and make a majestick noise , fitting his tragick buskin ; but the man had little mind to set his feet in those lawes of god , to do them . and hence so much distraction , phrensie and blindness possesseth us this very day . yet like bold impudent flies , we sieze confidently upon those precious . oyntment-pots of the apothecary , and in this plenty of wholesome refreshment , have wings and feet clung together ; and lose our life even in the very book of life . prov. . if thou hast found honey , eat so much as is sufficient for thee : that is as much as thou canst well digest into practice . for so it is with the word as it is with meat : not taken it doth no good : taken in and not digested it brings but diseases : but taken in and perfectly digested by honest labour and exercise , preserveth life and health . . but these considerations are more proper to the fourth and last reason , why we should be doers of the word : which hath reference to us ; and is the reward of keeping his commandments . by them is thy servant taught , and in keeping of them there is great reward . psal. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a threefold great reward ; a reward in estate , a reward in body , and a reward in soul. . a reward in estate . ] blessed shalt thou be in thy basket and in thy dough . blessed shall be the fruit of thy body , and the fruit of thy ground , and the fruit of thy cattle , and the increase of thy kine , and the flocks of thy sheep . deut. . but if we think moses word not sufficient , christ himself will put in security , for supply of all necessaries , if we take but the condition of obedience . seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness , and all these things shall be added unto you . matth. . so the psalmist ; the lyons rore and suffer hunger , but they that fear the lord shall want no manner of thing that is good . there are manifold testimonies in scripture to this purpose , and so obvious that quotation is needless . ( . ) the second reward is in a mans body ; for strength , health and beauty . fear the lord and depart from evil , so health shall be to thy navel , and marrow unto thy bones . prov. . envy , anger , hatred , and discontented melancholly , which reign in either proud or pusillanimous souls , weaken nature , and destroy the body ; but life and vigour is in the perfect law of charity . a chearful conscience purifies and refines the blood , but disobeying the inward light , is the choaking of the vital spirits . a sound heart is the life of the flesh , ( saith solomon ) but envy is the rottenness of the bones . this for health and strength . now for beauty . the wisdom of a man doth make his face to shine . ecclesiastes . and ecclesiasticus . the wickedness of a woman changeth her face , and maketh her countenance black as a sack . the heart of a man changeth his countenance , ( saith the wise man ) whether it be in good or evil . so if there be a continual vigorous habit in the heart of shining vertue and lovely charity , it will issue even into the face of a man in all friendly amiableness . moses was so fill'd with this heavenly beauty , that the children of israel could not look upon him for his glorious splendour . but the works of darkness make the spirit of a man to set in gloomy obscurity and deadness . ( . ) but now we come to the third reward ; which is in the soul. psal. . . the law of the lord is an undefiled law , converting the soul ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 say the septuagint ; the word which the platonists use . for the clear understanding of the dignity of this conversion , we are to take notice of the nature thereof . conversion therefore includes two things ; a leaving and a making toward somewhat : and here in this christian conversion , that which is to be left is the creature ; and that which is to be turned unto , is god. the leaving of the creature is the forsaking of whatsoever is not god , but especially the renouncing of our own selves : for while we cleave unto the creature we most of all cleave unto our own selves ; for we adhere unto it , for our own sake . self-love is the hinge or centre upon which we turn from god to the creature ; and upon which we begin to circle from the creature to god again : but the accomplishment of conversion breaks this thing , abolisheth this centre ; and then we have our fixation in god , and all our motion and operation of will and affection , is upon him and from him . that aegyptian king ( as herodotus reports in his second book ) when he had prohibited his subjects sacrificing to god , and had shut up all the temple doors in aegypt ; he presently employes all his people in his own service , and sets them to leed stones to build pyramids for his own honour , and the lasting memorial of himself . no man would be so mad as to forsake the service of god , to be a drudge to an inferiour master : but without question , the plot is to be his own god and his own master , and to employ all his strength for himself . but how the law of god doth convert the soul from this idolatry ; and that which we falsely seek after , how it brings us truly more near unto , will be seen from the manner of this conversion of the soul to god. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith proclus in plato's theology . the conversion of things to their causes or principles , is to receive assimilating influence from them , or to rise up and ascend nearer and nearer unto them , and to become more and more like them . to return therefore unto god is to become like to him , by the recovery of the lost image of adam , who was made according to the similitude of god. now the image of god what it is , seems not to be unknown even to the very heathens . the ancient greek poet , brings in vlysses musing with himself , amongst his travels , what a kind of people he had fallen among ; after this manner , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; what a kind of people be the inhabitants of the land into which i come ? are they injurious , barbarous and unjust ? or are they of a loving disposition , courteous unto strangers , and of a godlike mind ? 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; are they animo dei formi ? where the poet plainly makes the form or image of god consist in love , in righteousness or iustice , and courteousnes ; they being contrary to injury , brutish fierceness , cruelty and injustice . the divine philosopher speaks out more expresly , though in fewer words ; to be like unto god is to be holy , just and wise . i might multiply words here for the setting forth of the manifold benefits and graces that accrue to the soul of man from his conversion to god , and obedience to his holy word : but nothing more can be said than this image of christ doth either express , or at least imply . justice , holiness and prudence comprize all excellence . that generous magnanimity of mind , that bears it self above all the contempt that can follow the practice of that which is good , or abstinence from that which is evil : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : pure temperance ; manly and awful-eyed fortitude ; gravity and modesty gently moving in all peaceful and steady tranquillity ; and a god-like vnderstanding , watering with showers of light this flourishing paradise of piety and vertue : this , and whatsoever else we can conceive that good is , is contained in this divine image ; nay more than we can conceive , before we be transformed into that likeness . the wisdom of him that is regenerate into this image and conformity with god , dives into the depth of darkness ; unties the knots of that old serpents train ; breaks off the bonds of death and hell ; pierceth like lightning into the inwardness of things ; stands before the throne of immortal glory . that holiness winds it self from all corruption of the flesh ; flyes above the bewitching attraction of the body ; looks upon god in unspotted purity . that iustice gives every thing it s own ; that which is caesars to caesar , and that which is gods to god : but nothing to it self ; seeketh nothing for it self ; exulteth not in it self : but gives all to god ; seeks all for god ; rejoyceth alwayes in god. thou art worthy o lord to receive honour , and glory , and power ; for thou hast created all things ; and for thy wills sake , they are and have been created . rev. . thus be they nothing in their own eyes , as indeed they are nothing ; but in profound humility and gratitude , ( which is the most exquisite act of iustice ) give all to the eternal and everlasting majesty . this is that lovely , beautiful , and most desirable image of christ the son of the father . who hath part here is an inheritor of eternity : but he that by false and lazy imagination and phansie , remains in the devils deformed nature , his doom is everlasting death , and unspeakable misery . and thus much for the reasons , why we should be doers of the word . i will only speak a word or two of the proposition that is left , and so end this text. the proposition is this ; iii. that we are not to deceive our selves . errare , falli , decipi , &c. to err , or be deceived , saith tully , turpe est : and that methinks should be a sufficient argument to avoid it . but to deceive ones self is a double fault . he that deceives himself is both fool and knave ( as we say ) both the gull and the cheater , the deceived and the deceiver . though to say the truth , he that is deceived by another , was first deceived by himself . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( saith aristotle ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the same defective principles that expose a man to be deceived of another , exposeth him as well to be deceived of himself . no man is discovered to be a fool by another , but he was so in himself first : and who made him so then ? but how can this be , that man should be so wise as to circumvent himself , and so foolish as to be circumvented by himself ? certainly it implies more natures than one in a man. the platonists reckon up three in general ; there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ( . ) there is vnderstanding , that lamp of heavenly truths , or intellectual illumination . ( . ) there is the soul in the middle , where will and reasoning is situated . ( . ) in the last place , there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that life which resides in the body , and is but a shadow of the soul ; the darkened cave of evil delusions , falshood and deceit ; a den of all serpentine natures , false spectrums , magical allurements , thick mists , benumming vapours , execrable whisperings , vain terrour , false delight , bewitching apparitions , fair flitting phantasms , deceivable suggestions , besotting attractions . here 's that damn'd cell ; where those three grand impostors and conspirators against the soul , plot their fraudulent mischiefs ; the flesh , the world , the devil : or rather , here is a world of devils in this life of the flesh , where the prince of darkness rules . well hath zoroastre described this place . he calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a world whose light is the blackness of darkness . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a world whose bottom is the depth of unfaithfulness : it 's foundation is laid in hell ; a hell whose fense is pitchy clouds and thick darkness ; whose treasure is corruption ; inhabitants , vanity and shadowes ; wisdom , senslesness ; prudence , precipitancy ; simplicity of heart , inextricable labyrinths of deceit and hypocrisie : constancy or steddiness , a vertiginous circuit of glowing phrensie and gross madness . he that here doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( which those wise oracles forbid ) he that looks down , indangers his sight , indangers being carryed away with this rapid course and hurrying flux of tumultuous motions : it 's enough to turn his brain , to change his understanding , to bereave him of his right senses . here 's the fountain of ignorance , and well-spring of all evil deceits . so long as the soul leans toward this , and its loving and liking is toward this shadow of falshood , it carries its deceiver about with it self ; and no deceit there is without but it is from this first , or in vertue of this . that which the platonists call , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the scripture calls spirit , soul , and flesh. this flesh is that whorish woman , that solomon speaks of so oft , and describes her subtil carriage : but all her fair speaking is but false allurement , and her flattering utter destruction : for a whore is a deep ditch , and a strange woman a narrow pit , saith the wise man : nay the high way to the very pit of hell. her house are the wayes of hell , whose descent is into the chambers of death . prov. . now the soul of man , betwixt these two , the spirit and the flesh , heaven and hell , god and the devil , is so placed , that accordingly as it inclines or cleaves to , so is its wisdom and life : if it continually struggle to work it self upward toward god , god will put out his merciful arm to draw it out of those infernal waters : if it cleave unto the flesh and its deceivable lusts , the warmth of wickedness will attract it down lower and lower , till satan hath insnared it in all his nests , and hath chained it in his own chains ; so that being made an absolute vassal of that tyrannick prince that rules in the sons of disobedience , he shall be excluded from the everlasting light of god and his holy truth . and thus briefly under one , we have seen how we are said to deceive our selves , and the way to escape this self-deceit . god that commanded the light to shine out of darkness , shine in our hearts , and give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of god , in the face of iesus christ , that we may walk before him in the truth of life . to him with the father and the blessed spirit , &c. discourse vii . prov . xv . . all the dayes of the afflicted are evil , but a good conscience is a continual feast . the text is a description of the estate of the wicked man and the righteous man : which will be more evident if we consult with the septuagints translation : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i. e. the eyes of the wicked continually expect evil , but the godly ( or good men ) are alwayes at rest . here do the lxx interpreters express plainly , that opposition of those persons , and of their conditions ; [ vngodly , and good or godly ; unquietness of mind , and perpetual rest ] : as i pronounced concerning this text at first , that it is a description of the opposite conditions of those ever opposite off-springs of god , and the devil ; the sons of christ , and the sons of belial ; the children of light , and the children of darkness . this sense have the lxx put upon this portion of scripture ; though the words themselves answer not so fitly to the hebrew text. to devise the occasion of their variation , would be more easie ( though curious ) than profitable . i intend not to mispend time , or abuse your attention with the husks of words , or fruitless discourse of translations . i will follow symmachus in the first part of the verse , exactly answering to the hebrew , [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all the dayes of the poor are evil ] ; in the second part the hebrew it self , [ but a good heart is a continual feast ; or as the words will bear , he that hath a good heart , feasts continually . ] now therefore that this poverty is not to be understood of outward poverty , is plain out of the text. continual feasting , and constant poverty or affliction , are contrary : so that we must either exclude the poor man from having a good heart and conscience , whereby all sorrow is dispell'd , and continual joy and chearfulness obtained ; or else if he hath these joyes , make him rich in outward wealth . but sith the poor upright honest man , through the continual comfort of his own good conscience , dives like , fares deliciously every day , though poor in estate ; then surely none of his dayes are evil , though he poor outwardly in them all . so that this present text is to be understood of an inward kind of poverty , that makes a mans life full of evil and misery . this evil poverty and miserable want , is described in the revelation of s. iohn , ch. . thou sayest , i am rich and increased with goods , and have need of nothing ; and knowest not , how thou art wretched , and miserable , and poor , and blind , and naked . i counsel thee to buy of me gold tryed in the fire , that thou mayst be made rich ; and white rayment , that thou mayst be clothed , and that thy filthy nakedness do not appear ; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve , that thou mayst see . here 's good store of penury , a wardrobe of want ; want of money ; want of clothes to cover their shame ; want of eye-sight , to be able to do that which is but a misery , to go from door to door to beg . but hear what 's said , verse . to him that overcometh will i give to sit with me in my throne ; even as i overcame , and sit with my father in his throne . see what a change ! from a begger to a king ; from a dunghil to a throne ; from a blind wretch to a judge upon a throne , that shall discern the right , that shall judge the twelve tribes of israel . he that is spiritual judgeth all things , yet he himself is judged of no man. we have by this time plainly seen what this poor man is , whose dayes are said all to be full of evil : that he is one that wants those white robes , which is the righteousness of the saints ; wants that old precious coin , whose image and superscription is righteousness and true holiness , the figure of christ the son of god , the express portraiture of his father : he wants his eye-sight , the true spiritual wisdom , holy discretion , the sense of spirits , and discovery of the mysterious working of that prince of darkness and deceit : he 's plainly destitute ( though not of the necessaries of this life , yet ) of that main one and only necessary thing , as our saviour calls it ; that better part that mary chose , and could not be taken from her . virtus nec eripi nec surripi● potest . nor force nor fraud can deprive a man of that inward good . and now i have described this poor man , i think it is not hard to prove that all his dayes are evil . by how much better the soul is than the body , by so much worse are the defects of the soul , than those of the body . . is an vlcer or wound grievous in the body ? much more grievous is it then in the soul or spirit . the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmities , but a wounded spirit who can bear ? prov. . . . is blindness or darkness an horrid thing to the body ? then is ignorance much more to the soul : as may appear from that excellent description of this aegyptian darkness in the book of wisdom , chap. . when the unrighteous people thought to have thy holy people in subjection , they were bound with the bands of darkness and long night , and being shut up under the roof , did lye there to escape the eternal providence . ( but now that we think not only of outward darkness in the air , see what followes . ) and while they thought to be hid in their dark sins , they were scattered abroad in the dark covering of forgetfulness , fearing horribly and troubled with visions . for the den that hid them kept them not from fear ; but the sounds that were about them , troubled them ; and terrible visions , and horrible sights did appear . no power of the fire might give light , neither might the clear flames of the stars lighten the dreadful night . ( and a few verses after . ) for it is a fearful thing when malice is condemned by her own testimony ; and a conscience that is touched doth ever forecast cruel things . thus having their eyes closed in misty sleep , it doth not secure them from the trouble of fear : for they that endure this intolerable night , breath'd out of the dungeon of hell ; as they sleep the same sleep , so are they in like manner tortured with the same monstrous visions , sounding for fear and perplexity of spirit ; as is largely described in that chapter . but that this evil condition may appear more evil , i will set the contrary by it . god is light , and in him there is no darkness . i am the light of the world , saith our saviour . and the apostle rouzing us out of this sleep of sin , saith , awake thou that sleepest , that christ may give thee light . to walk therefore in the light is to walk in the life of christ , as in the presence of the father ; and he that thus walketh knoweth both whither he and others go : but he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth , because that darkness blindeth his eyes . ioh. . and no wonder then that fear attends his footing , that ever and anon he is afraid that the next step , he stumbles into the pit of destruction . the wicked fear where no fear is , but god is in the generation of the righteous , saith the psalmist . it fares so with them as with those that travel in arabia ; who if they chance to set their foot upon iron , stone , or any cold thing by night , they are even ready to dye with fear , suspecting they have trodden upon a serpent : so ungodly men whose stay and trust is not on god , are subject out of the suggestions of an ill conscience , in every harsh thing they meet with , to think that god hath forsaken them , and that they now have stumbled upon that old serpent the devil . the rising of the morning may restore the other to peace and security , but what will chace away the terrour of this inward darkness ? nor the glorious light of the sun , nor the beautiful aspect of the moon , nor the chearful collustration of the sparkling stars , can yield them light , or refresh their troubled spirit . hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est non radii solis nec lucida tela diei discutiant , sed naturae species ratioque . as the poet speaks , and may be understood in a better sense , than his earthly mind could ever reach to . till that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or idea , or truth of all things free us from this misery , we shall not be truly freed from it : but if not freed from it , how evil do we think his dayes are , whom the clearness of the day , and common light , cannot deliver from the tormenting fears of that continual night ! vide qualis affectus sit timor ( saith cardan ) qui crepitare cogit dentes , &c. see what a kind of passion fear is , that makes a mans teeth chatter in his head ; which symptom ( saith that physitian ) is proper to those that labour with some deadly disease . but sure the horrour of that eternal darkness is worse , where is weeping , and wailing , and gnashing of teeth ; which is the fear of the ungodly here , and their portion hereafter . . deformity in body , doth a little diminish ones happiness : but the vgliness of sin in a mans soul , if it could be seen with outward eyes , it would even fright a man out of his wits to behold it : for it is the very impression or character of that evil fiend , the ill shap'd devil himself ; as righteousness is the image of god. . feebleness also of body , is a miserable thing : but weakness of soul is worse , when that every blast of vain doctrine is able to blow us down ; when every temptation makes us yield to our enemy , and to become a wretched vassal of the devils cruelty . . but that i run not too much upon one point , that which is most terrible is death : but the death of the body is but to be hid in the grave ; but the death of the soul is to be excluded the presence of god ; and not that only , but to be vexed and tormented with those spirits of torture , which in their fury lay on sure strokes . thus it is manifest , that every evil of the soul , is worse than that of the body that answers to it : and so that poverty , which consists in the want of good things , and the presence of evils that ensue from this want , is a great deal worse in the soul , than in outward things concerning the body . now when i say poverty , i know not what to add , either for misery of body or soul ; it including all in both : hunger , thirst , nakedness , filthiness , sickness , heaviness , disconsolateness ; these and all manner of mischiefs accompany poverty . but be it what it will in the body , it is unspeakably worse in the soul ; and a certain cause of making that poor mans life miserable , so long as he continueth in that sense poor . i , but will some say , how can this thing be ? when as dayly experience shows , that men that are as destitute of all spiritual and heavenly riches , as they abound in earthly , live in all jollity and pleasure , in all mirth and merriment ? but this is no good argument if we believe the wise man. prov. . . even in laughing the heart is sorrowful , and the end of that mirth is heaviness . so eccles. . as the crackling of thorns under a pot , so is the laughter of a fool . the flame and the noise go away together ; and at last is nothing left , but scorching coals or dead ashes . would a man count a man in good plight , because the poyson he takes makes him dye laughing ; as it is said of that herb in sardo , and of the biting of the tarantula ? we commonly count the case of a sick man more miserable , when upon his bed he sings merry songs , and finds out fond toyes from the weakness and distemper of his troubled brain : these men are miserable enough , though they think not , nor perceive themselves to be so . and so it fares with all them that be ungodly , and yet seem to flow in all joyes , pleasures and contentments : it 's but the phansie of a sick brain : wise men are sorry to see them in such distemper , to have such an ill symptom upon them : and surely that that is miserable in their judgments is miserable ; and not in theirs whom misery hath made mad , false pleasure hath infatuated . so we see now plain enough , that the poor man ( that is , he that is destitute of grace and vertue ) all his dayes are sufficiently evil ; sometime in the judgment both of himself and others ; other sometime , or rather ever , in the judgment of others , ( that is ) of wise and holy men : or that this truth may be the stronglyer established ; in the judgment of god himself , who is the measure of all truth ; thou sayest that i am rich , and increased with wealth ; but thou knowest not that thou art wretched , and miserable , and blind , and naked , &c. rev. . but of poverty , wretchedness and misery enough : it would seem more desirable , to point out some way to be enriched . the same spirit that tells the church of laodicea , of her miserable poverty , shews her a way , how to become rich ; vincenti dabitur . to him that overcomes , will i grant to sit with me in my throne ; even as i overcame , and sit with my father in his throne . here 's no ordinary riches : here 's the fulness of a kingdom . but , take the condition i pray you , vincenti dabitur . he that overcomes , he shall be endued with large possessions . he that overcomes , shall be clothed in white ; shall feed of the hidden manna . not as the children of israel in the wilderness , who lived of manna so many years and then perished . i am the bread of life , ( saith our saviour ) your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead . but this is the bread that cometh down from heaven , that he that eateth of it should not dye . john . , , . and ver. , . moses gave you not bread from heaven ; but my father giveth you the true bread from heaven . for the bread of god is he that cometh down from heaven , and giveth life unto the world . now what life is this ? a vertuous honest life , a life devoid of filthy lusts , of base concupiscence , of envy , hatred and bitterness , of idolatrous self-love , ( for self-love is perfect idolatry ) ? or is it an hypocritical , false , ungodly life , not escap'd the corruption of the flesh that is by lust ? surely it is the former , or else our heavenly father instead of bread giveth us a stone ; which no natural father would do to his son. he therefore that lives not an honest , godly and upright life , hath not been at this doal of heavenly bread ; and is but as one that dreameth he eateth and he eateth not , ( as the prophet esay speaketh ) but when he waketh he is hungry ; and dreameth that he drinketh , but when he waketh his soul is faint . but he that cometh to me shall never hunger , and he that believeth in me shall never thirst , saith our blessed saviour . so here 's meat , drink , and clothes sufficient ; if we perform the condition of overcoming . now overcoming presupposeth a fight , and fighting an adversary . and god knows we have enough , and strong ones too . the three captains of them be these ; the flesh , the world , and the devil : to whom we are sworn enemies from our very baptism : i am sure they are to us ; from the very beginning of the world. i will briefly tell you a way to foyl them , and so conclude the first part of my text. sobriety and temperance will overcome the flesh. humility and lowliness of mind will defeat the world. self-denyal ( which is the blessed cross of christ ) will keep off all the pestilent plots and devices , the devil can frame against us . the apostle doth harness us very surely and strongly for this great conflict . ephes. . take unto you the whole armour of god , that you may be able to resist in the evil day ; and having finished all things stand fast . stand therefore , having your loins girt with verity , and having on the breast-plate of righteousness , and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace : above all , taking the shield of faith , wherewith you may quench all the fiery darts of the wicked . and take the helmet of salvation , and the sword of the spirit that is the word of god. here 's compleat furniture for a christian souldier ; only he sets down no back-piece , because he intends not we should ever run away : but he commends to us above all , the shield of faith , which if we hold fast , and become not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , cowardly souldiers , such as cast away their shield , and take themselves to flight , he warrants it of such proof , as no shaft or brand of hell can enter it . what great deeds have been done , and brave atchievments wrought by this armature ; the apostle in his epistle to the hebrews , at the th chapter , doth largely discourse , and at last more roundly and summarily conclude , thus ; what shall i say more ? for the time would be too short for me to tell of gideon , of barak , and of sampson , and of iephte also , of david and samuel , and of the prophets : which through faith subdued kingdoms , wrought righteousness , obtained promises , stopped the mouth of lions , quenched the violence of fire , escaped the edge of the sword , of weak were made strong , waxed valiant in battle , turned to flight the armies of the aliens . all these exploits are done by keeping fast the shield of faith ; which is a sure trust and perswasion , that god is able and ready to fight on our side . the want of this faith is that which makes the devils camp so victorious against us . we are loth to believe that god can or will enable us to resist unto blood ; even unto the effusion of that wicked life , and mortification of all fleshly-mindedness . but this is required ; and if we will believe , that god would as heartily have it done , as he doth plainly command it ; it would be done in good time . be thou faithful unto death , and i will give thee the crown of life . rev. . if we dye with him then shall we also live with him . for if we be grafted with him into the similitude of his death , even so shall we be into the similitude of his resurrection . rom. . . thus we have seen the evil afflicted case of him that is destitute of the true riches of the mind , temperance , piety , wisdom , and all other vertues ; as also the way to attain unto those durable riches , and affluency of all good . i will now go on to the second part of my text ; viz. a good heart ( or a good conscience ) is a continual feast . the heart is the seat of conscience ; i. e. of desire , or bent of will and knowledge ; knowledge of things moral or divine . so in scripture , we have oft mention of a wise and understanding heart . and surely if a man observe ; in moral and pious matters , a man communeth with his heart , and discovereth deceit and hypocrisie there ; as he doth incongruities and falsities in his brain , where imagination is placed , in natural and mathematical theories . conscience therefore is nothing but the censure of the soul upon the guize of the heart , accusing or excusing its drifts , intentions and acts : and is called quiet or troubled : not that that light is alwayes so , but that it causeth such a perturbation in the spirit of man , conscious to it self of evil committed . or otherwise thus : conscience is the impression of the true light of things moral or divine , upon the heart ; where will and intention , and motion of life is : as reason natural is the impression of the clear light of truth in natural theories . these true lights never vary ; but the impressions are more or less perfect ; sometime plainly false ; as the image of the sun in the water , when it appeareth broken or of a long form , or in a mist when it appears red . hence is falshood and correction of falshood both in heart and brain : for the clearer and more exact impression , confuteth the imperfect , if displaced ; or confirmeth it , if only dim before . but that common and vulgar apprehension of conscience , such as every man conceives , when the word is named , shall be sufficient for my discourse . and this is nothing but a certain disposition or condition of mind , from the knowledge or remembrance of its acts and intentions ; which if they be represented as good , simple and sincere , ioy and rest follows ; if otherwise , disturbance of mind and disquietness . and this very latter disposition is good too , but not alwayes ; that is , when it is accompanied with a iudas-like despair ; otherwise it is good , as wholsome physick , not as a pleasant banquet . but it is seldom or never known , that the heart was ever established , without the fore-going of this disquietness of mind : for mans natural inclinations lead him astray , and childhood and youth betray him unto vanity : so that man being lost thus in his natural blindness , when christ begins to open his eyes by his truth , and he is convicted of his wicked errours , what can come of it but sorrow ? nay , but being thus in some good measure enlightened , afterward to have rebelled against this measure of light , or at least through weakness , or rather the love of sin and neglectful yielding to the devils assaults , to fall into the same filth he was warned of before , surely this must needs breed great distraction and confusion of spirit : and so long will this be as that holy light keeps in ; and we live not conformable unto it . for god is a god of pure eyes , and cannot behold wickedness ; and so long as we see this eye upon our wayes , this light over our actions , which we see by light imparted from it , in lumine tuo videbimus lumen ( as it is said in the psalms ) in thy light we shall see light : every work of darkness will so ashame us and confound us , that we shall never be at quiet till we vvalk uprightly before the avvful majesty of heaven , that is ever present before us . but vvhen through the mercy and might of jesus christ , and his quickning spirit , vve vvalk in unfeigned obedience in the sight of the father of lights , our conversation being in heaven , vvhere christ sits at the right hand of the povver of god , having led captivity captive , as the psalmist speaks : then shall our mouth be filled with laughter , and our tongue with joy ; as it is said in another psalm , about the turning again the captivity of sion : and psal. . my soul shall be filled , even as with marrow and fatness , when my mouth praiseth thee with joyful lips . but there is a more apt and ample description of this joy and feasting , esay . in this mountain shall the lord of hosts make unto all people , a feast of fat things , a feast of fined wines , and fat things full of marrow , of wines fined and purified . this is mount sion : whom the lord hath chosen to be an habitation for himself ; which he hath longed for ; which shall be his rest for ever : here will he dwell , for he hath a delight therein , ps. . here he keeps open house all the year long , or rather all eternity long . ho! every one that thirsteth , come ye to the waters ; and ye that have no silver , come , buy and eat . come , i say , buy wine and milk without silver and without money . wherefore do you lay out silver and not for bread ? and your labour without being satisfied ? hearken diligently unto me , and eat that which is good , and let your soul delight in fatness . esay . but what is this mountain , that god should promise such joy upon it ? or what is sion , that such feasting and mirth should be in it ? mount sion is called the hill of the holiness of god , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hill of his holiness , psal. . such a kind of holiness , such a kind of purity as a man may stand before god in , that a man sees god in , that is approved of god and will abide the fire : for our god is a consuming fire , and burns and pains a mans soul so long as filth resides there . who amongst us shall dwell with devouring fire ? who amongst us shall dwell with everlasting burning ? he that walketh in justice and speaketh righteous things , &c. he shall dwell on high , his defence shall be the munition of rocks , bread shall be given him , and his water shall be sure , saith the prophet esay . he shall dwell on mount sion ; that high and holy hill , where god hath prepared this great feast . this is the hill of the thirsty ; for so may this word sion signifie : and blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness , for they shall be satisfied . or more properly it may signifie dry earth : and so we may fitly use that of the psalmist , my soul thirsteth after thee , as a thirsty land : and the same happiness will return again as before ; they shall be satisfied , so our english ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they shall be fed , so the greek . they shall be sufficiently fed ; they shall be feasted ; continually feasted : for he that eateth of this bread shall never hunger , and he that drinketh of this drink shall never thirst , saith our saviour . how excellent is thy mercy , o god! therefore shall the children of men trust under the shadow of thy wings : they shall be satisfied with the fatness of thy house , and thou shalt give them drink out of the river of thy pleasures . psalm . this is the excellent inward state of the upright soul and undefiled conscience , streaming and over-flowing with strong and full torrents of heavenly delight , issuing from the throne of god and of the lamb. but to handle the matter some what more distinctly , i will consider the nature of a feast , and of what parts it chiefly consists . the curious varro in gellius makes a compleat feast to consist of these four things ; si belli homuncali collecti sunt ; si electus locus ; si-tempus lectum ; si apparatus non neglectus . i. e. if good disposition'd people be gathered together ; if the provision be not poor or sordid ; if the place be convenient ; if the time fit and seasonable . ( . ) that those that are assembled to this feast , are [ belli homunculi ] in the best sense , i shall easily prove . mat. . many shall come from the east and west , and shall sit down with abraham , and isaac , and iacob , in the kingdom of heaven . there is very good company , you 'll all grant it . but the doubt will be , what this kingdom of heaven is . let the apostle resolve you . rom. . the kingdom of god is not meat and drink ; but righteousness , and peace , and joy in the holy ghost . all which things may be obtained ( in some good measure at least ) here , without spreading a table-cloth in the coelum empyreum . but to proceed . you saw before out of the prophet , how that god prepares a feast in mount sion . the apostle in his epistle to the hebrews , makes known to us the guests . but you are come to the mount sion , and to the city of the living god , the celestial ierusalem , and to the company of innumerable angels , and to the congregation of the first-born written in heaven , and to the spirits of just and perfect men . all these are the guests of gods heavenly table : there these are assembled . wheresoever the carkass is there will the eagles resort , saith our saviour . this is the great communion of saints , who do all eat of the same spiritual meat , and do all drink of the same spiritual drink ; and are all incorporate into one body , all quickened by the same spirit , all conspire into one will through unity of the same life ; so that all 's in peace and good order . and thus much for the persons assembled : which if you doubt of , or are perswaded that you shall not continually enjoy their company ; yet i will shew you an assembly , that so long as you enjoy a pure conscience , you shall alway enjoy their company , in a true paradise , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an holy paradise , where are assembled , vertue , wisdom , and all decency and discretion . and these are excellent companions ; tho' they were known to no body , but him that lives with them : and he lives with them that hath a pure heart ; for the father of them abides in the sincere spirit . ( . ) but it were time now to speak of [ the provision ; ] had i not spoke already somewhat of it , almost before due time . but no tongue can declare it : i will rather use the psalmists words , o taste ye and see how gracious the lord is ! for they that fear him shall lack nothing . the lyons do lack and suffer hunger , but they that do seek the lord shall want no manner of thing that is good . so then here is apparatus non neglectus at least ; no want , if not redundancy . ay , but it 's a poor feast , you 'll say , where there is no overplus . if any man suspect he shall come to such a slender dinner , i will use the words of our saviour , mat. . o ye of little faith , why think you thus within your selves ? do you not perceive , neither remember , the five loaves when there were five thousand men , and how many baskets were taken up ? neither the seven loaves when there were four thousand men , and how many baskets were taken up ? if christ could satisfie such multitudes of men with so few loaves , so that so many fragments were left : surely we need not fear , but when he feeds us with himself , who is that heavenly bread , and the foecundity or fulness of god ; but that we shall be unspeakably satisfied and superabundantly refreshed . so we have plainly seen , how excellent our company ; how good our chear shall be . i will interfeit one accomplishment which varro omits in his feast : and that is musick . the concent of musicians at a banquet , is as a signet of carbunoles set in gold. as the signet of an emerald well trimmed with gold , so is the melody of musick in a pleasant banquet . ecclesiasticus . , . now that this feast is not devoid of musick will thus appear . for righteousness is nothing else but an harmony of the lower parts of a mans soul with the upper , of the affections with reason ; as the pythagorists define it : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith polus the pythagorean . when as the inclinations of a mans will or desire answer the dictates of true reason , these are heavenly responses indeed , fit for a celestial quire : when reason begins the point , and all the affections chearfully follow it ; as philo comments upon that song of moses and miriam : [ i will sing unto the lord , for he hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider he hath over-thrown in the sea. the lord is my strength and praise , and he is become my salvation . who is like unto thee , o lord , among the gods ? who is like unto thee ; so glorious in holiness , fearful in praises , doing wonders ? ] then miriam ( the rest of the women following her with timbrels and with dances ) takes up her timbrel in her hand and answers : [ sing unto the lord , for he hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and the rider hath he over-thrown in the sea. ] such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as these , such triumphal songs against our spiritual enemies , will become this feast well . the same exultation of spirit you shall find in the blessed psalmist . the lord is my strength and my shield ; my heart hath trusted in him and i am helped : therefore my heart danceth with joy , and in my song will i praise him . psalm . this is that which the apostle exhorts to , eph. . be not drunk with wine wherein is excess ; but be filled with the spirit , speaking unto your selves , with psalms , and hymns , and spiritual songs , singing and making melody to the lord in your hearts . hitherto then is this feasting very compleat ; good companions , good chear , good musick . ( . ) but what is all this , if not in a good [ convenient place ] ? iobs children , you know , as they were making merry at their elder brothers , a strong whirlwind took a corner of the house , and buried them with the ruins in the midst of their merriment . but whosoever dwelleth under the defence of the most high , shall abide under the shadow of the almighty , ( that is , under the protection of him that is able to keep them safe ) ps. . and at the th psalm , lord thou hast been our habitation from generation to generation . before the mountains were made , and before thou hadst formed the earth , even from everlasting to everlasting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou art the strong god ; a more sure sustentation than the steddy earth ; a more strong safeguard than the massy hills . so then this holy assembly feast under a safe roof , far from the reach of any tumult or tempest . god is our hope and strength , a very present help in trouble : therefore will we not fear , though the earth be moved , and though the hills be carryed into the midst of the sea . though the waters thereof rage and swell , and though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same . ( yet there is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of god , the holy place of the tabernacle of the most high . ) in all this danger and stir , you see , here 's secure feasting and joy in the tabernacle of the most high. the voice of joy and gladness is in the dwelling of the righteous ; safe pleasure , and never fading delight in the habitation of the upright in heart and pure in conscience . but if any man be not contented with the safeness of the place , but would curiously inquire into the beauty of it , that description is done to our hands in the th of s. iohns revelation . gold and pearl and precious stones is a slight glimpse of the glory of that habitation , and the beauty of god. ( . ) i will pass now to the fourth thing considerable in a feast , [ the convenience of time . ] and no time surely is inconvenient to these feasters , who have the preeminence exceedingly above them that enjoy any outward delight . for these men be confined to seasons and opportunities , which be but poor small parcels of time : but all time and eternity too is but one entire opportunity for those spiritual feasters to enjoy themselves in . a good heart , or a pure spirit , is one continual everlasting feast . it was well said of diogenes to one that was too much taken with the seldom solemnity of an outward feast , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; what , saith he , doth not a good man count every day a festival ? surely if it be so , he must needs count it so : and that it is so , my text can witness . solomon hath asserted it ; and the devil himself cannot deny it ; nor good men conceal it ; nor wicked men confute it , for they have not experience of it . but do i not seem to tantalize you all this while , by describing so desirable a banquet , and not shew you the way to be partakers of it ? verily neither god nor good men do envy us it . but to say the truth , the way to it is as undesirable as the feast is to be wished for . abstinence and emptyness is the way to be filled with this precious food . the full soul ( saith solomon ) loatheth the honey-comb . and if we be taken up with , and filled with the delights of this sensible world , and the pleasures of the flesh , we shall never relish the sweetness of this banquet ; never so much as taste of it . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . if false transitory pleasures get possession of the soul , they will exclude that true light and safe delight in god. what 's the way then to this continual happiness ? a contemptible thing they call self-denyal , or abstinence from our own wills and desires . upon which if i should enter a discourse , you especially of the younger sort , might account it , or a dull melancholick dream , or a pretty solemn night-piece , but when you have viewed it , immerse your selves again into the false light of this bewitching world , and closely embrace that life and pleasure that i should wish you to part with . but be you assured , that he that is so slightly affected , with the most solemn and solid duties of christianity , is so far off from the good conscience or good heart named in the text , that he is not so much as in a preparation to it ; which is contrition and brokenness of spirit . but he that even now begins , and sets himself seriously upon the curbing of his lusts , and denyal of his own wayes , and endeavours cordially from the very depth of his heart , to perform whatsoever he conceives is the will of god , and allowes himself in no fault , this man shall in due time be wrought into the life and spirit of christ : and shall continually enjoy in a more eminent manner , whatsoever or sight , or hearing , or smelling , or tasting shall judge pleasant and delectable ; such beauty , such harmony , such fragrancy , such deliciousness as no man can conceive , but he that hath it , nor he that hath it can know how to utter it . to this happiness god grant that we may all arrive , through iesus christ our lord , to whom &c. discourse viii . psal. xvii . . as for me , i will behold thy face in righteousness : i shall be satisfied , when i awake , with thy likeness . the excellency of this holy resolution and high aspires of the prophet david , will be better set off , and more-savourly relished , if we bring into view that lively character of men of a quite contrary dispensation , in the foregoing verse ; which are stiled men of the world , which have their portion in this life ; who are very belly-gods and cormorants , greedy devourers of the temporary good things which god has treasured up in these lower regions of the universe : these they dig out , and rake up together , and lay on heaps ; that they may satisfie their own worldly appetite , and gratifie themselves in the lusts of the flesh , in the lusts of the eyes , and in the pride of life ; that they may eat and drink plentifully , yea riotously , fill their bellies with the choicest delicates , and feed their eyes with the inexhaustible store and plenty of their riches ; and their treasure being inexhaustible , ( when they have lived in all the jollity and gayity of this world , in all the affluency and felicity this present life will afford , ) bequeath or entail upon their posterity the like happiness themselves enjoy'd , by leaving the rest of their substance to their babes ; as is described in the foregoing verse . this is the state of that blessedness which the meer natural man breaths after , neither his foresight nor desire piercing any further . but this holy man of god , who was inspired from above , has a thirsty presage of matters of far greater moment ; whose mind is not fixt upon these hid treasures of the earth , but upon that treasure which is reserved in heaven ; whose neither hopes nor enjoyments are in the things of this life , but deems this life as death or sleep in comparison of that which is to come ; who evangelizes before the gospel , and speaks the language of christians before the coming of the messias , as if he would anticipate the words of s. paul , col. . . our life is hid with christ in god : but when christ which is our life shall appear , then shall we also appear with him in glory . wherefore let others enjoy themselves as much as they will ; let these men of the world have all things succeed according to their desire , and please themselves to the height in their wealth , pleasure and honours : i do not at all envy their condition , nor place my happiness in these things : while these mens eyes and minds , while their affection and animadversion is wholly taken up with these worldly objects , the pantings and breathings of my soul are entirely directed towards god , and to the blissful enjoyment of the light of his countenance . as for me i will behold thy face in righteousness : i shall be satisfied , when i awake , with thy likeness : or ( as the psalms in our liturgy have it ) when i awake up after thy likeness , i shall be satisfied with it . that saying of heraclitus in clemens alexandrinus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all that we see waking is death , and what we see dreaming sleep ( which is the brother of death , as another termed him ; as if in this body , whether sleeping or waking , it were in the valley of the shadow of death ) : i say this speech of heraclitus , may seem to savour much of a very deeply melancholized spirit ; yet if to speak conformably to inspired men , were an argument of inspiration , heraclitus his melancholly would approve it self divine , by the apparent conformity it bears with the most notable passages of those who certainly were inspired . god forbid ( saith s. paul ) that i should glory , save in the cross of the lord iesus christ , whereby the world is crucified to me , and i unto the world . what was it not sufficient that s. paul was crucified to the world , but the world must be also crucified unto him ? that he was dead to the world , but the world must be also dead to him ? or who ever , except s. paul , ventur'd on such a phrase , as the worlds being crucified or dead to us , though we be rightly said to be crucified or dead to it ? why yes , heraclitus said so long before , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all these things which we see with these bodily eyes , it is but a scene of death . that vivid and chearful colour of the heavens which recreates the eyes of ordinary mortals , seem'd to him not a bright azure , but a funeral black ; nor sun nor moon real and true lights , but two painted scutcheons or and argent hung upon the melancholly tapestry of this house of mourning . wherefore to be buried in the body , with him is a real death ; and this terrestrial region , wherein we seem to live , but one great caemeterium or dormitory . no life , no joy , no pleasure is here ; no not amongst those that seem to enjoy most , that have the greatest portion in this life , nay their only portion therein . wherefore what expectation of happiness before that blessed resurrection ? when we shall see the face of god , and be satisfied with his likeness , in whose presence there is fulness of joy , and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore : but for the present interval , ( that is , the time of our immersion into the sense of this body ) the prophet david as well as heraclitus , does plainly deem it a state of sleep or death ; which are the same in scripture every where , as to any mystical meanings or purposes . as for me , i shall behold thy face in righteousness : i shall be satisfied , when i awake , with thy likeness . munster piously , and i believe truly , paraphrases thus upon the text. egó verò & omnes electi tui , domine , non ita quaeremus has temporarias & transitorias divitias ut in illis deliciemur ; sed justè & piè vivemus in hoc seculo , ut aliquando in futuro seculo videamus faciem tuam & eâ satiemur , cum scilicet è pulvere evigilaverimus & reformati fuerimus ad similitudinem christi tui . and this may go for the philosophical sense of the text. but there is a moral sense thereof , which castellio seems to reach at ; and is indeed the most easie to the words of the text , which run thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which the easie and accurate sense is , i will behold thy face in righteousness , at the awaking of thy image i shall be satisfied ; according as castellio has also rendered it ; tum satiandus cum tua experrecta fuerit imago . and his gloss is accordingly , per christi resurrectionem qui dei imago est , plenam consecuturus justitiam & foelicitatem . for the image of god is christ , who is called also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the brightness of the glory of god ; answerably to the lxx translation of my text , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i shall be satisfied when i shall see thy glory : which glory , like the beams of the sun , reach and touch the very eye-lids of him that is asleep , but are not seen nor enjoy'd till he awake ; for then the image of the sun is also awoke in him ; that is to say , excited into actual being . according to which analogy is that saying of the apostle , awake thou that sleepest , and christ shall give thee light . the evigilation therefore , or resurrection of the image of god in us , is our evigilation or resurrection in a mystical or moral sense into it ; which as soon as it does appear , we also do appear in glory with it ; but while christ is thus hid , or dead , or asleep in us , we are in a state of death or sleep , and the true life of our soul is hid in him . and this i would have the first truth comprised in my text , viz. that the immersion of the soul into the life of the body , and love of this present world , ( which is the image of the earthly adam ) is as it were the sleep or death of the soul. the second , that there is no true satisfaction in this worldly or terrestrial life , which is but a torpid sleep and the very shadow of death . the third , that the true evigilation and real life of the soul is the recuperation of the image of god ; the resurrection of christ in us , according to the spirit . the fourth , that this mystical resurrection of christ is the only solid enjoyment and satisfaction to the souls of the faithful , even in this life . the fifth and last , that the way to attain to this satisfaction which arises from the evigilation of that divine image in us , ( which is also stiled the face of god ; or if you will , the image thereof , whereby we see his face so far forth as he is visible to man ) is righteousness and sincerity of heart . [ i shall behold thy face in righteousness . ] these are the precious truths comprized in the text , which i shall handle with all possible brevity . . that the image of the earthly adam is as it were the sleep or death of the soul , the very text does apparently intimate ; especially that translation in our liturgy , when i shall awake into thy image , ( which is the image of the heavenly adam ) i shall be satisfied therewith ; which implies , that till this awaking we are in a state of sleep or death . for in that we can eat and drink , and go up and down , these are no arguments that we are truly alive , no more than the growing of the hair and the nails of them that have lain long buried in the ground , is any argument of life in them ; i mean of the sensitive life : nor though the flesh be full of worms , will the man be thought ever the more alive for that . for neither is sense the life of a man , nor meer carnal and worldly reason the life of the child of god : the divine image is the soul of his soul , and the life of his life ; of which seeing every soul is capable , it is rightly deemed dead till it partake thereof , till it be awaken'd into this image of god. but so long as the mind is addicted to the things of this world , to the law of the body , which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so long is she dead or asleep ; call it which you will. hierocles calls it death ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for the death of every rational essence ( sayes he ) is the loss or suppression of her divine and intellectual excellencies : plotinus , sleep ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so far forth as the soul is immerged into the body , so far she is asleep . and therefore those that are wholly taken up with the concerns thereof , as relishing nothing but what is worldly and carnal , may justly be look'd upon as fallen into a deep sleep . and what if they can walk and talk , and go up and down , and do such things as men that are awake also do , do not the noctambuli do the same ? whose eyes being shut , yet unwittingly do they several exploits , some hazardous , others ridiculous ; other some ( as it some seldomer times happens ) safe and congruous , if the chain of phantasms that leads them , attract luckily , and to convenient objects : but in the mean time they know not what they do , but without any free consultation or deliberation are carried out hoodwink'd to action , by the meer suggestion of dreams and phansies . and is not this the very condition of those who have arriv'd no higher than to the image of the earthly adam ? surely every such man walketh like a vain image or shadow ; or like a winking noctambulo , that sees not whither he goes , nor in what plight he is , nor whom he may meet , nor what eyes are upon his nakedness , nor what sad events may attend his fortuitous motions . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . every wicked man or unregenerate , not yet awak'd into the image of god , has the eye of his mind closed , as these noctambuli , those of the body ; and do not walk by sight , but by fortuitous phansie , their whole life being but a series of dreams , and all the transactions thereof , the execution of the dictates of their imagination impertinently busie in this profound sleep . for these phantasms , under whose conduct they are in this condition , and which is their first mover in all their actions , creep upon them by meer chance , as dreams in the night , suggested by the temper of the external air , or of their own blood , or from some other casualty ; and so one phantasm or commotion occasions another , and the man , like a ship at sea whose pilate is asleep , may be driven one while one way , another while another , in a right tract , or out of it , as it happens , there being neither judge nor guide , to stear to any end , that due examination , or mature deliberation has made choice of . and therefore all the passages of such a life , whether thoughts or actions , are ( so as it fares in dreams ) either fatal or fortuitous . and although there be a great confidence , that things are true and real , and such as they appear , and that we have concluded sure ; yet in all this we do but imitate those that dream , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thinking those things they see to be clear realities , while they are but dreams ; as plotinus speaks , and few but do experience it . nor can we give judgment what is right or wrong , what false or what true , whether we have dreamt luckily and divinatorily , or all be falshood and delusion , till that mystical resurrection , the resuscitation of the image of god in our souls . and this briefly may suffice for the first particular , that the immersion of the soul into the life of the body , and love of this world , is as it were the death , or sleep , of the soul. . the second is , that there is no true satisfaction in this condition . and indeed how can any true satisfaction be there expected , where we suppose nothing but delusions and dreams ; nor any one in a case to profess himself satisfied , as being utterly unable to compute right , or make a due estimate of things ? no man thinks him that is grosly cheated , truly satisfied ; no not though he give it under his own hand he is so . and is not this state of sleep and dreams a meer cheat and delusion ? there only is true satisfaction , where that which satisfies , is truly that which it would appear to be , and will be found so by a man when he can judge aright . for that which every man means , in all his pursuits , is happiness ; nor would he put forth his hand towards any thing that did not bear upon it that inscription : which if it be false , he must needs at last find himself in a wrong box ; and what profit is there in those things whereof he then must be ashamed ? and as in the sequels of reason , some one latitant falshood being admitted , it will discover it self by the inference of some more gross and palpable absurdity , to be false it self : so some practical mistake in adhering to some false good , though pleasing and alluring for the present , will in the conclusion prove it self a real evil , by the calamitous consequence that will necessarily issue from it : for the end of such things is death , as the apostle speaks . thus plain it is , that though we should dream pleasingly and prosperously , it is no true satisfaction , because at the long run we shall find our selves disappointed and deceived . but the truth is , that those that dream most successfully , are not happy , ( no not so much as in this dream ) but have an unquiet night of it ; there being so many interruptions and disturbances , from the fortuitous clashings of flying phantasms that rise by chance , and bring in scenes of discontent as well as pleasure : insomuch that those that have cast up the compute most accurately , have concluded it best never to be born ; but next to that , quickly to dye ; as the epigrammatist inferrs upon his synopsis of all the wayes and conditions of humane life . and solomon , who was a king , whose reign also was peaceable , splendid and prosperous , yet when he had laid all things together , and compleated his account , the whole summe was vanity and vexation of spirit : nay the scene of things in this present world , seem'd to him so sad and tragical , that he praises the dead , which are already dead , more than the living which are yet alive ; and accounts him better than them both , which hath not yet been , because he hath not seen the toil that is done under the sun. so far is this worldly or terrestrial life from affording any true satisfaction to them that are immerse into it . but this is a theme so trite , that it had been enough , only to have named it ; and therefore we will pass to the third particular . . that the true evigilation and real life of the soul is the recuperation of the divine image . the truth of which assertion , we shall easily understand if we but consider , what life is , and wherein its fulness does consist , as also what is the image of god. for we know that death is a privation of life ; and sleep a partial death , as being a partial privation of the vital functions : and therefore the recovery of the soul into more full and ample functions of life , must needs be her expergefaction , if not resuscitation from the dead . now i conceive the fulness of life to be compleated in these three things , in self-motion , or self-activity ; in sense or speculative perception ; and in pleasure , love or joy : and that the heightning or enlargement of these in several degrees , is the enlargement of life , and a releasement from such a measure of sleep or death . these principles are so plain and manifest that scarce any one can be so dull and sleepy , but that he will acknowledge them at the first sight . what the image of god consists in , we shall easily understand , if we have recourse to the attributes of his nature , by which only he is cognoscible to us : which nature of god consists in omnipotency , omnisciency and infinite goodness . whence the image or face of god ( as it is called in the text ) so far forth as it is visible to us , is nothing else but our perception , approbation , or rather devotional admiration of these divine excellencies ; and the being effectually impressed upon by them , to the transfiguration of our souls into this similitude , so far forth as humane nature is capable to be assimilated unto god. for we cannot be absolutely omnipotent , nor omniscient , nor infinitely good . but we may have a kind of communicated omnipotency , as to the affairs of our own sphere , in our own microcosm , or little world ; where we ought to rule with an absolute hand , and never to be quiet , till we can profess with s. paul , i can do all things through christ that strengthens me . wherefore as god is omnipotent in the great universe , and does curb and keep up the whole corporeal creation within the limits of certain natural laws , which they cannot pass : so also we are to set bounds and limits to our bodily passions , and keep them in constant subjection to the laws of right reason , or to the rule of the spirit of god. and again , in the second place , though we cannot be omniscient , yet we may become in a manner entirely intellectual , and throughly understand , and as affectionately relish the true interest of our own souls , and perfectly discern all the concerns thereof , and be accompanied with all those divine truths , and blissfull speculations , which are requisite for the perfecting of humane happiness ; which in our sphere , is an imitation of the divine omnisciency . and lastly , though it is impossible that any creature should be infinitely good , yet it is capable of being filled with a spirit of unexpressible benignity ; and to be a faithful well-willer to the happiness and prosperity of every creature of god , and therefore to be in a perpetual promptness and readiness to help them that are in any distress , and to rejoyce in the good and wellfare of every parcel of the creation . and this is briefly the amiable face or image of god , as it is visible or communicable to us ; which we see by the beams of its own brightness , as we see the sun by its own light , though not in that real lustre nor bigness that it is . and i hope now it will plainly appear , that the recuperation of this divine image is the true expergefaction or resuscitation of the soul , from a state of sleep or death , into the most full and ample functions of life : of which the first degree was self-motion or self-activity : for meer passivity , or to be moved or acted by another , either without a mans will or against it , this is the condition of such as are either dead or asleep ; as to go of a mans self , is a symptom of one alive or awake . wherefore whatever is done in us by meer passion or ignorance , seems rather to be acted upon us than acted by us ; and to be a defect of that degree of life which we call self-motion or self-activity ; in such cases we seeming rather to be carried by surprize , than to go of our own accords , as men that are dead drunk may be haled or disposed of where others please . and every one that is acted by passion is drunk ; or if acted upon through ignorance , asleep ; and so are deprived of that degree of life which is self-activity , a doing things from an inward or thorough assent to them : which no man does in a wicked action , because every one that commits wickedness , does it to his own infinite disinterest and wrong ; which no man did ever yet , nor even can assent to . whence it is plain that he is not , in this regard , self-active ; and that therefore he is in the state of death , out of which the image of god awakes him ; namely the power of christ in him , which shews him his way clearly , that he may make a choice never to be repented of , and enables him to walk in that way , and to bear strongly and victoriously against all the assaults of the body , or suggestions of this worldly life : and so by the self-activity of that spiritual or immaterial principle in him , he rules this little world of his by irresistible laws , as god himself does the great one . and this i think is one considerable degree of the evigilation of the soul through the divine image . and the second is no less considerable , and which we have touched upon already in the former . for if ignorance be sleep , the intellectual state of the soul must needs be an eminent evigilation of her . and if to grow corporeal be to become more inert , more unactive and drousie , then surely to become more spiritual must be joyned with a greater measure of life and activity . and what actions are more spiritual , than those which the soul exerts her self into in rational disquisitions , and divine speculations , and in the search of the most noble and momentous truths , concerning god and nature ? when she unravels all into certain immutable and indelible ideas of things , which she was taught by no touch from external matter , but are the most inward hidden life of the soul , that adytum or oracle that speaks truth from the deepest recess of her essence , into which she cannot enter , but by a lusty rowzing up , and rubbing her eyes clean of all those mists and fumes that arise from corporeal phantasms , or accustomary prejudices . these operations certainly must be very intellectual and incorporeal , and therefore very much raised above the body , that sepulchre or dormitory of the soul ; and not to be performed but by the excitation of such kind of spirits , as are in some measure congenerous to that heavenly body , that luminous or aethereal vehicle in which the soul shall ride as in her triumphal chariot , at the general appearance in the last day . i say the closer and more noble intellectual operations of the soul are not to be performed but by the assistance of more tenuious and fiery spirits ( whence the oracles call the mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentem igneam ) which are contrary to that phlegmatick sluggishness and drownedness , that the worldly and carnally-minded are overflown with . but besides that the principle from whence these intellectual actions flow , argues a notorious excitation or expergefaction of the mind therein ; that which is intellectual being plainly divine or godlike ; whom the schools rightly define to be actus purissimus , pure life , and essential energy : that the soul in her intellectual operations is roused as it were out of a sleep , will farther appear , if we compare the functions of the terrestrial life with those of the intellectual . the largest operation of the former of which , is that of our eye , which takes in but this visible hemisphere of the world ; and if it could take in the whole , according to this contracted proportion , it were a pitiful scant thing , such as is infinitely lesser than what our understanding conceives the universe to be , nay , many thousand times less than the earth , which is but as a mathematical point in comparison of the body of the world. how contracted then is touch , and taste , and the other senses ! for the love of which , when the soul is immersed into the body , and wholly given up to them , it is plain that her functions of life are infinitely contracted , and that she lies asleep or dead to her largest faculties ; and that therefore the excitation of them is her expergefaction into infinitely a more ample sphere of life . to all which you may add , that those that are regenerate into the image of god or christ , there does accrew to them by vertue of their second birth , an intellectual or divine sense ; which you may also if you please call moral , sith what is moral is also intellectual . for it is an intellectual sense which discerns the pulchritude or deformity of things or actions . and as all handsomeness and proportionableness of the forms and shapes of things in the universe , is from that vniversal intellect which is the maker of the world ; so all honest and decorous actions , is from an intellectual principle in us , which bounds and figures into due proportion , all our corporeal passions or actions , which otherwise would flow rudely and undeterminately , like the tumbling of the particles of matter it self , committed to no other guide than chance or fortune . wherefore he that walks , as in the day , decently and honestly , it is a sign his eyes are opened , and that he is not asleep : he that disrelishes every evil motion , whether in himself or others ; that feels or sees plainly what is just or unjust ; that abominates every appearance of haughtiness , or envy , or worldly baseness , and brutish intemperance ; to whom these things , and others of the like kind , are distastful , unsavoury and unsufferable ; it is a sign that he is awoke into this part of the intellectual life which we call moral . but such as have neither love of vertue nor aversation of vice , whether in themselves or others , they have these senses bound by a lethargick sleep , out of which the recuperation of the divine image , where-ever it is , loosens and awakens men into a perpetual quickness of perception of what is truly good or evil. thus apparently is the image of christ the resuscitation of the soul into these two first parts of life , which we call'd self-activity , and sense or perception . the last , but not the least considerable , is pleasure , love or ioy : which how little it is in the worldly-minded , i have above declared : but how unspeakably great it must be in him , upon whom this glorious image of god is risen , is discoverable at first sight . for this image does most eminently contain in it the sense of love or goodness . god is love , and he that abideth in love , abideth in god , and god in him . which intellectual love or goodness , is certainly the highest joy or pleasure that humane nature is capable of , the flower and quintessence of all sweetness . here 's no afflicting care , nor consuming envy , no disquieting lust , nor tyrannical superstition , no distrust or fear of our future state , nor any jealousies concerning the favour of god ; this spirit of love being an inseparable pledge thereof . and even the more miserable objects in this present scene of things , cannot devest him of his happiness , but rather modifie it ; the sweetness of his spirit being melted into a kindly compassion in the behalf of others : whom if he be able to help , it is a greater accession to his joy ; and if he cannot , the being conscious to himself of so sincere a compassion , and so harmonious and suitable to the present state of things , carries along with it some degree of pleasure , like mournful notes of musick exquisitely well fitted to the sadness of the ditty . but this not unpleasant surprize of melancholly cannot last long : and this cool allay , this soft and moist element of sorrow will be soon dry'd up like the morning dew at the rising of the summer sun ; when but once the warm and chearful gleams of that intellectual light that represents the glorious and comfortable comprehension of the divine providence that runs through all things , shall dart into our souls the remembrance , how infinitely scant the region of these more tragical spectacles is , compared with the rest of the universe , and how short a time they last . for so the consideration of the happiness of the whole will swallow up this small pretence of discontent , and the soul will be wholly overflown with unexpressible joy and exultation ; it being warmed and cheared with that joy that is the joy of god , that free and infinite good , who knows the periods and issues of all things , and whose pleasure is in good as such , and not in contracted selfishness , or in petty and sinister projects . and certainly this is such an enlargement of life , that he must needs seem either dead or asleep , and fixt and congealed in some contractive and obstupifying dream , whom the love and admiration of himself , ( and covering over that sack of dirt , his body ; and wholly rejoycing in the ease and pleasure of it , and the honour or respect conciliated to his own particular person ) has made unsensible and uncapable of this transcendent satisfaction and happiness i have described . which leads me to the fourth particular , viz. . that this mystical resurrection of christ , or the revelation of the face or image of god in us , is the only solid enjoyment and satisfaction to the souls of the faithful even in the life : which i need not at all insist upon , the truth thereof being so exceeding manifest from the foregoing particular . and david accordingly has declared it in the th psalm , many say , who will shew us any good ? lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us . and so in my text , at the awaking of thy image i shall be satisfied therewith . the lxx have it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i shall be really fed , when i shall see thy glory . not according to the condition of those whom the prophet describes , as when an hungry man dreameth , and behold he eateth , but he waketh and his soul is empty ; or as when a thirsty man dreameth , and behold he drinketh , but he awaketh , and behold he is faint : but according as our saviour christ has promised , i am the bread of life ; he that cometh to me , shall never hunger ; and he that beleiveth on me , shall never thirst . for being fed and transformed into the image of christ by truly partaking of his body and blood , they have that which fills their vastest capacities , and fits them for an eternal enjoyment thereof . which perpetuity of the conditon plainly shews that the condition is most natural ; and that perfection which is most natural must needs be most satisfactory : for every thing seeks the perfection of its own nature ; and when it is where it is most natural for it to be , is naturally satisfied , and rests therein . and this briefly shall serve for the fourth particular . . the fifth and last is , that the way to arrive to this satisfaction , which is the enjoyment of the face or image of god , is righteousness or sincerity of heart . [ i will behold thy face in righteousness . ] i must confess that righteousness is sometimes of so comprehensive a sense , that it takes in all that which we have described in the image of god ; and so is in a manner the same with it : and if it were understood so here , the sense would be good ; for by this image we do see the face of god. [ in thy light we shall see light . ] but by righteousness i will rather understand that in us which answers to diaphaneity rather than to light ; and which i would render faithfulness , vprightness and sincerity of spirit . for in such a sence as that , the lxx sometimes translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 faithful and true . and i conceive that purity and sincerity is that righteousness that will lead us at length to the vision of god , according as our saviour has also promised , blessed are the pure in heart , for they shall see god. so the psalmist , this is the generation of them that seek him , that seek thy face , o iacob ; even of them that seek him in sincerity and truth , to whom god is so faithful that he will be found of them , nor shall their labour be in vain in the lord. and that a man may know whether he be in the way or no , i shall only briefly intimate what sincerity is ; and that he may have no excuse to keep out of the way , i must futher superadd that it is in his power to keep in it . for i say , it is in a mans power to be sincere , though it be not in his power to be righteous in that other usual sense : for to be sincere is only to do what we can , and what our conscience witnesses we can do ; which god will graciously accept in christ , and endue us with further strength so long as we make use of that which we have already . now it is noematically true , and wants no further demonstration , that we can do what we can do : and therefore it is but the examination of our selves , whether we do all that which our own consciences tell us we both ought to do and can do , and thereby we shall easily discover whether we be in the way toward this blissful vision or no : and if we find our selves out of it , we cannot excuse our selves for our wandering , sith it is in our power to keep in the vvay , ( that is ) to be sincere , as certainly as it is in our povver to do vvhat is in our povver . and therefore the falling short of this happiness lyes at every mans door , and god and providence must be quit of all that evil that these loyterers must once sadly complain of , vvhen it is too late . every man therefore must dayly examine his ovvn conscience in this : for as the keeping close to this vvay of sincerity , or doing vvhat is in our povver vvill unfailingly , through assistance of fresh supplies of heaven , lead us directly to the vision of god ; so he that finds himself remiss and unsincere , may be as certain , that he is out of the vvay to that happiness . he that layes his hand to the plow and looks back , is not fit for the kingdom of god. but if vve continue in the vvay of sincerity , vvhich god has put in our povver to do , as has been already demonstrated , it is impossible but that a man shall find an encrease of divine assistances , and a successful progress ; god imparting strength , according to the fidelity of the user thereof , as seems to be adumbrated in the parable of the talents . [ habenti dabitur , ] that is , bene utenti ; and [ fac quod in te est , & deus adjuvabit voluntatem tuam ] are , i must confess , but short and trite sayings , but such as fall from the mouths of those that travel in the direct road to heaven . for the aid and assistance of god is never wanting to such : but they hold on their journey in chearfulness and constancy , with that song of the psalmist in their mouths , blessed is the man whose strength is in thee , in whose heart are thy ways : which going through the vale of misery use it for a well ; and the pools are filled with water . they will go from strength to strength , and unto the god of gods appeareth every one of them in sion . or with this of my text , as for me i will behold thy face in righteousness ; when i shall awake into thy likeness , i shall be satisfied therewith . discourse ix . rom . viii . . and if children , then heirs ; heirs of god , and joint-heirs with christ : if so be that we suffer with him , that we may be also glorified with him . this text is the evidence of our eternal inheritance . there is none here ( i suppose ) so dull , so slow and so sensless of his own good , and outward welfare , but that if he were to purchase any worldly possession , he would look that his conveyances were sure , and his title good and warrantable . how much more sollicitous and careful ought we to be concerning our everlasting inheritance in heaven ? to inform our selves whether there be any such possession or no ; and to whom it appertains ; what manner of persons shall be made partakers of it : so that our hopes of future felicity may be setled upon good grounds : that they be not all blown away with our last breath ; and the extinguishing of this life , leave us not to eternal horrour of darkness . this present text of scripture , will answer both those queries ; which contains these two doctrines . . that god hath prepared an inheritance for his children . . that they that would have this inheritance must suffer with christ. i. that god hath prepared an inheritance for his children , is plain out of scripture . ( and verily i would not go about to prove so evident a truth , did not the lives of men contradict it ; who live as though there were neither heaven nor hell , no reward nor judgment to come . ) mat. . . come ye blessed of my father , inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world . and coloss. . . giving thanks unto the father , who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light . and surely it is a very reasonable thing , that god should as well provide for our inward man as for our outward . the light of the sun , the seasonable showers of rain , the timely fruits of the earth ; all these hath he prepared , and many more for this natural life of man ; nay , his careful providence extends it self to the young ravens , and the lillies of the field : and shall his goodness fall short in providing for that dear and precious life derived unto us by his own spirit , making us his sons and holy off-spring ? no , surely god will not forget that which is so near to himself ; when his fatherly benignity circuits the utmost verge of his creature . add unto this , that we our selves are the house and inheritance of god. know you not that your bodies are the temples of the holy ghost ? saith the apostle . and the prophet esaias ; the vineyard of the lord of hosts is the house of israel , and the men of iudah his pleasant plant . and cant. . the voice of my beloved that knocketh , saying , open to me , my sister : for my head is filled with dew , and my locks with the drops of the night . and elsewhere in holy scripture , god is said to dwell in us , and walk in us : and israel is called the inheritance of god. wherefore god in a kind of gratitude , as i may so say , will provide us an inheritance , sith that we ( as he himself testifieth ) are an inheritance to him . now if any man be desirous to know what an inheritance this is that god hath prepared : it is no less than a kingdom . and how great an esteem is put upon an earthly kingdom , is very well known to you all : which if it be so desirable , how much more desirable is the kingdom of heaven , that nor time , nor tumult can ever demolish ? this kingdom of heaven , of god , or christ , is the inheritance of the sons of god with christ. but if any one rest unsatisfied yet ; and would further know what the kingdom of god is . let him listen to s. paul , rom. . . the kingdom of god is not meat nor drink ; but righteousness , and peace , and joy in the holy ghost . but this will seem even nothing to him that hath not the spirit of righteousness , peace and joy : wherefore saith the apostle , cor. . . &c. but we speak the wisdom of god in a mystery , even the hidden wisdom which god ordained before the world unto our glory . which none of the princes of this world knew ; for had they known it , they would not have crucified the lord of glory . but as it is written , eye hath not seen , nor ear heard , neither have entred into the heart of man , the things that god hath prepared for them that love him . but god hath revealed them unto us by his spirit : for the spirit searcheth all things , even the deep things of god. for what man knoweth the things of a man , save the spirit of a man that is in him ? even so , the things of god knoweth no man , but the spirit of god. now we have received , not the spirit of the world , but the spirit that is of god , that we might know the things that are freely given to us of god. in a word therefore , beloved , the inheritance of the children of god is the spirit of god , and all that it doth discover ; as the sun is the lot and the inheritance of the natural eye , and all visibles laid open by it in nature . and can any thing be wanting to them that are sharers in that inheritance ? ( if i may call them sharers , where every one is full possessour of the whole ; as the sun is alike wholly in every eye . ) can our souls be larger than the life of god ? or our understanding not filled and satisfied by his all-knowing spirit ? can our will wax restless or anxious , where the understanding finds out and feels the greatest good that any thing is capable of ; where the pure and undefiled affection , baths her silver plumes in eternal love and delight ? what is the soul more than infinite , that it should desire any inheritance greater than god ? but it were now more seasonable to make some vse to our selves from this doctrine so infinitely plain , or infinitely inexplainable . first , who cannot hence condemn all avarice , drunkenness , fleshly lust , voluptuousness ; the bartering away this glorious inheritance of the everlasting kingdom of god , for the muck of this world ; choak'd with the cares of this world ; undermining our neighbours by false and treacherous practices ; over-reaching them in bargainings , and cheating indeed our selves of eternal life by our own couzenages : instead of being filled with the spirit , to be full of base liquor , drowning our reason and conscience , and laying our selves open to the despight of the devil , and the shame of the world : chaffering away for a light momentany fit of pleasure , or some seducing wanton lust , the inheritance of the good spirit of god , the sweet and comfortable fellowship of the holy ghost , the joyes of heaven , the full contentments and unspeakable delights of that hidden paradise , that garden of all sweetness and deliciousness ? secondly , the consideration of this future excellent state , and glorious royal condition , may afford much comfort to men of low degree , and meaner fortune . what though our means be small , our calling base and dishonourable before men : this time vvill certainly over ; and that quickly : though i be poor here , a servant and bond-slave , a beggar ; yet hereafter i shall be rich , free , noble , a prince , a king , an emperour : then shall i be lord ; not of a larger spot of ground , consisting of dirt and gravel , and vvithering grass , and perishing trees , the sight of vvhich every nights sleep takes from me ; but of the boundless heavens , the everlasting beauty of god , vvhere vvith never-vvaking eyes i shall alvvayes behold his excellent glory . this , i say , may comfort the poorer sort ; they being as capable , if not more capable of this precious inheritance , than lords and princes of the earth , than kings and caesars , than dukes and emperours . gal. . , &c. for you are all the children of god by faith in christ iesus . for as many of you as have been baptized into christ , have put on christ. there is neither iew nor greek , there is neither bond nor free , there is neither male nor female : for ye are all one in christ iesus . and if ye be christs , then are you abrahams seed , and heirs according to promise . but thirdly and lastly : is it so indeed that there is prepared for men of all conditions of life , such a rich inheritance ? let then all men of what condition soever , examine themselves , and try what assurance they find in themselves , in their own souls , of this future happiness . what then is the sign ? that brings me to my second doctrine , viz. ii. that the heirs of the kingdom must suffer . so saith the text , heirs of god , and joynt-heirs with christ ; if so be that we suffer with him , that we may be also glorified with him . which truth is manifest out of sundry places of scripture : i will name only two . acts . . we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of god. and coloss. . , , . that ye might walk worthy of the lord unto all pleasing , being fruitful in every good work , and increasing in the knowledge of god : strengthened with all might , according to his glorious power , unto all patience , and long-suffering with joyfulness ; giving thanks unto the father , which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light . what ? shall we think ( beloved ) to obtain heaven at a more easie rate , than we purchase any temporal honour or estate ? multa tulit fecitque puer : those that are designed for some special piece of earthly preferment , sweat and toil for it even from their very childhood , by industrious education . but we think to have heaven for an old song ( as they say ) or for a lazily repeated pater noster , for a word , for an imagination , for a phansie , a thought , an empty faith , for nothing . who , in the name of god , told us so ? my text contradicts it : and scripture will not contradict my text ; because my text is scripture . no verily ; it confirms it : be not deceived , god is not mocked ; as a man sowes , so shall he reap ; saith the same apostle that wrote my text. but i will prove by a threefold reason , that the heirs of the kingdom of god shall suffer really themselves . first , from the antipathy betwixt the world and the children of god. wisd. . let us lye in wait for the righteous , because he is not for our turn , and he is clean contrary to our doings . he upbraideth us with offending the law , and objecteth to our infamy , the transgressings of our education . he professeth that he hath the knowledge of god , and he calleth himself the child of the lord. he was made to reprove our thoughts . he is grievous unto us even to behold , for his life is not like other mens , his wayes are of another fashion . hence do the children of god oftentimes incurr much mischief , by the wicked plots of the ungodly : and however , if they escape this outward evil , they are grieved and vexed continually by their dayly misdeeds . but secondly , the will of god is , that all that he admits to that glorious inheritance be tryed first , and he chastiseth every son that he doth receive , pet. . . &c. blessed be the god and father of our lord iesus christ , which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again to a lively hope , by the resurrection of iesus christ from the dead ; unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled , and that fadeth not away , reserved in heaven for you ; who are kept by the power of god through faith unto salvation , ready to be revealed in the last time : wherein you greatly rejoyce , though now for a season ( if need be ) ye are in heaviness through many temptations : that the tryal of your faith , being much more precious than of gold that perisheth , though it be tryed with fire , might be found unto praise , and honour , and glory , at the appearing of iesus christ. thirdly , and lastly , we cannot escape suffering and the exercise of our christian patience , by reason of often assaults the devil makes against us , who like a roring lyon goes about seeking whom he may devour ; as also for the close siege that sin layes continually against us , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that sin that so easily besets us on every side . heb. . . but to display the sufferings of the heirs of the kingdom more distinctly , i will cast them into these four several kinds . . in estate or fortune . . in name or estimation . . in body . . in soul or spirit . . in estate . ] as if any man by his pious life , his delight in the word of god , in brotherly conference or community in spiritual things ; by his rebuking his neighbour for swearing , profaning the name of god ; or by his frugality and sobriety , that he will not run to the same excess of riot with the rest of his neighbours , but lives temperately , honestly and justly : if this man ( as it is not improbable but he may ) bring on himself the envy of wicked men , sons of belial , or at least their dislike ; and so they having power , or empair his estate by unequal mulcts , or deny him his due desires : i say , he suffers as an heir of heaven , as a member of christ , as a child of god ; and vengeance shall be poured out upon his enemies , but his happiness shall be increased . . in name . ] as our saviour ; who for his being in company with wicked men , to convert them and heal them , ( as he himself answered , the whole have not need of the physitian but they that be sick ) he notwithstanding was termed a glutton , a winebibber , a friend of publicans and sinners . mat. . for his casting out devils , a conjurer : for doing good and healing on the sabbath-day , a sabbath-breaker : for telling the iews that which was true , that they were going about to kill him , a demoniack , or one possessed of the devil : for teaching the people the mysteries of the kingdom of god , a seducer . and so s. iohn the baptist , for his abstemiousness , his temperance , and severe manner of life , was counted also one possessed of the devil : s. paul for preaching the gospel , a pestilent fellow , one that turned the world upside down : that young man , one of the sons of the prophets , whom elisha sent to anoint iehu king , the captains of ioram counted him and call'd him a mad fellow . wherefore came this mad fellow to thee . kings . the frugal , they 'll call nigards : the conscientious , timorous or superstitious : the humble , base-spirited or silly : the harmless and quiet , fools or innocents : the charitable , papists : the zealous and fervent in spirit , puritans : godly and pious professours , hypocrites . the devil hath found out a nick-name for whatsoever is good : that blasphemous mouth can miscall every attribute of god. but let us not be discouraged for all the reproaches of the world : for if we suffer in name for well-doing , our shame here is nothing to that honour and glory that shall be revealed in us hereafter . i will only raise one vse from this point , and so leave it . did our saviour christ , his apostles , the prophets of old , and the holy men of god , undergoe such harsh censures ? were they branded with such notorious names , and undeserved calumnies ? then are not we to judge ill of any man merely from the report of men , till we see his life our selves . they said of iohn , that he had a devil . they made the son of man , a man gluttonous , a wine-bibber , a friend of publicans and sinners : but wisdom is justified of her children , saith our saviour , matth. . . that is , by its fruits . by their fruit you shall know them . and if we find purity of life , far be it from us , beloved , that we should speak reproachfully against such as we are not able to judge . wherefore let us rather mortifie our sinful lusts , and purge our own souls of corruption , that they may be a habitation for the holy ghost ( rather than to give ill names , or give credence to ill reports of others we do not know ) our selves being still in our carnal condition , slaves of sin and satan ; servants of pride , of envy , of avarice , of drunkenness , of whoredom , of lasciviousness : which whosoever hath , let him be assured that he hath not the spirit of god ; for it will not abide in such a sink of sin. wherefore he cannot judge : but he that is spiritual judgeth all things ; and he himself is judged of no man. cor. . and thus i have briefly run through the external sufferings of the heirs of the kingdom of christ , in fortune and name . the internal follow , in body and spirit . . in body . ] these kind of sufferings you may read of , heb. . others were tortured , not accepting deliverance , that they might obtain a better resurrection . and others had tryal of cruel mockings and scourgings ; yea , moreover , of bonds and imprisonments , they were stoned , they were sawn asunder , were tempted , were slain with the sword : they wandered in sheep-skins , and goat-skins , being destitute , afflicted , tormented . it would be a long task to reckon up all the manners of the sufferings of holy martyrs , which they underwent , under the tyranny of bloody salvage heathen . heading , and hanging , and crucifying , were nothing for the satisfaction of their fury . they were broyl'd on grid-irons ; they were fryed in frying-pans ; they were boyl'd in cauldrons ; they were put in the brazen bull ; they were fired at the stake ; cast into ovens ; fired in ships , and so thrust from the shore into the deep ; fired in their own houses ; cast upon burning coals ; made to walk upon burning coals ; burnt under the arm-pits with hot irons : they had their hearts riven out of their warm body ; had their skin flean off from their live flesh ; had their feet tyed to boughs of two near trees , which boughs being at first forcibly brought together , suddenly let go rent their body in twain : they were trodden down by horses ; cast , bound and naked , into vaults to be eaten of rats and mice : they had their flesh pulled off with pinsers , torn off with iron-rakes ; were squeezed to death in wine-presses ; were tyed upon wheels , which turning , rub'd their naked body against sharp pegs of iron : they were hung by their hands and feet with their face downward over choaking smoak : they were set out on high in the sun , having their naked skin besmeared with honey , to be stung with bees and waspes . the devil spent all the skill and malice he had in finding wayes and engines of torture for them . god make us truly thankful unto him for his mercy so long continued to us , that we have without terrour or torment so many years enjoy'd the christian religion in such purity : and give us grace to repent us of our unworthy walking , and unbeseemingly of so great a light. but as concerning these sufferings of the body , beloved , such is the love of god to mankind , and so reasonable is his service , that he hath made it no necessary condition of eternal life , actually to suffer them . but we ought to be so minded , that rather than to relinquish the true christian faith ( or do any thing which we know offends god ) we would rather dye a thousand deaths . and this was s. pauls resolution , acts . i am ready not only to be bound , but also to dye for the name of the lord iesus . but yet there is a suffering in the body , that we must needs suffer if we will approve our selves the children of god , and heirs of that glorious kingdom : and this suffering we must inflict upon our own selves . cor. . . but i keep under my body , and bring it into subjection . these sufferings are most acceptable to god , and requisite fore-runners of eternal life . if you live after the flesh , you shall dye ; but if you through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body , you shall live . verse . of this th chapter to the romans . pet. . . dearly beloved , i beseech you , as strangers and pilgrims , abstain from fleshly lusts , that war against the soul. and galat. . . they that are christs have crucified the flesh , with the affections and lusts . you see plainly then , that we are not christs , nor gods , nor heirs of god with christ ; unless we suffer with christ , in mortifying all bodily lusts , in curbing our inordinate desire of eating or drinking ; unless we study to keep under the body , and live chastly and continently . if we will be heirs of that heavenly inheritance , we must bring under all evil and carnal concupiscence . if we will partake of that eternal glory in heaven , we must be content to suffer reproach and evil speeches amongst men . if any man ask , what necessity , what reason is there ? i will briefly shew him how it comes about . first , for suffering in name ( for i will step so much back ) . there is no man loves to be disquieted in mind , or vext : but it would disquiet us , and gall us exceedingly , to be found fools ; so that we have not the heart to find our selves so , it would so discontent our natural proud spirit : hence we blame other men rather than our selves ; and say , they be in the false way . so did the pharisees to our saviour , and to his apostles : and thus were the prophets used before them ; because their wayes were of another sort , their speeches and actions of another fashion from the world. you will better understand it in some examples . a carnal or natural man , that hath no sense of the spirit of god , and is unacquainted with its operations , derides such performances as prayers , exhortations , or what so else may proceed from thence , as truly and extraordinarily proceeding from the spirit of god ; and counts those men , that acknowledge gods power in them in the performance of such things , weak men , crack'd-brain'd enthusiasts , fanatical fools , silly lunaticks : but all this proceeds out of pride , envy , and self-love ; he himself being not able to perform such duties , or at least not in that manner . so some that have got the trick of praying ex tempore , by custom the mother of confidence and dexterity ( ignorance and want of a true sense of the majesty of heaven upholding them in their rash performance ) these men will vilifie justice and uprightness , humility and patience , and the mortification of our sensual lusts ; because they find in themselves no such vertues , nor intend to trouble themselves so much as to practise them . then for the upholding of their own credit , they must give them poor contemptible terms , that they are but heathenish vertues , such as socrates or plato had , and make but a moral man ; and that there is no such need for a christian to have them . but , beloved , be not so deceived ; but observe this truth : though moral vertue carries us no higher than an heathen ; yet without the exercise of moral vertue , and inward life and liking of it , we are no true christians . the summe is this , that the good ways of god are spoken against and miscall'd , that wicked men may keep their credit , and yet walk indeed in the wayes of the devil . to the second i answer , that it is necessary that we suffer in the flesh ; because that if we do not keep down the flesh and its suggestions , the spirit will be choaked and stifled by that filth and corruption . the carnal mind is enmity against god ; for it is not subject to the law of god , neither indeed can be . ver. . the carnal mind , that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the bent , will , intent , liking , or desire of the flesh is enmity with god ; desires against the will of god , and will not be obedient to the law of god ; nor indeed can be . wherefore we are to kill it , to mortifie it , to crucifie it ; that we may be dead to sin or the desire of the flesh , and alive to god , by his enquickening spirit , through jesus christ our lord. here is the patience of the saints : here their great suffering . . but i go on to their last affliction , which is in spirit : and that is twofold , . the wrestling or conflict with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places . . the suffering with the spirit of christ. for the first , eph. . . for we wrestle not against flesh and blood ; but against principalities , against powers , against the rulers of the darkness of this world ; against spiritual wickedness in high places . beloved , the great work of salvation is not then accomplished , when we have through the power of god , and the strength of jesus christ , overcome the lusts of the body ; as drunkenness , gluttony , whoredom , and the like : but we shall find a new task , the taming of our proud spirit . for after our first conquest , i mean , the overcoming the lusts of the body ; then pride and haughtiness , and contempt of our neighbour , the thinking of our selves some-body , rigour and unmercifulness to our sinful brother , the magnifying of our selves in some conceited opinions , searching out and confidently concluding concerning the secrets of god , censuring and contemning all men that are not of the same conceit in divine speculations with our selves : these and many such like evil delusions the devil will sow in our hearts . the devil himself is neither whoremaster , nor drunkard , nor glutton : but he is proud , but he is contemptuous , but he is hypocritical , but he is a blood-sucker , a murderer from the beginning ; full of self-love , full of self-admiration , full of cruelty under pretence of religion , full of deceit and injustice under pretence of truth and maintenance of godliness , full of ambition and desire of rule , even over the souls and consciences of men , full of self-applause and arrogancy , and strutting in his own supposed knowledge and power . but true denyal of our selves , and unfeigned deep humility , a sensible apprehension of our nothingness , as i may so say , or real detestable vileness , will cause such dreadful agonies in our souls , that no tongue can express nor heart conceive that hath not had experience of those bitter sufferings : with so great pain and torment are we torn and riven from our spiritual wickedness , disjointed and dislimb'd , as it were , from our head , that prince of pride and father of disobedience , the devil . but i will now shew you the other kind of suffering , which is the suffering in spirit by reason of other mens wickedness . when we are united to god and christ in the union of spirit , then do those things that are contrary to the spirit of god , as all manner of sin , trouble our spirit : envious or cruel acts , drunkenness , deceit , pride , rigour , fierceness , folly , and whatsoever else is sinful or vain ; our spirit being enlivened by the spirit of god , is grieved and vext at these wickednesses or vanities : then we plainly see how christ is cut , and lash'd , and hew'd , and stab'd with our wicked deeds , how he is crucified afresh , as the apostle speaketh . here may the true church of god , the holy ierusalem , take up fitly that lamentation in ieremy . is it nothing to you , all ye that pass by ? behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow . see how the prophet david was affected with the wickedness of men . psal. . mine eyes gush out with water , because men keep not thy law . i beheld the transgressours , and was grieved because men keep not thy word . so lot was tormented at the wickedness of sodom . pet. . . and delivered just lot , vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked . for that righteous man dwelling among them , in seeing and hearing vexed his righteous soul from day to day , with their unlawful deeds . so god complains in the spirit of his prophet amos. behold i am pressed under you , as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves . amos . . and surely there is good reason it should be so , a sure necessity . for fire is not more contrary to water , nor light to darkness ; nor any enmity in nature or among men so strong , as that betwixt the spirit of god , and the spirit of the devil that is in evil wicked men ; according to which they live and act . so then , when that detestable ugliness flowes out in their words or actions , it must needs offend the children of god ; god being of pure eyes , and not abiding to behold wickedness . hence are they driven into consuming zeal , or deep inexpressible grief . and this is the second kind of suffering in spirit . but , beloved , take this in by the way , that he that can be angry at other mens faults , and not much more angry at his own , is a dissembler , an hypocrite . herein let every man examine himself . but he that is so stupid , that he is not moved at all with the wickedness of others or of himself , is perfectly dead in sin , and is in the full power of satan , and is covered with eternal death and darkness . this second doctrine is now sufficiently plain ; that they that would be heirs of the kingdom of christ must suffer with christ. i will again here stir you up to an examination and tryal of your spiritual state , whether you have any interest in the heavenly inheritance . the sign and infallible seal is our suffering with christ. but not any suffering : for the fuffering in estate if we escape it , yet may we be inheritors of heaven . but to be evil spoken of for christ , is harder to efcape ; yet admit we escape that too , we may for all that be secure of our eternal inheritance . nor have all that are now with god been whip'd , and tortur'd , and put to death or martyrdom : but yet we ought to be so minded , that we had rather endure all these things , than depart from christ. but all the other sufferings ; as abstinence from voluptuousness , from the delights of the flesh , from priding our selves in any thing that god hath bestowed upon us ; a suppressing our anger , abstaining from the sweetness of revenge , denying of the ever-craving appetite of covetousness ; keeping our tongues from the delight of defamation and evil reports , our ears from hearing evil of our neighbour ; these be necessary . all which endeavours will surely afflict and vex the corrupt natural spirit of a man : but he that will not undergo this suffering , believe it , beloved , he is none of christs ; he hath neither part nor portion in the kingdom of christ and of god. but he that doth , though with great agony of soul and affliction of mind , fight against all this corruption of flesh and spirit ; he may bless god for his good condition , and with good reason lay hold of the hope of heaven . they that are troubled in spirit for the wickedness of men , the prophanation of gods name , and any manner of sin and iniquity ; these men may conclude that they have the spirit of god , and consequently that they are the sons of god : and if sons , then heirs ; heirs of god , and joint-heirs with christ : if so be that we suffer with him : which our own spirit together with gods spirit doth testifie to us , that we do ; and that we shall be certainly glorified with him . let every man herein examine himself , that he may find a true ground of his hope of eternal salvation . for none shall be saved but they that are the children of god , elect to this inheritance ; none are the children of god , but those that have the spirit of god ; none have the spirit of god , but those that suffer with christ , that mortifie their own sins and are grieved for the sins of others . be not deceived ( beloved ) with flattering dreams and phansies : this is the very truth of god , and according to the gospel of jesus christ. and this truth being so apparently true , i need not exhort in many words , to those christian sufferings . stand fast in the true faith of the power of god , and quit your selves like men . cast away all softness and effeminateness ; and be so stout-hearted as to endure the pangs of death , of the mortification of your sinful flesh and carnal mind , for his sake that dyed for you . resist unto blood ; even unto the effusion of the wicked life , and unrighteous devilish spirit that resideth in you . for this is the good will of your god , that you be mortified , that you be thoroughly sanctified , that you destroy all things contrary to god in you . thess. . and let this be the first motive to run with patience the race that is set before us . secondly , these our sufferings , though great , are not comparable to the rich reward , that glorious inheritance in heaven . cor. . for which cause we faint not , but though our outward man perish , yet the inward man is renewed day by day . for our light affliction which is but for a moment , worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory . thirdly , if we compare the future state of the wicked and the godly , how all their glory and pleasure vanisheth , and how the children of god are received into everlasting happiness , crown'd with eternal light , it will more firmly establish us in our christian resolutions . it cannot be better described , then it is in the book of wisdom . the iniquities of the wicked shall convince them to their own face ; and they shall approach the tribunal of god with fear and quaking . but then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness , before the face of such as have afflicted him , and made no account of his labours . when they see it , they shall be troubled with terrible fear , and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation . and they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit , shall say within themselves : this is he whom we had some time in derision , and a proverb of reproach . we fools counted his life madness , and his end to be without honour . how is he numbred among the children of god , and his lot is among the saints . wisd. . you may read the whole chapter at your leasure . fourthly , and lastly , the inheritance of heaven is conditional : if we suffer with him , we shall be glorified with him ; which implies , if we do not suffer with him , we shall not be glorified with him . tim. . . this is a faithful saying , that if we be dead with him , we shall also live with him ; if we suffer with him , we shall also reign with him . wherefore , beloved , sooth not up your selves in vain hopes and flatteries : for without killing of your sinful lusts , without mortification there is no salvation . he that hath not the spirit of christ , is none of his . now no body hath the spirit of christ , unless he be dead unto sin : for if he be dead unto sin , then shall he be raised from death to life , by the spirit of christ that quickeneth us to righteousness : but if he be dead unto righteousness , and alive unto sin ; he is a son of belial , a child of the devil , a vessel of perdition , a faggot for hell ; and the devouring . wrath of god remains upon him : no heir of god , no coheir with christ ; but he shall have his portion with those infernal fiends , to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever . wherefore , beloved , awake from your beds of ease ; shake off your idle dreams , and bewitching phansies , that either the devil or his false prophets have buz'd at any time into your heads . if you will be the sons of god , and disciples of christ , take up the cross of christ ; afflict your own carnal minds ; give not way to wrath , to envy , to anger , to revenge , to lust , to wantonness , to back-biting , to swearing , to revelling , to drinking , to pride , to contemning , to reproaching , to fighting , to contesting , to censuring , to defaming , or whatsoever else flesh and blood is easily carried out to ; but deny your selves in abstaining from all those evil acts , and so give no encouragement to the devil to assault you . which if you shall do in the precious christian patience , even to the mortification of all manner of sin in you , god shall stir up in you the spirit of his son , and enrich you with the power and wisdom of the holy ghost : and the peace of god , which passeth all understanding , shall fill your hearts with all joy ; and you shall find in your selves an unexpressible taste of the delights of heaven , and receive an infallible earnest of your eternal inheritance . which god grant that we may all do , through iesus christ our lord ; to whom , &c. discourse x. jam . i. . pure religion , and undefiled before god and the father , is this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep himself unspotted from the world . the text is a description of pure and undefiled religion . and certainly if any thing ; religion it is that wants the pointing out by the most evident , plain and conspicuous descriptions that may be , to be writ in capital letters , in so large and visible characters that he that runs may read it . for indeed most men are but at leasure to read it running , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the by , tanquam aliud agentes ; still keeping on their course in that broad way , that beaten path , that leads to the reward of impiety and irreligiousness . but yet i know not how it comes to pass , that though men make not religion their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , their main business and work , yet they prove most-what , far more fortunate in this , than in their worldly occasions and employments ; where , though they take a great deal more pains , yet we shall more ordinarily hear them complain of ill success . but as for religion , how few are there that find themselves at a loss therein ; nay that are not suited to their own hearts liking ; and from these slight and transient glances cast upon it , are kindled into so hot a passion and inflammation of love and zeal for it , that finding their own breasts too strait and narrow for such a violent heat , would even force open the hearts of other men , that there may be more room and freedom for so ample a flame : not content to keep alive this vestal fire within the walls of its own temple , but to disthrone the sun , and ordain it the sole lamp of the universe ; where all other religions and worships , must like the lesser stars disappear and vanish . every rash religion is popery , and claims title to all , must be catholick : none must stand before it : a true vr of the chaldees , eating up and devouring all other deities . whatsoever is not this , is idolatry , blasphemy and impiety . and therefore we can admit of none but our own : or if we should by chance or unawares , we recoyl back with more than caunian zeal and indignation . we are no where so lavish of our affection as in point of religion ; and the more , because no where more safe : for who can love god too much , and religion immediately referrs to god. this i would say , that in the many and manifold distractions and divisions which the sons of men exercise one another with on this blind and dark spot , the earth ; where there is a great deal more talk of god than true knowledge of him ; all religions every where agree in this one , that nothing ought to be more precious and dear unto us than our religion : and in this also , which i must again note with greater admiration , that ordinary religionists are in nothing so superficially and perfunctorily satisfied in , as in what they do so devoutly love ; whence it comes to pass that many thousands of men , ixion-like , embrace not iuno but a cloud . wherefore we cannot sufficiently commend the sober care and prudence of the blessed apostle , who hath so amply and fully set out to us , that , which few men have the patience to peruse in a closer character : and therefore out of neglect and carelesness very subject to mistake ; and if mistaken , mistake more dangerously than in any thing else possibly they can do ; spending their most serious and dearest affections upon falshood , their very hearts and souls upon unprofitable lyes ; and not only forfeiting their own happiness , but as much as in them lyes , pulling in others also into the same whirl-pool , or dangerous pit of destruction . but , beloved , that we be not led away with the same errour of the wicked , nor serve the phansies of men , let us again cast our eyes on the text , and learn the truth of religion . pure religion and undefiled , before god and the father , is this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep a mans self unspotted of the world . the text as i intimated before , is a definition of pure and vndefiled religion . i might resolve it into these two logical terms of definitum and definitio . pure religion and undefiled before god and the father , that 's the definitum or thing defin'd : the definition this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep a mans self unspotted from the world . but i shall handle the text more roughly , and fetch out , though not force out , these four particulars . . that there is a pure and undefiled religion . . that god the father is judge of this pure and undefiled religion . . that to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep ones self unspotted of the world , this is pure and undefiled religion . . that it is pure and undefiled religion , even in the judgment and sight of god. i. that there is a pure and undefiled religion . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ] it will not be amiss to make some short stay upon the unfolding of the words . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies properly cultus divinus . orpheus the thracian and great mystagogue of the graecians gave occasion to this term : for they being taught the manners and rites of serving the gods by him , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as nonnus tells us , they called the worshiping of the gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as being a thracian invention . beza translates it very well and significantly cultus religiosus ; and our english not amiss , religion , in the proper sense , as it is taken for the worship of god , and not extended to both tables , as s. austin and lactantius would have it : for beside the propriety of the greek word , the quality of those to whom the apostle wrote is no small argument , that that religion which consists in gods immediate worship is here meant or alluded to ; they being the dispersed iews to whom he wrote ( as is manifest in the beginning of the epistle ) whose native religion consisted in multitude of rites and ceremonies , and was eminent for the outward form of worship and service of god. these were all but a cloud , a veil , and mist , and was to be drawn aside and vanish at the approach of the sun of righteousness that was to rise with healing in his wings ; that is our saviour , god blessed for ever . and according to this notion , the two following terms , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , will not only admit of but call for this exposition ; viz. pure and unpainted , as the words are sufficiently capable thereof : the true , pure , refin'd , unsophisticated religion is this . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . plato in his sophista . and plotinus lib. . ennead . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that according to the idiom of the tongue , pure religion is that which is unbared of all heterogeneal admixture , purg'd and separated from all ascititious additaments , cleansed and refined from that palpable gross luggage of unweildy ceremonies ; being pure extraction , mere essence or quintessence , perfect life and spirit . again , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] undyed , unpainted with the pencil of humane art or device ; a naked and bare truth : which though it hath been diversly figur'd and shap'd by the outward dress of ceremonies , yet it has been from everlasting to everlasting ; christ the same yesterday , to day , and for ever ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the gospel of eternal truth , the law of life , the perfect law of liberty . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is most true of this everlasting law of life , whose original is as deep as the divine abyss . but i am afraid that i have by this exposition ( though very true and genuine ) so spiritualiz'd religion , and unbared the truth , that carnal eyes accustomed to shadows and gross ceremonies , will doubt whether there be any thing of religion left , after so much sifting and cleansing . but i hold it no hard task to answer these men . if they mean by no religion left , no ceremony left ; i grant it : but if by no religion , no truth of religion ; i say , there is nothing but the truth of religion left . and that the truth of religion should not deserve the name of religion , as well as the shadow or type , i know no reason ; no more than caesar himself should not be called caesar , as well as his picture , be it drawn with never so much art and cunning . mistake me not , i speak not as if the kernel must of necessity be without a shell ; but led on by my text , i speak of the kernel without the shell , and exalt it far above the dry shell . psal. . . will i eat the flesh of bulls , or drink the blood of goats ? psal. . . the sacrifices of god are a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart , o god , thou wilt not despise . and psal. . . offer the sacrifice of righteousness ; and put your trust in the lord. and rom. . . i beseech you brethren , by the mercies of god , that you present your bodies a living sacrifice , holy , acceptable to god , which is your spiritual service : so beza . they were not to offer any dead or unclean beast under the law ; wherefore are we here under the gospel to offer our selves a living and holy sacrifice , impolluted of the world , and alive to righteousness and to god. give me leave here a little to enlarge my self . who can doubt but that the heart of a christian , from whence sweet odours of prayers and praises ascend up , is a better altar of incense than that in moses's temple ; that god is more truly fed by relieving his living members , true and sincere christians , than by feeding the unsatiable fire by thousands of holocausts ; that the seven spirits , the spirit of the lord , the spirit of wisdom and understanding , the spirit of counsel and might , the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the lord , are a truer and clearer light than the seven golden candlesticks of moses ; that the iewish temple was but a strait prison in comparison of the enlarged soul of man ; so many load of sand or gravel would have filled that up to the top , but no less than god himself can fill the heart of man : which therefore is the meetest temple or mansion for him . in brief , what is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but as nonnus speaks , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to honour and worship god ; and what doth that consist in but in appropriating or consecrating unto him times , or places , or things , persons also and solemnity of actions ? is not this therefore to worship god in spirit and in truth ? truly and unfeignedly to devote our selves , and dedicate all we have to the god of heaven , seeking his will in all our actions , and denying our selves and our own desires . what comparison is there betwixt the offering the firstlings of our flock , or the fruit of our ground , whereby we acknowledge we hold all these things of god , the great lord of heaven and earth ; what comparison is there , i say , betwixt this and the not arrogating any thing to our selves of either knowledge and power , but very sensibly and affectionately ascribing all to god , whatsoever we can do , think or speak ; which is the right christian humility and spiritual decimation to the true melchizedek christ jesus ? and let me be yet bolder , ( if there be any boldness in it ) what is baptism or the washing of water , in respect of the real cleansing by the spirit , the being baptized with the holy ghost and with fire ? what is bread and wine in comparison of that true bread from heaven , the flesh and blood of christ ? tell me therefore now , is nothing of religion left , when i only consider the inward essence or substance of it abstracting from shell or husk ? is the very heart or kernel of it nothing ? the pure and unpainted religion is truly religion , if not the only true religion . and pardon me if i seem too careful and curious in reserving the name of religion to it ; because that word strikes more powerfully upon the ears of men , and summons at the very first alarm all the power we have both of soul and body , to assist , countenance and maintain it . wherefore i would under the name ( as the notion it self doth most eminently deserve it ) commend unto my self and all men this truth of godliness , that we may as heartily and zealously both aspire unto our selves , and endeavour the same in others , as ever we did or can do the opinions and institutions of men , or yet the opposing of them : for this will not be found pure and undefiled religion in his eyes who is the judge thereof ; viz. god the father . which is the second particular ; and upon which i would now fall , did not another sense step between , which must awhile hold me back . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ] hitherto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have signified , the pure and un-colour'd truth of religion , without show or ceremony . the words are not incapable of another sense , which our english translation favours ; pure , impolluted or undefiled religion is this : which implies that there are impure , filthy and impious religions in the world. how it would make a noise to speak of the obscene ceremonies of baal-peor , the cruel rites of moloch , and that most ridiculous devil-service in india ! but we need not run back so much in time , or travel to so remote places . i do not see but the invocation of saints and worshipping of idols is impious enough ; and the relying on any one man , or a multitude , for infallible guides of his faith and religion , mere idolatry and irreligiousness . for what is this but to cut our selves off from the living god , and free guidance of his gracious spirit , and to give up our selves to men , blind guides ; to the sons of men that are found deceitful upon the weights , lighter than vanity it self ? is it not the lord that hath made heaven and earth , and filleth all things with his spirit and power ? behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket , and are counted as the small dust of the ballance : all nations are before him even as nothing , and they are counted of him less than nothing and vanity . it is he alone that has established the mountains , and has given laws to the measureless deep ; that has stretched out the heavens as a curtain , and spreadeth it out as a tent to dwell in ; that sitteth upon the circle of the earth , and the inhabitants thereof are as grashoppers . which of these will you chuse for your god ? or what number of them for the stay of your hearts ? will you worship a fly instead of your maker ? will you ask counsel of the god of ekron ? will you advise with baal-zebub concerning your salvation ? is not christ the only healer , the only saviour , the only recoverer of fallen man ? is his holiness at rome infallible ? or may not a many gray heads joyn'd together go astray together ? 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith elihu in iob ; and i said days should speak , and multitude of years should teach wisdom : but there is a spirit in man , and the inspiration of the almighty giveth them understanding . great men are not alwayes wise , neither do the aged understand judgment . iob . it is the lord that is the only wise god ; that auncient of dayes alone it is that can instruct us in prudence ; 't is god the father alone that can guide us safely in his truth . and thus am i again cast upon the second particular ; viz. ii. that god the father is judge of what is true , pure and undefiled religion . and indeed there is very good reason for it : for what is religion but the worship and service of god ? he therefore knows best how he would be worshipped and served . and here it will not be unseasonable to speak of that worship which the apostle has found out a very fit name for , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will-worship , serving god according to our own will and liking , according to the dictates of our own vain hearts : a fault that a natural man is not only subject to fall into , but it is even impossible for him to avoid it : for who knows the will of god , saving to whom the word and spirit of god is revealed from within ? for if the outward could do it without the inward , why is the whole christian world intangled in so much errour and confusion ? why , unless for that they have served god , either according to their own will , or have been led captive under the will of other men : for that they have forsaken the lord the fountain of living waters , and have hewed them out cisterns , broken cisterns that will hold no water ? is israel a servant ? is he a home-born slave ? why is he become a spoil ? verily because he is become a servant and a slave ; because he has ceased now to be israel , a prince and prevailer with god , and hath put his trust in mortal men . what is paul , apollos or cephas ? what is bellarmine , calvin or arminius ? was arminius crucified for you , or was you baptized into the name of calvin ? wo to the rebellious children , saith the lord , that take counsel , but not of me ; and that cover with a covering , but not of my spirit , that they may add sin to sin : that walk to go down to aegypt ( and have not asked at my mouth ) to strengthen themselves in the strength of pharaoh , and to trust in the shadow of egypt . isa. . shall all the preparation of egypt be your safety ? shall your chosen learned scribes and disputers , with all their knowledge of tongues and humane arts , assuredly talk you into the truth ? where is that infallible judge ? there are enough that say , lo ! here is christ ; and , lo ! there he is . but it is a shrewd argument that he is not here nor there : or else why did christ say , believe thou not ? he himself alone it is that is the truth , and let all men be lyars before him . cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils , for whereof is he to be accounted of ? if god then be that only infallible iudge of pure religion and well pleasing to himself ; who is to be sought unto but he ? but that no man deceive himself , ( for truth can deceive no man ) my drift is not to dehort from idolizing men that every man may make an idol of himself , and to cleave to sudden phansies , rashly sprung up in his polluted spirit : but that we may truly sanctifie god in our hearts , and serve him from a true , though inward invisible principle of life ; that we may attain to that righteousness of faith , which we are not born with , nor the mouth of man can confer upon us , but is the breath of the holy ghost ; a light and life derived from god the father , the fountain of light and life , from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift . of this it is written ; you have an unction from the holy one , and you know all things . io. . but as for us that have not yet attained thereunto , it will be our wisdom and safety to have this draught of pure religion , set out by the apostle , ever before our eyes ; and endeavour to frame our service to god accordingly : to visit the fatherless and the widow in her affliction ; and to keep our selves unspotted from the world. and this is the third particular , viz. iii. that pure and undefiled religion is this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep our selves unsported from the world . it is set out to us as once god shewed himself to moses . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 videbis posteriora mea , exod. . religion is here describ'd à posteriori , or ab effectis : which as it is most feasable to the teacher , so it is most profitable to the learner . for the very face and essence of pure religion is unexpressible : no pencil can draw it , and exhibit the sight of it to other men . hence is there , and ever has been a veil drawn over it ; but it ought not to be environed with utter darkness . let your light so shine before men , that they seeing your good works , may glorifie your father which is in heaven . the sacraments are a veil over the christian religion ; but the christians unfruitful yea impious conversation , a cimmerian mist , a palpable aegyptian darkness . but to return , though i have as yet scarce given one step out of the way : the description of pure religion is from a two-fold effect . the first respects others ; to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction . the second respects our selves ; to keep himself unspotted from the world. but before i fall upon these particulars , it will not be amiss , first to set out some general considerations , which the nature of this description affords us . and first , that the apostle chuseth to describe religion from the effects of it , rather than from the form , efficient or end. secondly , why rather from these effects than any other . . for the first . the form of pure religion , as i intimated before , is unexpressible , no man can describe it . it is that name written in the white stone , that no man knows nor can know but he that has it . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as plotinus in a case not unlike to this : if thou beest it , thou seest it ; speaking of that eternal form or beauty . then to have described it from the efficient which should have been god , the apostle knew very well what juggling and uncertainty there were in that : for all religions call god their author , and pretend his glory for their end. so that this general delineation would have been subject to much mistake , abuse and deceit . wherefore the safest mark to point out true religion was the effects of it . . but why these effects rather than any other ? would not prayer , would not the hearing of the word , often reading of the scripture ( as the very etymon of religion , as some would have it à relegendo , doth import ) would not these a great deal better have set out the nature of religion ? no verily : for i dare be bold to take the apostles part , and rely upon his judgment . for as for the external act of prayer , a pharisee may perform it , both largely and often , with many tedious tautologies , and wearisome circumlocutions , as our saviour has marked them out in the gospel . and as for hearing divine truth to talk of it in a natural exercise of our memory and reason , it is pleasant even to the unregenerate and impious man. that very natural motion that is in words and sounds put in a tunable number , and set off with action and affection , pleaseth in some sort even all kind of auditors : and if smartness of reason , and weight of argument be added to it , the merest philosopher that is , can be content to lend his attention thereto ; and no acceptable point of religion exerciz'd all the time . god himself bears witness against them ; ezekiel . they speak every one to his brother , saying , come , i pray you , and hear what is the word that cometh from the lord. they come unto thee , and sit before thee as my people , and they hear thy words but they will not do them ; with their mouth they shew much love , but their heart goeth after covetousness . and lo ! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice , and can play well on an instrument ; for they hear thy words but they do them not . and reading of the scripture privately is so like the publick preaching of it , that i need not take any new pains to refute the vanity of it , if it be not accompanied with due obedience . we may fetch that up to divinity , which epictetus hath both wittily and gravely , of moral theorems . the sheep tell not their keeper how much fodder or grass they eat , but shew that they feed sufficiently by their milk and wooll . let us not therefore , beloved , do as vain limners they say have done , drawn venus and the virgin mary according to the feature of some face they themselves love best : let us not , i say , picture out religion to our own liking , and then be in love with an idol of our own making , but love and like that which the apostle has so plainly pourtray'd to us : that , whose description consists in visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and keeping our selves unspotted of the world : which in two words is this , charity and purity . of these two consists that true religion acceptable to god. for i conceive visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction , excludes not other good deeds from this definition , but by a synecdoche , is put for the whole office of charity . . the first branch is charity . i will not curiously and artificially set out the bounds of this vertue . it will be enough to intimate , that it is not confin'd to the relief of the body only ; as he is not only fatherless that wants his natural parent , but he much more that has not god for his father , through the seed of the new birth : nor she alone a widow that has lost her natural husband ; but every soul is a widow that is estranged and divorced from her god ; whose sins have made a separation betwixt her and her maker . thy maker is thy husband . esa. . . he is so indeed to those that are not faithless and play the harlot ; for of such saith the lord , she is not my wife , neither am i her husband . hosea . . he therefore that can reconcile a soul unto god , doth not only relieve the fatherless and widow , but procures an husband and father for them , and wholly rids them out of their distressful estate . these outward transient actions tending to the spiritual or temporal good of our neighbour , are fit testimonies of our sincere religion before men ; but for every mans private satisfaction concerning himself , there be divers inward and immanent motions of the soul which will abundantly help on this confirmation . i will reckon them up out of the mouth of the apostle . cor. . where i will not balk those that be at ad extra too , they being all very well worth our taking notice of . charity suffereth long , and is kind : charity envieth not : charity vaunteth not it self , is not puffed up : doth not behave it self unseemly , seeketh not her own , is not easily provoked , thinketh no evil , rejoyceth not in iniquity , but rejoyceth in the truth : beareth all things , believeth all things , hopeth all things , endureth all things . . i pass on now to the second branch , purity : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to keep himself unspotted from the world. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ] the word signifies properly such kind of spots as are in clothes by spilling some liquid or oyly thing on them . an hard task certainly to be religious at this height . is it to be thought possible that we should wear this garment of mortality every day , nay every hour and moment , for thirty , forty , fifty , sixty years together , and soil it by no mischange or miscarriage , either of careless youth , violent manhood , or palsied old age ? to pass through the hurry and tumult of this world , and never be crouded into the dirt , nor be spattered by them that post by us . but verily this is not the meaning of the apostle , or of his description of religion , that no man is religious but he that is absolutely spotless . but he sets before us an idea or paradigme of true religion ; that men having their eyes upon it , may know how much , or rather how little of religion they have attained to : by how much nearer conformable to this pattern , by so much more religious ; by how much further off , by so much the less religious . he that is not so much as within the sight of it , has not so much as seen the least glimpse or glance of godliness , but may be , without any wrong to him , writ down , atheist . let every man herein examine himself , and ask his own conscience , how unspotted he has kept himself from the world. and here as hard a difficulty represents it self , if not harder than before . to keep himself unspotted from the world ? is it not pure irreligiousness to think so ? impossible to be so ? who can keep himself pure ? i answer , it may be a mistake in the idiom of the tongue ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no more than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to be kept unspotted from the world ; hithpael for niphai ; as there is elsewhere niphal for hithpael , acts . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : so beza . or to keep himself unspotted from the world , is to be understood so far forth as is in our power , which in truth is very little . here therefore steps in the power of christ , that strong arm of god for our salvation , the stay and trust of all nations , and the hope of the ends of the earth . for the law of the spirit of life in christ iesus , hath made me free from the law of sin and death : for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh , god sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh , condemned sin in the flesh , that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us , that walk not after the flesh but after the spirit . rom. . we walk , though it be in the power of that spirit of life in christ , as our body moves by vertue of our natural spirit . but whether this act of purification , or keeping our selves pure , be so from god , that it is not in any wise from us , i leave to them to dispute , that are more at leasure . that it must be in us , if there be any religion in us , is all that the text affords me , and 't is enough for the tryal of our religion . pure religion is to keep our selves unspotted from the world. what ? to keep our selves unspatter'd and unspall'd upon by foul tongues ? 't is a thing as impossible as unprejudicial to the soul her self . that which is without a man defiles not the man , but that which is within him . what is meant by world , s. iohn doth fully unfold unto us . all that is in the world , the lust of the flesh , the lust of the eye , and the pride of life , is not of the father , but of the world . of these then we must keep our selves unspotted , if we will be holy as our heavenly father is holy . this is the world that we must keep our selves unstain'd of : but for the natural world , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all things are sacred and good . 't is sensuality that soyles the soul , and fills the mind full of impure thoughts , unworthy desires ; that transform the humane nature , which is capable of the image of god , into a loathsome beast . 't is covetousness that contracts the large spirit of man , and makes it shrivel up and wrinkle , for want of that which can alone fill it , those unspeakable treasures of heaven , that no tongue can number , nor figures express . how deformed is that mind , whose are nothing but bills and bonds , mouldy money , moth-eaten housholdstuff , and such like trash ; rusty locks and keys , iron chests , and strong hollow vaults behung with cobwebs ! this is the covetous mans soul , if we could see within him ; nothing near so beautiful as the foulest pond or dunghil-puddle , where if you cast your eye , you may happily meet with the reflection of the stars , or the bright circle of the sun , or the white moving clouds , or the pleasant blew-coloured sky . but such things as an ingenuous man would scarce have the patience to look on , be not only the continually desired objects of the worldlings sight , but the perpetual life and energy of his mis-shapen spirit . and here though the proud man may please himself in conceiting , that this inward man is garnished with better bravery ; and is a more comely creature , his phansie glittering with the representation of crowns and scepters , silver maces , purple and scarlet robes , rich stuffs and holy mitres : yet if we look upon the beast that bears this glaring luggage , his own dear soul , what is the very life and heart of it but pride and envy ; the two essentials that constitute the ugliest of all creatures , the deformed fiends of hell ? and beside this innate ill-favouredness , his whole person is ordinarily besmear'd with the bloud of the innocent , and his garments drop and reek with the warm tears of the afflicted and oppressed , and are foul and greasie with the sweat of the poor . this is the attire both of the ambitious and covetous man. and certainly there is very little religion in him that doth not heartily abhor so abominable a monster . i● but is there indeed much religion in him that doth ? i confess that a man may be temperate ( for the devil , as we ordinarily conceive , is not lyable to the sins of the flesh , ) and yet fall short of true religion . his constitution , or some other strong but natural or secular design making him so . covetousness is also often but a complexion , and liberality may be no better in some men . some men are also born with a more low and quiet disposition , which is not the vertue of humility , but the lowness and stillness of their natural spirit . but to be unspotted of the world , is also to be free from the attraction of our own private nature , which is a piece of this dark deceivable world , and to have our whole man acted and regulated by the spirit of god. dull phlegm is no christian patience ; nor all fire , true zeal ; especially if it be fed by the fat of the earth . but that is true zeal that flowes out in affliction , and glories in the cross and tribulation . he is not chast that never partak'd of the bed of defilement , nor temperate that eats nor drinks to excess : but he that enjoys the pleasure of the creature , only in reference to the creator , tasting the sweetness of his god , even in his meat and drink , lifting up his soul to the meat that perisheth not , but endures to eternal life . he is untouch'd of covetousness , that desires nothing for himself , but is a faithful steward of the manifold blessings of god. he is unstain'd of the pride of life , who is so dead to himself , and the sense or cognoscence of his own power and will , that he arrogates no good thing to himself ; but doth , from the very ground of his soul , speak that of the prophet , thou , o lord , hast wrought all our works in us . this is , as i said before , the right idea or paradigme , of true religion . by how much more near we come to this , by so much more near we are to religion ; and the farther removed hence , the farther off from true religion . if any man doubt of it , i appeal to this judgment that cannot err , even to god the father ; and that 's included in my last particular , viz. iv. that to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction , and to keep our selves unspotted of the world ; this is pure and undefiled religion , even in the sight of god the father . i will dispatch this point in a word or two . the summ , as you may remember , of this description of religion , was comprised in these two words , charity and purity . both these are so near the nature of god , that he is engaged ( as i may so say ) to give sentence for them . god is love ; and he that abideth in love , abideth in god , saith s. iohn . can any thing then be more acceptable to god then love ? to do good and communicate , forget not , for with such sacrifices god is well pleased , saith the author to the hebrews . and our blessed saviour , matth. . love your enemies , bless them that curse you , do good to them that hate you , and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you ; that you may be the children of your father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good , and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust . be ye therefore perfect as your father which is in heaven is perfect . so then there is no doubt of gods sentencing that religion for the best , whose nature consists in that which himself loves and likes , and is the image of himself , viz. love or charity . and we have his command for the other part thereof , back'd with his own example , viz. purity . be ye holy saith he , for i am holy . but what is now this holiness or purity of god ? is it not this ? that whereas he is present in all things , he is not immerse nor polluted of any thing . so must our souls be . we are of necessity here in this orb of death and corruption , actors in the administration of the affairs of this lower world. let not our hearts sink into that , that our eye must needs attend , if we be not idle and useless . every man has a part or province committed to him by god : let us administer our part as god doth the whole ; not by immersion or spilling our souls or affections upon the visible creature ; but collectedly into god , as god is collected into himself . let not our souls cleave unto the dust , nor be spilt upon the ground , as the prophet david sometimes complains ; but be as the rayes of the sun , which though they reach to the earth , sink not in the earth ; but being fast fixt in their fountain , or not , the sun it self , do alwayes move whither he carries them . let us also acknowledge our own original which is from above , and move with god and the lamb , wheresoever they go . let us be so pure as not to drown our selves in the muddy stream of this transient world : let us be so charitable as to wade in it , that others be not drown'd . let our love to men be such , that we make not our selves unprofitable members of the world. let our love to god be such that we keep our selves pure and unspotted from the love of the world. let our whole conversation be such , that all men may see ( that have eyes to discern ) both whence and whose we are ; that we serve not the will of man , nor are vassals to our own vain desires , but are the free servants of christ , and true worshippers of the living god. o lord our god , thou which alone art able to speak to the hearts and consciences of men , descend we beseech thee powerfully into us by thy holy spirit : guide and teach us in thy ways . open our eyes that we may see the wonders of thy law. set up thy truth in us , and the life of thy son , above all contentious opinions and conceits of men . take away all pride , and prejudice , and wrathfulness , and hypocrisie ; and grant that the whole christian world may agree in meekness , and that sweet candour and simplicity that is in christ iesus . shew unto us , and convince us of that acceptable service thou requirest at our hands . let bitterness , and heart-burning reviling , and all deceit , and falseness , cease from amongst us ; and let the scepter of thy son bear rule over us in peace , and truth , and righteousness . enrich us with those precious graces of love and purity : and let the effectual power of thy spirit be so felt amongst us , that the least of thy church may be as david , and the house of david as the angel of the lord before thee . hear us , o merciful father , &c. discourse xi . heb. xiii . . to do good and communicate forget not , for with such sacrifices god is well pleased . the philosophers define good to be that which all things desire . now all desire is founded in life : and life is twofold ; there is the life of nature ; and the life of god , which in men is called the life of grace . now both these lives desire good . but here is the difference : the life of nature is only carried to good , as it is good to it self ; or if it wish good to others , it s for its own sake : the life of god , or life of grace , desires good too ; but not only for it self , but simply it desires good , wheresoever it can be effected , in due order and right means . so that the heart of the divine life is enlarged toward every capable thing , and would impart its good so much as any is capable , and so oft any is disposed : for there is neither envy , want nor niggardness in the divine nature . so then he that is thus affected ; whose bowels are enlarged to his fellow-creatures , to every one as they are capable : he that is merciful to the beast , loving to men ; feeds the hungry ; clothes the naked ; visits the sick ; directs the traveller ; is courteous to the stranger ; informs the ignorant ; heartens the poor-spirited ; sheweth the proud his folly ; comforts him that is in sorrow ; ballasts him that floats in vain joy ; soders up enmities , and stints strife ; flies envy , and exerciseth an universal amity to all : this man is like his heavenly father , who makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good , and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust . this man will neither persecute his enemy out of hatred , nor acquit his friend in his fault , out of fond love : but deals his doals of all kinds to every one as he is fitted for receiving ; slips no opportunity of doing any manner of good ; loseth no occasion of hindering of evil . his soul is nothing but the inward life of charity ; his life nothing but the passing from munificency to munificency , from one good deed to another . out of love to god he embraceth his neighbour ; after his duty to his neighbour faithfully perform'd , he is nearer united unto god. he becomes a king for his bountiful liberality and royal free mind . he becomes a priest , by offering these sacrifices so acceptable to god. nay he himself is but one intire sacrifice , whom that great high-priest , christ jesus , offers to his father : the fire of love and charity , is the fire that consumes and wasts continually all corruption in his soul ; and loosen'd every day more and more from the body of sin and iniquity , ascends in holy fume up nearer unto heaven , a sweet savour unto god and all the assistants of the divine majesty . but for a more orderly handling of this present text of scripture : be pleased to observe with me these three truths contained in the same . . that we are not to forget to do good and communicate . . that doing or communicating good is a sacrifice . . that it is a sacrifice in which god is well pleased . i. that we are to do good , i think no man is so devoid of reason or goodness as to deny it ; no not so much as in his silent thoughts : though this truth that he is so certainly perswaded of , lies not alwayes so freshly in his mind , but he may easily overslip the practice of it yea because a mans understanding , cogitations and affections are so mightily taken up for his own projects , and the advancement of his own private peculiar good , it were somewhat strange , if he did not omit too too oft this duty of communicating good to others ; his fierce and eager pursuit after his private welfare , so strongly and steddily directing his eyes upon his own . we being therefore so subject , out of the extream love of our selves , to forget the good of our neighbour , it is no wonder that the apostles exhortation is not delivered in a bare simple manner : do good and communicate : but runs thus , to do good and communicate forget not . as if he should say , i have delivered in this my epistle , many high and divine mysteries , concerning the divine nature of christ , the office of the angels , of the levitical priesthood , and ceremonies of the old law , the sacrifice of christ , and the excellency of faith , and many other heavenly theories ; which for their profoundness may easily invite the curious to muse upon them , and for their mysteriousness made me write somewhat more largely upon them : but that which i speak to you now ; it is not a thing so difficult to understand , or so hard to explain , you know it already , only be mindful to do it ; to do good and communicate forget not . and that we forget not , god hath set over us monitors enough ; it is not the voice of the apostle alone , but of the whole creature . the clouds drop fatness upon the earth . the earth sends up all manner of herbs and corn for service , and flowers for delight of men . the trees stretch out their spreading armes and offer their fruit. the musical falls of the cooling crystal brooks , sweetly call to them the thirsty traveller to refresh his fainting spirit . the sun and moon , with all the host of heaven , dance in their circuits about the earth , as being joyful to impart their light and influence , for the procreation of things here below , and their continual conservation . the sun cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber , and rejoyceth as a gyant to run his race : he leaves us indeed in the west ; but in the morning he carefully revisits us with his chearing countenance , and rescues the world from the close cloging vapours of the loansome night . see how readily and willingly the creature practiseth this precept of the apostle , and therefore become fit preachers unto us to do the same . but if we scorn to have so poor a pattern as the visible creature ; look through the creature unto god. for it 's he rather that doth this , than the outward visible creature . he laid the foundations of the earth , that it never should move at any time . he sends his springs into the rivers , which run among the hills . all beasts of the field drink thereof ; and the wild asses quench their thirst . beside them have the fowls of the air their habitation ; and sing among the branches . he watereth the hills from above ; the earth is filled with the fruits of his works . he bringeth forth grass for the castle , and green herb for the service of men . that he may bring food out of the earth , and wine that maketh glad the heart of man. he appointed the moon for certain seasons : and the sun knoweth his going down . psal. . he loveth righteousness and judgment ; the earth is full of the goodness of the lord. psal. . the continuation of the creature , and subsistance of this mighty universe , is nothing else but a continual testification of the nature and goodness of god , and his munificent and communicating property . wherefore we being incompassed with such a world of witnesses , witnesses that so clearly testifie unto us the mind of god and christ , let us be like-minded with him , and delight in doing good according to our power , to shew our thankfulness to him , of whom all power is received . there is the same argument for giving , that there is for forgiving . mat. . . o evil servant , i forgave thee all that debt , because thou prayedst me : oughtest not thou also to have pity on thy fellow , even as i had pity on thee ? so surely god will reason with us in this matter too , that which thou hast , i gave it thee ; why therefore dost thou not imitate me , and impart somewhat to thy neighbour of that i gave thee ? freely you have received ( saith our saviour ) freely give . now for the better understanding of this point , i will spend a few words by way of explication of this act of communicating of good ; wherein three things are supposed , and therefore to be explain'd so far forth as is necessary : there is the person , to whom we must communicate ; the matter , what ; and the manner , how we must communicate . ( . ) the persons to whom we are to communicate , are such as the prophet david names : psal. . . he hath dispersed abroad ; he hath given to the poor ; and his righteousness remaineth for ever ; his horn shall be exalted with honour . quite contrary to the garb of the world , and common practice of crafty and covetous men , who exalt themselves by gifts of unrighteousness , and trample upon the poor and needy how just soever ; and contemn the weak as of little worth : whose charity is none , and courtesie but policy , munificency a well contrived bargain : whose gifts are but worms and flies ; but their expectation , no worse than the best fish they can pull up : whose hearts are alwayes cold ; and their hands ever benumb'd , till mutual friction . manus manum fricat . this has alwayes been the way of them , the usual beaten path of the world ; and their children praise their sayings . but the children of god , born of the coelestial seed , be quite of another temper . witness that true noble and heroical spirit in our eldest brother christ iesus : with whom if the generosity and gallantry of the world be compar'd , it will appear mere pageantry : or to express the truth more homely and rudely , they will be found partaking more of the huxter than the courtier . but to leave them to their petty markets , let us endeavour not to degenerate , but to follow the counsel of the first-born of our fraternity . luke . . when thou makest a dinner or supper ( saith our saviour ) call not thy friends , nor thy brethren , neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbours ; lest they also bid thee again , and recompence be made . but when thou makest a feast , call the poor , the maimed , the lame and the blind ; and thou shalt be blessed because they cannot recompence thee , for thou shalt be recompenced at the resurrection of the just . but what needs so ample a testimony in a case so plain ? even ordinary reason will tell us to whom good should be imparted : not to them that have enough already , but those that want . physick is proper to him that is sick already , or is inclining to sickness . to whom should drink be given , but to the thirsty ? to whom meat , but to the hungry ? clothes to the naked ; and warm harbour to him that is afflicted with cold . so that whatsoever good it is that a man is in want of , that good is to be administred unto him , by him that is not in that want . ( . ) good is to be administred , which is the matter that is to be communicated . if any , ask bread , we are not to offer him a stone ; or if a fish a scorpion . which though we do not in that gross manner , yet too oft we do , lapides loqui , we mall the poor indigent man in the head with some stonish or hard-hearted answer , and deal such liberal lashes of sharp reproof , that bites and stings him as the whips of a scorpion . but that we straiten not the sense of this text more than needs : this communicating of good is not confin'd to outward bread and meat , and such necessary things for the natural sustentation of man ; but stretcheth also to that of the soul. so that this good which we are to impart , may be divided into these two general kinds , in rem & consilium ; a supply of outward necessaries , or seasonable and friendly advice . both these are good , and so both to be communicated , where we see there is a want , and find our selves able to make a supply . he that informs the ignorant , doth as it were lead the blind . he that comforts the distressed conscience , gives a cordial to the sick . he that appeaseth pride and anger , asswageth a dangerous swelling . he that casts out the envious devil out of a man , cures a rotting consumption . he that out of friendly monition and information amendeth another mans outward manners and behaviour , clotheth him as it were with a seemly garment and comely ornament . he that begets in a man the love of vertue and true piety , restores him to life . these things ought to be done , but the other in no wise left undone . for he that is liberal in good words , and a nigard in his works , he doth but verba dare , deceive both himself and others . now to whom and what we are to give , i have briefly intimated . ( . ) it remains that i speak of the manner ; which consists especially in these three things : . in the quantity of the gift . . in the universality of the persons to whom we are to give . . in the inward affection or qualification of the mind of the giver . . for the quantity of the gift . cor. . i thought it necessary to exhort the brethren to come before unto you , and to finish your benevolence appointed before , that it might be ready as of benevolence and not of sparing : remembering this , that he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly , and he that soweth liberally shall reap also liberally . now that those that are of a lower fortune be not discouraged or disheartened from giving alms , because they may conceive that their estate is such that their act of communicating must needs be deficient in this first requisite : they are to understand that this quantity of their alms , consists not in an absolute bigness or largeness , but is in relation to their states and abilities . see what a testimony our saviour gives of the poor widow , who cast in but her two mites into the treasury , among those great largisses of the rich men . he called to him his disciples , and said unto them , verily i say unto you , that this poor widow hath cast more in , than all they that have cast into the treasury : for they all did cast in of their superfluity , but she of her poverty did cast in all that she had , even all her living . two mites was not more than all those rich men cast in , but was more to her , or in respect of her poor fortune , than that which those rich ones gave , was to them and the abundance of their estates ! from whence that is plain which i said before , that the quantity of our alms doth not consist in an absolute bigness , but in a respect to our abilities . aelian in his first book of his various history , tells us how the persians , when the king goes his progress , are all to offer gifts to him , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , every one according to his ability . and that one sinetas , when king artaxerxes was not far off from his cottage , what with the fear of the law , and what with the shame , that he should not be found as forward as any in expression of his loyalty and good will toward the king ; having notwithstanding nothing at all at that time to offer or present to his majesty : the poor man was ill troubled in his mind ; and in this perplexity ( the king approaching nearer ) he runs to the river cyras , hard by , with all speed , kneels him down , gets up water in the hollow of his hands , comes to the king and salutes him after this manner ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , o king , artaxerxes , reign for ever ; i now ( o king ) what i am able , after what manner i am able , offer this present unto you , that so far as lies in me , you may not pass by me without the acknowledgment of my duty and allegiance : the king was very well pleased with the gift , and commanded the water to be received into a golden phial . surely the charitable man serves as reasonable a master , and one as graciously disposed . our saviour christ hath promised his favourable acceptance even of but a cup of cold water . whosoever shall give one of these little ones to drink a cup of cold water only , in the name of a disciple , verily , i say unto you , he shall not lose his reward . matth. . and to make the application of the story more fit : he that offers a cup of cold water to these little ones , offers it to no less than a king , and no less a king , than the king of heaven and earth ; matth. . . &c. ( where these doers of good , and free communicators , receive their doom of that great judge , and mighty prince christ jesus . ) come ye blessed of my father , ( saith he ) inherit you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world : for i was an hungred , and ye gave me meat ; i thirsted , and ye gave me drink ; i was naked and ye clothed me ; i was sick , and ye visited me ; i was in prison , and ye came unto me . then shall the righteous answer him , saying , lord when saw we thee an hungred , and fed thee ? or a thirst , and gave thee drink ? or when saw we thee a stranger , and lodged thee ? or naked , and clothed thee ? or when saw we thee sick , or in prison , and came unto thee ? and the king shall answer , and say unto them ; verily i say unto you , inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren , you have done it unto me . he therefore that offers a cup of cold water to these , offers it to this king , who hath promised a gracious acceptance of it , and a sure reward . wherefore we are not to be discouraged from these works of charity , though our means be small : for if we give a little of a little , that little is great in the eyes of god , who knoweth how to prize the works of his saints . if there be a willing mind , it is accepted according to that a man hath , and not according to that a man hath not ; saith the apostle , cor. . so that we see none excluded from this first requisite , in communicating of good : for though one man cannot give so much as another , yet one man may be as liberal as another ; which is , if he give as much for his estate as the other doth for his . which consideration , as it may animate the low-estated man in his beneficency : so it may make them of higher fortunes , bring their liberality to the right measure , and consider that he hath not done a super-eminent act of charity above others , because his alms was bigger than others of lower degree . he that gives one shilling out of twenty , is as truly liberal as he that gives one hundred pound out of two thousand . this i speak , that the poor man depretiate not his slenderer bounty , nor the rich overprize his larger liberality ; but that all may walk in all meekness , humility and holy charity , before god and before men . . but i pass on to the second requisite in our beneficency , which is the vniversality thereof . gal. . . while we have time , let us do good to all men ; especially to them of the houshold of faith . here 's no evasion out of this injunction . if so be the apostle had said , [ do good to all , ] some cavilling sophister would have said , i ; to all christians , or to all true professours ; ( as every sect will be found to stile themselves so . ) thus this [ all ] is to be restricted . but the apostles command , or rather the manner of it , prevents all such self-seeking sophistry : [ do good to all men whatsoever , so far as they are capable ; though in the first place i could wish you to have a special tender care of them of the holy faith , and upright godly life . ] i , but ( will flesh and blood reply ) to our enemy ? yes , to our enemy . if a man find his enemy , will he let him go ? this was that that amased saul so mightily : that david ( a type of the divine love , a symbol of the very life and spirit of christ , ) that david whom he had sought to kill , should let him escape when he was in his power : it wrought so upon sauls spirit , that it forced tears from his eyes , and made his heart in his body like melting wax . when david had made an end of expostulating with saul about his unjust pursuit of him , and had shewed how dear his masters life was in his sight ; saul said , is this the voice of my son david ? and saul lift up his voice and wept : and said to david , thou art more righteous than i : for thou hast rendered me good , and i have rendered thee evil . sam. . i will only add the apostles exhortation , rom. . . if thine enemy hunger feed him , if he thirst give him drink . . and so i go on to the third requisite , which is the qualification of the mind of the giver ; which consists chiefly in these two things , . in chearfulness and willingness of mind . . in an honest and humble simplicity of heart , without any reference to the applause and approbation of men , but in an unfeigned obedience unto god , and tender heartedness toward his neighbour . ( . ) that chearfulness s. paul speaks of , cor. . as every man wisheth in his heart ; so let him give , not grudgingly or of necessity , for god loveth a chearful giver . and rom. . . he that sheweth mercy , let him do it with chearfulness . it should seem that in time past the holy saints of god distributed their alms to men with such a loving and kind spirit , that they out of the abundance of their good affection , added sweet and comfortable words to their christian bounty ; whence in the new testament in the original , beneficency is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 good-speaking , blessing or well-wishing to the party to whom they do communicate : and the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath the same notion , which signifies both benediction and a gift . ( . ) the second qualification of mind is the sincereness of communicating , without respect to popular applause , but merely out of love to god and our neighbour . take heed that you give not your almes before men , to be seen of men ; or else you shall have no reward of your father which is in heaven . not that it is unlavvful to give alms in the sight of men ; but unlawful it is to give alms in the sight of men of a purpose to be seen of them . a man among other gifts and graces of god may let this light of mercy shine also before men , that they seeing his good works may glorifie his father which is in heaven : i say , with this proviso we may do our works in publick , that it be not for our own proper ostentation , but for the glory of god. hitherto i have declared , to what persons we are to give ; what we are to give to these persons ; and after what manner we are to give : i will now set down some motives to stir us up to give our beneficence to due objects of our beneficence . . the first motive may be drawn from the things themselves that we communicate : for such is the nature of them that no man can assure himself the possession of them , no not an hour . wilt thou cast thine eyes upon that which is nothing ? for riches taketh her to her wings as an eagle , and flyeth into heaven . prov. . here 's a double argument to unty our hearts from that which flesh and blood so easily cleaveth to . the most envious and nigardly man that is , will be very well content to give nothing , or to part with that which he conceives to be worth little or nothing : and such is riches in themselves ( unless made good use of for further happiness ) instead of being of our substance they are nothing , if solomons judgment be better than ours . but grant they be something ; i , and some great thing too , and very desirable : yet it being so uncertain how long we shall enjoy them , being they are so suddenly stone , as an eagle that in a moment gets upon her wing ; surely we would do wisely to follow our saviours counsel , make you friends with the mammon of unrighteousness , that when you fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations . luke . the covetous man holds his wealth so fast , as if he was perswaded whensoever his riches take their flight as an eagle , and mount to heaven , they will draw him up with them . i , but if he hold so fast , how shall they fly ? or if they get from him , he holds not fast then , and so is disappointed of his post . but to let this pass , and fall more seriously upon instruction . there 's no way of making riches serviceable for our journey to heaven , but willingly to let them fly thither before us : and that is by giving them to poor honest necessitous people ; to them that are as poor in spirit as in purse . thus may your liberality happily arrive at heaven : for heaven is where god is ; and god is there if any where . in so much as you did it to any of these little ones , you did it unto me , as you heard before out of the th of s. matthews gospel . he that gives unto these , doth rather purchase than part with his means : he doth but remove his goods to another house , whither he himself shall follow after , a house not made with hands , eternal in the heavens . . and this is the second motive , viz. the profit which doth accrue to us from our liberal distributions . but if we be so sharp set that we cannot wait till that great payment : that we have no excuse to hold our hands from doing good , god hath promised even a temporal reward too . prov. . . he that giveth to the poor shall not lack . and elsewhere in the proverbs , he that giveth to the poor lendeth unto the lord. and the borrower you know returns the same kind to the lender . so we lending temporal things to god , god will return to us temporal things here ; and eternal spiritual riches he will endue us with hereafter . . the third motive is taken from the persons to whom we are to communicate . the rich and the poor meet together , and the lord enlightens both their eyes . prov. . no difference between the greatest prince and the poorest beggar , but the goods of fortune ; or rather of providence : for they come not to us by chance , but by the good will of god , who hath made out of his wisdom , some poor and some rich , that we may have occasion to exercise the acts of mercy and tender compassion to our brethren ; who live by the same air , vvalk in the light of the same sun , vvere created by the same god , are to be saved by the same christ. there is one body and one spirit , even as you are called in one hope of your calling : one lord , one faith , one baptism : one god and father of all ; which is above all , and through all , and in you all . eph. . what ? one body , and one member despise and disregard another ? one spirit , and not sympathize one vvith another ? one hope , and not help one another ? one lord , and not one fellovv-servant acknovvledge another ? one father , and brethren not relieve one another ? one god above all , over-seeing us all in all our actions , ( vvho though he be so high , yet beholdeth things here belovv upon earth ) and vve poor earthly vvorms overlook one another ? one god in us all , and no goodness in us all ? god vvho is love it self pierce through us all , and yet not those lovely shafts of holy charity vvound any of our hearts ? god forbid . if vve abide not in love , god abideth not in us . if our hearts be contracted and darkened by frozen rigidness , the light of god shineth not through us . if our poor contemptible neighbour be so far under us , that vve disdain to stretch forth our armes to help him , vve forget god above us . if vve love not as brethren , god is not our father . if vve be asham'd of our fellovv-servants , the lord is not our master . if vve be cold in mutual affection , our faith is dead , and hypocrisie is our religion . if vve have no sympathy or fellovv-feeling , the spirit vve boast of is but vanity or empty air . if vve favour not one another as members of the same body , vve are not members of the same body ; but disunited dust , vvhich the wind blovves to and fro upon the face of the earth , and the angel of god scatters it . community is but a name vvhere there is no communication of good : vnity but a deceivable phansie vvhere there is no real mercy . he that will endanger the soul of his brother by with-holding the sustenance of his body , which out of brotherly affection he is to administer to him , surely that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that brotherly love which the apostle calls for , dwelleth not in him . the very shame of poverty will force a man to do or suffer any thing : how much more will pinching hunger , scorching thirst , benumming cold ! necessity hath no law , or at least necessitous persons are easily drawn to think so . give me not poverty ( saith the wise man prov. . , . ) lest i be poor , and steal , and take the name of my god in vain . a good man is merciful to his beast , and shall not we be so good as to have compassion upon men ? the miserable and penurious condition of the poor man would afford me great store or plenty of arguments to plead his cause ; but i will only name them ; hunger , thirst , nakedness , rags , filth , deformity , pensiveness , sickness , torture , contempt , sighs , tears , groans , fear , despair , disconsolateness , assaults of the devil , hard-heartedness of the world , dejectedness of his spirit , weak and vain looks , loss of limbs , blindness and deafness . i cannot name them all ; poverty is attended with such a numerous regiment of defects and infirmities , that they may win the most strong and stony heart to compassionate their miseries . but because we are fallen into these ill latter times , in which the apostle hath foretold that the love of many ( or rather of most , if not almost of all ) shall wax cold ; mercy and pity are not passions easily to be stirred up out of the representation of our neighbours misery and ill plight . these are poor contemptible vertues , befitting the weak womanish sect : a strong vigorous faith , ( i would to god it were so ) or if you will , a deep conceited phansie that we are gods children , ( though we be not merciful as our heavenly father is merciful ) is altogether in request and fashion amongst us christians . so this conceit makes us abound with love toward god , ( as vve think ) : but when all comes to all , it will prove but false and adulterate love ; it will not abide that touchstone , if you love me keep my commandements : or that of s. iohns epistle , chap. . whosoever hath this worlds good , and seeth his brother have need , and shutteth up his compassion from him , how dwelleth the love of god in him ? . but if we do love god so much , and our neighbour so little , yet we may not evade or escape this duty of doing good for all that . for say that all our time is to be spent in the duties of the first table , all our piety to be shewed in performances toward god : if i shew that these acts of mercy and bounty , be acts of the first table too , i hope we will not shew our selves so ungrateful and impious , as to decline this manner of worship which he requires at our hands . now that acts of mercy are duties of the first table , i need go no farther for proof than my text , which tells us that doing good and communicating is a sacrifice : and sacrificing you know is a duty of the first table ; even the immediate service of god. how fitly the apostle hath framed his argument for convincing of mens corrupt consciences , and discovering that mysterious hidden wickedness , that lurks in our hypocritical hearts ; a strong perswasion that we are gods , though there be little of the inward power of godliness in us ! this holy kind of irreligiousness , that is so immerse and lost as it were in a false counterfeit love of god , that it quite forgets all respect and duty to our neighbour : that foolish impudent spirit that would so confidently father it self upon god , and perswade him that he is his child , when it s nothing but the deceitful breath of the devil : a handsome slight to travel to heaven at least charges ! the service of god ; that is , a strong perswasion that we are one of them that god hath sign'd to be his ( though there be no other sure argument or sign , saving that we do strongly perswade our selves so ) the hearing of the word , the saying of prayers , and such outward performances , or outward deceivable phansies ; is a religion so cheap and easie , that it asks a man neither cost nor labour . but to be crucified with christ , to suffer with him , to undergo the deadly dolorous pangs of mortification , to sweat drops of blood , and endure the unspeakable agonies of dying to sin , this is a harder way : to give alms and relieve the needy , to furnish those living temples of god , the poor christians souls with necessaries , this way is more chargeable . now which of those wayes be more pleasing to flesh and blood , let any man judge . beloved , be not deceived , god is not mocked : he that sowes nothing but words , shall reap nothing but wind : if we will serve god as we will , he will recompense us as we would not . i will have mercy ( saith he ) and not sacrifice ; as the prophet speaketh : or in the apostles language , ( if you will be sacrificing ) this is the true christian sacrifice and holy worship of god , even to do good as we have opportunity . as if the apostle should thus speak ; i know that such is the quality of the natural man , and the highness of his mind , that he will easily be perswaded to be exercised in the immediate service of the great king of heaven and earth : but he is not so easily induced to regard the state of his poor necessitous neighbour . such his crafty and covetous disposition is , that he will easily bestow some sugared words upon his maker in publick or private devotion ; so that hereby he may be excused from real good deeds to his fellow-creature : he will easily sacrifice the calves of his lips , so it may exempt him from a chearful relieving or feeding the hungry and needy : he will be very earnest and anxious in the intricate subtilties of opinions , so he may be cold or frozen in common charity , the only acceptable religion . wherefore i knowing these slights and subtilties of the devil , and false and dangerous imaginations of the flesh , and abominable hypocrisie of the natural man , who takes all the hints and occasions he can to decline the true service of god , and seeks false pacifications of conscience for to retain his so dearly loved disobedience , and following his own desires : that you rest not our selves in a false pretended service to god , and so neglect those charitable duties to your neighbour ; i tell you that these good offices to your neighbour are services to god , the highest kind of service of his sacred majesty , such service as is most acceptable to the god of charity . . which is the fifth and last motive ; and brings to the second and third propositions in my text , ( . ) that the doing of good and communicating is a sacrifice : ( . ) that this doing of good is a sacrifice well pleasing unto god. these i will now handle in an absolute way , considering them in themselves . and first of the former ; viz. ii. that doing good is a sacrifice . i will first prove the truth of it out of other places of scripture . then compare the doing of good with the nature of a sacrifice and its kinds . lastly , i will draw some practical inferences from it . . that doing of good is a sacrifice , may easily be gathered out of that in s. iames . . pure religion and undefiled before god and the father , is this , to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction , and to keep our selves unspotted of the world . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , the worship of god ( which in the old law consisted of sacrifices and purifications external ) is this ; even offering or giving our benevolence to the poor , and comforting every one in his distress , as his misery requires , and our ability will afford ; this is our sacrificing : and our washing and purification is not that of the body but the spirit ; the keeping our selves from the pollution of the wicked world ; the lust of the flesh , the lust of the eye , and the pride of life ; as s. iohn glosses upon that word . purity from these , is undefiled religion in the sight of the father : to do good is that acceptable sacrifice or oblation to god. ecclesiasticus . whoso keepeth the law bringeth offerings enough , he that keeps the commandments , offers an offering of salvation ; and he that gives alms , sacrificeth praise . s. paul , phil. . . but i have all things , and abound ; i am full , having received of epaphroditus the things that were sent from you , an odour of a sweet smell , a sacrifice acceptable , well pleasing to god. so this point is strong enough out of divine testimony , that communicating good is a sacrifice . i but , some will say , it is not truly a sacrifice ; but metaphorically , and improperly so called . but the answer is easie , ( and yet beyond their expectation ) that it is more really and truly a sacrifice than those in the old law : as the living man is more truly and really a man than the picture of a man , or his shadow in a glass . it is well known and acknowledged of all true christians , that the service of the old law and its ceremonies , are but types and shadows of the righteousness that is required of us christians under the gospel . so then as the truth of the putting away the old leaven , is the purging of our souls of all malicious wickedness and hypocrisie : ( cor. . . ) so our sacrificing or offering unto god , is giving to our brethren that be in need , and not to god who hath no need of any thing . i will not reprove thee ( saith god ) because of thy sacrifice and burnt-offerings ; i will take no bullock out of thy stall , nor he-goat out of thy fold , for all the beasts of the forest are mine , and so are the cattle upon a thousand hills . i know all the fowls upon the mountains , and the wild beasts of the field are in my sight . if i be hungry i will not tell thee , for the whole world is mine , and all that therein is . thinkest thou that i will eat bulls flesh , or drink the blood of goats . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sacrifice unto god praise . psal. . but what shall we think then , that he that professeth his own self-sufficiency so largely in this psalm ( that he needs not the flesh of bulls , or the blood of goats ) that he stands in need of the empty breath of mans mouth , a thing so fading and transient , that weak puff , or perishing blast of man , whose very substance is but a vapour , a wind that passeth away , and cometh not again ? is this the change of worship that god requires ? is our vain breath the very life and soul of that body of moses , the ceremonies of the old law ? has aarons melodious bells , given place to sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal ? if good deeds ( as giving our goods to the poor ; and body to the fire , if need be ) without charity , be such a disconsonant and harsh thing before god , how will the praise of a wicked worldling , that hath neither inward charity , nor outward munificency , grate the ears of the almighty ! but that you may know that this sacrifice of praise is not a mere lip-labour , let us compare it with that of ecclesiasticus , in the fore-cited place ; he that gives almes sacrificeth praise : and with that of our saviour , let your light so shine before men , that they seeing your good works , may glorifie your father which is in heaven . hence doth shine out the praise and glory of god , even from our outward real good life . but to turn the sacrifice of the old law into a ceremony of words , would not be the turning of the type or shadow into the truth or reality , but the substitution of a lighter shadow for one of more solid subsistence . for words are but imagines rerum , the showes or shadows of things , and the faintest flittingst shadows of all shadows , next to vanity it self . but seni verba dare difficile est : if we offer empty words to the ancient of dayes , he will not be so deceived . wherefore it behoveth us to serve him in the truth of his worship , which is in the acts of charity ; lest we be found as mockers of god , and fire come from his presence ; not to consume our sacrifice , which so easily vanisheth of it self , but to blast our selves ; and so we perish irrecoverably . the summ is this : if sacrificing praise ; that is , giving of alms , or doing any manner of good to our neighbour , out of the holy spring of lively charity in our compassionate hearts , succeed the sacrifices of the old law ; then must these sacrifices of doing good be more really and truly a sacrifice than those of the old law ; by how much more the anti-type is more really such than the type , and every body more really that body or being ( suppose man , beast or tree ) than the shadow or image thereof is such . . this scruple removed , i will pass on to the second thing propounded , which is the comparing this true and christian sacrifice , with that description of a sacrifice that commonly men give . learned mr. calvin , in the fourth book of his institutions , speaketh thus . nos perpetuo scripturae usu sacrificium appellari scimus quod graeci , nunc 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , nunc 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , nunc 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dicunt , quod generaliter acceptum complectitur quicquid omnino deo offertur . we know ( saith he ) that sacrifice in continual use of scripture is called , that which the greeks name sometime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sometime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sometime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which in a general conception comprehends whatsoever is offered to god. so he . and according to this sense it is very plain and evident , that alms or any manner of doing good , especially to the members of christ , is a sacrifice . in as much as you did it to one of these little ones , you did it unto me . matth. . they that are united to god and christ , the spirit of god being shed abroad in their hearts , and so they becoming one with god , and god one with them ; surely our sacrifice of alms offered to these , doth as immediately approach to god , nay nearer and more immediately , than when a sacrifice lyeth upon a sensless stone , and the smoak vanisheth into the empty air . or suppose a turk or infidel to receive these alms ; if they be given in reference to the honour of god , and in obedience to the almighty , they are oblations or sacrifices to god as before : and what great matter , whether an outward fire upon an altar , or the inward heat of an hungry stomach consume them ? but that i may satisfie all apprehensions concerning the nature of a sacrifice , let us now take it in a more proper and restricted sense ; according to which some define it thus , a sacrifice is an external oblation , made to god alone , whereby some sensible thing being consecrated by a lawful minister with some mystical rite , is consumed or changed , to the acknowledgment of our humane infirmity , and the praise and profession of the divine majesty . that all these requisites are found in the true christian sacrifice of doing good , i will both briefly and clearly shew . that it is an oblation external , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gift or offering sensible or external , is evident to every mans apprehension ; it needs no proof or manifestation . but that it is an offering made to god alone , seems more difficult : yet that is true too . as true as in those sacrifices of the old law : for neither in those of the old law was god alone served ; others partaked of the sacrifice ; or the fire , or mens mouths fed upon them , or both . indeed to say the truth , in the matter of the sacrifice , god was not so much as a partaker . will i eat the flesh of bulls , or drink the blood of goats ? can the fume of frying flesh be so acceptable to him , when the vapour thereof is so displeasant to men ? or can he take any delight in the smoak of frankincense , the breath of whose spirit , gives life and motion to those sweet odours of paradise ? surely no. why then , when others partake of the sacrifice and he not , should a sacrifice be an offering to him alone , and not to others ? surely not because he enjoyed any emolument from them ; but because the minds of the offerers passing through all sensible objects and actions , fixed themselves in god , and witnessed before him their obedience and thankfulness , in an humble devotion of soul ; and this was the only thing that passed to god alone . and thus may the christian offering be offered to god alone : when this action of communicating is resolved ultimately into obedience and inward sensible worship of the almighty , not by watery and cold reason , but by a fervent vigour of life : when out of a quick and lively apprehension of the will and nature of god , which is goodness it self and all-embracing love , we to our power work according to that principle , and so exhibit to god an action most consonant to his own nature , an action of bounty and goodness ; neither the applause of men , nor hope of requital , nor any other sinister respect sharing therein ; but god alone being the end and beginning , whereby we move , and in whom alone we rest in this holy action . and this unfolds the following words of this description of a sacrifice , some sensible thing consecrated . consecration , you know , appropriates a thing to god. and our action of communication is appropriated to god , if we seek not any thing for our selves in this action , but do it simply in obedience to the will of god. but now that this action of doing good , whither by hand or tongue , is not without an outward mystical ceremony , is hence plain : for whether it be the munificence of our hands , they are but a resemblance of his munificence , that openeth his hands , and filleth with good every living thing : or if of tongue , whereby we do beget the holy life in others , or direct in doubt or danger , this is an emblem of the eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the everlasting word , whereby all things were made , and are now governed and directed . the next term that i shall explain in this definition , is a legitimate priest or minister . and surely every true christian is truly such . christ hath made us kings and priests unto god his father . rev. . . and pet. . . and ye as living stones be made a spiritual house , and holy priesthood , to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to god by iesus christ. ver. . you are a chosen generation , a royal priesthood . and if we consider the qualification of the righteous man , the unfeigned christian , we shall find him fit for this employment . who more gracious with god than he ? who more loving to men than he ? who therefore more fit to make prayers and supplications for the people than he ? that life which is in him , even the spirit of christ , doth adopt him into an higher order , than the order of aaron . or rather christ whose spirit of life is in him , is that high-priest , higher than the order of aaron ; a priest after the order of melchizedek ; a kingly priest , who officiates in everlasting righteousness . here 's a priest without exception , above all commendation , worthy all honour and admiration , worthy to be heard of god , worthy to be obeyed by men , worthy to be attended by angels , worthy to whom all power should be given in heaven and earth ; worthy of that glorious throne , even the right-hand of god the father in the height of heaven , where he makes intercession for us his poor members , wandering and toyling in the mire and mud of this wicked earth : that vve being redeemed vvith his most precious blood , may be made kings and priests to his father , to offer spiritual sacrifices ; and first of all , our selves , in a sensible apprehension that vve are vvholly from him , nothing at all of our selves ; and then an open and free-hearted love to our neighbour , in acknovvledgment that our fulness is not of our selves but of god. and this contains the last and best requisite , in that description of a sacrifice , the acknowledgment of our humane infirmity , and the praise and profession of the divine majesty . hitherto we have compared this christian sacrifice with the general notion of a sacrifice . we will now see how it fits with the kinds of sacrifice : which according to the schoolmens division are three . ( . ) sacrificing , or slaying of living creatures ; which is most properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and is the word in my text. ( . ) immolation , which is a sacrifice of inanimate things ; as of meal , bread , salt , frankincense , and such like . or ( . ) libamentum , a drink-offering ; as of wine , or other liquid things . how well some kinds of doing good will agree with that first kind of sacrifice , we should easily understand , if we did but rightly apprehend , how that the sundry lives of beasts lurk in the bodies of men ; as in some the fox , in others the lyon , in others the bull , in some one , in some other , in others many . our saviour calls herod , fox . s. paul his persecutors , lyons . so eccles. . be not proud in the device of thine own mind , lest thy soul rend thee as a bull . where there is the living property of a beast in a man ; no wonder that the spirit of truth , that pierceth through the surface of things , into the depth of life , calls them by that which they are within , not by that which they seem without . he therefore that can kill the oxe , the bull , the goat in any mans soul ; that is a stupid laborious toyl in the dirt , an high raving unquietness of mind , or that goatish nature , that brutish sensual lust : he that can exhibit these animalities dead before god , who is judge of the quick and the dead , he offers of the first kind of sacrifice , which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the mortification of some life that god was displeased with . he that doth this either in himself or others , doth sacrifice in this kind . he that gives his bread to the hungry , sacrificeth an immolation . he that gives his drink to the thirsty , offers a drink-offering . as much as you did it to one of these little ones , you did it unto me . he that goes about doing good ; ( as our saviour christ ) that is , he that lives not to himself , but according to the command of god , and example of his son ; spends all his time , power and ability , in diffusing of that good which god hath bestowed on him ; offers frankincense : or rather , that precious composition of sweet odours , which is mentioned exod. . , . and the lord said unto moses , take unto thee sweet spices , stacte , and onicha , and galbanum ; sweet spices with pure frankincense : of each like weight . and thou shalt make of it a perfume , &c. philo iudaeus will have these four ingredients to be emblems of the four general principles or elements of which this world consists : and the evaporation of this fume , to be that acceptable re-ascending of the creature to god in holy thankfulness , and evacuation of it self into that great ocean . his words are very significant . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is a life ( saith he ) well befitting the world , to give uncessant thanks to its father and maker ; even quite exhausting it self in a continual ascent and grateful fume , and simplifying it self into its elements ; that all may see that it hoards up nothing for it self , but consecrates it self wholly unto god that made it . such a sacrifice doth every microcosm , or little world , every particular man , offer dayly unto god ; when he spends all his dayes , and employes all the strength and faculties of his soul and body : it is a thankful acknowledgment of what he hath received , resunding that goodness that he is partaker of , back again to god , through those sure conduits or conveiances , the poor necessitous brethren . but there is yet another division of sacrifices into three kinds as before , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : so philo : which our modern writers call thus , holocausta , hostias pacificas , hostias pro peccato . the reason of this division , philo thus unfolds ; the two main and general causes of sacrificing be these , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : the latter consists in two things ; the participation of good , and the removing or preventing of evil . hence that sacrifice that respects the profit of the sacrificer , is twofold , a sin-offering , for the preventing the just punishment thereof ; and a peace-offering , which was either pro beneficio accepto , or accipiendo for a benefit received , or at least hoped for . ( . ) that the doing or communicating good appertains to the first sort , which philo calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an holocaust , which respects merely the glory of god , and not the profit of the sacrificer , will appear out of places of scripture , concerning this duty of communicating . let your light so shine before men , that they seeing your good works , may glorifie your father which is in heaven . matth. . . there 's the honour of god. now that we are not to participate our selves in this ; but that it be wholly to god , and for god , a true holocaust ; our saviour shews , matth. . . when thou doest thine almes , let not thy left hand know , what thy right hand doth . that is , we must not have any sinister respect , but do it simply in obedience to god , and for his glory . consult not with thy left hand , that is , thy natural false spirit , that will counsel for it self : but let thy right hand act by it self , that strong arm of god , the spirit of christ ; that the action may be wholly to god , the evil principle of that wicked life of falseness , nothing at all intermingling it self with it . and thus this communication of good will be an holocaust , totally consecrated and consummated in the service of god alone . but for the other two kinds , though the christian sacrifice hath not finem sacrificantis , the end of the iewish sacrificant , yet hath it finem sacrificii : for so thanks is rendered to god for his goodness , and further goodness obtained , and future evils prevented ; as is manifest out of scripture . ( . ) the end of the peace-offering , was to procure the blessing and favour of god. see now what the wisdom of god teacheth us , prov. . the liberal person shall have plenty , and he that watereth shall also have rain . and in the psalms ; he hath dispersed abroad , and hath given to the poor : his righteousness shall remain for ever ; his horn shall be exalted with honour . cornelius his prayers and alms , how well were they rewarded with the service of men and angels , and the descent of the holy ghost ! for as he was fasting and praying in his house , one in the shape of a man in white clothing stood before him and said , cornelius , thy prayer is heard , and thine alms had in remembrance in the sight of god. so he directs him to send for s. peter ; who came , and in requital of his alms , fed him with the bread of life ; at whose preaching the spirit of life , the holy ghost fell upon all his auditors , amongst whom was cornelius . thus we see , how meet a sacrifice this is , pro beneficio accipiendo , for the procuring a benefit from god. and as fit it is pro accepto , to manifest our thankfulness for favours received . freely you have received , freely give , saith our saviour : this is all the requital i desire , all the thanks i expect . ( . ) the last sacrifice is a sin-offering . the reward of sin is death : but mercifulness and doing good , delivers from this . prov. . . the treasures of wickedness profit nothing , but righteousness delivers from death . that is , the covetous hoarding of the wicked man , or riches wickedly and unlawfully heaped and scraped up together , shall not profit in the conclusion : but righteousness , that is , bountifulness , acts of mercy ; ( for so the original will signifie , the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is sometime turned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , an act of mercy : as also appears out of the inscription of the poor mans box in the iewes temple , which was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the chest of iustice , as we would translate it , following the first signification of the word ; but according to the signification of the word in that place , the chest of alms. ) this righteousness , goodness of mercifulness , will deliver from death . that of our saviour christ is more plain , and without exception . blessed are the merciful , for they shall obtain mercy . so whether we compare this duty of communicating good , with the general notion of a sacrifice , or with the kinds thereof , we see correspondency enough ; it falls short in nothing of a sacrifice under the old law , but in not being a shadow ; which you might bear withal . though to say the truth , it hath that in it too , the outward act ; which i have intimated before . but the inward principle it self , whence those good acts flow , nothing is greater than it , nothing more divine , nothing more sublime ; the everlasting life of charity , the glory and image of god , the beauty of man , the lamp of knowledge , the sun of paradise , the seal of eternity , the pledge and crown of everlasting happiness . now that i may not seem to have lost my time in inculcating this truth so long , let us see what useful inferences will flow from the same . first then , if doing good be a sacrifice , let us remember that which r. moses the aegyptian conceives , their wise and holy law-giver to have bound them to : vt , quisquis utilitatem aliquam ceperit , ex re sanctificatâ , pro praevaricatore habeatur , &c. whosoever doth take to himself any profit out of consecrated things ( as oblations , or sacrifices , or whatsoever is consecrated to god ) he is a transgressour ; and hath need of an atonement to be made for him , although he commits the act out of error . our doing good therefore to other men ; if we do it not simply in obedience to god , and love of our neighbour ; but in hope of requital by his friends , or himself , or out of desire of applause or vain glory , or any other sinister respects ; it is a making use of a thing consecrated , a sharing with god in the holocaust , and makes our action sinful and unsavoury before god. wherefore vve are to endeavour to the utmost , that vve be not guilty of this sacrilege . secondly , in omni oblatione tuâ offeres sal . lev. . . all thy meat-offerings shalt thou season with salt ; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy god to be lacking from thy meat-offering : vpon all thy oblations thou shalt offer salt . see hovv this precept is inculcated for offering of salt with every oblation and sacrifice . that salt is an enblem of wisdom and discretion is so well known , that i need not speak of it . i will only name our saviours words , you are the salt of the earth : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if the salt become foolish , &c. so that by salt is understood wisdom , or knowledge ; as it presently follows , you are the light of the world . so the seasoning our christian sacrifice of bounty , will prove nothing else but distributing our good things with discretion , whether pertaining to body or mind . rebuke not a scorner , for he will hate thee ; but rebuke a wise man , and he will love thee ; saith solomon . and our blessed saviour instill'd his words of wisdom into his disciples ears , according as they were capable . iohn . . i have yet many things to say unto you , but you cannot bear them now . howbeit , when he is come , which is the spirit of truth , he will lead you into all truth . as the apostle , cor. . the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of god. and chap. . . i could not speak unto you , brethren , as to spiritual men , but as unto carnal : i fed you with milk ; and not with meat , for you were not able to bear it . this is the discretion in imparting spiritual alms. nor is every man a fit object of our bounty , as concerning things belonging to the body . if strength and health be joyned to their poverty , the best charity is to set them to work . thirdly , leaven was not to be offered in sacrifice : so these christian oblations , are to be offered in sincerity of heart , without pride , without hypocrisie . beware of the leaven of the pharisees ; which is hypocrisie . and cor. . the apostle makes mention of the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth . but this is included in the first inference . wherefore i will let it pass . fourthly , if communicating of good be a sacrifice , then it is a duty of the first table , and respects the worship of god : from whence we may learn to set a true estimate upon this duty . we applaud our selves in the frequent hearing of the word of god , and praying to god , and the like . we highly esteem ( i say ) our performances in this kind , because they be of the first table , and respect god so nearly : but that we may with as great zeal and diligence , exercise the acts of charity , as well as of that kind of devotion , the apostle tells us , that when we distribute our goods to others , relieving them either in body or in soul , we then worship god ; we then sacrifice to god , which is an act of service and worship proper and peculiar to him ; which consideration is worthy our thinking of , and more worthy our practising of . cursed is he that doth the work of god negligently . the fifth and last inference shall be this , that which philo the iew speaks of in his tractate , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of them that sacrifice ; of their washing and sprinkling ; that kind of sprinkling of water mingled with the ashes of a red heiser . numb . . which is ( saith he ) to put us in mind whereof we be made ; that we are but dust and ashes , water and earth mingled together . this is our composure , such our frailty , this our poor condition ; capable of so many miseries , by reason of this tempered dirt we carry about with us : and therefore being all of one mould , we may the more heartily commiserate one another , and help one another . this sprinkling is a fit consecration of every christian sacrificer , that in all humility and compassion he may relieve his fellow-member . the summ is this , that with all sincerity , discretion , diligence , humility , and tender sympathy , we may offer unto god , this christian oblation ; even the charitable communication of such good things , as god hath imparted to us . and thus i have dispatched the second branch of my text ; viz. that doing of good is a sacrifice . iii. the third and last is , that doing of good is a sacrifice in which god is well pleased . it is not improbable that the apostle hath here an eye to those many testimonies in the prophets of gods displeasure against the iewish sacrifices . esa. , , . what have i to do with the multitude of your sacrifices , saith the lord ? i am full of the burnt-offerings of rams , and of the fat of fed beasts ; and i desire not the blood of bullocks , nor of lambs , nor of goats . bring no more oblations in vain : incense is an abomination unto me : my soul hateth your new-moons , and appointed feasts . so chap. . . he that kills a bullock , is as if he slew a man : he that sacrificeth a sheep , as if he cut off a dogs neck . what is it therefore that god would have ? wherein is his delight ? i desired mercy , and not sacrifice , saith he , hosea . . and in the first of esay , he nameth the relieving of the oppressed . and chap. . ver. . he speaks of a poor and contrite spirit ; and such a spirit is also merciful . for it's pride and high-mindedness that makes us forget the evil plight of our neighbour . i will add a reason or two to confirm this truth , and so conclude . god is truth and essence it self ; therefore his delight is in the truth of every thing , and not in their empty shadows . he loves the truth in the inward parts , as the psalmist saith . therefore doing good out of pure charity , cannot but please him ; it being the substance of the iewish ceremony of sacrificing . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; saith the pious iew : true sacrificing , what can it be , but the piety of the soul that loves god ? and he that loves him , must needs love his neighbour also : and he that loves his neighbour , will do good to him so far as he is able . therefore the same author saith very truly in another place . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . humanity ( or forwardness to do all good offices to our neighbour ) and piety are twins . he thinks not the term of cousin or sister fit enough ; but calls them twins , to shew that they be born both at a time . so soon as true piety is born in us , humanity strait springs up with it . now this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or love of our neighbour , being so like the nature of god , whom the apostle calls love ; this principle and the effects of it ( doing good to our neighbour ) must needs be acceptable to god. the heathens had so much reason in them , to offer that to their deities , which was most consonant to their nature . so the persians sacrificed on horse to the sun , ne detur celeri victima tarda deo. but i will not insist upon the proof of a thing so plain : i doubt not but that you are thoroughly perswaded of the truth of these tvvo latter parts of my text , that doing good is a sacrifice ; and that it is a sacrifice wherein god is well pleased . the inference and conclusion of all is that vvhich i begun vvith ; viz. to do good and communicate forget not . and that vve forget not , he that hath set his eyes upon the hearts of men , and mindeth all their wayes ; he strengthen us and stir us up , by the powerful working of his all-quickening spirit ; that we constantly endeavour to fulfil the dictates thereof through iesus christ our lord ; to whom with the father , and the blessed spirit , be all honour , glory , power , praise , henceforth and for ever . amen . discourse xii . gal. vi . , , . but god forbid that i should glory , save in the cross of our lord iesus christ ; by whom the world is crucified unto me , and i unto the world . for in christ iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing , nor uncircumcision ; but a new creature . and as many as walk according to this rule , peace be on them , and mercy ; and upon the israel of god. the drift of this epistle to the galatians is to reduce them again to the truth of christianity , that were almost apostatizing to iudaism and the ceremonial lavv of moses . ye observe days , and months , and times , and years : i am afraid of you , lest i have bestowed labour on you in vain . chap. . ver. , . but the main scope of the apostle is against circumcision , as is plain upon the very first perusal of the epistle : which he beating dovvn , together vvith all the lavv of moses , and extolling the faith in christ , seems sometime to excuse a man from walking in the lavv , under the pretence of faith in christ. but as s. peter hath well observed ; there be many things in s. pauls epistles hard to be understood , which foolish men pervert to their own destruction . and that we be not led into the same error and mischief , i hold it not from my purpose to trace the footsteps of s. paul in this present epistle , if so we may happily wind our selves out of this dangerous maze or labyrinth . whereas then he seems to nullifie , or vilifie at least , the law , in the advancing of that righteousness that is by faith ; let us see what this righteousness that is of faith , and what that of the law is . chap. . . for i through the law am dead to the law , that i might live unto god. ver. . i am crucified with christ : nevertheless i live ; yet not i , but christ liveth in me . i through the law am dead to the law , ] what a riddle is this ? that the law should deprive it self of its disciples . and yet it doth so . for it is a schoolmaster to christ , or rather an usher : which when it hath well tutour'd us and castigated us , removes us up higher , to be made in christ perfect , who is the perfection of the law : but the law it self makes nothing perfect . and this is the reason that righteousness is not of the law. and to this purpose speaks the apostle in this very epistle , chap. . ver. . is the law then against the promises of god ? god forbid : for if there had been a law given which could have given life , verily righteousness should have been by the law . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a law that could enliven and enquicken us ] . but that is beyond the power of the law. that 's the title and prerogative of christ ; who is the way , the truth , and the life . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i am the resurrection and the life : he that believeth in me , though he were dead , yet shall he live . iohn . . this therefore is the righteousness of faith or belief ; far above the righteousness of the law or killing letter . now when this faith is come , we are no longer under that poedagog of punie-boys , the low-master : but are all the children of god by faith in jesus christ. and none are the children of god , but those that are led by the spirit of god , as the apostle witnesseth in his epistle to the romans . and those that have the spirit of god , what fruits they bring forth , is amply set out by the apostle in this to the galatians , chap. . ver . , . but the fruit of the spirit is love , joy , peace , long-suffering , gentleness , goodness , faith , meekness , temperance : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , against such there is no law : for indeed there is no need of it , they being a law unto themselves . so we see how those that are in christ , are not under the law , because their obedience or that living law in their hearts are above it : they do really and truly fulfil it , through the spirit that is by faith : for that spirit is the begetter of love , and love is the fulfilling of the law. for all the law is fulfilled in one word , even in this ; thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self . but if ye bite and devour one another , take heed that ye be not consumed one of another . this i say then , walk in the spirit , and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh . for the flesh lusteth against the spirit , and the spirit against the flesh ; and these are contrary the one to the other ; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would . but if ye be led by the spirit , ye are not under the law . ver. , , , , . observe that [ if you be led by the spirit ] for against such there is no law , as was said before . which implies if thou art not led by the spirit , thou art liable to the curse of the law , to death , hell and damnation : for so also speaks the apostle , when he hath reckoned up the works of the flesh , ver . . but here methinks i see some filching away an excuse for their own hypocrisie , out of some of the foregoing words at the th verse of that th chapter , the flesh and the spirit are contrary , so that you cannot do that you would . i , but withal this is true too , that if we will that which we do amiss , we are then under the curse of the law : for we are not then led by the spirit of god , but are servants of sin and satan : we are not then in christ , no more than our bodies at athens or carthage , but our phansies roving thither ; for they that are christ , have crucified the flesh , with the affections and lusts . ver. . so we see plainly , beloved , that the righteousness that is of faith is not a mere chimaera or phansie , but a more excellent righteousness than that of the law. for the law is no quickening spirit , but a dead letter : but christ is the resurrection and the life . and he is god our righteousness , mighty to save ; and can with ease destroy the powers of death , darkness , and the devil , out of the soul of man : but we must have the patience to endure the work wrought in us by him . i live , yet not i , but christ liveth in me . and if we will still cloak and cover our foul corrupt hearts with forged conceits of hypocrisies own making , and excuse our selves from being good to one another or to our selves , because god in christ is so good to us ; hear what the apostle speaks in the last chapter of this epistle , ( for it is now time to draw nearer to my text ) ver. , . be not deceived , god is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth , that shall he also reap . for he that soweth to his flesh , shall of the flesh reap corruption : but he that soweth to the spirit , shall of the spirit reap life everlasting . the aim therefore of the apostle is not to extenuate or discountenance real vertue and righteousness , but to point us to it , and tell us where it may be had . not in days and years , not in new moons or festivals , not in circumcision , nor in the dead letter of the law ; but in christ and the spirit of god , in the renewed image of god , in the new birth , in the new life , in the second adam from heaven , in the new creature , in that stumbling block to all flesh and blood , in the cross of christ. but god forbid that i should glory , save in the cross , &c. the text contains briefly the summ of the whole discourse ; we may cast it into these three parts . . the apostles resolution ; he will not glory in any thing save in the cross of christ , whereby the man of sin in his very soul is crucified and made dead , that the life of christ may abide in him . . the reason of his resolution ; because when a man hath given his name to christ , neither circumcision , nor uncircumcision ( nor any of the ceremonial laws ) is any thing , but a new creature . . his benediction or well-wishing to all that walk after the rule ( i. e. according to the new man , that is fram'd in righteousness and true holiness ) the true israel of god ; peace be on them . but i will rather fall upon the words themselves : and in my passage point out such observations , as shall arise most naturally from the text , and be most profitable for you to hear . but god forbid ] that hath reference to the precedent verse , [ but they desire to have you circumcised , that they might glory in your flesh . ] yet the holy apostle , devoid of all ambition and emulation , and of making an outward shovv among them , contents himself vvith that vvhich is but the scorn of worldly men , nay glories in it , and in it alone , the inward cross , the mortification of the old man , the circumcision of the heart . god forbid that i should glory in any thing , &c. ] see the exceeding deep humility of the apostle , a man endued vvith such excellent gifts from god , so learned and vvell versed in the lavv , one acquainted vvith so divine revelations , rapt up into the third heavens , an hebrew also , an israelite , a son of abraham ; such an excellent oratour as he approved himself before felix , before festus , before agrippa , and also at lysta , vvhere they took him to be the god of eloquence , mercury himself , and would have sacrificed unto him ; so well versed in the poets , as his quotations out of aratus and others , testifie him to be . but these are but trifles , i mean poetry and oratory . you may see him in the acts , casting out devils , healing the sick , making the lame walk , recovering the dead to life ; nay giving the spirit of life , even the holy ghost , and with it the power of prophesie , and speaking with tongues : yet all these , and many more ( the least whereof were able to puff up the vain mind of our ordinary christians , and swell them to an unusual extent ) stir not s. paul above his wonted measure : but he still continues himself a paul , i. e. little in his own eyes , though the endowments god had bestowed on him were very great . a true disciple of christ who taught his to be thus minded ; learn of me , for i am meek and lowly . and methinks i hear the apostle call to us out of this text , saying , be you followers of me , as i am of christ. but if a man propound the example of the apostles and saints of god to some , they look on them rather as prodigies to gaze at , than examples to imitate ; and do usually with the rude cyclops in erasmus , return this answer , paulus est paulus , ego sum ego . paul had a privilege to be good , my privilege is to be as bad as he was good . but let reason move thee , if example will not . why shouldst thou glory , and in what ? art thou noble ? no more than the blood that runs out of thy fathers nose , or that which is blown out of it , unless thou be vertuous . art thou well apparel'd ? yet a lilly is better . art thou fair ? it is but in thy superficies , or surface of thy body ; within is stinking dung and dirt . art thou strong ? yet weaker far than an ordinary cart-horse . art thou proper ? yet not so tall as a pine. a goodly great-bodied man ? the whole earth is but a point , why struttest thou then so proudly , as if thou wouldst out-face heaven ? thou art a wise and subtil piece : so is the devil , and a serpent . thou art extolled and admired of men : so is vanity . beloved of women : but their own lust and lasciviousness a great deal more . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all , whatsoever thou boastest thy self in , is but ludicrous and ridiculous , contemptible dust , and less than dust , even nothing . why then dost thou glory in any thing ? god forbid that i should glory in any thing , save in the cross ] what a paradox is this ? more strange than not to boast at all . for not to boast , there being nothing worthy boasting of , is but reasonable : but to boast of that which is a shame and reproach among all men , is uncouth and strangely admirable . crux crux , inquam , infaelici & miseris . the cross was but the fate and doom of thieves and malefactors , and as little glorious as the deserts that bring to it . but it may be it was some fine silver or golden crucifix : a pretty toy for children to glory in . what was it ? the cross of our lord iesus christ ] . yet it is but a stumbling-block to the iews , and to the greeks foolishness . i , but it is the cross of christ , whereby the world is crucified to him , and he unto the world ] . this is worse and worse , a scandal also to the christians themselves . sufficient for them it is that christ bore his own cross , and the cross bore him : it was fitter one man should dye for the people . what ? that we may securely live in sin ? god forbid . he that will be my disciple , let him take up his cross and follow me , saith our blessed saviour . the death therefore of the cross belongs to us , as well as to him , though we would fain avoid it ? this is true then ( truer than we would have it ) that a right christian whose pattern s. paul is , must be crucified to the world , and the world to him ; be dead unto the world , and the world dead to him . but what is the world , and what to be dead to it ? s. iohn in his ep. chap. . describes it from its parts ; ver. , . love not the world , neither the things that are in the world . if any man love the world , the love of the father is not in him . for all that is in the world , the lust of the flesh , and the lust of the eyes , and the pride of life , is not of the father , but of the world . these then ought we to be dead to , viz. the lust of the flesh , i. e. all carnal concupiscence and unlawful desires of the body , all gluttony , drunkenness and leachery : to the lust of the eyes , i. e. all covetousness and filthy avariciousness , desiring to encroach and compass all that we see , and pleasing our selves with looking upon what we have got already , but making no good use of it , to the glory of god or good of our neighbour : to the pride of life , i.e. ambition , stately and lordly living , the praise and applause of men , superiority and authority over others . all these things we are to be dead to by the inward cross , by an holy and serious mortification of our corrupt life . but how shall a man be able to mortifie this corruption , to kill these inordinate desires ? i will tell you an infallible way , upon condition you will remember it : by a constant denial of their cravings . give a beggar nothing at thy door , and he will never visit thee . desire is starved by being unfulfill'd . a man , you know , often loseth his appetite by staying very long for his dinner . inordinate desire will hurt a man like an ague , if we pamper or satisfie it . the devil and the sop will both down into our guts at once . but thou mayst pine out both desire and the devil that lurks in it , by a pertinacious temperance , or stopping thy self in thy outward actions . affect not vain glory in thy actions or words , but modestly decline it , and pride will fall in thy soul in good time ; thou shalt find humility rise in thy heart , and sweetly shine in thee with her mild light . give not thine anger vent , it will be extinct like smothered fire . answer not thy lust or lasciviousness , and it will cease to call unto thee , but dye as a weed kept under in the ground . dare to do good , though thy base heart gainsay it : god will look upon thee in pity , and repay thee with a more noble spirit ; and covetousness being oft crost , will even out of discontent quite leave thee . but if thou be false to god and thine own soul in these things which he hath put in thy power ( and he hath put the outward man plainly in thy power ) and neglectest the performance of them , and yet doest complain of want of strength , thou art in plain english an hypocrite ; and the devil and thy own false heart have deceived thee . a man , i confess , cannot generate himself , but he may kill himself : so though we cannot regenerate our selves , yet we may mortifie our own corruption , if we be not wanting to our selves . and this is the cross that we with s. paul are to bear , and to dye upon ; that when we have suffered and been buried with christ in this baptism , god may raise us up with him to life , and endue us with his holy spirit . and this is the new creature which is spoken of in the next verse , for in christ iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing , nor uncircumcision ; but a new creature . in christ iesus ] i. e. when we have taken upon us the profession of christ , have been made members of the christian church by baptism . circumcision availeth nothing ] . and verily there is no reason why it should , for it is a badge of judaism , not of christianism ; and cannot , no not in judaism , do much without the inward circumcision of the heart , and observation of the commandments of god. rom. . . to the end . for circumcision verily profiteth , if thou keep the law : but if thou be a breaker of the law , thy circumcision is made uncircumcision . therefore , if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law , shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision ? and shall not uncircumcision which is by nature , if it fulfil the law , judge thee , who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law ? for he is not a iew , which is one outwardly ; neither is that circumcision , which is outward in the flesh : but he is a iew , which is one inwardly ; and circumcision is that of the heart , in the spirit , and not in the letter , whose praise is not of men but of god. and this also was known and propounded to the iews under the law. deut. . . circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart , and be not refractory . and in chap. . ver . . and the lord thy god will circumcise thine heart , and the heart of thy seed , to serve the lord thy god with all thy heart , and with all thy soul , that thou mayst live . and what else indeed doth god require of thee , o man , but that thou wouldst love the lord thy god with all thy heart and all thy strength , and thy neighbour as thy self ! this if thou perform in thy circumcision , thy circumcision is effectual to thee : if thou do not , it is but concision ; and cutting off a piece of flesh , which god and nature was not so overseen in making , but it might well be left uncut off . and if circumcision without obedience and an holy life , availeth them nothing that are under the law , how could it possibly be any thing to us that live under the gospel ? but to what purpose is this to us that do not bear the outward circumcision , nor are likely to prove so giddy as to revolt to judaism ? wherefore let us here turn aside awhile from the circumcision of the iews , to that which is its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that answers to it among us christians : and that is baptism . will that avail any thing without the new creature ? what it may do to children before they be actually sinful by their own misdeeds , i leave to the censure of the schools to dispute : that concerns not us who are past children , were we got as far out of foolishness as childishness . the question is , how much baptism availeth us of grown . age , without the new creature . just as much as circumcision without the keeping of the law , availeth a iew. can water wash without the spirits operation ? doth the spirit operate and effect nothing ? are we suppressors and choakers of the christian life that should revive in us , and yet stand justified before god ? can we kill christ within us , and persist in that obstinate cruelty , and yet be clean from the guilt or punishment of so hainous transgression , by the sprinkling of that outward water upon us in baptism ? ah nimiùm faciles ! qui tristia crimina caedis flumineâ tolli posse putatis aquâ . foolish and too too credulous men they are indeed , that think their being dipt in the font , shall vvash out the deep stain of this so horrible murder . yet there is a baptism that vvill do it , and vvithout it nothing is done : it is mortification . if the murderer dye , that is , that man of sin , the old adam , or the blood-red edom , and christ revive , all is vvell . rom. , , . know ye not , that so many of us as were baptized into iesus christ , were baptized into his death ? therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death : that like as christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father , even so we also should walk in newness of life . ver. , . knowing this , that our old man is crucified with him , that the body of sin might be destroyed , that henceforth we should not serve sin . for he that is dead , is freed from sin . believe it , though vve are called to liberty , vve are not invited to libertinism . but our true liberty or freedom is to become free from sin . so you see that outvvard baptism vvithout the invvard , is as little available as circumcision in the flesh , vvithout that in the spirit . if any here , as it is not plainly immaterial , ask of the efficacy of the lords supper : so far it is from doing good vvithout an invvard qualification , that it is poyson to the unvvorthy receiver , or vvorse ; even damnation it self , as the apostle vvitnesseth . it is the new creature then only , or at least chiefly , that a christian must rest upon ; sith nothing is available without it . the new creature ] it is worth the enquiring into , what this new creature is , that is of such efficacy , and power , and worth , and price . it is no more certainly than the new man. ephes. . , , . that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man , which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts : and be renewed in the spirit of your mind : and that ye put on the new man , which after god is created in righteousness and true holiness ; that is , not in external ceremonial holiness , or outward sanctimonious show ; but in the regeneration of the inward spirit to a new life from the very heart . and again , col. . , , . lie not one to another , seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds : and have put on the new man , which is renewed in knowledge , after the image of him that created him : where there is neither greek , nor iew , circumcision , nor uncircumcision , barbarian , scythian , bond nor free ; but christ is all , and in all . this new creature then is nothing but the image of god in the soul of man. so witness both these texts : — the new man which after god is created in righteousness and true holiness : after god ] that is , according to god ; or like him , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , after the image of him that created him . this new creature is the likeness of god : and the likeness of god ( as both these places evidently shew ) doth consist in knowledge , righteousness and true holiness . the very same that plato speaks at once in his theatetus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to be like god , is to become holy , just , and wise . but because most men ( even the old adam in us ) take themselves to be holy , just and wise : it will be seasonable here to see what justice , wisdom and holiness this is that is in the new creature . and who can tell it so well as he that is it ? matth. . , . ye have heard , that it was said by them of old time , thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill , shall be in danger of the judgment . but i say unto you , that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause , shall be in danger of the judgment : and whosoever shall say to his brother , racha , shall be in danger of the council : but whosoever shall say , thou fool , shall be in danger of hell fire . ver. , . ye have heard that it was said by them of old time , thou shalt not commit adultery . but i say unto you , that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her , hath committed adultery with her already in his heart . ver. , , . again , ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time , thou shalt not forswear thy self , but shalt perform unto the lord thine oaths . but i say unto you , swear not at all . but let your communication be , yea , yea ; nay , nay : for whatsoever is more than these , cometh of evil . ver. , . ye have heard that it hath been said , an eye for an eye , and a tooth for a tooth . but i say unto you , that ye resist not evil . ver. , . ye have heard that it hath been said , thou shalt love thy neighbour , and hate thine enemy . but i say unto you , love your enemies , bless them that curse you , do good to them that hate you , and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you . behold the exact and unblameable righteousness that is in the regenerate soul , far above the doctrine or thoughts of the pharisees . external righteousness in the outward man , or to be internally just as far as corrupt reason suggests , is but filthy raggs , in respect of this righteousness that christ requires of us , and the new creature doth bring with it , once grown up to its due stature in us . let every man examine himself by this rule . and as this iustice is far above , i , sometime contrary to the justice of the natural man ( for with him to hate his enemy , to recompence evil with evil is just ) so the holiness is far transcending the holiness of the scribes and pharisees , and zelotical ceremonialists . for all outward ceremonies of time , or place , or gestures , or vestments , rites or orders , they are all but signs and shows ; but the body is christ , the same yesterday , and to day , and for ever . lastly , that the natural man phansie not himself wise ( as who is not , of all precious things , the most forward to appropriate that to himself ? ) that he phansie not himself wise , before he be holy and just , let him examine his wisdom in the third chap. of s. iames's ep. ver. , , , , . who is a wise man , and endued with knowledge amongst you ? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom . but if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts , glory not , and lie not against the truth . this wisdom descendeth not from above , but is earthly , sensual , devilish . for where envying and strife is , there is confusion , and every evil work . but the wisdom that is from above , is first pure , then peaceable , gentle , and easie to be intreated , full of mercy and good fruits , without partiality , and without hypocrisie . the righteousness then of the new creature is a righteousness far above the letter of moses's law , though exactly performed . it s holiness more resplendent than the robe of aaron and all his priest-like attire , or whatsoever ceremonies else god hath instituted or man invented . it s wisdom far above all the thin-beaten subtleties of the disputacious schools , without contention or bitter contradiction . and they that walk according to this rule ] this upright rule of everlasting righteousness , peace be on them , and mercy ; and upon the israel of god. ] 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . peace be on them , or peace is on them . for the verb is not exprest in the greek . peace certainly is on them , they having obtained the true righteousness , whose very essence is peace , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the peace of the soul , as the pythagoreans have well defined it . and how can there not but be peace , when they that cause tumult and rebellion in the soul are dead ? pride is dead , covetousness is dead , anger is dead , malice , hatred , and envy , and lust , all dead and buried in the true christian baptism : none left now but reasons liege subjects . the whole man now is but an habitation of the deity , the temple of god , an instrument for the holy ghost to work his will by . this is the kingdom of god in us , the kingdom of peace and righteousness , the kingdom of joy and triumph in the holy ghost . this is the rule of christ in us , who is the prince of peace . and they that are thus guided and ruled , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , peace on them ] . the inward peace is on them ; they are at peace with god , and their own conscience : and god give them also peace with men . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , let no man molest me ( let no man trouble me ) for i bear in my body the marks of the lord iesus , saith s. paul in the following verse . the apostles desire is but equal : for why should any man afflict this peaceable generation of men ? certainly it is either out of ignorance or malice , whosoever do it . pray rather even for the outward peace of this true ierusalem : they shall prosper that love thee : for these indeed are the true inhabitants of salem , whose head or king is melchizedek , king of righteousness , and therefore king of salem , that is , king of peace . this is , as the text doth plainly speak , the israel of god ] ; the righteous nation in whom there is no guile . as our saviour saith of nathanael , behold a true israelite indeed , in whom there is no guile . and thus the psalmist , surely god is good unto israel , even to such as are of an upright heart . god continue his goodness to them , and encrease it sevenfold : and encrease them in number above the sands of the sea , and the stars of heaven ; that none may be able to count the dust of jacob , or to number the fourth part of israel : that the heathen may be swallowed up of them ; and that the very memorial of wickedness may perish from off the earth , to the king of saints , the holy one of israel , who inhabits immortality , and the light inaccessible , to the only wise and all-powerful god , be ascribed , as is most due , all honour , &c. discourse xiii . pet. i. , . seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit , unto unfeigned love of the brethren ; see that ye love one another , with a pure heart , fervently : being born again , not of corruptible seed , but of incorruptible , by the word of god which liveth and abideth for ever . the text is an exhortation to christian love , the duty is enforced from a double argument . . from the end of our sanctification , in those words , seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , unto ( or for ) unfeigned brotherly love . and this ushers in the precept or duty , love one another with a pure heart , fervently . . the other argument follows , of no less force than the former , which is drawn from the condition of our new birth ; being born again , not of corruptible seed , but of incorruptible , by the word of god , which liveth and abideth for ever . the several truths or doctrines contained in the first argument are these , viz. doctrine i. that the christian mans soul is purified . purified ] 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word , synonymous to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; both imply a purging or cleansing from filth . they are both used together , iames . . in one signification : but yet there is a more special sense belonging to them both ; they both signifie a sacred and ceremonial kind of cleansing and purification , and after , appropriation to god ; as titus . . where the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with allusion to the consecration of the levites , numb . . and their washing of their cloths , and sprinkling the water of purification , is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that the purifying of the soul ( in the text ) implies cleansing and appropriation . but the objects are not here express'd , yet very safely supposed ; we cannot miss of them if we would . for from what should the soul be purified , but from its filth ? what is the filth of the soul but sin ? to whom should the soul thus purg'd be appropriated or consecrated ? to it self ? it is not purg'd , if not purg'd from it self . to the creature ? it is the height of impiety , palpable idolatry . to sin ? it is not sense . to what then but to god its creator and redeemer , who gave himself , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that he might purifie unto himself a peculiar people . tit. . . thus is purified the christians soul ; which is true not only in that narrower sense of taking the soul , but also as it includes the body , or the beast as the platonists call it ; even the very passions , and more fiery motions which those philosophers resemble to horses drawing the chariot of the soul ; these also shall be sanctified : so that upon the reins of the horses ( if i may speak with zechary ) there is inscrib'd , holiness to the lord. but certainly more properly and chiefly this purification belongs to the soul her self , and from thence will sink through all the powers and faculties of the body , taking hold of them , wielding them and ruling them at its own pleasure , or at least not suffering it self to be over-ruled by them . now this purifying of a christian implies , that he was unholy and foul before . and not only the whole man , but also whole mankind is in this sinful state till wash'd and purified . rom. . . ioh. . , , . where we have both these points confirm'd . . that we all have sinned , and stand obnoxious before god. . that by the worth and merit of christ , and the effectual working of the divine spirit we have forgiveness , and that god doth cleanse us from all unrighteousness . and this is the true christian mystery : if we be christians , we must be as certainly purified , as its certain we were once impure . doct. ii. that the christians soul is purified in obeying the truth . here meets us the unwelcome visage of obedience ; but with its face turn'd upon a safe object the truth . where we may note , that it is not any obedience that purifies , but the obedience to the truth . a man may toil like a mill-horse in a circuir of ceremonies and outward performances , and yet but take his walk with the wicked , unless the truth be obey'd . again it is such a truth as obedience belongs to , not an high aery speculative truth ; not a truth only to be believed , but to be put in practice ; for we cannot be said properly to obey speculative truth , because the soul there has no power to resist or disobey : for the devil himself would glady embrace and assent to all pure and inoffensive speculation , that doth not touch his own interest and present condition ; and so would all his and natures children , the most wicked men that are : and that the devil is cast into a fit of trembling at this grand speculative maxime , [ there is a god ] ; is because his quick memory doth presently recollect that he is just , and that himself stands obnoxious to his justice ; here is his interest toucht . the truth therefore here meant is not so much those general speculations of the infinite power and wisdom of god , the incomprehensible trinity , &c. which both good and bad men do easily spend their time in , and promiscuously believe , and yet sit securely upon their lees , their hearts being untoucht , unbroken , unstir'd : but the truths which we are said most properly to obey are the practical truths , such as matth. . chap. . . chap. . ult . chap. . . &c. the purification of a christian is in obedience to such truths ; and christ admits none for his that be disobedient , workers of iniquity . matth. . . doct. iii. that the purified and obedient soul is thus purged and obedient through the spirit . this is he of whom malachi . , . but who may abide the day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he appeareth ? for he is like a refiners fire , and like fullers sope . and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver , and he shall purifie the sons of levi , and purge them as gold and silver ; that they may offer unto the lord an offering in righteousness . we having then so powerful a purifier , what hinders but the christian soul may be purified ? no doubt of this refiners art or skill . is his will doubted of ? it is one with the will of god ; and gods will is , that we be purified , thess. . . and christ is no teacher of loosness , but of the height of righteousness . 't is not the privilege of the gospel that we may sin securely , because christus solvit ; but that we may live more exactly , because christ requires it , and doth inwardly enable us to perform it . see also rom. . , , , . there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in christ iesus , who walk not after the flesh , but after the spirit . for the law of the spirit of life , in christ iesus , hath made me free from the law of sin and death . for what the law could not do , in that it was weak through the flesh , god sending his own son , in the likeness of sinful flesh , and for sin condemned sin in the flesh : that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us , who walk not after the flesh , but after the spirit . here we will acknowledge that god is able , his spirit is willing , but we are uncapable of so great a good , by reason of the infirmity of the flesh : but answer me , o vain man , what is this infirmity of the flesh , is it not the strength of sin ? and is there any strength that can withstand the powerful operation of the spirit of god ? the weakness , or strength if you will , of the body bears it towards the earth ; but the fire and activity of the natural spirits bears it above , and enables it to walk upright on the earth , contrary to be bend of its own essence and nature . shall not the spirit of god then be as able to actuate and lead the soul contrary to its accidental and ascititious principles , as the natural spirits to actuate the body contrary to its innate and essential principles ? certainly if it be not effectual in us , we our selves are in fault , who abuse our shuffling phansie and reason to fend off the stroke and power of truth that at once would cleave our hearts , that 's a tender place , the seat of life it self ; and any religion but that which kills us and mortifies us . the devil knew well enough what he said , and his children make it good ; skin for skin , and all that a man has will he give for his life . this is the shuffling hypocrisie of the natural spirit of man , and the root of infidelity . but let us make better use of this precious scripture , [ seeing ye obeyed the truth through the spirit ] . st . for the encrease of faith , and confidence , and courage in the wayes of obedience , sith we have so strong assistance as the spirit of our god , with true christian fortitude to conflict with all our spiritual enemies , wearing that motto in our minds , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . dly , for hearty thankfulness to god when ever we find our selves successful in our spiritual warfare , as to the only giver of victory . dly , and lastly , for humility , aequanimity , and christian patience and expectancy towards our neighbours that are not yet reclaim'd from their evil ways , being compassionate over them ; not to insult in other mens weaknesses and miscarriages , sith we our selves stand not by our own power , but by the gracious assistance of our saviour jesus christ : and certainly purification arrived at its full end , will easily afford us this ; for the end of purification is brotherly love , which is the fourth doctrine . doct. iv. that this purification of the soul , and obedience to the truth through the spirit , is for this end , viz. the eliciting of brotherly love and sincerity in the soul. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] . i know , sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are distinguished , as pet. . . but that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here may be as large as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i know nothing considerable to the contrary . the word is capable of that sense , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being used in as great a latitude as proximus and alter , including all that descended from our father adam . so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the love of our neighbour ; and this love is the end and height of our purification and obedience , the aim and scope of it , as much as concerns the second table , rom. . , . and tim. . . who is able to express so divine an excellency ? for certainly the unfeigned love of men is the very divine love it self , whereby god loves himself and all things , and we also love god and all things in reference to him . this is that love of whom the whole universe was begotten , and that rock'd the cradle of the infant world ; the very spirit of god , whose splendour none can behold and live ; for he must first be dead to himself , and extinguish the love of himself , before he can be touch'd and quickened by this spirit of life and love. thus much for the doctrines included in the first main argument . in the second are these ; viz. doctrine i. that there is a regeneration of the soul. by understanding what generation is , we may better know what is regeneration . . the notion in general of generation ( according to aristotle ) implies no more than a right and fit union of a form substantial with some capable subject , whether that form be elicited of the subject or matter , or be brought in from elsewhere , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle speaks of the rational soul. . there may be more forms substantial than one in one subject ; so they be but subordinate one to the other ; and that a new species doth not arise so much from the destruction of the pre-existent form , as by addition of a new one , which might actuate the whole that doth pre-exist : as the numerus ternarius is not made by taking from the numerus binarius , but by adding an unite thereto . thus aristotle seems to speak , metaph. . cap. . . observe , that one soul actuating a body , if any part of that body be cut off and lose the benefit of information , suppose an hand or foot , that is then said to be but equivocally what it was before ; which implies it is then of another nature or species , as much of it as there is , though it be not an entire substance if compared with the whole ; and consequently that the soul actuating it , did then specificate it another way . we have now a tolerable insight into generation , and regeneration is but this twice told . that which is this specifical substance now , by adding a new substantial form thereto becomes something else : this is regeneration . and to apply it to our selves . we are already once born according to nature ; our bodies and souls being fitly united together by him that is the father of all life , and the lord of nature : but though we be thus specificated , yet we are not thence perfected ; but this binary of body and soul the pythagoreans would be bold to call but a miserable , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , till that third completing vnite be added , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that divine nature , or spirit of god. this doctrine of regeneration is inculcated often enough in scripture , though not under this express name ; but it is strongly enough implyed in as many places as there is mention of being born of god : for what is that but regeneration , or a second birth , and how oft is that repeated in s. iohns writings ? iohn . , . but as many as received him , to them gave he power to become the sons of god , even to them that believe on his name : which were born , not of blood , nor of the will of the flesh , nor of the will of man , but of god. chap. . . iesus answered , verily verily i say unto thee . except a man be born of water and of the spirit , he cannot enter into the kingdom of god. regeneration is not a sleight tipping or colouring over with superficial qualities and habits , but is from a substantial principle of life , that actuates the soul as powerfully as the soul doth the body ; is the souls true form or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the soul is the bodies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and form . for what doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imply , but penetration and most intimate possession of the subject actuated or informed , and power , rule and command over the same to move it at pleasure ? and doth not the divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the eternal word , thus penetrate and possess the souls of godly men ; even as the subtle light doth the air , of it self but a dark and forlorn body ? there is so perfect a correspondency between generation and regeneration , that unless prejudice and sophistical curiosity keep it off , mans reason would forwardly assent that the christian regeneration is no dry metaphor , but full truth : and that the regenerate man is even as specifically distinct from the mere natural man , as the natural man from brute beasts . we made it good even out of aristotle , that the species or essences of things are as numbers , &c. the ternarius is not made by taking from the binarius , but by adding another unite thereunto : therefore a man though he have one form already , viz. the natural soul , it hinders not but he may have also another , the quickening spirit of god. i will add a little more force to the conclusion by taking notice of the grounds of our specificating things , and essentially distinguishing the one from the other ; that we may discover the like grounds for our conclusion . what small and slight intimations from accidentary differences in natural bodies , have cast the earth , water and air into so many distinct species ; and that they cannot put on one anothers outward qualities , without the generation of some inward substantial form ! a little difference in weight and colour must imply a several specification in silver and gold ; and upon a little more occasion than colour and taste , must a pigeon and a partridge be distinct species . not that these things are false , but that there is as true grounds to find a real specifical difference betwixt a natural man and a man regenerate . for if several colour , figure and weight , though they be something near akin to one another , be a sufficient cause of surmisal that some inward essential form is within ; surely then when we see the soul of man figured and covered over with new thoughts of mind , new knowledge , new desires ; it is as good an argument that it is actuated by a new principle of life . but here it will be replyed ; then any chast man will specifically differ from an unchast man , just men from unjust , philosophers from idiots . but it is not such an opposition as it seems at first sight . the improvement of nature is no sign of a new specification . a horse that can go , may also trot , gallop , pace , swim , and dance too , and yet not cease to be an horse : but if i should see him flying in the air , i should take him to be no horse but a devil . a nightingal may vary with her voice into a multitude of interchangeable notes , and various musical falls and risings , and yet be but a nightingal , no chorister : but should she but sing one hymn or hallelujah , i should deem her no bird but an angel. so the highest improvement of natural knowledge , or mere morality , will argue us no more than the sons of men : but to be of one will completely with god , will make us , or doth argue us to be the sons of god. stones , dirt , metals , minerals , distinct enough one from another , agree in tending downwards to the earth ; and fire is as much determinate to moving upward to the natural seat of that element : but if that either of them , or fiery or earthy nature , move of its pleasure upward , downward , to the right , to the left , this way and the other way , even as it will ; no man any longer will suppose it either fire or earth , but something else specificated by a new internal principle . to be always bent down to the desire of the body and worldly delights , that motion is bestial : to be always reaching at high things , that 's diabolical : to be disengag'd from a mans self , and stand indifferent to what ere the will of god is , that 's angelical or divine . but it is again objected , if regeneration imply a real new generation , that then it must also imply a real corruption ; so that the natural soul shall be destroyed , or at least natural knowledge , natural principles of reason . not a jot of this follows . neither the soul it self , nor its natural principles of knowledge or reason are destroyed or abated , but made up and perfected . doth one unite added to two pre-existent unites destroy those unites ? or rather , do they not all put together beget a new number of another species and name ? or , to bring it more home , doth the soul of man coming into the organiz'd body , destroy the body ? or doth it not rather perfect and compleat it ? so doth also the spirit of god coming into the soul. but as for the pre-existent qualities , no more of those are destroy'd than are incompatible with the residence of that new form , the divine spirit . disobedience and wickedness be the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with this new birth . reason is no more incompatible with this state , than phansie , memory , hearing , seeing , smelling , &c. nor the improvement of reason , or arts and sciences , then looking upon the stars through a galilaeos glass , or reading the bible with an ordinary pair of spectacles . doct. ii. that the soul is regenerated of no corruptible seed , but incorruptible . there needs no descant upon this , no interpretation , the words are so clear ; no proof , the truth is so unquestionable . doct. iii. that this incorruptible seed is the word of god. the word of god has two or three senses : it signifies the written word , the word spoken , and verbum mentis , that which god conceives within himself . this last is chiefly the word : the other but dead signs or shadows of it , differing as much from this , as a picture of a man from a living man ; nay much more ; as much at least as the shadow of the garland hanging on a sign-post , and projected on the ground , differs from the best wine in the inne . the word spoken perisheth with the speaking , vox audita perit . the written word is indeed longer-liv'd , but paper and ink is not incorruptible and immortal : for the heavens shall melt away with a noise , and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ; the earth also , and the works that are therein , shall be burnt up . pet. . . the word of god then is safe no where but in his own bosom , cypher'd within himself in his own mind . this is his eternal wisdom and incorruptible word ; the only incorruptible seed . preaching and hearing , and reading and discoursing , they may be a kind of plowing or harrowing , or some such piece of husbandry : but it is an hand out of the clouds that sets this seed of everlasting life in our hearts . those are but some hungry talk of the best dishes , or spreading the table : this is the real food . those but a note under the physitians hand : this is the very physick that restores to health . doct. iv. that this word of god , which is the seed of the soul , is a living and everlasting word . this word is no other than the inward word of god , which is his first-born son , the everlasting wisdom of the father , which sat in counsel with him when he made the world. prov. . iohn . this second hypostasis is so acknowledged by the heathen to be everlasting ; they make it to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the first life . that it is a living word , we have an ample testimony , heb. . , . for the word of god is quick , and powerful , and sharper than any two-edged sword , piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit , and of the joynts and marrow , and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart . neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight : but all things are naked , and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do . can these attributes be given to any dead letter , or any transient hand ? can words or writings be so penetrating as to divied asunder the soul and spirit ? &c. 't is true , authors both divine and profane give very quick operations to the words of the tongue . prov. . . by long forbearing is a prince perswaded , and a soft tongue breaketh the bone . psal. . . my soul is among lions , and i lie even among them that are set on fire , even the sons of men , whose teeth are spears and arrows , and their tongue a sharp sword . psal. . . who whet their tongue like a sword , and bend their bows to shoot their arrows , even bitter words . and in homer , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to speak words that cut to the heart . but for this , consider that it is not the words that do then so wound the mind ; as the mind launceth it self , and plagues it self by those unruly phantasms she then occasionally creates in her self upon such speeches . one man being jear'd at a comedy , bears himself so carelesly and jollily , that he walks cross the stage that all the people may take notice that he was the man that was so abused . another so used , goes home and hangs himself ; which is a sure experiment to prove that it is not words , but the souls own thoughts that so wound and scorch her self . words of themselves are but empty shells and husks , and can give no greater blow than the shadow of hercule's club lifted up in the sun ; nor can no more administer comfort than an ivy-bush can quench our thirst . wherefore it is plain , that 't is the soul her self that creates these joys or disturbances in things natural or moral . but in real conversion to god , in unfeigned repentance , in the new birth ( as the letter or outward word is excluded , as has been cleared , so ) the soul her self is excluded , as being unable to regenerate her self ; therefore what is left but god himself by his living word ? that 's the immediate cause of conversion and regeneration , the other but occasions . if not , there is no supernatural act at all in conversion and regeneration . again , this word of god is said to be a discerner of the thoughts , &c. all which are manifest properties of life . compareing therefore this place of the hebrews with the text , it is plain that there is a living and everlasting word , and that that word is meant in both these places : and if so , then it s the same with s. iohns words , in him was life , and the life was the light of men . thus much for the doctrines or truths , which are as so many enforcements to the great duty , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the substance of the duty is mutual love ; which is charged with a double modification , viz. of quality , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and of quantity , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; which implies extension , and is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or intension , and is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . again , this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or extension , is either in reference to the object or else duration , and implies an universal love , and continued . but no english word will fully answer to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : therefore our interpreters have been forc'd to make use but of one of these senses , fervently : and they have with more judgment , pitcht upon the sense of intension than extension , because that intension in some measure implies extension ; but not è contra ; for that which is ( ex . gr . ) very hot , has also a further extended sphear of calefaction , and doth last longer hot , than that which is at first but more remisly heated , as is manifested in heated irons . to make any subtle disquisition of the nature of love , is not much to the purpose . every one knows what it is to love himself , how he is affected towards himself : let him but transfer that affection , which he is so sensible of in himself , to his neighbour , and the duty is done more substantially and completely , than all scholastical definitions and curious circumscriptions can be able to set it out . be so affected to other men , as you would they should be to you , or as you are affected to your self : this is the law , and the prophets . the incitements to this duty are many : but i will confine my self to the text , and cull out some three : as , . from the seed of the new birth . for what is this seed but the son of god , by union with whom we also become the sons of god , petty deities ? but sith that the deity it self is nothing else but a sufficient and overflowing goodness , creating all things , and sustaining them from no other principle than the spirit of goodness ; though we cannot act as this absolute deity , yet we may will according to that uncreated will , which is nothing else but pure overspreading love. again , this seed , ( as hath been shewed ) which is the word , is a living seed . but where life is , and understanding or sense , there must needs be love , for it is the flower and sweet of all desire . what then can be the desire of the living word but love ; and how can he want desire , sith he is life ; and what can he so much desire as the good and welfare of mankind ? what therefore should that part of mankind that partake of this divine nature , desire more than the good of one another , and of those also , that as yet have not partaked of that divine nature : for god also loves those , or else how could ever any partake of it ? . from the regeneration of the soul. it is the holy ghosts own arguing , ioh. . . beloved , let us love one another : for love is of god ; and every one that loveth , is born of god , and loveth god. ver. . and we have known and believed the love that god hath to us . god is love ; and he that dwelleth in love , dwelleth in god , and god in him . by righteousness and unrighteousness , by love and hatred , are the children of god and the children of the devil manifested . iohn . . in this the children of god are manifest , and the children of the devil : whosoever doeth not righteousness , is not of god , neither he that loveth not his brother . ver. . we know that we have passed from death unto life , because we love the brethren : he that loveth not his brother , abideth in death . if water or earth be turn'd into fire , we expect it should burn and be hot . how shall then a son of satan , or the earthly man , be turn'd by regeneration into the son of god , and not love ? . from the end of our sanctification . love is the very end of it . shall envy , shall hatred , shall lust , ambition , luxury , &c. shall all these enormous desires and affections be cast out of the soul by sanctity and purity , that she may be but a transparent piece of ice , or a spotless fleece of show ? shall she become so pure , so pellucid , so christalline , so devoid of all stains , that nothing but still shadows and night may possess that inward diaphanous purity ? thus would she be no better than the nocturnal air , no happier than a statue of alabaster ; it would be but a more cleanly sepulchre of a dead starved soul. nay , certainly at this cleansing and preparing is for something well worth that labour . the stoicks themselves , that were such severe sentencers of passion , would retain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . stoicism it self brings in , upon that deadness and privation of other passions , that divine motion of the soul , which is love or goodwill to all mankind . and shall christianity be but a cold grave to the mortified soul of man ? no surely , there is a resurrection to life , love and the divinity , as well as a death of the enormous affections of this mortal body . bitter zeal , harsh censure , busie revenge , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are so far from being able to supply the place of charity , that it 's a manifest sign that we are as yet carnal and unsanctified . discourse xiv . psal. cvi . they joined themselves also unto baal-peor , and are the sacrifices of the dead . this psalm is a compendious commemoration of those many slips and falls the children of israel had in their journey to the land of canaan . as foul and as dangerous as any , is this in my text ; this business of the baal-peor . in the handling whereof i will observe this method . first , i will explain what may seem difficult to understand , or ambiguous . secondly , i will further confirm out of scripture the narration in this particle of scripture . thirdly and lastly ; i will make some observations or deductions from the truth of this text ; such as will come from it with as much ease as profit . i. for the first . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. they joyned themselves . ] for although the word be in niphal , and may seem to signifie either passively or neutrally ; yet ( as elias the grammarian hath observed ) the conjugation niphal sometimes signifies as hithpael , which denotes a reflex act : tota actio ejus est retransitiva , quum recipiatur ab ipso agente . so he expounds that in kings ! 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amasa non est custoditus ; that is ( saith he ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non custodivit se. so lev. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 et venditus tibi . vt dicunt sapientes bonae memoriae ( saith elias upon this place ) loquitur hic versus de vendente seipsum , necessitate cogente . other examples this grammarian brings , for the further confirmation of the matter , but i will omit them ; these being sufficient for proof . according therefore to this analogy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be interpreted ( as our translators have expounded it ) they joined themselves also to baal-peor . to baal-peor ] but what 's that ? such an abomination that i am loth to name it . i am almost forced back at the evil sight of it , and ill sent : and well may be , if we believe the hebrew writers . peor ( saith vatablus ) testantibus hebraeis spurcissimum idolum madianitarum fuit , a denudando nempe nomen habens : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 enim aperire & denudare significat . i will not venture any further in this description . the impure dog hath more modesty than the worshippers of that deity : for that which they hide by scraping over earth from the sight of men , they lay open to the view of their god. yet as filthy abomination as it is , the iews ( as moses the egytian for example , and r. salomon ) stick not to assert it as true . origen durst conclude , that at least , it is idolum turpitudinis , though not define what kind of turpitude , in his twentieth homily upon numbers . cum multae sint turpitudinum species , una quaedam ex pluribus turpitudinis species beelphegor appellatur . s. ierom ventures to parallel it with the latines priapus , and makes it to be chiefly workshipped of women . others i could bring in to confirm this of the turpitudo of this idol . but i lift not to dwell so long upon an history so foul . it is enough and too much , that it be true that all assent to , that it was an idol that israel joined himself to . those things concerning it that be questionable and uncertain , i will let go , and will build nothing but upon a sure foundation . let the condition therefore of their transgression be set as low as venerable bede hath pitch'd it , in his exposition upon this text , initiati junt ( saith he ) or consecraverunt se , vel initiati sunt & sacricaverunt beel , qui colebatur in phegor : belus enim fuit pater nini , in cujus honorem filius idolum fecit , quod vocabatur beel , & colebatur in regione phegor , cui isti in deserto sacricaverunt . and hence we may have some little light , to find out the meaning of the latter words of my text , they ate the offerings of the dead ] that is , offerings offered to dead men , departed this life . est honor & tumulis animas placare paternas . ovid. fast. this piece of superstition exhibited by ninus to his father belus descended to his posterity , and over-spread that country ; he being not a private person , but lord of a kingdom . this worshipping of the dead by prayers and sacrifices , is as commonly known as ordinary school-books . there 's a large description of these rites in homers odyssees : where after three libations or drink-offerings of wine and honey , of wine , of water and meal , which were poured into a ditch of a cubit wide , with promise of a further sacrifice , a barren cow and a black wether , with a present immolation of beast then prepared for sacrifice , upon the running down of the black blood , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , straight there were gathered together by whole flocks from out of erebus , the souls of dead deceased . cardan also writes of adrian , that he erected a temple and oracle , instituted priests and rites for his execrable catamite antinous , when he was dead . this is the superstition of necromancy . which tho' the israelites aimed not at , in their sacrificing to the ghost of belus ; yet is their idolatry as little , if not less excusable : for the end of the necromancer is knowledge of future things , or things past that lie hid : the drift of the israelites was the accomplishment of their wicked lust , their committing of whoredom with the daughters of moab . but more light than from any profane writer , may we gather out of the book of wisdom , chap. . a father afflicted with untimely mourning , when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away , now honoureth him as a god , which was then a dead man ; and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices . thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law , and graven images were worshipped by commandment of kings . here we see a father making an image for his child , and deifying him with ceremonies and sacrifices : which makes venerable bedes opinion of the childs deifying the father [ ninus his erecting an image in honour of his father belus ] sufficiently probable . so an ungodly custom got the strength of a religious law among the children of moab : as also that among the latins from the first example of aeneas , ille patris genio solennia dona ferebat : hinc populi ritus edidicere pios . ovid. fast. lib. . where patris genius may be very well for anima patris , the soul of his father , or his fathers ghost ; as hesiod also terms the souls of them that dyed in the golden age , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is genii in latin. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — these be genii . plutarch restricts it not to the golden age , but speaks at large : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . souls freed from their bodies become genii according to hesiod . so plutarch , and he venters to shew how they be affected with things here below : they love to be abettors though not actors ; as old men who have left off the more youthful sports , love to set the younger sort to their games and exercises , and to look on and encourage them ; as he expresseth it in his de genio socratis . maximus tyrius doth endeavour at large to prove that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or genii be nought but the souls of men , who are occupied much what in such employments as they were in the flesh . and xenocrates in aristotles topicks , makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all one , even when it is in the body . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : as xenocrates saith , he 's happy that hath a good soul ; for the soul is the genius of every one . but i have not bestowed all this pains for a distich in ovid. if we be perswaded of the identity of the souls of the departed and genii or spirits , way is made to that in s. basil , where he describes the nature of sacrificing to these genii , daemones or souls of the deceased ; they being all one , or little difference being betwixt them . which will be further confirmed , if we consider that even all the deities of the heathen ( as iupiter , mars , sol , luna , and the rest ) have been men upon earth , as the egyptians witness in diodorus sicalus ; from whence the graecians had their numina , as the egyptians contend , and is not improbable . insomuch that we shall scarce find any daemones or daemonia among the heathen , but the souls of them that have departed this life , to whom sacrifice hath been offered . statues , temples and stars have been bestowed upon them , as in that story of adrian and antinous , whom he placed also among the stars ; the constellation next the eagle bears his name , as all the planets the names of men once here upon earth , as i intimated out of diodorus . but to come at length to s. basil , out of whom we shall understand more fully this eating of the sacrifices of the dead , or of the daemones or daemonia , the statue consecrated to any daemonium or genius , hath the assistence ( saith he ) of the genii or daemonia . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. for as hungry dogs haunt the shambles where blood and gore use to be , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so the lickersome daemonia seeking the enjoyment of the blood and nidour of the sacrifices , frequent the altars and statues consecrated to them . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . hence it is that the apostle saith , that they that eat things consecrated to idols , partake of the table of the daemonia , or genii : or ( as was probably inferr'd before ) the souls of the dead , according to their apprehension . for it is more incident to natural reason to think that the souls of the departed ( men being rather forced out of their bodies by fatal necessity , than willingly following the call of nature ) that they should delight rather in such provision as men can make them , than those that we conceive never to have stooped so low as the descent into the flesh : and so , whatsoever s. basil speaks of the daemonia , natural reason to be more prone to conceive of the souls of the departed ; and accordingly to have provided for them in that worship they did to them . so that they that have been [ joined to baal-peor ; ] that is , that have been initiated into that religion , have worshipped the soul of belus , and have been partakers of his table , eaten of the same flesh with him ; accordingly as s. basil explains the daemonia . and nor reason , nor scripture , nor the mysteries of nature do any thing clash against this . ii. but now that israel was initiated into those rites of peor , is manifest out of numb . . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. initiatusque est israel beelphegor : or , as the hebrew hath it , et adjunxit se israel baal-peor . but that we may see the abomination of this act more fully , we will take in a more full narration of it . and israel abode in shittim , and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of moab , and they called the people unto the sacrifice of their gods , and israel joined himself unto baal-peor . ver. , , . of that chapter . that which is here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sacrificia deorum , is in my text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sacrificia mortuorum : which makes further for that i drove at before , viz. that the gods of the heathen are mostwhat the souls of dead men . thus i have dispatched the two former parts of my task , viz. the explication and confirmation of the truth of this text , so far as was needful . iii. the inferences following are these . first , from those words [ they joined themselves to baal-peor ] we may observe , that it is long of a mans self when he sins . thus ecclesiasticus . , . say not thou , that it is through the lord that i fell away : for thou oughtest not to do the thing that he hateth . say not thou , that he hath caused me to err : for he hath no need of the sinful man. so iam. . , . let no man say when he is tempted , i am tempted of god : for god cannot be tempted with evil , neither tempteth he any man. but every man is tempted , when he is drawn away of his own lust , and enticed . to say therefore , that it is the all-swaying providence of god that bore men to this or that evil action , is to blaspheme the sacred name of god , and contradict reason and scripture . or ( which seems more plausible ) to say the devil ought us a spight , is but to be gull'd by the devil , and to add a new errour to our former misdeed . the devil may suggest , but not compel . but to exalt the strength of the evil spirit above the dominion and power of him that is the prince of spirits , as tho' they were stronger than he , is to cast god out of his throne , and to place satan in his stead . surely god who hateth sin with a perfect hatred , will not let the devil prevail against that will in us that is conformable to his . if we be against sin , god will aid us . if we fall into wickedness , it is long of our selves : yea , though the greatest of wickednesses ; for they joined themselves to baal-peor , &c. not forced or necessitated by the devil , against a good will , and sincere aversation of sin ; for this is the will of god , and he will help his own will : nor led on by god ; for god will not beget to life that which he hates to see . but the truth is , god who is the god of love and freedom , would have us to serve him out of a free principle ; and so neither constrains us to good , nor over-sways us to evil . secondly , they joined themselves [ also ] to baal-peor . the calf in horeb , their envying and murmuring against moses and aaron , their lusting after the flesh-pots of egypt , all these did not satisfie ; but as if these were a light matter , they add whoredom and idolatry in this business of baal-peor . hence we may observe , that the wickedness of a mans heart knows no bounds , but his evil desires are enlarged like hell. thirdly , if we compare the greatness of this transgression with the great experience they had of the power and love of god to them ; who had done great things for them in egypt , wondrous works in the land of ham , and fearful things by the red sea ; who had given them from mount sinai an express law against idolatry , in thunder and lightning , clouds and vapours of smoke , to the utter dismaying of them from sin ; who had given them manna in the wilderness , and fed them with angels food ; who had guided them by two mighty pillars , a cloudy pillar by day , and a pillar of fire to give light by night ; who had made them eye-witnesses of so many miracles of his almighty arm : that these people should so fouly apostatize , argues plainly an excessive weakness in the children of adam . and the best use we can make of it is this , to be vigilant over our own wayes , and merciful to our brother when he slides . fourthly and lastly , we may gather also a kind of disability in all outward stays and props of our souls in goodness , all visible helps for piety ; if something stronger within do not sustain us and keep us . what more forcible outward means could have been used , than israel had experience of ? but all the terrour upon mount sinai , and all that tempest and dread in giving of the law , all the miracles that were wrought by the hand of moses , and the visible presence of god or his angel , all those passed out of their minds like a dream , and vanished as a vision of the night ; all those failed them , when the present object possessed their eyes , when the beauty of the daughters of moab had ensnared their hearts , and captivated their souls to the commiting of folly . the young man in macarius , who in an high rapture beheld glorious sights , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , faces of light , and the shining lustre of heaven , after fell into the filth of the flesh , and deplorable deformity of life . the best use we can make of this is , not to satisfie our selves with any outward or momentany worships or ceremonies , as to rest in them ; but to seek an inward principle of never failing life . else so soon as we are departed the church , and that honour we do there to god , we may be easily carried into the service of the devil , the committing any wickedness . whereas if we had the living spring of truth and righteousness in us , we should also have a perpetual sense of what is good or evil : and as our natural life is tender of it self , and perceives the least touch of harm that approacheth it ; so would that spirit of life and truth be exceeding sensible of whatsoever is contrary to it or the will of god , which would always be very fresh and vivid in our minds and will. but to attain to this spirit of life and righteousness , there is no way but mortification , a death to sin and our own selves , that the life of god may alone rule in us . then shall not the daughters of moab inveigle us ; that is , as philo the iew interpreteth it , the false allurements of the bewitching senses . nor shall we then worship baal-peor ; or partake of his sacrifices , that is , according to the same author , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. we shall not dilate all the openings of our bodies for receiving the influx or strong impressions , the unwholesome vapours of this intoxicating world , and the pleasures thereof ; and so drown our souls in the bottom of corruption . for so he interpreteth the name of this idol , as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , intimating his power to lye in all the openings of the body , or rather outward skin ; through which the influences of this sensible world , if they be not kept out by due vigilancy , stream in and drown the soul , and choak all life of vertue and goodness . this is that great deity of the heaten : this is the idol of the daughters of moab , whose stay and confidence is in this visible world , whose joy and pleasure is in the life of the flesh. i will conclude with the conclusion of the psalmist . save us , o lord our god , and gather us from among the heathen ; to give thanks unto thy holy name , and to triumph in thy praise . blessed be the lord god of israel from everlasting to everlasting ; and let all the people say amen . praise ye the lord. discourse xv. col . iii. . if you then be risen with christ , seek those things which are above , where christ sitteth at the right hand of god. this text contains in it that precious mystery of the internal or inward resurrection of christ in our hearts or souls ; which is the chief , if not only saving knowledge of that part of our christian religion . for ( alas ! ) beloved , what will that outward resurrection of our saviour according to the flesh profit us , though we have the history of it never so accurately ; nay , though we had seen it with our own eyes ? we may lye in the grave of sin our selves for all that : we may sink like a dead stone into the bottomless pit , and have our portion with the damned devils , who have an historical faith of all the passages of christs doings or sufferings here on earth ( it may be ) better than our selves . and those wicked souldiers that watched his sepulchre , were perfectly convinced , that he had escaped the jawes of death : but what was this to them , who were yet dead in their trespasses and sins ? surely nothing at all . and as little is it to us , beloved , if we be dead in sin , and have not risen from the strong holding bands of iniquity and vanity . wherefore it is not enough to say christ dyed for our sins , and rose again for our justification ; and so to imagine his resurrection to be our raising from wickedness and corruption : but we our selves also really and in truth are to rise from the grave of sin , by the power of the enlivening spirit of jesus christ. and whether we be thus risen indeed or no , this present text of scripture will teach us . if you be risen with christ , seek those things [ or you do seek those things ] which are above : for the greek text will bear both senses . i will first briefly run through the sense of the words ; and then raise such doctrines and uses as shall most naturally flow from the text , and shall be most profitable , for the promotion of that main work of our salvation . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if then you be risen with christ , ] that is , if you be risen in your souls , as christ in body rose from the grave : if your souls have scaped the bands of the spiritual death , which is the nature and life of sin , ( for that maketh us truly dead unto righteousness and unto god ) as christs body broke from the prison of the sepulchre : then you seek those things that are above . it must needs be understood of the resurrection of the soul from sin , because the apostle did not preach to dead men departed this life once , and again clothed with this fleshly tabernacle ; but to men , who were alwayes alive from their first being born into this visible world. in vain then had he taught them a sign of that which he knew would never come to pass , till the colossians were past his preaching to ; to wit at the last day , the time of the resurrection of our bodies . and according to this manner , doth the apostle speak also of the crucifixion of christ ; making the outward passion and death of christ , a sign or resemblance of something in our souls , viz. our dying to sin , as here he hath made his resurrection an emblem of our rising to righteousness . rom. . , & c.. how shall we that are dead to sin , live any longer therein ? know you not that all we that have been baptised into iesus christ , have been baptised into his death ? we are buried then with him by baptism into his death , that like as christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father , so we also should walk in newness of life . for if we be grafted with him into the similitude of his death , even so shall we be into the similitude of his resurrection . knowing this that our old man is crucified with him , that the body of sin might be destroyed , that henceforth we should not serve sin . the apostle there plainly compares our dying to sin , to the crucifixion of our saviour ; and that as he dyed on the cross corporally , so we ought to crucifie the body of sin in us , by the power of god in our spirits . thus have we good warrant from the example of the apostle , to look upon the mystery of christianity with spiritual eyes . the birth , the death , the resurrection , and ascension of our saviour bodily , have their similitude spiritually in our souls . the birth of christ , a resemblance of christs being born in us . gal. . . my little children of whom i travail in the birth again , till christ be formed in you . his death , of our dying to sin , as i have already declared : or of christs being dead in us . for we are also said to crucifie christ by our ungodliness , and by extinguishing his spirit of power and illumination in us . heb. . . for it is impossible , that they which were once enlightened , and have tasted of the heavenly gift , and were made partakers of the holy ghost , and have tasted of the good word of god , and of the powers of the world to come : if they fall away , that they should be renewed by repentance ; seeing they have crucified again to themselves the son of god , and put him to an open shame . crucified again : for verily , beloved , from our very youth up we have laid dead the son of god , the suggestions of the holy life in our consciences . but yet it pleaseth god to raise his son in us , and recover him to life , by the preaching of the powerful messengers of god , and the secret working of his holy spirit upon the heart : and here is christ risen as it were from the grave . but if we by loose and negligent courses , destroy this life of christ in us , and extinguish the spirit of god in our souls , then do we crucifie the son of god afresh , and shame the profession of regeneration and the spirit of god , and the true and living christianism , by our open revolting from the living god , and taking part with the wicked of this world , and their ungodly and sensual courses . but now as christ is thus in a spiritual manner killed and crucified , so when he is in us restor'd to life , it must needs be fittingly termed his resurrection from death : and according to this sense may those words of my text be understood also , if you be risen with christ : that is , if your souls have become living by that spirit of christ being alive in you , then you seek those things that be above . for it is as impossible that the spirit of christ should be alive in us , and not we alive by it to him , as it is , that light should be let into a room , and the air in the room not enlightened wherefore if christ be risen in us , we are also risen with him . but the sign that we are thus risen with christ , is , that we seek those things that be above . but how above ? what ? is the contemplation of the stars , or the knowledge of meteors , viz. of comets , of rainbows , of falling stars , of thunder , of lightning , of hail , of snow or such like , commended to us ? nor astronomy , nor astrology , nor meteorology , seem considerable things in the eyes of god. those things that be above ] that is , in heaven . but how in heaven ? or what is heaven ? we are therefore to understand , that this word [ heaven ] has a threefold signification in holy writ . first , it signifies the air. psal. . . the dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of heaven . that is , of the air. secondly , it signifies that space where the stars , the sun , and the moon , and the rest of the host of heaven do move . isa. . . for the stars of heaven , and the planets thereof , shall not give their light ; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth , and the moon shall not cause her light to shine . thirdly , it signifies that aboad of the holy spirits of men where the eternal light and lustre of god is present ; where christ sitteth at the right hand of god. at the right hand of god. ] that is , the power , majesty or glory of god. for god hath neither a right hand nor a left , because he hath not a body , or any palpable distinct members . wherefore when any sensible parts of a body are ascribed to him , they are to be understood , by way of analogy or resemblance . so when , his eyes are said to be upon the hearts of men , and his eye-lids to try their wayes , when his ear is said to be open to the prayers of the faithful ; these signifie nothing else but that god doth perfectly both know and discern , and approve or disallow , as certainly and as clearly , nay infinitely more clearly , than we see or hear any thing with our eyes or ears . now as by the organs of sense attributed to god , the knowledge of god is set forth , so by the organs or instruments of action or operation , is his power decyphered : and most eminently by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the instrument of instruments , or best of all instruments , the hand . the hand of god is the power of god ordinarily in scripture . so is he said to deliver the israelites with a mighty hand and stretched-out arm ; that is , by exceeding great power . now the right hand being more active than the left , the more usual instrument in outward works or manufactures , it may intimate the exceeding abundance of the power of god. or the right-hand of his power , may intimate the power of god to good ; the more large effusion or pouring out of benignity ; the enlargement and exaltation of the soul of christ and his fellow-members , as many as have been conformable to him in the death , or mortification of the old man. for these also god will raise up with him to eternal riches and glory , and irresistible . power , which the devil , death and sin shall never be able to overcome . but the power of his left-hand , is the power of destruction , the fury , and wrath , and strong tempest of god , which doth sieze the children of disobedience ; which abideth in hell for them , for an endless woe , and toil , and torment for ever . and this is the distinction of the sheep and the goats , on the right hand and the left ; these shall be plagued with the vengeance and anger of god in the power and dominion of hell ; but those shall be strengthened , and comforted with those pleasures that flow at the right-hand of god for evermore . thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave , neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption . thou wilt shew me the path of life : in thy presence is the fulness of joy ; and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore . what therefore the right-hand of god is , we plainly see ; viz. the full and strong stream of his goodness and divine benignity . to sit here , what can it be but to remain in this happiness , unshaken , unmov'd , steadily and securely ? but he that stands is next going or departing . and thus much by way of explication of the words , which will afford us these doctrines . . that there is a spiritual resurrection of the soul , belonging to every true christian . . that those that do partake of this spiritual resurrection , seek those things that be above ; that is , divine and heavenly things . . that they seek them where christ sitteth , at the right-hand of god. first of the first , viz. that there is a spiritual resurrection of the soul in this life . i will not go far for my first proof . i will only step back into the chapter foregoing my text , viz. the second chapter of this epistle to the colossians , at the th and th verses ; in whom ( i. e. in christ ) also ye are circumcised with circumcision made without hands , by putting off the sinful body of the flesh , through the circumcision of christ ; in that you are buried with him through baptism : in whom ye are also raised up together through the faith of the operation of god , which raised him from the dead . and ye which were dead in sins , and in the uncircumcision of the flesh , hath he quickened together with him , forgiving you all your trespasses . and then follows my text ( for all the residue of that chapter may be very well parenthetical ) if ye then be risen with christ , &c. which he doth assert or affirm in the forenamed verses , when as he saith they [ are buried with him in baptism . ] there 's the death we are to imitate in our soul ; that is , to have the body of sin dead and buried . [ in whom you are also raised up by the operation of god. ] there 's the spiritual resurrection of the soul. and in the next verse , [ ye which were dead in sins ] there 's the death of the soul ; [ hath he quickened together with him ] . there 's the resurrection of the soul from its death , which is sin. for sin is the death of the soul ; as obedience , righteousness , or the holy spirit of god , is the life thereof . but for further and more manifest proof of this point , it will not be amiss to rehearse again to you , that place at the th of romans , ( for it suits exceeding well with the place i expounded to you just now . ) ver. , &c. know you not , that all we that have been baptised into iesus christ , have been baptized into his death ? we are buried then with him by baptism into his death , that like as christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the father , so we also should walk in newness of life . for if we be grafted with him into the similitude of his death , even so shall we be into the similitude of his resurrection . knowing this that our old man is crucified with him , &c. the words do plainly describe the spiritual death of the soul , as also the inward resurrection thereof from sin to a newness of life ; as the apostle speaks . and so rom. . . and if christ be in you , the body is dead because of sin , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is mortified for sin : as we would say , such an one is kill'd for robbing , or is let blood for an ague . so [ dead for sin ] is either the mortifying our bodily and carnal affection , in a just vengeance on our selves for the sin they suggest , and made us commit : or [ dead , or mortified for sin , ] is , that sin may be quite dislodged of our bodies ; as a man is said to be let blood for an ague , to rid himself quite of that disease , or to prevent its unwelcome returns . but the spirit is life or righteousness ; that is , the spirit is our life , vivification , or the cause of our inward or spiritual resurrection , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for righteousness ; that is , that we may be righteous , or live righteously . for , beloved , if we take the sense of this place of scripture , in a natural meaning : it will not prove true . for those romans , bodies to whom the apostle writes , were not dead ; for if so , they had not been able to read the epistle , or to have heard others read it : and beside this , the words would imply , that christs being in us , destroyed this body or the health of it ; when as piety unfeigned preserves both body and soul in good temper ; much less doth christs being in us , make the body dead unto righteousness therefore it is plain that this is the sense of this place ; viz. that if christ be in us , the body or flesh of a man is dead or mortified to sin ; and that our life then is the spirit of god , to live in righteousness . now mark the following verse . but if the spirit of him that raised up iesus from the dead dwell in you , he that raised up christ from the dead , shall also quicken your mortal bodies , by his spirit that dwelleth in you . o behold the mighty power and dominion of the spirit of god in a man ! not only our will and understanding , is swayed , ruled , and enlivened by it , but it descends even to the enquickening of our bodies too , when they be once mortified ; that is , the passions and lusts thereof destroyed , so that we exercise not our affections in the things of this world. then will god enliven it with better and more divine passions and affections : for anger against our brother unadvisedly , it shall be moved with holy and discreet zeal against all wickedness in every body : for sorrow and inordinate grief , for its own private crosses , with a sweet and tender compassion and pitty toward all that be in any affliction : for lust , and sensual or carnal love , with divine charity , and a large embracement of all the creatures of god ; they having some resemblance of his lovely wisdom and beauty . thus shall a man exult and rejoyce in the ways of god , both body and soul , serving willingly and chearfully with the whole man. for our mortal bodies , even those earthly tabernacles , lyable to death and dissolution , shall the spirit of christ enliven by his powerful working ; if so be , that our bodies be first made dead unto sin , and the spirit of god be in us indeed : as the apostle doth plainly witness . a further proof for this purpose may we gather out of phil. . , . that i may know him , and the power of his resurrection , and the fellowship of his sufferings , being made conformable to his death : if by any means i might attain unto the resurrection of the dead . not as though i had already attained , either were already perfect . that this is meant of a spiritual resurrection , seems reasonable from these grounds : first , because it is ranked with spiritual sufferings , and spiritual conformableness unto the death of christ : and then , because the apostle useth this way of apologizing , [ not as though i had already attained , either were already perfect ; ] which caution he need not have put in about the bodily resurrection . for could the apostle think the philippians to be so mad , as to conceive that the apostle had now risen out of the grave already , clothed with his glorious body , which should be incorruptible ? wherefore the apostle speaks there of a spiritual resurrection . and that this doctrine want no authority to confirm it , i will add those words of our blessed saviour , iohn . . verily ; verily i say unto you , the hour is coming , and now is , when the dead shall hear the voice of the son of god ; and they that hear shall live . that life and resurrection from the dead , can it be understood of the resurrection of the body out of the grave ? that was not then when our saviour christ spoke ; nor hath been yet fulfilled , saving in one single example of lazarus , whom christ called out of the grave : but that was not the life that is meant here , for it is called everlasting life , in the foregoing verse ; which lazarus was not raised up to , else lazarus would be alive at this very day , which no man will acknowledge to be true . but remember what our saviour christ saith , iohn . , . i am the resurrection and the life , he that believeth in me ( or trusts in me , or my power ) though he dye ( or be mortified ; or though he be dead ) yet he shall live . and whosoever liveth and believeth in me ( that is , is alive in me , or to me , the everlasting righteousness of god ; and trusteth this living power ) shall never dye ; but be ever alive to righteousness , and to god , through jesus christ our lord. this must be understood of a spiritual life or resurrection ; or else it will follow , that all true believers in christ shall not dye at all , that their bodies shall never descend into the grave . and now , beloved , if this discourse of the spiritual resurrection of the soul , seem to us subtle , nice or obscure , it is our fault , not the fault of truth . the sun is clear enough , and easie to be seen , but he that is blind , dead or asleep , beholds it not : nor can the unbelieving and unregenerate , while he lies dead or asleep in sin , discern the truth of the spirit of god in the holy scripture . but all things are discovered , and made manifest by the light : for whatsoever doth make manifest is light . wherefore he saith , awake thou that sleepest , and arise from the dead , and christ shall give thee light . eph. . , . wherefore this point is plain to him whose eyes are open to behold it ; viz. that there is a spiritual resurrection , or vivification of the soul. but now if you be desirous to know what this resurrection of the soul is : i will also endeavour to satisfie you in that too ; but very briefly . it is the inward life of righteousness , it is the renewing of the soul , the shaping of it again into the image and similitude of god ; in a word , it is the life or spirit of christ , whereby a mans soul is alive to all spiritual and heavenly things . i will explain it by a comparison . when a mans natural life is gone , all his imaginations and machinations perish : he desires not any thing belonging to this natural life , nor food , nor clothing ; he feels not though his body be rent , or cut , or rot away ; goes not about to preserve or recover the health or life of his dead body ; thinks not of wife , nor children , nor any natural thing else : but when a man is alive according to nature , he desires food , meat and drink for the preservation of his natural life ; cloths , both for shelter and ornament ; is sensible of what hurts his living body ; provides for his health and strength ; is active in the deeds of nature , and ( if he be a mere natural man ) all his joy , pleasure and content is in the same . just thus it is , beloved , in the death and life of the soul. while the soul is dead spiritually , it hath no true desire to the word of god , which is the food of the soul , but doth come to the church only for fashion sake ; gives no ear to the voice of god , rebuking her in her conscience ; hath no unfeigned thirst after righteousness ; nor is she sensible of the violent heat of passion , how wicked it is ; nor feels her self frozen and stark cold to all charity and due devotion ; she goes not about to obtain that saving health , even jesus christ , that precious balsam of the soul , nor is she a whit moved whatever mischief betides him . but when the soul hath risen from this death , and hath got the new life of christ , being enquickened by his spirit : then hath she a right healthful appeal to that heavenly bread , and those spiritual waters , those refreshments from above , the sweet comforts of the holy ghost : then doth she heartily abhor all filth of sin ; and keeps her affections unspotted before her lord and husband jesus christ , clothed in fine linnen pure and white , which is the righteousness of the saints : then is the living law of god to her sweeter than the honey and the honey-comb , so delightful and pleasant that she meditates thereon day and night : she is very sensible of whatsoever is disgraceful to christ , or wounds or hurts his precious body in any thing ; very tenderly loves the communion of saints , and hath a very forward desire to propagate and enlarge the true and living church of god : she never falls by any infirmity or surprisal , but is grieved and hurt ; as the natural man is vexed , when his body chanceth to fall upon stones and is bruised . beloved , where there is life there is also sense , and where there in sense , there is also grief and joy ; grief at such things as are contrary or destructive of the life ; and joy at such things as are agreeable and healthful for the same . by this time i hope you are sufficiently instructed concerning the spiritual resurrection ; both that it is , and what it is . let us now make some vses of this doctrine , that there is a spiritual resurrection belonging to every true christian. . then it is plain from hence , that every christian be he what he will , that hath been made partaker of this resurrection , was once dead himself : for as rising presupposeth a being down first , so doth also a rising from death , or being quickened , presuppose a being dead . hence therefore it is plain , that every christian man , or if you will even every man , or was once , or is at this present spiritually dead . now the nature of death you know is such , that nothing that is held therewith , nothing that is dead can recover it self to life : as it is also said in the book of psalms , no man hath quickened his own soul. wherefore , beloved , this is the proper vse we can make of this consideration , that if we find the fruits of the resurrection of christ spiritually in our souls , we give god alone the glory . for it is he alone that killeth and maketh alive , that leadeth down to hell and bringeth up again : he it is that is the death of deaths , and a mighty destruction to the destroyer : he it is that is the resurrection and the life ; as he himself witnesseth of himself : he it is ( i mean the spirit of christ in us ) that fights against all the powers of death and darkness in our souls , and triumpheth gloriously over his and our enemies : he is the strong arm of salvation from god : he hath wrought all our works in us . therefore not to us , but unto god be the praise , for his mercy and truths sake . nor only are we to praise god , but also to live humbly and meekly before our neighbour . for thou whoever thou art , that presumest thou hast attained to the resurrection , or enquickening , or enlivening of the spirit of christ ; if hereby thou contemnest thy sinful brother , and settest him at nought , and art not mercifully and kindly affected toward all men , acknowledging very sensibly and inwardly , that wherewith thou conceivest thy self to excel others , or to be distinguished from them , to be the grace of god and his free work ; thou art a lyar , and a deceiver , and jugglest with god and thine own soul , and art vainly puffed up in thy carnal mind : for where pride is , there is not the saving spirit of christ ; where harshness of mind is , and contempt of our neighbour , there abides not the love of god. . if men be dead till they partake of the resurrection of christ , then such neither can , nor ought to take upon them any office of the living . who will make a blind man judge of colours , or a sick man of tasts , or a deaf man of musick ? but he that is dead is worse than sick , or blind , or deaf . wherefore no man that is devoid of the resurrectiod of christ in the spirit , is fit to judge in spiritual things , or in the secret mysteries of god. it is the spiritual man that judgeth all ; the heavenly man , the lord from heaven , and yet with man upon earth ; the true emanuel , god with us , and in us by his spirit ; the true judge of the quick and the dead . as it is written , the first man is of the earth earthly , the second man is the lord from heaven . as is the earthly , such are they that are earthly ; and as is the heavenly , such are they that are heavenly . wherefore , beloved , judge nothing before the time ; that is , till the coming of our lord and saviour jesus ; till his glorious appearing from heaven , when he shall make every work of man manifest , and shall judge with right judgment . . i will only add an vse of examination , and so conclude . is there such a state of the soul belonging to every christian , such a state , i say , as the resurrection from death ? then it is worth our pains , to try our selves , whether we be in that state or no. we have seen many easter-mornings , god be praised , but if the sun of righteousness hath not yet risen upon us with healing in his wings , all those solemnizations of the resurrection of christs body from the grave , is but death and darkness unto us ; is no health , no light , nor life . it was the manner of primitive christians to salute one another with this salutation , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the lord is risen : if we could this easter-sunday , and every lords-day , make such salutations as this in the very spiritual truth , [ the lord is risen , ] that is , is risen from death in our souls ; and we by him become enlivened to all righteousness ; o what mutual rejoycing , and true spiritual triumph , would there be in the church of god! verily , beloved , if you partake not of the mysteries of christianity in the spirit and truth of them , as well as in the history and ceremony , your profession is but vain , you are still in your sins , and dismal sentence of damnation remaineth still upon you . discourse xvi . appendix to discourse xiii . pet. . , . seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit , unto unfeigned love of the brethren : see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently . being born again , not of corruptible seed , but of incorruptible , by the word of god , which liveth and abideth for ever . i have already insisted upon the doctrines or truths which are as so many enforcements to the great duty in the text , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that which may be observed out of this precept is a fourfold doctrine . . that we are to love one another . . that we are to love one another out of a pure heart . . that we are to love one another fervently . . that we are to love one another universally and continually . the first of these i have done with . i come now to doct. ii. that we are to love one another out of a pure heart . this purity may be set out in these three constitutives , or at least , consecutives of love , viz. complacentia , benevolentia , beneficentia . . the purity of complacency consists in this , that we love and like that of a man that is the adequate object of honest love ; and that is divine beauty , which is not in the body , but in the soul , adorn'd with all moral and divine vertues . he that loves not according to this in a man , he loves after the same manner he may love an horse , a dog , or any beast that is fitted for the satisfying of his natural or extravagant humours . for if there be no ground of right friendship but vertue , then is there no love in vain and leud men , but after the manner of brutes ; that is , eating together as sheep and kine in one pasture , or sporting together like young . greyhounds at their going out into the fields , or better natur'd spaniels , or such like fond animals . i , but the gaudes of phansie and queint toyes of wit ; or at least the subtilty thereof , art and accomplishment of the intellectual parts ; these , all of them put together at least , may make up an object of complacency and friendly delight . verily as much as a well proportioned body , clear complexion , a vigorous eye , gentle deportment , &c. which are so far from that living object of pure love , that by the same law we may join friendship with a well wrought statue , or some more curious picture . complacency in any person , saving for vertues sake , is as far removed from pure and divine love , as the affections of xerxes , glauca , the youth of athens , and that others of sparta , who loved trees , statues , rams , geese , &c. were distant from natural . ( vid. aelian . lib. . cap. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ) and as ridiculous and absurd will their love prove in respect of that more pure and holy affection , that can take complacency in the person of men that have but the outward accomplishment of parts and abilities , or outward artifice , or natural well-favouredness , their souls being dead to vertue and righteousness . for beside that these are as helpless to the best things as a dumb statue or a dead picture , they are also very dangerous for either hindering the first shooting out of divine worth in the soul of man , or for corrupting and destroying what already is grown up of vertue and goodness . for so it is with man , that so soon as he is capable of vertue , he must either have it or the contrary . mans nature is no barren soil , it brings forth or good grain or stinking weeds : and where once corruption has taken hold , it is even worse than a gangrene ; it catches hold on the companion , and is the very pest of the souls of men . but if the love and complacency of those be not pure that can love notwithstanding the foulness of their friends , what pollution is there in theirs that can love for foulness it self ? viz. whose society pleaseth one another for some bad quality , as for being a vain gamester , swearer , for their lasciviousness ; or that delicious condiment of friendship , good fellowship , which some loving souls are so taken with : when as it s nothing but the similitude of their evil manners , or equality of their enlarged bellies , do thus joyn their affections ; fellow-wine-bottles of the same size , or ale-tap-urinals , &c. and as this impurity in love is bestial , so there is also that is devilish ; as when men like one another the better for being alike imbittered against this or the other party : such complyance as this is but like the twining together of snakes and venomous serpents in one bed . a paradox , that that which is the most ugly of all the affections , viz. embittering malice and hatred , should make men so amiable one to another . thus hags and imps love one another . and there is a knot of friendship , that is as fond at least , as this is devilish ; viz. endearment from identity of opinion , fellow-thomist , fellow-scotist , &c. and when it riseth no higher than scholastick siding , or philosophical altercations , it is not much worse than fondness or childishness . but when this unskillful affection interweaves it self with matters of religion , and toucheth upon the attributes , actions or designs of the highest god ( where men are very loth to be deceiv'd though no where more subject to err ) fondness is then too mild a term for that which is boil'd up to fury and fanaticalness . for here men of the same sect are not content with the pleasure and good-will they exhibit one to another ; but they grow to that heat , as to scorch all gainsayers , as well as warm themselves at these misguided flames . god forbid that i should go about to slack any mans affection in the pursuit and profession of divine truth , such as is plainly contained in the scripture , or evidenced by palpable experience in his heart . but that which is but the collection of humane reason ( which at the best , and containing it self within its own more proper bounds , the representations of nature , is slippery enough and uncertain ) if it be promoted with urgency of affection over-proportionated to the weight of reason and argument , by how much it transgresseth this way , by so much largely doth it partake of superstitious phrenzy and fanaticalness . and that this heat is but mistaken zeal , not divine love of the truth , this one thing may be a shrowd sign , that they hate a man commonly more for not being of their sect , than they love him for being a christian. . the second branch of love is benevolence : which as it is nothing so precious as the former [ viz. complacency ] so we may and should be the more prodigal thereof . we may wish well to all men , but can delight in none but such as be good . the purity therefore and perfection of benevolence , is that it shoots out before and lasts longer , if need be , than complacency may do . for god also loved us when there was nothing lovely in us . and we are to be like-minded with god , who is kindly affected to those who deserve it not . and though there be a good rude honesty in such a disposition that makes a man not able to be at all kindly affected to them that are debauched ; yet certainly we are obliged to a more high and divine temper , if that which is most perfect and most divine doth oblige us , as certainly it doth . object . but then , anger and hatred , and such churlish passions are useless , nay sinful . sol. that follows not . for we may wish well to the man , though we be angry , or hate , or grieve at his vices . nay , it s impossible to bear a sincere good-will to any man that goes out of the way , but that he should be angry , or grieved at such a mans wicked courses , and reprove him . benevolence is so far from excluding anger and rebuke , that the want of this upon due occasions is an argument of the impureness or counterfeitness of the affection ; at least in those men who hold it lawful , or are upon any occasions brought into this passion . when a man sees god dishonoured , and his brother endangered by his vain ways , quis est tam ferreus ut teneat se ? he that can be still and smooth in such matters , has some unwarrantable complacence in his friend ; they are not united in the bond of vertue . the impurity of this part of love , is the well-wishing to others for our own sakes . this is called amor concupiscentiae , in contradiction to amor amicitiae ; as being indeed nothing akin , but rather opposite thereunto . he that loves a man thus , is no more a friend to him , than a country farmer is a friend to his team of horses , his cart , or plough . i wish that most polititians were not of this stamp , to look upon all the world as the rustick does upon his horse , plough , sheep , dog , &c. as profitable and instrumental . the world is so epidemically corrupt herein , that the whole conversation or dealing of men , ( even of them that would seem something more than ordinarily serious ) is not much better and more generous , than the trade and commerce of fairs and markets : they make choice of their friends after the same rate they would seek out a purchase . profit and pleasure share all the societies of men betwixt them two . he that is not instrumental to either of these ends , is overlookt as a thing of no worth ; so that there is no room but for the skilful flatterer , or the able purse . and indeed none can love at a better rate , that is not born of god , who is love it self ; and made the world , and the whole creature , out of no such self-respects at all , but for their happiness ; or if for any thing in reference to himself , for the delight that should arise to him from their being happy . nor do i know that they are obliged to any thing but what is conducible to this end , whatever unlearned melancholly , or rude mistake may surmize to the contrary . . the third and last considerable in love is beneficence . and . this should spread out as large as our benevolence . humanity is to be extended so far as mankind reacheth , at least , . those who partake most of vertue , and the divine image , should share the greatest part of our favour . . it must be devoid of all self-respects . what a shameful thing is it , that where that noble and generous title of a friend is pretended , there should be no other love found at the bottom ( if the business be unravelled ) than such as he bears to the meanest utensil he has in his house ! we pass on now to the intension of our love , viz. doct. iii. that we are to love one another fervently . and if we did make good the foregoing precept of loving sincerely , we might easily arrive to the doing of it fervently , — quis enim celaverit ignem ? indeed the most accurately well painted flame that is , gives no heat : but true fire without a miracle will betray it self in burning , or warming at least . quest. but you will say , we are uncertain of the due measure and degree of this fervency of our affection . answ. the least degree that we can allow our brotherly affection is , that it must be fervent . coldness here is death , and luke-warmness an abomination , a thing to be spued out , as being nauseating and distastful to all good men . but when we are got to that due warmth and heat that we are really constituted in the divine life and heavenly love , we are in a very good and safe and commendable condition , though we have not reached all the degrees thereof ; for a little fire is as truly fire as a great deal . and these degrees of divine love are , it may be , best proposed unto us in several examples of saints and prophets , which have gone before us carrying the glorious lamps of divine love in their hands to light us the way , that we might follow them by a godly imitation . such were abraham , ioseph , moses , s. paul , &c. this kindly flame did so inact abraham , that in the very heat of the day , at the door of his tent , he waited with as much earnestness for an opportunity to exercise that excellent vertue of hospitality , as our greedy inn-keepers at their sign-posts expect a traveller . nor does this generous fire only melt him into all sweet behaviour and kindness unto strangers ; but elsewhere we shall find it bravely to raise him to feats of arms and hardy . enterprizes in behalf of his captived friends , gen. . and certainly no truer root of valour and bravery can be found , than hearty and compassionate love to those that be in affliction and oppressed : nor any cause that god is more engaged to prosper . nor does this principle of holy fervency only express it self in bounty and indignation , and just revenge ; but in grief also , whether mixt with joy or downright sadness . thus ioseph fell upon his brother benjamins neck , and wept ; and benjamin wept upon his neck . moreover he kissed all his brethren , and wept upon them . gen. . . . and thus in acts . , . they all wept sore , and fell on pauls neck , and kissed him : sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake , that they should see his face no more . but no story in all the new testament at least is of that sadness and solemnity , as the preparation to the raising up of dead lazarus . women , men , nay god himself ( as in the flesh ) all melted together into one sorrow . iesus wept . nor is this so much a torture as a pleasure to the mind sweetly melting in kindly motion and gentle ruth for any mishap that befalls her tender care and charge , the several parts of the creation of god. this is so far from being a blemish to the condition of holy and divine men , that it is even a member and branch of that condition that makes them holy and divine , which is their abiding in love , i. e. in god ; whence we become dei-formes . now the due and safe measure of those degrees of fervency in our mutual love , is , the love of our own selves . thou shall love thy neighbour as thy self ; and none is coldly affected to himself . and that which is to limit our love to our selves , is to bound our affection to our neighbour ; and that is discretion and iustice. for if we may not do any thing unjustly in our own behalf , nor reason , nor scripture , can warrant us to adventure on any unjust enterprise in the behalf of our neighbour . now let us see what this plain and familiar measure will amount to ; which indeed is little less than what was intimated before . for though we love our neighbour no better than we love our selves , and that within the bounds of justice and sound reason ; yet we loving our selves so much , and so affectionately as we do , it must follow that all that joy , grief , pleasure , displeasure , hope , fear , care , labour , valour , and whatever else we can bestow upon our selves in our own behalfes , that when occasion requires , we confer it all upon our neighbour . this will enable us to profess with s. paul , cor. . . who is weak and i am not weak ? what is offended , and i burn not ? and to make good his precept , rom. . . rejoyce with them that rejoyce , and weep with them that weep . to bear others burdens , to wax pale with other mens fears , to grow lean with their cares . it will harness us with courage , as it did abraham for lot. it will make a man , though not desire , yet not care to dye for his brother : for its plain his affection being equal to both , he must be indifferent whether shall taste of that bitter cup. object . if we love every one equally with our selves , then must we love all men equally : which is thus demonstrated ; for the love whereby one loves every man , being each of them equal to that one love whereby one loves himself , they must be all equal to one another from the first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in euclid . sol. i answer , that our love of complacency is not equally to be distributed to all . what then , shall our love of benevolence ? shall i bear as much good-will , and therefore do as much good , and owe as much service to thersites as achilles , shimei as david , nabal as abigail ? verily no. but as god loves himself best , not because it is himself , but because there is nothing better than himself ; so we certainly are to love all things according to the several degrees of participation of the excellencies of the divine nature . as they that contribute to one common stock , though by unequal contributions , suppose some one contributing a third part , another a seventh part , a third a tenth ; though they partake of the gains but according to this proportion , the distribution is said to be just and equal ; there being indeed a similitude or equality of proportion , tho' the shares of gains that every adventurer has , are not equal ( for it were unequal that they should be so ) : so though the shares and portions of our love to others be not equal , nor ought so to be , yet the proportions of our love may and ought to be equal ; and that is , if our love flow out according to the several degrees of divine excellency in every person : and thus its true , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , viz. of geometrical equality . object . but you will still urge , my love to my self , being one single term of quantity , to which my love to every one is to be equal , proves plainly that all these loves are arithmetically equal one with another ; as and are equal to one another . sol. to dispatch all in a word . when we are pointed to the love of our selves , as a right measure of our love to our neighbour , it must be understood thus ; that we are to love our neighbour of this or that rank and qualification , in such sort as we would love our selves , if we were in that rank and qualification ; and do the same to our neighbour of this condition , that we should expect from others if we were of that condition ; as suppose a prince , a noble , a wise man , an honest sincere man , a man of unparallell'd accomplishments . in these cases what love and respect we would look for , if we were such ( though we be not such yet ) are we bound to give it to those that are such . and thus it will come about , that we are obliged to love some better than our selves , viz. such as have more divine accomplishments in them . thus in sam. . . the people said to david , thou art worth ten thousand of us . and this obligement to love some better than our selves , arises from that general rule of all , that we are bound to love every one according to the proportion of divine worth in them . whence it must also follow , that we are to love othersome less than our selves , if we do palpably and infallibly discover in our selves more divine accomplishments , and more excellent endowments than in others . and thus we come to the last doctrine , viz. doct. iv. that we are to love one another universally and continually . vniversally . ] so also . pet. . . where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is universal love. and so . thess. . . the lord make you to increase and abound in love one towards another , and towards all men . and chap. . . see that none render evil for evil unto any man : but ever follow that which is good , both among your selves , and to all men . we might add testimonies out of heathen philosophers , whose examples may shame us , who without any niceness place them many stories below our selves . socrates had so little gall against the judges , his mortal enemies , who were no better to him than to tell him , he should dye for it , if they caught him philosophizing ; and had so great affection to the good of all , that he saith , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the meditations of m. antoninus are full to this purpose . vid. lib. . and lib. . and this philosopher attempts by many wayes and arguments to keep us in this so pleasant temper of spirit to all men , good and bad , friends and foes , viz. . a settled perswasion that all those things which the stoicks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , are so indeed , not truly good or bad in themselves ; there being nothing truly good but what is in our own power ; such are the voluntary motions of our mind or soul. thus he . and indeed a very little observation will make this good to us , that an eager and sharp desire of outward things , riches , honour , and corporeal pleasure , whose maintenance is from the outward creature ; that this is the main , if not only cause of all dissention amongst the sons of men : so that i think envy it self is not moved at the vertuous accomplishments of any ; but merely at the effects thereof , viz. the admiration and glory they get amongst the people . therefore the best way to be friends with all the world , is not to desire the things of this world , but to reckon them as nothing to the purpose ; and so shall we assuredly provoke very few against us , and be provoked by none . . consider socrates's maxime , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so christ said , father forgive them , they know not what they do . this is true in injuries done to our selves , but the stoick would drive it to an universality . . that thou thy self transgressest in many things , &c. . mans life is but for a moment of time . . consider how many things may and do often follow upon such fits of anger and grief , far more grievous in themselves than those things we are grieved for , and angry . . the meekness is a thing unconquerable , if it be true and natural . . it is a mad mans part to look there should be no wicked men in the world , because it is impossible , &c. thus he . but observe , that in all these attempts for a continued meekness and benignity towards all men whatsoever , the ease and quiet of the philosophers mind is rather aimed at than any thing else : and that it is not so much an vniversal love to all men , as an universal fencing of himself against the provocations of all whatsoever may at any time chance to assault and shake that firmness and stillness of temper he proposes to himself ; being loth to be so obnoxious to any man , that it should be in his power to plough up in uneven furrows the settled planities of his smoothed mind . object . but here it will be objected , that unless we endeavour after , and at some time reach that stoical state of the mind , it will be impossible to hold out perpetually in that mild and even tenour of love to all men . for some men are so habitually evil , that nothing is tolerable , much less lovely in them : so that when we light on such , some other affection will be drawn out . and for those of the better sort , they are sometimes so unlike themselves , that it cannot be that the same affection should be continued to them . how then is it , that we are to love continually ? sol. to this i answer , three wayes . first , we are to love all men , i. e. all manner of men , of what religion , sect , or nation soever ; so be that god has manifested his graces in them any way : and then that this love should continue as long as the deserts of them that are loved . and this takes away all partiality in love. or secondly , we are to love all men , and alwayes , amore benevolentiae , though not complacentiae : and thus all particularity or peculiarity will be taken away , or swallowed up : all men whatsoever being objects capable of this love. we may wish those to be good that are notoriously evil , and endeavour too to make them so ; which are real fruits of love : or we may pitty them , that they are not so already , it being so great a misery for them to be otherwise ; which is a symptome of love , if not a genuine notion thereof ; nay the very act of love , only under another modification . which minds me of a third way of answer , which i cannot so well make out without giving first some settled notion or definition of the nature of love. the general description whereof let be this . love is an affection , or passion of the mind , conversant about divine beauty and perfection , introducible into the souls or persons of the sons of men . and i say conversant about divine perfection and beauty communicable to the sons of men , to distinguish it from what love soever else . for that love that ariseth from interest , is but such as a man would bear to his saddle-horse that carries him safely and easily : and that pitty we bear to calamitous men in sickness , death or great distress , without reference to what we have mention'd in our definition , is but the same we may be haply moved with toward a dying beast , or a bemoaning and whining dog . that love therefore that like the vestal fire is never to go out , but alwayes to burn and shine in our hearts , is the motion of our mind one way or other taken up about the divine beauty communicable to man. and thus i have at large , as if i should define colour in general , described the nature of love. but as colour is not at all , but in its several kinds and distinctions , viz. either white , or red , or yellow , or green , &c. or some other particular kind : so this love is not any passion at all , indeed nothing at all but in its several kinds , such as are hope , fear , ioy , anger , sorrow , &c. for the very root or matter of all these is love , yea of hatred it self , if we look to the bottom of this mystery . as the wax takes all shapes , and yet is wax still at the bottom ; the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 still is wax : so the soul transported in so many several passions of ioy , fear , hope , sorrow , anger , and the like , has for its general ground-work of all this , love ; which if it were taken away , those various superstructures would suddenly fall . for he that loves nothing , how can he fear any thing , or hope or joy , or hate any thing ? for how can he hate , when there is nothing to injure , or cross him in what he loves , he loving nothing ? or yet to make a more fit representation , love is that to the soul that the light is to the sun : for light being simple in it self , and uniform , is yet the basis or ground of much variety in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of nature . light being in it self one , according as it lights on various surfaces of things , returns modifyed into this or that colour . if it fall upon grass , it becomes green : if upon the piony-flower , red : on the marigold , yellow : from the swans back it is reflected white ; and so according to the variety of the surfaces of bodies which occur , there is a change of light into some particular modification , which to us are so many distinct colours . but take away the light , and all these colours cease to be : as if there were a way to intercept the suns light from coming to the cloud where the rainbow is figured , all the colours of the rainbow would soon vanish and disappear . so if love be not , no other passion can be ; but that first supposed , the other occasionally will arise from it : as from the hitting of the sun-beams against several objects several colours arise , which are nothing else but the beams or light it self variously modify'd , according to the variety of surfaces against which it doth impinge , and is reverberated from . so in like manner the passion of love in a mans soul being one , is variously transformed into several shapes and modes , according as the occurrences and occasions it meets with . and this we may sensibly perceive in the love of our selves , which domestick fire is kept alive in us with more superstition and care than that more sacred flame of divine love ; but in a multifarious transfiguration , as we may easily observe . for example ; when a man has committed any thing against his own profit or interest , through some carelesness or mistake , and so grows vext at it , what is this but self-love appearing in the disguise of anger ? sadness and discontent at the death or displeasure of some potent friend , what is this but self-love mufled up in the sad attirements of sorrow ? those pleasing motions and prefigurations of the mind upon the promise of future honours and preferments , what is that but self-love putting on the smiling countenance of hope ? and so of the rest . but now to transfer all this to the present purpose : that love which i have defined to you , is one simple and uniform thing , like the visible light. and this is a perpetual well-liking of , or benign affection to the divine beauty communicable to man ; which is as one still sun-shine day ; or ( if you will ) as the sun shining in silence and solitude , there being no earth , or any opake part of the world to reflect and variegate his rays . such is the mind of him that is possest with this divine love , as it is freely and uncurb'dly working in it self : but lighting upon several objects is after several manners modified and transfigured into several shapes . this love at the conversion of a sinner shines forth in that chearful aspect of heavenly ioy and exultation of spirit ; at the unworthy usage of good and holy men it burns with anger and indignation , looking as red and purpled as the horizontal sun ; at the doubtful carriages of men is broken into distractful thoughts , careful fear and anxiety ; at the sight of solomons fool , devoid of understanding , is struck with forlornness and sadness of spirit ; such a one being as a lonesome desolate cottage where no man inhabits . for as he that is in the wilderness , though he have the company of beasts , yet being destitute of the society of men , finds himself really in sadness and solitude ; so certainly he that is regenerate into the image of the true man , the heavenly adam , i. e. christ , even in a crowd of acquaintance devoid of that image , perceives himself but in solitude : and whensoever he converses or meets with any in whom that heavenly inhabitant is wanting , it is to him as forlorn a spectacle , as a lonesome and empty lodge in the midst of a desart ; whither when the weary traveller diverts , he finds no man to refresh him with a morsel of bread , or a dish of water . for certainly they that once have a right sense and esteem of the lovely image of christ , out of a kind of a divine dotage ( as i may so speak ) can not endure to find it missing any where , would have it hung up in every room , would have it inhabit every house , that they may meet with it at every turn . and therefore where they miss of it , it is as sad a chance , as divorce or exile from our dear friend ; as discomfortable , as close imprisonment , and seclusion from all conversation with men . thus we see divine love ceases not by other passions , but remains still the same , though in several postures : and that it is the several operations of one simple nature about one and the same object , that is the image of god or divine accomplishments communicable to man : which when they begin to spring and flourish in men , this love is figur'd into ioy ; when they decay or are lost , into sorrow ; when despightfully used , into anger ; and the like . so that if we know what we chiefly love , and for whose cause man is to be loved , we shall find it not impossible to have our souls work according to this principle of love , upon what object soever : so that we may without contradiction fulfil these duties in the text , of vniversal and perpetual love. and now that the thing is understood feasible , it will not be hard to fetch out arguments for the enforcement of the same : the present text will afford them . and the first is , from the state of purification , which every christian is bound to be in , and is in , if he be truly a christian. for the soul of man being a kind of flame or fiery essence , ( igneus est olli vigor & coelestis origo . ) whereas that foulness and rubbish , which it lies in , to wit , sensual and corruptible pleasure , the instrument whereof is this faeculent and misgoverned body , makes the soul wrathful , lustful , self-will'd , impetuously given to petty interests , and particular poor contentations and delights : surely the purging of it from this foul dross and dregs , must needs wing it , free it , universalize it , and make it as generally benign to all men , as the sun is universally courteous to all the world , in lending light and heat to all . for by how much the soul doth purge her self , by so much nearer she approaches to that primogeneal , or original fire , which is god himself , that lets his sun rise on the evil and good ; and sendeth rain on the just , and on the unjust , matth. . . this is the chaldaean 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , out of which proceeds all things : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as those oracles speak . and the soul of man , the image of god , is in the same said also to be fire , which psellus more expresly defines in his notes upon those oracles , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the soul is an immaterial and incorporeal fire , which withdrawing it self from the thickness and foulness of this low corruption , incorporates with that original fire , even god himself , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the same author upon those oracles hath it . wherefore mingling essences , as it were , with the divinity , it must be of the same sense and mind with god ; and therefore never ceases from loving all men , as god himself refuses none . the publishers post-script . three things i shall here advertise the reader of . . the first is , that the appendix to discourse xiii th should not have been printed apart , but that most of it was wanting till that other part was printed off . . the second is , that what is still wanting to complete that discourse , as also the continuation of discourse xv th , never came into my hands . . the third is , that if those papers ( or any other of the authors ) be sent to me , all due care shall be taken for the making of them publick . finis . a catalogue . books published by his grace , john lord arch-bishop of canterbury . thirty sermons and discourses upon several occasions , in three volumes , in octavo . the rule of faith ; or , an answer to the treatise of mr. i. sergeant . octavo . since which is published nine several sermons on several occasions , in quarto . books writ by the learned dr. isaac barrow , late master of trinity college in cambridge . and published by his grace john lord arch-bishop of canterbury , in four volumes in folio . the first volume , containing thirty two sermons preached upon several occasions . an exposition of the lords prayer , and the ten commandments ; also the doctrine of the sacraments . a learned treatise of the popes supremacy . with some account of the authors life . the second volume containing sermons and expositions upon the apostles creed . the third volume containing forty five sermons upon several occasions : compleating his english works . the fourth volume , being his opuscula ; viz. determinationes , conc. ad clerum , orationes , poemata , &c. any of the said volumes may be had alone . all sold by brabazon ayliner , at the three pigeons in cornhil . apocalypsis apocalypseos, or, the revelation of st. john the divine unveiled containing a brief but perspicuous and continued exposition from chapter to chapter, and from verse to verse, of the whole book of the apocalypse / by henry more ... more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; 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ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng bible. -- n.t. -- revelation -- commentaries. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - spi global keyed and coded from proquest page images - olivia bottum sampled and proofread - olivia bottum text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion apocalypsis apocalypseos ; or the revelation of s t john the divine unveiled . containing a brief but perspicuous and continued exposition from chapter to chapter , and from verse to verse , of the whole book of the apocalypse . by henry more d. d. ecclesiastic . chap. . he that giveth his mind to the law of the most high , and is occupied in the meditation thereof , will seek out the wisdom of all the ancient , and be occupied in prophecies . ezech. chap. . vers . . thou son of man shew the house to the house of israel , that they may be ashamed of their iniquities ; and let them measure the pattern . london , printed by i. m. for i. martyn , and w. kettilby , at the bell , and the bishops-head in s t paul's church-yard , . the preface to the reader . reader , that thou mayest with better acceptance peruse my exposition of this book of prophecies , the apocalypse , i thought fit to say something by way of preface : first , concerning the book it self , not only the authentickness and intelligibleness , but also concerning the excellency thereof : secondly , concerning the grounds i go upon , and the truth of my exposition : and thirdly and lastly , concerning the great usefulness thereof . that this book is canonical and of divine inspiration , is confirmed by the authority and suffrage of the church universal , both roman and reformed : and though it had no external confirmation , the truth of predictions in that large comprehension of things that it reacheth to , and the holiness of that spirit that breaths in it , to any intelligent reader will certainly prove it to be a book divinely inspired . not to add , that the very wit , as i may so say , and artifice in it seems not to be humane but angelical . it was indeed doubted of at first , and the authority thereof called into question ; but the occasion of questioning it was , because it was in the hands of very few , it being dangerous for the christians to let this book of the apocalypse ( that does plainly predict , as it might seem , the burning of the city of rome , situated on seven hills , and having rule then over the whole earth ) so freely to go about as those others of the new testament did . and therefore this book being so generally unknown , when they began to determine what books were authentick and what not , they might very well be at a loss concerning it . besides that , cerinthus and others overmuch judaizing christians who drew those things written of the first and second resurrection , and the new jerusalem , and the thousand years reign of christ , to their carnal iudaical conceits , made them more shie how they admitted this book for authentick . nay some , as gaius an ancient author in eusebius , relate that cerinthus the chiliast was the writer of it . others , who yet thought well of the book , that john the presbyter , a disciple of the apostle , not john himself was the author thereof . the occasion of which might be , as grotius ingeniously conjectures , because that john the presbyter had the book in his custody , whence some out of mistake might deem him the author thereof . but by the authority of the chiefest fathers , and upon a more narrow search and examination of the business , it is now out of question with all christian churches , that this book of the apocalypse is authentick and canonical , and writ by john the evangelist and divine , so called for his more plainly and peculiarly declaring the divinity of christ beyond any other of the evangelists . now for the intelligibleness of the book . ii though there is a marvellous artifice of concealment in it , yet there is as sure an artifice of revealment , as i hope will appear by this our exposition . and why prophecies should be obscurely writ , and in what this obscurity consists , i have sufficiently * elsewhere declared . the chief obscurity is in the prophetick stile , which when it is opened to a man , the sense will run clear . as he that understands any other language different from the vulgar , if the book it is writ in be good sense , he without difficulty will find it out . and as it would be absurd in him that understands not that language to complain of the obscurity of the book , so it is as childish for him that will not take the pains , ( which is not much ) to understand the prophetick stile , to complain of the obscurity of the apocalypse . but that it is intelligible , all sorts of christians reformed and unreformed have given their suffrage thereto , in writing commentaries upon it : and it is no less than blasphemy against the holy ghost that inspired this prophecy , to say it is simply unintelligible , as if christ trifled with his church in a thing so exceeding serious , as this book of prophecies seems to be . iii the excellency whereof is notably set out , if not also the necessity of reading and understanding it , chap. . vers . . blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy , and keep those things that are written therein ; which they cannot do unless they understand them . and so , chap. . vers . . blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book : which is chiefly performed by faith and constancy to the true church of christ against either the dragon or antichrist , which he cannot do if these prophecies were unintelligible : nor can there any blessedness accrue to a man from reading a book he understands not : but the sayings thereof understood and kept being so effectual a way to blessedness , it must needs argue the excellency of the book . but there is yet a further illustration of the excellency thereof from what occurrs , chap. . vers . . which concerns the greatest part by far of this book , and that which some phansie the only prophetical part thereof , namely the visions of the sealed book , and of the opened book . for what was contained in the opened book lay open by virtue of the breaking up of the seals . in that chapter is the highest encomium of this book of prophecies that the wit and rhetorick of men or angels can invent or utter . for first it is said , vers . . and i saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice , who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof ? and no man in heaven nor in earth , neither under the earth was able to open the book , neither to look thereon . this therefore must be a most excellent and transcendent book of secrets and predictions that neither angels , men , nor infernal spirits can reach to the knowledge of by virtue of their own faculties . and then it follows , and i wept much because no man was found worthy to open and read the book and to look thereon . which further argues that it is a book not only of rare secrets and vast comprehensive predictions , but more than ordinary desirable , if not necessary to be known . and lastly , when the lion of the tribe of judah , that is , christ , the lamb under another expression and figuration , was found worthy , and had taken the book , what acclamations in heaven were there thereupon ? for the four beasts , and four and twenty elders fell down before the lamb , having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours , which are the prayers of the saints . and they sung a new song , saying , thou art worthy to take the book and open the seals thereof , for thou wast slain , and hast redeemed us to god by thy blood . as if this priviledge of obtaining such a wonderful power of predicting things to come , and communicating such a book as this of the apocalypse unto his church , were one special fruit of his passion , and the shedding his most precious blood upon the cross. iv and therefore let them take heed that despise this book of the apocalypse so much , and all endeavours to understand it aright , that they be not found in the number of them that tread under-foot the son of god , even in those things for which he is the most highly admired and extolled by the blessed saints and angels ( which is the greatest slight and affront of him imaginable ) and count his precious blood shed upon the cross ( whereby he procured this transcendent priviledge to himself and them , of fore-knowing things that concern all ages of his church ) an unholy thing , and do despite to the spirit of prophecy . in the mean time , this may at least excuse them that seriously and soberly endeavour rightly to understand the visions of this book from being reputed men less judicious , or else very unfortunate to spend their time and labour on so mean and obscure an argument as this book of the apocalypse ; as some for want of judgement or good will have perstringed that excellently learned and pious person m r joseph mede : but what a vast difference is there betwixt the spirit of the holy evangelist john and the great spirits or wits , as they would be accounted , of this age ! he wept out of an eager desire of understanding the prophecies of this book , they laugh at any one for a fool that pretends the endeavouring to understand them , or thinks they are to be understood . but i hope that will be found true that solomon sayes , prov. chap. . vers . . a scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not , but knowledge is easie to him that understandeth . which i distrust not but will be made good in any intelligent reader of my exposition of this book . v it will prove easie to him upon his taking notice of the meaning of the prophetick stile , and supposing the grounds i go upon , which are but few , and allowed generally by all protestant churches that i know of , ( viz. ) that the church of rome is idolatrous , which will imply , that the greek church also was so , as is plain from the second nicene council , which the romanists alledge . that the said church is murderous , as having put to death many and many thousands of innocent souls , because their consciences would not allow them to joyn with this church in their idolatrous worship . and lastly , that she is imposturous , in pretending to many miraculous acts that exceed the power of nature , or the faculties of any ordinary men . as changing the elements , as they call it , of bread into real flesh , and of wine into real blood , by saying certain words over it : in exorcising or enchanting of statues , or images , and of water , oyl , and other things , by certain words , into a power of keeping off enemies , repelling diseases , ceasing thunder and lightening , and driving away the devil ; nay , in pretending to a power of thunder-striking men down into hell , which is only in the hand of god almighty , to do at his pleasure , and not for men to do at their pleasures , because others will not joyn with them in their gross doctrines , and idolatrous worship . this if it were true were a stupendious miracle indeed , thus to bring fire from heaven to thunder-strike innocent men into the pit of hell . but such pretended feats as these this book elegantly expresses by the phrase of sorcery or magick , as it may be called , as being an imitation of the pretences of magicians thus to act above nature , by words and charms . these are the main things that are supposed concerning the church of rome , which if they be admitted the sense of the apocalypse will run as glib as may be upon a little knowledge of the prophetick stile : and i shall wonder at any one that is satisfied concerning these , that shall stick at the truth of our interpretation ; which as touching this part is so throughly demonstrated in my joynt-exposition , or rather in the eight last chapters of the first book of my synopsis prophetica , that i cannot tell what can be more fully evidenced to the reason of a man ; namely , that the beast that was , and is not , and yet is , is the roman empire , and the woman that rides him , the roman hierarchy , after the times of the seventh king , that was to stay but a little while , which are the pure christian caesars : wherefore the roman hierarchy after that time being set out by the symbol of a whore , for so that woman is called , ( viz. ) the whore of babylon , and the beast she rides on , said to be full of names of blasphemy , it is manifest , that both the empire and hierarchy are become idolatrous . besides that , if the apocalypse were silent in this matter of their being idolatrous , the writers of the protestants have over and over again demonstrated them to be so , and for them that are so perswaded , not to acknowledge their condition to be predicted in the apocalypse , but to conceit it silent therein , is to envy god and christ the glory of foretelling things to come , and the church the priviledge of having them foretold her , and the advantage of confounding her enemies thereby . and now for the state of the reformed church that it will be at last so well reformed , and so largely amplified , that peace , truth and righteousness shall at last over-spread as it were the face of the earth , and that herewith the iews will be called , and make one part of the catholick church , this is a thing both believed and hoped for by all good men , and expresly pointed at in several places of scripture , as well as in the apocalypse . and lastly , for the first resurrection , the proper priviledge of the martyrs at the entrance of the millennial reign of christ upon earth , that this was the general opinion of the primitive church is made out notably by m r j. mede in sundry places of his writings : and that way that i have explained it here in my exposition , it cannot have the least scandal or offence , the martyrs according to my explication , not living upon earth , but being revivificated into their glorious bodies , reign with christ in heaven . wherefore the things that i suppose being so certain or unexceptionable , and my exposition consequential to these , and perpetually made out according to the known meaning of the prophetick stile , and agreeably to the truth of history , without any violence done to either grammatical criticisme , or the rules of rhetorick , and observable genius of the very stile of this book of the apocalypse it self , if such an exposition for so far as the time of prophecies is already past , be not true , what exposition of any prophecy , or of any thing else can be thought to be true ? and the things that are to come , as the calling of the jews , and the utter breaking in pieces of the roman idolatrous hierarchy sore against their will , considering the sweet relish of domineering and imposing upon the world , and their obdurate pretence of infallibility , it were a miracle indeed , to think they will ever confesse themselves convinced of those enormous errours and crimes that are so justly laid to their charge : and being they would fall of themselves did not some secular power support them , it therefore is rational to conceive that some remnant of the roman empire may stick to them to the last vial : so solid is our exposition in that part also . and concerning the calling of the jews , i have noted already how generally the opinion is allowed of , and how often intimated in the scriptures . to which i may add , that it does not seem probable , that they are preserved a distinct people from the rest of the world all this time for nought . and then for the flourishing of peace , and truth , and righteousness in the times of the new jerusalem so universally over the face of the earth ; it is a thing that has been so little done already , and so fully and repeatedly inculcated by the ancient prophets , as well as set down so exactly in the apocalypse , that unless a man will question the truth of scripture , he cannot but admit it to be true . from which considerations i hope it will appear that our exposition of the apocalypse is throughout true , and that i have not rashly called it apocalypsis apocalypseos , it being a plain and true unveiling of the apocalypse , or stripping it of all those coverings and disguisings contained in the prophetick stile , and whatever other artifices of concealment , and laying the sense bare and open to the eyes of all that will not wilfully wink that they may not see the truth . vi and that there may be no distrust of the assuredness of our interpretation by pretending that others have interpreted the apocalypse another way , i shall give notice here by the bye , that i have with all care and diligence perused other interpreters , and the very best of them , grotius and ribera ; ( for as for some modern buffoones rather , and abusers of the apocalypse , than serious interpreters of it , no sober man will think-himself obliged to take notice of them ) and in those two chefest chapters , as to the controversie betwixt the church of rome and us , whether they are not to be proved from thence idolaters , ( i mean the thirteenth and seventeenth chapters , of which i have made a joynt-exposition in my synopsis prophetica ) i have shewed how absurd and impossible both ribera's and grotius his interpretations of those chapters are . and in grotius his exposition of them , who yet is now accounted the chiefest interpreter , and most accommodate to baffle the true and genuine meaning of those prophecies , i have noted near fourscore such flawes , as i should be loth any one should be able to find one in my whole exposition of the apocalypse ; besides his absurd mis-timing of the visions , which would show , though otherwise his expositions were more tolerable , that they were nothing to the purpose : and that they are mis-timed , i have abundantly demonstrated in my synopsis prophetica , book ii. chap. . so that there is the greatest assurance imaginable of my exposition of the thirteenth and seventeeth chapters of the apocalypse , as you may be fully satisfied by the reading of my joynt-exposition of them , synops. prophet . book i. chap. , , , . and if this bulwark of my joynt-exposition stand impregnable , as most certainly it will , none that perceives the force thereof , but will easily admit of the rest of our interpretations as solid and true . and thus much briefly of the truth of our exposition of the apocalypse . vii now the usefulness thereof , which i proposed in the third and last place , it is exceeding considerable : first , against atheists , and those that believe neither angel nor spirit ; for there being a deduction of things foretold from the beginning of the church to the end of all , so natural , so solid , and so true , and every way unexceptionable to any rational man , this is the greatest evidence desirable to evince a divine providence over the church , and the affairs of mankind , and consequently the existence of a god ; as also of angels , the ministers of his providence , which is all along inculcated in this book of the apocalypse . and particularly it is asserted in the beginning of the book that this revelation was made to s t john by the ministry of an angel : and that this can be no imagination of s t john 's , as the prophane hobbians and spinozians would be ready to suggest out of the principles of their stupid and incredulous minds , but a real thing , the book it self is an ample testimony and plain demonstration , it being out of the reach of any man by his own natural wit or fore-sight , to write a book of such comprehensive prophecies , and so continuedly true : to say nothing of the manner of writing it , the very wit and artifice thereof , which seems to imply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the stile and wit is not the stile and wit of a man , but certainly of an angel . nor does the apocalypse only support the truth of natural religion , viii which is the belief of the existence of a god , and of spirits or angels good and bad , and of a blessed immortality after this life ; but it is a most special and extraordinary confirmation of the truth of the revealed religion of christianity , and the most assured argument , and most lasting and satisfactory of the apotheosis of christ , that the wit of man can excogitate , or his heart desire . for reading this book , and comparing it with the history of the affairs of the church , and of the nations , so far forth as they have had any thing to do with the church , or the church with them ▪ he may as it were see with his own eyes , and feel with his hands the truth of our religion in the veracity of our great prophet and saviour , and in the exact completion of the predictions he has communicated to his church as hitherto . which standing miracle is of as much weight with the intelligent , for the confirmation of their faith in christ , if not more , than if they lived in our saviours time to see his miracles , or conferr with the eye-witnesses of them . and it is an extraordinary glorious priviledge of the christian church to have such a book of prophecies as these ( and peculiar to her above all religions else in the world that ever was ) and so easie and naturally applicable to the events predicted : and therefore they deserve very ill of the christian church , who either rashly , or out of design , instead of the true and genuine meaning of the visions of the apocalypse give unnatural , forced senses of them , disterting them from their intended scope , applying mean , sapless , insignificant , useless and inept meanings to them , instead of those that are proper and adequate : which not to dissemble the truth , grotius , though otherwise a learned writer , has most wretchedly done . for this makes the very pretense of understanding prophecies ridiculous , and deprives christ of his glory , and of one of the most illustrious fruits of the passion and apotheosis , and the church of her so eminent priviledge above all other religions : for such meager , dry , distorted , and contradictions expositions , as grotius has given of the apocalypse , if there were no other to be had than those , would never argue it a book divinely inspired , but to be rather a confused heaping up of vagrant thoughts , and fortuitous imaginations : and yet these fond conceits of grotius ( forsooth ) must stifle the genuine meaning , and due efficacy of the apocalypse ; that is , we must rob christ of his glory , and the christian church of her high peculiar priviledge above any other churches or religions ; nay , take take away that extraordinary support , which not only christianity , but even natural religion it self has from this book of the apocalypse , in a meer complement to the church of rome , that she may not seem as well by divine testimony , as by humane reason guilty of idolatry : see my synopsis prophetica , book ii. chap. , , . and my mystery of godliness , book v. chap. . which chapters if you attentively read , though with the favourers of rome and grotius , you may think me not over-civil , yet you will certainly conclude me very true and just in this my censure . this i thought fit , though it is against my genius to lessen any ones performances , plainly to declare , that no man may be fobbed off from embracing the truth , by the specious name of hugo grotius prefixed to such weak and imperfect essayes upon the book of the apocalypse ; where amongst other things it is to be noted , that the six first seals , and the six first trumpets , which are indeed all the visions of the sealed book , he interprets of things which were transacted before the prophecy was writ , than which nothing can be more wild and preposterous . ix a third considerable usefulness of our exposition , is , that it is a plain justification of all reformed churches , prince and people , for their having left the communion of the church of rome , and a discharging of them of that perverse and unjust imputation of schism , which the church of rome would fain cast upon them : for though they do loudly miscall them by the name of hereticks , yet they have nothing to lay to their charge , but the disowning those things which it were heresie for them to embrace , and are nothing but unsound doctrines , and foul trumperies , and principles of idolatry , which pretended holy church holds up for her unholy and secular ends , or worldly interest : for the main body of protestants hold all that were accounted articles of faith in the first ages of the church about the first four hundred years while the church was deemed symmetral , as is intimated in the apocalypse , chap. . whence it is impossible they should be hereticks : and that neither prince nor people in the reformed churches are guilty of schism , besides the nature of the thing it self , that no man is bound to disobey god under pretence of obeying a church that is idolatrous , there is not only a commission but a command to all to leave her communion , apoc. chap. . ver . . and chap. . vers . . and i heard a voice from heaven , saying , come out of her my people , &c. so that both prince and people every where have a commission from heaven to leave her communion , so far are they from being schismaticks for leaving it . a fourth usefulness may be , x and that again to the reformed churches , which are the church in sardis , who are reprehended by christ in his epistle to that church , for having a name of living , as having a zeal one against another about things of smaller consequence , and from thence making schisms and dissentions in the reformed churches , but being even dead otherwise to that which is the onely life of a true christian , which is charity or love , the character of the philadelphian church : which the sardian church is heartily to breath after , that all their breaches may be healed , and defects made up , and that peace , and truth , and righteousness may flourish amongst them : but as yet it is too true that her works are not found perfect before god , as christ complains of her in his epistle : which epistle of christ to the church in sardis , i wish all the reformed churches would seriously peruse and take notice of the heavy commination against them ; if they do not watch and stand upon their guard , and endeavour to strengthen the things that are ready to dye , namely true faith in god , and in jesus christ , and the promised asssistances of his holy spirit to subdue our corruptions to the scepter of his kingdom , and a sincere zeal against all scandal and debauchery of life , and gross superstition , and idolatry , and against hankering after the flesh-pots of aegypt , as thé israelites did when god had brought them out of the house of bondage into the wilderness : which state is something analogous to the sardian interval in respect of the philadelphian , which is as it were the taking possesssion of the holy land , and more analogous than we could wish in murmuring against their governours , and that government which obtained in the church even in those times , which by the spirit of god were accounted symmetral , apoc. cap. . . if they do not remember how they have received and heard , and hold fast and repent ; namely how they have received from the apostles themselves by their writings , and from apostolick men raised up in the late reformation , who generally declared against the idolatries of the church of rome , and declared the pope with his hierarchy to be that man of sin , the antichrist , even those that professed themselves not to know what to make of the book of the apocalypse , as luther and calvin , whom cornelius à lapide affirms to have cast it out of the canon , which is a sign that the idolatry and antichristianisme of the roman church was to their judgements so gross , that they wanted no such helps to assure them thereof : how they have received from s t paul ; children obey your parents in the lord ; as well as , fathers provoke not your children to wrath , ephes. . . and that love is the fulfilling of the law , galat. . . for all the law is fullfilled in one word , even in this , thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self : but if ye bite and devour one another , take heed that ye be not consumed one of another . these and the like sins is the sardian church to repent of , and to stand upon their watch , lest the judgement of god suddenly surprize them before they be aware , apoc. . . a fifth usefulness of our exposition is in reference to the jews , xi for the facilitating their before in jesus , the true messias . for that perverse objection of theirs against the messias having been already come above sixteen hundred years ago ; seeing such gross idolatry , and bloody persecution has been so long a time in the church against those men that have had the most conscience touching the purity of gods worship , and the greatest zeal against idolatry ; this objection , i say , is easily answered out of our exposition of the apocalypse , that these things are no otherwise than the true messias has predicted they would be , whence the argument is retorted against themselves , that it is the greater demonstration that jesus is the true messias , and not only this , but moreover , which is the chiefest of all , that all things predicted in the apocalypse , from the beginning of the church to this day , have exactly come to pass , which is a pledge of christs veracity touching the future state of the church , that is , that this bloody and idolatrous hierarchy will be put an end to , and that both jew and gentile will become one fold under one shepherd , jesus the true messias , namely , at the descending of the new jerusalem out of heaven from god , in which will be accomplished al the glorious promises of god touching his church , predicted by the mouths of his holy prophets : which cannot but be a full answer to this objection of the jews . the sixth is a particular usefulness for the undeceiving the fifth-monarchy-men , xii as they are called , and any others that are inclinable to such opinions as they are of , ( viz. ) that upon the rising of the witnesses a fifth monarchy must be erected , in which jesus christ is personally to reign with the revived martyrs in the millennium here upon earth , and that the way to these times is to be made by the sword. for according to our exposition the witnesses are already risen in the late reformation , and the time of the one thousand two hundred ▪ and sixty dayes expired , that no watch-word may be taken to any tumults from any such indication of time. but the most certain sign of the downfall of antichrist will be the raising again in the reformed churches a sincere and fervent zeal after truth and holiness , hearty love and amity amongst themselves , and a conversation unspotted and unexceptionable , and such as will convince their very adversaries that they are in good earnest christians , and demonstrate their faith by their works , and that they have not shaken off the yoke of the pope to serve themselves , or to turn slaves to their own lusts , but to be the faithful servants of him that redeemed them out of that house of bondage . if this were seriously minded in the reformed churches , and due discipline kept up to that purpose , the papacy would melt away like a bank of snow in the summer-sun , or consume as the fat of lambs , as the psalmist speaks , yea , even as the smoak would they consume away . and as for any fifth monarchy , in which jesus christ shall visibly and personally reign as the monarch thereof , or any one else as an universal monarch over all those many and large kingdoms that shall then be christian ; ( that the fifth-monarchy-men may not substitute this instead of the other ) our exposition is not at all favourable to any such conceit , as neither to that of the reign of the revived martyrs upon earth in the blessed millennium . and i am so far from countenancing the opinion , that these times are to be brought in by the sword , unless it be by the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god , that that most dismal prophecy , chap. . vers . . where it is said , that blood came out of the wine-press even unto the horse bridles by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs ; and that prophecy of the battel of that great day of god almighty , chap. . and the other of the rider of the white horse , chap. . where the fowles of the air are called unto the supper of the great god , to eat the flesh of kings , of captains , and of mighty men , &c. that i interpret , i say , all these not litterally but mystically , not of slaying of bodies , but of converting and saving of souls . and i hope the reader will be convinced , when he considers the places , that my interpretation is true . the seventh and last usefulness of my exposition redounds to the pontifician party themselves , xiii as many as are predisposed to hear plain and evident truth . for according to our exposition , which how true it is i have above made good , and it will approve it self true to any intelligent and unprejudiced reader , those that stay in the communion of the roman church , when as they should be the faithful members of christ , they are , ipso facto , the members of an harlot , that is , of an idolatrous church , which the stile of the apocalypse calls the whore of babylon . and how assured a man can be of his salvation in such a state , i 'le leave to himself to judge : or rather let him hear what the angel sayes , chap. . vers . . come out of her my people lest ye partake of her sins and of her plagues : as also what another angels sayes , chap. . vers . , . if any one worship the beast and his image , and receive his mark in his forehead , or in his hand , the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of god which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation , and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels , and in the presence of the lamb , and the smoak of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever . this is the doom of those that forsake not the communion of the church of rome , but obey the two-hundred idolatrous beast , that has the horns of a lamb but the voice of a dragon , decreeing gross idolatries and bloody persecutions . this plain therefore and evident exposition of the apocalypse , i hope may be an instrument to bring off those that are any thing well disposed , out of those gross and damnable errours into the way of saving truth , and keep those more stedfast that are in it . for though there will be those , and they not a few that will remain obstinate and unconvinced , especially of the roman hierarchy it self , even until the effusion of the last vial , yet there may be many particular gleanings , and some larger harvests in the mean time , to which so sound and faithful a sense of the apocalypse , as our exposition exhibits to the reader , may be effectually subservient : and truly this one usefulness thereof may very well seem a sufficient compensation for my labours , to any sincere lover of the souls of men. wherefore to come to a conclusion : xiv since this book of the apocalypse is so excellent and transcendant a book as well as authentick and intelligible , and our exposition thereof so sound and assured , and the use of it so manifold and so great , i hope that every intelligent man that is a well-willer to the truth , and a sincere lover of the church of christ will allow of my design of publishing it , as a thing laudable at least , if not indispensable . for though in things of mere speculation , it is a piece of prudence for a man to seem no wiser than others can bear , lest instead of being admired he be looked upon for a fool , or a man of extravagant conceits ; yet in such points of knowledge as we are assured of , and as assured of their manifold usefulness for the church , and the good of mankind , it is a piece of conscience that we communicate them to the world , it being a depositum we are intrusted with from god , and of which we must give an account to him at that great day . xv and thus much i think is competently well for a preface . what may further occurr i shall reserve for an epilogue : where amongst other things i shall exhibit to thy view the ichnography of the temple with the inner and outer court , for the better understanding of the eleventh chapter of the apocalypse , as also a table of synchronismes with a defence of them : which will both refresh thy memory after thy reading my exposition , and the more fully assure thee of the truth thereof : as will also that admirable key of the visions of the sealed and opened book prophecies , ( viz. ) the angels interpretation of the beast , chap. . and the woman that rides him . and lastly , the wonderfull harmony that is to be observed of the antemedial , medial and postmedial synchronals , the harmony of all of them , in each order , amongst themselves , and with the times , to which in virtue of the interpretation of the angel they are necessarily affixed , so far namely as the prophecies have been already fulfilled or are in fulfilling ; which is a pledge of the truth or credibility of our exposition touching what is to come . this harmony , i say , is so admirable and surprizing , that unless thou hast a genius dead or stupid to matters of this nature , thou canst not fail to be enravished with the consideration thereof ; as also with the divine artifice of the whole book of the apocalypse ; much whereof is opened in the said epilogue : so that it may go for a kind of technology to our exposition . in the mean time i will only advertise thee , that i have taken care that the entire text of the apocalypse go along with my interpretation , printed in a black english letter , the more easily to be distinguished from the comment , that thou having it so entirely in thy sight , and continuedly with the comment , thou mayest with the more ease and assuredness judge of the faithfulness and agreeableness of our exposition . errata sic corrige . preface , page xviii . line . read his passion . ] page . l. . r. spondanus . p. . l. . r. sardian . p. . l. . r. churches especially , let . p. . l. . r. paronomastical . p. . l. . dele the. p. . l. . r. him . sealed with seven seals . p. . l. . r. comes . p. . l. . r. narses . p. . l. . r. scorpio-locusts . p. . l. . r. a voice . l. . r. and iconium . p. . l. . r. good . p. . l. . r. trumpet suppose , as . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . r. cruelty . p. . l. . r. lolhards . p. . l. . r. decrees . l. . r. iconomachus . p. . l. . r. lineaments . p. . l. . r. enlargment . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . r. and briefly . p. . l. . r. topazos . p. . l. . r. antemedial . p. . l. . r. assenter . p. . l. . r. he . p. . l. . & p. . l. . r. antemedial . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . r. r. h. ch. . p. . l. . r. hills . p. . l. . r. with these . p. . l. . r. that is , one. apocalypsis apocalypseos , or the revelation of s t john unveiled . chapter i. . the revelation of iesus christ which god gave unto him to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass : not therefore the revelation of things * manifestly foreshewn by him already , or that are already past , so that any entire visions or prefigurations should be here expected of them , which would but make them more obscure ; but of things which are to come some sooner and some later , but all of them shortly in respect of some successions of ages in the church or other , that they may perpetually be advertised of their concerns , and stand upon their guard . and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant iohn : this revelation i say was made to jesus christ by god , that he might communicate it to his servants ; for which end he sent his holy angel , by whose ministry these things through prophetick visions and prefigurations wrought and impressed upon his inward man were conveyed to iohn . . who bare record of the word of god , and of the testimony of iesus christ , and of all things that he saw . this is he who is usually called iohn the divine ; for giving that record of the word of god in the beginning of his gospel , and of the divinity of jesus , and who declared that which was from the beginning , which he had heard , seen and handled of the word of life , and did testifie in writing the actions of jesus , and all things that he faw . . blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy , and keep those things that are written therein . that are written in the volume of these prophecies , consisting chiefly of three parts ; the vision of the seven churches , the vision of the seven seals , the seventh whereof contains the seven trumpets , all which belong to the sealed book , and the visions that appertain to the opened book , ( amongst which are the seven vials ) and all the rest of the visions of this volume , that some way or other are reducible to these : blessed is he that observes the things written in this book of prophecies , that he may order his life accordingly , and alwayes approve himself such as he is by these visions admonished to be , and adhere to christ sincerely , and to his true church in all conditions . for the time is at hand , namely , for the fulfilling of such vision as appertain to the earlier scene of the affairs of the church , and will ever be at hand to the end of the world for the fulfilling of some visions of this book or other . . iohn to the seven churches which are in asia . to the * truly catholick and apostolick church distinguished into seven successions , reaching from the beginning of the church to the end of the world , * and dispensed on the face of the earth grace he unto you and peace , all favour , happiness and prosperity . from him which is , and which was , and which is to come : from the eternal jehovah , who graspeth all past , present and to come in the eternity of his wisdom and power . and from the seven spirits which are before his throne . and from all his holy angels that are assisting at his throne , and in a readiness to be sent upon messages , and to minister for the good of his people . . and from iesus christ who is the faithful witness , and the first-begotten of the dead , and the prince of the kings of the earth . from jesus christ that faithful witness of the will of his father when he was upon earth , and the first-begotten of the dead , the first-fruits of them that slept , to whom is given the right of all the kingdoms of the earth , to be prince over them all , and to rule them in righteousness and peace : to him that loved us , and washed us from our sins in his own blood , that so loved us , that he laid down his life for us , for a propitiation for our sins , and to wash us from all the silth thereof through sincere repentance and mortification of our lusts out of a due and gratefull return of love to him that died for us . . and hath made us kings and priests unto god and his father , namely , by this victory over our corruptions through faith in him , to offer spiritual sacrifices of prayers and thanksgiving , with an utter resignation of our selves to the will of god the father of our lord jesus christ. to him be glory and dominion for ever and for ever . amen . . behold he cometh in the clouds , ( so vast a prospect have the prophecies of this book ) and will judge the whole world at the last day . and every eye shall see him , and they also that pierced him , either in his own person , or wounded him , and killed him in the persecution and murdering of his living members . and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him ; namely , all those that have thus outragiously sinned against him : even so amen . this is a certain truth , let scoffers and unbelievers say and imagine what they please . . and that this may not seem strange , that his providence and power reaches so far as to the very last , there is presently added , i am alpha and omega , the beginning and the ending , saith the lord , which is , and which was , and which is to come , the almighty : whose administration therefore of affairs , and the presence of his power is palpably to be felt , and plainly to be discerned from the beginning of the church to the end of the world . he is the almighty , grasping all things in the hand of his all-comprehending providence . . i iohn who also am your brother and companion in tribulation , and in the kingdom and patience of iesus christ , both which he hath bequeathed to his faithfull followers . was in the isle that is called patmos , one of the cyclades so called in the aegean sea , for the word of god , and for the testimony of iesus christ , thither banished for the preaching the word of god , and bearing witness to the truths of the gospel of our lord jesus . . and it came to pass in this island , that i was in the spirit on the lords day , actuated and impressed upon in my inward man , my mind being vacant from this earthly body , and external senses , and wholly seised by this divine and angelical power , which caused in it the following visions , and prophetical impressions , but as lively and clear as any objects to the outward or corporeal senses : and when i was thus in the spirit , and had as it were left the body in this ecstasie , i heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet ; . saying , i am alpha and omega , the first and the last , and shall declare unto thee such things as concern the church continuedly , from the first beginning thereof to the end of the world . and what therefore thou seest write in a book , and send it unto the seven churches which are in asia , unto ephesus , and unto smyrna , and unto pergamus , and unto thyatira , and unto sardis and philadelphia , and unto laodicea ; that is to say , send it to the truly catholick and apostolick church dispread upon the * face of the earth , and divided into seven successions , unto the ephesine succession , and unto the smyrnean succession , and unto the pergamenian succession , and unto the thyatirian succession , and unto the sardian succession , and unto the philadelphian succession , and unto the laodicean succession : which seven successions one after another fill up the whole time of the church universal , from the beginning thereof to the end of the world . . and i turned to see the voice that spake with me , to see who it was that spake thus to me : and being turned , i saw seven golden candle-sticks . . and in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks , one like unto the son of man ; the representation , namely , of christ , as he is also one with his church . for we are members of his body , of his flesh , and of his bones ; they two shall be one flesh : this is a great mystery , saith the apostle , but i speak of christ and his church . cloathed with a garment down to the foot , and girt about the pops with a golden girdle , in token that he is our high priest , this habit alluding to the high priests vestments . . his head and his hairs were white like wool , as white as snow , for the greater venerableness of this high priests person , and in token he is that christ that the prophet calls councellour , the mighty god , the everlasting father : for these are the symbols of his wisdom , and paternal authority . and his eyes were as a flame of fire , to signifie the penetrancy of his providence , and spirit of discerning both in himself , and in his church . . and his feet like unto fine brass , as if they burned in a furnace ; which shews the stability and purity of his wayes in himself , and the constancy of his church in the furnace of affliction and fiery tryals : and his voice as the sound of many waters : which plainly discovers that christ is here represented in union with his church ; waters signifying a multitude in the prophetick stile , as most certainly they do . . and he had in his right hand seven stars : the seven stars according to his own interpretation are the seven angels of the seven successions of the church , whom he bears up , sustains , and strengthens throughout all ages . and out of his mouth went a hard two-edged sword ; a symbol of christ as he is the living word of god quick and powerfull , and sharper than any two-edged sword . and denotes also the powerfull word of the gospel preached by the living members of his church . and his countenance was as the sun that shineth in his strength . this is spoke in reference to him as he is called the sun of righteousness , or in reference to the church in the state of the new jerusalem ; of which it is said , there shall be no night there , and they need no candle , nor the light of the sun : for the lord god giveth them light , and they shall reign for ever and ever . . and when i saw him i fell at his feet as dead , as being exceedingly afraid that this fight might portend some great evil to the people of god. and he laid his right hand upon me , saying unto me , fear not , i am the first and the last : and though there may be some great afflictions and tryals of my church represented to thee in what thou seest ; yet thou must remember , nothing shall come to pass without my providence , who am the first and the last , and will carry you through all persecutions and deaths , and make you at length more than conquerours . . i am he that liveth and was dead , and behold i am alive for evermore , amen , and have the keys of hell and of death ; as if he should say , for i am now alive , though i was my self dead once and crucified , but behold i am alive for ever . amen . this is most certainly true of him whom this vision represents , and that he has the keys of hell and death . and therefore no man need fear to undergo martyrdom for his cause , who will certainly make him partaker of a blessed immortality , and plunge his barbarous persecutors into everlasting perdition . wherefore after this encouragement to iohn , he sayes , . write the things which thou hast seen , and the things which are , and the things which shall be hereafter ; that is , write the things which thou hast seen and known already as being past , and the things that are present , and the things that are to come after , ( viz. ) the affairs of the first succession of the church , which is the ephesine succession ; the affairs of the present succession of the church ( in which s t iohn wrote these visions ) which is the smyrnean ; and of the rest of the successions of the church which are to come afterwards . . which affairs thus distributed into seven successions , or intervals , are indeed , the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand , and the seven golden candlesticks : for , the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches , that is , the seven successions of bishops and pastors that are to shine forth in the brightness and purity of their life and doctrine in the seven successions of the churches : and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven successions of the apostolick church , here called seven churches . notes . chapter i. vers. . manifestly shewn already by him , or that are past , &c. this is spoken in reference to the absurd interpretations of grotius , in the first six seals , and the first six trumpets , who fixes the scene of all those visions in judea , and ends them with the sacking of the city : which was before s t john wrote the apocalypse , for he wrote it in domitian's time . but what will not prejudiced wits imagine , rather than stoop to the truth ? see my mystery of godliness , book . chap. . and synops. prophetic . book . chap. . sect . , , &c. vers. . truly catholick and apostolick church , &c. this i conceive to be comprehended in the name asia , in allusion to the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , asia , signifying fundamentum ; as if he should say , to all the churches that keep the apostolical foundation in doctrine and practice , that keep in it , and swerve not from it by admitting any thing contrary thereto . and dispersed on the face of the earth , &c. this also is comprised in the word asia , by allusion to another hebrew word of a like nearness of sound 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is asia again , and is the lowest of those four worlds notoriously known amongst the cabbalists , aziluth , briah , jetzirah , asia , of which last the lowest part is this earth we tread upon : so evidently is the allusion to the nearness of sound in words made use of in this book of the apocalypse . see another reason from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my exposition of the seven churches . vers. . the affairs of the first succession of the church , which is the ephesine succession ; the affairs of the present , &c. that the affairs of the ephesine succession were past when s t john received those visions in patmos is plain from hence ; because he received them about the end of domitians reign : but the beginning of the smyrnean succession is in the tenth of nero , or not long before : which is about thirty years before s t john received the visions in patmos . besides that the ephesine succession is described amongst other characters , as not yet being stained with the doctrine and deeds of the nicolaitans : but the nicolaitans appeared in the twelfth year of nero , as you may see in spandanus the epitomizer of baronius : therefore the ephesine succession was to expire before that time . so plain is it that it was past when s t john was in patmos . but hence emerges a difficulty that well may stumble some , ( viz. ) being the ephesine succession was then past , why should there be an epistle directed to it , which is as if one should write to the deceased ? to which i answer , that this book of prophecies being designed a representation of the state of the church , or of the empire in reference to the church , from the very beginning of the church ( that the representation might be the more compleat by not leaving out that little time that was then past ) to the end of the world , in that way , i say , it is comprized , whether epistolar or other , it is to be begun and continued throughout : and therefore in the prophetical vision of the seals ; as the first seal is rather an history than a prophecy , though disguised under prophetick iconismes ( for the time of the thing signified there by the rider of the white horse ( which the whole stream of interpreters understand of christ guiding and assisting the apostles and his church in the apostolick times ) was in a manner quite expired when john wrote the apocalypse : ) so this epistle to the ephesine succession of the church , is to be conceived an historical description of that state of the church , rather than an epistle , though for conformity-sake it is put into this epistolar disguise . and since it is not so proper to write epistles to any but those who are in present being ; surely they who are satisfied there is no absurdity in writing in this epistolar way to the successions of the church not yet come , ought to think the using this epistolar form to a succession already past , the more tolerable . but supposing the apocalypse a designed representation , as i hinted above , of the affairs or state of the church set out by a triple prophecy , this of the seven churches , the second of the sealed book , and the last of the opened book , and that the prophecy of the sealed book , and of the opened book , each of them , though in a prophetick stile , yet in the entrance of the prophecies represent things or times partly past and partly present ( neither of which are the proper objects of prophecy ) when s t john was in patmos , and therefore so far are rather an history than prophecy , though disguised or adorned with prophetick iconismes , and consequently that that little snip of time , the ephesine interval contains , though an history rather than an epistle , may as well be set down in an epistolar form , as the other in a prophetical : these things , i say , being considered , the using this form of an epistle to the ephesine succession , that it might keep conformity with the rest ( the usefulness of which epistolar forms i have declared in my * prophetical exposition of the seven churches ) is not only tolerable but very fit and commendable . and yet this is not all that i have to say : for being there was a real church in ephesus in s t john 's time , which according to the literal sense of these epistles might be concerned therein , and that there is also a moral use and sense of them , according to which they may be applicable to this or that state of any particular church of christ , in any particular place or age of the world ( so richly usefull is the contrivance of this holy writing for the edification of the church of christ , though the main be the prophetical design , as to the illustration and confirmation of his providence over his church , and that the vision of the seven churches is a prophecy properly so called , i have by no less than twenty arguments confirmed in my * exposition of the seven churches ) this epistolar form , i say , to the ephesine succession is not only tolerable , fit , and commendable , but altogether necessary . which things , though i have sufficiently noted and confirmed in my said exposition of the seven churches , yet i thought fit to give an hint of them here , that no man unawares may stumble , as is said , at the very threshold . chapter ii. . unto the angel of the church of ephesus write ; that is , to the bishops and pastors , &c. of the ephesine succession of the church ( which begins with the beginning of the church of christ , and ends in the tenth year of nero ) * whose name bears with it the signification of its condition . these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand , and walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks . and he salutes you under the title of this part of his former representation , that you may run the race more chearfully that now is begun , he going along with you , even to the end thereof . he supports , comforts and guides all the seven successions of the bishops and pastors of the church that labour in the word and doctrine , and is in the midst of all the seven successions of the church throughout all ages , minding their conversation , and assisting them that are true of heart even to the end of the world . . i know thy works , thy labour , and thy patience , and how thou canst not bear them which are evil . i know your works , and approve of your labour , industry and patience , and commend you for that loathing and detestation you have of lewd and wicked men . and thou hast tryed them that say they are apostles and are not , and hast found them lyars . that also i commend , that you can sift and try such as pretend to be sent from me , and to be apostles , and are not , but are lyars and deceivers , mere impostors and counterfeits . . and hast born , and hast patience , and for my names sake hast laboured , and hast not fainted . i commend you for this your first great fervency and desire of enlarging my church or kingdom , and bearing patiently all crosses and difficulties you meet with in the carrying on the work , and for your not fainting under so great pains and travail . . nevertheless i have somewhat against thée , because thou hast left thy first love. there is not that earnestness of affection for me as at the first , nor fervency and zeal for the enlargement of my kingdom , but you are more cold and remiss . . remember therefore from whence thou art fallen , and repent , and do the first works , that is , act with that constancy , fervency and sincerity you did before . or else i will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of his place , except thou repent ; that is , i will raise such a tempest of persecution against the church , that she will not be able to keep her place but be shaken and driven with the violence thereof . this you must expect unless you repent . . but this thou hast , that thou hatest the déeds of the nicolaitans , which i also hate . this was yet the priviledge of this ephesine interval of the church , that she was not then tainted with the lusts of that filthy sect of the nicolaitans , which the soul of christ so abhors . . he that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches in these prophetical parables . for it is of great concern and edification for them to consider and understand them through all the successions of the churches , that what is recommended they may follow and eschew the contrary at all times . to him that overcometh will i give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of god ; that is , he that overcometh through his much labour and pains , he shall be refreshed with the food of the tree of life , and for his patience and sufferings enjoy a paradise of pleasure in heaven . . and unto the angel of the church of smyrna write : to the bishops and pastors , &c. of the smyrnean succession of the church ( which reaches from the end of the ephesine succession to about the three hundred twenty fourth year of christ , * and bears the signification of its condition in its name ) write to them thus : these things saith the first and the last , which was dead and is alive . who salutes you therefore with this part of his former representation as his most proper title here , for an encouragement in the bloody persecuting times you are in : for if you dye martyrs , you shall as assuredly be alive again as i am that was once martyred and crucified . and i am the first and the last , and will make my church hold out to the end , and stand conquerour in the field . . i know thy works , and tribulation , and poverty , but thou art rich . i know how you are destitute of all the comforts of life , and conflict with the greatest necessities , but yet ye are really rich , full of christian patience and meekness , and of invincible courage amidst all the dangers of death . and i know the blasphemie of them that say they are iews and are not , but are the synagogue of satan . that say they are christians and are not ; ( for so iews signifies in the apocalyptick stile ) and so by their dastardliness and perfidiousness blaspheme and dishonour that noble name and calling , by proving themselves of the synagogue of satan , and betrayers of the kingdom of their lord that bought them , fast slaves to the flesh , and impatient of all persecution , worse than peter , whom notwithstanding when he would have discouraged me from my sufferings on the cross , i sharply rebuked with a get thee behind me satan , for thou savourest not the things of god. . fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer , nor imitate that base cowardise of that synagogue of satan , for they are no church of mine , but a cage of perfidious hypocrites . behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tryed , and ye shall have tribulation ten dayes . the devil and his ministers under paganism will cast some of you into prison for the tryal of your faith and constancy ; and you shall have the tribulation of ten dayes , even of those ten bloody persecutions under the pagan emperours . be thou faithful unto death , and i will give thee a crown of life : be in no wise discouraged , but continue faithful unto death , and i will give you a crown of life , even the imperial crown , constantine turning christian , which will be a crown of life and security to you my church , and save you from death and persecution : this shall be the external effect and fruit of your sufferings , or the political reward thereof . . he that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . he that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death . he that stands out this tryal , and valiantly suffers martyrdom shall not be hurt of the second death , but have his part in the first resurrection accordingly as it is written , apoc. . . blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection , on such the second death hath no power . this is the promised priviledge of those martyrs that suffered persecution in this smyrnean succession of the church under the ten hot persecutions . and as that other promise that preceded the parabolical epiphonema was external and political : so this reward that follows the said epiphonema is invisible , and belonging to the other state : which distinction is to be observed in the rest of the epistles ; and that the promise that follows the epiphonema , he that hath ears let him hear , &c. belongs to what is spiritual and invisible . . and to the angel of the church in pergamus write , ( viz. ) to the bishops and pastors , &c. of the pergamenian succession of the church ( which reaches from the end of the smyrnean succession , namely from the year three hundred twenty four , to the year one thousand two hundred forty two , when the popes legate ameline with trancavel the bastard son of count beziers ended the war against the albigenses , * and which has its condition signified by its name ) write thus : these things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges . who salutes them wearing the title of this part of his representation by a kind of antithesis , this sword that comes out of his mouth being the sword of the spirit , in opposition to the sword and arm of flesh , that persecuted the true church in this succession . . i know thy works , and where thou dwellest , even where satans seat is ; and thou holdest fast my name , and hast not denyed my faith : i observe how well thou carryest thy self , though thou dwellest under the dominion and jurisdiction of the first-born of lucifer , that man of sin , and son of pride , a right pergamenian , lofty and haughty , under whose jurisdiction notwithstanding thou art found to dwell , and yet holdest fast to my authority , and the pure christian profession , nor hast apostatised from the ancient faith and purity of worship , untainted with superstition and idolatry : even in those days wherein antipas was my faithful martyr , who was slain among you where satan dwelleth : no not in those dayes when antipas , those faithfull and couragious opposers of holy father , the pope ( for so the word plainly signifies ) the waldenses and albigenses were cruelly slain with the sword within the jurisdiction of that first-born of lucifer . . but i have a few things against thée , because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of balaam , who taught balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of israel , to eat things sacrificed to idols , and to commit fornication . you have those that comply with the pseudo-prophet balaam , the lofty lord of the people , for so balaam signifies , who has taught balac the secular power , now but a shadow or cypher , it being in this interval , evacuate in a manner ( as the name imports ) by the over-topping of the power ecclesiastical , to force the israelites , that is , the true and genuine christians ( of which the israelites were a type ) to come to mass , and by partaking thereof to partake of idolatry , they making by their idolatrous usages there , the lords supper , which is a feast upon a sacrifice , like to the feeding upon idolothyta , upon things sacrificed unto idols . . so hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the nicolaitans , which thing i hate . and besides these complyers with the mass , though they be in their own judgements against it , there are amongst you also that indulge too much to the liberty of the flesh , and imitate the sect of the nicolaitans , a thing which my soul abhors . . repent , or else i will come unto thée quickly ; amend these faults , or else i will come unto you quickly by a more strict vigilaney of the lords of the inquisition ( whose rule was most notorious in the succeeding interval of the church ) and then the more frequent terrour of being burnt at the stake will more effectually extinguish the flames of your wantonness and lust : be ye therefore pure and holy as i also am pure and holy . and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth . and as for those that opress my faithfull ones , i will fight against them with the sword of my mouth , and cut off whole nations by vertue thereof , ( namely of the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god convincingly preached ) from the idolatrous roman church . this is a reward political and visible to be fulfilled in the next interval at the close thereof . . he that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . to him that overcometh will i give to eat of the hidden manna . he that stands out in purity of heart and a good conscience , he instead of that sweet consecrated wafer , that pretended visible manna , shall eat of the true hidden spiritual manna , spoken of iohn . my flesh is meat indeed , and my blood is drink indeed : for the words i there speak , they are spirit and they are life . and if he dye he shall eat angels food , and pass unto their communion and society . and will give him a white stone , and in the stone a new name written , which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it ; that is , though he be accused and condemned for an heretick by this lofty roman or pergamenian church where satan the accuser dwells , yet i will give him a white stone , and absolve him in foro divino . or i will give him the white stone in which a new name is written , that is to say , i will confirm and establish him in the new birth , and give to him that pure and permanent inestimable pearl of the divine nature , which none knows but he that has it . and thus he shall be abundantly compensated for all the evil , or loss he may seem to sustain by his quitting the communion of this idolatrous church of pergamus or rome . for the * signification of their names do very nearly agree . . and unto the angel of the church of thyatira write . to the bishops and pastors , &c. of the thyatirian succession of the church ( which begins at the ending of the former succession , and reacheth till the time that whole nations forsook the communion of the church of rome , * and whose condition is represented in the signification of its name ) write thus : these things saith the son of god , who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire , and his feet like fine brass . these things saith the son of god to a people that live amongst those that make the virgin mary in as high a way or higher ( as to worship ) the daughter of god. but his eyes like a flame of fire denote the penetrancy of his providence , as also the kindling of his just anger against the fiery persecutions of his servants by thyatira , the roman church again , in this interval . and that his feet are said to be like to fine brass , if we refer it to him as he is in union with his church , that supplement is to be remembred , as if they burned in a furnace ; which is an intimation of the frequent burnings of the servants of christ at the stake in this interval . . i know thy works , and charity , and service , and faith , and thy patience , and thy works , and the last to be more than the first ; that towards the latter end of this thyatirian succession they were more and greater than before : which is a noble testimony to the zeal and sincerity of those that began the reformation . . notwithstanding i have a few things against thee , because thou sufferest that woman iezebel , the roman hierarchy or priesthood , when now in this interval things are come to that maturity , that thou mayest cast her off , and free thy self from this unjust and idolatrous yoke : this is spoke to the powers and principalities held under by her . which calleth her self a prophetess , but is indeed a pseudoprophetess , a false teacher and seducer of my servants , the same with the false prophet elsewhere mentioned in the apocalypse : to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication , and to eat things sacrificed unto idols . that thou sufferest her to bring them to the communion of the mass which she has made so idolatrous , that my supper being a feast upon a sacrifice , she makes it look altogether like the eating of things sacrificed unto idols , and so seduces to spiritual fornication , which is idolatry : wherefore let iezebel * according to the omen and fate in her name be cast out and reputed as the dung of the earth . . and i gave her space to repent of her fornication , and she repented not . since my monition to her by the waldenses and albigenses , but she remains still obdurate and impenitent . . behold i will cast her into a bed of languishment , instead of that large bed of wantonness , in which the kings of the earth have so universally committed fornication with her . and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation , except they repent of their déeds , unless they desist from their usual gross idolatries so scandalous in the eyes of all sober christians . . and i will kill her children with death , that is , either by the sword that cometh out of my mouth , i shall make them dead to her by their conversion to the truth , they being mortified and made dead to all the vain trumperies of that false , deceitfull , idolatrous church , or i will kill them by a natural death ; namely , their emissaries and armies that may be sent against my true church . and all the churches shall know that i am be which searcheth the reins and hearts : and i will give unto every one of you according to his works . so that all the christian world shall ring of the righteousness of my judgments , who have mine eyes like a bright flame of fire piercing into the reins and hearts of men to discover what they are , that i may give to every one according to his demerits . . but unto you i say , and unto the rest in thyatica , as many as have not this doctrine , nor comply with the idolatrous form of the roman religion . and which have not known the depths of satan , as they speak : those deep reasons of state as they phrase it ; that frame religion so as if there were no god really , nor christ that superintends his church , but that religion were only to be a trick of state to rule or fool the people with : unto you , i say , that are better minded , i will put upon you no other burthen , i will give you no further trouble . . but that which you have already , hold fast till i come . persist only in the good way you are in , and hold fast to the truth till i come , and take the papal yoke from off your neck . . and he that overcometh and kéepeth my words unto the end , to him will i give power over the nations ; that is , they that with invincible patience and courage stand out to the last , and keep my works unto the end , remembring to do what i command , that keep faith and good conscience in despite of all the thyatirian persecutions : these people , with their princes and governours shall at the end , namely , in the last semi-time of the seven get the nations under them , that is , the paganochristians , nor shall be any longer subject to their dominion , who had become in a manner heathens by their idolatrous practices , and barbarous cruelties . . ( and he shall rule them with a rod of iron , as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers ; that is , they shall rigidly enough , and severely rule them , so that they shall not be able to whinch but at their own peril , and all their strength shall be broken to fitters as a potters vessel ) even as i have received of my father ; that is , so far as i shall have received of my father , as to the propagating of my kingdom at this time , so will i give to them . . and i will give him the morning star : not the bright morning star , which state belongs rather to the seventh vial , the commencement of the philadelphian interval , or to the millennial empire of christ ; but the morning star , which shall appear , though not so bright , yet very early or unexpectedly , but a little beyond the middle of the seventh semitime , after the time and times are expired . . he that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . nothing following this epiphonema , or rather the promises of reward going before it , it shows plainly , that they belong to this life , and the visible state of the church on earth . notes . chapter ii. vers. i. whose name bears in it the signification of its condition , &c. and that by an allusion either to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the bar , lists , or beginning of a race ; for that this ephefine interval is the beginning of the whole decursion and succession of the church to the end of the world , and the christian mans life is compared to a race by s t paul : or in allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is an earnest desire , suppose , of promoting our own salvation , and propagating the kingdom of christ upon earth , and of winning the imperial crown , which he on the white horse with bow in his hand aimes at , whose vision begins with this ephesine interval : for which zealous design this ephesine church is commended in the second and third verses of this chapter : but in the fourth verse christ saith , i have somewhat against thee , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because thou hast left thy first love , remitted it , or slackened it : so that there may be an allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in another sense , as it signifies , relaxation or remisness of duty , as well as to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . both which , one after another was the condition of this interval of the church ; first earnest zeal and love , after remisness and coolness . vers. . and bears the signification of its condition in its name , &c. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , smyrna is the same that myrrha , myrrh , from the syriac 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , amara . by smyrna therefore is understood the bitterness of affliction , and persecution in this second interval of the church . vers. . and has its condition signified in its name , &c. for by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are signified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all high and lofty structures , though the towers of troy were properly at first so called , wherefore this name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of the church in pergamus , partly denotes the exaltation of the church out of her smyrnean humiliation and affliction , and partly the excessive pride and fastuosity of the idolatrous hierarchy growing up to the top in this interval . in which pergamus notwithstanding , or proud luciferian church , the true apostolick church was fain to have its abode , being the woman in the wilderness , as she is set out in other visions . vers. . signification of their names do very nearly agree , &c. pergamus signifying , as was observed above , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all lofty and stately structures , and rome having its name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exaltari , as some criticks are pleased to observe . vers. . and whose condition is represented in the signification of the name , &c. for it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the church in thyatira : which either alludes to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by reason of the effeminacy of the church of rome at that time , and her worshipping the virgin mary as the daughter of god in the highest sense ( for thyatira signifies daughter , from whence this city had its denomination ) more by far than the son of god himself : or else it alludes to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , altars of burnt offerings , the burnings of the martyrs of iesus for their testimony against the foul corruptions , and gross idolatries of the church of rome , being more than ordinarily frequent in that interval : for either of these reasons , or rather for them both , is this succession of the church , called the church in thyatira . vers. . according to the omen and fate in her name , &c. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies , either habitaculum or stercus , and from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which considered together will signifie her casting out of her habitation , and the loathing of her , as the dung of the earth . see my exposition of the seven churches , chap. . chapter iii. . and unto the angel of the church in sardis write : to the bishops and pastors especially , ( and those committed to their charge ) of the sardinian succession ( which begins where the thyatirian succession ends ; that is , when protestantisme had become the religion of nations and kingdoms , and reaches to the last vial , apoc. . * whose condition is notified in their name ) write thus : these things saith he that hath the seven spirits of god and the seven stars ; that has in his power and disposal all the divine graces , and heavenly hosts or companies of angels for the assistance of his church , and all the bishops and pastors thereof , which are here typified by the seven stars ; as by having them in his hand , that they are under his power and protection ; a description of christ , like that in the epistle to the ephesine church . which description is here repeated for the encouragement of renewing his church again , and the reforming it into the ancient apostolick faith and practice . as if it were the very beginning and emerging again of the truly apostolick church that had lien hid in the wilderness of paganochristian romanism . which through these helps , though it began hopefully and commendably , yet was never at any great pitch of perfection , and has also degenerated from what she at first appeared . of which christ complains , saying , i know thy works , that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead . i observe how mean and wretched thou art in comparison of what thou oughtest to be , and that thou hast a name that thou livest , as being so full of zeal for or against this ceremony , and that opinion , with hot and nice disputes about faith and justification ; but i will assure thee , be thou as full of life and activity as thou wilt about such things , if thou hast not that faith which worketh by love , thou art nothing in my esteem . whosoever is devoid of a due degree of charity , and unself-interessed love , let him be reputed to live as much as he will , he is accounted dead in my sight . . be watchfull : keep a guard over thine own heart , and breath after unfeigned charity , which is the bond of perfection , and will prevent all schisms and factions , and tye the members of reformed christendom in one heart and one mind to their governours temporal and spiritual , and to one another . and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to dye . revive and corroborate in you the things that remain , ( viz. ) faith in god , and in the lord jesus christ , and of a blessed immortality after this life ; these you yet profess , though infidelity and atheism , with sensuality and libertinism have grown much upon you , so that the belief even of these necessary things are ready to dye also . for i have not found thy works perfect before god. for you do not go on towards perfection , nor are ye in a growing state , though ye have not yet reached your due stature approvable before god , which is a sign you are in a state of languishment and vergency towards death . . remember therefore how thou hast received and heard , and hold fast and repent : since you profess your selves reformed into a true apostolick church , remember what you have heard out of the apostles writings . how that i so loved my church that i gave my self for it , that i might sanctifie it , that i might make it a glorious church , having neither spot nor wrinkle , nor any such thing , but that it should be holy and without blemish . and let not the vain glosses of any faint-hearted hypocrites deceive or discourage you . remember also what ye heard of antichrist , that man of sin , that exalts himself above all that is called god and worshipped , and for ever abandon that wicked and idolatrous communion . and take heed of that nauseous and detestable ingratitude of not setting a due value of my redeeming you from that worse than aegyptian or babylonian captivity into the gospel-liberty : and be not imposed upon by the fine words and subtil sophistry of either known enemies , or perfidious brethren . these and such like things as these taught by my apostles , and repeated again by the first reformers , be sure to hold fast , and repent of your slipperiness and remisness , of your easiness and inclinableness again to the flesh-pots of aegypt , the carnal entertainments under that mystical pharaoh at rome . if therefore thou shalt not watch i will come on thée as a thief , and thou shalt not know what hour i will come upon thee . these things therefore i strictly command thee and charge thee to do , which if thou wilt not carefully and diligently observe , and have a due watch over thy wayes , i will come on thee of a sudden , and surprize thee with some terrible judgement for thy gross ingratitude , and thou shalt not know what hour i come upon thee before the storm certainly overtake thee . god make the reformed churches sensible of this sad commination , which is foretold them for no other purpose , than that by their timely repentance , and carefull watchfulness they may avoid it . . thou hast a few names even in sardis , which have not defiled their garments , and they shall walk with me in white , for they are worthy . there be some few excellent persons , and of a true christian spirit scattered up and down in the reformed churches , ( though the generality be so bad and imperfect ) who have not defiled their garments , the inward nor outward cloathing of their soul , nor spotted the decency of their conversation by any scandal of the flesh . with these innocent and spotless souls not soiled or stained with the filth of the usual tinctures of the flesh , will i converse by my spirit , whereby they shall be able to walk with me with all innocency and integrity of heart for ever : for they are persons meet and fit for such converse . . he that overcometh , the same shall be cloathed in white raiment : they that overcome all difficulties inward and outward , and persist in purity and true holiness , they shall be cloathed in white rayment , that is , they shall be successfull and prosperous in the affairs of my kingdom , which they endeavour to propagate . and i will not blot out his name out of the book of life : that is , this sort of men shall continue to the philadelphian succession , and onwards to the end of the world . and this book of life to them shall be as the crown of life to the smyrnean succession , shall be their security from persecution and death . that church which they introduce into the world , which is the philadelphian , shall never be brought again under the subjection , tyranny and persecution of any power whatsoever . but i will confess his name before my father , and before his angels . i will in a special manner recommend them to the good providence of god , and the watchful ministry of his holy angels . . he that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . the reformed churches , especially let them take particular notice what the holy ghost has here delivered . that christ who holds the seven stars in his right hand , and appears thus to the reformed churches , as he did to the ephesine or first apostolick church , is as ready and serious in the renewing , and the reforming of his church as he was then in setting it on foot first in the world . and he appears , as then walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks ; ( which signifies his helpfull presence to his church ) so here with the succour of his divine graces , and ministry , and assistance of his holy angels : so that nothing is wanting to rouse us effectually out of this carnal drousiness toward the attainment of the dispensation of the spirit and power , except our own sincerity and diligent attention to , and firm belief of the oracles of god : so that the main success of things hitherto , as to the effect of religion in the reformed churches , lies at our own doors : god give us grace to consider it . . and to the angel of the church in philadelphia write : to the bishops and pastors especially ( but together with their charge ) of the philadelphian succession , ( which begins where the sardian ends and reaches to the fourth thunder , * and discovers its nature and condition in its name ) write thus : these things saith he that is holy , and speaks to a church that willingly listens to such monitions as these : be ye holy for i am holy , and , be ye perfect as your father which is in heaven is perfect . he that is true : and will verifie all his glorious promises in the philadelphian succession , or blessed millennium to all those that trust in his word . he that has the key of david : he that is the chief minister of state to the eternal god , * whom the apostle iohn calls love . he that openeth and no man shutteth , and shutteth and no man openeth : he that when he will can open the door of success to his own , and shut it again when he will against his enemies , and so administer all things prosperously . . i know thy works and designs , and highly approve of them ; i know thou doest nothing out of bitter zeal , faction , or self-seeking , nothing out of vain-glory , or any other worldly end , but simply out of love of me , and of my righteousness , and out of love to all mankind , for the promoting of whose both present and future happiness thou dost all thy endeavours ; and therefore , behold i have set before thée an open door and no man can shut it , against thee : for thou hast a little strength , and hast kept my word , and hast not denyed my name : though thou hadst but a little force or army in comparison of the rest of the world , yet thou hast been valiant , and stood for my word stoutly and couragiously against all gainsayers , and hast never behaved thy self otherwise than becomes a sound and faithfull christian , and such as is resolved never to dishonour that profession or name . . behold i will make them of the synagogue of satan ( which say they are iews and are not , but do lye : ) behold i will make them that are the synagogue of the devil , for their pride , falsities , and murderous cruelties , and yet call themselves iews , that is , christians [ nay , holy church ] ( the type as above being used for the antitype ) but are so far from being so , that really they are but pseudochristians , or rather the synagogue of antichrist , who under pretence of professing christ do most wickedly oppose him , by nulling his laws , and barbarously murthering his true and faithfull subjects for not committing idolatry , and other abominations they would force upon them : whereby it is manifest , though they call themselves holy church and christians , they are counterfeits and lyars . behold i will make them to come and worship before thy féet , and to know that i have loved thée . behold i will make them to come , instead of kissing the popes slipper , to worship before thy feet , to be subjected unto thee , and to do thee homage : and to acknowledge how much i have loved thee , and set thee above all the other princes of the earth . . because thou hast kept the word of my patience , i also will kéep thée from the hour of temptation , which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth : because thou hast showen all along such invincible meekness and patience in maintaining my cause , and undaunted faithfulness ; in that great confusion , commotion and temptation under the last vial , which shall come upon all the world to try the inhabitants of the earth , i will keep thee and protect thee , and thou shalt be safe and victorious in all . . behold i come quickly : even in this last vial , into which thou art already entred . hold that fast which thou hast , that no man take thy crown . thou art a church after my own hearts desire , o philadelphia , nor do i accuse thee of any thing , thou carriest thy self with that integrity and sincerity , only hold fast to that perfection thou hast attained , that thou mayst not be deprived of the crown i intend for thee : for in thee shall be accomplished all the glorious promises concerning my kingdome upon earth . . him that overcometh will i make a pillar in the temple of my god , and he shall go no more out . to you that overcome , to you it shall be given to be pillars in the temple of my god , you shall be an holy , fixt and stable people , the true , holy catholick church that shall never fail , but shall endure till i come in the clouds to judgement at the last day . all other forms and denominations shall perish , but this shall obtain the dominion unto the end . and i will write upon him the name of my god , and the name of the city of my god , which is new ierusalem , which cometh down out of heaven from my god , and i will write upon him my new name . and on these lasting pillars shall the name of my god be written , and the new nature in you shall be visible and legible , as it were , to all , how heavenly it is and divine , and how you are really that church represented by the city in ezechiel , which is called iehovah shammah , god is there . for your conversation will be such , that every man will be ready to say , god is amongst you of a truth , and that you are really , as well as called the new ierusalem , which cometh down out of heaven from my god. and lastly , i will write upon you my new name , not the morning star , but the bright morning star , or that newly purchased title in the battle , where the beast and false prophet are taken and cast into a lake burning with brimstone , and the rest slain with the sword of him that sate on the white horse , which sword cometh out of his mouth , ( viz. ) the title of king of kings , and lord of lords : for it is then that you shall be the greatest empire upon earth . . he that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . . and unto the angel of the church in laodicea write : unto the bishops and pastors especially , and the charge under them in the laodicean succession ( which reaches from the fourth thunder till christ visibly appear in the clouds of heaven , * and whose name denotes the nature thereof ) write thus : these things saith the amen , the faithfull and true witness ; in whom all the promises are yea and amen . whose faithfulness is seen in bringing to pass the philadelphian estate , that marvellous purity and external prosperity of that succession of the church , and therefore we are to believe his promises of the eternal felicity he reminds us of in this : a blessed immortality after this life , and his visible coming to judge the quick and the dead , and his putting an end to this terrestrial scene , though in this declining age of the church in the laodicean succession some may be too slow to believe it : and therefore these titles of assuredness and veracity are here used . and he is called a faithful witness also , because he so impartially witnesses of the state of the laodiceans , and does not flatter them . the beginning of the creation of god. it may be well understood of the new creation , or constitution of things under the gospel ; which he having carried on all along hitherto according to prophecy and prediction , he is the more certainly and readily to be believed in this last catastrophe of things : or taking the beginning of the creation of god , with an higher reference to that title of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which respects his divinity , or the eternal logos , without whom nothing was made or created ; then the importance of of it is this , that as sure as he made this earth , this habitable round world , so we may be as sure that he both can by the same power , and also will destroy it again in this laodicean succession by a final conflagration , taking vengeance of the wicked , and resetling all true believers in an eternal state of glory . . i know thy works , that thou art neither cold nor hot : but that you are careless , formal , luke-warm christians . thou retainest indeed still the external form of the philadelphian church , as to doctrine and worship ; but thou art destitute of that spirit of life in the new birth , which was the proper character of thy deceased sister philadelphia . i would thou wert cold or hot . for though it be not better in it self to be quite cold , yet it were for thee , that thou mightest the more easily be convinced of thine own wants , and by repentance and mortification enter into the state of regeneration , and be made partaker of my spirit . . so then because thou art lukewarm , and neither cold nor hot , i will spew thée out of my mouth . i will shew how nauseous and loathsome thou art to me in a torrent of reproof , as a sign of my disgust against thee ; and upon thy impenitence at length being weary of thee ( as concerning god it is said before his bringing the deluge of water on the earth , that it repented him that he had made man ) i will spew thee out from my self , who fill all things , and exterminate thee out of being by a deluge of fire that shall put an end to this terrestrial scene of things , and the laodicean church shall be no more . . but in the mean time , that i may faithfully admonish thee , because thou sayest i am rich and increased with goods and have néed of nothing , whilst thou considerest , that peace and plenty , that power and rule , and security from enemies which thou enjoyest , and the purity of doctrine and worship free from superstition and idolatry , and the abundance of both natural and divine knowledge , and clear understanding of prophecies , by reason of their completion now , and skilfull interpretations of thy predecessors , and universal freedom from all persecution ; i tell thee , notwithstanding all these thou art mistaken in thy condition . and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable , and poor , and blind , and naked , in that thou art destitute of the glories and treasures of the inward man , and art ignorant of the mysteries of regeneration , and of the spirit of life in the new birth , and art content with a covering , but not of my spirit , whereby thou dost but add sin to sin . . i counsel thée therefore , to buy of me gold tryed in the fire , that thou mayest be rich . gold refined in the fire , and so pure , that it is transparent like glass . new jerusalem gold , which is the new nature or creature , mine own image : and the price is , thy sincere endeavouring and breathing after that state , that thou mayest possess those durable riches which shall not be melted , when the elements shall melt with fervent heat , and the earth and the works therein shall be burnt up , namely , at the conflagration . and white rayment , that thou mayest be cloathed , and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear . and buy of me white rayment , that is , groan in thy self , o spiritless laodicea , and desire to be cloathed with thy spiritual tabernacle from heaven , that being so cloathed thou mayest not be found naked , and that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear at the last day . and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see . clear thy judgement and understanding by a diligent purification of thy soul from all corruptions of flesh and spirit , and perfect holiness in my fear , that thou mayest see , and have a right discerning in all things . . as many as i love i rebuke and chasten , be zealous therefore and repent . as many as i love i chasten , and i have a love to thee even for thy outward resemblance of thy deceased sister philadelphia , and therefore i chastise thee with sharp reproofs to bring thee to an inward sense of things , and shall further afflict thee by outward straits and distress to awaken thee . for thine enemies gog and magog by reason of thy remisness in religion , security and neglect of the interest of my kingdom will grow upon thee , and at last encompass the beloved city . be zealous therefore , and repent thee of thy dead formality and remisness in the affairs of my kingdome , that so thou mayest recover the philadelphian love and fervency . . and do not complain of difficulties ; behold i stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice and open the door , i will come in to him and will sup with him , and he with me . i offer my aid unto you , and solicit you ever and anon by good monitions and suggestions , and if you obey sincerely my dictates and succours of light and grace i offer you , and by this your sincerity open me the door , i will sup with you , i will communicate my nature and spirit unto you . you shall feed on my flesh which is meat indeed , and drink of my blood which is drink indeed , and that saying shall be fullfilled in you ; i in my father and you in me , and i in you . if any man love me and keep my word , my father will love him , and will come to him , and abide with him . . and that i may the more effectually rouse thee up out of this dead formality and tepidity , out of this dulness and lethargy , i add further , to him that overcometh will i grant to sit with me in my throne , even as i also overcame , and am set down with my father in his throne . you shall not only enjoy me and my father in this life , but if you will stand to the conflict , and so attain to the state of the spirit of life and real regeneration into the living image of my self , i will exalt you to the same happiness with my self , your bodies being transformed into the image of my glorious body , and so fitted to ascend into the throne that he has given me , whose throne is heaven , as earth his footstool . nay , you shall sit with me in my throne , and judge the apostate angels at the last day . this is a great and stupendious promise , but you ought to consider , that he has promised it , who is the amen , the true and faithfull witness , and the beginning of the creation of god , and therefore both will and can bring all his counsels , purposes and promises to pass : even so . amen . . he that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches . notes . chapter iii. vers. i. whose condition is notified in their name , &c. namely , by way of allusion to the lapis sardius , whose vertue is to exhilarate the mind of him that wears it , and make him couragious , and is an amulet against witchcraft and poyson : which may intimate the comfortable doctrine of iustification by faith , and the defeating the poyson of that cup of fornication in the hand of the whore of babylon , that the sardian church is not infected with that poyson of idolatry , as being out of the reach of that inchanted cup of the whore. sardis also signifies canticum laetitiae , which sutes well with the ioy of the reformed churches at the rising of the witnesses , signified by those harpers with the harps of god in their hand , ch . . but being the sardius stone is in hebrew called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , odem , which sounds near to edom , and by the latines termed carnalina , this insinuates the defectuousness of the sardian church , and her carnality in several points of doctrine and practice . concerning which see my exposition of the seven churches , chap. . vers. . and discovers its nature and condition in its name , &c. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the love of the brethren , and indeed consequently the love of god and all men , these vertues are so nearly linked together when they are sincere , and in a due degree . see my exposition of the seven churches , chap. . the apostle iohn calls love : and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies amor , as also dilectus , amatus , which will answer to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the platonists ; which is the highest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of all . vers. . and whose name denotes the nature thereof , &c. for laodicea signifies either the righteousness of the people , that is , an external popular mode of righteousness , the inward life and spirit decaying ; which is too much the state of laodicea : or it signifies the judging of the people , because in this interval of the church , namely at the end thereof , christ will come visibly to judge and sentence all people to their final doom . chapter iv. hitherto reaches the first part of this book of prophecies , which has this peculiar and distinctly from the other two that follow , that as they run altogether upon real symbols or iconismes , representations or images of what is foretold taken from things ; this first part did most what run upon nominal or paranomastical iconismes or images , consisting in allusion to words or names that signified the condition of things foretold , as was obvious to observe in the explication of that first part of this book . the second part now begins , and that as high , and reaches as far as the first , that is , it reaches from the beginning of the christian church to the end of the world . and it is to be observed , that as this former part , the so far extended prophecy of the churches , was ushered in by a voice like a trumpet , and the glorious representation of christ in the midst of the golden candlesticks ; so here in this sealed book-prophecy here is again the voice like a trumpet , and christ again represented in a glorious manner , to shew the parity of these two prophecies , and that they are of the like concern and extent : which will appear more plain in the interpretation , after the introduction in this sealed book-prophecy , which takes up the fourth and fifth chapters , is explained . . after this i looked and behold a door was opened in heaven . after this vision of the seven churches was past , and i come to my self again , having occasion to look upwards ; behold a door seemed to be opened in heaven : and the first voice which i heard , was as if it were of a trumpet talking with me . and lo ! the first voice which i heard before the vision of the seven churches , as of a trumpet talking with me , saying , come up hither and i will shew thee the things which must be hereafter ; that is , the representations or prefigurations of those future things . . and immediately i was in the spirit , which is a sign he was again come to himself before . and behold a throne was set in heaven , and one sat on the throne . being thus caught up in spirit , in this ecstasie i presently saw a throne set in heaven , and one sitting on that throne with great majesty . . and he that sat was to look upon like a iasper and a sardine stone : a iasper and sardine stone , the one famous for the firmness thereof , denoting the strength , or rather the omnipotency of the divinity ; the other for the red , fiery colour of it , denoting the piercing activity of the divine nature : or the colour of fire is here made choice of , as being the root of light , to show , that he that sits here on the throne is god the father : which answers to that appearance of fire in him that sits on the throne in ezechiel's vision , to whom the rainbow belongs : which is there god the father , with which this vision has no small affinity , as may appear , because the rainbow is seen also here about the throne in sight like an emerald , that imitates the most pleasing colour of the rainbow or halo , as it follows in the text : and there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight much like unto an emerald . . and round about the throne were four and twenty seats , and upon the seats i saw four and twenty elders sitting cloathed in white rayment , and they had on their heads crowns of gold. here it also varies from that vision of ezechiel , as being framed for a type of the future state of the church , when the new ierusalem descends from heaven , and the tabernacle of god is with men : and therefore the four and twenty elders are here said to sit round about the throne , as the priests and levites were pitched next the tabernacle : but in that they wear crowns as well as white rayment , it implies the sanctity of the kings in that state of the church which this type points at , those renewed apostolick times in the new ierusalem , when the conversion of the jews will add the heads of their twelve tribes to the number of the twelve apostles , which these twenty four elders or princes of nations may answer to . and in that there is no one besides god and the lamb here that appears to be supream over them ; it signifies , that in those times the popes pretenses will vanish , and that kings and princes then of the christian profession will know themselves , and be acknowledged by all to be in all causes as well ecclesiastical as civil within their own dominions next and immediately under christ supream heads and governours . . and out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings , and voices : and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne , which are the seven spirits of god. there is also mention of lamps , and fire , and lightning , though no thundring in the vision of ezechiel , which is the representation of the spiritual kingdom of christ , which is here again typified , but as a state to come of the church here on earth . and the seven lamps of fire are , either * all the ministring angels , or all the living and quickening graces of the spirit of god. . and before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal . this is not found neither in the vision of ezechiel , but is an emblem also of the spiritual kingdom of christ , it being the pure laver of regeneration , the being baptized with the holy ghost and with fire , which the seven lamps also betoken . and in that it is called a sea of glass , it may signifie the pure transparent condition of the church , which is a multitude [ as sea signifies ] the fixed purity thereof being ever penetrated by the presence of the seven lamps of fire , which are the seven spirits of god. and * in the midst of the throne , and round about the throne were four beasts full of eyes before and behind . these four beasts full of eyes before and behind have plainly a resemblance of the four beasts in ezechiel's vision , but may here more particularly relate to the four camps of israel , which was a type of the new israel of god : but in that they are said to be full of eyes before and behind , it implies , they look backward and forward into the histories of times past , and unto the prophecies and predictions of things to come , for the better managing the affairs of christs kingdome . . and the first beast was like a lion , which was the standard of iuda , on the east side of the camp. the second beast like a calf , which was the standard of ephraim on the west side of the camp. the third beast had the face of a man , which was the standard of reuben on the south side . and the fourth beast was like a flying eagele , which was the standard of dan on the north. and note that these four beasts were thus situated in the vision of ezechiel . and that this only is a type of that church that shall be , cast thus into four parts , the spiritual kingdom of christ signified in both visions . . and the four beasts had each of them six wings about him , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is but hard sense if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as it must , signifie in a circle about him . and therefore grotius judiciously joyns 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 together : and so the text runs thus . had each of them six wings . and they were full of eyes without and within : and they rest not day and night , saying , holy , holy , holy , lord god almighty which was , and is , and is to come . now that the four beasts are said each of them to have six wings , as the beasts in ezechiel's vision also have , undoubtedly they have them for that use the seraphims are said to make of them in the prophet esay ; with twain to cover their faces , with twain to cover their feet , and with twain to fly : which implies a reverence of the divine majesty , an activity and readiness in his service , and a carefulness over our affections , that we walk in clean paths . and whereas they are presently said to be full of eyes without and within , it implies , that with one eye regarding outward objects , and the other their own nature , and so comparing them together they will ever behave themselves decorously and becomingly , with due reverence to that which is above them in dignity and excellency , and at a due distance from those things that are unworthy of them and beneath them : and therefore if any such thing be offered them from without as is repugnant to the innate light and immutable principles of an intellectual creature , their eyes within will easily discern the proposer to be either a fool or an impostor . this is the state even of the whole people of god in those dayes : but as for their reverence and devotional sense of their maker and redeemer it is in a manner perpetual , they rest not day and night saying , holy , holy , holy , lord god almighty , which was , and is , and is to come : who fills all things and times with his presence and providence . and as the people are , so are their priest-like princes and rulers . for it follows immediately in the next verses : . and when those beasts give glory , and honour , and thanks to him that sat on the throne , who liveth for ever and ever , . the four and twenty elders also , prince and people being of one heart and mind , fall down before him that sat on the throne , and worship him that liveth for ever and ever , and tast their crowns before the throne , in humble acknowledgment from whom and for whom they reign , even for the manifesting of the glory , and honour , and power of god in the kingdom of his saints : and therefore they are introduced , saying ; . thou art worthy , o lord , to receive glory and honour , and power , for thou hast created all things , and for thy pleasure they are and were created . notes . chapter iv. vers. . all the ministring angels , or all the living , &c. for seven we substitute , all , in this place , the septenary number with the cabbalists signifying universality , whence of the pythagoreans it is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and the full comprehension of the numbers of sundry things in this book of the apocalypse is terminated in seven . vers. . in the midst of the throne , and round about the throne , &c. the beasts seem to have been placed to s t john 's sight , so as that one appeared just in the midst before the throne , and the spectacle being exhibited to him shelvingly , another appeared beyond the throne in the same line ; and two other , the one on this side , and the other on that side in a line , cutting that other in right angles ; so that they at due distances encompassed the throne in a circle exteriour to the twenty four elders . and in that they were not only seen , as it were in the middle of the throne in the sense abovesaid , but on each side also , and so encompassed the throne placed in the common sections or conterminations of the four quadrants of the circle drawn about it , they are said to be not only in the midst of the throne but about the throne in a circle at equal distances : or else in the midst , that is , within the circle of the throne which is thus conceived to be drawn about it , but so near that the beasts supposed like those in ezechiel , will have the same faces appear within the verges of the throne that appeared without , but in opposite places : but then the elders must be placed in a circle without the beasts , which will make these priestly kings , less answer to the levites . but thereby we are the better assured that they are kings and not priests . it 's possible both these wayes may be glanced at in the vision , and that it may reflect both on the camp of israel , and vision of ezechiel at once . chapter v. . and i saw in the right hand of him that sate on the throne , that is , in the hand of god , a book written within and on the backside : ( viz. ) a book that had a more outward sense in the meer letter which consists of representations symbolical or hieroglyphical , of iconismes or images of things future ; and a more inward sense , which is the sense of the future things themselves thus represented in symbols or images ; this book of prophecies was in the hand of god the father , in his power to impart it to whom he pleased , as it is intimated in the beginning of the apocalypse , which is said to be the revelation of jesus christ , but that god gave it unto him : sealed with seven seals : and in that this book is said to be sealed with seven seals , it shews what a great arcanum or secret it was , it being a representation of a scene of affairs reaching from the beginning of the church to the end of the world . . and i saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice , who is worthy to open the book , and to loose the seats thereof ? and that the inestimable worth of this book of prophecies , which sottish and prophane spirits so much slight and vilifie , and crafty politicians so much harden themselves against , may appear , here is proclamation made by a strong angel with a loud voice , who is worthy to open ? &c. that is , who is worthy to have so vast a foresight of things communicated to him from god , as to endite such a book of prophecies as this ? . and no man in heaven nor in earth , neither under the earth was able to open the book , neither to look thereon . and this proclamation being made there was none found neither of the angels in heaven , or men upon earth , or infernal spirits under the earth , who are vulgarly accounted so wise and cunning , and in whom witches and wizards so confide for the knowledge of things to come , that were able to open the book or look thereon , ( i. e. ) that had so reaching a foresight as to pierce through such a large series of future things as is contained in this book , which intimates , that nothing but the holy power of god could be the author thereof . . and i wept much because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book , neither to look thereon : that is to say , i was sorely grieved that there was none found meet or worthy to have imparted to him so stupendious a faculty of foretelling things to come , in such a manner as they are in this book : so useful a gift of prophecy . where iohn personates every good christian that is solicitous for the affairs of the church , and thoughtfull what will become of her . . and one of the elders saith to me , wéep not . cease to be so grieved and troubled in spirit . behold the lyon of the tribe of iuda , the root of david hath prevailed to open the book , and to loose the seven seals thereof . christ hath by his courageously fulfilling the will of his father obtained this priviledge , that he may open the book and loose the seals thereof ; that is , to have so wonderfull a comprehension of future things , and piercing foresight by the gift of his father , as to foresee all that is contained in this book , and to communicate it to his church . . and i beheld , and lo , in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts , and in the midst of the elders ; that is , betwixt god the father and the church , stood a lamb as it had been slain , and with bleeding wounds upon him ; the blessed jesus mediator betwixt god and man , as he is here placed betwixt the throne and the four beasts : having seven horns , which are the emblems of power , as being he to whom all power is given in heaven and in earth : and seven eyes : all manner of wisdom and counsel , and all the angels of god at his beck to execute his counsel and his will ; which is implied in what follows , which are the seven spirits of god sent forth unto all the earth . . and he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sate upon the throne : that is , it was given to him of his father to have so vast a foresight of things to come , from the beginning of the church even to the end of the world , and power to effect what was foreknown , according to the beginning of this book of the apocalypse , the revelation of iesus christ which god gave unto him , &c. which shews , that the whole book of the apocalypse , the epistles to the seven churches , as well as the visions that follow , is a prophetical revelation of things to come . . the consideration of which wonderful gift and power signified by this receiving of the book , being made so exceeding manifest in the times of the spiritual reign of christ in the new ierusalem , which times this pompous introduction to the prophecy of the sealed book does typifie , ( for the four and twenty elders belong to that state of the church ) will raise a wonderful strain of faith and devotion in them , and admiration of the stupendious providence of christ over his church , as it is signified by what follows : and when he had taken the book , the four beasts , and four and twenty elders fell down before the lamb , having every one of them harps and golden uials full of odours , which are the praises and prayers of the saints . . and they sing a new song , saying , and then will they sing a new song , namely , they will then praise their creator and redeemer for that new constitution of things in the reign of the spirit , ( as it is written , chap. . and he that sate upon the throne said , behold i make all things new : and he said straightway to iohn , it is done , i am alpha and omega , the beginning and the end , i will give him that is a thirst of the fountain of life freely ; that is , i will communicate unto him my spirit here , and make him partaker of eternal life hereafter in my heavenly kingdom ) and they will say as follows : thou , o christ , wert worthy to take the book and open the seals thereof ; that is , to have communicated unto thee so vast a comprehension of the futurity of things , as is contained in this book of prophecies , and power to carry on things as they are predicted . for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to god by thy blood out of every kindred , and tongue , and people , and nation : this is but a just reward of thy endearing sufferings upon the cross for the salvation of mankind . . and hast made us unto our god kings and priests , and we shall reign upon earth . in this blessed millennium which thou hast long ago shown to thy church in that admirable book of prophecies : which by the ministry of an angel thou communicatest to thy beloved disciple iohn . . and to show further how holy , heavenly , and angelical those times will be , and what an union and agreement betwixt the church of christ and the angelical hosts , it is further added : and i beheld , and i heard the voice of many angels round about the throne , and the beasts and the elders ; which beasts and elders signifie the church of christ consisting of men upon the earth . and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand , and thousands of thousands . . these innumerable companies of angels joyn themselves to the quire of the church , saying with a loud voice , worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power , and riches , and wisdom , and strength , and honour , and glory , and blessing , as by whom the state of the church is brought to such a blessed condition upon earth , according to the predictions of this book of prophecies . let all therefore be ascribed to him . . nay , the completion of this book of prophecies in those times will be such an universal conviction of the divinity and sonship of christ , that he was really and in truth the foretold messias , the beginner and finisher of the works of god to his church , that that will come to pass that follows . and every creature which is in heaven and on the earth , and under the earth , and such as are in the sea , and all that are in them heard i saying , blessing , honour , glory and power be unto him that sitteth on the throne , and unto the lamb for ever and ever . all intelligent beings and spirits , whether belonging to heaven , earth or sea , even the infernal spirits themselves shall in the inward powers of their minds and consciences be forced to break out and confess upon the completion of this book of prophecies , that all blessing , and honour , and glory , and power is due unto him that sits on the throne , and unto the lamb for ever and ever . . and the four beasts said amen . unto this the four beasts , that is , the church of christ here upon earth , we may be sure will say amen , that is , consent to such a doxologie : and the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever ; that is , all the kings and princes of this truly catholick and apostolick church will fall down and worship him that was dead but is now alive , and behold he liveth for evermore ; that is , they will devotionally adhere to him , serve him and obey him , who according to the promise made to his church , has brought things at last to such an admirable , heavenly , holy , righteous and peaceful constitution : so glorious an effect will there be of the completion of the prophecies of this book , both as to christ , and also as to his church : which shows how detestable the ingratitude is of such either shallow and frivolous , or prophane spirits , or cunning obdurate politicians , that phancying it not to sute with their worldly interest , vilifie and decry it ; when as indeed this book of prophecies will prove the most effectual instrument in the hand of providence that may be , for the rooting all atheism and infidelity out of the world , and converting all the kingdoms of the earth to the faith and profession of our lord jesus christ. chapter vi. . hitherto the introduction to the prophecies of the sealed book , we come now to the prophecies themselves : and i saw , says iohn , when the lamb opened one of the seals , that is the first seal : and i heard as it were the noise of thunder , one of the four beasts ; that is , the first of the four beasts , the lion , whose place is towards the east , saying , come and see . where we may observe how some parts of the introductory representation are made use of in this following vision , as some parts of the description of him that was seen amongst the golden candlesticks are made use of in the prefaces of the epistles to the churches . . and i saw and behold a white horse , and he that sate on him had a bow. which heros on horseback , and on a white horse signifies a great commander or emperour , righteous , prosperous and glorious in his undertaking . and in that he is said to appear upon the first beast ( the lion placed on the east side ) his saying , come and see , it is a sign that he is an emperour from the east part of the world , and in a word , it is the lion of the tribe of iuda , that captain of our salvation jesus christ , who being ascended into glory was yet present with his church , affording them all succours to carry on their spiritual warfare . and these gospel-soldiers came from iudea in the east . and in that he is said to have a bow , it denotes , that he aimed at something of no mean importance . and this heros on horseback with his bow answers to the ephesine succession of the church , whose name imports earnest purpose or desire , but the thing aimed at or designed is specified in the following words : and a crown was given unto him ; to wit , the right of it , even the roman imperial crown , and this bow-man hat the mark when the emperour constantine turned christian . this is also the crown promised to the church in the smyrnean succession : be thou faithfull unto death , and i will give thee the crown of life ; the crown of security from pagan persecution . and he went forth conquering and to conquer . this heros on the white horse went forth conquering and to conquer till he obtained this crown under the sixth seal . . and when he had opened the second seal , i heard the second beast ; that is , the calf or oxe , say , come and sée . . and there went out another horse that was red , a colour significant enough of the effusion of blood , as the oxe also of the great slaughter , that was to be under this seal , and what follows , plainly implies so much : and power was given to him that sate thereon to take peace from the earth , and that they should kill one another , and there was given to him a great sword , as a token of exceeding much blood-shed on the earth under the second seal . this seal therefore begins with trajan a spaniard , and therefore an emperour from the west . in his reign , and adrian's his successor , there were so great commotions in the empire , that there were slain in those . tumults and rebellions at least fifteen hundred thousand men . . and when he had opened the third seal , i heard the third beast , that had a face like a man , and was placed on the south , say , come and see : and i beheld , and lo a black horse , and he that sate on him had a pair of balances in his hand . the black colour betokens gravity , severity , justice , which justice also is intimated by the face of a man this third beast is said to have , prudence and justice being the proper characters of a man : which sutes well with the last part of the description , the pair of balances in the riders hand ; which argues him severe , just , frugal and provident . . which accordingly is exprest by that voice in the midst of the four beasts : and i heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say , a measure of wheat for a penny , and three measures of barley for a penny , and see thou hurt not the oyl and wine ; that is , the rider of the black horse will take special care : . that if one choenix of wheat be sold for a penny , that three of barley shall be sold for a penny . . that men shall live by their honest labours , not by theft or rapine : for choenix signifies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the food for a day , and denarius the wages for a days labour . . there shall be no stealing nor robbing but buying by measure , though it should prove so hard a time that their dayes labour will but find them food . . he will provide that they shall have a choenix for a penny ; ( viz. ) that the price of bread-corn and necessary victuals shall not exceed a dayes wages . and so of wine and oyl , he will take care that there be no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , no fraud in buying and selling there neither , nor spoil and wast by unruly soldiers . which prediction was egregiously fulfilled in septimius severus an african , and therefore an emperour from the south , and in alexander the son of mammea , both of them notorious lovers of justice , and severe punishers of thieves and robbers : to the latter the sight of an unjust judge was so nauseous , that he was ready to vomit at him ; and he was famous for that christian motto , do as you would be done to : quod tibi fieri non vis , alteri ne feceris , which he caused to be set up in his palace , and other publick places . they are both taken notice of for their care and provision in bread-corn , and other necessaries of life . . and when he had opened the fourth seal , i heard the fourth beast , that was like a flying eagle , and was placed on the north , say , come and sée . . and i looked and behold a pale horse : which colour of the horse is very sutable to the name of the rider . for it follows ; and his name that sate on him was death : and hell followed him , that is the grave , which is made a person here as death is , and as it were his lackey to follow him . and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth , that is over almost all the roman empire , which upon due compute was then a third part of the earth ; as if this power reached three fourths of the empire . to kill with the sword , and with hunger and with death , that is , with famine and pestilence , and with the beasts of the earth : which ordinarily invade the land in those eastern and southern parts in extream famines and pestilences to increase the mortality . the beginning of this seal is from maximinus the thracian , and consequently an emperour from the north , as the place of the flying eagle denotes , that notable bird of prey , and feeder on dead carcasses , and therefore significant of the condition of this seal under which concur so various modes of vast mortality , the sword , famine , pestilence and wild beasts . which pestilence raging and over-running in a manner the whole empire for the space of fifteen years , and ending anno cclxiii , from maximinus to this year is the extent of this seal . and now for the sword in the interval of this seal , besides that in the reign of gallus and volusianus emperours , the whole empire in a manner was exhausted with rapine and slaughters by the barbarians , and consequently tillage did fail and famine ensue ; there were not two more bloody beasts in the world than maximinus and gallienus , the former for his cruelty being called cyclops , busiris , phalaris , and what not , who without accusers or defence , caused to be killed and spoiled of their goods no less than four thousand men ; and the latter his cruelty was such that he killed all the male sex of whole cities , and made nothing of slaying three or four thousand of his soldiers in a day . and there are many more examples of horrid cruelty by the sword under this seal according to the prediction thereof : so admirably fully was accomplished what was predicted by these four seals , of which it is to be noted , that not only parts of the introductory vision are made use of , namely , the four beasts which usher in each seal , ( i mean the visions thereof ) as parts of the description of him that appeared in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks in the salutation of each epistle are again made use of ; but as those parts of his description were sutable to the things signified concerning the church the epistle was wrote to , so each beast is sutable to the things predicted in each seal in these four first seals ; which strengthens the certainty of the epistles being a prophecy reaching from the beginning of the church to the end of the world , as well as this of the sealed book . . and when he had opened the fifth seal , i saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of god , and for the testimony which they held : that is , he saw them lye at the foot of the altar as sacrifices that are slain use to do , slaughtered or martyred for their couragiously professing christianity : for by faith , and an invincible firmness of mind , and unspeakable patience , they had made themselves an oblation or sacrifice for the carrying on the affairs of the kingdom of christ. here is predicted the bloody ten years persecution begun by dioclesian , and continued by his successor , which was the most terrible that befell the church of god. this is the dregs of bitterness in the smyrnean succession of the church , where by the ten days of tribulation , this persecution may be more particularly glanced at , as well as all the ten persecutions usually so called . . and they cryed with a loud voice , saying , how long , o lord , holy and true , dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? that is , the persecution of the church under this seal was so exceeding grievous that they called aloud for divine vengeance on this persecuting empire . . and white robes were given to every one of them , and they were adopted into the society of the blessed : which white robes allude to the custome under the jewish temple . where after a due search into their pedigree , and the unblemishedness of their body , by giving them , or putting on them a white vesture they were admitted into the court of priests , as these to serve god in heaven . and it was said unto them , that they should rest yet for a little season , untill their fellow-servants also , and their brethren that should be killed as they were , should be fulfilled : that is , till their fellow-christians under licinius , iulian , and under the arians should be slain , after which due vengeance should be taken of the bloody empire under the time of the trumpets . . and i beheld when he had opened the sixth seal , and lo ! there was a great earthquake . the greek word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and may have a more general signification , and denote a concussion , shaking and commotion of the frame of things : which things are here the constitution of the pagan hierarchy , as i may so call it , or gentilism , the religion of the roman empire as pagan . and the sun became black as sack-cloath of hair , and the moon became as blood : that is , they were both eclipsed , both the dragon himself , the sun , as head of that religion , and the office of their pontifex maximus , which is next to the draconick majesty , and there intimated by the moon . these plainly suffered an eclipse , when the roman emperours by professing christianity renounced satan with all the wicked crew of evil spirits under him , and would serve him no more , nor exercise the office of his pontifex maximus , as is recorded of constantine , constantius , valentinianus , and valens , and gratian would not so much as retain the name of pontifex maximus . . and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth even as a fig-trée casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken with a mighty wind : that is , all the false gods of this diabolical polity , the frame of the pagan religion , they fell from that religious honour and worship which was given them , and were trampled under-foot by the prevailing christians , as also their priests that served them . . and the heaven departed as a scrowl when it is rolled together : that is , this pagan hierarchy shrivelled up with all the false deities and priests therein , as a scrowl of parchment that hides the letters therein contained as it is rolled up . and every mountain and island were removed out of their places : that is , their high places where they sacrificed , and their temples divided from other houses for their supposed sacredness , were demolished at last by theodosius . . and the kings of the earth , and the great men , and the rich men , and the chief captains , and the mighty men , and every bondman , and every fréeman hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains : that is , all sorts of men from the highest to the lowest were sorely affrighted and dismayed at this terrible storm that came upon the pagan hierarchy , nor were able to resist the force thereof , not maximianus galerius , not maxentius , not maximinus with martinianus caesar , not licinius , nor iulian the apostate , who all felt the irresistible power and wrath of the lamb ; and some of them , ( viz. ) galerius , maximinus and licinius , their miserable conditions even whether they would or no , forced them by open confession to give glory to god. . and said to the mountains and rocks , fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne , and from the wrath of the lamb : like that of esay . . and they shall go into the holes of the rocks , and into the caves of the earth , for the fear of the lord , and for the glory of his majesty , when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth ; as he did in this shaking of the pagan religion of the empire , and abolishing their idols . . for the great day of his wrath is come , and who shall be able to stand ? not galerius , not maxentius , not licinius , nor iulian , nor the tyrants eugenius , and argobastus , with all the power the pagan party were able to make , could stand against this storm of the wrath of the lamb. so that the church upon the conversion of constantine to the faith entred into the state of the pergamenian succession being exalted out of the dust : and o that she had not been thereupon exalted so much in her own mind , and become the pergamenian succession in the worst sense , that is , proud and cruel , as well as exalted in power . chapter vii . hitherto the first six seals which are contemporary with the ephesine and smyrnean succession , and with the forepart of the pergamenian ; while the church was only exalted out of her smyrnean affliction , ( in which she had been so trod to the ground ) not yet grown haughty and antichristian , and persecutive of the true members of christ , nor apostatized into gross superstition and idolatry as she was after in the far greatest part of the pergamenian interval , and in all the thyatirian , in both which the eating things offered unto idols is mentioned : which tract of time is equal to the first six trumpets , which together with the seven thunders fill up the whole space of the seventh seal : which seven thunders are put in the place of the seventh trumpet on purpose , that the six first trumpets may be noted as a more peculiar space of time , wherein as vengeance was taken on the roman empire by the incursion of the barbarous nations for the persecution of the primitive christians , so in the mean time a kind of paganochristianism and antichristian power sprung up in the church , and grew to the height : i say , this being the condition of things under the first six trumpets , the artifice of the following transition from the first six seals to them is admirable , and of grand consideration . the hundred forty four thousand sealed , and so taken special notice of by divine providence , intimating , that the true apostolick church should be still preserved all this time , notwithstanding all the incursions and devastations of the barbarians , and all the gross apostasie , idolatry and antichristian cruelty from a wickedly degenerated church , against christs true members , that held to the pure apostolick faith and practice . . and after these things , ( viz. ) after the opening the six seals , i saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth , holding the four winds of the earth : that is , he saw the ministers of gods power in making war and peace , and blusters in the world , and that at that time they held all in peace as for any incursions of the barbarians into the empire . that the wind should not blow on the earth , nor on the sea , nor on any tree : should not blow down buildings , nor cause shipwracks on the sea , nor break off branches of trees , or tear them up by the root . houses , ships and trees in analogie , signifying political fabricks and constitutions . and the babylonian kingdom in daniel is expresly represented by a tree . . and i saw another angel ascending from the east : that is , from christ , * one of whose titles is the east , having the seal of the living god , having a commission from christ to protect such certain men from the imminent destruction now coming upon the empire . and he therefore cryed with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea ; that is , to raise tempests of war and invasion on the empire . . saying , hurt not the earth , neither the sea nor the trees ; that is , forbear to bring in those tempests of the barbarians upon the empire ; till we have sealed the servants of our god in their foreheads : that is , marked them out for deliverance and protection : which insinuates the assured providence of christ over his true church , and living members of his body , in all that confusion and corruption that would be under the first six trumpets . . and i heard the number of them that were sealed : which is not numerally to be understood but symbolically , noting the condition of the sealed , and there were sealed an hundred forty four thousand : which chiliads or thousands are cubical numbers , and signifie therefore stability or constancy : but it is said there were an hundred forty four thousands , it being the square number of these chiliads or companies , of which the root is twelve , which is the apostolical number : of all the tribes of the children of israel ; namely , the twelve patriarchs typically or figuratively , being put for the twelve apostles , and the children of israel for the church of christ , of which the israelites are here a type , as they are in the epistle to the church in pergamus , in which pergamenian interval this sealing begins : wherefore briefly by the hundred forty four thousands , are meant the faithful , constant apostolick christians that submitted not to the tyranny and idolatry of the apostatized church , but were preserved pure and safe by divine providence during the sounding of the first six trumpets , under which notwithstanding the empire was broken in pieces , and the tyranny and idolatry of antichrist rising , and increasing , and growing to the height . so great was the providence of god in his preservation and protection of his truly apostolick church for all this . . of the tribe of iuda were sealed twelve thousand : of the tribe of reuben were sealed twelve thousand : of the tribe of gad were sealed twelve thousand . the order is much inverted and confounded in this numbring of the twelve tribes , besides that dan is left out and ephraims name is suppressed ; because those two tribes were the ring-leaders to idolatry , ( iudges chap. . . ) but iuda is here put before reuben , because christ was of the tribe of iuda ; but reuben keeps the second place , as by birthright , it being fit he should yield to no other , especially his courage having been so notable in battles for the lord , numb . . and ios. . gads valour also has purchased him the next place ; besides , that elias and iehu the destroyers of baal and his worship were of the tribe of gad. . and of the tribe of aser were sealed twelve thousand : this tribe also is notable for the woman of sarepta that entertained elias that great champion against the baalitish idolatry , and for anna the prophetess that gave testimony to christ when he was presented in the temple . and these are the first four sons of leah . of the tribe of nephthali were sealed twelve thousand . of the tribe of manasses were sealed twelve thousand . nephthali is here placed , and manasses before their seniours , simeon , levi , issachar and zabulon ; the former , because that tribe is so much ennobled by the story of barac the conquerour of sisera , and for capernaum that see as it were of that great bishop of souls jesus christ , whose residence was so much at capernaum a city of galilee , that belongs to nephthali , insomuch that he was called a galilean : and the later for the feats of gideon the destroyer of the altar of baal , who was of the tribe of manasses , as was also elisha , upon whom the spirit of elias rested , and who was sent to anoint iehu king , that sore executioner of iezebel . . of the tribe of simeon were sealed twelve thousand . of the tribe of levi were sealed twelve thousand . of the tribe of issachar were sealed twelve thousand . . of the tribe of zabulon were sealed twelve thousand . these four last sons of leah were ranked according to their birth , there being nothing eximious in them , or if there was , it being blotted again by some contrary miscarriages , so that there was no extraordinary merit to break the order of their birth . of the tribe of ioseph were sealed twelve thousand . of the tribe of benjamin were sealed twelve thousand . which two tribes nominated from the other two sons of rachel , as the tribe of nephthali and manasses before from her other two , are thrust down into this lowest place , and the tribe of ioseph here put for the tribe of ephraim , whose name is here suppressed , because of the foul faults of that tribe of ephraim in micha , ieroboam and ahab all ephraimites : and benjamin juniour of all is rightly placed last : but upon the account of the whole we see the ranking and ordering of the names of the tribes is so fitted as to represent a company zealous for christ , and as zealous against antichrist , ( as being that very virgin company with the lamb on mount sion , chap. . ) and against spiritual whoredom which is idolatry . this pure apostolick church did christ seal and keep safe even during all that dangerous time under the sounding of the first six trumpets . . after this i beheld , and lo , a great multitude which no man could number of all nations , and kindreds , and people , and tongues stood before the throne , and before the lamb : namely , before that throne above described in heaven . for iohn is supposed to see all these visions in heaven , though they concern things here on earth : clothed in white robes and palms in their hands . this part of the vision therefore shoots beyond the pergamenian and thyatirian interval of the church , and begins with the sardian . which enjoyes that promise to him that overcomes , that he shall have power over the nations ; that is , whole nations , tongues and people are now become open professors of the pure apostolick faith : this is the effect of their victory , and the sign thereof , the palm-branches in their hands . they are the same with them that have got the victory over the beast , his image and his mark , and the number of his name , and sing the song of moses and of the lamb , chap. . which is the commencement also of the sardian succession , which signifies a song of joy. . and it is here said : and they cryed with a loud voice , saying , salvation unto our god which sitteth upon the throne , and unto the lamb : namely , because he has thus delivered his israel from the antichristian bondage and persecution they were under in the pergamenian and thyatirian successions . . and all the angels stood round about the throne , and about the elders and four beasts , and fell before the throne with their fates , and worshipped god : this may seem to strike further into those ages of the church that come near to , or are in the blessed millennium , to those of the philadelphian interval , which are as it were the succession and off-spring of the apostolick church that held out in the most persecuting times of antichrist , and are all held as one continued church , but growing and spreading further . in which angelical times the consent and harmony of heaven and earth will be more full and more perfectly united and accorded : so that it is no wonder it is said that the angels joyntly with the elders and four beasts did fall before the throne on their faces and worship god. . saying , amen . blessing , and glory , and wisdome , and thanksgiving , and honour , and power , and might : by which these happy and heavenly times are brought upon earth ; be unto god for ever and ever . amen . . and one of the elders answered , saying unto me , what are these that are arayed in white robes ? and whence came they ? that is to say , how come the true apostolick church in these dayes that are here foreseen , to be so prosperous , and successfull , and victorious ? for to be clothed in white , signifies so in the prophetick stile . . and i said unto him , sir , thou knowest : and he said to me , these are they which come out of great tribulation , and have washed their robes , and made them white in the blood of the lamb : that is , these times of the church that are thus prosperous , as well as holy , it is in vertue of the great tribulation and affliction , their predecessors endured under the cruel and bloody persecutions of antichrist : so that they have washed their robes as it were , and made them white in the blood of the lamb : that is , the sufferings of christ in his true and living members under antichrist were the instrumental cause of the splendid and prosperous condition of the blessed times that are here prefigured , in or near the millennium , as the blood of the lamb in the usual sense is justly deemed the meritorious cause thereof . . therefore are they before the throne of god , and serve him day and night in his temple , ever thankfully mindfull of the evil they are delivered from , and the great good they enjoy . in vertue of the former sufferings of the true apostolick church under the antichristian tyranny , shall the church in these dayes here described enjoy peaceably their religion , and make their addresses to god continually in safety in his holy church , which is his temple . and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them . for these are the times of iehovah shammah . of the tabernacle of god amongst men , the times of the new ierusalem . . they shall hunger no more , nor thirst any more : they shall not be false-fed nor hunger-starved by deceitful teachers , that cannot impart to them the bread of life , nor raise the spirit of life in them by their ministry ( as being devoid of it themselves ) whereby their thirst may be satisfied . neither wall any sun light on them , nor any heat . there shall no political power whatsoever tyrannize over their consciences , and by their persecution force them , as was usuall under antichrist , to a sapless , senseless , heartless , nay grosly superstitious and idolatrous religion against their own judgement and inward sense of things . . for the lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall feed them , and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters : that is , christ himself , by his spirit , and by true spiritual guides and governours , to whom he has communicated his spirit , shall feed them ; that is , guide and govern them , and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters , shall conduct them into , and guide them in the dispensation of life , the renovation of their inward man into the living image of god. and god shall wipe all tears from their eyes . they shall be no more calamitous by the wrongs and persecutions of bloody tyrants , whether spiritual or temporal . for the true apostolick church shall then be an impregnable city or polity of it self , the new ierusalem as it is described in the chapter of the apocalypse . this is the sense of this transition from the six first seals to the opening of the last , and reaches from the beginning of the corrupt part of the pergamenian interval to the end of the laodicean . notes . chapter vii . vers. . one of whose titles is the east . this is d r hammonds sense upon the place , and it is i think not only ingenious but true . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the east , is with the cabbalists the eternal wisdom of god , that is , the eternal word which is christ. and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the very word in the text , the same that occurrs luke . vers . . whereby 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the day-spring from on high has visited us , which is there understood of christ , as also , zachar. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and chap. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ecce vir , oriens nomen ejus . and jerem. . . he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as also chap. . . all which places not only the christians , but the iews understood of the messias : so plain is it , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is , oriens , the east or day-spring is a name or title of christ. and though in those places of the old testament it is translated germen , a branch , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most ordinarily signifies , yet being it may also signifie light or shining , and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in what sense soever is a title of christ , and yet does usually signifie the east , that the word here may be allusively used to signifie christ , is to me abundantly rational : see doctor hammond upon luk. . v. . chapter viii . . and when he had opened the seventh seal , there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour . this is spoken in allusion to the custome in the service of the temple , where though in the former part of their service , while the sacrifices were offered the temple rang again with their loud musick , yet in the time of incense , all were silent and in their tacit devotions . . and i saw seven angels which stood before god , and to them were given seven trumpets . this he saw during this silence , or at the beginning thereof . . and another angel came and stood at the altar having a golden censer , and there was given unto him much incense , that he should offer it with the prayers of the saints upon the golden altar , which was before the throne . things thus represented in heaven prefigure things here on earth , and these ceremonies of the temple , the devotions of the christians , whose prayers are here represented as coming up in remembrance before god : which is expressed in this judaical way or ceremony of the temple by the giving to this angel as to a priest much incense , that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar , which was before the throne , answering to the altar of incense overlaid with gold , that stood before the sanctum sanctorum . . and the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before god out of the angels hand : that is , the desire of the true church , who are of one mind with god , ascended up before god , as incense out of a priests hand , and was known and accepted with him . their prayers in all likelihood were in general for the preservation of the church , and suppression of both the old and new growing abominations of the empire . . and to the end that you may know what the will of god was in order hereunto , it is further added ; and the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar , and cast it into the earth : and there were voices , and thundrings , and lightnings , and an earthquake . which things betoken the wrath of god to be poured upon the bloody persecuting roman empire , against whom the souls of the slain under the altar had called for vengeance , chap. . . the great tempests and commotions that should befall it are thus expressed in the general , and as an effect of the foregoing groans and cryes of his aggrieved people . . and the seven angels that had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound . and therefore those tempests and calamities will now more particularly be described in the several soundings of those angels that have the seven trumpets . . so the first angel sounded , and there followed hail , and fire mingled with blood : that is , a thundring hail-storm with fire , whereby is signified the furious invasion of the barbarians into the empire . and the mention of blood seems on purpose to be added , that there may be no mistake , as if this storm was to be upon trees and grass , and not upon men , though it follows : and they were cast upon the earth , and the third part of trees was burnt up , and all green grass was burnt up : which the mention of blood shows not to be understood of earth , trees and grass that bleed not , but of the men of the roman empire great and small : trees signifying the great ones , and the grass the common people . and that it is understood of the roman empire is plainly intimated from hence , that the third part is said to be burnt up : which third part does not signifie the third part of the roman empire , but simply the roman empire , the empire being the third part of the known world in s t iohn's time : so that here , as in other places hereafter , third part , is not to be taken numerally or proportionally but symbolically , * as a character of the roman empire . the impletion of this trumpet began about the year , when alaricus invaded the empire with an infinite number of gothes , and other barbarians , especially the eastern part thereof , harassing it for five years together . and in the year the same alaricus , with gothes , alans , hunnes broke into italy also , and besieged honorius the emperour at hasta , and so terrified the inhabitants of italy , that they were in a manner all ready to leave their dwellings : but with much ado , partly by the valour of stilico honorius his general , partly by the fair treaty of honorius , he was content to recede into illyricum , a province of the eastern empire . but alaricus being quiet for a while , there was anno a notorious irruption of the barbarians into italy to the number of two hundred thousand under their general radagaisus a scythian , who yet was slain by stilico . and yet there was a third , and that the most grievous irruption of all , an. into the west , an innumerous multitude of vandals , alans , marcomans , herules , suedes , alemans , burgundians , and other barbarians , with which france , spain , and lastly africk were filled and miserably afflicted : so punctually is this prediction of the hail-storm under the first trumpet here fulfilled . . and the second angel sounded , and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea , and the third part of the sea became blood : that is to say , a great city , namely , rome it self , ( for so mountain signifies in the prophetick stile , and sea the extent of jurisdiction or dominion ) by its being taken by alaricus king of the gothes , who after the death of stilico , anno , made a new and more fatal expedition into italy : this case , i say , of this city being taken by alaricus was as if a burning mountain had been cast into the sea , the earthiness and fieriness thereof being so contrary and mischievous to water . and so was this condition of the city of rome to the territories and jurisdiction thereof : which sea signifies , the number three or third being the character of the roman empire : for upon this taking of the city did presently ensue the dilaceration or tearing in pieces of the roman jurisdiction into many kingdoms : so that the entireness of the roman dominion was plainly destroyed . whence the sea is said to become blood , that is , to be dead , and to be dead is to cease to be what a thing was before , namely , the romanum imperium , properly so called , and as to the former sense thereof failing , when it was now divided into so many kingdoms : which division honorius was forced to begin by his covenant which he made with alaricus for the regaining the city of rome again , and the empire to himself ; as he was likewise forced to make such like covenants with others : and so the roman empire was still more and more divided , till about the year , when rome was again sacked by gensericus the vandal , or a little after , it was plainly divided into ten kingdoms . . and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died , and the third part of the ships were destroyed : that is , the roman both men and profitable constitutions of things were altered , and ceased to be what they were : which here in analogie to sea are intimated to be fishes , they being the living creatures proper to the sea , and plainly said to be ships . these now had lost their former propriety , and they are no longer the entire roman empire 's but each respective kingdom 's to which they belong , to say nothing of the real destruction of many . and this i think is a fair impletion of the second trumpets prediction . . and the third angel sounded , and there fell a great star from heaven burning as it were a lamp : as if it were a fair comet called lampadias , which betokens the greatness of the prince it denotes , and also the shortness of his reign . and it fell upon the third part of the rivers , and upon the fountains of waters . the burning of it denotes the mischief to the rivers and fountains it is said to fall into . which rivers are provincial magistrates or armies , and the fountains of waters provincial cities . and here is mention again made of the third part , that you may know the prediction belongs to the roman empire . and it is no wonder this falling star or comet should be looked upon as so mischievous to rivers and waters , when natural history speaks of falling comets that have drunk up whole rivers ; so decorous is the representation . . and the name of the star is called wormwood ; and the third part of the waters became wormwood , and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter : that is , the condition of this princes reign was such , that the roman territories were so full of affliction and calamity , that their life was bitter to them , besides the slaughter of many in wars . now this prince was the western caesar , who from the time that gensericus sacked and pillaged rome , which was anno , strugling with death for a while in the succession of those inconsiderable and unfortunate caesars , avitus , majoranus , severus , anthemius , olybrius , glycerius , nepos , at last expired in augustulus , into which name the western caesar had dwindled , and under which that caesareat was quite extinguished by odoacer king of herules , to the bitter misery of the fountains and rivers , the cities and magistrates provincial . thus did the third trumpet sound the sad final fate of the western caesareat , under the figure of a great falling star , called wormwood ; which odoacer cast down and extinguished , and reigned himself king of italy sixteen years , who restored to rome her consulate which he had taken away before . and king theodoricus that vanquished him and succeeded him , so rebuilt rome , and restored to it all the ancient magistracies , honours and priviledges belonging to it , that bating the memory of her misery and infamy , she seemed perfectly restored to her former glory and felicity ; and thus she continued through the reign of several successors of theodoricus . . but the fourth angel sounded , and the third part of the sun was smitten , and the third part of the moon , and the third part of the stars , so as the third part of them was darkened , and the day shone not for a third part of it , and the night likewise : that is , there is nothing of the roman lustre of the lower or higher degree left . for that this belongs to rome , the wonted character [ third ] plainly shews : therefore under this trumpet there is no longer at last any king of rome , denoted by the sun , nor consular power , nor senatorian , nor the power of other known ancient magistrates of rome , denoted by the moon and stars ; but the city at last , namely , after that from the year , in the ostrogothick war by belisarius and narsus , iustinian's generals , it was deprived of the consular power , and after taken twice by totilas , and burnt , and retaken by narses , and a little after struck to the ground by thunder , and lightning , and tempest , being despoiled of all ancient ranks of roman magistracy , sunk to that ignoble and obscure title of the dutchy of rome , and after was forced to pay tribute to ravenna ( under the exarchate ) a city that before had been subject to her . in which inglorious state she continued till the year : which year is the epocha of that notable interval of the kingdom of the saracens from the beginning of the caliphate of the abasidae ( who first made bagdad their imperial seat ) to the taking of the said bagdad by togrulbeck king of the turks , which was in the year . and this is the easie and natural sense of the fourth trumpet , and perfectly fills up the scope thereof . . and i beheld , and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven , saying with a loud voice , wo , wo , wo to the inhabiters of the earth , by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound . these woes are denounced against the roman empire , who by this time , besides the guilt of the blood of the primitive martyrs , had in a gross manner lapsed into a kind of paganochristian idolatry , which they would be found in under these following trumpets , and in cruel persecutions of the apostolick members of the church that would not submit to their idolatrous paganochristianisme : wherefore vengeance proportionable to their redoubled wickedness shall be poured down upon them under the voices of the trumpet of the three angels that are to come . notes . chapter viii . vers. . as a character of the roman empire , &c. that the third part , or subtriple proportion is a character of the roman empire , will appear from chap. . vers . . where the dragon with seven heads and ten horns , which is undoubtedly the roman empire pagan , is said with his taile to have drawn the third part of the stars of heaven , and cast them to the earth : which in the prophetick stile is as much as to say , that he had brought down a third part of the princes or rulers of the known world in that time , and subjected them to himself ; that is , that the roman power had subdued a third part of the powers and principalities of the world to her self . for heaven and earth are the parts of a political world as well as of a natural : and the stars of the political world are the several princes or rulers thereof . but when they are subjected to some other great potentate , then they cease to be fixed stars , but fall to the earth , that is , to the low estate of subjection , or are utterly extinct . and in that they are said to be cast down by the taile of the dragon ; by his taile is understood his retinue , his train , military especially , his armies and forces whether by land or by sea. this is a most assured sense of the prophetick stile , and that therefore the amplitude of the roman dominion is hinted by the third part of stars cast down to the earth by the dragons taile , as if it were about the third part of the known world in s t john 's time . and that consequently this subtriple proportion is an intended character of the roman empire , whereby we may know , that such or such a vision belongs to it . and thus to give characters from numbers and proportions is according to the cabbalistical mode , and the very genius of this book which is cabbalistical . and it is absurd to think there should be so repeated a mention of a third part so perpetually of things ( as if divine providence had a peculiar pique against the third part of things or persons more than any other part , as it may seem in at beast a dozen places in the apocalypse ) were it not there were this mystery under it . chapter ix . . and the filth angel sounded , and i saw a star * fallen from heaven to earth , that is , a lapsed spirit or angel , a devil if you will. for as a star signifies an angel , so a fallen star a lapsed angel. and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit : that is , he had great power in the kingdom of darkness , of which a key is a symbol . . and he opened the bottomless pit , and there rose a smoke out of the pit , as the smoke of a great furnace : that is , there arose a hot and hellish zeal conjoyned with dark ignorance for the imposturous religion of mahomet . and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit : that is , the gospel of the sun of righteousness was endeavoured to be clouded and eclipsed by the over-running force and false pretenses of monotheisme , and of a more pure worship in mahometisme . . and there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth : that is , under this dark , ignorant , and false pretense , the saracens professors of the mahometan religion spread themselves over the earth . and unto them was given power as the scorpions of the earth have power ; to have their sting and poison in their taile ; which deadly sting and poison in the saracens was the falseness of their religion , which they transfused at the end of their conquests . that was the poisonous sting to all conscientious christians ; and to others it was at least poison if not a sting . . and it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth , neither any green thing , neither any tree : which here in analogie stand for several orders of men , as the locusts for the saracens . but only those men , that have not the seal of god in their foreheads ; which intimates , that notwithstanding the grassations of these impostors , the truly apostolick church would be kept safe . and there is mention made of men , to insinuate , that these locusts were also men , not mere insects : for locusts do not fall upon men , but upon grass and trees . . and to them it was given that they should not kill them : that is , that these saracens should indeed infest the roman empire sore , but not destroy it quite , as after happened by the euphratean horsemen : but that they should be tormented five months ; that is , during their time of lying upon it , called here five months in allusion to the time of locusts who live about that space of time , as naturalists relate : but their continuance in vexing italy was not much above five months of years , if that may be particularly glanced at . and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man : ( viz. ) lesser at first , but increasing upon him : and the stroke being by the serpentine taile of the locusts , it shows the poison and sting to be diabolical , and to cause such vexations of mind as that poison is apt to breed . and as the torment of a scorpion when he strikes a man is from a white poison transfused in the stroke , as apollodorus relates in pliny , lib. . so it is that perversly pretended monotheisme of these saracens , that looks so fairly and innocently on it , with which they might perplex and torment the minds of the unsealed , and sorely disquiet their consciences , besides the general fear of their lives in them that would not turn mahometans , the saracens wars being carried on upon a religious account , as is to be noted in their alchoran and zuna , and they great zelots , and diligent promoters of their religion , as being the most early professors of it ; and as it is signified by their type , these scorpion locusts , it being * the nature of the scorpion perpetually to attempt to sting and transfuse her poison , as of these saracens to proselyte the world to their religion . . wherefore the fear of death , and horrour of conscience did so vex men , and fill them with anxiety , that it was worse than death it self , to be in such perpetual danger , and unsettledness of things worse than the christians are now in under the turks , which were a desirable condition to them , rather than these perpetual renewed vexations of the saracens ; but this did not fall to their lot in the saracens dayes , though it were the more desirable condition of the two ; which may be glanced at in these words : and in those dayes shall men seek death and shall not find it , and shall desire to dye , and death shall flée from them : that is , those parts of the empire shall not be setled in the saracens hands where they invaded , as afterwards it came to pass in the turks invasion , who seized on the eastern part of the empire , and setled there ; so that the empire there was not only vexed but killed , extinguished , or put an end to , and the minds of the conquered at quiet . . and the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared to battel : that is , ready harnessed , as it is said afterwards , that they have breast-plates of iron , which shows the courage of these saracens , and their well-appointedness for war ; and their success was accordingly , as is expressed by what follows : and on their heads were as it were crowns of gold. which shows their victory over so many nations and kingdoms : for in the space of eight years , or a little more , they acquired to that satanical kingdom of mahomet , palestine , syria , both the armenia's , all asia minor , in a manner ; persia , india , aegypt , numidia , all barbarie to the river niger , lusitania and hispania ; nor were they stinted here , but won also a great part of italy , even to the gates of rome . to which you may add sicily , candia , cyprus , and the rest of the mediterranean islands . wherefore there is great reason that they should be represented with golden crowns on their heads , they having acquired so many rich kingdoms by war. and their faces were as the faces of men : the better to assure the reader that men indeed are meant and not infects or mere locusts . . and they had hair as the hair of women , to show what countrey-men they were , not for any effeminacy or cowardize in them ; namely , that they are derived from the arabians , whose custom it was to wear long hair on their head unshorn , and an head-tire like women . this therefore shows they are saracens from arabia ; and in that it is said , and their téeth were as the téeth of lions : that shows , that they were very dispatchfull of their prey , who could devour so many kingdoms in so little time , as was above noted . . and they had breast-plates , as it were breast-plates of iron : that is , they were well armed to fight , and had an iron courage . and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battel . here is mention of wings , in allusion to the figure of locusts , who also make a noise with their wings when they fly ; but the sound of chariots of many horses running to battel , emplyes that they are indeed men , and great warriours , that with great swiftness , noise and terrour run down all before them , witness the above-mentioned conquests which were so large and so many . . and they had tails like unto scorpions , and there were stings in their tails : that is , they are of the serpentine kind , of the ancient serpent that was alwayes an enemy to the son of god and his kingdom ; and it denotes , that with their conquests they would bring in a religion contrary to that of christ , and destroy the worship of the son of god under an ignorant pretense of monotheisme , as if the christian religion were inconsistent with the worship of one god , whereas the more distinct knowledge of that one god does not make us less monotheists than they . this is the up-shot of their victories , and the very sting and poison their atchievements end in . and their power was to hurt men five months : that is , to hurt and vex the empire particularly , but not quite to destroy it , as the turks did afterwards . nor is it said here , to hurt the third part of men , as in the former trumpets , because their invasions were not restrained to the empire , but ran over other vast tracts of the habitable world also . but they are said to hurt men five months , in allusion to the life of locusts , as i noted above . and if mention be made of five months twice to remind us to double the number ; that is another character , whereby we may discern , that the saracens are here meant by these locusts ; twice five months of years , ( viz. ) three hundred years ( saving that there is the difference of five single years , which is nothing in the numbering by months of years ) being that most notable interval in the saracenical kingdom , namely from the beginning of the caliphate of the abasidae , who first made bagdad their imperial seat , to the taking of the said bagdad by togrulbec king of the turks ; that is , from the year of christ , to the year . but otherwise i conceive that five months do not signifie arithmetically but symbolically with an allusion to the time of the locusts , and only stand for the time that the saracens had to hurt men , not defining how long it was to be . . and they had a king over them , which is the angel of the bottomless pit. the same that the fallen star , to whom was given the key of the bottomless pit , it being an ensign of his power in the kingdom of darkness , as i noted above . this was the supreme captain of these troops of locusts , that is saracens , and his name denotes his nature as follows . whose name in the hebrew tongue is abaddon , but in the greek tongue hath his name apollyon ; both which words signifie a destroyer , which is a fit title , he being a captain of such numerous troops , that destroyed so many mens bodies by war , and their souls by bringing a false religion along with him contrary to christianity , reproaching it , as if it maintained the worship of more gods than one : which malicious pretense seems also to be glanced at in both the name of abaddon , and also of apollyon ; abaddon alluding to adad , as if it were ab-addon , and apollyon , to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 apollo , both which names according to this allusion signifie one . as if this angel of the abysse and his locusts stood up for the worship of one god , and that the christians worshipped many , because they worship the holy trinity , which nothing but their ignorance of the mystery , and their malice could make them conclude to be inconsistent with the unity of the deity . which passage therefore of the vision is no small countenance to the doctrine of the trinity of the godhead . . one wo is past , and behold there come two woes more hereafter ; namely , under the sounding of the next two trumpets , which therefore as the former may well be called wo-trumpets . . and the sixth angel sounded , and i heard voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before god. for iohn rapt thus into heaven , the temple and the throne of god was as it were continually represented to him , and so the golden altar , which is the altar of incense . and incense is the symbol of the prayers and breathing of the pure apostolick church oppressed and afflicted under that antichristian or pseudochristian and idolatrous constitution of things established by the second nicene council . . saying unto the sixth angel that had the trumpet , loose the four angels which are bound in the great river euphrates : that is , let loose the turks upon the idolatrous empire . for that angels signifie men under their conduct , is a frequent apocalyptical figure . and that the turks are here meant is plain from those more notable four * turkish sultanies or tetrarchies on that and this side of euphrates , that of bagdad , that of caesarea cappadocie or iconii , that of aleppo , and that of damascus . . and the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour , and a day , and a month , and a year , for to slay the third part of men . which term of time is another indication , that the turks are meant here . for togrulbec prince of the turks , the city bagdad being taken by him , had his imperial robes put upon him and was inaugurated emperour of the turks by the caliph chaiim biamrilla in the year . from this time was the turk invested in the saracenical empire . and from this year to the year , when constantinople was taken , and the remainder of the roman empire in the east utterly lost , is a prophetical day , and a month , and a year ; that is , years : so notable an indication is this , that the turks are here meant ; and the sense is this , that these turks were prepared 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against a determined appointed time , even to the expiration of years , for to slay the third part of men , that is , that about that time they might not vex only as the saracens did , but put an end to the eastern roman empire . for [ third ] is a character of the roman empire , as i have already noted . which accordingly came to pass at the taking of constantinople , and swallowing thereupon the whole roman empire in the east . . and the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand , and i heard the number of them : whereby i understood how exceeding numerous they were ; which is another note of their being turks , it being well known what vast armies they bring into the field . and this number does not signifie arithmetically , that is , precisely that number , but figuratively is put for a vast number in general , and so vast , that it could not be discovered by the eye , so well as signified by speech . and that there is no mention of foot may be an allusion to their known name in greek historians , who usually call them persians , which name signifies horsemen : which is another note of their being turks . . and thus i saw the horses in vision , and them that sate on them having breast-plates of fire and iacinth ; of iacinth , that is , of a blue colour ; and of brimstone , by reason that when they shot off , the air betwixt them and the sight of the beholder seemed fiery at the flashing of the powder , and then coloured with a blue smoke , and after filled his nostrils with the scent of sulphur ; which shows , that this vision * belongs to the times since the invention of gunpowder . and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions ; not for their shapes , but for the roaring noise that seems to come from them at the riders discharging their carbines or pistols , as what follows plainly intimates . and out of their mouths issued fire , smoke and brimstone . . by these three was the third part of men killed ; that is , the roman empire in the east was not only vexed and annoied , but utterly subdued , vanquished and destroyed by these centaures , as i may so call them , the turks , who are called persae in the greek historians from the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 paras , which signifies a man on horseback , including both the shapes in one appellation , as if that country bred such monsters which are usually called centaures : which centaures here are set out still more monstrously , as killing men by the fire , and by the smoke , and by the brimstone which issued out of their mouths ; as it may seem at a distance when they let off their fireguns and pistols . . for their power is in their mouth and in their tails : as in the scorpio-locusts before , a monster made up of a locust , and of a scorpion , to signifie the saracens : so here is a monster made up of a horse and a man , a centaure , as it were to signifie the turks , and have tails whereby they are said to hurt men , signifying the same venome or mischief of mahometism . the power of these centaures is in their mouths and in their tails , the turks playing two parts , ( viz. ) of a warriour in the field discharging fire and shot against the enemy , and of a religionist after the victory , all their war according to their alchoran , being a kind of holy war to propagate mahometisme , and paradise is promised to them that dye in the cause ; and therefore it is said , for their tails were like unto serpents , and had heads , and mouths too , i warrant you , to speak and tempt the vanquished ( as the old serpent did eve ) from their obedience to god and his christ ; ( and so with them they do hurt ) not only upon that false pretense , as if we christians were guilty of polytheisme , or of worshipping more gods than one , because we profess the trinity of the godhead , but also upon a pretense then too lamentably true , because they had so wretchedly corrupted the ancient apostolick christianity , with many intolerable superstitions and gross idolatries ; adding the persecution of all those that would not submit to them and their wicked inventions . for which gross degeneracy of the church , this scourge of the turks especially was sent in upon them , as is plainly implyed in what follows . . and the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues : that is , of the scorpio-locusts , and euphratean centaures , as i may so speak , but were only vexed with them ; by which is plainly meant the western part of the roman empire , which the turk could never possess himself of yet as he has of the eastern : yet for all this sad example of gods severity for the like crimes this western part of the empire repented not of the works of their hands , their wicked and impious inventions , whereby they corrupted the ancient apostolick christianity , that they should not worship devils , * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the original has it , that is , demons , or middle invisible powers betwixt god and men , whether angels or souls of men departed . and in reference to these idols of gold , and silver , and brass , and stone , and of wood , which neither can see , nor hear , nor walk ; and yet they lift up their eyes and hands to them , and pray before them , as if they could see their posture , hear what they said , and were able to go and bestir themselves to accomplish their requests : but in that the mode of their idolatry here is by statues not by pictures , this is another insinuation that the western church is here understood . . neither repented they of their murthers : that is , of their murtherous persecution of innocent souls for not submitting to their idolatrous rites and customs ; nor of their sorceries , their imposturous exorcismes and enchantments of several things to holy pretended uses ; nor of their fornication , their unnatural uncleannesses of all sorts upon an hypocritical profession of a single life ; nor of their thefts , their cunning tricks of cheating the people of their money , by setting up images for them to bring oblations to , their merchandises of hallowed crosses , beads , medals , and the like trumperies and deceits . for such like wickednesses as these was the wrath of god poured down upon the eastern part of the empire , by letting loose the euphratean horsemen upon them , so as to quite over-run them and vanquish them ; and yet the western church , the more the pity , did not lay it at all to heart , while those judgments were thundring against the eastern , and these euphratean horsemen were let loose upon them . which happened a little before the year , after the caliphate of bagdad , with which the first wo expired , had in the year been abolished by the tartars , and the remainder of the turks who had reigned in persia on the other side of euphrates were cast out , as out of a sling into the parts of the roman empire on this side euphrates by the said tartars ; namely , in the year , who winning syria and palestine , and dividing amongst themselves the greater part of asia minor , at last joyning in one othoman empire broke also into europe , nor ceased till they took constantinople , and quite abolished the constantinopolitan empire , and made themselves fully masters thereof . but as for the close of this second wo-trumpet , the most natural extent i discern thereof , is the universal impenitency of the western parts of the roman empire , till some country or kingdom appeared converted from such crimes as the eastern empire was destroyed for by these euphratean horsemen . and so we shall clearly observe with what succession of the churches this sixth trumpet , or second wo-trumpet expires ; namely , it ends with the thyatirian succession . the six trumpets added to the six seals reach just so far and no further . so that the seventh trumpet must be contemporary with the sardian , philadelphian and laodicean successions , and equalize the succession of them all ; which is worth the remembring for the better understanding what follows . notes . chapter ix . vers. . fallen from heaven to the earth , &c. the original has it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which though our english translation renders , i saw a star fall from heaven ; as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , then falling ; yet i have made bold to translate it according to grammatical truth , fallen from heaven . but i understand it of a fallen angel , according to the warrantable sense of the cabbalists . see my synopsis prophetica , book . ch . . sect . . vers. . the nature of the scorpion perpetually to attempt to sting , &c. semper cauda in ictu est , nulloque momento meditari cessat , ne quando desit occasioni , plin. histor. natur. lib. . c. . her taile is alwayes a striking , nor ceases she any one moment to endeavour to sting , that she may be sure to miss no opportunity . vers. . four turkish sultanies or tetrarchies , &c. these four sultanies , their number is learnedly and ingeniously made out by m r j. mede on this text : but besides this , if they were not just four , ( and the business is not their number but their office , what they are to do and when ) yet by a prophetick diorisme they might be called four , four standing for a note of vniversality in the cabbalistick mysteries . and d r hammond on this place would have four not to signifie just four , but indefinitely to be put for the number of the angels concerned in this affair : which he might the better have adventured on , if he had been acquainted with the cabbalistick stile . vers. . belongs to the times since the invention of gunpowder , and the use of guns in war ; which berchtoldus niger a franciscan monk and alchymist is said first to have divulged to the world about the year , which was after the plague of the saracens upon the empire : and shews also , how vain the attempts of those are who would draw back these visions to the times of titus , and the besieging of jerusalem by the roman armies . vers. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the original has it , &c. and this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has the same signification that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies spirits , whether the souls of men or angels , and that either good or bad . this is certainly the sense of the word in the greek language : and therefore it is not so justifiably and fitly translated here devils ; which none amongst the pagans themselves are said to worship , unless witches and magicians : and therefore it had been more safe to have retained the greek word , which also the latines use , and called them demons , which signifies as well goods angels , and the souls of good men departed this life , as bad angels or bad souls , or if you will , devils ; which in all idolatrous worship are in all likelihood busie assistants , and several times make a show of miracles , and so attract the worship of idolaters to themselves , they worshipping them that do these miraculous feats when any are done ; so that the sense is easie enough either way . not to add , that by a just reproach to their worshipping of saints and angels , they are said to worship devils : for who but a devil would receive religious worship ? or at least to worship false objects , according to that of psalm . v. . all the gods of the heathen are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is the very word here in this verse : and the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no gods , but vain objects of worship , called in hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , there being no true objects of worship , but he that made the heavens : see my synopsis prophetica , book . cap. . and m r mede 's apostasie of the latter times , ch . , and chapter x. the euphratean horsemen having over-run and destroyed , and fully seized on the eastern part of the roman empire , natural method will prompt us to expect that what follows in this prophecy of the sealed book , should refer to the western parts of the empire , and concern the highest dominion there , to wit , the bloody , idolatrous , papal hierarchy , that antichrist that exalts himself above all that is called god or worshipped ; the prophet balaam lord of the people , and who had made the secular power a balak , an empty cypher or an ahab , that is wholly guided or directed by the prophetess iezebel : so that this papal hierarchy in the west , being in reality the highest power by usurpation ; and the antichrist exalting himself against christ , and above him ; we may rationally expect , that the last wo-trumpet which contains the residue of the sealed-book-prophecy , carries in it such things or alterations as tend to the downfall of antichrist , and restoring and enlarging the kingdom of christ in these parts of the roman empire , and over the whole earth . and therefore accordingly it is said : . and i saw another mighty angel come down from heaven , one distinct from the seven trumpet-angels , cloathed with a cloud ; that is , clouds and darkness were round about him , a thick cloud charged with thunder . and a rain-bow was on his head ; which betokens he came in the glory of the divinity , even in the glory of god the father , for the rainbow in the vision of ezechiel so signifies . and therefore this mighty and victorious angel must be christ ; and a further intimation hereof is from what follows ; and his face was as it were the sun : for so he appeared to saul , when he cryed out to him , saul , saul , why persecutest thou me ; and such was his description when he appeared in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks . and his feet as pillars of fire , as it were coming out of the cloud and reaching to the earth ; which are tokens of the great wrath of the son of god , or christ , and his coming to judge and take vengeance of his enemies : his feet was as fine brass in the thyatirian interval , here they are like a pillar of fire . . and he had in his hand a little book open ; which contains all the visions of the prophecy of the opened book , as we at first noted : and he set his right foot on the sea , and his left foot on the earth , standing in that majestick manner , and laying claim to , or seizing himself , as it were , on his right by sea and land : see ch . . . ch . . . . and cryed with a loud voice , as when a lion roareth : which is another intimation , that it is christ the lion of the tribe of iudah . and who in this majestick posture , and terrible roaring could so well be said to set himself against antichrist , or the papal hierarchy as christ ? the roman empire eastern and western too was sorely vext and scourged by the scorpio-locusts the saracens , and eastern quite destroyed after by those euphratean centaures the turks : but the papal empire or hierarchy here in the west , christ himself with his apostolical legions of reformed christians will utterly demolish and destroy , as it is elsewhere said of the ten horns or kings , that at last they shall hate the whore , make her desolate , eat her flesh , and burn her with fire . this loud roaring therefore of this lion of the tribe of iudah sets off , in general , the anger and victorious terrour of christ in assaulting and overcoming the kingdom of antichrist , or the papal hierarchy , and glorious erection of his own kingdom . these in general are the affairs of this last space of the sealed-book-prophecy . and whereas it is said , when he cryed , or while he cryed , seven thunders uttered their voices ; this is a distribution of the aforesaid space into seven parts , which will be very serviceable for the orderly disposing of the visions of the opened-book-prophecy . these seven thunders may be seven bath-cols , that is , seven oracles or voices delivered in the midst of a thunder ; and the last thunder , which betokens the turning of the earth into a lake of fire by thundering and lightning might happily send out some such voice as this : go ye accursed into everlasting fire . this is the doom of them that adhere to the bloody , imposturous and idolatrous papal hierarchy . . and when the seven thunders had uttered their voices , i was about to write , namely what they said : and i heard a voice from heaven , saying unto me , seal up those things that the seven thunders uttered ; with an allusion to this sealed book of prophecies , as if he should say , though the seventh seal be opened , yet as to this part thereof , let it be as sealed again , for it is needless here so particularly to declare things touching the destruction of the papal hierarchy : which agrees very well with what follows , according to the reading of the biblia regia , andreas and others . and thou shalt write them hereafter ( not , and write them not ) namely in the opened-book-prophecies , where these affairs of the destruction of antichrist , and of the advancement of christs kingdom shall be more fully and particularly delivered ; which is a marvellous manner of transition from the sealed-book-prophecy to the opened-book-prophecy , and sutable to the usual majestickness of this book of the apocalypse . . and the angel which i saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven , as using that usual ceremony of posture in swearing . . and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever , who created heaven and the things that therein are , and the earth and the things that therein are , and the sea and the things that are therein . this is a mighty and vehement asseveration , but it is concerning a thing that sunk flesh and blood are too too incredulous of , which makes christ in his epistle to the church of the laodicean interval , which includes his coming to judgment , and his putting an end to the scene of things here on earth , use as vehement asseveration as might be , by calling himself the amen , the faithful and true witness , and the beginning of the creation of god ; and therefore he who could also put an end to it . and so here , there is the like vehement asseveration , that the stage of the earth must have an end at the last thunder , which will bring upon it the conflagration . for so he saith , that there should be time no longer , that is , that there shall be here no more time upon earth . . saving in the dayes of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall sound , and the mystery of god be finished , as he has declared to his servants the prophets : that is , those predictions be fulfilled which in such a mystical and symbolical stile god hath foretold by his prophets isaiah , daniel and ezechiel , and others , which reach to the very end of the world , or of the stage of things on this earth . and this is the first part of this marvellous transition from the prophecy of the sealed book , to that of the opened book . . and the voice which i heard from heaven , namely , at the beginning of the sealed-book-prophecy spake unto me again in the tone of a trumpet , suppose as it did before : and said , go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel , which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth : namely , in the hand of christ , now in the form of an angel , as before in the form of a lamb , but the same person still under another form , as it is the same book , though opened now when sealed before : but this new change in both denotes a new series of prophecies from the beginning of the church to the end of the world , as those of the sealed book were . . and i went unto the angel and said unto him , give me the little book : and he said unto me , take it and eat it up , and it shall make thy belly bitter , but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey : that is , though the knowledge of future things may be pleasant and tempting to the curious reader of this book , yet when he shall throughly digest it or understand it , it will be bitter by reason of the several sad and bitter things contained in it . as the sad persecution of the primitive christians in the smyrnean succession of the church , and the foul apostasie of the church into gross idolatry under the reign of antichrist , or the whore of babylon , and the most barbarous persecutions of them that will not submit to her wicked and idolatrous tyranny . and there is bitterness enough for her too at the last , which makes her paramours so loth to understand this book of prophecies aright . . and i took the little book out of the angels hand and ate it up , and it was in my mouth sweet as honey ; and as soon as i had eaten it , my belly was bitter : that is , my stomach was bitter : which is a prefiguration of the condition of those that shall read this book and rightly digest it , that is truly understand it : though there be pleasure in the understanding it , yet when these sad things touching the church were to come , it could not but be bitterness to them ; that is , the book is of that nature that it would so affect a christian. . and he said unto me , thou must prophecy again : that is , thou must run over again from the same epocha of time , this race of prophecying , that is , foretell , ( as before the fate or state of the empire , so now ) the fate or state of the christian church from the beginning thereof to the end of the world . before many peoples , and nations , and tongues , and kings ; that is , to their faces : so that they may all understand how they are concerned in this prophecy of the opened book . and thus is the transition from the sealed-book-prophecy to the opened-book-prophecy in both the parts thereof , fully finished . now follow the visions themselves of the opened-book-prophecy , and that in a sufficiently natural and rational order , those visions that reach from the beginning of the church being placed first . notes . chapter x. vers. . saving in the dayes of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall sound , &c. instead of , but in the dayes , i have rendered it , saving in the dayes , the sense of this verse in the original , being exceeding imperfect and ungrammatical , unless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be supposed to be put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saving or except . and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies so sometimes , is abundantly plain out of several instances in the new testament , mat. . . but to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , except to those for whom it is prepared of my father . and mat. . . compared with mark . . where the former has it : and when they lift up their eyes , they saw no man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , save jesus only , the latter has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is plainly put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and our english translation renders it , save jesus only . these and other such like places has grotius himself noted to our hand , which makes it manifest that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes signifies as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , except or saving . and being the sense is maimed in this place of the apocalypse , unless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be so rendred , it is plain that it is the sense of this particle here . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i have rendred , when he shall sound , not when he shall begin to sound , as if it were restrained to the beginning of the sounding , because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implies no such thing . see my ratio synchronistica , cap. . sect . . wherefore it is plain , that the angel swears there shall be no more time on earth , saving in the space of the seventh trumpet , and that therefore there will be an end of this terrestrial scene of things contrary to the confident conceit of those scoffing atheists , peter . . and moreover , that since we are at the end of all in this seventh verse , that there is a beginning of a new series of prophecies , from the first epocha , afterwards . chapter xi . . and there was given to me a réed like unto a rod , and the angel stood saying , rise and measure the temple of god and the altar , and those that worship therein : that is , all that space that is contained within the inward court. in the first part whereof is the temple which consists of the sanctum , and sanctum sanctorum , and in the latter part thereof stands the altar of holocausts , which whole space therefore is thysiasterion , or the place of sacrificing , and was not to be rendred altar , but the place where the altar stands . for the priests did not worship in the altar , but in the place where the altar was erected : which place the greek text calls thysiasterion . and in that it is said measure them that worship therein , it is plain , that the measuring belongs to the men not to the place . this space therefore of ground answers to that space of time which is comprehended in the ephesine and smyrnean succession of the church . and the correspondence is admirable betwixt the smyrnean succession and the thysiasterion , when so many martyrs as so many holocausts were sacrificed in testimony of the truth of the christian religion , the space where the altar of holocausts stands , falling in with the space of time of the smyrnean persecutions . . but the court which is without the temple leave out and measure it not . for it is not commensurable to the rule of gods word , and the apostolick faith and practice , but contrary or repugnant ; namely , that time of the church which is comprised in far the greatest part of the pergamenian succession , and all the thyatirian , in which they are said to offer things sacrificed to idols , and were in some kind or other become idolatrous , never go about therefore to measure them , for they are incommensurate to the rule , and point-blank contrary thereto : such is the outward court. for it is given unto the gentiles , and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months : that is , a kind of paganochristianity instead of pure christianity shall visibly domineer for forty and two months of years , that is years ; which is the same proportion of time to the commensurate time of the church under the ephesine and smyrnean succession , and a little further , that the proportion of the outward court has to the inward court , which proportion is as to ; that is , the outward court contained the inward three times and an half in quantity . . and i will give power unto my two witnesses , and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and threescore dayes cloathed in sackcloth . the works of darkness were numbred by months , the moon being ruler of the night , but the works of righteousness by dayes , of which the sun is moderator . but by dayes are understood prophetick dayes here , that is , years , a thing known and usual in prophecies . by these two witnesses are understood all that bore witness against the idolatries and disorders of this time of apostasie , and they are said to be cloathed in sackcloth , to denote both the sadness of heart they are in , to see such times , and also to signifie the low and mean condition of such holy and apostolick men in this wicked time of apostasie . but all these mournful witnesses are said to be two , though never so many , partly by reason of the types in the old testament to which they allude , moses and aaron , elias and elisha , zorobabel and ieshuah who show'd their zeal for the purity of gods worship against the idolatry in the wilderness , in the baalitish idolatry , and in the captivity of babylon . there may be also an allusion to things in this division into two , ( viz. ) to magistracy and ministry , to the old testament and the new , or else to the people of the iews , such as are kept out from our religion by the gross adulterations of it , and to the virgin company of christians . . those are the two olive trées and the two candlesticks standing before the god of the earth . a description of the two witnesses in the sense above declared , with a particular allusion to that in zachary chap. . . where by the two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and the left is understood zorobabel and ieshuah , those faithful servants in the babylonish captivity , and the time of the mournfull witnesses is the very time of the whore of babylon . . and if any man will hurt them , fire proceedeth out of their mouth , and devoureth their enemies : the allusion is to moses and elias , who did really bring down fire upon their enemies ; but here it is to be understood mystically of the fire of the spirit : not by might nor by power , but by my spirit saith the lord of hosts : it was the word of the lord to zorobabel , who was a type of these witnesses , and an helper of gods people in the babylonish captivity : and it is said of the man in esdras coming out of the sea , and he shall destroy them without labour , by the law which is like unto fire . in which sense i would understand that which followes : and if any man will hurt them , he must in this manner be killed by the power of the spirit in conviction and prayer ; these are the weapons of their warfare . . these have power to shut heaven that it rain not in the dayes of their prophecies : namely , in the dayes of their mournful prophecy , their prophecying in sackcloth . this is figuratively spoken by a prophetical metalepsis or zoopoeia of the second kind , attributing that to their activity , or it may be oral denunciation , which is only a consequence of their condition , they being put out of power and place in church and state. the allusion is to elias his hindering it from raining three years and six months in ahab's time , which time exactly answers to dayes the time of these mournfull witnesses . but the rain that is here hindred is the sound apostolick doctrine , and heavenly influence thereof , which hinderance is a consequence of these mournfull witnesses being put out of power and place . and have power over waters to turn them to blood ; because their apostolick preaching of the gospel of meekness and peace does not take place . and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they will ; that is , as often as occasions offer themselves : * for particular occasions answer in analogie to particular acts of will in this prophetick zoopoeia ; and indeed all the ten plagues of aegypt came upon the roman empire , because these witnesses to the apostolick truth are not heard , it having become a land of aegypt to the true israelites , the pure and apostolick christians . * how the plague of frogs , of lice , of swarms of gnats and flyes , murrain of beasts , boyles and ulcers , hail and locusts , in a mystical sense interpreted fell upon this mystical aegypt , as it is called in this book of prophecies , as a necessary consequence of these witnesses disgrace , affliction and deprivation of power and office , were easie here to show , if it were not too long for this short explication we are upon . . and when they shall be * a finishing their testimony ; that is , performing their witnessing to the truth against all the impostures and idolatries of this spiritual aegypt . the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit : that is , either out of a pit of the earth or the abysse of the sea , and so it will signifie either the two-horned or the ten-horned beast : shall make war against them , and shall overcome them , and kill them ; shall oppose them and overcome , as to the power of this world , and kill them ; so that they shall be politically dead all of them , and some , as it happened to the waldenses and albigenses and others , be slain in a natural sense : so that the meaning in short is this , that no sooner shall they begin to perform their office of witnessing to the truth , but they shall be assaulted , suppressed , kept out of power , and politically killed , as their resurrection also is political , as you shall hear anon . . and their dead bodies shall lye in the stréet of the great city , which spiritually is called sodom and egypt , where also our lord was crucified : that is to say , these witnesses as to any political power and life being dead karcasses ( as it is said of the people of the jews in a political sense , shall these dry bones live ! ) shall be in being still ( though in this political death ) in the large jurisdiction of that great city , which is spiritually or mystically called sodom and aegypt , and the city where our lord was crucified , that is , ierusalem that killeth the prophets , that far extended idolatrous church , that for their uncleannesses upon their pretense of vowed celibate is here called sodom : aegypt for the slavery they keep the people of god in , which agrees well with the plagues of aegypt abovementioned , and the old ierusalem for persecuting the true prophets and servants of god , that is , the true professors of the apostolick christianity . . and they of the people , and kindreds , and tongues , and nations shall sée their dead bodies , thus devoid of all political life and power , thrée days and an half ; that is , for three times and an half , day signifying the same that time in some cases , and here it is said . three dayes and an half , for decorum sake , that in the out-side of the letter they may not seem to prophesie and be dead at the same time , nor lye too long unburied or unrevived . but these three times and an half , or a time and times and half a time , is the same that three years and an half prophetically understood , or years , which is the time of the political death of these witnesses , and of their prophecying in sackcloth . and whereas it is said , and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves ; that implies that they are kept safe in being , though kept out of all power , and so politically dead . . and they that dwell on the earth shall rejoyce over them , and make merry : that is , they whose hearts and minds dwell upon earthly things , these will rejoyce when the two witnesses are slain , their free rebukes out of the word of god being very disquieting and tormenting to these worldly and carnally minded men . and they shall send gifts one to another , and more jollily and freely congratulate one another the enjoyment of their honours and church-preferments shared amongst them , because these two prophets tormented them that dwell on the earth : but could now do so no more , they being put out of place and power . these two true and faithful prophets are slain in this sense , who tormented them whose minds were set upon the earth , that is , savoured nothing but earthly things . . and after thrée dayes and an half ; that is , after a time and times and half a time was now currant ; that is , in the last semitime , the spirit of life from god entered into them ; that is , divine providence so brought it about , that they began to have some political power , and favour , and interest with the great ones . and they stood upon their feet ; they stood on their own legs , and they were countenanced and supported even for the very profession sake of the pure and apostolick faith , in opposition to that paganochristianity and new-coined idolatry that had got into the church ; and great fear fell upon them which saw them , suspecting what might be the issue thereof . . and they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them , come up hither : there was a powerfull command from the political heaven , in which political suns and moons , and stars , kings , princes and governours shine ; there was , i say , an express and effectual command from these higher powers , that the more pure and apostolick religion should be established , and that idolatrous and paganochristian superstition , that so long domineering and persecutive papal hierarchy should be abolished , and the long persecuted profession of the apostolick faith and practice be advanced to the highest degrees and dignities whether ecclesiastical or civil . for it is said , and they ascended up to heaven in a cloud : their riding thus in a cloud is an emblem of rising into honour and power , and that they were to be employed in the highest offices and places whether in church or state. and their enemies beheld them ; and you may be sure with a malicious and envious eye . . and the same hour was there a great earthquake : a mighty change and commotion in affairs : and the tenth part , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of the city fell : that is , tithes , the holy revenue of the city , that papal hierarchy , or idolatrous roman clergy fell , was shaken off from them ; and as to their any longer enjoying of them lost . and in this earthquake were slain seven thousand names of men : that is , politically slain , as the witnesses resurrection to life is political . but neither seven nor thousand signifie here arithmetically but symbolically : and they are called names of men rather than men , denoting that they are titles , dignities , offices or orders of men belonging to the state of christendome under the seventh head of the beast : which apoc. cap. . is an idolatrous head , and antichristian ; and therefore shews their nature to be idolatrous and antichristian : and they are said to be slain as ceasing to be in that power they were before . but this seven is multiplyed into a thousand to show what a solid overthrow this hierarchy had , and for adorning the outside of the vision . and the remnant were affrighted , and gave glory to the god of heaven . when so great a part of the roman hierarchy had fallen in the late blessed reformation , it is no wonder if the rest of that party were affrighted and surprized , they sitting before as a queen in the thyatirian interval , which thought she should find no sorrow . but now they could not but acknowledge the hand of god was upon them , and understand that the god of heaven , or the most high god ruleth in the kingdoms of men . . the second wo is past : ( viz. ) in the resurrection of the witnesses , or the late blessed reformation . and that general impenitency in this western part of the empire is now expired with this second wo , so many parts thereof ceasing to worship demons and idols of gold and silver , &c. and here likewise the thyatirian succession expires , and iezebel the false prophetess , the roman hierarchy is no longer permitted to seduce the people to commit fornication , and eat things sacrificed to idols , and that promise to the church in thyatira is fulfilled . he that overcometh and keepeth my works to the end , to him will i give power over the nations or gentiles , those that had trod down the outward court to the latter part of the last semitime of the seven , which are equal to the forty two months , wherein they are said to have trod it down : so that the residue of this vision runs up into the sardian succession of the church , into the time of the seven vials . and already i think it is manifest in this opened-book-prophecy , that this lion of the tribe of iudah did not roar in vain , he having rescued so considerable a prey out of the jaws of antichrist in the last notable reformation . and behold the third wo cometh quickly , which is the pouring forth of the vials . the first whereof is that intoxicating cup of envy , rage and exulceration of spirit against the risen witnesses , by which their enemies being dementated , it would make them impotently attempt such things as would render them execrable , odious or despicable to all the world . which wrath of theirs , and malice so naturally flowing from the prosperity of the witnesses , it is no wonder it is said , that the third wo cometh quickly . . and the seventh angel sounded , and there were great voices in heaven , namely where s t iohn was wrapt up in spirit , saying , the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our lord and his christ ; that is , several kingdoms and principalities , as pledges of the rest , are recovered already by christ out of the hands of the tyrannical antichrist by the late blessed reformation . and he shall reign for ever and ever ; that is , whatever chastisements may come upon the church of sardis for her neglects and imperfections , this kingdom of christ which has begun shall for certain take place , and he shall reign to the end of the world through the sardian , philadelphian and laodicean successions . . and the four and twenty elders which sate before god on their seats , fell upon their faces and worshipped god. these princes in heaven are said thus to do , betokening what those princes and potentates on earth , that were our noble reformers , would do , or how devoutly they would be affected for so blessed a reformation , which god by his gracious providence had brought to pass , for they were in a manner slaves to the pope before . . saying , we give the thanks o lord god almighty , which art , and wast , and art to come ; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power , and hast reigned : that is , given so glorious a specimen of thy power , and that thou rulest in the kingdoms of men , and hast thus happily begun the reign of thy christ for the subduing utterly at last the kingdom of antichrist . the beginning of the seventh trumpet is the beginning of the sardian succession of the church , and of the seven vials ; and the commencement of them all are with praises and acclamations for this first auspicious victory of christ over the papal hierarchy or antichrist . for the word sardis signifies a song of ioy , and here is the thanksgiving of the elders , and at the beginning of the vials there is sung the song of moses , and of the lamb. what follows here are some scatterings and obscure hints of the affairs under the seven vials , and plainly ends with the seventh . . and the nations were angry ; that is , the gentiles that had trodden down the outward court , and defiled it by a new kind of idolatrous gentilism ; the minds of these were exasperated and exulcerated with wrath and envy at this sudden resurrection of the witnesses , which is a short glance at the first vial. and thy wrath is come , and the time of the dead ; that is , of those that this tyrannical roman hierarchy had so often and in such multitudes so barbarously murthered for their witnessing to the truth , the time is now come that christ is to judge and revenge their cause , which seems to allude to the third vial , where it is said , thou art righteous o lord , which art , and wast , and shall be , because thou hast judged thus : for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets , and thou hast given them blood to drink , for they are worthy , which is an easie comment upon what follows . that they should be judged , and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets , and to thy saints , and them that fear thy name small and great . the meanest that have died martyrs and been murdered for the profession of the truth , that thou shouldest judge their cause , though they were despised by this proud , imperious iezebel : and shouldest destroy them that destroy the earth : that is , the men upon the earth , for of this iezebel or whore of babylon it is said , and in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints , and of all that were slain upon the earth ; into such an akeldama has that lofty prelate the pope ever and anon turned christendom by his restless ambition and tyranny . . and the temple of god was opened in heaven : out of which the seven angels having the seven last plagues are seen to come , chap. . and there was seen in his temple the ark of the testament : which answers to the great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne , chap. . . under the seventh vial : so that this time reaches to the very sanctum sanctorum , or holy of holies , betokening a most powerfull , pure and apostolick state of the church , as if we were come into the first apostolick times again in the beginning of the church , as the outward court is an emblem of the latter apostated times thereof . by which is notified the beginning of the philadelphian succession , which commences with the seventh vial. to which what follows seems to allude . and there were lightnings , and voices , and thunderings , and an earthquake , and great hail : which is plainly a description of the seventh vial. so that this whole vision in this chapter begins with the first epocha of the church , and endeth with the seventh vial or first thunder . which is also the very space of the sett of visions comprized in the three following chapters ; which are a more ample description of the same state of things in the same time , and we shall note what parts answer each other . notes . chapter xi . vers. . by a prophetical metalepsis or zoopoeia , &c. metalepsis is a figure , whereby an effect or event is translated or communicated to some person or thing , because the place and time is coincident with them . that there is such a figure , and that it is made use of in the apocalypse i have proved in my synopsis prophetica , lib. . cap. . sect . . but a zoopoeia of the second kind is , when free actions are attributed to free agents , of which notwithstanding they may be no more the cause than if they were inanimate beings , or not in being at all . this figure also i have proved to be made use of in the apocalypse , as well as in other authors , lib. . cap. . sect . . see my synopsis in the places cited . for particular occasions answer in analogy to particular acts of will , &c. and the analogie is very exact , the figure being but once admitted which i have demonstrated in my synopsis prophetica . nor can any man wonder that the apocalypse affects such high figures as these are , if he consider that this is one part of the artifice of concealment , which is so studiously intended in it . but if we understand this power given to these witnesses of the oral denunciation of these aegyptian plagues , that also is very plausible from jer. . . where god speaks thus to jeremiah : see , i have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms , to root out , and to pull down , and to destroy , and to throw down , and to build , and to plant : which is not to do these things , but to denounce them . chapter xii . . and there appeared a great wonder in heaven , a woman cloathed with the sun , and the moon under her féet , and upon her head a crown of twelve stars . this is the primitive apostolick church before the apostasie . where being clothed with the sun signifies her being environed with the pure light of the gospel , or the sun of righteousness communicated to her . and her being crowned with twelve stars denotes , that it was her glory , and her crown , that she was not yet degenerated from the true apostolick faith and practice , nor did as yet either iudaize or paganize , but trod under-foot both the carnality of the judaical rites , ( whose feasts , and legal observances were appointed according to the course of the moon ) and also the gross superstitions and idolatries of the pagans , which are rightly deemed the works of darkness , or of the night , of which the moon is governess . . and she being with child cryed travailing in birth , and pained to be delivered . these sharp throes signifie the cruel cutting persecutions the primitive church was under , and the many martyrdoms they did suffer before that promise of christ was made good to them , fear not little stock , for it is my fathers good pleasure to give you the kingdom . this state therefore of the church is contemporary with that of the earnest ephesine and bitter smyrnean succession , and with the inward court , where also stood the altar of holocausts , betokening the primitive christians frequent sacrificing their lives in testimony to the truth . . and there appeared another wonder in heaven ; namely , while this woman was thus in travail ; and behold a great red dragon , that is , bloody and cruel , having seven heads and ten horns ; on his seventh head suppose , but without crowns , to intimate they are not yet in being , though the heads be said to be crowned as well the five past , and that one to come , as the present sixth head , the better to understand thereby , that they are men or magistrates , not hills that are intimated in this place , that is the reason it is said , and seven crowns upon his heads . . and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven , and did cast them to the earth ; that is , his military train or armies had subdued in s t iohn's time , the third part of the kingdoms and principalities of the then known world . and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered to devour the child as soon as it was born . the dragon , that is , the roman empire pagan , known by its seven heads , which allude also to the seven hills , chap. . as well as to the sevenfold succession of government in it , but pagan in that it is in the shape of a dragon , as being under the dominion not of christ but satan , and also because seven heads are only named , and the horns of the seventh head yet uncrowned : wherefore this vision belongs to the empire while it was yet purely pagan , and the sense of that last clause is briefly this , that the roman pagan emperours and their ministers , the devil assisting , watched as close as they could , that the church of christ never should come to such power as to have an emperour of their own religion , and so the roman empire come into their hands ; but so soon as any such thing appeared , they endeavoured to quash it and defeat it . . and she brought forth a man-child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron . but notwithstanding all their envious and malicious watchfulness the woman brought forth a man-child , a mystical christ , or christian people , that at last would make themselves masters of the empire , and rule the wicked persecutive pagans with such severity as they deserved , which is intimated by what follows : and her child was caught up unto god and to his throne . he was advanced to the imperial dignity , which is called here the throne of god , in such a sense as supreme magistrates are called elohim , gods , in the hebrew idiom , because they are gods vicegerents and representatives here on earth , whence their majesty is also called sacred . and this was plainly fulfilled when constantine turned christian. the watchfulness therefore of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this quick-sighted vigilant dragon seems to be contemporary with the travail of the woman till she had brought forth a man-child that might rule all nations with a rod of iron . . and the woman fled into the wilderness : but a little after this external prosperity of the church , and deliverance from the present pagan persecution , she was yet fain to take shelter in the wilderness , the outward catholick church becoming little better in a short time : for which reason she is said to fly into the wilderness , being more safe in this christiano-gentilism , than in that open furious oppression of the pagan red dragon , thought in propriety of speech the desart or christiano-paganism came swiftly upon her rather than she by any will of her own fled into it , but it is a prophetical hypallage : where she hath a place prepared of god that they should feed her there : the apostolick church should be preserved by gods providence all the time of this her abode in the wilderness or christiano-gentilism , namely about the time of a thousand two hundred and threescore dayes , prophetical , that is years : or the time and times and half a time , as they are afterward called , and sometimes resolved into dayes , sometimes into months , for * particular symbolical meanings , and for the embellishing of the cortex of the apocalypse , but to be understood alwayes seven semitimes in whatever other disguise expressed , whether of dayes or months : these dayes therefore is the same time with forty two months , of the treading down the outward court by the gentiles . . and there was war in heaven ; which betokens the like affair to come upon earth : michael and his angels fought against the dragon , and the dragon fought and his angels : which implies the invisible assistances and oppositions of angels good and bad , the one on the primitive christians side , the other on the pagan empires side , during that strong conflict betwixt the church and the pagans their persecutors in the ephesine and smyrnean succession , with which the pangs of the woman in travail also is contemporary . . and the dragon and his angels prevailed not ; that is , they were quite vanquished , neither was their place found any more in heaven . . and the great dragon was cast out , that old serpent , with whom christ had had no small combating long before , called the devil and satan ; the reproacher and opposer of the kingdom of christ in all places and ages ; which deceiveth the whole world , and seduceth them into false and idolatrous worship . he was cast out into the earth , and his angels were cast out with him : this appearance thus in heaven signified the destruction of the empire as draconick and idolatrous , that none of that foul stamp should be in high places of the empire , but such as were professed christians . . and i heard a loud voice saying in heaven , now is come salvation , and strength , and the kingdom of our god , and the power of his christ. this is contemporary to the affairs of the sixth seal , or rather with the close thereof , and the commencement of the pergamenian interval . for the accuser of our brethren is cast down , which accused them before god day and night . what the devil is said to do concerning iob , accuse him before god , the pagans are here understood to do before the emperour and other magistrates of the empire , to raise most wicked calumnies concerning the christians , objecting against them thyaestean suppers , incests , adultery , promiscuous lusts , murders , conspiracies against princes , plagues , famine , mischiefs by fire , or what other calamity happened in the empire . . and they overcame him by the blood of the lamb , through the merits of christ crucified on the cross , and by the word of their testimony , and spending their own blood also in way of martyrdom , for it is said , and they loved not their lives unto the death . this verse makes it plain , that the battel that is said to be in heaven , denotes a battel here on earth betwixt the christians and their persecutors . . therefore rejoyce ye heavens , and ye that dwell in them . ye angels and holy martyrs , not without an intimation also to the political heaven , in the roman empire to those in high places and offices under the christian emperour . wo to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea , that is , to the lower multitude : for the devil is come down unto you having great wrath , and will stickle to do as much mischief as he can amongst you , while he may , because he knoweth that he hath but a short time : for though the great ones of the empire were turned christians , yet many of the common people were still pagans , wherefore the devil will find out a fetch to strengthen those in their paganism , and dissettle the other in their christian profession . . and when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth , and reduced to such a low , base condition : he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man-child : an envious , revengefull , persecuting temper rose in him against her . . and to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle : that is , by reason of the roman empire becoming christian ( and now divided into two parts , eastern and western ( and that the eagle is the ensign of the roman empire is notorious enough ) which these wings might represent ) she was in such a state , that by a prophetick hypallage it might be said of her , that she might fly into the wilderness into her place : that is , the wilderness condition of the church would come shortly upon her , wherein she should by divine providence be ever safe from the red pagan , persecuting , dragon , as it follows , where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time from the face of the serpent : that is , for three prophetick years and an half , which is seven prophetical half years , or semitimes , which are the measures intended , as seems to be insinuated , by expressing the one thousand two hundred and sixty days , vers . . by a time and times and half a time. . but before the commencement of the time , as if he had a mind to overwhelm her before she could reach the appointed place , it is said , and the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a stood after the woman : that is , the water of heresie and contention , that sore division of the church by reason of that heresie of arianisme , that he might cause her to be carried a way of the flood : that the church which stood out the hottest persecutions with invincible valour against the red dragon may now perish by the over-speading of heresie and intestine division , this furious controversie hardening the hearts of the unconverted people , and staggering the converted in their faith and profession . . and the earth helped the woman , and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth : that is , the church was delivered from this overflowing heresie and dissension by the decree of an oecumenical council , ( viz. ) the first nicene council ; their opening their mouth in a decree against arianisme , and condemning it for an heresie , was like the opening of the mouth of the earth to a flood that presently sinks and never is seen any more . partly this real analogie is alluded to , and partly there may be an allusion to the title oecumenical , which is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which implies in it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the earth . for such gentle touches and glances at the signification of words are not unusual in the prophetick stile . . and the dragon was wroth with the woman , and went to make war with the remnant of her séed which kéep the commandments of god. the former wicked project failing , the wrath of the dragon was again incensed against the woman , ( viz. ) the woman with the crown of twelve stars on her head , and the moon under her feet , the pure apostolick church , and went to make war with the remnant of her seed , those namely that she was to bring forth , while she abides in the wilderness , which will approve themselves her genuine off-spring by keeping the commandments of god , who forbids us making any graven image to bow down to it or worship it , and bids us worship , serve , and pray to himself alone . and have the testimony of iesus christ. for the testimony of jesus is the spirit of prophecy , in which sense the two witnesses are said to prophecy as well as to witness . the testimony therefore of jesus is to witness to the gospel of our lord jesus christ , not from mere custom or education , because others have told us it is true ; but because we are assured of the truth thereof from the spirit of god , and in virtue of the spirit of life in the new birth . from this living principle do these faithful servants of christ bear witness of the truth of his word revealed in the gospel , and witness against the wicked inventions of an apostatized church , and loath them and detest them . for they are not dead vessels that will receive wholesome liquor and poyson alike , but the living creation of god : and therefore have an antipathy against all the works of the devil , gross superstition , imposture , idolatry , cuelty , lying impossibilities , instead of true miracles or mysteries , and what other inventions of the old serpent that seduceth the whole world . against such witnesses therefore you may be sure this dragon will make war , who in this chapter is described under one single figure of a red dragon , the roman pagan emperours being pontifices maximi , as well as caesars . in the following chapter this draconical power is divided into two , there being now such a state in the roman empire , as that there may be said to be imperium in imperio , the papal or sacerdotal hierarchy distinct from the caesarean majesty and power . notes . chapter xii . vers. . for particular symbolical meanings , and for the embelishing of the cortex of the apocalypse , &c. this symbolical meaning , as i remember m r mede takes notice of . that the time and times and half a time is expressed by one thousand two hundred and sixty days , when the time or continuance of the children of light , or of the day is notified ; but by forty two months , when the children of darkness or of the night their continuance is signified . thus the continuance of the ten-horned beast , chap. . is numbred by months ; as also the treading down the outward court by the gentiles , chap. . but the womans stay in the wilderness is expressed by dayes , as also the time of the two witnesses prophecying in sackcloth . and it is manifest that the outward letter or cortex of the apocalypse is better adorned this way , than if where ever we find forty two months , or one thousand two hundred and sixty dayes , a time and times and half a time had been repeated . but these reasons of varying the phrase thus being so apparent ( to say nothing of the use of turning daniel's time and times and half a time into forty two months , or one thousand two hundred and sixty dayes , for the more certainly understanding that three prophetick years and an half is meant thereby ) we may be the better assured , that no greater accurateness of time is intended by them , than if the phrase of a time and times and half a time had been alwayes used . the not understanding of which has made sundry in vain attempt to predict events foretold in the apocalypse to the accurateness of a prophetical day , whenas indeed there is no use of either prophetical day or month , unless in saying , such a thing was to fall out , or did fall out in such a day , or such a month , or such a day of such a month of , suppose , the seventh or last semitime or prophetical half year , which consists of one hundred and eighty dayes or six months . and the nature of the things foretold are such , that they are not to terminate on a year , but rather require that grosser numbring by semitimes . but the several particulars of the completion of a prophecy , suppose of the rising of the witnesses , might be more distinctly declared by saying this part was , suppose , in such a month of the last semitime , and such in such , in the fourth month suppose of the seventh or last semitime , or prophetical half year , and such a day of that month , &c. chapter xiii . . and i stood upon the sand of the sea , that is , me thought i stood by the sea side ; or rather as the vulgar latine reads it , ( which not only m r mede , but cornelius à lapide and alcazar , and , as they say , the generality of interpreters follow ) and he stood upon the sand of the sea , that is , the dragon stood , &c. and i saw a beast rise up out of the sea , having seven heads and ten horns ; which betoken the roman empire , and upon his horns ten crowns . in the former vision there were no crowns upon his horns , but here there are , to denote that this is the roman empire divided into many kingdoms , ( viz. ) that the vision reaches unto these times , or belongs to the times of this state of the empire , which division of the empire happened betwixt four and five hundred years after christ. and upon his heads the name of blasphemy , that is , of idolatry ; which signifies to us , that this figure represents the empire only under that succession of time , that it was more or less idolatrous . . and the beast which i saw was like unto a leopard ; that is , it was like a kingdom divided into many parts , as the greek kingdom was . and his feet , that is , his forepart , which are as the arms and hands of the bear , which are his strength and instrument of action to raven and prey with ; these were as the feet of a bear : which denotes the likeness of it with the persian kingdom , who as they were governed by their magi in their affairs , so these by the papal hierarchy , by the power and counsel of the pope and his clergy . and his mouth as the mouth of a lion ; that is , it is like the babylonish kingdom in its cruel decrees against such as will not obey their idolatrous edicts , nor worship the golden image that nebuchadnezzar had set up . their stubbornness must be punished by an hot fiery furnace , fire and fagot must be prepared for them that will not submit to this new roman idolatry . and the dragon gave him his power , his seat and great authority . his power here according to the original should be his forces or armies : and what are the forces and armies of the dragon , but his evil angels or wicked spirits , and their weapons and artillery the external pomp of images or idols , and such gross furniture of their worship , whereby they overcome and captivate the feeble phancies of the people ? but his seat and great authority is the imperial crown and authority : which showes , that this imperial power as idolatrous , is the genuine successour to the pagan imperial power . . and i saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death : namely , in the fight of the dragon with michael and the holy martyrs who were conquerours at last , and converted the roman pagan empire to christianity . and his deadly wound was healed ; that is , the roman empire for that succession of time it was represented to me under , was recovered unto its former pagan-like and idolatrous plight and condition . this panther-like beast , who by reason of the beauty of his skin , and sweetness of his scent allures other beasts to him , and whom the dragon is said most chiefly to fly from , under this fair show , and yet with the assistances of the dragon was easily reduced to the former pagan-like state , under pretense of christianity they imposing the old paganick idolatries upon the people . and all the world wondred after the beast : that is , they were all mightily taken with the beast , he both gratifying them with his outward specious show of christianity , that seemed so contrary to the dragon , and from which he so much abhorrs , and also having the assistance of the dragon , ( viz. ) the dragon-like idolatries , and carnal sense-striking rites of worship , and the tricks and delusions of his wicked spirits at their images or altars to deceive the people . . and they worshipped the dragon which gave power to the beast : namely , which had given him his armies , his throne , and his great authority , that is to say , though he appears in the shape now not of the dragon but of the leopard or panther , a beast the dragon is said so much to abhor , that is , in the gratefull shew of christianity , yet so far forth as they gave obedience to the paganical and idolatrous part joyned with it , they indeed worshipped or obeyed the dragon , whose fiends or goblins might please themselves to receive that worship at their altars and images that they had by their jugling tricks and false miracles reintroduced into the church , and flear amongst themselves at the imposture , that they made the church in so gross a sense become the worshippers of devils , as it is said in the sixth trumpet : and they worshipped the beast : that is , they yielded obedience to the beast , to the imperial power in such a state as it was , saying , who is like unto the beast , who is able to make war with him ? things are so well setled and strongly this way , and so accommodately to all mens liking , that neither jew nor pagan can be able to dissettle the peace of the empire in this point , or make war and raise stirs against it . . and there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies ; that is , great and enormous blasphemies : which are injunctions for idolatry of several sorts ; for blasphemy in scripture often signifies idolatry . and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months , the same time the outward court is trodden down by the gentiles ; that is , the entireness of his dominion shall continue till the seventh semitime , till about the fourth month thereof . . and he opened his mouth in blasphemy against god to blaspheme his name , by giving his incommunicable name to idols or images ; or name may signifie his person , and so his person is blasphemed by idolatry committed against him by worshipping any other person besides god or christ. and his tabernacle , namely , the body of christ , which is the living tabernacle of god , it is blasphemed more wayes than one , both in that they idolatrously worship a mere wafer instead thereof , and make it also so vile a thing , that it shall be at the command of every priest for whatever uses he will please to fetch it down by his transubstantiating charm , to be devoured into the foul stomachs of the people , and as it may happen , to be eaten by base vermine , such as rats and mice . and them that dwell in heaven ; that is , the saints and angels they most wickedly blaspheme , in that they set up idols by the instigation of evil spirits , the forces or armies the old dragon delivered to the beast , who no doubt are busie enough to assist there and play tricks , and do call these idols by the names of the saints or angels , and impute these tricks there played in the behalf of idolatry by them to the saints , when they are the mere delusions of these goblins or devils : besides , it it a gross reproach to the saints and angels , to suppose they will accept of religious worship , and so prove rebels to god : wherefore that power that established and decreed such enormous things as these , image-worship , saint-worship and transubstantiation , may well be said to open their mouth in blasphemy for publishing such edicts , &c. . and it was given him to make war with the saints , and to overcome them ; that is , to oppose them and subdue them , and keep them under all along , that they shall have no power in the empire , as it was said before of the mournful witnesses , that they were politically dead all the three times and an half in a manner . but in some part of this time the war and slaughter or killing is not mystical but proper : for of the waldenses and albigenses in france alone there is said to have been slain no less than ten hundred thousand . and in the inquisition within thirty years space no less than an hundred fifty thousand persons were consumed with all manner of grievances and miseries , besides infinite numbers more . and sanderus the jesuite reports , that an infinite number of lothards , as he calls them , and sacramentarians through europe were burnt with fire and fagot , but excuses it as not done by the pope and bishops , but the secular magistrate : which is the thing this prophecy foretells , that it is the beast with ten horns , the secular power of the empire , not the beast with two horns , that is the executioner of the cruelty , or that dooms to death . iezebel excites , but ahab , the secular powers execute , or command to be executed , her bloody suggestions against naboth , that is , against those that have the witnesses of jesus , the spirit of prophecy as is elsewhere explained . and power was given him over all kindreds , tongues and nations : namely , that he might persecute and force men to idolatrous worship in all the parts of the empire . . and all that dwell upon the earth ; that is , whose minds are fixed on earthly things , shall worship him , that is , obey his idolatrous edicts and commands : whose names are not written in the book of life of the lamb slain from the foundation of the world ; that is , are not of the number of the called and chosen , as they are termed , chap. . nor of those that are redeemed from the earth , as they are described chap. . for those will ever stand out till they get the victory over the beast . . if any man have an ear let him hear : for this was a remarkable intimation , and worth the observing , as also that which follows . . he that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity : he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword : that is , that power which now in this forty-two months of years of the beast , domineers so , and forces men to their idolatrous worship shall at last be led captive into the truth , and they that kill now with the sword of persecution shall be slain by the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god , answerably to the witnesses slaying their enemies by the fire that came out of their mouth : which victory was obtained in the resurrection of the witnesses in a degree in the third or fourth month of the seventh or last semitime , ( viz. ) in the late blessed reformation as i have above noted . here is the patience and the faith of the saints , that they may stand to it with these spiritual weapons till it shall please god to give them success , as he did in the time even now mentioned . . and i beheld another beast coming out of the earth : why there is two beasts here since the empire became christian in profession , i above intimated , namely because there is as it were imperium in imperio , a secular empire and sacerdotal , which pretends to an universal rule in ordine ad spiritualia , whenas the pagan emperours were pontifices maximi , as well as caesars . but that this other beast is said to come out of the earth and not out of the sea implies its more still and quiet growth , as of plants out of the ground , or its baser extraction , the chiefest in the sacerdotal hierarchy being more usually of meaner parentage . or lastly , earth may signifie here as it does chap. . vers . . where oecumenical councils are glanced at , which though laudable in themselves , yet this two-horned beast grew out of them by the abuse of that power of determining controversies of religion when once they had got the custom not to mind what was true and christian , but what was for the interest of holy church , though never so worldly and secular . and he had two horns like a lamb : that apostate sacerdotal hierarchy or prelacy pretend their power from the lamb christ , of binding and loosing . it may allude also to the bishops two-horned mitre , which the two-horned beast wears , though it so ill beseems him ; as also signifie the distribution of the apostatized church then into two parts as the empire was eastern and western , and betoken the two chief summities of this sacerdotal hierarchy , the two patriarchates of rome and constantinople . and he spake as the dragon ; namely , in that he made decrees for idolatrous practises , and for the persecuting of such as would not submit to them . this was the voice of the old dragon . . and he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him ; that is , his whole power he hath in religion : for the power of approving things in religion , and passing it into a law is in the secular supreme magistrate , not in the clergy : but this sacerdotal hierarchy claimed all this power , and exercised it accordingly in the behalf of the former beast , as he succeeded the dragon in his dragon-like power and properties . and under pretense of this power , in sacris , in matters of religion , he causeth the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed ; that is , represented so as to have been healed or recovered into its former paganical or dragon-like condition , but by the authority of this sacerdotal hierarchy , which was so prevalent with the people as to effect it ; and how he effected it now follows : . and he doth great wonders , so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth : which is a proverbial expression of the notoriousness of a wonder , alluding to elias his bringing fire from heaven upon those fifties . but it is as childish to understand this literally here , as it would have been to understand the fire proceeding out of the mouth of the witnesses , and their turning the waters into blood , and the like , literally . fire from heaven therefore here is the thundering excommunications of this sacerdotal hierarchy , whereby those that did not obey the voice of this beast , though it was the voice of the dragon appointing idolatrous worship , * were rent off from the church , and made obnoxious to eternal fire . what is a greater wonder-working-power than this ? and yet this great wonder , this two-horned beast does . in the sight of men ; that is , they are such fools as to believe he does it ; especially when a pope thunders against a prince and his nation for their heresie , ( viz. ) the relinquishing the superstition , idolatry and tyranny of the roman church . and gregory the seventh when he had excommunicated the emperour henry the fourth , said , he was fulmine afflatus , thunder-struck by him . these things , i confess , are rather a show of miracles than miracles ; but antichrist was to come with lying and feigned miracles . and if there might be any thing extraordinary , it is imputable to the forces of the dragon , the evil spirits that were bequeathed by the dragon to the apostatizing empire . . and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast : that is , in the sight of the lay or secular empire , before whom he made a show as if he did these miracles : and whatever was in truth extraordinary , they are to be imputed to the two-horned beast : for he claiming and accepting the power of ordering the empire in matters of religion , the forces of the dragon bequeathed to the ten-horned beast fell naturally to his share . and by these assistances are done whatever looks really like something extraordinary or miraculous for the promoting idolatry and superstition , miraculous cures and visions , exorcising spirits , and a deal of such stuff , whether feigned or true , these are justly imputed to the two-horned beast , as they conferr to the bringing the empire again into a more perfect pagan-like or dragon-like condition : for by reason of these he was listened to when he made his harangue to the people : saying to them that dwell on the earth , that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound by the sword ; namely , in the fight with michael and the martyrs , who overcame this beast , ( viz. ) the dragon , and his pure paganism . but this two-horned beast revives his image again by the means abovesaid , by the obtruding of the belief of such miracles on the people . and he lived ; that is , the old dragon , or pagan superstition and idolatry was very lively reintroduced in this image the two-horned beast made , by making the empire thus idolatrous . . and this image was no spiritless image , sluggish and harmless like an inanimate statue : for the two-horned beast had a way to transfuse spirit and life into it , as it follows : and he had power to give life unto the image of the beast , that the image of the beast should both speak , and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast , that is , would not obey himself , the secular idolatrous power of the empire , should be killed : which power of so commanding to kill , which is the spirit of the image of the beast , is derived from the two-horned beast , or sacerdotal hierarchy ; the image of the beast having no power to kill any one for matters of religion , but whom the sacerdotal hierarchy has declared heretick ; then is he delivered up to the secular power , the ten-horned beast : for the two-horned beast kills none himself , but delivers up to the secular magistrate according to this very prophecy . . and he , this image of the beast , causeth all both small and great , rich and poor , free and bond , that is , all sorts and degrees of men , to receive a mark in their right-hand , or in their foreheads , as soldiers or servants do the name of their general or master , that is , they must make open and express profession to whom they belong . . and that no man may buy or sell , save he that had the mark or name of the beast , or the number of his name : ( viz. ) of the two-horned beast , the very antichrist , who will have his marked soldiers as well as christ hath his ; that is , no man not markt with the name of this beast , or the number of his name , that has not either his name in letters plainly writ or in figures , that contain the number that the letters of his name make according to their numeral value ( for every greek letter has such a numeral value ) those that are not thus marked , that is , profess not themselves of the faith of this sacerdotal hierarchy signified by the two-horned beast , may neither buy nor sell , but are excommunicated for hereticks , with whom by the very sentence of their synods there is to be no negotiation . now who this beast , this two-horned beast , or sacerdotal hierarchy more particularly is , is enigmatically expressed in the following verse . . here is wisdom , let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast . here is a dark riddle , let him that has skill that way number the number of the beast . for it is the number of a man ; that is , not so strange a number , but that it may be numbred by the art of man. and his number is six hundred threescore and six ; which is to be numbred no otherwise than by the extraction of the square root which is , * which is marvellously applicable to the city and church of rome , as the root of to the new ierusalem . and that you may be sure this sacerdotal hierarchy of rome is more specially aimed at in this vision , take another easie sense of [ it is the number of a man ] that is , of a mans name . for above there is mention of the number of his name . and his name will prove 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( lateinos ) for those letters in their numeral value make just . and it is notoriously known , that the fathers of this western church , of which old rome was the head , were stiled in subscriptions at councils , the latin fathers , and the eastern fathers , roman , from new rome and the eastern roman empire in those parts : so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is that name of a man , of that man of sin , or antichrist , and the number of this man , that is of his name , which is a cabbalistical device , and by the cabbalists called gematria . from whence we see that the pinch of this prophetick vision at last lights more particularly on the pope of rome and his clergy . notes . chapter xiii . vers. . were rent off from the church and made obnoxious to eternal fire , &c. that thunder is fire from heaven is plain , as also that the popes excommunications are compared to thunder , and that heaven in the prophetick stile are the high places in any polity . wherefore his thundering excommunications against princes is very fitly set out by that phrase , that he causeth fire to come down from heaven , as if he thundered against them : which analogy is still more accurate , if we consider what artemidorus saith of thunder , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for thunder and lightning does not unite but disjoyns things that are united : so does excommunication , that rives off a member from the church . and there is still a further congruity that excommunication should be called thundering and lightning , or fire from heaven , in that it is the commination of hell fire , of which the destruction of sodom was a type , which was burnt by fire from heaven , as m r j. mede has judiciously observed : see my synopsis prophetica , lib. . cap. . sect . . vers. . which is marvellously applicable to the city and church of rome , &c. concerning this applicableness of this number , by way of counter-correspondency , if i may so speak , to the number . see my mystery of godliness , lib. . cap. . sect . . for it were too long and tedious to transcribe those things into these brief notes . chapter xiv . . there was mention in the foregoing chapter of the wars of the beast , and his marked soldiers , and of his continuance ( viz. in his entire state ) to the seventh semitime of forty two months of years ( which is one manner of expressing daniel's time and times and half a time . ) now in counter-correspondency to those soldiers and that war , in this very first verse there is exhibited the lamb and his soldiers : and i looked , and lo ! a lamb stood on mount sion ; which is christ against antichrist : and with him an hundred forty four thousands : that is to say , an hundred forty four chiliads or regiments , consisting of a thousand a piece : having his fathers name written in their foreheads : that is , making open profession of christ and of god his father against the pretended holy father of rome , the pope , as the word signifies . instead of receiving the mark of the two-horned beast in their right hand , or on their foreheads , they have the name of god the father and of his son christ marked on their foreheads , that you may see whose soldiers they are . and in that they are said to be regiments , it denotes that they are pure apostolick christians , the square root of being . here therefore the number from its root denotes the apostolick church , as the number from its root , the church apostatizing . . and i heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters , and as the voice of a great thunder : and i heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps . this is a description of the angelical musick in heaven , where multitudes of angels praise god and the lamb , the voice of many waters and thunder , being symbols of a multitude speaking or singing together : but it is further said of this angelical quire. . and they sung as it were a new song before the throne , and before the four beasts , and the elders , and no man could learn that song but the hundred forty four thousand which were redeemed from the earth . this song of the angelical quire , which is the joy that ariseth from the new nature , or the divine nature superadded to the animal nature , and is the same in men and angels , i mean regenerate men , who thereby are made partakers of the divine nature , as well as the angels ; none could learn this song , that is , none could know what belongs to the joys of the new birth , or divine life raised in us , that state of righteousness , and peace , and joy in the holy ghost , but the hundred forty four thousand redeemed from the earth , that is , from the earthy sense and wisdom , that savours only the things of this world , and of the flesh . . these are they which were not defiled with women ; namely , with the daughters of babylon , that famous strumpet the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth : these would not submit themselves to the lewd debaucheries of that idolatrous church . for they are uirgins : for they have so holy and chaste a sense in the duties of divine worship , that they abhor from every thing that has any shew of violating that loyalty and fidelity they owe to god or christ , to whom alone they are betrothed . these are they which follow the lamb whithersoever he goeth . these are they who are only led by his word and spirit , not by a blind and implicite faith in a church not only fallible but fallacious or deceitful , most of their corruptions both in doctrine and worship being upheld for their own worldly interest . these were redeemed from among men , were rescued from being carried away with the stream of the rest of the superstitious and idolatrous rabble , hood-winked and captivated by the false showes and subtil enticements of the most cunning polity in the world , being the first-fruits unto god and to the lamb : namely , the first pure apostolick christians after the apostasie , and but an handful in comparison of those multitudes that will appear after the dissolution of the papal tyranny . . and in their mouth was found no guile ; that is , there was no hypocrisie nor dissembling in them , but they professed the truth from their hearts , and concealed it not : for they are without fault before the throne of god ; that is , in the judgment of god they are holy and upright men , though at the tribunal of antichrist they are condemned for hereticks , and deemed men not worthy to live , or dye an ordinary death . nay , besides what they call heresie in them , ( though according to that they do worship in purity the god of their fathers , as s t paul speaks , even the father of our lord jesus christ ) they add a multitude of abominable lies to make them odious to the people , but the god of heaven knows they are guiltless , whence it is said , they are without fault before the throne of god. . and i saw another angel distinct from that quire of angels taken notice of before , fly in the midst of heaven , that he may be seen and heard over all the christian world , as well the western as eastern empire , as is intimated in what follows : having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth , and to every nation , and kindred , and tongue , and people : that is , to preach the everlasting righteousness , law , or religion , that christ according to daniel was to bring in : which is the pure and apostolick doctrine unsophisticated with the superstitions and idolatries of either greek or roman church , which hay and stubble is to be burnt up , but that apostolick gospel to be eternal , never to fail , and to spread over all . . saying with a loud voice , fear god and give glory to him , for the hour of his judgment is come : and worship him that made heaven and earth , and the sea , and the fountains of waters : and therefore none but god the father and the son , with the spirit , who created all things , is to be worshipped : the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth , they shall perish from the earth , and from under the heavens , as the prophet ieremiah foretells : this is a plain declaration against giving any religious worship to any but god alone : and therefore a commination against all saint-worshippers and image-worshippers , or whatever other idolatry in the greek or roman church . that this voice of the angel respects the edicts and degrees of those greek emperours that protested so zealously against saint-worship and image-worship , namely the decrees of leo isaurus , constantinus iconomaches , leo armenius , michael balbus and theophilus , i do not deny , but this angelical monition was the most loudly and earnestly urged upon the christian world at the dreadfull siege and storming of constantinople , and the subduing the whole eastern church and empire to the turk . this was a plain manifestation that the hour of his judgement was come against such gross idolaters . and yet though his judgements flew so high , and sounded so loud as to give notice to all christendome , yet the western church would take no notice thereof , as it is predicted chap. . vers . . and the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues from the euphratean horsemen , which are the turks , yet repented not of the works of their hands , that they should not worship demons and idols of gold and silver , &c. and therefore if we hear news of the hand of god upon the western church also , i mean upon the idolatrous hierarchy thereof , which is more particularly stiled babylon , we need not be much surprized : and thus we read in the next verse . . and there followed another angel saying , babylon is fallen , is fallen , that great city , or polity , bicause she made all nations , the eastern as well as the western church ( as may be observed in the popes activity at the second nicene council , and in excommunicating the iconoclast emperours ) drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication , of the philter she had mingled for them , the love-poison , or love-potion of her fornication , by which is plainly understood idolatry . to the voice of this angel belongs the reformation , when so many provinces and principalities fell off from the church of rome , and was a pledge of her further ruine : here therefore ends the thyatirian interval , and that of sardis begins , in which is contained the effusion of the vials , all but the last . . and the third angel followed them , saying with a loud voice , if any man worship the beast and his image ; that is , give obedience to the secular and spiritual power in such things as are idolatrous , and are the very strokes and lineament of the image of the beast , and receive his , the beasts , mark in his forehead , or in his hand ; that is , make profession of , or promote and countenance the romish idolatrous religion : . the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of god , which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation . he shall drink of the cup of bitterness and malediction from the lord. and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels , and in the presence of the lamb. . and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever ; that is , all they shall be condemned to those infernal and eternal flames , who under the voice of this third angel shall persist in the gross idolatries , and other foul corruptions of the church of rome : for under the voice of this angel , the abominations of that church will be so fully discovered , and convincingly , that the adherers thereto will be generally deemed uncapable of salvation , with any that have any remainders of judgment and conscience in them . and they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image , and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name . truth against the church of rome will be then so dear , that no man that has any conscience can be of that religion and profession , but it will lye exceeding unevenly in his mind , it will put him in restless and unsatisfied condition , it appearing so manifestly against all sense , all reason , all honesty and loyalty , and against all those sound and sacred principles that god hath implanted in the nature of man : wherefore in those dayes no honest-hearted man can endure to submit to the church of rome . from whence it follows , . here is the patience of the saints . this is the time wherein the patience of the saints will be tryed , the external carnal power of the enemy endeavouring to force them against so great light , to submit to their idolatrous and antichristian usages by cruel and barbarous persecutions : wherefore this answers to that passage in the epistle to the church of sardis , which contains a commination for their more general deadness and degeneracy , whereby the better sort amongst them are brought to this jeopardy and distress . here are they that keep the commandments of god , and the faith of iesus : that is , here are they that will say unto their persecutors , whether it be right in the sight of god , to hearken unto you more than unto god , judge you ? here are they that keep to the pure faith and doctrine of christ and his apostles , and will not submit to any new-coined forms , invented for worldly interest , and contrary to the faith and doctrine of christ and his apostles . and surely god will give at last to the sufferings of such holy and sincere souls sutable victory and success , as is intimated in the following verse : . and i heard a voice from heaven , saying unto me , write , blessed are the dead that dye in the lord : that dye as martyrs in witness to his truth against the abominable corruptions of that idolatrous church . from henceforth , are they blessed , that is , from this time of the sardian interval that here is intimated , a time when the scales begin to turn , and nearer approach is made to the philadelphian state , which commenceth with the reign of the spirit , as the cabbalists call it ; and therefore it follows , yea , saith the spirit . the spirit that is to bring on these days , sets his seal thereto : that they may rest from their labours : for their martyrdom puts an end to their pains and toyles in this world : and their works do follow them ; that is , the effect and success of their works and labour here , which are the hoped consequences thereof : which expected effect and success is the restoring of the kingdom of christ upon the overthrow of the salvage and barbarous tyranny of a bloody idolatrous church , which murders and massacres men , and does all imaginable despight to them , because they will not sin against the manifest laws of christ to serve the lewd worldly ends , and interest of antichrist . . and i looked and behold a white cloud , and upon the cloud one sat like unto the son of man , having on his head a golden crown . this is christ that son of man in daniel , who is said to come with the clouds of heaven , as if they were his chariot , and dominion , and glory , and a kingdome , as here a crown is said to be given unto him ; and in his hand a sharp sickle . that christ himself here appears with his sickle in his hand ready to reap , is very agreeable to what was intimated before of the reign of the spirit , and the approaching thereof : for what he is said to do by himself is by the ministry of his spirit in counterdistinction to humane and carnal means . this is about the time of the sixth vial. . and another angel came out of the temple , representing the holy church , and her earnest and sincere devotions for the enlargement of the kingdom of christ : and therefore it is added , crying with a loud voice to him that sate on the cloud , thrust in thy sickle and reap , for the time is come for thee to reap , for the harvest of the earth is ripe : like that of our blessed saviour himself ; lift up your eyes and look on the fields , for they are white already to harvest . . and he that sate on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth , and the earth was reaped : namely , that crop that belonged to that season , which as i said , is about the sixth vial , which contemporizeth with the vision of the lambs bride : and therefore by this harvest happily may be prefigured the gathering of the jews to the faith of christ , which will prove a further enlargement of his kingdom : but the most universal conquest of all follows in the next vision , which contemporizeth with the seventh or last vial. . and another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven , [ which is in heaven ] is omitted , vers . . as needless , because the reaper there is christ himself , which implies his immediate assistance in that work . but this angel being himself to be vintager , there is mention made of heaven , to intimate his heavenly mission , that he is sent from god , and immediately assisted by his spirit . the appearance of which reign of the spirit will be eminent under this seventh vial , which contemporizeth with the vision of the rider of the white horse , with a sharp two-edged sword coming out of his mouth , this angel also having a sharp sickle ; which fitly answers to the sharp two-edged sword coming out of the mouth of the rider of the white horse : both of them signifie the cutting convictiveness of the word and spirit in the powerful ministers of christ in those days . . and another angel came out from the altar , which had power over fire : the altar , as elsewhere in the apocalypse , is a symbol of the sacrifice of martyrdom . and here is mention of fire , because that kind of martyrdom was so frequently inflicted by that murderous and idolatrous church of rome upon the faithful witnesses of christ , who bore testimony against the abominations of that bloody synagogue . and cryed with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle ; namely , for vengeance against this den of cruel murderers and idolaters ; saying , thrust in thy sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the uine of the earth , for the grapes are fully ripe ; that is , some are in full ripeness and readiness for conversion , and for others their sins are fully ripe for utter destruction and confusion . but i conceive this vision respects more especially the former , which yet involves the destruction and confusion of the latter . . and the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth , and gathered the uine of the earth , and cast it into the great wine-press of the wrath of god ; that is , men were pressed in conscience upon the sharp convictions of the powerful ministers of christ with sorrow for their sins ; and the wrath of god against themselves was kindled in them : as the apostle writes to the corinthians concerning the like conviction . what carefulness it wrought in you , what indignation , what vehement desire , what revenge . here christ , who is said to tread the wine-press of gods wrath alone , treads and squeezeth out the corrupt blood of edom. and in the vision which is parallel to this chap. . his vesture is said to be dipt in blood , and that he treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of almighty god : which plainly shows , that these two visions tend to one and the same thing . . and the wine-press was trodden without the city : that is , this powerful conviction neither began in , nor reached to the city of babylon , the roman hierarchy or polity ; ( for wood and stone is not here meant , but a polity or society of men ) as is observable in the seventh vial ; that though the cities of the nations fell by those powerful boanerges's yet this babylon the great , though hail-stones of a talent weight fell upon them , were not converted or convinced in their consciences , but blasphemed god , because of the plague of the hail , it was so exceeding great . and in the vision of the rider of the white horse , the false prophet and his adherents were taken , and their power abolished , as to that tyranny and idolatry they exercised before ; but it was the rest only that were slain with the sword that proceeded out of the mouth of him that sate on the white horse , it was they only that were converted and convinced by the powerful preaching of the everlasting gospel , the pure gospel of christ cleansed from all the filth and trumperies , all the idolatries and superstitions of antichrist . and they are the same that are pressed here by christs vintagers or grape-pressers , but the city of babylon proves obdurate and uncapable of any such pressure of conscience , or true contrition for her abominations , so strongly is she hardened in her pretense of infallibility . and blood came out of the wine-press even to the horses bridles . this again shows plainly that the vision of the rider of the white horse and his company , and this of the wine-press is all one : but this signifies a full conviction in the convicted and a perfect victory over the contumacious , which is further illustrated by what follows : by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs , which signifies the exceeding largeness and universality , as it were , of the victory , if we read as we may , sixteen hecatontads or centuries of furlongs . and then as in the number , and as in the chiliads , by extracting the square root we find the symbolical meaning of them ; so by the extracting the square root of sixteen which is four , we find the symbolical meaning of this : * for four is the symbol of vniversality with the pythagoreans and cabbalists : which construction sutes wonderfully well with the visions this is a parallel to , namely , that of the seventh vial , and the battel of the rider of the white horse : which is the battel of that great day of god almighty , to which the kings of the earth , and of the whole world are gathered together ; and the defeat is proportionable : for upon this defeat all the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdoms of god , and of his christ. notes . chapter xiv . vers. . for four is the symbol of universality with the pythagoreans and cabbalists , &c. that the ancient true cabbalists held the number four to be a symbol of universality is plain from the fourth dayes creation : which is indeed the creation of the whole world in general according to the philosophick cabbala . and as for the pythagoreans it is frequent with them to call their tetractys , that is , the number four , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all number , as photius observes ; because all number is made up in ten , and the putting together of every number in four , ( viz. ) , , , . makes up ten , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , saith he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for this reason the pythagoreans called the number [ four ] all number , or the whole number . and suidas reports the same almost in the very same words concerning the pythagoreans . for the abovesaid reason , saith he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they called the number [ four ] all number , as universally comprehending all number in it . and philo judaeus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . the number [ four ] is called all number , or the whole number , because it comprehends what reaches to [ ten ] and the number [ ten ] it self . which again he asserts , but with that distinction , that , [ ten ] is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all number , or the whole entire number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , actually , but [ four ] 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , potentially ▪ which hierocles expresseth thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . whereby he would insinuate , that before we make up explicitly [ ten ] by the numbers contained in [ four ; ] ( viz. ) , , , . there is notwithstanding an implicite or complicate entireness of [ ten ] in the number [ four. ] which is sufficient to make it a symbol of universality . see meursius his denarius pythagoricus . this therefore being the symbolical significancy of [ four ] the root of sixteen , i do not doubt but that i have hit upon the genuine sense of the sixteen hundred furlongs . but before i was aware of this mystery i was fain to take up with m r mede 's conceit , that they relate to stato della chiesa , and to the holy land , but so as i understood it mystically : for the literal sense of sixteen hundred furlongs overflown with blood , so that it reached to the horse-bridles , never seemed to me either credible or tolerable . chapter xv. in two several setts of visions , the one contained in the eleventh chapter , the other in the twelfth , thirteenth and fourteenth chapters , and each of them beginning from the first epocha of the christian church , and ending with the last vial , or first thunder , have the prophecies of the opened book hitherto been contained , as being most general and comprehensive , taking in all the five intervals of the ephesine , smyrnean , pergamenian , thyatirian and sardian churches , together with the beginning of the philadelphian . now according to right method , some particulars are more copiously or clearly explained : as for example , the transition out of the thyatirian condition into the sardian ; the joy and triumph thereof is competently set out , chap. . vers . , , . and more sparingly , chap. . vers . . but most clearly and illustriously in this th chapter vers . , , . which plainly demonstrates , that before the effusion of the vials , there is a considerable victory over the beast . for that doxologie , chap. . is after the rising of the witnesses . and that triumphant acclamation , chap. . vers . . not before the fall of babylon . and here most expresly of all in this chapter , there is thanks for a notable lately gotten victory over the beast , and over his image , &c. before we come to the effusion of the vials , so that these things notably confirm one another . to say nothing how the very name sardis signifies canticum laetitiae , a song of ioy. . and i saw another sign in heaven great and marvellous , seven angels having the seven last plagues , for in them is filled up the wrath of god. namely , against the beast or roman hierarchy , that was punished considerably by the reformation ; but before there vials be over , in the cup that she has filled , it will be filled to her double : the seven last plagues , which therefore in all reason are to be in the last wo-trumpet , and the second wo-trumpet was past at the rising of the witnesses : and therefore the effusion of the vials must be after the rising of the witnesses , and the rising of the witnesses the protestant reformation , when so many provinces and principalities had cast off the yoke , and freed themselves from the sad bondage of that roman pharaoh , the papal hierarchy , as the israelites of old were delivered from the slavery of aegypt : and therefore it follows , . and i saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire : this seems to have a double allusion , either to the sea of glass , like unto crystal , before the throne , chap. . vers . . which the light of the seven lamps there shined upon , or else to the red sea congealed , as it were , into two walls of glass or ice , on which the angel in a pillar of fire going before the israelites shined also and the redness of the sand of the sea made the mixture more like fire . and them that had gotten the victory over the beast , and over his image , such as had got free from both the sacerdotal and secular idolatrous power , that they could not longer persecute them for not submitting to their pagan-like abominations : and over his mark , and over the number of his name ; that is , that now could neither be forced to swear into the forms of that false church by a slavish implicite faith , nor to profess himself a latin or roman catholick , but a free apostolick christian : stand on the sea of glass , on the shore of that sea that was converted into glass or ice when they passed through it , as newly escaped the persecution of that roman pharaoh , who was overthrown horse and man in the red sea , that is , by the protestants profession , that they were only justified by the blood of christ , and the sanctification of his spirit , which is resembled by fire : having the harps of god , that is , holy or large harpe . . and they sing the song of moses the servant of god , and the song of the lamb ; that is , they sing the song of the lamb , of which the song of moses was but a type , but the occasions so like one another , that the song may indifferently serve both : but in the mean time , it is plain here , that rome is that spiritual aegypt , wherein the witnesses were slain , and the bishop of rome the pharaoh thereof : saying , great and marvellous are thy works lord god almighty , just and true are thy ways , o king of saints . . who shall not fear thee , o lord , and glorifie thy name , for thou only art holy , for all nations shall come and worship before thee , for thy judgments are manifest : shall come and worship before thee , which implies , that this first victory is but the first-fruits of that elargement god intends for the kingdom of his son christ. . and after that i looked , namely after this triumphal song of the harpers , that had gotten the victory over the beast , and over his image , and over his mark , and over the number of his name : for it is absurd to conceive a triumphal song before the victory , or this victory to be of the primitive christians over the pagans , because of the image of the beast , and his mark , and the number of his name : and therefore it must be the victory of the protestants over the paganochristians . whence it is impossible , that the first vial , and the first trumpet should contemporize . and behold the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened : which answers to that , chap. . vers . . and the temple of god was opened in heaven ; which again assures us , that the effusion of the vial is after the rising of the witnesses ; namely out of what follows . . and the seven angels came out of the temple , having the seven plagues ; that is , designed to that office : cloathed in pure and white linnen , and having their breasts girded with golden girdles ; that is , being clothed in priestly attire , as being heavenly priests belonging to that heavenly temple , that is to say , as being so represented . . and one of the four beasts ; the lion haply , it being the most military beast , and a beast of anger and courage : gave unto the seven angels seven golden uials full of the wrath of god who liveth for ever and ever : whence it is intimated , that these ministers were to be actuated , not by any private spleen , but by the just wrath of god , which burneth only against obstinate hypocrites and sinners . . and the temple was filled with smoak from the glory of god , and from his power ▪ that is to say , from the glorious power of god in taking vengeance of the beast , or false prophet , in reference to whom chiefly is the pouring out of the vials , till he be taken and cast out into the lake of fire and brimstone , and so all idolatrous and tyrannical power be abolished : no settlement till then , but all filled ever and anon with confusion , dust and smoak . and no man was able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled ; that is , there is no recovery of the church into that state thereof , which is decyphered by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the temple of god , chap. . vers . . till the seven plagues of the seven angels be fulfilled , accordingly as has been signified . then will the temple become symmetral again and commensurable , not only to the reed of a man but of an angel , nor to a reed any way combustible , but to a golden reed . this is to be under the second thunder that immediately follows the last vial , at the descent of the new ierusalem from heaven , of which state it is said , lo ! the tabernacle of god is with men , and they will become his living temple pure and undefiled ; otherwise , there is no temple there but god almighty , and the lamb is the temple thereof . this setled state of the church , which is the temple of god , will not appear till after the effusion of the vials . chapter xvi . some strictures there were , and glances at the things that appertain to the vials after the rising of the witnesses , chap. . and after the fall of babylon , chap. . but hinted very maimedly , obscurely , and interruptedly . but the vials in this chapter are more fully and orderly set down ; as we shall see by perusing the chapter . . and i heard a great voice out of the temple , ( out of which the angels had come forth , chap. . vers . . ) saying to the seven angels , go your wayes and pour out the uials of the wrath of god ( which ye received from one of the four beasts ) upon the earth ; that is , upon this terrestrial or terraqueous globe . . and the first went and poured out his uial upon the earth : ( viz. ) in that sense of earth that was intimated before ; for it means no more than on this terraqueous globe , unless there be an allusion to the ashes of the furnace from which the aegyptian blains and boiles did arise , as certainly there is an allusion to those aegyptian plagues both in this and in other vials ; whereby we may be assured , that these plagues belong to that city or society , that is spiritually called aegypt , namely to the papal or antichristian hierarchy , that has so long kept the children of god in bondage , and in which the witnesses have been so often slain . earth therefore here is chiefly repeated to bear a correspondence in the outward cortex , with sea , rivers and air , as if god would stir up all the elements or nature to fight against the beast , and the antichristian powers . and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast , and upon them which worshipped his image ; that is , the minds of the pontifician party were extreamly enraged and exulcerated with fury and envy against the risen witnesses ( as an evil spirit from the lord troubled saul ) when they beheld them [ chap. . vers . . ] ascending to heaven , that is , called up to high places and dignities in church and state , and that the papal idolatrous power and tyranny was abolished . this cup of bitterness , wrath , envy and intoxicating zeal for so foul a cause , was the effusion of the first vial upon them , which did so work upon them , and dementate them , that they made themselves still more execrable and odious by their impotent and unsuccessful attempts against them , that god had thus exalted above their reach . in the mean time we see how naturally ( besides the letting loose evil spirits upon them ) the first vial follows the rising of the witnesses accordingly as it is glanced at chap. . vers . . immediately after their rising , and those triumphant doxologies for the same , ( those songs of joy from whence the sardian church has her name , which here commenceth . ) and the nations , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the heathen were angry , &c. by which are understood the antichristian party , as by iews , the truly christian ( chap. . . ) in the stile of the apocalypse . . and the second angel poured out his uial upon the sea ; that is , upon some parts of the sea : and sea in the prophetick stile signifying the gathering together of the people into one polity or kingdom , it must signifie some parts of this kingdom or polity ; which is here the jurisdiction or dominion of the papacy . of some parts therefore of this sea it is said , and it became as the blood of a dead man ▪ and every living soul died in the sea : ( viz. ) in these parts of this sea which were turned into blood there were no live fishes to be caught there any more : and fishes dead in the sea signifie disappointment of hope , and that what we expect will not come to pass . in such a state was the papal hierarchy after the settlement of the reformation in so many provinces , principalities and kingdoms ; which deadness and hopelesness of his affairs there , brought to pass by the good providence of god , was the pouring out the second vial upon these parts of this sea or jurisdiction , and turning them into blood , and the quite spoiling any further fishing there . . and the third angel poured out his uial upon the rivers and fountains of waters , and they became blood : as sea signified above politically , so rivers and fountains of waters or springs must , that are the heads of rivers , and both come from the sea and return thither again , ( viz. ) the water of them . a sea therefore here being a kingdom or polity , the rivers must be emissary powers of the said kingdom , whether armies , or other agents , with those that head them or govern them , who may be deemed the spring-heads of them , they taking their directions and motions from them , and depending on them as rivers do on their springs : and this plague of turning rivers into blood being manifestly one of the plagues of aegypt , these emissaries must be the emissaries of that city or polity which is spiritually called aegypt , which is the papal hierarchy : and the turning these rivers into blood , is the putting to death such emissaries for their treasonable attempts against kings or princes , and the setled religion and government of the place . . and i heard the angel of the waters say , ( viz. ) the prefect of the multitudes of people , thou art righteous , o lord , which art , and wast , and shall be ; that is , thou art just , o jehovah , thou great judge and king , because thou hast judged thus : . for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets ; namely , in the pergamenial interval , in which thy faithful martyr antipas was slain with the sword , besides many other bloody butcheries and massacres of the people of god. and thou hast given them blood to drink , for they are worthy , as having shed so much innocent blood . . and i heard another out of the altar , say , that is , out of that place of the temple where the altar stood , and where so many burnt-offerings were made : even so lord god almighty , true and righteous are thy judgements : for i can witness what a number of innocent souls were burnt with fire and fagot in the thyatirian interval of the church , because they would not submit to the gross superstitions and idolatries , and incredible , nay , impossible figments of the roman hierarchy , and so were made burnt-offerings or sacrifices to their intolerable avarice , ambition , and tyrannical cruelty . . and the fourth angel poured out his uial upon the sun : sun here may have either a political sense or a mystical : mystically understood , it may be the word of god , which is a lamp unto our feet , and a light unto our paths ; as the great lamp of the universe is naturally understood to be : the vial therefore poured upon the sun , are clear convictive explications of the word of god , the prophetical parts thereof especially whereby manifestly are discovered the unrighteous mysteries of the kingdom of antichrist , that men may see in what a foul condition they are , how apostatized from god and christ , and how plainly , and reproachfully their abominable doings are characterized by the finger of god in scripture , and how lively their most direful and diabolical image is there described : whence it is no wonder , that it immediately is said , and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire . . and men were scorched with great heat , and blasphemed the name of god which hath power over these plagues , and they repented not to give him glory . they are so vext , that they blaspheme the name of god , and rather vilifie the scriptures , and the spirit that wrote them , than repent them of their sins , and give glory to god by acknowledging the truth ; as certainly the true sense of the prophecies of daniel and the apocalypse where they are known and acknowledged , tend exceeding much to the glory of god , and the illustration of the constancy of his providence . and this may go for the mystical sense of the effusion of the vial upon the sun : but there may be also a political one ; and then sun is to be understood of the greatest secular power within the papal jurisdiction ; which therefore is the german empire . wherefore if any german emperour , or any potentate as considerable as the german emperour , should be so illuminated with the true knowledge of the gospel , as cordially to resent the cause thereof , the general reformation that he would introduce into his empire , through the light and zeal he has conceived for the truth , will scorch and burn , and vex the vassals of the two-horned beast at the very heart , and so will prove the completion of the pouring out the vial on the sun in the most proper political sense . . and the fifth angel poured out his uial upon the seat of the beast , namely of the two-horned beast , or false-prophet against whom chiefly these vials are meant . in a mystical sense therefore correspondent to the former , the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here may be the same that cathedra , the pretended infallible chair of that pseudo-prophet . to the detection of whose frauds the vial poured out on the sun mystically understood may prepare the way : for though the sworn vassals of the two-horned beast blaspheme the name of god , by reason of that more than ordinary light of the word under the fourth vial ; yet providence may so manage things , that by virtue of those clear explications of prophecies under the fourth vial , the people may be generally convinced of the false pretense of the papal hierarchy's infallibility under the fifth . the false light of which vain pretense being once removed , they must needs find themselves much in the dark , their religion being such as neither scripture , reason , common sense , nor any thing else , that has any authority with it , can afford any light to : nay , it will be found repugnant to all these . wherefore it rightly follows : and his kingdom was full of darkness : which is again one of the plagues of aegypt . and they gnawed their tongues for pain : for this cheat of infallibility being discovered by the clear demonstration of the apostasie of the church out of the prophecies , they are quite left in the dark , hopeless and helpless , and know not now what hank to have over the people , who before were made to believe any thing , which made for the churches power and gain , upon this pretense , of the infallibility of their church . . and blasphemed the god of heaven , because of their pains and of their sores : the event of so great manifestations of truth was so vexatious to them , that they reproached the author of it , the spirit of god , and the holy scriptures . and they repented not of their deeds : the heart of this pharaoh , the king of this mystical or spiritual aegypt , it seems , is so hardened under these plagues , that he will not let the israelites , the true apostolick christians , go and serve god as he has commanded , but forcibly keeps them under to serve his own worldly designs against the will of god. this may be the mystical meaning of this fifth vial ; but there may be also a political sense : and then the throne or seat of this two-horned beast is the same with the seat of the whore , who is seated on seven-hilled rome . and in this sense it bodes ill to that city , as if there would be a sacking of rome , and banishing the pope from thence ; or at least , as if from the effects of the former vial politically understood , there would be a great deadness of trade to that greatest merchant of the great men of the earth ; and so great unfrequentedness , obscurity and darkness would seize his principal seat. . and the sixth angel poured cut his uial upon the great river euphrates , and the water thereof was dryed up , that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared . that the euphratean horsemen are the turks , we have noted in the sixth trumpet . this vial therefore seems to intimate such a mutation of affairs in the turkish empire as will make for the joyning of the iews , and it may be some other eastern people with their princes or persons of note , with the church of christ , as being either converted , or in a near preparation to conversion to his gospel , as may appear from chap. . vers . , . for the marriage of the lambs wife there immediately precedes the battel of the rider of the white horse , which undoubtedly is the same vision in effect with the seventh vial : and so much of the six first vials . the scene of the seventh now begins , which contains the victory of the true apostolick church of christ over the antichristian church , and the rest of the world that are infidels , atheists and unbelievers , who are here all gathered together against the lord , and against his christ , but dividable into two parts , antichristian properly so called , which contains the beast and the false prophet , and the infidel party that believe not in christ at all : and the third party of this conflux , are the pure evangelical christians . . and i saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon , and out of the mouth of the beast , and out of the mouth of the false prophet : these are the emissaries , orators , negotiators or solicitors of the affairs of the dragon , and of the beast and false prophet ( the two parties i even now intimated opposite to the evangelical party ) though these negotiators are called the spirits of devils in the following verse , according to the usual genius and stile of the apocalypse , putting angels and spirits for that company of men that be conceived to be under their guidance : but they have the shape of frogs for their earthliness and slimy uncleanness , to betoken that the wisdom they act from is earthly , sensual and devillish . . for they are the spirits of devils working miracles . and the onirocriticks tell us , that frogs , in whose shape these spirits are , signifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , enchanters or iuglers , prestigious deceivers of the people by false miracles , feigned visions , or the like , which haply may be more peculiar to the antichristian party , the beast and false prophet : but the frog out of the dragons mouth , his miracles may be , besides those of unlawful magick , prestigious demonstrations , whereby he would pretend to demonstrate the frivolousness of all revealed religion , at least , the better to animate , or rather harden the hearts of the kings of the earth against the pure and apostolick christian. which go forth unto the kings of the earth , and of the whole world to gather them to the battel : for as that wisdome which is from above is pure and peaceable , so this earthly and devilish wisdom delights in confusion and blood . of that great day of god almighty , under whose conduct are the evangelical party , or the pure and apostolick christians . . behold i come as a thief . this defeat of false and ineffectual religions will be a surprizing providence to all those that hypocritically shrowd themselves under them instead of being cloathed with the everlasting righteousness of the gospel of christ , to those that cover with a covering , but not of gods spirit , that they may add sin to sin : but all such coverings shall be accounted as nakedness before god , or they will be stript of it and made naked : whence it follows ; blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments , lest he walk naked , and they see his shame ; that is , who is so watchful over his ways , and intent on the work of real regeneration , which will appear also in his outward conversation , that he becomes cloathed in such a garment as shall not be taken from him in this time when god will pluck off the covering from all nations , and the veil of hypocrisie from off the people , as esay somewhere foretells : which is a plain intimation , that this battel is not carnal but spiritual . . and he gathered them together into one place , called in the hebrew tongue armageddon ; that is , by the over-ruling providence of god they were brought into this place , which in the hebrew tongue signifies the destruction of their armies ; but there is nothing yet done toward their discomfiture , for the seventh vial is not yet poured out : * and therefore by a commutation of iconismes , the event of this congress is set out in another form , this huge camp of all the armies of both sides , being turned into one mighty city , which is called the great city , consisting of the universality of cities considered as one , as it follows in the prophecie . . and the seventh angel poured out his uial into the air , namely over this great company ; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne , saying , it is done : this is a firm decree from him that sits on the throne , and a full assurance by his spirit universally in the hearts of his servants , the evangelical party , that their ministry shall succeed ; and as to the utter overthrow of antichrist , and the enlargement of the kingdom of christ by the conversion of the gentiles , the mystery of god shall be consummate under this seventh vial : the thing is as sure as it were done already . . and there were voices , and thunders , and lightenings , and there was a great earthquake , such as was not since men were upon earth , so mighty an earthquake , and so great ; that is , there was such a strange commutation of affairs in the world as was never known or recorded in any history of former times : of such mighty efficacy was the preaching of the gospel in the power of the spirit , by the speaking party of the army of christ , against the forces of the infidels and antichrist : for this is the meaning of those voices , and thunders , and lightenings , that it was the promulgation ( by these boanergers's ) of the law of the son of god , which is like unto fire , as is related in esdras . . and the great city was divided into three parts ; as there were three parts in the great camp before : the antichristian party , the infidel or purely heathen party , and the pure evangelical party : but this tripartition is named immediately after this great earthquake , as if it were the effect of it , for the more handsom embellishing the outward cortex of the prophecy . * and the cities of the nations fell , that is , the heathenish or infidel party were thunder-struck by these boanerges's , and converted to the faith of the gospel of christ in the simplicity and purity thereof : and great babylon came in remembrance before god ; that is , the antichristian hierarchy with her adherents , the whore of babylon , as she is called in the following chapter : to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath , ( viz. ) of the wrath of god , that is , to be arraigned and judged , that condign punishment and vengeance may be taken of her . . and every island fled away , and the mountains were not found : their temples , and other consecrated places were taken from them , and they were deprived of their dignities , or of the assistances of the great ones of the earth . . and there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven , every stone about the weight of a talent , namely upon babylon , or the antichristian party : so that all her goodly trees were spoiled and stript of their both leaves and fruit , their boughs broke down , and their stocks beaten bare even to the inmost bark . and men blasphemed god because of the plague of the hail , for the plague thereof was exceeding great ; that is , the hearts of this antichristian party were still hardened even in this last aegyptian plague inflicted on them , and their rage and impatience under their calamity made them speak evil of the ways of god which yet are altogether righteousness and truth : or if in these miseries they took themselves to their devotions , * their very prayers were blasphemy in the stile of the apocalypse , they being so mingled with various sorts of idolatry . notes . chapter xvi . vers. . and therefore by a commutation of iconismes , &c. this is called iconismorum metallaxis in my synopsis prophetica : and it is a prophetick figure , whereby the image or representation that is begun with , is not continued but changed , and yet the same matter still pursued : see synops. prophet . lib. . cap. . sect . . but in the mean time , the letting go the first iconisme in this place , which is of a camp , and not persuing it to the event of the battel , is here done with great consideration and prospection , because this battel is fully afterwards described , and the commander also or general , which is here omitted , in the th chapter vers . . which is one of the main pieces of the artifice of concealment , intended in this admirable book of prophecies . vers. . and the cities of the nations fell , &c. there is mention at first but of one great city , and yet here besides babylon , there is mention of many cities , ( viz. ) of the nations : which seems to be a destined key whereby we might understand , that by that great city is meant the vniversality of a number of cities considered as one , in which babylon it self was also comprized , according as we have expounded it . vers. . their very prayers were blasphemy , &c. this is the sense which that learned and pious author peganius gives in this place , which i thought worth the taking notice of , if it may effectually force any one to make a more serious reflexion on the hainousness and horridness of the romish religion . chapter xvii . in the nineteenth verse of the foregoing chapter , there was a short glance at the arraignment , accusation and condemnation of the whore of babylon . but the destruction of this babylon being the main scope of all the vials , this argument may well seem to deserve a more full and copious prosecution , i mean the arraignment , accusation and condemnation of the great whore contained in these two next chapters , namely the th and th . and therefore it follows : . and there came one of the seven angels which had the seven uials and talked with me , saying unto me , come hither , i will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore ; that is , the arraignment , accusation and condemnation of the antichristian and idolatrous hierarchy ; for so whoredom signifies in the prophetick stile : that sitteth upon many waters : who is seated amongst many people , and whose jurisdiction spreads far and wide , and who pretends to be the church universal . . with whom the kings of the earth , the ten kings , suppose , vers . . have committed fornication , have joyned with in idolatrous worship : and the inhabiters of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication : so inflamed , so intoxicated and dementated with the unwholesome heat of idolatrous zeal , that it has made them very boisterously quarrelsome against all opposers or despisers of their fair diana , and so sottish , secure , and heedless , that they have lien exposed to all the deceits and injuries that this cunning circe could put upon them . . so he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness , and i saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast : whose colour denotes tyrannical cruelty as well as imperial majesty . by this is understood the roman empire . full of names of blasphemy , that is , full of titles or kinds of idolatry , full of gods , so grotius interprets it , understanding it of the pagan empire : and we may safely render it , full of daemons in m r medes sense , that is , full of superstitious and idolatrous worship of the souls of the saints departed ( besides other idolatries in the manner of worshipping the due object of our religion god and christ ) since the empire has become paganochristian : having seven heads and ten horns , which the angel interprets vers . . . . and the woman was arayed in purple and scarlet colour , and decked with gold and precious stone and pearls ; that is to say , this idolatrous hierarchy , the patriarchs or popes especially and cardinals , &c. have this imperial colour and richness , very gorgeously apparelled upon occasions in their rich copes and costly miters , to say nothing of the furniture of their altars : having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication : an enchanted cup or philter , an intoxicating love-potion to inflame the empire again with a whorish desire after idols . and it is further observable , that the very metal of the cup has a natural magick with it to draw and allure men to her , and at a distance to intoxicate the brains of their clergy with the fumes of ambition and covetousness , who are not enriched with the golden gifts of their church , but upon the condition of assisting and abetting the idolatry thereof . . and upon her forehead was a name written : by way of allusion to some impudent harlots , who had their names written upon their foreheads : mystery babylon the great , the mother of harlots , and abominations of the earth . the first word is a key to the rest , and is to be understood in such a sense as that , chap. . vers . . the great city which is spiritually called sodom and aegypt . for in neither place is it a mere ordinary synecdoche putting one heathenish city for another . for what mysteriousness or spiritualness could there be in that ? but it is a christian polity or hierarchy so degenerated into unchristian tyranny and idolatry , that it is mystically or spiritually set out by the name aegypt in that chapter , and here by the name of babylon the great : babylon , as holding the children of god in such an hard captivity , and also propagating , as they , the worship of baalim , of daemons , or false gods ; so this hierarchy of saints , and angels , and images , and other idolatries : great , as pretending to be the church catholick or universal , and having indeed a large extent of jurisdiction in the christian world : mother of harlots , by way of reproach to her affectation of being accounted and called holy mother the church , when she is yet so unholy as to be the author of the abominations of the earth , that is , of idols or image worship : for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is translated by the seventy interpreters : but to understand here , by babylon , rome heathen , one pagan city for another , certainly would be but a dry synecdoche , no mystery at all . this whore of babylon therefore is the same with the two-horned beast , that had the horns of a lamb , that is , pretended to be a christian hierarchy , but spake as a dragon , that is , decreed gross idolatries , and cruel persecutions : as here one part of the charge laid against this whore of babylon is idolatry , and the other part follows in the next verse : her bloody persecutions . . and i saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints , and with the blood of the martyrs of iesus . to be drunk with the blood of the saints shows her excessive and unsatiable cruelty in persecuting them , not only burning them with fire and fagot , but destroying them with repeated massacres , insomuch that those that have made a careful compute of their murders and cruelties have found them to exceed the bloodiness and cruelty of the pagans against the primitive christians under the red dragon : and when i saw her , i wondered with great admiration : to see a woman so nobly and splendidly attired , drunken and defiling her garments with blood , and that god should permit so great impiety and wickedness , and so great prosperity , to consort together : but that iohn might the better understand the comprehension of gods wayes and providence touching his church , the angel unfolds the riddle to him . . and the angel said unto me , wherefore didst thou marvel ? i will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carrieth her , which hath the seven heads and ten horns ; namely , on his seventh head , that thou mayest be satisfied touching the wayes of the providence of god. . the beast which thou sawest , * his name is ( and the occasion of it taken from the intercessation of paganism , when the empire becomes christian , which to your comfort will come to pass ) his name is , was and is not , and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit , and go into perdition ; that is to say , the roman empire , which is understood by the beast with seven heads and ten horns , is represented here under such a state or condition , that at some time it might be said truly of it in its prefiguration , that it is the beast , that was and is not ; which was only true in the time of pure christianity obtaining in the empire , that is , from constantines time , suppose , to the apostasie of the church into antichristianism or idolatry . for the beast is the empire idolatrizing , which idolatrizing empire ceased to be in the reign of the pure christian caesars : but being there would be an apostasie again into a kind of paganochristian idolatry in the empire , and so the empire become a beast again ; it is therefore called the beast , that was , namely , under the paganical idolatry , but is not , namely in that time , that pure christianity is the religion of the empire , but should be afterwards , which is expressed by , and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit . the word in the greek is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which may signifie both the bottomless pit , and the sea , the latter denoting multitudes of people , of which this beast would consist , the other the original of this horrid apostasie into idolatry again , as coming from the pit of hell it self , and the deceits of the devil . but to mitigate s t iohn's wonderment , there is at last added , and go into perdition . this apostasie shall not continue alwayes , but the empire as to its idolatry shall perish quite , and so cease to be any longer a beast , the idolatry and tyranny therein against the saints of god being utterly abolished : whence it is plain , that not the pagan empire , but the empire paganochristian is here to be understood by the beast , and that the times of the apostasie of the church are here prefigured . and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder : as chap. . vers . . and all the world wondered after the beast , which is the same beast with this in this chapter , that is , were so wonderfully taken with the beast , that they were in love with him and enslaved to him , and to the paganochristian idolatry , which he countenanced ; ( whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world ) that is , all are seduced , unless the elect of god , such as are afterwards termed , the called , chosen and faithful . when they behold the beast that was and is not , and yet is : which is the very same beast that is called the image of the beast , chap. . vers . . for the empire becoming paganochristian , and exercising their idolatry upon other objects than the old pagans did , could not be properly said to be the same pagan empire revived again , but rather the image thereof , that is , an idolatrous empire , bearing an analogie or similitude to the old pagan idolatrous empire in a manner in all their strokes of idolatry : from whence it is rightly termed that was , as being idolatrous , as the pagan empire was ; and is not , that is to say , is not that very pagan empire , their idolatry now having new objects ; and yet is , ( viz. ) because the idolatry is the same though disguised under new titles and objects . this is the easie and natural sense of this description of the beast , and which necessarily imports that the roman empire is here understood in that succession of time , wherein it had apostatized from the pure christian worship into idolatry : and that therefore the woman that rides this beast can be no pagan polity , but the paganochristian hierarchy . . and here is the mind which hath wisdom ; that is , here lies a meaning of a great arcanum or secret : for so the greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to insinuate . for wisdom is according to her name , and is not manifest to the vulgar , ecclesiastic . . . the seven heads are the seven mountains on which the woman sitteth : which haply has a glance at constantinople , as well as rome , both these cities having seven mountains , and the greek clergy having defiled the eastern church with idolatry , as well as the latine church the western : and the horns of the two-horned beast we did above interpret of these two patriarchates , rome and constantinople . . and there are seven kings , ( viz. ) seven forms of soveraignty or supreme magistracy in the roman common-wealth or empire : the division of the succession of which is naturally made thus : the soveraignty is either in many or in one ; in many , as consuls , tribuni militum , triumviri ; in one , as kings , dictators and emperours : which emperours may be again divided into pagan , christian , paganochristian : so that according to this distribution , the beast will have just seven heads of blasphemy , as he is described , chap. . vers . . kings , consuls , tribunes , decemviri , dictators , pagan caesars or emperours , and emperours paganochristian : five are fallen , ( viz. ) kings , consuls , tribunes , decemviri , dictators , these sovereign magistrates had past away in s t iohn's time : and one is , ( viz. ) the pagan caesars or emperours , these were in being in his time : and the other is not yet come , ( viz. ) the other king , for the enumeration now is of kings in the largest sense : therefore this other king is the christian caesar or emperour who had not appeared upon the stage yet . and when he cometh he must continue a short space : the succession of the pure christian emperours will last but a while , the apostasie not long after being to come in . . and the beast that was and is not , which above was called the beast that was , and is not , and yet is ; the head , suppose of this beast , he is the eighth king or soveraign , which are the paganochristian caesars , at least till the pope make himself caesar , or supreme paganochristian ; for paganochristian supremacy constitutes the eighth king or seventh head of blasphemy : as it follows , and is of the seven , that is , and is of the seven kings , that are the seven heads of the beast , and consequently idolatrous : for though there be eight kings , yet there are but seven heads of the beast , the beast ceasing to be under the christian caesars , who therefore could be no head of the beast , as being not idolatrous themselves , and the idolatrous empire then ceasing . and goeth into perdition : the beast that was , and is not , and yet is , or the image of the beast , though it reign to the last semitime of the forty two months , yet his jurisdiction about that time was to be cut shorter , ( which happened in the reformation , when so many provinces , principalities , and kingdoms fell off from him ) and at last his idolatrous power and tyranny shall be quite abolished : as is supposed in several passages in the lamentation over babylon in the following chapter . . and the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings , which have received no kingdom as yet ; namely in s t iohn's time , who lived in the reign of the sixth head , under which the beast fought , and was slain by michael : in which battel he is also represented with seven heads and ten horns , but no crowns upon the horns , their actual coronation being not till the seventh head : but chap. . vers . . there are crowns on his horns , because the beast there in that vision is the healed or revived beast , the same that the beast that was , is not , and yet is : and yet no mention of any crowns in this chapter , because it had been a repugnancy to this passage [ which have received no kingdom as yet ] and there are other infallible arguments of this beast , being the beast under the seventh head without that , so that that indication was needless , though fit and requisite in the vision of this beast in the thirteenth chapter : but here that which follows supplies the omission of the crowns on the horns : but receive power as kings one hour with the beast ; that is , about the same time that the church degenerates into paganish superstitions and idolatries , will the empire be divided into many kingdoms , the entireness of the empire being a lett to the appearing of antichrist , according to the opinion even of the ancient fathers . as the empire was healing into the image of old paganism again , and became a beast , it grew actually divided into several kingdoms , which therefore is as much , if not more express , than the crowns upon the ten horns of the healed beast , chap. . vers . . and therefore the more needless to mention the crowns here . . these have one mind , and shall give their power and strength unto the beast ; that is , shall be of one paganochristian religion , whereby the empire had again become a beast ; and shall give their power and strength unto the beast , being ready by force of arms , if need be , or by what other power or authority they have to maintain this beast in its beastly , that is , in its idolatrous condition , and pagan-like superstitions . . these shall make war with the lamb , and the lamb shall overcome them ; namely at the last , by that patience and truth that is found in his followers : for he is lord of lords , and king of kings : so already by right , and his father has decreed , that at last he shall have full and quiet possession , that all the kingdoms of the earth shall become the kingdoms of the lord , and of his christ. and they that are with him are called , and chosen , and faithful . the great stress lies upon chosen and faithful : for many are called but few are chosen . but those choice ones that are said to be with him are stout soldiers , that will follow the lamb whithersoever he goes , never leave him for any persecution whatsoever , but be firm and faithful unto him , be their patience never so much exercised by sufferings . . and he saith unto me , the waters which thou sawest where the whore sitteth , are peoples , and multitudes , and nations , and tongues : even all the nations and people in the roman empire . . and the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast ; ( viz. ) under the seventh head , that is , the paganochristian head , be it pope or emperour , for the supreme power paganochristian be it lodged where it will , is the head of the healed beast , or of the beast that was and is not , and yet is : these , some of them at least , shall hate the whore , that is , the idolatrous hierarchy and church of rome particularly : and shall make her desolate and naked , and shall eat her flesh , and burn her with fire . the making of her desolate and naked is the stripping her of her wealth and revenues , and bestowing of them upon better uses . and the eating of her flesh may partly have the same signification ; flesh signifying wealth with the onirocritical interpreters : but it may also signifie carnal ordinances and institutes superstitious and idolatrous , which are the fulsome flesh of this whore : and the eating this flesh of hers , and burning her with fire is the abolishing of these grosly superstitious and idolatrous rites through the spirit of truth and zeal which is likened to fire . this has been done in its measure in the reformation , when so many kingdoms and principalities forsook the church of rome , but may be further , that is more extendedly , fulfilled under the fourth and fifth vials politically understood . . for god hath put in their hearts to fullfil his will : it is easie enough to conceive , that by gods connivence at these times of ignorance , as the apostle speaks of the gentiles , it might be permitted to the pseudoprophetick beast , through the officious assistance of the powers of darkness , to do such miracles , and use such wayes of imposing upon the ten kings , as would certainly enough determine them to the idolatrous religion of the empire : but that they were thus certain to be deceived is the fault of their own lapse , and of the after-consequences of it , not any injustice in god , who no otherwise here is said to put in their hearts to fullfill his will , &c. than in exod. he is said to harden pharaoh's heart from letting the people of israel go . and to agree , and give their kingdom to the beast : the same that was hinted , vers . . and so to be understood : until the words of god shall be fulfilled : for dan. chap. . it is plainly said of the little horn , which there takes upon him to change times and laws , that they shall be given into his hands for a time and times and half a time , which therefore is a time determinate by god : but then it presently follows , but the judgement shall sit , and they shall take away his dominion to consume and destroy it to the end . and that little horn is the whore of babylon , as i have proved , synops. prophet . lib. . cap. . sect . . . and the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth ; that is , which reigned in s t iohn's time over the kings of the earth , whereby it is manifest that old rome is understood , not new rome , or constantinople . for no polity seated upon seven hills , but what was there , reigned over the kings of the earth in s t iohn's time . the sense therefore of the verse may be clearly delivered in this short paraphrase : the woman which thou sawest riding on the beast , whose name is , was , is not , and yet is ; is that great city that now ruleth over the kings of the earth , namely rome ; whose inhabitants though flowing successively are accounted one and the same city , because included within the same reputed walls and buildings , as that is accounted one and the same river that flowes betwixt the same banks , though the same water does not continue for a day together : therefore the ruling power ecclesiastick or hierarchy of seven-hilled rome in italy , ( as the two-horned beasts name is latinus , in the other vision , chap. . ) is this woman that rides the beast , that was and is not and yet is , and most principally concerned in this vision ; which contains as it were the arraignment of her person described from her quality or dignity , being queen or empress , as it were , of the whole empire signified by the beast she rides on ; and from her gorgeous apparel , and from her palace or chief place of her residence seven-hilled rome : but the crime or charge against her , is , the corrupting of the whole empire with idolatry and cruelty , murdering the saints of god , and martyrs of iesus . her doom or condemnation is very copiously and pompously set out in the chapter following . and this i think is a very easie , natural and coherent exposition of this seventeenth chapter of the apocalypse , and such as cannot but abundantly satisfie any unprejudiced reader : but whoever will take the pains carefully to peruse , and throughly to understand the eight last chapters of the first book of my synopsis prophetica , amongst which is my ioynt-exposition of this seventeenth and thirteenth chapters of this book of the apocalypse , i hope , be he never so much prejudiced , if he will speak his own conscience , he will confess , that i have made out with evidence even mathematical and undeniable demonstration , that the sense i have given of this chapter here is true , and that the roman hierarchy is that great whore riding the beast , that was , and is not , and yet is ; ( viz. ) the empire since it was corrupted from pure christianity , and relapsed again to a kind of idolatrous paganochristianism : for what roman polity can rule this empire but what is contemporary to it ? wherefore the woman that rides the beast is not pagan but paganochristian , that paganochristian hierarchy of rome . notes . chapter xvii . vers. . his name is , &c. this i intersert because it is a prophetical ellipsis ; which is one of the figures that make up the artifice of concealment in this book of prophecies : but such an ellipsis is so natural , that it is used where there is no such design , as exod. chap. . vers . , . and moses said unto god , behold when i come to the children of israel , and shall say unto them , the god of your fathers hath sent me unto you , and they shall say unto me what is his name ? what shall i say unto them ? and god said unto moses , i am ●hat i am . where there is plainly an ellipsis , instead of , my name is , i am that i am , as is obvious at first sight . but in this place of the apocalypse , such an ellipsis is made use of , but purposely in such a way as that it is not obvious to discern there is an ellipsis , the sense seeming so perfect and running so glibly without one ; which therefore is the artifice of concealment in this place , and without which it had not been a prophetical ellipsis , but a common one : see synops. prophet . chap. . sect . . and chap. . vers . . sect . . whence you may more fully understand how certain it is , that such an ellipsis is to be acknowledged in this place , and that there is to be interserted , his name is , &c. chapter xviii . . the arraignment and accusation of the great whore was in the preceding chapter , now follows her doom or condemnation . and after these things i saw another angel come down from heaven , having great power : which intimates , that those agents that are prefigured by him , and are to effect what he predicts , are persons of high place . and the earth was lightened with his glory ; that is , the earth was enlightened with his brightness , which signifies that these great persons being themselves fully illuminated through the spirit by the light of the gospel , did most effectually enlighten others of the meaner sort by their example and godly profession of the pure apostolick faith. . and he cryed mightily with a strong voice : he predicts the doom , or pronounceth the sentence against the great whore with a strong and strenuous voice , in token of the assuredness and certainty of the execution thereof ; saying , babylon the great is fallen , is fallen : which words , though they be the same with those , chap. . vers . . yet they are not to be restrained to that time , which was but the partial fall of babylon in the first reformation , at the rising of the witnesses , but to be extended further to the final destruction of the whore and the beast under the seventh vial , when the beast is to go into utter perdition ; which time of his final overthrow is not limited in chap. . as it is in the vision ( chap. . ) of his partial overthrow , ( viz. ) to the seventh semi-time of the forty two prophetical months : and therefore this doom of babylon contains both her partial and final destruction : and is become the habitation of devils , and the hold of every foul spirit , and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird . the desolation and destruction of babylon , which is the roman idolatrous hierarchy or polity , not a city of stones or brick ( a thing childish to be conceived ) is set out by the description of ruined and desolate cities , and particularly of babylon literally understood , isai. . . and their houses shall be filled with dolefull creatures , and owles shall dwell there , and satyrs , that is , shaggie-haired devils shall dance there , &c. but the mystical meaning of this place , as i conceive , is , that when the power of this hierarchy is utterly destroyed , yet in the ruines thereof there will be lurking assemblies of such kind of persons as are deciphered by devils or foul spirits ( in that sense that unclean spirits are said to come out of the mouth of the dragon , beast and false prophet ) and by hateful and unclean birds . the character of whom , and who are said to be without the holy city , which appears after the destruction of this babylon , is set down , chap. . vers . . for without are dogs , and sorcerers , and whoremongers , and murderers , and idolaters , and whosoever loveth or maketh a lie . this is the cage of unclean birds or impure spirits , that the ruines of babylon are the habitation of ; who having now no power over others , will exercise a power amongst themselves : and one aethiopian or leopard will wash and absolve another . . for all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication ; that is of her poisoned philter or love-cup , whereby they have been intoxicated : and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her : she has corrupted the ten kings of the empire with the abominations of her idolatry : and the merchants of the earth ; that is , the ecclesiastical merchants , that prog'd for great dignities and preferments under her , which she chaffered for the maintaining or advancing her own interest and greatness ; who are here called merchants of the earth in reproach to their false pretense of spirituality , and of acting still in behalf of holy church , when their designs are really sensual , worldly and earthly ; are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies , that is , from the luxuriancy of her wealth , and from their accustomed luxury , the later an incitement to get wealth , that they may be in the mode , and the other a supply to their desire . . and i heard another voice from heaven , saying , which therefore is a commission , nay ; a command from heaven to the first reformers , and all others after to forsake the communion of the church of rome ; come out of her my people that you be not partakers of her sins ; by being at her masses , and other idolatrous worship : and that you receive not of her plagues : whether in this world , or in the world to come . . for her sins have reached unto heaven , and called for vengeance there in the ears of god : and god hath remembred her iniquities , and will repay her in part at the rising of the witnesses , but pay her home under the seventh vial , when her power shall be utterly abolished , as it follows . . reward her even as she rewarded you , and double unto her double according to her works ; in the cup which she hath filled , fill to her double : that is , spare her not but punish her severely for all her abominations and wickednesses ; which is a prediction of what will come to pass notoriously under the seventh vial. . how much she has glorified her self , and lived deliciously ; that is , magnified her self , or boasted of her self , and lived pompously and luxuriously , so much torment and sorrow give her : fill to her a cup as full of vexation and grief : for she saith in her heart , i sit as a queen . thus she might say in the thyatirian interval before the reformation , or rising of the witnesses , but whether she will be in that case to say so again , that will happen according as the reformed churches shall behave themselves : and am no widow : but the bride of the lamb , the spouse of christ , the only holy catholick church , the rest that call themselves christians , a company of schismaticks and hereticks , nor worthy to breath on gods earth , but to be massacred and burnt with fire and fagot : and shall see no sorrow : thus i say might she boast in the thyatirian interval : and if by the demerits of the reformed churches she ever recover unto that plight again , yet the great doom will certainly at last be executed upon her , as it is set down in the next verse . . therefore shall her plagues come in one day unexpectedly , and contrary to her boastful presages , death , and mourning , and famine : this roman hierarchy shall be politically killed , devested of all power and authority : from whence will naturally flow mourning and famine , grief of heart , with scarcity and poverty to requite their luxury before . the word famine is used in allusion to scarcity of provision in besieged cities : and she shall be utterly burnt with fire : the roman idolatrous hierarchy shall be quite destroyed and abolished : then shall that in the highest degree be fulfilled , which is written , chap. . vers . . they shall make her desolate and naked , and shall eat her flesh , and burn her with fire : for strong is the lord god that judgeth her : and there is neither wisdom , strength nor counsel against the almighty . . and the kings of the earth who have committed fornication and have lived deliciously with her , that is , have been of the same idolatrous profession with her , and have lived luxuriously with her , it being with them , like priest like people , even to the highest priest and highest of the people : shall bewail her , and lament for her when they shall see the smoke of her burning : this idolatrous church having accommodated their religion to the gusto of great men , it is no wonder , that some of the kings of princes of the earth bewail her burning . . standing afar off for fear of her torment , saying , alas ! alas ! that great city babylon , that mighty city , for in one hour is thy judgement come . but though her judgement be come in one hour , yet the execution of it may take up a considerable time . and this description belongs as well to the time of the rising of the witnesses , as to the latter vials , and especially the last of all . . and the merchants of the earth shall wéep and mourn over her : as if the merchants of the earth were so much concerned for rome literally understood , and could not as conveniently traffick elsewhere , and buy the following commodities as well if not better in other places . wherefore the merchants of the earth , as i noted above , are ecclesiastick or spiritual persons , which in reproach to their worldliness in their pretended holy and spiritual functions are here called the merchants of the earth : for no man buyeth her merchandise any more . the usual traffick in the roman church , where all is supposed to pass , or to be disposed of for money or earthly interest , now ceaseth , sith she her self ceaseth , and is devested of all her power and wealth : therefore no man buyeth her merchandise any more . . no merchandise of gold , and silver , and precious stones , and of pearles , and fine linnen , and purple , and silk , and scarlet ; the rich attire of those higher parts of the whore ( as you may see in the foregoing chapter ) fit for popes , cardinals , and other great personages of that babylonish body , and their officers . no thyine wood for the roof of their temples , or for carved idols , to whom sacrifice is done ; ( for i suspect some such allusion in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) no incense for burnt-offerings , for their adored images . * no images , or other utensils of ivory , precious wood , brass , iron , or marble , which in the text are called , all manner vessels of ivory , and all manner vessels of most precious wood , and of brass , and iron , and marble . . no cinnamon , and odours , and ointments , and frankincense , and wine , and oyl , and fine flower , and wheat , and beasts , and sheep , and horses , and chariots , and slaves , and the souls of men . no traffick any longer in aromatick odours , oiles or ointments for sacred unctions . no man will participate any longer of her panis benedictus , nor taste of her idol wafer made of the finest flower , nor sip of the wine of her chalice , though she would offer it to the lips of the laity : for their idolatrous mass shall cease , and the besprinkling of sheep , and other cattle with holy water by the friars of s t antony , and all other profits issuing from them shall cease also , and the redemption of souls out of purgatory for money . and lastly , the merchandise of chariots , horses and slaves , [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which alone being in the genitive case , they go together as one commodity ] that is the merchandise of such dignities in their church , as whose equipage it is to go with their coach and horses , and lacqueyes to run by them ; this amongst the rest will fail in the ruine and desolation of babylon . . and the fruits that thy soul lusteth after are departed from thee , and all things that were dainty and goodly are departed from thee , and thou shalt find them no more at all . these great and opime preferments and dignities , which thy ambitious and worldly mind so longingly hanker'd after ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , those fat and fair objects that make their mouths run a water so in this full babylonish market , where every thing is to be had for money , and nothing without it , all these are vanished never to appear again . . the merchants of these things , whether buyers or sellers , which were made rich by her , shall stand afar off , for fear of her torment , being solicitous for themselves , nor able to help her , weeping and wailing . . and saying , alas ! alas ! that great city , that great . hierarchical polity , that was cloathed in fine linnen , and purple , and scarlet , and decked with gold , and precious stones , and pearles : the very habit of the whore above described , [ chap. . ] and not a city of stone and brick . . for in one hour so great riches are come to nought : the sense is such as in verse . and every ship-master , and all the company in ships , and saylers , and as many as trade by sea stood afar off . if we consider what sea signifies in the prophetick stile , the multitudes of men upon earth , we shall not much be at a loss to understand * what is intimated by ships , namely consecrated houses disjoyned from the rest , as ships are usually separate in the sea. and one part of a 〈◊〉 in that architecture is called the nave thereof . it seems therefore to give a glance at the babylonish churches abused to gainful idolatries and superstitions : where they sell the use , the sight , or possession of several consecrated things , exchange souls out of purgatory for money , and do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , turn the very word of god into an adulterate piece of ware or merchandise . . and cryed when they saw the smoke of her burning , saying , what city is like to this great city ? like that of the mariners lamentation over tyrus , that great city for merchandizing ( which i know not that rome was ever so famous for ) what city is like tyrus ? . and they cast dust on their heads and cryed weeping and wailing , and said , alas ! alas ! that great city ! that great sacerdotal polity ! wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea , so to be understood as above : by reason of her costliness , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so the greek has it , out of that treasure of honours , dignities , preferments and offices , wherewith she was able to enrich these merchants : for in one hour is she made desolate ; that is , surprizedly and unexpectedly . these last three verses are borrowed out of ezechiel's lamentation over tyrus , which was a city notorious for merchandises , literally understood , but that rome was ever so i do not remember i have expresly read ; that she should be so well replenished with all the abovesaid wares to sell to merchants of other nations : and therefore i conceive it is to be understood of this mystical merchandise , as hath been above declared . . rejoyce over her thou heaven and ye apostles and prophets , for god hath avenged you on her : that is , rejoyce ye heavenly minded over these merchants of the earth , and ye that are the teachers of the pure apostolick doctrine , and declare the naked truth of things to the world , be ye glad that the lord has avenged the blood of your predecessors upon her , the blood of the waldenses and albigenses , and the rest of the holy martyrs of jesus . . and a mighty angel took up a stone like a great milstone and cast it into the sea , saying , thus with violence shall that great city babylon be thrown down , and shall be found no more at all : the sense is , that at last there will be an utter ruine and dissipation of this idolatrous city or polity , namely at the pouring out of the seventh vial. and the mighty angel signifies the mighty agents under him that shall effect it . . and the voice of harpers , and musicians , and of pipers , and trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in thee ; and no crafts-man of whatever craft he be , shall be found any more at all in thee : and the sound of a milstone shall be heard no more at all in thee . . and the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee : and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee . all this may be nothing else but a prophetick hylasmus , setting out one single thing , namely the destruction , silence , and vast solitude of this idolatrous hierarchy , by the privation or absence of such gross and palpable objects as occurre in a city inhabited , as the noise of musicians , the hammering and knocking of artificers , the grinding of mills , the light of candles in the night , and the singing and dancing at weddings , and the like : or else it may have a more mystical sense ; as if by a diorismus , we should understand rather the musick at their idolatrous worship , and by these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , artificers , such as do technas consuere sophisticas & politicas , ( viz. ) in theology and church administration for the interest of their hierarchy , these artifices imperii in imperio , and those also that work curious work in the scholastick divinity ; by the sound of the milstones their fraudulent profit , and by the light of a candle , honour and prosperity , as both those symbols are interpreted in achmetes : or candle may signifie consecrated candles , or candles burning on their altars , or before images . and lastly , by bridegroom and bride their voice being no more heard , may be signified , that there shall be no more propagating of their pseudocatholick religion , the end of marriage being propagation : for thy merchants were the great men of the earth : for by thy sorcery were all nations deceived . hitherto has been described the destruction of babylon , the reasons whereof now follow , which are three : the two first are couched in the words even now rehearsed , the former of them , the riot and lordliness of these mystical merchants , they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , great men of the world , and greatly worldly , ambitious , covetous and sensual , which is the very essence of an earthly mind : which how much it has been amongst the popes , cardinals , abbots , and other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or magnates of the roman church , history , and the mouths of all men are full of it . the other is the debauching of the world with idolatry , accompanied and countenanced with a pretense of a power plainly magical of changing the elements in such a sort as all the magicians of pharaoh could never do , nor had the face to attempt the like ; besides other magical feats of an inferiour rank , and necromantick stories of the apparitions of dead saints , as they pretend them : whence idolatry is indigitated here by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sorcery or witchcraft , as that whereby it is introduced . as also that cup in the hand of the whore is looked upon as a philtrum , a poisonous intoxicating love-potion made with magick charms , and horrid ingredients : and likewise their being said to be deceived by these sorceries , implyes their being seduced to idolatry whither they tend ; as appears plainly from what is written of the miracles of the two-horned beast , chap. . vers . , . and the whore , and the two-horned beast are all one . and thus much of the two first reasons ; the third and last follows in this last verse . . and in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints , and of all that were slain upon the earth . here is described the bloody cruelty of the roman hierarchy : and there is laid to their charge not only the blood of prophets and of saints , that is , of faithful preachers , and expounders of the gospel , and of other pious men , such as out of conscience of their obedience due to the law of god and christ , could not submit to the idolatrous profession and practice required of them by antichrist , but the blood of all that have been slain upon earth : so great incendiaries have the pope and his emissaries been , and disturbers of the peace of christendom . notes . chapter xviii . vers. . no images , or other utensils , &c. the greek word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is of so large a sense , that vessel , as our english translates it , does not reach the latitude thereof : for in the byzantine history , images of silver and gold are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , holy utensils , instruments or furniture , which made me render the place images , or other vtensils . vers. . lacqueyes to run by them : for by d r hammonds own acknowledgement , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is the greek word here , does not signifie slaves but servants . i render it lacqueyes , that attend the coaches of great men , in querpo ; which sutes not unhandsomly with the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , bodies : for they that run can do it most conveniently in querpo , without the cumber of unnecessary cloathing , suppose of a cloak , or the like . vers. . what is intimated by ships , &c. that ships are not rashly assimulated to churches or temples , besides what is produced on this place already , that in achmetes , out of the indian onirocriticks , may further confirm , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if any man see in his sleep that he has built a merchants-ship , he shall have a congregation of men , or erect a synagogue for the celebrating of religious mysteries : which shows plainly , that there is a fitness in a ship to represent a church or temple in the judgement of others that have had nothing to do with the apocalypse that we know ; which yet is nothing at all to the derogation of the sacredness of those places themselves , they being no merchants-ships to any that make use of them out of a good conscience , and a desire to gain souls to god , not meerly out of the love of money : but even the best things may be the most abominably perverted , as our saviour complains of the profanation of the temple in his dayes . it is written , my house shall be called a house of prayer , but ye have made it a den of thieves . chapter xix . . and after these things i heard a great voice of much people in heaven : but a resemblance of what in those times belong to the true church on earth , saying , allelujah , salvation and glory , and honour , and power unto the lord our god. . for true and righteous are his judgements , for he hath judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth , the roman empire , with her fornication , debauching them with idolatry , which therefore cannot be understood of rome pagan : for the parts of the empire then were idolatrous of themselves . and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand ; the causes of the destruction of the roman hierarchy was their idolatry and cruelty against the professors of pure christianity , as it was observed at the end of the foregoing chapter . . and again they said allelujah : and her smoak rose up for ever and ever . in such a sence as is said of the destruction of idumaea , isai. . vers . . it shall not be quenched night nor day , the smoak thereof shall go up for ever , from generation to generation it shall lye wast , none shall pass through it for ever and ever . . and the four and twenty elders , and the four beasts fell down and worshipped god ; that is , the whole truly catholick and apostolick church praised and glorified him that sate upon the throne , saying , amen , allelujah ; and this is the triumphal song , and doxology of the true church upon the utter destruction of the whore , the roman hierarchy , in opposition to the lamentation of her paramours , or antichristian party . and this reaches to the end of all the vials , as the eleventh , fourteenth and sixteenth chapters do : but the following verse might very well have been the beginning of this nineteenth chapter , and the four first verses been adjoyned to the end of the foregoing chapter . for , for the better understanding of things , here is plainly a going back to the sixth and seventh vials , which , ( as also the visions of the harvest and wine-press ) are marvellously illustrated , and have their meaning certainly discovered hereby , as shall appear by the explication ; so that this will be found no vain repetition . . and a voice came out of the throne , or from the place where the throne was , namely the voice of christ. this answers to the son of man who puts in his sickle , and reaps the harvest , chap. . vers . , . which immediately precedes the treading of the wine-press , which contemporizeth with the following vision of the rider of the white horse , as that with the seventh vial : saying , * praise our god all ye his servants , and ye that fear him , both small and great . . and i heard as it were the voice of a great multitude , and as the voice of many waters , and as the voice of mighty thunderings ; which are the symbols of multitudes of people , saying , allelujah , for the lord god omnipotent reigneth ; that is , his kingdom begins to appear now most gloriously , the waters of euphrates being dryed up to make way for the kings of the east , to joyn in one communion with the pure church of god. this therefore synchronizeth with the sixth vial. . let us be glad and rejoyce and give honour to him , for the marriage of the lamb is come , and his wife hath made her self ready ; that is to say , the people of the jews are now in a readiness to joyn in communion with the truly catholick and apostolick church of christ , and that is a ground of the greatest joy indeed : for if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world , what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead ? as the apostle speaks . . and to her was granted , that she should be arayed in fine linnen , clean and white : and so shall not be of the number of those that at the seventh vial shall be found naked to their great shame ; for the fine linnen is the righteousness of the saints , namely , of those that now are to be partakers of the kingdom of christ and of god , which consists not in meats and drinks , or such like superficial and hypocritical cloaking or cloathing with rites and ceremonies , but in righteousness , and peace , and joy in the holy ghost , the everlasting righteousness of the gospel of christ. . and he saith unto me , write ; as being a thing of great moment , and never to be forgotten : blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the lamb ; that is , o thrice happy they that shall see those times , and partake of them , and shall celebrate the espousals of the people of the jews with christ their bridegroom , and true messias , as he will then be acknowledged : and he saith unto me , these are the true sayings of god ; as unlikely as it may seem to men , that these dry bones shall live again , ( as the jews are represented in that vision of ezechiel ) yet the thing will certainly come to pass . . and i fell at his feet , and worshipped him : this he did being so full of joy and transport at so transcendent good news touching his countrey-men the jews ; for whom paul also had such a zeal , that he could wish himself accursed from christ , that they might be implanted into him , rom. . wherefore it is no wonder s t iohn did so profound reverence to the messenger of news so unspeakably grateful , acceptable and enravishing : and he said unto me , see thou do it not : for it should seem the mien of his face conjoyned with the posture of his body betrayed such a pitch of veneration and worship , as might seem more than civil , and not due nor warrantable from one fellow-creature to another ; i am thy fellow-servant , and the fellow-servant of thy brethren that have the testimony of iesus , worship god. reserve such high pitches of affection and veneration for god alone , whom thou art to love with all thy heart , and all thy soul , but thy neighbour only as thy self . and if iohn's worshipping this angel visible and present be thus reprovable , what is the worshipping of saints and angels invisible in temples , and at altars , and images consecrated to them , but the dregs of idolatry ? for the testimony of iesus is the spirit of prophecie : he was not to be taken with so profound admiration and veneration of the angel , for that he was such a prophet , for he was yet but his fellow-servant , as also of others that had the testimony of jesus , for no man can say iesus is the lord , but by the holy ghost . they cannot be true and faithfull witnesses of jesus out of love and loyalty to him , but they must be inspired by his spirit ; and so their witnessing of him is an effect of the spirit of prophecy , the spirit enabling them firmly to believe and declare beyond what flesh and blood can attain to : such a spirit of prophecy was in the two witnesses , chap. . whose faith was so strong , that they could suffer the utmost for the truth . . and i saw heaven opened . now follows the vision that contemporizes with the treading of the wine-press , and with the seventh vial , which will give admirable light to both . and behold a white horse : an horse with his rider doth signifie rule and command , and the colour white , prosperity and success : and he that sat upon him was called faithfull and true , and in righteousness doth he judge and make war. in the seventh vial there was mention of the battel of that great day of god almighty , but no mention there of any armies , or any captain of the forces . lo ! here is the commander of the army , christ himself , the eternal logos , joyned with the humane nature , who in righteousness doth judge and make war. . his eyes were as a flame of fire . fire is a symbol of intellectuality , especially a flaming fire that implies light . thus we read of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the fiery intellect in the magick oracles , and of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , shining fire attributed to the soul , as being a certain divine and intellectual essence , as plethon speaks : wherefore the logos here is rightly said to have eyes like a flaming fire , because he is not only intellectual , but that great and eternal intellect , from whence all intellectual beings are , as also their operations , exercised by virtue of the more pure etherial and igneous spirits : and on his head were many crowns : for the kings of the east by this time had submitted to him , besides what might be done under the fourth vial. and he had a name written , that no man knew but himself . this in brief signifies the incomprehensibleness and imperscrutableness of the divinity of our saviour ; he alone that is it , being able to comprize it . . and he was cloathed with a vesture dipt in blood : this partly relates to his humane nature and passion , and partly to the vision of the treading of the wine-press where blood is said to ascend up to the horse-bridles , whence his garments would be dipt in blood : and is a sign that these two visions , this and that of the wine-press , tend to the same thing . and his name is called the word of god : which may include not only the eternal logos that was made flesh , but even the written word of god also . the false prophet , or idolatrous hierarchy of rome , upon their pretense of infallibility , had silenced not only the express law of the written word of god , but most coarsly and barbarously had trodden down those innate principles of morality and reason , that the eternal word had implanted in the souls of men , and by terrour and cruel force did what she could to smother , stifle and extinguish them . but here the scene of things is changed , and the pure word of god like a valiant heros triumphs over the corrupt , superstitious , idolatrous and contradictious doctrines and institutes of a company of deceitful and deceivable men , which in this vision is called the false prophet . . and the armies which were in heaven followed him : here be the armies ( as before we noted the commander ) which belong to the battel of the great day of god almighty under the seventh vial ; upon white horses cloathed in fine linnen white and clean . a strange kind of armature , if it were to be understood literally of such a battle as soldiers ordinarily fight in the field : but white horses , and fine linnen white and clean , signifie the righteousness and good success of these evangelical warriours that shall bestir themselves in those dayes . . and out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword , that with it he should smite the nations : this again showes , that this is no carnal warfare , but as it is said in the epistle to the hebrews ; the word of god is quick and powerful , sharper than any two-edged sword : and he shall rule them with a rod of iron ; in allusion to the second psalm , which is a prophecie of these times of the messias : thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron , and break them in pieces like a potters vessel : which is a prophetick symbol of that wonderful contrition of heart , that the word of god makes when it is sincerely , seasonably and powerfully evibrated against the enemies of his kingdom : and he treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of god almighty . this referrs to the vision of the wine-press , chap. . whereby it is again manifest , that those two visions belong to one and the same thing . but the treading of the wine-press is there explained , and the explanation ratified by this of the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider of the white horse . . and he hath on his vesture , and on his thigh a name written , king of kings , and lord of lords : which sheweth the royal descent of christ , even according to the flesh ; as if he had laid claim to this soveraignty by descent from david the king , accordingly as it is said , chap. . i am the root and off-spring of david , and the bright morning star ; the root of david , as to his divinity , and the off-spring of david as to his humanity . . and i saw an angel standing in the sun ; that is , those signified by this angel stood in the most bright and glorious light of the gospel , or word of god , as sun elsewhere is expounded ; by the illumination whereof they were able to play the part of such auspicious heralds touching the victory of the evangelical party , that it would go on their side : and he cryed with a loud voice , saying to all the fowles that fly in the midst of heaven , come and gather your selves to the supper of the great god. . that ye may eat the flesh of kings , and the flesh of captains , and the flesh of mighty men , and the flesh of horses , and of them that sit on them ; that is , the flesh of horsemen by an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the flesh of all men both free and bond , both small and great : these are the slain by the sword of him that sate upon the horse ; for the beast and the false prophet are cast into a lake of fire and brimstone , so that the fowles of the air could not feed on them . wherefore it is plain , that those slain with the sword are those that are converted by the powerful preaching of the word , which is sharper than any two-edged sword : and then this great feast of the fowles is the joy of angels , who if they rejoyce so much at the conversion of one single sinner , what a feast of joy is it with them , when whole countries and kingdoms are converted to the true faith in christ , and are made part of his church or kingdom . * and that fowles signifie spirits , and good spirits here , or angels , is plain from the cabbalistical signification of that word , and the tenour of this vision . . and i saw the beast , either the two-horned beast or the ten-horned beast ( namely the remainders of him ) or else both ; which is one part of the adversaries of the evangelici , or of the armies of this illustrious heros on the white horse : and the kings of the earth and their armies ; that is , the infidel party , the other adversaries of the abovesaid heros , who with his armies make up the tripartition i observed in the treading of the wine-press , and in the seventh vial : which is another argument of the coincidency of these visions ; gathered together to make war against him that sate on the horse , and against his army ; which exactly answers to , and makes a supplement of what is wanting chap. . v. . this therefore is the army that was gathered together in armageddon . . and the beast was taken , the ten-horned beast , namely the remainders that was left of him at this time : and with him the false prophet , who is mentioned also in the seventh vial , ( viz. ) the roman idolatrous hierarchy , that wrought miracles before him , with which he deceived them which had received the mark of the beast , namely , of the two-horned beast , ( see chap. . vers . , , . ) which is the same with this false prophet : and them that worshipped his image , ( viz. ) the image which the two-horned beast made , who debauching the christian empire by the introduction of the old idolatry under new names , made it the lively image of the pagan . these both were cast alive , ( viz. the beast and false prophet ) not slain by the sword that comes out of the mouth of the rider of the white horse , that is , not converted from their antichristianity to the pure apostolick faith , into a lake of fire burning with brimstone , whereby their idolatrous power and tyranny was abolished and consumed . . and the remnant , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the rest , that is , the other of the two parties , that opposed the evangelical armies , namely the infidel party , were slain with the sword of him that sate upon the horse , which sword proceeded out of his mouth , and all the fowles were filled with their flesh ; that is , all the holy angels were feasted and filled with the joy of their conversion . for this sword is the cutting conviction of the word of god , and of the gospel of our lord jesus preached effectually in the power of the spirit , whereby they were converted . it is here compared to a sword , as chap. . vers . . to a sharp sickle , whereby the vine of the earth was gathered and cast into the great wine-press : which vision , as i said , is the same with this , as also that of the seventh vial. in all which visions , three parties of men are plainly distinguished . in the vision of the wine-press , the vintagers or treaders of the grapes , are the evangelical , or the pure christian party . in the seventh vial , the said party , are those that are the armies of god almighty at the battel in armageddon , or those boanerges's with the third part of the city , which they thundered over so divided , ( viz. ) into three parts . in this vision the heros on the white horse with his armies : this is the pure christian party in all these three visions . but the obdurate antichristian party in the vision of the wine-press , is the city without which ( as being a company uncapable of conviction and contrition ) the wine-press is trodden . in the seventh vial the beast and false prophet , or babylon the great , who pelted with hail-stones of a talent weight , blasphemes but does not repent . and in this vision of the rider of the white horse , the beast and the false prophet : this is the antichristian party in all the three visions . but the heathen or infidel party is denoted in the vision of the wine-press by the grapes there gathered and pressed , and having their edomitish blood squeezed out of them , ( who is this that comes from edom , with his died garments from bozrah , which bozrah the very name signifies vintage ) in the seventh vial by those under the dragon , ( for all pagans or infidels are so , he being the old opposer of the kingdom of the messias ) and by the cities of the nations or heathens , who are said to fall , as being thunderstruck at the powerfull voice of those evangelical boanerges's over the great city divided into three parts . and in this vision , by those that are slain by the sword of the rider of the white horse . for these being a distinct party from the christian party , the armies of that divine heros , and from the party antichristian , the beast , and the false prophet , what can they be but infidels ? which three visions therefore thus dispersed and so maimedly and obscurely described single , but so fully and certainly to be understood compared together , is one special instance of that admirable artifice in this book of close concealment , and certain revealment of the truth in these prophecies . notes . chapter xix . vers. . praise our god all ye his servants , &c. that is no bar to christ his being the precentor here , because he saith [ our god ] as if it were below his divinity to use that phrase . for his humane nature is a creature : besides he saith expresly to mary , john . . go to my brethren and say unto them , i ascend to my father and your father , and to my god and your god : see also apoc. . . vers. . and that fowles signifie spirits , &c. that fowles or birds signifie spirits or angels with the cabbalists , that saying of r. moses corduero will evince ; quando neschamah exit in hunc mundum duas aves , id est , duos angelos custodes ex arbore volitare cum ea . and tertullian himself briefly and smartly , omnis spiritus ales est , hoc angeli & daemones ; every spirit is a fowle or bird , whether they be angels or devils . chapter xx. hitherto none of the visions of the opened book have reached any further than to the last vial , which takes up the forepart of the philadelphian interval . to which church it is said , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thou hast a little army , so grotius : which army is that which is under the command of that victorious heros on the white horse : and the effect of his victory will make good what christ promises to the philadelphian church . behold i will make them of the synagogue of sathan , which say they are iews ; that is , christians , and are not , but the slaves of antichrist , behold i will make them come and worship before thy feet . the residue of the visions of the opened book take up the following part of the philadelphian interval , and the whole laodicean , and so reacheth to the end of all : or for more distinctness , it takes up the space of the six last thunders , as the effusion of the vials did the first . . and i saw an angel come down from heaven , whose commission therefore must be from god , having the key of the bottomless pit ; the supposed habitation or prison rather of evil spirits : and the having the key thereof signifies the having power and authority to do things there : for the very kingdom of the devil is subject to the power of god : and a great chain in his hand , which is the power of legislation or making laws , ( as some , as to the sense well , though not so critically , derive lex à ligando ) which are bonds and iron chains to tye up the wicked from doing mischief . by this angel therefore , according to the apocalyptick stile , after the abolishing the antichristian and infidel power , are those persons understood that are impowered from god to make laws for the more sure support of the recovered kingdom of christ. . and he said hold on the dragon that old serpent , which is the devil and satan ; that is , the surviving wicked ones of the earth , for whom the dragon , the old serpent , and the devil is here put , as the angel before for those evangelical legislators . and the dragon is here explained by the devil and old serpent , that the sense might not be restrained to the remainder of pagans , but reach also to those of the antichristian party now subdued , which were the two-horned and ten-horned beast to whom the dragon yet gave his power : by these express severe laws touching the indispensable duties of a christian , not insignificant trifles and superstitions , is the dragon , that is , the wicked ones of what denomination soever , to be laid hold on . this is the constitution of the new polity after the abolishing of the antichristian tyranny , where it was more safe to serve the devil and antichrist , than to approve a mans self the faithful servant of christ. this constitution of things being setled , which is dispatched within the space of the second thunder ; then it follows , and bound him a thousand years : which is the time of the third thunder , and of the blessed millennium , properly so called : which reaches to the end of the philadelphian interval . . and cast him into the bottomless pit , and shut him up and set a seal upon him , that he deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled : therefore during the happy millennium of the reign of christ , he is as close a prisoner as can be imagined or expressed . which is a demonstration , this millennium is not yet come . the parable is of the devil , but so as to be understood of his children here on earth , that they shall be kept under with iron or adamantine chains of rigid , severe and inviolable laws , nor be permitted to do any thing that is really profane , wicked , or antichristian , nor to tempt or seduce others to do it . they shall have no publick permission or connivance for such things : and after that he must be loosed a little season , namely in the laodicean interval , the evangelical party growing more coole and remiss , and the church degenerating in many from the state of philadelphia to that of laodicea , of whom christ complains in his epistle to her . this loosing of satan is conceived for order and distinctness sake to happen under the fourth thunder . . and i saw thrones , and they sate upon them , and iudgment was given unto them : this vision runs back ( as it was usual in the former to do ) and commenceth with the second thunder : then were there judges sitting upon thrones , and they gave judgement touching the christian confessors and martyrs , whether under antichrist or the red dragon , as follows ; and i saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of iesus , and for the word of god. * and i saw also those which had not worshipped the beast nor his image , neither had received his mark upon their foreheads , or in their hands . of these two distinct sorts it is said in common , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and they lived , as being true of them both : and reigned with christ , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not a thousand years ; but the thousand year , ( viz. ) of the blessed millennium ; but it is not said where , and therefore it is to be understood the martyrs in heaven , where christ is personally and visibly present ; the other with their successours on earth , where christ is also present , but by his spirit ; these in bodies terrestrial , those revivificated into their bodies coelestial and glorified ; an early priviledge peculiar to the martyrs : and therefore it follows , . but the rest of the dead , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , lived not again , much less were thus revivificated as the martyrs were , till the thousand years were finished : where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , being made use of , and it being unproper to be said of the confessours with those that succeed them , they being considered as alive on earth , must needs respect those that are said to have been beheaded , to insinuate their priviledge or different condition from all others , and that though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might be truly said of them , as being they that were to be revived into their glorified bodies at the beginning of the millennium , yet it was not to be said of any other men , it not being to be fulfilled of them until the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , till the thousand years of the millennium be expired , nay , till the end of the laodicean interval under the sixth thunder ; this is the first resurrection : this namely of the martyrs according to the opinion of the primitive fathers , and that intimation to the church of smyrna , chap. . vers . . when so many christian martyrs suffered : he that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death , as to whom belongeth the first resurrection accordingly as here followeth . . blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection , on such the second death hath no power : namely , the lake of fire ( vers . . ) into which hades , or the whole region of mortality is cast the earth being all on fire . but they that have obtained their glorified body , as the martyrs do in the first resurrection , they are sped already , and are safe from this fate : but they shall be priests of god and of christ ; that is , holy and divine souls cloathed in glorified bodies , serving god in his heavenly temple . and shall reign with him , ( viz. ) with christ in the kingdom of his father , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the thousand years of the millennium ; but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a thousand years , symbolically understood ; which being the cube of ten , which comprehends all number , signifies a steady permanent reign even to all eternity . . but when the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the thousand years of the millennium are expired , that is at the expiration of the philadelphian interval , and the beginning of the laodicean , satan shall be loosed out of his prison , that is to say , the ancient zeal of the philadelphian church , and strictness of discipline will be much relaxated , and wickedness will get head again , namely under the fourth thunder . . and he shall go out to deceive the nations , which are in the four quarters of the earth , gog and magog ; that is , the whole rabble of men that are disposed to wickedness , and have an enmity against the holy and just , which are the true israelites indeed , in whom there is no guile . and gog and magog are those notorious enemies of the people of israel , ( ezech. cap. . and . ) who therefore here typifie the enemies of the holy , christian and apostolick church , of which israel was a type . to gather them together to battel , to fight against israel , the true church of christ ; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea : so much had wickedness increased by the not still endeavouring with that wonted vigour , the amplification of christs kingdom , and by relaxation of discipline in the laodicean state of the church , though purity of external worship was still retained among them , neither had they contaminated themselves with course superstitions and idolatries . . and they went up on the breadth of the earth , which indicates the swarming and the spreading of their forces , and compassed the camp of the saints about : the camp wherein there were many saints , and right philadelphian spirits , but all saints , as to the purity of external worship . and the beloved city : the mystical ierusalem , or pure church of christ , and beloved of him , for the reasons even now intimated . here is an attempt of bringing again the righteous under the power and tyranny of the wicked ; which attempts are made toward the latter end of the laodicean interval under the fifth thunder : but before they could effect their wicked enterprise , the day of judgement overtakes them : and fire came down from god out of heaven and devoured them . . and the devil that deceived them was cast together with them into the lake of fire and brimstone , even that lake which is afterwards called the second death , where the beast and the false prophet , the whole antichristian rabble , shall be , and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever . . for i saw a great white throne ( for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and , does ordinarily signifie for , as the sense may require ) and him that sate on it , namely christ coming to judgement at the end of the laodicean interval ( in the sixth thunder ) from whence the church of laodicea also has its name : from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away , and there was found no place for them ; that is , the glory of his majesty was so great , that heaven and earth seemed to vanish before him , the eyes of the spectators at first being so wholly filled with the brightness of the presence of his glory . . and i saw the dead small and great , good and bad , stand before god : this is the general resurrection , which is not till the thousand years of the millennium be expired , but a good while after it , though but a little time compared with the thousand years in the latitude of the sense thereof . and the books were opened , the rolls and records of their actions ; this is spoken in allusion to law-proceedings in courts of judicature amongst men . and another book was opened which is the book of life . an auspicious title , signifying that they whose names were found there , should be sentenced worthy of eternal life , and escape the second death : and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works : as is done in righteous courts of judicature , where the judge gives sentence according to what is alledged and proved : and so it is in this general assizes ; none shall be condemned for what he is not guilty of , but be judged according to his works . . and the sea gave up the dead which were in it : the souls here appear of them that were drown'd in the sea ( as being not extinct thereby , as some fondly imagine ) and actuate their bodies . and death or pestilence ( all manner of death by diseases is intimated by it ) and briefly hell , that is hades , the whole region of deceased souls , or this sphere of mortality into which they are congregated at this general assizes , delivered up the dead that were in them , that is , exhibited them to the view of all : and they were judged every man according to their works . the divine nemesis proportioned punishments or rewards to every one according to their doings . hitherto are the transactions of this general assizes , and the passing of judgement on those that were called to the bar , which takes up the sixth thunder : but in the seventh there is thundering and lightening , properly so called , as is intimated , vers . . and fire came down from god out of heaven and devoured them : so here . . and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire ; that is , this whole region of mortality above which the spirits of devils and damned souls cannot emerge , but are chained and confined to this caliginous atmosphere , will be set on fire at the last thunder , which together with eruptions from beneath will cause a dreadful conflagration , and turn the earth as it were into one great lake of fire . this is the sense of these words , and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire . which is a very figurative expression ; first by a prosopopoeia making death and hell as it were two persons , as in chap. . vers . . and then by an hypallage , casting them into the fire , when as the fire is rather cast into them , it occupying all this region of mortality , and putting an end to dying , by consuming all the species of mortal creatures , and giving a stop to their propagation . this is the second death : as the first death is the death of this body . wherefore it is here a seasonable monition : fear not them which kill the body , but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell : which is the second death infinitely worse than the former . . and whosoever was not found written in the book of life , that is , in the book of life of the lamb , as a faithful soldier , and true member of his kingdom , was cast into the lake of fire , and underwent the same doom with the apostate spirits ; which implies , that those which were found in that book of life were adjudged to the enjoyment of eternal life , to reign with christ for ever in heaven in the kingdom of his father , as he promises in his epistle to the church of laodicea . notes . chapter xx. vers. . and i saw also those that had not worshipped the beast , &c. that the beheaded and these are two distinct sorts of persons , methinks is plainly enough insinuated in the original ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 &c. he saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of jesus , and for the word of god , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and those who had not worshipped , &c. david pareus supposes an ellipsis , which he would supply thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so secure is he , that two several sorts are meant . if this be not the sense , why is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 interposed ? 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , had been sufficient without 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before it ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so the text should have run : and besides , why is it said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and they lived ; and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and they lived again , if both the beheaded and the not-worshippers of the beast were of the same kind ? but indeed interpreters do generally understand them to be of two sorts , ( though otherwise they cannot hit it among themselves about the sense of this place ) the one sort martyrs , the other confessours . and i add surviving confessours , who with their successours survive the cruelty of the beast and his image : see my mystery of godliness , lib. . cap. . sect . . chapter xxi . . and i saw a new heaven and a new earth : one would think upon the conflagration of this earth immediately mentioned before : but this is but the artificial embellishing of the outward cortex of this book of prophecies in this place * by a lemmatosynechia , as it is called in my synopsis prophetica : for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away : namely the former heaven and earth or world , in the sense of the prophetical stile , according to which they denote a polity ; which therefore intimates here , that the tyrannical and idolatrous polity of the beast and the false prophet , which is the great whore , or great city of babylon was now abolished , as appears by chap. . vers . . and there was no more sea ; no unquiet multitudes of the wicked who are like the raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame ; tumults , war and bloodshed was under that polity , that is cast into the lake of fire , chap. . vers . which was the reign of antichrist . but now the reign of christ is at hand , who is the true melchizedec king of salem or ierusalem , king of righteousness and prince of peace : this vision therefore goes back to the second thunder . . and i iohn saw the holy city new ierusalem : the truly holy city , not pretended holy church , and the new jerusalem , not that old prophet-killing jerusalem , which is also spiritually called sodom and aegypt , the roman hierarchy , where christ in his faithful witnesses were persecuted to death . this sight therefore of the city ierusalem is exhibited , as a polity succeeding the great city of babylon , and in opposition thereto , coming down from god out of heaven , which shows it is a polity here upon earth , and of divine institution , and to be setled after the utter destruction of the whore of babylon , by a council truly holy , and truly oecumenical , being persons of pure and upright spirits , and without all worldly interest , and moreover inspired extraordinarily by the spirit of god. this is the meaning of this descent of ierusalem from god out of heaven , all things then being to be ordered by that wisdom which is from above , when as the constitution of the city of babylon was from that wisdom which is from beneath , and is earthly , sensual and devilish : prepared as a bride adorned for her husband : not as a whore to commit fornication with the kings of the earth as babylon did . this constitution of things is setled under the second thunder , after which immediately follows the millennial reign of christ , and is described in the following verses . . and i heard a great voice out of heaven , saying , behold the tabernacle of god is with men , and he will dwell with them , and they shall be his people ; and god himself shall be with them ; namely , by his spirit , whose presence shall sensibly and feelingly be acknowledged by all the inhabiters of this new ierusalem : for this is the reign of the spirit , or the reign of christ in the spirit , of which the apostles of old witnessed , know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the holy ghost ? but in the city of babylon , instead of being taught and guided by the holy ghost , they were forced to follow their blind guides that led them into all manner of superstition and idolatry , and gross disobedience to the laws of god and christ , unless they would be persecuted , and barbarously murthered : and be their god , that is , their protector and defender from all manner of evil : as it follows . . and god shall wipe away all tears from their eyes : this reign of christ in the millennium will be with that equity , goodness and sweetness , that no mans heart that is good shall need to be oppressed with grief , or express his grief by his tears : and there shall be no more death ; no more bloody massacrings of the faithful witnesses of christ , or burning them at the stake with fire and fagot , as was done under the tyranny of the great whore : neither sorrow for the loss of friends thus barbarously and inhumanely murthered : nor crying , no clamours against gross injustice and cruelty , or crying out for the tortures that are inflicted on poor innocent men for keeping a good conscience towards god : neither shall there be any more pain , by noisom and wearisom imprisonments , or what other hardships they are put to for the testimony of a good conscience ; for the former things are passed away : the bloody whore or false prophet with the beast are now in the lake of fire burning with brimstone : and babylon the great , like a milstone , sunk into the bottom of the sea never to rise again : such is the state of the blessed millennium when it comes ; nor shall gog and magog prevail against the holy city in the laodicean interval . . and he that sate on the throne , said , behold i make all things new : a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness : and he said unto me , write , for these words are true and faithful ; that is , what i have told you will certainly come to pass . there will be such a blessed millennium as here has been hinted at . . and he said unto me , it is done . the thing is as sure as if it were done already . this is a farther confirmation to him of the truth of the things affirmed . and this earnest and repeated assertion of this truth is no more than needs , it being foreseen how incredulous not only those would be , whose interest it is that it were false , ( the idolatrous hierarchy i mean of the antichristian party ) but even those , that were it not for the carnal sluggishness of their natures , might easily conceive it were their interest that it should be true . i am alpha and omega , the beginning and the end. i comprehend all within the compass of my providence and power : therefore never distrust but that what i have told will come to pass . these things reach into the laodicean interval : in the epistle to which church christ calls himself the amen , the faithful and true witness , and the beginning of the creation of god. and what follows belongs to the last judgement of all , the eternal reward of the good , and the punishment of the wicked . i will give unto him that is athirst , of the fountain of the water of life freely : he that does seriously desire and endeavour to obtain everlasting life , according to the wayes prescribed in my gospel , i will give it him freely : he need not buy it by large summs of money , or what other gainful conditions imposed upon him by that merchandizing city of babylon ; touching whose merchandizing it is said , — coelum venale deusque : they set heaven , and god himself to sale for money . . he that overcometh the flesh , the world , and the devil , shall inherit all things : he shall be an heir of god , and joynt-heir with christ in the glorious kingdom of his father , and this certainly comprizeth all that heart can wish . and i will be his god , and he shall be my son. and if sons then heirs , as i said before : heirs of god , and joynt-heirs with christ , if so be we suffer with him , that we may be also glorified with him , that is , be made partakers of his heavenly kingdom and glory , according as he has promised to the church of laodicea : to him that overcometh will i grant to sit with me in my throne , even as i also overcame , and am set down with my father in his throne : where throne plainly implyes a kingdom . . but the fearful , and unbelieving , and abominable , and murderers , and whoremongers , and sorcerers , and idolaters , and all lyars , such as the great city of babylon abounded withall , shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone , which is the second death : which therefore undoubtedly is the conflagration under the last thunder , which plainly shows , that from the second verse to the ninth , is a brief description of the affairs of the church from the second thunder to the last , or to the end of the world . now as after a brief mention of the destruction of babylon , chap. . vers . . there is a large description of her , and her destruction in the two following chapters , ( viz. ) chap. and . so here , after a brief intimation of the emersion of the new ierusalem into being , there is a full and glorious description thereof from this ninth verse following of this chapter to the sixth of the next . . and there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven uials full of the seven last plagues , and talked with me , saying , come hither , i will shew thee the bride , the lambs wife . it is likely it was the same angel that before shewed him the judgement of the great whore : whose destroying was in order to the lambs wife taking place . and therefore the showing him the lambs wife , was to show him the main end of the effusion of the vials , and therefore a fitting office for one of these angels to do . . and he carried me away rapt in the spirit to a great and high mountain : the height of the mountain denotes the height , and power , and dignity , the pure apostolick church is then arrived to . and shewed me that great city , as being the church catholick spread far and wide , the holy ierusalem , as being the truly holy catholick and apostolick church , not a city of idolaters and murderers , descending out of heaven from god , as whose constitution and institutes are not the carnal invention of men , but the pure laws of the god of heaven , and the living dictates of his spirit . . having the glory of god ; not as the pharisees in the old ierusalem that sought glory one of another , but were strangers to that glory that is of god , the glory of true approved wisdom , and unspotted righteousness : and her light was like unto a stone most precious , even like a iasper-stone clear as crystal . the luminary of this city which was instead of a sun ( for the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies a luminary , or that from which the light proceeds , not the lumen dispread from the luminary ) is likened to a most precious stone , a iasper-stone clear as crystal : by which , i conceive , is understood the holy ghost ; whose holiness , purity and illumination is set out by this iasper-stone clear as crystal : ( but the natural sun it self is not without its scum and spots ) wherefore this is the most proper symbol thereof . and the times of the new ierusalem are regnum spiritûs , as the cabbalists call them . . and had a wall great and high , namely for the security of the city : and had twelve gates , and at the gates twelve angels , and names written thereon , which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of israel . the number twelve is sacred in the holy scripture , for the twelve patriarchs sake , and the twelve apostles : the former are mentioned here , the latter , vers . . and both concurr in this new city of ierusalem , it being the time when iew and gentile shall accord in one faith and be one sheepfold . the twelve angels may signifie either the safety of the city by the guard of angels : for if god , by his angels keep not the city , the watchmen wake but in vain ; or else the pastours under these twelve angels who have occasion to admit converts into the church from all quarters of the world ; as it follows in the next verse . . on the east three gates , on the north three gates , on the south three gates , and on the west three gates . three towards every quarter , as grotius and others would have it , in token that the converts are to be admitted to the profession of their faith in the holy trinity , father , son and holy ghost at their baptism . nor does this season , being regnum spiritûs , superannuate this sacrament , but rather call for it ; according to that saying of s t peter , can any one forbid water that these should not be baptized , which have received the holy ghost as well as we ? there may be also no mean nor useless mystery in the inscription of the names of the twelve tribes of the children of israel on the gates of the city rather than elsewhere . for the jews being a nation under the law , and the dispensation of the law being to live under an external rule , though we have not yet arrived to the spirit of life , it is implied , that there is no entrance into this dispensation of the spirit , without endeavouring as well as we can , to live up to those external rules exhibited to us from the word , whereby we break off from all external evil courses , and imitate all good and laudable actions , as well as we can , with all sincerity of heart , which is the summe of true repentance . . and the wall of the city had twelve foundations , and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the lamb ; which sheweth the pure apostolicalness in this constitution of the church , and insinuates the safety of this apostolicalness : for walls are for safety , and these are the very foundations of the walls . . and he , the angel , that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city , and the gates thereof , and the wall thereof . apoc. chap. . there the church was measured by a man , but this new state of things by an angel. that simply with a reed , this with a golden reed ; which implies , that this new state of things will as much surpass that state of the church , though symmetral to the reed it was then measured with , as angels do men , and a golden reed , an ordinary combustible one , as there indeed was in those first four hundred years , ( which are accounted the symmetral ages of the church ) that which was very combustible , and ought to be consumed . but the pure word of god , and spirit of love abide for ever . and this is the golden reed that adequately measures the new ierusalem : for the word of god abideth for ever , and charity never ceaseth . . and the city lyeth four square ; which figure , as well as the number four are symbols of righteousness : and the length is as large as the breadth ; that 's but an explication of the squareness thereof : and he measured the city with the réed twelve thousand furlongs : the length , and the breadth , and the height of it are all equal ; that is , the city is in the form of a cube , which plainly shows it cannot be a city literally understood but a polity , and signifies not walls and houses but men . the solid content therefore of the city is said to be twelve thousand furlongs , to signifie how entirely apostolical the constitution of things then will be . and to show that this city is more peculiarly described in opposition to the roman hierarchy , * the perimeter of the cube twelve thousand furlongs is the circuit of ierusalem , as the perimeter of the cube twenty five thousand furlongs , ( which twenty five is the root of the number of the beast ) is the circuit of rome . but this it may be is a curiosity that might as well have been omitted , as i do also for brevity sake omit , * that to the twelve gates , angels , tribes , foundations in the new ierusalem , do answer twenty five gates , pastours , parishes , cardinals , &c. in the city of rome . . and he measured the wall thereof , an hundred forty four cubits , according to the measure of a man , that is , of the angel in the shape of a man , and whose measuring is to be understood humano more , by extracting the square root : now the root of , is twelve , which shows the height and thickness of the wall , and being twelve , it denotes again the pure apostolicalness of the frame thereof , and the strength of it from this apostolical fabrick thereof . . and the building of the wall of it was of iasper , the hebrew word , which is rendred by the septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is as much as ictibus resistens , as grotius notes ; which is not to be subdued by the knocks of the hammer , but rather so strong , that it breaks all that strikes against it : in which sense the wall being of iasper signifies how firm and inexpugnable it is throughout , and is a symbol of invincible patience or fortitude , without which all the rest of the vertues are in a manner useless , especially in the day of tryal . and the city was pure gold like unto clear glass : whence it perfectly resembles the amber in ezechiel's vision , which is that divine element of regeneration , as i elsewhere more fully show : but the golden colour is the tincture of the spirit of love or charity , which high perfection ( and the highest that is ) of the soul , i conceive to be here signified by gold in this vision where ever it is mentioned . gold being by far the most noble of all metals , most pure , and most permanent , as the apostle takes notice that charity is , which never fails , whatever becomes of other gifts and graces . and this city is the philadelphian interval of the church , whose proper character is divine love. . and the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones ; that is to say , the beauty of them was the garnishing , but the substance of them the safety of the city , which is the end for which walls are built . the first foundation was a iasper : that by iasper more peculiarly was signified the holy spirit , that is said to be the luminary of this city , i have noted above . but he is not only the luminary of this city , but the first foundation of the wall thereof , that is , the principal ground of their safety , ephes. . . that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory , to be strengthened with might by his spirit , &c. and a little after , that ye being rooted and grounded in love , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , having your foundation in love , &c. which is this spirit of love , the first foundation of the wall of this city : and which is such a spirit as will drive away all evil or foul spirits , such as have their haunts in the ruines of babylon , chap. . vers . . as the iasper-stone is said in dionysius afer , to be an amulet against all empusa's , and other specters : and others write of it , that it stops the tumults of thoughts , and inconstancy of mind arising from the motions of the blood , which in an higher sense in the proper office of the holy spirit , of which the iasper is a symbol . the second a saphir : the saphir is a stone of the colour of the heavens , which therefore is a fit note of heavenly-mindedness ; and is said to be an amulet against lust : this is another security of their city , that they set their mind upon heavenly things , whereby they escape the pollutions of the earthly . the saphir therefore is a fit means to keep the new ierusalem in her pure philadelphian condition , that is to say , in the holy and divine love , which is counterdistinct to lust and wantonness , of which some sects that have pretended too early to this philadelphian state , have been , i fear , over-justly suspected . the third a chalcedonie , which is a kind of carbuncle , a glowing gemm like fire , which signifies holy zeal , which keeps the philadelphians from sinking into that nauseous state of lukewarmness , which is so severely reprehended in the church of laodicea , and which brings gog and magog upon them at last . the fourth an emerald ; smaragdus , the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which has its name from casting forth lightening , as when it thunders , whence in cornelius à lapide , it is called also ceraunius . this denotes that safety which the city has by those boanerges's , those powerful preachers of the gospel assisted by the spirit , such as appeared under the seventh vial , and batter'd down the cities of the nations : who serve also for the preserving their own city , better than cannoneers playing from the walls thereof . . the fifth a sardonyx : a stone of a threefold colour , beneath black , in the midst , white , and above , reddish : this i conceive may denote the due frequenting of the sacrament of the lords supper , as the gates of the city , with the angels , that is , pastours or bishops to admit converts , signified the sacrament of baptism : the black therefore at the bottom is the death of our lord the foundation of the solemnity that celebrates his death till he come ; the white the bread , and the red the wine , the elements that are made use of in the celebration of his supper . and this is a good hold to the church from relapsing into heathenism again , as some enthusiasts have seemed too prone to do . the sixth a sardius , in the hebrew it is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , odem , from the colour of blood ; which may signifie these two things : the profession of our readiness to lay down our lives for the faith of christ , and also a due remembrance of those horrible cruelties , butcheries and massacres of both the pagan and paganochristian polity , the whore that is said to be drunk with the blood of the saints , and with the blood of the martyrs of iesus , and so retain an eternal watchful aversation from so detestable a religion . this is also one part of the wall of safety about the new ierusalem . the seventh a chrysolith , or the stone that has its denomination from gold. whether the philosophers stone may be hereby prefigured , i leave to the chymists to consider ; but because that knowledge is vulgarly held the very top of all natural knowledge , by this stone it 's likely is signified the flourishing of the most profound and useful natural wisdom in this new ierusalem , that humane nature is capable of . and besides , it is written of the chrysolith , that it does , confortare intellectum , pusillanimitatem stultitiámque auferre , & sapientiam animique constantiam promovere . so in this also it is plain , that there consists part of the safety of the city . but this chrysolith , besides wisdom , may also signifie firmness of love , whereby the stones of this living city of god are held fast together , which is an egregious ground of safety indeed . the eighth a beryl , a stone excellent to make collyriums or eye-salves of ; the want of which is upbraided to the church of laodicea ; whereby as by other defects she was made obnoxious to the rabble of gog and magog , that at last besieged her : this stone therefore is a good prop from falling into the laodicean state , and for the keeping the church safe in the philadelphian , their eyes being cleared by this collyrium , and enabled by their quick-sightedness , to foresee afar off how they are to order their affairs for their safety . the ninth a topaze , which either has its name from the island topazios , according to pliny , which is so called in the troglodytick language from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to seek , mariners with much ado finding it out by reason of being wholly covered with mists ; whence this stone may be a fit symbol of a generous and noble desire of the soul , to find out the dark mysteries of the nature of god and his providence , whereby her affections are drawn upward from the dregs of this earth : or else , as some would have it , the word may be made of the article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aurum solidum , solid gold , or gold well purified , for that makes it the more solid : this is that gold tryed in the fire , which christ counsels the laodicean church to buy of him , for want of which she had become so poor and miserable . this topaze therefore may well be a stone in the wall of the philadelphian church , to keep her still in that condition , it signifying pure love firmly radicated in the divine element of regeneration . the tenth a chrysoprasus , a gemm of an austere colour , as grotius and others have noted , but the golden colour being mixt with it , it signifies animum subtristem & benignum , the best temper of mind in the world , and most like to our blessed saviours . this is a great conservation of that reverence that is due to holy personages , when lightness and mirth diminisheth their estimation . and those whom by this artifice they would win , ordinarily feed onely on the sweet of their conversation , but let the wholesom alone , like fishes that have a trick to nibble away the bait and avoid the hook . the eleventh a iacinth , which is a stone of a bright , clear skie-colour ; which therefore signifies that inward chearfulness , calmness and serenity of mind in this state of the regenerate , which the apostle calls , righteousness , and peace , and ioy in the holy ghost , which they having once tasted , they will be ever unwilling to be deprived of , and therefore never like to relapse from the state of philadelphia , or the new ierusalem . the twelfth an amethyst : this stone is an amulet against drunkenness , as the notation of the word does plainly import , too frequent a vice in the sardian church , to be drunk with wine or strong drink , as it was for the whore of babylon to be drunk with the blood of saints and martyrs : but the philadelphian keeps free from this debauchery , which is her great security from errour and danger . of this wretched sin is that complaint of the prophet , ( esay . ) the priest , and the people have erred through strong drink , they err in vision , they stumble in judgement : wherefore if this amethyst were not one of the stones of the wall in the new ierusalem , they would soon be exposed to the armies of gog and magog , that would invade the city — somno vinóque sepultam , overwhelmed with sleep and wine . wine and strong drink , and all other intemperance and gluttony diminisheth the understanding and judgement , especially in things of the greatest importance , makes men careless , and remiss , and destroyes all order and discipline , weakens the health of the body , and makes the soul incapable of the holy influences of the spirit of god : so necessary a stone therefore for the safety of the city is this amethyst to be placed in the wall thereof . . and the twelve gates were twelve pearls , every several gate was of one pearl ; which shows plainly the thing cannot be literally understood , unless there were oisters , or other conchae , bigger than one of these gates or porches . but in that the gates , ( viz. ) inletts into the city are said to be pearles , that gemm sets out the condition of them that are fitted to enter into the city . for the colour of the pearle shows the mild , innocent , child-like meekness of them that are fit to enter , as our saviour has declared : vnless you be converted and become as one of these children , you cannot enter into the kingdom of god. the notation of the word also intimates what is requisite to baptism , ( viz. ) repentance : for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , vnio , from whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is derived , alludes to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the mixture of bitterness , which denotes the wholesome cup of repentance . but the whiteness of the pearles may insinuate also the washing away of the guilt and stain of sin in the sacrament of baptism , which interpreters make these gates to be a symbol of . and the street of the city was pure gold , as it were transparent glass : the street , that is forum vrbis , as grotius notes , the publick place where they meet and transact businesses : it is said to be pure gold , like to transparent glass , because they converse one with another bonâ fide , in pure love and sincerity , as if they were transparent to one another , and could see one anothers hearts and thoughts . . and i saw no temple there . no such temple as was amongst the jews ; which together with the divine residence supposed in it , as being deemed the house of god , is properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such a temple as this there was none in the new ierusalem . for the lord god almighty , and the lamb are the temple of it . the eternal deity is the object of their worship , and the lamb , the body of christ , the holy catholick church , is the house wherein he resides , the same with the city it self , which from his presence there is called iehovah shammah , ezech. . . god therefore immediately residing by his spirit in the hearts of his people , the citizens of this new ierusalem , this is instead of the temple of the ancient jews : and according to the prophetick stile , lamb , will more naturally ( though it does not so usually ) signifie the body of christ his church , than christ himself . . and the city had no need of the sun , neither of the moon to shine in it : this may allude to isai. . . the sun shall be no more thy light by day , &c. but the more peculiar sense of the place , i conceive , according to the prophetick stile , ( which makes the sun the highest power in any polity , and the moon next to it , as an emperour and an emperess in an empire , or an vniversal patriarch and emperour , as the popish interpreters expound the two great lights , the sun and the moon , the one of the pope , the other of the emperour , the ecclesiastick power being the sun , the secular the moon ; ) the sense , i say , is this , that no man imagine any necessity in those dayes , when the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of the lord , and of his christ , that there should be any such oecumenical patriarch , pope or bishop over the church of christ , or any vniversal monarch or emperour over his whole empire , it is expresly said , that the city had no need of the sun , neither of the moon to shine in it , no need of any one vniversal prelate , and vniversal monarch , as some would fancy the pope and the emperour to have been . for the glory of god did lighten it ; that is , the spirit of god which is compared to the iasper-stone , vers . . which is said to be the luminary thereof ; this is the sun or supreme power thereof , which is to hold all together . and the lamb is the light thereof ; namely by shedding the promised efficacy of his spirit into it . the kings therefore of those many kingdoms , that in those dayes become the kingdom of christ , shall have no other supreme head over them but christ himself , but be as the four and twenty crowned elders before the throne of the lamb , and have no other superiour , neither patriarch nor monarch but he . of those times is said that of isai. chap. . . then the moon shall be confounded , and the sun ashamed , ( all that have born themselves as universal monarchs in church or state hitherto ) when the lord of hosts shall reign in mount sion and ierusalem , namely in this new ierusalem , and before his ancients gloriously ; those ancients described , chap. . as cloathed with white rayment , and sitting upon thrones with golden crowns on their heads ; which signifie the kings of those times when jew and gentile shall make one fold , and the church be reduced to her apostolick purity in the blessed millennium ; over whom there will be no head but god and christ , nor will they have need to be held together in one universal kingdom of christ by any other tye than his laws , and the union of his holy spirit , which will be so abundantly shed forth in their hearts in those days , namely in the philadelphian succession . . and the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it : extra ecclesiam nulla est salus , is a maxime amongst the pontificians , confining salvation to a blind implicit faith in the infallibility of their pope and church : but the iasper-stone , the influence of the holy spirit , which is the light of this city , is that by whose guidance the nations now walk in the wayes of salvation : and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it ; that is , turn converts to this dispensation of the spirit , where the word and the spirit is the rule , not the blind decrees of both a fallacious and fallible polity of men , that adulterate doctrine for their worldly interest . . and the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day : their prosperity , and great knowledge , and illumination will not make them proud , disdainful or careless of others happiness and salvation , but they will be ever ready to embrace and admit by baptisme all converts from all quarters of the world upon their sincere repentance and conversion . for there shall be no night there , no adversity nor ignorance in this philadelphian interval , while the eternal spirit of love shines upon them : and therefore they will be alwayes ready at every one of their twelve gates standing open to all the four quarters of the world , to admit all single-hearted and sincere proselytes . . and they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it : the best spirits , and the most noble and considerable persons of all nations will flow in to them , and be proselyted by them , be admitted citizens of the new ierusalem , and members of this truly holy catholick and apostolick church of christ. . but ( for so may 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie ) there shall in no wise enter into it * any thing , any person , that defileth , or is of a scandalous conversation , neither whatsoever , whosoever worketh abomination , that is , committeth idolatry , though the whore of babylon would admit none but such , or maketh a lye . no legend-mongers , nor obtruders of absurd and impossible doctrines , such as the artificers of babylon forged for filthy lucre-sake , no such may be admitted to come into this city , whose gates are pure pearl : but they only who are written in the lambs book of life , as breathing after a life sutable to his : but the description of this glorious city is not yet finished , it reaches further into the five first verses of the following chapter . notes . chapter xxi . vers. . by a lemmatosynechia as it is called , &c. lemmatosynechia is an apocalyptick scheme or figure , whereby , as the word signifies , the cortex , or outward letter of the text is held together , or continued in such sort , as if there were a real connexion and dependance of one part upon the other , when as in the inward sense there is no such matter : an elegant instance of this is to be found , chap. . vers . , . where upon the mention of the great earthquake it is presently said : and the great city was divided in three parts ; as if that division had been a diruption caused by that earthquake , when as what is meant by that great city , were three distinct parties before . a like example of this figure is also , chap. . vers . , , . where the two witnesses are said to be slain , as it were at the ending of their witnessing , and their dead bodies to lye three dayes and an half unburied , where the three dayes and an half are set at the end of the one thousand two hundred and sixty dayes , as if they were the latter end of them , when as they in truth commence as high as the one thousand two hundred and sixty dayes , and the same time with them . but the parable runs smooth in the outward cortex , as if they were distinct , and the death of the witnesses for three dayes and an half together , occasioned by their one thousand two hundred and sixty dayes prophesying : see also , chap. . vers . . but as eximious as any is this present example of a lemmatosynechia , the mention of a new heaven and a new earth being immediately made upon the burning of this natural earth : which therefore in the cortex implyes , that the destroying of that gave occasion of making a new heaven and a new earth , when as they are not natural but political , as both grotius and doctor hammond acknowledge , and the text will extort it from any one that reads this twenty first chapter considerately . vers. . any thing , any person , &c. it is usual with s t john to put the neuter gender for the masculine , as joh. . vers . , , . see grotius upon the place . chapter xxii . . and he shewed me a pure river of water of life , clear as crystal , proceeding out of the throne of god , and of the lamb : what this river may signifie , that in * amos may be a key to : let iudgement run down as water , and righteousnesse as a mighty stream . again , touching the uttering of divine and holy doctrines , it is said of god , ecclesiastic . . . he filleth all things with his wisdom , as phison and as tigris in the time of the new fruits . he maketh the vnderstanding to abound like euphrates , and as jordan in the time of harvest , &c. wherefore this river of water of life from the throne of god , is the faithfull and effectual administration of justice , and pouring forth holy and wholesom doctrines and monitions in the demonstration of the spirit , by them that are in highest authority , in this city of god , which authority is understood by the throne of god , and of the lamb , who in right of his father is supreme governour over all , and the immediate actuator of his vicegerents . . in the midst of the street of it , that is , in the midst of the forum of the city , or broad open place where their meetings were to serve god , consult of their affairs , and administer justice . and of either side of the river , which ran from thence through the city , was there the tree of life , that is , trees of life , else how could they be in rowes on this side and that side the river ? by which trees , according to the prophetick stile , must be understood men , and that not of the meaner sort , but grandees in church and state. and being they are called trees of life , it intimates a state quite contrary to that of the wicked ; ( iud. . ) trees whose fruit withereth , without fruit , twice dead , &c. beside that it signifies , that the life of the lamb is in them : which bare twelve manner of fruits , and all worthy the profession of the pure apostolick faith ; and yielded her fruit every month of the year : so uncessant are they in the bringing forth the fruits of true faith , which are good works . here seems to be an allusion to the description of the righteous man , psalm . he shall be as a tree planted by the rivers side , &c. and of these happy times of the messias in the expected millennium , is that , psalm . . understood : in his dayes shall the righteous flourish , like a palm tree , as it is elsewhere said ; or , like a cedar in lebanon . the sense therefore is , that by the free current of justice , and the countenancing pure doctrine from the higher powers , which the throne of god intimates , holy and good men both in church and state will be in authority and esteem to manage the affairs of christ's kingdom , obliging all unto them by their christian goodness and equity , which is the constant fruit which they bear . and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations ; that is , the people of those several nations which are then brought under the empire of christ : which is an insinuation of the gentle but effectual healing discipline , which will be in this philadelphian interval . those are the leaves of these trees to heal the sores of the people , by gently drawing away the corruption , whatever may be remaining in them . . and there shall be no more curse ; no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . no more furious papal anathema's , or excommunications to depose kings and princes , and to involve the christian world in blood . but the throne of god and of the lamb shall be in it : that is , christ shall be in it . the meek empire of the lamb of god shall obtain after the tyranny of the bloody antichrist , or two-horned beast , who wore the horns of the lamb , falsly pretending to be his vicar , but spoke like the dragon , decreeing idolatries , and barbarous persecutions : and his servants shall serve him , they shall serve him with a willing and prompt mind in this day of his power . . and they shall see his face ; they will enjoy the full light of the glory of god in the face of jesus christ. his life and his spirit will be most palpably and sensibly revealed in them . and his name shall be in their foreheads . it shall also be plain to all from their outward conversation , whose they are , and to whom they belong , ( viz. ) that they are the faithful servants of jesus . . and there shall be no night there : no ignorance , nor any persecution for not being ignorant , and for not admitting of things blasphemous and impossible . that ignorance is the mother of devotion will be out of date in those days , which principle sate like the darkness of midnight on the church during the time of the idolatrous hierarchy . and they need no candle , no factitious lights or false instructions of carnal men : nor the light of the sun , no pretended infallibility of the pope , whom his flatterers make the universal sun of the christian world , and put the emperour like the moon under his feet . for the lord god giveth them light ; namely , by his word and by his spirit , and they shall be no longer slaves to the cunningly contrived opinions of men . and in this freedom of the light of the word and spirit they shall reign for ever and ever , that is , this kingdom of christ shall never be subjected again to the power of the wicked . nor shall that numerous rabble of gog and magog , be able to take this city , but it shall continue to the visible coming of christ to judgement , and his sentencing all the ungodly to the lake burning with fire and brimstone , which is the second death . . and he said unto me , these things are faithfull and true ; namely , these predictions of the excellent state of the church in the philadelphian interval , described or set out by the new ierusalem , and as stupendious as it may seem to flesh and blood , yet is a most certain truth . and the lord god of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants , both this great mystery of the new ierusalem , and other things , the things which must shortly be done , namely under the first six seals . . behold , i come quickly to support my church in her smyrnean condition under the second , third , fourth and fifth seals , and to deliver her from her persecutions under the sixth . blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book : that is , that observeth what is writ therein for his own direction and comfort . . and i iohn saw these things and heard them , and when i had heard and seen i fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things ; and amongst other things , the great glory of the catholick or universal church , set out by the description of the new ierusalem : which did so overcome him with joy , as that assurance of the conversion of his own countrey-men the jews , that again he was carryed away into the greatest affection and veneration for the messenger of such enravishing news . . then saith he unto me , see thou do it not : for i am thy fellow-servant , and the fellow-servant of they brethren the prophets , ( viz. ) of those that truly believe in , and bear witness of jesus christ by the inspiration of the holy ghost . and of them which keep the sayings of this book : that observe them , understand them , and believe them , and have faith and courage to act accordingly : which no man can do , but by the power of the spirit of god : worship god : accordingly as our saviour has prescribed , thou shalt worship the lord thy god , and him onely shalt thou serve . . and he saith unto me , seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book , as if it concerned onely times afar off , or many ages to come : for the time is at hand , that is , the time of exercising the faith of the true followers of christ in the smyrnean interval of the church , and of discovering the barbarous and brutish cruelty of paganism against them : which tragedy will be acted over again in the pergamenian and thyatirian intervals of the church by a pagano-christian synagogue ; whereby the faith of the true church will be exercised , and more illustriously appear , and the wickedness of a false hypocritical hierarchy more notoriously manifested to the world , divine providence administring occasion for the discovering both in their colours , not forcing the wills of either by his absolute omnipotency . whence it follows in the next verse : . he that is unjust let him be unjust still , and he that is filthy let him be filthy still : let their unjust cruelty , and barbarous persecution , and foulness of life , and filthiness of idolatry go on in the pagan , and afterwards in the pagano-christian polity , till they are ripe for judgment , i will not stop them . and he that is righteous let him be righteous still , and he that is holy let him be holy still ; that is , increase more and more in honesty of conversation , unblameableness of life , and purity in religion , and in zeal against all idolatry , not refusing the assistances of my spirit and grace . . and behold i come quickly , and my reward is with me , to give every man according as his work shall be . i will demolish or abolish the pagan religion , and set up the christian under the sixth seal in the reign of constantine , and judge the whore , the idolatrous hierarchy under the sixth trumpet , and utterly destroy her under the seventh vial , and he that is righteous growing still more righteous , and he that is holy still more holy , introduce the glorious state of the new ierusalem under the second thunder . these things are within the compass of my providence and power , and therefore will certainly come to pass . for , . i am alpha and omega , the beginning and the end , the first and the last . my kingdom shall out-last all kingdoms , neither shall any power upon earth survive my reign in the holy city ierusalem : whence follow the words of saint iohn , as relating to those times . . blessed are they that do his commandments , that walk uprightly according to the external word or law : that they may have right to the tree of life ; that is , be baptized at last into the dispensation of the spirit of life in the new birth , and may enter through the gates into the city , that is , be baptized and admitted citizens , in order to the aforesaid attainment , to be true members of this living church of christ , the new ierusalem , and enjoy all the holy and healing priviledges thereof , which have been above described . . for without are dogs , and sorcerers , and whoremongers , and murderers , and idolaters , and whosoever loveth and maketh a lye ; that is , brutish , obscene and atheistical men , and jugling pretenders to miracles , and kainish persecutors had they but power , and in the mean time gross idolaters , and either lovers of lying legends , or inventours of them : these unclean birds are kept out of the new ierusalem , but have their dismal haunts in the rubbish and ruines of the demolished babylon , as has been observed above . . i iesus have sent my angel to testifie unto you these things in the churches , alluding to the churches in asia ; which signifie the whole succession of the truly catholick and apostolick church to the end of the world . the churches therefore for whose use this book was written , are the churches in smyrna , pergamus , thyatira , sardis , philadelphia and laodicea . the whole book of the apocalypse is as it were an epistle to them all , as they are concerned in their several successions . which passage is a farther confirmation of the prophetical sense of the epistles to the seven churches in asia . i am the root , and the off-spring of david . * which may denote his divinity and humanity ; as also his being the off-spring or son of david the true messias , his right to the kingdoms of the earth , as it is foretold in the second psalm , ask of me and i will give thee the nations for thine inheritance , and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession . and therefore because of the greatness and glory of his kingdom , it follows , and the bright morning-star . in the sardian interval he was onely the morning-star , ( here the bright morning-star ) which is a sign this saying glances at the philadelphian interval in the commencement thereof under the last vial ; which sutes with the saying of s t iohn in the next verse . . and the spirit and the bride say come : the spirit , because this is the commencement of those times that are properly called the reign of the spirit by the cabbalists : and the voice of the bride is added as a testimony of the churches desire of the settlement of things into the glorious condition of the new ierusalem , upon the destruction of the blood-drunken idolatrous babylon . and let him that heareth , say , come ; that is , let him pray for the acceleration of so glorious a settlement of things . and then our saviour speaks , ( for this latter part of the chapter , from vers . . to the end , is a kind of dialogue , as both peganius and grotius have observed ) and let him that is athirst come , that is , he that sincerely hungers and thirsts after righteousness . and whosoever will , that is , whosoever has a will and desire , let him take the waters of life freely . let him enjoy the happy priviledge of this living city of god , and so grow up in all true holiness and godliness in communion of the spirit . this priviledge shall he enjoy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , gratis , or freely , without money , as the prophet speaks . . for i testifie unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book , if any one shall add unto these things : interpreters , and not without reason , take this to be a commination to terrifie men from being so negligent as to let any errata slip into the copies of this book of prophecies , where every word was so curiously weighed by the pen-man thereof ; or from being so bold as on purpose to alter any thing therein , by adding or taking away : * but i conceive also , there is besides this a 〈◊〉 sense , and that it is a prohibition from bringing in their carnal inventions to add , inconsistently with the pure apostolick doctrines and institutes of this city : whosoever would do any such thing , god shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book , whether they concern this life , or that which is to come , the sulphurous lake of fire , which is the second death . . and if any man will take from the words of the book of this prophecy , and be faint-hearted , or of little or no faith , and contend there never will be such an excellent state of the church upon earth , god shall take away his part out of the book of life , and out of the holy city , and from the things that are written in this book . he shall never be able to enter into the blessed new ierusalem state , by reason of his unbelief . . he that testifieth these things , saith , surely i come quickly : that is , for the fulfilling of the visions of the first six seals , and what contemporizeth with them , to assist his church , and support them in their smyrnean affliction , and to defeat the enemy under the sixth seal . to which saint iohn answers , amen : even so , come lord iesus . this was seasonable for saint iohn to say in his time , in reference to christs coming to subvert the power of the old dragon , and abolish paganical idolatry and tyranny : as it was also in the pergamenian and thyatirian intervals for the oppressed and afflicted church to say in respect of his coming to judge the great whore , the pagano-christian hierarchy , who had been drunk with the blood of the saints , and with the blood of the martyrs of jesus : and in the sardian , that he would consummate the judgement begun to be executed on the false prophet , who is perfectly to be consumed under the seventh vial. and lastly , in the laodicean interval , it will be again very seasonable , by reason of the inclining of things again to worse , to pray , come lord iesus , come quickly , to that general judgement , when death shall be swallowed up into victory , and all the saints shall be translated into the incorruptible state of heavenly bliss and glory . and this whole book of prophecies , being as it were one entire epistle monitory to the church of god throughout all ages of the world ; as there is mention vers. . of witnessing these things to the churches ( in asia no doubt ) that is , over the face of the whole earth , and successively through all ages or intervals , ( from saint iohn's time to the end of the world ) smyrnean , pergamenian , thyatirian , sardian , philadelphian and laodicean ; this whole book , i say , being such a general monitory epistle , it is but sutable that he conclude with that usual form of valediction in the epistles of the apostles . . the grace of our lord iesus christ be with you all . amen . notes . chapter xxii . vers. . which may denote his divinity and humanity , &c. this any one that firmly believes the divinity of christ , and that he is the eternal logos , united with the humane nature , will easily admit to be suggested here ; though grotius is content to understand no more by radix davidis than surculus davidis , and i must confess , that according to the use of the hebrew word , radix is sometimes the same with surculus : but being that root ordinarily signifies that from which another grows , not that which grows from another , and that this sense here is both true , and more ample and sublime , and therefore more sutable to the genius of the apocalypse , i thought it was more probable to be meant here ; as also in the fifth chapter . and generally the ancients go that way , ambrosius , aretas , andreas caesareensis , and others . see ribera on the place . vers. . but i conceive also , there is besides this a further sense ; and the truth is , that other sense does very hardly agree with the beginning of the verse , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for i testifie : in so much that ribera is fain to acknowledge , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here is only an expletive particle , and signifies nothing at all . and adds further , how several mss. are without 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and grotius follows those copies . but if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the force thereof be retained , and we read , for i testifie unto every man , it involves a reason , why every man should close with this free invitation made before , implying , that this excellent state of things is really intended by christ , a state so pure and so perfect , and that all other things condemned in this book are to be rejected . and therefore he that would either admit or foist in any of those rejectaneous things , or hypocritically diminish the faith or belief of so great perfection of the church , as there is set out by the description of the new jerusalem , the commination is to him . and this threatened punishment is also an argument of the truth and seriousness of christs proposal ; which i would have them seriously to consider , that make it their business to decry all hope of those good times , when peace , and truth , and righteousness shall reign upon earth , to lull themselves and others asleep in their sins . and farther to confirm this sense of ours , d r hammond upon this and the following verse ; whosoever , sayes he , shall go about to infuse any other expectations into men than what are agreeable to these visions , god shall bring on him the judgments that are denounced against gods greatest enemies . and whosoever shall derogate any thing from the authority of this prophecy , or occasion mens not receiving the admonitions of christ , ( he might have added also , or their not believing his promises ) contained here in every part thereof , of which that of the state of the new jerusalem is one of the chief , god shall cast him off , and account him uncapable of all the blessings which are here promised to the faithful christians . which paraphrase of this learned and pious doctor of our church on these two verses , is not much unlike ours , which is no small argument for the naturalness of the interpretation , in that , though we disagree in other things , we both agree in this . the epilogue . i have now , i reader , i hope made good the promise of my title page , and exhibited to thy view and judgment , as well a plain and perspicuous as continued exposition of the apocalypse from the beginning to the end . which whole exposition , though it be intirely of one piece , yet that more be not attributed to my performance than i deserve , the invention of every part thereof is not from one man , but whatever i have drawn in from others , it is like well concocted food , made a congruous and congenerous part of the whole body of my exposition , i admitting nothing but what i first carefully considered , and if need was rectified , polished , illustrated , and amplified : and he that i am most of all beholden to , is that incomparably pious and learned person m r ioseph mede , once one of the fellows of our colledge , in whose steps where he treads right , i thought i was bound to insist , as also in any others so far as they are in a true path . for i account it a juvenile piece of pride and wantonness in any one to innovate where things seem right already , unless he bring that which is plainly truer . for this affectation of bringing of something new in interpreting scripture , does but dissettle the minds of those that are to be informed , and makes the holy writt to lose its scope and efficacy , and to seem more uncertain , and obscure than indeed it is . and therefore enthusiasts that attempt any expositions of this book , without carefully consulting the most likely interpreters before them ; it is no inspiration of the spirit in them , but a blind puff of pride and vanity of mind , a blast of self-conceitedness , that drives them upon such rash and dangerous enterprises , out of a bold presumption , that others have not attempted these things as much in the fear of god , and with as good assistances of his spirit , as they can pretend to . such men as these seek not the interest of the true apostolick church , but do sacrifice to their own pride , and seek to be accounted somebody amongst men , or to make a confusion of all . ii but for my own part i can call god and my own conscience to witness ( and i think the circumstances of the times we are in may assure any one of my integrity in this protestation ) that nothing but the mere service of the truly catholick and apostolick church , has invited me to publish this my exposition of the apocalypse ; as being full perswaded of the truth , and manifold usefulness thereof , which i have showed in my preface to the reader , and that especially amongst the rest , that it does so plainly demonstrate both the protestants freeness from the guilt of schism as to the church of rome , and the church of rome's guiltiness of that hainous and intolerable crime of idolatry , which is a further confirmation of the protestants freeness from the guilt of schism . i confess that our writers by sound and irrefutable reason , have proved the church of rome guilty of this crime : but by reason of the hardness of the hearts , or foreheads of our adversaries , god himself has set his hand again and again in the apocalypse , to this accusation , or rather as a truly infallible moderator , has decided the controversy on the protestants side expressly , and repeatedly against the church of rome . i will hint some few examples , as in the prophecy of the seven churches , ( my exposition whereof is so confirmed in the tenth chapter of it , to omit other arguments , that i think it is impossible for any man that is not prodigiously laden with prejudice not to be convinced ) there , in the epistle to the church in pergamus , and again in the epistle to the church in thyatira , both which successions of the church succeed the smyrnean , which are those ages of the church in which the church suffered bitter persecutions from the pagans , doth the spirit of god complain of their eating idolothyta , which is turning the lords supper , which is a feast upon a sacrifice , into an idolatrous solemnity , like the eating of things sacrificed unto idols : in which the idolatry of their mass is plainly perstringed . and this is evidently in the successions of the church , after she had got the victory over crude paganism . again in the sealed-book-prophecie where such an exposition we have given out of m r mede of the six first seals , as against which neither papist nor protestant can justly except , and whence the six trumpets must needs shoot into the pergamenian , and thyatiran successions of the church ; it is manifest that saracens and turks under the fifth and sixth trumpets , invade the empire as a scourge for their idolatry , as plainly appears from ch. . v. . where the rest of the men that were not killed by these plagues are said not to repent them of their worshipping 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , daemons , and idols of silver , and idols of gold , &c. where daemons according to the greek idiom , signify either angels , or the souls of men , any spirits out of terrestrial bodies , the souls of saints and spirits of angels . and lastly in the opened-book-prophecy , chap. ii. what is the treading under-foot the outward court by the gentiles for fourty two months , but the over-running the empire again with idolatry and persecution ( of which gentilism , or paganism consists ) for so many months , or semitimes of months of years ? and what the . names of men , vers . . but idolatrous titles , or men of those titles that belong to the seventh head of the beast which is an idolatrous head ? and chap. . vers . . the beast there rising out of the sea with ten crowned horns , plainly shows it is the empire after its division into so many kingdoms . which therefore is under the seventh head . and all the seven heads there are said to have names of blasphemy upon them , that is of idolatry . besides , this beast is said to be the healed beast , and the image of the dragon that received the deadly wound in his fight with michael and the martyrs . which plainly shows that the empire after christanity was setled in it , became again an idolatrous persecuting beast , as the old pagan empire was . and lastly , ( not to number up all we might ) chap. . the whore of babylon with her cup of fornication , that is of idolatry , in her hand , as grotius himself cannot but interpret it , and sitting upon a beast full of names of blasphemy , that is of idolatry , again , even according to grotius , what can this be but the city of rome , and the roman empire become idolatrous ? but they put it off by saying , it is the pagan empire , and rome pagan ; which is a thing impossible . for the woman here sitting upon the beast , that was , is not , and yet is , which was never true of the roman empire , till after it had been christian , it cannot be understood of the roman empire pagan . and that conceit of domitian being this beast , it is such a childish trifle or sleight whiffle , that it is a wonder to me that any one that had any freeness of judgment , or soundness of reason , should ever fancy such a thing : but having spoken of this in my preface i will say no more of it here . from these few places to omit several others , it is abundantly evident that that truely infallible moderator , even the spirit of god himself , has decided the controversie concerning the idolatry of the church of rome , and has declared them guilty of that crime , and the protestants guiltless of any crime of schism , in leaving the communion of that church . which is a thing seriously to be considered by all the potentates of christendom , that they may not listen to the voice of the blood-thirsty iezabel , when she shall solicite the kings of the earth , to the persecution of the servants of god and christ , because they cannot bow down to stocks and stones with her , nor submit to any other of her points of idolatry . now for any invidious cavils against this firm protestant exposition of the apocalypse , iii i hope , reader , thou wilt set as little by them as i do my self . for it may be it will be thought by some , an high piece of rudeness and incivility , in that this protestant exposition of the seven heads of the beast , makes all the emperours since the apostasie of the church into idolatry , to be part of the seventh head , which is one of the heads of blasphemy , though otherwise never so noble and vertuous . and the like cavils may be raised touching the popes of rome , though they be never so learned and pious , that they will make part of the two horned beast , that has the horns of a lamb , but the voice of a dragon . and i must confess the same may be alledged against making those six forms of pagan government , kings , consuls , dictators , decemviri , triumviri , and emperours , six heads of blasphemy . when amongst the emperours it is well known , what an excellent example of vertue marcus antoninus was , and that tully , a roman consul , for wit , vertue , and eloquence , was the glory of the roman empire . but i can briefly answer for my self , that i never , since i understood tully , and marcus antoninus to be part of those two heads of blasphemy , had in the least the more diminishing thoughts of their vertues and perfections i had observed in them before . for i knew before , they were pagan idolaters , and that it was the privilege of their nature , to bear up so stoutly against the disadvantages of their religion they were born under : and there is the same reason of excellent emperors and other princes of the pontifician religion . the profession of an idolatrous religion ought not to derogate from their natural , or acquired perfections ; only all good men will heartily and solicitously wish that their souls were as safe as their personal reputation . and i charitably judge of them of the roman church , who do not stick to call all protestant kings and princes , be they never so great or never so good , hereticks ; ( and by the punishment they allot to those they call so , any one may judge what wretches and vile persons they deem them , ) that they intend notwithstanding no derogation thereby to their personal worth or vertue . but here is the great difference , that we call them nothing but what the scripture calls them ; but they nickname others against all reason and scripture , adding to false and bitter words , unjust and barbarous persecutions : and what we have said concerning emperours and kings , the same is to be said of the popes of rome . no popes personal perfections and vertues are touched , but the idolatrous and antichristian constitution and frame of things , such as every pope is to succeed into , and which make a pope a pope . but as for my interpreting the two horns of the beast of the episcopal mitre , iv that no protestant bishop take exceptions , the interpretation is not mine , but iosephus acosta's , as cornelius à lapide cites him . de tempor . noviss . lib. . c. . duo cornua , episcopalis putà mitrae sive infulae ( haec enim est bicornis ) insigne sunt . videtur ergo quòd hic pseudopropheta erit episcopus quispiam apostata , & simulator religionis , ecclesiastici honoris proditor , qui draconis venenum suis sermonibus populo propinabit . so near to the mark is the interpretation of this romanist . but in the mean time , the making the two horns of the mitre , the two horns of the lamb ; ( lamb always signifying in the apocalypse , either christ himself , or his true church ) it is a manifest commendation of the order of episcopacy , rather than any reproach thereto , as cornelius à lapide himself has observed upon the place . and as for the sharpness of stile in my exposition against the idolatry and blood-thirstiness of the roman hierarchy ; i am satisfyed in my self , that i have not the least ill will to the persons of any romanists , though i utterly abhor their religion ; and i had not been a faithful interpreter of the apocalypse , which in a great part of it is a very keen , but just satyr against the gross wickednesses of the roman church , if my exposition had not had also a due keenness and sharpness with it to awaken them , if it were possible , out of their errours , into the acknowledgment of the truth . and that a main body of them will continue obdurate , even to the effusion of the last vial ; the clearness of the vision has driven me to acknowledge such a comminatory prediction too likely to come to pass , unless a timely and sincere repentance open a way to them for the embracing of the truth . these few things i thought not amiss to take notice of , christian reader , that thou mayst take no offence at any thing , nor be entangled . now according to my promise at the end of my preface , i will present to thy view my general table of synchronisms , wherewith thou mayst refresh thy memory , as to the right order of the visions whose interpretation thou hast perused . v in the table therefore presented to thy sight , let there be noted that principal line of the whole apocalyptick scheme ad. divided into three parts ab . bc. cd . and let the whole semicircle azd. contain the prophecy of the sealed book , but the semicircle and. the prophecy of the opened book . but of those two particular semicircles alb. and brd . the former contains the first six seals , the latter the seventh , which comprehends the seven trumpets . the six first of which trumpets the semicircle bmc . includes , and the semicircle cnd. the seventh , distributed into seven thunders , orderly distinguished by numbers i. ii. iii. iv , &c. as is done in the seals and trumpets . and to this line , or row of seals , trumpets , and thunders all the rest of the visions , not only of the opened book , but of the seven churches may some way be annected and applyed by synchronismes either proper and perfect , or by imperfect and partial , as we shall advertise as we go through them . we shall begin with the antimedial visions , where aeb . is the woman in travail , cloathed with the sun , and crowned with twelve stars , rev. chap. . vers . . afb . the court of the temple and altar commensurate , or symmetral , chap. . vers . . agb . the fight of michael with the dragon , about the woman in travail , chap. . vers . , , . air . the church of ephesus , or the ephesine interval contemporizing in part with the first seal , chap. . v. . rhk. the smyrnean interval , which contemporizes with the latter part of the first seal , and with the second , third , fourth and fifth seal , and with the forepart of the sixth , chap. . vers . . the medial visions now follow , where bc. is the company of the . servants of god , sealed with the seal of the living god in their foreheads , chap. . vers . . bdc . the outward court incommensurate , or asymmetral , troden down of the gentiles for forty two months , chap. . bec . the two witnesses clad in sackcloth , and mournfully prophesying for . days , chap. . b e c. the same witnesses slain , and lying in the street of the great city for three days and an half . bfc . the woman in the wilderness there to be nourished for . days , or for a time and times and half a time , chap. . vers . , and . bgc . the seven-headed beasts with ten horns , whose deadly wound is healed , chap. . vers . . bhc . the two-horned beast , or false prophet , the restorer or healer of the beast , chap. . vers . . bic . the virgin company of the . sealed of the lamb , chap. . vers . . bkc . that great city , the whore of babylon sitting upon the seven-headed beast , with ten horns , which was , and is not , and yet is , chap. . vers . . . kpr. the pergamenian interval , contemporizing with the latter part of the sixth seal , and with the five first trumpets . rqc. the thyatirian interval , synchronizing with some small part of the fifth and with the whole sixth trumpet . as for lnc and mc . in these visions , and ceh . and gh. in the following , they respecting the voices of the three angels , and anapleroses of them , i shall take no notice of them here ; nor is their placing , nor anaplerosis so sound as what i have intimated in this my present exposition of the apocalypse , where these three angels , chap. . the first is assigned to the times of the turks taking constantinople , the second to the appearing of the reformation , and the third to about the times of the fourth vial , which being a more simple way , to me seems more assured . but we proceed to the postmedial visions . where cah . hyp. pzq . qqr. rrs. spt. and tod. are the seven antisynchronals of the seven thunders . cah . the interval of the seven vials , chap. . cfh. the compendium of the vials , chap. . vers . . to the end of the chapter . cbo . the interval of the sardian church , contemporizing with the interval of the six first vials , chap. . vers . . gh . comprehends three combinations of synchronal visions , the vision of the harvest and the winepress , chap. . vers . , . the vision of the sixth and seventh vial , chap. . vers . . and the vision of the preparation of the bride , and of the battle of the rider of the white horse , chap. . vers . , . visionvm apocalypticarvm tabvla generalis . this is the description of all my synchronisms belonging to the apocalyptick visions , vi which differ from the synchronisms of m r mede only in this , that i place all the vials after the middle synchronals under the first thunder of the seventh trumpet , he six of them before the seventh trumpet , and that he does not distinguish the seventh trumpet into seven thunders in his table as i have done , and therefore makes the binding of satan and millennial reign of christ , &c. to commence immediately ( and consequently the raign of the beast quite to expire ) at the beginning of that trumpet ; when as in truth the entireness of his kingdom only then expires . but being that else the main of the synchronisms of m r mede so far as he has gone ( for he never medled with the seven churches , nor was aware that the three days and an half the witnesses lye slain , are the same with days of their prophesying ) agree with this description i have proposed ; i will vindicate the truth of his synchronisms so far as they agree with the said description , against the cavils of a late writer r. h. of salisbury : because some men phansie though his interpretations of the apocalypse are so absurd , that as he boasts himself the sole inventor of them , so he is like to prove the sole assertor to them ; yet that he has said something material against m r mede's synchronisms , which how little it is we shall now see , but with all possible briefness , alledging only the main stress of m r medes arguments , and taking notice only of the main stress of r. h. his answers unto them . the first part . synchronism i. vii the woman remaining in the wilderness . the seven-headed beast restored . the outward court troden underfoot by the gentiles . the two witnesses in the mean time prophesying in sackcloth . that the two latter of these do contemporize or synchronize , he grants ; but denyes , that the two first begin at the same time , the woman in the wilderness , and the seven-headed beast restored . for he saith , . the woman got into the wilderness before the dragon cast the flood of water after her , to drive her out from thence , chap. . vers . , . and then , . that the earth opens her mouth and swallows up the flood of water , vers. . and , . that the dragon seeing that , leaves the woman in the wilderness , and goes and makes war with the remnant of her seed which were not fled into the wilderness , vers. . this he thinks is so true a sense and order of the prophecy , that he wonders that any man should set his wit against it : and i wonder on the contrary , that any man should have so little wit , or so little to do as to bring such weak stuff to obscure the clear reasoning of m r mede in this synchronism . for if what is alledged have any strength , it is this , that the dragon and his activity against the church in his own person , was so long after the time of the womans getting into the wilderness , that the time of the restored beast and the womans entring into the wilderness cannot commence together . but the premises are said only , not proved at all : nay the scriptures alledged for his conceit are plainly against him : for , vers. . the sense of that verse plainly is , that two wings of an eagle were given unto her to fly into the wilderness , that she might there be nourished for a time and times and half a time , &c. and the copy that grotius follows , has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that she may be nourished there . and though we retain the ordinary reading 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , yet the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it being a prophecy , will be future : for it is nonsense to say wings were given her to fly into a place into which she had gotten already . and therefore , vers. . the serpent casts out the flood of waters , whilst she was in her flight , that she might be drowned before she got into the wilderness , where she was to be entertained and nourished : and vers. . the earth opened her mouth and drunk up the flood , that she might pass safe into the wilderness ; and consequently all this is before she gets into the wilderness ; and this casting out the flood by the serpent , is his personal persecution of her , mentioned vers. . but that the dragon , vers. . went to wage war with a party of the womans seed , that had not gone into the wilderness , is a meer figment of r. h. there is no such thing in the text , and it is contrary to the plain sense thereof : for no man can doubt , but that woman is the whole catholick church ; whom to phansie not to have fled whole into the wilderness , is as absurd , as to phansie a woman to fly into the wilderness , but to leave some limbs of her behind her ; and the seed of the woman is part of the woman her self . the woman , is ecclesia tota , semen ejus singuli qui ad ecclesiam pertinent , as grotius notes upon the place . and therefore if the woman be in the wilderness , her seed must be in the wilderness ; and this seed distinguished from her seed before she came into the wilderness . whence the sense is clear , that as the dragon persecuted the womans seed before she got into the wilderness , so being he could not hinder her going into the wilderness , by his spuing out of that flood ; he maliciously meditated some mischief and hostility against her seed in the wilderness : which he presently did , by raising the healed beast against them in the chapter immediately following . thus solidly has m r mede evinced , that the time of the healed beast and of the womans remaining in the wilderness , do commence together ; and it plainly appears , that it is even nothing that r. h. has alledged against it . m r mede's other proof of this synchronism , namely from the ending of the times of the beast with the sixth trumpet , revel . . , , . to this r. h. speaks more materially than to the former . but for brevity sake , i will only note this , that there is nothing of moment alledged that reaches any further , than to prove that the reign of the beast does not end with the sixth trumpet . which is a thing i do easily grant , but yet in the mean time i contend that the fulfilling of his fourty two months is at the exitus of the sixth trumpet , which respects the duration of his kingdom in the entireness thereof . which entireness was broken at the rising of the witnesses , and therefore the entireness of his kingdom is synchronal to the two witnesses prophesying in sackcloth , they being both isochronal , or of equal time , as all those four synchronals are expressly noted to be in the very text ▪ and hence by these two arguments of m r mede's demonstrated to be synchronal , namely the womans abode in the wilderness , and the restored beasts reign for forty two months beginning together , and being isochronal are synchronal : and the restored beasts reign for forty two months , ending with the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth , and being isochronal are also synchronal . therefore the womans being in the wilderness , and the prophesying of the witnesses in sackcloth are synchronal . and r. h. himself cannot deny , but the treading under foot the outward court , and the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth are synchronal : whence it is manifest that they all four synchronize one with another . his evasion by asserting the beast , chap. . vers . . and the beast , chap. . vers . . not to be the same , is very sleight . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and if the translators had been pleased to translate it accordingly , rising out of the sea , there had been no doubt of his sameness , there being nothing repugnant in him to the description of the other , and it is the genius of the apocalypse to give an obscurer hint at first , of what it speaks more fully and clearly afterwards . synchronism ii. the two-horned beast or false prophet . the ten-horned healed beast or image of the beast . here r. h. acknowledges that the healed beast synchronizes with the two-horned beast , from the time of his healing , but that the healed beast was first raised , then wounded , and after healed . but that he was raised , and exhibited to s t iohn with a head that had been mortally wounded , but now healed when he saw him , the text plainly enough imports . for if the sense were that he saw him while he was wounding , i mean his head , it would not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as you may see , chap. . vers . . has a preterpluperfect signification ) but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which would imply he saw it while it was a doing , and then there would not follow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this had been the natural expression of the thing , and therefore the natural sense of the words as they now run , is that above intimated , which implies , that iohn saw one of his heads as if it had been wounded but healed up again . for in that he is called the first beast , that is no more than the beast first spoken of , and bears no weight with it , and therefore we will pass to the third synchronism , after we have briefly intimated that the false prophet and the two-horned beast being the same by chap. . . and the two-horned beast , the healer of the ten-horned beast , chap. . vers . . and perishing together , chap. . . that they must needs synchronize . synchronism iii. the great whore or mystical babylon . the healded beast with seven heads and ten horns . this synchronism , saies r. h. if it were meant of the beast chap. . it were true , but it being meant of the beast chap. . it is false ; for the beast out-lives the whore , and wars against him that sate on the white horse , after the whore is destroyed , rev. chap. . , . and the synchronism does suppose these beasts to be all one . to that last part of which his answer i reply , that what is supposed is plain enough to any one that will not nodum in scirpo quaerere . but that the whore , and the two-horned beast are one ; and that the restored beast , and the beast that was , and is not , and yet is , are the same beast , i have in my synopsis prophetica so clearly demonstrated , that scepticism it self cannot doubt thereof . and therefore this synchronism , the beasts , chap. . and . being the same beast , by r. h. his own confession , must be true . and i add further , that it is a mistake in r. h. in that he saies the beast out-lives the whore : for the whore and the two-horned beast being one , and the two-horned beast , and false prophet , one , which r. h. himself cannot deny , the whore and false prophet are one , of whom mention is made with the beast , chap. . , . and so the beast does not out-live the whore. synchronism iv. the hundred fourty four thousand sealed virgins . the whore of babylon and the beast . that these are synchronal , m r mede's proof is from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or relative opposition one to another ; virgins opposing the perpetual debauching attempts of that whore of babylon , from the beginning to the end , and the sealed souldiers of the lamb opposing the marked souldiers of the beast that made war with the saints from the beginning to the end , in some measure or other . the nature of the thing it self is a demonstration of the synchronism . and now let 's hear what r. h. saith to it . it is true , saith he , if god had no more servants but these only , then would they be antistoechal to the beast throughout from his first breathing to his last gasp , but there are the remnant of the womans seed , &c. which figment of his , how vain it is i have shown above , and that they are no other than the seed of the woman in the wilderness , whom this healed beast persecutes as being the faithful souldiers of the lamb : the rest is so flat and impertinent that it is not worth the while to take notice of it . only i must observe how he contradicts himself , while he saies , we want a prophecy to tell us when the whore began : for himself acknowledges the third synchronism to be true , if it be understood of the beast , chap. . wherefore that prophecy tells us , the whore began with that beast ; which beast began not till he had ceased to be a beast , and grew a beast again . synchronism v. the fifth synchronism is nothing but a consectary from the four synchronisms hitherto , inferring , that all synchronize one with another , with the woman in the wilderness , the treading under-foot the holy city , the witnesses in the mean time mourning in sackcloth , doth the restored ten-horned beast synchronize , synch . i. with this ten-horned beast the two-horned beast , synch . ii. with both these the whore , synch . iii. with the whore and the beast , the sealed virgin company , synch . iv. whence they all synchronize one with another . to which r. h. has nothing to say but what he has said already , that none of these are synchronal , but the treading under-foot the holy city , and the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth ; which he avouches as a consectary from his allegations against the rest of the synchronisms : but how weak they have been , i hope , the reader cannot but understand . so that all the medial synchronisms of m r mede are safe , rightly understood ; namely of the entire state of the ten-horned beast , two-horned beast , and the whore. the entireness of whose reign is only broken , not quite destroyed at the ending of the second woe , or sixth trumpet . synchronism vi. the inner court measured with a reed by s t john. the lying in wait and battle of the seven-headed dragon with michael about the childbirth of the woman in travail . m r mede's demonstration of their synchronizing is short and pithy . for they are , saith he , the immediate antecedents of synchronals . the fight of the dragon , and the womans travailing with child to be delivered , and her difficulties in those circumstances , the immediate antecedents of her habitation in the wilderness , and of the ten-horned beast . and the inner court the immediate antecedent of the outer . here r. h. first in general denyes the first synchronism , which i have maintained against him to be true , nor is it needful to repeat what i have already said . secondly , in particular he says , though the womans travail , and the fight of the dragon with michael do contemporate , and the flight of the woman into the wilderness immediately succeed them : yet the restored beast does not immediately succeed the overthrow of the dragon by michael . for before he raises the beast out of the sea , he persecutes the woman . the woman flyes into the wilderness . he sends a flood after her to carry her away out of the wilderness . the earth openeth her mouth and drinketh up the flood , and when all this is done , he leaves the wilderness , &c. to which i have answered already upon the first synchronism that all this noise is nothing but this , that the dragon persecuted the woman in her flight into the wilderness , by sending a flood to carry her away before she got thither , but that stratagem not succeeding , he raised the restored beast to disturb her by that time she got thither . so that the dragon is acting in his own person till that time , and continues the fight as it were though upon the ground . so immediate therefore is the raising of the restored beast to war against her seed in the wilderness , that nothing but the spuing out the water to hinder her flight thither was done of the dragons side , before his raising of the said beast . which therefore de dispatcht by that time she had got into the wilderness . this the text plainly implies , even according to r. h. his paraphrase , who with the vulgar latin and generality of interpreters , and with m r mede himself reads vers. . thus , and the dragon was wroth with the woman , ( namely , when he saw his spuing out that flood of water after her in her flight towards the wilderness did not succeed ) and went to make war with the remnant of her seed , which keep the commandments of god , and have the testimony of iesus christ , and he stood upon the sand of the sea. and then the next chapter begins , and i saw a beast rise up , as it were conjured up by the dragon that stood upon the sand of the sea , in a readiness to surrender his power or forces , and his seat and great authority to him , vers. . whence it is plain that the restored beast immediately succeeds the womans flight into the wilderness , and therefore begins with her arrival thither . no action of the dragon besides that spue of his , which was in the flight of the woman , coming betwixt the beginning of her flight , and his raising the restored beast . which therefore is naturally conceived to be dispatcht by that time the woman got into the wilderness . now as to the inner court or the measuring thereof , he grants it precedes the conculcation of the outer court , and that the fourty two months of the gentiles begin when the measuring of the inner court is ended , but he denies that the inner court synchronizes with the womans travail , and the fight of michael with the dragon . and why ? because the conculcation of the outer court , and the abode of the woman in the wilderness do not synchronize . this is all the reason , which by what i have said upon the first synchronism is no reason . for i have made it good there that they do synchronize : and it is needless here to repeat the same over again . he has also a sleight fling at m r mede's mention of a repeated prophecy , and says that , oportet te iterum prophetare , chap. . . does not signifie that he must begin a new prophecy ab ovo , but go on to prophecy of other things , and times . he says it , but does not prove it : but we shall prove the contrary in its due place . in the mean time we proceed to the seventh synchronism . synchronism vii . the seven vials . the beast and babylon inclining to ruine . hitherto we have showed the synchronisms of m r mede in the sense intimated upon the fifth synchronism to be as firm as adamant , against all the little cavils of r. h. the seventh ( which is the only synchronism of all seven , truly obnoxious to exception , understood in m r mede's way , who in his table places six of the vials under the sixth trumpet ) yet such is the noble good nature of r. h. of salisbury , that the seventh alone he allows of as a true synchronism , and hugs as it were with both arms . but that all the seven vials are within the seventh trumpet i have plainly demonstrated , synops. prophet . lib. . c. . and in vision . apoc. synchron . c. . sect . , , . and this is the main difference betwixt m r mede's table of synchronisms and mine . but in the rest of the medial and antimedial synchronals hitherto specifyed we agree . we come now to the second part of his synchronisms . the second part . synchronism i. the seventh seal as far as the first six trumpets reach . the ten-horned and two-horned beast and the rest of their fellow synchronals . that these contemporize m r mede briefly proves thus . the beast and virgin company sealed contemporize by synch . . part. . this company sealed quatenus sealed commences with the seventh seal , rev. chap. . namely it begins in that small interim betwixt the end of the sixth , and beginning of the seventh seal . for the nature of the vision of sealing persons can imply no considerable time to break any square , as touching the commencing of these synchronals , especially it being performed by the ministry of angels . therefore says m r mede , the ten-horned beast and the rest of his fellow synchronals begin with the seventh seal . but in the second place , the end of the beast , saith he , contemporizeth with the end of the sixth trumpet , the reign of the beast being synchronal to the time of the mourning of the witnesses , which ends at the exitus of the sixth trumpet , chap. . vers . . and therefore the reign of the beast ( viz. as to the entireness of his kingdom ) ends with the sixth trumpet . which plainly proves this synchronism of the beast with the seventh seal , as far as the first six trumpets reach , which was the thing to be demonstrated . r. h. in his answer to the first part of this demonstration , is plainly not so much copious as loose and spungy , and not at all solid , offering eight particulars , but so weak and impertinent , that i profess i am half ashamed to recite them . the first of them supposes the events of the visions to fall in that order the visions are rehearsed , which is to beg the question . the second , that two opposites may be actually opposite the one to the other , though only one of them be in being . the third , that the sealed regiments of the lamb , and the marked slaves of the beast , are only opposite in respect of their religion , and persecution for religion , whenas they are opposite as the raised forces of two hostile parties , that swear them and retain them in pay and readiness , occasionally to assault one the other , till a conquest on one side or the other be obtained . the fourth , that revel . . . which mentions the victory over the beast , implyes the sealed regiments fought not till the latter end of the reign of the beast , which is a marvellous weak inference . for though they occasionally fought against him from the beginning , yet they might not obtain the expected victory before the last , or seventh semitime of his reign . and other such stuff there is which he brings , but i have answered it upon synch . . part . the fifth supposeth , that the beast has no being before the seventh trumpet , which is built upon the first fond supposition . the sixth , that the fourth synchronism of part . is false , which i have maintained to be true . the seventh , that this present synchronism is to be understood of the servants of god simply ; whenas it is understood of them quatenus sealed . the eighth and last , that the companies are sealed , not to call them out against the beast , but to preserve them from the storms of the ensuing trumpets ( which plainly implies , by the by , that their continuance is all along the trumpets , till they get a new denomination . ) but i say they are sealed in both regards , both to secure them from the ensuing storms , and to confirm them in a constant courage against the debauching decrees of the beast . and their being twelve regiments , and the order of the tribes put according to the merits of their zeal against idolatry , plainly implies as much . this little is more than enough to his pretended arguments against the first part of m r mede's demonstration . what he says against the second part is more pertinent and express to the purpose . and i must confess he does prove , that the latter end of the beasts reign does not synchronize with the exit of the sixth trumpet ; but it is sufficient for my design , that the end of his reign as to the entireness of his kingdom does synchronize with it ; and that m r mede has very firmly demonstrated . lastly , two of those four things which he says m r mede supposes , he does not merely suppose , but prove by vertue of his synchronisms , viz. that the sealed virgins , and the two witnesses be all one company , and that the days of the witnesses be the same with the fourty two months of the beast . but i confess one of the other two , viz. that the whole reign of the beast is contained within forty two months , is false : but the other , that the beast chap. . is the same with the beast chap. . if he supposes it , it is an easy and modest supposition . for the beast chap. . being the beast rising out of the sea , as i noted above , as well as the beast chap. . and the times of them both being not only equal but synchronal , and they both persecuting the witnesses ; for chap. . vers . . those there whom the beast is raised to persecute and who are said to have the testimony or witness of iesus christ , what can they be but the witnesses , chap. ? to all which you may add that even without the use of these synchronisms interpreters generally , as you may see in à lapide and ribera , understood the same thing by these two beasts , namely antichrist , which is a sign they took the two beasts to be one and the same beast ; so easy and modest a supposition is this , or rather more than a supposition , a truth demonstrable from his synchronisms and other observations from the texts of scripture . and r. h. himself making this beast chap. . the same with the scarlet beast chap. . this last beast being the same with the ten-horned beast chap. . as i have demonstrated in my ioynt exposition , the ten-horned beast chap. . must be the same with the beast chap. . synchronism ii. the inner court. the fight of the dragon and michael about the womans childbirth . the six first seals . that the last synchronizes with the two former m r mede proves briefly and solidly thus . because all three are the immediate antecedents to synchronizing subsequent visions . the six first seals to the seventh . the inner court and the fight of michael with the dragon to the beast and to the of the sealed companies of the lamb. and that the seventh seal or six first trumpets , the sealed companies and the beast do synchronize , is proved synch . . part . to which r. h. says , but does not so much as offer to prove , . that the inner court and the fight of michael with the dragon do not synchronize . . nor that the inner court and fight of michael with the dragon are immediate antecedents of the beast and sealed virgins . . nor the first six trumpets , the sealed virgins , and beast synchronize one with another . which since he says only and proves nothing , and i have proved upon the foregoing synchronisms against him , that it is quite otherwise , i need add nothing further on this synchronism . synchronism iii. of the vials with the sixth trumpet . this expressed in the general synch . . part . he swallowed down glib . but being here so particularly explained , he rejects . where some of his arguments against it are passable , but others at random . but because here i utterly dissent from m r mede , and place all the vials in my table under the seventh trumpet within the first thunder , i hold it needless to say any thing more on this synchronism . synchronism iv. the thousand years of the dragon or satans being bound . the seventh trumpet or space from the destruction of the beast . this synchronism in a more large and improper sense may be more passable . but the binding of satan properly so called together with his imprisonment commences not till the second and third thunder , before which is the effusion of the seven vials , and therefore this binding and imprisoning of satan cannot synchronize totally with the seventh trumpet . to say nothing of his being let loose in the laodicean interval , which m r mede not taking notice of , makes me conceive that though he still calls them synchronisms , he did intend no more by the postmedial synchronisms with the seventh trumpet , than that those things which he would prove to synchronize with it , were to be placed in the seventh trumpet and not before it . r. h. here says true , that the binding and imprisoning of satan is shorter than the seventh trumpet both à parte ante , and à parte post , though all his arguments for it are not sound . but it is not worth the while to canvase them , we being both already agreed in the conclusion . synchronism v. the thousand years of the reign of christ. the seventh trumpet or space from the destruction of the beast . the same is to be said of this as of the former synchronism . if you understand it of his partial or inchoative reign when some of the kingdoms fall off from antichrist , it may begin with the seventh trumpet , but the millennial reign properly so called , begins not till the third thunder ; as you may see in my table r. h. his answer to this synchronism is , that the seventh trumpet and the space of time that succeeds the destruction of the beast , are not all one . which is true , but the argument he brings for it precarious , which to confute is nothing to my scope , and therefore i let it alone . synchronism vi. the new jerusalem or the lambs bride . the seventh trumpet or the space from the destruction of the beast . the new ierusalem descends from heaven , immediately upon the utter destruction of the beast by the seventh vial. but that all the vials are within the seventh trumpet i have already noted , and that therefore the new ierusalem cannot totally synchronize with the seventh trumpet , but with part only of it . but that which r. h. here answers is this in general , that the new jerusalem doth not begin at the destruction of the beast nor synchronize with the thousand years , but succeed them . which how false it is three or m r mede's four arguments will give us to understand . for the first of them though it be too hard for r. h. to answer , yet i will decline as less firm . for the marriage of the lamb chap. . vers . . preceeds the seventh vial , but the marriage chap. . vers . , . does follow the said vial. but r. h. his answer is , that the first marriage is with the spouse in grace , the second is with the spouse in glory ; which is pointblank contrary to the text , chap. . vers . . where the new ierusalem is said to descend from god out of heaven , and his tabernacle is said to be with men , &c. m r mede's second argument is from [ chap. . vers . . ] gog and magog their besieging the beloved city , at the end of the thousand years , &c. here r. h. answers , that this beloved city is not the new ierusalem , but that the beloved city is the church in the state of grace , the new ierusalem the church in the state of glory , whereby he intimates , were it not so , they would be one and the same city . but it is impossible the new ierusalem should be any other than a state of the church upon earth , if you consider vers . , , . besides many other considerations which would be too long to mention here . the third argument is from chap. . vers . . compared with chap. . v. , . where , it is done , implyes that the same time is indigitated , that is , the certain bringing in the new ierusalem , that holy city , upon the destruction of the city of babylon , that city of murderers and idolaters . but here r. h. harps still upon the same string , that by the first it is done , is meant the finishing of the last vial , and the full state of grace , and by the latter it is done , that the state of glory was to begin , which answer how extravagant it is i have already noted . the fourth and last argument is from chap. . vers . . where the vial-angel , as we may so call him , that had shewed s. iohn the condemnation and destruction of the whore the city of babylon , shows him the new ierusalem as a city that should succeed in its place . to which r. h. returns this answer , that the new ierusalem does not succeed the destruction of the beast and babylon immediately , but that there is first the thousand years , then the insurrection and destruction of gog and magog , after that the last judgment and the lake of fire for the cursed , and then the new ierusalem for the blessed . for which he has no reason but that they are writ in this order , which is so gross and fallible that no interpreters rely upon it alone . and these many synchronisms of m r mede so firm and solid are a demonstration against this dull hypothesis , and yet this is all the force of his answer . but let me ask him a question or two : if this new ierusalem be a state in heaven , why is it said to come down from god out of heaven , chap. . vers . , ? and why are the kings of the earth said to bring their glory and honour into it , vers . ? and how comes it to pass that the trees on this side and that side of the river of this new ierusalem , that the leaves of them are said to be for the healing of the nations chap. . vers . ? shall there be any sores or maladies in heaven ? synchronism vii . the palm-bearing multitudes out of all nations . the seventh trumpet , or space from the destruction of the beast . this synchronism m r mede confirms by these two arguments . first because these palm-bearers immediately succeed the sealed company that synchronize with the beast , synch . . part . therefore the beast expiring they must succeed the beasts expiration ; partial at the beginning of the seventh trumpet , total at the beginning of the second thunder . the second argument is , that these palm-bearers are the citizens of the new ierusalem , by comparing chap. . vers . , . with chap. . vers . , . and the new ierusalem synchronizeth with the seventh trumpet . to the first r.h. answers , that these palm-bearers immediately succeed the time of the sealing of the virgin company , not the race of the sealed . which is a wonderful weak cavil if we consider the end of their sealing , viz. that they should be kept safe in all the dangers and difficulties they were to grapple withal , and preserve their virginity still against all the force , solicitations , and persecutions they should find under the six first trumpets ; for these sealed ones are the souldiers of the lamb. now compare this true and undeniable hypothesis , with vers . . which speaking of these palm-bearers saith , these are they who came out of great tribulation , &c. could these then immediately succeed the sealing , and come off victoriously before the conflict ? what a shameful cavil was this ? to the second he answers . that these palm-bearers are not any men upon earth , but the souls of martyrs in heaven while these companies were sealed on earth . and that the new ierusalem is after the general resurrection , and that therefore the palm-bearers cannot immediately succeed the sealed company by their being citizens of that city . but as for this latter supposition how absurd it is i have shown already . and as for the former , he says it without any ground and against the natural tenour of the text , which compares the great and innumerable companies of the apostolick followers of christ after the expiration of the six first trumpets , with that smaller and more definite number of the sealed under them . besides r. h. is to consider that the apocalypse is a prophecy of things here upon earth , not a description of what is in heaven ; and also how harsh a thing it is to make such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and thus abruptly to skip from earth to heaven in a moment . and how ill these things cohere a man may observe from his paraphrase chap. . vers . . but lest any , saith he , should be discouraged from suffering for the cause of christ , because they be not sealed , and secured from suffering , &c. which in brief is , lest any should be discouraged from suffering , by their not being secured from suffering . which implyes that the encouragement they want to suffer is their being secured from suffering , and consequently that they are to suffer and not to suffer at once , which is very bad sence , nay i may say a gross contradiction . such an unfortunate paraphrast does r. h. prove while he thus profanely sets himself to abuse the holy oracles of god. and thus i have showed throughout how slight r. h. his allegations are against m r mede's synchronisms , those against the antimedial and medial synchronisms , being of no force at all but mere whisles , and for the post-medial his objections are not such , but those visions which m r mede would have synchronize with the seventh trumpet , are all within the seventh trumpet , and commencing at the final destruction of the beast synchronize one with another sufficiently . which is as much for the main scope and use of the apocalypse , as if they had adequately synchronized with the seventh trumpet . and yet r. h. thinks so goodly well of his confutation of m r mede's synchronisms , that for a conclusion of all he professedly persists in that obdurate conceit of his own ; that the prophecies succeed one another and shall come to pass in that order in which they are written and were revealed . which gross opinion of his , though it be confuted over and over again by my maintaining m r mede's synchronisms against all his cavils , yet for a fuller conviction i will make good against him on m r mede's behalf , that main point , that a new set of prophecies begins at chap. . whereof some commence from the same epocha that the prophecy of the seals does . viii and to disarm my antagonist of several arguments that he clicks up upon a false supposition , i shall grant , nay prove that the book whose seals the lamb opened , and the opened book which iohn took from the hand of the angel , is one and the same book , first unsealed by the lamb , by which is denoted christs assistance in discovering the prophecies of the sealed book , and then delivered by the angel ( which is christ again in another form as appears by his description ) to iohn to eat . where again christ's assistance is denoted , and that this whole book of prophecies is from him , namely the opened book-prophecies as well as those of the sealed book . which opened book is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the sealed one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , both of them diminutives : so that the sealed book might have been called a little book as well as the opened book , and the vulgar latine translates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 simply librum . but if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be a more lessening diminutive than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it is made use of in respect of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the cortex , that it may be the more easily eaten up by s t iohn , and also in respect of the prophecies themselves , that are signified by this book : for when all of them together was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so many , namely those of the seals being already dispatcht , the other that remain , being less than the whole 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of prophecies , are duly and proportionately called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the former libellus , this latter libellulus . but to conceive this libellulus a scrowle in which nothing was written , is a very vain and empty conceit , and such as is inconsistent with the drift of the vision , which entitles christ to the whole book of prophecies , to those of the sealed book by his opening of the seals , to those of the opened book by giving iohn the opened book to eat it , which if it contained nothing , nothing was given him to eat . but now that the sealed book and opened book be one and the same book , i briefly prove by these two arguments . first from the intertexture of the visions or dependance one of another , so that one could not be well understood without the other , which is a plain argument that they all belong to one volume . but that they cannot be well understood one without the other , is admirably made out by m r mede's synchronisms . and there is apertly mention made of the sixth and seventh trumpet which belong to the prophecies of the sealed book , in the prophecies of the opened book chap. . vers . , . the other argument is , that whereas there are such high encomiums of the sealed book chap. . unless the sealed book and the opened book be all one , the opened book will have none of those encomiums , though it contains the more concerning prophecies of the two . but now lastly , that notwithstanding the sealed book prophecies and the opened book prophecies make but one volume , yet at chap. . there begins a new set of prophecies commencing from the same epocha that the seals do , m r mede's arguments to me seem sufficiently solid . the first whereof is his synchronisms , which if true as i have maintained they are , plainly prove that the prophecies of the opened book contemporize with the visions of the sealed book prophecies . the second , that there is a light touch chap. . vers . . upon the seventh trumpet . and the seven thunders immediately succeeding the sixth trumpet are in all reason to be conceived to fill the space of the seventh trumpet , as the seven trumpets fill up the space of the seventh seal . wherefore unless we will fancy the prophecies of the opened book to run beyond the goal of the apocalypse ; after this they are to begin from the same lists of the race again , that is to commence from the same epocha that the prophecy of the seals did . the third is taken from chap. . vers . . where upon iohn's swallowing down the opened book it is said to him , thou must prophesy again before many peoples and nations and tongues and kings , which seems to import that he was to run over the same space of time again , and that his visions would be of the like large extent as before . the fourth and last is taken from vers . . and the voice which i heard from heaven , viz. as of a trumpet , spake unto me again , which being an introduction to the prophecy of the seven churches chap. . vers . . and to the prophecy of the sealed book chap. . vers . . and being set here again before the prophecy of the opened book , it is a sign that the prophecy of the opened book is a new system of prophecies beginning from the same epocha with the former . now to the first , r. h. his answer is very obvious , that he has confuted m r mede's synchronisms . but what a nothing it is which he has alledged against them , let any impartial reader judge . to the second i do not see what material answer he does direct , unless it be , that the sixth trumpet is continued to chap. . vers . . where it is said , the second wo is past . which arguments is repeated again with a pretense of five more , disp. vii . quaes . . but they being so lax and tautological i will comprise the strength of them , that pretend to have any , in these two . the first therefore is , that the close of the sixth trumpet is not set down at the end of the ninth chapter nor at vers . , or . of the tenth , but at vers . . of the eleventh . nor are there in the other trumpets any heterogeneous visions interserted besides the visum belonging to each trumpet . therefore all from the beginning of the sixth trumpet chap. . v. . to the close thereof chap. . vers . . is the visum of the sixth trumpet , it not being there said , the first vision of the little book is past , but , the second wo is past . this is the very strength and quintessence of his first , second , third and sixth argument . and the fifth is but a toy fetched from a supposition , that if they that divided the apocalypse into chapters had begun the tenth chapter at vers . . of the ninth , and continued it to vers . . of the eleventh , none would have questioned but all that were the visum of the sixth trumpet . to all which i shall answer in order . and i. that there was no need of setting down at the end of the ninth chapter a note of the close of the sixth trumpet , it being to be observed in every one of the five foregoing trumpets that each have but one visum belonging to them . wherefore the description of the vision of the euphratean horsemen , which is the visum of this sixth trumpet , being dispatched , it was obvious to any one that is not over oscitant to conclude , the sixth trumpet is past without its being said so . but again to awaken his oscitancy , immediately after the visum of this sixth trumpet , which the interval of the seventh necessarily succeeds , is there the mention of seven thunders to fill the space of the seventh trumpet as the seven trumpets fill the space of the seventh seal . and he must be in a great dulness if not a dead sleep whom these seven thunders will not awake into a certain assurance that the sixth trumpet ended with the vision of the euphratean horsemen . and that he may not think there are any visions appertaining to any times beyond this interval , or that the space of the seventh trumpet was not indigitated before ; the angel swears there shall be no more time saving that wherein the seventh angel sounds , and in which the mystery of god is finished , v. . whence what follows vers . . must needs be in order to a new system of prophecies beginning from the same epocha with that of the seals , the race of the seals being arrived at the utmost goal already . . there is no reason that the close of the sixth trumpet should be set at the sixth verse , the sense being there imperfect , nor at the seventh , it being not to be understood of the time and times and half a time expiring , but of the whole seventh trumpet as the grammatical sense requires , and therefore it had been absurd to put the close of the sixth trumpet after the seventh . . nor does the note of the ending of the second wo-trumpet set chap. . vers . . argue the visum of that trumpet to reach thither , but only the vision there , to end with the ending of the second wo-trumpets time . for the seven trumpets are rather notes of the intervals of time than of the visions of those intervals , the trumpets being nothing like them , though figuratively they may denote either . but here where it is said the second wo is past , the time of the second wo-trumpet is understood , to give notice that the vision of the mournful witnesses , &c. did expire with the end of that time . besides if it were to be understood of all that occurrs from chap. . vers . . to this chapter vers . . there is more woes than one , the woful condition of the witnesses as well as of those the euphratean horsemen vex and destroy . . and what follows methinks is an argument against himself . for the things here that he would have all of them the visum of the sixth trumpet , none of the other trumpets being charged with such heterogeneous stuff , do the better assure us that the euphratean horsemen are the only visum of the sixth trumpet . . and to have put chap. . vers . . the first vision of the little book is past instead of the second wo is past , had been too bare and bald , contrary to the genius of this book of the apocalypse which was not writ for either a prophane or stupid reader . and besides it would not have served the end that the [ second wo is past ] does . which is to be of the main hinges upon which all the middle synchronisms hang , as shall be seen anon . . and lastly as to the toy i mentioned , though such a division of chapters might have the more firmly fixt m r r.h. in his gross conceit , yet it could never have imposed upon so pious and sagacious a person as m r i. mede . but it is plain that they that did divide the chapters as they are , and begin the tenth immediately after the vision of the euphratean horsemen , took that to be the sole visum belonging to the sixth trumpet . the other argument of r. h. which he calls his fourth , i will set down in his own words . of all the six trumpets none have a remarkable close added to them but the fifth and sixth trumpets only : and wherefore were these closes added to them , but that we might exactly know as well where they end as where they begin ? now the fifth trumpet ends where the close thereof is set , and that is rev. . vers . . and therefore also the sixth trumpet ends where the close thereof is set , and that is rev. . vers . . and not before . this looks most like an argument of any thing that he has brought yet . but i briefly answer , that the fifth and sixth trumpets have not that remarkable close added to them to know where they end , there being no need of adding them for that purpose , forasmuch as the ending of them is so easily to be known without it . are not the endings of the four first trumpets , well enough known without any such remarkable close ? for they are known to end where the next trumpet begins . now it is evident that the fifth trumpet needs no such remarkable close because the sixth trumpet immediately follows it , which shews the ending thereof . and yet there is added as a close to the fifth trumpet , the first wo is past . this is undeniably true of the fifth trumpet . and that the visum of the sixth trumpet , that is , the euphratean horsemen have no need of any such remarkable close , i have proved abundantly already in my answer to the first particular of his first argument . from whence it is manifest that these remarkable closes of the fifth and sixth trumpets , must be for some other use . and to answer r. h. his demand wherefore they were added , i shall tell him , not as notes of the ending of the visions of those two trumpets , but as notes of the expiration of the time of them , as i distinguished above . for the former i have demonstrated to be needless , but this latter admirably useful . in brief therefore , though the adding that note chap. . vers . . the first wo is past , in that place is needless as to the determining the time of the fifth trumpet , yet because the spirit of prophecy intended to make use of the like note chap. . vers . . to denote the ending of the time or interval of the sixth trumpet , he prepared the mind of the reader for the taking notice of it by makeing use of it here as a note of the ending of the time of the first wo-trumpet . wherefore the sense is chap. . vers . . of [ the second wo is past ] here ends the time of the second wo-trumpet or sixth trumpet , namely with the rising of the witnesses or inchoative destruction of the beast or expiration of his . months . whence this note is plainly intended for a note synchronistical to show that the end of the fourty two months of the beast , and the end of the sixth trumpet do synchronize . which therefore is a thing of admirable importance . for the beast and sealed virgins synchronizing synch . . part. . and the commencing of the sealed ones being just at the beginning of the first trumpet chap. . the beast also begins and ends with the six first trumpets , whence the time of the sealing of these virgins and this note , the second wo is past , are as it were the two hinges on which all the middle synchronals hang , as m r mede has very well observed . and this i think is a sufficient answer to r. h. his question , wherefore were those remarkable closes added to the fifth and sixth trumpets . but the ends he would have them added for i have demonstrated cannot be . which is the greater confirmation they were added for this which is a most worthy and admirable end and becoming the stupendious artifice of this book . to the third argument of m r mede he answers . admit that passage , thou must prophesie again , &c. to emply two main prophecies , one of the sealed book , the other of the opened book , or that the book maybe divided into two tomes and the second begin at chap. . vers . . yet it does not follow that the second part must begin ab ovo or from the same epocha with the former . but i answer , the vision reaching to the very utmost goal of the apocalyptick race from such a time before we come at the eighth verse , as i have clearly proved , there is all the reason in the world s. iohn being bid to prophesie again , that his prophesying should commence from the same epocha . as if one should intend to write two tomes of the affairs of any kingdom , the one secular the other ecclesiastical , and that in his first tome he had deduced his secular history to the last year , it is impossible to imagin but in his next tome he would begin his ecclesiastick story from the same epocha that the secular began from . to the fourth and last he answers not unappositely . we read not , saith he , that the voice chap. . vers . . was as the sound of a trumpet , and therefore not likely to relate to the voice chap. . vers . . but rather to the voice chap. . vers . . for that voice chap. . vers . . is said to be as the sound of a trumpet , but this not . this is the first part of his answer , but he proceeds . but to what purpose he would have the reader , saith he , to take notice of this i cannot tell . is this an index that the prophecy of the little book , as he calls it , doth contemporate with the prophecie of the seals ? no more than the voice chap. . vers . . is an index that the prophecy of the seals doth contemporate with the vision of the seven churches , &c. but i briefly reply to the first , that seeing ellipses are so usual in the apocalypse , that the sense may not lye over bare , m r mede has with judgment made this supplement [ as of a trumpet ] it being in all likelihood the same voice that spoke to him at the beginning of the vision of the seven churches and of the prophecy of the seals chap. . v. . nor is it said here not to be as the sound of a trumpet , but only that qualification is not mentioned for the reason abovesaid . but that it should be the voice mentioned vers . . of this tenth chapter is not at all likely . first because then it would have been only , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. and the voice which i heard from heaven said unto me , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would be superfluous . but then in the second place , it being added , there ought to be understood something more or different in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than simply in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and methinks it is very obvious to conceive what it is , if we recur to chap. . vers . . where iohn is said to hear behind him a great voice as the sound of a trumpet , that is a loud sonorous or canorous voice ; and then to chap. . v. . where the voice he there hears from heaven is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as of a trumpet talking loudly or canorously with him . here the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to speak aloud is put instead of the great voice chap. . vers . . and that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has sometimes this peculiar signification not to speak simply but to speak aloud , is observable in that verse of the poet , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 &c. where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is , loudly speak out thy letters , as the following words also imply . and let the inscription on thy leaves be more than ordinary express . but what is yet more to the purpose , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which besides the usual signification is very often by the seventy rendred by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he cryed also in my ears with a loud voice , ezek. . . so is it also in the same sense rendred by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , proclaim in the ears of the people saying , judg. . . and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which has no other signification but of loud clamour or vociferation , yet by the seventy esa. . . it is rendred by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , clamabis & dicet , thou shalt cry and he shall say here am i. and to come nearer to the present chapter vers . . the voices of thunder i think are loud and sonorous enough , and yet the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used of them , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the seven thunders uttered their voices . from whence we see plainly that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , vers . . is not there prefixed for nought , but that it signifies a speaking to iohn with a loud and sonorous voice , such as was the voice chap. . vers . . and chap. . ver . . expressed by a trumpet . now therefore being it is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which implies a speaking thus sonorously to him again , and that voice vers . . of this chapter is not said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it cannot be said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to speak in such a loud tone again , it having not done so yet once ; and therefore of necessity it must be referred to chap. . vers . . from whence it is evident that that supplement of [ as of a trumpet ] made by m r mede is added with judgment and truth . to the second part of his objection i answer briefly , and confess that this canorous voice like a trumpet in this chapter vers . . is no more an index that the prophecy of the little book doth contemporate with the prophecy of the seals , than the voice chap. . vers . . is an index that the prophecy of the seals doth contemporate with the vision of the seven churches . but withal i affirm , that the voice chap. . vers . . is an index that the prophecy of the seals does contemporate with the vision of the seven churches , and that the vision of the seven churches is a prophecy commencing with the beginning of the church and reaching to the end of the world , as i have made good by no less than twenty firm arguments in the last chapter of my exposition of the vision of the seven churches . so fitly do all things fall in together m r mede's way . but no sense to be made of them any other way . nor is that which r. h. takes notice of disp. ii. ques . . that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the preface to the vision of the seven churches , ix rev. . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the preface to the prophecy of the seven seals , chap. . vers . . ( as if the events of the seals should be after the events of the vision of the seven churches and begin a good while after them ) of any validity against the contemporizing of the vision of the seven churches with the prophecy of the seven seals . for this is but another notable example ( of which i have given several in my notes ) of that apocalyptick figure which we call lemmatosynechia or the holding together of the external cortex of the apocalyptick narrations . but according to the sense of all interpreters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , has no reference here to the things of the seven churches , but only signifies things which shall be hereafter , which hinders not but that they may contemporize with the future things of the seven churches . all take it in that sense which beza translates it in , quae oportet fieri posthac , which must be hereafter , as our english rightly renders it . which had been good sense though it had been said in the very beginning of the apocalypse according to ribera his own interpretation , who without any reference to what belongs to the seven churches understands by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( the things which must be hereafter ) decursum ecclesiae à tempore iohannis ad finem seculi . aperit , saith he , argumentum sequentis prophetiae . to which i may add , that it is a mistake in r. h. that he makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a proper preface to the vision of the seven churches , whenas it is rather a general preface to all the three prophecies of this book , and true of them all that they contained some things that were then to come to pass quickly , as it is true of them all that they are the revelation of jesus christ which god gave unto him , &c. x and what i was a going to say , that there can be no sense made of the apocalypse but m r mede's way , a notable pledge of the truth thereof is , in that , that egregious learned writer hugo grotius , who so humanely , when he saw the romish interpreters so foully stick in the mire and make such pitiful sense of things , offered his helping hand in their behalf , but with so little success that r. h. himself , to give him his due , has all along notably well confuted the grotian way though to enemy at all to the romanists ; but out of like kindness to them that grotius seems to have born , he to wipe off that charge from the church of rome that she might not be taken for the whore of babylon , by a marvellous invention makes her as innocent and clear of that fault as the child yet unborn , namely by laying the scene of the affairs of the apocalypse not in europe , no by no means , but in asia , and by affirming that all the visions are to be fulfilled in their litteral sense , and that there is no mystical meaning of them in any place but where they are explained and acknowledged to be such in the very book it self , and consequently that none of these visions are yet fulfill'd , and he adds , not to be fulfilled but in such order as they are set . and therefore no whore of babylon to appear upon the stage , no not so much as in asia it self , much less in europe at rome in italy , till there be a great shaking and concussion in the heavens , and the sun it self become as black as sackcloth made of goats hair , and the moon as red as blood , and the stars fall from heaven in clusters to the earth , and that there be such great earthquakes that every mountain in the earth shall be moved out of its place , and every island in the sea also , which be the events of the sixth seal , rev. chap. . vers . . and that there be just . young men of every tribe of israel sealed with the seal of god in their foreheads , chap. . moreover it must rain hail and fire and blood upon the land of asia , and a sulphureous mountain burning with fire must be cast into the asiatick sea , and the third part of that sea be turned into blood ; and a great blazing star fall from heaven burning and flaming like a torch , which shall break asunder and fall into the third part of rivers and into the third part of the springs of waters throughout the land of asia . and the third part of the sun shall be smitten with darkness , and the third part of the moon and the third part of the stars , chap. . there shall be also a bottomless pit opened , out of which such a smoke shall arise that men shall not see the light of the sun in the land of asia . and strange kind of locusts with tayls of scorpions , heads with crowns of gold on them , faces like men and hair like women , and with wings that make such a dreadful noise as if it were the noise of chariots drawn with horses running furiously to battle , these shall swarm in the land of asia and sting and vex men very sore . there will also appear in the said land an innumerable number of strange kind of horses with their riders upon them . the heads of the horses in shape like the heads of lyons , and out of the mouths of every one of them shall come forth fire , smoak and brimston . their tayls also shall be like serpents with heads and mouths , and by the fire , smoak and brimston coming out of their mouths , and by the serpents heads and mouths at the end of their tayls shall the third part of men be slain in asia about the river euphrates . paraph. r. h. . furthermore before the whore of babylon be in being , that emperess of the world and debaucher of the kings of the earth with her cup of fornication , the temple will be rebuilt and the inner court at ierusalem , and there will then appear two inspired witnesses doing such miracles as moses and elias did , and after three years and an half they will be slain by the scarlet beast , and their dead bodies lye three days and a half in the open streets of ierusalem , and at the half days end they will be revived again , stand upon their feet , and ascend visibly in a cloud to heaven , their enemies beholding them , chap. . the jews also before that time shall be converted to christianity in despight of the devil , who will persecute them , so that part of them will fly into the wilderness , and the devil send a great flood of water after them , chap. . there will also appear before the time of the said whore a two-horned beast like a lamb and that speaks like a dragon , who besides that he will do strange miracles as being a magician or witch , and make a molten image to the ten-horned beast which shall breath and speak , he will cause also his subjects to be marked in their right hands or in their foreheads with the capital or acrostick letters of his name , and the letters of that mark shall contain the value of . the root of . chap. . and when this queen of babylon shall be in being , that she may sit secure and at ease like a queen and never dream of any sorrow , she is not concerned in any one of the vials but the seventh , which are all litterally to be understood , nor any of the vials to be poured out till there be such a slaughter of the people of the beast in iudaea without ierusalem , that the blood shall reach even to the horses bridles in height , for the space of a thousand six hundred furlongs in length , chap. . v. . and chap. . so tender and dear a friend does this r. h. approve himself to this whore of babylon if she be already in being , to shelter her thus from all suspicion , from all peril of both dammage and disgrace . this it is to have a friend in a corner to help at a dead lift . and when both her own proper champions and grotius himself fails , to take up the buckler so dexterously for her . but certainly you will say , it is either a piece of madness or a piece of drollery in him to comment in this sort on the apocalypse . whether it be a piece of drollery in him to jear and insult over the desperateness of the romish cause as to this point , that have no safer sanctuary at last than this to betake themselves to , to free themselves from that grand accusation of idolatry and murder that is so plainly cast upon them by the true and genuine meaning of the apocalypse , he himself best knows . but if he be mad , he pretends cum ratione insanire , he offering his reasons for all those extravagant positions he goes upon . the first whereof is , xi that the scene of the affairs of the apocalypse is not in europe but in asia . the second , that the visions are to be fulfilled not in a mystical but in a bare litteral sense . the third , that the visions are to be fulfilled in such order as they lye in the apocalypse . the fourth and last is , that none of the visions of the sealed book nor opened book are yet fulfilled . which is a necessary consectary from the second and third position . we shall now examine the reasons he builds these positions upon , so many and so far as is requisite . i. the reasons that he alledges for his first position occurr disp. . quest. . and the chief of them are these two . . the prophecies , saith he , were written unto asia and not unto europe , rev. . vers . . iohn to the seven churches in asia , and vers . . what thou seest write in a book and send it to the seven churches in asia . . his second argument is taken from chap. . vers . . i iesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning the churches , saith he , and grotius himself expounds it , ecclesiarum bono , in the behalf or for the good of the churches . and saith r. h. what is meant by the chuches , but the churches of asia , rev. . vers . . and therefore asia is the scene of the visions of the apocalypse . i confess comparing the citations of the first chapter with that of the last , and which to me is highly probable , allowing that the same churches are meant in both chapters , these two arguments of his make a fair show . but those that expound the vision of the seven churches litterally , will deny that the same churches are understood in the last chapter , but that that passage signifies indefinitely all or any of the christian churches for whose use this book of prophecies was writ . but i will easily allow r. h. this liberty to expound it of the same churches in my prophetical sense , and of the same churches of asia too in the cabbalistical sense of that word , which signifies this lower region of the world or terrestrial globe containing not only asia but europe and africk and america too if need were . which spoils the conceit of his making asia only , in the usual sense , the scene of the apocalyptick visions , though his conceit in the mean time gives countenance to my understanding the churches chap. . to be the very churches in asia in my sense , and to my making the epistles to the seven churches to be a prophecy . ii. the reasons for his second position the principal of them are these . . a revelation cannot be a mystery nor a mystery a revelation . they are as contrary each to other , saith he , as light is to darkness . wherefore the whole book of the apocalypse being a revelation , it cannot be a mystery or be expounded in a mystical sense but only in a litteral , unless where the spirit of god himself tells us it is a mystery , and renders to us the mystical sense of the letter . to this effect is his first argument disp. . quest. . and disp. . quest. . . the second , where things are mystically to be understod they are afterwards interpreted in the apocalypse , or in other texts of scripture which speak of the same or the like matter . as rev. chap. . vers . . rev. chap. . vers . , , . &c. dan. chap. . vers . , , . wherefore when there is no such interpretation , the text is litterally to be understood . ibid. . his third is , no scripture is mystically to be understood without evident necessity ; but there is no necessity , much less any evident necessity of understanding those things in a mystical sense which himself has interpreted in a litteral . wherefore the things above mentioned and all the rest where the spirit or angel does not interpret them to a mystical sense , ought to be understood in a litteral . ibid. . the fourth and last , this mystical way of interpreting makes the scripture a nose of wax , which a man may turn which way he will , subjecteth it to our vain lusts and humours , and leaves us partially to apply the good things to ourselves and our own party , and the bad things to our enemies , disp. . quest. . these be the main arguments for his second paradox . . but to the first i answer , that a revelation may be a mystery , that is , mystically or hiddenly conveyed , but yet plainly to be known by them that have the key . as it is in steganography by which secrets are certainly conveyed or revealed , but in such a mysterious way that none but they that know the clavis or key shall be ever the wiser . wherefore it is not at all repugnant that the apocalypse may be a revelation and yet a mystery , that is , a revelation mystically conveyed . but where is that clavis will you say , that will so certainly unlock the mystery ? to that i shall answer after i have answered his three following arguments for this present paradox . . and therefore i proceed to the second , which i say does not prove that where the holy ghost does not interpret , the text is litterally to be understood , but that the interpretation of those texts that are interpreted are made with that skill and judgment that they give sufficient light to the rest of the prophecies , suppose of the seven churches or of the sealed and opened book prophecies . and of this kind is that clavis offered rev. . vers . . and rev. . vers . , , . . and concerning the third i demand , when he will allow that there is evident necessity of interpreting a text mystically ? when the letter it self is simply impossible ? but this then argues his ignorance of the apocalyptick stile and of the artifice of the external cortex of the prophecies , in which so carefully is observed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in speech ( which figure you may call pithanologia or logoprepia if you will ) that no representation be over extravagantly incredible in the very letter , much less impossible . but if he mean by an evident necessity , a moral incredibility or impossibility in the litteral sense , i say there is such an evident necessity , the litteral sense putting him upon such an extravagant hypothesis , as that none of the prophecies are yet fulfilled nor will be god knows when . which is little less than blasphemy against the divine providence , as if he had neglected his church in this point for sixteen hundred years together . besides that the synchronisms demonstrable out of the intrinsecal characters in the prophecies themselves , do necessarily imply that most of the visions are fulfilled already , but not in a litteral sense , wherefore there is evident necessity they be interpreted in a sense mystical . to all which you may add that the holy ghost his interpreting some parts mystically may justly be an intimation and animation to us to follow his example in the rest . . to the fourth and last i answer , this is but the old popish allegation against all the scripture , unless it be fixt by the sense of the infallible chair , as r. h. would have the apocalypse by the litteral sense , that so it may not be a nose of wax but a brasen nose , or the same mettle that their foreheads are that can plead for such absurd hypotheses . but i say this mystical way of interpreting the apocalypse will not make it a nose of wax , if men will but make use of those helps that the intrinsecal characters of the visions do afford to cast them into orderly synchronisms , so as m r mede has done . and those that have neglected this necessary help , what pitiful interpretations they have made r. h. himself can witness . nay certainly , to the skilful the mystical sense of the apocalypse is as certainly determinable one way , as any scripture is in the litteral sense thereof . and if r. h. thinks it such a nose of wax , i challenge him or any one else whosoever to make a nose of wax if he can of my ioynt exposition of the thirteenth and sevententh chapters of the apocalypse in my synopsis prophetica , and to show that the sense which i have given is not the determinate sense of them . and that r. h. himself has so shroudly confuted the grotian way of interpreting the apocalypse , it may be an argument to him if he please , that it is not such a nose of wax that will stand any way , but that all false interpretations , like a frozen muscovian nose before the fire , will drop off . but there is one certain true way as firm as adamant , which the fiery subtilty of no mans wit will be able to melt or dissolve . and those that go this synchronistical way , to them the prophecies are not left to interpret according to their own humour in favour to their own party and to the disgrace or disadvantage of their adversaries , but the time of the prophetical vision being known and the acknowledged meaning of the prophetical iconisms observed in the application of history belonging to that time the synchronism makes the vision point to , they are necessitated whether it be for or against their own party or others , to render the certain , clear and determinate sense thereof , so little fear is there that this mystical way will make the prophecies a nose of wax , or leave men to the wantonness of their own humours to interpret as they please . but in pretense of taking away this abuse , to allow none but a litteral sense of the apocalypse , is indeed to take away all the use thereof , which those that favour the church of rome full willingly would do . iii. as for his third position , he pretends disp. . ques . . by many arguments to make it good , but i shall take notice only of the chiefest , by which you may judge of the rest . . the first is , that things revealed at once and not at several distant times , must come to pass in order as they are revealed ; but the apocalyptick visions were revealed at once or at one continued time to iohn without ceasing or intermission of his ecstasy , and therefore they must come to pass in order as they were seen . . the prophecies of the revelation were all of them written in one book , and therefore they are to be fulfilled in that continued order they are written , as histories written in order as they come to pass . . first , second , third , fourth , &c. are ordinal numbers not cardinal , and shew not only the number of things spoken of but their order also . now the prophecies of the revelation do all of them consist of these numbers , seven seals , seven trumpets , seven vials ( and he might have prefixed seven churches too ) and therefore they being set in order and called , first , second , third seal , trumpet , and vial , shows plainly they are to be fulfilled in the order they are mentioned . . the fourth and last arguments is : where no instance can be given to the contrary , there things shall come to pass in order as they are revealed , and such are the prophecies of the revelation says he , no instance can be given of any prophecy that comes to pass before or after the order of its revelation . and therefore they shall come to pass prophecy after prophecy as they were revealed and presented unto iohn in vision . . but to the first i answer . the argument will not hold good there , if at all , where there are special notes given of a new beginning of prophesying . for that is as much if not more than if the visions had been exhibited to iohn at several distant times or days . and that there are such notes it is plain , namely of a new beginning of prophesying . for as the prophecy of the seven churches was ushered in with a sound of a trumpet , so is the prophecy of the sealed book , betwixt which two prophecies there was an intermission of iohn's ecstasy , as you may see chap. . vers . . and then before the prophecy of the opened book , besides other certain indications of the beginning of a new prophecy as i have above shewed , there is again that voice like a trumpet that talked with him at the beginning of the sealed book-prophecy , which is a greater assurance that there are three distinct prophecies than if they had been revealed to him at three distinct times or days . . to the second i answer , that there is no harshness at all to conceive two prophecies beginning at the same epocha to be writ in the same book one after another , it being impossible according to the usual writing of books , that they should be written together , no more harshness i say than to conceive that an historian in one volume may write the lives of all the secular governours and bishops of a city from the first times thereof to his own times . is it any thing harsh or rather not necessary when he has gone through all the times of the governours , that he begin at the first epocha to write the lives of the bishops of the said city ? . to the third i answer , that the argument proves only that the seals and trumpets are to be fulfilled in that order they are mentioned , and the trumpets after the six first seals , they being the parts of the seventh seal . but this does not at all hinder but that the seven churches in that order they are set , may commence with the seven seals , as also the measuring the inner court and the fight of michael and the dragon , as is plain to any one that attends to what is said . . and lastly to the fourth and last i answer , that it is demonstrable by vertue of m r mede's synchronisms , that there are many instances of things coming to pass not in the order they are revealed , but before and after . this is most evidently true if m r mede's synchronisms be true , as most certainly they are , and i have mentioned them to be so against all the pretended cavils of r. h. iv. as for his last position , all the proof it has is from the arguments of the three former , which being so false and weak and this last paradox but a consectary of them , it is manifest it falls to the ground with them , if they be sufficiently confuted , as they will all without question be deemed to be , after i have perfected my answer to the first argument for the second paradox , and shown what is the clavis to the apocalyptical steganography , which is such a mystical or occult way of revelation . i briefly therefore here answer , xii those two places r. h. himself notes , viz. rev. . vers . . and rev. . vers . , , &c. are the two keys the one of the prophecy of the seven churches , the other of the prophecies of the sealed book and opened book , in vertue whereof we may come to a clear and certain knowledge of this steganographical revelation called the apocalypse . for as for the first , that is , the interpretation of the mystery of the seven stars , and of the seven golden candlesticks , it is a plain intimation to any one that is not stupid , that there is something more meant by these seven churches in asia , than seven particular churches in asia minor at that time ; and that indeed the vision of the seven churches represented by the seven golden candlesticks is a prophecy concerning the whole succession of the church to the end of the world , divided into seven intervals . for if it were not so , what needed all the pomp of this vision , and the explication of it , if concerning the seven particular churches in asia , whenas chap. . vers . . there was mention of the seven churches in asia , and after seven epistles writ to them by name ? wherefore he must be exceeding stupid and slow-witted , or of a course perverse spirit that cannot , at least being advertised of it , discern the scope of the spirit in this vision of the seven stars , and seven golden candlesticks , and the interpretation thereof , that it is a prophecy in so large a sense as i have shown in my exposition , and proved that it is such a prophecy by twenty solid arguments in the tenth chapter thereof . such intimations suffice to the pious , free and sagacious reader : but for profane drolls , carnal politicians , or prejudiced superstitionists , if seeing they see not , and hearing they understand not , the fault lies at their own doors . xiii now for the key of the other two prophecies of the sealed book , and of the opened book , let us briefly observe the use thereof , and how effectual it is for the purpose intended , and what the clear result thereof will be . revel . chap. . vers . . there begins the interpretation of the vision of the whore of babylon , and the beast with seven heads and ten horns ridden by her . the beast that thou sawest , saith the angel , was and is not , and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit , and go into perdition . and here it is remarkable , how the angel does not go about to explain what a beast is , it being so well known that according to the prophetick stile it is a kingdom , state or empire cruel and idolatrous , such as they were that are described in daniel , and called there by the septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as this beast is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is as much as to say , a cruel wild beast : wherefore the angels interpretation plainly imports thus much ; that the beast which iohn saw denotes a kingdom , state or empire cruel and idolatrous , and withall whose condition is such , that at some time it might be said of it truly , that it was a cruel idolatrous kingdom , state or empire , but is not , but will be again a cruel idolatrous kingdom , state or empire , and then afterwards quite perish , at least as to its cruelty and idolatry , that is , the bestiality of it shall perish . this is the name or nature of this beast in general . and though it may already very well be understood of that time of the succession of this beast which followed after it had ceased to be , yet for sureness , that you may not mistake , the angel calls him at the latter end of this verse , the beast that was , and is not , and yet is : which therefore is necessarily understood of the latter part of his time after he once ceased to be , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a beast , that is , after this empire had ceased to be a cruel idolatrous empire , but had become a cruel idolatrous empire again , though not perfectly the same idolatrous empire it was before ; which is the natural and necessary meaning of [ is not and yet is . ] but yet we are never the wiser what empire certainly to pitch upon if the angel stick here ; and therefore he holds on , vers . . the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth , who is also said to sit upon the beast . now he comes up closer to the business , which plainly showes this empire to be the roman empire , whether you understand the seven hills of rome , or constantinople , or both , they both belonging to the roman empire . wherefore it is manifest the roman empire is here meant in that succession of time , after it had ceased to be an idolatrous empire ; which it did for a time while pure christianity prevailed , and till the apostasie came in : after which it became the beast that was and is not , and yet is . it was of old , the pagan idolatrous empire , but is not so now , and yet it is in a very considerable sense , it being a pagan-like , or a paganochristian idolatrous empire , and cruelly persecutive of the pure christians . and that you may still be the better assured , that this latter part of the succession of the empire ( namely after it had become christian , and apostatized again into idolatry ) was aimed at ; the angel holds on , vers . . and there are seven kings , namely , which are the heads of the beast , and must take up the entire times of the being of the beast , both the former and latter part thereof , unless we will admit of a living beast without an head : five are fallen and one is . now let any man living show five heads , that is , five supreme governours to be fallen or past in s t iohn's time , unless they be those five sorts of governours of the roman state or empire , kings , consuls , decemviri , consular tribunes , and dictators . no five single emperours can fill up that space of time ; and therefore it must be understood of sorts of governours : whereof five had ceased in s t iohn's time , and one is , that is , was in his time , ( viz. ) the pagan caesars or emperours : what can be more plain and assured ? but the other is not yet come , namely , the christian caesars or emperours : for the emperours were pagans in s t iohn's time . and when he cometh he must continue a short space , that is , the pure christian caesars reign would be short , the apostasie into an idolatrous paganochristianism being so quickly to prevail in the empire . and the beast that was and is not , that is to say , the paganochristian head , ( be they paganochristian emperours or popes that get the soveraignty , it is all one , they make still , or continue the paganochristian head ) of that beast : for that beast is the empire , not the head of the empire ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he is both the eighth and one of the seven ; that is , he is both the eighth king and seventh head of the beast : for the beast is the empire , quatenus idolatrous , and so has but seven heads though there be eight kings , the seventh of them being king over the empire while it ceased to be a beast or idolatrous , or while the publick religion of the empire was purely christian. and the ten horns which thou sawest , namely , on the seventh head , are ten kings , which have received no kingdom as yet , ( viz. ) in s t iohn's time , but receive power as kings one hour with the beast . this also plainly denotes the time of the beast commencing with the discerption of the roman empire into many kingdoms , which happened not while the religion of the empire was purely pagan , but when it was apostatizing again into a kind of paganochristian and idolatrous condition . the empire therefore debauched again with superstition , and pagan-like idolatry and cruelty after the expiration of the pure christian caesars , or seventh king , who was to continue but a short space , is the beast upon which the woman rides . and who this woman is , is plainly indigitated again , and more precisely than in the ninth verse , ( viz. ) vers . . and the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth . in the ninth verse , the seat of the woman are seven hills , and here in this verse , she is that great city , that in saint iohn's time is said to reign over the kings of the earth , which no city on seven hills then did besides rome : but the walls and houses of rome did not then reign over the kings of the earth ; but the roman polity here signified by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a city , did then rule over the kings of the earth : and therefore the roman polity it must be , that rides the beast that was , is not , and yet is , but not the roman polity pagan . for that beast which is here ridden is after the expiration of paganism properly so called , and therefore it must be the roman polity paganochristian , that is , the roman hierarchy which rides this beast : which roman hierarchy the spirit of god here calls the whore of babylon . quod oportebat demonstrare . and what more assured demonstration of any thing can r. h. or any man living else desire than of this so concerning a truth ? and what a notable key this is to unlock the sense of the prophecies of the sealed book and opened book i will briefly show , after i have smoothed the flawes , and wiped off the rust that r. h. seems to fancy to stick on it . i will produce his most material cavils , that by them you may judge of the rest . . the first is touching the hills of rome , xiv which though at first they were seven , three were after added while rome was pagan , and that papal rome stands but upon two and no more . . that kings , dictators and emperours , being but one kind of governours , we shall fall short in our account of making up seven heads of the beast . . that when it is said , five are fallen , the meaning is not that five are fallen in s t iohn's time , but that five are fallen , that is , shall fall , before the seventh vial. forasmuch as the apostle writes a prophecy not an history : and therefore it must be understood of things to come . . and the like he objecteth concerning the th verse . that it does not speak of a city which raigned over the kings of the earth in iohn's time , but which is to raign in the time of the seventh vial , because the apostle writes not an history but a prophecy . . and lastly , that this babylon cannot be the city of rome , he proves by an heap of arguments : . that babylon , till the seventh vial , is not to taste of the cup of gods wrath , but rome hath tasted of that cup many a time , but especially in the time of the gothes and vandals , by whom it was taken four times and made so desolate , that not a man , woman nor child could be seen therein for forty dayes together . . babylon is one of the greatest cities in the world , but rome at this day , but a little city , but the tenth part of what it was before . . babylon , one of the strongest cities in the world , revel . chap. . vers . . but rome , but a weak city , in comparison of other cities , and which was seldom besieged but taken . . babylon one of the most prosperous cities in the world , revel . chap. . vers . . but rome a doleful city many a time . . babylon the last city to be taken , insomuch that she thinks it will never be , but rome taken many a time by the gothes and vandals , and she cannot think but that she may be taken again . . and lastly , babylon is a city with which the merchants of the earth have great trade and traffick by sea , but rome not so , nor can she be so , for since she became pontifician , the mouth of the river tiber hath been stopped up for fear of invasion ; so that no ships of any great magnitude can pass thither . these are the chief of his arguments , to which i shall answer briefly and in order . . to the first i answer , that those three hills of less note , added to the first seven , never were so considerable as in history or poetry to alter that title of rome , roma septicollis , or , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , seven-hilled rome . and it is the most clear and exquisite way to speak in the language of historians , when we would certainly define or describe things . again , as for rome pontifician standing upon two hills and no more , which yet is not absolutely true , it standing upon two hills more besides , as i am informed from a good hand , skilfull and curious in these things ; the text of the prophecy does not require that exactness , that rome pontifician should stand upon all the seven hills : for the words run thus , the seven heads are seven mountains , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which only denotes the place of her abode , or where she is seated . and the woman , which is not the houses and walls of the city but the polity residing there , is possessed of the whole space of ground environed with a wall that takes in all the seven hills , so that all the seven hill may be said to be the place of her abode . and if the being environed with a wall be essential to a city , i do not see but that the name of the city is to be conceived to reach so far , and the wall with all the space of ground contained in it , all of it , to be called rome . to all which you may add , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , may be taken partitivè , as when it is said of iephtah iud. . chap. . that he was buried in the cities of gilead , and of iosiah that he was buried in the sepulchers of his fathers , chron. . vers . . that is , in some one of the cities , and some one of the sepulchres . so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signify upon some of the hills , as well as upon them all . and the character is as certain whether rome now stand but on four hills or two , that rome is meant , as if it stood still on all . as suppose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the seven-mouthed nilus his stream so lessen that it did nothing near fill the chanel so much as of old , and that thence five of his mouths being shallower than the rest should grow dry , no man notwithstanding will deny that it is nilus still ; and so this rome is rome still though contracted suppose to two hills , and her walls stand at a great distance from the city , as the banks of nilus from his now more narrow and shallow stream . so sure a character notwithstanding r.h. his exceptions , are the seven hills that rome is here glanced at . . to the second i answer briefly , as to the former , if prophecy describe things as they are described in history it self , the description is more certain and exact , and historians generally make dictators , kings and emperours three several sorts of government . which answer being abundantly full and sufficient , for brevity sake i omit to prove they are three several sorts of government as well as so called . . to the third , that this is a distorted unnatural exposition in this place to understand a preterperfect tense in a sense future , all commentators that i have met with will testify . who however otherwise they vary in their interpretations , yet take it for granted that , five are fallen , signifies had ceased to be in s. iohn's time . which the varying of the tense immediately in , and one is , would force any one that is not obstinately humorsome and perverse to acknowledge to be true , as that also which follows must needs still put it further out of doubt , and another is not yet come . it is a mere madness to imagine in these circumstances five are faln , not to signify time past , because forsooth the preterperfect tense sometimes is used of a thing future in prophecy as rev. . vers . . where there are no such circumstances . but i add further , that it is impossible but it should be so understood , the roman state or kingdom as idolatrous having but seven heads in all , and the pagan ceasars or emperours in s. iohn's time being the present head . therefore of necessity those other heads must be past , unsess you will have the roman state or kingdom till the caesars time to have been an headless animal , which would be a very witless supposition . and lastly his grand argument is a gross mistake . for this interpretation of the angel is not properly a prophecy but the interpretation of a prophecy , which naturally requires plainness and propriety of speech , and therefore not to understand by , five are faln , five shall fall , but requires us to understand it of the time past according to the vulgar grammatical sense thereof . . to the fourth i answer as to this last , that the objector forgets that this eighteenth verse is part of the interpretation of a prophecy , not the prophecy it self , and therefore is to be taken in the plain grammatical sense , if there be no indication to the contrary , as there is touching that saying vers . . for god hath put in their hearts . where the preterperfect tense is used for the future , but safely and elegantly ; safely , because the foregoing verse doth plainly determine the sense to a futurity ; and elegantly , that which it expresseth being a cause antecedent to what is said before , and therefore rightly intimated to have been first . and where the verb substantive [ is ] or [ are ] occurr we are carefully to distinguish when they signify the nature of a thing , and when existence . as when it is said , and there are seven kings , it does not signify the present existence of them , for it were a contradiction to what follows ; but that there are seven several kinds of governours that appertain to the roman state or empire whereby its nature or condition is illustrated as to this point , but nothing yet is defined touching their present existence or non-existence . but when it follows , five are faln and one is , [ is ] here plainly signifies existence , and because it is in the present tense , present existence , namely at the time he was to whom it was spoken . and so it is , vers . . and the woman , which thou sawest , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is that great city which raigneth . there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 put together signify present existence in this interpretation of the angel , there being no indication to the contrary , but rather a forcible urging thereunto by that repeated demonstrative article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of which the full sense in english cannot be otherwise rendred than thus , that great city , that city that raigneth , &c. which plainly denotes a known city then existent and pointed to . but i cannot insist on these things , i hasten to the last objection . . to which i briefly answer , that the more true those particulars are , the more they confirm my mystical interpretation of the whore of babylon , which chap. . i interpret not of rome , against which interpretation all these particulars run , but of the roman hierarchie . whom i understand also by babylon chap. . so that all this hailshot flyes quite over my head and touches not an hair thereof . xv we having thus brightened this key and smoothed it as it were , and freed it from all those flaws and rust that r. h. phansied to stick to it , we shall now show what an excellent key it is for the unlocking the meaning of the sealed and opened book-prophecies . for as that key of the prophecy of the seven churches by taking notice only of the obvious order of the churches as they are set down , and of the meaning of the paronomastical allusions of the names of them and of the persons concerned in them , and applying them to history , gives the assured sense of that prophecy : so by this present key of the prophecies of the opened and sealed book taking notice of the order into which the visions of these prophecies are cast by vertue of the synchronisms which i have maintained to be true , we are enabled to apply every vision to its proper time in history , as there by paronomastical allusions , so here by the knowledge of the prophetical iconismes , and so with judgment to discern what events answer such and such visions . and now more fully and orderly to illustrate the admirable use of this key , that is , of the interpretation of the angel chap. . vers . . first , we may observe how it assuring us that the beast that was and is not and yet is , is the roman empire divided into many kingdoms and tainted again with new paganlike superstitions and idolatries , which his very description also makes good ; and that the paganochristian head of this empire should shortly succeed the seventh king , the purely christian caesars ; how it is manifest i say from hence , that this beast with the whore riding him began many hundred years ago , even as soon as the empire was dividing into many kingdoms and apostatizing into a paganochristian kind of idolatry , which was about four hundred and odd years after christ. now let us see what further comes of this . secondly , by carefully comparing the ten-horned beast chap. . with the ten-horned beast chap. . and the two-horned beast with the whore in this chapter , we shall find that the two beasts be one and the same beast , and that the two-horned beast and the whore denote the same thing . this i have demonstrated in my synopsis prophetica book . chap. . by no less than eighteen agreements betwixt the two ten-horned beasts , and by nine agreements betwixt the two-horned beast and the whore. so that no man that is in his wits can be so sceptical as not to be convinced of it . but thirdly , of the ten-horned beast chap. . it is said vers . . that power was given unto him to continue forty two months , i demand here of r. h. has the roman empire since the time of its being divided into many kingdoms continued but forty two months or three years and an half ? is this a likely measure of time for the continuance of an empire ? nay is it not plain that this divided roman empire thus apostatizing and apostatized more and more into a paganlike idolatry had continued so , near forty two prophetical months , that is months of years , viz. . years , till in the last semitime of these . years , the reformation broke out , which was the expiration of the entireness of the raign of the beast . but in the mean time by vertue of this key of the angel it is exceeding evident that the forty two months are not to be understood litterally but of prophetical months , forty two whereof make . years . and consequently that all the visions that synchronize with this ten-horned beast have the same extent of duration : as the two-horned beast , the whore , the woman in the wilderness , the sealed company of virgins , the outer court troden down by the gentiles , the two witnesses mourning in sackcloath , and the dead bodies of the witnesses lying three days and an half in the street of the great city . for i conceive that as the womans abode in the wilderness is first denoted by . days , and after in the same chapter by a time and times and half a time , so the continuance of the sad condition of the witnesses is first set down by . days , but after by three days and an half , to answer to a time and times and half a time , which is three times and an half . and that three times and an half are signified by three days and an half on purpose to teach us to reckon the duration of all these synchronals not by the curiosity of a prophetical month much less of a prophetical day , but as it is originally in daniel by semidays or half-days : after the beginning of the expiration of the seventh of which half-days the witnesses were to rise , as they did . but this by the bye but very worthy the noting . all these synchronals , i say , of the prophecy of the opened book are necessarily to be measured by prophetical semitimes , that is , the duration of every one of them is to be about seven semitimes , a semitime consisting of one hundred and eighty years . and so must also those two synchronals of the sealed book-prophecy , the six first trumpets , and the one hundred forty four thousand sealed servants of god , they being synchronal to these . fourthly , from whence it will further follow , that neither the one hundred forty four thousand sealed ones are the same individual persons , continuing all the space of time near one thousand two hundred and sixty years , nor the two-horned beast some one particular witch or magician , nor the two witnesses two particular persons , as r. h. with his litteral sense would have all these expounded , but all of them successions of such and such bodies or companies of men for such a space of time together . and before we go any further , xvi let us observe of those synchronals we have noted hitherto , what either correspondent opposition , or else close cognation or identity they have one with another , which is a further marvellous confirmation of their synchronizing . that the two-horned beast and the whore signifie one and the same thing , and that the ten-horned beast chap. . and the ten-horned beast chap. . are one and the same beast i have noted already , and the cognation of the one two with the other two is apparent , the former being the ecclesiastical part of the roman empire , ( and more particularly the roman hierarchy , as appears by the name and number of the two-horned beast , and the seven hills the seat of the whore , for which rome is most remarkable ; as also that it is the city that ruled over the kings of the earth in s t iohn's time , according to the interpretation of the angel ) and the latter , the secular part of the roman empire debauched chiefly by the roman hierarchy with gross pagan-like superstition and idolatry . and the secular and ecclesiastick part together thus paganizing in a new mode , are the gentiles that tread under foot the holy city or outer court of the temple till the seventh semitime of the forty two prophetical months , that is , till the rising of the witnesses . and these are the synchronals of the debauched part of the roman empire for this time : but the apostolick church never failed notwithstanding in this apostasie . this sincere part therefore that run in correspondent opposition to the former are set out by the woman ( viz. crowned with twelve stars , to denote her apostolicalness though now ) in the wilderness , the two witnesses prophesying in sackcloth , the servants of god sealed in their foreheads ; the bodies of the witnesses lying dead three dayes and an half and unburied ; which showes , that the apostolick christians though in being could not be a living body politick , that is , invested with open power and rule during the seven half-dayes or semitimes of the beast , till they were in the seventh semitime expiring : as the two mournful witnesses could only protest and witness against the cruel idolatrous proceedings of the beast , and denounce the judgements of god against them , but proceed no further . for that the three dayes and an half of their bodies lying unburied , is the same with the one thousand two hundred and sixty dayes of their mournful prophecy is plain from hence , that else no war was made against them , nor they either politically or naturally slain , till the last three years and an half of their prophesying , whenas they were politically slain all the while , and some hundred thousands of them in a natural sense slain at times , some by the sword , others by fire and faggot , &c. which is a demonstration , that the three dayes and an half must be understood in the same sense that three times and an half , or one thousand two hundred and sixty dayes . the virgin company also by their avowed and resolved virginity was a perpetual reproach to the whore of babylon ; and the one hundred forty four thousand marked with the lambs name , and the name of his father in their forehead are in an apparent opposition to the marked slaves of the two-horned beast . and this being the state of the roman empire for about something more than four hundred years after christ till the seventh semitime was expiring , it is no wonder that the judgements of god thundered upon them under the sounding of the six first trumpets , and that at the beginning of their sounding , one hundred forty four thousand servants of god are marked to save them both from these judgements , and also from the debauchings of the two-horned beast , or whore of babylon ; which signifies that god would preserve to himself a pure apostolick church , notwithstanding all the calamities , persecutions , and gross superstitions and idolatries raging in the empire . and conformable to the account of this period of time are the pergamenian and thyatirian intervals : for during eight parts of nine of the pergamenian interval , and all the thyatirian , was this pagan-like superstitious and idolatrous state of the church , and there is express mention of the idolothyta in both those intervals , but in none else ; and the persecuting the pure christians by the sword in one , and by fire and faggot in the other , is plainly made out in our exposition . so admirably do the visions correspond belonging to this time and state of the roman empire , which the angels interpretation hath pitched upon : so that there is all the assuredness of the truth of the thing hitherto that humane reason can desire , and that the middle synchronals are to be expounded in such a sense , as i have expounded them in my exposition of the apocalypse . xvii but let us now proceed , and see how the antemedial synchronals will sute with the times which they necessarily run into ; ( for that they all precede these middle synchronals , and so synchronize one with another , has been plainly proved in my defence of m r mede ) which antemedial synchronals , are , the six first seals immediately preceding the six first trumpets : the inner court , ( which is the court of the temple and the altar ) symmetral or commensurate : the woman clothed with the sun , and crowned with twelve stars not yet gone into the wilderness , and the fight of michael with the dragon while this woman is in travail . these are the antemedial synchronals , and therefore all of them necessarily run into the primitive times of the church before its apostasie , and reach up to its very first beginning , as soon as the church , assisted by the promised aids of christ after his ascending to his father , began to propagate his kingdom . there was the beginning of the parturient state of the woman , whose throes were great and sharp till constantines time , and the dragon spued out a flood after her while she was making into the wilderness , that flood of contention about the arrian points . here i will appeal to r. h. or any man else living , what a fit resemblance the sharp throes of the woman is of those fierce resistances and cruel persecutions the church of christ found in preaching his gospel , and in their endeavouring to enlarge his kingdom : and how naturally the conflict betwixt christianity and the old roman paganism is expressed by the fight of michael with the seven-headed dragon : and how significative the inner-court , that is said to be measured and allowed ( but the outer rejected as incommensurable ) is of the first ages of the church not yet lapsed into those gross superstitions and pagan-like idolatries . and lastly , for the first six seals , ( though the sealed book-prophecy respects the fate and affairs of the empire rather than of the church , yet ) the first vision , ( viz. ) of the first seal , namely , the heros on the white horse , i doubt not but it is christ more particularly guiding and assisting the apostles and other agents for the enlarging of his kingdom in those times , by sending of the holy ghost , and enabling them to do true miracles , one of the greatest whereof is this apocalypse written by s t iohn ; and the mention of a bow and a crown , of which the right was given him , denotes him aiming at the possession of the imperial crown , the making the whole roman empire his church or kingdom ; which causing such great mutations in the empire , the fate of the empire may very well be conceived to be concerned therein . the three next seals how exquisitely they fit with those times of the riders of the red , black and pale horses , the exposition makes good , and they are in a manner merely touching the affairs of the empire , though useful also to the church to know where or in what times they were , and what to expect next : but the fifth seal exhibiting the souls of the slain under the altar martyred or sacrificed for their bearing witness to the christian truth , is hugely congenerous with the sharp throes of the womans child-bearing ; and the affairs of the empire are here also concerned , great calamities being to come upon it for the effusion of this innocent blood. and lastly , that great earthquake under the sixth seal , which brought the confusion and subversion of the old pagan religion ; as the fate of the empire could not but be concerned therein , so also it doth fitly fall in with the victory of michael over the dragon , and his casting him down unto the earth : so agreeable are the primitive times of the church to all these antemedial synchronals . and what is still more admirable , we may further observe how exactly the ephesine and smyrnean interval of the church agree with those times , and with the said antemedial synchronals of the sealed and opened book . for as in the first seal , the heros on the white horse is brought in earnestly aiming with his bow and arrow at a crown , the right of which is given to him ; so the first interval of the church , ( viz. ) the ephesine has its name from a paronomastical allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that signifies an earnest desire after a thing , and in the smyrnean interval ( which with the ephesine equalizes the time of the fight of michael with the dragon , till his victory over him under the sixth seal , and is the interval of the ten noted persecutions of the church ) it is said to the church in that interval ; be thou faithful unto death , and i will give thee the crown of life ; that is , the imperial crown , constantine turning christian under the sixth seal at the expiration of the smyrnean interval so called from the bitterness of persecution in that succession of the church . but the great encomiums of the church in those two intervalls answer handsomly to the inner court of the temple and altar , which is said to be symmetral , and allowed ; and the altar there to the many martyrdoms of the primitive christians sacrificed for the profession of the christian faith in the smyrnean interval of the church : so wonderful an harmony is there of these antemedial synchronals of all sorts , with the history of those primitive times , and with one another : so that it must be mere stupidity , or obstinate perverness that hinders any one from assenting to the truth in this point . we have seen what a fit and effectual key the interpretation of the angel has been for the opening the true meaning of all the antemedial and medial visions of the apocalypse : xviii which since they concern things past , the sense of the visions is the more assured and certain to us : but the postmedial visions being all of them in a manner to come , the sense cannot be so precise , fixt and certain . but thus much is manifest out of the interpretation of the angel , that they are to succeed the rising of the witnesses , or the expiring of the seventh semitime of the forty two prophetical months of the beast : which seventh semi-time , or seventh semiday or half-day by the interpretation of the angel reaching to our times , or the times of the reformation , it is evident that the reformation is the rising of the witnesses . after which immediately succeeds the seventh trumpet ; within which in gross or at large are contained , the millennial reign of christ , the ligation and incarceration of satan , the palm-bearing company , the time of the new ierusalem , or of the lambs wife ; and this is so firmly proved by m r mede's synchronisms , that there can be no doubt but that those glorious and happy times of the church upon earth are yet to come , which is the main scope of the postmedial visions . but in our table of synchronisms things are delineated more distinctly and particularly , and it mainly differs from that part of m r mede's table , in that i have divided the seventh trumpet into seven thunders , and placed the seven vials under the first thunder . for in that they are the seven last plagues , that they should belong to the last wo-trumpet there is all the reason in the world . and that the vials must of necessity follow the rising of the witnesses , i have elsewhere sufficiently demonstrated . it remains only that we briefly note the reasonableness of the order of the postmedial visions in my table , and the congruity of those that are set down as synchronizing one with another , all which i have referred to the order of the seven thunders : and that we also observe how the expiration of the time of the beast and his destruction , and so likewise of the whore at the rising of the witnesses is to be understood only of the entireness of their kingdom or rule . and that according to that analogy all the rest of the synchronals are to be understood , namely as there is but a partial destruction of the kingdom of the beast and the whore , so there is but a partial and imperfect advance toward the millennial reign of christ , and the new ierusalem , &c. this being premised we will take notice of the order of the seven thunders and what visions synchronize with them . as , with the first thunder synchronizeth the effusion of the seven vials , as the seven thunders with the seventh trumpet and the seven trumpets with the seventh seal . with the sixth vial synchronizeth the harvest , and also the preparedness of the spouse of the lamb. whereby the conversion of the iews is intimated to be under the sixth vial , as also in part at least , by the sixth vial it self . and if this be not the time of their conversion , there appears none in the apocalypse for them . and r. h. himself is very earnest for the conversion of the jews , though he is utterly mistaken in the application of the apocalyptick visions to that event . with the seventh vial synchronizeth the treading of the wine-press and also the battle of the rider of the white horse ; and how necessarily these three visions are tied together in one time my exposition of the apocalypse does clearly demonstrate , & that the fulfilling of all these three visions are an utter destruction of babylon the roman hierarchy , and as it were an universal conversion of the heathenish unbelievers to the faith of the gospel . wherefore the city babylon being thus destroyed ; with the second thunder naturally synchronizeth the descent of the new ierusalem , that city or polity coming down from heaven , and quite contrary to the carnal and tyrannical city or polity of babylon . under the second thunder therefore is the constitution of laws for universal christendom by a truly holy and truly oecumenical council really inspired from heaven . with which time therefore naturally synchronizeth the laying hold of satan . and this city or polity the new ierusalem thus constituted being the kingdom of christ , the duration thereof does of necessity immediately follow under the next , that is , the third thunder , and is that millennial reign of christ properly so called , wherein his laws and discipline are vigorously and faithfully executed and observed . whence , with this millennial reign the close imprisoning of satan for a thousand years is rightly conceived to synchronize . which time of his imprisonment his letting loose again immediately following , it is evident that his letting loose synchronizeth with the fourth thunder . and the besieging the holy city by gog and magog as an effect of this , with the fifth ; and the coming of christ to judgment to defeat the besiegers , with the sixth thunder . from whence it follows that the new ierusalem or holy city continues all the time of the third , fourth , fifth and sixth thunders , though the millennial reign of christ properly so called is contained within the space of the third thunder ; and the palm-bearing company within the space of the second and third . for when the devil has got loose again , their palms may be justly conceived to wither in their hands ; and yet considering they are still in their hands , you may phansy if you will that they reach from the second thunder to the seventh , as the exclusion of the wicked rabble out of the holy city reaches through the third , fourth , fifth and sixth thunders . and lastly with the seventh thunder synchronizeth the conflagration of the earth by thundering and lightning properly so called , as also the consummate salvation of the saints or their transvection into those eternal mansions of glory . these are the main postmedial visions of the opened book-prophecy , and you see how natural their order is thus disposed under the seven thunders which fill the seventh trumpet of the sealed book , and what cognation there is betwixt those visions that are made to synchronize one with another ; we will only add how they correspond with the intervals of the churches . and it is observable that as the ephesine and smyrnean interval did totally symbolize with the antemedial visions and eight of nine parts of the pergamenian and the whole thyatirian interval with the medial ; so the sardian , philadelphian and laodicean intervals do most conspicuously symbolize will these postmedial visions . for as the effusion of the vials is ushered in with musick chap. . so the very name of sardis is as much as canticum laetitiae a song of joy . and as the state of the first six vials is but an unsetled imperfect state in comparison of what is to come , so the interval of the church of sardis , whose works are said not to be perfect before god , is terminated with the sixth vial. but philadelphia that excellent state of the church , that interval reaches through the seventh vial and the second and third thunder ; it being the philadelphian army which christ so commends in his epistle to that church that atchieves that notable victory under the seventh vial , and it being expresly said to that church , that the name of the city new ierusalem should be writ upon her , which cometh down from heaven , which cometh to pass under the second thunder . and lastly , the interval of laodicea synchronizing with the fourth , fifth and sixth thunders , the first whereof is the loosing of satan , the next the siege by gog and magog , and the last , the coming of christ to iudgment , how congenerous this is to the remisness of laodicea who brought this siege upon her self , by her lukewarmness and laziness , is obvious to observe . and also how well the name of laodicea which signifies the iudging of the people , agrees with christs coming to judge the people under the sixth thunder . xix wherefore in virtue of the angels interpretation , chap. . that royal key of the apocalypse , with the addition of irrefutable synchronisms , there being given such a coherent mystical sense throughout all parts so wonderfully harmonizing one with another ; and according to the angels interpretation a litteral sense being impossible in the middle synchronals , whereby we are assured also of the mystical sense of the antemedial and postmedial visions , i dare appeal even to r. h. himself if there be not more rhythme than reason in those drolling verses of his made in imitation of martials upon sabidius , o litteral sense i love thee not , the cause i cannot tell , this only i can say of thee , i love thee not , farewel . and whether it had not been more advisable for him to have abstained from medling with these holy and mysterious oracles of god than to have rushed upon them with so little reverence and fear , and to have bethought himself , that a person so learned and pious as m r mede , and pursuing these studies with that care and devotion could not easily be mistaken in the main . nor has r. h. produced any thing material against any part of m r medes interpretations , no more nor so much as against his synchronisms . i will only give a taste of one or two of his best objections , that you may judge thereby of the rest . for my epilogue is swollen too big already . against the rider of the white horse , in the first seal , his being christ miraculously assisting his church in the apostles times , he objects , that it is christ , ( viz. ) the lamb that showeth the rider of the white horse by opening this seal , and the revealer and the revealed cannot be the same . as if a man could not show himself in person if he will , and so be both the revealer and the revealed ; much more in representation or image : not to add , that it is the angel that is the shower of the whole scene of this vision , and makes a double representation of christ here , the one as he is the chief revealer of the vision , the other as a principal person beginning that scene , that the vision of the seals represents . that objection is more material touching the first trumpet , where it is said , and the third part of trees was burnt up , and all green grass was burnt up . where trees signifying the great ones , and the grass the plebeians , or common people , according to m r mede , it will follow , saith he , that there will be no common people left for the ensuing plagues to take hold of . but he that understands the prophetick stile , and observes in what various senses [ all ] is taken , will not in the least be scandalized . i remember somewhere in drusius , that he observes that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all , sometimes is simply taken for all , sometimes for the greater part , sometimes for many and sometimes for a few . and this latitude there is without any pretense that i can remember : but here it is a notable elegancy , for having said , the third part of the trees were burnt up ( where the third part does not signifie numerally but symbolically denoting the roman empire ) by a logoprepia in the cortex of the vision , it was to be said , and all green grass was burnt up : where notwithstanding all signifies no more than a good deal , though for decorum sake in the cortex of the vision , it was to be said [ all ] none of the grass in likelihood escaping when the third part of trees was burnt down to the root ; for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies . against the fifth trumpet also he objects , that the locusts cannot be the saracens , because the locusts did only hurt the body , not kill it out-right : and that they were only to hurt the bad not the good . but i answer , the not killing is not understood of particular men , but of the eastern empire , that they should not make it cease to be the roman empire still , which the turks did effect . and it is not said they should hurt no good men , but that they should only hurt those men that had not the seal of god in their foreheads ; whereby is denoted the safety of a certain part of his church , both from the violence and impostures of the saracens . and lastly , against the sixth trumpet he objects , that the turks never came into the field with an army of two hundred thousand thousand , that they have foot as well as horse , and that they kill men not by mere fire , smoak and brimstone but by bullets . but i answer to the first , that it is an usual scheme of speech to put a finite number for an indefinite , and a finite vast number is here put for an indefinite numerous multitude , and it is well known the armies of the turks are very numerous . to the second , that the turkish foot being not so considerable as their horse , and the name of the turks in greek history , as m r mede observes , being usually persae , which signifies horsemen , to the end that this amongst other things , may be a note that the turks are meant , they are all represented as horsemen . and to the last , that the mention of bullets is with admirable judgement and elegancy omitted , and consentaneously to an intimation in the vision it self , vers . . and thus i saw the horses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , our english translates it , in the vision , but it should be in appearance , or to look unto : and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , when nothing was perceived by a spectator of the battle , but fire , smoake , and the scent of brimstone , and yet men at the firing off , ever and anon to fall down dead , nothing being perceived but these ; by these three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in appearance , ( viz. ) by the fire , and by the smoak , and by the sulphur was the third part of men , that is , the men of the roman empire killed , no bullets being seen by the spectator that struck them down : so witty , true and elegant is this description , setting the thing out just as it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to appearance . this is enough for a taste , to discover what a nothing it is , that is to be alledged against expositions , regulated by that interpretation of the angel , and irrefutable synchronisms , such as i have maintained m r mede's to be for the main . wherefore there being that firmness and solidity m r medes way , xx and such wild extravagances , and indeed impossibilities in r. h. his way , who makes asia the only place or scene of the apocalyptick visions , and contends , that all of them are to be fulfilled in a litteral sense , and that none of them are yet fulfilled , nor will be god knows when ; one would wonder that a man of his learning and parts , which he showes so considerably in other points , should become so marvellously delirant in this . but that i may not seem less ready to take notice of his virtues , than i have been to expose his weaknesses , it is nothing else so far as i can find , but an high strain of civility to that lady city of europe , rome , the she may not be deemed the whore of babylon , and deep pangs of kindness and charity to the papists , that the protestants may not begin a war with them upon account of their religion , disp. . quest. . and lastly , no small measure of officiousness , and respect to our church of england , that she may not be deemed antichristian by the mystical interpretations of the revelation , ( praef. pag. . ) that has thus necessitated r. h. to adhere to the litteral sense of the apocalypse , and for greater safeness to remove the scene out of europe into asia , and still to make more sure , to affirm , that the visions ar to be fulfilled in the order as they stand in the revelation : so that untill there appear in the land of asia , two hundred thousand thousand bob-tailed horses , whose bob-tailes are in the shape of serpents with heads and mouths in them , that have fire , smoak and brimstone coming out of them , as his paraphrase describes the very tailes themselves , as well as the horses heads like to lions , with fire , smoak and brimstone issuing out of them , till this strange sight appear in the land of asia , there is no conversion of the jews to be expected , though he seems tooth and nail for that opinion , no two-horned beast to be seen , much less any whore of babylon , which comes five chapters later than he ; ( and both which fond men , such as m r mede , and other mystical interpreters that insist in his footsteps , interpret of the roman hierarchy : ) and i add further , no resurrection first nor second , nor any coming of christ to judgement , ( for these come two or three chapters later than the whore ) till these two hundred thousand thousand bob-tailed steeds with lions heads and serpents tailes spitting fire , smoak and brimstone at both ends have appeared in the land of asia . how ridiculous and prophane soever this may seem to the serious , or grateful to the atheistical , r. h. notwithstanding is so gravely and devoutly confident on the matter , that in his preface , he desires the reader to give god the glory , and not him , for this his solid litteral interpretation of the apocalypse , and desires also , that the lord who is the authour of the prophecy , and revealed it to john , would reveal the truth to him ; as if the reader was to find it in this his new and rare litteral way . but to examine now as briefly as we may the three grand causes or grounds of his betaking himself to this new invention , never yet met with in any other writer whatsoever , as he but truly and justly boasts of himself in the beginning of his preface . concerning the first therefore i answer , that i commend civility and fair language so far as is consistent with truth : but if by the interpretation of the angel , the whore of babylon that rides the beast , chap. . is necessarily and inevitably the roman hierarchy debauching the empire with idolatry , i will ask r. h. whether he takes himself to be a more wise and just nomenclator than the holy ghost speaking by the voice of an angel , and whether we have not sufficient warrant to call rome or the roman hierarchy , the whore of babylon , we having the example of such an infallible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or imposer of names : and whether he himself is not to take the less offence at it , he expresly declaring at the end of his book , that god may permit the turk for the punishment of idolatry to take the city of rome and possess himself of it . to the second i answer , that i dearly embrace that christian good nature in him , and great abhorrence from war and blood-shed , especially upon account of religion , but withall i affirm , that with this christian temper my exposition of the apocalypse , though i follow m r medes synchronisms for the main , and interpret it mystically , better agrees than r. h. his litteral interpretation , which seems framed in a tenderness to the worldly peace of the church of rome only , but mine tends to a peace and cessation of wars and persecution in all christendom . let r. h. read my preface , sect. . and then tell me whether his litteral sense , or my mystical sense is more abhorrent from persecution , war and bloodshed , and better consists with christian peace and charity . but he , while he seems so solicitous for the church of rome in his litteral interpretation of the apocalypse , cares not to disarm all the reformed churches of that just defence which apparently they have out of the apocalypse rightly understood for their separation from rome : whereby they can demonstrate themselves neither schismaticks nor hereticks , nor ought to have been massacred and burnt for such , to the exhausting of the lives of several hundred thousand innocent souls that could not stoop to their idolatries : what a preposterous piece of charity therefore is it in r. h. that in a tenderness to the peace of the church of rome , he will despoil his own church , and all the reformed churches of their just and most effectual defence against that blood-thirsty hierarchy , who have drunk the blood of so many hundred thousands of innocent dissenters , and if their interest require it , and opportunity give leave , are , it is to be feared , ready to drink as much more ? but for my own part i am against all war upon account of religion , and all bloody persecutions of one party or other , nor doth my interpretation of the apocalypse require any such thing : but that they that are unjustly assaulted may defend themselves r. h. himself allows against the papists in the conclusion of his book in these express words : and so stands the case betwixt vs and rome , if they assault us we may assault them , if they begin with us we may defend our selves , and offend our foes , until they be minded to be quiet and agree on peace upon safe terms , and firm foundation . and the mystical interpretation of the apocalypse implyes no more against the persons of the romanists than thus . but that their policy quatenus idolatrous and persecutive will be confounded , methinks r. h. should conceive there is no inconvenience in that , unless he were a lover of idolatry and persecution more than of the purity of gods worship , goodness , equity and truth . therefore the second cause of his adhering to a litteral exposition of the apocalypse is thus quite blown away . and for his third and last , though the church of england cannot but take in good part his kindness and well-meaning in her behalf against such phancy-full sectaries as would prove her antichristian out of the mystical interpretation of the apocalypse , yet the most orthodox , the most pious , and the most learned clergy-men of the church of england , to whom he dedicates his meaning of the revelation , will easily understand that he does our church a great disservice by exploding all mystical interpretations of the apocalypse , the true mystical explication thereof ( such as i have pitched upon , and such as i challenge r. h. or any man else living to show any flaw of moment therein ) excusing our english church from all suspicion of that antichristianism which is deciphered in the apocalypse , as doth appear by the second consectary of my ioynt-exposition , synops. prophet . book . chap. . besides what occurrs ( in my preface to my synopsis sect. . ) of a peculiar attestation to the church of england from the completion of the prophecy of the rising of the witnesses . not to omit also that according to our mystical interpretation , episcopacy was in the church in the symmetral times thereof . and that there is no warrant for separation from the church of england , it being so considerable a part of the reformed church or the church of sardis . so plain is it that r. h. doth disservice to our church by decrying all mystical interpretations of the apocalypse . in the mean time i have abundantly shown how altogether groundless as well as how extravagant r. h. his hypothesis is who would have the apocalypse expounded in a litteral sense , and supposeth the visions must be fulfilled in the same order they occurr in the text ; and how weak his objections have proved against m r mede's synchronisms . xxi but as weak as they are , they were the best his cause could afford him , and his way more laudable thus to combate with his adversary in the open field , to try if he could vanquish him , than to use those small arts and petty tricks that is usual with a party of men that think any thing just that is for their interest , and stick not to report of men when they are dead , that they had changed their opinions , whom , they being fixed upon firm grounds , they could never move when they were alive . and thus as i have heard , has m r mede been served . his singular learning and piety being a great countenance to what tenents he held , and therefore the most plausible as well as the most compendious confutation being his own disapproving of them upon better thoughts , there has been a report raised that himself before he died was out of conceit with his own synchronisms . which that it is a meer figment any unprejudiced man may be satisfied from these brief considerations . . first , that in neither of those that wrote his life any such thing is mentioned , nor in the preface to his works in folio , the writer whereof i know to have been so curious in all things touching m r mede and so faithful and impartial , that if it had been true it had not been omitted . . that it was the genius of m r mede as to be exceeding cautious how he entertained an opinion , so to be as fixt and immovable when he had once entertained it . . he was an holy conscientious man neither covetous nor ambitious , and therefore devoid of all temptation to dissemble , and there was no persecution in those daies to fright him into a fit of dissembling . . nor did he live till he was so old as to doat , he dying in the fifty second year of his age , and therefore his synchronisms being for the main so firm as i have maintained them to be against r. h. it was impossible but he should always be able to discern the validity of them . . these truths as you may see , in his clavis apocalyptica , being received by him with such exceeding great reverence , devotion and thanksgiving to god for his assistance and illumination , it is a most incredible prodigy , when there is so little reason for it , that he should prove guilty of such prophane levity , as so rashly to reject what he had so devotionally received . . and lastly , these synchronisms being the necessary basis of all his expositions of the visions of the apocalypse , in which as we may see in his epistles , he persisted to the very last , it is necessary that he should likewise retain the same opinion of his synchronisms to the very last . and m r potter's invention touching the number of the beast , which falls in with his own interpretations of the apocalypse , and would signify little without them , ( truths so closely hanging together on one string , ) he gave i say a very high encomium of that invention of m r potter's in a letter written not passing half a year before he dyed . xxii and therefore for the vindication of m r mede's and m r potter's credit and of the truth and solidity of that invention , i think it not amiss to bestow a few lines , in confuting a novel conceit of r. f. that makes the number of the beast not to be , but forty two , that all sorts of coverings may be removed from betwixt the readers eye and the truth . the number of the beast , saith he , is not . but forty two only , forasmuch as the figures in the number imply only that sum , which also agrees exactly with the number of the forty two pagan emperours from iulius caesar to constantine the great , when rome or babylon fell , and upon whose fall the saints reigned a thousand years , till gog and magog , that is , the turk took constantinople . this is the sum of his hypothesis , which how weak and absurd it is i shall now briefly disclose . . first then , he does not prove , but only suppose , that the number of the beast denotes the time of his continuance and not his nature or constitution . which seems hugely improbable , the number of the chiliads or regiments of the lamb . denoting the nature of them and being to be numbred by the extraction of the square root . . he supposes not proves , that the letters of the greek alphabet when they are set together in one line as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have but the value of their place in the alphabet , as that iota should stand for nine , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for ten , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for fourteen , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for seventeen and so of the rest . a man may have an humour as homer had to write as many books as there are letters in the alphabet , and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will be the first book , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ninth book , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the fourteenth , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the seventeenth , and so of the rest . but they will be then only numbers ordinal not cardinal , nor in that sense fit to be put together to make up a summ . . the folly of this pretence is discovered in the very number it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for if it were as this writer would have it , that the value of each figure should not exceed the number of its place . and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should stand only for twenty two , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for fourteen , the next should not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which has the sixth place in the alphabet , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being no letter of the alphabet ( unless you will have it the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which will be as much as eighteen nineteen , and so quite confound the number of forty two ) it is an infallible indication that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be numbred the common way , since 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a figure for that common way of numbring , and that therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is . not forty two . . if this were the way of numbring , it were meer luck not skill to be able to number the number of the beast . but the text saies . here is wisdom , let him that hath understanding number , the number of the beast . . he doth not prove but suppose , that the number of the beast belongs to the ten-horned beast not to the two-horned beast which is the power hierarchical not secular . and which two-horned beast in my synopsis prophetica , i have most evidently demonstrated to be the same with the whore of babylon in my ioynt-exposition of the seventeenth and thirteenth chapters of the apocalypse . . the whore and the two-horned beast being the same , the number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 belongs to them both it to either . and that it belongs to the two-horned beast , besides chap. . vers . , . where the image of the beast causeth men to receive the mark of the beast , which therefore must needs be the two-horned beast ; that also chap. . vers . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , shews plainly that the mark and the number of the name belongs to the two-horned beast contrary to this writers supposition . . wherefore seeing the number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the number of the whore , and the number of the whore indicated by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in allusion to the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the value of whose letters contain . thus : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as peganius , that pious and ingenious interpeter hath well observed , it plainly follows that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not . but . . to which we may add that the number being the number of the name of that beast to which the number belongs , let this writer , as i can tell him that the number . is the number of the name ΛateinoΣ , let him i say tell me , what name the number forty two is the number of . . historians ordinarily number but forty emperours from iulius caesar to constantine , and philippus arabs was a christian , so that there will be but thirty nine pagan emperours : but suppose there be forty two pagan emperours : yet . these forty two emperours are not the beast , and therefore forty two cannot be properly the number of the beast . . these emperours are indeed the head of the beast , but according to this writer , the beast . therefore the head of the beast , o rem ridiculam & monstrosam ! will have seven heads , chap. . vers . . . and vers. . this head of the beast will have the feet of a bear coming out of it , which is a sign that this fancy of this otherwise ingenious writer has neither head not foot . . the beast received a deadly wound , and was healed again , so that all the world wondred after the beast ; but did these forty two pagan emperours in their persons receive any such mortal wound , and were healed again , that all the world wondred at them . . men received the number of the beast as a token of their allegiance , vers . . but the number perpetually varying from iulius caesar to constantines time , how could they be marked with the number of the beast ? it could not be forty two in iulius caesar's time but . in augustus his time . in tiberius's . and so on . and lastly , the beast , whether you understand it of the forty two emperours pagan , or the pagan empire from iulius to constantine the great , ( for the succession of these heads , and the continuance of the empire pagan from that time will be the same ) it is plainly said in the text , vers . . that this continuance is forty and two months : which whether they be meant litterally , and then it is but three years and an half , or stilo prophetico , signifie forty two months of years , that one thousand two hundred and sixty years , how ill the summs agree with about three hundred and fifty , the distance betwixt iulius caesar and constantine the great , let any one judge ; so impossible is this writers conceit of forty two being the number of the beast : and that appendage is but a further clog to it . for , . that babylon which s t iohn describes the quality and ruine of , chap. . and . rides the beast which was , is not , and yet is : which is the roman empire after it had degenerated into a kind of christiano-paganism , as i have with undeniable evidence demonstrated in my ioynt-exposition of the seventeenth and thirteeth chapters of the apocalypse : wherefore that babylon can be neither rome pagan , nor rome christian , and consequently nor have her fall in the times of constantine . . the lamentation over babylon chap. . shows , that not the city of rome but the papal hierarchy is meant thereby , and their spiritual or ecclesiastical merchandises perstringed . for as for rome her self it was never famed for any great city of traffick ; but this city of babylon is described chap. . as if it were the greatest emporium in the world . . the thousand years reign of the saints could not begin in constantines time , forasmuch as the binding and imprisoning the devil is coincident with that time , and as grotius noteth , is to commence from that edict of constantine in eusebius , ubi vincti draconis fit mentio . now let us compare the description of the binding and imprisoning this old serpent , chap. vers . . ( he was cast into the bottomless pit and shut up there , and a seal set upon him , that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were fulfilled ) with the state of things in this millennium begun in constantine's time . there had not past quite three hundred years of this thousand , wherein the devil should deceive the nations no more , but up starts the pope and mahomet , two so great impostors , that this writer sayes , pag. . the lot is fallen betwixt them who should be accounted the grand antichrist ; and pag. . he doth of his own accord and acknowledge the murthers and idolatries of rome papal . how is this consistent with the devils being close sealed up in the bottomless pit till the thousand years were expired ? . and lastly , the turks besieging and taking constantinople , which is his chief argument that the thousand years reign of the saints began in constantine's time , cannot be the besieging the holy city , ( revel . chap. . vers . . ) by gog and magog , because the holy city though it be besieged is not taken , but the turks have taken constantinople , and possessed it above these two hundred years : so that there is not one sound thred in the whole contexture of his hypothesis . which i have thus copiously shown , on purpose to undeceive some wanton confident wits , that think the interpretation of the apocalypse is a mere piece of arbitrarious fancy , and that a man may make quidlibet ex quolibet as he pleases , whenas there is but one right sense , which he that misseth will be obnoxious to be thus entangled and bewildred by his rash and unskilful adventures . xxiii in the mean time we see how sound m r mede's judgment is in his high approbation of m r potter's invention touching the number of the beast , that it is , not only ( for who ever doubted it till now , and we have abundantly shown , that there is neither now any reason to doubt it ) but is to be numbred by extracting the square root , which is twenty five , and is a number notoriously significant of the papal hierarchy ; m r potter , chap. . proving very solidly , that the first established number at once of cardinal titles and cardinals , which was by pope marcellus , was twenty five , which he confirms by at least half a score of good authors . and chap. . out of onuphrius , who writ a particular discourse of the gates of rome , that there were just twenty five gates of rome actually existing betwixt the times of pliny and iustinian , which doth very well agree , saith he , with that time in which marcellus did erect twenty five cardinalships in rome . and how in other regards twenty five doth characterize the church of rome may be seen in this author . and yet i do not think it impertinent to add one regard more to all these , and that a more moral and mystical one ; namely , that twenty five is a circular number arising from five drawn into it self , and ending in five : for five into five is twenty five , which is a symbol of that circle of carnal rites or ceremonies in that church which reach the five senses only , not the renovation of the inward man into the living image of god ; as twelve is the symbol of the apostolick dispensation , which is the participation of the promised spirit of christ , without which all religion is but a mere mask or dead vizard . but the other space b. bbbbbb , which is the outer court , is represented as rejectaneous and prophane in these words , vers . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but the outer court of the temple leave out , and measure it not , as being to be trodden down by the gentiles , and to be defiled by a new kind of gentilism and idolatry , contrary to the word of god , which is the true measure of all christian rites and usages , with which these times not squaring they are called incommensurate or asymmetral : so fitly do these two courts denote these two different states of the church . but they signifie not only the order of dignity or worth of one before the other , but of time also , for the inner was before the outer . and moreover there is the same proportion betwixt the inner and the outer court , ( which is as two to seven , according to villalpandus his compute ) that there is betwixt the symmetral times of the church and the asymmetral . thus have i crowded in more than could be well contained within the ordinary compass of an epilogue , xxv but it was out of an extreme solicitude that nothing might be wanting to the clear understanding , and certain assuring of the truth of this our exposition of the apocalypse ; it being of so mighty concernment for the christian world that this book be rightly understood , that men may know what religion they ought to adhere unto , and what to forsake , and that the great potentates and prelates of christendom , seeing the state of the church thus lively and truly represented in this looking-glass of divine providence , may conscientiously guide their affairs accordingly with judgment and prudence , removing what is an offence in the eyes of god , and like fathers of their people , and true sons of the most high , after so long a tyrannical reign of antichrist bethink themselves of the further introducing and enlarging the righteous and comfortable kingdom of christ , which according to the romish expositors themselves is thus described , isai. chap. . behold a king shall reign in righteousness , and princes shall rule in judgment : and a man shall be ( that is , men shall be , and especially they in power ) an hiding place from the wind , and a covert from the tempest , as rivers of waters in a dry place , as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. such nursing fathers and nursing mothers will the higher powers be in the reign of christ , to all his true and living members ; whenas in the reign of antichrist , or the roman hierarchy , they are the only men that are exposed to danger , and have been slaughtered , and massacred , and burnt with fire and faggot some hundred thousands of them , ( for keeping faith and a good conscience towards god ) upon pretence of their being hereticks . xxvi whenas there can be no heresie , but it must be the profession of something contrary to the truly catholick and apostolick faith ; whereas the reformed churches generally hold all those points of faith that were professed in the symmetral times of the church about four hundred years after christ , before the apostasie came in . and certainly the christian faith was abundantly complete in those primitive ages and wanted nothing . but the dissenters from the church of rome are held hereticks by them for not embracing such articles , and rites , and usages as are maintained by them for mere worldly interest for encreasing the power and revenue of holy church as they call it ; though in what it differs from the reformed churches , suppose this of england for example , holy church , or the roman hierarchy , are nothing else but a body politick of men that drive on a secular design under a religious pretense , and so may be looked upon rather as a secular polity than spiritual ; but christian no further than as to the profession of that christianity , we both agree , in a subserviency to their worldly designs . for if they did in good earnest believe and love the ancient apostolick christianity , which obtained in the symmetral ages of the church , which was then consummate , and abundantly sufficient to salvation , they could not murder those that do heartily profess it , the rest being no part of that consummate christianity , but at best mere moss and filth added to it . from whence it follows that no one that suffers in the cause of the roman hierarchy or church of rome as opposite to the reformed churches , suffers as a martyr for christianity , but as a souldier of fortune that espouses the cause of a worldly polity , that guilds it self over with a specious title of holy church . and truly it were very well if they quitted their lives thus as mere souldiers of a secular power . but they giving testimony to all the abominations of the roman religion by their thus suffering ( for they suffer not for the primitive apostolick faith wherein we are all agreed ) they giving testimony , i say , to all their idolatries , gross superstitions , wicked and tyrannical laws against the true members of christ whom they nickname hereticks ; ( which things make the roman hierarchy the real antichrist ) they are not only not the martyrs of christ but the real martyrs of antichrist , they suffering for such doctrines and practices as are against the law of christ , and are the very support , constitution , and peculiar interest of antichrist . but as many as suffer by this roman hierarchy as the faithful servants of christ in obedience to his laws that are contrary to the institutes , doctrines , and practices of antichrist , they die as the real martyrs of christ and faithful witnesses against antichrist , their witnessing serving no secular design , but the keeping faith and a good conscience and the approving themselves the sincere servants of christ. the main thing therefore that i aim at is this , xxvii that they that suffer by the roman hierarchy ( instigating the princes of christendom to persecute the conscientious ) being the real martyrs of christ , and their persecution only for such things as are both against the laws of christ , and only for the interest of the antichristian hierarchy , nothing for the secular powers themselves , ( such as are the invocation of saints , the worshipping of images , the adoration of the host , the doctrine of transubstantiation , than which nothing can be imagined more reproachful and blasphemous against the person of christ , it exposing him to be swallowed down into that bag of filth the bodies of men , or to be imprisoned in a pyxis , to be gnawn with rats and mice , or if fallen to the ground ( and he cannot stay himself , i mean this deus panaceus this breaden-god of the pontificians ) to be licked up by every obscene dog . and yet as glibly as he goes down he is a whole man with head , arms and legs , with flesh and bones , and thus all swallowed down at once without gnawing or chawing , nay , and that which is still more prodigious , it is a whole living man in health and vigour , with arms and legs able to run away from either mouse , rat , or dog , or chase them away from himself , and yet he suffers himself to be gnawn and eaten up by these vermin ) i say these and such things as these dissenters suffering for , which are against common sense , scripture and reason , and against the honour and institutes of christ , and only make for the interest of the antichristian hierarchy , to enrich and magnify their priesthood as if they were more omnipotent than god almighty , who according to their own schools can do nothing that implies a contradiction to be done , whenas transubstantiation is nothing but a fardle of flat contradictions , it may justly amaze any considering person , that the civil powers in this long reign of antichrist have been so little sensible of their own secular interest ( for in the multitude of people is the kings honour , but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince , as solomon speaks ) as to have suffered so many thousands of their useful innocent subjects to be sacrificed to the lust and ambition of that proud and bloody hierarchy , to say nothing of that great guilt of blood that lay upon the civil powers themselves for listening to the counsels of that iezebel . the account that lay upon them in those times was heavy enough , when the earth was as well full of darkness , as of cruel habitations , as the psalmist speaks . but now the fuller light of the gospel being so manifestly dispread through so great a part of christendom , and the gross idolatries , impostures and cruelties of the roman church so generally known ( which cannot but take hold of the consciences of them that have the greatest sense and fear of god and the most sincere inclinations to approve themselves the faithful servants of jesus christ , and therefore will be the most certain to suffer by the barbarous suggestions of that woman that is said to be drunk with the blood of the saints , and the blood of the martyrs of jesus ) what a vast weight of guilt will lye upon such civil powers of christendom as at this time of the day , shall listen to the wicked suggestions of the abovesaid iezebel , for the destroying of the prophets of the lord , and whither and how far it will sink them , i dread to think and am afraid to speak out . but it may be easily collected from the voice of that angel , rev. . vers . . if any man worship the beast and his image and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand , he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone , and the smoak of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever . and if this be the fate of those that suffer themselves through fear and violence to be thus debauched , what will be the fate of them that force them and debauch them ? the mighty shall be mightily tormented , wisd. . vers . . xxviii such things as these being exhibited to the view of all men in this admirable looking-glass of providence the apocalypse , which doth so fully and faithfully set forth the state of the church , and how necessary it is to reform from the roman impurities rather than to have an hankering again after the fleshpots of egypt , their gross superstitions and idolatries , hath made me with all possible care and diligence unfold the continued sense thereof with an unexceptionable coherence of things from the beginning to the end of the interpretation : and in this epilogue thus industriously to confute any thing that might seem to have any shew of argument against the truth of my exposition . and that the reader may be less prone to sleight my pains herein , i give him to understand that nothing but the clear evidence of the truth hath driven me this way , things manifestly appearing to me thus , . against my natural inclination which disposeth me to make the best of the phaenomena of providence which i meet with in the world , and to interpret them with all imaginable favour and advantage , out of that love and honour i bear to that holy godhead that is at the helm and steers all . and yet let me look never so earnestly upon things and never so favourably , i cannot perceive otherwise than that the church of rome is very grosly guilty of idolatry and consequently of most barbarous murthers of conscientious men that cannot comply with her in that hainous sin against god. . against my repute and estimation in the world , the pretending to understand the apocalypse seeming a fanciful ridiculous thing to the wits of this age that are ready to snear and flear at any such profession , and indeed at the serious profession of any religion at all , as if it were an indication of but mean parts and wit , and of great ignorance in matters of philosophy . . against the civility of my nature thus to declare in such harsh terms , as they cannot but seem to more courtly ears , that so great a part of the christian church as the roman hierarchy , is the whore of babylon , which yet closely and impartially attending to the interpretation of the angel , revel . chap. . vers . , , &c. i am as well assured of and as little doubt of as i do of any demonstration in euclid . . and lastly , against all my worldly interest and the safety of my person , as is plain i think to any one that considers the circumstances of things of late . there being therefore thus many clogs in my way i think any man may be well assured as well as i am my self , that it is merely the evidence of the truth that has driven me to assent thereunto . but they that are of another mind from me i will leave to themselves and others to consider , whether some carnal sense or worldly interest hath not swayed their judgments . for as for prophane wits and impatient of considering any thing that is weighty and serious , i will only say to them , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 while my self in the mean time am so well assured of the truths i stand for , that i hope i shall not stick ( if providence call me forth to it ) through the assistances of the promised spirit of our lord jesus , ( for our strength is not of our selves ) rather than to sin against god and my own conscience , to seal the said truths with my blood. finis . a catalogue of all the treatises contained in d r h. more 's philosophical and theological volumes , many whereof having been originally writ in english , are with the rest now published in latin by the same authour . praefatio generalissima , in qua nonnulla obiter de vita authoris habentur , de scriptorum verò occasionibus ac stylo , generalíque universorum scopo fatìs fusè agitur . enchiridium ethicum praecipua moralis philosophiae rudimenta complectens , &c. scholiis subinde illustratum . enchiridium metaphysicum , sive , de rebus incorporeis succincta & luculenta dissertation , &c. scholiis multò jam auctior facta : ubi inter caetera objectionibus respondetur viri clar. i. c. sturmii , math. & phys. p. p. altdorffini . philosophematum eruditi authoris difficilium nugarum de principiis motuum naturalium , sive de essentiis mediis & de modo rarefactionis & condensationis , examinatio ; cum responsione ad ejusdem objectiones quaestionésve circa principium hylarchicum sive spiritum naturae ; quae est prior enchiridii metaphysici appendix . adnotamenta in duas ingeniosas dissertationes , alteram tentamen de gravitatione & non-gravitatione corporum fluidorum , alteram observationes circa experimentum torricellianum , quae est enchiridii metaphysici appendix posterior . ad clarissimum & eruditissimum virum christianum knorrium , de usu decem sephirotharum , &c. epistola . trium tabularum cabbalisticarum decem sephirothas sive numerationes exhibentium , ( viz. ) tabulae iudaicae vulgaris , tabulae knorrianae vel lorianae in sublimioris cabbalae clavem zoaristicam destinatae , & tabulae sephirotharum graecanicae sive pythagoricae ab h. m. restitutae , descriptio & expositio . quaestiones & considerationes paucae brevésque in tractatum primum libri druschim , quibus accessit , ad cl. & eruditissimum virum christianum knorrium de rebus in amica sua responsione ad dictas quaestiones , &c. contentis , ulterior disquisitio . visionis ezechielis sive mercavae expositio ex principiis philosophiae pythagoricae praecipuísque theosophiae iudaicae reliquiis concinnata , mirâque cum locis quibusdam s. scripturae hactenus obscuris , luculentâque congruitate , consolidata . catechismus cabbalisticus sive mercavaeus , quo in divinis mysteriis mercavae ezechielis explicandis & memoriâ retinendis , decem sephirotharum usus egregiè illustratur . fundamenta philosophiae sive cabbalae aeto-paedo-melissaeae , quae omnem creationem propriè dictam negat , essentiámque supponit divinam quasi corporeo-spiritualem , mundúmque materialem aliquo modo spiritum ; cum brevi ac luculenta praedictorum fundamentorum confutatione . philosophiae teutonicae censura sive epistola ad amicum quae responsum complectitur ad quaestiones quinque de philosopho teutonico i. b. illiúsque philosophia . ad v. ● . epistola altera , quae brevem tractatûs theologico-politici confutationem complectitur , paucáque sub finem annexa habet de libri francisci cuperi scopo , cui titulus est , arcana atheismi revelata . demonstrationis duarum propositionum , viz. ( ad substantiam quatenus substantia est , necessariam existentiam pertinere , & , vnicam in mundo substantiam esse ) quae praecipuae apud spinozium atheismi sunt columnae , brevis solidáque confutatio . divinorum dialogorum tres priores qui de attributis dei tractant ejúsque providentia in genere . rerum ac verborum locorúmque scripturae in hoc primo tomo voluminis philosophici occurrentium index . collectio philosophica in qua continentur , praefatio generalis . antidotum adversùs atheismum . appendix ad dictum antidotum . enthusiasmus triumphatus , sive de natura , causis , generibus & curatione enthusiasmi , brevis dissertatio . immortalitas animae . conjectura cabbalistica , sive mentis mosaicae in tribus primis capitibus geneseos , secundùm triplicem cabbalam , literalem , philosophicam & divino-moralem interpretatio ; cum singularum cabbalarum defensione . ad defensionem cabbalae philosophicae appendix , scholiis multùm aucta , ubi inter alia , examini respondetur cl. viri s. andreae s. s. theologiae doctoris & philosophiae professoris herbornensis . divinorum dialogorum duo posteriores qui de regno dei tractant & de speciali illius providentia per christum super ecclesiam à principio ad finem seculorum . rerum ac verborum locorúmque scripturae in hoc altero voluminis philosophici tomo contentorum index . praefatio ad lectorem . visionum apocalypticarum ratio synchronistica . magni mysterii pietatis explanatio , sive vera ac fidelis repraesentatio aeterni evangelii domini ac servatoris nostri jesu christi , dei filii unigeniti , hominúmque principis ac angelorum . mysterii iniquitatis pars prior , sive , diligens justáque delineatio verae ideae antichristianismi , in realibus genuinísque illius membris . mysterii iniquitatis pars posterior , sive , synopsis prophetica compendiosum continens prospectum in illa sacrae scripturae vaticinia quibus regnum antichristi insignísve lapsus seu degeneratio ecclesiae , in eis rebus omnibus quae in idea antichristianismi comprehenduntur , praefiguratur vel praedicitur . expositio prophetica septem epistolarum ad septem ecclesias asiaticas . de veris rationibus sive fundamentis certitudinis fidei in rebus religionis brevis dissertatio . antidotus adversùs idololatriam , sive dissertatio brevis , multa complectens theoremata ad dignoscendum quid sit haberíve debeat idololatria apud christianos , apprimè utilia , cum applicatione ad doctrinam concilii tridentini . antidoti appendix , in qua vera & adaequata notio seu definitio idololatriae communiter sic dictae proponitur , exempla plurima istiusmodi idololatriae in romana ecclesia per propositam definitionem examinantur , consuetudines quaedam in ecclesia anglicana vindicantur seriaeque aliquot monitiones de idololatria spirituali demum annectuntur . divinorum hymnorum heptachordon . carmina quaedam in scriptis philosophicis anglicè occurrentia & latinè hîc per authorem reddita . rerum ac verborum , locorúmque scripturae in hoc volumine theologico explicatorum index locupletissimus . praecipuorum membrorum antichristianismi descriptionum simul & praedictionum eisdem respondentium , index particularis . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e the authentickness of the apocalypse . ii the intelligibleness of the apocalypse . * synops. prophet . book . chap. . iii the excellency of the book of the apocalypse . iv the peril of slighting the apocalypse , and the study of understanding it . v the grounds the authour goes upon in his exposition of the apocalypse , how assured they be . vi how grosly grotius has overshot himself in his interpreting the apocalypse . vii the usefulness of the authors exposition against atheism , and for the defence of natural religion . viii the usefulness of it for the confirming of christianity . ix and for the justifying the reformed churches from all imputation of schism . x and for moving them to repentance , and amendment of their lives . xi the usefulness of his exposition in reference to the jews . xii a particular usefulness for the undeceiving the fifth-monarchy-men . xiii the usefulness of it in the behalf of the pontifician party . xiv the conclusion . xv of his epilogue to be annexed at the end of his exposition . notes for div a -e * see notes vers . . eph. . . * chap. . sect. . * chap. . matt. . . john . , . cap. . vers . . esdr. . . * see synops . prophetic . book . c. . sect . . dan. . . jer. . . acts . . dan. . . joh. . . corinth . . . sam. . . esai . . . esdr. . . mat. . . rom. . . corinth . . . isai. . . matt. . . jude . corinth . . . rom. . . joh. . . acts . . * see mr. potters interpretation of the number , cap. . * see mystery of godliness , lib. . cap. . sect . . * chap. . vers . . notes for div a -e i of what writers and in what way the author has made use of in his exposition of the apocalypse , with a monition not rashly to attempt the expounding of that book , without consulting former writers . ii the repeated testimony of the spirit of god , in the apocalypse against the idolatry of the church of rome . iii the authors answer to certain invidious cavils against the protestant exposition of the seven heads of the beast . iv his answer touching his interpreting the two horns of the beast of the episcopal mitre , and his sharpness of stile in his exposition . v the authors table of synchronisms proposed and explained . vi the main difference betwixt m r mede 's table of synchronisms and the authors . vii the authors defense of m r mede ' s synchronisms against r.h. so far as they agree with his own . viii the authors defence of mr. mede ' s opinion , that a new set of prophecies begins rev. . whereof some commence from the same epocha the prophecy of the seals does . ix 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , no arguments that the vision of the seven churches & the prophecy of the seven seals do not synchronize . x no good sense to be made of the apocalypse but mr. mede 's way . the ridiculousness of r. h. his way whereby he would gratify the church of rome . xi r. h. his extravagant positions touching the interpretation of the apocalypse , together with his reasons of them , and their confutation . xii the key of the prophecy of the seven churches . xiii the key of the sealed book and opened book prophecies , which is the angels interpretation of the beast and the woman sitting on him , revel . chap. . xiv r. h. his objections against this key proposed and answered . xv the admirable usefulness of the abovesaid key for the certain unlocking of the sealed and opened book - prophecies . xvi the cognation and identity , or correspondent opposition of the middle synchronals . xvii the antemedial synchronals how well they sute with the times they run into . xviii the post-medial visions , their order , and the congruity of those that are made to synchronize one with another . xix r. h. his groundless drolling against the mystical sense of the apocalypse , with an answer to some chief objections of his against mr. medes expositions . xx what the motives were that drove r. h. to reject the mystical way of interpreting the apocalypse , and embrace the litteral , and how insufficient . xxi that mr. mede never disapproved or was out of conceit with his own synchronisms . xxii a confutation of a novel conceit of r. f. that the number of the beast is not . but . xxiii the number twenty five in what regard a character of the roman hierarchy or church of rome . xxv what a true and clear looking-glass of providence the apocalypse is , and of what great consequence it is for all christians high and low to have a right understanding thereof . xxvi of heresie , and of the secularity of the roman hierarchy , and how they that suffer for that church are no christian martyrs . xxvii that they that suffer for conscience sake by the church of rome are christian martyrs , and how much their sufferings are against the interest of the secular powers . and what a weight of guilt lies upon them that have gratified the papal hierarchy by such persecutions of the conscientious . xxviii what assurance the author himself has and others also may have concerning him , that nothing but the meer evidence of truth has cast him upon such sentiments touching the church of rome . notes for div a -e vol. philosop . tom. . vol. philosop . tom. . volum . theologic . divine dialogues containing sundry disquisitions & instructions concerning the attributes and providence of god : the three first dialogues treating of the attributes of god and his providence at large / collected and compiled by the care and industry of f.p. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) divine dialogues containing sundry disquisitions & instructions concerning the attributes and providence of god : the three first dialogues treating of the attributes of god and his providence at large / collected and compiled by the care and industry of f.p. more, henry, - . [ ], p. printed by james flesher, london : . the first three dialogues. 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characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng god -- attributes. religion -- philosophy. theology, doctrinal. theology -- early works to . - tcp assigned for keying and markup - aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images - rina kor sampled and proofread - rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion divine dialogues , containing sundry disquisitions & instructions concerning the attributes and providence of god. the three first dialogues , treating of the attributes of god , and his providence at large . collected and compiled by the care and industry of f. p. thy wisedome , o lord , reacheth from one end to another mightily ; and sweetly doth she order all things . wisedome . . london , printed by iames ●l●sher , anno dom. . the publisher to the reader . reader , though it may well seem needless to preface any thing in particular touching these● three first dialogues , we being in so great a measure prevented by what is already noted in general in the palaeopolite's epistle to his friend ; yet because 〈◊〉 other two went not out of my hands ●ithout something a larger preamble , 〈◊〉 have thought it not amiss to preface 〈◊〉 little in way of commendation of these . 〈◊〉 then , the subject of the first 〈◊〉 these three dialogues is the attri●utes of god ; of the two latter , the adjusting of the phaenomena of the world to the goodness of his providence . arguments that will easily allure the attention of the curious , and i think handled with that plainness , that full comprehension and carefull circumspection , that they will also satisfie the ingenuous . but they that have a minde to finde flaws will easily phansie they see them even there where they are not . the main scope of the authour in the handling of the attributes of god seems to be , to cut his way with that caution and iudgement , as neither to lessen the majesty of the godhead by a pretence of making his nature so universally intelligible to all capacities whatsoever , ( for it is well known how dull and short-sighted some are ) nor yet on the other side to make his existence incredible , by puzzling and confounding even the best vnderstandings with high-flown notions and hard repugnancies , yea perfect contradictions , upon pretence of magnifying the nature of god the more thereby . as if the more perplext and self-inconsistent the nature of god were , it were the more glorious and adorable ; and that were not a reprehension of our saviour to the samaritans , but an encomium , where he saies , ye worship ye know not what . which yet is the condition of all those that dress up the deity with repugnant attributes , and an invitation to the atheistically-given to quit both the deity and his worship at once . which consideration i conceive made the authour of these dialogues not onely with sound reason to beat down , but also with a due and becoming contemptuousness to explode that new fond opinion of the nullubists , who , forsooth , imagine themselves so superlatively intellectual above other men , in declaring that god is no-where , though they cannot deny but that he is . in which lofty adventure though they boast themselves as so safely elevated above the region of imagination , yet i do not doubt but this high lift of their thoughts will be found at last to be but as a tumid bubble on troubled waters , and that the levity and puffiness of their spirits has carried their conceptions ( if they have any of the thing they pronounce of ) above the levell of common sense and reason . in his adjusting of the phaenomena of the universe to the divine goodness , it is considerable that he has declined no difficulties the wit of man can imagine or invent , but brought them all into view , or at least the hardest of all , and such specimina of all kindes , that in all likelihood , what-ever new instances may occur to men , or they may on set purpose excogitate , will be easily satisfy'd by the solution of these foregoing examples . that also is not to be pretermitted , how he has fitted solutions and hypotheses to the severall degrees and capacities of the mindes of men , that the argument may not be too big for some , and too little for others . to say nothing how in the representing of the gross barbarities of the manners and religions in the vnciviliz'd parts of the world , he does by not an unpleasant satyricalness dexterously endeavour the quickening of the civilized parts into a sense and abhorrence of the least shadow or resemblance of those execrable barbarities . and that again , methinks , is very sober and humane , in that in the setting out these genius's of severall sorts and sizes , as i even now intimated , there is nothing of reproach cast upon any , but he that has not the fate to be a philotheus or a bathynous , is notwithstanding allow'd to be a sophron. all which dispensations in their kinde are laudable and honourable ; and it is certainly want of iudgement or good nature that makes them contemn one another . for those that are arrived to any due measure of real piety and vertue finde so great a perfection in that , that those whom they see arrived to the like degree there with themselves , let their other capacities be what they will , they will easily give them the right hand of fellowship , and acknowledge them their equals . but for those whose either knowledge or ignorance is accompanied with so high a pitch of rudeness and immorality , as that they contemn and reproch all that are not of their own size in either , it is but just if they find themselves lightly perstringed in the parable of those two loud-singing nightingales of arcadia that so rudely awakened bathynous out of his divine dream . lastly , for the observation of decorum of persons , though it be not neglected or transgressed in any part of all the five dialogues , yet it is more full and articulate in these three ; whenas the peculiar character of hylobares had no occasion distinctly to shew it self in the two last . but the characters of all the others are more or less discernible in all five , but most of all that of cuphophron . in the character of which person the dramatist seems to have been judicious even to physiognomonicall curiosity , ●e intimating him to be one of so little a stature . which comports excellently well with that gaiety of manners , that versatility of wit , and lightsomeness of humour , that discovers it self all along from the beginning to the end in the person of cuphophron . for this qualification of manners is most incident , according to the rules of physiognomie , to men of a little stature , their heat and spirits being something over-proportionated to the bigness of their bodie ; which makes them quick and chearfull , and of a sudden apprehension , obnoxious to raptures and exalted resveries , though reaching short , or else shooting over , and not easily hitting the truth . which therefore agrees well with the platonicalness of cuphophron's genius . besides that it may be the authour may have some regard to the littleness of des-cartes his stature , of whose wisedome cuphophron is introduced such an excessive admirer . as if the lesser-sized bodies were the fittest sheath or case for a cartesian wit. not to note farther , that plato also was of no procere stature . severall such like prettinesses accompany the nervose prosecution of the main subject of these dialogues : wherein to the free and ingenuous i think the authour will not easily seem to have over-shot himself in any thing , unless in his over-plain and open opposing that so-much-admired ph●losopher renatus des-cartes , on whom persons well versed in philosophicall speculations have bestowed so high encomiums , especially a writer of our own , who , besides the many commendations he up and down in his writings adorns him with , compares him ( in his appendix to the defence of his philosophicall cabbala ) to bezaliel and aholiab , as if he were inspired from above with a wit so curiously mechanicall , as to frame so consistent a contexture of mechanicall philosophy as he did . and the late learned authour of philosophia scripturae interpres , after an operose , subtile and copious endeavour of evincing that philosophy is the best interpreter of scripture , as if all that pains had been intended in the behalf of des-cartes , to set him in the infallible chair , he concludes all at last with a very high and unparallel'd elogie of the cartesian philosophy . wherefore it may very well be questioned whether it was so advisedly done of the writer of these dialogues , to adventure the exposing of his own credit , by so openly opposing and oppugning the great name and authority of so very famous and eminent a philosopher as cartesius . but for my part , i must confess , the more he may have exposed himself by this freedome , ( provided that he be in the right , which the impartial reader must judge of ) the points that are controverted are of such great consequence , that i think it is in him the more conspicuous act of vertue , and that that very ground upon which this imputation of over-shooting himself is raised is a principle to be abhorred by all good and generous spirits ; namely , as if it were a point of imprudence to be less tender of a man 's own private credit then of the glory of god and the publick good ; or , as if any one ought to lose any esteem by doing what is r●ally ●orthy and laudable . besides , he does but follow the pattern of that very authour that is observed so highly to have commended des-cartes , most of the allegations against his philosophy being more fully pursued in that encomiast's writings . and in that very epistle to v. c. where he makes it his business to apologize for him , and to extoll him and magnifie him to the skies , yet he does plainly and apertly declare , that it is a kinde of vile and abject 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or superstitious idolizing of matter , to pretend that all the phaenomena of the universe will arise out of it by mere mechanical motion . and yet in the same epistle he seems to acknowledge that there may be some few effects purely mechanicall . which i believe was from his over-great desire of making des-cartes seem as considerable as he could with any judgement and conscience . but for my part , upon my more seriously considering what occurrs in these dialogues , i am abundantly assured that there is no purely-mechanicall phaenomenon in the whole vniverse . nor ought that authour so to be understood in the comparing cartesius with bezaliel and aholiab , as if he did really believe he was supernaturally inspired . for with what face can any one put that sense upon such an high-flown complement , whenas he does as well up and down in his works plainly and zealously confute des-cartes , where he findes him faulty in things of any concern , as praise him and commend him where he deserves it ? which is a plain indication he did not take him to be infallibly inspired . and it may be the right exegesis of bezaliel and aholiab's being filled with the spirit of god , is but their being filled with wisedome of heart for those mechanicall curiosities of work ; as it is signified toward the end of that chapter , that they had a special and extraordinary genius that way , which was the gift of god in nature . besides that every great thing in nature according to the hebrew idiom has its denomination from god. and therefore to be filled with the spirit of god in wisedome and understanding , &c. is to have a great measure of wisedome and vnderstanding in such and such things . as without question des-cartes had a great deal of wit and sagacity to finde out the most credible material causes of the phaenomena of the world , and to order them into the most specious contexture that the thing is capable of , to make up a mechanicall philosophy . but that these things can neither arise nor hold together without an higher principle that must superintend and guide them , this great encomiast of his does as plainly declare in * severall places , as the contriver of these present dialogues does . but as for the authour of philosophia scripturae interpres , i must confess i do much admire , that after he has laboured so much to make good his argument , he should pitch upon des-cartes his philosophy as such a safe oracle to consult about the meaning of scripture . it is true , that severall strokes of it are very fitly applicable to a philosophical sense of the six daies creation : but those are such as are comprehended in the pythagorick frame of the vniverse , and correspond with the ancient cabbala ; are no new inventions of the cartesian wit. and the truth is , that which makes des-cartes his philosophy look so augustly on 't is , in that he has interwoven into it that noble system of the world according to the tradition of pythagoras and his followers , or , if you will , of the most ancient cabbala of moses . but the rest of his philosophy is rather pretty then great , and in that sense that he drives at , of pure mechanism , enormously and ridiculously false . but now for those principles or passages in his philosophy that are more peculiarly his own , there is nothing more estranged from the genius of the scripture and the service of theologie then they . for fuller satisfaction , and for the suavity of the co●ceit's sake , let us make triall in some few . it is a grand principle with him , that where-ever we cannot but conceive an extension or expansion , we must likewise necessarily conceive there is matter . and therefore because we cannot but conceive an indefinite space round about us extended , we cannot but conceive matter all along extended . which plainly implies , we cannot but conceive there is matter , what-ever else there is . whence it follows , that its existence is necessary of it self and independent of god , because in its very notion or idea it cannot but ●e conceived to be ; we being not able otherwise to conceive but that there is an indefinite extension round about us . how this will comport with the absolute perfection of god , or how sound a sense it will render of the first verse in genesis , i leave to any one to conjecture . again , it is as confessed a principle with him , that matter alone with such a degree of motion as is supposed now in the vniverse will produce all the phaenomena of the world , sun , moon , and stars , air , water , earth , plants , animals , and the bodies of men , in such order and organization as they are found . which principle in his philosophy certainly must prove a very inept interpreter of rom. . , . where the eternall power and godhead is said clearly to be seen by the things that are made ; insomuch that the gentiles became thereby unexcusable . but if the cartesian philosophy be true , it was their ignorance they could not excuse themselves . for they might have said , that all these things might come to pass by matter and mere mechanicall motion ; and that matter excludes motion in its own idea no morè then it includes rest : so that it might have motion of it self as well as its existence , according to the former implication . see also how fit a gloss this principle will afford upon acts . . and how well that text agrees with the first section of the first chapter of des-cartes his meteors . a third peculiar property of his philosophy is , a seeming modesty in declining all search into the final causes of the phaenomena of the world : as if , forsooth , that were too great a presumption of humane wit , to pry into the ends of god's creation ; whenas indeed his philosophy is of that nature , that it prevents all such researches ; things coming to pass , according to it , as if god were not at all the creatour and contriver of the world , but that mere matter mechanically swung about by such a measure of motion fell necessarily , without any more to doe , into this frame of things we see , and could have been no otherwise then they are ; and that therefore all the particular vsefulnesses of the creation are not the results of wisedome or counsel , but the blinde issues of mere material and mechanicall necessity . and things being so , it is indeed very consistent to cast the consideration of the final cause out of the mechanicall philosophy . but in the mean time how fit an interpreter of scripture this philosophy will be in such places as that of the psalmist , o lord , how manifold are thy works ! in wisedome hast thou made them all , i understand not . for , according to this philosophy , he has made no●e of them so . let the zealous cartesian reade the whole psalm , and tune it in this point , if he can , to his master's philosophy . let him see also what sense he can make of the first to the corinthians , ch. i. v. . fourthly , the apparitions of horsemen and armies encountring one another in the air , macch. . let him consider how illustrable that passage is from the last section of the . chapter of des-cartes his meteors , and from the conclusion of that whole treatise . fifthly , that of the prophet , the oxe knows his owner , and the ass his master's crib ; as also that of solomon , the righteous man regardeth the life of his beast , but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel : what an excellent gloss that conceit of des-cartes his , of brutes being senseless machina's , will produce upon these texts , any one may easily foresee . and , lastly , gal. . . where that enmity and conflict betwixt the flesh and the spirit is mentioned , ( and is indeed as serious and solemn an argument as any occurrs in all theologie ) what light the cartesian philosophy will contribute for the more 〈…〉 this so important mystery , may easily be conjectured from the th article of his treatise of the passions , where the combate betwixt the superiour and inferiour part of the soul , the flesh and the spirit , as they are termed in scripture and divinity , is at last resolved into the ridiculous noddings and ioggings of a small glandulous button in the midst of the brain encountred by the animal spirits rudely flurting against it . this little sprunt champion , called the conarion , ( or nux pinea ) within which the soul is entirely cooped up , acts the part of the spirit , as the animal spirits of the flesh. and thus by the soul thus ingarrison'd in this pine-kernell , and bearing herself against the arietations or iurrings of the spirits in the ventricles of the brain , must that solemn combat be performed , which the holy apostle calls the war betwixt the law of our members and the law of our minde . spectatum admissi risum teneatis , ami●i ? would not so trivial and iudicrous an account of temptation and sin occasion bod●nus his ●●lack-smith to raise as derisorious a proverb touching actual sin , as he did touching original , and make them say , what adoe is there about the wagging of a nut , as well as he did about the eating of the apple ? besides , if this conflict be not a combat betwixt two contrarie lives seated in the soul her self , but this that opposes the soul be merely the spirits in such an organized body , ( as cartesius expresly affirms ; ) the souls of the wicked and of the godly in the other state are equally freed from the importunities of sin. these few tasts may suffice to satisfie us how savoury an interpreter the cartesian philosophy would prove of holy scripture and theologicall mysteries . so that religion can suffer nothing by the lessening of the repute of cartesianism , the notions that are peculiar thereto having so little tendency to that service . indeed if cartesius had as well demonstrated as affirmed that matter cannot think , he had directly deserved well of religion it self . but how-ever providence has so ordered things , that in an oblique way his philosophy becomes serviceable to religion , whether he intended it or no , or rather , that of it that was most against his intention , namely the flaws and defects so plainly discoverable in it . for the unsuccessfulness of his wit and industry in the mechanicall philosophy has abundantly assured the sagacious , that the phaenomena of the vniverse must be entitled to an higher and more divine principle then mere matter and mechanicall motion . which is the main reason that his greatest encomiast does so affectionately recommend the reading of the cartesian philosophy : as you may see in the preface to his treatise of the immortality of the soul. these things , i think , duly considered will easily clear the authour of these dialogues from all imputation of imprudence , in opposing the renowned philosopher in such things as it is of so great concern thus freely to oppose him , especially he going very little farther then his highest encomiasts have led the way before him . nor can i bethink me of any else that may have any colourable pretense of a just complaint against him , unless the platonists , who haply may judge it an unfit thing that so divine a philosophy should be so much slurred by introducing cuphophron , a platonist , uttering such tipsie and temulent raptures and rhetoricall apologies , as he does in the second and third dialogues , for the extenuating the hideousness of sin ; besides the ill tendency of such loose and lusorious oratorie . and yet the judicious , i believe , will finde those passages as pertinent and usefull as those that bear the face of more severity and reservedness ; and will easily remember that the character of cuphophron is not simply a platonist , but an aiery-minded one , ( as indeed both the danger and indecorum of light● mindedness or over-much levity of spirit is both represented and perstringed all along in his person ; ) which therefore does not redound to the discredit of platonism as such , but to the discovery of the hazard of that philosophy , if it meet not with a minde that is sober and well ballasted . and for the ill tendency of his rapturous eloquence , that fear is altogether groundless ; since of all the force of reason and rhetorick he produces , there is so perfect and convictive a confutation , that there is not the least colour left to palliate immorality ; for as much as it is so clear●y evidenced that sin and vice are no● , as cuphophron's sophistry 〈…〉 onely pursuances of a 〈…〉 things in themselves absolutely 〈◊〉 , and perfectly contrary to the ●ill and nature of god. but it was a matter of no small moment to bring into view all that could plausibly be said in the behalf of so pleasing a monster , that it being all enervated and demonstrated to be weak and frivolous , the minde of man might be the more firmly radicated and es●●blished in what is good : and that ev●l men also might take notice , tha● the more-severely vert●ous are not 〈◊〉 of the wi●tiest pleas and 〈◊〉 they can frame for their adherence to sin , nor at all at a loss how utterly to de●eat them . and that therefore those that are cordially good are not so out of simplicity and ignorance , ( as the falsely-deemed wits foolishly conceit them ) but out of a clear and rational discernment what is best , and out of an holy sense and relish of the divi●●●st things . to the latter whereof as those conceited wits lay no claim ; so is it as manifest that they have as little right or title to the former , no man willingly continuing in wickedness but out of a base stupidity of minde and imbecillity of reason . but these things , reader , thou wilt best understand by perusing the dialogues themselves , from which i have too long detained thee by an over-tedious preface ; which i must intreat thee to impute rather to my desire that thou mightest reap a clear satisfaction without the least scruple or disgust , then that i have any suspicion of either thy candour or iudgement . farewell . g.c. the epistle of fr. euistor , the palaeopolite , to a noble friend of his , touching the ensuing dialogues . honoured sir , it is now well-nigh two years agoe since i gave you intelligence touching that notable meeting i had the good hap to be at in cuphophron's renowned arbour : wherein i signify'd to you the great satisfaction philopolis received in those conferences , and how excessively hylobares was transported with philotheus his converse , being made thereby so firm a convert to the belief of spiritual beings , and of the accuracy of that divine providence that has the government of the world. but though the hints i gave then of the severall days discourses made you so passionately desirous of having the whole matter of those disceptations more fully communicated to you , and all the five days conferences recovered , if it were possible , into so many dialogues : yet , for all the care and industry i could use , i could not till now bring about what you so earnestly requested . but now , partly out of my own records i made to my self there a-nights after every day 's discourse , and partly by communicating since that time either by letters or word of mouth with those that were there present , ( especially sophron , a man of a very firm memory as well as of an able judgement ) i think i have at length recovered all that passed in every day 's conference , even to the minutest humours and circumstances of our converse : which i have done with that faithfulness , that i have not omitted such passages as may seem to redound to my own discredit ; as being more then once not over-handsomely abused by our young friend hylobares , who , you know , is free enough in that kinde with his familiar acquaintances . which made him fly upon cuphophron so frequently as he did , even to the admiration , and offense sometimes , of my worthy patron philopolis . these two , i mean hylobares and cuphophron , are , as it were , the small mean and treble in this heptachordon or instrument of seven strings . and indeed they are all along ( especially in the three first dialogues ) as acute and canorous as two stridulous swallows on the top of a chimney . the rest you will find grave enough , and my self some degrees below gravity , that is to say , pretty solemnly and authentickly dull . how ever , i served to supply the place of an historian to them ; as i do to you in the rehearsall of the whole matter . wherein i recording the humours and passions of men as well as their reasonings , if any thing be faulty in any phrase of speech or comportment of the young men , yet you are to consider that it had been a fault in me to have omitted it ; esp●cially the blemishes of the less perfect being so discernible in the company of those more-accomplished persons , and therefore the more likely to beget a disrelish and aversation in the reader to such miscarriages . which is the main scope of all moral writings , whether poetry or history . but what may seem more harsh in those youthfull persons , compared with the discreet and unexceptionable demeanour of those of more mature age , will yet be found very sutable and harmonious to the persons themselves , if you have but recourse to the particular characters in the page before the book ; which briefly represents the genius of every actour . which if you firmly fix in your mind , and carry with you all along as you reade , you will at least be assured that i am not altogether an unskilfull dramatist , how-ever you may doubt whether i be so exact an historian . farewell from palaeopolis , novemb. . . yours to command , fr. euistor . the contents of the three first dialogues . i. the preference of vertue and assurance of an happy immortality before the pleasures and grandeur of this present world. . ii. the description of hylobares his genius , and of cuphophron's entertainments in his philosophicall bowre . . iii. philopolis his quere's touching the kingdome of god , together with his sincere purpose of proposing them . . iv. hylobares his interposall of his quere's : first , touching the existence of god , and divine providence . . v. the existence of god argued from the orderly designs discoverable in the phaenomena of nature . . vi. severall instances of that general argument . . vii . that necessary causality in the blind matter can doe as little toward the orderly effects in nature , as the fortuitous iumbles thereof . . viii . that there is no phaenomenon in nature purely mechanicall . . ix . that there is no levitation or gravitation of the aether or of the vulgar elements in their proper places . whence 't is plain that matter 's motion is moderated from some diviner principle . . x. that the primordialls of the world are not mechanicall , but vital . . xi . instances of some simple phaenomena quite contrary to the laws of mechanicks . . xii . the fond and indiscreet hankering after the impossible pretensions of solving all phaenomena mechanically , freely and justly perstringed . . xiii . the existence of god argued from the consent of nations , from miracles and prophecies , from his works in nature , and from his idea . . xiv . the obscurity of the nature of god , and the intricacy of providence ; with preparatory cautions for the better satisfaction in these points . . xv. the attribute● of eternity . . xvi . an objection against the all-comprehension of eternity , with the answer thereto . . xvii . another objection , with its answer . . xviii . the attribute of immutability . . xix . of the deity 's acting ad extra . . xx. the attribute of omnisciency . . xxi . the attribute of spirituality , and that god cannot be material . . xxii . the false notion of a spirit . . xxiii . that there is an spiritual being in the world. . xxiv . that extension and matter are not reciprocall . . xxv . that there is an extension intrins●call to motion . . xxvi . that there is an immovable extension distinct from that of movable matter . . xxvii . that this extension distinct from matter is not imaginary , but real . . xxviii . a fresh appeal touching the truth of that point to reason , sense , and imagination . . xxix . the essential properties of matter . . xxx . the true notion of a spirit . . xxxi . the attribute of omnipresency . . cuphophron's paradox of god's being no-where . . xxxiii . the confutation of that paradox . . xxxiv . that all spirits are some-where . . xxxv . the grounds of cuphophron's paradox ( that spirits are no-wh●re ) produced and examined . . xxxvi . that god is essentially present every-where . . xxxvii . the arborists affected liberty of dissenting in unnecessary opinions , and friendly abusiveness of one another in their philosophicall meetings . . xxxviii . the conclusion . . the second dialogue . i. the introduction , containing philopolis his thanks for the last day's discourse ; with a touch by the bye of inspiration , and of the difficulty of the present subject . . ii. the two main heads of objections against providence , with certain laws to be observed in disputing thereof . . iii. evils in general how consistent with the goodness of god. . iv. the arguments of lucretius against providence . . v. providence argued against from the promiscuous falling of the rain , and undiscriminating discharges of thunder-claps . . vi. an answer to lucretius his arguments . . vii . of death , how consistent with the goodness of providence . . viii . of diseases . . ix . of war , famine , pestilence , and earthquakes . . x. of ill accidents happening to brute creatures , whereby their life 's become miserable . . xi . of the cruelty and rapacity of animals . . xii . of the rage of the elements , the poison of serpents , and wrath of wilde beasts . . xiii . of monstrosities in nature . . xiv . of fools , mad-men , and men irreclamably wicked from their very birth . . xv. the best vse to be made of the saddest scene of the things of this world. . xvi . how the entrance of sin into the world can consist with the goodness of providence . . cuphophron's l●natick apologie whereby he would extenuate the hainousness of sin. . xviii . a solid answer to the foregoing apologie , though ushered in with something ludicrous preamble . . xix . a more sober enquiry into that dif●culty , how the permission of sin in th● world can consi●t with the goodnes● of god. ● . xx. the first attempt of satisfying the di●ficulty , from that stoicall position of 〈◊〉 invincible freedome of man's will. ● . xxi . the second attempt , from the consid●ration of some high abuses of a vincib● freedome , as also from the nature of this freedome it self . . xxii . the third and last , from the questionableness whether in compute of the whole there does not as much good redound to the vniverse by god's permission of sin , as there would by his forcible keeping it out . . xxiii . how consistent it is with the goodness of providence , that god does not suddenly make men holy so soon as they have an hearty minde to it . . xxiv . the parable of the eremite and the angel. . xxv . that the adversity of the good , and the prosperity and impunity of the wicked in this life , are no arguments against the accuracy of providence . . xxvi . a civil , but merry-conceited , bout of drinking in cuphophron's arbour . . xxvii . the marvellous conjuncture in hylobares of an outward levity and inward soberness at once . . xxviii . his serious song of divine providence . . xxix . the breaking up of the meeting . . the third dialogue . i. conjectures touching the causes of that mirth that the meeting of some persons naturally excites in one another . . ii. hylobares his relapse into dissettlemen● of minde touching providence , with the cause thereof . . iii. paucity of philosophers no blemish to divine providence . . iv. reasons in general of the gross deformity in the religions and customs of the savage nations , as also of the variety of this deformity in manners & customs . . v. of the barbarous custome of going naked . . vi. of the ridiculous deckings and adornings of the barbarians . . vii . the lawlesness of the barbarians and their gross extravagancies touching wedlock apologized for by cuphophron , advocate-general for the paynims . . viii . of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the men of arcladam that lie in child-bed for their wives . . ix . of the pagans cruelty to their enemies , and inhumane humanity to their friends . . x. their killing men at funerals to accompany the dead . . xi . the caraiamites murthering good men to seize on their vertues . . xii . of the anthropophagi or cannibals . . xiii . of the atheism and the polytheism of the barbarians . . xiv . of their men-sacrifices . . xv. of their worshipping the devil . . xvi . of their sacrificing men to the devil . . xvii of self-sacrificers . . xviii . the meaning of providence in permitting such horrid vsages in the world. . xix . the madness of the priests of the pagans . . xx. of their religious methods of living in order to future happiness . . xxi . of their opinions touching the other state. . xxii . the vnsuccessfulness of cuphophron's advocateship hitherto in reference to the ease of hylobares his perplexities . . xxiii . severall considerations to make us hope that the state of the world may not be so bad as melancholy or history may represent it . . the first consideration . . the second consideration . . the third consideration . . the fourth consideration . ibid. the fifth consideration . . the sixth consideration . . the seventh consideration . . the eighth consideration . . xiv . excellent instances of morality even in the most barbarous nations . . the ninth consideration . . the tenth consideration . . the last consideration . . cuphophron's rapturous reasons why god does not dissolve the world , notwithstanding the gross miscarriages in it ; with hylobares and sophron's solid animadversions thereon . . xxvi . hylobares as yet unsatisfied touching the goodness of providence , by reason of the sad scene of things in the world. . xxvii . an hypothesis that will secure the goodness of providence , were the scene of things on this earth ten times worse then it is . . xxviii . bathynous his dream of the two keys of providence , containing the above-mentioned hypothesis . . xxix . his being so rudely and forcibly awaked out of so divine a dream , how consistent with the accuracy of providence . . xxx . that that divine personage that appeared to bathynous was rather a favourer of pythagorism , then cartesianism . . xxxi . the application of the hypothesis in the golden-key-paper , for the clearing all difficulties touching the moral evils in the world. . xxxii . severall objections against providence fetch'd from defects , answered partly out of the golden , partly out of the silver-key-paper . . xxxiii . difficulties touching the extent of the universe . . xxxiv . difficulties touching the habitableness or unhabitableness of the planets . . xxxv . that though the world was created but about six thousand years ago , yet , for ought we know , it was created as soon as it could be . . xxxvi . hylobares his excess of ioy and high satisfaction touching providence , from the discourse of philotheus . . xxxvii . the philosopher's devotion . . xxxviii . the hazard and success of the foregoing discourse . . xxxix . the preference of intellectual joy before that which is sensual . . xl. that there is an ever-anticipative eternity and inexterminable amplitude that are proper to the deity onely . . errata . pag- . lin . . reade ac — aq. p. . l. . r. res cogitantes . p. . l. . r. as in . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. . l. . r. neighbour p●ilothe●s . p. . l. . r. philoth . p. . l. ul● . r. bear . p. . l. . for have , r. hear . p. . l. . r. hathney and the brasilian . the proper characters of the persons in the ensuing dialogues , with some allusion to their names . philotheus , a zealous and sincere lover of god and christ , and of the whole creation . bathynous , the deeply-thoughtfull or profoundly-thinking man. sophron , the sober and wary man. philopolis , the pious and loyall politician . euistor , a man of criticism , philologie and history . hylobares , a young , witty , and well-moralized materialist . cuphophron , a zealous , but airie-minded , platonist and cartesian , or mechanist . the general character . all free spirits , mutually permitting one another the liberty of philosophizing without any breach of friendship . divine dialogves , containing several disquisitions and instructions touching the attributes of god and his providence in the world . the first dialogue . philotheus , bathynous , sophron , philopolis , euistor , hylobares , cuphophron . cuph. thrice welcome , o philotheus , who have brought along with you two such desireable associates as bathynous and sophron . will you please to make a step up into the garden ? philoth. with all our hearts . there ●s nothing more pleasant these summer evenings then the cool open air. and i 'll assure you it is very fresh here , and the prospect very delightsome . cuph. methinks i envy greatness for nothing so much as their magnificent houses , and their large gardens and walks , their quarters contrived into elegant knots adorned with the most beautifull flowers , their fountains , cascades and statues ; that i might be in a more splendid capacity of entertaining my friends . this would be to me no small prelibation of the joys of paradise here upon earth . philoth. for my part , cuphophron , i think he need envy no body who has his heart full fraught with the love of god , and his mind established in a firm belief of that unspeakable happiness that the vertuous and pious soul enjoys in the other state amongst the spirits of just men made perfect . the firm belief of this in an innocent soul is so high a prelibation of those eternal joys , that it equalizes such an one's happiness , if he have but the ordinary conveniences of life , to that of the greatest potentates . their difference in external fortune is as little considerable as a semidiameter of the earth in two measures of the highest heaven , the one taken from the surface of the earth , the other from its centre : the disproportion you know is just nothing . cuph. it is so . philoth. and for gratifying your friends ; they that are in a capacity of being truly such , are as fully well satisfy'd with your ordinary entertainment , as if you were master of the fortunes of princes . besides that it would be hazardous to your self to live in that affected splendour you speak of , as it is not altogether safe to affect it . for both the desire and enjoyment of external pomp does naturally blinde the eyes of the mind , and attempts the stifling of her higher and more heavenly operations , engages the thoughts here below , and hinders those meditations that carry the soul to an anticipatory view of those eternal glories above . cuph. what you say , philotheus , may be , and may not be : these things are as they are used . but i must confess i think worldly fortunes are most frequently abused , and that there is a danger in them : which makes me the more contented with the state i am in . philoth. and so you well may be , cuphophron : for though you will not admit you live splendidly , yet it cannot be deny'd but that you live neatly and elegantly . for such are the beds and alleys of this little spot of ground : and such also that arbour , if the inside be as neat as the outside . cuph. that you may quickly see , philotheus . philoth. all very handsome , table , cushions , seats and all . cuph. here i love to entertain my friends with a frug●l collation , a cup of wine , a dish of fruit and a manchet : the rest they make up with free discourses in philosophy . and this will prove your greatest entertainment now , philotheus , if philopolis , euistor and hylobares were come . sophr. no entertainment better any-where then a frugal table , and free and ingenuous discourse . but i pray you , cuphophron , who is that hylobares ? is it he who is so much famed for holding that there is nothing but body or matter in the world ; that there is nothing iust or vnjust in its own nature ; that all pleasures are alike honest , though it be never so unaccountable a satisfaction of either a man's cruelty or his lust ? cuph. o no , it is not he . for i verily believe i know who you mean , though it never was yet my fortune to be in his company , and i least of all desire it now . for he is a person very inconversable , and , as they say , an imperious dictatour of the principles of vice , and impatient of all dispute and contradiction . but this hylobares is quite of another genius and extraction ; one that is as great a moralist on this side rigour and severity of life , as he is a materialist , and of a kind and friendly nature . bath . that is not incredible : for i see no reason why a soul that is infortunately immersed into this material or corporeall dispensation may not in the main be as solid a moralist as a mathematician . for the chief points of morality are no less demonstrable then mathematicks ; nor is the subtilty greater in moral theorems then in mathematicall . sophr. in my mind it is a sign of a great deal of natural integrity and inbred nobleness of spirit , that maugre the heaviness of his complexion that thus strongly bears him down from apprehending so concerning metaphysicall truths , yet he retains so vivid r●sentments of the more solid morality . philoth. that will redound to his greater joy and happiness , whenever it shall please god to recover his soul into a clearer knowledge of himself . for even moral honesty it self is part of the law of god , and an adumbration of the divine life . so that when regeneration has more throughly illuminated his understanding , i doubt not but that he will fall into that pious admiration and speech of the ancient patriarch , verily god was in this place , and i knew not of it . wherefore those that are the true lovers of god must be friendly and lovingly disposed towards all his appearances , and bid a kinde welcome to the first dawnings of that diviner light. cuph. but besides the goodness of his disposition , he has a very smart wit , and is a very shrewd disputant in those points himself seems most puzzled in , and is therein very dexterous in puzzling others , if they be not through-paced speculatours in those great theories . sophr. if he have so much wit added to his sincerity , his case is the more hopefull . cuph. what he has of either you will now suddenly have the opportunity to experience your selves : for i see philopolis and the rest coming up into the garden . i will meet them , and bring them to you . gentlemen , you are all three welcome at once , but most of all philopolis , as being the greatest stranger . philop. i pray you , cuphophron , is philotheus and the rest of his company come ? cuph. that you shall straightways see , when you come to the arbour . philop. gentlemen , we are very well met . i am afraid we have made you stay for us . philoth. it was more fitting that we should stay for philopolis , then he for us . but we have been here but a little while . cuph. a very little while indeed ; but now our company is doubled , so little will be twice as little again . i am very much transported to see my little arbour scored with such choice guests . but that mine own worthlesness spoils the conceit , i could think our company parallel to the seven wise men of greece . hyl. i warrant the septenary will be henceforth much more sacred to cuphophron for this day's meeting . cuph. the senary at least . hyl. you are so transported with the pleasure of the presence of your friends , o cuphophron , that you forget to tell them how welcome they are . cuph. that is soon recounted . i sent into my arbour just before philotheus came this dish of fruit , and this wine , the best , i hope , in all athens ; and i begin to philopolis , and bid you now all welcome at once . hyl. you was very early in your provision , cuphophron . cuph. i did early provide for our privacy , that there might be no need of any body 's coming here but our selves . hyl. a large entertainment . cuph. i keep touch both with my promise to philopolis and with my own usual frugality in these kind of collations : and yet , hylobares , you have no cause to complain ; you have to gratifie all your five senses . here is another glass , tast this wine . hyl. it is very good , cuphophron , and has an excellent flavour . cuph. there 's to gratifie your tast then , hylobares , besides the delicacy of these ripe fruit , which recreate also the nostrils with their aromatick sent ; as also does the sweet smell of the eglantines and hony-suckles that cover my arbour . hyl. but what is there to gratifie the touch , cuphophron ? cuph. is there any thing more delicious to the touch then the soft cool evening-air , that fans it self through the leaves of the arbour , and cools our bloud , which youth and the season of the year have overmuch heated ? hyl. nothing that i know of : nor any thing more pleasant to the sight then the faces of so many ingenuous friends met together , whose candour and faithfulness is conspicuous in their very eyes and countenances . cuph. shame take you , hylobares , you have prevented me : it is the very conceit and due complement i was ready to utter and bestow upon this excellent company . hyl. it seems good wits jump , and mine the nimbler of the two . but what have you to gratifie the ear , cuphophron ? cuph. do you not hear the pleasant notes of the birds both in the garden and on the bowre ? and if you think meanly of this musick , i pray you give us a cast of your skill , and play us a lesson on your flagellet . hyl. upon condition you will dance to it . sophr. i dare say philopolis thinks us athenians very merry souls . philop. mirth and chearfulness , o sophron , are but the due reward of innocency of life ; which , if anywhere , i believe is to be found in your manner of living , who do not quit the world out of any hypocrisie , sullenness , or superstition , but out of a sincere love of true knowledge and vertue . but as for the pretty warbling of the birds , or that greater skill of hylobares on the flagellet , i must take the liberty to profess , that it is not that kind of musick that will gain my attention at this time , when i see so many able and knowing persons met together ; but the pursuance of some instructive argument freely and indifferently managed for the finding out of the truth . nothing so musicall to my ears as this . cuph. nor , i dare say , to any of this company , philopolis . philop. but i am the more eager , because i would not lose so excellent an opportunity of improving my knowledg . for i never met with the like advantage before , nor am likely again to meet with it , unless i meet with the same company . cuph. we are much obliged to you for your good opinion of us , philopolis . but you full little think that you must be the beginner of the discourse your self . philop. why so , cuphophron ? cuph. for it is an ancient and unalterable custome of this place , that in our philosophical meetings he that is the greatest stranger must propound the argument . whether this custome was begun by our ancestors out of an ambition of shewing their extemporary ability of speaking upon any subject , or whether out of mere civility to the stranger , i know not . philop. i believe it was the latter , i am so sensible of the advantage thereof , and do not onely embrace , but , if need were , should claim the privilege , now i know it ; but shall use it with that modesty , as to excuse the choice of my argument , if it shall appear rather a point of religion then philosophy . for religion is the interest of all , but philosophy of those onely that are at leisure and vacant from the affairs of the world . philoth. let not that trouble you , philopolis : for , for my part , i look upon the christian religion rightly understood to be the deepest and the choicest piece of philosophy that is . philop. i am glad to hear you say so , philotheus ; for then i hope the argument i shall pitch upon will not appear over-unsuitable . it is touching the kingdome of god. cuph. philopolis hath both gratify'd philotheus , and most exquisitely fitted himself in the choice of his argument , his genius and affairs being so notedly politicall . it must be a very comprehensive argument , in which religion , philosophy and policy do so plainly conspire . philoth. it must , indeed . but what are the quere's you would propose touching the kingdome of god , o philopolis ? philop. they are chiefly these . first , what the kingdome of god is . secondly , when it began , and where it has been or is now to be found . thirdly , what progress it hath made hitherto in the world . lastly , what success it is likely to have to the end of all things . philoth. these are grand questions indeed , philopolis , insomuch that i am mightily surprised that so weighty and profound quere's should come from a person that is so continuedly taken up with affairs of the world. cuph. i dare pawn my life that the noise of the fifth monarchy , or the late plausible sound of setting jesus christ in his throne , did first excite philopolis to search after these mysteries . philoth. i am not so curious to enquire into the first occasions of philopolis his search after these things , as solicitous for what end he now so eagerly enquires after them . for it is a great and general errour in mankind , that they think all their acquisitions are of right for themselves , whether it be power , or riches , or wisedom , and conceit they are no farther obliged then to fortifie or adorn themselves with them : whenas they are in truth mere depositum's , put into their hands by providence for the common good ; so that it were better they had them not , then not to use them faithfully and conscienciously to that end : for they bring the greater snare upon their own heads by such acquired abilities , and make themselves obnoxious to the greater condemnation , unless they use them , as i said , as the depositum's of god , not to their own pride or lust , but to the common good of the church , of their prince , and of their countrey . philop. i acknowledge that to be exceeding true , philotheus . and next to those are they obnoxious that craftily decline the acquisition of any power or knowledge , that they may not run the risques of fortune in witnessing to the truth , or assisting the publick concern : which hypocrisie i being aware of , am so far from being discouraged , that my zeal is the more enkindled after important truths , that i may the more faithfully and effectually serve god and my prince in my generation , though with the hazard of all that i have . euist. which he has once already more then hazarded in the cause of his sovereign , besides the hazard of his life in five or six bloudy battels . but i hope he will never have the occasion of running that hazard again . philoth. o admired philopolis , you are of a right faithfull and upright spirit ; verily i have not discovered more true vertue and nobleness , no not in the most famous philosophical societies . philop. i love to feel my self of an express and settled judgement and affection in things of the greatest moment ; and nothing , i think , can be of greater then the affairs of the kingdome of god , to know who are more properly and peculiarly his people , that my heart may be joyned with them , where-ever they are discoverable in the world , and my hand may relieve them to the utmost extent of the activity of my narrow sphear . for it seems to me both a very ignoble and tedious condition , to be blown about with every winde of doctrine or transitory interest , and not to stick to that wherein a man's loss proveth his greatest gain , and death it self a translation into eternal life and glory . hyl. this were an excellent temper in philopolis indeed , to be thus resolved , if he were sure not to fall short in his account . sophr. but suppose he was not sure , seeing he ventures so little for so great a stake , i think his temper is still very singularly excellent and commendable . philoth. but what needs any such supposition , o sophron ? for as sure as there is a god and a providence , such a single-minded soul as philopolis will after this life prove a glorious citizen of heaven . hyl. i am fully of your opinion , o philotheus , that philopolis his future happiness is as sure as the existence of god and divine providence . but the assurance of these has hitherto seemed to me very uncertain and obscure : whence , according to right method , we should clear that point first . for there can be no kingdome of god , if god himself be not , or if his providence reach not to the government of the universe , but things be left to blinde chance or fate . philop. for my part , gentlemen , i could never yet call such truths into doubt , though hylobares has divers times attempted to dissettle me at my house near the other athens , where sometimes he gives me the honour of a visit. but all his reasonings have seemed to me sophistical knots or tricks of legerdemain , which though they might a little amuse me , yet they could not move me at ●ll from my settled faith in god and ●is providence . philoth. so great a firmitude is there ●n life against all the subtle attaques ●f shifting reason . this farther con●●rms me in an observation i have made a long time ago , that there is a kind of sanctity of soul and body that is of more efficacy for the receiving or retaining of divine truths , then the greatest pretences to discursive demonstration . philop. but though i want nothing to confirm me in these points , yet if philotheus could convince hylobares of the truth of them , and beat him at his own weapon , it would be to me a pleasant spectacle ; provided he come to my proposed theme at the last . philoth. it is a great wonder to me that a person so ingenious as hylobares , and so much conversant in philosophy , should at all doubt of the existence of the deity , any more then he does of philopolis his existence or my own ; for we cannot so audibly or intelligibly converse with him as god doth with a philosopher in the ordinary phaenomena of nature . for tell me , o hylobares , whether if so brief a treatise as that of archimedes de sphaera & cylindro had been found by chance , with the delineations of all the figures sutable for the design , and short characters ( such as they now use in specious arithmetick and algebra ) for the setting down of the demonstrations of the orderly-disposed propositions , could you or any else imagine that the delineating and fitting these things together was by chance , and not from a knowing and designing principle , i mean from a power intellectual ? hyl. i must confess i think it in a manner impossible that any one that understood the purpose of those figures and the adnexed demonstrations should doubt but that the description of them was by some intelligent being . philoth. but why do you think so , hylobares ? hyl. because it is the property of that which is intelligent to lay several things together orderly and advantageously for a proposed design . which is done so constantly and repeatedly in that treatise , and so methodically , that it is impossible to doubt but that it is the effect of some intellectual agent . philoth. wherefore where-ever we finde frequent and repeated indications of pursuing skilfully a design , we must acknowledge some intelligent being the cause thereof . hyl. we must so . philoth. but what a small scroll and how few instances of pursuing a design is there in that treatise of archimedes , in comparison of the whole volume of nature , wherein , as in archimedes every leading demonstration to the main upshot of all ( which is the proportion betwixt the sphear and cylinder ) is a pledge of the wit and reason of that mathematician , so the several subordinate natures in the world ( which are in a manner infinite ) bear conspicuously in them a design for the best , and therefore are a cloud of witnesses that there is a divine and intellectual principle under all ? hyl. this is better understood by instances , philotheus . philoth. it is . and i will instance in the meanest first , i mean in the most loose and general strokes of the skill of that great geometrician , as plutarch some-where calls the deity . as in the nature of gravity , which precipitates thick terrestrial parts downward through both air and water , without which power no beasts nor fowls could live upon the earth or in the air , dirt and filth would so flow into their mouths and stop their breath ; nor could fishes subsist in the water . . in that strong tug against over-much baring the subtilest matter in these lower regions , that thinner element being disproportionated to the lungs of either birds or beasts ; as is to be more fully understood in those excellent experiments of the air-pump . . in the parallelism and the due-proportionated inclination of the axis of the earth , and the latitude of the moon from the aequator . hyl. i cannot deny but that these laws are better then if things had been otherwise . philoth. . the contrivance of the earth into hills and springs and rivers , into quarries of stone and metall : is not all this for the best ? hyl. i conceive it is . philoth. and what think you of land and sea , whenas all might have been a quagmire ? hyl. that also is for the best . for on it depends the pleasure and profit of navigation . besides that the sea is the fountain of moisture that administers to the springs underneath , as the springs supply the rivers above-ground , and so imitate the circulation of the bloud in man's body . philoth. cast your eye also upon the variety of herbs and trees , their beauty , their virtue and manifold usefulnesse , the contrivance of their seed for propagation ; and consider if all be not for the best . hyl. it would require an age to pursue these things . philoth. well then , let us for brevity sake consider onely the severall kinds of animals : which , beside the usefulness of some of them especially and more appropriately to mankind , ( as the dog and the horse for services , and oxen and sheep for his food ) their external shapes are notoriously accommodated to that law or guise of life that nature has designed them ; as in general the birds for flying , the fish for swimming , and the beasts for running on the ground ; the external frame and covering of their bodies are exquisitely fitted for these purposes . besides what also is very general , that contrivance of male and female for propagation , and that notable difference of fishes and birds being oviparous , that there might be the more full supply for th●● great havock that would be necessarily made upon those kind of creatures by their devouring enemies . to these you may add the instinct of birds in building their nests and sitting on their eggs ; the due number and position of the organs of sense and peculiar armatures of creatures , with the instinct of using them : that those fowls that frequent the waters , and onely wade , have as well long legs as long necks ; and those that are made for swimming have feet like oars : and that no birds have paps , as beasts have . all which things , and infinite more , do plainly argue the accuracy of design in their framing . hyl. things are , i must confess , as if they were plainly designed to be so . philoth. but to put an end to these instances , which , as you said , a whole age would not suffice to enumerate ; the inward anatomie and use of parts in many thousand kinds of animals is as sure a demonstration of a very-curiously contrived design in each of these animals bodies , as the severall figures and demonstrations in the above-named book of archimedes are of the writer's purpose of concluding the truth of each proposition to which they appertain . that in man's body is notorious . the fabrick of the eye , its safe and usefull situation , the superaddition of muscles , and the admirable contrivance of the flesh of the whole body in a manner into that usefull organization ; those of the larynx for speech and singing ; the industrious perforation of the tendons of the second joints both of fingers and toes , and the drawing of the tendons of the third joints through them ; the ventricles of the heart and their valvulae , as also the valvulae of the veins ; the fabrick of these , and the apparently-designed use of them , and of a thousand more , not onely in man , but analogically in the rest of animals , are as certain a pledge of the existence of a god , as any voice or writing that contains such specimens of reason as are in archimedes his treatise are an argument of the existence of some man or angel that must be the authour of them . hyl. the weight of reason and the vehemence of philotheus his zeal does for the present bear me down into this belief whether i will or no. for i easily feel the force of his arguing from these few hints , having perused the latest treatises of this subject , and being sufficiently versed in anatomicall history ; which , i must confess , urges upon me , more effectually then any thing , the existence of god. philoth. which belief , methinks , you should never be able to stagger in , if you consider that in these infinite kinds of living creatures , none of them are made foolishly or ineptly , no not so much as those that are gendered of putrefaction . so that you have infinite examples of a steddy and peremptory acting according to skill and design , and abundant assurance that these things cannot come to pass by the fortuitous jumbling of the parts of the matter . hyl. no , philotheus , they cannot . but though they be not the results of such fortuitous causes , why may they not be the effects of necessary ones , i mean , of the necessary mechanicall law of the motion of matter ? as a line proportionally cut , if the greater segment subtends an isosceles whose crura each of them are equal to the whole line , each angle at the basis will necessarily be double to that of the vertex . and this will be the necessary property of this triangle . philoth. but what does this prove , whenas there is no necessity in the matter that any line should be so cut , or , if it were , that any two lines of equal length with the whole should clap in with the greater segment to make such a triangle , much less to inscribe a quinquangle into a circle , or that the motion of the matter should frame an exact icosaëdrum or dodecaëdrum , whose fabrick much depends on this proportional section of a line , as you may see in euclide ? and yet there is a more multifarious artifice in the structure of the meanest animal . i tell thee , hylobares , there is nothing necessarily in matter that looks like an intellectual contrivance . for why should blind necessity doe more in this kind then fluctuating chance ? or what can be the motion of blind necessity but peremptory and perpetual fluctuation ? no , the necessary and immutable property of such a triangle as thou hast described , with such a basis and such crura , is in thy own minde or intellect , which cannot but conceive every triangle so made to have such a propriety of angles , because thy minde is the image of the eternall and immutable intellect of god. but the matter is lubricous and fluid , and has no such intellectual and immutable laws in it at all , but is to be guided and governed by that which is intellectual . hyl. i mean as cartesius means and professes , that the mechanicall deduction of causes in the explication of the phaenomena of the world is as close and necessary as mathematicall sequels . philoth. nay , i adde farther , that he conceives his own mechanicall deductions to be such . and i must confess i think they are as much such as any will be ; and so excellent a wit failing so palpably , makes me abundantly confident , that the pretence of salving the phaenomena by mere mechanicall principles is a design that will never prove successfull . hyl. why ? where does cartesius fail , o philotheus ? philoth. nay , rather tell me , o hylobares , where he does not ; or rather instance in any one phaenomenon that is purely mechanicall . hyl. the earth's being carried about in this our vortex round the sun. philoth. that is very judiciously pitched upon , if the deferent of the earth , i mean the vortex , were the result of mere mechanicall principles . hyl. why ? is it not ? what can mechanicall motion doe , if not produce that simple phaenomenon of liquidity ? philoth. the matter of the vortex is not simple enough , not to need the assistence of an higher principle to keep it in that consistence it is . hyl. why so , philotheus ? philoth. because disunity is the natural property of matter , which of it self is nothing else but an infinite congeries of physicall monads . hyl. i understand you , philotheus . and indeed there is nothing so unconceivable to me as the holding together of the parts of matter ; which has so confounded me when i have more seriously thought upon it , that i have been prone to conclude with my self , that the gimmers of the world hold together not so much by geometry as some natural magick , if i knew what it was . philoth. you may do in due time . but in the mean while it is worth our noting , that there is another great flaw in this most hopefull instance you produce of pure mechanism . for the earth never got into this orbit it is now moved in by virtue of those mechanicall laws cartesius describes , nor is still detained here by them . hyl. why not ? philoth. for if the earth had been bandied out of one vortex into another , as is supposed , all that looser and lighter matter that hung about it had been stript from it long before it came hither : ( as if a man should fling out of his hand feathers , chaffe and a bullet together , the solidity of the bullet will carry it from the chaffe and feathers , and leave them behinde ) and so the matter of the third region of the earth had been lost , whereby it had become utterly unhabitable . hyl. i never thought of this before . philoth. and then the descending of the earth to this orbit is not upon that mechanicall account cartesius pretends , namely the strong swing of the more solid globuli that overflow it . for if there were such an actual tug of the globuli of the vortex from the centre toward the circumference , the pressure would be intolerable , and they would even mash themselves and all things else apieces . hyl. i am again surprised , philotheus , but i must ingenuously confess , i think so . philoth. but there being no such hard pressure , no levitation or gravitation ( as is also manifest in the elements vulgarly so called ) in locis propriis , is it not a manifest argument that all is not carried according to mechanicall necessity , but that there is a principle that has a prospection for the best , that rules all ? hyl. it is very manifest , in that neither the celestial matter of the vortices nor the air nor water are pressitant in their proper places , that it is for the best . else how could any creatures live in the air or water ? the weight of these elements would press them to death . philoth. must not then some diviner principle be at the bottom , that thus cancells the mechanicall laws for the common good ? hyl. it should seem so ; and that the motion of matter is not guided by matter , but by something else . philoth. that seems very evident from light things that rise up in water . as for example in a deep bucket of water , where we will suppose a thin round board forced to the bottom , of almost the same wideness that the bucket is : the water of the bucket we will suppose so heavy , that scarce two men shall be able to bear it . now tell me , hylobares , how this thin board does get to the top , so massie a weight lying on it . the whole water that lies upon it does actually press downward , and therefore rather presses it down , then helps it up . hyl. it may be the weight of the water gets by the sides under it , and so bears it up by its own sinking . philoth. that is ingeniously attempted , hylobares . but you must consider that the water that lies upon the board to press it down is , it may be , forty times more then that which you conceive to press betwixt the rim of the round board and the vessel . hyl. i am convinced that the rising of the round board is not mechanicall . but i pray you deal freely with me , philotheus , for i perceive you are cunninger then i in that philosophy ; has des-cartes truly solved no phaenomenon in nature mechanically ? philoth. he thinks he has solved all mechanically he treats of . but , to deal freely , i finde none of his solutions will hold by mere mechanicks : not his formation of suns , stars nor planets ; not the generation nor motion of the magnetick particles ; not his hypothesis of the flux and reflux of the sea ; not the figure and colours of the rainbow ; not the winds , nor clouds , nor rain , nor thunder : neither of these , nor of any other phaenomena , has he given sufficient mechanicall causes . nay , i will adde at once , that that simplest and first hypothesis of his , that all the matter of the universe was first cast into small parts equal in motion and magnitude , and that hence the suns or stars and vortices arose in the distinction of the matter ( by the mutual fridging of those particles one against another ) into the first and second element , i will adde , i say , that this first original of things is most grosly repugnant to the actual proportion of these elements one to another . for from this mechanicall way , so stated as he has declared , it will follow that the sun overflows the orbit of saturn no less then ten millions four hundred eighty four thousand semidiameters of the earth : which one would think were intimation sufficient to give us to understand , that the primordialls of the world are not mechanicall , but spermaticall or vital ; not made by rubbing and filing and turning and shaving , as in a turner's or blacksmith's shop , but from some universal principle of inward life and motion containing in it the seminal forms of all things , which therefore the platonists and pythagoreans call the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the world. hyl. this is admirable : and it would be a great pleasure to me to see these things made out by reason , that i might the more clearly understand how much that great wit has fallen short in his account . philop. i prithee , dear hylobares , deny thy self that pleasure at this time : for i fear all the time of my abode here in the town will not suf●ice for such a task . philoth. it would , i must confess , be something too copious a digression . cuph. and the more needless , forasmuch as it cannot be deny'd but that des-cartes's deductions are not always so mathematically or mechanically certain as he took them to be . but however , though he fails in his attempt , yet the mechanicall philosophy may stand firm still . it is not the errour of the art , but of the artist . philoth. but it is a shrewd presumption , o cuphophron , that when so transcendent a wit as des-cartes , and so peculiarly mechanicall , fails so palpably even in the general strokes of nature , of giving any such necessary mechanicall reasons of her phaenomena , it is too palpable a presumption , i say , that the pretence it self is rash and frivolous , and that it is not the true and genuine mode of philosophizing . philop. what philotheus says seems to me infinitely credible , though i be no pretender to philosophy . philoth. but if we produce even among the more general phaenomena of nature such instances as plainly thwart the acknowledged laws of mechanicks , let cuphophron tell me then what will become of his pure and universal mechanism he pretends to run through the whole frame of the world. cuph. i will tell you , when you have produced them . philoth. but tell me first whether you do not firmly believe the motion of the earth annual and diurnal . cuph. i do , and every one else i think that has any skill in philosophie . philoth. why then you must necessarily hold a vortex of aethereall matter running round the sun , which carries the earth about with it . cuph. i must . philoth. and being so great a mechanist as you are , that the particles that have swallowed down the earth thus far into our vortex , that even those that are near the earth , so many of them as answer to the magnitude of the earth , are at least as solid as it . cuph. they are so . philoth. and that therefore they move from the centre with a very strong effort . cuph. they do so . philoth. and so do the vortices that bear against our vortex . cuph. no question , or else our vortex would over-run them , and carry them away with it self . philoth. do you or any else either here or under the line at mid-day or mid-night feel any such mighty pressure as this hypothesis inferrs ? cuph. i believe , not . philoth. there is one thrust at your pure pretended mechanism . cuph. well , at it again ; i will see if i can lie at a closer ward . philoth. the phaenomenon of gravity , is it not perfectly repugnant to that known mechanicall principle , that what is moved will continue its motion in a right line , if nothing hinder ? whence it will follow that a bullet flung up into the air must never return back to the earth , it being in so rapid a motion with that of the earth's . cuph. i understand what you mean ; you thrust at the mechanicall philosophy before , you have now shot at it . philoth. i and hit the mark too , i trow : so that it is needless to adde that of the great weight hanging at the sucker of the air-pump , and drawn up thereby beyond all the accounts of mechanick philosophy , with other things of the like nature . hyl. i expected these instances of philotheus , and understand the force of them throughly out of a late * authour , and must ingenuously confess that they seem to me such as contain little less then a demonstration , that all things in nature are not carried on by principles merely mechanicall . cuph. if they be so good , i pray you let us hear some more of them , philotheus . philoth. when i have heard your answer to these . cuph. my answer is , o philotheus , that these instances seem for the present demonstrative and unanswerable ; so far hylobares and i concurr . but i hope i may without offence profess that i think the cause of the mechanick philosophy is not therefore quite desperate , but that when our active and searching wits have made farther enquirie into things , they may finde out the pure mechanicall causes of that puzzling phaenomenon of gravity . philoth. i but hylobares may take notice , that the authour he mentions does not onely confute the false solutions of that phaenomenon , but demonstrates all mechanicall solutions of it impossible , it being so manifestly repugnant to the confessed laws of mechanicks . hyl. it is very true . cuph. that may seem a demonstration for the present , which to posterity will appear a mere sophistical knot , and they will easily see to loose it . bath . i believe by the help of some new-improved microscopes . philop. nay but in good earnest , o cuphophron , ( if you will excuse my freedome of speech ) though i have not that competency of judgement in philosophicall matters , yet i cannot but deem you an over-partial mechanist , that are so devoted to the cause , as not to believe demonstration against it till mechanicks be farther improved by posterity . it is as if one would not believe the first book of euclide till he had read him all over , and all other mathematicall writers besides . for this phaenomenon of gravity is one of the simplest that is , as the first book of euclide one of the easiest . not to adde what a blemish it is to a person otherwise so moral and vertuous , to seem to have a greater zeal for the ostentation of the mechanical wit of men , then for the manifestation of the wisedome of god in nature . sophr. excellently well spoken , o philopolis . as in water face answers to face , so the heart of man to man. you have spoken according to the most inward sense and touch of my very soul concerning this matter . for i have very much wondred at the devotedness of some mens spirits to the pretence of pure mechanism in the solving of the phaenomena of the universe , who yet otherwise have not been of less pretensions to piety and vertue . of which mechanick pronity i do not see any good tendency at all . for it looks more like an itch of magnifying their own or other mens wit , then any desire of glorifying god in his wise and benign contrivances in the works of nature , and cuts off the most powerfull and most popular arguments for the existence of a deity , if the rude career of agitated matter would at last necessarily fall into such a structure of things . indeed if such a mechanicall necessity in the nature of matter were really discoverable , there were no help for it : and the almighty seeks no honour from any man's lie. but their attempts being so frustraneous , and the demonstrations to the contrary so perspicuous , it is a marvell to me , that any men that are vertuously and piously disposed should be so partially and zealously affected in a cause that has neither truth nor any honest usefulness in it . cuph. o sophron , sophron , full little do you consider what a wonderfull pleasure it is to see the plain mechanicall sequels of causes in the explication of the phaenomena of the world as necessarily and closely coherent as mathematicall demonstration it self . sophr. certainly , o cuphophron , you are much transported with the imagination of such fine spectacles , that your mere desire should thus confidently present them to you before they are . but for my part , i conceive there is far more pleasure in clearly and demonstratively discovering that they are not , then there would be if it were discoverable that they are . and that way of philosophizing that presses the final cause , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as aristotle calls it , seems to me far more pleasing and delicious then this haughty pretence of discovering that the frame of the world owes nothing to the wisedome of god. bath . all things must out , o sophron , in the promiscuous ferments and ebulliencies of the spirits of men in this age , that that wisedome which is the genuine fruit or flower of the divine life may in succession of time triumph over the most strutting attempts or performances of the highest natural wits . cuph. what wisedome is that which flows out of the divine life , o bathynous ? bath . that which leads to it ; which the mechanicall philosophy does not , but rather leads from god , or obstructs the way to him , by prescinding all pretence of finding his footsteps in the works of the creation , excluding the final cause of things , and making us believe that all comes to pass by a blinde , but necessary , jumble of the matter . cuph. well , be the future fate of things what it will , i doubt not but cartesius will be admired to all posterity . bath . undoubtedly , o cuphophron ; for he will appear to men a person of the most eminent wit and folly that ever yet trode the stage of this earth . cuph. why of wit and folly , bathynous ? bath . of wit , for the extraordinary handsome semblance he makes of deducing all the phaenomena he has handled , necessarily and mechanically , and for hitting on the more immediate material causes of things to a very high probability . cuph. this at least is true , bathynous . but why of folly ? bath . because he is so credulous , as not onely to believe that he has necessarily and purely mechanically solved all the phaenomena he has treated of in his philosophy and meteors , but also that all things else may be so solved , the bodies of plants and animals not excepted . cuph. posterity will be best able to judge of that . philop. cuphophron is very constantly zealous in the behalf of the mechanick philosophy , though with the hazard of losing those more notable arguments deducible from the phaenomena of nature for the proving the existence of a god : and yet i dare say he is far from being in the least measure smutted with the soil of atheism . cuph. i hope so . philop. wherefore , o cuphophron , let me beg the liberty of asking you what other inducements you have to believe there is a god. is it the authority of the catholick church ? or what is it ? cuph. i have a very venerable respect for the church , o philopolis , which makes me the more sorry when i consider how much they have wronged or defaced their authority in obtruding things palpably impossible , and most wretchedly blasphemous , with equal assurance and severity as they do the belief of a god. euist. i conceive cuphophron reflects upon their barbarous butchering of men for their denying the article of transubstantiation . cuph. it may be so . who can believe men upon their own authority that are once deprehended in so gross and impious an imposture ? euist. but these are not the church catholick , but onely a something-more-numerous faction of men . but not onely these , but the whole church , and indeed all nations , believe that there is a god. cuph. indeed tully says , nulla gens tam barbara , &c. euist. it is consent of nations therefore , o cuphophron , that you chiefly establish your belief of a deity upon . cuph. that is a plausible argument , euistor . euist. but the history of mircacles and prophecies , with their completion , a far greater . cuph. they are very strong arguments that there are invisible powers that superintend the affairs of mankind , that have a greater virtue and comprehension of knowledge then our selves . bath . and so may be able to bring to pass what themselves predict in long succession of ages . as if the government of the world and the affairs of mankinde were intrusted into the hands of angels . sophr. but some miracles are so great , and predictions of so vast a compass of time , that none but god can rationally be thought to be the authour of them . bath . most assuredly god himself superintends and acts through all . philop. is this then the basis of cuphophron's belief . cuph. i will tell you , o philopolis , because i see you so hugely desirous , what is the main philosophicall basis of my belief of a god. philop. what is it ? cuph. the innate idea of god in my minde : the arguings from thence seem to me undeniable demonstrations . philop. i believe they are the more prevalent with you because they are des-cartes his . cuph. it may be so . and they are so convictive , that i do very securely disregard all that other way of arguing from the phaenomena of nature . philop. i have read those reasonings of des-cartes , but they seem to me hugely high and metaphysicall , and i meet with many men that look upon them as sophisticall ; most men some of them , others all . but it is the privilege of you high and exalted wits to understand the force of one another's notions the best . cuph. i must confess , o philopolis , there is an extraordinary and peculiar congruity of spirit betwixt me and des-cartes . philop. i but we ought to consult the common good , o cuphophron , and not decry the more vulgar intelligible arguments , or affect such a philosophy as will exclude all from laying hold of god but such as can soar so high as you raised wits can . arguments from the phaenomena of the world are far more accommodate to a popular understanding . cuph. wherefore i talk at this rate onely in our free philosophicall meetings . philop. it is discreetly done of you . hyl. well , cuphophron , you may hug your self in your high metaphysicall acropolis as much as you will , and deem those arguments fetched from the frame of nature mean and popular : but for my part , i look upon them as the most sound and solid philosophicall arguments that are for the proving the existence of a god. and i wonder you do not observe that mighty force that philotheus his comparing of the volume of nature and archimedes his book of the sphear and cylinder together has for the evincing some intellectual principle to be the framer of the world. for those figures and characters annexed to each proposition with an effectual subserviency to the demonstration of them is not a more manifest indication of an intellectual agent , then an hundred thousand single fabricks of matter here in the world are of the like agency ; the parts being so disposed to one end , as the management of the demonstration to one conclusion , and the subordination of severall conclusions to one final and ultimate one : which subordinations of things are also most evidently and repeatedly conspicuous in nature . philop. on my word , philotheus , you have not spent your labour in vain on hylobares , that does thus judiciously and resentingly recapitulate your main reasonings from nature for the existence of a god. i hope now , hylobares , philotheus may proceed to treat of god's kingdome , we being all so well assured of his existence . hyl. i must confess , while i am in this company , i am like saul amongst the prophets . philotheus his zeal and smartness of arguing carries me away captive , whether i will or no , into an assent to the conclusion . and indeed when at first i set my eyes on this side of things , there shines from them such an intellectual fulgor , that methinks the very glory of the deity becomes visible through them . but when i would more fully comprehend his nature , and approch more nigh him , the same glory , that recreated mine eyes before , strikes me blinde , and i lose the sight of him by adventuring to look too near him . this is one entanglement and confusion of minde , that i understand not the nature of god. and the second thing is this , the obscurity and intricacy of the ways of providence . sophr. is it not consonant to the transcendency of so high a nature as that of god , hylobares , that it be acknowledged incomprehensible , as also to his infinite wisedom , that his ways be past finding out ? bath . this is excellently well spoken , o sophron , if it be rightly understood : otherwise , to give no other account of the nature of god and his ways then that they are unintelligible , is to encourage the atheist , and yield him the day ; for that is the thing he does chiefly applaud himself in , that he is secure there is neither head nor foot in the mysteries of religion , and that the very notion of a god implies a contradiction to our faculties . hyl. i desire onely so to understand god , that nothing be attributed to him repugnant to my vnderstanding , nor any thing found in the world repugnant to his attributes . bath . i believe philotheus will make this good , that nothing is truly attributed to god but what is most certainly existent in the world , whether we understand it or not ; and that there is nothing in the world truly in such circumstances as are repugnant to the attributes of god. philoth. i conceive bathynous means this , that unless we will entangle our selves with making good some fictitious attributes of god , or defend his providence upon false suppositions and circumstances , there will be no greater entanglements touching the notion of god and his providence , then there would be in the nature of those things we are sure do exist , though there were no god in the world . wherefore , hylobares , let me advise you to this , since you have such fast and certain hold of the existence of the deity by the repeated effects thereof in nature , not to let that hold goe upon any grounds that are uncertain or false . for the scripture declares nothing contradictious touching the nature of god : nor is there any humane authority that has any right to be believed when it propounds contradictions : nor are we bound to burthen the notion of a deity with any thing we are not assured implies perfection . these cautions if we use , no man , i think , need be much entangled in his thoughts touching the nature of the deity . hyl. this is a hopefull preamble , philotheus , and therefore i will the more chearfully propound my difficulties , which are drawn from these five heads ; from the eternity of god , from his immutability , from his omnisciency , his spirituality , and his omnipresencie . for , to my understanding , the very notion of eternity implies a contradiction , as some describe it , namely , that it is an essential presence of all things with god , as well of things past , present , as to come ; and that the duration of god is all of it , as it were , in one steddy and permanent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or instant at once . if there cannot be a god , but he must be in such a sense as this eternall , the contemplation of his idea will more forcibly pull a man back from the belief of his existence , then his effects in nature draw a man to it . for what can be more contradictious , then that all things should have been really and essentially with god from all eternity at once , and yet be born in time and succession ? for the reality and essence of corporeall things is corporeall ; and those very individuall trees and animals that are said to be generated , and are seen to grow from very little principles , were always , it seems , in their full form and growth : which is a perfect repugnancy to my understanding . for it implies that the same thing that is already ready in being may , notwithstanding , while it is , be produced of a-fresh . that eternall duration should be at once , is also to me utterly unconceivable , and that one permanent instant should be commensurate , or rather equal , to all successions of ages . besides , if the duration of god be all at once , sith no agent acts but within the compass of its own duration , god must both create and destroy the world at once . whence it seems impossible that eternall duration should be indistant to it self , or without continuation of intervalls . philoth. you argue shrewdly , hylobares , against that notion of eternity that some have rashly pitched upon , but without the least prejudice to the belief of god's existence , if you have but recourse to those cautions i intimated at first , that we are not bound to believe contradictions upon any man's account . these are oversublime reaches of some high-soaring wits , that think they never fly high enough till they fly out of the sight of common sense and reason . if we may charitably guess at what they would be at in this so lofty a notion , it may be it is onely this , that the whole evolution of times and ages from everlasting to everlasting is so collectedly and presentifickly represented to god at once , as if all things and actions which ever were , are , or shall be , were at this very instant , and so always , really present and existent before him : which is no wonder , the animadversion and intellectual comprehension of god being absolutely infinite according to the truth of his idea . hyl. this , i must confess , is a far more easie and passable notion then the other . philoth. yes surely ; and not harder to conceive how continuity of duration is also competible to the divine existence , as well as eternity or life eternall , which comprehends the idea's of all things and ages at once in the intellect of god. for it is as a vast globe wholly moved on a plane , and carried on in one exile line at once : or like the permanency of a steady rock by which a river slides ; the standing of the rock , as well as the sliding of the river , has a continuity of duration . and no other way can eternity be commensurate to time then so ; that is to say , the comprehension of the evolution of all times , things and transactions is permanently exhibited to god in every moment of the succession of ages . hyl. what makes the schools then so earnest in obtruding upon us the belief , that nothing but nunc permanens is competible to the divine existence ? philoth. it may be out of this conceit , as if that whose existence was successive would necessarily break off , or at least may hazard to fail , one part of successive duration having no dependence on another . but it is a mere panick fear : for the continuation of duration is necessary where the existence of the thing is so . and such is manifestly the existence of god from his own idea . bath . and this necessary existence of god i conceive to be the most substantial notion of his eternall duration : which cannot well be said to be successive properly and formally , but onely virtually and applicatively ; that is to say , it contains in it virtually all the successive duration imaginable , and is perpetually applicable to the succeeding parts thereof , as being always present thereto , as the chanel of a river to all the water that passes through it ; but the chanel is in no such successive defluxion , though the water be . such is the steddy and permanent duration of the necessary existence of god in respect of all successive durations whatsoever . philoth. i do not yet so throughly understand you , bathynous . bath . i say that successive duration properly so called is incompetible to god , as being an essence necessarily existent , and therefore without beginning : but the most infinite successive duration that you can imagine will be found to have a beginning . for what-ever is past was sometime present : and therefore there being nothing of all this infinite succession but was sometime present , the most-infinitely-remote moment thereof was sometime present : which most-in●initely-remote moment was the terminus terminans thereof , which plainly shews it had a beginning . philoth. you say true , bathynous . there must be a most-remote moment in succession , and a most-infinitely-remote one in infinite succession . but being the most-infinitely-remote moment cannot be terminus copulans , there being nothing for it to couple with future succession , and therefore it being terminus terminans , and of necessity having been once present , it is plain that at that present was the term or beginning of this infinite supposed succession . or briefly thus , to prevent all possible exceptions against the most-infinitely-remote moment in an infinite succession , as if they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i would rather argue on this manner ; viz. that forasmuch as all the moments past in infinite succession were sometime present , it thence plainly follows that all the moments in this infinite succession , or at least all but one , were sometime to come . and if either all these moments , or all but one , were sometime to come , it is manifest that the whole succession ( or at least the whole bating but one moment ) was sometime to come , and therefore had a beginning . i understand the strength of your reasoning very well . and therefore when i spake of the successive duration of god , i did not mean succession in that proper and formal sense , but onely a virtual , applicative or relative succession ; as you might gather from some passages or expressions in my speaking thereof . the duration of god is like that of a rock , but the duration of natural things like that of a river ; their succession passes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as heraclitus speaks . and therefore they that give successive duration properly so called to the steddy permanency of a necessary self-existence , seem like those that phansie the shore to move by reason of the motion of the ship. provehimur portu , terraeque urbèsque recedunt . we apply our own fluid successive duration to the steddy permanency of the eternall duration of god : whose duration , though steddy and permanent , and without all defluxion and succession , ( as being indeed nothing else but his necessary self-existence ) is notwithstanding such as the most infinite successive duration past can never reach beyond , nor future ever exhaust . whence it is plain , that though the eternall duration of god be really permanent , yet it is impossible to be an indivisible instant , and to be perfectly and in all regards indistant to it self , and not to comprehend all possible successive evolutions that are . hyl. this is very well , philotheus : but yet there are some scruples still behinde . i must acknowledge that eternity in your sense bears along with it no palpable contradiction ; but methinks it is not altogether free from a marvellous strange incredibility . philoth. what 's that ? hyl. that all the noises and cryings , and houlings and shreekings , and knocking 's and hammerings , and cursings and swearings , and prayings and praisings , that all the voices of men , the squawlings of children , the notes of birds , and roarings and squeekings of beasts , that ever were or shall be , have ever been in the ears of god at once : and so all the turnings and toyings of every visible object , all the dispersions , motions and postures of hairs , and leaves , and straws , and feathers , and dust , in fine , all the little and inconsiderable changes of the ever-agitated matter which have been , are , or ever shall be , are , and ever were , and ever shall be in the sight of god at once . this seems to me ( though not an impossible , yet ) a very incredible privilege of all-comprehending eternity . philoth. this is a wild , unexpected fetch of yours , hylobares , and as madly expressed . but if you will answer me soberly to a question or two , you shall see the difficulty will vanish of it self . hyl. i will. philoth. whether do you think , o hylobares , that this privilege , as you call it , is really a privilege , that is , a perfection , of the divine nature , or no ? hyl. i cannot tell . euist. those philosophers in maimonides , which i do not well remember whether he calls the sect of the loquentes , would tell us roundly that it is not ; they presuming god's providence reaches no farther then the species of things , but that he little concerns himself in individuals . bath . i suppose then that they hold that he has concredited the administration of his more particular providence to severall orders of angels , and in some sort to men and all intelligent creatures , in whom he has implanted a law for the rightly ordering individuals . euist. it may be so . bath . which if they could order as well as if god himself look'd on , as it is no addition to god's happiness to have made the world or to meddle with it ; so it would be no detriment to the world if he were conceived to be wholly rapt into the contemplation of his own divine excellencies . euist. this , i must confess , is not much abhorrent from the aristotelean theologie . bath . but it is intolerably false , if the frame of the creation be not such as that the standing spirits hugely exceed the number of the lapsed . euist. they need do so . besides , what a ridiculous thing were it to offer sacrifice or pray to god , if he were always so rapt into himself that he never were at leisure to hear us ? bath . that is most pertinently observed , euistor : and all pious men must acknowledge that they draw power and influence by their earnest devotions to the deity . hyl. and therefore i easily acknowledge that all things in present succession lie open to the eyes of god. but whether all voices and sights whatsoever from everlasting to everlasting be represented continually to him at once , for all that this short sally of bathynous and euistor has given me some time to think of it , yet i must still profess i cannot tell . philoth. well then , hylobares , in such a case as this you know the above-mentioned rule , that you are not to let goe your hold of those solid and certain grounds of the existence of a god , for what is either false or uncertain . hyl. you say very true . nor does this at all shake my belief . philoth. but farther to corroborate it , answer me but this one question , hylobares . is it not necessary that that part of the representation you made of eternity be either a perfection , or an imperfection , or a thing of indifferency ? hyl. that cannot be deny'd . philoth. if it be an imperfection , it is to be removed , and so the difficulty is removed therewith : if an indifferency , it is in different whether you remove it or not : if a perfection , being that it is not impossible , as you cannot but acknowledge , no man need hesitate , nay he ought not , but to attribute it to god. so that be your fate what it will in the determination of your assent to any of these three parts , it can be no impediment to the belief of god's existence . this is the thing that made your objection seem so considerable to you , that you did not consider , that though all those voices and sights are perceived in the divine being at once , yet they are per●eived in the same distances and distinctnesses that they are found in in the very succession of ages . for infinite comprehension admits , or rather implies , this . hyl. you are a man , o philotheus , of the most dexterous art in facilitating our adherence to the belief of a deity that ever i met with in my life . i have but one scruple more touching god's eternity , and i will pass to the next attribute . the eternall succession of god's existence seems to imply a contradiction . for unless every denominated part be infinite , the whole cannot be infinite . and if every denominated part , suppose the tenth , the hundredth , the thousandth , be infinite , there are so many infinites . philoth. i understand you very well . but you must consider that either god has been ab aeterno , or the world has been so . wherefore something being so certainly eternall , it is no repugnancy that god be so . so that you see there is no more perplexity or difficulty on the account of god's being , then if he were not in the world , according to the last of my preliminary advertisements . nay , indeed , the most inextricable perplexity of all would be to admit a world ab aeterno without god. for an eternall flux of motion of the matter would be eternall succession properly so called ; which bathynous shrewdly suggested to be impossible . and if it ever rested , and afterwards was moved , there must be a first mover distinct from the matter . which seems necessarily to inferr there is a god ; and the rather , because if matter was of it self , it must eternally have rested before it moved . hyl. this difficulty has vanished so of a sudden , that i am half ashamed i ever propounded it . philoth. i have met with not a few that this would have seemed no small difficulty to ; so that it was not unworthy the propounding . philop. but i pray you proceed to the next attribute , hylobares : for i am hugely pleased to see the succesfulness of philotheus . hyl. the next is immutability , which seems to me a necessary attribute of god , forasmuch as mutability implies imperfection . but here humane understanding does seem to be caught in this dilemma ; that either we must acknowledge a mutable god , or an immutable one : if the former , he is not properly god ; because god excludes all imperfection in his nature : if the latter , he is not to be worshipped ; for all the good that was to come will come without our worshipping him ; and none of the evil can be kept off by all our services , because he is immutable . wherefore we must either grant an imperfect god , or a god not to be worshipped : either of which is so absurd , that it seems forcibly to suggest that there is no god at all . philoth. this seems a smart dilemma at first , hylobares ; yet i think neither horn is strong enough to push us off from our belief of the existence of a god. but for my part , i will bear the push of the former of them , and grant that god is mutable ; but deny that all mutability implies imperfection , though some does , as that vacillancy in humane souls , and such mutations as are found in corporeal matter . but such a mutability as whose absence implies an impotency to or incapacity of the most noble acts imaginable , such as the creation of the world , and the administration of justice to men and angels , is so far from being any defect , that it is a very high perfection . for this power in god to act upon the creature in time , to succour or chastise it , does not at all discompose or distract him from what he is in himself in the blessed calmness and stilness of his all-comprehensive eternity , his animadversion being absolutely free and infinite . so that they that would account this power of acting in time an imminution to the perfection of god ●re , i think , as much out in their account as if one should contend that a c ● a q. is less then a c. alone . hyl. this is convincing . bath . and that you may be the more throughly convinced of the weakness of your biaion , i will bear the push of the latter horn , and deny that the immutability of god would imply that he is not to be worshipped . for what is the worshipping of god but the acknowledging those supereminent and divine excellencies in him to which the world owes its conservation and subsistence , and from which is that beautifull order and wise contrivance of things in the universe ? it is therefore a piece of indispensable justice to acknowledge this rich fountain and original of all good , and not the less , because he is so perfectly good , that he cannot be nor act otherwise , but is immutably such . besides that this praise and adoration done to him are actions perfective of our own souls , and in our approches to him he is made nearer to us ; as the opening of our eyes is the letting in of the light of the sun. hyl. what you say , bathynous , i must confess will hold good in that part of worship which consists in praising of god : but i do not see how his immutability will well consist with our praying to him . for things will be or will not be whether we pray unto him or no. bath . but you do not consider , that though this were , yet our praying to him is an acknowledgment of his being the great benefactour of mankinde ; and it is like children asking their fathers blessing , who yet would pray to god to bless them whether they ask it or no. besides that while we pray to god for internall good things , for grace , wisedome and vertue , we do ipso facto open our souls to receive the divine influence , which flows into our hearts according to the measure of the depth and earnestness of our devotion . which is , as i said , like the opening of our eyes to receive the light of the sun. nor do we alter or change the will of god in this , because it is the permanent and immutable will of god , that as many as make their due addresses to him shall receive proportionable comfort and influence from him . and , lastly , for externall good things , though we should imagine god still resting in the immutable sabbatism of his own ever-blessed eternity , and that nothing is done in this world ad extra but by either natural or free created agents , either good men or those more high and holy orders of angels , that are as the ears and eyes and arms of god , as philo somewhere insinuates , and who are so steddily and fully actuated by the spirit of god , that they will do the very same things that god himself would doe if he were to act ad extra in the affairs of the world : upon this hypothesis of things , notwithstanding the immutability of god , it implies no incongruity to pray unto him . for he does not onely hear and behold all things at once , but has eternally and immutably laid such trains of causes in the world , and so rules the good powers and over-rules the bad , that no man that prays unto him as he ought shall fail of obtaining what is best for him , even in externall matters . hyl. this is a consideration i never thought of before . but it seems to me not altogether irrational . euist. but , methinks , something needless , because the divine records do testifie , that the very deity sometimes steps out into externall action ; as in our saviour christ's feeding the multitude with five loaves and two fishes , in his raising the dead , and in that great execution he is to doe on the globe of the earth at the last day . bath . the deity indeed does act here ad extra , but not the bare deity , as i may so speak , but the divine magick of the exalted soul of the messias . euist. but what will you say to those passages in the old testament , bathynous , such as the dividing of the red sea , the making of the sun and moon stand still , the keeping of shadrach , meshach and abed●ego harmless in the fierie furnace , and the like ? did not the bare deity , as you called it , step out then into externall action ? bath . you know , euistor , there was a mighty east-winde that blew all night , and divided the sea ; and that there appeared a fourth man in the fiery furnace like unto the son of god. and , in brief , all the miracles that were done by moses or any way else among or upon the people of the iews were done by virtue of the presence of the same christ , who was the conductour of the israelites into the land of canaan , and the residentiary guardian of that people . euist. indeed i remember some such opinion of some of the ancient fathers , but i look'd upon it as one of their extravagancies . sophr. and i upon the hypothesis of bathynous as a very high reach of wit ; but methought philotheus had fully satisfied hylobares his dilemma before . hyl. i must ingenuously confess , that i think neither of the solutions so weak but that they sufficiently enervate my argument touching the immutability of god : and therefore i willingly pass on to his omnisciency . philoth. what is it that pinches you there , hylobares ? hyl. a certain and determinate prescience of things contingent , free and uncertain . for it seems otherwise to take away the liberty of will and the nature of sin : for sin seems not to be sin , unless it be voluntary . philoth. it may be not , hylobares . but why do you then attribute such a prescience to god as is involved in such dangerous inconveniences ? hyl. because it is a greater perfection in god to foresee all things that are to come to pass certainly and determinately , then the contrary . philoth. and would it not be a greater perfection in the omnipotency of god to be able to doe all things , even those that imply a contradiction , then not to be able to doe them ? hyl. it would . but because they imply a contradiction to be done , no body thinks the omnipotency of god maimed or blemished in that it reaches not to such things . philoth. why then , hylobares , if certain prescience of uncertain things or events imply a contradiction , it seems it may be struck out of the omnisciency of god , and leave no scar nor blemish behinde ; for god will nevertheless be as omniscient as he is omnipotent . but if it imply no contradiction , what hinders but we may attribute it to him ? hyl. but it seems necessary to attribute it to him : else how can he manage the affairs of the world ? philoth. o hylobares , take you no care for that . for that eternall minde that knows all things possible to be known , comprehends all things that are possible to be done , and so hath laid such trains of causes as shall most certainly meet every one in due time in judgement and righteousness , let him take what way he will. hyl. i understand you , philotheus . philoth. and you may farther understand that , according to some , what you would attribute to god as a perfection sounds more like an imperfection , if well considered . hyl. why so , philotheus ? philoth. is it not the perfection of knowledge to know things as they are in their own nature ? hyl. it is so . philoth. wherefore to know a free agent , which is undeterminate to either part , to be so undeterminate , and that he may chuse which part he will , is the most perfect knowledge of such an agent and of his action , till he be perfectly determinate and has made his choice . hyl. it seems so . philoth. therefore to know him determined before he be determined , or while he is free , is an imperfection of knowledge , or rather no knowl●dge at all , but a mistake and errour : and indeed is a contradiction to the nature of god , who can understand nothing but according to the distinct idea's of things in his own minde . and the idea of a free agent is vndeterminateness to one part before he has made choice . whence to foresee that a free agent will pitch upon such a part in his choice , with knowledge certain and infallible , is to foresee a thing as certain even then when it is uncertain ; which is a plain contradiction or gross mistake . hyl. you do more then satisfie me in this , philotheus , that to conceive things undeterminate determinately , or that they will be certainly this way while they may be either this way or that way , is an imperfection or contradiction to the truth . but there is yet this piece of perplexity behinde , that this pretence of perfection of knowledg will necessarily inferr an imperfection or inability of predicting future actions of free agents , and take away divine inspiration and propheci● . philoth. that is shrewdly urged and seasonably . but you are to understand , that so much liberty as is in man will leave room enough for millions of certain predictions , if god thought fit to communicate them so throngly to the world . for though i question not but that the souls of men are in some sense free ; yet i do as little doubt but there are or may be infinite numbers of actions wherein they are as certainly determined as the brute beasts . and such are the actions of all those that are deeply lapsed into corruption , and of those few that are grown to a more heroicall state of goodness : it is certainly foreknowable what they will doe in such and such circumstances . not to adde , that the divine decrees , when they finde not men sitting tools , make them so , where prophecies are peremptory or unconditionate . bath . what philotheus has hitherto argued for the reconciling of the divine omniscience with the notion of man's free will and the nature of sin , bears along with it a commendable plainness and plausibleness for its easiness to the understanding . but in my apprehension , for all it looks so repugnantly that there should be a certain foreknowledge of what is free and uncertain , yet it seems more safe to allow that privilege to the infinite understanding of god , then to venture at all to circumscribe his omniscience . for though it may safely be said , that he does not know any thing that really implies a contradiction to be known ; yet we are not assured but that may seem a contradiction to us that is not so really in it self . as for example , to our finite understanding a quadrate whose diagonial is commensurate to one of the sides is a plain contradiction , and we conceit we can demonstrate it to be so , that is to say , that the ratio of the one to the other is unconceivable and undefinable . but dare any one be so bold as to ●ffirm that the divine intellect it self , whose comprehension is infinite , cannot define to it self the ratio of a diagonial line in a quadrate to the side thereof ? the application is very obvious . philoth. it is so , bathynous . for i suppose in brief you mean this ; that as the diagonial line and side of a quadrate , which to our apprehension are incommensurate , are yet commensurable to the infinite comprehension of the divine intellect ; so a certain and infallible prescience of uncertain futurities , that seems inconsistent to us , may notwithstanding be deprehended abundantly consistent by the all-comprehensive understanding of god. a very safe and sober solution of the present difficulty . i am very well contented it should be so , bathynous , and that what i have offered at therein should pass as spoken by way of essay rather then of dogmatizing , and according to the sense of others rather then mine own . philop. i never saw that saying so much verified any-where , that wisedome is easie to him that understands , as in bathynous and philotheus's discourses . are you not throughly satisfied hitherto , hylobares ? hyl. i must confess i am . but now i come to the most confounding point , and which is such as that i fear it is fatal to me never to be satisfied in . philoth. what is that , hylobares ? hyl. the spirituality of god. it is the proper disease of my minde , not to be able to conceive any thing that is not material or corporeal . but i hope it is not a disease unto death . philoth. god forbid it should be , hylobares , so long as it is no impediment to the belief of the existence of god , and of all those attributes that are requisite for the engaging a man's soul in the pursuit of true piety and vertue . god will at last bring such an one to the true knowledge of himself , what-ever his ignorance may be for the present . and for my part , i am not fond of the notion of spirituality nor any notion else , but so far forth as they are subservient to life and godliness ; that there may be as much happiness in this life as humane affairs are capable of , and that we may be eternally happy in the life to come . otherwise i have no such great solicitude , that any should be such trim and precise speculators of things , as not to erre an hair's breadth in matters of great perplexity and obscurity . euist. i reade that some of the fathers have been of opinon that god is a kinde of pure subtile body . bath . that may very well be . but then they had not that true and precise notion of a subtile body that most philosophers have in this age : but it is likely they understood no more thereby , then that it was a subtile extended substance ; which , for my part , i conceive in the general may be true . but to say it is properly a subtile body , is to acknowledge it a congeries of very little atomes ●oying and playing one by another , which is too mean a conception of the majesty of god. besides that it is unconceivable how these loose atoms , which are so independent of one another , should joyn together to make up the godhead ; or how they do conspire to keep together , that there is not a dissolution of the divinity . or thus : if this multitude of divine atoms be god , be they interspersed amongst all the matter of the world ? or do they keep together ? if they be dispersed , god is less one then any thing else in the world , and is rather an infinite number of deities then one god or any god ; and this infinite number in an incapacity of conferring notes to contrive so wise a frame of the universe as we see . but if there be one congeries of divine atomes that keep together , in which of those infinite numbers of vortices is it seated , or amongst which ? or how can it order the matter of those vortices from which it is so far distant ? or how again do these atomes , though not interspersed , communicate notions one with another for one design ? do they talk or discourse with one another ? or what do they doe ? and then again — hyl. nay forbear , bathynous , to go any farther , for you have put me quite out of conceit with a material deity already , the more my grief and pain . for to make a material deity , i must confess , seems extremely ridiculous ; and to make a spiritual one , impossible : so that i am in greater streights then ever i was . philoth. why , hylobares , what conceit have you of a spirit , that you should think it a thing impossible ? hyl. is it not infinitely incredible , philotheus , if not impossible , that some thousands of spirits may dance or march on a needle 's point at once ? cuph. i , and that booted and spurred too . hyl. and that in one instant of time they can fly from one pole of the world to the other ? philoth. these things , i must confess , seem very incredible . hyl. and that the spirit of man , which we usually call his soul , is wholly , without flitting , in his toe , and wholly in his head , at once ? if the whole soul be in the toe , there is nothing left to be in the head. therefore the notion of a spirit is perfectly impossible : or else all things are alike true : for nothing seems more impossible then this . philoth. but whose description of a spirit is this , hylobares ? hyl. it is , philotheus , the description of the venerable schools . philoth. but did i not preadvertise you , that no humane authority has any right of being believed when they propound contradictions ? wherefore their rash description of a spirit ought to be no prejudice to the truth of its existence . and though the true notion of a spirit were incomprehensible , yet that would be no solid argument against the reality of it ; as you may observe in the nature of eternall succession , which we cannot deny to be , though we be not able to comprehend it . hyl. that is very true indeed , and very well worth the noting . but how shall we be so well assured of the existence of a spirit , while the comprehension of its nature is taken for desperate ? philoth. that there is some intellectual principle in the world , you were abundantly convinced from the works of nature , as much as that archimedes his treatise de sphaera & cylindro was from a rational agent : and even now it seemed ridiculous to you beyond all measure , that a congeries of atomes should be divine and intellectual : wherefore there is something that is not matter that is intellectual , which must be a substance immaterial or incorporeal , that is in a word , a spirit . hyl. i am , i must confess , very strongly urged to believe there is a spirit as well as an eternall duration , though i can comprehend neither . philoth. and that you may be farther corroborate● in your belief , consider the manifold stories of apparitions , and how many spectres have been seen or felt to wrastle , pull or tug with a man : which , if they were a mere congeries of atomes , were impossible . how could an arm of mere air or aether pull at another man's hand or arm , but it would easily part in the pulling ? admit it might use the motion of pulsion , yet it could never that of attraction . hyl. this indeed were a palpable demonstration that there must be some other substance in these spectres of air or aether , if the histories were true . euist. we reade such things happening even in all ages and places of the world ; and there are modern and fresh examples every day : so that no man need doubt of the truth . hyl. these experiments indeed strike very strongly on the imagination and senses , but there is a subtile reason that presently unlooses all again . and now methinks i could wish the nature of a spirit were more unknown to me then it is , that i might believe its existence without meddling at all with its essence . but i cannot but know thus much of it , whether i will or no , that it is either extended , or not extended ; i mean , it has either some amplitude of essence , or else none at all . if it has no amplitude or extension , the ridiculous hypothesis of the schools will get up again , and millions of spirits , for ought i know , may dance on a needle 's point , or rather , they , having no amplitude , would be nothing . if they have any amplitude or extension , they will not be spirits , but mere body or matter . for , as that admired wit des-cartes solidly concludes , extension is the very essence of matter . this is one of the greatest arguments that fatally bear me off from a chearfull closing with the belief of spirits properly so called . philoth. it is much , hylobares , that you should give such an adamantine assent to so weak and precarious an assertion as this of des-cartes . for though it be wittily supposed by him , for a ground of more certain and mathematicall after-deductions in his philosophy ; yet it is not at all proved , that matter and extension are reciprocally the same , as well every extended thing matter , as all matter extended . this is but an upstart conceit of this present age. the ancient atomical philosophers were as much for a vacuum as for atomes . and certainly the world has hitherto been very idle , that have made so many disputes and try'd so many experiments whether there be any vacuum or no , if it be so demonstratively concludible , as des-cartes would bear us in hand , that it implies a contradiction there should be any . the ground of the demonstration lies so shallow and is so obvious , that none could have missed of it , if they could have thought there had been any force in it . hyl. it is true , this might in reason abate a man's confidence a little , philotheus ; but the apprehension is so deeply rivetted into my minde , that such rhetoricall flourishes cannot at all loosen or brush it out . philoth. well then , give me leave , hylobares , to attaque you some other way . did you not say even now , that what-ever has no extension or amplitude is nothing ? hyl. i did , and do not repent me of so saying . for i doubt not but that it is true . philoth. wherefore extension or amplitude is an intrinsecall or essential property of ens quatenus ens , as the metaphysicians phrase it . hyl. it is so . philoth. and what is an intrinsecall or essential attribute of a thing , is in the thing it self . hyl. where should it be else ? philoth. therefore there is extension in every thing or entity . hyl. it cannot be deny'd . philoth. and it can as little be deny'd but that motion is an entity , i mean a physicall entity . hyl. it cannot . philoth. therefore extension is an intrinsecall property of motion . hyl. it must be acknowledged ; what then ? philoth. what then ? do you not yet see , hylobares , how weak an assertion that of des-carte● is , that extension and matter are reciprocall ? for you plainly see that extension is intrinsecall to motion , and yet motion is not matter . hyl. motion is not ens , but modu● entis . philo●h . nay , by your favour , hylobares , motion is ens , though in some sense it may be said to be modus corporis . hyl. methinks i am , i know not how , philotheus , illaqueated , but not truly captivated into an assent to your conclusion . philoth. that is because you are already held captive in that inured conceit of des-cartes , that makes you suspect solid reason for a sophism . hyl. if motion were a thing that was loose or exemptitious from matter , then i could not but be convinced that it had extension of its own ; but being it is a mere mode of matter , that cannot pass from it into another subject , it has no other extension then that of the matter it self it is in . philoth. but if it have another essence from the matter it self , by your own concession it must however have another extension . besides , you seem mistaken in what i mean by motion . for i mean not simply the translation , but the vis agitans that pervades the whole body that is moved . which both regius and des-cartes acknowledge exemptitious and loose , so that it may pass from one part of matter to another . hyl. but what is that to me , if i do not ? philoth. it is at least thus much to you , that you may take notice how rashly and groundlesly both des-cartes and regius assert extension and matter to be reciprocall , while in the mean time they affirm that which according to your own judgement does plainly and convincingly inferr that extension is more general then matter . hyl. it is , 〈◊〉 must confess , a sign that the apprehensions of men are very humoursome and lubricous . philoth. and therefore we must take heed , hylobares , how we let our mindes cleave to the opinion of any man out of admiration of his person . hyl. that is good advice , and of great consequence ( if it be given betimes ) for the keeping out of errour and falshood . but when a phancy is once engrafted in the minde , how shall one get it out ? philoth. i must confess i marvell much , hylobares , that you being so fully convinced that every real and physicall entity has an intrinsecall extension of its own , and that motion is a physicall entity different from matter , you should not be presently convinced that motion has also an intrinsecall extension of its own . to which you might adde , that the manner of the extension of matter is different from the nature of the extension in motion : the former being one sing●● extension , not to be lessened nor increased without the lessening and increase of the matter it self ; but the other a gradual extension , to be lessened or augmented without any lessening or augmenting the matter . whence again it is a sign that it has an extension of its own , reduplicative into it self , or reducible to thinner or weaker degrees ; while the extension of the matter remains still single and the same . hyl. i must confess , philotheus , that i am brought to these streights , that i must either renounce that principle , that every physicall entity has an intrinsecall extension of its own , as much as it has an intrinsecall essence of its own , ( which i know not how to doe ; ) or else i must acknowledge that something besides matter is extended . but i must take time to consider of it . i am something staggered in my judgement . philoth. give me leave then , hylobares , to follow my blow with one stroke more , and see if i cannot strike your opinion to the ground . hyl. do , philotheus . i will stand the shock of it . philoth. place your self then under the aequinoctial line , hylobares . hyl. is it not better being in this cool arbour ? philoth. i hope the mere imagination of the torrid zone will not heat you . but you may place your self in a more temperate clime , if you please . hyl. what then , philotheus ? philoth. shoot up an arrow perpendicularly from the earth ; the arrow , you know , will return to your foot again . hyl. if the winde hinder not . but what does this arrow aim at ? philoth. this arrow has described onely right lines with its point , upwards and downwards , in the air ; but yet , holding the motion of the earth , it must also have described in some sense a circular or curvilinear line . hyl. it must so . philoth. but if you be so impatient of the heat abroad , neither your body nor your phancy need step out of this cool bowre . consider the round trencher that glass stands upon ; it is a kinde of short cylinder , which you may easily imagine a foot longer , if you will. hyl. very easily , philotheus . philoth. and as easily phansy a line drawn from the top of the axis of that cylinder to the peripherie of the bas●s . hyl. every jot as easily . philoth. now imagine this cylinder turned round on its axis . does not that line from the top of the axis to the peripherie of the basis necessarily describe a conicum in one circumvolution ? hyl. it does so , philotheus . philoth. but it describes no such figure in the wooden cylinder it self : as the arrow in the aereal or material aequinoctial circle describes not any line but a right one . in what therefore does the one describe , suppose , a circular line , the other a conicum ? hyl. as i live , philotheus , i am struck as it were with lightning from this surprizing consideration . philoth. i hope , hylobares , you are pierced with some measure of illumination . hyl. i am so . philoth. and that you are convinced , that whether you live or no , that there ever was , is , and ever will be an immovable extension distinct from that of movable matter . hyl. this evidently demonstrates the existence of the ancient democritish vacuum , and withall that extension and matter are not convertible terms ; for which yet cartesius so much contends . this conceit is struck quite dead with the point of the arrow describing a curvilinear line in the steady aequinoctial circle . and if it should ever offer to flame out again into life in my thoughts , i would use the conicum as an extinguisher to smother it . philop. what a chearfull thing the apprehension of truth is , that it makes hylobares so pleasant and so witty ? cuph. but methinks he claps his wings before the victory , or rather s●bmits before he be overcome . for it may be seasonably suggested , that it is real extension and matter that are terms convertible ; but that extension wherein the arrow-head describes a curvilinear line is onely imaginary . hyl. but it is so imaginary , that it cannot possibly be dis-imagined by humane understanding . which methinks should be no small earnest that there is more then an imaginary being there . and the ancient atomists called this ● acuum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the intangible nature ; which is a sign they thought it some real thing . which appears farther from their declaring , that this and atomes were the onely true things , but that the rest were mere appearances . and aristotle somewhere in his physicks expresly declares of the pythagoreans , that they held there was a vacuum , from an infinite spirit that pervades heaven or the universe , as living and breathing in virtue thereof . euist. i remember the passage very well : it is in the fourth book and the sixth chapter . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . bath . as if this pythagorick vacuum were that to the universe which the aire is to particular animals , that wherein and whereby they live and breathe . whence it is manifest the pythagoreans held it no imaginary being . hyl. and lastly , o cuphophron , unless you will flinch from the dic●ates of your so highly-admired des-cartes , forasmuch as this vacuum is extended , and measurable , and the like , it must be a reality ; because non entis nulla est affectio , according to the reasonings of your beloved master . from whence it seems evident that there is an extended substance far more subtile then body , that pervades the whole matter of the universe . bath . excellently well argued , o hylobares ! thou art become not only a disciple , but a very able champion for the truth of immaterial beings , and therefore art not far off from the right apprehension of the nature of god. of whose essence i must confess i have always been prone to think this subtile extension ( which a man cannot dis-imagine but must needs be ) to be a more obscure shadow or adumbration , or to be a more general and confused apprehension of the divine amplitude . for this will be necessarily , though all matter were annihilated out of the world. nay indeed this is antecedent to all matter , forasmuch as no matter nor any being else can be conceived to be but in this . in this are all things necessarily apprehended to live and move and have their being . sophr. lord , thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations . before the mountains were brought forth , or ever thou hadst formed the earth or the world : even from everlasting to everlasting thou art god. bath . whence the cabbalists have not vainly attributed those titles of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto god , who is the immovable mover , receptacle and sustainer of all things . answerable to what hylobares noted of the opinion of the phythagoreans , who have a great affinity with the ancient cabbalists . cuph. what mysterious conceits has bathynous of what can be but a mere vacuum at best ? bath . it is an extension plainly distinct from that of matter , and more necessarily to be imagined in this distinctness then that extension of matter , and therefore a ground infinitely more certain of the existence of an infinite spirit then the other of indefinite matter . for while that extension which cartesius would build his matter on is conceived movable , this spirit is necessarily supposed in which it moves , as appears from philotheus his instances . so that this is the extension onely which must imply the necessity of the existence of some real being thereunto appertaining ; which therefore must be coincident with the essence of god , and cannot but be a spirit , because it pervades the matter of the universe . cuph. it is onely the capacity of matter , bathynous . bath . what do you mean by capacity , cuphophron ? matter in potentia ? cuph. yes . bath . but we conceive this extension loosly distinct from that of matter : that of matter being movable , this immovable ; that of matter discerpible , this indiscerpible . for if it were discerpible , it would be also movable , and so ipso facto distinguish it self from the indiscerpible and immovable extension . but when ens potentiâ is once made ens actu , they are one and the same undivided essence actually existent , nor can possibly be loose from one another while they are : as your metaphysicall wit cannot but easily apprehend . cuph. i cannot so easily apprehend it in this case , bathynous , who must , with des-cartes , make extension and matter reciprocall . for i am certain i am illaqueated with a mere sophism , forasmuch as i easily conceive that , if god were exterminated as well as matter out of the world , yet this extension you talk so magnificently of would to my deluded phancy seem necessarily to remain . but if there were no god nor matter , there would be nothing . which is a plain sign that this remaining extension is the extension of nothing , and therefore that it self is nothing but our imagination . bath . this is cunningly fetch'd about , o cuphophron . but if you well consider things , this fetch of yours , which seems to be against me , is really for me . for in that you acknowledge that while you conceive god exterminated out of the world , this extension does notwithstanding remain , it is but an indication of what is true , that the conception of god's being exterminated out of the world implies a contradiction , as most certainly it does . for no essence that is exterminable can be the essence of god , forasmuch as his essence implies necessary existence . wherefore that god which you did exterminate , that is to say , conceived exterminable , was a figment of your own : but that extension which remains to you whether you will or no , is really and indentifically coincident with the amplitude of the essence of god. whence we may see not onely the folly , but the impiety , of the other position , which would transplant that main prerogative of god , i mean his necessary existence , upon matter , upon pretence that whatever is extended must be such ; and withall necessarily exterminate god out of the universe with as many as cannot conceive any thing to be but what is extended , that is to say , has some kinde of amplitude or other . hyl. and therefore it had been my inevitable fate to have been an atheist , had not philotheus so fortunately ●reed me from so mischievous a conceit by those instances of the co●icum and arrow . for i do most immutably apprehend thereby , that there is an extension distinct from that of matter , which though we should admit to be imaginary , yet this at least will result therefrom , that extension being thus necessarily applicable as well to imaginary things as to real , it is rather a logicall notion then a physicall , and consequently is applicable to all objects as well metaphysicall as physicall . cuph. as well phantasticall or imaginary as physicall , you should say , hylobares . for if any real thing be extended , it is ipso facto matter , as that oracle of philosophy has concluded , i mean renatus des-cartes . hyl. that is again spitefully interposed , cuphophron , ( but not at all proved ) and yet repugnantly to your own admired oracle , who has declared , as i told you before , that nihili nulla east affectio . wherefore there being a measurable extension distinct from that of matter , there is also a substance distinct from matter , which therefore must be immaterial , and consequently metaphysicall . but that there is an extension distinct from matter , is apparent in that instance of the conicum . cuph. there is no real description of a conicum , hylobares , nor in any extension but that of the wooden cylinder it self . these are whims and turnings of our phancy onely : and then we make grave theologicall inferences , and uses of reproof , as if we carried all before us . hyl. answer me but with patience , cuphophron , and i doubt not but i shall quickly convince you , that there is more then phancy in those arguings . i will appeal to your reason , your imagination , and your sense . what therefore is it , o cuphophron , to describe a figure , as the mathematicians speak , but to draw some extensum or some point of it through the parts of some other extensum , so that the parts are passed through of that extensum in which the figure is said to be described ? cuph. right , hylobares , that is plain at first sight . hyl. this to gratifie your reason . but farther too to caress your sense and phancy , let us imagine for that wooden cylinder a glass one , with a red line in it for its axis , and from the top of this axis , another red line drawn down to the peripherie of the basis ; which lines would be visible to your very sight through the transparent glass . cuph. a fine thing to play with , hylobares ; what then ? hyl. i would have you play with such a thing , o cuphophron , but in such sort , as to make it turn swiftly upon its axis . and there will appear to your very sight a red conicum , like the usual shape of an extinguisher . if the line were blew , it would be like it something in colour as well as figure . this i conceive ( for i never try'd it , nor thought of it before now ) you might distinctly see in the glass . cuph. a goodly sight : but what of all this ? hyl. i demand in what extensum this conicum is described . cuph. in the same it is seen , namely in the glass , hylobares . hyl. you answer what is impossible , cuphophron , and against your first concession . for the red line does not pass through the parts of the glass , but is carried along with them , and therefore cannot describe the conicum in it . but there is a conicum described even to your very ●ense . in what extensum therefore is ●●scribed ? cuph. in an imaginary extensum . hyl. but what is imaginary , cuphophron , is a figment made at pleasure by us : but this extensum we cannot dis-imagine , as i told you before , but it is whether we will or no : for no figure can be drawn but through the parts of some extensum . cuph. i am cast upon the same answers again that i was before : then it is the idea of a possible extensum , which indeed the glass-cylinder actually is . hyl. that is to say , it is the particular or individual possible idea of that extensum which the glass-cylinder is actually . cuph. it is that , or else i confess i know not what it is . it is a mockery of the minde , it is a troublesome fallacy . hyl. but you do not mean any idea in our brain by this possible idea . for the red line that describes the conicum is in the glass , not in our brain . cuph. therefore i must mean the object of that idea . hyl. but is not the actual describing of a figure in a mere possible extensum like sense to the writing of an actual epistle in a possible sheet of paper ? besides , this particular or individual possible idea of the extensum which this particular cylinder is ac●ually is an immovable extensum , but this cylinder removable from it even while it does exist . how can it then be that particular possible extensum which the cylinder is actually ? but admit it could be , and let this cylinder be removed from this possible immovable extensum , and another cylinder of the same bigness succeed into its place . now this second cylinder is actually that particular extensum which still the same individual possible extensum is or was potentially . and so both the first and second cylinders are one and the same individual cylinder : for one individual possibility can afford no more then one individual actuality in the world . and therefore one and the same cylinder is in two distant places at once . sophr. this makes cuphophron rub his temples . i believe he is confounded in the midst of this hot and hasty career he has taken afresh in the behalf of des-cartes . let me help him a little . it may be that immoveable possible cylindricall extensum is the genus of the two other cylinders , and , as i remember , * des-cartes intimates some such thing . hyl. but how can that which is immovable , o sophron , be the genus of those things that are movable ? and we will suppose both these cylinders removed from this possible cylindricall extensum , and thus the genus will be deserted of its species , and the species destitute of their genus . which can be good in no logick but cuphophron's or des-cartes's . but if by genus you mean a mere logicall notion , that is onely in the brain , which the red line is not , but in the glass . sophr. nay , i perceive there is no dealing with hylobares when his wit is once awakened . i am presently forced to sound a retreat . and yet i care not to cast this one conceit more at him before i run away . what if i should say it is onely spatium imaginarium , hylobares ? hyl. then you would onely say but what in effect cuphophron has said twice already . but i tell you , sophron , that the extension of this space which you call imaginary is real . for whatsoever is a real affection or attribute any-where , ( and you know extension is so in matter ) is every-where real where it is deprehended to be independently on our imagination . and that this extension is actual , necessary and independent on our imagination , is plainly discoverable in those instances of the arrow and conicu● . philoth. you are an excellent proficient , hylobares , that can thus vary , emprove and maintain things from so few and slender hints . i never spoke with better success to any one in all my life touching these matters . hyl. i finde my self hugely at ease since your freeing me , o philotheus , from that prejudice , that whatsoever is extended must be matter . whence i can now easily admit the existence of spirits ; but have therefore the greater curiosity , and find my self finely at leisure , to be more punctually instructed concerning the nature of them . philoth. i dare say , hylobares , you will be able abundantly to instruct your self touching that point , if we do but first carefully settle the notion of matter , whose essence i conceive consists chiefly in these three attributes , self-disunity , self-impenetrability , and self-inactivity . hyl. but i desire , o philotheus , to know the distinct meaning of every one of these terms . philoth. by self-disunity i understand nothing else but that matter has no vinculum of its own to hold it together , so that of it self it would be disunited into a congeries of mere physicall monads , that is , into so little particles , that is , implies a contradiction they should be less . hyl. i understand the notion well enough . but what makes you attribute disunity to matter rather then firm union of parts , especially you attributing self-inactivity thereto ? philoth. because there is no vinculum imaginable in matter to hold the parts together . for you know they are impenetrable , and therefore touch one another as it were in smooth superficies's . how therefore can they hold together ? what is the principle of their union ? cuph. o , that is very clear , philotheus ; that s●upendious wit des-cartes plainly tells us that it is rest. philoth. but i pray do you tell me , cuphrophron , what is rest ? cuph. that is easily understood from motion , which des-cartes intimates to be the separation or translation of one part of matter from the other . philoth. and so rest is the vnion or vnseparateness of one part of matter from another . cuph. i can imagine nothing else by it . for if a whole mass of matter move together in one hard piece , the whole is moved ; but the parts in respect of one another , because they do not separate one from another , are said to rest . and on this account motion is said to be reciprocall , because indeed separation is so . philoth. then rest and vnseparateness of parts are all one . cuph. it seems so . philoth. and vnseparateness and vnion all one . cuph. the very same , i think . philoth. why then , rest and vnion is all one , and so the principle of the vnion of the parts of matter is the vnion of their parts . hyl. that is , they have no principle of vnion at all , and therefore of themselves are disunited . philoth. and there is great reason they should have none , forasmuch as they are to be bound together in such forms and measures as some more divine cause shall order . cuph. i think in my heart philotheus and hylobares have both plotted a conspiracy together against that prince of philosophers , our admired des-cartes . hyl. philotheus and i have conspired in nothing , o cuphophron , but what so noble a philosopher would commend us for , that is , the free searching out of truth : in which i conceive we are not unsuccessfull . for i must confess i am convinced that this first attribute of 〈◊〉 , as philotheus has explained 〈◊〉 true . and for self-impenetra●●●●●y ▪ it is acknowledged of all sides . but what do you mean , o philotheus , by ●●●finactivity ? philoth. i mean that matter does not move nor actuate it self , but is or has been alwaies excited by some other , and cannot modifie the motion it is excited into , but moves directly so as it is first excited , unless some externall cause hinder . hyl. this i understand , and doubt not of the truth thereof . cuph. this is no more then des-cartes himself allows of . bath . and good reason , o cuphophron , he should doe so . for there being no medium betwixt self-activity and self-inactivity , nor betwixt self-union and self-disunity , nor any immediate genus to these distributions , as cogitation and figure are to the kindes or modes under them , it is necessary that one of the twain , and 〈◊〉 an indifferency to either , should 〈◊〉 the innate property of so simple an essence as matter : and that therefore self-inactivity and self-disunity should be the properties thereof , it being a passive principle , and wholly to be guided by another . philoth. you say right , bathynous ; and the consectary from all this will be , that sympathy cannot immediately belong to matter . hyl. very likely . philoth. we are fully agreed then touching the right notion or nature of matter , hylobares . hyl. we are so , philotheus . philoth. can you then miss of the true notion of a spirit ? hyl. methinks i finde my self able to define it by the rule of contraries . for if self-disunity , self-inactivity , self-impenetrability , be the essential attributes of matter or body ; then the attributes of the opposite species , viz. of spirit , must be self-unity , self-activity , self-penetrability . philoth. very right . and have you not as distinct a notion of every one of these attributes as of the other ? hyl. i will try . by the self-unity of a spirit i understand a spirit to be immediately and essentially one , and to want no other vinculum to hold the parts together but its own essence and existence ; whence it is of its own nature indiscerpible . philoth. excellently well defined . hyl. this i am carried to by my reason . but methinks my imagination boggles and starts back , and brings me into a suspicion that it is the notion of a thing that cannot be . for how can an extended substance be indivisible or indiscerpible ? for quatenus extended it must be divisible . philoth. it is true , it is intellectually divisible , but physically indiscerpible . therefore this is the fallacy your phancy puts upon you , that you make indivisibility and indiscerpibility all one . what is intellectually divisible may be physicall● indivisible or indiscerpible : as it is manifest in the nature of god , whose very idea implies indiscerpibility , the contrary being so plain an imperfection . for whatsoever is discerpible is also movable : but nothing is movable but must be conceived to move in that which is a necessary and immovable essence , and which will necessarily be , though there were nothing else in the world : which therefore must be the holy essence of god , as bathynous has very well noted already , and seems to have light upon the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which aristotle sought for above the heavens , but bathynous has rightly found to be every-where . wherefore at length to make our inference ; if it imply a contradiction , hylobares , that the divine extension should be discerpible , extended essence quatenus extended cannot imply physicall divisibility . hyl. it is very true , philotheus . philoth. what hinders then but spirit quatenus sp●rit , according to the right idea thereof , be immediately or essentially one , that is to say , indiscerpible ? for what is immediately and essentially one , and not instrumentally , or one by virtue of some other , is necessarily and immutably one , and it implies a contradiction to be otherwise , while it at all is , and therefore is indiscerpible . cuph. why , philotheus ? cannot the omnipotence of god himself discerp a spirit , if he has a minde to it ? philoth. he may annihilate a spirit , if he will. but if a spirit be immediately and essentially one , he can no more discerp it , then he can separate that property , of having the power of the hypotenusa equal to the powers of both the basis and cathetus , from a rectangle-triangle . cuph. you know , philotheus , des-cartes asserts that god might change this property of a rectangle-triangle , if he would . philoth. he does indeed say so , but by way of a slim jear to their ignorance , as he deems it , that are not aware of his supposed mechanicall necessity of the result of all the phaenomena of the world from the mere motion of the matter . this piece of wit i suspect in this paradox of that great philosopher . however , i will not contend with you , cuphophron : let but a spirit be no more discerpible then that property of a rectangle-triangle is separable from it , and then we are agreed . cuph. i am well pleased that we can agree in any thing that is compliable with the dictates of the noble des-cartes . philoth. so i dare say should we all , o cuphophron : but i must pursue my purpose with hylobares . what do you understand by self-activity in a spirit , hylobares ? hyl. i understand an active power in a spirit , whereby it either modifies it self according to its own nature , or moves the matter regularly according to some certain modifications it impresses upon it , uniting the physicall monads into particles of such magnitude and figure , and guiding them in such motions as answer the end of the spiritual agent , either conceived by it or incorporated into it . whence there appears , as was said , the reason why both disunity and inactivity should belong to matter . philoth. very accurately and succinctly answered , hylobares . you are so nimble at it , that certainly you have thought of these notions before now . hyl. i have read something of them . but your dexterous defining the attributes of matter might of it self make me a little more chearfully nimble at defining those of a spirit , especially now i can close with the belief of its existence , which i could never doe heartily before . and for the last attribute , which seemed to me the most puzzling , i mean that of self-penetrability , it is now to me as easie a notion as any : and i understand nothing else by it , but that different spirits may be in the same space , or that one and the same may draw its extension into a lesser compass , and so have one part of its essence lie in the same space with some others : by which power it is able to dilate or contract it self . this i easily conceive may be a property of any created and finite spirit , because the extension of no spirit is corporeall . philoth. very true . but did you not observe , hylobares , how i removed sympathy from the capacity of matter ? hyl. i did , phi●●theus ; and thereby i cannot but collect that it is seated in the spiritual or incorporeall nature . and i understand by this sympathy , not a mere compassivity , but rather a coactivity of the spirit in which it does reside : which i conceive to be of great use in all perceptive spirits . for in virtue of this attribute , however or in what-ever circumstances they are affected in one part , they are after the same manner affected in all . so that if there were a perceptive spirit of an infinite amplitude and of an infinite exaltedness of sympathy , where-ever any perceptive energie emerges in this infinite spirit , it is suddenly and necessarily in all of it at once . for i must confess , philotheus , i have often thought of these notions heretofore , but could never attribute them to a spirit , because i could not believe there was any such thing as a spirit , forasmuch as all extension seemed to me to be corporeall . but your aequinoctial arrow has quite struck that errour out of my minde . for the more i think of it , the more unavoidable it seems to me , that that exten●●on in the aequinoctial circle wherein the arrow is carried in a curvilinear motion is not onely an extension distinct from that of the aereall circle , but that it is an extension of something real and independent of our imagination . because the arrow is really carried in such a curvilinear line , and we not being able to dis-imagine it otherwise , we have as great a certainty for this as we have for any thing . for it is as certainly true as our faculties are true : and we have no greater certainty then that of our faculties . and thus was the sole obstacle that kept me off ●rom admitting the existence of spirits demolished at once by the skilfull assaults of philotheus . philop. i am exceeding glad of it , hylobares , and must owe philotheus many thanks for his successfull pains . the spirituality of god then is not the least prejudice to your belief of his existence . hyl. not the least , phi●opolis . the notion of a spirit is now to me as easie and comprehensible as that of matter ; and the attributes of a spirit infinitely more easie then the competibleness of such properties as they must be forced to give to matter who deny there is any such thing as a spirit in the world . philop. why then , you may without any more adoe proceed to the last attribute of god which you propounded . hyl. i will , philopolis . it was omnipresency , i mean the essential omnipresency of god. for attending to the infinite perfection of god according to his idea , i cannot but acknowledge his essence to be infinite , and therefore that he is essentially present every-where . and for those that would circumscribe the divine essence , i would ask them , how they can make his essence finite , and his attributes infinite ; or to what extent they conceive him circumscribed . to confine him to a point were intolerably ridiculous . and to pretend that the amplifying of his essence beyond this were any advantage or perfection , were plainly to acknowledge that the taking away his essential omnipresency is to attribute to him an infinite imperfection . for any circumscription implies an infinite defect . these considerations , o philopolis , force me to believe that god is essentially omnipresent , and that he pervades all things , even to all infinite imaginable spaces . but when i have thus concluded with my self , i am cast off again with a very rude and importune check , as if this were to draw down the divinity into miry lakes and ditches and worse-sented places , and to be as unmannerly in our thoughts to the true god as orpheus is in his expressions to the pagan iupiter , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . euist. it is the very verse that gregory nazianzen quotes in his invectives against iulian the apostate , and does severely reproch the poet for the slovenliness and unmannerliness of his style . cuph. and well he may , euistor . euist. but how shall we redeem our imagination from this captivity into such sordid conceits ? cuph. i can tell , euistor , and i am very glad of the opportunity of the shewing the usefulness of a peculiar notion i have of the omnipresency of god , to solve such difficulties as this of hylobares . hyl. for the love of the truth , good cuphophron , declare it . cuph. but it is so sublime , so subtil and so elevated , o hylobares , ( though not the less solid ) that i question whether it will be discretion to commit it to unprepared ears . hyl. why ? you see , cuphophron , that i am not altogether an undocible auditour of metaphysicks , by philotheus his success upon me . besides , it is against the professed freedome of philosophizing in these our meetings to suppress any thing , and the more injurious , in that you have set our mouths a-watering by the mentioning of so excellent a notion , and so serviceable for the solving this present difficulty touching the divine omnipresence . cuph. well , hylobares , because you do thus forcibly extort it , i will not suppress my judgement concerning this matter . hyl. what is it then , dear cuphophron ? cuph. that god is no-where : and therefore neither in miry lakes nor dirty ponds , nor any other sordid places . hyl. ha ha he . cuphophron , this is a subtil solution , indeed , to come from one that does , i think , as firmly adhere to the belief of a god as any one in the whole company . if all the atheists in italy , in england , in europe , should hear this pious solution of thine , they would assuredly with one voice cry out , amen , venerable cuphophron . cuph. it 's much , hylobares , the atheists should be so universally devout . philop. this solution seems to me point-blank against the very words of scripture ; if i climb up into heaven , thou art there ; if i descend to the bottom of the sea , thou art there also ; and the like . and again , in him we live and move and have our being . if we have all this in him , we have it no-where , if he be no-where , nor are we any-where our selves . philoth. i suppose that cuphophron's meaning is , that god is no-where circumscriptivé . cuph. i mean he is no-where essentially , philotheus . philoth. monster of opinions ! sophr. the pythagoreans and platonists , and all the established religions of the civilized parts of the world , are for the essential omnipresence of god : onely aristotle places him on the primum mobile ; whom pomponatius , cardan and vani●us follow . nor do i know any other opinion , nor could i imagine any more divisions touching god's presence , but of those that would place him at least some-where , or else of those that would declare him every-where . but now we are come from every-where to some-where , and from some-where to no-where at all . this is a strain of wit , i suppose , peculiar to this present age. cuph. it may be so , o sophron. for i think no age within the records of history has produced more elevated wits then this present age has done . bath . i suspect this new conceit , o cuphophron , of god's being no-where , is the waggish suggestion of some sly and sculking atheists , ( with which sort of people this present age abounds ) who , upon pretence of extolling the nature of god above the capacity of being so much debased as to be present with any thing that is extended , have thus stretched their wits to the utmost extent to lift the deity quite out of the universe , they insinuating that which cannot but imply as much in their own judgments . for it is evident that that which is no-where is not at all . wherefore it must needs make fine flearing sport with these elevated wits , while they see their ill-intended raillery so devoutly taken up for choicest and sublimest pieces of natural theologic by well-meaning , but less cautious , contemplators of philosophicall matters . euist. is not this something inhospitall for us all to fall upon cuphophron thus in his own arbour at once ? cuph. no , euistor , there is nothing committed against the laws of hospitality , but all transacted accor●ing to that liberty that is given and often made use of in these our philosophicall meetings . they are not at all uncivil , though you be extremely much a gentleman , euistor , and it may be a more favourable estimatour of my distressed opinion then the rest . euist. i must confess i think none can conceive better of your person , cuphophron , then my self ; but your assertion of god's being no-where is the most odd and unexpected assertion that ever i heard in my life ; and , but that you are so very well known for your piety otherwise , i should have thought to have been the voice of a down-right atheist . you will pardon this liberty . cuph. i told you at first , euistor , that the notion was more then ordinarily subtil and sublime : these things are not apprehended in an instant . hyl. i but a man may in almost less then an instant discover the assertion to be impossible , supposing god has any essence at all , as philotheus or bathynous could quickly convince you . philoth. the cause is in a very good hand ; i pray you proceed , hylobares . hyl. tell me then first , o cuphophron , whether god be not as essentially present every-where as he is any-where . cuph. that i must not deny , hylobares : he is . hyl. and whether his essential attributes be not in his essence , not out of it . cuph. who can imagine to the contrary ? hyl. and whether omnipotency , wherein is contained the power of moving th● matter , be not an essential attribute of god. cuph. that is univ●rsally acknowledged . hyl. and that he does or did sometime move at least some part of the matter . cuph. that des-cartes himself asserts , with whom i am resolved to stand and fall . hyl. now i demand , if it be possible for the matter to be moved by the power of god , unless there be an application of god's power to the matter . cuph. it is not possible , hylobares . hyl. nor the power , being onely in the essence , not out of it , to be apply'd without the application or presence of the essence to that part of the matter the power acts upon . cuph. i am surprised . hyl. and therefore there being a necessity that the essence of god should be present to some part of the matter at least , according to your own concession , it is present to all . cuph. and so i believe you will inferr , hylobares , that the divine essence is in some sense extended . hyl. that indeed , cuphophron , might be inferred , if need were , that there is an amplitude of the divine essence . bath . it might ; but this in the mean time most seasonably noted : how that that atheisticall plot laid against the existence of god in that bold assertion , [ that there can be no extension or amplitude , but it must necessarily be matter ] being defeated by the notion of the essential omnipresence of god , to make sure work , and to baffle the truth , they raised this sublime and elevated fiction , that in stead of god's being every-where , according to the universal opinion of all sober men , that his nature is such that he can be no-where : without which far-fetch'd subterfuge they could never have born two faces under one hood , and play'd the atheist and deist at once , professing god was no-where , and yet that he was . cuph. is this your sagacity or deep melancholy , bathynous , that makes you surmize such plots against the deity ? for i have no more plot against god , then against my own soul , which i hold to be a spirit . and i hold god to be no-where , not as he is god , but as he is an intellectual spirit : for i hold of all spirits , that they are now-where . hyl. it seems then , cuphophron , that the plot aims farther then we thought on , not onely to exclude god , but all the orders of spirits that are , out of the world . cuph. i know not what you call excluding out of the world , hylobares ; i am sure i do not mean any excluding out of being . hyl. that is mercifully meant , o cuphophron ; but we cannot conceive they are , if they may not be upon any other terms then you conceit them . and it is a wonder to me , that you do not easily discern your own soul to be some-where , if you can distinctly discern her to be at all . cuph. i do most intimately and distinctly perceive my own soul or minde to be , and that i am it , and yet without being any-where at all . hyl. but cannot you also think of two things at once , o cuphophron ? cuph. every man can doe that that can compare two things or two idea's one with the other : for if he do not think of them at once , how can he compare them ? hyl. let not go therefore this perception you have of your self , but raise up also the idea or remembrance of the indefinitely-extended matter of the universe , which is discontinued no-where , but reaches from your self to infinite spaces round about you , or is continued from infinite spaces round about till it reach your thinking selfship . can you be surrounded by all this , and yet be no-where ? or can you compare your distinct selfship with this immense compass , and yet not conceive your self surrounded ? cuph. i compare what is no-where with that which is every-where , and finde them to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . hyl. you suppose your minde or soul no-where first , or rather say so , though you cannot conceive it , and then you cry out that the universe and she are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which errour , if you were unprejudiced , this consideration would convince you of , especially back'd with what palpably falls under sense . cuph. what 's that , hylobares ? hyl. the soul 's being touch'd and transfix'd , as it were , from real objects ab extra round about , from above and beneath and from every side ▪ which would be notoriously perceptible to you , if you could pearch your self , as a bird , on the top of some high steeple . cuph. it is more safe to suppose the experiment , then to try it . but what then , hylobares ? hyl. there being from above and beneath and from every side round from those externall objects ( suppose of sight ) motion transmitted to the perceptive soul her self through the air and organs of her body , and she palpably perceiving her self thus affected from things round about her , it is manifest from thence that she is in the midst of them , according as she plainly feels her self to be , and that consequently she is some-where . cuph. that which is no-where cannot be in the midst of any things . it is onely the body that is in the midst of those objects , which obtrudes this mistake upon the soul , whiles she thinks herself to be in the midst of them , whenas indeed she is not . hyl. but the body with all its organs , and those more externall media betwixt the body and the objects , are but the instruments whereby the soul perceives those distant objects round about . wherefore she herself must needs be where the lines of motion through these continued instruments of her perception do concentre . nay indeed the transmission of any single motion through matter that affects the soul is a palpable argument that she is some-where . for how can that which is some-where , as matter and motion are , reach that which is no-where ? how can they come at it , or it at them ? not to adde , that des-cartes himself expressly admits that those objects the soul sees and flies from or pursues are without her . wherefore many of these in a compass must needs surround her , and therefore they being without her , she must be within them , and so of necessity be some-where . cuph. the philosopher , it may be , there slips into the ordinary conceit of the vulgar . hyl. again , cuphophron , if the souls of men be no-where , they are as much in one man's body as another's , and one man's soul may move another man's body as well as his own , and at what-ever distance that man is from them : which seems impossible for any finite spirit to doe , nor are there any examples of their doing so . cuph. you give the reason your self , hylobares , why they cannot act at any distance ; namely , because their power is finite . hyl. and you , cuphophron , acknowledge souls to be nearer and farther off , in that you acknowledge they cannot act at any distance . but that which is nearer and farther off is some-where , at least definitivé . cuph. and that one man's soul does not move another man's body , is because it is vitally united onely to one . hyl. is it then united to the inside of the body , cuphophron , or to the outside ? cuph. that is a captious question . for whether i say to the inside or to the outside , you will infer the soul to be some-where . but that which is no-where cannot be united to either side . hyl. and therefore is not united at all . cuph. these things will not fall into every man's capacity . hyl. again , cuphophron , is the soul united to the body by its essence , or by some essential attribute of the soul ? cuph. there is another caption , hylobares : for i foresee your sophistry , that if i say the essence of the soul is united with the body , then the soul must be where the body is . but if i say by an essential attribute , the soul must be where the essential attribute is , and consequently where the body is : so that it will come all to one . hyl. or thus , cuphophron , does not the so●l move the body ? cuph. what moves the bodies of brutes , hylobares ? is not their soul mere mechanicall motion , according to that admirable philosopher ? hyl. but i ask you , does not the rational soul by the power of its will move the body ? cuph. else there were no exercise of free-will in external actions . hyl. is then the power of moving the body thus by her will in the soul , or out of the soul ? cuph. in the soul , hylobares . hyl. how then can this power be exerted on the body to move it , unless the soul be essentially present to the body to exert it upon it ? cuph. by a certain emanative efficacy that comes from the soul. hyl. and flows like a streamer in the air betwixt the soul and the body . cuph. you run always into these extensional phantasms , hylobares , the busie importunities of which , when i am rapt up into my metaphysicall sublimities , i look as contemptuously down upon , as upon the quick wrigglings up and down of pismires and earwigs upon the extended surface of the earth . hyl. you have a very ele●ated soul , i must confess , o cuphophron . but i pray you look down a little lower and closer on this emanative energy of the soul upon the body , and pursue it from the body to the source of it , the soul , where ends it , cuphophron ? cuph. in the soul , hylobares . hyl. but where is then the soul ? cuph. no-where . hyl. why then it ends no-where , and began from no-where . cuph. that must needs be , because the soul is no-where . hyl. but this is marvellously mysterious , o cuphophron , that there should be a continued emanation betwixt two things , whereof one is some-where , and yet the other no-where ; the intermediate emanation also proceeding but to a finite distance . cuph. metaphysicks were not metaphysicks , hylobares , if they were not mysterious . hyl. had you not better admit of an immaterial or metaphysicall extension with philotheus and my self , then to harbour such unconceivable notions , that lie so unevenly in every man's minde but your own ? cuph. i am not alone of this minde , hylobares . and as for philotheus his opinion and yours , ( since you have adopted it ) i have heard what has been said all this while , and have thought of these things over and over again , but your reasons move me nothing at all . hyl. tell me then i pray you , cuphophron , what is it chiefly that moved you to be of the opinion that you are , that no spirit can be any-where , or that the soul of man is no-where ? cuph. o hylobares , there be convincing reasons of this seeming paradox , if they meet with a minde capable of them : but the chief are these two . first , in that the minde of man thinks of such things as are no-where , as of many moral , logicall and mathematicall truths , which being of the nature to be no-where , the minde that conceives them must be necessarily no-where also . the second , in that cogitation , as cogitation , is ipso facto exempted or prescinded from all extension . for though we doubt whether there be any matter or any extended thing in the world , yet we are even then assured that we are recogitantes . which shews that cogitation has nothing at all to doe with extension , nor has any applicability to it ; forasmuch as we perceive our selves to think , when we have not the least thought of any thing extended . wherefore our thoughts having no relation or applicability to extension , they have no applicability to place , and consequently neither they nor our mindes are any-where . hyl. i partly understand what you would be at , cuphophron , but not so fully as to discover any strength at all in your reasonings . the weakness of the first ground you may understand from hence ; that it will as well follow , that the soul or minde of man is some-where , because it thinks of things that are some-where , as that it is no-where , because it thinks of things that are no-where . besides that those things which you say are no-where are some-where , i mean those moral , logicall and mathematicall truths . for they are in the minde or soul ; and the soul i before demonstrated , i think , to any unprejudiced auditour , to be in the body , and the body you cannot deny but to be some-where . it is true , some of those truths , it may be , as they are representations , respect neither time nor place ; but as they are operations or modes of a subject or substance , they cannot but be conceived to be in that substance . and forasmuch as there is no substance but has at least an essential amplitude , they are in a substance that is in some sort extended , and so by virtue of their subject must necessarily be conceived to be some-where . for the mode of a thing is inseparate from the thing it self . cuph. but here you run away with that , hylobares , which i will not allow you to assume , viz. that there is a substance of the minde or soul didistinct from cogitation . i say that cogitation it self is the very substance of the soul , and therefore the soul is as much no-where as if it had no substance at all . hyl. but observe , cuphophron , that in your saying that cogitation it self is the very substance of the soul , you affirm the soul is a substance . and so my argument returns again upon you ; though the saying the very operation is the substance is a manifest falshood . for the operations of the soul are specifically distinct , and such specifically distinct operations succeeding one another must be , according to your account , so many specifical substances succeeding one another . so that your soul would not be alwaies the same specifical substance , much less the same individual ; then which nothing can be more wilde and extravagant . again , the soul is accounted a permanent thing by all men , but her operations are in flux and succession : how then can the operations be the soul her self ? or what will become of memorie ? there is therefore , o cuphophron , a substance of the soul as distinct from its operations or succeeding cogitations , as the matter is from the figures and motions that succeed in it . cuph. i am not yet convinced of that . hyl. and now for your second ground , which would inferr from our being assured we think , while we doubt whether there be any extended thing in the world , or , it may be , think of no extension , that therefore our minds have no relation or applicability to any extension whatsoever ; the weakness of this reasoning you may easily discover , if you will but consider , that intension of heat or motion is considered without any relation to extension , and yet it is related to a subject extended , suppose to a burning-hot iron . and we think without at all thinking of time or of the course of the sun ; and yet our thought is applicable to time , and by the motion of the sun may definitively be said not to have commenced till such a minute of an hour , and to have ceased by such a minute . and there is the same reason of place as of time , that is to say , such a man's thoughts may be said definitively to have been conceived in such a place , as well as within such a time . and , to conclude , it seems a mere sophism , to argue from the precision of our thoughts , that the things themselves are really prescinded one from another ; and it is yet far worse , to inferr they have not any relation or applicability one to another . if they were so unrelated indeed in the full and adequate apprehension of them , as well circumstantial as essential , then i confess the inference might be sound : but when the minde is so set on the metaphysicall rack as to pull those things asunder that are found together in nature , and then to say they have no relation to one another , or to leave out by inadvertency what cannot be excluded from the perfect idea of s●ch or such a being ; all conclusions from such principles must be like the principles themselves , defective or distorted . and therefore , being so little satisfy'd with cuphophron's solution of the present difficulty touching the divine omnipresence , i foresee that philotheus must have the sole honour of fully easing and settling my mind in a right and rational apprehension of all the attributes of god. philoth. the honour of that satisfaction is due to god alone , hylobares who has given you so quick an apprehension , and so impartial a love of the truth , where-ever it is found . hyl. that honour i do unfeignedly render to god that is his peculiar due ; and yet i think there is a civil gratitude due also to those that he vouchsafes to make instruments of his goodness and bounty , as he has at this time made you , philotheus . and therefore you having had so excellent success hitherto , i desire you would proceed to the solution of this last difficulty , touching the divine omnipresence . philoth. i will , hylobares , and i believe you will find it one of the easiest you have propounded , though i must confess it may seem odd at the first sight , as it has done to very famous criticks in points of theologie , who mainly from this consideration , that the foul and ill-sented places of the earth are an unfit receptacle of the divine presence , have made bold to confine the godhead to the heavens . which opinion of theirs is rather to be imputed to the nicety of their sense then to the sagacity of their wit. for all those things that seem so foul and disagreeable in nature are not really so in themselves , but onely relatively ; and what is one creature 's poison is the delight and food of another , and what is the death of the one is the life of the other . so that we may easily conceive , though god has an apprehension of what-ever is , that yet there is no necessity at all that he should be disaffected , disgusted , or any way annoy'd by being present with any thing : nay rather , that it is impossible he should , every thing that implies imperfection being incompetible to the divine essence ; so that he need not withdraw himself from it , he suffering nothing by immediately residing in it , no more then he can be wounded with a sword or prick'd with a thorn ; and there is the like reason for any other ingratefull sense . for all is to be resolved into the motion and figure of the particles of the matter variously impressed upon the organs of our bodies : and what unholiness or absolute defilement can there be in any either motion , figure , or exi●●ty of such particles ? wherefore the frame of all natural things whatsoever , nothing at all excepted , is no less inoffensive , no less holy , no less agreeable to the eternall minde , then the lines of a picture or statue are to a limner or statuary , no part whereof gives him the least disgust or aversation from the matter he has thus shaped or figured ; for art and skill and reason runs through all . whence it appears that this exception against the omnipresence of god is nothing but a fallacy put upon our own inadvertent thoughts , while we phansie god liable to the same inconveniencies that we our selves are by reason of our weak and passive senses . philop. this seems to me , though less versed in philosophy , a very plain , solid and intelligible solution of the present difficulty . but cuphophron's hypothesis is , i must confess , to my slower apprehension infinitely paradoxicall , and methought was very intelligibly confuted by hylobares , though with some circumstances that to me seemed not so becoming toward so worthy and obliging a person as cuphophron . cuph. i thank you , philopolis , for your sensibleness on my behalf . but in contest he ordinarily looks as if he were abused who is thought to be overcome . besides , it is an usual thing in our meetings , and to which we are much inured who are so familiarly acquainted , to abuse one another into the truth , by shewing the ridiculousness of the errour , and intimating from what disproportion of temper of minde it may arise . for this subderisorious mirth is so far from giving any offence to us who understand one another , that it is rather a pleasant condiment of our conversation , and makes our serious discourses the less tedious to our selves , and , i think , sometimes not the more ungratefull to strangers , when they understand that there is not the least enmity under it . philoth. that solicitude , philopolis , which you seem to have for the excusing of hylobares , we on the other side , i think , ought to have in the behalf of cuphophron , who was not at all behind-hand with him in any jocant wit or humour . cuph. i confess it , in that sense i have already explained unto philopolis . philop. you pass away your time in a marvellous way of pleasant●y and innocency , o cuphophron , while those things which may seem blemishes elsewhere are truely the badges of vertue and good nature amongst you . but it is much that , there being so great consent of affection and friendship amongst you , there is not likewise the same consent of opinion . cuph. that is a thing we do not so much as affect , unless it be in those things that are necessary for proficiency in piety and vertue . philop. are then the opinions of god's being no-where and of his being every-where alike conducive to vertue and piety ? cuph. yes , philopolis , if they be rightly understood . for he that saies that god is no-where , holds notwithstanding that his providence and protective presence is every-where . so that it is no discouragement to vertue and true piety . wherefore the case stands thus betwixt hylobares and my self . he has a great zeal against my opinion of god's being nowhere , for fear it should be thence inferred that there is no god at all : and i have as great a zeal for my opinion , because if i acknowledge god any-where , i must acknowledge him extended , and to me it is all one to acknowledge an extended god , and no god at all . for what-ever is extended , is either matter , or as uncapable of cogitation or perception as matter it self . for if any entire thing , any form or figure be perceived by what is extended , nothing in the extended percipient perceives the whole , but onely part . which is a sign that our own souls are not extended , much less the essence of god. but i will not renew the dispute . philop. i am surprized with an unexpected subtilty of . cuphophron's : how will you rescue me , hylobares ? hyl. very easily . do you not remember the notion of sympathy , philopolis , in virtue whereof whatever the least real point of the essence of the perceptive part of the soul , suppose , does perceive , every real point of the perceptive must perceive at once ? philop. i partly understand you , hylobares : but now i see you so good at these notions , we will discourse some time more fully of them at my house . in the mean time i think you cannot but be fully satisfy'd with philotheus his solution of this last difficulty touching the divine omnipresence . hyl. very fully . philop. and i am abundantly pleased with the consideration , that the widely-different apprehensions betwixt you and cuphophron touching god's omnipresence , meet together and join so strongly in one common zealous design of turning off whatever may seem to supplant his existence . hyl. i believe it is a great satisfaction to us both . philop. but i triumph in nothing so much as that philotheus has so throughly convinced you , that there is nothing in all the divine attributes so intricate as to hinder your closing heartily with the belief of a god. hyl. there is nothing , i thank god and philotheus , in all those attributes we have hitherto considered that seems not extremely much more easie then any other hypothesis that ever yet came into my minde . but there is a main attribute behinde , which is the goodness of god , the notion whereof though it be not hard to conceive , yet to make the phaenomena of the world and the passages of providence constantly to comport with it , i foresee may prove a very great difficulty . philop. this therefore is the second obstacle , hylobares , you at * first mentioned . hyl. it is so . philoth. and i fear will be too copious a subject to be entred upon at this time . philop. i conceive so too . and besides , i have some letters to dispatch by the post this night , which i must not neglect . for we may rectifie our inward thoughts so soon as we find our errour ; but if any errour or neglect be committed in outward affairs , though the errour be discovered , the loss is many times irrecoverable , and the inconvenience incorrigible . cuph. that is very true . but , according to the ancient custom of athens , you have a right , philopolis , as well of putting an end to as beginning the dispute . philop. this law was undoubtedly an intended civility by your ancestors , o cuphophron , but in this circumstance of things i look upon it as a piece of cruelty ; that i must doe execution upon my self , and by mine own act deprive my self of that ingenuous converse which i could enjoy with pleasure even to break of day . cuph. it is the common loss of us all , especially mine , who enjoy myself no-where so well as in so excellent company . but it is in your hand , philopolis , to remedie this : for you have the right of appointing the time of our meeting again , as well as of dissolving this present meeting . philop. have i so ? this makes amends for the other misfortune , which i will repair by a more timely appointment . i adjourn therefore this meeting till tomorrow at five a clock in the after-noon , if philotheus and the rest be agreed . philoth. agreed . the end of the first dialogue . the second dialogue . philotheus , bathynous , sophron , philopolis , euistor , hylobares , cuphophron . philop. yesterday's performance , o philotheus , has indeared to me the memory of that day , of this place , ( this sacred arbour wherein we are again so happily met ) and of your excellent self and the rest of this worthy company , for ever . i never reap'd so much pleasure in so few hours in all my life . in which notwithstanding the chiefest satisfaction was , that my dear friend hylobares was so fully satisfied touching those most intricate theories concerning the nature of god and his attributes . it rema●ns now , philotheus , that with the like happy success you clear his mind of those manifold scrupulosities and difficulties it seems laden wit● touching the providence of god. philoth. your extraordinary kinde resentment , o philopolis , of my former endeavours is no small obligation upon me to doe the best i can in this present task . but i cannot omit to take notice , that your over-proportionate propensions towards my self makes you seem not so just to others , who bore their part in whatever contributed either to your own delight or hylobares his satisfaction . nor can i alone sustain this day's province , but must implore the help of others , especially in so copious and various a subject . cuph. yes , philotheus , that is supposed . euistor , bathynous and the rest will assist ; nor shall i fail to put in for one , when occasion requires , and i finde my minde moved thereunto . euist. cuphophron expresses himself in such phrase , as if it were hopefull that he will speak by inspiration . hylob . he seems to me , euistor , so to doe sometimes : of which some passages of yesterday's discourse are fresh instances . for he was severall times so highly rapt and divinely inspired , that i profess i think no humane understanding could reach his meaning . sophr. nullum numen abest , si sit prudentia . so i think close and cautious reason in a calm and pure spirit is the best inspiration now-adays in matters of contemplation , as well as prudence in the common practices of life . cuph. i am as much for illuminated reason , o sophron , as any man living can be . hyl. so am i , cuphophron ; provided the illumination be not so bright and fulgent as to obscure or extinguish all perceptibility of the reason . sophr. i always thought right reason it self to be the illumination or light of the minde , and that all other light is rather that of the eye then of the understanding . hyl. let cuphophron look to that , o sophron , and defend his own magnificent style . philop. but be you pleased in the mean time , o hylobares , according to the purpose of our present meeting , to propound your difficulties to philotheus touching divine providence , and to the rest of this judicious company . sophr. how becomingly does philopolis exercise his office , and seasonably commit the opponent with the respondent , like a long-practised moderatour ? i wish philotheus no worse success then he had yesterday . but i cannot ominate so well touching this congress . i fear such a storm will be raised as all the wits in europe will not be able to allay . so intricate , so anfractuous , so unsearchable are the ways of providence . cuph. i wonder whence sophron took this ill omen , hylobares . hyl. i suppose from our two sporting together , which he look'd upon as the playing of two sea-calves before a storm . sophr. i wish , hylobares , you prove calf enough to bring no objections but what philotheus or some of us may sufficiently answer . philop. i earnestly with philotheus assistence enough and ability from above , that he may with satisfaction answer the greatest difficulties that either hylobares or any one else can produce touching divine providence . sophr. that indeed is the more desirable of the two , and my heart and vote goes along with yours , o philopolis . philop. begin then , if you please , o hylobares . hyl. i have in my minde such a croud and cloud of difficulties , that i know not where to begin , or when i shall make an end . sophr. did not i tell you so , philopolis ? hyl. but i believe they are mainly reducible to these three heads , or rather , if you will , to these two more general ones , the evils that are in the world , and the defect of good. for when you have senced as well as you can , philotheus , and pretty well satisfied us that all things here upon earth are at least well enough , and that there is no such evil discoverable as implies the first principle of all things not to be the sovereign goodness ; there is yet this difficulty behinde , how it can consist with the goodness of god , that this good scene of things should begin no sooner or spread no farther , that is to say , that there should be no more earths then one , or that this one or all should have been but six thousand years ago or thereabout . sophr. this very last difficulty , philopolis , is able to confound any mortal living . philoth. dear sophron , be not so dismay'd ; i dare pass my word that nothing that is holy or sacred shall suffer any detriment by this conflict , when i have declared the laws of the combate , and what weapons we must be confined to , namely to mere reason and philosophy . in which field i must notwithstanding confess that i suspect hylobares will prove a stout champion . but it 's much if we be not all able to deal with him . and forasmuch as it is so plainly evident from a world of phaenomena , that there is a principle that acts out of wisedom and counsel , as was abundantly evidenced by yesterday's discourse , and as roundly acknowledged ; it shall be severely expected and exacted of hylobares , that he do not oppose false or uncertain hypotheses , or popular mistakes and surmizes , or vagrant and fictious stories , against certain truth , such as is discoverable every day before our eyes . philop. that is very equitable and reasonable . philoth. and if he cannot keep his philosophicall fingers from meddling with the holy writ , that he do not handle it so ineptly , as to draw expressions accommodated to the capacity of the vulgar into a philosophicall argument , or to inferr a negation from the preterition of such or such a subject . euist. it is incredible that hylobares , professing himself a philosopher , should betake himself to such nugacities as are exploded even by the theologers themselves , who notwithstanding spend their main study on the holy scriptures . hyl. these laws , o philotheus , i accept as just and right . philoth. and if they be kept to , hylobares , as stout a retiarius as you are , you shall never be able to catch me in your net , or entangle me in any of your intricacies touching divine providence . for as for that which you have proposed in general touching the evils in the world , whether they be those that seem more tragicall , or else lesser miscarriages in the manners of men or the accidents of fortune , if such things were not , where were the objects of sighs and tears , of smiles and laughter ? so that what you bring as an argument against providence , is in my apprehension a very palpable argument for it . for it is plain that that power that made the world foresaw the evils in it , in that he has so exquisitely fitted us with passions correspondent thereto . hyl. this is ingeniously inferr'd , o philotheus , so far as it will reach , namely , to prove there is a providence or fore-sight of god : but you seem to forget the main question in hand , which is , whether the measure of his providence be his goodness , and that nothing is transacted against that attribute . but your concession seems to imply that he knowingly and wittingly brought evil into the world ; which seems therefore the more grossly repugnant to his goodness . sophr. methinks , gentlemen , you are both already agreed in a point of so great concernment , namely , that there is a divine providence , that if there were any modesty in mortal men they might be content with that bare discovery , without so strictly examining or searching into the laws or measures thereof , but apply themselves to the law of life which god has written in their hearts , or expressed in the holy writ , that it may go well with them in the conclusion . philop. that is very piously and judiciously noted , o sophron. bath . so it is indeed , o philopolis : but yet i humbly conceive that it is not alwaies an itch of searching into , but sometimes a necessity of more punctually knowing , the truth of the mysteries of god , that drives some mens spirits into a more close and anxious meditation of so profound matters . as it may well doe here in this present point touching the measure of god's providence , namely , whether the rule thereof be his pure goodness , or his mere will and sovereignty . for if it be his goodness , all free agents have all the reason in the world to apply themselves to that law of life which sophron mentions , because their labour shall not be in vain in the lord , as the apostle speaks . but if the measure of his providence be his mere power , will or sovereignty , no man living can tell what to expect in the conclusion . all true believers may be turned into hell , and the wicked onely and the blasphemer ascend into the regions of bliss . for what can give any stop to this but god's iustice , which is a branch or mode of his goodness ? philop. methinks , bathynous , that you both have reason , both sophron and your self ; nor do i desire philotheus to desist from the present subject , though i much long , i confess , to hear him discourse of the affairs of the kingdom of god. philoth. that shall be done in due time , philopolis . in the mean while i dare avow to hylobares , that there are no evils in the world that god foresaw ( and he foresaw all that were to be ) which will not consist with this principle , that god's goodness is the measure of his providence . for the nature of things is such , that some particulars or individuals must of necessity suffer for the greater good of the whole ; besides the manifold incompossibilities and lubricities of matter , that cannot have the same conveniences and fitnesses in any shape or modification , nor would be fit for any thing , if its shapes and modifications were not in a manner infinitely varied . hyl. i partly understand you , philotheus ; i pray you go on . philoth. wherefore i inferr , that still the measure of god's providence is his goodness : forasmuch as those incompossibilities in matter are unavoidable ; and what-ever designed or permitted evil there seems in providence , it is for a far greater good , and therefore is not properly in the summary compute of the whole affairs of the universe to be reputed evil , the loss in particulars being so vast a gain to the whole . it is therefore our ignorance , o hylobares , of the true law of goodness ( who are so much immersed into the life of selfishness , which is that low life of plants and animals ) that makes us such incompetent judges of what is or is not carried on according to the law of that love or goodness which is truly divine : whose tenderness and benignity was so great as to provide us of sighs and tears , to meet those particular evils with which she foresaw would necessarily emerge in the world ; and whose gayety and festivity is also so conspicuous in endowing us with that passion or property of laughter , to entertain those lighter miscarriages with , whether in manners or fortune : as if providence look'd upon her bringing man into the world as a spectatour of a tragick-comedy . and yet in this which seems so ludicrous , see , hylobares , what a serious design of good there is . for compassion , the mother of tears , is not alwaies a mere idle spectatour , but an helper oftentimes of those particular evils that happen in the world ; and the tears again of them that suffer , oftentimes the mother of compassion in the spectatours , and extort their help . and the news of but one ridiculous miscarriage age fills the mouths of a thousand men with mirth and laughter ; and their being so liable universally to be laught at makes every man more carefull in his manners , and more cautious in his affairs , especially where his path is more slippery . hyl. i perceive by these beginnings , that you are likely to prove a marvellous mysta of divine providence , o philotheus . sophr. i wish with all my heart , philopolis , that philotheus may come off so cleverly in the particular difficulties that will be proposed , as he has done in this general one . for there are infinite unexpected puzzles that it 's likely a busie searching wit , such as hylobares , may unluckily hit upon . euist. what , do you think any harder or greater , o sophron , then are comprised in those elegant , though impious , verses of lucretius ? sophr. what verses do you mean , euistor ? euist. those in his fifth book dererum rerum natura , where he proposes this conclusion to himself to be proved , viz. nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam naturam rerum — sophr. and by what arguments , i beseech you , does he pretend to inferr so impious a conclusion ? euist. the argument in general is the culpability of nature , — tantâ stat praedita culpâ and that therefore it cannot be the work of god : and i think he brings in at least half a score instances of this faultiness , as he phansies it . sophr. lucretius is esteemed so great a wit , that it were worth the while , euistor , if you thought fitting , to give your self the trouble of recounting those instances . philop. a very good motion , and such , o sophron , as whereby you may easily guess whether philotheus has undertaken so desperate a province as you imagine . for it 's likely that so great and elegant a wit as lucretius would , out of those many , pick the most choice and most confounding puzzles ( as you call them ) that the epicurean cause could afford him . and therefore if these should not prove such invincible arguments against the goodness of providence , it may be the better hoped that there are none absolutely such . sophr. you say well , philopolis , and that makes me the more desirous to hear them . euist. and that you shall , sophron , upon the condition you will answer them . sophr. either i or philotheus or some of us will doe our best . euist. i will not repeat the verses themselves , for i should doe that but brokenly ; but i believe there are very few of the particular instances in them but i remember firmly enough . as first , that so much of the earth is taken away from us by the barrenness of mountains and rocks , by the inaccessibleness of large woods inhabited by wilde beasts , by the overspreading of the seas , and by huge vast marishes : besides that the torrid and frigid zones are unhabitable , the one by reason of the excess of heat , the other by reason of the extremity of cold : that that part of the earth that is inhabited by men is of so perverse a nature , that if it were not for man's industry and hard labour , it would be all over-run with thorns and brambles : that when with much toil he has made the ground fruitfull , and all things look green and flourishing , often all this hope is quash'd by either excess of heat and drought , or violence of rain and storms , or keenness of frosts . to which he adds the infestation of wilde beasts , that are so terrible and hurtfull to mankinde both by land and by sea ; the morbidness of the seasons of the year , and the frequentness of untimely death ; and , lastly , the deplorableness of our infancy and first circumstances of entring into life ; which he sets off so pathetically , that i cannot but remember those verses whether i will 〈…〉 sophr. i dare say they are very good ones then , if you like them so , euistor : i pray you let us hear them , if it be no trouble to you to repeat them . euist. no , it is not sophron. the verses are these : tum porrò puer , ut s●●vis project us ab undis navita , nudus humi jacet , infans , indigus omni vitai anxilio , cùm primùm in luminis or as nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit , vagit●uque locum lugubri complet , ut aequum est , quoi tantum in vita restat transfire malorum . cuph. they are a very empassionating strain of poetry , hylobares ; methinks i could have fallen a-weeping while euistor repeated them . i remember them very well . but is there not something in the following verses about childrens rattles ? for these are not all . hyl. let me intreat you of all friendship , euistor , to repeat to cuphophron the rattle-verses , to keep him from crying . euist. they are these that cuphophron means , and immediately follow the former : at variae crescunt pecudes , armenta , feraeque , nec crepitacula eis opu ' sunt , nec quoiquam adhibenda est almae nutricis blanda atque infracta loquela , nec varias quaerunt vestes pro tempore coeli . what think you of these instances , o sophron ? sophr. i must ingenuously confess that if lucretius have no better arguments against providence then these , nor hylobares then lucretius , their force will not seem so formidable to me as i suspected ; but i must on the contrary suspect , that they are ordinarily very small motives that precipitate those into atheism and epicurism that have of themselves an inward propension thereunto . philoth. are these the same arguments , hylobares , that you intended to invade me withall ? hyl. these are onely of one sort of them referrible to the classis of natural evils , and but few of those neither . but to speak the truth , philotheus , i had not so dinumerately and articulately mustered up or shaped out the particular arguments i would urge you with , though i felt my mind charged with multifarious thoughts ; and that pressed the forwardest that had left the latest impression on my mind on the rode as we rid hither to this city , upon our being overtaken with so great a storm of thunder , hail , and a mighty dash of rain , that we were well-nigh wet to the skin . for i began to think with my self how consistent those kinde of accidents could be with so good and exact a providence as men imagine . for the high-waie● yield no crop ; nor do we our selves grow by being liquored without-side , but within : besides the wetting of all our clothes , and the indangering the catching of an ague or a fever . wherefore if providence were so exact , the rain would be alwaies directed to such places as are benefited thereby , not to such as it does no good to , but trouble and mischief to those that are found there . philoth. your meaning is then , hylobares , that it is a flaw in providence that the rain is not restrained from falling on the high-ways . but in the mean time you do not consider how intolerably du●ty they would be , especially in summer , and how constant a mischief that would prove and troublesome both to horse and man. hyl. i but it rains as much on the high-waies in winter-time as summer-time , be they never so deep in wet and mire already : which methinks is not consistent with so accurate a providence as you contend for . philoth. and this , hylobares , i warrant , you take to be an impregnable argument , a stout instance indeed , in that you place it thus in the front of the battel . but if it be sounded to the bottome , it will be found to stand upon a ground no less ridiculous then that comicall conceit in aristophanes , of iupiter's pissing through a sieve as often as it rains : or what is a more cleanly and unexceptionable expression , that the descending of rain is like the watering of a garden with a watering-pot by some free agents ; where they do not water the walks of the garden , but onely the beds or knots wherein the flowers grow . which is the most idiotick and unphilosophicall conceit , hylobares , that could ever fall into the minde of any man of your parts . for the committing of all the motions of the natural phaenomena , as they are called , to any free agents , were the utter abolishing of all natural philosophy , and indeed of nature it self ; and there would be no object left of speculation in these things , but either metaphysicall or moral . and by the same reason that you require that the rain should onely fall upon such plats of the earth as are destined for grass , for corn , for trees , and the like , you must require also that the sun should not shine on the high-waies for fear of infesting us with dust , and that it should divert its beams from the faces of tender beauties ; that the shadow of the earth should withdraw to those that travel in the night ; that fire should not burn either an usefull building or an innocent man ; that the air should not transmit the voice of him that would tell a lie , nor the rope hang together that would strangle the guiltless , nor the sword of the violent , be it never so sharp , be able to enter the flesh of the just . these and many millions more of such sequels would follow in analogie to this rash demand . hyl. i must confess , philotheus , that what you urge makes so great an impress upon me , that it has almost dash'd me out of conceit with this first instance , which i thought not so contemptible . but though with but a broken confidence , yet i must persist , and demand , if providence would not be more exact , if all things were carried thus as my instance implies they should be , then it is now as they are . philoth. no , by no means , hylobares . for the scene of the world then would be such a languid flat thing , that it would disgrace the great dramatist that contrived it . for there would be no compass or circuit of any plot or intrigue , but every thing so shallow or sudden , so simple and obvious , that no man's wit or vertue would finde any game to exercise themselves in . and assure your self , it is one fundamental point of the divine counsel , and that laid deep in his wisedome and goodness , that at least on this terrestrial stage there should be sufficient difficulty and hardship for all sensible and intellectual creatures to grapple and contest with , that an ignoble and corruptive torpour may not seize their bodies and spirits , and make their life languid and their faculties useless , and finde nothing to doe in the world but to eat and drink and sleep . for there are very few men given to contemplation , and yet fewer successfull in it . that therefore that i contend for is this , that in these general , but constant and peremptory , strokes of nature there is an exact providence of god ; and that which you account a defect is indeed a perfection and a surer pledge of a divine foresight , that does thus manifestly in the compute of things defalcate either useless or hurtfull super●●uities ; as this guideance of the rain from the high-ways in winter . for has he not given man wit and art to make a supply by good wax'd boots , oil'd coats and hoods , and eyes in his head to chuse his way , if one be better then another ; or if all be intolerable , politicall wit to make laws and orders for the mending of the high-ways ? for thus are men honestly employed for their own and the common good . and judge you what a ridiculous thing it were , that the sun should so miraculously turn off his beams from every fair face , whenas the same end is so easily served by the invention of masks ; or that the continued shadow of the earth should be broken by sudden miraculous eruptions or disclusions of light , to prevent the art and officiousness of the lantern-maker and the link-boy ; or lastly , that the aire should not resound a lie , nor the point of a sword pierce the skin of the innocent . for this were an exprobration to the wisedom of god , as if he had mistook himself in creating of free agents , and by an after-device thus forcibly ever defeated their free actings , by denying them the ordinary assistences of nature . this would be such a force and stop upon the first spring of motion , that the greatest trialls of mens spirits and the most pompous externall solemnities would be stifled thereby , or utterly prevented ; and all politicall prudence , sagacity , justice and courage would want their objects . wherefore this indifferent and indiscriminating constancy of nature ought to be ; it being reckoned upon in those faculties god has endow'd both men and other animals with , whereby they are able to close with the more usual advantages of these standing laws of nature , and have sense and foresight to decline or provide against any dangerous circumstances of them ; and that with at least as much certainty as is proportionable to the considerableness of the safety of such an individual creature as cannot live always , nor was ever intended to live long upon earth . hyl. i partly understand what you would be at , philotheus , and indeed so far , that i am almost disheartned from propounding the remainder of the meditations that met me on the rode touching the hail also and the thunder . for methought nature seem'd very unkinde to pelt a young foal so rudely with so big hail-stones , and give him so harsh a welcome into the world . philoth. tush , hylobares , that was but a sportfull passage of nature , to try how tight and tinnient her new workmanship was ; which if it were not able to bear such small fillips , it would be a sign that things hung very crazily and unsoundly together . wherefore nature does but justifie the accuracy of her own artifice , in exposing her works to a number of such trialls and hardships . this is but a slight scruple , hylobares ; but surely some profound conceit surprized your minde in your meditations touching the thunder . hyl. the main thing was this , that if providence were so exact as some pretend , those thunder-claps that doe any execution should ever pick out some notoriously-wicked fellow to make him an example , and not strike an heedless goat brouzing on the side of a rock , or rend some old oak in a forest. philoth. this indeed is more shrewdly urged . but are you sure , hylobares , that this were the most perfect way that nature could pitch upon ? hyl. so it seems to me . philoth. i suppose then it is because you take this to be the most effectuall way to make men good . hyl. why not , philotheus ? philoth. but suppose a mighty , if not an almighty , arm out of the clouds should pull men by the ears as often as they offered to offend , would not that be more effectuall ? hyl. one would think so . philoth. wherefore upon this ground you should require that also , hylobares . hyl. but that would be too great a force upon free agents , o philotheus . philoth. and how do you know , hylobares , but that other would be so likewise ? hyl. i must confess , philotheus , it is an hard matter to define what measure of force is to be used by providence to keep men from sin. philoth. and therefore a rash thing to prescribe laws or ways to providence in so obscure a matter . besides , there are so many notoriously wicked , that there would be such thundring and rattling , especially over great cities , that we should be never quiet night nor day . and those that escaped would be forward to phansie themselves thunder-proof ; and others , that there was no judgement to come , because vengeance was taken so exactly in this life . besides that you seem to forget that the strokes of nature levell not at particulars . for she is an unperceptive principle , and cannot act pro re nata , or suspend her self from acting ; and that the end of thunder is not to forestall the last day of judgement , but for clearing the air , and sending more fattening showrs into the bosome of the earth . hyl. but do thunderbolts conduce any thing to that , philotheus ? philoth. those are very seldome , hylobares ; and i deny not but they may have their moral use : but best so moderated as they are , not so constantly vibrated as your curiosity would have them . for if every perjured or notoriously-wicked person is to be pelted from heaven with thunderbolts , people will presume them innocent when-ever they die without this solemn vengeance done upon them . hyl. well , i perceive i must produce new objections , and such as i have thought on more deliberately . for these philotheus easily blows away . philop. we will give you some little time of respite to consider , hylobares . for i believe euistor and his lucretius will think themselves slighted if no man vouchsafes those lucretian instances any answer . fuist . if philotheus thinks his hands will be full enough other-waies , i pray you , philopolis , let sophron play the philotheus as well as i have play'd the hylobares . sophr. why truely philotheus his discourse is able to make us all philotheusses . and methinks , following his footsteps , it is no such difficult business to answer all those instances of lucretius . i shall willingly attempt some of them my self . as that complaint of the earth's being run over with thorns and thistles , if man by his hand-labour did not cultivate it . for besides that we know that curse that came upon the fall , it is fit that we in this life should have something to grapple with , to keep us from idleness , the mother of mischief . and that the husband-man's pains are sometimes lost by ill weather , over-much heat , or wet , or the like ; he is taught thereby not to sacrifice to his own net , but to depend upon god , and to give him the praise when he is successfull , as also to be frugal and provident , and to lay up for an hard year . but for that imputation of so much of the earth's being unhabitable by reason of extremity of heat or cold , we find by experience that it is mostly a mere calumnie of nature . for the torrid zone is habitable , and a considerable part of the frigid : and that which is not is so little , that it is inconsiderable . and to speak briefly and at once : the inclination of the axis of the earth is so duely proportionated for the making it as habitable as it can be , that the wit of man cannot imagine any posture better . now for those allegations , that rocks and mountains and woods and the sea take up so great a part ; what-ever elegancy there may be in lucretius his poetry , the philosophy of such objections , i am sure , lies very shallow . for it is as unskilfully alledged against nature that all the earth is not soft molds , as it would be that any animal is not all flesh , but that there is bloud also and bones . the rocks therefore , beside other uses for conveying the subterraneous water , may serve also for consolidating the earth . and it is manifest that the hills are usually the promptuaries of rivers and springs , as geographers make good by infinite examples . not to adde what a treasury they are of minerals and metalls , and wholesome pasturage for sheep , as the rocks delight the goats and the coneys . but the poet seems to speak so unskilfully , as if he expected all the face of the earth should be nothing else but rank green meadow ; whenas to exclude the sea , would be like the draining of an animal of its heart-bloud . or if things could be so contrived as that all the surface of the earth should be rich meadow , and the world thereby thick inhabited by men , the air , in all likelihood , would become so unwholesome , that plagues and death would ever and anon sweep away all . wherefore long tracts of dry and barren places are the security of so much health as we enjoy : which is of more consequence then to have the earth pester'd so with inhabitants , and ever and anon to have all to stink with noisomeness , pestilence and death . bath . and it is questionable , sophron , whether these places that seem mere forlorn solitudes be not inhabited by at least as considerable creatures as men. cuph. i 'll pawn my life , bathynous means some aereall daemons or spirits . bath . and why not , cuphophron ? cuph. nay , i know nothing to the contrary . hyl. but i do . cuph. what 's that , hylobares ? hyl. why , i pray you tell me , cuphophron , how can a spirit , that is nowhere , be in dry and barren places more then in meadow-pastures . cuph. away , hylobares , you are a very wag. i perceive you will break your brown study at any time to reach me a rap upon the thumbs . euist. gentlemen , i know not whether you be in earnest or in jest touching these aereall genii in remote solitudes . but this i can assure you , that besides the usual and frequent fame of the dancing of fairies in woods and desolate places , olaus and other historians make frequent mention of these things ; and that there are daemones metallici , that haunt the very inside of mountains , and are seen to work there when men dig in the mines . what merriment they also make on the outside of vast and remote hills , that one story of mount athos may give us an instance of , as the matter is described in solinus . the impression of the passage sticks still fresh in my memory even to the very words . silet per diem universus , nec sine horrore secretus est : lucet nocturnis ignibus , choris aegipanum undique personatur ; audiuntur & ca●tus tibiarum & tinnitus cymbalorum per oram maritimam . but of a more dreadfull hue is that desart described by paulus venetus , near the city lop , as i take it , in the dominions of the great cham. this wilderness , saith he , is very mountainous and barren , and therefore not fit so much as to harbour a wilde beast , but both by day and ( especially ) by night there are heard and seen severall illusions and impostures of wicked spirits . for which cause travellers must have a great care to keep together . for if by lagging behinde a man chance to lose the sight of his company amongst the rocks and mountains , he will be called out of his way by these busie deceivers , who saluting him by his own name , and feigning the voice of some of his fellow-travellers that are gone before , will lead him aside to his utter destruction . there is heard also in this solitude sometimes the sound of drums and musicall instruments , which is like to those noises in the night on mount athos described by solinus . wherefore such things as these so frequently occurring in history make bathynous his conceit to look not at all extravagantly on it . sophr. our saviour's mentioning spirits that haunt dry places , gives some countenance also to this conceit of bathynous . euist. and so does the very hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whose notation is from the field . but all these must be lapsed spirits therefore . bath . i , as sure as men themselves are lapsed , then which nothing is more , euistor . euist. and so lapsed spirits and lapsed men divide the earth amongst them . and why not the sea too , bathynous ? bath . you mean the air over the surface of the sea : for the sea is sufficiently well peopled with fishes . euist. 't is true . sophr. if this were not as poeticall as lucretius his poetry it self , his arguments against providence were very weak indeed . but this is to bring in again the nereîdes and oreades of the pagans . euist. and if so , why not also the hamadryades and other spirits of the woods , that the vast woods lucretius complains of may not be left to wilde beasts onely , no more then the sea to the fishes ? sophr. in my apprehension lucretius seems mightily at a loss for arguments against providence , while he is forced thus to fetch them from the woods . cuph. because you think , sophron , that no arguments can be brought from thence but wooden ones . sophr. indeed , cuphophron , i was not so witty : but because the plentifull provision of wood and timber is such a substantial pledge of divine providence , the greatest conveniences of life depending thereupon . euist. that is so plain a case , that it is not to be insisted upon . and yet it is not altogether so devoid of difficulty , in that the great woods are such coverts for wilde beasts to garrison in . bath . but you do not consider what a fine harbour they are also for the harmless birds . but this is the ignorance and rude immorality of lucretius , that out of a streight-lac'd self-love he phansies all the world so made for man , that nothing else should have any share therein ; whenas all vnregenerate persons are as arrant brute animals as these very animals they thus vilifie and contemn . sophr. i thank you for that , bathynous ; for from hence , methinks , an answer is easily framed against his objection from man's being liable to be infested by horrible and hurtfull beasts . for considering the general mass of mankinde was grown such an herd of wicked animals , that is , beasts , what repugnancy to providence is it that one beast invades another for their private advantage ? but yet providence sent in such secret supplies to these beasts in humane shape , that seemed otherwise worse appointed for fight then their savage enemies armed with cruel teeth , and stings , and horns , and hoofs , and claws , ( which she did partly by endowing them with such agility of body and nimbleness in swarming of trees , as apes and monkeys have now , but chiefly by giving them so great a share of wit and craft and combining policy ) that lucretius has no reason to complain against nature for producing these objects that do but exercise mens policy and courage , and have given them an opportunity of so successfull a victory , as we see they have obtained in a manner throughout the whole world at this very day . and lastly , for that lamentable story of the circumstances of the entrance of infants into this life , it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it is mere poeticall smoke or fume , that vanishes in the very uttering of it , and is so far from being a just subject of lucretius his complaining rhetorick against providence , that it is a pregnant instance of the exactness and goodness of providence in nature . for there being so much wit and care and contrivance in mankinde , both male and female , the weakness and destituteness of the infant is a gratefull object to entertain both the skill and compassion of that tenderer sex , both mother , midwife , nurse , or what other assistents : though perhaps there has come in a greater debility in nature by our own defaults . but how-ever , that body that was to be an habitacle for so sensible a spirit as the humane soul , ought to be more tender and delicate then that of brute beasts , according to that physiognomonicall aphorism of aristotle , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . nor is the crying of the infant so much a presage of the future evils of life , as a begging of aid against the present from them about him , by this natural rhetorick which providence has so seasonably furnished him with . and for lambs , and calves , and cubs of foxes , they are not so properly said to need no rattles , as not to be capable of them , they having not so excellent a spirit in them as to be taken up with the admiration of any thing . for the child's amusement at the rattle is but the effect of that passion which is the mother of reason and all philosophy . and for that last of all , that mankinde clothe themselves according to the seasons of the year , it is their privilege , not their defect : for brute beasts , when it is cold , willingly apply themselves to the fire . but thus silly are ordinarily the reasonings of those men that have a minde there should be no god. euist. i promise you , sophron , you have laid about you very notably , i think ; and though i am something taken with the elegancy of the poet , yet i must confess i cannot but be convinced that his reasonings are very weak . sophr. i have answered as well as i could thus extemporarily ; and if i have omitted any of the objections , hylobares , if he see it worth the while , will resume them , and propose them to philotheus , who is more exercised in these speculations . philoth. none more able in this kinde then your self , o sophron : and i cannot but commend your caution and discretion , that you intimate , that the fulness and solidness of the cause we contend for is not to be measured from what we utter thus extemporarily in the defence thereof ; as if we in a moment could finde out all the richness of that divine wisedome that is couched in the contrivance of nature and in the ordering of the world. it is sufficient that we shew , that even to our present thought such reasons occurr as are able to stop the mouths of them that are not partially affected , and to give a tast how that , if they would search farther into the reasons of things without prejudice , they will still finde nature less faulty , or rather more and more perfect at the bottom . philop. i think it is not without a special providence , o hylobares , that you are fallen into the company of so many skilfull and successfull defenders of providence ; and therefore i desire you would produce the most considerable scruples that ever diseased your minde . for if any-where , you will here finde a cure. hyl. i shall produce all , philopolis , and consequently the most considerable , but in such order as they occurr to my memory . and for the present these are those that swim uppermost in my thoughts ; viz. diseases , war , famine , pestilence , earthquakes , and death it self , the sad effect of so affrightfull causes . these , methinks , do not so well consist with that benignity of providence that philotheus contends for . philoth. these are indeed sad and terrible names , hylobares ; but i hope to make it appear , that the world in general are more scar'd then hurt by these affrightfull bug-bears . i will begin with that which is accounted the most horrid , i mean , death it self . for why should mankinde complain of this decree of god and nature , which is so necessary and just ? i mean not onely in reference to our lapsed condition , which incurr'd the penalty of death ; but that there is a becoming sweetness in this severity , in respect both of the soul it self , as it is so timely released from this bondage of vanity , and also in regard of our peccaminous terrestriall personalities here . for i hold it an oeconomy more befitting the goodness of god , to communicate life to a succeeding series of terrestriall persons , then that one constant number of them should monopolize all the good of the world , and so stifle and forestall all succeeding generations . hyl. i do not understand that , philotheus . why may not a set sufficient number of men , equal to the largest number of the succession , be as meet an object of the divine goodness , as a continuall succession of them ? for there is an equal communication of good in the one case and in the other . philoth. if there be this equality , it argues an indifferency whether way it be ; and therefore it is no flaw in providence what-ever way it is . but yet i say that way that is taken is the best : because that in this terrestriall condition there would be a satiety of the enjoyments of this life ; and therefore it is fit that , as well-saturated guests , we should at length willingly recede from the table . euist. i believe philotheus alludes to that of lucretius , where he brings in nature arguing excellently well against the ●ond complaints of mankinde : quid tibi tantopere est , mortalis , quòd nimis aegris luctibus indulges ? quid mortem congemis ac fles ? nam si grata fuit tibi vita ante acta pri●rque , et non omnia , pertusum congesta quasi in vas , commoda perfluxêre atque ingrata interiêre , cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis ? philoth. but my eye was most upon the following verses : nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniámque quod placeat nihil est , eadem sunt omnia semper . si tibi non annis corpus jam marcet ? & artus confecti languent , eadem tamen omnia restant , omnia si pergas vivendo vincere sêcla . from whence i would inferr , that there is more joy and pleasure arises to men in this way of succession of mankinde , then if there were the same men alwaies . and the theatre of the world is better varied and made more delightfull to the invisible spectatours of it , as also the records of history to them that reade them . for it were a dull thing to have alwaies the same actours upon the stage . besides that the varieties of mens ages would be lost , and the prettinesses of their passions , and the difference of sexes , which afford their peculiar pleasures and delights one to another . and there is the same reason for brutes , who when they die , though they finde not themselves in the other state , as we do , yet they no more miss themselves after death then they sought themselves before they were born . hyl. i must confess , philotheus , that the case is at least so disputable , that a man cannot lay any just charge against providence from this topick . philoth. besides , hylobares , it seems to be of the very nature of terrestriall animals to be mortal , and that without the force of a miracle they cannot endure for ever . what therefore could providence doe better , then to make their species immortal by a continued propagation and succession ? for that is the infirmity of our particular nature to dote upon individuals : but the divine goodness , which is vniversal , is of a more released and large nature ; and since individuals will be thus fading and mortal , concerns her self onely in the conservation of the species . to all which you may adde , that unless you could secure this terrestriall world from sin and sense of grief and pain , not to be able to die , to the generality of men oppressed and tormented by the tyranny and wickedness of others , might prove the greatest infelicity that could befall them . immortality , hylobares , joyn'd with pride and ambition , would easily bring the world to this pass : and men now , though mortal , yet conceive immortal enmities one against another . hyl. that 's shrewdly suggested , philotheus . but admit the necessity of dying , what necessity or conveniency of the frequentness of diseases ? which is an head in lucretius which sophron forgot to speak to . philoth. as for diseases in general , hylobares , they are as necessary sequels of the terrestriall nature as death it self . but as death would visit us more slowly , so would diseases less fiercely and frequently , if it were not for our own intemperance and irregular passions ; which we are to blame for what we finde most intolerable , and not to tax providence , which has contrived all for the best , and has let nothing pass without mature judgement and deliberation . for diseases themselves , though the natural sequels of a mortal constitution , may well be approved of by the divine wisedom for sundry reasons . as first , while they are inflicted they better the minde in those that are good , and are but a just scourge to them that are evil ; and the pleasure of recovery doth ordinarily more then compensate the over-past misery in both . so little cause have either to complain of the neglect of providence in such visitations . bath . nay , indeed , i think that mankinde have so little reason to complain , that they have rather a very high obligation to admire and extoll that providence that suffers so many outward evils , as they are called , to rove in the world. for where they hit , they frequently put us into such capacities of seriously bethinking our selves of the duties of piety and vertue as we should never meet with , for all the boasts of our free will , unless these heavy weights were cast into the balance to poize against our propensions to follow the lusts and pleasures of life , and the ordinary allurements of the world. philoth. that is excellently well observed indeed , bathynous . hyl. but i pray you proceed , phi●otheus . philoth. i was observing in the second place , that the sick being a spectacle to them that are wel , make them more sensible of their own health , and should stir up in them thankfull devotion towards god their preserver , and engage them to employ their health to the best purposes . and lastly , that diseases are a notable object of man's art and industry and skill in medicine : the exercise whereof does very highly gratifie them that are either lovers of mankinde or of money . that therefore that does naturally accrue to the condition of a terrestriall creature , why should god interpose his omnipotency to disjoin it , especially it bringing along with it such considerable conveniences ? nor must we think much that sometimes a disease is invincible : for thereby sickness becomes more formidable to the patient , without which it would not prove so good physick to his soul ; and general success would lessen the estimate of the cure , and the pleasure of escaping the danger of the disease ; as likewise it would diminish the joys and congratulations of friends and officious visitants . for it is fit that things should be set home upon our passions , that our delights thereby may become more poinant and triumphant . hyl. you come off jollily , methinks , philotheus , apologizing thus in the general . but if you will more closely view the particular grim countenances of those more horrid disasters of mankinde , war , famine , pestilence , and earthquakes , which i intimated before , these one would think should abate your courage . philoth. concerning these , hylobares , i answer , first in general , that it is worth our taking noti●e of , how divine providence has counted upon this extraordinary expense of man's bloud and life , the generations of men being not considerably scanted for all these four greedy devourers of them . and therefore we ought to consider what a testimony of the perfection of the works of god in nature the greatest disasters of the world are . for if they did not appear , we should think it liable to none , but that it stood wholly on its own leggs . but we now seeing it liable to so great ones , and yet such as are perpetually triumphed over by that wisedom and counsel of god that is so peremptorily carried on in the nature of things , we are thereby manifestly convinced of a providence even from such things as at first sight seem most to contradict it . to which you may adde that eminent use of the calamitousness of this scene of things , if we must needs think it so , namely the serious seeking after a portion in those regions that are not subject to such horrid disasters , those sedes quietae , as your lucretius calls them , hylobares , and in imitation of homer , that more religious poet , describes them very elegantly . i believe euistor could recite the verses . euist. i remember them very well , philotheus . apparet divûm numen , sedésque quietae , quas neque concutiunt venti , nec nu●ila nimbis aspergunt , neque nix acri concreta pruinâ cana cadens violat , sempérque innubilus aether integit , & largè diffuso lumine ridet . hyl. but i do not intend to be thus put off with an old song , philotheus : i desire to hear your account of those four more dismall particulars i proposed . philoth. why , that is no such hard province , hylobares . for as for war and its effects , it is not to be cast upon god , but on our selves , whose untamed lusts , having shaken off the yoke of reason , make us mad after dominion and rule over others , and our pride and haughtiness impatient of the least affront or injury . and for famine , it is ordinarily rather the effect of war then the defect of the soil or unkindliness of the season ; which if it were , mens providence and frugality might easily prevent any more direfull ill consequences thereof ; and present necessities set mens wits on work . and there is also that communication betwixt nations and countries , that supplies are usually made in such like exigencies . i confess plagues and pestilences would seem more justly chargeable upon god , did we not pull them down upon our selves as deserved scourges for our disobedience . and though whole cities be sometimes swept away with them , as that of athens and constantinople , yet we are to consider that such acute diseases make quick dispatch ; which makes earthquakes in like manner the more tolerable . for whether they be islands or cities that are thus swallowed into the ground or sunk into the sea , it is a present death and more speedy buriall . thus perished those two famous cities of achaia , helice and buris ; as also , according to plato and some others , an ancient atlantick island sunk into the sea. but what more then ordinary mischief came to the inhabitants ? for the souls of the good , having once left their bodies , would easily find way through the crannies of the earth or depth of the sea , and so pass to those ethereall seats and mansions of the blessed . and for the souls of the bad , what advantage the atheist can make to himself by inquiring after them i know not . if a man's phancie therefore be not suddenly snatch'd away , these things are nothing so terrible as they seem at first sight ; nay , such as we of our own accord imitate in sea-fights , which have sunk i know not how many thousands of floating islands thick inhabited , by the thunder and battery of murtherous cannons . but it is the skill of the great dramatist to enrich the history of the world with such tragicall transactions . for were it not for bloudy fightings of battels and dearly-bought victories , the strange changes and subversions of kingdoms and empires , the horrible narrations of countries depopulated by devouring plague and famine , of whole cities swallowed down by unexpected earthquakes , and entire continents drown'd by sudden inundations , the spectatours of this terrestriall stage-play would even nod for want of something more then ordinarily notorious to engage and hold on their attention . wherefore these things are not at all amiss for the adorning of the history of time , and recommending of this theatre of the world to those that are contemplative of nature and providence . for the records of these fore-past miseries of other ages and places naturally engender a pious fear in the well-disposed , and make all that hear thereof more sensibly relish their present tranquillity and happiness . and , which is ever to be considered , the unexhaustible stock of the universe will very easily bear the expense of all these so-amusing pomps and solemnities : which therefore give the more ample witness to the wisedom and power of the deity . hyl. but we seek more ample witnesses of his goodness , o philotheus . philoth. why , it is one part of his goodness thus to display before us his wisedom and power , to perfect our natures , and bring us into admiration and love of himself . for you see all these things have their usefulness , that is , their advantageous regard to us . for god wants nothing . hyl. nay , i see you will make every thing out , philotheus . nor dare i adventure to propose to you the murrain of cattel or rots of sheep , whenas you have already suggested that touching the mortality of men which you will expect should stop my mouth . and i confess you may adde , that they may be swept away sometimes for the wickedness or triall of their owners . and therefore i will not so much insist upon the death of dumb creatures , as upon such accidents as may make their life 's more lingringly miserable ; as the putting some limb out of joint , the breaking of a bone , or the like . for why does not that invisible power that invigilates over all things prevent such sad accidents ? it being as easie for him that made them to keep them from harm , as it was to make them ; he being able to doe all things without any trouble or disturbance to himself , and being so good and benign as to despise none of his innocent creatures . philoth. this is pertinently urged , hylobares . but i answer , that god has made the world as a complete automation , a machina that is to move upon its own spring and wheels , without the frequent recourse of the artificer ; for that were but a bungle . wherefore that the divine art or skill incorporate into matter might be manifest , absolute power does not interpose , but the condition of every thing is according to the best contrivance this terrene matter is capable of . wherefore these ill accidents that happen to living creatures testifie that there is nothing but the ordinary divine artifice modifying the matter that keeps up the creature in its natural condition and happiness . whereby the wisedome of god is more clearly and wonderfully set out to us ; that notwithstanding the frailty of the matter , yet the carefull organization of the parts of a creature does so defend it from mischief , that it very seldom happens that it falls into such harms and casualties as you specifie . but if an immediate extraordinary and absolute power did always interpose for the safety of the creature , the efficacy of that intellectual contrivance of the matter into such organs and parts would be necessarily hid from our knowledge , and the greatest pleasure of natural philosophy come to nothing . which is of more concernment then the perpetuall security of the limbs of every beast ; especially it happening so very seldome that any of them are either strain'd or broken , unless it be long of us , and then providence is acquitted . hyl. how long of us , philotheus ? for these mischances are incident to more creatures then we ride on , or make to draw at either plough , coach , or cart. philoth. as for example , when one shoots at a flock of pigeons or a flush of ducks , do you expect that divine providence should so guide the shot that it should hit none but what it kill'd outright , and not send any away with a broken leg ? by the same reason neither should it be in our power to break the leg of a bird , if she were in our hands . and , which is of greater moment , the judge should be struck dumb so soon as he began to give sentence against the innocent ; the sword should fall out of the hand of him that maintains an unjust quarrell ; the lips of the priest should be miraculously sealed up so soon as he began to vent false doctrines , and delude the people with lies ; and the dangerous physick of either an unskilfull or villainous physician should never be able to finde the way to the mouth of the credulous patient . the sense of which would be , that god should make man a free creature , and yet violently determine him to one part . which would make useless the sundry faculties of the soul , prevent the variety of orders of men , silence these busie actours on this stage of the earth , and by this palpable interposall , as it were , bring christ to judgement before the time . thus would the ignorance and impatience of the unskilfull raise the theatre before the play be half done , the intricacy of the plot making the spectacle tedious to them that understand it not . but let the atheist know there will be a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , christ coming in the clouds , that shall salve up all , whom he shall see at length to his own sorrow and confusion . philop. excellently good indeed , philotheus ! hyl. and it is well it is so , philopolis , for otherwise it were intoler●ble . for he repeats but what he said before upon my first objection . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . philop. i pray you , philotheus , proceed . philoth. in the mean time god has not left us without excuse , having given us the admirable works of nature and the holy oracles to exercise our faith and reason . but so frequent and palpable interpellations in humane affairs would take away the usefulness of both , and violently compell , not persuade , the free creature . and thus would our intellectuals lose their most proper and pleasant game , the seeking out god by his footsteps in the creation . for this were to thrust himself upon us whether we would or no , not to give us the pleasure and exercise of searching after him in the tracts of nature ; in which there is this surprizing delight , that if we meet with any thing that seems less agreeable at first sight , let us use the greatest wit we can to alter it , upon farther triall we shall finde that we have but made it worse by our tampering with it . so that we alwaies finde that what-ever evil there is in the world , it is to be charged upon the incapability of the creature , not the envy or over-sig●t of the creatour . for did things proceed from such a principle as want●d either skill or goodness , that were not god. hyl. that is acknowledged on both sides . but this is the thing we sweat at , to make the phaenome●a of the world correspond with so excellent a principle . which , methinks , nothing does so harshly grate against as that law of cruelty and rapine , which god himself seems to have implanted in nature amongst ravenous birds and beasts . for things are there as he has made them , and it is plain in the talons , beaks , paws and teeth of these creatures , that they are armed fittingly for that tragicall design . besides that commission that man hath over the lives of them all . cuph. i am heartily glad to see this puzzling objection brought upon the stage ; not that i would have the cause of providence any way entangled or prejudiced , but that there is so fit an opportunity of shewing the unparallel'd usefulness ( in the greatest exigencies ) of the peculiar notions of that stupendious wit des-cartes : amongst which that touching brutes being mere machina's is very notorious . philop. so it is indeed , o cuphophron . cuph. and the usefulness here as notorious . for it takes away all that conceived hardship and misery that brute creatures undergo , either by our rigid dominion over them , or by their fierce cruelty one upon another . this new hypothesis sweeps away all these difficulties at one stroke . hyl. this is a subtil invention indeed , cuphophron , to exclude brute creatures always from life , that they may never cease to live . cuph. you mistake me , hylobares ; i exclude them from life , that they may never die with pain . hyl. why , few men but die so , cuphophron , and yet scarce any man but thinks it worth the while to have lived , though he must die at last in such circumstances . and there not being that reflexiveness nor so comprehensive and presagient an anxiety or present deep resentment in brutes in their suffering as in rational creatures , that short pain they undergo when they are devoured by one another cannot be considerable nor bear the thousandth proportion to that pleasure they have reaped in their life . so that it is above a thousand times better that they should be animated with sensitive life , then be but mere machina's . philop. truly , methinks hylobares argues very demonstratively against you , cuphophron ; and that therefore the cartesian hypothesis in this case is so far from helping out any difficulty in divine providence , that it were the greatest demonstration in the world against the goodness thereof , if it were true ; namely , that such an infinite number of animals , as we call them , capable of being so truly , and of enjoying a vital happiness , should be made but mere senseless puppets , and devoid of all the joys and pleasure of life . hyl. i expect a better answer from philotheus , or else i shall be very much left in the dark . philoth. my answer in brief is this : that this is the sport that the divine wisedome affords the contemplative in the speculation of her works , in that she puzzles them at the first sight even to the making of her self suspected of some oversight , and that she has committed some offence against the sacred nature of god , which is goodness and iustice it self ; which yet they afterwards more accurately scanning finde most of all agreeable to that rule . as certainly it is here . for what is so just as that aphorism of pythagoras his school , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that the worse is made for the better ? and what so good wisedome , as to contrive things for the highest enjoyment of all ? for i say , as i said before , that divine providence in the generations of fishes , birds and beasts , cast up in her account the supernumeraries that were to be meat for the rest . and hylobares is to prove whether so many individuals of them could come into the world and continue so in succession , if they were not to be lessened by this seeming cruel law of feeding one upon another . and besides , we see sundry species of living creatures this way the most pleasantly and transportingly provided for . for how delightfull a thing it is for them by their craft and agility of body to become masters of their prey , men that make to themselves a fortune by their own wit , policy and valour , let them be judges . where something of consequence is in chace , it makes the pleasure of the game more solid , fills the faculties with more vigour and alacrity , and makes the victory more savoury and valuable . as running for a wager makes a man feel his limbs with more courage and speed , and finde himself more pleased that he has overcome his antagonist . wherefore the animal life in beasts and birds ( and they were never intended for any thing higher ) is highly gratify'd by this exercise of their strength and craft , and yet the species of all things very copiously preserved . but to complain that some certain numbers are to be lopp'd off , which notwithstanding must at last die , and if they lived and propagated without any such curb , would be a burthen to the earth and to themselves for want of food , it is but the cavill of our own softness and ignorant effeminacy , no just charge against god or nature . for the divine wisedome freely and generously having provided for the whole , does not , as man , dote on this or that particular , but willingly lets them go for a more solid and more universal good . and as for beeves and sheep , the more ordinary food of man , how often is the countrey-man at a loss for grass and fodder for them ? judge then what this foolish pity of ever sparing them would bring upon them . they would multiply so fast , that they would die for famine and want of food . hyl. what you say , philotheus , i must confess is not immaterial . but yet , methinks , it looks very harshly and cruelly , that one living creature should fall upon another and slay him , when he has done him no wrong . philoth. why , hylobares , though i highly commend this good nature in you , yet i must tell you it is the idioticalness of your phancie that makes you thus puzzled in this case . for you phansie brutes as if they were men : whenas they have no other law then the common law of nature , which is the law of self-love , the cravings of which they will satisfie , what-ever is incommodated thereby . as the fire will burn if it take hold , though to the consumption of a whole forest , notwithstanding the wood never did the fire any hurt , that it should use it so : so every animal would satisfie its own craving appetite , though it were by the devouring of all the world beside . this every sparrow , titmouse or swallow would doe . so that if you will indulge to that phancy , they are all wicked alike ; and therefore it need not seem so harsh that the devourers are also to be devoured . but it is the most true and philosophicall apprehension , to impute no more wickedness to devouring brutes then to swallowing gulfs of the sea or devouring fire . hyl. why , philotheus , that is the thing i was going to object in the next place ; i mean , as well the rage of the elements , as the wrath of wilde beasts , and several monstrosities of creatures that occurr , whether whole species or single individuals . for do not these discover some malignancy in the principles of the world , inconsistent with so lovely and benign an authour as we seek after ? euist. i can tell you an hypothesis , hylobares , that will sufficiently solve this objection , if you and i could close with it . hyl. i warrant you mean the behmenicall , the corruption of the divine sal-nitre by the rebellion of lucifer against his maker . these things i admire at a distance , euistor , but , as you say , i have not an heart to close with them . for i cannot believe that there is any might or counsell that can prevail against god ; or that he can overshoot himself so far , as to give the staffe out of his own hands in such a measure as is taught in that hypothesis . wherefore , philotheus , i desire a more credible account of these things from you . philoth. i shall offer you , hylobares , a very easie and intelligible supposition . hyl. i pray you what is it , philotheus ? i long to hear it . philoth. onely this ; that this stage of the earth and the comprehension of its atmosphere is one of the meanest , the least glorious and least happy mansions in the creation ; and that god may make one part of the creation less noble then another , nay it may be his wisedom requires it should be so at length in process of time ; as the art of painting requires dark colours as well as those more bright and florid in well-drawn pictures . therefore i say the nature of things , even of all of them , sin onely excepted , is but less good here , not truly evil or malignant . hyl. how does that appear , philotheus ? philoth. it is manifest , for example , that there is no such malignant heat as is supposed in fire , but all is sound and sacred , if it be in due measure and in right circumstances apply'd . for it is well known that the gentle and comfortable rays of the sun may be so crouded together in one point by the artifice of glasses , that they will be so furiously hot as to melt hard metalline bodies . and little question is to be made but that there are certain particles , good store , in nature , of a form long and flexible , that the ordinary heat of the sun raising into a vapour , and he or some higher principle still more strongly agitating them , will cause mighty winds and tempests , and these tempests vehemently toss the sea , and make it rage and roar . but that sea-voiages become dangerous by this means , is but the exercise of the wit and observation of man , and has occasioned a more accurate art of navigation . and if some ships notwithstanding be cast away , it ever makes the passenger that has any piety in him pay his vows at land with greater religion and devotion . and for the wrath of beasts , it has nothing more diabolicall in it then natural choler and the flames of fire , which do no more hurt then the pure beams of the sun passing through a pure glass , whose figure onely makes them burn . but the power of god indeed seems more barely set out in these fierce beasts of prey , such as the lion , bear , and tiger , and is yet more terrible in huge scaled dragons and serpents . but if these kind of creatures bear any mischief or poison in their teeth or tails or their whole bodie , that poison is nothing but disproportionality of particles to the particles of our own or other animals bodies . and nature has armed us with caution , flight and abhorrency from such dreadfull spectacles . but we must not make our abhorrency the measure and true estimate of others natures . for those poisonous creatures are not poisonous to their own kinde , and are so far from mutual abhorrency , that they are joyned in the nearest link of love that can be , whereby they propagate their species . wherefore these objects of so terrible an aspect are not evil in themselves , but being capable of the delights of the animal life as well as any other , and being so egregiously direfull to behold , as living symbols of that attribute of power unqualified with goodness , they were rightly brought into being in this region of sin , as ready instruments of divine wrath , notorious ornaments of the theatre of the world , and a great enrichment of the history of nature , which would be defective , did it not run from one extreme to another . for even variety of sweet things cloy , and there is no remedy so good as the mixture of sharp , bitter and sowr . and therefore those more sacred and congruous laws of nature are sometimes violated by her own prerogative , as is manifest in the birth of monsters ; which i look upon as but a piece of sportfulness in the order of things , as when a well-favoured boy makes a wry mouth out of wantonness , whereupon the sudden composure of his countenance into its natural frame seems the more lovely and amiable . but for these prodigious deviations , they are not many . for it is the rarity of them that invites the people to look after them . and it is a plain argument they are well pleased with these novel spectacles , they so willingly parting with their moneys to have the sight of them . for these diversities of objects in the world variously touch the minds of men , playing upon their severall affections and faculties as a musician on the sundry keys of an organ or virginals . and that stop which is a discord of it self , yet not being too long stood upon , makes the succeeding harmony more sweet . and so it is in that which is uglily defective or mis-shapen , it quickens the sense of that due shape and elegancy we see ordinarily in other things . but that there are whole nations absolutely monstrous or misshapen , such as the cynocephali , acephali , monoculi , monocoli , & the like , it will be then time enough to answer to that difficulty , when the truth of the story is cleared . the probability of which i think euistor is as able to judge of as most men , he taking so special a felicity in reading of histories . euist. that there are such monstrous nations mentioned in history , o philotheus , it cannot be dissembled . but for the credibility of the story or pertinency to this subject , that is not so clear . for in my apprehension historians do very much betray their vanity in the very circumstances of what they relate . as in the monocoli of tartarie , which , they say , have but one arm as well as but one leg ; but they adde , that they run so swift on that single hand and foot , that no horse can keep pace with them . which if it were true , what great charge could be laid against nature for making so admirable and usefull a fabrick ? there is also a people near california , called enoticoeti , which they say have long ears that reach to the very ground , but withall so large and thin and limber , that they hang like a skarf behinde or before them ; which they spread and lie in a-nights on the ground , ( if any be so foolish as to believe it : ) from whence they are called enoticoeti , as having their ears for sheets to lie in . so that when they travel they may in utramque aurem dormire , and be afraid of no contagion but what they carry with them . cuph. this is a pretty privilege , euistor . but i would be very loth to be so liable to be lugg'd by the ears up and down as they are , for all their security of wholesom sheets . euist. for my part , i must confess , i look upon it as a very fable ; as i do also upon those several stories of the monoculi . and sr iohn mandevill , to outbid the mendacity of all his predecessours , thought it not enough to feign nations with one eye in their heads onely , but also such as had none at all , but onely two holes like empty sockets where the lights should be placed . but to give you my conjecture , i think the first occasion of this fable of the monoculi was raised from the scythian arimaspi , which were famed to be such , and indeed have their name from thence , as eustathius notes upon dionysius afer , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . philop. what 's that , euistor ? euist. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the scythian language is as much as one , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as much as to say an eye . so that arimaspus signifies as much as one-ey'd . and aeschylus in the same authour calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the one-ey'd army , as being excellently-well-exercised archers , and having by frequent winking on one eye lessened it so much as in a manner to have lost the use of it . i believe there is no more in it then this ; and can hardly conclude with eustathius , that in process of time they begot children quite deprived of one of their eyes . but be that how it will , that was no fail of nature , but a fault of their own . but surely from such slight hints as these might so many loud lies be spred abroad in the world . and when they had once brought it to one eye , they might then place it according to the easiness of their phancy , not on one side of the nose , but , as pliny does those of the arimaspi , in the midst of their forehead . and as for the acephali , they might be nothing but some strong hutchback'd people , that having their heads very low and their shoulders high , men in humour and derision might say that they had their mouths in their breasts and their eyes in their shoulders . for men love to express themselves so as to raise admiration . and lastly , for the cynocephali , it is a thing incredible , and betrays the falseness by the circumstances of the report . as that they understand one another by barking and howling , and partly by signs with their hands and fingers ; that they have long tails like dogs , and that they engender as dogs do , and that the humane way is by them , forsooth , accounted more shamefull and dishonest . i believe the truth of the existence of those apes that are called cynocephali gave the first ground to this amplify'd fable ; which you may see more enlarged in eusebius neirimbergius , but rejected even by him as a vain report . and as the cynocephali are but brutes , so i conceive those terrible men with horns beyond cathay , and those humane shapes with long tails that straggle on the mountainous parts of the island borneo , with other sportfull variations and deviations from the usual figure of man , were but so many several kinds of satyrs , monkeys and baboons , that are of a middle nature betwixt men and beasts , as the sundry sorts of plant-animals are betwixt beasts and trees . and as the perfectest of plant-animals come very near an absolute animal , as the boranetz not far from the caspian sea amongst the tartars ; so the perfectest of satyrs and apes may very well come so near mankinde that they may be suspected to be of humane race . but that they can ever be improved to the accomplishment of a man , i think as little probable , as the turning of a zoophyton into a perfect animal . philop. on my word , hylobares , euistor has laid about him more then ordinary in this point . hyl. i must confess , philopolis , that euistor has spoke so probably touching these stories of humane monstrosities , that i cannot have the face upon so uncertain reports to lay a charge against providence , whose exactness is so conspicuous in things of assured and certain knowledge . and therefore i would now pass from this classis of natural evils , if that three more of this kinde ( if i may call them all natural ) did not forcibly detain me . for indeed they are such as do more amuze me and dissettle me then any i have yet proposed . philoth. i pray , what are those , hylobares ? hyl. that sad spectacle of natural fools , of mad-men , and of men from their very childhood irreclamably wicked . i cannot devise how such phaenomena as these can well comport with so benign a providence as you seem to plead for . to me , philotheus , they are the most dismall sights in the world . philoth. and , to deal ingenuously with you , hylobares , there is nothing does more contristate and melancholize my spirit then any reflexions upon such objects . but yet i cannot conclude but that god may be exactly good and just in his dealings with men for all this . for we must consider that mankinde by their fall are lapsed into a parallel condition with that of beasts in a manner , and , by their being invested with these terrestrial induments , do put themselves into all those hazards that the brutal life is obnoxious to , that is to say , not onely the diseases of the body , but the maladies also of those better faculties of perception and imagination , of natural wit and sagacity , and of natural humour and disposition . the distemper of any of these seizes the soul , if it meet with so ill a fitted body . for we see that some beasts are egregiously more sottish and slow then others of their own kinde , and more mischievous and unmanageable , as is observable in dogs and horses . and several brutes are capable of becoming mad . these mischiefs follow this terrestrial fate of things , which none can be secure from but those that inhabit not in these houses of clay . and who knows but he that is born a natural fool , if he had had natural wit , would have become an arrant knave ? which is an hundred times worse . and to have been in a capacity of being good , and yet to range out into all manner of wickedness , is more horrible then to have ever had a senselesness of what is pious and vertuous uninterruptedly from the very birth . and as for mad-men , it is notoriously known that the greatest cause is ordinarily immorality , pride , the want of faith in god , or inordinate love of some outward object . but no madness but that which is purely a disease is to be charged upon providence : for which there is the like apologi● as for other diseases ; which if we should admit they did not always good to the afflicted , yet it cannot be denied but that they do very naturally tend to the bettering of the spectatours , as this sad object of madness ought to doe ; to make men humble and modest , and masters of their passions , and studious of purification of soul and body , and close adherers to the deity , that so horrid a distemper may never be able to seize them ; to keep down the ferocity of desire , and to be wholly resigned to the will of god in all things , and not to seek a man's self no more then if he were not at all ; not to love the praise of men , nor the pride of the world , nor the pleasures of life , but to make it his entire pleasure to be of one will with his maker , nor to covet any thing but the accomplishment of his will in all things . hyl. this divine madness , you will say , philotheus , will extinguish all natural madness , as the pure light of the sun does any course terrestriall fire . philoth. this divine sobriety , hylobares , will keep our animal spirits safe and sober . bath . i conceive , philotheus , that hylobares may not call that excellent state of the soul a divine madness out of any reproach to it , but for the significancy of the expression . for madness is nothing else but an ecstaticalness of the soul , or an emotion of the minde , so that a man is said not to be himself , or to be beside himself . the misery of which in natural madness is , that he being thus unhindged , he roves and is flung off at randome whither it happens , or lock'd into some extravagant phancy or humour that is to no purpose , or else to ill purpose . but divine madness is , when a man by studiously and devotionally quitting himself and his own animal desires through an intire purification of his spirit , being thus loosened from himself , is laid fast hold on by the spirit of god , who guides this faithfull and well-fitted instrument , not according to the ignorant or vicious modes of the world , but his motions keep time to that musick which is truly holy , seraphicall and divine , i mean , to the measures of sound reason and pure intellect . hyl. i meant no worse , bathynous , then you intimate ; but you have apologized more floridly and rhetorically for me then i could have done for my self . and therefore this rub being removed , i beseech you , philotheus , proceed in your well-begun apologie touching those difficulties in providence which i last propounded . philoth. i will adde therefore these two considerations . first , that this life is short , and that no more is required of these ill-appointed persons for wisedom and vertue then proportionally to the talent committed to them . so that their danger is diminished according to the lessening of the measure of their capacities . secondly , that it is our phancie rather then our reason that makes us imagine these objects so much more sad and deplorable , then what we see in the ordinary sort of men . for , as i was intimating before , which of these two is the more deplorable state , to be a fool by fate or upon choice ? and are not all things toies and fools-baubles and the pleasures of children or beasts , excepting what is truly moral and intellectual ? and how few , i pray you , amongst many thousands do seriously spend their studies in any thing weightily moral or intellectual , but fiddle away their time as idlely as those tha● pill straws or tie knots on rushes in a fit of deliration or lunacy ? the wits of this age contend very much for this paradox , that there is no other happiness then content ; but it is the happiness of natural fools , to finde their content more easily and certainly then these very wits . and there is in this case much the same reason of mad-men as of fools . and what is the gaudiness of fools coats but the gallantry of these wits , though not altogether so authentickly in fashion ? besides , this may excuse providence something , that the generality of men do usually flock after fools and mad-men , and shew themselves delighted with the object . bath . they are pleased , it may be , to see some more mad and sottish then themselves , and so congratulate to themselves the advantage and preeminency , as they phansie , of their own condition . hyl. it may be they approch to them as to alluring looking-glasses , wherein they may so lively discern their own visages . philoth. you may have spoken more truly in that , hylobares , then you are aware of , saving that generally men are more foolish and mad then these looking-glasses can represent them . nihil tam absurdè dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum , is a saying of cicero . and if the philosophers themselves be such fools , what are the plebeians ? could ever any thing more sottish or extravagant fall into the minde of either natural fool or mad-man , then , that the eternall god is of a corporeall nature and shape ; that the world and all the parts of it , the organized bodies of men and beasts not excepted , are the result of a blinde iumble of mere matter and motion without any other guide ? what more phrantick then the figment of transubstantiation , and of infallible lust , ambition , and covetousness ? or what more outrageous specimen of madness , then the killing and slaying for the non-belief of such things ? a man is accounted a natural fool for preferring his bauble before a bag of gold ; but is not he a thousand times more foolish that preferrs a bag of gold , a puff of honour , a fit of transient pleasure , before the everlasting riches , glory and joys of the kingdome of heaven ? no man wonders that a mad-man unadvisedly kills another ; and if he did it advisedly and of set purpose , yet it being causelessly and disadvantageously to himself , he is reputed no less mad . how notoriously mad then are those that , to their own eternall damnation , depopulate countries , sack cities , subvert kingdoms , and not onely martyr the bodies of the pious and righteous , but murther the souls of others , whom by fraud or violence they pollute with idolatrous and impious practices ; and all this for that gaudy bauble of ambition , and a high conceit of one vniversal spiritual monarch , that ought to wallow in wealth , and tumble in all the fleshly and sensual delights of this present world ? wherefore , to speak my judgement freely , hylobares , seeing that there would be such abundance of men mad and foolish and wicked according to the ordinary guize of the world , it does not misbeseem the goodness of providence to anticipate this growing degeneracy in some few , by making them fools and mad-men as it were by birth or fate : that folly and madness being represented to the sons of men in a more unusual disguise , by hooting at it , they may doe that piece of justice as to reproch themselves thereby , who are upon their own cost and charges more reprehensibly wicked then they that never came within any capacity of being vertuous , ( if there be any such ) and more outrageously mad and abominably sottish in the eyes of him that can judge rightly , then any natural fool or bedlam ; or rather , that using that seasonable reflexion which plato somewhere commends upon the consideration of the ill carriage of others , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they may finde by such analogies as i have hinted at , that they are far worse fools and mad-men then are hooted at in the streets , and so for very shame amend their lives , and become truly wise and vertuous . for what can be more effectuall for the raising an horrour and detestation of what is ugly and dishonest in our selves , then the reflexion , that what we so abhorr in others is more in our selves both as to degrees and other circumstances ; and that whereas others may seem an object of pity , our selves deserve the highest reproof and scorn ? so that you see , hylobares , that even in these pieces of providence that seem most forlorn , most dark and desperate , a very comfortable account of the divine goodness does unexpectedly emerge and shine forth . which would still clear up into a more full satisfaction , the more leisure and ability we had to search into things . but if you cannot keep your eye from being fixed on the black side of providence rather then on the bright side thereof , and must ruminate on the particular evils of plagues and pestilences , of war and famine , of devouring earthquakes , of that cruel and savage custome of both birds , beasts and fishes , in preying and feeding one upon another , which is a shadow of the most outrageous violence and iniquity imaginable ; if you will melancholize your phancie with the remembrance of the groans of the maimed and sick , the dread of ravenous beasts and poisonous serpents , the destroying rage of the elements , the outrageousness of the distracted , and the forlornness and desolateness of that forsaken habitacle , the body of a natural fool , ( whom therefore we most usually call a mere body ; ) this consideration also has its grand use , and it is fit that so sunk a condition of mankinde as this terrestriall life is should be charged with such a competency of tragicall fatalities as to make the considerate seriously to bethink himself of a better state , and recount with himself if he be not , as they say , in a wrong box , if he be not stray'd from his native countrey , and therefore , as the platonists exhort , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , if he ought not seriously to meditate a return , and to die betimes to this world , that death at last striking off the fetters of this mortal body , the soul may emerge far above the steam of this region of misery and sin. o praeclarum diem , cùm ad divinum illud animorum concilium coetúmque proficiscar , cúmque ex hac turba ac colluvione discedam ! euist. it is part of that excellent speech of cato to scipio and laelius . what say you now , hylobares , to philotheus his assoiling these your last and most puzzling and confounding difficulties about natural evils ? hyl. i say philotheus discourses excellently well , euistor , and beyond my expectation . and i cannot deny but that there being such a lapsed state of mankinde , that providence upon this supposition does manage things to the best even in those phaenomena we call natural evils ; and that the frame of things , taking them in their full comprehension , could scarce be better , so far as my understanding reaches , then it is . but the greatest difficulty of all remains touching this sinfull lapse , ( which is the second head of evils i had in my thoughts to propose to philotheus ) that providence should ever suffer so abominable , so diabolicall and destructive a thing as sin ever to appear on this stage of the universe : a thing that has brought in such a tragicall train of miseries upon us , and is in it self so detestable and hatefull both to god and man. i know not how to make sense of these things . cuph. i am even glad at heart to see hylobares so much puzzled with this difficulty , it giving me the opportunity , with philotheus his leave , to raise him into as high a pleasure by the agreeableness and perspicuity of the solution . and , methinks , i finde upon me a very great impetus of spirit to doe him this friendly office . philoth. i pray you proceed then , cuphophron ; i hope your success will be the better . cuph. that i shall doe right willingly : for i hold it a matter of great importance , that mankinde have a right understanding of one another's actions and manners , and that they be not over-harshly censorious , and think every thing infernall and diabolicall that is not in so high a degree good as the rest . for my purpose is , o philopolis , to clear unto the world such principles as may sweeten the passions of men , or excite in them onely the sweet passions , and take off all anger , hatred , and indignation against their mutuall carriages ; that seeing so little hurt done or meant , they may live quietly and neighbourly one with another . philop. that is an excellent plot , o cuphophron , and very advantageous to as many of us justices of peace as desire to get as much time as we can to bestow upon the more profitable parts of philosophy . but i would rightly understand this plot of yours . cuph. i perceive hylobares ( which is a symptome of his great sense of vertue ) looks upon that which we ordinarily call sin or wickedness to have such an essential and infernal poison and hellish perverseness in it , so abominable and detestable , and so contrary and repugnant to the nature of god , that it seems a contradiction that they should both coexist in the world together , but that the wrath of the almighty ought to have thunder-struck or stifled so horrid a monster in the very birth , not onely by reason of those natural evils it unavoidably brings upon mankinde , but even for its own diabolical vgliness and detestableness . but for my part , gentlemen , i commend his zeal more then his judgement , in his adhering to so groundless an imagination . sophr. i wish , cuphophron , you beginning so daringly , that your judgement do not prove as little as your zeal . you are such an extoller of the sweet passions , and so professed an enemy to those more grim and severe ones , that i fear , to bid adieu to them for the milder repose of our mindes , you would persuade us to shake hands and be friends with sin it self . cuph. you know not what i would , sophron , nor i scarce my self ; but something i am very big of , and desire your assistence or patience in my delivering of my self of it . hyl. i pray you let it be neatly then , and a cleanly conveiance , o cuphophron . cuph. it shall be very dry and clean . for it shall be onely a disquisition touching the mere nature of sin and wickedness , in what it consists : whence we shall make the duest estimate of the poison of its condition . and i wish my breath may be as gratefull and agreeable to your eares , as this fresh evening-aire , wafted through the sides of my arbour , and steeped in the cooling beams of the moist moon , ( whose strained light through the shadow of the leaves begins to cast a tremulous chequer-work on the table , our clothes and faces ) is delightfull and comfortable to my heated temples . philop. it begins indeed to be late of the night , cuphophron , but it is not the less pleasant to continue our discourse in this chequer'd moon-shine , especially you having thus raised our expectations . wherefore i pray you proceed . cuph. in my judgement no man has so luckily pointed at the true nature of wickedness as mercurius trismegistus , in that short saying , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that wickedness is connate or natural to beasts . which yet i am so far from believing in that sense the words sound in , that i hold it incompetible to them . but rather , as that mirrour of wisedom , moses , has defined in his law , when the leprosie is all over a man , no part untainted , that he is to be reputed as clean ; so brutes , who are constituted onely of sense and the animal affections , without any participation of an higher principle , they are uncapable of sin. and if there were any rational animals , be they in what shape they will , from the sight of whose mindes that higher principle was ever excluded fatally and naturally , they would be as the mosaicall leper , or rather as an ordinary brute , devoid both of sin and conscience , relishing onely the laws of the animal life : wherein when we have considered how much there is of the divine wisedome and goodness that contrived them , we shall not have so venemous a conceit concerning the creation of god , or be cast upon manicheism or gnosticism , phansying the sign of the devil's paw , or senting the sulphur of hell in every thing as strongly as the bishop's foot in milk burnt to the skillet bottom . nay , i may say that those mysterious depths of satan which the theosophers so diligently discover , such as are ipseity , egoity , or selfishness , it is nothing else but that sovereign or radicall principle in the animal life , which is self-love . of which if there be no necessity in nature that it should be , ( as indeed we see sometimes the affections of creatures to be carried out so to others that they forget themselves ) yet it was fit for divine providence to settle this principle in them all , that every thing should love it self very heartily and provide for it self ; as the roots of trees without all scruple draw to themselves all the nourishment they are capable of , not regarding what tree withers , so they flourish , in which notwithstanding there is nothing of either devil or sin. but now that providence did very well in implanting so smart a self-love in every animal , is manifest . for those more notable functions of the animal life , such as depend on strength and agility , craft and sagacity , could not be exercised to any considerable degree without this principle . a crow would not have the heart to pick at a worm , nor a swallow to snatch at a fly. and there is the same reason for those more notable and industrious insidiations of other stronger and more crafty creatures that hunt after their prey . besides , every animal in respect of it self has in some sense or measure a resemblance of that divine attribute of omnipresence ; for be it where it will , it cannot leave it self behinde . wherefore it is fit it should be indued with this great love and care of it self , being in a more constant readiness to pleasure , help and provide for it self then for another . lastly , it is a thing unimaginable , unless brutes were indu'd with intellectual faculties , ( and then they would be no longer brutes ) that they should be able to have so free and reflexive cogitations as to seek the emprovement and live in the sense of the publick good . and if their thoughts and phancies were always taken up or gadding after the welfare of others , the height of life and joy in every one would much be diminished and obscured . for phancy is far weaker then the present sense of the body : and if you would have it any thing strong , how calamitous must the lives of these animals be , who must die , must be maimed and suffer mischief , as often as any of their fellow-animals suffer any of these things ? wherefore it is better for the whole generations of brute animals , that every one love and regard it self , then that they be all distracted and tortured with ineffectual thoughts concerning the welfare of others . we see therefore , o philopolis , the wisedome and benignity of providence , that has so firmly engrafted this principle of self-love , the root of undisturbed joy and of self-preservation , in the animal life . from whence is also in animals that eminent love of their young , and their kindness and tameness to them that feed them . and for those passions in animals that look more grimly and infernally on 't , or at least seem to have a more nauseous and abominable aspect , as wrath , envy , pride , lust , and the like , they are but the branches or modifications of this one primitive and fundamental passion , self-love . for what is wrath , but self-love edged and strengthned for the fending off the assaults of evil ? what envy , but self-love grieved at the sense of its own want , discovered and aggravated by the fulness of another's enjoyment ? what pride , but self-love partly desiring to be the best or to be approved for the best , and partly triumphing and glorying that it is now become none of the meanest ? and , lastly , what is lust , but self-love seeking its own high delight and satisfaction in the use of venery ? these are the main misshapen spawn of that monstrous fiend , that deeply-couched dragon of hell , self-love ; which if we eye more accurately , we shall find as necessary and usefull in the animal life as the mother that bears them . for as for wrath , and also craft , ( which i forgot to mention before ) it is plain they are as unblameable in beasts as prudence and valour in men . and for pride and gloriation , it is but a natural spur to quicken their animal powers , or but the overflowing of that tickling sense they have of those perfections nature has bestowed upon them ; and shews how mightily well-pleased they are with them , and what thankfull witnesses they are of that goodness and wisedom that framed them . and for lust , who dare blame it in the brute creature , there being distinction of sexes , fitness of organs , and sufficiency of spirits prepared by the divine wisedom in nature for it ? besides that it is one of the most important acts , as well as accompanied with the greatest and most enravishing joy that the animal life will afford . a matter of that consequence , that the generations of living creatures would cease to be without it ; and the sun and moon be constrained once again to shine on an empty earth ; and the shadows of the trees to shelter nothing but either the trees themselves , or the neighbouring herbs and flowers . that which looks most like a fury of all this litter is envy ; which as bad as it is , yet methinks aristotle slanders it , whiles he would make it such a passion as was not raised from the sense of our own want , but merely out of the sense of another's good , without reference to our selves ; which for my part i look upon to be such a monster as i suspect is scarce to be found in the regions of hell. philop. that 's a marvellous charitable conceit of your's , cuphophron . cuph. but that envy that is , o philopolis , is a genuine result of the animal life , and more usually in a passive melancholick spirit , and is a grief arising from the sense of our want discovered , as i said , and set off more stingingly to us by the more flush and full representations of another's happiness . but that there should be any more wickedness in grief then in joy , or in pain then in pleasure , is a thing my understanding cannot reach to . for then repentance it self would be a sin. sophr. it 's well you pass so favourable a censure on those more sowr passions , o cuphophron ; i thought you had been onely for the sweet affections . cuph. it is in virtue of the sweet affections , o sophron , that i speak so favourably of the sowr . but to tell you the truth , i had rather give them good words at a distance , then to receive them into my house , or entertain any more inward familiarity with them . to my peculiar temper they are but harsh guests . sophr. i have but interrupted you , cuphophron , i pray you go on . cuph. wherefore we conclude that no branch of the animal life is simply sinfull , poisonous or diabolicall , they being really the contrivances of the good and wise god in the frame of nature , or else the necessary sequels of such contrivances . and that therefore those men that are so strongly enveagled in the pleasures and allurements of this lower life are rather lapsed into that which is less good , then detained in that which is absolutely evil . and it is but a perpetuall gullery and mistake , while they are so hugely taken with so small matters , they being in the condition , as i may so say , of children and fools , of whom it is observed , that a small thing will please them : though it be a doubt whether these things be so small and contemptible , if that be true that the divinest of philosophers have asserted , that the whole world and the parts thereof are but so many symbols and sacraments of the deity ; every thing being either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , some more perfect image , or at least some picture , shadow , or footstep of the divinity . upon which if our eyes be stayed and our affections entangled , as it is a real testimonie of our approvement of the excellency of the archetype , so are we in some meaner sort religious , we adoring thus and doting upon these congruous gratifications we receive from these particular shadows of that perfect good , untill we are called up to an higher participation of him . but that even those that seem to flie from god seek after him in some sort , is apparently necessary , there being nothing but himself , or what is from him , in the world : otherwise he could not be that absolutely-perfect good , whose goodness , wisedome and power fills all things . and i think there is no perceptive being in the whole universe so estranged from its original , but it is either courting or enjoying these or some of these attributes in some rank and measure or other , they ever trying and proving what they can doe in matters of either pleasure , wit , or dominion . and the sincere and undistracted fruition of any one part of any of these has so mightily taken up the minds of some men in complexion fitly framed for such delights , that they have sacrificed even their lives , liberties and fortunes , to these slighter glimpses of the great godhead , whom they thus unwittingly and unskilfully seek to adore , and so become in a sort religious martyrs for a part , which they that make profession of their love and honour of the entire deity seldome are persuaded to undergoe . now sith it is something of god that the mindes of all spirits ( even of those that seem to be in actual rebellion against him ) are set after , it is a very hard thing to find out how he should look upon himself as disesteemed , whenas all the creatures are mad after something or other of his , most religiously prizing it even above their own beings . for it is onely their ridiculous mistake to cleave to that which is of less worth and moment , and therefore deserves laughter and pity more then fury and revenge . not to adde what a childish and idiotick conceit it is , to phansie god in the similitude of some aged tetricall person , impatient of and obnoxious to affronts and injuries ; w●en neither any can be really done him , nor any is intended against him ; but men out of a debasing modesty or laziness of spirit take up with smaller good things , when they may be more welcome to greater . which solution as it may well satisfie hylobares touching his querie , why god almighty did not at the first appearance of sin straightway with sulphureous thunderbolts strike it dead upon the spot ; so it may be also an excellent antidote against the rage of the more grim and severe passions , mitigate the harshnesses of severall disgusts in humane life , and generally sweeten the conversation of men one with another . hyl. sweet cuphophron and mellifluous , young nestor in eloquence , that hast conceived such raised notions from the wafts of the evening-air and the chequered moon-shine , whose tongue is thus bedew'd with bewitching speech from the roscid lips and nectarine kisses of thy silver-faced cynthia ! but dost thou think thus to drown our sense of solid reason by the rapid stream or torrent of thy turgid eloquence ? no , cuphophron , no : one touch of right reason will so prick the tumour of thy brain thus blown up by the percribrated influence of thy moist mistress , the moon , that these notions that look now so fair and plump , shall appear as lank and scrannell as a calf that sucks his dam through an hurdle ; and all thy pretences to right ratiocination shall be discovered as vain and frivolous as the idlest dream of endymion . sophr. in the name of god , what do you mean , hylobares , to answer so phantastically in so serious a cause ? hyl. did not he begin thus , o sophron ? i onely answer my phantastick friend according to his own phantastry . which yet you may observe i have done very hobblingly , it being out of my rode . but yet the sense is very serious and in earnest , viz. that it is a kinde of lunacy , not reason , that reigns thus turgidly in cuphophron's copious harangue ; that is , in brief , he seems in this rapture , be it from what influence it will , to be wittily and eloque●tly ●ad . sophr. nay , if you mean no otherwise then so , it 's well enough ; but it beginning to be late , it had been better expressed in shorter terms . and i pray you , hylobares , since you think cuphophron mad , make him sober by discovering to him his deliration . hyl. i hope i shall very briefly discover it to the rest , but i know not how far he may be in love with his own lunacy . that there is no poison or harm in any of the animal functions or passions , i easily grant him , and it may be the least in the sweetest . for i was before convinced by philotheus that there is nothing substantially evil in the world. but it is immensely manifest , that those things that are good in themselves , yet by misapplication or disproportion may cause that which is unsufferably naught . as in a musical instrument whose strings are good and the stick good , yet if they be touch'd upon when they are out of tune , what more harsh and intolerable ? and so may the exercise of the animal functions or passions , though good in themselves , yet if they be either set too high , or exercised upon undue objects or in unfitting circumstances , become very nauseously evil . to spit is one of the animal functions , good and usefull in it self , and to spit into the mouth of a dog and clap him on the back for encouragement , is not indecorous for the man , and gratefull also to the dog : but if any one had gone about to spit into cuphophron's mouth , and clap him on the back to encourage him in that rapturous oration he made , he would have thought it an intolerable absurd thing , and by no means to be suffered . cuph. why , so far as i see , hylobares , that was needless ; you making as if dame cynthia , aliàs diana , had spit into my mouth already , and clapt me on the back , as one of her hunting-dogs , and so put me into this loose rhetoricall career . hyl. something like it , cuphophron , it may be . but now you are out of this career , how do you like this instance of the exercise of the animal functions , that men and women should stale and dung ( like mares and horses in a stable ) in any room or company they came into ? it is something a course question , cuphophron , but very substantially to our purpose . cuph. that 's stinkingly naught , hylobares . hyl. but they then but exercise their animal functions . and were that quicker sense revived in us whereby we discern moral good and evil ; adultery , drunkenness , murther , fraud , extortion , perfidiousness , and the like , all these would have infinitely a worse sent to our souls , then this which you say is so stinkingly evil can have to our noses . and yet in all these things there is nothing but an undue vse of the animal faculties . and forasmuch as order and proportion and the right congruity of things are those things in the world which are the most intellectual and divine , the confounding and opposing of these must be the greatest opposition and contradiction that can be made or devised against the divine intellect or eternall godhead . for although the faculties of the soul of man be but gradually differenced as to goodness , that is to say , that some of them are better then other some , others onely less good : yet the incongruity and disproportionateness of the use of them are diametrically opposite to the congruity and proportionateness of their use , and have the greatest contrariety that can be betwixt good and evil ; and are really such , the one good , the other evil , not a less good onely . sophr. excellently well argued , hylobares i and it was as seasonably intimated at first , that there is a sense in a man , if it were awakened , to which these moral inc●ngruities are as harsh and displeasing as any incongruous object , be it never so nauseous , is to the outward senses . but a mere notional or imaginary apprehension or conception of these moral congruities and incongruities does not reach that due antipathy we ought to have against sin and wickedness : whereby also we do more lively understand how contrary and repugnant they are to the will of god. but besides this fallacy in general , hylobares , there were severall particular passages , in my minde , very rash and unsound ; but especially that , which makes our inordinate adhesion to some parts of the creation a religious worship or service of god. bath . there may be some shew of wit in such like conceits and expressions ; but undoubtedly , o sophron , such exorbitant adhesions to the creature is so far from being the due worship of god , that it is down-right idolatry . for neither the whole creature nor part is god himself . and therefore to love them more highly and affect them more devoutly then the pure godhead , that is to say , to love them most of all , is to doe that honour to them which is onely due to god. which is to play the idolater . sophr. that is very true , bathynous , and the same that the apostle glances at , when he calls covetousness idolatry . bath . that also , o sophron , is very perversly and un-platonically done of cuphophron , that , whereas the platonists from that notion of things having some similitude or at least some shadow of the divinity in them , would draw men off from the doting on these meaner objects , that they might approch nearer the pure and essential fountain of these more minute delights , and enjoy them there more fully and beatifically ; he by a strange rapturous rhetorick and perverted ratiocination would charm them in the present enjoyment of these smaller perfections , and fix them down to that , which ought onely to be a footstool to stand upon to reach higher . philop. gentlemen , although the wit and eloquence of cuphophron's harangue is indeed notable , and your opposing so diligently the ill consequences of his enthusiastick rhetorick very commendable : yet i must crave leave to profess , that i take his sophistry to be so conspicuous , that i think it not needfull for any body more operosely to confute it . i believe it was onely a sudden rapture , a blast that came with this evening-aire , and will be blown over again with the morning-winde , and this influence of the moon dried quite up by the greater heat and warmth of the next meridian sun. cuph. indeed , philopolis , it was a very sweet waft , and smelt wonderfull odoriferously of the eglantines and honey-suckles . but if it be not so salutiferous , i wholly submit it to your severer judgements . hyl. in the mean time i am quite at a loss for satisfaction touching the weightiest difficulty i have yet propounded , viz. how it can be consistent with the nature of god , who is goodness it self , to permit sin in the world , if it be so real an evil , and not onely a less good , as cuphophron's inspired muse , like a bird of athens , has so loudly sung to us this moon-shine night . philop. i pray you , hylobares , make your address to philotheus : you know how successfull he has been hitherto . philoth. if that would quiet your minde , hylobares , i could indulge to you so far as to give you leave to think that , although sin be in it self absolutely evil , ( as being an incongruity or disproportionality onely betwixt things , not the things themselves , for all things are good in their degree ) yet the motions , ends or objects of sinfull actions are at least some lesser good : which i charitably conceive may be all that cuphophron aimed at in that enthusiastick hurricane he was carried away with , and all that he will stand to upon more deliberate thoughts with himself . cuph. yes , i believe it will be thereabout to morrow morning , after i have slept upon 't . and i return you many thanks , philotheus , for your candid interpretation . philoth. but methinks the question is in a manner as nice , why god should suffer any creature to chuse the less good for the greater , as permit him to sin . for this seems not according to the exactness of a perfectly-benign providence . hyl. you say right , philotheus ; and therefore if you could but clear that point , i believe it will go far for the clearing all . philoth. why , this scruple , hylobares , concerning the souls of men , is much-what the same ( if not something easier ) with that concerning the bodies of both men and beasts . for the omnipotency of god could keep them from diseases and death it self , if need were . why therefore are they subject to diseases , but that the wisedome of god in the contrivance of their bodies will act onely according to the capacity of corporeal matter ; and that he intends the world should be an automaton , a self-moving machina or engine , that he will not perpetually tamper with by his absolute power , but leave things to run on according to that course which he has put in nature ? for it is also the perfection of his work to be in some sort like its artificer , independent ; which is a greater specimen of his wisedome . hyl. but you should also shew that his goodness was not excluded the consultation , o philotheus . philoth. no more is it , so far as there is a capacity of its coming in , for any thing that humane reason can assure it self to the contrary . for let me first puzzle you , hylobares , with that position of the stoicks , that the minde of man is as free as iupiter himself , as they rant it in their language , and that he cannot compell our will to any thing , but what-ever we take to must be from our own free principle , nothing being able to deal with us without our selves : as a man that is fallen into a deep ditch , if he will not so much as give his fellow his hand , he cannot pull him out . nor may this seem more incongruous or inconsistent with the omnipotency of god , then that he cannot make a square whose diagonial is commensurate to the side , or a finite body that has no figure at all . for these are either the very essence or the ess●ntial consequences of the things spoken of , and it implies a contradiction they should exist without them . so we will for dispute sake affirm , that liberty of will is an essential property of the soul of man , and can no more be taken from her , then the proper affections of a geometricall figure from the figure ; unless she once determine , or intangle her self in fate , which she cannot doe but of her self , or else fix herself above fate , and fully incorporate with the simple good. for , to speak pythagorically , the spirits of men and of all the fallen angels are as an isosceles betwixt the isopleuron and scalenum , not so ordinate a figure as the one , nor so inordinate as the other ; so these spiri●s of men and angels are a middle betwixt the more pure and intellectual spirits uncapable of falling from , and the souls of beasts uncapable of rising to the participation of divine happiness . wherefore if you take away this vertible principle in man , you would make him therewithall of another species , either a perfect beast , or a pure intellect . hyl. this opinion of the stoicks is worth our farther considering of . but in the mean time why might not man have been made a pure intelligence at first ? philoth. why should he so , hyloares , sith the creation of this middle order makes the numbers of the pure intellectual orders never the fewer ? not to adde , that your demand is as absurd as if you should ask why every flie is not made a swallow , every swallow an eagle , and every eagle an angel , because an angel is better then any of the other creatures i named . there is a gradual descension of the divine fecunditie in the creation of the world. hyl. this is notable , philotheus , and unexpected . but were it not better that god almighty should annihilate the individuals of this middle vertible order , as you call it , so soon as they lapse into sin , then let such an ugly deformity emerge in the creation ? philoth. this is a weighty question , hylobares ; but yet such as , i hope , we both may ease our selves of , if we consider how unbecoming it would be to the wisedome of god to be so over-shot in the contrivance of the creation , as that he must be ever and anon enforced to annihilate some part of it , as being at a loss what else to doe , and if they should all lapse , to annihilate them all . hyl. why ? he might create new in a moment , philotheus . philoth. but how-ever these would be very violent and harsh , though but short , chasma's in the standing creation of god. i appeal to your own sense , hylobares , would that look handsomely ? hyl. i know not what to think of it . besides , if that were true that some philosophers contend for , that all the whole creation , as well particular souls and spirits as the matter and universal spirit of the world , be from god by necessary emanation , this middle vertible order can never be turned out of being . but that the stability of god's nature and actions should not be according to the most exquisite wisedome and goodness , would be to me the greatest paradox of all . philoth. why , who knows but that it is better for them to exist , though in this lapsed state , and better also for the universe , that so they may be left to toy and revell in the slightest and obscurest shadows of the divine fulness , then to be suddenly annihilated upon their first lapse or transgression ? for to be taken up with a less good is better then to be exiled out of being , and to enjoy no good at all . hyl. that it is better for them is plain according to the opinion of all metaphysicians : but how is it better for the universe , philotheus ? philoth. how do you know but that it is as good for the universe , computing all respects , if it be not better ? and that is sufficient . for man is betwixt the intellectual orders and the beasts , as a zoophyton betwixt the beasts 〈◊〉 the plants . i demand therefo●● , if the zoophyta some of them 〈◊〉 degenerate into mere plants , while others emerge into the condition of animals , and so they should ever and anon be ascending and descending , what great hurt were done : what contradiction to the divine goodness would there be in this ? hyl. i confess , philotheus , i see no great hurt in that . philoth. man therefore being of such a mixt nature , and of so invincible a freeness , that he may either associate himself with angels , or sort himself with apes and baboons or satyrs of the wood , what more hurt is there , he so doing , then that there are apes and baboons already ? and who can tell just how many there ought to be of any of those orders ; or why there must be just so many orders of apes or satyrs , and no more ? hyl. i must confess it were a rash charge against providence on this account , and hard to prove but that it is indifferent , as touching individuals of this or that order , to have some thousands more or some thousands less , it may be myriads , and yet the good of the universe much-what alike concerned in either number . and there is the same reason proportionally touching the number of the orders themselves . such variations as these , it 's likely , may not bear so great stress with them , as to force god to betake himself to that extremest of remedies , annihilation . philoth. but now in the second place , hylobares , supposing mankind of a vincible freeness or liberty of will ; what , would you have god administer some such powerfull philtrum to all of them , that he might even force their affections towards those more precious emanations of himself which are more properly called divine ? hyl. yes , philotheus , i would . philoth. but i much question how this will alwaies consist with the divine justice . for i think it as incongruous that the divine goodness should alwaies act according to the simplicity of its own nature ; as it is unnatural for the beams of the sun to be reverberated to our eyes from severall bodies variously surfaced in the same form of light , and not to put on the face of divers colours , such as yellow , green , red , purple , and the like . for as the various superficies of bodies naturally causes such a diversification of pure light , and changes it into the form of this or that colour ; so the variety of objects the divine goodness looks upon does rightfully require a certain modification and figuration of her self into sundry forms and shapes , ( as i may so call them ) of vengeance , of severity , of justice , of mercy , and the like . this therefore is the thing i contend for , that free agents , such as men and angels , may so behave themselves in the sight of god , that they will become such objects of his goodness , that it cannot be duely and rightfully expected that it should act according to its pure and proper benign form , dealing gently and kindly with all the tenderness that may be with the party it acts upon ; but it must step forth in some of those more fierce and grim forms , ( i speak after the manner of men ) such as vengeance and iustice. and i will now put a case very accommodately to our own faculties . suppose some vertuous and beautifull virgin , royally descended and princely attired , who , venturing too far into the solitary fields or woods , should be light upon by some rude wretch , who , first having satisfied his lustfull desires upon her by a beastly rape , should afterwards most barbarously and despightfully use her , haling her up and down by the hair of the head , soiling her sacred body by dragging her through miry ditches and dirty plashes of water , and tearing her tender skin upon briars and brambles , whiles in the mean time some knight-errant or man of honour and vertue ( but of as much benignity of spirit as god can communicate to humane nature without hypostaticall union ) is passing by that way , and discerneth with his astonished eyes this abhorred spectacle : i now appeal to your own sense and reason , hylobares , whether it be enough for that heros to rescue this distressed virgin from the abominable injury of this villain , and to secure her from any farther harm ; or whether there ought not to be added also some exquisite torture and shamefull punishment worthy so hainous a fact , and proportionable to the just indignation any noble spirit would conceive against so villainous a crime , though neither the wronged person nor punished party were at all bettered by it . hyl. for my part , philotheus , i should be in so high a rage against the villain , if i were on the spot , that i should scarce have the discretion how to deliberate to punish him so exquisitely as he deserved ; but in my present fury should hew him a-pieces as small as herbs to the pot . i should cut him all into mammocks , philotheus . philoth. wherefore , hylobares , you cannot but confess that goodness it self in some circumstances may very justly and becomingly be sharpened into revenge : which must be still the less incongruous , in that the revenge is in the behalf of injured goodness , though she get nothing thereby but that she is revenged . euist. to this case that notion of punishment appertains which the greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as gellius observes ; which nothing concerns the reformation or amendment of the punished , but onely the honour of the injured or offended . philoth. right , euistor . but in the mean time it is manifest from hence , as i was making inference to hylobares , that the divine goodness may step forth into anger and revenge , and yet the principle of such actions may be the very goodness it self . which therefore we contend is still ( notwithstanding that evil which may seem to be in the world ) the measure of all god's works of providence , even when sin is punished with sin , and men are suffered to degenerate into baboons and beasts . hyl. i grant to you , philotheus , that a man may behave himself so , as that all that you affirm may be true , and that even the highest severity may have no other fountain then goodness . but where goodness is omnipotent , as it is in god , how can it consist therewith not to prevent all occasions of severity and revenge , by keeping his creature within the bounds of his own laws , and by communicating to all men and angels such an irresistible measure of grace , that they could never have possibly been disobedient to him ? philoth. to this , hylobares , i answer , that god having made a free creature , ( and it is impossible to prove he did amiss in making it ) omnipotency it self ( if i may speak it with reverence ) is not able to keep off certain unavoidable respects or congruities it bears to the divine attributes : as it is a thing utterly unimaginable that even the eternall intellect of god should be able to produce a finite number that did not bear a certain proportion to some other finite number first given . this free creature therefore now made , necessarily faces the severall attributes of god with sundry respects . and this native freedom in it challenges of his wisedome , that she shew her best skill in dealing with a creature that is free with as little violence done to its nature as may be . which we see the wisedome of god has practised upon matter , as i noted awhile agoe . and yet the defacement of rightly-organized matter is as real an entrenchment upon or opposition of what is intellectual or divine , ( i mean the divine idea's themselves ) as vice or immorality . as the divine wisedome therefore forces not the terrestriall matter beyond the bounds of its own natural capacity , to fend all animals bodies from diseases and death ; no more should the divine goodness universally in all free creatures irresistibly prevent the use of their own nature . and therefore being free , they ought , according to the congruity of their condition , be put to the triall what they will doe . and if the miscarriage be upon very strong temptations that did even almost over-power the strength of the free creature , this state of the case is a meet object of the mercy of god. but if it have strength enough , and has been often and earnestly invited to keep close to and to pursue after those things that are best , and yet perpetually slights them and shuffles them off , the party thus offending is a congruous object of the divine slight and scorn ; & it is but just that such an one be left to follow his own swindge , and to finde such a fate as attends such wilde courses . for it seems a kinde of disparagement , to pin vertue and divine grace upon the sleeves of them that are unwilling to receive it . it would be as unseemly as the forcing of a rich , beautifull and vertuous bride upon some poor slouching clown , whether he would or no. hyl. but god may make them willing . philoth. that is , hylobares , you may give the clown a philtrum or love-potion . but is not this still a great disparagement to the bride ? wherefore for the general it is fit , that god should deal with free creatures according to the freedom of their nature : but yet , rather then all should goe to ruine , i do not see any incongruity but that god may as it were lay violent hands upon some , and pull them out of the fire , and make them potent , though not irresistible , instruments of pulling others out also . this is that election of god for whom it was impossible for others that have arrived to a due pitch of the divine life . but for those that still voluntarily persist to run on in a rebellious way against god and the light that is set before them , and at last grow so crusted in their wickedness , that they turn professed enemies of god and goodness , scoff at divine providence , riot and lord it in the world , with the contempt of religion and the abuse and persecution of them that profess it ; that out of the stubborn blindness of their own hearts , being given up to covetousness , pride and sensuality , vex and afflict the consciencious with abominable tyranny and cruelty ; i think it is plain that these are a very sutable object for divine fury and vengeance , that sharp and severe modification of the divine goodness , to act upon . hyl. truly this is very handsome , philotheus , and pertinent , if not cogent . philoth. but lastly , hylobares , though we should admit that the whole design of divine providence is nothing else but the mere disburthening of his overflowing goodness upon the whole creation , and that he does not stand upon the terms of justice and congruity , or any such punctilio's , ( as some may be ready here to call them ) but makes his pure goodness the measure of his dealing with both men and angels ; yet i say that it does not at all contradict , but that god may permit sin in the world , he having the privilege of bringing light out of darkness , and the nature of things being such , that the lessening of happiness in one is the advancement of it in another : as it is in the motion of bodies , what agitation one loses , is transferred upon another ; or like the beams of the sun , that retunded from this body are received by another , and nothing is lost . so that in gross the goodness of god may be as fully derived upon the creation , though not so equally distributed to particular creatures , upon his permitting sin in the world , as if he did forcibly , and against the nature of free creatures , perpetually keep it out . this is that therefore that i would say , that the vices of the wicked intend and exercise the vertues of the just . what would become of that noble indignation of minde that holy men conceive against wicked and blasphemous people , if there were neither wickedness nor blasphemy in the world ? what would become of those enravishing vertues of humility , meekness , patience and forbearance , if there were no injuries amongst men ? what had the godly whereupon to employ their wit and abilities , if they had no enemies to grapple with ? how would their faith be tried , if all things here below had been carried on in peace and righteousness and in the fear of god ? how would their charity and sedulity be discovered in endeavouring to gain men to the true knowledge of god , if they were alwaies found so to their hands ? terrestriall goodness would even grow sluggish and lethargicall , if it were not sharpened and quickned by the antiperistasis of the general malignity of the world. there are no generous spirits but would even desire to encounter with dangers and difficulties , to testifie their love to the parties they are much endeared to ; and it is an exceeding great accession to their enjoyments , that they have suffered so much for them . but if the world were not generally wicked for a time , no soul of man could meet with any such adventure , and the history of ages would be but a flat story . day it self upon this earth would be tiresome , if it were alwaies day , and we should lose those chearfull salutes of the emerging light , the cool breathings and the pleasing aspects of the rosie morning . the joys and solemnities of victories and triumphs could never be , if there were no enemies to conflict with , to conquer and triumph over . and the stupendious undertakings of the saviour of mankinde , and the admirable windings of providence in her dramatick plot which has been acting on this stage of the earth from the beginning of the world , had been all of them stopped and prevented , if the souls of men had not been lapsed into sin. and the sweetest and most enravishing musicall touches upon the melancholized passions ( so far as i know ) of both men and angels had never sounded in the consort of the universe , if the orders of free agents had never played out of tune . nothing therefore of the divine goodness seems to be lost , whenas the very corruption of it , as in a grain of corn cast into the ground , makes for its encrease ; and what of it is rejected by some , is by the wisedome of god so unavoidably conveyed upon others . but that it is best that all should partake alike of the overflowings of god , will , i think , be no less difficult to prove , then that all subordination of estates and conditions in the world should be taken away , and that god should not have created any of the more vile and contemptible kinde of creatures , such as the worm , the fly , the frog , and the mouse . wherefore it being so disputable a point , whether it be not in it self as good that there should be those that are rightly called evil and wicked in the world , as that there should be such and such viler or more mischievous creatures on the face of the earth , it is an unexcusable piece of rashness to conclude , that the permission of sin is any such argument against the goodness of that providence that guideth all things . for why should she generally force or certainly determine the faculties of men that are naturally free , and so perpetually keep them off from acting of sin , whenas sin it self is so pompously led captive by the power of righteousness , and by the admirable wisedome of god serves for the equal advancement of his intended goodness ? hyl. your reason , or your zealous eloquence , or both of them jointly , strike so strongly upon my minde , o philotheus ▪ that i am , whether i will or no , constrained to look upon it as a desperate doubt or difficulty , and such as i never hope to be resolved of , whether , considering the comprehension of all , god's permission of sin be more becoming his goodness , or his perpetuall forcible hindering thereof . and therefore the goodness of divine providence being so conspicuous in other things , i think i ought not to call it into question from matters that be so obscure , but to surmize the best . sophr. excellently well inferred , hylobares . hyl. but there are yet two scruples behinde touching the circumstances of this permission that something gaul my mind , which if philotheus please to free me of , i shall sleep the quieter this night . philoth. what are those scruples , hylobares ? hyl. the one is , why , though it may not prove worth the while for divine omnipotency to prevent all sin in the world by absolutely determining the humane faculties to the best objects , that yet , when these faculties of men are determined to the best objects , there should not appear a more palpable assistence of the deity to make the ways of religion and godliness more easie and passable to poor toiling mortals , who are so pittifully tired and wearied out in their pious prosecutions , that they often forfeit not onely the health of their bodies , but even the soundness of their minds , and are given over either to miserable mopedness or distraction . the other in brief is , the externall adversitie of the just , and prosperity of the wicked . for in this god does not seem to assist the converted wills of men so favourably as he may . philoth. that it is an hard thing for us mortals , whose abode is in houses of clay , to arrive to any due pitch of purity and goodness , experience does so frequently witness , that it cannot be denied . but that this is no real blemish to the benignity of providence , if a man look more narrowly into the nature of the thing● he may easily satisfie himself from manifold reasons . for , first , if we had any modesty in us , we may very well suspect that the pain and torture we undergoe in the process of our regeneration is but a just punishment of our former sins , in which they that stay the longest come out with the greatest sorrow and di●●iculty . . besides , in other things we hold it not indecorous , that matters of greatest price should be purchased with answerable pains . for what has god given us severall faculties for , but to employ them to the emprovement of our own good ? . again , by this means of god's acting according to our nature , not by his absolute power in some mighty and over-bearing miraculous way , the acquisition of the holy life becomes a mystery , and men to the great gratification of one another record the method and , as i may so say , the artifical process thereof . a thing of greater moment then the finding out the most sovereign elixir or the philosopher's stone . . the tiresomeness of the fight makes the victory more pleasant and sensible , and the continuance of the quarrell fixes more deeply upon our spirits an antipathy against sin ; and the hardness we finde in winding our selves out of the bondage of wickedness will more strongly establish us in the kindgdome of vertue . . it is a meet triall of our faith and sincerity , and entire affection to god. for when we perceive our selves hold on notwithstanding all these combats and incumbrances , we are assured in our selves that we are in good earnest , and that we shall at last obtain , if we faint not . . and that therefore we ought rather to examine our own sincerity , then accuse providence . for if our love to goodness be sincere , and not lazy and phantasticall , it will hold out with patience ; which vertue is exercised and increased by these present trialls . . we are also to examine our faith and opinion concerning god's will and power , whether we think him as well willing as able to help all those that sincerely seek after him ; which is essentially congruous to the divine nature and goodness ; and whether we believe that through his power we may be inabled to get the conquest over all the enormities of the animal life . and if we think god is not so good to his creature , let us consider whether we could serve the creature so , if we were in god's stead . if we could , it is the wickedness of our own nature that has thus infected the notion of god in us , and so our own evil spirit is our fury and devil that at last may chance to drive us into madness . if we could not deal thus our selves , how foolish a thing is it not presently to collect , that we cannot be more benign then god , and that therefore the fault is in our selves that we are no better ? moreover we are to consider , that clearness and serenity of minde is not to be had without the forsaking all manner of sin ; and that if we hope otherwise , it is an indication of our own hypocrisie , that we would hold a league with both light and darkness at once . and therefore we see as touching religious distraction , that we our selves may be the causes of it , and that it is but the just result of our own insincerity . but for down right-madness proceeding from melancholy , it is natural disease , and respects the physician rather then either the philosopher or divine . . and lastly , the great desertions , dark privations , desperate temptations , enfeeblements of minde and body , or what-ever other inconveniences , as they seem to be , occurr in this process towards the due pitch of regeneration and newness of life , they very effectually and naturally make for that most precious and truest piece of piety , i mean humility ; whereby the soul is so affected , that she very feelingly and sensibly acknowledges that all the good she does or knows is wholly from god her maker , and that she is nothing of her self . wherefore she is just to god , in attributing all to him ; and milde and meek-hearted towards men , even to those that are yet out of the way , being conscious to her self , that the ordering of her ways is not from herself , but that god is her strength and the light of her paths . wherefore there being such genuine advantages in this slow process of them that move towards what is truly good , and that congruity to our faculties , and to the nature of the things we seek after , it seems to me as unreasonable that god should use his absolute omnipotency in making men good in a moment , so soon as they have a minde to be so , as to expect he should make the flowers suddenly start out of the earth in winter , or load the trees with autumnall fruit in spring . euist. there 's nothing can stand against the power of philotheus his reasonings . this first was by far the more difficult probleme of the two , and how easily has he solved it ? the other , which is the more ordinary , never seemed to me to have the least force in it , since i met with the story of the eremite and the angel. philop. i pray you what story is that , euistor ? euist. i hope , philopolis , you would not have me to interrupt philotheus , by reciting of it . philoth. by all means let 's hear it , euistor . i shall not proceed quietly till you have told it . it will at least give me some respite , who have spoken so much already , and it is likely may save me the labour of proceeding any farther on that subject . euist. i will not tell it , o philotheus , but upon condition that you will afterwards proceed as copiously as if i had said nothing . philop. i will undertake he shall , euistor . euist. the story then in brief is this . that a certain eremite having conceived great jealousies touching the due administration of divine providence in externall occurrences in the world , in this anxiety of mind was resolved to leave his cell , and travell abroad , to see with his own eyes how things went abroad in the world. he had not gone half a day's journey , but a young man overtook him and joyn'd company with him , and insinuated himself so far into the eremite's affection , that he thought himself very happy in that he had got so agreeable a companion . wherefore resolving to take their fortunes together , they always lodged in the same house . some few days travels had over-past before the eremite took notice of any thing remarkable . but at last he observed that his fellow-traveller , with whom he had contracted so intimate a friendship , in a house where they were extraordinary well treated stole away a gilt cup from the gentleman of the house , and carried it away with him . the eremite was very much astonished with what he saw done by so fair and agreeable a person as he conceived him to be , but thought not yet fit to speak to him or seem to take notice of it . and therefore they travel fairly on together as aforetimes , till night forced them to seek lodging . but they light upon such an house as had a very unhospitable owner , who shut them out into the outward court , and exposed them all night to the injury of the open weather , which chanced then to be very rainy . but the eremite's fellow-traveller unexpectedly compensated his host's ill entertainment with no meaner a reward then the gilt cup he had carried away from the former place , thrusting it in at the window when they departed . this the eremite thought was very pretty , and that it was not covetousness , but humour , that made him take it away from its first owner . the next night , where they lodged , they were treated again with a deal of kindness and civility : but the eremite observed with horrour that his fellow-traveller for an ill requitall strangled privately a young child of their so courteous host in the cradle . this perplext the minde of the poor eremite very much ; but in sadness and patience forbearing to speak , he travelled another day's journey with the young man , and at evening took up in a place where they were more made of then anywhere hitherto . and because the way they were to travell the next morning was not so easie to find , the master of the house commanded one of the servants to go part of the way to direct them ; whom , while they were passing over a stone-bridge , the eremite's fellow-traveller caught suddenly betwixt the legs and pitched him headlong from off the bridge into the river , and drowned him . here the eremite could have no longer patience , but flew bitterly upon his fellow-traveller for these barbarous actions , and renounced all friendship with him , and would travel with him no longer nor keep him company . whereupon the young man smiling at the honest zeal of the eremite , and putting off his mortal disguise , appeared as he was , in the form and lustre of an angel of god , and told him that he was sent to ease his minde of the great anxiety it was incumbred with touching the divine providence . in which , said he , nothing can occurr more perplexing and paradoxicall then what you have been offended at since we two travelled together . but yet i will demonstrate to you , said he , that all that i have done is very just and right . for as for that first man from whom i took the gilded cup , it was a real compensation indeed of his hospitality ; that cup being so forcible an occasion of the good man's distempering himself , and of hazarding his health and life , which would be a great loss to his poor neighbours , he being of so good and charitable a nature . but i put it into the window of that harsh and unhospitable man that used us so ill , not as a booty to him , but as a plague and scourge to him , and for an ease to his oppressed neighbours , that he may fall into intemperance , diseases , and death it self . for i knew very well that there was that inchantment in this cup , that they that had it would be thus bewitched with it . and as for that civil person whose childe i strangled in the cradle , it was in great mercy to him , and no real hurt to the childe , who is now with god. but if that childe had lived , whereas this gentleman hitherto had been piously , charitably and devoutly given , his minde , i saw , would have unavoidably sunk into the love of the world , out of love to his childe , ●he having had none before , and doting so hugely on it ; and therefore i took away this momentanie life from the body of the childe , that the soul of the father might live for ever . and for this last fact , which you so much abhorr , it was the most faithfull piece of gratitude i could doe to one that had used us so humanely and kindely as that gentleman did . for this man , who by the appointment of his master was so officious to us as to shew us the way , intended this very night ensuing to let in a company of rogues into his master's house , to rob him of all that he had , if not to murther him and his family . and having said thus , he vanished . but the poor eremite , transported with joy and amazement , lift up his hands and eyes to heaven , and gave glory to god , who had thus unexpectedly delivered him from any farther anxiety touching the ways of his providence ; and thus returned with chearfulness to his forsaken cell , and spent the residue of his daies there in piety and peace . philoth. it is an excellent good story indeed , euistor , and so much to the purpose , that it is plainly superfluous to adde any more words touching this theme . philop. but i believe , philotheus , that neither euistor nor hylobares will be so satisfy'd . euist. for my part , i challenge the performance of your promise , o philopolis , that the condition upon which i told the story may be made good to me , namely , that philotheus be never the briefer in his satisfaction to hylobares for my unseasonable interpellation by this parabolicall story . hyl. and i am of that childish humour , that i do not relish any drink so well as that out of mine own usual sucking-bottle ; wherefore i expect farther refreshment , philotheus , from your more nervous eloquence . philop. my credit also , philotheus , is at the stake , if you do not utter your sentiments upon this subject . philoth. but in the mean while , philopolis , it does me good to observe what fine sense hylobares speaks in so unmeet a demand , as if strong meat were for babes . hyl. but strong drink may be for them ; for some give such to children so soon as they be born . philop. nay he is even with you there , philotheus ; you had better have fallen directly upon the matter without these delays . philoth. well then , philopolis , i will doe so , becaus● you urge me so much 〈◊〉 it , though in my own judgement i think it needless . the difficulty propounded alwaies seemed to me one of the easiest to be solved , though the most ordinarily complain'd of , i mean , the impunity and prosperity of the wicked , and the affliction and adversity of the good. for first , what is alledged concerning the impunity of the wicked is not onely false , but impossible . for how can the wicked escape punishment , when wickedness it self is one of the greatest penalties ? or how can they be said to be prosperous , who have nothing succeed according to their own scope and meaning ? for every man means well , as socrates wisely determines ; but it is the perpetuall unhappiness of the wicked that he does that which is ill . so great is his ignorance and impotency , that he cannot reach the mark he aims at ; but wishing the best to himself , as all other men do , yet notwithstanding he really prosecutes that which is worst . and therefore with the wise he can be no object of envy , but of pity . and it is an unmeet thing that any sentence concerning divine providence should be carried by the votes of fools . when a drunken man breaks glass-windows , ravishes women , stabs men in the streets , and does many such villainies as these , i appeal to you , hylobares , what privilege or prosperity is there in this , ( though he were not to be punished by the magistrate ) having done that which indeed he had no true minde to doe , but did heartily detest and abhorr when he was sober ? this is the true state of all wicked men whatsoever ; let their power be never so high , they act like drunkards or men in a dream , such things as they will be ashamed of so soon as they are sober or awakened . sophr. this is the very philosophy of the apostle , o philotheus , what fruit have ye then of those things whereof ye are now ashamed ? philoth. now as it is evident , hylobares , that they are punished in the forfeiture of that high happiness that consists in the peace and joy of a purify'd minde , wherein resides the true knowledge of god , and a living sense of the comeliness and pulchritude of grace and vertue ; so likewise there is an infliction of internall pain to their very senses . for what torture can there be greater then that rack of pride , those scorpion-stripes of envy , those insatiable scorching flames and torches of furies , untamed lust ? what then strangling cares , then the severe sentences of their own prejudging fears ? what dungeon more noisome , horrid or dismall , then their suspicious ignorance , and oppressing loads of surprising grief and melancholy ? again , it is farther manifest that the wicked are plagued even in this life ; for they are a mutual plague and scourge one to another , and take the office of executioners and hangmen by turns . for all the noise of injury and injustice in the world is ordinarily nothing else but a complaint that wicked men abuse one another . wherefore why should it be expected that divine providence should forthwith take vengeance of the executioners of his own justice ? but for those few righteous that are in the world , they are bettered by those things that seem to the idiot and unskilfull the onely evils that mortals can fall into . but the infelicity of the godly is commonly this , that they will scramble with the men of this world for such things as are the most proper happiness of those that are wicked . for they fighting with them thus as with cocks on their own dunghill , it is no marvell they come by the worst ; for this is their hour and the power of darkness . thirdly , it is manifest that the peace and impunity of the wicked is very serviceable for the exercising of the vertues of the righteous , whereby they may discern their own sincerity or hypocrisie , and discover whether it be the pure love of piety that puts them in such a garb , or the desire of the praise and countenance of men ; whether the profession of their faith in god and of future happiness be formal , or real . for if it be real , what will not they be able to undergoe ? and what an high cordial must it be unto them , to have an unfeigned sense and belief of that great compensation they are to receive in the world to come ? not to mention what a great satisfaction the consciousness of constant sincerity is to the soul of a man even in this life also . wherefore the strokes of the confusion and unrighteous disorder in the world do in a manner miss the righteous , and hit heavy onely there where they should doe , upon the ungodly themselves . but what reaches those that are deemed more just , they are in all reason and modesty to look upon it as either a punishment of some reliques of vices in them , or as an exercise of their vertues , that god may be glorify'd in them . wherefore if any thing harsh happen to a good man , he will forthwith examine himself if his heart be clean : which if it be not , he is to look upon it as a chastisement ; if it be , he will bear it and embrace it as a triall from god , and as an occasion whereby he may glorifie the power of god in him . but if he doe not thus , it is a sign his heart is not clean , and therefore why should he grumble that he is punished ? fourthly , that tyranny , murther , perjurie , blasphemy and exorbitant lust has been notoriously and exemplarily punished by a kinde of divine vengeance , and above all the expectation of men , even in this life , in severall persons , is so noted in history , that i need name no instances . but to pursue every monstrositie of wickedness with present punishment here in this world , were not to make men good , but to hinder the wicked from mischieving and scourging one another , and from exercising the vertues of the righteous . fifthly , in that wickedness is not so constantly and adequately punished in this life , there is also this convenience in it , that it is a shrewd argument to any indifferent person that understands the nature and attributes of god , that there is a reward to come hereafter in the other life . to all which i adde in the last place , that the affairs of this world are like a curious , but intricately-contrived , comedy , and that we cannot judge of the tendency of what is past or acting at present before the entrance of the last act , which shall bring in righteousness in triumph : who though she has abided many a brunt , and has been very cruelly and despightfully used hitherto in the world , yet at last , according to our desires , we shall see the knight overcome the giant . and then i appeal to you , hylobares , whether all things have not been carried on according to the natural relish of your own faculties . for what is the reason we are so much pleased with the reading romances and the fictions of poets , but that here , as aristotle says , things are set down as they should be , but in the true history hitherto of the world things are recorded indeed as they are , but it is but a testimony that they have not been as they should be ? wherefore in the upshot of all , if we shall see that come to pass that so mightily pleases us in the reading the most ingenious plays and heroick poems , that long afflicted vertue at last comes to the crown , the mouth of all unbelievers must be for ever stopped . and for my own part , i doubt not but that it will so come to pass in the last close of the world. but impatiently to call for vengeance upon every enormity before that time , is rudely to overturn the stage before the entrance into the fifth act , out of ignorance of the plot of the comedy , and to prevent the solemnity of the general judgement by more petty and particular executions . these are briefly the six heads , hylobares , which i might have insisted upon to clear providence from this last allegation , had there been any great difficulty in the matter . hyl. what you have already intimated , philotheus , from these six heads , and euistor suggested by that handsome parable , has , i must confess , so fully satisfy'd me in this last point , that it makes the difficulty look as if it had been none at all . philop. in this last point , hylobares ? that 's but one point . but i pray you ingenuously declare how much at ease you finde your self touching the other difficulties you propounded . hyl. very much , i 'll assure you , philopolis , touching all of them for the present . but what dark clouds may again overcast my minde by our next meeting , i cannot divine aforehand . but you shall be sure to hear of it , if any thing occurr that dissettles me . in the mean time i am sure i finde my self in a very gay and chearfull condition . philop. we may then very seasonably adjourn this meeting , o cuphophron , to six a clock to morrow in the afternoon . cuph. i shall then be again very happy , o philopolis , in my enjoyment of so excellent company . in the mean time my service to you in this glass of wine ; for i think neither you nor any one else has drunk since they came hither , they have been so intent upon the discourse . philop. it is utterly needless this summer-time , o cuphophron . cuph. it is very convenient to drink one glass , to correct the crudities of the nocturnall air and vapours . this therefore is truly to your good health , o philopolis . philop. well , since it must be so , i thank you kindely , cuphophron . hyl. nay , gentlemen , if you fall a-drinking , i may well fall a-whistling on my flagellet . cuph. what , do you mean to make us all horses , to whistle us while we are a-drinking ? hyl. nay , cuphophron , i whistle that you may drink , and all little enough to make philotheus , bathynous and sophron to take off their glasses . bath . i believe hylobares his whistling may have a more symbolicall meaning in it then we are aware of , and intimate to us that eating and drinking are acts common to us with the beasts . philop. be if so , bathynous , yet these acts are sometimes necessary for men also . nor is it inconvenient to drink to my next neighbour philotheus , not onely to fortifie him against the nocturnall vapours , but likewise to recruit his spirits , which he may have over-much expended in his long and learned discourses . philoth. the fresh air , philopolis , moistened with the moon-shine , as cuphophron noted , is as effectual to that purpose , if i had been at any such expense . philop. but this glass of wine will help to correct the crudity of that moisture : wherefore my service to you , philotheus . philoth. i thank you heartily , philopolis , i will pledge you . philop. it is very good wine . philoth. i shall commend it the more willingly to bathynous , a little to warm and chear his thoughtfull melancholy . bathynous , my service to you . bath . your servant thanks you , philotheus . philoth. i perceive philopolis has a very judicious tast. bath . it is ordinarily the pure effect of temperance to have so . but yet my palate is something more surd and jacent . however i will trie . i promise you it seems to me very good , philotheus , and such as cato himself would not refuse a cup of : which makes me with the more assurance drink to my next neighbour , even to sophron , to chear him after his conceived fears and affrights touching the success of this dispute concerning providence . sophr. the good success , bathynous , chears me more then all the wine in athens can do . and therefore not so much to be cheared , as out of my present chearfulness , i will , readily pledge you one cup. for sobriety is not in drinking no wine at all , but in drinking it moderately . bath . well , my service to you then , sophron. sophr. i thank you , bathynous . euist. but certainly , if my memory fail me not , cato , as grave as he was , would drink more cups of wine then one at a time . sophr. nor do i think that moderate drinking consists in one cup , but in drinking no more then is for the health of both soul and body . and one glass will serve me for that end at this time . euist. your definition is very safe and usefull , i think , o sophron. sophr. and therefore my singular respects to you , euistor , in this single glass of wine . cuph. see the virtue of good canarie , the mere steam of whose volatil atoms has so raised sophron's phancie , that it has made him seem for to offer to quibble before the glass has touched his lips . sophr. it is marvellous good wine indeed . i warrant you , euistor , this will rub up your memory to the purpose , if the recalling how many cups grave cato would take off at a time , may warrant our drinking at any time more then is needfull or convenient . i pray you tast it . euist. i thank you , sophron , i should willingly pledge you , though it were in worse liquour . they have all of them had each man his glass but hylobares , but have excogitated such pretty pretences to accost them they drank to , that i finde i need to have my wit rubb'd up as well as my memory , to hold on this ingenious humour . cuph. do not you observe , euistor , how studiously hylobares has play'd the piper all this time ? take your cue from thence . euist. hylobares , not to interrupt you , my humble service to you in a glass of canarie , to wet your whistle . hyl. i thank you kindly , euistor ; but i profess i was scarce aware what i did , or whether i whistled or no. philop. methinks those airs and that instrument , hylobares , seem too light for the serious discourse we have had so many hours together . hyl. but i 'll assure you , philopolis , my thoughts were never more serious then while i was piping these easie airs on my flagellet . for they are so familiar to me , that i had no need to attend them , and my minde indeed was wholly taken up with objects sutable to our late theme . and even then when i was playing these light tunes , was i recovering into my memory , as well as i could , some part of a philosophick song that once i had by rote , ( both words and tune and all ) which has no small affinity with the matters of this day's discourse . philop. it is much , hylobares , you should be able to attend to such contrary things , so light and so serious , at one and the same time . hyl. that 's no more , philopolis , then euistor did in his story of the angel and the eremite . for i look upon the twisting of a man's mustachio's to be as slight and triviall a thing as the playing on the flagellet . and yet i believe he was at it at least twenty times with his fore-finger and his thumb in his rehearsing that excellent parable , though his minde , i saw , was so taken up with the weightiness of the sense , that his aspect seemed as devout as that of the eremite , who was the chief subject of the story . euist. i pray you , hylobares , take this glass of wine for a reward of your abusing your friend so handsomely to excuse your self , and see if it be so good for the rubbing up the memory as sophron avouches it . for then i hope we shall hear you sing as attentively as you have regardlesly whistled all this time . hyl. the wine is very good , euistor , if it be as good for the memory . but i believe i had already recalled more of those verses to minde then what is convenient to repeat at this time . philop. i prithee , hylobares , repeat but them you have recalled to memory ; it will be both a farther ratification of this unthought-of experiment , and a sutable close of the whole day's discourse . hyl. your desire is to me a command , philopolis ; and therefore for your sake i will hazard the credit of my voice and memory at once . where 's now the objects of thy fears , needless sighs and fruitless tears ? they be all gone like idle dream suggested from the body's steam . o cave of horrour black as pitch ! dark den of spectres that bewitch the weakned phancy sore affright with the grim shades of grisly night ! what 's plague and prison , loss of friends , war , dearth , and death that all things ends ? mere buglears for the childish minde , pure panick terrours of the blinde . collect thy soul into one sphear of light , and 'bove the earth it bear ▪ those wilde scattered thoughts , that erst lay loosely in the world disperst , call in ; thy spirit thus knit in one fair lucid orb , those fears be gone , like vain impostures of the night , that fly before the morning bright . then with pure eyes thou shalt behold how the first goodness doth infold all things in loving tender arms ; that deemed mischiefs are no harms , but sovereign salves , and skilfull cures of greater woes the world endures ; that man 's stout soul may win a state far rais'd above the reach of fate . power , wisedome , goodness sure did frame this universe , and still guide the same . but thoughts from passions sprung deceive vain mortals . no man can contrive a better course then what 's been run since the first circuit of the sun. he that beholds all from an high knows better what to doe then i. i 'm not mine own : should i repine if he dispose of what 's not mine ? purge but thy soul of blinde self-will , thou straight shalt see god does no ill . the world he fills with the bright rays of his free goodness . he displays himself throughout : like common air that spirit of life through all doth fare , suck'd in by them as vital breath who willingly embrace not death . but those that with that living law be unacquainted , cares do gnaw ; mistrusts of providence do vex their souls and puzzled mindes perplex . these rhythms were in my minde , philopolis , when the flagellet was at my mouth . philop. they have an excellent sense in them , and very pertinent to this day's disquisitions . i pray you whose lines are they , hylobares ? hyl. they are the lines of a certain philosophicall poet , who writes almost as hobblingly as lucretius himself ; but i have met with strains here and there in him that have infinitely pleased me ; and these , in some humours , amongst the rest . but i was never so sensible of the weightiness of their meaning as since this day's discourse with philotheus . philop. well , hylobares , if you ruminate on no worse things then these while you play on your flagellet , it will be an unpardonable fault in me ever hereafter to disparage your musick . euist. i think we must hire hylobares to pipe us to our lodgings , else we shall not finde the way out of cuphophron's bower this night , as bright as it is . hyl. that i could doe willingly , euistor , without hire , it is so pleasing a divertisement to me to play on my pipe in the silent moon-light . philop. well , we must abruptly take leave of you , cuphophron , and bid you good night : hylobares is got out of the arbour already , and we must all dance after his pipe. cuph. that would be a juvenile act for your age , philopolis . philop. i mean , we must follow his example , and betake our selves homewards ; for it is now very late . was it a delusion of my sight ? or did there a star shoot obliquely as i put my head out of the arbour ? bath . if the dog-star had been in view , one would have thought him in danger from hylobares his charming whistle . euist. no hags of thessaly could ever whistle the celestial dog out of the sky , bathynous . cuph. how sublimely witty is euistor with one single glass ? euist. good night to you , dear cuphophron . cuph. nay , i will wait on you to your lodgings . philop. by no means , cuphophron ; we will leave you here in your own house ; unless you will give us the trouble of coming back again with you . cuph. good night to you then , gentlemen , all at once . philop. good night to cuphophron . the end of the second dialogue . the third dialogue . philotheus , bathynous , sophron , philopolis , euistor , hylobares , cuphophron . sophr. what tall instrument is this , o cuphophron , that you have got thus unexpectedly into your arbour ? cuph. the tallness discovers what it is , a theorboe . i observing yesternight how musically given the company was , in stead of hylobares his whistle , ( which is more usually play'd upon before bears or dancing dogs then before philosophers or persons of any quality ) have provided this more grave and gentile instrument for them that have a mind to play and sing to it , that so they may , according to the manner of pythagoras , after our philosophicall dissertations , with a solemn fit of musick dismiss our composed mindes to rest . sophr. you abound in all manner of civilities , cuphophron : but do not you play on this instrument your self ? cuph. no , alas ! it is too tall for me , my fingers will not reach the frets . but sometimes with a careless stroak i brush the gittar , and please my self with that more easie melody . hyl. and it would please any one living to see cuphophron at that gracefull exercise , so as i have sometimes taken him ; he is so like the sign at the other end of the street . cuph. this wag hylobares , i dare say , means the sign of the ape and the fiddle . this is in revenge for the disparagement i did his beloved syrinx , the arcadian nymph . philop. i never heard that hylobares had any mistress before . hyl. this is nothing , philopolis , but the exaltedness of cuphophron's phancy and expression ; a poeticall periphrasis of my flagellet , which in disparagement before he called a whistle . philop. but your imagination has been more then even with him , if he interpret you aright . let me intreat you of all love , hylobares , to suppress such light and ludicrous phancies in so serious a meeting . hyl. i shall endeavour to observe your commands for the future ; o philopolis , but i suspect there is some strange reek or efflux of atomes or particles . ( cuph. of particles , by all means , hylobares , for that term is more cartesian . ) hyl. which fume out of cuphophron's body , and infect the air with mirth , though all be not alike subject to the contagion . but for my self , i must profess , that merely by being in cuphophron's presence i find my self extremely prone to mirth , even to ridiculousness . philop. as young men became disposed to vertue and wisedome merely by being in the company of socrates , though he said nothing unto them . cuph. and i must also profess that hylobares is not much behinde-hand with me . for i can never meet him , but it makes me merry about the mouth , and my heart is inwardly tickled with a secret joy . which , for the credit of des-cartes's philosophy , i easily acknowledge may be from the mutuall recourse and mixture of our exhaled atomes , or rather particles , as cartesius more judiciously calls them : for these particles are not indivisible . some also are ready to quarrel one another at the first meeting , as well as hylobares and i to be merry : and you know some chymicall liquours , though quiet and cool separate , yet mingled together will be in such a ragefull fermentation , that the glass will grow hot to the very touch of our fingers . euist. this is learnedly descanted on by cuphophron : but , by the favour of so great a philosopher , i should rather resolve the probleme into some reason analogous to that of those seeds which solinus says the thracians at their feasts cast into the fire , the fume whereof so exhilarated their spirits , that they were no less merry then if they had drank liberally of the strongest wines . hyl. pomponius mela also relates the same of them . but nothing , methinks , illustrates the nature of this phaenomenon better then that experiment of a certain ptarmicon , ( seed or powder , i do not well remember ) which cast secretly into the fire will unexpectedly set the company asneezing . suoh i conceive to be the hidden effluvia of cuphophron's complexion , which thus suddenly excites these ridiculous flashes of my ungovernable phancy , to the just scandal of the more grave and sober : which extravagance i must confess is so much the more unpardonable to my self , by how much my own minde has been since our last meeting more heavy-laden with the most tragicall scenes that are exhibited on this terrestriall globe ; which endeavour to bear against all those ponderous reasons , those dexterous solutions and solid instructions which philotheus yesterday so skilfully produced in the behalf of providence . philop. why , what remains of difficulty , hylobares , either touching the natural or moral evils in the world ? hyl. touching the natural evils , philopolis , i rest still pretty well satisfy'd ; and in that general way that philotheus answered touching moral evils , his solutions seemed to my reason firm enough : but when in solitude i recounted with my self more particularly the enormous deformities and defects that every-where are conspicuous in the nations of the earth , my phancy was soon born down into a diffidence and suspicion , that there is no such accurate providence ( as philotheus contends for ) which does superintend the affairs of mankinde . bath . that is to say , hylobares , after that more then ordinary chearfulness raised in your spirits by your re-acquaintance with those many and most noble truths that philotheus recovered into your mind , ( by his wise discourse ) at which the soul of man , at her first meeting with them again , is as much transported , as when two ancient friends unexpectedly meet one another in a strange countrey , as iamblichus somewhere has noted , i say , after this more then usual transport of joy , your spirits did afterward as much sink and flag , and so melancholy imposed upon your phancy . but there is no fear , things having succeeded so well hitherto , but philotheus will revive you , and dissipate these clouds that seem so dark and dismall to your melancholized imagination . hyl. i believe you will more confidently conclude it melancholy , bathynous , when you have heard what an affrightfull puzzle one thing then seemed to me . bath . i pray you , hylobares , propound it to philotheus . hyl. well , i shall , bathynous , and it is briefly this ; how squalid and forlorn the world seemed to me by reason there are so very few philosophers in it . for the rest of mankinde seemed to me little to differ from baboons or beasts . cuph. o hylobares , how dearly could i hug thee for this meditation ! this is a consideration framed after the sentiments of my own heart . it is a thing i have often in secret bewailed the world for even with tears , i mean , for the paucity of philosophers ; and then most of all , that amongst these few there should be so very few pure and thorough-paced cartesians . these serious thoughts in private have afflicted my heart very sore . philoth. i pray you , cuphophron , be of good comfort , and you , hylobares , let not this scene seem so tragicall to you . for it is a great question , whether the philosophers be not more ridiculous , then they , that are accounted none , deplorable or contemptible . besides , why is this to be charged upon providence , that there are so few ? the book of nature lies open to all , and the generality of men have wit for observation : but it is their own fault , that they had rather please their senses then exercise and improve their reason . but admit that few are born to philosophy , yet all in a manner are born to far better matters : that is to say , it is in the power of every man to be religious , iust , and vertuous , and to enjoy the wholesome pleasures of the animal life in a pious and rational way . wherefore there being so short a cut every-where to prudence and religion , ( if a man be sincere and faithfull , ) i see not how any one is excluded from the most substantial happiness humane nature is capable of . but for other knowledge , if it were every man's , it were scarce the enjoyment of any man. but the confident ignorance of the rude and the unexpected paradoxicalness of the skilfull do fitly furnish out the stage of things , and make more for the sport and pleasure of life , and enhance the price and compensate the labour of finding out or apprehending the more abstruse theories in philosophy . but this peculiar philosophicall happiness is but a very small accession to that moral happiness which is common to all men , if they be not wanting to themselves ; as , to be loyall to a man's prince , to be true to his religion so far as it is true , to deal faithfully with all men , to be kinde to his neighbors , to relieve the oppressed , to be an hearty lover of god and of the whole creation . a man thus affected , and armed with so much prudence as not to deny or assert any thing beyond his clear comprehension and skill in speculative matters , but to admire and adore the ineffable wisedome of his creatour , this man , i say , is a more complete , perfect and unexceptionable person , and more solidly happy , then any philosophers i know that have left their writings to the world as a lasting testimony of their wit , des-cartes himself not excepted ; whose gross extravagancies ( such as making brutes mere machina's , the making every extension really the same with matter , his averring all the phaenomena of the world to arise from mere mechanicall causes ) will be more stared upon and hooted at by impartial posterity , then any other pieces of wit he may have light on can be admired or applauded : which hazard those that adhere onely to vertue and true piety are alwaies secure from . hyl. what think you of this , cuphophron ? cuph. with philotheus his leave , i think the cartesian philosophy a very fine thing for all this . what think you , hylobares ? hyl. i think philotheus has spoken in the main very solidly and home to the purpose , and that the prudent vertuous man is far a more noble and goodly spectacle then any philosophicall knight-errant whatsoever . if he can blow away the rest of those mists and clouds that sit upon my mind with like facility , i hope i shall be in an utter incapacity of raising the least doubt concerning providence for the future . philop. try what philotheus can doe , hylobares . propound to him the rest of your difficulties . hyl. the rest of my difficulties , o philotheus , arise from the view of the manners and religions of the barbarous nations , such as they are described in history , and which indeed are such , so sordid and ridiculous , so horrid and enormous , that they would even force a man's phancy into a distrust that in those nations divine providence has quite forsaken the earth . for if she cast her eye upon them , why does she not either reform them , or confound them and destroy them ? philoth. that the face of things , in some parts of the barbarous nations especially , looks very durtily and dismally , i cannot but acknowledge : but the causes being found out , admiration ought to cease . for that mankinde is in a lapsed condition it cannot be denied , nor that a great part of the invisible powers are sunk into the animal life with them . now that which is the most high and powerfull in the animal life will not let its hold goe so long as it can hang on . whence the most active spirits in this region get the dominion over the more passive , and the kingdome of the prince of the air has proved very large over the nations of the earth , they being so deeply lapsed and immersed into the animal nature . wherefore we cannot expect but that both the rulers and the ruled having fallen from the holy light and the divine benignity of the aethereall nature , that the effects of that government and the garb of their manners should be cruel , squalid , deformed and ridiculous ; a judicious sense of true pulchritude and decency not being able to reside in so dark and distempered complexions , and their envious guardians caring more to tyrannize over them and to make sport with them , then to spare them or to be true guides to them in any thing . all therefore that can be done is , to mitigate as well as we can the sad horrour and mad aspect of this strange theatre , which strikes the phancy so strongly and so harshly . for the wound , by your own proposall of the difficulty , hylobares , i perceive reaches no farther then the phancy ; which is an intimation the better parts of your minde stand sound . and there is another passage i noted , which i shall make use of for the cure of your phancy also , viz. that this squalid face of things is onely in those barbarous nations : wherein there is imply'd a tacit concession that the civilized parts of the world are at least passable . hyl. i must confess it seems to import so much . philoth. and the christian world most of all . hyl. one would think so , philotheus . philoth. wherefore to satisfie your reason and quiet your phancy , if any of us shall shew that either there is no great hurt in such customs of the barbarous nations that seem strange and uncouth to us , or that we our selves have something analogous to them , much of this surprizing horrour and astonishment will be taken off . hyl. i hope so . philoth. in the mean time it is worthy the noting in general , that there being this lapse in mankinde , it is far better that their obliquities and deformities in manners and religion be very much varied , then that they should be every-where one and the same . for that would make transgression look more like a due and settled law of life and firm reason : but now the freeness of the internal spirit of man , that is so active and reflective , having broken the animal life into such varieties of fooleries and vanities , whether national , provincial or personal , we become a mutual theatre one to another , and are in a better capacity of censuring what is evil in our selves by reflecting upon others ; the deformities we espie in others being nothing else but a reprehensive parable touching our selves . for the whole mass of mankinde is like a company fallen asleep by the fire-side , whom some unlucky wag has smutted with his sooty and greazy fingers , and when they awake , every one laughs at the false beards and antick strokes in other mens faces , not at all thinking of his own . but assuredly it is a very easie intimation to him to reflect upon himself , and to look into the glass whether he be not smutted also . wherefore seeing there must be faults in the world , methinks it is more agreeable to reason and providence , that there be a variation of them , though the strangeness thereof surprises us , then that the jar should be alwaies on the same string ; that folly and wickedness may not seem familiar to us in every place we meet with it , but that we may be astartled at the new and unexpected guizes thereof in others , and thereby take occasion to examine if we have nothing akin to it in our selves . this may be said in general , hylobares , but to particulars no answer can be returned , till you propound them . hyl. that i shall doe as they occur to my mind ; but i must implore the aid of fuistor where i am at a loss . the first brutish and barbarous custome that occurrs is the going stark naked , as some nations do , if my memory fail me not . euist. the inhabitants of the west-indies did so , as americus vesputius reports . and paulus venetus relates the same of the abraiamim in the kingdome of lae. again , in the west-indies particularly the maids of venesuella are said to goe as naked as they were born . philoth. i do not deny but that some nations may goe stark naked , as questionless there may be many with little or no covering on them , the parts of modesty excepted : but as to these latter , that this is any such flaw in providence , i understand not . for the clemency of the clime under which these people live , the goodly structure of their bodies , the true shape and symmetry of parts , their prodigious agility , strength , and nimbleness in running , swimming and dancing , their freedom from care of providing , and the trouble of putting on and putting off their garments , their long lives , unwrinkled skins , easie child-birth , virgin-like breasts , and unsophisticated venery , the imposture and gullery of fine clothes , ( like pernicious sauce ) never begetting in them a false appetite , nor administring occasion of lascivious phancies ; i say , these are so considerable concomitants of the nakedness of these people , ( which historians joyntly take notice of ) that it may not onely apologize for this seeming barbarity , but put us to a stand whether they be not either more rational or more fortunate in this point then the civilized nations . i am sure , some sects of the civilized world look upon it as a piece of perfection to imitate them , if not to out-doe them , as the adamites and such like . and those two severer sects of philosophers , the stoicks and cynicks , will abett them in it , who contend there is no turpitude in any thing but sin ; from which they willingly acquit the works of god and nature . that more general shame in mankinde , of having their more uncomely parts seen , is undoubtedly an indication by god and nature , that we are born to higher and more excellent things then these corporeall pleasures . but to be ashamed to be naked , and yet not to forbear those sins that this shame was intended a bar to , such as whoredome , adultery and sodomie , is to turn their clothing into cloaks of hypocrisie , and to be but apes and satyrs still in green coats . this is a tast of what may be said touching such uncouth spectacles . but it would be too laborious a task for me , hylobares , to answer every particular you may produce . i had rather employ my thoughts , while you are proposing them to others , in finding out some summary answer to all , upon a ●uller view of your allegations , or euistor's relations . philop. philotheus makes but a reasonable motion , hylobares . give him some respite , and propound your particulars in common to all , or any that are ready to answer . cuph. a very good motion , philopolis . hyl. the next then , cuphophron , shall be touching the ridiculous adornings or deckings of the barbarians . the embroidering of their skins with flowers , stars , birds , and such like pleasant figures , this indeed has as little hurt in it as that kind of work in womens petticoats . but the painting of their skins with serpents and ugly beasts , as the virginians are said to doe , how vilely must that needs look ? cuph. that 's a slight business , hylobares , if you consider the design , which i suppose is to make them look more terrible of aspect ; a thing that seems to be affected in the civilized parts of the world , many families bearing coats of arms wherein are seen as venemous and poisonous monsters . not to adde how general an humour it is amongst men , to desire power more then goodness , and to be feared rather then to be loved . euist. but what say you , cuphophron , to the gentry of calecut , who stretch their eares as low as their shoulders , that they may be large enough to be laden with variety of rich jewells ? cuph. i say it is not so unhandsome , it may be , euistor , as unsafe , unless they be well guarded . it is a ●air invitation to have them effectually pulled by the eares , to the hazard of their eares and jewells at once . euist. indeed i think so too , cuphophron . but what shall we think of the tartars and maldives cutting off all their hair of the upper lip ? cuph. why , euistor , i think it an excellent way for the more cleanly drinking , and supping of their potage . euist. but is it not very ridiculous in the virginians , to cut away half of their upper and lower beards , and leave the other half behind ? cuph. it is not , i must confess , so sightly . but who knows but that there may be some usefulness of it , as in the amazons cutting off their right breasts , the better to draw their bow and arrow ? it may be also , when they take tobacco , they slaver on the shorn side of their chin. euist. but o the beauty of black teeth , the affected ornament of the inhabitants of venesuella ! cuph. and so it may be , for ought we know , as lovely as black hair and black eyes and eye-brows : a black sett of teeth would fit excellently well with these . for my part , i know not whether jet or ivory looks more pleasantly ; either , methinks , looks more handsomely then a row of teeth as yellow as box , which is the more ordinary hue of our europeans . euist. but the laws of miction amongst those of the west-indies is a pitch of slovenliness beyond all cynicism , the men and women not sticking to let fly their urine even while they are conversing with you . cuph. that is very consequentially done , euistor , to that simple shamelesness of being stark naked . for it is those parts , rather then any loathsomeness in the liquour that proceeds from them , ( which is both wholesome to be drunk in sundry cases , and many times pleasant to the smell ) that require secrecy in that evacuation . wherefore there seems more of iudgement then sottishness in this custome , unless in the other exoneration they use the like carelesness . euist. cautious beyond all measure . no miser hides his bags of muck with more care and secrecy then they endeavour to unload themselves of that depositum of nature . they are very essenes in this point of cleanliness , o cuphophron . cuph. why , this makes amends for the former : i thought they would easily smell out the difference . hyl. methinks , euistor , you ask a little out of order . the present theme is the deckings of the barbarous nations . but you see cuphophron is excellently well appointed for all . cuph. an universalized spirit , a soul throughly reconciled to the oeconomie of the world , will not be at a loss for an apology for any phaenomenon . euist. there are far harder then these to come , o cuphophron . but i will onely give one step back touching ornaments . is not that bravery which americus vesputius records in his voiage to the new-found-world very ghastly tragicall ? for he saies sundry of those nations had quite spoiled their visages , by boring of many great holes in their cheeks , in their chaps , in their noses , lips and ears ; and that he observed one man that had no le●s then seven holes in his face , so big as would receive a damask prune . in these they put blew stone , crystall , ivory , or such like ornaments . which i the easilier believe to be true , having spoke with those my self that have seen americans with pieces of carved wood stuck in their cheeks . sophr. cuphophron scratches his head as if he were something at a loss . in the mean time , euistor , take this ●ill cuphophron has excogitated something better . that which is rare ( we know ) is with all nations precious , and what is precious they love to appropriate and transferr upon themselves as near as they can : whence rich men eat many times not what is wholesomest , but the hardest to be got . so if there be any thing more costly then another , they will hang it on their bodies , though they cannot put it into their bellies , such as their ear-rings and jewells . but these barbarians seem to exceed them in the curiositie of their application of these preciosities , they fully implanting them into their very flesh , as if they were part of their natural body . hyl. well , sophron ; but how rude and sottish are they in the mean time , that they thus cruelly wound their poor carcases to satisfie the folly of their pride and phancy ? sophr. but the boring of the face and the slashing of the skin i believe will prove more tolerable , then the cutting and piercing of the heart with care and anxiety , which the pride of more civilized places causes in men of high spirits and low fortunes . besides , hylobares , it may be our ignorance to think they undergoe so much pain in the prosecution of these phantastick humours . for these holes and slashes may be made in their bodies when they are young , like incisions on the bark of a tree or a young pumpion , that grow in bigness with the growth of these plants . and how safely and inoffensively such things may be practised on young children , the wringing off the tails of puppets , and circumcision of infants used by so many nations , are sufficient examples . cuph. i thank you for this , sophron ; some such thing i was offering at , but you have prevented me . proceed , euistor or hylobares , whether of you will. hyl. i prithee , euistor , puzzle cuphophron , if you can , touching the political government of the barbarians . euist. does not that seem marvellous brutish , o cuphophron , that in some places they had no government at all , as in cuba and new spain , whose inhabitants went naked , acknowledged no lord , but lived in common liberty , as cosmographers witness ? cuph. is that so unreasonable or brutish , o euistor , that those that are not burthened with the incumbrance of riches should neglect the use of laws ; the chiefest controversies amongst men arising concerning honours and wealth , those two great incitements to injustice ? wherefore those barbarians seem so far from any degeneracy in this , that they rather resemble the primevall simplicity of the golden age , where there was neither judge nor gaoler , but common liberty prevented all occasions of injury . here adultery was found impossible , there being onely difference of sexes , no distinction of the married and unmarried state , or appropriation of any single female to one solitary man. which some eminent sages of greece ( to omit the suffrage of some of the more spiritually-pretending sectaries of this present age ) have look'd upon as a special part of the most perfect platform of a commonwealth their wisedom could excogitate . assuredly the power of nature is so wire-drawn through so many ceremonious circumstances , of parentage , of portion , of alliances , and then so fettered and confined by the religious tie of marriage , whether the parties can well hit it or no , that her vigour is very much broken , the generations of men weakned , and their days shortened , in most parts of the civilized world : whenas those tenants in common you speak of seldome are sick , and ordinarily live to an hundred and fifty years , as i have read in historians . so that the confinements of the law of marriage seem instituted for the good of the soul rather then the health and strength of the body . but outward laws not reaching adulterous affections , the hypocrisie of the civilized nations has made them too often forfeit the sincere good of both grace and nature at once . sophr. this is smartly , but madly and surprizingly , spoken , cuphophron , and more like a poet or philosopher then like a christian. cuph. this is nothing against the sanctity of the laws of christianity , which undoubtedly are infinitely above not onely the lawlesness , but the best laws of other nations . but forasmuch as i finde my self as it were advocate-general of the paynims , i must plead their cause , and make their case look as tolerable as i can . bath . which you do , cuphophron , over-lawyer-like , supporting your clients without any regard to the truth , while you impute the health and longaevity of these barbarians to their promiscuous venerie , rather then to their ranging abroad in the open air , to their fastings and huntings , and other hardships of life . but i have interrupted euistor . euist. i pray you then , mr. advocate , what say you to that custome of the west-indians , who offer their wives or daughters to a stranger in token of friendship and hospitality ? of the bridegroom his not lying with his own bride the first night , but some other of the like quality ? of the king of ca●ecut , in the east-indies , his not lying with the queen the first night , but one of the priests , who has five hundred crowns for his pains , as you may reade in the voiage of ludovicus patritius ? what to the custome of the province of camul belonging to the great cham , where the master of the house , in an high strain of hospitality , commits his wife and his whole familie to the stranger , to use his wife and all he has with the same liberty himself doth ; and that his enjoyment may be entire , quits his house for the time , that the stranger may seem to have no corrival ? as paulus venetus relates . cuph. this is marvellous pretty , euistor . but i conceive the custome comes from hence , in that they take marriage to be no part of religion , but of nature , and look upon their wives merely as the best chattel they have , and therefore in an high strain of friendship offer them to be enjoy'd by their friends . in which kind simplicity the camulites seem to exceed all the rest . euist. but what think you of the priest of calecut , cuphophron ? cuph. i think that his lying with the queen the first night pretends to an auspicious consecration of her womb to future fertility ; and that his five hundred crowns are a reward of this religious performance . euist. but it is a strange act of religion , to lie with another man's wife . cuph. the direction of the intention , euistor , is all in all . the priest does not intend to commit adultery , but to consecrate the womb. but what blemish is this in providence , that paynim-priests are as crafty as some of the christian , who upon spiritual pretences too often promote an interest of the world and the flesh , as these calecut-priests seem to doe , they both reaping the pleasure of lying with the queen , and strengthening the interest of the priesthood by mingling the sacerdotal with the royal seed , the first-born of the queen being in all likelihood as much the son of a priest as heir to the crown ? philop. i thought cuphophron had not been so nimble a politician . hyl. his zeal , philopolis , for the paynims makes him more then ordinarily quick-witted . euist. but what excuse will his wit finde out for the other excess in matrimony , that , i mean , of the tartars , who think marriage so holy , that they believe their god natagai to have wife and children , and therefore if their sons or daughters die before age , yet they celebrate a marriage betwixt parties thus deceased , that they may be man and wife in the other world ? cuph. that they make marriage so sacramental a thing , need not seem strange to us . but that they conceit god to have wife and children , is more extravagant , and yet not much more then that opinion of the anthropomorphites , who phansie god in the form of a man. which conceit certain monks of aegypt were so mad upon , that they forced the bishop of alexandria to subscribe it for fear of his life . euist. i perceive no small matters will puzzle cuphophron's invention : and therefore though the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the men of arcladam that lie fourty days in childbed for their wives , present themselves to my memory , yet i will pass them over . cuph. that 's a very odd thing of the men of arcladam , euistor : i pray you , what is it ? euist. when the woman is delivered , she gets out of the bed as soon as she can , and follows the businesses of the house ; but the man lies in for so many days , and does all the offices of a mother to the infant , saving the giving it suck : and the neighbours come a-gossiping to the man lying thus in bed , as in other countreys they do to the woman . and they of arcladam give this reason for this custome , because the mother had a sufficient share of trouble in bearing the child and bringing him forth , and that therefore 't is fit that the man should ease her now , and take off part of the care to himself , as paulus venetus reports . cuph. if the men of the country had had milk in their breasts , which severall men have had , according to the testimony of many credible writers , philosophers , physicians , and anatomists , the custome had been more plausible . but such as it is , it has its reason , as you see , and it was not a pure piece of sottishness that carried them unto it . and for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in that the women rule them , it is a sign that it is fit they should . for it is in virtue of their strength , wit , or beauty ; and you know the iambick , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . they chose their kings of old from the beauty of their form , as lucretius notes . and why do men rule the women , but upon account of more strength or more wisedome ? but where the women rule the men , it is a sign they have more strength or wit , and therefore have a right to rule them . and indeed where do they not rule them ? insomuch that the whole world in a manner are of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so that this is no peculiar disorder amongst the barbarians , such as mela and diodorus siculus mention . hyl. the women are much beholden to you , cuphophron , for your so kinde and careful patronage of them . cuph. i am of a large spirit , hylobares ; i love to be civil to all sects , sexes , and persons . hyl. cuphophron swallows all down very glibly . but , as i remember , there are some direfull stories of the pagans cruelty to their enemies , and inhumane humanity to their friends , that , methinks , should a little turn his stomack , euistor . euist. there are very savage customes recorded in pomponius mela touching the essedones , axiacae and geloni . the last clothe themselves and their horses with the skins of their slain enemies ; with that part of the skin that covers the head they make a cap for themselves , with the rest they clothe their horses . the essedones celebrate the funerals of their parents with great feasting and joy , eating their flesh minced and mingled with mutton ; ( which is the manner of their buriall of them ) but tipping their sculls with gold they make drinking-cups of them : as the axiacae quaffe in the heads of their slain enemies , as well as drink their bloud in the field . in castella del oro the inhabitants also eat their own dead . but in the island iava , as ludovicus patritius reports , the children do not , like the essedones , eat their parents , but when they are old and useless , sell them to the anthropophagi , as the parents do the children , if desperately and irrecoverably sick in the judgement of the physician . for they hold it the noblest kinde of burial to be interred in the belly of a man , and not to be eaten by worms : to which if any expose the body of his dead friend , they hold it a crime not to be expiated by any sacrifice . the laws also of the sardoans and berbiecae , which aelian relates , are very savage ; the one commanding the sons to knock the fathers o' th' head when they are come to dotage , the other prohibiting any to live above seventy years . hyl. stop there , euistor : let 's hear what excuse the advocate of the paynims can devise for these horrid customes . cuph. truly , hylobares , these things must seem very harsh to any civil person , especially at the first sight . but yet there seems , if we make farther search , to be something commendable at the bottom of some of these . for the parricide that is committed by the sardoans and berbiccae seems to arise out of compassion to their parents , they not enduring to see so sad a spectacle as helpless and wearisome old age , a heavy disease , and yet uncurable by any thing else but death . and those of iava , that sell , either the parents their sick children , or the children their aged parents , to the cannibals , it is both to ease them of their pain , and procure them , as they think , the most honourable buriall . and it is no small countenance to these barbarous customes that s● more 's vtopia allows painfull and remediless diseases to be shortened by some easie way of death . which seems to me another kinde of midwifery , to facilitate the birth of the soul into the other world , as midwives do the entrance of the body into this . which may be the reason why the essedones are so jocund at the funerals of their friends , they looking upon it as their birth-day into the other state. euist. the thracians do so indeed , if we will believe pomponius mela , who adds , that their wives contend who should be buried with their dead husbands . as also do the indians . and acosta reports that the kings of peru and the nobles of mexico had their wives , nearest friends and servants , killed at their funerals , to bear them company into the other world. cuph. this is harsh , i must confess , euistor ; but , it may be , not so silly and unpolitick . for this custome might be begun for the safegard of husbands and kings from being poisoned by their wives , nearest friends , and servants . euist. but what a mad solemnity was that of the funeral of the great cham of the tartars , which paulus venetus describes , when his body was carried to the mountain alchai ? for they slew every one they met in the way , horse and man , saying these words , ite , & domino nostro regi servite in alteravita . it is thought no less then twenty thousand men were slain thus on this occasion at the funeral of the great cham mongu . there seems not in this so much as any plot or policy , cuphophron , but mere savage barbarity . cuph. it is very wild indeed , euistor : but the opinion of the immortality of the soul and personal distinctness of the deceased in the other life is both sober , religious , and philosophicall ; and the impression of the belief thereof on the spirits of the people very usefull and politicall , for the making them warlike and just ; and this solemnity of more force to impress this belief , then all the subtil ratiocinations of the philosophers . euist. but it is so barbarously cruel , o cuphophron . cuph. who knows , euistor , but most of these men were voluntiers , and had a minde to serve the great cham in the other world ? otherwise they might have kept out of the way . and the ambition of living princes sends more to orcus then this superstition about the dead cham of the tartars , and , methinks , in more uncouth circumstances . for he that dies in the service of his living prince leaves him he serves , but he that dies in love to the deceased cham goes to the prince he loves . euist. very elegantly answered , cuphophron . hyl. cuphophron is such an oedipus , that he will stick at the solution of no riddle . euist. but i have one more to try his skill to the purpose , an accustomary cruelty of the people of caraiam , such as it is hard to say whether it be more ridiculous , or barbarous . cuph. i prithee , euistor , what is it ? i love to hear such stories . euist. the forenamed authour tells us that the people in this country , when a traveller from forein nations lodges with them , the man of the house , if he perceive the stranger to be one of an excellent carriage and vertuous behaviour , prudent and sober in his words and actions , and very eminent for his goodness and honesty , he will be sure to get up at midnight and kill him , conceiting that thereby he shall for ever detain the prudence , vertue and honesty , nay the very soul , of this traveller in his house , and that he will be a perpetuall lodger there . bath . surely euistor plays the wag with cuphophron , and contrives a story to pose him . euist. in the word of a gentleman , bathynous , i relate no more then what i read , and what any one else may reade , in m. paulus venetus his history of the oriental countreys , in his second book and the fortieth chapter . cuph. i could easily suspect hylobares of such a piece of waggery , but i believe euistor will deal bonâ fide with me , and play no tricks ; and therefore i am glad hylobares has committed this province to him . but as for his story of the inhabitants of caraiam , i do not see that the cause of the paynims is much detrimented thereby . it should seem these pagans were as greedy after vertue as the civilized nations after mony , who ordinarily murther the owner to make themselves masters of it . they therefore were more ignorant , but we more wicked . but what farther mystery there may be in the matter no man knows . it may be they intended the deceased for some lar familiaris , whose soul they would propitiate by some religious ceremonies after they had trespassed so far on his body , which they had killed in honour and love to his vertues , though with small kindness to his person . but whether it be more tolerable to murther men out of love to their vertues , or out of hatred to them , i leave , as a new disquisition , to more subtil casuists . i am sure the iews had no other cause then that to kill our saviour , although they lived under the institutes of no less noble law-giver then moses himself , and were then the choicest part of the civilized world. hyl. you do but play with cuphophron . i pray you , euistor , try what gusto he hath for the diet of the cannibals . euist. had not you better resume your province , hylobares , and assault him your self ? hyl. it cannot be in a better hand then yours , euistor , who so particularly remember stories . besides that cuphophron is out of all jealousie of being abused by you , which will make his answers come off more glibly . euist. well then , since it must be so , i will adde to this single example of slaying men to seize upon their souls , that of murthering them to feed upon their bodies , a villany , cuphophron , very frequently mentioned as well in ancient as modern historians : as of the anthropophagi about the nyssean mountains in india , which eustathius notes ; as also those of scythia , noted by pomponius mela. and solinus takes notice not onely of these anthropophagi of scythia , but mentions also others in aethiopia . the truth of which things later discoveries seem to ratifie . christophorus columbus tells us of cannibals not far from the island hispaniola , that eat man's-flesh , and salt or souse it as we do beef , pork , bacon , and brawn : that they geld those they take young , as we do capons , to make them eat more tender ; and keep women alive to breed on , as we do hens to lay eggs. this island of cannibals is called insula crucis , of which you may reade more in the voiage of columbus . the men of zipangai , ( that belongs to the tartar ) if they light on a stranger , unless he can redeem himself , kill him and eat him , calling their friends and kinsfolks to the feast . in timaine , a town of castella del oro , they sold man's-flesh in the shambles , as cosmographers write . as also that the brasilians celebrate their festivals , making themselves m●rry over the body of a fat man cut into collops ; and that the enemies they take in war they roast and eat , dancing round about them . cuph. enough , euistor , my stomach is surcharged already ; nothing is more nauseous then the phancy of those things is to me . nor can i devise what may be said in the behalf of so high barbarities . onely it is to be noted , that these sad objects are more a torment to the well-natur'd living then any farther mischief to the dead : and that flaying of men of their estates and livelihood , or taking away their lives , is an harder cruelty to the sufferer : and that it is not so much the conscience of decorum , as queaziness of stomach , that makes our modern europaeans abstain from their enemies carcasses . besides , whether is it more barbarous out of scorn and hatred to kill men to feed their dogs withall , as the spaniards used the poor indians , or for the indians or other barbarians , out of an appetitious liking of man's-flesh , more honourably to bury it in their own bowells ? a funeral-solemnity that some of them use , and think it the last good deed they can doe for their deceased friends . wherefore we can onely make this deplorable conclusion , that the unmercifulness of the europaeans is not less , but their hypocrisie more , then that of the uncivilized indians . for that horrour they profess and abhorrency from the flesh of dead men ( which instinct , questionless , god and nature has implanted in us as a bar against all cruelty to our kind ) does not keep them off from doing all the ●eal cruelty that is committed by the savage nations . whence they seem to me to be self-condemned , while they boggle at the less kindes of crueltie , and so frequently practise ●he greater ; straining at the gnat , ( as ●t is said ) but in the mean time swallowing down the camel. sophr. i promise you , cuphophron , i did not think you could have made ●o passable work out of so crooked and knotty a matter . at least thus much i think is true , that to them that make so light of war and bloudshed and murthering of men to seize on what they have , to them , i say , to whom this substantial cruelty seems tolerable , these men should not think it intolerable in providence , that she permits those slighter and more innocuous shadows thereof . for all those seeming cruelties are but the flagellation of the absent , and they take up and use at their pleasure onely what he has left : but the killing and murthering of a man is a present tormenting him , and forcible driving of him out of all that he has . which i speak to shame the civilized nations , in shewing them that they frequently commit acts that are infinitely more cruel and barbarous then those which they themselves judge the most horrid and outragious of all the acts of the barbarians . cuph. i am glad , o sophron , to see so grave a judgement fall in with mine . sophr. i must confess , cuphophron , that you have made a pretty shuffling show of mitigating the harshness of the secular barbarity of the paynims , as you call them : but i fear you will not have half the success in palliating the gross enormities of their religions . hyl. and that , sophron , is the very next thing that i would have euistor to exercise mr. advocate-general's wit in . euist. in what , hylobares ? hyl. in finding any tolerable excuse for their gross opinions touching god , for their polytheism and idolary , for their men-sacrifices , devil●orship , sacrificing men to the devil , ●nd the like . euist. i understand you , hylobares , ●nd shall accordingly propound instances to cuphophron . in the first place therefore , cuphophron , i pray you , what do you say to the brasili●ns , that are reported to acknow●edge no god at all , and yet to be so addicted to divination , that they grow mad therewith ? cuph. to this i answer , that in that they are so much addicted to divination , it is a suspicion that they do believe there is a god ; and may be slandered as atheists , because they worship no idols nor any visible object . euist. that is very charitably surmized of you , cuphophron . cuph. but suppose they be atheists , how many thousands are there of such kinde of cattel in the most civilized parts of europe ? euist. but others of the indians , cuphophron , to make amends , hold more gods then one . they of new-england worshipped kesan their good god , and the devil beside , that he might not hurt them . cuph. and so by worshipping the devil acknowledged two sovereign powers or principles , a good one and 〈◊〉 bad one : which though it be a great errour , yet is such as very great wit● have fallen into . for s ● . augustine himself , before he became christian was a manichee . and plutarch , in his isis and osiris , entitles plato to the like errour , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he tells us also that zoroaster was of the same opinion ; and that they named these two distinct principles oromasdes and areimanius ; and that the aegyptian osiris and typhon answer to them . so that it is not any sign of so great sottishness , if the barbarian● of america were lapsed into this strange mistake . euist. but your paynims , o cuphophron , seem to have made not onely two , but even two thousand deities , while they worshipped sun , moon , starrs , beasts and plants , sea , land , winde , thunder , caves , hills , the tallest and most spreading trees , nay what-ever living creature they met with first in a morning , as some chuse valentines , or rather not chuse them , but embrace the first they meet on valentine's-day . cuph. this cannot be deny'd , euistor , but that the barbarous nations did religious worship to innumerable objects of this kind , but not as to the supreme power of all , ( which was the primary or ultimate object of all their adoration ) but rather as to images and symbols of that ultimate object . and how great a part of the civilized world , even of them that are called christians , contend that the worshipping of images in such a sense as this is laudable and right ? euist. i think both much-what alike laudable . bath . i have thought often of this point , and that very impartially as well as anxiously , and i cannot for my life find any excuse for those of the roman church to clear them from idolatry , but the same with better advantage may be alledged for the pagans , they having no written law against worshipping images as the romanists have , who acknowledge the bible to be the word of god. euist. that is very material . but what mitigation can you find out , o cuphophron , for that horrid and hideous way of worshipping these objects , as that of the scythians about taurica chersonesus , who sacrificed strangers to diana , that is , to the moon ? cuph. this is very harsh : but i pray you let me ask you this one question , euisior , did never any man suffer in the civilized parts of europe , for being estranged from certain religious lunacies which bloudy and ty●anicall obtruders urged upon them under no less penalty then death ? euist. i must confess that history furnishes us with instances of not onely many h●catombs , but severall thousands of holocausts of man's-flesh butchered by that bloudy church of rome , and sacrificed to the honour and interest of their great diana . you know what i mean , cuphophron . cuph. i do . and i pray you how much better is this then the pagans sacrificing of men to diana taurica ? euist. both exceeding bad : and yet i must propose to you other things as ill or worse . as that barbarous custome of the ammonites , who sacrificed their children to molech or milchom in the valley of tophet , so called from the drum that was there beat to drown the lamentable cries of the murthered infants . cuph. this i must confess is exceeding barbarous , euistor , to sacrifice though but a single son to that cruel idol . but , methinks , it seems more destructive to mankinde , that those that either are or ought to be patres patriae , ( i mean great princes and emperours ) unprovoked by any injury , but merely out of a desire of dominion and rule , are so lavish of the bloud of their subjects , as to expose numerous armies of them to the slaughter ; they smothering in the mean time the groans of the dying and maimed by the sound of drums and trumpets , and other clattering noises of war , while they thus sacrifice to the cruel idol of ambition , as the ammonites to milchom in the valley of tophet . and will history acquit the civilized world of this piece of barbarity , euistor ? euist. the grand seigniour is deeply guilty of this cruel kinde of idolatry : and i wish it were not to be found too much in christendome it self . cuph. so do i. euist. but , god be thanked , we are so clear from one horrid crime of the pagans , that we have nothing like it in christendome . cuph. what 's that , euistor ? euist. why , it is the worshipping the very devil himself . which that the pagans did , is manifest from their temples and images , from the madness of their priests , and from their sacrifices . the peruvians worshipped two carved idols , a black goat and a long serpent , both of them perfect symbols of satan , and such as himself loves to appear in . in the city of goa their pagods or idols are of so detestable a form , that no man can imagine how ugly and deformed they are : yet these they consult as oracles , and by the power of the devil have answers from them . the chinois also worship a devil-idol standing on an high , but something duskish , place of their temples , having two huge horns on his head , with a most terrible countenance , with sharp claws in stead of hands and feet , and his head uglily starting out from the midst of his breast , as gotardus describes him . but the most horrible description of a temple is that of the king of calecut's , where they worship his god deumo : for the true god tamerani he serves not , because , though he made the world , yet he has given up the government of it , as they con●eit , to deumo . this temple has its entrance garnished with numbers of devils made in wood artificially turned and carved . in the midst of the chappel there is a seat like a throne of brass , with a brazen devil sitting upon it , with a crown on his head , like that of the roman pontife , ( as ludovicus romanus describes it ) out of which come three horns . there are four others also that turn in after such a manner , as that they seem to support his head. he has also four teeth standing out of his foul wide gaping mouth , and a threatning look , with terrible staring eyes , and hands with crooked nails like to hooks ; but his feet not unlike to a cock's . in every corner of the chappel is likewise placed a devil made of brass , with such art , as that he seems to be in the midst of flames wherein souls are scorched in most direfull manner , whom the devil also is devouring up , putting one soul into his mouth with his right hand , and reaching underneath at another with the left . cuph. if there had been written upon the walls of the chappell , primus in orbe deos fecit timor , ( as they say there is in mahomet's mosco's , non est nisi deus unus ) all had been complete . euist. can there be any thing possibly parallel to this , cuphophron , amongst our civilized europaeans ? cuph. i think nothing , unless it be the religion of the superlapsarians , the object whereof is infinite powe● unmodified by either iustice or goodness : which is that very idol of typhon or arimanius i spoke of . for this imagination of o●nipotent power and will acting without any regard to iustice or goodness , is but an idol , no real thing . if it were , it were more horrible then the indian deumo , or any devil that is . but it could not be god : for god is love , and every thing acts according to what it is . sophr. very well argued , cuphophron . philop. in many things cuphophron seems to be on a more then or●inary good pin to day . euist. but i believe he must stretch his wit to an higher pin them he has done hitherto , to pretend to make any tolerable answer to what follows . cuph. why , what strange thing is that which follows , euistor ? euist. the sacrificing of men to the devil . those of peru frequently sacrifice their children for the success of the affairs of their ingua , for health , victory , or the like . the son was also frequently sacrificed for the health of the father . they of mexico had a ▪ custome of sacrificing of their captives . whence their kings wore often stirred up by their priests to make war upon their neighbours , to get captives to sacrifice to the devil , they telling them their gods di●d for hunger , and that they should remember them . the devil also him●●lf is said to appear in florida , and to complain that he is thirsty , ●hat humane bloud may be presently ●hed to quench his thirst . the solemnity of sacrificing cap●ives to vitziliputzly in mexico within ●he palisado of dead mens sculls is most horrid and direfull : where the ●igh priest cut open their breasts with a sharp flint , and pulled out ●heir reeking hearts , which he first ●hew'd to the sun , to whom he offe●ed it , but then suddenly turning to ●he idol , cast it at his face ; and with 〈◊〉 kick of his foot tumbled the body from the tarrass he stood upon down the stairs of the temple , which were all embrew'd and defiled with bloud . these sacrifices also they ate , and clothed themselves with the skins of the slain . cuph. now certainly this custome of the americans is very horrible and abominable , thus bloudily to sacrifice men to that enemie of mankind , the devil . and therefore it were very happy if we had nothing in these civilized parts of the world that bore the least shadow of similitude with it . euist. why ? have we any thing , cuphophron ? cuph. why ? what is the greates● horrour that surprises you in this custome , euistor ? euist. to say the truth , cuphophron ▪ i do not find my self so subtile an● distinct a philosopher as explicitly t● tell you what , but i think it is , first , that mankind should worship so ugly and execrable an object as the devil ▪ and then in the second place , tha● they should sacrifice so worthy an● noble a thing as an humane body ▪ which is in capacity of becoming the temple of the holy ghost , to so de●estable an idol . cuph. you have , i think , answered very right and understandingly , euist●r , if you rightly conceive what makes the devil so detestable . euist. surely his pride , cruelty and malignity of nature , and in that all love and goodness is extinct in him , which if he could recover , he would presently become an angel of light. ●ath . euistor has answered excellently well , and like a mysticall theologer . euist. to tell you the truth , i had it out of them . cuph. but if he has answered right , bathynous , it is a sad consideration , that we have in the civilized parts of the world those that profess a more odious religion then the mexicans that sacrifice men to the devil , i mean , the superlapsarians . for the object of their worship is a god-idol of their own framing , that acts merely according to will and power sequestred from all respect to either iustice or goodness , as i noted before , which is the genuine idea of a devil . to which idol they do not , as the mexicans , sacrifice the mere bodies of men , but their very souls also ; not kicking them down a tarrass , but arbitrariously tumbling them down into the pit of hell , there to be eternally and unexpr●s●ibly tormented , for no other reason but because this their dreadfull idol will have it so . can any religion be more horrid or blasphemous then this ? hyl. i perceive you begin to be drawn dry , o cuphophron , you are fain so to harp on the same string . this is but your typhon and areimanius you mentioned before . i expected some more proper and adequate parallelisms to euistor's fresh instances , especially to that of sacrificing to the idol vitziliputzly . cuph. do you think then , hylobares , that it is so hard a thing to find something in the civilized world more peculiarly parallel to that dreadfull ceremonie ? what think you of the roman pontif ? euist. how madly does cuphophron's phancy rove ? and yet how luckily had he hit , if he had but made use of the usual name papa ? for that is also the title of the high priest of mexico , who sacrifices men to vitziliputzly , as iosephus acosta tells us . cuph. i thank you for that hint , euistor : it seems then there will be a consonancy betwixt the verbal titles as well as an analogie betwixt the things themselves . hyl. i would gladly hear that analogie , cuphophron . not that i should take any such great pleasure in finding the papacy so obnoxious , but that it pleases me to observe the versatil sleights and unexpected turnings of your movable phancy . cuph. nor care i to tell you for either the one or the other , hylobares , but that i may adorn the province i have undertaken in the behalf of the poor paynim . the analogie therefore briefly is this : that as the high priest of mexico with his officers pulled out the heart of the captives , kicking down their bodies for the assistents to eat their flesh , and clothe themselves with their skins : so the roman pontif , by his cruel inquisitors discovering the true religion of the faithfull servants of christ , whom they hold in a forcible captivity , murthered them , and gave their estates for a spoil to his cruel ministers and assistents , to feed and clothe them . does not this occurr often enough in history , euistor ? euist. it cannot be deny'd , many thousands have been thus butchered . hyl. but to whom were they sacrificed , cuphophron ? you have omitted a principal term that ought to have been in the analogie . cuph. i would i knew what vitziliputzly signified . euist. if that will do you any service , i can tell you what it signifies expresly out of iosephus acosta , viz. the left hand of a shining feather . cuph. very good , very good : have patience then a little . why may not then the sun easily signifie the heavenly glory , or the glory of god ; and this shining feather the vain and foolish pomp and glory of the world , or the pride of life ? hyl. that is not much strained , c●phophron ; but what then ? cuph. wherefore as the high priest of mexico pretends to sacrifice to the sun , shewing him the smoaking heart of the captive when he has pluck'd it out , but presently turns about , and does really and substantially cast the heart of the sacrificed to the idol vitziliputzly : so the roman high priest , when he murthers holy and righteous men ( under pretence of heresie ) for deny●ng such falshoods and blasphemies as are onely held up for the supporting the interest of the papal sovereignty and sublimity , pretends these murthers sacrifices to the glory of god , and for the vindication of his honour ; whenas they are really and truly bloudy oblations and cruel holocausts offered up to that idol of abominations , pride of spirit , and vain mundane glory and pomp , and a remorseless tyranny over the souls and bodies of men : which is such a quintessential lucifer , that it is that whereby lucifer himself becomes a devil . hyl. all this from vitziliputzly signifying the left hand of a shining feather . ha , ha , he . wit and phancy whether wilt thou goe ? how merrily-conceited is cuphophron , that can thus play with a feather ? sophr. i promise you , hylobares , though the phancy of cuphophron may seem more then ordinarily ●udibund and lightsomely sportfull , yet what he points at seems to be overlamentably true , viz. that many thousands of innocent souls have been made burnt-offerings to the luciferian pride of the roman hierarchy , and the sons of god ( which is worse then the mexicans case ) thus cruelly and perfidiously sacrificed to the first-born of the devil . euist. this is too true to contend against it . hyl. i wish it were not so . but in the mean time we can never take cuphophron at a loss . euist. so methinks , and i have but one kinde more of tragicall instances to pose him with . cuph. what 's that , euistor ? euist. in some parts of the world they are their own executioners ; as those of narsinga and bisnagar , who cut their flesh in pieces , and cast it on the idol's face , or putting a piece of their own flesh on the pile of an arrow , shoot it up into the air in honour to their pagods , as gotardus writes . after which ceremony they cut their own throats , offering themselves a sacrifice to their idol . the king of quilacare , upon a silk scaffold , in view of his people , after some solemn washings and prayers , having first cut off his nose , ears , lips , and other parts , cuts his own throat , as a sacrifice to his idol . gotardus , as i remember , addes , that the●e is loud musick sounding all the time . this is done every jubilee . cuph. whether satan put them upon this slavery out of his scorn and hatred of mankinde , or that he pleases himself in feeling his own power , or in seeing examples of the great affection and fidelitie of his vassals , ( as imperious whores pride themselves in commanding their lovers some signall hardship or penance , as being a more sure testimony ( if they perform it ) of a more then ordinary worth in themselves , that has engaged them in so perfect a bondage ) or whether it be out of all these put together , is not so requisite to dispute . hyl. no more is it , cuphophro● , it is so little to the present purpose . cuph. but i was coming to something which is more near to the purpose , namely , that the nearest to these self-sacrificers to satan are those sad disciples of certain mystae ▪ of dark and sowr dispen●ations , who , having no knowledge of a deity but such as is represented unto them in the dreadfull shape of the indian deumo above described , ( that is , will and power disjoyned ▪ from all iustice and goodness ) having first almost fr●tted a-pieces their very heart-strings with tormenting thoughts and anxious suspicions , do at last either hang or drown themselves , or else ●●t their own throats , as a sad sacri●●ce to that ghastly idol which their false teachers had set up in their melancholi●ed phancies . but no amulet against such diabolical impostures comparable to that divine saying of s. iohn , god is love ; and he that abideth in love ▪ abideth in god , and god in him . sophr. that is very profitably and seasonably noted , o cuphophron : and though my judgement is not so curious as to criticize on the perpetuall exactness of your applications of the sad miscarriages of the civilized parts of the world to those gross disorders of the barbarians ; yet your comparisons in the general have very much impressed that note of philotheus upon my spirit , that the more externall and gross enormities committed by the barbarous nations are as it were a reprehensive satyr of the more fine and hypocriticall wickednesses of the civilized countries ; that these civilized sinners , abominating those wilder extravagancies , may withall give sentence against their own noless wickedness , but onely in a lesseugly dress . whence it cannot be so great wonder that providence lets such horrid usages emerge in the world , that the more affrightfull face of sin in some places might quite drive out all similitude and appearance of it in others . bath . true , sophron ; but this also i conceive may be added , that divine providence having the full comprehension of all the periods of ages , and the scenes of things succeeding in these periods , in her minde , permitted at first and afterwards some parts of the lapsed creation to plunge themselves into a more palpable darkness , that a more glorious light might succeed and emerge . the lovely splendour of which divine dispensation would not strike the beholder so vigorously , did he not cast his eyes also upon that region of blackness and sad tyranny of the devil in preceding ages over deluded mankind● , such as euistor has so plentifully discovered . all these things therefore seem to have been permitted in design to advance the glory and adorn the triumph of the promi●ed mess●as , the t●ue son of god and saviour of the world. sophr. that may very well be , bathynous . nor is it any injustice or severity in god to make use of the impenitency of sinners to better purposes then either themselves or wiser persons are many times aware of . but we interrupt euistor by this unseasonable descanting upon cuphophron's performances . euist. i was onely a-going to adde something of the madness of the heathenish priests , as the last note of the satanicalness of their religion . but it is scarce worth the while . cuph. nay by all means let 's hear that also , euistor . euist. that the maenades , the priests of bacchus , were mad , appears in their very name , whose notation is from that distemper . the priest of the samadees , a people subject to the muscovite , begins his holy things with howling , which he continues till he grows mad with it , and then falling down dead , after orders his sacrifice , and finishes the solemnity he was about . the hoxiones also , or priests of china , when they consult their oracles , cast themselves on the ground , stretching out their hands and feet , another reading in a book , to whom are responses made by some assistents that sing and make a noise with bells or cymbals . in the mean time the spirit comes upon him that lies prostrate , who , rising with staring eyes and distorted countenance , falls a-prophesying and answering such questions as the by-standers demand . cuph. these are mad guizes of religion indeed , and yet not an unfit resemblance of as mischievous a madness amongst too many of our more civilized religionists . euist. i believe you mean the howling quakers , as uncivil as they are . for they began in that tone at first , and fell down dead in trances , and afterwards getting up fell a-prophe●ying , uttering out of their swoln breasts very dark oracles , declaring against all ord●r and ordinances , decrying all reason as a work of the flesh , and pretending to an unaccountable spirit , and to a light within that is invisible to all without who have not lost their spiritual eye-sight . none conceive they see it but such as are either blind or in the dark . cuph. there are great and good things the quakers pretend to , euistor , but they soil them by so wild a way of profession of them , and indeed in particulars seem to contradict what with so loud a voice they in the general extoll . but that madness i hinted at is more epidemicall then this sect , there being more besides these that never think themselves divinely-wise till they grow so staringly mad that the eye of reason seems to have quite started out of their head , and fumes and phancies to be the sole guides of their tongue . sophr. i suppose , cuphophron , you perstringe that general disease of ungovernable enthusias● dispersed up and down in christendome . and yet there is another kind of religious madness more spreading and no le●s mischievous then this . cuph. i pray you what is that , sophron ? sophr. so fix'd and fierce a belief in an infallible priesthood , that what they dictate for an oracle , be it never so repugnant to all our outward senses , to all our internall faculties of imagination , reason and vnderstanding , never so contradictious to whatsoever is holy , vertuous , or humane , yet they embrace and stick to it with that zeal and heat , that they fly in the faces and cut the throats of not onely them that gainsay , but even of those that will not profess the same abominable errours with themselves . if so enraged an heat , kindled upon so enormous a mistake as never any lunatick could think or speak more contradictiously , joyn'd with as high outrages as ever mad-man did commit , for all manner of murther and cruelty , if this temper or spirit be not the spirit of ma●ness , and that of the highe●t strain , i know not what belongs to the spirit of sobriety . cuph. certainly it must be a great matter that thus transports sophron , and makes him something unlike his usual self . sophr. to tell you the truth , i had mine eye on the artolatria of the romanists and their article of transubstantiation , with all the wild concomitants and sequels thereof . cuph. you could not have pitched upon a greater reproch of the civilized world. i profess unto sophron , though no man can have a greater aversation then my self from slighting or reviling that which others embrace as the most sacred and solemn point of their religion ; yet amongst ourselves i cannot but declare , that this figment of transubstantiation comprises in it such a bundle of barbarities , of unheard● of sottishnesses , and savage cruelties , that there is no one thing parallel to it in all paganism . the manifold impostures of the priests of the pagans , their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ●hether it be the feeding ●n the flesh of enemies , or entombing the bodies of their dead friends in their own bellies , whether their gross idolatries in the general , or their sacrificing men to their idols , all these abominations are as it were tied together in this fictititious fardel of transubstantiation . for was there ever any indian so imposed upon by their priests , as to believe they had a power by a certain form of wo●ds to turn a cake of maize into a living man , and that the miracle is done by them , though the cake of maize appear still to their sight , to their touch , and all their other senses , as perfect a cake of maize as before ? and how can these look upon the indians as such a barbarous people , for either feeding on their enemies , or burying their dead friends in their own bowells , whenas they themselves profess that they eat and grinde a-pieces with their teeth , not dead , but living man's-flesh , and ●hat not of an enemie , but their dear●st friend and saviour ? can any ●hing ●eem more barbarous then this ? and then to uphold this figment , ( which seems invented onely for the pomp and vain-glory of the priest , that he may be accounted a stupendious wonder-worker , a creatour of his creatour ) to maintain this fiction , i say , by the murthering many a thousand innocent souls that could not comply with the imposture , what is this inferiour to sacrificing captives to the idol vitziliputzly , as i intimated before ? sophr. i am glad to see you , cuphophron , so heartily resent the unsufferable wickedness of that point of the roman religion . i thought you had been so high-flown a philosopher , that you had taken no notice , no not so much as of these grosser miscarriages in the religions of the world : which had been an unpardonable neglect . cuph. if i flew higher then the strongest-winged fowls are said to do in the time of pestilence , yet the sent and noisomeness of this crass and barbarous miscarriage could not but strike my nostrills very hotly , and detain my sight . sophr. the truth is , cuphophron , that no phaenomenon in all providence has more confoundingly astonished me and amazed me then this of transubstantiation in all its circumstances . if the priests of peru had thus imposed upon those savages , how should we either have bemoaned them or derided them ! o poor peruvians ! o sottish and witless paynims , devoid of all sense and reason , that are thus shamefully imposed upon by their deceitfull priests ! or else , o miserable people , that must either profess what it is impossible for any one entirely in his wits to believe , or else must be murthered by the grim officers of the ingua , incensed against them by the complaints of an imposturous and bloudy priesthood ! but this to be done in the most civilized parts of the world ! hyl. nay , this consideration would make any one sigh deeply as well as your self , but me especially . does not this , o sophron , subvert utterly all the belief of providence in the world ? sophr. god forbid , hylobares . no , it more strongly confirms it , there nothing happening to degenerated christendome in all this but what is expresly predicted in the holy oracles ; that in the time of the man of sin , god would send upon them that loved not the truth strong delusions , that they should believe ●a lie ; and particularly pointing at this reproachfull figment of transubstantiation , it is said of the beast , that he should blaspheme the tabernacle of god , which , undoubtedly is the body of christ ; which , for the enhancing of the glory of the priest , they thus foully debase and abuse . hyl. these things neither cuphophron , as i think , nor my self are so well versed in as fully to judge of ; but we presume much of your judgement and gravity , o sophron : which is no small ease to us for the present . cuph. in the mean time , hylobares , i hope you have spent all your force against me and my paynims . hyl. not all , but the chiefest , or rather in a manner all : for my other remarks on the barbarous nations touching their religions are more slight , and such as bear too obvious a resemblance to the known miscarriages of christendome ; such as the over-severe , or over-loose , methods of living in reference to future happiness . an example of the latter whereof may be the doctrine of the bo●zii of iapan , who teach the people , that if they pray but to amida and zaca , two holy men that lived here , and satisfied for the sins of the world , though they doe it but carelesly and remissly , yet they shall not fail of everlasting happiness . euist. but gotardus taxes these bouzii for a religious order of atheists . cuph. and yet severall sects in christendome that would be thought no athei●ts , as the antinomians and liber●ines , and others that would be loth to be noted by those names , have too great an affinity with these bouzii and their followers in their life and doctrine . but i spare them . but ▪ what instances have you of the over-severe method , euistor ? euist. there is an odd example of the indian abduti , who for a time lived very rigidly and severely , but that dispensation once being passed over , they gave themselves up to all dissoluteness , and conceited they might doe so with authority . cuph. that is very easie to parallel to the condition of some spiritualists , who , under pretence of having subdued the flesh by more then ordinary austerities , and of having arrived to the liberty of the spirit , return again to the gross liberties of the flesh , to the great grief and scandal of the more sober professours of religion . euist. some chast votaries of the turks set a great iron ring on their yard , using themselves as we do our mares that they may not take horse . those of mexico slit that member for the same devout purpose . cuph. this is a sign that these hast votaries are in good earnest . but to pretend to undertake a vow of chastity more strong then iron or adamant , and yet to lie with other mens wives rather then to break it , is such a mysterious juggle or contradictious point of hypocrisie , that the very pagans would be ashamed of it . euist. they might be so indeed , cuphophron , nor does there any thing of importance occurr to my minde that looks like a sullen piece of severity in paganism , but the same may be produced in the very same terms in the present romanism ; as long and tiresome pilgrimages , voluntary whippings and scourgings , immoderate watchings and fastings , and the like . these are the exercises also even of them that serve idols and worship the devil , as well as of them that pretend to be the genuine servants of the lord iesus . hyl. but is there nothing observable touching their opinions of the other state , in order to which they may undergo these hardships ? euist. that is worth the noting , that most of the barbarous nations have some glimpse or surmize of the soul's immortality , and of a state after this life . but it is often mixed with very feat conceits . as they of peru hold that after death men eat and drink and wantonize with women . cuph. who knows but that they may understand that mystically , as the persians expound like passages in mahomet's alcoran ? bath . besides , these europaeans seem to me in some sort to peruvianize , that think they can by bargain and contract buy future happiness with mony as we do fields and orchards in this life ; not considering that if paradise be not opened within us by virtue of true regeneration into the divine life , all the wealth in the indies will not purchase an entrance into the eternall ●aradise in heaven . euist. the brammans also in the east-indies have a most ridiculous conceit touching the transmigration of souls , namely , that the reward of a vertuous soul is , that she may pass out of a man's body into the body of a cow. cuph. that 's ridiculous indeed , if the expression be not symbolicall , and hint not some more notable thing to us then we are aware of . for that the transmigration of mens souls into the bodies of beasts has a mysticall or moral meaning both plato and some of his followers have plainly enough intimated . euist. and go●ardus expresly writes , that these bra●●nan● had the knowledge of pythagoras and of his philosophy , then which nothing was more symbolicall . i will produce but one observable more , and then give cup●ophron , or rather my self , no farther trouble . for cuphophron turns all off with sport and pleasantry . cuph. you have produced nothing yet , euistor , at all hard or trou●●esome . euist. nor will i begin now : for it is onely that they of s. sebastian de la plat● have neither image nor idol . cuph ▪ it is a sign they are the more pure . worshippers of the deity . euist. if they be not atheists : but that which i was going to adde was that fond imagination of theirs , that after death they should come into a pleasant place which they dreamed to be situated beyond certain hills , which they could point at with their fingers . cuph. it were a question worth the starting , whether this american elysium or the scholastick empyreum be the more likely rendezvous of blessed souls departed this life . hyl. i pray you , what think you of that , cuphophron ? cuph. i think the coelum empyre●m of the schools is a childish figment . for what ground is there that the first heaven should be cubicall , unless it be for the young angelick shapes to whip their gigs on the flat and smooth floor thereof ? wherefore the rude indians , so far as i know , may come nearer the mark then the subtil schoolmen , though they both seem to me widely enough to miss it . hyl. but i am for the empyreum of the schools rather then for that ●ly●ium of the americans . for the american elysium is somewhere , viz. beyond the hills that those of s. seba●tian de la plata use to point at . but if the empyreum of the sch●ols be a mere childish figment , it is no-where . cuph. there 's a reason indeed , hylobares ; how can it then be the real rendezvous of separate souls ? hyl. separate souls are spirits , cuphophron , but spirits are no-where : where can they therefore more fitly have their rendezvous then in the scholastick empyreum , which is nowhere also ? cuph. shame take you , hylobares , have you hit on that piece of waggery once again ? is this all the thanks i have for bes●irring my ●elf so stoutly to ease your aggrieved imagination , that was so oppressed and burthened with the consideration of the sad scence of affairs in the pagan world and ages ? hyl. for that friendly office i return you many thanks , o cuphophron , and must confess you have in your attempts shewn a great deal of versatility of wit and nimbleness of phancy , and that not without the mixture of some solidity sometimes . but the less there had been of that , it had been the better . cuph. that 's a paradox indeed : why so , i pray you , hylobares ? hyl. for your endeavour being perpetually to shew that things were as ill in a manner in the civilized parts of the world as in the barbarous , this was not to ease me of my sad perplexing thoughts , but to redouble the burthen , and make the waies of providence appear to me twice as dismall as before . cuph. this hylobares has a mind to baffle me , and make me ridiculously unsuccessfull in every thing i attempt . did i not persist in the way th●t philotheus himself seemed to point at , viz. to undeceive your phancy , that was so horribly struck with the strange enormities of the pagan world , by intimating that for the civilized nations , that you had a better conceit of , that the heathen were in a manner little worse in their opinions and practices then they ? hyl. nay , i confess , cuphophron , that that was pretty well levelled at my phancy . but in thus quieting my phancy , you have roused up my reason , to give me a more lasting and invincible disquiet then i laboured with before . for my reason tells me , that if the world be all over so bad in a manner as it is in the barbarous countries , i ought to be less satisfied with providence now then ever . cuph. alas ! hylobares , i am sorry i have made your sore worse , but you must make your address to him who prescribed the plaister . philotheus was the physician , i but his surgeon or apothecary that administred the physick according to his prescript . he ought to set you right again by his greater skill . philoth. i pray you deal freely and ingenuously , hylobares , are you really more pinched then before ? or is it a counterfeit complaint and a piece of sportfull drollery with cuphophron ? hyl. to deal plainly with you , philotheus , it is mixt . but i am very much still dissettled , and therefore implore your farther help . philoth. will not this consideration , hylobares , both ease your phancy and gratifie your reason too , that upon the observation that there are some very sottish conceits and practices even in the civilized world , where all things otherwise look so chearfully and splendid , we may also conceive the like of the barbarous nations , and not immerse or defix our thoughts on those things onely which are so reprehensible and hideous amongst them , but think there may be much also of natural gayety and jollity , and that that dark scene does not becloud all times , places , nor persons ? hyl. that 's well suggested , philotheus , and is accommodate to the relieving one's melancholy a little . wherefore because you have begun so well , i pray you hold on , and communicate to us the thoughts which your own silence all this time and our discoursing may have occasioned you to pitch upon , in order to a fuller and more perfect cure of my present malady . for it is no more then you promised , and i hope philopolis will see that you keep your word . philop. there needs no other obligation , i dare say , for philotheus to doe that office of friendship , then his own goodness and sincere zeal for the truth , and hearty desire of delivering souls from the bondage of ignorance and the rack of doubt and anxiety in so great matters . philoth. i wish i were as able as i am willing in that kinde , philopolis . but i will attempt it , and that two waies . first , by shewing that the world may not be so enormously ill as hylobares his melancholy surmizes it : secondly , by hinting an hypothesis which , if embraced , will plainly make good , that be the world as bad as it will , yet it is not inconsistent with the divine goodness ( which we contend is the measure of his providence ) to permit it . hyl. i , that second , philotheus , were a remedy indeed , such as would quite eradicate all future possibility of such diffidences as i labour under . but i shall willingly have you treat of the first in the first place . philoth. cuphophron with a great deal of dexterity of wit answered the particular instances that euistor produced of the most ugly usages amongst the barbarous nations . i shall onely rehearse certain brief heads that will serve in general to break the force of such arguments as either others offer or offer themselves to our thoughts , to invalidate the belief of such an exactness of providence as we plead for , and boldly pretend to inferr , that if there were a god , these things could not be permitted in the world ; as you in the beginning complained , hylobares . hyl. that horrid squalidity in the usages of the barbarous nations presseth hard toward that conclusion , philotheus ; especially when a man is immersed in melancholy . philoth. but that you be not hereafter so easily imposed upon , let me desire you to remember those considerations that i was ever and anon thinking on all this time you were discoursing . as first , that historians may write things that are false , whether they pretend to be eye-witnesses themselves , or take thing up upon the reports of others . old men and travellers may lie by authority , as it is said in the proverb . wherefore either negligent enquiry , or the vanity and affectation of telling strange things , may fill histories with many false narrations ; and so though euistor did not intend to deceive cuphophron , yet he may haply have exercised his wit in severall objects that never had any existence but in the pages of historiographers . and therefore i could not but smile to see how nimbly cuphophron analyz'd the politicks of that custome of the high-priest's lying with the king of calecut's bride the first night , as if it were a design that the son of a priest and the heir to the crown should concurr in one person : whenas the sons of the king do not succeed in the kingdom , but his nephews on the sister's side , as aloysius cadamustus tells us in his navigation to those parts . philop. that 's very strange , philotheus . i pray you what may be the reason of it ? philoth. he says it is this ; because the queens of calecut are perpetually attended by no less then ten priests a-piece , ( for , according to him , the king has two queens ) and they are often compressed by them ; which he is persuaded to be for his honour so to be dealt with ; but this mixt of●spring not to be so fit to succeed as heirs to the crown . philop. this quite spoils all the witty descant that cuphophron made on that supposed custome , if aloysius cadamustus be a more credible writer then ludovicus patritius . euist. which is a very hard thing to prove , philopolis . philoth. but in the mean time historians contradicting one another , or differing so much in their narrations , makes things so uncertain , that no wise man will suffer himself to be born down by stories into any anxieties touching providence , before he be well assured of the truth of them . i am sure epicureans and atheists are very circumspect how they believe any stories about apparitions or witches , though never so true , lest they should be disturbed in their mindes with over-urgent suspicions of the existence of god. why should they then that believe there is a god from certain indications of him , be cast into anxieties about providence from stories and reports that are uncertain ? hyl. that 's but a reasonable caution , philotheus : i pray you go on . philoth. and a second is this ; that touching ceremonies as well civil as religious , and most of all opinions , we are to consider , there may be lay'd down the narration of the symbols without any key of mythologie added thereto . of which sort , for ought i know , may be the brammans transmitting the souls of the best men into the body of a cow ; a thing as likely as iupiter's carrying europa on his back through the sea in the form of a bull. which palaephatus resolves onely into an homonymie in words , and tells us that it was a man of crete , ( an island peculiarly sacred to iupiter ) whose name was taurus , that carried europa into crete out of tyre , as he had carried many other maids captive thence before . hyl. but what is this story of a bull to that of the cow the brammans speak of ? philoth. very much , hylobares . for i must confess i think it is such another homonymie of words , the same word signifying both a cow or oxe , and a cherub , that is , an angel , in the oriental tongues . is it not so , eui●●or ? euist. the criticks do write of some such etymologies . philoth. and therefore the wiser amongst the brammans , unless they have lost their pythagorick tradition , surely understand by this transmission of good mens souls into the body of a cow , the assecution of the cherubick or angelick body , which is the greatest reward of the vertuous soul that can be , and the end of all the pythagorick purgations . hyl. this is an unexpected and surprizing account of that seeming gross conceit of the indian brammans . cuph. i thought it was symbolicall . philoth. they of narsinga are worshippers of the sun and moon . hyl. it may be so : a gross and sottish religion . philoth. and they have a tradition , that when either of them are eclipsed , they are bit by the celestiall dragon . hyl. on my life their priests are concealed almanack-makers , and have turned into a superstitious parable ( which the people understand not ) the philosophy of caput and cauda draconis . philoth. then you see another real truth wrapt up in the homonymie of words ; and that this is no sottishness in the priests of narsinga , but our ignorance that understand not their mythologie . who knows therefore but that they may be as subtil in their worshipping the sun and moon , and pretend they worship not them , but the deity that is in them and in all things ? as the europaeans plead for their worshipping images , that they worship god or christ in them . hyl. in this they may be both alike subtil or sottish . euist. but was there ever any conceit so silly as that of some of the americans , ( though i have forgot the country wherein they live , ) who have this tradition amongst them● that god shot a multitude of arrows into the ground , from whence sprung men and women , and that thus the world was peopled ? cuph. it may be it is a riddle concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . hyl. what a youthfull conceit has your phancy slipt into , o cuphophron ? cuph. it 's good enough to allow amongst the americans . hyl. what ? then you have left off being advocate-general for the paynims . cuph. it were no wit to defend them in so slight a matter . bath . it may be the first authour of that aenigma needs no defence , the parable bears so fair an analogie to that passage somewhere in plotinus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . cuph. why , do you think , bathynous , that pythagoras or plato ever travelled into america ? bath . no , but there may have been wise men in all parts of the earth , for ought i know , who in symbols and parables have insculped the memorials of their wisedome in the mindes and memories of rude people ; as some walking in solitary woods or groves carve their names in the barks of trees , which grow with the growth of the tree they are carved on . but it may be in a little time men know as little of the meaning of these parables , as the stock or bark of a tree does of the person whose name it bears . and to tell the rude people of the mysticall meaning of their traditionall allegories , as if the story were but a parable , but the mystery the truth , would be as harsh to their minds , as it would be hard to a tree , if it had sense , to have the true effigies of the man whose name it bears carved on it , in lieu of the name which it has already , and which has grown and spread in the bark with the growth of the tree . it would be as dolorous to them as using the incision-knife to carve their live flesh . and therefore it would make them furiously oppose the manifestation of the truth . hyl. what pretty unexpected fetches has the thoughtfull mind of bathynous ! but i eagerly desire that philotheus would hold on in his proposed method . philoth. in the third place therefore , hylobares , you are to consider , that the prejudice of custome may so infect our phancies , that for matter of ornaments of the body or other civil ceremonies , we may unawares tax those that are really as good as our own . there is a great latitude in these things , and they vary even in the most civilized places from one extreme to another , and that very often in one age : and the habits of our fathers or grandfathers seem as strange to us as those of strangers and foreiners . hyl. this is a point that least of all troubles me , philotheus . philoth. but fourthly , as for moral deformities and extravagancies , it has been hinted already , that there being folly and wickedness all over the world , it is better there should be this variegation of it , then that it should be every-where in the same dress ; that seeing it out of the more familiar habit , we may the more easily discern the ugliness of it , and the more courageously hoot at it , and so at last heartily detest it , be it in what mode or habit it will. thus is vanity and vileness laughed and jeared at even upon its own stage , while it is in acting , and in due time will , it may be , quite be hissed off the stage by the spectatours ; that is to say , they will be as much ashamed to frame dark and dismall idol-imaginations of god , as to worship the devil ; and to live as if there were no god in the world , as to profess openly they think there is none . sophr. i pray god hasten those times , philotheus . philop. amen , i pray god. philoth. fifthly , you are to consider , hylobares , that this terrestriall globe is the very dregs of the world , and the most proper region of evil ; and that therefore to judge of the full benignity of divine providence by what we find here , were to measure the happiness of some famously-flourishing and excellently-well-ordered city by the condition of them that live in the hospitals or gaols . for , according to the opinion of the ancient philosophers , philo , plato and others , there may be many aereall and aethereall concamerations above this earth and lower air well replenished with happy souls or spirits , such as are arrived to that condition that plutarch sets down in this aenigma , that they are the citizens of that region where the inhabitants eat no meat , nor do their bodies cast any shadow . hyl. that 's a good and comfortable consideration to those that rejoyce more in the good of the universe then their own . philoth. and those that are such curious enquirers into providence ought to be so minded . but i proceed . sixthly , therefore , consider , that whatsoever evil mankinde groans under , they have brought it on their own heads by their disobedience and revolting from the first good , and by preferring the full swindge of the animal life before the orderly pleasures and warrantable joys of the divine . sophr. and therefore , philotheus , i think we have greater reason to magnifie the mercy of god , when we see any sad object in the world , that every man is not in so ill a condition , ( whenas we have all made our selves obnoxious thereto ) then to repine against providence , because we see some are . philoth. you say very well , sophron ; and we may also adde , that there are very few in the world so miserable , but they would take it very hainously of any one whom they understood to goe about to take away their life . because ( which is to be observed in the seventh place ) the lapse of man ( as touching happiness ) is but into lesser enjoyments , out of god's blessing ( as the proverb is ) into the warm sun ; he catching at good even then , if we may believe socrates , when he closes with that which we ought in such circumstances of defect or obliquity to call by the name of evil. sophr. and good reason too , philotheus . philoth. eighthly , we are to take notice , that in the most disadvantageous parts of the world there is a possibility of emerging out of the wickedness and ignorance of the place , if a man be sincere : if he be not , his hypocrisie is ipso facto punished . for those that of late years have gone about to convert the indians to the faith , have found them very capable , and not onely so , but exceeding witty and subtil , nothing infe●iour to the civilized nations , as i have heard from them that have made observation . and i doubt not but if euistor would make it his business to set out the commendable things amongst the barbarous nations , as much as he has those things that look the most horridly and reprochfully , it would alleviate hylobares his melancholick conceits of things very much . euist. i must confess , philotheus , that i meet with such specimina of peace and righteousness amongst the barbarous nations so called , that it were desirable we could finde the like amongst us christians . the barbarous americans themselves seek future happiness from these principles ; promising that prize to the just and peacefull , and adjudging the injurious , cruel and covetous to a dark , slippery and disconsolate pilgrimage after this life , where they shall cut their feet with hard flints , and enjoy no comfort , rest , nor quiet in any thing . whence hathney , a peruvian noble-man , would not be baptized , because he would not goe to the place where the cruel and covetous spaniards went , though they called it by the specious name of heaven . i should think as much from fear of being in like condition after this life with these bloudy manslayers , as out of detestation of their accursed companie : whose insatiable desire after gold made them insufferably injurious , to the shame of all christendom , as if they had no other god but this ; as a brastlian upbraided to them , who took up a wedge of gold , saying , behold the god of the christians . sophr. so easie a thing is it for one son of wickedness to reproch another . euist. but if you reade but the description of the country of mangi in the east-indies , and of their king fakfur , as paulus venetus sets things down , with what justice , peacefulness and kindness all affairs were administred , and with what security they lived , and how safely strangers might travell night and day through all parts of his large kingdome , and that though tradesmen left open their shops by night , no man would enter to steal any th●ng ; you would bestow a better title on these surely , o sophron , then you did on the spaniard or brasilian . sophr. they seem to deserve a better , euistor . euist. the like character particularly does ludovicus patritius give of the city cambaia , averring that they keep most professedly to that royal law , quod tibi fieri non vis , alteri nè feceris . hyl. but where find you any such examples in the west-indies , euistor ? for that is the most notorious region of barbarity . euist. it cannot be denied . and yet you see they have a discrimination of good and evil , by that story of hathney the brasilian . and even that people which americus vesputius describes in his first voiage , to be as remote from all that which we call civility as can be , they being without government , laws , or clothing , yet their humanity and kindness to strangers is said to exceed all belief ; they receiving them when they were landed with all expressions of joy and gladness , with songs and dances , with mirth and junkettings , offering them every thing they found pleasing to themselves , and doing all honour and respect imaginable to them , inviting them by their friendliness and hospitality no less then eighteen leagues into their country , and entertaining them thus liberally nine daies from place to place . and as they waited on them in such numerous companies , if they saw any of the strangers wearied , they would of themselves ease them by carrying them in their hamocks , and were wonderfully officious in conveying them over rivers , by sleights and artifices they had , for both their ease and safety . happy he that had the opportunity of shewing his kindness to any one of them , in getting him on his back or neck to swim over the river with him . with these high , but natural , strains of real civility and humanity did they conduct the strangers also back again to their ships . where they having entertain'd them for a day , and after given them notice that they were to go away next morning , the natives having sufficiently pleased themselves in viewing and admiring the largeness and artificialness of their vessells , they very friendly took leave , and left them . cuph. it had been a pretty experiment to have shot off some of the cannon while these poor ignorant paynims were in the midst of their astonishment and admiration . euist. they did so , cuphophron , having no design to experiment any thing , but onely to discharge a gun or two according as is usual on such occasions . but it had a ridiculous effect . cuph. i pray you tell what , euistor . euist. those that were on the shore leapt into the sea , and dived ; as frogs affrighted at some sudden noise or disturbance leap from among the grass or flags on the bank into the river . cuph. i understood before they were able swimmers . euist. to admiration , cuphophron . sophr. but that was not so well done of americus and his company , to terrifie them so with so sudden and dreadfull a noise , after all their civilities . euist. it scar'd them indeed , but they soon perceived the strangers meant them no hurt ; and they had no grounds of fearing any injury from them , being conscious to themselves of meaning them none , and of having done all kindness to them they could . philoth. you see , hylobares , how much of the law of reason and goodness is implanted even in those nations that are to the utmost barbarous , they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , lovers of mankinde , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . euist. why may we not then adde that which follows in homer , — 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ? philoth. that 's a very high expression , euistor , for them ; but not unapplicable to the best sort of christians . for our o●n religion testifies that god is love , and that love is the fulfilling of the law. hyl. it is a chearfull consideration , that there is the emergency of so much good in a people that seemed in so squalid and forlorn a condition , and so utterly hopeless . philoth. but imagine , hylobares , a nation or country in as squalid and forlorn a condition as you will , this may also , in the ninth place , ease your phancy , that though the succession of such a nation continue for many ages , yet the particular souls that make up this succession in such a disadvantageous abode , their stay is but short , but their subsistence everlasting after this life . so that their stay here is nothing in comparison of their duration hereafter . hyl. this indeed were something , philotheus , if their quitting of this life were a release from all that evil that hangs about them here . philoth. who knows , hylobares , but the present disadvantages to them that are sincere may prove advantages to them in the other state ; and by how much more forcibly they seemed to be born down to evil here , that by the special providence of god , at the releasment of the soul from the body , there is the more strong and peremptory resiliency from this sordid region of misery and sin ? hyl. if that be , your argument is not devoid of force , nor do i know how to confute it . for i know you will say , that what-ever good does accrue to such sincere souls , it is in virtue of the miraculous revelation of iesus christ to them . philoth. you conjecture right . hyl. but what shall we think of those barbarians in whom there never was any thing of the divine life , nor any moral possibility of acquiring it ? philoth. if this were , which is hard to admit , i must confess i could not think so hardly of god , as to imagine that they must answer for that depositum that never was put into their hands . and therefore it were the safest to conceive , which you may note in the tenth place , ( nor can we define any thing more determinately therein ) that they will be committed to such a state after this life as is most sutable and proportionable to such a creature . to which you may adde in the last place , that on the stage of this earth , a throughly-castigated body , though it be the fittest habitacle for the divine light and heavenly life to abide in , yet it is more inept for the enjoyment of that more full and sensible sweetness of the animal or bestial ; and that so reflexive and animadversive a spirit as the soul of man given up wholly to the pleasures of the animal life reaps an higher measure of delight therefrom , and that with more punctual and pompous circumstances , then any beast whatsoever . son , remember that thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good things , &c. cuph. i partly understand you , philotheus , and cannot but applaud the felicity of your invention , that has hit upon so many and so pertinent considerations to bear up the minde of hylobares from sinking into any distrust of the goodness of providence . but , methinks , i could adde one consideration more , to make the number even , and such as will meet with the most passionate expression in hylobares his complaint ; as if god should rather dissolve the world in an high indignation against the miscarriages of it , then suffer it to go on in such a wilde course as it seems to have done in the manners and religions of the most barbarous pagans . my meditation , i must confess , is something metaphysicall ; but i hope it is not above the capacity of hylobares to understand it . philoth. that he will best know when you have delivered your self of it , cuphophron . cuph. the summe of it is to this purpose , ( and i wish my self better success then formerly , for i have been very unlucky in my delivering my self hitherto ) that the universal object of man's understanding , religion and veneration , is much-what according to that inscription in the temple of isis or minerva in sais , an ancient city of aegypt , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i am whatsoever was , is , or is to come , and no mortal hitherto has ever uncovered my veil . this i conceive is the hidden essence of the eternal god , who is all , and from whom all things are in such sort , as that they may in some sense be said still to be him . hyl. this is hypermetaphysicall , o cuphophron , very highly turgent and mysterious . what do you mean ? that god is so the essence and substance of all things , that they are but as dependent accidents of him ? if there were nothing but matter in the world , this riddle would be easily intelligible in this sense , and all phaenomena what-ever would be but the modifications of this one substance . but for my own part , i was abundantly convinced by the first day's discourse , that there is an immoveable substance distinct from that of the moveable matter : which distinction is so palpable , that nothing can be said to be god in any good sense but god himself , at least no material thing can . cuph. you have almost struck quite out of my thoughts what i was a-going to say next , hylobares . philop. cuphophron seems to be full of something ; i pray you give him leave to vent himself . cuph. i have recovered it . now i say , whatsoever is represented to the soul is not god himself , but some exteriour manifestation : 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and whatsoever is more eminent and extraordinary , nature from religious complexions has easily extorted veneration thereto , it being as it were a more sensible appearance or visible stirring of that great godhead that inhabits this august temple of the world. wherefore god and his holy temple filling all places , the passionate motions of all creatures are a kinde of divine worship , they every-where seeking and crouching to him to enjoy some benediction of him , or else singing his praises in triumphant accents , and in transporting expressions of their present enjoyments ; some even wasting themselves in the complacency they take , though in but smaller matters which he bestows on them , or rather permits them to take them , though he could wish they would make choice of better . but these , though small in themselves , seem great to them that are pleased with them ; these lesser communications of the embodied excellencies of the deity so filling their pusillanimous spirits with joy and rapture , that they even willingly forfeit all the rest , and turn as it were martyrs and self-sacrificers to but so faint a shadow or scant resemblance of the first uncreated perfection : whose beautifull nature is solidly born witness unto by so ready and constant a profession , ( though many times with sad after-inconveniences ) and by so religious an adhesion to so slender and evanid emanations thereof . which mistakes therefore should in all likelihood move pity rather then vengeance in the deity , whose meaner gifts are so highly prized and received with such eager devotion . wherefore as uglily disordered as the affairs of mankinde seem , hylobares has no reason to conceit that god's vengeance must be presently poured down upon their heads , they not so much reproching him , as befooling themselves , by their ill choice . hyl. what think you , gentlemen ? has not cuphophron made a very rapturous harangue ? sophr. if the full stream of his phancy and eloquence had not carried away his judgement , and miss-led it into such scandalous expressions as well as real mistakes , the musick of his words had been no offence to mine ears . but to me it seems the remainder of yesternight's resverie which he fell into when he had so plentifully imbib'd the evening-air impregnated with the moist influence of the moon , which it seems has given him this second intoxication . for though his words pass the tongue very glibly , yet the sense of some passages seems very unsound to me , and to be rather the wild fetches of wit and phancy , then the suggestion of true reason : as that they that make such an affectionate choice of meaner good things , pleasure , suppose , in stead of vertue , seem notwithstanding religiously to give glory to god , in that they so highly esteem these lesser shadows of that fulness and perfection that is in him ; whenas really it is a reproch to god , to have those things that are least like him preferr'd by a rational creature before those things that are most like him , as true vertue and the divine life most certainly is . this therefore is extravagantly false and scandalous . besides that it is a gross affront to the almighty , whenas he bids us make choice of one thing , that we will make choice of another . hyl. you have said enough , o sophron , to enervate all such slight pretensions . these moon-shine conceptions of cuphophron are very abortive , and suddenly vanish in so clear a light. besides , if there had been any force of reason mingled with his high-flown eloquence , what makes it to the main design , that providence has its rule and measure from the divine goodness ? philop. you unmercifully fall upon the rear of those many considerations which philotheus and cuphophron have joyntly offered you . but what think you of the whole body , hylobares ? is your scepticism in this point so powerfull as still to be able to bear up against them ? hyl. i must confess , o philopolis , that many things have been suggested from philotheus that are very considerable , and much to the purpose they aim at : but i am so in love with the opinion , that the goodness of god is the measure of his providence , that the desire i have `it should be true , it may be , makes the defence thereof seem weaker to me then it is . i must ingenuously confess , i do not find my self so perfectly yet at ease in my minde touching this matter ; and cuphophron's shrewd reflexions on the analogies of the miscarriages of the civilized nations which they bear to those of the most barbarous in manners and religion , have rather rankled the sore then healed it , and have made it the more incurable . cuph. was ever man so unfortunate as i in my officiousness to serve my friends with that small pittance of wisedome that god and nature have bestowed upon me ? when i reason shrewdly , that is to say , solidly , then i fester the sore ; when my arguments naturally tend to mollifie , soften and asswage the anguish of the sore , then they are weak , abortive , moon-shine-conceptions . well , i see the fates cast the whole honour upon philotheus of curing hylobares his malady . and i wish him good success therein . philoth. i thank you , cuphophron . and i shall soon find out what my success is like to be , by asking hylobares but one question . hyl. i pray do , philotheus : i shall answer you with all freedome . philoth. tell me then , hylobares , whether you do not think that some free agents , whether the spirits of angels or of men , may not so misbehave themselves , that if you saw the● tumbling in stifling flames of brimstone , and heard them howling for extremity of torture , and hideously blaspheming god out of an impenitent vexation of mind and diabolical fixedness in that which is evil , being committed to a state of devils and of hell ; whether , notwithstanding the dismalness of this tragicall sight , you cannot easily conceive but that such a state of things , though it were all over the face of the earth , might consist with the iustice and goodness of god ? hyl. with that part of his goodness which we call iustice , you mean , philotheus . philoth. be it so , hylobares . hyl. that i was convinced of yesterday , by your parable of the defloured virgin , and the condign punishment of the villain that defloured her and abused her so barbarously ; that , even in such severity as tended not at all to the emendation of the punished , the infliction notwithstanding of the punishment might have its rise and take its reasons and measures from goodness it self . philoth. can you stick to this without any diff●dence , hylobares , hyl. yes surely , this seems to me a clear case . philoth. why then , hylobares , i have one single catholicon , which , if you can receive it , will quite purge out of your minde the lowest , the last , and the least remaining dregs of diffidence that you can have touching the goodness of providence , though the scene of things quite over the earth were ten times worse then euistor has described them . hyl. i marry , sir , this is something indeed , philotheus . this is that which will clear up my thoughts to the purpose , and set me at perfect ease . i thought there was some great thing wanting still to the full satisfaction and quiet of my minde : i beseech you let me know it therefore , philotheus . philoth. it is one of the two famous keys of providence , even the golden one . hyl. why , are there just two ? philoth. two main ones . hyl. and if the one be gold , i pray you what is the other ? a silver-one ? philoth. so they call it . hyl. o how i long to have these keys delivered into my hand ! i pray you , philotheus , produce them . philoth. not while bathynous is in the company . hyl. why so , philotheus ? bathynous seems one of the worthiest persons in the whole company to receive them . philoth. you would say so , if you knew all . hyl. i pray you conceal nothing from me . philoth. it was he that first received them , and that many years ago , when he was scarce older then your self : and therefore none of us think it decorous to take upon us to deliver these keys to any one while he is in presence , we ever reserving that honour to him that first received them . hyl. that 's an handsome ceremony . o thrice happy youth , whom the bright face of wisedome so early shined upon ! but , i pray you , where did he receive these keys , philotheus ? philoth. in a dream . hyl. what , has all my expectation then vanished into a dream ? euist. you know , hylobares , what high strains of philosophy are delivered in somnium scipionis . hyl. you say right , i was but in jest , and expect no less truth now , nor of meaner importance , then before . euist. i pray you , bathynous , what kind of dream was it ? for there are five severall sorts , according to macrobius , namely , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . bath . truly , euistor , i have not yet considered that so critically , never since i had it . euist. but you could easily tell me , did i but describe the natures of these five severall sorts of dreams to you . hyl. o impertinent euistor , that wouldst cause such needless delaies by catching at this occasion of shewing thy skil in critical trifles , whiles i in the mean time am almost quite consumed with excess of desire to have so important an arcanum communicated unto me , for the establishing my minde in that great and fundamental truth i so eagerly seek after ! euist. let me beg of you , bathynous , to put hylobares out of pain , for i see he is highly impatient . bath . it is a dream i had in my youth , of an old man of a grave countenance and comportment speaking unto me in a wood. euist. that very intimation shews it to be that kinde of dream that the greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the latines oraculum . hyl. a good omen , euistor , i thank you for that . i 'll forgive thee all thy criticall impertinencies hereafter for this passage sake . euist. and i will jointly beg of bathynous to tell us this dream of his ; for i am almost as eager of it as your self . i would fain see how exquisite an example it is of that kinde of dream which in english we should call an oracle . bath . i profess , gentlemen , i am much ashamed to seem so light-minded as to tell my dreams before strangers , especially before so grave a person as philopolis . hyl. the proper term , bathynous , is not a dream , but an oracle . bath . but i am more ashamed to pretend to speak oracles then to tell my dreams . cuph. you did not speak the oracle , but the oracle was spoke to you . bath . but if i had not spoke it afterwards , cuphophron , none of you had ever heard it . philop. call it a dream , or an oracle , or an oracular dream , it matters not , bathynous , so we may enjoy the hearing of it . for i am neither so unskilfull nor morose as to have the slighter conceit of any one for telling his dream , especially in such circumstances : nay , i think it is his duty rather so to doe . bath . well then , since it must be so , gentlemen , upon the permission of philopolis and the importunity of hylobares , i shall recite to you my dream as exquisitely and briefly as i can . you must know then , first , philopolis , of what an anxious and thoughtfull genius i was from my very childhood , and what a deep and strong sense i had of the existence of god , and what an early conscienciousness of approving my self to him ; and how , when i had arrived to riper years of reason , and was imbued with some slender rudiments of philosophy , i was not then content to think of god in the gross onely , but began to consider his nature more distinctly and accurately , and to contemplate and compare his attributes ; and how , partly from the natural sentiments of my own minde , partly from the countenance and authority of holy scripture , i did confidently conclude that infinite power , wisedome and goodness , that these three were the chiefest and most comprehensive attributes of the divine nature , and that the sovereign of these was his goodness , the summity and flower , as i may so speak , of the divinity , and that particularly whereby the souls of men become divine ; whenas the largest communication of the other , without this , would not make them divine , but devils . in the mean time , being versed in no other natural philosophy nor metaphysicks but the vulgar , and expecting the laws of the externall creation , whether visible or invisible , should be sutable to that excellent and lovely idea of the godhead which with the most serious devotion and affection i entertained in my own breast , my minde was for a long time charged with inextricable puzzles and difficulties , to make the phaenomena of the world and vulgar opinions of men in any tolerable way to consort or sute with these two chiefest attributes of god , his wisedome and his goodness . these meditations closed mine eyes at night ; these saluted my memory the first in the morning : these accompanied my remote and solitary walks into fields and woods sometimes so early , as when most of other mortals keep their beds . it came to pass therefore , o philopolis , that one summer-morning having rose much more early then ordinary , and having walk'd so long in a certain wood ( which i had a good while frequented ) that i thought fit to rest my self on the ground , having spent my spirits , partly by long motion of my body , but mainly by want of sleep , and over-anxious and solicitous thinking of such difficulties as hylobares either has already , or , as i descry'd at first , is likely to propose ; i straight way reposed my wearie limbs amongst the grass and flowers at the foot of a broad-spred flourishing oak , where the gentle fresh morning air playing in the shade on my heated temples , and with unexpressable pleasure refrigerating my bloud and spirits , and the industrious bees busily humming round about me upon the dewy honey-suckles ; to which nearer noise was most melodiously joyned the distanced singings of the chearfull birds reechoed from all parts of the wood ; these delights of nature thus conspiring together , you may easily phansie , o philopolis , would quickly charm 〈◊〉 wearied body into a profound sleep . but my soul was then as much as ever awake , and , as it seems , did most vividly dream that i was still walking in these solitary woods with my thoughts more eagerly intent upon those usual difficulties of providence then ever . but while i was in this great anxiety and earnestness of spirit , accompanied ( as frequently when i was awake ) with vehement and devout suspirations and ejaculations towards god , of a sudden there appeared at a distance a very grave and venerable person walking slowly towards me . his statu●e was greater then ordinary . he was clothed with a loose silk garment of a purple colour , much like the indian gowns that are now in fashion , saving that the sleeves were something longer and wider ; and it was tied about him with a leviticall girdle also of purple ; and he wore a pair of velvet slippers of the same colour , but upon his head a montero of black velvet , as if he were both a traveller and an inhabitant of that place at once . cuph. i dare warrant you it was the ghost of some of the worthy ancestors of that noble family to whom these woods did belong . hyl. you forget , cuphophron , that bathynous is telling of a dream , as also ( this third time ) that ghosts , that is , spirits , are no-where , and therefore cannot be met with in a wood. philop. enough of that , hylobare● i pray you proceed , bathynous , a●● describe to us his age and his looks , as well as his clothing . cuph. i pray you do , bathynous : i love alife to hear such things as these punctually related . bath . did not the ruddiness of his complexion and the vivacitie of his looks seem to gainsay it , the snowy whiteness of his hair , and large beard , and certain senile strokes in his countenance , seemed to intimate him to be about sixscore years of age . sophr. there is no such contradiction in that , bathynous : for moses is said to be an hundred and twenty when he died , and yet his eye was not dim , nor his natural force abated . but , i pray you , proceed . bath . while he was at any distance from me , i stood fearless and unmoved , onely , in reverence to so venerable a personage , i put off my hat , and held it in my hand . but when he came up closer to me , the vivid fulgour of his eyes , that shone so piercingly bright from under the shadow of his black montero , and the whole air of his face , though joyn'd with a wonderfull deal of mildness and sweetness , did so of a sudden astonish me , that i fell into an excessive trembling , and had not been able to stand , if he had not laid his hand upon my head , and spoken comfortably to me . which he did in a paternal manner , saying , blessed be thou of god , my son , be of good courage , and fear not ; for i am a messenger of god to thee for thy good . thy serious aspires and breathings after the true knowledge of thy maker and the ways of his providence ( which is the most becoming employment of every rational being ) have ascended into the sight of god ; and i am appointed to give into thy hands the two keys of providence , that thou maiest thereby be able to open the treasures of that wisedom thou so anxiously , and yet so piously , seek'st after . and therewithall he put his right hand into his left sleeve , and pull'd out two bright shining keys , the one of silver , the other of gold , tied together with a sky-coloured ribbon of a pretty breadth , and delivered them into my hands ; which i received of him , making low obeisance , and professing my thankfulness for so great a gift . and now by this time i had recovered more then ordinary strength and courage , which i perceiv'd in a marvellous way communicated unto me by the laying of his hand upon my head , so that i had acquired a kinde of easie confidence and familiarity to converse with him ; and therefore , though with due civility , yet without all fear , methought i said farther to him , these are a goodly pair of keys , o my father , and very lovely to look upon : but where is the treasure they are to open ? to which , smiling upon me , he straightway replied , the treasures , my son , be in the keys themselves . then each key , said i , o my father , will need a farther key to open it . each key , said he , my son , is a key to it self ; and therewithall bad me take notice of the letters embossed on the silver key , and there was the like artifice in the golden one . which i closely viewing in both , observed that the keys consisted of a company of rings closely committed together , and that the whole keys were all bespattered with letters very confusedly and disorderly . set the letters of the keys in right order , then said he , and then pull at their handles , and the treasure will come out . and i took the silver key ; but though i could move the rings by thrusting my nails against the letters , yet i could not reduce the letters into any order , so that they would all lie in straight lines , nor was there any sense in any line . which when that aged personage saw , you must first know the motto , said he , my son : that is the key of the key . i beseech you then , said i , o my father , tell me the motto . the motto , said he , my son , is this , claude fenestras , ut luceat domus . having got the motto , i set to work again , and having reduced those letters that made up that motto into a right line , i , holding the lower part of the key in my left hand , pull'd at the handle with my right , and there came out a silver tube , in which was a scroll of thin paper , as i thought , but as strong as any vellum , and as white as driven snow . having got this scroll , i took the boldness to open it . the figure thereof was perfectly square , with even margins on all sides , drawn with lines of a sky-coloured blew , very perfect and lovely . in the midst was described the figure of the sun in blazing gold : about the sun were six circles drawn with lines of the same-coloured blew . two of these circles were very near the body of the sun ; the other four more remote both from him and from one another , though not in equal distances . in every one of these circles was there the figure of a little speck like a globe , but of two distinct colours ; the one side toward the sun shining like silver , the other being of a duskish discoloured black . about those little globes in the third and fifth circle there were also drawn lesser circles of blew , one about the third , and four about the fifth : and in each of these circles was there also a small globous speck , of a lesser size then those in the middle . something there was also about the globe of the sixth circle , but i cannot remember it so distinctly . beyond these circles there was an innumerable company of star-like figures of gold , of the same hue with that of the sun , but exceeding-much less , which carelesly scattered , some were found a pretty distance from the margin , others towards the margin ; othersome were cut in two by the blew line of the margin , as if it were intimated that we should understand , that there were still more of those golden stars to an indefinite extent . this scheme entertained my gazing eyes a good time ; for i never had seen such before , and was resolved to impress the lines thereof perfectly in my memory , that i might afterwards discourse more readily thereof with this venerable personage . for i knew the purpose thereof by the inscription on the upper margin , which was , the true systeme of the world. having thus satisfy'd my self , i rolled up the scroll again , and repositing it in the silver tube , easily thrust in the tube into the other part of the key , and disordering the line of letters that contain'd the motto , all was lockt up again safe as before . having pleased my self so well with opening this first treasure , i had the more eager desire to assay the other ; and knowing all attempt to be vain without the knowledge of the motto or key of the key , i besought that divine sage to impart it to me . that i shall doe right willingly , said he , my son : and i pray you take special notice of it . it is , amor dei lux animae . an excellent motto indeed , said i ; the key is a treasure it self . however i set me to work as before , and reducing the letters to such an order that a line of them did plainly contain this motto , i pulled at both ends of the golden key , as i did in the silver one , and in a golden tube continued to the handle of the key there was a scroll of such paper , if i may so call it , as in the other , exceeding white and pure , and , though very thin , yet not at all transparent . the writing was also terminated with even margins on all sides as before ; onely it was more glorious , being adorn'd richly with flower-work of gold , vermilion , and blew . and i observed that twelve sentences filled the whole area , written with letters of gold. the first was , the measure of providence is the divine goodness , which has no bounds but it self , which is infinite . . the thread of time and the expansion of the vniverse , the same hand drew out the one and spred out the other . . darkness and the abysse were before the light , and the suns or stars before any opakeness or shadow . . all intellectual spirits that ever were , are , or ever shall be , sprung up with the light , and rejoyced together before god in the morning of the creation . . in infinite myriads of free agents which were the framers of their own fortunes , it had been a wonder if they had all of them taken the same path ; and therefore sin at the long run shook hands with opacity . . as much as the light exceeds the shadows , so much do the regions of happiness those of sin and misery . these six , philopolis , i distinctly remember , but had cursorily and glancingly cast mine eye on all twelve . but afterwards fixing my mind orderly upon them , to commit them all perfectly to my memory , ( for i did not expect that i might carry the keys away with me home ) by that time i had got through the sixth aphorism , there had come up two asses behinde me out of the wood , one on the one side of the tree , and the other on the other , that set abraying so rudely and so loudly , that they did not onely awake , but almost affright me into a discovery that i had all this while been but in a dream . for that aged grave personage , the silver and golden keys , and glorious parchment , were all suddenly vanished , and i found my self sitting alone at the bottome of the same oak where i fell asleep , betwixt two rudely-braying asses . euist. these are the usual exploits , bathynous , of this kind of animal . just thus was the nymph ` lotis , lying fast asleep on the grass in a moon-shine-night , awakened by the loud braying of silenus his ass. asses are as it were the trumpeters of the forest , bathynous , that awake careless men out of deep sleeps . hyl. if your memory did not far surpass your phancy , euistor , you would not be so good an historian as you are . surely the braying of an ass is more like to the blowing of a neatherd's or swineherd's horn then to the sound of a trumpet . besides , the braying of silenus his ass was the saving of the nymph's virginity : but this , o euistor ! o bathynous ! was there ever a more unfortunate mis-hap then this ? this story has quite undone me . it has wounded my belief of providence more then any thing i have yet taken notice of . that god should ever permit two such dull animals to disturb so divine a vision as it seems to me ; and that so mysterious , so heavenly and intellectual a pleasure , and so certain a communication of such important truths , should be thus blown aside by the rude breath of an ass. to what a glorious comprehension of things would this scene have proceeded ! what accurate information touching the fabrick of the world ! what punctually-satisfactory solutions of every puzzle touching divine providence might you after have received in your intended conference with this venerable personage , if these impertinent animals by their unseasonable loud braying had not called your ecstaticall minde into the body again , which is as unfit for divine communication as themselves ! bath . do not take on so heavily , o hylobares , nor be so rash a censurer of providence , no not so much as in this paradoxicall passage thereof . for how do you know but all that which you phansie behinde , had been too much to receive at once ? old vessells fill'd with new wine will burst . and too large a dosis of knowledge may so elate the spirits , that it may hazard the brain , that it may destroy life , and chase away sobriety and humility out of the soul. sophr. this is very judiciously advertised of bathynous , is it not , hylobares ? hyl. i cannot disown truth whensoever i meet with it . bath . but besides , though you should judge so extraordinary-charitably of me at that age , hylobares , as that i might have received all that behind , ( which you surmize was lost by that accident ) without any hazard to the morality of my mind : yet i can tell you of a truth , that i take that accident , that seems so paradoxicall to you , to be a particular favour and kindness done to me by providence , and that it fell out no otherwise then ( could i have foreseen how things would be ) i my self should even then have desired it ; that is to say , i found my self more gratify'd afterwards , things happening as they did , then if that divine dream , if we may call it so , had gone on uninterruptedly to its full period . for it would but have put me into the possession of all that truth at once , which in virtue of this piece of the dream i got afterwards , with an often-repeated and prolonged pleasure , and more agreeable to humane nature . hyl. i profess , bathynous , this is not nothing that you say . nay indeed , so much , as i must acknowledge my exception against providence in this passage very much weakned . but what use , could you make of the silver key , when that divine personage explained nothing of it to you ? bath . it was as it were a pointing of one to those authours that conform the frame of the world to that scheme ; as nicolaus copernicus and those that follow that systeme . but it is no-where drawn nearer to the elegancy of the silver-key-paper then in des-cartes his third part of his principles . cuph. that 's notable indeed , bathynous . this is a kinde of divine testimonie to the truth of all des-cartes's principles . bath . no , by no means , cuphophron : for in the golden-key-paper , in that cursory glance i gave upon all the sentences or aphorisms therein contained , amongst the rest i espy'd one , of which part was writ in greater letters , which was to this sense , that the primordials of the world are not mechanicall , but spermaticall or vital ; which is diametrically and fundamentally opposite to des-cartes's philosophy . cuph. there is great uncertainty in dreams . bath . but i must confess i think the thing true of it self . and if i had had full conference with that divine sage , i believe i should have found his philosophy more pythagoricall or platonicall , ( i mean his natural philosophy , cuphophron ) then cartesian . for there was also mention of the seminal soul of the world , which some modern writers call the spirit of nature . cuph. so many men , so many mindes . bath . but i doubt not but that it is demonstrable by reason , that the primordials of the universe are not purely mechanicall . cuph. so many men , so many reasons , so many demonstrations . hyl. i believe cuphophron takes it very ill of you , bathynous , that the old grave person you met with in the wood was not a thorough-paced cartesian , or else he is in a very scepticall mood : which i do not desire to be in , especially in so weighty points as these concerning providence . and therefore let me intreat you , bathynous , to unlock that difficulty i propounded last to philotheus , by virtue of your golden key . bath . you must excuse me there , hylobares ; i would not be so injurious to cuphophron as to make him a false prophet , who so expresly foretold a while agoe , that the fates had designed that honour solely for philotheus . philoth. and it seems , in the like complement to cuphophron , i must again resume my not unpleasant burthen of serving hylobares ; which i shall doe according to the best skill i have . philop. i pray you do , philotheus ; for i am very ambitious you should work upon hylobares a perfect cure. philoth. i shall endeavour it , philopolis . but i must first take the liberty to chafe the benummed part , and soundly chide hylobares that he is not cured already , nor has been sufficiently sensible of that clearness and evidence for the unexceptionableness of divine providence which has been hitherto produced . which i must profess i think to be such , that those that have not some peculiar humour or phancy , or labour not under the burthen of their own idiosyncrasie , cannot but be fully satisfied with , without the flying to any such high-swoln hypothesis as that systeme of the world represented in the silver-key-paper , or pre-existence of souls , which is part of the golden one . so that any farther solution of the present difficulty , were it not for hylobares his own fault , and the peculiarity of his own phancy that still molesteth him , were plainly unnecessary and superfluous . how many thousands of sober and intelligent persons have been fully satisfied touching the accuracy of divine providence without any such far-fetch'd helps ? sophr. which is a shrewd indication , that those arguments , distinct from these more aiery hypotheses and finely-contrived phancies , are the more natural strength and arms , as it were , of humane understanding , ( by whose strokes it bears it self up in these profound mysteries from sinking into infidelity or atheism ; ) but those more big and swelled hypotheses , but as a bundle of bull-rushes or a couple of bladders ty'd under the arms of some young and unskilfull swimmer . hyl. and i for my part , gentlemen , do profess my self such a young and unskilfull swimmer in these depths , and therefore would gladly be supported by the artificial use of these bladders , that my melancholy may never sink me to the bottom . cuph. and i commend your wit , hylobares , that you can so well provide for your own safety . for i dare undertake that these bladders are so big , so tough , and so light , that if they be but well ty'd on , a cow or oxe may securely swim on them through the hellespont , or rather through the main ocean , and never fear drowning . hyl. i thank you for that encouragement , cuphophron , and shall therefore the more earnestly beg of philotheus , that he would use all the art and skill he has to tie them on me as fast as possibly he can , ( that of pre-existence especially , the reasons and uses thereof ) that the string may never slip nor break , to my hazard of ducking to the bottom . philoth. that i will do , hylobares● but on this condition , that you ever remember that what i do thus firmly fasten on you is yet but by way of hypothesis , and that you will no longer make use of these bladders then till you can safely swim without them . hyl. that i do faithfully promise you , philotheus , in the word of a gentleman . wherefore , without any farther interruption , i pray you proceed . philoth. to begin therefore where we left . do you still , hylobares , adhere to that truth , that free agents may so hainously misbehave themselves , that even according to the laws of divine goodness they may be detruded into the state of devils and of hell , and therefore far more easily into a state less deplorable ? hyl. that i said , and do still say , is to me a clear case , philotheus . philoth. let us then but assume out of the golden-key-paper that which is so clearly contained therein , the pre-existence of humane souls , and all these black and dark difficulties that thus over-cloud your understanding will instantly vanish . hyl. why so , philotheus ? philoth. because supposing humane souls were created in the morning of the world , and in such infinite myriads , there has been time enough since that for as many and more then hitherto have peopled the earth , to have transgressed so hainously before their entrance on this stage , that by a just nemesis measured and modify'd by the divine goodness it self they may be contrived into the worst and most horrid circumstances , into the most ●qualid and disadvantageous condition and state of living , that euistor has produced any example of amongst the most barbarous nations . hyl. this reaches the point home indeed , philotheus , and does perfectly pull up by the roots all pretension to this last and greatest scruple , if we were assured of the truth of the hypothesis . philoth. why , did not your self call this dream of bathynous a divine dream , before i came to make this important use of it ? and every divine dream is a true dream . but you serve me just so as cuphophron did bathynous . whiles it seemed to serve his turn to credit des-cartes's philosophy , so long it was a divine testimonie ; but when it proved contrary , then there was little certainty in dreams . this seems a piece of levity in you both . hyl. but i hope in my self the more pardonable , o philotheus , by how much more important a thing it is that the ground of a man's belief of the goodness of divine providence should be solid and unshaken , then that des-cartes's principles should be deemed a piece of such infallible wisedome . cuphophron's vilification of the dream proceeded out of a partial zeal in the behalf of the cartesian philosophy : my distrust of it , out of an excess of desire it should be true . for i must confess , if this one point in it of pre-existence appear to me certainly true , all my doubts and difficulties touching the moral evils in the world will suddenly melt into nothing . nay , if i could believe bathynous his dream to be a divine dream , the first aphorism in the golden-key-paper puts all our controversies to an end , it declaring the measure of providence to be the divine goodness , which has no bounds but it self , which is infinite . wherefore it was the most calamitous accident that could ever have befallen the philosophicall republick , that 〈◊〉 two unlucky asses so rudely broke off bathynous his conference with that venerable sage , who , i surmize , in that intended discourse would have communicated the reasons and grounds of these conclusions to bathynous . for true reason is so palpable and connatural to a man , that when he findes it , he feels himself fully satisfi'd and at ease . philoth. i commend your caution , hylobares , that you are so loth to build great conclusions upon weak or uncertain principles . wherefore let me offer to your consideration a point of which i presume you will acknowledge your self more certain , that is , the possibility of the pre-existence of the soul ; i demand of you , if you be not very certain of that . hyl. yes surely i am ; i see no repugnancy at all in it . philoth. then you are not certain but that the soul does pre-exist . hyl. i confess it . philoth. and uncertain that it does not . hyl. that cannot be denied ; it is the same , i think , i granted before . philoth. therefore , hylobares , you make your self obnoxious both to providence , and to my self . to providence , in that you bring in uncertain allegations and accusations against her , and so soil the beauty and perfection of her waies , that are so justifiable where they are perfectly known , by opposing phancies and conceits , such as you your self acknowledge you are not certain of . to me , in that you covenanted with me at the first , never to alledge uncertain hypotheses against known truth . hyl. this is true , philotheus ; you make me half ashamed of my inconstancy . but in the mean time i do not finde my self in that full ease i desire to be , while as well the pre-existence of the soul as her non-preexistence is an uncertain hypothesis . philoth. if you cannot finde divine providence perfect without it , it is your own fault that , as to your self , to save you from sinking , you do not make use of it as a true hypothesis . and forasmuch as you finde it so hard to discover divine providence to be perfect without it , that is no small argument that the hypothesis is true . hyl. i must confess i think it is a safer argument then bathynous his single dream . philoth. nay , it were in it self , hylobares , a solid argument , supposing providence cannot well otherwise be salved ; as it is for the copernican hypothesis , that nothing else can give a tolerable account of the motion of the planets . and i must tell you farther , hylobares , that this hypothesis of the soul's pre-existence is not the single dream of bathynous sleeping in the grass , but was deemed a vision of truth to the most awakened souls in the world . hyl. that 's very good news , philotheus ; for i do not at all affect singularity , nor love to finde my self alone . philoth. if the dream of sleeping bathynous be a mere dream , the most famously-wise in all ages have dream'd waking . for that the souls of men do pre-exist before they come into the body , was the dream of those three famous philosophers , pythagoras , plato , and aristotle ; the dream of the aegyptian gymnosophists , of the indian brachmans , and persian magi ; the dream of zoroafter , epicharmus , and empedocles ; the dream of cebes , euclide , and euripides ; the dream of plotinus , proclus , and iamblichus ; the dream of marcus cicero , of virgil , psellus , and boethius ; the dream of hippocrates , galen , and fernelius ; and , lastly , the constant and avowed dream of philo iudaeus , and the rest of the most learned of the iews . cuph. i pray you let me cast in one more example , philotheus . philoth. i pray you doe , cuphophron . cuph. the dream of the patriarch iacob when he slept in bethel , and dream'd he saw angels descending and ascending on a ladder that reached from earth to heaven ; whereby was figured out the descent of humane souls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and their return from thence to the aethereal regions . hyl. o egregious cuphophron , how do i admire the unexpectedness of thy invention ! this is your dream of the mysterious dream of the holy patriarch . cuph. and who knows but a very lucky one ? hyl. but i pray you tell me , philotheus , did any of the old fathers of the church dream any such dream as this ? sophr. this is a very becoming and commendable temper in hylobares , that his younger years will enquire after the judgement of the ancient fathers in the primitive church touching so important a matter . cuph. those primitive ages were the youngest ages of the church , but the ages of persons much the same now that were then . hyl. notwithstanding this flurt of cuphophron's wit , i beseech you , philotheus , satisfie me in the question i propounded . philoth. this at least , hylobares , is true , that the primitive fathers in the most entire ages of the church dream'd not the least evil of this dream of pre-existence ; the wisedome of solomon , which expresly asserts it , being appointed by them to be read in their publick assemblies . nay , our saviour himself , when he had a most signal occasion to have undeceived the iews in that point , if it had been false or dangerous , in the question touching the man that was born blind , took not the least offence at the supposition . whence you will the less wonder that either st. austin , basil , and gregory nazianzen , were ●avourably affected touching the opinion ; or that clemens alexandrinus , origen , synesius , arnobius , and prudentius , were express assertors thereof . hyl. this truly , philotheus , casts me into so great a security from any harm in the hypothesis , that if you hold on as you have begun , the power of your speech will unavoidably charm me into the same dream . philoth. you know the worst of it then , hylobares , that your minde will be at perfect rest touching the present difficulty concerning providence . and if testimonies thus please you , be assured of this , that there was never any philosopher that held the soul spiritual and immortal , but he held also that it did pre-exist . hyl. that is very considerable . philoth. and do not you , hylobares , hold the soul of man to be an incorporeal indiscerpible substance , a spirit ? hyl. i do , and i thank you that i do so , philotheus . philoth. how then comes it to pass that you , being of so philosophicall a genius , should miss of the pre-existence of the soul ? for there being no other considerable opinion in view but creation , traduction , and pre-existence ; creation of pure souls , and the infusion of them into impure bodies , and in such horridly-impure circumstances as sometimes happens , is a repugnancy to the purity of god , who is supposed then to create them : but traduction a derogation and contradiction to the spirituality and indiscerpibility of the soul it self . wherefore it necessarily remains , that these two being such absurd opinions , the third must take place , and that the souls of men do pre-exist . hyl. o philotheus , that venerable sage in bathynous his sleep could not have argued better then thus , if they had come to conference . i do not dream , but i see with the eyes of my minde wide open in broad day , the reasonableness of this hypothesis , that the souls of men did exist before they came into these terrestrial bodies . philoth. and in this day-light , hylobares , all your difficulties do vanish touching that part of providence that respects the moral evils , whose hue seemed so dismall to you out of history , and their permission so reproachfull to the goodness of god. hyl. they are all vanished quite , and those touching natural evils too , so far forth as they respect the souls of men. philop. this is a good hearing . we are infinitely obliged to philotheus for his pains . are there any more scruples behinde touching divine providence , hylobares ? hyl. onely those objections fetch'd from defects conceived to be in the administration of providence . for though we be convinced that all things that are are rightly ordered ; yet it may be demanded why there are no more of them , why no sooner , and the like . sophr. indeed , hylobares , you seem to me hugely over-curious in such inquisitions as these . is not the whole world the alms-house of god almighty , which he had a right to build when he would , and to place us his eleemosynary creatures in it no sooner then he pleased ? he does but utisuo jure in all this . and it is an outrageous presumption , to expect that he should not act according to his own minde and will , but according to the groundless enlargements and expansions of our wanton and busie phancies . so long as we see that the things that are are well and rightly administred , and according to the laws of goodness and justice , it is a marvellous piece of capriciousness to complain , that such things with the unexceptionable oeconomie of them began no sooner , nor reach no farther . bath . you speak very gravely and soberly , o sophron , and that which has very solid sense at the bottom , if rightly understood . for god has no obligation from the creatures to make them sooner , or more , or larger , and the like . so that if he had made the world no larger then the vulgar phansy it , a thought suppose above the clouds , or had stay'd the making of it till a year ago , or had not made it yet , nor ever intended to make it ; he did in all this but uti suo jure , as you speak . but in that he has made it much larger and sooner , to what leading attribute in god is that to be imputed , o sophron ? sophr. surely to his mere goodness , bathynous . bath . you acknowledge then his goodness the leading attribute in the creation of the world , and his wisedome and power to contrive and execute what his will actuated by his goodness did intend . sophr. speaking more humano , so it seems to be . bath . but this is a marvell of marvells to me , that the goodness of god being infinite , the effects thereof should be so narrow and finite as commonly men conceit , if there be no incapacity in the things themselves that thus streightens them . that one small share of the divine goodness should be active , but that infinite remainder thereof , as i may so speak , silent and inactive , is a riddle , a miracle that does infinitely amaze me . sophr. o bathynous , my very heart-strings are fretted with fear and anxiety , when you plunge us into such profound disquisitions as these , out of which there is never any hope to emerge . i pray you , hylobares , ask modestly touching these things . i wonder you are not throughly satisfi'd about providence already : i am sure i am . hyl. and i desire but to be so too , sophron. what will satisfie one man will not satisfie another . philoth. that is very true , hylobares , which i perceiving , it forced me to mention the golden key of providence to you . for we do not wantonly and ostentatively produce those keys , but at a dead lift , when no other method will sati●●ie him whose minde is anxious and solicitous touching the waies of god ; that by these hypotheses he may keep his heart from sinking . hyl. it is a very laudable custome , philotheus , and such as i find the benefit of already . for i find the very first difficulties of this last and present head i intended to propose , to melt away of themselves in virtue of that light from the golden key , i mean that of pre-existence . for i intended to have propounded it as an objection against the goodness of divine providence , that , whereas the soul can live and subsist out of this terrestriall body , ( for so it does after death ) she should not be created before this terrestriall mansion , and enjoy her self before she come into the body , as well as afterwards . but this doctrine of pre-existence has plainly prevented the objection . another objection also , touching the messias coming into the world so lately , is in my own judgement much enervated by this hypothesis . for who knows but the demerits of humane souls were such , that it was consonant enough to the goodness of god , not to communicate the best religion to the world till that time it was communicated ? philoth. that is no inept consideration , hylobares . but besides , it is a strange presumption to determine when it is just fit time for providence to use her strongest effort for reclaiming of straying souls : and to reclaim them as soon as they have strayed , is next to the keeping them forcibly from ever straying , which is to hinder a free agent from ever acting freely . wherefore seeing the souls of men were to use their own liberty , there were certain pompous scenes of affairs to proceed upon either supposition , whether they stood or fell , and not all presently to be huddled up in an instant . and what light providence brings out of the darkness of sin , i did more particularly intimate unto you in our yesterday's discourse . hyl. i remember it , philotheus , and rest very well satisfy'd . philop. to expect that the messias should have come into the world so soon as adam had fallen , is as incongruous as to expect the reaping of the crop the very same day the corn is sown , or that spring and autumn should be crouded into the same months of the year . hyl. this is abundantly plain . and another difficulty also which i intended to propose , touching the plurality of earths or worlds , quite vanishes : while i contemplate the paradigm of the world 's systeme in the silver-key-paper , that bears me up as stoutly on the left hand from sinking as the other hypothesis on the right . bath . do you not see , sophron , that you are worse s●ar'd then hurt ? do you not observe how these great and formidable difficulties crumble away of themselves , when a judicious eye has had once but a glance into the truth ? sophr. it 's well if all will come off so clear . hyl. but there are some little scruples remaining , philotheus , partly about the extent of the vniverse , partly about the habitableness of the planets and earths . sophr. i thought so . philoth. propound them , if you please , hylobares . hyl. whether the universe be finite , or infinite . for if it be finite , it is infinitely defectuous , if it may be infinite . philoth. that 's well put in , if it may be ; but try whether it may be or no , hylobares . hyl. how , philotheus ? philoth. phansie it as infinite as possibly you can . hyl. i phansie it absolutely infinite . philoth. then every part thereof is infinite . hyl. you mean every denominated part , philotheus ; else the number of parts is onely infinite , not the parts . philoth. i mean the denominated parts , a third , a fourth , a fifth , &c. but a middle third part is bounded by the extremes , and therefore the extremes themselves are boundable . and consequently when you have phansied the world as infinite as you can , you must be inforced still to conclude it finite . hyl. it seems so , if it be not a fallacy . philoth. wherefore if the possibility of an infinite world be unconceivable to you , it can be no imputation to the goodness of providence if it be found finite . hyl. but is it found finite , philotheus ? philoth. no art nor oracle that i know has declared it so . that not onely the globe of the earth but her very orbit is but as a point to the circuit of the nearest fix'd stars , offers rather toward a detection of the infinite vastness of the world then of the finiteness thereof . how vastly distant then are those little fix'd stars that shew but as scattered pin-dust in a frosty night ? in what immense removes are they one beyond another ? o israel , how great is the house of god! how large is the place of his possession ! great , and hath no end ; high , and unmeasurable . they are the words of the prophet baruch . hyl. it seems then that the infiniteness of the world is declared by that oracle rather then the finiteness thereof . philoth. it is so vastly big , hylobares , that there is little doubt but that it is as immense as it can be , and that is enough to shew that the dimensions thereof take their measures from the divine goodness . whence it is clear that providence is unexceptionable in this point . hyl. it is so . sophr. i wish philotheus come off so well in the other . philoth. be courageous , o sophron ; we 'll doe our best , when hylobares has proposed it . hyl. that the silver-key-systeme is the true systeme of the world i am well enough persuaded of , and that consequently it were in vain to object the solitude of this one earth in this immense liquid space of the world , whenas this systeme exhibits so many more to our view . for we can no sooner discern our own earth to be a planet , but we must therewithall detect also that the rest of the planets are so many earths , as indeed the pythagoreans did expresly call the moon our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or opposite earth . but the difficulty i come to propound is touching the habitableness of them , which i suppose will not be deny'd ; but then there is this snare we are caught in , that if we conceive them to be inhabited by mere brutes onely , there will be a defect of men to keep good quarter amongst them ; but if they be also inhabited with men , these men will want the means of salvation ; for that they are in a lapsed state is supposed in their becoming terrestriall creatures : either of which is inconsistent with that exquisite goodness of god that is pleaded for . philoth. that 's a knotty problem indeed , hylobares . sophr. why do you smile , philotheus ? methinks it is a very formidable question . philoth. i smile at something that extraordinarily pleases me . sophr. i pray you what is it that pleases you so much , philotheus ? i would gladly know it , that i might smile also for company . philoth. it is sophron's honest and sober solicitude touching the solution of the present difficulty , which so becomingly betrays it self in the very air of his countenance , and even then when there is least fear of miscarriage . sophr. that were good news , philotheus , if it were true . philoth. it is a less puzzle then that about the salvation of them of the new-found world upon earth , i mean those of america , who heard not the least whisper of either moses or of christ till within this age or two . in what capacity of salvation were they then , o sophron , for some thousands of years together , who yet are certainly of a lapsed race ? ( whenas whether all souls that enter into thicker vehicles in any part of the vniverse be lapsed , is uncertain . ) and we cannot deny but that vast continent has been inhabited , as also the adjacent islands , all that time , though they heard as little of christ as they that live in saturn or the moon . sophr. that cannot be deny'd , philotheus . but you know either your self or some of us has answered this point already , that those americans that lived sincerely according to the light they had , god might impart more to them , and finally in some extraordinary way or other communicate the knowledge of christ to them to their eternall salvation . for you know a just and honest creditour , if the debt be satisfy'd by a friend , though unknown to the debtour , yet he will free him from all suits at law and arrests , and what-ever other troubles or inconveniencies attend a debtour whose debts are unsatisfy'd . whence the passion and atonement of christ might take effect with the sincere americans , though they knew nothing of the history thereof . and therefore being reconciled by the death of christ , they should be much more saved by his life , as the apostle speaks . philoth. it is very well and piously argued , o sophron. hyl. i think so too , philotheus . philoth. had i not therefore reason to smile at sophron , being so well furnish'd to satisfie a greater difficulty , to see him so hugely confounded at the less ? hyl. but why take you this to be the lesser difficulty , philotheus ? philoth. because there is more elbow-room for framing of answers to it . for first , suppose we should affirm that all the earths in the universe , besides this of ours , were inhabited merely with brutes ; that is no argument at all against the divine goodness , no more then it would be against the accuracy of policy in a great city to see all the gaols therein devoid of prisoners , and that they were left to the sole possession of bats and cats , of rats and mice , and such like vermine . it were rather a sign of a more exquisite government and good disposition of the people , that there were now found no such criminalls amongst them . and for the pretence of having some rational creatures amongst them to keep good quarter ; what rational creatures are there that rule among the scaly nations of the vast ocean ? hyl. none , unless tritons and sea-nymphs . philoth. you may as well phansie fauns and satyrs and other sylvatick genii to range these earths supposed destitute of humane kinde , and to superintend their brutish inhabitants for their good , though at a more remote and careless distance . hyl. as probable as the black hunter ranging the forest with his vocal , but invisible , hounds in fountainbleau . euist. i remember the story very well , it is recorded in the life of henry the fourth of france . hyl. but there being such an infinite number of earths as there is of stars or suns , it is incredible , philotheus , that it should be the onely fate of this earth of ours to be inhabited with men . philoth. but how do you know , hylobares , that there is such an infinite number of earths ? for you covenanted at first not to bring in mere suspicions and surmizes reproachfully to load providence withall . hyl. but if that innumerable company of ●ixt stars have no planets dancing about them , that is to say , habitable earths , that will be a real reproach to providence indeed , as if divine goodness were infinitely defectuous in that point . philoth. nay , that were rather an auspicious sign , hylobares , that the intellectual orders of creatures are not so much , or rather so universally , lapsed as they might be conceived to be , and that the divine goodness has a more successfull and effectual dominion over the universe then you imagined . for as much as the light exceeds the shadows , so much do the regions of happiness exceed those of sin and misery . it is an aphorism of the golden-key-paper . hyl. i perceive you are prepared to meet one at every turn , philotheus . philoth. it is but common civility to meet him that makes towards one . but now in the second place , hylobares , let us suppose that all the planets or earths be inhabited with rational creatures , yet these rational creatures may be as specifically distinct as the earths or planets they inhabit , but agree all in rationality ; as the sundry species of dogs here on earth agree in latrability . they having therefore no specifick cognation with the sons of adam , what have they to doe with that religion that the sons of adam are saved by ? nay , i adde farther , that these varieties of rational creatures in the other planets , as they all agree with one another and with us in mere natural reason , so they may all disagree from us in this essential property of being capable of true religion ; no properties but those either of the animal or middle life being essential to them . in virtue whereof they may be good naturalists , good politicians , good geometricians and analysts , good architects , build cities and frame commonwealths , and rule over their brother-b●utes in those planets , and make as good use of them as we doe ; but be as uncapable of the divine life , or of being good citizens of the heavenly kingdome , or genuine sons of god , as the very brutes they rule over . cuph. o how do i flutter to be acquainted with this kind of people , hylobares ! they are pure philosophers , i 'll pawn my life on 't . o that the invention of the gansaws were once perfected , that i might make my first visit to our neighbours in the moon ! hyl. but it would be pretty in the mean time if the art of telescopes were so far perfected , that we might discern their shapes and persons distinctly , cuphophron , and see whether it were worth the while to make a visit to them , whether they be not a nation of mere apes and baboons . cuph. i dare say , hylobares , if we could but see these apes and baboons through our telescopes , we should sometimes finde them as busily tooting through their tubes at us , as we at them . hyl. that were a rare hit indeed , cuphophron , that the sons of the mechanick philosophy should be so lucky at bo-peep , and be able to take a mutuall interview of one another at such a distance . if i could once hear this news , i should presently suspect that those pieces of ice that i. metius is said to have contrived first into telescopes tumbled out of the moon . cuph. well , well , hylobares , you jear all things ; but you know not what time may bring forth . hyl. but in the mean time i am very serious in my conference with philotheus , which your raptures have thus interrupted . the scope of whose discourse on this point is , to shew that these other earths may not be inhabited by any other creatures then such as are essentially uncapable of true religion , though he may haply allow them to doe such venerations ( those in the moon par●icularly ) to our earth as the cercopithecus and elephant are said to doe to the moon , and so may exercise a natural idolatry , and that , it may be , in magnificently-exstructed templ●s , even in this utter incapacity of true religion , and consequently of salvation ; their condition in that respect being much like that of brutes . which hypothesis once admitted , ( and it is such as it is hard to demonstrate to be false ) the present difficulty i must confess does quite vanish . but because from the prejudice of custome , and habitual experience of our own earth's being inhabited by men properly so called , we have such an invincible propension to think the same thing comes to pass in all other earths or planets ; i beseech you , philotheus , ease my thoughts touching their means of salvation in this state of the question , if you can . philoth. those that are saved of them are saved by the same means that the americans and the rest of the pagan world , that never had the opportunity of hearing of the history of christ , were or are saved . the ransome is paid into a very righteous hand , that will not exact the debt twice , as sophron very soberly and judiciously suggested . cuph. who knows but the passion of christ was intimated to the inhabitants of those other earths by the miraculous eclipse that then happened , the sun win●ing to the rest of the world , to give them notice far and wide what was transacting on the stage of the earth in the behalf of all ? hyl. you are a man of rare devices , cuphophron . how came then the americans not to lay hold on this opportunity ? for they had no knowledge of the suffering of the messias , till such time as the christians brought it thither , and fetch'd away their gold. cuph. you know it is night with them , hylobares , when it is day with us ; and therefore they missed the information of that miracle . hyl. but they might have taken hold then of the miraculous eclipse of the moon , which was every whit as prodigious and conspicuous , these two luminaries being then in opposition , and christ was crucified about noon . philoth. cuphophron's conceit is witty , but over-slight and humourous for so solemn and serious a matter . the summe of my solution of this difficulty , hylobares , is this : lapsed souls , where-ever they are , that recover into sincerity , are saved as we are saved , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by the divine humanity , or humane divinity , of the son of god : which is the inmost and deepest arcanum of our christian religion . and it is the privilege of the christian world , that they have this mystery so plainly and distinctly communicated to them by the preaching of the gospel . but the efficacy of the said mystery may be also derived to them that never hear it sound externally and historically to their outward ears . for the spirit of the lord passes through the whole universe , and communicates this mystery to all souls , where-ever they are , that are fitted to receive it , in a more hidden and miraculous way , such as himself and at what time himself shall please to make use of . this i think the most sober solution of the present difficulty , upon supposition that there are any men properly so called that inhabit those planets or earths you speak of . which , whether there be or no , is uncertain to us ; and therefore the allegation of such uncertainties against certain testimonies for the exquisite goodness of divine providence , ( as i have often intimated ) ought to be esteemed of no value . hyl. i must confess it , philotheus , and crave your pardon . but i find my very impertinencies in my conference with you successfull and edifying . let me propose to you but one scruple more , philotheus , and then i shall give you no farther trouble . sophr. i am glad we are at length so near getting out of the briars . philoth. i pray you , what is that scruple , hylobares ? hyl. it is again about the pre-existence of the soul. sophr. nay , if he go back , philotheus , look to your self ; he will come on again with such a career , and give you such a push as you never felt yet . philoth. that cannot be help'd , sophron , i must bear the brunt of it as well as i can . speak out therefore , hylobares , and tell your scruple . hyl. my scruple is onely this , how it can consist with the infinite goodness of god , which you say is the measure of his providence , ( since that humane souls can pre-exist and enjoy themselves before they come into these terrestriall bodies ) that they were created no sooner then cum mundo condito , which is not six thousand years agoe ; whenas they might have enjoy'd themselves infinite millions of thousands of years before . philoth. if we rightly understand the nature of the soul , hylobares , this is no such hard probleme . for you must understand it may be an essential property of the soul , either vitally to actuate some material vehicle or other , or else not to act at all . wherefore it had been a frustraneous thing to create souls so infinite a space of time before the corporeall world was created , that hypothesis supposed . hyl. this may be true for ought i know , philotheus : but admitting it so , it casts me still into an equal perplexity touching the divine goodness , in that she has not thought fit that the corporeall world should be created till within six thousand years agoe , whereas it might have been created an infinite time before , and ought so to have been , that humane souls might so early come into play , and live and act in their respective vehicles . philoth. this is something indeed , hylobares . sophr. did not i tell you so , philotheus ? our ship is sunk in the very haven , when we were ready to land . philop. your heart is sunk , o sophron , pluck up your spirits , and be of good chear . is this the utmost of your difficulty , hylobares ? hyl. it is ; cure me but of this anxiety , philotheus , and i shall declare my self as sound as a fish , and perfectly freed from all scruples touching divine providence . philoth. but your self must assist me then in your own cure. tell me therefore , hylobares , why do you think that the world was not created till about six thousand years agoe ? hyl. that 's plain from the chronologie of holy scripture . philoth. but have you no other argument for it , hylobares ? hyl. none at all that i can tell of , philotheus . philoth. why then , hylobares , the case stands thus . if you heartily adhere to the truth of the scripture , as you ought , i will declare you as sound as a fish ; and this intricate discourse about providence might have been the less needfull . but if in a philosophicall wantonness you will not concern your self in the letter of the scripture touching theorems of philosophy , you have already declared your self as sound as a fish. hyl. you have caught me like a fish in a net , philotheus : but i must freely confess i do not perceive my own soundness yet , unless i should be so unsound as to quit the scriptures . philoth. that you will never do , if you rightly understand them . for they are most assuredly the truth of god. hyl. but how does this truth consort with his goodness , whenas it declares to us that the world has continued but about these six thousand years ? philoth. this earth and heaven that the conflagration is to pass upon assuredly commenced no longer ago , hylobares . but i pray you how high would you have the commencement of the world to begin , and in what order , that it may fill out the measure of that idea of goodness which you would have its continuation stretch'd upon ? hyl. i would have it begun no sooner then it was possible , which is infinite myriads of years sooner then it began . philoth. well then , hylobares , begin it as soon as you will in your philosophicall way , and in what order you will , and see what will become of it . you young men are marvellously wise . cuph. o that i had hylobares his province now ! what rare work could i make of it ? hyl. i prithee , cuphophron , take it . i know thou wilt manage it nimbly and wittily . cuph. cartesianly enough , i warrant thee , hylobares ; you shall see else if i do not . and i will smartly say at first , that the world was to begin so soon as god was , his omnipotency being coeternall to himself ; and therefore what-ever he could produce in any moment , he could produce as soon as he was , which was from everlasting . wherefore the matter might have been created from everlasting , and , having a due measure of motion imparted to it , might within a little time after have fallen into the contrivance of vortices and suns , according to the description of the cartesian philosophy ; that is , say i , mechanically , with des-cartes , but bathynous spermatically , from an old pythagorick dream in a wood. but it is not material now which way it was . for whether way soever , in process of time , after these suns had shone through the universe with a ●ree light , some of them being inveloped with spots grew perfectly opake , and being suck'd in by their neighbour - vortices became planets or earths . euist. these are , it may be , those extinct suns or cold suns that parme●ides the pythagorean taught , adding also , that men were generated out of the sun ; meaning surely these extinct or cold ones , that were turned into earths or planets . cuph. that 's a pretty observation , euistor . hyl. i , and an handsome confirmation also of bathynous his dream , that the rise of the world was not merely mechanicall , but spermaticall or vital ; this parmenides being a pythagorean . but this is not the present business . i pray you return to your province , cuphophron , and bring things to a conclusion . cuph. the conclusion is manifest of it self : that if the world did not commence so early as i have described , sith it was possible it might doe so , ( but infinite myriads of years later , ) that the infinite goodness of god is not the measure of his providence , but that he has been infinitely less good then he might have been to the world and to humane souls , if they have continued but six thousand years . sophr. this is smart indeed , cuphophron . cuph. i love what i take upon me , sophron , to doe it thoroughly and smartly . what say you to this , philotheus ? philoth. i say you have charged stoutly and home , o cuphophron ; but i shall make the force recoil again upon your own breast , if you will but freely and ingenuously answer to what i demand . cuph. i shall , philotheus . philoth. was there not a first six thousand years of duration from the beginning of the world , supposing it began so timely as you have described ? cuph. according to my hypothesis it began from everlasting , and therefore the numbring of years from this time to that will have no exitus . we shall never come to the first six thousand years . philoth. that 's true , o cuphophron ; but you answer craftily , and yet you plainly imply that there was a first six thousand years , though we cannot come at them : but that is because we begin at the wrong end . by the same fallacy you may conclude that there is not a last six thousand years , beginning your account from everlasting , as you call it , because your numbring will finde no exitus to us . and yet we are , suppose at this moment , in the last moment of the last six thousand years ; and so we shall be alwaies of some last six thousand , or at least have been so in such divisions . cuph. that cannot be denied . philoth. wherefore , cuphophron , pitch your animadversion on the right end , that is to say , on the beginning of this infinite duration , as you phansie it , i mean , on that intervall of time wherein all the whole universe was either lucid or transparent , there being nothing but suns then according to your cartesian hypothesis , no earths or planets : was that time infinite ? cuph. i must confess it seems to me incredible that it was so . methinks within less then an infinite series of time some of the suns should be inveloped with spots , become comets , and afterwards earths or planets . philoth. well then , if that intervall of time was finite , it had a finite number of six thousand years . cuph. of six thousand years repeated , you mean , philotheus . philoth. i mean so , and would from thence infer , that there is most evidently therefore in that finite intervall a first six thousand years as well as a last . cuph. it seems impossible to be otherwise . but well , what of all this , philotheus ? philoth. let us phansie now our selves , o cuphophron , or any other rational beings , philosophizing at the end of those first six thousand years immediately succeeding the most early commencement of the world that was possible , ( for you pitched as high as possibly you could ) and entertaining themselves with the very discourse we are now upon ; would not they with your self notwithstanding conclude , that the world might have been made an infinite series of time sooner ? cuph. not if they knew it ( as we suppose it ) made as soon as possibly it could be . hyl. very well answered , cupho●hron . sophr. it is too well answered . this cuphophron has a mischievous wit with him when he is set upon 't . cuph. i told you , sophron , i love to doe all things smartly . philoth. i pray you doe , cuphophron , and tell me farther , whether the ancient of days was then but of six thousand years continuance ; and whether those disputants we speak of , unless it had been told them by divine revelation that the world began as soon as it could , would not confidently have conceived it might have begun an infinite series of time before ; and , lastly , whether we knowing by divine revelation that the world began about six thousand years ago , it may not for all that have commenced as soon as possibly it could ; and god , who is omnipotent , could as early create planets as suns or stars , and order all things as he is said to doe in six days creation , or as we finde them to be at this day . hyl. answer , cuphophron : why do you gape and stare , and scratch your head where it itches not ? cuph. i pray you , hylobares , take your province again , if you will , and manage it your self : i have enough of it . hyl. why , what 's the matter , cuphophron ? cuph. i am confounded . hyl. i am convinced . cuph. convinced afore-hand , i warrant you , at all adventures , before philotheus has made any conclusion . what would he infer from all this ? philoth. that though with the holy scriptures we admit , as all orthodox people do , that the world was created but about six thousand years ago , yet , for ought we know , it was created as soon as it could ; and therefore hylobares his allegation , of the possibility of the world 's being created an infinite series of time sooner , is of no validity against our assertion of the exquisite goodness of providence , which i have contended for all this time . hyl. i , and your's is the victory , o admired philotheus , but mine the triumph . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ! philop. what 's the matter with hylobares , that he raps out greek in this unusual manner ? what is it that he says , euistor ? euist. it is a broken sentence of a transported barbarian in aristophanes . o how am i pleased ! how am i delighted ! how am i rejoyced , and could even dance for joy ! philop. i suppose hylobares speaks better greek then you english , or else it s as barbarous and rude as the barbarian himself . euist. i know what you mean , philopolis , i humour'd it on purpose to the barbarian's greek . i am rejoiced is as good english as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is greek , if we will believe the criticks . hyl. euistor is got to his sapless criticks again ; but i am brim-full of the pleasure of important things and notions . o happy philopolis , that brought us to this conference ! o thrice-blessed philotheus , that has so divine a gift of easing the minds of the serious in their anxious perplexities about the most concerning matters ! philop. i am glad philotheus has wrought so great a cure. hyl. a cure , philopolis ? it is more then a cure. i am not onely at perfect ease touching all doubts about divine providence , but in an ineffable joy and ecstasie , rapt into paradise upon earth , hear the musick of heaven , while i consider the harmonie of god , of reason ; and the vniverse , so well accorded by the skilfull voice of philotheus . how lightsome is my heart , since my minde has been eased of these perplexities ! how transported are my spirits , how triumphant and tripudiant , that i am ready even to skip out of my skin for joy ! cuph. if you be so dancingly merry , hylobares , you would doe well to call for a fit of musick : i have provided an instrument almost as high as your raptures . musick joyn'd to this mood will put you upon a rare pin indeed . sophr. hylobares wants no aid for the increase of his joy , but rather for the regulating of it . for in my apprehension he is in a very great emotion of minde . philoth. melancholick persons are sometimes in such a condition upon such like occasions ; truth being to the eye of the soul what beauty is to that of the body , very transporting . sophr. i believe a solemn lesson on the theorbo would finely compose him , and bathynous i know has skill on that instrument , and can sing to it . philoth. you say right , he can . i pray you , bathynous , give us a cast of your skill . bath . i am a very sorry musician , to venture to sing in such company . i sing sometimes and play to my self in the dark some easie songs and lessons , but have not the confidence to think others can be pleased with such mean musick . cuph. you may play and sing in the dark here too , bathynous , if you will. the moon 's light comes not so plentifully through the leaves of the arbour as to discover whether you blush or no , in case you should be out . come , i pray you , be confident . i 'll reach you the theorbo . philop. i pray you , bathynous , let 's hear what you can doe . i know it will be gratefull to hylobares . hyl. i shall like a song of bathynous his chusing ; i know it will not be impertinent to our present purpose . bath . it 's an excellent theorbo , cuphophron : it deserves a more skilfull hand to touch it then mine . how sweet and mellow , and yet how majestick , is the sound of it ! hyl. o how that flourish charms my spirits ! you have a very good hand on the lute , bathynous . bath . i 'll sing you a good song , hylobares , though i have but a bad hand , and a worse voice : and it shall be out of your own beloved hobbling poet , the philosopher's devotion . hyl. none better : i pray you let us hear it . bath . sing aloud , his pr●●●e rese●rse who 〈◊〉 m●●e the vnivers● . he the boundless heaven has spred , all the vital orbs has kn●d ; he that on olympus high tends his flocks with watchfull eye , and this eye has multiply'd , ' midst each flock for to reside . thus as round about th●y stray , toucheth each with out-stretch'd ray. ●imbly they hold on their way , sh●ping ●ut their night and day . summer , winter , autumn , spring , their inclined axes bring . never slack they , none respires , dancing round their central fires . in due order as they move , echo's sweet be gently drove thorough heav'n's vast hollo●ness , which unto all corners press ; musick that the heart of jove moves to ioy and sportfull love , fills the listening sailors ears riding on the wandring sphears . neither speech nor language is where their voice is not transmiss . god is good , is wise , is strong , witness all the creature-throng ; is confess'd by every tongue . all things back from whence they as the thankfull rivers pay ( sprung , what they borrowed of the sea. now my self i do resign : t●ke me whole , i all am t●in● save me , god , from self-desire , death's pit , dark hell's raging fire , envy , hatred , vengeance , ire : let not lust my soul bemire . quit from these thy praise i 'll sing , loudly sweep the trembling string . bear a part , o wisedom's sons , freed from vain religions . lo , from far i you salute , sweetly warbling on my lute . india , aegypt , arabie , asia , greece , and tartarie , carmel - tracts and lebanon , with the mountains of the moon , from whence muddy nile doth run , or where-ever else you wone , breathing in one vital air , one we are , though distant far . rise at once , let 's sacrifice odours sweet , perfume the skies . see how heav'nly lightning fires hearts inflam'd with high aspires ! all the substance of our souls vp in clouds of incense rolls . leave we nothing to our selves , save a voice ; what need we else ? or an hand to wear and tire on the thankfull lute or lyre . sing aloud , his praise rehearse who hath made the vniverse . hyl. your judgement is very sound , o sophron ; this solemn lesson on the theorbo did not so much increase my passion of joy , as regulate , establish , and fix it . methought i was placed in the third heaven all the while i heard so sweet an instrument , so lively a voice , and so exalted philosophy and morality joyn'd together in one harmony . cuph. you was a very great way off then , hylobares , if you mean the cartesian third heaven . hyl. i mean an higher mystery , cuphophron . a man may be in the cartesian third heaven , and yet be as silly a fellow as i was before i conferred with philotheus . philop. you are the most rapturous and ecstaticall company of people that ever i met with in all my life ; a kind of divine madness , i think , rules amongst you , and the efficacy of your converse is able to make others mad for company . i am sure when philotheus comes to my beloved theme , if he manage it with the like success he has done this , it will hazard my being at least inwardly as much transported as hylobares . which i would willingly try to morrow more timely in the afternoon , betwixt three and four of the clock , because my occasions will call me next day out of town . philoth. i am sorry to hear of your so sudden departure , philopolis ; but we shall not fail at that time you appoint to give you the meeting here . sophr. and i hope philotheus will manage your theme , philopolis , with a more steddy and secure success then that of hylobares . for the truth is , i have had many an aking heart for you all in this doubtfull dispute ; your hardiness seeming to me as reprovable as theirs who , when they may securely stand on the firm land , or safely pass over a strong-built bridge , will chuse to commit themselves to some weather-beaten cock-boat , when the winde is very rough and the waves high and tossing , onely out of a careless wantonness , or desire to conflict with danger . methought ever and anon i saw the boat r●ady to ●opple over , and your selves put to swim for your lives , or drown . philop. but providence did marvellously assist her so earnest and affectionate advocate , o sophron. sophr. she did , and i heartily congratulate your safe arrivall to land. cuph. but this is but a dry and ineffectual congratulation , o sophron. come , begin to them in a glass of good canarie , to comfort their chill hearts after the perill of this shipwreck and sad sea-storm . hold , i 'll open the bottle . hyl. stay your hand , o cuphophron . there 's none so chill or cold at heart as you imagine . i am sure i am all joy and warmth without the help of any such liquour . cuph. it may be you are over-hot , hylobares ; sack is good even in fevers , and it is not unlikely but that a glass of it may cool you . hyl. all the heat that i have at this time , be it never so much , is so sacred and divine , that i will not diminish it in the least degree upon any pretense . philop. i pray you , cuphophron , keep your bottle entire till another time . i perceive it is now utterly needless , and your liquour is too good to be cast away in vain . philoth. we all overflow with such joy , o cuphophron , as no terrestriall wine can procure , nor increase , nor ought to diminish . euist. indeed i think we doe , philotheus ; i would not drink a glass of sack now , no not for forty pounds . cuph. i have not the luck of it at this time to contribute to the pleasure of this excellent company in any thing , my wine it self being as rejectaneous as my reasonings . hyl. o dear cuphophron , be not you solicitous touching these things . i 'll assure you , your performance was marvellous noble , and worthy the great parts and wit of cuphophron . cuph. it 's a comfortable circumstance , that the censure of hylobares is so favourable , whose humour is to abuse in me what-ever is or is not abuseable . but i profess to thee , hylobares , i was never so confounded in all my life as in that point of the world's possibility of being created from everlasting . i am perfectly puzzled in it to this very day . hyl. why , i prithee , cuphophron , how many hours , or rather minutes , is it since that confusion first surprized thee ? cuph. my minde has been so jumbled betwixt time and eternity , that i think i can speak sense in neither . what a marvellous thing is this , that god , who was omnipotent as soon as he was , and who was from all eternity , and could create suns and vortices within a moment that he was omnipotent , yet should not be able to create the world so soon , but that there would be an eternity of duration necessarily conceivable before the world's creation ? bath . yes , cuphophron , and this marvellously - anticipating eternity is the proper and necessary eternal duration of god , which nothing can reach or exhaust ; as that inmost extension or amplitude which will necessarily remain after we have imagined all matter , or what-ever else is removeable , removed or extermina●● out of the world , is to be look'd 〈◊〉 no as the permanent expansion or 〈◊〉 of the radical essentiality 〈◊〉 god. cuph. this is obscurum per obscuriu●● bathynous ; but doubtless it is an highly-metaphysicall point , and a 〈◊〉 ought to muster up all his metaphys●●call forces that would grapple with 〈◊〉 this is a noble game for me alone 〈◊〉 my self to pursue in my arbour . philop. or on your pillow , cupho●●phron ; for it is very late . and there● fore , courteous cuphophron , we 'll 〈◊〉 you good night . cuph. you say well , philopolis , 〈◊〉 will not be amiss to consult with one's pillow , as the proverb is , and ●leep upon 't . philop. gentlemen , you 'll remember the appointed time to morrow . philoth. we will not fail you , philopolis . the end of the third dialogue . finis . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e john . . exod. . . exod. . . * antidot . ●●b . . 〈◊〉 . . sect . , , , , , , , . ● . . sect . , , ● , &c. immortality of the soul , lib. . . , . princip . ● part . . artic. . isai. . . pro. . . rom. . . sect. , . notes for div a -e the preference of vertue and assurance of an happy immortality before th● pleasures and gra●deur of thi● present world . i. ii. 〈…〉 his genius , and of cuphophro●'s entertainments in his philosophical bowre . gen. . iii. philopolis his quere's touching the kingdome of god , together with his sincere purpose of proposing them . iv. hylobares interpos all of his quere's : first , touching the existence of god , and divine providence v. the existence of god argued from 〈◊〉 ●●derly desig●s discoverable 〈◊〉 the ph●●nomena●f ●f 〈◊〉 . vi. 〈…〉 vii . that necessary 〈◊〉 in the bli●d m●tte● 〈◊〉 doe as little toward the orderly effects in nature as the fortuitous iumbles thereof . viii . that there is no phaenomenon in nature purely mechanicall . that there is no levitation or gravitation of the aether or of the vulgar elements in their proper places . whence 't is plain that matter 's motion is moderated from some diviner principle . x. that the primordialls of the world are not mechanicall , but vital . princip . philos. part . . sect . , . xi . instances of some simple phaenomena quite contrary to the laws of mechanicks . * dr. more 's antidote , lib. . ch . . immort . lib. . ch . , . xii . the fond and indiscreet hankering after the impossible pretensions of solving all phaenomena mechanically , freely and justly perstringed . prov. . . 〈…〉 xiii . the existence of god argued from the consent of nations , from miracles and prophecies , from his works in nature , and from his idea . xiv . 〈…〉 xv. the attribute of eternity . xvi . an objection against the all-comprehension of eternity , with the answer thereto . xvii . another objection , with its answer . xviii . the attribute of immutability . xix . of the d●ity's acting ad extra . xx. the attribute of omnisciency . xxi . the attribute of spirituality , and that god cannot be material . xxii . the fa●se notion of a spirit . xxiii . that there is a spiritual being in the world. xxiv . that extension and matter are not reciprocall . xxv . that there is an extension intrinsecall to motion . 〈◊〉 that there is an immovable extension distinct from that of movable matter . xxvii . that this exte●sion distinct from matter is not imaginary , but real . diog. laert . in vi●●●picuri psal. . . . xxviii . a fresh appeal touching the truth of that point to reason , sense and imagination . * pri●● . philos. p●r . . sect . , . xxix . the essential proper●ies of matter . xxx . the true notion of a spirit . xxxi . the attribute of omnipresency . xxxii . cuphophron 's paradox of god's being no-where . xxxiii . the confutation of that pararadox . xxxiv . that all spirits are some-where princ. part . . artic. . xxxv . the grounds of cuphophron's paradox ( that spirits are no-where ) produced and examined . xxxvi . that god is essentially present every-where . xxxvii . the arborist's affected liberty of dissenting in unnecessary opinions and friendly abusiveness of one another in their philosophicall ●eeti●gs . xxxviii . the con●●sion . * sect. . i. the introduction , containing philopolis his thanks for the last day's discourse ; with a 〈◊〉 by the by of inspiration , and of the difficulty of the present subject . ii. the two main h●ads of objections ag●inst providence , with 〈…〉 iii. evils in general how consistent with the good●ess of god. iv. the arguments of lucretius against providence . v. providence argued agai●st from the promiscuous falling of the rain , and undiscriminating discharges of thunder-claps . vi. 〈…〉 polyhist . c. . lib. . c. ● ▪ vii . of death ▪ how consistent with the goodness of providence . viii . of diseases . ix . of war , famine , pestilence , and earthquakes . x. ●f ill accidents happ●ni●g to brute creatur●s , whereby th●ir 〈◊〉 become miserable . xi . of the cruelty and rapacity of animals . xii . of the rage of the element● , the poison of serpents , and wrath of wilde beasts . xiii . of monstrositi●s i● nature . hist. nat. l. . c. . ●ist . nat. l. . c. . xiv . of fools , mad-men , and men irreclamably wicked from their very birth . xv. the best use to be made of the saddest seene of the things of this world. xvi . how the entrance of si● i●to the ●orld can consist with the goodness of pro●ide●ce . xvii . cuphophron's lunatick apologic whereby he would extenuate the ●ainous●●ss of si● . xviii . a solid answer to the foregoing apologie , though ushered in with somethi●g a ludicrous preamble . xix . a more sober enquiry into that difficulty , how the permission of sin in the world can consist with the goodness of god. xx. the first attempt of satisfying the difficulty , f●om that stoicall position of the invincible freedom of man's will. xxi . the second attempt , from the consideration of some high abu●●s of a vincible freedome , as also from the nature of this freedome it ●elf . noct. att. l. . c. . xxii . the third and last , from the questionableness whether in comp●t● of the whole there does not as much good r●dound to the universe by god's pe●mission of si● , as ●here would ●y his forcible keepi●g it out . xxiii . how co●sistent it is with the goodness of providence , that god does not suddenly make men holy so soon as they have 〈◊〉 hearty mi●d to it . xxiv . the parable of the eremite and the angel. xxv . that the adversity of the good , and the prosperity and impunity of the wicked in this life , are ●o arguments ag●i●st the accuracy of providence . ●om . . ● . xxvi . a civil , but merry-conceited , bout of drinking in cuphophron's arbour . xxvii . the marvellous conjuncture in hylobares of an outward levity and inward soberness at once . xxviii . his serious song of divine pr●vidence . xxix . the breaking up of the meeting . i. conjectures touching the causes of that mirth that the meeting of some persons naturally excite in one another . polyhist . c. . ●e situ orbis l. . c. . ii. hylobares his relapse into dissettlement of minde touching providence , with the cause thereof . iii. paucity of philosophers no blemish to divine providence . iv. reasons in gen●ral of the gross deformity in the religions and customs of the savage nations , as also of the variety of this deformity in manners & customs . v. of the ●arbarous custome of g●ing naked . vi. of the ridiculous deckings and ado●nings of the bar●●rians . vii . t●● lawleness of the barbarians and their gross extravagancies touching wedlock apologized for by cuphophron , advocate-general for 〈◊〉 p●ynims . viii . of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the men of arcladam that lie in child-bed for their mives . de region . orient . l. . c. . ix . of the pagans cruelty to their enemies , and inhumane humanity to their friends . var. hist. l. . c. . x. 〈…〉 de region . orient . l. . c. . xi . the caraiamites murtheriag good men to seize on their vertues . xii . of the anthropophagi or cannibals . xiii . of the atheism and the polytheism of the barbarians . xiv . of their men-sacrifices . xv. of their worshi●ping the devil . xvi . of their sacrificing men to the devil . hist. ind. lib. . c. . hist. ind. lib. . cap. . xvii . of self-sacrificers . xviii . the meaning of providence in permitting such horrid usages in the world. xix . the madness of the priests of the pagans . thess. . , . apoc. . . xx. of their religious methods of living in order to future happiness . xxi . of their opinions touching the other state. xxii . the u●successf●lsess of cuphophron's advocateship hitherto in ref●rence to the ●as● of hylobares his p●rple●ities . xxiii . severall considerations to make us hop● that the state of the world may not be so bad● as melancholy or history may represent it . the first consideration . the second consideration . the third consideration . 〈…〉 the fifth consideration . 〈…〉 the seve●th consideration . the eigh●h co●sideration . xxiv . e●ce●lent instances of morality even in the most barbarous nations . the ninth consideration . the tenth consideration . the last consideration . xxv . cuphophron's ●apturous reasons why god do●s not dissolve the world , notwithstanding the gross miscarriages in it ; with hylobares and sophron's solid a●imadversions thereon . xxvi . hylobares as yet u●sati●fy'd touching the goodness of providence , by reason of the sad sce●e of things in the ●orld . xxvii . a● hypothesis that will secure the goodness of providence , were the scene of t●i●gs on this earth ten times worse then it is . in soma . scip. lib. . cap. . xxviii . bathynous his dream of the two keys of providence , containing the above-mentioned hypothesis . deut. . . xxix . his being so rudely and forcibly awaked out of so diviac a dream , ●ow co●●istent with the accuracy of pr●vide●ce . xxx . that that divi●e personage that appeared to bathynous was rather a favou●er of p●thagorism , then cartesianism . xxxi . 〈…〉 xxxii . severall objections against providence , fetched from defects , answered partly out of the golden , partly out of the silver-key-paper . xxxiii . di●ficulties touching the extent of the uni●e●s● . bar. . , . xxxiv . difficulties touching the habitableness or unhabitableness of the planets . arist. de coelo , lib. . c. . rom. . . des-cartes his dioptr . cap. . xxxv . that though the world was created but about six thousand years ag●● , yet , for ought we know , it was created as soo● as it could be . diog. laert . in vita parmen . xxxvi . hylobares his excess of ioy and high satisfaction touching providence , from the discourse of philotheus . xxxvii . 〈…〉 xxxviii . the ha●●r● and success of t●e f●●egoing dis●o●●se . xxxix . the preference of intellectual joy before tha● which is sensual . xl. that there is an everanticipative eternity and inexterminable amplitude that are proper to the deity onely . a plain and continued exposition of the several prophecies or divine visions of the prophet daniel which have or may concern the people of god, whether jew or christian : whereunto is annexed a threefold appendage touching three main points, the first relating to daniel, the other two to the apocalypse / by henry more ... more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r ocm this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english books online text creation partnership. this phase i text is available for reuse, according to the terms of creative commons . universal . the text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. early english books online. (eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) a plain and continued exposition of the several prophecies or divine visions of the prophet daniel which have or may concern the people of god, whether jew or christian : whereunto is annexed a threefold appendage touching three main points, the first relating to daniel, the other two to the apocalypse / by henry more ... more, henry, - . ciii, , [ ] p. printed by m.f. for walter kettilby ..., london : . errata: p. . advertisements: p. [ ] at end. reproduction of original in british library. "a confutation of the opinion of hugo grotius, who makes the kingdome of the lagidæ and seleucidæ the fourth kingdome in daniel": p. - . 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true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng grotius, hugo, - . mede, joseph, - . -- clavis apocalyptica. bible. -- o.t. -- daniel -- commentaries. bible. -- o.t. -- daniel -- prophecies. bible. -- n.t. -- revelation -- commentaries. bible -- prophecies. apocalyptic literature. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images - judith siefring sampled and proofread - judith siefring text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a plain and continued exposition of the several prophecies or divine uisions of the prophet daniel , which have or may concern the people of god , whether iew or christian ; whereunto is annexed a threefold appendage , touching three main points , the first , relating to daniel , the other two to the apocalypse . by henry more d. d. dan. . . many shall be purified and made white and tryed , but the wicked shall doe wickedly , and none of the wicked shall understand , but the wise shall understand . london , printed by m. f. for walter kettilby , at the bishop's - head in saint paul's church-yard . . the preface to the reader . reader , what i present thee with , though it be not , nor indeed was ever intended to be , an entire commentary upon the whole book of daniel , yet i hope it will prove what the title promises , a plain as well as continued exposition upon the several prophecies or divine visions of daniel , wherein the affairs of the church of god whether iewish or christian are prefigured or predicted , which indeed is as much as to say , upon all the prophecies or divine visions of daniel . for those two visions which i have omitted , that touching the tree , chap. . to be hewn down by the decree of the watchers and the demand of the holy ones , and that other , chap. . of the hand seen writing upon the wall , neither of those are the visions of daniel , but the former the dream of nebuchadnezzar , the latter a vision which belshazzar saw , namely , the shape of a mans hand writing on the wall . nor were these predictions of the state of the church , but of the particular state of those two kings nebuchadnezzar , and belshazzar , his grandchild . so that i did not avoid them for any more difficulty in them than in those i have expounded , for it is far less ; but merely because they were not sutable to my scope . the strangest thing in the former is that wonderful metamorphosis supposed by some in the body of nebuchadnezzar , as if he were transformed into an oxe . but that is a mere abuse both of the text and of him . that by the just iudgment of god he was struck with a ferine melancholy is true . and as some in such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or delirancy , phansie themselves wolves , others dogs , other some , cats , which distempers physicians call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as you may see in sennertus , institut . medic. lib. . part . . sect . . so this ferine melancholy or madness of nebuchadnezzar , with which he was smitten and continued in for seven years , may be termed a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and as physicians report of those other distempers , that the parties that are affected with them will imitate the actions , gestures and voices of those animals , wolf , dog or cat , so might nebuchadnezzar of an oxe or bull , and in this wild salvage life of his he might grow very rough and hairy , and his nails long as the claws of a bird are , he never paring them . which is all that is meant by that text , * that his hairs were grown like eagles feathers ( not broad as feathers are , but so thick set and much grown that they covered his skin as close as the feathers of an eagle doe hers ) and his nails like birds claws , that is , long especially , and something bending inward . and that this matter , this judgment upon nebuchadnezzar , was determined by the decree of the watchers and by the word of the holy ones , that is , of the angelical powers , this is no more than is more fully intimated in those prophecies of daniel which i have expounded ; that the affairs of men and of kingdomes especially are carried on by the activity and ministry of angels , according to that of theognis , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we mortals knowing nought , vain things surmise , but all must goe as th' holy ones devise . and as for that vision of the hand seen writing upon the wall , the most puzling thing in that whole story is , that all the chaldeans , soothsayers and astrologers , all the wise men of king belshazzar should prove themselves such fools , as to be puzled in the reading three or four words writ in their own language , for the words are chaldee . this i confess interpreters make a great pudder about , and endeavour to loose the knot various ways . some say , they could not read it because though the words were chaldee , yet they were writ in the old hebrew , i.e. samaritan character . others that the characters though they were chaldee , yet were transposed . others that onely the initial letters were writ , and so they could make no words of them . and others that they being writ without points , they did not know how to point them or vowel them . and lastly there are others that conceive that god miraculously blinded or rather dazled their sight , and confounded their perception , that he might reserve the credit of that exploit for daniel . but it being such a night of profane revelling and feasting , why might not the wise men partly out of tipsiness , and partly out of consternation of mind , in sympathizing with their perplexed prince and his court , be so maskard that they could not read the hand-writing on the wall , it being writ also on purpose by the angel gabriel ( for the iews make him the scribe ) so scribledly as i may so say , and brokenly , that though a man of a pacate mind and quick understanding would easily read it , yet men so much gone in drink , and drunk also with horrour and astonishment , would not be able to make any thing of it . and yet there is a more simple and easy solution than all these . in chap. . vers . . tell me , says nebuchadnezzar to daniel , the visions of my dream that i have seen and the interpretation thereof . where the particle ו [ and ] most assuredly signifies as much as [ that is to say . ] for daniel was not to tell the dream but the interpretation of it . so that the true and plain sense of that part of that verse is , tell me the visions of my dream that i have seen , that is to say , the interpretation thereof . in like manner chap. . vers . . where it is said , the wise men could not read the writing , the particle following which is [ ו ] and which our english translation renders [ nor ] in ver●●● of the negation preceding ( otherwise it naturally signifies [ and ] ) may as well be rendred [ that is to say ] as [ nor ] and then the sense is plain and easy . the kings wise men could not read the writing , that is to say , they could not make known to the king the interpretation thereof , they could not read it so asto interpret it to him . for though the hand-writing was not mere initial letters , yet they were such single incoherent words without any syntax , that none could tell what they meant but he that writ them , who haply assisted daniel in 〈◊〉 the riddle . for the hand-writing in chaldee was onely this , mene , mene , tekel , vpharsin . which verbatim sounds no more than thus , he has numbred , he has numbred , he has weighed , and the persians . which broken writing without the guidance of god , or the good angel gabriel , he could hardly make sense of , unless we may conceive that by reading the prophets , and being skilled in some principles of prophetick interpretation , he might of himself spell out the meaning . as for the first part , mene , mene , he has numbred , he has numbred , this , by reading of jeremiah . . ch. . . and ch. . . where is expresly set down the number of the duration of the kingdome of babylon , viz. seventy years , and till nebuchadnezzars sons son , which time was then near expiring ; he might , i say , well interpret , [ he has numbred , he has numbred , ] of the certain ●…inishing of the number of the duration of the kingdome of babylon , to whose king the hand-writing is directed , and declare , as he has in this text , ch. . . mene , god hath numbred thy kingdome and finished it . but now for the interpretation of tekel , he has weighed , it is not improbable but that in the reading of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there might be a paronomastical resonancy of words in his mind , that would make out the whole sense thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tekal veatte kal , he has weighed and thou art light . which daniel expresses more fully thus to the king , thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting , that is , found to want weight , and therefore rejected , as money illegitimate . and the prophetick analyse of the last , vpharsin [ and the persians ] is manifestly paronomastical . where he takes peres by itself , which signi●…ies a persian , and in a paronomastical allusion to the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 paras , which signi●…ies discindere or divellere or dividere , he makes out this full sense of vpharsin , thy kingdome is divided , or rent from thee , and given to the medes and persians . which whenas he could not but know would be very bitter and distastfull news to belshazzar , and such as he would be more like to reward with a wreath of hemp than a chain of gold , i say although he attained to the sense of the hand-writing on the wall , by a kind of art and skill , yet the full assurance of the truth thereof , and his undaunted courage and fortitude of spirit , ( one great requisite in a prophet , as maimonides takes notice in his * more nevochim ) which imboldned him to declare the matter to the king , plainly shews that his mind was actuated by a special assistance and divine impulse . for according to all humane reasoning , besides the loss of his scarlet and golden chain , which he did not stand upon , he would certainly incur the greatest displeasure of the king imaginable , nor could escape without some such sharp and wrathfull rebuke , as that of agamemnon to calchas in homer . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou messenger of mischief who to me didst never yet tell ought that good might be . in the mean time there are two main observables and worth the noting , in this vision of belshazzar , the one against the incredulous of this age that are so slow to believe any apparitions . whenas the appearance of an hand , while it writ upon the wall , was most certainly a real appearance to belshazzar , and not a mere fancy of his own , it having so violent an effect upon him , that it loosened the ligaments of his loins , compages renum , as the latin has it , so that for very fear his urine came from him , as grotius comments upon the place . the agony that the apparition put him into , it seems was so great that it weakened his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , relaxated his retentive faculty , and wet his knees , as elsewhere it is expressed in the * prophets , nay made both his knees knock one against another from the violence of his trembling and fear . besides , that it was no fancy , the hand-writing upon the wall was an indubitable testimony , it being permanent and visible to all . the other observable concerns those high conceited witts that think so goodly and manly of themselves , as if it were below them to be moved by any prophetical interpretation that is analyzed into paronomastical allusion . whenas maimonides , in the above named * treatise , takes notice of that very way of understanding some passages in prophecies . and here , which is above all exception , daniel himself that prince of prophets expounds the hand-writing upon the wall according to this very principle of prophetick interpretation , at least in the last part thereof . what greater or more authentick testimony for this way of interpreting can be desired ? this little excursion , which i have made , almost unawares , touching these two visions that are not properly the visions of daniel , but the one of nebuchadnezzar , the other of belshazzar , his grandchild , will i hope satisfie the reader , if my preterition of them , in my exposition of daniels visions , may seem any defect , and make some compensation for my omitting them , i having thus cleared by the bye the most considerable things in them . but to have undertaken the whole book of daniel , it would have taken more time , and swelled the volume into a greater bulk and price than would be ordinarily convenient , and delayed the publishing of it , and made it less effectual for the main design , which is the most speedy and expedite succouring of the reformed religion , which the agents of rome lay such strong battery against , and by all means possible seek to undermine . wherefore i conceived that my exposition would prove the more effectual for that end , the less it had of any thing but what tended thereto . and yet i would not be so sparing and precise as not to take in all the prophecies of daniel that concern the state of the church of god , whether jewish or christian ; even all those entire visions in which these affairs are predicted , though also the affairs of the infidel nations are involved in them , but in order to the affairs of the people of god. wherefore the prophetical parts of daniel so far as i have attempted , i thought it not improper to undertake , forasmuch as in all likelyhood it might prove an easier province to me , than to another man , and be more speedily and more successfully administred by me ; both because i have so throughly from the beginning to the end considered the apocalypse , which is a more full commentary upon those parts of the visions of daniel which fall 〈◊〉 with the times of the visions of the apocalypse ( whence they will wonderfully illustrate and confirm one another ) and also because i had aforehand in other writings of mine , viz. my mystery of godliness and mystery of iniquity , explained some parts of the prophecies of daniel already , as that of the seventy weeks , and of the king of pride , and others . one good use of which my performance , i hope , will be , that when men see so palpable a correspondency betwixt the apocalypse and daniel , they will be steared off from conceiving any such sense in any passages of daniel as may be inconsistent with the genuine meaning of the apocalypse . which was one reason amongst the rest that invited me to this task . but now for the performance of the task itself , the manner and nature thereof , it is muchwhat like that of my apocalypsis apocalypseos , an exposition homogeneous and coherent , and as it were of one thread , though i have been here and there ever and anon assisted by several interpreters , such as cornelius à lapide , gaspar sanctius , john calvin , hugo grotius and joseph mede , the two first of the church of rome and high papists , the third as high an anti-papist , the fourth a cassandrian protestant , and the fifth a sound christian , and the glory indeed of our english church . something out of all these authours , besides what is spun of mine own , makes one continued contexture and closely coherent exposition of these six visions or prophecies of daniel , which i have undertaken to interpret . but as for those parts of any of the visions which synchronize with the times of the apostasie of the church , or the duration of the beast with ten horns , as i had least need of it ( the understanding the apocalypse being a sufficient key for the opening those parts of the visions ) so i had least help from either cornelius à lapide , gaspar sanctius , grotius or calvin himself , who is more out in his interpretation of those parts of the visions touching the little horn rising amongst the ten horns , and the king of pride , than those two iesuits who with the ancient fathers ingenuously confess , that antichrist is prefigured in those parts of the visions , though they with the ancient fathers rest in ignorance who this antichrist is . but calvin not allowing so much as that they are predictions of antichrist , but bounding the vision in the seventh chapter , and also that in the eleventh , upon the first coming of christ , and interpreting things concerning the pagan roman empire , his expositions are so childishly argute and whisling , so dilute , shallow and slubbering , so preposterous , forced and confused , and so devoid of that strength and nervosity he shews in other things where he is unprejudiced ( nor is it prejudice i dare say here , for he holds expresly and zealously that the pope is antichrist , but mere defect of skill and judgment ) that calvin is not at all like calvin in this performance . and no wonder , he venturing to interpret those parts of the visions which are not to be unlocked without the key of the apocalypse , which he neglected to get the understanding of , or despaired ever to attain to the understanding of it , by reason of the seeming obscurity thereof . and i wish there were not so many in the reformed churches that in this point calvinize also , as there are . but yet to give him his due he is much more tolerable than grotius , forasmuch as he expresly declares the fourth beast with the ten horns to be the roman empire , though he does not improve that light to the due advantage he might . but grotius on the other side , was so nasute on the behalf of the church of rome , that foreseeing if the fourth beast were the roman empire , it would infallibly fall to the share of the pope to be the little horn with eyes and a mouth speaking great things , that is to say , to be antichrist , he to befriend the papacy denies , against the authority of all antiquity , and against the roman interpreters themselves , that the fourth beast is the roman empire , but that it is the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae , having yet no better authour for his opinion than porphyrius a pagan philosopher , and professed enemy to christians . but how foully he and porphyrius are out , i have abundantly demonstrated partly in my exposition itself , and more fully in my confutation of grotius , ●●●exed at the end of my exposition . amongst all these interpreters , there is onely mr. mede that i have found to have a right sense of things in those parts of the visions i now speak of . but as for the prophecy of the seventy weeks , he missing of the right epocha of the reckoning , and having indeed taken two epocha's , the one from the third or sixth of darius nothus for the whole entire seventy weeks , the other from the seventh of artaxerxes mnemon , for the sixty two weeks , not well knowing in the mean time what to do with , or in what sense to understand the seven weeks antecedent to the sixty two weeks , and interpreting the odd week , or last week , of things appertaining to the week in which christ suffered , as well as to that in which the city was taken by titus and temple demolished ; i say , though he hath shewn good learning and skill in the managing his hypothesis , yet it looking so like a labyrinth , and seeming not so easy and natural a sense of things , i have declined this otherwise excellent interpreter , in this point , and have taken the epocha of thomas lydiat , that other singular ornament of our english church , namely the twentieth of artaxerxes longimanus , and in my notes briefly opened his chief arguments for that epocha . and therefore this way being most simple , plain and natural , i preferred it before what was more operose , intricate and labyrinthical . and i believe mr. mede's main confidence in his own interpretation as to these epocha's , was this , in that he followed the footsteps of joseph scaliger in the main , ( of whom through his innate modesty he might have an overweening opinion , ) and that he saw it was not charged with those inconveniences which funccius his epocha was , which is the seventh of artaxerxes longimanus , from which inconveniences this of thomas lydiat is free . thus have i with all freeness and impartiality imaginable dealt as one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as laertius calls them , i have , i say , like a philosopher of the elective sect , addicting my self to no persons nor parties , chosen what is most sound and unexceptionable in any , and so out of diverse writers with what i have interwoven of my own made one uniform and strongly coherent contexture of things , and such as , i hope , will bear the test of the most accurate and freest judgment . nor have i concealed the names of those whom i have made use of , doing right as i conceive thereby both to them and to the truth . which thing i intimate , that no mans ears may be offended by my so frequent citing ever and anon some or other of the above named authours or whatever others come in by the bye . i must confess hugo grotius took another course in his exposition of the evangelists , and did designedly suppress the names of those writers he made use of in his annotations , of which he renders this reason , quod ea videam , saith he , factioso hoc seculo magis ad oblimandum quàm ad defaecandum judicium valere . because , if authours were named , it would in this factious age , saith he , conduce more to the muddying or obscuring than to the clearing of the judgment of the reader ; and so make him less capable of assenting to what grotius had set down for truth . which reason does not at all reach our case , which i conceive to be quite contrary . forasmuch as those parties i so often quote , most of them above named , if not all , besides mr. mede , being of a different persuasion from my self in other things of no small moment , as certainly the two iesuits are cornelius à lapide and gaspar sanctius , to say nothing of calvin and grotius , it is the greater argument to the reader that those things are the plainer wherein both they and i agree and the more assuredly true . and as for mr. mede he is such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , such a modest and unexceptionable writer , and so usually successfull in what he attempts , that no mans judgment can be muddied or made less capable of receiving truth by its being recommended to him by his suffrage . and thus much briefly touching the manner of my performance of this present task . but now for the performance itself , i hope it will recommend itself to the reader upon this twofold account , namely of the utility , if not necessity of perusing such discourses , and also of the pleasure thereof . he that giveth his mind to the law of the most high , and is occupied in the meditation thereof , will seek out the wisedome of all the ancient , and be occupied in prophecies , saith * siracides . he will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , be very busy and diligent in searching out the true meaning of the holy prophecies in scripture . in which inquiry therefore a plain , faithfull and impartial exposition , from an hand that has no design but the discovering the truth , must be very usefull and helpfull to as many as have the fear of god before their eyes , and any regard to his law . and certainly both particular persons and whole nations miscarry many times from their ignorance of , or non-attendance to the voices and predictions of the inspired men of god , that they will not take notice of the works of gods hand , and of his dealings with the sons of men , but think all things are hurried on in a blind carreer by chance , because they do not attend to what god has foretold his church by the mouth of his holy prophets , nor will take the pains to compare the predictions with the events . but that wofull denunciation in the psalmist is against such , psalm . . because they regard not in their mind the works of the lord , no●… the operation of his hands , therefore he shall break them down and not build them up . so that we see a kind of necessity incumbent upon us , to study the prophecies of the holy scripture , and to endeavour after the attainment of the right sense of them , and more especially of daniel and the apocalypse ▪ the prophecies there so assuredly reaching into our times , and so 〈◊〉 setting out the state of the christian church , both of her apostasie into a pagan-like idolatry , and of her emerging out of it , and so faithfully also forewarning the true church what barbarous persecutions they should undergoe under the tyranny of antichrist accordingly as it is come to pass , and is copiously recorded in the histories of christendome to the eternal shame and ignominy of that woman of idolatry and bloud , the lady of the seven-hilled city of rome . i do not deny but there may be several , besides those of the profane rabble , that would willingly excuse themselves from the duty of diligently studying these prophecies of the apocalypse and daniel , and that out of a demure , shall i call it , or hypocritical modesty , as if these things were so profound and sacred , so abstruse and mysterious as that they , poor humble souls ! durst not presume to come near them , but were as afraid of these two prophets daniel and st. john , as the gadarens were of that great prophet our blessed saviour , after he had dispossessed the two demoniacks , and brought them to their sober senses , but permitted the devils and the swine , fit companions , to run headlong together into the sea. the presence of the hoggs they could bear and of the devils they could bear , but the singular sanctity of our saviours person was so unsuitable to their coarse and unsanctified nature , that out of consciousness thereof they desired him fairly to depart out of their coasts . and it were worth the while for them that have so slight a conceit or great abhorrence from conversing with john and daniel , to search into the condition of their own souls whether their unholy and insincere nature makes not the converse with these two holy prophets so irksome and burdensome to them . o ye hypocrites , saith our saviour to the pharisees , ye can discern the face of the skie , but can ye not discern the signs of the times , and thence gather that your expected messias or christ is come by the predictions of the prophets , and by his life and miracles done by him , both the time of his coming and characters of his person and actions being so lively described in the prophetick writings ? and is not the like rebuke due to all the pharisees of christendome that pretend they have convincing marks , signs or arguments to conclude things far more hard and difficult , and yet cannot discern from the plain presigurations in the prophecies of john and daniel ( that set out so punctually the coming of antichrist both his time and place , the pagan-like superstitions he would bring into the church , and gross idolatries , and thereupon most bloudy and barbarous persecutions ) and yet , i say , cannot thence discern the signs of the times , but as the pharisees before them did oversee the present true christ , so they the present true antichrist , and as the jews a christ , so they forsooth expect an antichrist to come . i say therefore it is the hypocrisie and wickedness of their own hearts that makes men so shy and squeamish of professing themselves able to understand the prophecies of john and daniel . it is over sublime , cry they , and over divine for us , a thing of miracle and inspiration . i grant the prophecies themselves are so . and for that very reason these men are so shie to have their judgments determined by them , they harbouring other crotchets in their carnal minds more sutable to the spirit of this world and sentiments of the flesh , and so seem to shuffle with god almighty and their own consciences , as ahaz did of old , isai. ch. . to whom when the lord had spoken , saying , ask thee a sign of the lord thy god , ask it either in the depth , or in the height above , ahaz presently returns this cunning hypocritical answer , i will not ask , neither will i tempt the lord. what palpable hypocrisie is this , as if it were tempting the lord to do as he commanded him ? but he was tampering with the king of assyria and his head was full of worldly policies in which he had a greater trust than in the living god , and therefore resolving to settle on these and not to be distracted by new appearances , he did what he could to winde himself off from any divine or supernatural direction , as all true prophecies are , that he might the more fully follow the swing of his own carnal mind . and this is the usual case of those that pretend such a shyness and modesty touching the understanding of daniel and the apocalypse , they would not have their judgments so plainly and irrevocably determined to the truth by divine sentence , but be left free to shuffle as occasion serves to maintain their worldly interests . but if really they do not understand them , it is no fault of the prophecies themselves , but that they are not duly qualified that read them . for , as , that the apocalypse is intelligible is manifest from that passage in the beginning of it , blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy , and keep those things which are written therein , that is , observe them , which is impossible for them to doe , unless they understand them : so it is likewise declared touching the prophecies of daniel , those parts especially that concern the christian church , that after such a time , namely the expiration of one thousand two hundred and ninety prophetick days , which are so many years from the profanation of the temple by antiochus epiphanes , though none of the wicked shall understand them , yet that the wise , namely those whose wisedom is according to godliness , they shall understand them . but otherwise those that have heaps of arts and learning , and reading 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , having a disorderly rabble of collections and notions in their heads as thersites is described in homer ) yet these things being not managed in order to the discerning and maintaining of those grand truths that concern the kingdome of god and christ , and the opposing of the kingdome of antichrist , i say in the midst of this full light they phansie themselves in , they do become stark blind as to any discovery of the true meaning of the prophecies of daniel . wherefore from the expiration of those one thousand two hundred and ninety days the understanding of daniels prophecies , when the sense is fairly represented to one , seems to be the touchstone to try a mans condition by , whether he be in the rank of the wicked or the wise ones mentioned dan. ch. . . which is no small argument of the utility if not necessity of studying these prophecies of daniel , and reading impartial interpreters of them , the rightly understanding of them being amongst other arguments , no obscure mark of our being sound , sincere and intelligent christians . which i would have those seriously to consider who ( though they would take themselves much injured if they were not numbred amongst the godly , yet ) are so boastfully big of their ignorance of the meaning of the prophecies of daniel and the apocalypse , that they cannot forbear the declaring of it in their publick writings , as if it were forsooth such a special perfection of nature or gift of the holy ghost , not to be able to understand those prophecies . whenas the holy ghost himself does declare those blessed that understand them , and that the wicked shall not understand them , but that the wise shall understand them . whence we may note a further ignorance in these men more than they are aware of , or willing to acknowledg . they seem ignorant or insensible that they , thus publickly and boastfully professing their ignorance in these prophecies , do but glory in their own shame , and basely and shamefully beg the applause and approbation of the wits of the age , and the worldly wiselings who for coarse carnal ends decry all pretence to the understanding of prophecies . and thus out of a fond and light ambitious desire of being entred into the list of the wits of the times , they really record themselves in the catalogue of the scriptures fools . for if the scripture tell us that the wicked shall not understand these prophecies , but that the wise shall understand them , certainly according to scripture , they that understand them not ( to suppress the other more odious part of the glosse ) are plainly insinuated to be no better than fools . this is the holy scriptures express charge against them , not mine . and thus much briefly to shew how usefull if not necessary the reading of any impartial exposition of these visions of daniel may be . but now for the pleasure thereof , i profess that to my self it was unspeakable . and indeed what man is there that has 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that has a soul sincerely in love with god his creatour and christ his redeemer , but he must be enravished in contemplation of so clear footsteps of the providence of god at large in the world , and more especially of that tender care and inspection of christ our lord ( the sovereign of all souls that are to be saved ) over his church whether iewish or christian : that in dear regard to his charge the people of the iews then carried captive to babylon , and there remaining in servitude under the babylonian monarch , he should condescend personally to converse with his servant daniel , first near the river ulai under that mysterious name of palmoni , and afterwards on the river hiddekel or tigris in the pontifical habit of the high priest of the iews , which with other circumstances shews plainly that it was christ , of whom the high priest with his pontifical habit was but a type : who i say without tears of joy in his eyes can consider this solicitude of the son of the most high god for the despicable sons of men , who , yet further , though he did not personally appear to daniel , saving in those two visions , yet by his appointment , and the ministry of his holy angels , as of gabriel particularly , were the rest of the visions , to say nothing of the hand-writing upon the wall , communicated unto him ? and it is an astonishing consideration to observe how the holy messias bore in his breast the care not onely of the present people of the iews , but had pourtraied in his mind the solicitous comprehension of the affairs of the whole church of god from that time even to the end of the world , over whom his father had ordained him universal protectour and governour , and accordingly he has described in these divine prophecies the state of his church as well christian as of the iews , and indeed mainly of the christian , the largeness of the christian church both for duration of time and amplitude of place being exceedingly more considerable than that of the jews . whence even those visions that concern the iews are so framed , that they also by way of type lively set out both the apostasie of the christian church , and the persecution of those that bore witness against the apostasie . which persecutions both iewish and christian this dear sovereign of souls the messias faithfully forewarns his true servants of , not to avoid them but manfully to suffer them , his care and solicitude being not so much for the gratifying of their bodies , as the safely bringing back their souls out of this region of mortality and corruption , as a glorious spoil snatcht out of the hands of satan and antichrist to present to god his father in those higher regions of immortality and bliss . and certainly so dear and tender as well as so potent a patron as the messias , would never have permitted his best clients to suffer such grievous things for his sake , had there not been a certain reward in the other world for the souls of them that so suffered , and that been true which he told his disciples after he was come in the flesh , joh. . in my fathers house there are many mansions , i go to prepare a place for you : whence these things add a mighty weight to our faith , and assurance of the immortality of the soul , and of an unexpressible happiness to be enjoyed after we have left this body . these considerations i think must bring abundance of pleasure to them that have an heart to believe them . and yet i will add one thing more which i have observed , that cannot but be taking with the judicious , that as the miracles of our saviour christ here upon earth were never done out of any vanity or ostentation of his wonder-working faculty , but as the principle of goodness and needfull beneficency directed him , and limited him ; so likewise the same christ has behaved himself in like manner in the communication of these prophecies . wherein there is not the least shew of affectation of foretelling future things as future , but merely as they are in subserviency to the most certain information of his church , whether iewish or christian , concerning their own state and condition , what it would be . this is more largely insisted upon , if the prophecies be rightly understood ; but the pagan concerns more sparingly , and in subordination onely to the affairs of the church , which is a thing methinks very gracefull and becoming the weightiness and authentickness of these prophecies . and this shall briefly serve to intimate what pleasure the pious soul may reap from the reading and rightly understanding these divine visions of daniel , as well as what other fruit or profit he may have thereby . the more particular usefulness of which it was less needfull for me to insist upon here , they being muchwhat the same with those i have noted in my preface to my apocalypsis apocalypseos , to which the reader may have recourse . i shall onely give an account of my adding the threefold appendage to this my ●…xposition of the visions of daniel , and then conclude . and the reason of my adding the first part thereof , viz. the confutation of grotius his opinion , who makes the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae the fourth kingdome in daniel , is this : it being the constant tradition of the church , and opinion of the primitive fathers , besides other interpreters ( it would make too great a rattle or noise to rehearse the names of them , you may see them in cornelius à lapide and ribera ) that the times of the ten-horned beast and two-horned beast apoc. . and also of the beast that was , is not , and yet is , apoc. . are the times of antichrist ; and ribera expresly says of this last , viz. the beast that is said to ascend out of the bottomless pit , that antichrist ascends with him , and that the other beast , chap. . with ten horns is antichrist , from the authority of the fathers , and the two-horned beast his armour-bearer or squire of his body , though more properly the two-horned beast is to be called antichrist , and the ten-horned his squire , ( i wish he had had a better office and not been debased to so mean and unbecoming a ministry by the imposture of the two-horned beast ) i say it being according to the common stream of antiquity and interpreters , that those times of the ten-horned beast are the times of antichrist , and the same being founded mainly upon that which is unexceptionably sound , viz. that the times of these apocalyptick beasts , and of that in daniel with ten horns , ( amongst which appears that little horn with eyes , which the ancient tradition of the church and all the primitive fathers with one consent declare to be the formidable antichrist then to come ) that those times , i say , do synchronize , or are the very same times , and both necessarily conceived in the latter time of the roman empire ; grotius discerning that unless porphyrius his opinion may be admitted , viz. that the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae , not the roman , is the fourth kingdome in daniel , and having so much wit and perspicacity of iudgment as to perceive that the papistical notion and declaration touching antichrist is such a romance , so incredible and ridiculous ( you may have it pretty well at large in cornelius à lapide upon thess. . ) that it is more fit for old wives and children to listen to , than any one that can pretend to have the understanding of a man , he ( and as it seems to me partly out of the distaste he had taken against the reformed church of holland for their usage of him , and partly to glaver and curry favour with the pontifician party ) that he might make all sure in the behalf of the pope and his hierarchy , rejects the primitive orthodox opinion of the church who ever made the fourth kingdome in daniel the roman , and strikes in with porphyrius a mere pagan , who conceited the fourth kingdome to be that of the lagidae and seleucidae . by which device grotius forsooth would excuse the pope from being the little horn with eyes , and consequently antichrist , and cast it upon antiochus epiphanes , the little horn according to him not belonging to the times of the roman empire , but to the times of the kings of syria and aegypt . wherefore i thought it a business of no small importance to shew the shamefull groundlesness of grotius his opinion , and to restore truth to her due possession and place . but in the mean time it is worth our observation , that grotius being ashamed of that romish or rather romantick fable which that church entertains of antichrist , as that he shall be born of a iewish female of the ●…ribe of dan , and be begotten by an incubus , or at least that he shall be of the abovesaid 〈◊〉 and make himself the messias of the jews , shall doe strange miracles to deceive them , shall make mountains seem to remove out of their place , shall raise himself or some other mortally wounded prince from the dead , shall bring fire from heaven , and ( like the story of frier bacons brazen head ) his statue shall be made to speak ; he shall fly in the air , the devils in the appearance of angels doing homage to him ; he shall rebuild the temple at jerusalem , and there require to be honoured as the sole god of the vniverse ; and in the mean time enoch and elias appearing again in the flesh , shall prophesy against him , whom he shall slay , and their dead bodies shall lye three days and a half in the streets of that city , but then a voice from heaven calling to them to rise , they shall get upon their feet , and ascend into heaven in the sight of all the inhabitants of jerusalem , with other such like stuff which would be but too tedious to rehearse : i say grotius being ashamed of such a childish story , occasioned first from the ignorance of the prophetick style , but entertained afterwards by the roman clergy to save the credit of the pope from being suspected to be the antichrist , it is worth our noting that he had no way left to doe them a more solid piece of service , or to offer them any plausibler pretence , that the pope may not be thought to be the little horn with eyes ( which all christian antiquity with one voice declare to be the antichrist ) than by espousing the opinion of porphyry , that the fourth kingdome in daniel is not the roman , and therefore the little horn not the papacy nor the pope antichrist . for grotius was certainly a person of so much wit and iudgment as clearly to discern that that wooden conceit of mahomet's being the little horn with eyes , and consequently the antichrist , was altogether impossible . that was such a blockish device , or rather such a stumbling-block , that so sober a man as he would never break his shins against it ; it being a thing absurd at the very first sight . for it is plain out of the text that the little horn is an horn growing up amongst the horns of the fourth kingdome , which is the fourth beast , and therefore it is an horn of that beast or kingdome , not of the kingdome of the saracens or turks . otherwise there would have been mentioned another beast to which this horn should belong . but there being no mention of another besides this fourth , which i say , is the roman empire , nor does grotius allow it to be the mahometan , it is necessary that this little horn be an horn of the roman empire , not mahomet nor any horn of the mahometan kingdome . and therefore accordingly , ch. . ver . . the other ten horns are called his fellows as belonging all to one and the same polity the roman empire , and as being all politically conjoyned or consociated into one community as the words in the original imply , which no saracenical or turkish horn is with the roman empire thus divided into ten kingdomes . this could not but lye obvious to the sight of so perspicacious a person as grotius , besides the unapplicableness of the description of the little horn to the mahometan empire which it would be too long to insist upon . i will onely add one notable bar more against this conceit of mahomet's being the little horn with eyes , viz. that what the clay is to the iron feet and ten toes of the image , dan. ch. . what the king of pride is to the roman empire , dan. ch. . what the two-horned beast is to the ten-horned horned beast , apoc. ch. . what the whore is to the beast that was , is not , and yet is , apoc. ch. . the same is the little horn with eyes to the beast with ten horns , dan. ch. . so that if the horn with eyes be mahomet or the turk ; the clay , the king of pride , the two-horned beast , and the whore must be the turk also . this he that understands the prophecies of daniel and the apocalypse throughly is certainly assured of , and consequently as certain that neither mahomet nor any turkish polity is that little horn with eyes , dan. ch. . but what was so very obvious you may be sure turned grotius his stomach sufficiently from so fond and frivoloùs a conceit . see my synopsis prophetica , book . ch. . consect . . where it is undeniably demonstrated , that the whore of babylon or antichrist sits not now at constantinople , but that old rome is his imperial seat. wherefore it is plain , that grotius shewed a great deal of iudgment in not adventuring to let the roman empire be the fourth beast , and so to pretend that mahomet is the little horn or antichrist , it being a thing so absurd and impossible . and therefore to give a stop to this grand inconvenience , that the turk not proving the antichrist or little horn the pope would be surely he , he was forced to deny that the fourth empire was the roman , thinking that less absurd , than that idea of the pontifician antichrist or that mahomet should be he . whence it plainly appears of what great moment it is to be assured of this ancient truth of the church , that the fourth kingdome in daniel is the roman . which made me therefore though i have competently well confuted grotius , or made good that the fourth kingdome is the roman in my exposition itself , yet for more full persuasion and impression of so concerning a truth upon the mind of the reader , to add this first part of my appendage , namely a particular confutation of that opinion of grotius . which being found so weak and impossible as i have demonstrated , and this fable of the romanists so foolish and ridiculous as well as that of mahomet's being antichrist , or the little horn , even in grotius his own judgment , and in any ones else that has any sagacity or reason , this very effort of his recoyles with the greater strength against the romanists , to prove that the pope is antichrist , he , methinks , thus plainly insinuating , that if this conceit of his and porphyrius his will not hold , the pope will be antichrist and no mortal man knows how to help it . wherefore none ought to take amiss my diligence in making good this point . forasmuch as the fourth kingdome in daniel its being the roman , is a necessary foundation of the ancient fathers interpreting the little horn with eyes , dan. ch. . the king of pride , ch. . the man of sin , thess. . the ten-horned beast and the two-horned beast , apoc. ch. . and the beast arising out of the bottomless pit , ch. . of the times of antichrist . and if this foundation stand , as it is most sure , the interpretation of the fathers , so far in general , as that those prophecies concern the times of antichrist , must stand also . but now by undeniable demonstration in my apocalypsis apocalypseos , and in my synopsis prophetica , i have proved that those times which the ancient fathers declare to be the times of antichrist , are in reality the times of the papacy . whence it necessarily follows , that the times of the papacy , if we stand to this verdict of the fathers , are the times of antichrist , and that it is not a piece of angry or reproachful language but a just and sober charge laid upon the pope with his hierarchy by the reformed party , that he is that very antichrist which the ancient christians , in the very apostles time , so much dreaded that he would come . which rumour and fear most certainly was raised from the prophecies of daniel , and more especially from that of the king of pride , which st. paul calls the man of sin , and from the little horn with eyes . which false seer or pseudo-prophet , as also that king of pride , is , by st. john according to the vulgarly known name then in the church , called antichrist . touching whom they which he wrote to in his epistles , being solicitous , he acknowledges indeed that grand antichrist to come that daniel foretells of , but in the mean time warns them of such antichrists , false seers or pseudo-prophets as were more near and under their noses as it were already , and gives them characters of them to shun them , as being very wretched and mischievous antichrists in their time and place , as well as that other to come . so authentick a name is that name of antichrist for that party and polity that should prove the little horn with eyes , the king of pride , or the two-horned beast , &c. so that if the pope with his hierarchy be they , and i have demonstrated them in my synopsis propherica and apocalypsis apocalypseos to be so , it is evident , that the papal polity or hierarchy is , as i said , the very antichrist properly so called , which the ch●●ch in the times of the apostles was so solicitous about , they not knowing how near his coming might be , nor having any distinct ●…otion of him what an one he would prove when he came , though they were assured out of the prophecies of daniel , that , when he did come , he would prove horribly bad , as all the sincere servants of christ have found him , his tyranny and salvage cruelty against them being unutterable , as the monstrosity of his doctrines and gross enormities in practice a thing beyond all conceit of any of the apostolick age , that one that professes himself the successour of st. peter , the vicar of christ , the bridegroom or husband , if you will , of his spouse the church , and the holy father of christendome , nay such an one as is styled holiness in the very abstract , should be such a man of idolatry and bloud , a destroyer and murderer of the most faithfull and loyall servants of christ , whose vicar notwithstanding he pretends to be . but how well this name of antichrist which st. john and the primitive church has bestowed upon him does suit with him , that is , with the pope or papal hierarchy , i have so fully set out in my idea of antichristianism , that i may well forbear to say . any thing more here ; but onely remind the reader , which is the thing in hand , to what good purpose this first part of my appendage is added , it making for the fuller confirmation , that the fourth kingdome is the roman , which is the foundation of the ancient fathers interpreting those visions , which we know certainly to belong to the papacy , concerning the times of antichrist , and that consequently according as our reformed churches have ever declared , the pope is he . for that is but a childish and fo●…d subterfuge and fit for nothing but to fobb off fools , to interpose the above described romish prefiguration of antichrist , as if antichrist must not be said to come till a bastard of the tribe of dan sit in the temple of god at jerusalem , and declare himself the onely supreme god , and that he himself alone is to be worshipped , &c. i say besides the ridiculous fabulosity of enoch and elias their coming again in the flesh , and their being slain by this antichrist , and their bodies lying dead three days and an half in the streets of jerusalem , and then raised to life and ascending into heaven all the people of the city gazing upon them , that very one thing of his declaring himself to be the onely true god that is to be worshipped , is a figment impossible , the devil himself would not have that impudence , nor any devil incarnate so little wit as to declare so , besides that it is perfectly repugnant to the description of antichrist in daniel ch. . where he is said to worship the mahuzzim together with a strange god. nor is antichrists description thess. . such as implies that he declares himself to be the supreme god who-alone is to be worshipped . for he is not said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to shew himself that he is the true and onely god , but onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that he behaves himself as if he were a god rather than a man , an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as one of the popes boasted , that the people took the successours of st. peter to be , or supremum numen in terris as his glozing canonists call him , and he abundantly exalts himself above god , i trow , that takes upon him to dispense with his laws and enact things quite contrary to them . but such pitiful shifts are they put to that wilfully maintain a wicked cause for worldly interest , that they must thus pervert the idea's and notions of things to delude the ignorant , and draw such an image or representation of antichrist though never so salse and fabulous , so be it may but shelter the pope from appearing to be him ; and to coin false notions of idolatry such as rubenus essendiensis has defined it , that it is the worship of latria or truly divine worship given to an accursed devil , and that directed in such a sense as it is directed to god , whereby he would excuse the church of rome from idolatry . but we have insisted too long already on this first part of our appendage , we will onely add this , that in making such gross shifts as these , they do but betray their own guilt and insinuate to the sagacious , that unless such a ridiculous and fabulous image of antichrist as they set forth be admitted , the pope must be antichrist , and unless such a false and illogical definition of idolatry be allowed , the church of rome must be idolatrous , that is , in brief , they confess their own guilt , and acknowledge the pope to be antichrist and his church idolatrous . but now for the second part of the appendage which proves that the vials are to follow the rising of the witnesses , besides that it is a confirmation of our exposition of the prophecy of the opened book as the former part of the appendage was of my exposition of the visions in daniel , and the third is of the epistolar prophecy in the apocalypse , it does also confirm mr. mede's scheme of synchronisms such as i have exhibited it in my epilogue to my apocalypsis apocalypseos with such emendations and supplements as i have signified there . which cannot but be a gratification to men of a stable and judicious spirit , and who are delighted with a settled and orderly comprehension of things . but sundry being not aware that the vials , all of them follow the rising of the witnesses , and consequently that the witnesses are risen already in the late blessed reformation , busy themselves in the inventing new epocha's of the medial or antemedial synchronals to fit themselves for the foretelling ( out of an itch of prophecying or prognosticating things future ) when that will come , that is already past , as i have demonstrated the rising of the witnesses to be , in this second part of my appendage . and they that have applied the late blessed reformation to the second vial , as mr. mede and after him peganius has done , it was from this errour , that they took it for granted that most of the vials preceeded the rising of the witnesses . and such is the humour , fansifulness and partiality of many , that they can hardly believe of themselves , that the witnesses are risen , till kingdomes , nations , and principalities of their own party rise into political power , namely all episcopal , all presbyterian , all calvinists , all arminians , all socinians , and so of anabaptists , quakers and famulists . but they erre knowing not the scriptures or the true meaning of them , nor rightly considering the records of history , where they may find what was the testimony of these witnesses who are predicted to rise in the reformation , and to be warred against before by the beast and cruelly persecuted . as there was nothing to alledge against the apostolicalness of their faith , they professing the triunity of the godhead and divinity of christ , and such like articles of the christian belief , and living accordingly , whereby they became idoneous , witnesses ; so their plain and simple testimony against the church of rome was this , that the pope was that man of sin or antichrist , and their church idolatrous by reason of their adoration of the host , invocation of saints and worshipping of images , and their religion otherwise also grosly corrupt in seeking to propitiate god by their adhering to the multifarious vain and wicked inventions of men , excogitated onely for the gain of the priest and the keeping the people in blindness and ignorance . this was the tenour of the testimony of the witnesses both in the pergamenian and the thyatirian interval of the church , which they witnessed with great favouriness and assurance , in virtue of the spirit of life and holiness in them : and persons innumerable that bore the same testimony and were of the same sentiments , instead of being still mournfull witnesses in sackcloth , or lying dead in a political sense in the streets of the mystical prophet-murdering jerusalem ( the same with babylon or aegypt which signify the large jurisdiction of the pope of rome ) at the reformation had a reviving into political power again , and ascended , in several kingdomes , to the highest honours , dignities and employments in church and state. which therefore as i have proved in this part of my appendage must needs be the rising of the witnesses , they being of the same mind and profession with those that were so grievously persecuted and kept out of all power , nay burnt at the stake , murdered and massacred god knows how many hundred thousands of them . and at this very day our own church of england , partly in her homilies , partly in her articles and liturgy gives the same testimony of the church of rome , even that she is that old painted harlot of babylon with her cup of fornication , that is , of idolatry , and that the pope is antichrist , as i have shewn in my synopsis prophetica , book . ch. . which , whenas our own church , which seems most moderate , does so plainly attest , we may be sure the rest of the chiefest writers of the reformation do not mince the matter at all . and if there be any persons in the reformation any where that at all recoyl from this testimony , it is because the spirit of life and holiness is decayed in them , and the gross spirit of this world has blinded their eyes and darkened their understandings , and hardened their hearts against the truth , they preferring worldly power , pomp and riches before the purity of gods worship . wherefore , i say , this is one great usefulness of my demonstrating the vials to follow the rising of the witnesses , in that it is thence manifest , that the vision of the rising of the witnesses was fulfilled in the late blessed reformation , there being thus no other vision to predict it but this . which conclusion contains a manifold usefulness in it . for , first , that acclamation in heaven upon the rising of the witnesses , that the kingdomes of the world were become the kingdomes of the lord and of his christ , namely after so many principalities , provinces and kingdomes had cast off the pope in the late blessed reformation , what does this imply but that they were before in the hands of antichrist , and that were the pope has any dominion it is ipso facto antichrists kingdome , and on the contrary that all the reformed parts of christendome are the kingdome of christ , and indeed the fifth monarchy begun . which ought to stop the mouths and carrears of an ignorant and fanatical sort of men that cannot see wood for trees , and seek for a fifth monarchy in a fifth monarchy , whenas so considerable a part of it is erected before their eyes already . but as i noted above , such is the folly and freakishness of ignorant and conceited men , that they would not willingly acknowledge the witnesses to be risen till those of the same crotchets with themselves , ( whole kingdomes and nations of them ) have got into power . but it is very true and extremely worth our nothing , that , as in the times of the old roman paganism all those that professed christ according to the tenour of what we call the apostles creed , though in the mean time they had several different conceits about things that appertained to the christian religion , were notwithstanding lookt upon as the kingdome of christ in opposition to the kingdome of the red dragon , the pagan persecutive roman empire ; so all the reformed churches , states and kingdomes , though some lutherans , others calvinists , some of one opinion , others of another , yet they keeping to the old orthodox faith of the triunity of the godhead and divinity of christ , acknowledged by the church in the symmetral times thereof , and renouncing the communion of the roman church for her gross idolatries and wretched and intolerable superstitions and humane inventions , whereby she has so notoriously adulterated the purity and simplicity of the christian faith and worship , all these i say , are justly deemed the kingdome of christ , in opposition to the dominion of the pope or kingdome of antichrist . whence as i was a going to say a second special use of this our demonstration , that the late blessed reformation was the fulfilling of the vision of the rising of the witnesses , is the undeceiving of those they call the fifth-monarchy men , who would pretend to begin the fifth monarchy , and upon that account raise commotions and tumults , whenas it is so stupendiously and surprisingly by the special providence of god , begun already . and let a third usefulness be to reprove them , that out of rashness and conceitedness or any other worse principle vilify and contemn this great work of god the late happy reformation , whether it be those that think there is too much done already , they having an hankering again after the flesh-pots of aegypt , the worldly bigness and downbearing dominion of a tyrannical clergy over an affrighted and besotted laity , who are made to believe , or at least out of fear to profess any thing that makes for the worldly interest , the gain or revering of the priest : ( for who without astonishment and affright can look upon such a priest as professes himself , and is believed to be a creatour of his creatour , and by a few words to be able to change a piece of bread into the very person of christ who is to be worshipped with latria as being god blessed for ever ? ) or it be those that have private phansies or freaks of their own , and think never enough is done till reformation come up to the measure of their conceit , nor will suffer the witnesses to rise or acknowledg them risen , till things ascend to the pitch of that peculiar idea which they have formed in their private imagination . whenas god be thanked things are in so good a frame for example in our english church , that nothing hinders but that a man may be a most perfect and accomplished christian holding communion with her . the fruits of the spirit are love , joy , peace , long●…suffering , gentleness , goodness , faith , meekness , temperance . which of these fruits or priviledges of the spirit i beseech you may you not injoy ( if it be not long of your self ) holding communion with the church of england ? and as for the works of the flesh , adultery , fornication , uncleanness , lasciviousness , idolatry , witchraft , hatred , variance , emulation , wrath , strife , seditions , heresies , envyings , murders , drunkenness , revellings , are these any of them , any conditions of the communion of the english church as some of them are of the church of rome , as particularly that of idolatry , to say nothing of heresy , of murder and bloud , of which that church stands so deeply guilty , which yet she justifies herself in , and they in a manner subscribe to it , that joyn in communion with her . but as our church engages none in the guilt of such detestable wickednesses , so it apertly declares against all the rest of the vices of this black roll , and has a pure and unexceptionable form of the worship of god , devoid of all idolatry and superstition . whence those people that so slight and vilify the reformation which gods providence has brought to pass amongst us , their ingratitude is monstrous and horrid , and i pray god it may be never laid to their charge . they will be reforming the reformed churches , in things indifferent ; why do they not reform themselves from their own vices and corruptions which are not indifferent , they having so full and fair opportunity by the free enjoyment of the gospel , and no man requiring unlawful things of them , as they were required in that deplorable condition under the church of rome ? wherefore fourthly , all magistrates supreme and subordinate in reformed christendome being in truth the established powers , whether spiritual or temporal , of the kingdome of christ in opposition to the kingdome of antichrist , this ought to be a rousing motive i trow , to all in the reformed churches to give due reverence and honour to them as the appointed ministers of the kingdome of christ , and be obedient ( in all things lawful ) to the powers both ecclesiastical and civil , and make no schisms in the church , much less behave themselves rudely and malapertly as the custome of some has been , as if they forsooth were the only children of the kingdome , when nothing but fanatical pride or mistake , or the perfidious suggestions of foreign emissaries , or the envy of satan has driven them to such misdemeanours to slur and disgrace the reformation as much as he can . but it being thus apparent that the reformed magistrates are the risen witnesses ruling in the kingdome of christ in opposition to the kingdome of antichrist or dominion of the pope , whom the reformed princes have justly cast off , as it appears out of the fulfilling of the vision , not onely ●…hose of the reformed persuasion are to come in to the church and leave their schism , but those also that yet continue romanists , it is not onely lawfull for them ( the dominion of the pope being thus by divine sentence abrogated and made null in england and in the rest of the reformed countries ) but their indispensable duty to renounce their communion with the church of rome , and communicate here with our english church , as elsewhere with other reformed churches , and so become both good christians and good subjects at once . but for those of the protestant persuasion to divide and subdivide ( which is but to doe that which all the activity of the emiss●…ries of antichrist is chiefly employed about ) surely is a strange fruit of the spirit , which yet the most factious amongst them most of all boast of . if it be not the spirit of pride and hypocrisie , it is yet certainly the spirit of giddiness , imprudence , and indiscretion . fifthly , the impletion of this vision of the rising of the witnesses in the reformation , justifies all the reformed princes in christendome in their casting off the pope , from all shew of injustice or heresy which the papal party would charge them with , and demonstrates a right in all the rest of the princes of christendome to doe the like , it being but the recovery by degrees of the kingdome of christ out of the hands of antichrist , and delivering themselves and their people like so many good moses's from that salvage idolatrous and impious dominion and worse than aegyptian servitude of that mystical pharaoh the pope of rome , who has so notoriously and prodigiously defiled christendome with idolatry and bloud . sixthly , it being so manifest that the kingdomes and principalities recovered out of the hands of the pope that signal antichrist predicted by daniel , john and paul , are indeed the kingdomes of the lord and of his christ , and that the supreme and subordinate magistrates both temporal and spiritual set over them , are set over them as the vicegerents and ministers of christ , in opposition to the kingdome of antichrist , the duty of all such is so to discharge their offices as remembring they must one day give an account to christ how well they have defended or enlarged his kingdome , or protected his loyal subjects in it , nor given any advantages to those of the kingdome of antichrist to incroach upon or get foot-hold against the faithful subjects of christs kingdome . but that any magistrate spiritual or temporal should be so disloyal to christ as to betray any part of christs kingdome into the hands of antichrist , that is a thing that none can think on without unspeakable astonishment and horrour . certainly they must have a deep melancholy and darksome jealous mind , that can so much as fansie it possible to come into any ones breast so to doe , that remembers he is intrusted with such a charge from our saviour iesus christ , who is king of kings and lord of lords , and has the keys of hell and death . which consideration touches also private persons in proportion as well as publick magistrates , as many as leave the reformed communion to joyn themselves to the church of rome . for how can they excuse themselves from treachery against the kingdome of christ by thus listing themselves amongst the slaves of antichrist ? but it is no pleasure to me to insist on so tragical a subject . seventhly and lastly there is this use also of our demonstration , that the late blessed reformation is the fulfilling of the prophecy of the rising of the witnesses , in that it may free men from falsly conceived fears and hopes of the witnesses being to be slain and their bodies to lye three years and an half dead , and then presently to rise again , and then that there will insue such glorious times as none can easily pre-conceive . which is founded upon as little ground or reason , as that conceit of was of being the year of the ruine of rome , a thing which i always declared against as having no ground on any prophecy in scripture . but that london was burnt that year all know . and whether this conceit was not furthered by some in order thereto to put a dodge upon the protestants to weaken their faith , and to make the pretending to understand prophecies in prejudice to the popedome , ridiculous , let those that understand the intrigues of the burning of the city better than i , declare their opinion . in the mean time since all may rest satisfied that the rising of the witnesses is past and consequently their being slain and lying dead three days and an half in the street of the great city that is called sodom and aegypt , let every one discharge himself of that panick fear , as if it were a thing yet to come , and of that romantick hope , if it were to be done , that they would rise again within three years and an half , that so they forsooth may wisely step aside under some convenient shelter till the fatal storm be blown over ; but let all that have any faith in or kindness for the reformmed religion with joynt effort resist five rushing in of popery by sincere repentance and hearty prayer to god that it may never re-enter this nation again , nor any nation else that has been gained out of the hands of antichrist ; and let us bewaile our unworthiness and unthankfulness to god that we have not sufficiently esteemed nor valued this wonderfull work of his , that he has brought things to that pass he has in the late blessed reformation , and be morigerous to the magistrate as well spiritual as civil in all things indifferent , and heartily love one another of whatever different persuasion we may be , that has no impiety nor immorality in it , and then god will love us all , and be our mighty deliverer and protectour . * but if ye bite one another , saith the apostle , take heed ye be not consumed one of another . but of this i may have further occasion to speak , in the giving my reasons why i added the third part of my appendage , viz. my twenty arguments for the proving the vision of the seven churches to be a prophecy of the state of the church from the beginning thereof to the end of the world . for i think it of very good use and moment that we be assured of this truth for these two main reasons especially . first that it appearing so plainly , that the church of sardis stands for the reformed churches , as they are called , we may look our selves in that glass and see our spots and blemishes therein , to amend them . for that we are signified by that church even they do acknowledg who otherwise differ something from me in the determining the seven intervals of these churches ( but have declared , as i find , long before me , that this vision of the seven churches is a prophecy of the state of the church to the end of the world ) while they expresly deliver that the sardian period as they call it , is the period of the reformed churches commencing from luther and melancthon's time , &c. thus balthasar willius a sober and learned german doctor in his commentary on the prophet zachary ( and indeed he is so well assured of the truth of the vision of the seven churches being a prophecy of the church from the beginning thereof to the end of the world , that he makes it the basis of a special part of his commentary ) borrowing his first light from his master ludovicus crocius , whom he calls clarissimum suo seculo theologiae astrum , gives his suffrage touching the fifth period of the church in these words . quinta periodus , saith he , est sardensis à reformatione coeptâ per lutherum , melancthonem , zwinglium , aliósque veritatis doctores in hunc usque diem durans , in qua puritas doctrinae apostolicae morte operum , proh dolor ! dedecoratur , & ii quibus lux evangelii fulget limpidissima , contentionibus , odiis ac discordiâ colliduntur , & somno vitiorum ac luxuriae sepulti jacent . which is a free perstriction of the disorders observable in the reformed churches , how they hold the truth of god in unrighteousness , and i wish it were not as true as free . but there be a few names , god be thanked , even in this sardis which have not defiled their garments , of whom christ foretells that they shall walk with him in white , for they are worthy . but the rest may read their defects or corruptions in the epistle itself . where christ tells the sardian church , that is , the reformed churches , that they have a name that they live , because they have zeal and heat , which seems to be a symptome of life , but it is not for the true indispensable christian life but for or against this opinion or that ceremony , whenas they are cold at the heart to what is the onely life of a christian , humility , purity and charity . to which they are either dead or in a profound sopor . whence christ says to them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as st. paul in the behalf of christ in another place , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 awake out of this deep sleep or lethargy , and keep they self awake and strengthen the things that are ready to dye , that is , faith in god and christ and of a life to come . for it is horrid to consider how far atheism , vnbelief , and epicurisme has spread itself even amongst the reformed churches themselves , these monsters having grown upon us as our zeal has relaxated against the church of rome . for to such all religions are alike , if the worst be not the most eligible , with them especially of the clergy , it serving best for the pride , power and profit of a corrupt priesthood . but christ bids them remember how they have received and heard , from the ancient prophets and apostles , and from the late witnesses to the truth , as by whom they were expresly informed that the pope of rome was the great antichrist , and his church a synagogue of idolaters . that the popedome is antichrists kingdome , and consequently for one to forsake the reformed religion and betake himself to the church of rome is little better in foro divino than rebellion and treachery against the kingdome of christ. wherefore says christ to the church in sardis , hold fast and be no revolters , but renew and resume your ancient zeal for the purity of gods worship and the power of godliness , your ancient iealousy for the honour of god against idols and image-worship and other kinds of idolatry and heathen-like superstitions , your horrour and detestation of all debauchery and scandal of life , lest he whose eyes are more pure than to behold iniquity , loath you and turn off from you on a suddain , and leave you to be a prey to your insulting enemies . so that here is commination of misery enough to the reformed churches unless they repent , without recourse to the slaying of the witnesses , the fulfilling of which prophecy is already past . but in the mean time it is apparent enough from this first consideration , namely the usefulness of the epistle to the sardian church for the representing the defects and corruptions of the reformed churches to their view , that i had reason why i should be solicitous to make good that the vision of the seven churches is a prophecy of the state of so many intervals of the church from the beginning thereof to the end of the world. and the other main reason is the description of the state of the succeeding interval of the church in christs epistle to the church in philadelphia . which glorious character is exposed to the view of the sardian church as a pharos to mariners on a dangerous sea in a dark night , that they may know towards what to make to , and that the reformed churches may be assured that christ intends such a state of his church upon earth , at the next turn , as shall be without either spot or wrinkle or any such thing , but that it shall be holy and without blemish . for for this very cause did he yield himself to the death of the cross , as you may see , ephes. . . but of the sardian church it is said expresly , that her works are not found perfect before god , apoc. . . and for this reason certainly , most especially are they not found perfect , because they are not done in charity , according to that precept of the apostle , cor. . . let all your things be done in charity , which the apostle elsewhere calls the bond of perfectness , and is indeed perfectness itself , without which , nothing is right nor perfect , nor can well hold together . this is the thing that is especially wanting in the reformed churches , and is the very title and inscription of the next interval of the church , which is the church of philadelphia , the church of holy love or charity . for that church will count every son of adam their brother , as the good samaritan did every one his neighbour . wherefore this condition of the church that is next , is exhibited to our view as an high golden tower with crystal windows on the sea side , full of lights by night , and the burnis●…ed gold and crystal glistering in the sun by day , to shew us whitherto we should stear our course , that we may conform all our outward actions and inward motions as near as we can to this excellent principle of charity . the nature whereof st. paul has so accurately described on purpose , one would think , that we might be guided by the light thereof . and it is so divine and transcendent a principle , or deep and profound , that a man may give all his goods to the poor and his body to be burnt , and yet either not have reached it , or else overlooked it , and so be devoid of it , when a man would think that so great a zeal and liberality could not be without that celestial flame of holy love. but methinks i hear you say , if these be not sure symptomes of it , what i beseech you are ? the apostle will tell you . for whenas the former things may be done out of self-interest , the apostles description is of a pure and holy unself-interessed love , that arises out of the ruines , death , or annihilation of the old man , in us , and is that rectitude of spirit , of which our saviour christ declares , blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness , for they shall be satisfied . as on the contrary they are in a sad condition , that never felt this hunger and thirst in them , and are thereby convicted to be mere strangers and aliens from the life of god. but out of the annihilation and mortification of our own impetuous selfish will or lust , which is our true purification from the life of the flesh , does this divine or vnself-interessed love arise , the effects whereof paul describes thus : charity suffereth long , that is to say , is slow to anger ; and no wonder , anger being properly a passion raised out of a sense of injury done to ones self . charity is kind , as being the image of that god who according to saint john is love itself . charity envieth not , forasmuch as the good of the vniverse , and of every man in particular is the very life and pleasure of the regenerate soul , whose real regeneration is into this divine love. charity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , does nothing scurvily , rashly or tumultuarily , forasmuch as this grace arises out of the allaying or extinguishing all the impetuosities of our own wills and lusts . is not puffed up , this spirit of charity being not an huffy blast of crude enthusiasm , but the permanent and solid life of god in us , into which our souls are regenerated by the operation of the holy ghost . doth not behave it self unseemly , no not to her equals , much less superiours , least of all to the publick magistrates , as being the ordinance of god , but gives honour to whom honour , and tribute to whom tribute is due . for in the life of charity all the quick sentiments of justice and decorum are eminently contained . seeketh not her own . and good reason , she being not a self-lover , or lover of her own sect or faction , but that unself-interessed love , whose glory and joy is in the good of all mankind , and in reference thereto , is mainly sensible and solicitous of the common interest of the kingdome of christ , which so much concerns the salvation of men , and for this reason alone , a sincere opposer of the kingdome of antichrist . is not easily provoked , to wrath and invective speeches or severe designs , as commonly factions are affected one party against the other . thinketh no evil , makes no misconstructions or perverse collections from the opinions or actions of men ( that are capable of better interpretation ) out of an ill will towards them . rejoyceth not in iniquity , though carried on with never so cunning intrigues and never so good success in the behalf of any party . but rejoyceth in the truth , that is , in honest , true and plain dealing , not the preference of a party but the common interest of the true church of christ being the onely allowable spring of her ioy. charity ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for that i look upon to be the more likely reading and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which bears the same sense comes so presently after ) loveth all things , that is to say , is a sincere lover and hearty imbracer of the whole creation of god and a rejoycer in his works . believeth all things , that is , all the fundamentals , at least , of the truly ancient and apostolick faith , in vertue of that purification of the soul whereby she has arrived to this transcendent state of divine love. hopeth all things , namely firmly expecteth all those great and gracious promises of a blessed immortality after this life , and the glories and enjoyments thereof , in which hope she is so fixt and stedfast , by reason of the purity of the soul , and presence of the divine spirit in her , that as it follows ( buoyed up by this full persuasion , and chiefly in assurance it is for the glory of god and the good of his people ) she , endureth all things , being assured that god whom st. john calls love , and with whom she is united by faith and love , can carry her through a thousand persecutions and deaths , and yet repose her safe at last in his own bosome . which is according to that couragious profession of the same blessed apostle , rom. . who shall separate us from the love of christ ? shall tribulation , or distress , or persecution , or famine , or nakedness , or peril , or sword ? nay in all these things we are more than conquerours in him that loved us . for i am persuaded , that neither death , nor life , ( the fear of the one , or the love of the other ) nor angels , nor principalities , nor powers , nor things present , nor things to come , nor height , nor depth , nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of god , which is in christ our lord. this is that most excellent , glorious and salutiferous idea or character of the philadelphian state of the church , which is immediately to succeed the sardian , and in which alone the reformed churches must hope to be in safe harbour indeed . but in the mean time the nearer we compose our selves to this great pattern , in the greater safety and better condition shall we be . if we will lay aside all our dissentions and animosities , all our factions and schisms , and remember that for all the stir and noise we make about opinions and ceremonies and forms of government , in the esteem of our lord christ we are but dead bodies ( for so he declares to the church in sardis ) being destitute of the life of christ , which is the spirit of love , whose fruits and effects i have above described out of st. paul : if we could but have so much zeal and ardour of mind to promote the indispensables of christian religion as every sect has to promote such forms or opinions as christianity can well want , and yet be most effectual for the salvation of souls , which is the end of our religion , it would be a wholsome symptome or sign of our recovery . for this undoubtedly would bring along with it all decency and order and morigerousness to the magistrate , whether ecclesiastical or civil in things indifferent , and cement us together and consolidate us into one inexpugnable temple of christ , able to bear off all the assaults of the emissaries of antichrist ; whereas now divisions and factions , animosity and discord , amongst our selves , is like to make us a prey to the common enemy . these things are lively represented to us in those two epistles , the one to the church of sardis , the other to the church of philadelphia , which therefore made me so solicitous to confirm to all the world that truth , and here again repeatedly to declare it , that the vision of the seven churches is a prophecy of the state of the church from the beginning thereof to the end of the world . to which i will onely cast in this third reason , that it makes much for the gracefulness and elegancy and enravishing artifice of this divine volume of prophecies , the apocalypse , that the vision of the seven churches be acknowledged such a prophecy as i have described , especially if we consider how the order of the intervals agree with the order of the synchronals of the sealed and opened book-prophecies , and particularly how the church of sardis falls in with the rising of the witnesses , on which things it is needless here to enlarge any further and not at all convenient , my preface having already swelled so exceeding much beyond my expectation . onely i will remind the reader that i am not alone in this my confidence of the vision of the seven churches being such a prophecy , those two eminent theologers ludovicus crocius and balthasar willius ( an authour that was very lately sent me by a reverend and learned friend ) discovering the same truth before me , and the latter so well assured of it that he makes it the ground of his exposition of a considerable part of the prophecy of zachary as i have intimated above , and the more of us hitting upon and approving the same notion , unknown to one another , it ought to be the greater confirmation to others that the notion is natural , sound and true . thus have i with all imaginable sincerity and freeness given an account of this my exposition of the divine visions of daniel and of my annexing the threefold appendage thereto . and now that this my just zeal for the truth may not seem to any one either unseasonable , immoderate , or extravagant : that it is not unseasonable i think is over apparent , there being that strong effort by the popish party to bring their religion again here into england ; and therefore it is the duty of every one of my calling , as he finds himself tolerably appointed for it , to instruct the people touching the solidity of our reformed religion and of the detestableness of popery , such as it may be made out to be either from reason or the divine oracles . for , for a nation , priest and people to turn in a moment from one religion to another , as contrary to one another as light is to darkness , and christ to antichrist , surely must be the greatest slur that ever was put on the profession of true religion since the world stood , and the greatest gratification and triumph , which that triumvirate of pestilent wits ever yet have had , i mean the atheist , antichrist , and the devil . and verily there being that vast difference betwixt the reformed religion and popery , this consideration alone , one would think , should put an effectual stop to any ones revolt , that is not an infidel and believes nothing of a life to come , viz. that if he does not stand his ground in this assault , nor be driven off by the terrour and affright of men , he cannot assure himself , but if the like threatnings of death and cruelty were used to him to renounce all christianity whatsoever , that he might be an utter apostate from christ , pass over to turcism , nay paganism , and at last be persuaded humbly to salute , not the cloven toe , but the hairy backside of the black goat in a nocturnal conventicle of witches . the consciousness of which baseness and impiety of spirit to him that has any sense of religion left in him , one would think , should be more affrightful to him , than the menaces of the most cruel tyrant , or the very flames of hell. wherefore there being so strong an effort and tugg to debauch a nation on this manner , how can it be unseasonable by all honest means to endeavour to keep them sound , that god be not dishonoured , nor religion slurred before the eyes of this atheistical world , by so foul an apostasie ? nor is there any thing of immoderateness or extravagancy in this my zeal for so good a cause . for i herein offend neither the law of god nor man. and i doe but that duty i owe to my prince , church and country , in defending the established religion of the land against all opposers or vnderminers of it ; and being what i defend is true , i have the apostles warrant if not command to be zealous in it , who tells us , it is good to be zealously affected always in a good matter . it is not onely asserted by our church but it is irrefutably proved by able writers of our church , that the church of rome is idolatrous . and the most horrid murders they have committed upon innocent souls hundred thousands of them , because they would not commit idolatry with their church , all histories ring thereof . wherefore our church in her homilies does not stick to intimate this bloudy idolatrous church to be that harlot in the apocalypse upon the seven hills , as also that the pope of rome is the antichrist . and bishop jewel in his volume against harding , appointed by authority to be in every church , expounds the man of sin ( thess. . ) whom all the ancients understood of antichrist , of the bishop of rome , making the antichrist predicted there , to be the pope . and indeed what protestant writer before grotius , ever expounded that prophecy of any other than the pope ? but how absurd and ridiculous grotius his interpretation is , i have abundantly shewn in my * synopsis prophetica . now what extravagance is it in me who further confirm what our church holds ( to say nothing of other churches ) by a more perfect and accurate account of the prophecies of st. john and daniel ? wherein i shew all those prophecies that the ancient fathers interpreted of the times of antichrist himself , necessarily to belong to the papal hierarchy . and for antiochus epiphanes whom they lookt upon as a type of antichrist , i have further shewed how lively a type he also is of the pope . so fitly do things agree and cohere all along , in every place . and verily i am so well assured of the truth of the expositions i have exhibited of daniel and st. john , those parts especially that appertain to the deciding of those grand controversies betwixt the church of rome and the protestant churches , viz. whether that church be idolatrous , and the pope antichrist , that i dare in an humble confidence spread them in the sight of heaven before god and his holy angels and the blessed spirits of the saints departed , and particularly st. john and daniel , the two inspired pen-men of those divine visions , which the special providence of god has left to the comfort and direction of his church , and appeal unto them whether the expositions be not true . not that i expect any miraculous voice from heaven in attestation to the truth of the said expositions , but to signify thus to all the world with what sincerity and assurance i have written them . which i would have chiefly understood of the abovesaid controversies and of my applications of things past . but as for what is to come , that of the poet may here take place , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as he is the best hariolus that guesses well , so he the best interpreter of divine prophecies that gives a rational account ( whatever the event may prove ) touching such passages of them as concern things yet future . which i speak in reference to my expounding dan. ch. ii. vers . . of the taking of rome by the turk , which i heartily wish the papal hierarchy may prevent by a timely repentance of their idolatry and bloud . but the like fears and jealousies of holy men in former time touching the turks over-running the west for their idolatry , are expressed in our churches homily upon that subject , to which i refer the reader . but as for the truth of my expositions which reach the main points , whether the church of rome be not that babylon the great , the mother of harlots with the golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of fornication , the woman on the seven hills that is drunk with the bloud of the saints and the bloud of the martyrs of iesus , and whether the pope be not the antichrist and the papal hierarchy understood in all those prophecies in john and daniel which the ancient fathers and primitive writers understood of antichrist ( whence it is manifest that the pope with his hierarchy is he ) these things i profess are as clear to me as any point in all theology and philosophy , geometry itself being not excepted . but as for those that answer this our well-grounded confidence of the truth of our expositions ( instead of endeavouring a solid confutation of them , which they are conscious to themselves they can never perform , and therefore have discreetly declined the taking notice of my joynt-exposition of the seventeenth and thirteenth chapters of the apocalypse in my synopsis prophetica , published at least fifteen years agoe , which alone would make good the conclusions aimed at , of the antichristianity and idolatry of the church of rome ) for those i say which answer this well grounded confidence of mine with mocks and mowes , with distorted drollery and course buffoonry , i have no other reply to give to them , but that i heartily pity them , and that i humbly conceive , if there were any remainders of a mans heart left in them , they would pity themselves ( could they but once consider what a few hairs breadths their souls are elevated above those of monkeys or baboons ) and would sadly sit down on their breech with their arms or rather forelegs , if you will , across , and sigh deeply to the maker and former of all things that he would vouchsafe to transform them into the shape and state of men . and i in the mean time , it being something doubtfull how much the braying of their brutish nature may prevail , shall desire all good people to pray for them . but for those to whom is given a more sober and understanding heart and capable of the mysteries of god , i hope by perusing the expositions which i have written upon the prophet daniel and the apocalypse , they will not stick to acknowledge with our own church and other reformed churches that the popedome is the kingdome of antichrist , and the roman church most foully and loathsomly besmeared with idolatry and bloud , and that those that shut their eyes from seeing and their mouths from professing so plain a truth , are but dough-baked protestants and in great peril if occasion offer itself , to be amassed and kned again into the old soure lump of popery , worse than the very leaven of the pharisees , which christ advised his disciples to beware of . moreover , that the rising of the witnesses was fulfilled in the late blessed reformation , and that , as the popedome is the kingdome of antichrist , so reformed christendome the kingdome of christ , in opposition thereunto , and a more visible emersion of the fifth-monarchy ever distinct from the four monarchies so much guilty of idolatry and bloud . and that as the many sects in the primitive times , more in number and more hainous in quality ( as you may see in epiphanius ) than have appeared since the reformation , did not hinder but the christian church was then the real kingdome of christ , no more do those sects that appear in the reformed churches , but are disallowed by them , hinder at all but they are the true kingdome of christ also , and rightfully oppose the kingdome of antichrist , as the primitive christians did the kingdome of the dragon . and that reformed christendome being in truth the kingdome of christ , our inference therefrom is very sound , that we ought from the very heart to give all reverence and obedience in things indifferent to the magistrates thereof , a duty which is owing even to pagan magistrates from christians , much more , one would think , to christian magistrates from those that pretend to be christians themselves . this is a truth so firm and sure that i have placed it amongst my eight principles for the support and enlargement of the kingdome of christ in my divine dialogues , in these express words . the fifth document or instruction should be to all the members of christs kingdome , wherever their abode is , that they do not suffer themselves to be stain'd with the least blemish or taint of disloyalty to their lawful sovereign , upon any account whatsoever , but especially upon a religious one , there being no greater disinterest to the true religion , than to appear to be promoted or maintained by so gross an immorality as disloyalty , nor any greater advantage than through faith and patience to bear all tryals and hardships , as the old primitive christians did , whose eyes being lift up heavenward , and their feet wholly in that path , by providence stumbled on the imperial crown , the emperour at last becoming a professed christian. furthermore , the rising of the witnesses and the sardian period commencing together , that they of the reformed churches are bound in the fear of god with all attentiveness to read christ's epistle to the church in sardis , and especially we of the church of england , and to impress those weighty words on our minds , remember how thou hast received and heard , and hold fast and repent ; as of our carnal and sensual lives , so of our wantonness and stipperiness in matters of doctrine , as those two great points attested by the witnesses of christ , that the popedome is the kingdome of antichrist , and the papal hierarchy the mother of spiritual fornication or idolatry , that we are to remember what we have heard and received and hold fast , and repent us of either our coldness in , or apostasie from the profession of so grand concerning truths , as also of our schismaticalness and rebelliousness ; that we remember i say what we have received , and may still read in that excellent book of homilies of our english church touching these main points of the pope being antichrist , the papal church idolatrous , and of that hainous wickedness of rebellion against our lawful sovereign , and of mingling any righteousnesses or satisfactions and penances of humane invention , with our justification and remission of sins in the bloud of christ. the profession of the risen witnesses in the book of homilies is so sincere , savoury and genuinely christian in this point without the least leaning towards libertinism and antinomianism , that i do not doubt but this profession of the reformed churches is alluded to , apoc. . in the placing those harpers that sing the song of moses and the lamb , upon the sea of glass mingled with fire , namely upon the shore of the red sea ( for what reason so called it matters not ) in which pharaoh and his host was overthrown , as the pope and his pontifician clergy defeated by the witnesses professing , that a true and living faith in the bloud of christ ( which the title of the red sea is a symbol of ) for remission of sins does alone justify us before god. whereby they flung off a load of trumperies and tedious impositions of humane invention , by which they were kept in a worse than aegyptian servitude under the pope and pontifician clergy . and therefore the reformed churches are brought in , in the above-cited place of the apocalypse ( in imitation of the israelites that had escaped the thraldome of pharaoh ) singing a triumphal song on the shore , as it were , of the mystical red sea , where the roman pharaoh and his tyrannical hierarchy were overthrown , and that wretched bondage , which those true israelites had been kept in for filthy lucre's sake and gain of the church , cast off utterly and quite escaped . for , all that sweet alluring power and genuine comfort from the gospel , and wonderfull efficacy to make men truly good , they hid from the eyes of the people ; and whenas the very specifick nature and essence of the christian religion is a sincere and vehement love of our saviours person and peaceful repose of our souls in his passion and merits , we in the mean time acting sincerely ( as our homilies require ) in this covenant of grace , this high honour and affection we bear to christ , this repose and peace of mind we have in the merits of his most precious bloud and passion , those supplies , by his promised spirit , of illumination , comfort and direction , all this is so miserably and perfidiously squander'd away or sold , if you will , for the gain of the church by multiplying of false patrons and the vain worshippings of saints and their images , by making men to depend on the infallibility of the pope and his priests , and by stifling all hopes of illumination and direction from the blessed spirit of christ , that the members of that church are made not onely so many slaves , bereft of their christian liberty and enjoyment of the love of christ that procured it , but so many senseless stocks or stones , as to divine matters , and are taught to transfer all that recumbency that every true christian has on the person of our faithful high priest , upon the persons of these unskilful and , which is worse , unfaithful tamperers with the souls of men . whose salvation consisting in a lively faith and sincere love , honour and dependance on the person of our blessed saviour , and doing the things that he commands , these deceitful emissaries of rome , o detestable treachery ! carry on such a religion or rather superstition , as whose very nature is to abuse that religious inclination in humane souls by making them swattle away their love and zeal upon false objects , and to spend their obedience on the vain inventions of men ; by making them rely on the falsly supposed merits of saints , and to depend upon the person and trumperies of an ignorant or deceitful priest , instead of having their sure repose in the richness of the mercy of god through christ iesus our lord. to whom if we be immediately united by faith and love , and shew our love by endeavouring sincerely , to our power , to keep his commandments , this is the plain and compendious way to salvation . all other interposals of humane invention are but distractions and obstacles thereto , and wicked elusions of the power and comfort of the gospel of our lord iesus . this seems to be the sound and savoury sense of the homilies of the church of england , and that in opposition to that aegyptian servitude and vile bondage that gods people were held in , under the church of rome . and certainly it must have been a most loathsome slavery and a sight intolerable to as many as whose eyes god had opened , to see the whole scope of the gospel thus ●…luded for filthy lucre's sake by the wretched invent●●ns of men , besides the sordidness and foulness of 〈◊〉 intermingled therewith . which made the s●…ate of that church intolerable to as many as god had visited with his saving grace , and had made to understand this mystery of iniquity by the illumination of his holy spirit , insomuch that it was more tolerable to them to quit this world and life itself , than to comply with such horrid impieties . how can we then , whom god long since has delivered out of this vile bondage , and have sung that triumphal song of moses and the lamb , return again into sodom and aegypt ? how can we desert a religion , to the witnesses whereof god has given so ample a witness in that blessed and apostolick reformation , in raising them from the dead after three days and an half according to prediction , and calling them up into the political heavens and setting them to rule in high places ? how can we return like a dog to his vomit ? to a vomit cast out and lying so long time cold and sour in the dirt and mire ? a vomit cast out as nauseous to all that is sound or sacred in the faculties of a man ? nauseous to the outward senses and inward senses , nauseous to common reason , nauseous to the principles of logick and all sound philosophy ; so nauseous to all these was that figment of transubstantiation forged for the gain and honour of the priesthood , but quite repugnant to all the abovesaid faculties of man , and nauseous to all common honesty and modesty , to obtrude such an impossible fiction upon deluded people , and to make them profess it whether they will or no for fear of being cruelly and barbarously murdered , which must be exceeding nauseous to all such as have but the least sense of iustice or humanity remaining in them . how shall we again incorporate with that church whom the spirit of god has so plainly as well as the homilies of our church of england declared to be the whore of babylon ? may we take the members of christ and make them the members of an harlot ? how shall we forsake the kingdome of christ , and make our selves subjects of the popedome , which , out of st. john and the prophet daniel , to say nothing of st. paul , three sufficient witnesses i trow to put an end to this controversy , is most evident to be the kingdome of antichrist . if treason and rebellion against an earthly prince be so hainous a crime , as most certainly it is , what a crime is rebellion and treason against him who is assuredly king of kings and lord of lords even the lord christ iesus ? and lastly , how can we turn our backs of a religion , unless we will wilfully run into eternal perdition , that has all the assurance of truth against that of the church of rome that the heart of man can wish or his curiosity require ? is the vote of primitive antiquity of any value ? that stands for us , the church for the first four hundred years being the very platform of our reformation . has sense ? common reason ? the rudiments of logick ? the sound principles of philosophy any weight with them ? all these assuredly witness for us against the impossible figments and fond forgeries of the church of rome . has morality and indispensable principles of common honesty , ( which the pretence of no religion ought in any wise to deface ) has the eternal law of god and nature implanted in our hearts any right to be appealed to ? we right willingly appeal to it , how innocent the form of our religion is as to this , and how foul and obnoxious will be found the principles of the papacy . and finally has the attestation of scripture and bloud of martyrs , some hundred thousands of innocent and holy souls , burnt and massacred by these antichristian persecutors ? have such serious testimonies any force with them ? then have we even a cloud of witnesses in the behalf of the truth of our reformed religion against the impious corruptions of the church of rome . the plain places of scripture expresly condemn the worship of images , the praying in an unknown tongue , the communicating but in one kind , and the like . and the prophecies do not onely declare the church of rome to be the whore of babylon , and the pope antichrist , but those that professed the faith of the reformed churches , to be the witnesses , to be the martyrs of iesus , and the saints of the most high. such a seal is there set to the truth of the profession of the reformed religion against the enormous corruptions of popery , even by the bloud of infinite numbers of the serious and faithful servants of our lord christ , that i may not say even by the bloud of christ himself . who gave himself , and shed his most precious bloud on the cross , for his church that he might sanctify it , and cleanse it , as with the washing of water , by the word of god : and the pope keeps the word of god from the knowledge of the people that they may wallow in the black mire of ignorance and the filth of idolatry , for the gain of holy church . christ the true bridegroom gave himself for his church that he might present it to himself a glorious church most illustriously shining forth in the fruits of the spirit and the works of real righteousness declared in the gospel : but the pope blasphemously arrogating that title of sponsus ecclesiae , to himself , has debauched the church , not presenting it a glorious church to christ her true husband , but in a whorish , pompous dress contrary to the christian mans very promise in baptism ( to forsake the pomps and vanities of this wicked world ) presents it to himself a garis●… , gorgeous , idolatrous church for the satisfaction of his own pride and lust . and whenas christ the true husband gave himself for the church that she might have neither spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing , but be holy and without blemish , the whole body of the religion of the roman church so far forth as it differs from the ioynt profession of the reformed churches , is nothing but an overspread leprosie of grosly false doctrines , and of foully superstitious , and idolatrous practices , besides being smeared over and over again with the bloud of the innocent , and carrying on a perpetual design and trade of eluding all the force of true religion and piety by a multitude of humane inventions , and breaking off our comfortable recumbence and dependence upon the lovely person of our lord iesus our faithful saviour and redeemer , to depend upon the person of some ignorant or deceitful wight , that bewilders a deluded soul with a world of false devices and trumperies , giving her no solid rest after she has once strayed from the simplicity of the gospel of christ , and fallen into the hands of these deceivers , who are sealed and occrustated in the trade of their impieties by a false and boastful pretence of their churches infallibility , and under the colour thereof declaring the true and faithful servants of christ hereticks , they thereby snatch all occasions to drink and swill and make themselves drunk with the bloud of the saints of the most high. from whence it is plain that the roman church is an estranged synagogue , which is no spouse of christ , but the spouse of the pope , as he boastfully pretends to be her husband . so contrary does this successour of st. peter to the example of st. paul , who espoused the church of corinth as a chast virgin not to himself but to christ , but the pope the church of rome not to christ but to himself , and not a chast virgin but all to be polluted with the filth of idolatry which is spiritual fornication . but reformed christendome is the spouse of christ as acknowledging no husband but him , and depending immediately upon him by faith in his bloud alone and sincere obedience to his commands ( and not to the vain injunctions and inventions of men ) for her justification and salvation . and for such a church his own chast spouse has christ given himself , and poured forth his most precious bloud , and not for those that have espoused themselves to another husband . which is also a sound witness and may go for a most firm and authentick seal to the saving truth of our reformed religion . these things i have taken the boldness to speak with all freedome out of sincere love and faithfulness to the souls of men of what communion soever , that those that are already deluded may be undeceived , and they that are yet of our communion may never so deeply sin against their own souls as to depart from it , and so dislodging themselves out of the bosome of christ run into the arms of that man of sin and son of perdition the declared antichrist according to the testimony of the holy scriptures , and more especially of those divine visions of the prophet daniel , which i have with so faithful care and diligence expounded for mens fuller satisfaction and instruction , that they may return into , or if they be there already , continue and persist in , the way of truth and of everlasting salvation . a plain and continued exposition of the several prophecies or divine uisions of the prophet daniel . vision i. the vision of the image of the four metals signifying the four empires , babylonian , medo-persian , greek and roman , seen first by nebuchadnezzar , and after revealed to daniel , dan. . in the second year of his reign ( which is now about years ago ) did nebuchadnezzar being sollicitous concerning the fate of his own empire and what would be afterwards , his thoughts coming into his mind upon his bed , as it is said ver. . fall into a dream , which much affected him when he was in it , and therefore was earnestly desirous to recall it into his mind again ; but not being able , he sent for his magicians , astrologers , sorcerers , and chaldeans , to try if they could divine what this dream was . for the thing was gone from him , neither could he recover it into his mind . but if they could have declared unto him what it was , he could then have very-well remembred he had dream'd it . which forgetfulness of nebuchadnezzar in not retaining the dream in his mind , as well as the impression of the dream it self , is no small argument of the providence of god over his church and people , for whose sake these things happened , viz. that nebuchadnezzar should dream this dream that concerned the church of god infinitely more than himself , and that he should forget it , to the baffling of all his magicians , sorcerers and chaldeans ; and that daniel a jewish youth , and one of the people of god , should by divine revelation have the honour of declaring the king's dream unto him , so that the king could not but acknowledge that this was the dream . by which alone it was manifest that the spirit of the holy god was in him . and the dream , it concerning the people of god , ( more than nebuchadnezzar himself ) whether jews or christians , there was this singular good effect thereof , that they could not but be more certainly assured that it was a truly divine dream , neither feigned by nebuchadnezzar , nor by daniel , but communicated to both by god , either immediately , or by the ministry of his holy angels . and that therefore da●…iel having this privilege of declaring nebuchadnezzar's dream , had also the same supernatural privilege of rightly interpreting thereof . the declaration and interpretation whereof is as follows , which we shall expound as briefly and as clearly as we may , where there is need , beginning at the verse . for it will be admirable to observe how the pre●…iguration of things in this prophetical dream reaches from nebuchadnezzar's time not to our days only but even to the pouring forth of the seventh vial , whereupon , all the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdom of the lord and of his christ. . thou o king , when thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed , and thou didst fall into that dream , sawest , and behold a great image , or great statue of a colossean bigness , it comprehending in its extent no less than the succession of four famous empires . this great image whose brightness was excellent , it representing the splendour and glory of those empires it did prefigure , stood before thee . and the form thereof was terrible , setting out thereby the great fear and awe these empires , viz. the supreme powers therein and their ministers , cast the world into by their severity , violence and cruelty . for which cause in another vision they are resembled to wild beasts for their rage and bloud-thirstiness , as the true church of god has too often found them . . this image's head was of fine gold. there being a succession of four empires here to be prefigured by four kind of metals , the order of dignity or pretiosity in the metals is made use of to set out the order of time , in the succession of the empires . and therefore because gold is first in esteem amongst metals , therefore the golden part of the image the head , both because it is the head , and of gold , denotes the first empire the church of god , or people of the jews were concerned in , viz. the babylonian under whom they were then captive . but as for the ten tribes they were carried away into perpetual captivity by salmanasser king of assyria long before , never to be heard of again , at least during the time of these four empires here prefigured . but the jews properly so called were concerned first under the babylonian empire , then under the medo-persian ; decrees being given out first by cyrus then artaxerxes in their behalf though cambyses was unkind to them . and under the great xerxes by reason of his queen esther a jew they had a signal deliverance from their bloudy enemy haman . and how they were concerned during the greek empire , especially under antiochus epiphanes , and much more under the roman , is so notorious , that it is enough only to name it . which reasons may suffice why no more kingdoms or empires , and why these especially , babylonian , medo-persian , greek , and roman are comprised in this image . the first whereof was signified by the image's head of fine gold , as daniel himself will anon interpret . his breast and his arms of silver . the arm is properly that part of the body which reaches from the shoulder to the wrist , and so excludes the hand , of which there is here no mention though there be mention of feet adjoyned to the legs . which is not fortuitous but designed . for this breast with its arms of silver denotes the medo-persian empire , which consisting of two people , the medes and persians , they are fitly represented by these two arms , but with no mention of hands of which the ten fingers would be the natural parts , because there was no division of the medo-persian empire into ten kingdoms as there was of the roman . his belly and his thighs of brass . by this belly and the two thighs of brass is understood the greek empire , which was one in alexander , but after his death divided more notably and durably into the two kingdoms of the lagidae and seleucidae . for at first there was a quadripartition of his empire , but that not lasting so long , or all parts of it being not so famous , or the iews not so much concerned in them , this general prefiguration of the succession of the four empires , takes notice only of what is most remarkable , as those two were . . his legs of iron . here begins the roman empire ; suppose upon aemylius paulus the roman consul his vanquishing of perseus the last king of macedonia . from which time the roman empire in the prophetical account may rationally seem to commence , the greek or macedonick empire properly so called being then put an end to , though other parts still remained . and here the roman empire may very well be represented by the two legs , that state for many hundred years being most-what supported by the supreme power of their two consuls . and so this character may be alluded to by the two legs , to understand what people is meant , though the succession of the empire commence no higher than from the vanquishing perseus king of macedonia by aemylius the consul . which consular power continued above an hundred years after , and the name much longer . so fit an emblem are these two legs of iron , of the people of rome and their empire . his féet part of iron , and part of clay . which feet imply the ten toes which are parts of the feet , and therefore represent the roman empire divided into ten kingdoms . which ten kingdoms are also prefigured by the ten horns of the fourth beast , chap. . the division of which roman empire into ten kingdoms happening since the empire became christian , we may better thence understand what is meant by the feet being partly of iron , and partly of clay , namely , that in that time of the roman empire it was become partly ecclesiastical and partly secular , by the iron as before understanding the secular power , by the clay the ecclesiastical . which clay , or earth here in daniel seems to be alluded to apoc. . . where the earth is said to help the woman , namely , an oecumenical council , by opening its mouth and swallowing down the floud of contention ( which the arians especially had raised ) by their condemning that heresie : as if a clayie ground should cleave with a wide scissure and swallow down a sudden torrent , or land-floud . . thou sawest till a stone was cut out without han●● , that is , besides this image and the four distinct metalline parts thereof , thou sawest moreover a stone cut out without hands , no man with axe or gavelock dissevering it . which stone is christ and his true church , himself being born in a supernatural way by the over-shadowing of the holy ghost , and his church being raised and propagated in a supernatural way by the assistance also of the holy spirit , by real miracles , by unfeigned sanctity , and by invincible patience and suffering for the truth . wherefore the true christian church , head with the members , this is that stone cut out without hand , which smote the image upon his féet , which were of iron and clay , and brake them in pieces . this true apostolick church which appeared with christ and his apostles , and so on in the pure primitive times , will at last strike the image upon his feet , namely , under the seventh vial , or at that war of the rider on the white horse . wherein the beast and the false prophet ( the remainder of the iron and degenerate clay ) are cast into a lake of fire burning with brimstone , apoc. . . . then was the iron , the clay , the brass , the silver , and the gold broken to pieces together , and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-●●oor , and the wind carried them away that no place was found for them . this plainly answers to the casting the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire burning with brimstone . both places signifie the utter abolishing all the idolatrous tyranny remaining in the roman empire at that time , whether in the secular or ecclesiastical powers . but that then the clay , brass , silver , and gold are said to be broken to pieces together , that is only an embellishing of the external cortex of the vision . the succession of these four empires being exhibited at once , they are made also to fall to dust at once together . besides that the succeeding empire most-what occupying the possession and territories of the antecedent , that which vanquisheth the last may in some sense be thought to vanquish them all at a clap , or to possess what any of them had . which will be immediately made good in the next words . and the stone that smote the image 〈◊〉 a great ●…ountain , and filled the whole earth ; that is , the true apostolick church purged from all superstitious , idolatrous , and tyrannical principles and practices will over-spread the whole world in a manner ; the kingdoms of this world , as it is predicted in the apo●…alypse , becoming the kingdoms of the lord , and of his christ. this state of the church may be termed regnum montis , the kingdom of the mountain , ( as mr. mede has well noted ) as the state before this may be called regnum lapidis , the kingdom of the stone . . this is the dream , which miraculously and by the mere inspiration of the spirit of the most high was communicated unto me , and which the king cannot deny but to have been the dream which he was so desirous to recover into his mind . and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. which he may be sure is true and divinely inspired , it being impossible any man should know the thoughts of another man , especially so strange and operose as these , unless he were inspired . whence my declaring the dream ought to be look'd upon as a certain assurance of the truth of my interpretation ; which is this . . thou , o king , art a king of kings , that is , the greatest king on earth . for the god of heaven hath given thée a kingdom , power , and strength , and glory . thou hast a strong , potent , and glorious kingdom , and it is the gift of god unto thee , and therefore thou shouldst remember to govern as his vice-gerent . . and wheresoever the children of men dwell , viz. the cultivated places of his kingdom , the beasts of the field , the desart places of arabia and africk , says grotins , and the fowls of the heaven , invious and inaccessible rocks , where only the fowls of heaven can nest , hath he given into thy hand , and hath made thée ruler over them all . all these diversities of the vast places of thy kingdom art thou lord over . and god having given thee so large an empire , so prosperous and glorious , i declare unto thee , thou art this head of gold. which is briefly and figuratively spoken by a synecdoche or metonymie , for , thou art the head of this golden kingdom of babylon , or , thou art the lord and owner of it . from whence we may be assured that the head of gold signifies the babylonian kingdom , nebuchadnezzar being then king of babylon , and cyaxares the made conjoyn'd in a●●inity and confederacy with nabopolassar the father of nebuchadnezzar having subverted nineve the metropolis of the assyrian empire , together with the empire it self some four years before , and near an hundred and twenty years after salmanasser had taken samaria , and carried the ten tribes away captive . . and after thée shall arise another kingdom inferiour to thée . the first empire comprised in this image being thus evidently the babylonian , it does naturally follow that the second must be the medo-persian begun in cyrus . who first having taken babylon , and belshazzar the last king being slain by the medes and persians he brought along with him , though he delivered the empire to his uncle darius the mede ; yet he being aged , and dying within a year or two he presently succeeded him , and became monarch of the medes as well as persians , himself also being a medo-persian by extraction , on the mother's side a mede , and on the father's side a persian . whence he was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or a mule , as grotius notes . but that the coalescency of these two nations into one kingdom or empire , is signified by the silver part of the image which is the breast from which the two arms come , has been noted above . the hardest scruple is , how this medo persian empire should be said to be less than that of nebuchadnezzar's , the babylonian , there being the accession of persia , and all the acquists of cyrus added thereto . grotius his answer is , quia cyrus & successores ejus africam non tenuerunt . gasper sanctius , that there was not that pacateness nor tranquillity in the medo-persian empire that there was in the babylonian , or so continued prosperity and success . calvin makes one empire inferiour to another , ( as the metals are from gold to iron , ) in morality , temperance , justice , faithfulness , &c. according to that vulgar opinion expressed in horace , carm. lib. . od . . aetas parentum pejor avis tulit nos nequiores mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem . whence sprung that poetical description of the world 's degenerating according to the four ages thereof , from gold to silver , from silver to brass , and from brass to iron . which in all likelihood was more particularly occasioned from nebuchadnezzar's dream of this image of those four metals , antiquity not understanding the true sense thereof . but it is possible that forasmuch as it is read , and after thee shall arise another kingdom inferiour to thee ; that [ to thee , ] is here on purpose put for [ to thine , ] that the first head of this following kingdom might be understood to be more especially compared with him , in which there seems apparent odds . for cyrus the first head of the medo-persian monarchy or empire reigned not past two or three years in that inlarged empire , and not passing thirty in his kingdom of persia , whenas nebuchadnezzar in his babylonian empire reigned three and forty years most splendidly and prosperously , insomuch that the excess of his prosperity cast him into that septennial delirancy , out of which he was recovered and gave praise to the god of heaven . but cyrus as he reigned but a small time in the medo-persian empire , so he was vanquished ingloriously by the hand of a woman , tomyris , a scythian queen , who cut off his head and cast it into a vessel of bloud saying , satia te , cyre , sanguine , quem ●…itisti . but whether this way or that way please best to make the easiest sense of the text , it is unavoidably plain , that this second monarchy is the medo-persian , nor does any interpreter doubt of it . and another third kingdom of brass . this shews plainly , that the golden , silver , and brass parts of the image , signifie three distinct kingdoms . but now it is evident in history that as the medo-persian empire succeeded the babylonian , so the macedonick , or grecian , succeeded the medo-persian . for alexander macedo after he had vanquished darius codomannus in his last battle at arbela , ( darius being slain some six months after by bessus one of the peers of his own empire , and babylon taken , ) translated the monarchy from the medes and persians to the greeks , about the third year of the olympiad . and that the greek empire was not unfitly set out by the two thighs of brass , by reason of those two most eminent parts of it , into which after alexander's death it was divided , and stood so divided for a long time , namely , the two kingdoms of the lagidae and seleucidae , i have noted above . and it may not be altogether impertinent to note also what iustin writes , lib. . eâdie quâ natus est alexander duae aquilae totâ die praepetes super culmen domû patris ejus sederunt , omen duplicis imperii europae asiaeque praeferentes . which shall bear rule over all the earth . so it is said of him , i maccab. i. he made many wars , and won many strong holds , and slew the kings of the earth , and went through to the ends of the earth . and so iustin , lib. . from the utmost coasts of the ocean were embassies sent to him returning to babylon , both of the carthaginians and other cities of africk , yea of spain , sicily , france , sardinia . and some also from italy expected his return to babylo●…ia ; adeo universum t●…rrarum orbem nominis ejus terror invaserat , ut cunctae gentes veluti destinato sibi regi adularentur . which is enough to shew how well this prediction sutes with the event . . and the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron . that this fourth kingdom is the roman is manifest from hence that it succeeds the greek empire ; which it may seem most properly first to seise upon , when aemylius paulus the roman consul had vanquished perseus the last king of macedonia . but about an age after the kingdoms of the lagidae and seleucidae , those two eminent parts or thighs rather of the macedonick or greek empire , were subdued also by the romans . the last of the seleucidae or kings of syria , tigranes , ●… as vanquished by pompey , and syria reduced into a province ; as also aegypt by augustus when he had vanquished ant●…nius the husband of cleopatra . daughter of ptolemaeus auletes , the last but one of the lagidae , or kings of aegypt . whence it is plain that the roman succeeds the greek empire as the greek the medo persian , and that therefore this is the fourth kingdom prefigured by the image of four several metals . and the genius of the roman empire , the former days of it especially , sutes well with this metal , they being not only full of courage and valour , but also hardy , rigid , severe , and indeed cruel . they that are any thing versed in history will easily acknowledge this a fitting character . to which you may add what is intimated in the text , namely , that as iron can cut , and form , and subdue all those three first metals , gold , silver and brass , so the roman empire could vanquish and subdue all those regions wherein the babylonian , medo-persian , and grecian empire was spread . which feat not being done by the kingdoms of the lagidae and seleucidae , it is impossible they should be the fourth kingdom of daniel . and besides this , we may be infallibly sure that the fourth kingdom is the roman , in that the stone cut out without hands happened , during the roman empire , ( and it must happen in some of the four kingdoms according to the vision , ) and not during the kingdom of the lagidae and seleucidae . forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things , and as iron breaketh all these viz. , all these metals of gold , silver and brass , shall it , this roman kingdom or empire , break in pieces and bruise , the countries and people which the babylonian , medo-persian , and grecian empires had ruled over . . and whereas thou sawest the féet and coes. here is mention made of toes with the feet , which justifies our exposition above , ver. . but now we are come hither , we must remember we are come unto that period of the roman empire when it was divided into ten kingdoms , which are intimated by the ten toes of the statue . which ten toes answer to the ten horns of the beast actually crowned . which is the time that the two horned beast rises out of the earth : so it is said , apoc. . and why not out of a white clayie clammy earth , such as potters make use of , as well as out of any other earth beside . and no man i think while he considers that the iron here signified men , a body politick of them , can stick to admit that this clay does signifie so likewise . but there being so palpable a difference betwixt iron and clay , it is manifest that there must be as great a difference betwixt these two bodies politick , the one signified by the iron , the other by the clay ; the former suppose the secular power , the latter the ecclesiastical ; as it is said of the papal hierarchy , which is the little horn , chap. . . that that horn or king shall be diverse from the rest , which diversification here betwixt the secular and ecclesiastical power , signified by the iron and the clay , need not be expressed in words , the symbols themselves being so apparently different . part of ●…otters clay , and part of iron ; that is , partly of such clammy white clay as potters make use of , and partly of iron ; which implies that by that time the empire was divided into ten kingdoms , the summa p●…t●…stas began to be neither in the secular power absolutely , nor in the hierarchical , but they were so mingled together that it was not compleat or full without both concurrent ; the ecclesiastick power getting such a hank upon the secular , in ordine ad spiritualia , the effects whereof within no long time appeared with a witness . the kingdom ●●all be 〈◊〉 ; that is , the power will be divided or shared betwixt the papal or sacerdotal hierarchy , and the secular orders of emperours and kings . for the iron and clay cannot stand for the division of the empire into ten kingdoms , for that the ten toes prefigure , but the sharing the summa potestas betwixt the secular magistrate and papal , or sacerdotal hierarchy . but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron , forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with the miry clay : that is to say , the sword-men or secular power of the ten kings was so assured to the maintaining the power and the institutes of the papal hierarchy ( though never so foul or idolatrous , so they made for the sacerdotal worldly interest ) that the papal empire , or the empire framed according to that pattern and scope , was as it were strengthned with iron . which is that which is intimated apoc. . . where the ten kings are said to give their strength and power to the beast that was , and is not , and yet is . which is the empire refashioned again into a pagan-like idolatrous form , for the worldly advantage of the papal hierarchy . thus was the iron mixed with the miry clay , the ten kings cleaving so close to the interest of the papal idolatrous clergy . . and as the toes of the féet were part of iron , and part of clay , that is , and as every one of those ten kingdoms consisted of temporal power and ecclesiastical , the papal hierarchy being branched through all the ten kingdoms till the reformation : so the kingdom shall be partly strong , and partly broken ; that is , the roman empire divided into these ten kingdoms shall be partly strong , and partly brittle ; the papal power weakening the absolute power of each kingdom , and occasioning many breaches and jars in christendom . . and whereas thou sawest iron m●…xt with miry clay , i shall tell thee the reason of it by what means it came to pass in that measure it did ; they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men ; so our english renders it , with the seed of men . the septuag●…nt , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . by this interpreters usually understand * alliance by marriages , whereby one kingdom may be more surely obliged to keep peace and amity with another . but dominandi cupido cun●●is affectibus flagrantior est , as the historian observes . and if this may go for a good sense as to the sodering of the ten kings one to another , the iron to the iron , yet we are to consdier that the text here speaks of the iron being mixt with clay , and how they come to unite . they shall mingle one with another , faith he , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it might as well be rendred , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in sementi hominum , that is , by placing of men in seminaries , where they shall be so brought up , informed and instructed , suppose in covents , monasteries , and other such like places , that they shall be made notable instruments , so to insinuate into the secular powers , and also into the people as to ingage their affections to his holiness , the great ecclesiastick sovereign , and to all the rites , institutes , and doctrines that are fittest to support that papal greatness . the propagation and dissemination of such instruments as these , i conceive to be alluded to , as if he should say , they shall mingle one with another , agree or unite together , ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie , ) by the sowing or planting of men in the seminaries abovesaid , fitting them for the foresaid purpose , the more brisk , cunning , and gentile attacking princes and great men ; and other monks , priests , and friers hanging fast on the people , and clarting upon them , and keeping warm in them all the modes of idolatry and superstition , and all the principles and practices that may be gainfull to the papal hierarchy . thus the clay sticks to the iron as well as it can . but they shall not cleave ( so very firmly ) one to another , even as iron is not mixed with clay . and what bickerings and clashings there have been betwixt these two powers , the secular and ecclesiastick in particular kingdoms , the chronicles of each kingdom will declare : as also what combates there have been betwixt the pope and the emperours , both greek and german , is notoriously known to all . i will only cite one passage out of the defence of the right of kings , written by king iames of blessed memory . let histories be searched , saith he , let just accounts be taken , and beside many sieges laid to cities , it will appear by true computation , that henry the fourth , and frederick the first fought above threescore battles in defence of their own right against the enemies of the empire , stirred up to arms by the popes of rome . and indeed the dealings and usurpations of that hierarchy grew so intolerable that many kingdoms at last shook them off , and would admit the papal authority and religion no longer . whereby was manifestly fulfilled which is here predicted by daniel , that they shall not cleave one to another , even as iron is not mixed with clay . it is an unnatural and heterogeneal union , and therefore not durable and permanent . this passage therefore in daniel seems to answer to that in the apocalypse , ch. . v. . and the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast they shall hate the whore , and make her desolate and naked , &c. which was performed in some measure in the happy reformation begun in luther's days , and when there will be a farther accomplishment of it , lies wholly in the pleasure of the almighty . . and in the days of these kings shall the god of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed . after daniel in his interpretation has gone through all the empires comprised in that image which nebuchadnezzar saw from head to foot , now he begins to explain the mystery of the stone cut out without hands ; whereby is understood christ , with his truly pure apostolick church . wherefore by [ in the days of these kings ] must be understood in the days of the fourth , viz. in the time of the roman empire . for christ was born , and his gospel divulged , and his church first gathered in that time , as every body must acknowledge . and the seventy weeks plainly carry to that time also . but now this pure church of christ being called the kingdom which the god of heaven shall set up , we may observe from hence , how in our saviour christ's preaching and mentioning the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of god , that it had a respect to this prophecy : and the use of those phrases with him does further ratifie our interpreting it thus , of the appearance of christ with his true church . which is rightly called the kingdom of heaven or of god , because the raising of it was by the special miraculous power of the god of heaven . and the administration of this his true church is by his spirit from above in the hearts of his true believers . god does truly rule there by his spirit , whence it is rightly called the kingdom of god. which shall never be destroyed . the gates of hell shall never prevail against it . the true and living church which the spirit of christ actuates , this shall never fail . and the kingdom shall not be left to other people . the persians succeeded the babylonians , the greeks the persians , and the romans the greeks , but no empire shall succeed , nor any people the true christian church which is the kingdom of god , which either as regnum lapidis , or else as regnum montis will last to the end of the world. but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms ; that is , when it has become regnum montis , it will have overspread , and will possess , and keep in rule all the countries that the four great monarchies , signified by the statue , had occupied . and the three former kingdoms being as it were incorporated into the fourth , or because the four kingdoms are in this image exhibited at once , the kingdom of the mountain , for the embellishing the cortex of the vision , is said to break in pieces and consume all the other kingdoms together , striking the image on the toes as i noted above . and it shall stand for ever . according as it is said , apoc . ii. . the kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of the lord , and he shall reign for ever and ever . . forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands ; that is , forasmuch as the state of the true church of christ is the absolute work of god , carried on by his special providence not by humane arts or policies , and that it was thus begun , and that he is with his church to the end of the world : and that it broke in pieces the iron , the brass , the clay , and the silver , and the gold. forasmuch as thou sawest the stone cut out of the mountain without hands to do this : which signifies the true church of christ thus supernaturally begun , and as supernaturally emerging to this glorious issue at last . for as the stone was cut out without hands , so it will be carried without hands to smite the image on the feet , namely , by the power and conduct of the spirit of christ , who will then open a door of success that no man shall be able to shut , as it is said to the church of philadelphia ; considering , i say , that omnipotency it self is the spring of this motion , and that it does not depend on the humours and purposes of men , i can of a truth declare unto the king that , the great god hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter , or after this , namely , after the demolition of all these four empires , the vision reaching to the end of the world , which that expected glorious state of the true church will precede , when the kingdom of the stone cut out of the mountain , that is , out of the roman empire , shall it self become the kingdom of the mountain , and fill the whole earth , that is , when that state of the glorious and pure church shall spread over all . and the dream is certain , and the interpretation thereof sure ; and more particularly touching that excellent state of the church concerning which it is said , apoc. . . and he that sate upon the throne said , behold , i make all things new . and he saith unto me write , for these words are true and faithfull . and he said unto me , it is done . i am alpha and omega , the beginning and the end , the dream that he has interpreted is certain , especially the most concerning part thereof , the glory and prosperity of the true church of christ , it being to be atchieved by the irresistible power of the lord jesus . notes upon vision i. ver. . * alliance by marriages whereby one kingdom , &c. ] that this is not the sense of the place , viz. the marriages of those of great rank in these principalities mutually with one another , thereby to bind these distinct kingdoms in peace and amity , besides the reasons alledged in my exposition , this may be one also , that the words which seem to import it are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a very improper word to signifie that noble , princely , royal sort of men or women , who matching with one another of several kingdoms , might tie those kingdoms in the bonds of unity and friendship . it would then have been said , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they shall mingle themselves with the seed of nobles , or men of great power and interest , or at least 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with the seed of men , in a common or indifferent sense . but here it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with the seed of mean , abject , weak , despised men , such at least in appearance , as cornelius à lapide very well comments upon those words , dan. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , id est , saith he , alluding to the roots 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , quasi filius hominis miseri , aerumnosi , mox morituri , obliviosi & oblivioni tradendi : haec enim omnia significat enos , from the two roots above named , the one whereof signifies to be sickly , the other to be oblivio●…s . whence he makes enos , which is the same with the chaldee ansa , to denote a wretched , weakly , sickly , contemptible wight , and at least seemingly dull and oblivious , and whose name is quickly to be drowned in oblivion . which certainly is a very unmeet character for the princes and great ones of kingdoms : but may very well decipher those of the papal seminaries , covents or monasteries , those monks and fries mob'd in their cools and long coats , and making a shew of great mortification and despicableness , as if they were altogether dead to the world , and the vigour of nature were quite extinct in them , they pretending to nothing but holiness and interest of holy church , whether in these mob'd habits , or got into a more brisk dress to carry on affairs in the behalf of the papal dominion , either in their own country or other nations . the very propriety of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i say , intimates that this mingling with the seed of men does not signifie matches of great persons of several kingdoms , and that therefore it will naturally point to that sense i have pitch'd upon in my exposition . and how hugely applicable this is to history , see that excellent english gentleman sir edwin sandys his speculum europae . which shews what fast hold the pope takes on the secular party by the activity and fedulity of the monks and friers , and other emissaries , that are sent out of their seminaries for the purpose . for the religion that is taught in those seminaries being framed more for the power of the pope , and worldly interest of holy church , than for safe guidance to the eternal salvation of souls ; those that come out of these seminaries to instruct the people do rea●…ly the work of the papacy , that is , bind the laick party to obedience to the pope , and so make the iron stick to the clay . vision ii. the vision of the four beasts rising out of the sea , whereby the four above-named empires are prefigured , dan. . as by the statue consisting of four metals those four empires , the babylo●…ian , medo-persian , greek , and roman , from their beginning to their ending were represented ; so they are here in the very same extent of time , notwithstanding this vision was seen towards the end of the first of these empires , namely , the babylonian . which manner of representing in prophetical type part of time past in a set of visions , is made use of also in the apocalypse , the greatest part of the time of the first of the six visions in the first six seals being expir'd when s. iohn saw them . and there is the same reason of the set of visions of the seven churches which begin , as that of the seals , from the first epocha of christianity , as does also the vision of the measuring the inner and outer court , and the woman clothed with the sun with twelve stars upon her head , &c. there was about sixty years from the epocha of s. iohn's visions to the time he saw them ; and less from the beginning of the babylonian empire till daniel's seeing of this vision of the four beasts . so that this is no obstacle , but that the babylonian empire may be here represented , from its beginning , though daniel saw this vision toward the end thereof . but because that in a set of prophetical visions , a little snip of time ( in comparison of what the whole set of visions takes in ) may be set out by some inconsiderable part of that set of visions , to take the liberty of interpreting a whole set of visions ( viz. all the six seals , nay two whole sets of visions succeeding one another , viz. all the six trumpets succeeding the six seals ) of things past when s. iohn saw those visions , as grotius does , is so wild and extravagant , that it may well astonish any sober man , to see a person of so considerable parts and learning to fall into such a delirancy . but what we here adventure on is sober enough , viz. the supposing that the babylonian empire even from its beginning is here represented by the first beast , there being the like liberty taken in the apocalypse . and this being supposed , the exposition will run smoothly and unexceptionably . . in the first year of belshazzar ( the son of evil-merodac , who was the son of nebuchadnezzar ) king of babylon , namely , the last king of babylon who was slain by the medes and persians , the city babylon being taken by cyrus in the eighteenth year of belshazzar's reign , according to thomas lydiat . daniel had a dream and uision of his head upon his bed . he had a divine vision communicated to him in his sleep . for prophetical visions are communicated to the prophets either way , either sleeping or waking , and they are either way truly divine . then he wrote the dream , and told the sum of the matters ; that is to say , he declared the sum of the matters in writing . . daniel spake and said , viz. he declared thus touching himself , i saw , says he , in my vision by night , and behold the four ●…inds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. by the great-sea in the prophetick language is understood vast multitudes of people that overspread the face of the earth , as the waters of the sea doe . by the winds is understood that invisible principle of motion , from whence comes that ●…icissitude of mutations amongst the nations of the earth , who are driven this way and that way according as the active part , whatever it is , that answers here to the winds , doth move them : whether they be angelical powers which superintend the affairs of nations , or what-ever else . and it is said in the psalms , who maketh his angels spirits , his ministers a flaming fire . on which grotius learnedly and ingeniously glosses thus , psal. . . sunt angelorum alii aerei , alii ignei , and a little after , esse angelis corpora sed subtilissima non pythagorae tantùm & platonis schola sensit , sed & iudaei veteres & veteres christiani . the activity therefore of the aerial genii or angels may be understood by these winds , or the commotions they bring in by divine providence in the production of new empires , and demolition of the old . from the subtility of their bodies , but it may be chiefly from their activity in the innovations and commutations of the affairs of mankind , in pulling down and building up kingdoms and empires , these angelical orders are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , venti . and there is a quadripartition of them , ( zach. . ) a distribution of them into four chariots with various coloured horses . where to the prophet asking , what are these my lord ? it is answered , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , isti sunt quatuor venti coeli , where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the very same word that is in psal. . . these are the four winds of heaven , the quaternio of the angelical ministers of divine providence . something like that apoc. . where there is mention of the four angels at the four corners of the earth , holding the four winds of the earth that they should not blow on the earth , nor on the sea. and that the great things in the vicissitude of kingdoms and empires are done by the angels , is an hypothesis that both daniel and the apocalypse plainly supposes , the latter indeed inculcates to awaken this dull sadducean age. this i don't doubt but is one sense of this passage in daniel , but if any one think it too sublime and remote from the vulgar capacity , he may substitute for these angelical powers here denoted by the winds , the ambitious and unquiet minds of great princes and politicians , and their officers , and those blusters they make in the world by their impetuous activity to begin or increase their dominion , and to inlarge it into a more absolute empire . but the more sober may take in both senses according to the genius of the prophetick style , that by the same symbol exhibits frequently more things than one at once . but that these winds are said to be four , it may be partly in allusion to the four quarters of the world , partly to the mystical meaning of the number four , in setting out the angelical kingdom or ministry , and partly to the four beasts that were to arise in succession one after another out of the sea , by the striving thereon , not all together , but one after another . for expressing the thing so as if they all co●●●cted one with another at the same time , is but for the embellishing the cortex of the vision , of which no more is to be taken in than is agreeable to history and reason . but this in the mean time is very remarkable , that being the very pri●…ordia here of them all is premised is necessarily follows that the vis●…ion reaches the very beginning of each empire , the babylonian as well as the rest , or because it reaches the very beginning of the first of these empires , that that empire must be the babylonian , as we shall see in the procedure . . and four great beasts came up from the sea. which , as i said , shews that the vision reaches the very rise or first beginning of each of them . but here we are again to note that though all four are here mentioned together , yet the rising out of the sea was one after another . but their coming thus out of the sea together strikes the phancy more strong , which is the peculiar scope of the cortex of the prophecies both here and in the apocalypse . diversone from another viz. , in shape and condition . but in the mean time they are all beasts . the septuagint render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , wild beasts . and grotius upon the place , ideo bestiae , saith he , quia idololatrica erant imperia ut not at hic jacchiades . their idolatry indeed shews their brutishness , being accustomed to no higher a dispensation of religion than adoration of visible objects , as the elephant is said to worship the moon . but cruelty is another ingredient to make them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , wild beasts : such salvage cruelty , and gross and stupid idolatry , being exquisitely opposite to the kingdom of the son of man , who came to erect the empire of love and charity , and of pure religion , the worshipping the father in spirit and in truth . . the first was like a lion , a beast of a fulvid or golden colour , as the poets describe him , and the head of all beasts , which is the babylonian empire signified also by the golden head of the image or statue . the prophet ieremy likewise describes nebuchadnezzar king of babylon by this animal , ch. . . the lion is come up from his thicket , and the destroyer of the nations is on his way . and had 〈…〉 , which betoken the quickness of his dispatch in his expeditions and conquests . and accordingly the same prophet speaking of nebuchadnezzar his coming against the iews , ch. . . behold , he shall come up , saith he , as clouds , and his chariot shall be as a whirlwind , his horses are swifter than eagles , wo unto us for we are spoiled . and again , ch. . behold , he shall fly as an eagle , and shall spread his wings over moab . and many other places there are concerning nebuchadnezzar to the same purpose . i beheld till the wings thereof were pluckt wherewith it was lifted up from the earth . for the marginal [ wherewith ] in the english bible is better than [ and ] in the text. and grotius says , verte [ per quas efferebatur supra terram . ] and he adds thus note further , saepe enim chaldaeis ut & hebraeis copula vim habet relativi . and besides the copula ●… will signifie [ for ] as well as [ and ] and then the sense will be the same that grotius drives at , and the septuagint ratifie it by translating 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies , he was carried up on high , not taken out of the way or destroyed , as some would have it . now the babylonian monarch his being thus carried up on high on his wings , may signifie both the height of his prosperity and the haughtiness of his mind , his ambition , as it is set out by the prophet isaiah , ch. . v. . where he brings him in saying , i will ascend above the heights of the clouds , i will be like the most high. for this is to be understood of the king of babylon , and the whole succession is to be look'd on as one king , as the empire is look'd upon as one beast . now therefore [ i beheld till the wings thereof were pluckt ] is not to be understood as if this plucking of the wings could not be but after the time of this vision of daniel , because , as i proved above , the vision reaches from the beginning of the babylonian empire , the scene whereof all along daniel here beheld . where amongst other things he noted the plucking of the wings of this lion , the babylonian monarch . which happened most notoriously in his being cast down from his loftily priding himself in his great magnificence , ch. . . is not this great babylon that i have built , by the might of my power , and for the honour of my majesty ? which was no sooner said by him , but he heard a. voice from heaven , o king nebuchadnezzar to thee it is spoken , the kingdom is departed from thee , &c. and so he was driven out to eat grass with the beasts of the field , till seven times passed over him . and is not this a clipping of his wings indeed , who was soaring before above the clouds ? instead of being lifted up on high with his wings from the earth , he was fain to graze on the ground with oxen. and was made stand on the feet as a man , and a man's heart was given to it . now after that septennial humiliation of nebuchadnezzar by being cast into so deep a melancholy and delirancy , as if he were grown a very brute that goes on all four , these words describe his happy recovery out of that deep disease . for physicians take notice of such a melancholy as makes the party imagine himself to be , and to imitate the manners and nature of this or that beast , as you may see in sennertus , and other writers . but here it seems he came to himself again by the good providence of god , and went constantly upon his feet as other men do . and a man's heart was given unto him , that is , his humane understanding was restored unto him . for the phrase of scripture makes the heart the seat of understanding . instead therefore of having the mind or heart of either a brute or luciferian devil , he had got a man's heart , and was taught ch. . v. . to honour and extoll the king of heaven , all whose works are truth , and his ways iudgment , and who is able to abase all those that walk in pride . what can be more significant of nebuchadnezzar's case than this ? which therefore is a most certain character that the first beast is the babylonian monarchy , and this passage is most properly applied to him . but withall i do not deny but it may be extended further to other cases of the empire , or monarchs of babylon ; accordingly as grotius expounds the plucking of the wings of this lion , tardati cursus ejus imperii , &c. the affairs of that empire were not carried on with that speed and success under evil-merodac and his vice-roy , as it were , naragalrazar , in whose days cyrus rebelling against astyages ( whom nebuchadnezzar had set over the kingdom of media insomuch that media was under the babylonian empire in the reign of nebuchadnezzar , and onward till this rebellion of cyrus ) media by this means in evil-merodac's days son of nebuchadnezzar was rent from the babylonian empire . and this , i think , was a considerable clipping or plucking the wings of the lion , besides what other particularities might be noted in history . and moreover belshazzar , ch. . ( as daniel reproves him for his not regarding that fearfull punishment of his grandfather . for his pride had lifted him up also against the lord of heaven , v. . and he had quaffed in the holy vessels of god's temple in that impious feast he made ) belshazzar , i say , was pretty well humbled by that hand-writing against him on the wall , but immediately after was laid in the dust of death . but in his successor darius the mede ( for i above noted that the succession is accounted as one continued monarch , as the beast one continued empire , and what belongs to the monarch or empire is said of this first beast ) the other part of the prophecy is again fulfilled , that he was made to stand upon his feet as a man , not to soar in the air with eagles wings , and phancy himself above him that dwells in the clouds . and a man's heart was given to him , namely , to darius the mede * the last monarch of the babylonian empire . ( for all begin the medo-persian empire from cyrus . ) and what a heart full of humanity towards daniel , nay indeed of piety and belief in daniel's god , the god of israel , was given unto him , will plainly appear to any that reads the sixth chapter of daniel , ver . , , , , , , , . thus fully well assured may we be that this first beast is the babylonian empire , and this being given we shall easily be induced to believe that the three following will prove the medo-persian , greek , and roman , as they were in the image of the four metals , for the same reasons there above specified . . and behold another beas●… , a s●…econd like to a bear. this , according to the succession of the empires in history , which is the most faithfull interpreter of prophecies , must be the med●…-persian empire . so that there is less need to take notice what interpreters have observed of congruity , in the making a bear the symbol of the medo-persian monarchy : as that persia is notorious for the breeding the fiercer sort , as well as plenty of those animals : that what is most notorious in the bear , that he can live on little or no meat for a long time , is likewise significative of the great abstinence and hardhip of the persians , and what a mean diet they use to satisfie themselves with , as xenophon has taken notice in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the like . upon which it is less necessary to insist ; there being further characters of this empire in the text it self . and it raised up it self on one side , that is , it rear'd up it self to fight against only one party of men , namely , the gentiles , as if we should conceive the world divided into two parts , iewes or the people of god , and gentiles . the sense is , he medled not with the iews ( but favoured them , as is notorious from the decrees of cyrus , and of others his successors in the behalf of the iews , ) but only with the heathen party . it is also grotius his gloss , iudaeae nihil nocuit , which interpretation he confirms from the authority of s. ierom , who professes he follows the iews therein , and the thing is abundantly reasonable in itself . whence it is a plain characteristick of this empire of cyrus and his successors , that were kind to the iews . according to that of isaiah , ch. . . that saith of cyrus he is my shepherd , and shall perform all my pleasure ; even saying to ierusalem , thou shalt be built , and to the temple , thy foundation shall be laid . and it had 〈◊〉 ribs in the mouth of it , between the téeth of it . these three ribs , says grotius , are persia , media and chaldaea , which were three notorious parts of the medo-persian empire , ( and ribs signifie the strength of a man according to achmetes , ) and others agree with grotius herein . but some by these three ribs would have understood three several coasts of the world subdued by the medo-persian m●…narchs , by cyrus the eastern part , by cambyses the southern , viz. aegypt and aethiopia , and by darius hystaspis the northern , namely , the scythians . and they said unto it , arise , dedour much flesh. whether this may be vox divinitus emissa , an instigation from heaven , or as he says in virgil , — sua cuique deus ●…it dira cupido . the cruel and bloudy feats in the mean time of the medo-persian monarchs are here signified , whether they were stirred up as a scourge to the wicked world , or their own ambition prick'd them on to make a prey of so many countries , and to make a spoil of their riches , which by flesh are understood in the onirocriticks . which therefore seems to indicate the spoil of the more civilized parts of the world which were grown rich and luxurious . in the mean time , besides the order of reckoning , there are indications enough from the characters of this empire it self , that it must be the medo-persian . but the most substantial is , that it succeeds the babylonian . . after this i beheld , and to another like a leopard . succession here again is enough to assure us that this is the greek empire , because the medo-persian was put an end to by alexander , whose victories with his armies were so swift , that in this regard a leopard is a fit symbol of this empire , that animal , besides the extraordinary velocity of it , jumping upon his prey , as naturalists observe . and there was a wonderfull dispatch and celerity in alexander's conquests , who in the space of six years subdued not only all asia , but a great part of europe and africk . the variety of the spots of that animal , grotius will have to set out the diversity or uncertainty of the genius of alexander , the first founder of the greek empire , as being one strangely variegated with notable vertues and notable vices , giving a specimen now of one , and then of another in no small degree , and that of those very contrary . and that his body had a sweet and pleasant smell , as the leopard is reported to have , and very gratefull to other animals , and that the leopard as well as alexander loves wine . these things also are noted by interpreters , which makes the leopard still a more fit symbol of the greek empire . some also think that the levity , uncertainty , and fallaciousness of the greek nation is perstringed in the diversity of spots in the leopard's skin . but what follows in the text will sufficiently confirm to us that this third beast is the greek empire . which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl. these wings in the general signification of them assuredly denote the celerity of alexander's conquests , as they are wings ; but as four , they betoken the division of his empire into four parts after his death , or into four kingdoms : as also what follows denotes the four several successions of kings in those kingdoms . the beast had also four heads . as the roman empire is represented by a beast with ten horns , because it was to be divided into ten kingdoms at last , so this leopard is represented with four heads , because after alexander's death , the greek empire was to be divided into four kingdoms ; philippus aridaeus the brother of alexander , or rather cassander , enjoying the kingdom of macedonia ( for aridaeus reigned not passing seven months ) ptolemaeus lagi fil. the kingdom of aegupt and africk ; lysimachus the kingdom of thracia , and antigonus the kingdom of asia minor . than which what can be desired for a more certain character of the greek empire , or a surer argument that the greek empire did not expire with alexander's death , but was continued in the successions of those four kingdoms so long as they lasted , and till some other empire may rationally be thought to put an end to their compute , as when aemylius paulus the roman consul vanquished perseus , the last king of macedonia ? which gave in a special manner the denomination to the greek or macedonick empire . and dominion was given unto it . alexander 's conquests were so exceeding marvellous , and so extremely overproportionate to the number of his soldiers , and the space of time he atchieved them in , that a man may rationally think that [ dominion being given to him , ] may have a more peculiar meaning here than in other places . as if the empire he is said to acquire was * rather a meer gift of divine providence than any acquist by his own strength , policy , or vigilancy . for what was his thirty thousand men , when he was to conflict , one while with an hundred and fifty thousand , anon with four hundred thousand , and at last with near ten hundred thousand , darius codomannus bringing so many into the field against him ? and when notice was given to him by his captains , he was found in such a dead sleep , that they could hardly awaken him , and yet he had scarce rub'd his eyes , as calvin expresses the dispatch of his victory , 〈◊〉 darius fled , his army was routed , and forty thousand of his men slain with the loss of less than three hundred of the greeks , as quintus curtius relates . calvin's expression here is indeed hyperbolical , but for the main the characteristicks of this third empire are so remarkable and notorious , that he must be very bad sighted that does not plainly perceive the said empire to be the greek or macedonick . . after this i saw in the night uisions . in this divine or supernatural dream communicated to me from god. and behold a fourth beast , that is , a fourth empire , and particularly the roman . for what empire should succeed the greek or macedonick empire but the roman that vanquished it , as the greek the persian , and the persian the babylonian ? that this fourth beast or fourth empire is the roman empire , i have so fully and evidently demonstrated against grotius , in my synopsis prophetica , book . ch. . that no rational man , i think , if he read considerately what i have written , can ever for the future doubt thereof . and how suitable the description is in the vision all along , we shall now see . dreadfull and terrible , and strong excéedingly , and it had great iron téeth . as this fourth kingdom is also represented in the vision of the image by the iron legs thereof , to which you may also refer that it is said here to be strong exceedingly . for so is that metal . and the courage , cruelty , and exceeding largeness of the roman empire must needs make it dreadfull and terrible . which some conceive it to have been in so great a measure , as no one wild beast could be a sufficient symbol to set off the terrible cruelty thereof . amongst oth●● specimens of which that bloudy and salvage pe●●eution , first , of the pagan roman empire again●● the primitive christians , and then of the pagano-christian against the waldenses and albigenses , and innumerable others , that professed and stuck to the pure christian faith , is astonishing and ineffable , and exceeding the salvageness of any wild beast whatsoever , that we may not want a reason why this fourth beast is without name . it devoured and brake in pieces , and stamped the residue with the fé●…t of it ; that is , the romans subdued and brought under many kingdoms and nations , devoured their wealth , and incorporated them into their empire ; and whom they could not so perfectly subdue , yet they harassed their countries , and by inriching some of their clients , by giving others lands or revenues to them , they trampled upon those whom they could not so perfectly devour and digest into the body of their empire . illa igitur astuta liberalitas , says calvin , vocatur conculcatio , quòd residuum , quia scilicet non poterant vorare & absumere suis dentibus , pedibus suis calcarent . see calvin upon the place . and it was diverse from all the beasts that went before it . forasmuch as they being absolute monarchies , this fourth beast consisted of two consuls and a senate , ( dictators also were sometimes chosen , ) and in after times of a mingle-mangle of popes and emperors , &c. and it had ten horns , answering to the ten toes of the iron legs of the image , that is to say , this roman empire was at last divided into ten kingdoms , as the greek empire was into four. that these ten horns belong to the roman empire , grotius himself is fain to acknowledge in his commentary on the apocalypse . though with might and main he endeavours to distort and obscure the sense of that book to the utmost he can . but by virtue of the apocalyptick synchronisms , and the clear and undeniable sense of the seventeenth chapter of that book , these ten horns must be the roman empire divided into ten kingdoms after the empire became christian , and was beginning to pagano-christianize and grow idolatrous again . this therefore is the time , and there the ten horns of the beast . . i considered the horns . which is said by daniel to excite us to a close consideration of these horns to see what we can espy there . and behold there came up among them another little horn. and this more especially was the object of daniel's , and ought to be of our consideration , what this little horn , that is said to be another horn , ( among them indeed but distinct from them ) may mean. this little horn therefore is an additional to the ten horns here , as the two-horned beast and the whore are additionals to the ten-horned beast , apoc. ch. . and . which most peculiarly is the papal polity or hierarchy . now let us see how this suits with the text. before whom there were thrée of the first , namely , of the first kind , and first mentioned , viz. secular , horns pluck●… up by the roots . vatablus his translation has it out of the chaldee , tria autem ex cornibus prioribus evulsa sunt à facie ejus . whereby is signified only the removal from before his face , they stood in his light it seems . whereas they would have or had fixed themselves so near him to his prejudice , he made shift to get them pull'd away . but this you must conceive could not be till the pope had ascended unto that rampancy of power , that he would excommunicate emperours , and depose them if need were , or absolve their subjects from allegiance and seize their lands . in which time the pope becoming the monarch as it were of the roman empire , the emperours so called whether greek or german , may well take their places among the ten horns , especially the secular empire of old rome being dissolved , which gave the name or title to the roman empire , as macedonia did to the macedonick empire . this premised , what mr. mede says on this text is very agreeable , that the three horns pulled away from before the little horn is the power extending into italy , of the greek emperours , of the lombards , and of the franks continued in the empire of germany . all these three powers or horns he made shift to rid himself of , that he might the more easily domineer in italy without any corrival , as is sufficiently made out by history . and behold in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man. this is another main observable in this little horn , that it had eyes , when none of the rest are said to have so . which is a notorious difference , and hugely significant of a power that will pretend to lead all the rest of the horns , as being themselves destitute of sight . and the papal hierarchy how cunning and quick-sighted a polity it has been all histories ring of it , and how far they pretend and how active assistants they are , even in civil affairs . but i conceive this does not exhaust all the meaning of these eyes in the little horn , and of the other horns having none . which may more peculiarly represent the difference betwixt this hierarchical power in the empire , and the secular of the ten kings , who in matters of faith and religion are to have no eyes of their own , but to profess and believe as this horn who pretends to have the only eyes tells them , and to be led in a blind implicit faith and profession of whatsoever this seeing horn declares to be articles of the christian religion , and requisite to salvation . and this little horn having this hank upon them , you may be sure will require them to believe such things as tend most for the greatness , power , and riches of the papal hierarchy . and all the gross and intolerable corruptions of their church , whether touching faith or practice , are invented or upheld for this very end , and upon this very advantage , that the little horn is thought only to have the eyes in matters of faith and religion , but the other ten horns to be stark blind . but lastly , though this little horn pretends to the only sight and infallibility in matters of religion , as if it were inspired so from god that it cannot erre ; yet the very character which the prophecy gives it , doth advertise us , that this is but a bold boast among the rest , and that these are really but the eyes of a man , even of that man of sin or antichrist , that exalts himself above all that is called god , or worshipped . for that by this little horn antichrist is characterized , is the common and current opinion of the ancient fathers , as the romish interpreters themselves cannot but confess , though they were mistaken in the time of his coming . and a mouth speaking great things ; that is , uttering great boasts of his own power and infallibility . for this papal hierarchy pretend him , as to superiority , to be above all kings and emperours , as to their miraculous power , that they can by certain words turn a piece of bread into a man , with flesh and bloud , and all essentials of humane nature , nay , into god after a manner , and infallibly declare , 't is no idolatry to worship this thus transubstantiated bread , though it seem still bread to all , and is believed still to be so by all , but by those that see only by the eyes of this little horn , and so trust his eyes only , and renounce in the mean time the use of their own eyes and all their senses , nay , of reason , and the plain light of the scripture . their pretence also of consecrating images to the effectually keeping off thunder and lightning , and incursion of the enemies , and the like , may be reckoned amongst other their boasts . but this speaking great things may more especially respect the great vaunts of the papal authoritative power , he being called by the pontifician polity , our lord god , optimum maximum & supremum numen in terris , the supreme deity on earth : it being declared by them , that his tribunal and god's is all one . that his power is absolute . that what he does he does as god and not as man. that he is all and above all . that he has the disposing of kingdoms , can pull down one and set up another . that he can do all that god can do . that he can change the nature of things , make something of nothing , make injustice justice , and wrong right . that all laws are in his breast . that he can dispense with the canons of the apostles , and with the new testament itself . that he is the cause of causes . that it is sacriledge to doubt of his power . that he has dominion over angels , purgatory and hell. that he is the monarch of the world , and exceeds the imperial majesty as much as the sun does the moon . and , that he is to be adored by all the potentates of the earth . this and more than this you may see made good by bishop downham in his treatise de antichristo , for above fifty pages together . and is not this a mouth speaking great things indeed ? and is not this part of the prophecy also eximiously fulfilled , understanding by the little horn that man of sin or antichrist , that thus exalts himsel●… above all that is called god or worshipped , whom the lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth , and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming ? which thing is exhibited in the following part of the vision . . i beheld till the chrones were cast down . the word in the original might as well be rendred , set down or erected , which is the most natural sense and most conherent with what follows , and the ancient of days did sit , * namely , god the father , who though he is not before the other two hypostases of the blessed trinity in time , yet he is in order of nature . he sate in his throne together with the chiefest of the angelical orders in their thrones or seats , to make up the solemnity of the judgment . whose ●…arment was white as snow , and the hair of his head like the pure wooll . whiteness here by interpreters is look'd upon , that of his head as an emblem of mature counsel and judgment with a sutableness to his title of the ancient of days , that of his garment as a symbol of pure unspotted righteousness and impartiality in judgment . and this appearance of this first hypostasis in general in white , may denote the proper character of his nature . which the platonists call the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which imply an ineffable simplicity and benignity , and who would not have the world judged by such a judge ? his chrone was like the fiery flame , and his whéels like the burning fire . viz. such was the splendour of his throne and of the wheels thereof , bright , sparkling , and shining like fire and light. this is a description of the divine shechinah , not much unlike that in ezekiel , ch. . and . this is a chariot-like throne as that a throne-like chariot ; and as the wheels there as well as living creatures are angelical , so there are angels here innumerable in this great session sitting with the ancient of days , or assisting , while he sits in his imperial throne drawn with wheels , angelical wheels , by whose ministry is the revolution of all states and kingdoms : though in the mean time there may be also an allusion in these wheels to the sellae curules , chairs of state that ran upon wheels , in use in the days of old . . a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him . flumen igneum manabat ab ore ejus egrediens , so grotius says it is , in chaldaeo . a fiery stream issued out of his mouth . the brightness of this appearance , and the mention of this fiery stream coming out of his mouth , ( like that blast of fire and flaming breath , esdr. . ) sutes excellently well with that passage thess. . whom the lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth , and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming . which shall be by the clear demonstration of the power of his spirit so manifestly appearing in his true church , of whom jesus christ is and ever has been the living head , the same which is the son of man which is anon exhibited in this vision , namely , christ , together with his true and living church . but in the mean time i leave to the ingenious readers consideration , whether that fiery stream and flaming breath coming out of the mouth of the ancient of days , god the father , may not emblematize the procession of the holy ghost , the third hypostasis of the holy trinity , as well as the son of man plainly represents to us the second . for who can doubt but that it is a representation of christ , the humane nature of the messias united with the eternal logos , and according to his divinity every where existing in the father , as well as according to his humanity he is here represented distinctly from him ? thousand thousands ministred unto him , and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him . this judgment of the little horn is so magnificently set out as if it were the last judgment of all , and i do not doubt but that it alludes to it , and touches upon it in the following words . the iudgment was set and the books were opened . this sitting of the judgment corresponds with that apoc. . , . where there is a white throne and the books are opened , and this is at the final judgment , and general resurrection , immediately preceeding the conflagration , which in another sense this fiery description here in daniel sutes very well with , and then the fiery stream out of the mouth of the ancient of days will presignifie that final sentence , depart from me ye accursed into everlasting fire . but ver. . of the same chapter , and i saw thrones and they sat upon them , &c. this answers to the ninth verse of this seventh of daniel , and i beheld till the thrones were set . for these thrones are set to judge the little horn , the same with the whore or false prophet , which is said , together with the beast , apoc. . to be taken and cast both alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone , which is to come to pass under the seventh vial ; which immediately preceeds the coming down of the new ierusalem , and the reign of the saints . here is onely the difference betwixt these two sessions , that the apocalyptick session mentions only the reign of the saints , this the instant dooming and executing the doom of the little horn in order thereto , and the giving the son of man the kingdom . but being that corruptio unius is generatio alterius , and the things are so closely connected , we may very well admit that these two preceding sessions or sentences declared therein , have a considerable correspondence one with another , that in the apocalypse manifestly belonging to this part of this judgment here in daniel , that gives the kingdom to the son of man. so that so far the correspondence is palpable . . i beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake ; namely , such blustering and boastfull words as were recited above upon ver. . to see what would become of this horn that so magnified himself above all . and had acted accordingly in deposing kings and trampling upon the necks of emperours , and murthering , massacring and burning god knows how many hundred thousands of innocent christians for not submitting to his tyranny and idolatry . i beheld even till the beast was slain , and his body destroyed , and given to the burning flame . what then , is the beast destroyed and the little horn escape punishment ? this therefore is a very compendious and elliptical form of speech . but the sense is fully made out by s. iohn apoc. . . for it is impossible but the little horn must be concerned in that destruction of the beast , himself being the two-horned beast in the apocalypse , chap. . but in * this chapter stiled the false prophet for his false pretence to infallibility . and the beast was taken , says he , and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him , that is , who transubstantiated bread into a man , and brought fire from heaven , and had power over purgatory and hell , thither to strike innocent souls by his fulminant excommunications . these both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone . and thus the fourth empire , the roman , as to its idolatrous tyranny , of which the pope makes himself the head , as his canonists and theologers declare , is quite demolished under the seventh vial. . as concerning the rest of the beasts they had their dominion taken away ; that is , and if any one shall be so curious as to enquire what became of the rest of the beasts , the other three above mentioned , let that suffice that their dominion was taken away ; and that , yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time ; they had their certain periods allowed them too , by the doom of the ancient of days . this is enough as touching them , but the great business of all is touching the fourth beast , the roman empire ; forasmuch as the true church of christ for so long a space of time is so much concerned therein , and therefore that deserves more special observation and enlargment . the affairs of the iews under the three first beasts are not considerable , in respect of these of the christians . and therefore the three first beasts in this vision seem to be brought in meerly as a preamble to the fourth ; and the fourth with the three first to be first described , as being of one sute , namely , idolatrous . but then there is a fifth kingdom which is christ with his true church commencing in the apostles times , and lasting till the end of the world. of which in the following verse . . i saw in the night uisions , in this divine dream as was above-said , and behold , one like the son of man. the son of man is a title which christ so inculcatedly assumes to himself , to whom the kingdom does belong , that it is impossible but he should have a regard to this very place , in the so perpetually using that style touching himself . and therefore it being christ , it is plain that the second hypostasis of the holy trinity is here exhibited in this divine vision as well as the first and third , as i have noted , they all three are in the vision of ezekiel . this title of christ , the son of man , occurrs in innumerable places . i need name none . and yet there is one i will not omit , matth. . . when the high priest had adjured him to tell him if he was christ the son of god , iesus saith unto him , thou hast said . nevertheless i say unto thee , ( though thou hast hit it already , yet i will give thee a further confirmation thereof , ) hereafter shall you see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power , and coming in the clouds of heaven ; namely , as it were at the head of the roman army , to take vengeance of the murtherous unbelieving iews , i say , the roman army , out of which people especially he was to raise to himself his kingdom , the church . which yet was but regnum lapidis , as i noted in the foregoing vision , but would be in time regnum montis . came with the clouds of heaven . to be carried with the clouds of heaven , denotes that a king shall be master of his enemies , and get glorious victory , saith achmetes . and the destruction of the iews was the establishing of the church of christ , or his kingdom among the gentiles , the romans especially , whose empire became at last christian. and came to the ancient of days , and they brought him near before him , presented him as a candidate for the designed kingdom . . and there was given him dominion and glory , and a kingdom , that all people , and nations , and languages should serve him ; that is , that some of all people should serve him in the pure apostolick way of doctrine and worship ; and indeed the whole roman empire in a manner did so for a while after constantine's time , till the apostasie came in . which small interval of time in this vision is not taken notice of , as being inconsiderable . but in the mean time it may be here seasonable to note , that this right of the kingdom being given to the son of man , answers to the first vision of the seals , the vision of the heros on the white horse , with a bow in his hand , and who had a crown given unto him , apoc. . . the right of the imperial crown . so that this part of daniel's vision here commences with the epocha of the apocalypse , or the beginning of christianity . for there seems four sentences to have been represented in this iudicial session of the ancient of days , ( besides that touching the three beasts , ver. . ) one assigning the kingdom in general to the son of man , the other , the judgment of the little horn ; the third , the giving of the more inlarged kingdom to the son of man upon the destruction of the little horn ; and the fourth , the final doom of all , at the day of judgment properly so called . but the first and the last there is only a slight perstriction or brief intimation of them , but that of the little horn is insisted on , the abolishing of his power , and the giving the great enlargement of the kingdom , the regnum montis , to the saints of the most high. his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away , and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed . the true church which is the genuine kingdom of christ , and of which he alone is the head as being universal , never yet from the beginning thereof has failed , nor ever will fail to the end of the world. . i daniel was grieved in my spirit , in the midst of my body , and the uisions of my head , upon my bed , troubled me ; that is , i was very anxious to know what the meaning of this vision might be . and methought , . i came near to one of them that stood by ; to one of the assistant angels in this great session , not to those that were placed on thrones . and asked him the truth of all this ; that is , the plain meaning of this prophetick parable . so he told me , and made me know the interpretation of things ; namely , as follows ; and first in general . . these great beasts which are four , are four kings ( with their kingdoms or empires , viz. the babylonian , medo-persian , greek and roman , ) which shall arise out of the earth . and therefore be but earthly kingdoms , minding earthly things here below . . but the saints of the most high ; of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of the most high god , or of christ ; who is called in the apocalypse , king of kings , and lord of lords . shall take the kingdom , of the stone , regnum lapidis , from the first planting of the gospel , but regnum montis , the kingdom of the mountain , upon the destruction of the little horn. and possess the kingdom for ever , even for ever and ever ; that is , the true church of christ shall never fail till the end of the world , as was intimated above . and thus far in general touching the vision , but he holds on . . then i would know the truth , the true meaning , of the fourth beast which was divers from all others . and in what regard we have above declared , as also why so excéeding ●●●adfull , whose 〈◊〉 were of iron and his nails of brass , which 〈◊〉 , brake in pieces , and stamped the residue with his 〈◊〉 , that also we have above explained . . and of the ten horns that were in his head. and of the other especially which came up . for the interpretation is spent most in describing it , ver. , . and before whom 〈◊〉 fell , those three i above named . even of that horn that had eyes , and would admit no other horn to have eyes besides it self , especially in spirituals . and a mouth that spoke 〈◊〉 great things , both against the law of god , which this horn the papal power pretends to have a right to dispense with and act contrary to , and against the right of kings and emperours , whom he pretends a power of excommunicating and deposing , and absolving their subjects from their oath of allegiance , if they submit not to the decrees of his infallible mouth , which will be sure to pronounce nothing that is not agreeable to the worldly interest of holy church . for this horn has the eyes of a man merely , and directs all by the measure of humane policy , let him pretend never so much to inspired infallibility . whose look was more stout than his 〈◊〉 ; that is , that has a bold assured look , affecting the greatest grandeur imaginable , as pretending to be lord of the whole world , in whose presence his fellow horns did but sneak , as whose stirrop they are ●…ain to hold , even emperours themselves as well as kings and other princes , when this little horn is to ride on horseback , and to bear on their shoulders his chair when he will be carried in state , to hold the bason and towel when he washes his hands , and in publick assemblies to sit at his feet , and if they will not be dutifull enough , to be trod upon by his feet , as frederick barbarossa was served by pope alexander the third , who treading upon his neck in conspectu populi , with a bigg look and loud voice , abused that of the psalmist to his barbarous insulting over the emperour , super aspidem & leonem ambulabis , &c. thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder , &c. these hints are enough to shew how fully this part of the prophecy is accomplished [ whose look was more stout than his fellows . ] . i beheld , and the same horn ( namely , the little horn ) made war with the saints and prevailed against them ; that is , the papal power by using the forces of the ten horns or secular power makes war against the saints , the true apostolick church , that stand out and cannot admit the gross corruptions and idolatrous usages of the little horn. this answers to that of the apocalypse , ch. . v. . and it was given unto him to make war with the saints , and to overcome them . it is spoken there of the ten-horned beast as the executioner of the war , but in daniel of the little horn , as the instigator or authorizer of the war. but this in the mean time is no small indication , that the times of the little horn belong to the times of the ten-horned beast healed ; which are the times of the apostasie of the church . . until the ancient of days came . viz. till he proceeded to that part of the doom that pronounced sentence against the little horn. and iudgment was given to the saints of the most high ; that is , the sentence was pronounced on their side , god so generally convincing the world of the truth of their cause . and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom ; namely , after the evidence of the truth of their cause was so well known to the world. . thus he said , the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth ; namely , the roman state or empire . which shall be divers from all kingdoms , as having a political constitution different from them , as has been noted above . the vulgar latin , the septuagint , and vatablus , as also gasper sanctius read , which shall be greater than all kingdoms , namely , than those three before named . which therefore cannot be the kingdom of the lagidae and seleucidae , as grotius would have it , if that reading obtain . and it has the start of the other for antiquity . and shall devour the whole earth , and shall tread it down , and break it in pieces . which sutes best of all with the sense of vatablus , the vulgar latin , and the septuagint . for the greatest kingdom was the most able to do this . . and the ten horns out of this kingdom are the ten kings that shall arise . the roman empire , ver. . is described under one interval of its period to have ten horns , so that it is the same ten-horned beast that occurs in the apocalypse . and , ver. . it is said that there came up among them another little horn , which naturally implies that it came up much about the same time with them , though in what here follows it is said , and another shall arise after them . which is no contradiction to the former supposing in order he came up last , so be it was not any considerable time after , or be understood of his more sensible growth or palpable appearance ; though the hebrew word implies no necessity of signifying any posteriority of time , but that he might spring up with them and amongst them , but in such an occult manner , and so unawares , as if he had stoln his growth behind them . for so the septuagint render it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the word in the original will bear that sense very well , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying order of place as well as of time , accordingly as the septuagint have translated it . but the time of the ten-horned healed beast being the time of the apostasie of the church , and he being actually ten-horned and healed at the same time , ( for the crowned ten horns which shew their actual reign , appear only on the healed beast's head , as i have noted in my exposition of the apocalypse , ) and the little horn being said to arise among them or with them , though the other horns were not aware of him , as having no eyes , though the little horn have the eyes of a man , of a cunning perspicacious politician ; it is manifest that the growth of the little horn began with the apostasie of the church , and so the little horn may well be suspected of helping it on , being most concerned in matters of religion to manage them well or ill , as being that sacerdotal polity or hierarchy , as is intimated in what follows . and he shall be divers from the first , namely , from the other ten horns , they being laick or civil , this ecclesiastick or spiritual , for such was the papal power . and , under pretence of this ecclesiastick power , he shall subdue thrée kings . the three kings which he is said to humble , subdue , or supplant , are , as i have hinted above , those three whose dominions extended into italy , as that of the greek emperour leo isaurus , whom he excommunicated , and made his subjects of italy revolt from their allegiance because he was against image-wor●…hip . the other supplanting or subduing is of the longobards , whose kingdom he caused , by aid of the franks , to be wholly ruined thereby , to get the exarchate of ravenna , ( which since the revolt from the greeks the longobards were seized on ) for a patrimony to s. peter . and the last of the three which he humbled were the emperours of germany , whom from the days of henry the fourth , he excommunicated , deposed , and trampled under his feet , and never suffered to live in rest till he had made them quit their interest in election of popes , and investitures of bishops , and what-ever remainder of jurisdiction they had in italy . see mr. mede , epist. . thus did this horn with eyes , whose look was more stout than his fellows . . and he , namely , the little horn , shall speak great 〈◊〉 against the most high. it is rightly translated , great words , because that phrase touching the little horn has been used so oft already , ver. . . . where either great things or great words occur , and there cannot be a more fit and authentick commentary on these passages than that in the apocalypse , ch. . v. , . and there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies ; where great things are expounded by blasphemies . and in the following verse he shews how these blasphemies are against god the most high , many examples whereof i have given above upon verse . and he opened his mouth in blasphemy against god to blaspheme his name , his authority and titles , and his tabernacle , and them that dwell in heaven . the ten-horned beast is said here to reproach them by allowing , authorizing , and inforcing ( against the decrees and authority of god , which is also a blaspheming of his name , ) those blasphemous decrees of the two horned beast , ( which is the same with the little horn , they being both the papal polity or hierarchy , the ecclesiastick authority not the laick or secular , ) for image-worship , for saint-worship , and worship of angels , and for transubstantiation , which is a reproach to the tabernacle of god , the body of christ ; see the place in my exposition of the apocalypse . it is sufficient here to note how well the deeds of the little horn sute with those of the ten-horned healed beast , who is but the abettor and executioner of what the two-horned beast would have . and therefore when it is said the little horn here speaks great words against the most high , it is all one as if it were said of the ten-horned beast in the apocalypse , nor is it any repugnancy to understand it of them both . for this which is said of the ten-horned beast is to be lookt upon as the meer echo of the draconick voice of the beast with two horns . so agreeable in every point is daniel with the apocalypse . and shall 〈◊〉 out the saints of the most high , by imprisonments , confiscation of goods , by burnings , croysades , and massacres , upon which this little horn will put the ten horns as his occasions require , as is also noted apoc. ch. . v. . and in this chapter of daniel , ver . . and think to change times and law●… ; to alter the primitive simplicity of the christian religion into a constitution that best serves the interest of his papal kingdom , and the increasing the revenues and the power of holy church , as they call it . all superstitions never so idolatrous , all doctrines never so monstrous , shall pass into a law and decree if they serve this end . for the papal omnipotency has a power to make what laws and institutes he pleases ; all edicts and decrees lodge in the cabinet of his own breast . whence he may produce what he pleases , if you will believe his canonists . and they shall be given into his hand for a time , and times , and the dividing of a time , or half a time . i.e. and they shall be established , authorized , and inforced by the secular power of the ten horn●…d beast , as was observed above . to whom apoc. . . power was given to continue forty and two months , which is just the same time with daniel's time and times , and half a time , in the literal sense , each of the sums amounting to three years and a half a piece , or days . but in the prophetical style they signifie so many years . and that they are prophetical ●●ys not vulgar , i have invincibly proved in my 〈◊〉 prophetica , book . ch. . see also my mystery of godliness , book . ch. . wherefore it is highly rational to conceive the times of the little horn to synchronize with all the middle synchronals of the ap●…calypse : so that we may know plainly where we are . . but the ●…udgment shall sit , namely , to judge the little horn or papal hierarchy , which is the two-horned beast in the apocalypse , or the whore of babylon . to this alludes that saying of the angel , apoc. . and there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials and talked with me , saying unto me , i will shew unto thee the iudgment of the great wh●…re that sitteth upon many waters , with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication . and part of this judgment is menaced against her in the epistle to the church in thyatira , apoc. . . under the name of iezebel , who calleth her self a prophetess , but seduces christ's servants to commit fornication , and to eat things sacrificed unto idols . which prophetess so called by her self is the papal hierarchy who boast themselves infallible , but judgment is menaced against them , ver. . behold , i will cast her into a bed , and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation if they do not repent of their deeds . which judgment fell upon her in the happy reformation , when so many kingdoms and countries deserted the pope . and likewise in the song of the risen witnesses , ch. . v. . who shall not fear thee , o lord , and glorifie thy name ? for thou only art holy , for all nations shall come and worship before thee . for thy iudgments are made manifest . and this is the former part of the execution of the sentence against the little horn or great whore. but the execution goes on in the seven vials . and they shall take away his dominion to consume and destroy it unto the end ; that is , by that time all the vials be poured out upon the two-horned beast , the little horn with eyes , or the false prophet , his dominion shall be quite destroyed and consumed , which is the second part of the doom of the little horn , and will be compleated under the seventh vial , with which the vision of that divine heros on the white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth doth contemporize . which sword out of his mouth answers to the fiery stream out of the mouth of the ancient of days , and both to that of s. paul , thess. . where he says , that the lord shall consume the man of sin , by the spirit of his mouth , and destroy him with the brightness of his coming , as i have noted above . now as the little horn is doomed to destruction ( from whence the man of sin is called the son of perdition , thess. . ) by this divine consistory , which is one part of their act in this session ; so that ample and everlasting kingdom that succeeds the destruction of the little horn , is adjudged to the truly apostolick , catholick church , of whom christ alone is head. which is the other part of the act of this session , and which alone is taken notice of apoc. . . the other part having been taken notice of ch. . and . . and the kingdom and dominion , and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the most high. this is that other part of the sentence pronounced by that divine sanhedrim in the behalf of the true church that had been afflicted and oppressed so long under the tyranny of the little horn. the true church then consisting of iew and gentile , will overspread all . this is to be accomplished under the second and third thunders . and i think no body can doubt but that the people of the saints of the most high are the truly catholick and apostolick church , if he consider the description of the new ierusalem in the apocalypse . and the most high is christ , who there is termed king of kings and lord of lords , and the messias will be acknowledged in those days to be such both by iew and gentile . this answers to that of apoc. . . and i saw thrones and they sate upon them , and iudgment was given unto them , and the result was , they that had not worshipped the beast , neither his image , &c. they lived and reigned with christ a thousand years , acknowledging him the only universal head of the church . this will be the truly holy catholick church of christ as they are here called the people of the saints of the most high. whos 's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom , not to end upon earth till the last thunder or conflagration according to the tenour of the apocalypse . and all dominions shall serve and obey him . all nations and kingdoms shall willingly submit themselves to , and injoy themselves in this mightily extended and overspreading kingdom of the son of man which the ancient of days had assigned to him . which well may be called the kingdom of the son of man in counterdistinction to those other four kingdoms that are set out by ●…ruel ravening beasts , ●…earing and trampling all under their feet , and forcing men to blind obedience with salvage violence , as was usual in the kingdom of antichrist or little horn with eyes , that would let no body see but himself . whenas the true church of kingdom of the son of man ( as the four beasts or rather wights in the apocalypse ) are all full of eyes within and without . and certainly the kingdom of the son of man will be a kingdom of unaffected prudence , defecate reason and holy love. for this is the true man , the rest in us is but common to us with the brutes . and therefore of such shall consist the kingdom of christ the son of man , ( as he perpetually calls himself ) after the abolition of the kingdom of antichrist . . hitherto is the end of the matter , namely , the matter the angel communicated to him by way of interpretation of the vision . as for me daniel , my cogitations much troubled me , and my countenance changed in me . i was so actuated by a supernatural power that my natural strength could scarce bear it , which was discoverable in my very countenance grown lean and pale in undergoing this divine or angelical actuation or impression . but i kept the matter in my heart , that is , i committed it firmly and carefully to my memory , so that i might be sure to transcribe it right , as being ingens documentum divinae providentiae praescientiaeque , they are the very words of grotius ; a wonderfull instance of divine providence and prescience to all posterity . as certainly this vision and interpretation is rightly understood , and i wish grotius had so understood it . notes upon vision ii. ver. . the last monarch of the babylonian empire . ] how rightly darius medus may be deemed the last monarch of the babylonian empire , see thomas lydiat in his emendatio temporum , anno mundi . ver. . rather a meer gift of divine providence than any acquist , &c. ] which that in iosephus antiq. lib. . c. . seems to confirm . for notwithstanding iaddus the high priest his disobedience to alexander a little before , at which he had conceived a displeasure against him , yet when alexander came to ierusalem , and the high priest and other priests and levites went out in their habits to meet him , and in this peaceable and splendid pomp to receive him , alexander alone accosting iaddus in his pontifical habit and golden crown with the name iehova writ on it , bowed himself and saluted the high priest very friendly . which was a wonder to the by-standers , they expecting rather some token of displeasure from him , than of that veneration and friendliness . wherefore parmenio one of alexander's captains came privately to alexander , and asked him what was the matter with him that he , whom all others so much adored , should condescend thus humbly to adore this pontif of the iews . to whom he answered that he did not worship the pontif , but that god whose priest he was . for i saw , says he , this his priest in this habit in dios of macedonia ( which therefore must be his god himself , for he could not there appear ) who while i was deliberating with my self how i might subdue asia , bid me be of good courage , and without delay to ship over my army , for by his conduct i should obtain the empire of persia. which vision of his in dios of macedonia , and the meeting of iaddus the high priest in the very same habit that that spectrum appeared to him in , made him , as he himself professed to parmenio , confident of success . and iaddus , which yet further might confirm his hopes , shewed him the book of daniel , i suppose that place in the prophecy of the scripture of truth , where it is said , and a mighty king shall stand up that shall rule with great dominion and do according to his will , &c. which the high priest might well interpret of alexander his present expedition , and he , in virtue of his vision in dios , of the god of israel appearing there to him in the pontifical habit ( as he did also to daniel and s. iohn ) firmly believe him . as we also from these considerations may easily believe that alexander's conquests were rather a meer gift of divine providence , than the fruit of his own prowess or policy . verse . namely , god the father , &c. ] so we christians call this first hypostasis of the holy trinity which the cabbalists call kether , and ( from this place questionless of daniel ) attik iomin , antiquus dierum . see the second cabbalistical table in my philosophical volume tom. . vision iii. the vision of the ram and he-goat , betokening the kings of media and persia , and the kings of graecia , chap. . the vision of the image consisting of four metals and that of the four beasts , both of them reached from the babylonian empire inclusively , to the glorious reign of christ upon earth in his true apostolick church in the blessed millennium . now follows a vision that insists more largely on some parts of the time of the foregoing visions , namely , those of the medo-persian but chiefly of the greek empire ; which is like the method in the apocalypse . where first in a more general and comprehensive way the state of the christian church from the beginning thereof to the last vial is set out in [ chap. . ] and then again the same period of time is run over in the twelfth , thirteenth and fourteenth chapters . but afterwards the visions concern but parts of the same period which are more fully insisted on . and so we shall find it here in daniel , that the rest of the visions concern but parts of the times that are represented by the image of the four metals , and the vision of the four beasts . and this of the ram and he-goat here in this eighth chapter concerns the times of the medo-persian and grecian empire only , in manner as follows . . in the third year of the reign of king belshazzar king of babylon , and immediate predecessor of darius the mede , a uision appeared to me , even to me daniel non jam secundum quietem , ; says grotius , sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not in sleep but when i was awake , and up and abroad . else if it had been in his sleep on his bed he would have expressed so much in like manner as before . after that which appeared to me at first , namely , in the beginning of the reign of belshazzar , chap. . . and i saw in a uision , ( and it came to pass that i was at shushan in the palace which is in the province of elam . ) he describes the place where he saw this vision as well as the time when . now this shushan is that royal city of the persians , that is called s●…sa in historians and geographers , a famous city situated betwixt persis and babylonia , from whence the country round about is called susiana . but there is mention of this susa being in the province of elam , that is , of elymais , because elam is the name of the persian people . isa. . . go up o elam , besiege o media ; ascende o elam , i.e. persa , & tu o mede invadite urbem , &c. says cornelius à lapide . the vision therefore which so much concerns the persian empire , daniel saw upon the spot even in the province of elam , which denotes the persians . and i saw in a uision and i was by the river ulas . which is vlaeus fluvius with historians and geographers . that of pliny is for our purpose , susianen ab elymaide disterminat amnis ulaeus ortus in medis medióque spatio cuniculis conditus , ac rursus exortus per mesobatenen lapsus circuit arcem susorum . it rises in media , touches upon susa , and at last exonerates it self into the sinus persicus according to ptolemy as well as bochartus . . then i lift up mine eyes and saw , and behold there stood before the river , that is , he saw externally with his eyes when he had some charge there under belshazzar before that high honour of all which he bestowed upon him . a ram which had two horns , by which as the angel anon interprets , is understood the medo-persian empire , and kings thereof ; media and persia being noted by the two horns , as by the two horns of the beast , apoc. . the two patriarchates of rome and constantinople are noted . but why the persian king with his kingdom should be represented by a ram , many reasons occur . for first a ram is a strong pugnacious animal , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in chaldee as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in hebrew signifies to be strong , as it also signifies , the last i mean , a ram. and such paronomastical allusions are not unusual with the prophets , as i have observed elsewhere . the strength therefore and pugnaciousness of the ram , well represent cyrus and his successours . but secondly , a ram , according to achmetes signifies riches , which therefore intimates the vast treasures laid up in the castle at susa and other places , in cyrus and darius codomannus his time also ; see grotius upon the place , of whom you may have a more particular account . and lastly you may cast in that also , that for the kindness of the kings of persia to the iews , ( especially in comparison of the babylonian monarchs and greek ) they making several favourable decrees in their behalf , they with their kingdom is represented by the figure of this better sort of animals , as sheep are conceived to be , whether male or female , and a ram is of the male-kind thereof . wherefore though they were as a bear to other nations , yet they were as a ram to the iews , or rather as a sheep . and the two horns were high , but one was higher than the other . the persians here are preferred before the medes . and the higher came up last . the persian power , namely , did emerge into that greatness after the median . . i saw the ram pushing west-ward , and north-ward , and south-ward . he pusht west-ward , when darius hystaspis and xerxes made war against greece ; babylonia also is west-ward of persia , which cyrus took . he pusht north-ward , when the said darius made war against the scythians . and south-ward , when cambyses , and others of their kings invaded aegypt , aethiopia and libya . so that no beast did stand before him , neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand , but he did according to his will and became great . for the persians took babylon with its whole empire , lydia also and ionia , asia minor and aegypt . . and as i was considering behold an he-goat . that the greek empire is denoted by the he-goat we have the authority of the angel for it , ver. . and why he should signifie the greek empire , there be several reasons for it : as first , it is a very apt allusion to the ancient name of the macedonians . for a company of greeks under the conduct of caranus taking the city of aedessa , caranus called it afterwards aegea , from the flock of goats ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in greek ) that led him in a misty mizling day unto the city , his omen lying in them , according to the prediction of an oracle , which bid him fix his seat in macedonia where the goats should lead him . and therefore urbem aedessam ob memoriam muneris aegeas , populum aegeatas vocavit , saith iustin , lib. . so that the macedonians ( and alexander was such ) their being called aegeatae , which is as much as the goat-people in english , may be one palpable reason why the macedonick empire should be represented by a goat . secondly , hircus rapaces significat , as grotius observes out of achmetes . thirdly , in that he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , hircus caprarum , it denotes alexander's youngness when he began his enterprise of overrunning the eastern empire , he being not much past twenty years old . fourthly , the clambring nature of the goat that gets upon the highest and steepest rocks , sets out the bold aspiring mind of alexander , to say nothing of that * strange exploit of his , literally taken , in india , his ascending with his soldiers an high craggy rock that hercules himself was deterr'd from enterprising . and lastly comparing the greek nation with the persian , as pliny notes of goats and sheep , that the goats are the wiser and more ready-witted animal ; so the greeks were more cunning and more clear-headed than the persians . to this purpose interpreters comment on the text. and how much philosophy flourished in greece is well known , and that aristotle was the master of alexander , and how that they affected not only long robes but long beards , which some wits among them have compared to that of a goat , as you may see in the greek anthology , lib. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . came from the we●● , greece being seated west of persia. on the face of the whole earth . whereby is intimated the largeness of his divagations in this his expedition into the east , and the over-spreading of his victories . and touched not the ground , which is an indication of his swiftness and speed . the swiftness of camilla in virgil is expressed thus , aeneid . lib. . illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret gramina , nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies an he-goat and is the word here used , is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies to fly . so that this also may have some allusion to this extraordinary speed in alexander's victories , who in the space of six years over-ran and vanquished the persians , the medes , the babylonians and aegyptians , and the neighbouring nations . and the goat had a notable horn betwéen his eyes . where it is worth our taking notice of , that here is the goat and his horn , which cannot be the same thing in nature , but one the part of the other , and there is but one goat , and therefore no more than one empire can be understood thereby which is the greek , of which alexander was the first horn or sovereign . but it is placed betwixt the eyes of the goat , meerly for the embellishing the cortex of the vision , supposing an animal have but one horn , that being the most seemly placing of it . . and he came to the ram that had two horns which i had seen standing before the river , that is , the greek forces assaulted the medo-persian signified by the ram. and ran unto him in the fury of his power . pliny observes that goats are of a more hot and fiery temper than sheep . so well do the symbols agree with the things signified . . and i saw him come close to the ram , and he was moved with choler against him , with a fiery courage and animosity . and smote the ram and brake his two horns . the two kingdoms of media and persia. and there was no power in the ram to stand before him , neither in campis adrastiis or at granicus a river of phrygia , the first battle that was fought betwixt alexander and darius his satrapae , nor at issus in cilicia where the second was fought , and where the exceeding numerous army of darius was put to flight , from whence the city by alexander was after called nicopolis . but he cast him down to the ground and stamped upon him . for all darius brought out a far more numerous army against him this last time than before , yet alexander quite vanquished him and the whole strength of his kingdom at arbela a city of assyria . and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hands . nay the terrour of alexander was such , that it caused darius his own nearest friends to betray him . and so alexander was made master of the whole medo-persian empire . . therefore the he-goat waxed very great ; that is , the kingdom of the greeks was exceedingly inlarged by this accession of the medo-persian empire added thereunto by alexander the great , deservedly so called for thus inlarging his empire . and when he was strong , as having all this power of the medes and persians added to his own . the great horn was broken . this alexander the great , for all his greatness died , and that an immature and violent death , in the very flower of his age , at about the thirty second or thirty third year thereof , and that by poyson as historians record . and , after this great horn of the goat was broken , for it came up four notable ones . not in comparison of the first great one that was broken , but in comparison of the rest of alexander's captains amongst whom the empire was divided after his death . but in that there is not the least mention or intimation of any more than one goat , it is gross delirancy for any one to imagine the horns here mentioned to belong to any other but to him . whence it is as clear as noon-day that all the horns here mentioned signifying particular sovereignties , there being in the mean time but one beast mentioned , which necessarily implies but one empire , state , or kingdom , that all these particular sovereignties must be the sovereignties of one and the same state or empire which the goat signified , which is the greek empire . the four notable horns whereof here aimed at , i conceive , are * ptolemaeus the son of lagus , sovereign of aegypt ; lysimachus of thracia , antigonus of asia , and cassander ( the son of antipater ) sovereign of macedonia . toward the four winds of heaven , that is , east , west , north , and south ; aegypt lying in the south , thracia in the north , macedonia in the west , and asia in the east , if we compare the situation of these four principalities one with another . . and out of one of them came forth a little horn which waxed excéeding great . this cannot be understood restrainedly of the particular person of antiochus epiphanes , * but of the kingdom of the seleucidae commencing from seleucus satrapa or prefect of babylon , who was none of the four notable horns , but himself being less notable grew up by the favour of one especially of the most notable ones , namely , king ptolemy , to whom he made his address when antigonus would have turned him out of his prefecture , as you may see in diodorus siculus . but this little horn , the kingdom of the seleucidae , which rose from such small beginnings later than the rest , grew afterwards very great . first , antigonus king of asia being vanquished and slain , seleucus and ptolemy divided the greatest part of the spoils betwixt them . and seleucus afterwards , demetrius poliorcetes the son of antigonus being taken by him , he got to himself the empire of syria and asia . so exceeding great did this little horn grow in seleucus his time , but nothing comparable to this in antiochus epiphanes his . toward the south , and toward the east . this little horn so called from its small beginnings ( as the little horn , chap. . is ) is to be understood of the whole continuation of the kingdom of the seleucidae , or the succession of the kings of syria or assyria , as helvicus styles them , and so the vision is to be applied to such parts of the succession as it fits with . and therefore this part may point more particularly to antiochus epiphanes , who toward the east overcame artaxias king of armenia , and had over-run aegypt also in the south , but that at his siege of alexandria the roman legat popilius interceded in the name of the senate , and circumscribed him so , that he durst proceed no further but retroceded from his enterprise on aegypt , as you may see in iustin. and toward the pleasant land. the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies what is beautifull , fair , and pleasant . all interpreters understand it of the land of iudea , this being the character of that land in holy scripture , as psal. . the city of ierusalem is said to be beautifull for situation , and the joy of the whole earth ; and ezec. . . the land of iudea is described as a land flowing with milk and honey , and as the glory of all lands . not but that iudea belonged to the kingdom of syria or of the seleucidae before , but that there is here a peculiar occasion of mentioning it , because antiochus epiphanes being disappointed of his purpose on aegypt and alexandria , made presently after , towards iudea to vent his choler upon them . nor do i deny , though the little horn in its more general sense takes in the whole succession of the kings of syria , but that yet it may more peculiarly aim at antiochus epiphanes . * which is the genius of the prophetick style to give as it were two strokes at once , and under one figure to represent both the general state of the thing , and also some more special part thereof alone . and here that may luckily come in of grotius , who understands the horn out of which the little horn comes , to be antiochus magnus , the father of epiphanes , and epiphanes to be called little because he was modicae primùm fortunae , privatus , & romae obses , of a mean fortune at first in a private condition , and an hostage at rome . . and it waxed great even to the host of heaven ; that is , so far that it fought against the people of god , the israel of god , whose god is called the lord of hosts , of which his own people are peculiarly a part , and may be said to have kept garrison , as it were , in ierusalem , the temple being as it were the main fortress thereof . and grotius understands it peculiarly of the levites there watching . and it cast down some of the host , that is , antiochus perverted some of the priests and levites , and of the iews in general , to forsake the law and to observe the customs of the heathens , as you may see in the books of maccabees at large . and of the stars to the ground . even some of those that were or should have been great lights to the people by reason of their learnedness in the law , were perverted and precipitated into a compliance with the heathenish rites and customes . and stamped upon them , trode them into the very dirt and mire at last of abominable prophanations . . yea he magnified himself even to the prince of the host , that is , so as to set himself above him , to dispose of the high priesthood as he pleased , accordingly as he was more largely bribed ; as the case was in iason and menelaus , and to put an end to the service of the temple , and the daily sacrifice as it follows . and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away . these things grotius would refer to the high priest , but the more full and genuine sense is , that epiphanes magnified himself above god himself by thus taking away that service that god had appointed for himself . and moreover he rose to that impudence that he would bring in the idol of iupiter olympius into the temple to take possession thereof , as if he intended to turn the true owner out of doors , who abominates idols , and has strictly forbid his people the worshipping of them ; see cornelius à lapide on the place . and the place of his sanctuary was cast down , that is , was debased and cast down from that hight of sanctity that belonged to it before , by vile heathenish prophanations and sacrificing swines flesh on the very altar , as you may see in iosephus , iudaic. antiquit. lib. . c. . . and an host was given him against the dayly sacrifice by reason of transgression . there is no [ him ] in the original , but the sense may run thus , an host shall be given , that is , granted or appointed by antiochus ( of whom in the same place , iosephus writes , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to hinder the daily sacrifice , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i.e. through his villany and wickedness , his haughtiness swelling to so high a pitch of impiety . to this sense grotius glosses on the place , and it is consentaneous to what follows in iosephus in the same chapter . for presently after , it is said , they built a fort or castle that could command the temple , to nose , as it were , the god of israel , and deter both priest and people from their duties touching the daily sacrifice . for in that castle did antiochus place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a macedonick guard , for the purpose . and it cast down the truth to the ground , that is , the true religion or true worship of god contained then in the law of moses . and as if this chapter of iosephus were a comment on this passage of daniel , it follows in order after this , that , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the holy book that containeth the law of moses wherever it was found , it was presently abolished , i.e. torn in pieces or burnt . and it practised and prospered , that is , these wicked doings of antiochus succeeded and obtained for a time . that the ancient fathers make antiochus epiphanes a type of antichrist ( whose time is also set ) is better known than that i need to note it . but in nothing is antichrist like his type more than in trampling under foot the sacred scripture , ( as antiochus caused to be burnt or torn in pieces the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the law of god contained in the holy bible , ) that the people of god , without any scruple , might be made subject to the vain inventions of men ; in his cruel persecuting of them that will not partake of his idolatrous sacrifice of the mass , as the iews were persecuted , tortured , and killed for not communicating in their feast of sacrificed swines flesh , as it is recorded touching eleazar , maccab. . . and lastly , in endeavouring to heathenize the people of god again by many idolatrous and pagan-like rites and customs , as you may see antiochus did in the books of maccabees . but this only by the by , we go on . . then i heard one saint speaking , and another saint said unto that certain saint that spake . saint here is as much as angel , as ch. . . and behold a watcher and an holy one , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that angels are called holy ones and watchers is from the ethereal purity , exertedness , and activity of their nature , as well as from their office and ministry , they being as it were the vicarious eyes of god to watch over his people for their good , and to see that righteous things be done among men . the most easie and genuine translation of the original i think is this , then i heard an angel speaking , and that same speaking angel said , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to a certain one who shall be nameless , as if it were put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the sense i have expressed . but it being a word occurring no where but here , and aquila , symmachus , theodotion , and the septuagint not venturing to interpret it , but leaving it as they found it in the original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , phelmoni , it raises a suspicion in me that there is some greater mystery in it than some men are aware of , and therefore , i conceive , with calvin , it is a title of christ , and that this angel here called palmoni , is christ himself , having this mystical name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pele , wonderfull , which is one of the titles of him , isa. . . and from almoni , which is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 obmutuit , and in pihel , colligavit , which intimate the ineffableness and unutterableness of the admirable union or colligation of the humane nature with the divine , of the soul of the messias with the eternal logos , as it is said also of him in the apocalypse , that he has a name written that no man knows but himself . which admirable and unspeakable condition of christ is set out by this word palmoni . * which is the sense that calvin himself seems to aim at upon the place . how long shall be the uision concerning the daily sacrifice , viz. concerning the taking of it away , how long will that condition last ? and that transgression of desolation , viz. that wicked usage of antiochus against the people of god and their city and sanctuary , which he will so greatly oppress and make desolate , as it follows in the next words . to give both the sanctuary and the host to be troden under foot , to be insulted over , despised and prophaned . by the host here in the first place may be understood the priests and levites that kept watch and ward there in the temple , engarrison'd , as it were , in this great and glorious castle of the god of israel . to say nothing of the angelical powers residing there , such as were heard to say before the final destruction of ierusalem and the temple , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , let us go hence , but no small part also of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this host are the rest of the people of israel . . and he said unto me , unto two thousand thrée hundred days , then shall the sanctuary be cleansed . the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , evening-mornings , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which plainly shews that prophetical days are not here meant but natural days . and it being an unskilfull conceit to think there was an affectation to predict the time to a very day that this desolation or oppression from antiochus should continue upon god's people , it is plain the time is to be reduced into years . and so by the answer may be signified there would be six years or there-about , which may comprehend the first coming of antiochus into iudea when the priesthood was prophaned , as also his second , his interdicting the iudaick rites , the placing the idol in the temple , and the whole time of the intermission of the daily sacrifice : so grotius expresly upon the place . but from the time of that gross prophanation of the temple when antiochus his soldiers set an heathenish altar in the sanctuary and sacrificed swine's flesh on it , till antiochus eupator granted the iews the free use of their religion and temple , thomas lydiat reckons about three years and a half . which may give a glance , being prophetically understood , at the time of the true antichrist , chap. . as to the duration of the entireness of his kingdom . then shall the sanctuary be cleansed . at least by that time it shall be cleansed . . and it came to pass when i , even i daniel , had seen the uision and sought for the meaning ; he praying in his heart that he might understand it , then behold there stood before me as the appearance of a man. an angel externally visible to him in humane shape . for this is not a dream , or night-vision , but a day-vision , as i observed out of grotius in the beginning . . and i heard a man's voice betwéen the banks of ulai . the river vlaeus that runs by susa , betwixt the banks of this river he heard the voice of palmoni , or christ : who since he could walk on the waters when he was in the flesh , might well appear betwixt the banks of vlai in the air , or upon the water , and there speak in a man's voice before he was incarnate . which called and said , gabriel , make this man understand the uision . the giving this command to gabriel shews , that this palmoni is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , any ordinary angel ; but this and what was above-said may well assure us that it was the prince of angels , yea christ himself , if we add what will occur in the tenth chapter . . so he came near where i stood , and when he came i was afraid . and might have been more astonish'd if palmoni himself had come so near him , when he could not bear the presence of one of his ministers . and fell on my face , through very astonishment my spirits failed in me . but he said unto me , understand o son of man , that is , be attentive and diligent to conceive what i say . for at the time of the end shall be the uision . though it be long , even about years , till this of the little horn be fulfilled in antiochus epiphanes , yet at the end for a certain the vision will be accomplished . to say nothing how its antitype at another time of the end , even during the time and times and half a time , will have its completion too . . now as he was speaking with me , namely , at the hearing of his voice , i was as much stounded thereat as before at his sight , and so sinking down fell upon my face , my spirits retiring as in those that are in a deep sopor , as if they were half dead . and therefore our english translation is not so exact that renders the following words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i was in a déep sléep on my face toward the ground . vatablus has it , sopore correptus cecidi in faciem 〈◊〉 in terram , and calvin , sopitus corrui , &c. and the vulgar latin , collapsus sum pronus in terram . which therefore signifies a sounding fit that took him at the hearing the voice of the angel. hence daniel is concluded to have fallen twice to the ground , the first time at the sight , the second at the voice of the angel , says maldonat . which naturally implies , that saving in these sounding fits daniel was perfectly awake , and that this vision was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , properly so called , a day-vision not a night-vision or divine dream . but he touched me and set me upright , the hebrew is , he made me stand upon my standing , that is , by his touch he enabled me to stand upon my feet again ; so great vertue was there in it . and no wonder that the aethereal and vivifical body or vehicle of an angel which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the marvellous energy thereof , actuated also by so holy an inhabitant , should raise daniel , faln into a sound , unto life again , when holy souls even in their terrestrial tenements have done such marvellous cures , and by the application of their own bodies have raised them to life that have been taken to be dead , as elisha did in the widow's child , and paul in eutychus . and here we see the angel gabriel ( christ appearing in humane shape by way of prelude to his incarnation ) to have a preludious mission , as of an apostle , to preach to daniel and to instruct him , and to do miracles also as the apostles did . for this is a priviledge of the ministers of christ's kingdom , the malcuth of the god of israel , which is the tenth sephirah with the cabbalists , as geburah the fifth , the topick of the powers belonging to that kingdom , of which doing miracles is one . and gabriel here , the angel , his name signifies the power of god , or the strength of god. . and he said , behold i will make thée know what shall be in the last end of the indignation . for this prediction of the wrath of god in the time of antiochus against his people , and the raging tyranny of antiochus over them , is the main drift of this vision , and here the angel promises to tell what shall come at the end thereof , which he does ver. . that he shall be broken without hand . for at the time appointed the end shall be . all times and affairs are in the hands of god , and he can determine as he pleases , and at his appointed time the heat of those persecutions and oppressions of the iews under antiochus shall have an end , they being not to last passing days as was declared above by palmoni , that prince of angels and men , and of israel especially . . the ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of media and persia , that is , the whole race of those kings from cyrus to darius codomannus , as is to be understood from ver. . where the ram is said to push west-ward and north-ward , and south-ward , which was not performed by any one king but by the succession . for that typical ram , says gasper sanctius , rusht out of persis an oriental quarter , and turning himself to the south assaulted aegypt , aethiopia , and libya ; to the north , pontus , scythia , and cappadocia ; and turning himself to the west he made himself master of the babylonians , assyrians , ( i suppose he means syrians ) and the isles of the mediterranean . these things were not performed by one king but by the succession . and grotius particularizes for the main . for upon [ towards the west ] the persians , says he , under darius the son of hystaspis and xerxes made war upon greece , [ towards the north ] the said darius made war against the scythians , [ toward the south ] cambyses invaded aegypt and aethiopia , as i noted above . so evident is it that the whole succession is understood of the kings of media and persia by the ram together with their kingdom . whence it is reasonable that by the goat the whole succession of the kings of the greek empire should be understood in like manner . . and the rough goat is the king of grecia . hic rex pro regno ponitur hebraicâ locutione quae talia permiscet , says grotius . and , i say , the rough goat is the kings of graecia together with their kingdom or empire , that is , the whole succession of their kings with their kingdom or empire . but now for the rough goat , as he is here called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that hirsute or long-haired goat , and consequently long-bearded , ( which above was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which interpreters make to be a young goat , and refer it to the youngness of alexander when he undertook this expedition against darius to win the eastern monarchy , ) i do not see but this long-bearded goat as he is here described may have reference to alexander's army , it consisting of old soldiers , as iustin describes them , the leaders especially . ordines quoque nemo nisi sexagenarius duxit , ut si principia castrorum cerneres , senatum te alicujus priscae reipublicae videre diceres . none , says iustin , led the files unless he was threescore years old , so that if you viewed the fore-part of the army , you would take them to be the senate of some ancient common-wealth . these long-bearded sexagenarii appeared in the fore part of the army as the goat's beard goes before the rest of his body . but at least the condition of alexander's army consisting so much of old soldiers may very well be prefigured by this long-haired or long-bearded goat . and the great horn that is betwéen his eyes is the first king. this first king is most manifestly alexander the great , a thing that no man ever denied , and he is the first horn of the goat , or first king of the greek empire . from whence it necessarily follows that there must be other horns and other kings to succeed in this body of the goat or greek empire . this is so plain that grotius himself does allow it upon ver. . that the four horns of the leopard as he calls them , ( he had better said heads ) belong to the greek empire , that is , to the third empire , and consequently the four horns of the goat . thus much grotius whether he will or no , is forced to allow , though upon chap. . he seems to endeavour to avoid it . . now that being broken whereas four stood up for it , four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation , namely , out of the greek nation . these four kingdoms into which alexander's empire was divided grotius is forced to confess , as to the first kings of them or heads of them , that they belong to the leopard or goat , the third monarchy . now what a miserable and unnatural divulsion is there that the successours of antigonus , suppose , of ptolemaeus lagi , of cassander and lysimachus should be torn off as it were from their predecessors in their four kingdoms respective , to make a distinct empire from the greek , which is as mad and extravagant as to cut off the leopards and goats heads with their horns to make two goats and two leopards of them . and yet this valiant exploit grotius aims at , that he might excuse the roman empire from being the fourth beast , and the papal power the little horn amongst the other ten. what aegyptian darkness and blindness will prejudice and interest cast men into , that can entertain such impossible conceits as these ? here is but one goat and one great horn and four lesser horns , which lesser horns imply so many successions of the four first kings , be they longer or shorter . which therefore according to the prophetick style and common sense can make no more than one greek empire , first entire under one king , and then divided under four , with their successours . but not in his power , that is , they were neither so valiant as he in their own persons , nor was their kingdom so strong by reason of the wars among themselves , they squabling one with another about the prey . . and in the later time of their kingdom when transgressions are come to the full , that is , when the sins of the iews shall be very much increased . a king of fierce countenance understanding dark sentences shall stand up . this no man doubts but is understood of antiochus epiphanes , but withall most of the ancient and modern look upon epiphanes as a lively type or image of antichrist . but in that it is said [ in the later time of their kingdom ] in the singular number , that fairly offers to us this truth , that in prophetical account the four kingdoms named before are looked upon as one kingdom though they be divided into four parts and have four kings , some of longer and some of shorter succession . but in that it is said [ in the later time of their kingdom ] viz. of the four kings as they were at first , this does so manifestly tye the first four kings to their succession even to antiochus epiphanes his times , as many of them as reached so far ; that it is a plain demonstration that the kingdom of the four horns doth extend it self into the times of antiochus epiphanes , and that therefore the third monarchy which is the greek reaches at least so far . whereby grotius his fond conceit of making the kingdom of the lagidae and seleucidae the fourth empire and the fourth beast , is quite blown away . and it is hence evident that the fourth beast or empire is the roman . now that epiphanes is said to be a king of a fierce countenance , the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may as well signifie , vultu duro & obfirmato , of an hard , bold , and shameless countenance . the vulgar latin renders it , rex impudens facie , and gasper sanctius records one specimen of his impudence out of s. ierom , luxuriosus , says he , fuisse dicitur & in tantum dedecus , per stupra & corruptelas , venisse regiae dignitatis , ut mimis quoque & scortis publicè jungeretur , & libidinem suam populo praesente , compleret . which publick fornication and adultery of his whether it be a sign of greater shamelesness than the spiritual fornication , i mean , the idolatry of antichrist , his antitype , not only practised by himself in publick but also injoyned by him for others so to practise , i leave the unprejudiced to consider , and whether antiochus his setting the idol of iupiter olympius in the temple , be a greater piece of boldness than a●…tichrist's setting himself in the temple of god upon the holy altar which is the throne of christ or god , to receive publick adoration from men there , shewing himself as if he were god , or above him , by decreeing things contrary to the laws of god , as if he were supremum numen in terris , as his flatterers call him , for who can null or abrogate the law of god but that god that made it , or some god , if there be any , higher than he ? what antiochus did to the iews in commanding them point-blank to transgress the laws of the god of israel , and in making them conform to the idolatrous laws of the gentiles , ( the samaritans , those false brethren , writing in the mean time to antiochus in this style , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to the glorious god king antiochus , ) the same does antichrist in his forcing the true servants of the living god and faithfull members of christ , against the express word of god , to worship idols of his own setting up , and so to pollute the church with gentilism , his flatterers in the mean time crying out , dominus deus noster papa , and that all is right that he commands and no man must disobey him , as i have noted above . these are great examples of boldness in the antitype as well as the type , who yet was never so bold as to avow that a piece of bread ( such certainly , examined by the indubitable test of sense , scripture , and reason ) was either a man or god , and miserably to kill men if they would not yield to this bold obtrusion . now for the understanding dark sentences as this passage in some sense respects antiochus epiphanes , so it does antichrist , and is , it may be , more eminently fulfilled in the later than in the former . the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , [ chidah ] which most usually signifies a parable or riddle , but it signifies also , at large , any hard question . such as the queen of sheba is said to propound to king solomon , the word chidah is there used chron. . where she is said to commune with him of all that was in her heart , and that solomon told her all her questions , &c. which two great persons surely spent not their time in , riddle me , riddle me , what 's this ? as children sometimes do , but the queen of sheba put hard and weighty questions to him in points of state , religion , and philosophy . and in the two former antiochus might be pretty well versed , and would not stick , when the question was put , whether the pure worship of the god of israel such as himself had appointed was to be kept , or the rites of the gentiles and their idolatry to be brought in amongst the iews , to make all his people of one religion , and so the more to strengthen his kingdom ; he would not stick , i say , to pronounce , having an equal share of boldness as of wit , that the pure worship of the god of israel must stoop to the reason of state. and whether antichrist has not horribly defiled the ancient pure christian religion with gross gentilism and idolatry , to support the wealth and greatness of his antichristian kingdom , let all indifferent men judge . these things are so plain and open that they are unknown to none but those that wilfully shut their eyes . but besides this , the papal hierarchy is a most notorious understander of hard questions in matters of religion especially , and of state so far forth as religion or holy church is therein concerned , as assuming to themselves the privilege of infallibility . so that the pope , with his hierarchy at least , is the infallible oracle of christendom to solve hard questions . which makes me conceive that this passage [ and understanding dark sentences and hard questions ] was put in by the spirit of prophecy with a more peculiar respect to antichrist himself , than to antiochus , his type . and indeed that church would make every sentence in scripture a riddle or dark sentence that the pope may have the pretence of interpreting it , who will be sure never to interpret it inconsistently to his own corrupt interest . . and his power shall be mighty , but not by his own power . the power of antiochus over the iews was caused by some mistaken or ill-minded iews themselves . and as for antichrist or the head of the healed beast , or of the beast that was and is not , and yet is , it is plain apoc. . . that the ten kings give their power to him . thus plainly is his power mighty but not by his own power . and he shall destroy wonderfully . but whether antiochus destroyed more iews or antichrist more christians let any one that reads history compute , and tell which of them is the more wonderfull destroyer . for not only the bloud of saints and prophets , but the bloud of all the slain upon earth is laid to the charge of the papal hierarchy , apoc. . . and shall prosper and practise . antiochus against the iews , and antichrist against the true christians , apoc. . . and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people . the mighty , the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 azumim , the septuagint render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , vatablus , and the vulgar latin robustos . it signifies those that were strong in faith , and stout and couragious in professing the truth , whether in the times of antiochus or antichrist . these may be those which the apocalypse calls the prophets , and the holy people are those that are instructed by them which are called saints , apoc. . . what a destroyer antiochus was , and how much greater a destroyer of these antichrist has been , all history rings of it . what antiochus was to the sincere iews , the same was antichrist and much more to the sincere apostolick christians . . and through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand , and he shall magnifie himself in his heart , that is , applaud himself as all politicians do ( when things succeed ) for his own great policy that he has brought things to pass as they are . this history testifies to be true as in antiochus so much more in antichrist or the papal hierarchy , there never having been a more cunning polity in the world as all historians and politicians are agreed . which perspicacity of theirs in politicks is set out by the little horn with eyes ( chap. . ) amongst the ten horns as i have noted above on that chapter . and by peace shall he destroy many . the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in peace , out of time of war , he shall destroy many . multos pacificos & innoxios occidet , says à lapide , and grotius understands it of the iews persecuted for their religion by antiochus . but what is this to the bloudy massacres that antichrist has made upon the peaceable and innocent protestants and to the burning god knows how many beside with fire and fagot ? the examples are more fresh than that they need to be named . he shall also stand up against the prince of princes , the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , where grotius says , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is attributed to the chiefs of all the families of the priesthood , ezr. . . and ch. . v. . wherefore the chief priests being called princes , the high priest must be the prince of princes here meant . and let that be one sense , though calvin says it is nimis argutum & infirmum . but this sense of the prophecy is fulfilled in antiochus his setting up and pulling down the high priests at his own pleasure , against the law of god , as you may see in the books of the maccabees . but is there nothing in antichrist that answers this presumption in antiochus his standing up against the prince of princes ? surely yes . what think you of the emperour ? has not antichrist stood up against him with a witness , and that many a time as historians record , and sometimes stood with his foot upon his neck singing super aspidem & leonem ambulabis , as i noted above ? and other sometime has humbled him so as to make him be content to receive the imperial crown in the submissest manner imaginable , the pope crowning him with his feet , and when the crown was on , kicking it off again , as spo●…danus records of pope celestine the third . but the full sense of the prophecy in this passage i think is not yet exhausted , but by the prince of princes is also understood the god of israel in reference to antiochus whose temple he prophaned and robbed , affected himself the title of god , and was so saluted by the samaritans , and at last brought in the abomination of desolation the statue of iupiter olympius , in more full contempt of the god of israel . this is antiochus his standing up against the prince of princes , as gasper sanctius comments upon the place , and i think not without judgment . but you will say , how is this fulfilled in antichrist or the pope ? how has he prophaned god's temple , or robbed it , or brought in the idol of iupiter olympius , &c. answ. it is manifest that he has prophaned gods temple , i mean , the church of christ , by bringing in heathenish customs and idolatrous practices into it , as is abundantly known ; and as for robbery or sacrilege , the most precious treasure the church has he despoils them of , viz. the word of god , or the law of god , of which the psalmist says , they are more precious to him than thousands of gold and silver . to say nothing of what are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the apocalypse ch. . v. . and depriving the living temple of god of their livelihoods upon pretence of their heresie , not permitting them to buy and fell that receive not the mark of the beast . and that the popes have affected the title of god has been also above noted , they accepting of it by not reproving their flatterers , as neither did antiochus when they called him god. qui non vetat peccare cum possit , jubet . and that nothing may be wanting to compleat the parallelism , he when he brings himself into the temple of god , and behaves himself as to absolute power as if he were god , as it is said in the epistle to the thessalonians , he being but a man , what can this man be but an idol , the fulminant iupiter of mount coelius , ( for that mountain is appropriate to the pope of rome upon account of the lateran there , his palace ) as that idol antiochus brought into the temple of the iews , was iupiter of mount olympus , by which the poets understand heaven , coelum , from whence mount coelius is so called , that the names may have also some little correspondency as well as the things . but if this seem too quaint and operose , let the intelligent consider whether the bringing one idol into the temple of the iews , or the filling of the christian church with thousands of idols and requiring the people to worship them , which the papal hierarchy does , be the greater affront to the prince of princes , to god and christ , who is king of kings and lord of lords , and has expresly commanded , thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image , thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship them . but he shall be broken without hand . morbo divinitus immisso , says grotius , god inflicting a sore disease upon him . for , to be done without hand , in scripture phrase signifies to be done not by humane but by divine power , as the stone cut out without hands , ch. . and cornelius à lapide upon this passage [ but he shall be broken without hand ] sic antichristum christus , says he , occidet spiritu oris sui , thess. . . for he had said before upon ver. . that antiochus in many things was the type of antichrist , following the opinion of the ancient fathers therein , irenaeus , origen and others . and gasper sanctius acknowledges that antiochus was viva quaedam imago antichristi , a lively image of antichrist , and is so throughout to the very last stroke according to that intimation of cornelius . and the very circumstances of antiochus his death , as it is described , will notably sute with the circumstances of the extinction of the papal hierarchy , maccab. . . the worms rose up out of the body of this wicked man ( antiochus ) and whilest he lived in sorrow and pain , his flesh fell away , and the filthiness of his smell was noisome to all his army . but thus he died , percussus faetore & vermibus , as cornelius phrases it upon the place . and as antiochus went out thus with a stink , so in all likelihood the exstinction of the papal hierarchy will leave no good favour behind it , but end in wretched contempt ; according as it is predicted touching the king of babylon , no doubt a type of the pope or papal hierarchy , isa. . . all the kings of the nations even all of them lie in glory , every one of them in his house . but thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch , — as a carcase troden under foot . thou shalt not be joyned with them in burial , because thou hast destroyed thy land and slain thy people , massacred , killed , consumed in prison , and burnt at the stake many hundred thousands of apostolick christians for not complying with the worship of those idols which this king of babylon had set up , and also filled all christendom with bloud upon other squables . let that be for one instance amongst the rest which i above-named , that those two emperours henry the fourth , and frederick the first , fought above threescore battles in defence of their own right against the enemies of the empire stirred up to arms by the popes of rome . see my exposition of that prophecy of isaiah in my synopsis prophetica , book . ch. . but enough has been said to shew how lively an image antiochus epiphanes was of antichrist , viz. of the pope or papacy , and how much the church of god , as well christians as iews , are concerned in this vision . . and the uision of the evening and morning which was told is true . explicatio visi , says grotius , exponens numerum dierum nihil habet obscuri . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 verum , says he , hîc est clarum , apertum . wherefore [ is true ] here signifies , is not aenigmatical or symbolical , the days are not symbols of so many years as elsewhere , which calvin also observes , but are to be taken in the literal sense as was above declared , though the other part of the interpretation touching antiochus epipha●…es may have also a further meaning touching antichrist . but it is here to be noted that the angels giving notice to daniel that the vision of the days is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , is a plain truth , no aenigma , but that the days signifie days in a literal sense , does imply that unless there be some such notice to the contrary , that they signifie aenigmatically and stand for years , as in dan. . , . wherefore shut up the uision , that is to say , having exactly writ this vision with the explication lock it up safely , that the original may be kept to compare with the event . so grotius as well as cornelius à lapide , and calvin . for it shall be for many days , the time from the prophecy to the event will be a long time , betwixt three and four hundred years . for from belshazzar's reign to antiochus epiphanes is about years . . and i daniel fainted and was sick certain days , namely , by reason of my converse with and consternation of mind from the hearing and seeing of those angelical powers , so much removed above the condition of us mortals , and also out of sadness for the prophanation of the sanctuary , and great calamities of my nation which were foretold me . afterwards i rose up and did the king's business , that is , after i had grown well again i went about the business the king sent me for into susiana where i was when i saw this vision . and i was astonished at the uision , that is , i lookt with an astonished or forlorn look by reason of the vision i had seen , that portended so much ill to my people . but none understood it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . none understood what the matter was with me , that i lookt so sadly and ghastly on it . quàm diligentissime poteram dissimulabam dolorem meum . to that sense grotius interprets the place , and before him theodoret , maldonat , and gasper sanctius . notes upon vision iii. ver. . that strange exploit of his literally taken , &c. ] his climbing up with his soldiers a steep rock as natural goats are said to do . the story is in iustin lib. . cap. . peragrata india cùm ad saxum mirae asperitatis & altitudinis , in quod multi populi confugerant , pervenisset , cognoscit herculem ab expugnatione ejusdem saxi terrae-motu prohibitum . itaque cupidine herculis acta superare , cum summo labore ac periculo potitus saxo omnes ejus loci gentes in deditionem accipit . ver. . ptolemaeus the son of lagus sovereign of aegypt , &c. ] the authentickness of this distribution to be applied to the four horns , that is , the notable ones , as the four chief successours of alexander , appears from diodorus siculus , lib. . p. . where , upon cassander , ptolemaeus , and lysimachus , their making peace with antigonus , the sum of the form of agreement was this . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say , that cassander should be chief commander of europe till alexander the son of roxana came to age ; and zysimachus should be lord of thracia , and ptolemaeus of aegypt with the cities conterminous in africk and arabia . and antigonus should be prefect of all asia . and the greeks live after their own laws . and thus they continued but advanced in title . for upon demetrius his naval victory over ptolemy , and notice given thereof to his father antigonus , antigonus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , puffed up at the greatness of the success , put upon himself a royal crown and took to himself the title of king. which out of emulation and to shew himself not at all discouraged by that late defeat , ptolemy did also , and in imitation of him lys●…machus and cassander . which things iustin also witnesses , lib. . cap. . and seleucus a supernumerary to the four notable horns , who did rise up after ptolemy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , lately having acquired the satrapies of syria superior to adjoyn to his former prefecture , crowned himself king also , diodor. lib. . p. . but that the above-named four horns still continued tight till seleucus routed antigonus and his son and so succeeded in their place , is plain from diodorus . for there is mention how cassander , lysimachus , seleucus , and ptolemaeus by common consent made war against antigonus , lib. . p. . his ambition threatening to swallow up all . and whe●…as some leave out lysimachus out of the number of the four first notable horns , it is without reason and against the testimony of this excellent historian di●…dorus siculus , who reckons them together , and gives us to understand that seleucus came on afterwards as a supernumerary , helpt to this his power ( which afterward proved so considerable ) by the favour of ptolemy ; as part of the very title of the nineteenth book of diodorus gives us to understand , which is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. how seleucus receiving a small army from ptolemy made himself master of babylon , and recovered his former satrapy and prefecture again . and that lysimachus may not be thought unworthy of the rank of those four notable horns , consider what iustin says of him . erat hic lysimachus illustri quidem maoedoniae loco natus , sed virtutis experimentis omni nobilitate clarior , quae tanta in illo fuit ut ●…nimi magnitudi●…e , philosophiâ ipsâ viriumque gloriâ omnes per quos oriens domitus est , vicerit . so little 〈◊〉 is there but that , according to thomas lydiat out of diodorus , he should be reckoned one of the four notable horns , after the breaking of that first great one . ver. . but of the kingdom of the seleucid●…e , &c. ] the truth of what is said here will be the more easily acknowledged from what we have produced upon the foregoing verse out of diodorus and iustin. but i cannot here but take notice of the well grounded confidence of thomas lydiat , who in his emendatio temporum , anno mundi . writes thus . videtur verò nobis pace om●…inum , ipsum 〈◊〉 imperium hoc tempore babylone institutum aliqua●…to post caetera illa quatuor successorum alexandri , ●…uisse parvum illud cornu juxta danielem propheta●● ab uno eorum exoriens : quandoquidem sel●●cus 〈…〉 initium ptolemaeo accept●● retulerit ac 〈◊〉 s●…pra ipsum evectus fit . the reasons are manifest from the foregoing note on the eighth verse . and of these two main kingdoms of the lagidae and seleucidae he adds this observation , that the epocha of the anni seleucid●…rum , is at this very day by the arabians , saracens , and maho●…etans called dhilcar●…a●●● , from these two horns so remarkable in history and the prophecy of daniel . which is the genius of the prophetick style to give as it were two strokes at once , &c. ] viz. a more general stroke and a more particular , touch , and that in the series of the same words . the former whereof for more expedite and compendious expression you may call geniconaea , the latter idiconaea , which signifie the general and more particular meaning of such a part of the prophecy . as in this present instanc●● geniconaea the whole succession of the kingdom of the seleucidae may be understood , but by an idiconaea such passages as are understood of others in the succession at large , may be again particularly applied to antiochus epiphanes , for whose sake chiefly the affairs of the seleucidae are predicted . and to give instances of these figures in other propehcies , apoc. . by a geniconaea the whole succession of the heads of the beast that was , is not , and yet is , ( namely , of the roman empire become pagano-christian ) whether emperours of popes , are understood by the seventh head of that beast , but by an idiconaea the popes particularly , as antiochus epiphanes particularly in the succession of the seleucidae . so apoc. . the beast healed of its deadly wound , healed i say by the diligence of the two-horned beast , and recovered again into a kind of paganism , by a genico●…aea may be understood of the whole laick roman empire , so debauched by the sacerdotal polity , but by an idiconaea , the making of the image of the beast may be referred particularly to the german empire as the object or opus , and to the pope as the particular artifex thereof . and lastly , in daniel chap. . ver . . the king that does according to his will and shall exalt himself , &c. by a geniconaea may be understood of the roman power , at least from the first epocha of christianity to the expiration of the said power , which will expire with the pope , but by an idiconaea it is particularly understood of the papal polity or hierarchy . which four examples i hope are sufficient to illustrate these prophetical figures , which are worth the notice of the judicious and considerate , and will serve to reconcile serious interpreters of the prophecies , some hitting upon the idiconaea of the prophecy , others upon the geniconaea . which is no clashing one with another , if they understand themselves . but that sense which the geniconaea exhibits is necessary sometimes , and demonstrably true by virtue of the synchronisms . ver. . which is the sense that calvin himself seems to aim at , &c. ] and theodoret and isidore are of the same opinion as they are cited by gasper sanctius ; neque desunt , says he , qui christum esse dicunt illum qui in flumine apparuit , quique gabrieli jussit ut prophetae obscurm illud aenigma manifestaret , quasi jam praeluderet ad sumendam posteà humanam naturam , in qua suas deinde inter homines delicias haberet , ita theodoretus & isidorus . so gasper sanctius upon the place . vision iv. the vision or prophecy of the seventy weeks communicated to daniel by the angel gabriel , chap. . . in the first year of darius the son of ahasuerus , that is , the son of cyaxares ( king of media ) as the greeks call him . and ctesias in diodorus siculus , biblioth . histor. lib. . p. . seems to call him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , * which is very near to ass●…baras , and consequently to asuerus . which cyaxares the mede gave his daughter nicrotis to nebuchadnezzar the son of nabopolassar to wife , who therefore was the sister of darius the mede as well as mandane , who was the mother of cyrus the persian . of the séed of the medes . for he was son to cyaxares king of media , whom , being an infant in a manner , his father committed to the tutelage of nebuchadnezzar , his son in law , when he died , together with his kingdom , over which nebuchadnezzar set astyages of near a kin to nicrotis his wife , haply her uncle : but upon nebuchadnezzar's death cyrus rebell'd against astyages , by some intimation from his uncle darius , and overcame him , after he had reigned some thirty five years in the kingdom of media and persia , and darius had been kept out of it the time . but astyages being vanquished , the kingdom of media was restored to darius , and cyrus had the kingdom of persia for his pains . see tho. lydiat his emendatio temporum . which was made king over the realm of the chaldeans , succeeding immediately belshazzar , after cyrus nephew to darius had taken babylon , and belshazzar was slain . wherefore darius was invested in the kingdom of babylon , cyrus his nephew delivering it to him , being then about sixty two years of age. and forasmuch as he lived from his infancy in nebuchadnezzar's court , and nicrotis nebuchadnezzar's wife was his sister , and was brought up as nebuchadnezzar's son , and so haply called out of courtship , the babylonian empire seems still to have been continued in his reign , and he fitly to be called the king of the chaldeans , as daniel the prophet here styles him . and yet notwithstanding daniel comparing the babylonish captivity and the extirpation of nebuchadnezzar's race by the medes and persians , and that , cyrus being commander in the war , by name so predicted by the prophet isaiah , he comparing these things , i say , with the commencement and duration of the empire of nebuchadnezzar and his sons , predefined by ieremy the prophet , and with the time himself was first made captive , which was in the fourth year of iehojakim king of iudah , and the first of nebuchadnezzar when he was sent by his father nabopolassar with regal power against aegypt , it came then into his mind that the expiration of the seventy years captivity of the iews in babylon was near at hand , as it appears in the following verse . . in the first year of his reign i daniel understood by the books . for there was in the hands of the iews then the books of moses and the prophets , that they might know their transgression , punishment , and time of appointed mercy . the number of the years whereof the word of the lord came to ieremiah the prophet , ier●…m . . . . and this whole land shall be a desolation and astonishment ; and it shall come to pass when seventy years are accomplished i will punish the king of babylon , &c. and the whole race of his sons was exstinct in belshazzar killed at the taking of babylon by cyrus . and ch. . ver . . and all nations , says he , shall serve him , and his son , and his son's son until the very time of his land come . and there was but three successions , nebuchadnezzar himself , evil-merodac his son , and belshazzar his son's son , ( according to the words of the prophet ) slain at cyrus his taking of babylon . of whom isaiah foretold by name what a friend he would be to the iews , isa. . . that saith of cyrus , he is my shepherd , &c. that also of jeremy , ch. . v. . is very express , thus saith the lord of hosts , that after seventy years be accomplished at babylon , i will visit you and perform my good word toward you , in causing you to return to this place . wherefore daniel seeing so plainly from these places of the prophet sent to the iews by god , that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of ierusalem , and then relaxate their captivity , and observing also that cyrus had now appeared , and cut off the race of nebuchadnezzar , and reckoning from the time of his own captivity and the beginning of the reign of the kings of babylon , he did rationally conceive hopes that the day of their deliverance was now nigh at hand , and accordingly he betook himself to his devotions to hasten it as follows . . and i set my face unto the lord god , viz. toward the temple at ierusalem , as he did , ch. . v. . which is a demonstration it is no idolatry to direct a mans devotions towards one certain place . to seek by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes . not lazily expecting , as if , because god had once promised , he would be faithfull and be sure to perform it , let us behave our selves as we will , but preparing himself ( for i look upon him as the representative here of all the people of the iews ) by earnest prayer , hearty repentance , and sincere humiliation , and fitting himself thus , to receive so great a mercy and blessing . which singular piety of daniel , all those that wait for the deliverance of god's people from the captivity of the mystical babylon should set themselves faithfully and conscientiously to imitate , and break off their sins by repentance , and make it their business that the man of sin may be slain in themselves , and the spirit of everlasting righteousness and holy love be raised in them , and then will it come to pass , that even the external antichrist will be consumed by the breath of christ's mouth , and by the brightness of his appearing . not by might , that is , not by an army , nor by power , but by my spirit , saith the lord of hosts . this was the word of the lord to zerubbabel , zach. . . no force nor rebellion becomes the people of god in their captivity under the king of babylon , as ieremy also inculcates unto them . but they are patiently to wait till some good prince , like cyrus , moved by the good spirit of god and their own good behaviour do relaxate their captivity ; in the mean time they are to be obedient to the supreme magistrate in all secular matters , but as for their religion , to be as firm in it as daniel and the three children . . and i prayed unto the lord my god , and made my confession and said , o lord , the great and dreadfull god. which expressions shew with what fear and reverence we are to make our addresses to him , and that from our very heart and inward sense , not in words and composed looks only . kéeping the covenant and mercy , that is , the mercifull promise in particular of redeeming thy people from the babylonian bondage . to them that love him , and to them that kéep his commandments . i.e. if we were fitted for so great a blessing by unfeigned love and obedience to him . . but , we have sinned and have committed iniquity — the whole prayer and confession following is plain of it self , and wants no interpretation , only we may observe from the very form , we have sinned , &c. that daniel here sustains a publick person , and represents the whole body of the iews , as i noted before ; we will pass therefore to the twentieth verse . . and whiles i was speaking , and praying , and confessing my sin , and the sin of my people israel . this passage also shews that daniel in his prayer represented the whole body of the people of the iews . which he did certainly with the profoundest humility and the purest sincerity conceivable , as all such addresses in such like circumstances are to be made . and presenting my supplications before the lord my god , for the holy mountain of my god , that is , for the restoring of the exercise of their religion to the iews , and the rebuilding of the temple . . yea whiles i was speaking in prayer , even the man gabriel , viz. the angel gabriel in humane shape . behold the efficacy of humble , earnest , and sincere devotion , that by a kind of divine magick does attract unto the supplicant , not only the gracious illapses of the holy spirit within , but also the external and visible converse of angels . whom i had seen in the uision at the beginning , namely , at susa near the river vlai or vlaeus , ch. . v. . being caused to fly swiftly . as if angels were winged creatures . but they are so described only to signifie the speed of their ministry . touched me about the time of the evening oblation , that is , about the ninth hour of the day , the time heretofore while the temple stood , allotted for sacrifices , and now the temple was down , it was made choice of by the iews for the time of prayer , which is a more spiritual sacrifice . . and he informed me , and talked with me and said , o daniel , i am now come forth to give thée skill and understanding , namely , touching his people , religion and temple , for which he was concerned with so much zeal and earnestness . . at the beginning of the supplications the commandment came forth . thou hadst no sooner set thy face to seek god in behalf of thy people , thy religion , and the holy mountain , but it was given to me in charge to come unto thee . and i am come to shew thée , not only how cyr●…s king of persia will relaxate your captivity , but how the messias the true shepherd of israel will come to relaxate his people from the captivity of sin and satan . for thou art greatly beloved . that is one sense of the hebrew text which verbatim is , thou art a man of desires , which may signifie as well actively as passively , and denote the earnestness of his spirit in matters that concerned the glory of god , and the welfare of his people . which holy desire is , as i said , a certain divine magick of the soul to attract the influences of the spirit of god , and the ministry of angels . therefore understand the matter and consider the uision , viz. this prophecy here ensuing of the seventy weeks , which is expresly called a vision in such a general notion as prophets are called seers . it is grotius his note upon the text ; nam ut prophetae videntes , ita omne prophetiae genus , quocunque modo ●…omini innotescat , visio dicitur . which vision of daniel considered well , it does more than abundantly answer the scope of his prayers , which concerned only the relaxation of the babylonish captivity , for which they obtained a decree in the very first year of the reign of cyrus . but in the ensuing vision , as it is called , there is granted them the injoyment of their religion and laws for the space of about five hundred years , and the promise of the coming of their messias for greater purposes than were otherwise ever designed for the people of god. this might daniel collect by understanding the matter , and considering the ensuing vision , which is this : . seventy wéeks . that seventy weeks of years are understood , and that it is as much as if he should have said years , all interpreters are agreed , as well iew as christian. but the very number of these prophetick weeks , which consists of ten septenaries of septenaries , or ten weeks of weeks , seems not to want its mystery . for a septenary of septenaries , or week of weeks prophetically understood is years , which is the iewish iubilee consisting of seven sabbaths of years , so that every forty ninth year was , as the sept●…agint render it , their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it was the year of iubilee wherein whose lands were gone from him were restored again to him ; his lands that were mortgaged as it were before , were then released gratis . now these seventy weeks being ten jubilees ( for ten times is ) and the number ten a note of perfection , as alcazar observes , what are these seventy weeks of daniel but the most perfect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or the bringing in the most compleat jubilee conceivable , that is , our being restor'd to our heavenly inheritance by the coming of the messias ? for this is the main upshot of them . are determined . the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , cut out , as some would have it , implying that immediately after the expiration of these , the iews would into captivity again . but that is a curiosity more than needs , and not so conformable to the sense of the prophecy . so that in my apprehension the english translation has the odds of it . upon thy people and upon thy holy city , that is to say , near upon the expiration of the seventieth week the people of the iews shall be no longer the people of god , nor the city holy ; their religion naturally ceasing upon some act of theirs , whereby a better according to the purpose of god shall be brought in . but from the commencement of the seventy weeks till that time which is nigh years , they should be the people of god , and their city accounted holy , which is a fair space of time and ought to be welcome news to daniel . to finish transgression , that is , to consume sin and make an end of it . for to that end christ came who baptizeth all true believers with the holy ghost and with fire ; or , who throughly purges his floor , and burneth the chaff with fire unquenchable , as iohn the baptist witnesseth of him : and he of himself , that he came to pluck up every plant that was not of his father's planting . and such sure is all manner of sin and unrighteousness . but the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , may signifie to compleat transgression . and it seems as naturall a sense in this place . as if the angel should say , seventy weeks shall the scourge be taken from thy people , wherein notwithstanding they will again follow their own evil ways , and increase their sins to the very height , which they did the most notoriously in killing their messiah . and to make an end of sins , or to put an end to the iudaical sin-offerings . for so will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is as much as to seal , denotes a putting an end to a thing by fulfilling and compleating it , as toward the latter end of this verse to seal up vision and prophecy , the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used . and surely christ crucified on the cross for the sins of the world was the complement of all sin-offerings . and to make reconciliati●● for ini●…uity , or to expiate iniquity , for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies . but the sense is much-what the same in both . and that christ is that great expiation and atonement for sin all true believers are agreed on . and to bring in everlasting righteousness . such a law or religion as shall endure for ever , and according to which if we live will be our justification , not the works of m●…ses his law nor those offerings and sacrifices . iustitia ●●terna est evangelium , says pintus , quod 〈…〉 justitiam . and i say it is that evangelium ●●ternum mentioned apoc. . so that no other evangelium is to be expected beyond this here mentioned in dani●…l . and to seal up the uision and 〈◊〉 , that is , to fulfill and accomplish the prophecies , viz. those great important prophecies concerning the messiah . so the word to seal is used , e●…ek . . . thou seal●…st up the sum , which plainly there signifies to make full or compleat . and the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same that is here , and immediately follows , full of wisdom and perfect in beauty . so that the vulgar latin renders this passage very rightly . vt impleat●…r visio & prophetia . and to anoint the most holy , viz. the most holy person that ever lived . for though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be the feminine gender and may seem to signifie rather sanctity in the abstract , or res sancta , yet the iews themselves understood it of a person , moses ger●…ndensis of the very messiah . and it is used of any thing consecrated to god , whether field , man , or cattle , levit. . . besides that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 need not be a noun of the feminine gender , but be the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sanctus , as appears from levit. . . and num. . . or the words there are to be read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and therefore again confirm that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 belongs to persons consecrated as well as things . if it had been meant of the most holy place of the temple , it had in all likelihood been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might go for the most holy place , christ was also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( see rev. . . ) in the most eminent manner imaginable . for in him dwelt the godhead bodily . . know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build ierusalem , viz. from the decree or command of artaxerxes longimanus in the twentieth year of his reign , that decree , namely , that nehemiah obtained of him , who made his complaint to him , how the place of his father's sepulchers lay waste , that is , the city ierusalem and the gates thereof were consumed with fire , according as hanani had told him , nehem. . . that the wall of ierusalem was broken down , and the gates thereof burnt with fire . wherefore chap. . ver . . in the twentieth year of artaxerxes his reign he obtained a decree for the restoring and rebuilding ierusalem . for the other decrees granted by cyrus , darius hystaspis , and by this artaxerxes in the seventh year of his reign , concerned only the temple , not the city and the walls , as you may plainly discern by reading of ezra . whence it is manifest that the epocha of the seventy weeks must be taken from this decree of the twentieth year of artaxerxes . but chronologers and divines have been discouraged there-from , because they could not adjust the time from thence to the passion of christ , it shooting many years beyond it , and so they were content to take up with the seventh year of artaxerxes , from which the seventy weeks end in the passion of christ according to funccius and others . but our country-man thomas lydiat , has adjusted the chronology of times so , that from this epocha of the twentieth of artaxerxes the passion will fall in the middle of the last week , which is exquisitely according to the prediction of the prophecy , as we shall hear anon . unto messiah the prince , that is , unto the manifestation of that person that is so well known and so much expected by the iews under the name of their messiah , the word never being used absolutely but concerning him . to the initiation therefore of him into his ministry , he being first baptized by iohn , and so shewing himself after in preaching the gospel of the kingdom , and doing miracles for the confirmation thereof in the sight of all the people , to this manifestation of the messiah , shall be seven wéeks and threescore and two wéeks , that is , sixty nine weeks , there being no mystery in the pa●…ting of these numbers saving an hebrew idiom to be understood from ezekiel ch. . v. . and gen. . often in that chapter , as also ch. . v. . as grotius comments upon the place . in the last day of the sixty ninth week , that is , in the four hundred eighty third year from the twentieth of artaxerxes longimanus , did iesus the messiah manifest himself according to thomas lydiat's chronology , whom i conceive to have hit the nail on the head in this business . the stréet shall be built again and the wall . this seems to be added on purpose to give light to interpreters that the decree here mentioned from whence the weeks do commence , is the decree granted in the twentieth year of artaxerxes , because that was expresly for the city and the wall , the other three that preceeded for the temple . the sense is , that not only the area of ierusalem shall again be replenished with houses , but the wall shall also be built again . even in troublesome times , as it appears out of nehemiah , ch. . for the builders were fain to have their swords in readiness as well as their trowels . . and after thréescore and two wéeks shall messiah be cut off , namely , after the sixty two weeks which succeed immediately the seven weeks , that is to say , after sixty nine weeks shall messiah be cut off , viz. the above-named messiah the prince . for that must needs be the natural meaning thereof ; and , as i said before , messiah is never put thus absolutely but here ; whence doubtlesly the iews gave him , whom they expected for their redeemer , the name of messiah . and now for [ cut off ] if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the original it might signifie transfixus , or affixus , as funccius would have it ; but it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies to cut off , not only from life , but as mr. mede says , from reigning as a king. and in respect of the iews he was cut off in both these senses . for he was the messias their prince whom his own people rejected and cut off from life , and thereby from themselves that they should be no more his people , nor he their king. but not for himself . the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and most easily and naturally is translated , and they shall be none of his , viz. they that cut him off or crucified him , the people of the iews shall no longer be his people . this sense generally interpreters run upon , and it is most congruous and coherent . the messiah shall be cut off by the hands of the people of the iews , and that 〈…〉 none of his . and the people of the 〈…〉 shall come , i.e. but the people designed 〈…〉 people of messiah the prince hereafter . for 〈…〉 ●…ede interprets the place excellently well in 〈…〉 , rendring 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , populus 〈…〉 , understanding thereby the romans , in 〈◊〉 empire christ was chiefly to have his church 〈◊〉 kingdom . and it is most natural that as messiah before was the same with messiah the prince , so the prince here should be the same with the messiah , the sense not only fitting exceeding well , but being more closely knit and compact . shall destroy the city and the sanctuary . for this hainous parricidium of the iews , namely , for their murthering of their messiah the prince , shall the romans destroy their city and their sanctuary , which was effected by titus the son of vespasian . and the end thereof shall be with a 〈◊〉 , that is , after the destruction of the city the roman army shall overflow iudea . and to the end of the war desolations are determined . [ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ] grotius here interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ for ] not [ to ] and renders it , pro fine belli erit definita desolatio . deus hunc exitum bello isti praefinivit terrae vastitatem . god has determined that issue of the war , the devastation of the land. . a●…d he shall confirm the covenant with many for one wéek . mr. mede renders it , nevertheless he shall . for indeed the conjunction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has the force in a manner of any conjunction , and may be rendred according as the sense directeth . and the most genuine sense seems that which mr. mede has given . that though israel was cast off , yet a remnant according to the election of grace should be won off to christ , by the preaching of the gospel of his kingdom , which should be done before and after his passion , by himself and his apostles . this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or new covenant , which adorns the very title page of the new testament . and the seventy turn it in this place , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , he shall confirm the covenant , that is , the covenant of the gospel . see funccius on the place . and that with many , i.e. with several . for so the word signifies frequently , though it be true also that many of the iews were converted and entred the covenant within the space of this one week , which is the seventieth or last week , some being converted before christ's passion , others afterwards . but the main body of the iews remained obstinate , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and were none of his pleople . and in the mid●● of the wéek he shall cause the s●…cr●…fice and oblation to cease . this implies the death of the m●…ssiah as well as that in the foregoing verse , [ and after threescore and two weeks the messiah shall be cut off , ] but the time there is less definitive . so be it be but af●…er the threescore and second week , or rather the sixty ninth and before the seventieth expire , that part of the prophecy as to time would be fulfilled if there were no more accurate determination intimated , as there seems to be here , and that he is to be cut off in the midst of the last week , suppose in the fourth year thereof . whis is the scope that thomas lydiat has aimed at , and , as i conceive , hit the mark . which makes me now less adhering to that laxe sense of [ in the midst ] which i set down in my mystery of godliness , on this verse . wherefore about the fourth year of the last week of years shall the messiah , by suffering on the cross , put an end to the iewish sacrifices and oblations . for he that was prefigured by them being come , and having been sacrificed and made an oblation , it is plain those other ceased as to right and efficacy , that is , were abrogated or abolished by the excellency of his person , who offered up himself once a-sacrifice and atonement for the sins of the whole world . the main drift therefore of the prophecy is more curiously to define the time , as of his manifestation , so likewise of the death of the messiah , which i question not but may very well be hinted at here in this expression , [ he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease , ] and what was spoke more at large and more undeterminately in the foregoing verse , touching his being cut off , may here , for time , be more punctually defined . and as at the mention of his death before there was annexed that vengeance upon them that murthered him , so here where it is repeated again , the same vengeance is repeated as follows . and for the over-spreading of a●●minatio●…s he shall make it desolate . the hebrew is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which with mr. mede i would render thus , and commanding over a wing of abominations he will be a destroyer , i.e. over an army of idolatrous gentiles , namely , the roman army . and the coming of the romans to destroy the city of ierusalem is in several places of the new testament called * the coming of christ. so well fitted is the interpretation to the nature of the thing . see also grotius upon matth. . . whose interpretation though it differ something from mr. mede's . yet in my opinion does confirm it very much , he proving by several citations out of authours that the romans bore upon their standards the images of their gods , which in the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . we shall only instance in that one of many out of tacitus , fulgentibus aquilis signisque & simulacris deûm in modum templi . so fitly is this wing of abominations interpreted of an army of idolaters . even until the consummation and that determined , read out of the hebrew , and until the consummation , i.e. the finishing of this destruction , shall be poured upon the desolate , read out of the original . it shall continue upon the distressed , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall do so . the roman army shall continue upon ierusalem till they have brought it to utter devastation . or it shall be spread like water poured out upon the desolate , in that sense that inundation was interpreted in the foregoing verse . for , as i intimated before , this is but a repeated prediction of the same vengeance upon the fame occasion , namely , upon the consideration of their murthering the messiah , which is implied in that expression , [ he shall make the sacrifice and oblation to cease , ] himself then becoming a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world , according to the eternal counsel of god. the sense which we have given of this prophecy is so coherent and of one piece , though taken out of several interpreters , that no sense can be applied to any writing more naturally . so that if chronology will but favour the interpretation of this prophecy , it is most certain that what we have given is throughout the true meaning thereof . * and the chronological part thomas lydiat in my judgment has made out accurately well , of which i shall say something in my notes . the goods news therefore that the angel gabriel imparts to daniel in this prophecy is this , that they should return out of captivity and that from the going forth of a certain decree to rebuild ierusalem , even with the wall thereof , that from that time forward god had determined seventy weeks for them , that he would give them his special protection so long , and they should be his people , and their city should be holy , their oblations and sacrifices should not be antiquated , nor their law and religion abrogated . but within that time a new law or religion should begin , which should never have an end , which therefore is called the everlasting righteousness , and that the iudaical sin-offerings should then cease , that is , should be no longer warrantable or effectual . for the messiah should by that time be come , whom they will slay , and he shall by his death put an end to all other sacrifices , his bloud being sufficient to reconcile the whole world to god. but though the design of divine providence herein was holy and good , yet the iews crucifying him out of malice and envy ( enormous wickedness having blinded their eyes , ) the people of the iews shall be cast out of god's favour , nor shall they be the people of the messiah , but a people that shall be the messiah's , viz. the romans , shall come and destroy their city and sanctuary with an utter destruction . this is a short and easie account of the whole prophecy , in which it plainly appears , that the foretelling of the destruction of the city is but an appendix of the main prophecy , and comes but in by the by , as an effect of that soul act of the iews in slaying their prince : but that the circumscription of the prophetical weeks is made by those main designs they were allotted to the iews for , that is , they should not expire till the everlasting righteousness was brought in , till the prophecies were fulfilled , and the most holy anointed , that is , till the messias was manifested to the world , till he suffered , rose again , ascended into heaven , sent down the holy ghost upon the apostles , and set the christian religion on foot in the world . all which was done in the last week . after which the city was to be destroyed by the romans , but there was no need of precisely setting down the time when . it came to pass by titus the son of vespasian about thirty years after the expiration of daniel's weeks . notes upon vision iv. ver. . which is very near to assibaras and consequently to assuerus , &c. ] which name assuerus , gasper sanctius looks upon as a common name of all the kings of media , as merodac of the babylonian kings , seleucus and antiochus of the kings of syria , ptolemaeus of aegypt , caesar of the roman emperours , arsaces of the parthian kings , and tigranes of the armenian , because the first founders or enlargers of those kingdoms were called by those names ; see gasper sanctius on the place . but diodorus seems to make this distinct succession by different names , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( the son of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so thought because he succeeded astibaras , whenas according to thomas lydiat he might be the uncle of nicrotis ) which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the greeks call ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . whence it is probable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 standing there for one single king , as well as the rest , that it was the proper name of that single king as the rest are , and consequently that assuerus is not a common name of the kings of media , but a proper name to some one of them , or at least was so at the first . but if grotius his critical conceit be true , that out of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is assuerus , the name xerxes is framed , first by letting go the two gutturals ●… and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as he notes it to be very usual so to do , and leaving only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and not sounding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with that softness as in assuerus , ( which when it is sounded entire is as much as the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as you may observe in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mosche , whence vossius derives the greek m 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in strabo , the name of a sidonian atomick philosopher there , ) but rather transposing the single elements in the sounding that compound letter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and setting the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so that it will be of the same fo●…ce with the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( as the doricks by transposition pronounce not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( which is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ) but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) so that from this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will be made xwerx , and the w for more easie sound being cast out , xerx , whence the greek termination added it will be xerxes ; this conceit i say of grotius , if it be true ( and i wish he had brought more examples of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 founding as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) , ( a people , i suppose , he means in arabia ) from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , where both the guttural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is lost , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 turned into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) i can easily allow that from that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or assuerus , or xerxes , the medo-persian kings afterwards might be called assueri or xerxes . and i will also add , that according to grotius his way of criticizing , cyaxares the father of darius may more easily be derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for by casting away only the first guttural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and retaining the second , and by sounding the first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the later as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it will be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and then by detracting the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into the foregoing syllable for more easie pronunciation , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that is , cyaxares , the real father of this darius , and only the supposed father of astyages , from the mistake of the heathen historians . and we are the less to wonder that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should have the same force that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has , sometimes , when-as bochartus notes that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes has so , as in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from whence thrax is derived as he would have it . wherefore xerxes being the same with assuerus , and artaxerxes but xerxes again with a prefix of art , which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a persian word , as bochartus notes , and made by transposition of letters from the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and of the same signification with it , viz. illustris , magnificus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as herodotus and hesychius render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , gasper sanctius may have said well in the sense above limited . and artashasta may be but the same xerxes or assuerus under a disguise , namely , of the above-mentioned honourable title prefixed , and sounding the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 more soft , and letting go the force of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in it , and suffering the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to fall to the ground . as if it were first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , with an insignificant termination of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but that honorificent title 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prefixt to it , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let go , as needless , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as harsh , the sound also being as clear without it , it became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and as assuerus was xerxes before , so this artaxerxes , the great magnificent xerxes , or king of persia , as cambyses certainly thought himself when he had added aegypt to the persian empire , and others so accounted him . and herodotus in his sixth book expresly says , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . wherefore we will thus far assent to gasper sanctius , that assuerus or xerxes either openly or in disguise , either this name or darius , ( as usually the names of the kings of syria were either seleucus or antiochus ) were the names or titles of the kings of persia after cyrus . but artaxerxes the more frequent of the two , insomuch as darius who was vanquished by alexander , is , as grotius has noted , called artaxerxes by iacchiades , but the first that bore that name for eminency seems to be cambyses , ezra . , . which might be paraphrased thus , ver. . for in the reign of ahasuerus , that is , in the reign of xerxes or the persian monarch , in the beginning of his empire , &c. ver. . namely , or , that is to say , ( for so will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie ) in the days of artaxerxes , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that great xerxes , viz. cambyses , that immediately succeeded cyrus , who enjoyed the persian empire not passing two or three years , and therefore the days of cambyses may well be said to be in the beginning of the persian empire , wrote , bishlam , mithridath tabeel , &c. this seemed to me to be an easie and natural sense of this perplexing passage in ezra , when i did not know any body of the same mind with me . but looking after into vatablus , i find his short note to be , tempore artaxerxis , is est assuerus . so that assuerus is but a general expression for a xerxes or monarch of persia at large , but the person is determinated in artaxerxes , by whom cambyses , as being so early in the beginning of the persian empire , is naturally understood . and if this may satisfie the reader , my playing so long above in words , having also so grave an example therein as hugo grotius himself , i hope will the better be excused from being reputed pedagogical trifling . see grotius upon ezra . . ver. . called the coming of christ. ] if any one doubt whether the roman armies coming to destroy ierusalem be one coming of christ , let him read dr. hammond upon matth. . . that citation out of iohn . . where peter asking iesus and saying . lord what shall this man do , speaking of the beloved disciple iohn , iesus answered , if i will that he tarry till i come what is that to thee ; this citation , i say , is clear and unanswerable , and must needs be understood of the coming of christ to take vengeance of the iews . for it is not sense to understand it of so little a time as to the day of pentecost , when he sent down the holy ghost and was with them in that assistance , nor of so long a time as his coming to the final judgment . and besides , there were several things so peculiar in his chief commander over the army , as if he were pickt out on purpose or so qualified on purpose , that the iews and christians too might easily believe that he was jesus christ his general , and that he by him and his army came to take vengeance on the iews . as that he healed the blind and the lame with spittle and touch , that he was one of the most humble and mild men then breathing , which is the very character of christ , that he shut the gate of ianus his temple and erected a temple of peace , like a lieutenant of that prince of peace the blessed jesus , that after the taking ierusalem and vanquishing the iews neither he nor his son would be named iudaicus , as other conquerours usually were styled from the nation they conquered , but ascribed the whole work to god. these and several other considerations which that learned authour produces , are more than enough to make good the fitness of mr. medes interpretation , who understands 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ a destroyer ] of christ , who then made good that parable of the injured king , matth. . who in his wrath sent forth his armies and destroyed those murtherers , and burnt up their city . and the chronological part thomas lydiat in my judgment , &c. ] a general account of thomas lydiat his performance in this point i have given in my latin explanation of the grand mystery of godliness , lib. . cap. . sect . . which i will translate hither with some emendation . the summ of his method is this . forasmuch as he makes the beginning of the reign of artaxerxes longimanus six years sooner than funccius does ( who places it in the fourth year of the olympiad , but lydiat in the second year of the olympiad , ) it is plain that daniel's seventy weeks from the thirteenth year of artaxerxes ( according to lydiat's epocha ) will have the same ending as before from funccius his , viz. in the third year of the olympiad . so that if the passion of christ , as funccius would have it , fell out upon the expiration of the last year of the last week according to his own epocha , which helvicus also intimates , namely , that christ suffered anno quarto olympiad . . we computing from thomas lydiat's epocha , viz. from the twentieth year of artaxerxes longimanus , the passion will fall on the first year of his last week , which is immediatly next to the last of funccius his , if the passion fell out no later than they would have it . wherefore the rest of the artifice of lydiat's method is spent in proving the passion of christ to have fallen out about three or four years later than vulgarly they reckon , viz. in the twenty second year of tiberius ( whenas others reckon it to have fallen out in the nineteenth of his reign ) and consequently to have happened in the midst of the last week , according to daniel's prophecy . this is that general account i give for the main , in the abovesaid place of my mystery of godliness . but here , for the better satisfaction of the reader , i shall briefly intimate the main reasons whereby thomas lydiat proves , first , that artaxerxes longimanus began his reign six years sooner than others account ; and secondly , that the birth , baptism , and passion of christ fell out several years later . that artaxerxes his reign began six years sooner than others reckon , he makes out thus . artaxerxes began his reign about six months before the flight of themistocles into asia , according to the testimony of thucydides , the chief of the heathen historians : for , themistocles in his flight , according to him , being tossed upon the sea a day and night at anchor , that he might not be driven into the army of the athenians then besieging the people of naxos , whom they subdued , as the same thucydides writes , before that twofold famous victory against the persians by sea and land in the same day on the coast of pamphilia , and near the shores of cyprus , under cimon the athenian general ; which victory they obtained , according to diodorus his own testimony , on the third year of the . olympiad , himself referring the flight of themistocles to the former year , viz. to the second of the . olympiad : i say , it is plain from hence , that the beginning of this artaxerxes his reign was six years sooner than funccius , and others do place it , the argument being founded upon the unexceptionable authority of thucydides , of whom plutarch in the life of themistocles writes thus . that thucydides and charon lamplacenus record , that xerxes being dead , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that themistocles had the communication with his son , viz. artaxerxes . and plutarch adds , that though others write that the said conference was with his father xerxes , yet he prefers thucydides his account as being more agreeing with the chronology of those times . and so cornelius nepos prefers his authority in this matter before all others , quòd aetate proxi●●s erat qui illorum temporum historiam reliquerunt , & ejusdem civitatis fuit . who therefore could not but know the time of the athenians subduing the naxii , and of their famous twofold victory by sea and land over the persians , under ci●●n their general . so well is this first point established . but see further in thomas lydiat himself , a●●o mundi . now for the birth , baptism , and passion of christ , daniel's weeks reaching from lydiat's epocha , which is the twentieth of artaxerxes , ( which is seven years later than the seventh in their epocha , or the thirteenth of his own ) reaching , i say , seven years beyond funccius his expiration of them , so that the year next after the last week , with funccius , is the first of the last with lydiat , it was requisite for lydiat to set the birth , baptism and passion of our saviour several years later than others account them , that his death may fall out in the midst of the last week . wherefore , whereas funccius and helvicus also placed the birth of christ in the year when c. lent. getulicus and m. messalinus were consuls , and others sooner as well as other-some later . thomas lydiat places his birth in the latest date of all , viz. in the year when l. aelius lamia and m. servilius geminus were consuls . which is four years later than that date of func●…ius , which is in the third year of the olympiad , that in the third of the . the first ground of his evidence is , that the birth of our saviour happened in that oecumenical tax appointed by augustus , and mentioned luke . and executed by cyrenius then governour of syria . now we are to understand that augustus in his reign appointed three universal taxes of the citizens and people of the roman empire , which suetonius intimates in his life , cap. . ce●…sum populi ter egit , primum ac tertium cum collega , medium solus . the first was presently upon the defeat and death of antonius , cum collega m. agrippa . the third a little before his own death , cum ti●…erio collega . the middle tax was that which was begun by his appointment in the year of p. vinitius and p. alfinius varus , but finished , aelius catus and sentius saturninus being consuls , as thomas lydiat makes good out of history . and that it is that middle tax of augustus that the evangelist luke points at , is plain , in that the first and last are too far removed to pretend to be the tax at what time christ was born . and besides , the year before the beginning of this tax , caius caesar and aemylius paulus being consuls , the gates of ianus quirinius were the third time shut up by augustus , and it is a tradition of the antient fathers , that christ was born in such a time of peace . moreover in the beginning of the consulship of vinitius and alfinius was the twenty eighth of augustus his obtaining that title , together with that supream and sacrosanct tribunitial power , and clemens alexandrinus expresly says , that augustus his tax and our saviour's birth was in the twenty eighth year of augustus his reign . and lastly , epiphanius farther to confirm the other , says , our saviour was born in the twenty ninth year after the iews were perfectly joyned with the romans , and iudaea fully reduced under tribute , so that they had paid tribute to the romans these nine and twenty years , commencing after the fourth year of herod his being constituted king by augustus ; forasmuch as so many entire years , says thomas lydiat , intervene from the first tax of augustus ; peracted , himself the sixth time and agrippa the second time being consuls , to his second tax instituted , vinitius and alfinius being consuls . to this purpose does thomas lydiat argue , to prove that our saviour was born in the time of the second tax of augustus , which was begun vinitius and alfinius , and ended aelius catus and sentius saturninus being consuls . but not content with this , he further proves , that christ was born in the very middle year of this tax , l. aelius lamia and m. servilius geminus being consuls , and p. sulpitius quirinius or cyrenius being then governour of syria ; and that the first tax that he medled in , as the greek , luke . v. . will very well bear it , expunging the comma betwixt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . now the year of these consuls aelius lamia and servilius geminus is the year of the reign of augustus to be computed from the consulship of pulcher and flaccus , ( which is the aera hispanica in tomis conciliorum , as helvicus notes , ) but in this year of augustus was christ born , according to the testimony of irenaeus and tertullian and others , which is no mean argument in a matter of this nature . again , p. quirinius was sent rectour or tutour by augustus to caius caesar after he had gotten armenia . for m. lollius , the former tutor of caius being dead a little before tiberius his return out of rhodes , which was when vinitius and alfinius were consuls ; and caius after his renewing his confederacy with the parthians , and gone again into armenia , being in an heedless conference treacherously wounded , and thereby disinabled as well in mind as body to attend publick affairs : from hence there can be no doubt , since luke affirms this tax to be carried on quirinius or cyrenius being governour of syria or guiding the affairs there , and that caius was thus unhinged , ( who indeed died within a year after that disaster ) there can be no doubt i say , but that augustus by this same p. quirinius at this time , aelius lamia and servilius geminus being consuls , carried on the tax , at what time christ was born in bethlehem , his parents coming up thither to be taxed . and that it is not for nothing called the first tax of quirinius to distinguish it from that other , which he afterwards was imployed in , when the kingdom was taken from archelaus . thirdly , whereas suslyga and kepler make that tax , under which christ our lord was born , depending or interrupted , suslyga for four years from the consulate of censorinus and asinius , and kepler six whole years from the year after the consulate of quirinius to the twelfth consulate of augustus with sylla , as reaching to saturninus president of syria , under whom tertullian with all confidence affirms the said tax to be finished , i appeal says thomas lydiat , to kepler's conscience and ingenuity , whether my account , which reducing the tax within the space of three years divides it by years and half years betwixt quirinius and sentius , allotting a year and an half to each , so that quirinius together with his prefecture of syria began to carry it on in iudaea in the beginning of the consulate of alfinius and vinitius , but sentius succeeding him and caius , in the midst of the summer ( the usual time of changing the presidents of provinces ) next following the nativity of christ , servilius and lamia being consuls , that sentius , i say , finished it in the consulship of aelius catus and sentius saturninus his son in all probability ; i appeal , saith he , to kepler whether this account be not far more rational and congruous , than that of suslyga , or his own . fourthly and lastly , for it were too prolix to take in all ; it appears out of velleius , suetonius and dion , that augustus adopted tiberius and agrippas p●…sthumus in the midst of the consulate of aelius catus and sentius sat●…rnin●…s the junior . but eusebius in his chronicon places the nativity of christ in the year immediatly preceeding that adoption , which therefore is the year of aelius lamia and servilius geminus consuls . these reasons with others , which for brevities sake i have omitted , being considered , and how stoutly and dextrously t. l. has removed all blocks and rubbish which either scaliger , kepler or suslyga have cast in his way , it may convince any unprejudiced man that reads him , that he is in the truth touching the time of the nativity of our blessed saviour . now for his baptism , whereas they usually refer it to the fifteenth year of tiberius , he places it in the beginning of the nineteenth , which makes about four years difference again . and indeed considering that iohn the baptist began but his function ( which was to prepare the way to the messias ) on the fifteenth of tiberius , as it appears luke . and that province being of so great moment and consequence , to wit , iohn his approving of himself so to all the people that he might be an idoneous witness to our saviour that was to come after him , it was requisite that he should exercise his proper ministry some competent time before our saviour appeared upon the stage . and who can say that the space of about four years is more than competent , or superfluous ? but let us hear thomas lydiat's own reasons . and the first is to that purpose we have already intimated , only he adds , that iohn doing no miracles and yet having by the exemplarity of his life and the efficacy of his doctrine drawn the eyes of all so upon him and got such an authority with the iews and esteem , that they began to think with themselves that he might be the very messias , so great an opinion could not be raised in them from one years experience , but from many ; and that it is rashly gathered from christ's baptism being named so soon in the same chapter , that it should be in the very first year of iohn's ministry , viz. in the fifteenth of tiberius ; things of far greater distance of time being spoken of within less compass of lines and no intimation given of the times distance , a thing frequent in scripture . so that the time of christ's baptism by iohn is to be defined from other considerations . and therefore the second reason is , that this nineteenth year of tiberius exactly complies with the age of christ at the time of his baptism , luke ch. . ver . . and iesus began to be about thirty years of age , &c. the greek has it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is , and iesus himself was about thirty years of age ( namely the age in which the levites began their service numb . ch. . ) beginning his function , which he was initiated into by this baptism of iohn , the holy ghost also then descending upon him . now from the year of aelius lamia and servilius geminus consuls , to the nineteenth of tiberius are thirty years , as you may see in chronologers . so plain an argument is this for christ's being baptized in the nineteenth year of tiberius as lydiat would have it . thirdly , from the twentieth year of artaxerxes longimanus to this time of the manifestation of christ in his baptism and ministry are precisely years or sixty nine weeks , according as it said in the very prophecy . that from the abovesaid decree to messiah the prince , viz. to his manifestation should be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks , that is , sixty nine weeks . and thus is there left one intire week to confirm a●… covenant with many , first by his own preaching the first half of the week , and after by his apostles , after he had sent down the holy ghost upon them . and let these three first reasons serve for a tast , but there are more than thrice as many congruencies with historical passages that , lydiat notes in several succeeding years , that do notably confirm this hypothesis of his , touching our saviour's baptism falling on the nineteenth year of tiberius , which i must omit , that the notes upon this vision run not out too far . now the time of christ's baptism is setled , the time of his suffering will be determined with ease , and fall in right whether we will or no , taking but what the generality of expositors have concluded on , whom funccius declares to have been of opinion that christ was between thirty three and thirty four years old , when he suffered , whence of necessity his death falls upon the fourth year of the last week , and about the middle of that year . and that he did not exceed that age is further confirmed by thomas lydiat in his canones chronici , p. . out of theodoret , who expresly says , when our lord for about three years and an half had preached and had confirmed his disciples by his doctrine and miracles , he suffered . to all which you may add , that there being from christ's baptism to his suffering but four passovers , as is apparent out of s. iohn's gospel , ( who writing to make a supply to the omissions of the other evangelists , who scarce take notice of any passover but that wherein christ suffered , would be sure to omit none from the time of his baptism to his suffering ) and christ being baptized in the beginning of the eighth natural month , that is , of the jewish marchesvan or roman november , as thomas ●…ydiat notes out of epiphanius , christ's passion will necessarily run into the middle year of the last week and near upon into the middle of that year , there being nigh six months space betwixt the beginning of marchesvan and the middle of abib or nisan when the passover was kept . so handsomely do all things fall in and agree together . and though i have been very brief in opening the grounds of thomas lydiat's chronological account of this prophecy , yet i hope it is so plain , at least so considerable , that it may excite the reader to seek further satisfaction if he need it from thomas lydiat himself , and admire with all true christians the stupendious providence of god who has left such clear and wonderfull testimonies thereof unto his church in these books of daniel and the apocalypse , for our certain assurance who is the christ and who is the antichrist . and those certain revelations touching antichrist are also as effectual corroboratives of our faith in christ , to as many as are unprejudi●…ed and set themselves seriously to understand them . vision v. which is the vision of an angel in human shape clothed in linen with his loins girt with the fine gold of uphaz , ch. . and is a prooeme or introduction to the vision of the scripture of truth , which takes up the other two whole chapters in daniel . that the same times are run over again as in the apocalypse so in this book of daniel , and things more fully explained in the repetition of the same times , i have noted above . but what is most remarkable in this present introductory vision is this , that the vision of the scripture of truth which follows , and is a description of affairs from the times of the persian monarchy to the end of the world , being of such great importance , ( the affairs of the church not only jewish but christian being so lively described therein ) that which is most remarkable i say is , that as in the apocalypse to visions of like great comprehension and compass , so here to this vision of so vast extent of time is there pref●…xt a very pompous introductory vision : as there is before the prophecy of the seals which reaches from the beginning of the christian church to the end of the world , the representation of the throne of god prefixed and of the four beasts and the four and twenty elders . before the prophecy of the opened bo●…k , which reaches also from the beginning of the church to the conflagration , there is a vision of a mighty strong angel clothed with a cloud and a rain-bow about his head , his face as the sun and his feet as pillars of fire ▪ &c. and lastly , before the prophecy of the seven churches , which is of the same extent with the forenamed prophecies , there is seen in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks , one like unto the son of man clothed with a garment down to the foot and girt about the paps with a golden girdle ; his head and his hair was white like wool as white as snow , and his eyes were as a flame of fire , and his feet like unto fine brass , and his voice as the sound of many waters . which is a representation of christ according to the sense of all interpreters on that place of the apocalypse , and the thing is evident from the text it self . but how like to this description of christ , in the apocalypse , this of the angel here appearing to daniel is , i shall take notice in my exposition of the vision . i will only observe for the present , that there being so pompous an introduction to the vision of the scripture of truth , which reaches from the times of the persian empire to the end of the world , that there must be most remarkable matters revealed therein , such as concern not only the iews but the christian church as well as them , or else the gate will be too big for the city . . in the third year of cyrus king of persia , * namely , in the third year of the persian monarchy begun upon the death of darius the mede , who immediately succeeded belshazzar , the grand-child of nebuchadnezzar . a thing was revealed unto daniel , ( whose name was called belteshazzar ) there are three names that occurr in daniel that sound like one another in the hebrew , but are not the same ; the first is of the grand-child of nebuchadnezzar called belshazzar , in the hebrew it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is compounded of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the pronoun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies thesaurum colligere , where grotius interprets it , belus est cujus opes , q. d. in beli potestate sunt opes & imperia . the other two names in hebrew belong both to daniel , and have a distinction in writing and signification , but they are writ alike in the english , viz. belteshazzar , and so other languages make no discrimination . but here in the hebrew the name that was given to daniel by ashpenaz the prince of the eunuchs , is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which iunius in gregorius gregorii his lexicon sanctum interprets beli abdita thesaurizans , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , absconditum , ( though with something an hard hypallage ) and from the pronoun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is thesaurizare . which sounds as if they would make daniel arcanorum beli thesaurarium the treasurer of the secrets of belus , understanding thereby the god of the babylonians ; which , new name partly because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is of a large and indifferent signification and may signify simply dominus , and partly because he could not help it , he bore as well as he could . but here in this vision there is a variation of the writing , and it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being put before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whence grotius would have it to signify ( as if it were compounded of these parts , of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which preposition and noun put together will signifie latenter , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ignis , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hostis ) latenter ignis hosticus , and daniel calls himself so , says he , signifying that thereby what he had predicted did suddenly and unexpectedly come to pass upon the babylonians . but yet though he a little changed the writing of his name , the sound being so near that which was given him by ahpenaz master of the eunuchs , he thought fit to record it here as well as his own genuine name daniel , which by long disuse in those parts was in a manner buried in oblivion , and therefore he thought requisite to record this more known name of his , that it might be more certain to those nations , that this was his prophecy . to this sense calvin writes upon the place . but indulging to a little liberty and putting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 belteshazzar may signify , homo host is in abscondito , whereby daniel cries quits with them . for when they would have besmeared him with the name of their idol bel , as if he were a professed client of his , this little change of the name declares himself to be inwardly a downright enemy to the babylonish idolatry , though always a faithfull subject to the kings of babylon , as all good men are to their princes be they of what religion they will , though they never close with the palpable erours and gross mispractices therein . and the thing was true , that is to say , the matter that was communicated unto him was not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 chidah , a prophetick parable or aenigm , ( such as was communicated hitherto unto him under the types or figures of an image of various metalls , and of severally shaped beasts , and therefore wanted an interpretation ) but it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , emeth , a matter declared plainly and apertly without any such riddles or figurative involutions . but the time appointed was long , that is , this clear and plain prophecy or vision of the scripture of truth , without any aenigmatical shadows , ( which begins at the next chapter and reaches to the end of daniel ) comprehends a long extent of time , even from the beginning of the persian empire to the end of the world or conflagration , as is exprest in the apocalypse . and he understood the thing and had understanding of the uision , that is , he understood the aforesaid prophecy of the scripture of truth , ( for vision is here as much as prophecy , as i noted above ) it wanting no interpretation , as those aenigmatical prophecies did . this further confirms that that passage [ and the thing was true ] is to be understood as i have expounded it , viz. that the matter was plainly delivered without any aenigmatical figure or symbols of beasts or statues as in the former prophecies . otherwise if [ and the thing was true ] should be understood in that other sense as opposed to false , it would imply that the foregoing visions were not true , than which nothing can be more false or absurd . . in those days , i.e. on a certain time in that third year of cyrus king of persia after the adversaries of the iews ( notwithstanding the gracious decree of cyrus ) had so prevailed with ca●…byses his son , his father being busy in a foreign war against the scythians and others , as to hinder the building of the temple , as it is recorded in ezra , ch. . that they hired counsellers against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of cyrus king of persia. i daniel was mourning thrée full wéeks . and the reason thereof i have already specified , the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , three weeks of days , in counter-distinction to the seventy weeks in the foregoing prophecy , which signify weeks of years , that when in any prophecy it self of daniel , years or weeks or days are mentioned , and nothing intimated to the contrary , it may be presently taken for granted , that it is to be understood of prophetical years , weeks and days . which being an observable rule in daniel , the putting days for years can bring no obscurity on the prophecy , whereby it may less deserve the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , emeth , a plain prophecy . . i ate no pleasant bread , neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth , neither did i anoint my self at all , which implies at other times he did all these , especially he being in that quality in the kingdom that he was . but now in these three weeks of days he earnestly humbling himself before god in the behalf of his nation and religion , he abstained from all these things , ( which otherwise it was lawfull for him and accustomary to use ) to recommend himself the more to god , and make himself more fit for prayer , contemplation and devotion . till thrée whole wéeks of days were fulfilled . though there be no propheticall mystery in these days , they being simply taken for days not for years , yet that he would determine himself to three septenaries , there may be some cabbalisticall arcanum therein , though it may be more curious than needful . they may signify a consummate subduing of the flesh by abstinence , for the fuller enjoyment of the fruits of the spirit or divine influence of the holy trinity according to that of prudentius the christian poet. parcis victibus expeditu ' venter infusum melius deum receptat . . and in the four and twentieth day of the first month , as i was by the side of the great river which is hiddekel . the vulgar latin from the septuagint calls it tigris , and the prophet here calls it the great river , because of the breadth of it as it touches upon the prefecture or province susiana , which daniel was set over , and where he was at the sight of this vision . the head of it is in armenia major as pliny says , and therefore having come so long a way before it arrive at susiana , and being increased by several rivers running into it , it may well become great . it runs on the west side of vlai or vlaeus which passes through susiana too , has its name as pliny reports ( lib. . c. . ) by reason of the swiftness of its course , from an arrow , ita appellant medi sagittam , as if tigris were from the chaldee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hemantik 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being prefixt , from whence it will be tegiris , and after tigris . and the hebrew name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hiddekel is given it for the same cause , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 acuit , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 levem ac velocem esse , which were a name as proper at least for an arrow as for the river tigris . but this makes not much for the understanding of the vision . see gregor . gregorii n. . . then i lift up mine eyes and looked and behold a certain man clothed in linen . this is the very same angel in humane shape that appeared unto daniel when he was near the river vlai , which calvin not without reason concluded to be christ , called there palmoni . and therefore it will be less rash to conclude this angelical shape to be christ here too , and consequently to be the same person in both places , which will be undoubtedly true , if it appear that this angel here is christ , that brought the israelites out of the land of aegypt , gave them a law on mount sinai , setled them in the land of canaan , and bestirs himself here in their behalf in their captivity at babylon . now i think i have proved evidently enough in my exposition of the apocalypse , or rather it is plain at first sight , that the representation there of one like the son of man , ch. . amongst the golden candlesticks , is the representation of christ. and therefore if that be the lively picture of this angel described in daniel , we may well conclude that this angel here in daniel is christ. to take notice that here in daniel he is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a certain man , but in the apocalypse one like to the son of man , as a picture is to him of whom it is the portraiture , is one of the least observations . but it follows , clothed in linen , the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which in this place the septuagint render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ▪ but ezek. ch. . v. . they render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is remarkable what grotius says upon this of ezekiel , idem habitus hîc & in dan. . . & . , . datur angelo qui pontifici maximo , that is , to aaron the type of christ. but from hence it is plain that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which are the very words in the apocalypse ch. . . clothed with linen . and that therefore in both the visions the angel in humane shape was clothed with the pontifical garment down to the foot , or both clothed with linen , which signifies the same thing , namely such linen or pure fine silk as the high priest was clothed in . and as it is here said in daniel , whose loins were ●…irt with fine gold of uphaz , so in the apocalypse it is said , that he was girt about the paps with a golden girdle ; wherefore to be girt with a golden girdle is proper to them both , only in the one the place is mentioned from whence the gold comes , but in the latin it is only aurum obryzum , which signifies only pure gold , of which both their girdles are supposed to be made . and vphaz or ophaz signifies aurum optimum as gregorius gregorii has noted , i suppose most properly optatissimum , from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 optare to desire and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aurum , as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aurum optatum , from whence by detrition of one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ophaz or vphaz , for it is writ both ways . and gregorius gregorii says , it is a place ( as also calvin ) so called from the good or choisest gold there . grotius conceives upon ier. . . that ophaz is the island topazos which pliny makes mention of which it may be might be so called from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but these things as less material i willingly pass by . . his body also was like the beryl . the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies the sea as well as beryllus thalassius ●…ive marinus . the septuagint keep the same word rendring it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . now the sea signifying a multitude there is mention of this tharsis to signify the party here described to be no private person but the prince of a multitude , and that the people is represented together with the prince . which same thing is notified also in that representation in the apocalypse though not by this symbol of tharsis or the beryl . and his face as the appearance of lightning . for this , in the apocalyptick representation is there put , his head and his hairs were white as wool as white as snow , and the whiteness of snow has a very dazling brightness in it like that of the lightning , which is also a white splendour not red like fire , nor is the flashing motion of it necessarily implied but only the bright colour , so that the snow and it may signify the same thing , a mature clearness and serenity of mind . but now they agree again in the very words . here it is said , and his eyes as lamps of fire , and there , and his eyes were as a flame of fire : here , and his arms and his féet like in colour to polished brass ; there , and his feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnance . and lastly here it is said , and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude ; and there likewise , and his voice as the sound of many waters ; and waters unquestionably are a prophetical symbol of a multitude . whence i say , christ is described in both places together with his church , the iewish in daniel , and the christian in the apocalypse . and the prophetick symbols signify much-what the same things in them both . the greatest difference is , in that the mention of the beryl or tharsis is left out , but it only signifying a multitude , the multitude is expressly put in , in the close of the apocalyptick description , to supply its place . and brass brightened by rubbing or polishing and purified by the fire will signify the same things , the tryal of affliction and the being bettered by it . but it is not necessary to insist over minutely on these things ; it is evident enough from what so easily offers it self , that this angel is that very palmoni that appeared to daniel , ch. . . as they both being the same christ bestirring himself in the behalf of his afflicted people the iews , and the latter having the same representation with that of him in the apocalypse , ch. . . and i daniel alone saw the uision , for the men that were with me saw not the uision , at least they saw nothing but a glorious light , as st. paul's fellow-travellers did , when christ appeared unto him going to damascus , and yet they are said to see no body , because they saw not the distinct shape of the appearance , as here daniel and it's likely there saul did . but that daniel's companions saw something , is evident from what follows . but a a great quaking fell upon them so that they fled to hide themse●…ves . which implies they saw something whereby they were thus terrified , and that therefore this of daniel's was a real 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or day-vision , and that he was in the place truly which he mentions , namely by the great river , the river hiddekel or tigris in susiana . . therefore i was left alone and saw this great uision . as being better fitted for such divine communion by his three weeks preparation of fasting and devotion . * but how an angel can make himself seen of one and yet not of others present , or whether the difference lie meerly in the predisposedness of the persons that are to see , is a subtile piece of philosophy not requisite to enter upon in this place . but well may this vision be called great , it being the sensible and distinct presence of the lord christ. and there remained no strength in me , being overcome and stounded at the presence of so glorious a personage , as it follows . for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption , and i retained no strength . . yet heard i the voice of his words . though he was half dead in this strange consternation of mind , yet he heard the voice of this illustious angel that was present with him . and when i heard the voyce of his words , that is to say , but at the hearing the voice of his words , then was i in a déep sléep on my face , and my face toward the ground . the like passage is there ch. . . and therefore the like interpretation is to be given , namely , that he was so overcome and astonished at the voice of this angel as well as before at his sight , that it made him fall down into a soporiferous swound with his face towards the earth , his spirits did so fail him or quite retire through fear . thus were the natural or carnal powers abolished in a manner and annihilated , turned into a present chaos and death , before he could be raised up into a capacity to receive supernatural illuminations . and it is the fate of those that have a strong robustious carnal mind or wit , as they gladly would have it called , to be as uncapable of understanding these prophecies of daniel , or any of the like nature , as he was before his humiliation and concidency of spirit , of receiving them . i cannot forbear to bring in here that description of the method of divine wisdome , siracid . ch. . . at the first she will walk with him by crooked ways , and bring fear and dread upon him , and torment him with her discipline , until she may trust his soul and try him by her laws . then will she return the streight way unto him , and comfort him and shew him her secrets . a figure whereof we have here in this communication betwixt palmoni and daniel . . and behold an hand touched me . when he was fallen thus to nothing in himself through perfect humiliation and contrition , then an hand from without toucheth him , supernaturall power then is conveyed unto him , by due degrees , not all at once , nor per saltum , such inordinate motion having no harmony in it , nor soundness or safety , neither in things natural nor divine . they goe from strength to strength , saith the psalmist , though their beginning be but small as a mustard-seed . but we must first learn to creep and then goe , according as we may observe in the following words . which set me upon my ●…nées and upon the palms of my hands . but this however was a good hopefull beginning , it being in vertue not of our own strength but of that which is supernatural , which will carry us out to the end if we be faithfull . . and he said unto me , o daniel a man greatly beloved . i have noted above that the original has it , a man of desires , and so may signify a man of great love towards god and his people , or a man greatly beloved of god and all good men . understand the words which i speak unto thée , and stand upright . thus was daniel rouzed up and enabled to hear , understand and to take perfect notice of what was to be delivered unto him for the information of posterity . for unto thée am i now sent , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word is the same from whence shilo the name of the messias is derived . whence his being sent hinders nothing but that he may be christ , who is said in severall places to be sent in the gospel . and when he had spoken this word unto me i stood trembling , i.e. by the vertue of his saying unto me stand upright , i stood upon my legs , but i trembled withall as yet being not so throughly strengthened , or fearing what tidings this angel might bring unto me . . then said he unto me , fear not daniel . this was to encourage him and abate his trembling . for from the first day , namely of the three weeks of days , that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thy self before thy god by fasting , mourning and prayer , thy words were heard , thy petition was granted . and i am come for thy words , that is , by reason of thy earnest and zealous prayer i am come unto thee . behold the admirable efficacy of earnest and sincere devotion that attracts to it , not only the ministry of angels , but brings down into converse the son of god himself . . but the prince of the kingdom of persia withstood me one and twenty days . this is spoke by way of preventing an objection ; for if his petition was heard the very first day of the three weeks of humiliation , daniel might think strange that he heard no news of it before now . but to solve that difficulty the angel tells him , that the presidentiary angel of the kingdom of persia with whom he contested , detained him that time . and it is admirable to take notice of the concurrence of daniel's prayers and devotions , and the activity of the invisible powers for that which he prayed for . at the very same time while he prayed , they acted for the effecting the thing he prayed for . but lo michael one of the chief princes came to help me . this bringing in of michael one of the chief princes as assisting against the prince of the kingdom of persia , shews plainly that the prince of the kingdom of persia is an angel as well as michael , and therefore as michael is the presidentiary angel of the ie●…wish nation , so must the prince of the kingdom of persia be the presidentiary angel of the said kingdom of persia. from whence it is plain that there are presidentiary angels of all kingdoms and nations . to which purpose the ancient fathers alledge that of deuter. chap. . . according to the septuagints translation , as cornelius à lapide takes notice . when the most high divided to the nations their inheritance , when he separated the sons of adam , he set the bounds of the people , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , according to the number of the sons of god , not of the children of israel , they reading as it sems , not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , understanding by the sons of god , the angels . and with this agrees excellently well what follows in the latine translation , pars autem domini populus ejus , but the lord's portion is the iews , iacob is the lot of his inheritance . this runs far more coherently than any sense i can find expositors make of it , who reade 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which text therefore implies that whereas other nations have but presidentiary angels over them , the lord himself , i.e. iehova filius , palmoni , is the governour or king of ieshurun or israel , and michael the general of his armies under him . but now for the presidentiary angels of other nations * whether they be good angels , as the general authority of the fathers seems to confirm , or bad , as gasper sanctius industriously endeavours to demonstrate , is a point too nice to be insisted on in so brief an exposition , and therefore i will let it pass . and i remained there with the kings of persia. for i was left alone ( so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signify ) as being the remainder of those that were with me , i.e. michael and i were not both there together for a good while , i having sent him elsewhere , but at last he came again to assist or relieve me ; whom leaving behind me in my place . . now i am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people , for whom thou didst so earnestly intercede in thy devotions , in the latter days . for yet the uision is for many days . as it is said verse . the thing was true , but the time appointed was long : as if he should say , thy great zeal and earnestness is concerning the deliverance of the iews out of this present captivity , and to know what their condition is like to be in reference to it . but i am , for the good of my people , come to make thee understand what will befall the iews , or people of god at large , through the series of many ages , even to the end of all ; what they shall suffer under the greek empire , what under the roman , and what an happy restoring there will be of them towards the end . . and when he had spoken such words unto me , i set my face towards the ground and became dumb , that is , i lookt downwards towards the earth with all reverence and modesty , not being able to bear the glorious presence of this mighty angel. and my astonishment from having beheld him was so great , and also from hearing his voice , that i was not yet able to speak . for that fear , and the surprize of admiration will stop the voice , is a thing vulgarly known , and noted , both in poets and historians as an effect of those passions . . and behold one like the similitude of the sons of men , not in a terrestrial body yet , though in humane shape . it is the same angel , says a lapide , which he had seen , and which had talked with him all this time , and he will allow him to be a type of christ , and calvin mentions some that understand this person in the similitude of the sons of men , to be christ. touched my lips , as he touched the tongue of the deaf and dumb man , mark . and crying ephphata loosed his tongue , that he could speak , as daniel after the angel had touched his lips , says , then i opened my mouth and spake and said unto him that stood before me , o my lord by the uisions my sorrows are turned upon me , and i have retained no strength . so overcoming was the glorious presence of the messiah , before he came in the flesh . these consternations of mind in daniel thus often repeated , set off the inexpressible eminency of the person he conversed with , and the huge weightiness of the matter that he was to conveigh unto daniel . . for how can the servant of this my lord , the hebrew may be rendred , how can this servant of my lord ! for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 zeh here may be referred to servant , as well as lord , and then the sense is , how can so vile a servant , so wretched , poor and despicable a creature as i am . for here zeh signifies as iste in latine , a diminishing indication . ta●…k with this my lord , that is , with such an one as this my lord is . for here zeh signifies eminency of worth and excellency , or height of glory and majesty . which expressions of daniel put calvin to the trouble of making an excuse for him , and to shew , that this does nihil detrahere dei monarchiae . but understanding here by this angel , that christ is meant by it , as i have proved he is meant thereby , this appellation of him by the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 conjoyned with so profound humiliation before him , can bear with it no scruple or difficulty at all . for as for me , straightway there remained no strength in me . so perfect an exinanition ought there to be of our own carnal mind and powers for the fitting us to receive the supernatural power from god , and those divine communications that flow from him . we ought to become breathless and liveless as it were to our natural and carnal sentiments and abilities , that we may be inspired from above , and receive the influences of the holy spirit . . then there came again and touched me , one like the appearance of a man , that is , after daniel was thus lost and confounded in himself , and found no strength of his own carnal will and mind left ( that we may pursue the moral allegory also of this vision ) and after the free and hearty acknowledgment of the same , then christ in humane shape here , though not yet in humane flesh , touched him again . and , says he , he strengthened me , namely by his touch . so great virtue is there in the touch of the divine body of christ. . and said , o man , greatly beloved . what senses [ greatly beloved ] may bear , i have more than once intimated . fear not , but instead of trusting in thine own wit and strength , trust in me . it is the sober boast of st. paul , i can do all things through christ that strengthens me . but that is more moral , the more literal sense is intimated in what follows , peace be unto thee . which friendly salutation shews , that he came for the good of daniel , and for the good of his people the iews , for whom he was so much concerned . be strong , yea , be strong . and this is the word of him , of whom that is true , dixit & factum est . for he is the word by whose command all things were created . the repeating therefore of the command is a note of his proportionating supplies according to the sincere acknowledgment of our defects and desire of being supplied from him . for it is upon daniel that man of desires , that these communications are bestowed . and when he had spoken to me , i was strengthened . and by this strength perceived and acknowldged to come from without , not from our own natural and carnal principles , was daniel incouraged to think himself prepared to hear the voice of christ in things of greater concern , according as it follows . and said , let my lord speak , for thou hast strengthened me , that is , thou hast enabled me to be a fit auditour of thy instructions and informations . . then said he , viz. the angel , knowest thou wherefore i come unto thée , that is , thou canst not easily imagine what things and of what mighty concern i have to impart unto thee . and now will i return to fight with the prince of persia , viz. i will return to dispute or contest ( * for so praeliari is taken in cicero ) with the presidentiary angel of persia , after i have imparted what i have to communicate unto thee . and when i am gone forth , lo , the prince of grecia shall come , viz. the presidentiary angel of grecia , for he will also put in for the empire of the world , and to have the iews under his command . and this is the reason of the mentioning of the prince of grecia here . . but , now that i may enter upon what i came to thee for , i will shew thée what is noted in the scripture of truth , that is , i will declare in plain words ( without any symbolical or hieroglyphical figures , such as were used in the former prophecies ) the divine counsel and purpose , so distinctly and orderly as if it were writ in a book , which writing therefore here is called scripture , and for its plainness and unsymbolicalness , as i may so speak , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the scripture of truth . and i do not question but there is a certain correspondency betwixt this scripture of truth , and that book in the apocalypse first sealed and then opened . the prophecy of which this scripture of truth contains , and the times also before the epocha of the apocalypse , from the persian monarchy to the said epocha , which is fixt in tiberius his reign the third of the roman emperours . and there is none that holdeth with me in these things but michael your prince , that is , there is none of the presidentiary angels of the nations that holds fast to me but your prince , which is michael the presidentiary angel of the iews , who is my general and therefore contains all the powers or forces under him . so little occasion is there , that interpreters should be puzzled or move difficulties how one angel only should be imployed in carrying on and assisting the affairs of gods people . but we may note here by the by , that as michael here is made the presidentiary angel of gods people the iews , so in the apocalypse he is made the general to fight the battles of the christians , the christians succeeding into the place of the iews and being called or implied to be iews or israelites in several places of the apocalypse . and the sense of this passage suits well with the interpretation of the former passages that make this angel so great and glorious , and the same with palmoni , as it is here insinuated , that michael is the generaliss●…mo under him , but that he himself is the lord of hosts properly so called and above this generalissimo , that is , that he is christ. as is further confirmed out of the first verse of the following chapter which ought to have been the last of this , which contains the proemial vision to the great prophecy of the scripture of truth : which first verse is this . also i in the first year of darius the mede , even i stood to confirm and strengthen him . where [ i ] is repeated and an emphasis put upon it , that that act should be imputed not so much to the minister gabriel as to himself that sent him , ch. . . the man gabriel whom i had seen in the vision before , viz. ch. . . being caused to fly swiftly , touched me , &c. now in the vision before , it is manifest that palmoni commanded gabriel , saying , gabriel make this man to understand the vision . therefore there is all the reason to think that gabriel by the same palmoni was caused to fly swiftly , that is , was sent speedily to touch daniel about the time of the evening oblation , when he was at his devotions in the first year of darius the mede . but in that it is said , he stood to confirm and strengthen him , that is , to strengthen michael , ( as both grotius and other expositours , as calvin confesseth , refer [ him ] to michael ) by michael , accordingly as is perpetually to be observed in the apocalypse , that by angels are understood the people over which they preside , is to be meant the people of the iews , who with daniel were strengthened and comforted by that prophecy , ch. . delivered by gabriel sent by palmoni unto him . wherefore it is most evident also from this last reason , that this angel that delivers to daniel this prophecy of the scripture of truth , is the same with palmoni whom calvin with judgment concludes to be christ. whence therefore the angel , that delivers this book of the fate of the church of god and of kingdoms in reference thereto , which is the prophecy of the scripture of truth , must also be christ. which agrees admirably with that in the apocalypse , ch. . that it was onely the lion of the tribe of iudah , that is , christ that had the priviledg of opening the seven-sealed book , and of looking thereon . which privilege of so wonderfull comprehensive prophecy he obtained upon the account of his foreseen obedience even to the death of the cross , and his actual undergoing thereof at the time appointed . and again , that this privilege may be solely reserved to him , that angel also apoc. ch. . in my apocalypsis apocalypseos , i have plainly shewn to be christ , who delivers the little book to iohn to swallow down . which haply amongst other reasons may be called little in that , comparing the epocha thereof with this of the prophecy of the scripture of truth , ( which begins with the reign of cambyses , but that first in the reign of tiberius ) it will be found to take in less time than that by five or six hundred years . but in this do they agree , both the prophecy of the scripture of truth , and the prophecy of the sealed book and opened book , that these latter prophecies run through no other times than those of the prophecy of the scripture of truth , though they run not through all of them , they beginning later by betwixt five and six hundred years , but they both reach to the end of all things or general resurrection , and declare the same things of the same times , and are the prophecies of the same great prophet even of jesus christ the son of god , as i have made manifest to the taking away of all cavils and derogation to our blessed saviour , as if he put but in his sickle in messem alienam , into another mans harvest , and had told by his angel sent by him , apoc. ch. . nothing but what another , one daniel , of old had told before him , saving that he was something more particular , and more copious in declaring matters . which though it may be a pretty specious answer , and stand in stead , where there is no better to be found , yet this i here intimate , so absolutely stoppingmens mouths fromuttering any such derogatory stuff against the person of our saviour , i think is worthy of all due consideration , viz. that it was as well christ himself that delivered this prophecy of the scripture of truth to daniel the man greatly beloved , as it was christ himself that sent his angel to iohn , whose name also signifies gracious or greatly beloved , to communicate to him the prophecies of the sealed book and the opened book and of the seven churches . and that this might be understood by the careful and intelligent reader of this proemial vision , i conceive all those passages that set off the exceeding grandeur and majesty of this angel , and the repeated consternations of mind and humble deportments of daniel towards him , are recorded , as the literal scope thereof . which does not at all exclude those moral insinuations i hinted in the exposition of the vision . and thus much of this vision proemial to the vision or prophecy of the scripture of truth , which prooemium reaches to the very second verse of the eleventh chapter , as other interpreters also have taken notice how ill the division is made . the eleventh chapter should have begun at [ and now will i shew thee the truth ] and there will we begin our exposition of the prophecy of the scripture of truth . notes upon vision v. ver. . namely in the third year of the persian monarchy , &c. ] gasper sanctius here moves a doubt how well this of the first verse of this chapter [ in the third year of cyrus king of persia ] agrees with vers . . of chap. . and daniel continued even unto the first year of king cyrus . whence some interpreters collect , that daniel either lived no longer , or at least prophesied no longer than to the first year of the persian monarchy . but here sanctius out of st. ierome answers to his own scruple , that daniel is to be understood to have continued in the babylonian court no longer than to the first year of cyrus king of persia. but afterward though he returned not to ierusalem with other captives , yet he was translated from babylon to the medes , where he obtained an honourable prefecture . and this is the account which saint ierome with others give of the place , which sufficiently takes away the seeming repugnancy . vers. . but how an angel can make himself seen of one , &c. ] theodoret according , to gasper sanctius , is of opinion , that those that saw not , were struck with a kind of blindness which the greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as the sodomites were that could not find the door , and those also that were sent from the king of syria to apprehend elisha . but cornelius is point-blank against this opinion , and says expresly that the cause why daniel alone saw the angel , and not his companions , was not that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wherewith the angel might strike them , as that angel that stroke the sodomites , gen. . . but that angels in assumed bodies as well as the blessed in their glorified bodies , have the species vis●…biles of their bodies in their own power , and can transmit them to one , suppose daniel , and divert them from another . which opinion of a lapide were yet more plausible if he understood that ang●…ls need not assume bodies , but have bodies , aethereal bodies , of their own , whose raies therefore not mechanically ( as in burning glasses which direct the beams of the sun , otherwise scarce sensible to the touch , so vigorously to one point , that they will set on fire matter combustible ) but vitally they may direct toward one , party by the command of their will and phancy , and slip by the other . and though the difference of some seeing and others not seeing at the same time the apparition of an angel , may proceed from the angel himself that directs the visibility of his body , the visible raies i mean thereof , to one party and not to another ; yet there may be a difference also in the parties themselves present , whereby they may see some of them less distinctly , or not at all , others clearly and distinctly . and this i conceive to proceed from the purity , mildness and passivity of their spirits . the spirits of whose eyes are far less thick , and less fiercely agitated than others , these are more capable of seeing distinctly the subtle vehicles of angels than others are . and therefore men of a more fierce , strong , robustious temper , are more inept to see any such spectra , as it is observed of them . and as for madmen , whose spirits are gross and hugely agitated , i conceive they do not so much see spectres as raise them in themselves , by the strength and fieriness of their imagination . so that what they see is more properly to be called a phantasm than a spectre . vers. . whether they be good angels , &c. ] this controversy gasper sanctius pursues pretty copiously , and of himself is very much inclining to conclude against the authority of the antient fathers , that the presidentiary angels of the nations , of all but that of the iews , were downright devils . the two chief arguments are , first , that the devil is said to be the prince of this world , iohn . . now shall the prince of this world be cast out . and st. paul , ephes. . . for we wrestle not , saith he , against flesh and bloud , that is against men onely , but against principalities , against powers , against the rulers of the darkness of this world ( of this world of darkness ( an usual hypallage ) this world comprised within the caliginous air ) against spiritual wickednesses ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , so it is to be read according to the syriack version , cum spiritibus malis , against wicked spirits ) in high places , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the same version has it , qui sunt sub coelo , viz. in the air , for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 often signifies out of the hebrew . which passage of saint paul suits excellently well with this hypothesis of presidentiary angels in daniel . but whether all angels that are presidents of the nations besides such as belong to the church of god be downright devils , is the controversy . and these two scriptures are the first argument for the affirmative , that since the devil is said to be the prince of this world in distinction to the church of god , and that in bringing the world into subjection to christ , the apostles fought against evil spirits that had the rule of this dark world , that were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the chieftains , presidents , and emperours of it , that it is hence apparent , that the presidentiary angels , suppose , of persia and greece were devils . the second argument is from the contest of the presidentiary angels of grecia and persia with michael and gabriel , and indeed with palmoni himself , which is the other argument which sancti●…s brings and pursues with that tightness in answering all the evasions of the adverse party , that i must confess i do not wonder that he is so much inclining to this opinion of his , that these presidentiary angels of greece and persia were cacodaemones , as he calls them , downright devils , rather than good angels . though it is hard on the other side to conceive , that mere quintessential devils , such as consist onely of envy , pride and malice , and pursue evil for evils sake , should be presidents over nations . wherefore in respect of such devils as these , we may with the ancient fathers conclude them to be good angels , but in respect of that more holy and divine grace , such as christ was anointed with in a measure far above his fellows , but such as by his means all of his kingdome properly so called , in some measure partake of , and are expresly , and from the root of their life the sons of light and love , we may , i say , comparing those presidentiary angels of greece and persia with these of christs kingdom , conclude them not to be good angels but devils . if any one will adventure to say , that there is some such analogy betwixt michael the presidentiary angel of iudea and the presidentiary angel of greece or persia , as there is betwixt the most holy and most regenerate christian king or emperour , and some other emperour or king that is neither styled christian nor is regenerate , haply he may not be much out of the way . but i leave to every one to think of such things as these , in such a way as will be with most ease and satisfaction to himself , provided he shrink not from the belief of that which is so manifest here on daniel , viz. that there are presidentiary angels over nations and countreys . vers. . ( for so praeliari is taken in cicero ) ] epist. . ad attic. lib. . quomodo ego minus quàm soleam praeliatus sim , and within a line or two after , ego enim quamdiu senatûs authoritas mihi defendenda fuit , sic acriter & vehementer praeliatus sum , ut clamor concursúsque maxima cum mea laude fierent . and a little afterwards persisting in the same metaphor and bragging , quàm fortis esset ( which also is a military expression ) dii immortales , says he , quas ego pugnas & quantas strages edidi ! so easily is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which the seventy render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , understood of dispute or arguing the case , whence the disputative or controversial divines are also called pole●…icall . vision vi. which is the vision or prophecy of the scripture of truth , which reaches from the second verse of the eleventh chapter to the end of daniel . . and now will i shew thee the truth , that is , now will i declare unto thee things to come in a plain intelligible way , touching the kingdomes of persia and grecia , and also the roman empire , not resembling the first to a bear or ram , the second to a leopard or goat , and the third to a monstrous beast with iron teeth , but delivering the matter without any prophetick aenigm or parable , you shall hear from me the bare truth in easy and vulgar words . behold there shall stand up yet three kings in persia , viz. cambyses , smerdis and darius hystaspis , which that particle [ yet ] seems to imply , as if it should hint to us , that they are three beside cyrus the then present king of persia , so that cyrus is not to be taken into this reckoning . and the fourth shall be far richer than they all . which fourth is xerxes , the same who is called ahasuerus ( in the book of esther ) who married esther the iewish virgin ; and herodotus records the name of xerxes his queen to have been amestris , which manifestly has the sound of esther in it , whatever the syllable am prefixed may signify , whether it be from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies sol , her beauty being such an inflammatory to love , or from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mater . for such in a wonderfull manner was she to her countreymen the iews , whose lives she saved from the malice of haman , which was no less to them than their mothers did for them that first gave them their lives . but if we are to read as ioseph scaliger would have it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that there is the like composition of the name of the father of aman , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , this is not so consistent with our former conjectures : but what 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the composition of those two names signifies , neither scaliger nor any one else i know , can tell us . however so be that esther be but acknowledged to sound in amestris xerxes his queen , i am content . now for the riches of this xerxes or ahasuerus , all histories ring of it , and the book of esther will assure us thereof , which says he reigned from india even to aethiopia , over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces . and iustin lib. . notes of the riches of xerxes , that though his army was so numerous that they drunk up rivers , yet his riches were so great that the expence of so vast an army nor any other occasions could exhaust them . so hugely is it verified of this fourth king , that he was far richer than they all , and that therefore there is no doubt but that it is xerxes . which yet is further confirmed from what follows , and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of grecia . the expedition of xerxes against the greeks is so vulgarly known and copiously set down in iustin , diodorus , siculus and herodotus , that to remind the reader of it is sufficient . and that he did stir up all against the realm of grecia , is i think very plain if we consider the numerousness of his army as it is described in herodotus lib. . cap. . where he reckons up no less than twenty six hundred thousand and forty one thousand six hundred and ten 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , fighting men , to which he adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the attendants of the army , that were to minister to them , and others that came along with them . all which put together , says he , made a number at least as big as that of the fighting men . so that there was in all at least two and fifty hundred thousand and eighty three thousand two hundred and twenty . and this , says he , is the number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of the whole army , which he brought as far as to the thermopylae . but for the number of the women to dress their meat , and of courtizans , and eunuchs , of wagon-horses , and other beasts of burthen , and of indian dogs , it was not to be told they were so many . whence says he , i less wonder that it is reported that some rivers were drunk up by them ; which also diodorus relates , and likewise the number of his ships , that they were about one thousand two hundred . so that xerxes by this account may well be said to have stirred up all against the realm of grecia . and he must needs be rich that could set out such a fleet and maintain such an armie , as i noted above . thus notably is this prophecy of daniel fulfilled concerning this fourth king of persia. who came against the realm of grecia with an army to quite overflow them and swallow them up at once . of which xerxes confiding in the numerousness of his army , made himself sure in a manner , as we may understand by that discourse betwixt him and demaratus that had been king of sparta . see herodot . lib. . cap. , , &c. for we have already produced enough to shew how fully the prediction is accomplished . but why there are no more than four of the persian kings mentioned in this prophecy , and why four , i conceive the reason is because the scope of this prophecy is mainly to forewarn the people of god of the evils that would come upon them , or what mutations there would be in which they were concerned , whether iews or christians , and therefore the catalogue of the kings of persia is so short , but yet brought down to xerxes , who would have swallowed up all greece , as a fit transition to the expedition of alexander against the persians , which intimates the reasonableness of the success which was given him by providence as follows . . and a mighty king shall stand up , namely alexander the great , that shall rule with great dominion and do according to his will , that is , all things shall succeed according to his mind . and it is curtius his character of him , lib. . fatendum est tamen cùm plurimum virtuti debuerit , plus debuisse fortunae , quam solus omnium mortalium in potestate habuit . he had the world in a string , as our english proverbial phrase is . so fitly is this prophecy fulfilled in alexander . but we will only take notice by the by , how like this is , which is a transition from the persian empire to the grecian , how like it is , i say , to that transition from the grecian to the roman , vers. . and a king shall do according to his will. in both which the transition is so little pompous and discriminative , that if the matter it self did not discover there was a transition from one empire to another , the form of transition would scarcely assure us of it . but being no man doubts but that here is a transition ( though the form be so slender and obscure ) from the persian to the grecian empire , so the slenderness and obscureness of the form of the transition ( v. . ) from the greek empire to the roman , ought to be no prejudice to the reality thereof . . and when he shall stand up his kingdom shall be broken and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven , namely , into four kingdoms lying north , west , east and south . which are the kingdoms of thracia , macedonia , asia and aegypt , which belonged to lysimachus , cassander , antigonus and ptolemaeus . see what has been said above ch. . and not to his posterity . for within sixteen years space after alexander's death , not only aridaeus the brother of alexander together with his mother olympias were put to death , but also alexander the son of alexander the great and roxana , and hercules the other son of alexander by barsine was killed , and cleopatra the sister of alexander . so fully is this passage accomplished [ and not to his posterity . ] nor according to his dominion which he ruled . as not having that strenuity and greatness of parts , nor that strength ; his entire empire being thus divided into four kingdoms , which therefore was a weakening to it , and made it subject to dissen●…ons amongst themselves , besides that there were several other satrapies which other commanders of alexander were possest of , distinct from those four kingdoms , which was a further weakening thereof ; as it follows . for his kingdom shall be plucked up even for others besides those . the hebrew word which our english translation renders , shall be plucked up , is rendred by the septuagint 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and by the vulgar , lacerabitur , from the septuagints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies quisquiliae : whence is intimated into what a many little shreds this great empire would be discerped after his death , which is most fitly understood of those lesser portions they had , who are related to here , besides those four , namely lysimachus , cassander , antigonus and ptelomaeus . for eumenes , philotas , menander , leonatus , seleucus and others had their portions distinct from those four , whereby the main body of alexanders kingdom possest by them , was the more weakened . . and the king of the south shall be strong , that is , ptolemaeus the son of lagus king of aegypt . he speaks onely of the kings of the south , and of the north , that is , of the kings of aegypt , and of syria , because the affairs of the iews are most concerned in them . and this very first king of aegypt , ptolemaeus the son of lagus , he is taken notice of in historians , for that treacherous exploit of his , of the taking ierusalem on the sabbath day , under pretence of sacrificing . but he possest himself of the city they not arming themselves for resistance . for which agatharchides cnidius twitts them , as a fond people that preferred their superstition before their liberty . he carried many of the iews at that time with him into aegypt . see ioseph . antiq. lib. . c. . and one of his princes , that is , one of the princes of alexander , says grotius ; but if it be referred not to alexander , but to ptolemy , it may haply be one of those lesser princes that he had a more special favour for : but either way it is seleucus nicator , that is here meant , who got up first toward this greatness by the favour and countenance of this ptolemy , as i noted above . and he shall be strong above him . seleucus shall outdoe ptolemy in exploits of war. for having taken demetrius the son of antigonus he added asia to syria , he overcame lysimachus king of thracia , in batle , and antigonus in phrygia , as androcotus also in india , from which great exploits he purchased to himself the name of nicanor , or nicator , as if we should say , seleucus the conquerour . and have dominion , that is plain from which has been said already . his dominion shall be a great dominion . and so it appears to have been by history , as grotius has noted out of appianus , according to whom his dominion contained all these countreys , syria , phrygia , mesopotamia , bactriana , arabia , sogdiana , arachosia and a great part of india , even beyond the river indus . and appianus adds in general , that he was by far the most potent of all the successours of alexander , and that there were built by him near fifty cities . . and in the end of years , that is , after a certain time , they shall ioyn themselves together , that is , they shall be friends or confederates one with another , viz. the king of the north , with the king of the south . not that the same individual persons ptolemaeus lagi and seleucus nicanor shall do this , but some of the succession of each of them . for the succession of the kings of the north and of the south , or of syria and aegypt , are in the prophetick style spoke of , as of two single kings continuing all that time of their kingdomes . which is a thing so obvious and known , that it hinders not at all , but that this prophecy may be called the prophecy of the scripture of truth , for all that . for the kings daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agréement . the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies rectitudes , and the septuagint render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , agreements . for the agreeing of things is to set them right and straight . this kings daughter therefore of the south is berenice the daughter of ptolemaeus philadelphus , son and successour to ptolemaeus lagi . she it seems was sent to the king of the n●…orth , viz. to antiochus theos king of syria and asia and grandchild to sele●…cus n●…icanor , to beget peace and amity betwixt those two kingdoms , with a vast dowry of gold and silver , so that by this marriage betwixt antiochus theos and berenice , these two kingdoms might be held together in a firm league : otherwise the pro●●er seems needless , antiochus having already a wife , viz. laodice , and two children by her , seleucus callinicus and antiochus . but accepting of berenice for his wife , and promising that he would not have laodice for any other than a concubine , this proved an ill business both to him and to berenice at last . for he receiving afterwards laodice into favour , and calling her ●…ack to court , she made shift to poison her husband antiochus , and get berenice and her young child she had by antiochus to be slain , according as it follows predicted by daniel . but she shall not retain the power of the arm , that is , she shall not have that strong interest at court , nor remain in that authority she seemed to have at first , the mind of her husband being afterward carried to his former wife laodice . neither shall he stand , not antiochus himself , for la●…dice suspicious how constant he might prove in his love to her , got him to be poisoned . nor his arm , the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and may be translated , nor his seed , viz. that offspring which he had by berenice , his little son he had by her , who was killed with her . but she shall be given up and they that brought her and he that begat her . the truer reading is , and that son of hers , or , he whom she brought forth . for that is the most obvious sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and he that strengthened her in these times , that is , those who were with her and took her part as friends and comforters . but she and her little son and all her confidents would go to the pot . even as it came to pass in the daphneum at antioch , where she had shut her self up , and might have been safe through the help of friends that heard thereof , but that she was betrayed , and so she and her little son murder'd by seleucus callinicus her son in law . so bad an end had a matter ill begun . see iustin , lib. . c. . . but out of a branch of her roots . it seems to be an hypallage , as gasper sanctius also takes notice , for [ but out of the roots of her branch ] that is , from the root or stock from whence she and her little son was , that is , from ptolemaeus philadelphus , who was her father . shall one stand up in his estate . the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where there is plainly an ellipsis of a praeposition , suppose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; super ba●…in ejus , so vatablus supplies it . he shall found his quarrel upon the right that the young child had , if he had had strength and been alive , to revenge his mothers death . this therefore is the brother of berenice , ptolemaeus euergetes . which shall come with an army and shall enter into the fortress of the king of the north , that is , shall fall into the territories or frontiers of seleucus callinicus the king of syria , who killed berenice and her little son. and shall deal against them and prevail , that is , he shall make war against them , and have them so much in his power , that he may do what he will with them . he shall have very easy and mighty success . . and shall also carry captives into egypt their gods with their princes and with their precious vessels of silver and of gold . st. ieromes comment upon this place is full enough . ptolemaeus , saith he , prevailed so far that he took syria and cilicia , and the upper parts beyond euphrates , and almost all asia , and when he heard there was sedition moved at home in aegypt , he spoiling the kingdoms of seleucus , brought away with him fourty thousand talents of silver , and two thousand five hundred images of their gods , amongst which were those that cambyses when he took aegypt carried away with him into persia. for which feat of bringing back again their images that were violently taken from them so many years agoe , the aegyptians being a very superstitious people , he obtained the name of euergetes amongst them , as if he had been so great a benefactour to them in recovering their images . thus st. ierome out of writers which he had the use of , but since have perished . and he shall continue more years than the king of the north. ptolemaeus euergetes his reign was six years longer than the reign of seleucus callinicus the son of antiochus theos by leodice ; his reign was almost by one third part longer than his . and the kingdom of syria was made a province by the romans betwixt thirty and fourty years before aegypt was , if that may be also insinuated . but the former is more material , it implying that callinicus durst not bouge against aegypt all the days of his life , ptolemaeus euergetes who got so full a victory over him ( which would naturally daunt his spirits ) being still living . . so the king of the south , ptolemaeus euergets , shall come into his kingdom and shall return into his own land . which intimates his power and success to have been so great and with so little loss to his armie , and with that ease , as if he had been lord of syria , and had free ingress and egress at his pleasure . . but his sons shall be stirred up . though that shamefull overthrow he had received , cowed the spirit of seleucus callinicus , yet his two sons seleucus ceraunus and antiochus magnus after his death , and indeed after the death of ptolemaeus euergetes , which was a further incouragement to them , bestirred themselves to recover what their father had lost , and to that end gathered a great armie as it follows . and shall assemble a multitude of great forces . see polyb. lib. . and lib. . and they were the more encouraged thereto , ptolemaeus euergetes not onely being dead , but a person little beloved , a killer of his father , mother and brother , and therefore in derision called philopator , succeeding him . and he shall certainly come and overflow and pass through . though he began with the two sons , yet he changes the number plural here into the singular , because seleucus ceraunus died in the beginning of the enterprise , reigning scarce three years . wherefore antiochus magnus is here meant by him that shall certainly come and overflow , &c. for he did overflow iudea and coele syria by the treachery of theodotus ptolemaeus philopator his governour of that province . then shall , he return and be stirred up even to his fortress . and after this no peace being concluded , he shall again renew the war , and taking many towns he shall at last come to raphia an exceeding well fortified town in the confines of aegypt . see polybius , lib. . . and the king of the south shall be moved with choler and shall come forth and fight with him , even with the king of the north , viz. philopator with antiochus magnus . for though philopator was but a sluggish voluptuous person , and given to his ease and pleasure , yet when his proper kingdom was in such imminent danger , he was inraged , and thought it was time to bestir himself for fear he should not only lose syria but aegypt too . and he shall set forth a great multitude . seventy thousand foot and five thousand horse , and seventy three elephants . and a multitude shall be given into his hand , that is , he shall take many prisoners of the armie of antiochus magnus . which is the thing that the author of the third book of maccabees expresly sets down , and that the success was from the passionate importunity of arsinoe philopators sister , who ran up and down from one part of the armie to the other with her hair disheveled and hanging about her shoulders , and by promises and earnest intreatings driving the soldiery to fight with more than ordinary resolution and courage , whereby they won the day , and took many prisoners . grotius out of polybius names four thousand , and the rest were killed or routed and put to flight . . and when he hath taken away the multitude , that is , when he hath partly taken captive , partly killed , and so taken them out of the way , and partly put to flight and scattered the multitude of antiochus his armie , and thereby driven them away from his territories . his heart shall be listed up , his heart that was oppressed and depressed with fear and anxiety before , will be now more lightsome and exalted , and give it self the swing to satisfie its own lusts , in this security , by his unclean conversation with agathoclea the singing wench and agathocles her brother , and will rudely and prophanely at iudea not onely come into the temple , but rush into the holy of holies against the advice and persuasion of all either pious or prudent by-standers . see the third book of maccabees ch. . and he shall cast down many ten thousands , but he shall not be strengthned by it . the sense is ( for of this latitude is the signification of the particle ●… ) and though he shall cast down many thousands ( for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signify an indefinite great number , and not exactly myriads , as all interpreters agree ) yet shall he not be strengthened by it . though that great armie of antiochus magnus was quite vanquished by him , yet antiochus himself escaping he will appear again in the field and undoe all that hath been done , after he has espied an opportunity for his purpose . the idleness , luxury and sottishness of philopator made this great advantage he had got against antiochus , to signify nothing . . for the king of the north shall return and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former . he shall again gather an army and that greater than the former . and shall certainly come after certain years , that is , these things were a brewing for a certain time while he observed the luxury and dissoluteness of philopator and his mindlesness of his affairs , which encouraged him to meditate this other war against egypt , made him sure to come , and gave him hope of success . with a great army and much riches , with a great army and well appointed . which armies sometimes are not , by reason of the want of money or whatever necessaries are requisite for the good appointment of an army . for the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies any acquist from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 acquisivit , whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a post-horse or mule has its name ; wherefore by this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i conceive is meant all the plentifull supply of necessaries and fit accommodations for an army , such as beasts of burthen , wagons , and draught-horses , with the things they carry , &c. which the latins call impedimenta , in english they are called the carriage of the army , bag and baggage , with these the army of antiochus was stored , which the english translation here renders , much riches . . and in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south . for philopator having appointed agathocles his catamite and brother to agathoclea the singing wench , to be prefect over aegypt , not only the provinces subject to aegypt rebelled , but aegypt it self was vexed with ●…editions . and philopator being dead and antiochus magnus having made a firm league with philip of macedonia , he was assisted by him upon condition of dividing the spoils equally upon victory ; and hence , saith st. ierome , is to be understood the meaning of many standing up against the king of the south , that is , the king of aegypt . which attempt was made in ptolemaeus epiphanes his time , the son of philopator , of not passing four or five years of age , and the stress of affairs lay then upon that impure and dissolute minister of state agathocles . but the wisest act that philopator did before his death , was his recommending his young child to the tutelage and protection of the senate of rome , as you may gather out of iustin lib. . also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves . the hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is here rendred robbers , does signify also at large effractores or breakers , and therefore the sense may be , those of thy people which are breakers of the law or of the union of the iewish church and nation , some siding with the king of aegypt , others with the king of syria , they shall be puffed up , ( namely those of the king of aegypt's side , as he carried many with him , viz. ptolemaeus lagi , as you heard above , so considerable a party of iews were there in aegypt , and they had their correspondents also in iudea ) they shall be puffed up in confidence of their arms and the fresh remembrance of the former victory . to establish the uision , that is , to fulfill or accomplish the sayings of the prophets which denounce all evil to them that despise the law. so grotius upon the place , according as it follows , and they shall fall , to fulfil those comminations by the mouths of the prophet . wshich were accomplished in the victory of a●…tiochus against scopas , ptolemaeus epiphanes his general , and them whom antiochus overthrew at the spring-heads of the river iordan ; and when he had taken the towns of coele syria and samaria that scopas was possessed of , the iews delivered up ierusalem to him of their own accord , and helpt to beat scopas his garison-souldiers out of the tower he there had left them in , as iosephus tells us , lib. . c. . and now though this may be part of the sense of these words [ to establish the vision ] and most accommodate to that very time ; yet considering there was a continuation of these partizim in aegypt , even to onias the junior his time , and onward , i think there may be a glance also at a further completion of this passage in onias , who in the time of ptolemaeus philometor fled into aegypt , and being favourably received there of ptolemee obtained leave to build a temple in the nomus or canton of heliopolis , and drew a great many of the iews to him , he pretending to fulfill the vision of isaias ch. . vers . . there shall be an altar of the lord in the midst of the land of aegypt . which temple after it had stood years , was in the time of vespasian rased to the very ground . and though it stood so long , yet st. ierome and other interpreters think this feat of onias here pointed at . but i leave it to the readers judgement to consider it . grotius his interpretation touching the deserters of the law at that time may be the first impletion of the prophecy , but this may be more particularly and eminently intended the fall of this temple and the iews at once . . so the king of the north shall come . for the king of the north , antiochus magnus , shall come , whereby these contemners of the law shall smart for it . for this antiochus was a great friend to the iews that stuck to moses his law , and were no prevaricatours , but did things according to his prescript , as you may see in iosephus in the place abovenamed . and cast up a mount. against sidon ( saith st. ierome who had the benefit of more historians than are extant at this day ) where he shut up scopas , ptolemaeus epiphanes his general , so close and so long , that he forced him to yield . and take the most fenced cities , according as i have noted above out of iosephus . and the arms of the south shall not withstand , viz. europus , menocles and damaxenus , whom ptolemy sent to relieve scopas when he was shut up , but in vain . neither his chosen people , namely those supplies that came with those three commanders . neither shall there be any strength to withstand . all attempts will be in vain . . but he that cometh against him , against the forces of ptolemaeus epiphanes , shall do according to his own will , shall have compleat success , and none shall stand before him , and the iews shall of their own accord deliver up the city to him , viz. to antiochus . and he shall stand in the glorious land , viz. in iudea . the septuagint do not venture to render the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but retain the word , as if we should say , and he shall stand in the land of sabi . which i confess i suspect to be the name of the god of that land , namely of the god of israel , who is called the lord of hosts . of his entring iudea and ierusalem upon his vanquishing of scopas i have hinted enough above . which by his hand shall be consumed . the vulgar latin has it so likewise . but the interpretation suits not with history . for as i intimated above , antiochus magnus was very kind to the iews ( as you may see at large in a letter of his inserted by iosephus into his antiquities , lib. . c. . ) granted them many immunities , supplied their expenses for sacrifices and repairs of the temple , with other testimonies of his favour to them . wherefore the true interpretation of the place is , which shall be perfected by his hand , that is , which shall flourish under his power . for the word in the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as well to be perfected or consummated , as to be spoiled or consumed . . he shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom . the more genuin●… sense i conceive is , and the hebrew easily admits it , viz. [ he shall also set his face to get into the power of his , namely of ptolemaeus epiphanes his , whole kingdom ] that is to say , he was not content with the regaining onely coele syria and iudea which were his ancestours before , but he has a design to make himself master also of aegypt , there being such a fair opportunity by reason of the youngness of ptolemy , and the present disorder of things there . and upright ones with him . and there are upright ones with him . but the hebrew word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which i conceive may very well be the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vers . . which signified agreements . and so gasper sanctius also expounds it . but if it be not to be understood as before of a covenant or agreement but of men , then the sense will be , that antiochus will bring along with him honest , fair conditioned men , and such as had a good repute withall , to help to carry on the match betwixt his daughter cassandra and ptolemaeus epiphanes . thus shall he do , the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and he shall do , that is , it shall succeed . and he shall give him the daughter of women , that is , he shall give him his daughter cassandra * the fairest of women , and coele syria , phaenice , iudea and samaria for a dowry with her , corrupting her , that is , infusing such principles into her , if she would listen to him , as might make her instrumental by treachery to her husband to get her father antiochus the kingdom of aegypt . but she shall not stand on his side , or , she shall not persist in such ways as her father would put her in . neither be for him , she will make good her duty to her husband , and be faithfull to him and loyal as to her husband and prince , and not be seduced by her father . so that antiochus his politicks fell short of success in this design of marrying his daughter to ptolemaeus epiphanes , though it was wisely enough done upon other regards , to shew himself by this match to be a friend to whom the roman senate was a friend , and also to strengthen his interest by this alliance against the romans if they proved his enemies . but the text is plain enough already . . after this shall he turn his face unto the isles . which he thought he might do with the better security having laid so firm a foundation of friendship with the king of aegypt , that worser plot which he was conscious of , being kept to himself , and cassandra's piety to her father , though she was loyal to her husband , permitting her to discover nothing . by the isles are understood any maritime towns as well as islands properly so called in the hebrew idiom . and he is recorded to have set himsel●… to take the sea towns of thrace and greece . and shall take many , even several islands properly so called , as rhodus , samos , delos and euboea . see grotius on the place , but especially calvin , that tells the occasion of antiochus his setting his face toward the isles , and how he came to be engaged in that war. but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease , without his own reproach he shall cause it to return upon him . this translation is something obscure and confused , grotius has rendred it out of the hebrew into latin very truly and cleverly thus . et cessare faciet dux ipsius in se contumelias , quinetiam contumelias illius in ipsum vertet , that is , a commander shall cause to cease his ( that is antiochus his ) reproach against him , yea , and moreover he shall return the reproach upon himself , viz. upon antiochus . this is the easy and natural sense of the hebrew text. and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is rightly turned in this place especially , a leader or commander . and both gasper sanctius , calvin , cornelius à lapide , and grotius interpret this of lucius scipio the roman commander , who brought it to pass that antiochus should not onely no longer despise and slight the offers of the roman senate , and infest their confederates with war , which they took as a great affront , but that the reproach at last should fall foully upon himself , he being wholly vanquished by lucius scipio at sipylus a mountain in asia minor near the confines of phrygia , where fifty thousand of his men were slain and eleven thousand taken prisoners as iustin writes , and antiochus brought to hard and dishonourable terms of peace , whereby he was bound to have nothing more to do with any part of europe , nay that the romans should have asia , and he rest content with the kingdom of syria , that he should surrender all his ships and captives , and also defray the expences of the war. see iustin lib. . he gave hostages also for performance of covenant , namely his two sons , seleucus and antiochus epiphanes . thus was the reproach cast upon the roman power by antiochus , returned with usury upon himself at last . . then shall he turn his face toward the fort of his own land , that is , toward the frontiers of his own kingdom . upon this passage cornelius briefly thus , out of st. ierome . antiochus vanquished by the romans , and commanded to bound his dominion within the mountain taurus , went thence to apamia , susa and other of the more remote parts of his kingdom , and then fighting with the elymites he and his whole army was destroyed ; according as it follows . and he shall stumble and fall and not be found . impinget & corruet . where i●…pingere to ▪ stumble , saith grotius , is as much as impruden●…er se gerere , to act rashly and imprudently . for in iustin , lib. . cap. . it is recorded that antiochus upon his robbing the temple of iupiter didymaeus by night , the thing being made known , concursu incolarum cum omni militia interfectus est . where grotius ingeniously conjectures that for didymaeus should be read elymaeus . whence saint ierome's and iustin's account will fall into one . . then shall stand up in his estate , shall succeed in his place by right of inheritance seleucus philopator the elder son of antiochus magnus , a raiser of taxes . for his luxury put him upon the greater exigencies as calvin observes , and we may be sure he would not spare the people , who did not stick to rob the temple of the money there deposited for pious uses , who sent heliodorus his treasurer thither for that purpose , maccab. . . in the glory of the kingdom , it is rather to be rendred upon the glory of the kingdom , that is , upon the riches thereof . for riches are the political glory and decor of any kingdom or people , whenas poverty makes them look sordidly and contemptibly . but there is neither [ in ] nor [ upon ] neither 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the hebrew , but the text runs thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is verbatim , one that makes to pass up and down afflicters or oppressers of the beauty or glory of the kingdom by exactions or taxes , understanding by the decor or glory of the kingdom , as before , the riches thereof . of which taxes , besides his own luxury , the expence of the war its being cast upon his father antiochus by the romans may be also an occasion or pretence , &c. but within few days he shall be destroyed , which implies he shall reign nothing near so long as his father antiochus , not passing a third part of his time , the one reigning but , the other . years . neither in anger nor in battle . neither by the sedition of the people nor by war with foreign enemies , but by the treachery of heliodorus , who , as it is thought , poysoned him , hoping and attempting to succeed him in his kingdom , but he was kept off by eumenes and attalus . . and in his estate , in his place , shall stand up a vile person , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a despised or contemned person ; who is here that antiochus epiphanes , son of antiochus magnus , and second brother to seleucus philopator . who is here represented as despicable , not for want of wit or parts , but for his actions and manners . which made the people when he would be called epiphanes , which signifies illustrious , call him epimanes , which denotes a mad man , as he was of a cruel , turbulent spirit , and yet very servile , crouching and flattering where it was for his own interest . besides he came unjustly to the kingdom by defeating his nephew the son of seleucus philopator . but grotius his short character of him gathered out of athenaeus is most conspicuously applicable to the words of the text. dicitur hic antiochus , saith he , despectus , ob mores , ab omni non tantùm principis dignitate , sed ab honesti viri gravitate alienos . to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom . there being no colour for it at all , by reason of his ill manners , and which is the main of all , the right of succession belonged to demetrius the son of his brother seleucus . but he shall come in peaceably , and obtain the kingdom by flatteries viz. , by plausible pretences of administring the affairs of the kingdom of syria for the good of his nephew demetrius the true heir to the crown , and by making a fair shew of clemency and of kindness he shall win the hearts of the people of syria to him . the ancient fathers some of them by this vile person will have antichrist alone to be understood , all of them , supposing it to be antiochus epiphanes , will yet have him to be a lively type of antichrist . but in this prophecy of the scripture of truth , the down-right literal sense is the sense aimed at , and the sense intended as to the persons and actions described in it . and therefore this prediction concerning antiochus epiphanes is no more a prediction touching antichrist , than the history of the iews a prediction of the state of the christians , and onely in this large sense can i admit antiochus epiphanes to be a type of the papal hierarchy , or if you will of the popes of rome , who by flattering and crouching at first to the civil soveraignty ( consider the letter of gregory the great which he wrote to phocas when he had slain his sovereign mauricius the emperour : ) by giving to themselves all alluring titles of servus servorum ; of holy father ; of sponsus ecclesiae , &c. and by pretending the care of all christian people , and of the emperours themselves whom they look'd upon always as pupils in nonage , young weakly wights , wights scarce nine days old and that cannot see ( for the little horn only must have eyes ) from such fine pretences as these got they the government not onely of the people but of the emperours themselves whom they trampled upon , and made themselves in reality the emperours of rome and of christendom in a manner . that there is a conspicuous correspondency here betwixt the type and antitype i cannot deny , but the literal and historical meaning as i may so speak ( for prophecy , especially such an one as this , is a kind of an anticipatory history ) that is the main that is to be attended . we shall come to that part of the vision that speaks of antichrist without a type or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hereafter at vers . . but till we come thither i find grotius to be one of the most easy and coherent interpreters , in whose footsteps therefore i shall mostwhat insist , till he turns out of the way , and then i shall shake hands with him and bid him adiue . . and with the arms of a floud shall they be overflown from before him , namely heliodorus his forces who murdered seleucus demetrius his father , prompted thereto perhaps by antiochus , but doing the feat with a design for himself , to get to himself the kingdom of syria , he having raised forces for this end . but antiochus epiphanes with a specious pretence , as doing all in behalf of his nephew then at rome , assisted with the forces of eumenes and attalus , s●…all quite overcome and rout this armie of heli●…dorus , and break in pieces all his faction as it follows . and shall be broken , namely , the followers of heli●…dorus . yea also the prince of the covenant , viz. demetrius the son of seleucus philopator , who may well be said to be the prince of these consederate forces of his uncle antiochus , attalus and eumenes , he being indeed a prince and heir to the crown , and this war against heliodorus seeming to be managed in his behalf . but the good success turned to his mischief by reason of the treachery of his uncle . and therefore he is said to be broken here as well as the followers of heliodorus . . and after the league made with him , that is , for after the friendship professed by him to his nephew demetrius at rome , with whom you may be sure he kept intelligence , he shall work deceitfully , this is the cause that antiochus his success against heliodorus was the undoing of demetrius as well as of him . he shall work deceitfully , by getting his ●…riends at rome to detain demetrius there ( though his father in kindness to antiochus had sent him thither for an hostage in his stead ) that he might better pursue his own designs in the mean time , as grotius has noted on the place . and he shall come up and become strong with a small people . his beginnings in syria shall be small , saies grotius , but he shall grow up by degrees ( as the popes of rome did . ) . he shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province . by degrees antiochus will possess himself of the best places of syria , as the roman hierarchie of the fairest and fattest seats in europe . and he shall do that which his fathers have not done , nor his fathers fathers , he shall scatter among them the prey and spoil and riches , that is , antiochus epiphanes shall be a greater exacter of tributes , and more profuse rewarder of his favourites and adherents , his souldiers especially , than any of his ancestors . this lavish liberality of his is taken notice of maccab. . . where he is said in giving liberal gifts to have abounded above the kings that were before him . and the papal polity what tricks they have to get money , to say nothing of bloud and violence against pretended hereticks , and how able and lavish rewarders they are of their stickling clients , is obvious to consider . none of the emperours of rome , the popes predecessours , comparable to him for that . yea and he shall forecast his device against the strong holds even for a time . after he had taken the more easie and opime places , and encouraged his soldiers by liberally dividing the spoil amongst them , he afterward will set his mind to the taking of the more strongly fortified places , which will hold him longer tack and take him some time , which haply is meant by [ even for a time . ] but of the hebrew it is better exprest thus [ and that for a time . ] . and he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army , that is , against the king of aegypt , ptolemaeus philometor , because he pretended a right to syria . and the king of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a great and mighty army viz. ptolemaeus philometor , king of aegypt , whose two chief commanders were eulaius and leneus . but he shall not stand . he shall not be able to withstand him , but shall be put to flight and discomfited . for they shall forecast devices against him . there will be treacherous plots against philometor and his army . . yea they that feed of the portion of his meat shall destroy him , that is , some of his domesticks , ministers of state , and of great trust in his affairs , and in the very management of this war , will be false to him and betray him , and undoe him , and spoil the success of the battle . and his army shall overflow , his army shall be overflown or overrun , opprimetur has the vulgar latin , obruetur , calvin , as if they read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but if our english translation obtain , then [ his ] must be referred to antiochus , not to ptolemaeus philometor , accordingly as vatablus also refers it . and many shall fall down slain , by the hands of antiochus his army . this battle was fought betwixt mount casius and pelusium . so s. ierome out of suctorius , and so grotius out of both . and touching many falling down slain it is said expresly concerning this battle , maccab . . . that ptolemee was afraid of antiochus and fled , and many were wounded to death . . and both these kings hearts shall be to doe mischief , and they shall speak lies at one table . they shall meet together at memphis , ptolemaeus philometor , and antiochus epiphanes , in outward shew friends but inwardly suspicious enemies and suspected one of another . but it shall not prosper . this palliated friendship will again break out into open war. for yet the end shall be at the time appointed . the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , for it is yet till the end will be at the time appointed , that is to say , there will be a space of time till another war break out , but it will certainly break out at the time appointed . so that there is an ellipsis or omission of the thing which is to be understood from what went before and only the time mentioned , an intercessation of war is intimated till the time appointed . . and he shall return into his land with great riches , that is , with great spoils , maccab. . . thus they got the strong cities in the land of aegypt , and they took the spoils thereof . and his heart shall be against the holy covenant . this is the first coming of antiochus into iudea , says grotius , which the writer of the first book of maccabees takes no notice of , it being so inconsiderable in respect of the second . by the holy covenant here is meant the law of moses given by god , in which amongst other things , the right of succession in the high priesthood is determined . and he shall do exploits . exploits is not in the hebrew . but the meaning is , he shall do according to his own mind and will , particularly about the high priesthood , iason and menelaus by bribes and flatteries obtaining the high priesthood of him , contrary to law. and return to his own land , he shall return out of iudea into syria . . at the time appointed he shall return , this is the appointed time mentioned vers . . and come toward the south , that is , toward egypt . but it shall not-be as the formet or as the ●…atter . the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which the septuagint render thus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for the other seems to be an hebraism , a feminine for a neuter . and so the latin has it , non erit priori simile novissimum , that is , this second expedition of antiochus against aegypt , will not be so prosperous as the former . . for the ships of chittim shall come against him , that is , the ships of the * romans who were antiently called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 chittim according to bochartus , or at least the ships of the romans out of macedonia who were anciently called chittim , as there are plausible arguments for it . and in general , says iosephus antiq. lib. . c. . from cethima , the antient name of the island cyprus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , all islands and maritime places are by the hebrews called chittim . whence it is no wonder that alexander and perseus the last king of macedonia , are said the one to come out of the land of chittim , the other to be king of the chittims . so that these ships of chittim may be so called , whether from the romans themseves , or because the roman navy came out of macedonia after they had vanquished perseus , and made of that kingdom a province . for partly there , and partly in other places the romans had a great navy ready for any exploit . therefore shalt he be grieved and return . the cause of his desisting from his enterprise of invading aegypt and of taking alexandria , was popilius a roman legate sent by the senate to command him to forbear , the king of aegypt having put himself under their protection . wherefore popilius taking ship presently upon this commission sailed to aegypt , and imparted the commands of the senate to antiochus . and this is all the ships of chittim that came to him then that i know . and i must confess i doubt whether 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here , which they render ships , signify ships or no , and is not rather an epithete of the chittim or transmarine people , such as the macedonians and romans were to them of syria , and that the rather because if it signify'd the ships of chittim it would not have been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in regimine , as they call it , thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being not a substantive in regimine but an adjective , it is an epithete of the chittim , or the more northern and transmarine people the macedonians or romans , and signifies as much as the fierce , rude or rough chittim . and thus may it peculiarly . reflect upon popilius his rough handling of antiochus , who at his arrival very complementally receiving him , and upon their former familiarity at rome offering to kiss him , was bluntly bid to forbear those ceremonies ; and the decree of the senate being produced and given him , and he making delays and pretending it fit to consult his friends , popilius presently drawing a large circle with his stick about antiochus , bad him forthwith consult his friends there upon the spot , nor pass out of the circle till he had returned answer to the senate whether he would have war or peace with them ; which rough carriage of popilius so humbled him that he presently answered he would obey the senate . which passage in iustin lib. . cap. . suits mighty well with the very words in the hebrew text and septuagints translation , the one saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and he will be struck or broken , the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and he will be humbled , viz. by this rough carriage of popilius , as iustin also phrases it . adeoque haec austeritas animum regis fregit ut pariturum se senatui responderet . the english [ he shall be grieved ] is less emphatical , and not so punctually answering to the niceties of history . but certainly when antiochus was thus struck , broken , and humbled , he was also grieved , and returned from aegypt in this discontented mood . and will have indignation against the holy covenant . he will ease his grief and disburden himself of his rage he had conceived against the romans that were too strong for him , upon the iews , whom he could better master , and upon those especially that would most faithfully adhere to the holy covenant nor forsake the law of moses . so shall he do , he shall even return and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant . he will be sure to take this wicked course to ease his grief for his disappointed hopes of aegypt , and carry away what spoils he can from iudea , the city and temple , that he might not seem to return into syria empty ; and for the better effecting his purpose he will practise with the deserters of the holy covenant iason and menelaus and those of that faction . . and arms shall stand on his part , though not the whole stock , yet arms or considerable branches of the stock , or people of the iews . for so gasper sanctius would have brachia to signify , viz. the same that rami , as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here were the seed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the seed of abraham , the iews ; as if the sense were , some of the seed of the iews should stand on his part , such as iason and menelaus and that faction . and calvin expresly upon the place , stabunt ab ipso brachia , hoc est , non propriis opibus pugnabit sed fretus auxiliis ipsius populi . which is the same thing that is said of the little horn or king understanding dark sentences ch. . . and his power shall be mighty , but not by his own power , which i noted above to be a remarkable note of antichrist , not sustained so properly by his own power as by the power of the ten kings apoc. . and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength , they shall enter into the temple and take away the silver and the gold and the precious vessels and the hidden treasures , maccab. . . but it is here called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the sanctuary of strength , quia templum erat munitum arcis in modum , saies grotius . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a fortified place or a castle , and we may add , such here as in which the god of israel with his heavenly hosts and priests and levites , as it were , kept garrison , the god of israel being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the god of hosts , whence the land of israel was called the land of sabi , as i noted above . but this their entring and robbing the temple thus foreseen and predicted as well as permitted by the god of israel for the trial of the faithfull , is the first degree of the prophanation thereof as grotius has also noted . and shall take away the daily sacrifice , that is , king antiochus shall send letters by messengers unto ierusalem and the cities of iudah , that they should follow the laws of the gentiles , and forbid burnt-offerings and sacrifices and drink-offerings in the temple , maccab. . . that they should not serve god according to his own laws and prescripts , but according to paganick rites prescribed by this type of antichrist . and this silencing the law of god , and setting up the dictates of men is the second degree of profanation even according to grotius , and an inlet to the grossest prophanation imaginable , and therefore it orderly follows , and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate , the hebrew word is , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and may signify either a stupifying idol , or an idol that makes desolate , the abomination of desolation , taking abomination for idol as it so signifies . and truly idols in general in respect of them that worship them willingly and superstitiously , may well be called stupifying , it making their worshippers stupid , as very blocks as themselves whom they worship , as to all sense of the true religious worship indeed . they that make them are like unto them , and so are all they that put their trust in them . and as for those that know the great vanity and gross impiety of them , they are astonished to see that mortal men should ever so far degenerate as to fall down on their knees with their eyes and hands lift up to stocks and stones . but that this should be in the church of god either iew or christian , whose hair would not stand on end at so horrid and detestable a spectacle ? but these idols may be said to make desolate , the church of god , suppose , in that they will fright all good and conscientious men from her communion , or cause them to be murdered or massacred , myriads of them , as it happened from the church of rome , for their not complying with her idolatries . such abominations of desolation are idols . but to come more particularly to the present idol brought into the temple at ierusalem , which is the third and last profanation of the temple , and which drew along all disorder and uncleanness with it , it is macc. . . recorded thus . now the fifteenth day of the month casleu in the hundred fourty and fifth year they set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar , and builded idol altars throughout the cities of iudah●…on every side . and when they had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found , they burnt them with fire , viz. that the people might not be instructed thereby of the unlawfulness of worshipping idols . which answers in analogy to the popes forbidding the use of the bible to the laity , because he has filled the church of god with images and other trumperies , which the bible declares against . this is the abomination of desolation in general , set up in the temple of god , though they have yet given it no name : but macc. . . this same idol is iupiter olympius , as both calvin and cornelius à lapide , nay grotius himself doth acknowledge . the thing being to be done therefore , that it may seem more passable and plausible to the iews and a less violation of the law of moses , there was sent to them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , * an old man of athens , a venerable sophist i warrant you , to give them to understand that this image which they were so affrighted with , was but the image of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , iupiter olympius , that is , of the god of heaven , olympus signifying . heaven with them , and zeus that god which according to the notation of his name is the living god , and gives life and motion to all things : and that their very law or scripture calls their god the god of heaven also , so that they will worship , but the same god still , and thus the whole kingdom of antiochus will be of one catholick religion , the iews joyning with the rest in the same worship . which will be much for the honour , safety and peace of antiochus his kingdome . and as for the worshiping of the image , would that reverend sophist say , that we directing our intention aright , the worship of the type passes to the prototype , and that we do not give divine worship to the image , but such as it is capable of , nor to the rest of the inferiour gods , whose altars might be set in other parts of iudea , but such is meant to them as they are capable of , and no more . at which grave harangue of this old greek , the apostate party might find themselves much edified , and it may be , others drawn in , but the sounder sort it 's likely would cry out , * to the law and to the testimony , and that those that spoke not according to that word , there was no light in them . and certainly it is most safe to hold to the plain and obvious sense of that doctrine which is delivered by inspiration . and the like just and safe appeal there is of the reformed churches to scripture given by divine revelation , in the plain and apert sense thereof , against the church of rome . but by the sophistry of that old athenian , if they will listen to his deceitfull speeches , they may be seduced to worship not onely iupiter olympius , but pluto also and all the fiends of hell with their most deformed and affrightfull images , such as the indians idols are , in reference to that great and terrible god , as he is in judgment , as well as infinitely sweet and alluring in mercy , under pretence of their being the ministers of his wrath , and that we intend no higher worship to them than is due . wherefore the worship of god is the most safely bounded by his own inspired word , not by the humour some or fraudulent and self-interessed prescripts of men , or by their subtile and perverse interpretations of holy writ , which is abundantly plain in any thing of moment touching divine worship . but now for this idol of iupiter olympius its proving an abomination of desolation , it was so in that it caused the temple to be left desolate and deserted of all good men , driving them into secret places wheresoever they could fly for shelter , and it is said , macc. . . how the sanctuary was desolate and shrubbs grew in the courts , as in a forrest or one of the mountains . . and such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt with flatteries . eos qui sacerdotium , sayes grotius , contra legem nundinati sunt , blandimentis eò perducet , ut ad idololatriam conniveant . those that had merchandized and given money for the high priesthood contrary to the law , by fair insinuations and flatteries , he would further persuade to comply with his idolatrous designs . where we may observe , earthly-mindedness , covetousness and ambition in the priesthood what an occasion it is of , and what a prop to idolatry and the corrupting the worship of god. but the people that do know their god. calvin well upon this place says , cognitio autem hîc non tantundem valet ac frigida imaginatio , sed accipitur pro fide quae radicem vivam egit in cordibus . this knowledge , says he , of god is no frigid imagination , but is faith that has a living root in the heart , which implies a purity there , from whence all firm assurance of knowledg in divine matters doth arise . and that is pitifull knowledg indeed that has not firm assurance . for how can we be said to know what we are not assured of that it is true ? it is vain imagination and conceit but not knowledg , such as a man will adventure any thing upon . and hence it is that men crumple so in persecution , in that they do not know god with any assurance , their hearts being not purified sufficiently for such a kind of knowledg , and real sense of god , as it were , according to that saying of our saviour , blessed are the pure in heart , for they shall see god , and act always as in his sight and presence , which will give them invincible courage and fortitude , whiles they are assured , that he looks on in whom they trust , and for whom they suffer , and who will plenteously reward their fidelity to him . shall be strong and doe exploits , that is , by the strength and power of god , and by faith in his assistance , they will not be forced through the threats of mortal men , be they never so great and potent , to forsake the law of god , or to relinquish their loyalty to him , who brings these persecutions on his people , on purpose to try them . wherefore if they prove faithless and disloyal to him , the note of condemnation is branded upon their own consciences , whereby it shall be either enraged with everlasting disquietness , or hardened into eternal deadness and stupidity . which is a sad thing and worth our serious consideration . but as for the fullfilling of this prophecy touching the exploits they doe that truly know god , and are not mere sons of talk and imagination , besides both the books of the maccabees , iosephus also witnesses to it lib. . cap. . where he says , though many of the iews partly of their own accord , and partly to avoid the punishment threatned by king antiochus , to them that disobeyed his command ( which command was to disobey moses and embrace gentilism ) they submitted to what he decreed , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which are here the people that knew god , they listened not to him , but had more regard to the law of god , than to the threats of king antiochus , against those that disobeyed his decree , and accordingly they endured murders and tortures , rather than they would forsake the law of god. which is a lively type of the sufferings of gods people under antichrist for adhering closely to the law and will of christ , and avoiding that pagan-like worship of idols , that antichrist has introduced into the church of god. . and they that understand among the people shall instruct many . these that understand among the people are those that before were said to know their god from such a principle of life in their heart , and not in dry imaginative opinion . these therefore being assured of the truth , whether priests or lay-men , instructed many . for so gasper sanctius says , hi vero non sunt scribae aut legis doctores , &c. these were not the scribes or doctors of the law , but men that studied the law for that purpose that they might keep it , such as mattathias and iudas maccabaeus , who incouraged many to the observance of the law , with the peril of their lives , and made , that they willingly underwent killing with the sword , burning , captivity , and a thousand such like jeopardies , says he . and cornelius à lapide speaks much-what to the same sense , interpreting those that understand among the people , though of the priests chiefly , yet also of the laity . which is therefore the more lively type of those that encouraged the people of god against the idolatrous tyranny of antichrist , there being those that instructed them so , both of the clergy and laity . so that the ponti●●cian party have no reason to lay such things in the dish of the reformed , these of their own church here approving of it . for both gasper sanctius and cornelius à lapide , were members of the church of rome . yet they shall fall , read rather , though they shall fall , by the sword , and by the flame , and by captivity , and by spoil many daies . though these things be in their eyes , and they be in a manner certain to undergo them , to be either killed by the sword , burnt at the stake , banished out of their countrey , or despoiled of their goods , yet those that know their god , will not desist to instruct those they have the opportunity to instruct touching their duty in religion , and adherence to the true worship of god , nor will others be discouraged to follow their counsell , to keep a good conscience , nor be driven to gentilism by the terrour of men , they knowing whom they serve , and being so sure of their reward . else it were as if there were no god upon earth , and that the supreme power of every countrey were absolutely the god of that countrey , and that there were no difference of moral good or evil , nor any religion truer or more obligatory one than another , which is the very quintessence of atheism . but this pious party of the iews was otherwise persuaded , and stood to the truth with the hazard of their lives , and all that they had , as is copiously set down in the books of the maccabees . . now when they shall fall , they shall be holpen with a little help . mattathias with his five sons ( amongst whom was iudas who was called maccabaeus ) he will open a way toward their liberty . see macc. . . and macc. . but many shall cleave to them with flatteries , the hebrew word here for 〈…〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies lubricitates , ●●ipperinesses , as well as flatteries , so that the sense may be , that many shall joyn themselves to them 〈◊〉 , not firmly and sincerely . there shall not be an immediate firm union from one principle , which is the hearty love of god and unfeigned zeal for the purity of his worship , but their adherence will be from by-respects of ambition or covetousness , or the like , of each which we see an example in some of those that sided with iudas maccabaeus against antiochus his forces . of ambition and desire of fame in ioseph and azarias , who when they had heard of the valiant acts which iudas and ionathan had done , said , let us also get us a name , &c. macc. . . but their success was accordingly , for they were routed by gorgias , and slain of them two thousand men , vers . . but the example of covetousness is that in those slain in the battle which iudas fought with gorgias the governour of idumaea , the men of iudas his side that were slain were such as under whose coats were found things consecrated to idols of the iamnites or idumaeans , as grotius would have it , which is forbidden the iews by the law . here we see plainly that some of iudas his company , who was himself so sincere a zealot for the true worship of god , adhered to the cause , part out of ambition , part out of covetousness , which therefore was a more infirm or lubricous adhesion . and it were desirable that those who oppose antichrist as these did the type of him , antiochus epiphanes , held together in a more sincere principle , and then the opposing of him , i mean in polemical theology ( for i have nothing to do with other polemicks or politicks ) would prove more successful . it was calvins complaint in his time upon this text , that in that little number that had withdrawn themselves from the idolatries of the papacy , major pars , says he , plena est perfidiâ & dolis , which is something an harsh censure understanding it in the grosser way , as if they wittingly and resolvedly were such . but so few are touched with the sincere and hearty love of the pure worship of god , or oppose the papacy upon this just and laudable jealousy for his honour and the support of the power of true religion and right knowledg of god , such as destroys the body of sin in us , that being encumbred with these unknown hypocri●…es , or better assured that many things in popery are grosly false , than that the great articles of religion , wherein we seem generally agreed on all sides , are assuredly true , or that not so much the purity of gods worship as the splendour , power and worldly interest of the priesthood is to be the measure of a prudent and well moderated reformation ; i say mens minds and consciences being darkened with such prejudices , and they seeking their own interest , or following their own humour , rather than sincerely affecting that the power of true and pure religion should prevail , it is no wonder we have no better success in opposing the papacy than ioseph and azarias , or those that had under their coats things consecrated to the idols of the idumaeans , had in opposing paganism . for it is two to one , but that he will be vanquish'd by the popes champions , whoever enters the lists with them , who hath already , as the proverb is , a pope in his belly . . and some of them of understanding shall fall , that is , some of them that know their god in the sense above explained shall fall , the septuagint turn it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as in the former verse where the same hebrew word is used , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the septuagint render it by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signify to be in misery , in several places in the new testament . so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has not a moral sense but physical , as the following words do more fully assure us . to try them to purge and to make them white . and therefore these troubles that seem so direfull and tragical to mortal men , proceed from the love of god to his own , that he may make them more pure and consequently better fitted for communion with himself . and this is that which st. paul suggests , cor. . . for our light affliction ( and such is all that wicked men can inflict upon the true servants of god , who will never suffer them to be tempted above what they can bear ) which is but for a moment , worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory , while we look not at the things which are seen , but at the things which are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal , but the things that are not seen are eternal . even to the time of the end , that is , to the time of their ending . for god had set his time wherein these afflictions of his church should end , as bounding all human affairs by his power and providence , so that there may be a respiration to his people from these extremities of affliction . and therefore there is put an end to this affliction of his church , because it was foreseen that another would begin , as it is intimated to us by what follows according to the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , because it is yet for a time appointed . the vulgar latin has it , quia adhuc aliud tempus erit , because there will be yet another time , namely of persecution of the church of god , viz. under the roman empire , pagan and pagano-christian : wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is an elliptical speech as was observed above v. . which verbatim is thus to be rendred , because yet-again at the time appointed , subaudi , there will be a persecution of my people or church , viz. under the roman empire , whose succession begins in the next verse , for hitherto is described from vers . . the reign and feats of antiochus epiphanes . but that now the times of the roman empire succeed , both the mention of a time and times and half a time , ch. . . and those other numbers there vers . . that point to them , and that vast gap that would be betwixt antiochus his time and the resurrection of the dead mentioned v. . may sufficiently assure us . to which you may add that the passage here from the greek empire to the roman in the next verse , is as distinct and plain as from the persian to the greek vers . . and the like great success and prosperity expressed in both , in that of both kings it is said , and he shall do according to his will. * which therefore cannot be understood of antiochus . whence they that would drag what follows of the prophecy to that scope are fain to run back and apply the same things that were predicted before , and so make the prophecy to tautologize . besides , many things are most wretchedly distorted and very weakly and faintly accommodated to the person of antiochus . which calvin being sensible of applies all to the roman empire from the times of the roman empire after antiochus his death , to the coming of christ. in which besides that many things are dilute or forced , he leaves a vast gap as well as those others , viz. from the beginning of the gospel to the resurrection . which makes the prophecy less worthy of that pompous preface to it , viz. the prefatory vision ch. . as i noted above . wherefore there can be no doubt with them that consider the matter , but that this prophecy of the scripture of truth does not only here pass from the greek empire to the roman upon the death of antiochus , and the vanquishing of perseus the last king of macedonia by aemylius paulus , and turning his kingdom into a roman province , but that the prophecy continuedly goes on , though in general strokes , through the whole series of times of the roman empire to the end of the world , or general resurrection . and that as there has hitherto been predictions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and literally or historically to be understood of the affairs of the persian and greek kingdome , and more particularly of those two parts thereof the kingdoms of syria and aegypt , where the real gests of antiochus epiphanes are foretold , and are but onely as other historical parts of scripture drawn to a typical sense ; so whatever follows touching the affairs of the roman empire has a plain historical meaning , and is so to be understood , till its utter dissolution . so that there will be no room left for such a chimerical antichrist as some of the fathers have fancied , and others have been either themselves such children , or would have others to be such , as to believe them . wherefore bidding adieu to hugo grotius , and laying aside all the fancifull and chimerical crotchets of mistaken antiquity , i shall clear the sense of the remaining part of this prophecy of the scripture of truth , as follows . . and the king shall do according to his will , and shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god. this may be understood of the roman empire at large , and the words be rendred thus , then shall a king do according to his will , shall have all things go prosperously according to his desire , by king understanding here as it is elsewhere in daniel , a state or kingdome , which is here the roman upon the expiration of the greek empire , macedonia being conquered by the romans , of which perseus was the last king contemporary to antiochus whom daniel foretels to reign ch. . in the latter time of the greek kingdome . and therefore the roman is very fitly here supposed to succeed it , after antiochus epiphanes , the rest of his successours being taken no notice of , for the same reasons that all but one after xerxes are past by in the persian empire . and this roman king or kingdome is said to magnify himself above every god , in that the romans by sacred charms called out the gods of those cities they conquered , and so as it were led them captive to rome . see my synops. prophet . book . ch. . and shall speak marvelous things , that is , blasphemous , against the god of gods , that is , the officers of this roman power shall do so , namely against christ jesus himself , who was truly god as well as man , and therefore the god of gods ; and yet was he in word and deed most despightfully used by them and crucified . and how the god of of gods , viz. the god of israel was despised by the romans , a man may collect from that greatest wit of the roman empire , marcus cicero , and one of the best men of them , who yet speaks but contemptibly of the religion of the iews as unworthy of the greatness of the roman name and empire , and insults over their nation as less befriended by the gods , because they were vanquished and subjected to the romans . if a person of his quality went so far in reproach to the god of israel , what would others of less sagacity and morality blurt out ? see his oration pro flacco . and shall prosper till the indignation be acc●…mplished ; for that that is determined shall be done . and yet they shall prosper notwithstanding this their villany towards christ , and bloudy persecution of his members wherein he was again reproached and blasphemed , till the determined time of this rage ran out , and that the empire became christian , which was certainly determined to be done , under the sixth seal . . neither shall he regard the god of his fathers , that is , the roman empire becoming christian will cast off the gods of their ancestours , and cashier the old pagan religion . nor the desire of women , that is , marriage will not be in that high esteem then as it was with the ancient romans , as those laws testify which were called iulia and papia , which constantine abrogated . this i say may be one sense of the foregoing verse and of this part of this , and so take in all the time of the roman empire from the beginning of the gospel at least , to the times of the apostasy of the church , or of the empire become the beast that was and is not and yet is . by a geniconoea , as i may so speak , this may be the sense of the foregoing verse and this part of this . but by an idiconoea , i conceive , with the ancients , that the chiefest sense is , that which concerns that antichrist which undoubtedly paul aims at thess. . and therefore emboldened by his authority i shall paraphrase the foregoing verse and this hitherto , thus . then shall a king , &c. i.e. after the reign of antiochus epiphanes , that type of antichrist , and notorious enemy of the people of god in the greek empire , shall there arise a rex sacrorum , or royal pontifex if you will , who with his formed body politick or ecclesiastical power shall prove the very antichrist indeed , answering in the roman empire to that wicked antiochus in the greek , and both of them placed in the latter times of each empire . which ecclesiastical prince or pontifex finding the stream of affairs and good fortune to carry him along , shall at last exalt himself above every god , i.e. every supreme magistrate , the emperour himself not excepted , nay shall speak strange blasphemous words against the sovereignty of god himself , as if he had power to abrogate and dispense with the laws of god and christ , and were himself supremum numen in terris . which impieties he will prosperously carry on for such a time as divine providence shall permit , that is for a time and times and half a time , at the expiration of which his kingdome shall begin to be broken . but notwithstanding all this wickedness he shall not be a pure roman pagan , nor shall he regard the gods of his ancestours or predecessours ( that is , of the supreme magistrates of rome who reigned there a long time before him ) such deities , i say , as neptune , mars , iupiter capitolinus , and the like . but this shall be notable in him , that he shall be outwardly a strict professour of a single life , and it shall be against his pontifical office to marry , and likewise his clergy shall be tyed to the same laws , that he may thereby the better promote the designs of his rampant and insatiable ambition . which spirit of pride and worldliness shall grow so rank in him , that he shall in time cast off the real sense of all religion , as it follows in the text. nor regard any god : for he shall magnify himself above all . and therefore he will subordinate all religion to his own worldly advantage and interest . whence it will be , that he will amongst other things make no conscience of idolatry , as it follows . . but in his estate shall he honour the god of forces . the hebrew runs thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i.e. for together with god , or besides god ( for so will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signify , namely , together , as dan. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 calvin renders , cum exercitu ) he will honour the mahuzzim , that is , the daemons which st. paul prophesies of , whose worship would be brought in , in the latter times , ( that is in the time and times and half a time , which is the reign of antichrist , and in the fourth empire ) by unconscionable liars , and men that are against marriage , and place their r●●igion in abstaining from meats , that is , by monks especially . this paul says tim. . that the spirit has foretold 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 expresly , not obscurely nor aenigmatically , as being in this prophecy of the scripture of truth , that is , in this plain and express prophecy , and not at all obscure or aenigmatical . these daemons therefore of st. paul and daniel's mahuzzim are the souls of departed saints , which this antichrist king of rome , or roman hierarchy , will worship together with god or christ. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not , in his estate , but place , namely in the places or temples of god , or christ , in churches which have their name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , our lord christ. or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signify as much as , upon his bottom , or foundation , which is the very pretence of the pontificians , that they worship the saints upon account of honouring christ. and it is to be noted also that mahuzzim signifies as much as , towers , fortresses , walls , bulwarks , guards and protectours , which are the very titles the idolatrous saint-worshippers give the saints and their reliques reposed in their churches . of so fit significancy is this name of daemons , viz. mahuzzim which 〈◊〉 expresses them by , and the worshipping of whom st. paul says , is so expresly foretold would be . and where is it foretold , especially expresly , if not here ? and a god whom his fathers knew not , read according to the hebrew , even together with a god which his fathers , that is , his ancestors the ancient romans , knew not , which god is christ. shall he honour them with gold and silver and with precious stones and pleasant things . which is abundantly fulfilled in the rich offerings to , and clothings of the images and altars of the saints in the romish church , which are very costly and sumptuous . . thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god. this is very obscure sense , the hebrew runs thus , and is easy , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . i.e. and he shall make the holds of the mahuzzim jointly to the foreign god. as if we should say , the holds of the mahuzzim with the foreign god , i.e. the holds jointly made to them both , or jointly appertaining to them both . which are churches and monasteries dedicated to christ ( for he is this foreign god , partly as being a iew by birth not a gentile , much less a roman , and partly as being really god-man , which is such a strange and foreign deity as the romans , nor any nation else were ever acquainted with before ) together with this or that saint ; and elegantly here are these churches and monasteries called holds , in reference to mahuzzim , which has a warlike sense in it , and signifies * military protectours and champions , whose houses therefore may well be called strong holds . and the reliques of the saints lying there are accounted strong castles and towers of defence , by the superstitious followers of antichrist . whom he shall acknowledg and increase with glory , that is , antichrist shall make an outward profession of christ , and accumulate external shews and pomps in honour to him . and he shall cause them , the mahuzzim , to rule over many , and shall divide the land for gain . and shall distribute the earth to them for a reward . so vatablus out of the hebrew ; and the seventy have it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , every one has his portion as a retribution or reward , namely of their sufferings , and of the good offices the mahuzzim , daemons or deceased saints are supposed to doe to them that worship them , that is , this antichristian power though they profess christ , yet they will consecrate temples and altars to saints together with him , and ascribe the safety of cities and provinces to their protection , and trust in them accordingly , giving religious worship unto them , and invoking them as their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( for so mahuzzim is often rendred by the seventy ) as their refuge and protectours , in the time of trouble . which is a lively description of the condition of the papacy at this very day , and indeed of a long time heretofore both of the greek and latin church , of both which the pope pretends to be supreme patriarch . for which the idolatrous empire has been sorely scourged by the saraceus and turks , namely for worshipping mahuzzim , that is , daemons or the souls of deceased saints , and in order to them images of gold , and of silver , and of brass , and of stone , &c. apoc. . . the plagues of the locusts and the euphratean horsemen , that is , of the saracens and turks came upon them for this . and so it follows answerably here upon the mention of these mahuzzim . . and at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him , that is , within the compass of the time and times and half a time , under the fifth trumpet , shall the locusts or saracens come against the idolatrous empire , whose original is from arabia that lies south on the said empire . and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind , that is , the euphratean horsemen , which are the turks and whose original is northern beyond the caspian sea at a great distance opposite to arabia , these under the sixth trumpet , which is the last part of the time and times and half a time , these shall invade the said roman empire by reason of that idolatrous antichristian polity therein , like a whirlwind or strong tempest from the north. with chariots and with horsemen and with many ships . with carriages and a number of horsemen as they are described in the apocalypse . and ships are here mentioned consentaneously to what follows . and he shall enter into the countreys and overflow and pass over , the sea , out of asia minor into europe , and at last take constantinople and utterly ruin the eastern part of the empire for their idolatries with the mahuzzim , as has been above intimated . . he shall enter into the glorious land , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( as ch. . . ) signifies the land of iudaea , according to the general strain of interpreters , by reason of the glory of the temple and divine residence there . the king of the north the turk will be master of this land too , as he is known to be at this day . and many countreys shall be overthrown , but these shall escape out of his hand , edom and moab and the chief of the children of ammon , that is , saith mr. mede , the inhabitants of arabia petraea , which were never yet provincials of the turkish empire . yea with some of them he is fain to be at pension , for the safer passage of his caravans . . he shall stretch forth his hand also upon other countreys , and the land of egypt , namely , shall not escape , which thoug●… it held out long under the mamalukes , till the year ( whenas constantinople was taken in the year ) at last fell under the hands of the turk . . but he shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver , and over all the precious things of egypt , and the libyans , and the ethiopians . the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the cushites ( that is , the neighbouring nations whether of africk or libya , as those of algiers , &c. or of the arabians in scripture called cushim ) shall be at his steps , that is , at his devotion , so mr. mede . and thus far the prophecy seems clear , being applied to times past . but what follows is to come , and therefore the sense more uncertain , and being so little is likely to reach at times more distant . and we are already at the seventh trumpet , with which begin the seven vials , and i suspect in this so contracted a prophecy , that aims onely at main things , and such especially as concern the church of christ , and here treats of the scourges upon antichrist from the saracen and turk , that there may be a leap to the sixth and seventh vials , in the latter whereof antichrist or the bloudy idolatrous papal hierarchy is utterly ruined , which is a thing so considerable , that it is unlikely to be omitted in this prophecy of the scripture of truth . . but tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him , that is , shall trouble the turk which tidings out of the east may very well contemporize with the sixth vial , which is poured out upon the river euphrates , whereby its waters are dried up , and a way to the kings of the east prepared , which shews some grand mutation of affairs and jeopardy that the turkish empire in those eastern parts will seem to be in , at that time : but the tidings out of the north may be of a most formidable strength of tartars invading the turkish empire at the same time , it may be converted to the christian religion . and peganius , i remember , in his exposition of the sixth vial , interprets the kings of the east of the tartars and persians . but the tartars are to be look'd upon as a people from the north rather than from the east , as this prophecy of daniel expresses it . the tartars their first driving the turks on this side of euphrates , made them overflow so , that by degrees making themselves masters of asia minor , they at last got into europe , took new rome or constantinople , and seized themselves of the constantinopolitan empire . and what this driving of them here mentioned will doe , god alone certainly knows . but it seems the same and rumour of this incursion of the tartars and persians casteth the turk into a great anxiety of mind , and an equal rage , as is intimated in what follows . therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy , and utterly to make away many , that is , any by whose destruction and overthrow he may think it probable further to strengthen himself against those imminent dangers he is so sensible of , or to compensate his losses . . and he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace betweéen the seas in the glorious holy mountain . this interpreters ordinarily understand of his entring into iudaea , because of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here used , which they make a character of the land of iudaea , and will have the mountain mount sion and moria , where the temple stands , betwixt two seas , the mediterranean and mare mortuum , whenas if you consult the maps of ptolemy and adrichomius , ierusalem lies manifestly north of mare mortuum , and therefore it cannot well be said to lye betwixt the mediterraneum and it , it being nearer the north pole than the most northern part of mare mortuum . but beside , this land of iudaea the turk had entred and possessed before ver . . therefore this seems some new exploit and acquist in some other countrey betwixt two seas , and where is to be found a glorious holy mountain . now for the countrey betwixt two seas , it is manifest that italy is such , being placed betwixt mare adriaticum and mare tyrrhenum , which are also called mare superum and mare inferum . and then for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is translated , the glorious holy mountain , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not necessarily a proper name of iudaea , but may be a noun appellative ( though the seventy , both here and also ver . . do not change it in their translation , but call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , sabi ) which signifies rem tumidam , plenam , turgidam , as a lapide himself has noted , and the root from whence it comes , viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies intumuit , to swell , or to be puffed up . but it may also signify a solid greatness and gloriousness , as where it is used of iudaea in reference to the temple , where the glory of the true god resided , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 itself in one place by the seventy is translated , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ierem. ch. . but in the mean time , as we have found a countrey distinct from iudaea betwixt two seas , so that country will afford a city , and hills famous ones belonging to that city betwixt these two seas , and these are the hills and city of rome . which being the metropolis of holy church , or the papal hierarchy and the seat of his holiness so called , it is no wonder that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies holiness , is here added . and moreover though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were a proper note of iudaea and the temple there , yet nothing hinders but figuratively it may be used to signify another place . as it is said of the prince of tyre , though but a type of antichrist , ezek. ch . . that he was the anointed cherub and set upon the holy mountain of god , and that he walkt up and down in the midst of the stones of fire ; that is , sparkling stones in aaron's breastplate : if these things proper to aaron the high priest and to the temple of god , be applyed to the prince of tyre , who is only a type of antichrist , why may not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which may seem to belong properly to iudaea and the temple there , be applied to antichrist himself , especially it hitting so fitly as it does in vertue of other significations of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , it signifying as well a tumid excellency , as solid excellency ; for so you may render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , either the hill of a tumid pompousness of holiness , the holiness of that church consisting most-what in outward pomps and shews , or , the hill of the tumour and fastuosity of his holiness the pope , * or , the hill of sabi codesh , of the god who is called his holiness , and indeed who exalts himself above all that is called god or worshipped , as st. paul speaks . and so it will be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in good earnest , the hill of a very tumid though not solid supremum numen in terris . this is har zebi , the hill of him that puts himself in the place of god , as it is said to the king of tyre his type , who is said also to have swelled himself into the conceit of being a god. because thy heart is lifted up and thou sayst i am a god , and sit , in cathedra dei , so the vulgar latin has it , in the heart of the seas , that is , not at the north end nor south end , but in the midst space of italy included betwixt two seas mare superum and mare inferum . behold therefore i will bring strangers upon thee the terrible of the nations , namely the turk , and vers . . wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee i am god , but thou shalt be a man and no god in the hand of him that slayeth thee , whether naturally , or , which is far more probable and desirable , politically , that is , despoils him there of his rule and power . see my synopsis prophetica , book . ch . . where i explain these visions of ezekiel touching the king of tyre ; and consider but what i have writ , and i think you cannot doubt but that the pope of rome , or the roman hierarchy , is concerned in those visions , and that he is to fall by the terrible of the nations , and very probably by the king of the north here in this vision , viz. the turk . but by this description in ezekiel , what a zebi antichrist is , that is , what a turgid and tumid thing , as cornelius à lapide interprets the word , swoln and puffed up into a conceit of being supremum numen in terris , is fitly set out . but that his power will be surmounted and that he will be brought down by the king of the north the turk , is intimated in the following words of this verse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . our english translation renders it , yet he shall come to his end and none shall help him . which i conceive is not so natural a sense , nor so consentaneous to the drift of the prophecy in hand , touching the man of sin or antichrist . wherefore the vulgar latin and vatablus render it better . to which gasper sanctius also assents and maldonat . et veniet usque ad summitatem ejus & nemo auxiliabitur illi . and he shall come to the top of it , viz. of the hill , ( suppose mount coelius ) and no man shall help it , that is , the hill , and rescue it out of his hand , so maldonat and others . which implies that the king of the north will make himself perfect master of this hill or hills and city of rome , and that no man will hinder him * by rescuing the hill , and consequently the city and seat of the pope , out of his hand . but then will be fulfilled , at least within this seventh vial , that prediction touching the king of babylon or antichrist by isaias , ch. . which i had occasion to mention also above . all the kings of the nations , even all of them lye in glory , every one in his own house . but thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch , as a carcass troden under foot , because thou hast destroyed thy land and slain thy people ; as it is said of the whore of babylon , which is the same polity , that in her was found the bloud of prophets and of saints , and of all that were slain upon the earth . in this taking of rome therefore by the turk , and his possessing of himself of italy will the western empire be extinguished , as well as the eastern was by the taking of constantinople , and that will come to pass before the expiring of the seventh vial , that is written apoc. ch. . and the beast was taken and with him the false prophet , and were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone . but to the comfort of all good christians , the king of the north or turk * shall be slain with the sword of him that sits on the white horse , that is , he shall be converted to christianity in all likelihood , according to the intimations of those prophecies in the apocalypse , which also place these things under the pouring forth of the seventh vial. which taking of rome under this vial makes it seem less probable , though not impossible , that the pouring out of the fifth vial upon the seat of the beast should be the taking of rome too , but some other calamity upon it , which is more easy to conceive , than needfull to utter . in the mean time i think it very rational to expound this last verse , as i have , of the destruction of antichrist at rome , the turk having taken iudaea and ierusalem before , and the tartar and persian being far off , nor any holy hill there betwixt two seas to be found that i know of ; and it being also incredible , that this prophecy describing so lively the idolatrous state of antichrist , and the beginnings of his punishment under the fifth and sixth trumpets , should not glance at his final destruction under the seventh , that the prophecy may seem , as it is not without an head , so not to be without a foot . the prophecies of the metalline image , and the four beasts , that reach to the end of the roman empire as this does , speak of the destruction of it in the last period thereof , namely of the feet and toes and of the little horn with eyes . therefore there is all reason that this prophecy of the scripture of truth should do so too . which it does not , unless this last verse of this eleventh chapter be understood of the destruction of the papacy . which is a thing worth the considering . notes upon vision vi. ver. . the hebrew is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which taken verbatim , signifies no more than the daughter of women , filia foeminarum , and therefore vatablus adds , subaudi , formosarum . but if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is prefixt to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies emphatically , it may signify the daughter of excellent women , and therefore vatablus calls her filiam formosissimam vel nobilissimam . for it is not so perfectly reducible to the form of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hircus caprarum , which interpreters generally agree signifies young ones of the kind , as there a young goat ; so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should signify a young delicate damsel . grotius is of opinion , that there is an ellipsis in the phrase , and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. filia foemina foeminarum . but these curiosities are but needless , all interpreters agreeing in this , that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is understood some very commendable female , with whom the king of aegypt might be taken . vers. . romans who were antiently called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 chittim according to bocartus , ] namely in phaleg lib. . cap. . where though he produce probable arguments why chittim should signify the macedonians , and amongst other that out of hesychius , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that out of a. gell. lib. . c. . philippus amyntae filius terrae macetiae rex , &c. yet he is more propending to the opinion that chittim signifies the romans . but his first argument is from the authority of expositours , who where the word chittim occurs expound it of the romans or italians , as numb . . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 à parte chittim , where st. ierome , the ierusalem targum , the arabian interpreter , onkelos and ionathan understand by chittim the romans or italians . so ezech. ch. . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ex insulis chittim , the chaldee interpreter and the vulgar render it de insulis italiae . and lastly , which bochartus puts in the first place , namely this present passage of daniel's prophecy ch. . . supervenient enim naves chittim . here he makes no question but that these ships of chittim are the ships of the romans , because the vulgar latin has romani for chittim ; which exposition , says he , the greek and latin fathers follow , and of the hebrew writers iosephus ben gorion , selomo iarchi , r. saadias gaon , aben ezra , iosephus iacchiades , which is a competent plea of authority . and for the more credibility of the matter he further adds , that in dionysius halicarnassaeus , there occurs the city 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 situated in latium , one of the great and populous cities taken by coriolanus . there is also cetus flu . near cumae that petrifies plants according to aristotle . he adds also that eusebius , chronicon alexandrinum , cedrenus , suidas affirm the latins to have their original from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the chittim , nay that in the very word chittim is contained the name of the latins , latium being derived à latendo , to be hid , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying , occultus , absconditus . these are pretty criticisms and the fruit of laudable wit and reading ; but whether we are to confide in this more precise notion that makes chittim signify the romans properly and adequately , or in that more large acception out of iosephus mentioned in my exposition , i leave to the reader to use his own judgment in . but whether way soever you take it , by chittim the romans will easily and naturally be understood , from the genuine sense and coherence of the prophecy . vers. . which therefore cannot be understood of antiochus . ] indeed antiochus epiphanes is said some two years after he had prophaned the temple at ierusalem with idolatry , to have made a third expedition into aegypt , and upon physcon his account to have expelled philometor his brother out of the whole kingdom , and to have entred a league and shared the government of that kingdom with physcon . but he had scarce setled these affairs , but the romans again were on his back out of cilicia , and a sad rumour out of the east of the king of parthia his invading his kingdom on that side , and that iudaea also had revolted came to his ear , and in the midst of his stickling to obviate these difficulties and extricate himself out of the confusions he was in , within the space of a year or thereabout he was cut off by an inglorious and lamentable death . how well this suits with that phrase , a king shall do according to his will , ( which signifies the greatest prosperity that may be in the style of this prophecy ) let any one judge . vers. . military protectours and champions , &c. ] here , where mahuzzim is joyned with holds , it is requisite the word should signify persons , that is , protectours , defenders , guardians , helpers , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is very often rendred in the scripture , the septuagint five times in the psalms render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 [ mahoz ] 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the vulgar latin as often protector . see mr. mede his apostasie of the latter times , ch . . part . there can be no doubt of the sense of mahuzzim in this personal signification . and in the other two places , where mahuzzim are named , though it were translated , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , walls , towers , bulwarks and the like , yet the persons of the saints or daemons are easily understood thereby , forasmuch as the antient fathers gave those very names to the saints in reference to their reliques disposed of in this or that church or monastery . i will onely add one citation of mr. mede's out of theodoret , ( who calls the holy martyrs , guardians of cities , lieutenants of places , captains of men , princes and champions , &c. which are plainly military terms , ) and so leave the reader to see the rest in that excellent authour in the abovesaid place . but hence it is plain how wonderfull easy and naturall the exposition of this place of daniel is . vers. . or the hill of sabi kodesh of the god who is called his holiness . ] that the pope affects a kind of divinity was the complaint of frederick the second , and how he is twice placed upon the holy altar ( which is the proper throne of the body of christ ) after his election and at his coronation you may see in laurentius bank his roma triumphans , and what adorations are done unto him . and in the gloss of the canon law the pope is called dominus deus noster , our lord god , as bishop downham has noted in his de antichristo , lib. . cap. . and there are many passages to that purpose in their canonists and theologers who think fit to give all the names to the pope that are given to christ to assert his primacy over the church , powel , de antichristo lib. . c. . thes . . and therefore sabi which no man can deny to be justly given to christ , may be given to the pope . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the septuagint render ierem. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god omnipotent , suits excellently well with what the canonists call omnipotentiam pontificiam the omnipotency of the pope , in papa omnem esse potestatem supra omnes potestates tam caeli quàm terrae , which bishop downham cites as the saying of an arch-bishop of that church in a publick oration of his in the lateran , and there are several to that purpose as you may see them cited by bishop downham and by gabriel powell in their books de antichristo . so that the pope is a sabi sabaoth indeed , and take it in the most military sense , he is , as one predicted of him , that rex superbiae cui paratur sacerdotum exercitus , that king of pride with his army of priests , of severall ranks , and as well ordered , as themselves will not stick to acknowledge , as an army with banners . so little unfitness is there that the pope should be called sabi , scoptically , by the prophet , he in the mean time in good earnest foretelling how immensly he would extoll himself and be extolled by his own . but kodesh is added that there may be no mistake , and that we may understand that the same sabi is not here meant that is meant vers . . ( where the land of iudaea is called the land 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , of that true and eminent , of that solid ( not tumid ) sabi , even of the god of israel himself . but here this hill , the hill coelius in all likelyhood ( where the popes proper imperial palace is and chair of state , whose feet are as high as the top of the emperors chair and other great princes ) is onely called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hill of sabi , not of that true and eminent sabi , the god of israel ) kodesh , i say , is added , that no man may miss of who is meant thereby , namely , his holiness of rome . for this is his known title , nothing more celebrated . and that it may be the title of a man , notwithstanding it is the feminine gender and in the abstract , cornelius à lapide very well makes out upon dan. . . where says he , sanctitas sanctitatum , the most holy , is to be understood of christ not of the temple , and signifies no more than sanctus sanctorum or sanctissimus , sic pontificem , says he , vocamus sua sanctitas , that is , sanctissimus dominus ; and gasper sanctius on the same place speaks to the same purpose . what can be more easy or plain ? so manifest is it that no grammatical or critical violence is done to the text by thus expounding of it , but by the coherence of things and of the context , the place thus expounds itself . by rescuing the hill and consequently the city , &c. ] i do not love to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a messenger of ill news , to any , but this is more tolerable and less affrightfull , it being of a thing in all likelyhood so far off . but whether this be not the natural and easy sense of this passage in daniel , i appeal to any unprejudiced reader . and it is no more than has been threatned to old rome ( as well as it has happened to new rome already , namely to constantinople ) by men of their own church , that their city would be destroyed by reason of the wickedness of their clergy . so st. bridget , st. catharine of sienne , abbot ioachim , and others , have denounced against them , and some , of their being overrun by the very turk . but of all predictions of that kind , none seems more considerable than that which bartholomaeus georgivitz , a zealous pilgrim of the roman church , and one who was a slave for some thirteen years in turky , delivers in his epitome , de moribus turcarum , cap. . as a prophecy of the turks themselves , to this sense . that after their emperour the grand senior has taken the red apple , if at the seventh year of his reign the christian sword does not advance , he shall rule unto the twelfth , but after the twelfth year that he shall have won the red apple , the christian sword shall appear and put the turk to flight . which is an odd prophecy amongst the turks , and the more considerable in that it seems so impartial as to declare against themselves . but what this red apple should be , saith georgivitz , is a question amongst the learned of them , there being a various reading in the prophecy , either kusul almai which signifies a red apple , or vrum papai , which may indigitate , says he , the patriarchacy of constantinople , vrum signifying the greek , forasmuch as all greece was once under the roman empire , otherwise vrum would more immediately signify roman ; but taken in that other sense , constantinople would be aimed at . but it is so long since constantinople was taken , that vrum papai will either signify the seat of the pope of rome , or else must be excluded for a spurious reading , understanding the prophecy literally . and it may be it was a comment crept into the text. for as all are agreed that by the red apple is meant some imperial city , so the red hats of the cardinals and the scarlet cloathing of the papal hierarchy might easily invite the commentatour to interpret this red apple of the city of rome , and if any iew was the interpreter , as there are many amongst the turks , they understanding by edom in the scripture ( which signifies red ) the city of rome or the roman power , it was hard for him to miss of that interpretation . and cornelius à lapide notes , that the iews by the idumaeans understand the romans , in his commentary upon isai. . . the burden of dumah ( that is , of idumaea ) in the hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . which is very nigh in writing to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as martinius in his technologia observes out of st. ierome , sic , saith he , hieronymus ait 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 literas parvo apice distingui , & cùm interpretatur 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 paululùm literae apice commutato , pro 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 legi posse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 & sonare romam . but there was no need of this nicety , the interpretation of this turkish prophecy is discovered enough already . i will onely referr the reader to mr. mede , book . ch. . where , by many examples he shows , that the iews by edom understand rome , and how r. d. kimchi turns 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but i think interpreters are much mistaken when they interpret the seven and twelve years not symbolically but arithmetically . for , if there be any thing in the prophecy , i suspect this to be the meaning thereof , that the turk may take the city of rome ( suppose within the space of the seventh vial ) being so ▪ hugely guilty of idolatry and bloud , if she prevent it not by timely repentance . and if the christian sword advance not against him during the septenary , a symbol of the reign of idolatry , for such was the seventh head , yet upon the commencing of the duodenary , which is the symbol of the times of the pure apostolick restitution , and of the new ierusalem , christianity shall furmount turcisme . nor shall the christians any where be any longer slaves ●…nto him . but i brought this prophecy of the turks taking ▪ the city of rome , set down by that zealous romanist bartholomaeus georgivitz , onely to shew that the forewarning the church of rome of the danger , is no argument of the least ill will towards them . shall be slain with the sword of him that sits on the white horse . ] and this is the christian sword that in the beginning of the duodenary , when the truely pure and apostolick church shall appear , will put the turk to flight , that is , quite vanquish the turkish religion and power and turn them all christians . and these are those times which cardan in an astrological fit of divination , more than ordinarily assisted , it may be , as the star-gazers of the east were by a supernatural star , describes in his language briefly thus . martem & lunam debellant sol & iupiter , authoritate , dignitate , veritate . ob hoc christiani erigite capita , qui potest capere capiat . the language is fantastical as being astrological , but the prediction insinuated by some better kind of genius ( as the turkish prophet haply might be inspired by some secret emissary from palmoni , who has a right to all kingdomes though not possession yet of all ) is sober and true , as appears by the holy oracles of scripture . vision vi. continued . from the times of the sixth and seventh vial to the second resurrection ; as also the duration of the entireness of the kingdome of antichrist defined ; and the time of his more palpable discovery indigitated by two numbers directing thereto , chap. . . and at that time shall michael stand up , the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people . as it is said ch. . . and there is none that holdeth with me in these things but michael your prince . this passage therefore denotes the time when the affairs of the iews become very hopefull and prosperous , which is about the sixth and the seventh vials , to speak in the language of the apocalypse and there shall be a time of trouble , such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time . as it is said apoc. . . under the seventh vial , and there was a great earthquake such as was not since men were upon earth , so mighty an earthquake and so great . the comparing which two places together plainly shews to what times they belong . and at that time thy people shall be delivered . the seventy have it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thy people shall be saved , as also the vulgar latin has it , salvabitur populus tuus , namely , from that bondage and abject condition they had lived in among the nations , as also from the rude and beggerly elements of moses , and by their conversion to christianity , they will be made partakers of eternal salvation . chery one that shall be found written in the book , yea not the iews onely but every one as well gentiles as iews that are found written in the book of life mentioned apoc. . . shall be saved . so that , as it is usual with the prophets , there is a running out from the temporal deliverance of the iews to the spiritual deliverance , and from their particular deliverance from the lake of fire or second death to the general salvation of all whose names are writ in the book of life : as the sense is very coherent with what follows in the next verse which contains though something involutely and contractedly both the first and second resurrection , according as the words are capable of a double exposition . . and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake . where many , in counterdistinction to all , does plainly intimate the first resurrection , which is not the general resurrection , but the resurrection of the martyrs onely , such as did actually lose their lives for witnessing to the truth , or did without all reserve expose them for the same , as daniel did who was cast into the lions den , and the three children into the fiery furnace , though they were miraculously delivered . some to everlasting life , the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , those to everlasting life , viz. those that awake out of the dust of the earth , at this time , those that are revivificated into their glorious bodies at this first resurrection , these awake to eternal life , and enjoy a blessed immortality in their heavenly bodies . this is the first resurrection of which it is said apoc. . blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection , on such the second death hath ●…o power . and some to shame and everlasting contempt . in the hebrew it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which you may render , but those others , another sort of people which the prophecy points at ( whose condition begins at this first resurrection or about the commencing of the blessed millennium or new ierusalem-state ) these shall be in perpetual shame and contempt all along the time of the blessed millennium or new ierusalem , and indeed even to the end of the world : for these are that wretched crew , who are the foul spirits or unclean birds that haunt the ruins of babylon , those dogs , sorcerers , whoremongers , murderers , idolaters and liars that are excluded the holy city . which is a very shameful and contemptible condition indeed . and according to this sense of the words of this verse , it is plain the first resurrection mentioned in the apocalypse is pointed at . but now if by many we do not understand a certain number in counterdistinction to all , but a vast multitude as there will be certainly at the general resurrection ( and the critical interpreters of the bible do not stick to affirm that many sometimes signifies all , so be they be but a great multitude ) then the text will run naturally enough for the last and general resurrection when both good and bad shall arise . and those words , some to everlasting life , and some to shame and everlasting contempt , will be a fit distribution of those many or all that are then said to arise out of the dust of the earth , the one part of them being to be adjudged to a blessed immortality in glorified bodies , the other to that shamefull , squalid , forlorn and accursed condition of the apostate spirits , those horrid hell-hounds with whom they are to be sentenc●…d to everlasting fire , or the lake of fire and brimstone which is the second death . . and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament , that is , they that be docible and understand the ways of god and walk therein , accordingly shall shine as the brightness of the firmament , as the bright azure skie . and they that turn many to righteousness , as the stars for ever and ever , that is , they that are not onely wise and holy themselves but are instrumental in the promoting true wisdome and holiness in others , shall shine as the stars , shall have a greater and more peculiar and eminent glory than others . which if it respect the first sense of the foregoing verse , it denotes the splendour and prosperity of the blessed millennium , in what honour and repute the citizens of the new ierusalem , especially the good ministers , pastors or teachers , and godly magistrates in what high esteem and veneration they will live , in counterdistinction to that wretched rabble that are excluded the holy city . but if it respect the second sense , it intimates the different degrees of the glorified bodies of the saints in the resurrection , which the apostle sets off by comparing one star with another . for one star differeth from another star in glory . but daniel by comparing the brightness of the firmament with that more vigorous lustre in the stars themselves , makes a great difference betwixt that share of glory and happiness which successfull teachers and instructers of the people in the ways of holiness , and faithfull magistrates shall have , and that which shall fall to their lot whose activity hath reached no farther than the concern of their own souls . and thus we see this prophecy of daniel to reach to the very end of the world the general resurrection , when the good shall be rewarded with that immarcescible crown of eternal glory , and the wicked sentenced to everlasting fire . what follows concerns the obscurity , and intelligibleness of these predictions in this last vision and others that tend to the same scope , when and by whom they are likely to be understood , and by whom not understood . . but thou o daniel shut up the words and seal the book even to the time of the end . this command to daniel to seal the book is a kind of prediction that the book will not be unsealed as to the aforesaid visions , till the time of the end , that is , till the last times or the time of the roman monarchy , for that is the fourth and last monarchy . but then in that time , many shall run to and fro , that is , be inquisitive and hunt after truth . and knowledge shall be increased , that is , they shall not altogether hunt in vain , but many shall find the truth and understand the coming of christ by the help of the prophecies of this book when he shall appear , as also in the latter part of these last times the coming likewise of antichrist , which is chiefly here aimed at , when knowledge shall most of all abound , as it has very much this last age or two . . then i daniel looked and behold ! there stood other two , angels suppose in the shape of men , the one on this side of the bank of the river , viz. of hiddekel or tigris , ch . . . and the ●…ther on that side of the bank of the river . these two angels signify two presidentiary angels of two kingdoms or empires , and st. ierome makes them the presidentiary angels of greece and persia ; alcazar of syria and aegypt . but this is out of inadvertency to what times this part of the prophecy reaches , which is to the times 〈◊〉 the roman empire and ma●●metan . whence we may reasonably collect , that as there has been mention made of the presidentiary angels of persia and grecia , ch . . and also of iudaea , so these two angels are brought in as the presidentiary angels of those kingdoms or empires that this part of the prophecy reaches to , namely the presidentiary angels of the roman and mahometan empire . . and one said to the man clothed in linen which was upon the waters of the river , viz. to the man described ch . . . namely to palmoni or christ himself . how long shall it be to the end of these wonders , that is , how long shall these wonderfull things that have been here foretold continue ? . and i heard the man clothed in linen , viz. him that is described ch . . . and whose description is somewhat like that of christ apoc. . v. , , &c. and that in ch . . . which was upon the waters of the river , but apoc. . . is said to set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the earth . when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven , as the angel apoc. . . is said to lift up his hand to heaven , which is the posture of them that swear . and sware by him that liveth for ever , that it shall be for a time and times and half a time : namely , those more marvellous things especially foretold of that king of pride ch . . v. , , . that they should continue so long , about three prophetical years and an half , or forty two prophetical months , as the apocalypse expresseth it , which is the time also of the little horn with eyes , dan. . . who is the same with this king of pride . and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people , that is , after the dispersion of the holy people the iews shall be ended , which will be under the first thunder , about the sixth and seventh vials . all these things shall be finished . all these marvellous things even to the first and second resurrection when there shall be no more time upon earth , according to the oath of that angel apoc. . , . which answers to this . for it is about the same thing , as the persons are the same , and therefore the time the same . but the oath of that apocalyptick angel is . that there shall be no more time saving in the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall sound and the mystery of god be finished , that is , upon the expiration of the time and times and half a time , there shall be no more time on earth or series of things there , save what are contained within the seventh trumpet or seven thunders . within the expiration of that time and the time and times and half a time , all these things , as the angel tells daniel , shall be finished . so excellent a key is the apocalypse to this passage of daniel . . and i heard but i understood not , namely where to pitch these time and times and half a time , or where the latter part of the times of the end which is the time of the fourth monarchy , is supposed to be . then said i , o my lord. he speaks to the man clothed in linen upon the waters with this reverence and respect as being the same angel described ch . . which i there shewed to be christ. what shall be the end of these things ? the hebrew has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , what the latter part of those ? whether times , or things transacted in those times ? . and he said , goe thy way daniel , for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. which time of the end here has a more restrict signification , it being an answer to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what the latter part of those times ? which latter part the apostle calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the latter times of these last . and therefore is as much as if the angel had said , the vision touching these time and times and half a time is sealed up or concealed till the being of those very times , which are the times of the end in the more strict sense . in which time of the end or time and times and half a time , which is the time of the apocalyptick whore and beast and the little horn with eyes which wars against the saints , it is said here likewise , that . many shall be purified and made white and tried , viz. in the furnace of affliction and persecution under the whore and the beast or little horn with eyes or under the above described king of pride the very antichrist . but the wicked shall do wickedly , that is , shall persist in their gross idolatries and sensual lewdnesses and all manner of wickednesses , of pride and avarice , and persecution of the pure apostolick christians . and none of the wicked shall understand , that is , none of the followers of antichrist and immersed in the foul idolatries and gross sensualities , or blinded with the deceitfull hypocrisies of that antichristian synagogue , none of these , or others as carnally or worldly minded as they , shall understand either these visions of daniel or those of the apocalypse which tend to the same scope . but the wise shall understand , viz. those that the fear of god has made so , which is the beginning of all true wisdome . these will prove competent judges of the true sense of these prophecies : and will not be such fools as to expect light from the antient fathers for the understanding of them , whenas it is expresly declared that the●… are closed up and sealed till the latter times . and then those that are truly wise will understand them , as it is further intimated by what follows that it will not be till then . and it is an hint and a sufficiently certain though something obscure subindication , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , what are the latter times of the last ? or the times of the reign of antichrist ? this intimation i say that follows is sufficient . . and from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination that malieth desolate set up , the same that is mentioned and in the ●…ame words ch . . . in this very prophecy of the scripture of truth . there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety prophetical days , or eighty six roman indictions , such as not onely the emperours but the popes of rome make use of in their decrees and are peculiar to the roman state. in the latter part of the last times at the end of this number will that king of pride above described ch. . v. , , &c. be revealed , namely , in the year of christ . * then will this antichrist by a publick writing be exhibited or set out to the world in his colours , that all may ●…ee him that are not wilfully blind . . blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days , that is , years as before , or indictions . blessed are they that come to this time , for they will have the opportunity of not onely knowing antichrist but of suffering martyrdome by opposing of him , and witnessing against him in behalf of christ and his true church . this number therefore thus augmented by three indictions , viz. by forty five years , reaches to the time of the waldenses and the beginning of their persecutions , viz. to the year . which continued upon them so long and with that cruelty , that many hundred thousands of them lost their lives in witnessing to the truth of christ against the deceits , impostures , idolatries , and barbarous and tyrannical pride and cruelty of the roman antichrist : and so became martyrs for christ , and purchased to themselves the priviledge of martyrs , which is the priviledge of having their share in the first resurrection . whence it is said , blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days . for blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection , on such the second death hath no power , apoc. . . these numbers therefore served for the pointing out the times of antichrist to them that should be born in those times , though daniel understood nothing by them ; and therefore the angel says . . but goe thou thy way till the end be . which translation is somewhat hard and obscure , vatablus his interpretation seems more natural to me , who interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not imperatively , but in a future ●…ense , as is often in the hebrew . tu autem vades ad ●…inem tuum , but thou shalt come to thine end , that is , thou ●…halt dye , long before these things come to pass or be understood . and thou shalt rest , in an happy , peacefull and secure condition , as it is said , the souls of the righteous are in the hand of god , and there shall no torment touch them , wisd. . . and stand in thy lot at the end of the days , that is , at the resurrection of the just , and because it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in thy lot , it may intimate some peculiar lot proper to him , and such as he , that is , martyrs : for he was as good as actually martyred , he exposing himself fully to the fury of the lions , rather than he would obey that wicked and impious decree that his enemies had got to entrap him with , from the mouth of darius . his lot therefore seems to be with those that partake of the first resurrection , which happens under the last trumpet , as well as the last resurrection does , and therefore may well enough be said to be at the end of the days , that is , of times , namely , to be in the last share of them , under the seventh trumpet , beyond which the angel swears there shall be no more time upon earth , apoc. . notes upon vision vi. contin . ver. ii. this prophecy of the time of the revelation of antichrist is so remarkable , that it is worth our pains briefly here to consider the certainty thereof . first then these numbers days and days cannot be understood of days so as to be applied , the former of them to the time from the pollution of the temple by antiochus epiphanes unto the grant to the iews , of living according to their own laws , macc. . . the latter to the time from the same epocha to antiochus his death , as mr mede has unanswerably demonstrated in his de numeris danielis , against broughton and iunius . whence it will necessarily follow that these and days are indeed so many prophetical days , that is , years , as they are in this book of daniel naturally to signify , unless some intimation be given to the contrary , as i have noted above in due place ; and that this obvious prophetical signification of days suits very well with this prophecy of the scripture of truth , and takes nothing from its clearness and plainness , nay indeed there being here given no intimation to the contrary ( as there is in other places of daniel where days do not signify prophetical days ) it is no slight but rather demonstrative argument that they do signify prophetical days here , that is , that they are so many years . whence it will follow that if we can but light upon a fit epocha to fix them to , the time of the strange wonders , or the time of the time and times and half a time ( which the antients universally understood of the reign of antichrist ) will be discovered , and consequently that antichrist is already come , according to the very suffrage of the fathers . and truly unless we will wilfully wink against it , the epocha to which these numbers are to be fixt is evidently declared by the angel , namely , the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination that maketh desolate be set up , which is spoke of in this very prophecy of the scripture of truth , ch. . . where touching antiochus and his ministers it is said , they shall take away the daily sacrifice , and shall place the abomination that maketh desolate . what can be more assured , and more handsome , than that the epocha of the number that points to the times of antichrist , should be fixt to the foulest times of his type , antiochus epiphanes ? but it is further to be noted that this epocha , this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the transgression that maketh desolate , as it is called dan. . . is of some latitude , above six years space . the bounds of which space grotius seems with judgment to define thus , upon dan. . . this time , says he , of about six years begins from the first coming of antiochus into iudaea when the priesthood was prophaned , and it comprehends his second coming the forbidding of the jewish rites , the placing of the idol in the temple and the whole time of the intermission of the daily sacrifice . and upon ch. . . this is the first coming , says he , of antiochus into iudaea , when he disposed as he pleased of the high priesthood . whence i think we may safely set those bounds of prophanation or the transgression that maketh desolate , so as to place their beginning in the . year of the seleucidae , and their ending in the . for in the former year menelaus by large bribes and much flattery obtained the high priestood of antiochus , and thrust out iason . quod erat proximum initium miseriarum iudaeae sub antiocho epiphane , says thomas lydiat . and in the latter antiochus epiphanes died , and antiochus eupator his successour granted an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the iews , ●… liberty of living acording to their own laws , viz. according to the holy covenant or law of moses . and therefore this epocha being so large as comprehending the space of above six years , it is the less likely that the ending pointed precisely to a year , when this discovery of the times of antichrist should be . but both the numbers consisting absolutely and compleatly of quindenaries or indictions , that this was not onely an intimation that the numbers reached into the times of the roman empire since the beginning of their computation by indictions , but that we may also compute this distance of time by quindenaries or indictions . as if he should say , after quindenaries , or quindenaries , or before the th or the th be expired , such things touching antichrist will be clearly understood , and it will be manifest and plain that those be the times of antichrist , and that we are not then to expect an antichrist to come , but may be sure he is come already ; and if it were but thus , it were sufficient . but mr. mede taking the middle of the time of the transgression that maketh desolate , which is the year before christ . the time of the first number will expire , says he , a. d. , the time of the latter a. d. . but forasmuch as there is a latitude in the epocha , we may begin the reckoning from every year thereof , and therefore beginning at the first of the six , the first number will expire a. d. . in which very year was there a book published which did plainly declare the apostasy of the church of rome , and that the pope was antichrist . and the very date thereof is set in the title page a. d. . as you may see in paul perrin's history of the waldenses . this is very accurate , though i confess i think it sufficient that this happened in the last quindenarie of the first number . for neither were the evening-mornings intended to predict to a day , but to be collected into years , as these numbers into indictions or q●…indenaries . this book with this date of a. d. . by paul perrin is reckoned among the books of the waldenses , of whose holiness and sincere christianity i cannot but recite that testimony which mr. mede has noted out of bern●…ardus , who in the midst of his inveighing against t hem for being enemies to the pope , yet he could not but allow them this character . whom notwithstanding , says he , if you ask them concerning their faith , there is nothing more christian , if you consider their conversation , there is nothing more irreprehensible , and they make good their words by their deeds . who would know more of these excellent christians , let him read paul perrin . and thus admirably is the prophetick purpose of this first number fulfilled in the publishing of that book of the waldenses a. d. . and within the last quindenarie of that number . and it is remarkable how in that age , yea less than twenty years before the publishing of that book , all the world was in expectation of antichrist's being revealed , insomuch that pope pas●…hal himself , when he intended for gallia cisalpina , stopt his journey at florence , being struck with the greatness of the rumour , which was understood of such an antichrist as the ancient fathers fancied to themselves , and the romanists would seem to believe . which circumstance was not without a providence , that it might be more remarkably imprest upon the capable , who it is that is indeed the true antichrist , to whom that title so often used by the fathers , does of right belong . but now for the other number , the fulfilling of its ▪ prophetical indication is also admirable . for not precisely tying our selves to the year . by taking the middle of the six years of the transgression that ▪ maketh desolate for our epocha ; betwixt the year . and , and if another quindenarie were added to it , it would break no squares , provided that things happen within that quindenarie , upon this revelation of antichrist innumerable multitudes of men were awakened as with a trumpet into the ancient apostolick faith , whom they called waldenses & albigenses and by other names , but they called themselves apostolici , who stood so s●…outly to the faith , that no persecutions which presently ensued could change their minds or make them alter their profession , though about ten hundred thousand of them , and that in france alone , were put to death , if paulus perrionius computes right in his history of them . and these are that faithful martyr antipas who was slain in the lofty pergamus , where satans seat is , as christ complains in his epistle to the church there . and they having the priviledge of martyrs , who are faithful unto death , it is said here in daniel , blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the days . but this i have noted already in my exposition . i will only add one note more , what a childish thing it is or worse , to have recourse to the ancient fathers for a certain and distinct knowledge of these prophecies of daniel ( and there is the same reason for those of the apocalypse ) whenas it is thus expresly signified in daniel , that these mysteries touching antichrist would be sealed up till the time of the end , and particularly till the expiration of the years from the profanation of the temple by antiochus , i.e. till about and odd years after christ. that the times of antichrist were prefigured and foretold by these and such like prophecies , so far the ancient fathers were right , and so far their testimony stands for us ; but when those times would be , or who would prove that antichrist , that was left for the faithful to find out by the ass●…stance of gods spirit , when the time of that revelation by gods appointment was come , which was about the time of the beginning of the waldenses and albigenses . but to deny the people of god the assistance of his spirit , to keep up the credit of the fathers and the authority of the church , as if we could be assured of nothing unless they tell us it is so ▪ is the very dregs of antichristianism , and the very pit of slime and spawn out of which antichrist did arise , and though men do not so easily observe it , a bidding defiance to our very baptism , whereby we are baptized in the name of the father , son and holy ghost . which is not to make a mere drie profession of the triunity of the godhead , but to remind us what a lively faith we ought to have in the son , for his ●…ending the spirit from his father , according to promise , to sanctify us , to strengthen us , and illuminate us , and to carry us on in the process of real regeneration , in which we shall attain to eyes as well as heart , hands and feet , whereby we shall be certainly able to discern christ from antichrist , and true prophets from impostours . and it is no small piece of imposture in the little horn , that he will permit no other horns to see besides himself , or with no other eyes but his . the threefold appendage to the prophecies ▪ or divine uisions of daniel . the first . a confutation of the opinion of hugo grotius , who makes the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae the fourth kingdome in daniel . the second . the authours apologie for his placing the seven vials within the seventh trumpet , after the ri●…ing of the witnesses , contrary to the opinion of mr. m●…de , as also for his making the three days and an half wherein the witnesses lye dead , the same with daniel's three times and an half . the third . his twenty arguments whereby he does prove that the seven epistles to the seven churches are a pr●…phecy of the state of the church cast into seven inter●●ls from the beginning thereof to the last iudgme●● . a confutation of the opinion of hugo grotius , who makes the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae the fourth kingdome in daniel , taken out of synops. prophet . book . chapter xiii . . that prophecy also in daniel of the little horn that is said to change times and laws , is an express prediction of that antichristian opposition which is against the regal office of christ. for that this little horn is the same with the two-horned beast , or the whore in the apocalypse , i think no man will scruple that considers that this horn is part of the roman kingdome , which is decyphered by ten horns , and that it belongs to that time when the kingdome is actually ten-horned ; which is not in succession , but together ; as the ten●…toes of the statue , which answer to these ten horns , do not ●…ignify the succession of ten kings , but ten kings ranked in the same time , as the toes of the feet of the image , which have not properly a precedency , but rather a co-ordination in site . . now tha●… the fourth kingdome which is prefigured by the iron●…legs , feet and ten toes of the image , and by the beast with iron teeth and ten horns , is not that of the lagidae and seleucidae , as grotius would have it , but the kingdome of the romans , there are these weighty reasons to convince us . first , it is the universal sense of all ecclesiastick . writ●…rs , that the fourth beast is the roman empire ; as both cornelius à lapide , and gasper sanctius , both of them jesuits , yet do roundly assert . the words of the latter are these : est ergò omnium sententiâ innominata haec atque horribilis bellua , romanum imperium ; neque necesse est quenquam nomi●…are , cùm nemo non dicat . . secondly , that it cannot be the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae , as grotius would bear us in hand , ( in which odd conceit of his he forsakes the judgment of the whole church of christ , to follow porphyrius his , who was a sworn enemy to the christian religion ) appears from what is said daniel . . the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdome upon earth , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 qu●…d majus erit omnibus regni●… , which shall be greater than all kingdomes ; so the vulgar latine and vatablus . the seventy also render it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and it agrees best with what follows , and shall devour the whole earth , ( which must be understood in such a sense as earth was before ) and shall tread it down and break it in pieces . which it could not be said to do , unless it were so great a kingdome as is here intimated . now it is manifest that the kingdome of the seleucidae and lagidae * was neither greater , more excellent , nor a more victorious kingdome than any of the three preceeding , namely , the babylonian , persian and that of alexander the great , from whose kingdome they would make this of the lagidae and seleucidae distinct . wherefore their kingdome cannot be this fourth . this inference is so plain to gasper sanctius , that he does , though but justly , yet very severely , chastise porphyrius for this errour , which grotius has so unluckily taken up . for he breaks out into these words upon this text , vide porphyrii stuporem & oscitantiam , in cujus mentem venire potuit ●…ut existimaverit regnum eorum , qui alexandro successere , omnium esse maximum , quodque omnem terram sibi subjecerit conculcaveritque , cùm reliquis regnis longè fuerit infirmius , & ab omnibus concisum out malè vexatum . nay , the very prophecy it self makes the kingdom of the successours of alexander less than his in power and greatness , dan. . . where it is said that four kingdoms shall stand up , but not in the power of alexander : which is , they shall be in●…eriour to him . which questionless is meant of them joyntly , it being a needless intimation of them single . . thirdly , the kingdom of the iron legs and toes and of the ten horned beast with iron teeth are one and the same kingdom , according to grotius his own acknowledgment , which he makes that of the seleucidoe and lagidae . now it is said that , a stone cut out of a mountain without hands should break in pieces these legs and toes , nay the whole image o●… iron , brass , silver and gold , and so succeed this kingdom of the seleucidae according to his sense o●… the vision . and ch. . one like the son of man in the clouds of heaven comes to receive a kingdom , namely , upon the destruction of antiochus epiphan●…s , that little horn amongst the ten in this fourth kingdom of grotius his framing , of whom it is said , at the verse , i beheld and the same horn made war with the saints , and prevailed against them , until the antient of days came , and judgment was given to the saints of the most high. which is the same with the son of man his coming in the clouds of heaven , to receive the kingdom of the antient of days , vers . . and both agree with the stone cut out without hands , to shew it is not the work of man , but of the antie●● of days , god himself ; and that this is indeed the very kingdom of christ , as interpreters ever have expounded it . which is a perfect contradiction to grotius his dream , that the fourth beast with iron teeth and the iron legs of the image denote the kingdom of the lagidoe and seleucidae , and t●…at antiochus is this little horn. * for antiochus epiphanes was dead almost two hundred years before christ so much as preached the doctrine of the kingdome , or had any disciples to follow him ; and yet it is said dan. . . and in t●…e days of these kingdoms shall the god of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed . ( from which passage i doubt not but that phrase [ the kingdome of god , ] as also from that above [ the kingdom of heaven ] does so often occur in the gospel , as also that title which christ so often gives himself of the son of man. and grotius himself upon matthew . . acknowledgeth that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the son of man mentioned dan. . . is to be understood of the messias ) wherefore it is impossible that the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae should be the fourth kingdom . . but here grotius , contrary to his judgment when he wrote upon matthew , has found a device which is scarce to be uttered without horrour and astonishment . so that i am infinitely amazed , that a man otherwise so learned and laudable , ( as he speaks of porphyrius ) should be mis-led into so bad an adventure . the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven , according to him , is populus romanus nullum intra se habens regem . when our saviour christ intimated to the high priest , that he was that son of man that should come in the clouds of heaven , it seem'd so high an arrogation , that he rent his clothes and said he had spoken blasphemy . and truly i think that neither jew nor christian can well acquit grotius of that crime , who attributes that which is the peculiar character of the messias to a prophane and pagan people , and that forsooth because they had no king , as if they were ever the better for that . but they had kings at first , and both in the infancy of their empire and afterwards they had a supreme power so great and imperial , as may excuse them from the least shew of contempt . they had always over them a sovereignty , so that they could not be deemed the son of man for any such private condition . for the summa potestas is the summa potestas under what name or form soever , and of the same real grandeur . besides that , they were a most glorious and victorious people before antiochus his time . so that it is a very dilute and sapless conceit of grotius to apply the phrase of the son of man to them for any inconsiderableness in them or obscurity : for they were not so in the times of antiochus . . again , the kingdom of the son of man and the stone cut out without hands are all one , both in truth and according to grotius his own concession . but this stone , is christ and his kingdome , as being heavenly , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a thing erected not by human power , but by the power and spirit of god. that this is the meaning of [ without hands ] is the general vote of interpreters , s. ierom , irenaeus , iustin , epiphanius , s. augustin , theodoret , and several others . where think you does grotius take shelter now ? why , this figure which is so appropriate to christ , and mentioned of him so often in the new testament , this stone must be cast away as if it were neither precious nor a corner-stone , and be bestowed again on a pagan people the romans . for so grotius does not stick to profess , idem lapis & filius hominis ; and he made the son of man before the people of rome . but can a man believe that the original or success of that people was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a thing brought to pass by the special power and spirit of god , and not more humano , according to the usual course of the world , and that not of the best kind , their beginnings being helped on by a rabble of ruffians and robbers ? . no , but that is not grotius his gloss , you will ●…ay . let us therefore hear what it is ; lapis abscissus de monte sine ma●…ibus , according to him , is exercitus populi qui suae esset spontis nullique regi pareret , cuj●…s populi origo à monte , nempe palatino . in which there is nothing sound nor solid . for was this roman army any thing more suae spontis in , that they had not a kingly government at rome ? that supreme power of consuls and senatours was as directive and coactive as if it had been regal . so that the motion of this army was never the more spontaneous for this . again , the stone cut from the mountain without hands , implies that it was then spontaneously divided from the mountain , when it is said to be cut thence : but when the romans first issued from mount palatine , yea so soon as they were populus romanus , regal government was amongst them , it being the first government of this ●…eople , and therefore they were not then populus suae spontis , according to grotius his own conceit , so that he cannot bring both ends together . and lastly , to interpret mountain here in a litteral sense , is unskilfully done , and not according to the analogy of the prophetick style , nor the very intimation of the present text , which says the little stone became a great mountain it self , and filled the whole earth . wherefore this mountain signifying not litterally but politically , there is no question but the other does so too , and that the stone is in some sense homogeneal to this rocky mountain . whence the sense is plainly this : that out of the great mountain , that is , the roman empire , there should be a people raised , not by human power or policy , but by the spirit of god , and the preaching of the gospel by iesus christ , and his apostles , which should be a peculiar people to him , and becom●… the subjects of his kingdome ; that is to say , that the church of christ should be cut out of the roman empire without human help . this is a most easy and undistorted sense , and against which there cannot be made the least exception . . fourthly , which i have already intimated above , the ten horns of the fourth beast with iron teeth , and the ten toes of the iron legs of the statue , signify the same thing . wherefore it is plain , sith the ten toes imply a coexistence of the ten horns , by reason of the coordination of their site , that there must be ten kings together in the fourth kingdome . but in the kingdome of the seleucidae and lagidae there were not ten kings together all at once . therefore that kingdome is not the fourth . . fifthly , antiochus epiphanes , part of this kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae , is said to ri●…e up in the latter time of the kingdome of the successours of alexander , dan. . , . wherefore this kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae has expired near two thousand years ago . but the kingdome of the fourth beast reaches even to the day of judgment . dan. . , . and i beheld till the thrones were cast down , and the antient of days did sit — his throne was like the fiery flame , and his wheels as burni●…g fire . a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him , thousand thousands ministred unto him ; and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him ; * the iudgment was set , and the books were opened , &c. that this is the description of the day of judgment is the general opinion of both christians and jews , and answers exactly to the lake of fire and the opening of the books , apoc. . which grotius himself does interpret of the last day . whence we may safely conclude that the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae is not the fourth kingdome , as having ceased so long before that time , though we understood the day of judgment in the sense of the rabbins 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to which the meaning of [ i beheld till the thrones were set — and the books were opened ] is this , that the prophet daniel had a prospect even to the utmost end of that great day . but he begins more particularly at the beginning of that day in the eleventh verse . but this i have onely noted by the by . . sixthly and lastly , alexander's kingdome and that of his successours is all one kingdome : but that of alexander's is the third according to grotius his own concession . now that that of his successours ( of which line are the lagidae and seleucidae ) is one kingdome with that of alexander's , is evident out of daniel , ch. . . the rough goat is the king of graecia , and the great horn that is bet●…ixt his eyes , is the first king. now that being broken whereas four stood up for it , four kingdomes shall stand up out of the nation , but not in his power . this is one plain proof that the kingdome of alexander and his successours is all one kingdome . for he calls alexander the first king , which necessarily implies that his successours are the second , and that therefore they all belong to one and the same kingdome . nay he says plainly , that these four horns stand up for that great one , that is , in his stead . what is this but to succeed in place of him , as the heads of one and the same empire ? for no new beast is said to succeed this beast , but the horns the horn. and then the comparing of them and saying , but not in his power , farther intimates a cognation and succession of one line , and that he does no●… speak of the heads of two different kingdomes . which appears farther from vers . . therefore the goat waxed very great , and when he was strong , the great horn was broken , and fo●… it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven . but where should these come up , but on that head that had lost this great horn , which is compensated with four lesser ones , * though in their kind notable ? for it is very incongruous and extravagant to fansy ▪ them to come up in any other . and surely if they had belonged to any other beast , that beast would not fail to have been named . wherefore they must either grow out of this goat's head , or no where , unless out of the ground ; which is ridiculous . and therefore it is plain , that alexanders kingdome and that of his successors is but one kingdome . for that goat is but one and the same goat under the succession of this variety of horns . . and yet there is still greater evidence of this truth from ch. . . after which i beheld and lo , another like a leopard , which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl , the beast had also four heads , and domini●…n was given unto it . that the four heads of this beast are the four successours of alexander , * namely , perdicca , seleucus , ptolemaeus , meleager , grotius himself does frankly confess . the wings therefore denote the four kingdomes alexander's empire was divided into , after his decease ; which is still lookt upon as one beast notwithstanding , as the roman is with its division into ten kingdomes , noted by ten horns , or into oriental and occidental , figured by the two wings of an eagle . here grotius , if he would speak out , would make alexander the beast , as he has domitian and others in the apocalypse against all the laws of prophetick interpretation , nay indeed against all rhyme and reason . for he glosses thus , pardus vari●…m animal , ●…ic alexander moribus variis . but how grosly incongruous it is , let any one consider . for then would alexander be inferiour to his four chief officers , and they would be the head of him , which is a political absurdity ; nay the head of him when he ceased to be , which is an absurdity metaphysical . wherefore alexa●…der is the first head or great horn of this beast , not the body of it , that he may be superiour to his four grand officers ; and not be the beast to bear these ●…our horns or heads , when he had quite ceased to be on this stage of things . for these were not heads nor horns , before he w●…s dead . alexander therefore is the first of the succession of the heads or horns of this beast , not the beast it self . but to come up closer to our business : i say , it is very manifest from thes●…●…our heads and four wings that this leopard is said to have , that the third kingdome takes into it the four first successours of alexander . nothing can be more plain than this from the very text. for the leopard is described in the third place , and immediately after him the fourth beast is mentioned , and called the fourth , v. . wherefore this four-headed leopard is plainly the third beast . but now that the succession of these four heads even to antiochus epiphanes is the succession of one and the same kingdome , is plain from ch. . . now that being broken , ( namely the great horn ) whereas four stood up for it , four kingdomes shall stand up out of the nation , but not in his power . and in the latter time of their kingdome ( the original has it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which the seventy render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is the very same with our english , and there is no doubt of the translation ) a king of fierce countenance — shall stand up . which grotius and every one acknowledges to be antiochus epiphanes . whence it is evident that the whole succession of alexander's captains from the first four inclusively even to antiochus his time , is one succession and one kingdome . for he calls the times of antiochus the last times of their kingdome . wherefore it is plain , seeing that the kingdome of alexander is one and the same with the kingdome of the four captains ( for that is the third kingdome ) and the kingdome of the four captains the same with their succession even to antiochus his time ; that the whole succession from alexander to antiochus is one succession and one kingdome . if this be not demonstratively true , there is no demonstration in mathematicks ▪ but if this be true , the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae are not the fourth kingdome , but the kingdome of the r●…mans , according as all sober men have hitherto held . . which we being so firmly assured of ▪ we shall easily know where to seek for this little horn that is said to change times and laws . for where can we find it but amongst those many horns in the roman kingdome or empire ? not in the greek , to which antiochus epiphanes appertains . and we have already plainly shewn * that the apocalyptick beast with seven heads and ten horns is this roman kingdome ; and that this beast once healed , or in such a condition , that it may be said of him that he is the beast that was , and is not , and yet is , ( which is when he is become pagano christian ) is this empire actually divided into ten kingdomes , and that together with this division the empire began to relapse gradually into idolatry by the agency and guidance of the two-horned beast or the whore , whom i hav●… also shewed to be synchronal to the healed beast , or the beast that was , and is not , and yet is . . but the beast restored or healed , his duration is months , which is days , or a time and times and half a time. for the abode of the woman in the wilderness is indifferently expressed by either of these latter ; and the first and the second are joyned together in the vision of the outward court and the two witnesses . wherefore months and a time and times and half a time , being the same with days , they are the same one with another . but this little horn in daniel we speak of , his reign is also set out by a time and times and half a time : therefore it is of the same duration with the whore or two-horned beast , which is synchronal to the beast restored , whose continuance is . months . wherefore it is a strong suspicion that there is a coincidence at least of time , if not of affairs , or complication of natures ( if not identity of some ) betwixt this little horn in daniel and those three synchronals , the restored beast , the whore and the two-horned beast . for that expression dan. . . and another shall rise after them , does not at all hinder , since the seventy translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , behind them , * it signifying order of situation as well as of time . and this being placed behind is the most convenient posture for such an exploit as is attributed to this horn , which is said to throw down or humble three kings : which is more by treachery and craft than open force . . now from this equality of time it will also follow * that the duration of this little horn is years by the last confectary of our joynt exposition . which again shews how impossible it is this horn should be antiochus epiphanes . to which you may add that it is said to be different from the rest of the horns , in the explication of them . * and the ten horns out of this kingdome ( that is , the roman kingdome , as has been demonstrated ) are ten kings that shall arise ; and another shall rise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 behind them , and he shall be diverse from the rest , and he shall subdue three kings . now i demand what one of the ten kings or kingdomes is so different from all the rest , unless it be an ecclesiastical kingdome . wherefore the coincidence of time with the pagano●…christian empire , and the long continuance , as also the difference of this kingdome from the other ten , is more than a strong suspicion that it is part of the succession of a kingdome ecclesiastick , which is necessarily to run along with the empire professing christianity . but if the question be whether this part of this ecclesiastick kingdome be the uncorrupted kingdome of christ or the reign of antichrist , the solution is not difficult . for that it is not the kingdome of christ , is plain , in that christ is said to come to burn and consume it . whence it is manifest that the church has not been out in their conjecture in deeming this little horn to be antichrist ; and therefore say i , the same with the two-horned beast and the whore , who is plainly isochronal , and i doubt not but synchronal to this little horn , and is adjudged to be burnt in the apocalypse , as this little horn is here in daniel . . to speak briefly therefore , this little horn is the idolatrizing clergy of the empire , but more chiefly and particularly that great and notorious part thereof under the bishop of rome , who has been a more than ordinary stickler for both the obtaining this degenerate ecclesiastick empire in the roman empire , and in lapsing and keeping down the empire in superstition and idolatry ; and therefore is rightly said to be an horn growing out of this beast , the symbol ( beast ) it self according to grotius his own confession , intimating idolatry . . and if exquisite fitness of application will assure us of the right sense of a prophecy , we cannot fail in this , examining every character of this little horn. for as it is little , so is the original of the popes mean and obscure , and their secular principality small in comparison of those princes they have contested with . again , as this horn had the eyes of a man , so it is well known that for politick quick-sightedness there has not been any body of men comparable to the roman hierarchy ; insomuch that it is proverbial to say , that the roman religion is nothing else but a mere trick of policy to increase and keep up the honour , power , and wealth of the pope and his clergy . see sir edwyn sandys his speculum europae , and you shall find this part of the prophecy fulfilled to admiration , and that it is not for nothing that this little horn is said to have the eyes of a man in it , which is said of no horn in all the prophecies besides this . thirdly , as this horn is said to have a mouth speaking great things , whether you mean thereby boasting of its own sovereignty or blaspheming , it is well known that from this horn are uttered such words as imply the pope greater than all princes and emperours , nay , that he is not onely said to be infallible * but styled god , and declared worthy of divine worship . fourthly , for the humbling and subduing three kings , which this horn is foretold to doe , is it not long since performed by the pope of rome , in his usage of leo isaurus , in his ruining the kingdome of the lombards to get to himself the exarchate of ravenna , and in tormenting and disquieting henry the fourth and his successours with his thunder-claps and mischievous political plots , till he wrested from them all their right and jurisdiction in italy ? . fifthly , and to come nearer to our purpose in hand ; whereas it is said that he shall speak great words against the most high , and shall wear out the saints of the most high , and think to change times and laws ; and they shall be given into his hand for a time and times and half a time : i say , this idolatrous clergy has bid fair towards the fulfilling this period of times already ; the degeneracy of the church beginning about four hundred years after christ , and ( which is more considerable ) they having received so notorious a check in the decursion of this half-time , which is elsewhere called a half-day , in which his swaggering is pretty well diminished and chastised . sixthly , and for his wearing out , and consuming the saints of the most high , he has done it even more bloudily and cruelly than the very pagans on the primitive christians ; which is the most furious opposition against the regality of christ that can be imagined , thus to waste and destroy his true subjects . seventhly , and for his speaking great words against the most high , that is , against the divine sovereignty , is it not plainly done in the pope's pretences of having power to dispense with or lay aside the laws and injunctions of christ , of which we have given several instances in our idea of antichristianism , and such as are notoriously well known to appertain to that church ? besides that he is reus laesae divinae majestatis in appointing religious worship to his canonized saints , which is an honour due to god alone . lastly , in that he is said to change times and laws ; what innumerable institutes are there of the pope's injoyning , of which may be truly said what our saviour told the scribes and pharisees , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , from the beginning it was not so ? and what is this therefore but to change times and laws , and in many of them in a most perfect opposition to the laws of god and christ , as i have already noted in its place ? whence we see plainly that this antichristian opposition against the regal office of christ , is very expresly foretold in this vision of the little horn●… which rose up with the ten horns in the roman empire , and did fabricate imperium in imperio , as some phrase it , and became a two-horned beast in the ten-horned beast , erecting an ecclesiastick antichristian empire within the civil , in opposition to the true empire or kingdome of christ , and in defeatment of his power and laws in the church ; nay , in opposition to those immutable laws of the eternal logos that enlightens every man that comes into the world . notes upon the confutation , sect. . was neither greater , more excellent , nor a more vi●…torious kingdome , &c. for they both , viz. the kingdomes of the lagidae and seleucidae put together were yet but part of alexander's kingdome , and for their victories and spoils they were of one against another , which was a farther weakning of this but part of the kingdome of alexander , which still argues the less excellency of the said part . sect. . for antiochus epiphanes was dead almost two hundred years before christ so much as , &c. ] and yet grotius would have antiochus epiphanes the little horn upon whose destruction notwithstanding the ancient of days gives the kingdome to the son of man , dan. . . in the days of these kingdomes , the fourth and last of which is according to grotius that of the. lagidae and seleucidae , shall the god of heaven set up a kingdome which is the kingdome of the gospel of christ , whenas the kingdomes of the lagidae and seleucidae were both of them utterly vanquished and abolished by the romans before christ was born , and at least fifty years before the gospel of the kingdome was so much as preached . so plainly impossible is it that the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae should be the fourth kingdome . sect. . the iudgment was set and the books were opened , &c. ] this toucheth both upon the final judgment of the little horn , the onely horn with eyes or seeing horn , or if you will , the seer , the ancient name of a prophet ( for in old time the prophets were called seers ) this toucheth i say both upon the final judgment of this falsly pretended seer or pseudo-prophet as he is called in the apocalypse , and on the general judgment at the last day , when also in the apocalypse the books are said to be opened . but the nearer of these two points , and it must signify either one or both , are far enough removed from the times of the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae , whenas the fourth kingdome necessarily is understood , dan. . , . to reach at least to the first point of that time of judgment . whence it is impossible for the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae to be the fourth kingdome . this is in short the undeniable force of the argument . sect. . though in their kind notable . ] i have observed in my exposition , that the four notable horns that came up are called notable in comparison of several other horns , viz. commanders , that succeeded alexander in several lesser principalities or satrapies . but those notable ones who they are , we shall have occasion to note in the next section . sect. . namely perdicca , seleucus , ptolemaeus , meleager , &c. ] quorum perdicca , saith grotius , equitatui macedonico , externo seleucus , meleager satellitio regio , ptolemaeus peditatui praerant . quatuor haec capita , saith he , succreverant loco unius . where why he should say [ succreverant ] and not [ succreverunt ] i know not , unless he would insinuate that they had grown upon him so as to overrule him in his life time . which yet is grosly false and inconsistent with the magnanimity of alexanders nature as well as with history . it makes me suspect he would insinuate some such thing , because no historian reckons meleager as one of those notable four horns or heads that succeeded the great horn after its fall , he living himself not many days after alexander and no notice being taken of his succession . but those four notable successours of alexander historians take notice of as i have related in my exposition . and that these four horns must be understood to arise after the fall of the first great one , alexander himself , is plain from the text. but the four heads and the four horns are all one according to grotius his own acknowledgment , and the four heads are the heads of the leopard the third beast or greek empire , and what can possibly hinder then but that their successours also , viz. the successours of ptolemaeus lagi and of seleucus be heads likewise of the greek empire ? but what a blinding thing is prejudice that grotius could not see so clear a consequence ! but these things i have pursued sufficiently in my confutation it self . sect. . that the apocalyptick beast with seven heads and ten horns is this roman kingdome , &c. ] see synops. prophet . book . . ch. . sect. . it signifying order of situation as well as of time , &c. ] but if the little horn be supposed to rise after the other in order of time , it will be good sense that way also , by an idiconaea , which may restrain the sense of that part of the prophecy to the papal power when it emerged to that height that the pope might be more truly said to be the head of the beast that was and is not and yet is , than the emperour . sect. . that the duration of this little horn is years by the last consectary of our ioint-exposition . ] the consectary is , that all visions that are synchronal to that of the beast with seven heads and ten horns , which is said to continue fourty two months , have necessarily the extent of years . see synops. prophet . book . ch. . sect. . but styled god and declared worthy of divine worship . ] the reader for his fuller satisfaction in this point , let him consult bishop downham , de antichristo , lib. . cap. . where he proves that in the gloss of the canon law the pope is called dominus deus noster , and that there is no shuffling it off by saying it was an erratum of the press ( which is incredible that by mistake they should intersert that word [ deus ] ) but that rather the omission of it in whatsoever impression it was left out , was an erratum typographicum . for whereas most editions had it , saith he , and some few had left it out , the most accurate edition of all caused by pope gregory the thirteenth , who appointed certain skilfull men to revise the gloss of the canon law , had [ dominus deus noster papa ] in it . and this appellation of god and his receiving adoration sitting on the altar which is the proper throne of the body of christ , to say nothing how it is also the place where they set their images to be worshipped , suits well together and are an indication that a kind of divine honour or religious worship , call it which you will , is given to the pope . see bishop downham in the place above cited . these few notes are more than enough upon this my confutation of grotius his opinion , that the fourth kingdome in daniel is the kingdome of the lagidae and seleucidae . the authours apology for his placing the seven vials within the seventh trumpe●… after the rising of the witnesses , contrary to the opinion of mr. mede , &c. i am i confess abundantly convinced in my own judgment that persons of learning and parts and sobriety of life , that have piously applied themselves to the understanding and interpreting the holy scripture , especially the prophetical parts thereof , and particularly of daniel and the apocalypse , have a right , as to be read and duely considered by those that come after and put themselves upon the same province ; so also not to be contradicted or deviated from , but upon plain and palpable reason . nor indeed do i think it safe for any one or lawfull , out of mere curiosity of knowing hard and obscure things , as they may seem to many , to adventure upon such a province , but simply either the better to inform himself of his own duty , or to serve the publick , and having this design with fear and reverence as in the sight of god to enter upon his charge , and accordingly to quit himself therein . whenas yet notwithstanding such is the vanity and frailty of human nature that upon mere curiosity many times men rush upon such things , neither considering the sacredness and difficulty of the matter , nor duly weighing what god has imparted to others before them , but out of levity of mind , if they have excogitated or hit upon any specious thing different from other interpreters , out of levity of mind , i say , and a self-favouring conceitedness they presently fancie it as well more excellent and more true as different . others out of a fondness towards themselves presume they have a more peculiar gift that way , and by strong prepossession of their private conceits deeply impressed upon their melancholy imagination render themselves incorrigible and uncapable of the most evident and most solid information from others . and others given up to a fanatick spirit do not stick to presume themselves in an extraordinary manner inspired , and upon that account heed not what others have writ before them , and so comparing themselves onely with themselves , prove themselves , as the apostle speaks , unwise . and lastly there are those who to serve an interest have quite left the rode of other expositours ( who had according to their measure of light expounded things bonâ fide ) and have most lamentably and shamefully perverted and distorted the genuine meaning of both daniel and the apocalypse , the former in the most concerning parts thereof , and the latter in a manner all over . but i can appeal to god and my own conscience , that i have framed no interpretations to serve any interest but that of truth , and the church or kingdome of christ. nor have i out of any curiosity of prying into hard and obscure things medled with either the apocalypse or daniel , but merely for more full satisfaction in the great controversy betwixt us and the papists , who leave no stone unmoved to pervert souls , and to bring them over to their idolatrous church . wherefore for my own more full satisfaction , and for the service of the true church of christ , and for nothing else that i know of , have i taken these pains to make a continued exposition of all the prophecies as well of daniel as the apocalypse . wherein if i have deviated from the footsteps of others , amongst whom i account mr. ioseph mede absolutely the chief ( and than whom i conceive no writer of that kind has deserved better of the church of god ) yet i can aver it with all faithfulness that it is not out of a desire of seeming to have found out something better than his , that i have dissented from him , but because i am driven thereto by meer force of reason . otherwise having no design but assisting the truth , i hold it absolutely my duty not to deviate or vary from such pious and able interpreters where i find their interpretation sound ; truth being thus the better recommended by the witness of two or many than if i stood single by my self . and therefore i always covet if i can find them , to have companions if they be companions in the truth , otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — one man to me is as much as three myriads and three myriads not so much as one man. but now that it is mere reason not any vain humour in me , such as i have specified above , which makes me ( contrary to the sense of mr. mede ) place the vials in the seventh trumpet after the rising of the witnesses , and interpret the three days and an half , wherein the witnesses lie slain , of three times and an half , i hope i shall make clear by the account following . first then we are to take notice of the method , or genius if you will , of both daniel and the apocalypse , that after two prophecies suppose of the same extent of time and of the same things which are of a more large and reaching compass , there comes a prophecy or vision concerning onely part of that larger compass of time wherein some part onely of the foregoing vision is more copiously enlarged upon . as for example , after the vision of the statue of four metals and that other of the four beasts , both which visions reach from the beginnnig of the babylonian empire to the ending of the roman , or speaking in the apocalyptick phrase to the end of the last vial , there comes next the vision of the ram and he-goat which takes in onely the time of the persian and greek empire , and enlarges on the affairs of the greek empire onely , and especially on the times of antiochus epiphanes . so likewise in the apocalypse in the opened book-prophecies , after the two visions or prophecies of the same extent of time , viz. from the beginning of the church to the end of the seventh or last vial ( the former of which two prophecies is contained in the eleventh chapter , the latter in the three following chapters , namely , the twelfth , thirteenth and fourteenth ) there follows then the vision of the seven vials which run over but part of that extent of time which each of the two foregoing prophecies do comprise . now as there are three conspicuous ioynts of a more universal consideration in the compages of the two abovesaid prophecies in daniel , namely , those in which are held the ending of the babylonian monarchy and beginning of the pesiran , the ending of the persian and the beginning of the grecian , the ending of the grecian and the beginning of the roman , so there are two manifest ioynts likewise and of a more universal consideration in the two abovesaid prophecies in the apocalypse , ( the one contained in the eleventh chapter and the other in the twelfth , thirteenth and fourteenth ) namely , the time wherein , as in a communis terminus , the end of the symmetral ages of the church and the beginning of the asymmetral or of the apostasy are held together , and the time wherein the ending of the entireness of the apostasie and the beginning of the restitution or first emergency out of it , are held together . the former ioynt is the time wherein the ending of the sixth seal and beginning of the first trumpet are held together , the latter ioynt wherein the ending of the sixth trumpet and the beginning of the seventh trumpet are held together , where according to the vision ch. . is the rising of the witnesses . but now the question is , sith we see in daniel the vision of the ram and he-goat placed so as it begins with the first ioynt of the two foregoing prophecies and ends with the third ioynt , that is , begins with the persian monarchy and ends with the grecian , the question , i say , is where the vision of the vials , that is , to what ioynt of those two more comprehensive visions [ ch. . ] and [ ch. , , and . ] the beginning of the said partial vision is to be affixed , whether to the first or to the second ioynt , to the beginning of the first trumpet or to the beginning of the seventh immediately after the rising of the witnesses , with those acclamations in heaven and doxology of the elders , ch. . , . or which is the same ioynt of time to that joyfull annunciation of the happy news of babylons being faln ( whose fall must needs be the rising of the witnesses ) told by the second angel , ch. . . the question is , to which of these two more universal or notable ioynts ( for other ioynts betwixt trumpet and trumpet , they being so many , are more inconsiderable ) the beginning of this partial vision of the vials is to be affixed . there is a temptation , i confess , to place the beginning of the vials with the beginning of the first trumpet , because of some specious correspondence betwixt the vials and trumpets of the same order or numeral denomination . for thus the evil of the first trumpet as well as of the first vial is cast upon the earth . as well under the second vial as under the second trumpet the sea is turned into bloud , and the living creatures therein dye . under the third trumpet and under the third vial the rivers and fountains are mischieved . the su●… is smitten under the fourth trumpet , and the fourth vial also is poured out on the sun. under the fifth trumpet out of a pit comes up a smoak as out of a furnace that darkens the skie : under the fifth vial the kingdom of the beast is full of darkness . under the sixth trumpet the four angels are loosed from the great river euphrates : under the sixth vial the waters of the great river euphrates are dried up . . these congruities thus overly and in general represented make some shew , but look closer into them and they vanish , ( as being intended onely for part of the artifice of concealment in the apocalypse , or for an intimation that , as the first six plagues concerned the fate of the empire , so these seven last , the state of the popedome especially , after the six first plagues were past , they orderly mentioning the same things in both , or lastly to signify that the state of the empire under them was aegypt ( whence hail , rivers turned into bloud , and locusts are mentioned ) as well as the popedome afterwards was so , which is also afflicted with aegyptian plagues under the vials ) i say , if we look closer into them these pretended synchronizing congruities will signify no more than thus , and so quite vanish . for in the first congruity to say nothing how that [ upon the earth ] may have no particular signification ch. . . but signify so as [ upon the earth ] in the foregoing verse ; the hail cast upon the earth under the first trumpet is plainly another thing from the noisome and grievous sore that fell upon men at the pouring out of the first vial. that hail-storm and this rankerous ulcer most certainly signify quite different things as the symbols are hugely different . and i must confess i make no question in the world , but that symbol of a grievous rankerous vlcer signifies the plague of an envious malicious exulcerated mind , which is the plague of intoxication or dementation to them on whom it falls and spoils all their counsels , they being given up to be actuated by evil angels and the fury of the devil . this i conceive is a sad plague indeed , and lively set out by the symbol of a vexatious vlcer . but what an hail-storm signifies in the prophetick style is so well known that i need say nothing of it . wherefore there is not onely no congruity betwixt the first trumpet and the first vial to prove they must begin together , but the visa and the things signifyed by them being so quite different , it is a strong barr against any such presumption . the second congruity indeed is more tolerable or passable , if all the rest came to so near an agreement , but in that there is nothing peculiar under the second vial that answers to the burning mountain cast into the sea under the second trumpet , the correspondence b●…twixt this vial and this trumpet is visibly lame and defectuous . the third also is a congruity far more passable than the first , but yet besides the defectuousness in the third vial that has nothing to answer to the falling lamp or comet lampadias under the third trumpet ; what the fountains and rivers suffer under the third trumpet , is a misery to men and bitterness to them , what they suffer under the third vial is a refreshment to men who praise and justify god upon the account . the fourth congruity is wonderfully wretched and small . the sun indeed is smitten under the fourth trumpet , as well as the fourth vial said to be poured upon him , but not the sun alone under the fourth trumpet , but the moon also and the stars ; but the sun alone is mentioned in the fourth vial. besides , the sun , moon and stars lose their light and the sun consequently his heat under the fourth trumpet ; but the light and heat of the sun is so invigorated under the fourth vial , that he scorches men so intolerably that they blaspheme again . and the fifth congruity is yet slighter . the fifth vial is poured out upon the seat of the beast whereby his kingdome becomes full of darkness . upon the sounding of the fifth trumpet , the angel of the bottomless pit , opens the pit and a smoke comes out of it that darkens the sun and skie . in eleven large verses wherein the visum of the fifth trumpet is described , there is no more that symbolizes with the fifth vial than this , that is worth the speaking of . for the gnawing their tongues for pain under the fifth vial , is from their impatiency of that dark inglorious condition they were cast into , not from the sting of any scorpions . and for the darkness arising from the vial poured on the seat of the beast , and that smoak and darkness out of the bottomless pit ; as the seat of the beast and bottomless pit have no analogy one to another , so it is incredible that the darknesses themselves should not be quite different things . so small grounds or rather none at all is there for this fifth congrui●…y . and as little for the sixth . for there is no correspondency betwixt the sixth vial and the sixth trumpet , but that the great river euphrates is mentioned in them both . for the description of the sixth vial is comprised within one verse of ch. . viz. ver . . but there is a large description of the sixth trumpet ch. . from v. . to v. . as there is also of the fifth trumpet . ii. which consideration of the descriptions of the six first trumpets , their being either as large or much larger than the descriptions of the first six vials , is a second argument against the placing of the beginning of the vials with the beginning of the trumpets , as of a partial vision whose beginning is to be fixt at the first ioint of the foregoing prophecies of larger extent , to the end that part of the larger extended prophecies might be more enlarged upon and more copiously described , as it fares with the vision of the ram and he-goat in daniel . which partial vision is annexed to those two more large visions for a fuller description of the affairs of the greek monarchy . and therefore this vision of the seven vials the affixing the beginning of them to the beginning of the first trumpet not serving its due end , it is a sign it is misplaced , and that the beginning thereof is to be placed in the second ioynt of those two larger prophecies [ the one comprised in the eleventh chapter and the other in the three following ] and not in the first ioynt . these therefore are my two first arguments against the placing of the first vial with the first trumpet . the want of a continued congruity betwixt the trumpets and vials all along : and their uselesness for the fuller explaining the affairs of that part of the more universal visions that they are supposed to synchronize with . but that there is a part in those more universal prophecies [ ch. . ] and [ ch. . and . and . ] that the partial vision of the vials will properly serve more copiously to illustrate , i shall note hereafter . i am now onely intent upon the proving that the vials and trumpets do not commence together . iii. of which i conceive this may be a third argument , if we do but remember and take notice of the second notable ioynt in those two more universal prophecies ( comprised , the one in the eleventh chapter and the other in the three following ) and how in the former that second notable ioynt is in the con-termination of the sixth trumpets ending and the beginning of the seventh , where the rising of the witnesses is , and those acclamations in heaven and doxology of the elders ; and the same ioynt in the latter prophecy at that joyfull annunciation of the angel , babylon is faln is faln ( which fall , as i said above , must needs be the rising of the witnesses : ) the making thus the six first vials to synchronize with the six first trumpets , will leave the seventh vial alone to posses the whole space of time and affairs from the abovesaid second ioynt to the end of those two visions or prophecies , whenas in mr. medes own account , the seventh vial synchronizes with the vision of the wine-press ; so that in the fourteenth chapter from vers . . to vers . . there is a chasma of time and affairs which the seventh vial takenth not in , and so in like manner in the eleventh chapter , from the same ioynt of the prophecy , to the seventh vial signified in the last verse , there is such a chasma leapt over by the seventh vial. which is too hard and broken a business to have the seventh vial thus by an unnatural divulsion torn from the rest . but that the seventh vial ends both those prophecies , there can be no question with the judicious . iv. fourthly , the plagues that the seven vials pour forth are the plagues upon some party and not the meer beating of the air , and it is a frigid and dilute thing not to conceive the last plagues to concern the same party on which the first were inflicted , so that one party may be conceived to be afflicted by them both . but the last ( even the very first of them ) fall upon the marked slaves of the beast as appears from apoc. ch. . vers . . and the first went and poured out his vial on the earth , and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men that had the mark of the beast , and upon them that worshipped his image . but these marked slaves of the beast were not in being before the first trumpet , and not being before the first trumpet could receive none of the former plagues . whence it is manifest that the first vial cannot begin with the first trumpet . v. fifthly in brief thus : the very being of the beast commences but with the first trumpet , but a plague or punishment supposes some time wherein the party may have committed some grievous offences before the plague or punishment is inflicted . wherefore the pouring out the seven vials cannot commence with the first trumpet , because then the beast would be plagued before he has had any time to commit any considerable offences . vi. sixthly , the seven vials are called the seven last plagues . wherefore if we place the first vial so as to commence with the first trumpet , i demand where be the foregoing plagues in respect of which the seven vials are to be called the seven last plagues ? for the first six seals , there is no intimation that they are so many plagues , but rather the contrary is intimated , that the plagues and vengeance upon the roman empire was not to be poured out till the sounding of the trumpets , as mr. mede interprets that of apoc. . . how long o lord holy and true , dost thou not judge and avenge our bloud on them that dwell on the earth ? and whereas answer was given to them , that they should rest yet for a little season , till their fellow-servants also were killed , that little season mr. mede with judgment interprets , till the sounding of the trumpets , then vengeance would be taken on the saint-murdering empire . but that complaint of the souls of the martyrs under the altar that no vengeance was taken , it shews plainly that the five first seals are not five plagues , and the conversion of the empire to christianity under the sixth was no dilaceration of it , as happened afterwards , nor reputed by the apocalypse as a plague . and it would be a sorry business to name the seven plagues of the vials , the seven last plagues in respect of one solitary plague before it , which yet is no aegyptian plague neither , but the very first plague of the trumpets is aegyptian viz. hail , as the very first plague of the vials is also aegyptian , viz. sores or vlcers . wherefore no number of plagues being taken notice of in the apocalypse before the six trumpets which are unquestionably six plagues , and there is a solemn premunition of the servants of god against them ch. . the plagues of the seven vials is being the seven last plagues of aegypt cannot commnece with the first trumpet , which is but the first aegyptian plague of the mystical aegypt the roman empire . vii . wherefore seventhly , the seven last plagues of the vials supposing a sett or number of plagues antecedent , and there being no other sett or number of plagues but those of the six trumpets , it is manifest that that sett or number of plagues of the six trumpets are the antecedent plagues to the seven last plagues of the vials , and that these seven plagues of the vials follow them , and therefore do not commence with the first trumpet . viii . and now in the eighth place , though all the six first trumpets are in the general plagues upon the roman empire , yet the wo-trumpets more especially for their pagano-christian idolatry and persecution as is expresly declared apoc. . . and therefore in respect of the fifth and sixth trumpets especially , though of all six in general , ( they being plagues upon aegypt as i noted above ) would i have the plagues of the seven vials called the seven last plagues ; and indeed where can the seven last plagues be more properly placed than in the last wo-trumpet , or in the seventh or last trumpet , it being a continuation of plagues upon that party of men that did not repent them of the works of their hands , of their worshipping of daemons and idols of gold and silver , and of murdering the servants of god upon a false pretence of their heresy , notwithstanding they were forewarned by the plagues of the two first wo-trumpets , the locusts and euphratean horsemen . but if the first of the seven last plagues be to be placed in the seventh trumpet , it cannot commence with the first . ix . ninthly and lastly , those plagues that follow a victory over the beast and over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name , which certainly signifies the two-horned beast , cannot commence with the first trumpet , because this two horned beast could neither be fought with nor be overcome , before the first trumpet , he having no existence before that trumpet . but the seven last plagues of the vials follow the abovesaid victory as appears from apoc. . and . where those that had got the victory over the beast are said to stand on the sea of glass , having the harps of god in their hands , and to sing the song of moses the servant of god and of the lamb , which is a plain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , a song of triumph , answering to that of the israelites upon the overthrow of pharaoh in the red sea. so that it is a triumphal song upon an actual victory . this is most punctuall and plain , in chap. . and it is said immediately after this song , that the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened , that the seven angels having the seven plagues came out of it , and that unto them were given seven golden vials full of the wrath of god , and chap. . . they are there commanded to pour them out . there is no wriggling out of this plain evidence , that the plagues of the seven vials all of them follow the victory over the beast . and therefore it is impossible they should commence with the first trumpet . but it may be you will say , what is all this to the purpose as to mr. mede , who does not make the vials to commence with the first trumpet , but rather with the sixth ? i grant he does so , and yet what i have wrote is much to the purpose . because if once a man be beaten off from placing the first vial with the first trumpet , so as they may not commence from the first notable ioynt of the two prophecies ( comprised the one in the eleventh chapter , the other in the three following chapters ) the position of the first vial being loosened from this first notable ioynt will naturally slide down and fix it self at the second notable ioynt of the prophecies , namely , in the beginning of the seventh trumpet , where those acclamations in heaven upon the rising of the witnesses , and doxology of the elders do occur . but besides , the second , seventh , eighth and ninth arguments prove not onely , that the first vial is not to commence with the first trumpet , but that it is to be placed after the rising of the witnesses in the seventh . for according to our second argument the commencement of the vials being placed at the second notable joynt , they will then ( in analogy to that partial vision in daniel of the ram and he-goat ) more largely illustrate the affairs of those times they are applied to , namely from the beginning of the seventh trumpet to the end of those two prophecies , which conclude with the vials , as no man doubts . for there being but some few slight intimations of the affairs of the vials , ch. . from v. . to the end of the chapter , as in that it is said the nations were angry , which belongs to the first vial , and , and thy wrath is come and the time of the dead , &c. which belongs to the third , as also , and there was seen in his temple the ark of the covenant , which refers to the sixth vial , and , an earthquake and great hail , which belongs to the seventh . these things which are so sparingly hinted in this part of the vision from the second joynt to the end , are more fully insisted on in the vision of the vials , ch. . through the whole chapter . as also instead of those acclamations in heaven upon the rising of the witnesses and the doxology of he elders , there is a triumphal song of moses and the lamb in the fifteenth chapter . which also makes amends for that more sparing annunciation of the fall of babylon , ch. . . where is the second ioynt of the other prophecy : after which to vers . . the things of the fourth vial are glanced at , and from vers . . to vers . . the things of the fifth vial , and from vers . . to vers . . the things of the sixth vial ; and from thence to the end of the chapter the things of the seventh . but that one partial vision of the seven vials contained in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters makes a full illustration of that time they are applied to namely from the joyfull annunciation of the fall of babylon to the end of the chapter : but is the most proper supplement of all affixed to the second joynt of the vision in ch. . from whence we may be sure that the affixing this one partial vision contained in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters to the second ioynt of those two more universal visions , is sound and right . and now for the seventh argument , it has its force to prove not onely that the first vial does not commence with the first trumpet , but that it follows the sixth , the whole set or number of the last plagues of the vials being so called in respect of the whole set or number of the plagues of the six trumpets . this i say is most natural and which ought to take place unless some necessary reason withstand , which i question not but will never be found . and as for the eighth argument it also does directly prove that the plagues of the vials do follow the sixth trumpet , as is plain at first sight to him that peruses it . and for the last it is an invincible evidence that all the vials follow the sixth trumpet or the rising of the witnesses , and are placed in the seventh , forasmuch as they follow a notable victory and triumph over the beast . and where can there be imagined any foregoing victory and triumph over the beast but that which is expressed in the rising of the winesses with which the fall of babylon ch. . . as well as the fall of the city by an earthquake , ch. . . synchronizes . but upon the fall of this city and the rising of the witnesses it is said , the second woe is past and the third cometh quickly , and that the seventh angel founded and there were great voices in heaven , &c. wherefore the vials following this victory ( which is the rising of the witnesses ) and the acclamations in heaven and doxology of the elders which answer to the triumphal song of moses and the lamb prefixed before the vials , ch. . it is plain that the vials follow the rising of the witnesses , and are to be placed in the seventh trumpet after the doxology of the elders as they are placed ch. . and . after the triumphal song of moses the servant of god and of the lamb. nothing i think can be more demonstrable . and it is worth our noting here , how that the whole two chapters , viz. ch. . and . though they be so divided are indeed but one partial vision synchronizing with the last part of those two more universal visions , comprised ( the one in the eleventh chapter , the other in the three following chapters ) and beginning with the second main ioynt of them , the acclamations in heaven and doxology of the elders , or joyfull annunciation of the news of the fall of babylon . so that that doxology of the elders , the joyfull annunciation , and the triumphal song of moses and the lamb , fall in together , to which you may add the commencement of the church of sardis , which also signifies a song of ioy. which coincidency of things to my reason is very harmonious , the sardian church being the state of the church commencing with the rising of the witnesses , which state is promised to the church in thyatira , the preceeding interval thereof . to all which you may add ; whereas mr. mede cannot deny but that the vial-plagues are called the last plagues in reference to the trumpet-plagues , and that the trumpet-plagues are just six as well as the vial-plagues seven , i would appeal to mr. mede if st. iohn had had occasion to express himself therein , whether he would not have called the six trumpet-plagues the six first plagues , as well as he calls [ ch . . ] the seven vial-plagues the seven last . whence it will necessarily follow that all the seven last plagues of the vials must follow all the six first plagues of the trumpets , whenas according as mr. mede has placed the vials , onely one of the seven vial-plagues namely the seventh follows the six trumpet-plagues , which is an apparent repugnancy . nay , merely in that the vial-plagues , all seven of them are said to be the last plagues , that , i say , does plainly imply that none of them are to be before the ending of all the trumpet-plagues , else they all seven ( though they are said to be so , viz. the seven last plagues ) could not be the last , but five of them according to mr. mede's placing of them would expire before the six trumpet-plagues , which is apparently absurd . for last of all in succession supposes the other all to have given place and to be gone , but by no means the last themselves to expire before them . and these vial-plagues all seven of them are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very last seven plagues , which they cannot be if any of them expire before any of the six trumpet-plagues . these arguments are so considerable to me , that i make no doubt at all but that the vials are to be placed in the seventh trumpet after the rising of the witnesses , and whether they satisfy others so as to make them of one mind with my self or no , yet i hope they will not stick to acknowledg that i have not rashly deviated from the tract of mr. mede , and so not violated that right , which is due to so excellent an interpreter . but there is yet i confess another thing touching the witnesses that mr. mede and i do not agree in , which is the time of their lying dead , which the vision expresses by three days and an half . he will have it to signify three years and an half , but i must confess i am fully assured in my own mind that those three days and an half are the very same that three times and an half . nor is this a new opinion of my own , but i met with it near fourty years ago by chance at the end of a socinian book in quarto , but the title of the book i have forgot , and the socinians , every one knows , are rather dry reasoners than phancifull writers . and after i met with it again in clavis apocalyptica ad incudem revocata , published a. d. . and since that in that pious and learned authour a. b. peganius , his genuine explication of the visions of the revelation , who though he most-what follows mr. mede in other things , yet he leaves him in this . and that all people are not of the same mind herein with peganius and my self , the onely objections that i know are first , that the witnesses are said to be slain at the ending or finishing of their mournfull prophecy . secondly , that if the three days and an half be the same with the three times and an half , which is the same with days or months , which are but various expressions of the three times and an half , then the witnesses will be conceived to speak and prophesie while they lie dead , than which nothing can be more absurd . this i confess would be an harsh repugnancy . wherefore to remove these obstacles , the reader must learn to distinguish betwixt the cortex and the pith , betwixt the rine and the pulp of these parabolical or symbolical visions . in which if the parts of the pith or pulp agree amongst themselves as well as those of the rine or cortex amongst themselves , all then is sound , compleat and harmonious . but those that make the above named objections seem to me to doe as the welch-man did , that bit the rine of the orange into his mouth together with the pulp , which made him sputter and make hard faces . the vision or prophetical parable it self is very neat and coherent taking it in its literal sense , which represents the two witnesses lying slain three days and an half after their days prophesying in sack-cloth . so that as their natural death and prophesying in sack-cloth are inconsistent one with another , so they are disjoyned one from another in the cortex of the parable , and their death represented as an effect of their days prophesying . but by this natural death being signified their political death , or deprivation of all power in church or state ( for their resurrection is into that power ) which political death is part of the pulp or pith of the parable , this is not onely consistent with their mournfull prophecy but the very cause thereof . so that the parts of the pith or pulp of the prophecy cohere one with another singularly well , and the contrivance of the prophetick parable is of admirable elegancy and festivity . for the matter to be represented being this , that for a certain time holy , good and apostolical persons sit for employment in church or state , shall in the apostasie of the church be for a time kept out of employment , namely , for that time denoted by daniel's time and times and half a time , which is three prophetical years and an half , resolvible into days , or months prophetical : which being kept out of power and employment is a political death to them , though they in the mean time in this low condition bear witness against the corruptions of the said times ; but it being also that at the end of the said times there will be such a change of things that they will come again into power both in church and state : first by an henopaeia the succession of these two sorts of men thus kept out of power are turned into two single persons called two witnesses . then they are clothed in sack-cloth as well as made to prophesie , to shew their low condition in the world. thirdly , it being incredible that two single persons should each of them live years , they are said by an antichronismus to prophesie onely days , namely , the days of their deprivation of all power in church or state , wherein they lay like dead carcases as to any political power or influence upon the world , though they were yet in being then , as being the woman in the wilderness , as it is expressed by another symbol . but this dead condition of theirs representable by an unburied carcase , that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the cortex might be observed , is not to expatiate unto days , much less to so many years , but by another antichrenismus though the same time is signified , is to be contracted into three days and an half . for who could endure that two carcases should lye stinking in the streets of the city suppose days or three years and an half ? besides the incredibility of their being raised to life after so long a time . and though these three days and an half be set at the end of the days , yet by a lemmatosynechia , a figure usual in the apocalypse , they are easily understood to belong to the antecedent time and to synchronize with it . see my synopsis prophetica book . ch. . in antichronismus . therefore this is the external decorum observed in the outward cortex of the vision , that their political death which is exactly synchronal to the time of their mourning in sackcloth , which is said to be days , is contracted into three days and an half , signifying there daniels three times and an half , as day and time sometimes signify the same thing . this parabolical prophecy of the two witnesses thus understood , has a most enravishing festivity and elegancy in it , and is one of the choicest examples of that divine wit and artifice of concealment , as well as revealment , that occurr in the whole apocalypse . nor does that expression ver . . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , put a bar to the supposed lemmatosynechia , and hinder their political death from running back into the same time with their mournfull witnessing . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here is a word which the spirit of prophecy has made choice of to serve as well the sense of the pith of the parable , as of the cortex thereof . but our english translation has pitched upon that sense which onely comports with the cortex of the parable , while it renders it , and when they shall have finished their testimony , as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were futurum exactum which it is not , and besides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as well agere or peragere , as finire . and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will easily and naturally signify , while they shall be performing or declaring their testimony , the beast shall make war against them and kill them , that is the successive body of them , kill them all successively in that political sense , or keep them successively dead from the first suppression of them , and kill some of this successive body according to a natural death , even many myriads of them as history can witness . so easily is the difficulty of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 removed . where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has two senses , the one serving the pith the other the cortex of the parable , as day has two senses vers . . and relating to the cortex signifies a natural day , but to the pith it signifies time , in such a sense as time is taken in daniel , ch. . vers . . and now i hope i have made it abundantly plain that there is no incongruity in this opinion of peganius and mine , in making the three days and an half the same with daniel's time and times and half a time , or days prophetically understood . nothing hinders but this may be the sense . but now i shall produce reasons to prove that it really is so . as first , it being a number consisting of three integrums and an half as daniels three times and an half is , and the months and days being but the varying of the phrase for the three times and an half , if a man have but any competency of apocalyptick nasuteness or sagacity in him , he will easily smell out the high probability of these three days and an half being the same with the three times and an half in daniel , and consequently the same with the days of the mournfull prophecy of the witnesses . secondly , there being no example in all the apocalypse at least , and , i think , no where else , of the affectation of predicting things to the curiosity of half a year , it is plainly incredible that there should be any such affectation here . thirdly , if the condition of the apostolick church be ever brought to so sad a condition again as is represented by the carcases of the two witnesses lying dead in the streets of the great city , it is incredible that they should recover again within the space of three years and an half . the conceit looks almost as romantickly or fabulously , and out of the same ignorance of the apocalyptick antichronisme , as that of the romanists , who tell us what strange feats antichrist shall do in the same space of time , namely , within the space of three years and an half , when an age would scarce be sufficient to compass such atchievements . fourthly , if we restrain the lying dead of the witnesses to the three years and an half at the end of their prophesying , there is nothing in the vision to represent their political death ( to which their resurrection relates ) before that time , though they have been dead in that sense at least years already . which is exceeding absurd . fifthly , being that the witnesses have lyen slain in a political sense , and have been so often slain many hundred thousands of them in a natural sense before the end of their mournfull witnessing , it is unconceivable what persecution or oppression in these last three years and an half different from what they had endured before , should ●…efall them , or more worthy of taking notice , that the former should be omitted , and these by the carcases lying three days and an half in the street , be represented . sixthly and lastly , whereas it is said , v. . and when they shall have finished their testimony , the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them and shall overcome them and kill them , unless my sense be admitted ; till the end of their prophesying there is neither any war nor any overcoming nor any killing of the witnesses , which is point-blank against the truth of history . this which i have produced as it does fully satisfy my self , that the three days and an half , are the same with daniel's three times and an half , so i hope that other will also be satisfied , if not of the truth of the thing , yet at least that i have not rashly dissented from mr. mede therein . we having thus solidly stated the sense of this vision of the death and resurrection of the witnesses which was the true sense thereof many hundred years ago , and ever will be , we may now the more seasonably enquire whether the prophecy be yet fulfilled or no. which if it be not and the witnesses be not risen , it is evident from what we have proved above , ( viz. that the vials follow the rising of the witnesses ) that there is not yet one vial poured out . but there is no protestant interpreter that i know but will allow that some of the vials are already poured out . wherefore unless they will shamefully recoil , they must of necessity acknowledg that the witnesses are already risen . but i shall use but one argument for all to prove that this vision or prophecy of the rising of the witnesses is already fulfilled . what a remarkable providence , as touching the church of god , and what a vast change of affairs there was in the papacy at the late reformation , is notorious , and what an innumerable company of people were delivered out of that worse than aegyptian bondage of the pope ; and multitudes who because of their supposed hereticalness lay dead , useless and unactive to all political power , whether in church or state , being excluded therefrom for their falsly suspected heresy , got into the most honourable employments at the reformation both in church and state ; nay , that the highest honours were in the hands of the protestants in many intire kingdomes and principalities , which had been under the papacy before . what a marvellous , nay stupendious change this was , no man can but be sensible of , and therefore that it must be , and that in no slight manner , predicted in the apocalypse . now it cannot be predicted in any of those visions that in order of time follow the vision of the rising of the witnesses as the vials do , because this notable and stupendious mutation of things has happened already , and as those of the adverse party would have it , before the rising of the witnesses . wherefore i demand of them in what vision , which is antecedent to the vision of the rising of the witnesses , is this so remarkable and marvellous a piece of providence predicted or prefigured ? i am confident they cannot find any before this of the rising of the witnesses . wherefore it must be this vision of the rising of the witnesses which prefigured this stupendious piece of providence in the reformation , or else none at all . which were an absurdity intolerable and utterly incredible . wherefore it is even mathe matically evident , that the vision of the rising of the witnesses is a prophecy of the late reformation , and that it is fulfilled therein . and this it would be , though it were less significative of that marvellous passage of providence than it is . but that it is most fitly and fully significative thereof , as if made on purpose for it , my exposition of it in my apocalypsis apocalypseos and elsewhere , will i hope abundantly make good , which is needless here to repeat , as also how naturally the song of moses the servant of god and of the lamb follows the rising of the witnesses , which contains a deliverance of the servants of god from that worse than aegyptian bondage of that mystical pharaoh the pope , and how the sardian interval of the church which signifies a song of ioy , commences at the same time . which things fall in with that congruity and harmony , that he must be something more than ordinary stupid that is not enravished therewith . but in the mean time having observed , that neither the messias who is called the christ , when he was come , though predicted plainly enough by the prophecies , was taken notice of as such , by them that were concerned to take notice of him , nor yet antichrist ( as fully nay more fully and repeatedly predicted and prefigured ) was taken notice of by them who were sufficiently concerned so to do ; i less wonder that the prophecy of the rising of the witnesses , so punctually predicted and manifestly fulfilled in the reformation , should be so little taken notice of as it is , but that several men , as the iews expect a messias to come , and the romanists an antichrist , so they a rising of the witnesses to come , when the impletion of that prophecy is so evidently already past . wherefore it was the duty of some or other to remind them of it . the authours twenty arguments whereby he does prove that the seven epistles to the seven churches are a prophecy of the state of the church cast into seven intervals from the beginning thereof to the last iudgment ; out of his exposition of the seven churches . chapter x. . as in natural hypotheses , those are accounted truest that solve the phaenomena of nature the most naturally and easily , and especially if such as are no otherwise solvible than upon the proposed hypothesis : so that meaning of scripture , i mean especially of any considerable portion thereof , ought to be esteemed truest that can solve the most difficulties that may be raised concerning the same , or the contexts precedent or subsequent / thereto ; and if all , still the more certain ; and if unsolvible otherwise , there is still the more assurance of undeniable demonstration . now how near this mystical or propheticall exposition of these epistles approaches to the clearness of this case , i will leave to the reader to judge , after he has considered the solutions of the questions easily raised out of the epistles themselves , or the precedent chapter , and not easily answered , nor at all satisfactorily , at least most of them , but upon the hypothesis we have gone . . as first , if a man enquire why the spirit of prophecy , after he has so expresly given notice that this book of the apocalypse is to shew unto his servants things that are to come , and called it plainly a book of prophecies , should start so unexpectedly from the title and intended subject , as to write no less than seven epistles to certain churches , that have nothing considerable of prophecy in them , before he deliver any prophecies properly so called , but onely promises and comminations ; and that he should do this * with as great pomp and as high a preamble as he does when he begins so famous prophecies as those of the seven seals , and the opened book . but according to our hypothesis the answer is easie ; viz. that though these seven epistles to the seven churches of asia have a literal sense , yet they are also a parable or prophecy , and of as high concern for both matter and extent of time ( they reaching from the beginning of the church to the end of the world ) as the prophecy of the seals and opened book ; and that they are ushered in with this great pomp on purpose to give us notice thereof . secondly , a man would be prone to enquire why the spirit dictates letters unto the churches in asia , and not rather to the churches in europe , asia and africk . for certainly the church had disspred it self into all these quarters of the world by that time . as if the spirit of truth were a respecter of persons . for these are not the letters of iohn , but of the holy ghost . but our answer is ready at hand , * that for the significancy of the word asia to comport also with the significancy of the names of the seven churches , asia alone was pitched upon . but , according to the prophetical sense , the true catholick church is writ unto under such distinct conditions as she was to vary into , unto the end of the world . so that there is no partiality nor acception of persons in this . thirdly , if a man demand touching the order or precedency of these seven churches that are writ unto : what a plain and manifest account is there to him that compares the epistles in their prophetical sense with the intervals of the church catholick lying in that order that these churches are ranged ? this is a satisfactory reason , and worthy the spirit that wrote these epistles . but whether they are ranged in this order , * because that a letter-carrier going from patmos , his first journey will be to ephesus , and then to smyrna , and so in order till he come to laodicea ; whether the holy spirit of prophecy regarded that in the dictating of his letters , ( though alcazar the jesuit be for it ) i cannot but suspend my judgment , and that not without a smile . but of this ataxie more particularly anon . . fourthly , if it be demanded why just seven churches in asia are writ to , neither more nor less , ( especially that in thyatira , according to the acknowledgment of epiphanius , being then not founded , but after the writing of these epistles , ) it is hard to give a satisfactory answer in the literal sense . for to say this book of the apocalypse affects the number seven , and that , because it runs upon the number seven altogether in the ensuing part of the book , which is prophetical , it therefore , for conformity sake , chuses this number in writing to the churches though literally understood , seems but a meagre , mean , and trifling account , a design unworthy the holy spirit that dictated this book . but the using this number seven all over is rather an intimation that the book is prophetical all over , and that these epistles are also a prophecy , accordingly as we have explained them . and taking them so , the answer is plain and obvious , viz. the number seven is here chosen out as symbolical , it being the note of vniversality ; whence the pythagoreans , as i elsewhere have noted , call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . wherefore seven ( and no more than seven ) churches are writ unto , as standing for the seven intervals of the church from the beginning to the end of all . fifthly , if it be demanded why these seven churches rather than any others , which in all likelihood may have the same vertues and vices that these are commended and taxed for : the reason of this is writ in the very notation of their names , every name being significative of the condition of the church catholick in that successive intervall of time that this or that church so named standeth for , and in such order as they are repeated . sixthly , if one require a reason why christ is described by holding the seven stars in his right hand in the epistles to the churches of ephesus and sardis , why the same description in both , or why in either : in the literal sense it will be hard to find any peculiar reason ; but in the prophetical sense already declared , it is obvious . for the seven stars signify all the pastours , whether in present existence , or succession and ephesus is the begnning-state of the church ; and therefore it is both very seasonable and methodical to represent the first founder , sustainer and continuer thereof , by this emblem ; lo ! i am with you to the end of the world. and that this again is hinted at in the epistle to the church of sardis , is with evident proportion and analogy to the affairs of the church there represented . for the church of sardis is as it were the beginning again or the emerging of the true church or kingdome of christ out of the power and kingdome of antichrist . . seventhly , why the church of ephesus , of all other churches , should be commended for their trying false apostles . why might not other churches be attacqued by them , and also discover them , as well as the church of ephesus ? the solution of which problem is easy in this mystical sense of the epistles , * that places the ephesine interval within the apostles times , but the rest on this side of them . eighthly , if any one demand why it is said to the church of smyrna , more than to any other church , be thou faithfull unto death , and i will give thee the crown of life ; and again , he that overcometh shall not 〈◊〉 hurt by the second death : in the literal sense it will be very hard to find any peculiar reason why this might not as well be said to the church in pergamus , where there was killing for religion , it seems , by the mention of the martyr antipas : i , but there was no obtaining the crown of life there in any peculiar sense ; but the crown of life , that is , the imperial crown was given to the sufferings of the primitive martyrs under the ten persecutions : to whom also according to the opinion of the antient church the promise of the first resurrection belonged . which is here obliquely glanced at , ( according to the mode of the apocalyptik style , that loves to hint things by ellipses ) in that promise , he that overcometh shall not be hurt by the second death , implying thereby , that he shall be made partaker of the first resurrection . ninthly , if any one will again object more particularly against the ataxie of the churches , that they are ra●…ged neither according to the merit , nor congeneracy of their conditions , pretending that it had been far better to have joyned the two irreprehensible together , smyrna and philadelphia , against whom there is no complaint at all ; and then ephesus , sardis and laodicea , against whom there is no complaint of eating things offered unto idols ; and afterwards pergamus and thyatira , in which churches alone there is : if any one , i say , contend that this method had been more exact ; truly in the literal sense it will be hard to frame an handsome and satisfactory answer ; especially if he urge , that god is the authour of method , as well as the god of order . but in this mystical or prophetical sense the answer is solid and exquisite , and much what the same that was given to the like difficulty more generally propounded before , namely , that the churches of asia are named in that order the successive intervals of the church catholick were to proceed in , of which these asiatick churches are but the symbols or hieroglyphicks . and therefore those two intervals of time which take in the reign of the beast and the false prophet , viz. the intervals of the church of pergamus and of thyatira , must come after ephesus and smyrna , because till the expiration of those two intervals idolatry had not again reentred the apostatizing church . and the three following intervals of sardis , philadelphia and laodicea are the intervals of the true church elapsed out of the hands of domineering idolatry ; and therefore we hear no more in them of things sacrificed unto idols , nor of any iezahel . and philadelphia which is the most holy and the most glorious interval of the church that is to appear on the face of the earth , is not to be named acco●…ding to her dignity , but according to her succe●●ion in time , toward the latter end of the world , as she is here ranged . but of this more than enough , because we had touched of it in the general before . . tenthly , why is christ in his description before the epistle to the church in pergamus set out by a two edged sword , coming , suppose , out of his mouth ( according to the ellipticalness of the apocalyptick style ? ) what reason in the letter can be given of that ? for ( especially if this supplement be made ) it cannot respect the slaying of antipas with the sword . what peculiar thing then in this church of pergamus is there to require this description ? truly nothing at all appears in the letter , but in the prophetical sense it is very proper , the waldenses and albigenses in this interval assaulting the church of rome , or at least defending themselves and their pure faith , so signally by this weapon , i mean by the sword of the spirit , which is the word of god ; though themselves died so many thousands of them in the field by the sword for the faith they thus defended . and in the eleventh place , the description of christ before the epistle to the church in thyatira , and his feet like fine brass , ( as if they burned in a furnace ) ( for that supplement is to be understood out of his description in the first chapter , as before : ) but now what peculiar significancy has this description , or what congruity to any thing in the church of thyatira literally understood ? surely none . but in the prophetical sense it is very expressive of those lower members of christ's body , his church here on earth , of their invincible zeal and patience , and sincerity of affection , such as did abide the most fiery tryals that could be put upon them , and made them stand at the stake amongst burning faggots with the flames about their ears , and never flinch for it : as has been noted in the interpretation of that epistle . this was the state of that interval of the church . twelfthly , in a book that is so full of aenigmatical involutions , and coverings upon coverings , where he calls the churches golden candlesticks , and the bishops or pastours , stars and angels , even then when he interprets , and offers to be more plain ; that the same authour should so openly and plainly mention any one by name as he does the martyr antipas , if there were not some farther mystery in it , would be a great difficulty , and hardly to be digested by the more sagacious and curious . i must confess i have often wondred at this naming antipas by name , till i understood a further sense thereof , such as we have rendred in the exposition of that epistle . . in the thirteenth place , one might well demand why christ expresses a greater disgust against the church of laodicea than that of sardis . for though the former is said to be luke-warm ; yet the other making a great shew of life , is notwithstanding declared to be dead . that christ should be more inraged against luke-warmness than hypocrisie , and threaten it more deeply than the other , i will spew thee out of my mouth , ( which is quite to cast a thing away , never to be resumed again , ) must seem marvellous to the onsiderate certainly , if there were not some greater matter in it , the spirit of christ would not speak so severely onely to follow a metaphor . but in the prophetical sense the solution is easy , that passage being predictive of the extermination of the church from the face of the earth at the close of the world , as i have expounded it . in the fourteenth place , it may be demanded , why so affectedly and repeatedly in every epistle that phrase is used , i know thy works , without any variation or omission . which seems a thing but of-small importance in the literal sense of these epistles : but in the prophetical it seems on purpose so repeated , to intimate an allusion in asia to the hebrew word * ( as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was intended on purpose to answer to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * that asia may also be significant as well as the names of the seven churches : which they all being , it is a shrewd presumption this repetition was for some such design as has been declared . whereas the literal sense can give no account thereof . fifteenthly , alcazar himself is much stumbled that the spirit of god should be thought to take notice of any one particular woman in the church of thyatira , and so call her by the name of iezabel , as is ordinarily supposed . and indeed these things are too little for the majesty of this writing of the apocalypse . but how can we help it in the literal sense , if we will interpret with constancy and coherency ? but in the prophetical sense there is no such incongruity . the object is worth the spirits taking notice of in this kind ; this iezabel being that painted woman of rome , intoxicating the kings of the earth with the cup of her spiritual fornications , as has been shewn upon the text. . sixteenthly , it seems very strange that that promise of ruling over the nations , and receiving the morning star , ( which doubtless are political promises , ) should be made to the church in thyatira , more than to that in pergamus , or ephesus , and others . what victories or dominion did the church in thyatira in asia get over the nations more than other churches ? this is an hard knot in the literal sense . but in the prophetical it is loosened at the first sight . for the closure of the interval of the church of thyatira brings in the time wherein whole nations revolted from the pope and his idolatrous church , and professed the reformed religion , and so in these parts got the pontifician party under them . seventeenthly , in the epistle to the church in philadelphia there is mention made of a mighty temptation that is to come upon all the world , to try them that dwell upon the earth , touching which he saith , behold , i come quickly . why should this be said to the church of philadelphia more than to any other of the churches here specified ? there are not the least footsteps of reason to be found in the literal sense . but in the prophetical sense the thing is plain . for the interval of philadelphia beginning in the last vial , wherein that mighty and terrible earthquake is to happen , the great temptation , what it is , is plainly thence understood , and how in respect of this philadelphian church it will come quickly , she commencing but in the very same vial that this is to happen under . eighteenthly , why upon this philadelphia , a private asiatick church , should the name of the city of god , the new ierusalem , which cometh down out of heaven from god , ( the very same that is expressed apoc. . ) be said to be written ? this title were too big and turgent for any private church , were it not a type or symbol of some greater matter . but by the prophetical interpretation this difficulty is quite removed . for the interval of the philadelphian church is coincident with the times of the new ierusalem , ( mentioned at the end of the apocalypse , ) and of the millennial empire of christ upon earth . . nineteenthly , the curious may be prone to enquire , why the church of laodicea in those times should account her self so hugely and extraordinarily rich , encreased in goods , and to have no want of any thing . and truly why this should be her estate rather than any of the churches specified , from the literal ground we can fetch no reason . but admitting the prophetical sense , and that this is the last interval of the church of christ , it will naturally so come to pass : for this laodicea will be left heir to all the riches of her sister philadelphia , to peace , prosperity , purity in worship , abundance of natural knowledge , universal skill in the interpretations of the prophecies , and whatever good thing there is belonging to the church , saving the life and spirit which philadelphia carried along with her into the other world. how easily then and naturally , or rather necessarily , does this description of the church of laodicea fall upon the last interval ? and lastly , it is a question extremely obvious to demand , why that phrase , * he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear , which our saviour so often is found to adde at the end of his parables to the people , should be used here so repeatedly in every epistle , they being no parables , but epistles sent to each of those seven churches in asia respectively : and then , why this epiphonema is sometimes the last close of the epistle , sometimes not ? to which problem there is no tolerable solution in the literal sense of these epistles . but supposing a mystical or prophetical sense , there was a necessity of affixing this epiphonema , to shew there was a farther sense intended than that of the letter : and also , that sometimes this epiphonema should come last of all , ( as in the four last epistles , ) that the promise to the conquerour , to him that overcomes , might be more certainly understood to be of a proper prophetical or political sense , not merely theological , moral or spiritual ; as has been abundantly declared in the exposition . . we might have drawn many more questions and solutions from the consideration of the letter , and of this hypothesis we go upon , to shew its solidity and fitness , but that we hold it needless , having produced so many already : which jointly considered , with the perpetual easiness and naturalness of the whole exposition of all the epistles , * and the exact correspondency of the names of the churches to the events of the successive intervals of the true catholick church which they represent , one would think they should not fail fully to satisfy any unprejudiced peruser of our exposition of these epistles , touching the truth thereof . but i am abundantly taught by experience , that both the finding out , and receiving of divine truths found out by others , is a special gift of god. and therefore to him alone be the glory for ever and ever . amen . notes upon the twenty arguments . sect. . with as great pomp , and as high a preamble as he does , where he begins so famous prophecies as those of the seven seals , &c. ] you may adde to this of the seven seals , and that of the opened book , the prophecy of the scripture of truth in daniel . to which prophecy the vision , chap. . vers . , , &c. is a preamble , as this vision is to this prophecy of the seven churches , and which is yet more remarkable , the person represented in the vision , the same person in the like attire and other circumstances as here : and there set before the most concerning prophecy in all daniel , which reaches from the persian monarchy to the end of the world. whence it is the more ●…rigid and absurd not to make these epistles of the seven churches a prophecy , as well as those three other are , that reaches to the end of the world as they do . that for the significancy of the word asia to comport also with the significancy of the names of the seven churches , &c. ] and there is one significancy more in this name asia than i was aware of when i wrote my exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches . for besides that allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fundamentum , and to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies operari to work , from whence [ i know thy works ] is so often repeated ; there may be also a further allusion to the cabbalistical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which signifies as they call it mundus asiathicus , of which the earth is the lowest region . so that the churches in asia will s●…gnify according to this cabbalistical notion , the churches dispersed over the whole earth . because a letter-carrier going from patmos , his first journey will be to ephesus , &c. ] this is alcazar his conceit , and yet as liter●● as it is , it will not hold . for he must be an unskilfull and indis●…reet letter-carrier that setting out from patmos to ephesus will pass to smyrna and to pergamus , if he intend , what he ought to doe , the delivering most of his letters in the shortest time he may . for then , if we consult ptolemies mapps , in asiae tabula , he being to deliver the most of his letters in the shortest time , is not to go from ephesus to smyrna , and so to pergamus , but from ephesus to laodicea , from laodicea to philadelphia , from philadelphia to sardis , from sardis to thyatira , and from thyatira to pergamus , and then from pergamus to smyrna ; from whence he may take shipping to patmos again to give saint iohn an account of the delivery of his letters . this is very evident out of ptolemie's geographical table , especially if we understand by laodicea that laodicea which is situated betwixt the rivers meander and lycus , which questionless alcazar understands : and that laodicea is near to philadelphia , and philadelphia to sardis , and sardis not far off from thyatira . but there is a laodicea at a great distance from them all , that lies a good deal east of the mountain or valley aulocrene , from whence the river meander runs , which ptolemy calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , laodiceam combustam : which were it understood would alter the account . and yet for ought i know it may be chiefly alluded to in the prophetical sense of the epistles to these churches , the laodicean interval in a manner conterminating with the conflagration of the world. so that not onely the notation of the name of laodicea intimates that to be the interval of the church that reaches till the last judgment , but that epithete also of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or combusta that it is the interval next to the conflagration of the earth . sect. . that places the ephesine interval within the apostles times , &c. ] for the ephesine interval terminates in the tenth year of nero , as i have shewn in my exposition . in which interval all the apostles were living , saint iohn long after . but another character of this interval is , that the nicolaitan sect appeared not till presently after it . whence they are commended that they hate the deeds of the nicolaitans ; that is , such deeds as the nicolaitans after were found guilty of . and spondanus places the sect of the nicolaitans some two or three years after the tenth of nero. the church hitherto had kept free from such wretched debauchery as that . sect. . ( as if ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was intended on purpose to answer to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) ] though there be two other paronomastical allusions in the word asia besides this , yet i do not doubt but this is also intended , and the rather from the repeating so perpetually 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i know thy works , and it is the most usefull and the most accommodate to vulgar capacity . that allusion to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or mundus asiathicus , lies more deep , and is less intelligible to the vulgar . sect. . he that hath an ear to hear , let him hear , &c. namely what the spirit saith unto the churches . this additional put to that excitation to attention to what the spirit saith unto the churches , shews that all these seeming private epistles to particular churches , are indeed one sett or compages of epistles which concern the succeeding intervals of the universal church , from the beginning to the end of the world. whence the epiphonema of each epistle to every church is so framed as if it were directed to all the churches , that is , to every interval thereof ; the whole being a representation of the state of the church universal according to several intervals from the beginning to the end , which they are bound to take notice of and consider , and compare together , for the better understanding of the whole . sect. . and the exact correspondency of the names of the churches to the events , &c. ] and not onely of the names of the churches , but of whatsoever names of persons are mentioned in any of the epistles to the churches there is a correspondency of these with the state or affairs of that interval of the church whereever they occur . it may be that some strong spirits , as they are called , or high and hard lofty wits will overlook these paronomastical correspondencies or allusions in words or names as trifles . but the great hugo grotius himself does not , that makes the names of every one of the seven churches to be significant . nor does peganius that incomparably learned as well as singularly pious german , who knowing nothing of my exposition of the seven churches , nor i of his , gave about the same time muchwhat the same prophetical exposition ( with allusions to the words or names ) that i have done . which shews the obviousness and naturalness of this way of opening the prophetical sense of these epistles , to them whose judgments are free . and though i knew none , when i set my self to the prophetical exposition of the seven churches , that held it a prophecy of the state of the church distinguished into so many intervals from the beginning to the end , unless he that put me upon it might surmise some such thing ; yet after the publishing my exposition i met with one who was something a curious enquirer after expositours of the prophecies of scripture that named to me at least half a dozen , that held the seven churches to be such a prophecy , reaching from the beginning of the church to the end thereof ; and i have had some such like information since . but none of these that were of this opinion had attempted to make the thing out , as i was informed from the same hands . and very lately by chance looking again into mr. mede , i find him also explicitly to declare his opinion , that the vision of the seven churches is a prophecy touching the church universal à princip●…o ad finem , setting out the different states of the church in several intervals in that order that the seven churches are ranged in the apocalypse , which i have noted in my preface to the exposition . and he gives two reasons for it , the one that the number seven is a number of entire revolution of time ; to which i would adde expresly that , as the seven seals reach from the beginning to the end of the entire apocalyptick period , whose epocha is the beginning of the christian church , and exitus in the end of the world , so doth also the vision of the seven churches , and that for that reason they are likewise exhibited under the number of seven . his other reason is , that if this prophetick sense was not intended , the spirit of prophecy would not have pitched upon these seven churches in asia , but the letters would have been directed either to all the churches , or the most famous , such as the church at antioch , at alexandria , and rome , and many others ; and such as no doubt , says he , had need of instruction as well as those named in the apocalypse . these are his two arguments which i have not missed in my twenty though i never met with them before that , in mr. mede . and these two arguments were sufficient to perswade that person of so excellent a wit and judgment , of the truth of the thing in general . into how deep a sopor therefore or lethargy is their wit and judgment cast whom twenty arguments of like nature will not awake ? but now for a further assurance upon a more particular account : which is briefly this , i first considered the integrum which was to be distributed into these seven parts . which is the true apostolick church not contaminated with either pagan or pagano christian idolatry , though living in various circumstances from the beginning to the end . now there being a complaint of eating things sacrificed unto idols under the third and fourth intervals , and none in the two first and three last , made me conceive that those middle intervals both put together did comprehend no less space than the times of the apostasy of the church , before whole kingdomes and nations had emerged out of it , as it happened at the blessed reformation . this is the first fast hold i seemed to have of things , viz. that the pergamenian and thyatirian intervals included the times of the apostasy of the church till the time of reformation came . the time antecedent to this was all that time before the apostasy , or at least , which i look upon as the more probable , before the roman empire became christian by the conversion of constantine . now this antecedent time is naturally divided into two parts . the time before the beginning of the ten persecutions which began in the tenth of nero , and the time from thence to constantine , when the pagan persecutions ceased . the former is the ephesi●…e interval , the latter the smyrnean . the persecutions are threatned in the former , executed in the latter . so we see the order of these four churches placed according to the order of time and known history . and the sardian interval naturally follows where there is no complaint of eating things offered unto idols as in the two former the pergamenian and thyatirian intervals , which intimates that the true non-idolatrizing church had now , whenas before she was but the woman in the wilderness , become , according to promise in the thyatirian interval a visible conspicuous church and polity of her self got from under the pagano-christian yoke , as well as the primitive church before had got from under the pagan . not that this is the best constitution of the church that ever will be , though incomparably , or , if you will , infinitely better than popery , but that it is introductory to the blessed millennial state , when the new ierusalem descends upon earth , according to the prophecies in the opened book . for now prophecy shews the order of these latter intervals , not history , as being things to come . and it is said expresly to the church of philadelphia , i will write upon thee the name of the city of my god even of the new ierusalem . &c. but now as in the visions of the opened book prophecy after the thousand years satan is let loose , and gog and magog besieges the holy city ; so after this excellent philadelphian interval succeeds the laodicean , who by their laziness and their luke-warmness will permit gog and magog to grow upon them ; and as fire from heaven puts an end to that siege , so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , laodicea combusta puts a period to this stage of the earth together with the church . so that the account of the placing of the seven churches without any respect to paronomastical allusions you see is steady and orderly and according to time and history for what is past , and according to the prophecies in the other part of the apocalypse , for what is to come . which ordering of them who can be so stupid as not to acknowledg to be done by design ? from whence again it will follow that this vision of the seven churches is a prophecy ( properly so called ) of the condition of the church from the beginning to the end . and the same will be still more particularly and exquisitely proved by the paronomastical allusions of the names of these churches and other names that occurr in the epistles to the churches . but as the former way of proof i have pursued but sparingly , so i must let this alone altogether , both because it would take up too much space , whenas my notes are swollen to too great a bigness already , and because the reader may peruse what i have copiously enough writ in my exposition it self . i will onely here take notice that if the paronomastical allusions all along from the beginning to the end suit exquisitely to the order of time and things , as i am well assured they do ; they are also a notable confirmation or demonstration of the vis●…on of the sev●● churches being a prophecy , properly so called , of the state of the church from the beginning to the end ; that it was as ce●●ainly intended a prophecy by the spirit of god , as the skilfull structure of the bodies of animals are an assured argument of his providence , or that flower-work or imagery in carpets or clothes made of variously coloured feathers ( which are things light and slight enough one would think ) are an argument of the art of the indians that are said to make them . and for my part i look upon this paronomastical way , let others make as light and slight of it as they will , to be made use of on purpose , because as it is , where seriously taken notice of , a sufficient key of revealment , so it is here as pleasant a pie●…e of the artifice of concealment from high and lofty wits , that would be likely to stalk over such allusions with a disdainfull gate , and overlook them ; there being more ways than one wherein that of the apostle may be verified , that god has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty , and chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise . the end . errata sic corrige . page . l. . for , is rightly , r. is , rightly . p. . 〈◊〉 . r. genicon●●a , ibid. r. idicon●●a . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . r. good . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . r. retracting . ibid. r. ●… . p. . l. . r. mithridath . p. . l. . r. : we. p. . l. . r. pamphylia . p. . l. . r. from uttering . p. . l. . r. called , in . p. . l. . r. therein accordingly . p. . l. . r. ioint-exposition . books printed for walter kettilby , at the bishop's head in st. paul's church-yard . henrici mori cantabrigiensis opera omnia , tum quae latinè , tum quae anglicè scripta sunt , nunc verò latinitate donata . fol. voll . — apocalypsis apocalypseos ; or , the revelation of saint iohn unveiled . quarto . — his tetractys anti-astrologica , a confutation of judiciary astrology , in answer to iohn but●…er , b. d. quarto . — his remarks on judge hales's treatise of fluid bodies . octavo . — answers and replies in defence of his antidote against idolatry . octavo ▪ t. burneti telluris theoria sacra : orbis nostri originem & mutationes generales , quas aut jam subiit , aut olim subiturus est , complectens . ( figuris aeneis . ) quarto . . dr. falkner's libertas ecclesiastica . octavo . — christian loyalty . octavo . — vindication of liturgies . octavo . dr. sherlock's discourse of the knowledg of iesus christ , with a defence and continuation . octavo . a reply to a pamphet called , the mischief of impositions : which pretends to answer the dean of st. paul's sermon concerning the mischief of separation . quarto . . n. resbury's sermon preached at the anniversary meeting of the charter-house scholars ; on monday , december . . quarto . — his sermon at the funeral of sir alan broderick , kt. november . . mr. long 's history of the donatists . octavo . — his character of a separatist . octavo . — the nonformists plea for peace impleaded , against baxter . octavo . — against hales of schism , with mr. baxter's arguments for conformity . octavo . the spirit of enthusiasm exorcised , in a sermon before the university of oxford , on act-sunday , iuly the th . . by g. hicks , d. d. quarto . the spirit of popery speaking out of the mouths of fa●…atical protestants . grov●…i responsio ad nuperum libellum qui inscribitur celeusma seu clamor ad theologos hierarchiae anglicanoe , &c. quarto . mr. grove's vindication of the conforming clergy . quarto . a farewell to popery , to dr. nichols , vice-chancellour of oxford , and warden of new colledge , from walter harris , m. d. lately fellow of the same colledg . a true and lively representation of popery , shewing that popery is onely new-modelled paganism . quarto . the reasons for nonconformity examined and refuted . quarto . mr. lamb's stop to the course of separation . octavo . fresh suit against independency . octavo . allen's works . octavo . vol. r. kidder ' s christian sufferer supported or , a discourse of christian fortitude . octavo . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e the extent of the authours exposition of the prophecies of daniel . the change of nebuchadnezzar by the decree of the watchchers and holy ones into the condition of an oxe , how to be understood . * dan. . . of the hand seen writing on the wall by belshazzar , and of the chaldeans , soothsayers , &c. being not able to read it . the interpretation of the said writing , by daniel . * part. ●… . cap. . two things most to be noted in the 〈…〉 shazzar , and daniels interpretation . * ezech. . . ch. . . * part. . cap. . why the authour did not undertake the whole exposition of daniel . why he undertook the prophetical parts . what the manner and nature of his performance therein , and how grosly calvin is mistaken in interpreting daniel in those parts of the visions that fall in with the apocalypse . that yet grotius is far more intolerable , and in what regard . whythe authour has preferred 〈…〉 epoch●… of the seventy weeks before ioseph mede's . why he so often names the writers he makes use of , contrary to the professed purpose of grotius who suppresses their names . of the usefulness of faithfull expositions of the divine prophecies and the requisi●…eness of the reading the same . * chap. . the feigned and hypocritical modesty of such as pretend inability of studying daniel and the apocalypse . what is at the bottom of this hypocritical modesty or shieness . clear proofs that the prophecies of daniel and the apocalypse are intelligible , and what a touchstone they are to try a true christian. dan. ch. . ver . . the enravishing pleasure in reading and rightly understanding the visions of daniel . the vast comprehensiveness of christs care over his church discovered in them . why christ did not prevent rather than predict the persecution of his saints . the manner of christs working miracles , and his communicating prophecies compared one with another . the reason of the authour his adding the first part of his threefold appendage . the popish fabulous notion of antichrist , and how it drove grotius to embrace porphyriu●… his opinion , touching the fourth kingdome in daniel in favour of the pope , and why he rejected the conceit of mahomet's being antichrist . the great importance of proving the fourth kingdome in daniel to be the roman , for making good the opinion of the ancient fathers that the times of the little horn with eyes are the times of antichrist &c. and consequently the times of antichrist the times of the papacy . how manifest it is out of the 〈◊〉 that the pope is the very 〈◊〉 . that th●● 〈…〉 representation antichrist and false notion of idolatry , to shelter their church from seeming idolatrous , and the pope from appearing to be antichrist , is indeed an acknowledging the pope to be antichrist , and their church guilty of idolatry . the second part of the appendage , the usefulness thereof in setling the table of synchronisms , and discovering the vain conceits of men about the ●…ising of the witnesses . the main testimony of the persecuted witnesses what it was , and that there was a resurrection of these witnesses in the reformation . a sevenfold usefulness of proving the late reformation ( from the vials following the rising of the witnesses ) to be the rising of the same . the first usefulness , viz. the discovery of the popedome to be the kingdom of antichrist , and reformed christendom the kingdom of christ. the second usefulness against the fifth-monarchy men . the third usefulness , against the contemners and despisers of the reformation , or unjust censurers of it . 〈◊〉 . . . galat. . . the fourth usefulness , the conciliation of due reverence and obedience to all the magistrates as well spiritual as temporal in reformed christendome . the fifth usefulness , for the justifying the reformation from all imputation of injury or he●… resie in casting off the pope . the sixth usefulness , to show the ●…wrod●… of either publick or private persons revolts from the reformed religion to popery . the last usefulness , for the freeing mens minds from the vain fear of the witnesses being to be slain , and as idle hopes when they are slain that they will rise within three years and an half . * galat. . . reasons why he added the third part of his appendage , as first from the sardian church its being so plain a representation of the reformed churches , as balthasar willius and ludovicus crocius had noted before him . the s●…ules of the reformed churches laid before them , with comminations from christ in his epistle to the church in sardis . apoc. . . ephes. . . the second reason why he added the third part of his appendage , viz. for the description sake of the philadelphian interval which is to succeed the sardian . st. paul's description of charity with a brief explication thereof , and consequently of the state of the philadelphian church . matt. . . cor. . . that the sardian church , the nearer she makes towards the pattern of the philadelphian , the greater will be her safety , but that her slackness there may hazard all . the third and last reason of his adding the third part of his appendage . the authour's justification of his zeal for the truth of the reformed religion from the seasonableness thereof , left men dishonour god and the profession of true religion by their foul apostasie . that there is no immoderateness nor extravagancy in his zeal for the reformed religion . gal. . . * book . chap. . with what great sincerity and assurance the authour has writ his expositions of daniel and the apocalypse especially in those parts that concern the grand points betwixt us and the church of rome . a brief reply to the contemners of his well-grounded confidence . what effect his expositions are like to have with the more sober minded protestants , particularly in reference to loyalty to their prince and seemly behaviour to other magistrates . dialog . . sect. . how the reformed churches are bo●…nd with all attentiveness to read christ's epistle to the church in sardis . and of the sound and ●…avoury doctrine in the book of homilies of the church of england . several weighty reasons , why no protestant should change his religion upon the solicitation of the emissaries of rome . cor. . . notes for div a -e apoc. . * apoc. . notes for div a -e 〈…〉 chap. . ●… . notes for div a -e * macc. . . * isai. . . notes for div a -e ●… sam. . . apoc. . , . apoc. . , . apoc. . . apoc. . . apoc. . . a brief reply to a late answer to dr. henry more his antidote against idolatry shewing that there is nothing in the said answer that does any ways weaken his proofs of idolatry against the church of rome, and therefore all are bound to take heed how they enter into, or continue in the communion of that church as they tender their own salvation. more, henry, - . approx. kb of xml-encoded text transcribed from -bit group-iv tiff page images. text creation partnership, ann arbor, mi ; oxford (uk) : - (eebo-tcp phase ). a wing m estc r this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the early english 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(eebo-tcp ; phase , no. a ) transcribed from: (early english books online ; image set ) images scanned from microfilm: (early english books, - ; : ) a brief reply to a late answer to dr. henry more his antidote against idolatry shewing that there is nothing in the said answer that does any ways weaken his proofs of idolatry against the church of rome, and therefore all are bound to take heed how they enter into, or continue in the communion of that church as they tender their own salvation. more, henry, - . [ ], , [ ] p. printed by j. redmayne, for walter kettilby at the sign of the bishops-head in st. pauls church-yard, london : mdclxxii. [ ] a reply to: walton, john. a brief answer to the many calumnies of dr. henry more. reproduction of the original in the cambridge university library. created by converting tcp files to tei p using tcp tei.xsl, tei @ oxford. re-processed by university of nebraska-lincoln and northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. eebo-tcp is a partnership between the universities of michigan and oxford and the publisher proquest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by proquest via their early english books online (eebo) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). the general aim of eebo-tcp is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic english-language title published between and available in eebo. eebo-tcp aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the text encoding initiative (http://www.tei-c.org). the eebo-tcp project was divided into two phases. the , texts created during phase of the project have been released into the public domain as of january . anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source. users should be aware of the process of creating the tcp texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data. text selection was based on the new cambridge bibliography of english literature (ncbel). if an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in ncbel, then their works are eligible for inclusion. selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. in general, first editions of a works in english were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably latin and welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so. image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in oxford and michigan. % (or pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet qa standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. after proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of instances per text. any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of tcp data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a tcp editor. the texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level of the tei in libraries guidelines. copies of the texts have been issued variously as sgml (tcp schema; ascii text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable xml (tcp schema; characters represented either as utf- unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless xml (tei p , characters represented either as utf- unicode or tei g elements). keying and markup guidelines are available at the text creation partnership web site . eng walton, john, fl. . -- brief answer to the many calumnies of dr. henry more. - tcp assigned for keying and markup - aptara keyed and coded from proquest page images - rina kor sampled and proofread - aptara rekeyed and resubmitted - rina kor sampled and proofread - rina kor text and markup reviewed and edited - pfs batch review (qc) and xml conversion a brief reply to a late answer to dr. henry more his antidote against idolatry . shewing that there is nothing in the said answer that does any ways weaken his proofs of idolatry against the church of rome , and therefore all are bound to take heed how they enter into , or continue in the communion of that church as they tender their own salvation . corinth . chap. . be not deceived , neither fornicators , nor idolaters , nor adulterers shall inherit the kingdom of god. london , printed by i. redmayne , for walter kett●lby at the sign of the bishops-head in st. pauls church-yard , mdclxxii . the preface , chiefly consisting of an answer to the answerers advertisement , and the preface or introduction to his answer . what my antagonist gives notice of in his advertisement , ● partly know to be true . for it is about two years ago , that the perusal of this answer of his , in m. s. was offered me ; but i was then wholly taken up in writing my enchiridium metaphysicum , but yet promised that if he thought he had said any thing that he in his own conscience judged to be material against my antidote and would publish it , i would lay all aside and answer it forthwith so soon as it should come out . and whereas i was informed that his language in several places was not so civil to me , i added this also , that my reply to him should be without the least ill word , but be made onely to matter of argument . wherefore since this answer is come out , besides other obligations , i am by vertue of my promise obliged to reply to it ; as also with the least offensive language that may be . which promise i hope i have abundantly performed . but there is a passage or two more in his advertisement that i cannot but take notice of , as where he saith , but now whereas , besides dr. more , dr. stillingfleet hath thought it not below his name and abilities to descend to the like foul and injurious calumnies , in his late book concerning the idolatry practised in the church of rome , &c. i grant if they were calumnies it would be a very vile condescension indeed in either of us to debase our selves so low , as to the doing of so great a wickedness . but when you speak of its being below my learned friends abilities to descend to such a charge , methinks it seems to imply , that any man of meaner parts might easily make that charge good , you being so manifestly guilty thereof . or as if you would complement us out of the strongest hold that we have , viz. this just and true charge of idolatry ; that quitting this castle you might the easilyer , as you think , take hold of us for schismaticks and carry us back captive again into that land of egypt or babylon . but this charge being true , as most certainly it is , it can be neither below the dignity of my worthy friend dr. stillingfleet , nor any one else , to insist thereon , unless it be below any ones person to indeavour the saving of multitudes of souls from eternal death , and the bodies of many innocent and conscientious men from those barbarous cruelties your religion exercises upon them , when you get power to do it with security . see the preface of my idea of antichristianism , sect. . , . and whereas he says , he thinks the publishing of this his answer seasonable for the undeceiving of the many unfortunately misguided souls , whose leaders ( to speak favourably ) seem not to understand what themselves object ; it is a dilemma of two hard imputations , that pretends to gore us one way or other ; as if we were either such dishonest persons as to speak against our own consciences , and pretend we have reason when we know we have none , ( which were it not the fault of your party , controversies betwixt us would soon cease , & you would be no longer able to deceive the people ) or else were at least very silly fellows , and understood not what we say . which my reply , i hope , will abundantly confute , and undeceive those unfortunately misguided souls , which your arts and slights have really imposed upon . but for us , how can we mislead any , who send them to the ancient , primitive and apostolick constitution of our christian religion , and such as your selves cannot deny to be true ? we lead them onely from the errors and corruptions that since have crept into the church . but thus you bemoan and weep over poor deludible souls , whom you would make proselytes , till you have devoured them . what you threaten of abler pens against dr. stilling fleet , and boast of your own performance against dr. more , as if there were nothing in dr. stilling fleet on this subject , but what might be answered out of this of yours against my self ; when it shall so manifestly appear that your answer is so insufficient to weaken any of the evidences of my charge of idolatry against your church , certainly then it will be easily concluded , that it can do no execution against his . and then for your threatening of abler pens , i do not fear their being overproportioned to the ability of the person they shall grapple with ; whose vigour of youth , wit , parts , and copious reading and learning , might make him even heartily wish for such an encounter . optat aprum , aut fulvum descendere monte leonem . i pass now to my antagonists preface or introduction , i know not whether to call it . but i had almost forgotten his title-page , a brief answer to the many calumnies of dr. henry more , &c. which language is too too harsh and false . i might indeed truly have intitled my book , a brief reply to the many cavils , &c. but i thought it not so adviseable , because the firmness and solidity of my replies to his answers do perpetually demonstrate them to be but cavils no true answers to my charge . but it was the great prudence of my adversary to call my charges of idolatry upon their church , calumnies , because he might be conscious to himself that his answers to my charges , whereby he would transform them into calumnies , were so weak and dilute , and my replies to them might be so strong , that unless himself called them calumnies the slow witted people might not easily take them to be so , no more than they can tell what to make of a bad picture , unless the name be writ under it , a cock or a cow , or the like . there is but one thing more that i shall take notice of in the title-page , which is the omitting to set his name to his book ; so that i am as it were to combate with a spectre in the dark . i could never learn any more concerning my adversary than that he was a doctor of the roman church . for what reasons he conceals his name i know not , i suppose he is not ashamed of the cause he undertakes , and i speak ingenuously and as i think the cause need not be ashamed of such an advocate , so far as i can judge of him by his performance . for it is the fate and nature of this cause , that no man can maintain it by truth . and therefore to bring a true argument against us in defense of it , would be to bring an impertinent one . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , truth always agrees with , never clashes with truth , as aristotle has noted . and therefore it is not to be imputed to the weakness of my antagonist , but of his cause , that with undeniable evidence i have perpetually confuted his answers ; though i believe he has brought as good as the cause is capable of , and managed them and intermingled them with such circumstantial rhetorical humours , slights and tricks , to make something of nothing , and to make a show of answering and confuting me , that i must freely confess he is a complete artist in that roman sophistry , whereby they become cunning anglers for poor deceivable souls . and thus much in short upon his title-page and advertisement . we come now to his introduction , which i shall cast into so many paragraphs , and so answer them in order . paragraph the first . dr. henry more is a person whose learning and parts have brought him into a name , among the professors of the refined arts and sciences . fame speaks him a great philosopher , and his publick works are said to avouch no less . nay some have passed so far in favour of his character as to term him , the great restorer of the platonick cabbala . and truly , if this be so , i conceive the gentleman had done himself a great deal of right , if he had still kept to his own element ; for as much as his late unlucky ingaging in controversial disputes , cannot but prove a blot to his former undertakings : for the learned world must needs acknowledge that dr. more the controvertist , is much degenerated from dr. more the philosopher . the answer . here ▪ observe the art and smooth cunning of my adversary , who drives at these two things : first to make show of a great deal of equity and candor of judgment , in acknowledging , notwithstanding the controversie betwixt us , that i am not altogether nothing in matters of philosophy , but have writ with some success and acceptance on such subjects ; that he thus seeming so impartial and indifferent a man , and so readily acknowledging any thing well done by me , he may the more easily be believed where he gives judgment against me , and says , that though i be something succesfull indeed in philosophy , yet i am very unlucky and unskilfull in theological disputes , a tolerable philosopher , but a very mean controvertist in points of divinity . the other drift is , to make me , if it were possible , to melt and relent , that i have thus lessened my credit in the world by my unfortunately ingageing in controversies betwixt us and the church of rome , as if he bemoaned my misfortune therein ; who if i had kept to my own element of philosophy , might have been gratious and acceptable with all the world , with the pontifician party as well as vvith the reformed , and kept up my credit in force with all , when as now i have hugely impaired my repute , at least with those of his party . but to the first i answer , that though this intimation of his own impartiality be craftily enough managed , yet that general acknowledged testimony of my suffering in philosophy is a witness against himself . for if i have been so usefull and succesfull in my philosophical demonstrations of the existence of god and immaterial beings , in the vindication of divine providence , in the proving of the immortality of the soul , and in finding the ancient iudaical cabbala , ( which the platonick philosophy is so near akin to , ) so artificially couched in the text of moses , and the like , all which tend to the honour and safety of the christian religion , the same clearness of sight which helps me to discern and judge of these things , cannot but inable me to judge also in those concerning points that are betwixt you and us ; as that eye that can see one colour right , is not confined to that colour , but by the same faculty and soundness of sight can see another . and it is more my impartialness and unprejudicedness than any thing else that makes me see so clearly and so truely in any thing . as to the second , my adversary has suggested no more , nor so much as i have diverse times reflected upon my self , and was well aware of before i meddled with these kind of controversies : namely that it would lessen my repute and favour with many . but if i seek to please men , how shall i be the servant of iesus christ , as the apostle speaks , gal. . . and as for the business of repute and esteem in the world , i thank god i am convinced even from my very heart and soul , that i ought to be utterly dead to all self-joy and self-gloriation , and therefore if any thing happen cross to that life , that ought to be mortified in me , if it moves me not , i am at peace ; if it does , it is yet the gift of god to me , and i am admonished thereby to advance furth●r into that death , by the power and spirit of christ , that will at length lay asleep all such disturbances in my soul for ever . and there are greater matters than the esteem of men , which i am not insensible , but have always been well aware that i run the hazard of , and such as that wisdom , which is according to the spirit of this world , sets the greatest esteem of all upon . but this i thank god could never affright me into the neglect of so undispensable a duty , as the declaring so important truth , so exceeding clear to my self , and of so unspeakable consequence for the church of god , and for the settling of a true grounded peace in the christian world , that there might be truely one flock and one sheepfold , and jesus christ the true shepherd over all ; which cannot be till such barbarous and idolatrous laws and institu●es be reversed as obtain still in the papacy . but for my part , my great fort and shelter against all the inconveniences i expose my self to , by my just liberty of speech , is to keep as near as i can in that frame of spirit which our saviour commends to us in that precept of his , matth. . . love your enemies , bless them that curse you , do good to them that hate you , and pray for them that despightfully use you and persecute you . father forgive them for they know not what they do , luk. . . this is the sanctuary i desire to take shelter in , even in that ineffably profound and humble spirit of unself-interessed love , which i infinitely prefer before all the keenness of wit and crafty prudence of the spirit of this world , that so subtily shifts for it self , which i envy no mans use or injoyment of , may but my soul sufficiently incorporate with this lovely spirit of our lord jesus christ , may that be the lot of mine inheritanec , both in this life and for ever . for this is that which is truely invincible indeed , and will easily put by any such thrust as my adversary has offered at me in this paragraph . paragraph the second . he has lately set forth an exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches of asia . the whole piece is of a pure romantick strain , wherein the authours fancy being broken loose from the command of reason , and leaping over all boundaries of church-authority , and the faith of his ancestors , runs on at eleven-score , as if he were upon a warm scent , giving chase to some of his platonical idea's . the answer . this is indeed a pretty pleasant rhetorical career , but what it would affirm in plain english is this , that my exposition of the epistles to the seven churches is but a mere phancy . and the arguments he offers at to prove his assertion are these , that it is against church-authority , against the faith of our ancestors , and that i have brought no reasons to prove it . as to the authority of the church , there was never any general council , nor any other that i know , that ever declared that such a prophetical sense as i have given of these seven epistles is false , nor for any doctrine that clashes with any thing supposed in my exposition , while the church continued symmetral , i mean before her apostasy . but in that the ancient fathers declared , upon the removal of that which hindereth , thes. . . that the apostasy of the church would insue , and the appearing of antichrist , they expounding also the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the intireness of the roman empire , that is consonant to my exposition of those seven epistles and to the assigned interval of pergamus . but now in that he insinuates i have brought no reason for my exposition , i think i have brought no less then demonstration for it . and i think any one that has a genius to read and judge of such things will easily acknowledge it upon the considerate perusal of my exposition , and serious pondering the tenth chapter , wherein the strength thereof is more briefly represented . if we can in the contemplation of anatomy in the body of an animal , observing how all the parts conspire to one end , ( the convenient functions of life for such an animal , ) conclude a providence therein ; certainly upon taking notice , that the whole frame of all these epistles and the order of them , the notations of the proper names not excepted , do all intirely tend ( as all the flesh of an animal is made into muscles for fit and due motions for that animal ) to set out the state of the church in seven intire intervals from the beginning to the end , this is as certain a sign that these epistles are such a divine prediction or prophecy , as such an anatomy is of such a piece of divine providence in that creature . paragraph the third . to this he has adjoyned a pretended antidote against idolatry , with application to the council of trent , and for the putting a stop ( as he phrases it ) to the romish infection . his most formidable weapon is that harsh and unmanly rhetorick called railing . his phrase is rough and clogged with much dirt , which he throws too bountifully upon persons which never deserved it at his hands . his objections are bold , uncivil , irreligious ; not without a deep tincture of geneva . the answer . my useing nor affecting any other rhetorick but plain propriety of speech or scripture phrase , applied to things that are true , that is that which makes it both harsh and formidable to those that are friends to falshood . and this it is which they call railing : such as when i call idolatry , idolatry , and pagan-like idolatry , pagan-like idolatry , and the unjust and cruel killing of innocent men , barbarous murder . but that it should be unmanly to speak truth i understand not , or yet ungentile in such necessary occasions as these ▪ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to speak truth was one of the main characters of a gentleman amongst the persians though pagans , so that it is a sad thing that it should be ungentile so to do amongst christians . and why is my phrase said to be rough and clogged with much dirt , but that it expresses such things as are scabrous and dirty . a poet or painter describing a leper or a man newly taken up out of a pit of mire , if their pens or pencils describe true , by you they must be called rough or clogged with much dirt or mire . in the mean time it is a sad case that the constitution of your religion is such that we cannot set it down in proper and significant language but we must seem to rail at you in your own judgements , though we speak onely the truth . and for his talking of my throwing dirt upon persons , for my part i have no personal controversie with any , but onely declare against the corruptness of the roman religion , with which they indeavour to infect the people , and against their idolatry in particular . which i do out of a spirit of common charity both to them and our selves , wishing not the least hurt to them in any regard , but being ready to serve them in what is fit and in my power to serve them , in any thing . my objections indeed are bold because i have clear truth on my side , but they can seem uncivil and irreligious onely to your selves , because it is a ruffling as it were , by rude reason , of your trim formalities in your superstitious ▪ and idolatrous worship which you call religion . but as for the deep tincture of geneva , i am as much a stranger to it as to rome , but ready to receive of either any usefull truth i am as yet unacquainted with . but where they offer errors i am as little concerned in the one as in the other . paragraph the fourth . and therefore were it not , that the opinion of his supposed abilities , may cast a favourable reflection upon all that issues from his brain , and gain credit to his antidote amongst his vulgar zealots , to the irreparable dammage of their souls , his work might have lain neglected , as without a reader , so without an adversary . but in regard the doctor has prefixed his name to the book as author , and that a great name is a great argument with some to evince the truth of the contents , and that no doctrine is so absurd but may spread under the professed patronage of a famed divine ; therefore some things must be said by way of rejoynder to the antidote , least some unwary readers seeing the doctor so full gorged against popish idolatry , and repeating his invectives almost in every page with endless tautologies , should tamely suffer themselves to be borne down the stream with big words , and think all is gospel and well-grounded , that falls with so much noise and confidence from the mouth of a doctor . the answer . the brief account of this long paragraph is this : that he would make his own believe , that there is nothing but my name , my degree in divinity , and the confidence of my affirming those things whereof in my antidote i do pronounce , that makes my book taken notice of , but that it would be of it self the weakest and most worthless thing that ever was penned . which if it be so , my antagonist has had a fair opportunity with ease to raise his trophies on so great a name , as he is pleased to call it , and so mean performance . and my arguments being so plain , and such as are not above the meanest capacity , if his answers are as plain and bear covincing truth with them , he need not fear but he will take away all the credit he says my antidote has obtained amongst my vulgar zealots , to the irreparable dammage of their souls . but in the mean time that is either perversly or unskilfully insinuated ; as if there could be no zeal against idolatry but it must be a sign of a vulgar spirit , ( so gentile a thing is it in contempt of god and his holy commandments to complement idols or images ) or as if their being reclaimed from or fortified against idolatry could be any prejudice to their souls . paragraph the fifth . and indeed i am already informed that some well-meaning protestants , who have a great kindness for the author and no less value for the work , have càlled for an answer to it with a kind of insulting accent , as conceiving no such answer could be given . they ( poor souls ) thinking , that surely the doctor would never have been so positive in his assertions , if the strength of his evidences were not such as might bear all the stress he lays upon them . the answer . it was but a plain expression of their confidence i dare say , which the heighth of my adversaries rhetorick calls insultation , in that they professed they conceived my antidote to be a book unanswerable . and it is a sign to me that they duely understood the weight and solidity of my arguments , that they did with such confidence pronounce them unanswerable . and i hope upon the perusal of my reply to my adversaries pretended answer , not onely those that have a kindness for me , but all lovers of the truth will acknowledge them unanswerable ; and that those are no such poor souls in his sense , in that they deemed my arguments no less strong than my self was positive in asserting of them , but that they are persons of a clear and perspicacious judgment . the sixth and last paragraph . wherefore seeing the concern of souls is at stake , whom he seeks by a pernicious wile to seduce , venting poyson gilded over with the specious title of an antidote ; the design of these few pages is to sum up briefly the doctors arguments , allowing to each a due reflection , and to represent the nullity and inconclusiveness of all that is material in him as to his foul and odious charge of idolatry , drawn up against his , and our common mother church . the answer . this is fine rhetorick again , and an high boast , as if he could so easily bring the solidity and firmness of my demonstrations to a mere nullity . some men build castles in the air , and others think they can batter down castles on the earth though built on rocks , although they have nothing but water-squirts or elderguns to discharge against them . but it is a pious design he undertakes , as if it were the concern of souls not to be sufficiently heedfull how they commit idolatry ; or as if i could seek by pernicious wiles to seduce them into the ancient pure apostolick way , unto that faith and practise which was in use and the known way to heaven before that grand apostasy into these gross idolatries seized the church . and why should any soul be afraid of being deceived by me , when i show them no other way then what upon a free and impartial search i find to be true and go in my self , driving on no worldly interest at all in my choice thereof , or in my charity of showing it to others , i getting not a peny for my pains , nor expecting nor desiring any thing , nay it being even according to my adversaries own acknowledgement , against my worldly interest . but the love of christ constraineth me , as the apostle speaks , cor. . . which extendeth it self to your church as well as to my own . for he would all men should be saved and leave those ways that lead to eternal death . nor would our charge of idolatry , being true , prove odious to you , but that you hate the light that would convince you , because your deeds are evil . but for drawing any such charge against my own church , i am so far from it , that i have clearly vindicated her from all suspition of antichristianism , of which idolatry is no mean part , at the end of my synopsis prophetica . nor know i what common mother you and i can have , unless you would become a convert to the truth , and forsake all the gross corruptions and idolatries of the church of rome . for so we may be both members of the ancient apostolick church , and sons of that jerusalem which is above , which is the mother of us all , gal. . . and thus i have answered each paragraph in my antagonists preface or introduction . in my replies to his answers i shall not always covet to set down his text so intire , for it would swell the volume into too big a bulk ; but for both shortness and perspicuity disenveloping what pretended strength of argument there may be , from the manifold heterogeneous humours and strains of art and rhetorick , i shall bring the bare edge of his objections against my antidote and then reply to them , which i suppose will be less tedious to the reader . for if i should bring in such things as are not essential to the cause , i must also be so impertinent as to answer them , and so we shall make so long a story of it betwixt us that the reader may fall asleep before he gets half way , which is ordinarily the fate of these books of answers and replies . but this volume consisting of the text of my antidote , each chapter being prefixt before his answers to the conclusions or paragraphs of them , and my replies set under each answer , i hope it may prove as little tedious , and it may be more pleasant than if i had done all along as some do in their own treatises , raise objections at the end of each chapter , or upon each point , and so answer them . and i will assure thee , reader , that with all possible faithfulness and to my best skill i have represented the utmost strength of his answers where i have not brought his text intire . of which if thou hast any doubt , his book is not great so that thou maist satisfie thy scrupulosity at a very reasonable rate . as for his harsh language to me , i very seldom take notice of it in my replies , nor will i here concern my self to collect any specimens of it . for i have no mind to quarrel but onely to defend the truth , let people reproach my person as they please , and am at perfect peace with my adversary , even while i am inforced to enter this combate with him . of which i desire thee , reader , to be a diligent and impartial spectator . for there is not a more material point can be controverted , nor of greater necessity throughly to be understood , than this charge of idolatry upon the church of rome . the more considerable errata correct thus . preface p. . l. . for suffering r. sufficiency . p. . l. . r. inheritance . page . l. penult . r. as well as . p. . l. . for must r. most . p. : l. . for ruin ● . mince . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . l. . for application ● . appellation . p. . l. . for empty r. imply . p. . l. . r. as ridiculous p. . l. . for as r. if . l. . for now r. nor. p. . l. . r. so say ● . p. . l. . r. chanceableness . p. . l. . for the r. that . p. . l. . for none r. not . p. . l. . r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . for thirteen r. nineteen . for all r. most . l. . for toward r. at p. . l. . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . p. . l. . for commemoration r. commemorative . p. . l. . r. perfect . p. . l. . r. on him . ( iohn . , . ) p. . l. . ● . god. p. . l. . r. imbued . p. . l. ● . for it r. is . l. . for induing r. ●nding . p. . l. . r. through . p. . l. . for them r. there . p. . l. . r. dialog●●s . p. . l. . r. enervate . the antidote against idolatry . chap. i. what is idolatry according to divine declaration . . there are two ways in general of discovering what is or ought to be held to be idolatry amongst christians ; the one , divine de●laration , the other , clear and perspicuous reasons : which though they may haply reach the one no farther than the other , that is to say , that whatsoever may be concluded to be idolatry by divine declaration , the same may also by unprejudiced reason , and vice versâ yet their joint concurrence of testimony is a greater assurance to us of the truth ; and two cords twisted together are stronger than either single . wherefore we will make use of both , and begin with divine declaration first . . the first conclusion therefore shall ●e , that as in civil governments it is the right of the supreme power to define and declare what shall be or be held to be treason , and punishable as such : so it is most manifestly the right of god almighty , who is also infinitely good and wise , to define and declare to his people what shall be or be held to be idolatry , which is a kind of treason against god , or crimen laesaa majesta●is divinae . and what is thus declared idolatry by god is to be held by us to be such , though the ludicrousness and fugitiveness of our wanton reason might otherwise find out many starting-holes and fine pretences to excuse this thing or that action from so foul an imputation . but as in civil affairs the declaring such and such things to be treason , does in a political sense make them so ipso facto ; so god's declaring such and such things to be idolatry , they do to us ipso facto become idolatry there●y : though to an ordinary apprehension , perhaps , neither this would have seemed treason , nor that idolatry , without these antecedent declarations . but where the law-giver is infallible , there is all the reason in the world we should submit not onely to his power , but to his judgement in the definitions of things , and rest sure that that is idolatry which he has thought fit to declare so to be . . the second conclusion ; that what is declared idolatry by god to the iews ought to be acknowledged idolatry by us christians . the ground of this conclusion is fixed in the nature of the christian religion . for christianity being a far more spiritual religion than that of iudaism , and therefore abhorring from all superstition , there cannot be the least relaxation to the most rancid of all superstitions , idolatry it self . wherefore whatsoever was accounted idolatry amongst the iews , and so defined by a divine law , must be reckoned much more such under christianity , there being not the least pretence for any relaxation . besides , there was nothing under the iews ( or can by any people be ) rightly deemed idolatry , but it is carefully enough cautioned against and plainly forbid in the first and second commandments of the decalogue . but the whole decalogue is moral , and so declared by god , in that it is said to be writ by his own finger on the tables of stone , exod. . . ( which are symbols of the permanent substance of our souls , on which all the general precepts of morality are ingraven as innate notions of our duty . ) and therefore it is hereby intimated that the precepts of the decalogue are just and fitting , not onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , not onely by an external law , but engraffed in our very nature and reason ; and that the root and ground of them will easily be fetch'd from thence . to which you may add , that it were a very immethodical and heterogeneous botch , unworthy of the wisdom of god and of his servant moses , when as all the rest of the decalogue is moral , to phansie one or two of the commandments of another nature . this is so rash and gross a reproach to the divine wisdom as truly , in my judgement , seems unexcusable . but besides this , the morality of the decalogue is also acknowledged by the church , it making part of their liturgy every-where , and we begging an ability of obeying the second commandment as well as the rest : and christ also refers to the decalogue for eternal life , mark . , . and lastly , it seems as it were singled from all the rest of moses laws , as a lasting and permanent law to the church of god , ( whence it is entred into our very catechisms , ) never to be abolished , or rather vigorously to be kept in force , for the second commandment's sake particularly , that it might strongly bear against those invitations to idolatry , that may seem to offer themselves in the nature of our religion , or reclaim the church from it when they were fallen into it , as well as it was to keep back the iews from joyning in worship with their idolatrous neighbors round about them . wher●fore all manner of idolatry being cautioned against by the moral decalogue given to the iews , there are no kinds thereof that ought to be entertained or allow'd of by any christians . . the third conclusion ; that what-ever was idolatry in the heathen , the same is idolatry in us , if we commit it . the reason of which assertion is this , because the heathen had not so express a declaration from god against all manner of idolatry as the iews and christians have : and therefore where-ever they are guilty of idolatry , the iew and christian , if they do the like things , are much more . the fourth conclusion ; the idolatry of the pagans consisted in this , viz. in that they either took something to be the supreme god that was not , and worshipped it for such ; or else worshipped the supreme god in an image ; or gave religious worship , that is to say , erected al●●rs , temples and images , offered sacrifice , made vows to , and invoked , such as they themselves knew not to be the supr●me god , but either the souls of men departed or other daemons , or else particular appearances o● powers of nature . the fifth ; that both divine declaration and the common consent of christendom do avouch to us , that all th● aforesaid pagan modes of idolatry practised by them wer● in t●ose pagans practices of idolatry . and therefore , by the third conclusion , they must be much more so i● either the iew or christian. . the sixth ; that giving religious worship , that 〈◊〉 to say , erecting temples , building altars , invoking making vows , and the like , to what is not the suprem● god , though not as to him , but as to some inferio●● helpfull being , is manifest idolatry . this is plain out 〈◊〉 the precedent conclusion ; and may be farther confirme from this consideration , that idolatry was very ra● amongst the nations , especially the romans , if thi● mode of idolatry be not truly idolatry . and scarce any thing will be found idolatry amongst them , but taking that to be the supreme god which is not , and worshipping it for such . but if any being on this side the supreme god may be worshipped with religious worship void of idolatry , all things may , though some more nonsensically and ridiculously than others . wherefore to use any of the abovesaid modes of worship to what is inferiour to the supreme being , though not as to the supreme being , must be idolatry ; or else the roman paganism it self is very rarely , if at all , chargeable therewith , they having a notion accurate enough of the supreme god , and distinct enough from their other deities ; so that unless they chance to worship him in an image , they will ●eldom be found idolaters , or rather never , according to the opinion of some , who say , none that have the knowledge of the one true god can be capable of idolatry . . the seventh ; that to sacrifice , burn incense , or make any religious obeisance or incurvation to an image in any wise , as to an object of this worship , is ●dolatry by divine declaration . this is manifest out of the second conclusion and the first , as may appear at first sight . for it is plainly declared in the second precept of the decalogue touching images , thou shalt not bow to them , nor worship them : of which undoubtedly the sense is , they shall not be in any wise the object of that worship which thou performest in a religious way , whether by bowing down to them , or by what other way soever . for the second commandment certainly is a declaration of the mind of god touching religious worship , let the ceremonies be what they will. the eighth ▪ that to erect temples , al●ars , images , or to burn incense , to saints or angels , to invoke them , or make vows to them , and the l●ke , is plain ●dolatry , this is apparent chiefly out of the third , fourth , fifth and sixth conclusions of this chapter . for the pagans daemons exquisit●ly answer to the christians saints and angels in this point ; saying that this spiritual fornication is a rape upon our saints and angels , but simple fornication in the heathen with their impure daemons . the ninth ; religious incurvation towards a crucifix , or the host , or any image , as to an object , and not a meer unconsidered accidental circumstance , is idolatry . this is manifest out of the seventh and eighth conclusions . but the worship of latria exhibited to the host upon the opinion of transubstantiation is idolatry by the third and fourth . . conclusion the tenth ; to use on set purpose in religious worship any figure or image onely circumstantially , not objectively , but so as to bow towards it , or to be upon a man's knees before it with eyes and hands devoutly lifted up towards it , but with an intention of making it in no sense any object of this religious worship , yet if this were in a country where men usually and prof●ssedly do , it were notwithstanding for all this intention a gross piece of idolatry . but if the whole country should conspire to make this more plausible sense of those incurvations and postures ; admit we might hope it were not idolatry , yet it would be certainly a most impious and wicked mocking of god , and ●luding his mind in the second commandment , ( that naturally implies the forbidding any worship or incurvation toward images in a way of religion , ) and a crime as scandalous and near to idolatry as the going into bed to another man's wife , with chast pretensions , would be to gross adultery . nay , indeed , it is very questionable , if he knowingly and deliberately put himself into these postures before an image , whether the image will not be the object of th●se postures and incurvations whether he will or no. or rather it seems plain , beyond all questioning , that it will be so . for there is a corporeal action significative of honour and respect corporeally ( though not mentally ) directed towards and received by the image , and this at the choice of the religionist , which intitles him to the fact . but we need not labour much touching this last conclusion , the two former abundantly convincing the church of rome of multifarious idolatries , if they will stand to divine definitions , or the declarations of holy scripture touching this point . answers and replies on chap. i. his answer to the first conclusion . to this conclusion , saith my adversary , i onely return this remark ; that the learned simile , wherein the doctour spends many words , might very well have been dispenced with , without any offence to logick or impeachment to the authors judgement . for the simile seems to aim at the clearing and setting the unquestionable prerogative of an increated power , upon the right of a meer humane iurisdiction : which is in effect , an unskilfull piece of hysteron p●oteron , making a truth of the highest rank to truckle under an inferiour principle : which , considering there is no power but of god , ( rom. . ) can have no truth in it , but by presupposing that very truth which it pretends to illustrate and establish . the reply . this is a very remarkable remark indeed , and 〈◊〉 as g●ves timely notice of the design of my antagonist , which is to make a show of saying something to every conclusion , though he knows in his own conscience , being of that wit and parts that he is , that it is really nothing to the purpose , as most certainly this is not . for i do not go about to establish the prerogative of an uncreated power upon the right of humane jurisdiction ; but the argument is à comparatis , that if the supreme power amongst men , have the right to define and declare , &c. then much more or most abundantly clear it is , that it is the right of god almighty , who is infinitely good and wise , to define and declare , &c. our saviour ( m●t . ) argues thus , if men being evil give good gifts to their children , how much more will our heavenly father give good gifts to them that ask him . does he there establish the bounty of god on the bounty of evil men ; but argues à minori , if they that are less willing and able to do good , notwithstanding do it , much more will god who is goodness it self , and infinitely able and willing to do good , be sure to do good to those that call upon him . and so say i , if it be the right of finite mortals , that have the supreme power , to define and declare , it is much more , or most of all true in god almighty , who is also infinitely good and wise , that he hath the right to define and declare , &c. so that my antagonist , without any offence against logick or impeachment to his judgement , might have saved himself the labour of this assault upon my first conclusion , and ingenuously confessed it as it is , impregnable and inexpugnable . his answer to the second conclusion . his assault also on my second conclusion is very oblique and elusory . now , says he , that the whole decalogue is moral he makes some needless attempts to prove , chiefly for the second commandments sake . all which proofs it is easy to take off by this single answer : i say then , as to the second commandment , if he expound it so as onely to prohibit the making or worshipping of idols or images of false gods , i shall readily grant it to be moral and strictly binding both the jews and christians : but if he puts any other meaning on the text , he begs the question , and he must excuse me if i call for ●is further proof , &c. the sense of which answer in brief is this , that though he acknowledge the whole decalogue moral , ( else why does he say i make needless attempts to prove it ? ) yet if i expound the morality of the second commandment so as that i would thereby show it unlawfull to worship any images saving of false gods , which he calls idols , that it will not go down with him , unless i more fully prove the morality of this commandment to extend also to the prohibition of worshipping any image suppose of the true god , or of saints and good angels : this is the full sense and scope of this first answer . but he comes in also with a secondly , that some both catholick and protestant divines own no more then a ceremonial precept in the second commandment , if extended to any vniversal prohibition of all images , and under that notion given onely to the jews . the reply . in reply to the first ; i first take notice , that he is fain to pass over my first ground of this second conclusion as too hard for him to deal with , namely the spirituality of our christian religion . which ground being unshaken , the second conclusion remains firm , from instances of jewish idolatry in scripture . but now for the extent of the moral sense of the second commandment of the decalogue , that it should forbid the bowing to any images whatsoever in the way of religion or devotion , the words aptly spreading to that latitude ; in the first place i say , my adversary should bring reason to the contrary : for we are with fear and reverence to receive the laws of god in such an extent or latitude of sense , as , it being natural , will be most effectual to keep us from sinning against them . otherwise , if my adversary would be still more humoursom , and would say , that stealing from a man of another religion , killing of him , or covering his goods were lawfull ; and i should produce those commandments against him , thou shalt not steal , thou shalt not kill , thou shalt not covet , &c. he might roundly reply after his fashion , that if i understand them of stealing from , killing or coveting any ones goods but theirs of our own religion , i beg the question . which consideration alone , methinks , should make any one senside of the great absurdity of his answer to the present case of worshipping of images . but yet again in the second place , i say it is necessary and inevitable to understand the second commandment in that extent of sense that i suppose it to have : for it is manifest , that the second commandment as well as the first , treats of religion and our worship of god. the first is , thou shalt have no other gods but me , that is to say , we shall exhibit religious worship to no other beings besides himself , and so make as if they were gods. for the all-wise god knows there is really no other gods besides himself , nor any can really make them so . but men may make as if there were , by giving religious worship to them , though they be no gods. so that here all false deities , whether angels , daemons , or separate souls of men , or what ever powers of nature , are plainly forbid to be worshipped or made gods of , or acknowledged to be gods by any religious worship . which therefore à fortiori takes away all erecting images to be bowed to or worshipped in reference to them . in so much that the second commandment seems tautological , or at least superfluous , if it be meerly to forbid the making of images of worship for those gods , whose at all having , or any way worshipping is already so plainly forbid . whence it necessarily follows , that at least chiefly , though not onely , the making and worshipping of images , in reference to the true god , is forbid by the second commandment : whom the commandment strictly forbids to be worshipped in any image whatsoever , that represents any thing in the whole universe , heaven , earth , or sea , &c. this i say , is plainly the principally intended sense , according to free and unprejudiced reason . but yet the precept is so penned , that in a secondary scope it forbids the religious bowing to or worshipping all images whatsoever . thus plain is it , that the worshipping any images of the true god is here strictly forbidden , contrary to what our adversary pretends . which interpretation the law-giver himself , who best knows the meaning of his own laws , do's plainly ratify , exod. . where israel worshipping god himself in a visible image the golden calf , provoked gods wrath so as t●ere fell thirty thousand of them by the sword , for so hainous a crime of idolatry . so that the true exposition of this law , as draco's law was said of old to have been , was written in blood . so solid and authentick is this sense thereof , namely , that as he will have nothing else besides himself worshipped with religious worship , so himself will not be worshipped in an image or similitude of any thing in heaven , earth , or sea , that is , in the whole universe . but then thirdly out of my adversaries own concession ; as it is already manifest , that the erection of an image to the true god is forbidden by this commandment , so is the worshipping of images in reference to saints and angels here also forbidden . for my adversary do's readily grant , that the precept is moral and strictly binding as to the prohibition of the worship of the images of false gods. now i say , there is no more than one god ; and the rest no otherwise made gods than by giving religious worship to them , of which erecting consecrated images to them and bowing to them is one mode . and therefore these saints and angels , to whom religious worship is given by a law , do ipso facto become gods , but not true gods but false gods ; and therefore the worshipping of their images is forbidden , yea strictly forbidden even in the moral sense of this commandment , according to the very concession of my adversary , whom no man will question in that point to have pronounced right . and lastly , that there may be no creep-hole left , whereas my adversary would weaken my argumentations taken from the morality of the decalogue in general , and of this precept in particular , by supposing that i will not stick to grant , that one and the same precept of the decalogue ( considered under a double respect ) may be both moral and ceremonial , i do absolutely deny that any commandment in the substance thereof ( and i think i have sufficiently proved it in the third section of this chapter ) is ceremonial or temporal , but of eternal obligation to the church of god. as for example in the fourth commandment , the substance is the keeping of every seventh day , as an holy commemoration of the worlds creation by god , declared by himself , finished in six days space , himself also sanctifying the seventh day and hallowing it . so that it seems to me , that every seventh day for a memorial of the creation , and in such a way as may further our contemplation in divine things in reference to god our creator and redeemer , is perpetually to be observed . but to keep the self same day with the jews is but circumstantial , or to keep it in that strict resting , ab omnimodo opere seculari , in such a superstitious way as they do . but now for the second commandment , if the forbidding of the use of images by way of religious worship , that is by way of bowing to them and worshipping them any how , be not the substance of it , it has no substance at all , but is wholly ceremonial . which is very gross and absurd as i have already proved in this section . so sufficiently firm is our proof from the morality of the decalogue , for any thing my adversary has alledged or can alledge . for as for his secondly , that some both catholick and protestant divines own no more than a ceremonial precept in this second commandment , &c. i answer , that i think the jews themselves are not really concerned in the commandment as to the meer making of images , nor is the commandment against that , but the making them in reference to religion and the worshipping of them . this is plainly the scope of the commandment , as any one that does not wilfully wink cannot but see . and i am confident no protestant divine will ever acknowledge , that the prohibition of making images in reference to religion and the worship of them , to be meerly ceremonial in this precept . he must be a papist under a protestants hood that can ever assert this . and this shall serve by way of reply to what ever is material in his answer to my second conclusion . his answer to the third conclusion . with my third conclusion he plays at bo-peep , on this sort , feigning the sense of it to be either this , that we are guilty of heathenish idolatry , if we commit heathenish idolatry , which he wittily calls an identick proposition surfeiting of too much truth : or else , what ever external act of vvorship was idolatry in the heathen , is also idolatry in us , if applied to any being on this side god. the reply . to the first i say , that my conclusion is not an identick proposition , because that though the acts of idolatry be of the same nature , yet they are not from the same party . a pagan worships a consecrated image ; a christian worships a consecrated image ; are these two but one identick proposition surfeiting of too much truth ? if you espy any overplus , i pray you take it to your self to line your propositions with , which i usually find too lank and devoid thereof . but it is no vain assertion , nor so plain to every one at the first sight : that acts of the same nature committed by several parties , are still of the same nature . for there are some high-flown illuminado's , that hold that lying with another mans wife is not adultery in them though it be so in others : and i wish it were not so in the spiritual adultery , i mean the ●dolatry of too many christians ; they do not think they commit it , when the same things done by heathen they will readily acknowledge to be idolatry . but now to the second part , i answer , that i do not restrain idolatry in this place to external acts of worship onely ; but it comprehends any external , internal , or mixt act consisting of both , which are held idolatrous in the heathen . which quite breaks in pieces the insnaring case my adversary offers to me ; of a converted christian begging st. pauls blessing on the knee as his father that begat him in christ ; and of an heathen of lycaonia on his knees adoring the apostle at the same time for the god mercury , act. . for every external act of worship is not idolatry . nor was it idolatry in the lycaonian to be on his knee to paul , but the intended adoration of him for the god mercury . this mixt action of genuflexion and internal religious adoration together was idolatry , but the external alone had not been idolatry . and if the new convert had given inward religious worship adjoyned to the external genuflection unto st. paul , then it had been idolatry in him also as well in the lycaonian . so little hurt has this assault done my third conclusion , which is not restrained to external act of worship , but asserts onely , all acts of worship , internal , external or mixt , that are idolatrous in heathens , to be so also in christians when they commit the like . answer to the fourth conclusion . in his answer to my fourth conclusion he hales in preposterously my eight conclusion out of time and order , and so confusedly speaks to them both . but i am such a lover of method , that i will onely reply to what belongs to my fourth conclusion here , and defer the answering to what is mentioned under my eighth conclusion till we come thither . what there●ore he objects against my fourth conclusion is onely this : first that it is proofless and false that the pagans worshipped the supreme god in an image . secondly , that i omitted one branch of the pagan idolatry , the worshipping of the very images for gods. they called them gods , sayes he , they took them for gods , sacrificed to them as gods. and the same is to be said of those souls of men departed , daemons or other particular appearances or powers of nature , all which they took and worshipped for gods , for gods i say , which this mincing conclusion seeks most warily to conceal . this is the utmost of the force my adversary summes up against this conclusion . the reply . to the first thing objected i answer ; that he must understand by his assertion either , that the pagans had not the knowledge of the supreme god , and so could not worship him at all , and consequently not in an image ; or else that having the knowledge of the supreme god yet they did not worship him in an image . if he means the first it is a notorious untruth , as may easily appear out of plato , plutarch , aristotle , homer , tully , plotinus , jamblichus , and many other of the heathen writers , who were clear asserters of the supreme godhead , and many of them notable skilfull describers of the same , this is a thing so well known among the learned , that it is enough to mention it onely . but if he mean the second , that is also a mistake . for the inhabitants of thebais worshipped the maker of the world , in the image of a man with an egg coming out of his mouth . dion chrysostomus also , and maximus tyrius do profess , that in their images of gold and silver and ivory , they worshipped the supreme god the maker and governour of all things . and what was more frequent than the images of iupiter , who is the supreme deity , whom aratus invokes in his phanomena , and st. paul speaking of the supreme god , ( acts . . ) in whom we live and move and have our being , alledges out of aratus in that very place , these words of his , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for we are his off-spring , namely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of jupiter , and ●heon the scholiast on the place , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . vve must understand , saith he , here by jupiter the maker of the vvorld . so that that part of the heathenish idolatry is plain , that they worshipped the supreme god in an image : but suppose they did not , were it , not then a shame , that the church of rome should be greater idolaters than they , that stick not to worship the supreme god in an image , and a shame for my adve●●ary who contends , that the worshipping of the true god by an image is not forbidden in the second commandment ; and so proves himself a patron for greater idolatry than he acknowledges to be among the very heathen . to the second thing objected , i answer , that i might very well omit that branch of idolatry , the worshipping of their very images for gods , because i did not intend any such charge upon you , as if you worshipped images taking them for the very saints or angels themselves , because i hope that seldom happens even amongst the most ignorant of your pl●beians ; as i believe it very seldom happened amongst the heathens themselves . and the force of my arguing from this fourth conclusion will never iye upon the plenary enumeration of all the sorts of pagan idolatry , but on my true application to those that are mentioned there . so be they be there i refer to in my arguments , it is enough ; others not being there , or there being more than i refer to , neither strengthen nor weaken my applications and arguings , so framed as i have intimated . so that it is a superfluous thing for me to go about to disprove your assertion , that they called their images gods , that they took them for gods , that they sacrificed to them as gods ; onely i shall return thus much , that dan. . . do's not prove that they themselves called their images gods , but that the holy penman styleth them so . as the spirit of truth also stiles them , or rather stiles their gods images , which is all one . isa. . psal. . habac. . act. . . the very places you quote to prove they took their images for gods. which places yet do not at all prove it , but onely prove what the sentence of the true god is , touching the gods of the heathen , in reference to their images they worshipped complexly with them , upon a supposal that upon their consecration , some invisible power was conveyed into them , and was ready there to hear and help all supplicants to them . but now god who is the prince and commander of all spirits knows , that this their religious consecration has no such power to convey any such assisting spirits unto those images , so that they may be assured of their presence and ayd , and therefore he must justly and truly , contrary to their opinion of them , who took them to be inhabited by some d●mons , calls them meer stocks and stones as they really are . but to take the meer stock or stone which they saw hewed into such a forme to be a god , is so excessively sottish , that it is not credible , that it ever fell into the mind of any number of the lowest dregs of the heathen common people , or that they intended their sacrifices to them . but that they phancyed the presence of some daemons that received the nidour and odour of their sacrifices , is a thing so vulgar and trite , that i hold it needless any more than to mention it . and now whereas he saith , that the souls of men departed , their daemons , and particular powers and appearances of nature they took them , and worshipped them for gods , and calls my conclusion a mincing conclusion , because it do's not mention that ? this omission was no intended cunning of mine to ruine the matter at all . for i thought i spoke sufficiently home in saying they gave religious worship to these , which is at least equal to the calling of them gods , especially in greek and latine . for as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and dii in the greek and latine signify as large as elobim in the hebrew which signifyes angels or particular spirits as well as the eternal god the maker and governour of all . and so does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and dii signify all invisible spirits , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 particularly separate souls from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to divide or separate , because they are separate from the terrestrial body . and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also is said of a separate soul amongst the pythagoreans ; and synesius himself also says , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , that he would be an angel or a blessed spirit amongst the blessed spirits . wherefore dii , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which we usually translate gods , the words of themselves imply no more than angels or souls separate . but if religious worship be given to them , then they become gods : nor can any thing beside the supreme god be properly called god , unless religious worship be instituted for it ; and then be it what it will , the notion and name of a false god properly belongs unto it : so that in reality in saying , they give religious worship to the souls of men , or daemons ; i say also , that they were their gods , and that they worshipped them for such ; so that my adversary has what he would , and yet my conclusion remains as strong as ever . but in the mean time let me observe , that the calling of the canonized souls of holy men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , ( and saints answers to it , and consequentially is of the same sense so far forth as it respects their canonization ) from the propriety of notation from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , whence is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which implies religious worship , is the calling of them by an higher title than if they should call them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . so little mincing is there in the application of saints , from that of gods signifying in the same latitude that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but s●ints as it signifies onely pious or holy , there sounds nothing amiss in it . answer to the fifth conclusion . all the answer , saith he , that truth can allow to this fifth conclusion , is nego suppositum ; for the doctor here supposeth , that he hath given us a true and adequate division of the pagan idolatry in the precedent conclusion , according to divine declaration and the common consent of christendom ; whereas i have shewed his hypothesis to be false , and laid open his foul and gross mistakes , ( 't is a favour to call them so ) which indeed are such as might invite a modest man to wipe his pen and lay it aside , till he had taught it a more awful regard to ingenuity and truth . this is his whole answer verbatim . the reply . upon which truely i have much ado to forbear from more than smiling , to observe the art of my adversary in making the greatest noise and boast where there is least of all at the bottom ; he speaking such a perfect nothing with so great a grace . if he has shewed any hypothesis to be false , it must be an hypothesis of his own making . for i did not , nor do suppose my fourth conclusion to be an adequate enumeration of all the idolatries of the pagans , but onely as many as i have enumerated to be real paganical idolatries ; which my adversary himself cannot deny . and i intended no more than thus , nor is any more than thus serviceable to my design : for i shall not refer to that conclusion for any more modes of idolatry than are mentioned there . nor does this fifth conclusion pronounce of any more than are there mentioned . so that this conclusion is as firme as a rock of marble . let any man therefore consider his long flourish at the end of this answer , and he will observe what an excellent artist my adversary is , in making a show of saying something , when the matter do's not afford any thing to be said . but such sleights serve to keep the people in their bondage of errour . and yet he wipes his mouth , who ever should wipe their pen ; and presumes he has done nothing amiss , it being in so pious a cause , and for the interest of his church . for i must confess , i think it impossible but himself should here clearly discern , that he says nothing at all to the purpose . answer to the sixth conclusion . this sixth conclusion , says he , looks back upon the fifth , and calls to it for help ; but till the fifth has learned to stand upon its own legs , it is not in a condition to lend any proof or support to its neighbours . this to the sixth conclusion as demonstrated from the fifth . but my adversary is very pleasant upon the confirmation annexed thereto , of which i shall give a tast in my reply . the reply . i appeal to the reader , if the fifth doth not stand very fast and unmoveable for any thing my adversary hath brought against it , or indeed can be brought against it . to make a show of undermining it , he seigned a false hypothesis of his own , which he would have fastened upon me , as if i had need of it , when as i have most manifestly proved to the contrary : so that this sixth conclusion also is as firme as need be desired . but he assaults the further confirmation of it , ( which i added ex abundanti ) with a pleasant freak fetched out of eusebius , his mentioning of thirty thousand deities of the heathens reckoned by hesiod , which he brings in a maurice dance against my confirmation to make it ridiculous ; nay many more gods of wood and stone noted by eusebius himself , he like a second amphion makes to dance after his pipe ; but all his musick is spoiled by my freely acknowledging , that by ●ome inferiour helpfull being : i understand such a being as he may if he will call an inferiour deity ; and is so in as good a sense as any can be upon the suppo●al i mean ; namely , that religious worship is given to it . so that the uncertainty of the sense of that phrase shall be no matter for his antick sophistry , or distorted raillery . but in the mean time , this numerous rabble of inferiour deities he has conjured up , i shall make discharge their force against himself , illustrating the strength of my confirmation from hence , viz. that if the giving religious worship to what is not the supreme god , though not as to him but as to some inferiour helpfull being , which they judge worthy of religious worship , and so make an inferiour deity of it , be not idolatry ; the pagans , who as my adversary affirms out of eusebius worshipped thirty thousand such like deities and more , were seldom or never to be found idolaters ; which i think is absurdity enough . so little has my adversary got , by attempting to raise a disjunctive quibble out of that ancient father of the church e●sebius , to blind the eyes of the populacy . answer to the seventh conclusion . in answer to this seventh conclusion , he first proposes some things as preparatory thereto . afterwards , he brings in the answer it self . the preparatories are these i. that catholicks usually distinguish two parts of worship . the first latria which is the highest religious worship possible , due to god alone the creatour of all things , and that examples of this kind of worship are , sacrifices , and the erecting of temples and altars . ii. that neither sacrifice it self , nor dedication of temples and altars excludes a secondary remembrance , or titular honour of saints . iii. that there are other acts of an inferiour respect which without any offence to the catholick divinity , we may chuse whether we will call religious worship or no , as burning incense , lighting up candles , and bowing our bodies to the saints and their images . these acts he calls indifferent and variously determinable according to our intention to either a divine or civil vvorship . as was abrahams incurvation of his body to god , gen. . to angels , gen. . to men , gen. . this is the sum of the force and strength of his preparatories . the main strength of his answer it self , is contained in these few things ; namely , that all my instances of idolatry in this seventh conclusion are not true instances of idolatry , but that i do as unskilfully , as if a lawyer should define murther to be the wilfull taking away a mans life without cause , or cu●ting a limb or drawing of blood . so saith he , sacrificing to an image and bowing to an image sutes not well together , as if they were both acts of idolatry , any more than all those are of murther . his great exception therefore against this seventh conclusion is , that i make bowing to an image idolatry , which he indeavours to disprove . first from the jews bowing towards the ark of the covenant , over which were the cherubims of image work ; which , says he , could not be done without bowing before images . secondly , from christians bowing at the name of iesus . tuirdly and lastly he adds , that the vvorship done to their saints and images , is not by the catholick church commanded to be called religious vvorship , which he applies to the proof of my seventh conclusion . this is the main of what he brings against this seventh conclusion : for it were tedious to take notice of what things are so little pertinent to the purpose , but onely brought in for a blind to the people . and i have neither leasure nor any list to meddle with such things . in which notwithstanding i acknowledge my adversary an egregious artist for the imposing on poor souls to use his own phrase . the reply . as to the first of his preparatories , that tells us catholicks usually distinguish two sorts of worship ; i wonder then that he has so soon forgot to be a catholick himself , as to assert there are three ; from that instance of abrahams bowing to god , to angels , and to men , by a different application of the heart , viz. to be divine worship in respect of god , an inferiour kind of worship in respect of angels , and a civil worship as referred to men . wherefore , says he , he that would speak distinctly to the catholick tenet , must distinguish these several modes of worship one from another , or else shew cause why he ranks them all under one and the same species of religious worship , else he will not cope with his adversary like a scholar . namely , unless contrary to the current of catholicks he make three kind of worships instead of two , or take not heed of making all three one kind of worship , that is , religious ; which is impossible for any one to do that is not a meer dotard . so perplextly and confoundedly does he speak of his sorts of worship by reason of the tenderness and unsoundness of the cause he undertakes . but if he would make any sense of the two sorts of worship usually distinguished by the catholicks , he must either understand that general bipartition of worship into religious and civil . or else that bipartition of religious worship into latria and dulia , which later may again be subdivided into dulia major or minor ; major that which is given to the blessed virgin , and is particularly called hyperdulia ; minor , that to the rest of the saints and their images . but this he durst not speak out explicitly , that he might not be found to allow religious incurvation to images , which is so manifestly forbidden in the second commandment , as is intimated in this seventh conclusion . now to his second preparatory , that neither sacrifice it self , nor dedication of temples and altars , which he says are acts of latria , excludes a secundary remembrance or titular honour of the saints ; i say , as it is little to the present conclusion , so it is in it self plainly false ; for it is expresly said , thou jhalt have no other gods besides me . and god himself knows , and god be thanked we all know , that it impossible there should be any gods besides him , and that therefore we can have none but him in any other sense than in doing some actions in honour to that which is not god , which is proper to be done to god alone . and therefore to make any thing or person to communicate with god in these actions of honour , is to have other gods besides him , as much as it is possible to have any other . nor will it excuse the fact , that this honour is but secundarily intended to the saints , or what ever else is thus worshipped besides god. for besides , that the direction of our intention will not change the nature of the proper notes of an external latria , these can be no other than secondary deities which are forbidden ; for as much as there can be no other but these besides him to be forbid , and therefore no other than a secundary honour or inferiour kind of religious worship can be possibly intended to them , by those that institute it or do it to them ; they retaining as the iews did , the supreme god still for their god ▪ and therefore even that honour is also forbidden , in that it is forbidden that we should have any gods besides jehovah himself . and besides , can be that is a jealous god endure that any other should any ways partake of that honour that is proper to him even of latria , which these acts are acknowledged to be by my adversary ; whose insensibility therefore i stand amazed at in this point . for he flatly affirms this to be warrantable religion , viz. that this temple and this altar be erected and dedicated to god and st. francis ; that this or that sacrifice be offered to god and st. francis ; to god primarily as the supreme god , to st. francis secundarily or as to a saint , not as to the supreme god. but does not temples , altars and sacrifices , make a secundary or inferiour deity , as much as any thing or person can be made a deity , by them that hold one supreme god ; which was the case of the jews . and therefore thus having or making a secundary deity is palpable idolatry . to the third preparatory , i answer , first , that it is hard to conceive , that we may choose whether we will call these acts of inferiour respect religious or no , without any offence to his catholick divinity ; when as the catholicks , as he calls them , distinguishing two sorts of worship , it is necessary to make such bipartitions of them as i have hinted ; if they will have them run by twos , which will empty these acts of inferiour respect , as he termes them ▪ to be religious ; and himself plainly intimates they are so toward the end of his answer to this seventh conclusion . for he says , but if nothing will serve my turn , but religious and divine worship must be all one , then we utterly deny that we are in any wise concerned in his objection , for we give no such religious worship to the saints themselves much less to their images ; that is , no such religious worship as is divine and is properly latria ; but it implies , that an inferiour religious vvorship you do give ; nor do i contend for a latria , but religious vvorship in general . secondly , i deny that burning incense , lighting up candles , bowing our bodies to saints and their images are acts indifferent , determinable as our intention shall be to either a divine or civil vvorship , as abrahams incurvation of his body to god , to angels , to men ; for bowing the body is a vulgar ceremony of civility , known up and down in the vvorld to be so ; and does not become a religious ceremony , till it be applied to an object of religious vvorship , or in such circumstances that it is understood to be so : but the bowing the body to the consecrated image of some invisible power or spirit , is as notoriously all over the vvorld known to be a religious ceremony , and to signity religious honour and vvorship . and we may as well , or rather better , call the saints gods , and pretend onely a civil sense by it , as bow to the image of a saint set up and consecrated for the purpose , and pretend we intend onely a civil vvorship by it . for this was the universal mode of acknowledging any person a god , by erecting an image , and honouring him in it by the above said ceremony ; as it was the universal phrase of calling that a god which was so honoured . and what is said of bowing the body to the consecrate image of an invisible power or spirit , the same is also to be said of lighting candels before the said image ; it is an universally well known ceremony of religion amongst the nations , not a civil ceremony , whereby they acknowledged that to be a god whom they so honoured . and lastly for burning of incense , the learned are agreed , that it is a sacrifice , and therefore an act of latria according to my adversaries own concession . and the primitive christians were so sensible thereof , that they would rather die than fling a few grains of incenfe into the fire in honour of the emperour , they looking upon it as a sacrificing to him . and truly it is a very noble kind of sacrifice , as may be seen by the altar of incense next the holy of holies , and highly significant of honour ; that is , of sending up prayers , and devotionally spending all the powers of our souls and bodies as an acceptable service , and of a sweet smelling savour to him we thus worship : which is the highest worship imaginable , so far is it from being determinable to a civil worship , i mean the type thereof , from either custom or the nature of the thing it self . it s preparatories being thus swept away , let us consider the answer it self : in which he lays to my charge , what himself was just now so manifestly guilty of , namely of mingling things of an heterogeneous nature , he making the burning of incense to a saint , which is a sacrifice , a civil worship , as well as the bowing of the body . and he blames me for making , sacrificeing to an image , and bowing to an image , both of them acts of idolatry . whenas notwithstanding , i do not say , that simply bowing towards an image , suppose to take up a pin , or a glove , from off the the flour betwixt the image and us , is idolatry , but a religious incurvation to the image is idolatry . so that my adversary is disingenuous in not representing my a●sertion such as it is , which addes religious to that bowing or incurvation to an image which i pronounce to be idolatry . and all incurvation is such , that is made to a consecrated image , as to an object of this worship . i but he has two proofs to evince , that even religious incurvation to an image is no idolatry . for the name of jesus is religiously bowed to , and the jews were commanded to bow toward the ark of the covenant over which were the cherubims of image-work . and therefore they were commanded to bow to images by god himself , which therefore can be no idolatry . to the first i answer , that a name or voice is no image or similitude , accordingly as it is written , deut. . . ye saw no similitude , onely ye heard a voice . and besides it is ridiculous to infer , that we bow to the name of jesus when we hear it named , because we bow at the naming of it , as to infer that those of your church say their ave-maries to the ave-mary-bell , because they say them at the tinkling of it ; neither the ave-mary-bell , nor the name or word jesus are the objects of our devotion , but onely the occasions of it . besides , they whose backs are turned off the priests or reader when he names the name of jesus , what a ridiculous bowing were that in them , if they bowed to the name sounding behind them . therefore these are poor and weak shifts to make a show for the worshipping 〈◊〉 images ; from an example where there is neither any image ▪ nor any bowing to that which they would fain fancy to be one . to the second i answer , that be it so that there is a command to bow toward the ark of the covenant where images are , and consequentially towards images ; and that this incurvation is religious , yet the command to bow toward these images is onely ex accidenti : and mark the cunning of my adversary here again , ( my words are , or make any religious obeisance , or incurvation to an image in any wise , as to an object of this worship ) which last words he craftily leaves out ; which are of ●ssential importance to this act of idolatry . but god was so far from commanding the jews to bow towards the cherubims , as to an object of their worship , that he barred them from the very sight of them , and suffered them not so much as to be an object of their eyes . which was a plain inhibition from bowing to them , as an object of their devotion , or any way of worshipping them . it would be a very unjust imputation of any rash tongue , touching suppose some chast amazon , that she was familiarly saluted by such a knight at such a time , when she did not so much as lift up the beaver of her helmet all the time they conversed together , which therefore was a certain bar against any such audacious attempt . and the case is the same in this foul charge , that god commanded the jews to worship the cherubims over the mercy sear , and bow to them as an object ; when as he carefully hid them with a vail from their eyes , that they might not be worshipped . besides how infinitely inconsistent is it with the truth and sanctity of the divine majesty , to give so strict a law against worshipping of images , and then at the same time to command the two cherubims to be worshipped , and yet to take away the lives of thirty thousand men for worshipping that golden cherub , or golden calf which aaron had set up : which being in their view and they bowing before , became the object of their worship . but the cherubims on the ark of the covenant were onely a ci●cumstance of their worship as so much , but were industriously hid from being any object thereof . and god alone who spake from betwixt the cherubims , was the onely object of their worship : and the cherubims and other holy things there were onely holy figures and hierogly phicks of mysterious and profound truths , which here it is not at all necessary to explain . and now lastly touching his last shift , concerning the nature of this worship of images and saints ; which insinuates , that though there be a middle worship betwixt divine and civil , the catholick church ( he means the roman ) does not require that it should be called religious ; besides that it is contrary to the common stream of catholicks as i noted before , and that he himself does imply that middle worship to be religious ; i add further , what are we the better for not calling it religious , when it is so in its own nature , and we thereby idolaters ? now is it in our power to make this middle worship of saints expressed by consecrated images , and bowing to them to be a civil worship . for the almighty law-giver is afore hand with us in this , who has forbidden us to have any other gods besides himself . and in the second commandment as he has forbidden that himself should be worshipped by any graven image , deut. . v. . , , , , ▪ so by vertue of the first commandment he has also forbid us to erect , or consecrate , or any ways to make any image to any one else , and to bow to it in honour of the person it is made to , it being the known and usual way of making a false deity ; a false or in●eriour deity being nothing else but some creature , ( for there cannot be possibly any more than one real god ) that by erecting an image ●o it , and by bowing to this image , or any otherwise worshipping it , or honouring it , in reference to t●at creature , as by burning incense before it , and making invocations looking up to it , is made a god. vvhich therefore is forbid by this first and second commandment as a religious , that is to say , as a wickedly religious or idolatrous vvorship , whether to god or to any thing else ; but is not in any wise a civil vvorship , it being thus branded by god for an idolatrous one , and declared to be a mode of religious vvorship , though a bad one , as i have noted in this conclusion . nor is there any legitimate religious vvorship , but what is truly divine , and is done to god himself . vvhat ever comes after this , it is but several degrees of civil vvorship , whether to men or to angels , namely when they are visible to us . but to vvorship an angel no way sensible , nor visible to us is an act of idolatry , as is else where proved . in the mean time we sufficiently see how weak all the attempts of my adversary are against this seventh conclusion . answer to the eighth conclusion . this conclusion for its proof appeals to the testimony of four false witnesses ; to wit , the third , fourth , fifth and sixth conclusions , and as such i justly except against them . this is his whole answer to the eighth . the reply . but now i desire the reader to examine those four witnesses as he calls them , and consider how clear and unexceptionable a witnses they give ▪ and to perpend my reply to his objections against them , that he may see what exceeding firm and evident truths they witness too , and such as no man of ordinary wit and conscience , if he impartially consider them , can possibly deny . and to note also , that from my adversaries own concession , if those four conclusions be true , this conclusion must be true also . but that there may be no room left for further cavilling , i will according to my promise in my reply to his objections against my fourth conclusion , answer to his exceptions there preposterously made against a special clause annexed to this eighth , viz. that the pagans daemons , exquisitely answer to the christians saints and angels in this point ; saving that this spiritual fornication is a rape upon our saints and angels , but single fornication in the heathen with their impure daemons . touching this particular clause says my adversary , pag. , of all the doctors conclusions , there is none more intrinsick and fundamental to the subject now under debate , nor any that ought to speak more , or doth speak less to the point than this ; for it is most fondly erroneous , and most disingenuously ob●ruded upon the easy credulity of the vulgar ; that the pagans daemons exquisitely answer to the christians saints and angels , so he : but this is onely to make a noise ad populum . for what i affirm is most apparently true , viz. that the pagans daemons exquisitely answer to the christians saints and angels in this point here mentioned , in having the like idolatr●us worship done to them . for my conclusion says [ in this point ] which he craftily and according to his custom leaves out ; but the point is easily proved . for had the daemons of the pagans temples consecrated to them ? so have the saints ; had they altars built to them ? so have the saints ; had they images erected to them ? so have the saints ; did they burn incense to the daemons ? so they do to the saints ; were the daemons invoked before their images ? so are the saints ; did they make vows to the daemons ? so they do to the saints . and is not this similitude exact enough for my purpose , who intimate onely , that those things are done to saints that were done to the pagans daemons ; and that therefore those four conclusions are rightly alledged to prove the eighth . but whereas my adversary makes a noise , as if this clause were the most intrinsick and fundamental to the whole business , it is so little essential to the matter , that if i had not mentioned it , my cause had been alike strong without it ; and my reader by casting his eye on this conclusion , and the conclusions here cited , might have observed as much as i have said , of himself , so obvious is the truth thereof . but taking this clause absolutely as my antagonist has quoted it , there might abundance more similitudes betwixt the pagans daemons , and the pontifician saints be enumerated out of the . chap. of the first book of my synopsis prophetica , which for brevity sake i omit . the greatest objection my adversary brings against this assertion is , that the saints are not called gods , as the daemons of the pagans were ; can any sober divinity , says he , brook it , ( pag. . ) that the pagans daemons should be said exquisitely to answer to our saints and angels . do we worship saints and angels for gods ? ●do we call them gods ? do we take them for gods ? do we sacrifice to them as gods ? far be it as from our heart to intend it so from an ingenuous adversary to object it . but i say , though you do not sacrifice oxen to the saints , yet you burn incense to them , which was a very high and holy sacrifice under moses . but the great stress lyes in this , that you do not call them gods. but what 's that to the purpose while you make them so ; doing in a manner all the religious ceremonies that the pagans did to their gods : and for the very name in your latine authours , how much does divus paulus , and divus thomas , differ from deus paulus , and deus thomas ; which yet is usuall enough . nec tam praesentes alibi cognoscere divos . but we will not insist on grammatical niceties : admit they are not called gods , ( not to note that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies at least as high ) does it follow you do not make them so . let us frame this short parable fitted for the meanest capacity . a city suppose , for a certain time was so instituted , that whores and whoredom , under that very name and appellation was admitted as lawfull ; but there being some ill consequences of it , and inconvenient for the common weal of the city , this licentiousness was abolished , and the city reduced to a more sober pass . but after some time the same custom got up again , and was ratified by law , but under another title ; calling those that were termed whores before , nymphs of pleasure , and whoredom , the doing duty and service to the nymphs of pleasure . thus having continued for a season , a certain plain-hearted , and plain-spoken citizen , observing the same inconveniences return that were before , stood up in the senate , and spake out his mind concerning this custom ; openly declaring , that the old whoredom was returned again , which they had upon good grounds abolished out of the city : whereupon a zealous oratour of the other party stands up and cries out : can any sober politicks brook such a reproach as this to so well governed a city , as to condemn it of approving whoredom , for allowing men to do duty and service to the nymphs of pleasure ? where are the whores that this licensed whoredom is committed with ? do we caress or accost these nymphs of pleasure as whores ? do we call them whores ? do we take them for whores ? do we lye with them as whores ? far be it , as from our hearts to intend it , so from any ingenuous and well-bred citizen to object it . was not this a very smooth and convincing speech to wipe the city clean off the imputation of vvhoredom ? but this honest blunt citizen briefly replied : that in lying with these nymphs of pleasure , they ips●facto made them vvhores ; which was an answer never to be refuted . and to say i to my right fluent and eloquent adversary , and to his vehement rhetorick so like that of this oratour in the parable . that by erecting temples , altars and images , by invoking and making vows to saints and angels , they make them gods whether they will or no , as much as any thing can be made a god by men . so that the pagans daemons d● exquisitely answer to the christians saints and angels in this point of idolatry ; saving that this spiritual fornication is a rape upon our saints and angels , but simple fornication in the heathen with their impure daemons . nor is it any immodesty in any one to use such similitudes as the spirit of god has used before us , who frequently sets out idolatry by fornication . whence it will follow by clean and dry mathematical analogy , that idolatry committed upon an unwilling object is a ●ape , and that the saints and angels are unwil●ing t●us to be abused , an● one may adventure to be their compurgator . vvhence the idolatry committed is more hainous , as a rape is a more hainous sin than simple fornication . this is t● refore truly that blaspheming of them that d●ell in heaven , the saints and angels , apoc. . . namely by this idolatrous vvorship done to them , traducing them as if they were pleased thus to be made false gods by receiving religious vvorship , and were open rebells against the true . but we will dwell no longer on this subject ; it is already sufficiently manifest that not onely this eight conclusion , but also this superadded clause annexed to it , is without exception . answer to the ninth conclusion . this conclusion having thus coldly drawn up an enditement against us , pleads its evidence out of the seventh and eighth conclusions ; and so leaning upon two broken reeds falls to the ground , where i am sure neither reason nor authority will ever stoop to take them up . the reply . this is all he returns to my ninth conclusion , which is just nothing at all . for i have abundantly evinced that my seventh and eighth conclusions are no broken reeds , but invincible and immovable pillars of truth ; which reason will never suffer to fall to the ground , nor any understanding authority ever gain-say . answer to the tenth conclusion . here asking leave first of ethicks he tells my conclusion , that it gives god the lye , and makes him the approver , commander , and rewarder of ▪ sin , eve● idol●try it self . for god promised a reward to prayer made in the temple , chron. . . where not withstanding there were graved angels or cherubims upon the walls . and he commanded his people to adore the a●k over which were cherubims or angels of image-work ; where the worshipper could not possibly make his addresses , but he must needs bow at least circumstantially if not objectively towards an image , which he says i make idolatry . this is the sum of what he alledges against this tenth conclusion . the reply . to which i reply , that he would have done well tohave beg'd pardon of grammar , rhetorick , and logick too , as well as of ethicks ; for he has offended against all four . to give god the lye is no such rhetorical flourish , though he uses it more than once in his answer to this conclusion , as if he were in love with the phrase . nor has it that grammatical sence he would put on it ; for to give the lye is to say one speaks false , not to speak false of another ; that is to be lye one . besides to adore the ark that is not good grammar , psal. . it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vvorship at his footstool . and the seventy has it , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has the same force that ● in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . and it is lastly very bad logick to argue , that because i sav , in a country where men professedly vvorship an image as an object , if another bow to the same image , with an intention onely of making it a circumstance of his worship commits idolatry ; that therefore i say , that al bowings before an image , though onely circumstantially , is idolatry . for this is to conclude a general from a particular , which is enormous bad logick : as ill as if he should conclude , that because one says , that putting the hat off in turky is a reproach ; therefore he says , the putting the hat off any where is a reproach . wherefore i do not make god an approver or rewarder of idolatry , since i do not affirm circumstantially to bow towards an image to be idolatry , unless in a country where the people do objectively bow to it ; which was not the case of the jews , as i have sufficiently proved above . there are some little nibblings and quibblings at my transition which concludes this first chapter , which i permit my adversary to please himself in , it being past that time of the day with me . it is sufficient that i have shew'd , that my ten conclusions of this first chapter have prov'd themselves as firm as adaman● against all the assaults of my adversary . and as for his nibbling at my transition to build a jest upon , it he had rather have divine definition or declaration , than definitions or declarations , let him please himself . but the grounds of my conclusions running much upon the first and second commandments , and we having no dual number in english , i thought no body would have cavilled at my using the plural . chap. ii. what is idolatry according to the determination of clear and free reason . . we will now try how obnoxious the romanists are out of the plain definitions and determinations of free and clear reason . in which method let us set down for the first conclusion , that idolatry is a kind of injustice against god. that this is true , may appear from that definition of religion in t●lly , who defines it iusti●am adversus deum . which is not the sense of tully onely , but the very voice of reason and nature . and therefore idolatry being one kind of irreligion or impiety , it must needs in●lude in it a kind of injustice against god. . the second conclusion ; that idolatry is a very fore and grievous disease of the soul , vilely debasing her and sinking her into sensuality and materiali●y , keeping her at a distance from the true sense and right knowledge of god , and leaving her more liable to bodily lusts : that the natural tendency of idolatry is this , and yet the souls of men , in this lapsed state , are naturally prone to so mischievous a disease , as both history and daily experience do abundantly witness . see the mischiefs of idolatry in my mystery of iniquity , part 〈◊〉 lib. ● . ch. . nor can it infringe the truth of this conclusion , that a man , retaining still the true notion of god according to his divine attributes , may , according to a sense of his own , bow down toward a corporeal object of worship . for he must retain it by force against such a practice , as would and does naturally debauch the users of it . and besides , if he had really the life of god in him as well as the notion of him , he would feel such actions grate against his heart , and perceive how they would invade and attempt the abating and extinguishing the more true and pure sense of god and of his worship , and seduce the soul to external vanity . but suppose a man or two could keep their minds from sinking down from a right notion of the deity ; yet they are as guilty of idolatry , if they give religious worship to corporeal objects , as he is of adultery and fornication that yet uses them so cautiously as neither to impair his bodily health , nor besott his natural parts thereby . and therefore , though there may be some few such , yet the laws against fornication and adultery ought notwithstanding to be very sacred to every one , even to those discreeter transgressours of them , and ever to be obeyed by them , because the observation of them is of such infinite importance to the publick . and what we have said of the worship of god is analogically true of honouring of the saints , who are best honoured by the remembrance and imitation of their vertues , not by scraping legs to or clinging about their image , which are no more like them than an apple is to an oister . . the third conclusion ; that those high expressions of the jealousie of god and his severe displeasure against idolatry are very becoming the nature of the thing , and his paternal care of the souls of men . this appears from the foregoing conclusions . for both the prerogatives and rights of the divine majesty himself are concerned , and also the perfection , nobilitation and salvation of the souls of men . this we discover by reason , and our reason is again more strongly ratify'd by divine suffrage . the fourth ; that idolatry , though it be so hainous a sin , yet where it is committed most in good earnest does necessarily involve in it ignorance or mistake , in the act of worship or in the object ; they either taking the object to be god when it is not , or to have some attribute of god when it has not , or to enjoy some prerogative of god which yet it does not , or else the worship not to be divine when it is ; or , lastly , they mistake in the application of the worship , thinking they do not appl● divine worship to an object when they do . the fifth ; that to be mistaken in the object of worship , or in the kind of worship , or in the application , cannot excuse any-thing from being downright idolatry ; forasmuch as none are in good earnest idolaters without some of these mistakes . the sixth ; that the peculiar honour or worship which is given to god is given to him not so much as his honour and worship , as his due and right : insomuch that he that does not give it to god , or communicates it to another , does an injury to the divine majesty . this is plain , and consonant to what was said on the first conclusion , that religion is a kind of justice towards god. and indeed if divine honour was not given to god as his due and right , it were no honour at all , but rather a benevolence . . the seventh ; the right of that peculiar honour or worship we do to god is grounded either in the nature of his incommunicable excellencies , or in his excellencies so far as we know incommunicated to any creature , or , lastly , in divine declaration or prescription of the ways or modes of thus or thus worshipping him , which himself has some-time set down . the eighth ; that any actions , gestures or words directed to any creature as to an object , which naturally imply or signifie either the incommunicable or incommunicated eminencies of god , is the giving that worship that is the right and due of god alone to that creature , and that injury against the divine majesty which is termed idolatry . the evidence of this conclusion may appear from hence , because there is no other way of application of external worship than by directing such significant actions , gestures , or words , toward such a being as to an object . the ninth ; that the using any of those actions or gestures , or doing any of those things that the true and supreme god did chuse and challenge in the setting out the mode of his own worship , towards or in reference to any creature as to an object , this also is that injury against god which we term idolatry . the reason is this , because such a mode of worship does thus manifestly appear to be the peculiar right of god , which none can transfer to another but god himself . wherefore this right having not been communicated by him to any other , when-ever such a kind of worship is used , it must be used to him , and to none else . nor can his dereliction of any such mode of being worshipped warrant the use of it to any creature afterwards , because no creature can be god in those circumstances as he thought fit to institute such a worship for himself in : for no creature can be god at all , and therefore never capable of any of those modes of divine worship which god ever at any time instituted for himself . besides , if this dereliction and disuse of any mode of worship might make it competible to a creature , then might we sacrifice beeves and sheep ( besides other services of the temple ) to any saint or daemon . . the tenth ; an omnipercipient omnipresence , which does hear and see what-ever is said or transacted in the world , whether considered in the whole , or as distributed into terrestrial , celestial , and supercelestial , not onely all these omnipercipiencies but any one of them is a certain excellency in god , and , for ought we know , incommunicated to any creature . the eleventh ; that this omnipresence or omnipercipience terrestrial is one main ground of that religious worship due to god which we call invocation . this is plain , that upon this very ground that god hears and sees ( though himself be invisible ) what-ever is said or done upon earth , he has the honour of being invoked any-where or every-where , and of having temples built to him ; because he that is omnipresent cannot be absent from his temple , but is alway there to be invoked . the twelfth ; that if omnipresence or omnipercipience , at least terrestrial , ( if not celestial , ) be not communicated to saints and angels by god , the invocation of either is palpable idolatry . this is manifest from the eighth conclusion . for invocation implies an incommunicated excellency in the saints or angels , and ●o communicates that right to them that appertains onely to god , and is that injury against god that is called idolatry . so that it is a vain evasion that pretends that we honour god the more in making him so good to the saints and angels , as to bestow this excellency on them ; whenas yet his wisdom has not thought fit so to do . for we are so far from honouring him hereby , that we injure him in giving his right to another ; and we dishonour him in presuming he had done wiselier or better in doing what he has not done . whenas indeed , if he were so lavish in imparting his proper excellencies to creatures as ●ome would make us believe he is , to palliate their own idolatries , it were the next way to make men forget all applications to god , and to cast him out of their memory , and take up with the more particular patronages of saints and angels . . the thirteenth ; that our thinking such a saint or angel can hear us where-ever we invoke him , is no excuse for our invocation of him , nor saves us from idolatry , since all idolatry committed in good earnest implies some mistake , as has been noted in the fourth conclusion . the fourteenth ; that all the modes or ways of the communication of this omnipercipiency to saints or angels are either very incredible , if not impossible , or extremely ridiculous as to any excuse for their invocation . for the usual residence of saints and angels being in sede beatorum , as the roman church holds , and that place on the coelum empyreum above all the stars , that the angels and saints should upon the account of the exaltedness of their natures see and hear from thence , what is done or said from one side of the earth to the other , is extremely incredible , if not impossible ; yea , sufficiently incredible , or rather impossible , though they had their abode on this side of the moon . and that they should see all things and transactions , hear all prayers and orations , in speculo divinitatis , is alike incredible ; a thing which the humanity of christ himself , though hypostatically united to the divinity , did not pretend to . but that god should either in this speculum or any otherwise advertise them that such a one prays to them that they would pray to him for that party , is it not at first sight above all measure ridiculous ? and alike ridiculous it is to pray to saint or angel , as if they were present and heard our prayers , when indeed they are absent , and cannot tell that we did pray , unless by some intelligencers . this devotion is an improper and unnatural act , and shews that we do that to an invisible creature which is onely proper to be done to the invisible god ; and that therefore it is idolatry , as giving that right of worship to others which is onely congruous to him . . the fifteenth ; that though there were communicated by god to saints and angels at least a terrestrial omnipercipiency , yet if he have not communicated the knowledge thereof to us , as most certainly he has not , the invocation of them is notwithstanding a very presumptuous invasion of the ●indubitable rights of god , and the intrenching upon his prerogatives , and therefore as to the internal act no less than the sin of idolatry . the reasons of this conclusion are , first , that god concealing from us the knowledge of the communication of this excellency , does naturally thereby intimate that he would not have them invoked , but reserves the honour of our invocation of an invisible power unto himself onely . secondly , that whatsoever is not of faith is sin : and therefore the ground of invocation of saints or angels being at least dubitable , their invocation is sin ; and it being about the rights of god in his worship , what can it be better esteemed than idolatry ? thirdly , this principle of feigning or groundlesly conceiting , without any revelation from god , that any creatures are capable of such honours as are god's indubitable right and prerogative , is the forge and shop , the palliation and pretense , for infinite sorts and odlyexcogitated varieties of idolatrous objects : and therefore so presumptuous and so abominable a principle , which is the mother and nurse of such infinite ways of idolatry and injustice against god , even according to humane reason ought to be declared against as idolat●ous ; and consequently , all the practices thereupon are also to be declared idolatry , because they spring from a principle taken up which is such a fundamental piece of idolatry and injustice against god , and exposes him to all manner of idolatrous injuries . fourthly , to date to do an act we know not whether it may be idolatry or no , and this needlesly , our conscience not all compelling us thereto , this is to dare to commit idolatry ; and the daring to commit idolatry , and so to do defiance to the majesty of god , what is it less than to be an idolater ? for according to his inward man and the main morality of the action he is so : as he is morally a murtherer that , doubting or not knowing but that it is his own friend , by luck killed his intended enemy : for the sense is , that rather than not be revenged of his enemy , he will not stick to kill his dearest friend . and finally , this idolatry is the more discernable and aggravable in the invocation of saints or angels , their omnipercipiency being so extremely incredible , if not impossible or ridiculous , upon any ground , as appears by the foregoing conclusion . . the sixteenth ; that the erecting of symbolical presence with incurvations thitherward , the consecrating of temples and altars , the making of oblations , the burning of incense , and the like , were declared by the supreme god , the god of israel , the manner of worship due to him , and therefore , without his concession , this mode of worship is not to be given to any else ; as appears by conclusion the ninth . the seventeenth ; that the pagans worshipping their daemons , though not as the supreme god , by symbolical presences , temples , altars , sacrifices , and the like , become ipso facto idolaters . this is manifest from the ninth , the fifteenth , and the foregoing conclusion . the eighteenth ; though it were admitted that there is communicated to saints and angels at least a terrestrial omnipercipiency , and that we had the knowledge of this communication , and so might speak to them in a civil way , though unseen ; yet to invoke them in such circumstances as at an altar , and in a temple dedicated to them , or at their symbolical presence , this were palpable idolatry . the truth is manifest again from the ninth and sixteenth conclusions . . the nineteenth ; incurvation in way of religion towards any open or bare symbolical presence , be it what-ever figure or image , as to an object , is flat idolatry : in the worship of saints , angels and daemons double idolatry ; in the worship of the true god , single . the reason hereof is resolved partly into the ninth and sixteenth conclusions , and partly into the nature of application of worship . for external worship is not any otherwise to be conceived to be apply'd to asymbolical presence , but by being directed towards it as towards an object . wherefore if religious incurvation be directed towards any figure or image as to an object , this figure or image necessarily receives this religious incurvation , and partakes with god ( if the image be to him , ) in it ; which is manifest idolatry . for the direction of our intention here is but a jesuitical juggle . and therefore i will set down for conclusion the twentieh , that religious incurvation toward a bare symbolical presence , wittingly and conscienciously directed thither , though with a mental reserve , that they intend to use it merely as a circumstance of worship , is notwithstanding real idolatry . the reason is , because an external action toward such a thing as is look'd upon as receptive of such an action , ● and has frequently received it ) if it be thus or thus directed , will naturally conciliate the notions or respects of ●ction and object betwixt these two , whether we intend , it or no. and it is as ridiculous to pretend that their motions or actions toward or about such a symbolical presence are not directed to it or conversant about it as an object , as it were for an archer to contend that the butt he ●●oots at is not the scope or object , but a circumstance , of his shooting ; and he that embraces his friend , that his friend is not an object , but a circumstance , of his embracing . which are conceits quite out of the rode of all logick . see the last conclusion of the foregoing chapter . . the twenty-first ; that the adoration of any object which we , out of mistake , conceive to be the true god made visible by hypostatical union therewith , is manifest idolatry . the reason is , because mistake does not excuse from idolatry , by conclusion the fourth and the fifth . and in this supposition we miss of one part of the object , and the onely part that single is capable of divine honour . for god to be disunited from this adored object is in this case all one as to be absent : for god is not considered not intended in this act of adoration but as united with this visible object . which respect of union if it fail , that consideration or intention also fails , and the worship falls upon a mere creature . in brief , if out of mistake i salute some lively statue or dead body for such or such a living man , though this man or his soul were present , and saw and heard the salutation , yet i play the fool , and make my self ridiculous , and an conceived not to have saluted him i would : so if i do adoration to any object , suppose the sun or some magical statue , for the true deity visible , when as neither of them are so , i play the idolater , and make my self impious , and have missed of the due object of my adoration . . the twenty second ; that the adoration of the host upon the presumption that it is transubstantiated into the living body of christ is rank idolatry . this appears from the precedent conclusion . to which you may add , that the romanists , making transubstantiation the true ground of their adoration of the host , do themselves imply , that without it were so their adoration thereof would be idolatry . but that it is not so , and that their ground is false , any body may be as well assured of as he can of any thing in the world : and no less assured that they are idolaters according to their own supposition and implication , as costerus indeed does most emphatically and expresly acknowledge it , if they be mistaken in their doctrine of transubstantiation ; as we shall hear anon . the twenty-third conclusion ; that adoration given to the host by protestants or any else that hold not transubstantiation is manifest idolatry . the reason is to be fetch'd from the nineteenth and twentieth conclusions . for it is religious veneration towards a bare corporeal symbol of the divine presence , and , to make the action more aggravable , towards a symbol that has imagery upon it , and that of the person that is pretended to be worshipped thereby . what can be idolatry if this be not ? the twenty-fourth ; that the invocation of saints and angels , though attended with these considerations , that both that excellency we suppose in them , and which makes them capable of that honour , is deemed finite , and also ( be it as great as it will ) wholly derived to them from god , yet it cannot for all this be excused from gross idolatry . this is clear from the seventh , eighth , tenth , and so on till the sixteenth conclusion . for though this excellency be supposed finite , yet if it be so great as that it is no-where to be found but in god , it is his right onely to have such honours as suppose it . and though it be deemed or conceived to be derived from god , yet if it be not , we give an uncommunicate excellency to the creature , and rob god of his right and honour . and , lastly , though this excellency were communicated , but yet the communication of it unreveal'd to us , it were a treasonable presumption against the majesty of god , thus of our own head to divulge such things as may violate the peculiar rights of his godhead , and ( for ought we know ) fill the world with infinite bold examples of the grossest idolatry : and therefore all our practices upon this principle must be idolatrous , and treasonable against the divine majesty . consider well the fifteenth conclusion . . the last conclusion ; that this pretended consideration , that where christ is corporeally present , divine worship is not done to his humanity , but to his divinity , and that therefore , though the bread should not prove transubstantiated , the divine worship will still be done to the same object as before , viz. to the divinity , which is every-where , and therefore in the bread ; this will not excuse the adoration of the host from palpable idolatry . for first , that part of the pretense that supposes divine worship in no sense due or to be done to christ's humanity is false . for it is no greater presumption to say , that in some sense divine worship is communicable to the humanity of christ , then , that the divinity is communicated thereto . in such sense then as the divinity is communicated to the humanity , which are one by hypostatical union , may divine worship also be communicated to it ; namely , as an acknowledgment that the divinity with all its adorable attributes is hypostatically , vitally and transplendently residing in this humanity of christ. which is a kind of divine worship of christ's humanity , and peculiar to him alone , and due to him , i mean , to his humanity , though it be not god essentially , but onely hypostatically united with him that is ; and does as naturally partake of religious or divine worship in our addresses to the divinity , as the body of an eminently-vertuous , holy and wise man does of that great reverence and civil honour done to him for those excellencies that are more immediately lodged in his soul. which honour indistinctly passes upon the whole man : and as the very bodily presence of this vertuous person receives the civil honour , so in an easie analogy doth the humanity of christ receive the divine ; b●● both as partial objects of what they do receive , and with signification of the state of the whole case , viz. that they are united , the one with the divinity , the other with so vertuous a soul. hence they both become due objects of that entire external worship done towards them , to the one civil , to the other divine . and therefore , in the second place , it is plain , that there is not one and the same due object capable of religious worship in either supposition , as well in that which supposes the bread transubstantiated , as in that which supposes it not transubstantiated . for in the former it is the true and living corporeal presence of christ , whose whole suppositum is , as has been declared , capable of divine honour ; but in the latter there is onely , at the most , but his symbolical presence , whose adoration is idolatry , by the nineteenth , twentieth and twenty-first conclusions . and lastly , the pretending that though the bread be not transubstantiated , yet the divinity of christ is there , and so we do not miss of the due object of our worship ; this is so laxe an excuse , that it will plead for the warrantableness of the laplanders worshipping their red cloth , or the americans the devil , let them but pretend they worship god in them . for god is also in that red cloth and in the devil in that notion that he is said to be every-where . nay , there is not any object in which the ancient pagans were mistaken , in taking the divine attributes to be lodged there , whether sun ▪ heaven , or any other creature , but by this sophistry the worshipping thereof may be excused from idolatry . for the divine attributes , as god himself , are every-where . to direct our adoration toward a supernatural and unimitable transplendency of the divine presence , or to any visible corporeal nature that is hypostatically united with the divinity , most assuredly is not that sunk and sottish , that dull and dotardly sin of idolatry . for , as touching this latter , to what-ever the divinity is hypostatically united , or ( to avoid all cavil about terms ) so specially and mysteriously communicated as it is to christ , the right of divine worship is proportionably communicated therewith , as i have already intimated . and as for the former , that through which the divine transplendency appears is no more the object of our adoration , than the diaphanous air is through which the visible humanity of christ appears when he is worshipped . but the eucharistick bread being neither hypostatically united with the divinity , nor being the medium through which any such supernatural transplendency of the divine presence appears to us , adoration directed toward it cannot fail of being palpable idolatry . for the eucharistick bread will receive this adoration as the object thereof , by conclusion the nineteenth and twentieth . but the adoration or any divine worship of an object in which the divine attributes do not personally reside , ( in such a sense as is intimated in those words of st. iohn , ( ioh. . . ) and the word was made flesh , ) but onely locally , as i may so speak , this , according to sound reason and the sense of the christian church , must be downright idolatry . chap. ii. his answer to the first , second , and third conclusions . his first , second and third conclusions , saith he , quite digress from the charge in hand , shewing what a grievous sin idolatry is ; which is much more largely and learnedly declared by our own authors , and readily granted by them , with this further allowance ; that if he can fix the crime upon us with any shew of reason , we shall acknowledge our guilt to be of a double dye . the reply . these three first conclusions do not digress from the charge in hand ; for as much as they tend to the better understanding of the nature of the charge : as for the first , it is plainly referred to in the sixth conclusion : and the second and third yield their due illustration to the fourth , which is framed by way of an axioma discretum ; that though idolatry be a sin of that hainousness , and provoke gods wrath and jealousie so , yet it does necessarily involve in it ignorance or mistake , &c. which does seasonably prevent all vain excuses and subterfuges , all unskilfull extenuations of so deadly a crime ; which i wish i could free the church of rome from . when as of the contrary , out of my love to the truth and the church of christ , i am necessitated to prove her guilty thereof , not by shews of reason , but by solid and irrefragable demonstration . which i pray god open their eyes to see , that they may wash away their guilt of a double dye , by the tears of a timely repentance . answer to the fourth and fifth conclusion . the fourth and fifth , saith he , tell us that idolatry necessarily involves in it ignorance or mistake in the act of worship . the fifth advanceth a step higher , and concludes very abruptly ; that because all idolatry involves in it some ignorance or mistake , therefore no ignorance can excuse from idola●ry : very learnedly ! the reply . not so learnedly neither , or rather not altogether so solidly , as you have set down my inference in the fifth conclusion from what preceeded in the fourth . for my own words are these in my fifth conclusion ; that to be mistaken in the object of worship , or in the kind of worship , or in the application , cannot excuse any thing from being down right idolatry ; for as much as none are in good earnest idolaters without some of these mistakes . how very learned this is , is another matter , but how firm and solid an inference it is , i leave any one to judge . answer to the one and twentieth , and two and twentieth conclusion . from the fourth and fifth , the doctor , saith he , makes a long stride to his one and twentieth conclusion ; where he peremptorily concludes , that because mistake does not excuse one from idolatry , by conclusion the fourth and fifth : therefore the adoration of any object , which we out of mistake conceive to be the true god made visible by hypostatical union therewith is mani●est idolatry . but let us put the case , saith he , that some christian contemporary to christ our lord , whilest he sojourned upon earth , had through mere mistake adored some other person for christ. here the query arises , whether this mans errour would have pleaded his excuse or no ? the reformed churches of france in their apology by dally declare for the affirmative . and if this errour be not idolatry , he says , i shall never be able to prove what i aim at in my twenty-second conclusion , that any idolatry is committed though it should so fall out , that the host untransubstantiated were exposed to the veneration of the people . for as no adoration is here due , so none is intended , but onely to iesus christ adorable where ever he is . this is the main strength of his answer to my twenty first and twenty second conclusions . the reply . the long stride that is made , is made by this doctor of the church of rome , not by my self . i had rather he would have taken my conclusions as they lye in order , which he does hugely neglect to do in this chapter : but however i am his servant to attend his motions whither he pleases within the compass of this little treatise . and to his query upon the propounded case , i answer , with the reformed churches of france , if they speak no further then to the case of this man , ( for i never saw that apology by daille ) that this mans errour would have pleaded his excuse : but not so as to argue him guiltless of idolatry , but that his sin of idolatry is more pardonable in these circumstances ; pardonable i say , which implies a fault or sin . and so my fifth conclusion holds good ; that to be mistaken in the object of worship , or in the kind of worship , or in the application cannot excuse any thing from being down right idolatry , because mistake is necessarily supposed in any idolatry that is committed in good earnest . but the invincibleness of the mistake , the sudden surprisedness , or inevitable changeableness of the mistake may be a ground , though not of making that to be no idolatry which is , yet of excusing the person as to the severity of punishment . whence you may see , that it was not for nothing that my adversary moulded my fifth conclusion into words of his own , that he might the easilyer have something to cavil at . but to let this pass , i say , the mistake does not excuse , but the invincibleness , or inevitableness of the mistake , which it does in all other sins whatsoever . and in all idolatries whatsoever , besides these committed in the christian world , where ever they are committed upon invincible mistake . but as amongst the heathen , those that worshipped the sun suppose , taking it to be the supreme god , endued with understanding and power , of making and governing the universe ( and millions worshipped him under the notion , and as it seems to me were in a manner inevitably , by reason of their education and want of opportunity of knowing better , detained in this errour ) as these by all men are rightly judged to have been idolaters , though more excu●able then they that have opportunity of knowing better , so it is in the case of this man my adversary instances in , who surprised by an inevitable errour has his excuse to crave pardon ; but it is manifest that he has committed the fault or rather crime of idolatry , in giving divine adoration to him that is not god. and if this were repeated and habituated act in him , he were as errand an idolater as the persians other nations that worshipped the sun. for mistake even where it is not essential to a fault , does not destroy the nature of the fault : as suppose one having his hat flung off his head to day by some body he meet with in the streets , and next day meeting one like the party that did him the injury , should presently fling his hat off , the mistake does not take away the nature of this fault so as to make it no injury to this party , but onely makes it more pardonable , it being not intended to an innocent person : how then can mistake even in faults to which mistake is essential change their nature from being what they are ? so that though the idolaters of the church of rome were under invincible ignorance , they would not for all that cease to be idolaters , or though they were made such onely by sudden and inevitable surprise . but this is not their case , and therefore with the good leave of my adversary , i must tell him , the case he has put is not at all to the present purpose ; nor that of a loyal subject taking hephestion for alexander : all these learned fetches will not serve his turn . the worshipping of the consecrated host with them is neither upon inevitable surprise , nor invincible ignorance , nor want of opportunity of knowing better : for that which is accustomary , and continual , is not surprise , nor is that invincible ignorance , which common sense , scripture and reason will so easily dissipate in a very ordinary capacity . for who , unless he were under the power of diabolical delusion , but can easily undeceive himself by common sense , reason and scripture , that a wafer which mice and rats will eat , cannot be that adorable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god-man , the creator and redeemer of us all . and then for opportunities of knowing better from others , what irrefragable evidences have the reformed churches offered to the contrary , and how many thousands have sealed their testimony with their very blood ? which is a sufficient occasion , i think , in so easie a case to undeceive them , that are not given up , as the apostle speaks , thes. ▪ to believe a lye , for their want of the love of the truth . so that the adoration given to the host upon the presumption of its being transubstantiated , is most palpable and unexcusable idolatry , according as my twenty second conclusion infers from my twenty first , and that from the fourth and fifth . but to say , as no adoration is here due , so none is intended , but onely to jesus christ , adorable where ever he is ; is such a laxe answer and unsound , that it will excuse the persians worshipping the sun , and indeed all the idolatries in the world as well as the romanists artolatria , or bread-worship ; which is a manifest demonstration of the falsness thereof . for no serious idolaters give nor intend any worship , but such and to such objects as they think it due to . answer to the sixth , seventh , eighth , tenth , eleventh , twel●th , thirteenth , fourteenth , fi●teenth , eighteenth and twenty fourth conclusions , but more particularly to the eig●th , tenth and twel●th ▪ and first in a more general way . these eleven conclusions , says he , talk big against the invocation of saints . but the best speakers amongst them are the eighth , tenth and twelfth ; he should add the fifeenth also , that the foundation may be more square and stable : which i desire my reader to read over , and then consider my antagonists answer in general to them . behold then , says he , the doctors argument . invocation implies an incommunicated excellency in the saints , viz. an omnipercipient omnipresence , atleast terrestrial if none celestial , and so communicates that right to them that appertains onely to god. ergo , invocation of saints is palpable idolatry . now if we can but acquit our selves handsomely in a fair return to this argument , all the rest that is to be found in the above said eleven conclusions , will amount to no more then meer empty and insignificant nothings . the reply . here i would understand of my adversary , what he means by quitting of himself handsomely , and making a fair return to this argument . for ● suspect in such fair and smooth language , there lyes some cunning slight , or trick of legerdemain to impose upon his reader , and keep the simple still in ignorance . and therefore it is seasonable here to advertize them , that unless he bring evident proof out of the holy oracles of god , out of some universal council , that is really universal , and held before the lapsed ages of the church , or from clear and convictive reason , that an omnipercipient omnipresence , at least terrestrial , is an excellency communicated to the saints ; that all what he says will be nothing to the purpose ; the ground of my argument in those conclusions touching the invocation of saints , being laid chiefly in this , that there is no convincing proof of any such omnipercipiency in the saints , but that men doing no violence to their faculties naturally conclude the contrary , and condemn the other conceit as a mere extravagancy . and then secondly , i advertise this , that though we should prove there is this omnipercipiency of the saints , ( which yet he has not proved , and i am well assured cannot prove ) all the rest of my conclusions will not prove insignificant nothings . for the fifteenth and eighteenth will have their use still . but i am well assured his handsom and fair return is so gentle and civil , that it has not ruffled the least hair of any of these conclusions , in that he has done no execution upon the eighth , tenth , twelfth , and fifteenth on which the rest depend ; which we shall understand after we have set down the manner of his particular assault on these . his answer more particularly to the eighth , tenth , and twelfth conclusions . in order to this he casts the centuries of the church into two sorts , into those that were more ancient , not yet resolved whether the saints entred into heaven before the day of iudgement , or were confined to some other place of rest excluded from the beatifick vision , and those that are more modern and resolved of that point . the former was the state of the church till the council of florence , who cleared the point , defining that the souls of the ●ead , as soon as cleansed from all sin , are received into heaven and see god clearly as he is in himself . now his argument proceeds in reference to these elder times thus , as for those elder centuries , says he , before the council of florence , they held invocation of saints for an undoubted truth , though some of them doubted whether they heard our prayers or ●o ; because no church-definition had as then ascertained them of their full beatitude ; let venerable antiquity speak for it self by the mouth of a saint austin , who in his book de cura pro mortuis , cap. . speaks thus . this question exceeds the reach of my judgement , how the martyrs relieve those who are certainly assisted by them ? whether they are present by themselves at the same time in so many several places where the benefit of their succour is received ? or being retired from the conversations of men in some place proportioned to their merits , and there interceding for the relief of those that call upon them , as we pray for the dead who are not really present with them , and know not how they are or what they do ; god omnipotent and ever present , hearing the prayers of the martyrs , grants to men by the ministry of angels these helps , where he will , when he will , and how he will. thus b. s. austin , here we have it , says he , from an undoubted work of this great saint and doctor ( owned by himself in his retractations : ) first , that invocation of saints was the constant avowed practise of those elder and purer days . secondly , ( contrary to the doctors fifteenth conclusion and all his pharisaical scruples ) here is a sure and certain ground of this invocation , viz. unquestionable , ancient , and immemorial possession , and the often experienced benefit of it , by those who addressing themselves to the holy martyrs mediation , were ( says st. austin ) certainly assisted by them . thirdly , that the saints presence at the same time in so many several places , ( which is equivalent to the doctors terrestrial omnipercipient omnipresence ) does not at all in st. austins opinion , either imply an impossibility , or entrench upon any of the divine excellencies : for then he would certainly have rejected it ; which yet he does not . fourthly , waving this omnipercipient omnipresence , st. austin renders it easily intelligible , how the saints might , ( even without that , and without the hearing our prayers ) relieve those that called upon them , viz. god omnipotent and ever present hearing the prayers of the martyrs , and granting to men by the ministry of angels these helps when he will , where he will and how he will. out of all which i deduce , says he , this inference which is home to the point , that if st. austin be to be credited before dr. more , it is good and profitable to invocate the saints , though we know not whether they heard us or no. and till the doctor can prove the contrary , his main hypothesis upon which he builds ( viz. that an omnipercipient omnipresence , is the onely ground of the invocation of saints ) is fundamentally subverted , and all his vapouring pretenses of idolatry end in smoke and phancy . the reply . it would make even a serious man smile to observe what a fair and handsom return he has made to the ground of my argument , comprised in those four conclusions . i thought there was some circumvention and winding about to ensnare in such smooth words . and lo ! a marveilous fetch of wit , to prove from those ages ( and this he must prove , or else he proves nothing to the purpose , that is , to excuse them from idolatry ) wherein the church knew not whether the saints had any knowledge of our affairs or no , ( as vet not assured whether they enjoyed the beatifick vision before the day of judgement ) that an omnipercipient omnipresence was an excellency then communicated to them ; which seems to be the prospect of his first way of arguing in general , or else that we may pray to them though they do not hear us at all : which yet is as delirant an action , as if one of us here in england should speak to an absent friend in the east indies . and yet to invoke the saints , uncapable of hearing us , is not onely equally absurd , but grosly idolatrous ; by conclusion eighth . but let us see if he be more succesfull in his particular applications , which i confess to me are so wondrous subtil , and his collections from that quotation of st. austin so marvailous fine , that the dulness of my sight cannot discern the coherence . for first that he should collect , that the invocation of saints was the constant and avowed practise of those elder days , from that paragraph of st. austin , is without all ground , and implies that st. austin understood not his own meaning , and writ things contrary to his own judgement . for himself was an opposer and disallower of that fond and idolatrous superstition that began to creep up in his time , and a rejecter of it as a practise uncatholick and against scripture . so far was it from being a constant and avowed practise in those days . a position that is both false in it self , nor any way deducible from any thing here in this paragraph of st. austin , as it is in the latine text. which is , et tamen generaliter orantibus pro indigentia supplicantium , that is , praying in general for the relief or necessities of suppliants : which is not suppliants to them , but to god , though at their memorials . so that my adversary in rendring supplicantium , of those that call upon them , has foisted in them , contrary to the meaning of st. austin . for it is onely supplicantium in him , not supplicantium ipsis . nor could st. austin disallowing invocation of saints as an impious worship , conceive god so ready to hear their prayers if they prayed to the saints . for god heareth not sinners , nor could be the author of so foul a sin , by fullfilling such petitions by the ministry of his holy angels , as is here said . wherefore those that invocated god onely and jesus christ , at the monuments of the martyrs , might be helped by the prayers of the martyrs , though they themselves were not prayed to . i say , men making their addresses to god through jesus christ , that they might be delivered from this or that evil , at the memorials of the martyrs might be healed and relieved , and this imputed some way to these martyrs , their prayers in general for them , ( god having a mind to improve their sufferings for a further propagation of his church ) contributing to the effect . but that invocation of saints was no allowed nor avowed practise of the church in st. austins time is most certain , as any one may see at large in the bishop of armagh and chemnitius and others , who have bestowed their pains on this point . and therefore his second inference is a meer vaunt , that here is a sure and certain ground of invocation , to wit , unquestionable , ancient , and immemorial possession , and the often benefit of it by those , who addressing themselves to the holy martyrs mediation were certainly assisted by them , and that in those times when they knew not whether they heard their prayers or no , whereby he would subvert the truth of my fifteenth conclusion . but it is apparent , if you read those who are impartial searchers of antiquity ; that this ground my adversary alledges is a very rotten and reprobate ground , which as it is not asserted by st. austin here , so is it disapproved by him else where , and condemned as a wicked superstitious innovation , begun amongst weak and ignorant souls , against the sense and tenour of scripture , and practise of the catholick church . and that therefore those helps that were afforded at the monuments of the martyrs , were to them that made their addresses to god through jesus christ. but if any happened to any that prayed to the martyrs , it might well be either an accident in nature , or some officious delusion of the devil , to plunge the church into further apostasie . so little force is there in this second inference from the pretense of either avowed practise or effect , in the age of st. austin before the beatifick vision of the saints was ratified , to enervate my fifteenth conclusion . but on the contrary , if the church had ratified the invocation of saints upon no assurance they had of their hearing our prayers , they had notoriously lapsed the christian world into idolatry . and as many as took up that custom in those days , were assuredly idolaters , as epiphanius defines of his collyridians . so that the sallies of my adversary hitherto are in vain . and now for the third inference , does st. austins doubting of the martyrs , after what manner they yield their help to those that are helped by them , vtrum ipsiper seipsos adsint , uno tempore 〈◊〉 diversis locis & tantâ inter se longinquitate discretis , confirm the belief that they are a● so far distant places at once to help , which my adversary says is equivalent to the terrestrial omnipercipient omnipresence , which i deny to be in them ? certainly no , but so venerable a fathers doubting of it rather , makes the thing doubtfull . nor do i think 〈◊〉 was of so slow a wit , but that if he had thought a little closer on the matter , he would have declared it out of all doubt , and concluded it impossible , that any finite being should be in one moment of time at two distant places at once , a whole diameter of the ●arth removed one from another , and a semicircle , or at least a quadrant , distant in the surface of the earth , if we reckon more places then two . for the motion must be either unconceivably swift , or the saint intirely divided into two whole saints in two distinct places at once . this i believe would have seemed little less then impossible to st. austin , and plainly to entrench upon the omnipresence of god ; sure i am it seemed so to athanasius or whoever was author of those questions ad antiochum , ( quest. . ) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . it is the priviledge of god alone to be found in more places then one at once . and anastatius nicenus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for neither can an angel be seen in several places at once , but god onely can be so , who is uncircumscribable by any place , quest. . but if st. austin does but onely doubt , it is sufficient for me . for if we be not certain of the omnipercipient omnipresence of the saints , we have no warrant nor right to invoke them , as doing that honour to them , which is the undoubted privilege of god , and thereby incurring the crime of idolatry , by conclusion fifteenth . for if there be no such omnipercipient omnipresence communicated to the saints ; it is plain from conclusion , . that it is idolatry . but if we know not whether this omnipercipient omnipresence be communicated or no to them , then when we adventure to invocate them , we know not whether we commit idolatry or no , that is , we do a doubtfull or uncertain action , and act not out of faith . but he that acts not out of faith does sin , and sins specifically that sin , which he doubts whether he so doing commits or no. as if he doubt whether such a thing be extortion , and yet do it , he commits the sin of extortion . so he that does an act which he knows not whether it is idolatry or no , he commits the sin of idolatry in adventuring to do it , as to the inward man ; but the saints having no such omnipercipiency , ( as any one that is free from superstition cannot but be easily assured of ) it is idolatry both as to the inward and the outward . and now for his fourth inference ; that waveing this omnipercipient omnipresence , st. austin renders it easily intelligible , how the saints might relieve them that call upon them , viz. god omnipotent and ever present hearing the prayers of the martyrs , and granting to men by the ministry of angels those helps , &c. i have above plainly shown that st. austin asserts no such thing as the invocation of saints in this paragraph , or that the saints are called upon ; but god being called upon at the memorials of the saints by suppliants , and the saints praying in general for us , god is pleased to send relief to his suppliants by the ministry of angels . this is all that is affirmed by st. austin ; which makes nothing to the proving , that according to st. austin , though the saints do not hear our prayers , yet we may pray unto them . and therefore his general conclusion of all which he so exults in , and says is so home to the point , ( viz. that if st. austin be to be credited before dr. more ; it is good and profitable to invocate the saints though we know not whether they hear us or no ) is a castle in the air , and stands upon no foundation , since all the four pillars that should sustain it are fallen into dust . for neither does st. austin say , that it was the constant and avowed practise of those elder and purer days to invoke the saints , not that any received help from the martyrs by invoking them , nor does he assert , but doubt of the omnipresence terrestrial of the saints ; nor is it credible , but upon better consideration he as well as athanasius and anastatius , would have concluded it impossible ; nor lastly does he affirm , that god by the ministry of angels did relieve them that prayed to the saints , but onely such as at the memorials of the saints prayed to himself . but i will not content my self with this , but i will further add ; that if st. austin and dr. more be to be believed before this doctor of the church of rome , it is very ill and pernicious to invocate the saints whether they hear us or no. and concerning my own judgment , i think this doctor of rome will confess there is no controversy . now for the judgment of st. austin , i think he sufficiently declares himself , in his de civitate dei , book . chap. . we build no temples , says he , to our martyrs as to gods , but memorials , as to dead men , whose spirits are alive with god ; nor do we there erect altars on which we sacrifice to the martyrs , but to that one and common god of the martyrs and us . at which sacrifice the martyrs as men of god , who by the confession of him have overcome the world , are recited in their place and order , but not invoked by the priest that sacrificeth . and in his . epistle , you see , saith he , the most eminent head of the most renouned empire , stooping with his diadem , and praying at the sepul●hre of peter the fisherman , namely , to god himself it is that he prayes , though at the monument of peter . and lib. . confes. chap. . whom may i find that should reconcile me to thee ? was i to go to the angels ? with what supplication ? with what sacraments ? many indeavouring to return unto thee ? and of themselves being not able , have , as i hear , attempted such things , and have been thought worthy to be ill-used , &c. and is there not the same reason of the mediation and nvocation of saints . and against parmenian , lib. . cap. . he says , that if st. john should say , you have me a mediatour with the father , i pray for your sins ( as parmenian would have the 〈◊〉 to be a mediatour betwixt god and the people ) who would look upon him as an apostle of christ , but as antichrist . and in the same place , for if paul were a mediatour , the rest of the apostles would be so too ; and if there were many mediatours , how would that of paul agree , who says their is one mediatour , &c. and we know that invocation in the most modest sense , is for the mediation and intercession of the saints , that they may intercede for us . in a word if you consult st. austin , he is so far from approving invocation of saints , that he is a diligent opposer of it , as you may see more at large in chemnitius . and still , which will make my adversaries argument weaker and weaker , if st. austin had been an approver of it , yet that would not have proved , that it had been a constant and an avowed practise of those purer times , from the apostles to st. austins age ; there being for years after christ no testimony for any such thing , none of the fathers appearing for it , but determining point blank against it . but the apostasie being to come in according to prediction , about years after christ ; if any father , and st. austin amongst the rest , should write any thing in favour of 〈◊〉 foul a crime , it would avail nothing with the prudent and unprejudiced . so that here is a ratiocination 〈◊〉 than nothing , and the smoke and phancy appears on my adversaries side , but on 〈◊〉 clear and solid reason . nor need i use any ●urther arguments to prove , that it is not good nor profitable to invocate the saints , than what i have subnected to my fifteenth conclusion . which sufficiently proves it is a sin : and i think sin will be held by no good christian either good or profitable . and thus you see my antagonist full● routed in his first method of attempting my four chief conclusions , viz. the eighth , tenth , twelfth , and fifteenth , he pretending that invocation of saints may be without idolatry , though we know not whether they hear us or no ; which was a more oblique and incongruous method , and less likely to bring about what he would have . his more direct answer to the above said four conclusions . his secand method is more natural , direct and pertinent , if he can make his attempt good , viz. that ●e have a certain or sufficient knowledge , that the saints have at least a terrestrial omnipercipiency , and hear all those that pray to them ; which they , 〈◊〉 , most certainly do . . from their blissfull vision of god ▪ not gainsaid by protestants , and determined by the council of florence . ly . it is to be proved by the appearance of devils upon the invocation of witches and sorcerers . ly . from the aequality of the saints with the angels , mat. . . ly . and lastly , from the weakness of the objections taken from the ●ncredibility of the modes of this omnipercipiency of the saints . because , potest constare de re quando non constat de modo rei , which i allow to be a sound maxime . this is the sum of all the force he has to make out a certain or sufficient assurance , that the saints hear our prayers : which by the way is to be understood of every particular saint that is called upon by chance , or else its little to the purpose . and then again it is worth the nothing , that if it were possible to bring certain or sufficient proof , that every particular ●aint hears us , it will not follow that a religious invocation is competible to them , which the circumstances of the romish vvorship argue to be given to them , but onely a civil calling to , or asking them to do this or that . for no honour bu● civil is due to them , as st. austin himself up and down asserts . and it is further to be noted , that if they do not hear us , the invocation then is not civil , but non-sensical , and which is worse , idolatrous , by conclusion twelfth . and therefore let us examine particularly the arguments he produces to make good the contrary , namely that they do ●ear , and we should add , by the intrinsick vertue of that state they are in . but let us see at large how he proves they hear us at all . the reply . his first argument is , that they enjoy the 〈◊〉 ●●●●tifick vision , not gainsaid by protestants , 〈◊〉 ●●termined by the council of florence . 〈…〉 some of the protestants not gainsaying , 〈…〉 enjoy the beatifick vision , prove they 〈…〉 rather do not they deny it , in denying that the consummation of our happiness , which is the 〈…〉 vision , is till the resurrection , 〈…〉 appear , and we then being transformed 〈…〉 glorious similitude , shall thereby see him 〈…〉 but till then few or no protestants 〈…〉 a beatifick vision . and it they did , how 〈…〉 prove but that they are mistaken ; especia 〈…〉 scripture seeming to defer that great and 〈…〉 happiness till that day : though they do not 〈…〉 them a pleasant rest , and enjoyment of the divine favour before then ? but the council of florence , a general or oecumenical council , has determined the point , and therefore we may be certain that the saints do already enjoy the beatifick vision . the words of the definitive sentence , as is supposed , of the council , are , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . to see clearly the triune god himself as he is . and the speculum trinitatis , the clear looking-glass of the trinity is answerable to this stile of the council . so that i must contess , if there be sufficient authority in this council , my adversary has so fast hold of me , that i must acknowledge that they have determined , that purified souls do enjoy the beatifick vision before the day of judgment . but there are many things that make me think that this council has not authority enough to assure any prudent man that this position is true . for first it determines also for transubstantiation and the universal supremacy of the pope , declaring him to have the power and right of ruling and governing the whole church . the former of which is manifestly impossible , the latter grosly injust against christ the only universal head of the church , and against the particular supreme heads of christian nations and kingdoms , over whom this synod declares the pope set over to govern as supreme . which by how much more it seems to favour the popes immoderate ambition , by so much it seems more certainly to deviate de via spiritus 〈◊〉 , and show the council not to be infallible but rather actually erroneous . and if they were so in these things that are more obvious and discernible , viz. that a wafer or a piece of bread is not jesus christ the son of god , nor the pope the universal soveraign of all christendom ; may not any one justly wonder how they became infallible in determining what is the state of the saints in heaven , themselves having never looked into that looking-glass of the trinity , nor experienced what it is to see god as he is . mat. . . blessed are the pure in heart , for they shall see god. and again , psal . . . when i awaken into thy likeness , i shall be satisfied therewith , viz. with the eternal righteousness of god , whereby we become like him , and so see him as he is . secondly , if this opinion of the beatifick vision had been true , and usefull for the excusing of the church from idolatry in the invocation of saints , as my adversary seems to insinuate , surely the holy ghost would have revealed it more timely . for this council of florence was not held till about or years after christ ; wherefore it coming so extreme late , it is a sign , it is onely a device found out by men to stop the mouths of them that object against the invocation of saints , from their incapacity of hearing our prayers . thirdly , besides these flaws , the certain●y and infallibility of this council is blasted from the clear prediction of the apostasy of the church after about or years after christ. and therefore we protestants do well to have no great regard to any more then the four first general councils . fourthly and lastly , though this council had the face and appearance of a free oecumenical council , it was not at all so in reality and truth . the greek bishops and others of that clergy , being many ways necessitated against their own judgments and consciences to subscribe that form , which the emperour iohannes paleologus and ioseph the patriarch had upon politick ends , with some few others , contrived . so that sylvester sguropalus a person of singular integrity and judgment , and a perpetual witness of the transactions of that council , as in particular he has noted , how the the bishop of ephesus was denied his florens , because he was so inflexible to the purposes of the pope . how the latines produced a false and adulterate creed of the seventh general council , affirming that it was so read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the addittament of filioque in that council . how the emperor observing that his clergy was for the greatest part of them against the latine church in their votes , found a device to deprive all of votes but the bishops and coenobiarchae . how falsely and fraudulently they read the places of the fathers , mutilating them , and mangling them as they pleased , and was most for their purpose . how that after all this ado , but ten of the bishops and coenobiarchae gave their votes for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the procession of the spirit from the son , seventeen against it . h●w ●ereupon consultaion was held again of purging the council , but that way declined both the patriarch and the emperour dealt under hand with the most effectual perswasions of fear and hope that they could . and at last how they brought it to this , that thirteen bishops gave their votes for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but the coenobiarchae's votes were made null by a trick , least they should have turned the scales again . how the lay courtiers even to the physicians and meaner sort of officers were enabled to vote , when so many of the reverend clergy were by devices made vote-less . and lastly , when by these arts they had got a plurality to declare for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the emperour made a long speech extolling the present synod , and delivering his own suffrage to close all : how his greyhound that constantly followed him to the council , and lay on a silk cushion wrought with gold , at the emperors feet every session , and in so many sessions had lain still , both when the emperour spake , and also others , did now so soon as the emperour began to speak set up a shril howling note , modulated to the very cadences of the emperours oration , nor could they by any sneaping of him , or threatning him , keep him from so doing : which , says he , many look't upon as an inauspicious sign . this is also observable , how nothing but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , was so much as disputed in the synod : but the emperour with some few of his own , the cardinals ever and anon visiting him , and propounding questions to him , added four more articles as agreed upon , amongst which , by the by , there is no mention of the bea●ifick vision , which i observe others also to omit . and how nicenus made a long and eloquent speech in publick , which contained things as agreed on by the greek church which yet they knew nothing of , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but it was altogether a pack't device : but that however most of the greek clergy , what by promise , what b● threatnings and urging necessit●s , ( for the bishop of nicomedia poor man was fain by friends to beg a new cloak of the pope , that he might not disgrace the solemnity by the squalour of his old apparel ) much against their wills were brought off to subscribe the form , and make their appearance at the celebration of the union . i say , besides these particulars and many more that this sguropulus sets down , which plainly shows , that this was not a synod held per viam spiritus sancti ; he in general also tells us , that it was indeed an oecumenical synod , no man can deny , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but no man that was there will ever affirm that they came to any synodical sentence or determination ▪ for after the publick disceptations ceased , nothing was inacted ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , but all things were transacted in hugger-mugger , by a few prelates both on the emperors part and the popes , the rest of the greek or latine bishops knowing nothing : and much more to this purpose may you read in this accurate describer of this florentine council . but it is sufficiently evident already how little ground there is in this florentine council , to found any mans belief of any conclusion they are said to have defined , and to venture on so hainous a sin as idolatry , as certainly invocation of saints is , be it called civil worship or religious ; if they hear us not , when the authority of this council is so uncertain or rather null , which my adversary would make use of to prove that they do hear us , because purified souls injoy the beatifick vision before the day of judgement according to that councils determination . and if my adversary would teach his party here to evade , by saying what ever this council may prove , it is well known that the council of trent has concluded the same opinion ; i answer , that the three first things alledged against the council of florence , are also alledgeable against the council of trent , and besides they have determined for the communion in one kind , and for the worshipping of images , expresly against the word of god , whereby we cannot but be well assured of their fallibility . besides that it is evident at it is neither a free nor general council , but a company of men contrived together for the interest of the pope , thirteen new cardinals , all italians , being made by him at a clap toward the end of the synod , besides much garbling of the council before . and the holy ghost is also said at the time of their setting to have travailed from rome to trent in a portmanteau , another evidence how much that synods proceedings were per vi● spiritus sancti . and therefore to adventure to commit so hainous a crime as idolatry , upon so weak a pretence as the authority of such a council , what can be more horrid ? butadmit the saints do enjoy the beatifick vision , how is it proved that the beatifick vision is such as implies the sight and hearing of all visible and audible objects here on earth , or that to a meer creature it would be any happiness at all , but rather an unhappiness and a burdensom and unseasonable distraction . din quis vivendo multa quae non volt videt . wherefore it is most reasonable to conceive , that onely such things are exhibited to them by god , as they are particularly concerned in . and that all things and persons of this caliginous globe , are not obtruded on them in the beatifick vision , where there is infinitely more then will fill them of better objects . and therefore the beatifick vision as to this point , will amount to no more then to one of those ●odes of the saints knowing when we pray unto them ; which i think i have not without cause declared to be absonous and absurd as to the solving of this difficulty , in my fourteenth conclusion . and we may further here take notice , that they make god an abettour of a very incongruous act , the putting up prayers to a finite invisible power , which of himself knows not whether he be prayed to or no , unless god be so officious as to give him notice of it . the thing therefore is so incredible in it self , and supported by so weak authority of the florentine and tridentine councils , that no certain or sufficient assurance can from hence be had thereof . now for the next argument , fetch'd from the devils appearing upon the invocation of witches or sorcerers● i conceive it has little force to prove that any particular saint invocated by name , does presently of himself hear the lnvocations of his clients , though some be in america , others in the east-indies , others in italy at the same time . which i deny that any particular devil can do : and therefore the inference will be infirm , to conclude that saints hear the prayers of their suppliants , when they are particularly called upon , and at whatsoever distant parts of the earth at the same time ; because some particular devils hear sorcerers so , when there is no proof they do . any particular devil may step in if magically invoked , to delude a sinner , and when covenant is once made , that very familiar by name may be ready to assist being invoked ; but this falls very short of proving , that a devil let him be at what distance he will from a suppliant , that he hears , or that he can hear and assist many thousands of suppliants in many thousand far distanced places at once . which incapacity not onely of a devil but a saint makes their invocation idolatry by conclusion twelfth . but at last my adversary knocks at the door of the most important topick of all , for the proof of the saints knowing the prayers of their suppliants ; i mean the holy scripture , and if he produces any place there to prove they hear when we speak to them : i will so far forth yield up the cudgels to him , as to acknowledge a civil calling to them , or desiring them to do this or that for us , that is really in their power to effect , may not be absurd . the place he cites is matth , . . the saints are as the angles of god in heaven , says he , and of the angels it is written , see ye despise not one of these little ones , for i say unto you , their angels in heaven 〈◊〉 see the face of my father which is in heaven , matth. . . and again , there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that repenteth , luke . . to the latter i answer first , if it were the priviledge of angels , through the excellency of their own nature , to know at what distances soever they are at when men prayed to them , why was the invocation of angels laid asleep all the time of the mosaical law ? and why spoken against by the very gospel ? or what warrant has the church of rome to invoke saints , more then the iews to invoke angels ? but moreover i answer to that of matth. . . the sense , of the angels in heaven always seeing the face of christs father which is in heaven , is not , that by enjoying the sight of god they obtain thereby a terrestrial omnipercipiency , and see and hear all things transacted here on earth ; but the phrase of seeing the face of christs father in heaven , signifies , that they are those angels that also minister and wait before god and are assistents at the divine schechina or that inimitable glory whereby god reveals himself to the angels and blessed spirits , and gives oracles for the ministration of his kingdom . the angels i say , that assist holy men on earth , are of so great excellency , that they are in heaven part of the satellitium that always wait on god who is in heaven ; which also implies that they are one while on earth , another while in heaven , a●cending and descending to negotiate the affairs of the church , receiving oracles and commands from the divine schechina . but instead of these oracles of importance , if the divine schechina should tell st. peter , or st. paul , or st. apollonia , and the rest of the saints ever when any pray to them in such infinite distinct places , and some great numbers put together , praying to some or other of the saints , let any indifferent man judge how incongruous it is . it is sufficient in the mean time , that no such terrestrial omnipercipiency is to be proved in the angels from this text. nor do's luk. . . imply any such thing . for the angels ascending and descending as iacob saw them in his divine vision , on the ladder that reached from earth to heaven , those that ascend from earth tell them in heaven of the good news of converted sinners , and so this text implies no such terrestrial omnipercipiency as my adversary would insinuate . but then in the last place , suppose this terrestrial omnipercipency were competible to the angels , it does not follow from mat. . . that the saints already enjoy it . for the entire text runs thus , for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage , but are as the angels of god in heaven . but i hope my adversary will not , with hymeneus and philetus , affirm the resurrection is past ; and if not so , he must acknowledge even from this text himself produces , that this angelical priviledge of the saints , in seeing all things in the face of god , is yet to come , if there were at all any such angelical priviledge . the last thing he alledges for this point , is the weakness of our objections from the modes of this omnipercipiency of the saints ; because , potest constare de re quando non constat de modo rei . but i answer , à posse ad esse non valet consequentia . if we had indeed the like assurance of the thing it self , that one particular saint invocated by never so many , and at never so far distant places at once , did hear the prayers of all those suppliants , as we have of the divinity of christ and the triunity of the god-head , then though i could not reach the particular mode how it was , yet i would believe it . but when all manner of modes producible of a thing seem absurd and incredible , and in the mean time there is no assurance of the reality of the thing it self , it argues great levity of mind to give belief to such a thing that it at all is . and it is not meer levity in things of such great importance , as the rights of god , and the danger of idolatry , but an irreligious and giddy temerity ; which i pray god keep all men from . in the mean time it is very apparent , that his attempts against my eighth , tenth , twelfth , and fifteenth conclusions are frustraneous , and that they stand as firm as ever , he haying neither proved that we may invocate the saints , we being uncertain whether they hear us or no , nor yet proved it certain that they do hear us ; which were the two methods whereby he could have undermined these four conclusions . and therefore they standing firm , still it is manifest from his own supposal , that the other seven , viz. the sixth , seventh , eleventh , thirteenth , fourteenth , eighteenth , and twenty fourth , stand firm and unshaken also . we proceed now to his answers to the remaining conclusions in the order i find them . his answer to the ninth conclusion . against this conclusion he argues thus ; incurvation of the body , according to my sixteenth conclusion , is one of the actions or gestures which god did chuse in the setting out the mode of his own worship . ergo , incurvation towards or in reference to any creature is idolatry . but now , says he , if this be true , abraham who used this incurvation to men and angls , gen. . and . and the beloved disciple of iesus , who reiterated the like incurvation towards the angel , apoc. . . were idolaters . and therefore my conclusion cannot be true , that is laden with so great an absurdity . this is the main of his argument . the reply . in answer to which i desire the reader to peruse my sixteenth conclusion . my words are these , that the erecting of a symbolical presence , with incurvations thither ward , &c. i do not say that simple incurvation is one of the actions or gestures , which god did chuse to set out the mode of his own worship by , ( for incurvation of the body in general is neither religious nor civil , but may be either , as all men know ) but that it is incurvation toward a s●mbolical presence , which god appropriated to himself , as a religious mode of worship due to himself onely . simple incurvation is permitted , and has been used , without any scandal to god or man , both unto men and angels . now neither abrahams , nor st. johns incurvations being to the symbolical presences of the angels they bowed to , my sixteenth conclusion is unconcerned in it , nor does it therefore at all enervate my ninth , as is plain at first sight . for it does not at all imply that either abraham , or st. john were idolaters in their bowing to angels or men. his answer to the sixteenth conclusion . the sixteenth , seventeenth , nineteenth and twentieth talk much , says he , of a symbolical presence , and incurvation towards it ; whereof the sixteenth refers to the ninth and hath its answer there . the reply . how infirm my adversaries answer is to the ninth and unsatisfactory you have already seen , and therefore , i having already replied to it , it is evident that his answer to this sixteenth wants no further reply . his answer to the seventeenth conclusion . to this , saith he , i have already answered , shweing that the pagans gave the worship and title of deities to their daemons , and therefore became ipso facto idolaters . the reply . to that pretended answer , i have made a full and perspicuous reply above , which if the reader be pleased to turn back and peruse , the more he looks on it , i do not question but the more he will be satisfied with it . his answer to the nineteenth conclusion . here , saith he , i would know of the doctor , whether the name of a person be not a symbolical presence in its kind as well as an image . for as much as both of them are signs or tokens representing the same thing , with this onely difference that the image represents it to the eye , the name to the ear . and why then may we not bow to the image of iesus as well as to the name of jesus , or how can the one be condemned of idolatry , but the other must incur the like brand . the reply . the doctor answers , that the name may be a symbol , as aristotle has defined . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aword or name may be a symbol of that conception i have in my mind , says aristotle , but he says nothing of its being a symbol of the external object . but let that go ; though it be a symbol , yet it is very unnatural to conceive it a symbolical presence , not is any where called so , nor accounted so by any one . besides , a symbolical presence must be a standing permanent representation of that which it is the symbolical presence of , consecrated and intended for that purpose . how unna●ural therefore is it to conceit a name , that is no sooner sounded but vanishes from the senses , to be a symbolical presence , but onely a meer note or symbol to help our memories , and to be part of speech and discourse : so plain is it , there is not the same reason of the image of jesus , and the name of jesus . no● is the second commandment against bowing to sounds but images : nor do we , which is best of all , bow to the name of jesus , but at the name of jesus , as i answered above . and if it could be proved that the name of jesus were a symbolical presence of one kind , as my adversary phrases it ; so long as it is not of that kind my nineteenth conclusion speaks of , and founded on the second commandment , what is it to the purpose ? or if it were included , unless that of the second to the philippians commanded to bow to it in such a sense , which my adversary will be never able to prove , what will it avail ? but i have even over-answered this objection . and it is already too too manifest , that though bowing at the name of jesus be no idolatry , bowing to the image of jesus may be palpable idola●●y . his answer to the twentieth conclusion . to me , this conclusion , saith he , seems big with a spirit of contradiction , as being manifestly against scripture , against the practise of the church of england , and lastly against dr. more himself . first , against scripture , as is manifest , ( besides what we have said , says he , in answer to the last conclusion of the first chapter ) from the incurvation the scripture commands to the name of jesus , which is as much a religious incurvation as any we give to t'ose symbolical presences called images . secondly , against the church of england , who bow the knee at the eucharist to the bare figurative or symbolical presence of christs natural flesh and blood ; and therefore they useing this religious incurvation towards a symbolical presence , are idolaters ; nor can excuse themselves by a mental reserve , they intending it onely as a circumstance of their worship , because that is declared equivocation , in this very conclusion and the foregoing one . thirdly and lastly , this conclusion is against my self , because my sixteenth conclusion openly avoucheth , that the erecting of a symbolical presence with incurvation thitherward , was declared by the supreme god the god of israel one of the manners of worship due to him ; but my twentieth runs counter and stifly presseth , that religious incurvation towards a symbolical presence ( without exception of any ) wittingly and conscientiously directed thither , is real idolatry . these two conclusions , saith he , are as perfect a contradiction , as to say , all religious incurvation toward a symbolical presence is idolatry , not all religious incurvation toward a symbolical presence is idolatry . the reply . to all which three i reply , and first to the first , that what he has said in answer to the last conclusion of my first chapter , i have replied to already and plainly proved there is nothing therein that clashes with the scripture . and as i said before , so i again repeat , that we are not commanded to bow to the name of jesus , but , if it be understood of any external ceremony , onely at the name of jesus ; and with all , though the incurvation be religious , that his name is no symbolical presence , as i declared before . never any one phancied a name any such thing , so that it is a meer shift to amuze the ignorant . to the second , that the bread and wine are no symbolical presence or figure of the very person of christ , nor do i know that any protetestants hold that any blood or flesh of christ not actuated by his humane spirit , nor joyned with the divinity is capable of divine or religious worship , sith nothing is capable thereof but god. but a symbolical presence is the representation of some person or thing , erected to represent the thing o● person conceived by them that erect it , adorable ' but we do not conceive the body of christ killed and sacrificed , and his blood shed out of his body adorable ; unless it could be proved , what yet is impossible , that it was even then hypostatically united with god , when it was disunited from the soul. so that the broken bread and the wine are but commemoration tokens of the body of christ killed and crucified , and his blood shed for us , this commemoration being as it were a feast upon a sacrifice , as the apostle intimates , ( cor. . . ) after the lamb is perfectly slain . nor is any man on his knees at the communion in order to direct their kneeling to the bread or wine in any sense , but they are on their knees afore hand in their prayers and devotions to god and christ , and it is ex accidenti , as i may so speak , that they are on their knees when they receive the holy symbols ; so far are they from wittingly and conscientiously directing any religious worship toward them : but the symbols are brought to them in such a posture as the communicant is found in at his devotions , whose face happily was not so much as derected to the communion table while he was at his devotion , and his heart , as it is said , sursum corda , wholly carryed to heaven . this i confess is a pretty gird of my adversary , and a cunning justling me as it were against my own church as much as he can ; but it is manifest that what i have here delivered in this conclusion is agreeable enough with the rites of our own church , as well as with truth it self . to the third i answer , that my twentieth conclusion is not truly recited . for my words run thus , that religious incurvation toward a bare symbolical presence , wittingly and conscientiously directed thither , &c. he has left out the most emphatical word in the sentence , viz. [ bare ] . and hence you see how unseasonable his parenthesis is , [ without exception of any ] for when i restrain my assertion to bare symbolical presences , it is evident that i except those that are covered and concealed from the eyes of the people ; as the cherubins were on the ark of the covenant . so that it was a great oversight , to say no worse , in my adversary to leave out that monosyllabon which was of such principal signification in the sentence . but it being in , as it was manifestly in and before his eyes , in the conclusion he pretends to consute , this twentieth conclusion is no contradiction at all to the sixteenth . all religious incurvation towards a bare symbolical presence is idolatry , says this twentieth conclusion : but does the sixteenth say , not all religious incurvation toward a bare symbolical presence is idolatry ? it says no such thing . but does onely imply that some symbolical presence may be bowed towards without idolatry , as that over the ark of the covenant , it being not bare or open , but hid from the eyes of the people ; nor yet that bowed to as to an object neither , but onely as a circumstance of worship . let the reader judge how heedlesly at least , if not disingenuously , my adversary has dealt with me in this assault , and withall how firmly and clearly i have maintained my own . his answer to the two and twen●ieth conclusion . my twenty first he gives here no brush against . of the two following he speaks thus . the twenty second , and twenty third conclusions weakly cavil at the adoration of the host as idolatrous , either in catholicks or protestants . but these petty nibblers at the most blessed and ever adorable sacrament , shall have their answer in the next chapter , when the doctor treats of this subject ex protesso , the reply . his answer is marvellous lofty and full of despiciency towards his antagonist , and all of his mind . but i do not impute this so much to the pride of my adversary as to his cunning and prudence , that he may by this scheme of confidence keep his parties devotions warm to the adoration of the most blessed and ever adorable sacrament , as he phrases it : and we indeed will also acknowledge the consecrated bread , an holy and blessed symbol of the body of christ , but we adore onely our celestial lord and king , who sits at the right hand of his father in glory ; and take it as a great reproach done to him , that those of the romish religion should pretend that a morsel of bread or a waser , after a few words of the priest should become this lord of glory . and meaner and more petty nibblers than we , even those small and contemptible animals , ordinarily called mice , offer such an argument against so grand an absurdity as may well puzzle the subtilest of your school-divines , viz. how this consecrated host , if it be christ himself in his own body and person , should suffer himself to be eaten up by a mouse : you will say , that the mouse onely eats up the species or external shew of a body not any real body at all , and that though christ be contented to go along with the species when men eat the sacrament , yet if a mouse light on it , as soon as she nibbles at it he slips out of the way . i must confess i know no other subter-fuge but this but this seems to me a meer shift , nor do i think that any will deny , but that if the mouses stomach were searched presently after she has eaten this consecrated bread , that the bread , or call it the species , will be found there , and certainly endewed with such attributes as are the specifick attributes of body , that is with divisibility and impenetrability , which being the essential and specifick difference whereby body is body , it is plain , that what they call species is really a body or substance ; but the body or substance of the bread is transubstantiated into the body of christ , therefore it is evident that the body of christ is in the belly of the mouse , if transubstantion be true . which plain consideration methinks , might be sufficient to awaken any one that is not in a very dead sleep or incurable lethargy out of all conceit that a consecrated water does become personally and corporeally christ himself . for if it be he , though he humbled himself indeed so very extraordinarily in the behalf of us men , yet it is not at all credible , that he would make himself so vile and cheap as to suffer himself to be devoured by a mouse . and if this argument chance to be less pleasing , yet the recalling it to my memory is to be imputed to the scornfull expressions of my adversary , who makes us such petty niblers in our argumentation ; whenas if he had not overlooked , in this lofty mood of his , my twenty first conclusion , this twenty second could not but have appeared to him perfect demonstration , upon the suposal that transubstantiation is but a conceit , and no solid truth ; which is the main argument of the next chapter . his answer to the twenty third conclusion . his present answer to my twenty third is this , for protestants indeed to adore the sacrament who believe no corporeal presence of christ there , would be a like crime , as for an unconverted iew to adore iesus christ in whom he believes not . but what is this to the doctors purpose . the reply . my antagonist here acknowledges it a great sin , even a crime in a protestant to adore the sacrament , as well as for the jew to adore jesus christ , when he does not believe on him . let me then here note by the by , how great a crime it is in them , who as much as in them lyes , force men to commit so great a sin by their unchristian persecutions . but i would ask further what crime it is that the jew and protestant here commit . certainly the jew's can be no less then idolatry in the internal , being that he has assented to the practise of what he thinks in his own conscience is idolatry , the giving of divine worship to a meer crea●ure . and so much at least is true of the protestant that adores the sacrament , but the sacrament being not christ , he is also guilty of idolatry in the compleatest circumstances , and becomes an idolater as well in the external as internal act. and if you ask what this is to the doctors purpose ; he will tell you , that his purpose is to per●●●●● all men as much as he can to deal uprightly and not to dissemble . so that it is an intimation to as many as are not perswaded of transubstantiation , that they would not abuse themselves in communicating in your service , they not being able to do it without apparent idolatry . his answer to the twenty fifth conclusion . to the twenty fourth he answered above , where you have also my reply . to this twenty fifth or last , he onely says , touching my objection there raised and answered , that he will leave the doctor to the pleasure of his own thoughts , raising his airy castle with one hand , and beating it down with another . the reply . to which my reply is onely this , let the reader seriously peruse this my last conclusion , and consider whether the objection i raise be not material , and whether the solution thereof be not solid . and let him also impartially judge if i have not , though briefly , yet very clearly and perspicuously showed the invalidity of all my antagonists objections against the conclusions of these two first chapters of my antidote . we proceed now to the third . chap. iii. that the romanists worship the host with the highest kind of ● orship , even that of latria , according to the injunction of the council of trent ; and that it is most gros● idolatry so to do . i. and having thus clearly and distinctly evinced and declared what is or ought to be held idolatry amongst christians ; let us at length take morefull notice of some particulars wherein , according to these determinations , the church of rome will be manifestly found guilty of idolatry , and that according to the very definitions of their own council of trent . as first , in the point of the adoration of the host , touching which the very words of the council are , latriae cultum , qui vero deo debetur , huic sanctissimo sacramento in veneratione esse adhibendum : and again , siquis dixerit , in sancto euc●aristiae sacramento christum non esse cultu latriae etiam externo , adorandum , & solenniter circumgestandum populóque proponendum publicè ut adoretur , anathema sit . . this confident injunction of gross idolatry , as it is certainly such , is built upon their confidence of the truth of their doctrine of transubstantiation . for the chapter of the adoration of the host succeeds that of transubstantiation , as a natural , or rather necessary , inference , therefrom . null●● itaque dubitand● locus relinqui●ur , &c. that is to say , the doctrine of transubstantiation being established , there is no scruple left touching the adoration of the host , or giving divine worship to the sacrament ( or christ , as it is there called , ) when it is carried about , and exposed publickly in processions to the view of the people . but the doctrine of transubstantiation being false , it must needs follow , that the giving of divine worship to the host is as gross a piece of idolatry as ever was committed by any of the heathens . for then their divine worship , even their cultus latriae , which is onely due to the onely-true god , is exhibited to a meer creature , and that a very sorry one too ; and therefore must be gross idolatry , by the twenty-first and twenty-second conclusions of the second chapter . . but now , that their doctrine of transubstantiation is false , after we have proposed it in the very words of the council , we shall evince by undeniable demonstration . per consecrationem panis & vini conversionem fieritotius substantiae panis in substantiam corporis christi , & totius substantiae vini in substantiam sanguinis ejus ; quae conversio convenienter & propriè à sancta catholica ecclesia transubstantiatio est appellata . and a little before , cap . si quis negaverit in venerabili sacramento eucharistiae sub unaquaque specie , & sub singulis cujusque speci●i partibus , separatione factâ , totum christum contineri , anethema sit . in which passages it is plainly affirmed , that not onely the bread is turned into the whole body of christ , and the wine into his bloud , but that each of them are turned into the whole body of christ , and every part of each , as often as division or sepa●ation is made , is also turned into his whole body . which is such a contradictious figment , that there is nothing so repugnant to the faculties of the humane soul. . for thus the body of christ will be in god knows how many thousand places at once , and how many thousand miles distant one from another . whenas amp●itruo rightly expostulates with hi● servant sosia , and rates him for a mad-man or impostour , that he would go about to make him believe that he was at home , though but a little way off , while yet he was with him at that distance from home . quo id ( malúm ! ) pacto p●test fi●ri nunc ntí 〈◊〉 hícsis , ● domi ? and a little before , in the same colloquie with his servant , nemo unquam ●omo vidit , saith he , nec potest fieri , tempore uno homo idem d●obus locis ut simul sit . wherein amphitruo speaks but according to the common sense and apprehension of all men , even of the meanest idiots . . but now let us examine it according to the principles of the learned , and of all their arts and sciences , physicks , metaphysicks , mathematicks and logick . it is a principle in physicks , that that internal space that a body occupies at one time is equal to the body that occupies it . now let us suppose one and the same body occupy two such internal places or spaces at once ; this body is therefore equal o those two spaces , which are double to one si gle space ; wherefore the body is double to that body in one single space , and therefore one and the same body double to it self . which is an enormous contradiction . again , in metaphysicks ; the body of christ is acknowledged one , and that as much as any one body else in the world . now the metaphysical notion of one is , to be indivisum à●se , ( both quoad partes and quoad totum , ) as well as divisum à quolibet alio . but the body of christ being both in heaven , and without any continuance of that body , here upon earth al●o , the whole body is divided from the whole body , and therefore is entirely both unum and multa : which is a perfect contradiction . , thirdly , in mat●ematicks ; the council saying that in the separation of the parts of the species , ( that which bears the outward show of bread or wine , ) that from this division there is a parting of the whole , divided into so many entire bodies of christ , the body of christ being always at the same time equal● to it self , it follows , that a part of the division is equal to the whole , against that common notion in euclide , that the whole is bigger then the part. and , lastly , in logick it is a maxime , that the parts agree indeed with the whole , but disagree one with another . but in the abovesaid division of the host or sacrament the parts do so well agree , that they are entirely the very same individual thing . and whereas any division , whether logical or physical , is the division of some one into many ; this is but the division of one into one and it self , like him that for brevity ●ake divided his text into one part. to all which you may add , that , unless we will admit of two sosia's and two amphitruo's in that sense that the mirth is made with it in plautus his comedy , neither the bread nor the wine can be transubstantiated into the intire body of christ. for this implies that the same thing is , and is not , at the same time . for that individual thing that c●n be , and is to be made of any thing , is not . now the individual body of christ is to be made of the wafer consecrated , for it is turned into his individual body . but his individual body was before this consecration . ●herefore it was , and it was not , at the same time . which is against that fundamenta● principle in logick and metaphysicks , that both parts of a contradiction cannot betrue ; or , that the same thing cannot both be , and not be , at once . thus fully and intirely contradictious and repugnant to all sense and reason , to all indubitable principles of all art and science , is this figment of transubstantiation ; and therefore most certainly false . read the ten first conclusions of the brief discourse of the true grounds of faith , added to the divine dialogues . . and from scripture it has not the least support . all is , hoc est , corpus meum , when christ held the bread in his hand , and after put part into his * own mouth , ( as well as distributed it to ● his disciples : ) in doing whereof he swallow'd his whole body down his throat at once , according to the doctrine of this council , or at least might have done so , if he would . and so all the body of christ , flesh , bones , mouth , teeth , hair , head , heels , thighs , arms , shoulders , belly , back , and all , went through his mouth into his stomach ; and thus all were in his stomach , though all his body intirely , his stomach excepted , was still without it . which let any one judge whether it be more likely , then that this saying of christ , this is my rody , is to be understood figuratively ; the using the verb substantive in this sense being not unusual in scripture ; as in , i am the vine ; the seven lean kine are the seven years of famine ; and the like : and more particularly , since our saviour , speaking elsewhere of eating his flesh and drinking his bloud , says plainly , ( ioh. . . ) that the words he sp ke , they were spirit , and they were truth , that is to say , a spiritual or aenigmatical truth , not carnally and literally to be understood . and for the trusting of the judgement of the roman church herein , that makes it self so sacrosanct and infallible , the pride , worldliness , policy and multifarious impostures of that church , so often and so shamelesly repeated and practised , must needs make their authority seem nothing in a point that is so much for their own interest , especially set against the undeniable principles of common sense and reason , and of all the arts and sciences god has illuminated the mind of man withall . consider the twelfth conclusion of the abovenamed treatise , together with the otherten before cited . wherefore any one that is not a meer bigott may be as assured that transubstantiation is a meer figment or enormous falsehood , as of any thing else in the whole world . . from whence it will unavoidabl● follow and themselves cannot deny it , that they are most gross and palpable idolaters , and consequently most barbarous murt●●rers , in killing the innocent servants of god for not sub●itting to the same idolatries with themselves . costerus the iesui●e speaks expresly to this point , ( and conson●ntly , i think , to the suppositions of the council ) viz. that if their church be mistaken in the doctrine of t●ansubst●ntiation , they ipso facto stand guilty of such a piece of idolatry as never was before seen or known of in the world . for the errours of those , saith he , were more to●rable who w●rship some golden or si●ver statue , or some image of any other materials , for their god , as the heathen worshipped their gods ; or ar●d cloth hung upon the top of a spear , as is reported of the laplanders ; or some live animal , as of old the aegyptians did ; then of these that ●orship a bit of bre●d , as hitherto the christians have done all over the w●r● for so many hundred years , if the doctrine of : ransubstantiation be not true . what can be a more full and express ackno●ledgement of the gross idolatry of the church of rome then this , if transubstantiation prove an errour ? then which notwithstanding there is nothing in the world more certain to all the faculties of a man ; as is manifest out of what has been here said . and therefore the romanists must be gross idolaters , from the second , third , fourth , seventh and ninth conclusions of the first chapter , and from the fourth , fifth , eighth , ninth , twenty fi●st , twenty-second and twenty fifth of the second chapter . all these conclusions will give evidence against them , that they are very notorious idolaters . . and therefore this being so high and so palpable a strain of idolatry in them touching the eucharist , or the eating the body and drinking the bloud of christ , wherein christ is offered by the priest as an oblation , and the people feed upon him as in a feast upon a sacrifice , which is not done without divine adoration done to the host , according to the precept of their church ; this does hugely confirm our sense of the eating of things offered unto idols in the epistles to the churches in pergamus and in thyatira , this worshipping of the host being so expresly acknowledged by the pope and his clergy , and in that high sense of cultus latriae , which is due to god alone . and therefore it is very choicely and judiciously perstringed by the spirit of prophecy above any other modes of their idolatry , it being such a gross and confessed specimen thereof , and such as there is no evasion for or excuse . hoc teneas vultus muianiem protea nodo . chap. iii. his answer to the first paragraph . it had been ingenuous in the doctor whilest he states catholick ●octrine to speak catholick language . the council of trent ( even as quoted by himself ) mentions not the ●ost but onely the ●●oration of the blessed sacrament or ( which is the same ) of iesus ●hrist in the sacrament . which is a quite different thing from that uncatholick expression of worshipping the host ; for catholick principles own nothing of the host to remain after consecration , but the species or symbols . nor does the council enjoyn the worship of latria to the symbols but to ●esus christ veiled with these symbols . the reply . this answer is most what but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or strife about words . whether it be called host or sacrament , it is all one to me , and to the cause i undertake . for by the host i mean t●e consecrated bread , and it is familiar in common sp●●ch to understand the host in that sense . as when they say , at the elevation of the host , and , as the host passes by , a●d the like , which is understood of the sacrament , as my adversary here had rather have it called . besides that , the very reason of the name implies so much , that it is the consecrated bread ; because hostia , from whence the word host is , signifies a sacrifice ; which your church will not grant the bread to be before consecration , whereby you conceive it to become christ himself . and lastly durandus , and i doubt not but many others of your church , do call the sacrament it self hostia very often . so that there is more of pomp then solidity in this rebuke , and a cunning endeavour to make me seem less skilfull in these points of controversie in the eyes of your party . but now to the second part of your answer which seems more material , that the council enjoyns not the worship of latria to the symbols , but to jesus christ veiled with the symbols : i reply , that for as much as they enjoyn adoration or bowing to this effigiated bare or visible s●mbolical presence of christ invisibly there , it is idolatry by conclusion th . chapter . and though they pretend to omit the external species or shew of the pread in their worship ; yet while it is acknowledged that they worship christ as hypostatically united with the substance of the bread not annihilated but changed and transubstantiated into his body there veiled with these species , and being this transubstantiation is not , this latri● of theirs is turned into idolatry by the twenty first , twenty second , and twenty fifth conc●usions of the second chapter . as it is manifest to any one that lists to compare the case with these conclusions , which stand very firm still , for any thing he has been able to alledge against them . after this my adversary gives a brief sum of this third chapter of mine in this enthymeme , transu●stantiation is a meer figment ; ergo , the adoration of the eucharist is palpable ldolatry , and so runs out preposterously to the eighth paragraph , in answer to the concealed proposition of the enthymeme . but i will rather set his answers in the same order that the numbers of the paragraphs require . and so his answers to the antecedent of the proposition will come in view first . we will consider his answer to the consequence of it , at the eight paragraph which is its due place . his answer to the argument in the fourth paragraph . to this he answers , this is indeed a fair demonstration that dr. more is acquainted with plautus his comedies , and can when he pleases descend from the divinity-chair to a piece of unseasonable mirth an● stage drollery . but let this pass as a pleasant skirmi● before the main charge . the reply . if it was not indecorous for st. paul to quot● heathen poets , as aratus and epimenides , yea comedians as menander in his thais , how can it be below such an one as i to quote a comick poet ▪ 〈◊〉 in any point of drollery , but for an earnest 〈◊〉 ration , that ●t never was seen nor is it possible that 〈◊〉 body can be 〈◊〉 two places at once . but if this testim●● does not like you , you may remember how i showd you above , that athanasius and anastatius ancient christians declare , ●hat an angel himself , nor a soul separate can be in two places at once . but the stress of my argument yes not in the ●uthority of p●autus , but in t●e sense of all mankind as i have in●ima●ed , who by common suff●age , unless infinitely prejudiced , do ratifie this 〈◊〉 that one body cannot be in two places at once . which distinct force of this my first argument 〈◊〉 a●versary endeavoured to smother , by a rhetorical flourish , and nimble-paced transition 〈◊〉 those fetc●ed from arts and sciences , &c. to which you shall now hear his answers . his answer to the argument from physicks in the fifth paragraph . to this he answers , first , by asserting it possible , that a body occupying a space equal to it self in one place , may ●et be elsewhere without occupying any place at all ; and he would prove this more then possible , from the opinion of the learned , who maintain that actually the supreme heaven occupies no place . secondly , by denying the inferences i make 〈…〉 of one body being in two places at once , as first , that the body will be equal to those 〈◊〉 s●aces , what needs that , mr. doctor , sa●s he , it is enough that in each of those two space● it be onely equal or commensurate to that determina●e place it there occupies , suppose of six cub●●s , and in neither of them equal or commensurate to a space of twelve cubits . and then for my inference , that granting this body equal to the spaces it occupies at once , it will be double to it self , he denies the consequence . because a body of one cubit rare●ied into a double dimension , and therefore occupying a double space , will not be double to it self . and a rational soul informing a body of a span length , when the body is grown to another span still informed by the same soul , it does not follow that the soul is double to it self . is not this rare divinity , says he . let the doctor show a material disparity in these two cases , or else acknowledge the unconclusiveness of his own objection . this is the sum and substance of that wherewith he would en●rvate my argument , drawn from physicks against transubstantiation . what follows belongs rather to his answer to my argument drawn from metaphysicks which we shall consider there . the reply . in the mean time to his first answer , i reply thus , that it is a fetch beyond the moon or rather beyond the world , to endeavour the enervation of my consequences from the supposal of a body in two internal places at once , that it so filling those two places , is equal to the two places equal to one another , and that therefore it is double to it self ; by saying , that a body occupying a place equal to it self in one place , may yet be elsewhere without being in any place , be●cause the supreme or extimate heaven is in no place ; which yet is to be understood of no ex●ernal place . but eustachius and other school●hilosop●ers , and all that hold an internal place ● which truth is plainly demonstrable ) do hold that it is in a place internal , upon which our argument goes , but is equally true of locus externus . nor then will this high flight beyond 〈◊〉 supreme or extimate heaven serve for any ev●● 〈◊〉 . for as much as we speak of bodies placed ●n this side of 〈◊〉 extimate heaven , and no bo●y can b● found amongst bodies , but it will be 〈◊〉 cumscr●bed b● the ambient superficies of the next bodies about it , that superficies of the ambient bodies that do immediately compass 〈…〉 body being its place . and every body ●ill h●ve such a place that is found on this 〈…〉 extimate heaven . this is a truth that 〈◊〉 be denied . and our question is 〈◊〉 onely of suc● bodies as are on this side 〈◊〉 extimate heaven . from which the unseasonablen●ss of my adversaries subter●uge is plainl● d●cerned , which in no sense will serve his turn , unle●s for the amuzing the minds of the people . to 〈◊〉 second answer i return this ; to the first 〈◊〉 thereof , that it is not onely enough to him but it is also en●ugh to me that in each of the two ●paces the body be equal to that de●erminate place it t●ere occupies , understanding either an internal or external place . for suppose one and the ●ame body at each place at ●nce 〈◊〉 either an internal or external place of such a quantity , of six cubits suppose , which it cannot fill unless it be commensurate to them , it is plain it fills as much space as comes to twelve cubits , if six and six make twelve , which is as sure as two and two make four . and therefore that it is equal to twelve cubits , because it plainly fills up the space of twice six cubits . or how ever at the same time fills the ambient superficieses that would exactly fit twice six cubits in several . there is no greater demonstration of equality then this , which the geometricians call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or co●gruentia . so certain is it that a body adequately filling two places of six cubits big at once , has it self the magnitude of twelve cubits : but the body is supposed but one and the same body in both places , and therefore can be but six cubits . wherefore it is both six cubits and twelve cubits at once , that is to ●ay , it is double to it self at the same time , which is impossible . nor does the second part of my adversaries answer evade this impossibility : that it will no more follow that a body occupying at ●he same time two places , and so being equal to those two places , which are double to one single place , that the body is double to it self , then that a body of one cubit ●a●ified into a double dimension and therefore occupying a double space is double to it self : or the rational ●oul informing a bod● of a span length at first , but 〈◊〉 the same body grown another span , is thereby double to it self . for not at all to quarrel with the mistake of the nature of rarefaction , which i must confess i take to be the cartesian way not the ●ristotelean , and candidly interpreting his meaning , in those words , ( a body of a span length and then grown up to another span ) which grown up to another span naturally implies the body not double but octuple to what it was before , passing by these and medling onely with his own meaning , ( as it may be hoped ) and hypotheses , the examples do not at all reach the present purpose . for speaking in his sense , a body of one cubit rarified into a double dimension is double to it self unrarified ; that is , it is as big again as it was when it was unrarified . but it is not as big again or double to it self at the same time , but double it is to what it was before . and the same is to be said of the soul , ( in such a sense as extension is applicable to her , and increase or decrease of it , namely by dilatation and contraction spiritual ) that it is double when the body is grown as big again as it was when it was but a span long , to what it was when the body was but a span long . but here in the present case a body is demonstrated double to it self , compared with it self and its present condition at the same time : which is impossible , viz. that the same body should be double now to what it is now . that it now should be as big again as it self is now . for neither can the soul her self be said to be now as wise again as she is now , but onely as wise again as she was some time ago . and so my adversaries answer does not at all reach the point in hand . and therefore my demonstration stands firm and unshaken , of the impossibility of transubstantiation from this argument taken from physicks , as any unprejudiced eye may easily discern . nor had we any need here to consider the continuity or discontinuity of places . but all is clear from what we have thus briefly represented . his answer to the argument from metaphysicks in this fifth paragraph . to my metaphysical argument that infers , that the body of christ will be divisum à se , and both unum and multa . first he answers to the first part ; if divisum à se secundum substantiam , i deny it , if divisum à se quoad locum , transeat . to the second , that it will not be unum & multa , but onely unum in multis , one and the same in many places . his second answer is , that i go upon a false supposition , that essential vnity is derived from the vnity of local presence , not from the intrinsick principles of the subject . for unless this be granted , plurality of local presence at once will not prove a thing divided from it self . his last answer is , that by this and my former argument i put armes into the hands of infide●s against the mystery of the holy trinity . for it will follow , saith he , that one and the same divine nature being in three distinct persons at once , the same nature will be treble to it self , as much as the same body being in two places at once will be double to it self . and secondly , that one divine nature being in three distinct persons it will be as much divisa à se ( besides that it will not be divisa ab aliis , viz. from the three distinct persons with which it is really identified ) as a body will by being in two distinct places at once . th●s is the bare edge and full strength of his answers against my metaphysical argument . as for his rhetorical flourishes and boasts , they are no part of any proof , and i list not to meddle with such things . the reply . to the first part of his first answer i reply , that it is plain that it is divisum à se secundum substantiam , both quoad totum , and quoad partes , because it is separate or distant so many yards or so many miles suppose from it self , nothing of it self being between . as distant and separate as two several individual bodies at the same distance , that is to say , a is as many yards or miles distant from a quoad integram suam substantiam , as to its intire substance , as b is from c. but b is really distant or separate from c suppose twenty yards or miles , as to their intire substances . ergo , a is distant or separate from a twenty yards or miles as to its intire substance , nothing of its substance being between . so that it is both present with it self and absent from it self at the same time twenty miles , and may be many thousands according to this impossible hypothesis . in so much that it is plain this part of his answer is weak and insufficient . to the other part i say , that it manifestly follows from my former reply , ( that shows plainly that a is distant and separate from a which is a plain and palpable division of a wholly and intirely from it self ) that a is not ens unum , but entia multa or plura , because the very definition of ens unum is , that it be indivisum à se. this is perfect demonstration to any one 's whose eyes are not obstructed with prejud●ce . and now to his second answer , i deny that i go upon any such supposition , that essential unity is derived from the unity of local presence . but what i contend for is this , t●at unity of local presence is a necessary consequence of essential unity : nor can any finite essential unity be in any m●re than one place at once , as athanasius and anastatius also have concluded . and there may be as ne essary and indubitable reasonings ●rom the property of a thing as from its intrinsick principles . as a man may as certainly conclude such a triangle to be a rectangle triangle from the equality of the power of the hypotenusa to the powers of the sides including the angle subtended by the hypotenusa , as from the very definition of a rectangle triangle it self . and though the ubi of a being be not essential to it , yet we are sure what ever is is some where , & quod nusquam est nibil est . from whence it is apparent how weak my adversaries inference is , that unless essential unity be derived from the unity of local presence , it will not follow that the same body being in divers places at once is divided from it self , any more than it is divided from its intrinsick principles , which it can never be by plurality of local presence , they being wholly extrinsick to the subject . which is the same as if he should contend that a man may be and yet be no where , because vbi or place is extrinsecal to him . or that his soul may be neither wiser , nor less wise , nor equally wise with others ; or his body neither taller , nor less tall , nor equally tall with others , and yet be , these being onely external respects and comparisons , and not in the definition or ●ssential constitution of a man. to all which i add , that the very intrinsick principles of any one ●eing supposed to be in two places are divided from themselves , that is , are distant or s●parate so many yards or miles , as is plain from my former arguing . as suppose plato were at the same time at athens and thebes , the intrinsick ●rinciples of plato , to wit , his soul and body would be both divided from themselves at this distance , and constitute two plato's . these things are so plain , that it is a wonder to me that they can be hid from any mans eyes , that does not wilfully wink against them ; or rather that any man can wink against them , though in humour or for ends best known to himself he may talk against them . now to his third and last i answer ; who does the greater disservice to the catholick church he or i ? i dealing bonâ fide and plainly demonstrating that to be an errour that cannot be hid from the unprejudiced , it being in a subject so easily comprehensible to all mens perceptions , i mean the nature of a body ▪ and the impossibility of what they pronounce thereof . and it being an opinion unknown or disown'd by the fathers of the church , i mean this opinion of transubstantiation , not avowed by any council till about four or five hundred years ago , when as the doctrine of the trinity was repeatedly ratified in the primitive times by general councils above years ago , with what reason is it that my adversary will allow no greater certainty of the mystery of the trinity then of transubstantiation , which has such palpable and easily deprehensible and plainly demonstrable contradictions in it . is not this to put weapons into the hands of in●idels with a witness ? but i hope i shall easily wrest them out again by a sufficient reply to this third answer of my adversary . in the first part therefore , i say , his supposition is very gross and incompetible to the divine nature . as if it were in the three persons as one hand phancyed in three distinct distanced gloves at once , or one finger in three distinct finger●stalls filling them out in several with its presence , whenas the divine nature and the persons are promiscuously said to be in one another , ( iohn . . ) i in thee , and thou in me ; and trinity in unity and unity in trinity . peter lumbard not unskilfully resembles the trinity and divine nature , to the mind and the three powers in the mind , memory , and understanding , and love , or will. these three , saith he , out of st. austin , are not three lives but one life , not three minds but one mind , one essence . he descants further on this similitude , but it is enough to hint thus much , that from hence also it is manifest , that the divine nature is not in the three persons , as one finger that fits three distinct distanced finger-stalls , but as the memory , understanding , and will , are adequately every-where where the mind is by a metaphysical coincidency and ●ongruity , so also is the presence of the three persons and divine nature every where coincident and adequate : nor is the divine nature any more repeated according to the number of persons , then the essence of the soul is according to the number of those three powers , memory , vnderstanding , and will. so that nothing more can be concluded then thus , that the number of the persons are triple to the divine nature which is but one , as the powers of the soul or mind are triple to the soul or mind that is but one. and what inconvenience is there in this ? do not all men say , that there are three persons though but one divine nature ? but he would bring a thick night upon truth , that gross errour also might find harb●ur under that covert . in the second part of his answer there seems also to be a supposition as uncatholick and false as the former . as if the divine nature in the three divine persons were as one common general humane nature in three men , suppose pythagoras , plato , and socrates ; when as according to st. austin and others , the divine nature is to the three divine persons ra●her as the rational soul or mind to the three powers , memory , understanding , and will : ●his is as near as in this impe●scrutable mystery we can come , speaking in a parable with that ancient father . and we must say so rather than acknowledge any similitude with that of the common humane nature in pythagoras , plato , and socrates , least we run into that dreadfull absurdity of making more gods than one. but now speaking according to the sense of st. austin , it is plain that that one divine nature being not in the three persons as one general humane nature in three men , but the union and mutual inexistence being as that of the soul and her powers , it is plain i say , that tha● one divine nature will be no more divided from it self by being thus inexistent in the three persons , than the soul will be divided from her self by reason of her three powers , memory , understanding , and will , or m●ns , notitia & amor , or sapientia & amor , which peter lumbard contends to be the proper titles of the son and holy ghost ; which also is very consonant to the doctrine of the ancient phílosophy of the jews and greeks touching their trinit● . and lastly as the soul is sufficiently divisa ab aliis in a metaphysical sense , though she be really identi●ed with her three powers , so is the divine nature sufficiently divisa ab aliis though it be identified reall● with the three persons . so that my adversar● does here nodum in scirpo qu●rere out of an ill will to the clearness of my arguments which he would thus obliquely obscure , and teach the infidel to cavil against the solid mystery of the trinity , because neither himself nor any else can make good that false opinion of transubstantiation . which how pious and warrantable an act of him it is , let any man judge . this is onely to cast dust into the eyes of the vulgar to dishearten them from endeavouring to see the truth . his answer to the argument from mathematicks in the sixth paragraph this argument is meer cob-web stuff , half an eye may look through it ; for these words of the doctor , ( that a part of the division is equal to the whole ) either refer to the species ( and then it is false that a part of the division is equal to the whole ) or they point at the body of christ ( and then the words are de subjecto non supponente ) for there is no division of any part of christs body from the whole . the reply . i will not say , that my adversary looks through too thick a cob-web to discern the force and scope of my argument . but this i will say , that he has plainly missed it . for the very absurdity that i drive at is , that in dividing suppose an entire consecrated host into two parts , ( in which one entire consecrated host there is but one continued body of christ , veiled as he says , but co-extended with the species ) that in the dividing this host or species of the host if you will , that one continued body of christ there before , is discontinued and separated into two as sure as it is in two places at once . and what , i pray you , is this but to be divided into two ? and being division here is into two intirely the same with the divided , what is it but to be divided into parts of a division which singly are equal to the whole , contrary to that common notion in euclid ? or if you think this less absurd , to be divided into two wholes ? for they may be called either , in such an hypothesis , as brings in the con●usion of all things . his answer to the argument from logick in this sixth paragraph . this , says he , is the same in effect with the former and requires no new answer . because these his trisling expressions if applied to the separated species are false , if to christs body then they proceed upon a false supposition , as hath been declared in my answer to the third objection . the reply . that this argument stands upon the same supposition that the former , i grant , but that the supposition is false i may well deny , having proved it true in my reply to his former answer . nor is this argument altogether the same in effect , because it illustrates the grand absurdity of the opinion it oppugns from new maximes . so little tri●ling is the argumentation which i have here produced . but it is the policy of my antagonist to slight and make himself merry with such things as are too solid to be really answered . for this is succedaneous to a real confu●ation in the eyes of the vulgar , and it may be of more consequence with them , that are taught not to examine but believe : in which method he shows himself an egregious artist in his attaque upon my next objection , where he begins with some few scoptical and undervaluing reflections as he calls them . but a man of his parts and wit cannot but know that they are insignificant to any but the vulgar , before whom he thinks it very conducing to seem to trample on his antagonist right loftily acting his part as it were on a stage . his reflections on some passages in my argument from that fundamental principle in logick and metaphysicks in this sixth paragraph , together with my replies thereunto . first , saith he , a knowing reader cannot chuse but smile to see ( can be ) or a capacity of being brought in for a piece of an argument to prove that a thing is not . that individual thing that can be , saith the doctor , and is to be made of any thing , is not . so my adversary in his first reflection . to which i reply , that some knowing reader it may be , may not onely smile but laugh quite out while he observes to what pretty shifts my adversary is pu● , to make the doctor , as he calls him , seem an old doting fool to the heedless and ignorant . for the knowing reader will easily discern , that ( that that can be ) is not to be disjoyned from the rest of the sentence , but that ( made ) is to be referred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to ( be ) in both places , and that the sense is , ( though the sentence is then less succinct and elegant ) that that individual thing that can be made or is to be made of any thing , is not . but here he makes another oblique reflection , and observes how fondly the doctor playes the confident dogmatizer asserting as evident , that that individual thing that can be and is to be made of any thing , is not ; as if forsooth it were evidently demonstrable , that that individual thing which is to day in actual being could not possibly be destroyed and made anew again to morrow by a second generation . reply , this is a very oblique and distorted reflection indeed and cast off quite from the mark it should aim at ; nor does it at all respicere titulum , the argument in hand , which is our ever blessed saviours body never to be destroyed . so that this answer is onely an argute cavil . for my antanist is not so short sighted but he could easily discern , that i understand the individual thing i speak of to be such a thing as being once made is not to be destroyed . and therefore to quit my self of my antagonists crafty evasions , i will mould my proposition into a consistence more full and close , that there may be no holes nor chinkes for a slippery wit to creep through , and shall argue t●us that thing that once made is never to be destroyed , when ever it may be truely said of it , that it can be made and is to be made of any thing , it then is not . but the body of christ is a thing that once made to exist , is never to be destroyed . therefore when ever it is truely to be said of it , that it can be made or is to be made of any thing , it then is not . but transubstantiation even now says , that the body of christ can be made and is to be made of bread or a wa●er consecrated ; therefore according to the doctrine of transubstantiation , the body of christ is not but we know certainly and both the scripture and the church universal do restifie , that the body of christ is : therefore if transubstantiation be true , the body of christ both is and is not at the same time , against that logical and metaphysical principle . idem non potest esse & non esse simul , is not this as clear as the meridian sun ? but he has not done yet , to say the body of christ is to be made of the consecrate bread , is suc● an unhappy absurdity with my antagonist , that he reflects on that in the third place even with the eye of pitty . it is pitty , says he , to observe his words in the next proposition . the individual body of christ is to be made of the wafer consecrated . which implies as if the wafer were the material cause of christs body . what philosophy ever spake so unphilosophically ? reply , good lack ! what tragedies are here raised upon not an half-penny of harm done ? if my antagonist had but observed the many significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in aristotles metaphysicks , he might easily have observed more significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or of , than the material cause . but he proceeds , yet to make amends he immediately contradicts himself and adds , that the wafer is turned into his individual body ; which is a much different thing from being made of the wafer , reply , water is turned into ice or crystal or into wine by a miracle , and lead , by chymical transmutation , into gold ; how much is that different , from ice or crystal and wine being made of water , and gold of lead ? but the particle ( for ) saith he , goes beyond wonder . the individual body of christ is made of the wafer consecrated ( mark the word ) for it is turned into his individual body : which is a piece of as learned non-sense , as if he said in open terms , because the wafer is turned into christs body by a total conversion , which excludes a material cause , therefore his body is made of the wafer by generation , which requires a material cause . thus unfortunate are the arts and sciences when they ingage against gods church . reply , would not one think that in this high bluster and swaggering language he had plainly proved his antagonist a meer dotard in matters of divinity ? but let us reflect a little on the reflecter , and first upon his hyperbolical wonderment on the particle ( for ) . crystal is made of water , for water is turned into crystal , vineger made of wine , for wine is turned into vineger , gold sometime made of lead , for lead sometimes is turned into gold. is the use of ( for ) in such cases as these so wonderfull ? or were it not a wonder if ( for ) were not used upon such occasions . and yet my antagonist cannot abstain from calling it a piece of learned non-sense ; though not half so learned as the making of a child of two spans long , but double to the same child when but one span long , which yet i had the candour gently to connive at . nor do i understand any sense in this saying of m● antagonist , that a total conversion excludes the material cause , if he will allow the matter to be such . for certainly the whole bread includes the matter of the bread as well as the form , and the form perishing , else it were bread still , what remains but the matter of the bread to be turned into the body of christ and to become formally and individu●lly his body . and whether this may be called generation or no is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ▪ it is no such generation as is ordinarily seen in nature , but being it is such a conversion , changing or mutation , as whose terminus is substance , ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , says aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is properly and simpl● generation . so fortunate are the arts and sciences when they engage for gods church against errour and falshood . but the best jest is yet behind , all the stir and bluster he makes and crowing over me is , because i say , the body of christ is made of the wafer , which is the v●ry language of the school-men and the fathers . for besides that conficere corpus christi is an usual phrase with t●em . st. ambrose plainly says , vbi accessit consecratio de pane sit christi caro . and again , scrmo christi creaturam mutat & ●ic ex pane fit corpus christi . the body or flesh of christ is made of the bread. which ex pane , according to my adversaries own sense , designs the material cause . and st. austin , corpus christi & sanguis virtute spiritûs sancti ex panis vinique substantia efficitur . the body and blood of christ is made of the substance of the bread and wine . no words can signifie the material cause more fully then these expressions . so that now my antagonist may clap his wings and crow over st. austin , and st. ambrose for their learned non-sense , as well as over me . thus unfortunate is humour , wit , and eloquence , when it will ingage against true religion , sound philosophy , and right reason . but he knows this was but a farce to the people , and does ingenuousl ▪ at last acknowledge he has said nothing as yet in answer to my argument , in that he says he does but now come to it . his answer to the argument from that logical and metaphysical principle , nothing can be and not be at the same time , in this sixth paragraph . i come now to his argument , saith he ; transubstantiation implies that the same thing is and is not at the same time . this , says he , i deny . first , because physicks have rendred it probable that a thing which actually is may be reproduced without losing its actual existence . and if we should say that christs body is thus reproduced in the sacrament , it will not follow that the body of christ is , and is not at once , viz. before the consecration ; but onely that it is by a first production , and is not by a second production till after the consecration . secondly , that when the host is converted into the body of christ , there is no necessity of the granting of the production of a new body which was not before , but onely that the body begins to be where it was not before . as in the augméntation of our bodies there is no need of a new soul , but the same soul occupies those parts of matter that have accrewed to the body in its augmentation . the first is verbatim out of him . the second answer contains the full strength of his own words . the reply . to the first answer i reply , that it has no basis , for physicks exhibit no such probability , nor has he nor can he produce the least instance thereof . but in the mean time it is worth the taking notice of in this answer , how well assured in his own mind , for all his external cavilling before , my adversary is , that the meaning of that proposition of mine , that that individual thing that can be and is to be made of any thing , is not , was intended by me of such things as which once made are not to be destroyed : or in such a sense as this , that that individual thing that can be made or is to be made of any thing , in that point of time that it is to be made , is not . which is an axiome noematically true . and therefore to say that a body is by a first production , but yet still remaining produced is to be again produced entirely , even while it remains produced , that is to say , that it remains produced already in that very point of time that it is to be produced , is plainly to confess that the very same individual thing is produced and not produced , or unproduced at the same time . for the terminus productionis is one and the same individual body a. now according to aristotle and the common sense of all men , all production whether accidental or essential has its contrary termes and proceeds à privatione ad actum , from privation to act. so that let a be accident or essence , a must be supposed not to be that it may become a , or be made a ; supposing a such an individual body , when it is to be produced the termini productionis are non-a and a. that which is to be made a , from not being a it becomes a. otherwise it being the same individual body and being before , it could not of not being this individual body become this individual body a , but onely a would be in a new place . which is no essential production as is here supposed , but onely local mutation ; and consequently the individual body a is not produced , when it is thus supposed reproduced . and therefore if it be really reproduced , as is pretended , it is a demonstration that it then was not . wherefore it being certain that our saviours body does not cease to be ; if transubstantiation be true that pretends it reproduced , it necessarily implies that it then is not . and therefore it plainly is and is not , according to that doctrine , at the same time . besides , if it were possible that a , suppose socrates , could be produced while socrates is in being , it can be no otherwise then thus , that is to say , that another man exquisitely socrates , to whom socrateity is fully and essentially communicated in all points , is also produced . but then this will also follow , that socrates is now become a genus , and this and that socrates are the species infimae of it , which we usually call individuals , and so they will not be idem numero but diversa numero and consequently not the same persons . and so the same individual socrates or the same individual a will be produced and not produced at the same breath . for things that differ numerically cannot be the same individuals . so impossible every way is this first fiction , and implies still the same repugnancy . for i● in the second production , the individual body of christ be produced , it necessarily argues that body before not to be his individual body , so that his body then was not , according to the doctrine of , transubstantia●ion , which yet certainly was , and therefore if that doctrine be true , it is again true , that the body of christ is and is not at the same time . to the second answer i reply , first , that it is apparently repugnant to the very definition of transubstantiation by the council of trent . which saith , ' that there is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of christ. which , say they , is fitly and properly called transubstantiation . but if there were no production of the body of christ , but onely the causing of it to be where it was not before , this would not be properly transubstantiation , but mutatio localis . but in the action of transubstantiation the terminus is substantia not locus , it being the transubstantiating one substance into another . secondly , if the body of christ be not produced , but there be onely mutatio localis ; the substance of the bread either remains or is annihilated . that the bread remains is expresly against the doctrine of the roman church . that it is annihilated , is to give the power of annihilation to a creature which is onely proper to god , and to supose that every consecration of the host annihilates so much of the matter of the universe ; which mustneeds seem very harsh and absurd to any unprejudiced judgement . besides that there is this palpable repugnancy in it , that whereas transubstantiation is said to be the conversion of all the substance of the bread into christs body , this plainly implies that there is the conversion of none at all into it , it being all annihilated and exterminated out of the universe . to say nothing of the accidents of the bread remaining after this annihilation , it being unconceivable where they should be subjected , or that any modes of substance should be separated from their substance , and exist without it . and then to what end it should be that the species of the bread should appear by the divine omnipotency , the substance of bread being annihilated . when it would conduce far more to our belief of the corporeal presence of christ , in lieu of the annihilated bread , if those species did not appear , or were so changed that they seemed much above the nature of ordinary bread. which things being not , it is a plain judication to the unprejudiced , that the bread is still bread after the consecration . else god would be found exercising his omnipotency , in exhibiting such perfest species of bread and wine in such a way as is most effectual to drive all christians to the misbelief of the pretended mystery of transubstantiation : which were a grand absurdity and incompe●ible to the divine wisdom and goodness , if that mystery were true . and thirdly and lastly , for his quaint allusion to the soul , which being the same yet extends it self into new parts of matter accrewing to the body in its augmentation ; it is a pretty offer of wit , but in my apprehension it extremely falls short of the present case . for the soul being still one and the same spirit undistanced from it self and uninterrupted can contract and extend it self within moderate bounds . but to imagine christs body in heaven by extending it self from thence to the earth upon every consecration of the host , continuedly , so to become present where it was not , is to make him even perpetuall● in a manner to have a monstrously big and mishapen body , stretched out into parts god knows how many thousand miles long , which any judicious minde and of a quick sense cannot but hugely abhor from thinking on . but this being not , he must either come down from heaven upon the consecration and annihilation of the bread , leaving heaven quite for the time , and ever and anon travail on earth , and so swiftly as to be in many places at once , and some many thousand miles distant one from another , which how absurd it is has been often intimated ; which also seems to clash with , acts . . or else as it were taking leave of himself in heaven and parting from himself and yet leaving himself behind he comes down to supply the room of the annihilated bread. orlastly , he is present in the room of the said bread , without at all passing from heaven to earth . both which seem altogether impossible and unconceivable , for how can one and the same body go from a place and yet leave it self entirely behind in the said place , and so as it were divide it self entirely from it self ? or how is it possible it should be found in two distant places , without passing at least as great a space as that which lyes directly betwixt ? these things are clearly and perfectly impossible . and if they were not , yet are they quite beside the cushion , this answer balking the doctrine of transubstantiation established by the council of trent . so plain is it every way , that neither this nor his former answer enervates any thing the force of my argument which proves that transubstantiation implies that the same thing is and is not at once . and therefore this argument together with all the former against transubstantiation , notwithstanding all the assaults of my adversary , remaining so manifestly strong and invincible , let the impartial reader judge whether i have cryed victory before my time or behaved my self any way in down-bearing words hector-like , as he says , and not rather like a true trojan , or to speak more properly in so weighty a cause , like a sincere christian , speaking the truth from my very heart , as i find it in the innate and indeleble characters writ by gods own finger in the understandings of all men that will open their eyes to read them , even those indubitable first principles of physicks , metaphysicks , mathematicks , and logick , and the common sense of all mankind , learned and unlearned . so far am i from those arts and sleights of men , who managing a wrong cause do swagger and vapour to set off a fals●ood . truth needs no such ill artifices of wit ; my adversary indeed swaggers much here in bearing us in hand that the difficulties of the trinity are equal or greater then these of transubstantiation , and so harpes again on the same string , but to this i have sufficiently answered above , and yet it may be i may touch upon it again in the close of my next reply . his answer to the eight paragraph touching costerus the jesuite . my antagonist does altogether decline saying any thing to my seventh paragraph , which i desire my reader considerately to peruse , and observe the great judgement and discretion of my opponent in so doing . but to that about costerus in this eighth paragraph he answers thus . here is , saith he , the ground of costerus his concession , that if the true body of christ be not in the sacrament of the eucharist , the church of rome in that point is in such errour and idolatry as never was seen or heard of . namely , because christ then had dealt unworthily with his church , in leaving them to fall into such idolatry by occasion of his own words , and by consequence would not be the true christ ; and therefore the adoration of the eucharist would be not onely a mistake as to the circumstance but also as to the object , there being no such adorable object in the world as a true christ according to this supposition , and so the cultus latriae would be exhibited to a meer creature . and adds , that if transubstantiation can be proved a meer figment he will willingly grant as much as costerus to the full . this is the main of his answer and the full strength thereof . the reply . this is an adventurous answer indeed which hazards the divinity of christ , nay the making him an impostor and all the churches of christendom single idolaters at least , and themselves double idolaters , who then worship not onely a meer man , but the symbolical presence of a meer man , which is double idolatry by conclusion th . chap. . but this is a cunning though a very evil fetch of my adversary meerly to elude the testimony of costerus , viz that the divinity of christ standing , and he still acknowledged the true christ , ●et the adoration of the eucharist is idolatry , un●●s transubstantiation be true . which most certainly is the sense of costerus in that place , chap. . n. . nor did he dream of any such consequence as my adversary pins upon him ; as if he meant that then christ would not be the true christ if transubstantiation were not true , and that thence the idolatry would proceed . but i will set the whole argumentation of costerus before my readers eyes , and let him judge , whether his argument be such as my adversary pretends . if in the sacrament of the eucharist the true body of christ be not contained , christ dealt unworthily with his church , whom throughout the world for years together , he has by occasion of his own words left in such errour and idolatry as was never in the whole world seen or heard of . and then follows that which i have cited in this eighth paragraph . for the errours of those , &c. which makes up the whole argument . where i observe , first , that there is not the least men ion or intimation , that christ would not be christ if his words , this is my body , did not signifie properly but ●iguratively , but rather firmely supposing him to be christ , he would not do any thing so unworthy of his own office and dignity ▪ as to use words in such a way as should occasion the church to plunge into so foul idolatry for so long a time ; acknowledging that it would be idolatry though he were the true christ , but that he being so would not use such words but in their proper sense , that he might not occasion that idolatry . i say in the first place , there is no such thing in this place of costerus as my antagonist puts upon him . and then secondly i affirm , that no man in his wits could be so devoid of either reason or piety , as to say , in good earnest , that if these words of christ , this is my body , be to be understood figuratively , and not literally or properly , christ is an impostor , that is , is not the true christ , which is expresly the sense which my antagonist would pin upon this passage of costerus . for first it is well known that it is usual in the hebrew idiome , in which christ spake , as it is not unfrequent also in other tongues , to use the verb substantive [ est ] when the subject and predicate in a proposition is signum and significatum , or if you will when the subject and predicate are those arguments which logicians call similia . so our saviour ●ays elsewhere , i am the vine , i am the door . and st. paul says , cor. . the rock was christ ; besides the examples i have produced in the foregoing paragraph . will any body therefore that has the least dram of reason or religion in him , when , ( this is my body ) may so naturally , and according to the idiome of the ●ongue signifie , this is the sign or symbol of my body , or this is the representation of my body , that is to be broken or crucified for you , affirm , that unless it signifie , this is my very body indeed , flesh , blood , and bones , christ must be an impostor ? nay when christ himself so plainly affirms , ( mat●h . . . ) that it is bread for he affirms of that bread which he had used no consecration to , that even that was his body . indeed if he had first done something to it for the transmutation of it , and then taken it up and said , this is my body , here had been more colour of pretence , that it was not ordinary bread. but he says of this bread as yet unconsecrated , that it is his body , and therefore he plainly affirms , that bread remaining still really bread is his body , which can be in no sense so but in a figurative one , that is to say , that it is the sign or symbol of his body ; wherefore when our saviour does so plainly affirm , that the bread is but the symbol of his body , is it any fault in him , that the church of rome or any lapsed church else will so perversly and absurdly understand it , as if it were the very body of christ it self upon consecration ? as if our saviour christ had declared it so to be ? and besides this affirmation of our saviour we may add the attestation of his evangelists , whom he lead into all truth . does not st. luke expresly say , c●ap . . . he took bread and gave thanks and brake and gave it to them saying , this is my body which was given for you , do this in remembrance of me . what can possibl● be more plain then this ? he gave what he brake , he brake what he took , and what he took was bread , and of this bread which he gave , brake and took , he says , this is my body ; wherefore it is evident that of the bread he pronounced , according to the testimony of st. luke , that it was his body . but bread cannot be his body otherwise then symbolically , or by way of token or remembrance , and therefore he adds , do this in remembrance of me . now memory is not of things present but of things absent . all which circumstances do so emphatically import , that the bread is but still a sign not the body of christ himself , that the most cautious lawyer could scarce express any ones mind in a conveyance more certainly and expresly . and yet our saviour must be an impostor if he did not mean by this is my body , this is my real body , the same that hung upon the cross , and was born of the virgin mary . can there be any thing more injurious to christ and christian religion then this ? add unto all this , that besides that christ himself and the evangelists declare that it is bread and not the natural body of christ , it is demonstratively impossible to be so , and openly repugnant to all our senses , which alone would assoile our saviour from being an impostor , the words being easily to be understood in a figurative sense . but i hope by this , my adversary blushes that 〈◊〉 has pinned so uncouth and incredible a sense on this argument of costerus , and will acknowledge that costerus used this argument onely as a probability ; namely , that christ being so certainly the true christ , it is not probable that he would deal so unworthily with his church as by these words , this is my body , occasion so great idolatry in this artolatria , or bread worship continued so long in it , and that therefore it is not bread , but the real body of christ ; which yet is as well argued or rather far worse , then if the anthropomorphites of old should have argued thus : that certainly god would not have dealt so unworthily with his church , as to occasion so hideous an errour and blasphemy , that the eternal god has limbes and shape like a man , from those words , let us make man after our own image , if so be he have not so . and that therefore he has the lineaments and shape of a man. but besides this , where there is no pretense from scripture to any such thing , it is plain that the church for as long a time have defiled themselves with the invocation of saints and worshipping of images , which are gross idolatries as well as this ; nay indeed when the scripture is expresly against it . which yet , if you will believe the romanists themselves , have possessed the church as many hundred years as this worshipping of the eucharist , though they be all really innovations upon the lapse of the church , as the skilfull in antiquity do abundantly prove . and for this gross errour of transubstantiation , it was not confirmed by any council till about after christ. wherefore what an intolerable injury and calumny is it against the sacred person of christ , to cast this bread-worship upon him , as if by the occasion o● his words it was introduced , when indeed both against his words and against all sense and reason the lapse and corruption of the church has broug●t it in with other idolatrous opinions and mispractises . but when all this is so , to say christ is not christ , that is , that christ is an impostor , if these words , this is my body , be not literally to be understood , as if it were his very true natural body , flesh , blood , and bones , i leave to any one to judge , if it be not so groundless and so hideous a reproach , that it will be hard to find any name ill enough for it . and here i profess , i cannot but stand i●finitely astonish'd at the bold rhetorick of my adversary , and such like patrons of the roman cause : who for the swaggering of the credulous people into a belief of transubstantiation , do not stick to own it as reasonable and certain as that iesus is the messias , or that the mystery of the holy trinity is true . when as the mystery of the holy trinity has been no less then three or four times confirmed by general councils in the more pure times of the church , before her grand apostasy , and christ always held the true messias , nor can it be doubted but he is so by any that is a christian ; and may be demonstrated to be so to any that do doubt , if they approve themselves but idoneous auditors . nor can there be any reason or demonstration brought against the mystery of the holy trinity , ●o far forth as the scripture and the ancient councils have defined any thing therein ; but the triunity of the eternal deity has seemed to the best and wisest philosophers so reasonable and venerable a tradition , that without any force or fear of any external power , they have embraced it of themselves and spoken many things therein very cons●nant to the christian verity . and therefore this myster● , though it be competently obscure , whereby it becomes more venerable , to say it is as repugnant and as impossible to reason as transubstantiation , whenas it was confirmed by so many general councils in the purer times of the church , and intimated by so many places of scripture , as also is the divinity of christ most expresly and indubitably , and his messias-ship not questioned bv any christian ; to set these fundamentals of our religion on the same tickle point , nay on the same impossible point that transubstantiation stands upon , not countenanced by any council , till about four or five hundreds years ago , and repugnant to scripture and common sen●e , and to the very first principles of all solid knowledge and science , were it not charitably to be interpreted a ranting piece of rhetorick to befool the ●ulgar ; as if they would say , as sure as christ is the messias and that the mystery of his divinity and of the triunity of the godhead is true , transubstantiation is so ; it● ere either a careless disregard what became of christianity , or a subdolous and operose endeavour of betraying it , and oblique insinuation , that transubstantiation and the rest of those mysteries of our religion are alike false and impossible . but i hope better things of my adversary , and that he is rather an over officious propugner of a beloved falshood , and of so great interest to his church , then a sly impugner or betrayer of these sacred truths . and now , i hope , i have fully cleared all the objections that my antagonist has brought against this third chapter , or any paragraph therein : so that it remains invincible and unshaken , that the opinion of transubstantiation is not onely false but impossible , and consequently the adoration of the eucharist palpable idolatry . which my adversary himself cannot deny , no more than franciscus c●sterus who has so expresly affirmed it , as i have shewed in this eighth paragraph . as for that further o●fer towards a plausibilility for the truth of transubstantiation , ( for the mystery of the holy trinity wants no such small apologies ) that the seeming impossibility thereof , is an argument of its being a doctrine divinely inspired , and that that saying rightly here takes place , the more incredible the more credible : these are fine lullaby-songs to be sung to babies half asleep ; but we have most evidently demonstrated , even as clear as noon-day , that transubstantiation is not a seeming impossibility but a palpable and real one . and as for that saying , the more incredible the more credible , it is a foundation so large , that all the figments , even the most extravagant of all the religions of the world may equally be founded upon it , and by how much more incredible and impossible any figment , is by so much the more stronger faith it ought to obtain , and may the more firmly be supported by this foundation . for the more impossible the more incredible , the more incredible the more credible . as for example , the more incredible it is that mahomet put the moon into his bosome , and that it came out at each sleeve divided into two , and that he straitways sodered it together , and sent it back whole to heaven again , the more incredible this story is , the more credible it is . that is , saith my antagonist , ( for he explains this venerable aphorism ) by how much the more incredible the mystery is ; if we onely consult our senses and the bare sentiments of the natural man , by so much the more credible it is that there lyes a divine revelation at the bottom . cannot the mahumetan defend his religion as wisely as thus from this ground ? it is not a sign of our meer natural or unregenerate estate when we will not nor can believe things that are apparently repugnant to the indeleble principles of natural understanding . but it is a sign of their being the slaves of the man of sin in a doub ●esense , who can swallow such gudgeons . for for this cause god sends them strong delusions , saith the apostle , ( thes. . ) that they may believe alye , because they love not the truth but have pleasure in unrighteousness . but ( iohn . . ) if the son makes us free by his spirit of real regeneration , then are we free indeed , even from all such impostures as these , while the world ( apoc. . . ) wonders after the boast , and the strange stories that he utters . but we know who those are that are excluded out of the holy city , even every one that ( apoc. . . ) loves and makes a lye , and those certainly are none of the regenerate . and who should those be that love and embrace l●es , but those that take up such principles that they cannot discern a lye or withhold their assent from it ? for the more impossible , which should turn any mans stomach from believing , makes it but the more incredible , and the more incredible the more credible . but we have harped too long on a string which will sound over harsh to such ears as are less accustomed to truth . my main purpose i had dispatch'd before , but i could not but say something to the fine popular fetches of my adversarie , who cunningly insinuates into the minds of the unskilfull and simple , that it is a sign of a more then ordinary religious and regenerate estate , far removed above the meer natural man , to believe things that are plainly and apertly repugnant to the light of nature and right reason . for this is such a gap as may let in the grossest falsities and immoralities that can be invented , and that upon the shew of religion and supernaturality . for giving up their faith to their priest and his church , the more incredible the act to be good or doctrine true , the more credible . what therefore may not men be brought to believe and act upon so unsound a principle ? i pass now to his fourth section , which encounters all my three next chapters at once . chap. iv. the gross idolatry of the romanists in the invocation of the saints even according to the allowance of the council of trent , and the authorized practice of that church . . but we will fall also upon those modes of idolatry wherein the church of rome may seem less bold ; though indeed this one , that is so gross , is so often and so universally repeated every-where in the roman church , that by this alone , though we should take notice of nothing farther , idolatry may seem quite to have overspread her like a noisom leprosy . but , how-ever , we shall proceed ; and first to their invocation of saints . touching which the council of trent declares this doctrine expresly : sanctos utique unà cum christo regnantes orationes suas pro hominibus offerre , bon●mque atque utile esse suppliciter eos invocare ; & ob beneficia impetranda à deo per filium ejus jesum christum , ad eorum oratines , operam auxiliumque confugere . where invocation of saints is plainly allow'd and recommended : and besides their praying for us , or offering up our prayers to god , it is plainly imply'd that there are other aids and succours they can afford , if they be supplicated , that is , invoked with most humble and prostrate devotion . and the pretending that this is all but the way of procuring those good things we want from god , the first fountain , and that through his son ●hrist ; that makes the saints the more exactly like the pagans dii medioxumi , and the daemons that negotiated the affairs of men with the highest deity . . i say then that , though they went no farther then thus , even this is down-right idolatry which the council of trent thus openly owns , ( and consequently the whole church of rome , ) as appears from the third , fourth , fifth , sixth and eighth conclusions of the first chapter ; as also by the fifth , seventh , eighth , tenth , eleventh , twelfth , thirteenth , fourteenth , fifteenth and twenty-fourth of the second . but if we examine those prayers that are put up to the saints , their invocation is still the more unexcusable . . wherefore looking to the publick practise of the church of rome , authorised by the popes themselves , the invocation of a saint does not consist in a meer ora pro nobis , as people are too forward to phansy that the state of the question , ( though the meer invoking of them to pray for us would be idolatry , as is already proved : ) but , which is insinuated in the council it self , there are other more particular aids and succours that they implore of them , and some such as it is proper for none but god or christ to give : such as protection from the devil , divine graces , and the joys of paradise . but as the things they ask of the saints are too big for them to be the disposers of ; so the compellations , of the virgin mary especially , are above the nature of any creature . whence this invocation of saints will appear a most gross and palpable mode of idolatry in that church . as i shall make manifest out of the following examples , taken out of such pieces of dèvotion as are not mutter'd in the corners of their closets , but are publickly read or sung with stentorian voices in their very churches . i will onely give the reader a taste of this kind of their idolatry ; for it were infinite to produce all we might . . and first , to begin with the smaller saints , ( as indeed they are all to be reckoned in comparison of the blessed virgin , to whom therefore they give that worship which they call hyperdulia , as they give dulia to the rest of the saints , and latria to god alone , and to christ as being god : ) that prayer to s. cosmas and s. damian is plainly a petition to them to keep us from all diseases , as well of soul as of body , that we may attain to the life of the spirit , and live in grace here , and be made partakers of heaven hereafter . o medici piissimi , qui meritis clarissimi in coelis refulgetis , a peste , clade corporum pr●servetis , & operum , moribus nè langueamus : nec moriamur spiritu , sed animae ab obitu velociter surgamus ; et vivamus in gratia , sacra coeli palatia donec regrediamur . . such a piece of devotion as this is that to s. francis : sancte francisce , properè veni ; pater , accelera ad populum , qui premitur & territur sub onere , palea , luto , latere , & sepultos aegyptio sub sabulo nos libera , carnis extincto vitio . which is plainly a prayer to this saint that he would deliver us from the bondage and drudgery of sin , which is onely in the power of our great saviour and redeemer christ for to do . that invocation of s. andrew is also for that spiritual grace of duly bearing the cross here , that we may obtain heaven afterwards . iam nos foveto languidos , curámque nostrî suscipe , qu● per crucis victoriam coeli pet●mus gratiam . but that to s. nicolas is against the assaults of the devil : ergò piè nos exaudi assistentes tu● laudi , nè subdamur hostis fraudi , nobis fer auxilia . nos ab omni malo ducas , vitâ rectâ nos conducas , post ●anc vitam nos inducas ad aeterna gaudia . the like devotion is done to s. martin , s. andrew , s. iames , s. bartko●omew , and others , though not in the same words . . when i have given an example or two of their prayers put up to their she-saints , ● shall a little more copiously insist on those to the blessed virgin. they beg of s. agnes the greatest grace that god is able to impart to the soul of man , that is to say , to serve god in perfect love. and this gift this one poor single she-saint is solicited to bestow on all men . ave , agnes gloriosa me in fide serves recta , dulcis virgo & dilecta , te exoro precibus : charitate da perfectâ deum , per quem es electa , colere piè omnibus . that devotion put up to s. br●gitt is , that she would play the skilfull pilot , and lead us through all the tempests and hazzards of this world so safely , that at last , by her good conduct , we may attain to everlasting life . the rhyme runs thus : o bregitta , mater bona , dulcis ductrix & matrona , nobis fer suffragia ; naufragantes in hoc mari tuo ductu salutari duc ad vitae bravia . . but that to s. cath●rine is a piece of devotion something of an higher strain , or rather more copious and express : but so great a boon they beg of her as is in the power of none to give but god alone . ave , virgo dei digna , christo prece me consigna , audi preces , praesta votum ; cor in bono fac immotum . confer mi●i cor contritum ; rege visum & auditum : r●ge gustum & ●lfactum , virgo sancta , rege tactum . vt in cunctis te regente , vivam deo pur● mente . christum pro me interpella , salva mortis de procella . superare fac me mundum , nè demergar in profundum , nè me sinas naufragari per peccata in hoc mari. visita tu me infirmum , et in bonis fac me firmum . agonista dei fortis , praestò sis in hora mortis . decumbentem fove , leva , et de morte solve saeva ; vt resurgam novus homo civis in coelesti domo . . now it is observable in this devotional rhyme to s. catharine , that whereas the council of trent advises men , ad sanctorum orationes , opem auxiliumque confugere , that in these many verses there are not passing two or three that are an entreating of the saint to pray for us , but to aid and succour us in such a way as the story of the saint and the allusion to her name most naturally leads the phancy of the devotionist to think sutable for her : as if she were the giver of courage , of patience , and of purity of mind , and was to comfort and support us in the very agony of death by her presence . which petition is very frequent to other saints also . so plain a thing is it , that this invocation of the saints is not a mere desiring of them to pray for us . but here the devotionist commits the whole regimen of both his soul and body unto this saint , to rule all his faculties and senses , and begs so high vertues and graces , as that none but god can supply us with them ; as i intimated at first . whence the invocation upon that very account also must appear most grosly idolatrous , as gro●ius , who yet is no such foe to the papists , does expresly acknowledge and declare . chap. iv. his answer to the first and second paragraphs in this chapter . this the doctor ( namely what the council of trent has defined in the first paragraph ) termes the making the saints more exactly like the pagans dii medioxumi , and the daemons that negotiated the affairs of men with the highest deity . now to prove that this kind of invocation of saints is down right idolatry , and by consequence that we are worshippers of false gods , he conjures up a spirit , which ●or it s many names and bad qualities may well be termed legion , viz. the third , fourth , fifth , sixth , and eighth conclusions of the first chapter . as also , the fifth , seventh , eighth , tenth , eleventh , twelfth , thirteenth , fourteenth , fifteenth , and twenty fourth conclusions of the second chapter . but i ●ope my answer to these conclusions , in the first and second section of this discourse , will prove exorcisme enough to lay this foul unclean spirit of ●alumny , and silence its impertinencies . the reply . this answer would recommend it self from a scheme of confidence and unexpected piece o● drollery ; he phancying , as it seems , every n●mber writ in words at length , of the fifteen conclusions i refer to in my second paragraph , so many figures cast to conjure up a legion of devils . but he must remember that there are legions of good angels also , and that such were those that michael was general over when he fought against the red dragon . and these conclusions of mine do fight against the red dragon revived , that idolatry too too paganical ( though gilded over with the fair pretense of christianity ) that is so visible in the church of rome . so that if these conclusions be a legion , they are a legion under michael and therefore good angels , and victorious as his were notwithstanding the boast of my adversary . for i have most clearly proved above , that he has produced nothing to enervate them . and therefore these conclusions remaining firm , even according to my adversaries own concession that which i declare in this second paragraph is firm also , viz. that what the council of trent doth openly own in my first paragraph is down right idolatry . for my adversary has no way to avoid it but by recourse to his confuations of the above said conclusions . which i have apparently demonstrated already to be no confutations at all , in my replies to them , which is needless here to repeat . and therefore i go on to his further answers to these three chapters , which are all of them in a manner in general : as first , his first general answer touching the fourth , fifth , and sixth chapters of my antidote . in the rest of his fourth and two ensuing chapters , saith he , the doctor acts a new person . for laying aside his former conclusions and demonstrations , he trades now wholly in quotations , languishing or doting about questions and strife of words . the reply . i perceive nothing by my self but that i am the same person still , but having out of the conclusions named in the second paragraph demonstrated such an invocation of saints , as the council of trent approves of and requires , to be down right idolatry , which common people pretend to be no more than an ora pro nobis , which yet is idolatry too ; i go on not languishing , but hail and hearty , i thank god , nor doting at all i hope , but rationally deducing from the forms of invocation used in the roman church , that they naturally and plainly signifie more than an ora pro nobis . and it is the force and distorsion that my adversary and his party ordinarily use to excuse these things , that raises questions and strife of words ; when if they did not use this art and force to distort the sense of them , there could be no strife at all . his second general answer . amongst these quotations we are to meet with a great dearth of reason : three entire chapters having much ado to furnish out matter for one argument , and that a poor one , god knows . the reply . every form of invocation is a reason for the conclusion i aim at , which is to prove from either the manner of compellation , or from the nature of the objects of the prayers made to the saints , that the invocation is idolatry , and a crass kind of one too . how then is the argument but one ? and how a poor one ? this is plainly intimated in the third paragraph of this fourth chapter . his third general answer . my business is , saith he , to lay down and amuse my reader with a number of let forms of invocation of saints , scarce ever mentioning the churches publick prayers and liturgies , litany , canonical hours , pontifical or ritual , but the rosary of our lady and the mary psalter . the reply . i thought it sufficient in my third paragraph to signifie in general , that the examples i give are taken out of such pieces of devotion as are not muttered in the corners of their closets , but are publickly read or sung with stentorian voices in their very churches . i suppose my antagonist does not expect i should set down in what churches they are sung , but to what saints , which may be done in several churches . his fourth general answer . as to the fidelity of his quotations , saith he , i can neither accuse nor acquit him . but i shall allow him all the fair play in the world by supposing his allegations to be true , and freely take them upon trust : though his carriage hitherto gives no great cause to suspect him guilty of too much candor in that kind . the reply . to which i briefly reply , that i have set down all things in this book bonâ fide , without any design of imposing any way upon any one , writing nothing , but what i am in my own conscience perswaded to be true . nor can imagine what my adversary should mean by saying , that his carriage hitherto gives no great cause to suspect him guilty of too much candor in that kind . i would not do any thing of this kind knowingly and wittingly for any thing in the world. how ingenuously he deals with me in this , let his own conscience tell him ; which he seems to indeavour to satisfie by the equivocalness of the calumny . his fifth general answer . that since the new charge of idolatry from all these forms of invocation of the virgin mary and other saints is this , that their suppliants ask of them such things as are onely in the power of our great saviour and redeemer iesus christ to grant , let us single out , saith he , one of the most harsh sounding forms of invocation that is to be found in all the three chapters , suppose domina salvum me fac , blessed lady save me , and if this may admit of an orthodox sense , and that by clear warrant from scripture , then i hope the rest that are not so seemingly unjustifiable as this , may in all reason be excused from that odious epithet of idolatrous . now , says he , it is very possible , that he that makes this form of invocation a piece of his litany , domina salvum me fac , blessed lady save me , may be in no more danger of idolatry thereby than st. paul was when writing to the romans ( rom. . . ) he uttered these words , if by any means i may provoke to emulation those which are of my flesh and might save some of them . or when he speaks to the corinthians ( cor. . . ) i am made all things to all men that by any means i may save some . and therefore if any well-meaning suppliant had prayed to the apostle in this very form of prayer , holy apostle save me ; what idolatry had it been to petition st. paul for a favour which he professed himself both ready and able to grant . for here the apostle clearly supposeth in himself not onely the will but the power of saving souls . my adversary uses larger circuits and ambages of wit and rhetorick , but this is the very substance of his argument , and such as wherewith he would elude the force of all my cited formes of their invocation of saints . but how well he can effect it we shall see in the process of the matter . the reply . i reply therefore , that though my antagonist have used a great deal of plausible wit and smoothmouthed eloquence , yet what he has said is far from solid truth . for to omit for the present that this form of praying , domina salvum me fac , is not the harshest passage in all my quotations , yet it is so harsh that those sayings of st. paul to the romans and corinthians will not justifie it . for we must remember that st. paul elsewhere says , cor. . . that paul may plant and apollos may water but god gives the increase ; whereby he plainly declares it not to be in his power nor in any ones power else to save a man from eternal death . but that it is in the power of god alone . and therefore it is evident that in those places he professes onely that he used all the means he could or the most seasonable he could to save them but no logick will ever evince , that therefore he thought it to be or that it was in his power to save them he speaks of , but onely to use his best indeavour in his subordinate way of action and leave the success to god. and therefore it is rashly and falsly imputed to the apostle both against his own profession and against the truth of the thing , namely , that he clearly supposes in himself not onely the will but the power of saving souls ; which are the very words of my antagonist . and i do not question , but if any one had in his time been so silly or wicked as to have kneeled to st. paul with eyes and hands lifted up to him and said , holy apostle save me , he would have rent his garments and protested against it as an enormous and idolatrous petition , and have been carryed with a great deal of zeal and indignation against so sinfull an action ; as iacob was moved against rachel , when she said to him , gen. . give me children or else i dye . to whom the patriarch replied with much anger , what am i in gods sted ? intimating what an impious and idolatrous act it was , so bluntly and absolutely to ask that of him which was onely in the power of god to give . lo , children and the fruit of the womb are an heritage and gift that cometh of the lord , saith the psalmist , psal. . . how much more then is it , to be made a child of god and an inheriter of eternal salvation . this is in no mortals power to give and therefore cannot be asked of any creature without impiety and idolatry by conclusion the th . chapter . and therefore , holy paul save me , could not but have seemed to the apostle a petition blasphemous and idolatrous , nor could he have well born that compellation of holy apostle without some reproof like that of our saviour to him that called him good master , mat. . . why callest thou me good , there is none good but onely god. but we out of the rash idea's of our own corrupt minds phancy such things gratefull or tolerable to the apostle , which would really have proved horrid and intolerable to him . his sixth general answer . but yet as if the apostle had in himself the power of saving souls , ( they are his own words ) and as if this petition , holy apostle save me , were a lawfull and blameless petition , he further would improve the supposition thus , that forasmuch notwithstanding as the apostle has not in himself the power of saving souls , in the quality of a god , but as instrumental to their salvation by his prayers and preaching , it is manifest that holy apostle save me , can signify no more than holy apostle teach me the way of salvation , or holy apostle pray for my salvation : and yet this form of , holy apostle save me , being legitimate , it will follow that , ( taking our measures from the apostles o●n words and meaning ) blessed lady save me , will also be a lawfull form of prayer , it signifying no more , than blessed lady pray for my salvation . and so all the forms of prayer , saith he , assigned by the doctor taken in the sense of the apostle will amount to no more than a meer ora pro nobis . and thus with her in the proverbs , prov. . . he has neatly wiped , as he makes show , his own mouth , and the mouth of his party , and says , we have done no wickednss . the reply . there are two things asserted in this answer , first , that all the forms of invocation that i have recited in these three chapters amount to no more than a meer ora pro nobis . and then , that this is deducible from such grounds . now as to the first , as i shall more particularly confute that assertion , when i shall afterwards run through the paragraphs of these chapters , so i shall here in general intimate that the assertion is plainly repugnant to the very words of the council of trent : which says , that it is good and profitable ad sanctorum orationes , opem , auxiliumque confugere , where besides their prayers and intercessions , there are other helps and assistences intimated . and therefore these forms of invocation i have recited in these chapters , mentioning other help and assistence , besides their praying and interceding for their suppliants , how is it possible but according to the indication of the council they understand these helps and assistences , as things distinct from their meer interceding or praying for us . but now i further say , that the grounds here offered of this assertion , will not hold . for first i have already proved , that the apostle does not affirm any power in himself of saving souls , there being no such power in him ; nor his words to the romans and corinthians implying any such thing , and himself elsewhere professing against it . so that he has not the power of saving of souls in himself , neither in the quality of a god , nor in any sense . for to have the power of saving of souls in himself as an instrument , is a repugnancy , and plainly implies that he has not the power of saving of souls in himself , no more then a chissel has of carving in it self , or a pencil of limming , or an harp or lute of playing a lesson . and therefore , holy apostle save me , would be as good sense as , lute or harp play me a lesson . indeed david says , psalm . . awake lute and harp. but then by a seasonable epanorthosis he straitway adds , i my self will awake right early : for if he get not up before them and finger them , they will certainly lye dumb and silent . and so is the very word whether writ or spoken by the apostle or others ; so are all prayers put up by any one , if the spirit does not assist and god say amen to their prayers , all is ineffectual , all is as perfect dumbness and silence as in an instrument hung up against the wall . besides that the mere praying to another that a thing may be granted is a plain argument , that the thing is not in that parties power that so devoutly askes it . so that though there be a great deal of fineness and subtilty in these arguments of my adversary , yet we see they are plainly intangled and contradict one another . and therefore it is not sense , bluntly and absolutely to ask that of one that is not in his power to give , but onely to try and intreat it , if he can so procure it of another . it is manifest therefore , that holy apostle save me , and blessed lady save me , are groundless and incongruous forms of speech , and plainly ●ignifie that to be asked of a creature which is not in the power of any to give but god alone . ( iohn . . no man comes to me unless my father draw him , ) and consequently the implying that to be in the creature which onely is in the creatour , are idolatrous forms of speech by the eighth conclusion of the second chapter . and thus we see my adversary is far from proving by this fetch , that all the forms of invocation which i have recited amount to no more than an ora pro nobis . which though it were true , as it is most manifestly false , yet the reader is to remember , they are down right idolatry by the second paragraph of this chapter . and most paganically so while these petitions are put up before the image , at the altar , and in the temple dedicated to this or that saint . and thus i have fully replied in the general to the general answers of my antagonist to these three chapters , which are all the answers he has given . i shall take occasion to make some more particular replies to some of them as i run through the paragraphs of these chapters , especially in reference to his last general answer and his second , proving plainly , that the sense of these invocations are more than an ora pro nobis . and that greater things are asked and greater compellations used then are competible to mere creatures to give , or be invocated by . in the mean time it is plain , that the rest of his fourth section falls of it self by vertue of what has already been spoken . vpon the fourth paragraph . in this prayer to st. cosmas and st. damian it is observable how the devotion is framed with a sutableness to the condition of the saints when they dwelt on earth . and therefore cosmas and damian having been of the faculty of physick here , they are made to retain it still , but in an higher degree and to have the power of curing both body and soul , as if by their merits they had obtained such a privilege from god. and that souls departed are exercised about such things as they were taken up with in this life , was also the opinion of the ancient heathen , as you may see in virgil , plutarch , maximus tyrius , and others . people may find evasions for any thing , but considering the council of trent mentions ayds and assistences distinct from their intercessions , and the second council of nice , to which the council of trent attributes so much to , produces instances hereof , any one that has but half an eye will easily discern this meaning i have given to be true . and that the invocation of these saints is not a meer ora pro nobis , but the craving of them such peculiar ayds and helps as are supposed proper for them to give ; contrary to my antagonists last general answer . vpon the fifth paragraph . which is also manifest out of the invocation of st. francis in this next paragraph , sancte francisce properè veni , &c. for st. francis being desired to hast and come to his people plainly intimates it is not a mere ora pro nobis ; ( for that he might , one would think , most conveniently perform in heaven before the face of god ) but by his presence and assistence to his suppliant to deliver him from the ●oul bondage and burden of sin ; carnis extincto vitio , he himself having been such an eminent example of mortification here on earth , and therefore being now endewed with a peculiar power of helping men to mortifie sin and to deliver them from that bondage , accordingly as was observed in the former petition . which is a boon too great for any but christ himself to give . so that it is gross idolatry on that account also . st. andrew's being crucified on the cross is supposed likewise to have intitled him to the right and power of inabling men to bear the cross. but whether st nicolas was famous also for incountring the devil in his life time i know not . what has been said already on this paragraph is sufficient to prove that the invocation of saints are not a mere ora pro nobis . vpon the sixth paragraph . that prayer to st. agnes is both for a boon alone to be given by god , and is plainly directed to her in a form so far from an ora pro nobis , that it is , te ex●ro pr●cibus . i pray you to keep me in the right faith , or , grant you that all may serve god in perfect charity . and so the prayer to st. brigitt calls her , dulcis ductrix , and says , tuo ductu salutari duc ad vitae bravia . by your safe guidance bring us to the reward of everlasting life . which can by no ways be reduced to an ora pro nobis , which may be a further reply to his second and last generall answer . vpon the seventh paragraph . upon this paragraph or the hymn to st. c● tharine in it , i need say no more than i have already said in my next paragraph concerning it , which my reader may considera●ly read over , and then observe with himself not onely touching this present invocation but also the former , how fully that of the council of trent ad sanctorum orationes , opem auxiliumque confugere , agrees with their forms of invocation to saints , which is not onely to pray for them , but to give them further ayds and assistences according to the proper privileges that they are supposed by their merits to have obtained , and some so great , that they belong onely to god , whence the grosness of the idolatry is further argued , and a further reply made to his second and last general answers . but for the intitling of the saints to a power of assisting correspondent to some action , or condition of life of theirs here , i have observed in several other forms of invocation in their hortulus animae printed at dilinga , cum facultate superiorum : as to st. thomas , o glorious toucher of the wounds of our lord iesus , do thou vouchsafe to establish us thy suppliants in the faith of him whom by touching , thou deservedst , to acknowledge to he god. and to st. ambrose , o most blessed bishop and greatest doctor ambrose , who teachest the safe way , guide thou the course of my life , &c. and to st. austin , o glorious light of the church help us to profit in the precepts of god , and in thy doctrine , &c. where it is again observable , they make their direct addresses to these saints , and upon account of what it is peculiar for them to help them in , and that it is not a mere ora pro nobis , but in the mean time abundantly conformable to the words of the council of trent . chap. v. forms of invocation of the blessed virgin used by the church of rome egregiously idolatrous . . and if they can contain themselves no better in their devotions towards these lesser saints , to whom their church-men will allow onely the worship they call dulia , how wilde and extravagant will they shew themselves in their addresses to the virgin mary , the mother of god , to whom they allow the worship they call hyperdulia ? and that is the thing i will now take notice of , though not according to the copiousness of the s●bject ; for it would even fill a volume . but some instances i will produce , and those such as are publick and authentick , as i intimated at first . in the rosary of the blessed virgin she is saluted thus : reparatrix & salvatrix desperan●is animae , irroratrix & largitrix spiruualis gratiae , quod requiro , quod suspiro , mea sana vulnera , et da menti te poscenti gratiarum munera ; ●t sim c●stus , & modestus , dulcis , fortis , sobrius , ●●us , rectu , circumspectus , simultatis nescius , eruditus , & munitus divinis eloquiis , constans , gravis , & suavis , benignus , amabilis , ●orde prudens , ore studens veritatem dicere , malum nolens , deum volens pio semper opere . a very excellent prayer , if it had been directed to a due object . but such things are asked as are in the power of none but of iesus christ himself , as he is god , to give . . for the virgin mary is here made no less then a saviour and giver of all spiritual graces ; as she is also a giver of eternal life in what follows in prose . peccatorum consolatrix , infirmorum curatrix , errantium rev●catrix , justorum confirmatrix , desolatorum spes & auxiliatrix , atque mea promptissima adjutrix , tibi , domina gloriosa , commendo ●odie & quotidie animam meam ▪ ut me in custodiam tuam commendatum ab omnibus malis & fraudibus diaboli custodias , atque in ●ora mortis constanter mihi assistas , ac animam ad aeterna gaudia perducas . here is the commending of the soul of the devotionist into the protection of the virgin , that he may be kept from all evil , and from the frauds of the devil , and that she would assist at the hour of death to convey his soul to the eternal joys of heaven . . like that at the end of the rosary ; cor meum illumina , fulgens stella maris , et ab hostis machina semper tuearis . o gloriosa virgo maria , mater regis aeterni , libera nos ab omni malo , & a poenis i●ferni . which is a petition for illumination of heart , for security from the devil and from eternal death : which is onely the privilege of the son of god , the eternal wisdom of the father , to grant , who is said also ( apoc. . . ) to have the keys of hell and of death . . but the thing which is very observable , and which i mainly drive at , is this , that the roman church toward the latter end , before the reformation broke out , had run so mad after the patronage of the virgin , that they had almost forgot the son of god , and spent all their devotions on her , whom they do at least equalize to christ , and so really make her , as well as some love to call her , the daughter of god , in as high a sense as christ is his son : as will farther appear in the process of our quotations . as in that prayer to the blessed virgin that follows in chemnitius : te , mater illuminationis cordis mei , te , nutrix salut●●meae m●ntis , te obsecrant quantum possunt cuncta praecordia mea . exaudi ▪ domina , adesto propitia , adjuv● potentissima , ut mundentur sordes mentis meae , ut illuminent●r te●ebrae meae . o gloriosa domina , porta vitae , ianu● salutis , via reconciliationis , aditus recuperationis , obsecro te per salvatricem tuam foecunditatem , fac ut peccatorum meorum venia & vivendi gratia concedatur , & usque in finem hic servus tuus sub tua protectione custodiatur . which petition and compellations , saving what belongs to the sex , are most proper and natural to be used towards christ. but the virgin is here made our saviour and mediatour in the feminine gender . . as she is again most expresly in that prayer to her in her feast of visitation : veni , praecelsa domina maria ; tu nos visita : aegras mentes illumina per sacrae vitae munera . veni , salvatrix s●culi ; sordes aufer piaculi ; in visitando populum poenae tollas periculum . veni , regina gentium ; dele flammas reatuum ; dele quodcunque devium ; da vitam innocentium . in which invocation the virgin mary is plainly called the saviour of the world , and pray'd unto for spiritual illumination of the soul , and for the purgation thereof from the filth both of sin and guilt : whereby she is plainly equallized to the son of god , and made as it were a she-christ , or daughter of god. to this sense also are those prayers put up to her in her feast of the conception and of the annunciation : but it were infinite to produce all . read that prayer in 〈◊〉 sung to her by the council of constance : it is a perfect ●mitation of the ancient prayer of the church to the holy ghost . chap. v. vpon the first paragraph . in that prayer to the blessed virgin in this paragraph are such compellations as if they were in the masculine gender were onely proper for god and christ , and such things are asked as are in their power onely to give ; which is a further reply to his second general answer . vpon the second paragraph . and the very same may be said of the invocation in this second paragraph out of the same rosary of the virgin , which though my adversary seems desirous to signifie his slighting of , yet he dare not deny but that it passes current with them . and why may i not produce what forms of invocation i please which are allow'd amongst them , and are made use of in the devotions of them that are of the church of rome ? for this does plainly prove the idolatry that chuch is lapsed into . but if some few flowers out of the hortulus animae may be more gratefull to him , he shall find what will amount to as much as is in the above said rosary . for in a recommendation to the blessed virgin we read thus ; i commend unto thee blessed virgin , my whole body and soul and my whole life , the five senses of my body , all my actions and my death , who art with thy son christ blessed for ever and ever . what can be said more to christ or god himself ? this is surely more than an ora pro nobis , pray for us . for in a recommendation immediately going before , the form is : precor te , i pray thee , that thou wouldst keep me from sins , from scandals , from all the confusion of humane life , from unclean thoughts , from all perils of soul and body . and some few leaves before in the canticum ad virginem , it is said , dignare dulcis maria nunc & semper nos sine delicto custodire . o sweet mary vouchsafe to keep us now and for ever without sin . as if they had a mind to turn the te deum , into a te deam ; and indeed in this canticle they have indeavoured it as near as they can . but this in it verbatim answers to , vouchsafe to keep us this day without sin , in the te deum . i will close all with that rhyme in their oratio ad beatam mariam . esto custos cordis mei , signa me timore dei , confer vitae sanctitatem et da morum honestatem ; da peccata me vitare et quod justum est amare , o dulcedo virgin●lis nunquam fuit nec est talis . can any one be the keeper of ones heart b●t god that knows the hear● ? this therefore is such a sweet strain of devotion as never was heard till the lapse of the church into gross idolatry . and yet all this and a great deal more is in that hortulus animae , which questionless is a most delicious paradise with those of that church , and has a sufficient stamp of authority upon it . which i speak in reference to his third general answer . nor have i gathered any examples of invocation but such as the author i have them out of does expresly profess to have been confirmed by publick authority , and to have been in publick use . see chemnitius his third part of the examination of the council of trent , pag. . i do not profess to have all their rituals , and pontificals and rosaries by me , but what i have by me and under my eye are so like what chemnitius has produced , that i think it the greatest folly and stupidity in the world to misbelieve his quotations . vpon the third paragraph . as for example in the invocation in this paragraph , cor meum illumina fulgens stella maris ; why should i at least doubt of that form , when i have before mine eyes in hortulus animae ; esto custos cordis mei , signa me timore dei. out of both which in the mean time there may be a further reply to his second general answer , or an in●stance of one of those generals in my general reply to that answer . vpon the fourth paragraph . that i take notice , that these invocations imply that the virgin mary is the daughter of god , is in reference to my exposition of the epistle to the church of thyatira , which the reader , if his genius lead him to such things , may please to peruse . but in the mean time they implying so plainly that the virgin is the daughter of god in such a kind of sense as christ is his son , it plainly appears from hence , that the invocation is not a mere ora pro nobis , or the pra●ing for such things as are not greater then is in the power of any creature to give ; which therefore again is a further reply to the second and last general answers . vpon the fifth paragraph . besides that she is again in this invocation made the daughter of god in that high sense , and that the same arguments that prove ●er titles bigger imply the boons she can bestow to be greater then what is competible to a mere creature , and so it respects the second general answer of my adversary ▪ it is plain also from veni and visita , that it is impossible to be understood of a mere ora pro nobis , contrary to my adversaries last answer . and lastly it is to be observed in reference to his third general answer , that this song in her feast of visitation must be in the number of those forms , quae publicè in eccl●sus legunt●r & magnis ●oatibus proclamantur chemnitius . speaks . and the like is to be said of her feast of conception , and annunciation , in reply to the said third general answer . as also of that prayer sung to her at the council of constance , in imitation of veni creator spiritus , as that in hortulus animae is of te deum laudamus . and why should i doubt of that when i see this before mine eyes ? but instead of v●ni creator spiritus , which is the usual prayer to the holy ghost ; it is here , veni mater gratiae , fons misericordiae , miseris remedium ; veni lux ecclesiae , tri●tibus laetitiae nunc infunde radium , &c. and now let any one judge whether these are the words of suppliants onely saying , ora pro nobis . for whereas it is said , veni lux ecclesiae , nunc infunde radium ; o come thou light of the church , now infuse thy rayes ; this is both a calling her to them not a bidding her pray for them in heaven , and also the styling her the light of the church and upon that account praying her to illuminate them , it is plain they suppose her from self to shine forth upon them . and the like might have been observed in that form , paragraph . cor meum illuminae fulgens stella maris . so manifest over and over again is it , that those formes of the invocation of the saints must be more than an ora pro nobis , against his last general answer . chap. vi. more forms of invocation of the blessed virgin out of the mary-psalter , so called , exremely idolatrous and blaspemo●s . . we will now onely note some passages in the mary-psalter , as it is called , wherein how much at that time the church of rome had thrust themselves under the protection and patronage of the virgin , and made her the daughter of god , instead of approving themselves faithfull touching the rights and prerogatives of the son and his worship , will be most notoriously evident . i will begin with the thirtieth psalm : in te , domina , speravi ; non confundar in aeternum . ingratiam tuam suscipe me ; inclina ad me aurem tuam , & in moerore meo laetifica me . tu es fortitudo mea & refugium meum , consolatio mea & protectio mea : ad te clamavi cùm tribularetur cor meum , & exaudisti de vertice collium aeternorum . in manus tuas , domina , commendo spiritum meum , meam totam vit●m , diem ultimum . this is that whole psalm to the virgin : just in such a form and with such a repose of spirit as david prays in to god himself . . but we will content our selves with transcribing onely some select pieces . as psalm . resperge , domina , cor meum dulcedine tua . fac me ob●ivisci mi erias hujus vitae : concupiscentias aeternas excita in anima mea , & de gaudio paradisi inebria mentem meam . and again , psalm . salus sempiterna in manu tua est , domina , qui te dignè honoraverint suscipient illam . clementia tua non deficiet à seculis aeternis , & misericordia tua à generatione in generationem . and psalm . dispositione tua mundus perseverat , quem tu , domina , cum deo fundast● ab initio . tuus totus ego sum , domina ; salvum me fac , quoniam desiderabiles sunt laudes tuae in tempore peregrinationis meae . no man can say more to , or expect more from , the eternal god himself . whence they make the eternal godhead as hypostatically united with the virgin as with christ himself , and carry themselves to her as if she were as properly the daughter of god as he the son. for else how could she be said to have everlasting salvation inher power , and to have laid the foundations of the world from the beginning with the eternal deity ? . there are also other passages in this psalter whereby they make the virgin mary a she-christ , the daughter of god , as he is the son of god ; and that is by the applying of the very phrases spoken of him in the scripture , unto her . as in psalm . venite ad ●am omnes qui laboratis & tribulati estis , & refrigerium & solatium dabit animabus vestris . and psalm . terge foeditatem meam , domina , quaesemper rutilas puritate . fons vitae , influe in os meum , ex quo viventes aquae profluunt & emanant . omnes sitientes venite adillam , & de fonte suo gratanter vos potabit . this is the gift of the spirit , belonging onely to christ to give to them that believe on him . and he is also said ( iohn . , . ) to be the ease and rest of all them that are weary and heavy laden , matth. . . and again , psalm . omnes gentes , plaudite manibus , psallite in jubilo virgini gloriosae . quoniam ipsa est portae vitae , janua salutis , & vianostrae reconciliationis , spes poenitentium , solamen lug●ntium , pax beata cordium atque salus . this is attributed to the virgin , when as it is christ alone that is the way of salvation and reconciliation with god. . this is a foul and tedious subject , and therefore to make an end at length , let us consider the blasphemy of the . psalm . quem●dmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum , ità ad amor●m tuum anhelat anima mea , virgo sancta . quia tu es genitrix vitae meae , & altrix reparationis carnis meae : quia tu lactatrix salvationis animae meae , initium & finis totius salutis meae . here is that attributed to the virgin which is said of christ , that he is the author and finisher of our faith and salvation . nay , the creation or generation of our life and flesh , as well as our salvation , is here ascribed to the virgin. which can have no sense or truth , unless she were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god-woman , in that sense that christ is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god-man , and as i said , were as properly the daughter of god as he is the son of god. . as she is expresly called in her litany , filia dei , the daughter of god. which , considering what high titles they give her both in that litany and elsewhere , as illuminatrix cordium , fons misericordiae , flumen sapientiae , mater d●i , regina coeli , domina mundi , domina coeli & terrae , would be but a dwindling title , ( it belonging to all women that are believers , ) if there was not some such raised and sublime sense of it as i have intimated . and therefore their addresses to her being as if she were , as i said , a she-christ , and the daughter of god in as high a sense at least as christ is the son of god , and she being called the daughter of god in the litaniae mariae , in her litany or publick supplication to her , it is plain , that in that interval of the church wherein this most conspicuously and notoriously happened , the church of rome , by reason also of the abundance of their devotions then to the virgin , might be said to be rather the worshippers of the daughter of god then of the son of god. and that therefore the spirit of prophecy ●oreseeing these times , whenas for such a space he called rome pergamus , this succeeding scene coming on , he might very well change the title of pergamus into that of thyatira , with a derisorious allusion to the occasion of the name of that city , from the news of a daughter being born to nicanor . as if god almighty had the like occasion of changing the name of pergamus into thyatira , from the romanisls turning the virgin mary into the daughter of god. . for a stop to which insolency christ seems on purpose in the epistle to the church in thyatira to resume to himself the title of the son of god , apoc. . . notwithstanding that he is called the son of man in the vision in the foregoing chapter , apoc. . . out of which he ever draws a description of himself for an entrance before each epistle to the churches . which , in my judgement , is a thing specially well worth the marking ; and that this making the virgin mary the daughter of god in this interval , might alone be a sufficient occasion of changing the name of the church of rome from pergamus to thyatira . but other things that are apposite are also comprehended by a prophetical henopoeia . . but this is an overplus to our present purpose , which was mainly to discover the gross idolatry of the church of rome in the invocation of their saints , and especially of the virgin mary ; and how both the definition of the council of trent is idolatrous in this point , and much more the practice of the church countenanced by publick authority . . for this mary-psalter it self , that has the most enormous and blasphemous forms of idolatrous invocation of any , is not the private contrivance of some single , obscure , superstitious monk , but bears the title of that seraphick doctor ●t . bonaventure , once cardinal of rome : which is no small publick countenance thereto . and that nothing might be wanting to the grace and furtherance of so devotional a piece of idolatry , there was instituted a peculiar society , entitled the fraternity of the mary-psalter , confirmed afterward by sixtus the fourth , many indulgences being added anno . and innocent the eighth added to these indulgences plenary remission à poena & culpa once in their life , and once in articul● mortis , to as many as entred into that fraternity . . and in such case stands the church of rome at this very day , that is to say , she is still thyatira , notorious for her idolatrous worship of the virgin mary . but the interval of the true church in thyatira ceased upon the reformation , when we cast off the pope , or suffered i●zebel to delude the servants of god no longer , nor to debauch them with idolatrous modes of worship . but this is onely by the bye . in the mean time it is abundantly manifest , that the invocation of saints in the roman church is not onely the praying to them that they would pray to god for us , but the asking aids of them , and such frequently as are in the power of none but of god , and of christ as he is god , for to give ; and therefore is still the grosser idolatry . chap. vi. vpon the first paragraph . it is observable that as the canticum to the virgin in hortulus animae is an imitation of te deune laudamus , and the prayer sung to her by the council of constance an imitation of the hymn to the holy ghost , veni creator spiritus : so is this psalm of the mary-psalter an imitation of the thirtieth psalm , which is a prayer to god almighty , to jehovah himself ; beginning , in te domine speravi non confundar in aeternum . which is verbatim here applied to the virgin mary , and there is no change of the word dominus , but putting domina for it , which changes onely the gender not the signification . as if it had been deus and they should have turned it dea. and dominus ( which is so translated from the greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which in this sense some cri●icks , if i remember right , deduce from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( to be ) that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may answer to iehovah , essentiator ) signifies here not a lord in a civil sense , but is the same that iehovah and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god the creator and essentiator of all things , or that which is the fountain of all essence and is essence it self necessary and eternal . this is dominus in this psalm , and therefore to call the virgin mary here domina with the rest of the words of the beginning of this psalm , is as much as if they should say , in te dea ( in the highest sense imaginable ) speravi , non confundar in perpetuum , which is idolatry of the deepest dye . to give such an attribute to the creature , as implies the highest perfections that are in the creator himself . thus unadvisedly have they done , by making such humoursom imitations in words of such devotions as are proper alone to god. for to excuse it by saying , they can put another sense upon , it will not serve : for i dare say one may put such a meaning on the whole lords prayer as that the words may be used to the pope , with a continued coherence of sense , partly proper , partly figurative , if such shifts would serve the turn . and yet i hope none of the church of rome will stick to say , that , if one should kneel to the pope , and say the lords prayer to him , making him the object thereof , but it would be apert blasphemy and idolatry . but we proceed ; and as for exaudivisti de vertice collium ●ternorum , it is another privilege too big for a creature , as if the virgin were omniscient . but the whole form of the devotion is such , which i have already noted , as if it were davids own praying to god himself , and not an orapro nobis , against his last general answer ; as what went before was against his second . vpon the second paragraph . and in reply again to the same second answer , here is also attributed to the blessed virgin what is too big for any creature , everlasting salvation is said to be in her , psalm . and again , psalm . domina salvum me fac , if understood of eternal salvation as my adversary understands it . but besides this is these two psalms of the mary-psalter , in further reply to that part of his fifth general answer that singles out domina salvum me fac for the most harsh passage of all ; in my mind clementia tua non deficiet à saeculis aeternis seems more harsh , and to imply that her mercy is ab aeterno in aeternum , which no mercy can be but that of god alone . but , dispositione tuâ mundus perseverat quam tu domina cum deo fundasti ab initio , does plainly make domina our lady , to be dominus iehovah , or the aeternal wisdom , the son of god by whom the world was really made and is governed . and this surely is far more harsh than domina salvum me fac , against his fifth answer . vpon the third paragraph . that out of the second psalm of the mary-psalter , cleanse my filthiness o blessed lady who always shinest with purity , flow into my mouth o fountain of life out of which proceed living waters . how can this be a mere ora pro nobis , it being so plainly an address to the blessed virgin to purifie her suppliant by her own purity , and to flow in upon him as being her sels the fountain of life , which is against his last answer general . vpon the fourth paragraph . the compellations of the blessed virgin in this paragraph out of psalm . are too great for a mere creature , and therefore may be instanced in by way of reply to his second general answer . vpon the fifth and sixth paragraphs . these two paragraphs refer to my exposition of the epistles to the seven churches ; which if the reader have any inclination to such speculations and will peruse them , he will read these and some few more paragraphs of this my antidote with more pleasure . vpon the seventh paragraph . that the definition of the council of trent in this point is idolatrous , is abundantly demonstrated in the second paragraph of the fourth chapter , from such conclusions as i have above plainly proved no assaults of my adversary have at all weakened . but the accessions to make this idolatry still more gross , is that it is so evident from these usual forms of invocation , that the compellations of some of the saints at least are incompetible to any creature , and they are asked such things as no creature is able to give , and so , as if they were to be given by themselves and not by begging them of god for us . vpon the eighth paragraph . what is said here may serve for a more full reply to my antagonists third general answer , in that particular that concerns the mary-psalter , it bearing this authority and authentickness with it . for it goes under st. bonaventures name , though i will not avow him to be the authour of i● . but the countenance and authority of two popes is even more than enough to ratifie it for a genuine piece of devotion of the church of rome . vpon the ninth paragraph . to the former part of this ninth paragraph , i have no more to say than what i have said already on the fifth and sixth . the second part it is not impertinent to take notice what it intimates against the second and last answers of my adversary , viz. that i have not onely proved in these three chapters that invocation of saints is idolatry though it were onely for an ora pro nobis , but also that according as the council of trent it self doth insinuate , there are special aids and helps , besides praying for us , asked of the saints and so great ones , as also so great compellations , as are incompetible to a mere creature to give or receive ; which makes t●e invocation twice or thrice more gross than a mere ora pro nobis . to all which you may lastly add these aggravating circumstances which are very frequent , that these invocations are made at their festivals in temples , at altars and images consecrated to them , that nothing may be wanting to the most formal idolatry imaginable . see conclusion the eighteenth of the second chapter . we see therefore the gross idolatry of the romanists in the invocation of saints , even according to the allowance of the council of trent and the authorized practise of their church , beyond all exception evidenced and demonstrated . chap. vii . that the doctrine of the council of trent touching the worshipping of images is idolatrous , and the reason of the doctrine weak and unsound . . and thus much for their idolatry in the invocation of saints . let us now consider what the sense of the council of trent is touching the worshipping of images . imagines porrò christi , deiparae virginis , & aliorum sanctorum , in templis praesertim , habendas & retinendas esse , e●sque debitum honorem & reverentiam impertiendam . quoniam honos qui eis exhibetur refertur ad prototyp● , quae illae repraesentant ; ità ut per imagines quas oscul●mur , & coram quibus caput ap●rimus & procumbimus , christum adoremus , & sanctos , quorum illae similitudinem gerunt , veneremur . id quod conciliorum , praesert●m verè secundae nicaenae synodi , decretis contra imaginum oppugnatores est sancitum . the meaning of which in brief is this , that the images of christ , of the blessed virgin and other saints , are to be had and retain'd in churches , and that due honour and reverence is to be done to them . for which are produced two reasons . the first , in that the honour that is done to the images is referred to the prototypes . the second , in that this injunction is but what the second n●cene council had of old decreed . . to which ● answer , that thus much as the council of trent has declared touching images is plain and open idolatry by the seventh conclusion of the first chapter , and expresly against the commandment of god , who forbids us to make any graven image to bow down to or worship . but the council of t●en● says , yes , ye may make graven images of the saints , and set them up in their temples , and give them their due honour and worship ; nay , ye ought to do so ; and instances in the very act of bowing or kneeling and prostrating our selves before them . this definition of the council is so palpably against the commandment of god , that they are fa●n to leave the second commandment out of the decalogue , that the people may not discern how grosly they go against the express precepts of god in their so frequent practices of idolatry . see the first , ninth and tenth conclusions of the first chapter ; as also the third , fourth , fifth , eighteenth , nineteenth and twentieth of the second . . nor can all their tricks and tergiversations and subtil elusions serve their turn . for undoubtedly the decalogue was writ to the easie capacity of the people , and therefore their hearts and consciences are the best interpreters . not the foolish evasions and subterfuges of perfidious sophisters , who , to the betraying of weak souls to idolatry and damnation , and for the opening their purses , would make them believe that the council of trent's enjoyning of images in churches , and the honouring them or worshipping them and bowing down before them , can consist with god's forbidding to make any graven image , and to bow down to it and worship it . so that i say , the council it self does appoint flat idolatry to the christian world to be practised . and it being so monstrous a thing , i pray you now let us consider the reasons why they do so . . the first is , because the honour done to the image is referr'd to the prototype . but i answer , that this reference is either in virtue of that similitude the images have with those persons they represent , which the words of the council seem to imply , at least touching the saints , quorum illae similitudinem gerunt : as when we praise a picture of such or such a person , that it is a very comely and lovely picture , this praise naturally has a reference to the person whose picture it is , in virtue of the similitude betwixt the picture and the party . or else this reference , without any regard to personal similitude , is from the direction of the intention of the devotionist , that he intends upon the seeing and bowing , suppose , to the image of christ , the blessed virgin , or any saint , to take this occasion to worship christ , the blessed virgin or the saint thereby , the image being but at large a symbolical presence of them , it being not regarded whether the symbol or image have any personal similitude with the party it represents or no. . but now as for the former it is evident , that it is infinitely uncertain whether any image of christ , the blessed virgin , or of this or that saint , be like the carnal figure of these persons while they were alive upon earth , or no. nay , it is in a manner certain to the contrary , none of these holy souls being given to such follies as to have their pictures drawn while they were alive . see my mystery of iniquity , part . book . chap. ▪ but being it is extremely improbable but an image should be like some or other , that are either now alive , or have lived on the earth since the beginning of the world , according to this first supposition , this honour or religious worship intended to christ , the blessed virgin , or any other saint , will not onely miss them , but certainly fall on some other who , in stead of being saints , haply are or have been very vile and wicked persons . . but besides , no ●aints are worshipped before they be in heaven , nor indeed are properly saints till then ; and the glories in their pictures that are about their heads shew plainly that they intend to represent the saints in their present condition of glory in heaven . whence it is plain that the images are nothing like them they are made for . for how can these images of brass or stone or wood , or any other materials , bear the image of a seearate soul , which all the saints are for the present ? and what likeness can there be betwixt the glorious body of ●hrist heavenly and spiritual , and an image of any terrestrial matter ? no more than betwixt a piece of dirt or soot and the sun or bright morning-star . and , which is most of all to be considered , what terrestrial image can possibly represent him that is truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , god-man , and is not the object of our adoration but as he is this divine complexum as well of the divinity as the humanity ? but what statuary can carve out the effigies of the deity ? so that the pretense of this reference of the honour to the prototype in this first sense thereof is very weak and vain . nor , though there were this natural reference , would it follow that we are to honour them this way , it being so plainly forbid , and there being better ways then this , viz. the commemorating and imitating their vertues . . and for that second sense , it is indeed disinvolved of those former difficulties ; but greater here occurr . for as touching our saviour christ , forasmuch as his pretended image is but his symbolical presence , the doing of divine worship towards it is again plain idolatry , as appears by that example of the israelites , who worshipped the golden calf in reference to iehovah , as appears plainly in the story , exod. . ▪ . and for the blessed virgin and the rest of the saints , that incurvation toward their symbolical presences is flat idolatry , is manifest from the eighth , ninth and tenth conclusions of the first chapter , and the fifth , nineteenth and twentieth of the second of this treatise . and indeed thus to make the images of the saints so called onely their symbolical presences , and so to worship them before these images , is an attributing divine honour to them . for this naturally does declare that they have at least a terrestrial omnipresency , which no invisible power which we know has but onely god. but to make a low obeisance to an absent person god knows how many millions of miles off , is still a more forced and ridiculous thing . and therefore the saluting of the saints thus at their symbolical presences or images , and in the mean time acknowledging them to be in s●de beatorum , ( which they do , and must do , unless they exclude them heaven , ) is to acknowledge one soul to fill heaven and earth with its presence , which is that vast privilege of god almighty onely ; and therefore this worship to them is gross idolatry , as supposing such a perfection in them as is no-where but in god. besides what was intimated before , that let this reference be what it will , there being an incurvation or prostration before images , whether they be mere symbols or exact representations , it must be ipso facto ●dolatry by the seventh conclusion of the first chapter . from whence it follows , that the saints are not honoured by this worshipping of their images , but hideously reproached , it supposing them to be pleased and gratify'd with that which is an abomination to the lord , and a gross transgression of his express commands . it implies , i say , that they are ambitious , vain glorious and rebellious against god. and therefore they that the most vehemently oppose this way of honouring of them by images and invocations are the most true and faithfull honourers of them , they so zealously vindicating them from the great reproaches these others cast upon them . so far are they from being guilty herein of any rudeness or clownishness against the saints of god. chap. vii . his answer to the first part of the second paragraph . there was no answer to be given to the first paragraph , it being merely the setting down what the council of trent defines about the worshipping of images . but to the first part of the second paragraph his answer is this ; here the doctor , says he , gives us a learned antithesis betwixt the commandment of god and decree of this council . but how weak , frivilous and pharisaical this antithesis is , i have sufficiently declared in my answer to the second and seventh conclusions of the first chapter . this is his whole answer to this part of the paragraph . the reply . as to that he says it is a learned antithesis , i reply , that it is a plain , conspicuous and obvious antithesis , so obvious , that it has caused your church to hide the second commandment from the sight of the vulgar . to the ill language you give me i reply nothing , but that of the apostle . pet. . . not railing for railing . and for your pretended answer to the second and seventh conclusions of my first chapter , i refer my reader to my reply to it , and appeal to his judgement if it be not satisfactory . his answer to the second part of this second paragraph . he uses long ambages and circuits in his answer to this second part , but the main matter occurs in the the end of his answer , which is this , that i ought to have proved that which i call the second to be a commandment really distinct from the first ; and that the understanding is not the same whether we divide the precepts of the first table into three or into four commandments . this he absolutely omitting to do , saith he , his charge proves a mere calumny , and bearing false witness against his neighbour . and so while he pleads for his second , he very uncharitably breaks his ninth commandment . the reply . the whole frame of his answer , if i had taken it from the beginning to the end , is so weak and slight , that i half suspect he was invited to it merely for that last conceits sake ; to break ajest betwixt the second and ninth precept upon his adversary . for first , though i should admit the understanding would be the same though the first table were divided but into three commandments , so no words of the first table were left out ; nay though the first table were called one commandment or decree touching our duty towards god , yet my charge against the church of rome for leaving out so great and so material a part of this decree , or of the first commandment if you will , would not be a jot mitigated thereby , the understanding being the same , as my antagonist himself confesses , whether it be held one commandment , or two . for if it be held one commandment yet it is plainly divisible into these two parts which we call the first and second commandments . and this that we call the second commandment , and you the second part of the first commandment , being really one and the same , and you acknowledging you leave out that part of the commandment , where then is the calumny ? any more then if one should accuse another that he took away two shillings six pence , and he should reply , it is an unworthy slander , it was onely half a crown that he took away : would not this to any indifferent judge seem a very pleasant apology to clear one of the theft ? but now in the second place , though st. austin and st. hierome ( ●eter lombard says it is origen and austin ) may differ in their opinion about the first and second commandment , whether they be one or two commandments , yet i presume the more ancient , and the more general sense of the church is that they are two . and it is well known that origen flourished long before austin : but it is acknowledged of all hands out of the word of god , that there are just ten commandments , neither more nor less . now the church of rome that would have the first table consist but of three commandments , is constrained to divide the last commandment into two ; which is against the antiquity of the distinction of the greek and hebrew text into verses . for it is observable that both in the greek and hebrew text , though the length of some of the commandments has occasioned them to be divided into more verses than one , yet they no where have crouded two commandments into one verse ; in so much that they make , thou shalt not kill , thou shalt not commit adultery , thou shalt not steal , three distinct verses : whence it is plain that that which we call the tenth commandment is really but one commandment , as being contained in one verse ; and that , thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife , is not a whole commandment distinct from the rest contained in that verse . besides , which is hugely remarkable ; if , thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife , be one intire commandment , viz. the ninth ; part of the tenth commandment , viz. thou shalt not covet thy neighbours house , is set before it , which is not a thing credible . but there is no absurdity nor inconvenience , supposing it but one commandment , that , thou shalt not covet thy neighbours house , is set first in exodus , and , thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife , is placed first in deuteronomy . this methinks should be enough to the impartial to demonstrate , that that which we usually call the tenth commandment , is not to be divided into two but is all one entire commandment ; and that therefore the first and second commandments ordinarily so called cannot be one commandment but two , that there may be ten . to all which you may add , that but even a moderate smattering in logick may easily discover the tenth commandment usually so called to be but one , and the first and second commandments so called to be really two ; namely , from the consideration of their objects . now the object in the tenth commandment is but one in general , viz. the keeping our desires from other mens goods of what nature soever , thou shalt not covet any thing that is his ; that is the general of the whole commandment plainly : and house , wife , servant , oxe , asse , are but particulars belonging to this general , and by the same reason that you make an intire commandment of any one of these particulars , you may of every one of them , and so divide the last commandment at least into five , which is very absurd . but as the object of the tenth commandment shows it can be but one , so the objects of the first and second plainly show they must be two commandments , because their objects are distinctly two . the first having for its object the onely one true god whom alone to retain we are plainly taught or commanded by that precept ; the second having for its object graven images or whatsoever similitudes of things , which we are strictly forbid any way to wor●hip . so plain every way is it , that that which we call the second commandment is the second commandment , and that there is not the least show of calumny , in saying , they have left out the second commandment in their catechisms . but yet it is further observable , that if the first and second commandments were to be held but one commandment , there can be no so rational ground as this , that the second has a close subserviency to the first , and that it is added that we may keep the first more intirely and have no more gods in any sense , than one : which implies therefore that worshipping of images gods does interpret as the making more gods to our selves then one , or that it is a necessary concomitant of making to our selves more gods then one , as is too too apparent in the religion of the gentiles , nor can be enough lamented in degenerated christendom . which eagerness after idol-gods the true god most severely prohibits , and show's himself so much the more solicitous and zealous here against worshipping of images , by reason of the great proclivity of mankind to that more than to polytheisme , or the not believing that there is onely one supreme god the creatour and governour of all things . but the great danger is , that acknowledging this , yet they may either defile his worship with images , and make those images gods by worshipping them , or worship doemon● and saints in images and pictures , and so accordding to the custom of the heathens make more gods than one , though but one supreme and others inferiour to him . there is such a pruriency and precipitant inclination in humane nature to these superstitions , that to put a stop to it . god addes such a rousing commina●ion at the latter end of this second commandment or the second part of the first , as my adversary would have it . for i am a jealous god that visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me ▪ as if he declared them more particularly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 haters of god as well as hatefull to him who will presume so hainously to affront him as to make images to worship them or any object by them . which second commandment therefore with this direfull commination added to it , being so effectual a bar and so point blank against the idolatry practised in the roman church , my adversary must give me leave to suspect , that it is not , as he says , left out to ease the memory of the vulgar of so long a lesson , but to obliterate it out of their mind and memory , or rather to never let them have the sight of that which would certainly make their consciences tremble when they saw the practises of the church which they are obliged to , so plainly contrary to the word of god. but that they have also left out the tenth and eleventh verses about the sabbath , that may be for a better blind for this , and also that people may not be imbrued with an over religious regard to the lords day , least they should find offence at the licentiousness of that day too , and note that many saints days are more solemnly kept , then that wherein the creation of the world and redemption by god our great saviour and redeemer is celebrated at once . but i have insisted on this argument longer than i intended . i hope long before this the discerning reader perceives , that the crime lyes where it did , and that my charge in this point is no calumny . his answer to the fourth paragraph . my third paragraph he passes over sicc● pede , nor excerps any thing out of it , lest it should prove too wholsome food for his misled party . but to my fourth paragraph he answers ▪ thus , ( p. . . ) then he supposing , saith he , that neither of these are maintainable , he infers that by no means can the honour done to the image be referred to the prototype or thing represented . but to the argument i answer , that this reference is in vertue of that similitude which the image has with the prototype as including the direction of the intention of the devo●ionist ipso facto , that is supposed to be a rational agent . and therefore the doctours disjunctive dilemma is very vain and defective . this is his answer in general to my disjunctive dilemma , as he calls it . but before this answer he unmethodically propounds my arguments against the first member of the dilemma . but i shall reduce all to the order of my paragraphs ; and reply to this general answer first . the reply . i say therefore , that there is a great defect and mistake of my adversary in his not apprehending the full scope of my argument . for it is not merely to prove that the honour done to the image cannot be any of these two ways referred to the prototype , but that it cannot be referred so as to quit the act of idolatry , as i have intimated at the end of the sixth paragraph , and at the beginning of the last part of the seventh . now there being but two ways of referring this honour to the prototype , and the council seeming to insinuate a fitness from the similitude of the images to their prototypes , i mainly impugne that in my fifth and sixth paragraph , his answer to which we shall here omit . but for the sense of his present answer in general to the dilemma , if i understand him it is this , that there being a similitude of signification as well as of figure ( as he tells us anon ) which is implied in the direction of the intention of the devotionist , and that therefore represents the prototype to his mind , whether there be similitude of figure or no , that this makes my dilemma vain and defective , as disjoyning or dividing those things one from another , that are found together in every reference of the devotionist . this is the best sense i can make of his perplext and obscure answer ; to which i reply , that although there be that similitude of signification ( though in the mean time it be very improperly so called ) included in the intention or mind of the devotionist in the referring of the image to the prototype , and so is a kind of note of remembrance to him , yet being sometimes , this thing may be like the thing which it is a note of , and have the similitude of figure as well as of signification , and sometimes merely the similitude of signification , it is plain there is ground enough to raise this bipartition of reference of the image to the prototype , it being sometimes of images that have merely similitudinem significationis , sometimes of those that have similitudinem figurae also , which the council insinuating some greater fitness in , i impugne in the abovesaid paragraphs . in the mean time to them that understand logick , it is plain that my dilemma is neither vain nor defective . his answer to the fifth paragraph . i argue in this paragraph against the referring the honour done to the image unto the prototype by vertue of similitude ▪ . because it is uncertain whether the figure of christ the blessed virgin and the rest have any likeness to them . . and that it is hugely probable they may be like some body else and those none of the best . to the former he answers , that the honour done to the image may be referred to the prototype , though there be no personal similitude of figure betwixt the image and the person it represents , but onely the similitude of signification , the image signifying the dignity , gravity , or other perfections of the prototype . and this similitude of signification he would prove to be where there is no personal similitude of figure , because man is said to be made after the likeness of god though there be no personal similitude of figure betwixt them . and he who honours man , saith he , as he is t●e image of god , honours god in his image . and if therefore where no similitude of figure , much more where a specifical similitude of figure , the honour done to the image may be referred to the prototype , as it happens in the case of the images of christ and his saints . to the second he answers , that the case the doctor puts is more than possible . because the images of the angels or cherubims over the ark had no personal similitude with the angels but with some terrestrial creatures , yet the honour done to them was referred to the prototypes . the reply . to the former i reply , that the honour done to the image may be referred to the prototype ( or rather that to which the image is erected ) though there be no similitude of figure . but i deny that any such honour or worship can be done to the image with reference to the prototype without idolatry , as i have declared and proved in my seventh paragraph . and now this hitherto being the safest answer my adversary can make , i understand not why he should not stick to it and balk the first part of my dilemma , but that he has a mind to infuse idolatry by what follows in his answer to this paragraph , into his heedless and credulous party . whereunto tends also the proof of his assertion , that there may be a similitude of signification where there is no similitude of personal figure , from , let us make man after our own image . as if that the personal similitude betwixt god and man mentioned in the scripture respected that of external figure , and therefore could be onely of signification ; whenas it is understood of internal righteousness and true holiness , this is the image of god in which man was created ; in which there is not onely a similitude of signification , but of real and personal likeness . but this was onely to bring in that sly sa●ing , he who honours man as he is the image of god , honours god in his image . whenas there is no man honours man in reference to god as you pretend to honour the image of christ terminating your worship in him . but we do civil honour onely to men , and in bowing to them onely signifie our inclination and readiness to do them all good offices of love service and in the mean time acknowledge there is that in them that is worthy of civil honour and esteem . and lastly , i say , as to the pretense of specifick similitude of figure , it signifies no more as to the intended honour of an individual , then if there were no similitude at all . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . for not to signi●ie one determinate thing is to signifie nothing , as aristotle says . but by vertue of the direction of our intention , we may make any thing signifie any thing . to the second i reply , that if the case the doctor puts be more than po●●●ible , then it is probable or possible , so that he yields what i would have . but i will not yield him that he has brought a fit instance , or that he has spoke right in that instance . for neither were these cherubims ●ntended for the symbolical presence of angels but of god , nor was any honour done to the cherubims or their prototypes , although here again he slily would infuse this poyson of idolatry into his ignorant party , though with a reproach to god and moses . his answer to the sixth paragraph . to the first part of this paragraph he answers ; that the images of the saints represent them such as they were upon earth , onely with an additional mark of a crown or lawrel to signifie their triumphant state in glory ; and then , that an image may be like to a separate soul as well as to an angel or cherubim , he would infer from that opinion of the platonists , who make separate souls invested with aereall or aethereal vehicles as well as the angels . to the second he answers , that if a terrestrial image cannot represent that person who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 god-man , then neither can a terrestrial eye represent him , and so the apostles whilest living did never see that person who was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 god-man , which is no less then blasphemy ; as implying that that person called iesus christ whom the apostles dayly beheld with their eyes , was not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 god-man . the reply . to the first i reply , that unless my adversary here suppose what he can never make good , that they have the true effigies of the saints such as they were upon earth , he is never the near ( as to this first curiosity ) whether he phancy them represented such as they were on earth , or such as they are now in heaven . but being religious worship is not due to them till they be canonized , to represent them such as they were on earth , is to represent them in order to religious worship , such as they were before they were capable of religious worship . and the lawrel and crown he talks of , those are not on their images or statues , but onely a glory over their heads in their pictures , so far as i remember , of which the genuine signification is , that that picture stands for them such as they are now in glory , and there is the same sense of their statues and of their pictures . moreover , his supposal is false and contrary to his own assertion before , when he asserts that the images of cherubims or angels are like in figure to the angels themselves , as if there were ox-headed and lyon-headed angels . and lastly , suppose we should be so courteous as to grant him the doctrine of the platonists that souls separate have aereal or aethereal vehicles , what would this advantage him they allowing no settled figure to them ? and if there were an humane figure allowed , when we have no knowledge what was their individual terrestrial figure , how shall we know what is their aereal or aethereal ? and though the figure was known , what terrestrial matter can express that lively enravishing spiritual beauty that is in those lucid vehicles ? so that though the figure were 〈◊〉 the form which is the life of the figure would be quite lost , and be nothing near so like the separate soul as the dead carcass of the greatest beauty on earth , after four days lying in the grave , would be to the said party when alive . so that my adversary in his answer to this first part seems to indulge to humours and fetches of wit , rather than to reason soberly , and so as to prove a personal likeness betwixt the saints and their images . and this in like sort may be said of his answer to the second part , which is indeed an odd unexpected fetch of wi● , but hugely rude and harsh , that would pretend to fix on my argument the horrid crime of blasphemy , when it is in truth the asserting the transcendent excellency of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of christ , not the denying of it , which were an hainous piece of blasphemy against the son of god indeed . i say therefore that when i ask , what terrestrial image can possibly represent him that is truely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 god-man ? that no mans mind that is not very extravagant could ever phancy that i meant any other image , then what is external to our sight , which that in our eye is not . again , it is manifest that i mean it of some image that represents the absent , and invisible humanity of christ by reason of its absence ; and not such an image as a parelion or a paraselene are , that do not represent the sun or moon but by vertue of the presence of those luminaries . nor did t●e image of christ in the eyes of the apostles or other men represent christ any otherwise then by 〈◊〉 of his presence . but it is plain to any that will not cavil , that i understand my own words of such images as represent the absent , as the statue of caesar , of virgil , and the like . and then lastly i flatly deny that the image of an external object in the eye , is terrestrial . for the image is not in the nervous bottom of the eye but butts onely upon it , as the images let in upon white paper through a hole in a dark room . that image is not fixed nor subjected in the paper , but in the ethereal matter that touches the paper and so the image is in the ethereal matter that touches the bottom of the eye , not in the bottom of the eye it self . but ethereal matter is not terrestrial , and therefore this no terrestrial image . unto all which i add , that it does not follow but that , though the image in the eye , call it terrestrial or ethereal , had not the adequate or principal power of representing christ god-man to the apostles when he was on earth , yet , the presence of our saviour and the divine graces of his person shooting through that image into the souls and hearts of the beholders ( faith being wrought in them by the spirit of god according to his eternal purpose ; as it is written , no man cometh to me , unless my father draw him ) they might behold him and give that testimony that st. iohn does of him , iohn . the word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us , and we beheld the glory of him as the glory of the onely begotten son of god , full of grace and truth . but for others that saw the humane presence of him who is truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , though they could not discern him to be such or to be the messias , so far as they saw it chiefly to be imputed to his humanity being present , and not to the image in the eye , which but for his presence could not represent him to the soul. but i hope the wicked and unbeliever no● discovering his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does not at all argue him not to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 god-man . and now if the image impressed by the very presence of christ had not not the natural power of representing that divine complexum god-man , according to both the natures , how far short shall images of wood or stone , or what ever materials be from representing him being absent ? in the mean time it is apparent how rash and inhumane my antagonist is , to charge me with blasphemy upon such slight and toyish pretenses as he is pleased to take up , and every way so weak and insignificant . i have insisted on this longer than was needfull : but i was invited so to do , because my adversary here seems to have intended to make a show of induing his confutations of this seventh chapter with so great triumph ; when indeed he has one nothing at all , he having not taken notice of the close of this ●ixth paragraph , that declares and proves , that though there were this natural reference of images to their prototypes by reason of personal similitude of figure , yet it would be idolatry to worship them . vpon the seventh paragraph . which i do more-f●lly inculcate in the beginning of the last part of this seventh paragraph . and in the first and second part thereof copiously demonstrate , that though these images have the similitude of signification onely , as he loves to call it , and not of figure , yet it is idolatry over and over again to worship them . which hypothesis he chiefly or rather onely adheres to , and has sported and playd away his time in superfluously and weakly trifling against the first part of my dilemma , is if he would make good the similitude of figure betwixt the images and prototypes when he seems to believe neither any truth nor necessity of it : but onely to make a show of confuting this seventh chapter , when he has left the latter end of the sixth paragraph , and this whole seventh untouched , which is the main drift of all ; namely to shew , that whether the images have any similitude with their prototypes or no , yet it is idolatry to worship them , and that therefore the council of trent has no subterfuge in this regard to excuse themselves from the charge of idolatry , in appointing the honour they appoint to them . chap. viii . the doctrine of the second council of nice touching the worship of images , ( to which the council of trent refers , ) that it is grosly idolatrous also . . but now as for the other reason of these tridentine fathers , whereby they would support their determination in this point , viz. the authority of the second council of nice held about the year , ( to omit , that long before this time the church had become asymmetral , which yet is a very substantial consideration ) i shall only return this brief answer . the god of israel , which is the father of our lord iesus christ , has given this express command to his church for ever , thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image , thou shalt not bow down to it , nor worship it . but the second council of nice says , thou mayst and shalt bow down to to the image of christ , of the blessed virgin , and of the rest of the saints . now whether it be fit to believe and obey god , or men , judg ye : i might add farther , men so silly and frivolous in the defense of their opinions , so false and fabulous in the allegations of their authorities and the recitall of miraculous stories , as chemnitius has proved at large in his examen of the council of trent . . i will give an instance or two . mat. . . no man lighteth a candle and putteth it under a bushell ; therefore the images of the saints are to be placed on the altars , and wax-candles lighted up before them , in due honour to them . again , psalm . but to the saints that are on the earth : but the saints are in heaven , say they , therefore their images ought to be on the earth , &c. as for the miracles done by images , as their speaking , the healing of the sick , the revenging of the wrong done to them , the distilling of ro●id drops of balsame to heal the wounded , sick or lame , their recovering water into a dry well , and the like , it were too tedious to recite these figments . but that of the image of the virgin , to whom her devotionist spake when he took leave of her , and was to take a long journey , intreating her to look to her candle , which he had lighted up for her , till his return , i cannot conceal . for the story says , the same candle was burning six months after , at the return of her devoto . an example of the most miraculous prolonger that ever i met withall before in all my days . such an image of the virgin would save poor students a great deal in the expense of candles , if the thing were but lawfull and feasible . . from these small hints a man may easily discover of what authority this second council of nice ought to be , though they had not concluded so point-blank against the word of god. but because that clause in this paragraph of the council i have recited , id quod conciliorum , praesertim verò secundae nicaenae synodi , &c. may as well aim at the determination of what these fathers mean by that debitus honor & reverentia which they declare to be due to the images of christ and the saints , as confirm their own conclusion by the authority of that nicene council , we will take notice also what a kinde of honour and reverence to images the nicene council did declare for , and in short it is this ; that they are to be worshipped and adored and to be honoured with wax-candles , and by the smoaking of incense or perfumes , and the like . which smells rankly enough in all conscience of idolatry , as grotius himself upon the decalogue cannot but acknowledge . but this is not all . the invocation of saints , their mediation and propitiating god for us for adoring their images , ●ealing of diseases , and other aids and helps , besides ora pr● nobis , are manifestly involved in the worship of these images , according to that nicene council . . and truly , according to the collections of photius in iustellus , one would think that they meant the cultus latriae to the image of christ , they using the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as if that worship which was done to the image passed through to christ himself , which would not be sutable to him , if itwere not divine worship . and where that word is not used , yet the sense makes hugely for it . as in this paragraph touching the second council of nice according to photius ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . this seventh synod , saith he , ( that is to say , the second of nice ) with joint suffrages hath established and ratifj'd the worshipping of the image of christ , for the honour and reverence of him that is expressed by it ; this worship and honour being done in such manner as when we approach the holy symbols or types of our most holy and divine worship : ( for the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . ) for we do not stop at them , nor restrain our worship and devotion to them , nor are we divided toward heterogeneous and different scopes or objects ; but by that service and worship of them that appears divided are we carried up devoutly and undividedly unto the one and indivisible deity . whereby it is plainly declared , that that very worship which passes to the deity is done towards the image of christ first or jointly , as being one and the same undivided worship in truth and reality ; as also that this worship is that worship which is called latria , and is due to the highest god onely . . but that religious worship is done to the images of all the saints seems imply'd in what comes afterwards , where it is said , that this second council of nice , ( which photius calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that this council has not onely established and appointed that the image of christ should be honoured and worshipped , but the holy images of the virgin mary and of all the saints , according to the excellency and venerability of their prototypes . for even by these are we carried up into a certain unitive and conjunctive vision , and thereby are vouchsafed that divine and supernatural con●●nction or contact with the highest of all desirables , that is , god himself . . can any thing more inflame the souls of men with that mystical lust after idols then the doctrines of this nicene synod ? for as for the image of christ , the same devotion and worship is done to that which is done to god himself . and for the images of the virgin mary and the rest of the saints , though that worship is allotted them onely that is proportionable to their prototypes , yet they are worshipped such a way as that thereby ▪ while we adhere to their images or statues , we are declared to be made fit for and to be vouchsafed a tactual union with god himself . what philtrum more effectual to raise up that idolomania , that being mad and lovesick after images and idols , then this ? what can inrage their affections more towards idolatry , then to phansie that while they worship idols , and cling about dead statues , that very individual act ( and therefore it cannot be too intense ) is that wherewith they are united to , and lie in the very embraces of , the everliving and true god ? . the sense of the synod is , according to the representation of photius , that we worship and unite our selves with god as well in the worshipping the images of the virgin and of other saints , as in the worshipping of the image of christ. so that all is religious worship , and consequently gross idolatry , it being done to stocks and stones and such like sensless objects . for the drift of all idolatry is , when it is questioned , and craftily defended , that through the worship of daemons and images they reach at the worship of , and the joyning their devotion to , the first and highest god-head . wherefore the council of trent declaring with the second council of nice , that is to say , the blind leading the blind , they have both fallen into this dreadfull pit of idolatry . chap. viii . vpon the first paragraph . to this first paragraph he has given his answer already in what he has said to the first paragraph of the former chapter , viz. here the doctor gives us a learned antithesis between the commandment of god and decree of this council . the like rhetorical flourish he uses against the second council of nice , &c. see my reply to his answer on that paragraph . there is no need of any thing new to be said . his answer to the second paragraph . to that about the weak reasonings of the council , which he says i would gladly father upon them , he pretends to think it a child of my own brain till i take the pains to prove it is none of mine . touching the miracles there mentioned ; but whereas , saith he , the council recites some miracles in favour of the due honour given to the images of christ and his saints , these he most profoundly confutes by an unanswerable laughter . this is the main if not all to this second paragraph . the reply . to the first i reply , it is chemnitius , not i , that fathers those subtil reasonings upon the fathers of the nicene council . and though i have not had the time nor curiosity to examin the history of the council my self so throughly and exactly as to affirm of my own notice that this is the very reasoning of the nicene fathers , yet this i will say for chemnitius , that i find him , so far as i can see , carefull in the main of his account of things , not omitting that of the seventh action which my adversary alledges so triumphantly against photius ; which we shall consider anon . as for that of ●salm . i am sure they bring it in impertinently enough . but can any thing be more impertinent than that of pope adrian , who influenced the council , in his letter to irene and her son constantine , where pleading zealously for image-worship he urges these places of scripture , vultum tuum domine requiram , psalm . ad vultum tuum depre●abuntur omnes divites plebis , psalm . and again , psalm . signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui , &c. thy face lord will i seek , lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us . therefore images are to be erected and lights set up before them , as if the light of gods countenance were to be reflected from these painted statues , or his face to be sought in looking up to graven images which his soul abhors . but such seems to be the arguing of pope adrian to these two princes . and as for the middle quotation , it is very modestly or very cunningly done of the pope , that he did not take a greater share of that verse , and say , in muneribus vultum tuum deprecabuntur omnes divites plebis . but then the plot had been more easily smelt out , that the zeal for images was in reference to the oblations and gifts brought to them . this tast may suffice to let the reader understand what shre●d reasoners they were in that council , when the pope himself , who inspired all by his influence , reasons at such a rate as he does . now to the second part i have nothing to reply , but that i think it not so commendable carriage for a mans self to laugh when he tells a story that is ridiculous ; and therefore it is a breach of charity , at least of civility , to affirm that i laughed , where it was not good manners so to do ; he not possibly hearing me laugh at such a distance as he was removed from me when i writ this paragraph ; which makes me believe that he himself could not but laugh at the recital of such incredible stuff , and so measured my corn by his own bushel . his answer to the third paragraph . from laughing , saith he , he immediately falls alowring , and the reason is , because this council declares that it is lawfull to burn candels , incense , and perfumes in honour of the saints before their images ; which he in an angry mood concludes to smell rankly of idolatry , even by the authority of grotius himself upon the decalogue . this is all in answer to this third paragraph , saving his falling foul upon grotius . the reply . it is not unworthy observation of what a scenical or histrionical genius this roman doctor my adversary is , that can raise comedies and tragedies thus upon such slight occasions ; i must confess i am sorry for the idolatries of their church , but that i did either laugh before or lowre now is onely the poetical phancy of my antagonist so to imagine . but that the council of nice does appoint t●e burning of incense and the lighting of candles before the images , i shall prove in its proper place . in the mean time i would have my reader take notice that [ even by the authority of grotius himself upon the decalogue ] are the words of my adversary not mine , which are these , as grotius himself upon the decalogue cannot but acknowledge . i give little to the authority of grotius in himself , but to the clearness of the case , that such an one that did so glaver and fawn upon the church of rome and endeavour to gratifie her every where to the utmost he could , yet was ashamed to venture to gratifie her in a point so clearly against her as this , and therefore could not but acknowledge , though against his will , that the burning of incense before images is idolatry . his answer to the fourth paragraph . instead of answering to that quotation of photius which plainly implies that the council of nice has allotted the worship of latria to the image of christ , he according to his usual art would make the world believe , that i clash again here with our church of england , out of my own positions or conclusions . but the thing he here repeats is crambe bis cocta , heartless and sapless stuff , as indeed i proved it to be at first . the sum of his answer is this , that when the sons of the church of england bow their knees at the eucharist , which to them is a symbolical presence , whether they terminate this act of worship on the eucharist or symbolical presence , or profess it does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , pass on to christ , in the first they will be absolute idolaters by the twentieth conclusion of my second chapter , in the second they will be obnoxious to what i urge here against the nicene council ▪ one would think they meant the cultus latriae , &c. this , i say , is all be seems to be concerned in upon this paragraph . for his exception against photius his authority followes in the next . the reply . but to this , such as it is , i answer , or rather say that i have answered it already upon his first proposing of it ; where i deny that we of the church of england take the bread or wine to be any symbolical presence to be bowed to , but mere symbolical instruments of commemorating the passion and crucifixion of our saviour , mere holy elements consecrated to that use . and that we do not kneel to them , or at their approach , but are at our devotions afore in a posture of prayer to god and christ , which these symbols when they are given to us find us aforehand in . so that this is a mere cavil against the sons of the church of england and against my self , devised and repeated by my adversary to fill up the defect of better answerings . his answer jointly to the fourth , fifth , and sixth paragraphs : his next pretense is to prove positively by the testimony of photius that this council gives the worship of latria to the image of christ. but the doctor , says he , had plaid his master-prize , if he had given all this rabble ( he means both the quotations ) in the councils own words , but instead of that he feeds upon reversions , at the second hand takes his quotations from photius ( a person of as much credit as himself ) and makes photius the paraphrast and interpreter of the councils meaning . but what if the council say no such thing ? nay what if the council deliver the quite contrary doctrine ? how blank then will the doctors charge look , upon the discovery of such disingenuity ? and truly had the doctor but taken so much as a cursory survey of catholick authors on this subject , he might have found them frequently and truly quoting this very council , act. . to prove that the image of christ is not to be honoured with the worship of latria : but that such honour and reverence is due to images in general , as to the books of the gospel and the holy utensils of the altar . this is all , touching this chapter , the rest is raillery and humour , which i leave this roman doctor to enjoy himself in . but by the by in the next ●e pretends that i have omitted the translation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my second quotation of photius in this ; which therefore i shall touch upon . the reply . that these quotations out of photius prove that which i produce them for , my adversary cannot deny , supposing the authority of photius were authentick ; which he vilifies upon no grounds , nor has any that i know so to do . he was the patriarch of constantinople , the chief or head of the greek church where this council was held , and was patriarch not long after this council . and his place and dignity in the church , and very genius you may be sure would make him very carefull to understand a council of so great importance as this : and for his parts and learning , he was extraordinarily famous . concerning which i cannot here abstain from interserting that high elogium which that learned prelate of our church dr. creighton gives him in his preface to the history of the florentine council . illustri photio doctiorem in omni genere literarum , prudentiorem in rebus gerendis , omnis iuris divini humanique peritiorem nunquam quovis solio vel romae papam vel constantinopoli patriarcham sedisse puto . and again in the same preface , aequalem photio nulla aetas dedit , nulla dabit . and this photius it is that describes the seven general councils in his epistle to michael prince of bulgary , in none of which , for his own credit , can a man think he would willingly be taken tripping , or that he would say any thing contrary to the sense of this council of nice , which the bishop of rome had assuredly a copy of as well as himself , and would have been ready to discover him if he falsified in any thing ; especially these two sees being in competition for that principality of bulgaria to whether church it should be adjoined , they being but lately converted to christianity . and therefore in all likelyhood photius would take special heed how he spake any thing contrary to the sense of this council . nay , what will you say , if i prove that photius has spoke exquisitely according to the sense of the pope of rome himself , ( i mean of pope adrian who influenced this council of nice ) as also of the council it self ; who will be blank then ? or who ought to blush for his temerity and disingenuity ? let us therefore take notice what pope adrian says in his letter to irene the empress and her son constantine . that the worship or honour done to images does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pass to the prototype , such passages as these in pope adrians letter do plainly signifie . in the whole christian world , says he , the holy images are honoured or worshipped by believers , ut per visibilem vultum ad invisibilem divinitatis majestatem mens nostra spirituali affect● rapiatur , which he speaks more especially in respect of the image of christ. and a page or two after , creatura non terrenam speciem honorat sed coelestem ipsam figuram reveretur . and in the page following , non enim lignum adoratur sed id quod in ligno conspicitur & memoratur , honorificatur . and a little above he quotes ambrose to gratian the emperor , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . what , says he , out of ambrose , when we adore the divinity and the flesh of christ do we divide him ? god forbid . and then presently out of ep●phanius bishop of constantia in cyprus , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , i. e. if a king have his statue or image , is he presently two kings ? no by no means : the king is still one together with his image . and now we have heard pope adrian patriarch of rome , let us hear what tarrhasius patriarch or pope of consta●inople speaks , who presided in this nicene council , and does fully and plainly agree to this letter of adrian writ to irene and the emperor her son , he and the whole synod professing , that they ought to receive images , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. and the said images made to christ who is god , to our immaculate lady the holy mother of god , to the holy angels and saints to adore and worship them with respective affection , in the mean time plainly directing or devoting their faith and latria to the onely one true god , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . all which quotations considered together plainly intimate what photius has declared in that which i have produced of him . that there is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of that worship which is done to images , and that it passes to the prototype ; which therefore must be such as is worthy the prototype , and therefore latria in the image of christ. this diabasis or passing of the worship to the prototype is so manifestly and so principally aimed at , that in some of these sentences i have recited , they deny any honour at all done to the image , declaring that the terres●rial form is not honoured but the celestial , nor the wooden image , but that which is signified by i● ; and yet that the image and person is one , to make sure of but one mode of worship which is due to the person or prototype , and that there is no dividing of the worship more than of the person : which is exactly according to photius his description of this council , pa●●graph . nor are we divided toward heterogeneous and different scopes and objects , but by that service and worship of them that appear divided are we carried up devoutly and undividedly unto the one and indivisible deity , to the onely one true god , as the council and tarrhasius concludes in this . act. compare with this also the latter clause of the quotation out of photius in the fifth paragraph . so that hitherto photius has exquisitely represented the mind of the council . let us now hear what is said act. . to which my antagonist appeals . the last definitive sentence therefore of the council as much as respects our business is this . 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that is , we define with all care and earnestness that holy and adorable images be set up , and that they be honoured with salutations and adorations , but not in such sort as according to the tenour of our faith is the true latria which belongs onely to the divine nature ; but in such sort as we salute and worship the figure of the pretious and vivificative cross , the sacred books of the gospel and other holy things . and that there be added also lights and incense for the honouring of them , as was the pious custom of the ancients . for the honour of the image passes to the prototype , and he that worships the image worships the person which the image doth express . this is in full as much as respects the point in hand out of act. . of this nicene council according to the greek text as severinus binius has set it out : and the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is plainly used here . according to which and to those passages in pope adrians letter , and the consent thereto of tarrhasius and the whole council , act . it is manifest that photius has given an account of this council , terminating no worship in the images no● any thing used in our religion , but onely in god himself , or in the saints , or rather not in the saints neither , but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as both the council and photius faithfully following the footsteps of the council do declare . but now in this last definition of the council , to say they give to no image that worship which is latria , and then afterwards to say , the worship done to the image does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pass to the prototype , is plainly to say they give worship not divine to christ , and so declare he is not god ; which makes me hugely suspect , that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 till we come to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has been foisted in since photius his time . but photius living not long after the council , perused uncorrupted copies thereof ; and truely that this is foisted in it is an argument to me , in that the sense seems so lame and bungling , as if the party knew not how to express his mind in the language . for it should be naturally , either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. not giving them , contrary to the tenour of our faith , the true latria which belongs onely to god , or else , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. not giving them the true latria , whic● , according to the tenour of our faith belongs onely to god. for the definition of what is the true latria is not so properly any article of our faith and religion , but that the true latria belongs to god alone . and therefore the first reading was in all likelyhood thus ; that holy and adorable images be set up , and that they be honoured with salutations and adorations in such sort as we salute and worship the figure of the blessed and vivificative cross , the sacred books of the gospel , and other holy things . and that there be added also lights and incense , &c. for the honour of the image passes to the prototype ; where we might take notice of the unskilfull blunder and gross confusion in the latine translation which is caused by not taking notice , that [ we define ] is to be repeated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , before [ and that there be added also lights and incense , &c. ] but one thing more especially is to be observed here , that the council does look at the burning of incense and setting up lights as an act of latria if before the image of christ , and as a religious worship be they before what image they will , for immediately after [ and that there be added also lights and incense , &c. ] there follows , for the honour done to the image passeth to the prototype . but i will add unto all this , that suppose the foisted words which we have excluded should be retained and allowed of , yet if we improve that epither of latria to what it seems to aim at , it will not at all justle with photius his sense nor other parts of the council . for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 true latria , here naturally signifies that latria which is terminative on the object , which can belong to no other but god. and therefore is counter-distinct to that latria which does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and is transitive , which cannot belong to god , because there is none greater nor higher than he to whom it should pass : whence it is plain that the transitive latria is not the true latria as being incompetible to god the highest object . so that cultus latriae transitivus or respectivus , that is , which hits so on one object , that it tends to an higher and better , is allowed by the council to the image of christ , though not cultus latriae terminativus . which bin●us also plainly acknowledges in his notes on this seventh act of the council . which is the very sense of photius ; and which this foisted sentence at least does not obscure . but doth rather imply , that this to the image of christ is latria too , but not vera latria , viz. terminative but transitive onely ; which is the thing , as i said , which photius asserts . and now for that passage in the second quotation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the genuine sense of it will be hence easily understood . for latria belonging to the image of christ according to the sense of the council and of photius , and to christ himself according to the sense of all orthodox christians , the analogy will be thus . let christ himself be . and the worship due to him , viz. latria , . let the virgin mary be . every saint else . now 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we necessarily conclude , as to , so to . as to , so to , that is to say , as christ is to mary , so is latria to hyperdulia , and as christ is to any other saint , so is latria to dulia . but according to the council and photius who give latria also to the image of christ ; then as christ is to mary , so is the worship of the image of christ which is latria , to the worship of the image of mary , which must therefore be hyperdulia . and as christ or mary to another saint , so the worship of the image of christ or mary to the worship of the image of another saint . the former therefore being latria and hyperdulia , this last must be dulia : the worship of the image of the saint must be dulia , as well as of its prototype : which is the very same that alexander halts , thomas aquinas and bonaventure those ancient school-men , who writ above years ago , do affirm , that the same honour is done to the image that is done to the prototype . that the images have according to the excellency and venerability of their prototypes , some latria , some hyperdulia , and some dulia . and thus i think i have proved my translation of that passage , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , &c. to be very right and full , which he says is the onely material word in that citation , pag. . l. . and have made it manifest , that the very analogy photius aimes at concludes the sameness of honour to image and prototype . and which is my main drift of all , i have sufficiently evinced that photius has given the most natural and genuine sense of this nicene council . according to which my adversary even in his own conceit and opinion cannot but conclude the church of rome , which refers her self to this council , to be gross idolaters . and who , i pray you , ought to be blank now ? vpon the seventh paragraph . that my antagonist answers nothing to this seventh and last paragraphs , must be either because he thinks he has answered it already by denying that sense of the council which photius represents , or because he thinks it unanswerable . if the former , i have made good that photius his sense of the council is the most genuine and natural . if the latter , we have the day in this point without any more to do . nor can i imagine what may occur that may seem at all to lessen the certainty of that sense of photius , unless that passage of constan●ine bishop of constantia , act . where giving his vote for the worshipping of images ( as if forsooth there was any fear that he should give that worship to the image of a saint that is due to the holy trinity ) he is made to reserve 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ( by which is understood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to the super-essential and zoarchical trinity . the former part of which is so without analogy , and the latter so turgid and preterscriptural , and this caution so solitary , not one of the bishops making any such caution but himself ; and lastly , so superfluous in respect of what goes before in the form of profession approved by them , ( where they declare they do not worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the painted wood or stone , but that through these by the eyes of their mind they are carried to the prototypes , according to that of basil the great , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; which is a sign they pretend not one worship for the image and another for the prototype , but that it is one worship though the image to the prototype , ) that i must confess to me it makes bishop constan●ines caution look very odly and unlikely to be his own , but of some heedless and unskilfull foister in of stuff to serve a sense against the general current of the council , or to obscure the genuine tenour of it . which yet , if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be understood of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as i have noted and explained it above , though this caution were in , it would not be repugnant to any part of the council . and besides , what is the authority of one single bishop in so great a number of bishops , to weaken the general current of the sense of the council ? so sure and certain every way is the meaning that photius has represented of the council . chap. ix . the meaning of the doctrine of the council of trent touching the worship of images more determinately illustrated from the general practice of the roman church and suffrage of their popes , whereby it is deprehended to be still more coursly and paganically idolatrous . . but it may be it may give more satisfaction to some , to know what is the church of rome's own sense of this honor debitus she declares ought to be done to the images of christ and the saints . putting off a man's hat , and lying prostrate before them , the council does not stick to instance in by the bye . but because the council calls this neither dulia , nor hyperdulia , not latria , some will , it may be , be ready to shuffle it off with the interpretation of but a civil complement to these images or their prototypes . but since the council of trent has declared nothing farther , what can be a more certain interpreter of their meaning then the continued custome of their church , and the sense of such doctours as have been even sainted for their eminency , as ●homas aquinas and bonaventure , who both of them have declared that the image of christ is to be worshipped with the worship of latria , the same that christ is worshipped with ? . and azorius the iesuite affirms that it is the constant opinion of the theologers , ( their own , he means , you may be sure , ) that the ●mage is to be honoured and worshipped with the same honour and worship that he is whose image it is . which is not unlike that in the council of nice , , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the foregoing citation . but that they are all capable of religious worship , the council of trent it self ( as well as bellarmine and others , if ▪ not all the theologers of that church , ) does plainly acknowledge , in that it determines for their invocation , which is competible to no invisible power but the godhead it self . wherefore it is manifest that their images are worshipped with religious worship also . . but we shall make still the clearer judgement thereof , if we consider the consecration of these images which the council of trent declares are to be worshipped . for the con●ecration and worshipping of them makes them perfectly as the idol-gods of the heathen , as octavius jearingly speaks of the heathen gods , that is , their idols , in . minucius felix : ecce funditur , fabricatur , scalpitur ; nondum deus est . ecce plumbatur , constr●itur , erigitur ; nec adhuc deus est . ecce ornatur , consecratur , oratur ; tunc postremó deus est . behold it is clothed or adorned , it is consecrated and prayed unto ; then at length it becomes a god. and if this will doe it , the church of rome's images will prove as good idol-gods as any of them all . . chemnitius recites some forms of consecration : i will cull out onely those of the images of the blessed virgin and of s. iohn . that of the virgin is this : anctify , o god , this image of the blessed virgin , that it may aid and keep safe thy faithfull people ; that thundrings and lightnings , if they grow too terrible and dangerous , may be quickly expelled thereby : and that the inundations of rain , the commotions of civil war , and devastations by pagans , may be suppressed by the presence thereof . which is most effectual to make all men come and hurcle under the protection of the virgin 's image in such dangers , as under the wings of the great iehovah . this is hugely like the consecrated telesms of the pagans . but let us hear the form of the consecration of the image of s. iohn also : grant , o god , that all those that behold this image with reverence , and pray before it , may be he ard in whatsoever streights they are . let this image be the holy expulsion of devils , the conciliating the presence and assistence of angels , the protection of the faithfull ; and that the intercession of this saint may be very powerfull and effectuall in this place . what a mighty charm is this to make the souls of the feeble to hang about these images as if their presence were the divine protection it self ? . these chemnitius recites out of the pontificall he perused . but the rituale romanum , published first by the command of paulus quintus , and again authorized by pope vrban the eighth , will do our business sufficiently , they being both since the council of ●rent ; and therefore by the exposition of these popes we may know what that debitus honor is which the tridentine fathers mention as that which ought to be done to the images of christ , the blessed virgin or any other saint . for the consecration of their images runs thus : grant , o god , that whosoever before this image shall diligently and humbly upon his knees worship and honour thy only begotten son , or the blessed virgin , ( according as the image is that is a-consecrating ) or this glorious apostle , or martyr , or confessor , or virgin , that he may obtain by his or her merits and intercession grace in this present life and eternall glory hereafter . so that the virgin and other saints are fellow-distributers of grace and glory with christ himse●f to their supplicants before their images , and that upon their own merits , and for this service done to them in kneeling and pouring out their prayers before their statues or symbolicall presences . what greater blasphemy and idolatry can be imagined ? ornatur , consecratur , oratur , tunc postremò fit d●us : that is to say , the image is pray'd before , but the daemon pray'd unto . there is no more in paganism it self . and yet by the pope's own exposition this is the debitus honor that is owing to the images of the saints . consider the latter end of the last conclusion of the first chapter , and the forms of invocation in the fourth and fifth , as also the eighteenth conclusion of the second chapter . . this is all plain and express according to the ●uthority of their church . and that , besides their adoration and praying before these images , ( which , considering the postures of the supplicant and the image , is as much praying to them as the heathens will acknowledge done to theirs , ) there are also wax-candles burning before them , and the oblation of incense or perfuming them , feasts likewise , temples and altars to the same saints , and the carrying them in procession , ( which was the guize of ancient paganism , ) is so well known , that i need not quote any authours . and that this is the practice of the roman church jointly and coherently with their worship of images , is manifest to all the world ; and that therefore it is as arrant idolatry as paganism it self , and consequently real idolatry by the third conclusion of the first chapter . and lastly , it is to be noted that the council of trent , naming the debitus honor of images , and not excepting these in known practice then among them , must of all reason be conceived to mean these very circumstances , as paganicall as they are , of the worshipping of them . . and the rather , because they do pretend to rectify some miscarriages in the business of images , as any unlawfull or dishonest gain by them , all lascivious dresses of the images , all drunkenness and disorderly riot at their feasts , and the like . which methinks is done with as grave caution against idolatry , as if they had decreed that all the whores in rome should forbear to go in so garish apparell , that they should be sure to wear clean linen , to be favourable to poor younger brothers in the price of a night's lodging , that they keep themselves wholsome and clean from the pox , and the like ; which were not the putting down , but the establishing , of whores and whoredome in the papacy . and so are these cautions touching images . exceptio firmat regulam in non exceptis . wherefore these circumstances of idolatry being not named by the tridentine fathers in their exception , they are thereby ratify'd . which yet are so like the old pagan idolatry , that ludovicus vives , one of their own church , could not abstain from professing , non ●osse aliquid discrimen ostendi , nisi quòd nomina tanium & titulos mutaverint ; that onely the names and objects were changed , not the modes , of the ancient idolatry of the heathen . . if the council of trent would have really and in good earnest rectify'd their church in the point of images , they should have followed the example of that skilfull and famous physician dr. butler , they should have imi●ated his prescript touching the safe eating of a pear , viz. that we should first pare it very carefully , and then be sure to cut out or scoup out all the coar of it , and after that fill the hollow with salt , and when this is done , cast it forthwith into the kennell . this is the safest way of dealing with those things that have any intrinsick poison or danger in them . see those most wholesome and judicious homilies of our church of england against the perill of idolatry . . and thus much shall serve for the setting out the idolatry of the church of rome so far as it seems to be allow'd by the church it self . but for those more gross extravagancies , which , though they have connived at , yet they would be loath to own upon publick authority , i will neither weary my self nor my reader by meddling with them . such as the making the images to sweat , their eyes to move , the making them to smile , or lowre and look sad , to feel heavy or light , or the like . which does necessarily tend to the engaging of the people to believe and have assiance in the very images themselves , as those consecrations also imply which i cited out of ch●mnit●us , and which that rhyme seems to acknowledge which they say to that face of christ which they call the veronica . which rhyme runs thus : nos perduc ad patriam , felix ô figura , ad videndam faciem quae est christi pura . nos ab omni macula purga vitiorum , et tandem consortio junge beatorum . and with such like blinde devotion do they likewise speak to the cross : o crux , spes unica , hoc passionis tempore a●ge piis iustitiam , re●sque dona veniam . this must sound very wildly and extravagantly to any sensible ear . and yet the invoking any saint before his image for aid and succour , ( the image bearing the name and representation of the saint , ) with eyes and hands lift up to it , is as arrant talking with a sensless stock or a stone as this , and as gross a piece of idolatry , though approved of by the authority of the roman church . but i intended to break off before . chap. ix . his answer to the first paragraph . that the image of christ , says he , may be worshipped ●ith ●●e ●orship of ●atria ( though expres●y contrary to the doctrine of the second council of nice ) is the commonly supposed opinion of st. thomas and st. ●onaventure . but there is a great difference betwixt , is to be wors●ipped , and may be worshipped . and besides it is hard to say , what the meaning of these two doctors is , they wind about so , and enter into such nice distinctions , &c. the reply . as to the being contrary to the council of nice , i reply , that i have already shown that it is most consonant thereto , both from photius and the council it self . and therefore thomas and bonaventure being such very ancient schoolmen , about years ago , and therefore much nearer to the nicene council , it is most likely they followed the air of that council and of pope adrians letter to irene and constantine approved by that council . and it is incredible that pope adrians letter and the sense of the council concerning so great a point , and ●f so high importance , should be unknown to the church of rome , especially the more learned of them , for above four hundered years together . touching [ may be worshipped ] and [ is to be worshipped ] i demand whether any undue vvorship may be given to the image of christ. if therefore that vvorship which may be given is due and fit , it is plain it is to be given or ought to be given ; which questionless was the opinion of both thomas and bonaventure . and lastly , as to the winding into nice distinctions , what distinctions are here but onely of terminativè , and relativè , or transitive ? which are intelligible enough , viz that latria cannot be given to the image of christ terminativè but onely relativè , or transitivè , it must 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , pass to the prototype as the council of nice speaks . that is to say , we must do divine honour to the image of christ that christ ultimately may be honoured thereby , which is plainly to commit gross idolatry to the glory and honour of christ. and therefore my adversary durst name none of these nice distinctions , not because they are above the capacity of the vulgar , but because even a vulgar capacity can easily observe the folly and futility of them . his answer to the second paragraph . first , he says , that my alledging of azorius is a proofless accusation or calumny against them . i suppose , because ● cite not the very place and words . secondly , touching the doctrine z●rius witnesses of , he says it is so far from being the constant opinion of their theologers , that it is now generally rejected by them , unless limited by that qualifying distinction of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ; which he says i have forgot or purposely omitted in my long translation out of photius , though the onely material word in the whole citation . for he contends that the worship due to the image and the prototype , is analogically though not univocally the same ; which he would have intimated in that passage of photius , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and that therefore i have purpose●y omitted the translation of it . he streams out a great deal further in this second part of his answer to this paragraph , but what ever is material i shall have an eye to in my reply . the reply . to that of azorius , i have no more to say than thus , to prove it no calumny ; that his words instit. moral . part . lib. . cap. are these , constans est theologorum sententia imaginem eodem honore & cultu honorari & coli quo colitur id cujus est imago . what can be more express ? touching the doctrine it self , i note from the very intimatition of my adversary , that he cannot well deny , but that it has been the general doctrine of their church though now it is not , they being apostates , as it seems , from the opinion of pope adrian , the steers-man of that council of nice , whom yet they now make a fallible mortal , renouncing his opinion and the councils , as i think i have plainly proved above . and then to what he says , unless limited by that qualifying distinction of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which i purposely omitted in translating of photius . first , i say , i did not omit the translating of it ; for i render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , thus , according to the excellency of the prototypes , [ according ] here being the same that pro ratione , and that the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . but , not onely notwithstanding this passage , but from this very passage have i demonstrated , according to the mind of photius and the council , that one and the same worship , even univocally the same , is to be given to the image and the prototype . of such confessed idolatry has their . church been found guilty of till of late , even according to my adversaries concession . but now , secondly , with my adversary to say , they are onely analogically the same , is a phrase of uncertain signification , whether it is to be understood logically or geometrically . if logically , it is as much as to say , that the worship to the image and the prototype agree in one immediate genus analogum . as in those words that i suspected foisted into the council , there is mention of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , by which suppose were meant the highest and most principal latria , which is excepted there as undue , suppose to the image of christ ; but that there may be some other latria that is . wherefore the genus analogum that is immediate to these two latria's , is a latria common to them both , and the two latriae under it , the one to christ , the other to his image , are the species of this genus . and so in like manner of hyperdulia to the blessed virgin and of dulia to the rest of the saints , these words used in respect of their images and of themselves must be the species of those common genera , hyperdulia and dulia . but according to the rudiments of logick the species of a genus analogum do really , though one dependently of the other and less principally , partake of the common nature of the genus ; which being either latria , hyperdulia , or dulia , and all these religious worship , it is manifest religious worship is given to all the images . but now if we understand that the worship done to the image and the prototype is . analogically the same in a geometrical sense , we are first to take notice , that analogy in geometry requires four termes ; as , in a , b : : b , c. or a , b : : c , d. and therefore the four termes in this case , will be , christ , the worship of christ , christs image , the worship of christs ●mage : as christ to t●e worship of christ , so christs image to the worship of christs image . now if you will say , the worship of christ and the worship of christs image is one and the same term in this analogy , you ipso facto declare , that , seeing the worship of christ is latria prope●ly so called , the worship of christs image is so also . you see therefore how gross a thing it is to say the termes are analogically the same in this geometrical way , it implying also a parity betwixt the image of christ and christ himself . and the same inconvenience will recu● though you take them alternately : as christ to christs image , so the worship of christ to the worship of christs image . here again if the vvorship of christs image and the vvorship of christ be the same , it will follow that there is a parity betwixt christ and his image , which is impossible . but you will say , the worship of christ , and the worship of christs image is analogically the same , that 's the thing you mean. but you seem not to know what you mean your selves : if you mean in that logical sense above , you have your answer already ; if you mean in a geometrical or arithmetical sense , if i should use your freedom of speech elsewhere , i might say more than that it is not sense . for the termes including a proportion are not called analogically the same , but the proportions included betwixt each two termes , which make up the four termes proportional , are rightly said to be the same ; as in to , and to , the proportion betwixt and is the same proportion that betwixt and ; but neither and nor and are analogically the same . therefore nothing with any sense can be said this geometrical way unless this , that there is the same proportion betwixt the vvorship of christ and the vvorship of his image , that there is betwixt christ and christs image . but this is far from saying the vvorship of christ and the vvorship of his image is analogically the same ; there being no sameness of termes including proportions in these cases , unless the termes be equal , as in , : : , ▪ or , : : , . but thus will the image of christ have latria due to it as well as christ himself . but such muddy and confounded doctrines must needs be the mothers of confounded notions and distinctions . but supposing , as christ to his image ( which must be the ground of proportion betwixt the two worships of christ and christs image ) so the worship of christ is to the worship of christs image ; the image of christ beingin a most absolute sense infinitely inferiour to christ himself , what kind or share of worship that is to terminate on his image , can be imagined so mean , but it will be really too much ? and therefore the fittest proportion will be none at all . and how will lighting up candles and burning incense before christs image , which is plainly religious worship , yea sacrifice and therefore latria , as i have proved above , and yet enjoyned by this council of nice , bear so little proportion to the worship of christ himself , as his image does to him , which is infinitely inferiour ? things therefore succeed so ill this arithmetical way that i half phancy my antagonist to affect the logical , though i must confess i know not which he would be at , he is so off and on ; which made me show the unsuccesfulness of both . but let the reader judge of his words , pag. . as the man and the painted man are analogically the same , so the honour done to the painted man and the man himself , are not univo●ally but analogically the same ; which he applies to images and prototypes . by saying not univocally but analogically the same , ( though a few lines before he expresses himself in a geometrical way ) he seems to make a man and a painted man two species under one genus analogum , whenas a man and a painted man are termes equivocal ; as if thomas and bonaventure when they declared the worship given to the image and the prototype to be the same , meant equivocally the same ! what is all this but tergiversation and equivocation ? no question there●ore but thomas and bonaventure meant as photius , and photius as the nicene council , and the nicene council as pope adrian . and that religious worship is meant to images in their worshipping them , is plain from that clause ; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 . that besides salutation and adoration , they were to add the setting up lights and burning of incense in honour to them . for the honour done to the image passes to the prototype . now as i above noted , burning of incense is a sacrifice , and setting up lights was a piece of religious service in the pagan religion to their daemons and a kind of oblation , and it is here plainly expressed to be done in honour to the images , out of all which it is apparent that it is religious worship . and then , in that it is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , to pass to the prototype , that is a further confirmation thereof , and intimation that it is that very worship that is competible to the prototype ; whether christ , the blessed virgin , or any other saint , to all whom invocation is expresly competible according to the council of trent it self ; which yet is comperible to no invisible power , but the very god●ead . but pope adrian in his letter to irene and constantine says expresly , that images and their prototypes are lookt upon but as one , and therefore their vvorship bu● as one ; not one to the image the other to the prototype , ( accordingly as photius hath faithfully declared the sense of the council ) but one religious worship passing through the image to the prototype : as those that should vvorship the moon through a glass window with the picture of the moon in it . i do not at all doubt but this was the genuine and true sense and air of that second council of nice . and therefore my antagonist must give me leave to give credit to azorius , ( who , by the by , does also declare , that it is the sense also of the council of nice and of trent ) when he tells us this is the constant opinion of their theologers , especially the more ancient schoolmen , as alexander hales , thomas aquinas , bonaventure , &c. as keeping to the right sense of pope adrian and this seventh general council called on purpose to decide this matter of images . and if you have changed of late from this rule , it is but a concession how grosly you were lapsed into idolatry before . nor are you yet a jot mended , by saying it is analogically the same vvorship , it still remaining religious vvorship terminated in the images t●emselves ; which is a gross blot , and makes the matter worse than before . but to make the worship equivocally the same , is such an equivocating quibble to put on these two saints of rome , st. thomas , and st. bonaventure , that all the honour done to their images will not recompense this injury done to their memorie . and thus i have used my christian liberty , which my adversary so courteously allowes me , in impugning gabriel biel , and whosoever else do corrupt the genuine sense of thomas aquinas , and bonaventure , with such pittifull glosses . and whereas he says the council of trent never mentions any such worship of latria due to the image of christ ; i answer , it mentions the council of nice , and refers to the sentence of that council , which assuredly was the same that azorius says is the constant tenet of theologers . and thus consequentially at least does the council of trent declare for latria to the image of christ. besides , as i have noted ; azorius is of opinion that the council of trent of it self is of this judgement . but of this enough , not has he any thing else on this second paragraph which may not easily be answered from what is said already . his answer to the third paragraph . here is a calumny , saith he , of the first magnitude , most uncharitably implying that the roman church prayes to images as the heathen did to their idol-gods . the charge is so gross that no person but one remove from a fool can either believe the doctor , or think he believes himself . the reply . truly i think there were very few among the pagans that were so silly and unwise , as to take the very wood and stone they prayed to for a god , but for the image of that god they prayed to , towards which they doing their devotions hoped to be heard . there might be some so sottish amongst them , as i have heard a story long since of an old woman amongst you , who having done her devotions to the image of the virgin , and being asked by one that stood by , what lady she prayed to , to her in the church , or to her in heaven ; what talk you to me , says she , of our lady in heaven ? i pray to this lady before my eyes . i will not deny but there may have been such sottish old wives amongst the pagans too ; but assuredly for the most pa●● neither you nor they profess to pray to the very image of wood or stone , but to the prototype it is consecrated to . and now say , whether this calumnv of the first magnitude has not melted into a liquid truth : there is no praying to the image terminatively but to the prototype before the image , in either the pagan , or pagano-christian religion , unless by such doting old wives as that story goes on . the very meanest and most ignorant of the indians will profess , they do not take their pa-gods , or idols , to be gods ▪ or worship them as such , but worship god in them , as i am certainly informed by a carefull inquirer into those things . his answer to the fourth paragraph . chemnitius his word , says he , is no proof with us , who is a known sinon , a person of that tryed integr●ty , as that he that never trusts him shall be sure never to be deceived by him . this he makes another calumny . the reply . but this , i say , is a kind of an equivocating form of rayling against a very eminent person , for his great learning and faithfull industry in supporting the truth . but why a sinon i pray you ? si miserum fortuna sinonem finxit , vanum etiam mendacemque improba finget . if he undertook a miserable cause , destitute of all truth and solidity , as your party does in such points as we are upon , then indeed there were some temptation for him to do as some at least of you do , to use slights , and shifts , and tricks , to foist in , and to expunge by expurgatory indexes , to feign any thing plausible for your own advantages : but our cause being firm of it self , we are put to no such devices ; but if we were destitute of truth on our part , would willingly imbrace it where we find it . or if you could phancy chemnitius a sinon , could you phancy him such a fool to quote consecrations out of a known pontifical , where every body might see there is no such thing . i am glad i have the ritual by me , which i make use of in the next paragraph , that proves that there is such a thing as consecration of images in your church to be prayed before , and the saint whose image it is to be invoked before it . but in that consecration , you will say , there is no mention of thundring and lightning , and storms to be chased away by these images consecrated . but i beseech you what more of absurdity or incredibility , that the church of rome in honour to their saints should consecrate their images to these purposes , than that she should consecrate bells to the said uses ? as you may see abundantly in durandus his rationale , lib. . cap. . pulsatur & benedicitur campana ut fruges , mentes & corpora credentium serventur , procul pellantur hostiles exercitus & omnes insidiae ●nimici , fragor grandinum , procelia turbinum , impetus tempestatum & fulgurum tempe●entur , infestaque ton●trua & ventorum flamina suspendantur , spiritus procellarum & aereae potestates perterreantur , &c. when they consecrate bells to such mighty powers and effects as these , can any man that is but one remove from a fool , doubt whether they would consecrate the image of st. john and the blessed virgin to such like purposes ? their agnus dei is also consecrated to the like uses , as you may see in the same durandus , lib. . cap. . and in the above said ritual you may observe i know not how many things to the like purpose , the cross , oyle , salt , water , and the like : so that he must be very weak that can misbelieve this quotation of chemnitius out of the pontifical he mentions , or that it is any calumny to produce his testimony , or improper for me to use it , though he be a protestant , my scope being not onely to grapple with the adverse party , but also to confirm our own . his answer to the fifth paragraph . there is no such expression , says he , in the whole prayer , as grant o virgin , or grant o saint , but grant o god. how then do we here make the virgin and other saints , fellow-distributers of grace and glory with christ himself ? much less do we make them fellow distributers of grace and glory with christ upon their own merits , who have no merits of their own , but such as flow from and have their absolute dependence of the merits of christ. and least of all are they here made fellow-distributers of grace for the service done to them in kneeling and praying before their statues ; there being no such causal as that ( for ) specified at all in the prayer . the reply . to all which i answer , it is true , it is not said ▪ grant o virgin , nor grant o saint , but grant o god ▪ because this is a form of consecration of the images of christ , the virgin or any other saint ; to wit , prayer to god ( not to the virgin or any other saint , not made before any of their images already consecrated , as he would make his simple folk believe whom he indeavours to keep in ignorance ) but is , i say , a prayer to god , that whosoever shall invoke christ , the virgin , or such a saint , whose image is a consecrating , may be heard , and obtain by the merits and intercession of the party they pray to , grace here , and glory hereafter . this is the plain sense of the consecration . and it is plain it is through their own merits , though they may be supposed inabled so to merit be vertue of christ. and if an invocation of the virgin , or any other saint , before their images , by their merits and intercession ( which is the usual form of invocation as you may see above ) procure grace here and glory hereafter , are not they fellow-distributers of grace and glory with christ ? and does not the very form of consecration imply that they are distributers , that is to say , that the saints by their merits and intercession do procure grace here and glory hereafter for their suppliants , upon the very account of their earnest and humble supplication to them before their images , as being a means to this end and therefore causal thereto ? but i do not exclude herein the vertue of the intercession and merit of our highest mediator jesus christ no more than the form of consecration . yet these notwithstanding are like the dii medioxumi or daemons of the heathens , who were the lowest negotiators of humane affairs with the divine powers . so that the strenghth of this paragraph rests firm for any thing my antagonist has alledged against it , as any one may perceive who lists to consider on it . his answer to the sixth paragraph . to that about wax-candles burning before their images and the oblation of incense smoking before them , he says , i pretend , but do not prove to be idolatrous , and that therefore it is a calumny . to that of temples and altars he says again , they erect them to god alone , reserving onely a secundary honour for the saints . this is the sum against this paragraph . the reply . to the first , i reply , that it is very plain that burning of incense was a sacrifice to god in the mosaical law , which incense was burnt before his symbolical presence in the sanctum sanctorum , and i add also that the lighting the lamps before him in the same place was another part of this mosaical service to him , which is some-how imitated by the pagans in lighting candles before the images of their daemons . in both which respects it is plain , that to do thus to the images of the saints is idolatrous . and by thus doing the saints are intended to be honoured according to the very nicene council , that presently upon the mention thereof , says , the honour done to the image passes to the prototype : wherefore that these actions are idolatrous is plain already , and is more clearly confirmed from the third conclusion of the first chapter ▪ and the ninth of the second . to the second , i reply , that the very rubrick of the ritual i have so often named ( in the form of consecrating and laying the first stone of the church ) says thus , nominando sanctum vel sanctam in cujus honorem ac nomen fundatur ecclesia . is not this plainly a consecration to the honour and name of the saint ? and again in the form of consecrating the church and the altar , te rogamus ut hanc ecclesiam & altare ad honorem tuum & women sancti tui n. pargare & benedicere digneris , where questionless [ ad nomen sancti ] includes honorem in it , which was expresly signified before in the consecrating the foundation-stone , and is also included in the signification of nomen . we do not pretend that you equalize the saints , in these doings , with god himself , but that you make them partake of true religious worship , though in a less share or in a more secundary way , with god in these dedications of temples and altars to them as well as to god , though not principally , or equall● . suppose a pantheon dedicated to jupiter and the rest of the gods , no man would say it was dedicated with equal honour to the rest as to him , and yet the dedicating of it to the rest would be idolatry , as being religious worship as well as his , though not at the same pitch ; wherefore these excuses are very weak and insignificant . his answer to the seventh paragraph . i shall not foul my paper with taking notice of such uns●emly brothel-language as fills up his next page . it is enough to say , it is more than becomes a modest doctor . this is all to this paragraph . the reply . certainly if this paragraph were not before the readers eyes to peruse , he would think the doctor a man of very soul and obscene language . if it be the language of the holy men of god in the scripture , if it be not more than becomes a modest prophet , a modest st. john , apoc. . , . a modest jeremy or ezeki●l to compare idolatry to whoredom in broader terms than i have done , certainly what i have said here is not more than becomes a modest doctor . but it is the policy of my adversary to fling away with a seeming disdain from what he knows not how to answer . for this plain similitude pinches hard and carries along with it a demonstration , that the council of trent have not taken away idolatry from their way of honouring of images , but confirmed it . he slips by my eighth paragraph also , as conscious it is too true what i utter in that similtude likewise . and i hope he now sees more clear than ever , that the pr●●ence of honouring images is quite to be cast out of the church , there being no good sense to be made of it any way . his answer to the ninth paragraph . to that of the smiling , and lowring images , he says , that i charge their church with connivence at such vnchristian impostures as have ever been the object of her s●arpest censures , not backing my accusation with any single instance . to the veronica and to o crux spes unica , he answers ; to the first , that it is no part of any ecclesiastick office . to the second , that i might as well compare the invoking god almighty before the ark of the cove●ant to this devotion of speaking to the cross , as the praying before images , and make them both alike talking with a stock or stone . this is the main of his answer in brief : if there be any further pretense of reason , i shall mention it and meet with it in my reply . the reply . to the first i reply , that it is a witty fetch to require of me an instance of connivence at a fault which , as soon as it is known , is no interest of them that are to punish it to connive any longer at it . for those smiling , lowring and eye-rowling images , so soon as they are deprehended to be such by art and not by miracle , they loose the effect they are intended for , which is to bring more plenteous oblations to the church . but for as much as these tricks of the images cannot but be known to the wise of the clergy , the bishop and others under him , to be tricks and not miracles , and they suffering them till open discovery or complaint , why may they not be said to connive at them ? or why was i bound to bring an instance of their connivence in so short a treatise , more than my adv●rsary of any sharp censure of their church against these impostures ? which he being deficient in● , i will help him with one instance here in our own nation in the time of popery . in the abbey church at boxley there were two famous images , one of st. rumwald , a stone statue of the bigness of a little boy , the other was called the ro●d of grace . there was no admission here but upon a treble oblation , one to the confessor , the other to st. rumwald the touch-stone of clean life , and the last to the rood of grace . now to those that offered frankly to st. rumwald it was most easie to lif● him ; but on the contrary ( by reason of a pin which the keepers could put in and take out at their pleasure ) to those that offered faintly , it was immovable . so that it was a pleasant spectacle to the by-standers , to see a great lubber not able to lift that which a boy or a girle had taken up before . but he was made heavy to those whose offerings were light , and light to those whose offerings were more weighty . but they having passed this tryal of clean life , they then were admitted to the rood of grace . in which image stood a man inclosed , and with many wyres made the image goggle with the eyes , and nod the head , move and shake the jaws , according to the value of the gi●t that was offered . if it was a small piece of silver he would hang the lip . if it were a piece of gold then would his jaws go right merrily . thus were the people abused and beguiled for a certain time . i but you will say , certainly some of the prelates , so soon as it was discovered , severely punished the imposture . nay i will tell you more , one of the prelates discovered it , namely archbishop cranmer , and the image with all its engins was openly shewed at pauls cross , and torn in pieces by the people . did not i tell you so ? will my adversary reply ; but in the mean time let me tell him again , that it is well known how inclinable then archbishop cranmer was to protestantism , if not a protestant in his judgement . but we speak of the connivence of the popish clergy in this point , and desire one instance of any such discovery of imposture by them , that could any longer have been concealed . and if not , where is the calumny of connivence ? and for the prayer to the veronica , be it no part of any ecclesiastick office , yet it is in your approved devotion-books , such as hortulus animae ; and this veronica is showd solemnly once a year to the people to spend their devotion on ; and lastly pope iohn the d . is said to have granted a thousand years indulgence to them that repeat the whole prayer , of which i have set down but a third part . and in the last place , for that he says , the praying before the ark to god almighty ( which ark and the things in it and about it are wood ) may as well be said to be talking with stocks and stones as the praying before the image of a saint and the cross in such formes as are used to them , is a most sensless and absurd speech , to say no worse . for the disparity is manifest . for did the jews ever say , o ark hear me , or , o cherubims hear me . but here is plainly speaking to the cross , which is but a piece of wood , ( in this form ) hail o cross our onely hope , increase righteousness to the righteous , and pardon our sins . besides , neither ark nor cherubim was in their sight to speak to , but the image of st. peter , or the blessed virgin is before their eyes , and they bear the names of these saints , ( as the image of christ does his ; of which one johannes in the nicene council declares , if any one call it or inscribe upon it , this is christ , he does nothing amiss therein ) and are as it were these very saints represented to us in figure and person ; and therefore when we speak to these wooden personages , saying , o blessed virgin , o holy st. peter , &c. is not this infinitely more like talking to stocks and stones , then when the jews having their faces toward the ark , which yet was vailed from them , mentioned god alone ? nor was there any wood-work , nor stone-work there , that was called god or jehovah . but what will not they say , that are in a bad cause , to make a show to desend themselves ? but for o crux ave spes vnica , he would excuse the gross absurdity of it , ( for none can excuse the idolatry , when they yield latria to the true cross and contend what kind of religious worship is due to the type of it ) by saying that by crux here is not meant the cross but christ crucified on the cross. so that it is but a figurative speech , the cross for christ upon the cross , metonymis subject● ; as it is used , cor. . . for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness , that is , says he , christ crucified on the cross. but it is immediately in the former verse , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , left the cross of christ be made of none effect , then immediately follows , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , which is plainly an ellipsis , and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be understood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and so the whole is , for the preaching of the cross of christ , &c. as it is taken , gal. . . god forbid that i should glory in any thing saving in the cross of our lord iesus christ , whereby the world is crucified to me , and i unto the world . this is that which is foolishness to them that perish , but the power of god to them that are saved . so that there is no ground for a metony●nia subjecti , when an ellipsis is so naturally understood , which will not at all serve his purpose . and the metonymy indeed very poorly . for it does not follow , because by a figurative speech the subject may be put for the adjunct ; or the symbol for the person it is compared to in speech , that therefore we may ( and yet seem to be in our wits ) make prayers or speeches to these subjects or symbols . the cherubims are the seat of the divine presence ; should the jews therefore have said by a metonymy , o golden cherubims come and help us ? and because men talk of the infallible chair at rome , meaning the popes , would any but a mad man propound questions to the chair , and not to the pope himself , to be resolved ? and our saviour christ says , apoc. . i am the bright morning star , which is a figurative speech ; can therefore any one with eyes and hands lift up to the morning star , say unto it , o bright morning star illuminate my understanding , increase righteousness to the righteous , and pardon our sins , but he will be lookt upon as an idolater and star-worshipper ? and to say he means christ the morning star will not excuse him from mere madness and delirancy , if it could from idolatry . and how much better , i pray , is it to speak to a piece of wood ? nay , to the figure of another piece of wood ? for christ was not crucified on the wood they speak to . but by speaking to this piece of wood , they would be understood to speak to another piece of wood on which christ was crucified at ierusalem ; nor yet to that piece of wood neither , but to christ hanging on the wood , and that now at such a time as he is off of the wood , and is in heaven to be spoke to himself as a gracious intercessor , that we may not call on this stock or that stone , but make our immediate addresses to him in word and heart , that he would be graciously pleased to intercede with his father for us . to all which you may add , that comparing this passage of the prayer with that which goes before , arbor decora & fulgida , electa digno stipite tam sancta membra tangere ; beata cujus brachiis secli pependit pretium , and how within a line or two after follows , o crux ave spes vnica , &c. it is demonstratively plain , that it is the cross it it self , not christ meant in this passage ; unless you will make christ his own cross to hang upon , and make him distinct from his own body and members . whence the absurdity and idolatry of this devotion is most clearly manifest , and that it is no calumny to charge them with it . the rest of this section is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if you will , and i will leave my antagonist to injoy himself in the reek and perfume thereof . chap. x. severall important consectaries from this clear diseovery of the gross idolatry of the church of rome ; with an hearty and vehement exhortation to all men , that have any serious regard to their salvation , to beware how they be drawn into the communion of that church . . thus have we abundantly demonstrated that the church of rome stands guilty of gross idolatry according to the conc●ssions and definitions of their own council of trent ; that is to say , though we charge them with no more then with what the council it self doth own , touching the adoration of the host , the invocation of saints , and the worshipping of images . but we must not forget , in the mean time , that the crime grows still more course and palpable looking upon the particular forms of their invocation of the saints , and the circumstances of their worshipping their images , and yet ratify'd by the popes , and corroborated by the uncontrolled practice of their whole church : which therefore must in all reason be the interpreter of the minde of the council . so that there is no evasion left for them , but that they are guilty of as gross and palpable idolatry as ever was committed by the sons of men , no less gross then roman paganism it self . . from whence , in the next place , it necessarily follows , that they are the most barbarous murtherers of the servants of god that ever appeared on the face of the earth . for indeed if they had had truth on their side so far , as that the things they required at the hands of the dissenters had been lawfull , ( though not at all necessary ; ) yet considering the express voice of scripture , which must be so exceeding effectual to raise consciencious scruples , and indeed to fix a man in the contrary opinions , besides the irrefragable votes of common sense and reason , and the principles of all arts and sciences that can pretend any usefulness to religion in any of its theoreticall disquisitions ; i say , when it is so easie from hence , if not necessary , for some men to be born into a contrary consciencious persuasion , it had undoubtedly even in this case been notorious murther in the pontifician party , to have killed men for dissenting from the doctrine and practice of their church . but now the murtherers themselves being in so palpable an error , and requiring of the dissenters to profess blasphemies and commit gross idolatries with them , which is openly to rebell against god under pretense of obeying holy church , as they love to be called , they murthering so many hundred thousands of them for this fidelity to their maker , and their indispensable obedience to the lord iesus christ , this is murther of a double dye , and not to be parallel'd by all the barbarous persecutions under the red dragon , the pagan emperours themselves . . from which two main considerations it follows in the third place , that , considering the fit and easie congruity of the names of the seven churches and of the events of the seven intervalls ( denoted by them ) to the prefigurations in the visions , there can be no doubt but that by balaam mentioned in the epistle to the church in pergamus , wherein antipas , that is , the opposers of the pope , are murthered , the papal hierarchy is understood ; as it is also by the prophetess iezebel in the epistle to the church in thyatira , who was also a murtheress of the prophets of god , and both of them expr●●ly patrons of idolatry , as is manifest in the very text. nor is it at all wonderfull that balaam and iezebel , the one a man , the other a woman , should signifie the same thing . for the false prophet and the whore of babylon in the following visions of the apocalypse signifie both one and the same thing , viz. the hierarchy of rome , from the pope to the rest of their ecclesiastick body . . and what i have said of the vision of those seven churches , the same i say of all those expositions of the thirteenth and seventeenth chapters of the apocalypse ▪ and that of the little horn in daniel ; namely , the words of the prophecies being so naturally applicable to the affairs of that church , besides the demonstration of synchronism , that the weight of those two foregoing conclusions being added thereto , there cannot be the least doubt or scruple left , but that those interpretations are true ; and that the church of rom● is that body of antichrist , that mother of fornications and abominations of the earth , that is , of multifarious modes of gross idol●tries , or that scarlet whore on the seven hills , that is also drunk with the bloud of the saints , and with the bloud of the martyrs of iesus . . and that therefore , in the fourth place , in the church of rome the poison exceeding the antidote ▪ there can be no reason that salvation should be hoped for there . it is a sad and lamentable truth , but being a truth , and of such huge moment , it is by no means to be concealed . what god may do in his more hidden ways of providence , he alone knows . and therefore we cannot say that every idolatrous heathen must perish eternally : but to speak no farther then we have commission , and according to the easy tenour of the holy scriptures , we must pronounce , though with great sadness of heart , that we have no warrant therefrom to think or declare any of the popish religion , so long as they continue so , to be in the state of salvation ; and especially , since that voice of the angel which sounded in the intervall of thyatira , saying expresly , come out of her , my people , that ye be not partakers of her sins , and receive not of her plagues ; and the apostle in his first epistle to the corinthians , chap. . . be not deceived , neither fornicatours , nor idolaters , nor adulterers , &c. shall inherit the kingdome of god. and those of the church of rome are bound to continue idolaters as long as they live , or else to renounce their church ; and therefore they are bound to be damned by adhering to the roman church , unless they could live in it for ever . for he that dies in such a capital si● as idolatry without repentnce , nay , in a blind , obstinate perseverance in it , how can he escape eternal damnation ? . but though we had kept our selves to the apocalypse , the thing is clear in that book alone , ch . . ver . , . where all idolaters are expresly excluded from the tree of life : blessed are they that do his commandments , ( and one of them , though expunged by rome , is , thou shalt not worship any graven image , ) that they may have right to the tree of life , &c. for without are dogs , and sorcerers and whoremongers , and mortherers , and idolaters , and whoso loveth and maketh a lie. all these are excluded the heavenly ierusalem , and from eating the tree of life . of which who eateth not is most assuredly detain'd in eternall death . as it is written in the foregoing chapter , apoc. . . that murtherers , and whoremongers , and sorcerers , and idolaters , and all liers , shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone ; which is the second death . what sentence can be more express then this ? . but besides this divine sentence against them , they are also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , they are self condemned , or at least give sentence against themselves , while they so freely pronounce that no idolaters are to be saved ; which they frequently do , to save their own church from the reproach of idolatry . for , because some protestants have declared for the possibility of salvation in the romish church , they farther improve the favour to the quitting themselves of the guilt , from others hopefull presages that by an hearty implicit repentance of all their sins ( even of those that are the proper crimes of that church , ) they may , through god's mercy in christ , be delivered from the punishment . this piece of charity in some of our party they turn to the fencing off all imputation of idolatry from themselves , arguing thus ; that no idolaters can be saved : but those in the romish church may be saved , according to those protestants opinion : therefore those in the romish church are no idolaters . but most assuredly while they thus abuse the charity of some , even by their own proposition they must bring the sentence of condemnation from all the rest upon their own heads , as they have herein given it against themselves , in saying that all idolaters are damned , or that no idolater can be saved . for it is demonstrated as clear as the noon-light , in this present discourse , that the church of rome are idolaters . . and in that of those of our church that say they may be saved upon a sincere and hearty implicit repentance of all their sins , ( wherein they include the idolatries and all other miscarriages which they know not themselves guilty of , by reason of the blinde mis-instructions of their church , ) no more is given them by this then thus , viz. that they are saved by disowning of and dismembring themselves from the roman church , as much as it is in their power so to do , and by bitterly repenting them that they were ever of that church as such , and by being so minded , that if they did know what a corrupt church it is , they would forthwith separate from it . so that in effect those of the roman church that some of ours conceit may be saved , are no otherwise saved , if at all , then by an implicit renouncing communion with it , which in foro divino must go for an actual and formal separation from it . in which position if there were any truth , it will reach the honest-minded pagans as well ; but it can shelter neither , unless in such circumstances , that they had not the opportunity to learn the truth , which since the reformation , and especially this last age , by the mercy of god , is abundantly revealed to the world . so that all men , especially those that live in protestant nations or kingdoms , are without all excuse ; and therefore become obnoxious to god's eternall wrath and damnation , if they relinquish not that false prophetess iezebel , as she is called in the epistle to the church in thyatira , who by her corrupt doct●ines deceives the people , and inveigles them into gross idolatrous practices . . thus little is conceded by those of our reformed churches that speak most favourably of those in the church of rome . and yet this little must be retracted , unless we can make it out , that any of that church are capable of sincere and unfeigned repentance while they are of it . for to repent as a thief , because he is afraid to be hanged , is not that saving repentance . but to repent as a true christian none can do , unless he has the spirit of god , and be in the state of regeneration . for true repentance arises out of the detestation of the ugliness of sin it self , and out of the love to the pulchritude and amiableness of the divine life and of true virtue , which none can be touched with but those that are regenerate or born of god. now those holy and divine sentiments of the new birth are so contrary to the frauds and impostures , to the gross idolatries and bloudy murthers of the church of rome , which they from time to time have perpetrated upon the dear servants of christ , that it is impossible for any one that has this holy sense , but that he should incontinently fly from that church with as much horrour and affrightment as any countrey-man would from some evil spectre , or at the approach of the devil . . he that is born of god sinneth not , saith s. john : john . . how then can they be so born whose very religion is a trade of sin , and that of the highest nature , they ever and anon exercising gross acts of idolatry ? besides that they are consenting ( by giving up their belief and suffrage to the murtherous conclusions of that church ) to all the barbarous and bloudy persecutions of the saints that either have happened or may happen in their own times , or ever shall happen , by that church ; they become , i say , guilty thereof by adjoyning themselves to this bloud-thirsty body of men , with whom the murther of those that will not commit idolatry with them , and so rebell against god , is become an holy papal law and statute . and therefore , i say , how can any man conceive that those men are born of god who are thus deeply defiled with murtherous and idolatrous impurities , but rather that they are in a mere blind carnal condition , and uncapable , while they are thus , of any true and sincere repentance , and consequently of repenting of their daily idolatries which they commit , and ordinarily ( to make all sure ) in ipso articul● mortis , and therefore are out of all capacity of salvation while they are members of that church ? as plainly appears both by this present reason fetch'd from the nature of regeneration , as also from the judgement of the romanists themselves touching the state of idolaters after this life , and chiefly from the express sentence of the spirit of god in scripture , as i intimated before . . and therefore , in the fifth and last place , it is exceeding manifest how stupid and regardless those souls are of their own salvation , that continue in the communion of the church of rome ; and how desperately wild and extravagant they are who , never having been of it , but having had the advantage of better principles , yet can find in their hearts to be reconciled to it . this must be a sign of some great defect in judgement , or else in their sincerity , that they ever can be allured to a religion that is so far removed from god and heaven . . but this church , as the woman in the proverbs , is , i must confess , both very fair of speech and subtil of heart , and knows how to tamper with the simple ones right skilfully . she knows how to overcome all their carnal senses by her luxurious enticements . she has deck'd her bed with coverings of i apestry , with carved work , with fine linens of aegypt . she has perfumed her bed with m●rrh , aloes and cinnamon , prov. . , . she entertains her paramours with the most delicious strains of musick , and chants out the most sweet and pleasing rhymes , to iull them secure in her lap : such as those idolatrous forms of the ●nvocation of the virgin mary , and of other saints , which i have produced , of which she has a numerous store . unto which i conceive the prophet isay to allude in that passage touching the city of tyre , representing there mystically the relapsing church of rome : take an harp , go about the city , thou harlot that hast been forgotten , make sweet melody , sing many songs , that thou mayst be remembred , isa. . . see synop●is prophetica , book . ch . . . she gilds her self over also with the goodly and specious ●itles of vnity , antiquity , ●niversality , the power of working miracles , of sanctity likewise , and of infallibility ; and boasts highly of her self , that she has the power of the keys , and can give safe conduct to heaven by sacerdotal absolution ; and , if need be , out of the treasury of the merits of holy men of their church , which she has the keeping and disposing of , can adde oyl to the lamps of the unprovided virgins , and so piece out their deficiency in the works of righteousness . such fair speeches and fine glo●ing words she has to befool the judgements of the simple . . but as to the first , it is plain that that vnity that is by force is no fruit of the spirit , and therefore no sign of the true church : nor that which is from free agreement , if it be not to good ends. for salomon describes an agreement of thieves or robbers , heartening one another to spoil and bloudshed , and to enter so strict a society as to have but one purse , prov. . . and therefore for a company of men , under the pretense of spirituality , to agree in the inventing or upholding such doctrines or fictions as are most servlceable for a wor●dly design , and for the more easily riding and abusing the credulous and carnal-minded , thereby to be masters of their persons and wealth , this is no holy unity , but an horrid and unrighteous conspiracy against the deluded sons of adam . . and for antiquity and universality , they are both plainly on the protestants side , who make no fundamentals of faith but such as are manifestly contained in the scripture : which is much more ancient , and more universally received , then any of those things upon ▪ whose account we separate from the church of rome , which are but the fruits of that apostas●e which , after four hundred years or thereabout , the church was to fall into according to divine prediction . so that we are as ancient and universal as the apostolick church it self , nor do we desire to appear to be the members of any church that is not apostolicall . and for their boasts of miracles , which are produced to ratifie their crafty figments , they are but fictions themselves framed by their priests , or delusions of the devil , according as is foretold concerning the coming of antichrist , that man of sin , ( which the pope and his clergy most assuredly is , ) namely , that his coming i● after the working of satan , with all power , and signs , and lying wonders , thess. . . so that they glory in their own shame , and boast themselves in the known character of antichrist , and would prove themselves to be holy church by pretending to the privileges of that man of sin , and by appealing to the palpable signs of the assistence of the devil . for from thence are all miracles that are produced in favour of practices that are plainly repugnant to the doctrines of the holy scriptures . . but now , as for their sanctity , what an holy church they are , any one may judge upon the reading of the lives of their popes and history of their cardinals , and other religious or●ers of that church of rome ; how rankly all things smell of fraud and imposture , of pride and covetousness , of ostentation and hypocrisy ; what monstrous examples of sensuality their holinesses themselves have ordinarily been , of fornication and adultery , of incest and sodomie ; to say nothing of simonie , and that infernall sin of necromancy . but for murther and idolatry , those horrid crimes are not onely made familiar to them , but have passed into a law with them , and are interwoven into the very essence of their religion . judge t●en how holy that church must be , whose religion is t●e establishment of idolatry and murther . of the latter of which crimes the holy inquisition is an instance with a witn●ss . and yet that den of murtherers , whose office it is to kill men for not committing idolatry , with the church of rome must needs bear the title of holy. . and for their pretense of infallibility , it is expresly predicted in the apocalypse of s. iohn , as well as their laying claim to miracles . for as the two-horned beast is said apoc. . to do great wonders , and to bring fire from heaven , which two-horned beast is the pope and his clergy ; so iezebel , which is the same hierarchy , is called the woman that gives to her self the title of a prophetess , apoc. . whose oracles you know must be infallible . for she does not mean that she is a false prophetess , though indeed and in truth she is so . and the pope with his clergy is judged to be so by the spirit of god , in that he is called the false prophet , apoc. . . as well as the two-horned beast , in those visions of s. iohn . and while he pretends himself to be a prophet , even without divine revelation , one may plainly demonstrate that he is a false one from this one notorious instance of transubstantiation ; which is a doctrine repugnant to common sense and reason , and all the faculties of the mind of man , and bears a contradiction to the most pla●n and indubitable principles of all arts and sciences , as i have proved above . so that we may be more sure that this is false , then that we feel our own bodies , or can tell our toes and fingers on our hands and feet . judge then therefore whether is more likely , that the church of rome should be infallible , or transubstantiation a mere figment , especially it being so serviceable for their worldly advantages , and they being taken tardy in so many impostures and deceits . so that infallibility is a mere boast . . and now for their sacerdotal absolution , that they can so safely dismiss men to heaven or secure them from hell thereby , this power of their pri●st is such another vain boast as that of transubstantiation . except a man be born again , he cannot enter into the kingdome of god. john . . and the form of words upon one's death-bed can no more regenerate any one , then their quinqueverbiall charm can transubstantiate the bread and ● ine into the body and bloud of christ. where the form of absolution has any effect , it must be on such persons as are already really regenerate and unfeignedly and sincerely penitent : which i have shewn to be incompetible to any one so long and so far forth as he adheres to the roman church . so that in this case one aethiopian does but wash another , which is labour spent in vain . there must be a change of nature , or no externall ceremony nor words can do any thing . for the form of absolution is not a charm , as i said , to change the nature of things , but onely a ticket to pass guards and scouts , and to procure safe conduct to the heavenly regions . but if by regeneration and due repentance one has not contracted an alliance and affinity with the saints and angels , but is really still involved in the impure and hellish nature , the grim officers of that dark kingdome will most certainly challenge their own , and they will be sure to carry that soul captive into a sutable place , let the flattering priest have dismissed her hence with the fairest and most hopefull circumstances he could . this is the most hideous , the most dangerous and the most perfidious cheat of that church of rome that ever she could light on for the damning of poor credulous souls , that thus superstitiously depend on the vain breath of their priest for the security of their salvation . . and yet they are not content with this device alone to iull men secure in wickedness , but besides their pretense of singing them out of purgatory by mercenary masses , and pecuniary redemptions , by pardons and indulgences , and i know not what trumperies , they allure men to come into their church as having that great store and treasury of the merits of holy-men and women , their works of supererogation , which they pretend to have the keeping and disposing of . so that a poor soul that is bankrupt of herself , and has no stock of good works of her own , may sufficiently be furnished for love or money by the merchants of this storehonse . which , besides that it is a blasphemous derogation to the merits of christ , is the grossest falshood that ever was uttered . for these holy men , as they are called , and virgins , were , god wot , themselves most miserable sinners , and died in most horrid idolatries , as dying in the practices of that church ; and he that comes to that church does necessarily become a gross idolater himself ; besides that he sets to his seal and makes himself accessory to all that innocent bloud , the bloud of those many hundred thousands of martyrs for the protestant truth , which that woman of bloud that sits on the seven hills has with the most execrable circumstances imaginable so frequently murthered . so that a soul otherwise passable of her self would be necessarily drown'd in this one foul deluge of guilt : so far is she from having any relief or advantage by reconciling her self to the church of rome . . wherefore who-ever thou art that hast any sense or solicitude for thy future state and salvation , believe not this woman of subtil lips and a deceitfull heart , and give no credit to her fictions and high pretensions ; but the more she goes about to magnifie her self , do thou humble her the more , by shewing her her ugly hue in the glass of the holy scriptures . if she boast that she is that holy ierusalem , psal. . . a city at unity within it self , whenas the rest of the world are so full of sects and factions ; tell her that she is that carnal ierusalem , wherein christ in his true members hath been so barbarously persecuted and murthered , and that the stones of her buildings are no living stones , but held together by a mere iron violence , and the cement of her walls tempered with the large effusion of innocent bloud ; forasmuch as she is that two-horned beast that gave life to the image of the beast , apoc. . and caused him to decree that as many as would not obey his idolatrous edicts should be slain . this is the power of your unity , which is not from the spirit of god , but from the spirit of the devil , who was a murtherer from the beginning . but the division of us protestants is both a sign of our sincere search after the truth , and a more strong testimony against you of rome , in that we being so divided amongst our selves , yet we so unanimously give sentence against you : your miscarriages and crimes being so exceeding gross , that no free eye but must needs discern them . . if she vaunts of her antiquity ; give her enough of it , and tell her she derives her pedigree from that great dragon , the old serpent , apoc. . . that is called the devil and satan , that murtherer of mankind . ye are of your father the devil , saith our saviour , and the works of your father will ye do . iohn . . we grant that the visage and lineage of your church reaches even beyond the times of the apostles , the two-horned beast reviving the image of the pagan beast , the great red dragon , by bringing up again his old bloudy persecutions and idolatries . it suffices us , that our church began with the apostles ; if she glories in her vniversality , and in her large territories ; tell her she is that great city which spiritually is called sodom and aegypt , where our lord was crucified : apoc. . and that she is babylon the great , the mother of fornications and the abominations of the earth . if she boast of the power of the keys , and of sacerdotal absolution ; tell her that he that is holy , he that is true , he that has the key of david , he that openeth and no man shu●teth , and shutteth and no man openeth , apoc. . that is to say , our lord iesus christ , will never part with these keys to his inveterate enemy , that notorious man of sin , or antichrist . if she spread before thee her goodly wares of mercenary masses , of pardons and indulgences , of the mutuatitious good works of their pretended holy men and women , or the wealth and externall glories of their church , and varieties of rich preferments and dignities ; say unto her , that she is that city of trade of whom it is written , that no man buyeth her merchandise any more ; and again , alas , alas ! that great city that was cloathed in fine linnen and purple and scarlet , and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls : for in one hour so great riches are come to nought . for her merchants were the great men of the earth , and by her sorceries were all nations deceived . and in her was found the bloud of prophets , and of saints , and of all that were slain upon the earth , apoc. . . if she would amaze thee with the stories of the wonderfull miracles done by her ; tell her that she is that two-horned beast apoc. . , . that doth great wonders , and that deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the ten-horn'd beast ; or that false prophet working miracles , apoc. . . and deceiving them that receive the mark of the beast , and worship his image , who together with the beast is to be taken , and cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone ; or lastly , that man of sin and son of perdition , thess. . . whos 's coming is after the working of satan , with all power , and signs , and lying wonders . if she would inveagle thee with her pretenses of infallibility , tell her that she is that woman iezebel , apoc. . . that calleth her self a prophetess ; or the prophet balaam , apoc. . . that insnared the israelites in idolatry ; and that very false prophet that together with the beast is to be cast alive into the lake of burning brimstone , apoc. . . . and lastly , if she would gull thee with that specious and much-affected title of holy church ; tell her that the spirit of truth in the divine oracles , let her commend her self as much as she pleases , gives no such character of her , but quite contrary , declaring the see of rome to be the seat of satan apoc. . . and their church his synagogue apoc. . . the pope and his clergy to be balaam the son of bozor apoc. . , . who loved the wages of unrighteousness , and who was the murtherer of christ's faithfull martyr antipas ; to be that woman iezebel who calls her self a prophetess , but was indeed a sorceress , and a murtherer of the true prophets of the lord apoc. . . to be also that false prophet , that is to be taken alive , and cast into the lake of fire and brimstone apoc. . to be that great city that spiritually is called sodom and aegypt , where our lord was crucified apoc. . . to be the beast that has the horns of a lamb , but the voice of the dragon , apoc. . . decreeing idolatries and cruel persecutions against god's people ; to be that babylon the great , apoc. . mother of harlots and abominations of the earth ; the woman on the seven hills that is drunk with the bloud of the saints and with the bloud of the martyrs of iesus ; and lastly , to be that man of sin , thess. . that notorious antichrist , that opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called god or is worshipped , whose coming is with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish , because they receive not the love of the truth that they may be saved . for which cause god sends them strong delusion , that they believe a lie . that they all might be damned that believe not the truth , but have pleasure in unrighteousness . as well 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as well all they that love the romish lies and impostures , as all they that invent them , are here plainly declared in the state of damnation . with this nosegay of rue and wormwood antidote thy self against the idolatrous infection of that strange woman's breath , prov. . . whose lips yet drop as an hony● comb , and ●er mouth is more smooth then oyl . and be assured that that cannot be the true holy church wherein salvation is to be expected , which the spirit of god has marked with such unholy and hellish chara ●ers , let her boast of her own holiness as much as she will. . and if she return this answer to thee , that this is not to argue , but to rail in phrases of scripture ; do thou make this short reply , that whiles she accuses thee of railing against sinfull and obnoxious men , she must take heed that she be not found guilty of blasp●eming the holy spirit of god. i confess these propheticall passages apply'd to such persons as to whom they do not belong were an high and rude strain of railing indeed , and quite out of the road of christianity and common humanity : but to call them railings when they are apply'd to that very party to whom they are really meant by that spirit that dictated them , is indeed to pretend to a sense of civility towards men , but in the mean time to become a down-right blasphemer against the holy ghost that dictated these oracles . and that they are not mis-apply'd , any impartial man of but an ordinary patience and comprehension of wit may have all assurance desirable from that demonstration of the truth compriz'd in the eight last chapters of the first book of synopsis prophetica ; to say nothing of the present exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches in asia . . wherefore , o serious soul , whoever thou art , be not complemented out of the truth and an earnest pursuance of thine own salvation from a vain sense of the applauses or reproaches of men , or from any consideration what they may think of thee for attesting or standing to such verities as are so unwelcome to many ears , but of such huge importance to all to hear . for no less a game is at stake in our choice of what church we adhere to , that of rome or the reformed , then the possession of heaven and eternal life . wherefore stand stoutl● upon thy guard , and whensoever thou art accosted by the fair words and sugar'd speeches of that cunning woman , ( who will make semblance of great solicitude for thy future happiness , most passionately inviting thee to return into the bosom of holy church , ) be sure to remember what an holy church she is according to divine description ; and that if thou assentest to her smooth persuasions and crafty importunities , thou dost ●pso facto ( pardon the vehemence of expression adventure thy self into the jaws of hell , and cast thy self into the arms of the devil , matth. . . god of his mercy give us all grace to consider what has been spoken , that we may evermore escape these snares of death . amen . the end . chap. x. the answers of my antagonist to this th . chapter , and my replies put together without any distinction of paragraphs . hitherto i have reduced my antagonists answers to the paragraphs of each chapter . but now he does so overflow with humour , wit , and confusedness , and walks so alo●t in generals , that i cannot reduce this last section of his on my last chapter to any such particular distinctness , but must make what i can of things in that order they lye . first then , my hearty exhortation to men to take heed how they be drawn into the communion of the church of rome he phancies may fitly be called dr. taylor revived , or a second dis●asive from popery : whereupon he takes occasion to give the different characters of dr. taylor and my self . for dr. taylor is a person , says he , of a more refined and plausible insinuation , a smooth tongue and o●ly expression , cloaking his many and great disingenuities with fair glozing words in an affected strain of scripture phrase , pretending to the power of godliness . but dr. more is a polemical man , of a quite different temper , his fiery zeal wears no mask , his disputing is open rayling , and his arguments blustering words not always too much concerned whether true for alse . to which i reply ▪ whether he call my hearty dehortation dr. taylor revived , or a second diss●asive from popery , he may please his own p●ancy in that , he shall find me a man of great humanity and facility in matters of that kind : and let dr. taylor be of one temper and my self of another , so there be no immorality in these different tempers , that is all one to me also . but when he talks of the great disingenuities of dr. taylor , i suspect they are nothing else but great and hard arguments against the errors of the roman church , which they cannot answer ; the same crime that i have been guilty of all along this book hitherto , and it 's ●ell i be not charged with great disingenuities my self at last ; which now i think on 't , i have been already under an harsher term , he calling that calumny in me , who seem to be a more rude writer , which in dr. taylor that more smooth and oyl● arguer he termes a disingenuity . but it 's needless for me to say any thing more of dr. taylor , his learned and eloquent writings will answer for him and themselves too . but now for my own charge , that i am ●olemical ; i am sure i am neither souldier , n●r disputacious schoolman . but if i be polemical or warlike , it is in that war●are whose weapons are spiritual , as the apostle speaks , cor. . . for the pulling down strong holds and inveterate imaginations , raised against the truth of god and the kingdom of our lord jesus christ. and for my fiery zeal that wears no mask , the apostle says , gal. . . it is good to be zealous in a good matter , and as good to be zealous against a bad one . and is not the spirit of god resembled to fire ? which where it appears in truth it will burn off all masks of hypocrisy and make men walk in all simplicity of conversation before god and before men . but why is my disputing open railing ? if i speak any thing false , witness of the fal●hood : but if the corruptions of your church be such , that they cannot be named by their proper names , such as all solid theolog● , philosophy and ordinary humane laws would call them ; in calling them so , am i a rayler , or you very great and enormous sinners ? i speak of those two grand crimes idolatry and murder , which are interwoven into your religion . and whet●er my arguments be blustering words or solid reason , let any indifferent reader judge by what has passed ●itherto in your pretended confuration of this antidote against idolatry , and in my ●o clearly proving my reasonings therein to remain sound and unshaken for all the battery you could lay against them . and whereas you add , not always too much concerned whether true or false , it is such an equivocating imputation , that look one way on it , it says less than is true . for i confess i am never too much concerned whether i speak true or false , especially considering of what moment the things are i write of . but if you mean i am not always enough concerned , whether what i affirm be true or false : the tree is known by its fruits ; ●●ow me where i have trip't ; or if i have any where trip't , prove that it was out of carelesne's whether it was true or false which i uttered . and this i think he pretends he will show in this dehortation of mine : for immediately he adds , witness the contents of this chapter , whereof i shall give my reader a brief extract drawn up in the form of an homily , yet in the doctors own words and charitable dialect . thus then begins the dissuasive . repl. this is a dissuasive of my adversaries own making , whom though i acknowledge a man of wit and eloquence yet i will not trust him in making speeches for me ; and se●ing his dissuasive is pretended but an epitome of mine , and mine being already under the eye of the reader , i hold it altogether impertinent to set down his , especially he putting his for mine , and calling it so , adding at the end of it , this is mellifluous dr. mores sweet harangue , &c. the truth is he has made as dry and lank an homily as he could , and heaped up those titles their church is adorned with in the apocalypse , barely and nakedly without the occasions and circumstances i bring them in upon , to make himself and his party merry , and to make my serious exhortation to deceivable people that they take heed of the frauds and danger of that church , to look ridiculously . but this is one artifice of theirs amongst the rest , when the weight of reason and religion presses on them to any purpose to slip from under it by some ludicrous jest , or profane raillery . wherefore letting this drollery pass , let us observe what in good earnest he would weaken my exhorration by , or where is that place in it where he will make good that imputation against me , that i am not enough concerned whether what i say be true or false . now i would gladly know , says he , what there is in all this discourse , which an ingenuous son of the church of england will not be heartily ashamed of , and even blush for the doctors sake ? repl. why did you then make such a silly oration in my name , that all the ingenuous church-men in england should be ashamed of it ? as well they might , if i had made such a jejune lank piece of stuff as your officiousness has made for me . but for mine i dare say , there is no ingenuous son of the church of england ( unless ●ou measure the i●genuity and disingenuity of men by their affection and disa●fection to the errors of your chuoch , as you seem to do in dr. taylor ) much less any genuine sons of our church , but will approve of the firmness , reasonableness and seasonableness of such an exhortation . here is i conf●ss , quoth he , stout railing , disingenuity more than is necessary for a doctor , &c. repl. here the reader may be pleased to take notice of the special sense of disingenuity with my antagonist , namely , that it is the plainly speaking such truths as argue the gross errors and perillous enormities ●f the church of rome . whenas it is ten thousand times more disingenuous , according to the law of god and nature , to smother truth to the great and real injury of both the church of rome and our own . and then for my stout railing , which else where he calls that ●nmanly rheto●ick of railing , let us put them together , the stout unmanly rhetorick of railing . i demand , if it be either ferine or womanish with a plain open constancy to declare those truths that are of such vast concern and of so perspicuous a clearness to those that do not wilfully wink against them ? or if the propriety of language , and to declare according to the nature and true notion of things , and that without all ill will , be any form of rayling ; unless adam in the state of innocency railed when he gave names according to the natures of the creatures ? and this great clamour against me of railing , is because i call idolatry idolatry , and the killing of men because they will not commit idolatry with the church of rome , barbarous murder . but if he mean because i call the church of rome by those titles the spirit of god calls her in the apocalypse , my apology is already made in the twenty fourth paragraph of this th . chapter . which i desire my antagonist , and every one it may concern , in the fear of god to● peruse , and to consider the latter part of it touching those eight last chapters of the first book of my synopsis prophetica , and my exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches of asia . in both which expositions , i challenge any diligent searcher to show any considerable flaw that will lessen the certitude of them for the main , or if they think there is the least faultering in this proposal , let them show any flaw at all if they can . for as for my self , though i have been an anxious searcher after truth , i was never yet satisfied concerning any , more palpably than of these i speak of . which , god knows , i do not speak in the way of boasting , but merely to excite the ingenuous to try the strength and evidence i find them , that they may thereby , after a manner whether they will or no , feel it also themselves and find it . nor do i use those names of infamy wherewith the spirit of god has branded the pontifician clergy , nakedly and without occasion , as my antagonist has framed his frigid , flaccid and insipid dissuasive which he would father upon me ; but upon the church of romes false boasts of her self , whereby to tempt ours to her idolatries , i put in their mouths what the spirit of god says touching her in the apocalypse , and other places of scripture : whereby is understood plainly how the mystery of iniquity is with them , and how when they make a specious show and boast of being one thing , the spirit of god judges them the quite contrary . but further he adds ; that this exhortation of mine is an ill-grounded and schismatical discourse , dr. thorndike himself being vmpire in the case . repl. as for dr. thorndike i shall consider him at t●e close ; in the mean time it is apparent that my exhortation is very well grounded , it being grounded upon sound and clear reason and the holy scriptures of god , than which there is no ●u●e● ground in the world . and certainly no genuine sons , what ever the ingenuous sons of the church of england may do , will ever say that it is schismatical whenas the main end of it is to keep the members of our church ●rom making any schism or separation from us , and from betaking themselves to the church of rome , who has separated herself from the purity of the gospel . but after this , most inhumanely and injuriously he parallels this faithfull and unexceptionable exhortation of mine made to the people to keep them from the deceits and inticements of the church of rome , that they may not separate from the church of england and apostatize to her , to the bitter and rebellious trumpeters of war in the late distempered times , who loudly out of the pulper thundred into the peoples ears , curse ye meroz , yea curse ye bitterly , &c. and there are not wanting in this nation , says he , those who can find rome in england to make meroz of it when they please . repl. then they are those chiefly that are of your emissaries gendring and fomenting . but it is well known to all the world , that it has been precisely and particularly my care and labour to distinguish what is truly antichristan from what is not , that the church of england might be cleared from such imputations , and the saddle set on the right horse ; as you may see , preface to my idea of antichristianism , sect. . and in the two last chapters of synopsis pro●hetica for my own part i dare say , there is none that know me either personally or by my writings that will not readily acknowledge , that nothing can be more removed from bitterness , persecution , tumult and rebellion , then that spirit that i am of . no could i in those very times of rebellion and tumult forbear to testifie in publick my disgust thereof , in these mean rymes but of sound and good sense . immortality of the soul , book . cant. . stanz . ● . can wars and jars and fierce contention swoln hatred and consuming envy spring f●om piety ? no , 't is opinion that makes the riven heavens with trumpets ring and thundring engins mundrous balls out-sling , and send mens groaning ghosts to lower shade of horrid hell. this the wide world doth bring to divastation , makes mankind to sade , such direfull things doth false religion pers wade . but true religion sprung from god above is like her fountain full of charity , embraceing all things with a tender love , full of good will and meek expectancy , full of true justice and sure verity in heart and voice , &c. it is not our telling you plainly and apertly , according to truth and scripture , what is hainously amiss in you , that can be any prejudice to our own church , but it is the excusing you and dissembling your great crimes by extenuating termes , and your aggravating every little ceremony of ours , such as kneeling at the communion and the like , to make us odious to the ignorant people , that makes us suspected of romanism . but this is one of your arts amongst many others to make those that are the most hearty well-willers to the church of england the most suspected by them . but truth and innocency bids defiance to all your devices . but in the mean time where is the charge made good of being so little concerned whether i speak true or false in this exhortation of mine ? why , at last it is this , that i so peremptorily aver , that no protestants allow them a possibility of salvation , but onely in case of such a repentance as implies an absolute renunctation of their religion and its idolatrous doctrines and practises by diso●ning of and dismembring themselves from the roman church . which , says he , will scarce appear pardonable in the eyes of his fellow doctors . repl. this is a charge founded upon the eighth paragraph of this tenth chapter , i desire the reader to peruse the paragraph and compare it with his charge : where , after [ disowning and dismembring themselves from the roman church ] he omits a special ●lause which immediately follows , viz. [ as much as it is in their power so to do . ] which is quite another t●ing from actually renouncing of their church , while they have not the opportunity of discovering her gross errors ; but that their general repentance is so hearty and unfeigned , that it would descend to this particular upon the detection to them of the foul errors of that church . and this i hope will not onely be pardonable but acceptable to those eminent men of our church , arch-bishop laud , bishop abbot , and the rest he names out of bishop laud , relation sect. . who examined to the bottom will appear of the same mind with my self . and for that of mr. hooker in his discourse of iustification , sect. . where he sa●s , for my part i dare not deny possibility of their salvation , who have been the chiefest instruments of ours . which quotation , which my adversary so much glories in ▪ it is evident , is n●thing at all to the purpose . for as much as he speaks not here of those of the church of rome since the reformation but be●ore , when the state of the church was the vvoman in the vvilderness , as is manifest both from the sentence it self quoted and the context . but if mr. hookers authority be of any weight with you , do but look into the foregoing section , and he will tell you the church of rome hath plaid the harlot worse then ever did israel . and now i demand , for a christian who is part of the body of christ to adjo●n himself to the church of rome , what is it but to make a member of christ the member of an harlot ? as the apostle speaks , cor. . . and is that , i pray , the next way to the capacity of salvation ? but this by the by . after this he brings in dr. potter and dr. hammond , glorying much of the charitable principles of the church of england and objecting want of charity to them , for maintaining that protestancy unrepented destroyes salvation : now if the objectors should retaliate and say , that popery unrepented destroyes salvation , i would willingly be instructed , saith he , by dr. more , wherein lyes the charity and moderation they boast of . why , i 'll tell you ; in this , ● hat whereas protestancy , that is , christian religion quatenus reformed from the errors of rome wants no repentance , and the errors and mispractises of the church of rome are so hainous and enormous , that most protestants , comparing the crimes of that church with the menaces of scripture , do conclude the adherers thereto in the state of damnation without any more to do , so soon as they adhere unto it , dr. hammond and dr. potter are so charitable , that though men dye in that church , yet by a general sincere repentance , such as implies that if their errors and mispractises were discovered to them to be such they would forthwith leave the communion of that church , declare they may be saved , which is the same i profess too . but we declare in the mean time , that it is perfect madness in any one to go over to such a church in which there is no salvation but upon supposition that if we knew the gross errors and mispractises of it , we would presently renounce communion with it , which if we did not we should certainly be damned . but behold a third fetch also ; nothing is more current , saith he , amongst them , when they are pressed with the crime of schism , then to return the charge upon us from other grounds , saying , that as the donati●ts and luciferians were , so we are schismaticks in cutting off from the body of christ and hope of salvation other churches from which we are divided in communion . from which he would infer , that we should make our selves donatists and luciferians if we should cut them off from hope of salvation . to which i reply , that this must be current onely amongst them that phancy themselves pressed with the crime of schism . but , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ! how soft and yielding must they be , how weak and feeble , that can phancy themselves pressed with such an objection ? certainly those must be but very few , and therefore this answer must be current but with a very few . our constant answer is , that they are shismaticks that depart from the communion of the truly ancient and apostolick church . of whose lineage we do avow ou● selves to be , and do plainly and irrefragably prove it . and therefore you are apostates from us and schismaticks that you do not cast off your enormous errors and hainous practises , and communicate with us . but with the lucif●rians and donatists you make your selves more holy , and call us hereticks when your selves are really the hereticks and schismaticks . in this are you like the donatists and luciferians , and unjustly take upon you to cut us short of salvation . but does it thence follow , we justly declaring you debar'd of salvation by reason of your open idolatries and murders of the innocent people of god , that we become thereby also donatists and luciferians ? let any indifferent man judge . but the last and strongest prop of so bad a cause , is the great and venerable authority of dr. thorndike an ingenuous son of the church of england . of whom he says , in regard i have mentioned so eminent a person and member of the church of england as dr. thorndike , i shall make bold to turn him into the lists against dr. more . the antithesis of their doctrines is very remarkable ; for they run diametrically opposite one to another . . dr. more affirms the vvorship of the host in the papacy to be idolatry . dr. thorndike ( ch . . ) denies the vvorship of the host in the papacy to be idolatry . . dr. more holds that the placing and reverencing images in churches is idolatry . dr. thorndike ( ch . . ) holds that the placing and reverencing images in churches is not idolatry . . dr. more will have invocation of saints to be inexcusable idolatry . dr. thorndike ( ch . . ) excuses invocation of saints from idolatry . . lastly , dr. more exhorts all men to separate from the church of rome , as idolaters . but ●r . thorndike ( ch . . ) avows to all the world , that those who separate from the church of rome as idolaters , are thereby schismaticks before god. vvhen the two doctors are fully agreed upon these points , dr. more shall hear more from me , if he desires it . in the mean time i shall intreat him to respite my pen for some other employment . repl. dr. thorndike , i confess , is a person , whom his years and repute of learning have made venerable . but what is this to the point in hand ? to the proveing the charge of my being less regardfull then i should be in this exhortation whether i speak true or false ? this is a mere popular topick , and this your whole last section , wherein you would fain offer something against this last chapter of my antidote , but a loose and weak stroke of rhetorick to drive the simple into your church as i have seen men drive geese or turkies on the high way to london , with a stick and long string with a red cloth tyed at the end of it ; as you annex the splendid name of dr. thorndike at the end of this section , to either scare or incourage poor souls to your communion . but does dr. thorndikes being of another mind from me prove that i am in the wrong ? if this be to con●u●e a man , i can easily con●ute dr. thorndike himself , by shewing that persons not onely of very eminent learning , but of clear and terse judgments , differ from dr. thorndike in all these four antitheses . mr. ioseph mede of our colledge , who was so modest a soul , that though he had worth to furnish out i know not how many doctorships never commenced doctor , let us for the time , to make the comparison more plausible , call him doctor as well as my adversary does doctor thorndike , and then say , dr. thorndike denies the worshipping the host to be idolatry , dr mede affirms it to be idolatry ; dr. thorndike holds the honouring of images in churches to be no idolatry , dr. mede affirms it to be idolatry , &c. where is dr. thorndike now ? nay suppose i should put that eminently learned prelate of the church of england and of singular clearness of reason and judgement , bishop downham once of christs colledge , in the balance with dr. thorndike , who in these things is exquisitely of the same mind with dr. mede , in what elevation would dr. thorndike appear then ? the same i may say of the archbishop of armagh , bishop jewel , arch-bishop abbot , and several other bishops and doctors of our church , who at least joyntly , if not in several , will surely counterpoize the weight of dr. thorndikes name . indeed i might say the whole body of our church , as subscribers to the homilies of our church , affirm in all these points against dr. thorndike . nay i dare with all confidence assert that no man can make any good sense of the th . and th . chapters of the apocalypse , but he will plainly discern that the very spirit of god himself has declared against him . what poor and simple souls then must they be that can be scared out of the truth or kept in error by such topicks as these ? dr. thorndike is not of the same mind with dr. more , therefore dr. more uses blustering arguments not much concerned whether true or false . for my part i desire no man take my arguments or assertions upon trust , but do appeal to scripture and his own reason whether what i say be not true , and would have him examine them accordingly . and therefore dr. thorndike must not be offended though i yield not to his name , though i have a due respect for him , till i have tried the strength of his arguments , in each antithesis to my assertions . as to the first antithesis therefore where he denies the worship of the host in the papac● to be idolatry , cap. . the short and long of his argument is this , that no papist worships the elements of the eucharist nor the accidents of it for god. therefore no papist in this vvorship is an idolater . he v● orships not the elements of the eucharist because he does not believe them to be there , nor the accidents , as they call them , because he believes them to be no part of the body of christ into which the consecrated bread is transubstantiated . but to this i briefl● answer , that the bread transubstantiated into the body of christ and hypostatically united with the deity there where the accidents shew us ( so that they become that very person god-man ) is the intended object of their worship and adoration , being visible to them merely in vertue of those accidents or species that are like bread. now therefore it is plain if there be no such thing as transubstantiation , that their adoration passes upon a mere untransubstantiated piece of bread instead of the body or corporeal presence of christ , supposed to be veiled with those accidents of bread ; which therefore is plain idolatry . for in that they are mistaken in their object and intended no worship to a piece of bread but to christ , does not excuse the idolatry by the th . and th . conclusions of the second chapter . see also conclusion . and . as also the last conclusion of the same chapter . i have represented dr. thorndikes argument with the utmost strength i could possibly , and yet it is no other than you see . to the second antithesis , dr. more , says he , ho●ds that the placing and reverencing of images in churches is idolatry . repl. i do not hold that the mere placing of images in churches is idolatry ( though i must confess i had rather have their room than their company ) but onely the worshipping of them . and now let us hear what dr. thorndike ( chap. . ) alledges to the contrary ; ●n doing honour , saith he , to the images of saints there can be no idolatry , so long as men take them for saints , that is , gods creatures , much less to the images of our lord. ●or it is the honour of our lord and not of the image . and a little after to the like sense , for indeed and in truth it is not the ●mage but the principal ( the nicene council calls it prototype ) that is honoured by the honour that is said to be done to the image because it is done before the image . this is the sum of his argument to prove that image-worship is no idolatry . now in order to the better understanding my answer , you are first to take notice that both my adversary and dr. thorndike understand such images as have honour done to them in the church of rome , viz. images dedicated or consecrated , as you have an example of the form above , and therefore such as are the symbolical presences of their principals or prototypes . secondly , that this honour here mentioned in general by dr. thorndike is the honour done and allowed by the church of rome unto images , viz. invocation before them , incurvation , setting up wax-candles and burning incense before them . no● that the doing of this honour to these images is not idolatry , dr. thorndike would prove upon the principel of pope adrian and the second council of nice ; because the honour does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , passes from or through the image to the principal , in so much that the principal alone seems to be worshipped not the image ; and this principal being either the saints or christ , so long as we remember the saints to be gods creatures it can be no idolatry , much less in the image of christ , since the principal or prototype there is god. repl. to the first of which i answer , that the primitive christians knew the emperor to be gods creature , and even eo nomine because they remembred him to be gods creature would not cast a few grains of incense into the fire in honour of him though it cost them their lives for not doing of it . and the departed souls of the great heroes or benefactors among the heathen , whom they after death made damons and worshipped them , were known well enough to be gods creatures , that is to say , the off-spring of the highest numen , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 — as the heathen poet could sa● ) and y●t no christians doubt but they were idolaters in worshipping them . and therefore by the third and fourth conclusions of the first chapter the worshipping of the images of the saints though terminating on the saints themselves is idolatry . besides incurvation to an image , such as is here practised , is idolatry by the seventh and eighth conclusions of the same chapter . see also the nineteenth conclusion of the second chapter . and then for the image of christ , though christ be god , yet to worship god by an image is idolatr● ; by the nineteenth conclusion of the second chapter , and by the second commandment , and the ●earfull vengeance on the israelites for worshipping the golden calf , which not withstanding was the symbolical presence of jehovah . and for the pretense that the worship is done onely before the ●mage not the image ; since the image is a symbolical presence dedicated to christ or this or that saint , and that these are the instances of honor debitus , viz. incurvation toward it , burning incense and the like , used by the c●urch of rome and specified by the council of nice to which the council of trent does refer , it is manifest that these honours are done to these images as well as to their protoypes ; as appears further from the tenth conclusion of the first chapter , and the twentieth of the second ; which conclusions are improvable also to the case of burning of incense , and lighting up wax-candles , and bringing of oblations to these symbolical presences , which please the simple people when they visibly behold their masters to whom they pay their religious tribute or offerings , whether money or money-worth . what idolatry can be more pagan-like than this ? so little satisfactory is it what dr. thorndike produces for the freeing of the church of romes image-worship from idolatry . to the third antithesis , dr. thorndike , says he , excuses invocation of saints from idolatry . repl. truly upon my perusal of that chapter in dr. thorndike , i think my adversary has little reason to brag of the excuse there made for it . for first , dr. thorndike does sreely confess the saints know nothing of our particular necessities unless god reveal them to them . secondly , he accuses invocation of saints of novelty , as not being owned and used by the church till a good while after constantine . thirdly , he says the abuse has increased so far that the same things are desired of them , ( of the virgin mary especially ) and in the same terms in which t●ey are desired of god even in the holy scriptures . fourthly , that the appearance of devotion to the mother is visibly an● outwardly no less than to the son ( which is equal to that to god himself ) whence any mean logician may infer , that the appearance of devotion to the mother is no less than that to god himself . does not this hugely excuse the romish invocation of saints from idolatry ? but you 'l say , certainly i am mistaken in the place . no , no , iam not . now comes the excuse ; so that were there not a profession of that church extant , contradicting the proper sense of such prayers to the saints , and forceing them that address them , unless they will contradict themselves , to abate their own meaning , and to expound them to signify no more than the saints obtaining that of god which they are desired to grant of themselves , they could not be excused of idolatry . of which the brief sense is , that unless the profession of the church contradicted their practise , which is idolatrous , viz. their profession of one god the giver of every good and perfect gift , ( for i know no other publick profession then that he can mean ) they cannot be excused of idolatry . as if professing things repugnant to idolatry , and in the mean time committing it against their profession , could save them from being idolaters , more than from being murtherets and adulterers , because they profess the decalogue . or as if there being a society of men that did in special manner profess civility , and yet would call any one all the ill names imaginable , might put it off by saying , these names and railings are indeed utterl● repugnant to our publick profession if they be taken in their proper sense ; and therefore you must interpret them in such a sense as is not repugnant to our known profession ; for we declare to all the world that we are civil gentlemen and very much every mans humble servant . would this seem a solid excuse and not rather matter of laughter to all that heard it ? such an excuse might excuse the heathen who held one supreme god fountain of all things , in all the idolatrous rites of worshipping their daemons . for they might say , no other sense is to be given of those idolatrous rites then will consist with the belief of one supreme deity the fountain of all good. nay , they of the roman church might sacrifice whole hecatombs of oxen to their saints , and excuse it , because it is not to be taken in the proper sense of such sacrifices , but in such a sense as is consistent with the knowledge and profession of the onely one true god. so that that which is an excuse for any idolatry , is indeed an excuse for none . and besides this , dr. thorndikes excuse , though it were solid as to this particular point of idolatry , yet it is too scant to reach others . for the mere invocation of this or that particular saint for an ora pro nobis , it implying such an excellency as is in god alone , ( according to dr. thorndikes own acknowledgment ) will be idolatry , by the eighth conclusion of the second chapter of my antidote . and then considering their canonization , the erection of dedicated images or symbolical presences to them , the belief that some are proper to intercede for one thing others for another , and that offerings are brought to them upon the good either expected or obtained by their negotiations for us , what is this invocation thus circumstantia●ed different from the invocation of the dii medioxumi of the heathen which all will say is idolatry ? and therefore this must be idolatry , by the third and fourth conclusions of the first chapter . see also the eighteenth of the second . so that in an ill hour has my adversary brought dr. thorndike to be a compurgator of his church from the stain of idolatry in the business of invocation of saints . but it may be he will make amends in the last antithesis . dr. thorndi●e , says he , ( chap. . ) avers to all the world , that those that separate from the church of rome as idolaters are thereby shismaticks before god. repl. i confess he does say so . and i never read it but am surprized with amazement at it , that any one that professes himself a protestant , should adventure to pronounce such a speech . for my own part i can profess truly and unfeignedly ( and i think there is not any one but will believe me that knows me or has read my writings , especially my mystery of godliness and my dialogue , where drawing the best and the most benign representation i can of providence and the affairs of the world in all ages as to religion , i strain my little wit to the utmost to make the idolatry of the pagans look as tolerably and excusably as i can ) i say i profess unfeignedly that i am not conscious to my self of any superstitious hurry or fright and over scrupulous fear of committing idolatry where none is to be committed , that carries me into this judgment touching the idolatries of the church of rome ; nor can any thing possibly tempt me to it , it being so contrary to my nature to find any more faults in the world then needs must ; and i think any one will easily discern it is not any way for my interest to declare this fault i find , if it were not true . but it is pure and impartial reason , and something better and higher in my esteem than reason , that does assure me of the ●ruth of what i do in this case thus pronounce against my own natural inclination and interest . whence i am well assured , that in all integrity of conscience other men having the fear of god before their eyes may be also fully persuaded to these idolatries i charge the church of rome with , and consequently be necessarily ingaged to quit her communion , and separate from her . now what protestant , nay what christian would ever think , or whisper within himself , much less aver to all the world , thar such a separation is schism before god , or in foro divino ? especially considering that the opinions and practises for which the party separates are not catholick but after-inventions and customs of the church degenerating , as dr thorndike himself cannot deny . this instance i give , at least in foro divino , certainly would be no schism , though the church of rome were guilty of no idolatry . and therefore i am sorry so venerable a person should be so rash and precipitant in his censure against his fellow-protestants . but in the mean time will my adversary say , it is apparent not withstanding that dr. thorndike has quitted the church of rome of the charge of idolatry in this last antithesis . repl. i grant he supposes you no idolarers , but how does he prove you none ? i have demonstrated over and over again in my antidote that you are idolaters , and you have not been able to inervate one proof . now let us consider the demonstrations of dr. thorndike upon which he builds his assertion so prodigiously paradoxical to all protestants , a thing never uttered by any member of the reformed churches before . i have poized his weights , and fathomed the measures of his reasonings to the utmost length and extent of them , but find all too light and scant to make good so strange a conclusion . the utmost he says to prove you no idolaters is this ; first , saith he , the church of rome is a true church , but a true church presupposeth the profession of so much of christianity as is necessary to the salvation of all christians , and therefore men may be saved in the church of rome . but no idolaters can be saved . therefore the church of rome are no idolaters . secondly , the church of rome being a true church must needs profess the true god , and therefore if they believe that which they profess they cannot honour any creature as they honour god , knowing every creature to be an infinite distance below him , and therefore they cannot be idolaters . thirdly and lastly , a true church , which therefore professes the onely true god , does necessarily profess to detest all idolatry ; which detestation of idolatry the church of rome does expresly profess , which profession therefore unless they expresly renounce they cannot expresly be idolaters . this is the utmost ( and represented to the utmost ) of mr. thorndikes reasons whereby he would prove the church of rome to be no idolaters ; all which he makes to depend upon that grand assertion , that the church of rome is a true church . to which before we can say , i or no , we must understand what is meant by a true church . for , true , sometimes signifies as much as pure and sincere without mixture of any other with this nature or formal essence which is really here . as that is said to be true wine that has no other liquour mingled with it , and that true gold that is not adulterated with any base alloy . and in this sense i flatly deny the church of rome to be a true church . but there is another sense of true which excludes not impurity or some hurtfull superaddition to the nature and form of the thing , the true formal nature of the thing still existing there : as some subtil poyson conveyed into wine , the wine is true wine still ; and an house infected with the plague , or whose walls are over-run with the leprosie is a true house still ; or , if it be not too homely a comparison , a pair of sheep-clippers shears fallen into the pitch-pan , and so all over besmeared with pitch , is a true pair of shears still ; all these having the true and essential form whereby they are constituted such . and they have an aptitude in themselves for those ends they were made , though their actual usefulness is for the present taken away or turned into the contrary by what incumbers them or is added to them ; but the definition of wine , an house , and pair of shears dot● still belong to them and is truly predicated of them . now therefore though i will neither aver nor deny the church of rome to be a true church , you making so ill use of all our fair and ingenuous concessions , yet i will suppose with dr. thorndike the church of rome to be a true church ; and that to be a true church , is to profess all those articles of the christian faith , to have that form of government , suppose episcopal , which was in the primitive church , to administer the sacraments in that form of words the primitive church did , and in a word to profess so much of christianity and preach it , as of it self , if there were no other impediments added , would be sufficient to salvation . and so supposing the church of rome to profess all those things which the true and unapostatized church professed , ( which were then and are still of themselves effectual for salvation if men be not wanting to themselves ) in this regard i confess she may be said to be a true church . for so much as such a definition of a true church would be competible to her . but all this supposed and admitted , i utterly deny that there is any validity at all in dr. thorndikes arguments to prove she is not an idolatrous church . for a true wife according to definition of law , yet may be a soul adulteress and noisomly infected with the disease of her uncleanness , and a true house may be infected with the plague , or stand in pestilential air , or be infested with the devil or evil spirits . and now therefore to answer to his first argument , i say it does not follow because the church of rome is a true church men may be saved in it , because a thing may truly be , what it is said to be , by reason of its intrinsick form and nature , and yet notwithstanding be in such circumstances , that unless it be extricated out of them , it is made quite useless for the end it was ordained , and for which it has still an aptitude were it extricated and cleared from the present incumbrances , and admixtures ; as in the example of the pair of shears , of the house , and of the wine with poyson in it , and the like ; which for the present , though it be a true house , a true pair of shears , true wine , &c. yet they are not good . they retain the form but fall short of the end , nay are quite opposite to it . and so they in the church of rome , though a true church , fall short of their salvation , nay fall into eternal damnation by reason of the deadly poyson in their church which they wilfully keep infused in it . to his second argument i answer , that t●ey that profess the true god may notwithstanding commit idolatry , as i have demonstrated at large in my idea of antichristianism , chap. . and chap . of the first book . and no man doubts but the israelites committed idolatry even then when they professed the worship of the true god. and the indians at this day who worship their pa-gods and are universally accounted idolaters , i am certainly informed have a clear notion of the true god the creatour of all things . besides , this argument of dr. thorndikes supposes that which is notoriously false , as if there could be no idolatry unless the creature were so honoured as if it were done to god himself : which is abundantly confuted out of the third , fourth , fifth and sixth conclusions of the first chapter of my antidote . and lastly , they do de facto give that honour to the creature that is due to god alone . and there is no arguing against experience . his last argument i conceive is the infirmest of all , and the conclusion the faintest o● all , and is a kind of tacit insinuation that they are indeed idolaters but not express ones , as if their hypocrisie could avail any thing with god , or free them from that condemnation that attends all that are idolaters . is the business then come onely to this , that the romanists are not professed idolaters ? i wonder who ever professed themselves idolaters that were serious in their idolatry ! for serious idolatry always implies ignorance and mistake in the idolater , though the crime of idolatry be so exceeding hainous , by conclusion th . chapter●d . but it being probable that dr. thorndike had a greater kindness for the church of rome then thus , and that by this last argument also he would prove them to be really no idolaters , let us suppose it , and see how well his argument will conclude it . they expresly profess their detestation of idolatry , nor make any express renunciation of that profession , therefore they are no idolaters . to which 〈◊〉 answer , an unjust man or extortioner , one that blinded with covetousness does unjust actions , does expresly profess his detestation of injustice , nor renounces that profession ; does it follow therefore that he is not an unjust man ? or to make an hypothesis something more operose , though sufficiently pertinent to the occasion , we will suppose a considerable number of jews in some kingdom having misbehaved themselves , out of fear of punishment to posses themselves of some strong castle of the prince of the countrey , and there continuing a considerable time to exercise their religion , and for better show to write at the upper end of the hall where they meet , moses decalogue in golden capital letters , making great profession of the righteousness of the laws of that decalogue , but in the mean time for the indulging to themselves the pleasures of the flesh as well as for the supplying their necessities and securing themselves , should make particular laws and decrees amongst themselves for the plundring and spoyling the country people as they went to market , and killing such as resisted , and should declare it lawfull to ravish the women they met with , interpreting the law against adultery touching jewish women onely that are of their own religion , and theft , and murder , of plundring or killing those of the common wealth of israel , not aliens and strangers , which their law makes no provision for as they will pretend , that take upon them to be the interpreters thereof . now if any one should accuse them of adultery , the●t and murder committed against their princes subjects , and they should plead or any for them , that they cannot possibly be robbers , murderers or adulterers , because they expresly profess their open detestation thereof , nor have any where renounced that profession , the decalogue of moses also witnessing for them , writ in great capital letters in their very hall where they dayly meet , in which it is expresly said , thou shalt not commit adultery , thou shalt do no murder , thou shalt not steal , they notwithstanding making those particular decrees amongst themselves and acting accordingly , would not the apology seem vain or impious ? how then can the express profession of the church of rome against idolatry excuse her from idolatry when they make particular decrees of worshipping the host with latria , of invocating the saints and bowing to their images , and practise it in such circumstances as i have again and again declared . nay when these decrees are made by general councils as they pretend , how can they be but express idolaters and renounce their prosession against idolatry as much they can do ? for no serious idolater takes himself to be so . wherefore we see how hugely unconcluding every argument of dr. thorndikes is whereby he would prove the church of rome no idolaters but i have over and over agai● demonstrated them to be idolaters in this my antidote , nor has my adversary produced any thing that in the least manner enervates any of my arguments ; nor can he prop himself by the authority of dr. thorndike , it being so without all ground and reason . from all which , that imputation i hope by this time is washed off , that my arguments are mere blustering words , and i unconcerned how true or false they are : whenas if my adversary be a man of sense , as truly i presume him to be , he cannot but feel by this that my words are not a storm and thunderclap without a bolt , but that they carry along with them what is solid and strong . and verily for dr. thorndike , himself being so venerable and learned a person and of that judgement and sincerity , after a cause is so throughly canvassed on all sides as it has been betwixt you and me and him and my self about the idolatry of the church of rome , if he were now alive , ( as it has pleased god to take him out of this life and translate him , as i hope , to a better , since the finishing of this my reply and before the transcribing of it ) i believe he would not stick to conclude her guilty of idolatry and that he and i should be fully agreed in these points . which i am the more easily induced to believe from what he wrote in a letter about a year before he died ; which clause does plainly seem to null this fourth and greatest antithesis betwixt him and me , viz. that the separating from the church 〈◊〉 rome upon the account of idolatry is schism before god. his words , as i had them faithfully conveyed to me by a worthy friend , are these ; to pray to the saints for those things which onely god can give , as all papists do , is in the proper sense of the words down right idolatry . i but here my adversary will be forward to reply , but so long as the words may be figuratively understood we are excused of idolatry . but let him hear how dr. thorndike himself obviates this subterfuge : if they say their meaning is by a figure onely to desire them to procure their requests of god , how dare any christian trust his soul with that church which teacheth that which must needs be idolatry in all that understand not that figure : which is spoken with incomparable judgement and modesty and tender civility to that church , but , i promise you , in effect charges them as home , as to this point , as if he had said in a word , they are all down right idolaters . from whence it will necessarily follow , that he changed his opinion before he dyed , and held that to separate from the church of rome upon the account of idolatry is not schism before god. now that he says they are all down right idolaters is manifest : because he says all that understand not that figure , which may excuse them of idolatry , are so . now i am well assured , and he could not chuse but be so too , that the most learned of them understand not that figure , there being no such figure in all rhetorick yet , unless they have made of late a new figure calling it , quidlibet pro quolibet , that is , the putting any thing for any thing , which will be a colour for all the nonsense in the world that ever was , is , or can be writ or spoken . but men can no more make what figures they please in rhetorick then they can make what moods they please in the three figures in logick . but all must be measured by the end of each art , bene disserere in the one , and bene dicere in the other ; what is not consentaneous to the former can be no precept in logick , and what not to the latter none in rhetorick . and if there be the pretence of the use of any figure acknowledged in rhetorick , which is not consentaneous to that end , the figure thus pretended to be used cannot be used , but the words will at the peril of the speaker remain in their proper sense . as if some wretched extravagant fellow should venture to begin his prayer thus , o infinitely weak , unwise , and unholy lord god , and pretend it is an irony , and that he speaks by contraries , would this excuse him from horrid blasphemy ? surely no. for the use of the figure in this place is not consentaneous to the general end of rhetorick which is ars bene dicendi , which no loathsom , disharmonious and absurd speech can agree with . wherefore if a figure cannot be admitted here where there is one to which it is so obvious to refer the speech , how can the pretence of a figure excuse that speech which it will puzzle any man to find a figure to refer it to . as for example , if one should pray thus to st. francis , o holy st. francis give me the spirit of grace in this life , and eternal glory in the life to come . upon which one crying out , down right idolatry , if he that addressed this absurd and idolatrous prayer , should say he meant figuratively , intending no more then thus , o holy st. francis pray to god to give me the spirit of grace , &c. this speech also being so loathsom , harsh and scandalous can be no figurative speech but is necessarily shut up in the proper sense of the words , and as the other was horrid blasphemy , so this is down right idolatry , as dr. thorndike speaks . this is clear demonstration to any one that considers the case impartially ; whence it is plain that this sourth antithesis betwixt dr. thorndike and my self is quite broke a pieces , and that we are agreed in this , that to separate from the church of rome upon the account of idolatry is not schism before god. for as much as to pray to the saints for those things which god alone can give , as all papists do , is in the proper sense of the words do●n right idolatry . and i have plainly demonstrated there is no changing the sense of the words by a figure , for as much as there is no figure to refer the speech to , or if there were , there is no legitimate use of any such figure , because it would be no ornament or perfection of speech but a loathsom blemish thereof , and therefore no more a figure than a piece of dung hung at the ear in a string is an ear-jewel . wherefore , as i said , dr. thorndike coming so readily off , of himself , in this fourth and last antithesis , which indeed is founded in a breach also upon the third antithesis , he so plainly declaring such an invocation of saints to be down right idolatry which yet all papists use ; for all they cannot but remember the saints to be gods creatures , and therefore commit idolatry with them though they remember them to be gods creatures ; which enervates also the second antithesis , he indeavouring to prove that the honouring the images of the saints would be no idolatry so long as we remember them to be gods creatures ; i cannot but hope if he had lived and perused this carefull and distinct disceptation , he would have come off in all . for how could he stick in the first an●ithesis , at the acknowledging their idolatry in the worshipping the host ? whenas , though they think the bread is not there , yet they conceiving the individual matter of the bread transubstantiated into the body of christ , and so hypostatically united with the divinity , and upon that account pursue it with their devotion and divine adoration , hit upon the said individual matter untransubstantiated and remaining bread still , and so do plainly give divine adoration to bread , as much as the persians to the sun who take it for the supreme intellectual deity . but take him agreed no further then he actually was before he dyed , which is so far as to declare all the church of rome down right idolaters , he does thereby freely acknowledge the church of england and other protestant churches to be no schismaticks either before god or before men . nay , says he , ( weights and measures chap. . ) if the papists be idolaters , we are t● own the separation for our own act and to glory in it . for it is done by gods express command , come out of her my people , &c. apoc. . . but for the papists being idolaters , whatever the declarations of dr. thorndike are , my demonstrations in my antidote and what occurs in my reply do evidently and irrefragably evince it in all points they are charged with . and thereupon you see what an agreeable conclusion comes from us both . it is gods express command to come out of her . and if this be not agreement enough , conconsidering dr. thorndike has now laid down that load of ●arth that depresses the mind , and is , as we in charity hope , among the blessed , i question not but he clearly discerns his mistakes in all four antitheses betwixt us . so that it is very credible that the two doctors are agreed fully in these points , though i pronounce it with some peril of bringing my antagonist upon me again , who craves respite for his pen onely so long as till the two doctors be fully agreed , but then dr. more , says he , shall hear more from me if he desire it . but we being thus fully agreed , yet i confess i shall desire to hear no more from you , unless you will imitate your fellow-combatant , and wear no mask , but do as i do , speak verily as you think and bring no arguments but such as you in your own conscience think true and concluding ; and then i dare say the game will soon be at an end . but there may be made a show of confutation in infinitum to amuse or quiet those of your own party that have not the leasure or capacity of reading and understanding what is written . but if you think to make any rejoinder , if i find you bring any thing material more than what you have suggested already , i will , god willing , take the pains to answer ; but if not , i shall neither give you nor my self any further trouble , but leave the world to judge . and so , fellow-combatant , i bid you heartily farewell . and that you may be the better assured i part with you in charity , and that i may appear to you clear of that imputation of uncharitableness which you labour so in this last section to cast upon me , peruse the fifth paragraph of this tenth chapter , as also the parable in the preface to my antidote ; which you seem to have been loath to take notice of , that you might with better show accuse me so much of uncharitableness as you here have done . but it being so lively a representation of the real and sincere charity of those ministers of the gospel , that plainly and faithfully tell those of your church the great peril of continuing in it , i will close all with that apology . there was a certain knight bravely mounted , as it might seem , and in goodly equipage , in bright armour , a rich scarf about his shoulders , and a large plume of feathers in his helmet , who was bound for the castle of health , seated on an high hill not unlike to the domicilium salutis in cebes his table , which therefore he easily kept in his eye . but the way he was in , being something stony and rough , and leading not so directly as he thought , to the desired castle , he diverted out of the way , and descended into a green plain ; but not knowing whether it was all passable to the castle , called to some loyterers there in the field to inquire of them ; who came right willingly to the knight , scraping many legs to him , and desiring him to tell his demands . there was an old shepherd likewise not far off , who , by that time this idle people had got to the knight , had come down to him also . friends , said he , to those men he called , is the way passable and safe through this green plain to vouder castle ? pointing to the castle of health with his warder ; very safe , may it please your worship , said they , and shrugging their shoulders , and scraping many legs , asked a largess of the knight , pretending they had been at common work not far off , whereupon the knight put his hand into his pocket and gave them liberally . but are there no bogs , said he , nor lakes betwixt this and the castle ? some small inconsiderable sloughes it may be , said they , but you will meet with the holy society of the wipers every where , who will be ready to wipe you as clean as a clock before you come at the castle . and being so excellently well mounted as we see you are , namely upon that famous steed the infallible-footed aplanedo , so good an horse as that he never stumbles , your worship need fear no disaster at all : besides , the beast , god bless him , has a nose like any hound , and by a miraculous sagacity , without any reason or humane literature , with an unerring certainty he can smell out the right way , and so secure you from all danger . to say nothing how excellent he is at the swimming any water , and how he can tread the very air he is so high m●tald and light footed . onely be sure to keep fast in the saddle . and then , sr. knight , said the shepherd , if the wind blow fair , the plumes in your helmet may help to support you both ; but if not , some angel from heaven may take you by the crest of your helmet , as he did the prophet h●bbakuk by the hair of his head , when he carried him through the air from iudaea to babylon . the knight looking back ( for he was not aware of the shepherd at this time ) what conceited old man is this , said he , that talks thus phancifully ? may it please your worship , he is a shepherd , said they , and has a flock on yonder little hill hard by ; but he is one of the most self-conceated old fools that ever your worship met with in all your days : he thinks that all skill and knowledge lyes within the compass of his bald pate and wrinkled fore-head , though few or none are of the same opinions with himself . sr. knight , said the shepherd , i pretend to no skill nor knowledge but what is certainly within my own ken ; but what i know i love to speak freely . and i tell you , sr. knight , unless you be stark staring mad you will never follow these mens counsels , nor venture over this moor to that castle : for you will be swallowed up horse and man into a fathomless lake of ill-sented mire , for all the nice nostrils of aplanedo . you was in a more hopefull way before , though something rough ; but it is so streight before you come at the castle , that you could never have got through unless you had left aplanedo behind you . he 's an old cholerick dotard , said those other fellows ; be but sure to keep the saddle and we dare warrant your worship ( our lives for yours ) that aplanedo will carry you safe through all dangers . wherefore upon the renewal of the high conc●it the knight had before of his steed , and those confident animations of his mercenary counsellers , he set on in a direct line toward the castle over this moor , the shepherd looking after him to see the event . but the knight had not rid two or three bow-shots from the place , but the shepherd saw them suddenly sink horse and man into the ground , so that they were both buried alive in the mire . whereupon fetching a deep sigh after so tragical a spectacle , he returned with a sad heart and slow pace towards his sheep on the top of the hill , drailing his sheephook behind him , as they do their spears , at the funeral of a souldier : whom his dog followed with a like soft pace , hanging down his head , and letting his tail flag , as if he had a mind to conform to both the sorrows and postures of his master . but those other false companions had somewhat before this got to a lone ale-house not far off , to spend the knights largess merrily with a bonny young hostess , and in plenty of good ale and cakes to celebrate his funeral . now i dare appeal to the judgment of any indifferent reader which of these parties , the old free-spoken shepherd , or those mercenary flatterers , had the greater share of charity : and would have him consider with himself in what a sad condition those of the church of rome are , who having the opportunity of being better instructed , as the knight had , are yet led away captive by such cunning deceivers , which is the main state of the controversie . iohn . . if i had not come and spoken unto them , they had not had sin ; but now they have no excuse for their sin , saith our blessed saviour in the gospel . the end . notes, typically marginal, from the original text notes for div a -e concil . trident. self . . cap. . concil . trident. sess. . cap. . cap. . can . ● . * see paul. fag , upon deut. . john ▪ . gen. . . francise . cosler . enchirid ▪ controv ▪ cap. . physic. lib. . con●il . trident. sess . concil . trident. sess. . see ch. 〈◊〉 conclus . . synop● . prophet . lib. ● . c. .